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THE HEALING POWER OF LIVING FOOD
by By Mark Allen Ament © 2005
Nothing has ever changed my consciousness or expanded my awareness more than changing what foods I put into my body. I grew up eating a standard western omnivorous diet and already at 25 showed the signs of it. I was a few kilos overweight, had chronic low energy, a constant low-level depression, poor complexion and the beginnings of several food allergies. Some of these symptoms began to change for me as all meat dropped from my diet in 1994. The change was clearer and quicker when all dairy products dropped from my diet a few years later. But the most dramatic improvement in my health and well being came when I began to eat 95-100 of my food in a raw, uncooked form.
Before the spring of 2000 no one had ever told me nor had I discovered the obvious truth that cooking actually destroys the majority of the life force in the fruits and vegetables we eat. When I slowed down and thought about this revelation, it made total sense. I imagined how I would look and feel after I was in boiling water for 20 minutes or in a 100-degree oven for an hour or in a frying pan for just 5 minutes. I didn’t like the image I saw and immediately began to ask myself why I was putting foods in my body that had been treated the same way. I asked myself this question every time I put something in my mouth and in a couple of weeks cooked food simply dropped from my life just like meat had dropped away 6 years earlier.
During first 12 months of eating 95-100 raw, I began to feel much better. Specifically, I experienced much more energy, was more active and needed less sleep. My awareness of my body increased, my muscles were more flexible, my skin cleared up and friends began to tell me that I looked better and younger than ever. Mentally I was much clearer, had more focus and my thinking much sharper. Emotionally, my self-confidence and self-esteem increased, depression began to lift, I was more balanced and motivated, and overall much more fun to be around. And spiritually, I was becoming much more aware of my inextricable connection to the underlying oneness of nature. Overall, I felt like a fog or haze had lifted from my entire being.
These changes came from simply choosing to nourish myself with fresh, vital foods instead of the cooked, processed and devitalized foods I had been taught to eat. My body was reacting as all bodies do when they are revitalized—it was doing what it is designed to do: healing itself from imbalances. And the result was that I was free to enjoy my experience of life much more.
As these changes continued to deepen and manifest, I began sharing my experiences with friends and family. At first I would talk about the impressive facts I had learned: “Did you know that cooking kills 85 of the enzymes that are naturally present in the foods we eat. When this happens our bodies use their reserves of enzymes, which results in us ageing faster,” “Did you know that of over 700,000 species of animals on Earth, humans are the only ones to cook their food? Humans (along with the animals they keep domestically) are also the only species to get degenerative diseases like cancer and diabetes,” “Did you know that eating a diet rich in raw foods, decreases the risk for heart disease by over 50,” “Did you know that humans on average as a race, die at or below half their potential life span of chronic illness that is largely diet and lifestyle related. The typical species in its natural pristine environment and eating only raw foods lives seven times past its age of maturity. Humans normally mature in their late teens to early twenties and our average potential life span in robust wellness is actually in the range of 120-140 years,” and so on. Soon, I found that these facts, no matter how striking, were much more powerful when people had an experience of raw living foods for themselves. So, I began talking less and preparing and sharing raw living gourmet foods more. I shared dishes such as living lasagna, curry nut pate, raw apple pie, and coconut mango pudding with them and they were immediately impressed. I often heard some variation of, “I didn’t know raw foods could taste so good.” And then later on, “I feel less full, more satisfied and more energetic after I eat this kind of food.”
Out of these meetings, which inevitably concluded with a request for me to write down recipes, my first book, "Living Love: Living Foods" developed. I wrote the book to inspire and encourage anyone who would like to experience more vitality and more energy to start eating great tasting, fresh, gourmet living foods. I’ve designed it is a practical and accessible guide to making a transition to truly caring for yourself with what you eat. It contains all the basic living food information you'll need, affirmations to support you in overcoming the cooked food addiction and 50 great tasting recipies.
No matter where you are in life or with your health, I am convinced that shifting your diet to include at least 80 raw living fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds will make a tremendous impact on you and your level of well being. Over and over again, my experience is that we really can have it all with raw living foods. We can eat great tasting, vital foods that are the direct manifestation of the sun’s energy. These are foods that support our bodies to heal imbalances and create abundant health on all levels. And they are foods that are much more gentle with the earth, requiring significantly less resources for processing, transport and packaging.
BE WELL!
Mark Allen Ament, leading expert in whole being health and healing, inspirational speaker and author of “Living Love, Living Foods," offers leading edge information through his “Conscious Living” newsletter and healing transmissions through his podcast at www.healingvibes.com.
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