Pretty much everyone agrees that food fresh from a plant, stream or farm gives you the most nutrients. Time degrades the value of enzymes and compounds that can greatly enhance one’s health.
The main reasons to eat raw food are enzymes and raw fats. And undamaged proteins (which is what enzymes are).
Enzymes are fragile. Lots of enzymes break down at our body temperature, and our cells have to keep manufacturing them to keep the chemical processes they facilitate going. Enzymes are changed by exposure to acid, heat, light, and use. Luckily, they are not used up in a chemical reaction; they just help it happen with less energy input, and then are released to help another set of chemicals connect or separate. Over and over, thousands of times a minute.
Enzymes are vital (necessary to life). Without them you die. Not only are there digestive enzymes that help make your food available to the body’s cells, but every action a cell takes, every chemical or protein that is made, is done with the aid of enzymes. Enzymes are vital to the production and use of small chemical “batteries” used in every function of every cell. Without them, all production, motion, and life ceases.
Proteins are built with enzyme’s assistance in building the amino acids and then connecting amino acids. Proteins make up a large part of the structure of your body, and the hormones driving it. Most of the functions of every cell involve proteins.
Enzymes also help clean the body of dead cells, proteins and fats that are lying around, and blood clots that are not necessary, or are even harmful (as in strokes or heart attacks).
High fevers damage enzymes, and if enough are damaged, one gets seizures and can die. This is why high fevers are dangerous. Lower fevers can also damage enzymes, reducing the effectiveness of bacteria while increasing some chemical reactions and the actions of the immune system in ways that help the body clean out whatever the bacteria are there to eat, and reducing the negative impact of a large growth of bacteria and their waste products. (As an aside, bacteria are like flies. They are symptoms of trash, actually the answer to it, are there to remove it– not the cause of it.)
Most pesticides, cleaners, and anti-bacterial products work by damaging enzymes. So they are not good to have in your food. Neither is mercury, formaldehyde, or other things found in vaccines. Anti-biotics are just that—“against life”. Not so good for your own cells. Should only be used when the body is overwhelmed and needs a little breathing space to catch up. Antibiotics do not heal the body. They kill bacteria and suppress your own cells, which can make them fight back and win.
Unfortunately, antibiotics can and do kill the bacteria you want and need in your digestive tract as well as wherever you have an infection. We are designed to have certain bacteria introduced at birth in our trip out of the birth canal, as well as from the nipple. The first fluid from the breast, colostrum, has a lot of antibodies in it from the mother, to help protect the baby while the bacteria get established in the colon. This is the time you build your symbiotic bacteria, without whom you cannot live. The stomach is not producing much Hydrochloric acid, and bacteria coming in are bathed I milk, which helps protect them on their journey. A person who drinks raw milk as a child and has never had immunizations nor antibiotics will have a far greater immune system that anyone else. It is so rare these days, I think medical doctors do not even recognize or value their existence. Such people should really be protected from casual use of antibiotics. They will remain far healthier with just good nursing care.
So we arrive at milk, our first food. It, obviously, is not cooked. It is raw if you are getting it naturally.
Milk is chock full of everything you need to build a body. Fats, proteins, minerals, enzymes, and bacteria. We are supposed to get bacteria with our milk. The “good” bacteria naturally live well in milk, and produce unfavorable conditions for the “bad” bacteria. These symbiotes form the primary immune defense of your body. They are not actually inside your body—the tube that goes from your mouth to your anus is one long tube made up of skin cells. Everything in your stomach and intestines is technically still outside of your body. Food and water have to pass through this mucous membrane type of skin to get into your body.
We are kind of like an amoeba that surrounds its food (our mouth) and then secretes enzymes into that pocket to digest the food (saliva) and then absorbs the broken down food particles at a chemical level. Any bigger pieces are passed along and out.
Fats. Super important, and in my mind, probably the biggest problem with cooking food.
Cooking is not natural. Nor is it necessary. Unless you are trying to eat foods that your body is not designed to eat, like grains. Can you eat grains the way they come, whole and raw? Not easily. Only as an emergency food, or a special treat. We usually soak them first, at least.
Fats are super vital to everything in the body. The membrane surrounding every cell of your body is made up of fats and proteins. Hormones are made from fats and cholesterols. Hormones run the body. Fats clean and store toxins. Your nerve cells are wrapped in fat as an insulation, like electrical wires have insulation. Your joints and skin are lubricated by animal fats. Now cook them. Ever try to build something with broken or crooked boards? Good luck.
So eating raw, preferably without man-made chemicals, as soon as possible after harvest, is the best. Makes the best body, makes it strong and able to restore itself, rebuild itself after damage, and can clean itself out. One can see why Methuselah lived to be 900 years old! Goat milk and raw honey were main staples of the day. Some goat meat at festival times. Burnt meat was for the gods. Not the people.
