Fwd: Rationale for Eating Raw Foods

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone,

This is a cross post from Harmonious Living. Comments?

Misty

http://www..com

 

Rationale for Eating Raw Foods

 

People have asked me to explain why I do not cook the food I eat, and they want

me to be scientific ... so here is my response, once and for all...

 

Eating raw food is natural. Its the way animals eat, and the way human beings

evolved. Man only started to eat cooked foods relatively recently, and at that

time, it was possibly an essential survival adaptation. It was during the ice

age. It enabled man to live in areas that otherwise would not have had a

sufficient food source. This weather, and also the competition from other

animals might have been fatal for the species. But the last of the ice age has

been over, for more than 10 thousand years; and man still acts like he has to

burn what he eats. But we really don't have to anymore. We don't have to

compromise our life anymore. And this story is about how cooked food

compromises our health.

 

I offer 4 points to illustrate this:

 

1. By cooking the food, we change the way the food tastes. We even TRY to change

the way the food tastes. But our perception of the tastes and smells of food are

the instinctive tools that have enabled animals and man to know

exactly what to eat. Raw food, in its natural and unmixed state, is good for

you; when it tastes good. And it is not good for you when it doesn't taste good.

Animals know just what to eat without having to consult the department of

agriculture's minimum daily requirements and books of chemical compositions of

all the foods. They eat what they want. They eat what tastes good.

 

But we have come to regard our taste buds as the enemy. Ever hear the

expression, " It tastes so good it should be illegal? " We have come to distrust

our sense of taste as we accept the fact that foods that taste good are

fattening and unhealthy. But this is only true when we cook the food. Raw food

that tastes good is healthy. When we have eaten enough of a raw food, we know it

because it no longer tastes good. Raw food undergoes a taste change phenomena

when we no longer need it. The same food that tasted so good on the last bite

may now taste bad. And we will no longer want to eat that food.

 

Cooking the food also stops the ability of food to trigger the taste change

sensation in animals. When eating cooked food, the mechanism we use to know when

we have had enough,

is a full feeling in the belly. We basically stuff ourselves until we cannot fit

any more in. That full feeling is really a feeling that I have come to

understand as a sick feeling. Just as the hunger pains of a cooked food eater

are not a natural hunger either, but a withdrawal from cooked foods. The average

feelings of hunger and satiation of a cooked food eater and a raw food

eater are as different as sick and healthy.

 

2. Not only does cooking the food prevent us from know what to eat, the food we

eat that has been cooked, can not be properly digested, and we suffer for that.

 

 

Let me start by going over my understanding of the way food is digested. This is

how normal digestion happens: We chew our food and the saliva mixes with the

food and starts to break down the starches into more simple sugars. The food

travels down the esophagus into the top of the stomach. It stays in the top of

the stomach for a while before it gets mixed with enzymes in the stomach that

will break down proteins into the amino acids that the proteins are made of.

This is done in a highly acidic environment with chlorine. The stomach wall

is protected against this acidic environment (and protein digesting enzymes)

through a mucous layer which consists of a chemical combination of proteins and

starches.

 

While the food is waiting in the top of the stomach, it continues

being digested. The Ptyalin in the saliva, which is breaking down the starches

into sugars, is not the only chemical activity taking place. The food also comes

with enzymes. Plants and animals have enzymes thoughout all of its cells and

parts, and when we chew the food, the enzymes are there. And usually the exact

enzymes needed to break down the food. By the time the food enters the acid

environment of the middle part of the stomach, a lot of the starches, proteins

and fats have started on their way toward digestion. In the middle part of the

stomach, Pepsin and Typsin continue to break down the proteins into amino acids.

Later the food continues into the intestines.

 

As the food enters the intestines through the first part called the Duodenum,

the food is judged for its need for enzymes. It must be determined: what must be

infused into the intestines to complete the digestive process for this food.

Bile from the

gall bladder, which is partially made from the remains of dead red blood cells

serve as an emulsifying agent to provide a medium, base and mechanism for the

enzymes to digest the food. The pancreas will send in more enzymes as needed

to digest the remaining starch, proteins and especially lipids(fats), because

most of the lipid catabolism takes place here.

 

At this point, if the food was cooked, then the enzymes were rendered inactive,

and the predigestion in the first part of the stomach was minimal except for

what the saliva did, and by

this time, the fats have not even started to be digested. So the pancreas will

be hard pressed to supply all the needed enzymes. It couldn't possible make all

the enzymes there in the pancreas, so it leeches enzymes from all over the body,

to satisfy the demands of the digestive system. And this is how the pancreas

gets the enzymes:

 

White blood cells travel throughout the body in the circulatory systems of the

blood and the lymph. They digest particles and live bacteria with enzymes that

breakdown the different molecules of life like proteins, fats and carbohydrates.

