Why Raw?

The raw vegan diet is the best diet for us for many reasons. First and foremost, it is what our bodies were designed to eat. If you look at the structure of our teeth, hands, and digestive systems you can see that they are quite different from carnivores (cats, wolves), omnivores (bears, pigs), graminivores (grain eaters-birds) and herbivores (grass eaters).

Hand Holding Apple We, and other primates, are frugivores. Our bodies are perfectly suited to a diet based primarily on fruit, with some smaller amounts of vegetables, nuts, and seeds. We have flexible fingers and opposable thumbs that are perfect for reaching for and picking fruit, we see in color to help us find ripe fruit, we have flat teeth ideal for chewing fruits and vegetables, we are born with a sweet tooth, meant to guide us to eat fruit, our digestive tracts are long and twisted, not short and straight like natural meat eater’s are. Anthropologists have discovered that our ancestors evolved eating a frugivorous diet.

It has only been a very short time relative to how long humans have existed that we have been eating foods we are not designed to eat such as cooked meat, dairy and grains. Our health has suffered with the inclusion of these non-human foods. Have you ever wondered why there is so much sickness in the world? Why would we have evolved (or been created depending on what you believe) to be sick and suffer so much?

hospital bed Think about how many health conditions humans currently suffer from: the big ones like cancer, heart disease, auto- immune disorders, obesity and the little irritating ones like dandruff, colds, acne, and thousands of others. Does it seem natural that so many people would suffer from countless illnesses, both major and minor, if we were eating a diet that supports health? Is it any coincidence that obesity is an epidemic at the same time that our diet is the most unnatural it has ever been with most Americans living exclusively on processed, convenience, and fast food?

Many studies (read the recent book “The China Study by T. Colin Campbell) have linked meat and dairy consumption to cancer, heart disease, arthritis, asthma, and other diseases. Our bodies are simply not designed to digest and utilize meat, dairy or grains. The result from the incomplete digestion and utilization of these and other non-foods is that toxic by-products are created that the body must deal with.

Fast Food Our bodies are able to remove toxins from our bodies quite efficiently, they do so everyday. But with the onslaught of unnatural food day after day, year after year, the normal avenues of elimination of toxins (the liver, kidneys, bowels and skin), become overburdened and are not able to keep up. The body then has to start storing toxins in order to maintain daily living. This is when illness begins. When we eat our natural diet, the foods are properly digested and absorbed and/or eliminated and toxins do not build up, allowing us to enjoy a level of health and well being rarely experienced in our culture.

How Cooking Destroys Food

Humans have only been cooking for a very short period of time relative to the millions of years that we ate a natural raw diet. Our bodies are not able to fully utilize foods that have been cooked. Veggie Salad All types of cooking destroy food. If we were to eat only the foods that humans are meant to eat (fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds), but we still cooked them, we would have a higher level of health than the majority of people in our culture but we would be far from the highest level of health that is possible.

Why? Because cooking is actually a chemical process that changes the molecular structure of the food, making it foreign to the body. Anything that the body can’t use is a toxin and if the body can’t eliminate toxins fast enough, sickness is the result.

Arthur M. Baker in "Awakening Our Self Healing Body", writes, "Overly cooked foods literally wreck our body. They deny needed nutrients to the system since heat alters foodstuffs such that they are partially, mostly, or wholly destroyed. Nutrients are coagulated, denatured, caramelized, and rendered inorganic and become toxic and pathogenic in the body."

If you don’t believe that cooking cooking destroys food, try sticking your hand in a pot of boiling water and see how much it is damaged. Dr. Virginia Vetrano writes, "Heating any food, destroys much of its vitamin, mineral, and protein content, and poisonous inorganic acids are formed. The all uncooked diet is most healthful."

Fruit Bowl Cooked foods leave us feeling tired, sluggish and depressed. Raw foods are much easier to digest and contain a much higher level of beneficial components such as vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. When we eat fresh, alive, raw foods we are providing our bodies with the best possible nutrition. Our bodies will respond by giving us the best health possible.