Raw is a great lifestyle to aspire to. It promotes personal health and vitality in addition to helping preserve the environment. But, surprisingly enough, there is something even better than raw: living foods.
An uncooked carrot from your local farmer’s market is a wonderful thing. However, it is still a dead (or at least dying) food. The second you extract it from the ground, it begins a gradual process of death & decay which slowly robs this vegetable of its vitality and nutrition. Technically speaking, it is no longer a living food. Research is now showing that fresh produce loses nutritional value dramatically even within hours of harvest.
Of course, with carrots and many other foods there is no side-stepping this process. Whenever possible, you should eat these food as fresh as possible (freshly harvested veggies from your own garden are still pretty darn alive!). However, you can actually do one better by eating living foods. A living food is a food that is still attached to its source of life and is therefore still growing and alive. Sprouts are the main example of living foods, but there are several others worth learning about.
Other examples of living foods include: sprouted beans & seeds, germinated (soaked) nuts & seeds, sprouted grains and live fermented foods.
