Last week we talked briefly about why starting a meal with raw food could be beneficial. Raw food, such as fruit and vegetables, are full of important enzymes but most importantly full of enzymes that assist us to digest our food. This makes raw foods almost self-digesting. This also means that raw foods can assist us to digest other cooked foods, such as protein, which might be more difficult for your body to break down. Our fast paced lives can have an impact on our digestion. Stress can play a part in reducing stomach acid and upsetting the equilibrium of your gut making it difficult to digest. Starting a meal with raw foods can assist in dealing with this.
Raw Foodism has been around since the 1800s, and both studies and anecdotal evidence show the benefits of a raw food diet include:
- lowering inflammation
- improving digestion
- providing more dietary fibre
- improving heart health
- helping with optimal liver function
- preventing cancer
- preventing or treating constipation
- giving you more energy
- clearing up your skin
- preventing nutrient deficiencies
- lowering the amount of carcinogens in your diet
- helping you maintain a healthy body weight
While eating a completely raw food diet might be extreme and quite difficult to master, we can certainly learn from this way of living and adapt it into our modern day lives. Why don’t you try starting your mid-day or evening meal with a salad and see how that makes you feel? You might be quite pleased with the results.
