Raw foods diet emerged as a health food fad, but now has outgrown that label and struck out on its own, and this is mainly due to its own inherent merits. There is no frantic branding exercise or crucial marketing strategies to promote this healthy eating habit. On the other hand, word of mouth and good old common sense seem to be the only driving forces behind the promotion of raw foodism, as this movement has come to be known.
Eating healthy is a diehard desire that seizes folks at some time or the other. This can be after pregnancy and childbirth, after a robust holiday season, or as middle age begins to settle comfortably around the midriff. In fact, any time would be a nice time to consider the benefits of eating healthy, uncooked food. This is not a call to embrace the hippy culture, but to seriously consider the raw diet versus cooked meal pros and cons.
Raw Diet Vs Cooked Meal
A raw foods diet brings into your body the goodness of the naturally occurring enzymes in fresh food that are destroyed by cooking in high temperatures, or on occasion, even by heating. Heat sensitive goodies such as Vitamin C and thiamine undergo the same fate.
Cooking is similar in nature to digestion. It hydrolyses food causing it to change in nature, as when starch converts to glucose. This process is ideally undergone in our bodies with the aid of digestive enzymes, stomach acids, etc. Thus ingesting cooked food means this once hydrolysed food undergoes another hydrolysis during digestion, which is one too many. The body is unable to absorb nutrients that have been thus distorted and though you feel wonderfully full and satiated and the food was finger-licking good, it has not achieved its real objective of making you healthy.
Eating Healthy Stealthily
Going cold turkey in a desperate attempt at eating healthy and embarking on a basket of vegetables is not humanly possible. But stealthily increasing the amount of uncooked food at mealtimes may lead to a predominantly raw foods diet in no time. Raw diet does not mean green leaves and vegetables alone; it also includes nuts, fruits, juices, sprouts, raw eggs, milk (where permissible), fresh water, dried fruits, spices, and seeds.
Colourful salads, funky cocktails of vegetable and fruit juices, generous smattering of dried fruits and nuts for toppings, and imaginative use of salad dressings make raw foods diet a proposition worth adopting while considerably reducing the pain usually associated with eating healthy. A raw diet of uncooked food is also energy efficient, extremely green, and eco-friendly. You save on cooking fuel, cooking time, dishwashing, and cleaning burnt ovens and casserole dishes. You'll never scrub a pan again.
