Living food is a relatively marginal way to eat among humans. In part, it belongs to the raw food category on the humane side, partly not. As always with eating habits that are strongly associated with alternative treatments, the internal scene has more intense disputes over definitions than an outsider would genuinely perceive differences. For dogs, living food is the same as BARF, and the differences in emphasis come from the gurus’ desire to do business with the topic. It does not relate to dogs.
Living food is mainly vegetarian and often ideologically strongly vegan, but it can also be shifted towards omnivorous eating. The principles of living food cannot be implemented with meat without dangerous microbiological issues – in plain language: food poisoning is closer than you think. On the other hand, since sprouts play a strong role in living food, those who practice it have learned to live in the shadow of listeria and apparently accept the risks.
Definition of Living Food
Living food refers to food that is processed as little as possible. Processing means
- cooking
- freezing
- anything that feels industrial
Since raw plant-based food is poorly digested by humans, processing does not include
- grinding
- pureeing
- fermenting
- soaking
No one other than a living food enthusiast understands the essential difference, but the basic claim is that life disappears from food if it is
- cooked above 42 degrees because proteins break down and vitamins die
- frozen because somehow enzymes stop functioning
- processed through a factory because industry is somehow an undefined evil
Since food must be alive, practically only fresh plant-based foods are acceptable.
Living food consists of the most healing and green-dominant nutrition possible. Unheated vegetables retain enzymes, nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.
Claims of Living Food
Living food is eaten because living food brings life and health to the eater. Vitality is often obtained through undefined healthiness, but the strongest factors are
- living proteins and fats
- living vitamins
- living enzymes
- foods have different digestion times, which determine what can be eaten at the same meal
Does it sound familiar? Exactly, it’s the same as BARF. This is because BARF’s most effective marketer, Ian Billinghurst, was primarily a teacher of living food and had a very short career as a veterinarian.
When a plant is growing, meaning young plants are consumed, according to the theories of living food, they contain a lot of nutrients. Firstly, the soil contains nutrients and the plant contains nutrients for the eater, making it difficult for me to relate to nutrition experts who do not know the terminology. Secondly, growing plants do not have a lot of nutrients. They have quite little.
The nutritional values of a growing plant are somewhat different from those of a flowering, seeding, or tuber-growing plant, which is one reason why with the advent of agriculture, we have shifted to eating mature plants: they contain more energy and nutrients.
For some strange reason, the requirement for vitality brought by youth does not apply, for example, to nuts.
Enzymes
Enzymes are extremely important in living food. Essentially everything done is dictated by enzymes. According to the theories of living food, beneficial, necessary, and healthy enzymes are dormant in sprouts and especially in unsprouted seeds, nuts, and grains, so they are soaked to awaken the enzymes. Sprouting then brings the wonderful nutritional values of young plant beginnings and most importantly: awakened enzymes.
If that seems illogical and even contrary to biology, it is. This is entirely because living food is a completely pure pseudoscience.
Enzymes are species-specific. Mammals have a few enzymes that can be transferred from one species to another. These include digestive enzymes. This is because mammals are so close to each other in terms of bodily functions. Still, a dog will not become a vegan no matter how much you try to feed it cow pancreas, fresh or processed.
On the other hand, plant enzymes do not work for us. One could say thank goodness because we do not need to start developing insecticides in our limbs with c. sativa’s signaling, even if it would make nail-biting a bit more interesting. Or that we would start transferring skin pigment inside the body as the days shorten. Certain extreme sects might actually find that appealing because then we would all be albinos.
A significant part of plant toxins is due to their enzyme activity, and it is generally not considered a healthy thing.
Regarding enzymes, one essential thing must be remembered (in addition to species specificity). They are proteins, just like minced meat. It does not matter whether enzymes are given orally at body temperature or not, stomach acids kill and digest them into food. We and dogs have our own internal organs and cells that produce enzymes. Vitamins must be obtained from food, and enzymes are not vitamins.
That is why in pancreatic insufficiency, digestive enzymes must be given either in a stomach acid-resistant depot capsule or as frozen pancreas.
Proteins and Fats
Cooking above 43 degrees causes a situation in proteins called denaturation. Since “de” is the removal of something and “naturatiom” is obviously related to nature, it must be dangerous and something that is absolutely unwanted.
Denaturation is an event that in religious eating is called the killing of proteins. In it, proteins cease to be biologically active in their function and their spirals unravel, allowing amino acids to be used.
This must be done because the body never uses whole proteins from food. If a protein passes whole through the intestinal wall, it either causes an allergy, disease, or results in death from anaphylactic shock. The protein is unraveled and dismantled like an old woolen sock, and amino acids are transferred through the intestinal surface into the body and to the liver, which makes new proteins.
Living food does not care that stomach acids and digestive enzymes specifically perform denaturation. That is their task. It is natural and healthy. Eating raw living food, on the other hand, weakens digestibility and is very unhealthy and unnatural.
