Achieve Peak Health and Fitness with the Raw Food Diet!

Hello everyone.  Today’s article is a guest post from Shane Quigley – the features editor from JustSlimming.com – a fantastic, free online weight loss and slimming magazine which has some excellent content provided by qualified physicians and nutritionists.

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The raw food diet is becoming increasingly popular as more and more people are striving to become healthier and lose weight with a natural approach. Eating raw foods might sound odd at first, but it’s believed that cooking foods above certain temperatures kills important enzymes and just as importantly takes the “life force” out of the food. Maintaining a raw food diet is a healthy way to lose weight and is even said to increase the power of the immune system. Some raw food patrons are strictly vegan while others still consume raw meat and un-pasteurized dairy products.

There are seemingly infinite meal possibilities with this plan and, believe it or not, you will probably end up consuming more food than you normally would with cooked meals. Some of the food preparation techniques require planning, like sprouting rice or grass seed, but the end result is packed with important nutrients and tastes great too. Since cooking is not an option there is a lot of emphasis on juicing, blending and dehydrating different foods. However, it’s not necessary to have a kitchen full of expensive appliances to reap the benefits of a raw food diet. The main idea is to avoid cooking, so chopping and cutting will do just fine if you don’t have the funds to spend on machines.

Meals range from basic fruit salads to pasta made from thin strand of squash topped with home-made marinara sauce. As the diet becomes more popular the list of recipes is ever increasing. Un-cooked soups like Gazpacho soup or carrot juiced base soups are popular. Quick snacks like lettuce wraps and guacamole are also possible. One of the staples found in nearly all the raw food meal plans is the “green smoothie”. There are tons of recipes for different green smoothies but they all follow the basic guidelines of half veggies, half fruit, water and something like lemon or ginger for that extra zing.

All of these meals sound great and I’m sure your thinking, “no lettuce wrap could ever fill me up”. While on the raw food diet you will most likely eat much more food than you do on your normal cooked diet. The interesting part about it all is you will consistently lose weight despite the increase in food intake. This is achieved by eating mainly alkaline foods as opposed to the fatty acidic foods in cooked meals. So if you love to eat and want to lose, this diet is ideal for you.

Article kindly supplied by JustSlimming.com