What is Nutrition?

Although one usually thinks of Nutrition in terms of the body but the complete understanding of Nutrition is one that is intimately linked with spiritual life. Spiritual life is not something that occurs on a Friday or on a Sunday or on holidays or on during meditations but in each moment of our life. As you know spiritual life includes meditations, respect for all the creations of Nature, harmony with the Nature, cultivation of wisdom and Love for our own body, mind which is temple of our soul. Food should enhance communion with The Divine, diet that reflects and supports ones realization of highest state of consciousness or awareness, a diet that balances all our subtle energy centers on a daily basis. Nutrition is not all about calories. This calorie paradigm, developed in 1789, is completely out of date, even though it is still being used by people in the nutritional sciences. Food has subtle nutrients, general nutrients, electrical energies, phytonutrients, enzymes, vitamins, minerals, harmones, essential fatty acids, water, hydrogen and Oxygen. Cells are electrically charged working like an alkaline battery. A drop in the bio-electric potential is the first step of the disease process. Professor Hans Eppinger, found that a live-food diet increases the micro electrical potential, which improves the intra and extra cellular secretion of the toxins and absorption of the nutrients. He and his co-workers concluded that live foods are the only type of food that could restore micro electrical potential to the tissues. In essence we can say that by restoring electrical potential to cells, live-food rejuvenates the life force and health of the organism. Enzymes are catalysts that help other substances in the body either to combine or to break down. Enzymes are involved in every bodily funtions. Specific digestive Enzymes help break down the foods so that the body can better utilize them. Each Enzyme has a different job and helps digest a separate categories of food, for example starch- amylase, protein protease, Fat-lipase.

How are we getting enzymes? Our body produces and stores them. Our goal for optimum/super health and longevity is to conserve the bodys own Enzymes stock for use in repairing and rebuilding rather than to deplete them during the process of digestion. Good quality raw foods that are well chewed and properly combined provide us the needed Enzymes and nutrients. Consuming a diet predominantly cooked food on a daily basis creates an incredible demand for Enzymes that are produced by the body because all the Enzymes that are naturally exist in foods have been destroyed by heat (cooking). Premature aging, degeneration and disease begin when the bodys Enzyme reserves constantly are being over used, the organ hit hardest is the pancreas. Human body can handle a lot more abuse at a young age but as it gets older produces fewer Enzymes and has accumulated more internal toxic waste. Excess fat is deposited cholesterol and cellulite. Excess calcium helps in creating arthritis, excess sugar creates diabetes. Excess starch taxes the liver, kidneys and the skin which is the major organ for elimination, tries to excrete undigested food, toxic fluids often showing up in many forms of rashes in the body. Undigested protein rots in the digestive tract creating an incredible amount of acids and waste. The heart, kidneys, blood vessels and body joints will also suffer from toxic wastes. Undigested fat creates obesity, skin disorders and heart diseases. High protein, high fat and highly refined carbohydrates in cooked form create a body laden with toxic waste, dead cells, mucus, pain, poor elimination, over acidity, organ and capillary damage, poor absorption and fatigue followed by formation of cysts, and crystals and as well as malnutrition. A great deal of the body energy goes into the process of the digestion. Sometimes so much energy is needed for digestion that we tend to become sleepy after a meal. This increased amount of energy implies that a large input of enzymes are used up in the digestive process

Dr. Howells research shows that eating foods devoid of enzymes as a result of cooking, food irradiation, and microwaving causes enlargement of the pancreases and also stress related endocrine glands such as adrenals, pituitary, ovaries and testes. Increased enzyme secretion of the pancreas due to eating cooked food results in increased in leucocytosis or increased white cells production. Repeation of leucocytosis in every meal certainly puts a strain on the immune system. Cooked foods seem to stimulate the craving for food because the body is not getting the nutrients normally it gets from live foods. The body naturally craves for more nutrients which may translate into uncontrollable appetite and lack of will power. Cooked fats devoid of lipases causes lipase deficiency results in obesity and cholesterol disorder. Phytonutrients serve as anti-oxidants and modulates the bodys defense mechanism, block carcinogenic substances from the cells, calm the nervous system, reduce cholesterol levels, protects from pollution, radiation. Phytonutrients includes resveratrol which helps in our anti-aging genes. All raw fruits and vegetables in all the colors particularly in red help in remaining youthful. Essential Fatty Acids are necessary for healthy heart, brain, skin, glands and hair. Most people are deficient in EFA because cooking destroys much of them. Foods rich in EFA are flax seeds, avocados and nuts and seeds. Raw plants have an incredible variety of health promoting factors such as plant harmones which help our metabolism and paciferons which are anti-biotic substances. Raw plants are loaded with a variety of bio-flavinoids which help in removing heavy metals and drugs. Also decrease RBC clumping and in the genes expression. Raw foods stimulate production of the healthy bacterial flora. This is significant because healthy intestinal and colon bacteria protect against candida over growths, the growth of numerous pathogenic bacteria, constipation, colon, blood tissue toxicity. All cooked foods give us acidity. Sprouting, soaking nuts and seeds, vegetables, fruits all give alkaline. Excessive acids will be placed in the joints and in the tissues creating pain and disease.

If we eat continually foods that produce acids, we must neutralize with alkaline foods. Proper balance is a part of supporting a powerful immune system. A strong alkaline reserve protects our body from unexpected emergencies. An acidic body contains excess hydrogen. In order to make a balance it must combine with available oxygen forming water, so that it can neutralize. The result is constant depletion of internal oxygen. Other metabolic processes are unable to function properly without sufficient oxygen and this leads to degeneration. In an oxygen rich internal environment disease is unable grow. Body cells are highly sensitive to over acidity and will not function well. Iron containing hemoglobin in our blood helps to neutralize acids. The kidneys produce alkaline compounds that are released in to the blood and also help neutralize acids, while they filter out acidic compounds by protein digestion. Eating too much protein makes the kidneys over work. Oxygen stimulates digestion, promotes better blood circulation, promotes clear thinking, protects against anaerobic bacteria. Dr. William Richardson says Heat processing reduces the oxygen in fresh foodsoxygen we need to resist disease Cancer cells and AIDS viruses thrive in blood low in oxygen Raw foods contain small amounts of Hydrogen peroxide which provides to kill these particular viruses. Raw foods with its increased bio-electric energy stimulate the electric potential of the cells which leads to depolarization of cancer cells and their consequent death. Cooking alters protein into substances that disrupt cellular function and speed up the aging and disease process. Cooking coagulates the bio-active mineral/protein complexes and therefore disrupts mineral absorption such as calcium in the pasteurized milk. Every time we eat cooked foods we get an increase of WBC in our blood stream. On the other hand there are specific immune factors. Books to refer: Spiritual Nutrition, Conscious Eating by Dr. Gabriel Cousens.