Raw Food Life - the Science of Raw Food!

A raw food diet is not just good for you - it’s also good science! You don’t have to take our word for it, have ‘faith’ or trust the latest nutrition guru.

Science proves that cooking not only destroys nutrition and enzymes, but chemically changes foods from the substances needed for health into free-radicals and poisons that destroy our health!

On this website you’ll find out what happens when you eat raw, whole foods rather than cooked or prepared foods! You’ll see numerous references from scientific literature you can check out for yourself, as well as other useful perspectives about the concept I call "Whole Food, Whole Being, Whole Planet!^TM”

Don’t give away responsibility for your health to the government, medical industry or food industry. Don't even take my word for it! Discover the facts for yourself -- start here today!

Raw Food & Liberty
Thoughts on the Legislative History of the United States
for this 4th of July Holiday
Opinion by Robert Ross, July 4th, 2010

Tomorrow we will be celebrating the birth of our country. The thing at this special time is to realize is that we are celebrating a time when our founding fathers sacrificed their wealth and sometimes their lives to fight for something called our natural rights. Our natural rights only came into existence, for the first time in human history until this very day, when our forefathers were willing to fight to the death to claim them. First they “exhausted all other remedies” by going through years of legal and philosophical arguments and pleadings to the King who refused to acknowledge any of them.

As far as the King was concerned Americans had no natural rights - they were merely at that time a philosophical discussion among intellectuals. Only after we made all the appropriate legal arguments under international law, did our Founders actually go to war to claim and defend these rights even if it cost them their lives. At that great cost they won both a philosophical and legal argument. They had hoped that this victory would be handed down to their posterity, but what they said was basically -- here are your rights...keep them if you can. Thomas Jefferson famously said, "the tree of Liberty needs to be replenished occasionally with the blood of tyrrants and patriots." It isn't so much that tyrants need to bleed, it's that we must be willing to fight to keep our natural rights!

If you are into health and nutrition or, like me, raw food, this is very, very important. Under "color of law," which means it looks like law but really isn't, we are in all likelihood going to lose our access to healthy food. The FDA will be regulating natural remedies like herbs and vitamins. Organic food may be gone forever. Without clean, non-GMO organic food you can not be healthy! And that is their goal, since you cannot control a healthy, awake and aware population that takes responsibility for itself!!!

Interview with Robert Ross
With Katy Joy at Raw Spirit Festival, Santa Barbara, 2009

Robert, the creator of RawFoodLife.com, the #1 website on Google for Raw Food searches (or close to it) for over two years, talks about his raw food philosophy, the science behind raw food, the physiology of consciousness, raw food & compassion plus much more.

A Raw food diet is based on eating whole, live, nutritionally-dense organic uncooked and un-processed foods as a large percentage of your diet. When 75-100% of your total food consumption is raw food, you are a raw foodist. At that rate it is believed that your body's own elimination system can eliminate all or most of the toxins in the cooked portion of your diet. When you eat more cooked food you are eating toxins faster than your body canget rid of them so they back up causing dis-ease. Heating food above 118 degrees F. is believed to destroy valuable enzymes in food that can assist in digestion and health.

Cooking is also known to diminish the nutritional value of food, but where did the nutrients go? They don't diappear (see Dr. Jeckyl & Mr Hyde (below) -- instead, the heat actually causes chemical changes in your food creating many of the carcinogens, mutagens, free-radicals and other toxins that are associated with many of today's diseases, from diabetes and arthritis to heart disease and cancer.

Two common myths are that eating raw is expensive and that it takes a lot of time to prepare. Nothing could be further from the truth! I am one of busiest people I know (mostly answering emails from my readers)! But when you do it correctly, a raw food diet is actually one of the easiest, most convenient and most economical ways you can eat. Remember, raw foodists eat mostly organic food, which is usually 80% to 300% more nutritionally dense (click for article on Organic Food)! As your body learns to absorb this additional nutrition, you be less hungry and actually eat much less, reducing your food costs well below what is was when you were eating empty calories filled with toxins that increase your health care costs. Click to read the full article ...

TOP NEWS
The Raw Truth About Agave Nectar

agave

If you are reading this you probably already avoid any foods containing High Fructose Corn Syrup HFCS). But just as John Q. Public is learning that this is really really bad for you, the industry has discovered something new to con us with, one targeted right at the health-conscious consumer - agave “nectar.” Agave nectar is advertised as a “diabetic friendly,” raw, and “100% natural sweetener.” Yet none of these claims are true.

