Raw food: the pros and cons

1. The raw food philosophy is regularly under discussion. Raw foodies only eat food that is not cooked, baked or fried. According to them, when cooking food, many enzymes are lost that are necessary for digestion. However, nutritionists are critical of this diet.

1. The raw food movement states that we as modern humans are alienated from the diet on which we evolved. The primeval man was forced to never eat cooked food: after all, we only learned to make a fire about 400,000 years ago.

Cooked foods

1. Rawfoodie Diana Store, owner of the company Raw Superfoods, said in a 2007 interview published in the magazine Weeds: "Heating food almost never does anything positive for the nutritional value, but the destroys all kinds of vitamins and enzymes, disturbs the fat and protein balance and is disastrous for color, taste and structure. Moreover, humans are not made to eat cooked food. Toxins are formed in the body and the resistance decreases. And then I have not yet about all chemical additives in the average supermarket food. " Store claims that since she stopped eating cooked food (including bread) in 2000, she has never been sick again, sleeps better, can concentrate better, and has more energy. She says she owes this to the fact that all kinds of important enzymes remain intact in her food. "But", she says: "it remains important to eat tasty and varied food and I do that too."

But ...

1. Nutritionists ask questions about the diet, which after all goes far beyond returning to the diet of our distant ancestors. For example, one of the basic principles of the raw food movement is that no meat and fish are eaten and that dairy and eggs are also inadvisable because they are "of little value and are a source of allergies." In practice, raw food is therefore vegan. Such a diet lacks essential nutrients, especially vitamin B12, which is only found in foods of animal origin.

What does the Nutrition Center think?

1. The Nutrition Center therefore advises against eating only raw food. "Unilateral nutrition is never healthy", says the website of this information officer. "The supposed advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages." Indeed, a diet consisting exclusively of raw food virtually excludes obesity, but ultimately it leads to malnutrition and chronic deficiencies. It is also a fallacy to assume that raw foods provide more nutrients to the body than cooked vegetables. On the contrary: by cooking vegetables, the cell walls break open, so that the body digests them better and can absorb the nutrients better, according to the Nutrition Center.

What about that prehistoric man?

1. It is more than likely that primeval man â € ”who on average lived not even half our age today, although this is also due to hygiene, health care and the absence of natural enemies â € ”did not mainly feed on vegetables. His diet was almost certainly mostly fruits and nuts, supplemented with a relatively small amount of animal protein from insects, crustaceans and possibly fish. So all raw. But veganism was a luxury that prehistoric man could not afford.

2. It is more than likely that primeval man â € ”who on average lived not even half our age today, although this is also due to hygiene, health care and the absence of natural enemies â € ”did not mainly feed on vegetables. His diet was almost certainly mostly fruits and nuts, supplemented with a relatively small amount of animal protein from insects, crustaceans and possibly fish. So all raw. But veganism was a luxury that primeval man could not afford.