Raw Food can be used to improve health. There are a variety of foods to choose from including nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, seaweed, sprouts and beans. You are probably eating raw food every day without thinking about it. It may just be a piece of fruit at breakfast or lunch. Maybe its a salad or hors d’oeuvres at a party.
Normally the vitamins and minerals in food are mostly cooked out. Enzymes in food begin to break down at just 106 degrees. When food is cooked at temperatures over 118 degrees 30 to 50 percent of vitamins are lost. If you are boiling your vegetables you are looking at an even greater vitamin and nutrient loss. Ideally, we would like to get all of our vitamins and minerals from our food but with cooking it just isn’t possible. In reality we need to take supplements to get all that we need. You just need less if your food isn’t cooked.
Food naturally has enzymes in them that actually help us digest the food we eat. When the food is cooked above 106 degrees the enzymes start to break down. Higher than 116 and they are gone completely. Your body has to do its best to break down the food and process it but not as effectively and it will not get all the vitamins available in the food.
One of the things we all hear regularly is that we need more fiber in our diets. A high fiber diet has been found to possibly help prevent diseases such as heart disease and cancer. Most food is overcooked and loses much of its fiber content. The fiber helps clean the intestinal tract which leads to more needed nutrients being absorbed into our bodies. This also helps increase immune system functioning.
As a diet it is superb for weight loss. It is a whole foods diet rich in grains, vegetables, fruits and beans. You may wish to go through a cleansing of the body first. In this way once the cleansing is done you will have less cravings for cooked, over processed, sugary foods. With this higher functioning digestive system and whole foods your metabolism also increases. You are actually able to eat quite a bit of food and still lose weight when eating food in its natural state.
Food that is raw leaves you feeling more energized. This is partly due to the fact that it can be digested significantly faster than cooked food. Many times after eating a meal that has been cooked you feel a little tired. Your body does not have to work as hard or as long to digest its food when it is raw. It is also in the intestinal track less time.
A raw food diet is for everyone. You may not be able to switch to it completely but you can have fresh fruit for breakfast. You can have a salad at lunch or add fresh fruit and vegetables to your lunch. Eat fruit for a snack. Be creative and add more and more to improve health.
We’ve got the exclusive inside skinny on raw food diets for greater health now in our comprehensive raw foods overview.