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Cooked carrots better than Raw?

this article just came to my attention that cooked carrots are better than raw… and i think i’ve heard similar things about other foods. Anyway, i’m confused. Can anyone shed any light on this? the article basically says that in a study they did the processed carrots came out with higher antioxidant level etc.. this is the link: http://www.medicinalfoodnews.com/vol04/issue7/c…

Comments

  • chriscarltonchriscarlton Raw Newbie

    This reminds me of the tomato/lycopene news that came out a while back. Apparently we can actually get more lycopene from a cooked tomato than a raw one. So I guess there is more “antioxident power” in a cooked carrot than a raw one.

    Two Reasons that this doesn’t sway my belief in Raw Food:

    I eat so many more tomatoes and carrots than a SAD person. I am surely still getting more tomato lycopene and carrot antioxidants.

    Also…

    Since my 100% raw body is actually working properly I am able to benefit from “transmutation”. This is where my body makes whatever I need from the base ingredients I give it. This is how a Giraffe can grow to be 20 feet tall from basically eating one type of tree leaves. It’s probably also how Storm (a Raw Vegan for over 30 years) is NOT b12 defficient.

    Science is so limited in their thinking. They kind of discover what one compound does, then they find a food source of it, and then they say eat this and it will do this for you. This sounds good, but our bodies are much more inteligent than that. There is so much more going on in any living thing, than the little bit we have been able to figure out so far.

    When will science realize that our bodies are perfectly able to take care of us, if we can just stop damaging ourselves with our habits.

    Sickness and Disease as we know it just does not exist in Nature. Don’t scientists watch ‘The Nature Channel’. I’ve never seen a sick or depressed Giraffe in the wild. How can this be when Giraffes do not have access to ‘anitbiotics’ or ‘Prozac’.

    The only time you see animals suffering from sickness and disease is when they are in contact with humans. We are the creators of Sickness and Disease! We must stop going against nature so that nature will stop going against us. more info

    Thanks kundalalita for posting this news! I love to address this kind of thing when it comes up.

  • humanimalhumanimal Raw Newbie

    Chris I will have to disagree with you about the animals in nature. Animals do not live as long in the wild as they do in captivity. In the wild animals often die from: being hunted by predators, sickness and disease, and old age. In captivity they do not have to worry about predators, recieve medical care, and are fed well. We can not really tell if an animal is depressed or not. They may look as if they are perfectly happy, but we can not just jump to that conclusion. Have you ever seen a dog for instance that has not seen its companion? It s not a pretty sight. The dog may lay in one position until it starves or its companion comes home.To me that sounds like depression or feelings of abandonment. I will agree with you though on humans and animals. If a animal is fed the garbage that humans eat (fast food or other highly processed foods) then that will decrease their life span. But this doesnt apply to every human! There are people out there that feed their buddies wholesome unprocessed or raw foods that will increase lifespan tremendously. Now Chris I do not mean to criticize what have you have posted. But from my study of animals and their behavior this is what I have concluded.

    sigh are people still trying to back up that cooked foods are more nutritious that raw foods with the lycopene and beta carotene explination? Oh well :)

    Peace and blessings! Vaughn

  • debbietookdebbietook Raw Master

    Having read the cooked carrots article, what I do notice is that the article only mentions ‘antioxidants’. Are there other substances in carrots? If so, did the scientists look at the effect of cooking on these? What happens to these when carrots are cooked? Are the scientists sure that, although antioxidants increase, the ‘net’ effect of cooked, ie including anything that has been damaged/destroyed/rendered less usable by cooking, is better for the body than raw? Also, although there may be more antioxidants IN the cooked carrots after cooking, is it possible that these antioxidants need other chemicals within the carrot to be effective in the human body? And if so, would they still be there when the carrot has been cooked? My limited knowledge of chemistry/nutrition tells me that so many substances need others with them to work properly. Are the scientists sure that when cooked all the good things that were in carrots in the first place are still in the correct proportions to work together correctly?

  • alpdesignsalpdesigns Raw Newbie

    What the article leaves out is that cooked foods are acidic. Those studies isolate components and don’t take the whole food into consideration. Cooking carrots may increase the antioxidants, but it kills the vitamins and enzymes. Root vegetables, cruciferous vegetables and legumes are better cooked because they contain cellulose that is hard to digest. Cooking breaks down the cellulose. I don’t eat any of those foods often (never cooked) because they are not considered optimal by natural hygienists. There are other sources for those components other than carrots.

  • I do not believe cooked carrots are healthier for your body and that your body would be able to use it and assimilate it better if cooked. It does not matter to me the reasons the article gives for cooking them. One is killing them by cooking them.

  • chriscarltonchriscarlton Raw Newbie

    Hey Humanimal, I was only talking about animals in the wild. Dogs are definitely not wild. I agree that keeping an animal in captivity will allow them to escape the process of natural selection (becoming prey) yet I see a huge difference in the appearance of zoo animals compared to their wild brothers.

