I have heard so much about superfoods and their benefits. What's your
experience and what do you think about them?

Are there such things as superfoods? Gogi berries, cocoa beans, nibs and
powder, noni juice and powder, maca root powder, acai berries and powder,
hemp seed powder, camu camu berries and powder, green-tea extract, blue
mangosteen, cod liver and fish oils, green powders and pills made from
green grasses and their juices and algae such as spirulina, and chlorella
are all claimed as raw superfoods by many people in the raw-food movements.
I found that it is mainly within the vegetarian and vegan raw-food groups
that people seek superfoods. It is helpful to understand why they must have
superfoods.

Consider that humans have acidic and short digestive tracts producing
acidic digestive fluids and harboring acidic bacteria, and 80% of teeth are
designed for cutting, extremely similar to carnivores. Herbivores have
mainly alkaline and very long digestive tracts producing vast amounts of
alkaline- digestive juices and bacteria, and all teeth are molars for
grinding vegetation. Rarely are there healthy long-term raw vegetarians and
vegans. Usually, the more committed ones hit a wall at 7 years. Others that
cheat may spend a decade or two before they hit the wall. Often, the wall
is serious disease such as cancer. Half of my cancer patients were
long-term vegetarians and vegans.

Ninety-nine percent of human vegetarians and vegans cannot get enough
protein and fats, and lack minerals and an array of nutrients from their
diets. Ninety-nine percent of their bodies are unfulfilled and unsatisfied.
I know from 6 years of subjective and objective experience as a raw
"balanced-diet- eating vegetarian evolved to vegan." I and ALL of the
vegetarians and vegans I knew were usually malnourished with eating
disorders. I adhered to it 99.9% of the time. Others were much less
tenacious. However, occasionally, uncontrollably yet consciously, I
stretched and contorted what foods were truly raw, trying to force reality
to conform to my adopted concepts of vegetarianism and veganism.

I did not realize the irrationality of believing that humans were optimally
healthy as raw-food vegetarians and vegans. I had accepted the false
information that our digestive tracts were more alkaline like other
primates, and herbivores. I was so malnourished, anytime anyone told me
about a superfood such as amaranth "grain of Egyptian gods", I consumed it.
However, all such promises of superfoods resulted in my slow but steady
deterioration to 96 pounds at 5'8".

Primal-Diet-eating athlete Scott Wheeler of Australia for example won the
race at the Raw Games in Hawaii November 2008. All of the other runners
were vegetarians or vegans, some mostly raw and some not.

Ninety percent or more of all of currently purported superfoods are
processed and not truly raw. They are not fresh so they lack enzymes.
Whenever foods are dried, bioactive enzymes are inactivated like a dead
auto battery. They cannot be resurrected any more than we can resurrect
ourselves from dead. Therefore, even dried fruits are not really raw
because they lack bioactive enzymes.

Although Native North American Indians lacked our laboratory sciences, they
knew the inferior nature of dried food. They had empirical science called
experience. Empirical awareness and knowledge is much more valuable,
containing wisdom rather than conclusions based on chemical theories and
hypotheses.

Each summer, Native Americans made large supplies of a mixture of dried
meat and fat, sometimes adding berries. It is called pemmican. It would be
eaten in case they could not find fresh kill. Eating pemmican would prevent
starvation, fatigue and bodily deterioration. The process of making
pemmican was time-consuming, both hunting and preparing it by drying,
beating it until it became flour, soaking it in the sun with warmed fat,
drying it in the sun and sitting near it and occasionally pressing it into
90 pound dried hard blocks. By spring, if they did not consume it, they
buried it because they knew it would not be optimum for their health.

Let's take a look at the processes that so-called superfoods undergo to see
if they are truly raw. Noni juice is chemically or heat processed to
prevent fermentation in bottles. The chemical process utilizes kerosene
derivative or alcohol. Both are natural but toxic. All "superfoods" that
are powdered must be thoroughly dried so they do not cake and stick in the
machines while being ground. When hard foods such as cocoa beans and roots
are ground into flour, the machines reach a temperature of at least 176° F
(80° C), cauterizing the foods.

Cauterization seals the food and makes it harder. It is therefore harder to
liquefy and takes more time to digest in the digestive tract. Also, any
metallic minerals in the foods will be released by the heat and be more
toxic. Claims that such foods are 100% raw and have more antioxidants are
false, after drying and cauterizing/cooking. They have the opposite effect
in varying degrees.

