RAWSOME LIVING: Hints for the Summer

Friday, July 24, 2009

Hints for the Summer

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Shari Leiterman

Shari Leiterman is passionate about life, and loves is being a wife and mother and Raw vegan chef. Shari has been studying nutrition, fitness, and food preparation for many years, and has come it felt the befits in her own life. And as a gifted teacher she has helped hundreds of other people on the road to a healthy life style of eating Raw vegan foods, and changing their diets. Shari has a B.S. Degree in Exercise Physiology. And she was the Director of Club Hygiene Health Retreat in Florida, where she provided nutritional counseling, exercise training and meditation therapy along side Dr. Doug Grahman, noted author on fitness and health for several yeas. Shari is up to date on new easy ways of to eat more healthy and is on always on a quest to learn more, and to learn the truth, and the more researching she does the she realized that with the Raw lifestyle, people were doing this for life and they loved it! This seemed to be the one diet where people were thriving on it for 20, 30, and 40 years. Think about that; most diets are temporary. The testimonials out there and books from people who have been on a Raw diet, or eating a predominantly Raw diet, for anywhere from 1-40 years, all have the same things in common: They're enjoying radiant health, they feel better than ever, and they love their lifestyle of eating Raw, no matter how long they've been doing it. Raw makes you healthier. You can actually feel it. Doctors and everyone else tell us to incorporate this "time-tested" concept of increasing raw fruits and vegetables in our diet. But eating Raw is more than that; it tells us not only what to eat, but also what not to eat. Others have not been so good at telling us what to avoid, as you'll discover. There are so many benefits of eating Raw. The Raw food diet has helped many people find health when nothing else did. It can help anyone who wants healthy levels of blood cholesterol, healthy blood sugar levels, pain-free joints, clear glowing skin and shiny hair, reduced or eliminated cellulite, rapid elimination of excess weight, a permanent boost to your immune system, amazingly restful sleep, having unbelievable energy,increasing your mental focus, being in a happy and feel-good mood all the time, improving your relationships, and more. Now, I ask you, what other diet out there can do all of these things for you? None! So sign up for a class and get start today!

The case for a raw-food diet

4/7/08, 8:31 AM EDT By Kim Pierce

DALLAS - A raw-food diet - basically raw fruits, vegetables and whole grains - has plenty of advocates, but whether it's the right choice for a cancer patient is open to question.

In a matter of seconds, you can find numerous testimonials online about its health benefits. However, finding peer-reviewed scientific studies, much less specific research on raw foods and cancer, is harder.

"There are only a couple dozen studies worldwide on relationships between raw-foods diets and anything else," says Suzanne Havala Hobbs, a registered dietitian with a special interest in vegetarian nutrition who has tracked the raw-foods movement. She knows of no studies on raw foods and cancer.

"What you could say about a raw-foods diet and cancer risk or cancer treatment could be something that's extrapolated and kind of surmised," she says, "based upon the body of evidence related to diet and cancer in general."

Still, Hobbs, who's on the faculty in the school of public health at the University of North Carolina, is far from dismissive.

"I am fascinated by some of the claims made by raw foodists," she says. "But I'm cautious about them, as well. I am sympathetic and skeptical at the same time."

When she conducted what she calls a small, low-tech study in 2005 on raw-food attitudes, practices and beliefs, the top reason for adopting a raw-food diet was health, especially protection from disease and faster healing.

That's what drove Dallasite Courtney Smith, 26, to go raw seven years ago.

"I was experiencing a whole range of health problems at the time," she says, including asthma, allergies, chronic fatigue and digestive problems. "All of those challenges have gone away. I have way more energy than I've ever had, and I haven't been sick in many years. ... I sleep a lot deeper, and my brain works better."

IN THE BUSINESS

Today, she runs Loving Foods (www.loving-foods.com), a raw superfoods business, with her husband, Brian. Raw superfoods are blends of unprocessed ingredients that concentrate nutrients. Examples include Chocolate Silk, whose main ingredients are cacao powder, hemp seeds and whole coconut flour, and Fiesta Mole, whose primary ingredients are tomato powder, cacao powder and hemp seeds.

