For my daughter’s birthday, I decided to hire a raw food chef to prepare a totally raw gourmet dinner. I knew it would be a completely new experience for the whole family, except me, who has eaten this way before.  Not only was this a healthy gift, consuming a diet of raw food has a healthy impact on the environment as well. Read on to find out how.

I consulted with both the raw food chef and my daughter and came up with a menu that would suit most of the varying taste buds within our family. What we came up with was a choice of soups; Sweet and Spicy Red Pepper or Borscht, Lasagna and Coleslaw for the main course and Carrot Cake or Lemon Tart in Pecan Crust for desert.

The choices were good as we covered most of the family taste buds that way. During the dinner, there were tons of questions about ingredients and how it was made and most of the family enjoyed the meal.

The resounding response was that the meal was extremely filling and there was no snacking after the meal and during our evening conversation. Everyone felt very nourished and very full. So I felt that I had given a very healthy gift not only to my daughter but to the rest of the family as well. The grandkids will grow into it as they mature, but they at least tried everything.

So why raw food?

The raw food diet is one of the best kept secrets to creating optimal health, emotional balance and spiritual transformation. I find when I eat more raw, my energy changes. I am more alive and have more energy. I also notice a difference in my vibration. It is not as dense. In terms of the environment, it reconnects me again to Nature and Mother Earth.

Raw foods are alive with their enzymes intact. Processed food has valuable but fragile vitamins, enzymes, phytochemicals and probably other things as well, destroyed during cooking and processing.

Raw and living foodists eat all fruits, vegetables, seaweed, sea vegetables, roots, sprouts, nuts, seeds, grains, sea vegetables and other organic/natural foods that have not been processed, such as fresh fruit or vegetable juices, sweeteners, fresh herbs, raw spices, young coconut milk, fresh nut milks, purified water and oil.

There are special ways to prepare the foods by soaking, sprouting, juicing, dehydrating, pickling, and blending. This involves equipment like:

• containers for soaking the seeds, grains and beans
• a dehydrator (a piece of equipment that can blow air through food at low temperatures)
• a juicer, blender, food processor, and a sprouter

There are other pieces of equipment you may need when you get into the gourmet aspects of preparation, but these are the essential ones.

There are numerous health benefits to eating this way:

• increased energy,
• clearer skin,
• illness prevention,
• slowed aging,
• a naturally detoxed body,
• reduced risk of disease, etc.

In addition, raw food is rich in fiber, more flavorful, you can eat as much as you want and still maintain a healthy weight, it is easier to digest and it takes less time to prepare in most cases, easier to clean up, and there is more nutritional value in the food.

Let us not overlook the effect on the overall environment.  Eating raw is also environmentally sound. Think about it: with humanity on a diet of raw foods, the food industry would close up shop and take up organic gardening. What a concept! This would save us enormous amounts of natural resources used to produce power for these industries. Also, think of the forests we’d save, when we wouldn’t need the paper and plastics used in packaging our processed foods. There would also be less carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when all the cooking stopped.  More oxygen would be produced from all the new orchards and gardens. I know this whole idea might seem improbable, but if all of us made a few changes bit by bit, it would add up to help save Mother Earth.

I know we are not anywhere near this little dream of mine, but it is good to dream and throw around these ideas. I want our future generations to enjoy this planet as much as we have. Slowly more and more people are getting back in touch with themselves and with nature. EarthSave Canada is a great site to explore.

If you want to start eating raw, it’s a good idea to begin with a detoxified body. Check out the blog on cleansing.

To your good health!

Charlene