Many people see the raw food diet as being healthier and giving them more energy, despite the lack of any long-term analyses of the successes of a raw vegan diet as compared to other types of raw food diets. To try a raw vegan diet for yourself and see what it can do for you, these are the three food groups you can partake of: high-fat plants, sweet fruit and leafy green vegetables. As to the portions of each, opinions vary. Some say as little as two percent of your daily calories should be from leafy green vegetables; others think it should be as high as around thirty. With the high-fat foods, eat things like olives, nuts, avocados, seeds and cold-pressed oils. Again, some recommend anything from a tiny amount to as high as forty per cent.

To be honest, it’s unlikely you can get as high as thirty percent of your daily calories from green vegetables. That would require eating a lot of big salads! Fortunately, such a massive intake is not necessary to derive the benefits of a raw food diet. The green leafy vegetables have plenty of calcium, protein, vitamin K and zinc. All you need to do is eat around 500 g a day to get the recommended amount. If you’re sure to get things like carrots and peas in your meals, you’ll get plenty of calcium, zinc and protein.

Now, when it comes to striking the correct proportions between sweet fruit and fatty foods, that’s where your personal tastes and health come into play. It’s common for people to have troubles with their teeth if they eat a lot of fruit, especially young children. On the other hand, if you have a high metabolic rate, you may need more high-fat foods in order to maintain your weight in the optimum range. Just one caveat: do not have more than ten percent of your diet made up of polyunsaturated fats. Instead, get monounsaturated fats in there. By eating olives, avocados, almonds, hazelnuts and macadamias you can get the fats you need. Depending on how much energy you need each day, you can make up to forty percent of your diet from these foods. Also, you need to include omega-3 fats; they’re very good for you. So, eat things like crushed flax seed. Flax seed oil is also great for salad dressings. There are soils in the world that are low on selenium, and you can’t be sure where your foods were grown. So, an easy way to get around that issue is to include even just Brazil nut a day.

In terms of what sorts of fruits to eat, you don’t have to go with ones that are unusual or exotic. The banana has energy; it’s rather low in fiber, and plenty of potassium. Oranges are great to get calcium, folate, potassium and vitamin C into your body. One of the real pluses of a raw vegan diet is that it reduces calcium loss, and thus reduces your blood pressure; it will also reduce your risk of having a stroke.

Finally, there is vitamin B12. Some health experts recommend that you don’t take vitamin B12 supplements unless symptoms of a deficiency manifest themselves. And even then, some further say you should avoid taking any pills. Instead, there are some excellent natural sources such as wild plants, nori and spirulina. Now, if those are not available, eat fermented foods or a probiotic, and just be sure to include a B12 supplement.

Follow these steps, and you can eat a healthy diet that is in keeping with the vegan dietary guidelines.

About the Actor
Jennifer Cornbleet is a nationally recognized raw food chef and instructor. Through her company, Raw-Food Cuisine, she offers lectures, classes, hands-on workshops, and consultations in the Chicago area and internationally. Her web site, www.learnrawfood.com, is a comprehensive resource for raw food recipes, information, products, and instruction.

A great companion item to the best-selling book, “Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People”, this informative and enter (more…)

