A recent press release published by "Drinks Media Wire" highlights RAWvolution, a new raw food cafe, in Santa Monica, California.

Raw Food Café Brings Food and Consciousness Together in One-Stop Shop

New raw food cafe and market in Santa Monica serves up prepared raw food to dine in or take out and raw food snacks and treats.

Not your typical raw food restaurant, Euphoria Loves RAWvolution L.A.’s healthiest hangout is a haven for food lovers to enjoy a prepared meal or purchase snacks and ingredients to create their own meals at home.

“We wanted to create a space that could exist as a community center where customers come to share food and consciousness together,” says Euphoria Loves RAWvolution Owner and raw food lifestyle coach Janabai Owens. “Euphoria Loves RAWvolution’s approach to the raw food movement is non-dogmatic. We want this lifestyle to be accessible to everyone so people can eat healthy and get on with their lives.”

The café, which is open for lunch and dinner, features raw entrees, side dishes and desserts prepared by co-owner and renowned raw food chef and “RAWvolution” author Matt Amsden. To meet the needs of busy locals, the café offers food by the quarter pound or meal specials that feature an entrée and two or three side dishes. Chef Amsden creates a selection of entrees such as Big Matt with Cheese, Italian Pizza or Stir-Not-Fry and side dishes include Cucumber Dill Salad, No-Bean Hummus and Eggless-Egg Salad, to name a few.

"The flavor of raw food is so fresh and alive because it is as nature intended full of living water and life force,” says Amsden. “We shop local farmers markets and Santa Monica Co-Op for the freshest and finest organic ingredients. We want our customers to know that the food they purchase from Euphoria Loves RAWvolution is the best they can get.”

The meals can be taken to-go or eaten in the bright, bohemian café. In addition to the prepared meals, the growing grocery section features a host of superfoods including raw chocolate, exotic fruits, futuristic supplements, organic treats and radiant body care. Shoppers can explore the products and learn about the health and beauty benefits from the knowledgeable sales staff.

For those raw food fans who are unable to regularly visit the café or live on the other side of the country Euphoria Loves RAWvolution also offers “The Box,” a food box filled with a selection of two soups, four entrees, four side dishes and two desserts, designed to feed a customer for four to five days. These boxes, which have a celebrity and local following, can either be picked up at the café or are delivered via Fed Ex to the customer’s home. The Box allows raw food lovers to easily eat healthy delicious meals, prepared by Amsden, in their own home.

Michael Kenney, founder of Pure Food & Wine in New York City, has opened a new Blue/Green cafe at Equinox (an upscale gym) on Heights Road in Darien, Connecticut. Darien, CT is a small suburban community located just outside NYC, and is home to many Wall Street fund managers and "high finance" types.

The cafe serves raw juices (fruit, veggie, and nut milks) and appetizers (raw spring rolls, summer rolls, salads) and offers "Blue/Green To Go," where for $40 customers can pick up a day’s worth of raw food meals, including a green juice, a smoothie, two meals and dessert. The menu changes daily.

The raw food article below is excerpted from The Darien Times.

Darien Goes Raw, Gets Healthy
by Susan Chaves

So long fast food. Adios junk food. Good-bye carbs. Hello raw foods?

Noshing on portobello fajitas and sipping coconut water has become a popular alternative for people seeking a healthier lifestyle.

Darienites Michelle Mauboussin and Kim Walsh are two faithful followers of such cuisine that uses organic fruits and vegetables, seeds, nuts and sprouted greens.

“I love to eat this way,” said Mauboussin, adding that the change in her diet has resulted in clearer skin, a need for less sleep and an increased energy level. “It makes me feel so good that if I veer off it, I really feel the difference.”

Mauboussin was turned on to raw foods two years ago by Walsh, who began eating vegan-style a year earlier. Although initially skeptical about the practice, Mauboussin agreed to attend a raw food preparation class with her friend in New York City.

“I was immediately hooked,” Mauboussin said. “The food was so delicious and tasty. It wasn’t like I was being tortured.”

The positive experience prompted bringing a raw food juice bar to Darien. After a trip to the city last spring for another raw food class — this one led by Michael Kenney — approached the chef about opening a fourth Blue/Green cafe at Equinox on Heights Road.

“A lot of his restaurants are high-end and very expensive so I never thought he would come to a gym,” Walsh said. “When he said he would, I was thrilled.”

Blue/Green debuted in town last November and, due mostly to word-of-mouth, has experienced a steady increase in the number of customers.

“I’m amazed and thrilled with the response,” Kenney said.

This is Kenney’s first dalliance outside of the city since opening the first of 11 restaurants specializing in Mediterranean- and American-influenced entrees in 1993. After a successful seven years, during which he published two cookbooks, launched a catering and events company and created a line of gourmet food products for retail stores, Kenney’s culinary career began to crumble. His restaurants closed one after the other, leaving him in financial straits.

By 2004, Kenny bounced back with Pure Food and Wine, a raw, vegan restaurant in Gramercy Park he ran with his then-girlfriend. The pair also wrote a cookbook Raw Food, Real World.

Today, Kenney has left Pure Food and Wine and established Organic Umbrella, which oversees several business ventures focusing on a raw food lifestyle, including vegan and juice cafes, a raw food cooking class and a retail line of prepared foods. He also owns The Plant, a kitchen that, among other things, supplies food to Blue/Green and offers weekly raw food cooking classes.

“Getting into raw food had changed my personal life and my business life,” Kenney said. “I was definitely skeptical first, but the food changed my life. I’m never sick, I require less sleep, I have tons of energy and I’m 42, and never had a gray hair.”

He attributes the benefits to the fact that the foods are not processed, pasteurized or cooked above 118 degrees, meaning all essential vitamins and enzymes are left in tact. He said preparing the food is not difficult, just replace the stoves, ovens and microwaves with a dehydrator, Vita-mixer and juicer.

“The most challenging aspect is creating new cuisine that is tasty,” Kenney said. “You’ve got to be creative when putting things together.”

Some favorites at Blue/Green in Darien include the spicy mango spring rolls, vegetable summer rolls, Mexican salad, the all green juice and the mango, the raspberry and almond milk smoothie and the pear almond milk, cinnamon and hemp protein smoothie.

If people do not have time to dine at the cafe, there is Blue/Green To Go, where for $40 customers can pick up a day’s worth of raw food meals, including a green juice, a smoothie, two meals and dessert. The menu changes daily.

“It’s really about convenience and healthful food,” Mauboussin said. “So many people want it, but they can’t do it.”

That includes Mauboussin, a mother of five, who came up with the concept after finding she had little time to prepare the food she enjoyed. More recently, she started doing the Blueprint Cleanse, wherein people have nothing but six shakes a day for five days. Both the shakes and the program were developed by Zoe Sakoutis and are currently only available at Blue/Green for $300 for a five-day supply.

The New York-based raw food nutritional consultant has created four cleanses that increase in intensity. Raw 101 consists of raw food solids that are easily digested for people who are unfamiliar with healthy eating. Walk the Line is half solids and half blended drinks and serves as a segue to Blended & Smooth, offered at Blue/Green, is nothing but liquids and blended soups. Easy Being Green is the highest level and finds only the people most experienced with cleanses drinking green juices and coconut water.

“I wanted to bridge the gap between starting the cleanse and the extreme,” said Sakoutis, who launched her line two weeks ago after a year’s worth of trial and error. “It’s been a slow humiliation. I used myself and my mom as guinea pigs.”

Her cleanse, inspired by what she learned during time spent at the Anne Wigmore Institute in Puerto Rico, incorporates a lot of papaya, sprouts, greens and coconut water as well as a little bit of health science and a touch of behavioral science.

“When people understand what certain foods are doing for them, they want to go out and eat it,” Sakoutis said. “So I’m really interested to see how the cleanse does. I think it’ll be really great.”

Mauboussin and Walsh rave about the cleanse, saying the drinks are “very satisfying” and curb hunger throughout the day. In fact, Mauboussin said one Blue/Green customer has lost 35 pounds doing the cleanse and eating raw food.

“Blue/Green is the talk of the town,” said Mauboussin, noting that she has received e-mails, phone calls and letters thanking her and Walsh for “making Darien a healthier place.” “It’s great to see other people feeling good and being so enthusiastic about it.”

That bit of news is music to Walsh’s ears.

“It has been my dream that people in town would start feeling the way I feel every day,” said the mother of three boys. “Two weeks after I started eating raw food I felt 15 years old and was begging my kids to play with me.”

While raw food suits her just fine, Walsh said eating it all the time is not for everyone. However, she said introducing just a small amount into one’s diet can make a difference.

“It’s not all or nothing,” she said. “You can add more raw foods into your lifestyle and you’ll feel better.”

The Ottawa Citizen, a Canadian newspaper, recently published an article profiling a 45 year-old woman who says she has eaten raw (almost exclusively) for the past 14 years. Story excerpt below…

Dining in the Raw
by Louise Crosby

Natasha Kyssa is lean, fit and glowing. At 45, she is a picture of youth and vitality. She says it's the raw food. For the past 14 years, this Ottawa woman has eaten "living foods" almost exclusively. In the vegan raw foods culture, this means only fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and grains, much of which is made more digestible by soaking, sprouting, blending, juicing and fermenting. That means no meat, chicken or fish, obviously. No dairy foods, sugar, coffee or tea. No canned fruit or vegetables or commercial fruit juices that have been heated or pasteurized. No bubbling macaroni and cheese, wood oven-fired pizza or sizzling stir-frys. No steaming, roasting, grilling or baking.

It sounds restrictive, but raw foodists have come up with clever and imaginative ways of turning raw ingredients into gourmet masterpieces.American celebrity chef Charlie Trotter, a huge fan of raw foods (although he is not a vegetarian), has added raw dishes to the menu of his fine-dining restaurant in Chicago. His 2003 cookbook, Raw, has recipes for Bleeding Heart Radish Ravioli with Yellow Tomato Sauce, and Salsify with Black Truffles and Porcini Mushrooms.

Raw foods are also turning up at the world's most luxurious spa retreats, along with the detox and yoga. And at the monthly raw vegan pot-luck hosted by Natasha and her husband, Mark Faul, at St. Giles Presbyterian Church in the Glebe, people bring everything from lasagnas and sushi rolls to mango pie and carrot cake.

Why raw food? Raw foodists say enzymes — catalysts that aid digestion and the absorption of nutrients into the bloodstream — are destroyed at temperatures higher than 118 degrees F (48 degrees C). A raw food diet, along with other good habits like getting lots of sleep, fresh air and exercise, contributes to exceptionally good overall health, increased energy, a strengthened immune system, resistance to colds and flu and better concentration and mental clarity.

Natasha's earliest influence in the whole-foods department was her Austrian-born mother, who for many years ran The Pantry, a mostly vegetarian tea room in the Glebe Community Centre. Today, Natasha and Mark run SimplyRaw, which offers personalized healthy lifestyles coaching and workshops on preparing raw foods. They recently gave a presentation to medical staff at Elizabeth Bruyere Health Centre.

Adopting a completely raw food diet is a serious commitment and not for everyone. But if you'd like to increase the amount of raw food you're getting every day, you may want to re-stock your pantry and invest in a few essential pieces of equipment: a high-speed blender and food processor; a jar with a mesh lid for sprouting beans and seeds; a spiral slicer for making "noodle" strands out of zucchini, beets and other vegetables; fine mesh bags for making nut milks; a dehydrator, which gently removes the moisture from foods and turns out things like crackers, pizza crust, granola, cookies, dried fruits and vegetables. Natasha and Mark sell many of these products through their website.

A few weeks back, Natasha whipped up this Angel Hair Pasta with Marinara Sauce in my kitchen. It was room-temperature but tasty, with strong, bold flavours. I made the almond milk and it was quite delicious in banana-strawberry smoothies. Despite long soaking and prolonged blending, however, my dates didn't puree successfully. If you don't like chunky bits of date in your smoothies, but want to stay "raw," use a couple of tablespoons of wild raw agave nectar instead. It's made from agave cactus plants and rates very low on the glycemic index.

