A 100 percent raw diet prohibits all cooked foods. V8 juice is made from processed concentrate that was made by cooking down the eight vegetables that V8 vegetable juice contains. So, V8 juice cannot be consumed on a 100 percent raw diet. Some raw dieters are not 100 percent raw. Some go 50-50. Others are 80 percent raw. With these variations, you can consume moderate quantities of V8 juice.
The Raw Diet
A raw diet prohibits the consumption of cooked foods. Cooking food destroys essential vitamins and enzymes. Raw dieters do prepare their foods. If you follow a raw diet, you can heat your food, as long as the temperature does not exceed 115 degrees F. Dips, spreads, smoothies and soups can be made using a blender. Another common way to prepare food raw is to use a dehydrator. A dehydrator blows air on the food, which eventually dehydrates the food. This method can be used to make crackers and some forms of bread.
Excluded Foods
If you follow a raw diet, it may be obvious to you that you should not throw the food in a pot of boiling water. But if you eat foods from your local supermarket, it may be difficult to see whether the food has been cooked before ending up on the shelf. For example, making cheese does not require cooking, but commercial cheese is composed of milk that has been heated to temperatures above the allowed 115 degrees F. Finding out which foods from the supermarket can be consumed can require a little detective work.
V8 Juice
If you read the label on V8 juice, you will see that it says that the juice contains, among other things, tomato juice from concentrate. It further states that the concentrate is made from water and tomato paste. You can make tomato paste without cooking tomatoes by blending tomatoes and putting the substance through a strainer to remove skin and seeds and then dehydrating the juice. However, this is not how commercial tomato paste is made. Commercial tomato paste uses cooking at high temperatures and then filtering. So, you cannot drink V8 juice on a raw diet.
Make Your Own V8 Juice
If you have a juicer or food processor, a staple in a raw dieter's kitchen, you can make your own V8 juice. With a good juicer, you can juice hard vegetables such as carrots and beets, but most food processors won't produce much juice from hard vegetables. But you can make V8 juice by blending a large quantity of minced tomatoes together with smaller quantities of lettuce, cucumber, watercress, spinach, parsley, celery and lemongrass. To make spicy V8 juice, add a tiny piece of fresh chili pepper. Strain the substance to remove skin and seeds, but save what is left over for use in delicious salsas and spreads. Squeeze some lime into your juice for a powerful finish.
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