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Roundtable, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeRoundtable.com. In this excerpt, Phillip McClusky shares on starting a raw food diet.Renegade Water Secrets with Phillip McClusky, who lost 200 lbs. and found health and happiness in a raw food lifestyle. He is the host of www.lovingraw.com.Kevin: So you’re reading “Raw Family” you’re sitting on the couch and you decide to go raw, what were the first three days like, the first week? How did that all pan out for you?Phillip: Well I had tried so many things before in the past and what had happened was some of them were so confusing. Some of them were you had to buy this plan and you had to buy this package in the store and you had to write down how many calories and you had to move cards from slot to slot and all these different little colors and programs and all these different things that all these diets came across. So I knew that none of those were successful and basically they were confusing and not something that I want to do every day. I didn’t really want to look at every single calorie or every single box I picked up. So when I switched to this raw lifestyle what I had decided was the only way that I was going to be consistent and be able to do this was if I kept it simple and I stayed on a very easy program.
So in the very beginning I didn’t even concentrate on exercise. And it’s not that I recommend that but for me that’s what worked. I knew that I had to get the food right. I had literally devoured raw food books. I was reading a book a day and was really excited about everything. But I noticed that every body had a different opinion on raw foods. So somebody would say, “You have to juice so much.” The next person would say, “Juicing’s no good you have to do smoothies.” The next person would say, “You have to have 50 percent of your diet superfood.” And then the next person would say, “You have to mono-meal or do natural hygiene.” I read all that and what I decided to do was take all the information in and then do what felt right for me.
So the first three days for me were quite simple. I had been used to eating large meals so I figured, “I’m going to continue to eat large meals and I’m just going to switch them to salads.” So in the morning I had fruit and for lunch and dinner I had giant salads. I always think of it like this, when you go to maybe an Italian restaurant or a family-style restaurant and you have six or eight people around the table and they bring out a big bowl of salad that’s for everybody at the table, that’s pretty much what I made for my lunch and for my dinner. I didn’t worry about quantity. Some people would say, “You can’t have more than three avocados a week.” Well I was having three avocados a day, or four avocados a day. Some people would say, “It’s a good idea not to have more than a handful of nuts a day.” Well I was having like ten handfuls of nuts a day. I was making these giant salads that were really fulfilling and kept me pretty much at the same par as far as quantity wise, the food that I was eating. I pretty much stuck with that the next three days. Little did I know that my body would intuitively make changes and that would decrease over time.Kevin: What would decrease?Phillip: The size, the amount of food that I was actually eating.Kevin: Got you. Why don’t you talk a little bit about…there’s a bunch of things I want to speak about but since we’re on what you started off eating, let’s talk a little bit about how that transition over the last two years, maybe give us a snapshot of every six months up until now. So six months from there, then six months-Phillip: Sure. Great question. So here I am making these big, giant meals and just enjoying it and loving it. The weight is literally just flying off of me. Even without exercise at the time the weight was just flying off of me, just from changing the way I was eating. And I was shocked. I mean, I remember the first time I stepped on the scale and I realized that I had lost like 45 or 50 pounds or something like that, I just couldn’t believe it. It was a great feeling.
Then over the course of maybe the next three or four months I had noticed something that I had never noticed before, I was eating this giant, massive salad and I noticed that about 25 percent of the salad was left over. And I thought to myself, “Well that’s strange. I’ve never not finished a meal before.” So what I had to do was reevaluate. And I said, “Well, I guess I’m getting fuller quicker.” So I would make my salad a little bit smaller. Then over the next couple of months again the same thing happened, I had a little bit of the salad left over, about 25 percent. So I was making it smaller and smaller until I finally started to notice that it was kind of shrinking down to a normal size. It was quite an interesting experience because I wasn’t needing as much mass, this large amount of food that I had been used to eating.
