I’ve had people ask me over and over again if I recommend organic over standard grocery store vegetables. And the facts do show that organic fruits and vegetables are far superior to organic produce. The problem is that in order to transition to a healthier diet, you end up spending tons of money on your food if you focus on ONLY organic produce. If money is not a factor, then by all means purchase organic produce whenever possible.

But, if you are like me, and are on a budget, pretty soon it becomes necessary to bypass the organic produce and pickup the regular ‘non-organic’ produce. Even if they are gassed and irradiated (now euphemized as ‘pasteurized’ so the general public won’t panic, how’s that for big corporate food industry marketing?) Do we really know exactly JUST how bad they are for us? There have been no long term studies, but rumors abound that they can have carcinogenic properties. Hello, just about everything nowadays can be considered carcinogenic.

But, here’s a thought, what if we are increasing our consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, lots of green smoothies, and creating all kinds of really cool vegan and/or raw food dishes? Consuming high ORAC foods like cacao, green barley powder, goji berries, blueberries, pomegranate juice, etc. And, when possible, sprouting our own organic seeds and beans, maybe even maintain a small garden? Statistics show that when we increase our consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, we are also significantly improving our immune system and our blood supply, as well as providing our bodies with living, healthy enzymes that are only found in raw fruits and vegetables.

So by doing all of the above, perhaps our bodies are better empowered to fight off and discard any pesticide residue, gassing and irradiation (uh, excuse me, pasteurization). I don’t really know this for a fact and if anyone has done research on this, please let me know. I don’t doubt that organic produce is far superior, but not everyone can afford the stiff price tag that comes with this lifestyle change. And yes, I’m all about supporting the small organic farmers! All I know is my own personal experience. Sometimes I can afford to buy organic produce. Sometimes I have to pass it up and get the regular produce. I only know that regardless, I am feeling better than I ever have in the past, have more energy, and have not been sick in over 3 years!

Another argument to all of what I just said, is when you pass up the usual SAD products we’ve bought in the past, like, meat, milk, (all animal products in general) processed, packaged, frozen and canned foods, coffee, soda, alcohol, and sugary stuff, then the budget can handle the switch to organic fruits and vegetables. Of course, some fruits are not in season so I’ll buy frozen strawberries and blueberries, since I cannot always afford organic frozen fruit.

I am truly grateful that we have enough property to have a garden, and someday, my husband will build us a greenhouse so I can grow vegetables in the winter. But I understand not everyone has this luxury. Many people live in apartments or condos. That’s where the beauty of sprouting comes in. You can order a great sprouter or just the plans to build your own at www.eatsprouts.com. I ordered the plans to build one, and hope to find time to put my own sprouter together very soon. This is definitely the ideal way to go, super fresh, and organic baby greens! Currently, I use a simple TriBest sprouter and it works great for alfalfa seeds, but a little bit small for other greens like sunflower seeds, or even baby spinach.

New Raw Food Health Website Coming Soon!

I’ve taken out a new domain name dedicated to raw foods: raw4healing.com. Since I’ve been researching and working with my current site at LiveHealthy-LiveLong.com, I’ve learned so much about the health benefits of a raw food lifestyle that I want to share that information and hopefully help others overcome their health issues. Yes, I know, a raw food diet seems pretty extreme to most people, I know it did for me when I first heard about it several years ago. I thought it was too radical, and settled for being a vegan instead. But I’ve been very dedicated all my life to providing only the best in nutrition and health for my family. Especially since I have a battle to fight in my own health. My genetics are stacked against me since my father died of Leukemia in his early 50’s (I’m 54), and my mother had a debilitating rare disease that paralyzed her left side almost all of her adult life. Plus, I currently have a thyroid condition that I take meds for. My research reveals that many people have eliminated their thyroid issues, even after being on the meds (which doctors tell you it’s for the rest of your life!) by following a raw food diet. I know I would LOVE to be off the daily meds!

As a result, I’m very committed to beating those odds and living a long and disease free life! So far, it’s paying off. I’ve not had any health issues other than my thyroid issue. Also, my husband has asthma, and there are testimonies of asthma being cured on a raw food diet. My challenge there is trying to convert a ‘meat and potatoes’ man into a raw foodist! But at least he’s willing to try!

