Eric Bakker, naturopath.
Thanks for coming back.
We're going to talk about raw foods, are they good for you?
I may have done a video on this already, previously, I'm not sure.
You may want to have a look in my playlists.
There's probably some videos there on raw foods or raw vegan diet, things like that.
Now, let's have a look at food in general.
Many people will already be eating raw foods.
Some not, many will.
A lot of people, most people in my opinion have it balanced between some raw foods, and
some cooked foods.
Some people eat nothing but cooked, and some people eat nothing but raw.
What's the way to go?
What's going to be the best for your gut?
It's a difficult question to answer because I don't know you personally, but what I can
tell you is the healthier and stronger your gut, the more likely it is that you can take
a wide range of foods, and the weaker your gut is, the less likely you can take a wide
range of foods.
People get confused sometimes when I say the following.
I always say that people eat what you can tolerate because it depends on your bacteria,
and your ability for your body to produce enzymes at that point on what your personal
tolerability is going to be.
Raw food diets are excellent but so are cooked diets.
It depends on the health of your digestive system very much.
Let me explain a few different things to you.
One thing you have to remember, when you eat fruit, I mean, that's a raw food as it is,
so, hopefully you're eating one or two pieces of fruit per day, maybe three.
This is raw food.
If you're eating salads, that's raw food.
If you're eating nuts, or seeds, if you're having milk, for example, it's not pasteurized
or homogenized, if you're eating food that's not chemically sort of grown and hasn't been
heated up to a high temperature, that's essentially a raw food.
I personally like doing things that other people find repulsive.
I eat raw beef.
I love raw beef.
If I know that it's an organic cow and it's home killed, it's grass-fed, it's a high-quality
beef, I like raw hamburger meat.
I think that's a fantastic food, and raw fish is nice, too.
If you all got Sashimi, it's a great food to eat.
These foods contain enzymes in them, and you'll know that because food that's raw often will
rot or degrade quickly.
Enzymes allow that to occur.
So, when a person's got a compromised gut with a low output of stomach enzymes, it's
nice to eat a little bit more raw food, which contains enzymes which assist in the breakdown
of that food.
When you heat a food up to over 112 degrees Fahrenheit or 44 degrees Centigrade, you tend
to destroy the enzymes in that food.
That makes your body have to rely more on endogenous enzymes or internally produced
enzymes to break that food down.
So, bear that in mind, the less you heat food, the better.
That's why stir-frying and partially cooked foods are better, because the heat will not
penetrate right to the center.
So, when I cook, for example, lots of different vegetables like green beans, I will just boil
water and get the fresh green been from the garden, put that in a bowl, pour the boiling
water on it, leave it for about three to four minutes, and then plunge it into icy cold
water straight away, and I find that I've got the lovely, soft, sappy green bean that's
very crisp still and not cooked in the middle.
It's just cooked partially in the outside.
So, it's debatable whether it's got enzymes in it or not but I find that a very agreeable
texture for my palate.
I don't like steamed beans.
I don't like raw beans, but I like to cook them that way.
If I cook broccoli, it's only steamed for probably two, three minutes at the most so
the fork has some resistance going into it, so it's partially cooked.
It's partially steamed.
Personally, I find that for me, the best ... I grow a lot of carrots, and especially purple
carrots, and I find them to be absolutely delicious if they're very partially steamed
or stir-fried.
The fresher your produce, the higher the enzyme count, I believe, the more heat it can take
before you punish it.
The more processed the vegetables are, the longer they've been in cold storage and if
they've trapped them for miles away, and they've been sat there in cold storage for days or
weeks.
It's pretty crappy food, and I don't think you'll have a high enzyme count in that, and
I've found with those sort of foods, when you cook them, they go soft really quick.
So, not worth it.
I bought some broccoli once from a supermarket because it had produce from China on it, and
I kept the broccoli in the refrigerator for three weeks and it hadn't changed in appearance
in three weeks.
So, pretty amazing isn't it?
And when I grow broccoli in the garden, cut it, put it in the refrigerator, within three
days you can see the difference, so, just be careful on the kind of food you buy.
Always best if you can grow some food yourself.
I do apologize for the nail gun outside.
There's a builder working on my kitchen.
Personally, I believe, raw foods diets are great, but incorporate them into a cooked
diet.
Depending on the time of year, I think that the best time to increase raw foods is when
the weather is warm.
Decrease raw foods when the weather's cold.
It's winter now in New Zealand, so I tend to eat a lot of stir-fried foods and casseroles
and slow-cooked meals, and I think it's really good because it warms up the body, it's a
great way to eat.
But in summertime when it's very hot, when it gets around 80 or 90 or 100 degrees, up
around the high 30 Centigrade, I don't really want to eat a lot of casseroles, I don't know
about you guys, but a casserole doesn't really appeal to me or a slow-cooked meal when you're
sitting there in a bikini, sipping a Pina Colada, you don't want to have a roast meal,
do you?
You want to have a piece of watermelon, or you want to have a nice salad.
Something with nice, crispy, cool things in your mouth, and that's a good time to start
eating raw is when the weather's hot.
Incorporate a lot of greens in your diet and partially cooked foods and raw foods.
You'll feel better.
Pay particular attention to your bowel motions when you eat these kind of foods to see, you
should get bulkier stools, lighter colored stools, easier to pass out stools when you
start eating partially cooked or raw foods.
You're also keeping the flavonoids and the polyphenols and you're keeping nutritional
value of this food higher if you partially cook or have it raw as opposed to fully cooked,
okay?
So, don't think you have to be a raw food vegan, or a person who cooks everything.
I think you should take the middle path and incorporate both of these things to really
improve and make your gut very healthy and sound.
You'll slowly gravitate towards the foods that you really like to eat, but never feel
shy about incorporating new foods into your diet if you haven't previously done so, because
it could really improve your health a lot.
I hope that gives you some useful information.
Thanks for tuning in.