What I love about raw food is the juiciness and pleasure it adds to everyday life. Eating a mango on your lunch break, scooping the meat out of a coconut in your kitchen, breaking open a pomegranate and watching the seeds burst out—each of these experiences is grounding and connects you to nature in a tangible way. Sure, raw food is credited with glowing skin, bright eyes, shiny hair, and weight loss. But I think eating raw food is really about falling back in love with produce.
I am not fully raw. I’m madly in love with raw food, but I don’t have the time, money, or energy to eat raw all the time. It can be incredibly laborious and isolating to try to plan out every single meal in advance because you know you won’t be able to find anything you “can eat” at work, while traveling, or at a restaurant. Eating cheeseburgers for every meal isn’t healthy, but you know what’s also unhealthy? Being constantly stressed about your diet!
Our health is an accumulation of what we put into our bodies. I’d rather go for five years eating mostly plants than try to spend one month eating 100 percent raw only to get frustrated, throw up my hands, and eat cheese puffs for the next four years. It is much more realistic and sustainable to incorporate these kinds of changes into your diet one by one to see which ones work for you. Then you won’t have to worry about being the cliché “Oh, yeah, I was raw vegan … for a month” guy.
The danger of starting many new “diets” or “lifestyles” is that they often encourage people to abandon their former selves in favor of a newer, shinier version. I am always suspicious of people who flaunt their “after” pictures and talk badly about their previous selves. Wait, that version was you too! And that version of you was the one smart enough and strong enough to realize that you could be happier and healthier. That version of you is the real hero in this story.
We have no shortage of advice and information on how to lose the pounds, get rock-hard abs, and shape the kind of butt you can bounce a quarter off. And sure, all those things are great shiny pennies! But the real change happens when you find a way of taking care of yourself that makes you feel good inside and out, a way that allows you to eat intuitively to nourish your body and mind. It’s not about discipline, it’s about feeling good. And if it doesn’t feel good, it’s not going to last.
You want foods that make you feel good now, but that also keep you feeling good five minutes, two hours, and twenty-four hours after you’ve eaten them. Simply paying attention to how your body feels after you eat something will teach you more than anything I can tell you, and will also lay out a pretty clear roadmap for what you should and shouldn’t be eating on a regular basis.
My hope is that more people will come to realize that plant-based diets don’t have to be depressing, dogmatic, or cultlike. I see much more benefit for our collective health and environment if most of us eat a plant-based diet than if a handful of us are extreme hard-core raw vegans.
The whole “raw vegan” thing can really scare people off, and I get it: You’re already cutting out animal products with veganism, so adding in the raw component, meaning nothing processed or cooked, can feel really restrictive. I personally hate rules when it comes to food, but the boundaries of raw veganism have always felt like a creative challenge for me, and have pushed me to look at produce with fresh eyes. As for me, I eat all vegan and mostly raw. As you’ll see in the recipes in this book, that doesn’t mean all salads and green smoothies!
You are holding in your hands over a hundred of my favorite recipes from ten years of making and eating raw food. I’ve organized them by meal, course, and also context: For me, raw food is fun and social and great for parties, which is why I’ve included an entire chapter on Party Food. If you’re just beginning to dip your toes into eating raw, or wanting to share your love of raw food with friends, try pulling some treats from chapters like Sweets or Die Alone (my answer to comfort food, acknowledging the fact that we all want to eat our feelings now and then). Rather than focusing on eliminating foods from your diet, try adding one recipe from Weeknight Dinners into your repertoire each week, or start your mornings with a raw vegan Breakfast. If you’re in a hurry, head over to the To-Go chapter for instant meals that will satisfy you while you’re checking items off your to-do list.
Of course, if you’re already eating mostly (or entirely) raw and vegan, you’ll be familiar with the basics and ready to dive into some of the more unusual ingredients and flavor combinations throughout the book. And you’ll also find my versions of some raw vegan classics. But, hey, I love my banana soft serve better than any other banana soft serve I’ve tried, and I sure hope you will too.
