Raw versus Cooked: Which is More Natural?

[Richard]

Some people have spiritual beliefs, and others don't, I think that's the hurdle when discussing what raw foodism is. For those who don't have spiritual beliefs, it will appear to be a diet, and to people who have spiritual beliefs, it can mean something more to them.

[xveganjoshx]

Eat whatever version of the vegan diet you feel like, who cares...

[DV]

I get the point that something can be spiritual and therefore make a person believe that it is good and right and righteous. But it's the righteousness that can be harmful, IMO, because it can sometimes cause people to judge what others do as wrong or bad.

 

If a certain way of eating or living makes someone feel good then that's great. But demonizing other's choices (food, religion, politics) results in division among people.

 

I've pretty much stopped posting in the raw foods section unless I am in agreement with something or have something of value, IMO, to share. It's taken me some time to realize that, for some, raw foodism is not just about diet and is about something deeper. Strong beliefs and/or faith is sometimes best left to the person who holds them.

 

I do not believe a raw food diet is unhealthy if someone is getting all of the necessary nutrients. I also believe an omni diet can be healthy (unnecessary and unethical). I definitely believe that a vegan diet consisting of cooked and raw foods can be very healthy. I sincerely hope that those who follow a raw foods lifestyle on this forum will not demonize the food choices (cooked and raw) of the "non-believers." I think everyone eats raws foods on this forum, even if it's just fruit and salads.

 

IMO, much of the negative posting in the past was due to a failure of acceptance of others' choices and/or a judgement of others' choices. I truly hope we have moved beyond that point as a group and learned to accept each other.

 

While I think BeforeWisdom was looking to open discussion with this thread, I know that it's not something all members consider a point of discussion. If I were a raw foodist then that first post might feel similar to the theory that we evolved to eat animals products - and it might put me on the defensive. However, I see validity in most theories of how humans evolved to eat almost ANYTHING. But that's not the point. The point is that we CHOOSE to eat and live in a way that works for us as individuals.

 

If any of my past posts have seemed critical of raw foodism, understand that has never been my position. We have some members and lurkers who are very uneducated about nutrition and some with eating disorders who look to veganism and raw foodism for various reasons. When I see posts that I believe contain advice or thoughts that could adversely affect the health of some impressionable readers then I have added my thoughts in the past - always thinking of those readers, not making a judgement against the person posting. And I do this in the general nutrition section, not just raw.

 

I hope that I am not viewed as anti-raw by some of you. I eat a fair amount of raw as the weather gets warmer and enjoy raw food preparation very much. I'm not a spiritual or religious person. I just like good food and good nutrition with minimal to no cruelty and ecological damage.

[cubby2112]

One of the primary reasons we went through that period of animosity towards raw foods on this board was because raw foodism had become the accepted religion of eating on this board. For some time, if anything anti-raw was said, the one who said it was shot down quickly. Suddenly, a few people started examining the validity of a 100 percent raw diet and everyone realized they could now actually talk critically of raw foodism. An explosion of anti-raw posts ensued because I think people had a lot bottled up. I was one of the people who wanted to point something out here or there but was afraid to because of the repercussions. I think a floodgate opened, but has now found itself emptied. It seems like we are at a point now where we can have civil discussions either way on the vegan diet and I think this forum is far better for it. Blind, extremist thinking never gets people anywhere.

 

I have nothing against raw diets and believe they can be very healthy, but they are not for me. I was raw (albeit only 80%) for a while and feel that I do better on cooked food. I just hope that we can all just get along. I love debate but hate overt conflict.

[xveganjoshx]

I think everyone eats raws foods on this forum, even if it's just fruit and salads.

DV, I'm disapointed in you... You've met me, we've eaten together several times... Have you EVER seen me eat a raw food?

 

I get the point that something can be spiritual and therefore make a person believe that it is good and right and righteous. But it's the righteousness that can be harmful, IMO, because it can sometimes cause people to judge what others do as wrong or bad.

