Raw vs. Cooked: Do You Believe Dr. Fuhrman's Take? What's Your Stance?
This is from Joel Fuhrman M.D., a board–certified family physician who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods:
Raw vs. Cooked?
Certainly, there are benefits to consuming plenty of raw fruits and vegetables. These foods supply us with high nutrient levels and are generally low in calories too. Eating lots of raw foods is a key feature of an anti-cancer diet style and a long life. But are there advantages to eating a diet of all raw foods and excluding all cooked foods? The answer is a resounding “No”. In fact, eating an exclusively raw-food diet is a disadvantage. Excluding all steamed vegetables and vegetable soups from your diet narrows your nutrient diversity and has a tendency to reduce the percentage of calories from vegetables in favor of nuts and fruits which are lower in nutrients per calorie.
Raw vegetables are dramatically low in calories and we probably only absorb about 50 calories a pound from raw vegetables. Our caloric needs cannot be met on a raw food diet without consuming large amounts of fruits, avocado, nuts and seeds. This may be an adequate diet for some people, but in my 15 years of medical practice catering to the community of natural food enthusiasts, raw foodists and natural hygienists, I have seen many people who weakened their health on such raw food, vegan diets. Frequent fungal skin and nail infections, poor dentition, hair loss and muscular wasting are common on such fruit-based diets.
Unfortunately, sloppy science prevails in the raw-food movement. Raw food advocates mistakenly conclude that since many cooked foods are not healthy for us, then all cooked foods are bad. This is not true.
The idea that stirs the most enthusiasm for this diet is the contention that cooking both destroys about fifty percent of the nutrients in food, and destroys all or most of the life promoting enzymes. It is true that when food is baked at high temperatures—and especially when it is fried or barbecued—toxic compounds are formed and most important nutrients are lost. Many vitamins are water-soluble, and a significant percent can be lost with cooking, especially overcooking. Similarly, many plant enzymes function as phytochemical nutrients in our body and are useful to maximize health. They, too, can be destroyed by overcooking. However, we cannot paint with this brush of negativity over every form of cooking.
Only small amounts of nutrients are lost with conservative cooking like making a soup, but many more nutrients are made more absorbable. These nutrients would have been lost if those vegetables had been consumed raw. When we heat, soften and moisturize the vegetables and beans we dramatically increase the potential digestibility and absorption of many beneficial and nutritious compounds. We also increase the plant proteins in the diet, especially important for those eating a plant-based diet with limited or no animal products.
In many cases, cooking actually destroys some of the harmful anti-nutrients that bind minerals in the gut and interfere with the utilization of nutrients. Destruction of these anti-nutrients increases absorption. Steaming vegetables and making vegetable soups breaks down cellulose and alters the plants’ cell structures so that fewer of your own enzymes are needed to digest the food, not more. On the other hand, the roasting of nuts and the baking of cereals does reduce availability and absorbability of protein.
When food is steamed or made into a soup, the temperature is fixed at 100 degrees Celsius or 212 Fahrenheit—the temperature of boiling water. This moisture-based cooking prevents food from browning and forming toxic compounds. Acrylamides, the most generally recognized of the heat-created toxins, are not formed with boiling or steaming. They are formed only with dry cooking. Most essential nutrients in vegetables are made more absorbable after being cooked in a soup and water-soluble nutrients are not lost because we eat the liquid portion of the soup too.
Recent studies confirm that the body absorbs much more of the beneficial anti-cancer compounds (carotenoids and phytochemicals—especially lutein and lycopene) from cooked vegetables compared with raw. Scientists speculate that the increase in absorption of antioxidants after cooking may be attributed to the destruction of the cell matrix (connective bands) to which the valuable compounds are bound.
Another fallacy promoted in the raw food movement and on the web is that the fragile heat-sensitive enzymes contained in the plants we eat catalyze chemical reactions that occur in humans and aid in digestion of the food. This is not true. Plant foods do not supply enzymes that aid in their digestion when consumed by animals. Our body supplies exactly the precise amount of enzymes needed for digestion; we are not ill equipped to digest normal food. The plant enzymes are broken down into simpler molecules by our own powerful digestive juices and even those that are absorbed as peptide size pieces (or with some biologic function) do not function to catalyze human functions. So it is not true that eating raw food demands less enzyme production by your body. A healthy body produces the precise amount of enzymes needed to digest the ingested food appropriately and the enzymes our body uses for other processes are unique to our human needs and are not present in plants. We make what we need from the proper materials.
In conclusion, eating lots of raw foods is a feature of a healthy diet. I always encourage people to eat more raw food. One of my common statements is—the salad is the main dish. Raw food is necessary for digestive efficiency, proper peristalsis and normal bowel function. Certain foods, especially fruit, avocado and nuts undergo significant change with cooking and are best eaten raw. Baking, frying, barbecuing and other high heat cooking methods that brown and damage food form acrylamides, which are carcinogenic. Browning and other high heat cooking methods should be avoided. Cooking techniques like steaming vegetables, stewing foods in a pressure cooker and soup making, do not have these drawbacks. They do not brown foods or form acrylamides.
