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
-
Permalink Reply by Eric S on -
The grains I eat are a lot of quinoa and occasionally wild rice, I have never heard anyone refer to either of these as toxic.
I am questioning whether it is really necessary to eat 100% raw, not questioning whether it can be done or not. I have been eating raw on and off for almost 10 years, I know it can be done.
So let me rephrase my previous statement: When I choose to eat something cooked or something that does not fall within the strict guidelines of a 100% raw diet I am not going to beat myself up over it. I think that doing anything 100% leads to narrow-mindedness because instead of considering things on their own merits you have pre-judged everything by whether it falls into a narrow category. I know that a raw diet is the diet that makes me feel the best and the healthiest. I also know that realistically, in my life, I am going to eat some cooked food every now and then and I am OK with that.
You do have a good point about the fruit. I don't eat enough fruit, I do need to try to change that.
-
Permalink Reply by Debbie Took on
-
'I think that doing anything 100% leads to narrow-mindedness because instead of considering things on their own merits you have pre-judged everything by whether it falls into a narrow category.'
It's actually a very wide category. It's 'food that hasn't been cooked' (which for me includes hundreds if not thousands of delicious foods.)
Doing something 100% and 'considering things on their own merits' are not mutually exclusive.
High-raw diets are great. So are 100% raw diets. It may not have been your intention, Eric, but your statement gives a somewhat negative view of those raw fooders who simply choose not to eat cooked food.
I follow a 100% raw food diet, love it, and find it easy (in fact, I have never found it difficult, although certainly do realise I'm in the minority there.). Do I have to eat something cooked to prove I'm not 'narrow-minded'?
As you've said 'doing anything (my italics) 100%', I'd be interested to hear what other activities you would include here that would lead to narrow-mindedness if done '100%'.
-
-
BTW, Eric, if you're going to eat grains, have you considered eating them raw and sprouted?
I have sprouted wheat around once a week in the form of Essene bread.
You might find this article of interest:
http://debbietookrawforlife.blogspot.com/2008/04/wheat-part-i-give-...
(and it's followed with instructions for Essene bread).
Best wishes (on whatever diet you choose!).
-
Permalink Reply by Rawgreengoddess on -
its a disciplined feat,to eat 100% raw,or else everyone would be living it,lol...
i eat a raw diet,consisting of high fruit,greens and once a week an avocado...im an athlete and i eat around 3000-4000 cals a day ,its simple,it just takes time to get use to eating enough at a time,to satisfy your hunger...
-
Permalink Reply by Mellifera on -
In all seriousness, calories are king and getting lots of them from plant fats seems to be suboptimal. The people who seem to be able to maintain high-calorie 100% raw are either high-fruit or raw animal food eaters.
But I'm not sure that 100% raw is the optimal human diet. I just finished Wrangham's new book Catching Fire and it makes a convincing argument that humans are adapted for cooking. I suggest even those of us that love raw read that book.
That said, I like my raw diet and it works well for me. I did high-fruit for awhile and felt crappy. If high-fruit was the natural human diet, humans would be able to do it with NO dental care: no brushing, no tooth soap, nothing...like a wild animal. They can't. Long term high fruiters that do brush their teeth have high rates of tooth decay and gum disease. That doesn't mean it can't be a good diet with proper dental care, but the argument that it's the one natural optimal species-specific diet isn't very convincing.
-
Permalink Reply by John Coleman on -
I've read Wrangham's papers before, in the ones I've seen his argument is supposition based - no real experimental research. When people actually try 100% raw they often feel incredibly healthy, so what does that teach one about human adaptations to cooked food? Adapted for cooking... what does that even mean?
By the way, tooth decay is common in wild chimps, as it is in high-fruit raw foodists. It's probably an old problem, and says little about what diet is optimal. A natural diet can be good for all of our body accept the teeth. Cultivated fruits have a lot of glucose in them, it's a very sticky sugar, so that probably makes the problem worse, along with the chronic demineralisation of soils.
-
Permalink Reply by Mellifera on
-
Wild chimps don't seem to have have teeth problems until their 30s, which is very old for a chimp.
-
Permalink Reply by John Coleman on
-
Like other primates chimps use anti-bacterials and physical cleaning to reduce decay. So this is not an unnatural activity.
"Chimpanzees, which eat far more sugary fruit than howler monkeys,
suffer from both tooth decay and gum disease. To cope with
this ailment, they chew on antibacterial barks - which local people
also use to keep teeth healthy - and inspect and clean each other's
teeth. In captivity, one chimpanzee was even seen to pry out the bad
teeth of another by means of a simple wooden lever she had made.(33)"
p89 - Wild Health, Lessons In Wellness From The Animal Kingdom, Cindy Engel
-
-
Wow - interesting - chimps are dentists!
-
Permalink Reply by Rawgreengoddess on
-
yeh,they totally rely on their natural instincts,something i am trying to get a firm grasp on in my own life...trusting my instincts and living my life this way,has worked so far :)
-
Permalink Reply by John Coleman on
-
I would not call this instict. I expect this behaviour is part of chimp culture, i.e. passed on from the older generation to the younger by example.
Those tribes that don't exhibit dentistry probably reproduce less well.
-
Permalink Reply by Rawgreengoddess on
-
im not arguing,nor am i saying its the one natural optimal species-specific diet...:)
i believe there are many constitutions to be taken into account,some do well with high fruit low fat and greens (me)and green juices,some do well high raw,some eat raw animal products and meat,which i personally find terrible,i couldnt kill an animal so i could have food :(...my teeth are amazing,my gums are healthy..and im into my 6th year of raw...not brushing your teeth no matter what you're eating,is foolish...
Latest Activity
Community by WLIR:
© 2009 Created by Dhrumil
