In the next few blogs, I’ll review for you research on the benefits of raw plant food I found in various sources.   Unfortunately, science isn’t too interested in studying the effects of people eating raw food.   Who would fund large-scale prevention studies to document what happens when we don’t tax our enzyme production organs, by providing enzyme-rich food?

Surely not the drug companies, not companies perpetually in search of patentable products, not the meat or dairy or refined foods industries.   That’s who is funding most modern research.  

But we do have a handful of interesting studies to talk about. Let’s start by going back to the very old work done by Dr. Francis Pottenger in California in the 1930′s that started the huge and growing “raw” movement.

For over 10 years, Pottenger studied groups of cats, totally more than 900, through three generations.   Two groups were fed identical amounts of meat, milk, and vegetables.   The only difference was that in one group, the food was cooked, and the other, the food was raw.   In the RAW group, the original cats and their children and grandchildren were all healthy.   However, the cats in the COOKED group had health problems including these:

Sexual/hormonal problems (males docile and not interested in females; females aggressive and irritable)

Infertility (25% in first generation, 70% second gen, completely sterile third generation)

Lower birth weights

Respiratory infections

Allergies

Many congenital deformities

Underactive thyroid

Liver disorders

Intestinal parasites

Vision problems

Hair loss

Brittle bones

Arthritis

Heartburn

Brain thickening

Skin lesions

Oozing mucous membranes

Spinal cord degeneration

The degeneration of the cats’ health was noticeable in the first generation, but much worse in the children, and devastating in the third generation.   Humans, too, affect their genetic material with their diet and hand off weaknesses to their offspring.   As my mom always says, it’s not what you do now and then that’s going to kill you or save you, it’s what you do EVERY DAY.