Many of us would love to improve our diets and eat more good, wholesome foods, but we still want to enjoy what we eat. Stephanie Tourles’s new book Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body is a great way to bridge the gap.

So what is eating raw? Eating raw means eating real foods that are uncooked, unadulterated, unprocessed, not refined and stripped of their naturally occurring nutrients.

Stephanie Tourles’s 125 recipes for trail mixes, parfaits, energy bars, juice blends, smoothies, soups, vegetable chips, zippy dips, candies, and cookies combine raw ingredients in delicious snacks that are chock-full of nutrients and long-term energy boosters. The staffs favorite recipes were the Get-up-and-Go Apple-Walnut Bars, the Zesty Zucchini Chips, and the Cucumber Avocado Cream Soup.

I had the chance to speak with Stephanie Tourles last week before she set out on her book tour. Stephanie is a licensed holistic esthetician in both Massachusetts and Maine, with over 20 years experience. Trained in western-style herbalism, she specializes in the use of herbs as they pertain to skin, hair, nail, and foot care. In our twenty minute conversation about eating raw, Stephanie was very passionate and genuinely interested in helping people eat healthier. She understands that eating raw is a challenge, but her book, and the recipes in the book, can make eating raw snacks and the occasional meal easier. I suggest you do what I did several years ago – commit to eating seven raw meals per week. I promise you will feel better, inside and out, and Stephanie’s book is a great resource to help you do it.

Stephanie is the author of several other books on natural body care including The Herbal Body Book, Naturally Healthy Skin, and Natural Foot Care. Stephanie will be contributing an article a week over the next couple of weeks on FBWorld. Her articles will include some of her favorite recipes from Raw Energy: 124 Raw Food Recipes for Energy Bars, Smoothies, and Other Snacks to Supercharge Your Body.