The Raw and the Cooked

When you eat meat, how much of it do you eat raw? Well, Mr. Lion eats his raw, while it’s still brimming with enzymes that aid in digestion. Humans, however, cook their meat. In fact, we cook our meat to temperatures over 130 degrees Fahrenheit. This has the benefit of killing most disease- causing bacteria, but it also kills the enzymes in the meat.

Whenever you eat dead food—-food lacking in the natural enzymes that help you digest it—your pancreas has to work extra hard to provide more so the food will break down for digestion. This puts strain on the pancreas that it wasn’t originally designed to handle. This isn’t to say that you should eat raw meat, like the lion. But it’s another consideration when we look at whether humans are designed to eat meat; when true carnivores eat raw, fresh meat, all the enzymes are present to help them garner the nutrients they need as it passes quickly through their short digestive tracts, and the nutrient-depleted waste is eliminated soon after.

When we eat cooked meat, though, our bodies have to work extra hard to digest it by using precious energy needed for other purposes, overtaxing the pancreas, and creating free radicals as the dead flesh decays in our intestinal tract. But when we eat a plant-based diet, we’re feeding ourselves food that’s abundant with living enzymes, which break down efficiently in our systems and provide extra energy.

The Diabetic Vegetarian

The first line of combat when dealing with diabetes has always been diet. But with nutritionists and doctors radically changing their opinions on diabetics’ best dietary options, research has been a hit-and-miss affair over the years. For a long time, it was believed that carbohydrates were the primary cause of diabetics; doctors would advise diabetic
patients to limit their carbohydrate intake to just 20 percent of their total calories. Yet many cultures that maintain diets high in carbohydrates have much lower rates of diabetes than Western societies. So what’s the deal?

Current research indicates that it’s not carbohydrates that are the problem, it is the type of carbohydrates we eat. Simple carbohydrates, like those present in sugar and processed flour, raise the blood sugar so quickly that the pancreas has to create the hormone insulin to process it; complex carbohydrates, the kind found in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, take longer to break down into glucose, so the body doesn’t have the extreme insulin-producing reaction as with the simple sugars.

The American Diabetes Association now recommends that diabetics eat a diet that features a generous amount of slow-burning complex carbohydrates—including lots of fiber—with a moderate amount of protein and a low percentage of fat. Well, guess what? The vegetarian diet fits that prescription better than any other! In a study at the Pritikin Longevity Institute, a diet with 10 percent fat and just three ounces of meat per week was shown to radically help patients with type 2 diabetes, allowing many of the diabetics to stop using medication to treat the condition.

Slimming Down on a Vegetarian Diet

Believe it or not, there are fat vegetarians—just as there are thin people who eat a lot of red meat. It’s possible to have a terrible diet that just happens to preclude animal proteins, and then there are complex issues of body type and metabolism as well. But there’s still some truth to the stereotype. A vegetarian eating a healthy diet consisting of a wide array of whole foods is unlikely to be overweight, and so are those who eat meat now and then but subsist mainly on plant foods.

If your omnivorous lifestyle has left you with more pounds than you’re comfortable with, then your new vegetarian diet is a great way to lose the extra weight. We’ve already talked about how the foods you eat provide your body with the various nutrients it needs to build strong bones, organs, skin, etc. And plant foods are easier to digest than animal foods. So, by taking up a vegetarian diet, you’re saving energy that you can use to be more active. Most people who switch to vegetarian diets notice that there’s more pep in their step because of the more efficient manner in which they’re fueling their body. So use that extra energy to get up and get moving; it’s an important step in weight control!

You’ll also find that your appetite is under control on a vegetarian diet. When you feed your body foods rich in the nutrients it needs, in an easily digestible form, you won’t find yourself with those mysterious cravings for more and more food at inappropriate times. When we eat a lot of animal foods, our colons become congested with mucus, toxins, and the detritus of decaying flesh; this limits the absorption of nutrients from our food.

Removing that blockage from the lower intestine is why many people swear by regular cleansing of their colon, either through professionally administered therapeutic enemas or by treating yourself to a do-it-yourself colon cleanser. Two or three weeks after transitioning to your vegetarian diet, mix a morning drink of apple juice with a tablespoon of aloe vera and liquid chlorophyll. Along with it, take two to four psyllium capsules and two capsules of cascara sagrada; these are readily available where nutritional supplements are sold. Be warned, though—this will have an invigorating effect on your bowels, so do it on a day that you’re at home and close to the bathroom!