I’ve been adding some videos to my Live Healthy site and if you get a chance, go check them out! They are YouTube videos focusing on healthy eating, vegan and raw food benefits. I have plans to create my own YouTube videos about preparing my special Purple Green Smoothies, and many other similar vegan and raw food preparation.

You probably already know how beneficial it is to eliminate animal products from your diet. But actually doing it is another thing. Believe me, you’re not alone! My husband, Larry, is struggling with it. Remember I said he’s a die hard ‘meat and potatoes’ guy. He grew up eating eggs and bacon, chickens from the farm, and raising a turkey every Thanksgiving. But he likes the new meals I’m learning to prepare, and especially likes the ‘purple green smoothies’. Says it gives him so much energy that he’s not hungry for a long time. Being in construction, this is important. Of course, he works with some real ‘red-neck’ kind of guys, and they can’t resist making fun strange of his looking smoothies, or teasing him with their ham sandwich, cookies and soda in his face! But he’s strong. He knows the benefits, and he really wants to eliminate his asthma, and research has proven that a 90-100% raw diet will definitely be the ticket!

Check back as I will be adding some recipes again here in another day or two… Take care, and be blessed!

I saw this on YouTube and decided it needed to be on my blog. Although the USDA “food pyramid” recommends lots of fruits and vegetables, government spending and the behavior of the food industry reflect otherwise. They are channeling billions to meat, dairy and junkfood while suppressing health-based farming, agriculture, and food products.

So who do you think benefits from all this subsidized stuff? Certainly not us, and our kids! Hey, there’s no money to be made in endorsing fresh fruits and vegetables, and a genuinely healthy diet! Oh, not to mention, I wonder if the government and the food industry are lying in bed with the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry, and all the other organizations that make money off the sick….

“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”

–Hippocrates

Dr. Kim’s Story

Raw Green’s History: By Dr. Kim

“The quality and quantity of blood, body fluids, and waste matter are in proportion to the quality and quantity of the material that are ingested by our five vital organs (mouth, nose, skin, eyes, and ears).” Dr. Kim’s Law

How to live “correctly” is an important issue in today’s society. In my opinion, the “modern man” life versus an animal’s life, are very different for many reasons. Yes, animals and humans are alike when speaking about breathing, drinking, eating, moving and our sexual life, but one thing divides humans- “thinking”. We can either help people with our love and open heart, we can harm people physically or emotionally or we can choose to live without helping or harming people. Our lives can take on many different ways. However, the ultimate purpose of life we all search for is achieving happiness through self-satisfaction. Mankind has begun to believe that self-satisfaction is to have wealth, knowledge, beauty, power, and sometimes this may even lead us to want to conquer others. When we have achieved what we want on the surface, we may say that we are living a good, successful life. Is this true? What needs to be fulfilled to make us realize the meaning of true happiness and feel it? We talk about happiness and well being all of the time, but this is easier being said than done.

Ancient Chinese philosophy calls joy “Five Wishes.” This means that there are five wishes needed to achieve joy. The first wish is living a long life, the second one is wealth, the third one is health, the fourth one is helping others with virtue, and the last wish is to live until your life expectancy with dignity. All five wishes equal ultimate joy.. Joy is one of seven human emotions, according to oriental philosophies. The seven emotions refer to joy, anger, worry, thought, sadness, fear, and surprise. Everyone as a human, experiences all of these seven emotions. Among them all, joy would be what everyone wants the most. There is an old saying, “When people are joyful, their hearts and bodies sing, and they will be free of diseases”.

There are many factors that fulfill joy, but if we were to look for the most important thing, it would be health. Health comes first and foremost, because without a healthy body and mind, it is impossible to achieve or maintain anything we want in life. Just as the Earth needs the existence of the sun to embrace any living beings, health is vital to us.

We have to understand that health is the result of one’s choices.

According to oriental philosophies, the fundamentals of life can be roughly divided into six categories. The first one is about emotion (having an emotion is a unique human characteristic), the second is to live within our natural surroundings, the third is about what we ingest (our food choices), the fourth is how we move and utilize our physical body, the fifth is to live for preservation of the species, and the last one is to let our soul be in peace. Therefore, true health does not only come from the physical body. Rather, being truly healthy means to be healthy physically, mentally, socially, and also spiritually.

