Cooked vs. Raw Foods | The Ultimate Diet: Nature's Diet

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40:57

Cooked vs. Raw Foods | The Ultimate Diet: Nature's Diet

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What is better? Raw foods or cooked foods? Ayurveda, the ancient science of life, has a lot to say about this. Transcend food fads and diets and adhere to the ultimate diet: Nature's Diet. This is episode #025 of the Vital Veda Podcast.

Meet your Teacher

Sydney NSW, Australia

Meet your Teacher

Sydney NSW, Australia

Transcript

Cook foods vs raw foods or how about we transcend these food diets and fads and adhere to the ultimate diet that is nature's diet. Welcome to the Vital Vader podcast I am your host Dylan Smith, A very practitioner and holistic health educator based in Sydney and traveling around the world sharing the knowledge. Yo seriously let's get into this we got an important one probably one of the first podcast episodes we've done on nutrition and I get asked this a lot about nutrition and about raw foods or cooked foods or what's the best diet so we're just going to explore a specific topic related with raw foods. But before we go into this I just want to shout out about the events coming up if you want to join me I'll be in Avalon the northern beaches of Sydney on the 13th of February giving a talk with Sattva Yoga you can check out that on their website that will be at balanced studios in Avalon and the following Thursday night in Melbourne I'll be at Light Space Yoga in Ivanhoe in Melbourne so check out Light Space Yoga for an evening and then I'll be offering consultations and treatments the following weekend for both Avalon North Sydney and Melbourne and also I will be in New Zealand in the middle of March so keep an eye out on my newsletter for all those details and speaking about newsletter follow the newsletter it's where I give probably the most detailed information and knowledge and wisdom and also sharing some special offers and discounts updates that sort of stuff. So before we get into today's episode just remember if you like the stuff that I'm doing you can show support by subscribing to this podcast leaving a review and if you want to make a donation head over to the podcast page on the Vital Vader website if you want more knowledge Instagram is where I most regularly post check out the many other wonderful podcast episodes we've got a newsletter as I said Facebook and hey welcome 2020 happy new year guys so happy for you to join me and what an exciting year hey by the way I'm going to put it out here right now which is going to motivate me even more I'm going to intend to do or I'm going to try commit to doing two podcasts a month rather than one so I'm going to up it and I've got some really exciting interviews lined up already in the next week I'll be interviewing quite some amazing people I've already done quite an amazing one with someone very special so there's really awesome stuff coming up so make sure you subscribe to not miss an episode and always remember there's the show notes for the details on what I talk about sometimes I elaborate even more on the show notes and also provide links resources all that jazz. Alright let's get into it whenever I'm engaging in a discussion or talking about health trends or whatever it may be I really try to create a balance argument on both sides I like to give both the pros the cons the science and also of course something very valuable to the equation the ancient wisdom the time tested wisdom of something like Ayurveda which has thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years of time tested wisdom which doesn't change that's what I love about the Ayurvedic diet you get all these food fads and trends and fads and whatever it may be they just change they only last a few years ten years there's not a lot of time if you look at you know Ayurveda has been doing the same thing for thousands of years the textbooks don't change this is a testament to the authenticity and that this stuff actually works so ancient wisdom is definitely something that someone should be considering when assessing whether an intervention is appropriate for them whether it's a diet or lifestyle regime or technique or practice whatever it is so when it comes to the raw food diet or the cooked food diet really I try to you know have a look on both sides and show both but when you look at Ayurveda it's just so much emphasis on the cooked foods and really raw food doesn't have much of a place it does have a place there are sometimes when it's indicated and we're going to go through that and still provide a balanced argument or a balanced view of each rather but yeah let's go ahead and show you and you can decide for yourself and I just want to add that when you're looking at scientific studies of which I do and looking at the scientific literature there is a dubious flexibility to scientific literature and typically you will find pros and cons for both you'll say for example if you look at is soy good for you well you'll have heaps of studies saying that it's great for you and then you'll have heaps of studies saying that it's not good for you it's an anti nutrient it's hard to digest and really it's not as black as white it's something that's good for you or bad for you and it's the same with raw foods there's many things that we have to take into consideration and I'm going to give you one of a few of these now they are and these are really the eight factors for diet in health in Ayurveda and that is look at the prakriti what is the actual nature of the food articles okay what is the method of processing karana like how