by Gretchen
(Fairfax, CA)
This is one of my favorite smoothies to make. It is well balanced meal and so refreshing and satisfying. It’s easy and quick to make, I just love it. Sometimes I add dates if I’m trying to up the calories.
5 to 6 oranges
1 head of romaine
Raw food appetizer recipes are a wonderful way to show friends and family just how tasty and fulfilling the raw diet can be. On the other hand you have to be careful, because like their cooked food counterparts, some raw appetizers can be very high in fat. As long as you pay attention to that and use them for what they are, appetizers, and not as a main course you’ll be fine.
An appetizer recipe shared with others and followed by a large salad can indeed be a very healthy meal. Just remember fresh is best. It’s OK to have a “special” or dehydrated appetizer dish now and again; however the raw diet is based on fresh raw foods with all their natural juiciness intact.
Other things to look out for are hidden additives that not only may not be raw, but can also be detrimental to your health as well. Let’s face it, there’s no use in trading in one poor diet for another. The substances I’m talking about are things like namo shoyu, nutritional yeast and agave nectar. Basically if it’s not from a whole plant food, it’s probably not a good idea to eat it. I think a little miso, although not raw, and a little sea salt are acceptable additives to raw appetizer recipes. The reason I think miso is OK is because it’s alive with cultures and is a “living” food, just like cultured vegetables or sauerkraut. In the end it’s up to you to set your own healthy parameters as to what is acceptable and what is not.
Now that we’ve covered what to look out for with appetizer recipes, let’s look at some of the good things about them. Appetizers are a part of the meal that you can get really creative with, and produce some wonderful tasty recipes that you’ll be proud to share with others. They tend to be fairly calorically dense so they pair nicely with salads, and vegetable sticks. They are a great way to incorporate some healthy fats into your diet, while still enjoying lots of fresh produce.
Appetizers are a great way to sneak healthy herbs and spices into your raw diet, especially herbs and spices that you may not add to a regular raw dish. These flavors will go well in your raw appetizers, and give you a chance to enjoy the health benefits of a little rosemary, chive, turmeric, nori, or dulse, to name just a few.
And as I touched on above there is nothing like a great tasting raw recipe to get people thinking positively about the raw food diet. If you can share a tasty raw appetizer with someone they will be much more accepting of your raw diet regime, and may even consider including a few raw recipes in their own diet. This way you get the message out about how healthy and good the raw food diet can be, but you don’t have to beat anybody over the head or scare people off.
The recipes below can be tweaked by you to suit your own needs or simply used as a starting place for ideas for your own tasty recipes. Please share your own tasty recipes with the rest of us so we can spread the word and enjoy them too.
Do you have a great raw appetizer recipe? One that makes your mouth water just to think about? Share it here so we can all reap the health benefits and savor the goodness that you created!
Click below to see recipes other visitors have shared...
Sun Dried Tomato & Nori Tapenade 
This is a really tasty spread or dip for raw veggies or crackers. I used Bok choy leaves and stalks and it was wonderful. You could use celery, cucumber, …
Jalapeño Poppers
Stuffing 1 cup cashews (any nut really) 1 cup walnuts (again any nut) 1 red bell pepper 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper 1/4 tsp coconut oil …
Olive Tapenade Not rated yet
This is a very tasty recipe yet not too fatty because of the vegetables. Mix all ingredients together and let stand for about an hour so the flavors can …
Turmeric Guacamole Not rated yet
This is a spicy and very healthy guacamole recipe. Turmeric has many healthful benefits and is something I try to incorporate into my meals fairly regularly. …
Flax Seed Crackers Not rated yet
This is a simple recipe that can be tweaked to meet your taste preferences. Soak 2 cups flax seed in 2½ cups water for 6 to 8 hours, overnight is fine. …
Cantaloupe and Berries Not rated yet
This recipe is so simple and so tasty, but one not many people would come up with on their own. Halve a ripe organic melon spoon out the seeds and fill …
Walnut Pate Not rated yet
This recipe is great for the holidays and entertaining, or when you feel like treating yourself to a tasty and nutritious meal. It can be spread on to …
Seed Cheese Not rated yet
Grind 2 cups sesame, sunflower, cashew, or almonds and put into a medium glass bowl. Add ¼ cup finely minced sea vegetable, and either 2 cups rejuvilac …
Click here to write your own.