Angel Hair Pasta with Marinara Sauce

Serves 6
For the marinara sauce:
2 cloves garlic
1 cup (250 mL) sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in water until soft, drained
4 dates, soaked in water until soft and drained, or 2 tablespoons raw agave
4 to 6 medium ripe tomatoes
1/2 red bell pepper
1/4 cup (50 mL) minced fresh basil
2 tablespoons (25 mL) fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon (5 mL) dried
1 teaspoon (5 mL) dried thyme
1 teaspoon (5 mL) onion powder
4 tablespoons (65 mL) cold-pressed olive oil
1/4 cup (50 mL) lemon juice or unpasteurized apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Celtic sea salt, or 1 tablespoon (15 mL) Nama Shoyu or Nama Tamari, to taste
1/4 teaspoon (1 mL) black pepper
Pinch, cayenne

For the topping:

1/2 cup (125 mL) pine nuts
Fresh basil
Olives

For zucchini pasta:

4 to 6 large zucchini

1. In a food processor or blender, chop garlic. Add soaked sun-dried tomatoes and dates; blend. Add all remaining ingredients; blend, adding filtered water or the sun-dried tomato soaking water for a smoother, thinner consistency, if desired. Season to taste.

2. Slice the zucchini crosswise into quarters. Use a spiral slicer, shred zucchini into thin "noodles." Place noodles in serving bowls and top with marinara sauce. Garnish with chopped pine nuts, basil and olives.

Vanilla Almond Milk

Makes 3 cups (750 mL)
1 cup (250 mL) almonds with skins, soaked overnight
3 cups (750 mL) filtered water
6 dates, soaked until soft
1-inch (2.5 cm) piece vanilla bean, or 2 tablespoons (25 mL) wild, raw agave nectar
Blend almonds and water at high speed until creamy. Strain using a nylon nut bag or fine sieve. Return milk to blender, add remaining ingredients, and blend again. Serve over cereal, in smoothies or alone.

Bradley Saul, a former pro-cyclist, raw vegan and founder of Organic Athlete was recently profiled in The Arizona Daily Star. According to its website, Organic Athlete organizes bike races called Tour d'Organics in which participants race from farm to farm to promote organic foods and athleticism. Upcoming races are planned in Austin, Texas, Portland, Ore., and Santa Cruz, Sebastopol and Santa Barbara, Calif.

Excerpt below from The Arizona Daily Star…

On Pace: Can Vegan Diet Fuel an Athlete? He says yes.
by Jennifer Duffy

What did you eat yesterday? Bradley Saul, a former pro-cyclist and founder of Organic Athlete, stopped in Tucson last week to talk about his organization and told me what he had munched on that day: half of a case of strawberries, two heads of lettuce chopped into a salad, some oranges and about 50 small dates.

The tall and lean but strong-looking cyclist is a vegan, and a raw foodist. He promotes organic living for athletes to ensure personal and environmental health. (Being a raw foodist who eats only whole foods, he doesn't touch things like whole wheat bread or tofu, but will eat some brown rice in a pinch, he says.) Chowing down on a few heads of lettuce for lunch and avoiding all cooked and processed foods sounds a little extreme, but the principles of his vegan raw food diet are based on eating whole, organic foods that provide the vitamins, minerals and fiber that we all strive for in our diets.

Everyone's first question: Where do you get your protein? "Where don't you get protein if you're eating whole foods?" said Saul, who started Organic Athlete when he was living in Tucson in 2003 and now resides in California. "Human mother's milk has only 5 to 6 percent of its calories from protein. And that's for babies growing at a much more rapid rate than we are. We get enough protein if we eat whole foods, fruits and vegetables." He eats nuts and seeds in small amounts because they're high in fat.

Fruits and vegetables have a bit of protein per calorie — some more than others — so as long as you're eating whole foods, you can't not get enough protein, Saul says. These foods aren't as high in protein as meat, of course, but that protein is more difficult to digest, according to Saul. But this guy isn't just munching on heads of lettuce and lounging on the couch — he's an athlete. Doesn't he need supplements or a chicken breast once in awhile?

Nope.

He doesn't use supplements when he races, and when he recently ran a marathon he just ate dates for fuel during the 26.2-mile race. "I was fine." I can't even imagine a long run without chocolate energy gel, but Saul's minimalism is inspiring. Celery blended up in water provides the precious electrolytes athletes are always fretting over, although Saul says he really doesn't worry about whether he gets enough electrolytes. "I used to come out of a race all covered in salt. I'm not like that anymore," he said. "Since I've started this, I can say my recovery times are better. I wake up in the morning ready for the day, and I don't need stimulants or caffeine to keep me going."

He says he went through a transition period for a few months, moving from vegetarianism to veganism (no animal products at all), to eating raw, organic foods. "I had always known fruits and vegetables were the healthiest food and I ate a lot of them, but I had never heard of people that just ate them," Saul said with a laugh. Now he does, although he was raised on "traditional American food — but all made from scratch," and his mother still eats the way she did when he was growing up. "We had homemade birthday cakes, meat and potatoes. His friends were eating a lot of processed foods, but I just made everything from scratch. It wasn't necessarily healthy, though," said Molly Savitz.

"I'm surprised at how simple what he does is," said Savitz, of South Carolina, who will prepare food for as many as 700 cyclists at one of the Tour d'Organics race, put on by her son, this year. I'm a vegetarian, and Saul's principles of eating lots of fruit and veggies appeal to me — but I'm not giving up my organic tofu any time soon. What I am going to glean from his purist lifestyle is a focus on organic produce, locally grown foods and choosing nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables over processed snacks.

When Jennifer Pittman moved to Forth Worth, Texas and discovered a lack of organic food providers, she decided to create her own source of raw food produce and products. Pittman started an organic co-op called Blueberry Market…

Beyond the Chains, Local Options Limited
by Amy Culbertson
Star-Telegram Food Editor

When it comes to organic options outside supermarkets and natural-foods markets, Fort Worth and environs aren't exactly overflowing with options. Where in other cities, farmers markets are primary sources for local organic produce, you won't find any organic farmers at the Cowtown Farmers Market, the group of local farmers selling produce on Wednesday and Saturday mornings at the Benbrook Traffic Circle.

Ben Walker, president of the North Central Texas Farmers Market Corp., which operates the Cowtown market, says his group has just one organic farmer, who sells only at the Grapevine Farmers Market. The dearth of organic-food providers was what motivated Jennifer Pittman to launch a fledgling organic and raw-food business from her home near Texas Christian University several months ago. Pittman had been running an "environmentally safe cleaning business" in Austin before she moved here and found the options for her goal of a raw-food diet suddenly limited.

Through her Blueberry Market Organic Rawfood business, Pittman brings in organic produce, seeds, grains, nuts and nut butters, oils, herbs, teas and skin-care products for pickup every two weeks. She gets most of her items from several national distributors but has recently added some produce from a local organic farmer. She's looking for a storefront to offer a retail location in the future and eventually would like to be involved in the growing end of the organic-food business. For now, however, her business is mostly e-mail. Pittman joins a short list of local organic co-ops that includes Monica Brown's Your Health Source co-op, probably the area's largest.

Your Health Source, which Brown started four years ago, provides organic groceries for about 825 families. Brown lives in Weatherford, but her co-op is based in downtown Fort Worth, from which groceries are delivered to a network of "host" sites — homes or small businesses — for pickup within a two-hour radius. At the host sites, members "sort the food and get it ready for the people to come pick up," Brown said. Each member family pays $25 to join and gets a basic box of fruits and vegetables — some weeks include local produce — every other week for $40. Members can order extra shares or whole cases of produce; many members split cases. Other groceries available for order include local pastured meats, eggs and dairy products, along with dry goods such as bulk grains, seeds, nuts and nut butters; local honey; and oils.

Members also have access to e-groups to discuss health issues and share recipes, and Brown does frequent cooking demonstrations at various sites. All the co-ops operate a little differently — some have fees to join; some require that their members work a certain number of hours sorting food or doing other tasks. But all buy in bulk to offer price advantages over retail outlets, and most deliver a basic box of produce at set intervals, usually every other week.

Fort Worth Raw Food Related Co-ops

Blueberry Market
TCU area of Fort Worth: Specializing in vegetarian, vegan and raw-food items. Every-two-week pickup; individual orders; no joining fee. www.blueberrymarket.com. e-mail: blueberry@blueberrymarket.com

Joyful Living
Aledo: Kristy Bell specializes in organic grains and mills. Also produce, grocery items, dry goods. Every-two-week pickup; pre-assembled produce box $25; individual orders and on-site sales. No joining fee or minimum order. (817) 441-7074.

Wonderfully Made
South Fort Worth: Produce; frozen, refrigerated and dry goods; grain grinders and mills. Every-two-week pickup, produce box $20-$36 with a onetime $5 box deposit. No joining fee or minimum order. (817) 294-1873.

Your Health Source
Fort Worth: Produce, dry goods, groceries. Every-two-week delivery, produce box $40. $25 joining fee. (817) 793-3509; (888) 280-0494.

In the article below, a Nottingham woman explains how a raw food diet cured her rheumatoid arthritis which she had suffered from since 13. Interestingly, the arthritis developed after a rubella immunization. (The more I read about vaccinations, the more opposed I become to the practice of immunizing children.)

From The Mirror, a U.K. based publication.

Exclusive: Raw Food Diet Has Cured My Arthritis
By Claire Collins

As the Daniels family gathers round the dinner table it resembles a scene played out in many households. An evening meal shared with loved ones, a time to eat and talk together. But there is one significant difference. All the food laid before mum Jatinder, husband Derek and their three children, Raman, 17, Priyanka, 13, and seven-year-old Mohan is raw. And this unusual diet has been credited with saving Jatinder's life and turning her family's fortunes around.

"I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 16 and doctors said my future was bleak," says Jatinder, a healthy 45. "They said I could be in a wheelchair by the end of my teens, that I would be in varying degrees of constant pain for the rest of my life and, due to aggressive drugs, may not be able to have children. It was like a death sentence.

"But look at me now! I'm a mum of three, perfectly mobile and free from the agony I endured for years. And it's all down to my raw food, low-toxin lifestyle." Jatinder's teenage years in Nottingham were dogged with frustration and confusion over her stiffness and pain until, after endless tests, she was diagnosed.

"I was a healthy until 13 when I was vaccinated against rubella in school," Jatinder recalls."My health deteriorated rapidly afterwards. Suddenly I couldn't do any sports at all. I was persistently tired and regularly in terrible pain. There were days when I couldn't walk, dress myself or bathe. Sometimes my jaw was so stiff I couldn't eat at all or just manage soup." Jatinder went to hospital once a week for six months for injections into her joints yet the arthritis intensified and her knuckles and knees began to deform. She became suicidal.

She says: "The injections offered no immediate relief. I felt alone, angry and full of resentment. I was trying to do my A-levels but I couldn't even carry my own books. "My condition worsened during the winter. The cold wind went straight to my bones and was agony. I became very depressed and often thought about throwing myself into the River Trent."

Despite being in constant pain, Jatinder was determined to live life to the full and at 21 went to London to study computing. She says: "I needed a walking stick by the time I went to university but I refused to use one out of pride. I felt so vulnerable. I was adamant that I was going to be independent." Derek, a 43-year-old computer programmer, remembers the difficulties his bride-to-be faced when they met while studying. He recalls: "She couldn't walk for more than five minutes without pain. I felt helpless and desperately wanted to ease her discomfort.

"It was clear to us that the anti-inflammatory drugs she was taking made very little difference to her discomfort. In fact, the side-effects of stomach ulcers and blinding headaches made her feel worse. I fully supported her decision to stop taking them five years later." The couple married the year after she stopped taking the drugs and Jatinder summoned every bit of grit to walk down the aisle unaided. She says: "The days when I couldn't walk at all were becoming more frequent and I was limping more often than not. "But there was no way I was going to let my illness get in the way of a perfect wedding. "I blocked out the pain, held my head up high and slowly walked to join my future husband. It was very emotional."

Jatinder and Derek set up home in London and Raman was born later that year. But with their new baby came new hardships for Jatinder. She explains: "The doctors had warned that I would have difficulty conceiving because of the drugs I'd been taking, so Raman was extra special. But caring for him was the biggest challenge I'd ever faced. "The normal duties that new mums take for granted like bathing their child was like climbing a mountain. But I had no choice but to cope." Their second child Priyanka was born four years later and developed chronic eczema and asthma at eight weeks. The lack of sleep and stress that caused only made Jatinder's condition worse. She said: "I was beginning to think I couldn't go on. I couldn't see myself reaching my 40th birthday and if I'm honest part of me didn't want to if it meant living with constant pain. "I believed it was only going to get worse."

