In today’s world we choose to eat foods that are dead, highly processed, lacking life energy, vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other essential nutrients.   It is no wonder obesity and illness is on the rise.  Human beings lack the education required to eat correctly.  We are being brain washed by constant advertising which leaves us even more confused as to what food is good or bad.

Do our foods come from mother nature or from a laboratory?  Ponder this next time you contemplate what you will eat.  How long has it taken to get to your table from the source?  What has been added or removed from the food?  These are good basic questions that will get you thinking about where our food comes from and maybe why we are not well nourished.

Although we now have advanced technology and medical systems people are not getting any healthier.  Since the turn of the century there has been little decline in dis-ease, instead dis-ease is on the increase.  This is truly a sad state of affairs.

Degenerative disease such as Cardiovascular disease, Hypertension, Circulatory ailments, Arthritis, Diabetes, Cancer, Obesity and Mental disorders are common place in today’s world

Our lifestyles seem filled with excess stress, we consume too much of the wrong types of food, we do not get enough exercise or sleep and suffer with ailments as a result of the number of pollutants in our food, medicines and environments.

The combination of these factors can leave you feeling very fatigued and apathetic.  As a result we seek out quick fix solutions and use stimulants such as caffeine, energy drinks and sugar.  You may get a quick burst of energy but these foods also come with side effects such as dehydration,  dental caries, depletion of mineral levels from the body and ultimately leave you even more fatigued.  They are an unnatural source of energy that plays havoc with blood sugar levels.   These stimulants do not provide a solution.

We need to look towards nature to find plant based wholefoods.  Raw foods are unprocessed and contain a complete source of vitamins and minerals which can help you achieve balance and provide you with a longer lasting source of energy.

These foods produce less acidity and more alkaline within the body to create a more optimum environment.  If stress is reduced we can start to experience a calmer mind and body.

Even if you eat a diet that’s 50-70% raw it can not only reverse cell degeneration that comes with long term illness but it can also slow down the ageing process.

To reclaim our health we must first consider the importance of our nutritional intake.  Studies have shown that a diet high in raw live foods can considerably improve your health.

Its quite simple really the more lifeless or dead our foods that we eat are the less natural energy we will  obtain from their consumption.  Our immune system’s ability to fight disease is thus weakened.  We ultimately become the living dead.  We lack vital energy because the foods we eat are lacking in vital energy.

You can start your journey immediately simply by incorporating a green juice into your diet every day.  Green juices are packed with essential nutrients and are a great way to move you through your day filled with happy happy energy.

Here’s a recipe to get you started:

4 Cups of Spinach

1 Large Carrot

2 Apples.

Have fun and cheers to your health

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Roundtable. In this excerpt, Happy Oasis shares on getting family members and especially teens interested in trying raw foods. There is great advice here.

Happy is the chief visionary Officer of the raw spirit festival, a motivational speaker and author of Uncivilized Ecstasies and Bliss Conscious Communications.

Kevin: Ann has a question. She has a husband and a 14 year old daughter. She’s trying to let them know how important raw foods are. They don’t seem to understand and she doesn’t know how to explain it to them. She frustrated. What can you tell her?

Happy: Well, I wonder if you could give them the gift of the children’s book, Serge and Valya. They wrote that really wonderful book when they were, I think Valya was around 14. She might have been 15. They weren’t very old. Give them that as a gift or have somebody else give it to them, instead of the mom. Sometimes 14 year olds do exactly the opposite of their parents and it’s so frustrating for parents. But it’s actually the sign of a healthy teenager, so I understand. I’m not a parent but theoretically speaking a rebellious teenager is sometimes psychologically just doing what healthy teenagers do. So it’s a tricky one. However, I would say just the most enthusiasm, the most gusto in yourself. So instead of us trying to make our teenagers do something I would do it by the enticement.

That’s what I love to do with everybody I meet. For 13 out of 14 years I’m not convincing anyone to do anything. The first year I was like, “I want everybody to do this because it saved my life.”

I would suggest ice cream. Most teenagers love ice cream. Freeze some bananas. Does she have favorite nuts or strawberries? After dinner, have your ordinary dinner, then just make ice cream. That’s awesome. The other way to get them on board, we all love desserts. So if you have a chance to bring home some gourmet desserts and then some gourmet dishes. So if you make your lasagna as good as a lot of the raw lasagnas, that teenager is going to cross over. Pizza is a hard one because raw pizza is very different from cooked pizza. What are her favorite dishes? Make them even better raw. Then they can just do the cross comparison.

