Eat Smart, Eat Raw: Creative Recipes for a Healthier Life [Kindle Edition]

If you are looking for a picture with every recipe and a forward 50 pages long about the benefits of sprouting and the technicalities of a diet to enhance you spiritually, then look away. There are other books for that. But this is a book that you will come back to again and again for straight-forward, reliable recipes, easy to find british ingredients and Kate adds a note to every recipe giving tips/her findings having successfully used the recipes for many years on her young family. you don't have to go 100% raw, there's a recipe for healthy chips too. The recipes all work and raw food is fresh, tasty and colourful; includes soups, breads, biscuits, smoothies, ice creams, puddings, sweeties, breakfasts, stews, burgers, curry, salads, sprout and noodles dishes, wraps, pizza, crackers, sauces, dips, mayo, nut butters : see what I mean? You could pick up this book knowing nothing about raw foods and be off and running within a couple of days - understanding why you're doing it and feeling all the better for it. If you are on a budget, I would say this is the only book you would need to buy for quite some time. There is a comprehensive section on what foods to include, AND WHY, and until you become a purist who can only drink star water and nibble angels hair, this is a book that will cover all aspects of getting going; including a useful contacts page, her own story, further reading recommendations and easy to digest nutrients info. Well done Kate for keeping it simple. By the way, there are a few photos. And so far, my 4 yr old is lovin' it. Going raw is the best decision I have made in years, I feel great and havve lost 14lbs of useless flab. I shall climb the dizzy heights to purism and be supping solely on butterfly nectar in no time. Can't seem to give up the fags, though. And is wine raw? ;-D

Updated since original post:

This book arrived one lazy Saturday morning. After getting breakfast and the housework out of the way I had a lovely cosy morning (still in my PJs!) reading this book from cover to cover! I didn't necessarily read every single recipe in depth, but enough to get inspiration from all the different categories (and I've been referring back to them daily).

This book is great because it is very accessible (although I've been a vegan for several years so a lot of the ingredients are things I have around anyway). Kate does a wonderful job of making this lifestyle more accessible to those of us who aren't lucky enough to live in sunny California and have the best organic markets and health shops nearby.

The recipes strike a perfect balance between being exiting and being practical for those of us with busy lives, office jobs and a realistic food budget. They also use ingredients that can easily be found in your local Tesco with the more unusual bits available from a good health food shop, or via online shopping (just Google anything you're missing and see what comes up!). Also, the recipes provide enough flexibility to substitute or improvise with whatever you have around.

Probably my favourite thing about the book is Kate's friendly writing stile. She comes across as down to earth, genuine and open minded, leaving you feeling that it a raw food diet isn't an "all or nothing" lifestyle, making the point that everyone can benefit from increasing the amount of raw food they eat in a way that suits them. She also provides tips for those of us without a Champion juicer and dehydrator, so there really is no excuse not to get started!

I've found this book very useful even though I'm not ready to make the commitment to going totally raw (my system doesn't tolerate fresh fruit very well, which limits my choices somewhat). But this book has given me enough ideas to ensure I'm getting at least some raw goodness in my diet.

Personally, I'm not sure I agree with some proponents of a raw food lifestyle who say that *all* cooked food is bad for you. Saying that though I don't deny the obvious logic that if you can eat something raw (e.g. fruits, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, beetroot and many more of nature's goodies) then why not do so and get more vitamins, enzymes etc. from them.

Since getting this book a year or so ago, I still refer back to it regularly if I feel like I've had too many days of eating bread and potatoes and could do with a bit of raw recipe inspiration.

I highly recommend this book, not just to those thinking about switching to a raw diet, but to those who generally aspire to lead a healthy, holistic lifestyle in this crazy modern world.

Eat Smart, Eat Raw is a recipe book with a difference - no cooking is involved. The author Kate Wood explains in detail why she chooses to eat this way; she cites improved health and energy levels as the main benefits, as raw foods apparently do not deplete the body's resources in the same way that cooked foods do. She tells her own personal story of how she came to eat this way, and then gives a comprehensive account of how to go about incorporating raw foods into the diet.

The recipes themselves are fascinatingly inventive: who would have thought, for example, that you could eat raw burgers and biscuits, pasta and pies? In clear and detailed text, Kate gives instructions for all these and more. Many recipes require specialist equipment such as a dehydrator, but there is plenty to attract the novice as well.

Kate's message seems to be that eating raw foods can be easy and fun with the help of this book. She says that eating even one raw meal a day can make a tremendous difference to your well being, and with Eat Smart, Eat Raw on your kitchen shelf it shouldn't be a challenge.