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Ed
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I'm a 54 year old Husband, Father of Four Daughters, Pastor and Vice Principal of a private K-12 school on Long Island.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

The Importance of "Raw Food"


Here is an excerpt of an article of interest I found dealing with the importance of LIVE FOOD ENZYMES! I found it at http://freedomyou.com/ another great health site. Let me know what you think!

Raw Food EnzymesExcerpt from NORTH AMERICAN DIET
by: Ron & Stacy Lagerquist

There are two Kingdoms on earth which have very distinct cultures. They are transversely opposed to each other and have been at war for six thousand years. One rules by the law of Life—the other, the law of Death. Death, adorned in the garb of pleasure and self-indulgence. Or Life, clothed in the practical and less garish apparel of self-discipline and holiness. The North American Diet is a diet of death, rooted in a culture that has built its foundation on the wrong Kingdom.

God is the Author of Health and Life. He speaks from many pulpits—from the heights of the Eternal Word, to the depths of a lowly donkey’s mouth. He that has an ear, let him hear—it is time that we stop and listen.

Which Kingdom does your diet reflect? Christians ought to win the world with lives that are filled with vibrancy. And as the world increases in sickness you will stand out like a light, an Ambassador of a different Kingdom.

If rocks can cry out to the Glory of God, then certainly every living cell must sing in concert to Him who is their living Creator. So let us stop and listen. THE W.F.O.C. DIET PROGRAM , direct from the World Federation of Cells, is a comprehensive diet that has your health in mind. For a limited time, you can receive this celebrated program free—yes free! Its principal characteristic is its simplicity and versatility. This program will go anywhere you do—work, home, picnics, or when you have to eat on the run. The greatest feature is that you will never get sick, always have energy, never become overweight and need far less sleep. It is excellent for any age, whether healing, trying to lose weight, or simply desiring increased discipline in daily living.

The key to this revolutionary diet is this:
The greater the percentage of raw food in your diet, the healthier and happier your cells are going to be!
It just doesn’t get any simpler than that!

The earth is alive with the glory of its Creator. No longer can we live in the dark ages of our past, eating ourselves into sickness and decease, trusting a Medical Machine to make us all better. God has provided every resource needed for physical and spiritual health. Its time we stop feeding our cravings and start looking after the temple we have been given. A temple that houses the fullness of God. There’s power in raw food, because if it’s raw, it is filled with enzymes. Vital to life, enzymes tirelessly work at breaking down food, assisting the immune system and carrying on the functions of metabolism. Lipase breaks down fat, protease breaks down protein, cellulose breaks down cellulose and amylase breaks down starch, to mention only a few.

In 1933, the first enzyme diastase was discovered. Found in the wheat germ, it acts on decomposing the natural starches in the surrounding kernel. By removing both the diastase and the wheat germ, bread had a longer shelf life, however, bread became more difficult to digest.
Enzymes are protein molecules that act like spark plugs in the body. Without them we would die. Ninety-eight enzymes have been found in the arteries. Enzymes such as cytochrome qxidase, peroxidase and catalase are components of red and white blood cells. A high source of these enzymes are in the green leaves of plants. It has been discovered that they can fight toxic substances, helping protect the body from cancer.

Scientists are learning how enzymes are crucial to the healing process. Enzymes are the biochemical foundation for thousands of digestive and metabolic functions within the body. About 5,000 different enzymes have been identified so far. Some researchers have estimated that it takes about 100,000 enzymes to run the body.

In digestion, enzymes are the active materials within digestive juices that break down the food. Enzymes are keys that unlock nutrients. They do this job without being changed. Enzymes are found in the salivary glands, liver, stomach, pancreas and the wall of the small intestine.
A fruit left on the counter for too long becomes over-ripe and turns to mush. The ripening process is due to living enzymes breaking down and digesting the fruit. In contrast, pasteurized fruit juice can remain fresh for a year because the enzymes have been destroyed by heat. Enzymes in living foods are little digestion machines, working and assisting to help break down food so that the body may easily assimilate its nutrients. Killing the enzymes for shelf life causes the body to work much harder in digestion and assimilation.

The digestion of a banana requires very few stomach secretions. What about a piece of fried chicken? Chicken contains no enzymes to help digestion. If the chicken has been eaten quickly, there will be little enzyme activity from the saliva. It will sit in the stomach like a lead brick. The body is forced to produce strong acid secretions to build up to do some of the digestion. A coffee or two splashed down, dilutes the digestive juices. The barely-digested chicken then moves on to the small intestine where bile from the gallbladder emulsifies the chicken fat. The chicken is still in need of more digestion so the remainder of the work will require the help of the pancreas. To accomplish such a difficult task, the pancreas must produce large quantities of enzymes which place a heavy burden on it.