Next, somehow try hooking them up with other teenagers. We have a teenage program at Raw Spirit Festival. It’s led by teenagers. She may or may not want to come but if she did, we have a teenage table and we have teenagers telling us – they’re going to be on the main stage this year – teenagers and children telling us what they would like to see happen with the Raw Spirit Festival and what they would like to see happen in the world, in the future. I would say really valuing the teenager’s perspective.
How about raw chocolate? A lot of teenagers have acne and raw chocolate can cause a little bit of acne but it’s much less extreme than the cooked chocolate. So if she has any acne challenges, suggesting the raw chocolate.

I think winning people over by the taste buds is the way to go. If you make a really awesome carrot cake or something, those kids are going to gobble it up. They won’t care if it’s cooked or raw. Then after a while she’s going to get it.

Another thing is if she could perhaps just try one meal a day and see if she has more energy. I love to talk to construction workers, at least in the past I did, who would be older people, might be really macho guys, and you could tell they were a little lethargic. I said, “Don’t tell anyone but just go sneak away while everybody is having their burger and go have a salad and then come back to the group and go back to work and see how you feel.” I tell you, 100 percent of these men would say, “I have more energy. I’m stronger than the guys half my age.”

I’ve done this with students too. Students are hyperactive and they have attention deficit disorder. I say to them, just try for lunch this organic, leafy green salad and maybe a sweet drink. Make the juice as well. If you can get on just pure apple juice with a little bit of lemon and a little bit of cinnamon, just apple juice.

See if she likes it, to get off Coca Cola and that kind of thing. Go for the sugar at first and then slowly, slowly they’re going to actually wean themselves off the sugar.

The most natural way to become a healthier person is by eating more raw foods. I am sure you are thinking; rabbit food or a delicious steak with a side of greasy French fries, um, like this is a decision. The health benefits from eating raw vegetables, fruits, grains, and nuts are well worth the sacrifice of a little cholesterol. The energy and glow you receive from eating live vibrating food will immediately show on your face and daily walk.

The reason we cook or peel fruits and vegetables is to make them taste better and easier to chew. What most people do not realize is this takes away a lot of the best nutrition. In many cases the peelings provide the best quality of vitamins naturally present in these energy rich fruits and vegetables. When you consume a high percentage or only raw foods in your daily diet you can expect to feel your overall health greatly increase within a few days. After a week or so you will notice the evidence of this raw food diet generate weight loss and increase energy results.

A good healthy companion to increasing fruit and vegetable intake is regular yoga practice. It will advance the health benefits of your new menu with increased circulation, flexibility and muscle tone. It really may sound strange but you will experience a renewed source of energy with a raw food diet and yoga is the perfect method to channel it to a better mind and body. Just combine the healthy benefits of yoga with a raw food diet to get a stronger body and more positive mental attitude.

Yoga will tone your body and ease your mind while the essential vitamins and minerals from fruits, vegetables, or nuts will increase your brain power and promote a strong digestive system.

I like to call the Raw Foods Detox Diet the simplest revolution to transform the diet world of our generation.  No point, calorie, or carb counting.  No club membership fee, no pills to buy, no crazy eating-then-stopping, or anything else to distract you from <i>healthy</i> weight loss.  We’re just getting back to basics here, folks.

Natalia Rose has been a certified clinical nutritionist in New York City for years.  She has and still does work with models, actors, and media personalities to help them stay fit for the camera.  During that time, she has made amazing discoveries and breakthroughs to help everyone get healthy, lose weight and keep it off, find beautiful skin again, and gain more energy.  In her book, “The Raw Food Detox Diet”, she gives the public insight on what she has been telling models and actors for years.  The book takes you through all the ins and outs of the Raw Food Diet, as well as how to safely transition into it.  She answers many questions that people have been asking her, and makes it as easy as humanly possible for someone to change their life and their health.

I started the Raw Foods Diet in January, but still bought this book as I felt I needed some help and pointers because my food choices seemed to be getting too repetitive.  Her five step plan certainly revitalized my dieting practice, and I can see how it can help anyone from those just beginning to those who’ve already started but get lost along the way.

