Hi..I am new and just started educating myself about the health benefits of a raw diet about 2 weeks ago. I am trying to get my health back. Not doing too bad, but want to feel like I did when I was younger. I have been eating about 50% raw and plan to work up to 75-80% raw. Anyway...I made some raw hummus yesterday afternoon and had so much, I decided to freeze some until later in the week. Then I wondered.....in freezing it, am I destroying the enzymes, vitamins and minerals? Also, can anyone recommend a good food dehydrator?

I don't know much about raw foods, but I read on this board that frozen bananas are raw, so your hummus is probably still raw. I'm afraid I can't help you with the dehydrator.

Some nutrition is always lost with freezing, but it's still raw. I don't have anything against eating frozen foods, as long as the majority of your diet is fresh.

The best dehydrator to get is the Excaliber. It has a temperature gague so you can set it at the temp you want. The ones you buy in the store usually don't have a temp gague so you really don't know whether or not they're actually cooking your food.

You lose some nutrition with frozen food, but not nearly as much as, say, blanching peas and slopping them into a can with water for a year. Many commercial frozen veggies are briefly blanched before freezing. Probably not *technically* raw, but many raw foodists don't seem to know or care, and I don't see it as a big deal, especially for stuff you can't get fresh off-season.

Minerals in the nutritional sense aren't going to be destroyed by anything short of a blast furnace, so don't worry about them. Some vitamins degrade over time in frozen food. Thiaminase activity *increases*, so some attention to thiamine-rich foods or supplements when relying on older frozen food for thiamine may be in order, as well as adding a small amount of brewer's yeast before freezing.

I've seen very little on what food loses in the dehydration process, perhaps because raw people seem to be focused on 'enzymes' and don't much talk about vitamins or volatile nutritients. Dehydration takes a toll on Vitamin C, for sure. Low-temp dehydration is widely regarded at preserving the nameless enzymes, with a max of 85-150F depending who you ask. Most seem to take 110F as an upper limit. Setting an Excalibur on 100-105 seems like a safe bet, or with moist foods setting it to 120 for the first 2 hours or so then setting it down. A decent thermometer with a probe inserted into food will help you calibrate the analog and imprecise temp dial.

The Excalibur dehydrator is indeed widely regarded as the way to go among raw people. You can get circle-stack ones on the cheap at Mal-Wart, eg., but they are designed for higher-temp operation, and their layout doesn't make for even distribution of temperature -- not to mention the inefficient use of counter space.

There are various dealers of Excaliburs online. The best deal I found is here:
http://www.discountjuicers.com/excalibur2900.html

The 9-tray unit gives the best bang/buck, but the 4/5 ones are fine too. I bought a 9 with some extra teflex sheets so I had one for each tray.