Raw food is a term for mainly raw vegetables. Vegetables that are classified as raw vegetables and can be used in raw vegetable salads include endive, celery, cauliflower, mushrooms, zucchini, cucumber, pepper, radish, red cabbage, arugula, lettuce, spinach, tomato, onion, chicory, white cabbage, carrot. and kohlrabi.
WHY RAW COST?
A shift towards a more plant-based and less animal-based diet is good for our planet and beneficial to health, the Health Council’s nutritional guideline recommends. Eating more raw vegetables gives us more energy, has a natural purifying effect on our body, ensures that more enzymes are available to convert food into the building materials we need, is a good way to lose weight, contains about generally more antioxidants and is the ideal food for our microbiome, the more than 100 billion bacteria in our intestines that largely determine our health and remain healthy with a lot of plant-based food.
The Health Council committee concludes that it has been convincingly shown that eating vegetables, including raw vegetables, reduces the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke. Raw vegetables also have a positive effect on blood pressure, diabetes and certain types of cancer, including colon cancer and lung cancer.
Eat at least 250 grams of vegetables every day and plenty of raw vegetables in between.
Raw vegetables are often eaten as a salad, but can also serve as a garnish, be used in sandwiches and as a snack. You can easily spread your daily portions of raw vegetables over the day. Think of strips of pepper or slices of cucumber on bread, snack tomatoes or carrots on the go, a salad for lunch, leftover vegetables in your omelet and simply with dinner.
SHOULD WE ALL GO TO RAW FOOD?
Raw foodism is a diet of largely uncooked and unprocessed food, the so-called raw food. This can involve raw vegetables, but also raw milk, unprocessed fish (sashimi) and meat (carpaccio). Although it is good and healthy to eat a much more plant-based diet for the vast majority of the Dutch population, the Nutrition Center does not recommend such a diet. A raw food diet can lead to deficiencies. When eating only raw food, it is difficult to get a complete meal with all the necessary vitamins, minerals and proteins. With this diet it is especially difficult to get enough iron, vitamin B2, vitamin B12 and calcium.
So the advice is to definitely eat more raw vegetables every day, perhaps start with a salad for lunch, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and carrots as a snack and a handful of nuts in the evening.
Eat yourself healthier with raw vegetables!