Tell Me About Raw Vegan Or Organic Based Diets

For those who eat these types of diets or variations...

What do you eat?
How much time to you spend preparing food?
Is it hard to travel or entertain guests with your food regimen?
Do you have to supplement?
What health benefits have you seen?
Did you detox after switching
Oh, and what's up with all the sprouts? lol

After spending a lot time researching foods for my dog (elderly with hear disease), I've been trying to improve my own diet by eating more raw and unprocessed foods, free range poultry and organic dairy. But I travel during the summer for dog shows and find that it's really hard to maintain any type of healthy diet on the road.

Any tips, recipes, or recommendtions are appreciated. Thanks!

for the truly meat free diet, it's got to be McDonalds

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Originally Posted by EagleEye

But I travel during the summer for dog shows and find that it's really hard to maintain any type of healthy diet on the road.

Any tips, recipes, or recommendtions are appreciated. Thanks![/b]

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Nuts and seeds are really good and travel well. There are a lot of variations on the healthy bars now, organic and vegan and raw and combinations; those would are good for travelling too.

Hey EagleEye,

I'm not an expert, but I started eating Raw Vegan at the beginning of January. I had really felt the push to become healthier. And from all that I read, I felt like this was the answer.

I have nothing but great things to say about how this has gone for me.

One of my big worries was cancer. My older sister had breast cancer a couple of years ago at a very young age (30s). Raw vegan is a very anti cancer diet. So I no longer worry about it.

Before I started I was having some pain in my lower abdomen, and it was starting to really bother me. The doctors couldn't tell me what it was. This pain was completly gone after only a week of this diet (I had had the pain for a couple of years). Also arthritis run in my family. My mom and grandma have it pretty bad. And I was starting to feel joint pain at night which freaked me out too. But that pain disappeared within the first week of eating raw.

And there are a lot of other benefits I have noticed.

Also I love the fact that when I eat this way I don't have to limit what I eat (as long as it's raw vegan.)

I eat as many nuts or avacados or fruit or salads, etc, as I want. I haven't gained any weight, in fact, I have gone down. I have learned to make some great treats, too.

I have gotten some really good information from this website:

http://www.alissacohen.com/

Alissa has also put out a book that I have brought, and I have found it full of wonderful recipes. If you are serious about doing this I would consider getting this. After I had been eating faithful for a month I let myself get this book. :content:

Like Moombeam said there are a lot of options for traveling. I make my own nutbar. I also just eat organic raisins and other raw nuts or fruit as an easy snack.

Sprouts are good since they are full of nutrients and are high protein.

And I have not gone through any unpleasant detox, but I'm sure my body is gradually detoxing.

If you have any other questions just ask. :)

Good luck...I think you will love it!

Thanks for the input, Moonbeam and Twoshadows!

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Originally Posted by Moonbeam

Nuts and seeds are really good and travel well. There are a lot of variations on the healthy bars now, organic and vegan and raw and combinations; those would are good for travelling too.[/b]

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I really need to the food co-op and look for the bars. Those should be better healthier than the Balance bars I usually buy. I LOVE almonds, walnuts, pecan, etc. I recently added them back to my diet in small amounts daily after avoiding them thanks to the fat free craze. It sounds like larger servings would be OK if the rest of my meals aren't too high calorie.

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Originally Posted by Moonbeam

Hey EagleEye,

I'm not an expert, but I started eating Raw Vegan at the beginning of January. I had really felt the push to become healthier. And from all that I read, I felt like this was the answer.

I have nothing but great things to say about how this has gone for me.

One of my big worries was cancer. My older sister had breast cancer a couple of years ago at a very young age (30s). Raw vegan is a very anti cancer diet. So I no longer worry about it.

Before I started I was having some pain in my lower abdomen, and it was starting to really bother me. The doctors couldn't tell me what it was. This pain was completly gone after only a week of this diet (I had had the pain for a couple of years). Also arthritis run in my family. My mom and grandma have it pretty bad. And I was starting to feel joint pain at night which freaked me out too. But that pain disappeared within the first week of eating raw.

And there are a lot of other benefits I have noticed.

