Customer Reviews

Becoming Raw: The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets

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This is so much more than a simple raw food cookbook or commentary on raw food diets. I was surprised at the amount of information packed into this book. It has all sorts of nutritional information and easy to read tables on just about anything you can imagine relating to this way of eating. Here are just a few titles of the tables included: Research summary of the effects of cooking on phytochemicals, Calories, protein, fat, carbohydrate and water in raw food (6 pages long), Fatty acid composition of selected foods, Vitamins in raw foods, Minerals in raw foods, Vitamins A,C,E,K, and D: adult dietary reference intakes and intakes on raw and high-raw diets. And those are just a few. I like tables because I can get information at a glance and compare different values so this is really a good book for me.

You don't have to be a total raw food convert to enjoy this book. Even if you're just thinking about adding more healthful raw foods to your diet, I think you'll find this book as useful as I have. It starts out with a history of the raw food movement, gives lots of scientific evidence on why it can be a healthy way of eating, and then goes on to give all kinds of information, things you've probably never even thought about, on incorporating raw foods into your diet or going totally raw. It tells you what you need to know if you do decide to take the plunge, about getting all the nutrients you need.

There is a small section with raw food recipes and another section with full meal menus which I found especially helpful. I'm not looking (yet) to totally adopt this kind of diet but I would like to add a lot more raw food to our everyday meals. The recipes are pretty easy and there are a good variety. A few that I've tried and enjoyed are: Caesar's Better Salad, Warm Red Cabbage Salad, Morocc-Un-Butter and Marvelous Muesli. There's also a section on handling raw food safely and another on food enzymes. It's all easy to read and understand.

There's a large reference section, a glossary and an index. To me, this is important because I want to know the science or studies behind statements, not just take the author at his word. This is a high quality book, probably the best I've found on this subject.

Becoming Raw: The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets is a complete guide to the raw diet- a type of diet/lifestyle that has a strong following and continues to gain more and more adherents. This book covers all of the essentials of the raw diet and more. The reader ultimately becomes much better informed on the subject and completes the book loaded with knowledge on everything related to eating raw.

Becoming Raw is a complete guide to the raw diet and, in many ways, it is like reading an educational textbook on raw food nutrition. I am no expert on the subject of nutrition, so I knew there would be much to learn when I opened this book for the first time. My expectations were correct, for Becoming Raw is loaded with information on nutrition and eating raw foods. It teaches you about the building blocks of food, like carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals. It offers recipes, nutritional tables, and other reference materials. It educates the reader on the many benefits that raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and other foods bring to the body. It covers a wide range of topics and serves as a very informative book on this subject.

Individuals who are trying to lose weight will find that a diet in raw foods is certainly a good, viable way to drop pounds and many people will read this book for that reason alone. But Becoming Raw is much more than a book dedicated to those who are determined to reduce their waistline. This book is useful to anyone who wants to eat better and learn about the many benefits that a plant- based diet can bestow on the body. A diet rich in these raw foods can, for example, offer protection against cardiovascular disease, reverse the effects of some common ailments, and shorten the span of common illnesses such as the common cold. With benefits such as these, most anyone can adopt the raw diet, even if only to an extent, and emerge healthier than before. This book discusses all of these benefits and more, and it even offers a short history on going raw and how/why this type of eating lifestyle continues to grow in popularity.

Becoming Raw, at first, sounded like it was going to be a reference book and I wasn't sure it would be very useful to someone like myself, who is not a vegetarian. However, as you can see from the above commentary, this book is actually a combination reading/reference guide with facts about foods, the meaning of eating raw, recipes that include raw foods, etc. The book does include graphs, tables, charts, etc., but there the majority of the books pages are comprised of reading material intended to educate the reader on the different components of food, why they are important to the body, how deficiencies can affect the body, etc.

