Posted by Green Diva Mom on Jul.26, 2010

From LivingNutz.com

Raw and Living Foods are foods that contain enzymes. All cooked food is devoid of enzymes. Cooking food changes the molecular structure of the food. In general, the act of heating food destroys enzymes in food. Living and raw foods also have enormously higher nutrient values than the foods that have been cooked.

This belief is based on the work of Artturi Virtanen, a biochemist, and on the research of Dr. Edward Howell, an Illinois physician born in 1898, who researched how enzymes played a role in a person’s diet. He concluded that eating cooked food leads to health problems. In 1985, Howell published a book in which he claimed that laboratory rats fed cooked foods had an overly large pancreas size. Some raw food diet proponents believe that Howell’s book shows that the pancreas is forced to work harder on a diet of cooked foods and that food enzymes are just as essential to digestion as the body’s self-generated enzymes.

Professor Karl Eimer, director of the Medical Clinic at the University of Vienna studied the effect of a 100% raw diet on athletes. He placed his subjects on a two week program of intense physical training while they continued to consume their usual cooked diet. Their athletic performance was monitored and evaluated. They were then put on a 100% raw diet and continued their training. Without exception the athletes demonstrated improvements in reflex speed, flexibility and stamina. Eimer, and his colleague Professor Hans Eppinger, concluded that raw foods increase cellular respiration and efficiency. Their findings were reported in the July, 1993 edition of Zeitschrift fur Ernahrung entitled Klinik Schwenkenhacher.

Anthropologist Peter Lucas of George Washington University in Washington, DC, was reported in NewScientist magazine on 19/2/2005 as having the theory that man being the only mammal with chronic poor dentition and the only mammal to significantly process and cook his food, are causally linked. He believes that the adoption of food processing and cooking reduced the size of our jaw through evolutionary processes, but not the size of our teeth. Hence the expanding science of orthodontics. Conversely, the research suggests that a diet of unprocessed and uncooked food is more likely to promote health.

The benefits of going raw-vegan are boundless. Raw foods are easy to digest, and they provide the maximum amount of energy with minimal bodily effort. Studies have shown that living foods have healing powers that can alleviate many illnesses from low energy, allergies, digestive disorders, weak immune system, high cholesterol, candida, to obesity and weight problems (weight normalization), etc.. Research and real life experiences have also shown that a person can prevent a body’s healthy cells from turning into malignant cancerous cells by consuming mostly a raw food diet and whole organic foods!

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Posted under Food Facts, Food, Nutrition & Recipes, Raw.