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How to Start a Raw Food Diet for CleansingThe raw food diet is excellent for cleansing. To eat a raw diet means eating mostly raw fruits and vegetables and their juices, sprouted or soaked grains, seaweeds, grasses and soaked nuts. Some people will dry or dehydrate grains to make raw crackers, loaves, or a variety of other recipes. To transition to an all raw diet, it is best to add a couple items to your kitchen tools if you don't already own them. A food dehydrator An all raw food diet is also considered a high-enzyme diet. Enzymes play a major roll in your day-to-day living along with digestion. Every thought you have and every move you make, including a heartbeat requires enzyme activity. It is believed by “raw fooders” that eating all raw foods high in their own enzymes will require less of your body’s enzymes to digest. Therefore, your own body’s enzymes may be used for other things such as healing and repair. It is well known that an acid state is an invitation to degenerative disease. Meats, breads, sodas, alcohol and processed foods are all acidic and degenerative for the body. Eating a raw food diet has helped many people achieve optimal health by bringing balance to the body. On a cellular level, it will help your body become alkaline. Raw fruits and vegetables are full of live enzymes, but eating only these is not as easy as it may sound. If your body is used to a cooked diet that included processed foods, you may find your transition to a raw food diet full of healing crisis. When eating almost all cooked and processed foods, the digestion may drastically slow down. This is proven by the fact that many people who have this diet will feel gassy, bloated or uncomfortable after eating too many raw vegetables. It is best to start eating only raw foods for 50% of your meals and slowly raising the percentage of raw over time. Try eating mostly raw around the noontime when your digestive enzymes are at their peak. Then in the evening have a small raw vegetable salad with your meal of cooked veggies and protein. Juice - To help with your transition to an all raw food diet, drink a couple glasses of raw vegetable juice and a little fresh-made fruit juice. These juices are packed with nutrition and will ensure that you do not leave a nutritional deficit. In addition, fresh vegetables juices will help strengthen your digestion so your body can break down the other raw foods. For many people, their juicer will create the center of their diet while they get used to preparing other raw meals. For example, a Champion Juicer Salads - There are an endless number of the kinds of salads you can make. Keep your raw food diet interesting by using a variety of flavors and colors. Start with a pile of leafy greens, knowing that there are more than a couple kinds of lettuce. You can use romaine, arugula, spinach, baby spinach, butter lettuce, green leaf lettuce, a spring-mix and so on. Finely chop broccoli, cauliflower, or jicima. Try shredding carrots, cucumber or radishes for a topping. For salad dressing, use lemon and a little olive oil (I know, it’s not raw). Try the following in a blender: Dressing #1: 1 cup fresh pineapple juice, small spoon of fresh ginger juice (use a juicer for this) and a little sesame oil. Dressing #2: 1-2 pitted dates, 1/2 cucumber and 1/2 lemon juice in a blender Experiment and create your own using fresh fruit juices as a base and adding your own freshly chopped herbs. Protein sources for an all raw food diet will come from nuts, seeds, and sprouts. When using seeds, nuts or grains, soak them beforehand. This increases the nutrient value up to 400 times. If you are going to use these for a recipe for soups, dressings or seed loaves, you must soak them first. Use quart or gallon size glass jars for sprouting. Afterwards use your nuts, seeds or grains right away or in many cases the jar may be covered and placed in your refrigerator for a short time until you are ready to use them. Generally soak your seeds or nuts in twice the amount of water that you have of the products. (Ex: 1 cup seed to 2 cups water) Soak the allotted time then rinse and store in the refrigerator. I also like to rinse my water every 2 or 3 hours while soaking. If you have a raw recipe that requires soaked seeds or nuts, these guidelines will help if instructions are not given in the recipe. Sprouting is an important part of a raw food diet. Sprouts are considered to be the perfect food by many. They are full of nutrition and packed with healthy, no-fat protein. You can buy many types of sprouts in stores, such as alfalfa, radish and wheatgrass. Many people prefer to sprout their own either in a nursery flat or jars. Some grains such as barley and buckwheat can be soil grown for their fresh baby grass or sprouted in a jar for extra nutrition to be used in recipes. You may sprout these in water as typical for sprouting or move them into soil as soon as you see the green so that you can grow the grass. To sprout in a jar, put the seed or grain in a jar to soak in water. Drain and rinse regularly until the sprout reaches the ideal length, which could take 1-5 days, depending upon the sprout used. Then slow the growth by refrigerating. If you decide to go all out and use an all-raw diet, you should experiment with food combining. There are proteins and starches that would be better to not combine for optimal digestion. Explore your local bookstore or the internet to learn more about raw food diets. Resources for learning about eating raw: Stay in Touch and Stay Healthy - Sign up for the Free SCC Newsletter . You will receive a password that gives you access to a member's area with exclusive articles, special offers and free downloads just for our Springclean health and cleansing community. Benefits of signing up include:
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and a juicer may be the foundation of your non-cooking recipes for now. You might also want to purchase a
