Know This Before Starting a Raw Food Diet

Interviewer: So somebody wants to try a raw food diet, or is interested in that, how would you suggest they start?  I would imagine it will be hard to just to stop what they're doing and completely switch over, is a gradual change better?

Paul Nison: Well the first thing we need to understand is why do they want to change?  Are they doing it because somebody told them, are they doing it because of health issue, and that's going to determine how easy or hard it's going to be for them, why they're doing it.  I don't recommend people doing it for weight loss, I don't recommend people doing it to please somebody else, I recommend people doing a research, and if they know the raw foods are going to be good for them, they're going to have a much easier time with that change, you know.  With change, consistency can break any habit, so it's either if somebody's going one way or the other with their diet, it's consistency.

Now I wrote a book called The Raw Life, Becoming Natural in an Unnatural World, to help people make that transition, because when they read that, they're going to understand how much better that raw foods are, and I have interviews in that book people have been eating this way for a long time, so people connect with them.  And I recommend people when people ask me what I can do, I said first get that book, or a book, read it, get a raw food recipe book, and there's recipes in that book, make some of them, and if you eat a raw food recipe, if you taste ten recipes and you only like two of them, don't say this diet isn't for me, say, well, that's two new healthy recipes I can add to my diet, and it's just whether it's diet or anything else, change is always tough.  But depending on the reason you're doing it, and your attitude towards it, it can be accomplished.

Interviewer: Do you find that that's one of the big misconceptions when you talk about recipes, that people think that there's nothing they can do besides just make a salad, you know?

Paul Nison: Well, when I first got into this, I had a raw food restaurant in New York City, and I remember I got a job there as a chef, and I called my Dad and said I'm a raw food chef.  He said, you mean you make salads?  He doesn't understand you can make anything you can make cooked you can make raw, and I'm talking about vegan vegetarian, so I can make raw burgers, I can make raw pies, cookies, cakes, everything, casseroles, everything, and that's what I do, and it tastes delicious.  There's raw food restaurants happening all over the country now, and it's something people haven't heard of so it's hard to understand, but I can serve raw food to people and they don't even know it's raw.

Interviewer: Really.

Paul Nison: It comes down to people that say, here's the average thing you get, you see somebody, oh, I don't like avocadoes.  I go, really, but then they love my guacamole.  It's the same thing, it's like, and guacamole is made with avocadoes, and it's, I never had raw food, but if you ever had salsa, that's a raw food recipe.  So it's just really, people will say things, but you can't listen to what they say, you got to see what they're doing.