Cooked or Raw or Both

[Durgan]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -healthier Fact or Fiction: Raw veggies are healthier than cooked ones. Do vegetables lose their nutritional value when heated?

Cooking is crucial to our diets. It helps us digest food without expending huge amounts of energy. It softens food, such as cellulose fiber and raw meat, that our small teeth, weak jaws and digestive systems aren't equipped to handle. And while we might hear from raw foodists that cooking kills vitamins and minerals in food (while also denaturing enzymes that aid digestion), it turns out raw vegetables are not always healthier.

Comparing the healthfulness of raw and cooked food is complicated, and there are still many mysteries surrounding how the different molecules in plants interact with the human body. The bottom line, says Liu, is to eat your veggies and fruits no matter how they're prepared. "We cook them so they taste better," Liu says. "If they taste better, we're more likely to eat them." And that's the whole idea.

Cooking vegetables is inherently better for the simple reason that it makes so many foods more palatable (and often safer) to eat. Even if a potato loses 50% of its food value when cooked, that leaves the 50% that I would have never eaten otherwise, as I tried a raw potato once, and NEVER AGAIN! Uncooked wheat or rice anyone?

As for safer, washing alone does not destroy all the potential organisms that can be destroyed by cooking.

I certaily recognize the "whole food"ers' rights to live w/o a stove, but making silly arguments (and occasionally 'moralistic' arguments at that) that their preferences are more healthy are simply ignorant. by jaqcp

[seasidegirl]

I used to work in a health food shop and the owner was living on a raw food diet on a five year plan.

She said herself that it had advantages and disadvantages. Some foods are better cooked and some raw. The main thing was that the diet suited HER. Many of her previous health and digestive problems were solved by this diet. As she was a nutritionist anyway she was on a very good raw food diet. Others might not be.

I think the quality and variety is most important, whether cooked or raw. And the season. Worth a try in the summer but you can't beat a nice hot casserole on a winter day.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I suppose a raw food diet is OK if one is prepared to tollerate the vast number of food miles necessary to support such a diet when the only things growing are parsnips and a few brassicas. Certainly, on that basis, any moral arguement presented seems unlikely to hold water.

Human beings did so well because - amongst other reasons - we learned how to cook. With cooking came not only preseravtion techniques but also a far larger larder. We could settle and farm in fat contentment rather than constantly wandering through blizzards, half starved, living mostly on carrion and surplus children.

Cooking is something that defines the human condition.

[Millymollymandy]

Oh boy is hot food better in winter!

[irigg]

i can't imagine having a raw bowl of soup or a raw xmas dinner lol

[Zech]

Thanks for the link, Durgan. I've encountered 'raw-foodies' for the first time recently - well, just one who's really evangelical about it, but she seems to do quite a good job of persuading the people around her to try it. She insists that raw food is healthier and easier to digest. Incidentally, she also swears that refined sugar is a poison