Dead Food

Well I can't mention dead food without thinking about my Ayurveda (Ayurveda is a natural, traditional Indian practice of medicine) teacher Kamsella, you mention dead food around her and she cringes. It's what I always think about whenever I think of dead food.

Dead food is food which is literally food which is dead. Dead with nutrients, vitamins, minerals and enzymes. Even health food can be dead food- kind of shocking, but true.

Say I make a salad Saturday night and don't eat it until Monday afternoon. My once healthy salad is now dead. Most people don't think of this, including myself, until it was brought to my attention, and it makes sense! When food is left out on the counter, or in the fridge it's enzymes die. Enzymes are proteins which the body uses and NEEDS for metabolic processes- everything your body does is because of the help of enzymes, so don't kill them! If you're microwaving food, your food is instantly dead, even more dead if it's last night's dinner you're microwaving.

Dead food is also packaged food, canned food and generally frozen food (think of those Michalena's microwave dinners- yuck! Loaded with sodium, chemical preservatives and microwaving it on top, no thank you! That's the dead of the dead right there). A prime example of freshly baked dead food would be a donut. This is such a dead food because it literally offers zero health benefits. It does however offer, for the exchange of a dollar or two, saturated and trans fats, sugar, artifical colouring, white, refined flour, sodium, and is cooked at high high temperatures. You can see what I mean by dead now, right?

I always talk about being prepared and planning in advance so I thought I should talk about Dead Food. It is important to prepare, otherwise you make poor choices when you're on a tight schedule. SO, prepare, but don't over prepare. Pre-cut your veggies right before you go to bed if you don't have time in the morning, for a healthy snack the next day. Do your preparing as close to the time of consumption as possible to avoid eating dead food.

The best way to avoid dead food is to eat FRESH. Reduce your cooking time and temperature (or altogether if possible...more on Raw Food later), eat what was grown from the Earth. If it was made in a factory it's going to be closer to the morgue- so skip it!

Eat fresh, eat clean, eat living enzymes!