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.

Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a scientist in Cambridge (England) claims that humans can live 1,000 years, and offers $20,000 to anyone who can refute his claim. DeGray believes that if different types of cell damage (such as cell loss, and mutations to chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA) can be prevented or fixed, then there is no upper limit on human longevity. He is focused on strategies to prevent and cure aging.

A very interesting longevity article from The BBC News is reprinted below…

The increase in life expectancy enjoyed by many societies is a triumph of modern science.

Our understanding of the human body and how to repair it when it breaks down have continued to push "old age" into the distance – and researchers intend to keep pushing. But the claims made by Dr Aubrey de Grey, a scientist at the University of Cambridge, UK, that lifespan can be increased by over 1,000 years, have proven too much for some; and a dispute has now broken out within the gerontology community.

The argument, which has been played out through academic journals, and most recently at a "life extension" conference, has culminated in the unusual step of a cash prize on offer for anyone who can disprove de Grey's science.

Difficult science

Dr de Grey's claims for long life centre on SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence); essentially, strategies to prevent and cure ageing. SENS is based upon repairing the molecular and cellular damage that accumulates throughout life; so as to prevent age-related illness and frailty. It focuses on addressing seven different types of cell damage, including mutations to chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA, and cell loss. He argues that once these can be fixed or prevented, the sky's the limit for lifespan extension.

His assertions have made headlines around the world, but some gerontologists are not convinced that the science behind SENS is sound, and they spoke openly about their views at the Tomorrow's People International Conference on Life Extension and Enhancement held at Oxford University. "Aubrey is trying to generate enthusiasm for a commitment and programme that, in a sense, sidesteps the practical challenges that the science faces," explained Professor Tom Kirkwood, co-director of the Institute for Ageing and Health, University of Newcastle.

"There are really big challenges and we are all aligned in hoping that we can harness the science to improve and extend quality of life, but it doesn't serve any useful purpose to try to extrapolate so far beyond the immediate challenges." Twenty-eight scientists working in the field took the step of submitting a rebuttal to a paper published by Dr de Grey in the journal EMBO Reports in 2005. The strongly worded paper says that: "Each one of the specific proposals that comprises the SENS agenda is, at our present state of ignorance, extremely optimistic… "A research programme based around the SENS agenda… is so far from plausible that it commands no respect at all from within the scientific community."

Professor Richard Miller, associate director of the Geriatric Centre at the University of Michigan, US, told the BBC News website that he became involved with the rebuttal because he felt it was important to have on record that so many gerontologists felt that the ideas were without merit. "I wrote the article and we sent it around to 30 or so of our colleagues, expecting that only half would sign it, because scientists really do not like to take a public position in opposition to someone that they know. "I was amazed that we found no-one who refused on the grounds that they agreed with Aubrey; a couple of people said they didn't want to sign anything about his work because they didn't want to draw attention to it. We got 28 people who astonishingly were willing to say in public that they had evaluated the science and had found it to be worthless."

Money challenge

In response to this and other objections from the scientific community to SENS, Dr de Grey has fought back by launching the "SENS Challenge" in the Technology Review magazine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's essentially an offer of $20,000 (£11,000) to anyone who can write a demolition of my ideas that are sufficiently powerful to demonstrate that not only are they wrong but they are so wrong that they are unworthy of learned debate," explained De Grey to the conference delegates. "This is open to anyone who has credentials in molecular biology of any sort, and the important thing about it is that it is judged by a review panel."

At the conference, Dr de Grey announced that he had a five-person-strong panel to review submissions, including Dr Craig Venter, who led the private effort to decode the human genome, and Dr Nathan Myhrvold, a former chief technologist at Microsoft. "I essentially felt that it was critical for me to smoke out the opposition," Dr de Grey told the BBC News website. I had to move things along to an on-the-record opposition so that people would be forced not simply to say what they thought of these ideas, but why." So far, there have been very few submissions to the challenge, and none of these from the scientists involved with the EMBO rebuttal.

