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What Is the Raw Food Diet?

Are you wondering about the new raw food diet?

Raw food is the next step in the trend toward vegetarianism and veganism, as well as organic concerns. This diet has been embraced by several celebrities, and there are restaurants catering to raw foodists. There are also many raw food recipe books available, as well as support groups and message boards galore for raw foodists, people who eat a raw food based diet.

Many find the raw food diet compelling due to dramatic weight loss stories, as well as a belief in a healthier lifestyle and body, but this is not just your average diet. It is a lifestyle change. Raw foodists point out that this is not necessarily a new diet, but that many cultures a long time ago ate most of their food raw, including paleolithic man, and eskimos. (No longer called eskimos, eskimo means eater of raw food).

The raw food diet is a diet consisting mostly of raw vegan food, which includes raw fruits, raw vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Many raw foodists think that the more their diet is made up of raw food, the healthier their diet is, and the healthier they will become. This can also be true for your pets – cats and dogs have been found to benefit from raw food diets, although cats and dogs have very different digestive systems than people, so obviously their diets should be very different from a diet meant for human consumption.

The raw food movement is in itself divided up into groups of people. Some will eat cooked food for a small percentage of their diet. Many of these people are combinations of the following groups:

Living foodists: these people follow a diet in which their food is made up of plant food in which the plant’s enzymes are still active, such as sprouted seeds and nuts.

Juicarians: all of their food is in the form of home made juice

Some raw foodists will eat unpasteurized milk and some raw meats, but this can be a concern as cooking is often necessary to kill any unwanted bacteria. Temperatures need to be very high or very low to kill these bacteria, and eating food raw is an infection risk. Pasteurizing is a method of preserving milk, and unpasteurized milk needs to be very fresh to be safe.

A small group of raw foodists will not eat food that has been processed by a machine at all, including juicers, dehydrators, blenders, and/or food processors. They believe in eating food in the most natural state possible.

What are living foods?

By some definitions, raw foodist are also life foodists, but a more specific definition implies that in living foods, the enzymes are active, and are therefore considered living. It is the difference between sprouted and unsprouted seeds or nuts (sprouted seeds or nuts are living). Some people will only or mostly eat living foods, believing in the health benefits of greater enzyme activity.