are you cooking you can't just say soy is good or bad like what's the nature of it is it gmo is it organic and how have you processed it is it raw is it cooked is it fermented third one is samyoga combination okay what's it combined with that's going to influence if it's appropriate or not fourth one is rashi quantity obviously blueberries are great but you don't eat two kilos okay fifth one is desha what is the habitat that it's grown in is it grown in a heavy pesticide polluted area or is it grown in the beautiful pristine organic mountains color time what of the what is the time that you're eating this what is the age that you are in what is the time and or state of your disease of the individual so the time of all aspects included in the formula of a diet is taken into consideration seventh one is upayoga samta rules governing the intake of food really just to eat with awareness right i don't care if you're eating the best organic ayurvedic food if you're eating it on the run or on the bus or in front of your computer on the email of work or whatever maybe your flight or fight responses turned on your sympathetic nervous system you cannot even digest the best organic food when that nervous system is turned on you want the parasympathetic nervous system to be turned on the rest and digest nervous system that is so important how you eat it's not just about what you eat how you eat is so important then you can digest it many things you can even turn ice cream into nectar and the eighth one is upayogtam and that is the wholesomeness of the individual who takes it looking at the individual the actual individual so i did not grow up eating soy neither did my grandparents neither did my parents but what about a japanese person they've been eating it for many years many generations they become okasatima which means habituated it's in their genes so so many factors we have to look at we cannot just say this this product is bad or this way of cooking is bad or this roar is bad right you need to look at so many things and individualize it to the situation and to the individual ok now the main argument for raw foods is that they're more nutritious right why are you cooking you're getting rid of all the nutrition you know you're losing the nutrients the vitamins and even some argue you're losing the enzymes which is a quite ridiculous argument when you actually look at what an actual enzyme is but anyway back to the nutrition and vitamins ok sure that's true that some you know you do lose you know some with some foods you lose nutrients some other foods you actually gain nutrients and enhance nutrients which will go into soon however the bottom line is how are you going to digest these nutrients and minerals and vitamins how are you going to absorb them in the body if you cannot digest that food raw foods are harder to digest why make your digestion which we call agony your digestive fire why make your agony do the work let the kitchen do the cooking why give all the load on your stomach on your digestive capacity give it give it some more compatibility give it a less hard job make it much easier let the kitchen do the cooking even cavemen had fires and we'll go into the anthropology of raw foods and cooked foods soon but that's the one online you know most of us do not have good digestion some of us do maybe you know a third of us also the pit the constitutions the ones with strong notice defy that's really a blessing by the way they can digest you know how to digest foods like raw foods but even then we want to just make it more compatible and make us able to absorb the food and turn into nutrients and energy rather than it going straight out okay or not being able to digest and causing ama lodging in the body is a toxic sticky substance but most of the time it's just going straight out and with that it's detoxifying the body you think detoxifying is good it can be good definitely initially and we'll go into the cleansing thing now it's later I don't want to jump ahead but also clean it can be excessive cleansing and excessive catabolism so I just want to add the importance of agony transformation cooking okay ugly means fire that transforming is so important in a better we can transform foods we can transform has we can do wonderful things and it's a really important process for example if you take yogurt yogurt is a very heavy food it's you know said to be prohibited in nighttime because when it needed a night time it just blocks the channels because heavy food should not be taken in item and yoga is one of the heaviest and it you know it's it we call up shandy it obstructs the channels and it's also heating okay yogurts heating however when you transform yogurt by adding water in and mixing it well which we call making a lassi or buttermilk basically like a diluted yogurt drink it transforms it to become now it's cooling rather than heating and now it actually clears the channels and dilates the channels so this is the power of transformation another example is milk and this is a great one because everyone complains oh I can't digest dairy dairy is hard to digest blah blah blah well yes dairy is hard to digest it's a hard to digest protein has casein it's heavy congesting mucusy damp it's got those qualities however when you transform the milk by the process of boiling especially with some water diluted into it boil it until it foams up so it's about to fall out the pot and in that process what's happening is all the doshas are being removed not all of them the doshas are being removed transform it even more by adding in some black pepper now it is easy to digest now that heavy damp mucusy created quality