This has been the cry I give to my children lately. Eat raw food! With the study of nutrition being so important for good health I have come to the realization that eating as much raw food as possible is one of the best ways to keep a healthy body. Your digestive system works better, your blood stays cleaner, your weight is better controlled and your body absorbs more nutrition. It’s just an all-around better way to feed your body. Healthy people have healthy families and it is a great blessing to many to consider good nutrition to maintain healthy eating habits for the whole family.
A long time ago (about 40 years) my father found that eating as much raw food as possible over a period of time helps his rheumatoid arthritis. He was sick of getting shots and they really didn’t work very well anyway because he still felt pain. With eating raw food as much as possible in his diet, his joints didn’t hurt so much and they would grow stronger. He is now 88 years old and has no medication from the doctor. Taking that philosophy, I try to balance the meal of cooked food to uncooked food.
We eat fruit and vegetables and lots of them! How do I keep my family in raw food without spending a fortune? Gardening! The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have always encouraged their members to garden and we find a great satisfaction in growing our own food. This is the time to plan where and what you will do with your garden.
The law of the harvest states if you will till, plant and care for what you have planted, a bounteous garden will grow. With a long winter this year, even for the south, we are planning our family vegetable garden to be planted a little later than normal in hopes for a great bounty. We plant onions, radishes, zucchini, bell peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans. We plant with the best intentions to gain a full bounty of vegetables but it doesn’t always turn out that way. Even if we don’t get as much as we like, it’s still a good rule of a green thumb for families to plant every year.
Cucumbers, carrots and string beans are great raw snacks. Cucumbers are a big hit and I slice them as much as I could gather and make dill pickles to place in the refrigerator because we love the stash of cool, crispy dill pickles. They are not cooked and they are delicious. Carrots are sweet and string beans have a wonderful flavor when eaten raw.
Tomatoes also have a hard time in the humidity even though we plant near shade so my tomatoes are somewhat limited. I did make 6 quarts of spaghetti sauce last summer as we kept eating most of the tomatoes in salads and as apples. They are delicious.
Bell Peppers are our biggest bounty. Not only do bell peppers grow profusely but they continue to grow even when it gets cold up until November. It really is amazing. It’s great to go out to the garden in October and pick a few peppers for a salad or sauce. I also dice bell peppers and put them in quart freezer bags to use later in the winter.
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Of course with all of this bounty, I share much of it with my neighbors and friends. Not everyone has room for a garden or the determination to see it through so fresh vegetables is a welcome find for anyone. I also trade my surplus of cucumbers or bell peppers for something I don’t grow, like figs. In southern Alabama, figs are very plentiful and strawberry fig jam is a big hit at my house and makes a great item to trade.
Besides picking your own food in the back yard for better health, growing vegetables has so many other benefits. When families work together to take care of a garden, children learn to work through a project they start and the fruit of their labors is worth the end result. The cry of raw food for better health and planting a family garden to supply our own raw food helps families stay healthy and happy. Ezra Taft Benson (past LDS church president) said it well: “The revelation to produce and store food may be as essential to our temporal welfare today as boarding the ark was to the people in the days of Noah” (Ezra Taft Benson, “To the Fathers in Israel,” Ensign, Nov. 1987, 49).
Valerie Steimle has been writing as a family advocate for over 25 years. As a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she promotes Christian living in her writings and is the mother of nine children and grandmother to twelve. Mrs. Steimle authored six books and is a contributing writer to several online websites. To her, time is the most precious commodity we have and knows we should spend it wisely.
To read more of Valerie's work, visit her at her website, The Blessings of Family Life.
I have also found amazing benefits from eating raw. Nothing gets rid of tooth pain quicker than raw purple cabbage and then eating raw. My skin is clearer, I have more energy, hormones don’t swing quite so widely, and I heal more quickly.
I just now need to figure out gardening in a new state.
Yes!! Totally agree and the great thing is that many people are beginning to realize this as well…