Improving your Raw Foods Diet with Ionized Water

by Alderin Ordell, MA

Whether you are a raw foodist of many years or just starting out, you can improve your diet and your health with ionized water.   Your food will taste better, the nutrients will be better preserved, your sprouts and herbs will grow better, and your body will love all the natural oxygen and anti-antioxidants.

A water ionizer first takes water and filters it to 99.99% purity, making it much safer to use than tap water and more environmentally friendly than bottled water.  Then, most importantly, the water ionizer electrolyzes or ionizes the water with electrolysis, making it either hydrogen rich and alkaline or very acidic, depending on what setting you choose. A water ionizer generally has 5-70 pH settings, giving you control over the pH of your water.

This is important because most of the water in the US and from bottled water companies is acidic, usually between a 5.5 and 6.5 pH (7.0 is neutral, 1 is very acidic, 14 is very alkaline).  Acid water is not good to drink or to use in preparing food.  In fact, when preparing food, acid water breaks down the nutrients and chlorophyll.  When drinking acid water, it oxidizes our body, leading to health problems like arthritis, high blood pressure, sleep, and digestion problems.  Plus, an acidic body helps cancer cells thrive!  Think of how acidic water rusts metal … then imagine that going on in your own body!

Whether you are a raw vegan, raw vegetarian, fruitarian, an instinctive eating dieter, or on the Paleolithic diet, you know the importance of fruits, grains, and vegetables.  Most likely you soak your nuts and grains in order to activate the enzymes, you grow your own sprouts, you wash your fruits and vegetables before preparation, and you drink lots of water for your own health.  A water ionizer can significantly help with all of these activities.

For example, when you soak nuts and grains in high alkaline water, like a 10 pH, you will preserve the nutrients and neutralize the acid, bringing out a more natural taste.  But when you soak nuts and grains in acidic water, the natural nutrients and enzymes are broken down and the integrity of the nuts and grains is damaged.

When growing your own sprouts, ionized water has been shown to significantly increase growth because it is full of natural energy and acidic minerals like nitrates that plants thrive on.  It’s not just your sprouts that will be happy.  You can use ionized, acidic water in your garden and watch as your tomato plants grow twice the size, producing the sweetest tomatoes you’ve ever tasted!  Plus pests hate acidic, ionized water and will leave your plants alone and you won’t have to use pesticides.         

When washing fruits and vegetables, strong ionized, acidic water will naturally kill a bacterium that has grown on them, making them safer to eat.

If you are on more of a primal diet or instinctive eating diet, you can also soak your meats and fish in high alkaline, ionized water to dissolve the fat and neutralize the acid to bring out the natural flavor.      

Because they understand the importance of hydration, raw foodists include drinking water as a huge part of their diet. This is where a water ionizer shines the most.  When you drink alkaline, ionized water, you are drinking water that is closest to what Mother Nature originally intended.  For example, the water in Lourdes, France, known to many as the fountain of youth, has about a 9 pH with a huge supply of natural antioxidants – just like ionized water! 

You can also find this same quality water in glacial streams and high up in the mountains in little creeks.  The water in these creeks and streams is wonderfully minerally balanced, filtered by rocks, energized by the sun – and gives our bodies exactly what they want – energy, minerals, hydrogen, and ions. 

The problem is that most of us don’t live anywhere near a natural spring, a glacial stream, or a mountain creek.  In fact, our tap water and even a lot of bottled water spends a huge amount of time in tanks – dying.  It loses its energy.  The water molecules spread out.  The pH drops and the water becomes acidic.  Then it is contaminated with fluoride and chlorine and sent to us -- and we’re supposed to drink it?  We’re supposed prepare our food with it? 

A water ionizer restores our water.  It filters out the junk.  It re-energizes it.  It clusters the water molecules so that they can more effectively hydrate our cells.  It adds as much as 700% more oxygen.  And it raises the H+ level, making it alkaline, neutralizing stored acid in our bodies not to mention free radicals. 

When you incorporate ionized water into your raw food diet, you are giving your body optimal hydration, a natural and abundant supply of oxygen for your cells to use for regeneration and energy, and an abundant supply of hydroxyl ions for detoxification. You are helping your body to effectively get rid of toxins and acids that have built up over the years.  Add this to all the applications for food preparation and plant growth, and it becomes clear that every raw foodist can benefit from a water ionizer.