won't be there so much this is the power of transformation and this is simple foods look at the herb the therapeutic herbs there's such a massive science behind Agni and herbs transformation and herbs you're changing so much and you're even removing subtle qualities of that substance for example with the milk definitely we are getting milk from stress cows right but when you boil it and remove those doshas even some of the which we call some scholars even some of the memories even some of that stress chemistry which definitely gets passed on into the product is removed with the boiling you know you you when you boil you remove the parasites you move some of the bad microbes it can do so much so cooking is really important common cooking treatments can be used also to enhance the nutritional value of the vegetables because it increases the bio accessibility of health promoting constitutes which means cooking can actually enhance the nutrients in food and we're going to go through some of those foods which actually have more nutrients when cooked and it has the effect when you cook food of softening the indigestible cellulose which allows the nutrients to be released that may not be released if just eaten raw so cooked foods is one thing about nutrients but it's also nurturing for the intestinal wall it's much more nourishing raw foods are not so nourishing especially for those vada types who need some soft nourishment they're enough dry and edgy and nervous system is hyperactive and unstable the raw foods is much more grounding and nurturing now anthropology let's look at what our ancestors ate yes they definitely had fire studies show from we've been cooking for almost two million years the logic that our ancestors only ate raw food is absolutely fraud there's just so many studies showing that's absolute BS so you know cooking with fire predates homo sapiens if you trace way back you'll find the species prior to us which are still in our genus they were homo which means human in fact they were called homo erectus they had fire and they passed the torch on to homo sapiens okay this was all found in the studies with fossil analysis I list them in the show notes why did they use fire the study says and I quote to reduce the digestive effort and increase the supply of food energy there we go why did they cook it because it's easy to digest and you get more energy from it you actually get the reason why we eat food is to build our doctors to build our tissues and give us nutrients and feed our body with energy and we get that more with the cook foods it delivers that food better all right let's go into some more myths and some more arguments for the raw food diet and show that perhaps that's not a not a wise argument one being and this is an important one because there's definitely validity to it is that raw food is cleansing definitely raw food is cleansing it has more fiber you will get most people will get more bowel motions they think it's great I'm getting such good bowel motions the reality is the food is going straight out it's not getting absorbed into the body and along with that food undigested food through those big bowel motions going out is also good tissue okay definitely at first the toxins will go out so when the body is sick and toxic for example cancer the fiber can scrub the intestinal villi can scrub the intestines and cleanse right or cleanse the raw food will go out the cancer what's a fantastic thing for cancer I must admit I've seen good patients I've seen patients just clearly cancer with juices and I'm sure you've heard about it fruit juices vegetable juices but along with that once you're cleansed raw food is not suitable once you're cleansed the good toxins will start sorry the good tissue will start eliminating out the body catabolism is happening which is reduction of tissue and definitely we want that for something like cancer or something with excess toxins but the problem starts when the ama the toxic substance is finished and then the body starts to eat the data is it starts to eat the tissues itself another thing we will have all this is the patient or the individual lose weight definitely people lose weight but it's not really the best weight other tissues including fat will get depleted like bone and bone matter and reproductive tissue these are the three tissues under the but under the fat so once the fat goes then these tissues will go and in a wonderful book if you ever really want to read anthropology and fire and also about raw foods check out catching fire by professor Richard Rangam I believe he's from Harvard Institute and he wrote that recent studies indicate that low bone mass in the backs and hips of raw foodists was caused by their raw diet so here we have raw foodists having low bone mass okay and this is very much lines up with Ayurveda because once you start cleansing and detoxifying the body excessively after the fat the bone will go okay the bone tissue and I'm personally in my patients all around the world especially in places like India where they hide from the Sun I'm seeing a bigger especially as patient individuals age they get into the Vada age which is typically after 50 60 years old their bone tissue is pretty weak it's because we need to play it in long as that related with the calcium and lack of Sun Sun sunshine and vitamin D so we definitely need to check out our bone tissue more if you're having like thinning of hair you know weak hair hair falling out you definitely need to assess your bone tissue as one thing it could be possible since the hair is a sub tissue of the bone anyway there are healthy ways to lose weight simple ways to