The scene looks like this: you’re
hungry, you’re alone, and you’re going to eat another meal of
romaine lettuce, tomatoes and avocados. And you’re bored. And
these avocados are starting to be less interesting than ever. And
it’s raining outside, and cold, and damp. And you’re wondering, is
the fun of eating raw gone? Will I be able to eat like that
forever? Can this really be healthy?
As pure and as simple as our raw meals can be, there comes a point
for most of us where boredom can set in, when we require more
variety or friends to share food with, else we will might face one
thing: lack of enthusiasm.
I’ve told people that simplicity is best. That a simple meal of
ripe mangoes when you’re hungry beats the best raw or cooked pie
you’ve ever had. That making a great salad doesn’t necessarily
involve putting everything but the kitchen sink in it and that,
too often, raw recipes are too complicated and, as a consequence,
difficult to digest. However, I did not mean that it is better to
be a sad ascetic than a merry epicurean.
It may be because I’m a bit of an epicurean myself. I love food
and, since I seem to be endowed with a few culinary talents, I get
never bored. I like to vary my diet and introduce new fruits, new
nuts, new vegetables and new recipes. And I encourage you to do
the same for two things. First being bored isn’t fun. Second, it
might not be healthy either.
I’ve noticed a few things in raw foodists. They don’t seem to vary
their diet a lot. They often stick with the few foods that they
like. I’ve noticed for example that many raw foodists eat avocados
everyday. Others eat almonds everyday. Many raw-foodists told me
that they eat a meal of romaine lettuce, avocados, sprouts, and
tomatoes everyday. Sometimes they add some red bell pepper. Others
bananas for lunch and nothing else almost every day of the year.
Is this supposed to be what simplicity is about? Always eating the
same thing? Is this natural?
Chimpanzees are know to eat over 120 different varieties of plant
food in a year. While carnivorous animals always eat the same and
never get bored, frugivores seek variety. Most of us, too, have
been raised on a varied diet. When someone only eats porridge and
potatoes every day, we know that things are not going well for
him. As human beings we are used to variety and, if we don’t have
variety, it’s usually because of a lack of means or sheer
incapacity to cook (many divorced men find themselves in that
situation!).
On a raw food diet, variety is even
more important because raw fruits and vegetables provide nutrients
in a less concentrated, more diluted form. Thus, a certain
vegetable may lack in many important nutrients, which are
compensated by what other vegetables can provide. It is not enough
to look at the charts and calculate our nutritional intake because
these numbers are wrong. A tomato grown in a farm in California
doesn’t have the same nutritional value as another tomato grown in
a local garden or one grown in a hothouse. The only way we can
insure proper nutrition on a raw food diet is by constantly
varying the foods we eat according to the season. Let’s review a
few pieces of advice and add some more:
1) Vary the fruits — It’s easy to get stuck eating one food
that we like and forget everything else. I know, personally, that
when mangos are in season, I eat mangos. But fruit is fun. Fruit
is what makes the raw food diet a lot of fun, especially when we
include exotic fruits in the menu. So I suggest constantly varying
the fruits that you are eating and discovering as many tropical
fruits as you can. A durian cure once a year is allowed.
2) Eat according to the seasons — When I tell people to eat
seasonally, most of them don’t understand. They think, if
something can be bought in a store, it means it’s in season,
right? Partly. It’s in season somewhere, but not necessarily in
your hemisphere! Let’s consider the following: cherries are in
season during the summer, but in our side of the world. So the
cherries you may buy may be imported, but they are in season for
you. If you find cherries in the stores in the middle of the
winter, this means they have been imported from a far away country
like Chili, which is situated in the southern hemisphere where the
seasons are reversed! It is not only completely un-ecological to
import foods from that far away, but the fruit is also picked way
too early and eating it at that time doesn’t follow our own
biological rhythm.
3) Eating simply doesn’t mean eating just one food at a meal
— I don’t believe in mono-eating in the sense that every meal
should be ideally composed of one food alone. I think this way of
eating leads to abuse. For example, pineapples and oranges are
acid. If we eat only these fruits at one meal, we’ll likely eat
too many of them to satisfy our hunger and introduce too much
acidity in the system. Dates are too sweet. Plums contain a
particular acid which can give you the runs if you eat too much.
Melons and papayas are rich in water but a meal of them doesn’t
satisfy. So I recommend, when eating fruit, eating 2-3 varieties,
ideally not more than that. And if you like, you can eat them one
at a time like a true mono-eater.
4) Vary your vegetables — Your mum told you “Eat your
vegetables!” And she was rights. But the chances are that even as
a raw-foodist you may not be listening to her. First you may not
be eating enough vegetables, and second you may not vary them
enough. To eat enough vegetables, you have to be creative. A salad
can get boring. So put your salad in the blender and make a raw
soup sometimes! Check out some raw soup recipe books for ideas.
