Nothin's cooking: New Northville cafe serves up dishes raw

Something is cooking at the Red Pepper Deli, Northville's newest cafe, it's just not in the kitchen. Opened up in September, this cafe serves only raw food. No, not like raw, bloody meats, but food that doesn't feel temperatures above 120 degrees. It's said that a raw food diet is healthy and more nutritious.

Excerpt:

Carolyn Simon's new restaurant in downtown Northville is a raw foodist's paradise -- a place where the "pasta" is cut from raw zucchini, the sandwich bread is made of sprouted seeds, and the rich, creamy coconut pie has never felt the heat of an oven.

The cheerful, airy spot opened in September, and business has grown steadily as news about it spread through the mainstream media and metro Detroit's vegetarian, vegan and raw foods communities.

Raw foodists believe that heating food above 120 degrees Fahrenheit destroys nutrients and living enzymes that are necessary for the body to absorb nutrition. Raw food is "living," they say, while cooked food is "dead." Most adherents are vegan, meaning they eat no meat or animal products such as eggs and milk.

The diet, which dates to the early 1900s, has long been considered a fringe movement. But in the past decade, interest in it has grown dramatically as celebrities and other prominent people have tried it. Many praise it for helping them lose weight while improving their energy, stamina, mental clarity and mood.

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