The great thing is you have the comfort of knowing that you are reading information by someone who knows her stuff, yet it is written in such a way that you don’t have to be a scientist to understand it.  I like things put to me in clear, simple terms I can remember without a dictionary, and I believe the book accomplishes that very well.

Simply put, I have and will continue to recommend this diet to everyone I know.  Now that I’ve read this book, I will recommend it as the best place to start and keep up the motivation!  Since this is a review, I’ll say I would give it four stars out of five.

Recently I talked about 3 ways to waste money on a raw food diet.

You didn’t think I would leave you with that, did you?  Come on, I’m nicer than that.

Here are my top 3 easy ways to *save* money on a raw food diet.

#1: Buy in season

To put it bluntly, food in season costs less.

Here’s an example.  When cantaloupes are in season during the summer months, I can find them for as cheap as $1.50.  When they are not in season, they can cost as much as $3 PER MELON!  And we’re talkin’ really tiny melons with hardly any flavor.

Because the food is at its prime, you run less of a risk of choosing yucky fruit when you buy in season.  For instance, if I happen to buy cantaloupe during the spring, 9 times out of 10 I have to throw it out.  But during the summer, almost every single fruit that I choose is a taste sensation.

And that’s another point to bring up.  Food that is in season tastes a MILLION TIMES better than food that is not in season.  You really cannot go wrong buying seasonal fruit.

#2: Buy in bulk

As I stated in Tuesday’s article, I used to buy all of my produce at expensive health foods stores.  Not only was the fruit expensive, the quality wasn’t even that great!

Luckily, I soon stumbled upon an awesome resource for buying high-quality produce at great prices.

*Buy-In-Bulk Stores*

Buy-in-bulk stores are stores that offer a variety of goods at discounted prices.  Because you buy the goods in bulk, forgoing packaging charges, you are able to save some green.

Costco and Sam’s Club are two examples of these stores.  You need a membership for both of these.  I have both in my area, but I only shop at Costco.  The price is $50 per year and the savings I get more than make up for the annual fee.

Plus, the quality is amazing compared to the supermarket!  I get awesome Ataulfo mangoes each Spring, a variety that isn’t available anywhere else in my area!

Currently, I buy the majority of my food from buy-in-bulk stores.

*Wholesale Distributors*

If you *really* want to save some moolah, visit a nearby wholesale produce distributor.  These are the companies that supply produce and other foods to your local grocery stores and health food shops.  There are even organic specific distributors in some areas.

To locate a distributor in your area, simply do a Google search for “wholesale produce distributor.”  You can also talk to the produce department at your grocery store, health food store, etc. to see where they get their produce.

Make sure to contact your distributor *before* you actually head over there to load up.  Some distributors do not sell to the public, while others have specific dates and times for you to come and shop.

I know buying from a distributor seems like a lot of work, but anything is a little bit time consuming when you first start out.  I’ve just started this process myself, and it really isn’t that hard.

Once you’ve found a distributor that you like and set up a routine, it’s no different than a weekly trip to the supermarket.

Here is a great, in depth article on buying wholesale produce from someone with lots more experience on the subject.

*Other ways to save*

If you do not have a Costco in your area and cannot find a distributor to buy from, you can always look to your local Walmart or grocery store.  Some stores do offer small discounts for buying in large quantities.  However, I have never had any luck with this in my area.

Another option is to join a local co-op.  As a member of a co-op, you are presented every week with a list of available produce from local farmers.  Generally, you can then order from that list and pick up your food on a specific day of the week.  Some co-ops also have annual membership fees.

Joining a co-op also means that you are contributing to local produce farmers, which brings me to the 3rd way to save…

#3: Buy local

The easiest way to buy local produce is to visit your area’s farmer’s market.  Almost every city has one and they generally start in April or May and last until October or November.

Here in Memphis, we have a great farmer’s market downtown.  It happens every Saturday from April to October and has really become a nice outing for my family and I.

Now, I know that many of you will argue that farmer’s markets will actually *cost* you money because the food is more expensive.

With some items, especially free-range meat and dairy products, you are right.  But I have found that fruits and vegetables are generally comparable in price to what is offered at the supermarket.  And almost every farmer offers a discount on bulk buys.

