The Importance of Juices in a Raw Food Diet

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Many people have heard of juice fasts as a means of detoxifying the body. Followers of a raw foods regimen also include juices as part of their nutrition. Nearly anything can be juiced – fruits and vegetables, primarily. It’s a form of concentrated nutrition. Some raw foodists drink only fresh fruit juices.

In addition, fruit and vegetable juices are good sources of the traditional nutrients. Citrus fruits (grapefruit, oranges, etc.) provide a healthy portion of vitamin C. Carrot juice contains large quantities of vitamin A, in the form of beta carotene. A number of green juices are a good source of vitamin E. Fruit juices are a good source of essential minerals like iron, copper, potassium, sodium, iodine, and magnesium, which are bound by the plant in a form that is most easily assimilated during digestion.

While fruit and vegetable juices are the most common form of juice, wheatgrass juice has been getting a lot of attention lately because of the denseness of nutrients it contains.
The primary advantage of truly fresh wheatgrass juice - juice made from raw, live, soil-grown wheat grass, is the apparent high level of life force energy that it contains. It is one of the few truly fresh foods available (sprouts are another). The grass is alive and growing right up to the time it is juiced, and hopefully you are drinking it within a few minutes or so of juicing. Most of us get our green veggies from markets, and they were picked days ago and refrigerated - losing vitality the whole time. (It is an even worse situation for fruit, which may be picked weeks before you eat it, and in some cases, held in cold storage for months - losing vitality the whole time.) In contrast, one can grow wheatgrass indoors, and enjoy it when it is truly fresh.

In conclusion, drinking plenty of fresh fruit juices daily will cleanse your system, make you feel completely energized and last but not least, you will look beautiful. People will wonder what you are doing differently!

Types of Raw Foodists - Fruitarians

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We've talked a lot about the value of the raw food diet; that is, a diet that consists mainly of uncooked, unprocessed fruits, vegetables, sprouts, seaweed, nuts and juices. It’s a vegetarian diet, but one that maintains the idea that cooking and processing take out the majority of essential vitamins, enzymes and nutrients that our bodies evolved to thrive on.

Fruitarians, as the word implies, eat primarily fruits, with nuts and grains as well. Fruits are the part of a plant that carries the seeds - so a fruitarian diet includes some foods that we usually think of as vegetables in a culinary sense: tomatoes, avocados and cucumbers, for example. Fruit is nourishing and refreshing for your health. It doesn't clog the body's vital arteries; better still, it actually flushes and cleanses.

You need to eat carefully if you choose a fruitarian diet, because it can be a real challenge to get enough essential protein in your diet. A fruitarian can eat an avocado sandwich, a coconut milk shake or the purest coconut ice cream made from the milk and meat of the fruit. Or perhaps try sweets made with pure maple syrup or date sugar, fruit shakes made of a mixture of orange and banana, pear and peach, pomegranate, papaya, and plum. Other common meals are salads of tofu, tomato and cucumber, green and red peppers (but not lettuce, cabbage, or celery), and nut butters such as almond butter or tahini and hummus {chickpea paste}. In other words, fruitarian may eat fruits 99.9% of the time, but occasionally do indulge in the delicacies of other food groups.

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Dehydrating Fruits for a Raw Food Diet

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One of the problems facing anyone trying to eat healthier, especially for someone trying to move towards eating more raw foods is the convenience factor. Raw and natural foods are so much healthier for you, but it’s not as if there are drive-through raw foods restaurants on every street corner in the country.

And of course, there’s no such thing as a raw foods snack machine, is there? So if you get hungry during the day, you’re going to have a challenge of finding something appropriate to eat if you haven’t packed any raw fruits and vegetables. And when you’re rushing around in the morning, sometimes it’s next to impossible to find the time to put together a selection of healthy snacks to take with you.

One thing to try so that you have healthy snacks available quickly is to dehydrate your fruits or make fruit leathers. Those fruit roll-ups you see in the grocery store are derived from a pretty good idea – fruit leathers. But it’s better to make your own – commercial fruit leathers are going to be loaded with preservatives and sugars – just the things you want to avoid. In the picture, you can see fruit leather being made in a dehydrator.

When you’re switching to a raw foods diet, that doesn’t always have to mean fresh off the farm. It means not cooking foods with processes that strip all the essential vitamins, amino acids and enzymes from them. Drying fruit is a great way to add variety to your diet and make yourself tasty snacks of dried fruit or fruit leathers. It’s not hard to do. There are recipes and inexpensive food dehydrators on the Web. These are also great snacks to pack for your kids’ lunches!

You get all the benefit of the raw fruit, just packaged and preserved in a healthy, nutritious way!

No More Canned Foods!

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When you buy canned fruits and vegetables, you're getting lower quality food that lacks in nutrition and is usually loaded with salt and preservatives. On a scale of healthiness and freshness, fresh fruits and vegetables are best, followed by frozen foods and then canned. Last on the list, canned items are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

When foods are canned, they go through a cooking process that destroys up to a full half of the vitamins A, C, riboflavin and thiamin. And sitting on shelves in storage, the deterioration continues with the foods losing an additional 5% to 20% of these vitamins. The remaining vitamins only decrease their values slightly.