It was during these dark times that Derek discovered the raw food way of life on the internet. He read claims that nature intended us to eat raw, who le food and that it is unnatural to consume cooked or processed foods. Jatinder explains: "Long-term consumption of processed food will lead to toxicity or toxaemia – when the body is overloaded with poisons. These harmful toxins are found all around us – in our environment, treated water, non-organic fruit and vegetables and cooked food.

"Raw foodists believe that major illnesses like cancer, diabetes and arthritis are often a result of toxaemia and can be prevented and greatly helped by a raw food way of life." Jatinder says she realised the importance of food in relation to wellbeing years ago but the idea of eating only raw food seemed impossible. "I had stopped eating wheat years earlier noticing that wheat flour made my joints flare up and I had become vegan the previous year for similar reasons," she says.

"I put the fact that I wasn't already in a wheelchair down to my healthy diet and generally positive mindset. "I believed that food could have a miraculous effects on health, I just didn't believe I could take such drastic measures." When Jatinder conceived her youngest son Mohan, at the age of 37, she knew something had to be done to improve her health. So, at two months pregnant, she changed her diet to 100 per cent raw for one week. She says: "I had diarrhoea but felt the benefit and the pain reduced. "I went back to 50 per cent cooked until the following summer when the whole family began to detox."

The family moved to Spain four years ago where Jatinder is a raw food consultant. They live in beautiful whitewashed mountainside village on the Costa del Sol and the children attend the local school. "We wanted the children to grow up in a natural environment and I believe sunshine is another key to good health," she says. And the family insists the raw food diet is fun and tasty. "Now the kids love it," Jatinder laughs. "There is so much variety. I make biscuits, crackers, sweets and some really tasty desserts. Friends are amazed when I tell them what they are eating is not cooked.

"Just like you learn how to cook, you can learn how to uncook. It is amazing what textures you can achieve by using a blender or the food you can create simply by dehydrating it. It may sound complicated but once you've got the hang of it, the preparation time is actually less.

"Friends who come around for lunch are amazed when I tell them what they are eating is in fact raw." Jatinder is keen to stress that to truly detox, your whole lifestyle has to be adjusted. She says: "Detoxing is not as simple as just eating raw food — it includes being aware of your environment.

"It means changing you hair gel, your toothpaste, the chemicals you use around the house, chlorinated tap water — even your negative thought patterns. They all introduce toxins into our bodies."

After 12 months of raw food, Jatinder's arthritis all but disappeared. She smiles modestly: "I can now walk and ride a bike for miles, prepare amazing meals and look after my family. And I am pain-free. "We are all so much healthier. Neither myself of Mohan has been treated by a doctor since he was born. I don't believe a doctor will treat me again for my arthritis. I am healing myself.

A recent article, published by DailyIndia.com (out of New York) describes eating raw for both humans and pets.

The Raw Food Diet
by Sylvia Riley

The raw food diet is as much a lifestyle as an eating plan; a naturalistic approach which excludes, in addition to cooked and animal foods, processed and refined ingredients. In the ever-hungry quest for new fads and health panaceas, the raw food diet, with adherents such as Woody Harrelson and Donna Karan, is growing in mainstream popularity. Unlike many other bandwagons however, raw foods (also referred to as 'living foods'), offer unarguable health benefits and one can reap rewards even as a 50% dabbler. To be a 100% extremist takes commitment, discipline and education and is best introduced gradually to avoid the overwhelm of inevitable detoxification.

A food is essentially 'raw' if it is kept below 115 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature above which enzymes are destroyed. Eating raw food ensures an opulent intake of nutrients, fibre, healthy oils and life-giving enzymes. Raw food is much more easily digested, taking half to a third of the time of cooked food, around 24-36 hours compared to 40-100 hours. Raw vegetables and fruits, are also predominantly alkaline so help to optmize the pH balance of the body (around 60-80% alkaline foods being recommended for an internal environment resistant to disease).

Whole foods, sprouts and raw juices are favoured in a raw food diet, and dehydrator 'ovens' effectively concentrate the flavour of certain raw foods to assist in the creation of a mind-boggling array of as-cooked dishes. I've eaten a raw food pizza that unbelievably contained no wheat, no cheese and no cooked ingredients! It tasted delicious and I was stumped to figure out what it was actually made of!

Raw Power

Raw plant foods are healthy, regenerative, cleansing, energising, predominantly alkaline, and packed with vitamins, minerals, healthy oils, enzymes and antioxidants that promote health, beauty and longevity. As well as enhancing digestion and protecting against aging and disease, a raw food diet has noted weight loss benefits and promotes clear, beautiful skin. The benefit of raw food becomes even more apparent in view of the effects cooking can have on constituents in food.

The Effects of Cooking

Arthur Baker writes in Awakening Our Self-Healing Body, "Overly cooked foods literally wreck our body. They deny needed nutrients to the system since heat alters foodstuffs such that they are partially, mostly, or wholly destroyed. Nutrients are coagulated, deaminized, caramelized and rendered inorganic and become toxic and pathogenic in the body."

The indigestible end products of cooked foods can linger in the gut, clogging the intestines and interfering with healthy elimination. They can cause a build-up of toxins, mutagens and carcinogens. Carbohydrates ferment, proteins putrefy and fats become rancid, creating free radicals that enter the blood stream. Lipufuscin, the 'aging pigment', is an example of a waste product created from damaged proteins and fats. It accumulates in the skin and nervous system and is visible as brown 'liver spots' on the skin and eyes.

Toxic by-products and excess free radicals from cooked foods can weaken the immune system and accelerate the aging process.

Enzymes

Cooking destroys enzymes in our food. These delicate, heat sensitive proteins can destabilise at temperatures as low as 115 degrees Fahrenheit, hence even light steaming can render them inactive. Enzymes, so abundant in a raw food diet, are highly functional catalysts involved in various health-regulating tasks in the body, such as breaking down food in digestion, delivering nutrients, carrying away toxic wastes and strengthening the endocrine and immune system. All living cells contain enzymes which function in cooperation with other minerals. As there is not an unlimited supply of enzymes, eating them in our food lifts the burden off organs to produce digestive enzymes which allows a greater use of enzymes for other metabolic purposes, freeing up more energy for the performance of other tasks.

More Bio-available Nutrients in Raw Foods

In cooking food we can loose up to 97% of water-soluble vitamins (B and C) and 40% of fat-soluble vitamins (namely A, D, E and K).

Proteins

Heat denatures proteins, modifying their molecular structure and rendering them unusable. The bacteria in the gut feeds upon undigested proteins that tend to putrefy, giving rise to toxins. Raw foods provide healthy, readily available protein in greater supply without undigested residue.

Fats

Oils are heat, light and air sensitive. Heating can destroy the goodness of an oil and alter molecules generating toxins and free radicals. Unrefined oils that are cold-pressed contain all their natural healthy substances (olive oil for example is rich in phytonutrients, flaxseed oil a great source of omega-3 fatty acids and so on). Oils should be kept refrigerated in dark sealed containers.

Fibre

Fibre is essential for health and helps to flush out the intestines, scrubbing them clean and aiding elimination. With cooked food fibre becomes a soft substance, loosing its brush-like quality. It can partially rot, ferment and putrefy in the gut, causing toxins, gas and heartburn.

Raw Superfoods

Eating superfoods enhances a raw food diet even further. Superfoods are the most potent, antioxidant rich, nutrient dense, disease fighting, anti aging, beautifying, mood enhancing, immune boosting foods on the planet. Raw superfoods ensure an optimum intake of nutrients and phytochemicals for optimum health.

Raw Food Diet For Your Pets

A raw food diet for dogs and cats is both natural and species-appropriate. Not only does it provide a rich supply of nutrients, antioxidants and enzymes, but ensures a move a way from the low grade, inappropriate, highly processed and toxic ingredients found in commercial pet foods that can damage your pet's health. If embarking on a homemade raw food diet for your pet (sometimes referred to as BARF–biologically appropriate raw food), thoroughly research the area first as nutritional balance is essential.

Walmart will begin offering more organic food, according to a news article. According to Reuters, "Wal-Mart is the top U.S. grocery seller and also No. 1 in organic milk sales. It carries organic baby food, juice, produce and pasta sauce, but will be expanding its offerings to include products ranging from pickles to macaroni and cheese." Maybe more people will buy organic produce if Walmart begins actively supplying its stores with organics.

Right now, the two Walmart locations closest to my house have no organic produce, compared to Target (its closest competitor) which offers some organic produce (lettuce, grapes, apples, carrots, celery, cucumbers). Whole Foods is still the best retail choice for fresh organic produce, but Target is an alternative option (albeit less desirable).

All of Target's organic produce is "packaged" and comes from Earthbound Farms. For example, organic cucumbers at Target are wrapped in plastic in a black container, in comparison to Whole Food's produce which is not packaged, and comes from local farmers (well, at least some of it does).

I live in the suburbs, and the five options here for organic produce are…

Whole Foods
Local CSA (community supported agriculture) subscription
Kroger
Target
Lowes Foods

Whole Foods and local CSA's are the best. Surprisingly, Kroger has a decent selection of organic produce (they recently expanded their offerings). Lowes Foods is another store that offers a small selection of organics. It will be interesting to see what kind of organic products Walmart decides to carry.

A new raw food website for Australians has just been created by Paul Benhaim, a living food lifestyle coach.

According to the website, Alive Foods is Australia's information portal to everything RAW.

The site includes information about detoxification, detox and health retreats including meditation, relaxation, nutrition, raw living food preparation, seminars, lectures and raw food cooking schools.

The San Francisco Chronicle just published an article highlighting raw food "cooking" and Cherie Soria. Excerpt below…

Cooking School in the Raw
by Olivia Wu, Chronicle Staff Writer

Like all canny cooks, Cherie Soria knows how to hook her audience: with desserts. But Soria doesn't pull out the stops with butter, sugar, eggs and flour, baking them into fluffy confections. She makes her magic with avocado and agave syrup — and no baking at all. By the time her students taste her creations, they don't mind that those unexpected ingredients are the major components of their chocolate mousse. As Soria would say, "If you can make a raw vegan cheesecake better than regular cheesecake, why would you eat regular cheesecake?"

In no time, she has her students dipping into a layered pesto torta that relies on a cheese made from almonds to replace the usual ricotta, and digging into a lasagna-type dish with a noodle-like layer of pureed cashew nuts stretched over mushrooms, spinach and a killer marinara sauce. Soria is the pre-eminent teacher of gourmet raw food preparation, and founder of Living Light Culinary Arts Institute in Mendocino County. Now, she's established the country's first cooking school devoted to teaching raw and vegan cooking to home cooks and professional chefs.

A Place of Their Own

After nearly a decade of giving classes on the fly, in whatever facilities she could find, to some 800 students, she and her husband, co-director Dan Ladermann, have a place to call their own. The school is now housed in the 6,000-square-foot Company Store on Main Street in Fort Bragg. With the school, Soria and Ladermann aim to take raw cuisine mainstream. Classes are both demonstration and hands-on; the business also includes a production kitchen and takeout deli. There are no stoves or ovens; instead, dehydrators, high-speed blenders and special climate-controlled rooms for growing sprouts signal this is a raw-food operation.

Power Point presentations are part of the lectures and demonstrations, and six fully equipped stations are set up for hands-on classes. Roxanne Klein, whose eponymous, exclusively raw restaurant in Larkspur opened to critical acclaim in 2002 is Soria's most famous student. Klein's restaurant and takeout deli closed in 2004, but restaurants such as Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco and Berkeley, and Alive in San Francisco, are continuing the trend. Raw foodists believe that the greatest nourishment comes from food that is not heated beyond 115 degrees.

