Rawsome!: Maximizing Health, Energy, and Culinary Delight With the Raw Foods Diet 
asked by stix on November 9, 2006 4:09 AM
A raw foods diet advocates exactly that: raw foods. No cooking, no grilling, no steaming, no application of heat of any kind. Why? Because eating food closest to its natural state engenders a tremendous exchange of energy between food and body. The result, over time, is a feeling of buoyant, radiant health. Tackling head-on the skepticism likely to greet proponents of what the world sees as a "fad" diet, renowned nutritionist and long-time raw-foods adherent Brigitte Mars presents historical data, case studies, and scientific evidence confirming the efficacy of raw foods diets in: Increasing energy levels Boosting immune system function Improving digestive function Dispelling depression Supporting emotional stability Clearing the skin Sustaining overall good health In addition, Mars points out the environmental benefits of the raw foods diet, making a case for eating raw foods as a means of reducing waste, making the most of agricultural practice, and reducing the human footprint on the earth. Whether the reader wants to jump right into an all-raw diet or just wants to introduce more raw foods into the diet, Mars offers gentle encouragement and practical instruction. Readers will find advice on planning a balanced diet to meet their nutritional needs, combining foods for best effect, preserving raw foods, equipping the raw kitchen, sprouting, juicing, and every other technique that makes the raw foods diet simple, delicious, and healthful. In-depth profiles describe the nutritional and health benefits of hundreds of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seasonings. Perhaps most important, Mars provides more than 200 kitchen-tested, real-people-approved raw foods recipes. Under Mars_s instruction, readers will enjoy making everything from juices and shakes to salads, soups, dressings, yogurts, crackers, spreads, dips, vegetable burgers, curries, vegetable pastas, wraps, and more.
Reviews
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I am not entirely sure how I stummbled into raw foods but I am so grateful that I did.
Brigitte's book was one of the first that I picked up and a really great start for beginners. I was instantly converted reading her book. Although I have been a vegan for some time.. I did not feel entirely healthy. Brigitte's book really opened my eyes to eliminating all that processed foods (and even all those cooked veggies that I thought were so healthy for me!) and start really eating natural.
If you think you already eat healthy now.. read this book and you will be completely shocked! Not only is the introduction to raw foods she gives amazing and empowering, but her recipes are wonderful (and simple) for beginners. I do not have a dehydrator, but a lot of the recipes don't require it. I now drink homemade raw almond milk daily. I absolutely LOVE her recipe for Easy Almond Cheese Spread! Everyone I give it to can't get over it. Her shakes are absolutely fabulous I loved the Mango Lassi and Purple Haze. Brigitte has opened me to a whole new way of eating and all new foods that I probably never would have otherwise tried (I had never eaten almonds ever or drank coconut water! yummy!) Best of all even though I have only been eating about 75% raw for the past two weeks I am already noticing an improvement in my health. It is so exciting to know that for the first time in your life you are really doing what's right and natural for your body! I can't imagine ever going back to my old eating habits. If Brigitte's recipes weren't so good.. I may have given up on the whole raw food thing (as there are other gourmet raw recipe books out there that are so discouraging for newbies!). I take this book everywhere with me...it really is wonderful and I will recommend it to anyone who really has a genuine interest in being healthy. I cannot wait to see my health continue to improve.
Brigitte's book was one of the first that I picked up and a really great start for beginners. I was instantly converted reading her book. Although I have been a vegan for some time.. I did not feel entirely healthy. Brigitte's book really opened my eyes to eliminating all that processed foods (and even all those cooked veggies that I thought were so healthy for me!) and start really eating natural.
