Four Final Conclusions From My Raw Foods Trial

I learned so much and drew so many lessons from my 100% raw foods trial that writing this post turned out to be far more difficult than I expected. However, instead of writing an exhaustive (and endless) post covering every takeaway from the week, I decided simply to share what I thought were the four most crucial lessons.

[For readers tuning in for the first time, here's the archive page for my entire raw foods trial.]

1) You don't have to go 100% raw to capture most of the benefits of raw foods.
I'm convinced that it would be nearly as effective, and far easier, to apply an 80/20 approach to raw foods rather than going 100% raw. In fact, I'd suggest a trial of eating a raw breakfast and a raw lunch, then perhaps at dinnertime starting with a platter of raw veggies followed by a modest serving of cooked food.

You'll capture most of the benefits of a 100% raw diet (better mental clarity, better nutrition, and a healthy, satisfying diet on a fraction of the calories), with none of the food cravings and detox symptoms that are fixtures of a strict, absolutist raw diet. Moreover, a diet structured this way would save you from becoming a culinary outcast in your own home.

2) Weight loss.
I clearly lost weight and looked noticeably thinner after just one week of eating raw, even though I was already quite thin to begin with. Weight loss is an almost universal result experienced by new raw foodists (for one of the most highly compelling examples, see Angela Stokes' experience). I didn't weigh myself before and after my trial, but I'd guess I lost 3-4 pounds, despite the fact that I literally ate as much as I wanted to all week.

Therefore, if you are above your optimal weight, I strongly encourage you to explore raw foods. The bottom line is this: it takes so much effort to overeat on a raw food diet that it becomes easy to lose weight. If you can stick to a fully- or mostly-raw diet for a meaningful length of time, I'm convinced you will achieve powerful results.

3) Own your food cravings.
This week of raw foods helped me completely reframe how I think about food cravings, and it was by far the most significant (and unexpected) benefit of my raw trial. Normally when I have a food craving, I simply react to it. If I want chocolate, I go into the kitchen and eat some. If I want ice cream or chips and we have them around, I'll just dig in. It goes without saying that responding to food cravings in this way is a deeply unconscious act.

I had all sorts of cravings during my week of raw foods, but I obviously couldn't act on them without ruining the trial. As a result, I essentially spent the week having no choice but to observe these cravings and think about them more consciously and more objectively.

This was an enormous blessing, because it turns out that under conscious and thoughtful observation even the most powerful food cravings shrivel up and become easy to resist. Whenever I took a few moments to think instead of react to my food cravings, I had a far greater ability to consider the nature of the craving and then decide whether to act on it or say no to it. And being forced to do this repeatedly over the course of my week of raw foods helped me deeply grasp that I have much more power over my feelings and food cravings than I ever imagined.

I believe there are important implications here for anyone who wants to control their relationship with food, and I encourage any reader who struggles with unhealthy food cravings to try their own raw foods trial--not just for the opportunity for weight loss, but for the opportunity to experience food cravings on a deeply objective and intellectual level. I believe you will prove to yourself once and for all that your cravings don't own you--you own them.

4) Gratitude.
A final thought: if you really want to appreciate the things in life that make you truly happy, try giving them up for a while. Seriously. This raw trial helped teach me true gratitude for many daily food habits I took entirely for granted--things like my morning coffee, an afternoon snack of dark chocolate, or an evening glass of red wine. I never would have guessed that one of the most powerful lessons of a one week raw foods trial would be to teach me a deep appreciation for a simple life that grants us these seemingly minor things.

Readers, for those of you who have experimented with raw foods, what did you learn? And those of you who are new to raw, are you thinking of doing your own raw trial? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

For any readers who want to go beyond the context of food and pursue further reading on the issues of emotions and cravings, let me recommend four books that helped me significantly:

How To Want What You Have by Timothy Ray Miller
The Sedona Method by Hale Dwoskin
The Power of Now and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Raw Foods Trial: Day 8--The Day After Raw

This post, the last of the daily posts on my seven-day 100% raw trial, documents my official return to cooked foods. Once again, I'm sure you all know the drill by now: first I'll list the foods I ate and the schedule I kept, and then below I'll share my closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on the raw foods trial.]

Breakfast: 8:00am
2 cups of pineapple, 1 apple
1 splash of caffeinated coffee (yep, I seriously had about 1/16th of a cup--literally a splash).

Note: we played some doubles tennis that morning and the first piece of cooked food that I had--during a break between games--was a simple bagel. Pretty anticlimactic, I know. More below on how my body dealt with it.

Lunch: 1:45pm
2 apples, and yet another huge veggie platter of carrots, celery and a tahini dip.

Laura's comment after I made up this platter: "you know you don't have to eat this stuff anymore, right?"

Dinner: 6:00pm
All cooked food. A small glass of red wine to start things off, followed by a Tortilla Espanola (it's basically a frittata with fried potatoes and onions--a recipe post will be forthcoming!). Dessert consisted of a couple of pieces of dark chocolate and another glass of red wine. Delicious.

Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) On returning to cooked food: Most raw foodists are quick to share war stories about how they can get totally sick on even small amounts of cooked food. And most raw food trials seem to end with a final post describing how horribly sick the trialee became after the very first day of returning to "dead" food.

