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.
I was doing an interview yesterday and one of the topics that came up was about how does someone get more fruits and vegetables into their diet.
