Thursday, April 3rd

What is the raw food diet?
It is a lifestyle that supports eating naturally grown wild or organically and sustainably raised fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, seaweeds and occasionally sprouted grains. Most significantly, during the preparation of raw food dishes nothing is cooked, at least in the traditional sense. Nothing is heated or cooked above 116 degrees F.

What are Living and Raw Foods?
Raw and Living Foods are foods that contain enzymes. In general, the act of heating  food over 116  degrees F destroys enzymes in food.  All cooked food is devoid of enzymes.  Living and raw foods also have enormously higher nutrient values than the foods that have been cooked

Why Eat Raw Food?
People get into raw food for a number of reasons, and here are some of the many and varied reasons:

Ethics:
Some arrive by a path that involves a search for more natural, ethical and sustainable ways of living; a more compassionate way of life, as a natural extension of vegetarianism or veganism, or being ‘green'.

Spiritual:
Some sense the spiritual benefits, cleansing mind and body, with the widespread tradition of eating only or mainly raw fruit amongst wise men and women.

Health and Healing:
Others arrive at raw foods simply to maximize their health, or through serious illness or disease, having heard of the great healing effects of a raw diet, with particularly green juices and ‘living foods' having many significant benefits in fighting serious ‘lifestyle diseases' such as cancer, diabetes, crone's disease or heart disease.

Weight loss:
It is true that some people who have struggled with conventional diets, different degrees of food disorders and issues relating to weight have found the raw or mainly raw diet to be of great benefit.

A Positive Life:
Eating a lot of raw foods can be a fad for some, but for the majority, a mainly or totally raw food lifestyle is the result of a genuine search for an improvement in their lifestyle, for their own benefit or to benefit their relationship with the planet, or both of course a big first step in being able to walk away from processed foods and toward whole foods.

What are some health benefits I will achieve when I go raw?

• Become more beautiful and reverse aging
• Lose weight and keep it off without counting calories or measuring portion sizes
• Immunize yourself against colds and flu naturally
• Sharpen your focus and mental clarity on less sleep
• Strengthen your body so as to heal from and prevent serious disease without drugs or  surgery

The benefits of the diet are said to include:
A stable body mass index; clear skin; more energy; and minimising a range of common illnesses, from the flu to obesity-related illnesses.

Raw foods contain bacteria and other micro-organisms that stimulate the immune system and enhance digestion by populating the digestive tract with beneficial flora.

Raw foods have higher nutrient values than foods which have been cooked.

If you choose to eat fresh raw, whole foods, then you get adequate nutrition and enough enzymes to digest your foods properly. That means your body will not have to scavenge enzymes for digestion from other metabolic processes in your body, wasting energy and resources. Having sufficient living food enzymes will over time restore energy and stamina and rebuild your healthy metabolism of all nutrients, including fats. When you feel better physically, you’ll feel better emotionally, too.

Enzymes and Digestion
Some raw food advocates believe cooked food is less digestible than raw food because cooking destroys the enzymes contained in food.

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze (i.e. accelerate) chemical reactions.  Enzymes assist in the digestion of foods.  They are known to be the "Life-Force" and or "energy" of food.

Why are Enzymes Important?
Like all catalysts, enzymes work by lowering the activation energy (ΔG‡) for a reaction, thus dramatically accelerating the rate of the reaction.  Enzymes are important because they assist in the digestion and absorption of food.   One source for this belief is the work of Artturi Virtanen, a biochemist. Artturi Virtanen (1895-1973), a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, showed that enzymes in uncooked foods are released in the mouth when vegetables are chewed. It is believed that these enzymes interact with other substances, notably the enzymes produced by the body itself, to aid the digestion process.

Raw foods contain enzymes which greatly aid in their own digestion, freeing the body's own enzymes to do the work unimpeded of regulating all the body's many metabolic processes. Heating food degrades or destroys these enzymes in food, putting the onus on the body's own enzyme production.

Eating food without enzymes makes digestion more difficult; deprives the body of enzymes; and leads to toxicity in the body, to excess consumption of food, and therefore to obesity and to chronic disease.  One of the “magic bullets” for easy weight loss is simply the action of enzymes

Doesn't the acidic ph of the stomach destroy enzymes?
Viktorus Kulvinskas, one of the world's foremost and most experienced active researchers into enzyme nutrition has information showing then stomach acid merely deactivates food enzymes.  The enzymes are then reactivated in the more alkaline small intestine.  Many people who eat all raw foods, sense a world of healthful difference in our energy, digestion and connectedness with nature by eating enzyme-rich living foods.