 

If a certain way of eating or living makes someone feel good then that's great. But demonizing other's choices (food, religion, politics) results in division among people.

 

I've pretty much stopped posting in the raw foods section unless I am in agreement with something or have something of value, IMO, to share. It's taken me some time to realize that, for some, raw foodism is not just about diet and is about something deeper. Strong beliefs and/or faith is sometimes best left to the person who holds them.

 

I do not believe a raw food diet is unhealthy if someone is getting all of the necessary nutrients. I also believe an omni diet can be healthy (unnecessary and unethical). I definitely believe that a vegan diet consisting of cooked and raw foods can be very healthy. I sincerely hope that those who follow a raw foods lifestyle on this forum will not demonize the food choices (cooked and raw) of the "non-believers."

 

IMO, much of the negative posting in the past was due to a failure of acceptance of others' choices and/or a judgement of others' choices. I truly hope we have moved beyond that point as a group and learned to accept each other.

 

While I think BeforeWisdom was looking to open discussion with this thread, I know that it's not something all members consider a point of discussion. If I were a raw foodist then that first post might feel similar to the theory that we evolved to eat animals products - and it might put me on the defensive. However, I see validity in most theories of how humans evolved to eat almost ANYTHING. But that's not the point. The point is that we CHOOSE to eat and live in a way that works for us as individuals.

 

If any of my past posts have seemed critical of raw foodism, understand that has never been my position. We have some members and lurkers who are very uneducated about nutrition and some with eating disorders who look to veganism and raw foodism for various reasons. When I see posts that I believe contain advice or thoughts that could adversely affect the health of some impressionable readers then I have added my thoughts in the past - always thinking of those readers, not making a judgement against the person posting. And I do this in the general nutrition section, not just raw.

 

I hope that I am not viewed as anti-raw by some of you. I eat a fair amount of raw as the weather gets warmer and enjoy raw food preparation very much. I'm not a spiritual or religious person. I just like good food and good nutrition with minimal to no cruelty and ecological damage.

As for the rest of the post, it's great as usual!

[hsorlando]

I am a vegan for several reasons. And one of them is because I don't think it's necessary to eat any of God's creatures, you can call that a spiritual reason if you like. I don't care what other peoples reasons are for being raw, or vegan I'm just happy that they are, for the animals sake. I also don't think the reason matters as much as people think it does. Just my 2 cents, hope I didn't offend anyone.

[xveganjoshx]

I am a vegan for several reasons. And one of them is because I don't think it's necessary to eat any of God's creatures, you can call that a spiritual reason if you like. I don't care what other peoples reasons are for being raw, or vegan I'm just happy that they are, for the animals sake. I also don't think the reason matters as much as people think it does. Just my 2 cents, hope I didn't offend anyone.

Good ole GOD

[DV]

I think everyone eats raws foods on this forum, even if it's just fruit and salads.

DV, I'm disapointed in you... You've met me, we've eaten together several times... Have you EVER seen me eat a raw food?

 

Holy shit, you're right!!!! You wouldn't even eat that lovely sprouted salad I made with lunch when you visited.

[flanders77]

I think everyone eats raws foods on this forum, even if it's just fruit and salads.

DV, I'm disapointed in you... You've met me, we've eaten together several times... Have you EVER seen me eat a raw food?

 

Holy shit, you're right!!!! You wouldn't even eat that lovely sprouted salad I made with lunch when you visited.

OKAY, NOW LET THE BASHING ON COOKED-FOODISM BEGIN!

[robert]

I wouldn't call it bashing, he just likes fire applied to his meals.

[DV]

He just might be the only 100% cooked food vegan I know of.

[Zack]

I've seen him eat raw food.

[DV]

He will be pissed that you outed him.

[Zack]

I didn't out him. When I saw him, he didn't take his cooked foodism so seriously.