Sorry to disappoint, but that just didn't happen to me. I felt fine. The dead bagel I ate on the tennis court didn't make me barf, nor did it give me projectile diarrhea, much to the relief of our tennis partners. And dinner didn't make me double over with cramps or keep me in bed the next day.

Of course, that didn't stop me from worrying that I'd get sick. In fact, the whole reason I only allowed myself a teensy splash of real coffee this morning was because I was literally afraid to drink any more than that. I didn't want to suffer a spontaneous death from toxin overdose, or suffer something even worse--a spontaneous bowel movement.

Once again, nothing untoward happened. It was all so anticlimactic. And I'm not ashamed to admit I was just a tiny bit disappointed.

2) My first glass of wine: I had a tiny glass of red wine (don't worry, the dark chocolate part is coming up) right before dinner. The wine didn't taste all that good to me, oddly enough, and just a few sips made me feel surprisingly buzzed. (Talk about a completely unexpected way to save money on wine!)

3) Chocolate: After dinner, I helped myself to another very small glass of red wine. Thus fortified, I helped myself to a single individually wrapped square of Dove dark chocolate. And then another. And then 10 more, and then another 20. And then... I'm kidding. I managed to stop at two. Once again, nothing happened, other than perhaps a few quiet moans of pleasure.

4) Despite Laura's comment above about not having "to eat this stuff anymore," my diet on Day 8 was mostly raw by design. I thought it would be prudent to gradually work up to cooked foods over the course of the day, rather than start out with a heavy, eggs-and-sausage type breakfast and shock my body first thing in the morning.

5) I will say that cooked food, and particularly the dark chocolate, tasted stronger--and better--than ever today. They tasted "loud" to me, for lack of a better word. I'm sure my palate became quite a bit more sensitive after eating relatively bland foods for a full week.

6) On how easy it is to overeat cooked foods: My dinner, a Tortilla Espanola, was a simple dish which I lightly seasoned with some ground thyme and fried onions. It was really good. Really good. But I will say I felt heavy and really full once I finished eating, and (this part is sort of hard to explain) I had this vague guilty feeling, as if I had just eaten a ton of food that I didn't really deserve. It all went down the hatch so easily, too easily, with almost no effort or chewing, and I felt almost like I hadn't really earned all those calories.

It was so much less of a mindful experience than eating a big platter of fresh veggies and being forced to take the time to carefully chew through everything. Clearly, it's far easier to thoughtlessly overeat cooked food because it requires so little effort to consume it. I can't imagine how anyone could have a mindless eating problem on a raw-centric diet.

Stay tuned--in a few days I'll run my final conclusions from my raw foods trial!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Raw Foods Trial: Day 7--The Last Day of Raw!

Welcome to Day 7, the final day of Casual Kitchen's seven day raw foods trial! I'm sure you're all used to the routine by now: first I'll list the foods I ate and the eating schedule I kept, and then below I'll share my closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on the raw foods trial.]

Breakfast: 8:30am
3 cups of fresh pineapple and 1/2 an avocado, plus a couple of handfuls of sprouted wheatberries

Post Race Lunch: 1:30pm
Two apples, then a salad with some walnuts

Snack 4:30pm
Pineapple, about 2 cups' worth

Dinner 6:30pm
A big salad and a big plate of veggies with a small amount of plain tahini dressing.
All that remains between me and the end of my raw foods trial are these two huge plates of veggies:


Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) There are few things more discouraging than looking forward to eating an avocado that's been on your counter for three days, ripening until it's just perfect, and then cutting it open and discovering that it's mostly brown on the inside. Devastating.

2) No headache and no weird metallic taste in my mouth this morning. I feel totally fine. Which is a relief, because at noon today I'm supposed to run a 10k (6.2 mile) road race.

3) That's right: Today's 10k race was a final exam of sorts for my raw trial. Unless this week of raw food has completely sapped all my strength, I should finish in about 52-53 minutes (or a per mile pace of about 8:30). I'll be very curious to see what my endurance and energy level will be.

4) I felt great at the beginning of the race, but things went quickly downhill at about the four mile mark. I started to feel heavy and slow, and my body temperature went haywire. Despite the fact that it was a beautiful, warm autumn day, I started experiencing chills during the run. Normally, the only time I get chills during a hard workout is when I'm about to get heatstroke on a brutally hot day. Are there any raw athletes reading this series who have had an experience like this?

5) However, the race ended with an even bigger surprise: I finished in 51:56 (8:22 pace), a respectable time for an average runner like me, and a shockingly good time given how awful I felt midway through the race. It just goes to show that sometimes you really need some objectively measurable data to see how your body performs under certain conditions--you can't just go by feel. It turned out that in spite of (or perhaps because of) a week of 100% raw foods, I was able to push my body quite a bit harder than I thought.

6) My first restaurant meal: After the race, a group of us went out for lunch. And no, we didn't go to a raw restaurant--from what I'm told, there isn't a raw restaurant in the entire state of New Jersey (hmmm... business idea?). While we were waiting to sit down, my brain went wild imagining how I'd annoy the absolute crap out of everyone around me while I monopolized the waitress and systematically worked through the menu (is this salad raw? Is the dressing raw? Can you make this entree raw? No? What about this entree? That one? I'm on a raw diet--I can't eat anything cooked! Is this pasteurized? Is that pasteurized? Are you sure that's raw?, etc.). I figured it wouldn't be long until everyone within a ten foot radius was laughing and pointing at me.

