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12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food | 
| Author: Victoria Boutenko
Creator: Gabriel Cousens
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $9.35
You Save: $7.60 (45%)
New (43) Used (14) from $9.35
Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 12445
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1556436513
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.26
EAN: 9781556436512
ASIN: 1556436513
Publication Date: May 8, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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 Steps to Raw Foods in an open and sincere dialogue. Based on the latest scientific research, Victoria Boutenko explains the numerous benefits of choosing a diet of fresh rather than cooked foods. This book contains self-tests and questionnaires that help the reader to determine if they have hidden eating patterns that undermine their health. Using examples from life, the author explores the most common reasons for people to make unhealthy eating choices.
Rather than simply praising the benefits of raw foods, this book offers helpful tips and coping techniques to form and maintain new, healthy patterns. Learn how to make a raw food restaurant card that makes dining with co-workers easy and enjoyable. Discover three magic sentences that enable you to refuse your mother-in-law’s apple pie without offending her. Find out how to sustain your chosen diet while traveling. These are only a few of the many scenarios that Boutenko outlines.
Written in a convenient 12-step format, this book guides the reader through the most significant physical, psychological, and spiritual phases of the transition from cooked to raw foods. Embracing the raw food lifestyle is more than simply turning off the stove. Such a radical change in the way we eat affects all aspects of life. Boutenko touches on the human relationship with nature, the value of supporting others, and the importance of living in harmony with people who don’t share the same point of view on eating. Already a classic, this enhanced second edition is aimed at anyone interested in improving their health through diet.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 Inspiring December 24, 2008
I have become more and more interested in becoming a raw foodist. This book was helpful in describing the reasons their family became raw and some of the hurdles they had to go through. I have been making green smoothies every morning since I read the book and have even created my own.
 This Edition is Almost Completely New Material! November 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Greatly expanded, this edition has so many new things, it should have had a different title from the first! It includes so much of Victoria's expanded knowledge and wisdom, such as the green smoothies, scientific studies showing the superiority of raw foods, and the power of gratitude. Victoria was even bold enough to include a chapter on eating insects! This may seem strange, but many humans around the world do eat them, and she wisely points out that if Americans weren't so concerned with this, we wouldn't have to use all those pesticides.
But this book also contains the old wisdom from the first edition: how cooked food is very addictive, and raw food simply doesn't have the mind-altering substances that make food become "comfort foods."
And of course there are some of the best raw food recipes ever. If you haven't tried Igor's crackers and the Live Garden Burgers, you simply haven't realized your full hedonistic potential, whether you are a raw or cooked fooder!
Fantasitc Book November 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You will be amazed at the knowledge this woman entered on the pages of this book. It is mot a recipie book although it does have a few in the back. It is just so full of Facts that I find myself quoteing it all the time! An absolute must read for the average diet american, or those who like to change the average americans diet. ;)
Best Foods and Best Health November 13, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Surely with this book Victoria Boutenko will establish herself as a pioneer in the teaching of graceful living upon the planet and within our own bodies. From the information density, consistency, clarity and authority of this work more of us will become able to "get it right" as some of our ancestors did.
Most reassuring is Victoria's ravenous pursuit of knowledge:
"I started collecting data about every single food that existed for humans."
"I read all of the raw food books about this diet that I could find..." "I...checked out thirty books on addiction."
Paraphrasing and quoting:
>Wild animals intuitively prefer fresher, more alive foods...and they rarely develop human-type degenerative diseases. Domesticated animals, fed processed pet food, develop cancer, diabetes, arthritis...
>Primitive peoples HUNTED and consumed meat to survive long winters, but preferred to GATHER greens, fruits, tubers, nuts, seeds, berries, blossoms, mushrooms, sprouts, bark, seaweed...less hazardous, less laborious.
>Insects have been a survival food or a delicacy for most or all human groups or tribes throughout our history, and 80% of earthlings consume them regularly and deliberately, and 100% consume 1-2 lbs of them each year - unintentionally. Actually, it would be safer to have more insects and less pesticide residue in our foods. And, anyway, by weight and amount of feed required, various insects are more efficient sources of protein than beef, chicken, pork or lamb.
>Greens are rich in almost all essential minerals and vitamins recommended by USDA, including protein, but they must be thoroughly chewed in order to release their nutrients (requires much time!). And also, stomach acid must be very strong... A blender can rapidly rupture most of the cell walls of the greens and fruits for easy nutrient assimilation.
