The Raw Chef Blog

Did you see the interview of McDonalds UK front man - Steve Easterbrook, on Newsnight this week?  And who did they have in the studio to ask him questions?  None other than the author of Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser.  Mr Schlosser has been waiting years for this opportunity and he doesn’t disappoint.  Full marks to Steve Easterbrook though, despite what I consider to be some very ‘off the mark’ opinions, you have to give him credit for accepting the invitation to face these questions.

One of my favourite quotes from Easterbrook:

"Everyone likes a burger now and then and I think that’s fine"

Oh really?

Apparently McDonalds has been given an RSPCA award for animal welfare!!! Er, sorry? :-0  Don’t you turn these animals into slabs of meat and nuggets?  How is that animal welfare?  If someone were to treat their dog, cat or rabbit (for example) really well and then kill it for a summer BBQ, would they be given a similar award?  I think McDoanlds & animal welfare could be considered an oxymoron.

Anyway, enough of my views…The video can be found on this page!

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I’ve heard the message before but there’s something about the way Paul Nison said it that made me take action.  I’m talking about Paul’s Fresh Network Teleclass and the invaluable information he imparted on that call.  Now some of you reading this entry will be saying, "what, it’s taken you this long to realise?".  And some of you will be saying, "wow, I never knew fat and sugar could make that much difference, isn’t everything raw good?  After all, it is raw!"  From my personal experience, it appears that I was eating too many nuts and fruit!

What’s been going on?…

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Whoops!  I haven’t blogged for over a week now so here’s what I’ve been up to and what I intend to get up to!…

Last weekend we had a visit from James, Anna and their beautiful little daughter Maya (who has the cutest voice you’ve ever heard).  They came up to Karen’s by train for lunch so I prepared raw sandwiches and chocolate torte with ginger cream and strawberry sauce for dessert.  It was great to meet them, having only communicated by email previously.  Sounds like their retreats were fantastic in Ibiza last year, but not without the challenges the come from running something like that!
Pete and Luke came round after their trip to the zoo, just in time for Luke and Maya to get acquainted.  Before they all left, Maya gave Luke a pressie and in return got a hug from him…so sweet!

Dinner Party News

Unfortunately we found out last week that we would not be able to use Vita Organic for further dinner parties, which at first seemed very disappointing.  But true to form, everything happens for a reason, we (I say we, I mean Emma) have found an amazing alternative.  It’s Westminster Kingsway College, and before you say, "a dinner party in a college?", it’s a hospitality college that can boast several different function rooms, a fully-fledged restaurant and past students such as Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay!  One of the function rooms holds up to 150 people so there’s plenty of room for expansion! :-)  To top it all off there’s plenty of free parking in it’s central location.  This really is such a great result for us.  Ems and I are going to look at it on June 1st (Em’s Birthday) to decide which room we want, which will mean the dinner parties will continue from July.  Dates and themes will be updated on The Fresh Network website.

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It’s taken me over a week to write about it, for various reasons, but last Sunday (30th April) was my 30th Birthday!!!  So on a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning, Karen, Luke and I set off in my car for the coast.  The plan was to spend the day in Brighton and then go on to Bognor and then Chichester for some food with family and friends.  We had to change that plan slightly when we got to Brighton as it was just so busy.  Because of the Bank Holiday weekend, the car parks were all full - in all my years living in Sussex I’ve never known this to happen before!  There were even people waiting in queues 10+ cars deep at carparks with ‘FULL’ signs lit

So we drove through Brighton, admiring the sea, finally being able to positively answer Luke’s, "is that the seaside?" line of questioning, which had started about half an hour into the journey.  We were then left to try to explain why we weren’t stopping and had another 45 minutes to go before we could get out on the sand.

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More positive stuff in the press from MSNBC…

People who adhere strictly to raw food vegetarian diets are thin but have surprisingly robust bones, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Although nutritionists and the food industry have warned that a diet without dairy foods can lead to the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, the team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found the vegans they studied had many of the signs of strong bones.

Continue reading at msnbc.com…

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I was sent this article on The Daily Mirror’s website today, I don’t know if it was actually in the paper but it’s nice to see positive press around raw foods!

From mirror.co.uk…

As the Daniels family gathers round the dinner table it resembles a scene played out in many households. An evening meal shared with loved ones, a time to eat and talk together.

But there is one significant difference. All the food laid before mum Jatinder, husband Derek and their three children, Raman, 17, Priyanka, 13, and seven-year-old Mohan is raw…

Click here to go to mirror.co.uk and continue reading this article.

NB. Since writing this post I have been informed by Jatinder (see comments) that she was in the paper and ended up being the centrefold!
 

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From dailyindia.com…

The Effects of Cooking

Arthur Baker writes in Awakening Our Self-Healing Body, ‘Overly cooked foods literally wreck our body. They deny needed nutrients to the system since heat alters foodstuffs such that they are partially, mostly, or wholly destroyed. Nutrients are coagulated, deaminized, caramelized and rendered inorganic and become toxic and pathogenic in the body.’

The indigestible end products of cooked foods can linger in the gut, clogging the intestines and interfering with healthy elimination. They can cause a build-up of toxins, mutagens and carcinogens. Carbohydrates ferment, proteins putrefy and fats become rancid, creating free radicals that enter the blood stream.

Click here to continue reading this great little article I came across today.

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