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Certain Vegetables More Potent Raw Than Cooked - Just Three Servings Of These Veggies A Month Can Protect Your Bladder
Article Date: 18 Jun 2008 - 4:00 PDT

Mom was right again! Her advice to 'eat your vegetables' is getting more scientific backing - this time with a twist. Researchers now say that eating certain vegetables raw can have more health benefits than if you eat them cooked.

Katie Herdlein has always been a healthy eater, but when she was diagnosed with breast cancer she really made her menu a priority. Katie ate even more fruits and vegetables and believes it was her diet that helped her not only get through chemotherapy, but get a Master's Degree in college at the same time.

"You cannot believe how much better you feel. You just can't believe it. You'll have a lot more energy and you just feel good about yourself in every way," says Herdlein.

These foods have done more for Katie than just give her energy. Scientists at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York have found that cruciferous vegetables, things like broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage, may protect Katie from another form of cancer too.

"People who consume at least 3 or more servings of cruciferous vegetables a month had about a 40% reduction in risk of bladder cancer," says Susan McCann, PhD at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Researchers say the amount of protection you get is remarkable, considering how little you have to eat. Just three servings a month can help keep your bladder healthy, but there's a catch. Scientists say when these same vegetables are cooked, something in their chemical make up makes them less effective when it comes to bladder cancer.

"When they are eaten raw, they induce a kind of enzyme that may detoxify carcinogens," says James Marshall, PhD at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

The cruciferous vegetables that are easiest to eat raw are broccoli and cauliflower, but you can also try raw brussels sprouts or mustard and turnip greens. Scientists say you should still eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, and you may want to eat some of them raw from time to time.

Produced for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute by MediaSourceTV.

There is a vegan RD who is active online, he has written a number of nice articles about various nutrition issues. But he is against raw.

I gave him a list of about 50 studies that found raw vegetables to be more protective than cooked for cancers.

He replied, "But the diet that protects against cancer is not necessarily the healthiest diet."

Excuse me?

arugula

Well the key words are "not necessarily"

if you drank so much milk that you couldn't drink your usual quart of Whiskey,
that would protect you from alcoholism--but it wouldn't be a healthy diet.

So he is logically correct, in his statement: "But the diet that protects against cancer is not necessarily the healthiest diet."

although it COULD be...the healthiest diet...he just doesn't know

It WOULD be interesting to know the true source of his bias.

He tried it and had a hard time with it.

Someone should have directed him to this board!

I just wanted to add, the anti-cancer diet is also the anti-CHD diet and also the anti-diabesity diet is also the nutrient-dense calorie-sparse longevity minimal rate of elective aging diet. Etc.

I guess it depends on how you define healthy. Is it freedom from disease, or is it something else?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/2008 10:21PM by arugula.

Hey maui butterfly, thanks for the article!

Hey arugula, yes, I would say health is "quality of life" which includes freedom from disease and good energy levels. I wouldn't necessarily say it is the one which provides the absolute greatest longevity, although I might change my mind as I get older

Did he give any reason as to why cooked would improve the qualities of fruits and vegetables?

Cheers,
J

No, Jose, he didn't say anything about improvement of qualities, just that he tried and it made him miserable: always hungry, never satisfied.

arugula maybe you can help me. i recently made friends with a very nice guy, really smart, a nephrologist. when i was telling him about my diet, he was really openminded and, after questioning me a bit, said "i think its brilliant! i think you should add a glass of milk once in a while, though..." lol. but then a few days later he came back to me with an argument that i couldn't really answer, and it was basically this:

while certainly all fruits and most vegetables are more nutritious in their raw state, there are some vegetables that have been shown to be more nutritious cooked. why wouldn't you selectively eat those vegetables steamed? in other words, why is the litmus test "all raw", and not 'most healthy".

my personal experience in coming to raw was that i was led to this diet by my body, and i am gathering the facts around it almost as an afterthought. (i think if EVERY study i read said raw f&v was not as advantageous as cooked, i would still eat raw simply based on my experience of it, how i feel.) however, i am intellectually curious and always like to know the WHYs. i'd love to get your list of 50 studies...

Some vegetables may indeed become more nutritious, depending on which nutrients you are looking at. If you are looking at calories, then yes, the food become more calorically dense, as water is cooked off by cooking. Also, some toxins or antinutrients are rendered harmless by cooking, say like in soy. And many foods are just not so great to eat in their raw state, raw starchy vegetables like potatoes or winter squash.

That being said, cooking also introduces its own set of toxins that are not present in raw foods. Fats become carcinogenic, starches can turn to acrylamide, and proteins can become denatured and useless to the human body.

Also many nutrients are destroyed. Water is evaporated, fiber loses its ability to clean the digestive system, vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients are oxidized away.

Given the benefits of cooking, do they outweigh the costs? Well they do, for some time. But after one eats cooked foods for 30 years or so, the costs start to accumulate and manifest themselves as various chronic disease, the very chronic disease that are so rampant in our society.

thanks bryan, that's wonderfully stated. i get it.

[members.atlantic.net]

Bryan's answer is good.

I suspect that aging is faster with cooked v. raw food. Less glycotoxins. You get more damaged stuff when you cook. But lightly steaming certain veggies is probably a minimal harm choice. Some cooking is really truly poison (deep fried fast food in oil that has been through 100s of cooking cycles), while light steaming does very little damage.

If you are concerned with bioavailability of particular nutrients you can always throw your food in the blender. Even Sties who made the biggest noise about lycopene/cooked tomatoes posited that it was breaking down the fibrous matrix that made the lycopene more available. You can do that without cooking.

Regarding toxins, we usually avoid or seriously limit eating the foods that are toxic when raw, like legumes or grains.

I still eat some cooked food.

I had some yesterday when eating out with friends at Moe's. The whole wheat tortilla was cooked, but the fillings were all raw AFAIK.

thanks for the article list arugula. you rock!