I’m sure by now you’ve realized that one of the principles behind the 10-Day Daniel Diet is the consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds— or three bags of our specially formulated EA Pulse daily—all in their raw or live form.
I’m well aware that other diets based on the book of Daniel present you with a meal plan comprised of chickpea and lentil soup and heaping helpings of steaming pinto beans—cooked foods. So why is my Daniel Diet focused on consuming raw live foods? Was that intentional?
The answer is yes because I’ve become a staunch believer in the power of raw nutrients in their unheated, untreated, and unadulterated form. Since the writing of The Maker’s Diet, I’ve become an even bigger believer in the power of raw foods, which are loaded with live nutrients that include vitamins, minerals, probiotics, enzymes, and undenatured amino acids.
Raw foods are called “live” foods because they are consumed in their original, unheated—meaning uncooked—state, which makes them raw and alive. Examples of raw foods include fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, sprouts, grains, and legumes in sprouted form, fresh veggie or fresh fruit juices, and even animal foods such as dairy, eggs, and meats, which can be consumed raw.
Even though many people don’t think about eating raw food as much as they should, many of us intuitively understand that raw foods are the best sources of every known nutrient available. Let me explain why I feel this way.
I’ve presented thousands of seminars on the subject of health and nutrition at churches, health food stores, and wellness expositions over the years. Sometimes when I step before an audience, I pose this simple question:
If someone offered you an apple from a tree or a small jar of applesauce made from the very same apple, which would you choose?
You should see the eyes light up and the hands go in the air. Everyone is eager to tell me, “The apple!”
And they would be correct because a raw apple, picked from a tree at harvest time, will always be more nutritious and more alive than applesauce, which is a purée of cooked or baked apples.
When an apple is peeled and cooked, you lose all of the enzymes and probiotics contained in and on the apple, and many of the vitamins are partially or completely destroyed, including half of the fruit’s vitamin C content. Even though the very same apple was used to make the sauce, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a fresh raw apple trumps processed apple-sauce every time.
That’s why the Daniel Diet eating plan is centered around consuming raw live foods, which are—in my opinion and with few exceptions—the healthiest forms of food available. During the first nine days of the Daniel Diet, you’ll greatly benefit from consuming a diet of raw foods in the form of fruits, veggies, and nuts, or consuming the combination of over ninety raw superfoods that we call EA Pulse. No matter which route you take, you’ll be receiving the best form of vitamins, minerals, and bioactive compounds available.
Of course, I understand that Daniel, along with Hananiah, Misha-el, and Azariah, may not have exclusively eaten raw pulse when they were sitting at the king’s table while their Babylonian counterparts wolfed down “delicacies” supplied by the palace kitchen. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if they consumed plenty of raw fruits, veggies, nuts, and seeds as part of their ten-day eating regimen.
As someone who’s been a huge proponent of the raw food movement and pioneered the creation of the very first raw food multivitamins known as The Vitamin Code®, green foods known as Perfect Food®, probiotics known as RAW Probiotics®, enzymes known as RAW Enzymes®, and even the first raw, organic, and plant-based protein powder and meal replacement known as RAW Protein® and RAW Meal®, I understand very well the power of consuming raw nutrients. When it came to formulating EA Pulse, I knew from the beginning that we had to use raw whole food ingredients and bioactive compounds in their most usable, easy-to-digest form. That meant using ingredients that were unheated, untreated, and unadulterated.
The idea of consuming raw foods isn’t a new concept. Adam and Eve, we’re told in the Bible’s first book of Genesis, subsisted on raw fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts in the Garden of Eden. Certainly throughout biblical times people ate much of their food raw and made raw nuts and seeds cornerstones of their diet, especially during the winter months when fresh fruit and vegetables weren’t readily available.
Fast forward to present times, when our high-tech world has figured out how to take fresh fruits, farm-grown vegetables, and raw nuts and seeds and process these nutrient-dense gifts from God into manufactured, microwave-friendly, and mass-produced foods that are anything but healthy for us.
We need to swing the pendulum back to eating raw live foods as quickly as possible.
One of the biggest benefits of a raw food is the abundance of enzymes it contains. Enzymes are small bioactive proteins that act as catalysts, meaning they speed up chemical reactions in the body. Enzymes, as I explained in the last chapter, help the body turn food into energy and then unlock this energy for use in the body.
The enzymes present in raw foods play a vital role in our health because if you’re not supplying your body with the enzymes it needs to break down the foods you eat and produce biochemical reactions, then the body will deplete the stores of enzymes already present, placing a burden on your enzyme-producing organs such as the pancreas. While the body’s digestive system produces a substantial number of different enzymes, the body needs specific enzymes that can only be obtained directly from raw foods in the diet.
