The Benefits of Eating Raw Food

Series Summary

Raw foodism is a trend that is sweeping the world. With global obesity figures skyrocketing, people are taking a closer look at the factors that are affecting their body mass index and asking the question, “why are we getting so fat?” While some would say that the answer is genetic predisposition, others are convinced that a large part of the answer comes in the foods that we put in our body. And increasingly, we seem to be choosing meals high in fat and sodium content, but devoid of any real nutrition.

Raw foods are foods that have not been cooked above 118° F. The basic idea behind raw foodism is that essential nutrients and enzymes get cooked out of our foods at higher temperatures, causing our bodies to work harder to digest. Raw food diets tend to be very nutritious; most of the items on the menu are stout, green, leafy vegetables, nuts, fruit and berries. Are you convinced yet? Have you considered changing to a raw food diet? In this free healthy cooking video series our experts Matthew Fuller & Denise Bennett will show you some quick and easy raw recipes you can make on your own including salads and desserts.

Video Transcript

"Hello everyone, my name is Matt Fuller this is Denise Bennett my partner. We are the proud facilitators of the "Light and Love Cafe". We are here on behalf of expert village. We are interested in doing some raw food preparation for you today. Before we get going, in case you are not familiar I do want to talk a little about what raw food is and how it differs from cooked food. Raw food is basically food from nature just as it is grown and you do not have to heat it. You can basically just grab it and eat it. Sometimes you want to mix things together which create beautiful flavors, there are very important live enzymes that are in what we call raw food. And those live enzymes do tend to die at approximately 115 degrees, give or take 5 degrees. There are of course vitamins and minerals which are in the food and those do maintain to a higher temp but we choose to mainly enjoy the raw food because we like those live enzymes as well, they really do nourish our bodies. Today we are going to be making a very special fruit salad called stone heng. First of all it is very tasty, it is very beautiful and lastly and most importantly for me it is just so much fun to prepare."