Cooked Foods On a Raw Diet

Obviously since this is a cooking blog, we don't spend a lot of time on raw foods! However, some prefer to follow a raw food diet as much as possible for the health benefits (and in fact, even if you don't go full-out raw food, a raw food fast can be VERY beneficial for cleaning and detoxing your system, so it's a great thing to throw into your healthy diet once in a while). I thought I'd throw in an article here for those looking for ideas for their raw food diet (or raw food fast) during the winter months.

Image via WikipediaDoes moving to a raw foods diet mean never eating hot food again? No, it doesn’t. Sometimes you want something hot. Hot food has always signified comfort for many of us. And on a cold, rainy day, carrot sticks or wheatgrass juice probably won’t cut it for most of us.

Most raw food, like our bodies, is very perishable. When raw foods are exposed to temperatures above 118 degrees, they start to rapidly break down, just as our bodies would if we had a fever that high. One of the constituents of foods which can break down are enzymes. Enzymes help us digest our food. Enzymes are proteins though, and they have a very specific 3-dimensional structure in space. Once they are heated much above 118 degrees, this structure can change.

Once enzymes are exposed to heat, they are no longer able to provide the function for which they were designed. Cooked foods contribute to chronic illness, because their enzyme content is damaged and thus requires us to make our own enzymes to process the food. The digestion of cooked food uses valuable metabolic enzymes in order to help digest your food. Digestion of cooked food demands much more energy than the digestion of raw food. In general, raw food is so much more easily digested that it passes through the digestive tract in 1/2 to 1/3 of the time it takes for cooked food.

Eating enzyme-dead foods places a burden on your pancreas and other organs and overworks them, which eventually exhausts these organs. Many people gradually impair their pancreas and progressively lose the ability to digest their food after a lifetime of ingesting processed foods. (I was actually just listening to a very interesting audio on this topic recently, and may post more about this soon....)

But you certainly can steam and blanch foods if you want your food at least warm. Use a food thermometer and cook them no higher than 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Up to this temperature, you won’t be doing too much damage to the enzymes in your food.

Related articles on Raw Food Diet:

• The raw food diet and a better quality of life (justslimming.com)
• Raw Food Diet: Ready To Take On the Challenge? (justslimming.com)
• Why is the "raw diet" considered healthy? (greenanswers.com)
• Raw Food Diet Explained (socyberty.com)
• Raw Foods for Longevity and Health (+ Walnut Pate Recipe) (eatdrinkbetter.com)