Why is the Raw Diet the Most Proper Way to Eat?

Many have spent lifetimes wondering what caused humanity's "fall from grace." What has caused humanity's disconnection from living in a natural paradise? Why is civilization out of balance with Nature? These thoughts are often triggered by a study of the classical, legendary, or religious stories of a former perfect age.

Every culture seems to have a story about how human life began on Earth. Most describe a place where people lived in harmony with the plants and animals. While living this way, the stories indicate that, people experienced happiness and peace.

These stories often indicate that everything was in harmony until something happened. Some stories tell of a great flood, others tell of humans gaining an understanding of good and evil, still others tell of a shift in Earth's alignment, a few even tell of some godly or spiritual powers that drastically changed the state of life on Earth.

Those of us who follow a balanced, thoughtful raw-food diet, believe that we have found the major piece of the answer to humanity's obvious disconnection with Nature. A multifaceted collection of scientists, spiritual leaders, researchers, and grassroots raw-food enthusiasts, have come to understand through experience, that the great change in human life occurred after humans discovered fire, and then began cooking food.

The obvious separation created by putting fire between our food and our mouth, the tremendous amount of time and energy people spend to cook food, the use of massive resources to create today's cooked-food culture (with its billions of kitchens and restaurants), the construction of factories and shops all churning out cooked and processed foods, the packaging and wrappers involved in the whole cooked-food process, and the lack of life energy in cooked food are all major contributing factors in humanity's fall from paradise. Subconsciously, we know this, as our picture of paradise usually involves sun, beaches, mangoes, and coconuts; not gloomy cities, restaurants, and cooked animals for dinner.

All animals living in the wild eat their food raw and, almost always, fresh. Raw is Nature's First Law. Only humans and domesticated animals eat cooked and processed foods.

The cooking and processing of foods has become so common that most of us do not even question it. The assumption that cooked and processed foods are as good as raw foods is just an assumption. Most people do not know for sure, because they have never tried a balanced raw-food approach. Einstein once said: "The essential is to get rid of deeply rooted prejudices, which we often repeat without examining them."

Here is a visual experiment to consider: Feed a tribe of gorillas a diet of coffee, donuts, and other processed human foods for a few years. Let us watch what happens. Or consider, a herd of deer who, instead of eating their grass raw, decide to collect it and boil it in a giant cauldron. Picture what would happen in that situation!

What is it that constitutes the basis of human nourishment? Is it refined sugar flowing out of the roaring jaws of factories? Is it the flesh of animals being churned out by combinations of torturous factory farms and horrific slaughterhouses? Is it the milk of factory-farmed cows naturally intended for baby calves? Is it cooked and processed foods containing dyes, flavors, and preservatives?

No.

The basis of human nourishment is obvious: it is raw plant foods. And Nature presents this to us in abundance. Raw plant foods are simple, easy to find, fun to eat, enjoyable, contain thousands of health-giving nutrients, and conform to the biological design of the human digestive system. The sun is the source of all life and raw plant foods represent the purest form of transformed sun energy.

When one eats an orange, the wrapper (peel) becomes compost. When one follows a raw-plant-food lifestyle, the amount of trash produced by that individual decreases to almost nothing. Test for yourself and see.

An individual who eats the typical foods found in so-called "civilized society" who then changes to a raw-plant-food diet can discover energy they have never known. Eating a balanced mix of raw plant foods restores the body on a molecular level, building strong cells, radically naturalizing the body, raising alkalinity, and grounding the person in the natural world. Of course, the body resists shocking changes and everyone should ease into the raw-food approach at an appropriate pace. Also, everyone should educate themselves on this amazing subject (by further exploring this website, reading raw-food books, chatting on-line with other raw-foodists, and attending lectures), so that the common mistakes are avoided.

As the months and years pass, a person switching to a raw-plant-food approach may notice a greater awareness of the spiritual world, become more intuitive, and feel natural powers they have never experienced (or did not know they had). One will find oneself having more fun in a garden than a movie theatre. A profound new connection will arise with plants and animals.

Every person is a work of art in progress. Either one can become progressively more beautiful, or one can follow the fate civilization has set out (miseducation, wage slavery, decay, illness, and an untimely death). Each action one takes determines which of these two destinies will be achieved.

What we eat helps to guide our path. Eating determines what level of health our body will experience. Every bite of food put into the body should add to our strength, spirituality, and beauty. Each meal becomes part of who we are at the deepest level.

"You are what you eat" is a cosmic law. Everybody knows that saying ‹ everybody! It is a concept that has been known in every culture and civilization throughout history. It is written into the fabric of the universe. It is a simple law of Nature that should be remembered each day, and at each meal. Those who wish to heal themselves and the planet, should eat the most healing foods.

"Healing foods" means quality, organic, homegrown, or wild foods and/or superfoods in their raw natural state. Following this principle is not only the simplest way to choose what to eat, but is simply the best way to bring about good health and spiritual transformation. Because of this, this website is dedicated to helping as many people as possible succeed and prosper with the raw-food lifestyle.

