Ann Wigmore Chart for Raw & Living Foods

I found this Ann Wigmore chart so valuable when I began to change my diet, first from junk food to whole food, then on to raw foods.

Each day, gently remind yourself over and over:

I’m eating Whole foods only Today, Whole foods for Life

“Let me share my vision with you: I see a world without sickness, sorrow or mental disturbance … Reconnect with nature and your body will take care of the rest. This is the beauty of self-healing.”

Ann Wigmore, ND, DD, widely quoted. I don’t know which of her books it’s from, but I know for sure this is her eternal message — eat living foods and everything else is taken care of.

Notes on Chart

See Recipes — for links on how to make these foods.

I adapted this chart from The Hippocrates Diet and Health Program (#ad) by Ann Wigmore, ND (Avery Publishing, 1984); quoted with permission.

Sweeteners I adapted from Healing With Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition (#ad) by Paul Pitchford (North Atlantic Books, 1993).

Under Whole Foods, there are some machine foods, e.g. rice cakes and tofu, that are transitional foods, not whole foods.

The Ann Wigmore Way

Nutrient	Living Foods	Whole Foods	Avoid Altogether
PROTEINS — Legumes (beans, peas, lentils) are protein-dominant. — Green Leaves and grasses are best protein source for humans and most animals.	LIVING greens grown at home in Sprouter, leafy green salads & roll-ups, energy soup, green smoothies, green juices. Sprouted legumes — peas, beans, lentils, mung, alfalfa & clover (they’re tiny beans—the smallest of legume family); raw green beans and peas.	Steamed fibrous greens like kale and collard (spring greens in UK). Steamed large bean sprouts like soya, chickpea; slow-cooked dried beans and peas (soups, dahl), tofu, tempeh.	All animal meats and luncheon meats; all fish and sea-foods (crayfish, lobster, oysters, prawns), sushi; birds (chicken, turkey, ostrich); eggs; pasteurized milk and cheeses; hydrolyzed vegetable proteins; soya meat analogs; protein powders (vegan ones too — they don’t resemble anything in nature).
CARBOHYDRATES — Grains are carbohydrate-dominant. — Fruits are simple carbohydrates quickly utilized by body for energy. — Starchy Vegetables are good alkaline carbohydrates	All fresh fruits, home-dried & sun-dried fruits, vegetable fruits (bell pepper, cucumber, okra, tomato, zucchini, baby butternut, etc). Sprouted grain crackers, breads and cereals; grain milks; sprouted pie crusts; raw corn (maize). Root vegetables (carrot, beet, turnip), tubers (potato, yam) and gourds (pumpkin, squashes).	Unsulfured dried fruits. Sourdough wholegrain breads (no yeast); low-baked sprouted grain breads; whole-grain crackers; oat flakes, muesli and natural sugar-free granola; popcorn and other puffed grains; slow-cooked whole grains (amaranth, barley, buckwheat, corn, kamut, millet, oats, quinoa, rice, rye, spelt, teff, wheat); pasta made from whole grains. Steamed, baked or lightly simmered starchy vegetables.	Fruits dried with sulfur. All breakfast cereals; refined grains and flours like white bread, rolls, cakes, cookies, white rice, pasta; all yeasted breads; muesli and granola with sugar; bakery and health store baked goods containing oil, sugar, additives. Even “natural flavor” is an excito-toxin (linked to lesions in brain). All fast foods such as french fries and potato chips (crisps).
FATS / OILS — Oily seeds (flax, chia, hemp, pumpkin, sesame, sunflower) and nuts are fat-dominant. Seeds are best — they’re alkaline and often alive (will grow if you sprout them). Nuts are acidic, eat sparingly.	Non-dairy yogurts, cheeses and sauces made with fermented seeds and nuts; seed and nut milks; home-made raw nut butters; sprouted or soaked seeds and nuts; avocados; fresh coconut; raw olives; durians (an Asian fruit).	Coconut flour (NOT flax meal, always grind flax at home & eat within 5 minutes). Small amounts of raw virgin cold-pressed oils like coconut, olive, flax & sesame (in dark glass bottles); raw nut butters; raw sesame tahini. Raw cheese, cream & butter (not for vegans). Never eat heated oils.	All bottled oils not clearly labeled “raw cold-pressed, unheated, unrefined”; commercial nut butters; peanuts (raw + roasted) and peanut butter; roasted nuts and seeds, salted nuts. All foods containing or cooked in oil. Pasteurized butter, cream, cheese, milk; pizza and ice-cream.
