Think, Eat, Be Healthy

Raw Or Cooked: Which Is Better For Health

Raw

yellow pear tomato, tomato, yellow tomato, white background

I usually eat tomatoes raw. These yellow pear tomatoes are from the backyard garden.

Or Cooked?

roasted vegetables, whole vegetables, poblano chile pepper, sweet potato, tomato, carrot, fennel, garlic

Oven roasted whole vegetables including poblano chile pepper, sweet potato, tomato, parsnip, carrot, fennel and garlic.

For as long as I can remember, I have been hearing and reading about the raw diet. A raw diet consists of pretty much anything that you can possibly eat fully raw, but nothing else. It is alright to pulverize dried garbanzo beans into powder to make raw hummus but it is not alright to drink pasteurized milk. Beef tartar and oysters on the half shell are fine but sauteed mushrooms are banned.

Proponents of the raw diet claim it is the healthiest way to eat because the food is as close to the way nature provides it as possible. Please remember, though, that people(and other apes) have been eating cooked food since the first root, grain or animal carcass was found scorched after a forest or prairie fire. And also please remember that almost all people(and other apes) will choose cooked food over raw food.

Cooking food makes it easier to chew and digest and also(usually) enhances the flavor. But the heat of cooking can also destroy a lot of vitamins and phytonutrients, leach out minerals and possibly add known carcinogens to the food. Cooking some foods can enhance the availability of nutrients or remove toxicity.

So may contradictions. So many strong opinions threatening dire consequences for those making the wrong choice.

I think that once again moderation is the answer. Eat a mixture of both cooked and raw foods to reap the benefits of both. Mix it up: if you usually eat beets and carrots steamed, try shredding them to make a raw slaw once in a while; if your first thought about cabbage is raw cole slaw or stuffed cabbage leaves, try some sauerkraut or kimchi; if you like tomato-basil bisque, try some raw gazpacho.

green salad, orange ginger chuck, grass fed chuck, onion, oil cured olives, sauteed mushrooms, bell pepper, tomato, raw, cooked

A healthy whole food diet doesn’t need to be raw or cooked; it can be both. This raw greens salad with onion, bell pepper, tomato and oil-cured olives is topped with seared rare orange-ginger grass-fed chuck and sauteed mushrooms.

Raw diets, in my opinion, are just not sustainable over the long term. I would find it very difficult to take in enough calories and nutrients eating only raw whole foods. I eat plenty of raw food every day and I know how much longer it takes me to chew raw celery or fennel or carrot compared to when those same vegetables are cooked. I fully enjoy them both ways, but I would eat a lot less of them if I always had to eat them raw.

I am also wondering where fermented vegetables fit into the raw-versus-cooked spectrum. Are fermented vegetables cooked? By bacteria? If they are raw, why are they more tender and where did those extra B-vitamins come from?

We all need to find our own answers for our personal diets. To get those answers, we need to think about the problem. I eat a constantly varying mix of raw and cooked foods. There are very few things that I never eat raw or never eat cooked. There are a whole lot of wh0le foods that I almost always eat raw or almost always eat cooked. I don’t believe science has an answer to this question yet and we just need to eat to make ourselves feel as healthy as possible.