Eating raw food is necessary for good health and is an important feature of a healthy diet. But that does not mean that one’s entire diet has to be raw to be in excellent health. It also does not mean eating an all raw diet is the healthiest way to eat. It is healthier to expand your nutrient density, your absorption of plant protein and your nutrient diversity with the inclusion of some conservatively cooked food in your diet.
Link LB ; Potter JD. Raw versus cooked vegetables and cancer risk.
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2004; 13(9):1422-35.
Ismail A ; Lee WY. Influence of cooking practice on antioxidant properties and phenolic content of selected vegetables. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2004; 13(Suppl):S162.
Tags: cooked, eating, health, high, percentage, raw, soups, steamed, wellness
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Debbie Took on
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No, there aren't any well-documented studies, Rawzilla.
Re people claiming to feel good on both diets, sure - they do.
The difference is that there are hundreds of case studies of people tangibly improving their health (eg waving goodbye to ailments, including serious illness) when switching from a SAD diet to a raw vegan diet.
I don't know of the same thing happening the other way round...:-)
People who smoke and eat a SAD diet, no matter how great they say they feel 'now' will almost certainly run into health problems that the average raw vegan is unlikely to experience. Not for certain - but unlikely.
Also, when you talk of people who smoke and eat a SAD diet claiming they feel 'great', are you talking of your contemporaries? Age is telling...how many people in their 60s who smoke and eat a SAD diet 'feel great?' I know a few and they certainly don't give that impression. I only know a handful of raw vegans in their 60s and, actually, they do look as if they're 'feeling great'.
I have researched into the 'vegan cultures' thing, and most cultures that are claimed to have been vegan have in fact been vegetarian, if only to a small degree.
Speaking for myself (well, who else?) I have never claimed that a raw vegan diet is superior to a raw vegetarian diet, and have switched between the two myself. But neither am I convinced it is inferior.
Just noticed Mellifera's comment below - there are certainly examples of cultures that have not eaten meat. But that is all I shall say.
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Permalink Reply by Mellifera on -
I personally think the reason you don't see them is either
a. it's physically impossible to survive on raw wild plant foods
or
b. while they were busy chewing plants all day, the meat/cooked eaters had time to sharpen their spears...
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Permalink Reply by Rawzilla on -
As I consider this dilemma ("What are we designed to eat?!")--and I have searched and searched for many years---I think there is no way we are the first people to try to eat raw, raw vegan, or vegan.
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I don't subscribe to copying what I think our ancestors ate. Neither I do subscribe to copying what chimps eat.
The great thing about being a human being is that each one of us can look at all the information we have to our disposal, interpret it (in our own unique way!) and...make choices.
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Permalink Reply by Rawzilla on
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No doubt SAD is a bad diet, and chances are it will catch up with most who eat it. And that's my point: A handful of years on any diet does not make a case for its healthfulness. So, the fact that a SAD--and any other poor diet--catches up with people over time, is my point.
Time reveals a lot.
I'm really taking about looking at a lifetime or a few generations of "feeling good."
Re people claiming to feel good on both diets, sure - they do.
I know some of these people; Debbie, they are family members and close friends. They feel fine and don't think too much about what they eat. It's maddening because I have scrutinized over my diet with health challenges, and a misstep is a big deal for my body!
Some of them are in their 60s, some are in their 40s. A relative of mine died at 92--no prior degenerative disease, and she ate whatever she wanted. Again, I'm not saying that a "whatever diet" is fine, but I am saying that just because someone feels fine for many years doesn't mean the diet is ideal for humans. That's why I am more interested in larger communities and the centenarians.
I don't know many people who have been raw or vegan for several decades and are now in their 90s.
There are a number of us, myself included, who weren't SAD eaters to begin with and did not fare well on high raw or vegan.
Many people who do well on raw are cleansing from diseases of excess, so no doubt they're going to feel better shifting to other extreme (energetically and from toxic to cleansed). This is a crucial point in the raw community, because over and over I meet people with diseases of deficiency and depletion who fall apart on raw vegan diets, especially with high fruit.
Do a search for acne, rotting teeth, candidiasis, rashes, hair loss, anxiety, coldness, thyroid, and so on, and you will find this happening to people after they went on a raw diet (from what I've seen it's the vegan high-fruiters, but there might others too).
Like you, I'm not all that interested in what chimps eat. We're not chimps. But I definitely think we can learn from our elders as well as looking within.
I do think applying the factor of time is relevant if the discussion turns toward what works for others.
Following our own intuition and not putting any weight on science or anthropology/history is another fine way to go about this quest, but this particular discussion is really about studies, theories, etc., so I think both can be addressed here.
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Rawzilla says:
This is a crucial point in the raw community, because over and over I meet people with diseases of deficiency and depletion who fall apart on raw vegan diets, especially with high fruit.
Do a search for acne, rotting teeth, candidiasis, rashes, hair loss, anxiety, coldness, thyroid, and so on, and you will find this happening to people after they went on a raw diet (from what I've seen it's the vegan high-fruiters, but there might others too).
Rawzilla, all I can say is that this is not my experience. On 30Bad site for example, there are constantly stories from people who relate problems with other raw food diets, and those problems have gone on high-fruit diets. Exactly the opposite of what you say.
