After never really hearing about the Raw Food Diet or the Ayurveda Diet, I learned so much about them this week by making meals that follow these diets. The five biggest things I learned were as follows:
1. The raw food diet is the oldest way of eating. This is the way hunters and gatherers lived by consuming unheated and unprocessed foods. Aside from the raw food diet, there is a raw vegan diet which is over 200 years old.
2. There are many benefits to the raw food diet. First off, the diet is full of unprocessed foods which greatly reduces exposure to chemical additives, refined sugars, and hormones found in animal products. This makes it one of the most cleansing and healing diets. This diet also restores alkaline balance within the body which prevents diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia. This diet also improves energy and digestion and promotes weight loss.
3. Ayurveda is one of the oldest sciences and health practices dating back to over 5,000 years ago. The idea of Ayurveda is to create balance within the mind and body. This can be done by alignment with nature and cleansing with the right diet and lifestyle choices.
4. There are 3 doshas within the Ayurveda diet that makes up a person’s constitution. Each person typically aligns more so with one specific dosha, but can have qualities of the other two doshas as well. The doshas are called Vata, Kapha, and Pitta and they describe the specific foods you should be eating based on which dosha you are. For example, Vata people are typically cold and have creaky joints. They should eat warm, soothing foods to balance out their body.
5. Practicing each of these diets offers a lot of health benefits and disease prevention, but can lead to deficiencies in Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D. This can happen due to lack of animal products consumed in the diet. A supplement should be considered when following a raw vegan diet or the Ayurveda diet.
The recipes we made were super delicious this week. Each one was full of fruits and vegetables which, of course, offers tons of nutrients. For the Ayurveda diet we made a Grapefruit Chutney, Spicy Sauteed Asparagus, Cauliflower and Potato Subji, and an Indian Flatbread. For the raw food diet we made a Beet Juice, Kale and Walnut Salad, and a Classic Raw Lasagna. Each recipe offered so much flavor and difference in textures. My favorite dish was the Classic Raw Lasagna. It consisted of zucchini for the “noodles” and in between each layer was a creamy ricotta (made of cashews), marinara, and pesto. It was so delicious, I could not believe it was all plant-based, uncooked food.
Food for Thought 