Also I love the fact that when I eat this way I don't have to limit what I eat (as long as it's raw vegan.)

I eat as many nuts or avacados or fruit or salads, etc, as I want. I haven't gained any weight, in fact, I have gone down. I have learned to make some great treats, too.

I have gotten some really good information from this website:

http://www.alissacohen.com/

Alissa has also put out a book that I have brought, and I have found it full of wonderful recipes. If you are serious about doing this I would consider getting this. After I had been eating faithful for a month I let myself get this book. :content:

Like Moombeam said there are a lot of options for traveling. I make my own nutbar. I also just eat organic raisins and other raw nuts or fruit as an easy snack.

Sprouts are good since they are full of nutrients and are high protein.

And I have not gone through any unpleasant detox, but I'm sure my body is gradually detoxing.

If you have any other questions just ask. :)

Good luck...I think you will love it![/b]

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I'm sorry to hear about your sister :blue: Seeing some one in the family go through serious health issues or pass away like that can be a wake up call. Diet and exercise have an enormous impact on our health. I think eating a decent diet (tho not perfect) has helped me avoid the digestive problems that run on my mom's side of the family.

Glad to hear that the diet's already showing benefits for you! I've noticed that my immune system is a lot better and I'm sleeping better on the whole since eating less bread and grain and more vegetables and legumes.

Alissa had some delicious looking stuff on her site. Raw pizza...now that's cool! I expected to just see salads, so that's a pleasant surprise.

Is it normal for a lot of the food to be dehydrated? Is that how they get the bread-like food to stick together?

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I'm sorry to hear about your sister[/b]

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Fortunately the chemo worked and at the moment she is cancer free. She is eating a healthier diet now, but I would really like to get her to try this raw vegan one. I really believe it is the best around for helping yourself to be disease free. That's the reason I have remained so committed. If it was just for a vanity reason like "looking better" I might have quit by now. But how can I give up on my health?

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I've noticed that my immune system is a lot better and I'm sleeping better on the whole since eating less bread and grain and more vegetables and legumes.[/b]

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That's great. I have been in contact with many sick people this winter, but I never caught anything. I'm thanking this healthy way of eating for that.

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Is it normal for a lot of the food to be dehydrated? Is that how they get the bread-like food to stick together[/b]

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Yeah. You use the dehydrator like most people use an oven. It helps things stick together and takes excess moisture out of things. But it doesn't kill off the living emzymes that make the raw food healthy.

I use mine for some things, but at times I can go days without using it. So it is not essential to have one, but it helps give you a variety of options.

Twoshadows, I'm glad you're sister is doing OK now. You are so doing the right thing by paying attention to your diet.

Here is a company that I have ordered from:[post="http://www.lydiasorganics.com/"]lydiasorganics[/post] They have really good raw crackers and lots of other things.

PS I never get the link in right. It is Lydia's Organics, www.lydiasorganics.com

I found the best foods to be fruit. You can live a very very healthy physical existence if you eat only fruit.(though you really want to get rid of fear and over-grown negative emotions, then you can eat what ever the hell you want and be perfectly healthy) however with fruit you must eat a lot of it!

I recently started eating Raw Vegan. Nuts, fruits, vegetables - no meat.

Then I started getting really weak and tired, having horrible headaches and crappy moods. The food wasn't appetizing to begin with, and I had no desire to continue. So, after a week and a half of a diet that my mother wanted to try, I went out and ate pizza, ice cream, and KFC.

And I have no more headaches, I'm not tired (unless I go to sleep at three) and I actually have energy to do things.

Cooked foods and meat rocks.
EAT MORE CHICKEN!

Hi, I am vegan, I will try to answare your questions:

What do you eat?

Vegtables ( tomato, cucumber, letuce, carrot, parsley etc. )
Legums ( red lentils cooked, green lentils sprouted uncooked, sprouted mung uncooked )
Humus ( cooked chickpeas with white tahini )
whole wheat bread
whole rice
kinoa
kasha
Tahini from whole sesame
olive and flax oil
nuts
seeds ( sunflower, pumpkin )
soy "meat" imitations.
very few fruits.

How much time to you spend preparing food?