Fortunately, nobody laughed or pointed. Heck, nobody even rolled their eyes, at least that I saw. There was only one thing on the menu that I could even order: it was a goat cheese salad that I ordered without the goat cheese and without the dressing. Basically what came was an $8.95 plate of lettuce with some apple slivers and a few stray walnuts. The entire experience was much easier than I made it out to be.

That's it for my seven day raw foods trial! Tomorrow, I'll run one more post: Day 8, The Day After Raw, where I gorge myself on alcohol and dark chocolate (just kidding.... sort of). Let me also say how grateful I am for all of the increased attention and interest from readers during the past week--your thoughts, ideas and comments helped me immensely, and I hope you all learned a few things while following along.

Finally, in a few more days I'll share my conclusions from the entire trial. This week of raw foods gave me a lot to think about on a whole host of food issues, including how to deal with food cravings, how I might adjust my diet after this experience, how my body changed after just one week of going raw, and how grateful I am for regular old everyday food. I can't wait to share these thoughts with you. Stay tuned!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Reader Questions and Answers on Raw Foods and My Raw Food Trial

Here are several questions and comments that came in from readers over the course of my raw foods trial. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]
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How much extra did it cost to eat raw?
Not that much extra. I spent about $5.00 on grains (which will last me 2-3 weeks at least at my current level of consumption), and then I spent a total of $44.58 on the various fruits, veggies and legumes that I ate over the course of the week (I also had some extra food left over at the end of the trial, so the $49.58 total exaggerates the cost somewhat). To put this in context, our weekly grocery food budget (for the two of us) generally runs anywhere from $30 to $75, depending on what we cook in a given week. It's definitely not cheaper to go raw, but it's not crushingly expensive either.

I've read that people experience strong emotions when they are on a raw diet, but you didn't really talk about it that much.
Interestingly, I've felt like my emotions were more stable than typical during my raw trial. However, I've also been reading the Sedona Method, which has helped me a lot in that area of my life, so it's probably impossible to tease out the two factors. But in general, my emotional state this week has been good to the extent that there isn't really that much to say about it.

I will say, however, that during some of the days of this trial my mental clarity was exceptional. I got a ton of writing done, especially on Days 4, 5 and 6, and I was able to focus on my work for hours at a time without distraction. It's unclear how much of this is due to kicking my caffeine habit, how much is due to the raw foods, how much is due to the combination of the two, or how much might be due simply to placebo effect (e.g., I'm on a raw diet, so I'm supposed to feel mentally sharper than normal).

Aren't you worried that you'll miss a lot of nutrients on this diet?
This was one of my primary concerns going into the trial. But as I learned more and more about going raw, my fears subsided. There's an elegant logic to the diet: the more you cook, process or refine your foods, the less nutrient-rich they become. Further, there's the argument that you get far more nutrients in your diet when you go raw because you have to shift a large percentage of your food intake towards nutrient-rich leafy greens, fresh veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds and grains.

Here's the other thing: this trial is only for seven days. I could eat apples all day every day and I'd be fine.

What about alcohol? Is wine "raw?"
Most raw foodists consider alcohol a toxin and avoid it. Technically, wine can be raw, but it is generally assumed that you'll avoid all alcohol during a raw foods trial. (This will obviously be a huge deal killer for some of my readers.)

Would you do this for 30 days, or would you ever go permanently raw?
Great question, and as enthusiastic as I am about this diet, I don't think so. I'm actually losing quite a bit of weight on this diet, despite the fact that I'm already thin to begin with and it's only been a few days! I suspect my body needs more energy-dense foods than I can get on a 100% raw diet. Furthermore, I'm just not ready to say goodbye to cooked foods for that long a period, regardless of the potential benefits.

However, we are likely to make a permanent change here at CK by incorporating a higher percentage of raw foods into our daily diets.

Did you use any sweeteners in your smoothies?
None. Obviously processed sweeteners, like sugar, molasses, brown sugar, etc., are off-limits on a raw foods diet. Opinions on sweeteners like raw honey or stevia are mixed: some raw foodists use them, some do not. In my case, because I didn't know whether our honey was raw or not I opted out of using it (it was buckwheat honey sourced from the Ithaca, NY area, but it didn't specifically say "not pasteurized"). Instead, I used raspberries or blackberries for sweetness, or I simply enjoyed my food unsweetened.

Will you buy a Vitamix blender?
I'm seriously considering it. My regular blender worked fairly well for most smoothies, but it really struggled when I tried to use it to process heavy leafy greens. The key advantage of a Vitamix is it has a far more powerful motor and the blades spin far more quickly. This extra cutting speed ruptures the cells of even the toughest cruciferous greens. Thus, in theory at least, a smoothie made with a Vitamix is healthier for you because your body can much more easily extract nutrients from the food. There's a cost tradeoff too, obviously. A standard blender will run you $25-$50, but a Vitamix can run you $450 or more.