And that’s where you really save money.  Think about it: most people buy very little when they shop and so that’s what the farmers expect.  All of a sudden, you start showing up to the market every week to buy *pounds* of produce.

I guarantee you every farmer will be *dying* to offer you a discount just so you’ll buy from them.

An even better way to buy locally is to go directly to the farms themselves.  I have a wonderful orchard near my home that is keeping me loaded with perfect peaches, nectarines, and plums…for only $.75 per pound!!!!!!

This is the lowest cost I have ever seen peaches.  And nothing beats the added benefit of picking fruit myself that was growing just 30 minutes from my home.

If you have a produce farm nearby, I highly recommend that you give them a call.  That way, you can set up a shopping day that is convenient for you and start building a great relationship with the people who grow your food.

But the best part about buying locally?  The food is super fresh, always in season, and extra tasty!

Where to Get Started

If you are feeling a little overwhelmed.  Start with your local grocery stores first and see if they offer any discounts.  Then, do a search for local farmer’s markets and schedule your weekly trip.

To find a farmer’s market or farm near you, visit Local Harvest

That should be enough to help you find some great produce and really save some green.

Even though this simple 2-step routine will go a long way toward clearing up your dry skin, it’s not the best way to ensure a healthy epidermis.

The absolute best thing you can do for your skin actually has nothing to do with soaps, body crèmes, or exfoliants!

Hydration

One of the biggest problems with eating an unhealthy cooked food diet is the simple fact that this diet is extremely dehydrating.

Why?  Two reasons:

1.    The food is cooked, meaning that much of the water has been drawn out via heating.
2.    Most cooked food staples are full of irritating salt, spices, and condiments that draw the water out of your cells.

This is why dieticians, nutritionists, and the like recommend a staggering 8-12 glasses of water per day.  This water is needed to counteract the dryness and toxicity inherent in the standard cooked food diet.

But don’t think raw foodists are off the hook!  Unfortunately, the mainstream raw food diet doesn’t do much better in terms of hydration and actually makes the same two mistakes present in a cooked food diet:

1.    While not cooked, many of the foods consumed are DEHYRATED, and so much of the necessary water is removed.
2.    Raw foodists are known for their love of salt, as well as other irritating spices such as garlic and cayenne pepper.

Again, we see the exact same problems associated with cooked food eaters: dry and toxic ingredients.

This is likely the reason so many raw foodists continue to experience acne (as well as other health issues).

If they would just stop consuming all the dry, fatty, irritating foods and start consuming more fresh, water-rich ingredients, I bet they would see a marked improvement in the condition of their skin.

Which segues nicely into my final point…

How to Stay Hydrated

If you really want radiant skin, you need to stay hydrated.  And the best way to stay hydrated is NOT to drink gallons of water a day, but to eat a diet of water-rich foods.

And what diet might that be?  Why, a low fat raw vegan one, of course!  The amount of sweet fruit you will eat on such a diet has *more* than enough water to keep your skin healthy and hydrated.

And the more simply you eat – meaning the less irritating salt and spices you consume – the less toxic ingredients your body will have to dilute by removing precious water from your cells.

Another benefit of simple eating: no water retention!  Again, irritating salt and spices have to be diluted, which means that your body actually holds on to the water to keep the salt in solution.

Sounds counterintuitive, right?  You are holding onto more water and yet your body is dehydrated.

That’s because the water is no longer in your cells or bloodstream, but in your skin.  This is what gives so many salt lovers that “puffy” look.

It’s Not Just About Diet

Instead of ending on that note, I want to quickly add that it isn’t all about diet.

Perhaps you saw this one coming, but it’s so true!

No matter how clean your diet is, your skin (and your health, for that matter) will never be as great as it could be if you do not take other health factors into account.

Factors such as:

-    Exercise
-    Sunshine
-    Fresh Air
-    Clean drinking water
-    Etc.

All of these have a huge effect on the look and feel of your skin.

Healthy skin comes from within!

Have you started hearing about the Raw Food Diet? It’s gaining popularity and buzz, not just as a diet to lose weight, but a diet for a long and healthy life. We eat so much in the way of processed food that we don’t even stop to think about what we’re putting into our bodies, and how far we’ve come nutritionally from our ancestral, agrarian roots. 

