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Trust Marandure
Vitamins and nutrition have become hot topics these days.

New media books, health food stores and advertising campaigns are educating us about why we need vitamins and minerals.

It is encouraging to see an increased realisation of the role nutrients play in preventative healthcare and in helping the body heal itself with a strengthened immune system.

But we are getting a lot of misinformation on this subject from those who profit from the manufacture, distribution or advertising of the multi-billion dollar synthetic vitamin and processed foods industry.

Let us take a look at what modern science knows about nutrition. What we are being told about nutrition and what we are not being told. Synthetic vitamins and processed foods do not offer the same nutrients as raw fruits and vegetables. The influence from the big business of synthetic vitamins and processed foods has led to a neglect of any distinction between natural vitamins and synthetic vitamins. For example, we are generally not told there is any difference between the vitamin C in a fresh apple or orange and the vitamin C in a pharmaceutically manufactured synthetic pill. We are also not told the synthetic added to enrich or fortify processed foods, such as white bread and sugar-coated cereal.

In most of this mass –disseminated information, you also find no distinction between nutrients that are “death” and nutrients that are “life”. We are told to eat our fruits and vegetables, but we are not told that there is a difference between a fresh, living, raw carrot and one that has been boiled, baked, steamed radiated or processed, preserved and stored in a can on a grocery shelf.

Another closely related point that is overlooked is the essential fact that our body is a living organism made of living cells that are constantly regenerating and that living cells need living food to create healthy, new living cells. Scientists understand and accept the fact that the life of our body stems from the life of some 100 trillion living cells that are constantly regenerating. It is estimated that 300 million cells are replaced in our body every minute.

We know the food we eat, the liquids we drink and the air we breathe provide the energy and the building blocks for this massive, ongoing rebuilding of cells. We know that raw vegetables and fruits are composed of living cells, and that the cells of these fruits and vegetables contain the same organic minerals, natural vitamins, living enzymes and amino acids [protein] that our human cells need. We also know that cooking, freezing, radiation or processing kills food, stopping its cellular activity and that once we have taken the life from food, there is nothing we can do that can restore that life. This irreversible change alters the form of minerals and amino acids and destroys all enzymes and most vitamins.

But despite this knowledge, there are those who would like us to believe processed foods are as beneficial to us as raw, living food and that synthetic vitamins in pills and processed foods are the same as natural-occurring vitamins in raw food. They also avoid the subject of whether a person could live healthily on synthetic vitamins alone without ever consuming natural vitamins in food, such as fresh apples or orange.

The truth is that modern science knows relatively little about the long-term effects of how man-made chemicals and altered natural substances interact with our bodies on the cellular level. Warnings have been issued about the dangers of high doses of synthetic vitamin C, B, and A. Similar problems are suspected with synthetic vitamin E. It’s possible that some short-term stimulation may be felt from some synthetic vitamins.

From almost all directions, we are told that cooked, frozen and processed foods and synthetic vitamins are equivalent to fresh, raw food. How could we ever comprehend this tremendous lapse in mass-disseminated scientific knowledge if we fail to consider the fact that there is more money to be made from selling synthetic vitamins and processed foods than raw food, live food that can be grown in a backyard garden?

For example, if you look at the leading health magazines you will see that more than 90 percent of their advertising comes from the manufactures of synthetic vitamins and processed foods.

This fact has a tremendous effect on the information these magazines offer and choose not offer.

Do you think publishers of these magazines, knowing that 90 percent of their advertising revenue comes from synthetic vitamins and processed foods would publish a story informing people that there is a difference between the nutrition in raw foods compared to that in synthetic vitamins and processed foods?

A book first published six decades ago is more advanced than the latest scientific publication on vitamins.

For example, we can consume nutrients from a pound of raw carrots by drinking an 8–fluid–ounce glass of freshly-extracted carrot juice. About 10 minutes after drinking this fresh vegetable juice, its nutrients are already in the blood stream and on the way to our cells. The nutrients in carrots include beta carotene (which becomes vitamin A in our body), the B complex vitamins, vitamin C, D, E, and K along with the minerals iron, calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, magnesium, manganese, sulphur and copper, in addition to all eight essential amino acids.

Raw vegetables and fruits are the perfect source of the living nutrients our living cells need. The chemical complexities of nutrition on the cellular level are such that it is futile to attempt to duplicate this in a laboratory. Our bodies are not designed to obtain nutrition from synthetic pills, and we are being misled when we are told otherwise.

It should be equally obvious that when food has been cooked (killed), processed, and preserved, it is no longer of the same nutritional value as it was when it was alive, despite what the labels stuck on them may claim.

So when you are looking for nutrition, look beyond the numbers on a label. You must ensure the nutrients are natural, unprocessed, raw and in a form that can be easily assimilated by the cells in your body. I have found the nutritional programme recommended by Hallelujah Acres, a vegetarian diet dominated by raw fruits and vegetables, along with daily consumption of fresh vegetable juice an unsurpassed nutritional combination. In addition to providing the nutrients we need, this diet avoids disease-promoting substances such as meat, dairy, eggs, sugar, salt and white flour. Raw foods provides the fibre we need , while vegetable juice offers more intensive nutrition that is easily assimilated because it has been separated from the fibre .

Since I have been at Hallelujah Acres, I have seen incredible results from people who have switched to this diet. It is common to see individuals who are serious about this diet heal problems such as cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, arthritis and more.

The best results come to those who adapt the entire nutritional programme recommended by the Hallelujah Acres.

Trust Marandure is a naturopathic practitioner based in Bulawayo. He can be contacted on cell; 0772482382 or email: tgmarandure at yahoo.com.