Raw Food folks?

[turil.livejournal.com]

I just went raw (YAY!) and I'm frustrated by the lack of raw food options for both restaurants and stores in the area. I can't afford to take the train out to Beverly every time I want to eat out! And I'm wondering if anyone else knows of secret/independent restaurants and stores in the area that wouldn't be obvious that they have a good selection, or just one or two really good things, for a raw diet?

I know that the fresh made juices at Blue Shirt are raw (some of them anyway), and that's been useful and fun. And I just found raw nori (not roasted/toasted) at the Asian market in Union Square. (The Asian market in Porter didn't have it, surprisingly, and the Asian market in Central went out of business.) And I know about the Harvest Coop, Whole Foods, and Cambridge Naturals.

Anyone else raw here? Any other suggestions?

Comments

[ron_newman]

Are you referring to sushi?

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Probably not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_food

(Sorry, OP, I got nothin'.)

[turil.livejournal.com]

Not really, sushi isn't very raw. The rice is cooked, and the nori is usually toasted. (Which is why I was happy to find raw nori!)

A raw diet is just what it sounds like: eating only raw foods. Nothing cooked over 115° F, and preferably fresh foods.

Most raw food folks are vegan too, though some eat honey.

[dphilli1.livejournal.com]

you should talk to phermone on lj. She went raw for a while, might have tips.

[ert.livejournal.com]

pheromone?

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

You rang? :)

I did go raw, but only for a little while: less than a month. I thought it was fabulous, but I just didn't have the patience to deal, and I was also in training full time and couldn't handle the detox stuff while doing so.

As I've often said, if I had someone to prep my food (or even prep with), I'd be highly inclined to give it another go.

I do wish we had a really good raw place nearby. OG was the first one I ever visited since it was right nearby, and I thought it was nice, but after visiting the ones in NYC and elsewhere, I confess OG excites me a lot less. Around here, I don't even know a well-priced reliable source of young coconuts, which I think I could live on exclusively for some time! :)

[turil.livejournal.com]

I did find young coconut meat frozen at Super 88.

I think Davis would be a perfect place to launch a mostly or all raw restaurant/deli/supplier... :-)

As for preparing food, I mostly just eat simple stuff. Not quite mono meals, but a few veggies and/or fruits at a time, with maybe a dip or spread, and lots of quick smoothies. I only occasionally make something from a recipe that requires lots of work to make.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Oh, I meant fresh, not frozen. (Frozen never even occurred to me, actually.)

I'm not sure Davis would be a great place for a place like that, but what do I know? I'm honestly confused as to how OG stays in business up where it is! But given the Boston area's general inability to support a reasonable number of vegetarian restaurants... which I just don't get, don't get at all. Friggin' Atlanta, GA has orders more veg options than we do. WTF?

The thing for me about raw is that even the simple stuff requires a fair bit of prep comparatively speaking, in part because leftovers don't keep nearly as long if they aren't cooked. If you want to come feed me, I'll happily go raw with you. :)

Not raw myself, and never will be, but...

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Are you raw omnivore, raw ovo-lacto vegetarian, or raw vegan? That might affect your options.

There is an Indian market, Shalimar, in Central Square where you can buy quite a lot of kinds of dried legumes in large-ish quantities for soaking and sprouting. I think they have a better selection in that department than the sort of Indian-Irish market in Davis. Penzeys Spices is on Mass Ave in Arlington, a bus ride away from the Porter Square shopping center. You can get one-pound bags of untoasted sesame seeds there at a very reasonable price ($4.30, I think), and if you grind those up really well, you have raw tahini, which is awesome for salad dressings, raw hummus, etc. Of course, you can also just sprinkle them on things. Having a raw salad dressing whipped up in the fridge and a small container you could carry some in would make it easier to eat out, since you could order a simple salad in restaurants and discreetly add your own dressing. Not ideal, I know, but better than nothing.

