Why Raw Food #3: Nutrients

Eating raw foods is a way to give your body some of the nutrition it desperately needs.
Many of us are at least slightly overweight, and even the morbidly obese are starving for essential proteins and amino acids. All the processed, cooked foods we eat give us only a small percentage of what we need. Consequently, we eat and eat and yet we’re still not nourished. Psychologists try to tell us we’re eating to make up for an emptiness in our souls. Wrong! Our bodies are empty and trying to tell us so.

Eating raw foods is good for us on so many levels. It’s satisfying to eat them. They take more time to chew and swallow, so we don’t eat as fast. And we’re getting so much more in the way of nutrition by consuming fruits, vegetables, nuts and sprouts.

Cooking dramatically alters food nutrients

Cooking fruit and vegetables alter their nutritive quality. When foods go through the cooking process, this heating process destroys about one-third to one-half of the vitamins A and C, riboflavin and thiamin. Cooked fats are dramatically deteriorated. Processed foods, with their high-fat high-sodium content, are hard to digest. They take an enormous amount of the body’s energy to consume. When your body’s energy isn’t used up digesting all that fat, it’s available for YOU – for work, play, love, exercise – in other words, for LIFE.

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.

Enzyme-dead food makes you sick

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.
It can take time to prepare raw foods however, that's why a juicer is an important addition to your kitchen once your start to be serious about raw foods. A good juicer can process an entire apple – seeds, stems, peel, pulp and all – and turn all that into a healthy, nutritious juice. As I mentioned in my previous post, a Champion juicer for instances extracts ALL of the nutrients from the vegetable or fruit, for you to absorb in a form that is very easily digested.
Buying apple juice is NOT the same thing!!! Don’t even look at apple juices or even ciders in the grocery store. Put that $2 or $3 aside and save up for a juicer. Buy bags of apples, orange, bananas, carrots and make your own juices to get everything from the fruit that you’d get by eating it raw.

Add variety

Now you’re getting juice that’s as fresh as the fruit or vegetable you made it from. No preservatives, no processing that strips most of the energy from the fruit. And think of all the delicious combinations you can make with the many tropical fruits that are available now in most grocery stores. You can customize your fruits and add non-typical ingredients like pumpkin to an orange juice. Now that’s a powerhouse of a juice!

You do want to be sure though, that you’re getting enough of the right kinds of nutrition. Eating raw foods doesn’t mean eating only the raw foods you like. Watermelon is good for you, but it’s not enough. The same with most foods. You’ll need to do a little research into which raw foods have the essential proteins, or what combinations of food you need to eat to get enough protein. Raw food eating is intended to nourish your body in a completely different way, but just being raw isn’t enough. You want to do this to be in balance, and you need to balance the raw foods you’re eating for proper nutrition.

One way to ensure that you are getting enough nutrients is to incorporate a new vegetable every week. Buy something you have never heard of, like a "leek", or "swiss chard". You will find a whole new world of tastes and textures open up to you. You will feel more and more deterred by fast food.

More recipes from my Champion juicer manual

Raw Breakfast Muesli
3-4 apples (pealed)
1 orange
2 spoonfuls raw oats (soaked in water all night)
1 spoonful raw wheat grains (soaked all night)
1/2 cup dates or figs
1/2 cup raw almonds, or any kind of nuts
Assemble the Champion juicer for homogenization, and pass the ingredients in the order indicated above. Add some raw sugar (no fructose syrup!) or honey to your taste. You can us different fruits, but always with an orange to avoid oxidzation. You can add cinnamon, ginger...

Almond Milk Carrot Juice
4-5 carrots (unpealed if organic, but thoroughly cleaned)
10 almonds (soaked all night - throw the water away)
Extract the juice of carrots, adding 2-3 almonds after each carrot. Finish with a carrot.
You'll have a carrot juice rich with all the nutrients of almonds. Eat at once.

Liquid salad
3 carrots
1/2 small onion
1 slice green pepper
1 cup squeezed spinach
1/2 lemon
1/4 cup cut parsley
2 tomatoes

Extract the juice in the order indicated above.
This "liquid salad" is great for people who cannot chew salads.

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WHAT IF WE OPENED OUR EYES

CAUTION: you could be shocked




Comments found on this page:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_E4N5YIycI

"Look at me everyone, i'm a programed citizen who doesn't know the truth and thinks everything the government tells me is the truth. I'm a fucking typical stupid American who is blind. Thats what its like the majority." Lotzx5

"I'm only 16, but I think that 99% of teenagers that are being let out into the 'free' world have no idea what's going on." Perryownsyou

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ZEITGEIST

'Zeitgeist, The Movie' and 'Zeitgeist: Addendum' were created as Not-for-Profit expressions to communicate what the author felt were highly important social understandings which most humans are generally not aware of. The first film focuses on suppressed historical & modern information about currently dominant social institutions, while also exploring what could be in store for humanity if the power structures at large continue their patterns of self-interest, corruption, and consolidation.

