The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss

Review by Diana F. Von Behren for The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss
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If you are intrigued by the current trend of eating real food, want to take this concept to the next level but are skeptical as to how to implement the raw food lifestyle on a practical everyday basis, pick up a copy of Natalia Rose’s “The Raw Food Detox Diet, for a fast and fun introduction that does not require a cold turkey approach to eliminating cooked foods.

Rose is in agreement with French dieting guru Michel Montignac on her definition of what constitutes a “legal” food on this plan. Montignac, a long-time proponent of eating real food as opposed to processed junk, urges us to forego the old dieting adage of counting calories and all the newer macro nutritional phobias with regard to too much or too little fat, protein or carbohydrates and instead analyze each food choice with an eye on the food’s metabolic reaction with regard to fast and easy bloat-free digestion and elimination.

Rose agrees, emphasizing that whereas natural foods are easily recognizable by the body and therefore easily broken down, utilized and eliminated, the processed foods that make up so much of the typical American diet are deemed by the body as the worst kind of illegal aliens that sadly deteriorate into waste that the body can neither utilize nor expel. Waste in this case, has no other recourse than to morph into a variety of problems like weight gain, a degeneration of the organs, a slowing of the metabolism and premature aging.

By utilizing a method of food combining where mixing foods in different categories is verboten, similar to that of the Montignac method (minus the glycemic index factor), Rose further expands this theory by grouping nuts – an iffy category on most food combining plans (Somersizing immediately springs to mind) – as a separate category (starches, fleshes and fruits being the other three categories) , to be combined only with dried fruits and vegetables.

She provides an extremely helpful hierarchy of eleven types of quick exit foods, where level number 1, the best, contains fruits and vegetables and level number 11, the worst, contains chemicals and artificial colorings and sweeteners. She adds that as eating from quick exit levels 1-8 is doable by everyone; the higher levels of health will be reached when eating only from levels 1-5. In addition an indispensable transitional food grocery list is included to provide brand name items that act as substitutes for mainstream comfort foods that must be eliminated to insure success on this program. She is not a big fan of dairy and as expected pans the consumption of power shakes and bars. Surprisingly she eschews the current ‘soy is nirvana’ bandwagon, labelling soy products as mucus-forming poisons. Neutral foods, those which may be eaten with any category except fruit include such treats as nut milks, 70% chocolate, olivess and olive oil. how refreshing! Way to go, Ms Rose!

On the practical side, the book abounds with menu plans, recipes, and suggestions on what to eat in a restaurant or at social occasions. For the aspiring raw foodist, separate chapters are dedicated to detoxifying all aspects of your lifestyle including your bathroom, your living space, your kitchen, your family, fasting, traveling, holidays and your colon.

I emailed Ms Rose with questions that pertained to the diet as juxtaposed with my lifestyle and was extremely pleased that the author very pleasantly answered all my questions promptly and professionally and made suggestions that I was able to implement quite easily.

Bottom line: Ms Rose achieves the impossible, a raw food diet that doesn’t force you to eat only raw foods, but urges you to discover your own lifestyle at your own pace for achieving optimal health. With a combination of guidelines, recipes and a fresh common sense five part transitional approach, Ms Rose sends you out into unknown territory, with the option of staying on one particular phase of the diet for as long as you wish.

Review by Joanna Daneman for The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss
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This is a helpful book to improve your diet. The author stresses vegetables and low starch and refined foods. The science is “iffy”–I’d charitably call it empirical at best. For example, nuts and dried fruits are classed together as fats and I wasn’t aware dried fruit had anything but a concentration of fructose and fiber…fat? No. But then, alcohol is said to be metabolized like fat, so perhaps, again, empirically, there is something to be said for this idea.

The author essentially follows the old food combining rules, which Science says is bunk but effectively limits anyone from consuming a huge meal from soup to nuts. Instead, here you eat (drink) vegetable juice, salads, dressings of raw oil and seeds or nuts, and for those not totally into raw-only, steamed vegetables, some fish.

This book is valuable for the recipes, especially “green lemonade” which is a great juice to start the day (a head of romaine, some kale, apple, lemon and ginger. ) There is some fairly good advice on what to base your diet on. The author claims she eats almost exclusively greens and fruits with some nuts. Without a doubt, this diet lacks in vitamin B-12 and even chimpanzees, our close cousins, eat bugs and small critters. So is this really natural? I am not sure that is natural to exclude an important source of an essential nutrient such as eggs and occasional fish and meat, or even wise.

There are a lot of recipes for young coconuts. While I agree this is one food that is delicious and good for you, it’s pretty hard to find young, green coconuts in most of middle America, even in places with many Asian ethnic residents. And if you are not handy with a cleaver, they are tough to open. The author does give good advice; keep one hand behind your back no matter what.

One more thing; the author recommends stevia, a sweet-tasting herb which is fine, but substitutes Splenda, which is pretty much dissed in the health community. If you’re going all natural, artificial sweetener would probably fall on the first list of “must-avoids.” Since stevia is widely available now and is a good natural-based sweetener, why include Splenda? Even a dash of honey, maple or agave syrup would be preferable, in my opinion.

I like this book, but with reservations.