Have you invested in a food dehydrator? From what I can tell, they seem to be the single most useful piece of equipment a raw foodist can own. I did a single day as a raw vegan as the second-to-last day of a month long cleansing/detox period (the last day was a fast), and when I went online to see if I could find some interesting raw recipes for that day, most of the more tasty-sounding and filling stuff required a dehydrator, to my chagrin (I ended up making a YUMMY raw salsa dressing for a salad with avocados and nuts on it for dinner, though).

Good luck with your new dietary choice. Please make sure you get enough of all the nutrients your body needs, and consult a nutritionist who knows about raw foodism if you start feeling under the weather!

Re: Not raw myself, and never will be, but...

[turil.livejournal.com]

Raw Vegan.

Thanks for the suggestions. I live in Union, so I have lots of great independent world food shops for basics, like spices and such. But I was hoping for some places that had unusual things that just happened to be raw.

As for dehydrating, I either use the sun/wind outside (in a box with a screen over it), or my oven with a pilot light and a fan (it gets up to about 100° F, surprisingly, with just the pilot light on!).

[cemeterygates.livejournal.com]

I'm not raw, just a raw-friendly veg, and I've heard great things about Organic Garden Cafe (https://www.organicgardencafe.com/) in Beverly Mass, but haven't been out there myself yet. Also I don't know if Veggie Planet (http://www.veggieplanet.net) have any raw-specific meals, but they are super friendly and will probably prepare any of their awesome food to your liking.

[veek.livejournal.com]

I'll put in a vote for Organic Garden. I've been there only once but was astounded at the variety of foods I was presented with in the course of a single meal.

Of course, my three companions and I were sharing. :) But each plate had great variety, too.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the place in Beverly is what convinced me to go raw. But it's very expensive, and add the train fare to that, and I really can only go once a year or so, or if someone else is treating. (It's where I've asked to go for my birthday for the past two years).

I'll talk to the folks as Veggie Planet. But they are really pretty cooked-food centric (rice, pizza, and other breads), so I'm not sure what they could offer me.

[ruxxell.livejournal.com]

the other side cafe across from the Hynes t stop has a raw food section.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Really!!!!

Ooooooooh!

I may have to venture into the BIG CITY...

Thanks!

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

purely out of curiosity, and not judging or questioning...

what do you eat for protein?

[turil.livejournal.com]

Food!

Pretty much everything you can eat has plenty of protein. I've been a vegan for about 20 years, and got plenty of protein, and now all the food I eat has even more nutrients, since it's closer to being alive (rather than processed).

I have way, way, way more energy than I ever did before. It's really cool. I highly recommend it. It takes about 2 weeks to get rid of cravings, but once that happens, it's soooo worth it!

[ellf.livejournal.com]

Your diet works for you, and that's great - but please note that it is not accurate that "pretty much everything you can eat has plenty of protein", especially if you are vegetarian.

[turil.livejournal.com]

I stand by my claim. Humans can get all their protein needs from plants. You're not going to hear that in mainstream medicine, since there is so much money in both animal agriculture and in disease. But it's true.

Where do raw and living foodist get their protein?
The WHO (World Health Organization) says humans need about 5% of their daily calories to come from protein to be healthy. The USDA puts this figure at 6.5%. On average, fruits have about 5% of their calories from protein. Vegetables have from 20-50% of their calories from protein. Sprouted seeds, beans, and grains contain from 10-25% of their calories from protein. So if you are eating any variety of living plant foods, you are getting more than adequate protein. Numerous scientific studies have shown the daily need for protein to be about 25-35 grams per day. So if you ate 2,000 calories per day, and ate raw plant foods that had an average of 10% of their calories from protein, you would get 200 calories worth of protein, or 50 grams. This is more than adequate to support optimal well-being. Other studies have shown that heat treating a protein (such as with cooking) makes about half of it unusable to the human body. So raw plant food protein is even a better source than cooked plant foods or animal foods. There is still a huge, foolish, misguided idea that plant protein is not "complete". This is based on studies done on rats in the 1940's. This false conclusion was drawn before we discovered the bodies protein recycling mechanism and its ability to "complete" any amino acid mix from our bodies amino acid pool, no matter what the amino acid composition of a meal consumed. This false idea is still perpetuated by the meat and dairy industries, in an attempt to influence people to continue consuming their truly health destroying products.
(From Living Foods (http://www.living-foods.com/faq.html))