One reason, they believe, is that antioxidants and phyto-chemicals remain intact. They also believe that heat can transform some ingredients, notably oil and salt, into toxins. While these claims are controversial, Soria, 58, a radiant, small-framed woman who looks much younger than her years, may be the best advertisement for the cuisine and lifestyle. She has been cooking and living the raw food diet for 14 years, teaching classes at retreats such as Harbin Hot Springs in Lake County, and traveling the circuit of vegetarian and vegan national conferences.

When she began Living Light nine years ago, she kicked off with conventional raw dishes. "I taught raw without saying so by making gazpacho and olive tapenade," she says. Those dishes, followed by raw desserts, she says, won people over. The menu board of Living Light Cuisine ToGo, downstairs from the school, shows what draws: banana ice cream, carrot apple kuchen, chocolate mousse cup, chocolate cheesecake and frozen fudge bites. Juices and smoothies are listed, but so are entrees such as nori rolls, green burrito, zucchini angel hair pasta and a boxed mezze meal. All of them are made with 95 percent organic and 98 percent raw foods.

At the school, students begin with a required fundamentals class, then advance to associate chef and instructor training levels for professionals. As the classes progress, the format moves from a demonstration to hands-on format. In the past year, most of her fundamental classes have been at the capacity enrollment of 30 students. The hands-on classes are usually full, with 24 to 30 students per class. Soria says the school enrolls students from an international field, including Lebanon, South Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Europe and South America.

Raw food techniques are different enough from standard cooking that even chefs — many of them private chefs for Bay Area families — take her classes, says Soria. Google, the Internet giant in Mountain View, recently hired a chef who graduated from Living Light. Soria knows what it feels like to be labeled a cultist. "I went from the standard American diet to vegetarian to vegan to raw," she says. When she began a vegetarian diet in the carnivorous '60s, "people thought I was going to die."

She was a vegetarian for 19 years before she attended a workshop in 1992 at the clinics of Anne Wigmore, founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston, a wheatgrass and raw food discipline with an emphasis on using foods to rid the body of toxins. Wigmore's regime failed in one respect, Soria says — "Her food had no flavor." Clients might feel better after a regime of juices, wheatgrass, salads and sprouts, but "they go back home and are bored" with the diet, Soria says.

A Mind at Work

Soria set her culinary intelligence to work. She based her cuisine on raw vegan "cheeses," and began — as she did by teaching desserts — naming her dishes after mainstream comfort foods, and making them look like lasagna, pizza and sandwiches. She created raw dishes with cooked textures, such as her "stir, not-fried" vegetables. She searched for sophisticated cutting gadgets such as a spiral slicer to create long pastas such as angel hair and linguine out of zucchini, and used high-powered blenders to make smooth and creamy textures, such as vegan mayonnaise and aioli.

Nuts and seeds are sprouted, because a tenet of the raw food movement says that eating "living" food is the source of energy. By sprouting nuts and seeds, the living components are activated. Soria ferments pureed nut milks with beneficial intestinal flora such as probiotic and vegan acidophilus cultures and Wigmore's invention–Revjuvelac, fermented wheat and rye juice. All this adds flavor and nourishment, Soria says, which helps people feel fuller quicker. During the course of a weeklong class, Soria says, students feel sated and still lose an average of 10 pounds.

Jean-Marie Fayat is such a person — he had tried everything to lose weight. Fayat is executive pastry chef at Draeger's Market in San Mateo. A chef who came up the ranks of professional trade school in France, he came to the United States in 1976. Like many chefs, he had gained quite a bit of weight. He tried a three-day raw foods workshop and found "those foods were very appetizing." Like other individuals and some private chefs in the Bay Area, he learned that with raw food, "You can make a great, excellent meal." And, he says, "I lost 22 pounds in three weeks. It was very dramatic for me. I'm a French chef, and I like my cheese and wine."

Obesity Strategy?

Like Soria, Fayat predicts that raw food will become mainstream because it addresses obesity and tastes good. Soria admits that a raw diet can be challenging: It's ideal to eat 80 percent raw, but she says that most people will benefit from 50 percent raw. Many of her students, she says, strive to maintain a close-to-100 percent raw diet, but will drink hot tea, and revert to the occasional mashed potatoes.

Trying not to sound extreme, Soria says she and Ladermann do eat out, perhaps once a week, and when they do, they have "a nice vegetarian meal" at a local conventional cooked-food restaurant.

Living Light Culinary Arts Institute
301-B North Main St., Fort Bragg
(800) 816-2319 or (707) 964-2420
Raw Food Chef

Columbia News Service just published an article questioning whether children should be fed an all raw food diet. The article mentions the Talifero's, Gabriel Cousen's Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, and the Boutenko's. The recent controversy over whether children should be fed a raw food diet was sparked when a 6-month old girl in Florida died in 2003, after her parents fed her a diet composed only of wheat grass and coconut milk. The article, in its entirety…

Raw Food Diet: Half-Baked Idea For Kids?
Columbia News Service

At mealtime, the Talifero family's kitchen is abuzz with the sounds of the blender, juicer and nut grinder, but there's no whir of a microwave or heat from a stove. Raven, 11, and Jome, 8, may be lunching on spaghetti made of spirals of raw cut zucchini with a sauce of avocado, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil and salt. Shale, 5, has simpler tastes, preferring plain fruit or whole avocado. Adagio, at 21 months, is fed primarily breast milk, nut milks and mashed fruits and vegetables. But while their home is filled with a brightly colored raw bounty, including desserts made of crushed nuts, blended fruits and raw honey, there is no cooked food to be found.

Jinjee and Storm Talifero have chosen a raw, or "live foods," diet for their Pine Mountain Club home in California's Los Padres National Forest. They say that their children are thriving without meat, dairy, cooked, canned or frozen foods. "A few years ago at a party, Raven said she didn't want to be all raw anymore," recalled her mother, Jinjee, 38. "So we gave her a choice and said, 'OK, you can go ahead and eat whatever you want.' She loaded up her plate with bread, pastries and cupcakes. But two weeks later, she decided that she wanted to eat raw again."

The Taliferos, who sell their eBooks, documentary, workout DVD, music CDs and digital magazines on their Website, thegardendiet.com, want to help other families go raw. By ignoring the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food pyramid, which includes cooked grains and beans, dairy products and other sources of animal protein, they believe they can protect their children from diseases ranging from the common cold to diabetes and cancer.

Although it is difficult to estimate the number of children being raised on a raw diet, the Vegetarian Resource Group, a national meat-free advocacy organization, said that based on its 2005 Internet survey results, the United States has more than 450,000 vegans (those who abstain from meat, dairy and eggs) between the ages of 8 and 18. Talifero estimates that one in 10 of those follow a primarily raw diet, adding that her family's Website receives about 1,500 hits a day.

The Taliferos and other raw families expressed support for Lamoy and Joseph Andressohn, a Florida couple put under legal scrutiny after the 2003 death of their 6-month-old daughter, Woyah, who was born with DiGeorge Syndrome and fed a diet of coconut milk and wheat grass. The Andressohns were acquitted on manslaughter charges in November 2005 but were given suspended sentences and probation on charges of neglect, and have appealed.

"It is pretty sad that people's children can be taken away if they are sick on the raw vegan diet, but obese children who get sick on a standard American diet won't be taken away," said Talifero, whose children see a doctor for regular checkups. In order to combat some of the concerns that followed the Andressohn case, the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, a retreat for raw food education in Patagonia, Ariz., is studying the impact of such diets on babies and children.

Dr. Gabriel Cousens, the founder and director of the center, created a raw baby formula and is conducting a long-term study of the height, weight and health histories of babies fed all-raw diets. Educational manager Susan Miller-Madeley, who piloted the study, said she was surprised to find that some parents were nervous about the consequences of including their children in the study in the wake of the Andressohn case.

"There really is a need for more education around raw food diets," Miller-Madeley said. "Parents are definitely getting intimidated because of lack of information. There are some things that your baby will need supplements for, and it is not that you can go by the seat of your pants." Many in the mainstream medical establishment have been critical of the diet. "Children fed raw foods at weaning are likely to develop protein malnutrition and iron deficiency," said Dr. Robert Karp, a professor of pediatrics at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. "These conditions are precursors to developmental delay and a lifelong learning deficit."

Even some vegetarian doctors have questioned the necessity to go all raw. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, whose recent book "Disease-Proof Your Child" suggests that parents can prevent childhood illnesses through diet, said he did not necessarily mean no cooking. "These people have their heads buried in the broccoli," Fuhrman said of devotees of a strictly raw regimen. "Raw food should be mostly what we eat, but clearly if you are raising your child on an all-raw food diet, there may not be enough vitamin B12, enough vitamin D and enough calories." Fuhrman fed his own four children raw and cooked vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, beans and occasionally eggs.

But a 2005 study in Archives of Internal Medicine found no major deficiencies when comparing the bone health of adults on raw diets with those who ate a typical cooked diet. While the raw food group had lower weights and bone mass, they had normal vitamin D levels.

Some raw food families say they could not reap the same health benefits from eating cooked foods. After Victoria Boutenko and her husband, Igor, emigrated from Russia to Ashland, Ore., they suffered from arrhythmia and hyperthyroid conditions. In 1994 the parents turned to an all-raw diet for themselves and their diabetic son, Sergei, then 10, and asthmatic daughter, Valya, then 9. "Sergei's blood stabilized right away and Valya stopped having asthma attacks," said Boutenko, 50. Since that time, she and her family have stayed on a raw regimen and have remained free of disease, she said.

"Once in a while I would have panic attacks, worrying if they were missing nutrients," Boutenko said. "But my other choice was asthma and diabetes, so we didn't really have a choice."

Looks like there's a new raw food energy bar for those who live on the West Coast (U.S.). From the press release…

SmartMonkey Foods, the West Coast's premiere gourmet raw food company, is launching a new line of energy bars packed with the fresh, organic, raw materials your body needs to excel. “Our bars are never dehydrated or cooked,” says SmartMonkey Foods co-founder and executive chef Ani Phyo. “SmartMonkey Bars contain all their original water content to support active enzymes, along with amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.”

While market shelves are overflowing with energy bars of all shapes and sizes, SmartMonkey Bars stand out as a unique alternative. Organic, vegan, and gluten-free, SmartMonkey Bars are whole food at its finest with no refined sugars or highly processed ingredients of any kind.

While other nutrition bars can sit on store shelves for up to two years, the unrefined ingredients in SmartMonkey Bars require them to be fresh. “We have to run smaller batches that stay fresher,” says Phyo. “It's more work than running a two-year supply all at one time, but the taste of freshness makes it all worthwhile!”

Created by Phyo and partner Ede Schweizer — both chefs trained in natural culinary arts — SmartMonkey Bars offer something else consumers look for in an energy snack: exceptional flavor. Their Sesame Snap Bar is decadently delicious with sesame, poppy, pistachios, and dates to provide twenty-five percent of our daily recommended calcium requirements. Their Cacao Cookie Bar is rich with cacao, hailed for it's antioxidant benefits, and coconut for electrolytes. And their On-The-Trail-Mix Bar is packed with nutrients from raisins, dates, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, cinnamon, and sea salt. Other flavors include Carob Brownie, Ginger Snap, and Pecan Pie Bar, and all products are certified organic by Oregon Tilth.

SmartMonkey Foods' commitment to sustainability is evident in every aspect of their products, from sourcing the finest organic ingredients available to wrapping their bars in the ultimate green packaging. The ecologic PLA and PVdC coated Cello in which SmartMonkey Bars are packed is 95% percent biodegradable and compostable, yielding carbon dioxide (CO2), water, inorganic compounds and biomass at a rate consistent with other compostable materials and leaving no distinguishable or toxic residue.

“We're about treading lightly on the planet,” says Phyo, whose passion for the raw foods lifestyle goes beyond taste and nutrition. Both she and Schweizer discovered the power of raw foods while working in San Francisco's high-intensity high tech marketplace during the dot com explosion of the 1990s. They found that a diet of organic, raw, living foods allowed them to maintain optimum physical performance and mental clarity even under intense working conditions and a fast-paced lifestyle.

Phyo and Schweizer founded SmartMonkey Foods in 1999 to introduce others to the power of living foods. “I created this company because I know from first-hand experience this way of eating can have a profound impact on personal health and wellbeing,” says Phyo. They also wanted to prove that raw food can be delicious! Today, SmartMonkey Foods is the premiere resource for high-quality, organic, living foods, including nutrition bars and Flax Crackers.

