Posts Tagged ‘raw food’

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How Raw Food Diet Increases Your Energy

May 15th, 2010

Energy is one of those buzz words that can have everyone talking. It seems that no one ever has enough energy, and people are always looking for new and innovative ways to gain more energy. People do strange things to get more energy, things that they occasionally strongly dislike doing in order to get a few steps ahead of the competition. People eat foods that they do not like, drinks fluids that they can barely choke down, and pop pills like there is no tomorrow.

But if you are reading this blog post, of course you know that you can eat for energy, without all the mystery and the misery. Eating a raw food diet is an excellent way to increase your energy levels without having to suffer for the strength.

But you might wonder, how does a high energy diet give you the power that a diet of cooked foods simply cannot provide? There are a lot of important factors in raw foods that contribute to giving you more than simply a belly full of food.

For one thing, eating for energy with raw foods gives you a massive supply of natural vitamins and nutrients that are incredibly helpful for an active body. Certainly, you can get a decent amount of vitamins in a more traditional, cooked diet, but so many of the vitamins in fruits and vegetables are often leached out of them in the cooking process, lost to pots of boiling water and sizzling pans of fat.

So raw foods offer a higher level of vitamins – so what? Well, a massive amount of vitamins means that your body is fully stocked with the tools it needs in order to keep you in peak physical condition. A strong body needs to be a healthy body, so a good source of vitamins is one of the basic building blocks of being more active, and having more energy.

Raw foods also contain energy in the form of those much-talked about living food enzymes. These little wonders often get killed off in the cooking process, as a result of the high temperatures. Without them, your body has to rely on its own sources of enzymes for digestion, absorption and elimination. These might be incredibly normal processes that your body goes through every single day, but that is not to say that they are easy on your body. Precious energy can be wasted when your body has to work harder to grab those nutrients from your foods.

And of course, within the area of raw foods, there are a number of food items that contain huge amounts of energy giving ingredients. From the natural sugars in your favorite fruits to healthy fats, natural fibers and other wonderful additions, the raw foods that you eat can have a huge impact on your energy levels – and the best part is, they deliver that energy without resorting to terrible food choices, unnatural supplement pills and other unpleasant options. Energy is important, but you have to enjoy how you gather it.

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Does Eating for Energy Live Up to Its Claims?

May 6th, 2010

Hello beautiful people! My name is Terri. I’m 33, and I’m really excited to be one of Yuri’s new contributors to his blog. I suppose I should start by telling you a little about myself.

I was raised on a SAD (Standard American Diet). I spent the majority of my 20s with very low energy. I started having migraines around age 26. I suffered from hay fever, which I had developed when I was 17. I was congested and tired all the time. I never felt like doing anything and just wanted to sit on the couch all the time. That’s all I had energy for. No doctor ever gave me a reason for this. According to the doctors, I was in good health.

In January 2008, I finally got sick of things. My mom had suggested several times that part of my congestion problem came from a sensitivity to dairy, so I thought I’d try a cooked vegan diet. At that point I had heard of the raw food diet but thought it was a little extreme. The vegan diet definitely decreased my congestion and improved my energy, but I quickly got bored with it. A lot of the recipes revolve around tofu, and I don’t do tofu.

While I was experimenting with the vegan diet, though, I continued to read and learn more about nutrition and how eating the right foods can affect your health and energy levels. In February of 2009 I decided I was ready to try the raw food diet and purchased Yuri’s Eating for Energy book. The information in Eating for Energy really seemed to make sense to me, and I started putting it into practice.

Now, I eat raw all day until dinner time. For dinner I usually eat whatever the rest of the family is eating but sometimes not. So I am mostly raw but not 100%.

I live in a household of SAD eaters but am trying to change that. My husband is really quite opposed to drastic changes to his diet, so the same unhealthy foods are still in the house. That is slowly changing, though. About a year ago when a raw food recipe book I had purchased off of amazon.com arrived in the mail, my husband said, “I’m not eating any of that crap!” Now, he’s talking about doing a cleanse this summer!

