Raw Food V Processed Food.

One of the main reasons why most people are getting ill with 21 century diseases like: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and obesity is eating processed foods as their foremost form of nutrition. Over eighty percent of the foodstuff Americans buy every year are mechanically processed foods, and food marketers do a wonderful job at making it seem that mass produced processed and junk food are the apparent choice.

The problem is that processed foods, are nutrient dead and are devoid of any real nutrition. The reason that they taste so good is the result of a combination of a chemical cocktail of artificial flavours and additives, without which this artificial processed food would have the look and flavour of cardboard. But what the food industry forgets to inform you is that there is a terrible price to pay for consuming this pitiful diet. For the sake of convenience we are trading the most valuable assets that we have, our health.

This food ingredient alone is enough to completely wreck your health, and it is only one of the dangerous ingredients in processed foods. One of the terrible side effects of eating a mainly processed food regime is that it means we're also consuming foods that are choc full of high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup is the greatest source of calories in ones diet. This chemical food cocktail is enough to completely destroy your health, and sadly it is only one of many dangerous ingredients in chemically processed foods.

Are You Addicted to a poisonous Diet?

Processed foods are mainly chemically altered so they appeal to your taste buds, they can also trick your body's regulatory signals that would normally tell you have had enough to eat - snacks like potatoes chips (you know the kind that make you want to eat the whole bag- check the packaging)! These chemical cocktails are crammed full of large amounts of sugar, salt, corn syrup and MSG, these radically increase the chances of you becoming addicted to them.

In one study of laboratory rats that were fed a diet that contained 25 percent sugar, they became fretful when the sugar was taken away - displaying symptoms akin to people going through drug withdrawals, such as: the shakes and shivering.

The researchers who conducted the study found a causal link between opioids, (the brains pleasure chemicals) and a feverish craving for sweet, salty and fatty foods. It is thought that these high-fat foods excite the opioids, as when the researchers stimulated the rat's brains with an artificial version of the natural opioid enkephalin, and the lab rats ate nearly six times their usual intake of fat.

It was also noticed that long lasting changes occurred in the rats' brain chemistry - which are similar to those caused by heroin or morphine use. According to researchers, this is understood to mean that even casual exposure to pleasurable foods is sufficient to alter gene expression, which would suggest an addiction to the food.

Processed Foods Can Ruin Your Taste Buds

In the meantime, refined sugar, which is in nearly all processed food - because it is cheap and improves the taste of the food, has been demonstrated to be more addictive than cocaine! Your body's sweet receptors (two protein receptors that are located on your tongue), are not adapted to cope with high-sugar consumption.

Therefore, this abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets generates extreme reward signals in your brain, which have the possibility to override the normal self-control mechanism, and thus can lead to an insidious addiction.This is why, if you regularly have a diet of processed foods, some whole foods seem to be lacking in flavour. This is because you have become conditioned to think that these chemically changed foods are the norm, when in fact it is quite the opposite.


The unfortunate truth is that when you have a mainly processed food diet - it leads to a flood of harmful changes to your body's metabolism. One of these negative effects is elevated insulin levels, and ultimately an insulin resistance. Elevated insulin levels are the foundation of nearly every major disease known to man, such as: cancer cardiovascular disease and arthritis.
Most people think that if they can't have their junk food, they are being deprived. In actuality, the sooner you change your eating regime, the quicker you will enjoy increased vitality, weight stability, improved mood and enhanced health.

If you decide to try the raw food diet I suggest you do it gradually beginning with one meal a day. A target of 70% raw food is comfortably achievable.

If You Give Up Processed Foods, Should You Eat Raw Food?

It's a really wise decision to have as much raw food in your diet as possible.There are a number of sound reasons for this. For starters, cooking food, especially at high temperatures, destroys those naturally occurring enzymes. Enzymes are proteins. They are the catalysts that help speed up and make possible reactions in your body. In point of fact, some biochemical reactions will never occur without these enzymes (we each have about 1,300 of them). So if all nearly all of your food is cooked, your body is going to be deficient in the enzymes it needs to function efficiently. Ideally you'll want to eat as many foods as possible in an unprocessed state ?"'�"�� organic grown fruits and vegetables that have been grown locally and in season.

It is wise to seek medical advice before trying the raw food diet. It is not recommended that you give up meat altogether, three times a week is sufficient to obtain most of the nutrients and trace minerals that you require for a healthy diet.