Wouldn’t it be amazing if the healthiest foods on the planet tasted just as good as junk food? Don’t we all wish we craved kale salad and cucumbers instead of potato chips and pizza? Eating a healthier diet can be quite a task at first, but as your body begins to assimilate the new found nutrition in whole foods, your tastes will begin to change. Junk food cravings will be a thing of the past. I must admit, it helps to have foods that are yummy, because even the most avid health food eater would eventually get bored eating only salads and fruit. Since I eat a raw food diet I’ve grown to love fresh organic fruits and vegetables, but sometimes I’ll feel like something different. Here are a few foods that when I first went raw I had no idea about, and when I finally tried them I said to myself, "Where have you been all my life!"
One of these foods is mesquite, chocolate’s healthy rival. Mesquite is an amazing food. Unlike many crops grown today, it is sustainable and the growing practices are in harmony with the Earth. Mesquite grows in very arid regions of the southwestern areas of the United States such as Arizona and New Mexico. It is a wild food and the trees require little water and absolutely no pesticides or herbicides to grow. Natives of the land have used mesquite for hundreds of years as a nourishing source of food. Today you can buy mesquite pod meal, which consists of the pods that have been ground into flour. Mesquite is high in minerals, amino acids and essential fatty acids, and can be used in baked goods or added to raw sweet treats, cereal, nut milk and smoothies. The flavor is like a cross between chocolate, carob and vanilla. It’s a tasty treat!
Another food that I’ve just recently discovered is black sesame tahini. This tahini is like no other! It actually resembles black tar, but the taste is incredible. It’s rich and smooth, and has a roasted flavor, something that you don’t encounter much in the raw world. I’ve started to use it in replace of regular sesame tahini because of its higher calcium content. Chinese medicine has used black sesame seeds for centuries, probably because of their high mineral content and healing oil.
If you haven’t yet tried a young coconut, run to your nearest Asian market asap! A little while ago, a friend of mine and I were discussing what food we would take with us to an island. The catch was that we could only take one food. We both agreed that it would have to be the coconut. With avocado coming in a close second. Young coconuts make a great base for smoothies. You can come up with tons of variations. Coconut meat, coconut water, berries, vanilla…coconut meat, coconut water, banana…or just plain coconut meat and coconut water with nothing else! It’s just like a vanilla milkshake! I’ve also made great puddings with carob, coconut meat, vanilla bean and agave nectar. Tapioca pudding is now a thing of the past!
If you haven’t already, try some (or all) of these foods! You can buy mesquite at:
www.spmesquite.com,
black sesame tahini at:
www.livingtreecommunity.com
and young coconuts at your local Asian Market
--Anna was the winner of the "How I Went Raw" Essay Contest 2003. Read her essay.