"Most scientists, and I was among this group, took the position that any sort of response to de Grey was just feeding the fire," said Professor Miller, explaining why he had chosen not to enter the challenge. But while the debate continues, all involved do agree that life extension is within the realms of possibility for science; but how exactly we do it, how long we can postpone death for, and whether modern society can handle the burden of an increasingly aged population is still being debated. "I think we will hopefully be able to get some means to make a significant impact on processes of ageing. These will not necessarily result immediately in substantive life extension, but they may change the profile of health that people experience as they go through [old age]. We haven't begun seriously to discus what should be our priorities and how we should develop strategies," explained Professor Kirkwood at the conference.

"Most medical research is done by trying to prevent people dying. And Aubrey says we should simply extend this into ageing. Actually, now, we are in a situation of being able to harness what comes from the basic biomedical research to try to devise a better way to age. And if that leads to life extension, that's great. But it's difficult to see the path to make that happen."

Crisis is a powerful reason for change…or maybe not.

From EarlytoRise.com:

"In a recent study, 90 percent of patients who had heart bypass surgery continued to live a lifestyle that worsened their condition and threatened their lives. If a life-and-death situation won’t get them to change, what will?

According to scientists, making a change requires you to recondition your brain to a new way of thinking and behaving. It takes about 30 days of daily reconditioning to create the new neural networks that are needed for permanent change. It took time to create your habits and it takes time to get rid of the ones that don’t serve you."

Most people only begin caring about nutrition after they start having health problems. And even that is not guaranteed.

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).

This is interesting. There was a Chocolate in the Raw class taught last Saturday by Jeff Rogers, of Naughty Vegan in Seattle. Recently, there seems to be a lot of controversy over whether raw cacao is healthy and beneficial for you. Everybody seems to be promoting cacao (also known as "raw chocolate") as "healthy."

Opponents claim that raw cacao produces an acidic residue (thus, not an alkaline ash) in the body and that it's addicting because it contains theobromine. David Wolfe and Shazzie are in favor of raw cacao, since they just published a book together called, Naked Chocolate. Paul Nison and Frederic Patenuade, on the other hand, seem to think that raw cacao can be dangerous.

In his most recent newsletter, Paul Nison had this to say about raw cacao…
"And while I’m on the topic of my new book, I will expose the truth about the cacao craze. BOTTOM LINE: CACAO IS DANGEROUS! It is another addicting food that is setting people up for a big down fall.

Adding fuel to the fire, Frederic Patenaude writes this about cacao and raw chocolate…

Many of my readers have been asking me what I think of the whole raw cacao craze. For those who don't know, raw cacao beans are now sold by different raw-food companies as the latest 'superfood.' Cacao beans are traditionally roasted and used to make chocolate. Now, raw-foodists have found a raw version of the beloved bean and are apparently using it for its magical properties.

First, let me start by explaining what my own personal use of cacao is. I've known for a long time that cacao is a stimulant. Not as strong as coffee, but its stimulating 'qualities' are easy to spot when your body is not used to eating such foods. Because of this, I often used carob powder in my recipes. Carob powder is made from a fruit and has a taste that reminds of chocolate. It is naturally sweet. Instead of being a stimulant, carob is a mineral rich food and has a calming effect. So, like most raw-foodists, I used carob powder in my recipes. But, then one day, I decided to use cacao powder. I figured: if I'm going to make something that tastes like chocolate, why not use the real thing? I've noticed that cacao has a stimulating effect, but since I was using it occasionally (i.e. less than once a month) and just for fun in some recipes, I was not too bothered by that little indiscretion. However, I never considered it to be a health food.

Now, cacao beans are sold to us at an exorbitant price under the assumption that it's one of the best things we could ever eat. I couldn't disagree more.

First of all, cacao beans are not really food. If you found them in nature, you wouldn't eat the seeds. You would eat the fruit, which is apparently delicious, and throw away the seeds. Even if you wanted to eat the seeds, they would not taste like chocolate. In order for the cacao seeds to taste like chocolate and become the cacao beans that we know, they have to be fermented first. They are fairly bitter, indicating the presence of a poison. And when I say a 'poison,' I'm not making this up. Just do a little research and you'll discover that cacao contains many chemicals with a stimulating effects, such as theobromine and caffeine.

A popular article on raw cacao beans claims that cacao "increase(s) your focus and alertness and contains nutrients to keep you happy." My answer to that is the same as has been said and is being said about coffee. The fact is that what people actually confuse with "alertness" is actually an adrenal response to the stress that the body has to deal with when eliminating the toxins found in cacao beans. What you get is NOT energy. What you experience as energy is actually your body working hard to establish balance (homeostasis) again! It's like whipping a horse. Eventually, it will fall down.

Here's an excerpt from Neal Barnard's book, Breaking the Food Seduction…

Researchers at the University of Michigan brought out the truth about chocolate. In a research study, they gave 26 volunteers a drug called 'noxalone.' They then offered them a tray filled with Snicker's Bars, M&Ms, chocolate chip cookies, and Oreos. Normally, these snacks would have quickly disappeared. But, the drug knocked out the desire for chocolate. A candy bar was not much more exciting than a crust of dry bread.

Noxalone is an opiate blocker. That is, it stops heroin, morphine, and other narcotics from affecting the brain. And, it blocks the effects of chocolate, too. This research study showed that chocolate's appeal does not come from its creamy texture or deep brown color. Chocolate stimulates the same part of the brain that morphine acts on. For all intents and purposes, chocolate is a drug — not necessarily a bad one and not a terribly strong one, but strong enough, nonetheless, to keep us coming back for more."

Many people would argue that when cacao is not cooked, these chemicals do not have the same effect on the body. But yet, those same people actually admit to eating cacao beans for their stimulating effect! Many people have reported not being able to fall asleep if they eat cacao beans late at night and that they are still looking for the "best" time of the day to eat them. Others tell me that when they eat cacao beans, they get so much energy, but then have a 'down' later on. Does that remind you of something?

If you like the taste, you could use some cacao once in a while in a recipe. But don't fool yourself into thinking that there's somehow something really good about this. Personally, I would consider using cacao when making a special desert for a special occasion. I don't recommend eating cacao otherwise. I don't find anything special in it. I don't buy the whole raw cacao craze and I don't think it is worth the price that is charged for it.

Remember: A rose by any other name is … just as thorny.

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So, who should you believe? Well, you'll have to make your own decision. However, be careful if you choose to eat cacao. Try only a small amount first, and make sure you have no negative reactions to it.

Why Raw Food?
An article by David Wolfe of Nature's First Law (published on Alive Foods).

Many have spent lifetimes wondering what caused humanity's "fall from grace." What has caused humanity's disconnection from living in a natural paradise? Why is civilization out of balance with Nature? These thoughts are often triggered by a study of the classical, legendary, or religious stories of a former perfect age. Every culture seems to have a story about how human life began on Earth. Most describe a place where people lived in harmony with the plants and animals. While living this way, the stories indicate that, people experienced happiness and peace.

These stories often indicate that everything was in harmony until something happened. Some stories tell of a great flood, others tell of humans gaining an understanding of good and evil, still others tell of a shift in Earth's alignment, a few even tell of some godly or spiritual powers that drastically changed the state of life on Earth.

Those of us who follow a balanced, thoughtful raw-food diet, believe that we have found the major piece of the answer to humanity's obvious disconnection with Nature. A multifaceted collection of scientists, spiritual leaders, researchers, and grassroots raw-food enthusiasts, have come to understand through experience, that the great change in human life occurred after humans discovered fire, and then began cooking food.

The obvious separation created by putting fire between our food and our mouth, the tremendous amount of time and energy people spend to cook food, the use of massive resources to create today's cooked-food culture (with its billions of kitchens and restaurants), the construction of factories and shops all churning out cooked and processed foods, the packaging and wrappers involved in the whole cooked-food process, and the lack of life energy in cooked food are all major contributing factors in humanity's fall from paradise. Subconsciously, we know this, as our picture of paradise usually involves sun, beaches, mangoes, and coconuts; not gloomy cities, restaurants, and cooked animals for dinner.

