It is not as easy to buy raw food as you might think when you start out on a raw food diet. Many items on the supermarket shelves appear raw when really they are not. Some, like cashews and many other nuts, may even be labeled raw when in fact they have been subjected to very high temperatures in the process of extracting them from their shells.

The good news is that it is possible to obtain many of these items in their truly raw form. You may find some things in your local health food store, but it is often easier to order online. It is so easy these days to buy items like this on the internet and you can find many sites that will cater to people wanting to buy raw food to get the benefit of a non cooked, non processed diet.

There are many online raw food suppliers in the USA and a quick search on Google for whatever you are looking for will quickly produce some online stores. David Wolfe’s sunfoods.com specializes in raw cashews, chocolate/cacao and superfoods. In the UK, detoxyourworld.com provides most of the ingredients you could need to stock your raw kitchen. In Australia you can use getprice.com.au to find suppliers for just about anything.

As we have said, there are many foods that you might need to buy from a specialist raw food supplier if you want to be 100% raw. These include olives. Raw olives can be bitter so most of the olives that you find in the store have been cooked. However, there are a couple of varieties that taste wonderful in their raw form and you can find these online. Order plenty because you might find they disappear very fast!

The law now requires that all almonds produced in California must be pasteurized. This means most of the almonds sold in the USA and Canada, so check packaging and order from overseas if you have to. In other countries, almonds are extracted from the shell without using heat. However, of course you want to buy them with their skins on. White, skinless almonds, including chopped and ground, have been blanched in boiling water to remove the skins. And if you don’t like the skins, you can remove them quite easily after soaking the almonds overnight.

If you are not planning to be a raw vegan you may want to find a source of raw dairy foods to add enzymes and calcium into your diet. Unpasteurized milk is illegal to be sold in stores in many jurisdictions although you can still often buy it direct from the farm. Unpasteurized cheese is usually easier to find since many specialty cheeses are traditionally made raw. Be aware that as well as extra enzymes, raw dairy products can contain unwanted bacteria. Pregnant women in particular are usually advised not to consume raw dairy products.

Finally, have you thought about toothpaste? OK, you probably don’t eat it, but you must be ingesting some of it and if you buy any kind of commercial brand it will not be raw, even if it is fluoride free. Many people who go raw switch to Toothsoap which is free of undesirable chemical ingredients. It may take a few days to get used to the taste but it is not unpleasant and it is getting rave reviews. So that is something to add to your list when you go online to buy raw food.

There is a huge selection of raw vegan recipes available online now that the raw food diet is becoming so popular. You can also buy raw vegan cookbooks either on the internet or in stores, but often times these focus on either gourmet raw foods or recipes high in superfoods which are usually more expensive to prepare and are not everybody’s idea of the simple raw diet.

Raw or living foods are those which have not been heated above 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Strictly speaking, this rules out a lot of commercially dried and prepared foods which are often heated above this temperature at some point in the process.

Many foods which could be sold raw, such as milk and Californian almonds, are pasteurized to reduce the risk of microbial disease. It seems crazy to pasteurize almonds while fruits which are much more likely to come with bacteria if not well washed are sold raw everywhere, but it is a fact of life. Source your almonds from elsewhere if you want to eat raw.

Many raw vegan recipes include foods such as agave nectar which are processed food products and it is hard to know exactly what temperatures have been used in the preparation. You will also find recipes online which may claim to be raw but include ingredients such as Braggs or soy sauce which are not raw foods. So a certain amount of caution is required when looking at recipes on the internet.

Although it is possible that commercially dried foods may have been dried at temperatures below 115, many raw eaters prefer to dry their own. This is best done with a dehydrator which includes a thermostat to control the temperature. Food is dried on trays which sit inside the dehydrator. Most dehydrators have between 5 and 9 trays. Most raw foodists agree that the best dehydrator for drying living foods is the Excalibur, available to order online.

Having a dehydrator allows you to make raw ‘breads’ such as onion bread which is made from chopped onion, flax seeds and any other ingredients that you choose. We like to add finely chopped leeks and carrots.

Another essential piece of equipment for your raw kitchen is a high speed blender. With this you can make everything from green smoothies to nut pates. Vita-Mix is the brand to choose. While not the cheapest, Vita-Mix blenders are strong and long lasting. Anything else is a pale imitation.

You will also want a food processor for chopping and grating your vegetables. You can use a juicer, although many people prefer to put whole fruit in the blender with a little water instead of juicing, so that the fiber is not lost. Cheap juicers especially are very wasteful of fruit and vegetables, so you may be better off skipping the juicer purchase and investing in a better blender to enjoy your raw vegan recipes to the full. Apart from being wasteful of fruits and vegetables, juicers can be very messy, not to mention, hard to clean. Higher end blenders are great investments because you can control the texture of your smoothies or drinks.