Raw vs. Cooked: Raw Truth

[Guest guest]

Nutrition Beyond the Trends: The Raw Truth

By Mark Anthony, Ph.D.

http://www.foodprocessing.com/articles/2005/506.html

 

Wellness Foods, FoodProcessing.com

 

Dr. Mark Anthony explains that those who suggest we should eat " all raw, all the

time " are offering us a raw deal, nutritionally speaking.

 

I love raw food; raw fruits, vegetables, sprouted seeds, and juices are

irreplaceable items in a healthy diet. Nothing matches the purity and fresh

taste of raw food. And it stands to reason; cooking destroys or damages many

nutrients, such as vitamin C, several B vitamins and even some essential amino

acids. Fresh, raw food is bursting with beneficial phytochemicals, many of which

we have yet to discover. But then, we’ve known that for decades. Raw isn’t

new. Actually, experts agree there’s no debate about the benefits of raw food.

But it's those who decide to get evangelical — “All raw, all the time†—

who are on shaky ground.

 

For raw-food fanatics, it’s not a matter of whether raw is good — there’s

no punch to that line. The extremists making the media headlines vilify cooking.

This forces a situation where cooking has to be bad or the raw foodist position

isn’t special.

 

One of the key arguments for the raw-food diet is that cooking destroys the

enzymes in food and we need the enzymes to aid digestion. Living cells house

membrane-bound packages of enzymes called lysosomes. They serve the purpose

recycling nutrients and effecting self-digestion in older proteins. This

self-digestion, called “autophagy†goes on continually throughout life.

It’s part of cell remodeling and is enhanced during stress, such as the stress

from starvation.

 

When an organism dies, the lysosomes break, releasing the enzymes which digest

protein in their vicinity. Thus the enzymes in food are not necessarily critical

to digestion.

 

Yogurt is more digestible to many people because the protein is

“predigested†by bacteria. Does that mean all foods should go through

bacterial degradation before they’re fit for consumption? We still have to use

our own digestive enzymes to process the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in

raw food into the forms we can absorb.

 

In an attempt to get around these problems, raw foodists have an escape clause:

They are “allowed†to make many preparations of soaked grains and legumes

that are heated to just below the temperature at which enzymes are supposed to

be destroyed. But methods such as this or other tricks, such as dehydrating,

have yet to be put to solid scientific testing.

 

What’s cooking

 

Some foods are only able to be properly digested when cooked. Legumes contain an

inhibitor that counters trypsin, a protein-digesting enzyme in the small

intestines. Heating destroys that inhibitor and thus increases the protein

quality of the legumes. Legumes also contain phytic acid, which can bind

minerals and make them less available. There are many ways to stop the actions

of phytic acid: soaking, germination, fermentation and cooking.

 

Also, only cooking has the added advantage of gelatinizing the starch, which

makes it more digestible. We obtain far more energy from starches (grains,

beans, and potatoes) when they’re heated and allowed to gelatinize.

 

The inability to fully access the calories in starch makes it difficult for raw

foodists to hold body weight and strength. That’s one reason for the weight

loss in an all-raw diet. A “raw only†eater is also at risk for muscle loss,

because it’s difficult to store muscle glycogen effectively on such a diet.

 

Myth-taken identity

 

Another myth of raw fanatics is that we are born with a certain amount of

enzymes, and if we waste them on digestion, we don’t have enough to carry on

metabolism. This is utterly off base. Enzymes are highly specific protein

molecules that perform equally specific tasks and are created as needed by the

body.

 

We aren’t bequeathed a limited number at birth any more than we are bestowed a

ration of antibodies to fight infection. Enzymes aren’t in limited supply

unless there’s an underlying nutrient deficiency, or genetic abnormality. We

need vital materials from diet to build enzymes, just as we need vital materials

to build any protein. True, many of these vital materials are found in abundance

in raw food, but many are found in properly cooked food as well.

