Check out this great article from Helath101 about raw foods:) Summed it up wonderfully.
The Benefits
of Eating Uncooked Food
by Dr. Bernarr, D.C., D.D.
by Dr. Bernarr, D.C., D.D.
When food is
cooked above 118 degrees F for three minutes or longer, its protein
has become denatured, its sugar has become caramelized, its natural
fibers have been broken down, which means it will take longer to
move through the intestinal tract, up to 90% of its vitamins and
minerals have been damaged or destroyed, and 100% of its enzymes
have been destroyed. Cooked food depletes our body's enzyme potential
and needlessly drains the energy we need to maintain and repair
our tissues and organ systems, and shortens our lifespan.
Dr. Virginia
Vetrano writes, "Heating any food, destroys much of its vitamin,
mineral, and protein content, and poisonous inorganic acids are
formed. The all uncooked diet is most healthful."
Marilyn Willison,
of Hippocrates Health Institute, writes, "We should not cook our
food. During this apparently harmless process, vital enzymes are
destroyed, proteins are coagulated (making them difficult to assimilate),
vitamins are mostly destroyed with the remainder changing into forms
that are difficult for the body to utilize, pesticides are restructured
into even more toxic compounds, valuable oxygen is lost, and free
radicals are produced. According to Viktoras Kulvinskas, nutrient
losses can be as high as 80% or more. Other studies suggest that
cooked proteins (coagulated) are up to 50% less likely to be utilized
by the body."
Dr. Francis
M. Pottenger Jr., wrote about his experiments with 900 cats over
a period of ten years. Pottenger fed some of the test cats raw meat
and other test cats he fed cooked meats. Pottenger wrote, "Cooked
meat fed cats were irritable. The females were dangerous to handle,
occasionally biting the keeper..." The cooked meat fed cats suffered
with "pneumonia, empyema, diarrhea, osteomyelitis, cardiac lesions,
hyperopia and myopia (eye diseases), thyroid diseases, nephritis,
orchitis, oophoritis (ovarian inflammation), arthritis and many
other degenerative diseases." Over the years, the cooked food group
gave birth to more unhealthy kittens, and became less able to conceive
at all.
No cooked food
is benign. Cooked foods act malignantly by exhausting your bodily
energies, inhibiting your healing, and decreasing your alertness,
efficiency and productivity.
Cooked foods
suppress the immune system. The heat of cooking destroys nucleic
acids, and damages fats, making them indigestible. The fatty matter
becomes a local irritant and an oxidant.
Heat disorganizes
protein structures, leading to deficiency of some of the essential
amino acids. The fibrous or woody element of food (cellulose) is
changed completely from its natural condition by cooking. When this
fibrous element is cooked, it loses its broom-like quality to sweep
the alimentary canal clean. The fibrous matter is changed from its
natural state to an irritant. Raw food has the best balance of water,
nutrients, and fiber to meet your body's needs.
Cooking causes
the inorganic elements to enter the blood, circulate through the
system, settle in the arteries and veins and deaden the nerves.
After cooking, the body loses its flexibility, arteries lose their
pliability, nerves' ability to conduct electrical signals diminishes,
the spinal cord becomes hardened, the tissues throughout the body
contract, and the human being ages prematurely. In many cases this
matter is deposited in the various joints of the body, causing joint
disease. In other cases, it accumulates as concretions in one or
more of the internal organs, finally accumulating around the heart
valves.
Raw foods are
easily digested, requiring only 24-36 hours for transit time through
the digestive tract, as compared to 40-100 hours for cooked foods.
This unnatural transit time increases the threat of putrefaction
and disease. When you eat cooked carbohydrates, proteins, and fats,
you are eating numerous mutagenic (carcinogenic) products causes
by the cooking process. Dr. Karl Elmer experimented with top athletes
in Germany, producing improvement in their performance by changing
to a purely raw food diet. Dr. Douglas Graham achieved similar results
with athletes he trained. Raw food provides you with more strength,
energy and stamina.
