After 33 years as a nomad, with over years 25 dressing like you see in my photo, I have found diet plays many different functions in the body. 

One thing it does is regulate our internal temperature, along with feet and hand sensors.  When we eat raw vegetation fresh from their growing source the temperature in which they grow and ripens regulate the pores' opening and closing to keep the correct internal temperature of the body's organs.  A cooked diet of hot spices will open the pores although most cooked foods are neutral. 

When we eat cooked foods the temperature regulating is left to what the feet and hands touch.  Put your feet in cold water on a hot day and your pores closes to prevent hypothermia, put them on hot surfaces and they open them letting out the heat to prevent "heat strokes". 

When we eat summer fruit and vegetables raw they keep the pores open, then any cooling of the day is regulated by our bare feet touching the cool surface of earth.  In winter, when we eat ripened winter fruit and vegetables they tend to keep our pores closed and any warm days they are opened by our bare feet touching the warmer earth.  

I have also noticed how eating from raw vegetation, fruit included, fresh from their natural sources help our water needs. The sap of the plants and juices of the fruit helps quench our thirst.  Also, associated with thirst, I find that when we drink ground water untreated our thirst is better quenched.  My findings are we need the microbes in the water, preventatrive medicines, just as much as we need the liquid of it.  Purifying water provides the liquid but not the food stuffs our bodies need from the water.  That is why a beer will often times quench a thirst better than bottled water. 

Eating raw foods, I have noticed, provides us with energy and retards aging.  The raw is living, even more so when you get it from its growing source, and when the body replenishes its cells over the 7 years it takes, they do not age as fast.  Cooked foods are dead and chemically changed by the heat, and eating them does not retard the aging process as well.  The raw digests better and aids in our eliminating while the cooked causes constipation. 

Those are only a few of my findings concerning diet. 

Jan 22, 2010 -- 7:46AM, Sweetdominique wrote:

Thank you for your comment.  You are absolutely right about the raw foods.  We do not age as fast physically and our minds are sharp. I want to stay productive and socially engaged for as long as I can.  If I am frail and my mind is clouded, how can I help others?

You can't.  However, many times, when we attempt to help others we injury them.  They have their Karma to work through and our aid will hurt more than it helps.  Stay sharp and open to inquirers interested in what you have to offer,  if they do not seek you out, do not bother, they have their own baggage to work through.  Eventually, we all gets to the next level, the question is in how many more incarnations. 

Jan 22, 2010 -- 8:47AM, Sweetdominique wrote:

You could not put it better! Someone has to "stumble" upon you. A Taoist would say: When a pupil appears, you become a teacher.

I publish articles about health, nutrition, and aging. Some people who were very much in need just found my writing by "chance". What they found might have changed them. I at least hope so.

As far as sattvic diet is concerned, non-aggression, which includes non-interference in other people's affairs, is like a natural consequence. Your mind perceives things very differently.

You must consider I am only a high schooled Christian turned Christian Atheist after following the teachings of Jesus.  My mind works from the perspective of simple logic based on experiences. 

I have written much {in signature} and do not care if anyone reads it or not, it is there for them without any cost than to click on it and read.  Just last weekend I got a message from someone who saw it and read it and wanted to know if it was OK to use some of my poems.  10 people in her audience wanted to read it, she said. 

I recognize, when the student is ready the teacher will appear.  Sometimes I am the teacher and in others I am the student.  Although I have learned much I am always the student ready to learn. 

I had intended to include that in what I said but got distracted.