Eating a 100% Raw Vegan Diet: Eating cooked foods is unnatural to us. After all we weren't born with pots and pans for hands were we? We are the only living organism that cooks it's food. Our bodies evolved slowly over thousands of years. We have eaten cooked food only in the most recent past, in evolutionary terms. Our bodies just haven't caught up. When food is heated over 45 degrees centigrade, it's natural enzymes are destroyed. These enzymes actually are supposed to digest your food without your body doing anything. In addition, the enzymes work on your body, healing and repairing it. Enzymes are life. Enzymes are energy. When you eat cooked food, because the enzymes have been cooked out of it, the enzymes are taken from your body to digest it. Leading nutritionist Dr. Edward Howell suggests that "By age 40 the average person only has about 30% of their enzymes left, plus they have to give about 75% of their energy to detoxify the body." (Victoria Boutenko 12 Steps To Raw Food) Ever wonder why you are so tired? To survive, our bodies have adjusted to eating cooked food. Our bodies create their first mucus as a baby when we eat our first cooked food; the mucus is made from the cooked food. This mucus acts as a protective filter; it protects the digestive tract from the toxic cooked food. The tract is meant to absorb the nutrients from food, but the mucus prevents this from happening. Natural health practitioners call this mucus mucoid plaque. It is a green rubbery hose about 25 yards long. The more mucus we have, the fewer nutrients we assimilate from our food. We get hungrier and hungrier as our body asks for more and more food, trying to get some nourishment out of it, but it's all in vain, and we are never satisfied. When we go 100% raw the plaque is dissolved. If you eat 75% cooked food you assimilate only 0.1% of your food, if you eat 25% cooked food you assimilate 1%, if you eat 1% cooked food you assimilate 3%, but if you eat 100% raw food you assimilate a whopping 30% of your food. (Victoria Botenko 12 Steps To Raw Food) So you end up eating much less, but being healthier and having more energy than before.