Global Peasant: going raw for 100 days

Photo by Lex Illustrator.

I have an announcement to make….. starting tomorrow, I will be eating a diet of exclusively raw food for 100 days. I mean to say that, until September 8, no food shall pass my lips that has been brought to a temperature higher than 118 degrees. According to Wikepedia, foodism is “Raw foodism (or rawism) a lifestyle promoting the consumption of un-cooked, un-processed, and often organic foods as a large percentage of the diet. If 75-100% of a person's total food consumption is raw food, he/she is considered a raw foodist or living foodist.” The idea is to consume living food at a time when it still has all of its natural enzymes, the same enzymes that are killed off during the cooking process. Once these enzymes are gone, the body must in turn create its own enzymes to assist the body in proper absorption and digestion. Click here to learn more about enzymes.

While researching this cuisine, I learned that most people seem to embrace a raw food lifestyle as a last ditch effort to overcome some sort of chronic illness. Cancer, obesity, diabetes, celiac, depression, candida…. There are countless testimonials of healthy people whose lives have been transformed through a permanent or long term raw diet. As for me, I have no health complaints. I have a very healthy diet and an extremely harmonious relationship with the food that I eat. So why have I decided to make such a culinary commitment? I’m curious. I want to know what it feels like to eat only living foods for a significant stretch of time. Will I think differently? Will I have more energy? Will I look 5 years younger and be 5 pounds thinner? Will my skin glow like a super model and my tresses flow thick and glossy like a show dog? Time will tell.

In all honesty, I am most drawn to the idea as an exciting opportunity for innovative culinary expression. I anticipate that a summer of raw food eating will quickly become an incredibly inspiring time to explore and showcase fresh, locally grown food in its most elevated form….. as nature intended it, but with a twist. I want to make locally driven (when possible) raw food that is imaginative, flavourful and appealing to the eye. I want to mess with colours, textures and unorthodox applications of ingredients. I want to have a lot of fun with this. So join me as I play with my dehydrator, blender, turning slicer, micro-plane and forage in my own backyard garden for the freshest, most local ingredients possible. Raw-k on!