If you've been hearing a lot about raw foods lately it's because people are finally starting to pay attention to what they're putting into their mouths and the effect it's having on their bodies. It's long been known that healthier diets are those that include a lot of fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds and are often referred to as the raw food diet.

Raw food diets are not the kind of diet you go on to just lose weight although you'll lose a lot of weight fast, but a lifetime approach to a better quality of life and superior health.

Raw foods are also called living foods, and are essentially foods that are alive. Cooked foods include all those foods that have been cooked, canned, processed, packaged or refined, etc., in other words, anything that is no longer alive.

Adding more living foods to your diet has many health benefits. People find they need less sleep, have much better mental clarity, can focus and concentrate on tasks, have lots of energy, lose weight, get sick less often or not at all, get rid of various ailments, have less aches and pains and more.

Raw foods retain the enzymes they need to digest it properly. If foods are not raw then the enzyme structure has been tampered with by heating and they can no longer do their natural job which is to digest the food they are a part of. This makes the body work harder and the raw food community experts believe it's because the body has to tap emergency enzyme supplies in the pancreas to digest the cooked food. This makes one feel tired and less energetic after eating whereas if you eat living food you feel energized after eating.

Heating, (including pasteurization), also damages or nullifies many of the vitamins, minerals and beneficial phytonutrients.

It's easy to start incorporating more fruits and veggies into your diet without it being a totally raw food diet. I believe we need a lot more fruits and veggies than is now promoted in the media.

For breakfast you can have two or three fruits along with whatever else you're having except try to eliminate as much cooked, dead food, as you can. For lunch have fruits and veggies or a huge salad and eliminate any bad foods. Or have the huge salad for dinner along with some fruit and then have whatever you'd like for dinner. For snacks eat more fruit or nuts, for example.

You can easily learn to fix some of the simple raw food recipes that are found in raw food un-cookbooks. You can make things like candy, fudge, pie and cakes that are all healthy and include nothing cooked. Of course the best diet is one of all raw foods but if you're unable to do that you'll still greatly benefit from changing your diet to a more healthy way.

You can buy fruit at reasonable prices if you shop farms, farmer's markets and watch sales in the whole foods stores etc. Or maybe grow some of it yourself if you can or join one of the community gardens! Besides you may be giving up some expensive healthy food in the process because your body won't have room for it with all the fruit, veggies, nuts and seeds you're eating!

I'm in excellent health after changing my diet to all raw foods in 1999, curing myself naturally of breast cancer, arthritis, fibromyalgia, acid reflux, sinus infections, digestive problems and many other ailments.

Try changing your diet to include more living or raw foods even if it's slow-going and you'll start to see some wonderful changes in your health. You don't have to eat an all raw food diet to enjoy great health. Soon you may find that besides loving feeling great you really do enjoy raw foods.