Marin Stevens - Raw Food Cookbook: Raw Food Diet Recipes Including Some of the Best Raw Superfoods for a Healthy Lifestyle!

The raw food diet is rapidly gaining in popularity, both asa short term cleanse and as a lifestyle. In any major city (and quite a fewmid-sized cities as well), there are several raw food restaurants to choosefrom, exposing ever more people to the benefits of raw foods as well aseducating the public that a raw food diet doesnt have to mean being consignedto glumly munching on salad after salad.

As youll learn in this cookbook, you can enjoy a widelyvaried raw food diet, although it does take some creativity and a willingnessto do a little bit of work. You will have to do a lot of your own cooking, butraw food adherents are more than convinced that the extra time spent in thekitchen more than pays for itself in the form of better health.

One of the scientific concepts underpinning the idea ofeating raw is that the process of cooking most foods destroys much of theirnutritional content. Even heating most foods to relatively low temperatures ofaround 120 degrees Fahrenheit is enough to cause the enzymes that they containto break down and for that reason, many people choose to reap the maximumnutritional content of the food that they eat by choosing not to cook it. Whileyou will see many recipes in this book which call for warming or wiltingvarious ingredients or entire dishes, this is done at very low temperatures of100 115 degrees Fahrenheit in order to prevent the ingredients from losingtheir nutritive value.

Youll probably notice that many of the recipes here can bemade using a dehydrator; if youre serious about eating a raw food diet for thelong term, this is a kitchen appliance which you may want to invest in. Inevery recipe which calls for a dehydrator, however, weve also given alternatedirections for how to prepare the ingredients or dishes in a conventional oveninstead. However, you may want to get a dehydrator in any case, since its notterribly energy efficient to run your oven for many hours (sometimes as long as8 to 12 hours).

Planning ahead is an important part of eating a raw fooddiet. Many of these dishes take many hours to prepare. Of course, you wonthave to spend all that much time actually cooking its more of a matter ofpatience waiting for your food to slowly dehydrate or warm in the dehydrator oroven. You may find that eating a raw food diet helps you to make your mealplans in advance, since many raw food recipes take a fairly long time to make they arent the kind of thing that you can whip up on short notice if companycomes, for instance.

Theres no getting around the fact that it does take timeand effort to follow a raw food diet, but the benefits are well worth it. Onceyou make the switch to raw foods, youll find that you have more energy, getsick less often, lose excess weight and generally, feel better than youve feltin years, or perhaps better than youve ever felt. Its a diet which everyonewhos interested in their health should try you may find yourself neverwanting to go back to cooked food again!

A Word on Ingredients:

If youre new to eating raw food or if youre new to theidea of a vegetarian diet, there are a few ingredients youll find in this bookwhich you may not be familiar with. These are things that you can buy at anyhealth food store and like most natural foods, theyre getting easier andeasier to find at regular supermarkets as well.

Nutritional yeast:

This deactivated yeast product is available in both flakeand powder form. Its loaded with B vitamins and for this reason, has long beena favorite with vegetarians and vegans not to mention that it has adelicious, nutty flavor. Nutritional yeast is a common ingredient in cheesealternatives and it also tastes great on popcorn (you may have even seen it atyour local movie theater, in fact) and a lot of other things, for that matter.You can find it in bulk at many health food stores very cheaply. Manysupermarkets also carry nutritional yeast in small containers, though thistends to be a bit more expensive.

Kelp powder and Kelp noodles

Kelp is a type of seaweed which is used in several Asiancuisines as well as in some of the regional cuisines of the British Isles. Ithas a pleasing, savory flavor and is an excellent source of iodine, magnesiumand some of the B vitamins. Kelp can be made into noodles as well as kelppowder, which is an excellent condiment for many dishes and can be a goodreplacement for table salt if youre trying to cut back on your sodium intake.

Flax Seed and Flax Seed Meal

These are, as the name suggests, the seeds of the flax plant.Theyre a good source of omega 3 fatty acids, iron, calcium and other minerals,as well as B vitamins. They have a nutty flavor which goes well with a widevariety of other foods. You can find flax seeds in bulk in health food storesas well as in smaller containers in a growing number of supermarkets. Flax seedmeal is also commercially available (this is, for all intents and purposes,flax flour), but its just as easy to make your own and you can be sure itsfresh if you make it yourself. Just grind your flax seeds in a coffee grinderuntil theyre powdered and youve done it!