SmartMonkey Bars will make their worldwide debut at Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California, March 24 to 26 (Table #4706, Organic Hall D). Look for them in West Coast natural food stores beginning this spring. Find out more about SmartMonkey Foods or visit them at Expo West in Anaheim, California, March 24 to 26 (expowest.com, Table #4706, Organic Hall D).

A new raw food restaurant in Los Angeles called Leaf just opened its doors. Leaf serves raw vegan, organic, kosher cuisine and has two locations, one in L.A. just off the 405 freeway, and one in Sherman Oaks, CA. The founder is Rod Rotondi, who has a background in Italian and French cuisine, and previously worked at Juliano's Raw restaurant in Santa Monica. The menu looks great; wish it was closer to me.

Rod's story…

Growing up in an Italian-American family, Rod Rotondi, founder of Leaf Cuisine, learned to cook as a child, learned table service and Italian cuisine in Rome at the American Ambassador's Residence (his grandfather), took French cooking courses in Paris as a teenager (where his family lived), and worked in restaurants to pay his way through college and graduate school. Through 15 years of world travels (including working for the United Nations), he picked up culinary lessons from around the globe.

In 1996, Rod discovered raw and living foods and first introduced them in his restaurant in Egypt. Upon returning to the U.S., he opened "Rod's Wrap and Juice Bar" in Marblehead, Massachusetts and won the "Best of Show" and the "Best Theme" awards at the prestigious Marblehead Culinary Arts Festival. But California was calling, and Rod moved out to Los Angeles where well known raw foods chef Juliano hired him to set up, manage and chef at his new restaurant, "Juliano's Raw" in Santa Monica.

In 2004 Rod created Leaf Cuisine in order to offer "truly clean, delicious and affordable food in a convenient and relaxed format."

From the Santa Cruz (CA) Sentinel… 50-year old woman finds a cure for Epstein Barr, mononucleosis, and hypoglycemia with raw foods…

Rx For Raw Recipes
by Peggy Townsend

Robyn Boyd says her symptoms began when she was 10 years old. She would have debilitating headaches that required shots of Demerol to calm. Then came bouts of hypoglycemia, Epstein Barr and mononucleosis that left her weak and exhausted, she says. Anxiety attacks followed and, finally, after a day spent painting the baseboards of her house with oil-based paint, she collapsed, poisoned by the volatile fumes it gave off, she says. Barely able to pull herself out of bed, the petite, sandy-haired woman turned to a cure that didn't come on any prescription pad: Food. Specifically, raw food.

Nine years later, Boyd is a cheerleader for the benefits of raw foods and the author of a cookbook called "RawSome Recipes," which is in its third printing. Standing in her modern, Soquel kitchen with its red birch cabinets and green quartz-style counters, the woman who says she was raised on junk food smiles and explains that while a strict diet of raw food saved her life, a person doesn't have to be a fanatic to reap the benefits of this way of eating. Simple changes in the way a person shops and eats can lead to more energy and a healthier immune system, she believes. "I like to teach people how to take everyday foods and make them fun and pretty, but doable," she says.

Going Raw

The 50-year-old former massage therapist and aerobics teacher has set out a mini-party of raw foods on her dining room table. There are Banana Fingers made up of slices of sweet bananas and chocolate pudding that she fashioned from avocados. There is a ranch-pesto dip made of soaked almonds and a yam salad that tastes like old-fashioned potato salad. She pours a cup of Rooibus tea from Africa, sweetens it with agave nectar and almond milk, and settles in to talk. Technically, raw food is never heated past 117 degrees, preventing damage to the enzymes that help us digest and assimilate food, she says.

But as a wife and mother in a world full of restaurants and fast-food joints, taking a hard line on raw foods doesn't always work, she says. "I want to be more practical," Boyd says. "Nourishment can come from cooked food, too." That's the reason her cookbook is named "RawSome." It has recipes with both raw and cooked foods and even includes recipes kids will like. For breakfast, Boyd says, she will make a smoothie out of almond milk, brewer's yeast, spirulina, flax seed and a banana. At lunch, she'll have a whole coconut or a lettuce-leaf wrap filled with guacamole, grated carrots and pine nuts.

Dinner will be a huge salad and maybe a warm soup or stew. Boyd doesn't even shy away from meat. She'll eat salmon and lamb. Organic, of course, she says. Food, she believes, shouldn't be a religion, but rather an intelligent way to nourishment and health. Filled with an easy energy, Boyd whacks open a coconut with a knife and offers the liquid to sip. Coconut, she says, is good for weight loss and has antifungal and antibacterial properties. She opens a cabinet and demonstrates how to make "spaghetti" out of raw zucchini, then zips to a storeroom to bring out crackers that she made herself.

Largely self-taught, Boyd talks about the hazards of cooking in a microwave, of storing food in plastic, of the benefits of spirulina. This month, she'll be teaching a class on how to ease raw foods into your diet and make an appearance at the Capitola Book Cafe. "People hear raw food and think it is scary and boring," she says. "But it's vibrant and exciting and good food."

Boyd will teach a class on her eating style from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 18, 2006 in Santa Cruz, CA. The $130 class will include making and eating 14 recipes, a full sit-down lunch and a copy of "RawSome Recipes." Call 689-0609 or visit Rawsome Recipes

Raw Food Heats Up Some Pros and Cons
by Marilynn Marter
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Raw food as an alternative lifestyle has been promoted since the '50s. In recent years, the success of raw-food restaurants in California has spread the concept nationwide. With Raw (Ten Speed Press, 2003), two visionary chefs — Charlie Trotter in Chicago, Roxanne Klein in San Francisco — created a landmark volume celebrating raw food, giving it gourmet glam and nudging it into the culinary mainstream.

Certainly, eating some raw food is natural and healthful; raw-food vegetarian diets can promote health and healing. But questions of long-term success, and possible vitamin deficiencies, remain. Face it, the concept runs counter to evolution and thousands of years of cooking. If that's not enough to stir controversy, add the nutritional complexities to the mix and you could have a food war on your hands.

Here are a few of the pros and cons: Raw food contains live enzymes that aid digestion, said chef-author Matthew Kenney. Heated past 118 degrees, those enzymes begin to die, leaving only the enzymes our bodies produce to digest what we eat. When the body supplies those enzymes, some believe, it speeds up the aging process. Research has shown that a raw food diet can have a major effect on health, normalizing weight and increasing energy. Raw foods can be more easily digested, producing less acid and bile. Combining raw and cooked foods at the same meal, however, may cause indigestion.

There is some concern that raw foods have higher pesticide levels than cooked foods, thus use of organic ingredients is recommended for raw food dishes. A small supplement of Vitamin B-12 is suggested with vegetarian diets since that nutrient is found primarily in meat. Nuts, seeds and sprouts are good sources of protein. But because plant proteins don't have the "balanced" amino acid profile found in animal protein, it is best to include a variety of protein sources in vegetarian diets. For essential fatty acids, Omega 3, typically found in fish, is very important. A precursor of Omega 3, alpha-linoleic acid, is found in green leafy vegetables and walnuts.

Take note: While eating most foods raw won't hurt you, the nutritional benefits of eliminating cooked foods, or for that matter, of going vegan and cutting all meat and dairy items from your diet, remains a subject of controversy for dietitians and doctors.

For those interested in learning more about raw foods, here are three books to explore:

Complete Book of Raw Food: Healthy, Delicious Vegetarian Cuisine Made with Living Foods by Lori Baird (Healthy Living Books, 2003) — More than 350 recipes from more than 40 top raw food chefs worldwide, with tips for making elegant and healthy meals, from preparation to presentation.

Living Cuisine: The Art and Spirit of Raw Foods by Renee Loux Underkoffler (Avery Publishing, 2004) — A comprehensive introduction to a raw-foods lifestyle, including tools, techniques, nutrition and safety tips and more than 300 gourmet vegan recipes from the former chef/co-owner of Raw Experience in Maui.

An article about Glaser Organic Farms, which is one of the largest raw food producers in the U.S. From TheLedger.com …

Farm Finds Success With Raw, Vegan Dishes
Glaser Organic Farms near Miami doesn't use heat or animal products.

Served under a blue and-white tent, the strawberry ice cream at the Coconut Grove Farmer's Market is unbelievably creamy, the tropical fruit pies are rich and succulent and the patestuffed portobello mushrooms are savory. Quite a feat, considering that all the food served here is raw and vegan — no animal products or heat involved.

The "ice cream" is actually made of finely ground cashews, the pies sit on a pecan crumb crust and the pate stuffed inside the mushrooms is devised of almonds and herbs. These raw food dishes, which draw health-food enthusiasts from around the region, are the creation of Glaser Organic Farms, a 15-acre farm south of Miami that has grown into one of the largest raw food producers in the United States.

Glaser farm products, which range from unbaked cookies called "rawies" to a bread made from sprouted whole grains dehydrated at very low temperatures, are shipped across the country and widely found in health food stores, such as national chain Whole Foods Market. "Our business is growing every year," said owner Stan Glaser, who started selling raw products to local stores 25 years ago and is now building a new, 3,000 square-foot kitchen — three times the size of their old space — to keep up with demand. "The volume just seems to increase, increase, increase."

Some think raw foods are healthier because heat breaks down vitamins and minerals in food and kills enzymes, which aid digestion. Others say it's the most natural way of eating. "Raw food was the original food," Glaser explained, pointing to the biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. "What were they eating? Steaks? McDonald's?" They probably weren't eating mint and lemon tabouleh or tiramisu either, though both concoctions are a hit at the Farmer's Market, which Glaser Farms hosts every Saturday.

"I like the whole feeling of it," said Arthur Ackerman, a Key Biscayne business owner and yoga teacher who frequents the market's deli. "I like the ambiance, I like the food." Ackerman, 66, isn't a raw foodist, but says he tries to eat a healthy diet and the raw food dishes make him feel more energized and sleep better. "My disposition is more upbeat," Ackerman said.

Sitting at a nearby picnic table, a flight attendant who gave his name as Kachito called the Farmer's Market "the temple." The South Beach resident started eating a primarily raw foods diet after experiencing some health problems three years ago. He now says his allergies have disappeared and his annual physical exams consistently show he's healthier than average. "Raw foods is my life now," said the slim, bright-eyed man who looked younger than his 62 years. "I don't do it to live to 200, I just want to feel good every day."

But nutritionists don't recommend the diet. Although it's great to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, dietitian David Grotto said an optimal diet would include both cooked and raw foods. He said there's little scientific evidence that eating exclusively raw foods is healthier.In fact, cooking foods can bolster the amount of some vitamins, such as beta carotene. "It's not as simple as cooked equals less nutrition," said Grotto, a spokesman for the American Dietetic Association and the director of nutrition at the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Care in Evanston, Ill. Grotto said he's seen extreme cases of cancer patients on raw diets who have died from malnutrition.

Yet interest in raw foods and demand for such products is steadily growing. Adult education courses offered in Broward County, north of Miami, include a raw foods class called "Change your life: Cook with no heat." And few can deny that most Americans would benefit from eating more fresh fruits and vegetables. Glaser said he doesn't expect everyone to give up cooked foods, but he says the growing interest in raw foods is a "positive trend" because people could increase the percentage of their diets made up of raw foods.

A raw food "cooking" show?

It's in the works, according to Paul Benhaim, author of Living Food Recipes and presenter of Not The Cooking Show. Paul, an Australian native, plans to do a 26-series TV episode showcasing raw food preparation.

From the press release…

Raw and Alive!
From Thai Curry to Macadamia Pie—Raw Foods Come to a Kitchen in your Home.

Raw Food Cuisine is regarded as one of the most chic and desirable dietary trends among movie stars, super-human athletes, enlightened gurus and evangelistic vegetarians. Supposed benefits include rapid weight-loss, increased physical vitality, greater mental capacity, balanced emotional disposition, vibrant and beautiful skin, stronger immune system and spiritual peace of mind.

Haven't we had enough of diets and new food fads? How long do they last? Well, apparently this one is the oldest of them all—originating way before we invented fire. Can you smell a roast or fried foods when walking through your local forest? If cooking is so good, then how come insects and animals, which have lived for so much longer than we have, have not chosen to cook their foods?

Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson and Alicia Stevenson are some of today's celebrities who agree Raw Living Foods not only suit their busy lifestyle but provide all the elements for beauty and longevity that we all long for. “If it's raw it contains all the living enzymes, the total mineral content and live nutrition that is destroyed by cooking,” states Paul Benhaim, author of Living Food Recipes and presenter of Not The Cooking Show.

But rather than bore us with his theories, Paul has recently launched the first hands-on episode in a series planned for TV next year. “It's simple, there is no cravings in this diet –- you get to eat what you like, and lots of it. The only difference being, you don't cook!” And having watched the first episode (and checked out the numerous extra recipes found on the new DVD), I am convinced that raw foods can be quick, simple and just as delicious. I particularly enjoyed the topping for his Macadamia Pie with the raw dairy-free ‘ice-cream' (I didn't bother with the pie base).

Paul prefers to share the practical side of Raw Foods. The DVD gives all sides of the story — including interviews with a Natural Hygienist Doctor, a scientist and a psychotherapist as well as an in-depth interview with Paul. The evidence is quite conclusive and, unlike much of the medical profession, the crew is not sponsored by hundreds of chemical corporations. The proof is in the pudding (try Lemon Meringue or Chocolate Cake Supreme on page 36 and 40 of Living Food Recipes).

Article on new raw food restaurant in Toronto…

Live's Drive
Organic Bar Gets Parlayed Into A 30-Seater On Dupont
by Steen Davey

Jennifer Italiano is understandably stressed. In less than 24 hours, the vivacious chef will host a launch party for Live Organic Food Bar, the 30-seat upscale sequel to her wildly original –- but tiny –- Annex café. Acclaimed for its raw California-style vegan cuisine, the stylish bistro needs a lot of work. For starters, the banquettes have yet to arrive, someone just delivered a refrigerator and the construction crew seems to be weeks away from finishing. As if that weren't nerve-wracking enough, tomorrow's bash will be shot by Opening Soon, the Food Network's resto reality show that's been filming Italiano for months. Three days later, Live is scheduled to welcome its first paying customer. Now, NOW hails the latest version of Live as Toronto's top vegetarian restaurant. You'd be frazzled, too.

"I don't know why, but I keep breaking into tears," she laughs. Live was still in its infancy when we first surveyed the local veggie scene two years ago, but by the end of 2003 the four-seat eatery was named runner-up for NOW's restaurant of the year, right behind winning Clafouti and ahead of Chippy's, JK Wine Bar and Edward Levesque's Kitchen. Even if she hadn't moved two doors west into chic new digs and introduced a greatly expanded menu, Italiano would still be topping this year's vegetarian review.

At the new spot, old favourites like Live It Up Lasagna –- raw zucchini noodles layered with cashew ricotta, tomato marinara and basil pesto ($7.25) -– remain on the card, but Italiano ventures into new territory with vegan sushi rolled in untoasted nori stuffed with Cajun-fired almond "cheese," scallions and processed yam in apricot "cream." Another maki set sees cooked brown rice –- no purist, Italiano isn't afraid to bend the rules –- sweetened with red beet and mango garnished with fiery cashew wasabi ($7.50).

None of this will prepare devotees for another novel creation that is surely destined to become Italiano's signature summer dish, a cold, completely raw gazpacho ($5.75) of diced watermelon, corn, tomato and crisp pepper topped with red beet cress and chili coriander pesto. One second it cools you down, the next you break out in a delicious sweat. Desserts are always a highlight, especially Live's awesome take on Key Lime Pie made with raw avocado mousse, and a double "chocolate" cake made with another mousse of raw cacao and hazelnut, both built on uncooked raisin-walnut crusts (both $4.50). Yes, service will more than likely be shaky to start, and it's impossible to gauge how Italiano will handle the salivating throng already ringing her phone off the hook. But, come year end, don't be surprised if they and critics agree that Live Organic Food Bar is one of the best restaurants in town –- vegetarian or not.

Live Organic Food Bar
264 Dupont, at Spadina,
Toronto, CANADA
(416) 515-2002

Complete meals for $35 per person ($20 at brunch), including all taxes, tip and a squeezed-to-order juice. Average main dish is $10.
Open Tuesday to Saturday 11 am to 10 pm.
Brunch Sunday 11 am to 4 pm.
Closed Monday and holidays.
Reservations recommended.

Excerpts from a raw food news article published in The Kennebec Journal (a local newspaper in Maine)…

Enthusiasts Flock to Raw Food, Saying It Contains Health Benefits
by Mechele Cooper

A cool breeze floated in through the windows as the group of food enthusiasts sat down to a gourmet meal.The breeze was welcome, but not because these food groupies had been slaving over a hot stove. This group — gathered as part of Northern Botanicals Lifestyle Center's wellness retreat — were enthusiasts of raw food. A raw-food diet consists of uncooked vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, sprouted grains, and cereals. None of the food is cooked, processed or animal-based. No sushi here. No steak tartare, either. Going raw, when it comes to food, is a growing trend in the United States, but it's relatively new to Maine, according to Bob and Pat Manning, owners of the lifestyle center on Cobbossee Stream.

Raw-food advocates say heating foods destroys the enzymes that aid in digestion and diminishes the food's nutritional value. They claim that raw foods help "detoxify" the body, prevent cancer and fight obesity. But detractors, including some nutritionists, say those who subscribe to a steady diet of raw vegetables and fruits miss out on essential proteins and minerals. And they don't buy the argument that cooking destroy's food's essential value. For some, the diet is no mere lifestyle choice. "I have a health condition, growths growing in my brain and right eye, and I'm hoping to shrink them down," Loran Griffin, 47, of Manchester said.

THE RETREAT

As the West Gardiner table was set and covered in a white linen tablecloth, glass serving bowls were set out, showing off the contrasting colors of the raw concoctions. The menu: apple, carrot and celery juice in stemmed wine glasses; zucchini and yellow squash spaghetti; pesto; fresh tomato marinara sauce; cashew pimento cheese; flax chips; and a mixed romaine salad with alfalfa sprouts, cucumber and red cabbage. For dessert, we can have banana-and-strawberry ice cream topped with a raw sweetener made from the agave cactus, and we have some dehydrated fruit cookies," said Pat Manning, who sat at the head of the table next to her husband.

The ice cream was made from frozen chunked fruit run through a Champion juicer with the solid slide in place. Equipment deemed essential for eating a raw food diet includes a Vita-Mix blender, a juicer and a food dehydrator. All the preparations share a key fascination: Preserve the enzymes. "Enzymes are like the spark that get all the other metabolic actions going," Pat Manning said. "(Eating raw food) helps you lose weight and have more energy. People who go through this program say they have so much more energy."

Besides five-day retreats, the Mannings also open their home once a month to an average of 40 raw foodists from as far away as Massachusetts. For $10, they serve up a raw-food gourmet meal that would command five times the price in a major metropolitan area.

INTEREST FROM AWAY

Friends told Carol Shain, 59, of Haverhill, Mass., about the program. "I used to be a vegetarian and wanted to get back into it," Shain said. "I know this is the way to live, even if I don't do it all the time." Pat Caggiano of Veazie and her 22-year-old son, Brian, a New England Culinary Institute student, came to the retreat together. Caggiano, a registered nurse, thought she could share what she learned with students in the healthy lifestyle classes she teaches in Bangor. "People want to feel better and lose weight," Caggiano said.

"There's a whole phenomenon with vegetables and raw foods that's happening in other states, and I think before long it will catch up here. We do have a high rate of illnesses in Maine,"she said. Raw-food enthusiasts point out that studies in rural China support the benefits of plant-based diets. Christopher Maloney, an Augusta naturopathic physician, said studies of Chinese diets also show proper nutrition could have a dramatic effect on reducing and reversing heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity. He said a raw food diet can decrease calories, lower cholesterol levels and improve rheumatoid arthritis symptoms significantly.

"Eating raw foods shows longtime anti-cancer effects and really counter balances the obesity epidemic in America," Maloney said.

–End excerpt–

From News 14 Carolina…

Raw Food Detox Diet

Are you sick of counting carbs? There's a new diet trend on the market — it's called a raw food diet. It consists of eating foods that are close to nature and mainly raw. But can you stick to it? One nutritionist says it's easy and you can even have dessert. Ice cream, dark chocolate, and cookies� You can eat them and still lose weight? Sure, but they have to be raw. It's part of a diet designed by nutritionist Natalia Rose.

"Like most women, I had my own body battles, and I was determined not to have to spend the rest of my life on a stairmaster or counting calories." The Raw Food Detox Diet is about eating close to nature with the belief that easily digested foods are eliminated more quickly. Rose says: "Fruit is one of the easiest things that moves through the body. It only takes 15 minutes in the stomach to digest fruit." Rose says beginners to the diet should start out slowly — eat 75-percent raw foods.

"You can eat avocadoes, you can eat whole grain pasta, you can eat sprouted grain breads — which means breads have been sprouted to become easily digestible." Like many people, Danielle Reda had a hard time losing weight — until she tried the raw food diet. She says: "I lost weight rapidly. I lost about 15 pounds in three weeks. That kept me going. I had a lot more energy. I felt vibrant."

Skeptics say raw food diets may be deficient in certain minerals, but Rose says you can do raw done right. She says juice raw vegetables to get enough calcium. You can also have goat cheese, nuts, and almond milk. "It's easy to stick to because you're satisfied. If you love what you're eating and losing weight, it's a win-win scenario." And many grocery stores carry raw foods in the organic section. Although Rose says this diet is for everyone, you should always check with your doctor first before starting a new diet program. Rose says Reda's weight loss is not typical. It's usually more gradual.

For more information, contact:

Natalia Rose
The Rose Program
natalia@therawfooddetoxdiet.com
Raw Food Detox Diet

Yet another article on Pure Food & Wine in NYC (from Detroit Free Press)…

Chefs Can't Stand the Heat–Take on Raw Food Preparation

Just a few years ago, chef Matthew Kenney was ascending to the height of success and celebrity, with a string of thriving New York City eateries, two well-received cookbooks, and, early on, a ranking by Food & Wine as one of the "Ten Best New Chefs in America." But after Sept. 11, 2001, his empire collapsed in the economic fallout. And the French-trained chef took a surprising turn.

After a three-year culinary journey, he and his partner (in life and in the kitchen), Sarma Melngailis, have coauthored a diary cookbook, "Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow" (Regan Books, $34.95), and opened a raw food restaurant, Pure Food and Wine in New York City.

Unlike many health-oriented cooks, Kenney, 40, and Melngailis, 32, both graduates of the French Culinary Institute, approached their raw food adventure from the standpoint of taste, after hearing about the culinary style while they were pondering their next project. But the couple became hooked on a personal level, as the health benefits became evident. They had more energy, slept sounder and felt great. After a year of navigating the nutritional maze, Kenney and Melngailis reached the point of deciding to share their newly developed food style with others.

They opened their restaurant in June 2004 in the Flat Iron section of New York City, with a raw vegan menu that runs from sushi to stylized beet ravioli, green curry coconut noodles to flatbread pizza with hummus. Kenney and Melngailis don't miss "cooking" at all, he says, as they find preparing tasty raw food even more of a challenge. Raw food recipes can be as simple as blender pureed soups or drinks. Their Watermelon-Tomato Gazpacho, for instance, which uses watermelon, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, scallions, cilantro, ginger and jalapeno, can be easily blended "to taste."

Other raw food preparations can be labor intensive and ingredient-heavy (and not necessarily low-cal). Nuts and grains are made more edible by soaking and sprouting. Some foods are slowly "cooked" at low temperatures by dehydration. The payoff is no greasy pans to scrub. As for equipment, all you'll need, says Kenney, are a dehydrator, a powerful blender and good, sharp knives. The food processor is also useful. "And a juicer is good to have," Kenney says, "though I never got into juicing much. I just use a blender." Committed raw foodies can turn their ovens into storage space and use skillets for sprouting.

As exciting as the food is, it's the satisfying desserts that tend to lock in converts, says Kenney, items such as a dark chocolate ganache tart — one made with organic cacao beans but without the usual butter, eggs or sugar. The new eating style may seem drastic, so Kenney suggests easing into it. "In the beginning, keep it simple," he says. "Take little bites of the philosophy. Go slowly. It can seem overwhelming. It did to us."

