Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness.

– Hippocrates, Greek physician (460 BC – 377 BC)

These words were spoken centuries ago and yet remain true today, perhaps more so than ever before. Society has been slow to accept the concept of raw foods. Not completely resistant, just slow in coming to the realization, or perhaps reluctant to accept the fact that the food we’re eating is killing us slowly.

Twelve years ago, there were 2 raw food restaurants in the whole world. Now there are over 70. Still just a drop in the bucket when compared to the number of McDonald's worldwide, which now tops 31,000 – with 14,000 of them in the United States.

Perhaps if people were more aware of the health benefits of raw foods, they might be more open to the thought of embracing a raw food diet. The food we eat affects every system in our body, from the nervous system, to the circulatory and lymph system, the digestive system, and even the muscular system. The nutrients, or lack thereof, in the foods we eat directly influence how well the body is able to function, all the way down to the cellular level.

Raw food gives the body the proper vitamins and minerals it needs to run efficiently. It supplies life-giving oxygen and cleanses the blood. Raw foods like sprouts and legumes contain nutrients vital to the well being of the nervous system and the endocrine system. By eating our foods raw, we’re keeping the food intact, with all the enzymes and nutrients unaltered.

Cooking changes the composition of the food we eat. It destroys most of the essential vitamins and minerals, and all of the enzymes. Cooked food may maintain our lives, but it doesn't promote health or increase our longevity and conventional medicine will rarely acknowledge what we eat or how we prepare it as a possible cause for what ails us.

Yet it's known that the nervous system becomes impaired without the necessary vitamins it needs for optimal performance. Our nervous system plays a key role in relaying information throughout the body. When it's damaged or compromised in its ability to do its job, we suffer with decreased physical and mental functions. For example, the B vitamins are crucial in the proper functioning of the nervous system.

As far back as the 1930s, one insightful dentist, Dr. Weston Price, discovered the correlation between healthy food and healthy bodies. His published studies were not only ignored, but he was openly ridiculed by traditional medicine which maintained that “food has nothing to do with health”. Unfortunately, that sort of ignorance remains ingrained in the doctors of today's modern medicine.

We continue to eat foods that are vitamin and mineral depleted. Our body is not receiving those needed nutrients, so it sends out the signal, “More food please” in a search for the minerals it needs. Instead of giving it nutrient rich raw foods, we keep eating the same type of food, void of minerals and deficient in vitamins. So despite all our eating, our body is still undernourished.

We can eat enormous amounts of food, but it's usually been so processed and so filled with chemicals that it has little, if any, nutritional value left. And the fewer nutrients we give our body, the more it continues to crave food. But what it's really craving are the vitamins and minerals freely found in raw foods, not after they've been processed beyond recognition and cooked to death.

In January 1973, National Geographic published the results of a study done by Dr. Alexander Leaf on his research to find the oldest people in the world. He found three groups who were consistently disease-free and lived longer than anyone else he studied. The Abkhazians in Russia, the Vilacabambans in Ecuador and the Hunzukuts in Pakistan suffered none of the diseases of the western world.

There were no incidences of obesity, no cancer, and no heart disease in these people. They live to be over 100 years old, still physically active and the men still fathering babies, even at age 100. Do you find it coincidental that common among these geographically diverse groups is their diet? In all three populations, their diet consisted of 70-80% high water content raw foods, primarily uncooked fruits and vegetables. Consider that this isn't a coincidence, but a result of the effects a raw foods lifestyle can have on the nervous system, and overall health and wellness.

By TTS Cofounder Botanical Chef Omid Jaffari