>Inside plant cells, tiny organelles break down carbohydrate and sugar molecules to provide energy - but only if there is no cooking.
>2-3 cups of green smoothies daily will provide you with all of the beneficial nutrients. After a few weeks most come to crave and enjoy the smoothies. Boutenko recommends adding blended greens daily to one's diet for several weeks, and then, transitioning to a raw diet.
>Paraphrasing quoted results of studies conducted at accredited universities:
1.There is ample evidence that cooked and processed meats and fish contain mutagens and carcinogens.
2.Acrylamide, a human carcinogen, formed during heating of starch-rich foods, is present in a disturbingly large number of staple foods.
3.Nine of eleven studies...less cancer with raw vegetables.
4.Heating in hydrogenation and frying involves thermally oxidized fats which produced cellular damage in the hearts, livers and kidneys of lab animals.
5.Cooking meat at high temperatures for a long time produces heterocyclic amines and other mutagens, and increases risk of colorectal cancer.
6.A review of 206 human studies and 22 animal studies about cancer vs. fruit and vegetable (esp. raw vegetable) consumption produced consistent evidence for a protective effect against cancers of the stomach, esophagus, lung, endometrium, pancreas, colon, oral cavity and pharynx.
7.Heating produces AGEs (advanced glycoxidation end products) in foods, and they are involved in...arteriosclerosis, hypertension, stroke, heart failure, decreased resilience and flexibility in tendons and ligaments...
>During WWII, with restriction on animal foods, the incidences of some diseases were generally reduced.
>Your body never makes mistakes - for example:
1.A fever fights pathogens and infection.
2.Diarrhea minimizes the contact time between intestinal mucosa and gut pathogens or ingested toxins.
3.Vomiting gets rid of food when digestion energy must be diverted for healing.
4.Our bodies naturally crave foods that aid healing.
(Not coffee or donuts - cooking can create false cravings.)
>During infancy we are "imprinted" as to food choosing, good or bad, and this persists to defeat well-intentioned dieting and even stomach-stapling in adulthood, but a raw foods regimen can prevail.
>Bread, milk, meat, sugar and salt (opiates in the first 3) are probably the most addictive of all common foods. In one study, tumors were shrinking for 132 cancer patients newly placed on raw diets, but misunderstanding of the power of cooked food addiction brought on their demise.
>Boutenko's workshop success rate greatly improved after she learned and taught about addiction. Compulsive eaters probably must quit cooked foods "cold turkey" in order to start and maintain raw diets.
>At times of higher stress, persons raised on a raw food diet tend to crave grapes, figs, bananas...instead of confections.
>Raw foods are not "comfort foods" unless one is truly hungry. One needs to develop non-food stress management (spirituality, non-food interests, appreciation of small things.)
>It is not our business to control our children or our parents, even if they are dying from cancer. The best method for influencing others toward raw, healing foods is to persist happily and deliciously in the lifestyle ourselves and to respond well to any curiosity, while being supportive of the rights of others to persist in their own lifestyles, while also graciously declining offers of their food when necessary. Nevertheless, simply feeding them delicious raw foods can be most persuasive! For best palatability, in every dish you prepare there should be an element each of sweet, sour, salty, spicy and bitter.
>To avoid your own relapse, write down your main life goals along with planned responses for each of your temptation situations. A restaurant "acceptable foods" card is also helpful.
>Develop a support system: friends, websites, publications, exercise clubs, raw potlucks...
>Embrace other healthy habits: exercise, sunshine, good sleep, proper breathing, pure water, stress management...
>In lieu of investing in materialism, cultivate a lifestyle of gratitude and forgiveness which will bring increased pleasure to life and lessen one's dependence on addictive, cooked foods.
>Long term incentive can be gained from the increases in resources to do what one wants, resulting from time saved (quicker food prep, reduced sick time, longer life) increases in energy and strength, and savings of money. Boutenko's family's health money goes to best foods instead of health insurance, for example.
I hope that these sketchy notes will motivate you to read the book for a deeper understanding.
Other reviews, browse: "Bill Norwood" "customer review" Amazon.com
 12 Steps to Raw food October 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The book inspired my husband and me to try to eat raw foods for atleast one meal and to eat as much as possible. We both feel good and my blood sugar fell. The book is a good and simple way to encourage one to try to adopt the concept.
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