Hi RGG...I've been reading a bit on the same recently too, where various studies have shown that limiting food intake increases lifespan by so much etc. and how regular fasting as well as only eating to about 75% capacity is a good way to improve our health and longevity.  I haven't tried either yet, but it's all going in!

Love,

swami xxx

Well, I was 100% raw all day today and it was nice. This 12 steps book really helped me find my head space. I didn't find it hard at all today even though I've been having trouble staying even vaguely raw for ages.

The whole family is eating raw at the moment and that certainly makes it easier. I'm not tempted by my husbands food and I don't feel like I'm not sharing a meal with the family because we're all just eating what makes us feel good and it's not the same thing but its all together and its all raw. I think the book really tipped my husband over to committing properly to raw. I'm treading carefully because if I try to get him to talk about it it will scare him off, he doesn't want to be pinned down but he has been eating raw and talking about how he was looking at cooked food and completely not interested. It's so much easier when the whole family is doing it. Hooray!

Swami and RawGreenGoddess, I've also heard/read about longevity and sparse eating. We work our systems so hard eating all the food we do. I think I read of one of the fasting websites that one way to detox is just to eat less, I guess your body doesn't have to work as hard. Unfortunately, for my brother he doesn't get to choose the food he eats. He's 24 now and he's been preparing to be a monk since he was about 16. He was a vegan all through his teenage years but he was the most unhealthy vegan I've ever met When he finished school and went to live at the Vipassana center he was eating healthy vegan cooked but once he had his first overseas trip and was living in monasteries in India, Thailand and Burma he stopped being vegan. Last time he came home he  was as thinner than I've ever seen him but his skin, which used to be really bad, had cleaned up and he looked healthy. He has no choice about what he eats in Thailand because he goes out with his begging bowl and eats what he is given. He said that because he is a western monk often the Thais want to be kind to him and give him a taste of home so he gets MacDonalds in his begging bowl 
So even though he's eating a full on cooked/crap food diet, he's only eating it once a day and looks healthier than he did when he was vegan.

oh...we posted at the same time...well done on a 100% raw day, that book is very inspiring.

Love BB'
XXX

Hi Aliceyesterday

Your last post resonated with me so much...it was as though you were channelling my thoughts!!  I am in the same position as you; the "shoulds", the feeling of deprivation, the emotional attachments to cooked food...it's easy to find excuses not to stay raw when you've had a lifetime of cooked food, and I think because food is, for most of us, a necessity, it's not something that we can just give up like other addictions.

I am also educating myself; I have raw books all over my bed and on my coffee green smoothie table.  The education helps me so much.  The book I got out two days ago is David Wolfe's "The Sunfood Diet Success System", which I'm finding so interesting.  He talks about the karmic nature of food and how what we eat effects us on a karmic level, which I had only thought of before in terms of those who eat animals, but never related it to the plant kingdom.  There's a lot of information and I haven't read enough to tell you much about it, but I'm really enjoying his insight and a slightly different perspective to some of the other raw books I've read.

Go the weeds!!!

All the best to you and your raw family.

Love,

swami xxxx

That's a sweet dish by the way. I was just looking at the picture and realised it isn't obvious at all what sort of food it is. The base is made with whizzed up nuts (cashews, almonds and brazil nuts) and dried fruit (dates, dried apple) until dough like and then shaped into 'thumb print' bowls. In that is a 'cream'- blended dried fruit (mango, dates and sultanas) and water. I've put a blueberry in each of them and a stick of rainbow chard stem and they're sitting on spinach leaves. yuuuuummmmm, so good.

how gorguss is your little girl and the raw treaties..yummm!

Hi everyone,

I got a PM asking what my 3 year old eats and I wrote a reply but I'm going to post it here too in hopes that I can lure some more parents into giving me some more tips about what their kids eat. Always good to have more ideas/support. Recipes/ideas, please 

Here it is:

My three year old has been on and off raw, pretty much when I am on and off. She has had long periods of raw though and I've managed to find some things that she loves to eat so I can tell you those and maybe your little ones might like them too. If you find any good things that your kids like, let me know. It's always good to have new ways of presenting food for her to try.

Things my daughter loves:

She LOVES fruit 'icecream'. I freeze things like watermelon, banana, blueberries, pineapple, apple, orange etc and then I put it through the puree part of my juicer. I've also tried this in the blender when my juicer was broken (as little water as you can get away with) and it works well too. Another way we've tried is blending pineapple and avocado together and then freezing it (you can do it in those icy pole mold things). The avocado makes it sooo creamy.

I make my own 'bliss balls': spirilina powder, tahini, chopped up dates all rolled in tiny balls and then rolled in coconut. I freeze these too and they're so good but can be eaten not frozen too.

A little bit of beetroot in a smoothie makes it pink and that can be fun. If food is a nice colour she tends to be more interested and it's so easy to add a bit of beetroot etc to a salad dressing in the blender etc to make colourful food.

I get Essene bread from the health food shop, the sprout bread. She like that with tahini on it or avocado or mashed banana.

I make raw hummus by sprouting chick peas and blending them with tahini, water, garlic, salt and maybe some spices. She likes this with carrot sticks or even just with a spoon.

She's a big fan of fresh fruit so I just cut up big plates of fruit and let her help herself to what she likes. Strawberries, blueberries, watermelon, cantelope are huge hits, frozen chunks too.

She's not so keen on salads but is happy to eat the individual bits so I often just put random chopped up bits of veggie out for her.

When we go out somewhere for the day a packed lunch will usually be a couple of apples, a couple of carrots, a container of nuts, dried fruit and sprouts, maybe a container of chopped up oranges or something.

Her tastes have changed a lot, things come in and out. When she first started on solids at about 10 months I gave her paw paw because that is supposed to be a really good starter but she didn't like it. We used to just let her pick off our plates what ever she was interested in, i never made her purees or anything. I just made available lots of soft fruits she could squish up herself with her hands or her gums and she helped herself to whatever she fancied and played with it or ate it. She's still breastfed so I've never worried she wasn't getting enough nutrients. When she was around 18 months old she was right into Essene bread and hummus, heavier stuff, but now she doesn't want it at all and is mainly eating fruits and smoothies.

I've always found if I let her choose whatever she wants she's much happier than if I make a general meal for the family and hope that she eats it. I've noticed big differences in my daughter when she's on raw, she's a lot calmer and we can talk about things more easily instead of her having meltdowns. It's like she's got a little bit more strength to deal with this confusing world.

Green smoothies: My daughter isn't so keen on them but she's getting there as I'm trying to make them more interesting for her (pretty glass, pretty colour, straw, something like coconut sprinkled on top and a strawberry for a garnish ). She also been helping me pick edible weeds in the garden for the smoothies and that makes her feel a lots more involved and interested in the process, she's proud of what she helped make. The more I involve her in the preparation of food the keener she is to eat it.