Susan Schenck, author of The Live Food Factor, The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Jan. 09), has shared some raw food recipes! Visit LiveFoodFactor.com for more info.

All recipes courtesy The Live Food Factor.

Holiday Salad

• 5-6 cups spinach (about ½ lb)
• 1 cup candied pecans (see recipe below)
• ½ cup raw olives
• ½ red onion, sliced into halved ringlets

Toss pecans, olives and onion ringlets into spinach. Top with oil and vinegar or dressing of your choice. Serves 5-6.

Candied Pecans

• 1-3 cups pecans
• Cinnamon
• Unheated honey or raw agave or raw yacon root syrup

Soak the pecans overnight, rinse and drain. Roll them in a mixture of honey (or other) and cinnamon. Dehydrate them for four hours or so until they are dry. Toss them in a salad.

Cauliflower Pâté (“Mashed Potatoes”)

• 3 cups cauliflower, cut up
• 1 cup macadamia or pine nuts, soaked 4-8 hours, rinsed and drained
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ¼ cup water
• ¾ T powdered sea vegetables
• ½ T garlic

Put into food processor, using the “S” blade, adding cauliflower a little at a time. Blend until the mixture looks light and fluffy like mashed potatoes. The mixture will not only look like mashed potatoes, but the taste will also be reminiscent of mashed potatoes! Serves 8.

Cranberry Relish (recipe by Victoria BidWell)

• 1½ lbs fresh cranberries
• 1½ cups raisins
• 3 oranges, cut in sections
• 3 diced pears

Run all the above foods through the food grinder or through the food processor set for purée. Mix the foods thoroughly, cover with a tight seal, and let chill. This recipe is best when chilled overnight to let the flavors mingle one with the other.

(Image via stock.xchng; holiday salad image via Susan Schenck )

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Raw Food Diet Holiday Recipes

I really enjoy this fruit ice cream as a wonderful alternative to traditional ice cream during these warm days of summer. What makes it even better right now is the availability of fresh in season berries to add to the mix.

The best part is it only takes a few minutes to make if you keep a little bag of fruit in the freezer to throw in when you’re ready.

Frozen Fruit Ice Cream

Handful frozen strawberries (or blueberries)

1 frozen banana

Juice from 1 orange

8-10 grapes, frozen or fresh

Blend in food processor with the “S” blade until creamy. Or, if you have a centrifugal type juicer, push ingredients through, using the blank screen. The consistency will be like soft-serve ice cream. Store any leftovers in the freezer, but it will get very hard and difficult to use, so best to use it up now.

Serves 2-3.

Recipe courtesy of  Susan Schenck The Live Food Factor

Image (c) L Gerlach

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Raw Food Recipe~ Frozen Fruit Ice Cream

Raw food advocates chose the path of the fresh and crunchy because cooking kills the healthiest parts of the food. A diet that is 90-100% yields fuller hair, softer skin, no PMS, and fresher breath.

The book is thick and contains a lot of information on both the why and the how of a raw food diet. There are sections on how to adopt the diet for children, where to find resources in your area, and recipes that include Celery-Cilantro Soup, Spaghetti, Raw Pizza, many slushies and smoothies, salads.

If you need a jumping off point, take a look at the sample menus.

My favorite food is an avocado and I’d be interested in adding more raw food to my diet, but until someone develops a suitable raw substitute for a warm, gooey brownie, I’m going to have to stick with cooking.

Image credit: Barnes and Noble.com

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The Live Food Factor – Book Review

Apparently the organizers of Reversing Diabetes Day made a film in which Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics “are challenged to give up their traditional American diets consisting of meat, dairy, sugar, processed foods, and cooked foods, as well alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, as they continue to reduce their dosages of insulin and prescription medications.”

While I applaud the effort to bring awareness to diabetes, I’m not too thrilled that people are suggesting it can be cured. It can’t. A Type 2 diabetic can improve their blood sugars with diet and exercise and therefore not require medication. But even if they do that, they still need to continually check their blood sugar. And if things change with their schedule, or they get sick, or their diet changes slightly, those blood sugars can go right back up. That’s because diabetes never really goes away.

In Type 1 diabetes, someone can reduce the amount of insulin they take, but they can’t get rid of insulin. That’s because there is no cure for diabetes!

I think a better approach would have been to simply highlight the benefits of a raw food diet, without making the claim that it will “reverse” diabetes. Reverse means cure. Diabetes isn’t cured.

Image: sxc.hu.

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Reversing Diabetes Action Day

I was so intrigued by our interview with Susan Schenck that I did some research and discovered that Carol Alt has been on a raw food diet for about 15 years. And if you’ve seen Carol Alt lately, she looks great! No way does she look close to 50 years old.

In reading an interview with Carol, I was surprised to learn that a raw food diet isn’t necessarily a vegan diet. I think that’s one reason I always shunned it. She also said that she eats like a football player (hard to believe) and that the diet cured her of many things like allergies and acid stomach.