Some raw foodists swear by their Vitamix (Victoria Boutenko strongly recommends them and considers hers a prized possession), but I've met others who just use a regular blender.

How badly did you crave cooked food?
Not that badly, surprisingly. I probably faced some degree of cravings each day, and the cravings peaked on Days 5-6 of the trial. And as weird as this sounds, I was grateful for the cravings, because they gave me some really interesting insights into my mind and my relationship to food. I hope to expand on these thoughts in a future post.

Isn't it a pain in the ass to cut up all those veggies to make smoothies?
Actually no. My first couple of smoothies took a few extra minutes to make, but once I got the hang of it, it was quite easy to cursorily chop up a few things, chuck 'em in the blender and go. Sure it's not as easy as pouring a bowl of cereal, but you'll have a much healthier meal that fuels you for a lot longer.

What did Laura do during your raw week?
In terms of eating, Laura didn't go raw. She sampled a few of my smoothies and shared in some of my veggie platters and salads, but her food was primarily cooked. Otherwise, she handed out encouragement and/or sympathy when I needed it and gamely tolerated me and my antics. In other words, it was just like any other week for her.

I'd love to try going raw, but there's no way I'm going to bother with sprouting all those grains.
Admittedly, I was a bit stymied at first by the grains. But it turned out that learning how to sprout wheatberries, buckwheat and lentils was the easiest and most interesting part of the entire process. Don't let this stop you.

Get ready for the colon blow!
Sorry to disappoint, but nobody's colon blew. We already eat a ton of veggies here at Casual Kitchen, and nearly half our meals are vegetarian, so perhaps this might be more of a digestive adjustment for someone on a more meat-centered diet. But my digestive tract ran, uh, like clockwork.

Readers, if you have questions you'd like to ask regarding my raw trial, send me an email!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Raw Foods Trial: Day 6

I have never told anyone that shifting to a raw food diet is easy. In fact, it was very hard for us. Our bodies were demanding foods that we used to eat. From the very first day, and for a couple weeks, minute after minute, I daydreamed of eating bagels with cream cheese, hot soups, chocolate, or at the very least, various types of chips. At night in my sleep, I was searching for French fries under my pillow. I sneaked two dollars from our family budget and kept them in my pocket. I kept plotting that one day, I would have half an hour alone to run down to the corner restaurant and buy a slice of hot, cheesy pizza, eat it fast without being seen, run back, and continue the raw food diet. Luckily I never found that chance.
--Victoria Boutenko, 12 Steps to Raw Foods
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Welcome to Day 6 of Casual Kitchen's seven day raw foods trial! I'm sure you're all used to the routine by now: first I'll list the foods I ate and the eating schedule I kept, and then below I'll share my closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]

Breakfast: 8:30am
1 avocado and ~3 cups fresh pineapple chunks

Lunch: 1:00pm
Smoothie: 1 apple, 1 cup blackberries, 5-6 Tblsp wheat berries and a few ounces of water. Yield: 1 1/2 cups.

Snack 3:00pm
1 apple and a handful of lentils and buckwheat for nibbling

Dinner 6:30pm
Vegetable platter: 5 carrots, 1/2 a large cucumber, 1/2 a green bell pepper, broccoli, with a small amount of tahini dip (pretty much like last night). I had one apple for "dessert."

I didn't feel I wanted a smoothie after this enormous plate of food, so I allowed myself to not have one. Last night's smoothie on top of a similar plate of food was just too much. Also, tonight's veggie platter was delicious, and it wasn't hard work at all to graze my way through it.

Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) Once again I'm not feeling all that well, in fact this morning I feel pretty much the worst I've felt all week. I felt a little queasy for much of the day and I had a bad headache from the moment I woke up, although it fortunately faded somewhat after breakfast. It felt exactly like a hangover headache--except I didn't have the pleasure of drinking too much last night.

2) One positive thing: that weird taste in my mouth is mostly gone.

3) At the same time, despite the "hangover," I had one of my most productive mornings of writing in months. I think the takeaway here is that pain focuses the mind and I should hit my head on something every morning before I sit down to write.

4) Yesterday's breakfast worked well for me. I think the fat content of the avocado not only was good for my body, it also was exactly what I wanted. I'll probably eat the same thing to start off Day 7.

5) A couple of kooky food craving anecdotes today:
a) I was measuring out some rice for Laura's dinner, and, weirdly, the smell of it was enormously tempting to me. That's right. Uncooked, plain white rice. It never occurred to me that uncooked rice even had a smell, much less that it could smell so delicious.

b) I spent an hour today excitedly flipping through cookbooks for "cooked" recipes. I've been in a bad cooking rut, and this is the first time in several weeks that I find myself actually excited to cook. That's gotta take the cake for the most unexpected side effect of a week of eating 100% raw.

Onward to Day 7--just one more day to go!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Raw Foods Trial: Day 5

Dan: You know why they call collard greens "cruciferous," don't you?
Laura: Tell me.
Dan: Because they are crucifyingly bad when you try to eat them raw.
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Welcome to Day 5 of Casual Kitchen's seven day raw foods trial! As I've done on previous days, I'll first list the foods I ate and the eating schedule I kept, with explanatory notes where necessary. Below, I'll share my closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]

Breakfast: 9:00am
1 whole avocado, 2-3 cups of fresh pineapple chunks

Lunch: 1:00pm
Smoothie: 2 apples, 1 cup raspberries, 4 heaping Tblsp wheatberries, 3-4 ounces water, combined in blender. Yield: about 2.5 cups or enough to fill a 20 ounce glass.

