Raw foods for longevity and good health

The food we eat has a profound effect on our health and longevity.Latest researches show that food can provide health,vigour and vitality,and free us from various diseases,or it can make us unhealthy and miserable.
Before the discovery of fire,man ate raw foods as provided by nature. After fire came into existence,man started cooking food.Cooking of natural foods led to their debasement and destruction.Further loss of nutrients started taking place when man started refining and processing natural foods.This has inevitably led to ill-health and variety of preventable diseases.Man can still save himself by avoiding too much reliance on unnatural refined foods ,processed foods and cooked foods.
Benefits of Raw Foods
Normal Functioning of the Body
Raw foods have certain nutritive constituents that serve as building material for the construction and renewal of cells,produce energy to put these cells into motion and give warmth to the body and supply raw materials to the specialized cells needed for their productive activities.Natural nutrition ,as provided by nature ,thus ensures the normal functioning of all body organs.Cooked foods force human organs to work at about three to four times their normal capacity,bring about premature changes in them,cause various ailments and shorten the life span.Those who eat raw foods make use of the digestive organs at about one fourth of their potential capacity.As a result,their organs are never overloaded or fatigued.The overloading of the digestive organs results in over working of several accessory organs like the heart,liver,and the kidneys.The additional work perfomed by these organs soon has the effect of tiring them out and putting them out of action prematurely.This eventually causes ill health and reduces the life span of a person by several years.
Balancing the body chemistry
The tissues and cells of the body are composed of 16 chemical elements.The balance of equilibrium of these chemical elements in the body is an essential factor in the maintainance of health and healing of disease.The acid-alkaline balance plays a vital role in the balanced body chemistry.All foods after digestion either leave an acid or alkaline ash in the body depending on their mineral composition.
The normal body chemistry is approximately 20 percent acid and 80 percent alkaline.To maintain this acid-alkaline balance,it is essential that one should eat 80% of alkaline forming foods and 20% of acid forming foods.Fresh,raw,uncooked fruits and raw vegetables are rich in mineral salts which are necessary for neutralizing acid waste products.Fresh fruits and raw vegetables are hereby called purifying foods.In cooking foods,the mineral salts are lost to a large extent.
Antioxidant Effects
Many of the health problems are due to the perversity of oxygen.So far,scientists have linked destructive oxygen reactions to at least 60 different chronic diseases, as well as to aging itself.
Raw foods like fresh fruits and raw vegetables, especially the deep colored ones, contain strong antioxidants. When these foods are consumed in liberal quantities, the antioxidants contained in them are infused into the tissues and fluids where they help resist the oxidant invasions.
Curative Power of Raw Foods
Hippocrates(460-357BC),the father of medicine, once said “let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food.”The former part of the sentence is for the sick whereas the latter is for the healthy.Hippocrats fully believed that natural foods have unlimited power to sustain health and restore it when lost.
The adoption of raw eating can thus free mankind from all diseases. Raw foods contain all the essential vitamins,minerals,trace elements and other constituents, whereas it is present in small amounts in refined and cooked foods.