A growing number of health practitioners - as well as restaurants and celebrities such as Sting, Madonna, and Beyonce - are espousing raw food or 'living food' diets as a way to stave off disease, boost energy, and lose weight. However, 100% raw diets are difficult to sustain and have come under fire recently for not being nutritionally optimal. Balanced Raw eschews the all-or-nothing approach of other books and contains a 4-phase, 30-day plan for making the raw food lifestyle livable for life.