Let’s take a look at how we became so distant from being healthy. Oriental medical science, which can be traced back to 5000 years ago, focuses the reason of disease on living against the rules of nature and also on mental imbalance. It emphasizes that there is no better medicine than living with a loving and joyful mind. Further, it states that those who follow the order of nature will win, and those who go against it will lose. This is what Taoism (live in natural surrounding and only eat natural available foods) 5000 years ago is about as well. Different Chinese philosophers, writing probably in 5-4 Centuries B.C., presented some major ideas and a way of life that are nowadays known under the name of Taoism, the way of correspondence between man and the tendency or the course of natural world. Taoism mainly focuses on the importance of following the natural order in all things, the force that flows through every living and sentiment object as well as the entire universe. In the harmonious balance, health comes naturally.

Nowadays, we are living in a world where things that were considered impossible back in the old days, are actually possible thanks to advanced science and technology. Nevertheless, in spite of the comfort and the material abundance, the truth is that mankind is suffering from all kinds of physical and mental diseases (due to processing, changing etc, because of science and technology our culture has changed). This is far from what mankind truly wanted.

All living beings need to constantly fuel themselves to get energy and to regulate their bodies, in order to maintain their lives. Every living thing fuels their self differently. Plants need solar energy and water to create usable energy through photosynthesis. Herbivores feed themselves on plants, carnivores eat meat, and omnivores like humans eat both flesh and plants. However, mankind is the only living creature that denatures and processes its food.

I am a 65 - year old man. Most people at my age in Korea are retired, but I am still living an enthusiastic, busy life. Health is a strong grounding stone that enables me to live my life to the fullest with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I truly hope to be able to share the true meaning and experience of health and well being with people all over the world.

My life, until I realized the meaning of true health and happiness, was a constant battle with various illnesses. When I was growing up, I was always a very weak child. I remember when I was in elementary school, I used to get ill from malaria almost every summer. Later on in life, from the age of 20 to about 30, I suffered from very bad tonsillitis. It used to hit me periodically, almost every 2 months. The symptoms were very severe, accompanied by a high fever. When I was 32, I was diagnosed with a ruptured intervertebral disk and was told that 6 months of hospital treatment was necessary. When it was really bad, I was in so much pain that I had to be carried on a stretcher. About 5 years after that, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The doctor wanted me on medication for a year and a half. I then suffered tremendous pain from gout at the age of 42. I traveled from hospital to hospital, saw so many medical doctors, and was on many different pharmaceutical medicines. However, the surprising thing is that I was able to cure all of these illnesses not with the pharmaceutical or conventional medical help, but with alternative medicines and therapies. Now I am very healthy and full of energy and stamina. People call me an iron man at the age 65!

I regained my health through proper diet and exercise, as well as trying to achieve peace of mind. In the process of healing myself, I learned a lot. It was not easy, but it truly was an amazing learning experience. I started sharing my experience with other people around me in Korea, and from here things just started happening. It has been a true blessing. With what I’ve learned from my experiences, I’ve been helping many Korean people who are suffering from major and minor illnesses. Also, I have to say, it is a beautiful thing to see the results of people becoming happy through regaining their health. Now, I am standing here, talking about my whole experience, to share the joy of being healthy.

When we feel “sick” or “not well”, we don’t think about why we are feeling this way. We usually go to see a doctor believing that he will treat the symptom and we will be free from it the illness. Sometimes doctors tell people that their diseases are not treatable by any means of today’s medical science. With this comes despair and hopelessness. There are also cases where people feel that something is wrong with their bodies, but are told by the doctor that there is nothing wrong. With this, confusion follows.

Now I’m free from all the diseases and ill conditions that had been bothering me for over 30 years. I am now driven with my goal to pass on the knowledge I’ve learned to many of those who are suffering like I did. This might sound strange, but I thank God for the 30 years of pain. Like the saying goes “No pain, no gain”, the 30 years of suffering taught me so many valuable lessons, and enabled me to help other people as a result. What a great thing it is.