 

He has since gotten tired of the symptoms of raw food toxification and has made sure to give it up entirely. For a while I had to council him while he was transitioning....hard times.

[DV]

Aha. So he must have already detoxed when I saw him in January. That's why he wouldn't eat my lovely broccoli sprouts. He didn't have any noxious gas either.

 

You're a good friend to be there for him during the hard times.

[flanders77]

Aha. So he must have already detoxed when I saw him in January.

It is all about the REtox

[nobbi]

G. Raw versus Cooked: Which is More Natural?

How might our nontropical gatherer/hunter ancestors lived through a single winter without cooking, especially with their extreme energy expenditure?

 

That's not the point. Of course they had to cook - JUST TO SURVIVE!!!

And that is quite ok and natural. But the fact is that humans are not non-tropical. Humans were only able to reach other continents during/after the iceage by walking across frozen seas. They left their natural habitat and were forced to look for alternative food and alternative ways to eat it.

But this does not mean that cooked food is the only way to survive a winter. You can perfectly survive IF you have enough raw food around you.

 

What the author is doing is twisting the facts.

[Zack]

But this does not mean that cooked food is the only way to survive a winter. You can perfectly survive IF you have enough raw food around you.

 

I do not understand this. How does raw food survive the winter?

[Bambam]

http://www.beautifulonraw.com/why_raw_food.html

 

Nature Always Right, Cooks Never: Why Eat Raw?

By Tonya Zavasta

 

 

It seems pathetic that we aspire to create a new product as “natural” as possible but destroy the very natural ingredients in the process. New packaged products appear on the market every day. Each time you try one of these new products, you are foregoing the old-fashioned fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. As a result, you will not get enough nutrients from your meal.

 

Researchers are excited whenever they discover new benefits in produce of particular colors. The bright vibrant colors of fresh produce, such as the deep green of leafy vegetables, the lilac of blueberries, or the red of strawberries are a sign that this produce is packed with antioxidants, called polyphenols.

 

The brighter the color of the fruit or vegetable, the more nutrient combatants it has to prevent degenerative diseases. Now picture what happens to the original rainbow of colors after cooking. The colors fade like old laundry. How can it not be more obvious to us: by tampering with natural products, we are losing something essential for our health and beauty.

 

There is a scarcity of nourishment, but not of meals. In this country, we face unprecedented temptations. America is preoccupied with eating like no other country in the world. By giving in to the skillful seductions of the advertisers to try “new food," our bodies are starving while we constantly chew and swallow. Ironically, the variety and affordability of foodstuffs leads us to become overfed and at the same time undernourished. The best way to resist these temptations is to develop an attitude towards cooked food in general and adopt the raw food lifestyle.

 

Mark Twain wrote: “To eat is human, to digest divine.” We need enzymes to digest food. Our living body also needs enzymes for every other operation and chemical reaction to take place. Enzymes constitute the difference between life and death. Only living organisms can produce enzymes, but their capacity to make enzymes is limited and exhaustible.

Our body hosts two types of enzymes: metabolic enzymes, which run our bodies, and digestive enzymes, which participate in digesting our food. Only raw and living foods follow nature’s design and come with their own food enzymes to aid digestion. They are responsible for the release of nutrients out of the foods we eat.

Dr. Edward Howell writes in his remarkable book Enzyme Nutrition that heat over 118° F kills enzymes. If food is cooked, it does not carry enzymes, and the body is forced to use up its own digestive enzymes.

Only living organisms, be it a human being, an animal, or a plant, possess enzymes. No one would ever argue that a dead person is the same as a living one just because the chemical composition of the body is the same. And yet we never think twice about allegations that cooked food is as good as raw food or better. The plant world possesses integrity and the “life factor.” From an enzymatic approach, a picked up fruit or a cut off green is still alive, even though its own source of nourishment has been cut off. Seeds and nuts will reproduce if put into the soil, fruits will continue to ripen even after they have been picked from the tree, a vegetable--be it a carrot, onion, or potato--when put into the ground will sprout.

