Nutrition Mythbusting – Raw Foods Aren’t Healthier

Eating raw foods seems like it would be somewhat healthier. It’s how our ancestors ate food, and it seems logical that the nutrients could be destroyed by the absurdly high temperatures we use to cook food.

Brenda Davis, R. D., co-author of Becoming Raw: The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets said that “Raw food are unprocessed so nothing’s taken away; you don’t get the nutrient losses that come with cooking”. It’s true that cooking vegetables breaks down the natural enzymes in the plants, but then again, those same enzymes are destroyed the moment they reach the corrosive cauldron of sulfuric acid known as the human stomach.

Plants don’t make its enzymes specifically for the chance that someonewill eat it. Plants have those enzymes because those enzymes keep the plants alive. Sure, plant enzymes sound like they would be healthy to eat, but that doesn’t mean they actually are healthy to eat. Just because we believe something exists for human convenience doesn’t mean it actually does.

Mushrooms contain numerous nutrients, and wild mushrooms can be a very healthy snack because they absorb vitamin D from sunlight, and also contain many other minerals and nutrients. But, even if you manage to find and identify an edible mushroom, all mushrooms are composed of the protein keratin, and it is not digestible by the human GI tract. In order to absorb the nutrients within the mushrooms, the keratin protein needs to be broken down, by cooking it first.