Why The Raw Food?
Because cooking takes so many nutrients and vitamins OUT of food, you automatically start feeding your body what it needs when you stop cooking food and start eating uncooked, nutrient-rich foods. A raw carrot has exponentially more nutrition than a cooked carrot.

Cooking also alters the chemistry of foods, often making them harder to digest. Why do we have so many digestive problems in this country? Because we're putting foods into our bodies in a form that we weren't designed to absorb. High fibre, high water content fresh produce abolishes constipation of the bowels, cells and circulatory system. Obstructions are cleared and blood flow increases to each and every cell in the body. Enhanced blood flow is significant for two reasons: as mentioned above, blood delivers nutrients and oxygen to living cells, and carries away their toxic metabolites.

Obesity is endemic in this country. The diet industry is more profitable than the oil companies. Why? Because the way we eat and prepare our food practically guarantees that we'll overeat. Psychologists tell us that we overeat because our souls are hungry. But in reality, our bodies are hungry, even though we may feel full. When you start giving your body the nutrients it craves, overeating will cease.

Eating raw foods is a boost to your metabolism as well. It takes a little more energy to digest raw foods, but it's a healthy process. Rather than spending energy to rid itself of toxins produced by cooking food, the body uses its energy to feed every cell, sending vitamins, fluids, enzymes and oxygen to make your body the efficient machine it was intended to be.

You'll naturally stop overeating, because your body and brain will no longer be starving for the nutrients they need. A starving brain will trigger the thoughts that make you overeat. The brain and the rest of your body don't need quantity; they need quality.

 Have you started hearing about the Raw Food Diet? It's gaining popularity and buzz, not just as a diet to lose weight, but a diet for a long and healthy life. We eat so much in the way of processed food that we don't even stop to think about what we're putting into our bodies, and how far we've come nutritionally from our ancestral, agrarian roots.

A raw food diet means consuming food in its natural, unprocessed form. There are several common-sense rationales for why this is a good idea. Processing and cooking food can take so much of the basic nutritional value away. Think of some of the conventional wisdom you've heard about for years, such as: If you cook pasta just to the al dente (or medium) stage, it will have more calories, yes, but it will have more the nutritional value in it than if you cooked it to a well-done stage. Or you probably remember hearing not to peel carrots or potatoes too deeply, because most of the nutrients and values are just under the surface.

The raw food diet means eating unprocessed, uncooked, organic, whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, dried fruits, seaweeds, etc. It means a diet that is at least 75% uncooked! Cooking takes out flavour and nutrition from vegetables and fruits. A raw food diet means eating more the way our ancient ancestors did. Our healthier, more fit ancestors. They cooked very little, and certainly didn't cook or process fruits and vegetables. They ate them RAW. Their water wasn't from a tap; it was natural, spring water. Maybe they drank some coconut milk on occasion.

Doesn't it just make sense that this is how our bodies were meant to eat? It's a way of eating that's in harmony with the planet and in harmony with our own metabolisms. Our bodies were meant to work, and need to work to be efficient. That means exercise, certainly, but it also means eating natural, raw foods that require more energy to digest them.

Interesting facts:

Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Cancer Society, and the American Institute for Cancer Research, Campbell and others have spent the last twenty years studying cancer and nutrition. This is what they found: 
Protein creates the conditions for the germination of the cancer seeds by increasing enzyme activity that allows carcinogens to bind to and mutate DNA. Campbell and his associates found that low protein diets protected against cancer growth by allowing fewer carcinogens into cells. Furthermore, low protein diets actually reduced tumors. Cell clusters that are precursors to tumor development, called foci, are entirely dependent upon protein to grow. Even the consumption of carcinogens did not result in tumors unless there was sufficient protein. In their tests with rats, carcinogenic foci did not develop until protein levels reached 10 percent. Above that level tumor development took off. Below that level not one rat developed cancer. Further studies showed that not all proteins had the same effect on cancerous cells. Plant protein, even at high levels, did not promote growth. Protein from cow's milk, however, was the worst. Why have we not heard of this until now? I would suspect that the cattle and dairy lobbyists are doing their job. 
Fats and Cancer 
We consume more than 35 percent of our calories from fat. Scientists have been saying that this is too much. But they haven't pushed to go much below the 30 percent figure. It is also interesting that the Chinese in the study, consuming a plant-based diet, were ingesting more calories per pound of body weight than us- and they are slimmer. Why? Because a plant-based diet allows the body to burn calories as body heat instead of storing them as body fat as do the calories from an animal-based diet from plants provide more energy fuel than a more heavy and fatty food animals. It is no wonder that when you read about people turning to a more live food way of eating they proclaim they have so much more energy, need less sleep, have fewer aches and pains-the human body likes the lightness of a plant-based diet.  

 

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