Everyone can benefit from introducing raw, unprocessed food into the diet and Becoming Raw is an excellent book about this important subject. It is a book about your eating lifestyle, with complete coverage of the raw diet, explanations of nutritional facts and data, nutritional charts, history of the movement, recipes, and more. It's an exhaustive guide that can be referred to repeatedly for advice and general information.

Are you thinking about Becoming Raw? If you are, this book is a must have!! This is the most informative, complete book I've ever read on this subject. I thought I knew a lot about healthy eating, vitamins and minerals in foods and what food was good for what ailment, but this book is full of information I did not know.

The chapters are:
Becoming Raw For Life
A History of the Raw-Food Movement in the United States
The Raw Report: Scientific Evidence To Date
Why Raw Rocks!
Energy and Power
Carbohydrates in the Raw
Fat: Friends and Foes
Vitamins: Inviting Vitality
Acid-Base Balance, Bones and Minerals
The Great Enzyme Controversy
Food Safety: Raw Case Files
Nutrition Guidelines and Menus
Recipes

I've always wanted to try eating raw. With this book it would be so easy to do. The book is full of drafts and charts. In my opinion, there is no biased information in this book, it is just full of facts and you can draw your own conclusion.

My favorite recipes, even though there were only a few, were the Smoothies. I know I'll be using them often.

This is a book that you can either live by on a daily basis, or go to whenever you start feeling sluggish and want a boost. I know there have been many studies on the health benefits of going raw, from diabetes, to cholesterol and high blood pressure. This is one of the best books I've come across about eating raw.

*Thanks to Anna and Planned Television Arts for this review copy*

I will try to keep this review short and sweet. When my wife and I discovered Raw Food as a lifestyle 9 months ago, I fought against it tooth and nail. I went along with it, but it was rough. I was looking for anything to dispute it and knock it down. One of the main things I used against it was that most raw foodists and their way of conveying the greatness of raw food was purely based on faith. Most raw foodists want you to take them at their word when they talk about the health benefits of such-and-such vegetable, or how food enzymes are killed during such-and-such cooking process. I hated it. I wanted references. I wanted scientific studies and proof to back these claims. Now, 9 months later, I cannot deny the excellence of this diet, or the facts. I had to come to these conclusions on my own, however, by seeing the results evident in my own life. I had to search and search to find the facts and studies I needed to TRUST raw food completely. I SO wish I had this book 9 months ago, because instead of fighting and struggling to convince myself of the truth, I could have just read this incredible book and been unable to argue it from the get-go. Having been through college, to read a book laden with literally hundreds of references to other books and scientific studies with undeniable proof, was a real treat and truly made me RESPECT this movement and the people that are a part of it. It's not just a bunch of happy, healthy "fanatics" who just tell you how great it is. Now, it is people are are happy, healthy, and have the FACTS to back it up. This book is excellent, and very much to be trusted. This IS the college textbook on raw. Not only does it portray facts, statistics, histories, and literally anything you could want to learn about raw, it also includes full menus and recipes at the end, thrown in for good measure. How nice is that?! Very! However, it is worth noting that this is not a recipe book, but rather it is an encyclopedia on everything pertaining to the raw diet. I highly recommend this to anyone who wishes to learn about raw, and even those who desire a formidable opponent to try and argue against. If you do try to argue with what this book says, you will fail EVERY time, and for that it is the best raw book ever made. Now, whenever you face the raw food haters out there, and there are so many in every person's life that it is ridiculous, you have the ultimate source of encyclopedic knowledge to prove to anyone that this is the true way to live. Not only that, but you will have no doubts in your own decision to be Raw, whether you're increasing the raw food in your diet or becoming a raw foodist 100%. I cannot give this book enough praise. Buy it, read it, and enjoy the learning.

_Becoming Raw_ is *the* textbook on raw veganism. But, don't let that scare you away! Although the book is solidly based on oodles of accurate and up-to-date scientific studies (some chapters have well over 100 references cited!), the authors present the information in a way that--like the raw food itself--is highly and easily digestible.

