The Raw Food Approach to Well-Being

What are the benefits of eating raw food, the reader might ask. Let’s think about animals – no animal cooks its food, only humans do. And no animals get as sick as humans do, in particular during the last fifty years or so, when processed foods came largely into being and most meals are prepared by cooking with heat, which is known to change the molecular structure of food, making a lot of nutrients useless.

Raw food is known to be easier to digest than cooked or processed food. If cooked food has lost a lot of its nutrients, it ought to be considered that this food becomes merely waste that needs to be eliminated from the body. This waste can accumulate in the body and in turn lead to a toxic state and result in disease. Raw food, however, can be absorbed almost totally by the body and gives it all nutrients needed for healthy functioning.

Katina used to give deep tissue massage to her clients and after many years noticed that her hands began to ache. She had heard about an alternative health institute in San Diego who taught people to cleanse their bodies by eating raw food and signed up because she hoped this would help with the pain in her hands. She learned new eating habits and was intrigued to see that not only did the pain vanish, she also lost a lot of weight.

She was so intrigued by the well-being resulting from raw food that she became a teacher and taught this approach for many years. She has specialized in raw food treatments as a way of cleansing toxins from the body. A typical treatment is for her having clients staying with her at her house, serving them raw, healing foods to cleanse their bodies and make them well. She calls her house a one-stop-cleaning retreat; it is located up on a hill on a quiet street, with lots of trees around, and features a pool, Jacuzzi, colonic machine and infra-red massage bed – and all that only two miles from the beach. Katina is also available to live-in with clients at their homes to follow their cleansing regimen.

To Katina the benefits of raw food cleanses is that people feel clear, grounded, alive and also lose weight.  It can also help all the vital signs become normal and if done long enough can actually heal the body of disease in some circumstances. Meditation is an important aspect of healing and if people are interested and willing to learn, she teaches that and meditates together with them.

She said, “You might not recognize me from my photo…living in the communes I was always heavier, but once I found my niche in raw foods, I was able to lose and maintain my weight. Before I got in touch with the raw food principles I had never done any kind of diet a 100 % for a long period of time, but eating raw food for the last 20 years is something I always seem to go back to. It keeps my weight down, rejuvenates my mind, body and soul; it keeps me young. It heightens my senses and clears my path to meditation.”

As bodies change over the years, Katina has adjusted her diet according to her physical needs. She said, “Nowadays I no longer eat only raw foods – I am not an orthodox raw foodie! However, I do my cleansing routines, which are solely based on raw food, three or four times a year. I eat simply fruit, veggies, egg whites and fish occasionally and treat myself once in a while to dark chocolate, red wine, crackers and cheese! Important to me is to eat a lot of sprouts on a daily basis – in a salad, as a snack – sprouts are the most amazing healthy, nutritious and great tasting food!”

Check out this delicious and simple raw soup… 

Prem Katina took sannyas in 1979 and lived at the ashram and later for three-and-a-half years in Rajneeshpuram. She started her own massage business in 1986 in Los Angeles and in 1991 moved to San Diego and became part of Optimum Health, a health group that propagates live and raw food. After 12 years as a teacher there, she has been working as an independent nutritional consultant and colon hydrotherapist since 2004. katina_sandiego@yahoo.com

Bhagawati, Osho News