Image: Bauer-Griffin

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Carol Alt & Raw Food Diet

Have people really been healed from disease from a raw food diet? Could you share an example from someone you’ve met?
Studies at various clinics have shown that by eating 80-85% of your calories raw, most people can avoid degenerative diseases. People using a 100% raw food diet have even been able to reverse disease. Entire books have been written by people sharing their stories of healings using a raw food diet—healing from diabetes, colitis, various types of cancers, asthma, thyroid conditions, obesity, AIDs, hepatitis, and more.

Some of the people I have met or connected with in the raw food movement have incredible testimonials that should be all over the front pages of newspapers, but aren’t because the media depends heavily on drug companies for advertising. Victoria Boutenko, for example, was healed of arrhythmia and her husband of hyperthyroidism. Their son was cured of juvenile diabetes and their daughter of asthma. After just a few months on the diet, they were all going on extended hikes, bursting with energy!

Reverend George Malkmus healed himself of colon cancer…David Klein defeated colitis…Roe Gallo conquered a highly allergic sensitivity to the 20th century chemicals…Lou Corona healed from a head tumor…Dr. Lorraine Day reversed breast cancer…Angela Stokes lost 159 pounds… Jenny Smith no longer sleepwalks. The list goes on and on.

I myself was told that I would always struggle with hepatitis C, and haven’t at all since going raw. Also the minor health nuisances disappear or greatly diminish, such as herpes, constipation, athlete’s foot, jet lag, dandruff, dry skin, gray hair, etc.

Where can our readers get your book and learn more about you?
You can get my book at Barnes & Nobles, Amazon, small bookstores, all the usual places. But the best place is my website because I offer a $5 discount plus over 70 downloadable bonus gifts such as ebooks, mp3s, reports, etc. It is at www.livefoodfactor.com/specialoffer. To learn more about me you can read my whole health story in Chapter 3 of the book.

Anything else you’d like to add?
The first edition of The Live Food Factor won an IPPY award (2007). The second edition is revised, updated, and expanded with health educator Victoria BidWell, PhD. It won a Reader Views award (2009). The book has gained a reputation as being the raw foods bible or encyclopedia.
Getting the word out about the raw food diet has been the greatest joy of my life. When I do lectures, I often run into readers who tell me that this book changed their lives.

Image: Live Food Factor

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Healed by a Raw Food Diet

What’s the number one thing people are surprised about when they learn more about a raw food diet?
People find it incomprehensible that cooked food is toxic. Not just processed food. (Most people know that is bad.) But even your standard baked potato has been found to have 400 toxic byproducts that result from cooking.

Research by Dr. Paul Kouchakoff (and later Dr. Howard Loomis) has proven that when you eat cooked food, your white blood cells increase. This means your body is trying to fight off an invasion. But if you eat the food raw, this phenomenon doesn’t occur.

In 1916, Louis Maillard proved that cooking creates an endless chain of toxic molecules now called “Maillard molecules.”

In the spring of 2002, Swedish officials were so alarmed by their research findings that they decided to inform the public immediately rather than wait for them to be published in a scientific journal. Shortly afterwards, the World Health Organization held a three-week emergency meeting to evaluate the Swedish scientists’ recent discovery. They learned that starchy foods, such as potato chips, French fries, baked potatoes, biscuits and bread, contain very high levels of acrylamides, chemicals that have been shown to result in genetic mutations leading to a range of cancers in rate.

When proteins are cooked, up to 50% will not be assimilated. When cooked at high temperatures, cancer-forming mutagens begin to form at 154 F. Cooking meat forms heterocyclic amines. Cooking most kinds of fats forms toxic lipid peroxides. (If you must cook, use coconut oil.)

All of these age you faster, tie up a large chunk of your immune system, and put you on the path to un-wellness. This explains why people who eat a large percentage of their diet as raw foods are more youthful, energetic, and healthy than cooked fooders. They are also more cheerful!

Indulge me with a second surprise: People are really amazed at how GREAT the raw gourmet food tastes and how they soon do not feel the least bit deprived!

Please check back tomorrow for the final part of our interview.

Image: Live Food Factor.

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What Is a Raw Food Diet?

How would you like to….

• Have more energy than you know what to do with?
• Restore the slender figure you had in your youth?
• Glow with radiant skin, full hair, and a charismatic, energetic personality?
• Have the competitive edge at work with tons of energy and creative ideas?
• Eating a raw food diet is easier and more fun than you can imagine.

We’re giving away a copy of the Live Food Factor so if you’d like to win a copy, leave a comment on this post by Thursday, April 23rd. I’ll choose a winner at random and announce the lucky guy or gal the next day.

Image: Live Food Factor

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Win a Copy of The Live Food Factor

I did find a testimonial which swears by the raw food diet as fertility aid.

Marie at Green Fertility discusses her foray into raw food but doesn’t really say how she feels about it in connection with fertility.

But Author Susan Weed discusses the phenomenon of raw food and concludes that:

The cook dances with the element fire. The cook stirs the cauldron. The cook transforms the parts and turns them into our whole. Blessings on the cook. Praise to the cook. May your food be well cooked.

Here’s a great site with tons of links to introduce you to the raw food diet so you can decide for yourself. But in the meantime, tell me, does blueprint pudding (a mush of bananas, figs and avocado) sound tasty or not?

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The Raw Food Diet and Fertility