We’ve been told since we were born to eat our greens, and yet very few of us actually do. Even when we do get down to eating our greens, it’s only after we’ve cooked up most of the natural nutrients that our bodies desperately crave.
Keep in mind, as you go along, that while all raw vegetables are incredibly beneficial, raw green vegetables actually serve as the foundation for almost all life on this planet. That may sound a bit extreme to you, but stop and consider for a moment that almost every organism on this planet survives by eating raw green vegetables or eating an animal that eats raw green vegetables…they really are that important.
I know, you’ve probably eaten most of your vegetables cooked for as long as you can remember. Simply put, just because something has “always” been done a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it. You’ll get much more out of your vegetables if you eat them raw.
I specifically used the word “consume” because you actually get the same benefits from juicing raw green vegetables as eating them whole, and usually faster. This is because raw vegetable juice requires less internal work to digest and is absorbed into the body almost instantly.
It seems that most people only know to eat vegetables because they remember that mom told them to; very few people seem to understand the amazing nutritional value of vegetables.
Raw vegetables are extremely rich in minerals, vitamins, trace elements, enzymes, and natural sugars. These are all things your body needs to function properly and raw vegetables will help stabilize and normalize your natural bodily functions. In fact, they help virtually ALL natural bodily functions work.
You’ve probably heard about the need for vitamins and nutrients for your overall health all your life, but the concept of enzymes may be new to you. Basically, the enzymes in raw vegetables help your body digest food. This is one of the reasons why green vegetables are sometimes considered “natural laxatives”, because they make the stomach work properly.
The average American diet is actually made up of quite a few foods that are incredibly difficult for our bodies to properly digest. When we are not digesting properly, food stays in our stomach longer than it should and we lose any nutritional value it may have.
Ok, at this point, you may have started to convince yourself of the need for vegetables… but why raw?
All of our cooking methods have been shown in scientific studies to reduce the amount of vitamins, minerals and enzymes in vegetables. Of the cooking methods, steaming has been shown to retain the most vitamin content, although it still reduces it.
Vegetables begin to lose their valuable nutritive elements as soon as they are uprooted, uprooted, or picked up from the ground. For this reason, the additional loss of nutrients during cooking would be less of an issue if we were to grow our own vegetables and cook them the same day we harvest them.
However, most of us don’t live that way. The vast majority of us buy our vegetables at the supermarket after they have been shipped hundreds or thousands of miles. During that time, the nutritional value has been seen outside of them.
Finally, to make matters worse, repeat studies have shown that commercially grown vegetables, fresh from the ground, are not as nutrient-dense as they were 50 years ago. A big contributing factor to this is that farmers have found so many ways to make their crops grow faster that we’re not getting all the benefits of naturally ripe vegetables.
Admittedly, it’s extreme, but not that extreme, to claim that any vegetable you buy at the grocery store and then cook at home is likely to have the nutritional value of cardboard when it hits your stomach.
Start eating (or drinking) raw vegetables as soon as you can. Whenever possible, grow them yourself or buy them at local farmers’ markets.