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 periods, no sex drive, eroding dental enamel, dizziness, feeling faint....I sometimes wonder what planet these people are from if they don't see these things as problems.'
This planet?
http://debbietookrawforlife.blogspot.com/2009/04/periods-they-may-b...
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Permalink Reply by Mellifera on -
One thing you don't mention on that is how many women and animals in nature don't get their periods because well...they are knocked up or breastfeeding. I haven't started that part of my natural journey to eliminate periods :)
I think if you have any kind of cycle, you are OK, but if there is nothing at all, then I would worry.
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Permalink Reply by aishwarya on -
I see no periods as a huge problem for me as well when all raw. and some other probs too like poor circulation and eczema. am high raw now and happy with the balance. somedays am 100% and happy and somedays just 80%. but being raw for so long always means i will at the max have something lightly steamed and never anything full cooked. personally i find many vegetables easier to digest when slightly steamed than raw. i dont even digest raw nuts. so having efas with my steamed veggies is really helping me with my eczema detox, periods plus circulation problems. i am extremely happy with this current balance than when i was all raw. i guess the changes differ from person to person. for some one cooked food may mean huge emotional bingeing which is not good at all. a personal balance is really important knowing what your body reacts to and what it truly loves. being high raw for long i guess also brings on greater awareness of the true needs of the body, emotional needs as well. that has been so for me at least.
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Permalink Reply by telefunken on -
well said
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Permalink Reply by Bart M on
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Also, another issue with cooked food (aside from the cooking itself) is what you put into your cooked meals to actually make them taste good. I do realize that you can make a delicious cooked meal without putting a bunch of questionable ingredients in, but most people don't know how to do this. As a result, when making a veggie soup (like Dr. F advises), in order to avoid a bland meal, people will put in stuff like garlic and onions, which will make ya smell bad (and who knows if they're actually any good for you), too much oil, all sorts of spices which can enervate, store bought stocks and broths with various strange chemicals and neurotoxins, way too much salt, beans that will make ya fart... Why go through all these hoops to make some cooked stuff taste good, when you can just eat a bunch of your favorite fruit, or any of the yummy raw recipes which run one or two ingredients deep? Eating healthy can be difficult and confusing, or it can be sooo simple and enjoyable.
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Permalink Reply by Reena Kumar on -
This is such a great point. I know myself, that I still struggle with addictions to cooked food... but the foods I enjoy the taste of are found at restaurants (Indian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Italian etc). They are full of sauces, oils, chemicals, stabilizers, and god knows what else. At home I eat only raw now (and do not purchase any garlic or onions for home prepared food). I have occasionally tried to cook a simple whole foods meal at home.... but it never tastes flavorful like the restaurants. When I prepare cooked whole food at home, I think.... "wow, the raw food I eat tastes so much better. Why bother even cooking it?" It makes me realize how much we add to cooked foods in the way of sugars, refined processed starch, preservatives, msg, stabilizers, spices, stimulants (garlic, onions, chili), salts, oils, etc. Even though I still struggle with addiction to cooked food, I am becoming more and morre conscientious of what I am putting in my mouth and how loaded it is with additives that I am not fond of. It makes raw food more and more appealing to me. By the way, you are correct about onions and garlic not being healthy - they affect moods and concentration and make ADD worse.
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Absolutely. It's sad that condiments have the effect of adulterating our taste buds to the extent that the pure and natural tastes unattractive.
(My husband has stopped using the word 'bland' now as I've jumped down his throat too many times for that!)
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Permalink Reply by aishwarya on
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i find simple blended soups, slightly warmed if it is really cold, just as good as well. there is no way i would ever go high on condiments even on a raw salad. kills the natural taste for food.
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Permalink Reply by Sara Tonin on -
Renna or Anyone care to expound on garlic & onions not being good for you? Thanks...
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Permalink Reply by Rawstrength on -
Garlic is an excellent medicine for certain conditions. But it is not a food that a healthy person should use everyday, due to its anti-biotic properties. It can kill off all of your good gut bacteria.
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Permalink Reply by Travis on -
i don't believe it. raw is better. i feel better on raw. i don't feel like cooked food on raw. cooking destroys nutrients even if it liberates more from the cell wall they are damaged. cooking destroys amino acids. leaches minerals. ect. if you don't chew your food enough to get the good out of it then blend! raw food is awesome don't believe dr fuhrman. eating cooked doesn't expand your nutrient diversity it diminishes it really. its just that simple raw is better. cooked is unnatural. its not all about nutrients either. tabaco is apparently full of nutrients but it doesn't mean you should have it.
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