VEGETABLES — Eat organically grown (no pesticides, fertilizers or GMO’s) and inorganic if fresh from farmers market. Veggies are Builders — best source of proteins, minerals and phyto-chemicals. Sea veggies (seaweeds) are high in trace minerals.	Raw sprouted greens (especially home-grown, e.g. broccoli, fenugreek & radish sprouts, sunflower & buckwheat greens, green pea shoots), green leaves (cabbage, collard, kale, lettuce, spinach, parsley, etc.), roots, stems (celery), edible flowers (nasturtiums, pansies, etc.); fermented (raw sauerkraut); blended in soups, sauces and smoothies; juiced; home-dried. Raw sea veg (dulse, kelp, black nori).	Steamed or slow-baked oil-free soups, casseroles, broths. May add raw coconut or olive oil after cooking. Frozen organic (usually cooked by blanching). Non-raw sea vegetables (arame, green nori, hijiki, Irish moss, kombu, wakame).	Stale or wilted; irradiated; genetically modified (GMO); canned; frozen inorganic; pickled; fried; cooked with sugar or salt; overcooked; supermarket produce (unless labeled organic).
FRUITS — Eat organically grown (no pesticides, fertilizers or GMO’s) and inorganic if fresh from farmers market. Fruits are Cleansers — especially good to eat only fruit (no other food) until 12 noon.	Mono-fruit meals (e.g. one type of fruit only for breakfast, as much as you want); fresh fruit salads, sauces, smoothies; raw fruit pies; blended fruit ice cream; home-dried fruit.	Home-cooked fruit desserts; steamed fruits; baked apples and bananas; unsulfured dried fruits; frozen organic fruits (they’re usually raw, not blanched). Best to soak dried fruits before eating.	Unripe; irradiated; genetically modified (GMO); canned or preserved with chemicals and added sugar; frozen inorganic; dried with sulfur; supermarket fruit (unless labeled organic).
SNACKS — Best to floss & rinse after snacking. Dried fruits stick to your teeth & can cause tooth problems if you’re not eating enough leafy greens.	Vegetable sticks (carrot, celery); home-dried oil-free vegetable chips; fresh fruits; home-dried fruits; sprouted trail mix; sprouted grain crackers; soaked (then dried) nut or seed crackers; dried-fruit and nut candies; soaked seeds and nuts; home-dried nut and seed yogurts.	Popcorn (no butter, use raw flax oil); rice cakes; puffed kashi; natural granola; unleavened crackers; trail mix; rice syrup candies; raw chocolate; raw health food snacks; unsoaked seeds and nuts.	Junk foods; fast foods; candies, chocolate; biscuits, crackers, cookies, cakes; chips or crisps; commercial health food snacks not from rawfood companies.
CONDIMENTS — To make food taste good 🙂	Unpasteurized miso and tamari; Himalayan crystal salt, vegetable salts, rock salt, Celtic sea salt; kelp powder, dulse flakes; raw sauerkraut; lemon juice; raw apple cider vinegar; fresh and dried herbs; garlic, ginger, cayenne	Unrefined sea salt; onion and chives; chili spices; powdered vegetable broth; Bragg’s liquid aminos; natural cooking wine; agar-agar flakes or arrowroot powder to thicken sauces.	Products containing additives such as citric acid, carrageenan, salt, pepper, vinegar, oils, eggs, colorings, flavorings and preservatives.
SWEETENERS — Use sparingly in final diet. Eat Energy Soup to end sugar cravings.	Stevia powder; raw unrefined date sugar; coconut blossom sugar; dried cane juice (Rapadura); raw unfiltered honey (not for vegans).	Stevia liquid; fruit syrups; maple syrup; brown rice syrup, barley malt; amasake (a cooked fermented sweet rice); sorghum molasses, Barbados molasses; xylitol (best sweetener for healthy teeth), erythritol.	White sugar, turbinado sugar, brown sugar; corn syrup, cane syrup; blackstrap molasses; dextrose, glucose, fructose; agave nectar, sorbitol; sugar substitutes and artificial sweeteners. No aspartame (diet soda), it’s genetically modified + linked to multiple sclerosis.
DRINKS — Drink 15 minutes before or one hour after meal, never with a meal.	Fresh fruit & vegetable juices; spring or filtered water, distilled water with Himalayan crystal salt (add 1/2 tsp to 1 quart to restore minerals); green juices with wheatgrass juice; Rejuvelac (a raw fermented grain drink).	Bottled natural fruit and vegetable juices (preferably unpasteurized); alkaline water; grain coffee; organic coffee + chocolate; green tea; herb teas — infuse in salt-free distilled water to suck nutrients out of herbs.	Tap water; inorganic coffee and chocolate; black tea; soda; alcohol; artificially sweetened fruit drinks. Limit pasteurized juices (apple, orange, etc.) and ideally mix with water.
Nutrient	Living Foods	Whole Foods	Avoid Altogether

3 Essentials for Health

The Raw and Living foods movement (that’s me!) teaches that the three essentials for Super Health and Energy are:

• End Deficiency — eat and drink the right molecules. Enjoy every moment today, breathe into it! Feel an attitude of gratitude for yesterday. Cherish hope for tomorrow.
• Stop Toxemia — don’t eat or drink the wrong molecules. Turn negative thoughts and emotions into a positive experience. Say, “thank you for giving me that experience.”
• Eat the Life Force — LIVING FOODS FOR A LIVING BEING — eat food that’s growing when you eat it, or recently picked.

Eat Whole Nuts & Seeds, Not Oils

Try to reduce the oil you use until one day you’re eating none! Even cold-pressed virgin olive oil on your salad will coat the nutrients and slow down absorption, in the same way oil coats the plate.

