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Login Here Signup Here Signup using Facebooki think i need to try going nut free for a couple of weeks. I went to Pure last night (YUM!) and ate all sorts of things with nuts, and I felt so tired upon awakening this morning. I even needed a nap at about 10 am and I haven’t needed a nap since going raw. I am just trying to figure out what’s causing this fatigue. I have been drinking my green smoothies every day, obviously lots of fruits and veggies, and the occasional larabar (still transitioning, been at this 30 days).
Could this be detoxing?
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the last time i went to pure food & wine i got horribly sick. it’s pretty dense food. even though it’s delicious.
Probably because nuts take far more digestive energy than fresh produce, especially if combined with other stuff like in the gourmet raw dishes.
Hey nycgrrl, today is my 1 month anniversary of transitioning to raw. I had bouts of being really energetic and then days when I am very tired. In some of the reading on this forum and other sites this is normal. Which made me feel much better since it is apparently the body detoxing which requires rest for optimum efficiency. There were some days I came home from work and just crashed for a couple of hours I was so tired. I can say that every day I feel stronger and better and more in tune with my body. Plus I really, really enjoy preparing food again. No more baked on, cooked on crap to clean up in the kitchen. I love talking to my food while I’m preparing it and have tried so much stuff on this website. Especially the nut cheeses since I am a cheese addict.
Yes, anything heavy can make you tired. Nuts are the “meat” of raw food. They are dense and require lots of energy to digest. Definitely they can make you tired.
Most nuts are NOT raw, even the ones used at PF&W. Nuts are natural, and meant to be eaten. They are a superfood in my opinion. They are NOT however meant to be cooked. Heating, even a little completely changes the chemistry of any Nut. (just like any other food)
I continually see people debating over wether to eat nuts, yet I hardly ever see anyone mention that they are a cooked food. Could it be that this is the only problem? Zoe and I only use Pine Nuts, Walnuts and Hazelnuts because all the other nuts are not easily obtained raw and we don’t really order our food online very often.
This being said I have days when my body wants nuts and days when it doesn’t.
nuts are a very dehydrated/dehydrating food …they are very dense and need a lot of energy to deal with
nuts are only available in nature for a very short period of time and are juicy…..farmers instantly dehydrate them to preserve them, rendering them less-than -ideal immediately
in spain they’re known as frutas secas (dried fruits)....quite telling really
removing the water from our food will always make for harder digestion…water is all part of the ‘package’ that is ‘whole’ food
i’d love to, one day, try nuts straight off the tree
peace
Brazils, cashews, macadamias, almonds are all dead foods if bought at regular shops and not from specialist online raw food shops. They all are heated, boiled, steamed etc to remove their shells. You could check with Pure food and wine to see if theirs are turly raw, I doubt it. They also use other non raw foods like maple syrup, Nama shoyu, miso, nutritional yeast and tamari and a few others. I’ve got their recipe book and it isn’t as raw as it could be really…
Zoe-Is it possible to obtain raw cashews? I read that they are heated to get them out of the shell because of the fluid inside the shell which is poison or something. I am not quite sure on this.
Hey Zoe and Chris, you can obtain some of these nuts, like almonds and cashews, truly raw online, and I’m pretty careful where I buy them. If you get the newsletter that is link to the PurelyDelicious magazine, Sarma (owner of PF&W) mentioned the whole nut pasteurization and is now selling truly raw nuts on Oneluckyduck. If this is true, why wouldn’t they use truly raw nuts in their restaurant?
gorawmom – you ccan get truly raw cashews at http://www.rawguru.com and I’m not sure but I believe http://oneluckyduck.com sells them. My digestive troubles weren’t fixed when I transitioned to truly raw nuts. David Wolfe, who sells these cashews, says on the packaging that traditional cashews are heated out of the shell, like you said, but that he has a way of cracking the shell without heating the nut. Who couldn’t believe that? Also, the almonds I ordered from rawguru were truly raw, and I could tell because I actually could sprout the almonds. It was quite an accident really, I just got these shoots coming out of the point.
thanks everyone for all the responses. I suppose in the end, i am probably more like 80% raw than 90%, taking into acct the fact that my “raw” almonds and “raw” cashews are probably not raw.