    I know that animals on the edge of “civilization” suffer some of our ills, but from what I understand. In remote areas disease and sickness is extremely rare. I would not be surprised if we found out in the future that even these rare cases of disease in the wild are down to human intervention. Acid rain, polution etc.

  • humanimalhumanimal Raw Newbie

    Yeah most of the human race are definitely manipulating Mother Nature. It is very sad to witness all the ill treatment that Mother Nature is experiencing now and in the past. But in the future my hope is that all this will come to end and the blindfold will be removed from human eyes.

  • chriscarltonchriscarlton Raw Newbie

    Amen Humanimal! All those for blindfold removal, please signify by saying “I”.

    I love George Carlin the comedian. He jokes about how we run around saying “Save The Earth!”. He makes the point that we should be concerned about ourselves, not the earth. The Earth will be fine and can exist easily without us on it. He says something like… “The Earth is Fine, We’re F**ked!” and “The Earth will go on being a bald spinning rock, long after we are gone!”

  • humanimalhumanimal Raw Newbie

    hahah. And the blindfold is removed “I” !

  • stylistchickstylistchick Raw Newbie

    we are beings of earth, earth provides the raw materials we need as humans to sustain ourselves. why do human’s feel by changing something so perfect to begin with, that they make it better? hogwash i say!

  • Ha Ha! Georgie rocks!

  • debbietookdebbietook Raw Master

    Sorry this has digressed a little from ‘cooked carrots’, but just picking up on Chris’s comments re animals in the wild.

    Birds in the sky. I see dead ones sometimes. I see on the news that birds have died from disease, as a result of human activity. I see dead birds near the catflap sometimes. They’re dead because humans breed cats and keep them as domestic pets. Birds sometimes die because they fly into my greenhouse, or even car, as I can see that that’s what has happened. Those ones die. And I see that they’re replaced by little new ones!

    What about the millions of birds who live exactly according to nature’s law, and do not have the misfortune to come into contact with human activity?

    If birds,’naturally’, die of old age, where are the old birds? I can’t see any on my lawn that look ready to die of ‘old age’.

    OK, so I’m told that birds definitely do die, of ‘old age’ (I’d be two sandwiches short of a picnic to start implying otherwise, wouldn’t I?!) So where are their dead bodies? If we think of all the birds up there, surely we should be coming across dead ones all the time -shouldn’t we?

    A little ‘off the wall’, perhaps the most naive and daffy question…, but can someone shed some light on this? Where are the dead birds?

    Love

    Debbie Took

  • humanimalhumanimal Raw Newbie

    How can you tell an old bird from a young one? They do not acquire grey feathers as we do grey hair. If you send a lot of time in the wild then you will see quite a few dead birds. Most of them die in their natural habitat(especially the elder birds) . But I will say that I have come across quite a few dead birds which have been hit by cars or have flown into glass windows. I think you are just looking too hard maybe?? :) Its not pleasant at all to see dead animals due to technology or even old age. Just the other day I saw a baby deer on the side of the road and it was still alive and stared at me as I passed. Now that just hurts! I was crying the whole ride home. Its still affecting me, and I have tears in my eyes as I type this.

  • greeniegreenie Raw Newbie

    I agree with debbietook.

    Science looks at what they can see in a microscope. So they take one isolated ingredient, test that, and draw conclusions about it. They have not discovered all there is about carrots or anything else for that matter.

    Scientific research is a good thing when used well. I would love to see proper studies done on diet, such as the one that was done on Pottinger’s cats. It would be great to know what the long term effects of diet is, and not just from anecdotes. I mean, if you had diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, or another problem, it would be wonderful to know with certainty that for xx% of the people, a raw food diet fixed it, rather than to have just read the testimonials of 3-4 people who got better eating raw. With a controlled study, you could determine stuff like that. Unfortunately, the majority of research focuses on isolated substances. This is because most of the research is funded by the pharmaceutical companies, who only make money if they can sell those substances.

    You have only to read the health and science news for any 6-12 months to realize that it’s ‘science du jour’ not real science or knowledge. Because the discovery of one day is completely overturned by the discovery of the next day. Doctors’ rigidity and blind adherence to finding du jour absolutely amazes me, given the rapidity with which the scientific community reverses itself. For instance, at one point (in the 40’s? 50’s?) doctors were actually telling people smoking was good for them, that it was relaxing.

    So take those studies with a grain of salt, and instead go by how you feel. How do you feel after eating cooked vs raw carrots? How do you feel after a cooked vs raw meal? Week of meals?

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    I am little weary of getting involved in this discussion since I used to work at the zoo. But I will add some of my thoughts. I agree with the comment about that we can not judge whether or not animals are depressed. So often visitors would come in and comment that they felt sad for the animals that thought the animals were depressed because they were in the exhibits and not outside.

    True they don’t have as much freedom of space to move about in in the zoo but you can’t say they are depressed. Depressed is a human emotion I think. 75% of the diet we fed the animals I worked with was raw – so not perfect but not completely bad. I am sure there were many things missing they would have ate in the wild that was not available in the zoo because wild foragers will eat so much more an array of things (even humans should or would if they exclusively lived off of wild food – we are probably missing so much too!).

