A Raw Diet And Aging

The Baby Boomers are obsessed with keeping young and vital. In their day, the motto was: don't trust anyone over thirty. Well, now they're all well over thirty! Yet, they want to grow old gracefully, and stay as healthy as they can. Well, that's where a raw diet can help. It's said that the chemicals we pour into our bodies have a cumulative negative affect on us. You may have heard of someone being allergic to an artificial sweetener, and getting terrible migraines every time they try to drink diet soda. Or maybe you or a family member has a food allergy. They can lead to stomach troubles, rashes, and a host of other maladies. Sometimes it can be as simple as gas; and other times you can be struck down with terrible pains and diarrhea.

When you switch to a raw diet, nearly all these issues disappear. Now, granted, whole grains are not something you can tolerate if you have a gluten allergy; you have to substitute whole rice instead, but that's a minor point. When implemented properly, a good raw diet is said to increase your lifespan, boost your energy and even ward off diseases like cancer, diabetes and others.

So, what do you eat if you can only eat raw food? It means sticking to only natural foods, which, ideally, should be grown organically and locally. That way, you can be sure of the soil they were grown in, and they're unlikely to have herbicides and pesticides. It also means you'll be eating very little meat; certainly no red meat. The diet shuns things such as pork, lamb, and beef. Some seafood is allowed in some variations of the raw food diet, but beyond that, the diet is essentially vegetarian, even vegan. Many people even prefer to go further, and eat a strictly vegan raw diet al the time.

Also, typically, you eat certain foods only in specific seasons, as we used to eat, generations ago, and it's pretty much a common sense approach. As an example, if you live in the United States, corn is only available locally in the summer. So, if you eat some during the winter, it can't have been produced locally, and is therefore not something you'd want to include in your diet. Your daily diet is a function of where you live, the kinds of foods that are grown in your area; and at what times of the year those foods are grown and produced.

Now, when setting up your food for the day, here are the critical points. First, you need some kind of grain, a protein, a variety of vegetables and then a dessert of some fruit. Depending on your health and weight, you may want to forgo the dessert. To be honest, no matter your health, you should not have it with every meal.

The next item to consider is the different textures of foods. You want a blend to keep your raw food diet interesting. That means having something soft, smooth, crunchy and even sticky. Also for a variety of tastes - sweet, sour and so forth. Many people call this the yin and yang of the diet. So, when looking at a winter diet, you could have something like the following for dinner:

For the grain, go with whole rice, especially if you do have a problem with gluten. Remember that you can cook up to twenty per cent of your food on most raw food diet programs.

For the vegetables, you could have some beets. If you're hungry, try a bowl of sweet winter squash for dessert.

On the flip side, a summer menu could be:

For your serving of grain, try a dish of polenta made with fresh corn. For your protein, whip up some rich and creamy red lentils. Next, to get your serving of vegetables, and also make a green salad with sunflower seeds, diced chives and carrots. Chop up some Chinese cabbage with lemons and red radishes.

In every way, these meals create the proper blending of foods and sensations. So long as you maintain a raw diet that has this balance, it's said that your health will be maintained, and you can battle the negative affects of aging.