No matter where you are in your raw food journey, you’ll find that many of the recipes in this book are truly simple, and I’ve made sure to leave out any ingredients or equipment you can do without. Eating raw doesn’t need to be expensive or time consuming. If you’re not sure where to start, close your eyes and pick a page at random. You don’t need to wait until you’re more prepared, or own a fancier blender, or can differentiate among different types of sea vegetables at a casual glance. I hope these recipes will be as fun for you to make as they are for me.
I grew up with my parents and my older sisters, Mechele and Katie, on a twenty-acre parcel of land in northern California. There were rolling hills, giant oaks, a moss-covered creek that overflowed to the main road during heavy rains, a catfish-filled pond, and a garden that was bursting at the seams.
My dad owned a flooring business and worked very long hours but still managed to keep up a giant garden, a greenhouse, and a little orchard. He is one of those intuitive gardeners—he often didn’t know what a plant was called, but always knew how to make it grow. I spent a lot of time going to hardware and feed stores with him on the weekends. He had aviaries where he kept different kinds of birds. At one point, he and I even had a little bird business called Lovebirds R Us where we just sold birds to other breeders and made zero money. I learned to balance a checkbook and handle weird bird people—both skills that came in handy for future life endeavors.
I feel very lucky that I grew up surrounded by so much nature. I spent a lot of time climbing oak trees. In the spring we had entire fields covered with lupine and poppies. We had one hill that served as a fruit tree orchard and a pet cemetery. We would bury our pets, along with any other random dead wildlife we found, in between trees that my dad had planted for each of us: Mom’s was apricot, Mechele’s was apple, Katie’s was plum, and mine was pomegranate. I loved that tree. I would sit under it, easily eating ten pomegranates in one sitting, and then return to the house with every bit of me stained red.
I sometimes look at my adult sisters now, and as different as we have become, I remember that we are all from the same unique place. Sometimes the cows grazing on our property would get out at night and my sisters and I, screaming at each other, would have to work in tandem to shoo them back through the gate. I distinctly remember one day when my older sister Katie, then age nine, had to run outside in her Care Bears nightgown and wield a shovel to kill a rattlesnake that had gotten into one of my dad’s aviaries while I stood behind her, shrieking in fear. We climbed a lot of barbed wire fences, had very calloused feet, and spent a lot of time outside naked even after the age when it was probably socially acceptable. On a related note, we got a fair amount of poison oak.
My mom had grown up in a big Irish Catholic family in San Francisco. She was way ahead of her time in her understanding of health, nutrition, and exercise. She made dinner for us every night, feeding us things like “barley bake” (which we of course renamed “barfy bake”) that she’d made from scratch. She would allow us to have refined sugar only when we were on vacation, and we were rarely on vacation. The sugar ban backfired, and the Miller girls were on a constant quest to GET SUGAR. We would sneak spoonfuls of powdered sugar when my mom wasn’t looking. I went over to my friends’ houses and raided their pantries for sugared cereals and cookies. I was “that kid.”
My mom introduced me at a very early age to the idea that food affects how your body feels. It was her reasoning for not getting us donuts after church every Sunday. “You’ll eat them and then you’ll all be whiny grouches afterward!” she’d say. She was right. Once you start paying attention to which foods give you energy and which ones make you groggy and grouchy, you’ll be much more drawn to the good stuff.
When I was little, my sisters would sing the song about the pig in Charlotte’s Web but would substitute my name, as in “SHE’S Laura, LAU-ra LAU-ra, LAURA the FA-MOUS PIG!” While I was a chubby little kid, I wasn’t overweight, so my sisters were just messing with me. Still, the teasing definitely stuck with me.
Once puberty hit, I started becoming more concerned with my changing body and more aware that I wasn’t slim and petite like a lot of my friends. I was very athletic, usually playing two sports at a time. I did have an appreciation of what my body could do, but I also waded through a hormonally charged sea of self-consciousness and resentment with regard to my shape.
By the time I was in high school, my basketball team had made up a pet name for my butt. My coach would even frequently make comments about my butt (which I now realize was an incredibly inappropriate and creepy thing for a middle-aged man to be doing!). I developed a very complicated relationship with my body and soon found myself on the verge of an eating disorder. I don’t think anyone consciously intended the butt jokes and comments to be critical, but I couldn’t help but hear them as such. Our bodies are so personal and intimate. It takes some of our power away when someone else comments on our appearance, no matter what their intentions are.
