Cravings: Explained and Tamed

Cravings need no introduction. We've all experienced them, suffered from them, and often, given in.

No matter if we stash that bag of chips in the topmost shelf of that cabinet, or bury that dark chocolate deep in the fridge or promise ourselves not to buy "comfort food" in the next grocery trip or shut off our senses when passing by that steakhouse or pizza place, we inevitably end up using that step stool, ravaging the fridge, sneaking in trips to the corner store =), or indulging in the deep fried goodness on Friday evenings. Cravings are relentless.

The Internet is littered with tips on how to handle cravings. So is your nutritionists's office, personal trainer's studio, and, of course, the local supermarket with "low calorie," "low sugar," "low sodium" snacks to 'satisfy' your cravings. The latter thrive on the satisfaction we derive as we sink in our chair, having chowed down their snack; the former aim to latch on the guilt that accompanies afterwards. None, however, addresses the root cause of cravings.

The biggest part of our cravings resides in our taste buds. Other factors like smell or sight of food, happy memories, ongoing stress, and genetics play smaller roles to varying degrees from person to person.

The good news is, taste buds are adaptable!

If you find that hard to believe, consider this: do you feel like eating a mildly-spiced, cooling salad right after a salty, hot snack? Likewise, are fritters as tempting right after a healthful morning smoothie? These may be temporary changes in preferences, but a spicy food lover will usually find mildly spiced food 'bland'; a fried food lover, sautéed food 'less tasty'; a donut person, fruits 'less sweet'.

Point à noter: our taste buds adapt to -- and ask for -- the food we feed them over a long period of time.

So what can we do to "reboot" our taste preferences? If we can (re-)train our taste buds on finer, truly naturally-occurring flavors, before you know, they will stop asking for foods that accompany restraint and guilt. You might still have cravings but they will be of the joyful, healthful kind, not the suffering one. Healthy eating IS highly addictive too! Just that no one is telling us that.

Of all the naturally occurring foods, green leafy vegetables are the most rich and diversified in taste (and micronutrient value). When eaten raw, without significant amounts of processed additives like oil, salt, pepper, sugar, etc., they grow on our taste buds. Even a relatively short-term, but consistent, consumption of leafy greens changes our taste preferences. Three to four weeks is all they ask for!

How do I start incorporating more raw greens in my food, without throwing up, might you ask. For me, green smoothies paved the way for a high raw-vegan lifestyle that I would live on for two years. The first year of smoothies would lead to more green juices in the second year. The first juices with more fruit to mask the flavor of greens would make way for purely green juices. I'm still working on the latter, though =).

If a high raw-vegan lifestyle were merely a diet for me (and countless others walking the planet), I (and we) would've fallen off long ago. Two years is not a very long time, but you know eating this way is 'home' for your body and mind when, after eating 8-10 slices of pizza on a crazy, 17-hour day at work, you find yourself making a quick green juice before heading out the next morning!

Would you rather spend the rest of your life suffering and slapping down individual cravings or would you take a month to work on redefining what your body and mind crave for?

If doctors, nutritionists, personal trainers, and food companies and advertisers told you to eat natural, plant-based foods, they would mostly go out of business as the general population would be much healthier. So would the pharmaceutical industry. Would you rather wait for them to tell you what to do or be judicious, take charge, and transform your life before it hits the hospital run?

The Blueprint of Our Food Choices for Life

Have you ever wondered what shapes our food preferences? We develop tastes for different cuisines as we travel around the world or emigrate. But quite often, what really satiates most of us is still what we grew up eating? So what is it that makes it so hard to act truly Roman in Rome when it comes to food? Who created this almost indelible blueprint and when?

"Flavors in mother's milk begin to shape a baby's later food preferences." These preferences become imprinted during what is called the "sensitive period" or "critical period" -- a period that lasts for two to three months after an infant is weaned off of mother's milk. What the baby is fed during this sensitive period and what it sees others eating is practically immune to erasure!*

Wow. So scientific research reveals that our food preferences are implanted in us long before we can choose what we put in our mouth. Thinking about it, this is Nature's way of making us extinction-proof. Who, other than one's own mother, knows how to best ensure an infant's survival? After all, what to eat (and how to get it) is the most vital information an offspring inherits from its parent - across all species.

Eureka! Now we understand our downward spiral into a heavily meat, dairy, and processed-food-dependent generation over the last 50 or so years, ever since America was sold to corporations and 'canned' and 'convenience' foods flooded the supermarkets. Our mothers, having eaten these 'foods' all their lives, are progressively passing on these taste preferences to us despite having our best interests in their minds and hearts!

I cannot say about you, but this fact startled me. I wondered if this imprinting was universal in human infants? For me it was. At times I still craved my 'native food' even as I had been raw vegan for a few months before I read this piece. Then a vegetarian coworker casually mentioned her two year old almost spit when she ate an egg (yes, egg is NOT vegetarian). Then more examples emerged, as I looked for them...

So how does this increased understanding help us? For one, it has helped me to be kinder to myself whenever I crave my native food -- now I know my body just wants me to survive =). But more importantly, it has helped me to be compassionate to folks around me who, earlier, had simply appeared to be slaves to their unconscientious, eco-destructive, and detrimental-to-health food choices. Human will power against Nature's hardwiring isn't a fair game.

But this is exactly where wisdom comes in. We cannot use an imprinting passed on to us by Nature as an excuse to produce a sicker and ephemeral progeny. We cannot continue to submit to what is engineered to be delicious and craved for but wrecks 360-degree havoc. We have to step out of this guise to regain what we've lost in the last half century -- our health and environment. Being the highest evolved form of life known so far, this is our time to be socially - and morally - responsible.

*Deeply indebted to Victoria Boutenko for her masterpiece -- "12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Foods." This book is where I first read about the blueprinting of our food choices.

So Why NOT Eat a 100% Raw?

So. If eating raw has so many benefits, why not go a 100% raw? Why eat only a percentage of your food raw as opposed to eating ALL food raw ALL the time? Most people that I meet in my local raw food community eat raw in variable percentages - 30-80% being the most common bracket. I, too, eat an average of 70-75% raw (and vegan) (average taken over a week, though my daily intake of raw food is about the same as well on most days).

Well, first of all, being a 100% raw IS possible - and sustainable - both physically and biologically. Victoria Boutenko, who I have mentioned several times in this blog, and family, is 100% raw vegan and an inspiring example for today's health science research (and very embarrassing for the pharmaceutical industry!). Kristina Carillo-Bucaram also has been a 100% raw vegan for about 7 years now and is quite a success in restoring her health and running a local, organic food co-op movement in Houston, TX. Annette Larkins, dubbed as the Ageless Woman - boy, she looks fabulous at 70!

