Food preparation does matter
Most of us feel as long as we are eating the right foods we are doing good and that is a great start.
Buying quality, organic, free-range food is doing your body a world of good. There are however more factors that come into play with foods and how our body can absorb that food. How we prepare food is another large factor of this. Plant foods have a cellulose wall that our body has to break through, meats how we cook it can make it incomplete. Cooking foods with sugars that are unnatural to the foods can cause inflammation factors and the sugars can bind with the protein keeping us from digesting.
Today I am focusing on the preparation of foods and how you can make the food simpler to digest. When it comes to plant-based food it is important to ferment, soak, or cook the plant foods. Without overcooking them to drain the nutrients. Fermenting is a great way to support good gut health. Fermenting helps to break down the cellulose wall and to open up the plant so you can absorb the nutrients sealed up deep down in them. It also helps to take away excess sugars and promote probiotics for the gut. Fermenting is a way of predigesting the foods it is creating a break down of the plants supporting good digestion. We need this in this modern-day due to how much we have sterilized all the foods fearing bacteria. Promoting good bacteria and predigested foods helps us to nourish. We have a lot of sugars that alkalize the stomach and promote candida which causes an imbalance of bacteria. We also think that we need to alkalize our bodies one of the largest reasons we get parasites and food poisoning is the imbalance of the acidity and alkalinity with in digestive tract. The stomach needs to be acidic to do its job, of killing parasites and bad bacteria if you have acidity where it is needed those issues should not be a problem.
Soaking is another way to open up plants and get rid of toxins. It works like fermenting, helping to break down the exterior cellulose wall, if you add apple cider vinegar to it you are also helping to clean any sprays and toxins that may be on the outside of the plant food. I recommend soaking all plant foods, that are not in a shell that you would remove before eating, in Apple cider vinegar before eating.
Cooking is also helping to open the wall to get the nutrients inside. Eating raw plants isn't all it is cracked up to be, it has its time and place that it can do good. All plants have toxins they release to protect themselves by fermenting, soaking, and cooking your helping to get rid of these before eating the food. When it comes to organs and meats you really want to not overcook the meat, granted you do not need it to be raw, but cooking it till it is burnt is taking away your ability to get the nutrients from the meat. You also do not want to cook it with sugar toppings. The protein and sugars, when cooked really well, char those charred parts are not something the body can digest. Just adding sugar toppings also can make for inflammation in the body.
When it comes to food knowing your body's needs can help you go towards the foods you should be eating. Then you need to learn the proper way to prepare them so that you can digest them. Also, support your digestive tract is helping to make sure you enjoy your food, but also absorb it. These are all necessary aspects of having a healthy body. Take health one day at a time, challenge yourself to improve, we are all human and it is about learning and then implementing habits. Always strive for growth, not for perfection. It is about what we do the majority of the time not what we do once in a while that creates a healthy body.