raw food

[LetThemEatCake]

am doing a 3-day (maybe 5 if I can bear it) raw food detox diet - anyone fancy joining me?

pretty easy really - just fruit and veg, none of it cooked.

No coffee, tea, alcohol obviously

good luck, I did this with my ex a few years back, it does wonders for your health/feeling of health, but I did forget one important thing whilst doing this detox............

I can't stand raw veg!!!!!!!! oh, and that I didnt like/don't eat fruit except pineapple

apart from that I lost a couple of lbs and was the basis of my 5000 word essay on the main nutrition module for my degree

I'm nearly at the end of Day 2, feel fine. Slight headache, perhaps.

Luckily I love fruit and veg!

saves on washing up too ...

I'm curious, is all you're eating 3 pieces of fruit n veg each day? Or is it 3 meal sized servings of fruit n veg iykwim?

god, 3 pieces of f&V per day, ouch!

no, eating virtually as much as I want, as long as raw f&V

bowl of berries and kiwi for brekkie
plate crudites for lunch
large bowl salad for dinner

snacking on nuts and fruit betweentimes.

feel good after 3 days, will keep going for the 5 days I think. Am vegan and don't eat wheat anyway, so it's not like I'm cutting out loads of food groups or feeling much more deprived than usual

I've looked into this before.

What puzzled me about the raw food websites I found - and their recipes - is that they seem to "dehydrate" everything as a substitute for cooking, which surely makes it slightly less raw

I eat vegan too - apart from small-produced honey. Will be v. interested to know how you get on.

Not sure I could manage without bread and cake atm, maybe in the spring....

I know how extremely zingy I feel after a good salad or fruit salad though.

What is the purpose of this? What are the benefits? I sometimes do it accidentally (through laziness)

as much as you want makes more sense! It just made me wonder whether you were starving for the sake of detoxing!

How's it going?

the main purpose of raw food diet is a good detox for your body. it helps the liver and other elimination pathways de-gunk themselves. this has the impact that for one, the liver etc become more effective, if done long enough or regular enough can detox built up toxins like heavy metals etc, and also boosts nutrient levels as digestion has less to cope with and therefore becomes more efficient but also the intestines don't have the mucuc forming foods it usually has so the intestines free up and nutrient exchange is much higher.

if doing this for the first time, it can be quite daunting as first of all you could feel a lot worse as the toxins become higher concentrated as they are released by the body tissues. headaches are common as is the want to drink more. when reccommending this for my clients, I will either suggest a few short tries first over a few months before doing a 2 week then 4 week stint much later on, or will go in for the 2 weeker straight away. it depends on the person, their lifestyle and level of toxicity. you can get more than enough calories through this if you want to, but most people use this as an opportunity to loose a few pounds too as the raw food diet is one that promotes satiation if done correctly

the main purpose of raw food diet is a good detox for your body. it helps the liver and other elimination pathways de-gunk themselves. this has the impact that for one, the liver etc become more effective, if done long enough or regular enough can detox built up toxins like heavy metals etc, and also boosts nutrient levels as digestion has less to cope with and therefore becomes more efficient but also the intestines don't have the mucuc forming foods it usually has so the intestines free up and nutrient exchange is much higher.

if doing this for the first time, it can be quite daunting as first of all you could feel a lot worse as the toxins become higher concentrated as they are released by the body tissues. headaches are common as is the want to drink more. when reccommending this for my clients, I will either suggest a few short tries first over a few months before doing a 2 week then 4 week stint much later on, or will go in for the 2 weeker straight away. it depends on the person, their lifestyle and level of toxicity. you can get more than enough calories through this if you want to, but most people use this as an opportunity to loose a few pounds too as the raw food diet is one that promotes satiation if done correctly

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me too !!

my cousins dp's little sister and her mum are rawtarians. they only eat raw food. ever. and the little sis looks healthy enough...

nappies what are the reasons for only eating raw food?

When eating raw food, you are eating food that is "alive" - full of vitimins, nutrients and enzymes that are killed when the food is cooked. I don't eat 100% raw food, no where near, but I have eaten a largely raw diet in the past, and would like to go back to that again. I felt amazing when eating like this. Really clean and healthy. With regards the dehydrating of food - many people on a raw diet eat no dehydrated food. Those that do, tend to eat it in small quantities, it helps if you have a need to "crunch" on some food, just adds a bit of variation to the diet. I'm on the fence about dehydrated food, but as I'm not totally raw anyway, I just munch on a cooked cracker if I feel like it. The raw food websites tend to focus on raw "recipes" and gourmet stuff, I guess to make is seem more interesting to people - thus all the dehydrated food you see, but I prefer to eat raw in the most natural state. A banana, a simple salad, a handful of nuts and seeds. . .it doesn't need to be fancy.

Well, you learn something new every day! Who would have thought that at 8am on a Tuesday morning I'd be reading about the benefits of eating a raw food diet!

I'm quite surprised that there are so many positives to eating a raw diet, I would have thought it would be boring but from reading this obviously not

It can be boring, I guess that's why I'm not 100% raw, but it is probably a lot more varied than most people think. Add juices and smoothies to the list of things you can eat, raw olives, nuts and seeds. Flavouring salads with herbs and chili, lemon juice, raw soya sauce. You can make a delicious spread/dip from blended nuts and seeds flavoured with lemon juice and herbs etc - it's a good substitute for cheese. Healthy fats from avocado's etc. I just felt incredibly healthy, in mind and body. I soooo need to go back there again!

what about raw meat like steak and fish? is that included in this sort of diet?

generally not, Nappyaddict - but it can be. However you would need to be very sure of your source of the raw animal/fish products, as cooking them is designed to reduce the potential for getting nasty bugs from the food.

Raw food is a great source of vitamins and enzymes but it can be harder to digest - there are some foods that are perhaps better eaten cooked, lightly - a lot of cellular veg such as carrots, are better digested when steamed - and more carotene is abstracted from them if they are eaten with some kind of fat/oil base as well (butter or olive oil) because the carotene (and vitamin A) is fat-soluble. Tomatoes are another thing that can be more useful, nutrient-wise, when cooked - lycopene, which helps to protect against prostate cancer (for e.g.) is another fat-soluble substance which is better absorbed from tomatoes cooked in oil/butter.

I wouldn't have a 100% raw diet - 80% raw is better, I believe.