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Food is your big ticket to good health! If you eat garbage, your body will show it. If you feed your body whole, healthy and fresh foods, your body, skin and soul will return the favour and make you glow with health and endless energy! Here are some of my thoughts around food, and some of the practices I use when producing my products.
What is "Raw" Food
Search the internet and you can find lots of definitions of the term. In truth many of us eat our food raw without making a conscious effort to do so, for example, you wouldn't normally cook your salad or strawberries before eating them.
I would sum it up as follows:
"Raw food is, technically speaking, food that has not been heated above 48 C (117 F)."
This usually means uncooked foods, or more specifically, foods in their natural state – nothing added, nothing taken away. When you don't apply heat above this temperature, the food or ingredient retains more of it's good stuff, like vitamins, minerals, antioxidants etc.
You can find out more about raw food from a man often referred to as a raw food 'Guru', and the Nutribullet creator, David "Avocado" Wolf.
What is "Clean eating"?
There is no real "bible", or hard and fast rules on the subject, so if you were to research it yourself (which I encourage you to do), you'll find lots of different interpretations of it and of how people practice it.
Clean eating is pretty simple, for me anyway! Rather than it being about eating more or less of specific things (for instance, fewer calories or more protein), the idea is more about being mindful of your food's journey from its origins to your plate. Put simply it's about eating whole foods, or "real" foods — those that are unprocessed or minimally processed, refined, and meddled with, making them as close to their natural form as possible.
Interestingly, cooking is still a form of processing. While it's true that some nutrients are lost during cooking, like vitamin C, in some foods other nutrients are increased when foods are cooked, like lycopene found it tomatoes. So the good balance is to eat a wide variety of foods, in both their raw and cooked forms.
Over the last 10 years ago I've gradually given up most processed foods, all dairy, all refined sugar and started on my healthy eating journey. I very rarely eat meat or chicken, and still eat some fish and shellfish. I still can't believe how much better i feel and look, inside and out by eating more plant-based and whole foods! This decision was also the inspiration behind me setting up Abundance Foods - read more about my story here. The way I interpret it and live by it can be summed up as:
"clean eating is being conscious of where the food you put into your body comes from, and the impact it will have on you, physically and spiritually".
What is a "Paleo" diet
Some people include foods like meat and dairy in their clean eating lifestyle. This is often referred to as a paleo or caveman diet. Made popular by Professor Loren Cordain, in his book The Paleo Diet, he argues that certain foods entered our diets only about 10,000 years ago with the agricultural revolution, when we began cultivating grains in larger amounts, and that isn’t long enough for our digestive system to adapt to eating them. Instead, he believes we should stick to what the cavemen or women ate – meat, vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts, and avoid grains, along with anything that prehistoric man and woman wouldn’t have recognised, such as dairy, pulses, sugar and, of course, processed food.
Also, the way these foods would be consumed would usually mean rejecting modern day food production methods in the handling of their food, opting instead for organic, grass-fed meats and free-range eggs etc.
I've chosen not to include meat and dairy as part of my clean eating lifestyle. Alongside that, I've also cut out:
Most processed foods (by this I mean foods with extra salt, sugar, bad fats, chemicals, preservatives and additives that read like a chemistry lesson)
Salt (opting instead for organic Pink Himalayan)
Saturated fats (opting instead for raw organic coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil)
Processed Sugar (opting for plant-based sugars such as raw coconut sugar and agave syrup)
Gluten and Wheat
Soy
I share my tips and strategies on how you can eat more healthily, and still enjoy your food over on my blog.
Why do I soak nuts?
Tree nuts and seeds are a source of highly concentrated [good] fat and protein, making them a terrific nutrient-dense food! Just like any other raw foods, nuts and seeds contain enzymes, and our bodies love the benefit of these enzymes, and that’s one reason why I choose to use ingredients without subjecting them to intense heat.
However, until the germination conditions for nuts and seeds are met, like moist soil or a soaking process, the enzymes in most nuts and seeds stay dormant, held hostage by something called enzyme inhibitors. These can cause potential problems in humans, interfering with the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
When you soak nuts, the enzymes within them break free from those inhibitors, and start breaking down nutrients making them easier for digestion and lessening the burden on our digestive organs. Soaking the nuts also re-hydrates them and plumps them up for blending into a smooth, cheesecake-like consistency.
This is one of the many reasons Abundance Foods Truffles, Treats and Desserts are so good for you; you're eating healthy food that also tastes amazing! Want to soak your own nuts? It's pretty easy:
Pour your nuts into a glass bowl. Note: Do not mix nuts while soaking, but you can mix them while drying
Add enough filtered water to cover the nuts
Stir in 1 tablespoon of sea or Pink Himalayan salt
Soak for no more than 4-6 hours for cashews, walnuts, peanuts, pistachios and brazil nuts (otherwise they will get mouldy and/or slimy).
Drain and rinse really well
Dry in a warm oven on the lowest setting until dry or use a dehydrator.
