#Myth: You Should Only Eat Raw Fruits & Vegetables

In the famous words of Gordon Ramsay: IT’S RAW!!!!!

In recent years, you’ve probably noticed that the raw-food diet has become a popular trend within the health & wellness community. Make way for your cruditarians, a subspecies of your vegans & vegetarians. After seeing smoothie bowls and veggie wraps crowding our Instagram feed, you might be left wondering…should we avoid cooking our vegetables?

Let’s break down some popular claims.

Claim #1: “When you cook your fruits/vegetables, you’re losing the nutrients!”

While it is true that cooking vegetables can lead to some nutrient loss, it shouldn’t be always be your main concern. In fact, there are many benefits to cooking your vegetables:

Cooking your vegetables helps destroy bacteria that may be present in certain foods. With recent outbreaks of Salmonella in bags of lettuce, it’s important to minimize your risk of exposure.

More interestingly, a few fruit and vegetables’ nutrient availability has been shown to increase after having been cooked. For example, the levels of lycopene, an antioxidant found in tomatoes, appear to be higher when cooked.
Finally, some fruits and vegetables simply taste better cooked (agree to disagree?).

The better question to ask yourself should be “how can I minimize the loss of nutrients?”

Here are some quick tips on how you can preserve as many of your nutrients as possible while still allowing yourself the pleasure of eating some roasted peppers:

Cook your vegetables quickly and serve them right away.
Nutrient availability is affected by the length of time it has been exposed to heat & oxygen ─ so don’t leave your meal sitting out for too long!
Avoid using too much water when cooking your vegetables.
Some nutrients are water-soluble, meaning that they can easily be lost in water. So the next time you’re thinking about boiling your vegetables, try steaming them instead!

Claim #2: “Raw foods contain live enzymes that help increase the bioavailability of nutrients”.

Enzymes are a type of protein found in living organisms. They help conduct the chemical reactions that naturally happen inside our bodies (e.g. metabolism, respiration, movement, etc).

After you eat food, your body will start to digest it ─ meaning that it will break down your food into smaller bits so that it can be used as fuel for your body. When foods hit the stomach, this will cause stomach acidity, which is meant to break down proteins into what we call “amino acids” (its building blocks). Enzymes, being a protein, would therefore be broken down in the stomach and would not be used at all! In sum, enzymes don’t have any bearing on the nutritional content of your food.

So...what’s the verdict? Are there still benefits to eating raw foods?

Yes, there are!

✔ They are nutritionally intact ─ you should therefore aim to eat raw foods more often than not.

✔ Raw fruits & veggies make great simple & healthy snacks ─ raw vegetables sit much better (and longer) in our lunchboxes.

✔ Certain fruits & vegetables taste much better raw ─ especially in a salad!

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