Whole leaf grasses and fruits also have to be completely dried and hardened
for powdering. Rarely are any grasses sun-dried. Usually, they are
kiln-dried at temperatures above 118° F (48° C) and up to 138° F(59° C).
They are also subjected to the same friction-heat from machines during the
powdering processes that reach at least 176° F (80° C). They are not raw
because all enzymes are destroyed and the food is cauterized/cooked. Also,
we are not herbivores that can properly digest vegetable matter, especially
when dried. The only exception is chlorella; I have experimented and found
it to be somewhat beneficial. Commercial liquid green teas are all steeped
in boiling water.

Sometimes, kerosene derivatives, distilled alcohol or other chemicals are
sprayed on those foods to breakdown the oils and force them to dry faster.
Since kerosene and alcohol are natural, they may legally call the product
"All Natural." They know they mislead consumers and they do not care. Their
interest is to supply products for abundant profits rather than produce
quality products for which they obtain less profit.

The same is true of acai, camu camu, gogi, and noni. There are many
beneficial claims about those foods so most people who consume them believe
my analyses of those foods are wrong. However, consider that people feel
better because most of those foods are high in carbohydrates and raise the
blood and nerve sugar levels causing hyperactivity.

Raised blood and nerve sugar levels are not indications of health. In fact,
they are indications of bodily harm. Columbia University found that we
store 70-90% of Advanced Glycation End-products (AGEs), byproducts from
spent high-carbohydrates, in our bodies for a lifetime. AGEs are cancer
feeding byproducts that cause many ill effects, including arterial
sclerosis by attaching to venous and arterial walls.

Also, infusions of powders cause increases in hormones such as adrenalin,
also elevating energy levels but not to healthful benefits long-term. All
endocrine glandular production is for emergency purposes only. For
instance, adrenaline is for fight and/or flight. We are supposed to derive
our energy from foods that supply fats, proteins with little carbohydrate,
rich in enzymes and bacteria. If we were to eat proper raw foods rich in
fats and proteins, and digest and assimilate them properly, most of us
would have improved energy and stamina. After many years of eating a proper
diet, we would develop tremendous energy and stamina. Like primitive
Eskimos, we could live happily in the most strenuous climates and
environments.

Cocoa beans (cacao), nibs and powder contain theobromine which is similar
to caffeine and a nerve irritant. When cooked and/or processed, that neural
irritant is a free radical. It often stimulates hormones such as
adrenaline, testosterone and estrogen, making people think their new energy
is healthful.

The only truly raw cocoa bean retains it moist skin and must be hand
peeled. In small amounts it may be briefly ground in a coffee-bean grinder
or blender without reaching high temperatures to retain its rawness and
nutrition. I discussed the benefits of eating small amounts of raw cocoa
beans in the earlier PD newsletter issue Vol. 7, Oct. 30, 2007. I have a
correction to that. Cocoa beans do not contain the nerve
stimulants/irritants caffeine or theophylline. They contain theobromine of
the same family as caffeine and theophylline.

Fish and cod liver oils must have all proteins removed on which bacteria
can feed, according to USFDA standards. That requires heat and/or chemical
processes to separate and extract proteins. Two companies claim they
produce their fish oils without heat or chemicals but they add processed
oils as preservatives. Although that is a small amount, those preservative
oils have been heat and chemically processed. How much fish oil is lost to
the heated and processed preservative oils? How much of the fish oil will
be contaminated by the processed preservative oils? We can glean an idea by
the fact that they add enough to prevent the oil from being predigested by
natural bacteria. If all of the oil is prevented from predigestion, how
much will we not be able to digest? How much will the contaminated
preservative oils contaminate us?

As a civilized race whose members eat processed and chemicalized-food, we
require air-conditioning and heat in our homes and transportation to
sustain us or we cannot work, play or eat. Our perspiration would reek. So
many people I know who exercise reek of old stinky sauces, especially
tomato sauces. They have a body odor like the outdoor garbage bin of
fast-food Italian restaurants or pizza parlors on a hot summer day. That
odor is from chemically produced flavorings and fragrances added to tomato
sauces to make flavor and odor consistent. Civilized man is now the weakest
organism on this planet.

"Superfood" is a misnomer. All lack enzymes and little can be digested and
assimilated. Some contain nerve irritants and other chemicals that cause
the body to produce hormones that flow through blood and nerves, elevating
a sense of well-being without elevated true health. Therefore, the body's
responses to "superfoods" indicate toxic responses. Calling any processed
food superfood is the same as calling supplements magic bullets. However,
if I were to judge any food as superfood, one would be honey that was
unheated above 92° F (33° C). Another would be bone marrow from completely
organically raised animals, fresh and raw in bones.