Do You Eat a Lot of Cooked Food? Why Adding More Raw Foods to Your Diet is a Smart Move

Do You Eat a Lot of Cooked Food?
Why Adding More Raw Foods to Your Diet is a Smart Move
by www.SixWise.com

Asking most people whether they eat a lot of cooked food may sound like a silly question. After all, we’re conditioned to cook all of our meat thoroughly to avoid bacteria and parasites, and even our dairy products and juices are pasteurized.

For many, raw food in their diet consists of an occasional salad or piece of fruit, as even most veggies on Americans’ dinner plates are of the cooked variety.

So what’s the problem, you may now be wondering?

Raw plant and animal foods (such as raw milk) are loaded with beneficial enzymes for your body. (Enzymes are actually special proteins that act as catalysts for the chemical reactions that occur to keep your body functioning.) However, enzymes begin to be destroyed at temperatures above 110-115 degrees. So if your food is cooked, pasteurized or processed, it will contain no enzymes whatsoever.

"When you cook something, you destroy the enzymes," said Karyn Calabrese, a well-known raw foodist in the Chicago-area in an NBC5 article. "You need enzymes for every metabolic purpose in your body. When you lose enzymes, that's when you die."

Even though your body produces some enzymes on its own, if you’ve been eating only cooked foods for a long time, your body must divert extra energy to producing more and more enzymes to break down this food.

This puts a strain on your digestive organs, including your pancreas, and some say may cause premature damage to these organs that can impact your overall health.

On the other hand, if you eat raw foods that contain their own living enzymes, you’re giving your body a break, and allowing it to digest efficiently with very little effort. This is actually one of the key benefits that raw foodists often give to advocate a raw food diet.

To read this full, excellent article:
http://www.sixwise.com/Newsletters/2009/June/10/Raw-Foods.htm?source=nl