A well-balanced, much-needed, highly-informative, go-to book for the raw vegan diet, _Becoming Raw_ is a great reference and resource...and for those of us nutrition nerds, it makes a great cover-to-cover read as well. In addition to covering all the crucial topics, concerns and controversies of a raw vegan diet, this guide also provides a wide array of menus and recipes. And, just like an enzyme, _Becoming Raw_ helps us get the maximum benefits from whole raw food sources.

If you're hungry for a solid, no-sugar-added overview of raw vegan nutrition and health, this book will surely satisfy.

Clearly written and edited by very well qualified people who put a lot of work into it. Not just a bunch of stuff jotted down from the top of some "expert's" head, as other books I've read on this topic. Very frank and straightforward. Doesn't try to "sell" you on raw food or veganism, but objectively reviews the many benefits and the few dangers according to the most current science available. Over and over this book shows in detail how animal and cooked foods are nutritionally lacking and packed with harmful substances, versus raw plant foods that are nutrient dense and generally free from harmful substances. Discusses specific health problems (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.) and how the nutrients in raw plant sources address those problems. Includes lots of information on how to prevent various potential deficiencies like iron, protein, vitamin D, B12, and overall calories. If you eat, read this book asap!

Everyone has to begin their raw vegan lifestyle, or experiment, or cleanse, with a cookbook, or a general book on the subject, and I highly recommend that this be that book!

It is written in an easy to comprehend narrative style that masks the underlying scientific fact that permeates, in fact saturates, this unique work. EVERYTHING on the subject is covered and most subjectivity is thankfully vacant, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions based on the evenly balanced arguments that are presented. Historical, biological, chemical, and sociological aspects seem equally represented and this allows the participating reader to move forward with less urban myth to cloud their perceptions.

Clarity, I would say, is what this book brought to me and of all the other books I have on the subject, there is not one that has the research packed into it that this one does. I have many books/cookbooks on the subject of raw vegan and there is not one that delivers the value that this one does.

It's the definitive raw vegan reference guide/cookbook to start with and, now that I have adopted raw veganism as an incredibly rich lifestyle full of benefits and with very little downside, I can comfortably say that it is the book to continue with. Ir's usefulness never diminishes.

This is a good, well written book, but it's more about the science of raw foods rather than the day to day practicalities of raw food. There's a lot of information on vitamins, minerals, enzymes, plus a little on why raw food is good, and a bit about the history. It's all presented in a very objective way, with references through the book. This book isn't trying to convince you to eat raw, it's just giving you information.

There are recipes and menus, but they seem to be more of an afterthought rather than a core part of the book. The book doesn't talk at all about how to maintain a varied, interesting raw diet, and barely if at all mentions kitchen equipment such as food processors or dehydrators.

If you want to understand the science and nutrition behind raw foods, and want to understand how to stay healthy on a 100% raw diet, this is a great book. If you're looking for a practical introduction to raw foods in your day to day life, and motivation to start or continue a raw food diet, there are probably other books that would suit better.

If you are starting on a raw diet or even thinking about it, Becoming Raw is a great introduction. Experienced raw foodists can also benefit from the information presented. Written from a scientific and objective point of view with no hyperbole or bias, the book gives a history of the raw food movement, plus a detailed analysis of the health benefits of a raw food vegan diet. Davis and Melina, who are nutrition experts and have written several books together on vegan and raw vegan diets, further discuss some of the safety issues of a raw food diet, focusing on several foods emphasized by raw foodists and if these are safe to consume or not (in most cases, the foods are okay as long as certain safety measures are followed.). Melina and Davis also give the reader several menus to follow depending on if a person wants to spend a lot of time preparing food or desires a minimalist approach to food preparation. The recipes are easy to follow and the ones this reviewer has tried so far are really delicious.

This book is expertly researched and written. The authors are not trying to persuade you to adopt one type of diet over another. They simply present the facts in a clear, concise manner allowing you to make up your own mind. A great text to have for reading, learning about raw diets, and consulting for information. Highly recommended.