Amanda Seyfried is eating raw and says it’s “awful” – international raw food expert and celebrity coach Karen Knowler is ready to dispel the myth that raw food is just a bunch of carrots and apples.

(PRWEB) March 18, 2010 — Mama Mia! actress Amanda Seyfried, featured in April’s Esquire magazine, is eating raw and apparently she’s finding it “awful”.

“Amanda needs a raw food coach,” says international raw food expert Karen Knowler. “Raw food has been misunderstood for decades in spite of there now being raw gourmet recipe books, high-end restaurants [Saf, London, 105 Degrees, OKC and Pure Food & Wine, NYC and all manner of raw food products proving otherwise.”

“Amanda has shared that a typical lunch comprises of spinach and seeds – even in raw food circles this would be considered unhealthy, let alone to the public at large.”

Knowler, 37, who easily passes for a woman ten years younger, has been eating a predominantly or all-raw food diet for 17 years and has been coaching and teaching others how to make raw food “easy, delicious and fun” for the past twelve. Like Seyfried, Knowler herself originally chose to eat raw for weight loss but soon found out that the benefits extended way beyond the aesthetic.

Knowler shares, “I was 20 when I first found out about raw food and I must admit when I first read about it it did seem a bit extreme, and yet so much about it made complete sense that I decided to give it a try.”

Knowler went on to drop 14lbs in weight “effortlessly” within a few short months and was delighted to experience other benefits too.

“People at work started commenting on how well I was looking as well as admiring my weight loss. for the first time in my life I felt truly healthy and people were telling me I glowed. more staggering than that though were my energy levels, they were literally shooting through the roof.”

So what was Knowler’s secret and what did she do differently?

“I made the decision right from the start that I would only eat food that I loved and as much as I wanted so I never once felt deprived. In fact it ended up being quite the opposite and eating raw or mostly raw proved to be surprisingly easy not to mention delicious. within just a few weeks I discovered a vast array of divine foods and recipes that were raw that I’d never even heard of before and the door to a bright new world of food and vitality were blown wide open. I couldn’t believe how amazing I was feeling.”

So what do you eat?

“People think that raw food is literally just a bag of carrots and apples,” observes Knowler. “This couldn’t be further from the truth. The way I eat raw and teach others to do it is to find out your food personality and natural style first and then select the raw foods that are the best fit for that and the goals you want to reach. by putting pleasure first it’s very hard not to find a way of eating that ticks all the boxes – a wonderful thing, and it can literally transform a person from the inside out. Weight loss is of course brilliant, but what Amanda may not realise because her diet sounds seriously deficient, is that raw food done right can be the most wonderful way of eating imaginable. When I tell people I eat pizza, ice-cream and chocolate people struggle to comprehend how that can be raw. This is what Amanda needs to be turned on to so she can experience just how ‘awful’ raw food really can be!”

About Karen Knowler
Karen Knowler is a long-standing international raw food expert, celebrity coach and author of “How to Get Started with Raw Foods”. Visit TheRawFoodCoach.com for more details including recipes, tips and resources for eating raw food.

Knowler is available for interview or comment. Telephone + 44 (0)1223 860688.

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Peanut butter recalls. Spinach scares. Contaminated meat.

Is it any wonder Americans are jittery about their food? so much so that when the associated Press recently ran a recipe for traditional spaghetti carbonara — complete with its only barely cooked egg — e-mails poured in.

Had we forgotten the step in the recipe about cooking the egg? no. but it did make us wonder. with so many traditional recipes calling for uncooked eggs — mayonnaise, Caesar salad, eggnog, carbonara, never mind the simple joy of dunking toast in soft-boiled eggs — what can we safely do with raw eggs?

Simply put, raw eggs can carry salmonella, bacteria that can cause serious food poisoning, even death. but to be fair, any raw food can be contaminated. Salmonella is what triggered the massive peanut butter recall last year.

The Food and Drug Administration is clear on the matter, telling people eggs should be fully cooked until the yolks and the whites are firm. They tell people not to eat or even taste any foods that may contain raw or undercooked eggs.

The risks are highest among the very young, the elderly and people who are pregnant or have a compromised immune system, says Catherine Donnelly, a professor and expert on the microbiology of food safety at the University of Vermont. Healthy adults may get sick from salmonella, but Donnelly says they are unlikely to die.

Still, not dying is a pretty low bar to set for dinner. Is it worth it?

Charles Reeves, chef and owner of Penny Cluse Cafe, a restaurant in Burlington, Vt., known for its from-scratch breakfasts and lunches, certainly thinks so. “You can’t own a restaurant and call yourself a chef if you’re using mayonnaise out of a bottle,” he says. “It’s just too easy to make it better yourself.”

In Reeves’ kitchen, the ubiquitous dressing (made with raw yolks and sometimes the whites) is prepared daily and used on numerous sandwiches. Raw eggs also show up in the base for several other dressings and sauces.

“You just always have to use absolutely fresh eggs that come from a reputable source,” he says.

But Todd Pritchard, a food scientist at the University of Vermont, says farm fresh doesn’t necessarily mean bacteria free. “Bacteria are blind,” he says. “They don’t see whether the eggs come from a local farmer or are free-range or organic.”

Much depends on how the eggs and chickens have been handled, says Pritchard. An unhealthy chicken can have salmonella in its reproductive tract, and the bacteria can end up on the shell or inside the egg.

According the American Egg Board, the risk of an egg being contaminated with salmonella is only around 1 in 20,000. at this rate, an average consumer would encounter a contaminated egg once in 84 years.

But that doesn’t matter, Pritchard points out, if you’re the one who gets sick.

So what’s an egg eater to do?

For adult home cooks in good health, the minute risk of being sickened may be worth the joy of soft boiled eggs or homemade mayo. Ditto when dining out.

Still not so sure? Pasteurized egg products are available. Whites are common, but yolks are hard to find. but many of these products are made mostly from egg whites, which don’t emulsify or thicken well.