So then I wondered how I could change other things. I was having fun and I was experimenting and there was times that I did make some of the gourmet raw foods. I went out and got a Cuisinart food processor and dehydrator and blender and stuff like that. I would have fun making some of the raw dishes and the pizzas and stuff like that sometimes, but it wasn’t my normal fare. My normal fare was usually just fruit in the morning and this salad for lunch and dinner.
So after a while I started really getting into making green smoothies or green shakes and literally just putting in an entire head of maybe spinach or lettuce or whatever green, I would rotate my greens, in with a little bit of fruit and water. And I would make this giant half-gallon smoothie. I started drinking that in the morning instead of just eating the fruit. It was a good way for me to get in my greens and fiber and a large amount of water, being a half-gallon container. I noticed that would take me until about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Then I might eat a little bit and then I would have dinner later on.
Then I started to notice that would take me until 3 o’clock. I just wasn’t hungry until that point. Then 4 o’clock, and then 5 o’clock. Then one day I was just sitting down and I realized that I hadn’t been eating lunch anymore and that I was totally fine. My body felt energized and excited and I was losing weight and I was feeling great. Literally this half-gallon smoothie, which is a lot of liquid, that I was making in the morning was taking me right to dinner. So I had switched from a three-meal way of eating to this two-meal essentially within probably eight months to a year, maybe around the year mark. Then I would just have a very moderate salad for dinner.
I was really thinking about the dynamics of how everything had worked and how things had transpired and what had felt so good was I didn’t necessarily have to listen to anybody’s rules per say, I took in what everybody was talking about and if one day I felt like just juicing, I would juice. If the next day I felt like having smoothies, I would do that. If I was eating oranges and just felt like having citrus, I would do a mono-meal of oranges. So I kind of incorporated a little bit of what everybody was talking about. But more than anything I really began to start, for the first time in my life, intuitive eating and just eating what felt right for me. There might be a day when I had mangoes and they tasted fantastic and I’d have maybe four in a row because there was something inside there that my body was really desiring, but then a couple of weeks later I would go to eat the same mango and it might not be that tasty for me. So I just figured to myself that maybe my body already got out of it what it had needed. So intuitive eating became a really big part of the way I started to live. Some days I’d feel a little bit weighed down and I might just do juice that day. I was totally fine with it. And vice versa, some other days I might just feel like I want to be a little bit more grounded so I might do a little bit more as far as avocado and nuts and such.
But this process was a fairly gradual process until I got to the point that I am at today. Really just intuitive eating and just really listening to your body and breathing throughout the process and just kind of being present to what I was putting in my mouth was probably the greatest source of change for me and felt the best for my body.
So maybe after a year I started figuring out what would be the next option for me and things just kind of got lighter and lighter until maybe about a year and a half or a year and six, seven months. I decided to do a juice fast. Basically what that was was drinking just juice for 92 days. It was something totally new for me, I hadn’t done any kind of long-term fast for anytime that long. And I just felt that it was right, it was my time and I just jumped right in to it. I ended up extending it and I did it for 100 days. For 100 days I just had fruit and vegetable juice. So that had switched my diet drastically. But it was a new experience and I wanted to really experience what the human potential was and what my body could really do and how much resolve and determination I had to really stick with this thing. So I did it and just experienced such amazing changes in my life, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later. I experienced such amazing changes.
Then after the juice feast period I’m slowly transitioning, that ended maybe about three or four months ago, and I’m just slowly transitioning back into my old way of eating, having smoothies in the morning, having salads. I do a lot of high water content fruits and vegetables – cucumbers and celery and tomato and things like that. Lately I’ve moved away from the nuts so much and just kind of keep to some simple seeds, like chia or flax or sunflower seeds and some things like that. But I tend to do a lot of high water content. I usually have at least a head of some sort of green – lettuce, bok choy, swiss chard- per day. And I keep it simple. People ask me if I get bored and I’m just like, “Fresh fruits and vegetables is what my body craves.”

