Best ways of preparing food

[Dirkg]

Was discussing with some people, and I came up with this list of how to eat food -
(in order from worst to best)

Raw

• dehydrated
• raw
• fermented (and maybe pickled)
• sprouted

What do you think? I've read in quite a few places that sprouting and fermentation increases nutritional value of food.

[MysticTree]

I think your are over-thinking the whole thing. Just eat fresh raw foods and you'll be fine.

[Living Food]

That list is accurate.

fermented (and maybe pickled)

Pickling is a form of fermentation.

I've read in quite a few places that sprouting and fermentation increases nutritional value of food.

They do. They also dramatically increase the digestibility, and fermented foods are the best way to get probiotics. Sprouts are even better because the nutrition is unmatched, and they are bursting with life energy (electromagnetic vibration if you prefer) because they are still growing. Make both a regular part of your diet - when I first went raw I eat loads of fermented foods to heal my digestive tract and recolonize it with beneficial bacteria, but now I eat them very sparingly because I don't really need them anymore. But always eat lots of sprouts, and even better is to grow green sprouts, microgreens and grasses and juice them.

The best sprouting thread there is: http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthrea...t=sprouting%21

[Charybdisjim]

Yeah pickling can be a good way to help transition your way to a raw diet as the pickled form of foods which you may otherwise find hard to digest at first will be digested far more easily. Additionally as Living Food mentioned above the live cultures in home-pickled foods can be very helpful in restoring a healthy equilibrium to the flora of the digestive tract. These living cultures and the enzymes some of them produce can be quite helpful in digesting non-pickled foods; if you find certain foods cause mild digestive distress then consume natural raw pickles alongside them and you may find you are able to digest them much more easily.

If using pickled foods as a way to make the transition to raw foods gentler you may find you consume more pickled products during the transition than you need to later on in. This doesn't mean you need to cut them out by any stretch - they are still quite healthy -merely that you won't be consuming them for their aid in digestion at that point merely because they're nutritious and if you like the taste.

In a general sense, pickling doesn't exactly increase the nutritional content of the vegetables as much as it makes the nutrition more easily accessible and reduces anti-nutritional content. Pickled beets for example do not contain more iron than unpickled beets but the anti-nutritional compounds which would block iron absorption in the fresh beets is greatly reduced; this means that ultimately there is more effectively available iron content in the pickled beet even if the total iron content itself is not actually changed. Pickling does add certain enzymes and pro-biotic content to the food though this isn't quite the same as a flat increase in all nutritional content. These cultures and enzymes aid in the absorption of nutrition and digestive processes but aren't exactly nutrients in and of themselves.

Do note that most pickled foods you find in the grocery store are far from raw. Any not refrigerated are pasteurized (cooked at high temperatures to halt biological activity) and very much considered to be cooked. You can find some raw pickles in larger chain grocery stores but are likely to have better luck in health/whole-food specialty stores instead. Even better though, you can easily and fairly safely make your own truly raw pickles as long as you follow instructions regarding food-safety such as sanitizing pickling jars and other steps. Those will be far cheaper and allow you a much greater selection of possible pickled veggies than specialty retailers ever will.

[MysticTree]

Food plays vital role in every person's life. There are many ways to prepare food like (edited by MT to remove 7 methods of food prep that we don't talk about here) and many more. Here I get more info about best way of prepare food.

yes you will get to learn about best prep methods. None of the ones you mentioned are valid on this forum.

[Non]

I like putting together recipes, in a very basic sort of way. I like to call them "jungle recipes".

Sort of like the concept I saw on a youtube from "Dan the Man", wrapping a collard leaf over a banana. Crazy.


But no I think that's bad food combining.

I would eat things by hand like lettuce, etc. Or I'll just had like a salad with pretty much nothing on it. Maybe some seaweed and lemon.
I do use a dehydrator though for nuts because I haven't found a good way to store soaked nuts/seeds yet.

I like the idea though of a lettuce wrap.

And then one can use a food mill if you want to grind things up.