A recent raw food article from The News & Observer…

Eating in the Raw

The cookbook section of most bookstores offers a staggering selection of books that show you how to cook. But take a closer look and you'll find a small but growing number of books that focus on "un-cooking," that is the benefits and how-to's of eating raw foods. To most raw-food proponents, "raw" simply refers to food that hasn't been cooked or even heated above a certain temperature. Foods that have been heat-smoked, as well as those that have been heated during processing such as canning or pasteurization–like pasteurized milk or salsa in a jar–are not considered raw foods.

What Happens When Food is Cooked?

You may be surprised to learn that heat above 107 degrees or so begins to inactivate such nutrients as vitamin C and folic acid, and can cause minerals such as calcium to become less readily absorbed by the body. In addition to affecting vitamins and minerals, heat from the cooking process can also destroy enzymes in food.

Enzymes perform many important functions in the body. They act as protein catalysts, help to produce energy to fuel cells and jump-start our digestive process. Our immune cells also use enzymes to attack viruses and bacteria. Although our bodies can make many of the enzymes that we need, raw food supporters contend that we can get "premade" enzymes by simply eating raw foods that are full of their own enzymes.

If you would like to begin eating more raw foods, this is the perfect time of year to start. Area farmers markets are bursting with fresh fruits and vegetables right now.

–End excerpt–

The news article includes a raw food recipe involving cabbage, and advises sprouting beans, nuts and seeds.

Below you'll find a press release about the 2005 Organic Athlete Conference…

Vegan Athletes Flex Their Muscles
The OrganicAthlete Conference will highlight examples of successful vegan athletes.

In a recent interview, Olympic track star Carl Lewis, who was a vegan during his best years, says he believes that “most athletes have the worst diet in the world, and they compete in spite of it.” Members of OrganicAthlete’s “Vegan Pro-Activist” team are out to prove that a plant-based diet is the best diet for optimal health and performance, and that they can succeed at high levels in sports because they are vegan.

Many people are resistant about becoming vegan because of dietary myths like not getting enough protein, but elite vegan athletes and health professionals are participating in the 2005 OrganicAthlete Conference to dispel these myths. Scheduled for September 24th, the goal of the conference is to share information about the benefits of a plant-based diet. “At first other athletes told me I should really start eating meat,” says Brendan Brazier, a professional tri-athlete and vegan for six years. According to Brazier, those same friends now realize, based on his outstanding athletic example, that a vegan diet is optimal for high performance athletes.

The conference schedule includes talks from endurance athletes like Brazier and Christine Vardaros, a world class cyclo-cross racer, who has risen to the top of her sport as a vegan. But even in the protein-crazed sport of bodybuilding vegans are finding success. Kenneth G. Williams, a bodybuilder who placed 3rd at the 2004 Natural Olympia, and Charlie Abel, a raw vegan muscleman and personal trainer, will both speak at the event.

Leading nutritionists Dr. Doug Graham, Rozalind Gruben, Dr. Ruth Heidrich and Dr. Rick Dina will join the athletes in explaining the science of vegan nutrition. Dr. Graham, who has trained many Olympic caliber athletes, explains: “Every nutrient known to be essential for human health is available, in proper concentration, in plant foods. This is not so with animal-based foods, as there are many essential nutrients totally absent in them.”

The conference will be held at Sports Basement’s Presidio store. The $65 fee includes all educational seminars, food demos, training sessions, lunch and a gift certificate to Sports Basement. The World Vegetarian Day Celebration will be held the following day in Golden Gate Park.

More information about the OrganicAthlete conference. You can also call 707-360-8511 to find out more information about the event.

The following is from a South African publication about raw foods, including raw meat eating. Seems hard to believe that anyone could even consider eating raw meat. I've omitted the parts of the article that discuss raw meat eating. That's just unsanitary (certainly not hygenic!).

Those Cavemen May Have Been Onto Something…
By Steve Boomfield

Cavemen may have thought nothing of sinking their teeth into the raw flesh of a freshly slaughtered animal, but things have progressed somewhat since then. Boiled, baked, griddled and grilled, almost everything we eat has been cooked in some way before it reaches our lips.
But all that is set to change. The raw food revolution has swept the United States – and now it is spreading around the world.

Forget the low blood sugar GI diet and the fry-up friendly Atkins. The only rule for the raw food diet is that nothing is cooked — whether it be beef or beetroot, lamb or leeks. A-list Hollywood actresses such as Uma Thurman, Demi Moore and Natalie Portman are devotees. A plethora of "cookbooks" is also being launched to promote the advantages of a raw food lifestyle, and several nutritionists and food experts have launched courses in how to make the switch to raw.

The fad became mainstream in the diet-conscious US after the appearance of a raw food restaurant in Sex And The City. There are now more than 30 eateries without ovens across the US — a trend set to take off internationally. The health benefits of going raw are, claim its proponents, numerous. Raw food has live enzymes that help provide more energy. If food is cooked at above 47,8°C, the enzymes die. Raw food will increase your energy levels and, according to those who eat only raw, will cut down the amount of sleep you need each night.

Gillian McKeith, who presents Britain's Channel 4's You Are What You Eat, and has written several books on healthy eating, said more people were beginning to include raw food in their daily diet. "The message is starting to get through because it really works. When you eat only cooked food you do not feel as alive. You will notice a huge difference. I have seen people who have complained of headaches and digestive disorders. They have started eating raw food with their cooked meals and suddenly realise such a difference in their health."

The first raw food restaurant in Britain has already opened, in London's Primrose Hill, and more restaurants are planned in the next two years. Katia Norain, the co-owner of the Little Earth Café, was converted to raw food after spending time in Hawaii with friends who ate nothing but uncooked. "It is an amazingly interesting way of preparing food; it is good to have live enzymes in your system and, most important, it is yummy," she said. "This is not carrot sticks."

Evangelists for the raw food diet are spreading the word through one-to-one coaching sessions and food preparatory courses. Karen Knowler, director of The Fresh Network, an organisation that promotes raw food, said interest in the diet had increased as awareness had grown of the dangers of obesity.

"The word 'raw' puts some people off," she said, "but it is about much more than lettuce or apples. Interest in raw food has increased enormously over the past two or three years. More people have a desire for a healthy diet these days. "The best thing is, you do not need to fuss about calories — you can eat as much as you want."

The raw food event listed below was published in The Beachcomber, a daily newspaper for Vashon Island and Maury Island in Washington (just outside of Seattle).

Enjoy Raw Food At The Village

The Village invites Islanders to join them for a raw food event at 5 p.m. Saturday, June 11. Guests should bring all the ingredients for one or two raw dishes, and then everyone will prepare the food together, share recipes and ideas about living food and then enjoy a shared meal.

The event is free to Village members. Non-members pay $2/person or $4/family. The Village is at 9412 Gorsuch Road. For more information, call Jessa Zimmerman at 567-5804.

According to a recent news article, a West Virginia woman placed second in a national recipe contest using a (mostly) raw food recipe. The article below was published in The Charleston Gazette on May 18th. The woman featured in the news article isn't totally "raw," but at least she's headed in a healthy direction.

In the Raw: Local woman’s mostly uncooked recipe places second in national contest

Stacey Angel entered the world of raw foods preparation and dining after a pamphlet caught her eye. It explained the concept and gave a telephone number for further information. She called it and hasn’t looked back. The Charleston woman recently talked about her initiation one year ago into this new way of eating and viewing nutrition: “I took Sally Miller’s raw foods class that she conducts in her home in Sherwood Forest. It was four hours of a broad overview of raw foods. Sally is a wonderful resource and great mentor. I went to her because, after looking at all the food fads out there, I was confused about what could be considered ‘good’ for you. The safest and single–most universally agreed–upon approach seems to be fresh fruits and vegetables.”

Angel acknowledged that she’s not always totally in the raw. She applies some cooked food to a basic uncooked recipe to appeal to a wider range of palates. And to her own. “In winter it’s hard to convert cooked to raw because we all want warm food, especially after a difficult day,” she said. “Everyone loves homey, comfy food and the feeling we get when we enjoy it. My cooked noodles with raw vegetables may offer the best of both worlds.” She developed the recipe after she and her husband, Brooke Brown, had a craving for “something Thai.” She kept playing with ingredients until the dish was perfected. So perfect, in fact, that it’s a recent national award winner.

“My mother, Mary, is a big fan of QVC shopping network,” Angel said. “She got me hooked. I suffer from insomnia and find that QVC is a good cure—it’s repetitive, therefore comforting to me. However it was Mom who saw the cooking contest invitation and encouraged me to enter. It wasn’t one for raw foods, but I sent my Thai recipe anyway and just received the letter from QVC telling me that I placed second.” Angel said as much or as little raw food can be incorporated into your daily diet as you desire. Those who embrace it 100 percent are 100 percent vegans.

Why raw foods? She explained that there are enzymes in raw vegetables, fruits and nuts. When heated beyond 115 degrees, those enzymes are lost and, in order to digest, our body has to produce enzymes, making it work harder. If you cause less stress to your body, there’s more energy for it to perform other tasks. Allowing consumed enzymes to meet the challenge of digestion, giving the body a slight rest, seems in direct contrast with popular cooked-food diets that would have your body toiling to burn excess undesirable stored material. Two of Angel’s three daily meals are raw.

She saves semi-cooked dinners to have with her husband in their East End apartment. He is supportive of her efforts and shares her enthusiasm for the dishes she prepares. Has she totally conquered most no-no cravings? Not quite. She cheerfully confessed her weakness for unsanctioned foods. Her particular downfalls are pancakes, once-a-week salmon, French baguettes and an Endangered Species-brand extreme dark chocolate bar called “Black Panther.” Angel says it’s so good and deeply chocolate that she has recommended it to others and now they are addicted. It’s sold at Healthy Life Market in area Drug Emporiums, along with white and milk chocolate varieties.

She hasn't turned a cold shoulder to commercially prepared hot dishes, either. For eating out, Sitar of India is her most tempting restaurant and the biggest treat. She indulges in their cooked vegetables as her cooked meal of the day. Delish on McFarland Street also gets her nod as having excellent vegetarian items. To prove her cuisine doesn't consist of one salad after another, Angel, a spirited home cook, developed a recipe for chocolate truffles. They're made from raw cocoa nibs, ground to powder and processed with soaked walnuts, dates and coconut. The mixture is shaped into balls and rolled in cocoa powder or coconut. She pointed out that all nuts have to be soaked 8 to 12 hours, then dried before using because they naturally contain enzyme inhibitors. Soaking removes the inhibitors.

From macadamia nuts, she makes a cheese substitute that has the consistency and texture of a ricotta. Her frozen-fruit pie is an amalgamation of two recipes: a raw banana-coconut ice cream to which she adds fresh pineapple; and a maple-walnut crust. Raw zucchini or yellow squash “noodles” may be substituted for the cooked pasta in the Thai recipe. Put the squash through a spiral slicer or cut long, thin strands by hand.

Angel graduated from George Washington High School in 1988, and later from Marshall University with an anthropology degree. She works for Bryan Boyd Creative Group — a marketing and ad agency — as director of client services. She wants to enhance her education and cooking interest by attending The Living Light Culinary Institute in Ft. Bragg, Calif. It's a three-week focus on gourmet raw foods. “If I'm going to do it [raw foods], I'm going to learn how to make it taste good,” she joked. There's only one slight impediment. The 21-day intoroductory course and chef training/certification costs $4,000. Her plans aren't completely funded at the moment, but she's saving to go to the small-town school north of San Francisco.

“Food is a big part of pleasure in life,” she said. “It brings us together. I want to make it pleasant for my friends and family through these classes. I'd like to work as a raw foods chef where I get to be creative and have fun. I think raw lends itself better to experimentation than cooked — no spoiling, no cross-contamination. I introduce people to raw food when I have the opportunity by bringing something to a gathering for everyone to taste.” For those who want to learn more locally about raw foods, there is Sue Miller's $75 basics class. In addition, Miller holds specialty $50 hands-on cooking classes with themes of “Raw Lunches,” “What's Raw for Dinner?” and “Sprouting.” A potluck meal support group meets the first Sunday of every month with a guest speaker each session. Membership is open.

