Tag: vegetables

Why You Should Eat Fruit

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You’ve probably been hearing a lot about the value of a raw foods diet. A raw food diet consists primarily of uncooked, unprocessed fruits, vegetables, sprouts, seaweed, nuts and juices. It’s a vegetarian diet, but one that rejects any animal products. Its central tenet is that cooking and processing take out the majority of essential vitamins, enzymes and nutrients that our bodies evolved to thrive on.

Fruitarians, as the word implies, eat primarily fruits, with nuts and grains as well. A fruitarian diet also includes foods like tomatoes or avocadoes, which are fruits.

Fruit is nourishing and refreshing for your health. It doesn’t clog the body’s vital arteries; better still, it actually flushes and cleanses. A fruit diet also lightens our bodies and spirits, in line with the general lightening of our planetary vibration rate which many higher sources tell us is taking place at this time.

You need to eat carefully if you choose a fruitarian diet, because it can be more of a challenge to get enough essential protein in your diet. A fruitarian eats nothing which has been killed or stolen. That supplants meat, dairy, and plants with the thousands of fruit and nut combinations on the planet. E.g., a fruitarian can eat an avocado sandwich, a coconut milk shake or the purest coconut ice cream made from the milk and meat of the fruit, veggie burgers made of lentil or bean paste or tofu, a succotash of corn, limas, peas, and tomatoes, sweets made with pure maple syrup or date sugar, pecan pies made with fruit sugars, fruit shakes made of a mixture of orange and banana, pear and peach, pomegranate, papaya, and plum. A pizza of tofu, tomato, and pepper (not pepperoni), salads of tomato, cucumber, green and red peppers (but not lettuce, cabbage, or celery), nut butters such as almond butter or tahini, hummus (chickpea paste). In other words, fruitarian may eat fruits 99.9% of the time, but occasionally do indulge in the delicacies of other food groups.

Dehydrated Fruits Benefits

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One of the problems facing anyone trying to eat healthier, especially for someone trying to move towards eating more raw foods is the convenience factor. Raw and natural foods are so much healthier for you, but it’s not as if there are drive-through raw foods restaurants on every street corner in the country.

And of course, there’s no such thing as a raw foods snack machine, is there? So if you get hungry during the day, you’re going to have a challenge of finding something appropriate to eat if you haven’t packed any raw fruits and vegetables. And when you’re rushing around in the morning, sometimes it’s next to impossible to find the time to put together a selection of healthy snacks to take with you.

One thing to try so that you have healthy snacks available quickly is to dehydrate your fruits or make fruit leathers. Those fruit roll-ups you see in the grocery store are derived from a pretty good idea – fruit leathers. But it’s better to make your own – commercial fruit leathers are going to be loaded with preservatives and sugars – just the things you want to avoid.

When you’re switching to a raw foods diet, that doesn’t always have to mean fresh off the farm. It means not cooking foods with processes that strip all the essential vitamins, amino acids and enzymes from them. Drying fruit is a great way to add variety to your diet and make yourself tasty snacks of dried fruit or fruit leathers. It’s not hard to do. There are recipes and inexpensive food dehydrators on the Web. These are also great snacks to pack for your kids’ lunches!

You get all the benefit of the raw fruit, just packaged and preserved in a healthy, nutritious way!

Organic Raw Food

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Fortunately for those of us newly interested in eating organic and raw foods, there are lots of products out there. Natural and organic foods used to be found only in natural food stores, and those could be few and far between. While not as ubiquitous as McDonald’s, there ARE many more stand-alone stores. And the grocery chains are catching on too, with more organic selections than ever before. If you don’t see them in your grocery store, just ask. You’re probably not the only person in your neighborhood who’d like to see more of these options.

Many grocery stores now feature sprouts and other living foods in the produce aisle. Of course, if they don’t, there’s nothing easier to grow for yourself than sprouts!

There are also tons of sites on the Web where you can order raw and living foods. Just do a search on raw foods and you’ll come up with a lot of different places to order the foods you’d like to buy. Many of these sites are also full of useful information, to help you learn about eating raw foods, and help educate you on the specific food values.

What else? Experiment with what you like. Take the time to learn a little about what the different nutrients in foods do for you. A few examples:

Cabbage – High in Vitamin C; important for healthy cell function
Shitake mushrooms – contain essential fatty acids and antioxidants to support a healthy immune system
Kale – Rich in fiber and helps reduce calorie intake with less hunger. We like that!
Barley – Loaded with niacin, fiber and iron and is important for healthy blood sugar.
Pumpkin – So rich in fiber and vitamins; helps reduce appetite by filling the stomach with indigestible fibers

Cooking Raw Food

4Does 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.

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 food.

Healthy Skin and Raw Food

Healthy Skin And Raw FoodWhat’s the largest organ in your body? It’s your skin! It provides a protective covering for the other organs of the body. It changes to regulate your internal body temperature. And it’s a good indicator of overall health and well-being.

People spend thousands of dollars on skin preparations to make your skin look vibrant and glowing. They’re all topical products – products that we put on top of our skin. But if we spent just a fraction of the money we spend on these preparations on RAW FOODS, we’d begin to see an immediate change in the texture of our skin.

When you eat raw foods, you put more of the essential vitamins and amino acids your body needs into it. You’re also adding moisture – naturally. Raw foods have a much higher moisture content than cooked foods, simply because the cooking process takes out so much essential moisture.