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s The Healthiest Year of Your Life, which can be found at http://thehealthiestyearofyour life. com. In this excerpt, Nomi Shannon shares on kitchen equipment and recipes for preparing raw foods.The Healthiest Year of Your Life with Nomi Shannon, raw gourmet, author and raw food educator. Nomi: People get really tired, really fast of salads. I do, but you can take the same things that you put into a salad and throw it in the blender and do it up, it’s amazing what the addition of a tomato or slice of mango or something can do to a concoction like that and you can make yourself some really delicious things really fast.Kevin: What kind of blender do you use?Nomi: There are only two great blenders, in my humble opinion, Kevin. One is the K-tech which is the one I do recommend for several reasons. The other is the Vita-mix. They’re both fabulous blenders. I prefer the K-tech. The main reason is it’s a whole horsepower stronger but there’s a few others.
The difference between one of these blenders and a Hamilton Beach or whatever is the difference between a Pinto and a Rolls Royce. They’ re both cars but need I say more? In my book, for example, I assumed everybody would have a regular blender. They’re not inexpensive. I would say to make this dish,grate the carrot, grate the parsnip, then put it in the blender. Well, one of these blenders, you throw the darn thing in whole. I throw two frozen, rock hard bananas, whole and 45 seconds later I’m eating whatever it is.
You can do with one of these blenders things you could never do any other way. I will take a couple of apples and cut them up and throw them in the blender with some cinnamon, I have to baby the blender a little because there’s no liquid in there, and I can turn it into applesauce in a minute or two, because people think applesauce? Raw applesauce? No, it’s completely easy and possible if you have the right equipment.Kevin: It’s great for kids, too. I think the price comparison, you can tell me if I’m wrong or not, is if you break two or three $100 blenders, you can eventually, you kind of go for the bigger one.Nomi: Well, I personally have taken two, probably $30 to $50 blenders, smoking,outside to finish their smoking process in the air where I tried to make a pate or something in it. They couldn’t handle it. I do understand Kevin that there are plenty of people interested in this kind of food that are never going to be able to spend $400 on a blender. I appreciate that and that’s why in my DVDs I use a regular blender. One or two hints about that, if you have an old Oster blender or you can get your hands on one and that would be like at garage sales, 40 or 50 year old blenders grab it, because they have the most amazing motor. Now, they don’t compare with the Vita-mix or the K-tech. But they’re still nice and strong. My first few years I was raw I had an old Oster.Kevin: I think that people sometimes just think that the only thing you can make in a blender is a frozen drink or a yoghurt smoothie and you mentioned applesauce and then you just talked about pates. How versatile is a blender for making things?Nomi: There’s a big crossover in equipment. When I make a pate I use a food processor because a blender needs a lot of liquid. The pate I like best, it’s in my book, called the Sunflower Pate, and it’s 3 cups of sprouted sunflower seeds and lemon juice, because that’s a good preservative and some tahini and then some onion and scallion and different spices. I use it in the food processor. The secret to blending is it needs liquid. Food processing is for things that are drier. The food processor could never work with as much liquid as a blender would. It would leak all over the place.Kevin: What about Salidako. Can you explain what that is, for people who don’t know?Nomi: It’s an odd name, it’s also called a spiral slicer and some people call it a spiralizer. Another name is garnishing machine. I finally just said, listen, I’m confusing everyone because every time the company changed the name, I changed the name. And it’s called the Salidako. It’s now made in China. It’s just a simple plastic gizmo, but what it does is really amazing. Here’s what is does that’s wonderful. It will take a vegetable, and the most commonly used vegetable is a zucchini. You put a three-inch piece of zucchini in this little thing and you turn the handle and what you get is pasta-shaped zucchini. It has this fascinating way of shredding it and you get long, long strands. I’ve had three and four feet long strands, where I’ve had to cut them in the bowl, of angel hair sized pasta made out of zucchini or carrot or beet or sweet potato or parsnip. It won’t work with anything soft. Just turn like a tomato to mush, most cucumbers to mush. It has to be a good firm vegetable and this has revolutionized sort of the palate of raw people. You just never have to eat a salad. You can sit your kids down and they can eat this spaghetti and it’s tossed in a pesto sauce, which I’m sure as you know is garlic and olive oil and lots and lots of basil and pine nuts, just no cheese and it doesn’t taste any different, and then top it off with a raw marinara and suddenly it smells like and it looks like and it tastes like Italian spaghetti. The only difference is, it’s not hot. This has, literally this little gadget has revolutionized, because you’ve got to have ways of doing food fast that’s tasty.
