Amelie Mag asked:


In this day and age, everybody wants to improve their looks with a thinner waist line. For that, people may need some directions for finding healthy solutions to lose weight. The best choice someone can make in order to lose weight and gain health, energy and vitality is switching to a raw food diet.

People discover each day the benefits of raw food recipes. When switching to a raw food diet you will see improvements to your daily behavior like improved sleep, some anti-aging benefits, increased vitality and health. Owing to such advantages, the popularity of raw food diets is bound to increase, because we all want to improve the way we look and the way we feel about ourselves, don’t we?

In the beginning people didn’t cook their food and they consumed it raw. Eating like this helped them keep very healthy. Our bodies are built so that we can consume raw foods. The only thing we need to do is to rediscover the way we were in the beginning and enjoy all that nature has to give us. Consuming raw foods helps our bodies because they contain enzymes that help digestion. These enzymes are destroyed if the fruits and vegetables are cooked. Our body digests the foods through its own enzymes, but the enzymes in our body also give us energy. Therefore, when we use the enzymes in our bodies for digestion and not the ones in fruits and vegetables, it means that our energy levels and vitality are decreased.

Basic guidelines for planning your healthy raw food recipes recommend that you should include in your diet mostly fruit and vegetables, which are our most biologically conducive meals. Something that can help you in planning your raw food recipes is the categories in which fruits and vegetables are divided.

Fruits can be divided in sweet fruits (tropical fruits, persimmons, sweet grapes), acid fruits (lemons, citrus), sub-acid fruits (apples, pears, tart grapes) and fatty fruits (avocadoes, durian). Melons constitute a separate category of fruits. Some of the vegetable categories are non-starchy greens (spinach, cabbage), fruit vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes) and root vegetables (carrots, celeriac). Another category of vegetables includes lettuce and celery. The vegetables named here can be found as items on a list of raw low carbohydrate foods. All these fruits and vegetables are the common components of raw food recipes.

Now that the categories have been established, here are some rules of combining them in order for you to avoid fermentation in the intestines, indigestion, water retention and toxicity. Sweet fruits are to be eaten with other varieties of sweet fruits only or with sub-acid fruits. Don’t eat acid fruit with anything other than celery and lettuce. Avocadoes and olives should be eaten with non-starchy vegetables. Melons should be eaten alone or not eaten at all. These are combinations that you should try. But there are a few combinations that you should try to avoid like starch and acid (tomato and potato), protein and protein (avocadoes and nuts), sweets and starch (maple syrup and rice). Think about these combinations when you are developing your own raw food recipes.

Raw food diets are not all about fruits and vegetables. Organic foods can also be included in the diet. Organic cheese is very nutritious and can be included in raw food diets because it does not involve a cooking process that destroys enzymes. You should make sure that the organic cheese you buy is organic, and not a scam. The process that is followed by farmers to obtain organic cheese consists of letting nature take its natural course, from harvesting the milk from the cows and letting it coagulate with no help from additional catalytic agents. Incredible products made from raw ingredients and that may include organic cheese can be found here, on rawbakery.com.

Helen Hecker asked:


If you’ve thought about eating a healthier diet a good way to do it is by substituting some raw food recipes for some of the daily cooked food recipes you use now. This is just another way to look at copy cat recipes.

Although most people think a raw food diet consists of eating fruits and salads and maybe a handful of nuts and seeds, the raw food diet is much more than that. You can prepare dozens of copy cat recipes, those that mimic the standard American diet fare you are probably used to eating.

For example one of the best raw food recipes that is easy to make is almond milk. You can easily make your own almond milk cheaply, at home, to substitute for harmful cow’s milk and boxed soy and rice products. Soy milk and other boxed milks are highly processed. Although a better alternative to cow’s milk they still do not have the health benefits you get from a nice tall glass of homemade almond milk.

Making almond milk is relatively easy and doesn’t require any unusual ingredients. You can use dates, honey or agave nectar for sweetener and still keep it in its living or alive state.

To make almond milk you only need about a cup of raw almonds. Make sure not to buy or use roasted almonds. You soak these overnight in pure water, drain and put in a blender along with 3 cups of pure filtered or spring water and blend for about 2 1/2 minutes. Then pour into a nut milk bag, sprout bag or fine mesh strainer. Squeeze tightly if you are using a bag. Pour into a glass jar, add your sweetener and refrigerate.

Almond milk will keep for up to five days or so. Use it on sliced strawberries and bananas in a bowl, drink as is, add nutmeg for an eggnog flavor etc. Use it wherever you would use other milks.

Of course it can be used on cereal, muesli, granola in a bowl if you still eat those. At the least try to incorporate it into your diet. It’ll vastly help improve your health. This is especially true if you eliminate cow’s milk and other dairy products. Raw food diets are the healthiest diets and help you lose weight naturally.

There are many other copy cat raw food recipes you can make with living foods that will replace the cooked foods in your diet. If you’re a mom with young kids or teenagers, you will be greatly benefiting your kids’ diets with almond milk and other great living food recipes. They will never know the difference and their overall health will benefit. There are many other simple and easy raw food recipes you can fix for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner.