Eating Vegetables Raw Or Cooked?
AnimalCare 
Jul 15, 2016 
AnimalCare, NGOs 
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It’s been too long since we last posted anything on eating vegetables!
Here’s a good article on whether vegetables should be eaten raw or cooked in order to get the best health benefits: http://www.veganrecipes.com/blog/vegan/which-foods-are-more-nutritious-raw-vs-cooked/ (please do read the whole article, it’s very informative).
The conclusion:
Getting the Most From Fruits and Vegetables: Some Simple Guidelines
The fact is, there is no perfect way to prepare each and every food. No matter how you choose to prepare any particular fruit and vegetable, there will be some losses and gains. Yet, while it’s not possible to come up with specific recommendations for most foods, you can follow some simple guidelines to make certain you’re getting the most from your intake of fruits and vegetables.
– Choose raw fruit as often as possible. There isn’t much science showing benefits of cooking fruits so it makes sense to go with the most convenient and obvious way to enjoy these foods.
– Treat vitamin C-rich foods like oranges, grapefruit, papaya, kiwi, and cantaloupe with care. That is, eat them whole rather than juiced or blended into smoothies. Cut them up right before serving. This keeps the vitamin C protected from the destructive effects of oxygen.
– Eat blended or juiced foods as soon as possible after preparing them to get the most of their nutrient content.
– Don’t count on high-oxalate vegetables to meet calcium needs. While these foods — spinach, beet greens and Swiss chard — are super-nutritious and should play an important role in your diet, regardless of how you cook them, they shouldn’t be relied on for calcium. Instead, focus on low-oxalate choices like kale, collards, and bok choy for boosting your calcium intake.
– When you cook vegetables, be gentle. Opt for steaming or baking over boiling and microwaving. Cook foods just to the tender-crisp stage. That gives you the best of all worlds—a little heat to soften cell walls, without cooking the compounds right out of the vegetables.
– Aim for the best of all worlds by eating about half of your vegetables raw and half in the gently-cooked state.
– Include some raw cruciferous vegetables and onions in your diet to get the most of their healthful phytochemicals.
– For men especially, eating cooked tomato sauces — even prepared ones from a jar — may be a good choice for reducing risk for prostate cancer.
– Include some healthful plant fats in your meals — from naturally high fat foods like nuts, seeds, and avocado or from very small amounts of oils.
– Both roasted and raw nuts have been shown to be highly protective against chronic disease. However, roasting nuts does decrease nutrient and antioxidant levels and there doesn’t seem to be any nutritional advantage over raw. It’s fine to quickly toast nuts to improve their flavor, but for the most part, raw nuts are a better choice.
– Eat lots and lots of fruits and vegetables. Whether you eat them raw or cooked, chopped, blended or whole, simply by consuming generous amounts of these foods, you’ll get the benefits of their thousands of health-promoting compounds.
The amount of fruits and vegetables you eat is actually more important than how you prepare them.
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/20090323/7-rules-for-eating
Getting the Most From Fruits and Vegetables: Some Simple Guidelines
The fact is, there is no perfect way to prepare each and every food. No matter how you choose to prepare any particular fruit and vegetable, there will be some losses and gains. Yet, while it’s not possible to come up with specific recommendations for most foods, you can follow some simple guidelines to make certain you’re getting the most from your intake of fruits and vegetables.
– Choose raw fruit as often as possible. There isn’t much science showing benefits of cooking fruits so it makes sense to go with the most convenient and obvious way to enjoy these foods.
– Treat vitamin C-rich foods like oranges, grapefruit, papaya, kiwi, and cantaloupe with care. That is, eat them whole rather than juiced or blended into smoothies. Cut them up right before serving. This keeps the vitamin C protected from the destructive effects of oxygen.
– Eat blended or juiced foods as soon as possible after preparing them to get the most of their nutrient content.
– Don’t count on high-oxalate vegetables to meet calcium needs. While these foods — spinach, beet greens and Swiss chard — are super-nutritious and should play an important role in your diet, regardless of how you cook them, they shouldn’t be relied on for calcium. Instead, focus on low-oxalate choices like kale, collards, and bok choy for boosting your calcium intake.
– When you cook vegetables, be gentle. Opt for steaming or baking over boiling and microwaving. Cook foods just to the tender-crisp stage. That gives you the best of all worlds—a little heat to soften cell walls, without cooking the compounds right out of the vegetables.
– Aim for the best of all worlds by eating about half of your vegetables raw and half in the gently-cooked state.
– Include some raw cruciferous vegetables and onions in your diet to get the most of their healthful phytochemicals.
– For men especially, eating cooked tomato sauces — even prepared ones from a jar — may be a good choice for reducing risk for prostate cancer.
– Include some healthful plant fats in your meals — from naturally high fat foods like nuts, seeds, and avocado or from very small amounts of oils.
– Both roasted and raw nuts have been shown to be highly protective against chronic disease. However, roasting nuts does decrease nutrient and antioxidant levels and there doesn’t seem to be any nutritional advantage over raw. It’s fine to quickly toast nuts to improve their flavor, but for the most part, raw nuts are a better choice.
– Eat lots and lots of fruits and vegetables. Whether you eat them raw or cooked, chopped, blended or whole, simply by consuming generous amounts of these foods, you’ll get the benefits of their thousands of health-promoting compounds. If fresh produce isn’t always available or affordable, frozen options are often just as nutritious and beneficial. In fact, in the winter months, they can be even better.[17] The amount of fruits and vegetables you eat is actually more important than how you prepare them.
Source: https://myanimalcare.org/2016/07/15/eating-vegetables-raw-or..
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