Today, agave nectar can found in the health food aisles of many supermarkets, as well as health food stores. It can also be found as an ingredient in many foods labeled as organic or raw, including ketchup, ice cream, chocolate, and health food bars. The labels on these products are designed to make you think that agave is a natural unrefined sweetener that has been used by indigenous people in Mexico for thousands of years. While it is true that they used to let the sweet sap one species of agave to ferment naturally, creating a mildly alcoholic beverage called pulque, the agave nectar in stores today is a newly created sweetener invented in chemistry labs during the 1990’s. It isn’t even made from the sap or nectar of the yucca or agave plant, but from the root after being chemically treated, cooked and processed beyond all recognition! Though a natural agave product made from concentrated plant nectar does exist in Mexico, it is very hard to find and very expensive. If you actually locate a source please let me know!

Diabetes Disaster

Because high fructose agave syrup won’t spike blood glucose levels, these ruthless companies also sell agave syrup as good for diabetics! For this they should probably be criminally prosecuted! Of course fructose doesn’t trigger a test for glucose – but that doesn’t make it good for anyone, including diabetics! Yucca plants also can contain saponins. - highly toxic steroid derivatives. This unscrupulous industry actually tries to claim sapoinins have some rediculous health benefits, but you should avoid them at all costs, especially if pregnant or breastfeeding!

Fructose is broken down in your liver just like alcohol and produces many of the side effects of chronic alcoholism! Excessive fructose can cause mineral depletion, liver inflammation, hardening of the arteries, insulin resistance leading to diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, obesity, stroke, cancer, arthritis and premature aging.

If you have any insulin-related issues - high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, overweight – my suggestions is that you avoid all sweeteners. I even avoid stevia. As a raw foodist you body can rehabilitate you innate ability to enjoy the natural goodness in unadulterated foods. That empowers your innate ability to eat “intuitively.”

If you want something sweet, eat a piece of fruit, not a candy bar labeled as a “health food.” Even raw organic snack bars are loaded with processed sugar! How can I say that? Because “drying” fruit, even in the sun, is a form of processing! Dried fruits are sources of highly concentrated sugars and can be almost as bad if abused as any other kind of sugar.

Now, of course that is an ideal. You might have to work up to it, since most people are addicted to things tasting sweeter than they really do. Your body may actually have adapted to an emergency form of cellular metabolism that needs more glucose since that is all you have been eating for decades. If that is the case, then you can wean yourself from sugar by using sweeteners known to be safer. For uncooked dishes try using raw honey or dates. For cooked dishes try a good organic maple syrup. For the occasional desert, use dehydrated cane sugar juice or maple sugar in moderation. Freshly made apple juice or orange juice can also provide plenty of sweetness – but remember, juicing sweet fruits is also a form of processing that concentrates sugars so should be used in moderation.

But remember, ultimately sweeteners are bad. You see, healthy food is supposed to taste good naturally. When you change the way foods taste, you confuse your ability to intuitively know what’s good and what’s not. With a raw, live food diet, after a period of cleansing and healing right down to the cellular level, your natural ability to truly taste real food begins to return and live, fresh foods begin to taste wonderful without any enhancement – and then when you have a craving its not just your addictions calling, it really means your body needs something nutritionally.

The Raw Food Answer – No Processing, No Labels, No Lies

When you eat fresh, organic raw food it doesn’t come with fine print on the label that can be distorted and twisted by greed. Every single new sweetener like agave syrup introduced into the market was invented to do one thing - make a profit. Since the FDA doesn't enforce food-labeling laws, you can’t be sure what you’re eating is what is on the label of any processed food. So don’t eat that junk!

Nestle applies quantum mechanics to optimize food taste, texture, nutrition

THE SCIENCE OF WATER, PART 2
Can you be so full of life, powerful and strong that you are virtually immune to all diseases and live as long as a Hunza?

As we learned last month, live water is like live food and is healthier, better tasting and more alive than processed and fast foods or bottled water. Another good word for live water is "Organic Water" because it is just like organic food. Water is a “food” or a nutrient that can be either organic and alive -- or processed and dead. Like live, fresh organic food, Organic Water is “alkaline.” That is, it has a high “pH” that helps your body maintain a healthier acid/alkaline balance. Sometimes Organic Water is called Ionized Water, which refers to water made in a water ionizer, like the Life 7600.