I am going to cut out the nuts for a couple of weeks and see what happens.
Is tea raw? Like regular black tea?
chriscarlton – Thanks for the info. on which nuts are really raw – interesting, I have naturally gravitated to pine nuts, hazelnuts & walnuts lately because they felt better than the other nuts I had been using.
Truly raw cashews are also available at www.sunfood.com and a lot of really raw nuts are available from www.realrawfood.com if anyone’s interested.
angie, I know what you mean about naturally gravitating to pine nuts, because I was wanting those a lot even though I wasn’t sure whether they were raw or not. Yay! I love pine nuts, so I’m glad I can still eat them without expensive online ordering.
zoe- your instincts sound right about PF&W. my feeling is they mainly cater to a posh omnivore crowd that wants a little something different now and again when they dine out. it’s definitely a lovely place, but i wish their ingredient integrity were a little better.
I love pine nuts too :) and they’re easy to get here in the UK … shame about macadamias though sob
Nuts=sleep/coma for me if not purchased from a truly raw site. Even so..raw cashews(truly raw) =sleep. The bod knows when cooked food has entered and i know to avoid it next time.
I am totally away from nuts after finding out that nuts are dried.
i have no light to shed on the nut issue, but wasn’t pure AMAZING?! did you try the spanakopita? PHENOMENAL!!
el-bo: I don’t know where you got the thing about nuts being dried, but we have an apricot tree. The nuts/kernels from inside the pit are similar to almonds in appearance, taste & texture, and the minute I pick a fresh apricot & crack the pit open to eat the nut, the nut is like a raw almond – not juicy at all, but like a nut. We also have a walnut tree, and I’ve never gotten a juicy walnut, and they stay just fine until the next year without drying them or using any other kind of preservative. Pine nuts, on the other hand, are the ones I know of that are juicy if you get them freshly picked. The apricot kernels taste like almonds with almond extract added, btw :)
Angie you are making my mouth water talking about fresh juicy hand picked nuts!!!
Rawkid chef – I have got Pure food and wine’s recipe book and it’s full of non raw ingredients. Also after reading blogs by Sarma on welikeitraw.com I saw that her philosophy isn’t all for 100% raw, so I assume her restaurant isn’t that strict either. But why not ask them if you want to know for sure? I am sure they would be happy to answer questions about their ingredients.
Someone brought me some in shell macadamias which were gorgeous and they tasted nothing like the shelled ones I used to eat!
angie….you are so lucky to have your own trees….
when i look out over my balcony, i just see concrete… 8-)
to clarify….by juicy, i didn’t mean as in oranges…more like creamy and well…..juicy….ooops
anyways, i couldn’t trace down the original article i read, but i sourced some alternatives….a scary mission – typing ‘juicy nuts’ into google is fraught with danger
http://gardening.solveyourproblem.com/gardening…
http://www.smh.com.au/news/seasonal-cook/sweet-...
http://www.vegsource.com/talk/raw/messages/9993…
http://www.macadamia-nut.com/pages/about/proces….
http://chetday.com/nutprocessing.html
i guess it’s all about how youu think….moisture levels are high and nuts seem to be dehydrated to stop mould….the conventional raw food paradigm states that foods heated under a certain temperature are still ‘raw’...this may be true, but it isn’t the kind of ‘raw’ or ‘natural’ that i’m looking for
the moisture is there for a reason…it aids digestion and is 1 part of the ‘whole’ that is whole food
most of us know that to make nuts easier to digest we should soak them….there’s definately 2 stages too many, here
so…that then leaves us with nature providing nuts for only a short season….if, like you, we have access to the fresh nut during that 1 ‘window’ we can eat all that we want fresh and truly raw
i would be inclined to believe that if we were supposed to be eating nuts all year round, then nature would allow for this…only through human intervention is this possible….it may explain why so many have difficulties dealing with them
they are definately not ‘optimal’ foods
Angie, nuts have 1% water as I read in another article, and are heated slightly even if they are claimed truly raw. It doesn’t matter. If nuts are dried, no one has any way to tell at which temperature the nuts are dried. After all, why are almonds and cashews so wrinkly? Because they are dried. even David Wolfe’s cashews are wrinkly. I am interested in trying Real Raw Foods nuts though aas I heard they are juicy.
