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This newsletter is about Raw versus Cooked Food.
Conception Day 2012 flyer
March 11, 2012
Hi ,
I get asked about the virtues of eating a raw food diet from time to time by patients. This is a touchy subject similar to discussing religion for some people - for much the same reason - so much of the raw food belief has to be taken on faith. Like all things health oriented, personal experience is the rule of law. Because we are all so individual biochemically, there is no universal right way to eat. There is what works for you and nothing else.
That said, I will give my two cents on the subject based on my knowledge and experience.
Cooking changes our food...sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Not only the fact that the food is heated, but how it is heated, what it is heated with, for how long, and how hot are all relevant concerns.
Most of us are aware that cooking destroys some of the nutrients in the food. What many are not aware of is that cooking also greatly increases the nutrient availability in many foods. In fresh plants the nutrients we need are locked up in tiny wooden boxes called cells. We can not break down these boxes in our digestive tract and get the nutrients out. We are not termites. We do not digest wood. For this reason a heating process that breaks open the boxes by raising the internal temperature of the boxes to boiling causes the water in the boxes to turn to steam and burst the wooden cell walls open releasing the nutrients inside. Humans have been using cooking of their vegetables for over 40,000 years to get more nutrition out of their foods.
Yes, some vitamins are lost in the cooking process of fresh vegetables, but the amount is tiny compared to the increase in available nutrients caused by the cooking. Is there any other way to release these nutrients without using heat? Yes there is - mechanical breakdown of the cell walls. This process is why we were told to chew each bite of food 27 times - it increases food value and decreases overeating. A more modern approach is to juice your vegetables, or even better use a high speed blender so you keep the plant fiber (which is itself an important nutrient.)
My personally preferred method of optimizing my plant nutrients is to lightly steam my veggies and then run them through my Vitamix blender as part of my daily vegetable soup. I like a smooth soup. Ellen likes a chunkier soup so she will steam the veggies, put them into a bone broth soup base then use a stick blender briefly to break up just some of the veggies and keep most of them chunky.
Raw food lovers will cry out that steaming destroys the vital life giving enzymes in the plant. For those of you not savvy on the world of enzymes, they are little worker molecules that either break other molecules apart or squish small molecules together to make bigger new molecules. Our very living existence depends on enzymes doing their jobs. But the relevant truth is - do we use plant enzymes? The simple answer is mostly no. Plant enzymes are very slow. They are what causes fruit and vegetables to rot and decay. Stick a piece of fruit on the counter and see how long it takes for the natural enzymes to reduce that fruit or veggie down to a watery puddle...days to weeks. Our human digestion has to do this all in a couple hours. Human enzymes are hundreds of times stronger than most plant enzymes.
Many plant enzymes are useful in breaking down proteins, and these are used commercially for that purpose. Meat tenderizer is an example as is pineapple and papaya enzyme digestive tablets. They are even used in laundry detergents to break down certain stains. But they have little to do with our routine digestion - particularly since they are destroyed in the stomach by our stomach acid. (That is why if you take an enzyme digestive aid it has to be taken before you start eating - so it will get past the stomach before the stomach acid starts to come out.)
So my answer on the fruit and vegetable front is to combine minimal cooking with good mechanical breakdown of the plant cell walls to maximize my nutrition from the plant material. Fermentation also is another way to release nutrients which I will use to increase the food value from my vegetables. (If you are interested in fermentation, talk to Gypsy at the office - she is our fermentation queen. Her Facebook page for ferments is here.) More information can also be found here.
What about dry plant material like grains and legumes? Traditionally we don't eat these dry for a couple reasons. One is that they are nasty to try to eat raw. We are talking about seeds here. Seeds are little babies, and Mother Nature covers them with a protective shell of anti-nutrients to discourage bugs, animals, and fungus from eating the babies inside. She puts poisons in the outer layers of the seeds. Soaking the seeds washes away some of the poisons, and cooking destroys other of the poisons, but a portion of the poisons stay there no matter what we do. Either by soaking the seeds (like we do with beans) or by grinding the seeds into a flour then adding water, we will use cooking to achieve the same results that we achieved with our fresh vegetables.
That leaves our last major food group to consider - proteins. Proteins are different than vegetables. We can get all the food nutrients out of flesh food when they are eaten raw. Plus several of the essential amino acids found in protein are sensitive to heat, as are many of the larger protein molecules our body wants and uses. So ideally we should eat our meat raw - in an ideal world. But we are not in an ideal world. The bacteria that inhabit most protein foods are the same ones that like to munch on us. To be safe from food borne pathogens we usually need to cook most of our protein foods. Expert chefs can pick out healthy untainted proteins such as in the preparation of sushi or steak tartar that can be eaten raw, but otherwise we are safer cooking our foods.
So how do we optimize these conflicting pieces of information? For safety most meats are vastly overcooked. Safety only requires that the meat be heated to 165 degrees for 10 minutes to destroy most pathogens. But since the center of the meat heats the slowest, the outer layers are heated to much higher temperatures for a longer time period than is necessary for safety. This destroys the nutrition of these outer layers. Optimal nutrition says to order your steaks rare. But when I did my research, I discovered another way to reach safety without destroying the food value of most of the meat...slow cooking. You can achieve the same safety from nasty bugs by heating the meat to a much lower temperature, but holding the temperature there for a much longer time.
Personally, when I cook meat I use a crock pot at the lowest setting and let it cook the meat for 6 to 10 hours (usually overnight.) My crock pot keeps the meat at around 150 degrees - enough to kill the bugs after about an hour but not enough to destroy the heat sensitive amino acids. After 6 to 8 hours even the center of a sizable roast will have been up to the desired temperature for plenty of time to kill off any undesirable critters. This process also makes the meat really tender and juicy. Be aware that the color of the meat may stay pink and make you think it is uncooked, but it is quite cooked. The protein structure of the red blood cells has not been destroyed keeping the pink color - exactly what we are looking for.
So that is my take on cooking versus raw foods. Unless you are juicing and fermenting, I believe it is almost impossible to get the nutrition you need from eating whole vegetable based foods strictly raw. You would have to use supplements to fill in the gaps in your nutrition. On the other hand over cooking foods is not healthy either. Keeping foods as close to their natural state as possible is a wise idea, but I believe light low temperature cooking is a valuable asset to improving our nutrition.
Take care,
David
Announcement: We will be closed early next Wednesday so that I can take Ellen down for another bile duct stent replacement. We will be open all day Thursday to make up the time.
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Conception Day 2012 celebration
For those of you concerned about the predictions of changes that are supposed to occur planet wide on December 22 - here is an opportunity to use your creative energy to focus on positive change instead of disaster. March 22 - 9 months before the changes - a huge group of the leading movers in the positive creation spiritual field are gathering to "birth" a new beginning. Locally a live feed viewing of this gathering will be taking place at the Unity Church in Sacramento on Folsom Blvd at 6:30 in the evening organized by my patients Dori and Tammi. Call Dori at 916-402-5054.
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About Dr. DeLapp
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Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years. He began experimenting with medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis. In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education. Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic. He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice.
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health.
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities.
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth. The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework. Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.
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