High Raw Salad

In our house, most of the family meals are high raw. Here's a typical salad: spinach, tomato, carrot, avocado, and black beans, topped with a balsamic vinaigrette. Those of us who want to go all raw will replace the beans with nuts or seeds.

We try to limit our consumption of processed oil (in this case, olive oil) to no more than 1 tablespoon per day. It's not an attempt to go low-fat. We get plenty of healthy fats from avocado, nuts, and seeds. That way the fat comes with fiber and nutrients you can't get in the oil, and it's easier to insure that the health benefits of the fat hasn't been destroyed by processing.

Day 60 - When will my juice feast end?

Eating for Excellence

As you peruse raw food blogs and websites, it's easy to forget that this way of eating isn't all about gourmet meals and fancy desserts, both of which I truly enjoy. Any conscious eating-style should be about eating for excellence, while minimizing the amount of harm or suffering brought to people, animals, and the earth. The recent lecture I attended by Dr. Joel Fuhrman reminded me of some things that make a high raw diet a diet for excellent health, longevity, beauty, and vitality.

An excellent diet should:

• be vegetable-based
• be built on a foundation of leafy greens
• include high amounts of raw fruits
• include raw nuts, seeds, and avocados for healthy fats in their natural states
• minimize animal products (no more than a couple of servings/week)
• focus on organics as much as possible
• minimize cooked grains
• minimize sodium
• minimize processed foods, including oils of all types, (yes, even olive oil)

The last 2 points are often neglected in the raw food world. Personally, I hadn't emphasized them enough in my own diet until I was reminded by Dr. Fuhrman's lecture. If you're not sure why reducing sodium and oil consumption matter in a raw food diet, please follow the links for more information. As always, the best way to decide is by doing your own research.

While Dr. Fuhrman doesn't advocate a raw food diet, the plan he advocates can easily be tailored to a high raw eating-style. The man is telling people to eat a pound a day of raw vegetables, in addition to high amounts of raw fruits, and a healthy portion of raw nuts and seeds each day! The main difference is that he also encourages high consumption of cooked beans and legumes. Soups and stews are also big in his diet plan as a means to help people consume enough calories from high nutrient vegetables. Dr. Fuhrman argues that this balance of raw and cooked vegetables allows one to benefit from a wider variety of nutrients, as some nutrients are destroyed by cooking and others are made more available.

Dr. Fuhrman's new two book set, Eat for Health, is well worth reading. Book 2 includes many raw recipes,--smoothies, juices, salads, and dressings--and other recipes that can be converted to raw, or included in whatever percentage of cooked food you choose to eat. Book 1 is a primer in nutrition-based health, and even if you know a lot about nutrition, I'd be willing to bet you'd discover something new among those pages.