If you think you already eat healthy now.. read this book and you will be completely shocked! Not only is the introduction to raw foods she gives amazing and empowering, but her recipes are wonderful (and simple) for beginners. I do not have a dehydrator, but a lot of the recipes don't require it. I now drink homemade raw almond milk daily. I absolutely LOVE her recipe for Easy Almond Cheese Spread! Everyone I give it to can't get over it. Her shakes are absolutely fabulous I loved the Mango Lassi and Purple Haze. Brigitte has opened me to a whole new way of eating and all new foods that I probably never would have otherwise tried (I had never eaten almonds ever or drank coconut water! yummy!) Best of all even though I have only been eating about 75% raw for the past two weeks I am already noticing an improvement in my health. It is so exciting to know that for the first time in your life you are really doing what's right and natural for your body! I can't imagine ever going back to my old eating habits. If Brigitte's recipes weren't so good.. I may have given up on the whole raw food thing (as there are other gourmet raw recipe books out there that are so discouraging for newbies!). I take this book everywhere with me...it really is wonderful and I will recommend it to anyone who really has a genuine interest in being healthy. I cannot wait to see my health continue to improve.
reviewed by allnet on November 19, 2006 1:41 PM
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I really like all the info. It is really easy for a new raw-foodist!
reviewed by bricktop on November 27, 2006 4:41 PM
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If you can only get one Raw Food book--this is it! It includes sprouting charts, drying times for dried foods, Lists of every vitamin and mineral with the corresponding foods--even an alkaline/acidity chart. The recipes are simple. If you wnat more gourmet type stuff, I suggest Juliano's RAW. But this book is a must for every Raw kitchen--the most accessible Raw food book I've come across, and Thank You Brigette Mars for including research on uncooked foods--good research--there's a lot of hocus-pocus, magical thinking out there in the Raw Food World, and this is a breath of fresh air, because it's smart and straight forward.
reviewed by titanium7 on November 29, 2006 1:55 AM
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I found and bought this book a few months after reading Kevin Trudeau's Natural Cures book which has finally allowed me to be cured forever of crohn's disease which I had been fooled into beleiving was incurable by the medical community, so I would highly recommend the Natural Cures book to anyone fooled into thinking their disease in incurable (hint: 100% of chronic diseases are direct results of poor food choices, and the one and only cure is to switch to a healthy diet, which is well proven to cure all chronic diseases including cancer).
To get on to Rawsome!, I bought this expecting to find recipes for cold soups, salads, and not much more. To my amazement, there are recipes for pizza, lasagna, samosas, "meat" balls, cheese imitation, pancakes, chips. Even more to my amazement, is that most of these taste WAY better than their "real" equivalent, and they are very filling. For example, the chips which are awesome and crispy like real chips, taste much better, yet I can only eat a few at a time because they are so nutritious.
The secret to making these foods raw but with the taste and texture of cooked foods is dehydration, rather than cooking at 350 F for 30 minutes for example, it's dehydrated at 110 F for 12-24 hours, which preserves the vitamins, enzymes and other nutritional parts of the food. Sure, it may seem long, but the result is great tasting, disease-preventing food.
I can easily see myself eating mostly if not only recipes from this book from now on. They taste awesome, a cheap to make, and extremely healthy. Having given myself crohn's disease at the age of 17 through a terrible toxic diet loaded with dairy and sugar (2 very deadly poisons to the human body), I now understand the importance of healthy eating and this recipe book lets me eat healthy great tasting food for cheap.
One thing you'll notice is that many of these recipes can take 24 to 48 hours to make, it takes very little of your time though. For example, for the pancakes, you must soak nuts in water for 12 hours, then dehydrate them another 12 hours, then mix all ingredients, then make the pancakes on dehydrator sheets, and dehydrate 12 hours, turn around, dehydrate another 12 hours. That's 48 hours to make pancakes! But if you do one recipe per day, you will always have a constant supply of many recipes as one recipe makes quite a bit. So you can make pancakes on mondays, chips on tuesdays, samosas on wednesdays, etc and always have a bit of everything available, so I do not see this as a problem at all, quite the opposite, since the recipes take so little of your time, it will save you time compared to normal cooking. You also won't have baked on foods that are hard to wash. So don't expect recipes you can start a few hours before guests arrive, because they'll be done days after your guests leave, but many recipes can be done in a few minutes also, so there's still many choices for quick meals, like the raw pasta which can be made form start to finish including cleaning in no more than 5-7 minutes, as it is only grated and blended vegetables.
