12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 264 pages
• Published by: North Atlantic Books; Rev. and Expanded Ed edition May 8, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1556436513
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1556436512
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1 pounds

Product Description
Why do we overeat time and time again? Why do we make poor diet choices while we want to be healthy? What makes losing weight so difficult? These and many other vital questions are addressed in 12 Steps to Raw Foods in an open and sincere dialogue. Based on the latest scientific research, Victoria Boutenko explains the numerous benefits of choosing a diet of fresh rather than cooked foods. This book contains self-tests and questionnaires that help the reader to determine if they have hidden eating patterns that undermine their health. Using examples from life, the author explores the most common reasons for people to make unhealthy eating choices.

Rather than simply praising the benefits of raw foods, this book offers helpful tips and coping techniques to form and maintain new, healthy patterns. Learn how to make a raw food restaurant card that makes dining with co-workers easy and enjoyable. Discover three magic sentences that enable you to refuse your mother-in-law’s apple pie without offending her. Find out how to sustain your chosen diet while traveling. These are only a few of the many scenarios that Boutenko outlines.

Written in a convenient 12-step format, this book guides the reader through the most significant physical, psychological, and spiritual phases of the transition from cooked to raw foods. Embracing the raw food lifestyle is more than simply turning off the stove. Such a radical change in the way we eat affects all aspects of life. Boutenko touches on the human relationship with nature, the value of supporting others, and the importance of living in harmony with people who don’t share the same point of view on eating. Already a classic, this enhanced second edition is aimed at anyone interested in improving their health through diet.

About The Author
Victoria Boutenko lives in Ashland, Oregon. She is the author of Green For Life, Raw Family, 12 Steps to Raw Foods, and several raw recipe books. She teaches classes on raw food all over the world, and is an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University. As a result of her teachings, many raw food communities have formed in numerous countries. She continues traveling worldwide sharing her gourmet raw cuisine and her inspiring story of change, faith, and determination.

Boutenko’s Green For Life was nominated as a finalist in health and medicine for the Independent Publisher’s Award (IPPY) in 2006. She has published a monthly newsletter since 2003 on her website www.rawfamily.com. Boutenko contributes regularly to a number of periodic publications including Get Fresh, Just Eat an Apple, Alive, Natuurstemmingen, Neva, Die Wurzel, Naturaleza Cruda, and many others. She is a leader in the raw food movement and her works are recognized as having a profound impact on the development of raw food communities across the globe. Boutenko’s work is referenced in numerous books on the subject, and her books have been translated into nine languages. She has been a keynote speaker at a number of international expositions in Germany, England, Brazil, Canada, Belgium, Iceland, Holland, Jamaica, Spain, France, and the United States.

Reader Reviews
Review by Susan Albrecht Victoria Boutenko believes that our bodies are designed to be healthy, that our bodies are perfect, and that sickness is not normal. For Victoria, absolute health is having enough energy to manifest dreams. Yet many people simply do not have enough energy to do so, or engage in a mental and physical struggle of ups and downs which make it difficult to remain joyful and fulfilled. For Victoria, the health and joyfulness that is our natural birthright can be found in nutrition. Standing in the way of optimal nutrition is a dependency on cooked foods and a corresponding belief that it is simply too difficult or not possible to change eating habits in a significant way. The dependence on cooked food and the steps that can help one successfully end the dependency are outlined in Victoria's book, 12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food. The newly revised and updated second edition is now twice as large, containing about 80% new information and more detailed insights into the burning question of why humans should eat raw, about human dependency on cooked food, and how to people can end this dependency. This is a book for people interested in changing their dietary habits, for those completely new to raw, and for raw fooders interested in learning more about Victoria's research into the diet of the first humans, which focuses on the "gatherer" aspect of the hunter-gatherer paradigm of early to recent human lifestyle and nutritional needs. While we all learn in grade school about the hunter culture, not many of us learn about the gatherer lifestyle that was central to ALL people, not just Native Americans. It is exciting to learn that the "first bread" was little more than crushed seeds of grasses mixed with water and "baked" on stones heated by the sun. Clearly, for thousands of years, humans ate their "bread" raw. Central to the new edition is Victoria's other research into the power of greens. Victoria and her family had been raw for nearly ten years when they began to feel they had reached a plateau in their levels of health, noticing symptoms of less than perfect health. Yet it was when her children started to complain of increased teeth sensitivity that Victoria knew something was not right with her family's nutrition--such symptoms Victoria recognized as an indicator that her family's complete nutritional needs were not being met. This realization resulted in a three year quest to learn and collect data on all human foods. What she found is that the one food group that matches all essential minerals and vitamins recommended by the USDA, including protein, are greens! Convinced that greens are the most important food, Victoria was stumped at how to incorporate an optimal quantity into her diet (even Victoria was not able to consume more than several cups of shredded greens at a sitting). After many experiments, she discovered that blending greens in a high-speed blender with sweet fruit and water resulted in a wonderful concoction that is not too sweet and not too bitter. These "Green Smoothies" as she called them, are "freshness" in a complete package. The new edition of 12 Steps to Raw Foods also contains more detailed information on the "twelve steps" of how one can end his or her dependency on cooked foods, the ten benefits of green smoothies, and the physical, emotional, biological, and spiritual aspects of how and why we feed our inner hunger. This is a book that will appeal to anyone with an interest in healthy living, and is a "must read" for those seeking to better understand the relationship between nutrition and optimal health. Victoria demonstrates this relationship in an informal yet practical way, offering numerous tips and strategies. Planting a seed to help and inspire others can be as simple as preparing raw food for a friend or family member. While you never know if or when that seed may germinate, you are the most positive example of joyful living. As an ambassador of the living foods raw lifestyle, you have the potential to influence others simply by attaining your own optimal level of health. And this, Victoria makes clear, is worth a try.