Living Food And Your Feel Great Journey

There are lots of websites out there that tell you the percentage of protein and carbs to eat. What vitamins you need. What herbs help with what ailment. But I am not going there. I do not believe that life and food can be reduced to a combination of vitamins, minerals and food additives. I think there is more to it, and less.

At the most basic level, living food produces life (and health). Food that has not been altered with chemicals, genetically modified, bombarded with radiation or cooked contains all the nutrients we need in the right proportion. Look at the picture of the living food. Notice the bright colors and fresh looking produce. Then compare that with a picture of a brown bland looking steak and beige potatoes. Have you ever noticed that when food has garnish on the side it is often a brightly colored vegetable or fruit?

When we eat living foods, our bodies know how much we need. So we don't have to restrict our food intake and go hungry by dieting. It's that simple! There is no reading labels, no counting calories, no watching our food intake. There is only eating an assortment of food and enjoying it until we feel full, at which time we stop eating because we want to stop. Not because we have reached some arbitrary limit set by someone that doesn't know us or our bodies.

Now, before you take my word for it, do your own research. Don't reject new ideas just because they sound radical. Research what is behind the ideas and the people that are presenting them. Then decide for yourself.

I also want to make something very clear here. I am not an advocate of 'New Age' ideas that integrate spiritual mysticism along with the way I eat. I think eastern mysticism is dangerous and should be separated from what I am talking about here. As you do your own research, you will probably run into a lot of mysticism under the guise of 'holistic' that you may or may not agree with. It seems like a lot of people are into eating living food for mystical reasons. I am in it for the health benefits and I think a separation can, and should, be made. Don't let the mixing of eastern mysticism with healthy eating keep you from researching and learning. My philosophy: Keep an mind, but not so much that your brains fall out.

I want to ask you something. What do you have to lose by trying a raw food diet? If it doesn't work and you don't feel better, the cooked food will still be there later. But what if it does work? Before going any further, watch this video. They mention some things that you will find on other pages here.

What do I mean by 'living food'? Living food is food that has not been heated above 108^oF. At this temperature, the active enzymes in the food are destroyed. The active enzymes are what your body needs to process and assimilate the nutrients in the food. They also help with digestion and elimination. If you destroy the enzymes in the food, your body must use it's own reserves of enzymes to process the food, thus depleting your body of it's own enzymes.

Now, there is a lot of debate out there about enzymes. Some people say that the enzymes in your body are different than the enzymes in the food, so this is not really an issue. However, as I mention later, I think this is wrong. There is too much evidence that shows that raw food is much better for you than cooked.

Then, some people say that once you have depleted the enzymes in your body, they are gone for good, they can't be replaced. Other people say that eating enzyme-rich food can replenish your body's enzymes. I haven't decided where I stand on this one. I think you can feel better when you eat enzyme rich raw food. Whether your body can produce new enzymes or not is not something that really makes much difference to how I will eat. I still think that eating raw food is more healthy than eating cooked food.

Some people say that more than 85% of our diets are cooked food. Why do we eat so much cooked food? For me, it is habit. Look at the advertisements on television. Everything is cooked. An occasional salad dressing ad might have some salad with a few vegetables but even the salad dressing is cooked and processed. And, you know what? I don't really like salads!

Another reason we cook so much of our food is to kill germs and bacteria that would make us sick. This is a very good reason for cooking food. Pasteurization of milk is done to kill parasites and harmful bacteria. So, in many ways, cooking food protects us. But what if we are cooking food that we are not supposed to be eating anyway? And then cooking the good food too which kills all the good enzymes?

I have one more thing for you to think about when comparing raw food to cooked food. Here are two websites that have stories about animal reactions to cooked food. The first page is about Pottenger's Cats. I think this is a very interesting article. The second is called Health Benefits of Eating Raw Food. If you scroll down about halfway to a section called Psychological and emotional ill-effects of cooked food, you will find another story related by Dr. Ann Wigmore. If you haven't run across her before, Dr. Wigmore was one of the first raw food advocates years ago. Her name is everywhere when it comes to raw food and wheatgrass. (No, she didn't die of malnutrition. From what I understand, she died of smoke inhalation in a fire.)

I read a lot about living food before I decided to integrate it into my diet. Here is the website that finally convinced me. Even if you are not diabetic, I highly recommend that you get the video.

I know I am asking a lot of you right now. So, I just want to add that how you make this change (should you choose to) is just as important as what you change.

One of the best ways to get living food is to grow your own. Not only will you get locally grown living food that you where it came from but you will also get some exercise, fresh air and sunlight. Gardening.ie has lots of organic gardening tips and advice to keep you in good shape.

Changing What We Eat
What I am about to say, you have probably heard before. Besides cooked food we need to remove the following from our diets (by replacing them with healthy food).
- sugar and sugar substitutes
- high-fructose corn syrup
- corn
- genetically modified food
- mono-sodium glutamate (MSG)
- wheat (include bread and flour)
- pork
- carbonated drinks
- dairy and processed food

Here is what we need to get in our diets.
- fruit
- vegetables
- fiber
- green and vivid color foods including wheatgrass
- water

The keys to the last list are fruit and vegetables. One fruit that is really important is pomegranate. I will expand on this fruit more in the near future. But for now, this website has some great information about the health benefits of pomegranate juice and can get you started.

One great (and easy) way to get vegetables in your diet is by juicing. I subscribe to some juicing newsletters and I am always looking for new ways to integrate vegetables into my diet. Here is a great site for juicing: Juicer Reviews and Recipes which offers unbiased reviews on the top juicers available today, plus simple and easy juicing recipes to help get you started.

Notice that, other than pork, I don't say anything about beef and poultry. I still eat some beef and poultry and I am not comfortable eating those raw, mostly because of the potential of disease. That is up to you (which everything here is).

Also, I said above that I don't like salad. I eat salads sometimes anyway but mostly I eat smoothies as my raw food. Here is a great website that has tons of ideas. And when I am eating my raw foods, I eat as much as I want. That is another level of encouragement I give myself. I do limit my cooked food intake but not my raw food intake.

Okay, the next page discusses a few other issues like supplements and has a few other fuel related links.