The same enzymes that are used to digest food in the digestive

system are the same enzymes that are used to breakdown cells that can't be

repaired, as well as the bacteria deemed foreign matter. White blood cells also

function to transport enzymes around the body, since they have such large

storage. Sometimes, an area of the body needs extra enzymes to break down cells

that can't be repaired. Usually though, precedence is taken by the demands of

the digestive system. If the digestive system needs enzymes, other parts of the

body may have to wait till much later to process the dead cells and wastes.

 

Eating cooked food demands more enzymes; enzymes that could be used as needed

all over the body. When the body cannot break down a cell that is not healthy

and cannot be repaired, it must guard the rest of the healthy body against

what has become a toxic threat. So it quarantines the area. As the backlog

builds, it moves the toxic parts into one area. After a while, this area may be

observed as a tumor. Is it a common misconception to think of cancer as a

disease, Because it is really the other way around. If the body wasn't able to

segregate the toxic mass in such an efficient manner, the person would have died

long ago. Cancer is really a life saving and prolonging survival mechanism.

 

Cancer may also seem to be caused as a direct result of sun exposure, because

the sun will tend to damage cells and further add to the backlog. But this

backlog would not be a problem if the enzymes were free to do their work. There

are enzymes that continually traverse the DNA to check for abnormalities and

mutations. When such a situation is observed, the cell is marked for repair, and

enzymes are employed to correct the inconsistency. If the cell cannot be

repaired, it is marked for re-assimilation; where enzymes are needed to

catabolize and digest it, breaking it down into its fundamental molecules, which

may serve as building blocks and energy in other areas of the body.

 

(I will expound on this. People notice that exposure to the sun can damage the

skin and rest of the body. That may be true, but the sun is one of the most

vital and fundamental nutrients that feed life. Along with air, and water, and

soil, the sun completes the essential resource of life generating energy. It

can appear that the sun may damage the body. The ultraviolet rays of the sun may

mutate a strand of DNA within a chromosome in a random cell. However animals

usually have natural protection and healing for such occurrences.

 

 

To recap, the first point I made was that the instinctive desires of animals for

good tasting food are thwarted by cooking it. The second point up till how been

to show how essential the enzymes in the food are to digestion and what happens

if they are not there. (Cooked food does not have these enzymes, and

the body tries to compensate by compromising its healing powers.) But cooking

the food does more than just immobilize the enzymes, which bring us to the third

point.

 

3. Cooking food creates new substances that ordinarily are not found in nature.

To illustrate how enormous this problem can be, thing of a simple controlled

chemical reaction. Take a flask or beaker with a solvent like water and add two

different solutions of molecules. They can be many different byproducts

synthesized by using relatively simple ingredients. But food is composed of a

very wide variety of different types of molecules and the number of different

byproducts produced in such a process will enormous. Many of these new

substances are not broken down or filtered out in the digestive process, a

process which evolved before these substances ever showed their presence on

earth. And the body reacts to these particles as it would any other foreign

body. White blood cells are dispatched to digest and process this strange

intruder. Further taxing the body's resource of white blood cells and enzymes.

After a cooked food meal, elevated white cell activity can be observed, and many

times a measurable increase in body temperature.

 

4. The fourth point I saved for last because there is no scientific rational

that I can propose for this hypothesis. I maintain that plants are alive. And

when we eat them, we assimilate their life. And furthermore, that cooking the

plant kills the plant and the life force in it. There is more in the food we eat

than just the nutrients that can be chemically elucidated. Just as there

is life in the water that we drink and swim in, which is missing when it is

distilled. Just as there is essential life that we absorb from the air we

breath, in addition to the essential oxygen. There is more essential life in the

food we eat, than what can be reassembled from the scientifically analyzed

nutrient components.

 

In the final analysis, I may be wrong with everything I have said. Every

scientific fact and rational may be inaccurate, misconstrued, and unfaithfully

manipulated. I will admit to that possibility. I only enumerated them because I

have been asked. There is one truth that I know. It is so fundamental that I

don't have to believe it, I see it as clearly as ... well just real clearly, OK?

And this is it: I have tried it, I have eaten raw food for years. I know how I

feel, and I remember how I felt. The difference is more than sick or healthy.

And it can't possibly be described to someone who hasn't tried it. It is harder

than describing the psychodelic experience to someone who hasn't

experienced it. It is the difference between a schematic drawing and a color

picture and a 3d-model and a live person. It is a quantum leap in health and

awareness. It answers questions than run the gamut from, " What is the meaning of

life? " to " Should I make a right turn here? " My next article really

should elaborate on this. That would be nice. It would also be nice to end this

article right here.

 

 

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