spent $78 on nuts in two days. I watched seeds sprout inside Mason jars, their pale shoots spooky, subterranean, and 
definitely alive. On the raw food diet, I covered every available counter in my kitchen with nuts soaking and seeds sprouting and fruits dehydrating and thought: I have nothing to eat. I came to know new hungers but also new levels of full. I learned that crunchy and cool can still mean savory. As my colon “switched over” to raw, I moved through the five stages of digestive grief-denial, bloating, cramps, explosiveness, and acceptance and survived. I fell in love with my juicer, broke up with my blender, and came to see my big, boxy dehydrator as glorious because it’s warm and, on a diet of cool food, I craved warmth more than anything else.In late spring of this year, I migrated to the raw food diet, also known as “live food” cuisine, consisting entirely of uncooked vegetables and fruits, soaked nuts and seeds, and sprouted grains. (All the soaking and sprouting, advocates say, is necessary to transform the dormant seeds of plants into “living foods.”) Raw foodists avoid pasteurized and chemically processed foods, and argue that cooking food at temperatures higher than about 118 degrees Fahrenheit destroys its enzymes, making it harder to digest. (For the scientific rationale behind the raw food diet, see “Raw Data“.)
And these raw food zealots are gaining converts. While research is scarce on the popularity of the diet, the advent of dozens of raw restaurants, raw “cookbooks,” and the growing number of hard-core vegetarians-experts now estimate that one-third to one-half of North American vegetarians are vegans-point to a growing interest in raw cuisine.
At first, raw food seems simplen fact, the simplest diet possible. But is that simplicity possible for everybody, everywhere? I’m an omnivore who loves a Sunday roast. I live in Iowa, which may be the agricultural center of the country, but in the late spring, it sure doesn’t look it. Where would I get my coconuts? Mangos? Green zebra tomatoes? I wanted to see if the raw diet, with its high bar of healthfulness, was possible far from sunny climes or the gourmet produce aisles of a Whole Foods Market. I wondered: Is raw food just big-city hype?
Gearing Up
Raw food cuisine requires gear, none of which is cheap but some of which is essential. My Champion juicer, hardy and easy to clean (about $250), quickly became my main appliance and ally during my raw experiment. Every morning for breakfast I fed it different fruits and vegetables, and got bolder as I went. Familiar grapefruit yielded to a carrot-ginger-apple blend (tasty!), which led to a frothy brew of leafy greens including kale, parsley, celery, apple, and lemon. A pinch of sea salt (no iodized salt, since it’s processed) improved even the most bitter, unfriendly combination.After a few days of fresh juice, I felt like I’d jumped up to premium octane fuel after a lifetime of sludge. A hearty glass, occasionally spiked with spirulina, filled me for the morning, and shakes became a quick dessert in the evening. As I became more confident, I ran almonds and cashews with honey and salt through the juicer to make nut butters. I even shoved frozen bananas, with cocoa powder, into the juicer and produced a plausible chocolate pudding.
A dehydrator (upwards of $200) is less essential than a juicer, but it can greatly expand your menus. Resembling a giant sealed toaster oven, it’s used to dry nuts and fruits at low heat. My Excalibur model allowed me to simultaneously dehydrate strawberries for jam, a gloppy “grawnola,” and spiced almonds. The only thing I had to do was remember what needed to come out when. (One of the main challenges of the diet is tracking all the different sprouting, dehydrating, and soaking times; I wound up resorting to stacks of Post-it notes.)
Some raw fooders use dehydrators to warm plates for soups or to lightly “cook” vegetables, like asparagus, that just aren’t as appealing in their natural state. “Raw mushrooms don’t taste that good,” admits raw food chef Sarma Melngailis, “but toss them with herbs and oil and dehydrate them, and you end up with amazing ’sautd’ mushrooms.” But dehydrators are primarily used for crispness. “We’re used to a satisfying crunchiness in our foods,” explains Melngailis, the coauthor of Raw Food, Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow (Regan Books, 2005).
Planning Meals
The most exhausting aspect of the diet is the time it takes to prepare meals. A week before transitioning, I found myself sitting with a stack of raw food cookbooks, trying to schedule what I needed to do and when. Sprouting lentils and quinoa-to break down their cell walls and allow for easier digestion-takes at least a day. Nuts need hours to soak (to remove bitter flavors and the enzyme inhibitors in their skins), followed by days to dehydrate. All this meant I had to plan my every meal way in advance.If I screwed up (like the time I neglected to soak and soften the sun-dried tomatoes), my options were few: either make an emergency salad or starve. The assembly of certain meals, like the delicious soft corn tortillas (made from corn, ground flax seed, and chopped bell peppers) with spicy “beans” (sunflower seeds with sun-dried tomatoes) from Raw Food, Real World, took two and a half hours, and I must have cleaned the blender four times. Still, it was almost worth it. I served the tacos to friends who didn’t know they were raw. They loved them, but I was exhausted. And there were no leftovers.
So what did I actually eat? Monster salads, mostly, with inordinate amounts of avocados, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, carrots, celery, shredded daikon, and the like. As I stretched to more elaborate and gourmet combinations, I quickly learned that “experimenting” with raw food while hungry is a bad idea.
One lunchtime, my calendar called for quinoa tabbouleh with a red grapefruit, avocado, and fennel salad, both recipes from Raw Food, Real World. But the tabbouleh was acidicoo much lemon juicend the grapefruit-fennel salad tasted like wet packing peanuts. A disaster. And salads were supposed to be my backup meals. Fortunately, that morning I’d put slices of unbaked sprouted bread into the dehydrator to warm. I slathered them with almond butter and dehydrated strawberry “jam” (more like a mash of strawberry chips) and ate the entire loaf.