a raw diet is best for all humans, as far as the research shows. If you're interested in trying it out, and seeing for yourself how much healthier you can be eating whole, fresh, unprocessed, plant-based foods, I highly recommend it as a scientific experiment. Go two weeks on a raw diet and see how your body feels. If you want to go all out, get a doctor's checkup right before, and then after two weeks or more on a raw vegan diet (with a well rounded diet, with lots of greens, and not too much fatty foods like nuts and seeds), and see what the doctor thinks (don't tell him/her what you are doing, though so there isn't a bias).

[ellf.livejournal.com]

Your facts are somewhat flawed. All of the eight amino acids required within a diet - that is, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine - can indeed be obtained by plants. However, it is categorically false that the human body can "complete any amino acid mix from our bodies amino acid pool, no matter what the amino acid composition of a meal consumed". This is why there is a distinction between essential and non-essential acids - the former cannot be synthesized.

Quoting a single source that is devoted to espousing a particular way of eating, and its associated claims that science is being manipulated to some end, is easier than learning from a neutral third party how nutrition works. That's fine - I'm not bringing up my own dietary choices or trying to change yours.

However, I strongly encourage anyone else who reads your post to discuss what they want to do with their doctor before taking nutritional advice from a relatively anonymous raw-foodist on the Internet.

Don't take my advice, take your body's advice :-)

[turil.livejournal.com]

Definitely don't believe anything you read! :-) Instead, do a scientific experiment, try it out for yourself, and see what the results are.

Personally, I don't care what corporate medicine has to say about my diet. I do care what reality has to say about it. And reality says that I have more energy than ever before. My skin problems have all cleared up or are clearing up (scaly skin, acne, athlete's foot fungus, gingivitis, danduff, etc.) And my mental health is far better than it's even been before in my adult life (and I'm currently going through hell right now, with the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my adult life). And everyone says I look amazing. So yeah, I don't care if corporate science doesn't know why a raw plant-based diet is so damn healthy, but reality shows that it clearly is.

And, yes if you want to try out a healthier way of eating, do your research! Don't rely on any one opinion! Read lots of other people's ideas and studies, and then do your own studies: eat different foods, see how your body reacts (it's usually pretty quick, within hours or days, at most), and you'll find out first hand what foods make you healthier and what foods make you sicker.

Re: Don't take my advice, take your body's advice :-)

[catbird.livejournal.com]

Not to judge what is best for _your_ body but I know from experience that my body needs meat, grain and veggies to be happy.

I lived in a vegan/veggie co-op for two years (Anyone thinking of moving to Pomona, CA, great place to live!!). During that time I was vegan for a few months just for the convenience factor. I had low energy and wanted to eat _all_ the time. I was on the same diet as people who had been vegan for years so I doubt that it was a balance thing. I ended up going out to eat meat two or three times a week and everything evened out. There was at least one other person in the co-op who had a similar reaction.

Congrats on finding a diet that works so well for you! Keep in mind that universal truth's are far and few between.

Re: Don't take my advice, take your body's advice :-)

[turil.livejournal.com]

Right, but a standard vegan diet is very different from a raw diet. I've been a vegan for nearly 20 years, and never had any energy. Then when I went raw, I had astounding amounts of energy. So I say, try it, you'll like it!