A raw food diet means consuming food in its natural, unprocessed form. There are several common-sense rationales for why this is a good idea. Processing and cooking food can take so much of the basic nutritional value away. Think of some of the conventional wisdom you’ve heard about for years, such as: If you cook pasta just to the al dente (or medium) stage, it will have more calories, yes, but it will have more the nutritional value in it than if you cooked it to a well-done stage. Or you probably remember hearing not to peel carrots or potatoes too deeply, because most of the nutrients and values are just under the surface. 

The raw food diet means eating unprocessed, uncooked, organic, whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, dried fruits, seaweeds, etc. It means a diet that is at least 75% uncooked! Cooking takes out flavor and nutrition from vegetables and fruits. A raw food diet means eating more the way our ancient ancestors did. Our healthier, more fit ancestors. They cooked very little, and certainly didn’t cook or process fruits and vegetables. They ate them RAW. Their water wasn’t from a tap; it was natural, spring water. Maybe they drank some coconut milk on occasion. 

Doesn’t it just make sense that this is how our bodies were meant to eat? It’s a way of eating that’s in harmony with the planet and in harmony with our own metabolisms. Our bodies were meant to work, and need to work to be efficient. That means exercise, certainly, but it also means eating natural, raw foods that require more energy to digest them.

Cheap Steaks | Discount Cheese

Anyone who has ever eaten a meal of raw fruit knows how intensely pleasurable this can be.  Fruit requires little to no preparation (all you need to eat a banana is opposable thumbs).  It is easy to eat and digests quickly, usually in just 30 minutes.

Best of all, fruit tastes great and completely satisfies the sweet tooth in the most healthy way possible.

Just like avocado and nuts, fruit is calorically dense.  However, fruit is also high in volume, like vegetables.  This means that a meal of fruit both provides enough calories AND enough volume to leave you completely satiated until the next meal.

Just Fruit?!?

The idea of eating only fruit for a meal is very strange to people.  Much of this confusion stems from the fact that we grow up thinking of raw fruit as a snack or part of a dessert.  The idea of eating more than a couple pieces of fruit in one sitting is completely foreign to us.

As a result, people who are new to a low fat, high fruit raw food diet often under eat on calories at first.

To make the transition easier for you, here is a simple example of a sufficient fruit meal…

*Fruit Meal*

Let’s say you need 2000 calories a day and you like to eat 3 meals a day.  If each meal is divided equally, one meal would be between 600-700 calories.

One medium banana contains about 100 calories.  In order to consume 600-700 calories in one meal from bananas alone, you would have to consume 6 to 7 bananas.

And that’s it!  It really is that simple.

Of course, if eating a meal of only one type of fruit seems much too boring to you, there are many alternatives.  You can combine your favorite fruits into a nice fruit salad.  A popular choice for beginners is to blend fruits into a smoothie.  This is an easy way to get enough calories from fruit.

Here is a delicious smoothie you can make in just a few minutes…

*Two Pears in a Peel*

5 bananas 2 pears 1 cup of water

Blend ingredients together and enjoy!

There are many different combinations you can make.  You can also add greens, which will add some nice variety and counterbalance some of the sweetness.

Problems with Fruit

Many raw foodists believe that fruits should be severely limited, or even eliminated, because they contain simple sugars like fructose and glucose.  These simple sugars are believed to lead to such ailments as diabetes and Candida.

First, I want to clarify that the sugar in fruit does not cause sugar metabolic disorders.  It is an excess of fat in the body that coats the insulin, blocking it from reaching the sugar molecules.  The excess sugar in the blood leads to a high blood-sugar level.

Without the excess fat, the insulin will reach the sugar molecules and transport them out of the blood and into the cells.

Second, there is a huge difference between the simple sugars found in fruit and the simple sugars found in processed foods.  These refined sugars have been removed from whole foods (i.e. fruit, sugar cane) and further processed.  They no longer contain any nutritional value whatsoever.

On the contrary, the sugars in whole fruit have not been processed and are accompanied by necessary water, fiber, Vitamin C, Vitamin A, phytonutrients, etc.

How Much Fruit?

I recommend that the majority of your calories come from fruit.  The best way to determine how much is to simply eat sweet fruit until you are full.  As a general guideline, our closest relatives the bonobos consume 95% of their calories from sweet fruit.  The other great apes consume between 70-90% of their calories from fruit.

