The Good Health Guide

by Kate Wood of Raw Living and Raw Magic in Brighton. 

Raw foods have a long and venerable history, dating right back to Biblical times.  In The Essene Gospel of Peace, a reputedly overlooked book of the Bible, Jesus advocates eating raw foods.

‘But I do say to you Kill: neither men nor beasts, nor yet the food which goes into your mouth.  For if you eat living food, the same will quicken you, but if you kill your food, the dead food will kill you also.  For life comes from life, and from death comes always death.  For everything which kills your foods, kills your bodies also.  And everything which kills your bodies kills your souls also.  And your bodies become what your foods are, even as your spirits, likewise, become what your thoughts are.  Therefore eat not anything which fire, or frost, or water has destroyed.  Fire burned, frozen and rotten foods will burn, freeze and rot your body also.’

In 1930, Swiss physician, Dr. Paul Kautchakoff showed that eating cooked food causes leucocytosis, that is, an increase in white blood cells.  Effectively, the body recognises cooked food as a poison, and reacts accordingly as it would with any poison entering the system.  Cooked food is treated as a foreign body, so an immune response occurs; this does not happen when raw food is eaten.  Thus eating cooked foods regularly puts a huge strain on the immune system that eating raw foods does not, explaining why raw foodists tend to have more energy and be less susceptible to illness.  Furthermore, the body cannot just distinguish raw food from cooked, it recognises how denatured the food is, and produces more leucocytes accordingly.  For example, the body reacts more strongly to white flour than to whole-wheat flour, and junk foods such as hot dogs cause a reaction akin to food poisoning.  Cooked foods can be eaten without causing leucocytosis if they are eaten with raw foods, and raw foods make up more than half the meal.  Another experiment in 1946 by Dr. France Pottenger, conducted on 900 cats, showed the degenerative effects of cooked foods.  Half the cats were fed raw meat and unpasteurised milk, the other half cooked meat and paateurised milk.  Over a ten year period, the cats fed on raw foods thrived, while those on the cooked diet became progressively dysfunctional.  Each generation of ‘cooked-food kittens’ had poorer health and died younger.

From an ecological perspective, raw food is an incredible relief to the planet’s resources, and a potential solution to world hunger.  Raw food requires little or no packaging, and no processing, saving energy and emissions.  No cooking conserves energy, and saves money on fuels.  Finally, all the waste is compostable and biodegradable, so not adding to the burden of rubbish that must be disposed of.  Then there is the convenience aspect - although some of the recipes need time to prepare, it is possible to knock up a gournet raw dinner in just a few minutes, and as for fruit, it is surely the ultimate convenience food.  Furthermore, the HHS would save unimaginable amounts of money in not having to treat so many illnesses: raw foods have been used to successfully treat diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, skin and gut disorders.  The Hippocrates Health Institute was founded in Boston, USA in 1970 by Dr. Ann Wigmore, and has a long record of successfully treating people with life-threatening illnesses.

When we cook our foods, we lose a lot of the nutrients. Vitamin C and all the B group vitamins are heat-sensitive, and are considerably diminished by cooking.  Enzymes are a much neglected part of nutrition, but just as vital to health as vitamins and minerals.  We need them for every function in the body, yet they are completely destroyed by heat.  We are born with a large store of enzymes, which gradually gets used up by life’s processes.  If we do not replace them with the enzymes found in live foods, our reserves get depleted, we age more quickly, and it gets harder for the body to maintain good health.

Raw foods are very popular in Australia and the USA, although I think it is easier in these countries because the climate is generally a lot warmer, and there is access to a wider range of tropical fruits.  In America there are whole aisles devoted to raw produce in the wholefood stores and many raw food restaurants; the diet is popular among Hollywood actors (Woody Harrelson has his own raw food restaurant) and ‘potlucks’ are regular events - gatherings where everyone brings a raw food dish to share.  There are also many raw food groups across Europe, including the infamous Instinctos in France who eat raw insects and meat - not recommended by most other raw food proponents!

I am so excited by the developments in the raw foods movement at the moment, as it begins to be accepted by the mainstream.  There has never been a better time to be raw, with so much information available, gorgeous food to choose from, and inspirational people to motivate us.  Raw foods have such an extraordianry transformative potential to help us blossom and become more who we truly are, and the implications for our society as more people adopt this approach to life are hugely thrilling.  Eating raw helps to give us the stength, vision and integrity to make the change and create a better way, and as the numbers of us living this way grow, the closer we get to achieving the dream of a world of love and unity, and making it a reality.

Raw Living, for recipes, articles, events, advice and online shopping, can be found at http://www.rawliving.co.uk/. 01273 691011

The Raw Magic Shop is in Gardner Street, Brighton, http://www.rawmagic.co.uk/