Raw Foods Home > Raw Food Recipes > Raw Appetizer Recipes
Your first paragraph ...
by karen
(ca)
Q I have acne with lots of scarring. What can I do to clear it up?
A The first things I would do is stop eating dairy, go gluten free, and stop eating junk food. Those three things will probably do amazing things for your skin. I would cut down on any other animal products you are eating, or if you really want change cut them out all together. It may be easier to do this in steps though, you’ll have to decide.
Then of course I would be eating at least 75% raw foods. When I say raw foods, I mean fresh raw fruits and vegetables with very little, if any packaged raw foods.
Juicing would be great if you have a juicer and or green smoothies if you have a decent blender. In just a few short weeks you could stop the new breakouts and begin to heal. The scarring may take some time, but the sooner you get started the sooner you can look forward to at least reducing the amount of scarring you have now.
There are some very tasty Raw Food Recipes for you to look at and see what appeals to you. Also check out the smoothie page and juicing recipes page.
Basically as you clean up your diet your body will begin to heal itself. The acne is a sign of toxicity, so once you stop putting poisons in your body, your body will react with kindness towards you.
If you read through other pages on the site you'll learn a lot about healing and being healthy inside and out.
All the best to you and please keep me posted on your progress.
After reading my recent articles about red meat, I hope none of you are concerned that eating it will negatively impact your health. But I realize that nutrition is only one of the factors that motivate people to limit or eliminate red meat consumption; one of the primary reasons many go vegetarian is their concern about environmental impact.
We’ve all heard the claims that red meat production is harmful to the environment, so in this two-part series, I’d like to address some of those concerns. In many ways, the environment is as complex as the human body, so measuring the impact of meat production isn’t clear-cut. But at the very least, I hope to shed some light on the topic, dispel some common myths, and put the issue in perspective.
Is eating red meat really more harmful to the environment than eating a vegetarian diet?
A commonly cited statistic is that cows produce more greenhouse gases than all the world’s transportation combined, or 18% of all greenhouse gases. This statistic originated from a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Association called Livestock’s Long Shadow, and has since been cited frequently in the media and elsewhere as a reason to stop eating red meat. If you think that figure sounds unbelievable, you’re right; it turns out that the researchers were quite biased in their calculations, resulting in numbers that were skewed. One of the authors of the report even admitted later that it wasn’t a fair comparison. A more accurate analysis of the data resulted in a much more respectable estimate: that cattle contribute less than 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. (1)
However, even the revised figure doesn’t take into account that grazing livestock can actually help remove carbon from the atmosphere. (2) Grasslands are capable of sequestering more carbon than any other ecosystem, and livestock can enhance the incorporation of carbon into the plants and soil. (3) One study showed that grazing cattle can also reduce the land’s natural emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that environmentalists agree is more damaging than carbon dioxide. (4) Some research shows that when cattle are raised on natural pasture with no additional fertilizer or supplemental feed, their ability to enhance carbon sequestration actually outweighs their greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, under the right circumstances, cows are carbon negative!
Another common argument against red meat production is that it supposedly uses way more than its fair share of water. Graphics like this are often used to display how water-intensive red meat is compared with other foods. But are these figures accurate? Consider that previous studies have come up with water usage figures anywhere from 209 L/kg of beef to 105,400 L/kg of beef. (5) That’s a huge difference! When there’s that much variation, it usually pays to look a little deeper into the research to see what’s going on.
One reason for this variation is simply location. Water usage is going to be very different, say, for a feedlot in the US than for a pastoralist in Australia. But another reason is that researchers don’t always agree on how to classify ‘water use,’ and this creates some serious methodological inconsistencies in the literature.
