Healing with Nature

I finally decided to add images to my blog (not available at the moment). I just had to add this one because it just speaks so loudly that I couldn’t say it in words. I found this Nutrition Facts listing on an actual raw food restaurant web site. I couldn’t believe that the restaurant actually uses the word heathful in describing their food.

How can food which contains 190 calories from fat (out of 330 calories) in just 1 serving ever be considered a healthful food? If you follow a healthy diet it would consist of about 10 percent of it’s calories from fat. The average person consumes about 2000 calories in one day. This one serving of some unknown raw dish (I believe it was a raw cinnamon danish or something similar) contains almost the entire daily amount of calories from fat for the average person.

Ask any healthy person who has knowledge of the human body and it’s needs and they will tell you that high fat in any form (cooked or raw) is devastating to the body. Fat is very difficult to digest and interferes with the digestion of other nutrients and it can cause problems with the metabolism of sugars and the function of insulin.

Do you really think that eating raw food at gourmet raw food restaurants is a good decision for your health? I think you would be much better off eating a meal of steamed vegetables with some lettuce and celery without salt than any of these poorly combined toxin filled high fat concoctions. If you don’t believe me, just look at my other post about getting fat on the raw food diet and tell me if you think the raw food chef I linked to is a healthy person.

Many people believe that the gut, or more scientifically, the bowels are simply in our body to absorb nutrients from food and to pass the remains out of the body. This is one of the functions of the gut but the gut performs a lot more functions that just that. We say we have a gut feeling often, this is because the gut is the place we feel. What do I mean by this?

There are more nerves in our gut than anywhere else in our body except the brain. The gut is a secondary brain and a lot of the feelings we have originate from the gut. It’s no wonder that people who abuse their gut by consuming inappropriate foods often ‘feel’ bad. This feeling is created by having the gut in a state where it’s functionality is far from optimal. When the substances that are introduced into the gut are dead, for example from cooked food or from consuming the many other unacceptable foods, the gut must work hard and do work that it was not intended to do.

This causes the gut to send messages to the nerves that it is in an emergency state and that it doesn’t want the body to ingest more food. The way it does this is to make the person feel sick and nauseated. It is too busy trying to deal with the toxic products that it has to deal with and tries to make sure there is no more food coming in.

The gut is also the most important part of the defense system, also known as the immune system. The gut is actually part of the outside world as there is a hole from our mouth to our anus which is all part of the gut. This makes it very vulnerable to external pathogens. It must deal with the removal of all toxic and pathogenic substances that come in from the outside. It is the first defense for the cleansing and removing of these substances.

Most of the defenses that are initiated in the body are initiated in the gut. It will create many of the known immunity cells or at least initiate the signals to have them created elsewhere. If you do not keep your gut in excellent condition you are also not keeping your defense system in excellent condition which can lead to diseases that can manifest beyond the gut.

The only way to keep your gut in the best condition is to consume food that will not cause it distress. The foods that require the least amount of energy and work and are healthiest to the body overall are the ones that are necessary. These are the foods that are discussed in other blog entries so I will not repeat them here.

Many people who are familiar with the raw diet are under the impression that eating raw foods can not make you fat. They believe that anything raw is healthy and all raw fats are very good for their health in any amount. Ask any person who is familiar with human health and disease about being overweight or obese and they will all agree on one thing, which is that being even a little overweight can be extremely unhealthy and a huge risk to getting diseases. These diseases cover the usual chronic diseases such as heart problems, lung problems, cancer, stroke, diabetes, etc. Medical doctors, naturopaths, natural hygienists, alternative medicine doctors, biologists, nutritionists, dieticians, chiropractors, etc. will all agree on this one fact.

Can someone be overweight and still be healthy? No, being overweight is a telltale sign that a person is in poor health, being thin doesn’t indicate health either but being overweight or obese sure is a sign of high risk for diseases. If a person who is overweight should die and an autopsy was performed on their body, many problems will be discovered such as arteries caked with plaque and fat, liver problems, kidney problems, gall bladder problems, pancreas problems, colon problems, cancer cells, and many issues which are not obvious or easy to diagnose when the person was alive.

