In our day and age we’re presented with a countless array of options to create an ideal lifestyle with. We truly live in the greatest time in all of history, the age of information, where all the veils of censorship have been brought down. This allows us the opportunity to construct our lives in any manner we choose, especially in terms of health and sound nutritional practices.
When entering the food conversation it becomes evident that there are numerous ideas and opinions on what the most optimal fuel for the body may be. This conversation has been prevalent in the nutrition field for a long time and with the widespread information on diet, you would think we’d have come to a clear conclusion by now. But the opposite seems to be true, where people appear to be more confused than ever.
After years of digging into this subject from every angle, I have come to a conclusion that the diet equation is not a simple math problem, it’s actually a riddle that must be decoded by each individual. Experts in the field have looked back through history to uncover indigenous tribes and cultural eating patterns to better understand this idea. This has given us only a glimpse of the picture because we are not living in the same conditions or environment our ancestors did, therefore we must adjust our lenses in order to determine what works best for us moving forward into the future. Some believe meat is a critical element in human nutrition and others believe the meat-based diet has contributed to the breakdown of health worldwide. I am not attempting to clear up this particular debate, but I believe after looking at the evidence it becomes obvious. We cannot continue down the same road if we wish to produce a new result.
The great nutrition riddle of our time is that we have every option available for invincible health and yet there is no single answer for everyone. Each person is a locked treasure chest and requires a unique key to unlock their genetic code. Diet programs and standardized nutrition information attempts to over-simplify the sophistication of health challenges we face. There is an influx of hypoglycemia, diabetes (type 1 & 2), gut dysbiosis, thyroid disorders, immunological break downs, estrogen dominance (hormone imbalance), arthritic conditions, and a hundred other physiological impairments that our ancestors rarely, if ever, had to encounter. The chemical and electromagnetic pressure of our technological environment has forced us to begin looking at our health with a bit more sophistication and above all else, common sense.
In order to crack the diet code we must begin by looking at our current circumstances. The further out of touch we become from nature and our natural rhythms, the further away from health we fall. With a food supply loaded with pesticides, artificial flavors, antibiotics, plasticizers, heavy metals, radioactive particles, additives, pasteurization, homogenization, high-fructose corn syrup, and genetically engineered organisms, what actually makes sense?
The natural inclination for human beings has become pretty obvious through the living food or raw food movement. Raw plant food is the biological set point for all human beings, the basis of the entire food chain is plant food kept in its untampered, original, and authentic form. The raw food movement has gained tremendous momentum over the last ten years and is reaching worldwide for a very good reason, it works! Dr. Gabriel Cousens of the Tree of Life Healing Center says it perfectly: by consuming live foods, we support the newly emerging culture of life and move ourselves away from the ever-pervasive culture of death. There is no other dietary pathway that is more effective at pulling someone out of the most toxic food experiment known to man which we have become comfortable calling the standard American diet.
This is, in my opinion, the true purpose of the raw food movement in our time, to help us rebalance and reset our physiological patterns in order to regain our health, for ourselves and for future generations. Raw plant food, taken as a lifestyle, serves as a platform in which someone can begin making simple food changes which can produce monumental results. Living foods teach us about ourselves. In fact, they reveal more of who we are, whereas cooked and processed food can numb our sensitivities.
By exploring the colorful raw food cornucopia that surrounds us, we give our body a chance to truly find what works best over time. Raw plant food sets the foundation for creating a dietary strategy that works in the short term and can be followed out for a lifetime, not just in yours, but in your children’s lives as well. The confusion of conflicting nutrition information begins to dissipate as soon as we approach this conversation with common sense and a return to the intelligence of nature’s pharmacopeia.
