RawFoodism and Appreciative Inquiry

Rawfoodism seems to have cornered a market. And at times it may be more of a grasping than a market. I sometimes hesitate to tell people I have a raw food blog because the word rawfood conjures up some resistance even in me I suppose. And yet there is a need for the genre of eating habits or influences called rawfoodism because it is inclusive of vegetarians, vegans and meat eaters (even cooked food eaters) it is not about extremism. It is only radical in so far as we now live in a society that finds the norm in commonly self medicating with synthetic foods. In a culture where we all grew up eating primarily fruits and vegetables and living on farms it would have been absurd to speak of a raw food community. Now as an organized group it irresistibly exists even in the heart of the busiest cities, including a giant span between beautifully simple delicacies and the gourmet.

If you wanted to find a way to let go of the ding dongs and increase delicious fruit and vegetable options in your life where would you go? Why should you also then have to determine you must also let go of eating this or that in order to join the many most excellent veggie groups. What if your sole inclination was to find a way to gain the habit of filling up on many delicious pounds of fruits and veggies so that you had decreased interest in the food habits you were trying to let go of. There is a place for us all because we are all going to keep being all of us.

Because I have spent years as variants of vegetarian/vegan I can say my focus was not always about increasing fruits and vegetables at that time. The focus often lent itself to what are you not eating and you got defined by that. And after having poured through the (literally) 15 rawfood books I own I can say this invites you to focus on what you can eat more of. An aside: eventually I plan to dig into current medical journal research studies on the topic. PubMed would be a place to start.

In my opinion I think a useful idea is to focus on what you are eating and to do it via an Appreciative Inquiry style. And of course from there the focus in particular is what raw fruits, nuts, seeds and vegetables are you eating and how do you get it so that you find even more of them even more irresistible. It does happen bit by bit, when for example you get used to making a great new raw recipe. What have you noticed that you are already enjoying? Have you expanded on that in some way?