Besides, several M.D.s openly advocate the live foods nutritional regimen - Dr. Gabriel Cousens, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. T., etc. Cherie Soria, who I wrote about before, has a Science of Raw Food Nutrition program taught at her Living Light Institute that draws from the contemporary scientific research and studies on nutrition. There are notable vegan bodybuilders who are also raw to variable degrees. Venus Williams recently went raw vegan to cure her Sjogrens syndrome. However, 15 months into this lifestyle, so far I've chosen to relinquish some of these benefits to eat about 30% of my food cooked. Here are my reasons -

Being raw & vegan is easy and convenient as food preparation is usually fast and cleanup is easy. But it is also hard as the prepared dished don't have much of a shelf-life! Raw juices begin to disintegrate right away and must be consumed almost instantaneously. Green smoothies, when frozen, can last for up to a day, but don't taste quite the same - yuck! Salads become soggy when different ingredients are tossed together, even sans dressing. Raw soups are no longer yummy. Even raw ice cream, stored in the deep freeze, is not quite the same (from personal experience). This 'ephemerality' means that we need bursts of time available at hand right around when we're ready to eat. At times, that can be too much to ask for. And that's exactly when cooked food comes in handy.

Thinking about it, the short shelf-life of raw preparations makes complete sense - there are more enzymes and nutrients, so there is increased 'chemical' activity in the prepared dish! Cook the ingredients and they have lost most of their nutrition anyway - there's little left to spoil the food. Add preservatives, and voila, you have the isles after isles of ready-to-eat foods at the local supermarket. Use genetically-engineered ingredients and you have the 30-day survival kit for the Doomsday Preppers =). While we may not be in for an apocalypse yet, we're still doomed, albeit at a slower pace, if we continue to eat the way we do...

Raw food is nutritionally-dense. But not calorie-dense. Two bananas or a mango or a few peaches (the more calorie-dense fruits), won't fill us the same way as a large, baked potato. But we can't feel hungry all day, everyday, no matter the nutritional density of our food. Today, I simply can't eat the same amount of cooked food as I could before. However, even with my regulated portions, I do feel hungry earlier in the afternoon when I have had a salad for lunch, as opposed to a lean veggie sandwich - with bread. I get past this by keeping around more fruit and raw snack to munch on. But it can be a liability at times. It's unfortunate - just how easy it is to keep non-perishable, junk food around. The bacteria won't eat it, but we do, and expect the bacteria in our gut to just play along!

It's worth noting - a large baked potato, in turn, won't fill us the same way as one greased with oil, and loaded with cheese and salt. That, in turn, won't be the same as a plate full of deep fried chicken wings. In other words, getting enough nutrition and feeling full are two very different things. Lifelong social conditioning plays a subtle but significant role when it comes to feeling full. What can one do if deep fried chicken wings feel more satiating than heck, two avocados (which is too much of fat for one serving, BTW)?! We've all had moms shove three slices of bread down our throats when we really wanted to eat only two. In fact, these are exactly the food fads that our society needs to get rid of.

Further, most raw food dishes can be made more calorie-dense by adding avocados, nuts and seeds, coconut meat, olive oil, and more fruits. 

Certain fruits and veggies are best eaten cooked. For example, squash varieties, particularly, acorn. Beans, such as fava, kidney, soy. For others, heating releases nutrients from the cells they're bound to. For example, cooking a tomato releases lycopene, an important cancer-fighting antioxidant. Heating carotenoid vegetables, like bell peppers and carrots increases the bioavailability of their nutrients. Cooking mushrooms can dissipate some of their toxins. So why be headstrong and lose out on the added nutrition by cooking our food occasionally?

Did you know - bell peppers are one of the richest sources of vitamin C. Yes, way more than oranges! Red bell peppers also have a sweet, fruity flavor and taste great in salads and soups. They're the most ripe form of peppers - progressively after green, yellow, and orange. That explains their rich nutritional profile (and high price) in the family.

Another aspect that swings the balance in favor of cooked foods is Ayurveda, the system of ancient medicine from the Indian subcontinent. It might be rather surprising to learn that Ayurveda doesn't quite recommend eating a large percentage of raw foods! Particularly for vata and pitta dosha people. Kapha or kapha-dominant folks are the most suited to raw and vegan eating, according to it. Here's an online quiz, off of Deepak Chopra's website, that you can take to find out your dosha and exercise your judgement if a predominant raw food diet doesn't feel right to your body. For the sake of completeness, I must mention here that I am predominantly kapha. Good to know Ayurveda has my back covered ;).

Next, let's candidly address our selfishness and personal weaknesses - it's just too much of a sensory deprivation to give up all cooked food for the rest of our lives =). Being healthy, living eco-friendly, and riding the crest of the fountain of youth are all very desirable. But so are the joy and pleasure that come from doing (or in this case, eating) what we want, not merely need. For me, I have my favorite cooked vegetarian 'delicacies' that I am not ready to relinquish completely - yet. Maybe raw food will take their place in the upcoming times, or maybe it won't. I don't know. Until then, I will eat everything vegan in the remaining 30% of my diet. No animals will be hurt in the meantime.

Last but not the least, simply put, cooked food is much more accessible. That's what most of the restaurants serve. That's what we're (implicitly) expected to eat in social situations. Even when raw food is available in the form of salads and juices, at most places it's a fixer-upper menu item. No, Jamba Juice is no exception either! This makes eating 100% raw simply too socially restricting! To extend that, no matter how cleanly we eat, we're still exposed to a ton of pollutants and toxins in all walks of life. Do we really want to make our digestive system so sensitive that it can't take anything cooked, greasy, deep fried, even when feeding oneself supersedes everything else? Probably not.

This last argument comes from several personal experiences in the last 15 months. Most recently, while traveling to the western United States, I was appalled by the lack of fresh, organic produce at the local supermarkets. Particularly dismal was the (availability of!) limp, pale, green leafy vegetables. So fruit smoothies replaced my morning green smoothies. Rest of the day was all cooked food =/. 

Before that, I spent most of July 2012 eating 100% raw. Then one day, milk and cereal expected replaced the morning smoothie and yikes, I felt inflamed, heavy, and 'sick' all day. The message from my body was loud and clear - it did not like diesel in place of high octane gas =). There was my lesson - I could not rely on having raw food at hand at all times for the next 50 years of my life; I had to keep my body attuned to cooked and processed foods as well to survive optimally...

So as we end the celebrating cooked foods in this post, I'll leave you with this picture of acorn squash that I baked a couple of weeks back.

• Cut the squash vertically into two pieces. Be sure to use a sturdy knife. 
• Scoop away the seeds to roast them later. 
• Sprinkle salt and lay the pieces face down on the baking tray. 
• Preheat oven to 400F, bake for 40 minutes, turn the squash pieces over and bake for another 20 minutes. 
• Bring it out, sprinkle with honey/agave/maple syrup, nutmeg, cinnamon, and possibly more salt. 
• Scoop and relish.
• Note that most recipes call for butter and brown sugar, but hey, don't we know better as raw foodists?! =)

Baked acorn squash with wild huckleberry honey and spices

Concluding One Year on the Raw Vegan Lifestyle!

It's unbelievable - I recently completed one full year being ~70% raw and vegan! =) Okay, a little more than a year - 14 months, to be very precise. There is contentment that it wasn't a health condition that compelled me to overhaul my dietary preferences; there is gratitude for having stumbled on a path that brought such positive changes to my whole being; there is hope that this lifestyle will steer me clear of all major health problems of the day as time passes.

