For at least a few decades, there has been a small but very dedicated group of people who have followed and championed the raw vegan style of eating. In recent years, this raw food diet approach to eating has gained in popularity and is even starting to creep into the mainstream, as a viable and healthy lifestyle. Evidence of wider acceptance of the living raw diet is seen in the form of an increase in raw food books and diets on the market, and even in the appearance of raw food restaurants on the scene.

One event that helped to bring the raw vegan food "movement" into the forefront was the recent opening up an up-scale, five-star gourmet restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area called Roxanne's. Roxanne Klein, a well-known chef and restaurateur, and her multi-millionaire husband David Klein, opened the new establishment featuring a menu that is strictly made up of raw food recipe choices.

The majority of the dishes that are available on the menu at Roxanne's are original recipes concocted by Roxanne herself. They are considered gourmet level meals and they have attracted visits from some of the best-known chefs in the world, many of whom have traveled to her establishment to learn about her raw vegan recipes.

Roxanne's is just one example of a much larger movement that is becoming more popular. Today, in most large cities you can find several restaurants that have raw food meal options on the menu and even a few raw food restaurants that are devoted to only offering living foods.

John Robbins is a best-selling author and is widely known and respected for his research and information about the food industry as a whole. He reports that there is a true food revolution in the works that has people leaning toward eating more foods that are organic and locally grown, which is at the heart of the vegan way of life.

He indicates that this is out of both concern for health factors and for protecting and improving the environment as well. The vegan diet is a step beyond both the raw food diets and the vegetarian diets. Eating a raw food vegan diet excludes all meat and dairy, and also eliminates the cooking of fresh foods in favor of eating them completely in their natural form.

The raw or natural vegan diet includes a wide array of fresh fruits and vegetables, as most would expect. In addition, this raw vegetarian diet also relies heavily on sprouted legumes and grains, nuts and seeds to supply protein and beneficial oils and fats. One of the primary reasons why eating raw food is considered to be healthy and beneficial to the body is because all of the food is packed full of living enzymes. The enzymes help with digestion and help deliver nutrients throughout the system.

The problem is that these essential enzymes are destroyed during the process of cooking, as are most of the other vitamins and minerals in fresh foods. As a result, there is very little nutrition that the body can take from these foods and this triggers cravings for additional food as the body tries to get the vital nutrition it needs for health. By following a raw vegan diet, people are able to gain greater nutrition while eating less food, and therefore, they lose weight naturally and have fewer problems with bloating and sluggishness.

Technorati Tags: Raw Food, Raw Vegan Diets Provide Healthy Alternative