• RawforLife website here
• RawforLife Blog(articles)here
• RawforLife monthly e-zine

• Raw Food Preparation Classes
• RawforLife Support (e-mail)
• RawforLife Support (telephone)

• Forthcoming Events: RawforLife Experience, AND a new class!
• Feature Article: Acid-forming foods, alkalising foods...what's it all about?
• SUPER Food of the Month: Bell Pepper
• Recipe: Stuffed Peppers
• 'Pick of the Blog': Eat Locust...Move Over Cacao
• 'Raw When Poor': The Carrot
• Book of the Month: '80/10/10 Diet' Dr Doug Graham

This Autumn, as well as the RawforLife Experience class (which is full of the sorts of things you'd expect to find in a raw food prep class - like flax crackers, pates, shakes, desserts, main meals...), I'm offering an additional, new, class, focussing on..fruit and leaves! The RawforLife 'Fruit & Leaves' class is ideal for those who are interested in the high-fruit permutation of the raw food diet, and very simple meals (it's also nut-free - nothing wrong with nuts - but I know some people find raw food just a little too nutty (!)).

Early Booking Gift

For enthusiastic, organised, early-birds (OK, so I'm trying flattery) there's a small inducement for early booking. For booking either class by 31st August, you may have either a small (250g) pack of truly raw cashews, OR a 250g pack of truly raw olives (please allow 7 days for delivery).

PLEASE NOTE that if you do book by 31st August and would like one of the gifts above, please book as per the instructions on the page, but also send me an e-mail (debbietook@rawforlife.co.uk) with your name and address, and stating whether you would like cashews, or olives.

Acid-forming foods, alkalising foods...what's it all about?

Testing the pH of our diet

Robert Young, PhD, author of 'The pH Miracle' says that our blood pH is ideally maintained at 7.365. Dr Christopher Vasey, MD, says similar, in that the level should be 7.35-7.45.

Now, we can't test the pH level of our blood very easily at home, and even if we could, it would very likely be fine, because the body does whatever it needs to to keep it at the right level, but, as discussed, may do so at some cost to our calcium and energy reserves. What we CAN test easily is our urine and saliva, as these are indications as to whether in general we are putting into our body helpful food (alkalising) or food that puts our bodies under pressure (acid-forming). We can do this using pH strips.

For example, the makers of pHion test strips say that the 'Optimal' pH zone for weighted readings of urine and saliva is '6.75-7.25', and that '6.0-6.5' is 5 to 10 times too acidic. But, interestingly, Brian Clement MD believes urine and saliva should test at an average of 6.5 in a 'healthy' body. So it does seem that the docs can't agree on what's a 'healthy' level.

I've looked at other sources as well, and here's the RawforLife completely non-scientific, just-trying-to-steer-a-way-through-the-conflicts, summary:

In the 5's - too low (a nudge for us to increase our intake of alkalising foods)
Low 6's - not ideal...
Mid 6's - could be OK
High 6's/low 7's - well done!
High 7s/8's - can be 'too alkaline' or a 'false positive' indicating too much acidity (aargh!)

How can we test the pH of our saliva and urine?

I used to keep reading that pH testing strips could be bought from chemists. Well, not any I've tried in the UK! I've found two sources of strips here. The first was very expensive (£20 including postage?) for a bunch of litmus strips without any accompanying information. The second, and the one I recommend, is pHion via The Fresh Network here.

pHion will ask you to test your urine and saliva three times a day over two days, and enter the results on a chart. You then do a little simple arithmetic (following their instructions) which results in a weighted average. What 'weighted' means is that the average is calculated from far more of the wee than the saliva result, as the wee result is considered more important. But - please note - pH have made a mistake with the arithmetic, and the total should be divided by 78 rather than 80 (it does matter - a little!).

When you have your result, you will either be able to pat yourself on the back, or, as I did, say, 'hmm...'.

But, whatever, do not feel you have to buy one of the manufacturer's supplements. I raised my pH readings through adjusting my diet.

OK, so what was my own composite reading, before I tweaked my raw food diet? I carried out the two-day test twice, and recorded 6.5 and 6.7. In other words, my figures would have satisfied Brian Clements, but I really felt, as a 100% raw fooder, that I could be coming in a little better than that. Also, my early morning wee reading was too low for comfort - in the fives. It's common for the first morning wee reading to be lower than the rest, and I did cling for a while to a theory that said acidic urine meant your body was being extra efficient at eliminating acid. However, the realisation that if that was so I must nevertheless have been consuming a lot of acidic food, together with a review of the literature, strongly suggested to me that I should look at improving my diet (pHion - 'low urinary pH is an indication that you are low in alkaline mineral reserves that are used to neutralize the acids that are eliminated by your urine.')

