Eating Raw - Get Started Now!

You don’t have to give up the foods you’re used to eating all at once to start becoming more healthy and to start eating raw, organic and live foods. You know the best place to start changing your life and your diet? It’s at the grocery store, of course. Even if you’re at a good weight and pretty healthy, take a tip from dieters. Go shopping with a list and don’t go to the grocery store hungry. Make sure this shopping trip you can resist those Oreos and potato chips.

Clean out your refrigerator and your cabinets. Throw out the half-empty bags of snack foods. Put any microwaveable foods in a dark bag and stash them somewhere in the back of the freezer. Out of sight, out of mind.

Stock up on dried fruits and nuts for snacking. Transform your kitchen from a processed food haven to a healthy kitchen. Invest in a good juicer. Clean out those crisper drawers to get them ready for an influx of new organic and raw foods.

Load up on fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. If you can’t give up meat and fish, consider getting super fresh tuna that you can just sear and serve with sesame seeds and a small amount of soy sauce. (I’m getting hungry just thinking about this!)

Make eating this way fun. Invest in those big, white square dishes that are good for serving sushi. It’s easier to arrange small portions of different foods that way. And getting new white dishes will be symbolic of this new, purer way of eating. Get some good chopsticks so you can take your time eating. This is really fun!

Go to a bookstore and get a cookbook or a food book so you can learn about eating raw foods. Buy a big vase and a bunch of sunflowers to symbolize letting the sun into your diet.

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Raw Until Dinner?

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So, let's say you're interested in a raw food diet, but aren't sure you can do it all the time. That's ok! You don’t have to eat 100% raw, certainly not to start. It's not easy to change habits overnight, especially when so many of us are conditioned to think of food as reward and comfort. Dinner at night with family or friends is something many of look forward to.

If you aren't ready to switch completely, try just eating raw foods throughout the day. If you go to work every day, take carrots, apples, grapes or dried fruit with you to munch on. If you usually go out to lunch during the day, go places where you can get a salad. If you take a lunch to work or school with you, include sprouts and fruit with it.

Steamed brown rice and vegetables and a little fruit might not sound very interesting, but I think you'll be surprised at how much energy you get from it. If you’re like many people, fast food lunches make you want to crawl under your desk and take a nap in the afternoon! They make you sluggish and tired. A lighter lunch of raw foods can keep you energized throughout the day.

The business culture is different these days, and there’s less of a routine than there used to be with a morning “coffee break” and then “lunch hour” and an afternoon “break.” That routine doesn’t work for a lot of people any more, but you can still get hungry during the day. By taking a variety of raw foods with you to work, you can munch periodically during the day. Sometimes it’s better to eat to avoid getting hungry. If we let ourselves go too long without eating, you end up feeling hungry and deprived - and that’s when it’s easier to make poor food choices. Eating raw foods periodically throughout the day will help keep your metabolism humming along, and keep your blood sugar at steady levels.

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Junk Food

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Try this, just for the heck of it. Once you’ve started incorporating raw foods into your food plans, keep adding them in and reducing the number of cooked and processed foods from your diet. Especially things like fast food, chips, cookies and snacks.

After you’ve done that for awhile, have a junk food day. If you really miss your junk food, or think you do, then plan for it. Make it truly memorable and junk-worthy.

If we were gambling types, we’d be willing to bet a LOT of money that mid-way through your junk food day, you’ll stop.

Once you’ve started incorporating raw foods into your diet, and getting most of your nutrition from them, and stayed with it for at least a couple weeks, junk food is just not going to have the same appeal to you. Because now you’re thinking about what you’re putting into your body. And if you really think about what junk food does to your body, all of a sudden it doesn’t look so good.

You know, it just happens naturally. We’ve started eating more and more raw foods in our home, and haven’t been able to touch things like a McD's hamburger in ages. But have you ever read the warnings about handling chicken that you’ve bought in the grocery store? Or ground meat? It’s recommended that you wash your counters with BLEACH if you’ve prepared meat on them. Now, do you really want to put something in your body that requires BLEACH to clean the germs from it off of surfaces in your home? Nope - when I think about a fast food hamburger now, all I think of is germs. So why bother?

And other junk food we used to love just doesn’t appeal to us any more. Nachos and cheese? Well, the cheese you use is so processed, it’s nothing but corn syrup and processed cheese and fats and chemicals. We can feel our arteries grinding to a halt just looking at it. We don’t even use dips for our vegetables any more. We really do enjoy the taste of vegetables and fruits all by themselves.

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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!

Different Kinds of Raw Foodists - The Sproutarian

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Vegetarianism and raw food enthusiasts fall into many different groups with different theories of what kind of natural foods are best. Most vegetarians eat fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains. Vegans eat no animal by-products at all, including dairy or eggs. Fruitarians eat primarily fruits. And some vegetarians eat only sprouts.

