Posts Tagged ‘raw food diet’

Becoming a Raw Foodist (Raw Foods)

Monday, May 25th, 2009

To start on the road to Great Health, you don’t need to become a raw foodist. Rather, you simply need to start eating raw foods. After you have made them a small, but regular part of diet, you will begin to fall in love with them as I did, which is something I never thought would happen because I never cared for raw foods before I began eating them everyday. The day you find yourself eating mostly raw foods and very little cooked foods, if any, will be the day you realize that you have become a raw foodist.


The ignorance of the cooked food diet.

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Regardless of their age, anyone can have the body they had when they were in their twenties. At that age, most of us are physically and mentally in our prime. Physical decline is inevitable and starts in your thirties only if you are a cooked foodist. Physical decline only happens to a raw foodist if they never exercise and even then the decline will not lead to disease, but rather to physical atrophy.

http://www.watershed.net/

The human body does not make mistakes.

Monday, May 18th, 2009
The human body does not make mistakes. If provided with the right materials, it operates perfectly and the medical establishment instantly becomes obsolete in the treatment of chronic disease. Essentially, we are the architects of our own body. We sculpt it into the shape that we want it to be by exercising and putting foods in it that are either nutritious or harmful. If we are overweight and have health problems it is because our diet is comprised primarily of cooked foods, which never satisfy our hunger, thus we overeat.

My Response to Dr. Weil’s Opinion of the Raw Food Diet

Friday, May 15th, 2009
Dr. Weil does not support moving to a Raw Food Diet, the only diet that is actually healthy for us. As I often state, all disease comes from our diet and is not genetically inherited. In his article, the reason Dr. Weil does not approve of the raw food diet: “ I'm not a proponent of the raw foods diet. First of all, when you eat everything raw, you lose much of the best flavor, texture and appearance of food. ” My question to Dr. Weil is: Are we talking about the health or the flavor and appearance of the foods we eat? If it is only the flavor of our foods we are interested in, regardless of whether they are consumed raw or not, then we cannot expect to be healthy when we eat the foods that we cook. In my opinion, foods should be consumed with regard to whether they are healthy, not whether they taste good and look appetizing, although raw foods can be prepared to make them both taste good and look appetizing. The only reason we eat cooked foods is for taste and because we are conditioned to believe they are healthy for us. We are addicted to cooked foods. It is the greatest addiction of human history. As it is with most doctors, Dr. Weil understands everything about medicine and very little about true health. It is true that cooked foods are tasty, although I would argue that you “ lose much of the best flavor” of raw foods when you cook them. In fact, just the opposite is true. Cooking a food robs it of much of its true, robust flavor.

Dr Weil also states: “you can get lycopene, the carotenoid pigment that protects against prostate cancer, only from cooked tomatoes, not from raw ones. The carotenoids in carrots are more bioavailable from cooked carrots than they are from raw ones.” Cooking any food transforms it from an alkaline to an acid substance. Lycopene, an anti-cancer agent found in tomatoes, is a perfect example of this. Lycopene is found in greater concentration after heating tomatoes above 120°F. But the overall detriment to the tomato is not worth the extra lycopene the body may absorb from it. Also, the smaller amount of lycopene will be absorbed more efficiently by the body from a raw tomato than the larger amount of lycopene found in the cooked tomato. This is essentially true of any food once it has been cooked.

Dr. Weil states: Alfalfa sprouts contain canavanine, a natural toxin that can harm the immune system.” This is a misleading statement because Canavanine is found in miniscule amounts. Canavanine is a non-protein amino acid that's toxic in high amounts. In the dry seed it serves as a storage protein, a growth inhibitor, and a defense against natural predators. It is also known as an enzyme inhibitor, meaning that once you sprout a seed such as alfalfa it quickly dissipates to insignificant levels. A 150 pound person would need to consume 14 grams (14,000 milligrams) of Canavanine all at once for it be dangerous to their health. There are insignificant amounts of toxins in nearly all foods if one looks close enough, but they are harmless to us, especially if we live on a raw food diet. Copper, zinc, selenium, vitamin A and iron are all potentially toxic if we consume too much of them, but that is essentially impossible when we receive these nutrients from raw foods. It is when we consume them in bulk in vitamins after they have been extracted that they become dangerous. Spirulina, for instance, has large amounts of iron, however, since we consume it unprocessed and it is contained within a natural whole food it will not build up in the body and become toxic.

