Raw Food Diet Myths

"Raw Food Diet Myths" Is it better to eat our vegetables
raw or cooked? If you’re thinking raw,
you’re right! But if you guessed cooked,
you’re also right! A number of nutrients, like vitamin C,
are partially destroyed by cooking. On the other hand, some nutrients
become more absorbable upon cooking. For example, we get three times more
antioxidants in cooked carrots than raw. More cancer-fighting
indoles in cooked broccoli, and more lycopene
in cooked tomatoes. Leavening increases the mineral
absorption in grain products, and dry roasting can increase
the mineral absorption from nuts. There’s no good evidence
that raw diets are superior to other whole foods,
plant-based diets. In fact, the published evidence
that does exist is fairly disappointing. The only dietary survey I’m aware of
found raw food diets deficient in energy, protein, vitamins B12 and D,
calcium, selenium, and zinc. There are a number of
seriously flawed myths that circulate within the
raw foods community— like the belief that we have only a
limited amount of enzymes in our body that somehow get used up,
and so we need to consume live plant enzymes,
which are deactivated by cooking.

Well, they’re deactivated
by our stomach acid too, but even if they weren’t,
specific enzymes catalyze specific reactions
within our body. And since we’re not plants,
we have no need for plant enzymes. Our body makes all the enzymes we
need to function from the protein we eat, and cooking actually renders
proteins more digestible. So, I advocate eating a combination
of cooked and raw foods. Having said that, we should all be
eating huge salads every day.

We could easily polish off five cups
of spinach in one sitting, and that’s how we
have to think of greens— not as some little
overcooked side servings. If, for whatever reason,
you want to eat 100% raw, first, of course you
have to take a B12 supplement. Second, a diet based
on modern cultivated fruits is not nutritionally adequate. They’re a pale shadow of the
wild fruits eaten by our ape ancestors. To improve the nutritional content,
one would have to add at least a half-kilo a day of dark green leafies—
5 to 10 cups— and at least 50 grams a day
of nuts and seeds—about half a cup. And third, I explicitly recommend against
raw food diets for young children, as they just don’t have
the stomach capacity. Although an all-raw food diet
can be healthy, there is no reliable evidence
to suggest that it’s more healthy than a diet of whole plant foods—
cooked or not.

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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