Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Day 10: Are you on a raw food diet?

My nutritionist wants me to consider trying a raw food diet, once I get everything else under control. As every diabetic out there knows, to really take control of your health and well-being requires an enormous commitment of time, energy, money and discipline, and I have enough on my plate as it is. Pun intended.iStock_Fresh VeggiesXSmall

I did roam around a few raw-food sites last night and discovered what I suspected would be the case: the raw-food community is populated with true believers. I don’t mind that. But just as in the religious world, the nutrition world has its fundamentalists, those all-or-nothing evangelists who insist you go cold turkey (the “cold” part meant literally in this case) and buy thousands of dollars of new kitchen equipment to do so.

I ignored those sites. I’m all for eating raw, organic foods, but please—everything in moderation, you know?

There are also lots of raw-food “cookbooks,” which should be called recipe books for the sake of accuracy. But even here, there’s a lot of nonsense, like one book that apparently includes a “recipe” for chopped parsley: 1. Wash a bunch of parsley. 2. Chop the parsley. It’s impossible for someone who lives in a rural area (as I do) to leaf through a pile of books at a local Barnes & Noble since no such store exists. I rely on reader reviews on Amazon, but they can be wildly inconsistent.

So: Who can recommend a down-to-earth raw food site and/or recipe book that provides genuinely helpful information, recipes that include ingredients that I could find in any decent grocery store, and doesn’t require me to buy a dehydrator and such before I even know if I’m going to like this way of eating?

Suggestions, please! TIA, of course.

Fasting glucose: 202. I’m okay. Honest.

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