Most people, men and women alike have heard about all of the great benefits of the raw food diet, but many people are still not sure to exactly what it is and how they personally benefit from eating raw foods.

When you are first considering getting into eating a raw food diet, you’re probably at a point in your life where you’re feeling a little sluggish or that something in your body is feeling “off.” The fact is that we’re tired, overweight, burnt out and feeling stressed.

A key problem here is that we aren’t getting the proper nutrition and by you looking at a raw food diet now is your body telling you it is lacking important nutrients that it desperately needs.

A raw food diet doesn’t mean you have to go all out vegetarian either. Many raw food eaters will even go as far as eating raw meats and dairy products but this can be a bit risky so we’re just going to stick to the safer fruits and vegetables here.

Great Benefits Obtained on a Raw Food Diet

When you go grocery shopping you might have all of the right intentions in the world of buying good and healthy vegetables and fruits, thinking you’re getting a decent variety of the right vitamins and minerals your body needs. Then you bring your bounty home and destroy those beneficial nutrients by cooking them to death.

The way you prepare your foods can actually destroy most of those valuable nutritional benefits that you so proudly loaded into your grocery cart and brought home. Vitamins like Vitamin C, important for boosting your immune system and Vitamin B which provides you with energy, are drastically reduced by heating and cooking your food. If you must cook them a quick blanch is recommended for the best nutrient preservation.

Losing Weight on a Raw Food Diet

Raw food diets can help you lose weight too. Fruits and vegetables in general are very filling but even better at satisfying our hunger when eaten in their raw state as opposed to cooking them.

Within reason, you can have an unlimited amount raw fruits and vegetables that are full of fiber and provide you with a positive catalyst for losing weight. And all that fiber and the naturally occurring digestive enzymes make a great colon cleanser which in its own is a strong helping hand in maintaining a good healthy weight.

Gaining Energy with a Raw Food Diet

Another benefit of eating a raw food diet is energy gain. Most raw food lovers will choose a wide variety of foods to implement into their diet. The best thing that you can do is to try to incorporate every color of the rainbow that you can to maximize your exposure to vitamins, minerals and phyto-nutrients.

Typically, the larger variety of colors you choose, the larger the number of fatigue-fighting nutrients that are available to your body.

Slowing down aging is another perk to eating your food in the raw. Anytime we alter our foods by cooking, even cutting, their natural benefits begin breaking down. You simply can not get any better food than picking it raw off of the plant and immediately eating it. Once picked from the plant the breakdown of nutrients begins. So the fresher picked and the faster eaten once cut up or juiced the better off you are.

One common benefit that people come to realize is all those antioxidants and anti aging rewards you get when consuming raw food. You can actually see these benefits occur in health of your skin. Shortly after you begin your raw food diet you’ll likely start to notice improvements to your skin and you can trust that similar benefits are happening inside your body as well.

Dangers of Pursuing a Raw Food Diet

A true “hard-core” raw food diet isn’t only about vegetarian diet with fruits and vegetables, nuts and grains. It also involves the eating of uncooked meat, fish, unpasteurized milk (and other dairy products), and raw eggs.

With proper food handling, this is usually not a problem for most people, but for people who have medical issues, pregnant or a weak immune system, a raw food diet may do you more harm than it does you good.

If you have any medical issues it’s a great idea to your medical go-to professional and ask them if a 100% raw food diet would help or be bad you. The last thing you want is to pursue the health benefits from a raw food diet and end up making a pre-existing condition worse.

There are also certain things you’ll need to keep in mind when eating raw foods. For example most people don’t know that the eyes and green patches on the skin of a potato hold toxins and need to be discarded. And that all fruits and veggies need to be washed well before consumption.

Tips for Scrubbing Your Raw Food Clean

Fill a 32 oz spray bottle with white distilled vinegar and dissolve ¼ cup of regular table salt to create a chemical and pesticide stripping solution that also does a wonderful job of killing many harmful microbes. Simply wash your veggies and fruits with clean water – spray the vinegar/salt solution on the produce using your hand to do a “soft scrub” – then re-rinse with clean water. This does a better job for less cost than many store bought solutions.

You’re after an improvement to your health and energy level and the last thing you want is some nasty bug or chemical residue to send you down the wrong road. Obtaining fresh ingredients from a reliable source is very important for your produce but even more so if you’re going on a full blown raw food diet.

Raw Food Diet Food Sources

There’s nothing quite like raw food that’s pulled right out of your own organic garden and eaten instantly after being washed. Next in line is organic produce grown by others locally followed by trucked-in organic produce.

Further down your list of choices is raw food that’s been grown by others using pesticides, irradiated killing good and bad microbes, or had chemical preservatives and shellacs added to them so they stay fresh and looking pretty on the grocery store shelf. These need to be cleaned thoroughly before consuming using your vinegar/salt solution above.

