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Apr 10th, 2006 - 12:14:17 |
The potluck lunch today at Portland, Oregon, caterer Stacie Cohen's house centers on her specialty, "lasagna" -a colorful, layered concoction that's nothing like traditional lasagna. For dessert there's a luscious-looking "cherry cheesecake," compliments of 22year-old Dylan Fussell, a professionally trained chef.
But first the appetizer: cinnamon-orange truffles cut in dark fudge-like squares. Granted, it's not your typical appetizer, but then, this isn't your typical meal. Not by a long shot.
The red, golden and green entrée isn't truly lasagna, and the cheesecake certainly is no such thing. As for the truffles, well, they're not really truffles either.
This is a meal of raw and living foods. That is, nothing has been cooked or preserved. There's no meat, poultry, fish or dairy. Everything comes out of the garden, off the vine or from a tree.
"A raw and living food diet is a commitment to feeding our body with foods that remain exactly as nature has given them to us," says Victoria Jayne, president of the International Raw and Living Foods Association. "When you cook foods, you kill the life forces in them-the enzymes, vitamins, minerals and protein-and the food no longer supports life. Living foods promote life, but dead foods don't. It's profoundly simple."
In truth, it takes something of an education to fully understand the raw food diet. Raw, of course means exactly that: an organic apple picked ripe from the tree; lettuce straight from the garden; tomato off the vine. Food deemed "living," however, are actually sprouted, a process that involves soaking seeds, nuts, legumes and grains in water, then drying them.
"Sprouting means that when you take it into your body, it's still growing," Jayne says. Sprouting also softens seeds and grains so you can use them to make seed cheese, bread and crackers. Lastly, there's fermenting, which introduces friendly bacteria to foods. "The purpose of fermenting is to change the flavor. Plus, it helps keep your colon healthy."
And health, at least in part, is what the raw food diet is all about.
Lively Lifestyle
Cohen, a 46-year-old grandmother whose childhood revolved around her family's delicatessen, was introduced to the raw food lifestyle six years ago after suffering from the effects of lead poisoning for 18 years. "My organs were shutting down," she says. "The pain was so bad I was ready to take my life." She visited 37 doctors. She tried a vegetarian diet; she tried acupuncture. "Nothing took the pain away until I found raw foods," she says. "Within nine months, I was almost totally free from the pain and symptoms."
Likewise, Cherie Soria, author of Angel Foods and founder of the Living Light Culinary Arts Institute-the world's only raw foods school-credits raw foods with healing her carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. And Tolentin Chan, co-owner of Quintessence, a raw restaurant in New York City, says the diet literally changed her life.
I was starting to feel my age," Tolentin says. "I had a thyroid imbalance, I was gaining weight, I had gas in my stomach and I've always had asthma. After I started the diet, mv health completely changed. I have my youth back. I don't have asthma anymore. I used to get a cold or a virus four or five times a year. My immune system was really poor. Now I don't get sick at all."
Actress and former Golden Girls star Rue McClanahan is also a believer. She learned of the diet seven years ago when an acquaintance, noting her lack of energy, referred her to the Optimum Health Institute, a nonprofit center in Austin, Texas, and San Diego, California, which teaches guests the raw foods lifestyle.
"That was the beginning," McClanahan, 67, says. "I always stay two to five weeks depending upon what their program is, how much time I have and how ambitious I feel. It's a wonderful thing to do for your body. I've learned that you spend about 80 percent of body energy digesting cooked food. That leaves 20 percent for everything else, including the immune system."
At home, she follows the diet at breakfast and lunch, eating standard vegetarian fare for dinner. However, McClanahan, a five-year breast cancer survivor, notes that her oncologist, also a nutritionist, recommends that she eat fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids at least once a week.
Since starting the raw diet, McClanahan says, "I've noticed a change in my energy and certainly in my weight. It's amazing how much better I feel."
Culinary Cure-all?
It's no secret that fresh fruits and vegetables are good for you, but do they really have the power to heal, to change lives?
Absolutely, says Dr. Gabriel Cousens, founder of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center and author of several books, including Conscious Eating. "The diet works for many reasons. You get double the protein; you get 70 to 80 percent more vitamins and minerals per helping, and you get all the phytochemicals and enzymes that cooking destroys.
"Plus, live food has a much stronger energetic field. When we microwave or cook food, we destroy its energetic field-the electron clouds present in some fatty acids. Flaxseed, for example, has a tremendous amount of electron energy. When you cook it, you destroy that energy. You actually change the shape of the fatty acid. When that shape is changed, the cell membranes don't work as well. Raw fats don't cause clogging of the arteries. The Eskimos, who ate excessive amounts of raw blubber, never developed heart disease. When they began to cook their food, their rate of heart disease and high blood pressure skyrocketed. Raw foods also help cleanse the body of impurities. That's another reason why eating raw foods works."
Time-tested
The raw food diet, though new to many, has history on its side.
