Rawtopia is not just a place where you learn about raw foods, but it is a journey of discovering and uncovering an ideal you. Herein the pages of this website, through many rawvelations you will form a new raw-ality. For the first time, your eyes will be opened to many truths about your physical, spiritual, and emotional relationship with food. Whether you want to dabble or dive right in, doesn't matter. What matters is that you embrace and enjoy every aspect of your flirt with fresh live foods, and experience it as an exciting adventure into a whole new world-which is what it really is!
The concept of eating raw food is not new by any means, but is gaining greater popularity owing to its unquestionable benefits on health, energy, and overall vitality, as well as its ability to transform every cell in your body. Up until humans mastered the use of fire, our ancestors ate only raw foods. We find ourselves in an era where raw food is no longer seen as the domain of extreme health "fanatics" but instead making its way into mainstream media, celebrity diets, healing centers, retreats, nutrition books, products and seminars.
While I understand and am the first to admit the word "raw" isn't that inspiring and brings with it a number of misrepresentations, if you can get past that and see that raw equals pure, fresh, enzyme-rich, oxygen rich, unadulterated whole organic nutrition then we will all be on the same page. To prevent ourselves from falling into the common trap of seeing raw food as somehow "less than" cooked, let's take a moment to look at what exactly cooked food is.
Cooked food which has been processed and/or heated to high temperatures where chemical changes have occurred and the food has changed from its original state to something which, depending on the severity of its treatment, can end up looking like a shadow of its former self (think of spinach cooked and raw). While cooked foods may most certainly tantalize the taste buds, this is largely because of their stimulant effects on the body which - in fact - doesn't actually "understand" a lot of what it's taken in as many of the chemicals within cooked foods are unnatural and therefore the body sees them as foreign invaders! Fascinating research in the 1930's revealed that when someone eats cooked food without having eaten some raw food first, the body sends the white blood cells (your first line of immune defense) to the digestive system in order to deal with the perceived "invader". Interesting, don't you think?! And while we can glean some nutrition from this fractured, denatured "food", every time we cook our food or buy something pre-prepared and cooked in a can, box or bag we lose up to 70% of the vitamins, some of the minerals, all of the enzymes, all of the oxygen, the important plant feel-good hormones and a high percentage of the water - all of which we need to reward us with truly vibrant health. Doesn't seem quite as attractive when we look at it that way does it?!
By contrast raw food is replete with everything that enabled it to sprout and grow in the first place - life force, enzymes, water, oxygen, hormones, vitamins and minerals. Untouched, untainted, raw food is literally honest food - what you see is what you get. No hidden ingredients, nothing messed around with, just pure delicious fresh live food that we are designed to eat - living food for living bodies. And the good news is even when you start dabbling with more raw food, you don't just understand this conceptually, you actually start to "get it" experientially as your whole body cheers, shifts up a gear and the concept of what real food and nutrition is really all about starts to take on a whole new meaning.
Although this is your raw food journey, after reading the home page follow the path set out before you by previous trawvelers. We encourage you to become a regular at the Garden of Eat'n, our virtual cafe. You'll find the menu items nutritious and delicious! While you’re here, pull up the latest issue of theWeekly Dish newsletter, under Inspirawtion food for thought.
If you have questions, need support, would like to attend a class, have meals prepared for you or host a Live Food dinner party, meet us at the Rawnd Table for a more personal raw experience.
