Voting for the 6th Annual Best of Raw Foods Awards is now open at www.bestofrawawards.com. Almost 400 people, places, products, media and initiatives have been nominated in 66 categories. Now it’s up to the raw foods online community to pick the winners. Voting will remain open until January 8, 2014.
The Best of Raw Founder’s Awards and the Advisory Board Peer Review Awards will be announced at the Best of Raw Annual Awards Gala featuring a “green carpet” full of raw celebrities Friday, January 31, 2014 at the Raw Living Expo™ in Thousand Oaks, California at the Hyatt Westlake Village. The event will feature a sit down dinner orchestrated and designed by noted Raw Chef Jillian Love who has trained the Hyatt’s staff in raw preparation specifically for this event.
Then on Saturday, February 1, 2014 The 6th Annual Best of Raw Awards Show will present the online voting awards and feature live music, entertainment, and an Oscars style awards show presentation prepared by Best of Raw’s visionary Founder Laura Chiraya Fox, show director Christoffer Westerlund and awards director Mixtress Hava.
The awards events are the annual highlight for the plant based raw foods movement and the Raw Living Expo™, taking place January 31 to February 2, 2014 in Thousand Oaks, CA. With a mission to “invite everyone to add more raw, organic plant food to their diet to increase health, decrease their eco footprint, and raise their spirits,” these ‘Rawscars’ as the awards are affectionately known, bring much deserved attention to the exciting personalities, companies and products in this billion dollar segment of the food industry. Tickets for the awards and expo are on sale now.
Whether one is simply adding more raw food to their diet, reaching for a healthier way of life, or are all raw vegan, Best of Raw™ encourages the raw community to have fun voting for their favorites to increase visibility for these important brands and people.
The People nominees include the most incredible personalities in the raw food community including NPC Bodybuilder Michelle Batterman in the Female Athlete category, Cooking Channel Chef Jason Wrobel in the Funniest Raw Man category, Fire dancer Vatra Amidzich in the Male Athlete category, and Singer/Songwriter Emily Grove in the Raw Friendly Musical Act category. Many leaders in the raw movement were nominated in the Professional Chef, Coach and Educator categories. Other people categories open for voting include Funniest Raw Woman, Professional Raw Photographer, Sexiest Raw Man, Sexiest Raw Woman and more.
The Places awards nominees include Los Angeles’ Erewhon Market in the Grocery Store with a Raw Section category and Santa Monica’s RAWvolution in the Restaurant category. Other Places categories include Juice Cleansing Program, Raw Chef Training Program, Raw Vegan Retreat Center, Full Raw Vegan Online Store, Online Store Featuring Raw Foods, and Raw Vegan Event.
The largest group, Products, includes these nominees in the following categories Cereal – Go Raw Original Granola, Chocolate Bar – Divine Organics Decadent Raw Chocolate Brittles, Chocolate Truffle – Hot Love Chocolate Truffles, Beverage – Tumeric-the Elixir of Life, Cold Pressed Juice Product – Daily Greens, Cookie/Brownie – Rawxies, Kale Chips – Stumptown Original Kale Chips, and Raw Vegan Body Care Product – Feng Shea Facial Scrub.
Nominees in the Media categories include the Film Bethany’s Story, the Book – A Guide to Juicing, Raw Foods & Superfoods, the Blog – http://www.thisrawsomeveganlife.com/, and Raw App – The Rawtarian. Other media categories include Raw Food Song, Raw Recipe Video, Community Website and more.
The Eco-Raw category highlights the raw Chef, Company, Educator, Initiative, Product, and Restaurant who go the extra mile to minimize their environmental impact. Nominees in this group include the Eco-Raw Company, Living Light International’s Company-Wide Reduce Waste Campaign, and ChocolaTree Organic Eatery in the Eco-Raw Restaurant category.
The Best of Raw Founder’s Awards and the Advisory Board Peer Review Awards are given to satisfy the needs of this growing industry. These awards include the Founder’s Award for Innovation; The Lifetime Achievement Award; The Eco-Friendly Company Innovation Award; The Soil Quality Improvement Award; The Organic Produce & Farming Award; and The Children’s Education Award.
The complete list of nominees is at http://bestofrawawards.com/. Voting takes place on that site as well.
In addition to the awards, the Expo features three days of speakers, workshops, exhibitors, product giveaways, food sampling, live chef demos, entertainment, music, DJed dance parties, yoga, films and much more.
Regarding raw foods, Best of Raw founder Laura Chiraya Fox notes, “We are so pleased to honor all of our worthy nominees. With raw foods, we not only assist our bodies in reclaiming higher vibrancy, health, mental and emotional well-being, we also reduce our impact on the planet by simplifying our way of eating. When we also reach for local organic foods in their natural raw state, we’ve just reduced our footprint dramatically in the arenas of packaging, shipping, processing, marketing and more, as well as enhancing the physical energy of our sacred body temple with pure foods, adding to our well-being instead of taking away from it, as processed foods do.”