Raw Food Diet Ideas
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!
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!
Organic Products and Raw Food Diet
Fortunately for those of us newly interested in eating organic and raw foods, there are lots of products out there. Natural and organic foods used to be found only in natural food stores, and those could be few and far between.While not as ubiquitous as McDonald's, there ARE many more stand-alone stores. And the grocery chains are catching on too, with more organic selections than ever before. If you don't see them in your grocery store, just ask. You're probably not the only person in your neighborhood who'd like to see more of these options.
Many grocery stores now feature sprouts and other living foods in the produce aisle. Of course, if they don't, there's nothing easier to grow for yourself than sprouts!
There are also tons of sites on the Web where you can order raw and living foods. Just do a search on raw foods and you'll come up with a lot of different places to order the foods you'd like to buy. Many of these sites are also full of useful information, to help you learn about eating raw foods, and help educate you on the specific food values.
What else? Experiment with what you like. Take the time to learn a little about what the different nutrients in foods do for you.
A few examples:
Cabbage - High in Vitamin C; important for healthy cell function.
Shitake mushrooms - contain essential fatty acids and antioxidants to support a healthy immune system.
Kale - Rich in fiber and helps reduce calorie intake with less hunger. We like that!
Barley - Loaded with niacin, fiber and iron and is important for healthy blood sugar.
Pumpkin - So rich in fiber and vitamins; helps reduce appetite by filling the stomach with indigestible fibers.
Here are some great natural health products to check out:
Raw Food Made Easy
Amazon Price: $17.99 (as of 12/04/2009) 
Raw Revolution Organic Live Food Bars, Raspberry and Chocolate, 2.2-Ounce Bars (Pack of 12)
Amazon Price: $18.15 (as of 12/04/2009)
Raw Foods for Busy People The Video
Amazon Price: $24.95 (as of 12/04/2009)
12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food
Amazon Price: $11.53 (as of 12/04/2009)
Gabriel Cousens, MD: Rainbow-Green Live-Food Cuisine
Amazon Price: $22.49 (as of 12/04/2009)
Tools for preparation
You don't need to make a huge investment in eating raw and living foods. In fact, you'll probably be saving money by cutting back on highly processed convenience foods. All that high-fat, high-sodium microwaveable foods are pricey, too!If you're new to this, eating raw foods isn't just about putting something different in you mouth. It's an experience that goes beyond the act of eating. When you're shopping for your food, make it an aesthetic experience as well. Fill your cart up with all the colors of these delicious live foods.
Invest in a good juicer. There are cooks' catalogues that carry them. Shop online. Maybe you can find a good used juicer on an auction site. A juicer is NOT really a blender. It's much more powerful because it needs to liquefy foods that can be highly fibrous.
You want some good knives too, for cutting up your fruits and vegetables. Invest in a few good ones. Turn the work of chopping up your food into something artistic.
If you don't have a steamer, invest in one of those too, so you can lightly steam your vegetables if you want. Buy specific types of steamers. We've seen an asparagus steamer that's especially designed to steam the woody bottoms more than the tender tips.
Get a few chopping tools that are also garnishing tools. It's just as easy to cut up carrots with a ridged cutting knife to make them more attractive. There are special slicers that get your fruits and veggies really thin and therefore more fun to eat.
And do invest in a new cutting board. You don't want to use the same cutting board for all your fresh new foods that you've used through the years to cut up chicken or other foods. No matter how much you scrub, your cutting board can absorb bacteria.
Start fresh in all things - not just your food!
Food Dryers and Dehydrators - Essential Raw Food Diet Tools
Since dried fruits and vegetables are an essential part of a raw food diet, you'll need to include a food dryer or food dehydrator as part of your raw food preparation equipment.
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Eat raw up until dinnertime
Are you interested in a raw food diet, but don't think you can do it all the time? You don't have to, certainly not to start. Many of us are conditioned to think of food as reward and comfort.We look forward to the end of the day, having dinner with our families, or going out to dinner with friends.
Try 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, try to go places where you can get a salad. If you pack a lunch, include sprouts and fruit with it. Steamed brown rice and vegetables and a little fruit might not sound very interesting, but it's a good energy lunch.
If you're like many people, those 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 until we get ravenous, that's when it's easier to make poor food choices.
Eating raw foods periodically throughout the day also keeps your metabolism humming along, and keeps your blood sugar at steady levels.
Benefits of Juice to Your Raw Diet
Eating raw foods is a way to give your body some of the nutrition it desperately needs.Many of us are at least slightly overweight, and even the morbidly obese are starving for essential proteins and amino acids.
All the processed, cooked foods we eat give us only a small percentage of what we need. Consequently, we eat and eat and yet we're still not nourished.
Psychologists try to tell us we're eating to make up for an emptiness in our souls. Wrong! Our bodies our empty and trying to tell us so.
Eating raw foods is good for us on so many levels. It's satisfying to eat them. They take more time to chew and swallow, so we don't eat as fast. And we're getting so much more in the way of nutrition by consuming fruits, vegetables, nuts and sprouts.
It can take time to prepare raw foods, however. Which is why a juicer is an important addition to your kitchen once your start to be serious about raw foods. A good juicer can process an entire apple - seeds, stems, peel, pulp and all - and turn all that into a healthy, nutritious juice.
Buying apple juice is NOT the same thing!!! Don't even look at apple juices or even ciders in the grocery store. Put that $2 or $3 aside and save up for a juicer. Buy bags of apples, orange, bananas, carrots and make your own juices to get everything from the fruit that you'd get by eating it raw.
Now you're getting juice that's as fresh as the fruit or vegetable you made it from. No preservatives, no processing that strips most of the energy from the fruit. And think of all the delicious combinations you can make with the many tropical fruits that are available now in most grocery stores.
You can customize your fruits and add non-typical ingredients like pumpkin to an orange juice. Now that's a powerhouse of a juice!
Blenders and Juicers - Kitchen Essentials
A good blender or juicer is used daily in a Raw Fooder's kitchen.
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by djcasey
This lens is about eating a raw food diet for energy, for health, and for weight loss.
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