Soup Machine

There’s this chemical soup that is so amazing that it’s often confused for a machine. You can put almost any organic thing into it, and it just keeps jugging along. The less than perfect organic materials do seem to slow it down, but mostly that’s attributed to something wrong with the soup mix mistaken as machine. So other substances are often dumped in to correct it. Sometimes it helps, but mostly the extra stuff just masks the real issues with the mixture. Sometimes Hydroxyl group chemicals are dumped in just for fun, and then the soup really jumps around. Eventually however, the soup mix degrades and just plain stops working.

The soup, of course, is us.

Often, the ‘machine’ analogy used for the human body is over-simplified. It has parts, yes, but chemical - biological parts that re-generate (and only to a point). Stress the parts out long enough and things break down irrevocably.

I myself have often used the machine analogy, to justify bad habits such as over-eating, eating the wrong things, or drinking too much alcohol. Justification can come in many forms, but it’s usually something like this: Well, I really want another donut, so I’ll just have to run a few extra miles…. Ah, I haven’t drunk any beer since last week, so I’ll have an extra one now…… I’m an athlete; I need simple carbohydrates for fuel. All of which are either false or simple justification for bad habits.

The problem is of course, the soup is already stressed out from eating donuts, drinking beer and continually dumping over-refined products into it, and they can be a lousy fuel for extra miles on a system already stressed out from bad habits.

Simple carbs are not the thing for long term recovery and cellular repair; they can be the thing for fuel during activity, when used correctly. Here’s simple for you:

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

Last week I started on a regime of eating more raw foods. I started slowly, and right in the middle of a cold virus. The virus actually made it easier; nothing tasted good anyway. I recovered about 3 times as fast as many people around me with the same bug. I am up to about 35 – 40 % of my daily calories as completely raw foods. The other bonus, besides the extra nutrients is that the ‘bulk’ takes up space in your stomach and digestive tracts, so you don’t feel as hungry, another is that raw foods take more energy to process.

Oh, and here’s another earth shattering bit of news: the raw food diet doesn’t have to be expensive. A one pound bag of carrots is about a buck and a half; a pound of broccoli is about two bucks.

I enjoy eating, but there is a balance of eating the foods that are good for you, the foods that taste good, and the foods that are both. The western diet of refined products is killing us. And therefore, I quit.

Simply.