How To Get More Food Value For Your Money

Article #3: How To Get More Food Value for Your Money By Marti Fry

If you’re like most people you want to get the most for your money. This includes your food purchases too. Many of you have already learned that eating your food raw is the best way to get the most nutritional value from it. Perhaps you’ve also discovered that your doctor, hospital and prescription bills have gone down (or, hopefully, disappeared altogether).

When you learn that the body heals itself and that drugs, whether they’re prescribed by a doctor or sold without a prescription, always harm your body and never help it, you realize that going to a doctor or a drugstore is the opposite course from what you should take.

In the Health Crusader you have been learning:

1. which foods are best-fresh raw fruits and non-starchy vegetables;
2. which foods are second-best—dried fruits, nuts and seeds and raw starchy vegetables, (including roots and legumes);
3. which foods are third-rate—lightly steamed starchy vegetables such as yams, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, peas, corn, etc. and other lightly steamed vegetables such as broccoli and brussel sprouts;
4. which foods are fourth—rate-lightly cooked rice, millet, etc.; and
5. which foods are worst to eat—all the rest!

Even if the first-rate and second-best foods are more expensive in the store, they are still the best value for your money because they give you the most and harm you the least. Now let’s say you eat only top-rate foods and you eat them raw. Is this everything you can do to get the most for your money? No, there’s more!

Many of you have already learned that most organically-grown foods contain larger amounts of high-quality proteins, minerals and vitamins than the majority of commercially-grown produce. But there’s one more consideration and this is in the area of food preparation.

As you may know, there is a great loss of vitamins and usable protein and minerals when food is cooked. This is the result of two serious occurrences:

1. The food is oxidized, and
2. Lysosomes, which are enzymes within food cells, will self-destruct the food components (carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, etc.) within the cell.

These two occurrences happen only when the cell walls (or some of the cell walls) are broken, as by heating, freezing, cutting, blending, juicing or mashing. The cell contents are exposed to the oxygen in our air; and vitamins, minerals and proteins chemically combine with the oxygen and are rendered unusable to us in providing the nutrition they’re supposed to. Also, the lysosomes go to work to break down the cell components before your body gets a chance to use them.

Be aware that these lysosomes within food cells are destroyed by heat over 120 degrees. They become incapable of any kind of activity, constructive or destructive. But while it is true that raw foods are far superior to cooked foods, the processes of oxidation and enzymic breakdown also come into play when you eat raw foods, but to an insignificant extent.

When the cell walls are burst by methods other than heat, such as by cutting, mashing, blending or juicing, the vitamins, minerals and other food components are destroyed both by the cells lysosomes and by oxidation.

For example, when you bite into an apple or pear many cell walls are broken and oxidation occurs. However, you will get more nutrients from an apple or pear eaten this way than from the same apple or pear that has been cut up into a fruit salad. This is because many more cell walls are broken, usually for a longer period, when fruits are cut up into a salad. (The same is true for vegetables, of course.)

What’s true for cut-up foods is also true for mashed, blended or juiced foods. Blending and juicing break open the protective walls of almost ail the cells, in the food, causing a considerable amount of nutritional value to be lost. That is one reason we recommend that you either not blend or juice foods or else do it sparingly. (The other reason is ecological.)

You may want to mash avocados to make “Vegemole,” a salad dressing or a dip; or you might want to make a cut-up salad. But in the case of both avocados and other foods you are better off blending, juicing, cutting up or mashing them only occasionally—for variety or for guests, reluctant family members, or people without teeth or with other special problems.

So remember, when you are preparing foods a great way to get the most value from your food is to eat it whole. “Finger salads” of whole fruits or vegetables that you don’t cut up are considerably more nutritious than cut-up salads. This is because of the oxidation and enzymic action that occur when foods are cut up. Why not eat whole foods more often and get more nutrients for your money and with less fuss and muss?