There’s no doubt about it that the absolute best way to ensure you’re eating the healthiest raw foods possible is to grow and harvest your own product, raise and butcher your own meat and gather your own milk and dairy items.

The thing is though, not everyone’s able to do that. Most of us are too busy earning a living and need to rely on others to grow and raise the food we eat. In this case the best thing is to find a local farmer’s market where the food is generally raised in the local area.

You just need to be a smart about the food you buy and insist on freshness and quality as much as you possibly can. Fresh is better than frozen but frozen is better than canned, steamed, smoked, pasteurized or processed foods because they all fall out of the raw food arena. So, be sure to buy accordingly and read “Starting Right on a Raw Food Diet Plan” before you begin.

Eating Raw Foods is a Great Choice

Eating raw food is a great choice because they are very easy to digest as they have naturally occurring enzymes that aids your body’s digestion and its ability to increase nutrient uptake.

Raw foods in their natural state make them very digestible. What’s more, it takes your body very little energy to do so.

Raw foods are loaded full of nutrients in comparison to cooked foods. Junk foods are the worst and should be at the bottom of your food chain; meaning eat them sparingly if at all. Most junk foods are just that – junk food, and are primarily empty calories with little to no nutritional value.

When You Want a Snack – Reach For Raw Food!

When you start eating more raw foods you have a choice of eating them whole or juicing them. Juicing allows you to ingest more concentrated nutrient levels but in turn you lose the fiber that’s so important. Even if you juice though, you can still snack on some raw food to give yourself some bulk.

Raw Foods Promote Natural Energy

When you increase your intake of say something like carrots and celery you will immediately notice a huge increase in your energy level. You can eat practically any vegetable or fruit and increase your energy level.

Ideas on Getting More Raw Food in Your Diet:

Vegetables – We touched on that above a bit but basically everything from Artichokes to Zucchinis works. There are lots of recipes to combine both vegetables and fruits to keep your life full of variety if you choose the raw food diet.

Fruits – if you’re juicing them be wary of the concentrated sugars found in most fruits and think moderation. Just realize that if you’re juicing eight apples to make a small glass of apple juice you’re getting most of the calorie content of eight apples and a practically empty stomach.

Raw, organic fresh fruits are an excellent source of nutrition and a wonderful source of energy but be sensible and follow the guideline in the “A Healthy Nutrition Plan Starts with the Food Pyramid”.

Salads – mix it up, red leaf, green leaf, butternut, iceberg and romaine, mix it up and eat lots of fresh leafy organic vegetables. An ideal dressing is cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil with a few herbs and spices, maybe some lemon juice, balsamic or red wine vinegar. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar all by itself makes a great salad dressing.

Juices – If you looking to put raw food into your diet you can forget about cans, cartons and bottled fruit juices. As a matter of fact, you don’t even want to make fresh raw juice at home in advance. The best value comes from the freshest fruits and vegetables being juiced and consumed as soon as possible. This is the very best way to get all of the minerals, vitamins and enzymes that your body needs. When it is not possible to make your own, turn only to fresh, cold processed organic juices from trustworthy companies that preserve the nutritional integrity of the whole raw food.

Raw Nuts and Seeds – raw organic nuts and seeds when we eat them in moderation provide lots of benefits. They contain proteins, necessary fats and calories for energy. Be sure to eat raw, not roasted nuts but be careful not to overeat and use them sparingly. Seeds like flax and sesame can be mixed into your salads for some added crunchy flavor and great nutritional value if you chew them well.

Lastly, talking about important raw foods would not be complete without mentioning Aloe Vera. Aloe Vera has been dubbed the name “miracle plant” and for good reason… Aloe Vera provides so many benefits there have been entire books written on the subject.

Because of the power of this plant, companies have gone to great lengths to preserve the nutritional integrity of the plant in a juice form and have bottled it for our convenience and use. The best bottled Aloe Vera juices will have 100% organic cold processed “inner leaf fillets” at the top of their ingredient list.

Including Aloe Vera into your diet is a smart decision indeed but most people are not going to grow, harvest and juice Aloe Vera plants for their consumption even knowing it’s as beneficial as it is.

The problem is that they’re not typically available at your local market.

From healing burns and cuts on the outside to aiding digestion, providing high nutrient absorption and the healing of your body from the inside out there’s probably not another vegetable you’d want more in your diet if you only knew all of the many benefits it holds.

Staying in harmony with the purpose of this section, local raw foods are best and the soonest you are able to consume them once they’ve been harvested the more nutritional value they hold for you.

Eat fresh and enjoy the many benefits available to you when you choose to add in or exclusively eat raw foods in your diet.

The last and final section is the “Conclusion to the Healthy Nutrition Guide” where we’ll summarize a bit and hopefully get your vote to allow us to continue to help and serve you in the world of health and fitness.