Although I never crossed the line into a full-fledged eating disorder, many people close to me did. My older sister suffered from a pretty severe eating disorder. In the span of just a few months, she went from being wild and fearless to frail and weak. Trying to support and help her, my parents got all the best books on eating disorders, and I devoured them. I wanted to know the psychology of all this and why this was happening to so many girls I loved. You’d think that studying up on this topic would have kept me safe from succumbing to it. On a conscious level, yes, but I was a relatively social, well-adjusted teenager, which almost by definition meant that I also despised my body.
It infuriates me just thinking about how much brain space and energy girls and women expend day and night worrying about what they are eating (or not eating) and what their thighs look like. I’ve read enough to understand that it’s not all about vanity, either: It’s about control, pressure, family dynamics, and shame—all things that should not be related to food.
Our brains are so oversaturated with images of perfect bodies on TV (and Instagram) that we are trained to evaluate and harshly judge both ourselves and others. As women, when we are unhappy in our lives, we often look at our bodies as the reason why. It’s as if fixing how we look will be the solution to everything, as opposed to understanding that not liking our bodies is just another symptom of some other, potentially bigger problem. That said, the way you eat and how you fuel your body can greatly affect your mood, hormones, and energy levels, which in turn determines your level of happiness and self-esteem. It’s a balance, for sure, and it’s an ongoing process.
When she was about twenty years old, my older sister Katie went all hard-core vegan. I actually found it pretty annoying because she talked about veganism ALL THE TIME and ate legitimately gross food (this was over ten years ago, and there were far fewer vegan options then). I was at first not the slightest bit interested in her new diet, but then, bored on a family vacation, I picked up one of her books on veganism. I read the whole thing in a day and immediately became vegan. The emphasis on health, the environment, and animal rights made it a no-brainer for me. Mind you, I wasn’t necessarily doing it right. I was so focused on what I couldn’t eat that I didn’t have much time or space in my eighteen-year-old brain to think about what I did need to eat to feel good and healthy. I was surviving on Cheerios with soy milk.
So, yeah, I was actually doing it all wrong.
By the time I was in college, I was feeling drained and exhausted. I no longer had sports to keep me sane or give me a sense of community. I’d gained weight, I was always sad and tired, and I was uncomfortable in my body. I was already eating a vegan diet, but I was eating a bunch of processed crap that made me feel terrible. Then I found the book Raw Food, Real World (Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis, 2005), and it broke my brain open. This book made me realize that eating vegan is all about produce. And if there is one thing I love, it’s produce.
It made instant sense to me that the best way to nourish my body and take care of myself is to eat foods that are as close to their raw state as possible. Plus, I realized that I was naturally attracted to the vibrant colors of fresh food. I loved the way this book taught me to approach food. I learned how a plant-based diet nourishes your body, gives you loads of energy, strengthens your immune system, and regulates your digestion. This was so much more appealing to me than the get-skinny-quick books that just made me feel even more frustrated and worse about myself.
I was getting back to my pomegranate-picking roots, diving into plant-based raw food and loving the benefits. I had increased energy, my weight was getting back to normal, and I felt healthier and stronger than I had in a long time. Raw Food, Real World talked about nourishing your body in a holistic way. It was about feeling better in every way.
I started throwing raw dinner parties for all my meat-loving friends to test out recipes, and the response was incredible. There is something about a raw food meal that is energizing and fun—each dinner ended up turning into a giant dance party (although, to be fair, that may have had something to do with the tequila). And my friends loved the food! Like, legitimately, honestly loved it!
I moved to Reno for love. I’d met a mountain man who had grown up traipsing through the Sierra Nevadas, and he introduced me to backpacking and cold lake swimming. I arrived in Reno and went directly to all the nicest restaurants I could find and asked for a line cook job. I got one, working a line three days a week and then subbing for the baker on her two days off. Had I known what an undertaking this would be, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job. I don’t think I had ever baked before in my entire life, but all of a sudden I was making all of the bread, pizza dough for the wood-burning oven, and desserts for a 250-seat restaurant. Not to mention that I wanted desperately not to get in anyone’s way and for everyone to DEAR GOD PLEASE JUST LIKE ME.