Talking about the passing time, there have been many 'Aha!' moments in the last 14 months - as and when I realized how small things had shifted and made big differences in the grand scheme of my life. I wrote about several benefits I reaped from green smoothies alone in March this year. Some of them were near-immediate effects, like increased energy, focus, and vitality and others were longer term like the shedding of ~22 pounds. It's time to talk more about the still longer term benefits in this post.

Without doubt, my body has increased immunity. As I moved out after spending close to three and a half years in an oceanic climate to a Mediterranean one in Fall 2011, I found myself catching cold very often! As the temperatures varied largely between day and night and from day to day, by Spring 2012, I had 'fallen sick' almost 4 to 5 times, once every couple of months on an average. Very atypical of me to fall sick, I began loathing that moment when I needed a jacket but didn't have one on hand...

Guess what, I still haven't quite gotten into the habit of keeping that jacket on hand :p. Yet I haven't caught a cold since end of Spring '12, pretty much ever since I started eating raw. My revised food preferences took care of my cold. It's like all the warmth that the fruits and veggies absorb from the Sun keeps me warm (and immunized against germs and bacteria) ;). In case you didn't know, sunlight is a very powerful disinfectant; that's why ancient cultures still prefer to dry clothes and blankets in the Sun. Add to this the fact that food has the most nutrient density when it's in its natural form. Immunizers are nutrients too.

Several months into eating raw, I also realized that skin and hair care lies in the food that grows in the 'dirty' soil, not in the 'natural herbs' handled with gloved hands, packed in bottles neatly laid out on the supermarket shelves. All my soaps and face washes and shampoos still being the same, how should I explain the significantly clearer skin and texture? Folks that haven't seen me in a while can't help but mention the 'glow'. I tell them it's NOT Olay :p. I am not sure what else explains the growth of new hair on my scalp either! I very much need those new hair, BTW ;).

There is also a reduced need for taking rest and sleeping. For several years on my standard cooked food diet, I needed more than eight hours of sleep a day or an afternoon nap for a few hours every other weekend to complete my sleep quota and recharge batteries. It was quite an Aha! moment when a friend pointed out I hadn't been sleeping extra for several weekends in a row. I don't anymore. Sure, when the digestive system does not need extra energy to completely digest what we have ingested, the spare energy stays with the brain to keep it wide awake and alert. The body gladly follows the signals sent by the brain...

On a more abstract level, there has been a kind of spiritual upliftment. There is more contentment about life in general, the thoughts are happier, there is kindness, acceptance, and love for people around me. There is a pursuit of peace and harmony and bliss for the world, even when certain outcomes in my own life are not quite as desired. Feeding oneself with exactly what Nature provides without harming other living beings who share this Mother Earth with us has a whole new perspective of gratitude and co-existence attached to it. It plays out in the day-to-day life very subtly, yet very profoundly!

No, I won't exaggerate and say I was sold on going raw and vegan right as I took notes in the introductory un-cooking class. It grew up on me - from my first green smoothie to my first raw vegan dessert. It is still carving its niche´; one lifetime isn't enough to make and taste every dish that can possibly be prepared. The choice here is as diverse as Nature itself, simply because it comes directly from Nature. It's with Nature's help that our species has been thriving for millennia; not by man-made machines - or food.

Raw Vegan Desserts! :)

Alright, we've covered the raw vegan options for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and snacks by now. So it's time to move on to desserts - something we all absolutely love! =) Wouldn't it be quite nice to eat a dessert guilt-free and not feel weighed-down by the sugar and heavy cream and flour afterward?

Why choose raw desserts over cooked and baked ones? Well, first of all, they don't usually contain any processed sugar - white or brown! Yes, we just avoided the number #1 killer food - even while eating a dessert. Secondly, since the ingredients are not cooked, they are still nutritionally very dense (see this old post about the benefits of eating raw foods). Imagine trading all the empty calories for some real ones even when you are on a dessert binge. Third, they're WAY simpler (and, in most cases, quicker) to prepare than traditional desserts - no pre-heating the oven, baking for several minutes to hours, and scrubbing the bakeware thereafter. Fourth, if you happen to be vegan, you also get to avoid all the heavy cream that later weighs us down. Concocting a raw sweet, yet healthy, treat in a jiffy is super simple!

So what are the usual ingredients in a raw dessert? Typically, dates are the primary sweetener. If the dessert involves fruit, ripe fruit is the best form of natural sugar. Honey and stevia are other viable, minimally processed sweeteners. Sometimes, organic, high quality agave syrup / nectar or Grade A maple syrup are used, though overuse of these is discouraged as they're processed too. The major source of fat and creaminess in raw desserts is coconut meat or avocado (believe it or not). For chocolate, organic raw cacao powder is used. Imagine eating chocolate, sans sugar, in desserts and still maintaining your weight! Yes, raw cacao powder is a great aide in weight loss - check out the superfood catalog. Pie and tart crusts, cookies, cake mixes, etc are typically made with nuts and seeds or shredded and dried coconut - compare that to white flour tossed with dollops of butter or margarine in conventional desserts!

Equipment-wise, raw desserts are typically done in a food processor. That takes care of crusts, mixes, etc. A blender is used in preparing, for example, cream cheeze (the 'z' in cheeze indicates it's a vegan "cheese", made of cashews, almonds, etc.), frosting, filling, ice cream, etc. Funkier raw desserts, such as fruit lather, cinnamon rolls, and tart, cookies, etc. are done in a dehydrator - agreed that a dehydrator does take longer that an oven but we still bypass the soaking and scrubbing chore ;). Of course, tart and pie pans are used where needed. An ice cream maker is quite useful to make real raw ice creams.

Finally to the fun part - recipes with pictures. I must say I don't have a whole lot of personal pictures of raw desserts but I shall add what I have. In other cases, I'll pull something from the Internet and say so.

Raw vegan chocolate mylk - 2 cups homemade almond milk, half cup water as thinner, half banana, and 1-2 tbsp raw cacao power to taste. High speed blend. My personal favorite =) (and a copyright recipe :p). I swear, you'll never feel the same about any branded chocolate milk.

Raw vegan chocolate mylk

Fudge brownie topped with fresh berries - Followed this recipe by Ani Phyo

Brownie with fresh berries

Raw banana ice cream - Followed this recipe with my own tweaks: 1.5 raw banana if large or two smaller bananas, 1/2 cup blueberries, 1/4 tsp vanilla bean powder, and 1 tbsp agave. 

Raw vegan banana ice cream

Trail mix cookies - recipe courtesy Ani Phyo, again.

Trail mix cookies

Peach crumble - Crust made of pecans, medjool dates, virgin coconut oil and pinch sea salt. Filling made of peaches and pinch vanilla powder.

Raw peach crumble

Carrot cupcakes with raw cashew cream cheeze - Here is the recipe. The picture here is not as beautiful as one on that link but mine has a candle on it, to mark my birthday! =)

Carrot cupcake with cashew cream cheeze

Raw vegan chocolate fondue - 1/2 cup dates, 1/2 cup agave nectar or maple syrup, 1/4 tsp vanilla powder, 3/4 cup cacao powder, organic, raw, 3 avocados, mashed, 1 cup water or to desired consistency. Add the first three to a food processor. Blend until smooth. Add cacao powder and avocados and run until blended. May need to scrape the sides from time to time. Drizzle water gradually while running to get desired consistency. It gets thicker and sweeter when let sit for a while. Adjust ingredients accordingly. Recipe courtesy Heather Haxo Phillips.

