So, in my journey as a raw foodist I am torn on some of the mainstays used in the diet. I know we grow with time and our diet evolves with this growth, but in the meantime I ask myself: Am I really eating the foods needed for my body to heal and rejuvenate?

Living in Michigan makes it hard to find local, organic produce in the winter, but even in the spring & summer, I still find it difficult. It becomes a chore getting up at the crack of dawn to run around town to various Farmer's Markets looking for an inexpensive alternative to grocery store produce - most isn't local and travels an average of 1,300 miles before it even reaches our mouths; nutrients? I think NOT! Sure there are co-ops, but I guess I'm selfish, or too programmed to have someone else dictate what I can eat. I feel cheated that I'm not on the west coast where my sunny California friends "fruits and veggies cups runneth over." In hindsight, I have been to NYC and all the raw restaurants there seem to do just fine with organic year-round produce - oh, and Karyn's in Chi town. Do we have to be running raw restaurants in order to gather our food? Am I missing something?

This raises another question: Is it okay to eat conventional when there are no other options?

There's also got to be a trick to end my "grocery run" madness. In order to keep from spending a million $'s on food a week and to find the ingredients for more technical raw dishes, I have to almost always go to at least five different grocery and health food stores. I know how much organic bananas are at the Nature Patch in Ferndale (75 cents per lb), Trader Joe's (59 cents per lb), Whole Foods/Troy (99 cents per lb) and Good Food Co. (99 cents per pound - but I always rejoice when they have the brown paper bags full of really ripe nana's on sale for 75 cents a bag! I freeze most of them anyway). Pathetic, or is this just what raw foodists have to endure where we live?

And now some of the health food stores can't get some of my stuff! Nama shoyu is now extinct on store shelves in Michigan (Nutri Foods can't get it anymore; I called every health food store in SE, MI to try to get them to order it, and this was just a waste of time - anyone else know how to get it besides online?) and my favorite raw olive oil is no longer available (Carother's).

Which leads me to the purpose of my rant...is nama shoyu and olive oil really raw? Who's right? Jeremy Safron? Who says Nama is technically cooked before it's fermented or Anne Wigmore who does not advocate the use of any other oil except coconut because all other oils are denatured when made? Or how about Matt Monarch (author of Raw Spirit) who can't eat at raw restaurants or even have a glass of bio-dynamic, sulfite-free wine even once in a while. While I appreciate his dedication, I am panicked that I will never completely heal if I'm not this extreme (he even writes that he no longer orgasms because it takes 36 days to 'reload,' if you know what I mean). Then there's author Victoria Boutenko (author of Green for Life) who thinks the typical raw diet is lacking greens, and we should follow the diets of wild Chimpanzee's (we share 99.4 percent of our DNA sequence with chimpanzees) because their diets consist, depending on the season, consist of anywhere from 25-50 percent greens. She argues that most raw foodist consume large amounts of fruits (sorry fruitarians), nuts and seeds. Boutenko says we substitute nuts for carbs (particularly when trying to mimic cooked dishes with raw) even though nuts are 70-80 percent fat (though I argue that fat is actually good for you - our cells are made of fat).

Then there are the rawists (Pure Food and Wine in NY uses many borderline raw products - but aren't we allowed to live a little??) who use these sometimes frowned upon ingredients including: young Thai coconuts (which are supposedly treated with various chemicals, including formaldehyde and bleach and are processed by machines), raw honey, agave nectar (commercially available agave is heated to 150 degrees to prevent it from turning into alcohol), rejuvelac, nuts and butters (many question how they are dried), etc.

I know that listening to your body is the only way to know if the raw food you're consuming is right for you, but if it takes years to get to the point of my body telling me that I only need some greens and water to maintain optimal health - why can't I just start with this raw diet now? Do I have it all wrong? Why do have to stress myself out with costs and available ingredients to make all these foods when my body will just want greens and water someday? I actually enjoy layering many intense flavors into raw dishes, through the grueling process of sprouting, dehydrating, vita-mixing, homogenizing, juicing, extracting, food processing and spiralizing! Don't get me wrong sometimes I live on greens, but am I really raw? Am I getting this most I can out if this lifestyle, or am I just mimicking a better version of the SAD (Standard American Diet) diet?