Is Raw Vegetable Healthier Than Cooked Vegetable?

Big meal salads, one carrot after another as a snack and a bowl of cherry tomatoes on the table: as many vegetables as possible and as raw as possible, that’s healthy, right? Is it? Raw Brussels sprouts send your stomach into turmoil, and raw onion isn’t exactly a treat either. We investigated: is raw vegetable healthier than cooked, or the other way around?

Rawists, or rauwtariërs in Dutch, eat only raw vegetables and fruit. According to rawists, this allows the enzymes in food to be absorbed by their bodies in their pure form. It also enriches the mind, they say.

Raw Vegetable Healthier Than Cooked Vegetable?

Bad News

Unfortunately, raw vegetables can be harmful to your body in some cases. Raw mushrooms contain agaritine, a toxic and potentially even carcinogenic substance. Raw broccoli gives you a bloated stomach and smelly farts, while raw aubergine contains solanine, which irritates your stomach and can even cause dizziness and nausea. And those enriching enzymes? As soon as digestion begins, for example in your stomach, those enzymes have already been broken down.

Hot Tomato

You probably eat some vegetables exclusively raw, such as lettuce, celery and cucumber. But even tomatoes benefit from being roasted or cooked, in soup. Cooked tomatoes contain 35 percent more lycopene than raw tomatoes, and lycopene is an antioxidant—super healthy. The same goes for carrots, by the way: the carotene in carrots needs a higher temperature to be released.

Raw Beans?

You’re also better off not eating legumes raw. They contain lectin, which is only useful if you’re in the mood for stomach ache and diarrhea. If you’re making a salad with legumes, naturally you use canned ones, because they have already been cooked. The same applies to potatoes, although do people really gnaw on a raw potato? Cassava is a whole different kettle of fish: it’s packed with linamarin, which your body converts into hydrogen cyanide. Interesting as a plot for a psychological thriller, but at home: peel and cook it.

Short and Hot

It’s true that cooking vegetables causes you to lose vitamin C. So cook them briefly. Broccoli that is still bright green and slightly crisp contains plenty of vitamins—if your broccoli is dull green and drinkable, you’ve gone well past that point. The same applies to cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and green beans: let them swim in boiling water for ten minutes, then drain them quickly.

Deep-Frying: No

Briefly heated and deliciously crisp: you’re thinking of the deep fryer. But no, fries contain very few vitamins by then. The heat of the frying oil zaps out all the nutrients. Don’t let that stop you, though—nothing is as delicious as zucchini fries.

Also read:

• Tingling tongue when you eat pineapple? Not with this tip
• The carrot that makes vegans angry
• Recipe: cashew crunch salad with sesame dressing