As to how I improved it, significantly, that's to come...but I did it all through food. And one reason I suggest doing it through food rather than a bottled potion is that when you eat the food you are getting all of the other things in the food - the vitamins, the minerals, the fibre.

So,let's look at which foods are acid-forming, and which are alkalising. This all comes down to 'the ash residue that remains after our foods are consumed' (and no, I can't explain further!). But what this means is that a food we think of as acidic (such as a lemon) can an actually have an alkalising effect on our body once it's been digested.

Which foods/substances are acid-forming?

Foods which are acid-forming tend to be phosphorus-dominant. Foods which are alkalising tend to be calcium-dominant. As usual, there is some disagreement as to which foods fall in which camp, but the most consensus is on foods that are highly acid-forming, or alkalising, and the most disagreement surrounds the 'border-line cases', the 'slightlies' (so I've put them in the 'debated' category).

Highly acid-forming:

• Shellfish
• Certain fish, eg sardines
• Vinegar
• Processed meat, eg sausages

• Most prescription drugs, artificial sweeteners, synthetic vitamin/mineral supplements
• Meat in general
• Fish in general
• Cooked food in general (even pasteurised fruit juice)
• Processed food in general (eg white pasta, bread, biscuits, ready meals)
• Coffee, tea
• Beer, spirits, wine
• Soy sauce (eg nama shoyu)
• Cooked grains
• Sweets, chocolate

• Unripe fruit
• Blueberries
• Plums
• Walnuts, cashews

• Dairy
• Honey
• Raw sprouted grains and pulses (sprouting makes these more alkalising than in unsprouted state, but I do not have sufficient information to be able to say whether they could actually be called alkalising).
• Brazil nuts, hazel-nuts
• Seeds (eg flax, sunflower, sesame, pine nuts)
• Coconut

Which foods/substances are alkalising?

Firstly, food can be made more alkaline with chewing, so chomp well!

Highly alkalising

• Spinach
• Celery
• Carrots
• Watercress
• Lettuce

• Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower
• Cucumber
• Various fruits, including citrus*

• Various fruits
• Almonds

In the UK, we call this member of the 'capsicum' family ...just a pepper, or perhaps a sweet pepper. But in fact it's not a pepper at all. Christopher Columbus simply decided to name it thus when he brought it back to Europe, at a time when peppercorns were highly prized. In the US it's often called a 'bell pepper', and I've grown to rather like that term, as it's quite explanatory, and serves to distinguish it well from other (actual) peppers. And, apparently, according to Wikipedia, folks in the mid-Western United States used to call bell peppers 'mangoes'. ??? However, it does to go on to say that as the actual mango fruit has become more common over there, this usage has faded. (Hope so, as we're all going to get very confused if some of you US raw fooders start calling bell peppers mangoes...ah - now that explains why that smoothie didn't work out...)

The bell pepper is botanically a fruit, in conventional culinary terms a vegetable, and is also sometimes referred to as a 'non-sweet fruit'. If any of you have become nervous through a former life about eating from a plant that is a member of the dreaded 'nightshade' family, please don't worry. There's a lot of debate about the 'nightshade' thing anyway, and it does appear that some of the bad press that has attached to foods of this kind is because the leaves are poisonous. The fruits are fine.

As well as tasting very good, peppers are crammed full of vitamins and minerals and score very well on Vitamin B6 (17% of our recommended daily allowance in just 100g of pepper!).

And look at this - the RDA for Vitamin C is 60 mg.

Here are some foods raw fooders eat regularly, together with grams of Vitamin C per 100g:

(note 100g of bell pepper is about one-third to a half a pepper)

• Broccoli (90mg)
• Kiwi fruit (90 mg)
• Papaya (60 mg)
• Strawberry (60 mg)
• Orange (50 mg)
• Melon (40 mg)

The main RawforLife website, at www.rawforlife.co.uk is the 'base' - full of information about raw food, 'before and after's', and details of classes. The RawforLife Blog, at www.debbietookrawforlife.blogspot.com, is the 'newsy' site - updated 2-3+ times a month with news, articles and occasional recipes. As the e-zine and Blog subscriber lists are not identical, I do hope those who do subscribe to both will not mind my reprinting one Blog article here each month. If you would like to see all past Blog articles and receive articles by e-mail as soon as they are published, do visit the Blog site, enter your details in the Feedblitz panel on the Blog site, then follow very carefully the instructions for subscribing.