Dr. Douglas Graham, a well-known leader in the raw food movement, recommends in The 80/10/10 Diet that 80% of our calories come from simple carbohydrates in the form of fruit.  You can check out this excellent book and the rest of Dr. Graham’s top-quality catalog at FoodnSport.

On average, I consume between 85-90% of my calories from sweet fruit.

Take Action

You can get started today by simply eating all fruit for your next meal.  Many people prefer to wait until breakfast, as it is the easiest meal to transition.

You could also begin your next meal with as much fruit as you can eat, and then finish the meal with your regular fare.  Just be sure to wait at least 30 minutes between your two meals so that your body has time to fully digest the fruit.

Gone are the days when dog pets were pampered by their owners by the use of commercially-made canine food. When several recalls were made a couple of years back, pet owners stood at attention and seriously contemplated having a raw food diet for dogs (and surprisingly, even cats).

Some owners have some hesitations though. Two main reasons come to mind:

Their dogs might become carnivores. These people claim that the scent of blood might turn their dogs into flesh-eating mutts, their connection with humans limited only for hunting the latter as food. We must remember though that before dogs became trained as local house pets, they have been eating raw meat like their wolf cousins – for centuries now, if I may add. And dogs are omnivores just like us – they eat not just meat but vegetables as well.

The dogs may get salmonella or other bacteria. Ever wonder why your dog practically begs to go outside as soon as he finishes eating? That’s because their digestive systems work much faster than ours, the stomach acid doesn’t break it down – meaning, they don’t benefit from the food anyway. If you are scared of the likelihood of him getting worms, be sure to buy raw food that’s approved by the USDA (the United States Department of Agriculture).

The raw food diet contains protein and other nutrients that come from the following foods:

-          Raw, unprocessed bones (NOT pet store bones, as these have been cooked and boiled, therefore having a higher risk of bone splintering) or ground bones.

-          Whole raw chicken, fish, lamb, rabbit, pork, beef, tripe, turkey, quail and other meats.

-          Liver, kidneys and hearts.

-          Whole fruits such as apples, oranges and pears.

-          Whole raw eggs.

-          Either shredded or ground vegetables such as carrots, spinach, broccoli and peppers.

-          Yoghurt, cottage cheese or shredded cheese.

It is also recommended that you add some supplements too. Some vitamins and minerals that have been given the thumbs-up by experts consist of the following:

-          Fish oils for Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids.

-          Vitamin E.

-          Garlic.

-          Probiotics.

-          Digestive enzymes.

-          A multivitamins.

Remember to visit the vet so that he can prescribe what’s best for your dog.

I am going to supply you with knowledge about the essential nutrients needed for optimum health and longevity, several of which are ignored by mainstream nutritionists.
Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, 17th edition defines nutrition as, “All the processes involved in the taking in and utilization of food substances by which growth, repair, and maintenance of activities in the body as a whole or in any of its parts are accomplished. Includes ingestion, digestion, absorption, and metabolism (assimilation)…” As you may gather, consuming the needed nutrient does not guarantee that the nutrient will be assimilated by the body.
Many people on this planet are aware that proper nutrition is essential for good health and that inadequate nutrition is associated with poor health and disease. Yet the corporations that control the majority of the food sold in markets are getting away with supplying very low quality products. Corporations routinely package and market foods based on their shelf life and taste rather than their nutritional value. Seed variations are selected for ease of growing, harvesting, transporting, and processing rather than nutrition. Adding chemicals to achieve a longer shelf-life is commonplace and the overrefining of grains is ubiquitous. These practices contribute to inadequate nutrition which leads, intern, to ill health.
Have you ever had someone tell you that they have a chemical imbalance? Consider the idea that they are suffering from an essential nutrient deficiency; do you believe that a pharmaceutical can supply the missing nutrients?
Scientific research proves that many essential nutrients are destroyed in cooking; so are cooked foods still whole foods? This chapter explains why fresh, uncooked and unprocessed whole foods are the most important health guardians available to the human organism.

