"Warming" Raw Foods and Winter

The following excerpt is from RAWSOME by Brigitte Mars.

Won't Eating Raw Foods Make You Cold In The Winter?

Many people steer away from raw foods in the winter simply because it feels much nicer to have a hot bowl of soup warming up their insides. It's true that newcomers to a raw foods diet may feel cold more easily. One reason for this is that raw foods are less dense in calories, and calories produce heat as food is metabolized by the body. After some time, however, eating raw foods will cause your arteries and other blood vessels to become less congested, circulation will improve, and you will feel more comfortable in ether cold or warm weather.

Try eating warming foods when the weather is cold. "Warming" foods are those raw foods that offer concentrated nourishment, improve circulation and thereby increase body warmth, and otherwise help you tolerate the cold. Fill you diet with warming, concentrated, dark orange vegetables such as pumpkins, sweet potatoes, winter squash, and carrots. Eat more warming roots such as burdock, onions, rutabagas, and turnips, and warming greens such as arugula, mustard greens, and watercress. Consuming more nuts, nut butters, and dried fruit will help you develop better resistance to the cold. Getting adequate fats by consuming olive oil, avocados, durians, nuts, and seeds helps treat the dryness of skin and scalp that is so prevalent when heat is used in homes during the winter.

Use more of the warming culinary herbs to spice up your food and improve circulation:

Black sesame seeds, cinnamon, cardamom, curry, cayenne, garlic, jalapeno, ginger, pepper, black or white, and horseradish.

You can warm your raw meals up to 114 degrees F without destroying any of the enzymes. You can also leave food out at room temperature, or place it in a glass jar with a secure lid and submerge the jar in some hot water to warm it up.