Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #201532 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
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. 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.

Customer Reviews

More about her philosophy and family than raw food
I was really looking forward to some kind of illuminating, step by step approach to introducing more raw food into my diet, but there is a little of that in this book.

The author is trying to come across as open, telling us about her family and their transition to raw, but her style is quite cold and distant, so, not only have I learned very little about raw food, I haven't even enjoyed the story.

Her family did not transition to raw, they all went absolute 'cold turkey' overnight, and never wavered at all, so I can't understand why she is teaching about '12 steps to raw'. She is also quite a purist, so not only should we never eat cooked food, we should sleep naked, as out in the open as possible, on hard surfaces,switch off everything electrical at night.....good grief! She is probably right about everything, but why put all this in a 'beginners' book? It's enough to make you run to McDonalds for warmth and comfort (and I'm vegetarian)

She tells us a little of why we should eat raw food; there is a smattering of scientific research and some scaremongering about awful chemicals that appear in cooked carbohydrates and some information on how chimps eat.

The 12 Steps themselves are rather obvious.... Acquire the right equipment, get support, avoid temptation; but then she waffles on about 'gratitude and forgiveness' and 'actualising dreams'. It's all a bit too woolly for me, not enough actual facts and things for me to try.

There are a few recipes, they are fine,very little detail in them; it's like she suddenly remembered the book was about what to eat, just in the last chapter, and stuck them on the end. You could find all of this on the net for free.

I am still searching for the definitive raw food introduction book.

Excellent
What a great book. I am studying a joint honours degree in Health Studies and Psychology. This book has being very helpful to me. Although I was a raw vegetarian already my interest on this book was on how to guide other people into the raw diet. It is a very complete book. Apart from explaining the scientific evidence backing the raw diet (extremely beneficial for your health), it also takes you through how she had to pull her family from a cooked food diet to a raw diet. The title says everything "the 12 steps to raw foods. How to end your dependency on cooked foods". It is a fantastic book!

Buy this book if you are into raw food
Why buy this book? Victoria Boutenko tells her own story of how she got into raw food. She gives you the theory of why raw food is good for you, some really helpful principles for developing your own recipes (the five taste sensations)and simple ways of adapting the basic recipes to your own tastes and preferences. All these aspects of the book have encouraged me to stick with the raw food diet. She also expands on the wider implications of eating raw food, how it begins to affect other aspects of your life. You'll keep coming back to this book again and again as there is a lot here to digest (pardon the pun).
Lee odb