Why RAW? FAQs...answered
What is 'Raw Living Food'?
-A crazy, beautiful, fresh, and clean lifestyle often confused with a diet.
-Whole foods, that are prepared at no higher than 47degrees.
-Not sushi! Although you can make the best sushi and nori rolls with raw ingredients, they won't contain cooked rice or animal products.
-Foods included are fruits, vegetables, green leafy vegetables and herbs, nuts, seeds, sprouted grains and beans, superfoods, sea vegetable, oils and spices.
-Not boring! With 1000's of ways to juice, blend, sprout, ferment, process, roll, dip, mix, and dehydrate, Raw Food is scrumptious and fun to make.
Why oh why 'no cooking'?
-Heat -whether you are baking, frying, boiling or microwaving- damages vital nutrients and vitamins, slashing proteins and antioxidants in food by at least half.
-Enzymes which are crucial for every function of our body, our digestion, energy levels, glowing skin and healthy hair are destroyed completely during cooking.
-Enzymes are crucial for every bodily function, from walking to breathing.
-We are born with a limited enzyme supply and if we don't keep it topped up via the 'fresh food fuel', we'll start to age rapidly, invite disease easily, and feel low on energy and crappy all the time.
-During cooking the healthy carbohydrates turn into sugar. Sugar is addictive, hence the reason people become so dependent on cooked food and develop unhealthy cravings.
What are the benefits of eating raw foods?
-Raw Food has helped thousands feel better when nothing else has worked.
-Benefits are endless and range from a huge energy gain and less time required for sleep, which also means more time available for all those hobbies you've been dreaming of to more miraculous results such as people healing themselves of chronic fatigue, diabetes, depression and cancer. Many other regularly recorded illnesses healed have been adult acne and skin diseases, migraines, joint pain, obesity, bloating, colitis, Candida, anxiety, mood swings, high blood pressure, arthritis, heartburn, allergies, fibromyalgia and the list goes on.
-Since uncooked foods are so much easier to digest and have all the nutrition your body requires, you can eat all you want and never gain weight. Just use your common sense and eat a varied colourful diet, not just munch on nuts all day long.
-Spiritually, this kind of clean eating helps to evolve on many levels, your telepathic channels clear and intuition heighten.
-A-listers like Demi Moore, Alicia Silverstone, Woody Harrelson, Bill Clinton, Gwyneth Paltrow and Donna Karan have graced the raw food theme and are thriving on it.
Where do you get your protein?
-"Where do cows get theirs?"
-We require nowhere near as much protein as the [obese and diseased] society tells us. During the most rapid physical growth of our entire lives is when we require it the most and nature's clue is in the breast milk, which contains just 3% protein! This puts the claim of your RDI of protein being 30% in perspective.
-Meat takes three whole days to pass through the digestive tract, slowly rotting as it does so, creating excess acidic waste, and making depleting demands on the body.
-Excess [animal] protein intake is a primary cause of 'death by degenerative disease'.
-There is plenty of protein in nuts and seeds but the most bio available to us are in the form of individual amino acids, which are indeed the building blocks of all protein. Amino acids are in many superfoods, and you can find a full spectrum of them in sunflower baby greens and snow pea shoots.
Tanya's top tips on going raw
-Decide how raw you want to be and most importantly WHY you want to do it.
-Do an initial detox for 7-14 days to cleanse your entire system and improve digestion to make the most of the goodness you are about to introduce to your body.
-After the detox, begin to add more living foods gradually into your diet.
-Pick one or two nights of the week when you'll experiment with a brand new recipe, you'll be amazing at how quickly you'll develop a stack of your favourites and even start coming up with your own.
-Don't rush into getting all the equipment you've never used before, just choose one and experiment with all and any recipe you can utilise it for. My top three are a good knife, a food processer and a blender.
-Still skeptical? If you didn't want to change anything in your current diet and were willing to just add one thing, without a doubt I can tell you to make it a green smoothie/juice. Greens leafy vegetables are so full of nutrients, oxygen, chlorophyll and many healing and energising properties, that you will soon notice your taste buds changing, cravings vanishing and miracles happening.
-Call me bias, but I've spent a lot of time collecting your most frequently asked questions, coming up with the most useful recipes to beginners and best ever tips, so I'm recommending that the first DVD you watch is Raw Food 101! :)
Who is Tanya Alekseeva?
Tanya is a wellness coach, chef, author, and a renowned raw food and detox expert. She healed herself with raw fruits and vegetables at the age of fourteen after a near fatal car accident damaged her internal organs. Born in Russia, raised in New Zealand and now based out of London, she travels nationally and internationally to provide seminars, workshops, retreats, detox programs and one-to-one coaching, to educate and ensure busy individuals achieve their most desired wellbeing and ultimate health objectives. She is the founder of Better Raw, creator of Raw Food 101 DVD, author of Purified, Seduced and Festive eBooks, as well as the report 15 World's Healthiest Foods available to you completely FREE. Invite Tanya to speak at your next event by emailing tanya at better raw dot com.