Sprouts are very nutritious because they contain all the elements a plant needs for life and growth. The endosperm of seed is the storehouse of carbohydrates, protein and oil. When the seed germinates, these become predigested amino acids and natural sugars upon which the plant embryo feeds to grow. This life force we eat is filled with energy which is capable of generating cells of the body and supplying us with new vigor and life. For this reason sprouts are believed to slow the aging process. Research shows that sprouts are among the highest food in vitamins. They are not only a low cost food but are also tasty and easy to grow.

Almost any seed, grain or legume can be sprouted though some are tastier than others. You may try mung beans, alfalfa, wheat, peas, fenugreek, chickpeas, radish, fennel, celery seed, etc. These are most readily found in natural food stores. Remember to soak small seeds only for 4 hours and beans for 15 hours. You can also mix seeds - a variety is always best. Get a 2 liter wide-mouth jar and a piece of cheesecloth or old nylon stocking to fasten as a cover with a rubber band. Put seed into the jar as follows:

2 Tsps alfalfa
2 Tsps radish or fenugreek
1/4 cup lentils
1/2 cup mung beans
Soak these seeds for 15 hours and drain the water.
Afterwards rinse and drain well twice daily for about 3-5 days.

If you wish to make larger amounts of sprouts, so you may share with others, place 2 cups of mixed seed into a large porcelain pot, in the bottom of which holes have been drilled for easy rinsing. Simply place underneath the faucet and rinse morning and evening with warm water. Cover with a plate. The seeds grow beautifully and abundantly in a few days.

All Raw Foods?

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A diet is considered a raw food diet if it consists of at least 75% raw, uncooked fruits, vegetables, sprouts, etc. Raw and living foods are believed to contain essential food enzymes (living foods contain a higher enzyme content than cooked foods). The cooking process (i.e., heating foods above 116°F) is thought to destroy food enzymes.

People who follow the raw diet use particular techniques to prepare foods. These include sprouting seeds, grains and beans; soaking nuts and dried fruits; and juicing fruits and vegetables. The only cooking that is allowed is via a dehydrator. This piece of equipment blows hot air through the food but never reaches a temperature higher than 116°F.

Do you have to follow the regimen that strictly? Of course not. But it’s certainly worth it to incorporate some of these techniques and ideas into your diet. If you tend to snack at work, try taking in carrots or apple slices. Many of the bigger grocery stores now offer packaged vegetables or fruits that make it easier to pack them and take them to work. We’re a nation of convenience, and much of the resistance to healthier eating is that it does generally take a little more effort and time to buy and slice fruits and vegetables. Food retailers have been catching on, slowly, and it’s much easier now to get bags of sliced carrots, celery, apples, nuts and raisins.

Of course these aren’t necessarily organic foods, and organic is the better way to go, but we think anything raw is infinitely better than cooked, processed food. If you have the time, do buy organic and slice them yourself. But if you’re in a hurry, and nowhere near a natural food store, then don’t beat yourself up or sabotage your efforts because you can’t do this 100% all the time. That’s not realistic. Anything from the fruit and vegetable aisle is going to be better for you than a potato chip, or worse yet, a french fry!

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Leaving Processed Foods Behind

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Have you ever seen what a person's blood plasma looks like after they've eaten a fast food meal? It’s not a pretty picture. It looks thick and cloudy. Fast foods are loaded with fat and sodium. They use white bread and rolls, which means they’ve used white processed flour, with very few nutrients in them.

And how do you feel after a Big Mac and french fries? You need a nap, don’t you? All that fat drags you down and make you feel sluggish.

Changing your way of eating can be a hard thing to do, but think about some of the things you do when when you switch to a healthier diet. You eliminate those high fat, processed, high-sodium foods. You may eat less, true. But eating more raw fruits and vegetables and drinking plenty of water will result in more energy and less need for sleep. Processed foods, with their high fat content are hard to digest. They take an enormous amount of the body’s energy to consume. When your body’s energy isn’t used up digesting all that fat, it’s available for YOU – for work, play, love, exercise – in other words, for LIFE.

These aren’t drastic concepts. You don’t have to make drastic changes in your lifestyle. But take a good look at what you consume without even thinking about it. We reach for the potato chips, or stop at McDonald’s or Taco Bell when we’re hungry and we want something in a hurry.

It’s so easy to have snacks on hand so you don’t have to stop at a fast food place when you’re hungry. If you’re on the road a lot, and get hungry, pick up a bag of vegetables or apple slices at a grocery store. Yes, it’s easier to drive up to Wendy’s, but taking a few extra minutes, not to mention a few extra steps, will be well worth it in energy and vitality.

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Vegetarianism Vs. Raw Foodism - What's the Difference?

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Is there a difference between vegetarian and raw food diets? A raw foodist is a vegetarian, but one who generally is not going to cook his vegetables or fruits. A vegetarian is someone who simply doesn’t eat meat, fish or poultry, but only consumes vegetables, pasta, and rice. A vegetarian might eat meatless spaghetti sauce or order onion rings in a restaurant. (Not the healthiest choice, but sometimes it’s hard to find something to eat in a restaurant if you’re vegetarian – even harder if you’re a raw foodist.)

