Vitals for your Vitals

Nutrition Differences Between Living Food and Dead Food

Food is food, right? Well, unless you've been hiding in a well stocked fallout shelter for a couple of decades, you no doubt have seen countless news reports telling you what's good and what's bad when it comes to food. One aspect of food that is sometimes implied by such reports - but never specified or explored - is the difference between dead food and living food.

Before we explain the difference between the two, you may be wondering why you should care. The answer is simple: nutrient value and the health of your body. Living foods - especially fresh, raw foods - are more nutritious because they still have all of their vitamins, minerals, and enzymes (which the body needs to help you properly digest and metabolize food). These nutrients in food typically get clobbered during the processing, cooking, and packaging that dead food goes through. In the most egregious categories of dead foods - those that have refined flour and added sugar-they may actually suck stored viatmins out of your body as your system tries to metabolize them.

Generally, if a food spoils quickly, it's a living food. Fresh fruits and vegetables fall into this category, as do milk and cheese, freshly made baked potatoes and potato dishes, and freshly baked breads. If a product is more resistant to spoilage than a Teflon-coated nacho chip, it's dead food. But in some cases, just using the spoil-o-meter test to determine wheather an item is a living food or dead food is too simplistic. For instance, grains, if properly stored, can be milled or sprouted many years later to make high-quality living food. Similarly, nature has designed raw nuts and seeds - for example, hazelnuts, almonds, and sunflower seeds - to be fairly resistant to spoilage, and they too are excellent living food.

Several categories of food deserve special mention:

Meat and Fish - Some would argue that the flesh of dead animals by definition cannot be living food. Those who can stick to a vegetarian diet do accrue certain health benefits from it and are to be commended for choosing a "food lifestyle" that is healthy, animal friendly and environmentally friendly. But those interested in the living food concept should not feel they have to go vegetarian to begin adopting a living food diet.

Processed Food - The rule here is easy: The more milled, cooked, and dried-out a product is, the deader it is. Items that fall into the crispy/crunchy category are particularly dead.

RAW Food - Raw vegetables, fresh fruit, unroasted nuts and seeds, and sprouted grains, beans, and legumes are at the top of the living food pryamid. They are packed with vitamins and enzymes, all perfectly intact because the food is fresh and unalterd by heat, processeing, or containerized storage.

Cooked Food - Living food purists will argue that cooking greatly reduces the nutrient value of all food and creates new compounds within the food that are inimical to health. In an interview on living-food.com, author David Wolfe asserts, "You cannot revitalize (you body's) living cells with dead food." We do agree that raw food is superior in terms of active vitamin, mineral, and enzyme content. But, as with meat, we're going to suggest that you not let the perfect be the enemy of the good; that you can get pleanty of benefit by increasing the amount of fresh, uncooked food in your diet without feeling that you have to go 100% raw.

Living Food/Dead Food Examples

So, those are the general rules for determining what is living food vs. dead food. Here are some specific examples:

Living Food	Dead Food
Potato	Potato chips
Freshly-milled wheat bread	Wheat crackers
Beef	Beef jerky
Fresh fruit	Fruit rollups
Fresh vegetables	Vegetable chips

Article by Grinning Planet.com