balance your digestive fire and activate healthy tissue metabolism and there's wonderful ways to do that I do that with many my patients in consultations you can have online consultation with me if you're not in Sydney or wherever I am around the world but it's very simple especially with the diet with the intermittent fasting and with the herbs that stimulate the digestion and also digest the ama digest the toxins and then reset the metabolism okay not only if you excessively eat raw foods will the excess tissues will the healthy tissues become depleted but the digestive fire becomes compromised okay so this is seen a lot I've seen a lot of people recovering from raw food diet damage their digestive system has just been detoxifying detoxifying and just going out in and out in big bowel motions they have a like yeah that digestive system really needs to recover and it just takes a lot of slow sensitive sensitivity I mean whenever you know you're better we're cleansing always after a cleanse the it's very slow build up your digestive fire is like a baby you have to slowly build and you know when you're excessively cleansing on a raw food diet then that's what's going to happen now I must say overall with cancer a lot of people report juice cleansing raw food cleansing overall the more vegetables you eat the better and like having a plant-based diet and as little meat as possible if at all is really key to a healthy cancer diet to reactivate autophagy and apoptosis which is basically getting those cancer cells to perform the job they should be doing and not continuing to grow rather than in fact dying that's what they should be doing so when you look at other things like in from inflammatory bowel conditions the first thing the first recommendation really any good doctor would even general practitioner will tell you is to stop eating raw foods because although they're cleansing they are very tough on the intestinal wall and it's clean and cleansing is really not a suitable diet in this case now foods that have a higher nutrient value when cooked as I alluded to earlier I'm going to share with you artichokes cooking artichokes increase the antioxidant levels and in this case steaming is best studies observed the cooking effect on the artichoke antioxidant profile is probably due to the matrix softening and increase extractability of the compounds asparagus when cooked has more antioxidants than raw there was a study that assessed significant and more pronounced changes during cooking process now here's an interesting one blueberries alright blueberries when when they were baked it showed that they had greater antioxidant levels than the fresh blueberries it changed their polyphenol content now note that fruit doesn't need to be cooked right when it becomes ripe the sun's cooked it so this is an unusual one I don't you know you could go like blueberries and make a nice blueberry pie however I love raw fresh blueberries that's cooked by the sun and that's ripe fruit doesn't have to be cooked the sun cooks it carrots this is an important one called carrots are more nutritious than raw steaming or baking whole carrots preserves more of the beta carotene beta carotene is where the word carrot comes from and the human body converts beta carotene into vitamin A retinol beta carotene is a precursor of vitamin A and it's we need vitamin A obviously for healthy skin mucous membranes our immune system our higher health and our vision broccoli now two sides two studies again with the flexibility of scientific literature some studies suggest that raw broccoli is the best because the heat breaks down the enzyme called tyrosinase which is a precursor for broccoli to release its cancer fighting and also reducing sulforaphane okay that is the the constituent that elevated broccoli to its superfood status now overall how you gonna digest those enzymes if it's raw I don't really like the sound or taste or feeling of raw broccoli I want it to be cooked in nourishing it doesn't have to be cooked a lot just a little steamed or something to nourish the intestinal wall on the other hand a perhaps even more health promoting constituent or more health promoting nutrient indole-3-carbinol is processed only when broccoli cauliflower and cabbage are cooked indole-3-carbinol has been shown to be precancerous and specially in prostate cancer to prevent prostate cells becoming malignant cancer cells so that's a more health promoting constituent I would go with cooked broccoli all the time now spinach when you chew raw spinach notice it tastes chalky this is because it contains oxalic acid which is an organic substance that can interfere with the absorption of essential nutrients like calcium and iron a study showed it also attaches to quite a few other vital nutrients and long-term consumption of foods high in oxalic acid can lead to nutrient deficiencies just a little cook of the spinach like blanching just pour some hot water over it pour some hot water over your salad steam it chuck it in when the pots done cooking and just close the lid and let the steam of the pot of dull or stew or curry or whatever you're making heat that or just mix it into the rice that's already cooked and off the stove let the heat of the food heat the spinach something like that now tomatoes studies show that cooked tomatoes have higher lycopene which is a potent antioxidant more powerful than vitamin c and is particularly useful in helping the body repair damaged tissues and preventing cancer and heart attacks on the other hand of scientific literature other studies show that vitamin c decreased when tomatoes were cooked but you know when you look at these