Dr Weil continues: “ celery produces psoralens, compounds that sensitize the skin to the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. All of these are broken down by simple cooking. Although our bodies have natural defenses against these toxins, a raw food diet can add to the toxic load we're already dealing with. ” We develop unnatural sensitivities when we live on a cooked food diet, as the vast majority of us do. Psoralens, or oxalic acid found in beet greens and other foods, become a problem for us only when we create unnatural imbalances by living on a cooked food diet. Quite the opposite as suggested by Dr. Weil, raw foods do not add to the toxic load when we live primarily on a raw food diet. However, in the cooked world anything is possible because of the myriad number of imbalances we create through the wrong diet of cooked foods.

Dr. Weil sites a study, published in the March 28, 2005 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine , which states that calcium and Vitamin D were both low in those living on the Raw Food Diet. These kinds of deficiencies could very well happen to someone who is on the Raw Food Diet if they do not follow The Watershed Wellness Health Protocol of Spirulina, Chlorella , Raw Foods and Ionized Water. Those who simply stop eating cooked foods and go on a vegan raw food diet will be healthy, although they can become deficient in many areas of their health if they do not use Spirulina and Chlorella for their protein, drink ionized water and have a broad array of raw foods in their diet. I eat between 150 – 225 different foods every year. Health is about variety and consuming only raw foods. Dr. Weil could not be more wrong in his assessment of the Raw Food Diet.

Seven Components of Great Health – No. 5: Raw Foods

Friday, May 8th, 2009
Component 5: Introduce Raw Foods to your diet. Begin limiting the amount of cooked foods you consume

Only a raw foodist has the ability to Achieve Great Health, perfect health, the kind of health most people only dream of. If you remain on a cooked-food diet, you will never truly be healthy even though the outward symptoms of disease may not manifest themselves for years to come. Disease always resides in the body of the cooked foodist whether the symptoms are there or not.

Everyone wants to be healthy. No one wants to be sick or even divulge they ever get sick. Sadly, most will remain sick because of their refusal to leave the cooked-food world behind and start putting in their body what naturally belongs in it, that which can only make them healthy. Only what comes from nature will ever make us healthy. There is no substitute for nature because it is God’s ever-moving hand. And no matter what man creates to try and make himself healthy, it will only end in failure. God’s temple can only be properly served and maintained by the raw foods that are produced by God’s creation, that which we call nature.

Articles on Raw Foods

The First Steps toward Becoming a Raw Foodist – Part 5

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Rice also tends to cause a lot of gas, which is created mainly in the large intestines and is the result of undigested starchy carbohydrates. Foods that cause these problems become their own reason for removing them from your diet.I slowly removed rice from my diet over the course of several months until I was eating it only once a week.


Eventually, I got rid of it completely. Only giving up dairy products did more to remove mucus from my body. It was the last profound positive change in my health I experienced, for now I was nearly 100% raw. From: Achieving Great Health

http://watershed.net/achieving_great_health.aspx

The First Steps toward Becoming a Raw Foodist – Pt 4

Thursday, April 30th, 2009
The next step would be to begin cooking your vegetables less and less, whether it is steaming, frying or baking. Start by steaming them only half the time your normally do, then reduce the time until you are merely warming them. If you keep the temperature of the vegetables below 105°F, you will not destroy the enzymes and other chemical nutrients in the food. Any raw food can be raised to a temperature of 105°F without the fear of damaging its nutritional potential. Many people miss warm food when first moving to the Raw-food Diet and if it makes you feel better to warm your food to 105°F or less, you should do it.

