Over the years I have come to discover for myself the energetic power of raw materials, so to speak — of foods. It is this power that has fueled my recovery, out of my own personal Hell of health issues, back into a life that I greatly enjoy. I now enjoy robust health, amazing levels of energy, and this is the inspiration behind me putting together all of this information in one place to help you solve your own problems as well.

On the one hand, there is nothing like the satisfying feeling of a hot cooked meal. Whether it is home cooking in a rustic setting, with amazing side dishes being passed across the table family-style, or at the most amazing restaurant with the dishes being carried out to the table steaming-hot, sizzling, and smelling incredible.

After the meal is complete, you sit back in the comfort of your chair, feeling completely satisfied, full, and generally happy. It is a warm, fuzzy feeling that we all enjoy.

The raw food experience is a whole different enchilada. It doesn’t necessarily have that same kick, that bite, that salty, oily ‘bliss point’ as referred to by the food industry. It’s not the same type of pleasurable experience as you bite into it, with the different levels of savory, salty, crunchy, tender and so forth. It doesn’t ‘stick to your ribs’ in quite the same way.

A raw food meal is light, energetic, and nourishing in a totally different way. By the end of it, in my experience, that same fullness is not experienced in the same way as a cooked meal. Hunger is gone, and you feel satisfied, but you don’t feel full or bloated, and still feel light and airy. After the end of a good raw meal, you will feel more energy and with more pep in your step than before the meal, as opposed to a cooked meal, where you might feel a bit sluggish or have a drop in energy for a little while.

A raw meal can be delicious in its own lighter way, with all of the amazing flavors provided directly from Mother Nature, and can still be enjoying and exciting.

I just want to make one thing clear. I eat raw foods for the results, not for the dining experience. Raw food cuisine will never rise, in my opinion, to the level of cooked culinary creations, with all the different artificial and processed-food compounds chefs have at their disposal, not to mention how cooks can manipulate foods with heat. Cooked foods in my view will generally be more elegant, exciting, intriguing, and interesting to prepare and eat — but these delicious cooked meals will deliver nowhere near the results of the power of raw foods in terms of how someone will feel and levels of healing and wellness that can be achieved. Please allow me to explain why that is.

First I just wanted to clarify that, as delicious and satisfying as it can be to eat raw foods, I understand that cooked foods are more appealing and more crave-able. I just choose not to eat them (mostly) and opt for raw foods because personally I eat to live, I don’t live to eat. Here in America, it’s all about living to eat, and that’s fine, but that was a different phase in my life. I’ve moved on from that. I am now more interested in results in areas of life other than what’s on my plate (health, wellness, physical and mental performance, vitality & energy)!

Here are the main differences between raw foods and cooked foods:

#1 Difference: The chemistry of the food changes and becomes acidic when cooked:

When a food is heated, it lowers the pH of the foods. The Acid/Alkaline scale is measured on a pH scale, from 0 to 14, 0 being the most acidic and 14 being the most alkaline and 7 being completely neutral.

By cooking the food, it alters the chemistry of that food. As we have all learned in elementary school science class, this is the nature of chemistry and is simply cause and effect. When something gets heated, it causes the molecules to change and rearrange and in some cases oxidize and the result is a food that has had its pH lowered. Throughout this process, different harmful chemical compounds can be created by the cooking of the food, including carcinogens like acrylamides.

Some foods like vegetables start off alkaline-forming and become less alkaline-forming when heated, although in my research the vast majority of foods change from alkaline-forming to acid-forming, or go from slightly acid-forming to even more acid-forming when cooked.

This gets down to the nitty gritty of what Rapid Regeneration is all about, which is fixing the body or allowing the body to fix itself by putting it into an alkaline state. This allows the proper conditions to persist so the the body can be in an ionic state while alkaline, rather than a coagulative state that is associated with highly acidic conditions.

Every meal is a battle that is either won or lost, in chemical terms. Even when ‘healthy’ foods — like vegetables — are cooked and turned acidic, this meal is now a battle which is lost in the body, because now you have acidified your body by a certain degree and the body will have to fight back and compensate in some way.

It’s up to you on which battles you want to win or lose, and it’s OK to lose some battles — you don’t have to win them all and it’s a long life (hopefully) with numerous meals. However, it’s just good to have the awareness of the chemistry — either acid or alkaline — that you are putting into your body.

#2 Difference: You lose out on so much in terms of probiotics, phytonutrients and other nutrients when foods are cooked:

You may have seen a craze in recent years over the amazing benefits of probiotics. People seem to be guzzling down these expensive drinks with bacteria added to them, which are considered beneficial.

It is true that beneficial bacteria are a huge contributor to overall good health in the body. It is these bacteria which act as the custodians of the body, because they consume acidic waste within the body, and basically process that into more broken-down chemistry which is less acidic. This resulting ‘bacterial waste’ now has a higher pH (less acidic) and can be filtered out more easily through the kidneys and bladder, to put it simply. This process also contributes to the creation of Vitamin B compounds and other nutrient cofactors.

