Cooked Vegetables Healthier than Raw?

[eruso]

According to this article (and many others): Cooked Vegetables Are Healthier than Raw Ones | Health

...eating COOKED veggies is more nutritious than eating them in their raw, natural state.

But then the whole idea of the raw food diet is that cooking kills most of the nutrients? Can someone explain? I'm confused.

[openeyes]

I generally see steamed vegetables as a good compromise, with parts of the food being made more digestible without killing off so many other nutrients. Most days I have a bowl or two of steamed veggies with butter, and at another time I have a green smoothie with a few raw eggs, some berries, raw veggies (some should be fine), and maybe a banana.

[James81]

Healthy eating has become a fad anymore. You can find an article trying to prove anything about nutrition. One article will tell you that raw food is the way to go. Another will tell you that cooked food is the way to go. One article will tell you that meat is bad for you. Another will tell you that it is good for you.

Here's how I sift through all the garbage....

1. I use common sense. If a meal comes in a box, then I obviously know that, no matter what that box is telling me, it can't be good for me. Unless you find a tree somewhere growing those boxes.

2. I think of how our ancestors must've eaten and how our bodies have evolved to survive based on that. This isn't a cure all solution either because, well, just because we survived this long eating the foods they ate doesn't mean that we can't be doing it better (we ARE still evolving). But it's a good basic guide to thinking of the proportions of food they ate, how much exercise to get, etc.

3. For more in depth studies on nutrition, I look for solid sources. Joe Schmoe Phd. who publishes a diet book isn't a solid source. Joe Schmoe Phd is just trying to make money by producing a fad diet. The American Medical Association, however, is a solid source because it's based on a huge group of doctors who study and do tests with nutrition. The food guide pyramid is a decent source as well, for the same reasons.

4. I use what works for me. Certain foods make me feel like crap. So I know that I shouldn't eat those foods. Other foods, however, give me energy, make me feel light, and make me feel good. So I eat those foods as much as I can.

5. I don't beat myself up. When I want to cheat and eat something bad, I do it. There's nothing wrong with indulging yourself in something you like once in a while. Just don't make it a habit.

[blackunicorn]

There seems to be a fine line between cooking to release the optimum amount of nutrients in certain plants, and over-cooking to release them completely. I was filming a talk a few years ago about nutrition and bone density, and the nutritionist was explaining about how chelated calcium in raw broccoli is not as easy for the body to absorb than when it's cooked "just enough" to break down the chelator. And by just enough, she said get it to the point where it shows its brightest color and then stop cooking it immediately. Because if you over do it, the nutrients you're trying to release start breaking down themselves!

I don't know how far this goes in terms of cooking other vegetables, but I imagine it's similar. I gauge by color, texture and taste; over-cooked vegetables look limp and dead to me, but just-cooked vegetables that hold their shape and are bright look more delicious and feel more nutritious, often even more so than raw veggies.

Also, hi. I'm kinda new here

[cheech]

Welcome to the forums blackunicorn! Yeah, that makes sense. I think are bodies are pretty good at telling what is and isn't good for them, if we don't confuse them by throwing all sorts of weird unnatural junk at them

[ginkgo]

There is a difference between a food being healthier or more nutritious. The latter means more nutrition per pound. How can you make all vegetables more nutritious? Dehydrate them and they become much more nutritious since water is the heaviest thing in foods.

Does dehydration make the vegetable healthier? No. In fact some say the fresh fruit or vegetable is healthier. Cooking works like dehydration but also kills the living enzymes. There are no living enzymes in cooked food. Scientologists like Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Will Smith and John Travolta say that most confusion comes from misunderstanding what a word means.

Raw vegans can drink greens drinks. They are powder that you add to diluted juice and they have more nutrients than any foods. They contain super-foods and they are raw. One group that is 85% raw takes them and also B-12 vitamins.

Note that juicing makes food more nutritious since it takes out the fiber, but it is not healthier than the fresh food. Fiber is healthy but provides no nutrition since it is indigestible. Fiber is not nutritious at all but is very healthy.