There are different categories of vegetarians, like vegans, or fruitarians, and raw foodist is a category of vegetarianism. We haven’t seen anything about sushi being considered a raw food, but it is. Raw food, though, generally means eating raw, uncooked fruits, vegetables, dried fruits, seaweeds, etc.

But to be a raw food purist means raw broccoli, not steamed. To a vegetarian, someone committed to not eat meat or fish or animal products, steamed vegetables are just as good, although everyone would agree that steaming can take out nutrients from foods, rendering them less nutritious. A vegetarian might consume dairy or egg products; however a vegan will not consume any animal products at all. And a raw foodist is a vegan who consumes only uncooked, unprocessed raw foods.

Proponents of the raw diet believe that enzymes are the life force of a food and that every food contains its own perfect mix. These enzymes help us digest foods completely, without relying on our body to produce its own cocktail of digestive enzymes.

It is also thought that the cooking process destroys vitamins and minerals and that cooked foods not only take longer to digest, but they also allow partially digested fats, proteins and carbohydrates to clog up our gut and arteries.

Followers of a raw diet cite numerous health benefits, including:

• increased energy levels
• improved appearance of skin
• improved digestion
• weight loss
• reduced risk of heart disease

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Raw Food, Water and Your Skin

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Starting from the inside out is the best way to get healthy, glowing skin, and one of the first steps you take should be eliminating caffeine in the form of coffee and soda. Caffeine dehydrates the body, and it shows in the skin - a lack of moisture is a sure way to create lines and wrinkles. Caffeine functions as a diuretic, causing increased urine output, and so depletes your body and skin of the moisture it needs. We try to combat this with moisturizers, lotions and creams, but the better way is to put the moisture INTO your body, instead of on it.

Drinking pure water, unprocessed fruit juices and coconut milk will give your body and skin the hydration it needs. The colors in fruit juices are the colors of the earth and these colors will reflect themselves in warm and healthy skin tones.

The overall effects of caffeine on your body will manifest themselves in your skin. Heavy caffeine drinkers can experience osteoporosis, headaches, depression, sleeplessness. These can all be reflected in your skin.

When you replace colas, coffee and teas made with boiling water with water, fruit juices, herbal teas and coconut milk, you’ll soon start to feel better and sleep better. The health and vitality of your organs and cells will be reflected in the glow of your healthy skin as soon as you kick the caffeine habit.

Another reason for drinking lots of pure water is because it helps your body with detoxification. When the body rids itself of toxins, it passes not only through urination, but also through the skin which is the largest elimination organ. Raw food increases your detoxification rate. Drinking water helps the body rid itself of toxins.

To achieve a healthy complexion, drink plenty of water and eat plenty of raw food. What goes into your body will be reflected in your overall appearance.

Food Dehydrators for a Raw Food Diet

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Making dried fruit and fruit leathers isn’t hard and it doesn’t have to be expensive either. While some food processors and juicers can get really pricey, a dehydrator isn’t going to cost that much and it’s a lifesaver to have fruit leathers, dried fruit or fruit jerky on hand when you can’t get out to the store for fresh food.

When buying a dehydrator, some things to consider are the materials and construction used to manufacture the product, the size, heating elements, fans and guarantees. Make sure you have room for the dehydrator in the space you have planned for it. Look for one that’s multi-purpose, with multiple trays and special trays for fruits and herbs. A side-mounted or horizontal fan is best when choosing a food dehydrator.

Here are some food dehydrators to consider. But do a little research to find just the right one for you!

If you're looking for an 'entry level' type of dehydrator, you can't go wrong with the Nesco American Harvest – an inexpensive food dehydrator with five trays that don’t have to be rotated. Priced approximately $55-65

Or if you're serious and ready to invest a bit more, the Excalibur Dehydrator has over 12 square feet of drying space. Comes with 9 polycarbonate trays and has a horizontal fan for maximum drying efficiency. Fast drying times, no tray rotation needed and fast cleanup. Price approximately $200-$220.

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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!

Helping the Digestive system

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Even if we are not sick and look healthy, we may not be getting enough adequate nutrition. We can improve our state of health by simply knowing what nutrition we need. Nutrition is, after all, what food is all about - the amount we need, its function, and the basic materials we need for our body in order for it to continue on with its daily activities. By knowing how to take care of our body through nutrition, we can better maintain its high performance levels.

Eating raw foods helps our bodies with nutrition in so many ways, but the digestive system is one of the body processes that benefits the most. The extra fiber and moisture in raw fruits and vegetables helps keep the digestive system functioning regularly and actually keeps the system cleaner. Cooked foods - especially meats - are much harder for our bodies to digest. Eating healthy, living, raw foods can help to prevent certain cancers, most notably cancers of the colon and intestines.

Eating large meals, high in fats and proteins, often makes us feel sluggish afterwards - because the body is working so hard to digest these foods, it sends a large part of the body's oxygen to the digestive system. Eating lighter meals, full of raw food that is easy to digest helps us maintain our energy through out the day. It is believed that about three hours between meals is an appropriate interval for maintaining energy and facilitating digestion.