This morning, there was an article at Dr Mercola about eating raw food. I made a comment and thought that it would be helpful to post a summary about how I eat raw food.
My first comment is that I follow no rules and have developed my own pattern that suits me. I got very confused about the numerous different "ideal" raw food diets that are recommended by raw foodists. Some of these appear very extreme, almost judgemental in their approach (ie, if you eat too much fruit, "it's bad", or if you don't eat enough green vegetables "that's bad", or if you eat unsoaked nuts "that's bad").
I take the view that, if you are like me, trying to improve your diet and end up eating unsoaked nuts in place of soya burgers, this is better than before! It's all relative and I'm sure that in 10 years' time of eating raw food, I'll prefer to eat soaked nuts. But, for now, I'm a newbie and, as the French say, ça va (it's OK).
Here are examples of what I may eat in a day - it's not typical, because I'm inconsistent and eat according to how I feel.
One winter day could be like this:
Breakfast - often nothing because I'm not hungry
Mid-morning - fruit
Lunch - mixed vegetables cooked in coconut oil, with lettuce, grated carrot
Mid-afternoon - nuts and raisins
Dinner - coleslaw, raw crackers, mixed salad, olives
Evening - dark chocolate, red wine
So, around 60% raw
And another day....
Breakfast - sheeps yoghurt with a raw green superfood, like MegaGreens
Lunch - Vegi burgers made with all vegetables, plus spinach and mixed salad
Mid afternoon - packet of organic puffy crisps (I know, not perfect!)
Snack - more sheeps yoghurt and greensuperfood
Dinner - raw crackers and grated carrot salad
Evening - dark chocolate
This is around 50% raw
Note about superfoods: I've yet to discover these properly so that I can do them justice in a blog post, but have found a couple of green superfood mixes that have been incredibly helpful. I live in France where organic leafy green vegetables are so hard to come by, unlike in the UK and US where you have a huge selection. But the discovery of pHresh Greens and Boku has been fantastic, because now I get enough leafy green vegetables simply by adding them to water or a little yoghurt.
Then during summer, things are lighter...
Breakfast - often nothing
Mid-morning - fruit (eg, banana, apple, figs in season)
Lunch - Green smoothie, made with courgette, carrot, peppers, dandelion leaves from our garden, xylitol to sweeten, spices to flavour as I feel like
Mid-afternoon - avocado with grated carrot salad
Dinner - raw crackers and coleslaw
Evening - fruit and always some dark chocolate!
Here it's around 90% raw
To the above, I add when I feel like it, coconut oil, raw nut butter, dried apricots and dates and plenty of alkaline water all day long. The warmer the weather, the more raw food I eat.
So what did I learn from eating raw food?
- That I have more energy and less hunger, as long as I eat a balanced diet
- That I never get ill eating at least 70% raw food
- That I like it (that bit's important!)
- That I listen to what my body needs, and not what others tell me I need
- And, that mixed green superfoods, such as pHresh Greens.
