They're not. People diet to lose weight, depending on the diet, you might not get all the essential vitamins and minerals that your body needs, but it will not drastically harm you.
Some diets are to build muscle, in which cases your body could take a lot of protein, but that will not harm you.
It's not. A study published in the National Institutes of Health Library in March 2014 stated: "The highest Healthy-Eating-Index (HEI-2010) total scores were found for the vegans, and the lowest for omnivores."
that meat is high in cholesterol
If by "raw food diet" you mean "raw vegan" than yes. It is the ultimate health and healing diet, used to treat and reverse cancer in cancer patients.
There are no healthy advantages of an unhealthy diet. An unhealthy diet is an unhealthy diet.
It can be. You can have a low sodium vegan diet.
It depends on what you eat. Purely becoming Vegan does not ensure weight loss. In order to lose weight, you will need to burn more calories than you consume in a day, so even if you eat Vegan, you could still be eating unhealthy food. Here is a link to a "skinny" Vegan diet that should be able to help you lose weight. http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/skinny-diet-not-big-on-meatw-sweets
No, a vegan diet will do that anyway.
A vegan diet
A healthy way to start a vegan diet is to ease into it and start with subsutues like morning star and boca for a couple months and then go into a more vegan diet
A raw food vegan diet does not consist of foods that have been cooked. Pasteurized milks, and cooked meats are also not a part of a raw food vegan diet.
You certainly could lose weight on a vegan diet if you choose to, but going vegan won't guarantee that you will lose weight. You can still over eat even if everything you are eating is vegan.
vegan
Vegan diet can be monotonous and boring at times so there is importance in adding variety to one's vegan diet. This can be done by using olive oil and adding colorful fruits and vegetables.