    For the dead bird thingy – the animals I worked with at the zoo were birds. One thing you should remember is that unlike mammals, birds will rarely show that they are sick. To show you are sick in the wild, means you become singled out as a meal – you might as well be wearing a sign that says eat me!

    Often, we would have birds seem perfectly “healthy” and than one morning walk in and they are dead. Than we would do an autopsy and find out the bird has something like a kidney problem or such which was new news to us. Meaning that – you wouldn’t be able to tell if the bird was “old” (we knew how old most of our birds were and than knowing the expected life span – which is always higher in captivity – so you knew if they went past the highest in the wild, they were pretty “old”) – you can only really tell if they are newborn or fledging – it depends on the bird and when they leave the nest after birth. So, if you see an adult bird in the wild – you could very well be looking at an “old” bird and not know it. :)

    That said – those birds that die in the wild of supposed “old age” (which honestly I think is rare – mostly now birds will get eaten by a predator or get destroyed some how by us or sometimes from natural diasters) probably died from some disease (either something wrong with their systems or they get some sort of virus or bad bacteria that kills birds which is very possible). Don’t forget though how scientists believe birds were the grand survivors of many mass extinctions!

    Also you would never see any “old” birds on the ground – because if they DID die of old age (meaning nothing wrong with them but their systems gave out on them from being old), they will get eaten up pretty quick by any scavenger type of animal – like raccoons or possums or any sort of wolf type of dog or maybe fox. Vultures too. Also the bird bodies will decay faster than say a dead dear I believe – I mean, birds are mostly feather and hollow bones – most are small too. Little meat on most birds.

    I will add my comments about the cooked carrots too! I hate cooked carrots and I always have – something about the way the juice tastes after they are cooked it makes me want to throw up! I have no idea why ( I was one of those kids that their moms made them sit at the dinner table until they ate their cooked carrots – that was how much I hated them!). I love them raw though. They taste SOO different than when they are cooked. I have the same experience with green beans (except I wouldn’t eat those raw anyhow).

  • kundalalitakundalalita Raw Newbie

    lol you guys are so funny, i love it. hey this helps so much, cuz i dont really know how to answer those kinds of questions people present me, but that makes a lot of sense that western science has such a myopic view of things and takes them out of context to the point where even though it seems to make sense it really doesnt. i guess from the article we’d conclude antioxidants are the only things of value in carrots!? i agree fresh tastes and feels so much better, and its definitely what my body tells me to stick with! glad i now know how to return this kind of argument…i’ll start talking about dead birds!

    i dont know a thing about birds, except that many have had to change their songs in order to be able to hear each other over traffic and other industrial noise. it is definitely true that animals become unbalanced in one way or another once they are in contact with humans. I also don’t see why an animal can’t experience depression, despite that is considered a human emotion. Anyway, I concur about humans being so bent on manipulating nature and screwing it up. Once people learn to change themselves instead of trying to change their environment, and let go of fear, i think the world will be a different place. good thing consciousness is evolving!! 2012!! ok now were really gonna digress… :D

  • What is coming up in year 2012?

  • stylistchickstylistchick Raw Newbie

    i just read a book about the coming earth transformation (2012) and i posted something about it under the other section of the forum, title of the forum post is ‘book’.

  • Thanks stylistchick!

    123, why do you avoid root vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, and legumes? What do you mean by, “they are not considered optimal by hygienists?” How did you find this out?

    Also, I understand that one of the main ways to get protein and calcium (other than nuts) is through legumes. What have you been eating to substitute for the foods that you avoid?

    Thanks so much! -Caroline

  • Carrots and tomatoes do have more bio-availability of certain nutrients when cooked, but as 123 said this is not what we need as humans, we need the whole food with all the components combined into one package. This is the best way to eat all foods. Also there is plenty of these nutrients available when we eat them raw and more is not better, in fact more can often be worse. The excess will just cause our over toxic body to do more work to remove the excess.

    RawLifestyle, yes natural hygiene proponents (which I am one) do not suggest consuming foods that are invisible to man or are not edible in nature. Foods that grow under the ground such as potatoes, carrots, root vegetables, and grains, beans and the like are almost all inedible in their natural state. This is nature’s way to say that these are not good candidates for food. Also as early humans would not have equipment to find roots under ground they would not have been able to know they were there nor uproot them, let alone cook them or soak them etc.

    Asking questions on a nutrient is all backwards, it’s reductionism. We do not need to worry about any one nutrient as long as we are eating the right foods and are eating enough calories to maintain our weight. Eating such and such for it’s calcium is just wrong and foolish, if you eat lots of greens like spinach, lettuces, and so on you will have more than enough calcium and everything else. Humans do not need to eat legumes or even nuts for that matter as all nutrients needed for health are in fresh fruits and vegetables.

    Here is a quote from a study:

    Cooking vegetables also seems to have a positive effect on some nutrients by increasing their bioavailability, particularly certain carotenoids. One study found that heating tomatoes resulted in significantly increased lycopene content and antioxidant activity despite a decrease in vitamin C (63). Rock et al. (64) compared the plasma

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