Chocolate fondue from simplyrecipes.com. Compare their recipe with the raw one and hail raw vegan desserts =).

Raw vegan mango lassi - 1 cup homemade almond milk, 1-2 mangoes to taste, and ice. High speed blend. Add a couple of dates if the natural sweetness of mango and almond milk is not enough. Concocted it very recently while experimenting with homemade almond milk and fresh fruit. I'd like to believe that I invented it!

Raw vegan mango lassi

I will leave you here, making you want to appreciate and adopt healthier eating options. This post also concludes the series on the various food options in the raw vegan lifestyle. Click the 'What do I eat?' label in the word cloud on the right to check out all posts in this series.

This also happens to mark my first year with this lifestyle - I started eating raw vegan in late May 2012. So, in my next post, I'll talk about the enormous benefits I reaped. Then there are some more matured topics planned for this blog - optimal body weight, blueprint of our food choices, deep dive into green leafy vegetables, and much more. Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for all the exciting stuff!

Snacking on Raw

Snack time is probably the hardest for a healthy eater. It's hard not to reach out for our favorite chips, soda, chex-mix, roasted nuts, etc. when plastic packaging is being ripped open all around you, chips ruffling, soda cans popping and bubbling, and roasted pistachios cracked open. Oh, so tempting...! A year into this lifestyle, and planning my raw vegan lunch and dinner fairly well, I still struggle with morning and afternoon snack times at work when I hear Hawaiian chips crackling in the next cube.

So how much worse are we if we eat fairly healthy breakfast and meals but lax on snacks? Well, do you really want to eat a 500 calorie snack laden with several grams of sugar, carbs, and engineered chemicals (or toxins, as I call them), when you're replacing olive oil with the healthier fat in avocado and white sugar with dates in your meals? Why would one want to go backwards with greasy and salty chips and sugary soda to compensate for the salt after a green smoothie and hearty lunch added a spring to their step?

But how about the low-calorie, low-sodium, zero-sugar snacks? They're healthy, aren't they? Think about it - how does a food item get to have lesser calories than its labelled ingredients?! Do the calories magically disappear or are the ingredients artificial? How does our body know how to breakdown these engineered foods and, possibly, even 'release energy and nutrients' out of thin air?! If you're skeptical of my claims, read for yourself - top 10 cancer foods, truth about diet soda, and the list goes on. The problem is we're not eating food anymore, we're eating food-like products!

Unfortunately, these food-like products are not only unhealthy for us, they're also an environmental hazard - if you didn't realize already! Just imagine how much waste we're adding in the form of plastic wrappers, non-recyclable lids, industrial byproducts, etc. to the already teeming landfills. Sure, soda cans are recyclable, but setting up the recycling infrastructure in itself is an industrial process, with its own environmental issues and byproducts. And how often do we care to separate recycle from trash in the first place? So much just for snacks! Thanks to the food industry for making us such slaves to them!

We need to continue springing forward, eating nutritious, natural snacks that will want us to take an evening swim, instead of throwing us on the couch after work. These shall be grown locally, transported short distance, bio-degradable, and should generate minimal artificial byproducts. Above all, these shall be delicious and addictive, and yet need minimal preparation. What would these be? Read on for some ideas.

Well, fruits are an amazing finger-food! Reach for a banana or a couple of juicy, navel oranges, a mango, slices of pineapple or watermelon (esp. during summer). Pack a bowl of some washed red and green grapes alongside cherries or other berries to work, keep it at your desk, munch all day - you'll be too full for chips and soda and gain a glowing skin in no time. As a bonus, colleagues walking by your desk will notice and grab some fruits themselves - leading by example is extremely effective! Partner with a colleague, take turns to bring different fruits to work to share and double the fun. I bet, more folks will want to join your clique =).

My fruit plate at work one afternoon.

How about something more interesting? Throw together some blueberries, pomegranate seeds, and raw cacao nibs and toss them in flax meal (recipe courtesy Ani Phyo). You'll be amazed how well the flavorless blueberries fit with crunchy, sweet-sour pomegranate seeds and chocolaty cacao nibs! Make sure you grind flax seeds fresh as flax meal goes rancid in no time.

Blueberries, pomegranate seeds, cacao nibs in flax meal

Nuts and fruits together make a delectable and filling combination. Here's a snack with apple pieces topped with cinnamon and crushed pecans. Remember, some nuts, like almonds and walnuts, are better consumed soaked to activate the enzyme inhibitors (more on this in a different post).

Apple and crushed pecans, topped with cinnamon.

Feeling queasy after a greasy lunch and want something cleansing and citrusy?

Grapefruit wedges sprinkled with cinnamon and grated ginger

Here's something even more interesting - cashew carrot pate and sunflower pate served with celery and carrot sticks. This is almost a mini-meal. Love hummus? Here is a no-bean zucchini hummus recipe.

Cookies are possible too! No white flour, no sugar or preservatives, no baking and later scrubbing the bakeware. These trail-mix cookies keep for up to three weeks in an airtight container.

Raw vegan trial mix cookies

How about energy drinks? Well, mila, a form of chia seeds, is a great source of energy. Hydrated mila, whether in plain water or coconut water or a green smoothie or almond milk makes a great energy drink.

For chips lovers, as mentioned in the last post about raw lunch and dinner, a dehydrator can make chips of a variety of veggies like carrot, kale, beets, etc. It can also make raw vegan breads, bread-sticks, fruit lather, roasted nuts, etc. Checkout a pic of onion rings in the making in that post.

If you don't have a dehydrator, head to the raw food section of Whole Foods; you'll be amazed at the variety and possibility the raw food world offers for snacks. As a word of caution, I'd limit off-the-shelf products even when they're labelled raw. That's simply because they've been mass-produced and have lived on the shelf for a while - not as good as something fresh and homemade.

I'll conclude this post with another of my all-time-favorite raw vegan snack =). I bet you'll crave coconut water right now! ;)

Meat and water from a young thai coconut

Eating Raw for Lunch and Dinner

So I mentioned in a previous post how green smoothies extensively benefited me. Among other things, most importantly, they paved the way for my ~70% raw vegan lifestyle by essentially resetting my taste buds and getting a handle on the all too well-known cravings we often give in to! In fact, this has been my lifestyle consistently since the 20-day detox in July '12. So what have I been eating for all these months? Certainly not just salads ;). Read on... Be sure to checkout the pictures, too, of my food that I've been clicking over the last several months.

Raw food is much more diverse than salads! Even when we do eat salads, we tend to overload them with highly-processed, preservative-laden dressings to make them "tasty." This essentially negates the benefits of the nutrition-dense, fresh, low-calorie, easy-on-the-body salad. So how about fresh, raw, vegan dressings instead? At the start of every week, I make several servings of one to two salad dressings that I then use during the week.

Here are a few very simple salad dressing recipes. None of them takes more than 10 minutes. All of them taste delicious; uncannily similar to their cooked counterparts!

