What is the Raw Food Diet?
Have you started hearing about the Raw Food Diet? It’s gaining popularity and buzz, not just as a diet to lose weight, but a diet for a long and healthy life. We eat so much in the way of processed food that we don’t even stop to think about what we’re putting into our bodies, and how far we’ve come nutritionally from our ancestral, agrarian roots.
A raw food diet means consuming food in its natural, unprocessed form. There are several common-sense rationales for why this is a good idea. Processing and cooking food can take so much of the basic nutritional value away. Think of some of the conventional wisdom you’ve heard about for years, such as: If you cook pasta just to the al dente (or medium) stage, it will have more calories, yes, but it will have more the nutritional value in it than if you cooked it to a well-done stage. Or you probably remember hearing not to peel carrots or potatoes too deeply, because most of the nutrients and values are just under the surface.
The raw food diet means eating
unprocessed, uncooked, organic, whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts,
seeds, legumes, dried fruits, seaweeds, etc. It means a diet that is at least
75% uncooked! Cooking takes out
flavor and nutrition from vegetables and fruits. A raw food diet means eating
more the way our ancient ancestors did. Our healthier,
more fit ancestors. They cooked very
little, and certainly didn’t cook or process fruits and vegetables. They ate
them RAW. Their water wasn’t from a tap; it was natural, spring water. Maybe
they drank some coconut milk on occasion.
Doesn’t it just make sense that this is how our bodies
were meant to eat? It’s a way of eating that’s in harmony with the planet and
in harmony with our own metabolisms. Our bodies were meant to work, and need to
work to be efficient. That means exercise, certainly, but it also means eating
natural, raw foods that require more energy to digest them.
source:wehealthyliving.com