For the last several decades there has been a rather small, yet very loyal contingent of people who have advocated living the raw vegan lifestyle. In more recent years, this type of diet has become more popular and is becoming somewhat more "mainstream" as an alternative style of healthy living. With a greater number of raw food books and diets on the store shelves and escalating numbers of raw food restaurants being opened, it is evident that "living raw" is gaining in acceptance.
One event that served to bring the raw vegetarian food "phenomenon" into the limelight was the recent opening up an up-scale, five-star gourmet fine dining establishment in the San Francisco Bay Area called Roxanne's. Roxanne Klein, a leading chef and restaurateur, and her multi-millionaire husband David Klein, opened the new restaurant emphasizing a menu that is purely made up of raw food recipe preferences.
Most of the gourmet dishes presented have been developed by Roxanne herself. The quality, originality, seasonings and delicious tastes received the recognition of world-renowned chefs who have visited the restaurant to learn her secrets of the all-raw vegan menu.
Roxanne's is just one example of a much bigger movement that is becoming more popular. Today, in most large cities you can find several restaurants that have raw food meal options on the menu and even a few raw food restaurants that are devoted to only offering living foods.
John Robbins is a best-selling author and is broadly known and revered for his research and guidance about the food industry as a whole. He reports that there is a true food reformation in the works that has people favoring eating more foods that are organic and locally grown, which is at the heart of the vegan culture.
He indicates that this is out of both relevance for health factors and for protecting and bettering the environment as well. The vegan diet is a step beyond both the raw food diets and the vegetarian diets. Eating a raw food vegan diet excludes all meat and dairy, and also purges the cooking of fresh foods in favor of eating them completely in their natural form.
The raw or natural vegan diet includes a wide array of fresh fruits and vegetables, as most would expect. In addition, this raw vegetarian diet also relies a great deal on sprouted legumes and grains, nuts and seeds to supply protein and beneficial oils and fats. One of the primary reasons why eating raw food is considered to be healthy and beneficial to the body is because all of the food is packed full of living enzymes. The enzymes help with the digestive system and help deliver nutrients all over the system.
When food is cooked, these effective enzymes, as well as the other minerals and vitamins are destroyed. When these vital nutrients are destroyed by cooking, the body ends up desiring more food in an attempt to get its nutritional needs met. Through eating a raw vegan diet, the body acquires more nutrients from fewer calories and tends to shed weight naturally, while also feeling less sluggish and bloated.
