Seems a little drastic, right? But this is a thing. A cooked food is essentially a dead food. If you were cooked you’d be dead. Put a fork in me! But it’s not really that simple is it.
Today we’re talking about cooking plant food, no time to cover meats and such so we’re sticking with veggies. Why? Because eating plant food is the key to optimum health! I'm talking vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and for that matter, grains, legumes, herbs, spices and flowers. So what’s better, raw or cooked?
Now what do I mean by better for you? It’s where you get the maximum amount of nutrients and subsequent absorption in the body, because that’s the goal. We’re long past eating just because it tastes good. We eat to absorb nutrients, especially at this age. Our body is not as good at this as it once was. And we’ve hopefully moved on from the homogenous cravings of the typical 8 year old, pizza and icecream. Now it’s raw-food pizza (a good chef can do wonders with vegetables and a good wine).
Speaking of which, I had my first raw food lasagna in Santa Monica at Planet Raw back in 2001. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I kept saying to my friend, “You mean to tell me this mana from the gods is just raw vegetables and seeds? You sure? The flavor!” I was a fairly fresh LA implant, and it was the first I had heard of the Raw Food revolution. I’m a prairie girl? We do egg&cheese casseroles and beef stew. Who was this master genius? His name was Juliano Brotman and I was blown away. He was an absolute joy to watch and his creations nothing short of raw food live Picassos. He’s still there btw. And the raw food diet and lifestyle is very much a thing.
So what is raw food? Plant food that has not been heated above 104 and 120 degrees Farenheit. Raw foodies believe foods cooked above this temperature have lost their nutritional vitality and can be harmful to the body. Hence the question – does cooking kill? Natural plant enzymes are destroyed at temperatures above 118 degrees. Without their natural enzymes, these foods, any foods, are hard for the body to digest. That’s key, and there are many more plusses of raw food:
1. Raw food contains lots of nutrients in an easy to digest form thanks to enzymes. Cooking destroys not just enzymes, but plenty of vitamins and minerals too.
2. Humans have eaten raw food since the beginning of time. Refined? Last 100 years and look at our health stats.
3. Raw food does myriad other good things, fights inflammation, improves digestion, provides more fiber, improves heart health and liver function, prevents cancer, prevents/treats constipation, more energy, clear skin, helps you maintain a healthy body weight…
How can raw food do all that? Enzymes! People rarely talk about these amazing little things, so here’s your crash course. There are three types of enzymes:
1. Metabolic, every cell in your body has enzymes that conduct endless metabolic processes, we’re dead without them;
2. Digestive, amylase to digests starch in your mouth, protease digests protein in the stomach, and various pancreatic enzymes that get to work digesting in the small intestine;
3. Plant enzymes, they are in live and in raw food and naturally help you digest the food all the way along—unless you cook it out of them. When you do, that plant becomes harder to digest.
Raw milk also has enzymes (which help you digest milk, but only if it’s raw) as does raw meat, and so does every single fruit and vegetable on earth. Take these away through denaturing the food, pasteurization or cooking, refining, and they die—then your own digestive enzymes must do all the work, and after years of this, they actually wear out and don’t replenish as well. With a lot of abuse, eventually your whole digestive tract slows down, foods don’t digest properly, undigested protein particles leak through the compromised gut wall, and inflammation and allergy set in. From there? Chronic disease makes its foothold, including diabetes and cancer. Suddenly now we care about enzymes.
Raw food? YES. Every single day. Plant enzyme supplementation or digestive enzymes? If you’re over 40 and don’t eat much raw, YES. You may wish you had started younger.
Beyond that raw food can be so interesting. We think cucumber and carrot sticks, but there are sprouted quinoa carrot crackers, sushi with savory bean butters and sea vegetables, cashew nut cheeses, walnut stuffed mushrooms, bean tacos in lettuce wraps, ferments like kombucha and real sauerkraut, and so on. It’s hard to conceive when you’ve been cooking like your mom or grandma for years (like I had), using mostly the oven and the stove. That was my cooking education. Unless it was summer, then we’d pull cukes and strawberries fresh from the ground.
So that’s the good. What’s the bad?
1. Raw food exclusively is very cleansing and detoxing, but you can lose too much weight if you do it for too long. Ha! I think they mean 3 – 6 months, most of us don’t have that issue.
2. The cellulose/fiber in veggies is, paradoxically, hard to digest. Cooking helps predigest this for us. Cooking also can make some of the minerals more accessible by breaking ionic bonds.
3. Cooking can be easier and more palatable, and you still get all the macronutrients: protein, fat and carbohydrate. But as you see, you won’t get as many micronutrients: vitamins and minerals. The fact is, without micronutrients, your body can’t do much with the macros.
4. If you don’t eat meat then you may need to supplement Vitamin D, B12, iron and zinc—which we get in higher doses from animal proteins.
5. Sprouting and fermenting – which is an important part of the raw food diet to ensure you get all the nutrients you need – can be difficult and takes time.
Raw food is a learning curve for most of us because it’s doesn’t come naturally anymore. We need guidance to be able to ferment properly, and sprout grains, nuts and seeds. It’s even hard to find the ingredients, like raw nuts, which usually come pre-roasted, which damages their fragile oils. It’s also hard because you need equipment: food processor, blender, dehydrator and more fridge space.
So what’s the solution? A bit of everything, leaning heavy on fruit and vegetables. Be certain to eat raw, every single day. If you finish the day with not one salad or piece of fruit, or carrot stick or parsley, you get a FAIL. Your digestive tract needs the love. Even the Canada Food Guide suggests 8-10 servings of fruit and vegetables per day. Good for them! They’ve come a long way. But ignore their recommendations on dairy. Also they don’t specify raw, so I say aim for half your veggies raw or more. Try it. Get clean. Let me know how it all goes. If this helped you please hit like and subscribe. Healthy happy eating… xx Shannon