two studies I rather lyso- lycopene is the more potent antioxidant so again the flexibility of scientific literature these are some foods that you know a greater cooked tomatoes is actually a fruit so you could have it raw but even that itself is nice to have cooked we're going to go into the foods that you can eat raw soon even Ayurveda said in the classical text thousands of years ago which foods you can eat in salad form they called it so there are some foods you can eat raw but before we go that we're going to go into another reported benefit of raw food that raw food gives you more energy again this is true and also false definitely you will get this reported with some people but one thing is raw food takes about 80% more energy to digest than cooked foods okay so you better have good energy and you better have a strong digestive system if you can eat raw foods because you're going to be eating 80% more energy so you better have good energy and better have good digestion if you're going to be eating raw foods but plus after you eat it it provides the body with less energy following digestion so how is it that raw food makes you feel more energetic certainly it does certainly you will hear people raving about it and typically this will be when they just started the raw food diet you know this is a short term effect at least so and this is why raw foods are vada aggravating why because they have a catabolic effect on the body as explained earlier catabolism means reduction of tissues you're not getting nutrients you're not getting nurtured you're not getting nourished your body isn't building it's being detoxified it's being reduced the tissues are reducing when that happens and this is this is exactly vata that's what vata is vata and kapha are like opposites vata is old age it's reducing kapha is the young age it's building stability increasing growing so look at the qualities really qualities are a beautiful thing to understand for doshes and foods and everything in life to kind of align with the nature cycles the qualities of raw foods are dry light cold and rough now the vata dosha which is the bioenergy responsible for movement and perception that also has all those qualities vata is dry light cold and rough so according to the natural law which ava uses a lot of like increases like eating raw foods will increase the vata dosha simple so since vata is responsible for catabolism you'll get cell reduction and this the beautiful example which nadia marshall from the ditta institute gave was when you eat raw foods it's like stars exploding right this is like cells dying that's catabolism when a cell dies or star explodes you get this hit of energy right you get this hit of energy but eventually too many stars explode too many cells die and you left depleted and it's very common for me to see in practice patients who have been depleted from raw food diet and again you'll find your friends and people around you raving about it but i guarantee the early stages and they're feeling initial hits of energy but long term it won't last and neither should the raw food diet last because yeah so this is the same with smoothies juices all those things if you're on it for a short period of time you'll feel amazing but the feeling won't last long and neither should the diet so not only when does the excess catabolism start to play in the healthy tissues then ojas which is the essence of the tissue it's our immunity it's our vitality it's the byproduct the final byproduct of digestion that begins to get reduced and when our ojas gets reduced then we are really feeling depleted and this is why people don't stay on the raw vegan diet for long or the raw food diet for long i mean if you look into a you know when you have big lectures and someone's asking how long have people been on this for two years five years ten years ten years hardly anyone's there 15 years hardly hardly hardly anyone's there and even the few people that are even 10 15 years that's not a lot of time for a diet i mean never as a human species only been doing a diet for 10 15 years this is what i'm talking about transcend food fads and diets stick to the ultimate diet nature's diet everybody's been telling this for thousands of years why are we trying these things off and on for for a few years historically diets have never humans have never done diets for 10 years okay they don't dip in and out of fats they maintain the same diet for generations why because it's nature's diet they're eating with the seasons they're eating according to their location on the planet they're eating toward their ancestors ate okay this is nature's diet this just takes a lot of strain itself off the nervous system and mind of people of individuals of you thinking oh what should i eat what should i eat should i eat this i gotta count my calories i gotta have no fat i gotta have only fat no sugar only organic chocolate only organic coffee all these things just eat whatever nature's providing at that time of the year in that season whatever in your climate your locality that's the ultimate diet and look at the wisdom from araveda look at the wisdom for ancient sciences and look at the wisdom of your own body of your own self type into what you feel and just use nature as a guide that's the easiest eat whatever's local seasonal and then the principles of food not just about what you eat how you're eating what time are you eating the heavy meal is it at lunch or is it at dinner should definitely be at lunch now another reported benefit of the raw food diet is that it reduces the risk of disease now this is a little slippery reported benefit because it's not very precise