My major in university was Agriculture. After graduation, I moved to Japan and studied Commerce for about a year. From there, I studied pharmaceutical medicine with my wife who owned a pharmacy at the time. With the interest in health and my eagerness to understand the fundamentals of it, I went on studying Traditional Chinese Medicine for 5 years. In graduate school, I studied food processing science and life science, and received a doctor’s degree. In the course of finishing my degree in life science, I also had an opportunity to study at medical school for 2 years. Throughout my long and complicated education history along with the journey of my personal health, I came to a realization that Alternative Medicine was the answer to my question of how to achieve true health and well-being.

There are many different sub-categories or forms under the name Alternative Medicine or Alternative therapy. In my opinion, diet therapy comes first and foremost. Why is a proper diet so important? Let’s look at it this way. We all know that the quality and quantity of a harvest are proportionate to the balance of the quality and quantity of solar energy, soil, water and air. It is the same for us as human beings. Like all other living things, our quality of health is determined by the quality of the fuel we ingest, in other words, the food we eat.

The relationship between quality and quantity is important and interesting to discuss. For the last century, mankind has had an obsession to increase the quantity of food and in doing so, has risked sacrificing the quality of it. In fact, it is not only the quality of our food that has been overlooked; the whole Earth has been suffering from the pollution caused by our actions to merely increase the amount of available food, which in turn increases the profit of the industry. All of the great advancement in technology and Life Science has contributed to a tremendous increase in the quantity of food, but at the same time this has resulted in a severe deterioration of the quality.

The science of agriculture refers to improving the harvest through the use of scientific means: stronger and better pesticides and fertilizers, and genetic engineering. Nowadays, whether we are aware of it or not, we are consuming GMO (genetically modified organisms) vegetables and fruits that are covered with pesticides, and are eating meats from animals that are raised on antibiotics and hormones in their feed. We are living in a world where everything is a product of mass production, and our food is not an exception. Our “food” nowadays is heavily industrialized. Think about all of the packaged or bottled foods and beverages that people consume on a daily basis. All of these are usually made with poor quality ingredients and thus have a poor nutritional value. In addition, all kinds of additives are added to make the product taste stimulating enough, and this often leads to unhealthy addictions and overeating. Also, preservatives are usually added to increase the shelf life of the product. If we think about it, it is not that hard to see why we are suffering from so many strange diseases (e.g. mad cow disease), allergies and unhealthy conditions that have never existed before. The food today is very different from what our body is naturally used to.

If one keeps eating processed food for a long period of time, his or her body will start to suffer from metabolic disorders. The disorders will begin as uncomfortable symptoms but as they progress, they will take forms of so-called ‘syndromes’. Eventually, they will become ‘diseases’. These problems will get worse if one lives in a polluted environment, breathes polluted air and drinks poor quality water. This will cause a shut down of the immune system and from there on, it is a downhill; cancers and other kinds of geriatric and chronic diseases can and will manifest.

We come from nature and eventually we go back to nature. Therefore, our food should come from nature as well. We should eat what and how we were supposed to eat in the beginning. Naturally. Before mankind found fire, human beings survived on food that was in its natural state, just like wild animals. This does not mean that we should go back to the pre-historic times and live like cavemen, but take a look at our life styles and what we are putting into our bodies now. We are living in a sea of physical and mental stresses. Contributing factors are the toxic environment, “Frankenstein” food, and daily life problems.

Raw food has been around for thousands of years. There is a record that Taoists and Buddhist monks in ancient Korea and China, ate raw food for their entire lifetimes. Even to this day, quite a bit of the population still eat raw food, either for religious or health reasons. Therefore, I am obviously not the first one in the history to have come up with the concept of raw food. I just have found the solution for people today, to naturally and easily, enjoy raw living foods.

Even in the history of Japanese Buddhism, the average span of life for the Buddhist monk was 79, when that of Japanese citizens was somewhere around 40. More importantly, there are so many records that say people who eat raw food live so much healthier compared to people who eat cooked food. My family and I have been eating raw, living food for the last 20 years and it has been amazing to watch the process of everyone in my family regaining health and joy. This is why I started to share the incredible experience with people in Korea, and that is what has brought me this far.

My product Raw Greens is not something that is going to attack and destroy the symptoms of a disease. Rather, it is the right fuel, which will help the body function in the right way. When the body is fuelled with the right materials (nutrients), it will then recover it’s homeostasis, and the immune system will start to function with its full strength. Therefore, with a constant supply of the right materials, a healthy body will be constructed, starting from the cellular level. Supply the body with what it needs, and it will heal itself.