The May discussion was of attempts to start a vegetable co-op and instructions on growing organic wheat grass, an important component of a raw foods diet. Angel gets most of her ingredients from Miller. She says Miller also stocks delicious raw cookies, crackers and snacks at her business, Eats of Eden. Miller's e-mail address is eatsofeden@charter.net. Angel's email is s-angel@verizon.net.

“I want to get the message to others that there are classes, ingredients and a support system for raw food enthusiasts. Even though I don't do raw foods exclusively, I can tell the difference in how I feel when I eat more uncooked foods. I feel better. There's enough of a difference in my body to make me want to continue this eating lifestyle.”

News article published via TimesUnion…

Raw Power: Uncooked Food Diet Blends Health, Taste and Texture Into a Way of Life

Teshna Beaulieu typically starts her day with watermelon or sliced avocados and cucumbers topped with lemon juice, sea salt and tomatoes. Her beverage of choice is fresh coconut milk. The East Chatham chiropractor's routine doesn't change much as the day goes along. She eats a variety of salads for lunch and dinner, often adding fresh vegetables or seaweed. She snacks on nuts. Beaulieu almost never uses her oven or stove. The blender is the kitchen appliance she turns to most.

Welcome to the raw food diet. Beaulieu prefers to call it the raw food way of life, because diet implies a weight-loss program. For Beaulieu, who started eating raw foods 15 years ago, and many others, it's a lifestyle choice. "As the years go by I do it more and more. I feel better with it," she says. "When I eat raw food I don't feel tired after a meal. When I eat cooked food, I feel heavier and more tired." Raw food means exactly that — almost. Proponents of a raw food diet primarily eat uncooked fruits and vegetables. They also consume nuts and grains, oftentimes made edible with soaking that in some cases causes sprouting. However, many raw food enthusiasts use a dehydrator to "cook" certain foods.

Dismissed by some as a fringe fad or extreme vegetarianism, raw food entered the mainstream during the past decade when exclusively raw food restaurants began popping up in California and New York. Raw food received a ringing endorsement in 2003 when heralded Chicago chef and restaurateur Charlie Trotter co-authored a gorgeous cookbook called "Raw" (Ten Speed Press). A celebration of food in its natural state, "Raw" contains 70 color photographs of beautiful, mouth-watering dishes that were prepared without cooking.

"I believe that in the not-too-distant future all serious chefs and home cooks will have a decent understanding of how to prepare raw and living foods and have at least several raw dishes in their repertoire," Trotter writes in the introduction to the cookbook. "This is a way of eating that embraces healthful living, of course, but it is also a wonderfully exciting approach to food preparation that opens up fresh ways to celebrate flavor and texture."

An Alternative

While considered cutting edge, the raw food movement has in fact been around for half a century. Ann Wigmore, a self-taught nutritionist, began promoting it at her Midwest alternative health institute in the 1950s. It wasn't until the past decade, however, that raw food proponents found themselves on the covers of national publications like the Sunday New York Times Magazine. It always helps, of course, when celebrities are on board. Supermodel Carol Alt, musician Wynton Marsalis and actor Woody Harrelson are among the most prominent names touting the benefits of raw food. Raw food is actually more involved than its name implies, especially when the goal is to prepare dishes that are as appealing to the eye as they are to the palate.

The recipes in "Raw," for example, can't be considered easy to replicate. Even if you do have access to fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, try whipping together a dinner of stuffed squash blossoms with curried parsnip puree and tobacco onions the next time you're yearning for a quick meal. In addition to blenders and juicers, most raw food advocates employ a dehydrator to "bake" bread and other foods. Nothing is heated above 118 degrees, however. This is critical to the raw food way of life. The theory is that essential enzymes are destroyed at temperatures above 118, and these enzymes need to be properly digested. This is where raw food proponents run into trouble, so to speak. As pure and impressive as fruits, vegetables and nuts are in their unadulterated state, the nutritional benefits of not cooking is controversial at best.

Katherine Tallmadge, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, has called the diet "dangerous." She believes certain segments of the population — pregnant women, children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems — would be well advised to limit their intake of raw foods. "The idea that cooked food is toxic is absurd. There's absolutely no science to back that up," Tallmadge says. "The (raw food) diet is protein-deficient and nutrient-poor." [This is not true or accurate.]

A Long Debate

Try and convince a raw food enthusiast of that and you may be in for a long debate. Alexandra Miller is a private chef in central Vermont who learned the art of raw cuisine while working as a spa chef in the Caribbean. She adopted it for herself, but during a recent pregnancy found that she couldn't maintain an exclusively raw diet. Dry toast was one of the few foods she could keep in her stomach during bouts of morning sickness. Now that she's breast-feeding she's back to a full-fledged raw diet. "I get all of my iron and calcium through seaweed and nuts and nutritional juices. There's a lot of calcium in lemons and yellow and red peppers."

Miller believes she can tell a raw food follower when she sees them. It's that obvious. "When people are all raw they tend to glow. Your energy level is so high because your body's not clogged up trying to process all this food," she says. "You see things and see things clearer." The restaurateur most credited with making raw food popular is Roxanne Klein, the co-author with Trotter of "Raw." In 2002, the Californian opened a high-end raw food restaurant north of San Francisco in Larkspur called Roxanne's. It quickly became one of the most difficult reservations in a restaurant-rich region and was the most serious raw-food restaurant in northern California. The following year, Klein added a to-go outlet to the restaurant which became even more popular than Roxanne's. Last August, she closed "Roxanne's" while keeping open the raw food to-go venture.

Neither Beaulieu nor Miller is actively trying to convert friends to a raw food lifestyle, although each is raising her child on a raw food diet. "When people come to my house, they know they're going to get a big salad," Beaulieu says. "For dinner, I might make some winter squash for guests or some steamed greens. I don't like cauliflower and broccoli raw too much. I prefer them a little lightly steamed. Asparagus, too. But all of these can be eaten raw."

Corn-Jicama Salad with Avocado Puree

Makes 4 servings
From "Raw" by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein (Ten Speed Press)

Ingredients

SALAD:
1/4 cup jicama cut into 1/8-inch cubes
1/4 cup sweet corn kernels
1/4 cup unpeeled English cucumber cut into 1/8-inch cubes
1/4 cup peeled Asian pear cut into 1/8 -inch cubes
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
4 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tablespoon minced jalapeno pepper (optional)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

AVOCADO PUREE:
1/2 avocado, peeled and chopped
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup filtered water

LIME VINAIGRETTE:
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 lime segments, membrane removed and cut into thirds

GARNISH:
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons micro mint leaves
2 teaspoon finely grated lime zest

Directions

SALAD:
Combine jicama, corn, cucumber, pear, oil, lime juice, jalapeno, mint, and parsley.

AVOCADO PUREE:
In a high-speed blender combine the avocado, lime juice, water and puree until smooth.

LIME VINAIGRETTE:
Whisk lime juice and olive oil in a bowl. Stir in lime segments.

ASSEMBLY:
Spoon a line of puree down the center of the plate. Spoon 2 additional lines, perpendicular to the first line across the plate. Spoon some of the salad parallel to the first line, left on where the lines intersect. Drizzle the vinaigrette over the salad and around the plate. Sprinkle with the parsley, mint and lime zest.

The Morning Call, a Pennsylvania newspaper, published an article about Arnold's Way Vegetarian Raw Cafe. If you live near Landsdale, PA and you're a raw foodist, you've got a new restaurant to try out. Unfortunately, I don't live near PA, but for those who do…this is for you…

Raw Restaurant Offers Tasty, Inventive Vegan Fare
By Pervaiz Shallwani
Of The Morning Call

Veggies, I like. But a Lansdale eatery that prepares traditional all-American dishes using only raw vegan ingredients?

Will it be tasteless? Or will the dishes be a throwback to the scrumptious eats I encountered during a short stay in the country's unofficial vegetable mecca, San Francisco?

Gotta find out.

My friend Steve and I head to investigate Arnold's Way Vegetarian Organic Raw Cafe. If nothing else, Steve's puerile personality could make for an amusing afternoon. (He was puzzled and disgusted by a self-help book on display about the healthy benefits of consuming your own urine.) This tiny cafe and cluttered health food store sits tucked inside a shopping mall on W. Main Street. It is designed to be a one-stop shop for healthy, earth-friendly living, complete with organic toothpaste, sandals and shoes.

Customers flutter through in a steady stream, some eating wraps — rolled with seaweed, not a flour tortilla — others sitting on a love seat with a "banana whip" or chocolate mousse, which actually is carob, bananas and dates ''served a la chocolate Sunday style." (It was not my favorite.) One thing is clear: Owner Arnold Kauffman is serious about raw, organic, vegan cuisine. Seated, we are greeted with a sample of flavored banana whips, a sweet treat of frozen and pureed bananas that create the smooth consistency of ice cream or frozen yogurt.

"Yogurt?" Steve asked after the first spoonful.

"No yogurt, ever," Arnold blurted from behind the counter.

"Why not?

"Don't go there."

Arnold is convinced "the No. 1 reason for all diseases is based on dairy products."

Arnold, 57, has been experimenting with a raw diet ever since a heart condition forced him into a hospital more than 13 years ago. He had stuck to it 100 percent but has slipped to 95, including some boiled potatoes. "When I was 45, before I knew I didn't know anything, I started developing chest pains." The pains got so bad that Arnold had to make a hospital detour while driving his daughter to school one day. "I didn't think I was going to make it."

Obviously, Arnold did make it, but he wanted a healthier lifestyle. Thirteen years ago that quest led to the original Arnold's Way in the glitzy Manayunk section of Philadelphia. "[Eating raw] is hard for people to do. What you eat for breakfast, what you eat for lunch and what you do for dinner has to be re-evaluated," Arnold preaches.

"The thing that turned me on the most is that if you change the way you eat, you can pretty much reverse the aging process," swears Arnold, who looks his age and a little wiry.

He is trying to regain sight in one eye by drinking 80 to 100 ounces of carrot juice daily. He was accidentally poked by his grandson. Doctors told him surgery would cure the problem in a half-hour, but Arnold is waiting eight months, hoping to fix it naturally. Arnold moved to Lansdale in 2002 because "I live around here and my rent had skyrocketed four times."

The recipes were developed by Arnold and his daughter, Maya, many of which while doing mundane chores. A meatless ''stake," surprisingly red and close in texture to steak, and with its own juicy flavor, came about while driving down Bethlehem Pike. "I thought I need something red because a steak is pinkish in color," Arnold said. "You want a juicy steak. Beets and carrots are for color and consistency and cashews help hold it together."

The wraps: Arnold was in line at the restaurant supply store and the restaurant owner in front is "famous" for them. Immediately, he thought "nori" — paper-thin seaweed used to roll sushi. The "living bread" is a variation of a recipe that includes "a little oil and salt to make it Americanized." It's made using pulp after a carrot is juiced. The pulp is mixed with flaxseed and buckwheat that has germinated for a night. Together they make a loaf, which tastes moist and looks fittingly compact. The menu, unheated and uncooked, has grown to more than 60 dishes including burgers, pizza, spaghetti, nachos and the region's gastronomical staple sandwich, cleverly spelled "cheze stake."

The Pick-Me-Up soup — pureed carrot, celery, broccoli and red cabbage — is a forest green hue with a little spice to give it heat. It was OK. The Polynesian delight, a salad with frozen mango and pineapple mixed with shredded coconut and chopped almonds, is crunchy, sweet and pleasantly exotic in appearance and flavor. A "cheze burger" has "cheese sauce" of pureed sunflower seeds, but who would have thought a burger could be served at room temperature? It's a little dry, but the plate was cleaned, although I still don't like raw mushrooms.

Sally's red salad, a mound of minced beet, red pepper, tomato, carrot, red cabbage and green olives served on a bed of lettuce, looks like a mini red hill that Steve swears was "great." Yogurt or not, he had another whip. He just about licked it clean on the drive back.

Reversing the aging process? OK, maybe. But we'll pass on "Urine Therapy: Nature's Elixir for Good Health."

"Even if I lived 200 years, I am not going to drink my own urine," Steve remarked.

Neither would Arnold.

"That's where I draw the line."