by Natasha Czopor – Health Benefits of Raw and Living Food
Using raw and living foods is an evolutionary shift in the way we approach creating food. It is a plant based diet, using fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, superfoods, seaweeds, cold-pressed oil, fermented soya and natural sweeteners. It is completely vegan and uses no flours or refined sugars, making it suitable for Coeliacs, type 2 diabetics, allergy sufferers, children and people just into really tasty healthy food. All the vegetables and fruit are fresh, giving you an energy boost that won’t leave you feeling heavy, bloated or sleepy…in fact, quite the opposite…its food for life!
So how do we maintain all that life force?
Well, it takes time and love. What’s wonderful about the process of creating living foods is that through sprouting normal organic seeds and beans we awaken them into their evolutionary purpose, simply by soaking them in water. It’s a cheap and very tasty food which is full of life. My kitchen has no cookers or microwave oven, just a food processor, blender, and dehydrator.
Plants and seeds have wonderful properties that can be used for making dishes. There are oils in seeds, that when blended make delicious creams. Avocado acts as a great buttery alternative. Slicing and marinating courgettes makes a great alternative to pasta, and that is just the beginning.
Science has shown that cooking food with temperatures over 42°c causes important enzymes, valuable nutrients, minerals, amino acids and vitamins to die. Raw Food contains all the goodness that would otherwise be destroyed by the cooking process and maintains its plant life force, which aids digestion, giving your body a nutritional boost and heaps more energy.
I use some of the nutritionally highest known food sources in the world as ingredients such as raw Cacao products, Maca, Lucama, Mesquite pod, Spirulina and Seaweeds.
Our ingredients are sourced as locally as possible or from around the world through local producers that use traditional methods. We choose organic, fair-trade, cold-pressed, hand pressed, low temperature extraction and gently fermented techniques that keep flavours, vital vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants intact and ready to nourish your body, mind and soul. Food is our medicine in every way.
I have found that living a raw food lifestyle helped me to move through many dark and heavy old emotional pains that I had carried all my life. Because of the physical lightness of the diet, there is really nothing that your body can hold onto for that comfort feeling. The heaviness that breads, potatoes and other foods give us can act to block up not only our physical bodies but our energy bodies too. They can hold in place old energetic configurations that don’t serve us anymore and are now just habit.
Our habits create us everyday. The same repetitive actions fix in place the old stories of self-denial, low self esteem, guilt, etc. as equally as they liberate us through positive action. The body does not lie and, through authentic movement and action, we can a effect a deep and lasting change.
We each have such a deep force available within us to heal. The dichotomy is that fear can feel more powerful than freedom. Moving through the fear can be a challenge. Going raw can accelerate the process of healing and clearing by bringing unresolved emotions to the surface and by bringing so much light and freshness, love and power to places that we have felt might never change.
Raw foods can also, in a subtle way, be a political statement. Choosing to buy local, and not at big supermarkets, has a power all of its own. By promoting a local economy, we build community. To me, food is life, is an expression of love for ourselves and others. We are not alone in these times of change, and community is so important. Supporting each other with our pockets and hearts makes a difference. Believe me.