All animals living in the wild eat their food raw and, almost always, fresh. Raw is Nature's First Law. Only humans and domesticated animals eat cooked and processed foods. The cooking and processing of foods has become so common that most of us do not even question it. The assumption that cooked and processed foods are as good as raw foods is just an assumption. Most people do not know for sure, because they have never tried a balanced raw-food approach. Einstein once said: "The essential is to get rid of deeply rooted prejudices, which we often repeat without examining them."

Here is a visual experiment to consider: Feed a tribe of gorillas a diet of coffee, donuts, and other processed human foods for a few years. Let us watch what happens. Or consider, a herd of deer who, instead of eating their grass raw, decide to collect it and boil it in a giant cauldron. Picture what would happen in that situation!

What is it that constitutes the basis of human nourishment? Is it refined sugar flowing out of the roaring jaws of factories? Is it the flesh of animals being churned out by combinations of torturous factory farms and horrific slaughterhouses? Is it the milk of factory-farmed cows naturally intended for baby calves? Is it cooked and processed foods containing dyes, flavors, and preservatives?

No. The basis of human nourishment is obvious: it is raw plant foods. And Nature presents this to us in abundance. Raw plant foods are simple, easy to find, fun to eat, enjoyable, contain thousands of health-giving nutrients, and conform to the biological design of the human digestive system. The sun is the source of all life and raw plant foods represent the purest form of transformed sun energy. When one eats an orange, the wrapper (peel) becomes compost. When one follows a raw-plant-food lifestyle, the amount of trash produced by that individual decreases to almost nothing. Test for yourself and see.

An individual who eats the typical foods found in so-called "civilized society" who then changes to a raw-plant-food diet can discover energy they have never known. Eating a balanced mix of raw plant foods restores the body on a molecular level, building strong cells, radically naturalizing the body, raising alkalinity, and grounding the person in the natural world. Of course, the body resists shocking changes and everyone should ease into the raw-food approach at an appropriate pace. Also, everyone should educate themselves on this amazing subject (by further exploring this website, reading raw-food books, chatting on-line with other raw-foodists, and attending lectures), so that the common mistakes are avoided.

As the months and years pass, a person switching to a raw-plant-food approach may notice a greater awareness of the spiritual world, become more intuitive, and feel natural powers they have never experienced (or did not know they had). One will find oneself having more fun in a garden than a movie theatre. A profound new connection will arise with plants and animals.

Every person is a work of art in progress. Either one can become progressively more beautiful, or one can follow the fate civilization has set out (miseducation, wage slavery, decay, illness, and an untimely death). Each action one takes determines which of these two destinies will be achieved. What we eat helps to guide our path. Eating determines what level of health our body will experience. Every bite of food put into the body should add to our strength, spirituality, and beauty. Each meal becomes part of who we are at the deepest level.

"You are what you eat" is a cosmic law. Everybody knows that saying–everybody! It is a concept that has been known in every culture and civilization throughout history. It is written into the fabric of the universe. It is a simple law of Nature that should be remembered each day, and at each meal. Those who wish to heal themselves and the planet, should eat the most healing foods.

What are "Healing Foods?"

"Healing foods" are quality, organic, homegrown, or wild foods and/or superfoods in their raw natural state. Following this principle is not only the simplest way to choose what to eat, but is simply the best way to bring about good health and spiritual transformation. Because of this, this website is dedicated to helping as many people as possible succeed and prosper with the raw-food lifestyle.

We encourage anyone who wishes to experience the bounties of Nature to delve into eating what Nature provides to us. That is: raw plant foods. We encourage people to learn about superfoods, garden foods, and wild plants (herbs), to learn a new way of living, to experience the incredible energy Nature will give to you by accepting the foods she provides, and to live life in a melody with the plants and animals. By doing so, you may experience and reclaim your own little bit of paradise!