Raw Food

Raw Food Potluck

Journey of Health host a monthly potluck every 3rd Sunday at 5 pm.
Please check the calendar of events for our raw food potlucks.

Click here for the faw food calendar of events & schedule!

Why Eat Raw Food and What Is It?

A million years ago our ancestors spent most of their day foraging and hunting for food. Their days did not consist of sitting in front of a computer, driving to work, watching 4 hours of TV a day and drinking soda pop. Ever time they wanted to eat a chicken, they had to go and kill it, clean it, and roast it. When they wanted a salad, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage or berries, they were out foraging for it and by the time they were done, the last thing they did was cook it. So eating raw vegetables and fruit became natural for them.

Now fast-forward to the 21st Century. Modern technology is great but it is wreaking havoc on our health and our diet. We need to learn to live like the feral (A feral organism is one that has escaped from domestication and returned, partly or wholly, to a wild state) dogs roaming the streets of Mexico and take our new found knowledge and return to the wild. We need to learn how to live in our modern society but eat like our ancestors.

They were not eating a whole pint of ice cream, nor taming an animal for that matter to milk it, a jar of peanut butter, a bag of potato chips, Taco Bell or donuts and coffee. They would have never had time to process sugar and harvest grain to make a muffin. Life was hard enough just trying to get the basics in. But yet, they lived well and free of disease. It was not until the Egyptians started cultivating grains that disease began to plague the nations. And then comes sugar, fried foods, sodas, fast food and so on…..

Raw foods are foods that are not heated and come in their natural state. They can include low temp dried fruits, vegetables, raw fruit, raw vegetables, no heat, no cooking, raw not roasted nuts and seeds. Raw Food can be very simple to a salad or a gourmet veggie wrap made with fresh coconut and zucchini stuffed with marinated vegetables, decadent cheesecakes and pies all made without sugar, dairy, eggs, grains or heat. The new raw food diet has taken modern technology and created amazing delicious raw foods to help transition from processed sugary carb-loaded foods.

If you want to learn how to heal from disease, lose weight, gain energy, learn how to prepare raw foods that taste amazing, cleanse and detox, balance your hormones and be free from drugs and addictions, I encourage you to call for a free consultation today!

Why Raw?

Source: www.rawfood.com

Many have spent lifetimes wondering what caused humanity's "fall from grace." What has caused humanity's disconnection from living in a natural paradise? Why is civilization out of balance with Nature? These thoughts are often triggered by a study of the classical, legendary, or religious stories of a former perfect age.

Every culture seems to have a story about how human life began on Earth. Most describe a place where people lived in harmony with the plants and animals. While living this way, the stories indicate that, people experienced happiness and peace.

These stories often indicate that everything was in harmony until something happened. Some stories tell of a great flood, others tell of humans gaining an understanding of good and evil, still others tell of a shift in Earth's alignment, a few even tell of some godly or spiritual powers that drastically changed the state of life on Earth.

Those of us who follow a balanced, thoughtful raw-food diet, believe that we have found the major piece of the answer to humanity's obvious disconnection with Nature. A multifaceted collection of scientists, spiritual leaders, researchers, and grassroots raw-food enthusiasts, have come to understand through experience, that the great change in human life occurred after humans discovered fire, and then began cooking food.

The obvious separation created by putting fire between our food and our mouth, the tremendous amount of time and energy people spend to cook food, the use of massive resources to create today's cooked-food culture (with its billions of kitchens and restaurants), the construction of factories and shops all churning out cooked and processed foods, the packaging and wrappers involved in the whole cooked-food process, and the lack of life energy in cooked food are all major contributing factors in humanity's fall from paradise. Subconsciously, we know this, as our picture of paradise usually involves sun, beaches, mangoes, and coconuts; not gloomy cities, restaurants, and cooked animals for dinner.

All animals living in the wild eat their food raw and, almost always, fresh. Raw is Nature's First Law. Only humans and domesticated animals eat cooked and processed foods. The cooking and processing of foods has become so common that most of us do not even question it. The assumption that cooked and processed foods are as good as raw foods is just an assumption. Most people do not know for sure, because they have never tried a balanced raw-food approach. Einstein once said: "The essential is to get rid of deeply rooted prejudices, which we often repeat without examining them."

Here is a visual experiment to consider: Feed a tribe of gorillas a diet of coffee, donuts, and other processed human foods for a few years. Let us watch what happens. Or consider, a herd of deer who, instead of eating their grass raw, decide to collect it and boil it in a giant cauldron. Picture what would happen in that situation!

What is it that constitutes the basis of human nourishment? Is it refined sugar flowing out of the roaring jaws of factories? Is it the flesh of animals being churned out by combinations of torturous factory farms and horrific slaughterhouses? Is it the milk of factory-farmed cows naturally intended for baby calves? Is it cooked and processed foods containing dyes, flavors, and preservatives?

No.

The basis of human nourishment is obvious: it is raw plant foods. And Nature presents this to us in abundance. Raw plant foods are simple, easy to find, fun to eat, enjoyable, contain thousands of health-giving nutrients, and conform to the biological design of the human digestive system. The sun is the source of all life and raw plant foods represent the purest form of transformed sun energy.

When one eats an orange, the wrapper (peel) becomes compost. When one follows a raw-plant-food lifestyle, the amount of trash produced by that individual decreases to almost nothing. Test for yourself and see.

