Fat in Raw Foods: Essential Fatty Acid Recipes

The best fats are avocado, seeds and nuts, in that order. Symptoms of fatty acid deficiency are dry skin, brittle nails and hair, and stressed-out nerves (over-reacting to small things). 

In New York in the fall of 1992, I needed seed + nut milks every evening when I arrived back in my Brooklyn apartment, after a day's work in Manhattan. My nerves were totally on edge if I did not get my fats. I know 'cause I chased my cat round with a slipper when I was stressed. He'd miaow for his dinner. Lord knows I'd never do anything like that today! But that was then, I was emerging from a lifetime of sugar addiction.

When I had my seed milks, then all I wanted was to hug Buddy. What drove me crazy, now made me happy!

I stumble a lot because my comfort food is chips (crisps in UK). Any emotional upheaval, especially a death, can affect me. But I love the high-fruit diet! I get so much energy from fruit. In the summer I'm pounding through the ocean waves like an olympic athlete.

Doug's work is hugely controversial. Doug is a natural hygienist yet others in the natural hygiene branch of the rawfood movement, such as Dr. Vivian Vetrano, say we should eat 2 to 4 ounces of nuts or seeds a day.

Listen to your own body. If you're eating chips or cheese, it could be a craving for fat. Or it could be you are addicted to:

excitotoxins in chips – flavorants that damage our brain, try the unflavored chips!

casomorphin opioids in cheese – small protein chains from the digestion of casein that fit our feel-good receptors.

Both are highly addictive!

Please don't eat cooked fats like roasted nuts. Focus on fresh seeds, and leave the salted nuts for parties. 

Swallowing flax oil is not the answer. See why to Eat Whole Nuts and Seeds, Not Oils below the Ann Wigmore chart, here in Eating Raw.

Why Vegan
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Feel free to download this booklet Why Vegan, or get the vegan starter guide at veganoutreach.org.

Don't use their recipes, they're gross! All cooked and processed foods. Rather use my free raw food recipe book.

A vegan is a non-dairy vegetarian, one who enjoys eating plants only – fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, seeds, nuts, seaweeds. 

Animals are not machines. In the 1800's we realized human slavery is wrong. Today we are waking up to the horrors of animal slavery. It's morally wrong to cage, enslave and torture to death the birds and animals with whom we share this planet. Not to mention what it does to your health!

I absolutely love TV Ellen for being such a beautiful role model. She walks her talk. The couple (Ellen and Portia) went vegan in late 2008. Ellen said cheese was the hardest for her to give up.

Here's a World Vegan News interview with Portia on January 28, 2009:

WVN: Why did you decide to become vegans?

Portia: We just made that shift in our lives. The benefit of it is weight loss. For Ellen more than me. Her body responded to it very well. It is amazing. We are just both very happy. It feels like such a compassionate choice. We are such animal lovers, why stop short of cows and chickens? It didn't make any sense.

          When Ellen and I first got together I was wearing fur and Ellen was wearing very expensive Italian calfskin leather. She was giving me a hard time about wearing the fur and I said, "Why is a fox any more important than a cow?" We took that idea and went all the way with it.

They are LNA or Omega-3 (best source is flax seeds) and LA or Omega-6, found in sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

Nuts have Mono-unsaturated Fats that help to build our cell walls. The poly's and the mono's link arm-in-arm to form a strong membrane round every cell, a few poly's to every one mono. That's why we need more seeds than nuts.

The mono-unsaturated fats are – avocado, olive, and most nuts like almond, brazil, cashew (not a raw fat), filbert or hazelnut, macadamia, pecan, pistachio.

Walnut is more poly-unsaturated, but is often infected with liver-fluke says Hulda Clarke in A Cure For All Diseases, the craziest title I ever read for a book that leaves out living foods!

Children need EFA's daily. In an Oxford University study they gave elementary school children capsules of Omega-3 oil each day – they used fish oil, but flax seeds work better. Within 90 days, their reading, memory and concentration improved by as much as 2 years! Omega-3 fats make it easier for signals to jump the gap between brain cells.

In the raw food world we've known for eons that SEED food, not sea food, is the best brain food. We're experiencing it first-hand. You will too. Make seed and nut milks a regular part of your child's diet.

