Cooking vegetables & reduction of nutritional content

Misirlou wrote:As most of us know, heat will damage the nutritional content of veggies and also heavily reducing the enzymatic presence. However, I've read somewhere that a couple of veggies actually releases more nutrients (antioxidants) during cooking then raw. Could anyone confirm?

Another question, would cooking be able to alter the molecular structure of veggies in such way that it would actually aid digestion and absorption?

mphatesmpb wrote:I read that the lycopene in tomatoes is more available when you stew the tomatoes.

Misirlou wrote:

mphatesmpb wrote:I read that the lycopene in tomatoes is more available when you stew the tomatoes.

Interesting! I've heard that the beta-carotene content in carrots increases during cooking.


abc123, so you would argue that these "RAW-gurus" promoting at least 51% raw food every day, are perhaps a bit to extreme?
On the other hand, heating food in general will surely decrease both the total nutritional content and enzyme activity plus increasing the risk of developing damaging by-products, the later being a contributing factor in chronic diseases.

In 1930, under the direction of Dr. Paul Kouchakoff, research was conducted at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry in Lausanne, Switzerland. The effect of food (cooked and processed versus raw and natural) on the immune system was tested and documented.

Dr. Kouchakoff's discovery concerned the leukocytes, the white blood cells.
It was found that after a person eats cooked food, his/her blood responds immediately by increasing the number of white blood cells. This is a well-known phenomena called 'digestive leukocytosis', in which there is a rise in the number of leukocytes - white blood cells - after eating.

Since digestive leukocytosis was always observed after a meal, it was considered to be a normal physiological response to eating. No one knew why the number of white cells rises after eating, since this appeared to be a stress response, as if the body was somehow reacting to something harmful such as infection, exposure to toxic chemicals or trauma.

Back in 1930, the Swiss researchers at the institute of Chemical Chemistry made a remarkable discovery. They found that eating raw, unaltered food did not cause a reaction in the blood. In addition, they found that if a food had been heated beyond a certain temperature (unique to each food), or if the food was processed (refined, chemicals added, etc.), this always caused a rise in the number of white cells in the blood.
The researchers renamed this reaction 'pathological leukocytosis', since the body was reacting to highly altered food. They tested many different types of foods and found that if the foods were not refined or overheated, they caused no reaction. The body saw them as 'friendly foods'. However, these same foods, if heated at too high a temperature, caused a negative reaction in the blood, a reaction found only when the body is invaded by a dangerous pathogen or trauma.

The worst offenders of all, whether heated or not, were processed foods which had been refined (such as white flour and white rice), or pasteurized (a process in which milk is flash-heated to high temperatures to kill bacteria), or homogenized (also seen in milk where the fat in milk is subjected to artificial suspension), or preserved (chemicals are added to food to delay spoilage or to enhance texture or taste).