12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food

by Victoria Boutenko

Book Overview

Why do we overeat time and time again? Why do we make poor diet choices while we want to be healthy? What makes losing weight so difficult? These and many other vital questions are addressed in 12... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556436513
• ISBN13: 9781556436512
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Best way to stop getting sick and get younger, stronger and smarter

Wow, I feel awesome. Mostly I have not been sick and feel younger now at 43 then I did at 33. I jump out of bed every morning with energy, ready to start my day. I have now been eating 90% Raw consistently for 3 months. (The non-raw food I consume is 'ezekiel bread'.) No one is born with a stove on their belly, try this and you will see what the author and now I mean to share with the world. Once you know the information and once you feel the difference by eating raw, you can not go back to eating cooked foods since it does not achieve a feeling of health. Wow, talk about putting power into your hands! If you want to be a power house, you can do it on raw foods. Raw dairy, Raw cheese, Raw greens, Raw veggies and much more taste then you ever could achieve with cooked foods, not to mention the clean up is much easier then cooking. Just try it, you have nothing to lose! Oh, but you will lose one thing, extra weight.

A "must" for anyone interested in exploring the health benefits of a raw-food vegan diet.

Though 12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food features plenty of recipes, its purpose is to be the antithesis of "cookbooks" per se - author and raw-food diet teacher Victoria Boutenko extols the benefits of raw foods and the disadvantages of cooked foods (notably that cooking often destroys nutrients) to the extent of describing a diet of cooked foods as a "dependency". Now in a revised and expanded edition, 12 Steps to Raw Foods is also a vegan food preparation book, eschewing all meat, milk, egg-based foods. The preponderance of 12 Steps to Raw Foods is devoted not to recipes, but to convincing the reader to switch to an entirely raw-food vegan diet, as well as tips, tricks, techniques for making the transition. The main segments are "Why Raw Food?", "Human Dependency on Cooked Food", "How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food" and "Recipes". The first three segments are filled with tips, tricks, and techniques for dealing with cravings for cooked food, and the recipes range from raw green smoothies to gazpacho to nut or seed cheese, non-cooked vegan burgers, non-cooked vegan pizza, and much more. A "must" for anyone interested in exploring the health benefits of a raw-food vegan diet.

A fantastic new edition!! Review by Raw Network of Washington

Review by Susan Albrecht Victoria Boutenko believes that our bodies are designed to be healthy, that our bodies are perfect, and that sickness is not normal. For Victoria, absolute health is having enough energy to manifest dreams. Yet many people simply do not have enough energy to do so, or engage in a mental and physical struggle of ups and downs which make it difficult to remain joyful and fulfilled. For Victoria, the health and joyfulness that is our natural birthright can be found in nutrition. Standing in the way of optimal nutrition is a dependency on cooked foods and a corresponding belief that it is simply too difficult or not possible to change eating habits in a significant way. The dependence on cooked food and the steps that can help one successfully end the dependency are outlined in Victoria's book, 12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food. The newly revised and updated second edition is now twice as large, containing about 80% new information and more detailed insights into the burning question of why humans should eat raw, about human dependency on cooked food, and how to people can end this dependency. This is a book for people interested in changing their dietary habits, for those completely new to raw, and for raw fooders interested in learning more about Victoria's research into the diet of the first humans, which focuses on the "gatherer" aspect of the hunter-gatherer paradigm of early to recent human lifestyle and nutritional needs. While we all learn in grade school about the hunter culture, not many of us learn about the gatherer lifestyle that was central to ALL people, not just Native Americans. It is exciting to learn that the "first bread" was little more than crushed seeds of grasses mixed with water and "baked" on stones heated by the sun. Clearly, for thousands of years, humans ate their "bread" raw. Central to the new edition is Victoria's other research into the power of greens. Victoria and her family had been raw for nearly ten years when they began to feel they had reached a plateau in their levels of health, noticing symptoms of less than perfect health. Yet it was when her children started to complain of increased teeth sensitivity that Victoria knew something was not right with her family's nutrition--such symptoms Victoria recognized as an indicator that her family's complete nutritional needs were not being met. This realization resulted in a three year quest to learn and collect data on all human foods. What she found is that the one food group that matches all essential minerals and vitamins recommended by the USDA, including protein, are greens! Convinced that greens are the most important food, Victoria was stumped at how to incorporate an optimal quantity into her diet (even Victoria was not able to consume more than several cups of shredded greens at a sitting). After many experiments, she discovered that blending greens in a high-speed blender with sweet f

"How many people can you influence in a lifetime?"

"I think," says Victoria Boutenko, "the whole planet." As a vegetarian trying to go raw, I picked up this book thinking it was a twelve step plan to gradually eliminating cooked foods from my diet. It isn't. Instead, "12 Steps to Raw Food" tries the novel approach of treating cooked food as an addiction, and so the "12 Steps" refers to an AA-like code of honor for dealing with a raw food lifestyle. Author Boutenko was sick of being sick, and she and eventually her entire family went raw after much struggle and soul-searching. But when she tried to share the raw food lifestyle with others, she noticed something strange: Even people suffering from life-threatening illness would go on the raw foods diet for a while, get much better, but then fall off the wagon, "fall off the wagon" being the operative phrase. Once she geared her classes as if her students were recovering addicts, the results were much better (there's a hilarious story about Boutenko going to the library and checking out forty books on every kind of addiction, and the librarian's reaction). So we have chapters on gathering information and making knowledgeable choices, on living with people who do not share your passion for raw food (one of the best and most compassionate chapters in the book) and avoiding temptation (Boutenko's advice: avoid it). Her explanation of the body's reaction to cooked food is medically sound, and the passage on bacteria and its role in the earth's cycles is outstanding and of interest to anyone, raw food enthusiast or not. There are a few recipes included, but the author explains why traditional recipes do not tend to work when you're dealing with raw foods, because every batch will be different. This is needless to say an excellent book for those considering going raw. Boutenko's approach may not be for everyone, and quitting cooked foods cold turkey will have drawbacks she is upfront about (you are going to feel really, really crummy for the first two months). The book is well worth buying even if you're not ready for raw; the explanations regarding body chemistry are fascinating. I highly recommend "12 Steps to Raw Food" to anyone.

This book changed my life!

Victoria Boutenko's book, Twelve Steps to Raw Foods, helped me to change my diet and my health. Since switching over to a raw foods diet, my illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic acne, and major mood swings have all but vanished. I have lots of energy, can sleep like a baby, my skin is clear, and I'm a much more peaceful and happy person. Ms. Boutenko's book has been an integral part of my healing process, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's ready to look and feel better!