Good Food road-test: the raw diet

• Raw carrot cake bliss balls
• Raw curry noodle soup (pictured)
• How to make almond milk

The premise: Ingredients should be eaten in their natural state and not heated to anything above 42-45C to preserve their maximum nutritional value. Backers claim the diet reverses ageing and combats disease.

The results: Goodbye bread, goodbye dairy, goodbye anything processed, baked, steamed, toasted, roasted or pasteurised. It was difficult to tell where the pain of caffeine withdrawal ended and the pain of everything else began. The philosophy of the raw food diet intrigues me. Not being a big meat-eater I figured subsisting temporarily on raw fruit, vegetables, nuts and sprouted grains wouldn't pose too great a challenge. In some ways it didn't. I replaced my usual muesli (oats are steamed) with a buckwheat version, snacked on fruit and veg and raw cacao-almond balls. I lunched on salads with nut-based dressings. Dinner discoveries included ''spring rolls'' and a raw zucchini pasta that was saved by sun-dried tomato sauce and a raw cashew milk curry that would have been nicer in warmer weather. The hardest part? Chowing through cold dinners while my family beat the chill with warm bowls of pasta. I missed yoghurt, and bread. And I'm sick of nuts - yes, even in a cashew ''cheeze'' cake.

The pros: You can eat as much as you like, though most ''rawists'' believe you shouldn't eat early in the day because the body's digestive system isn't firing.

The cons: Cold dinners on frosty nights, being confined to the dips platter at social gatherings (hang on, that hummus is made from cooked chickpeas … ). It's time consuming. If you want to eat grains, you have to soak, rinse and sprout them over several days (even then their appeal is questionable) and just about every recipe requires a food processor and/or dehydrator; not ideal when you prepare separate meals for the rest of the family who aren't concerned about the ravages of ageing.

Dish discovery: ''Spring rolls'' (lettuce leaves stuffed with a tasty combo of sprouts, vegetables and dressing).

Dish disaster: The lowlight was an almond curry: a thick, cold nut slurry over vegetables and chickpeas that took four days to sprout.

How hard is it to eat out? Very, unless you count a trip to the greengrocer. I did get lucky though with a trip to an Asian fusion restaurant where staff accommodated my lifestyle choice with an amazing array of pickled veg, raw sea bream with crispy seaweed and a delicious beef tartare with clam mayonnaise.

Is it expensive? Yes and no. I went through nearly a kilo of almonds in a week - and avocados ain't cheap - but then, meat is also pricey. Also, the quality of fruit and vegetables matters more because they're the central plank of any meal, so I opted for organic.

Did it work? I've managed to cut my caffeine intake, my skin is a little clearer and my energy levels don't seem to experience the same peaks and troughs (though this could also be a result of cutting coffee).

What will you keep? I am trying to keep on with the sprouted buckwheat muesli, and taking raw lunches to work. I'll make my own almond milk once a week - it tastes better than UHT brands.