I put my head down and worked. The sous-chef loved me because he knew I was so hell-bent on learning everything. I barely looked up from my station for the first two months, until finally one of the other line cooks came over to tell me that everyone thought I was doing a good job. From then on I loosened up a bit. Working in a kitchen is unlike any other job. You get paid very little, work your ass off, deal with crazy amounts of stress, and are surrounded by a bunch of big personalities. But man, it’s super fun. My head chef gave me the nickname “cutlass”—I think as in the sword you pull out when you really need to win a fight? I never really got it, as I’m not much into swords, but I liked it.
Kitchens can be kind of bro-ey, so it was especially funny that I was getting so into raw vegan food while working in one. I was working a grill for eight hours a night. (I burned off the nerve endings on the tips of my fingers learning to judge different degrees of steak doneness by touch.) All the while, I was bringing in all my latest raw food experiments for snacks between rushes.
It just so happened that around this time, Reno was starting to get hip. A crew of lovely progressives opened a little co-op, and after a few trips in I worked up the courage to ask if I could sell some of my raw cookies there. I packaged up little pairs of lavender macaroons and almond butter cookies, handwrote the ingredients on the labels, and starting bringing a batch to the co-op every week. After a few weeks, I found out that my cookies had caused a rift because a couple of shoppers were buying out the entire lot of them before anyone else could get any. I took this as a sign that I was on the right path, and started researching what my next move might be.
In 2007, there weren’t any real “raw food schools” or training programs (or at least none that I knew of that were affordable), so I opted for an apprenticeship at a raw food retreat center in the desert in the Southwest. From the moment I got there, though, I knew it wasn’t the right place for me. It wasn’t just that all of the interns were crammed into one room to sleep, or that the pipes froze on day two when everyone was “detoxing” from the food. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it was twenty-five sick people sharing one bathroom, and it was gross.
This center was all about restrictions, like not eating fruit because it had too much sugar (I would later learn that there is an entire sect of the raw food world that eats only fruit, but that’s a whole other thing), not eating onions or garlic because they were “too stimulating” (might cause people to fart in the meditation center), and a slew of other limitations.
There was an apprentice there who went by the name Dandelion. I’m pretty sure he had just changed his name on the drive in. I remember a few people sitting around talking about a man who lived on sunlight alone, and they were talking about what a legend he was, like it was this amazing thing to aspire to. UHHHHMMM NO. That guy never has sex. These were not my people. I wanted lush, sexy, juicy, bright, fun food and people—and sometimes I wanted them with a side of tequila.
By this point in my life, I had known enough people with eating disorders that this way of thinking about food raised my hackles. What this place was offering and pushing felt like a glorified eating disorder disguised as a health movement. That was it. I needed out.
On the third day, I went to the guy in charge and told him I’d had a change of heart, then I packed up my truck and drove fourteen hours home, stopping only for gas and grilled cheese sandwiches. I decided that my love affair with raw vegan food was over.
I’d basically just started to realize that the one thing I was passionate about was a total sham. I no longer had a job, my relationship with my mountain man was on the outs, and I had no idea what I wanted to be doing. I moved back home to live with my parents, and it was then, when I finally took a moment to stop charging ahead and just breathe, that I had the Big Meltdown. I’m talking big. I’m talking I-don’t-want-to-be-alive-anymore big. I fell apart. It wasn’t pretty.
This is the part where I tell you that healthy eating doesn’t solve all of life’s problems. I mean, sure, if you don’t feel right, it makes sense to take all the steps within your control to feel better. That means exercising, eating well, getting enough sleep, and making sure you’re surrounding yourself with positive people. But if you are doing all these things and still feel terrible, or if you’re suffering too much to even start doing those things, you need some outside help.
I found a psychologist who saved my life, and who introduced me to the idea that I’d been living with a severe anxiety disorder and essentially just white-knuckling it for about fifteen years. She helped me take active steps to get better. I want to emphasize the fact that getting outside help is not a cop-out. It’s smart and it’s brave, and it’s just another step in doing the work to get better. I’d say that it took about three years to get back on my feet, and it was a very challenging and dark time for me. But it was worth it.