Juicing is another side door to the raw food lifestyle. Juicing is a world unto itself. The human body is essentially a juicer in the sense that it is the juice from plants that contains the nutrients that the body must extract. Anyone seeking to truly obtain Great Health must include juicing as part of their daily protocol. There are many types of juicers. Most separate the juice from the fiber, a valuable and necessary part of the food. Other juicers grind up the entire food, including the fiber. These are preferable. (to be continued . . . )

From: Achieving Great Health http://watershed.net/achieving_great_health.aspx

The First Steps toward Becoming a Raw Foodist – Pt 3

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

This monumental task that you have placed before yourself of changing a lifelong belief system must be done first in baby-steps that become bigger steps that turn in to leaps as your body cries louder each day for raw foods. Your reward will be perfect health and a disease free body when the transition is complete. Your body will punish you when you sometimes stray and revert to your old deadly cooked-food ways. It is tough love because your body knows what is right. The more you consume raw foods, the more traumatic this punishment becomes as you realize once and for all what poison cooked foods really are.

Another important step we can make is to begin moving away from pre-packaged processed foods to fresh cooked foods. It helps bring us out of the repetitious habit of our daily lives that shackles us to the cooked world. It is merely habit to come home tired and look for something easy to prepare for dinner. There is nothing easier than something that is already prepared and simply needs to be heated. Of course the ultimate fast food is a raw food because it is immediately ready to eat at any time. (to be continued . . . )

From: Achieving Great Health http://watershed.net/achieving_great_health.aspx

The First Steps toward Becoming a Raw Foodist – Part 2

Monday, April 27th, 2009
Another approach is to start eating a salad with each meal. Increase the size of the salad you have each day by 2% and shrink the amount of cooked foods you eat by a corresponding amount. Following through with this will leave you a 100% raw foodist in less than 50 days.

Another transition is to introduce dehydrated foods to your diet, foods that have had the moisture removed from them. They can be made into incredible raw food dishes such as sprouted bread, pizza, caramel apples, potato chips and many others, all of them raw and healthy. While dehydrated foods are not as healthy as fresh raw foods, they are the next best thing. They are an excellent transition food, but ultimately our goal is to consume 100% fresh raw foods. The closer you get to that goal, the healthier you will be. (to be continued . . .)

From: Achieving Great Health http://watershed.net/achieving_great_health.aspx

The First Steps toward Becoming a Raw Foodist – Part 1

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

I have found it useful to stop thinking about meals in the rigid way we traditionally regard them. We are conditioned to build our day around three meals when instead we should only eat when we are hungry. Your body will crave cooked foods less and less when it is provided with raw nutrients at a cellular level. The constant companion of hunger will leave you. We do not need the three meals we are accustomed to, rather, that is programmed into us, which is a central component of the obesity problem today. We look at a clock to know if it’s time to eat instead of our stomachs.

We need to break our pattern and start thinking outside the norms we are accustomed to when it comes to food. When we eat only when we are hungry, we begin to view food as a supply of nutrients we require to be healthy, not as something we need to do at a certain time of the day so our stomachs are always full.

An easy way to begin is by increasing the percentage of raw foods in your diet while shrinking the size of the cooked foods you consume. The concept is simple. Begin the process with breakfast and carry that sentiment throughout the day. Start by adding a banana or apple to your cereal, for instance. Increase the portion of fruit in the cereal each day without increasing how much you eat; this means that the milk and cereal portion will decrease. Within a short time, you will have transitioned to an all fruit breakfast. If it is complemented with 4 -- 6 grams of Spirulina and Chlorella, you will be meeting all your basic nutritional needs and then some. Your mornings will be full of energy when you eat this way. (to be continued . . . )

From: Achieving Great Health http://watershed.net/achieving_great_health.aspx