(NaturalNews) Out of all the weight loss programs that exist, very few are as simple and obvious as a raw food diet. People often forget about the calories that get padded on to foods through basic cooking techniques. Between oil and butter, as well as the general frying and baking process, a meal can have up to 25 percent more calories than the ingredients alone.
Furthermore, since the body has to do a little more work in order to consume raw foods, it results in a substantial difference in the caloric intake of a meal. There is a very interesting study on this topic that was recently featured in
Forbes Magazine. Basically, a group of scientists studied lab rats over a span of forty days and one group of rats ate raw foods, while the other ate cooked foods. It was so interesting how the body masses of the rats ranged between the two groups. The conclusion to the experiment was that raw food consumption does result in weight loss.
How does this affect general nutrition?If there is a goal that relates to weight loss or a lower caloric intake for whatever purpose, it is advised that raw foods, as a replacement to cooked foods, will produce this result. It is common sense that cooking food will increase the calories, however most people do not consider that eating it prior to cooking is even an option.
What raw foods should be the focus?The answer to this is simple: dark, leafy greens. Most people know through common nutritional trivia that dark leafy greens are essential to any standard of health. They are packed with vitamins and they have seemingly endless nutritional benefits. The irony of this strong stigma of dark, leafy greens is that many people do not even know what vegetables qualify as dark and leafy.
For those that prefer meal planning and grocery shopping with a list, it is recommended to deviate from that habit just once so that a stroll through the produce section of any grocery store can fuel ideas on all that is dark and leafy. So many vegetables can be used in simple and quick recipes that have great nutritional value, and just knowing the names of such ingredients will aid any Internet search for recipes. Specifically collard greens and dandelion greens are easy ingredients to begin exploring.
With so many weight loss methods that are filled with uncertainty and even potential health risks, raw food
dieting offers a truly natural alternative to curb weight in a healthy manner. Additionally, raw food dieting is enjoyable and a voyage that will result in wonderful discoveries through tasting new flavors of foods that are familiar, and perhaps a few that are not!
Sources for this article include:Forbes Magazine:
www.forbes.comProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2011 (
http://www.pnas.org/)
www.shreveporttimes.comAbout the author:Raw Michelle is a natural health blogger and researcher, sharing her passions with others, using the Internet as her medium. She discusses topics in a straight forward way in hopes to help people from all walks of life achieve optimal health and well-being. She has authored and published hundreds of articles on topics such as the raw food diet and green living in general. In 2010, Michelle created
RawFoodHealthWatch.com, to share with people her approach to the raw food diet and detoxification.
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