It is hard to find live organic water these days - almost all available water from the tap or in bottles is dead, and may even be contaminated. The only reliable way to get it in fact is to make it yourself! That's why I use and recommend a Life 7600 Water Ionizer.

A Life Ionizer increases the pH, antioxidants and available oxygen in water, increases the negative Oxygen Reduction Potential (-ORP) in the water and reduces the size of water's molecular clusters in half, making water easier to absorb.

There are five locations in the world where scientists have found a drinking water with some of the same extraordinary physical characteristics of live organic alkaline water - and where the inhabitants reportedly live to be over 100 years of age. The people are in excellent health, have no cancer, no dental caries, are robust and have children in their old age. They are Hunzaland in the Karkorum Mountains, Vilcambamba in Ecuador, a high mountain valley in Georgia, Russia, another in Mongolia and the final one in Peru. Though all these areas have different cultures and diets, they all have one thing in common – their water has similar properties to Live Organic Oxygen Water - especially microclusters!

I get concerned when Monsanto is the force not just behind dangerous GMO's, but also the power behind the scenes for HR2749! They have already demonstrated aggressive legal enforcement of their patent rights, so it isn't beyond them to use law enforcement to meet their needs, i.e., the Food Police!

If we give these clowns access to law enforcement, with the right to carry guns that goes along with that, growing organic food could become something like what growing marijuana is like today - something also engineered decades ago by corporate interests in the name of profit! The corn fields of tomorrow could also become host to Kevlar-clad jack-bookted troops. This has happened already to thousands of wholistic MD's trying to find natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals. Actual MD's have had their offices raided by armed & armored FDA officers for prescribing vitamins instead of expensive drugs. The pharmaceutical and agribusiness conglomaerates have one thing in common - they understand that the best thing they can do to make a profit is to control their market - you!

Without healthy, delicious and nutritionally dense ORGANIC FOOD, you cannot be sucessful as a raw foodist. So learn the truth and contact your own representatives to stop the Food Police now. Click here to sign a petition to say NO to the Food Police:
http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions/pnum993.php

Though the popular list of 10 reasons why we don't need GMO foods (click below) is making its way around the web, it really is just a summary of a much larger problem of particular importance to raw foodists!

GMO's are probably the biggest threat to your health (and the planet) in modern history. Personally, I think it is a bigger, more immediate threat than even Global Warming. To be sucessful, as well as healthy, as a raw foodist we MUST have access to a healthy, natural supply organic food. Organic foods' #1 enemy are GMO foods. They don't just threaten to put organic farmers out of business, they already do it every day - contaiminating organic crops with out-of-control modified genes that drift through the air. Then GMO Frankensteins like Monsanto actually have the temerity to sue the poor farmers they just ruined for growing their patented crops! Since they control the courts with a combination of deep pockets, armies of lawyers and who know what else, they win these ludicrous cases!

I assert that without healthy, delicious and nutritionally dense ORGANIC FOOD, you cannot be sucessful as a raw foodist. Period. So study the facts for yourself, learn the truth and be empowered in your own healthy choices.

In his new book, Genetic Roulette, Jeffrey M. Smith, provides a more detailed analysis of the documented health risks of GMOs. If you like his book Seeds of Deception, you'll be blown away by this one. Smith gives you the ammunition you need to shatter the biotech industry’s claim that genetically modified (GM) foods are safe. NOTHING could be further from the truth!

It has been known for some time that eating cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, can help prevent some forms of cancer, such as breast cancer, but the mechanism was unknown until now. According to ScienceDaily.com (Dec. 29, 2008), U.C. Santa Barbara scientists have shown how the healing power of these vegetables actually works. Their research is published in this month's journal Carcinogenesis. Other studies have shown that cooking can significantly decrease the bioavailability of the cancer-fighting compounds in these veggies!

Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables contain compounds called glucosinolates, the compounds found in cruciferous vegetables that give them their unique taste. Isothiocyanates are some of the biologically active hydrolysis (breakdown) products of glucosinolates, which according to many studies have cancer-preventive and anti-carcinogenic activities. Broccoli and broccoli sprouts have the highest amount of the isothiocyanates. One of these compounds, called sulforaphane (SFN), inhibits the proliferation of human tumor cells by a mechanism similar to the way that some anticancer drugs work - by inhibiting cell division during mitosis (cell division) and is much less toxic than drugs.

