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This post is part of the Natural Cures Blog Carnival hosted by Hartkeisonline.

After several months eating differently, my dear hubby had his first input yesterday. It was a very positive “review” and I thought I’d share it.

Hubby was raised in the midwest by a single, working mom. He and his two brothers would come home from school to a list of chores and cooking. He did not like to cook, and as soon as he left home, relied solely on the ever-increasing variety of processed foods and fast food. In college, he lived for several months on instant mashed potatoes, his favorite food. He was a ‘meat and potatoes’ eater, not terribly interested in salads, soups or condiments, but loved something sweet after every meal and his cold cereal in the morning. Being lactose intolerant, he had a cup of soymilk on his cereal. I have talked to him about cutting back on both, but my best progress was made not in talking, but in actually cooking for him every morning. He didn’t mind me cooking breakfast, especially when it’s bacon and eggs. But he didn’t like hot cereal and a breakfast of muffins left him ready for a bowl of cereal at 10 AM.

He told me that he was happy that I decided to go this direction with our food. He said if I had talked to him first, he probably would have tried to talk me out of it, because of his preconceived notions of time, money and energy required for this type of eating. (I didn’t discuss with him what I was planning before I changed the way we ate, as the kitchen is my kingdom and as long as food comes out, he didn’t much care what went on inside it.) He was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the meals, for which I give 100% of the credit to Nourishing Traditions. I can’t cook scrambled eggs without a written recipe and have been using NT almost exclusively to teach me this new foodstyle. He said there hasn’t been a single food that he just couldn’t eat. Even my strange condiments (lacto-fermented veggies) he said, add dimension and interest to the food. He wouldn’t want to eat them as a meal, but as a bite here and there they are good!

Several years ago, after his gallbladder was removed, the doctor warned him to stay on a lowfat diet, as his body wouldn’t be able to digest fat as well. He had been following this advice, but his heartburn grew worse every week and he was plagued by an irritable bowel that kept him home from work some days. He kept a bottle of papaya enzyme at his desk and chewed them like candy. I had encouraged him to find natural methods like papaya instead of relying on the drugstore versions of antacids and acid reducers. He took a strong probiotic formula and an ox bile tablet every day as well, but it was getting to the point he was ready to try stronger medicine just before our diet shift.

He was thrilled to report that since we have been eating a traditional diet, he has stopped taking papaya and ox bile entirely. I told him he could probably try cutting back on the probiotics as well, since we were getting so many “good bugs” in our food that we weren’t before. His irritable bowel has settled down completely. I was thrilled, too! He reported other problems he had that have been improving, and a couple action points for me to research. I was very happy that he approved of the changes I’d made, to say the least!

The Standard American Diet is nearly completely bereft of enzymes. Between the field and the kitchen, processed food gets heated. Even frozen food is blanched first, exposing it to heat before cold. Milk and juices are pasteurized, canned food is heated during the canning process, grains are heated, oils are heat extracted, some foods are even “cleaned” with a shot of high heat. This heat kills off the enzymes that help us digest. If we don’t put them back somehow, our digestion will suffer and send us running for one of the dozens of products modern chemistry has provided for our relief.

Then, on top of that, we have become germaphobes, striving to rid our environment of the ever-fearful bacteria. “Kills germs that cause bad breath” is a familiar ad line. But by rinsing our mouths with strong chemicals, are we also killing the beneficial bacteria that lives in our saliva which helps us digest our food?

The traditional diet I’ve been pursuing includes many raw foods. If you had asked me last year what a raw food was, I would have said, “Salad, raw fruits and vegetables.” That would have been the sum total of my imagination. I have since learned that milk can be raw, as can all the delicious products that come from it: cream, butter, cultured milk products, cheese. Sure, vegetables can be raw, but some of them can be hard to digest unless you cook them first. Fortunately, there are other ways of preparing vegetables that render them digestible without exposing them to heat, especially lacto-fermenting them. The bacteria in these condiments are terrific for aiding digestion. Even meat and eggs can be served raw, yes, safely. Knowing safe methods of food preparation protects us from the illness-causing bacteria while providing our bodies the healthy bacteria they need.

If you struggle with heartburn, acid reflux or irritable bowel, I want to encourage you to look into a diet that contains more of these raw foods. No, don’t run out right now and buy a pound of ground beef at your local grocery store and down it without cooking it! But do some studying, some research, and learn about how our ancestors ate all these raw foods safely. Find out where the life-stealing pathogens come from, how life-supporting probiotics help us and how to sneak them into your diet. You might be amazed at the difference.