| Is raw food healthier than cooked food? | | | | should never eat cooked sprouts, fruit, or fermented |
| It depends on the food. Certain foods should not be | | | | foods, but that if you do, your body will have to get its |
| eaten raw. | | | | enzymes from another source. |
| Most beans, for example, contain mildly toxic lectins | | | | As we get older, our bodies tend to make fewer |
| that should be leached out by soaking and then boiled | | | | digestive enzymes. We become more dependent on |
| out by cooking the beans to tenderness. Ounce for | | | | the enzymes in our food. What happens if we don't |
| ounce or gram for gram, most orange and yellow | | | | get the digestive enzymes we need? To a certain |
| vegetables contain higher concentrations of fat-soluble | | | | extent, helpful bacteria in the intestine can pick up the |
| vitamins A and K when cooked than when raw. The | | | | slack. Incompletely digested protein and carbohydrate |
| process of making sour dough bread greatly reduces | | | | molecules, however, can trigger a domino effect in |
| the gliadin content of grains so that they are less toxic | | | | which the fragments of incompletely digested sugars |
| for people who have celiac disease. And most people | | | | arrange into unusual polysaccharides. |
| can easily imagine reasons for cooking meats, eggs, | | | | Many polysaccharides have beneficial health effects. |
| and fish. | | | | Most of the immunostimulant compounds in herbs are |
| Foods that are rich in digestive (lytic) enzymes, | | | | polysaccharides. Aberrant polysaccharides from |
| however, should be eaten raw. Many naturopaths | | | | incomplete digestion, at least in the view of a large |
| refer to the "law of the gut." The chemical breakdown | | | | segment of the natural health community, produce |
| of ingested food through the process of digestion is | | | | mucoproteins that tend to trap cholesterol, hormones, |
| carried out with high precision. | | | | and toxins, and to interfere with the absorption of |
| The food we eat yields only a small proportion of | | | | nutrients the gut has successfully digested. |
| nutrients that the able to assimilate. The rest is food | | | | It is absolutely not true that undigested food stays in |
| for our intestinal bacteria or eliminated as waste. | | | | your digestive tract for years, but the mass of |
| Digestive enzymes, either produced by the body or | | | | mucoproteins can accumulate to levels that are |
| consumed in food, are essential to this process. | | | | dangerous to health. If you cannot or do not ever eat |
| Digestive enzymes in food are destroyed by heating | | | | raw foods, you should consider taking digestive |
| (or storing) the food at temperatures much above | | | | enzymes with your meals to keep this from happening. |
| 118º F (47º C). This is not to say you | | | | |