Usually about 15 minutes.

Is it hard to travel or entertain guests with your food regimen?

Not really, you can bring dry legums, sprout them, and then you can eat them without cooking.
Also you can take nuts, and seeds on the road, and also whole sesame tahini, buy some bread and vegtables where you go, and you can have a great meal in minutes.

Do you have to supplement?

I take a B12 sublingual tablet once in a while.

What health benefits have you seen?

I feal great being a vegan, but I also felt just as good when I was vegiterian.

Did you detox after switching

I don't know what is detox.

Oh, and what's up with all the sprouts? lol

Like I said you can buy dry legums, get them sprouted and eat them without cooking. A mung bean takes about 2-3 days to sprout in a warm weather.

Hope this helps!

Moonbean, I looked and the co-op where I shop a few times a year carries Lydia's! We're going there this weekend so I'll see if they have any of the bars.

Tom_Peace, fruit is a great food, but I don't think it's wise to limit oneself to only one type of food. I'd worry about the sugars in fruit and what it could do to your pancreas if that was all or nearly all you ate. What about protein and calcium?

Dallian, thanks for sharing your experience. I'm happy to hear pros and cons on the diet. I accept that this diet might not work for everyone.

Dodobird, thank you for your detail reply. I appreciate it alot. I'll have to sprout some beans and give them a try. Do they keep pretty well in the fridge or do you need to eat them right away? Also, do you ever sprout grains? I don't each much bread.

By detox, I mean when your body isn't being exposed to and coping with toxins, pesticides, etc., from your food, it has energy resources available to finally purge them from your system. I don't know if this actually happens, but my some of my dog friends observed this when switching their pets to high quality raw diets. I'm curious if humans experience something similar...a period of skin/hair problems, digestive upset, fatigue, etc. that eventually goes away in a few months on the new diet.

There are fat-soluble toxins (stored in fatty tissue), so when people are overweight, and lose weight too quickly, the levels of toxins in their blood goes up to bad/dangerous levels. But if someone is not significantly overweight, I don't think they have to worry.

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Originally Posted by EagleEye

Moonbean, I looked and the co-op where I shop a few times a year carries Lydia's! We're going there this weekend so I'll see if they have any of the bars.

Tom_Peace, fruit is a great food, but I don't think it's wise to limit oneself to only one type of food. I'd worry about the sugars in fruit and what it could do to your pancreas if that was all or nearly all you ate. What about protein and calcium?

Dallian, thanks for sharing your experience. I'm happy to hear pros and cons on the diet. I accept that this diet might not work for everyone.

Dodobird, thank you for your detail reply. I appreciate it alot. I'll have to sprout some beans and give them a try. Do they keep pretty well in the fridge or do you need to eat them right away? Also, do you ever sprout grains? I don't each much bread.

By detox, I mean when your body isn't being exposed to and coping with toxins, pesticides, etc., from your food, it has energy resources available to finally purge them from your system. I don't know if this actually happens, but my some of my dog friends observed this when switching their pets to high quality raw diets. I'm curious if humans experience something similar...a period of skin/hair problems, digestive upset, fatigue, etc. that eventually goes away in a few months on the new diet.[/b]

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Yea the sprouted legumes last up to a week in the fridge, after that they get a bit browny and taste more bitter.
But when you keep the sprouts in the fridge it's best to wash them a little everyday.
If you have 3-4 small sprouting boxes, you can create a cycle that will give you fresh sprouts everyday, without needing to keep them in the fridge at all.
But it could be boring to eat sprouts everyday. What I preffer is to add just a small amount of them to a salad, instead of eating a lot of them at once.
If you want I can write here the sprouting instructions that I use.
BTW If you get some leftover sproutes you can plant them in a pot, I had very good success with growing mung wihich is a pretty plant, and it produced lots of beans, that you can eat fresh because they are still soft ( you cut the "bag" that contains the beans, push them out and eat them ).

I didn't try to sprout grains yet.

I moved to vegan diet very gradualy. I was vegitarien for 14 years, and then I started to eat less and less milk and eggs for about two years, until I stopped completely, so I guess the detox thing wasn't an issue for me.