The word health doesn't just mean free from illness or ailments. It's originated from the word whole, your mental and physical status, your mind, body and energy. When you wake up in the morning, do you feel alive and bouncy or not? If your mind, body and energy are in alignment, then you will feel like a new born in the morning. The best proven way to attain such wholness is by eating 40-50% food in it's raw state. That means it's alive, it must be a live cell. It can be a fruit, a vegetable, a nut, a sprouted gram.
Before I go deep into this, let me show you something studied and noted. There's no wonder our elders often say chew your food before you eat, the ancient ayurvedic texts says, chew your food 32 times before gulping in. It helps in better digestion. Here is the time taken for different foods to digest by our body.
Diary and Meat - 5 hours
Nuts - 3 hours
Fish - 1 hour
Cooked vegetables - 45-50 min
Fruits - 30-40 min
Raw vegetables - 30-40 min
If you see the time required for raw food to digest is less compared to cooked food. But why should we incorporate 40-50% raw food in our diet?
You see, our digestive system doesn't contain all the enzymes required to digest food, so these are brought in by the food we eat. But when we consume the food that is cooked, which is devoid of nutrients and enzymes, which are destroyed in cooking process, is believed to be dead at molecular level also could be compared to poison. Now our body has to struggle to digest the food by itself. So now it takes it's sweet time to complete the process of digestion. In normal this tends to take your body down until an hour or more after you eat and then recovers slowly.
Food is the fuel to our body but we make it in such a way that after we eat it, it takes our energy atleast for an hour to digest that food.
Now, some of us might say, "I have strong digestive system." Even if you have strong digestive system, your body can reconstitute only 30-40% of enzymes and nutrition form cooked food. Now this shows that 50-60% of eating completely cooked food is just going waste.
Now imagine running a diesel car with petrol in it. It might run for a while but it's an expensive damage to the car internally. Similarly, even our body has chances of severe damage in longterm which might not be visible right now and then it could be costly for one to deal with.
Well, now there could arise few questions like, but what should I eat in raw foods. Well you can eat all fruits in their raw state. You can eat certain vegetables like; carrot, cucumber, beetroot, capsicum, cabbage, broccoli, watercress, kale etc. You don't have to eat only vegetables, you can eat sprouted green grams, sprouted bengal gram, etc.
If you can't commit, atleast give it a try. Many, prominent nutrionists and yogis have found tremendous changes in their bodies, all are backed up by many experiments and studies. Such a change in diet could change your life in a many ways, your energy levels, your sleep pattern, your body odour, your eye color, your skin tone, your hair, etc. Not just physically but internally as well, your body and mind gets rejuvenated. It's better to arrive late than never. So go grab some raw food next time you visit your grocery shop. If you like what I write, do like and share the post with your friends and family to make a holistic approach to their life.
Sources: Sadhguru, other facts and studies.
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