Occasionally you can use a coffee grinder to grind unsoaked seeds, then blend. But soaking is best.

I don't believe in long soaking times. Precious minerals leach out into the soak water. I soak just long enough for the seed or nut to soften.

Soaking transforms the beta-starch in seeds (hard-to-digest) into alpha-starch (easily digested). Read about how we digest starch here in Eating Raw Carbohydrates.

Soaking also eliminates the anti-digestive enzyme normally found in nuts. Many rawfood books claim that soaking for eight hours "activates the enzymes" but I don't buy into this.

Out of all the nuts and seeds, only sunflower and sesame will grow little roots if you sprout them (after soaking). So only they have living enzymes to activate.

To increase enzymes, simply make a yogurt or cream out of your seed or nut.

In New York, I used to alternate like this – flax and sesame on Monday, flax and sunflower on Wednesday, flax and pumpkin on Friday. In-between days I'd add avocado to my Energy Soup or salad. Or make a nut milk.

Of course it's not so rigid, it's more of a flow. I know what fat I ate last time, so I'll eat a different one today.

Soak almonds for 3-4 hours, pour off soak water,
Blend with a little fresh water into a smooth cream.
Don't use the soak water, it has low-level toxins from the almond skins.
Pour the cream into a bowl and place in a warm place for a few hours to ferment.

Almond soak water is the only one I throw out. For all the other nuts and seeds, I blend them in their soak water.

It ferments quicker when you use Rejuvelac as the blending base, or add living viable acidophilus. I find Solgar's "Multi-billion Dophilus with FOS" works well for cream and yogurt.

Here's a 6-minute video of the late Dr Ann Wigmore teaching how to make Rejuvelac.

Cashews ferment the best, and make yogurt taste creamier.
1/4 cup cashews (optional),
1/4 cup dates, fresh or dried,
3/4 cup of mixed seeds or nuts,

Soak together for 2-3 hours, blend in soak water, then ferment it as follows:
Pour into jar, cover with nylon mosquito netting, held in place with elastic band,
Leave overnight about 16-24 hrs depending on weather – goes quicker when it's warmer,
It ferments into lovely fluffy yogurt, all bubbly and sweety-tart.

Amazingly, blended cashews will ferment in the refrigerator in a closed jar! I like to keep cashew cream in my refrigerator – blend 1 C cashews, 1/3 C dates (raw unpitted), 1 C pure water (use soak water from dates) and 1/2 tsp vanilla essence (optional).

Cashew cream is good with blended or whole fresh fruit. If it sits in my refrigerator for a while, that's fine, because it ferments into a delicious yogurt.

This is the healthiest way to eat nuts and seeds. Yogurt is rich in living enzymes, busy breaking the fat chains down into simple fatty acids. It gives you more energy, because the food is pre-digested.

I can't make it in South Africa because there's no Edensoy here. And I no longer drink soya milk.

It's a transition. At one time in your life in one environment in one climate you need one thing. And at another time, it's totally different! Life is about change, those who are most open to changing and adapting, are the ones who prosper! 

Buy a yogurt maker with glass jars ($20-30).

Use EdenSoy Original organic soya milk, all other soya milks I tested don't work. Note that soya milk is  homogenized and pasteurized – homogenization causes heart disease because of its denatured fats. But turning it into yogurt is healthier. Yogurt is a living food, alive in the moment you eat it.

For your starter, use Solgar’s multibillion dophilus with FOS. It works great – mix two capsules into each glass jar of warmed milk (follow yogurt maker’s instructions re. warming the soya milk).

Refrigerate jars – then for instant dessert, mix concentrated fruit juice into a jar of yogurt, e.g. apple for sweet, cranberry for tart, grape for mellow velvety flavor. The sweet of apple concentrate and the tart of yogurt taste particularly divine!

Same goes for chocolate sauce on yogurt. The marriage of tart and sweet twists your tongue in delight!

Grind any quantity – e.g. one cup – of raw sesame seeds in coffee-grinder,
Pour ground seeds into a bowl and add raw sesame oil while mixing with fork,
Stop the oil when you have smooth buttery texture, you want to use as little oil as possible to make the butter spreadable with a knife,
One way I like to eat this is to slice a banana down the middle, like a banana split, then spread tahini thick between the two slices, it quickly and effortlessly satisfies my hunger – without any effort because the tahini's in the refrigerator.

