Do I Have to Eat All Raw Foods On a Raw Food Diet?
A diet should consist of at least 75% raw foods – fruits, vegetables, sprouts and so on – to be considered a raw food diet. Eating raw, living fruits and vegetables is considered the best way to get the essential vitamins and food enzymes that are contained in our foods. Food enzymes are destroyed by high heat (above 116F) in the cooking process.
Even though we aren’t cooking, there is still preparation involved in a raw food diet: fruits and vegetables are juiced; beans, seeds and grains are sprouted; and dried fruits and nuts are soaked to make them more palatable or for use in recipes. A food dehydrator is often used to create dried fruits and vegetables; although it uses hot air on the food, the temperature never goes above 116F.
Is it necessary to follow the raw food regimen all the time? No, you don’t have to eat 100% raw foods to start seeing benefits, but it’s certainly worth the effort to get as much raw, living food in your meals as possible. Snacking at work is a great place to start – instead of heading for chips or a candy bar, try keeping a bag of raisins and some carrot sticks at your desk. Packaged, pre-sliced fruits and vegetables have become a much more common find in grocery stores, so take advantage of that convenience.
Because it’s so easy to pick up something from the snack machine at work, people have been resistant to making the change to healthier eating. True, it does take more effort and time to slice up fruits and vegetables to take to work. But with more supermarkets seeing the raw fruit trend and taking it seriously, there’s no reason not to stock up on the items they provide – packaged carrot or celery sticks, sliced apples, and dried fruits are all available at most grocery stores now.
Now, organic foods are the best option, and these ‘convenience’ raw foods aren’t always organic. But eating anything raw is much better than getting some highly processed, cooked food. When you can, slice and prepare your own healthy snacks from organic fruits and veggies. But if you’re pressed for time, don’t stress about it or give up, thinking you can’t do it. Any foods from the produce section at the supermarket will be better than what you get from the snack machine or a fast food joint.
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