Raw Food

SoapAlchemist

SoapAlchemist

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I'm on one of my periodic health kicks again; juicer and blender are at least getting a work out, if not myself.
So I'm trying to eat as much raw food as possible. But it's not very tasty it has to be said. I did find one recipe for chocolate sweet thingies (using carob and cocoa and honey and coconut) which were genuinely really nice and positively decadent. But you can't live on chocolate thingies. Or gazpacho.....
I'm particularly interested in any recipes for seed and nut combos, preferably not with a major garlic flavour, as major garlic flavour seems to permeate all my attempts to add flavour to the rawness generally.
Has anyone here tried a significant % raw diet? It has to be said that it causes (at least 4 days in) quite significant digestive feedback.:icon_rolleyes:
 
I admire anyone who can manage to eat a raw food diet. It tends to be Americans from what I can tell, and they usually use a machine that dehydrates the food or something? The meals are not for me, but I get my raw food using a juicer and blender by making fruit and veg smoothies. Lots of apples, carrots, peppers, avocado etc. Jason Vale books are excellent for this. Oh, and of course a more traditional way as well - salads. Sharon, I'm sure there are some books out there that would give you tips if nobody here can. I'm just waiting for Tony to notice this thread... :rolleyes:
 
I feed my working dogs a BARF diet.

I don't think that's what your looking for though <vomit smiley here>

Although I think the reasoning behind it is the same, that cooking reduces the goodness of food.
 
What I really don't care for is faddy behaviour nonetheless I'm very happy to eat raw fish and meat given the right accompaniment but I assume we are talking veg. Unlike the pulp master the trick to continually enjoying the consumption of raw food is not disquising it but textural variety and mastering a few killer dressings.

The English are rather unimaginative when it comes to "salads" but it doesn't have to be that way; stock up on a few good oils, vinegars, mustards and a decent grater(s) as well as getting to grips with a few basic dressing recipes that you like. The trick with a decent dressing is that it should be over seasoned and a touch over acidic otherwise it will be lost in a lightly dressed salad that isn't dripping and soggy.

You can grate almost anything and eat it raw, adding a few seeds and nuts and a decent dressing should make this current fad pass more quickly.
 
A hotel I stay in frequently has tends to either offer of steak tartare or carpaccio of beef as it's starter. I can take the carpaccio in small doses, but the tartare is a step to far for me. Basically it is what it is, and I can't get by the thought that I am just eating raw mince, which kind of spoils it for me. Somehow though, the older I get the rarer I like my meat.

I don't think that lightly cooked veg lose so much nutrients that they should be avoided, and i wouldn't try a 100% anything diet, because life is too short and I wouldn't stick to it. The best diet isn't a diet, just a variation of different foods more healthy than unhealthy. A mediterranean diet appeals most to me as I think that they have all the bases covered.

If in doubt, Salad Cream is a wonderfull thing.
 
Try googling some of the American sites for headings such as "The Maker's Diet" or "The Eden Diet" or "The Hallelujah Diet". I believe that there's also a "Hallelujah Ministries" website. I have no idea what their theological views are, however I understand that they promote a mainly raw food diet on the basis that exposure to even low degrees of heat destroys the live enzymes contained in the (mainly fruit & veggie ) diet. Far as I recall from what I've read the underlying theory is that living cells in the human body thrive best on ingesting living food (at the microcellular level, rather than living carcasses).

& how glad am I that I'm typing this well upwind !!!

JohnnyO. \:angel:
 
If you don't like fads Antdad, then I guess there's no point me telling you about the strangely named 'oil pulling' I have been doing for about 5 days now with coconut oil.......but sure, I'll tell you anyway. My teeth feel much better, and possibly slightly whitened. As far as any other health benefits are concerned (claims that it can cure anything from the common cold to Aids abound), the only possible logical explanation I've heard is that sesame oil (as traditionally used in India) and coconut oil both have antiseptic/anti fungal properties. Oil is good at penetrating, and so gets to the parts brushing/mouthwash can't reach. Thereby killing more bacteria, thereby you're not swallowing so much bacteria, thereby not putting such a burden on your system. As certain forms of oral bacteria have been linked to heart disease and other conditions, this is not as bizarre as it might first sound. And there has been a scientific test done showing the effectiveness of sesame oil in killing oral bacteria.
As for the diet, I do feel a little more energetic, but no weight loss at all.:icon_cry2:
My third eye hasn't opened either JohnnyO.