Lemon-Avocado Dressing: 1 avocado, 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice, 1 tbsp water, 1 tsp apple cider vinegar, dash cayenne pepper, black pepper, pinch salt. Whisk together. Keeps for a couple of days. Makes one to two servings.

Olive Oil Vinaigrette: Whisk together 1 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp apple-cider vinegar, dash salt and pepper. Voila!

Raw Vegan Ranch: Quarter cup cashews (soaked for a couple of hours, ideally), 2 tbsp water, 2 tbsp lemon juice, 2 cloves garlic, 1 tsp dried dill, salt to taste, a couple of dates if you want slight sweetness. 2 servings. Yummy.


Raw soups are great accompaniments to salads, a hearty snack by themselves, and even a complete meal when made consistent and creamy (hail the avocado). No, one does not have to go cold turkey on a raw lifestyle. Let your Vitamix run for an extra 60 seconds on high and you have a lukewarm soup. Let it run for 2 minutes, and you have a steaming one. Over-blending should be avoided, though, to keep the nutrition and desired texture intact.

Raw soups can also be heated on a stove. Heat them until you can still dip your finger in the soup - that's about 105F. Stir intermittently to heat uniformly and avoid burning/thickening of the contents at the bottom. Another option is to use a food dehydrator, if you have one (and space for it on your kitchen counter). I have not used one myself but pouring the soup in a metal bowl and warming in the dehydrator for ~20 minutes works wonders.

A yet another great thing about soups is that the same ingredients can be used with different spices to vary the flavor and experience the world cuisine! Top your soup with one of the several superfoods and you have a home run meal. Here are a couple of my favorite soup recipes:

Red Bell Pepper Soup: 1 red bell pepper, 1 tbsp miso, 1-2 tbsp lemon juice to taste, half to 1 avocado, salt to taste, dash cayenne / black pepper, 1 clove garlic, chipotle or curry powder or turmeric powder to taste. Blend them all.

Carrot Ginger Soup: 2 cups of carrots blended in 4 cups of water, mixture strained to remove fiber (this step is optional - carrots never blend homogeneously, so straining the fiber away gives the soup a smoother texture). Add 1/2 avocado, 1 tbsp miso, 1-2" ginger depending on taste, 1 tsp curry powder or another spice for desired ethnic flavor and blend again.

Raw vegan carrot ginger soup topped with dried parsley and hemp seeds

Yes, there's more. Ever imagined a fully raw burrito? How about a lush green wrap? Green leafy vegetables with large leaves, such as red-leaf lettuce and collard, are perfect for making wraps! Layer the leaf with sunflower or another seed pate or even simply mashed avocado, top with shredded carrots, beets, red / green cabbage, sliced bell pepper, jalapeno, grated ginger, sprouts, etc., and roll 'em up. Stick a toothpick to hold it together and the funky look will have your friends salivate!

Red lettuce wraps with veggies and marinated mushrooms

When the leaf has a rough texture and is rather tough, like collard, steaming it for 30-60 seconds makes it pliable and gives it a real tortilla-like texture. Missing meat? Marinate portabella / crimini / shiitake mushroom in a blend of toasted sesame oil, agave / maple syrup, and soy sauce and they taste exactly like meat. Add ginger / garlic / grapefruit juice to the blend to further enhance the taste of the 'meat'. Stuff them in the wrap!

Collard leaf wraps with more pate, veggies, and avocado on the side.

What about pasta? Well, that's possible too. Zucchini, when run through a spiralizer, tossed in dash salt and let sit for a few minutes, looks and tastes exactly like pasta. Make a raw marinara / alfredo / pesto sauce and you have your pasta for dinner.

Zucchini pasta with raw marinara

Another (r)awesome option for pasta is kelp noodles. A sea vegetable rich in iodine and very low in calories, Kelp offers luscious tangles that would satisfy anyone's noodle cravings! Rinse them through cold water 2 to 3 times, let them sit in warm water for 30 to 60 minutes and they are ready to go.

Kelp noodles tossed in raw marinara, served with raw vegan alfredo sauce and shredded carrots on the side

If you have some more time, sushi is possible too. Checkout this one I made some time back =). Agreed, my knife skills suck! But still...

Raw vegan sushi =)

But wait, many food items are still missing from this list! There are raw options to even breads, empanadas, quiche, falafel, fritters, and many other foods. Really. A food dehydrator works by 'drying' foods over several hours using hot air. Dehydrating is fundamentally different from baking in that it is done at a much lower temperature and uses circulating hot air instead of typical convection. It's the lower temperature - only up to 105F - that still keeps the dehydrated food 'alive' or 'living'. See an old post on why we should eat raw for more details on the lower temperature part.

As the name suggests, dehydration reduces the amount of water in the food, thereby, impeding the growth of food spoiling bacteria. Many ancient Asian cultures still make pickles by drying fruits and veggies, marinated in salt and spices, under the Sun. Same goes for many a snack items popular today, like potato and other chips, onion rings, fruit lather, etc. Then the 'fast' and pre-packaged food industry took over and began using chemicals instead of the Sun to achieve the same results but making us addicted, obese, and sick in the process =(.

I don't have any personal pics of dehydrated foods to share - yet - thanks to my small, crammed kitchen. But here is a picture of raw onion rings in the making from a demo at my local raw food meetup group. This tray is ready to be inserted in a dehydrator for about 8-10 hours of dehydration.

Raw onions cut in rings, tossed in sauce, spread on dehydrator tray

So this is how we're well stocked up for eating raw for lunch and dinner. I hope this blog post inspires you to consider this lifestyle with greater credibility and confidence. Stay tuned for much more on this blog. Thank you for reading.

An Evening with Cherie Soria and Dan Ladermann

A few weeks back I got the opportunity of listening to Cherie Soria and and Dan Ladermann at my local raw food meetup group. Cherie's story and mission were inspiring, her knowledge of nutrition astounding, and her culinary prowess impressive. In the end, she allowed ample time for Q&A, signed copies of her books, and let the audience take pictures with her. Read on for a complete account of our evening with her =).

To start with, Soria is respectfully known as 'The Mother of Gourmet Raw Vegan Cuisine'. She has been teaching this cuisine for 20 years (and vegetarian culinary for 40) now! She became vegetarian at a very young age in a survival fight when diabetes, high cholesterol, and other related health problems claimed the lives of many of her immediate loved ones. In 1992, she turned to veganism and raw foods after a life-changing visit to the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute in Puerto Rico.

Ann Wigmore was the founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute - the face of alternative health care movement in the US for over 25 years. This is the place that many "terminally-ill" patients visit, as a last-ditch effort, in a hope to reverse their health. The raw food regimen has cured and resuscitated countless lives there! It's a pure coincidence that soon after listening to Cherie Soria, I also got to listen to Dr. Brian Clement, the co-director of the Institute, at another event; stay tuned for an article on that.

Inspired by her visit to the Ann Wigmore Institute, Soria brought the gourmet raw vegan cuisine home. Starting with teaching classes around the country and authoring several books, she founded the Living Light Culinary Art Institute in Northern California in 1998. This institute has since trained many top chefs around the world and offers a variety of culinary courses and certifications along with an in-depth science of raw food nutrition program. Together with husband Ladermann, she owns 3 other eco-friendly, raw vegan businesses - the Living Light Inn, Cafe, and Marketplace. Here is her Youtube channel.

