If
you’ve been reading about nutrition and health,
you’ve probably heard of the raw food diet and wondered just
what that was. When I first heard about it, I pictured uncooked meat
and seafood, but there isn’t really what it is about.
When people talk about “raw food”, they simply are
talking about food that is eaten in it’s natural unprocessed
form. In fact, you eat raw food every day - or at least you should - in
the form of uncooked fruits and vegetables.
Why A Raw Food Diet Is Important
In this day and age, we eat a lot of processed foods - foods that come
packaged in a grocery store already premade. These foods are
convenient, but the problem is that processing foods takes away a lot
of the nutritional value. Even cooking fruits and vegetables can leach
out a lot of the vitamins, not to mention kill off the vital enzymes
that have an important role in your health.
A raw food diet, is typically considered a diet where at least 75% of
the food is uncooked. This means eating organic whole foods such as
fruits, vegetables, seaweeds, raw nuts, sprouts in their
natural uncooked form.
When you think about it, doesn't this make sense for your body?
It's
more like eating the way our ancestors did before they could go to the
grocery store and buy Twinkies and Hamburger Helper. It's a more
healthier way of eating, and one our bodies are more adapted to.
It’s also a way of eating that is in harmony with nature and
our own metabolism. I think you will agree, even if you go to a 50% raw
diet, that your food is much more easily digested leaving you more
energy for the fun stuff in life.
A Word About Enzymes
There is a compound in food that you really don't hear a lot about and
that is enzymes. You probably don't hear your doctor talk too much
about getting enough enzymes when he's telling you to get enough
vitamins and minerals, do you? But enzymes are vital to your health.
They aid the digestion process which is a process that takes up a lot
of your energy. The more foods you eat that a full enzymes, the easier
they are to digest and the more energy you will have.
Both living and raw foods contain these enzymes, however they are
destroyed during the cooking process or when they are heated above 116
degrees Fahrenheight. This is one of the major benefits of a raw food
diet, because foods are eaten uncooked or cooked any dehydrator at a
very low temperature and retain most of their enzymes.
Whole and living foods should be a big part of your diet because these
enzymes can really boost your health - they probably even have more
benefits than we know about today and I’m sure future
research will reveal how important they really are.
How Raw Should You Go?
If you want to experience the benefits of a raw food diet, but don't
think you can go to 75% raw foods that's not a problem. This is not an
all or nothing way of eating, the more raw foods you have in your diet
the healthier you will be in the better you will feel.
There are several ways to prepare these raw foods. One popular method
is juicing
and you want to get a good juicer in order to receive all the benefits
from the foods you juice. Another method is sprouting seeds, and the
third is dehydrating foods in a food dehydrator which cooks them at a
very low temperature so that the food enzymes are not destroyed.
You can start adding more raw foods to your diet little by little until
you've reached the level of raw foods that you want to consume. Start
by replacing some of your snacks with fruit or vegetables. You can use
a food dehydrator, to dehydrate apple slices, pineapple slices, banana
slices and whatever you want and this way you won't have to worry about
storage because this dehydrated food will last quite a while. If you
love to eat chips, tried dehydrating some thin slices of zucchini and
eating those instead.
Every step you take closer to eating a raw food diet will be a step
closer to better health!
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