Food is among the most impactful aspects of our lives, and yet so many times we find ourselves struggling to find a balance between enjoyment and healthy living. Luckily, there are a few simple principles we can follow to maximize our nutrient intake and our culinary enjoyment!
If you are anything like me, your day is filled with many tasks that need to get done- calling your business contacts, meeting that deadline, or taking care of your household. In this type of frenzy, it is easy to compromise and settle for what we can get: picking up a quick fast food bite or eating that sandwich that you know is gonna make you feel bloated, just because it's the quickest solution available.
This is why it is so liberating when we finally discover that just a few small changes and commitments can turn everything around. When I first started looking at my daily food habits, I dug more and more into the principles of what makes foods radiant and chock-full of goodness.
Enjoying nutrient-rich food that is also delicious comes down to a few key factors:
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Aim for using ingredients in their most natural, least processed state available. It is best make sure that your ingredients are coming from producers that not only work with organic agriculture, but also process their raw material at low temperatures. Especially when it comes to materials like fruits, veggies and nuts, keeping them in their raw, unheated state is essential. Enzymes and micronutrients are destroyed during heat processing, and keeping a good portion of our food raw provides multiple health benefits.
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Following slow food principles is a key in allowing the nutrient density to be maintained. To take an example, My Raw Joy cookies are dehydrated over many hours rather than baked. This means that production becomes a whole lot more complicated, but also yields a much more satisfying nutritious result that maintains full flavour. Similarly, when we use fruits, they are still rich with taste due to the slow procedure of air drying which provides the most gentle way of processing. Slow food always wins the competition with fast foods, hands down!
- To provide maximum culinary pleasure for any food, it is essential to apply traditional gourmet procedures as much as possible. This difference becomes most obvious with raw cacao chocolates. Without proper grinding of the chocolate mass, the ingredients tend to create a rough, sandy texture. Taking the time and patience to grind the cacao mass into its finest state makes all the difference, and allows you to have a shiny “milky” chocolate that is packed with goodness. Similarly, when recreating your own dishes in a healthier version, think about what you can do to capture the same texture and flavour balance that you find in the original. Something as simple as combining spices in a balanced way will take foods from bland to tasty in no time.
This research into food led me to discover many other well-being practices like meditation and yoga, and I quickly understood that creating healthful lives is a daily process consisting of many small steps that make all the difference. As a family business that has been founded based on personal stories of healing with raw foods, we are excited to share more of this path with you and to support you in the many little ways to cultivate healthy living habits. Whether it is through our blog posts, our products or in-person events, My Raw Joy represents precisely what's in our name- a joyful lifestyle that we can experience every day.
Come join us on this journey to amazing health!
Sanja Hurem
Founder