Oils are not a whole food. Way back in 1978 macrobiotic doctor Rudoph Ballentine (M.D.) wrote in Diet and Nutrition: A Holistic Approach (#ad):

“Oil is essentially an empty food like refined sugar, containing calories, or fuel, but none of the other nutrients which the body needs. … Refrigerating the oil, putting it in a dark bottle, and keeping it tightly capped slows the process of oxidation, but oils can go rancid inside the body. Picking up oxygen present in the tissues, they form the free radicals that cause damage to cellular components.”

ALL oil is 100% fat, just as sugar is 100% carbs. Both are empty calories. Raw seeds and nuts are only 50% fat and include their minerals, vitamins, enzymes. Even cold-pressed oil lacks co-factors like the lipase enzyme to digest it.

Olive oil jugs date back a mere 6,000 years, to 3,500 B.C. That’s quite recent in our history. I don’t think we’ve developed the enzymes needed to digest oil, it’s too much fat all at once. Modern humans — Homo sapiens who think, speak and create art — first show up around 75,000 years ago in Blombos Cave, and even 164,000 years ago at Pinnacle Point (both caves are in South Africa). Bipedal hominids go back ten million years.

Gabriel Cousens, M.D., writes in Conscious Eating (#ad):

“An excess of raw oils in the diet may cause some problems, such as red blood cell clumping, and less oxygen getting to the tissues … Olives have plenty of lipase but olive oil has none. Oils as they occur naturally in plants, as in sunflower seeds and avocados, have all their nutrients and enzymes intact, whereas the extracted oils, even if cold-pressed, are missing many nutrients and their associated enzymes.”

Udo Erasmus, Ph.D., writes in Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill (#ad):

“Whole flax seeds provide good nutrition in the form of protein, lecithin, phytosterols, minerals, vitamins, fiber … The mucilage part of the seed soothes the digestive tract … Whole or freshly ground seeds are used in digestive, eliminative, toxic diseases of the stomach, intestines, and colon … our liver is relieved of toxic stress.

Two percent of the lignans in flax seeds end up in flax oil; the other 98% remain in the seed meal. As a result, freshly ground flax seed has advantages over the oil, the seeds provide the freshest possible oil.”

What Is a Whole Food?

A whole food comes to you straight from nature, like an apple in a tree. Nothing has been added to, or subtracted from, the plant. If the apple looks raw, but it’s been genetically engineered, or grown with pesticides or fertilizers, or irradiated, it’s not a whole food. Something has been added. Don’t eat it.

A whole food means no stripping of the plant and using only a fraction. White flour, white rice and white sugar are skeleton foods, not whole foods.

Some teachers (e.g. Dr. Bernard Jensen) say raw organic produce cooked at home is a whole food. Others say that *only* raw food is a whole food.

I found that so long as I cooked the whole food on slow and low heat, I continued to heal from pain. Only when I ate machine food — food that’s highly processed and looks like nothing in nature — my tooth-ache got worse. So I could drink chocolate milk made at home with whole almonds soaked in water, organic chocolate powder, brown rice syrup and a drop of peppermint extract, all blended together, but I could not eat chocolate.

The nut-milk healed my teeth, while chocolate from the store — even dairy-free tofu chocolate — gave me pain.

Healing Cancer

If you have a life-threatening illness, then Eydie Mae Hunsberger advises in Eydie Mae’s Natural Recipes (#ad):

“It is unwise to cheat where cancer or any of the major debilitating diseases are concerned because these diseases are unforgiving of even the smallest infractions of the Phase I diet.”

Her Phase I diet is NO COOKED FOODS. Eydie Mae healed herself of breast cancer with Ann Wigmore’s living foods program. Indeed thousands over the past century have healed themselves with an all-raw diet, ever since Dr. Edmond Szekely published The Essene Gospel of Peace in 1937 (#ad). For 33 years at his clinic in Mexico, from 1937 to 1970, Dr. Szekely saw more than 123,600 people (about 17% diagnosed as medical incurables) and more than 90% regained their full health (cited in Dr. Cousens’ book Conscious Eating (#ad)).

After one to three years on the strict therapeutic diet of NO cooked foods, when healing is complete, many find they can go to 80-95% raw with some cooked whole foods.

You must follow your intuition and body signals. Every human being is unique. Plus co-factors like work stress, climate, exercise and home-life are constantly changing. In New York I could not go a winter without cooked grain, while in summer I had no desire for grains. Today in sunny South Africa I never want grains, cooked or raw, summer or winter, except the occasional slice of home-made bread, or home-popped corn.

The more you blend and juice Living Greens grown at home in an Easy Automatic Sprouter, the quicker you get in touch with your own biochemistry.

Discover More

• See Recipes — for links on how to make tasty foods in this Chart, like slow-cooked spicy sprouted grain muffins, and raw carrot cake crackers.
• What to Eat in a Raw Food Diet — find out how to go plant-strong high-raw.
• Eating Raw Links — see all info on eating high-raw.
• Site Map — see the whole feast 🙂