Raw-Greens is a radical, back-to-the Eden food.

1. It is made with certified organic ingredients.
2. It is made in a way that all of the nutrients are preserved in the closest way to when the raw ingredients were picked. The ingredients are flash-frozen under the temperature of -40C, and dehydrated in a low-pressure vacuum tube using the principle of sublimation. This process preserves 97% of the natural, living nutrients.
3. The absolute humidity of the product is controlled to be less than 3% so that the content is protected from oxidization or going rancid.
4. The composition of the ingredients (the ratio of grains to vegetables is 5:3) is designed to fit human oral structure.

Raw Greens is a product of wisdom of the ancient oriental philosophies including Taoism and Buddhism, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Alternative Medicine, and my personal clinical studies and experiences.

Life on the physical level is to create energy and to use it to maintain the life force. This means that the body needs to produce basic metabolic energy to maintain bodily metabolic functions, and rest of the available energy is converted into kinetic energy, enabling the body to move. When the body is functioning with the wrong fuel, it needs a lot of energy to produce the basic metabolic energy, and as a result, there will be less energy available for other needs. This is when the body starts to compromise its needs. When the body is lacking the energy to be converted into kinetic energy, it will suffer from fatigue. Then the immune system will start getting weak and the body becomes more susceptible to the attacks of environmental, food toxins, bacteria, and viruses.

Raw Greens is about five times more bio-assumable than a regular cooked meal. Therefore, the body will require less energy to digest and assimilate the nutrients that is necessary, and as a result, more energy will be made available allowing the body to function at its peak level. Thus, in this hectic world where it is so easy to overeat non-nutritious food and lose health, Raw Greens is the perfect choice to eat less, regain health, and enjoy the happiness of life.

Source: http://www.rawgreens.com/

Dhrumil at the We Like It Raw blog found this list of Oprah’s Top 10 Super Foods on Oprah.com.

Link: We Like It Raw: Oprah’s list of Top 10 Superfoods

1. Açaí fruit: This little berry is one of the most nutritious and powerful foods in the world. It can often be found in juice form in health food and gourmet stores.
2. Anything in the “Allium Family”: Garlic, onions, leeks, scallions, chives and shallots can all help the liver eliminate toxins and carcinogens.
3. Barley: This can be used as a breakfast cereal, in soups and stews, and as a rice substitute. Barley’s also high in fiber, helping metabolize fats, cholesterol and carbohydrates.
4. Green Foods: Green foods like wheat and barley grasses can be bought in powder, tablet or juice form, and offer greater levels of nutrients than green leafy vegetables. They also help cholesterol, blood pressure and immune response.
5. Buckwheat, Seed and Grain: Buckwheat is loaded with protein, high in amino acid, stabilizes blood sugar and reduces hypertension.
6. Beans and Lentils: You can reduce cholesterol while beefing up on antioxidants, folic acid and potassium. Try kidney, black, navy, pinto, chickpeas, soybeans, peas and lentils.
7. Hot Peppers: Both bell and chili peppers contain antioxidants, have twice the Vitamin C as citrus fruit and work as great fat burners.
8. Nuts and Seeds: You can’t go wrong with a handful of nuts a day—walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, macadamia and pistachio nuts contain omega-3 fats, which are great for your heart. Raw, unsalted nuts and seeds are best.
9. Sprouts: Numerous varieties of sprouts are great with any meal. They’re a great source of protein and Vitamin C. Try adding them to any dish and your immune system will get a boost.
10. Yogurt and Kefir: These cultured foods contain healthful bacteria that aid immune function, and the calcium helps burn fat. Try using them as a base for a smoothie.

Olivia Wu, Chronicle Staff Writer

Like all canny cooks, Cherie Soria knows how to hook her audience: with desserts.

But Soria doesn’t pull out the stops with butter, sugar, eggs and flour, baking them into fluffy confections.

She makes her magic with avocado and agave syrup — and no baking at all. By the time her students taste her creations, they don’t mind that those unexpected ingredients are the major components of their chocolate mousse.

As Soria would say, “If you can make a raw vegan cheesecake better than regular cheesecake, why would you eat regular cheesecake?”

