Community & Stories
Discover Seggiano: The Finest Artisanal Italian Foods Available in the UK
Discover Seggiano: authentic Italian artisan olive oil and artichokes, sourced from small traditional farms. Shop the finest Italian food products at Raw Living UK.
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Farmacy: Manifesto on the Future of Food
Long-time friends and collaborators with Raw Living, Farmacy, have released a beautiful Manifesto for the Future of Food. Featuring a guest appearance from Woody Harrelson, it’s inspiring, bold, and absolutely worth a watch. Caring about the food you put into your body goes far beyond personal wellbeing. It’s about stewardship. It’s about how we relate to the land, the soil, the water, and the plants and animals we share this planet with. Every meal is part of a bigger ecosystem. Food is also a quiet but powerful political act. Where you spend your money matters. Which companies are you supporting? Are they regenerative, ethical, transparent? Are they thinking about the long term, about soil health, biodiversity, and future generations? Or are they driven purely by short-term profit? At Raw Living, this is something we take seriously. We choose to work only with brands and producers whose values align with ours. People who care about quality, sustainability, integrity, and impact. Brands like: 🌊 Algamar – Awarded by the Spanish government for biodiversity conservation, environmental respect, rural development, local resource enhancement and technological innovation. 🇯🇵 Christopher Dawson, founder of Clearspring – The only non-Japanese recipient of the Japanese government’s Award for Overseas Promotion of Japanese Food, recognising his global contribution to organic Japanese cuisine. 🌿 Auroville (India) – Multiple award-winner for sustainability, ecological restoration and conservation initiatives. 🍫 Paccari (Ecuador) – Multi-award-winning chocolate producers and a certified B Corp, recognised for ethical sourcing and regenerative cacao practices. 🌍 Ancient + Brave – Certified B Corp and proud members of 1% for the Planet, committed to purpose-driven business and environmental stewardship. Every time you shop with us, you’re not just buying a product. You’re participating in a chain of conscious decisions that supports farmers, growers, and makers who are actively working to create a healthier, more beautiful world. And for that, we’re truly grateful.
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Meeting The Cacao Farmers
At the end of my three week trip to Peru, one of the highlights was visiting some of the cacao farmers who produce our raw cacao. There are very few companies in the world who are committed to raw, organic, cacao, and having gone to the Amazon region and understood the logistics better, it's easy to see why. The company we work with has over 300 farmers in the Amazon region working with cacao. Often these farmers have only very basic literacy, they don't have their own vehicles, or even access to electricity and hot running water. Co-ordinating production and then being able to transport the cacao beans across the country to be processed into liquor, butter and powder is a Herculean effort. Even before it's shipped all the way to us in Europe! It was amazing to see the cacao growing in its natural habitat, and I ate a lot of the raw fruit and crunched on the raw beans. I particularly loved the beans in their semi-dried state, they were almost gooey in the centre and not as bitter as fully dried beans. You can read more about it and see more pictures on KateMagic.com.
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Peruvian Super Food Factory Visits
I visited two factories during my stay, one in the Cajamarca region and the other in the Jauja region. These are two of the biggest superfood facilities in the country (so I guess by default, in the world!), and it was a real privilege to get a sneak behind the scenes, and to learn about the incredible amounts of work that go into producing our superfoods that we take so casually off the shelves and spoon into our smoothies. One of the most difficult feats I think, is the co-ordination of the process. These companies work with uneducated people in remote regions, and are often supporting them into transitioning out of the standard crops like potatoes, corn and rice, that they get a very low income for, and into these higher value crops like maca and yacon. It’s a massive logistical operation to work with the farmers and ensure they are following organic procedures, and then to transport the harvested crops to these central facilities, and to make sure that there are customers who want to buy them at the other end. Especially considering many of these crops only have one harvest in a year, so demand has to be carefully managed to make sure that farmers aren’t out of a job and retailers aren’t out of product! The other thing that blew my mind was the scale of the machinery. I have heard it so often from small businesses, that you have to invest huge sums in getting the correct machinery to be able to scale up, but then it's not always reliable and when it breaks down, so does your whole chain of production. It takes a lot of skill to be able to firstly source the right machinery in such a niche industry, and then maintain it when its dealing with such high capacity volumes consistently. At the first factory, I saw the golden berries and the cacao being processed. They are first inspected and prepared by hand, before they go into the machines. The workers can sort through 100kg cacao beans in one hour, and 20kg of golden berries. I liked that they take the waste, and compost it outside. Then when they go to collect the crops from the farmers, they return the compost to them, thus creating a circular economy. Hygiene procedures are followed strictly, and everything is tested thoroughly, to ensure a product that meets international standards. In the second factory, most of the workers had already stopped for the day, but we saw the women scraping the dried camu camu berries off the industrial drier, ready to grind to a powder. I also saw the biggest amount of maca and cacao I’ve ever seen in my life – one tonne of maca powder, and ten tonnes of criollo cacao beans! They had a new state of the art machine that they were just installing, so they could up production of cacao butter and powder. Peru is the biggest exporter of organic cacao in the world; the total value of cacao exports from Peru in 2022 was estimated to be $22million USD. This is big business!
