Eating just raw food is changing your lifestyle completely. Some people are 100 % in eating raw foods, but if you choose to only eat a raw vegetable, that is already a big change and a healthy one.
The best ways to improve your health is to make sure you are eating a lot minimally processed and fresh vegetables, ideally locally-grown and organic. There are many positive things when eating raw vegetables, but also there some dangers if you not use it wisely. So this is what should you know about eating raw vegetables:
Benefits:
1. Lose weight— cooking foods shrinks the vegetables so they are more compacted in your stomach, but raw foods keep their natural size so less food will make you fuller.
2. Increased energy level— eating raw vegetables brings cleaner cells into your body, which are easier to break down meaning your body has to work less to process the food you consume, so you will have more energy to spend elsewhere. Your body uses enzymes to break down the things you eat. All foods have enzymes but cooking food destroys them. Your body produces enzymes naturally, so if you consume raw vegetables, it will give your body a beneficial enzyme boost.
3. Better for the environment— raw fruits and vegetables come with less packaging than their cooked counterpart so less waste will go to the landfill.
What to eat and how?
If you consume all of your vegetables that are conventionally farmed, is again the better choice than eating no fresh vegetables at all. But, conventionally farmed vegetables are not your best choice but you can eat it only if you must. Buying your vegetables from a local organic source is the ideal way to know that your vegetables are fresh and have a good quality. You should avoid wilted vegetables because when the vegetables wilt, they lose many valuable nutrients.
One simple way to boost your vegetable intake is to make the juice of them. Also juicing organic vegetables is highly recommended to people who want to improve or restore their health. Whether you are eating them raw or juicing, some vegetables contain more healthy nutrients than others. So this is the list of vegetables with the best nutritional value: broccoli, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, kale, onions, parsley, tomatoes, turnips, and spinach.
Disadvantages of eating raw food
It is true that vitamin C, folate, B vitamins can be destroyed by cooking, even though the vitamin C contributes less than 1% of the total antioxidant activity of vegetables and fruits. But the cooking also removes some of the harmful bind minerals and anti-nutrients in the gut and interfere with the nutrients utilization. With the destruction of anti-nutrients absorption increases, so as more of the beneficial anti-cancer compounds.
Fresh vegetables contain nutrients, minerals, and vitamins essential for growth and health, all that is necessary for our healthy diet. But almost all vegetables contains natural toxins which could be potentially dangerous to our health. We may hear a lot of times have been reports of food poisoning cases caused by eating raw vegetables containing natural toxins.