What is the fastest, easiest way to explain this phenomenon?

How about saying “uncooked’’ or “unprocessed”?

He knows, but he likes chips, Cheetos and soda too much to care.

What could be more simple than telling him live foods are unprocessed foods that come out of the ground? ... but I’m sure he already knows this.

Something that grows. Try to exclude mold.

Eating living food is the only way. He can keep the cheetos.

Great…now I’m hungry. **looks around at all the prospects**

Tell him natural things.

How about, “I want some food.”?

Chips, Cheetos, and soda are not really food, right?

Take him to a farm. Show him this is food. Take him to a convenience store and show him the junk food. Tell him this is not food. It’s losing touch with our roots. And
@UnholyThirst Not that kind of farm. :)

@Adirondackwannabe Why can’t it be that kind? This makes me sad.

@UnholyThirst Well it could be, but the economics would be a bear, humans take so long to reproduce. Plus the various fanatics would give you all kinds of crap. But if you like a challenge, go for it.

human meat is best from when they are babies, anyway

Well this took a dark turn. @Aster I’ll try to steer it back towards produce and veggies.

@Adirondackwannabe I can’t talk about Cheetos, or Rice, or soda. I’ve never had either.

He must be pretending not to know because
I just can’t see your S/O being so blatantly obtuse.

Why does he need to understand what you’re talking about? My guess is that he knows and doesn’t care. Why can’t the guy eat his chips and soda while you munch on your celery? He’s an adult, right? You worry about your eating habits and let him worry about his. Unless he’s actually interested in knowing what you mean by “live foods,” why try to explain it to him? I don’t think the issue is a short attention span. It’s I-don’t-give-a-flying-fuck-what-you’re-talking-about syndrome.

Honestly, I would’ve given you a funny look when you said “live food,” too, and I know quite a bit about food/nutrition. I can easily figure out what you mean by that, but the live/raw food movement always makes me scrunch up my nose. When I Googled the term and found, “the term ‘Live Food’ is sometimes used to express that the food is particularly high in life force,” it resulted in a major eye roll on my part. Life force? Ugh…

Feel free to eat all the live foods you want, but that doesn’t mean he should. Heed this girl’s advice.

Tell him you want to eat food that doesn’t have a list of “ingredients” on the package. Or for that matter – doesn’t come in a package. That should be clear enough.

How about simply saying that you would like more fresh fruit and veg in your diet. What’s not to understand?

To be honest, I wouldn’t understand what you meant by “live food”, either, and I have a pretty good vocabulary and a lot of experience with all kinds of food.

“Fresh food” I get. “Unprocessed food” I get. “Raw food” I get. “Live food” indicates some sort of grazing in a field, perhaps, or eating tree leaves in the way that giraffes do, or hunting prey. (I guess that “live food” would also exclude eating carrion as we do.) I get that Cheetohs and chips and cookies and soda are not “live food”, but otherwise… I can only imagine.

I’ve never heard the term before. It sounds like you want to eat an animal that is still alive. Once you explain what you mean he will then understand what you mean.

I have never heard the term “Live food” before and I see from the responses above that I am not alone.

I would call it “unprocessed food” or in the examples you gave, I would just say “fruit,” “vegetables” or “fruits and vegetables.” Why not be specific and say “fruits and vegetables” – why have to classify it as “live food?” Once it is pulled out of the ground or off a bush it’s not “live” anyway, it’s dead.

@Pachy thanks; I’ll go with your suggestion. I meant, “living foods.” I think of a tomato as living; maybe it isn’t. I think of bananas as living. I think of potato chips as dead.
Maybe I should read even more about this stuff.
But I really appreciate all of the answers. Thank you!!

I am not sure that I like the expression “live food.” I know the banana I just ate was alive, but I do not dwell on it, the expression makes me feel like a cannibal. Come to think of it, is it not still alive even if eaten? it is just in a different form. I don’t like that formulation either.

Thank you for this question, @Aster. It is proper to think of these things because we should always be interested in where our food comes from. For example, the living hen has a personality – I liked observing the life style of the common fowl in Tobago, where a lot of them are free range. This does not prevent me from enjoying my roast chicken on Sundays, but it makes me conscious of what I eat and why.

They aren’t living after you harvest them. I mean, take potato chips. The potato was living till it got ripped out of the ground and turned into potato chips…or mashed potatoes, or baked potato, whatever.

“Raw food” might be a more recognizable term. The enzymes in fresh produce stay intact and useful for human digestive system up to around 114F temperature, and that’s why raw foods are considered ‘live’.
Our digestive systems need some intake of digestive enzymes to function properly, cooked foods don’t have them. So we benefit greatly from including some uncooked/minimally-cooked foods along with our cooked foods.

Raw/Live vs cooked is a distinct discussion from processed and refined foods. Cooked food without weird taste-enhancers, high-fructose corn chemicals, refined starches, and preservatives is very different nutritionally from food-like stuff that is manufactured with them.

Take away the foods he enjoys most, starve him, then leave him here so the Family can convert him to a raw meat cuisine, trust us, he will not be the same.