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Triple The Impact of Your Charity Donations This Winter
STOP PRESS! We just had some amazing news. Made in Hackney have a funder who is matching donations this December. This means that for every plate you donate, Made in Hackney will receive six! That's right, your £3 will provide a healthy vegan meal for six people. There's literally never been a better time to donate. At Raw Living, we’re proud to support three charitable organisations who share our values and are making a real difference in people’s lives. 🌱 Made in Hackney is a grassroots community kitchen on a mission to tackle health inequalities and improve food access, all through the power of plants. For just £3, your donation covers the cost of an organic, plant-based meal for someone in need. This year, we’ve been matching your donations: for every plate you donate, we donate another. For this season of goodwill, we’re going to double that donation, so every plate you donate will feed three people. 🌳 Trees for Life is a multi-award-winning conservation charity dedicated to restoring the Caledonian Forest in the Scottish Highlands. For just £6, you can plant a tree in our dedicated grove, and for every one of your generous donations, we’ll plant two more this winter. 💧 Charity: Water addresses one of the greatest challenges of our time, access to clean drinking water. It’s hard to believe that in the 21st century, over 700 million people around the world still live without it. Charity: Water are on a mission to change that. You can donate to our Spring here, and together, let’s see how many people we can help. We collect donations all year round, but this special seasonal drive, doubling the impact of every donation, runs until 19th December. So please consider giving generously. Just think about it, what feels better: splurging in the sales, or supporting these amazing organisations ensuring everyone has access to clean food, air, and water? ✨ Thank you in advance for your kindness, we are excited to see how many people we can help together this year.
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Meeting The Maca Farmers
Kate recently went to Peru, and met some of the farmers that grow our Raw Living Maca. It's grown in a remote region of the northern highlands of Peru, five hours drive from the nearest major city, and at an altitude of 3,500m. Being able to farm and sell the maca provides a valuable source of income to farmers who have very limited education and opportunities. You can read all about it on her post here. There's more photos on our Instagram here. Buy Raw Living Maca here.
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Made In Hackney Visit
Last week, I had the joy of visiting the Made In Hackney community kitchen. It's set up in the Queen of Hoxton nightclub in Shoreditch; they use the dancefloor to serve up the meals before the post-work revellers start to arrive in the evening. Everything is community funded: as well as fund-raising projects, they are sponsored by the enormous generosity of local restaurants and food businesses donating leftover food, and volunteers who come to help chop veg and serve around 200 meals a week. I turned up to chop a copious amount of cabbage, peel potatoes, and stick labels on take-away containers. It felt really good to be back in a busy working kitchen again, and I had a wonderful time, meeting lovely people and doing something truly worthwhile. I was introduced to Made In Hackney by Asa Simonsson, naturopath and author of "Fermentation", who had come to some of my events. I was looking for a space in London to run my Raw Chef Certification Courses, and she recommended them as a community venue, I think probably in 2013. I wanted to support Made In Hackney for a few reasons. Firstly, I am Made In Hackney! I lived there until I was 7, and my earliest memories are all in Hackney. I went to Hackney Infants school and my mum worked in the playground in Victoria Park. She was a single parent with no support, and Hackney was very rough back then. One of my earliest memories is of my little kiddie plastic trike getting stolen from the front garden! So who knows, if it was a few decades later, we could be a household who was applying for the meal service. As a long term vegan (33 years now), veganism is obviously very important to me, so I love the fact that everything Made In Hackney do is vegan without making a song and dance about it. I think although our business model with Raw Living is quite different from MIH, at the heart, the ethos is the same: a desire to help people improve their lives through providing them with organic plant foods, produced and made with love. I am passionate about a lot of things, but giving people access to high quality nutritious foods and witnessing how much better they feel about themselves when they start eating well, is probably my biggest passion in life. I also feel strongly that we are here to serve. In yoga, they call it "Bhakti Yoga"; living life from a place of selflessness. I feel that once we are ok for our own survival needs - food, water, shelter - then our responsiblity is to help those in our community meet their own survival needs. It's not to amass material possessions and elevate ourselves above others. So I feel like its important to do that, and important to be seen doing that, and set a different example than the Hollywood celebrities with their multiple homes and yachts and extravagant lifestyles. It upsets me deeply that theres so much unnecessary suffering in the