 

The fact that every reaction in the body is made possible because enzymes lower

the “energy of activation†is not an argument for the necessity of eating

them intact. Enzymes in foods are proteins and are digested the same as any

other food protein — they’re broken down into constituent amino acids.

 

For an enzyme in food to act as functional molecule in our body, it would have

to routinely escape our digestive enzymes, and enter the blood as an intact

protein. Then it would have to fool the immune system into thinking that this is

not really a foreign protein, but a friendly nutrient. Otherwise we’d be in

for a severe allergic reaction if not all-out anaphylactic shock resulting in

physical collapse or even death.

 

Even if intact “live†enzymes acted as essential nutrients — which they

can’t — it’s still only an argument for eating raw food, not for avoiding

cooked food.

 

There are a few possible risks with an all-cooked diet. Raw foodists fear that

cooking destroys vitamins. Well, that’s true. Water-soluble vitamins, such as

vitamin C, are destroyed in the cooking process. Not completely, but certainly

enough to make a significant impact. Sailors of the Renaissance times found this

out when they developed scurvy on long voyages. Solution? Eat some fresh

fruit—problem solved. The fact that most Americans eat a highly processed diet

very low in fresh fruits and vegetables is not an argument for restricting the

diet by rejecting cooking.

 

The case for deficiencies

 

The usual argument against the all-raw diet is that there are risks for

deficiencies, particularly calcium, iron, and B12. Part of the reason is that

raw foodists are often vegans who have added yet another restriction to their

already limited diets.

 

The risk of deficiency is present with any restricted diet, especially the

modern fast-food diet. That’s why “variety, balance, and moderation†is

not merely a cliché but a solid nutritional defense strategy. Certainly; there

are supplements to shore up any diet that creates a deficiency. But the real

issue of raw food, the one that draws all the attention, implies all cooked food

is bad.

 

Some raw foodists insist that at least 75 percent of the diet should be raw. And

that’s not an argument for a raw-food diet. It’s an argument for the benefit

of raw food in the diet, about which there is no debate. But if 25 percent of

your diet is cooked, you’re not a raw foodist, just somebody who likes raw

food. If 25 percent of my diet is meat, am I a vegetarian?

 

The truly extreme raw foodists claim that cooking is unnatural, that no other

animal cooks its food, only humans. Yet even by the most conservative estimates,

cooking began at the very latest 300,000 years ago (with estimates on the other

end going back to nearly one million years ago). Homo erectus, an ancestral

cousin whose brain was about three-fourths the size of modern humans, was the

dominant hominid then. Neanderthal, the large-brained hominid that emerged in

Europe around 190,000 years ago (and is considered the quintessential “cave

manâ€) was cooking food. Homo sapiens (our species) didn’t arrive until the

earliest about 150,000 years ago in Africa.

 

In other words, cooking predates anatomically modern humans. There was no such

thing as a natural, all-raw Homo sapien or any all raw food-eating large-brained

hominid for that matter. How unnatural is cooking if we must go back to

doll-sized monkeys swinging in trees to find a time when cooking wasn’t

routine?

 

Raw food is great and, I would argue, an irreplaceable part of a healthy diet.

Raw food cookbooks offer some fun, interesting and innovative ways to introduce

a large variety of healthful raw foods into the diet. But when the discussion

changes from the benefits of raw food to the evils of cooking, we’ve left

promoting health far behind and ventured into the shaky realm of selling a

pseudo philosophy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__________________

Do not fear the dangers of human forgetfulness

and mortal inconstancy, do not be troubled with

doubts of failure or by perplexing confusion, do

not falter and question your status and standing,

for in every dark hour, at every crossroad in the

forward struggle, the Spirit of Truth will always

speak, saying, " This is the way. "

[The Urantia Book, p. 383, par. 2]

__________________

“Until he extends his circle of compassion to all

living things, man will not himself find peace. "

--Albert Schweitzer

 

http://www.vegconnect.com/

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