Recently we have started hearing a lot about the raw food diet. With a large portion of our population belonging to the “baby boomer” era, eating a diet built for longevity is appealing. Our diets are full of processed foods, fats and sugar. Our ancestors had agrarian roots, when foods were eaten with all the vitamins and minerals still intact when eaten raw.

A raw food diet simply means consuming foods in their natural, unprocessed form. There are several obvious reasons why this is a good idea. Processing and cooking foods can remove much of the basic nutritional value properties inherent in the food. Over the years the conventional wisdom has been to cook pasta to al dente (medium) stage. It will have more calories than pasta cooked to the well done stage, but it will have much more of the nutritional value still intact.

The raw food diet means eating uncooked, unprocessed, organic and whole foods such as: fruits, seeds, nuts, vegetables, seaweeds, dried fruits legumes, etc. It refers to eating at least 75% of your diet uncooked. Cooking removes nutrition and flavor from fruits and vegetables. We need to eat more like our ancestors. They were healthier and more fit. They cooked very little, and surely didn’t process or cook fruits and vegetables. They ate them raw. They didn’t get water from a tap; it was natural, spring water. And they did not battle modern diseases like diabetes and cancer.

It makes intrinsic sense that our bodies were meant to eat more raw foods. Raw eating is more in harmony with our own metabolisms and with nature. The body was designed to work, and it needs work to remain efficient. That means we should get regular exercise on a long-term basis. It also means eating raw, natural foods that require more energy to digest. Eaten regularly, the obese epidemic in this country could become a thing of the past.