This was a truly simple, good and delicious meal.

Snack 4:00pm
A quick snacklet of some pineapple chunks and a handful of sprouted lentils and wheat berries.

Dinner: 6:00pm
I made an enormous raw veggie platter, carrots, celery, cukes and broccoli with a small amount of tahini dip:

Then I had a huge, green(ish) smoothie:
1 carrot, 1/2 an apple, 3/4 cup of raspberries, 1/2 cucumber, a loosely packed cup or so of collard greens, 4-5 Tblsp sprouted wheat berries, water, juice of 1/2 lime. Yield: 24 incredibly filling ounces. More than I could really eat, but I made room.

Note: For some reason, I had a huge burping fit after downing this smoothie. A world-class burping fit. Oh, if I could have been transported back to my college days for just a few hours!

Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) I'm feeling better today than yesterday. I still have that weird metallic taste in my mouth today, and a very mild headache as well.

2) I changed up my breakfast and had avocado and pineapple instead of a smoothie, partly because I'm getting a bit sick of smoothies, and partly because I wanted to listen to my body and give it the food it wants--as long as it's raw of course (if I really ate what I "wanted," I'd die of chocolate toxicity in a matter of days). Seriously, though, the avocado and pineapple were immensely satisfying, and the higher-fat breakfast fueled me just as well as a wheat berry based smoothie.

3) My body is getting still more and more efficient in digesting these large smoothies... Looking back, I think on Day 1 my body was confusing fullness with sufficient energy. I guess it pays to remember that hunger often lies.

4) Sleep: My sleep schedule is starting to rotate forward a bit. The past couple of nights I've stayed up a couple of hours later than usual, and I've been getting up later, at 7-7:30 am rather than my typical 5-6am. I've also needed a bit more sleep this week than typical, usually eight hours rather than my more typical seven. Hard to know if this is raw food- or caffeine-related.

5) On the aesthetics of veggie smoothies: I simply have to share a photo of today's dinner smoothie:

What, exactly, does this look like to you? One of my family members asked me if this was a "before" or "after" picture. Ironically, this smoothie didn't taste as bad as it looked--it was actually pretty good.

6) Finally, when Laura sat down tonight to her dinner of delicious (cooked) food and looked over at me masticating my way through a veggie platter and a barf-colored smoothie, she said, "today is the first day I feel a tiny bit sorry for you."

Onward to Day 6... only two more days to go!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Raw Foods Trial: Day 4

I have encountered some people in my life who were able to consume several large portions of pizza in one meal, but I never met anybody who could eat several large salads.
--Victoria Boutenko, 12 Steps to Raw Foods
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Welcome to Day 4 of Casual Kitchen's seven day raw foods trial! As I've done on previous days, I'll first give the foods I ate as well as the eating schedule I kept, with explanatory notes where necessary. Below, I'll share my closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]

Breakfast: 8:00am
2 apples

Second Breakfast: 9:30am
Smoothie: 1 apple, 4 Tblsp wheat berries, 4 Tblsp lentils, water. Yield: enough to fill an 8 ounce glass. Yep--I've turned into a hobbit.

Lunch 1pm
A huge smoothie: 2 huge handfuls of spinach, 1 apple, 1/3 of a cucumber, about 1/2 c of red raspberries, 4 Tblsp sprouted wheat berries, 4 Tblsp sprouted lentils, and about 4-6 oz water. Yield: about 20-22 ounces.

Snack, 4:00-ish
2 cups of pineapple chunks. (PS: here's a tutorial on how to reduce a whole pineapple into edible cubes in minutes).

Dinner: 6:00pm
A huge salad, similar to Day 3's lunch: spinach, green pepper, broccoli, cucumber and a lime-tahini dressing, with a couple of pineapple chunks for dessert.

Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) Today was the first day that I'd describe as somewhat difficult. I'm definitely still craving cooked food, but fortunately the cravings are not overwhelming and they are pretty easy to resist. Mainly I'm just not in the mood for chewing on fruits and veggies all day long. And the last thing I want to eat/drink is a smoothie.

2) Oddly enough, however, I don't miss coffee at all. All along, I had assumed that giving up coffee would be the worst part of this raw trial. It turned out to be the easiest.

3) I'm finding that my body is handling these grains more and more efficiently each day.

4) I've had a weird taste in my mouth for most of today. It's a metallic taste, like I'd been sucking on a penny. Not that I'd know what sucking on a penny would be like of course.

5) Jaw soreness: One thing you quickly learn about a raw diet is you need to relearn how to chew thoroughly. And today my jaws really started feeling it. Raw food isn't pre-processed and made extra swallowable with various fats and oils like many foods manufactured by the food industry. You're going to work your jaw muscles when you eat fresh greens, nuts, grains and veggies all day. I was even thinking what a shame it was that my wisdom teeth had to be removed years ago--I certainly could use a few extra molars this week.

