Raw Foods Diet

Spencer and Sabrina Aird, Proprietors or The Grass Root Restaurants

On Sunday I drove 3 hours west to Lakeland to give an organic gardening workshop at a Raw Foods Restaurant, Grass Roots. Owned and operated by Spencer & Sabrina Aird, Grass Roots has a warm ambience with cinnamon and saffron painted walls, large arched windows, and upscale art.

The Airds have created a hub for the raw/organic foodies in Lakeland (they also have a restaurant in Tampa). Like the owners, workshop attendees were vibrant and excited about growing some of their own foods.

My mission on this trip, however, was to learn as much as I taught. A small part of me believes I would be healthier on a raw foods diet, but a bigger part of me stubbornly reminds myself of the years I have spent developing recipes for cooked meals. I wanted to know how those who partake in the raw foods lifestyle survive (happily) without lentils, brown rice, pasta, apple pie...what kind of life is that?

After the workshop, I signed books and surveyed the crowd for the best person to corner about her diet. Aha! There she was...last in line and wearing yoga clothes. She would tolerate my questions no matter how basic and annoying. She handed me a book to sign and I held onto it until my questions were answered.

Beans? I asked. How do you live without beans? I asked a million questions and she answered them all.  Thank you, Patricia!

It would be inaccurate to say raw foods dieters don't cook. Though it may not be over a hot stove, they spend more time preparing their food than the average person. They combine ground up nuts with other vegetables to make raw crackers, julienne zucchini to create "noodles", and substitute little known vegetables, such as Mameysa Pote, for those that would require cooking, such as sweet potato.

If I ever become a raw foodie, I promise it won't be tomorrow. But I am going to incorporate more raw foods into my cooking...for example, I'll add diced carrots and celery to my lentils after the lentils are cooked.

So--is a raw foods diet really any healthier than a cooked diet rich in vegetables and whole grains? See the Side Wiki for more information about this debate.

For more on growing your own food, visit The Gourmet Gardener.

Understanding the "Dirty Dozen"

Excerpt from "Container Gardening for Health: The 12 Most Important Fruits and Vegetables for Your Organic Garden" ISBN: 0978629329.
...In 1988, The National Research Council was commissioned by the U.S. Con-
gress to study issues concerning pesticides in the diets of infants and children using USDA/FDA data .
The results of this study are published in a 372 page book, Pesticides in the Diets
of Infants and Children(ISBN:0309048753).  The study concludes that children are uniquely suscep-
tible to health problems from exposure to toxic pesticides because of their rapid
growth. Infants and children also consume greater quantities of certain foods as
a proportion of body weight. This leads to greater exposure to some pesticides.4
The problem with pesticides is that the quantity of a vegetable your child eats
may exceed government expectations. Anyone who has children knows they go
through phases where they will only eat one food or one group of foods. Since the
government is not in your dining room calculating how many pounds of straw-
berries your tot has eaten this week, they cannot tell you if she has consumed
too much of a certain pesticide. The government can tell you what foods have
chemical residue even after they have been washed and prepared for eating. In
fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Adminis-
tration conducted nearly 43,000 tests on produce samples from 2000–2004.
The Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) analyzed this data and created a “simula-
tion of thousands of consumers eating high and low pesticide diets...” Their study
showed “that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by
avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the
least contaminated instead.”5 They nicknamed this list of foods “the dirty dozen.”
As of June 2007, the dirty dozen is as follows:
Rank Fruit or Veggie Score Page number
in this book
1 Peaches
2 Apples
3 Sweet Bell Peppers
4 Celery
5 Nectarines
6 Strawberries
7 Cherries
8 Lettuce
9 Grapes, Imported
10 Pears
11 Spinach
12 Potatoes
The list has changed slightly since this book was published -- Kale has moved to the top 12 and spinach has moved down slightly, but all the fruits and vegetables above still remain high on the list.
At The Gourmet Gardener, we don't believe you should have to limit these healthy fruits and vegetables in your diets. Instead, select foods your family commonly eats on the Dirty Dozen list and grow them organically. Use this book as a guide to growing healthy fruits and vegetables in containers and small spaces.
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in reference to: Container Gardening for Health (view on Google Sidewiki)

Organic Vegetable Gardening in Containers

This blog is an effort to get more people gardening organically. I think there is a misconception that gardening is expensive. When comparing the price of organics at the store to home grown organics, you'll see that growing your own is not only healthier, but also less expensive.

For my garden this year, I spent about the equivalent of one week's grocery bill for my family of four. For that price, I now have cherry, apple, nectarine, and pear fruit trees that should produce for years to come; I also have strawberry plants, sweet bell peppers, tomatoes, grape vines, lettuce and spinach seeds, and potatoes. In my next blog, I'll talk about food safety.

I'm growing the above mentioned plants because they are the plants with the highest pesticide residue according to USDA data. I researched this so much that I eventually wrote a book about it --
Container Gardening for Health: The 12 Most Important Fruits and Vegetables to Grow in Your Organic Garden by Barbara Barker
Check it out!