Kate Magic hasn’t had a hot meal in more than two decades.

Since discovering the raw food diet back in the 1990s – and becoming its most prominent champion – the mother-of-three from Brighton has only used her cooker for storage.

When we speak, she’s just eaten a late lunch of courgette noodles with hemp “feta” and basil. She assures me it was delicious.

The raw food diet, which precludes the cooking of food on the grounds that it kills off “life force” enzymes and causes a low-grade immune response, doesn’t always get a good press. Guardian food critic Jay Rayner described it as “like seeing in black and white, or hearing without any bass tones” and pegged its devotees as “swivel-eyed enemies of all that is edible”.

Claims about its benefits – some devotees credit it with curing everything from arthritis to cancer – have frequently been dismissed as spurious if not dangerous.

Yet for Magic, as for many others, the proof is in the pudding (most likely a fruit salad).

After years of experiencing what she describes as a rocky relationship with her weight, the raw food diet helped get her on an even keel. She believes she is happier and has more energy. “It’s a diet you have to experience to believe,” she writes in the foreword to Eat Smart, Eat Raw, the UK’s definitive raw food recipe book.

“I believe it’s testament to its efficacy that so many people choose to explore [the raw food diet] and then to stick with it, when there is so little understanding of why it really works.”

Writing Eat Smart – recently reissued to mark its tenth anniversary – launched Magic’s career. She has gone on to write two additional books and launch her own business (Raw Living, which sells Europe’s biggest range of raw foods) as well as hosting raw food classes and seminars around the world.

Even more impressively, the 43-year-old has managed to bring up three boys on a (mostly) raw diet.

“It was a big learning curve,” she admits. “I had all these big plans but kids have their own personalities and ideas and won’t automatically do what you say. I’ve tried to educate their tastebuds but my eldest is 16 now so who knows what he gets up to!”

While Magic maintains a 100% raw diet, she doesn’t claim it would be suitable or practical for everyone.

“We live in a world where we are constantly coming into contact with cooked foods and to refuse them continually is both challenging and awkward.

I believe it is as important to have a healthy mind as it is to have a healthy body, and the constant denial of other foods can be more harmful than the foods themselves.”

But even making 50% of your diet raw brings benefits, she says. “Try eating a side serving of raw food with every meal at first.

When you have got used to this, gradually increase the size of the raw portion to the cooked portion, until you have reached a level you feel comfortable with.”

The recipes in Eat Smart aim to show that raw food isn’t limited to salad and fruit slices. If you’re keen to eat raw and are willing to put in the time, it’s possible to eat everything from soup to carrot cake (or at least approximations of them) on the diet.

One of the book’s most popular dishes is a Thai yellow curry made with kelp noodles, turmeric, mushrooms and spinach, while Magic recommends her fruit tart, which incorporates an almond “pastry”

and banana and tahini “cream filling”, to impress raw food sceptics.

But I have to admit to remaining unconvinced. It sounds very timeconsuming and slightly depressing to forgo the pleasures of a fresh loaf of bread or a rich stew.

“Just try raw chocolate,” laughs Magic. “That’s the way raw food first gets people. It’s so good you can’t help wondering what other raw foods taste like.”

I think I’ll just have to trust her on that one.

l Eat Smart, Eat Raw is out now, published by Grubstreet, priced £14.99