During this time, I was probably still eating mostly vegan, but definitely not on purpose. I felt like I’d gone through a breakup with raw food after realizing that the cult was a sham, and it was an ex that I didn’t want to put any more energy into. I was still interested in plant-based eating, but not at the expense of holistic well-being. Feeling better is the whole reason I got into raw food. Nutrition and wellness are very personal issues for me. I care so much about people having healthier relationships with their bodies and minds.
A couple of years (and a few random jobs) later, I started selling raw vegan desserts at a “semi-legal” farmers’ market in San Francisco. I named my one-woman business Sidesaddle Kitchen because I thought that women riding sidesaddle were tough as nails and the opposite of the hippie cult image I was trying to stay away from. I made a giant sign with the words “RAW. VEGAN. NOT GROSS.” because I was usually the only vegan booth in a sea of pork sandwiches, fried chicken, and bacon-filled chocolates. I wanted people to know that I had the palate of someone who hasn’t eaten only raw vegan food all my life, as in “I know what ‘real’ fudge tastes like, guys—and this is still better.”
And it was true. Raw food made me excited because it tasted amazing, and also made me feel great after I ate it. I felt good about giving it to people because I knew exactly how nourishing each bite was.
I had tried and failed at so many things at this point in my career that I had gotten very good at bracing myself for things to not work out. I had originally wanted to sell my sweet treats to coffee shops and markets, but there were a few problems. First, I was afraid to charge enough for my products because I was embarrassed that I was selling “yuppie food” that I couldn’t afford to buy if I weren’t making it myself. I would sell out at farmers’ markets and still not be able to pay my rent!
Second, I was more interested in telling people how to make raw food themselves than selling it to them. People would ask me questions at the markets and I would get their e-mails and follow up to give them my recipes, tell them about how I crafted my signs, or send them links to websites they should be following. As it turns out, this is not how you run a business! I made wedding cakes, catered parties, and tried a hundred different things, but was never making money. All this is to say that I became very familiar with the feelings of failure and disappointment. I took a lot of rough jobs (which involved cleaning a lot of public restrooms!), but I was still so passionate about raw food that I kept finding ways to do it—having dinner parties, teaching classes, and eventually making recipe videos.
This might not come across, but I am a sensitive anxious introvert who has no business being in front of a camera.
I started doing recipe videos by accident. The farmers’ market where I had been selling my desserts had recently been getting some flak for not being totally legal, so it was doing a little good old-fashioned PR, and they wanted to get the profiles of some of the vendors who were making it work and starting homegrown businesses through the market. A local director, Eric Slatkin, contacted me about doing a profile, and he and the market director came to my house and filmed me talking about my business and making a strawberry tart. I was so nervous that I asked if I could take a shot of tequila. I went into the kitchen and glug-glug-glugged it straight from the bottle, not realizing that I was still wearing my wireless mic, and they could hear the whole thing.
I pretty much forgot about the video and went on my way in survival mode. I eventually decided to shut down my little business because I just needed a real job and was tired of crying about money, so I got a job at a letterpress print and design company and enjoyed the benefits of regular work. A year later, Eric told me that he’d just started working for a YouTube cooking channel called Tastemade and that they liked my video and wanted me to do some recipes.
I actually don’t know if I would have done it had I not needed the money so badly. My dream had been to own a business. I’d wanted to be in the kitchen, head down, working. I had never performed or been on any kind of stage, and I was not comfortable being the center of attention, much less having to see my face and hear my voice on video. Now, here I was trying to figure out what kinds of outfits wouldn’t make me look like an Oompa Loompa on camera and memorizing explanations about how to best soak nuts with a crew of ten people waiting for me to stop messing up my lines. It was incredibly challenging for me, but I pushed myself to do it even if it meant I’d collapse into a blubbering mess by the end of the day.
Raw. Vegan. Not Gross. was named after the tagline I’d made up for my business in San Francisco. It seemed like the perfect fit because we wanted to make raw vegan videos that were accessible to everyone, not just people who were already on board with hippie food. The show quickly gained millions of views, and the best part was that I could connect directly with viewers through the comments, so I could answer questions and start to better understand what recipes and information people were really looking for.