There’s another one I’ve just learned about from Germany and it’s called a Spiralo. If you do like a parsnip, beet, carrot, and turn it into this little skinny pasta — I’ve done this at shows and little kids have walked by and I’ve got it on the table next to the machine to show what it does, and these little three year olds will grab it and eat it. The mother or the grandmother will go, “I can’t believe it, he won’t eat any vegetables!” Something about cutting that vegetable into facets, let’s say, really brings out the sweetness like no grating or slicing ever could.Kevin: Not only does it bring out the sweetness, I think, but it’s just so much easier to eat. You look at a carrot and you’re like, oh, a carrot. I got to chew this thing forever and when it’s in that small kind of form, you can eat it and you just keep eating it and eating it and eating it.Nomi: When I started with raw food, I actually had a Champion juicer at the time, but it was in storage. When I started with 100% actually all I had was an everyday blender, a good sharp knife and a grater and I didn’t have any other equipment for at least for the first 6 months. So I do like to say to people when people say, “I don’t have the money to go out and buy all that stuff.” And you really don’t have to, but on the other hand, I have to say, that having some of these gadgets, the Salidako I mean is $24.95, really the ability to change these foods, their shapes, their size, pureeing or taking and turning into this little strand what suddenly is delicate and tender instead of chomping down on some hard. I would never eat a parsnip the way you might take a carrot and chew on it the way you would a carrot. I just wouldn’t, but it’s so delicious when you turn it into the pasta. It’s insane. It’s like a whole other thing.Kevin: You talked about some of the quick things you can do, like the applesauce. What are some other real quick ideas that someone can do to maybe make a meal like in 5 minutes and go?Nomi: Let’s not forget that almost any raw fresh raw fruit and vegetable can be eaten as it is. If you start out with a bowl on your counter filled with apples, oranges, bananas, whatever you can find seasonally, grapes papaya, mango whatever and then in your fridge you have different kinds of greens, like broccoli, cauliflower and all that there’s nothing wrong with going and sitting down and eating three apples and two bananas and a mango. I mean literally. I very often eat a red pepper like you would an apple. I found some that are so delicious and I just literally just wash the thing off and bite it and even if I get some of the seeds they’re not hot or anything like they can be. We’re so removed from going into the back yard and plucking fruit from the tree or a walnut from the tree that we literally forget, especially the younger generation, that food doesn’t really come in a box.
I’ve got a gadget called the Toss ‘n Chop. It’s such a clever gadget. You just throw everything that you want for your salad into the bowl and your dressing ingredients, everything, goes in a bowl but no cutting, no cutting board, no knife, no chopping, nothing. Then you just go at it with this thing, sort of a cross between a scissors and a tossing implement.
The other thing is, and I’m sure you already know this, is there’s just a huge craze going on with something called green smoothies, which I actually did mention in my book, suggesting you could put your sprouts and things, sneak them in smoothies. Would you like my green smoothie recipe which is my current passion and crave?Kevin: Sure.Nomi: Okay. I put a cup of either orange of tangerine juice in the blender and that’s taking about four tangerines at the moment. Personally I put about 8 cups of greens in, I wouldn’t start with that many because it might taste bitter to you at first. So, if there are any supplements that I’m taking, and I’m usually taking some supplements, put that in. Then if I can get my hands on papaya and I put that in. Yesterday I put a little bit of mango in instead, or a handful of blueberries and then I top it off with two frozen bananas. I like it, because I like my smoothies to be thick and cold. It gives me about 24 oz of smoothie. It’s fabulous. I have it at least once a day, every day. I vary out. You don’t want to eat the same thing every day, no matter how good you think it is for you, because you need variety.

About the Brand
As a registered nurse and natural foods chef, Raw Indulgence founder Alice Benedetto had developed a passion for preparing and eating raw foods. So when the raw snacks she made as an alternative to high sugar processed snacks for her high school son became so popular among his friends, she started selling them. Raw, living foods are cleaner and have higher nutrient content than cooked food. Processed foods such as protein isolates and grain-based fillers are acidic a (more…)

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