Following A Natural Diet - Eating Raw Foods

By Ali Bautista

The natural diet is also known as a raw food diet. In this diet the only foods you eat are uncooked and unprocessed plant foods, such as nuts, fresh fruit, sprouts, vegetables, dried fruit, seeds, beans, grains and seaweed. About 75% of all of the foods you eats should be live foods or raw foods.

The reason that eating raw food is important is because it is believed that the enzymes in food that are important for digestion are broken down and become inactive when they are cooked. It is also believed that any nutritional value in the food is severely decreased when the food is cooked.

Those that use the natural diet do so because they feel that it helps their heart, helps with digestion, improves their skin, helps with weight loss and gives them increased energy. Raw foods do not contain any of the bad fats such as saturated and Trans fat that can be quite damaging to their health.

Basically you can eat raw or whole foods, and organic products are preferred. Some foods that can be included in the diet are nuts, beans, legumes, seaweed, freshly juiced fruits and vegetables, young coconut milk, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, seeds, grains, dried fruit, unprocessed natural foods and purified water.

There are some cooking techniques you can use to make some of the foods easier to digest and this can also add a little variety to your meals. You can juice fruits in vegetables instead of eating them whole, you can dehydrate food, you can sprout grains, beans and seeds, you can soak dried fruit and nuts and you can blend.

There are a few known side effects. Many people have a reaction much like they are detoxifying their body. So when switching diets so dramatically you may experience food cravings or withdrawal symptoms. Some symptoms include nausea, cravings and mild headaches but these will only last for a few days. - 17268

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