We encourage anyone who wishes to experience the bounties of Nature to delve into eating what Nature provides to us. That is: raw plant foods. We encourage people to learn about superfoods, garden foods, and wild plants (herbs), to learn a new way of living, to experience the incredible energy Nature will give to you by accepting the foods she provides, and to live life in a melody with the plants and animals. By doing so, you may experience and reclaim your own little bit of paradise!

Written by David Wolfe, CEO of www.sunfood.com

Raw Food Combination - 8 Rules


Though the subject itself has only really come under investigation in the last 100 years, it has been covered in so many ways by some many different people that there are entire shelves in bookstores devoted to this very subject. Unfortunately, this makes for a whole lot of confusion for the average health-seeker.

No other creature on the planet seems to need elaborate charts and pyramids before they dive into their daily feast, so let’s see if we can’t come up with something simple so we can get out of our heads and on with the joys of eating and feeling good!

One of the first things to understand about food combining, is that the need for these principles comes from the fact that we have removed ourselves from our “natural environment”. Meaning that most of us can’t go out and pick our own mangos and then graze on the green leaves we find along our merry way. In modern society we have an infinite selection of food stuffs available to us at any moment. Combine that with our seemingly endless need for stimulation and we find that even though some apples, bananas and celery sticks would be a perfectly acceptable, nutritionally complete meal, we seek complication. The end result has been some marvelously elaborate recipes and a whole lot of indigestion.


The main problem with our combo-abombos and "gourmet" meals, (raw or otherwise), is that different foods digest at different rates. Generally, in order of speed of digestion, it’s sugars, starch, fats and then proteins. If you put something in your stomach that takes a long time to digest, followed by something that would normally digest very quickly, well the latter is forced to sit in the pipes and wait. Given the nature of the environment in the stomach, this leads to fermentation (sugars) and putrefaction (proteins). The byproducts of this gastric volcano is alcohol, indigestion and a whole lot of hot, smelly air. LITERALLY!

So, how can we avoid these physically and socially uncomfortable experiences? If you are going to get adventurous in your raw food play, take the following simple guidelines into consideration:

1. Fat and Sugar do not mix well.



Fat, which takes several hours to digest, and sweet sugars, which digest and are assimilated very quickly, do not make great belly-mates. Unfortunately, when you look around at most raw food recipes, you’ll see there is a discouraging number that contain mixtures like dates with nuts, banana with avocado, or sweet fruits with coconut. These recipes are an open invitation for digestive fermentation (never mind what they do for blood sugar issues)!


2. Bananas and Acid do not mix well.


Mixing bananas with oranges, for example, is less than ideal. Bananas are a starchy sweet fruit and where other fruits are concerned, combine best with other sweet fruits (like mangos) and sub-acid fruits (apples, pears, berries etc.) You should always listen to your body's response to the combinations you try, but we definitely advise you to avoid combining bananas and Durians. Other fruits generally mix fairly well together.


3. Acidic Fruits and Fats are okay for some.


Some people have no problems combining acidic and even sub-acid fruits with fat. The understanding is that these foods can actually help digest fats. The idea makes for some nice salad dressing combinations:


Tomatoes and tahini…
Orange juice and avocado…


4. Avoid Mixing Different Fats in the Same Meal.


Mixing different sources of fat like coconut, nuts, seeds, avocado or durian at the same sitting can make for a heavy-duty digestive workout and is best avoided. It’ just a lot more work than necessary for that beautiful body of yours.


5. Dark, Leafy Greens Go With EVERYTHING!


Mix them in your smoothies, or smother them with your favorite avocado dressing. Either way, leafy greens like spinach, lettuce, celery, etc. combine well with anything! (Green vegetables like broccoli, and cabbage do NOT mix well, and are not considered dark, leafy greens. They can be mixed with fats without any problem, however.)


So What About Cooked Foods and Other Vegetables?


If you want to eat fruit in the same meal as other foods, (salads with fatty dressings or cooked foods) then allow at least 20 Minutes for the fruit to make its way through the system, thus avoiding the uncomfortable side-effects of bloating, gas and digestive fermentation!

The Sweetness of Simplicity

Ultimately, we recommend simplicity because it most closely resembles the way things would be in nature. When you permit yourself the luxury of enjoying foods for the individual wonders and works of biological art that they are, you also allow your body to digest in “layers.”

Eating one food at a time, follow the following guidelines:

1. Eat Your Watery Foods First!

Because of its high water content, melon digests very quickly and within minutes of eating, it has already left the stomach!! While it does mix with other fruits very well, in sequential eating watery foods first, please!

2. Eat Acidic Fruits Before Sweet or Starchy Foods!

Things like citrus, kiwis, pineapples, and tomatoes should be eaten before other fruits. Again, if you think that most oranges tend to be less “concentrated” than a mango or a banana, this makes sense. *Dried fruit can be considered a concentrated food and should be eaten after fresh fruits, if eaten at all. We do not recommend more than occasional consumption of dried fruits.

3. Fat, Protein and Other Vegetables To Follow.

That’s it. Think generally in terms of eating your least concentrated foods first, and you’ll pretty much have it covered.

We hope these tips are comfort to your tummy and help to simplify what can appear to be an awfully complicated subject. The simpler you keep your foods the better you’ll feel!

Here’s to your health!