3-day old broccoli sprouts are concentrated sources of glucoraphanin, which contain 10-100 times more glucoraphanin by weight than mature broccoli plants. Broccoli sprouts that contain 73 mg of glucoraphanin (also called sulforaphane glucosinolate) per 1-oz serving are available in some health food and grocery stores. Remember, glucosin-olates are water-soluble so cooking just a few minutes can decrease the glucosinolate content of cruciferous vegetables as much as a 59%. Cooking can also inactivate myrosinase, the enzyme that catalyzes glucosinolate hydrolosis into isothiocyanates, which has been shown to substantially decrease the bioavailability of isothiocyanates.

Everyone knows that when you cook food you lose a lot of nutrition. But did you ever wonder where it goes? What happens to those beautiful vitamins, minerals, fats, carbs and proteins? Do they just disappear?

Unfortunately, they do not. Like Dr. Jekyl, they are horribly transformed by chemical reactions created by heat into monsters like Mr. Hyde -- only we call them Carcinogens, Mutagens, and Free Radicals!

Learn scientifically how heat actually causes molecules to break down and recombine, turning nutrients that were once life-givers into killers:

One of the most important benefits of a raw food diet is that it is "alkaline forming." The standard American Diet (SAD) is an "acid-forming" diet, which leads to dis-ease. Yet after spending weeks or months, perhaps even years, learning to eat raw food - WHAT ARE YOU DRINKING? After working so hard to become more alkaline, is your water neutral pH - or worse, even acidic?

If you are drinking bottled water, you may not be getting all the benefits you think you are. If you have a water filter on your faucet, you may also not be getting what you think you are! Even if you are using reverse osmosis or distillation to purify your water, you are not getting the results you should be getting!

So the more we learn about water, we learn that there is a similar difference betwen living water and dead water just like there is between living food and dead food. Live, raw food is naturally alkaline forming and free of toxins. Live water is similar, except that it is getting hard to find these days. Even in rural environments the water is no longer safe to drink and has been processed and chlorinated to the point that it is no longer live "raw" water. It is "cooked" or processed - and is often more toxic than healthy! So it is essential, if you want to take responsibility for your own well-being, that you not only eat raw, live food, but that you drink "raw" live, alkaline water. And there is only one reliable, safe and affordable way to get that - make it yourself with a Water Ionizer. If you can't afford my personal favorite, the Life 7600, you can make your own basic water ionizer, too. Click here to learn how!

In today’s fast-food society, it’s not uncommon for many people to have an aversion to vegetables, making becoming a vegetarian, vegan, or even worse, a raw foodist a little daunting. When I became a vegetarian over 40 years ago, people thought I was very strange. Now, after 40 years, a vegetarian diet is at least considered healthy, though still a little unusual. It took most of my 4 decades of gastronomic experience just to get to this point, where people at least accept vegetarianism as an reasonable idea. Now we are asking people to accept not just eating mostly vegetables as a way of life, but actually eating them raw! For some people that’s much more than just hard to accept - some people actually hate vegetables!

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 75% of Americans don't eat the recommended five to nine servings of fresh fruits and vegetables per day. That's alarming, considering how important vegetables are to maintaining a healthy and productive lifestyle--but not surprising, given that some people think that ketchup counts as one serving of vegetables!

So when you get to a buffet do you choose the chocolate cake over the carrot sticks even though you know carrot sticks are healthier? Do you skip the salad at the restaurant? Does the idea of eating something green make you gag? Well, many people new to raw food are confronting just such a challenge! They didn’t get interested in the raw food lifestyle merely because they thought is delicious – they were overweight or they got sick. Usually that is how they got here – raw food may have been their last resort. They studied raw nutrition, they’ve read stories about people who’ve overcome the very dis-ease they are struggling with using a raw food diet – but it didn’t help. Veggies still make them gag.

New Study Supports Importance
of Alkaline pH for health
Bicarbonate Increases Tumor pH and Inhibits Spontaneous Metastases
Published Online, March 10, 2009; doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-07-5575 Cancer Res March 15, 2009 69; 2260

