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I firmly believe in mind over matter, one's power over the physical world. Nonetheless, as I haven't yet been able to attain and maintain excellent health without attention on the physical world, I have sought the answers to why illnesses occur, what it takes to be healthy, and how to prevent the 2-3 head and chest colds I used to have every year. Illness doesn't just happen. Its causes are not mysterious, they are distinctly cause-and-effect, and we can control that cause.

There are few decisions in life more personal than what we put into our bodies. One's diet is very personal and is a decision which should be made only by oneself. Information here is offered for your consideration; any decisions you make are solely yours.

The Perceived Validity of the World's Diet

It's no wonder we eat the way we do. Consider:

• Everyone eats much the same foods, most of them cooked.

• We have done so for thousands of years.

• Our parents fed us this way.

• Restaurant menus and markets are filled with the foods.

• We're told it's good for us by family, friends, doctors, the U.S. FDA, and the meat, dairy, poultry, and fish industries.

All these factors infer the way we eat as a world is correct, that it is as good for us as we can get. Further, it's just the way it is, and few people question it.

The Effects of the World's Diet

Despite how obviously correct the world's diet may seem, consider some plain facts:

• The animal kingdom doesn't suffer from the widespread ailments of humankind and its domesticated pets. Most ailments of the animal kingdom are caused by humans' damaging actions on the planet.

• When cooked food arrived, so did disease.

• When fire or extreme heat touches anything, it damages or destroys it: your home, your body, a piece of paper. Food is no different.

• Doctors have said for years that there's no reason a human body, given what it has at birth, shouldn't live for 150+ years. Yet, it doesn't, and even the doctors don't know why.

Where Does This Lead Us?

It leads us to find the right diet for humankind. But how? A look to nature directs us well here.

If we compare the digestive systems (from mouth to bowels) of natural vegetarians (herbivores, those eating plants only, like horses, cows, monkeys), carnivores (those eating meat only, like cats), and omnivores (those eating both plant matter and animals, like dogs), we find distinct correlations.

• The teeth and saliva makeup of Man matches that of herbivores. Have you ever noticed how similar a horse's teeth are to our own? We don't have sharp fangs to tear raw meat from bones, as do cats. We have grinding molars, like horses and cows, to effectively grind plant matter for digestion.

• The length of the bowels of Man again match that of herbivores. They're longer to extract nutrients from our food. The bowels of natural meat eaters are much shorter, to quickly pass the meat through the system without putrefying.

• Author Harvey Diamond made the point this way: "You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car."

All dairy products create excess mucus in the system and cause serious diseases. Besides, cow's milk would naturally be for baby cows, our mother's milk for us.

Grains prove best for only occasional use: "The average diet today consists of large amounts of animals (meat) and/or seeds (grains or rice), both of which are high in phosphorous and other acid-forming minerals. An overabundance of acid-forming minerals eventually causes an acid condition throughout the body, contributing to anxiety, edginess, irritability, and worry ... Cooked animals and seeds leave residues behind which are difficult for the body to metabolize and detoxify. ... Hybrid grains and legumes should be sprouted, never cooked, to lessen their detrimental effect; as long as they are raw, the body can draw nutrients from them and deal with them." (Nature's First Law: The Raw-Food Diet, Arlin, Dini, Wolfe)

The remaining sources of food, then, would be fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. These are often grouped as three food groups: fruits, vegetables, and fats. Fats include nuts, seeds, fatty fruits such as avocados, coconut, and oils. Note that these raw fats are healthy--not to be identified with harmful fats in the standard American diet such as cooked animal fats, cooked or pasteurized dairy products, and heated oils. David Wolfe, in The Sunfood Diet Success System, provides The Sunfood Triangle, a new take on such past food charts as the four food groups and the food pyramid.

One's dietary balance is represented by a dot in the triangle, with the general advice being to stay toward the middle, with a relatively equal balance between the three groups ("The Center Point" in the above graphic). Based on one's preference or physical needs, the balance can be varied.

Next, consider the factor of cooking. Some would say the advantages are the creation of textures and flavors we're used to, that we like. As it happens, that's where the advantages stop.

Raising foods to cooking temperatures cooks out most of their vitamins and minerals, and completely depletes them of their enzymes.

Enzymes -- what are these? Enzymes are the "workers" of the body. They're substances found in our body and in foods. All actions our bodies take--walking, talking, breathing, digesting, etc.--are done with enzymes. The pancreas and other organs excrete the enzymes the body needs, to a point.

Nature has fortuitously provided enzymes in foods, and these enzymes are the very ones used to digest them. When foods are cooked, however, no enzymes remain; they are all killed by the heat during cooking. But the body naturally strives to survive, so it finds its own enzymes to digest the foods.

That all seems fine, especially in a young body. You've probably noticed that young bodies can seemingly eat anything with no or few negative effects. The young pancreases are serving them well. But, over years of pulling enzymes from the body for digestion, we find that they've been pulled from other vital functions of the body. Cooked food ravages the body, and thusly we have aging as we know it.

Here lies the answer to most of our body problems: the consumption of non-natural and cooked foods reduces the body's capability to function normally and have a long life.

In Conclusion

It is a gargantuan shift of thought to consider the whole world would be better off with a greatly different diet, and would have been for millennia, but the facts present themselves. It's not the food in your life, it's the LIFE in your food.

Suggested Reading

My first hearing of the plant-based raw food diet was upon seeing a book: Nature's First Law: The Raw-Food Diet, by Stephen Arlin, Fouad Dini, and David Wolfe (1994, Maul Brothers Publishing). After reading about a dozen books on raw foods, I still hold this book as the most pointed and compelling. Declaring "Cooked food is poison," the authors provide powerful points of logic, one after another. It alone convinced me of the validity of the diet. While I don't personally agree with every sentence in the book, no matter. It is truth-filled, and its logic is difficult to refute. The book has since gone out of print, but copies can usually be found at out-of-print book sources, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and BookFinder.com.

David Wolfe followed with The Sunfood Diet Success System, a great book with a wealth of helpful information.

Many other books and articles further address this area. Here are several articles, all outstanding.

(A click on the external sites below will open a new browser window. Subsequent clicks from this page will refresh that new window.)

The first article and this later article are from Sunfood Nutrition's Web site.

The second article is from the now non-existent Roxanne's Restaurant Web site.

The third article is by Rhio, as found on the EatRaw Web site.

The fourth article is from the now non-existent Good Mood Food Web site.

The fifth article is from LivingNutz' Web site.

Questions or comments? Feel free to contact me: glenn@glennwarren.com