Living Foods

by Sue Burke

Nutritional Value of Living Foods 

Living foods, what are they? Did our mother’s ever “say eat all your living foods”! No, mine didn’t. As a child I always thought all food was living and good for you. But that is not the case, not all foods are good for you and not all foods are living. Then why do we eat them, if they are dead and have no real purpose, why in heaven’s name do we consume so many of them?

As a baby boomer, I grew up in a time when life was starting to become a little easier for the average person. We had washing machines to clean our clothes instead of washing them by hand and clothes dryers that dried your clothes without carrying them outside to hang on the line and coffee pots that perked coffee right on the counter tops and television sets in our living rooms to entertain us. Mom would pulled out the cookies or pop corn and we snacked while we watched the television. But that was not all, the food industry had come along way by then, we now could go to the grocery store and buy food already prepared. Dinner wasn’t quit the chore it had been for centuries, open a can, pop open a box and wha laa we had dinner. With all the ease and convince that seemed so good at the time became one of our nations downfalls. We had become a country consumed with making our lives easy, quick and convenient and very deadly.

With the convince we so wanted, we gave up the preparing of good nutritious meals for meals that we poured out of cans and boxes that had been over processed and artificial. Food that no longer had live enzymes or nutrients in them, because they had been processed with high temperatures or man made ingredients. Heating food over 116 degrees destroys the live enzymes in the them and heating food as low as 106 degrees starts the degrading of the enzymes. All food that is cooked is devoid of live enzymes as well as changing the molecular structure of the food and renders it toxic to our bodies. Not to mention all the artificial ingredients the scientist invented to put into our easily prepared food.

So what are living foods? They are foods that contain live enzymes and nutrients. Enzymes assist in the digestion of the foods we eat. They are know as the “Life force ” or “Energy ” food. Enzymes are important because they help our bodies with digestion and absorption of food. When you eat food that is not live or enzyme less , your body will not get maximum utilization of the food you have eaten. This can cause toxicity in your body. Many people who eat live foods (raw) find a healthful difference in their energy and digestion when eating enzyme rich living foods. Many people who eat living foods also eat a low protein diet and find they have more energy and a lighter disposition.

Studies have shown that stomach acid does not destroy the enzymes of our food but causes them to deactivate while in the stomach acid but when the enzymes move into the small intestine where it is more alkaline, the enzymes become reactivated again. When you eat cooked protein ( as with meat) your stomach has to secrete a large amount of stomach acid to digest the meat, which is not good for your health.

What are the differences between raw foods and living foods, the enzymes in living foods are much higher. Foods that are sprouting are living foods. For example, raw unsprouted almonds contain enzymes that are “dormant”. If you soak them in water for 24 hrs, they will start to sprout and the enzymes will become “active” and they are considered living.

It is always wise to eat organic foods if possible. Conventional or industrial produce are grown with pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers that are toxic to our health. Organic produce is grown without toxic chemicals. Produce that have chemicals on them can be washed with cool water to cleanse the outside of the produce but the chemicals will absorb into the food as it is growing. Some of the most severely tainted types of produce is strawberries and bell peppers. Some of the least tainted produce are carrots and avocados.

There are many reasons to eat raw or living food. People who embrace this type of diet experience improvements in their general physical and mental state, more energy, better health, weight loss, detoxification and a sturdier immune system that has a better chance to resist and recovers from about any disease.

A diet rich in living foods will consist of raw fruits, raw vegetables, sprouts, nuts, seeds, grains, sea vegetables, legumes and other organic foods that have not been processed. Some people soak to sprout nuts, seeds and grain before consuming them.

Good pure water is also the choice drink for people who eat living foods, along with fresh squeezed juice or coconut milk.

What about protein, do we get enough protein when eating live food? Yes we do, the World Health Organization say humans need 5% of their daily calories to come from protein to be healthy. On average, raw fruits have about 5% of their calories from protein. Vegetables have 20% -50%, sprouted seeds, beans, and grains contain 10% – 25% of their calories from protein. If you are eating a diet rich with living food you are getting your protein. Studies show that adding heat to a protein ( as with meat) makes about half of it unusable for the human body. Raw plant food protein is better choice for the human body than cooked plant or animal foods.

We all know that you cannot revitalize (your body) living cells with dead food. Dead food is over milled, over cooked and dried out, the more dried out the product the deader it is. It has become processed food.

Some good examples are:

         Living Foods                                   Dead Foods

• Potatoes                                   Potato chips
• Wheat bread                              Wheat crackers
• Beef                                         Beef jerky
• Fruit                                         Fruit rollups
• Fresh vegetables                        Vegetable chips

Fruit juice that is freshly squeezed is a living food but juice in a container that says 10% fruit juice has 9 out of 10 toes in the dead food category. Flavored soft drinks are dead, dead, dead!! Natural flavors do not put life into them.

Living foods not only gives the maximum punch of vitamins, minerals and enzymes your body needs to run at top performance but it is also good for the environment. Buying living food eliminates the energy , raw materials and waste products associated with processing the food and storage. The more raw foods you consume the more energy you conserve when you don’t cook. It also helps to keep the environment clean by contributing less to the landfills.

If Mom would have known then want we know now, I think she would have put the cans and boxes back on the shelf and continued to cook from scratch, and not had to suffer from so many health problems later in her life.