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Why Raw
Foods
by
Rhio (excerpt from her book, Hooked
on Raw)
Cooked
foods cannot create true health because they are missing some very vital
elements needed by the body for its optimal functioning—things like
enzymes, oxygen, hormones, phytochemicals, bio-electrical energy and
life-force. When foods are heated above 105° F they begin to lose all of
these. By 118° F, most food is dead. Yes, the vitamins, minerals,
carbohydrates, fats and proteins are still there, but in a greatly altered
state—not at all what nature provided.
Each cell of the body is like a tiny battery, and raw and living foods
supply the bio-electricity which charges these batteries. The
bio-electrical energy of raw food can be clearly seen in Kirlian
photographs of the food. This photographic process shows electrical
discharges that naturally emanate from all living things as luminescent,
aura-like flares surrounding the subject. The glow is bright and radiant
in raw foods, yet almost totally absent in Kirlian photographs of
comparable cooked foods.
To me, "life-force" means "the energy that is able to
create life." The sprouting ability of raw foods demonstrates the
presence of the life-force within them. All grains, legumes, beans and
seeds sprout. Nuts in the shell sprout. Potatoes sprout and create new
potato plants. (Do not eat potato sprouts as they are poisonous.) If you
stick the top part of a pineapple into water, it will sprout roots. Apple
seeds create apple trees. Avocado pits and mango pits sprout.
Now, take cooked versions of all the above, put them into soil and see if
a plant will grow. Cooked food rots, rather than sprouts, and a new plant
does not come forth. Through observation, you can easily demonstrate for
yourself what you are losing by eating cooked foods. A food that is cooked
cannot create life and cannot maintain the life-force energy in our
bodies.
Cooking food disrupts its molecular structure and kills all the enzymes
too. Enzymes are the indispensable catalysts which enable the body to
utilize vitamins and minerals. (Think of enzymes as the workmen and
vitamins and minerals as the bricks and mortar. Without the workmen, the
bricks and mortar don't get put into place.) Enzymes are extremely
heat-sensitive and thus do not survive in cooked foods. The vitamins and
phytochemicals also are injured, greatly diminished, and left in an
altered molecular state. The minerals are made less soluble. The fats have
turned from life enhancing cis fatty acids to trans fatty acids, which
create damaging free radicals in the body. Trans fatty acids also
interfere with respiration of the cells. The proteins (including vegetable
proteins), become denatured; they then coagulate (like the white of an
egg) and are very difficult to digest. Some researchers report that
unmetabolized protein particles in the bloodstream are a possible cause of
allergies.
When you eat cooked (enzymeless) foods, you put a heavy burden on your
body, which then has to produce the enzymes missing in the food. One of
the reasons you feel lethargic or sleepy after a cooked meal is because
the body is diverting its energy to replacing the enzymes that were not
supplied. By comparison, a raw food meal leaves you feeling light and full
of energy. You can judge this for yourself. Uncooked foods digest in 1/3
to 1/2 the time of cooked foods. The stress of creating and replacing
enzymes, meal after meal, day after day, year after year, greatly
contributes to accelerated aging.
Ingesting cooked food also causes the body to produce a surge of white
blood cells (leukocytosis). These cells normally defend against disease,
infection and injury to the body, but their production is a routine effect
of ingesting cooked foods (as if the body considers such food a threat or
danger). Because leukocytes carry a variety of enzymes, there is another
possible explanation for the increase in white blood cells. The leukocytes
may be delivering the missing enzymes so that digestion can proceed
unhindered. Leukocytosis does not occur when raw, unheated foods are
eaten. According to Viktoras Kulvinskas, "In any pathological
condition, including the intoxification of the digestive system with
cooked food or other toxic materials, these white cells increase from 5 or
6 thousand per cubic millimeter to 7, 8 or 9 thousand per cu. m.m."
Leukocytosis also occurs when additives, pesticides and chemically based
supplements are ingested. And, of course, producing these cells creates an
additional stress upon the body.
Raw foods are full of oxygen, especially green leafy vegetables which
contain an abundance of chlorophyll. The chemical structure of chlorophyll
is almost identical to the hemoglobin in our red blood cells. The only
difference is that the hemoglobin molecule has iron in its nucleus and the
chlorophyll molecule has magnesium. Chlorophyll detoxifies the bloodstream
and every other part of the body better than anything else you could eat.
When you eat raw green chlorophyll foods, you oxygenate the blood. The
bloodstream, through its capillary system, then delivers this oxygen to
every cell in your body. And when you eat greens in blended form, such as
in Dr. Ann’s Energy Soups (see Recipe Index), this process is even more
efficient.
Sprouted seeds contain vital elements which nourish our glands, nerves and
brain. The hormones needed by the body are created out of the natural fat
and other essential principles found in seeds. Think about how few seeds
are found in the average diet. The plant breeders are hybridizing most of
the seeds out of our foods. Now we can get seedless watermelons, seedless
grapes, seedless citrus, and the list goes on. Even if we did find a seed,
most of us don't understand the value of eating it and thus, it would be
discarded.
When you eat cooked starch, the body absorbs more than it needs. Getting
rid of the excess starch then becomes another burden to the body. Those
who favor cooked foods often make the point that since the body cannot
absorb raw starch, this is a sign the food should be cooked. Another way
to look at it, however, is that the body absorbs just enough of the raw
starch for its needs and then passes out the rest. (When pig farmers feed
their pigs raw potatoes, the pigs stay slender. Since farmers sell their
pigs by the pound, they have learned to feed them cooked potatoes, which
fattens them up.)
Cellulose—the woody, fibrous part of food—was previously believed to
be unnecessary to the body. Because the body did not absorb it, it wasn't
deemed important. Now we know that this fiber is what keeps things moving
through our body so that we don't become constipated. Nature is vindicated
again! I believe, in addition, that raw fiber has the ability to act as a
broom which sweeps the intestinal tract and keeps it clean. Cooked fiber
has lost the ability to do this for us. Enemas and colonics serve their
purpose, but they are a poor substitute for what nature, by putting (raw)
fiber into foods, has provided.
Raw and live foods nourish and improve the body's inner environment. Raw
and live foods enable the body to dislodge and expel accumulated wastes. A
member of my family had a tiny sliver of metal lodged in his hand as a
result of an accident. For two years he tried to get it out by squeezing,
pushing, and probing with sterilized needles, etc., but it wouldn't budge.
He went to the Optimum Health Institute (to learn about live foods) for a
week and, when he returned home, decided he would continue on raw foods.
Four weeks later, a bubble formed on his hand and inside the bubble was
the sliver of metal. This is an example of what raw and live foods do. If
something is not supposed to be in your body, it will be expelled.
Eating cooked food prevents the immune system from working on what is
really important in keeping us superbly healthy and young in body, mind
and soul. We exhaust and dissipate the body's strength by using the immune
system to combat the unnatural cooked foods, chemically based supplements,
pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones (in meats, poultry, fish and
dairy) and numerous other toxins we ingest, breathe in or absorb through
our skin. When we really need the immune system to support us (as when a
disease or infection develops or an injury occurs), it then lacks the
strength to defend us properly.
Eating healthy means giving your body power foods it can easily assimilate
and use for regeneration and rejuvenation. Life comes from life. So the
more foods you eat which are organic and straight from nature's raw
garden, the better you are going to feel.
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Source:
http://www.eatraw.com/whyrawfoods.asp |
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