To help you better understand enzymes, below are the three types of enzymes your body utilizes:
◼ Metabolic enzymes are produced by the pancreas and perform a wide variety of functions. Breathing, eating, sleeping, digestion, absorption of nutrients, muscular movement, growth, blood circulation, immune system function, and sensory perception all are dependent on metabolic enzymes.
◼ Digestive enzymes are utilized in the digestive tract, where they aid in the digestion, absorption, and utilization of food. Digestive enzymes are produced by the pancreas in response to eating cooked food. When we eat raw foods, the pancreas doesn’t need to produce as many enzymes or potentially none at all.
◼ Food enzymes are found only in raw unheated foods and help initiate the process of digestion in the mouth and stomach. So while our digestive organs produce enzymes internally, the rest must come from live foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, raw sprouted seeds and grains, and raw unpasteurized dairy products, to name a few.
Food enzymes are vital to the body because they can help pre-digest the food before it reaches the small intestine, thereby reducing the need for the pancreas to produce more digestive enzymes. This is another reason the Daniel Diet consists of raw live foods.
I don’t believe, however, that you need to consume an entirely raw diet all the time, although there are periods when it makes sense—such as when you cleanse each quarter, month, week, and even at times during each day.
In addition, I believe that most people should consume more raw live foods in their diet because too many meals are consumed away from home in restaurants, which serve mainly cooked and processed food. Everyone agrees that consuming more fresh greens, vegetables, and fruits is an excellent way to reach optimal health, but few see that through. You can be part of the solution.
As much as I like raw foods and what they can do for the body, I recommend that a few certain foods be cooked. If you’re going to consume grains, I believe the cooking process makes them more digestible.
Likewise, when certain fibrous vegetables such as cauliflower and broccoli are cooked, the heating process softens the fiber and makes them more digestible in my opinion. Same with legumes and beans, which should be ideally soaked overnight and then baked or boiled. Nuts and seeds, when consumed raw, may also cause some digestive complaints, which is why I recommend soaking and sprouting.
I have some personal favorites when it comes to consuming raw foods. Here are a few:
◼ Avocados, with their creamy rich texture, provide protein, healthy monounsaturated fats, and enzymes galore, especially lipase, the fat-digesting enzyme. If my salad doesn’t have avocado, I feel like something is missing.
◼ Bananas are another enzyme-rich food, but note of caution: the more bananas ripen, the more enzymes that are utilized in the process. Try to eat bananas before they are overripe.
◼ Pineapple is the main source of bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme that has been used for centuries to support healthy inflammation. The less ripe the pineapple, the more enzymes.
◼ Papaya, a fruit native to Central America and tropical latitudes, contains the protein-digesting enzyme papain, which has a mild and soothing effect on the stomach. When isolated, papain is used as a meat tenderizer because of the way it breaks down proteins.
◼ Mangos originated in Southeast Asia and are grown in Mexico, Haiti, the Caribbean, and South America. You’ll find enzymes in mangos that stimulate the metabolism and detoxify the intestines. Again, the less ripe the fruit, the greater the enzyme content.
◼ Alfalfa sprouts contain enzymes such as lipase to break down fat; amylase and sucrase, which break down carbohydrates and convert them into easy-to-digest sugars; pectinase to digest starches; and protase to digest proteins. Sprouts such as alfalfa also contain antioxidant enzymes such as SOD (super oxide dismutase) and catalase.
◼ Raw sauerkraut is a fermented veggie blend that is consumed as a healthful food in various cultures around the world, but here in this country, most commercially-available sauerkraut is processed with heat and made with vinegar, which eliminates the naturally occurring enzymes beneficial to the digestive tract. When sauerkraut or cultured veggies are made simply with probiotic cultures, salt (optional), and good old-fashioned time, they are amazing foods to support digestive and immune system function.
Consuming more raw live foods is a critical part of the Maker’s Diet Revolution eating plan. By placing an emphasis on the consumption of nutrient-dense, enzyme- and probiotic-rich raw foods, you’ll eliminate cravings for many unhealthy—and even addictive—foods in your daily diet.
You may experience an increase in food cravings, have mild headaches, or even undergo changes in bowel habits as you integrate more raw, nutrient-dense, and high-fiber foods into your diet, but those will be minor bumps in the road and long forgotten after you experience a transformation in mind, body, and spirit during your Maker’s Diet Revolution.