Onward to Day 5!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Raw Foods Trial: Day 3

Dan: My tongue is green.
Laura: Really? That's cool. I guess.
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Welcome to Day 3 of Casual Kitchen's seven day raw foods trial! As I've done on Day 1 and Day 2, I'll list the foods I ate as well as the eating schedule I kept, with explanatory notes where necessary. Below, I'll share my closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]

Breakfast 10:00am
Smoothie: 1 apple, 3/4 cup red raspberries, 4-5 Tblsp soaked wheat berries, 2-3 ounces water. Yield: a bit over 1 cup.

Note: I went for a 2.4 mile run at about 1:30pm. I'm tapering my workouts in preparation for a 10k road race which is (coincidentally) happening on Day 7 of my trial. That ought to be a solid test of the fitness aspects of a fully raw diet.

Late Lunch: 2:30pm
1 apple, followed by a large salad of green bell pepper, cucumbers, spinach and tahini-lime dressing. Tossed in a couple tablespoons of wheat berries too.

By around 5pm I had some mild indigestion.

Dinner 6:30pm
Smoothie: Juice of 1/2 a lime (plus the lime's pulp and even some rind), 2 apples, about 1 1/2 cups of cubed cucumber, 3-4 Tblsp soaked lentils and 4-5 Tblsp soaked wheat berries. Yield: about 18 ounces.

Note: Best smoothie yet! It was so filling I could barely finish it.

Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) More dehydration: Just like yesterday, I woke up shockingly dehydrated--again, it's strange because I'm drinking more than my normal amount of water each day (my normal water intake is a lot as it is), and because I'm mainly eating water-based foods.

2) My headache from yesterday is gone and I feel relaxed and peaceful. Hard to say how much of this is due to not drinking coffee and how much is due to three days of raw foods.

3) One of the key things I'm trying to understand is how well I can train and run when on a 100% raw diet. So far my runs have felt just like normal.

4) I spent the entire day writing and had a really successful day--with much better than average mental clarity. I was able to work on several different posts simultaneously, which is not my normal pattern of writing.

5) I'm also getting a lot faster at making smoothies. After a few days of practice, firing up a blender for a quick smoothie is almost as easy as pouring a bowl of cereal, and it's much easier than cooking up some eggs and sausage. Yet a smoothie is far cheaper, far healthier and (if you include these laws-of-physics-defying wheat berries), just as satiating.

6) I craved cooked foods this evening, both before, during and after dinner. "Cooked foods" is sort of a strange thing to crave--in my case, it's not a desire for any specific thing, it's more of a vague, indistinct craving for a generalized category of food. Really weird. Normally when I crave a food, it's with a fair degree of specificity, like "I crave a bar of Lindt 70% Cocoa. Right now."

7) Another weird appetite-related feeling: even after the huge smoothie at 6:30pm, I was actually hungry again around 9:00pm. Even more weird: By 10:30pm my hunger totally went away--even though I didn't eat anything. Are there any raw foodists out there who have had similar misleading hunger sensations in the early days of a transition to raw?

Onward to Day 4!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Raw Foods Trial: Day 2

Laura: Would you like some herbal tea?
Dan: No way, man. By boiling that tea, you've killed it! I eat only living foods now.
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Welcome to Day 2 of Casual Kitchen's seven day raw foods trial! As with Day 1, I'll first give the foods I ate and the eating schedule I kept, with explanatory notes where necessary. Then, I'll share some closing thoughts on the day. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]

Breakfast: 7:30am
Breakfast smoothie: 1 apple, 3 Tblsp sprouted buckwheat (no wheatberries this time) and 4-5 red raspberries in a blender. Combine in blender. Add 2-3 ounces of water as needed. Yield: about 1 cup (enough to fill an 8-oz. glass).

Note: see below for a critical mistake I made with this smoothie.

Second Breakfast: 10am
Breakfast smoothie: 1 apple, 3 Tblsp soaked wheatberries and 2-3 Tblsp sprouted lentils combined in blender. Add water add needed. Yield: a little more than 1 cup.

Lunch: 1:00pm
I made a huge salad of spinach, cucumbers and red peppers with just a bit of dressing that I made out of lime juice, water and tahini sauce. I could barely wait to eat it; in fact it was so good that I made an identical salad later in the day.

3:00pm Snack: 2 apples

Dinner: 5:30 pm
Yep, another smoothie: 1 apple, a handful of red raspberries, one cup of cubed cucumber, about 1/8 of a red bell pepper, 4 Tblsp sprouted wheatberries and 3 Tblsp sprouted buckwheat. Combine in blender, add a few ounces water to achieve desired liquidity. Yield: ~1 3/4 cups.

Note: my most bizarre smoothie yet, and also the most bizarre tasting. This one takes the early lead for the worst-tasting smoothie so far.

Second Dinner: 8:30 pm
A large salad identical to today's lunch: spinach, cucumbers, red peppers and a fresh lime juice and tahini dressing.

Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
1) Today was a stiffer test of my willpower, mainly because I had promised Laura that I'd cook for her one of our favorite family recipes that night (Hamburger Corn Pone Pie--I'll run a post on it in the coming weeks). It's a delicious meal, I cooked it all up... and I couldn't even have a single taste of it. That's true love, is it not? Other than that, I felt a few cravings for cooked food at various points during the day.

