And why do people feel warm on a cooked diet? 😉

In this blog post I want to answer a question that pops up often, which is about feeling cold on a raw diet.

There are couple of points that I would like to explain here.

Constantly Elevated Body Temperature

It has been shown that the body responds to the intake of cooked food with the body’s defense mechanism, known as digestive leukocytosis, that is, an increased number of white blood cells in response to the intake of something that is toxic to the body, along with a slightly elevated body temperature.

This defensive response of the body doesn’t occur after the intake fresh food.

On average, people cause digestive leukocytosis along with a slight fever, three times a day and thus people practically live in a slightly elevated body temperature all the time and are used to that temperature.

Due to this, many people find it difficult to handle hot weather.

On our natural diet, the body temperature is not elevated, which allows us to comfortably tolerate our original habitat – the tropics.

When a person stops with the intake of cooked food, there is no more elevation of the body temperature on daily basis, which can at first create a feeling that the body is not being warmed and this only lasts until the person becomes accustomed to the new body temperature, which is actually the natural and healthy body temperature.

Poor circulation

I’ll explain this point with one of my experiences.

About 10 years ago, I spent 10 days on a business trip in Germany when it was extremely cold there. In a group of about 10 people, I was the only one who was eating a vegan diet and was replacing her breakfast with running outside, in the snow, in the cold. So, every morning, everyone in our group would gather in the dinning room where an extremely fatty and animal based foods were served for breakfast, while I would go for a run outside, in the snow.

After running and taking a shower, I would join the group that had just finished breakfast. Then we would all walk together from our housing place to the building where the project we were working on was taking place. During that walk, everyone was complaining about the weather. I was complaining that I was burning and I would unbutton my jacket to feel some refreshment, while others were complaining that they were freezing.

The point of the story: even though these people were eating cooked and extremely heavy food, they were freezing because they did not speed up their circulation through physical exercising.

And this is just one example. I have seen many similar examples that show that the intake of cooked food gives a short-term primary effect of feeling warmed, followed by a long-lasting secondary effect of feeling cold if the circulation is not sped through vigorous movement.

Higher water content in food = greater sense of cold

Would you say there is a reason why watermelons are available in summer, while dates and bananas are available in winter?

Watermelons, melons, cucumbers, grapes… and similar high water content fruits and vegetables, grow in summer, because these high water content foods provide a cooling sensation in the body, that feels good in warm weather.

On the other hand, dates, bananas, and many tropical fruits, such as durian, jackfruit, chempedack, mamey sapote and alike, are fruits with relatively low water content and thus have no cooling effect on the body.

Some fatty fruits, such as durian, for example, require that the body spends more effort, more energy, in processing them through the digestive system. As the body uses more energy to process them, the body therefore generates energy in the body that gives a feeling of warmth.

Cold food

Of course, cold food cools the body, why it is very important that the food is of room temperature when consumed.

I hope that this blog post was useful to you. If so, please share it and let me know your thoughts on it in the comments below.

Keep glowing,
Marina