The thing to remember is that everything depends on the time between the harvesting and the canning and freeing process. Generally, the vegetables are picked immediately and taken to canning or freezing divisions when their nutrient contact is at its peak. How the food is canned affects the nutrient value also. Vegetables boiled for longer than necessary and in large amounts of water lose much of their nutritional value as compared to those only lightly steamed.

Another real concern with canned foods is the presence of Bisphenol A - a chemical used in plastics and also a part of the lining of virtually all food and beverage cans. While originally determined safe for humans in small amounts, recent studies have found that people are absorbing much higher amounts than previously thought. This can have dangerous effects on developing fetuses, small children (especially those who use plastic bottles and sippy cups), and in general can have possible effects on obesity, the thyroid and reproductive organs. The US National Institute of Health has expressed concerns about neurological effects, also. In general, it's just another reason for canned foods to be avoided.

When we pick fresh vegetables or fruit at the farm, they are always more nutritious than canned or frozen – this is a fact. If you cannot buy fresh, at least buy frozen.

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Making the Switch to Raw Foods

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So, now that you know what a raw food diet is all about, you need to decide if it's right for you.

Well, you don't have to make a switch to 100% raw foods right off the bat. You can start by simply eating more fruits and vegetables and no processed foods. Try drinking fruit juices or smoothies for breakfast, and then eating a healthy veggie sandwich with fruit juice for lunch. For dinner, eat some blanched vegetables with brown rice and no meats.

As you gradually detoxify your body, you will see dramatic results. First, however, you'll go through the detoxify process, where you will feel tired, have headaches, skin eruptions, etc. Once you are over this tough time, you will feel light, not dragged down, energetic, vitality, and conscious, among other things. You will have more mental clarity and therefore be more productive. Your body will feel cleansed, you will be able to treat disease and prevent new ones from forming. You may start to see dramatic weight loss. You will also find that over time you won't be as affected with colds and other sicknesses because your immune system will become much stronger.

Apart from that, you'll find that you will be saving money because you can either grow your vegetables or buy them at a farmers market. Buying organic food will save the earth and provide agricultural support, which is much needed. You will also save time and money because you will not be in the kitchen cooking up a storm. You will not be eating animals, because these animals have been pumped with high hormones and other drugs that lead to health problems with humans.

The Raw Food Diet - Not Just for Rabbits!

It’s been said that a raw food diet program is the most influential diet trend to hit the scene in years. For many people, they hear that term: raw, and they figure they know exactly what’s involved in it. However, you’d be surprised as what it really encompasses.

Of course, a raw diet is nothing new. Looking back over the history of humanity, primitive man ate a raw diet prior to the discovery of fire. In modern times, at the beginning of the 20th century, a number of people began to advocate a return to such a diet as being the healthiest way for people to live.

Your mouth is – quite naturally – the means by which food enters your body. A key benefit of raw foods is that you have to chew them well before swallowing. No doubt your parents may have told you to chew your food a certain number of times before swallowing! The reason for this is that the digestive process starts in the mouth. Chewing releases saliva, an enzyme that helps you digest your food better. In the case of starches, it begins the process of breaking it down into its component sugar molecules.

Some people wonder if a raw food diet means you eat raw meat. No, that is not the case. For the most part, a raw diet is a vegetarian diet. In general, your diet will be composed of things like fresh fruit and vegetables (and their juices), nuts, seeds and sprouted seeds, purified water and unpasteurized dairy products. There are other foods included in the diet, but it’s important that they be unprocessed and free of any chemicals or preservatives. Typically, a raw food diet means that about three-quarters of the food you eat is raw. The remaining components of your diet are usually dehydrated fruits and vegetables. You can either buy them that way, or get yourself a dehydrator specially made for food. The one caveat with such a device: be sure that it operates below 116 degrees Fahrenheit; a good dehydrator functions best at this temperature.

Now, once you start eating the raw food diet, you’ll start to see some of the benefits and then you won’t miss those steaks and chops you once ate. A raw food diet will lower your risk of developing heart disease or diabetes, give you more energy, improve the glow to your skin by erasing some of the signs of aging, diminish your digestive troubles, help you to control your weight loss, and even get rid of some of those illnesses and chronic health conditions you may be suffering from. Most processed foods have so many chemicals that we still don’t know the long-term health impact of. By purging your body of these things, you can see a real improvement in your overall health.

Of course, deciding on a raw diet isn’t as simple as starting to eat a vegetarian or vegan diet, and that’s it. No, you should always meet with a doctor or dietician to design a diet just right for you. For one thing, you may have a food allergy that can cause you trouble, for example, if you are lactose or gluten intolerant.  If so, you must avoid dairy and/or some grains. Gluten is present in most grains; so the doctor will tell you to substitute whole grain rice. Then there are certain vitamins and minerals that you need on a daily basis. If you don’t eat certain foods (maybe you don’t like certain vegetables), then you’ll need to take supplements.

Raw food diet meal plans aren't ideal for everyone, but you can find more information at RawFood4Life.info, and talk to your doctor about the benefits of a raw food diet.