I make almond butter the same way, except I use raw almond oil and a little raw honey to sweeten it.

Nut butters are a heavy concentrated fat. Ann Wigmore advised that cancer patients should not eat them on raw sprouted-grain crackers, which are a concentrated starch. In fact I'd advise anyone with cancer to stick to seed yogurts and nut milks. leave out the butter for now.

Raw sesame milk gives you high quality calories, protein, and fat – about 100 calories per Tbsp of ground sesame seeds. It's also a good source of calcium.

Soak one type of seed or nut in a cup (not clear glass because that allows light in, and not plastic), e.g. 1/4 cup of pumpkin or sunflower for one hour, sesame or almond for three hours. The water should cover the seeds or nuts with a couple of inches to spare.

I prefer shorter soaking times, but it's okay to soak overnight or while you're at work all day.

Some people throw out the soak water, they claim it has enzyme inhibitors. I prefer to use my soak water for its extra minerals. If you throw it out, water your plants with it and see how much *they* love the minerals!

Also soak with it, 1 to 2 Tbsp of Flax seed. 

Blend the seeds or nuts, and flax, with one Tbsp soya lecithin granules. Be sure to use only a little water at first, then add more. If you start with too much water in the blend, then the smaller seeds like flax will stay whole. You want them ground into a smooth mush.

The lecithin helps to emulsify the fats. Later when you're clean inside and digest fat easily, you can drop the lecithin, it's a processed food.

If your blender is not powerful enough to break down flax and sesame, then don't soak them. Rather grind the dry seeds in a coffee grinder just before blending them with water and sweetener. Or invest in a Vita-Mix here!

Once you have a smooth blend, add more water and a banana or any other fresh fruit for sweetener. Or dates, fresh or dried.

For Chocolate Mint milk, add into blender peppermint essence, organic cocoa powder and brown rice syrup to taste; leave out the fresh fruit. Or use dates instead of syrup. Dates and chocolate are delicious together!

For Pina Colada, add to blender dried pineapple and coconut flakes with maple syrup.

For heavenly sweet seed milk recipes, see Candia Lea Cole's book, Not Milk–Nut Milks! I lived on her recipes for about a year, then their mixture of dried fruit and nuts began to give me a tummy ache.

kills any microbes on the seeds and dates, like mold, and

helps our body to digest and absorb the calcium in seeds.

Apple cider vinegar increases the flow of hydrochloric acid in our stomach. The acid ionizes the calcium, which makes it easier for our intestines to absorb it so long as Vitamin D is present. The malates from apples also combine with calcium into calcium malate which is very soluble.

Dr Benedict Lust in his book on Apple Cider Vinegar writes that it: "regulates calcium metabolism." Little vague, but you get the picture.

A few hours later I'll blend my soaking seeds with some greens and fruit, such as celery with banana and pear, or spinach with apple and pear. I use the soak water of course.

Once you experience the power of blended greens, you tend to add GREEN to everything, even to your seed milks!

Do you know how to grow in self-worth, how to love yourself? By eating RAW foods! It’s amazing! Your brain focuses, your body fills up with energy, you discover you’re realizing every dream, one by one over the years.

When you do what you love, you love yourself. It’s natural. Your stress goes down. You feel fulfilled and happy. Talk about self-worth, you begin to feel on top of the world!

Raw foods help you to discover what God/dess already knows about you. You’re here for a unique reason.

Your worth is not simply that you were born. It’s far more than that. You are created for a destiny. Raw foods will carry you to your unique destiny, a role in creation that only you can play.

When we don’t play it, there’s a little hole there. A hole in our life, and a hole in the tapestry of creation. That’s why there’s so many wars on our peaceful earth. We’re at war within ourselves.

But raw foods WILL take you to a LIFESTYLE where it’s easy to sit still every day for an hour or so, and go within.

When your life grows free of stress and pain, you find the time to go inside, and discover YOU.

Why wait another day to try a rawfood recipe? When so much is in store for you?

It’s a simple switch. Stop buying cow milk at the supermarket. Start buying nuts and seeds at the health food store. Cow milk is for calves, not for adult humans.

Seed milks taste divine!

They will transform your life.