Is Raw Your Nutritional Style?

      

Some people find too many raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds can be difficult on their digestion, causing gas, bloating, and even diarrhea. If that’s the case for you, try blending or juicing your raw foods. This cuts back on the amount of fiber you’re adding to your system and lets your digestion adjust to having more natural foods to process. Even if you have a healthy digestive system, liquefying large amounts of the plants and their beneficial phytonutrients will be easier on your digestion and allow you to consume more.

Most people who eat large quantities of raw food juice their vegetables and fruits or blend them into smoothies as part of their daily routine. Green smoothies are a way of getting more greens, and green juice can be a great pick-me-up instead of a caffeinated beverage. You may want to mix it up and enjoy a savory nut-and-veggie pâté blended in your food processor or try some raw dark chocolate desserts, like my 3-minutes-in-the-blender recipe for homemade chocolate truffles. (The recipes are in chapter ten.)

If you’re a Modern Vegan, you already incorporate most of these ideas into your diet, and my guess is you love summer for all its raw abundance. Flexible Vegetarians can try to ease back on the heavier cooked legumes and grains and enjoy protein from sprouted seeds and smoothies instead. For Healthy Omnivores, this is a very good time to lighten up your diet. Try eating mostly raw foods, including smoothies and salads, until the evening, then enjoy a grilled chicken or fish and vegetable dinner.
I begin each summer day with a smoothie or juice, deciding each morning whether my body needs the slower absorption of a green smoothie (due to its high fiber content), or the jet-fuel injection of a pressed juice when I want to rev it up. You can discover for yourself when a smoothie or juice feels best. There’s no right way. It’s up to your taste buds, your time, and your budget. Smoothies are tasty, fast, and economical. You just toss the whole ingredients into your blender and turn it on. Juicing takes longer to do and uses huge volumes of fruits and vegetables, so it can get expensive fast if you’re juicing throughout the day, every day.

Smoothies are tasty, fast, and economical.

Because the natural fiber is mostly removed from fruit juices, the sugar in them hits your system more quickly than eating whole fruit does. If you’re sensitive to sugar or have prediabetes or diabetes, fruit juices or green juices with a high fruit content may not be right for you. If you feel an energy crash about an hour after drinking fruit juice, or if you feel bloated or lethargic afterward, skip the juice and go for the whole fruit instead—or go for vegetable smoothies with little or no fruit. One thing to beware of: If you feel an energy crash after a fruit juice or smoothie, that could mean you have blood sugar problems. Check in with your doctor—you may need to head off or treat diabetes.
Sometimes a client of mine will crave sugar in the form of sweets, or starchy carbohydrates, or even fruit. This can be a sign of a yeast infection (candida). If you also have other candida symptoms, such as itchy skin, lethargy, brain fog, or even depression, this could be an issue for you to explore with your doctor.

If you do have blood sugar issues or diabetes, berries, which are plentiful this time of year, are the best choice. In fact, diabetes specialists recommend them. Try to avoid high-sugar tropical fruits, such as pineapple, mango, papaya, and bananas. These fruits are often recommended as additions to sweeten vegetable juices. If you can’t handle them, though, switch up your veggie blend instead. Cut back on the dark leafy greens such as kale and add more romaine, cucumber, or celery; adding lemon juice, ginger, and stevia will help to sweeten the blend.