typically people who go on the raw food diets tend to stop eating processed food and start eating a lot more fruits and vegetables so yes they can get feel better wellness overall and also they're you know typically practicing some yoga meditation exercising more getting outside more reducing toxic relationships surrounding themselves with like-mind conscious individuals so that's a pretty poor inaccurate argument to gauge off in relation to reducing the risk of disease now let's look at what araveda said about raw foods now we're going to go to the classical text this what I call the Shastras or what I call the Shastras which are really a wonderful source of knowledge to look at since they are the authority of araveda there's so much misunderstanding and confusion with araveda but when we look at the Shastras the classical text that's the authority that's something we can trust and there was a wonderful sage called Charaka a famous aravedic sage and he gave 10 rules for eating food okay so and they're in order of importance and yep certainly number one as a matter of fact is the food should be warm or cooked okay so there's he even gave the reasoning for this why is that the number one rule for food and its intake this is why it's pretty hard to provide a balanced you know view on both sides of cooked this raw just because it no better it's just cooked all the way so number one food should be cooked and warm why was the reasoning from Charaka thousands of years ago number one because it's delicious I agree with that number two after the intake it provokes the factors the enzymes in the abdomen helps digestion okay definitely helps digestion is going to help deliver the other nutrients in the other foods that you're eating it with the multitude of foods that is in that food right if it's just a raw food it's going to be very individual directions of pathways and not very wholesome and compatible third is to get that just digested quickly and easily the fourth is that it helps digestion fluids and nutrients moves downwards okay something we call vata andulomina it's important for the food to move downwards so that we have proper elimination and proper nourishment of individual tissues and the fifth is that it maintains detachment of a sticky undigestible toxic substance called ama or kapha ie the food actually turns into a thin fluid which nourishes our body rather than a thick fluid so that's the number one rule and I'm going to just mention the other nine rules the second is that food should be unctuous snigdha is the Sanskrit word so sneak that you can get a feeling of that Sanskrit the whole Sanskrit language is onomatopoeia it's the sound that nature is intending to make sneak that means unctuous even unctuous is quite onomatopoeia it means like oily it should have some oily substance food should not be dry the third is food should be taken in proper quantity okay not too little not too much fourth take your food only after the previous meal has been digested that's a big one that relates with snacks when you hungry you actually hungry do you have good appetite you know you need to be hungry for food and this is indicators of health and by the way when you're trying to figure out for all navigate through food vads and diets just check out these ten rules of taking food and again this is available on the show notes under the learn podcast section look for this episode fourth intake after digestion of the previous meal fifth intake of food having no contradictory pertincies which means incompatible food combinations we need to just there's some food combinations which incompatible we need to be aware like milk and fruit and sweet and sour fruits together and fish and milk and ghee and honey in equal quantities there's a few things like that sixth is intake in a proper place ie a calm environment with all the accessories required seventh is intake of food not in a hurry eight these intake of food that's not too slow and the ninth and tenth is intake with concentration with awareness make eating a ritual and as well eat with self-confidence with regard to yourself what is wholesome for you so these are the ten rules of food when we go back earlier we looked at the eight factors determining the utility of food the second one was karana processing the substances i just want to go through what i better said about the different processing methods and a lot of them are still practiced today one is dilution you can dilute the substance one is you apply heat okay cooking third is cleaning it a certain way with some certain substances it can just be water or something else the fourth is churning it for example curd as i said it becomes very blocking for the channels and can create excess water in the body but when churned even the fat content of it can alleviate this excess water build up and fluid retention how you storing okay when you store the substance it can process it karana how is it maturing flavoring for example putting some sweet smelling herbs in water like water lily or lotus impregnating so this can be like putting certain herbal fruits in juices preserving okay preserving some herbs or some substance in a jar smeared with ghee and leaving it out and then container what container even everybody has signs of using iron containers smeared with a paste of a herb to store this paste or this herb and putting you know ghee or in a copper vessel or an iron vessel or different vessels containers so these are the different methods of processing substances now i'm going to go into the vegetables that can be eaten raw which i even said plants in salad form i just want to say that in general there's a better