To Cook or Not to Cook

A Club Red expert examines the raw food diet

You savor the crunch of a carrot, choose celery over chips and crave kiwis. But could you subsist on raw foods alone? Proponents of the Raw Food Diet, or raw foodists, believe that the best foods for you are those that are in their natural state, and that cutting out cooked and processed foods will improve your health.

But is raw the right way to go? Susan Yowell of Charlottesville submitted a query about the Raw Diet through our Ask the Expert feature, so we turned to Mary Lou Perry, registered dietitian with Club Red Clinic and UVA's Heart and Vascular Center, to give us the pros and cons of a raw-foods only diet.

Fresh Is Best

No doubt there are advantages to eating fresh from the garden. Locally grown fruits and vegetables taste better and there’s no question where they came from. But raw food followers take this one step further by filling their plates only with items that come directly from Mother Earth -- no forays into the oven, stove or frying pan allowed.

Raw foodists believe that cooking foods at temperatures higher than 112 degrees depletes them of enzymes that are beneficial to the body because they aid in digestion, prevent toxicity and have other curative effects. According to Perry, this claim is not entirely valid. “Plant enzymes are largely inactivated by the highly acidic environment of the stomach and, thus, cannot aid in digestion,” she says. “There is no evidence that the enzymes can become reactivated in the intestines as some raw foodists claim.”

Pros

Perry does agree that there are benefits to eating some types of vegetables raw. “In a study from Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, people who ate the most raw (as compared to cooked) cruciferous vegetables had a reduced risk of bladder cancer, possibly because the raw vegetables retain more cancer-protective isothiocyanates. Cooking, after all, does reduce some phytochemicals, including isothiocyanates, as well as many vitamins.”

Cons

Some nutrients and potentially beneficial plant compounds are less available to the body in the raw state, says Perry. Heat is needed to break down a plant’s cell walls and release the compounds. Cooking a carrot releases extra beta carotene, while cooking tomatoes releases more lycopene.

Of more concern, some uncooked and unpasteurized foods pose a risk of food poisoning, which is especially dangerous for pregnant women, young children, the elderly, people with compromised immunity, and those with chronic medical conditions, such as liver or kidney disease. Raw sprouts, raw oysters and raw (unpasteurized) milk products have been the cause of many outbreaks of food-borne illness in recent years.

Find a Balance

When it comes to establishing healthy eating patterns, there’s no question that including more fresh produce and other high-fiber natural foods in your diet is a change for the better. But limiting yourself to these foods entirely can be challenging and may also compromise your system by limiting your intake of nutrients such as calcium, iron, zinc and vitamin B12. So if you do decide to give the Raw Diet a try, be sure you ask your physician about the need for supplements, and seek out a wide variety of natural foods that will give your body what it needs.

Smart Goal: Try cooking produce that you would ordinarily eat raw (steam carrots with fresh dill or grill fresh peaches with mint).