Studies show that eating a high percentage of cooked food causes the pancreas to enlarge. A pancreas that is enlarged as a result of over-stimulation, eventually breaks down. From years of abuse, the pancreas secretes fewer enzymes and causes digestive problems such as bloating, gas, diarrhea, gastritis or diabetes.

Let’s return to our piece of fried chicken. It has now been sitting in the intestinal track for 24 hours. Because of its partially-digested state, it has become rancid. The body must respond by producing a sticky mucus which envelopes the putrefying chicken in a protective sack. As the fiberless meat moves slowly through 30 feet of intestine, the mucus sack begins to dehydrate and impact on the colon wall. This creates a hard, black, crust-like substance that builds up, layer upon layer, inside the folds of the intestine further hindering the absorption of nutrients. Mercifully after 30 hours, this mucus sack of putrefying chicken is deposited with great effort into the toilet. Our fried chicken has taken more than it has given, depleting the enzyme bank, depositing very little in nutritional value, leaving impacted, dried mucus in its wake.
In contrast, a perfectly ripe banana is sweet to the taste and pleasant to the stomach. Quickly, the enzymes that are present within the banana mix with saliva to break it down into an absorbent vitamin-rich substance. No acid secretion is needed. Passing quickly through the bowel, instead of creating mucus, the natural soft fibers clean the intestinal wall. In a matter of a few hours the banana is easily deposited. No need to spend half your life in the bathroom!
To be healthy, all essential nutrients are required by the body. Even one missing essential nutrient is enough to seriously affect our health. Nutrients work together as a team. Any team suffers if two or three of its top players are missing. Likewise, the cells suffer. When essential nutrients are missing, the cell's metabolic processes are disrupted causing cell rebuilding to slow down and aging to speed up. When the cells’ metabolic processes are free from disruption, and the cells have all the required nutrients, the cells work vigorously at their specific bodily function.

Science is unraveling the wide spectrum of nutrients necessary for vitality. For instance, they have discovered that beta-carotene is beneficial in the healing of cancer. Carrots have been offering this nutrient for years, but it is only now that they are getting attention.
In 1747, James Lind, surgeon's mate on Britain's HMS Salisbery, discovered that when sailors with scurvy were given lemons and oranges they cured quickly of the illness. The vitamin C in the citrus fruits had cured the deficiency caused by eating the ship's rations during long sea journeys. It took the British Admiralty almost 50 years before they used Lind's discovery by adding one ounce of lemon juice to the daily rations. This one ounce of lemon juice supplied 14 mg. of vitamin C, 43 mg. of potassium, 2 mg. of magnesium, and 2 mg. of calcium. This simple supplement enabled the British fleet to become the world's greatest sea power.

Nutritional discoveries are important only if they are used. In the era of James Lind it took 50 years to get his discovery into action. In the present decade, new discoveries are hitting the health food store shelves within a year—thousands of products, supplements and health foods. All of these products are backed by research and testimonies of health benefits.
Even though herbs, vitamins and minerals can have a great benefit to the body, some have spent thousands of dollars looking for a cure through supplements with no success. People often assume that their illness is due to a vitamin deficiency, so by taking vitamins, the illness should disappear. Unfortunately, vitamins or herbs often will not correct the problem. People have tried dozens of different supplements without feeling better. This is because many problems are caused by toxins and the clogging of the lymph by mucoid matter. Unless these problems are first solved, the advantage of taking vitamins is greatly reduced. It is like putting high performance gas in a car when the carburetor is clogged and the engine is malfunctioning. Until it is fixed, high test gas will make little difference in the performance of the vehicle. The body is an electro-chemical machine. When the parts responsible for absorption are cleansed, vitamins will start to be assimilated more efficiently. Vitamin therapy works by flooding the system with nutrients so that the damaged area will have a chance to absorb from a higher blood concentration. A higher concentration means more nutrients will get through to the suffering cell. A therapeutic amount of vitamins will help, but it is more important to remove the obstructions caused by mucus in the intestine, mucoid matter in the lymph, and saturated fats in the bloodstream.

Consider the birds of the air. Animals portray a life of health and vibrancy that painfully contrasts the consumers of the North American Diet. All of God’s creation live on an enzyme-rich diet except for one. Far from Eden’s lush enzyme-rich fruit, modern man wanders the isles of supermarkets, searching packages of food, designed for taste, but empty of life.
All the organs of your body have had to painfully adapt to a cooked food diet. The stomach has a thick layer of mucus to protect it from high-acid concentrations. The intestine has a thick mucus coating to defend it against the toxins caused by purification. A person living on mostly cooked food will have a pancreas, according to percentage of body weight, three and a half times that of a sheep and twice the size of a horse.

