ABSTRACT
Humans have always pursued ways to improve health and prolong life. Besides other lifestyle factors, diet was always and is still a factor associated with desires and hopes in this connection. Pythagoras (570-500 B.C.) proclaimed vegetarianism to be an ideal way to fulfill this dream. During the nineteenth and twentieth century many movements for healthy and life prolonging lifestyles were initiated. Based on personal and clinical experiences a number of pioneers, most of whom were physicians, developed dietary therapy regimens which aimed to support healing and were not conceived as long-term diets. Most concepts were designed to bring people back to a natural way of life. One basic aspect of these diets was the recommendation for the consumption of exclusively or mostly natural food, meaning unheated and unprocessed food items.