Green vegetable juices are also extremely beneficial, and I
recommend to drink some every day, if possible. I like my green
juice to be tasty, so I mix enough celery juice in it and
sometimes add a little bit of carrot and beet juice too. And as
for variety, the key is to make the base of your salad out of a
different vegetable every time and discover the unknown varieties.
5) Don’t eat avocados everyday — This is my advice for raw-foodists.
Most of them tend to eat too many avocados and too often. Consider
the avocado as one type of fatty food, not the staple of a raw
food diet. I suggest eating avocados no more than once every other
day. Try to eat some nuts instead, and discover new varieties.
Seeds are also excellent. Hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds
and sesame seeds should be added to the menu more often. This will
help provide a wider range of nutrients that avocados alone could
not provide.
6) When in doubt, blend it up — Why shun all modern
developments and insist to eat only whole fruits and vegetables
when we have diabolical machines such as the blender that can
transform them into liquid meals of unsuspected nutritional power?
Hey, a little technology is good. One of my friends says, “I love
my car.” With the same unabashed mien I say “I love my blender,”
which just happens to be a Vita-Mix that I use almost everyday.
Smoothies and raw vegetable soups are great ways to vary your diet
and avoid boredom. And when we add young coconuts, soaked nuts,
avocados and carob powder to the blending orgy, the possibilities
for fun creamy treats are almost endless.
7) When wondering what to eat, go to the Chinese — The
Chinese themselves like to say they'll eat anything with four legs
except a table. We‘ll close an eye on some of their unscrupulous
ways and concede that they have helped us get out of the dark ages
of raw eating in northern countries, when no durians were
available. Chinatowns are full of surprises waiting to be
discovered. I even found durian toys. Then you can learn to say
“thank you” in Chinese (shiay shiay), or in whatever language the
store owners happen to speak.
I gave you some basic recommendations on varying the diet.
However, I didn’t tell you exactly how you can make your raw meals
fun and exciting. I will now give you some ideas for quick and fun
raw meals, which will hopefully open your mind to try out more.
A friend of mine, for whom I was un-cooking, told me with a shrewd
look one day, “It’s all salad anyway.” I was probably preparing a
raw spaghetti from zucchini lasagna with eggplant, and he told me,
just like that, “It’s all salad anyway.”
Okay, it may all be vegetables, but first it doesn’t look like
salad, and second it doesn’t exactly taste like a salad. The
difference between a salad that looks like a salad and a vegetable
mix that looks and tastes like something else is, as Mark Twain
once put it, “the difference between lightning and the lightning
bug!”
Here are some ideas:
1) Take a nori sheet. Spread some
mashed avocado on it or one tablepsoon of tahini. Add grated
courgettes and rinsed dulse. Roll up like and eat like a sandwich.
Everyone will think you’re a genius.
2) For a great smoothies, blend some papaya and two whole ripe
mangoes. Add any other fruit in season. Blend with some water and
beware of flying socks if you have your friends try it out.
3) Soaked sun-dried tomatoes really add flavor. Put them in
everything that is not sweet and be ready to discover great
combos.
4) Blend frozen durian with other fruits. Let it thaw for a few
hours and then blend it up with coconut water, mangoes, or other
fruits. You can even blend it with some carob powder, coconut
water, and a few dates for an “out-of-this-world experience.”
5) For a quick nut spread, blend in your food processor raw tahini
and carrots together. Use more vegetables than nut butter. Add
your favorite seasonings.
6) An easy dressing idea: blend 1-2
whole oranges with a small avocado. Add other herbs or vegetables
if desired. Simple and delicious.
7) Here's an easy soup that will
surprise many: blend tomatoes with celery. Use 2-3 stalks of
celery per tomato. Add diced tomatoes or cucumbers to the mixture.
This will take care of any salt cravings you might have.
These were just a few ideas to vary your diet and avoid boredom.
My motto is it should be tasty, healthy, and easy to prepare. When
I open some raw cookbooks and find a recipe with a page long worth
of ingredients I ask myself, “Do they really expect me to spend
that much time just to eat?” Then I think of all of the time it
will take to wash all the dishes and I give up. Are they kidding?
I can prepare something in 10 minutes and it will be just as good,
easier to digest and will leave me enough time to do the things
that I really like to do, such as writing articles for Get Fresh!
So in conclusion, varying your diet doesn’t have to get
complicated. It doesn’t involve becoming a raw gourmet genius. It
just means having the attitude of, “Hey, I’m going to have fun
with this and try something new everyday.” It’s about being open
to try new foods you’ve never tasted before, and making sure you
don’t eat the same thing every day.
And remember, the cure for boredom is curiosity. But there is no
cure for curiosity.
"Frederic Patenaude, is the author of the best-selling e-book
“The Raw Secrets”. He is currently giving away free access to
his private library of over 100 exclusive articles along with a
subscription to his newsletter Pure Health & Nutrition. Visit
http://www.fredericpatenaude.com
while charter subscriptions last.
Click below to buy Frederic Patenaude's E-Book, Raw Secrets
For more easy recipes please check out my
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