The Raw Food Movement: One Road to a Healthier Life

While talking to a pastry chef friend of mine recently about the upcoming plans for Thanksgiving dinner, she mentioned that she was going to whip up a dessert for her mother using only raw foods. When I raised my eyebrows over the words “raw foods” she explained that a few years ago her mother found her stomach distended so far she could barely stand and ended up spending a year in and out of the hospital having multiple tests to figure out what the problem was. A diagnosis was never made but knowing that something must have triggered her gastrointestinal problems, she turned to the one thing she could change: her diet. After trying the raw food regimen, she hasn’t had another health problem.

The raw food movement—which requires that food be cooked below 115 degrees Fahrenheit—includes not only what most people think of as “raw” such as celery sticks and fresh picked apples, but also refers to foods that have not been processed and still have natural enzymes. Once foods are cooked above 116 degrees, they start to lose their enzymes, lowering their nutritional value. Enzymes in natural foods help the digestive system break the food down in order to absorb nutrients. Raw foods contain alkalizing agents which help the body to purge dangerous toxins and chemicals out of its system. Besides vegetables and fruits, other raw food categories include herbs and oils, seeds and nuts, olives and nuts, wheatgrass, maple and teas.

Vegetarianism has long been a healthy diet followed by many but there are multiple branches of the being a vegetarian, one of them being the raw food specialty. There are also branches off of the raw food sector as well, also dedicated to the health of your body: Fruitarians who mostly eat fruits, Sproutarians mostly eat sprouts, and Juicearian followers mostly drink fresh juice.

Many people believe that health problems arise by faulty food intake such as chemicals, preservatives, pesticides, artificial additives, and even cooking can alter the state of foods by releasing free radicals into the food, which are a cause of cancer. A raw food diet is easier on the wallet and on the clock with little to no preparation time, raw foods tend to have more flavor and are better quality. Raw foods also protect the planet by using less energy and packaging as well as saving you the cleanup and those pesky oven burns.

This week a woman from the U.K. recently came out in the media with her story about how she lost over 160 pounds on the raw food diet. As a preteen, Angela Stokes developed an underactive thyroid—symptoms in which a lack of energy creates a lower metabolism that keeps the body from burning calories—and found her small frame carrying around 294 pounds by age 21. In the year 2000, when her weight had reached its heaviest and she was in fear of diabetes, she went to work, manually working around the world on farms hiding her weight behind her busy life. Two years later she got some help when a friend handed her The Raw Family a book about the raw food diet to improve health.

Stokes credits the book with revolutionizing her life, “I read the whole book in one go . I was utterly absorbed by the raw lifestyle. I had never bothered with structured 'diets' or slimming plans, and now I felt like I knew why—this was the answer I'd been waiting for. It made complete sense to me, a healthy, simple life of raw food, in tune with nature, shorter food preparation times, less washing up, less kitchen equipment, natural skin care and medicine.” Stokes calls this her “Raw Reform” with a website complete with before and after pictures. To date, Stokes has written five books about her transformation and adopting a healthy raw food lifestyle.

A raw food Thanksgiving would be difficult in my family, but with a little determination and a lot of imagination, conjuring up some tasty vegetable casseroles and mixed fruit pies are sometimes all a person can eat. Raw foodism isn’t for everyone and may not appeal to some people—maybe those that stay far away from the veggie trays at cocktail parties or detest wheatgrass smoothie bars—but experimenting with raw foods and finding the right balance may be helpful to solve a health problem or to give vitality to your life and if it works, for that you can be thankful.