Recipe Redux: Raw Apple Pie

As part of LUNA’s nutrition team, Lisa and I have been hosting webinars over the past few weeks to empower individuals to feed their strength and trust their nutrition intuition. We're all about ditching diets; instead, we focus on eating habits that are sustainable and maintainable long term.  

Last week, Lisa and I addressed the importance of fulfilling our cravings with the foods we eat by listening to our bodies and choosing foods that are truly worthy of our taste buds. Not only is food meant to satisfy our hunger and meet our nutritional needs, it’s also meant to be enjoyable!

What’s more, food can also deliver a sense of style. As funny as it may sound, apples are one of those foods that give me a sense of identity – they satisfy both my nutrient needs and my palate. In fact, it's a rare day when I do not eat an apple.  So, I have to admit that I get a little excited when apple season is in full swing – Honeycrisp, Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji, Granny Smith, Red Delicious – the options are endless.

This Recipe Redux below was inspired by our love of apples. One reason we love no-cook desserts is because they can be made in a cinch. And let’s face it, a dietary pattern that is sustainable and maintainable long-term is one that includes dessert from time to time. As someone with a self-proclaimed sweet tooth, I love turning to nature’s natural sweetener, fruit as an ingredient for my go-to desserts.

This recipe & photos were developed by our wonderful contributing blogger, Jaime – who also has a love and appreciation of apples (and dessert!).

Raw Apple Pie

There’s no better way to welcome fall than with this dessert. Quick to make, nutrient dense, and simply fun to eat – this dessert is dietitian’s dream.

Ingredients:

1 large apple

1 graham cracker sheet
¼ cup walnuts
¼ cup raisins
2 tablespoons unsweetened apple sauce
2 teaspoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt

Directions:

1.      Wash and peel apple. Cut into quarters.

2.      Combine sliced apple, walnuts, raisins, and apple sauce. Put mixture into a food processor. Process until well mixed and apples are at a fine dice.

3.      Pour syrup, cinnamon, vanilla, lemon juice, and salt into apple mixture. Stir well.

4.      Crush the graham cracker sheet. Scoop a tablespoon into a cupcake foil. Fill the foil with apple mix and top off with another scoop of graham cracker. Serve.

Makes 3 mini apple pies

Enjoy, preferably with those you love.

Going Raw: Pros and Cons

The diet world has moved beyond the low-fat and low-carb crazes of yore toward eating more whole, unprocessed foods. You can’t argue with this concept—the nutritional benefits of eating foods fresh from nature, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains and legumes, are plenty. But a new twist takes this diet principal beyond the whole food movement—to a dietary pattern based on eating whole plant foods that are cooked to temperatures not exceeding 118ºF. This means that most raw “foodists” are vegans, with the exception of a very few who also include unpasteurized dairy products or raw fish, meat and eggs.

Advantages of nature’s raw foods. A raw food diet relies heavily on fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, which are rich in nutrients, such as fiber, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals—plant compounds often responsible for the bright colors found in fruits and vegetables that hold health-protective activities, such as anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties Studies have linked vegan and vegetarian diets with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and type 2 diabetes. Supporters of this diet argue that once food is cooked, its nutrients and enzymes, which they claim are essential for optimal digestion, are lost. But there is minimal science to back this up. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reports that it is the body, not the food, that supplies the enzymes needed for digestion. However, it’s a fact that when some fruits and vegetables are cooked, water soluble nutrients, such as B vitamins and vitamin C, are susceptible to loss.

Pitfalls of a raw food diet. While raw foodists have an eating style that often reflects a vegan diet, the diet is further restricted to exclude cooked whole grains, beans and legumes, adding to the difficulty in following the diet long-term. For example, meeting the needs for essential nutrients, such as protein, vitamin D, iron, calcium, zinc, and B vitamins can be very challenging. And the few raw foodists who eat raw animal products open the gate for a variety of food borne illnesses and bacterial contamination concerns.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to this style of eating is that it takes a lot of work, creativity and careful planning— not to mention expense. Often raw foodists rely on costly prepared raw foods. Restaurant dining, or even traveling while on a raw food diet can prove very restrictive and difficult. There’s little science to indicate we need to eat only raw foods for optimal health, but there’s plenty of research that supports eating a bounty of whole plant foods—whole grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts.

This article was written by McKenzie for the March 2013 issue of Environmental Nutrition