It started with the ancient Greeks," says Cousens. "After studying for a time with the Essenes-an ancient Jewish sect of ascetics and mystics - Pythagoras, the sixth century BC philosopher and mathematician, returned to Greece as a believer in live foods. And according to Herodotus, the father of history, the Pelagasians lived to be around the age of 200 years on a diet of raw foods.
Dr. Max Bircher-Benner read Pythagoras' work, decided to heal himself and used raw foods in his Swiss clinic in the 1890s, His contemporary, Dr. Max Gerson, used raw foods to core Albert Scbweitzer of diabetes. He also cured Schweitzer's wife of tuberculosis of the skin. Then there was Dr. Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, who ran a live food clinic in Mexico from 1937 to 1970. People have used this diet for literally thousands of years."
ln more recent times, one of the names commonly associated with the diet is Dr. Ann Wigmore. Founder of the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute in Puerto Rico, and the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston-now the Ann Wigniore Foundation in New Mexico-Wigmore dedicated her life to teaching others about living foods. She is credited with developing and introducing a method of indoor gardening (for sprouting). Wigmore died at the age of 84 in a fire at the Boston center.
"Before Dr. Wigmore passed away, I talked to her about how she ate," says Puerto Rico center director Leola Brooks. "She would have a maximum of one-half cup of energy soup-which consisted of sunflower greens, buckwheat lettuce, seaweed and carrot or apple-part of a papaya, coconut water and Rejuvelac, a fermented grain beverage she developed. Wigmore's body was so healthy and energized from years and years of following her diet and lifestyle that she required very little food.
"She proposed a club for people who live to be at least 120. She thought that if you took responsibility for your own health, you could live that long. We believe she would have made it, too, if she hadn't attempted to put that fire out herself and been overcome with smoke."
But good health isn't the diet's only attraction. Most dedicated followers place equal importance on spiritual gain. The Optimum Health Institute is a mission of the Free Sacred Trinity Church, and at centers such as the Ann Wigmore Institute, meditation and silent meals are part of the daily practice.
"Food isn't a spiritual path," says Jayne. "You can't eat your way to God. But with a healthy body you can see God is the guidance. If you're sick, it's hard to focus on your spiritual path."
Dietary drawbacks
Critics, however, say the diet is too extreme to be healthy or practical.
"It's pretty out there,' says Julie Walsh, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. "It's not supported by scientific literature at all. Man has used fire to cook food for ages. To refrain from heating or processing foods could even be risky. Some studies also suggest that cooked tomatoes release more phytonutrients than raw ones. The lycopene found in tomatoes is a strong antioxidant linked to preventing several different diseases-and it's released with heat."
Diane Stadler, a registered dietitian and assistant professor at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, agrees that the diet is extreme. But she believes that it can be beneficial when practiced in moderation-perhaps several times a week. "It can be a very healthful diet for someone who's already healthy. It's strongly based on fruits, vegetables and grains, which is what the majority of nutritionists recommend."
Stadler does, however, take issue with claims of miraculous recovery. "Some raw food Web sites suggest that you can treat certain chronic diseases by consuming a raw food diet," she says. That frightens me as a medical professional. Some people will accept that as truth and delay seeking appropriate diagnosis and treatment. And that could seriously impact long-term well-being."
For those interested in trying the diet, Living Light founder Soria suggests thinking of it not as taking food away, but adding food in. "You can add more raw foods to your diet, eat more salad, eat more fruit. I tell people to have something raw with every meal. 1f they can't eat one entirely raw meal, say a salad for lunch or fruit for breakfast, they can have two breakfasts- fruit at one and something else later if they feel they need it. If you have something raw for each meal, you're already way ahead of the game.
Uncooked excitement
There's one other criticism of the raw food diet, summed up with two damning words: boring and bland. How, skeptics ask, can anything so simple actually taste good?
The diet's followers say that the proof is in the pudding.
"I just prepared a meal for a group," says potluck host Cohen. "I made chili rellenos, mole sauce, pineapple salsa, salad and fruit parfait with blended bananas and nectarines, topped with strawberries, dates and lemon juice, then covered with a chocolate sauce. It definitely wasn't bland."
But Cohen, who notes that in the past five weeks of potlucks, 20 to 30 visitors have been first-timers, says newcomers to the diet may need to rethink their ideas about food.
"It's really about changing the taste buds and changing our awareness of food. We're so conditioned to overprocessed foods and flavorings that we don't know true taste. Most people think the raw food diet is about picking up a piece of fruit, but it's really about getting your taste buds acclimated to the real food we're eating."
Recipe photography courtesy of Angel Foods: Healthy Recipes for
Heavenly Bodies by Cherie Soria, Heartstar Productions.
For more information about raw foods, contact:
The International Raw and Living Foods Association
503.293.3039
Living Light Culinary Arts Institute
rawfoodchef.com
Optimum Health Institute
Optimumhealth .org
Hippocrates Health Institute
hippocratesinst.com
Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute
annwigmore.org
Tabias, L. (2002, November). Au Natural. Better Nutrition, 35-38.
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