Eat Locust...Move Over Cacao

• 3-4 spotty bananas
• 2 chopped dates (soak first if ordinary blender)
• 1 tbsp raw carob powder

Packets of 'superfood' costing £15-30 can be fun additions to the raw food diet, but none of them are essential. Each month I will be reminding everyone about delicious, whole foods, available locally, that cost very little. To many of you this information may seem obvious, but, equally, many of us can get a bit carried away at the start of the raw food diet (I did!) and spend vast quantities on expensive foods - and I don't want anyone saying it's too expensive to be raw!

As not everyone is fortunate enough to have an organic co-op near them, or be able to get to a market, I've based my prices on Waitrose (so many of you will be able to obtain the foods far cheaper!).

The Carrot

Not as glamorous as the papaya, but SO affordable...

£1.59 for 1 kilo.

Try them juiced, with some apple and a hint of ginger.

'The 80/10/10 Diet' Dr Douglas N Graham

My reviewing this book will come as no surprise to those who know what a passion for fruit I've had lately, but I should make it clear that, although it's fair to say my current raw eating is '80/10/10' oriented, there are some significant differences, and I am not in the business of saying one raw diet is 'better' than another. Lives have been transformed on all sorts of raw diets. The key thing is - eat raw!

Nevertheless, I recommend this book highly, firstly because it contains so much compelling information as to why we should not be cooking food, secondly because it adopts a 'natural hygiene' stance (eg nutrients through our everyday food rather than through supplements or 'superfoods') and also because the arguments for a high-fruit diet are in direct contract to those of the low-fruit advocates such as Brian Clements MD. Always good to have the opposing view!

Dr Doug Graham is 30 years raw and a fitness coach; interestingly, at a recent UK 80/10/10 gathering, half the audience were male, which is not usually the case at raw events. Dr Douglas has trained world-class athletes, who have built their strength and endurance on a diet of, mainly...fruit and leaves!

The '80/10/10' raw vegan diet (abbreviates to 811rv) emphasises fruit, and leaves (vast quantities!), with just a little fat-rich food in the form of avocados, olives, nuts and seeds.

Dr Doug suggests that the average raw food diet is very high in fat. Now, whilst raw fat has a quite different effect on the body than cooked fat, and is essential for healthy functioning, he feels that we can have too much of a good thing, and that high fat will certainly cause problems for those who like to eat a lot of fruit.

Dr Doug meets fruit concerns head-on, addressing blood sugar issues (eg diabetes), fruit and chronic fatigue syndrome, fruit and candida, and fruit and cancer. For example, he explains that it is fat, rather than fruit, that is the culprit in these illnesses, as excess fat in the blood will cause sugar to 'back up' and not be able to reach the cells.

So, yes, fruit can, indirectly, cause problems, but, according to Dr Doug, this will be because it is eaten within the context of a high-fat diet, whether cooked or raw, and Dr Doug's definition of 'high-fat' is anything more than half an avocado or a sprinkling of seeds in a day.

The book is packed full of nutritional information (the usual issues - protein, B12 etc) and is as useful for hose with sedentary lifestyles as it is for athletes.

'80/10/10' advocates can be quite vociferous in their enthusiasm for the diet, and I can quite understand how some might find this off-putting (I did!). My personal differences are that I like to eat just a little more fat than Dr D recommends, and I differ with him on the issue of grain (when raw and sprouted). But, I can tell you that Dr Doug's general approach will be very refreshing to those who are wondering if it is really necessary to spend £30 on a bottle of 'miracle' supplement and/or are attracted to the idea of simplicity and quick preparation.

I don't think the book will really grab those who say 'I couldn't live on salads.' It's really more for those who think,'well, yes, I think I could...' and for whom fruit is the favourite food group. Quantities are large - when Doug says salad he MEANS salad - including at least a head or two of lettuce depending on your size - perhaps mixed with mango, tomato, and scattered with a few pine nuts.

And, for any who have hitherto felt the '80/10/10' Diet must only be suitable for those living in warmer climes, Doug spends half the year living in not-so-tropical Sussex!

The book can be obtained from Doug's own 'foodnsport' website here

or from Amazon.com, here,
for $29.95 (so around £16 plus a few £s for shipping from the US).