All animals living in the wild eat their food raw and, almost always, fresh. Raw is Nature's First Law. Only humans and domesticated animals eat cooked and processed foods.

The obvious separation created by putting fire between our food and our mouth, the tremendous amount of time and energy people spend to cook food, the use of massive resources to create today's cooked-food culture (with its billions of kitchens and restaurants), the construction of factories and shops all churning out cooked and processed foods, the packaging and wrappers involved in the whole cooked-food process, and the lack of life energy in cooked food are all major contributing factors in humanity's fall from paradise. Subconsciously, we know this, as our picture of paradise usually involves sun, beaches, mangoes, and coconuts; not gloomy cities, restaurants, and cooked animals for dinner.

The cooking and processing of foods has become so common that most of us do not even question it. The assumption that cooked and processed foods are as good as raw foods is just an assumption. Most people do not know for sure, because they have never tried a balanced raw-food approach. Einstein once said: "The essential is to get rid of deeply rooted prejudices, which we often repeat without examining them."

When one eats an orange, the wrapper (peel) becomes compost. When one follows a raw-plant-food lifestyle, the amount of trash produced by that individual decreases to almost nothing. Test for yourself and see.

Living foods are the key to our health and longevity. They allow our bodies to perform as they were meant to. Our bodies have evolved over a four million year period. For 3,950,000 of those years we ate only raw, living foods. It is only recently that we have begun eating cooked food. When we look at other mammals in nature, we do not see any significant incidence of the diseases that have become pervasive in humans. No cancer, heart disease, strokes or diabetes.

Cooking renders food toxic! The toxicity of the deranged debris of cooking is confirmed by the doubling and tripling of white blood cells after eating a cooked food meal. The white blood cells are the first line of defense and are, collectively, popularly called "the immune system."

Is cooked food good for us?

As confirmed by hundreds of researches all cooking quickly generates mutagens and carcinogens in foods.
Proteins begin coagulating and deaminating at temperatures commonly applied in cooking, and are devoid of nutritive value.

Vitamins are rather quickly destroyed by cooking.

Minerals quickly lose their organic context and are returned to their native state as they occur in soil, sea water and rocks, metals and so on. In such a state they are unusable and the body often shunts them aside where they may combine with saturated fats and cholesterol in the circulatory system, thus clogging it up with cement-like plaque.

Heated fats are especially damaging because they are altered to form acroleins, free radicals and other mutagens and carcinogens.

What to eat?

A balanced diet needs:

•     proteins: green leaves (herbs, leaves from trees, lettuce, ...)
•     energy: sweet fruits (cherries, berries, apricots, melons, apples, bananas, ...)
•     fat: avocados, olives, almonds, nuts, coconuts, seeds (sunflower kernels, ...)

Some other facts:

• Vegetable-fruits (tomato, cucumber, paprika) are a good source for water and minerals but not for energy.
• If you want, you can also eat roots (carrot, celeriac, parsley-root, ...).
• On cold days you shouldn't eat melons - otherwise you'll freeze!
• Dried fruits (raisins, figs, dates, ...) and nuts produce heat!

Example for one day:

• morning: watermelon, dandelions (leaves and flowers)

• during the day: "What neature gives" - cherry trees (leaves and ripe fruits), mulberries, blackberries, herbage
• evening: tomatoes, paprika, sunflower kernels, carrots, lettuce

Further Links:

• http://www.davidwolfe.com - David Wolfe
• http://www.living-foods.com - Living and raw foods
• http://www.fresh-network.com - The fresh network