Of course, reading the comments also had a downside! I found myself afraid to say/do/make anything because I was so anxious about the criticism I’d get. People criticized my recipes for being too nut-heavy (they were right, and I worked on that!). They criticized my voice (sorry, haterz: I take after my gorgeous and graceful low-voiced mother and I’m not ashamed of that!). They also criticized my weight, and you probably know that this digs into the deepest crevices of your soul and brings up feelings of shame, hurt, self-loathing—the whole bit. It certainly did for me. But I decided that if I stopped doing this just because YouTube commenters told me my thighs were too big, I was missing an opportunity to offer a new voice. A big-thighed voice.
I have a dog named Buzz. He’s an Akita–pit bull rescue that I adopted as a fully grown dog from the Oakland SPCA eight years ago. He has the soul of Gandhi and the body of Channing Tatum.
He wakes up every morning pumped to be alive. He tiptoes around babies and toddlers because he understands that they are important and delicate. He’s only disliked about three people he’s ever met, and his intuition was right: They all turned out to be creeps.
Buzz is the mirror I needed. He reflected things back to me that I didn’t expect. For example, Buzz was really stressed when I brought him to certain friends’ houses, panting and pacing around and generally just uncomfortable. I finally realized that he was just mirroring my discomfort in those situations. I know this sounds crazy, but I started reading him as a way of understanding myself. I made a point to focus on friendships that made me feel supported and relaxed. I chose a more peaceful living situation rather than one in a hipper part of town. He taught me to stop pushing, to go with the current instead of always swimming upstream, to take better care of myself. I am one of those types who always thinks they have to do everything the hard way. But guess what? The hard way wasn’t always the right way.
Having a dog has caused me to interact with the world differently. I find myself talking to people more. Dudes on the street who would usually make some misogynistic comment as I walked by would now ask earnestly what kind of dog he is and how old.
I was always one of those rock-solid types who didn’t cry at weddings or funerals or really … ever. Seeing how much my friends love my dog and how much he loves them has brought us closer. He’s like my heart outside of my body. Intuitive, confident, and smart as a whip, he is everything I want to be.
For me, being healthy isn’t just about the food. It’s about figuring out the things that either lift me up or wear me down. As weird as it sounds, Buzz has helped me to become more cognizant of what and who I need in my life to feel better and be happier.
And to be honest, I’m still figuring it out. The amount of hustling I’ve done to make ends meet while trying to promote wellness and healthy body image has sometimes left me drained, and occasionally made me feel like a giant hypocrite. As in, “I only have $10 in my bank account and these cheese puffs are the only gluten-free thing at the corner store and it’s probably not real cheese anyway … so that’s okay, right? Ugh, definitely not gonna Instagram this one!”
Between sublets and breakups and dog-sitting in exchange for a place to sleep, I moved about eight times in three years (San Francisco is insanely expensive and not very dog-friendly!). Dealing with the logistics of making money while also trying to put out interesting content that I believed in put me in a state of constant white-knuckling. I started having really bad back pain, so I went to my neighborhood chiropractor. In one of our sessions, he asked offhand if I felt healthy, and I said, without skipping a beat, OH, HELL NO. This is insane, right? I do videos on raw vegan food! I have an Instagram account that basically just documents my love affair with produce! THIS MAKES NO SENSE!
I was feeling crappy. Like, really crappy. I grabbed a piece of construction paper and scribbled down a pep talk to myself. I read it aloud to myself every morning for the next week or so.
Laura Miller.
Take care of yourself.
Your body is awesome and special. Take care of it. Nourish it. Move it. Not for any reason other than it will feel good and help you feel better.
You need to set an example of relaxed strength. Strong with ease.
Laura Miller.
Take care of yourself.
Can you imagine me doing this? WAIT STOP PLEASE DON’T, because I definitely looked just as crazy as you’re imagining.
But here’s the thing: It actually worked. I started drinking more water. I started eating more leafy greens. I made myself exercise even when I felt exhausted and terrible, because that’s when I needed it most. My body and I were on the same team.
