Excerpts taken from Living in the Raw by Rose Lee Calabro

“As scientific techniques to observe the cells of our bodies have improved over the past several decades, researchers have discovered that health and disease have very different chemistries in the human body.  This why a doctor often recommends a blood test be done when a patient is not feeling well.”

“The overall chemistry of a healthy human is slightly alkaline.  Dr. Ted Morter, in his book, Your Health…Your Choice explains it this way: ‘Your body is alkaline by design and acid-producing by function.’  When a person’s overall chemistry becomes more acidic, he gradually loses his vitality and health.  Realizing this, the medical/pharmaceutical world has looked for ways to restore alkalinity to the body.  Most of today’s medicines are in fact very alkaline substances that when taken in small doses do temporarily adjust the body’s chemistry. This includes antacids and aspirin, two of the most commonly consumed over-the-counter products available.  Unfortunately, their effects are short-lived and have side effects that often compound the health issue being addressed.”

“Changing your diet and introducing an abundance of living foods provide a much safer alternative than medicine in restoring the body’s alkalinity.”

“Consider any cell in your body to function lie an alkaline battery.  That is to say, there are areas in your cells that are designed to collect positive charges and areas that collect negative charges.  Now, you might remember from your high school chemistry or physics class that opposite charges attract, or more specifically that the negative charges rush toward the positive charges.  This is what we call electricity.  So your body’s cells in a healthy state produce steady minute pulses of electricity.  It’s always happening as long as these opposite charges exist in the body.”

“Now the question: why do these areas of opposite charge exist?  For life to go on, of course.  But is there a condition in the cell that allows this to happen?  Yes.  The cells in our bodies can be compared to an ocean of chemical elements.  Some of these elements are alkaline in nature; others are acidic.  The most common alkaline elements in the body are calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and iron.  The common acidic elements include chlorine, iodine, sulfur, and phosphorus.  The significance of this is that the alkaline elements attract the negative charges referred to above and the acid elements attract the positive charges.  As long as these elements are available to hold these charges, electrical impulses are created, life goes on, and you’re healthy and enjoying life.”

“When we become sick, it indicates that the cells in our bodies have become low in the alkaline elements, meaning there are fewer places in our cells to hold the necessary negative charges that create the electrical impulses of life.  How this happens is simple.  The source of all the elements in our body is…our diet.  Admittedly, some come through the air we breathe, most importantly oxygen, but the majority come through the food we eat.”

“Years ago, studies were done to determine the composition of various foods and their overall acid-alkaline balance.  You can find this information in many health books available today.  What you’ll find is simple and very eye-opening: with few exceptions, all raw vegetables and orchard-ripened fruits are alkaline; all other foods are acidic.  Fruit that has been forced to ripen off of the tree can be acidic.  It’s the tree-ripening process that turns the fruit from acidic to alkaline.”

“The truth is that so many of us have grown up on a diet that is predominantly acid-forming in the body.  Over the years, this has eroded the alkaline foundation that we were all born with.  This has contributed greatly to our slow energy decline and the eventual health challenges that face us.

When you commit to changing your diet and adding living and raw foods to your meals, you will reverse this imbalance.  A goal to set if you want your diet to provide you with the greatest health benefit is 80% alkaline, 20% acid.  That is 80% uncooked vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, and grains and tree-ripened fruit, 20% other.  Even though this seems like a daunting task when you first start out, you can think of it as a millionaire once said: you become a millionaire one dollar at a time, but you have to have the goal to achieve it.  So you gradually change your diet one food and recipe at a time with the 80-20 ratio as your goal.

Raw living foods are so powerfully rejuvenative because they contain the elements to rebuild the alkaline reserves in our cells.  They are loaded with calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and iron.  Even the nuts, seeds, grains, and beans that we use are either soaked in water for a determined amount of time or sprouted.  This converts them from acid-forming to alkaline-forming when metabolized in the body’s cells.

Another thing to note is that cooking your food makes it more acidic.  In actuality, when you cook your vegetables or fruits, you lose some of their alkaline properties due to the chemical changes that occur during the cooking process.”

“Enzyme activity is directly related to the chemistry of your cells.  Is it any surprise that enzymes perform best when your cells chemistry is slightly alkaline?  When your cells’ alkaline reserves diminish due to food choices, the enzymes slow down and you become tired.”