The following two-part article on the very important topic of raw versus cooked foods in your diet is by Nancy Lee Bentley. Nancy is the co-author of my new book, Dr. Mercola's Total Health Program, who created the more than 150 brand-new delicious and nutritious grain-free recipes (including raw foods!) that you'll find there.

By Nancy Lee Bentley
Co-Author, Dr. Mercola’s Total Health Program

The age-old debate still rages, peppered with a wide diversity of opinions and philosophies across the contemporary "rainbow" of healthy diets. What, in the final analysis, really is the best, healthiest diet for us to consume--a predominantly raw- or cooked-food diet? This is a dynamic subject, but the evidence may surprise you.

To shed some light on this debate, we can take a look at some common food facts from history. While there is a growing consensus today that eating raw food is healthier, the fact is, throughout history all cultures have modified, "cooked" or altered the energy field of their foods in some way. This is one of the 11 fundamental Characteristics of Traditional Diets, based on extensive research on so-called primitive cultures throughout the world by Dr. Weston Price in the 1930s. Even the most primitive tribe discovered in our time, The Tasaday of the Philippines, who had no wheel or weapons, did have fire, which they started with wooden sticks and used to roast wild yams and other foods.

This makes sense from a functional standpoint. Warmth, moisture, darkness, time--these are the elements of cooking. Whether through the application of heat (boiling, baking, frying, etc.), microorganisms (fermenting or pickling), mechanics (juicing, chopping), activation (sprouting) or preservation (canning, freezing, salting or drying, milling or other processing), "cooking" or altering foods is invariably a form of predigestion.

This applies, as well, to the human body itself. For whether it’s accomplished outside the body by chopping or processing before eating, or through the body’s own warmth, moisture, darkness and digestive processes after eating, the fact is we have to break down and "cook" or process our food in some way in order to be able to absorb and assimilate it.

Cooking contracts vegetable foods, concentrating more nutrients with less bulk. Bitter greens like turnip greens and collards, traditionally prepared by lengthy stewing, are generally more edible when cooked. Cooking also eliminates the oxalic acid, which binds and interferes with calcium absorption.

Cooking’s Metabolic and Psycho-Spiritual Effects

Beyond simple preservation, cooking has a variety of profound metabolic, as well as psycho-spiritual, effects on humans. Fire equals warmth for survival, protection, community, socializing, togetherness, as well as for making foods more ready for digestion. Its application depends on a host of factors, including season, locality, heritage, genetics and customs.

In Food and Healing, Anne Marie Colbin points out that for most people cooking supports mental concentration better than expansive salads with many different ingredients by saying, "The advantage of fire may have resulted in the development of civilization by mental focus and concentration." Cooking food for eating obviously has a long history in the annals of human existence.

There is no question that cooking deactivates some vital nutrients, including enzymes, but cooking also makes digestion less stressful. Many people with poor digestion don’t handle raw foods or beans very well, which is in part why macrobiotic diets may have worked for some people recovering from various maladies. The higher proportion of nutrients in raw food is useless if the food can’t be digested, absorbed and assimilated.

Good Nutrition is a Matter of Balance

So there are tradeoffs in each case. Ultimately it comes down to the individual situation ... and a matter of balance.

That’s ostensibly why dieticians have been saying eat a "balanced" diet with a variety of foods. Yet, this is only a partial truth, too often typical of standard scientific fact. It’s not only the total quantity, but also the quality of the food that is critically important, along with how it’s grown, treated, processed and handled; how it’s stored and packaged, prepared, cooked, overcooked or denatured; and how our own bodies individually process and handle it.

As Dr. Gabriel Cousins says, "There is so much we do not understand about the subtleties of nutrition that we are essentially shooting in the dark when we start to alter and process our foods."

It’s actually ironic that we should even have to engage in an intellectual debate about this subject, since ostensibly we should KNOW, without having to think about it, what the optimum fuel for our personal vehicle--our body--is. This just shows us how far OFF we are, how out of tune and out of touch we are with our own bodies. Animals, for example, don’t read articles or have to study about what to eat.

