I've got this annoying pasta addiction which I cave into several times a month and I was wondering if anyone knows how to beat it. It's got to be a common addiction since a lot of raw fooders were former cooked vegans and ate lots of pasta.

I've tried the spiroolied zucchini and other squashes with tomato sauce and, although it looks like pasta, a stomach full of burpy squash giving me indigestion just doesn't cut it. The last time I made that, I didn't even finish it. I've had better luck with corn and marinara sauce, at least corn is a grain so it better approximates pasta. I suppose I've just answered my own question, keep lots of corn around, even blanched frozen corn from a bag would be huge step up from pasta made of flour.

It's probably my biggest addiction because I was a cooked vegan for years and ate it almost every day and I need to detox all that pasta.

pasta addiction is the same as a sugar addiction (cooked starch is basically pure sugar)

try making your own raw (but real) pasta w/ flax seed 'flour', or winter wheat berry flour, or buckwheat flour etc... make the dough string it out, dehydrate it, add sauce mmmmmmmmmmm

can't find recipe's?

The way to get over a starch addiction on the raw diet to eat a lot of sweet fruit. Take those old starch meals, and enter them into a nutritional calculator like fitday or nutridiary to see how many calories of carbohydrates they contain. Then use the nutritional calculator to see how many pieces of sweet fruit it would take to have the same number of carbohydrates.

If you eat the fresh fruit with the same number of calories as your old starch meals, your desire for starch will completely disappear on the days you've eat the requisite amount of fresh fruit.

When you are craving pasta remind yourself of how horrible wheat/flour is for us. Do you remember making paper mache sculptures in elementary school? Do you remember what was used for the paste? FLOUR and water!! Flour is glue! Imagine it gumming up your insides like that. This visualization really worked for me when I was craving pasta or bread.

All the best,

Audrey
www.rawhealing.com

Opinion:

-I have a strong suspicion that refined carbs are turned directly into sugar in your bloodstream. An addiction to carbs is really just an addication to an abnormal sugar level. Once your system stabilizes - you should do just fine with the much slower-release sugars in fruits and vegetables....as noted in the wonderful posts above. Give yourself some time, effort and care....you deserve it.

-David Mason

Thanks for all the wonderful ideas! Next time I want pasta I'll reach for fruit! The making raw pasta sounds like an interesting idea. :-)

Hi lilian

good luck
with your new greens n fruit addiction
hee hee

Thanks La Veronique!

I'm sure that I'll beat it now, I've only been trying to go absolutely no pasta for weeks and and I've been caving much less than I anticipated I would, so in a few months I won't even think about it any more (I've done this before with my cheese addiction which gives me confidence).

Hurraw, down with my major addiction! I was just working at it the wrong way before by trying to make analogues. I didn't really realize that it was a sugar addiction, you just don't equate the savory pasta with sugar, now that explains why it was a stronger addiction than chocolate! Thanks everyone!

I'm a chloro addict
gotta get those greeeenz
get green withdrawals without em
mmmmmmm

Yup, me too! I was driving past a little mini-strip mall today and noticed that it had a nice band of deep green bricks around it and I found myself thinking "What a nice color of green - boy I wish I could eat something that color."!!!!!! Then I LOL'd and drove away smiling! If I tried to tell my mother or sister or husband about that - well, they just wouldn't get it. But I know some of you do. When I finished my errands I hurried home and have been munching on parsley all afternoon.

Life Is Good!

alive!

green is good lol!

speaking of switching to fruit -- try spiralizing cucumbers into noodles. or do it the way i do it -- peel off fettucine-type noodles from the cukes. they combine well with just about anything (except possibly melons) and won't give you the digestion problems that zuchinni did.

Like macfly said, cucumbers make an excellent noodle. I like using the English cucumbers, because they have fewer seeds than normal cucumbers. I also like using them in the spirooli because of the thicker noodles than the spiralizer.

Oh yes, cucumbers and tomatos, one of my favorite combos. Works great! Yummm!