I'm not doubting your experience. It's simply that my experience is different.
But, really, it's just too complicated to pin these things on a diet. Many people just aren't truthful about what they consume, what additional things they are taking, or, for that matter, for how long they try something! I'm not saying this is the case with everyone, but, after years of hearing these stories, and a little probing, it certainly is the case with some.
As to raw in general - it is the path less travelled. I can quite understand tha you would want convincing. There aren't any longitudinal studies, on raw, or on vegan, or even on raw vegetarian or raw omnivore for that matter.
For some reason, that is beyond the bounds of this discussion, raw made such complete sense to me by around two weeks after I started that I have never needed convincing and I have never had any doubts. High fruit, low fruit, it really doesn't matter - just food undamaged by heat. But I am not typical.
I think it highly unlikely that I would be 100% raw without that conviction. It seems many people 'struggle' to be 100% raw. In those cases, I would strongly suggest they go high-raw instead - why be miserable and feel 'deprived'? That would surely be enervating and unhealthful in itself! If I had doubts I would be happily 'high-raw'. Which of course is light years ahead of the average diet in terms of health. If your 92-year old grandmother had been high-raw she might have lived to 102 and had ten more illness-free years. I'd guess there were lots of good things about your grandmother's life that contributed to her good health. If she'd been on a healthy diet, that would have been one more.
As I remember saying recently, and if it's on this thread, apologies, food is obviously not the only factor that affects our health. It's quite possible for an outdoors-y, positive-thinking person on a SAD diet to be healthier than a computer-potato negative one on a good diet.
Anyway, although I have no doubts about raw, I understand your doubts about vegan v vegetarianism, and have asked on other forums for the same studies that you ask for. Those of us who prefer not to supplement aren't mad about the idea of irreversible nervous system damage either. The only answer is to continue to research, then make your own decision.
Anyway, I think I must bow out of this thread now, at least for a while! It's been a very interesting one - in many ways!
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Permalink Reply by Rawzilla on
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Debbie said: As to raw in general - it is the path less travelled. I can quite understand tha you would want convincing
Nope. I did go raw, and got quite sick. I certainly don't want any more convincing.
So it comes back to my question. Where are these well-documented, very old, multi-generational raw and/or vegan communities? Surely humans have tried it before.
Also, I want to be clear: I mentioned the 92-year-old (not my grandmother btw) to illustrate that a handful of people feeling good does not prove the benefits of a diet fit for humans--in fact the diet can be quite poor. And it is undeniable that people are becoming quite sick on raw too, but I am not going to name names.
What's more, as I said, I think raw is the extreme opposite for many (as I read their posts), so it's like medicine if you had diseases of excesses. It can take many years to come back into balance on raw. Raw is at the least a temporary remedy for diseases of excess.
Debbie, I understand this has not been your experience, but it has been mine, and it led me to meet a lot of people here who, once raw, are now stitching back together their health with cooked foods and animal proteins.
For a thorough discussion on which diets have truly worked for humans, to sustain a life and succeeding generations, we need to look at the long-term and communities at large. We just don't have that at this point for raw or vegan (I realize you question veganism too) cultures. From my point of view, and from my own experience, it's too early to declare any of these as a healthful diet for humans. There are too many of us who went downhill on raw.
The healthiest people I know eat a whole-foods diet with fresh salads and cooked foods, including animal proteins. They are dancers, artists, shop owners, business people, and very much in balance. They don't smoke or eat SAD, but they also are not 100% raw.
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Permalink Reply by John Coleman on -
Deacons claims are based on current knowledge in developmental biology - I'm not particularly intersted in his anthropology and do not use it in my work.
I agree with you about the vegan diet. It is a modern cultural phenomena, and has no known equivalent in nature. There have however been exampes of wild primates with food cultures that vary such as some populations seem to intentionally exclude animal foods. For example some bands of gorillas will refrain from eating insects they see while others will happily eat such insects. Chimps have also been observed to decline meat. So there may be crude similarities to the human condition.
Of course I am not suggesting that other primates are motivated by any ethical considerations, such as would motivate vegans. However, one must ask what is human "nature"? Are we not entitled to suggest that compassion for other species is part of our "nature", that is suppressed by cultural programming?
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'However, one must ask what is human "nature"? Are we not entitled to suggest that compassion for other species is part of our "nature", that is suppressed by cultural programming?'
John, could I use this for something I am (hoping to) write? Will of course quote you. As I can't return to this thread (it is a time vampire!), could you PM me?
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Permalink Reply by Travis on -
isn't it funny when people make claims about raw food not having enough nutrition to the point that they think people would drop dead if they were doing it! and yet species with very similar physiology to us seem to not need all these 'extra nutrients' that only cooking your food can unlock. it really makes me laugh. i think they problem with some of these people is they could never realistically see themselves surviving or coping without cooked and so attack the idea of eating raw food to feel better about the lifestyle they lead.
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Permalink Reply by Rawgreengoddess on -
ha ha Travis so true...i like to say to peeps who ask how long i have been eating raw?i say im in my 6th year now,and yup im still alive.he he;)
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