Abstract

The external pH of solid tumors is acidic as a consequence of increased metabolism of glucose and poor perfusion. Acid pH has been shown to stimulate tumor cell invasion and metastasis in vitro and in cells before tail vein injection in vivo. The present study investigates whether inhibition of this tumor acidity will reduce the incidence of in vivo metastases. Here, we show that oral NaHCO3 selectively increased the pH of tumors and reduced the formation of spontaneous metastases in mouse models of metastatic breast cancer. This treatment regimen was shown to significantly increase the extracellular pH, but not the intracellular pH, of tumors by 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy and the export of acid from growing tumors by fluorescence microscopy of tumors grown in window chambers. NaHCO3 therapy also reduced the rate of lymph node involvement, yet did not affect the levels of circulating tumor cells, suggesting that reduced organ metastases were not due to increased intravasation. In contrast, NaHCO3 therapy significantly reduced the formation of hepatic metastases following intrasplenic injection, suggesting that it did inhibit extravasation and colonization. In tail vein injections of alternative cancer models, bicarbonate had mixed results, inhibiting the formation of metastases from PC3M prostate cancer cells, but not those of B16 melanoma. Although the mechanism of this therapy is not known with certainty, low pH was shown to increase the release of active cathepsin B, an important matrix remodeling protease. [Cancer Res 2009;69(6):2260–8]

Introduction

The extracellular pH (pHe) of malignant solid tumors is acidic, in the range of 6.5 to 6.9, whereas the pHe of normal tissues is significantly more alkaline, 7.2 to 7.5 . Mathematical models of the tumor-host interface and in vivo measurements have shown that solid tumors export acid into the surrounding parenchyma). Previous in vitro studies have shown that tumor cell invasion can be stimulated by acidic conditions and that this may involve lysosomal proteases. These observations have led to the “acid-mediated invasion hypothesis,” wherein tumor-derived acid facilitates tumor invasion by promoting normal cell death and extracellular matrix degradation of the parenchyma surrounding growing tumors. Furthermore, pretreatment of tumor cells with acid before injection leads to increased experimental metastases, and these observations suggest that low pH up-regulates proinvasive and survival pathways. It has been argued that metastatic cancers are selected for their ability to export acid. Acid is a by-product of glucose metabolism, and notably, elevated consumption of fluorodeoxyglucose by more aggressive cancers has been observed with fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography .

The current work tests the hypothesis that neutralizing the acid pH of tumors will inhibit invasion and, hence, reduce the incidence of spontaneous metastases. Acid pH was inhibited using oral NaHCO3, which has previously been shown to effectively reverse pH gradients in tumors and not affect the pHe of normal tissues. This was confirmed in the current study using 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and fluorescence ratio imaging of SNARF-1 in a dorsal skin-fold window chamber. Notably, bicarbonate did not affect the systemic pH or the growth rate of primary tumors but had significant effects on the formation of spontaneous metastases. In two of three experiments, NaHCO3 therapy reduced the colonization of lymph nodes, but in no experiment did it significantly affect the levels of circulating tumor cells. The lymphatic results notwithstanding, these results indicate that inhibition of end-organ metastasis did not occur by a reduction of intravasation. In contrast, the formation of liver metastases following intrasplenic injection of MDA-MB-231 cells was significantly reduced, indicating that end-organ colonization of metastatic sites was affected by NaHCO3 therapy. Similarly, metastases following tail vein injection of PC3M prostate cancer cells were also inhibited by bicarbonate treatment, yet those of B16 melanoma were not. Preliminary investigations into possible mechanisms showed that the release of active cathepsin B into pericellular space was significantly increased by acidic conditions, and thus, NaHCO3 therapy may be acting to inhibit the release of this important matrix remodeling protease. Click here for full study ...

Good Health in a Bad Economy
Opinion by Robert Ross

In economics, a bailout is supposed to be when a bankrupt or nearly bankrupt company is helped by another party (like the U.S. government) giving them assets that can be converted to cash so that the troubled party can meet it's financial obligations.

What our country really needs during the current crisis is a raw food bailout -- when a sick body is helped by a healthy diet giving it assets ((live food) that can easily assimilated so that the body can meet all its nutritional requirements.

Of course, a bad economy is more difficult to deal with when you are also struggling with bad health! Poor nutrition can exacerbate negative emotions and make it more difficult to think clearly. Many diseases start with a cocktail of toxins created by cooking combined with the immune-suppressing effects of anger, stress, fear and hopelessness. Eating raw food is a great way to face a crisis. It will help you be healthier - saving on medical bills and insurance. It will help you act more responsibly and proactively to find solutions. And it will even help you save on your grocery bills. You see, organic, raw food is as much as 200-300% more nutritionally dense, making it more economical in the long run than less expensive and less nutritious conventional produce that may also be laced with pesticides or genetically modified organisms with unknown health hazards!