Bad breath is disgusting to many of us. Who wants to talk or even be near someone who extols a nasty smell every time they breathe or talk?

But, did you know that digestive enzymes, which are what our bodies use to break down foods and turn them into fuel -- can also lead to bad breath?

For those fans of raw eating, you probably already know that the digestive enzymes contained in many raw foods help those foods break down efficiently when they reach the stomach. Unknown to most of us, though, is that these digestive enzymes are completely destroyed in all cooked foods.

What to do? Our bodies can make up for these destroyed enzymes, but eating at least some raw foods would give the body a break every once in a while to focus on its real job when you eat: to power your body -- not make it smell bad.

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The Raw Foods movement has been gaining a lot of momentum lately, and with all the chemicals that go into foods these days, it's not hard to see why. But why is raw food better than cooked foods? And is it really worth it for us to switch over? Mark's Daily Apple took a look into raw foods by interviewing one of the driving forces behind it, Chef Dan, and here are some interesting tidbits:

What about protein? Elephants, whales, giraffes, silver back gorillas, in fact the largest and strongest animals on the planet, are all vegetarian. How much protein do you need for [expletive deleted] sake?

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A recent health tip from Chet Day got me thinking about sequential eating. He explained it as eating the food on your plate in groups, starting with the least dense, like salad, and ending with the most dense, the meat or protein source. If you eat this way, it is supposed to be better for digestion.

I did a little digging on this concept and found out that Dr. Stanley Bass writes about it in his book, Ideal Health through Sequential Eating. He describes it a bit differently, in that you should eat the food containing the most water content first, ending with the food with the least amount of water. His reasoning is that by eating this way, each food will get the exact amount of the correct enzymes that it needs to digest properly.

Interesting. My guess? There is probably something to this. For me, though, it would be very hard to follow.

I am a foodie, and I love how different foods taste together. Some of the combinations they say to avoid, like mixing dried sweet fruit or bananas with nut and seeds, are my favorite combinations.

Has anyone tried sequential eating? What were your results?