Enzymes are combinations of proteins, vitamins, and minerals in an active molecular form. Chemists are able to synthesize some of these nutrients, but they have not been able to “breathe life” into them. The “life factor” has never been and probably never will be re-created.

Enzymes are very particular. They cannot tolerate heat, microwave irradiation, or pasteurization. Cooking always removes or spoils the goodness of food. Cooked food points down to the grave, because it is dead. Only humans apply heat to what they eat. Presently, humans apply heat to most of their food prior to consumption. Humans on average as a race, die at or below half their potential life span of chronic illness that is largely diet and lifestyle related. “You won't be surprised that diseases are innumerable--count the cooks.” -- Seneca (4 BC-AD 65), Epistles

Cooking is the most profound abuse of food. Cookbooks are full of recipes on how to smother the life out of a meal. The more creative they are in doing so, the more honor we attribute to the cooks. The concept of great cuisine is based on the opinion that plain fruits or vegetables are not appealing to the eye or satisfying to our taste.

Natural food is seen as an enemy. The less the dish reminds one of the original ingredients, the prouder the cooks become. Raw produce is treated not like the divine food but as something to be mutilated and manipulated. It is even called “from scratch,” as if it is a second-class product needing an upgrade. And yet, man is not capable of producing even a simple meal without using the basic ingredients he did not make. The talent of the cook should be applied elsewhere, because the basic fruits and vegetables he begins with are nutritionally superior to the most sophisticated creations he ends up with.

Traditional cooking alters the taste buds into being incapable of appreciating the flavor and taste of raw fruits and vegetables. We become more concerned with pleasing our perverted palate and satisfying our coarse sensation than with providing nourishment to our body.

By cooking our food, we are killing nutrients that keep us alive and healthy. After we grill or roast, bake or boil, sauté or stew, we produce some decadent matter with no nutritional value and only by using salt or sugar abundantly can we get it to pass our taste buds. All cooks rely on salt, sugar, and spices to have their creations appreciated. Cooking without spices smells awful. Not surprisingly, spices were originally used to disguise decaying and decomposing food.

 

How delicious is a fresh apple! But we put it in an oven and it becomes a squashy, mushy, shriveled mass requiring a load of sugar so one can eat it. In cooking, the original colors of fruits and vegetables are dulled and the initial variety of flavors is altered. Make no mistake, the nutritional value is gone as well.

 

It is ironic, but not incidental, that fresh produce is used for decoration of this bland and dead food. We decorate this lifeless, tasteless, and shapeless mess with fresh green leaves and brightly colored veggies to deceive our eyes. We add spices to disguise the smell. We load it with sugar and salt to cheat our taste buds.

Nowadays, health-conscious people know processed food is devoid of nutrients and try their best to avoid it. But somehow, home cooking escapes the stigma of “processed.” Cooking is processing! And the difference between home cooking and manufactured foodstuffs is the same difference as between “dead” and “very dead.” We hear everywhere the less food is processed, the better. Why process it at all?

Most Americans do not eat the 5-9 recommended servings of fruit and vegetables each and every day. And if you haven’t heard yet…in January 2005 these government recommended allotments have been increased to 9-13 serving. Between the lines government is telling us in order to be healthy we need to go on the raw food diet. Since if you eat 13 servings of fresh fruit and vegetables per day you will not need or want anything else.

"This article may be freely reprinted as long as the entire article and byline are included."

[DV]

"Only living organisms can produce enzymes, but their capacity to make enzymes is limited and exhaustible."

 

The author had me up to the point where the magical enzymes entered the picture. Why is it that we don't exhaust our ability to produce red blood cells or white blood cells as we age, but we have a limited enzyme production? I haven't seen one older person deposit a fully formed dinner in a toilet bowl due to lack of digestive enzymes either. And it's amazing that we could DOUBLE our life spans according to the author.

