No Sugar or Salt

[rita3212]

Hello All. I need some advice please.I have been dabbling in raw foods for about 3 months now and I'm ready to take it up a notch. I really need to remove sugar and salt from my diet, but I'm finding it really hard to do so.

The food taste so bland without one or the other, actually making me crave bad foods. I know that its only a matter of retraining my taste buds. So, I was wondering if anyone could provide any flavorful recipe suggestions that don't include salt or sugar. My goal is to be 100% raw within the month.

I would greatly appreciate your suggestions.:heart

[modernmonkey]

All I can suggest is to increase your intake of fresh ripe fruits. You will find quite quickly that anything sweetened with refined sugar (be it raisins, agave or white death) tastes sickly sweet compared to fresh fruit. (SAD desserts will taste like poison). Salt is more difficult for me. I still get savoury SAD cravings from time to time. More greens and veg seems to help that.

[Revvell]

I agree with upping your sweet fruits for the sweet flavor. For salt, you can use dried and ground celery. I also use sumac and powdered dulse and kelp.

[Psychalone]

@modernmonkey- Bahahaha "white death" I love it! I am now stealing that for personal use XD

@Rita- Yes sugar and salt are the foundation of all addiction. In fact my friends and I figured that out LONGGGG ago during our gaming parties and movie nights. We'd all go out to Wawa or CVS and we'd always pick up sweet things like chocolate and such and salty things like chips or nuts. When we discovered this we'd always joke about it, like if someone only had enough for chips, we'd offer him some chocolate saying things liek "com'on man you needs some sugar with that salt". We later included cheesey as we noticed that doritos and cheese puffs were in their own catagory, lmao.

However I definately Agree with monkey on thr fruit intake.

There's a theory that says we crave sugar when we need carbs and we crave salt when we need minerals. If this is true then supplementing with lots of fruit and the occassional green smothies, green juices or large salad or just dark leafy green for minerals. Or you could do like I do and use sprouts and sprout them in water with sea salt (they absorb the minerals and turn them from poisonuous inorganic form to an assimilatable organic form). The other theory is that we're simply addicted to the stimulation and sensation of not just food but all of modern living. Poor sympathetic nervous system, lol.

You may want to try a short fast. Fasting helps resensitize one's body. Your sense of smell and taste are refined and strengthened to the point where fruit is like candy and salad is like fruit XD. Usually only takes 3-5 days for me. Or you could just bare the lack of flavor until your taste buds resensitize on their own, which will happen on the raw diet. Just gotta remember that salt and sugar are stimulants and any "normal" thing will obviously seem less stimulating in comparison, so you gotta wait until you resensitize before you'll really taste and appreciate raw plant based foods.

As for recipes...I mean fruit is fruit, you could make smoothies I guess. For the salt...I"m not a fan of oil nor do I recommend it as a "health" food, but as a transition food it's quite useful. Extra Vigin COLD PRESSED olive oil can make a great dressing and may provide the "salty" "fix" , at least it did for me. You can also try mixing avocado with flax oil adding some dill, pepper etc which I found tasted kinda like egg salad (mash the avocado but leave chunk). There should be a recipe section on this site, if not you can google "Raw vegan recipes" and find a whole bunch of good stuff.

Best Wishes

[BeingK8]

More greens! (In addition to all the other good advice you've gotten so far.)

Greens are champs for many reasons and one is how they help us heal and reset. When I've been having more cravings and having a hard time staying away from salt and sweet, upping my greens helps immensely.

Also, raw fudge balls. You DO have to be careful with these because they ARE super-concentrated calories and they're easy to overindulge in, but they satisfy desires in me for chocolate and the like.

[Raw Angel Mom]

I recommend that you get the book from detox on simplyraw.ca I noticed that i don't care about salt as much as i used too. Her program really helped me to reset my body and to be more in tune with natural taste versus too much flavor.

[rita3212]

Thanks for all of the advice. I will increase my consumption of greens and see if that works. I also think that the celery powder will work considering celery has a bit of a salt flavor to it.
I know that it may take some time to re sensitize my taste buds, but I'm in it for the long haul. I know that it will happen. Just gotta be positive and focus on my goal.