The Living Food Kitchen believes wholeheartedly that the body deserves to be nourished and supported with foods that represent the optimum in nutrition. As such we take great care in where we source our ingredients from and take every measure to insure that they are raw, organic and, wherever possible, produced locally. As a business we are committed to organic principles, and have therefore endeavoured to build up a team of organic suppliers who hold the same ethical and commercial values that we do.
Currently our products are not certified by the Soil Association or any other organic body, and as a result we are not legally entitled to list our ingredients as organic. However we would like to assure our customers we currently use organic ingredients wherever and whenever they are available.
Below is a sample menu from one of our Raw Food Evenings at Gracelands Cafe
Appetizer
Beetroot Ravioli with cashew cheese filling, tarragon and pistachios.
Walnut & Flax Seed Flatbread with hummus, green olives, cherry tomatoes and za’atar seasoning.
Main
Courgette & Vine Tomato Lasagna with basil pistachio pesto and pine nut ricotta.
Corn Tortillas with spicy “beans”, guacamole and tomato-lime salsa.
Sweet
Dark Chocolate Ganache Tart with vanilla cream.
Butter Pecan Ice Cream with caramel sauce.
For those of you not familiar with the concept of raw food here is some information on what being raw is all about.
To be classified as raw a food must not be heated over 115ºF (which is around 46ºC). The reason for this is that after this point essential water soluble nutrients, phytochemicals and digestive enzymes begin to be destroyed. The aim of the raw food diet is therefore to consume foods that are at their nutritional peak and provide the individual with everything that they need to be fit and healthy.
With this basic remit in mind raw foodists balance their diet with a variety of fruits, vegetables, living foods (such as sprouts), nuts, seeds, seaweed, and algae, refraining from using meat, dairy, eggs, wheat (unless it's sprouted) and rice. (Grains are only used if they can be sprouted, a means of waking the grain from it's slumber and making it digestible in a raw form and more nutritious).
Plant foods, when eaten in their raw form, are more digestible since they have their natural enzymes in tact and these work in unison with the body's digestive enzymes to facilitate the digestion process. Cooking food destroys the plants' natural enzymes and places a greater workload onto our digestive system. In turn, given the quantities and types of foods that many people consume, the body produces insufficient quantities of its own enzymes to break the food down properly. More often than not people overeat and force their body to spend large amounts of energy breaking down food that provides little nutritional benefit. Eating a raw and natural plant based diet reverses this process and invariably results in people eating less as their bodies are nutritionally satisfied on small amounts.
While a raw food plant based diet is designed to sustain and nourish the human body in a gentle and efficient manner it also represents a conscious effort to reduce the human impact on mother nature too. The amount of land used to graze livestock all over the world is completely unsustainable and contributes greatly to the destruction of forests and soil erosion . Add to this the significant contribution to greenhouse gases from the methane produced from cattle excretion and the devastating implications that over fishing the oceans is having on the entire marine eco system and it becomes clear that the vegan diet represents that most sustainable option for mankind over the long-term.
With sufficient knowledge and understanding of nutrition people can easily sustain all of their bodies needs through a vegan diet. In fact every nutrient known to be essential for human health is available, in proper concentration, in plant foods. This is not so with animal-based foods, as there are many essential nutrients totally absent in them. This is confirmed by the extensive number of high profile athletes the world over who have acheived remarkable success on a vegan diet. These include Carl Lewis, Martina Navratilove and Brendan Brazier (a professional Ironman triathlete and two time 50km ultra marathon winner).