We were told from birth to eat our vegetables, and yet far too few of us actually do. Even when we do get to eat our veggies, it’s only after we’ve cooked out most of the natural nutrients our bodies desperately crave.
As you proceed, keep in mind that while raw vegetables are incredibly useful, raw green vegetables form the basis of almost all life on this planet. This may sound a bit extreme to you, but stop and consider for a moment that almost every organism on this planet survives by either eating raw green vegetables or by eating an animal that eats raw green vegetables.. .they really are that important.
I know you’ve probably eaten the most vegetables cooked since you can remember. Simply put, just because something has “always” been done a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it. You’ll get a lot more out of your vegetables if you eat them raw.
I used the word “consume” specifically because you’re actually getting the same benefits from raw green vegetable juice as you would from eating them whole, and you usually get them quicker. This is because raw vegetable juice requires less internal work to digest and is almost immediately absorbed by the body.
It seems most people only know to eat veggies because they remember mom telling them to; very few people seem to understand the amazing nutritional value of vegetables.
Raw vegetables are extremely rich in minerals, vitamins, trace elements, enzymes and natural sugars. These are all things your body needs to function properly, and the raw vegetables help stabilize and normalize your natural bodily functions. They actually help pretty much ALL of your natural bodily functions to function.
You’ve probably heard all your life about the need for vitamins and nutrients for your overall health, but the concept of enzymes may be new to you. Basically, the enzymes in raw vegetables help your body digest food. This is one of the reasons why green vegetables are sometimes considered “nature’s laxatives” because they allow your stomach to function properly.
The average American diet is actually made up of a whole host of foods that are incredibly difficult for our bodies to properly digest. If we don’t digest properly, food stays in our stomachs longer than it should, and we miss out on any nutritional value that it may have possessed.
Okay, at this point you might have started to convince yourself of the need for veggies… but why raw?
All of our cooking methods have been shown in scientific studies to reduce the amount of vitamins, minerals and enzymes in vegetables. Of the cooking methods, steaming has been shown to retain the greatest vitamin content, although it still reduces it.
Vegetables begin to lose their valuable nutrients as soon as they are picked, pulled, or picked from the ground. Because of this, if we grew our own vegetables and cooked them the same day we harvested them, the extra loss of nutrients from cooking would be less of an issue.
However, most of us don’t live like that. The vast majority of us buy our vegetables from the grocery store after they have been shipped hundreds or thousands of miles. During this time, the nutritional value has oozed out of them.
Finally, to make matters worse, repeated studies have shown that commercially grown vegetables, straight from the ground, are not as rich in nutrients as they were 50 years ago. A big contributing factor is that farmers have found so many ways to make their crops grow faster that we are not getting the full benefit of naturally ripened vegetables.
It’s admittedly extreme, but not so extreme, to suggest that any vegetable you buy from the grocery store and then cook at home will likely have the nutritional value of cardboard by the time it reaches your stomach.
Start eating (or drinking) raw vegetables as soon as possible. If possible, grow them yourself or buy them from local farmers markets.
Thanks to Gray Rollins