2) Why did I eat two breakfasts? I made the mistake of using buckwheat grains rather than wheat berries in my morning smoothie. Buckwheat has an interesting and nutty flavor, but as I shortly found out, it does not provide anywhere near the energy or satiety that wheat offers. As a result, I was ravenous within two hours of breakfast. I didn't make the same mistake twice--I made sure to include wheat in my next meal.

3) You'll note that I consumed food on six separate occasions today, which from what I can tell isn't uncommon for raw foodists. However, it is also possible that yesterday on Day 1 I underfed myself, but "fooled" my body into thinking it was full with all of the fiber and bulk in what I ate. Thus it's entirely possible that today I was simply experiencing residual hunger left over from the prior day.

4) Detox already? I woke up today with a mild headache that lingered for most of the day. Also, when I got up, I was so dehydrated that I needed to drink about a liter of water and wait nearly two hours before my fluid levels corrected (that's an oblique way of saying "before I had to pee"). This surprised me, simply because so much of the raw foods I'm eating are heavily water-based in the first place. My normal water intake should have been more than enough to keep me fully hydrated. Furthermore, from what I understand after reading other peoples' experiences with raw foods, Day 2 is too early to begin experiencing any detox symptoms. Readers, if any of you have thoughts or context that you'd like to share on these symptoms, I'd be grateful.

Onward to Day 3!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Raw Foods Trial: Day 1

Note to readers: Over the next week I'll be running daily posts about my experiences on a seven-day trial of eating 100% raw foods. Today's post is my report for Day 1. [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial.]

PS: If there are readers out there who are raw foodists (I know I have at least a few), or other readers who have embarked on their own raw foods trials in the past, please share your experiences!
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Before we get into Day 1 itself, I want to share a few preliminary words about two food sources that are probably unfamiliar to most CK readers, but are key inputs into a typical raw foodists's diet:

1) Sprouted and soaked grains
2) Sprouted beans and legumes

Honestly, I had never heard of soaked or sprouted grains and legumes, much less had I ever eaten them. And I'll admit, when I was researching raw foods, I was a bit annoyed to discover that in order to have an easy source of "living" protein I'd have to spend time soaking and sprouting my food. However, it turns out that working with these grains and beans is quite easy and it requires only a tiny bit of advanced planning.

The key grains I soaked and sprouted were wheat berries--which are simply whole, unprocessed wheat kernels--and buckwheat kernels. Both require just an overnight soak in plain water to become soft enough to eat (but please, unless you have your dentist already queued up on speed dial, do not try to eat wheat berries raw! You will seriously break a tooth). As for legumes, I only experimented with lentils, which can be eaten raw after soaking for just 12-18 hours. The lentils tasted a lot like the bean sprouts you'd get at a Chinese restaurant, and they are--no joke--ten times as filling as cooked lentils.

After a night of soaking and a quick rinse, these grains and legumes will begin sprouting over the course of the next day or so. All you have to do is keep them somewhat damp (I put them in tupperware containers and covered them with wet paper towels) and rinse them 1-2 times a day.

Soaked and sprouted grains and legumes like these are extremely nutrient- and energy-rich, and they make a great (and filling) complement to a fruit or veggie smoothie, as you'll see shortly. Finally, it's pretty darn cool (and kind of amazing) to grow things like this in your own kitchen.

A word on the cost: these guys are cheap. The lentils that I soaked and sprouted were, believe it or not, just regular old grocery store dried lentils at 79c for a one-pound bag. The two-pound bag of organic wheat berries that I bought at a local health food store cost a seemingly steep $2.49, but I later discovered that two pounds will be enough wheat to last me 2-3 weeks, even if I ate them morning, noon and night. I'm sure wheat berries can be purchased much more cheaply if you go non-organic or buy in bulk.

I can discuss in more detail the surprisingly easy instructions for soaking and sprouting grains and legumes if there's interest from readers.

Now, let's move on to Day 1 of my raw food diet! First I'll discuss the foods I ate and the eating schedule I kept, with explanatory notes where necessary. Then, I'll share some closing thoughts on the day.

Breakfast: 9:00am
Breakfast smoothie: One apple, 3-4 Tblsp sprouted wheat berries, 2-3 Tblsp sprouted buckwheat: combine in a blender. Add a few ounces of water as needed to help liquefy the smoothie. Yield: about 1 cup (enough to fill an 8-ounce glass).
I also ate, separately, several cubes of fresh pineapple.

Note: It might not seem like much food, but this smoothie kept me full for more than six hours. More on that shortly.

Late in the morning, about two hours after breakfast, I went for my typical 5 mile run that I do 2-3 times a week.

Lunch:
Thanks to a last minute meeting Laura and I had to rush off to (we're bidding on a townhouse here in NJ), I ended up essentially skipping lunch. I just had a smallish snack of some cubed pineapple and some sprouted lentils and wheat berries. The wheat berries, which began sprouting about three days ago, actually tasted a little like bread!

Early Dinner: 4:00pm
Another smoothie:
Combine in a blender: two big handfuls of spinach, one carrot, 3/4 of an apple, 5-6 black raspberries and 4-5 Tblsp of wheat berries. Again, add water as needed. Yield: about 1 1/2 cups.