P.S. Recipes for salad dressings welcome.
 
"a scientific test " meaning one? Oh dear, girls really like quackery in any form don't they?

I've travelled quite extensively in India and it's full of quacks that don't live that long but usually make a relatively fair living and the last time I checked Monaco had the highest life expectancy and India was at a hundred and something so you can takes ya choice.

At least put that sesame oil to better use, have a look at the BBC recipes site for salads and dressings.
 
Gosh, the "Third Eye" , how that took me back to the 50s & 60s & the self renamed T. Lobsang Rampa who had self "help" books advising how to drill through your forehead with an electric drill to open & activate this.

Callous youth that I was, I reckoned anyone who was daft enough to try this at home with a Black & Decker could probably only improve their original mental condition ! Where were Health & Safety when we needed them.

JohnnyO. \:icon_rolleyes:
 
soapalchemist said:
If you don't like fads Antdad, then I guess there's no point me telling you about the strangely named 'oil pulling' I have been doing for about 5 days now with coconut oil.......but sure, I'll tell you anyway. My teeth feel much better, and possibly slightly whitened. As far as any other health benefits are concerned (claims that it can cure anything from the common cold to Aids abound), the only possible logical explanation I've heard is that sesame oil (as traditionally used in India) and coconut oil both have antiseptic/anti fungal properties. Oil is good at penetrating, and so gets to the parts brushing/mouthwash can't reach. Thereby killing more bacteria, thereby you're not swallowing so much bacteria, thereby not putting such a burden on your system. As certain forms of oral bacteria have been linked to heart disease and other conditions, this is not as bizarre as it might first sound. And there has been a scientific test done showing the effectiveness of sesame oil in killing oral bacteria.
As for the diet, I do feel a little more energetic, but no weight loss at all.:icon_cry2:
My third eye hasn't opened either JohnnyO.

P.S. Recipes for salad dressings welcome.
Click to expand...


Hmm, well, the common cold and AIDS are viruses, so antibiotics of any sort aren't going to touch them. There do seem to be some published studies on "oil pulling", but they're in specialist journals outside of my area of knowledge. There are certainly some journals in each field of study that are very poor in the quality of their peer-reviewing - therefore even poorly-executed studies that are, a best, flawed, and, at worst, totally meaningless will get published. I don't, as I said, know the reputation of the journals which have published these studies, but I'd like to see a large body of work published in journals from outside of the subcontinent before I give this much more than a "well, it's possible" verdict. However, I'd have thought a decent post-brushing mouthwash would achieve the same results with an awful lot less mumbo-jumbo and mystical implications.
 
and I believe Listerine was marketed as a floor cleaner before they discovered an alternative use, so it's gotta be good.

Sharon, you do realise that you' ve probably put your body through more shock by the radical change in diet than any oil pulling could theoretically hope to alleviate.

Take my vets advice, when you introduce any change in diet do it gradually.
 
Don't think so. According to a quote from Freakonomics via Wiki

"Listerine, for instance, was invented in the nineteenth century as powerful surgical antiseptic. It was later sold, in distilled form, as both a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn't a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for "chronic halitosis"— a then obscure medical term for bad breath.."
 
It seems it was a medical antiseptic product way before they found a public ailment they could target.

http://www.kilmerhouse.com/2008/02/listerine%C2%AE-antiseptic-a-very-useful-product/
 
Well, I've just arrived back from a couple of days at a festival (Shambala) where I introduced my two oldest grandchildren (12 and 14) to the delights of the British pop festival; although it has to be said that I didn't hear any pop music. Of course, whilst this might help their street cred right now, I can imagine when they are older they might not want to mention that they went to their first festival with 'Nanny'. Once we got through the first night of only 2 dry sleeping bags between 3 people, we were fine.
So anyway, back on thread. I'm not intending to go totally raw. Indeed, apart from a banana on the way to the festival on Friday, I've eaten only over priced tiny portions of slop since then.......until of course my return home, where I whistled up a very nice curry thing with some of our glut of French beans. Not being a big fan of green beans, I was quite pleased with the result, and can say that frying the spices and onions in a generous amount of unrefined coconut oil gave it a very nice coconut flavour. I have yet to try this approach with fried eggs.:icon_rolleyes:
 
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