In no time, she has her students dipping into a layered pesto torta that relies on a cheese made from almonds to replace the usual ricotta, and digging into a lasagna-type dish with a noodle-like layer of pureed cashew nuts stretched over mushrooms, spinach and a killer marinara sauce.

Soria is the pre-eminent teacher of gourmet raw food preparation, and founder of Living Light Culinary Arts Institute in Mendocino County. Now, she’s established the country’s first cooking school devoted to teaching raw and vegan cooking to home cooks and professional chefs.

A place of their own

After nearly a decade of giving classes on the fly, in whatever facilities she could find, to some 800 students, she and her husband, co-director Dan Ladermann, have a place to call their own. The school is now housed in the 6,000-square-foot Company Store on Main Street in Fort Bragg.

With the school, Soria and Ladermann aim to take raw cuisine mainstream. Classes are both demonstration and hands-on; the business also includes a production kitchen and takeout deli. There are no stoves or ovens; instead, dehydrators, high-speed blenders and special climate-controlled rooms for growing sprouts signal this is a raw-food operation.

Power Point presentations are part of the lectures and demonstrations, and six fully equipped stations are set up for hands-on classes.

Roxanne Klein, whose eponymous, exclusively raw restaurant in Larkspur opened to critical acclaim in 2002 is Soria’s most famous student. Klein’s restaurant and takeout deli closed in 2004, but restaurants such as Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco and Berkeley, and Alive in San Francisco, are continuing the trend.

Raw foodists believe that the greatest nourishment comes from food that is not heated beyond 115 degrees. One reason, they believe, is that antioxidants and phyto-chemicals remain intact. They also believe that heat can transform some ingredients, notably oil and salt, into toxins.

While these claims are controversial, Soria, 58, a radiant, small-framed woman who looks much younger than her years, may be the best advertisement for the cuisine and lifestyle. She has been cooking and living the raw food diet for 14 years, teaching classes at retreats such as Harbin Hot Springs in Lake County, and traveling the circuit of vegetarian and vegan national conferences.

When she began Living Light nine years ago, she kicked off with conventional raw dishes. “I taught raw without saying so by making gazpacho and olive tapenade,” she says. Those dishes, followed by raw desserts, she says, won people over.

The menu board of Living Light Cuisine ToGo, downstairs from the school, shows what draws: banana ice cream, carrot apple kuchen, chocolate mousse cup, chocolate cheesecake and frozen fudge bites. Juices and smoothies are listed, but so are entrees such as nori rolls, green burrito, zucchini angel hair pasta and a boxed mezze meal. All of them are made with 95 percent organic and 98 percent raw foods.

At the school, students begin with a required fundamentals class, then advance to associate chef and instructor training levels for professionals. As the classes progress, the format moves from a demonstration to hands-on format. In the past year, most of her fundamental classes have been at the capacity enrollment of 30 students. The hands-on classes are usually full, with 24 to 30 students per class.

Soria says the school enrolls students from an international field, including Lebanon, South Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Europe and South America. Raw food techniques are different enough from standard cooking that even chefs — many of them private chefs for Bay Area families — take her classes, says Soria. Google, the Internet giant in Mountain View, recently hired a chef who graduated from Living Light.

Soria knows what it feels like to be labeled a cultist. “I went from the standard American diet to vegetarian to vegan to raw,” she says. When she began a vegetarian diet in the carnivorous ’60s, “people thought I was going to die.”

She was a vegetarian for 19 years before she attended a workshop in 1992 at the clinics of Anne Wigmore, founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston, a wheatgrass and raw food discipline with an emphasis on using foods to rid the body of toxins.

Wigmore’s regime failed in one respect, Soria says — “Her food had no flavor.” Clients might feel better after a regime of juices, wheatgrass, salads and sprouts, but “they go back home and are bored” with the diet, Soria says.

A mind at work

Soria set her culinary intelligence to work. She based her cuisine on raw vegan “cheeses,” and began — as she did by teaching desserts — naming her dishes after mainstream comfort foods, and making them look like lasagna, pizza and sandwiches. She created raw dishes with cooked textures, such as her “stir, not-fried” vegetables.

She searched for sophisticated cutting gadgets such as a spiral slicer to create long pastas such as angel hair and linguine out of zucchini, and used high-powered blenders to make smooth and creamy textures, such as vegan mayonnaise and aioli.

