Raw food advocates believe cooking destroys the “life force” in food, leaching nutrients, phytochemicals such as antioxidants, and destroying valuable enzymes. Cooking does indeed reduce the vitamin C and B in vegetables because both are water-soluble. Vitamin C and some B vitamins are also heat sensitive, says Christine Scaman, a food, nutrition and health researcher at the University of B.C. Boiling a vegetable can remove as much as 50 to 80 per cent of its vitamin C.
But at the same time, cooking any fruit or vegetable breaks down indigestible cellulose in the plant cell walls, making the nutrients easier for us to absorb. Tomatoes and carrots are two stellar examples, Scaman says.
Other vitamins, such as A, D and E, are fat soluble, so the best way to get at those nutrients is to eat the food with a fat such as olive oil. Cooking does destroy most fruit and vegetable enzymes, but don’t let that bother you. We don’t need them. Banana enzymes, for instance, help bananas grow, ripen and decay, but they don’t aid human digestion.
Our own enzymes break down food enzymes along with everything else we eat, so we can absorb them as amino acids and get nutrition from them. On the other hand, simmer vegetables on the stove all day, and you’ll lose more nutrients than if you zap them quickly in the microwave.