Maybe it was the act of saying it out loud, as if I were telling a friend to take care of herself (i.e., “not for any other reason other than it will feel good and help you feel better”), but I almost felt like subconsciously I had been taking worse care of myself because I was retaliating against the YouTube commenters who called me too chubby, too manly, too whatever. I felt like exercising would be some sort of admission that I was responding to their tacky insults. But no, I was doing it for my body, as if I was taking care of her. To make her feel better, as I would for a friend. And this way of framing it worked for me, because I don’t want my best friend to look skinnier or prettier, I just want her to feel better.
I hope you love this food as much as I do. But more than that, I hope you remember to love your body and take care of it as well as you possibly can.
People ask me a lot of questions about health, which I often do not feel qualified to answer given that I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, or naturopath. I have, however, been reading, experimenting, and talking to people about health and wellness since I was a teenager. Everyone wants the same things: glowing skin, a happy weight, a digestive system that they don’t have to think much about (i.e., no issues in “either direction”), and to stop getting sick so much.
Here are a few of my go-tos for revamping your diet:
My first instinct when someone tells me that they have a digestive or skin issue is to ask if they’re eating fermented vegetables and, if not, to tell them to get on that. They are vegetables on steroids. They help regulate your digestion, boost immunity, and even help your body absorb other nutrients so that you can really get the most out of all the foods you’re eating. Sauerkraut, kimchi, or whatever you like—just get it in there. I have also noticed that since I’ve started getting serious about eating fermented veggies every day, my cravings for sweets have really decreased. Not only does the gut-healing beneficial bacteria help to balance a healthier inner ecosystem, but it also helps my body to better handle the sugars and toxins that I’m eating.
Please, please, please do not be afraid of fats. There is a significant portion of the raw food community that believes in eating mostly fruit and hardly any fat. I don’t think this is smart, and I can say from personal experience that it made me feel like crap. Healthy, plant-based fats feed your brain, prime your body to absorb nutrients, and keep you feeling full both physically and mentally. When in doubt, put some avocado on it.
Kale, spinach, chard, arugula, whatever you like—these are some of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. They are all packed with iron, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and even protein! They help prevent cancer, heart disease, and high cholesterol. As a side note, my dad and I raised birds when I was little, and he would grow a garden full of chard specifically to feed them—even birds need their greens!
I have to admit, this one is the hardest for me. I never remember to drink enough water. Most of us are dehydrated all the time, and that sucks, because it makes us tired, hungry, and even anxious. Do whatever you have to do: Stick Post-its to your fridge, get a water drinking app on your phone, or just try to keep your reusable bottle with you and full at all times.
Chances are your body is too acidic. Sugar, coffee, alcohol, meat—they all create acidity in the body. This can lead to symptoms like inflammation, a weakened immune system, water retention, skin rashes, sleep issues, mood swings, fatigue, and allergies. The best and easiest way to start getting alkaline is to have warm water with lemon first thing in the morning, every morning.
If you’re just getting started with raw food, don’t feel like you have to go out and buy everything all at once. Start with what you’ve got, then figure out which things you feel like you’re missing. The worst thing is to spend a bunch of money on kitchen stuff that will just take up shelf space.
“Will this one-speed blender from 1988 that I inherited from my older sister work?” Yes! Well, it will for a while, but then you’ll find that it just doesn’t cut it and you need to upgrade. On a personal note, I find that listening to a blender trying desperately to blend is just emotionally exhausting and makes me feel equally desperate. Like, all those times I kept texting boys who didn’t like me desperate. Invest in a good one if you can, and your raw food game will be significantly improved.
Sharp knives keep you from cutting yourself. Trust me, I cut myself a lot, which you know if you’ve ever seen my videos. While I have to admit that part of this is that my knife skills are about that of a toddler cutting up Play-Doh, the other part is that for a while we had the dullest, crappiest knives in the studio. Dull knives invite sloppy, put-your-back-into-it technique, which inevitably leads to cuts. Basically, if you decide not to invest in good knives, I encourage you to invest in a cute Caboodle and fill it with cute bandages.
A lot of people wonder why they need a food processor if they already have a blender. A food processor works better for thick doughs or crusts without a lot of moisture which can get stuck in a blender, and is also better for mixing pestos and things that you want to keep a little chunky.
