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One of the latest diet crazes is the raw food diet. It may seem like an odd idea to eat all your food raw, but it’s really only natural. All the animals on the planet eat raw food except for humans and those raised by humans. And those that eat cooked food tend to have a shorter lifespan and more widespread disease. Before you dismiss raw food as the latest fad diet, take a look at the benefits it has to offer.

When you cook food, you get rid of a lot of the benefits it has to offer. The most important thing humans need to live is water. Our bodies are made up of mostly water; if you are lacking nutrients, you may feel sick, but if you are lacking water, you die. Cooking foods removes a large majority of their water content, making them harder to absorb and digest and increasing the amount of water you need to drink. Cooking food also eliminates significant amounts of protein, vitamins and other vital nutrients.

While you don’t always think of it that way, cooking is a chemical reaction. It chemically changes food and changes how good or bad it is for your body. Most of these changes make things like protein and fats harder to digest. When cooked, fats become easier for the body to store; some even become carcinogenic. When you eat things that are easier to digest, you get the energy from them faster (without expending as much) this makes you feel better overall and more lively. If your goal is to lose weight, this will not only help you lose some pounds, but give you energy to work out and burn off more.

One of the most important benefits of the raw food diet is active enzymes. Most foods in nature contain the enzymes needed to break them down. When we cook food, we destroy these enzymes. This means we have to break them down ourselves using our own digestive juices. Why is this bad? Well our enzymes aren’t as efficient as the natural ones, and our body has to work really hard to make them. This draws resources away from out immune system, causing us to be more susceptible to illness and disease. Plus, we can only produce so many in a lifetime. If we eat raw food that helps digest itself; we don’t have to draw on these resources and can actually live longer, healthier lives.

With recent e coli outbreaks, you should be careful about what you eat raw. Cooking kills off beneficial organisms, but it also kills off harmful ones too

Most raw food diets include other healthy suggestions including: eating only organic food, not eating certain foods together, and only eating sprouted grains. While many of these diets are hard to stick to, you can try simply cutting back the amount of cooked food you eat. Another tip is to make sure you eat one raw food with each meal, this could be as easy as adding a few nuts, seeds or a fresh salad or fruit to your meals. By doing this you are adding active enzymes that will help you digest the food faster.

If you want the benefits of this great lifestyle, there are tons of books and resources you can find to help you get started.

Read more: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Eating-More-Raw-Food—The-Facts-And-Benefits-Behind-The-Latest-Trend-To-Eat-Healthy/785295#ixzz1WUEkjWFm
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Let me show you how raw food eating will reduce stress and improve your physical well being.

‘Let food by Thy Medicine’

Hippocrates taught this message in 431BC. For thousands of years cultures have been aware that the food we eat can have a profound effect on our mind.

The Greek Historian Herodotus found that cultures with a mainly vegetarian diet were more advanced in art and spiritual development than those who ate a mainly meat based diet.The latter tended to be much more aggressive. It could be said that the diet a whole nation follows will have a profound effect on that country’s mental well being.

Ayurvedic yogis have know this for thousands of years have divided food into three categories sattvic,rajasic and tamasic. A sattvic state of mind is common amongst religious groups with a prayer and meditation tradition.

A rajasic state of mind tends to be active restless and aggressive.This would be typical of a warrior or the high flying corporate executive.

A tamasic state of mind belongs to one who is cruel and morally degenerate.People who resort to criminal activity fall into this category.

For a western person the sattivc diet would be one that is vegetarian and would consist of 80% raw food and 20% cooked. Examples of such food would be greens, grasses, honey and some rice. Rajasic foods stimulate the nervous system and include meat, coffee garlic and peppers butter eggs cheese and sugar.It will leave people with a sense of restlessness and eventual burnout.

Such people tend to be adrenalin junkies seeking pleasure in sky diving or white water rafting or other risky sports. Tamasic foods tend to be the worst of the lot, what we would call fast foods, heavily processed and full of preservatives additives and colors.

Foods eaten in this category would include flesh that has not been recently killed ie all the meat you see in the supermarket.

We often hear how are ancestors ate meat and this is used as a justification for a meat based diet.However the meat they ate had only recently been killed so had some life force left in it.

Also our ancestors ate all the animal not just the muscle which is high in protein,hence a more balanced diet. Living on such a diet will make meditation and other calming activities almost impossible. Research has shown that people who have a history of violence display a marked drop in such activity when switching to a diet based on fruit and vegetables.

The bottom line is a switch to raw food eating will boost your well being both mental and physical.

Read more: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Raw-Food-Eating/1935356#ixzz1WUCq6bu6

By: Andrew Collinson