Of course, expect to buy a dehydrator as it is required for many of the recipes. Luckily, my counter top convetion oven has a dehydrate mode, but it is "hard coded" to 150 F, which is too hot and cooks the food slightly, eventually, I will buy the Excalibur dehydrator the author recommends to make perfect dehydrated meals as I know I will be dehydrating almost daily from now on (and have since I got the book).
If you want to not only have a disease-free life, but save money on groceries (the author claims a 50-80% reduction in grocery costs by following a raw vegan diet, indeed, I found myself comming out of the grocery store with many more bags and a much smaller total on the receipt, and that's if you buy organic, which I'd recommend, why eat healthy foods loaded with cancer causing chemicals?), I would highly recommend this book. It will also help save the environment as you will not be buying much packaged/boxed foods.
To get on to Rawsome!, I bought this expecting to find recipes for cold soups, salads, and not much more. To my amazement, there are recipes for pizza, lasagna, samosas, "meat" balls, cheese imitation, pancakes, chips. Even more to my amazement, is that most of these taste WAY better than their "real" equivalent, and they are very filling. For example, the chips which are awesome and crispy like real chips, taste much better, yet I can only eat a few at a time because they are so nutritious.
The secret to making these foods raw but with the taste and texture of cooked foods is dehydration, rather than cooking at 350 F for 30 minutes for example, it's dehydrated at 110 F for 12-24 hours, which preserves the vitamins, enzymes and other nutritional parts of the food. Sure, it may seem long, but the result is great tasting, disease-preventing food.
I can easily see myself eating mostly if not only recipes from this book from now on. They taste awesome, a cheap to make, and extremely healthy. Having given myself crohn's disease at the age of 17 through a terrible toxic diet loaded with dairy and sugar (2 very deadly poisons to the human body), I now understand the importance of healthy eating and this recipe book lets me eat healthy great tasting food for cheap.
One thing you'll notice is that many of these recipes can take 24 to 48 hours to make, it takes very little of your time though. For example, for the pancakes, you must soak nuts in water for 12 hours, then dehydrate them another 12 hours, then mix all ingredients, then make the pancakes on dehydrator sheets, and dehydrate 12 hours, turn around, dehydrate another 12 hours. That's 48 hours to make pancakes! But if you do one recipe per day, you will always have a constant supply of many recipes as one recipe makes quite a bit. So you can make pancakes on mondays, chips on tuesdays, samosas on wednesdays, etc and always have a bit of everything available, so I do not see this as a problem at all, quite the opposite, since the recipes take so little of your time, it will save you time compared to normal cooking. You also won't have baked on foods that are hard to wash. So don't expect recipes you can start a few hours before guests arrive, because they'll be done days after your guests leave, but many recipes can be done in a few minutes also, so there's still many choices for quick meals, like the raw pasta which can be made form start to finish including cleaning in no more than 5-7 minutes, as it is only grated and blended vegetables.
Of course, expect to buy a dehydrator as it is required for many of the recipes. Luckily, my counter top convetion oven has a dehydrate mode, but it is "hard coded" to 150 F, which is too hot and cooks the food slightly, eventually, I will buy the Excalibur dehydrator the author recommends to make perfect dehydrated meals as I know I will be dehydrating almost daily from now on (and have since I got the book).
If you want to not only have a disease-free life, but save money on groceries (the author claims a 50-80% reduction in grocery costs by following a raw vegan diet, indeed, I found myself comming out of the grocery store with many more bags and a much smaller total on the receipt, and that's if you buy organic, which I'd recommend, why eat healthy foods loaded with cancer causing chemicals?), I would highly recommend this book. It will also help save the environment as you will not be buying much packaged/boxed foods.
reviewed by perfectstorm on November 29, 2006 4:36 AM
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This well-written book not only has many great recipes and suggestions for the best possible diet, but a very complete complete encyclopedia of vegetables, herbs, grains, and even bee products! I have enjoyed it immensely.
reviewed by pits on November 29, 2006 5:47 AM