You'll never know if you don't try... :-)

this is basically an advertisement for diesel cafe

[takeapicaresque.livejournal.com]

I work at diesel in davis and I eat a (except the bread) raw lunch every day (not really on purpose, but being vegetarian and the fact that we don't actually have a stove or oven, that's what ends up happening). we have tons of fresh veggies (plus nuts, dried cranberries, and apples for flair), we make our own delicious balsamic vinaigrette that has no sugar (mainly just vinegar, oil, spices, and mustard), vegan black beans and chick peas (but maybe those don't count as raw? not sure...), and the salads are designed to be meal-sized, too. we're also opening a new store in union in a few weeks, so it'll be even closer to your house (the menu there will be slightly different, but with the same dedication to lots of vegetarian/vegan options). I suppose this is only helpful if all you're looking for is a salad for a meal...but I bet you eat a lot of those in a raw diet, anyway.

what I would suggest for a delicious lunch would be the Sprocket as a salad (green apples, tomatos, carrots, sprouts, mesclun greens, and add avocado for a little bit more). it's my pleasure every lunch break.

and to everybody else: please don't use this as an excuse to hate on diesel. it hurts my feelings.

Re: this is basically an advertisement for diesel cafe

[turil.livejournal.com]

I'll check them out. Salads are pretty boring, especially if I have to pay for them in a restaurant, but I could always bring some nori sheets and some raw soy sauce or other raw dressing (regular vinegar isn't raw, it's cooked, unfortunately) and make a roll-up.

And as far as the chickpeas and beans, they are only raw if they are raw :-) You can sprout most beans, and they are yummy. Sprouted lentils are my favorite!

And I am looking forward to checking out the new place in Union. I do like Diesel. Though I'm not much of a cafe kind of person.

[medyani.livejournal.com]

Contact Boston Vegetarian Society (http://www.bostonveg.org/) for additional info/tips -- a lot of really nice folks, and they'll know if anyone around does. Also go to their food fair in the fall to talk with lots of local (and not so) vendors for specific info.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do remember a few raw places at the Vegetarian Food Fest. And I'm always excited to go every year.

There is a Boston Area Raw Foods group I recently found out about, but they meet in Waltham... So I'm not likely to get to go very often.

[medyani.livejournal.com]

Hmm -- I thought I heard from some vegan friends (I'm a lacto-ovo-veg) that there was another raw food group in the Camberville area. I think I also heard mention there's a raw food place in Providence (I know that's not local, but it's always good to know about places, I think). Regardless, Evelyn, who runs BVS, can give you info, including perhaps names of BVS members who are Raw/Vegan, etc. I for one, always appreciate linking up with others of my same minority identity/persuasions. :)

Some recipes for you

[kristensraw.livejournal.com]

Hi! I'm not sure where you're located...If it's San Fran or NYC, then you have some raw restaurant options, right?

Anyway...I have a couple of FANTASTIC Raw recipes on my blog that you might want to try. They're super easy!!! and so delicious :) Hope this helps. And, if you have questions in the meantime, since you're new to Raw, just pop me an email :)

Have a great day!

Kristen
-------
www.KristensRaw.com
www.KristensRaw.blogspot.com

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Er, I'm wondering how you found the Davis Square community if you don't know where Davis Square is... :-)

It's in Somerville, Massachusetts. And Massachusetts has two, count em, two raw restaurants. Neither of which are anywhere near Davis Square :-( (The one in Beverly is about 30 miles away, I think, and the other one is about, oh, 80 miles away or so. So they aren't anywhere I'm likely to go to just for lunch or dinner more than once a year of so.)

But yeah, always looking for recipes. Though mostly I just eat simple stuff right now, as I'm still detoxing and losing lots of weight. In another few months, when the temperatures get down below freezing, I'm sure I'll want lots of warmer, heartier foods than the cool carrots, lettuce, and frozen smoothies, and such that I'm eating now!

Re: Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

[kristensraw.livejournal.com]

haha, that's funny. I found the thread through searching with google.

At least you have 2 restaurants. We have zero here in this part of Arizona. Have to drive 2 hours to Sedona. Thankfully, I'm a Raw food chef and just make my own stuff. But, I tell ya, there are times I definitely want to have someone else prepare the food :)

I imagine winter can be tough. But, hey, some people still love eating Raw in the Winter. You'll just have to see how you do. Miso soup is always nice!