I have to say that my energy is definitely much higher these days. I can really feel it when I get lazy with my diet, especially my ability to exercise is noticeably affected. My allergies (hay fever, dairy, and gluten) are practically non-existent. In fact, I keep hearing that this is one of the worst allergy seasons in recent history here, but I wouldn’t know it if I hadn’t heard it on the news because I’ve had so little trouble with my allergies this spring! Also, when I do eat conventional dairy and wheat products, I don’t have hardly any reaction to them anymore.

So I would give that a big YES! Eating for Energy definitely does live up to its claims!

See you next time!

Terri

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Raw Food Replacement For Milk

May 2nd, 2010

When it comes to raw food as a viable alternative for everyday life, there are plenty of things that you might not have considered replaceable. For example, you might think that a raw diet would mean you would never have a plate of spaghetti again, or never get to savor a hamburger.

But raw foods are nothing if not versatile, and you can find wonderful, delicious replacement recipes for both on any number of raw food blog sites. But there is one food item that people tend to think is fairly irreplaceable, and it’s absence in their diet is one that can have a dramatic impact.

Many of us have grown up with dairy as a vital and visible part of our everyday diets. From the milk we drowned our morning cereal in as children, to the ice cream treats we enjoyed as adolescents, and on to the yogurts we eat as adults. Of course, the dairy we consume today has very little in common with the dairy that we, as people, originally started with, and that’s where we find a conflict between eating raw and eating dairy.

Originally, milk was something that came straight from the cow or goat to the glass. But when pasteurization was discovered, something happened to the milk that we drink, both for the better and for the worse. On the upside, pasteurization greatly reduces the number of micro organisms in the milk that could cause illness. But the downside is a loss of the living food enzymes and beneficial bacterial cultures that make milk so good for us.

So, what are we to do? A good raw food diet blog will give you all sorts of examples of ways to get your daily allotment of calcium in other foods, but if you simply want a tall, cold glass of milk, you have two main options.

One way is to find a local source of raw dairy products. This can be exceedingly difficult, as laws in some jurisdictions have actually outlawed the sale of raw dairy, for fears of causing outbreaks of illness.

Many milk producers back these laws – and why not? If consumers want the beneficial bacteria that are originally found in raw dairy, they can still find them – in “pro-biotic” yogurts, which tend to cost a little bit more. If raw dairy is legal and available, by all means, take advantage.

But if you have no source for raw dairy, fear not. There are other milks available than what comes from the teat of a cow. Healthy eating advice will tell you that milks made from almonds or rice can give you the texture you crave, and a taste that might not mimic milk, but will be something very pleasing.

These alternative milks are also great in your raw recipes, making smoothies thicker and your sauces creamier. But be careful when you buy them in stores, as some of these milks also come pasteurized. Be sure to read the labels carefully, and you will be able to find a milky replacement.

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Posted in Food For Thought, Raw Foods

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What Foods Are Acidic?

April 30th, 2010

If you have decided to eat for energy, you may have begun to hear more and more about the pH levels of your food, and how they can affect your overall health. It has been said that a diet higher in acidic foods can result in an increase in stiffness of the joints and muscles, as well as an increase in headaches. If you are interested to know what your pH levels are, you can test your urine with pH papers, available at any pharmacy or drug store.

It is true that foods with a high acidity will be less beneficial to you than if you were to dine on a diet with a higher concentration of alkaline or non-acidic foods. And while you might think it would be relatively easy to determine which raw foods have a high acidity level and which do not, there are always a few trick foods that will make it very difficult to guess.

For instance, you might assume, based on the sour taste, that a lemon would certainly be highly acidic. The truth is, lemon juice is in the low end of the alkaline scale – it is not the most alkaline food to be sure, but it certainly is not acidic in your system.

