Cooking some of your food is important

Thanks. Much of the discussion of enzymes on these forums comes from the school of thought this video describes.

I also really liked the "This American Life" segment, "Life in the Fast Lane."

There are real physiological changes when a person begins to lose weight, and I think if you prime people to interpret those changes in a particular way, you can build a movement around it.

I'll cop to having dabbled in eating entirely raw.  lasted about four months and I felt great the whole time.  I didn't lose any weight, but I suppose I was eating quite a bit more.  in retrospect, I probably felt better because fresh fruits and vegetables had previously been a pretty small component of my diet.  it wouldn't surprise me to find out that all that extra bulk and fiber did some good for my innards, as well.  I quit because I was going broke buying so much produce after the end of the growing season.

I remember spending my entire lunch breaks picking and eating blackberries, currants, and raspberries as fast as I could.  they were so delicious and I felt really satisfied after binging.

anyhow, it felt good and right and I'm glad I did it.  I never planned for it to be a long term diet and I didn't do it because some crackpot or other claimed it as the best and only way to eat.  there are almost certainly other ways I could have achieved it, but I do feel like that four months put my body back into better balance after many years of fairly mindless eating.

which is all to say: whoever the chap in the video is seems to have it pretty much right on.

Some foods are actually easier to digest when they are cooked. Humans have a simple stomach and do not digest raw plant matter that well particularly since MOST people today suffer from digestive problems even if asymptomatic. A lot of raw veggies is not advisable ... veggies cooked in butter is the better way to go as advised by Dr. Weston A. Price in his letter to his nieces and nephews before he died.

A good rule of thumb I've always tried to shoot for is 50% of my diet as raw foods or enzyme and probiotic enhanced fermented foods.