world, when it should be a simple thing to make sure everyone has food and shelter. That's why I always say, women are the leaders of the future! Because it's our instinct to say, "Have you had a cup of tea? Have you got your coat on?" rather than, "Lets go to the moon! Lets invade that city!" So I love that Made in Hackney is taking that ethos literally. Doing their best to ensure that everyone in their community has access to good quality plant-based food, made with love. We are supporting them with superfood donations for the community kitchen and the cookery school, and I will be getting involved in various fund-raising activities throughout the year. On October 15th, I am dressing up as an avocado and joining them on their charity run. You can donate here https://localgiving.org/fundraising/MIH-Veg-Dash-Team-Sarahs/. If you want to support them further, you can also "Donate A Plate" here. Just £3 covers the cost of the salaried staff and any food and equipment that has not already been donated, to make one delicious vegan meal for a person in need. Kate
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Charity Partners - Made In Hackney
Made In Hackney's mission is to tackle health inequalities and food access, and bring communities together using the power of plants. They work across cultures and communities to ensure everyone can adopt a climate friendly, health-supporting, compassionate diet, and they do it all with joy and respect. Originally setting out to provide critical food education, giving people the skills to grow, cook and eat more plants, when the government restrictions of 2020 were brought in, and they found themselves unable to offer their usual classes, they pivoted to providing thousands of emergency plant-based meals for households across Hackney in need of food support. Today their in-house team of chefs and volunteers prepare over 1200 meals a week with input from the community meal service family on what dishes they’d like to see on the menu each week. The service is more than a meal. It’s care, it’s connection, it’s community. Learning to cook and eat more plants is one of the most impactful things you can do for the health of people and the planet. Their joyful, culturally diverse cookery classes support people to evolve to a plant-centred, planet friendly diet in an inclusive and enjoyable way with delicious, nutritious food at the centre of all we do. Having the confidence and skills to cook meals from scratch is a vital tool in tackling food poverty, child-hood obesity and lifestyle related diseases such as diabetes type 2 and cardiovascular disease. Their classes are available both in-person and online and they work with a range of community groups from young carers and young people in care, families, pensioners, people with long-term health challenges, hostel residents, people in recovery and other community groups. We support Made In Hackney with regular donations of super foods like Goji Berries, Shelled Hemp Seeds and Cacao Powder, so their community can receive the benefits of these wonderful foods. You too can get involved by supporting them with a donation next time you shop with us. Just £3 buys an organic plant-based meal for someone in need. Donate A Plate here! Learn more about Made In Hackney.
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Farmacy Giveaway!
Farmacy is our favourite restaurant in London. As well as being fully vegan and organic, they try wherever possible to source their fresh vegetables, herbs and flowers from their own biodynamic farm in Surrey. These are principles that are key to us here at Raw Living - not just eating plant-based, but organic and seasonal wherever possible. Fresh fruits and veggies should always be the mainstay of a healthy diet; all the lovely dried goods, pills and potions that we sell here are just the icing on the cake. So we are pleased to partner with Farmacy for a book giveaway. Go to @katemagic on Instagram for your chance to win two recipe books - the Farmacy book and Kate's newest book, The Magic Kitchen. Competition closes 22nd Aug 23. To celebrate the collaboration, Kate visited the Farmacy farm to learn more about biodynamic farming, and help harvest courgettes, cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes. Check out Kate's new book here. Visit Farmacy in Westbourne Grove for some of the best organic and vegan food in the UK!
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Visit To Islensk Hollusta
On a recent visit to Reykjavik, we were delighted to visit the Islensk Hollusta factory, and learn more about how they produce their amazing Icelandic teas, seaweeds and salts. They even took us to a part of the coast where they forage their dulse and sea truffle from. Here is the Arctic Thyme being dried. Arctic Thyme grows wild all over Iceland, and is distinguishable by its pretty purple flowers. It is a medicinal plant that has been consumed by Icelanders for thousands of years. You can make a tea from it or add a little to your savoury dishes. Here is the Seaweed Salt being mixed. They take Icelandic geothermal sea salt and mix it with ground kelp and dulse. Here we are picking dulse. It was cold and extremely windy! Dulse is one of my favourite foods, and it was wonderful to see where the dulse that I eat actually grows, and to learn more about the harvesting and production methods. Next time you enjoy some Icelandic seaweed or herbs, give a thought to the hardy souls who go out in extreme conditions to gather it for you! Shop Islensk Hollusta seaweeds, salts and herbs here.