to be cooked however you can eat raw green ginger radish especially tender radish a lot of the times vegetables when they're tender which means young is easy to digest and has more nutrient so tender radish is good it will alleviate all the doshas and it's and it simulates digestion however when it's overgrown it can provoke the doshas tulsi tulsi you can eat raw some people don't chew tulsi because it which is holy basil of course ocumum sanctum and i've done a whole article on tulsi it's one of the most important herbs to know in auretic herbology holy basil and you can eat that raw as a leafy green vegetable oil make it into a pesto but some other school of thought is not to chew it too much or break it down too much rather swallow it whole since it does create some natural and beneficial mercury leafy greens like ajwain the leaves of ajwain the clove basil moringa fenugreek black mustard all the leaves of these vegetables are able to eat raw and digest lemongrass you can have raw coriander you can have raw onion and garlic you can have raw in fact garlic has magnificent health benefits when eaten raw and also cooked and these are about it from chadakas samhita i will also add generally when vegetables have strong pitta characteristics they can be eaten raw in limited quality and you can grate them if you want that will make it easy to digest so those are like beetroot carrot cucumber celery and mint so folks these are the foods you can have raw note that typical vegetables in a salad like lettuce and spinach and kale and leafy greens these are not included in the raw section so salads are actually hard to digest especially if you're having them in the summer when your digestive fire is weaker the cucumbers are ok but the leafy greens better not just blanch it run just pour some boiling water over it just to blanch or steam a bit ok and we're going to go through some more cooking methods soon like let's do it now i'm not saying you guys have to like cook the food so much and high heat and cook them for a long time just lightly steaming is fine and very beneficial that's what's going to enhance the nutrient value as the study showed before and that i mentioned that's going to lightly cooking is enough to enhance the health of the intestinal skin of your body and that will digest properly if it's soups or stews that's good you know that will capture the nutrients especially if you're using a pure clay pot with the lid closed we discussed that in one of the episodes one of my favorite episodes on cooking with pure clay that retains the nutrients whether but if you are going to do really high heat and overcook it that is not going to be good that's going to damage the foods so using pure clay pots is a wonderful thing and because it retains the water content the steam isn't leaving and also in general you can also work other ways to retain the water content and eating a little raw food is fine right you don't have to again this is the balance you know your diet has to your diet should be predominantly cooked food with the raw food here and there okay so there you go i just want to also mention nuts you can take nuts raw but you can even cook them that's even better and you can also soak them and peel them the next day especially with things like almonds and walnuts also you should soak them and you can also activate them so there it is folks there is the argument on raw foods and cooked foods not so argument more discussion and not being rigid and all this and the idea is just to you know tune into your body and get yourself into a state of health so that you can actually experiment for yourself and determine for yourself what is best be aligned with your body you know feel into it not just go from a place of disturbed intellect and say oh this is good this is bad some people are too numb they can't even feel the effects on their body some people just eat because it's time for lunch or dinner like you should eat when you're hungry you need your digestive system to be regular your appetite to be regular your bowel motions to be regular that's why eating meals at regular times are important and meditating at regular times and sleeping and waking and doing everything with regularity will balance the vata and enable you to become to perceive your the world to perceive your life to perceive your digestive system to perceive everything that you interact with in greater context and with greater clarity so from here you can make a decision on what is best for you ultimately stick with nature's diet that nature is complex so we can be simple so just go with the natural diet and if you enjoyed the show let me know leave it comment leave a review this is really the first proper solo show I've done I've done another one another episode which was a recorded talk but this is if you want more info on nutrition let me know you know these days I'm not talking much about nutrition because it's really simple as I've demonstrated just eat with nature there's more things we need to be refining in our life with consciousness mind environment that's potentially more influential but definitely food is one of the three pillars of health and it's very important and if there's any topics you'd like me to talk about in the podcast or anyone particularly you would like me to interview please leave a comment leave a comment in the reviews in the Instagram on the Facebook page the bottle weather community Facebook group now that I'm doing two podcast episodes a month I need to step my game up so thanks for joining me and I'll see you and in fact I will communicate with you via your beautiful shravana your beautiful ears next time.