By: Hettie Basil Lighttower
Hey, how’s your week going? Pleasant? That’s good. Mine has been up and down and all around! I have learned lots of new things this week. I want to share with you a little bit of a science lesson. There’s a few things I recently became aware of when it comes to health and eating vegetables. You know how we have all been told to eat your vegetables! And there are a variety of ways to get them down. Most have to do with cooking them one way or another.
But truly the best way is to intake them raw. If you are going to do this for yourself you definitely need to know how to clean them properly first. Everything is inundated with pesticides and pollution. This will take a toll on your health if you are not cooking the food or washing properly. Here’s what you do. Fill a large bowl with (filtered) water add about a ¼ cup of baking soda to it. Sometimes I don’t play around and I just put a ½ cup in there. It depends on the size of my large bowl and how many foods I am washing. And there are times when I simply just have to change the water before continuing. Let your veggies soak in there agitating them and rubbing them thoroughly. Get all of them and all sides and parts of them. Pretend they are covered in paint and you are needing to get all the invisible paint off. Short cuts are not good in this case.
You will see all kinds of sediment come to the surface of the water. Yuck. Waxes, dyes in some cases, residue of juices leaked onto them, pesticides and so on. Everything that comes off in the water will make you wonder how you survived ever NOT washing them with the de-toxing baking soda. You can rinse. But do it in another bowl with filtered water. Rinsing in the sink with city water will defeat the purpose of making them as healthy as you can for yourself. You’ll be adding chlorine and who knows what other contaminants to your food.
About fifteen years ago I learned about juicing and why it is important and beneficial. This is something you do to get raw vegetables in you. Quickly I will say that when you juice veggies; you get a quantitative benefit of a lot of them at once and your belly doesn’t get full of all the bulk and fiber of the whole thing. And of course, fiber is important and those discarded parts from the juicer can be frozen and added to thicken soups later. If you have ever done juicing you know you get a burst of energy and feel amazing after drinking a glass of pure fresh juice. Mixing fruits and vegetables together can create amazing flavors and goodness.
We know all this is good for us but, it’s not just because they have vitamins, minerals, and hydration for us. Did you know that raw fruits and vegetables are good for you because they are still “live” and contain “bio-photons”? This is where the science lesson is going to come in. And I will continue with this amazing topic next week. It will not all fit into one column.
Bio-photons are actually little particles of light! The intensity of these is how the quality of nutritional value is measured. The higher and more coherent the photon emission is, the higher the nutritional value of that raw vegetable or fruit. Isn’t that interesting!? Have you ever heard that our food contains LIGHT? And the more light it has the better it is for us? Are you kidding me? This is fascinating.
Now right about here you probably think I am nuts and making this stuff up, but I assure you I have the science directly here in my back pocket to share and explain this whole concept to you. And just so you know, this concept or discovery is a main reason why eating sprouts and microgreens are so important. We have talked about those before although I did not get into the science of bio-photons. The fresher the plant, the soonest you eat it after it is cut or picked the better it is for you. The more light it contains.
Any fresh vegetable or fruit that has sat for weeks or even days, gets less and less viable as far as these photons go. Yes, they still have the vitamins, minerals and fiber for you but you will miss out on one the most beneficial part…..ingesting the light within, because it has slowly gone dead after so long.
Now if you go back in your mind to sixth grade science class you might remember a term called photosynthesis. Sound familiar? That is when the plant collects SUNLIGHT and uses it for energy and growth to build itself up through creating glucose. The chlorophyll absorbs the light and is essential to all life on earth because it then produces oxygen. Think about the word photosynthesis. It has the same beginning as the word photon! Bio-photon is the non-thermal particles of light emitted by all living things, including humans. So, these words have “photo” in common. Next week we will get into more of what that means.
Each one of our cells emit light! And that is true for all living organisms including plants. I hope you have enjoyed this little journey and there are more pieces to the puzzle. Let’s meet here again next week and see what all this gets into.
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