Excerpted from the book "Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt
the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You" by Tonya
Zavasta. The book is available at: http://www.beautifulonraw.com
It seems pathetic we aspire to create a new product as ?natural?
as possible but destroy the very natural ingredients in the
process. New packaged products appear on the market every day.
Each time you try one of these new products, you are foregoing
the old-fashioned fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. As a
result, you will not get enough nutrients from your meal.
Researchers are excited whenever they discover new benefits in
produce of particular colors. The bright vibrant colors of fresh
produce, such as the deep green of leafy vegetables, the lilac
of blueberries, or the red of strawberries are a sign that this
produce is packed with antioxidants, called polyphenols.
The brighter the color of the fruit or vegetable, the more
nutrient combatants it has to prevent degenerative diseases. Now
picture what happens to the original rainbow of colors after
cooking. The colors fade like old laundry. How can it not be
more obvious to us: by tampering with natural products, we are
losing something essential for our health and beauty.
There is a scarcity of nourishment, but not of meals. In this
country, we face unprecedented temptations. America is
preoccupied with eating like no other country in the world. By
giving in to the skillful seductions of the advertisers to try
?new food," our bodies are starving while we constantly chew and
swallow. Ironically, the variety and affordability of foodstuffs
leads us to become overfed and at the same time undernourished.
The best way to resist these temptations is to develop an
attitude towards cooked food in general and adopt the raw food
lifestyle.
Mark Twain wrote: ?To eat is human, to digest divine.? We need
enzymes to digest food. Our living body also needs enzymes for
every other operation and chemical reaction to take place.
Enzymes constitute the difference between life and death. Only
living organisms can produce enzymes, but their capacity to make
enzymes is limited and exhaustible.
Our body hosts two types of enzymes: metabolic enzymes, which
run our bodies, and digestive enzymes, which participate in
digesting our food. Only raw foods follow nature?s design and
come with their own food enzymes to aid digestion. They are
responsible for the release of nutrients out of the foods we
eat.
Dr. Edward Howell writes in his remarkable book Enzyme Nutrition
that heat over 118? F kills enzymes. If food is cooked, it does
not bring enzymes, and the body is forced to use up its own
digestive enzymes.
Only living organisms, be it a human being, an animal, or a
plant, possess enzymes. No one would ever argue that a dead
person is the same as a living one just because the chemical
composition of the body is the same. And yet we never think
twice about allegations that cooked food is as good as raw or
better. The plant world possesses integrity and the ?life
factor.? From an enzymatic approach, a picked up fruit or a cut
off green is still alive, even though its own source of
nourishment has been cut off. Seeds and nuts will reproduce if
put into the soil, fruits will continue to ripen even after they
have been picked from the tree, a vegetable--be it a carrot,
onion, or potato--when put into the ground will sprout.
Enzymes are combinations of proteins, vitamins, and minerals in
an active molecular form. Chemists are able to synthesize some
of these nutrients, but they have not been able to ?breath life?
into them. The ?life factor? has never been and probably never
will be re-created.
Enzymes are very particular. They cannot tolerate heat,
microwave irradiation, or pasteurization. Cooking always removes
or spoils the goodness of food. Cooked food points down to the
grave, because it is dead. Only humans apply heat to what they
eat. Presently, humans apply heat to most of their food prior to
consumption. Humans on average as a race, die at or below half
their potential life span of chronic illness that is largely
diet and lifestyle related. ?You won't be surprised that
diseases are innumerable--count the cooks.? -- Seneca (4 BC-AD
65), Epistles
Cooking is the most profound abuse of food. Cookbooks are full
of recipes on how to smother the life out of a meal. The more
creative they are in doing so, the more honor we attribute to
the cooks. The concept of great cuisine is based on the opinion
that plain fruits or vegetables are not appealing to the eye or
satisfying to our taste.
Natural food is seen as an enemy. The less the dish reminds one
of the original ingredients, the prouder the cooks become. Raw
produce is treated not like the divine food but as something to
be mutilated and manipulated. It is even called ?from scratch,?
as if it is a second-class product needing an upgrade. And yet,
man is not capable of producing even a simple meal without using
the basic ingredients he did not make. The talent of the cook
should be applied elsewhere, because the basic fruits and
vegetables he begins with are nutritionally superior to the most
sophisticated creations he ends up with.
Traditional cooking alters the taste buds into being incapable
of appreciating the flavor and taste of raw fruits and
vegetables. We become more concerned with pleasing our perverted
palate and satisfying our coarse sensation than with providing
nourishment to our body.
By cooking our food, we are killing nutrients that keep us alive
and healthy. After we grill or roast, bake or boil, saut? or
stew, we produce some decadent matter with no nutritional value
and only by using salt or sugar abundantly can we get it to pass
our taste buds. All cooks rely on salt, sugar, and spices to
have their creations appreciated. Cooking without spices smells
awful. Not surprisingly, spices were originally used to disguise
decaying and decomposing food.
How delicious is a fresh apple! But we put it in an oven and it
becomes a squashy, mushy, shriveled mass requiring a load of
sugar so one can eat it. In cooking, the original colors of
fruits and vegetables are dulled and the initial variety of
flavors is altered. Make no mistake, the nutritional value is
gone as well.
It is ironic, but not incidental, that fresh produce is used for
decoration of this bland and dead food. We decorate this
lifeless, tasteless, and shapeless mess with fresh green leaves
and bright colored veggies to deceive our eyes. We add spices to
disguise the smell. We load it with sugar and salt to cheat our
taste buds.
Nowadays, health-conscious people know processed food is devoid
of nutrients and try their best to avoid it. But somehow, home
cooking escapes the stigma of ?processed.? Cooking is
processing! And the difference between home cooking and
manufactured foodstuffs is the same difference as between ?dead?
and ?very dead.? We hear everywhere the less food is processed,
the better. Why process it at all?
Most Americans do not eat the 5-9 recommended servings of fruit
and vegetables each and every day. And if you haven?t heard
yet?in January 2005 these government recommended allotments have
been increased to 9-13 serving. Between the lines government is
telling us in order to be healthy we need to go on the raw food
diet. Since if you eat 13 servings of fresh fruit and vegetables
per day you will not need or want anything else.
"This article may be freely reprinted as long as the entire
article and byline are included."
About the author:
Tonya Zavasta is the raw food lifestyle expert, the author of
the books Beautiful On Raw: UnCooked Creations and Your Right to
Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most
Beautiful You, named a 2004 Health Book of the Year Award
finalist by ForeWord Magazine. For more information on how to
reveal your Rawsome beauty visit her web-site at:
http://www.beautifulonraw.com
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