The Raw Chef

An Experiment in Sacred Commerce

I was so impressed with Cafe Gratitude when I was in San Fransisco last year.  The extremely popular raw restaurant has such a beautiful ambiance that's created by the wide range of customers, the  talented and caring staff, the gorgeous food and the concept of what they are offering.

I made multiple visits during my 24 hour stay in SF before I caught my plane home, I even risked being late for my flight, just so I could pick up some snacks for the flight....which I promptly ate before I even got on the plane!!!

From Vision Magazine...

Cafe Gratitude How An Attitude of Gratitude Can Change Your Whole Perspective

Have you ever meditated on Gratitude?  Have you ever consciously chosen to believe that you are enough, that you have everything that you need?  Do you ever stop when you are feeling down or needing something and give thanks for all that you have been given?  For Matthew and Tersi Englehart, owners of Cafe Gratitude, this has been a daily practice for many years, one that has grown into an inspiring, industrious and innovative restaurant business...

Click to continue reading at Vision Magazine

Changing How The World Sees British Cuisine

Bad Food Britain: Why we're addicted to rubbish

The statistics are shocking. In a nutshell, Britain eats about 50% of all the junk eaten in Europe. The average Briton, for example, swallows 7.2 kilogrammes of savoury snacks (crisp-type products) a year, while the typical Italian manages just one kilogramme. British children now consume 25 times more confectionery and 30 times more soft drinks than they did in 1950. Our taste for over-packaged, added-value, factory food bearing an uncanny resemblance to airline meals has also spiralled out of control. By 2003, we ate more ready meals than the rest of Europe put together.

That's an excerpt from an article in Scotland's Sunday Herald revealing some shocking statistics about the way we eat in the UK.  The article then goes on to explain how we in the UK are viewed as far as our culinary attitudes go.  It's a great read and I had no idea these issues were such a problem!  You never know when your own breath smells but everyone else does and it comes as a shock when someone tells you!

Given that we are seen to be a nation of people with such, "bad food" habits, what could be the future?  As the article explains...

Raw Foodists Skinny But Healthy

More positive stuff in the press from MSNBC...

People who adhere strictly to raw food vegetarian diets are thin but have surprisingly robust bones, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Although nutritionists and the food industry have warned that a diet without dairy foods can lead to the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, the team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found the vegans they studied had many of the signs of strong bones.

Continue reading at msnbc.com...

Raw Food Diet Has Cured My Arthritis

I was sent this article on The Daily Mirror's website today, I don't know if it was actually in the paper but it's nice to see positive press around raw foods!

From mirror.co.uk...

As the Daniels family gathers round the dinner table it resembles a scene played out in many households. An evening meal shared with loved ones, a time to eat and talk together.

But there is one significant difference. All the food laid before mum Jatinder, husband Derek and their three children, Raman, 17, Priyanka, 13, and seven-year-old Mohan is raw...

Click here to go to mirror.co.uk and continue reading this article.

NB. Since writing this post I have been informed by Jatinder (see comments) that she was in the paper and ended up being the centrefold!
 

The Raw Food Diet According to Daily India

From dailyindia.com...

The Effects of Cooking

Arthur Baker writes in Awakening Our Self-Healing Body, 'Overly cooked foods literally wreck our body. They deny needed nutrients to the system since heat alters foodstuffs such that they are partially, mostly, or wholly destroyed. Nutrients are coagulated, deaminized, caramelized and rendered inorganic and become toxic and pathogenic in the body.'

The indigestible end products of cooked foods can linger in the gut, clogging the intestines and interfering with healthy elimination. They can cause a build-up of toxins, mutagens and carcinogens. Carbohydrates ferment, proteins putrefy and fats become rancid, creating free radicals that enter the blood stream.

Click here to continue reading this great little article I came across today.