I live in the Bay Area, where Cafe Gratitude (that raw food haven) first started, so I’m certainly at an advantage when it comes to hearing about raw foods. When I hit our Whole Foods, I pass by Cafe Gratitude’s counter, their shelves full of books and Himalayan crystal salt and to-go cakes, across from the aisle of raw chocolate and raw kale chips and raw cookies.
And yet I still don’t understand the basic concepts behind raw food. I get that people say cooking food kills at least some of the enzymes in it, and that that can make it lose nutritional value. I get that some greens, like spinach, need to be cooked in order to make their nutrients accessible, because they have oxalic acid or other juices in there that are somewhat toxic to us and prevent us from getting at the good stuff. And I know that I feel full faster when eating raw food, but I don’t know why. So what’s the bottom line?
I’m doing some research on it right now, and I thought I’d share it with you as I go. But first, my bottom line conclusions – for those of you who just want the facts, not the journey!
So, in support of raw foods:
* They often contain enzymes which aid digestion, as well as vitamins and amino acids, whereas many of the above are destroyed in the heat of cooking.
* Eating raw generally forces people to stick to high-nutrient foods that contain tons of antioxidants, etc., because the foods that don’t tend to be the ones that REALLY need a bunch of processing to be edible.
* Many raw foods, and foods which have been fermented to “cook” them, are good for the immune system because they are packed with probiotic and prebiotic bacteria (i.e. “good bacteria”) that support the digestive system, which is closely tied with the immune system – and these also tend to be killed by cooking. Which makes sense since killing off bacteria is one of our major arguments for cooking food.
* There are foods that it’s dangerous to eat raw – I don’t mean chicken here, but things like sprouted alfalfa – but not as many as I thought, and Wikipedia has what I hope is a complete list – linked below.
If you want to see more information and the process of getting there, click
According to one article on VegSource, one 1994 study showed that enzymes in food can work together with the digestive enzymes we already have, even though our digestive enzymes are also good enough on their own – which answers the question of why we can derive nutrition from cooked food even if the enzymes are destroyed. They also say that heat is well-established to break down “vitamins, amino acids, and producing undesirable cross-linkages in proteins, particularly in meat.”
That article is especially interesting to me because it targets and largely debunks the whole enzyme theory , but glosses over the cooking-killing-vitamins thing like that’s irrelevant. Their main issue with raw food seems to be with the people who say it is made to predigest itself… which is an argument I’ve heard for FERMENTED raw foods, like kimchi and kombucha, but not for food just sitting around on a tree.
It also touches on one of my few problems with raw food, which is that what I read about it makes it sound like everything should be raw and everything is better raw – when in fact there are all kinds of little danger zones. There’s the spinach issue I mentioned (which is also true in some other greens, like sorrel), and according to this article, while sprouting grains (common in raw food) does make them more nutritious and digestible, “sprouted alfalfa contains a non-protein amino acid L-canavanine which is thought to trigger systemic lupus erythematosis (SLE), an auto-immune disease.” If we lived in a raw food society, these little shockers would probably be common knowledge as much as the need to refrigerate raw meat is to us today. But they’re not; they just pop up here and there along the way when I happen to read arguments AGAINST raw food. Which then makes me wonder what else I miss, and what dangers I risk, by eating raw without being a food scientist.
Despite all the arguments in that article, the conclusion is that raw foods “should be a major if not sole part of the diet but not for [raw foodists'] reasons. Raw foods are not healthiest because they’re ‘live food’ or because of ‘life force’, ‘living enzymes’, ‘nerve energy’, or ‘chi’, but because the foods that can be eaten raw (mostly vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds) coincidentally have enormously higher nutrient values than the foods that either have to be, or usually are, cooked.” And then there’s a nice little graph demonstrating it at the bottom of the page, which also shows that “potato, brown rice, winter wheat, pasta, and 16 averaged breads [which are all usually cooked] don’t even make it to the [Recommended Daily Allowance of nutrients].”
I realize I’m also biased by Cafe Gratitude, because they are not just raw but vegan. I have a couple of raw cookbooks that are the same way, so I don’t think it’s just them – I get the impression that it is fairly common to lump the two together. It drives me crazy because I LOVE RAW MEAT. Yeah, I said that. I love sashimi. I love carpaccio. I looooove fitfit. (One recipe for fitfit gave me the best creepy argument I’ve ever heard against eating raw meat: “Did you know that some DNA strands from the meat that you consume bonds parasitically to cells in your stomach and/or gut? I know! Freaky Fridays or what?! So, what I’m saying here, is that if you want to gain some sort of sympathetic mutagenetic bond with another animal, a la the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’, or the ‘Street Sharks’, the only sure way to do so is to eat meat with its DNA still active; the rarer the better.”)
I love all that stuff. Raw oysters. Steak tartare. Cold-smoked salmon lox. But can I get any of it at a raw food restaurant? Hell no. Raw food restaurants seem hell-bent on serving me “weird” food. You could totally have a raw food restaurant that nobody would even notice was raw – some sushi places come awfully close.
And what about truffles? (The fungus, not the chocolate.) Those are raw, right? And caviar – that’s cured, not cooked! Just like the kimchi that is so popular (and damn good) at Cafe Gratitude.
Hallelujah – wikipedia’s article on “raw foodism” includes a list of what plants are dangerous to eat raw. Although they may go a little overboard – why would you be eating apricot kernels? I suppose someone out there is bound to think, “Wow, these kernels wouldn’t go to waste if I just ground them up to be the crust in my raw apricot tart….”
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