Ten advantages of eating raw
by Susan Jorg, Estacada, OR
The human race learned long ago that cooking meat before eating it would protect them from certain diseases. Since then, this practice of cooking has grown to include all types of foods and is now considered an art. Very few meals are eaten which include raw elements, except for the leafy green salad.
One advantage of eating raw is that it brings Nature’s intentions into focus. When I speak of eating raw I am referring to fruit, nuts, and vegetables, which taste good to the majority of humankind in their basic simplicity - direct from tree, bush or vine.
I realize it isn’t easy to simply abandon thousands of years of tradition and revert back to 100% raw food. Margaret Mead once said, “It is easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet.” So, to the point, there are 10 advantages to a diet of fresh, whole raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts, which may lead you to find a greater place for them in your diet.
1. Raw foods are better quality; therefore you eat less to satisfy your nutritional needs. The heat of cooking depletes vitamins, damages proteins and fats, and destroys enzymes which benefit digestion. As your percentage of raw foods increases you feel satisfied and have more energy on smaller meals because raw food has the best balance of water, nutrients, and fiber to meet your body’s needs.
2. Raw foods have more flavor than cooked foods so there is no need to add salt, sugar, spices, or other condiments that can irritate your digestion system or over-stimulate other organs.
3. Raw foods take very little preparation, so you spend less time in the kitchen. Even a child of 5 or 6 can prepare most of the items for breakfast, lunch or dinner. This gives children a sense of self-esteem and independence, not to mention the break it gives Mom and Dad.
4. When you are eating raw there’s little chance of burns, unless you’re in the middle of a forest fire or out in the sun too long. Just think - No burns to tongues, the roof of your mouth, or fingers, and many fewer house fires!
5. Cleaning up after a raw meal is a snap. No baked-on oils or crusty messes. And any inedible parts go directly to the compost pile.
6. Eating a diet of raw foods can reverse or stop the advance of many chronic diseases, including heart disease and cancer. Remember, cooking creates free radicals, which are the major cause of cancer. When you lower the number of free radicals your cells are bombarded with, you lower your risk of cancer.
7. A raw food diet can protect you from acute diseases such as colds, flu, measles, etc. Raw foods maintain a healthy body and a healthy body will not become diseased.
8. As long as you combine raw food properly, according to the rules of Natural Hygiene, you will soon reach a level where you no longer suffer from heartburn, gas, indigestion or constipation.
9. It is environmentally sound. With humanity on a diet of raw foods the food industry would close up shop and take up organic gardening. This would save us enormous amounts of natural resources used to produce power for these industries. Think of how many trees and oil reserves could be saved without the need for the paper and plastics used in packaging our processed foods. There would also be less carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when all the cooking stopped, and more oxygen produced from all the new orchards and gardens, thus helping to reverse the Greenhouse Effect.
10. Eating raw saves you money on food, vitamins, pots and pans, appliances, doctor bills, drugs, and health insurance.
So don’t waste your food, yourself, and our planet by cooking what you eat. Fruits, nuts, and vegetables which are whole, fresh and raw are brimming with life and have the ability to transmit their life force directly to you.
Please read more articles about the raw food diet on their site:
http://rawlivingfoods.typepad.com/1/2009/04/ten_advantages_.html
Eating changes both body and mind, the total of who we are. What we eat and how much we eat changes who we are physiologically. Why we eat and how we eat changes who we are psychologically.
Mindlessness is Blindness
When we eat mindlessly, the body expands (to the extent to which mindless eating leads to overeating) and the mind shrinks (to the extent to which mindless eating denies us the experience of eating). After all being mindless means just that: being of less mind. Mindlessness hides the reality and robs us of the experience.
I am sure you are familiar with this experience of having no experience: you get into the car, you start driving, half an hour later you are at your destination, but as you look back you don't remember the actual experience of driving. We've learned not to be puzzled by that. "Highway hypnosis," we think and move on. It's the same with eating, a kitchen-table hypnosis of sorts. You shop, you cook, you set up the meal, you turn the TV on and several mindless minutes later, you are done: your stomach is full but your mind is empty, and you are craving seconds just to have the very experience of eating you missed in the first place.
Mindfulness is Vision
When we eat mindfully, the body shrinks (to the extent to which mindful eating reduces mindless overeating), and the mind expands. After all being mindful means just that: having a full mind. Mindfulness is vision. Mindfulness reveals the reality of what is, in all its nuanced, complex and unique such-ness. The traditions of saying grace (to infuse a moment of spiritual gratitude into a meal), the Zen tradition of Oryoki (a form of meditative eating designed to facilitate here-and-now presence), the veganism movement (with its attempt to manifest one's ethics of compassion through eating) -- these and many other traditions have all recognized that eating can serve as an invaluable existential platform for awakening the zombie in us. Whereas mindless eating robs us of the experience, mindful eating allows us to reclaim the eating moments of our lives.
According to the Center for Mindful Eating, a multidisciplinary forum for "developing, deepening and understanding the value and importance of mindful eating," "mindful eating has the powerful potential to transform people's relationship to food and eating, to improve overall health, body image, relationships and self-esteem." The recent years have witnessed an emerging self-help and clinical literature on mindfulness-based counseling for overeating and binge-eating.
Therefore, it would appear that mindful eating is, indeed, the missing ingredient of the USDA Food Pyramid. The addition of an eye atop the food pyramid would cue the public to the importance of eating with both short- and long-term vision, with here-and-now tactical awareness of the process of eating and with the strategic vision of how the behavior of eating fits with their overall living philosophy.
The symbol of the all-seeing-eye-at-the-top-of-a-pyramid traces its origin back to ancient Egypt and indicates "that the dead god is entombed in the underworld but is still watchful," and "the open eye is his soul that is still alive, so he knows what is happening in the world" (Sandra Forty, Symbols, p. 11). The symbol, however, has been sufficiently secularized by the fact that it appears on the $1 bill and has become largely accepted as a legitimate part of American iconography.
Eating is physiologically inevitable, but mindfulness isn't. Associating eating with mindfulness, one meal at a time, can help us not only manage weight (by reducing mindless overeating) but also to nourish and enrich the mind.
Pavel Somov, Ph.D. is the author of "Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time" (New Harbinger, 2008).
