Can you get all the nutrients you need while eating a raw food based diet? Is there a health nutrient suppliment to take to ensure your body is getting all the necessary nutrients?

When you eat a 100% cooked diet you have a mucous lining protecting you from toxins but it also reduces absorption of the nutrients you consume; so you absorb 0.03% of the nutrients in the food. When you eat 100% raw your body trusts you after 3 or 4 months and drops the mucous lining. Then you can absorb 30% of the nutrients that you consume.

When you are on raw foods for a period of time your addictions to cooked foods, processed foods stop giving you false signals about what you need to eat. You naturally know I need an apple now or greens, or turnip, or tomatoes, or whatever. You begin to grave the things that you need to heal. If you eat those you will be very balanced. I used to take Blue Green Algae as a supplement before going on 100% raw. After a while I no longer needed it. I did find, periodically, an urge for Noni juice, Wolfberry juice, or carrot/cucumber/beet juice.

Having said that I don't consume anything all the time. My body tells me what I am low in and when I have had enough for a while of any food or supplement-type food. Occasionally I consume maca root, hemp seeds, Goji, Noni, pumpkin seeds, Lucuna powder, Mesquite powder, and increasingly coconut products. Raw Power is a great supplement/food and if I drink it in the morning it carries me until 2 or 3pm. I rotate among various healing things and may add mangosteen to my Cranberry Fizz-it several days in a row and then not again for a month or two.

Every body is a separate chemical factory that keeps changing. So recognize what helpful variety there is and initially eat consciously balanced. Then you get synchronized and your body tells you what to eat when.

David Wolfe has found some incredible healing best food on the planet (many from Amazon) so I keep some of those around, use fresh produce, and I have more energy than I ever had in my life even though my schedule is busier than ever.

Raw diet: fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. There is so much variety there. I am writing a book for people to start raw food and to have incredible foods. Last night I held a raw food prep class (1 of several series that helps me write the book) and a 12 year old girl said with a smile about the ice cream: " this is better than Baskin Robins!"

Personally, I have a concern for nutrition for those who eat cooked food. Cooked foods confuse your natural body mind communications for nutrition needs. But if I eat cooked food at the urge of a friend or situation I simply eat watermelon for 2 or 3 days and it will wash the toxins and urges out of my body, clean me and provide balancing electrolytes. Actually, watermelon is a great way to transition into raw foods.