Improve Your Health
by Eating More Living Foods
When it comes to eating for optimal
health, the first and most important step is to focus on eating plenty of fresh,
nutrient-rich plant foods. If you want to take nutritional excellence up another
level, consider replacing some of your cooked food staples with raw versions.
For example, instead of eating processed granola cereals and baked whole grain
breads, try raw versions that can be made with a high quality food dehydrator.
When foods are dried at low temperatures, their naturally occurring enzymes
are left intact, and getting plenty of enzymes through the foods that you eat
is highly beneficial to your digestive organs and overall health.
In our home, we use the Excalibur
food dehydrator to make all sorts of healthy and raw foods like onion bread,
crackers, burgers, wraps, flatbreads, chips, and even bacon - all out of micronutrient-rich,
living plant foods. And it's a lot easier than it sounds. In most cases, it's
a matter of blending a few simple ingredients together, spreading the mixture
in small portions on drying trays, and then letting the Excalibur dehydrator
go to work for a few hours or more.
Foods that are made in the Excalibur
dehydrator remain preserved with all of their naturally occurring vitamins,
minerals, enzymes, and health-promoting phytochemicals. And in almost all cases,
natural flavors are concentrated and combined with a chewy texture that adds
nice variety to a plant-centered diet.
The Excalibur food dehydrator also
churns out mouthwatering dried mangoes, bananas, apples, and other healthy fruits.
All without a drop of preservatives or other chemicals. It's not healthy to
eat a lot of dried fruit every day, but as a small snack once in a while, you
won't find a tastier treat than dried mangoes.
A Well-Designed
Drying System
The
Excalibur food dehydrator is built with something called the Parallexx
Drying System. As shown in the picture to the right, the horizontal
drying system is mounted at the back of the unit, providing the following benefits:
- Fast, even drying of all of the
food trays - there's never a need to rotate trays, which is usually needed
with food dehydrators that have their drying systems built into the bottom
of their machines.
- Easy to clean - any spills that
occur fall on an easy-to-clean surface, not onto the drying system and its
electrical parts.
The Parallexx Drying System comes
with an adjustable thermostat with allows you to set the temperature that you
want - anywhere between 85 to 145 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Excalibur food dehydrator also
ensures even drying and food safety while drying with something called Hyperwave
Fluctuation Technology.
Many dehydrators on the market apply
constant, unchanging heat, which can cause "surface hardening" - this
is where your foods develop a dry surface, but remain moist inside, a situation
that can lead to growth of undesirable microorganisms.
Excalibur's Hyperwave Fluctuation
Technology changes the amount of heat that is used while foods are drying. As
the heat level rises, surface moisture evaporates. As the heat level drops,
moisture inside the food being dried moves to the drier surface.
Throughout this cycle, the food temperature
stays low enough to keep enzymes vital, while the air temperature gets high
enough to dry food while minimizing risk of spoilage due to undesirable microorganisms.
The bottom line: Excalibur has been
manufacturing their food dehydrators for decades, and I believe that they're
producing the best quality food dehydrators on the market. All of their models
are manufactured in the United States, and have the following features:
- Removable door and trays, which
allow you to check drying food or add more while drying is in progress.
- Polycarbonate plastic cabinet
and a plexiglass door.
- FDA-approved polycarbonate trays
that are easy to clean, and pretty much unbreakable.
- A square design with no holes
in the middle of the trays, which allows more surface area for drying.
- Trays that can be moved around
to create room for a wide variety of purposes, such as making all-natural
fruit roll-ups, flatbreads, crackers, chips, burgers, cereals, and drying
herbs, flowers and even photos and various arts and crafts.
If you decide to get the Excalibur
food dehydrator, you'll receive a free 24-page guide that provides a number
of useful tips and instructions on how to dry different foods.
We use the Excalibur 2900 model in
our home. Here's a look at the Excalibur food dehydrator models that we provide
at our natural health shop:
Regrettably, at this time, we aren't
able to ship any of the Excalibur food dehydrator models to locations outside
of the United States and Canada. Orders in the States are shipped via UPS, and
orders in Canada are shipped via the United States Postal Service, all directly
from the manufacturer's warehouse at the lowest possible price.
If you get an Excalibur food dehydrator
and are not yet signed up for our free natural health newsletter, please sign
up below, as we'll be sharing plenty of easy, healthy, and delicious recipes
that you can create with your dehydrator in future newsletters.
One final note:
for some of our favorite recipes, you'll need to use parchment paper on the
Excalibur dehydrator trays. But rather than use parchment paper, we like to
use washable sheets called Paraflexx Premium.
Paraflexx
Premium sheets are super flexible sheets that have a non-stick surface,
and that are easy to clean. These sheets are indispensable when making certain
types of dairy-free cheese (like feta), cookies, crackers, breads, and fruit
leathers. They're made to perfectly fit onto the trays that come with the 2500
and 2900 Excalibur models, and can easily be cut to fit the 2400 Excalibur model.
Please note: when drying items on
a Paraflexx Premium sheet, I recommend flipping the item over half way into
the dehydrating process so that both sides of whatever you are making dry evenly.
Paraflexx
Premium sheets last for years. Even if they develop wrinkles or creases
after many months or years of use, they are fine to use.
Here's a look at two of our favorite
live, dehydrated recipes made with our Excalibur 2900 dehydrator:
Sunflower
Cheese Sticks Recipe
Flax-Onion
Flatbread Recipe
