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M3008

Question: Previous replies to questions in this letter about vegetable nutrition seem to indicate that a raw food diet is no more beneficial than eating cooked products. Is this true?
Answer: The previous replies to the above-mentioned questions were not concerned with shedding light on whether a raw food diet was preferable to cooked food. They were concerned only with stating that vegetable food was preferable to animal food, and whether the use of the cooking process itself in the production of food was harmful or not. Therefore it must be understood that the analysis of cooking that has been presented in the reply applies only to the situations – and with reference to the preparation and transformation of these products into food fit for the human being – that have made cooking a subject of current concern, the experience of centuries having shown it to be absolutely indispensable in the area of terrestrial human nutrition.
It is a matter of course that there is no need to cook those food products that are already transformed by Nature itself into a form of microlife so spiritually superior, and which is clothed in only such a minimal amount of physical matter that, entirely without being killed, it can be absorbed into an organism as nourishment and here continue its normal existence. Without this aim for the evolution of the principle of nutrition and the change in the digestive process from a process of murder or death to a process of life for the microlife, no being on the physical plane would ever be able to get away from the killing principle. It must still, through its digestive process, invoke hell, death and destruction upon myriads of microbeings in order to be able to live itself, even though it has long since acquired an angelic existence with mesocosmic beings (animals and human beings).
A process of developing a more refined form of digestion in the terrestrial human being's organic structure is taking place that will gradually remove the killing principle from the area of digestion so that the being – also here in its relationship to the microbeings – will reach the point of manifesting compliance with the fifth* commandment: "Thou shalt not kill", and can therefore in all fields represent the finished or perfect human being's way of being, or the total fulfilment of the law of neighbourly love.
With the development of this new process of digestion that is free from killing, a particular dietary situation connected to it becomes of current interest. One therefore begins increasingly to refer to "raw food" as the absolute only true form or nutrition, and one wants cooking to be banned from every field in the area of human nourishment. As we have already seen, this attitude is neither logical nor scientific in those cases concerning the use of the very robust and coarse products in human nutrition, since cooking is not only harmless, but downright necessary as a means of transforming products that are intended for an animal's ability to digest, into food for human beings. It is of course a completely different matter when it is a question of using the previously mentioned products that are fully evolved as pure food by Nature's hand, whose microlife can therefore pass over as nourishment in an organism without first requiring any form of killing process or death-promoting digestion. In fact, where this microlife's normal physical and mental existence is definitely dependent on this intake as nourishment in an organism. The fact that here cooking is therefore not only unnecessary but downright harmful will not be difficult to understand when one experiences that these products that are fully developed as food products by Nature itself constitute the flesh and juices of the edible ripe fruits. It ought to be taken for granted as common knowledge that ripe edible oranges, bananas, peaches, grapes, plums, apples, pears, melons etc. and to a certain degree the lighter leafy products that are used in salads, and equally the squeezed juices of mild, carrot-like root products, do not improve in taste and aroma by being cooked, and without this or some other killing process are easily taken up as nourishment in the terrestrial human being's organism. And we have therefore especially in the flesh and juices of the edible ripe fruits, the microlife that completely without any killing process, life-depriving digestion or physical destruction that can be taken up as nourishment in an organism and that therefore with the contact it has with the compliance with the fifth commandment1 and the law of love constitutes the true food of the perfect human being.
But the terrestrial human being is still a long way from being a fully evolved or perfect human being. To a large extent, it still belongs to the stages between the "animal" and the "human being". Its digestion and its diet are therefore also things that lies between the animal and the human being. It therefore still lacks the ability to live entirely on the flesh and the juices of pure fruit alone; it still needs a certain quantity of the coarser vegetable products. And the present-day dietary issue for terrestrial human beings is therefore not a question of what is best – either the raw food or the coarse products that still need to be cooked that we have touched on here – but on the contrary to the highest degree the question of which combination or mixture of the two kinds of food one should use in order to protect one's absolute health and the resultant absolute normal bodily wellbeing.
As terrestrial human beings are extremely differently evolved and cannot therefore find themselves on the same step regarding nutrition either, the answer has to be individual. Every being must therefore observe the reactions of its own organism to the various food products and in this way become aware of the combination of foods that gives it precisely the most perfect sensation of health and well-being.
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* "Thou shalt not kill" is referred to as the fifth commandment in Danish bibles and is commonly referred to as the sixth in English bibles.
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The above questions and answers are taken from a fixed heading in the Danish Contact Letters from 1950-51 where Martinus answered questions from the readers. Question no. 8 was first published in Danish in Kontaktbrev no. 4, 1950. The first two paragraphs were translated by Mary McGovern, 1984, and published in the English edition of Kosmos no. 1, 1984. The whole article has been revised by Mary McGovern and published in the English edition of Kosmos 3-2020. Article ID: M3008.

© Martinus Institut 1981, www.martinus.dk

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