Cooked food causes an increase of white blood cells. The body reacts to cooked food in the same way it reacts to infection. Cooking destroys vitamins, makes minerals inorganic, coagulates proteins, transforms fatty acids, and destroys natural fiber, increasing the transit time through the intestine. This, in turn, causes putrefaction that creates additional toxins. Although cooking is the traditional method of preparing food, it does not increase nutritional value, but reduces it and actually robs us of vitality.

Cooking destroys nutrients. Folic acid is abundant in most green vegetables. However, 95% of this vitamin can be lost by cooking. Over 50 fruits and vegetables have oxalic acid. While harmless in its natural state, altered by heat, it becomes harmful. Calcium binds with the oxalic acid in the blood to neutralize it and to form calcium compounds (calciumoxalate) which are difficult for the body to remove and may lead to kidney stones.

Raw food is alkalizing while cooked food is acid-forming. Cooked food tends to have a stimulant effect by causing the body to speed up its metabolism to rid itself of these destroyed nutrients, altered proteins and fats. For the sick, eating cooked food is like taking a whip to a tired overworked horse.

Research has shown that cooked fiber passes through the digestive system more slowly than raw food. It partially rots, ferments and putrefies, causing toxins, gas and even heartburn. Cooked food is harder to digest, less absorbent, and what is absorbed is less assimilable. In short, the body works more for less.FOOD IN THE RAW Enzymes start to die at 105 degrees, but all are destroyed at 130 degrees Fahrenheit. For this reason, leading health authorities agreed that 80% of our diet should be composed of raw living foods.

Plants have a complex array of enzymes necessary for their life process. When we eat living plant foods we also consume the enzymes used in their life process. It was once thought that enzymes were destroyed in the stomach by hydrochloric acid and were, therefore, useless to the body. Yet when certain enzymes were tagged with radioactive dye, they could be observed leaving the stomach and entering the blood and could later be found in the liver, spleen, heart, lungs, duodenum and urine. If we eat food packed with enzymes, the effect will be seen in every organ of the body. When we eat fruits or vegetables, plant enzymes act as catalysts and work in harmony with vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats to feed the cell.

When you eat an abundance of raw fruits and vegetables, they will act as a broom that gently sweeps and cleans the intestinal wall. The colon will be kept squeaky clean. This is important because a clean intestine is necessary for health and to heal disease.

All the nutrients we need can be found in fruits and vegetables. Eating a diet high in raw fruits and vegetables increases energy, assists healing, rebuilds healthy tissue, rejuvenates and invigorates the entire body. You feel vital because all cell functions are operating at peak performance.

Fresh applesauce poured over a bed of diced mango with a sprinkle of cinnamon, raw nut butters, bean sprouts rolled in noir sheets, flax oil salad dressing, fresh pineapple juice with blended coconut, lettuce with sesame seeds and avocado dressing—to mention only a few of the diverse, colorful, mouth-watering, cell-delicious raw food that can be created from an endless variety of raw materials. You can find many raw food recipes in Whole Foods And Healing Recipes, as well as healthy cooked food.

Healthy eating does not have to be bland and boring. Food in its natural state is filled with countless varieties of delectable flavors and textures. A diet that will not feed the carnal appetite, but nourish His Temple with foods that are fit for His glory.

It is a shame that the great fathers of theology did not include enthusiasm as one of the attributes of God. Omnipresence and omnipotence are profoundly esoteric names that help us stretch language beyond itself into the realms of the eternal. Magnetic, electrifying, enchanting, even filled with zest and fervor, these names may seem to border on the sacreligious when describing the character of God. But our Creator has an irrepressible nature, so filled with vigor and vitality, that there is nothing that can hold Him down—not even the grave. We cannot tame Him with clumsy labels or primitive theology. God smashes through such boxes with the laughter of a playing child.

The Eternal has a flair for the dramatic. A Universe brimming with choreographed movement.

If you like what you are reading I encourage you to order North American Diet
Available as soft cover book & as digital E-Book
WHAT NOT TO EAT AND WHY
http://freedomyou.com/

Also check out http://urilife.com/realfoodforlife/products.com

5 comments:

J said...

Great post on raw foods, Ed. As a former recreational bodybuilder, I would a lot of calories just to gain muscle. Of course that high calorie intake just wreaked havoc on me, partly because I was enough vegetables and fruits. I aged quite a bit during that time frame.

But now I eat fewer calories and I eat raw fruit and veggies everyday. Not quite 80%, but I've noticed quite a difference. Aside from being trim, my skin is better, my cardio is better, and my energy is better.

Anyway, great post!

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