Get your facts straight, girl!

My book arrived today!!  Well, not MY book, but the book I ordered after taking the raw food prep class with Heather H. Phillips at Redmond's Whole Foods.  Becoming Raw by Davis, Melina, and Berry has been tauted as the most comprehensive, facts based book on raw food to date.  I've started reading but still have a ways to go.

The first part is a historical and "movement" overview.  I've learned much already.  I thought Ann Wigmore was one of the first published, but I was off by a good 100 years.  Much of the movement started in Germany during the late 1800's.  (boy, Germany must have been a crazy place at that time when you think of all the medico's whose practices were considered suspect...like Freud and others).   As I work through it, I'll post a better review.

The raw food life is going well.  I'm have a bit more craving for the standard diet, but have been able to fix that by filling the appropriate nutritional request the ol' body wants.  It seem that protein cravings are the strongest, and I'm very happy filling them with hummus or black bean dips.  It's strange, but ever time I reach for the can of salmon to fill it, I change my mind and reach for a can of beans instead and make a dip.  Yes, canned and processed, but with the rarity of use it's the best way to make sure I can get what's needed without wasting food.

For most of my life, I took foods for granted.  Unlike some Native American practices where all foods are blessed for giving their energy and life to the human consumer, I just consumed.  Since becoming raw, I'm appreciating where my food is coming from and what it takes to get it there.  I've seen several documentaries on food production in the past, and it has always made me very sad, but did not convert me to vegetarianism or veganism.

What actually impacted me most was a short story from an Australian author.  Of course I can't remember who the author is or the title of the story, but I think it was published in an anthology of Oz SciFi and Fantasy stories.  It was about the creation of a hybrid "meat" creature that was raised to feed humans after other animals were emancipated from production-like environments.  The scientists who created the "meat" creatures were interviewed by a reporter to tout the benefits of these animals had as "food" because of their superior genetic design optimal for human consumption and, most importantly, that the creatures had no understanding of who or where they were.  They were the perfect food fodder because they were senseless.  The story unfolds that the reporter is approached by one of the beasts who communicates, in their own way, that they are cognizant and know what's happening to them.  More than a documentary, this strange and disturbing story lodged in my mind the not so fair practices of animal domestication and husbandry.  When a hunt occurs, at least there is some chance for the hunted.

We humans practice such unfair advantages over other animals that it's sad.  It shows us not as smarter because we can farm them, but there is a selfishness and a cruelty to it.  I ask myself now, is it enough to walk away from a hamburger when I feel my health is strong enough to permit myself some cooked food?  I don't know.  It's like Victoria Bentenko says, "We are addicted to cooked foods."  I find the pull even stronger than anything else.  I know it's partly because food is the center of life.  We socialize around it, and like other addictive substances, we comfort ourselves with it and use it for other purposes than its meant.

An interesting sidebar that has also surfaced since going raw has been a re-centering of the food addiction principle in my life.  I still eat with gusto and enthusiasm, but I find I don't have the cravings for things as with cooked food.  The window of what I could eat with cooked food was so wide and broad that a desire to fulfill any fixation was possible.  With changing to raw foods, so many of the unhealthy attachments I had to food come to the surface before I can indulge them because I have to think about HOW to get the "fix" in this new food world.  It makes me stop and think twice before I prepare and eat something based on a desire, as opposed to a bodily need.

Since going raw, I can hear my body ask for different foods more for need than want.  I like it.  I feel more at peace with my kitchen, my pantry, and my body than driven by a desire that is manufactured in more ways than mentally created.

I know I have much to learn and a long way to go on this journey.  Where I end will be intriguing to me.

Peace, love, out!