The Live Food Factor: A Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit... at Chef2Chef

This 520-page book contains four sections. Section one entails the benefits of raw and includes a chapter that details ten good reasons to stop cooking, as well as 17 personal testimonials. Section two has the science and includes not only why raw food helps the body heal (as Hippocrates said, "Let food be thy medicine") but also over 50 published studies demonstrating the superiority of an uncooked diet, and in many cases, the toxicity of a cooked one. This is a book that can be presented to the most skeptic of all. Section three informs the reader of the history and modern day leaders of the raw food movement. Section four is a complete "how-to" manual. It tells you how to go raw and what to expect. It also includes 13 common pitfalls of beginning raw fooders as well as discussion of 16 controversial nutritional issues and answers 27 of the most frequently asked questions. In Chapter 15 there are also over 60 raw recipes: gourmet dishes such as raw desserts, entrees, soups, etc. The appendices document how the food and drug companies keep us ignorant of true health. It also summarizes radical branches of the raw food movement (such as the raw meat eaters). In the back of the book is a useful resource section for raw gourmet foods, kitchen devices, raw restaurants, and doctors/healing centers familiar with the program.

This book won first place in the Independent Publisher's Awards (IPPY) as "The Most Progressive Health Book of the Year

Reader Reviews
Occasionally someone comes along and just plain gets it right in a field of study, and Susan Schenck does just that. Her new book, "The Live Food Factor" is a work that intelligently makes a multi-layered subject understandable for the neophyte while addressing the complexities that arise for those already initiated. I have been involved with raw foods and Natural Hygiene for nearly twenty years and having been exposed to almost every significant work on the subject, I'll say that Ms. Schenck has produced something that I've wished to see for a long time: a single-volume, easy to read book about raw foods that I can confidently recommend to others and not have to personally explain the many caveats about the subject. Ms. Schenck identifies and explains them for us right in the book. Like any study, "raw foodism" spawns diverse schools of thought, and "The Live Food Factor" satisfactorily deals with nearly all of them. Without the somewhat off-putting "absolute tone" that other raw food works occasionally assume, Susan Schenck even-handedly discusses arguments and counter-arguments about various doctrines within the field. She includes chapters on the history of the movement and the pioneers and leaders that brought it to where it is today. The book also contains informative testimonials by raw food users, complete with before-and-after pictures that should provide inspiration for any reader. Add to this a question and answer chapter, a recipe section, sample menus, five appendices, a massive bibliography, lists of raw food restaurants, lots of raw food resources, and a very useful index, plus much more. Although the book is very comprehensive regarding foods and their impact on health, it only touches upon other areas of Natural Hygiene like rest, fresh air, and exercise. However, these are studies unto themselves and beg to be sequels to "The Live Food Factor." I would hope that Ms. Schenck writes them, particularly if they are as well done as this first book In summary, "The Live Food Factor" is a very informative one-volume course on the raw food lifestyle. As much as I've managed to learn on the subject over the years, this book still held for me new bits of information on nearly every page. It is well formatted and written in a good, readable style (thanks to the editing skills of Bob Avery, himself a leading exponent of raw foods). In my opinion, the book could be used as a text for anyone learning or teaching the raw food lifestyle for personal fitness or at spas, retreats, resorts, health clinics, etc., and I highly recommend it for such. Giles Fischer gcfischer@earthlink.net Comment | Permalink | (Report this)