Lets Get Raw: Chef Matthew Kenney On Raw Foods And Why You Should Eat More Of Them

Most people are not immediately intrigued by the idea of "going raw," otherwise known as eating exclusively raw foods. There are however a growing number of individuals out there who are starting to tout the benefits. The theory goes that cooking food depletes the volume of nutrients it contains. As a baseline for what I mean by "cooking," hard core raw foodies will generally not subject anything to more than 118 degrees fahrenheit. We can get very technical with this, but essentially the line of thought goes that one, your body prefers to get its nutrients from a natural source (as opposed to that multi you are taking once per day) and two, the more you heat up what you are about to eat, the more you kill off certain nutrients.

Now I am not going to go into all of the arguments for and against "raw" as a lifestyle choice, like many health fads both the public and professionals in the industry are treating the idea with mixed reviews. But I think that you will be hard-pressed to find someone out there that prefers how they feel after eating a bucket of fried chicken as opposed to a salad (even with all of the toppings).

Recently I spoke with Chef Matthew Kenney, who is making it his mission to help people experience raw foods on a gourmet level. (Gourmet raw dishes? Do tell me more.) As it turns out, you can forget the carrot sticks and plain spinach salad, believe it or not, eating raw can actually be interesting, fun and delicious. Kenney has two restaurants by the name of M.A.K.E. in LA as well as two other venues, The White Lotus in Miami and The Gothic New England in Maine. So if you are lucky enough to live in Maine, Miami or LA you can run right over and check one out.