Written by Catherine Saxelby
on Wednesday, 23 April 2014.
Tagged: healthy weight loss, vegetables, vitamins, weight loss
Over the years the Raw Food Diet has waxed and waned in popularity. It was around in the 1980s with Leslie and Susannah Kenton’s Raw Energy movement. This spawned several books about the advantages of a raw diet plus the usual accompanying recipe books. Now, some 30 years later, the Raw Food Diet is popular with a whole other generation of people looking for ways to stay trim. So what is it?
This diet is based on eating foods that have not been heated above 40°C (104°F), which is slightly over body temperature (37°C). The rationale behind this is that the raw foodies claim that cooking destroys nutrients, and also forms harmful chemicals in food. While this is partly true, it is NOT the whole story.
It's hard to maintain a 100% raw food regime. It’s so easy to ‘forget’ that something isn’t raw, e.g. in a salad of grated zucchini, basil leaves, lemon and quinoa, the quinoa has been first cooked by steaming or bringing to the boil and then cooled and mixed. Or coffee and tea – we never think of them as ‘food’ but on a raw diet you can’t have them because the water is boiling and the coffee has first been roasted. All grains, legumes and starchy vegetables have to be cooked to be able to be digested. So what can you have? Any of the following:
Raw foodies can be divided between those who advocate raw veganism, those who advocate a raw vegetarian but not vegan diet, and those who advocate a 100% raw omnivorous diet including meat and fish.
Some raw foodies eat unpasteurized/non-homogenized dairy products (such as raw milk, raw milk cheese, and raw milk yoghurt) but you can only get these if you own a farm in Australia as they are legally not available for sale. So if you’re going 100% raw in Australia you’re going to lose out on the nutrition provided by dairy foods. Other products eaten by raw omnivores include: raw eggs, raw meat (think carpaccio or steak tartare) and raw fish (think sashimi or ceviche).
Green smoothie photo from ktmadeblog via photopin cc
Catherine Saxelby has the answers! She is an accredited nutritionist, blogger and award-winning author. Her award-winning book My Nutritionary will help you cut through the jargon. Do you know your MCTs from your LCTs? How about sterols from stanols? What’s the difference between glucose and dextrose? Or probiotics and prebiotics? What additive is number 330? How safe is acesulfame K? If you find yourself confused by food labels, grab your copy of Catherine Saxelby’s comprehensive guide My Nutritionary NOW!
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