RAW FOOD, EXPLAINED

“to process or not to process, that is the question”

Many have tried to create a new food product and keeping it as natural as possible in the process, but one thing is for sure, once you start processing those food, you’re already destroying the natural ingredients they possess. Science now proves that cooking not only destroys nutrition and enzymes but chemically changes foods from the substances needed for health into acid-forming toxins, free-radicals and poisons that destroy our health!

Raw strawberry fruit tart

However that doesn’t necessarily means we should stop cooking meals to consume. Sure, festivities, parties, gatherings, all these occasions will definitely add a pound or two to that beautiful figure of ours - then there’s that process of burning of those unwanted calories. But some have chosen to take it further, by eating only fresh, uncooked food. 

Common in western countries, these types of eating is called Raw Foodism. Raw foodism is becoming increasingly popular in the east expecially towards the health-conscious individuals, and apparently weight loss isn’t the only advantage that the raw food lifestyle delivers.

What is raw rood?

Raw foodism can include any diet of primarily unprocessed, unheated food, or food cooked to a temperature less than 40 °C. Depending on the type of lifestyle and results desired, raw food diets may include a selection of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs, fish (such as sashimi), meat (such as carpaccio), and non-pasteurized/non-homogenized dairy products (such as raw milk, raw milk cheese, and raw milk yogurt).

Humans need enzymes to digest food. Our living body also needs enzymes for every other operation and chemical reaction to take place. Our body hosts two types of enzymes: metabolic enzymes, which run our bodily functions, and digestive enzymes, which helps in digesting our food. Only raw and living foods follow nature’s design and come with their own food enzymes to aid digestion. They are responsible for the release of nutrients out of the foods we eat. Dr. Edward Howell writes in his remarkable book Enzyme Nutrition that heat over 47° C kills enzymes. If food is cooked, it does not carry enzymes, thus our body is forced to use up its own digestive enzymes.

Raw salmon and veggie

There are several types of Raw Foodist such as fruitarians, where these people only consume fruits, juicearians, where they only consume juices and sproutarians. Then there’s Raw Vegetarianism, a diet that excludes meat (including game and byproducts like gelatin), fish (including shellfish and other sea animals) and poultry, but allows dairy and eggs. Common foods include fruit, vegetables, sprouts, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, dairy, eggs and honey. Raw Animal Food diets on the other hand includes any food that can be eaten raw, such as uncooked, unprocessed raw muscle-meats/organ-meats/eggs, raw dairy, and aged, raw animal foods such as century eggs, fermented meat/fish/shellfish/kefir, as well as vegetables/fruits/nuts/sprouts, but generally not raw grains, raw beans, and raw soy.

It doesn’t sound so exciting when it comes to raw food, when everything sounds like they’re eating what hamsters or rabbits are eating, but you’ll be just as surprised that eating raw is almost just as similar to cooked food.