What I found most exhilarating about Soria that evening was her strive to empower every individual by disseminating her knowledge and sharing her personal experience with the raw vegan food philosophy. Her staunch belief that each one of us in her audience had the potential to steer our own small communities towards a healthier lifestyle, and thereby reverse the health crises of our nation, was quite encouraging. She put in words my unspoken intentions behind authoring this blog. Still running marathons and practicing skills from her three black belts in karate at the age of more than 60 - that few in her family even lived to see(!) - it was a marvel to listen to the accomplishments, ambitions, and hopes of this petite woman.

Moving on to healthy eating habits, Cherie started with the general advice from all raw foodists:

• Avoid cooking foods at very high temperatures as that renders the food essentially dead. See my earlier post on why we should eat our foods raw.
• Avoid eating foods devoid of all nutrition (e.g., fried foods or even those that have a lot of oil in them, like roasted nuts, chips, etc., pasta, white flour and other products containing gluten that causes inflammation).
• Avoid eating late at night as the body tends to disturb sleep while working to digest the food.
• Filter tap water before drinking as well as cooking as it contains chemicals that kill the essential bacteria in our digestive tract. It was interesting to learn that the Living Light Institute has a full in-house water filteration system at both the Institute and the Inn. They recycle their water and have all eco-friendly rooms - showers, beds and everything.
• Get enough fluids in the form of water, green smoothies and juices, soups, fresh produce, etc., to keep the body hydrated. She strongly recommended drinking warm water with a few drops of lemon in it, first thing in the morning. Here I can take partial pride in saying I've been drinking water everyday right after getting out of bed for about 10 years now and stomach problems don't even dare to come anywhere close to me =).

Coming to nutrition, needless to say, Soria is a huge believer in Nature's wisdom in meeting all our nutritional needs. She recommends eating all the colors of the rainbow as they have a rich assortment of the plant compounds called phytochecmicals. Usually, the darker the color, the richer the nutrient profile. Go for beets, red cabbage, eggplant, purple kale and many more. Phytochemicals do a great job assisting the anti-oxidants in fighting the free radicals. Additionally, greens are a great source of natural protein, the kind that our bodies know how to breakdown and process. Cherie likes to limit her avocado intake to half a fruit a day.

Like many other nutritionists, she strongly warns us from using rancid oils and other food products. Rancid ingredients, when consumed, enable free radicals that do the exact opposite of anti-oxidants! This is why it is recommended that flax seeds be ground to flax meal just before use. Flax is rich in Omega 3s but low in anti-oxidants; flax meal goes rancid pretty quickly. On the other hand, chia seed is rich in both Omega 3s and anti-oxidants.

In contrast to many, Soria shuns the use of vinegar - even apple cider vinegar! According to her, it causes bloating; she recommends using it only for medicinal purposes. It is somewhat baffling to read Ani Phyo refer to apple cider vinegar as a power packed ingredient that is rich in potassium and calcium and fights cholesterol and controls insulin - she uses it quite a bit in her 15-day fat blast plan. I'd love to know what my readers have to say about the edible properties of vinegar. Please write comments below if you have an opinion.

Fermented foods and nut and seed cheeses are great, advocates Soria. Between kombucha and kefir, she's more experienced with kefir. For cheeses, she recommends making them with rejuvelac while admitting that making rejuvelac itself takes 5 days. On that note, Heather Haxo Phillips uses probiotic powder to accelerate fermentation in nut and seed cheeses. These cheeses usually keep in the fridge for upto 3 days and are uncannily similar to dairy cheeses! This comes from sampling a variety of these in one of Heather's classes a few weeks back. Yes, I'm going crazy keeping on top of all these local raw food events!

Soria also believes in adding nutritional supplements to further enrich one's dietary intake. She recommends 2000IU of vitamin B12 once a week and taking vitamins D/D2/D3 from vegan sources. (There is quite a controversy on a possible B12 deficiency in a predominantly plant-based diet. I will write another blog post on that later.) Her favorite brands for supplements are HeathForce and E3. She takes E3 Renew Me and E3Live Frozen Blue-Green Algae. To that end, here is Heather's shopping resource on food supplements.

Before moving to the recipe demo, Cherie touched very briefly upon what it takes to be a good chef and create new recipes. There are four primary flavors that we taste and discern - sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. In order to come up with scrumptious recipes, it's important to know how to balance these flavors and play with the ingredients to accentuate or downplay any given flavor. Generally speaking, all greens are bitter and garlic, pepper, ginger, and onion are considered pungent.

Finally, it was time to impress us with her culinary prowess of 40 years. She demo-ed a raw recipe - sweet red pepper and zucchini hummus. The red peppers were peeled for a smoother texture (the thick bell pepper skin does not blend well and leaves tiny red traces in food). Raw tahini from Artisan was optionally used for more smoothness. Cherie made it spicy by adding chipotle powder and used both smoked and regular paprika. Crinkled cucumber slices were then decorated with this hummus, for us to sample it. Using a pastry decorator to give a wafer-like appearance to the icing was exciting; I'm looking forward to experimenting with it.

How Green Smoothies have Benefited Me

In my last post I wrote an extensive treatise on why green smoothies are, scientifically, a must-have food, regardless of whether one is living the raw food lifestyle. Before we move on to the many more exciting posts planned for this blog, I want to write a quick journal entry on the benefits I have personally reaped by incorporating green smoothies in my daily diet.

I first began making green smoothies for breakfast in late May/early June in 2012. Like many people, I was replacing ready-to-eat (and in my case, also freely and readily available at work) cereal and milk with something that I had to make at home. In the beginning this was not simple - I had to spend time on the weekend to plan, additionally, my breakfast for the week ahead, spend money to shop accordingly, and then store the ingredients carefully so the produce didn't perish half way through the week. Then, every morning, I had to wash/cut/blend, bring the smoothie in a jar to work, wash the blender, knife, cutting board, and lastly, wash my jar at work. It seemed to be a lot of additional effort.

So, 10 months down the line, why/how did I keep doing it?! In fact, the more regularly I drank green smoothies on a daily basis, not only did the whole 'chore' of making them become easier, a green smoothie a day became a vital need of my body! Today, I almost have a 'physical dependency' on green smoothies --- in a good way... For many months now, there are days on which I drink more than one green smoothie. In my stumble in the raw food world, I talked very briefly about what green smoothies have done for me; it's time to elaborate on that in this article.

First off, in only a week or two of getting started on this breakfast, I began feeling refreshed and energized. Even though my stomach was full in the same way as it used to be with cereal and milk, I felt lighter than usual. It's almost like I was using a better quality oil to run my machinery. As I felt lighter after breakfast, I could focus better on my work and my productivity increased. I knew I was getting more done than before, and at a faster pace. Days on which I missed a green smoothie, the heavy, clunky feeling that came with going back to drier, processed foods weighed me down. That, in itself, was reason enough to continue with my daily chore...