The second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other "establishment" notions of human affairs, but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which we are a part. The work advocates a new social system which is updated to present day knowledge, highly influenced by the life long work of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project.

The website, the DVD's with subtitles in 16 languages, and the full transcript of the movies can be found at this address:

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/transcript.htm#S1

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JUICING

Juicing is one of the healthiest things you can do for your body.

In fact, juicing is the easiest way to start a raw food diet. For example, you can replace your breakfast with juices. Nearly anything can be juiced – fruits and vegetables, primarily. It is a form of concentrated nutrition.

Eating plenty of vegetables is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. Vegetables provide the nutrients you need for more energy, healthy digestive support, and valuable assistance for virtually every cell in your body. Juicing is a sure-fire way to make sure you get enough of these nutrients every day.

Fresh fruit and vegetable juices are good sources of the traditional nutrients. Citrus fruits (grapefruit, oranges, etc.) provide a healthy portion of vitamin C. Carrot juice contains large quantities of vitamin A, in the form of beta carotene. A number of green juices are a good source of vitamin E. Fruit juices are a good source of essential minerals like iron, copper, potassium, sodium, iodine, and magnesium, which are bound by the plant in a form that is most easily assimilated during digestion.

Choosing the right juicer

You will not want to use the common centrifuge juice extractor because the centrifuge action deteriorates the molecules in the vegetables and fruits. You need to use a PRESS extractor.

Here are two kinds of juicers that are best known:

Omega 1000 juicer – Makes good, virtually pulp-free juice. It’s a high-yield juicer but not good for juicing leafy greens. This juicer will not process wheatgrass.
Dr MERCOLA advertises the Omega 8003 Juicer:
http://shop.mercola.com/Electronics___Appliances-Omega_Juicer_8003___220V__Non_US_Model_-P593.aspx

Champion juicer – Better juice quality, pulpy with good nutritional value. Also a multi-purpose machine that grates and churns and can make nut butters. A good heavy-duty juicer, high volume, good for families. Does not process wheatgrass. You can find it in several websites on Google:
http://www.championjuicer.com/what_makes_champion.html
http://www.discountjuicers.com/champion.html

The Champion Juicer chews the fibers and breaks up the cells of vegetables and fruits. This give you more fiber, enzymes, vitamins and trace minerals. This all results in the darker, richer color of the juice and a sweeter, richer more full-bodied flavor. You can see and taste the difference.

I purchased a Champion juicer six years ago and I am still very glad I did that for my health. With it I press vegetables and fruits to extract juices and I very finely grate carrots and other root vegetables to make great coleslaws. I can also mash fruits into a homogenized puree for home sorbets and icecreams, and make gorgeous raw tomato or apple sauce, easy to use in recipes.

Of course, you will need to find very fresh vegetables to make your own home juices, and it is good to think about getting them from organic farming in order to avoid all those chemicals.
Rinsing with cool water will remove some surface pesticide residue, but not the pesticide that was absorbed into the produce as it was grown. Some of the most severely tainted types of produce are strawberries and bell peppers. Some of the least tainted are carrots and avocados. Although in a regular press juicer you do not need to remove the peels and seeds from your vegetables and fruit, you need to at least peel your produce if they do not come from organic farming.

Drinking plenty of fresh fruit juices daily will cleanse your system, make you feel completely energized and last but not least, you will look beautiful. People will wonder what you are doing differently!

Here are a few juice recipes from my own Champion user manual:

Celery and Lemon Cocktail Delight
2 peeled lemons
1 handful of tender celery leaves
1 apple
Juice the celery leaves, then the lemons and apples in the Champion Juicer.
Add water to make 1 quart. Serve with ice cubes.

Frozen Banana Desserts
4 ripe banana (cut in half and frozen without skins)
Assemble the Champion Juicer for homogenizing and homogenize the frozen bananas.
Serve at once. Makes 4 servings.

Power Boost
Drink this at least 15 minutes before eating.
1 tart organic apple, unpeeled, quartered and chopped
3-5 scrubbed, unpeeled organic carrots, chopped
2 clean stalks of organic kale, stems removed
Juice according to manufacturer's directions for your juicer. Drink juice immediately to avoid letting vitamins deteriorate. The colour may surprise you but it is pleasant tasting and loaded with nutrients.

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