An individual who eats the typical foods found in so-called "civilized society" who then changes to a raw-plant-food diet can discover energy they have never known. Eating a balanced mix of raw plant foods restores the body on a molecular level, building strong cells, radically naturalizing the body, raising alkalinity, and grounding the person in the natural world. Of course, the body resists shocking changes and everyone should ease into the raw-food approach at an appropriate pace. Also, everyone should educate themselves on this amazing subject (by further exploring this website, reading raw-food books, chatting on-line with other raw-foodists, and attending lectures), so that the common mistakes are avoided.

As the months and years pass, a person switching to a raw-plant-food approach may notice a greater awareness of the spiritual world, become more intuitive, and feel natural powers they have never experienced (or did not know they had). One will find oneself having more fun in a garden than a movie theatre. A profound new connection will arise with plants and animals.

Every person is a work of art in progress. Either one can become progressively more beautiful, or one can follow the fate civilization has set out (miseducation, wage slavery, decay, illness, and an untimely death). Each action one takes determines which of these two destinies will be achieved.

What we eat helps to guide our path. Eating determines what level of health our body will experience. Every bite of food put into the body should add to our strength, spirituality, and beauty. Each meal becomes part of who we are at the deepest level.

"You are what you eat" is a cosmic law. Everybody knows that saying ‹ everybody! It is a concept that has been known in every culture and civilization throughout history. It is written into the fabric of the universe. It is a simple law of Nature that should be remembered each day, and at each meal. Those who wish to heal themselves and the planet, should eat the most healing foods.

"Healing foods" means quality, organic, homegrown, or wild foods and/or superfoods in their raw natural state. Following this principle is not only the simplest way to choose what to eat, but is simply the best way to bring about good health and spiritual transformation. Because of this, this website is dedicated to helping as many people as possible succeed and prosper with the raw-food lifestyle.

We encourage anyone who wishes to experience the bounties of Nature to delve into eating what Nature provides to us. That is: raw plant foods. We encourage people to learn about superfoods, garden foods, and wild plants (herbs), to learn a new way of living, to experience the incredible energy Nature will give to you by accepting the foods she provides, and to live life in a melody with the plants and animals. By doing so, you may experience and reclaim your own little bit of paradise!

Advice For You

From www.doctoryourself.com

I cannot tell you how many thousands of times people have asked me what to do for a health problem.

It takes no time at all to formulate the question: “What is your advice for this condition?” If only the answer were as quick and easy as the question is.

After over 30 years of experience in natural therapeutics, I now have what may be the closest thing to an equally concise answer, and here it is:

“You need to change your entire life."

Change your life. If you want to get better, that is what you have to do.  The first step is to read a lot, a whole lot.  As we liked to say in our college days, “Don’t start vast projects with half-vast ideas.” You have to be willing to develop an entirely new relationship with libraries. If you are well educated, and especially if you are a health professional, you will have to unlearn much of what you’ve been taught and start afresh with the rather disruptive thought that natural healing may actually work. If you are not highly educated, you will need to abandon your anxiety and fear of reading and doing research.

If you’ve never juiced vegetables, start.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/juicing_2.html and
http://www.doctoryourself.com/juicefast.html

If you’ve never read articles in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, start here:
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom

If you’ve never taken vitamin C to saturation, start.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/ortho_c.html and
http://www.doctoryourself.com/titration.html 

If you’ve never taught your doctor something, start.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/naturedoc.html;

If you’ve never taken a course in how to meditate or otherwise reduce stress, start.

If you have never done a half-hour fitness workout each day, start.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/exercise_avoid.html

If you’ve never given up alcohol or smoking, do it now.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/alcohol_protocol.html

If you have never used an interlibrary loan to get a valuable health book, start.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/libraryloan.html

“A person who doesn’t read is no better off than a person who cannot read.”

To quickly cut through the treacle, I ask clients this most pointed of questions early in a consultation:

“What are you willing to do to get better?”

The answer I want, of course, its, “Anything.” But as with wedding vows or new year’s resolutions, I know better than to hold people too rigorously to their dreams. Flexibility was never more necessary than with self-health care. I will accept a two-thirds effort, for, as a teacher of some experience, I pass anyone at a 65%. More is better, but if you were to entirely change two-thirds of your life, I’d be satisfied and also impressed. Especially if you hold to it for more than a year.

And I think you’d be impressed with the results you got.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, a quick fix, or a magic wand to cure illness. I wish there were easy answers to people’s health questions.  There aren’t.  There are answers, all right, but they are not easy.

“Give a man a fish, and he will be hungry tomorrow. Teach a man to fish, and he will always have food.” This is my personal and professional philosophy, because it is true.

Modern medicine has created more co-dependents even than co-pays. We’ve learned to hold out for a magic bullet, such as a new miracle drug, breakthrough surgical procedure, or new organ transplant. What rubbish. Oddly enough, we’ve also “learned” to discount the healing power of Nature, and the tremendous therapeutic benefit of lifestyle changes, vegetarian diet, raw food juices, and vitamin supplements.

Okay, that was then; this is now. There is a new paradigm, an entirely new way of seeing health, opening in front of us.  You have likely heard that the Chinese word for “crisis” is the same as the word for “opportunity.” On the other hand, the very word “patient” implies passivity and powerlessness. The Doctor Yourself philosophy is against that. When people ask me for a solution to their particular health problem, they would have me fall into the role of being their doctor. The Doctor Yourself philosophy is against that, too. Me-teacher-you-dumbbell, or me-doctor-you patient, or me-politician-you-voter, or any other paternalistic or maternalistic stay-in-your-place tradition will not pass muster with me.  Such were the old ways, and they are obsolete and unproductive. You want productive, you follow leads and dig. Whether it is for oil, gold, or information, it requires action, your action. Question authority. Do it yourself.

If you want to change your health, you have to change your life.