
Q2. Will I have difficulty digesting raw food
This is a total misunderstanding prevailing amongst many people I have talked to. The digestion time for various foods is as follows: Typical average digestion times, for a healthy digestive system, for different foods types are given below:
A raw fruit meal or fruit juice – about 4 hours for, less than 30 minutes to 1 hour in the stomach and 3 hours in the intestines.
A raw vegetable meal – about 6 hours, about 1 hour in the stomach and 5 hours in the intestines.
A coked vegetarian meal – about 8 hours, 1 hour in the stomach and 7 hours in the intestines.
A processed vegetarian meal, like burgers and pizzas, over 12 hours to digest.
A cooked non-vegetarian meal over 16 hours to digest and
A processed non-vegetarian meal takes over 20 hours to digest.
Another simple way of knowing is to observe the return of hunger. You will feel hungry much sooner when you eat either raw fruits or vegetables than when you eat any cooked vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal. This again is a clear sign of the ease of digestion of raw food vs cooked food.
Q3. But absorption of nutrients is better in cooked food than raw food
This again is another gross misconception. Darryl D’souza has answered this question beautifully in his book ‘Become Healthy or Extinct’. To quote him “Raw plants and their fruits are teeming with amino acids, live bacteria and living enzymes that aid in the plants own metabolic processes. They are beneficial not only for the plant but also for the human body. If we eat plants and fruits without cooking, these amino acids, live bacteria, and living enzymes get into our digestive system and help in breaking down and digesting the plant material eaten. The bacteria and the enzymes then become part of our intestinal microflora that help extract the nutrients from the very food they are present in.
When plants and fruits are cooked, all these useful bacteria and enzymes get killed. When such cooked food is eaten, it is the enzymes of the human body that have to do the job of decomposing and digesting the food. It takes a lot of energy and resources for the human body to keep up its count of beneficial bacteria and enzymes all by itself, with no help from natural and raw foods. This is what drains the human body of energy as well as makes the digestion process more difficult and longer.”
Q4. What about the chemicals in raw food? Won’t cooking help is removing them?
This is yet another misconception. Harmful inorganic chemicals get into our fruits and vegetable in either of the two ways. Firstly, inorganic chemical fertilisers and toxic pesticides that are used by the farmers while growing the plants are absorbed by the plants and become part of the fruits and vegetables of such plants. Whether we eat these vegetables raw or cooked these chemicals are very much present in them and the process of cooking by generating heat will only kill the enzymes and bacteria but cannot in any way remove the chemicals present.
Secondly certain preservatives, ripening agents, artificial colous, polish, etc are sprayed onto the fruits and vegetables after harvesting. While some of these are absorbed by the fruits and vegetables the rest remains on the skin. What remains on the skin can be removed by keeping them immersed in soda powder / sea salt / vineager water for atleast 30 minutes and then thoroughly washing them or removing the skin in some cases. The process of cleaning and resultant residue or absence of it, is the same whether you cook these or eat them raw.
Ofcourse these chemicals are dangerous to our health and can cause various diseases. That is why as far as possible we should eat organic fruits and vegetables. But if we have to eat fruits and vegetables not organic sometimes, it’s better to eat them raw. Research shows that even when known carcinogens get into our body creating cancer cells, the development of these into cancer depends on the conducive environment created by our diet. A raw plant based whole food diet is our best bet to further strengthen our body’s defenses and its ability to heal itself.
There is one caveat though – if vegetables have been grown in highly unhygienic condition using sewage water, as is happening in some areas of big cities, cooking will help in destroying harmful pathogens like E. coli that could be present in such vegetables.
Q5. Will my energy levels go down when I switch to this diet?
On the contrary. The energy levels will go up significantly, as I have already explained in Q1 in the part 1 of this blog. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You will experience this yourself when you switch to this diet.
Here please note that if after some time you find depletion of energy that’s a clear sign that your Vitamin B12 levels are down. That is one factor you need to keep in mind when you switch to this diet. You most probably will need to take Vitamin B12 supplements. But please go for organic plant-based supplements rather than the inorganic ones. The absorption will be much better. I personally use Unived supplements. Check the link below for details.
Vitamin B12 is produced by certain bacteria present in the soil or the gut of animals. Unfortunately, due to decades of intensive chemical farming population of these and other bacteria has drastically reduced in the soil where our fruits and vegetables are gown. I am sure that over a longer period of time soil where natural farming is practiced consistently will rejuvenate these bacteria.
Also, our ancestors did not have this problem as such bacteria would have been present in their gut too as in the gut of animals. But again, consistent eating of unnatural food, high in animal products and processed food with all kinds of chemicals in it, has drastically changed the composition of our gut bacteria. As we once again move to organic and raw plant based whole food there is a good chance that our gut bacteria composition will undergo a change thereby removing the root cause of this B1 deficiency. But both of these will take time and, in the meantime, we need to supplement our diet with vitamin B12 supplements.
Supplementing your diet with fermented rice and other fermented vegetable preparation referred in Q1 in Part 1 of this blog, will certainly help.
Q6. Questions on adequacy of protein and calcium in plant based whole foods
As I have already answered these questions in part 4 of my previous blog ‘Transformation of a hardcore meat eater’ I am not going to dwell on this topic again here. But as regards calcium from cow’s milk I just want to add one additional data point which has come to my light after this blog referred above. This is from the book ‘Become Heathy or Extinct’ by Darry D’souza.
‘Cow’s milk contains 3 times as much protein as human milk and about 50 % more fat. The main protein in human milk, lactalbumin, has a molecular weight of 14K vs the basic protein in cow’s milk, casein, which has a molecular weight of 233K. Because it is so durable and sticky, it is used as a binder in paint and as a glue that holds plywood together and sticks labels to bottles. It is perfect for building a calf’s tissues but causes incalculable harm to humans. Casein is an immense and unwieldy protein, difficult for a human child (or adult for that matter) to properly break down, creating a lot of acidic residue when metabolized. In the case of young children, it causes many serious digestion problems. The excess mucus (casein) caused by milk can harden to form a coating on the inner wall of the intestines, hindering the absorption of nutrients from food.
As regards Calcium this calcium is bonded to the protein casein, which cannot be unbonded without the action of two digestive enzymes, rennin and lactase. Since humans over the age of 4 do not produce these enzymes, they cannot avail of the calcium in cow milk at all. So, it gets excreted in urine, having done the body no good whatsoever. Even though a human baby under 4 years can avail of this calcium, the casein causes great harm to its digestive system.’
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