Raw Foods – For good Health and Longevity

Eating should not be considered as a trivial affair. Serious thought should be given in planning our daily diet. For, what we eat has a profound effect on our heath and longevity. Latest researches show that food can provide health, vigour and vitality, and free us from various diseases, or it can make us unhealthy and miserable.

Before the discovery of fire, man’s evolution and development depended on the consumption of natural, raw foods, as provided by nature. After fire came into existence, man started cooking natural foods without much thought. Cooking of natural foods led to their debasement and destruction of most of their essential nutrients needed for the maintenance of good health. Further loss of nutrients took place when man started refining and processing of natural foods. This has inevitably led to ill-health and vast varieties of diseases from which modern man suffers. He can get rid of these diseases and regain health, if he discards unnatural refined, processed and too much dependence on cooked foods.

Benefits of Raw Foods

Raw foods differ in nature from cooked foods, irrespective of their degree of cooking. They have certain distinctive advantage. These advantages are described herein in brief.

Normal Functioning of the Body

Raw foods contain certain vital ingredients which are essential for the maintenance of good heath. Their nutritive constituents serve as building material for the construction and renewal of cells, produce energy to put these cells into motion and give warmth to the body and supply the raw materials to the specialised cells needed for their productive activities. Natural nutrition, as provided by nature, thus ensures the normal functioning of all body organs. Cooked foods force human organs to work at about three to four times their normal capacity, bring about premature changes in them, cause various ailments and shorten the life span.

As against this, those who eat raw foods make use of the digestive organs at about one-fourth of their potential capacity. As a result, their organs are never overloaded or fatigued. The over-loading of the digestive organs results in over working of several accessory organs like the heart, liver, and the kidneys. The additional work performed by these organs soon has the effect of tiring them out and putting them out of action prematurely. This eventually causes ill health and reduces the life span of a person by several years.

Balancing Body Chemistry

Raw foods help balance body chemistry. The tissues and cells of the body are composed of 16 chemical elements. The balance of equilibrium of these chemical elements in the body is an essential factor in the maintenance of health and healing of disease. The acid-alkaline balance plays a vital role in the balanced body chemistry.All foods, after digestion and absorption, leave either an acid or alkaline ash in the body, depending on their mineral composition.

The normal body chemistry is approx 20 percent acid and 80 percent alkaline. To maintain this acid-alkaline balance, it is essential that one should eat 80 percent of alkaline forming foods and 20 percent of acid forming foods. Fresh, raw, uncooked fruits and raw vegetables are rich in mineral salts which are necessary or neutralizing acid waste products. In cooking foods, these minerals salts are lost to a large extent. Because of the large quantities of mineral salts they contain, in a form most suitable to the needs of the system, fresh fruits and raw vegetables are known as purifying foods. They possess eliminating, cleansing and healing properties.

Antioxidant Effects

The most important effect of raw foods on health is in its healing and preventive powers as disease-fighting dietary antioxidants. Many of the health problems are due to the perversity of oxygen. So far, scientists have linked destructive oxygen reactions to at least 60 different chronic diseases, as well as to ageing itself.

Raw foods like fresh fruits and raw vegetables, especially the deep coloured ones, contain strong antioxidants. When these foods are consumed in liberal quantities, the antioxidants contained in them are infused into the tissues and fluids where they can help resist the oxidant invasions. The dietary anti-oxidants can thus prevent all the damaging effects of oxidants on health.

Curative Power of Raw Foods

Hippocrates (460-357 BC), the father of medicine, said “Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food”. The former part of the sentence is for the sick, the latter is for healthy. For the sick, positive natural foods are the true medicine and not drugs, which are not conducive to health as all of them have adverse side-effects. For the healthy, natural foods are the means of freedom from disease. Hippocrats fully believed that natural foods have unlimited power to sustain health and restore it when lost.

There has been an increase in the variety of frequency of diseases in proportion to the process of the degeneration of foodstuffs through refining and cooking. Experiments conducted at various research labs throughout the world have clearly established the merit and value of raw foods in the treatment of several diseases.

There is an important work of Dr. Joseph Evers of Germany in the field of healing through raw foods. He has treated successfully nearly 1,000 cases of multiple sclerosis with diets composed chiefly of raw vegetables, raw fruits, raw nuts, raw honey, raw grain sprouts, uncooked coarse rolled oats and whole meal bread.

The adoption of raw eating can thus free mankind from all diseases. Raw foods contain all the essential vitamins, minerals, trace elements and other constituents, whereas it is present in small amounts in refined and cooked foods.