Feed production is the most water-intensive part of raising livestock for red meat, whether the feed is grain, soy, or forage-based. (6) Some of this water comes from natural rainfall, while some is supplied through various irrigation methods. The problem is that many researchers don’t distinguish between rainfall and other forms of water use. This means that a large portion of the water attributed to red meat production is simply rain that falls on the fields or pasture used to feed the livestock.
Although measuring in this way does give an accurate depiction of the sheer amount of water that’s necessary to produce red meat, it gives little to no indication of how environmentally friendly red meat production is. It doesn’t make sense to say that raising cows on non-irrigated pasture drains water resources, when the only water being used is natural rainfall. Even feed crops often receive much of their water through rainfall, and it just isn’t logical to classify that in the same way as, say, drawing water from a nearby reservoir for irrigation.
Luckily, some researchers from Australia thought the same thing, so they did their own analysis. (7) They measured the actual water usage of three different production systems in southern Australia over the course of two years. They classified ‘water use’ as water that was “removed from the course it would take in the absence of production or degraded in quality by the production system.” Thus, under their calculations, things like rainfall and evaporation weren’t counted towards the total ‘water footprint’ of beef unless the water quality was somehow reduced when it reentered the water cycle. To me, this approach gives a much more accurate picture of the impact red meat production has on water resources.
The researchers analyzed a small organic beef supplier, a larger supplier where the animals spend part of their time in a feedlot, and a mid-sized sheep meat supplier. For the systems without a feedlot, they came up with a range of 18-214 L/kg of meat, depending on the year and whether they were measuring water use based on input amount or output quality. For the feedlot system, they came up with a range of 34-540 L/kg. Compared to earlier estimates of 15,000 L/kg and beyond, these new estimates are tiny! However, these results can only be generalized to southern Australian production systems, and systems in the US tend to be more irrigation-intensive.
For a US-specific estimate, we can look at an older study on the average water required for beef production in the US. (8) This study was based on national government statistics as opposed to actual water usage measurements from individual production systems, but they classified ‘water use’ in a similar manner to the previous study by excluding rain and only counting the water needed for irrigation, drinking, and processing. They came up with 3,682 L/kg of meat, which is significantly higher than the Australian estimate. This reflects the higher use of concentrate-based feeding in the US, which usually requires more irrigation than natural pasture. However, this estimate is still much lower than some of the most commonly cited numbers, and demonstrates that red meat isn’t singlehandedly draining the world’s freshwater resources.
In the second article of this two-part series, I’ll discuss the claim that grazing livestock leads to soil erosion and desertification, as well as the different environmental impacts of grass-fed versus grain-fed meat.
Tagged as: diet, environment, health, impact, paleo, red meat, vegetarian
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Break through the energy swings, digestive upset, and obstacles of adopting a Paleo diet.
Learn MoreThis is a very tasty recipe yet not too fatty because of the vegetables. Mix all ingredients together and let stand for about an hour so the flavors can blend. Serve at room temperature with cut vegetable sticks or raw crackers. Yum.
1 cup pitted raw olives finely chopped
½ medium zucchini diced
1 celery stalk diced
2 fresh basil leaves finely chopped
2 pieces of sundried tomato soaked and finely diced
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Options: Add a little fresh ginger root and or hot pepper. Substitute cilantro for basil.
by Hosea
Q I heard going on a raw food diet can cure/reverse PCOS, is this true?
A Since I’m not a doctor I can’t say if the raw food diet can help your Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), but I do know that the raw diet will put your body in a very good position to heal itself. Many people have healed issues, many of them hormonal, through the raw diet, juicing, and for some fasting.
When you feed the body a natural healthy diet, and avoid harmful foods the body will self cleanse and heal as it returns to a state of balance.
Check out some of the things that people have to say about their experience with the raw diet on the Success Stories
page.
Best to you, and please keep me posted of your progress.