"Some of the claims are not supported by science," Ms. Hobbs says, "but they're not refuted by science."

A raw-food diet is a diet made up of raw fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and grains _ organic, if possible _ that excludes meat, dairy and fish. In addition, foods are heated to no more than 116F. Raw foodists say that food enzymes, sometimes more broadly characterized as the "life force" or energy in food, are destroyed when subjected to higher heat. They believe these enzymes improve digestion and fight disease. They also say that cooking produces harmful substances.

Nutrition experts reject the enzyme theory. As registered dietitian Karen Schroeder notes in an online article from EBSCO Publishing, humans use their body's enzymes, not enzymes from plants, to break down foods. Digestion also destroys plant enzymes.

She goes on to say that acrylamide and heterocyclic amines (HCAs) are possible carcinogens formed in high-heat cooking, but "neither the American Cancer Society nor the National Cancer Institute goes so far as to recommend a raw food diet to reduce the risk of cancer from these chemicals." NCI does note on its Web site that HCAs are not monitored and that there are no guidelines about limits.

A strict raw-food diet also can result in deficiencies of calcium, iron, B-12 and protein. But, at least in the case of calcium, it's unclear what effect this has on health. A small 2005 study at Washington University found that while raw-food vegetarians had lower bone mass than a control group on a typical American diet, their bone turnover was normal.

Some like it cooked

"I think there's good evidence to say, `Yes, some raw foods, like salads, are a good thing,'" says Lawrence Kushi, associate director for etiology and prevention research at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California. "A lot of other foods benefit from being cooked."

Kushi is more open-minded about alternative food approaches than some scientists. His father, Michio Kushi, helped introduce macrobiotics to North America. Macrobiotics is a philosophy of diet and wellness that relies primarily on whole grains and vegetables.

Kushi says that water-soluble vitamins, such as C and B, are leached out of foods when cooked. But sauteing foods in a little oil improves the body's uptake of fat-soluble nutrients such as the carotenoids found in tomatoes, greens, and orange fruits and vegetables. "Having a variety of preparations is the way to go," he says.

Even among people who support the raw-foods approach, compliance may not be 100percent. Jeannette Wright, 44, who manages her husband's chiropractic office in Dallas, adhered to a strict raw-foods diet for three years.

"The first year, I felt better," she says. "The second year, I was stable. By the third year, my nails were brittle, my hair thinned and I didn't have strength. My feeling at the time was that I was not getting enough protein. When I added fish, my nails got better, I got stronger and my hair got thicker." Now, she says, she eats raw foods 80 percent to 90 percent of the time.

Smith stresses that there are many strategies for eating raw. "I basically eat a lot of the superfoods on our Web site and a variety of fresh food," she says, "mostly blended foods that are high-nutrient, high-mineral and low in sugar. I eat a wide range of things, and it's very intuitive."

With cancer, diet isn't one-size-fits-all, either, Hobbs says. "There are different types of cancer, and situations differ," she says. The type of cancer treatment "can have an impact on diet and dietary needs."

She recommends that cancer patients considering a raw-foods regimen consult a dietitian knowledgeable about cancer and vegetarian diets. "That's a tall order," she says, because such specialists are rare.

"The idea that everybody could increase the portion of raw foods and vegetables in their diets and benefit from it is probably an accurate statement," Hobbs adds. "It doesn't necessarily translate into a raw-foods diet."

A RAW-FOOD DIET

The following should be unprocessed and preferably organic:

Fresh fruits and vegetables
Nuts
Seeds
Beans
Grains
Legumes
Dried fruit
Seaweed
Unprocessed organic or natural foods
Freshly juiced fruits and vegetables
Purified water
Young coconut milk
SOURCE: About.com: Alternative medicine

RAWSOME LIVING

Friday, July 24, 2009

Hints for the Summer

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Shari Leiterman

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