Suzanne - The Raw Awakening: your ultimate guide to the raw food diet

CHAPTER 1
WHY RAW?

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Goethe

Weve all heard time and again that we should eat more fruits and vegetables. The difference between that statement in the past versus today is that we now have exciting, delicious, and innovative ways to prepare fruits and vegetables, as evidenced by the skyrocketing popularity of raw food, which has emerged as a completely new cuisine all its own. Eating raw no longer refers to fruit plates and a few boring sticks of carrot or celery. Among thousands of chefs, healthful-eating advocates, foodies, and ordinary people from all walks of life, raw food now refers to an exciting, energetic way of eating and living that is not only far more healthy than anything thats come before, but is also amazingly delicious and satisfying.

Eating raw refers to a diet of plant-based foods that are uncooked, minimally refined or processed, and very close to their natural state. Living a raw food lifestyle simply means that you try to make raw food a majority of what you eat. Some people start out with very little raw food in their diet; others dive in headfirst and seek to cut out nearly all cooked food at once. And there are many degrees in between; you dont have to eat 100 percent raw starting tomorrow, or ever, for that matter. To get started, anyone can enjoy noticeably improved health and vitality by switching to eating at least 50 percent raw foods (ideally, 100 percent plant-based).

While 50 percent might seem like a lot, its actually very easy once you learn the basics. In fact, once you start seeing the results of including more fresh organic raw foods in your diet, youll want more and more, because thats exactly what your body will tell you it wants. And once you taste gourmet raw dishes that you can make yourself, youll wonder why you would ever want to eat cooked food at all!

When you eat raw food, especially gourmet raw food (which is very easy to make, as well discuss), the flavors pop. They shock your palate and wake up your taste buds. You have an experience that goes to your core, like an awakening or an enlightenment. Youll feel so amazing after eating a raw meal that adding more and more raw food to your diet will feel like the natural thing to do. It will become a no-brainer for you, and very easy once you start adapting to the lifestyle. With raw food cuisine, your world is suddenly open to experiencing bold flavors, sensuous textures, and surprising new combinations of fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts, and seeds as you never imagined they could beits simply incredible!

Eating more raw plant-based food is one of the most amazing things you can do for yourself. I would even say that its essential if youre looking to experience life at its fullest. The trick, then, is to find the most convenient and habitual ways to incorporate more raw food into your daily food choices. But dont worry; if you follow the principles outlined in this book, the raw lifestyle is actually very easy.

By simply eating more of the foods your body was designed to digest, and thereby getting rid of the junk that makes us unhealthy, youll be able to do amazing things: lose unwanted weight, eliminate or reduce cellulite, improve digestion, experience restful sleep, gain incredible amounts of energy, have brighter eyes and younger-looking skin, experience mental clarity and energy as never before, and have a new lease on lifeliterally, owing to raw foods ability to prevent and even reverse some of the diseases that are the leading causes of death in the industrialized world.

When Im eating raw, I am on top of the world. Its almost hard to describe, but Ill try! Sounds are more crisp, colors are more electric, and tastes are more vibrant. Everything is better. My skin is better. My sleep is better. My energy is better. My attitude is better. I feel empowered and unstoppable. Do you want to see what thats like for yourself? Do you want to feel better than youve ever felt in your life? Well, you can!

Ive always had a passion for nutrition, athletics, and staying in shape. As a result, I found myself reading and trying every diet out there over a period of fifteen years. During this time, a friend introduced me to John Robbins book Diet for a New America, which was the first time I learned about eating a plant-based diet. I was so enthralled, I blazed through the book in only a few sittings, and when I was done reading it, that was it: I was also done consuming animal products. Forever. It moved me that much. The book moves most people who read it, in fact. I remember reading it at a coffee shop and having more than one person come up to me to say that they too had read the book and that it had changed their life.

With my newfound enthusiasm for a plant-based, or vegan, diet (meaning no meat, fish, poultry, eggs, or dairy), I was on the hunt for recipes. And that is how I found raw. One day, I was in Whole Foods Market searching for a good cookbook with recipes that used lots of vegetables when I came upon a book about raw food. Hmm raw food? I thought. On one hand, it sounded strange. But at the same time, something resonated deep inside me as I realized that, no, the way our culture eats nowadays is whats strange. Insane, evenits killing us. And then we try to fight the diseases with drugs rather than fixing the problem where it started. Eating raw food is like personally rediscovering our roots and our place in the natural world. It strips away ten thousand years of bad habits.

No wonder, then, that the food tastes soright. Its hard to explain, but when Im eating raw food, I feel as though Im digging down to a more primal place, replacing the foods that seemed normal to me simply because I was raised with them with the foods that were abundant on the earth when humanity first began. In fact, when I was flipping through that book in the store, just reading its recipes instantly struck a chord. They sounded so amazing that I bought the book, took it home, and read it voraciously in one night. A recipe book! Funny, right? But its trueeach page made me more excited about the idea of eating more raw food. I was enticed by the recipes loaded with fresh ingredients and the promises of high energy, glowing skin, and feeling amazing. I literally could not wait to get started!

The very next day, I started adding more raw foods to my diet, and Ive never looked back.

What does raw really mean? In todays culinary vernacular, the term raw food refers to 100 percent plant-based food that has never been heated above 115 to 118F (46 to 48C), at which point proteins become damaged. Sometimes youll hear the term raw used interchangeably with living. There is a small difference. Some living foods, such as freshly picked fruit, are considered to be in a living state, where their enzymes are active and available. Raw can refer to foods that do not readily have their enzymes available, even though they have not been heated or destroyed. Nuts and seeds, for example, are considered raw (if they have not been heat treated), but they are not living because their enzyme inhibitors are intact. Its during the process of soaking nuts and seeds that their enzyme inhibitors are deactivated, converting them from merely raw into living food (more on that later). Some ingredients, like unpasteurized miso and tamari, are not considered raw because heat was used in the process of making them, but the products were later cultured with a beneficial bacterium, making them living foods.