Posts Tagged ‘raw’

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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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Diet Plan to Lose Weight in Seven Days

April 28th, 2010

We all know that rapid weight loss is not the ideal way to get yourself into shape. Trying to undo years of over eating and under exercising within the span of a few short weeks, or even days, can be dangerous at the extreme, and counter-productive for most. What few pounds we manage to shed by starving ourselves and working out to the point of exhaustion will inevitably come stampeding back the moment we return to our regular lifestyles.

But, if you are looking to drop a few pounds as part of a commitment to changing your lifestyle for a healthier and happier way of living, a raw food diet for weight loss might be just the thing that you are looking for. Within the first seven days of changing to a raw food diet, you will notice a change in your body.

The reason is not going to be the same as the average crash diet that you have tried in the past. Back then, you were depriving your body of sustenance, and forcing it to cannibalize itself in order to survive – and once you went back to your regular eating habits, your body stored as much excess fat as it could, in order to survive any future starvation periods.

A raw diet plan does not work like that. Instead of starving and denying your body what it needs, you are going to flood your system with wonderful, healthy foods. Your body will learn very quickly that it does not need to store excess fat, because there is always another heaping helping of healthy raw foods coming to provide the fuel you need.

On top of that, you will be getting more ‘bang’ for your buck with the fuel that you do introduce to your body – so much so, that you will have enough excess energy to get out there and get some exercise. That added activity can only help when you are trying to win the battle with the bulge.

So, what are the keys to eating raw so that you will see weight loss results within the first seven days?

For one, make sure that you are hydrated. With all the water-laden fruits and vegetables you will be eating, this will not be difficult. Also, replacing your daily coffee and soda consumption with glasses of water will help to keep you up on your water levels.

Second, never skimp on meals. Don’t gorge yourself until you burst, but eat until you are satisfied. With the fibre-heavy foods that are available in a raw food diet, you might be surprised not only by how little that will be, but by how long you will continue to feel full, but in a wonderful, healthy way.

Third, use that fuel. No diet plan is one hundred percent effective by itself. A raw diet will give you the power to get out there and get active, and that activity will lead to greater weight loss. So use that fuel, and you will see the results within the first seven days of eating a raw food diet.

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Posted in Uncategorized, Weight Loss

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Raw Food Made Easy

April 19th, 2010

Raw foods recipes often sound a lot harder than they actually are, and the very best ones look like they have taken hours of kitchen prep time to get onto the table. This sort of impressive presentation gives a perception that eating a raw food diet is going to be a lot of hard work – but nothing could be further from the truth.

There are plenty of easy raw food recipes out there that are incredibly delicious, and are even easier to prepare than their cooked-food comparisons. If you have your doubts, take a look at these three meals in a typical day on the raw food diet, and you will see just how easy it could be to switch your diet to an all-raw way of eating.

For breakfast in the morning, many people do one of two things – they either pour themselves a cup of coffee and forgo an actual breakfast, or they chow down on sugary cereals, drowning in over-processed milk. While the cereal is better than simply skipping, neither option can hold a candle to the power and flavor of the mighty green smoothie recipes that you can incorporate into your everyday life in a raw eating plan. All you need to do is combine leafy greens with some firm-fleshed fruit, and after a few seconds in the blender, you have an easy raw breakfast.

Lunchtime can be a hassle – you only get an hour, so a fast food hamburger is often the best pick out of a pathetic local selection. But if you take into account the cost of that food and the time you have to wait in line, you’ll be saving on both by packing a raw lunch to bring with you. A hearty and delicious salad will fill you up with vitamins and fiber, instead of heavy, processed fats and sugars. You will feel the benefits from the very first time you make the switch – when that dead period hits everyone else a little later in the afternoon, you will still have energy to spare from your easy raw lunch.

Dinner can take upwards of a hour to prepare, with plenty of time spend watching the oven or stove top. But an easy switch to a raw food diet means that, very simply, you put your food into the dehydrator instead of the oven, and other prep times are comparable or less, meaning that eating raw will actually give you more than just higher levels of energy and better delivery of vitamins – it will also give you back time at home. And don’t worry about getting bored – meals can be as simple as chilled soups, or as complex as raw pizzas.

The key to eating a raw diet is never to let the perception and the fear dictate how you eat and what you consume. If you simply dive in and try it, you will find that there are an abundance of raw meals that are incredibly easy to prepare, surprisingly delicious, and as varied as your old ways.

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Posted in Raw Food Recipes

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Why Eat a Raw Diet?

April 8th, 2010

“Why don’t you go raw?”

You might have had this asked of you at some point, if you have been talking to people about some of the new and innovative diet plans out there today. A raw diet plan has been gaining traction lately as far as popularity, and that has led some people to dismiss it as just another silly fad diet.

But hold your horses – this is not another quick weight loss miracle plan. If you take the time to really look, you will find that eating raw can offer you a lot of benefits. It is not always the easiest diet plan to follow, but the best things in life often require a little bit of hard work.

So, why go raw?

There are all sorts of benefits to consuming less cooked foods. For one, when you cook many of the foods we eat today, you leach away a lot of the benefits that your body could really use.

With vegetables, common cooking practices often include steaming or boiling, both of which pull out valuable nutrients and vitamins, leaving you with soggy, mushy carrots that are not nearly as useful or nutritious as they were before they hit the heat.

By cooking, you are also killing off the natural living enzymes in many foods – enzymes that can help with healthy digestion and processing of food within your body. Without those additional sources of enzymes, your body has to work hard to process, digest and pass foods, and often does a poorer job of it, meaning that what few nutrients are left in food are sometimes not fully absorbed by your body.

Another example of the killing power of cooking is milk products. These days, every milk product you can buy in the store – milk, cheese, and yogurt – has gone through a pasteurization process, killing off all of the bacteria in the milk. While this does protect you against the bad bacteria, it also destroys the good bacteria that can help your body.

Want proof?

Look at the new trend in yogurt – adding back in certain active bacterial cultures in order to benefit your overall health. Without pasteurization, those bacteria wouldn’t have to be added in – they would already be there.

So, how do you go raw? The best way to get into the groove with raw foods is to add them slowly, and little by little, remove the cooked items from your diet. Start off by substituting your side dishes at meals with raw items – cold raw soups, fresh salads or mixed vegetables instead of the usual hot items. Then, once your body begins to get used to these new sources of vitamins and nutrients, you can replace a meal a day with a raw alternative.

Breakfast is often the best place to start, as a smoothie for breakfast can really get your day going. Again, small steps are the best, and before you know it, you will be eating nothing but raw foods, and feeling great for it. And not only that, you will be able to sustain that sort of eating plan for the long term.

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Posted in Raw Foods

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