I am sure many of you will have heard about the Raw Food Diet?  It is becoming more and more popular, not just as a diet to lose weight, but as a diet for a long and healthy life. There is so much in the way of processed food on the market that is so convenient that we don’t even stop to think about what we’re putting into our bodies, or how far we’ve come nutritionally from our ancestral, agrarian roots.

The name is self explanatory, a raw food diet means consuming food in its natural, unprocessed form and there are several common-sense reasons why this is a good idea. Unfortunately processing and cooking food takes so much of the nutritional value away that much of what we eat today has no nutritional benefits at all. Of course you are fighting against some very forceful entities with their so called ‘conventional wisdom’ telling you such things as:  If you cook pasta just to the al dente (or medium) stage, it will have more calories, yes, probably but it will also have more the nutritional value in it than if you cooked it to a well-done stage.

The raw food diet means eating unprocessed, uncooked, organic, whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, dried fruits, seaweeds, etc. It means consuming a diet that is at least 75% uncooked! It is a well known fact that cooking takes out flavor and nutrition from vegetables and fruits. A raw food diet means eating more the way our ancient ancestors did.  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 and they maybe have been lucky enough to find some coconut milk on occasion.

The raw food diet is a radical change from the ‘normal’ diet and not for the faint-hearted. It is however, along with true vegetarians (did someone mention that fish was a vegetable) who eat no meat or fish, vegans who also eat no animal or fish byproducts, one of the healthiest diets around. It is a way of eating that is 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.