You can get a pretty high-quality plastic mandoline at any kitchen store for about $20. They are great for cutting any fruits or vegetables that need to be uniformly sliced. Be sure to use the safety guard, though!
I only just got a spiralizer of my own in the last few months, so I can attest to the fact that it’s really not a necessity, but it’s super handy and fun to make uniform noodles out of vegetables like zucchini. If you’re not into having another gadget in your kitchen, you can use your mandoline to get a thin julienne that will work fine too.
Dehydrating is a way to “cook” raw foods while keeping them at a low temperature so that they are still “raw” and maintain their full nutritional value. I love my dehydrator and use it to make crackers, crusts, kale chips, and basically anything crispy! I love it because I never have to worry about overcooking and can just set it and forget it, waking up the next morning to finished cookies or kale chips. That said, I am hesitant to tell anyone to get a dehydrator, because most people end up using it twice, then shoving it into a closet and forgetting about it. Especially if you’re just starting out, an oven kept at a low temp works fine. If you find yourself wanting a dehydrator, go for it. I recommend the kind with square shelves that you can put nonstick sheets on.
A tiny little gadget that can add so much! I use it mostly for zesting lemons and grating nutmeg directly into dessert fillings. It pumps the flavor up exponentially.
This feels like a loaded topic. A lot of raw vegans are “high carb, low fat,” meaning that they eat a lot of fruit. While I am a big supporter of fresh fruit, I just can’t get on board with that. I tried it for a while and I felt terrible. My blood sugar levels were on a constant roller coaster, as were my mood swings. No thanks (hair toss). For this same reason, I am also not a big proponent of juicing. Unless they are made of just straight greens, juices are usually loaded up with fruit, and without the fiber of actually eating the fruit, it’s a straight shot of sugar to your bloodstream.
Because stevia is usually seen in a white powdered form, a lot of people have trouble differentiating it from the horrible chemical-laden diet sweeteners that you find on the tables of most diners. Stevia is an herb that is three hundred times sweeter than sugar, so it needs to be used sparingly and in the right context. It can have a slight aftertaste in foods, but works great in drinks. I use stevia in my coffee, in smoothies, and in green shakes. It has zero effect on blood sugar, which is incredible for those with diabetes, people trying to lose weight, or those who are just watching their blood sugar levels. It also has zero calories.
Yacón syrup tastes a lot like molasses, but has about half the calories of the same amount of honey or sugar and doesn’t cause the giant blood sugar spike of either of them. You can use yacón syrup in any recipe that calls for maple syrup.
Coconut sugar has a flavor and texture reminiscent of brown sugar. It’s low-glycemic and does not spike insulin levels, and is also a great source of B-vitamins, zinc, magnesium, potassium, and iron.
First things first: Maple syrup isn’t raw. It’s just as sweet as sugar, but has fewer calories and very high levels of zinc to support your immune system. Make sure to get pure maple syrup, and choose grade B over grade A, as grade B has a high mineral content.
While it’s not vegan, I love using raw honey. Make sure that it’s actually raw, though! Unpasteurized and unfiltered honey should be solid and not pourable. It’s incredibly nutritious, packed with amino acids, enzymes, and B-vitamins, so I find that I use it more as a supplement than a sweetener in cooking or baking.
I’m not a big fan of agave. It has become incredibly popular over the past decade, and lauded as a lovely viscous sweetener with a neutral flavor that’s easy to use. I recommend that you use agave very sparingly, as it contains nearly 90 percent fructose, has no nutritional value, and is a highly processed sugar that can have detrimental long-term effects.
almond butter
almond milk (unsweetened)
buckwheat groats
chia seeds
cinnamon
coconut flakes (unsweetened)
cocoa powder and/or raw cacao powder
flaxseeds
mustard
nutritional yeast
sauerkraut
sea salt or Himalayan salt
sea vegetables
tamari (gluten-free soy sauce)
vanilla extract
sweeteners:
coconut sugar
maple syrup
raw honey (not vegan)
stevia
yacón syrup
oils:
cold-pressed extra-virgin coconut oil
cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil
flours:
brown rice flour
gluten-free oat flour