Nuts and seeds are sprouted, because a tenet of the raw food movement says that eating “living” food is the source of energy. By sprouting nuts and seeds, the living components are activated.

Soria ferments pureed nut milks with beneficial intestinal flora such as probiotic and vegan acidophilus cultures and Wigmore’s invention — Revjuvelac, fermented wheat and rye juice. All this adds flavor and nourishment, Soria says, which helps people feel fuller quicker. During the course of a weeklong class, Soria says, students feel sated and still lose an average of 10 pounds.

Jean-Marie Fayat is such a person — he had tried everything to lose weight. Fayat is executive pastry chef at Draeger’s Market in San Mateo. A chef who came up the ranks of professional trade school in France, he came to the United States in 1976. Like many chefs, he had gained quite a bit of weight. He tried a three-day raw foods workshop and found “those foods were very appetizing.”

Like other individuals and some private chefs in the Bay Area, he learned that with raw food, “You can make a great, excellent meal.” And, he says, “I lost 22 pounds in three weeks.

“It was very dramatic for me. I’m a French chef, and I like my cheese and wine.”

Obesity strategy?

Like Soria, Fayat predicts that raw food will become mainstream because it addresses obesity and tastes good. Soria admits that a raw diet can be challenging: It’s idealto eat 80 percent raw, but she says that most people will benefit from 50 percent raw. Many of her students, she says, strive to maintain a close-to-100 percent raw diet, but will drink hot tea, and revert to the occasional mashed potatoes.

Trying not to sound extreme, Soria says she and Ladermann do eat out, perhaps once a week, and when they do, they have “a nice vegetarian meal” at a local conventional cooked-food restaurant.

Living Light Culinary Arts Institute, 301-B North Main St., Fort Bragg; (800) 816-2319 or (707) 964-2420, or visit www.rawfoodchef.com.

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Raw basicsIn the raw food philosophy, most ingredients supply several nutritional components. Here are the major sources of various nutritional requirements.Protein: Nuts, seeds and greensCarbohydrates: Fruits and greensFats: Nuts, seeds, avocado, olives and cold-pressed oils

Vitamins and minerals: All raw foods

Antioxidants and phyto-chemicals: All raw foods

– Olivia Wu

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Click here for online-only raw food recipes.

Chocolate Orange Mousse with Almonds

Chocolate is a rich source of antioxidants, but can also be addictive, so use it sparingly, says Cherie Soria of Living Light Culinary Arts Institute. The secret ingredient, avocado, makes this mousse thick and rich, but cannot be detected in the flavor.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup agave nectar (see Note)

3/4 cup raw cocoa powder (see Note)

1/2 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice

1 tablespoon evaporated cane juice (see Note)

1/4 teaspoon orange zest

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Pinch salt

2 avocados, about 6 ounces each, peeled, seeded and mashed

1/2 cup peeled slivered raw almonds, for garnish, optional (See Note)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Place coconut oil in a small work bowl and place the bowl in a pan with about 1 inch of hot water. The coconut oil will melt.

Combine melted coconut oil, agave nectar, cocoa powder, orange juice, evaporated cane juice, orange zest, cayenne and salt in a high-powered blender. A regular blender will work, although it may not make the mixture quite as smooth. Puree until smooth; use a small rubber spatula to keep folding the mixture into the center to keep the mixture blending without adding water (you may stop the machine to do this). Make sure cane juice crystals are fully dissolved.

Add the mashed avocado and blend just until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Pour into six 4-ounce ramekins. Serve each portion topped with slivered almonds.

Note: Agave nectar and evaporated cane juice are minimally processed sweeteners. They are available, along with raw cocoa powder, at natural food stores.

To peel almonds, place a heaping half cup of almonds in a glass bowl. Cover with hot water and let soak 15 minutes. Drain, peel skin off of almonds and slice into slivers with a sharp knife. Dry the almonds slightly before using, either by allowing to air-dry for 15 minutes, or spreading on a sheet pan and placing in a 100° oven for 5 minutes.

Serves 6

PER SERVING: 400 calories, 4 g protein, 34 g carbohydrate, 30 g fat (19 g saturated), 0 cholesterol, 17 mg sodium, 7 g fiber.
Click below to find out about Cherie Soria’s latest book: