The Raw Gourmet
I was introduced to raw food over ten years ago by a holistic
physician. At that time, I had serious digestive problems and felt ill no matter what I
ate. For the first time in my life, I was gaining weight and had begun to develop an
alphabet of maladies.
With my physician's encouragement, I began to eat about fifty
percent of my food raw. Most of us already eat quite a bit of raw food, such as fruit,
salads, coleslaw and even smoothies, so I found it quite easy to expand on that theme, I
carried around a pocket full of raw almonds for snacks. I began to feel better almost
immediately.
But it wasn't until sometime later that I became really serious
about eating raw food and went on a three-week one hundred percent raw food and juices
program, including wheat grass juice. I lost eleven pounds in 14 days and couldn't believe
how physically and mentally well I felt. It made me realize that the degenerative process
was so very subtle and slow that I simply had forgotten how it felt to be healthy.
From that moment on, I embraced a 100% raw food program, and over a
matter of several weeks said good riddance to fibromyalgia, hypoglycemia, mood swings,
allergic sinusitis, digestive disorders, including acid reflux, and in time rid myself of
candida (a systemic yeast infection that has multiple symptoms). My physical, emotional
and mental energy was so high I had never experienced anything like it. It would be a lie
to say that, in my mid-forties, I felt as though I were in my twenties again. I had never
felt as good in my twenties.
Because of my passion about the remarkable effect of food on the
body, it wasn't long before I was working as a health consultant at a world-renowned,
alternative health institute in Florida. Called the Hippocrates Health Institute, the
center teaches the living foods approach to wellness and provides a three week educational
program devoted to cleansing and healing the body with natural, fresh, organic, uncooked,
unrefined foods. A gift from nature, these foods provide the body with everything it needs
to stay healthy and vigorous. It is a diet rich in enzymes and oxygen, both of which are
lacking in processed foods, dairy products and meat.
At Hippocrates, I had the opportunity to meet people from all walks
of life and from all over the world, ranging from average working-class people to movie
stars, from young to old. Some were ill, others were healthy and wanted to learn how to
maintain and improve their quality of life. During my years there, I saw profound
improvements in people's health when they changed their habits and embraced a living foods
lifestyle.
It was quite common to see drastic reductions in blood cholesterol
levels, blood pressure, and weight. I saw chronic infections dramatically heal and chronic
headaches disappear, I saw insulin-dependent people able to substantially lower their
insulin doses. People limped in with painful arthritis only to walk out with a huge
reduction in pain. And just about everyone experienced high energy and greatly improved
moods by the end of the three weeks. Time after time I was witness to gravely ill people
reversing the course of their illness with perseverance and bravery, and becoming well
again.
Although the living foods program is meant to be preventative, if
people who have had such serious illnesses feel that they have cured themselves, just
think what this program can do for you if you are relatively healthy. How much better to
prevent, rather than try to cure a problem.
What should you eat? Over the years wherever I go, the one question
I hear the most is: "But what should I eat?" Whether you'd simply like to add
more fruit and vegetable servings to your diet, or want to change your lifestyle in a more
dramatic way, this book has been designed to answer that question. It includes recipes for
all occasions, most of them very simple, so that you will be able to enjoy a variety of
food with no more expenditure of time than in a traditional Standard American Diet (SAD)
kitchen. Although you may find this hard to believe right now, once you get into the
rhythm of raw food preparation you will likely spend less time in your kitchen than you
did before.
You will see that a raw food diet can be as exciting and interesting
as any other type of cuisine. The recipes in this book will give you the tools to prepare
meals for all occasions that are tasty, nutritious and easy to make.
The challenge is in becoming educated and receiving the support you
need while making this change in the way you prepare and eat your food. You need to become
aware of the sources available to you--where to get the supplies, and how to use them.
Besides presenting an easy to live with system and lots of recipes, my goal is for this
book to be your raw food resource so that you can obtain the equipment, food and guidance
that you need, no matter where you live.
