Raw Food Diet vs Cooked

A raw food diet, many people believe, is the best way to get all the nutrients you need when you eat vegetables. People who follow this philosophy of eating say that adding heat in the cooking process can leach out the nutrition you should be getting from eating vegetables. But new research reveals that eating vegetables plain and raw may not always be best. The British Journal of Nutrition will release the results of this study in June 2008. It involved 198 Germans who were fed a raw food diet. Specifically, 95% of what they ate was raw. As a result, researchers saw that they had normal levels of Vitamin A and high levels of beta carotene. But 80% of the study subjects had below normal levels of lycopene, a antioxidant found in tomatoes.

Another study in the January 2008 volume of Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry found that absorption of nutrition from some vegetables occurred at higher rates in vegetables that were cooked than those that were raw. In fact, boiling is better than steaming, frying or serving them raw for carrots, zucchini and broccoli.

Researchers also found that when people ate vegetables served with high-fat dressings, they absorbed more lycopene, lutein and beta carotene than when they ate vegetables with a low fat dressing or even plain.

Whenever I read about study results like these, I always take the conclusions with a grain of salt. Sometimes details of the study that could make a big difference in the outcome are not revealed. It seems that including good fats when you eat vegetables makes a big difference in whether the nutrition is absorbed. Also, the study focused on 198 Germans. How scientific was this sample? Could there be other variables that could have affected the outcome of he study like where they got the vegetables that they ate? These are all questions that should be answered before making any conclusions about eating raw food versus cooked food.

If you’d like to give raw food a try, here’s a recipe taken from The Sunny Raw Kitchen:

Zucchini Hummus

4 Tbs. olive oil

1 and 1/2 lemon, juice of

3/4 cup ground sesame seeds

3/4 tsp. sea salt

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp. paprika

1 t ground cumin

Cayenne to taste

Blend all of the ingredients in food processor and eat with your favorite raw veggies .

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