Fats have it even easier. They do not need to be processed as much, and before fatty acid chains are broken down into pieces so small that they can no longer be used as fatty acids, heavy frying and very long cooking at high temperatures are required.
Vitamins
Vitamins are tough. Some of the strongest things found in food. Only minerals withstand more, but they are not alive by the measure of biological activity, which is the only measure of being alive in living food.
Vitamins generally withstand cooking very well. That is why we do not develop deficiencies, even though according to the theories of living food, we should have gone extinct long before we left Africa.
Vitamins have one weaker group: antioxidants, such as vitamin C and vitamin E. They poorly withstand air and sunlight. Therefore, all foodstuffs that are ground, pureed, exposed to light, and even dried, quickly lose even the last remnants of life.
This is one of the many problems of living food. Their foodstuffs have relatively high amounts of antioxidants, which are destroyed by living food kitchen methods (it is processing, but it must not be called processing because processing is dangerous).
The amounts are relatively high because they are not found in meat-based food. Quantitatively, they are not high unless the eating amounts are at the level of cattle – still, 100 grams is quite a lot. What saves living food eaters from scurvy is the low need for vitamin C.
Green Powders
Green powders play a strong role in the realm of living food. Someone might ask if processing is not bad here – but do not ask, you really do not want to hear the answer.
Green powders have an emphasized role for two reasons. Firstly, because they are healthy and contain many enzymes. Secondly, because nothing is as healthy for humans as chlorophyll. What makes chlorophyll so superior is somewhat unclear. It immediately shifts from nutrition to health claims.
The other reason is more mercenary. Business can only be done with books, lectures, and supplements – green powders have outrageous margins and are excellent business.
As Food in General
Living food is familiar to anyone who follows any kind of plate model. When fresh salad, vegetables, berries, fruits, nuts, and even much-maligned grains are placed on their own compartment on the plate, of course, they are healthy. It is still about emphasis and amounts.
Those who actively follow living food have less calcified bones because mineral intake is inadequate. The intake of vitamin B12 is a question mark, as it is for vegetarians in general. Those on living food have less fat than comparably sized peers, and that comes directly from a calorie deficit. However, in the south, they have better vitamin D levels than others because they usually spend more time outdoors – but that does not apply to our latitudes.
Health Claims of Living Food
As always with pseudoscience, living food cures absolutely everything. Cancer healing is an essential part of the basic claims of living food. The same line is sold and marketed by Olli Posti regarding his MS disease and asthma.
The claims are based on two strong pillars. The left is a broad, silent, and undetectable inflammatory state, which unprocessed food then cures. The fact that claims about food vitality, enzymes, and vitamins are invented and unsustainable is completely secondary. The nonexistence of this mysterious silent inflammation causing cancers and other diseases does not slow down the pace either.
The right pillar is also familiar nonsense: pH treatments. That is it and its sustainability.
When every loud advocate of living food is a fraudster who makes a hard business from their teachings and collects money from the sick, we are in dangerous waters.
Dogs and Living Food
For dogs, living food is not possible because its theories are impossible. It was attempted as BARF, and the result was a worse feeding error than what the dry food industry has ever managed.
It is impossible to give dogs meat that has not been frozen. But the theories of living food are constantly being pushed into canine nutrition, and this is circumvented in two very familiar ways:
- giving frozen meat at room temperature and inventing that this way enzymes awaken; the fact that there are only muscle enzymes in the meat, which are related to metabolism and cease when the animal dies, probably does not interest anyone
- adding sauerkraut and leaving minced meat soaked with it to warm up for a day; it supposedly gets good bacteria and the enzymes awaken too – others consider this a good and effective way to get food poisoning and replicate the diarrhea deaths in Norway
If you feel the need to give your dog living food for some reason, do two things:
- abandon the strange delusions of the believers
- feed the dog a meat-based raw diet, and if you feel like it, call it living food for dogs
In Conclusion
I wrote in Katiska’s Facebook group before this article:
Food can be alive when eaten, but most often such a situation for pet dogs means either severely spoiled food or a hunting violation, but as nutrition, food must always be dead, and killing it is the main task of the stomach.
The matter is just that simple. If someone wants to sell you something else in the name of living food, keep your feet on the ground and your bank details tightly hidden and ask a couple of questions:
- what is the real nutritional content of the food
- where is the evidence
And if someone who has experienced a miraculous cure and enlightenment wants to sell you a feeding method that will make your dog live to 30 years old, do not ask, but run away screaming.
The problem in the feeding world is threefold:
- every dry food manufacturer lies, every single one
- every raw food manufacturer lies and explains BARF delusions, every single one
- the scammers from the human side have started expanding into the dog market; it’s no coincidence that Olli Posti, who knows nothing about dogs, felt the need to try to sell himself in Katiska, and now does so in other dog groups
The pressure for dog owners to truly know what they are doing and why is growing all the time. The amount of disinformation is increasing every day – stay alert.