A couple of more weeks down the line, I realized green smoothies had actually begun affecting my food choices for the rest of the day! Days that I started with a green smoothie were days on which I naturally preferred salads for lunch (I hadn't quite been a salad eater before =)), fruits for snack, and a lighter supper. Anything that was deep fried, or just fried, creamy/cheesy/oily, or sodium- or sugar-laden did not appeal me on those days. Those were 'good' days - I got more work done, I had more spare energy, I was mentally more alert, I ate better, I felt better. On the other days, I was okay eating my usual lunch and snacking on roasted cashews, peanut butter pretzels, wheat thins, etc. Those were the days on which my exhaustion and general dissatisfaction with my routine came back.  

Heather did mention that green smoothies had the potential to impact our food choices for the rest of the day in her Introduction to Raw Food Cuisine class. Her statement made me quite cynical; it appeared that she was trying too hard to sell her food philosophy to have people sign up for more of her upcoming classes! But seeing this happen to me for real, amused and struck me and I had a new-found respect for her (she is a great teacher; I have taken many of her classes by now). A detailed account of her class is in an older post of mine. More about her is on her website - http://www.rawbayarea.com.

Soon after, I could predictably play around with my food choices every single day by having a green smoothie in the morning - or not. As I chose to continue with this regimen, with more passing weeks, it dawned upon me that I ate better even on days on which I occasionally missed a green smoothie. In other words, there was a shift in what was tasty to me and what wasn't; my taste buds had begun changing! What can be a more promising passport to healthier eating and, thereby, better health than all of us actually finding apples, oranges, romaine, and kale more delicious than burgers, pizza, nachos, soda, sundae? Would the processed food advertisements around us continue to be as effective as they are today? Would the Olympics have approved sponsors like McDonald's and Coke? Would we continue to be a nation victimized by obesity and a myriad of health problems that plague us today? Would our children have a shorter life span than us?

Beginning in July '12, I was taste bud-wise (and mentally) prepared to experiment with a 20-day raw food detox. Since I grew up vegetarian and had generally been a conscious eater (just not a salad eater, though =)), my body did not have much to detox. But that detox triggered my metabolism such that I began losing weight - something I had been aspiring for since my teenage years! What had never happened before happened now - I have lost ~22 pounds since, my BMI has dropped from 24.9 to 21.5!! Post detox, since August, I have been eating ~70% raw vegan and have never had this kind of energy and vitality before. I resumed swimming after 14 years in September and started this blog in November. Life has changed in many more profoundly positive ways...

What other benefits could I have reaped by making one single change - drinking one green smoothie a day? What else should I have to say to stress enough the importance of green smoothies and raw foods?

First Step towards Eating Raw: Green Smoothies

Okay, now I do understand that food, when eaten raw, claims to work unparalleled miracles for my mind and body(!) and is also lighter on our planet. I am also aware that there is a lot more to the raw food world for variety and nutrition than just the regular produce I see at my local grocery store. But what is the simplest thing I can do to start reaping the benefits of this regimen with minimal effort and time?

Fortunately, there does exist a "5-minute breakfast" in the raw food world. It is called a Green Smoothie. Whether or not this is a new menu item for you, this article discusses, in great details, why it is a key ingredient in our daily food palette. By the end of it, I truly hope to convince you to start your own one-green-smoothie-a-day routine for real.

To allure you into reading further, here is a picture of my VitaMix jar from one of these mornings.


In the jar: apple, purple kale, lemon, and alfa-alfa sprouts.

A "Complete" Meal

What would the nutritional chart of our ideal meal look like? It'd have to be rich in fiber, contain the recommended doses of vitamins, minerals, and proteins, and be low in fat and carbs. All this while keeping sugar low and, most importantly, still tasting delicious.

We absolutely need to care about getting enough fiber in our diet. Among other things, it helps control blood sugar, keeps bad cholesterol low, regulates bowel movement, keeps us full for a longer time (so we don't pile on empty? calories every hour), and thereby, helps us maintain an optimal body weight. A fiber rich meal in the morning keeps us full until lunch but does not weigh us down like many oily and greasy commonly preferred processed breakfast foods.

The best sources of fiber are natural, plant-based foods - vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts. (Animal products are not rich in fiber - bad news for hardcore meat eaters.) It is also worth noting that most fruits are not particularly rich in fiber (berries and a few others being an exception). When we juice an orange or apple, we essentially get concentrated sugar (with a small amount of vitamins/minerals). That's why The Holy OJ and AJ are not proving to be good accompaniments to the American breakfast table =).

While consuming fruits in their juiced form alone is not healthy, whole fruits offer a wide array of nutritional value. Additionally, they taste great, often beating vegetables that have an equally good nutritional profile. When grown organically, many fruits can be eaten with their peel on; most peels supplement the nutrition that their fruits offers (and reduce prep time).

Why Add Greens?

If I say "Green is Life" and leave it at that, you'll probably roll your eyes and skip the rest of this article. So here is the elaborated version: greens are nutritionally very dense, calorie for calorie. They are rich in almost all essential minerals and vitamins, including proteins. Pull up the nutritional profile of the most common green leafy vegetables - kale, spinach, collard greens, romaine lettuce - using your favorite search engine and take a look yourself. Here's my favorite one - kale. The darker the green color, the richer the nourishment.

If you're into the evolution theory, you might be curious to know what primitive man ate all these centuries before the Industrial Revolution came and trampled on our food preferences beyond resemblance with our ancestors. It is interesting to know that chimpanzees, our closest kin, consume 40% greens in their diet. Since their food pyramid has been far less modified than ours, there are reasons to believe that that's how many greens we really need in our diet (I'm looking at you, USDA!). Not sure if this also how we got to the 60 to 40 ratio of fruits to greens for smoothies, as a general rule of thumb.

So, after all this ado,

Essential Morning Meal => Fruits + Greens

But where does a smoothie fit into the picture?

Why Make a Smoothie?

All the nutrients that the greens possess are stored inside the cells of the plants, well, of course. These cells are made of cellulose, one of the strongest molecular structures on the planet. (It is this tough material that helps plants to survive outdoors.) For valuable nutrients to be released, these cell walls need to be ruptured. These wall are not ruprured unless we masticate our greens very well. Failing to do so jams our digestive system and makes greens unpalatable for the longer term.

Once again, an evolution-enthusiast reader would agree that our jaw muscles have frailed over past several centuries as we started eating cooked and other heavily processed foods. We biologically evolve to adapt to changes in our environment; we simply no longer need strong enough teeth and jaw muscles to masticate on rough fiber as our next of kin, chimpanzees, do!

So we resort to blending to do the "chewing" for us. Thus, is incarnated, a smoothie.

Another advantage of eating a blended food in the morning is that our digestive system is still waking up and we need to function at full throttle to get through our busy day. A holistic meal like this releases tremendous amounts of nutrients and energy in the body without engaging the digestive system heavily to break it down.

Have you ever juiced a celery and had to clean up the tangled mess of long, strong threads stuck in the juicing auger? That's fiber. It is the pulp left behind by our juicer when we juice fruits and vegetables. We saw the benefits of a fiber-rich diet above. In fact, it is the presence of fiber that makes a smoothie a complete meal.