Phytonutrients
Phytonutrients are nutrients from plant sources. This topic could fill many large books, but I will keep it brief. We should not assume that all the nutritive factors of foods are well known or understood. New nutrients are being discovered all the time. So, when we process or cook the foods that come in perfect form from nature, what else is being destroyed in addition to what is known?
Dr. L. Newman, author of Make Your Juicer Your Drug Store, writes, “One of the major discoveries in nutritional research was that nature never gives us isolated minerals and vitamins. She always gives them to us in combinations. Man [sic] probably does not comprehend one millionth of what still remains unknown in the field. We do know, however, that when we do fair [obtain], these vital elements from the master chemist, we are obtaining, besides the known vitamins, vitamins that have not yet been discovered.”
Following are the words on the first page of Prescription For Nutritional Healing, Third Edition, which claims to be America’s #1 Guide to Natural Health, and which is probably the most popular and widely used book of its kind in the United States. “One problem most of us have is that we do not get the nutrients we need from our diet because most of the foods we consume are cooked and/or processed. Cooking at high temperatures and processing destroys vital nutrients the body needs to function properly. The organic raw foods that supply these elements are largely missing from today’s diet.” (Balch and Balch pg. 2)
Many important nutrients exist in plant foods (many of which we have not yet identified) and these nutrients can be destroyed in processing and cooking are two of the many reasons that I believe optimum health requires the consumption of a wide variety of unprocessed and uncooked plant foods.

Protein
According to the Max Planck Institute for Nutritional Research in Germany, protein, when cooked, is only 50 percent bioavailable. In other words, about half the amino acids (the building blocks of protein) are unusable by the body because they are destroyed by cooking.
The World Health Organization recommends that 5 percent of one’s total daily calories come from protein. This level is easily reached on a plant-based diet. For example, 9 percent of calories in an orange are derived from protein, from zucchini 17 percent, strawberries 8, broccoli 42, cauliflower 31 and corn 13. The fact is that the commonly consumed plant foods contain 6 to 45 percent of their calories as protein. This research comes from John McDougall, MD. He says, “Protein is so abundant in plant foods that it is impossible for any dietician or scientist to design a diet that is composed of unprocessed plant foods (starches and vegetables) and, at the same time, be deficient in protein. We would not have survived as a species if this were not true.”
In the book, Disease-Proof Your Child, Joel Fuhrman, M.D. states, “Protein is ubiquitous; it is contained in all foods, not only animal products. Protein deficiency in not a concern for anyone in the developed world. It is almost impossible to consume too little protein, no matter what you eat…”
All proteins are formed by amino acids joined together in specific sequences. Eight are said to be essential to adults, and 10 essential to infants. The belief that one must eat all essential amino acids at every meal (also called the complete protein theory) in order to maintain health is a myth. The Wendt Doctrine, describing thirty years of research, debunks the complete protein myth. It proves that we have the ability to store these proteins in our cells and to convert them into amino acids that move freely throughout the body to areas that might be deficient. Therefore, combining beans and rice to supply complex protein is unnecessary. The Wendt Doctrine also shows the damaging effects of excess concentrated protein which clogs the system, depleting the cells of oxygen and nutrition and creates an acidic environment, a condition that eventually leads to degenerative diseases.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) states that, “…the average American takes in twice the amount of protein he or she needs. Excess protein has been linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract and some cancers.”
In the February 2004 issue of Readers Digest , in an article entitled Kicking Kidney Stones, the author states: “The simplest fix is to avoid high-protein diets.” Then the author explains how kidney stones are formed. “Protein from meat and other animal products is broken down into acids. It’s your kidney’s job to balance acids with bases for elimination from the body. The handiest base is the calcium in your bones. Protein is broken down and stored in the bone, where it binds with calcium. Then the kidneys filter these particles from your blood. And the more meat you eat, the more calcium you’ll have in your kidneys. Over time, these particles bind together, forming stones.”
According to Leslie and Susannah Kenton, in their book, Raw Energy, grilling a steak at 239 degrees Fahrenheit completely destroys the amino acids
lysine and cystine. Many researchers believe that the reason more people don’t get extremely ill from high-protein diets is due to the fact that about 50 percent of the protein is destroyed by cooking.
Because a diet rich in a variety of plant foods can provide all the protein one needs, I see no need to worry about getting enough protein unless poor digestion and absorption is an issue. In that case, thorough chewing, supplemental digestive enzymes and intestinal cleansing can help.