Increasing Your Energy With Raw and Living Foods

Including more raw and living foods in your diet is a great way to increase your energy level, lose unwanted weight, and cleanse your body. Wheatgrass is considered a raw, living food since it is still growing until the moment you put it into the juicer, and then into your body minutes later. In fact, there is a drug treatment center that gives its patients wheatgrass juice to help with the cleansing of their bodies.
As for other raw and living foods, most seeds like alfalfa and almonds are dormant and need to be activated. You can eat them in their raw state, but in order to turn them into a "live" food, you soak them in water to awaken them. Raw foods have a number of advantages including:

• Countless people including myself report a major boost in energy levels after switching to a mostly raw diet. I am absolutely convinced that a living, raw diet is far superior in nutrients and vitamins than eating processed, cooked food.
• Humans are the only animals that cook, and process our food. Thousands of other animals, including our close relatives (gorillas and chimpanzees) thrive on entirely raw food diets.
• Cooked and processed foods often lose a large percentage of their nutritional value when they are heated. Raw foods retain these nutrients until the moment you eat them. In fact, many studies have found that certain substances are carcinogenic when cooked.
• The human body evolved to consume a raw food diet. Before we figured out how to make fires (and for thousands of years after that as well), humans ate what they could find growing outside--fruits, plants, and nuts. It wasn't until very recently that humans started cooking nearly everything they eat. Evolution takes a long time to catch up!

If you want to learn more about raw food, this site is great, or get yourself a raw food book to show you the ropes.