Raw vs. Regular

I won't soon forget an image I saw in the winter of 2010, while watching a documentary on the benefits of eating Raw foods. Using some rather sophisticated technology and equipment in what's known as Kirlian photography, researchers captured images of the life energy (or "aura") around different fruits and vegetables. They displayed the photos side-by-side - the Raw fruit or vegetable, and then the same fruit or vegetable later, after it had been lightly steamed. What I saw then told me what I needed to know: The life energy around the Raw, uncooked vegetable was full and bright blue, and covered the entire surface area. But the life energy around the lightly steamed vegetable was weak, scattered and splotchy, and appeared to cover less than half of its surface area.

Now I was beginning to get the picture. What made it clearer, too, was an explanation I heard later - that, when a doctor prescribes a pill or drug to treat a particular condition, the pill is not what does the healing. Instead, the body does the work, and the doctor merely makes an educated guess - for better or worse - ultimately trusting the body to know what to do with that pill.

Well, it was the 'worse' part that concerned me.

When I saw that image of the two vegetables and heard the story about the pill, I suddenly realized two things: First, I wasn't giving my body the nutrient-dense fuel it needed to be able to perform its natural healing function; in fact, since I had been diagnosed with autoimmune (type 1) diabetes just three years earlier at age 27, I apparently wasn't even giving my body enough nutrition to be able to maintain normal, everyday health. Second, I was perhaps further hindering the affects of that already meager nutrition by blindly following my doctor's advice and taking whatever pill or vitamin supplement was suggested, without question.

My diagnosis, in some ways, had been a death sentence for hope. But the information I was now absorbing might just be some secret recipe for healing... Could it be that what the folks in the documentaries were saying was true? Could dis-eases as common and destructive as cancer and diabetes really be healed with a serious commitment to the consumption of Raw foods?

Beginning in January 2011, I set out to answer those questions for myself, and anyone else interested, by offering my own body and its capacity for healing as the measuring device - for better or worse.

And it's the 'better' part that concerns us all.