One of the most important aspects of a healthy diet that is most frequently overlooked is the issue of eating your food uncooked, in its natural raw state. Unfortunately, as you may be aware, over 90 percent of the foods purchased by Americans are processed foods. And when you’re consuming these kinds of denatured and chemically altered foods, it’s no surprise we have an epidemic of chronic and degenerative diseases.

It is no mystery that you are what you eat.

Cooking Destroys Valuable Enzymes

Enzymes are proteins; catalysts to speed up and facilitate reactions in your body. In fact, some biochemical reactions will not even occur without these enzymes (you have about 1,300 of them).

In addition to getting enzymes from fresh, raw food, you can also help stimulate the production of enzymes in your body simply by chewing. When you chew your food, a signal is transmitted from your brain to your stomach that tells your stomach to increase the production of enzymes.

Whole, live foods not only contain whole nutrition, but are also a source of the metabolic, digestive, food enzymes and other factors needed to digest and use our foods. Enzymes are delicate proteins, catalysts responsible not only for breaking down food, but for a host of other day-to-day processes, including transforming minerals into alkaline detoxifiers that neutralize the acid of our highly acidic diet. Enzymes are critically necessary for achieving our balanced pH, as well as our balanced diet.

Enzymes are deactivated or destroyed by heat, mechanical and chemical reactions--not only the high heat of cooking, but the high temperatures involved in food processing and manufacture, handling and storage of food.

Live foods contain a specific balance of natural forces that are programmed to affect the body in a particular way. That is, plant foods like fresh vegetables and fresh fruits have a wholeness and integrity that is more than just a collection of proteins, minerals, and vitamins found within them. In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

No Single Diet is Right for Everyone

Those of us who are working toward healthier food and lifestyles need to recognize that no single diet is right for everyone all the time and to start looking for areas of common agreement. Instead of competing within ourselves, we need to communicate and cooperate to create more unifying action, to put our energy and focus into asserting and proactively fighting for our rights for good, clean healthy food and environment.

Hippocrates’ “HEAL THYSELF” doesn’t apply just to physicians. Each of us has a healer within. Thy food shall be thy medicine and thy medicine shall be thy food.

Instead of thinking "raw foods versus cooked foods," or this diet or that philosophy is better, it’s probably closer to the truth to focus on getting a BALANCE of raw and cooked foods, depending upon the season, climate, your health, level of spiritual evolution, etc. So, in the final analysis, the truth in the "raw versus cooked" debate probably lies somewhere in the balance.

Ironically, it appears that the more tinkering and altering done to extend the shelf life of our food, the shorter our own lives. So one has to ask, are we giving our modern foods a longer shelf life and shortening our own? Janet Starr Hull puts it rather curtly, but succinctly, when she says, "People need to stop searching for excuses to eat all the junk food they want without penalty. In the long run, no one benefits from this product but the corporations."

Dr. Nick’s Comments

It was very interesting to me to read this. I have worked with Cathy now for about a year and a half. When she first told me about her being a “raw foodist,” we would have many a discussion about just eating meat vs. vegetarian and then about eating “raw.” She has taught me a lot about raw food eating. I am not a raw foodist. But I will say that I eat more fresh fruits and vegetables than ever before. The biggest lesson that she taught me was that the rise in my blood sugar is not from “overeating” fresh fruit. It is from eating too much fat. I have found just in the office that eating “raw” seeds and nuts will raise my blood sugar significantly enough that I need to give myself insulin. However going a whole day of eating ONLY fresh fruit and nothing else, my blood sugar during the day and at the end of the day is normal. There are a lot of views on how to and what to eat raw. Study up on the various ways.

**  For more information on the above article, please visit www.mercola.com.