I agree, el-bo, that nuts are not that digestible if they have no water. Thank you very much for clarifying that.
Hey Zoe! I have their book too. It’s full of maple syrup and nonraw ingredients like you said. Hmm, that’s interesting that she isn’t 100% raw. That would make sense. In her newsletter she said that she is now selling truly raw almonds on her website, but she purchased them from another company, but used Onelucky Duck packaging. Good idea, I might email Sarma.
But yes! I need to move somewhere where I can have nut tree! Lots and lots of them! Mmmmmmm,those macadamias sound amazing….yum!
el-bo: Our walnuts and apricot kernels are still just as good a year or more later – no intervention :) Sorry to hear about your trauma (I could imagine) looking up the topic! I didn’t know you are only into the fresh foods. And I seem to digest nuts really well even if they’re not soaked, as long as they’re really raw. I’ve kinda wondered if there was something wrong with that philosophy of having to soak & peel nuts, too, but, really, nuts have to be cracked open, so if we were left to just eat what we can pick and immediately eat, we wouldn’t eat nuts, or mangoes, or pineapples, etc…. and for me, nuts ARE one of the most optimal foods! :)
I have eaten almonds and hazelnuts (and pinenuts) directly from the tree, and if they are ripe (dry) the taste like those bought raw. If they are not ripe they taste similar to soaked nuts (or soaked nuts taste similar to “green” nuts).
Zoe where did you buy the shell nuts? can I buy them in London??? and will need a good nut cracker! any suggestions?
My FIL had macadamia trees in his garden and we'd scoop them up from the ground, crack them open on the spot and enjoy as many as we wanted. Never tasted a packaged macadamia the same as those.
I've had a raw cashew cream and raw cashew yogurt a fair bit the past few days and I'm so lethargic...like my legs and shoulders weigh a ton and can barely stay awake. I ggogled this and arrived here. Very interesting reading what you lovely people are sharing about nuts.
Right off the tree is perfect :) I've been thinking about investing in a place with a small orchard when it's time to leave the house that we are in.
I'm not allergic to nuts and I even like eating it but the only problem I have with it is that I have pimples breaking out the next day.
Hi angie207,
I don't really know much about the health benefits of eating raw foods...but I came across this discussion while researching nuts.
In my research I found an article that said eating apricot kernels can be dangerous. In their raw form, they contain a form of cyanide.
http://www.mashed.com/74664/nuts-you-should-shouldnt-eating/sl/dont-eat-bitter-almonds
...There are other nuts and seeds as well that contain some sort of poison if not processed correctly.
Just found this very informative site and wanted to participate.
Nuts contain enzyme inhibitors. Cut an apple in half and let it sit on the counter for a few days. Notice it begins to digest itself (rot). Nuts will sit on your counter for years, because the natural compounds in them prevent the enzymatic process from occurring. Soak the nuts overnight before eating them. This makes them vastly more easy to digest.
And the warning about apricot seeds is ill-founded and should be removed. Thousands have been cured of cancer by consuming apricot and other seeds that contain vitamin B-17. Remember the Laetrile studies many years ago? They were halted by the drug companies because of <insert any number of bogus reasons>. Of course the truth was that it worked much too well. Can't very well have a real cure for cancer, now can we? That doesn't sit well with the multi billion dollar cancer industry, which would collapse if even a few of the truly miraculous cancer cures were made public.
So, soak your nuts in clean water at least a few hours before consuming. Enjoy. And thanks for having me around.