Eating Healthy Raw & Cooked Foods

Video Transcript

"I'd like to talk another aspect of a healthy diet. Something that is not usually discussed in relation to the five food groups and so on. And that is raw food. The benefits of raw food and the benefits of cooked food. Like other aspects of nutrition we're looking for balance here. And it's important to get raw food in the diet for the live, I should say the active enzymes in there. Enzymes are considered the life force of foods. So if you put a raw food, like a raw potato in the ground it will grow into a plant. If you put a cooked potato in the ground it'll just decay. So that's an example of the life force in raw foods. And there are different opinions about what proportion that you constitute in the diet. There are some people that are advocating these days a completely raw food diet. Which I don't subscribe to. I think we need more of the balance. But this is something that's increasing in popularity as seen by the emergence of the raw food restaurants and the raw food "cookbooks". So raw foods of course we commonly think of are vegetables and fruits. But there are other raw foods as well. Raw eggs for example. If you remember the Rocky movies. Remember Rocky downing his raw eggs in his blender shake in the morning. Even raw dairy products like raw milk. And in some states this is available. Not all. Raw milk comes from a certified dairy. And what that means is the herd is checked on a regular basis, in some cases daily, to keep them clean and to prevent pathogens. So a certified dairy turns out a very safe raw food product in my opinion. And raw foods could also be sprouted nuts, seeds, grains, even fish. You've heard of Sushi. Sushi consists of a lot of different types of raw fish. And we can talk about the proportion. As I say I don't subscribe to a completely raw diet but I believe as much as seventy percent of the diet can be raw. And the problem with raw foods you might need to be careful about. Sometimes raw foods harbor pathogens, like raw fish, bacteria that might be on certain raw foods. Too much raw food in the diet can actually weaken digestion. And certain conditions you would not want to eat a lot of raw foods. Like if a person were suffering from Candida for example, which is too much dampness in the body. We don't want to contribute more dampness by eating a lot of raw foods. Some of the advantages of cooked foods. Cooked foods. Actually cooking makes some of the nutrients more available to the body. As in the case of carrots. You can get, assimilate more carotenoids by cooking the vegetables. Not over cooking them. But al-dente as they say. Tomatoes. Tomatoes contain Lycopene, another member of the carotenoid family. And we know that men who get more cooked tomato products in the diet have a lower risk of prostate cancer. That was not seen in those consuming the raw tomato products. So, again, we need a nice balance of raw and cooked foods in the diet. Well here's a gourmet approach to raw foods. This is something like you might find in some of the raw food restaurants. This is a spinach quiche. It's got an almond crust. And it has spinach, kale, celery, collard greens. And it's got sort of a mild almond creme topping. Looks delicious. Here's another one. This is a Mediterranean wrap. This has sprouted lentils and lettuce in here. Also delicious. So these type of gourmet raw foods you would have to look around. Try your local natural foods store. You'll see more and more they're carrying some of these gourmet raw varieties."