Finally, in a nutshell,

Fruits + Greens => Blending => Green Smoothie (a holistic meal)

Now let's spend some time on getting started on green smoothies.

Delicious green smoothie recipes

These are some of my most favorite green smoothie recipes. (Yes, I'm very partial to kale.) Blend approximately 60% fruits, 40% greens, and water to the desired consistency to enjoy these combinations.

Apple + lemon + kale
Strawberry + banana + romaine
Pineapple + kale
Pineapple + parsley
Orange + banana + parsley
Kiwi + banana + celery
Banana + kale

orange + banana + parsley green smoothie

A Note on Equipment

Buying a VitaMix is not a precursor to making smoothies at home! A personal blender does just fine, in the beginning at least. I had to run my personal blender for much longer to blend the ingredients well. As I started enjoying these smoothies and they became an essential part of my everyday routine, I was motivated to invest in a VitaMix.

Green smoothie resources

Recipes

• http://www.rawfamily.com/recipes - The app didn't work very well on my Android phone but there are recipes as you scroll down on this page
• http://www.rawbayarea.com/raw-resources/recipes/#greensmoothie
• http://www.oatmealinmybowl.com/the-kitchen/30-delicious-green-smoothie-recipes/
• keep looking online, there are more recipes than one can try in a lifetime =).

Books

• Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko
• Green Smoothie Recolution by Boutenko, again
• Countless books on Amazon.com for {green smoothie recipes}

Next Steps

I will be writing a follow up post to revisit green smoothies to talk about many other ingredients that can be added to them for further enrichment, variety, and taste. In a second post, I'll be talking about all the positive changes these have brought in my life. For now, this extensive treatise should suffice to generate some serious interest in this promising breakfast option. To good health for everyone!

References:

• 12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Foods by Victoria Boutenko
• Rigorous online reading...

Deep Dive into Nutrition: The Superfood Catalog

So now that we know why raw foods are good for our body and mind, it is time to explore the nutritional gamut of the raw food world. When I first got acquainted with these superfoods, I was absolutely flabbergasted by the kind of nutrition Nature has provided us with in the herbs growing in the Peruvian Amazonas to China and the sea vegetables in our oceans, seas, and lakes!

Let's start by talking about 'Superfoods.' Simply put, superfoods are foods with high nutrient or phytochemical content that have huge health benefits. Blueberry (for anthocynanins, vitamin C, manganese, dietary fiber, etc.) and fish (for omega-3 fatty acids) are the two most common superfoods from the plant and animal worlds. In the recent years, this term has reduced to a mere (and misleading) marketing tool; but that's a different topic altogether for now...

In the rest of this journal entry, I will be introducing a large variety of superfoods that we can incorporate in our food rather easily to make it nutritionally dense AND delicious. It is worth noting here that these superfoods are in addition to the already well-known nuts, seeds, sprouts, etc. that are typically consumed raw.

Proteins

Hemp protein powder: Great nutrient profile - 45% protein, 43% fiber, 9% beneficial fats.

Buckwheat groats: High quality protein. Acts as a wheat (gluten sounds familiar?) substitute. Sprout and dehydrate to use as crispies to top salads, soups, sprinkle into wraps, etc.

Brown rice protein powder: Substitute for milk proteins. Somewhat chalky texture.

Spirulina: Microscopic blue-green algae. Tastes like seaweed with strong ocean aroma. High amounts of proteins, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals.

Boosts immune system, aids in digestion, makes body environment alkaline. Available as flake powder and pressed tablets.

Wheatgrass: Complete protein with about 30 enzymes, most vitamins and minerals needed for the human body, increases red blood cells, excellent detoxifying power, and the list continues. Best taken as "shots," though powder form can be used in smoothies (watch out for some nasty flavors - coming straight from my personal experience! =))

Golden berries: Originally from the Incan land. 16% protein, high in phosphorous, excellent source for vitamin A, C, B Complex, and bioflavonoids. Sweet and tart, enjoy as any berry or raisins in trail mix, cereals, cookies, salads.

Antioxidants

Matcha: Finely milled green tea packed with antioxidants - reported to boost metabolism, enhance mood, lower cholesterol, help balance blood sugar. Easy add to smoothies for anti-aging. In fact, half a teaspoon of matcha is an essential ingredient in my green smoothies every morning.

Goji berries: Comes from a shrub native to China. Increases longevity, has antioxidants and vitamins for brain health, prevents Alzheimer's. I personally love the flavor these berries add!

Alfalfa grass juice powder: Potential source of antioxidants and phytochemicals. Used in traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine to treat poor digestion, arthritis, kidney stones, other digestive issues. Sweet mild flavor. Super alkalizing. Use in smoothies and shakes to boost immune system.

Immunizers

Chlorella: Fresh water algae. Believed to boost immunity, help detox heavy metals, eliminate constipation, and body odor. Contains mostly protein, vitamins (E, B, C), and minerals (zinc, iron). Snack on tablets. Tastes like seaweed and green tea.

Maca: Peruvian superfood that rebuilds weak immune system and re-mineralizes poorly nourished bodies. Awesome source for increasing energy and building endurance.

Omega 3s

Hemp Oil: 3:1 ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 fatty acids, rich in amino-acids and vitamin E, helps in hair and nail growth, anti-inflammatory.

Sacha Inchi: Peruvian plant that grows small nuts rich in oil that is cholesterol free and Omega 3 rich. Tasty source of vitamin A/E. High in protein, rich in nonessential amino acids, strong nutty flavor similar to hemp oil. Can be used as any oil in dressings, sauces, soups. Use sparingly due to strong flavor.

Fat Blast

Coconut oil: It has special fats called medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) that can break down health fats leading to burning of energy. Also increases HDL and resistance to infection causing viruses and bacteria. It was quite a surprise for me to see coconut oil being abundantly used in detox plans. Stay tuned for a post on detoxing.

Cacao nibs and powder: Yes, chocolate, in its purest form, is a great aid to weight-loss. It has certain enzyme inhibitors that dimish appetite too. Also a great source of sulphur and manganese.

Sea vegetables

Nori, kelp, hijiki, wakame, kombu, dulse: One of the best sources of iodine, health-promoting vitamin K and folate. Nori has also been known to assist in weight-loss. In general, these see vegetables decrease inflammation, decrease LDL, anti-coagulate the blood, help fight cancers, and the thyroid in hormone balance.

Oils:

Flax oil: Low in cholesterol, anti-inflammatory, cancer fighting, etc.

Sesame oil: Helps in diabetes and lowers high blood pressure. Also known to assist in multiple sclerosis and cancer.

30 times for Vitamin C than oranges and lemons?

Camu Camu: Plant growing along the rivers and lakes of Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela. 30 times more vitamin C than oranges and lemons. It's a Dry pink powder - add to juices and smoothies for fruity, semi-sweet, acidic flavor.

22 times more iron that spinach?!

Barley grass juice powder: 22 times more iron than spinach, calcium, protein. Everything from aging to weight-loss, mild sweet flavor for smoothies, shake.

References:
"Ani's 15-Day Fat Blast" by Ani Phyo
Countless other material that I read in last several months...