Are Raw Foods Always Nutritionally Superior to Cooked Foods?
Is raw food healthier than cooked food? It depends on the food. Certain foods should not be eaten raw. Most beans, for example, contain mildly toxic lectins that should be leached out by soaking and then boiled out by cooking the beans to tenderness. Ounce for ounce or gram for gram, most orange and yellow vegetables contain higher concentrations of fat-soluble vitamins A and K when cooked than when raw. The process of making sour dough bread greatly reduces the gliadin content of grains so that they are less toxic for people who have celiac disease. And most people can easily imagine reasons for cooking meats, eggs, and fish. Foods that are rich in digestive (lytic) enzymes, however, should be eaten raw. Many naturopaths refer to the “law of the gut.” The chemical breakdown of ingested food through the process of digestion is carried out with high precision. The food we eat yields only a small proportion of nutrients that the able to assimilate.