On raw foods,
the mind (memory and power of concentration) will be clear. You
will be more alert, think sharper and more logically.
Raw foods will
not leave you with a tired feeling after the meal. There is a tendency
toward sleepiness after a cooked meal. Eating a healthy raw food
diet allows a more restful sleep and eventually requires less total
sleep.
When we treat
foods with thermal fire, we lose up to 97% of the water-soluble
vitamins (Vitamins B and C) and up to 40% of the lipid soluble vitamins
(Vitamins A, D, E and K). We need only one-half the amount of protein
in the diet if raw protein foods are eaten rather than protein foods
which are cooked. Heating also changes the lipids. These changed
fats are incorporated into the cell wall and interfere with the
respiration of the cell, causing an increase in cancer and heart
disease.
After eating
cooked foods, the blood immediately shows an enormous increase of
leukocytes of white blood cells - corpuscles. The white blood cells
are a first line of defense and are, collectively, popularly called
"the immune system". This spontaneous multiplication of white corpuscles
always takes place in normal blood immediately after the introduction
of any virulent infection or poison into the body since the white
corpuscles are the fighting organisms of the blood. There is no
multiplication of white corpuscles when uncooked food is eaten.
The constant daily fight against the toxic effects of cooked food
unnecessarily exhausts the body's strength and vitality, thus causing
disease and the modern shortness of life.
Cooked foods
quickly ferment and putrefy in the intestinal tract. On a healthy
raw food diet you will experience the elimination of body odor and
halitosis. Cooked food causes allergies (hypersensitivities).
Raw foods are
delectable. There is no need to jazz them up with unhealthful additives
and condiments as is needed with cooked food. These flavor-enhancing
additives can irritate your digestive system and over-stimulate
other organs. Avoid these harmful additives: sugar, salt, pepper,
spices, garlic, condiments, ketchup, mayonnaise, dressing and toppings.
Hannah Allen
wrote, "Raw foods contain enzymes, which influence digestive efficiency
- cooking destroys all enzymes. Moreover, the consumption of raw
foods stimulates gastric enzyme secretion, necessary to initiate
good digestion. Besides, the more raw foods you eat as your first
course, the less cooked foods you will be able to eat. Ideally,
we should never cook any foods."
Arthur M. Baker
in "Awakening Our Self Healing Body", writes, "Cooked foods literally
wreck our body. They deny needed nutrients to the system since heat
alters foodstuffs such that they are partially, mostly, or wholly
destroyed. Nutrients are coagulated, denatured, caramelized, and
rendered inorganic and become toxic and pathogenic in the body."
Baker adds,
"Virulent bacteria find soil in dead food substances only and cannot
exist on living cells. Cooked food spoils rapidly, both inside and
outside our body, whereas uncooked plant foods are slow to lose
their vital qualities and do not as readily become soil for bacterial
decay."
I have been
a 100% raw food eater, for over 50 years.
Don's
Comments: I've been eating a 100% uncooked plant-based diet for
over 18 years, and the results have been so remarkable that you
couldn't pay me to eat cooked food. People who add copious amounts
of uncooked fruits and vegetables into their diet, and who eliminate
much of the cooked "food", enjoy vastly improved health.
Although
there are no raw food "cookbooks", raw food recipe books
abound... click here
to see some, but remember, "gourmet" dishes, even if all-raw,
can still allow ill-health to remain, mostly due to too much fat
(from too much nuts and the use of oils).
I encourage you to check all the related articles below...just click on each title.
Related articles:
Why Eat Raw Foods?
Raw Foods - What People Don't Know
Why Most Diets Don't Work
Raw Food Studies
The Natural Diet Primer
Healthful, Raw-food Trend is Picking Up Steam - USA TODAY
Why Eat Raw Foods?
Raw Foods - What People Don't Know
Why Most Diets Don't Work
Raw Food Studies
The Natural Diet Primer
Healthful, Raw-food Trend is Picking Up Steam - USA TODAY
And here is a great video by John about what's in his Raw Foods fridge