Your skin is a mirror of what’s going on in the rest of your body. And when your organs and blood are fed the nutrition they need to function properly, that shows in your skin. Get your vitamins and moisture from foods like apples and carrots. When you do, then phrases like “inner beauty” and “inner glow” will be applied to YOU. Your skin is what’s presented to the rest of the world and healthy, glowing skin makes the best first impression.

When you start adding raw foods to your diet, things will just naturally fall into place. You’ll feel better. You’ll look better. People will react to you more positively. You’ll have so much more energy for your work, your friends, and your family. And this kind of energy is a self-perpetuating thing. You don’t need self-help books and expensive moisturizers and plastic surgery. When your body and skin are getting their essential nutrition with raw, uncooked foods, you’ll look and feel your best, NATURALLY!

Benefits of Raw Food

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Food that is grown or raised without chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers is called “organic.” We’ve become so accustomed to getting by with foods that have been grown with fertilizers and that contain harmful toxins, that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel truly “well.” We don’t know how good we can really feel.

Why else would you choose to eat organic food? We pay a lot in terms of flavor and nutrition to eat perfect-looking food. Yes, organic food might have an occasional bruise on its flesh – but so does food that’s been sprayed with harmful chemicals. Organic food, though, are generally fresher and more flavorful. Many times, they’re grown locally, so they haven’t been stored or refrigerated. Consider the difference in flavor between a vine-ripened tomato and a regular tomato. There’s just no comparison.

The body has to process everything you put into it and eliminate what it cannot digest. If your food contains toxins in the form of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, your body has to figure out a way to get rid of the toxins. When the body cannot get rid of toxins fast enough, it stores them until it has time to eliminate them. This can lead to many health problems. Many of the pesticides used in farming have been found to be carcinogenic. Reducing your exposure to these toxins can improve your health. True, some people eliminate toxins well. Still, the body needs to expend energy to eliminate toxins when it could be doing other things such as healing damaged cells, fighting off viruses and bacteria, or patrolling the body for cancer cells. Even people who can tolerate or eliminate toxins could feel substantially better without putting these poisons into their bodies. And if your system is sensitive to toxins, you’ll be much better off eliminating them from your diet as much as possible. Fortunately, it’s easier to do this because there’s a greater selection and variety of organic produce in our grocery stores.

Feeding Your Dog Raw Food

Feeding Your Dog Raw Food

There has been a lot of debate recently over what types of food are best for dogs, commercial food versus homemade food, raw food, cooked food, etc. There are advantages and disadvantages associated with all of these diets, and in this article, we will cover the views on the raw food diet for your dog, covering both sides of the issue, so that you can make your own decision.

There are many benefits that your dog will receive from being on a raw diet, according to some vets. If you choose to allow your dog to have bones, then some say that their teeth will stay in better shape, and will be cleaner, than those on other diets. This could potentially mean less money that you have to spend on dental care at the vet’s office, which is considered to be an added bonus for you, the dog’s owner.

Many dogs’ digestive systems are better able to tolerate raw food than commercial dog foods that are filled with by-products and preservatives. You also don’t have to worry as much about potential food allergies, since you know exactly what is in the food that you are giving to your dog.

Another belief is that dogs that are on raw diets have significantly reduced risk of becoming obese, which can cause many serious health problems, just as it does for humans. They are only eating what they need, without getting all of the fillers that many commercial dog foods contain, which cuts out excess calories.

One of the most common complaints that dog owners have about a raw diet is that it takes a lot longer for them to prepare their dog’s food than normal. They can’t just go to a bag and scoop out kibble into a bowl; they have to actually prepare the food, much as they would for themselves. You have to have enough meat on hand to feed your dog, you have to measure out the correct amount, and then mix it with the proper amount of vegetables, and bones if you choose to go that route. You have to determine how much food your dog should eat each day, depending on his or her ideal body weight, and then either prepare the food on a daily basis, or prepare it in batches and store it in the freezer until it is needed. Either way, you have a lot more time invested in the entire process, and for busy families, this isn’t always an option.

When you purchase meat, depending on where you live, it can be pretty expensive, so you will likely have to spend more money on a raw diet than you would a commercial dog food diet. To make this option more affordable, you will need to look for sales and then buy as much as you can afford and store it appropriately, which could also mean investing in a separate freezer, if you don’t already have one on hand.

Anytime you think about raw meat, you have to think about parasites and bacteria, which could be potentially harmful for your dog. Some meats are more dangerous than others, for example pork, but in general, you should be okay. Raw beef and chicken usually don’t pose any problems for dogs, as long as it is stored properly at the correct temperatures.

You will need to decide whether or not to give your dog bones. Some vets say that you should never give your dog any kind of bone, because they could choke, or the bones could damage their digestive system, but others say as long as you are careful about the types of bones you give, this isn’t a problem. Many advocates of the raw diet grind bones up and mix them in, but again, that is your choice.

If you are thinking about putting your dog on a raw diet, you need to take the time to look at all of the information you can find, and then make your own decision based on your findings. The raw diet requires a commitment from you the dog owner, both financially, and time-wise, if you aren’t prepared for that, or aren’t certain that is the way you want to go, then you might want to think about other options.