A high energy diet, of course, cannot forgo all acidic foods when maintaining a raw diet, but it is a good idea to limit your intake of highly acidic foods as much as possible.

Raw foods can even have differing pH levels within the same food groupings. For example, high levels of acidity can be found in some nuts and legumes like walnuts, peanuts and lentils – which can certainly be a healthy part of a raw diet. Other nuts, like filberts and brazil nuts, are less acidic; and nuts like almonds are actually very high in alkalinity.

There are also some vegetables that are fairly high in acidity, including asparagus, green olives and artichokes. Again, these food items can be successfully incorporated into a healthy raw food diet for effective eating for energy, but care should be taken to include highly alkaline foods on the same plate, including most leafy greens, or other items like carrots, beets or cucumbers.

Surprisingly, most fruits are moderately to highly alkaline, with the notable exception of the very popular blueberry. This little fruit has an incredible number of benefits for the body when eaten raw, so it would be a mistake to remove it from your raw foods diet. But again, balance is what you are going for here, so for every heaping helping of blueberries you eat, make sure you include some alkaline fruits, like figs, raisins or prunes (highly alkaline), or peaches, bananas and avocado (moderately alkaline).

Avoiding acidic raw foods altogether is not practical or advisable for most people. These items often contain other benefits that you would be harder pressed to replace in a raw foods situation. But on the whole, you want your meals to be heavily favored towards an alkaline pH level, for optimal health and good eating.

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Posted in Food For Thought, General Nutrition, Raw Foods

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The Effect of Wheat on Fat Around the Stomach

April 29th, 2010

The old school method of preparing for some big athletic endeavor, such as a marathon or an important sports game, was to do what is called a carbo-load. That usually meant a huge, steaming plate of spaghetti the night before, to make sure that a ton of carbohydrates were available to the body as fuel for when the going got tough. Of course, it had the added benefit of tasting really good, and being incredibly easy to make. But while good carbs are a very important type of fuel for the body, is all of that glutinous wheat really the best delivery system for it?

If you are starting a raw food diet, you will have cut out a lot of the wheat products that you might have grown up with – pastas, breads and the like. For many people, these are some of the most difficult things to change within a diet. They taste good, and they do a remarkable job of filling your stomach. But that is not all they do to your stomach area.

The sugars, starches and carbs found in wheat products can quickly convert to fat if not used immediately, and more often than not, that fat will accumulate around your midsection.

If you are wondering how to eat a raw diet – a great way to avoid those fatty wheat products – but still get your noodle cravings taken care of, never fear. There is raw food help available to get you the carbs you crave, and the pasta you love, without resorting to masses of cooked wheat noodles.

The starches that wheat contains as a carbohydrate can be found in many rawly consumable foods, such as high-starch vegetables like squashes. You can also get your wheat-like carbs from other veggies like carrots and cauliflower, or from legumes like peanuts. Unlike wheat, these carbs can be eaten raw, and will contribute less to your spare tire, and more to your body’s fuel requirements.

But if is the pasta part of wheat that you really crave, fear not. There is even a healthy, raw alternative to your favorite spaghetti.

Of course, the sauce is simple enough, using fresh tomatoes, basil, and a few spices to flavor. Blend these in your food processor to the consistency you prefer, and use immediately – no cooking time required. For the noodles, a great alternative to wheat pasta is raw zucchini noodles. Again, you won’t have to cook these noodles – you simply take a good sized zucchini, and with your usual vegetable peeler, begin stripping off noodle-sized strips. You can simply eat the pasta as is, or you can add a touch of cold-pressed olive oil over the top for an even more authentic texture.

The important thing to remember is that you do not have to resort to sticky, sugary and fattening wheat starches in order to get the carbohydrates that your body requires. Eating a raw diet will offer you plenty of new and interesting foods with a high carb count, without adding fat to your midsection.

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Posted in Food For Thought, Weight Loss

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