Is Cooked Produce as Nutritious as Raw?

This summer has been unusual for me because I haven’t been eating much raw produce. Instead, I’ve been cooking most of my vegetables to reduce the risk of getting that pesky Cyclospora parasite. (Cooking is the one sure way to kill it.)

If you have been doing the same, you may be wondering if steaming, roasting, grilling or sautéing produce makes it any less nutritious. After all, many raw food advocates claim cooking destroys foods’ beneficial properties. While there is some truth to that, cooking produce also yields some surprising upsides.

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Raw fruits and vegetables have more vitamin C and many B vitamins than cooked because those nutrients tend to be destroyed with heat. Raw produce also has a lot of volume (think about how a heap of raw spinach turns to the tiniest bit cooked) and it requires more chewing which can slow down consumption and make you feel fuller with fewer calories.

Perhaps most importantly, eating produce raw means you are consuming it in its most unprocessed form, which is usually a good thing from a health standpoint. Take an apple, for example. Eaten fresh it is full of phytonutrients, minerals and fiber. When you peel it and cook it down to apple sauce it loses much of its nutritional value, but still has some benefits. Take it a step further by wrapping it in pastry and smothering it in sugar for a pie and you have another ballgame entirely- good, yes, but not nearly as good for you. My guess is, that’s a big reason many raw foodists find they feel better—by “going raw” they wind up eating more minimally processed, whole produce and less pie and the like.

While eating produce raw has some advantages, cooking it has several plusses that might surprise you.