Note: Thanks to the spinach, you could technically call this a green smoothie, but in reality it was sort of purplish-brown. It was bizarre looking, bizarre-tasting and bizarrely good. By this time I was really famished, since it had been more than six hours since my last real meal.

Around 4:30pm I had a craving for some chocolate (which shouldn't be a surprise to any longtime readers of this blog), but I shook it off. Heck, it's only day one. I can't quit already.

Around 7:30pm I had an avocado, which for some reason tasted like one of the most delicious things I'd ever eaten.

Later, Laura threatened to get into my stash of dark chocolate. "You won't be needing this for a while!" she said. Talk about kicking a guy when he's down.

Concluding Notes/Thoughts on the Day:
Today felt like any other day. The main surprise about Day 1 was how shockingly filling and satisfying the smoothies were. These soaked and sprouted grains are so tiny, yet they provide an enormous amount of satiety and energy. It's as if they defy the laws of physics.

In contrast, my typical meal after a longish run is usually a huge bowl of (cooked) pasta, and I'm usually hungry again within an hour or two. But it only took a single, smallish wheat berry smoothie, plus a small snack for lunch, to give me enough energy to run five miles and last nearly six hours before I became hungry again.

Onward to Day 2!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

The Raw Foods Trial: Introduction

Today begins a blog series about my seven day trial experimenting with a 100% raw food diet.

Why raw? Well, first, raw foods fits well with one of Casual Kitchen's cornerstone ideas: the concept of embracing first-order foods, which are foods that don't contain embedded processing, branding, packaging or transport costs. If you embrace a diet rich in first-order foods, you can eat extremely well for surprisingly little money. In many ways "going raw" is an extreme example of embracing first-order foods.

Furthermore, the logic behind the raw foods diet makes a lot of sense: after all, a million years ago our ancestors didn't eat any cooked, canned or processed foods. Of course, they also didn't have dehydrators or Vitamix blenders, but that's a separate issue entirely.

All kidding aside, a diet centered around raw foods may very well be significantly healthier for our bodies.

Over the past year, I've discovered quite a number of other bloggers who have experimented with or converted to this diet. Almost all have reported strikingly positive results, including successful weight loss, improved health, increased energy--and even greater mental and emotional clarity. And recently, on a trip to Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to meet several raw foodists, and what I learned from them made me decide to try the diet out myself.

Finally, I relied heavily on Victoria Boutenko's book 12 Steps to Raw Foods, which covers in great depth how to approach a raw food diet. This book is widely considered to be the key resource for raw food beginners, and it's a fascinating and instructive read even if you don't intend to go fully raw.

What do I expect from this trial? Well, first of all, I do not expect to become a full-time raw foodist. After this trial is over, I'm planning to go right back to regular old cooked food. My goal is simply to test out the diet and see what it feels like. I also hope to figure out answers to some key questions, including:

1) What are the logistics of eating 100% raw?
2) Will it be expensive?
3) Will I end up running to the grocery store every day to buy insane amounts of fresh produce?
4) Will it make me feel healthier?
5) Will the diet be satisfying, or will it leave me with food cravings?
6) How challenging will it be to stick to the diet?
7) Will I experience any difficult detox symptoms?

I hope to get insights into all of these questions and more over the next several days.

Other than this big change to my diet, I'll live my (relatively) normal life. Sure, I might be cuddling up with our blender a bit more than I normally do, but other than that, I intend to exercise the same amount, sleep the same amount and do pretty much the same things I usually do each day.

Last of all, just as I don't intend to convert permanently to an all-raw diet, I also do not intend to persuade my readers to do so either. My goal is simply to try it out for a brief time and share my experiences.

Tune in tomorrow, when I'll begin with Day 1! [See the full archive of posts on my raw foods trial]

A quick postscript to readers: The posting frequency is going to be quite a bit higher than typical over the next week--at least one post per day, compared to CK's typical posting schedule of 2-3 posts per week. After the trial I'll get back to my normal schedule.



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

The Raw Foods Trial: Full Archive

My seven day raw foods trial has turned out to be one of the most widely read and most commented upon features I've ever run here at Casual Kitchen. In order to make the entire series more readable and searchable, I've created a one-page archive with links to all of the relevant posts. Enjoy!

Preliminaries: Before I could start this trial, I first had to stop drinking coffee. Here's the post that I wrote when I realized that I'd found a quick and nearly painless way to kick caffeine addiction:
Speed-Weaning: How to End Your Caffeine Addiction in Just Three Days

The Trial Itself:
Introduction to Raw Foods
Day 1, soaking and sprouting grains and legumes.
Day 2, murdered tea and six meals.
Day 3, dehydration and a green tongue.
Day 4, needing a few extra molars on the first truly difficult day.
Day 5, "crucifyingly" bad greens and barf-colored smoothies.
Day 6, kooky food cravings and getting out of a cooking rut.
Day 7, a 10k race and an annoyed waitress.
Day 8, The Day After Raw, where, strangely, nothing bad happens.

Conclusions/Final Thoughts:
Reader Questions on the Raw Foods Trial
Conclusions from the Raw Foods Trial

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!