 

If we discuss the retention of some (not all) vitamins then raw (not dried, powdered, etc.) foods look very good. And some foods are certainly better when fresh-harvested and eaten raw - most fruits, corn, lettuces, cherry tomatoes. But some foods are MUCH easier digested when heat is applied - winter squash, cruciferous veggies, stinging nettles, yams. Cooking and preserving foods has allowed us to expand our menu and survive in most areas of the planet.

 

Raw food is natural and humans are natural and human ingenuity is natural - so cooking foods is also natural! (going back to the original title of the thread). The question of raw foods being the "best" would be ridiculous to someone living in an area with no access to a year-long growing season, refrigeration, freezer space, global shipping or electricity - unless they ate raw meat when seasonal vegetables were not available (and these 'humans' did exist in the distant past). Raw foodism, in its current form, has never existed - so how natural is it? No more natural than cooked foods in the current forms. Wheat grass juicers, dried spirulina powder, coconuts in your local grocery store, breakfast cereals, tofu cheesecake - they are all recent additions to our diets, made possible by human ingenuity. Take away all of our tender, big cultivated fruits and veggies and none of us would be happy, cooked or raw.

[Zack]

Raw food is natural and humans are natural and human ingenuity is natural - so cooking foods is also natural!

 

Exactly.

[Bambam]

DV wrote

But some foods are MUCH easier digested when heat is applied - winter squash, cruciferous veggies, stinging nettles, yams. Cooking and preserving foods has allowed us to expand our menu and survive in most areas of the planet.

 

Most raw foodies hardly eat the vegetables you speak of. Everyone knows that those listed above have bland taste and are difficult to digest. Cooking them creates toxins.

[medman]

I also tune out as soon as any raw foodist turns to the enzyme argument. Want to know why? It's one of those cases of people connecting two separate statements - "raw foods contain enzymes" and "enzymes aid in digestion" - into one ("raw food enzymes aid in digestion") inappropriately. Why does this not actually work?

 

Enzymes are proteins. There are 3 ways to denature a protein (causing it to lose its function): 1) heat, 2) pH, and 3) digestion with enzymes. Raw foodists avoid cause #1. Here's the trick. The second food hits your stomach - BAM! - hydrochloric acid with a pH of 2 (highly acidic) and the proteolytic (protein-destroying) enzyme pepsin. Enzymes only function within a very specific (and usually small) pH range. As soon as a plant enzyme hits your stomach, it will become denatured and inactive unless it normally functions in such acidic environments (maybe a lemon has some of these?). However, the pepsin in your stomach, which is an enzyme that does work at a pH of 2, will attack any plant enzyme the way that it attacks any other plant protein, breaking it into smaller pieces. Once the food (well, chyme at this point) makes its way into the small intestine, the pH becomes much more alkaline again, but there are even more proteolytic enzymes such as trypsin to help break down proteins into amino acids.

 

So, immediate inactivation by the stomach's pH and near-immediate destruction by pepsin and then trypsin mean that those plant enzymes will never get to carry out any function in your body, other than providing you with amino acids like any other plant protein.

 

Note: I'm not saying raw food isn't good for you. I love veggies, fruit, nuts, etc raw. I just have to point out that the enzyme argument doesn't hold up.

Edited August 7, 2008 by medman

[Bambam]

Medman

 

just let your med buddies know that the raw vegan diet cured me not the vegan diet alone.

[DV]

Taken from Bambam's intro:

 

"So what did I have?, What held me back why I'm slimm jim?

Light Eczema Acne Depression Mulitiple Chemical Sensitivities Candida Lactose Intolerant Gluten sensitivity brain fog "

So that we don't have to ask you what diseases needed curing! Glad that you found something that cured you of all that ails you. However, as Medman so eloquently points out, it wasn't the enzymes!