Au Naturel.

L.A. is getting a taste of the raw foods craze where celebrities and regular food buffs alike pledge their palates to the uncooked meal--crunchy concoctions untouched by boiling, broiling or frying

DON'T be thrown by Lesa Carlson's unofficial designation as L.A.'s "Raw Witch." She's just peddling uncooked fruits, vegetable and sprouted legumes -- the stuff that devotees will munch down by the plateful (usually under some new age guise), and skeptics will simply label as rabbit food.

Carlson is also looking for converts -- not just hippies, crash dieters and Zen seekers, but, well, you and me.

Raw food is going mainstream. At least in Los Angeles.

"You have to taste some of this stuff," says Los Angeles jewelry designer Anita Reichenberg, who spoke of her favorite breakfast dish: green coconuts from Thailand. "Chop off the top, put a straw in, drink the milk and eat the meat."

Carlson extols the nutritional benefits of going raw: "Raw foods offer stamina, strength, longevity -- the fountain of youth," she says. But her brand of raw food eating, she insists, is all about sensory indulgence, not sacrifice and mystical vibrations. Like a growing number of chefs embracing raw foods, Carlson uses words like "decadent," "rich," "creamy" and "beautiful" to describe her creations.

"It isn't just sprouts," she says. After all, the dessert that she fed Woody Harrelson, Alicia Silverstone, Herb Alpert and other glitterati at a summer dinner in Hollywood was a carob mint strawberry cake that stood eight inches tall. The "cake" of raw almonds and walnuts was layered with a macadamia nut frosting and doused with carob fudge.

Nothing rabbit-like about that. She also made a marinara sauce from sun-dried tomatoes, fresh garlic and onions, which were blended to a thick sauce.

"It's all about how you manipulate the food," says Carlson, whose primary tools are a food processor, a dehydrator, a juicer and a high-powered blender.

Carlson, who also is a jazz singer and actress, was raised a vegetarian and started experimenting with the raw foods culinary techniques about 10 years ago. As a private chef, she has been preparing raw foods dinners for private parties at various homes for a year and a half.

"It's pretty much full time. It takes me about a week to prepare a meal," she says.

Energized enzymes

The basic argument cited by raw foodists is that heating, foods above 118 degrees kills enzymes that aid in digestion. The body must work to replace those enzymes to digest cooked foods, the thinking goes, and that process takes energy away from natural healing and cleansing processes.

"Once you start eating raw food, you have so much energy," says Reichenberg, who regularly ate gourmet meals, red meat included, before "going raw" about a year and a half ago. "You get more in communication with your body. You're not numbed out."

Not everybody is signed on to this, mind you. Robert Girandola, an associate professor of kinesthiology at USC who specializes in nutrition, says most plant or animal enzymes will be broken down in the stomach into free amino acids, whether cooked or raw. Also, there is no data to suggest that the kind of enzymes in raw foods are the kind that are needed to digest the foods.

Nutritionists, in fact, warn about some potential dangers of a hard core raw food diet, which can be extremely high in fiber. A fiber overload could impede nutrient absorption and dilute the calorie concentration of foods. Another health concern is that, like meats, raw foods can be a breeding ground for dangerous bacteria.

Still, it's generally agreed that cooking can destroy the natural composition of food. Vitamins can be altered and destroyed, proteins can be scrambled and enzymes can be torn to pieces.

"There are certain foods that you benefit from by eating them raw, like vegetables and, obviously, fruits," Girandola says. "We do know that when you add heat, light, temperature and sometimes water you lose some of the nutrients in foods. Boiling vegetables, for example, is one of the worst things you can do."

Grill it, kill it

To a raw foodist, it goes beyond boiling. In their view, if you grill it, sautee it or roast it, you kill it.

Most raw foodists are vegans, so they shun animal products. Fruits and vegetables form the basis of the diet, with raw seeds and nuts, especially the sprouted kind, often included. Wine is acceptable, but beer, which is brewed through a heating process, is not.

Traditional foodies like David Bindley, associate editor of L.A.-based Bon Appetit magazine, scoff at the strictness of the raw food diet.

"When most people go out to restaurants, they don't like the idea of ordering a plate of raw vegetables," he says. "They're looking for something extra special."

Awareness of raw food diets has grown, Brindley notes, but "Angelenos love to jump on a bandwagon and then fall off pretty quickly. If chefs can be creative and incorporate raw foods into elaborately made dishes, then that's a different story."

In the past two years, several books have been published on the subject. There's "The Raw Gourmet" by Nomi Shannon, "Raw: The Uncook Book" by Juliano and "The Raw Truth: The Art of Loving Foods" by Jeremy Safron.

Safron, who runs a raw foods restaurant in Maui, Hawaii, teaches in L.A. and has consulted with area restaurants such as Real Food Daily.

"Raw foods have definitely moved into a more artistic place, well beyond the health benefits approach," Safron says. 'It's appealing to chefs, because working with nature in its original form is a challenge and an opportunity for them to express themselves in new ways."