How to Prepare
You can virtually eat the same on a raw food diet as you would on a cooked diet. What is
the most striking difference, besides de ingredients, is the preparation of your food. The
following preparation methods are to:
- Ensure that your food remains below 42 C/118 F degrees
- Get a preferred consistency
- Make your food easily absorbable and/or
- Conserve your food
Preparation Methods
Here are the most used preparation methods for making raw food dish.
- Juicing
- Blending
- Dehydrating
- Cutting
Juicing
Juicing is a way to get the liquid (juice) out of a vegetable or fruit. The fiber is taken out,
the juice is left. This is a way to get concentrated vitamins and minerals that are extremely
easy for your body to absorb. The nutrients may enter your blood stream within 20 minutes.
There are three kind of juicers:
- Citrus juicers (orange juice);
- Centrifuge juicers (carrots);
- “Slow” juicers (greens).
Citrus juicers are the ones you use for lemons and oranges. You can buy some hand juicers
for about 5 USD. I have cheap glass one I use for quickly juicing lemon juice.
Centrifuge juicers are quick and easy to use. They work well for harder fruits and vegetables
such as apples, carrots, cucumber, celery, ginger, beets. You can also use them for whole
lemons and oranges (peeled!). You may try to put in some greens, but they don’t get much
juice out of them. They range in price from 50 - 500 USD. I like the Solis or Breville brand.
Slow Juicers are best used for green leafy vegetables and grasses. But they also work for
apples, carrots and cucumbers. They are the most expensive, generally are more work to
juice (may have to pre-cut) and to clean. But they are quit and extract the most juice.
Moreover, they generally give you the best quality juice and nutrients because of added
magnets and or a gentler way to treat the produce.