Raw foods and especially fresh fruits and vegetables contain probiotics (with the exception of foods which gets radiated or pasteurized). These little bacterial helpful friends have been there all along, throughout the entire growing process of the food, all the way until it’s right there sitting on the store shelf, into your shopping basket, sitting in your pantry at home, and being assimilated through your digestive system. When you cook a food, if it contained probiotics before, they get killed off and are dead by the time the food gets digested.

By eating whole foods in their raw form, we get all of the benefits of the probiotics that are contained with them, also known as phytonutrients, which are so helpful for digestive purposes, the immune system, the lymphatic system and to help keep the body cleaned up and maintained. Especially for those individuals (most of us) who have taken rounds of antibiotics and essentially wiped out entire colonies of beneficial bacteria in the body, it’s important to re-populate the body with probiotics.

#3 Difference: Energy of the food is lowered dramatically when cooked:

People that know me know that I am an energy freak. I am always looking for ways to get that extra lift, buzz, or push to get me closer into that cosmic groove.

This phase of my life where I’ve been into raw foods and fruit especially has been the most energetic phase of my life, and I run around like a headless chicken with more proliferation in my activities now than when I was a little kid.

When you cook your foods, you lower the energetic properties of that food. Now I may be going out on a limb here, but I will theorize that if you consistently consume foods with a lower energy level, it will end up lowering your own energy level, with the same principal applying to foods with higher energy.

The energy of all matter can be measured using a unit of measure called angstroms. Just for reference, a healthy human body on average will be measured as having approximately 6,500 angstroms, although it can vary depending on the individual. Raw vegetables contain approximately 8,000 to 9,000 angstroms, while raw fruits contain approximately 8,000 – 10,000 angstroms or more.

By contrast, milk has an electrical measurement of 2,000 angstroms, cheese 1,800 angstroms, white flour 1,500 angstroms, and cooked meat: zero angstroms.

By eating these raw foods, as you will experience, you literally raise your energy of your body and can feel the powerful interaction with these compounds that are resonating more energetically. It’s a fascinating and rather incredible process that you will get to experience firsthand if you embrace the power of raw foods. In fact, most people know about this experience on an intuitive level, because everybody seems to enjoy fruit for a light, energetic snack. But maybe this will provide some additional insight and additional reasons to eat it more often.

On the other hand, cooked foods vibrate at a much lower frequency than a human who is in healthy condition. Cooked vegetables have their energy lowered from 8,000 – 9,000 all the way down in the 4,000 — 6,500 angstrom range.

I’m not sure I could add much more to this particular section, because this information about energy is so powerful, the numbers speak for themselves. The ’proof is in the pudding’ in terms of angstrom measurements.

Getting yourself healthy and well is about chemistry, and it’s about probiotics and phytonutrients, but it’s also about energy, and you’re going to need as much energetic help as possible to overcome your personal challenges ahead and to get to your destination of great wellness and vitality.

#4 Difference: Spirituality, Awareness & Consciousness:

The final difference between cooked and raw foods is just a fancy way of elaborating on the energetic differences between these two types of foods. After all, if you want to get more into the deeper levels of creation and the nature of reality, what you refer to as spirituality, God, or creation can also be referred to as energy.

Simply put, all matter especially all living forms have some level of consciousness to them or intelligence. By keeping a plant in its raw form, you can absorb its whole consciousness so to speak and sort of interface with it on a genetic or divinely intelligent level.

This speaks to the power of herbs in affecting the body’s consciousness and stimulating certain systems of the body. An herbal plant after all has a great sense of awareness in its own millennia of survival and genetic programming, which then is transferred on an energetic level to a human who consumes it.

This gets quite far out, and is powerful to experience for yourself, but the same is not just true with herbs but with foods in general. The tree that grew the fruit can have a lot to teach us on an energetic and/or consciousness level when we consume the gift of its fruit raw, and there is something deeper that goes on within that interaction that transcends explanation.

Putting it all together:

Those are the Big Four differences between cooked and raw foods. At the end of the day, it’s no contest, at least not for me. If I were in a different life, with perfect health and great genetics, sure, I could see why somebody would eat cooked foods all the time and indulge themselves.

But if you find yourself going through this information because you are in need of a solution to a health problem, or really have a strong desire to transcend to the next level of wellness, energy and performance while here on this planet, then the chemical, nutritious, energetic and even spiritual power of cooked foods does not even compare with what can be accomplished while eating raw foods. It’s like allowing professional athletes to take all the steroids and performance-enhancing drugs they want — there is no comparison and it’s a totally unfair advantage.

The ability to use the power of the raw elements of this earth, even though they might not be as delectable in your mouth, gives you a powerful Ace up your sleeve and will take you the distance to achieve your personal health and wellness goals, so you can create a truly beautiful and vibrant life.