The second advantage of getting more of raw vegetables and fruit in your diet lies in the latter's alcaline properties, and this can be proven by measuring your urine pH each morning.
What is pH?
PH is the measurement of how acid or alkaline something is. The pH level scale runs from 1 to 14 with 1 serving as "very acidic" 7 being "neutral" and 14 being "very alkaline". The blood has a PH level. In fact, it goes to great lengths to maintain a pH level of 7.35 to 7.45, slightly alkaline.
Why is this important? Among many reasons why your body strives for this balance is your energy level to begin with. Introducing a large amount of raw vegetable and fruit is what gives the blood enough alcaline elements so that your body is balanced and your energy increases.
To find out what your general pH is, get pH paper strips from your drugstore and dip it in your first urine in the morning. The color will change according to urine pH. Compare it with the color samples on the cover of the paper strip box: you get a number that should not be below 7 nor over 8.
What does acid do?
Your body is a finely tuned machine. Like other types of machinery, the parts need to be kept running by fuel. The best fuel for your body is a custom mix, more alkaline than acid. What difference does this make?
It all starts in the bloodstream. Think of the bloodstream as a superhighway with stops all over the body. Red blood cells are the commuting traffic riding along the bloodstream in a hurry to get to work. These red blood cells each have a negative charge on them, and this keeps them from getting into fender benders and collisions in the bloodstream. When the negative charge is stripped away from the red blood cells, they cluster together and can cause gridlock and bottlenecks in the bloodstream. In short, the traffic in the bloodstream isn’t flowing as smoothly and it causes everything to slow down. If you’ve ever been stuck in freeway traffic you know how frustrating this is.
This stress on the body causes a domino effect, which eventually saps the energy away and makes you tired and sluggish. Acid is the culprit in the bloodstream traffic jam. When acid is introduced into the bloodstream it eats away at the negative charge that surrounds each red blood cell and causes all kinds of problems. How can you avoid this? The answer is quite simple and it starts with what you put in your stomach.
Why acid makes you fat
Red blood cells are created by the food that you eat. When the stomach works on digesting food, it leaves behind natural acidic waste. Your body eliminates this waste through your urine and sweat, but there comes a point when the waste build up is too great to eliminate.
What does your body do with all of the acidic waste that cannot be eliminated? It stores it in your body! The cells in your body are mostly alkaline, but the acid waste starts to attack and destroy them. A lot of energy is expelled keeping the waste from doing detrimental damage to your body, but this fight can only go on for so long. Eventually the build up is so great that the cells deteriorate and cause energy depletion, leaving the body open to opportunistic diseases.
Rawfood brings alkaline relief
Making changes to your diet - and especially introducing raw vegetables and fruits - is a huge step in reversing this breakdown of your body while boosting your energy level. The choices you make in what you eat will greatly determine how much of acidic waste gets stored in your body.
The more alkaline your food choices are the less of this waste will be accumulated in your body, tipping the balance in the favor of good health. By limiting your intake of acidic foods and increasing your intake of alkaline food you can increase your stamina, endurance, and the overall performance of your body machine.
Many books and websites show lists that outline which foods are alkaline and which ones are acidic. But in general, when eating raw food you make sure that what you get is more alcaline than acidic. Even if you eat lemon juice! This will surprise you: although they are acidic in your mouth, eating lemons is a sure way to re-alcalinize your body.
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Recipe: BANANA PAPAYA RAW CREAM PUDDING
For 1 serving you need:
- 1 cup ripe papaya, peeled, seeded and cut in chunks
- 1/2 cup banana, peeled and cut in chunks
- A blender
Put fruit chunks in a blender and blend lightly until smooth.
Add your favourite spices: cinnamon, ginger... to taste.
Eat immediately.
You can create your own variations, adding:
- Fitted prunes, figs or raisins (soaked before blending).
- Raw tahini, raw almond butter, or any kind of raw nut butter you can find (make sure it is raw, meaning that the nuts have not been roasted before the crushing, and that the crushing was made in a refrigerated mill). However, the main problem with nuts is their acidic property; therefore, avoid this part if your PH is too acidic.
Why "Eat immediately"?
When the fruit is pealed and broken, or if you have just extracted the juice, the vitamins are exposed. They deteriorate in a very short time, from 10 minutes to half an hour according to the kind of vegetable or fruit, and even in the refrigerator. There can also be an oxydizing process of the whole, the taste and smell can change, etc. You want to get all the nutrients in their best state and quality.
Another important quick tip
If you mix raw and cooked foods at the same meal, EAT THE RAW FOOD FIRST, then the cooked dishes. Do not mix raw foods with cooked foods. Although people believe that everything get mixed up in the stomach, this is not true.
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