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Visit To Clearspring
One beautiful sunny day in June, I cycled over to the Clearspring warehouse in West London, to learn more about the products and the business. Clearspring is a family-run company, founded by Christopher Dawson in 1993. They specialise in working with Japanese organic farmers to produce high quality traditional Japanese foods. Even in Japan, a lot of these products are difficult to find in organic form, and so many of the farmers that Clearspring work with are dependent on them for their business. Christopher was even recognised by the Japanese Government in 2007, one of the only non-Japanese people to receive the Award for Overseas Promotion of Japanese Food, for his distinguished contribution to the promotion of Japanese organic food worldwide. The team gave me an in-depth talk on miso and umeboshi production. Clearspring produce six types of unpasteurised miso, all working in conjunction with Japanese farmers who have been using traditional methods of miso production for many generations. These range from a sweet white miso (rice and soya), to dark hatcho miso (pure soyabeans). The darker the miso, the longer it is fermented. They also recently launched a Chickpea miso, which is an innovative soya-free miso. Although technically not a raw product, because it is made from cooked ingredients, unpasteurised miso is a living foods product, because due to the fermentation process, enzymatic activity is still occurring. I am a big fan of umeboshi, and found it fascinating to learn more about umeboshi production. Clearspring produce Ume Su vinegar, Umeboshi Paste, and Umeboshi Plums. Their umeboshi has been grown on a mountain farm in a region which is known for producing the best and fattest plums, and has been grown there for four generations. The plums are harvested once a year, in late June, and then pickled. The plums can be added as a garnish to dishes, used in a broth recipe, or you can even make tea out of them. They are super alkalising, and support the liver; a Japanese superfood! The paste is easier to use, and I love to spread it in nori sheets when I am making cauliflower sushi, or make a salad dressing with raw tahini. The vinegar is another easy way to get the benefits - use it as a salad dressing, or try adding it to sparkling water for a refreshing alkalizing beverage. It's a great alternative to apple cider vinegar, being equally good for the digestion. Because the ume plums are pickled in salt, no heat-treatment or pasteurisation is needed, and they are still in their raw state. I love to learn more about the food I eat, and through chatting with Chris and his team, I really got a greater sense of the dedication and care that goes into producing these foods. I probably use a Clearspring product every day, and I will appreciate even more now, how lucky we are to have access to these traditional Japanese ingredients in organic form. It's wonderful that in this era of mass-commodification, they are keeping these artisanal food preparation methods alive. Shop Clearspring products here, including sea vegetables, cold-pressed oils, Japanese seasonings, and teas, as well as miso and umeboshi.
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Inside The Living Libations Boutique in Venice Beach, Los Angeles
Ever dreamed of being able to smell and feel the entire Living Libations range in one place? It’s truly a feast for the senses! ✨ Living Libations products are unlike anything else on the market — in both potency and purity, they really do need to be experienced to be believed 🌿 At Raw Living, we stock over 100 Living Libations products — the widest range outside North America — and still, there are many treasures we don’t yet have! With so much choice, we know it can feel a little overwhelming to know where to begin 💫 Kate recently had the pleasure of visiting the Living Libations boutique store in Venice Beach, Los Angeles 🌞 She connected with store manager Freya and captured the experience to share with you. You’ll find a helpful video guide to creating an oral care routine 🦷, as well as another with a suggested skincare ritual 💧 — perfect starting points for building your own Libations ritual. Living Libations is an investment, yes — but one that pays off beautifully. When you take the time to create a routine that suits you, you’ll be rewarded with glistening skin, gleaming teeth, and the shining locks of your dreams 💖
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Fushi Factory Visit
I recently had the pleasure of visiting Fushi at their home in West London, to learn more about how they make their wonderful oils and herbal products. Fushi is founded by Rannesh Jansari and Ria Pattni, based on Ayurvedic recipes handed down by their grandparents. They source herbs direct from farmers and growers in India and beyond, and import them to their factory, where they grind up the fresh herbs and encaspulate them the same day to preserve freshness. Some of the herbs also go into barrels to be infused in oil that then make some of their award-winning formulations such as Really Good Hair Oil, or my personal favourite, the Muscle and Joints Oil. I saw the Shatavari being encapsulated, and learnt more about the different products that they create, and the amount of effort that goes into producing everything with the utmost care and integrity. Shop Fushi here.
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