Becoming Raw: The Comprehensive Guide to Nutritious Raw-Food Diet [Paperback]

This is so much more than a simple raw food cookbook or commentary on raw food diets. I was surprised at the amount of information packed into this book. It has all sorts of nutritional information and easy to read tables on just about anything you can imagine relating to this way of eating. Here are just a few titles of the tables included: Research summary of the effects of cooking on phytochemicals, Calories, protein, fat, carbohydrate and water in raw food (6 pages long), Fatty acid composition of selected foods, Vitamins in raw foods, Minerals in raw foods, Vitamins A,C,E,K, and D: adult dietary reference intakes and intakes on raw and high-raw diets. And those are just a few. I like tables because I can get information at a glance and compare different values so this is really a good book for me.

You don't have to be a total raw food convert to enjoy this book. Even if you're just thinking about adding more healthful raw foods to your diet, I think you'll find this book as useful as I have. It starts out with a history of the raw food movement, gives lots of scientific evidence on why it can be a healthy way of eating, and then goes on to give all kinds of information, things you've probably never even thought about, on incorporating raw foods into your diet or going totally raw. It tells you what you need to know if you do decide to take the plunge, about getting all the nutrients you need.

There is a small section with raw food recipes and another section with full meal menus which I found especially helpful. I'm not looking (yet) to totally adopt this kind of diet but I would like to add a lot more raw food to our everyday meals. The recipes are pretty easy and there are a good variety. A few that I've tried and enjoyed are: Caesar's Better Salad, Warm Red Cabbage Salad, Morocc-Un-Butter and Marvelous Muesli. There's also a section on handling raw food safely and another on food enzymes. It's all easy to read and understand.

There's a large reference section, a glossary and an index. To me, this is important because I want to know the science or studies behind statements, not just take the author at his word. This is a high quality book, probably the best I've found on this subject.

Becoming Raw: The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets is a complete guide to the raw diet- a type of diet/lifestyle that has a strong following and continues to gain more and more adherents. This book covers all of the essentials of the raw diet and more. The reader ultimately becomes much better informed on the subject and completes the book loaded with knowledge on everything related to eating raw.

Becoming Raw is a complete guide to the raw diet and, in many ways, it is like reading an educational textbook on raw food nutrition. I am no expert on the subject of nutrition, so I knew there would be much to learn when I opened this book for the first time. My expectations were correct, for Becoming Raw is loaded with information on nutrition and eating raw foods. It teaches you about the building blocks of food, like carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals. It offers recipes, nutritional tables, and other reference materials. It educates the reader on the many benefits that raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and other foods bring to the body. It covers a wide range of topics and serves as a very informative book on this subject.

Individuals who are trying to lose weight will find that a diet in raw foods is certainly a good, viable way to drop pounds and many people will read this book for that reason alone. But Becoming Raw is much more than a book dedicated to those who are determined to reduce their waistline. This book is useful to anyone who wants to eat better and learn about the many benefits that a plant- based diet can bestow on the body. A diet rich in these raw foods can, for example, offer protection against cardiovascular disease, reverse the effects of some common ailments, and shorten the span of common illnesses such as the common cold. With benefits such as these, most anyone can adopt the raw diet, even if only to an extent, and emerge healthier than before. This book discusses all of these benefits and more, and it even offers a short history on going raw and how/why this type of eating lifestyle continues to grow in popularity.

Becoming Raw, at first, sounded like it was going to be a reference book and I wasn't sure it would be very useful to someone like myself, who is not a vegetarian. However, as you can see from the above commentary, this book is actually a combination reading/reference guide with facts about foods, the meaning of eating raw, recipes that include raw foods, etc. The book does include graphs, tables, charts, etc., but there the majority of the books pages are comprised of reading material intended to educate the reader on the different components of food, why they are important to the body, how deficiencies can affect the body, etc.

Everyone can benefit from introducing raw, unprocessed food into the diet and Becoming Raw is an excellent book about this important subject. It is a book about your eating lifestyle, with complete coverage of the raw diet, explanations of nutritional facts and data, nutritional charts, history of the movement, recipes, and more. It's an exhaustive guide that can be referred to repeatedly for advice and general information.

Are you thinking about Becoming Raw? If you are, this book is a must have!! This is the most informative, complete book I've ever read on this subject. I thought I knew a lot about healthy eating, vitamins and minerals in foods and what food was good for what ailment, but this book is full of information I did not know.

The chapters are:
Becoming Raw For Life
A History of the Raw-Food Movement in the United States
The Raw Report: Scientific Evidence To Date
Why Raw Rocks!
Energy and Power
Carbohydrates in the Raw
Fat: Friends and Foes
Vitamins: Inviting Vitality
Acid-Base Balance, Bones and Minerals
The Great Enzyme Controversy
Food Safety: Raw Case Files
Nutrition Guidelines and Menus
Recipes

I've always wanted to try eating raw. With this book it would be so easy to do. The book is full of drafts and charts. In my opinion, there is no biased information in this book, it is just full of facts and you can draw your own conclusion.

My favorite recipes, even though there were only a few, were the Smoothies. I know I'll be using them often.

This is a book that you can either live by on a daily basis, or go to whenever you start feeling sluggish and want a boost. I know there have been many studies on the health benefits of going raw, from diabetes, to cholesterol and high blood pressure. This is one of the best books I've come across about eating raw.

*Thanks to Anna and Planned Television Arts for this review copy*

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