Eating a Raw Food Diet

Proponents of eating a raw food diet base their food choices on the idea that heating foods over 116 degrees Fahrenheit contributes to the breakdown of vital nutrients and enzymes essential to optimal health. Eating a raw food diet translates to consuming 75 percent or more of your total meals in raw form.

Raw Food Diet Guidelines
It can be hard to simply jump into a raw foods lifestyle. You might want to start slowing with just a few raw living food meals a week. This way, you can also experiment with food combinations and sprouting. In the meantime, learn as much as possible about eating raw foods as you progress along your journey.

You can also consider the appliances that will make your life easier as a raw foodist, including a food processor and a dehydrator.

Raw Foods Menu
Raw foods diets may be more varied than you might imagine. A typical raw foods menu might include:

Breakfast:
Fruit smoothie

Lunch:
A lettuce wrap around sliced avocado, mushrooms and tomatoes

Dinner:
A "pasta" made from shredded zucchini topped with marinara sauce

Snacks:
Handful of raw nuts
Fresh fruit

Raw Food Recipes
Raw food recipes range from simple to complicated. Here are a couple of quick recipes that will help you jump into the world of raw foods.

Strawberry-Banana Sorbet Pie Recipe

Ingredients You Will Need:
1 ½ cups almonds, soaked
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
½ cup dates
¼ cup orange juice
3 pints of strawberries, cleaned
4 bananas
Optional: ¼ cup shredded coconut

Put two pints of cleaned strawberries and two bananas into your freezer.

To make the crust, blend the cinnamon, nutmeg, dates, almonds and orange juice in your blender or food processor. Press the mixture into a 9-inch pie pan.

Just before the bananas and strawberries are completely frozen, blend them in a food processor or blender to form a sorbet. Alternate layers of sorbet with layers of strawberries and bananas in the crust.

Sprinkle with coconut if you like.

Pizza Crust Recipe

Ingredients You Will Need:
2/3 cup golden flax seeds
2 cups almonds
2 cups sunflower seeds
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
3 tablespoons honey
½ cup water

Grind the flax seeds, almonds and sunflower seeds fine and combine in a large bowl. Pulse the remaining ingredients in your food processor until smooth. Pour the wet mixture over the dry mixture and blend, using your hand. You may have to add a little more water. Knead the dough  until it's smooth.

Divide to form four balls. Flatten out each ball into a thin round about 1/8 inch thick and place on a teflex sheet. Dehydrate for ten hours at 105 degrees. Remove from the trays and dehydrate another ten hours.

Top with tomato sauce and toppings and serve right away.