Eventually some of these early problems will become real major problems which will lead to diseases. Can these problems be reversed? Yes they can in most cases but it will take the body some time to repair all of this. Now back to the raw food diet. If it is so healthy to consume raw fats then why do people on a strict raw food diet who consume too much fat such as raw nuts, avocados, oils, coconuts, and other overt fats become fat?

The body never stores fat for the fun of it, it stores fat because it is not able to convert the fat into energy and body tissue. It uses the fat as a convenient place to store body toxins that the body was also not able to get rid of because it is too busy trying to keep up with all of the hard work it is being forced to do in getting energy out of fat. Of course when the diet has too much fat in it there is less available calories for other nutrients such as carbohydrates and protein.

This means the fat must be converted into energy and protein in order for the body to continue to survive. Also with so much fat circulating through the bloodstream the cells of the body become coated with fat. It is just like putting butter on a bowl of ball bearings, the bearings will stick to each other and they will not make good contact with one another. The same thing occurs with body cells, they will be coated with the fat and any nutrient which they need from the blood will not be able to get into the cell due to the fat blocking it. The nutrients also will be coated with fat since they are also in the body. The fat will be distributed everywhere.

This is even the case for raw fats, cooked fats are worse however because they are carcinogenic due to changes in heating but the other behaviors are exactly the same. If you don’t believe that raw food dieters can get fat or obese then check out this http://youtube.com/watch?v=-d0770LAoFU or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ED3f7S3i_o (check out the restaurant manager). . Even if you eat a raw diet you need to be mindful of the amount of fats in your diet, don’t take the lies as thruths, do your own research, humans need to consume a low fat diet to maintain health no matter what kind of diet they eat.

I can’t believe that it took me so long to write about this topic. Anybody who undertakes a new diet, any new diet, even the low carb or the high fat diets will experience some cravings. Are these cravings something that we need to worry a lot about? I do not think so. In the modern world food is more than nutrition, it is used for ceremonies, socializing, entertainment, picking ourselves up, greeting people, showing of affection, showing of respect, rituals, sport (as in eating contests), cures, showing of status, etc.

It seems as if the real purpose of food is almost lost among all of this. Food primarily is a source of nutrition for the body, it is not more than that but since it played such a big role in early man’s survival it become much more. In prehistoric times finding a stable source of food made a difference between life and death. Nobody ate food for entertainment or for sport or for status etc. If you had food you lived, if not you died.

Even the poorest of the poor on the planet have some source of food unless they are experiencing some serious conditions such as a long drought period or war. The reason why so many seem to be undernourished is because they do not understand the requirements for a healthy body and desire the foods that the masses consume.

Even the apartment building in which I live has several fruit trees behind it brimming with ripe fruit for many months of the year but most of it goes to waste as nobody gathers it to eat. I did see many large insects enjoying a feast of peaches and other fruits but not a human. Changing our diet often brings cravings due to many of the reasons why people eat as listed above. We associate an event with a food and our emotions start to take over from there. We think about a significant other or a friend, relative, etc. who is no longer in our life and we think of the foods that we ate together or alone at that time, we think of an event when we felt happy and we desire the food or drink that we were consuming at that time.

These cravings are all fake and are not real cravings, they are just emotional crutches that we use to try to get over some problems in our current life. It all depends on how serious you are about your new diet and lifestyle, if you want to acheive the best results then just remember that these cravings are not real and try to avoid them, if you give into them once in a while that is okay too but try not to let that do harm to you, just accept it and go on.

Eventually you will be over the biggest cravings as your body is less toxic and your thinking is clearer. Most people experience changes in their mental state after modifying their diet and lifestyle for the better. Just remember that food is supposed to be nourishment for your body and nothing more. When you finally accept this fact then the cravings will seem trivial and even if you acted on them you will know that it wasn’t for a necessity or a need of your body but an emotional need. This is a big breakthrough because it will then be possible to separate the emotional issues from the true nutritional issues.