Mineral-rich foods are the raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains that make up the Genesis 1, 29 Diet. To discuss their benefits, I intend to compare them with our usual over-cooked ‘dead’ food that is common with us. In doing so I shall be presenting the processing of food through the gastrointestinal tract (the GIT). The importance of the GIT to our health on one hand and to disease forming processes cannot be over-emphasised.
It extends from the mouth to the anus and along that path you have the eosophagus, the stomach, small intestine, large intestine that opens to the outside at the anus. The pancreas, an endocrine organ, is attached to the GIT at the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. The pancreas secretes insulin and an aqueous, alkaline, buffer solution into the intestine. Generally
When food is chewed in the mouth, it is mixed with the enzyme ptyalin in the saliva. Ptyalin is an enzyme in the saliva that breaks down starch to sugars. Therefore, the digestion of the carbohydrates that we eat begins in the mouth. This is either the carbohydrates left after cooking or that which comes from the components of our mineral-rich Genesis 1, 29 Diet. The difference here is that the raw vegetables, unlike the cooked food have enzymes in them that aid and speed up the digestion of carbohydrates in them. This is an advantage over the cooked food. Digestion of the raw food becomes faster and is more complete than the cooked food. That being the case, acid formation and accumulation is less with the raw food than with cooked food.
Further churning of the food and mixing with acid occurs in the stomach from where they are passed to the small intestine. In the duodenum, the acid food mix from the stomach, known as chyme, is acted upon by the aqueous alkaline buffer solution from the pancreas. This is to neutralize the acid in the chyme. More digestive juices, containing enzymes such as amylase, lipase and protease are introduced at this point where further digestion occurs. After the digestion of the chyme, absorption takes place also in the small intestine. Absorption is the movement of the digested food through the wall of the intestine into the circulatory system. The water-soluble food matter is then transported to the liver where they are detoxified. Undigested food matter and waste products are then moved into the large intestine. Here the fibre content of the food plays a very significant role.
Cooked foods are usually devoid of fibre while the fibre content of the raw foods is very high. Movement of digested, undigested and waste matter is dependent on the fibre content of the food. Raw vegetables and fruits are usually loaded with fibre and such foods move faster into and in the large intestine. On the contrary, cooked food that lack fibre move slowly in the large intestine. In fact, cooked food with animal protein and a lot of starch tend to cause constipation because they lack fibre.
Apart from increasing the movement of colonic contents, fibre also cleanses the colon. Increased rate of movement of faecal matter and cleansing of the colon, reduce the amount of acid that is produced and released from the colon. Taking this further still, acid accumulation, which we know is a cause of cancer, is reduced to the barest minimum with the raw foods because acid production is low with such foods. On the contrary, because there is no fibre in the cooked food, movement of faecal matter is very slow, causing constipation. The longer the faecal matter remains in the colon, the more acid is produced and released into the system. This is a risk factor for cancer of the colon and possibly, cancer in more distant parts of the body from the colon.
To summarize, the benefits of the mineral-dense raw vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts and whole grains include speeding up digestion of food and taking such to a completion and the role of fibre in preventing acid formation and accumulation.
In this new series, I intendbto dwell on the wellbeing of the gastrointestinal tract and the effect of the food we eat, raw foods or our usual ‘dead’ and over-cooked diet. There are several diseases that occur locally in the GIT and some of them secondarily affect other tissues and organs far away. Consumption of the right diet and drinking the right water sufficiently should prevent some if not all the diseases.
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