Raw Habits for Newbie's

There is a reason why people eat according to their environment. Generally speaking, if we continue to live in a certain place throughout our lifetime or for a large part of our life, we should follow the dietary practices, which have been traditionally exercised by the majority of people of that particular place. With raw food, this can be done by consciously choosing locally farmed fresh produce.

The Old Ways

The traditional way of eating is important because it has been developed through many centuries by the accumulation of numerous experiences from generation to generation. This knowledge has been passed down in order to achieve optimum health and well being for the people. If staying in tune with your environment and getting optimum health results is important to you, you should change your diet accordingly but it is important to do so in a slow and soothing way. For example, if you went from eating McDonalds every day to salads, this might be too much for your body to handle and you might get very sick. The best way is to slowly incorporate and slowly change your diet by replacing cooked food with raw food, salty nuts with raw soaked nuts and adding more vegetables. Of course, these fruits and vegetables should be as locally grown as possible. But with fruits, you should eat the kind of fruits you were eating before, and slowly, very slowly add fruits accordingly to your body's characteristics. Remember fruits are essential in taking your health to the next level.

The Old Patterns

When you are changing the old pattern of eating, it is always important to change by adding and subtracting in a slow gradual process. As your body changes with the diet, the patterns in your cells, organs and so on start to change and if this change is too sudden the modifications can result in bad health. Like anything, it takes time for transition, and if you push your body too fast, it will be in shock, and it might cause emotional and physical traumas because of detoxification.

The Problem of Calories

Many people are concerned about weight loss or weight gain when they start on the raw food diet. Although counting calories seems like a normal practice, it is well documented that your body will naturally tell you when it needs food and what kind of food it needs. Therefore, one's natural appetite for natural and high quality food properly prepared, and one's bowel movement occurring regularly once or more a day, are more practical barometers for determining the necessary volume and type of food one needs instead of a scale. So, if you are not hungry, don't eat, if you crave an avocado, eat an avocado, if you crave a cake…eat a sweet fruit that is high. If you crave fat content to satisfy your craving and if you are not going to the toilet as often as required, eat something high in fiber such as a green smoothie or have a leafy green vegetable salad.

But if you insist on a scale… daily caloric requirements vary generally between 1500 and 2000, depending upon personal needs, if the standard diet is generally practiced in a temperate region with two or three meals per day.

Although calories play a role in the amount of energy, you have another factor to consider is that some foods convert into calories with higher speed than other foods. For example, eating too many fruits produces calories rapidly, but the caloric discharge soon eases, while glucose contained in some of the sweeteners like agave are burn calories slowly and last longer. In this respect, a diet centered around fruits and vegetables is far superior to a diet centered around raw cocoa, cocoa butter, almond butter or some of the starchy vegetables like courgettes because you can use the energy immediately.

The Problem of Carbohydrates

Carbs have been given a bad reputation for making us fat but the truth of the matter is we need carbohydrates in our daily diet. Without carbs, we can't think, function, or do anything. Carbs are the body's fuel. The best carb is glucose, especially polysacchardride glucose (complex sugar), because it gradually decomposes and thus it can sustain our metabolism and activity. When we store excessive sugar within our organs such as the liver, it is stored in the form of polysaccharide glucose. On the other hand, other sugars, the sugars of fruits, cane or beets give undesirables effects to our physical and mental condition, and produce numerous kinds of disease and abnormal symptoms, including schizophrenia, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and many others. In order to cure those sicknesses, it is recommended to terminate or minimize the intake of such sugars, (especially raw sweeteners like agaves), but it is also important to replace such sugars with polysaccharides and continue to eat vegetables that are high in carbohydrates in this form. Another symptom of excess sugar are beauty spots and freckles. This is a sign that your skin is detoxing and access the sugar in your body.

So basically sugar is good when it comes from a natural source and when you eat according to what you use, so if you are exercising you need to eat more fruits than someone who is sedentary. And of course avoid any type of processed sugar on a regular basis…but do treat yourself once in a while!

The Problem of Protein

Recent trends in nutritional advice tend to overemphasize protein, especially in some of the raw food websites that are targeting body work out. It is true that the human body consists of protein in large part. However, (1) all protein required in our body does not necessarily comes from protein itself, but there is a constant interchange between protein, carbohydrates and fat within our body; and (2) food is used not only for the formation of the body but also for the energy of daily activities. The ratio of food used for body construction to food used for activity should be, on the average of 1:7, and this needs to be achieved in a healthy way.

Therefore, when adapting to a raw food diet, protein can be supplied from nuts, (almonds especially), soaked and sprouted lentils, avocado, soaked brown rice, leafy greens etc. These proteins and their compositions of amino acids including the balance of eight essential amino acids can all be found in the above products. Raw organic products are more flexible than animal protein in the ability to interchange between body construction and body energy for activity.

By TTS Cofounder Botanical Chef Omid Jaffari