Shopping With Your Raw Food List

When shopping for raw foods, one of the best places to visit is a farmer’s market. Allowing you to get the freshest produce, short of growing your own and picking it, this is the next best thing. Most farmers’ markets bring in fresh picked produce on a daily basis. The fruits and vegetables have not been refrigerated which causes the beneficial aspects to start to diminish.

When you purchase produce from your local supermarket, it has been refrigerated during shipment to keep it from going bad. This starts the process of breaking down beneficial vitamins and nutrients contained in the food. A health food store may be an option – at least it is certainly better than the alternative. Keep in mind, though many dried foods purchased here are cooked.

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When shopping for the raw foods you will be using, fresh sprouts should be on your list. As a matter of fact, growing different types of sprouts can be done on your own and you can pick them for use while they are still growing. Nuts and seeds are also a great raw food. Remember to purchase nuts that are still in the shell.

Coconuts are an excellent raw food. Containing electrolytes, they are great for providing calcium and fat for your diet. The best way to ensure you are getting dried foods that have not been cooked is to dry them yourself by sun drying them. The ones purchased in nutrition stores have been dried at over 200 degrees. This actually means they are being cooked. The temperature for food to be considered raw foods are 118 degrees and under.

Dates are a sun-dried product if you buy the right ones. You should purchase organic dates as they are dried correctly. The same holds true for other fruits that you may purchase for the raw food diet. The use of dried tomatoes will also depend on whether they are dried at a high temperature. Anyway you look at it, when heat is applied it is cooked. The natural effects of sun drying are not nearly as harmful.

Seaweeds are another common raw food used by many. They are normally sun dried. This could include sea lettuce, laver, dulse, nori and kombu. Purchasing these from an overseas business may mean they were not sun dried. It is hard to know for sure because this is not stated on the packages. They often are dried by roasting.

Green powders can be used when they are not processed with heat. Some of these would be barley green, blue green algae and wheat grass. The sweetener of choice for raw food diets is raw honey. This type that has propolis and pollen are the best. It is hard to eat without salt, but instead of using the regular type, try using sea salt instead. Using common sense when undertaking the raw food diet will guide you far better than any other method.

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