How can I eat avocados, nuts and other high fat foods on this diet and still lose weight?
There is a huge difference between cooked fats and raw fats.
The studies that have been done linking fats to high cancer rates, heart attacks, kidney failure, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, angina, cardiovascular disease, and all of the other diseases that clog up the blood and the arteries have been done with cooked fats. Obesity is linked to a high cooked fat diet.

Raw plant fats on the other hand, have exactly the opposite effect. Raw fats, such as avocadoes, olives, coconuts, nuts and seeds are imperative in a healthy diet. These fats contain antioxidants. They contain oils that help the joints, nerves, and bones.

These raw plant fats do not cause the body to gain excess weight because they still contain the enzyme lipase; this is the enzyme that is needed to digest fat. Cooking fats destroy lipase, along with other important enzymes and minerals. The fat digesting enzyme, lipase, brakes up the raw plant foods as they are eaten and help to digest the oils in these foods. Because this food is getting assimilated and digested properly, It is not clogging up the blood and arteries, and causing all kinds of chronic and degenerative diseases, and it is not getting stored as excess weight in the body.

What is the easiest way for me to become "raw"?
The best way is to just ADD raw fruits and veggies to your daily diet. The more raw you add the less cooked you will eat. Also read as much about raw foods as possible, try local Raw restaurants, experiment with making some raw dishes on your own.

Where do you get protein on the raw food diet?
From green leafy veggies, srpouts, fruits, green juices, nuts, seeds and seaweeds.  The WHO (World Health Organization) says humans need about 5% of their daily calories to come from protein to be healthy. The USDA puts this figure at 6.5%. On average, fruits have about 5% of their calories from protein. Vegetables have from 20-50% of their calories from protein. Sprouted seeds, beans, and grains contain from 10-25% of their calories from protein. So if you are eating any variety of living plant foods, you are getting more than adequate protein. Numerous scientific studies have shown the daily need for protein to be about 25-35 grams per day. So if you ate 2,000 calories per day, and ate raw plant foods that had an average of 10% of their calories from protein, you would get 200 calories worth of protein, or 50 grams. This is more than adequate to support optimal well-being. Other studies have shown that heat treating a protein (such as with cooking) makes about half of it unusable to the human body. So raw plant food protein is even a better source than cooked plant foods or animal foods.

What about calcium?
You can get calcium from salads, nuts, seeds, seaweeds, and veggie juices.

Where do you get iron from?
Berries, dried fruits, nuts, seeds, seaweeds, sprouts.

What is your daily diet like?
The diet of some one eating a raw diet varies according to the person, just as no two people who eat cooked food eat the same.

Whole fruits, smoothies, or fruit and  vegetable juices, are a great way to start the day.For lunch and dinner there are so many raw food dishes that you could make. Just as it is impossible to list all of the cooked food entree's that people eat, so too would it be impossible to list all of the options available for lunches and dinners. The choices for desserts are so numerous and delicious, and when made from raw and living food, there is no guilt and no need to abstain. There are times when I have eaten mango coconut cream pie for lunch. Raw pasta, thai veggie wraps, fettuccini alfredo, sun burgers, large salads with guacamole and corn chowder are some of my favorite lunch or dinner items. 

Do I need any equipment to go raw?
It will be helpful, but it's not necessary. The first pieces of equipment I would recommend would be a few good knives and a cutting board – then a heavy duty blender. (Vitamix is my personal favorite)  Then a juicer, dehydrator, and food processor.

Are olives raw?
Not all olives, there are a few raw stores that sell truly raw sun cured olives. Anything in a can is most likely cooked.

Is honey raw?
If it says on the bottle or jar, it may be. Call the company and ask. Labels may be misleading most times.

Is maple syrup raw?
Right from a tree yes, from the store, nope!

Is soy sauce raw?
No, it is "living" but it is still cooked then fermented.

Is soy milk raw?
Nope, it is heavily cooked and processed.

Is wine raw?
Some are, but wine contains alcohol, which is not good raw or cooked.

Are store bought nut milks raw?
No they are not. Make your own nut milks. It's cheaper and you know what's in it!