Oh, and here is something to try.... check out www.meetup.com and look for Raw/Vegan groups in your area. There might be some great potlucks to check out that you could attend.

Ahhhh and another idea! Don't know your budget, but you can have Raw food shipped to you. It's not cheap, but maybe it's something you can do every couple or every few weeks to break it up for you, you know? Even once a month can be a great treat!

Check out:
www.Rawvolution.com (some of his stuff is a little salty for me, but it's still better than eating a bunch of nutritionally deficient cooked food.

http://purerawcafe.com/ I've not tried her stuff, but the website looks nice.

Re: Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Years ago I'd fantasized about some raw place that shipped a couple of day's worth of meals weekly. But that's just not my style. I try to live simply, and shipping fancy food from several states away isn't so simple :-)

And as I said in my original post, the raw group in my area isn't really in my area, it's about 10 miles away or something. Which is about an hour or more bike ride or more on the bus/train. And Meet-up doesn't have a group yet for Boston, I checked. I'm thinking I might have to organize one, but meeting space is always a problem. (Why aren't there community centers that can host community meetings like this?)

Oh, and speaking of miso soup... I make a mean Raw Carrot Apple Ginger Miso soup!

[imvfd.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, a solid raw vegan meal in Boston is pretty much a desert so when I go raw it tends to be home made goodies that I take places. Somewhat surprising, really, that there's virtually nothing around.

Presumably you know about this site:

http://rawfoods.com/

Good for recipes.

One thing to keep in mind is that most of the info on raw foods that you can find is theoretically quite unsound. Which is not to say that raw foods are good and good for you, but Kristen's "why raw?" section is fairly typical in starting off with utter rubbish.

Also, if you're detoxing, consider adding your finer cruciferous veggies. If you've got a wheat grass juicer, I'd recommend kale (taste is... consider juicing some ginger into it). Also dandelion greens.

[kristensraw.livejournal.com]

I rather like my "why raw" section ;)

[imvfd.livejournal.com]

I should hope so, given that you've written it. Nonetheless, "enzymes" are simply biochemical catalysts. Some are used in digestion. Some repair DNA. Some cause cancer. And some create beta-amyloid plaques in your brain which might be the underlying cause of Alzheimer's. Also, plenty of enzymes work better at high temperatures. That's one of the reason why most beers are not raw foods because the wort is cooked to activate the digestive enzymes that breakdown the complex carbs into something that yeast can handle. Also, note that the "Okinawans and the Hunzas of Pakistan", though they may be "The world's longest living cultures," are not raw vegans. All things in good taste and moderation.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Right now I'm so overwhelmed by web sites and books, I don't know where to start. And I'm sure that lots of it is not so factual. But then again, that's pretty much true for everything anyone has to say in life! :-)

Mostly I'm just experimenting with my own diet and seeing what my body wants and doesn't want.

And, yep, I'm learning that my body does in fact want greens. I actually am fond of the wild edible (aka "weed") lambs quarters. It grows pretty much everywhere, including in my community garden plot. And it's apparently got tons of iron. I put it in my smoothies whenever I have them, and sometimes sneak it into salads and sandwiches (with flax crackers). The lamb's quarters is especially nice because I can cut it, put it in a vase of water on the windowsill and have it stay alive for weeks, if I don't happen to use it up right away.

I also eat lots of fresh "baby greens" lettuce from my garden (or windowsill in the winter). I've never been a fan of other leafy greens, but I'm playing with them, and finding them not so bad. :-)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Just curious -- is wine considered raw? Or other fermented beverages that are never heated or cooked? I'd be so sad without that! :-)

[turil.livejournal.com]

I read that some wine is considered raw, though most raw folks avoid alcohol. Beer isn't, I don't think, since it's heated, I think. Other fermented things are sort of on the borderline of raw. (Some raw folk use miso, for instance, others don't.)

I've never been into alcohol, so I didn't do much research on wine.

The biggest way to know if it's ok for you though is to try some and see how you feel, physically.