They are instinctually attuned to their own needs without having the "gift" of being able to intellectualize about it. They eat only when hungry. When they’re sick, they don’t eat, or eat grasses, even if they are omnivores like dogs, while we "smart" humans who know so much usually end up being forced to listen to our bodies only when they’re shouting with pain or discomfort.

Even then, we just want to stop the pain as fast as possible. And without training in biochemistry or medicine, we tend to fall back on following the advice of outside "experts" instead of listening to the messages our bodies are continually trying to give us.

Are ‘Modern’ Foods Shortening Our Lives?

While nutritional science is complex and admittedly complicated, it’s not rocket science. The bottom line is that we really don’t need to be a food company biochemist or a medical specialist to know what works best for our own systems, especially when it comes to what we eat. The fact is, all too often, the messages from the so-called "experts" are confusing, conflicting, and often counterproductive, and end up pointing us the wrong way--usually in the direction of their bottom line, to say nothing of the current political reality involved in the "revolving door" between industry and government.

As Cousens says, "There is no necessity to sell out our health and shorten our lives so that someone else can profit from marketing so-called longer shelf life, modern, convenient foods."

Ironically, it appears that the more tinkering and altering done to extend the shelf life of our food, the shorter our own lives. So one has to ask, are we giving our modern foods a longer shelf life and shortening our own? Janet Starr Hull puts it rather curtly, but succinctly, when she says, "People need to stop searching for excuses to eat all the junk food they want without penalty. In the long run, no one benefits from this product but the corporations."

Nancy Lee Bentley is the nutrition expert & chef who created the recipes in Dr. Mercola’s acclaimed Total Health book.
Read more about the book, including the Limited Time Special Offer, now!

That’s what’s exciting about the new, Dr. Mercola’s Total Health Program, which we just co-authored. Much more than just a cookbook, this food and lifestyle guide recommends all the real, whole, healthiest foods--both lightly cooked and raw--from the right sources, in the right proportions, in a comprehensive program that is all about balance--from the physical to the mental to the spiritual. This is a straight-shooting, cut-to-the-chase compendium of key information, tools and recipes that allow people to be able to access and identify their own personal metabolic type. It helps people learn how to listen to their body to fine-tune their diet to the foods and macronutrient ratios--the ratios of fat, protein and carbohydrates--that are precisely what they need, once and for all, permanently and by themselves.

Then the book offers simple lifestyle choices that can help anyone deal with their emotional issues, attitudes and even spiritual aspects to move toward a healthy, balanced life.

Continued in Part II

Related Articles:

Raw Food -- One of Your Keys to Outstanding Health

Raw Eggs for Your Health -- Major Update

The Dangers of Over-Cooking Your Food

Do You Microwave Your Food? You’re Zapping Away Nutrients and Risking Your Health

References

1. Conscious Eating, by Gabriel Cousens, M.D. 2000, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA.
2. Educational Nutritional Research Seminar by R. Neil Voss, 2004, American Fork, UT
3. Food and Healing, by Annemarie Colbin, 1986, Ballantine Books, div of Random House, New York, N.Y.
4. HEALTH FOOD JUNKIES, Orthorexia Nervosa: Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating, By Dr. Steven Bratman and David Knight, 2000, Broadway Books, a division of Random House.
5. Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon with Mary Enig, 1999, 2000, NewTrends Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C.
6. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Weston A. Price, DDS, Keats Publishing, Los Angeles, CA, available from The Weston A. Price Foundation, www.westonaprice.org
7. Raw Food--One of Your Keys to Outstanding Health by Wes Peterson, Mercola.com.
8. The Untold Story of Milk, Green Pastures, Contented Cows and Raw Dairy Foods, by Ron Schmid, ND, 2003, NewTrends Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C.
9. Traditional Foods are Your Best Medicine, by Ronald F. Schmid, ND, 1997, Healing Arts Press, div. of Inner Traditions International, Rochester, VT.