I get this question every week at work and I have always said eat cook food. As you will get more nutrition inside your body. I made this post to be able to find the two video’s listed a bit lower in the text.
It is not too hard to show that cooked food will get you more nutrition, but the movement for raw food is strong and I always get push back on it.
Then I came across Dr. Richard Wrangham, Professor at Harvard University who wrote Catching Fire. It’s a look at how cooking actually made us able to grow into the persons we are today.
I found a 7 minute video of his main points here and a one hour long video with some great point in it here
Sure he has opposition to his opinions, but from my many years in nutrition and treating people it makes a lot of sense to me.
I use raw foods at a treatment and for variety in eating. As some foods taste a lot better raw. But generally when it comes to getting nutrition and calories into us, cooked wins.
At work I normally say “eat warm, cooked food.” Warm is basically room temperature and up to body temperature.
As a side note the more you cook foods the easier they are to chew. As humans have been cooking foods for a while now, it would appear our teeth are becoming less robust. Our jaws are getting shorter and our teeth often do not grow in straight anymore and often/always ‘wisdom teeth’ need to be extracted and we have a smaller airway.
Anthropologists attribute that to easier to chew foods. I found an interesting interview about that here.
All of these things I am currently studying on how to work with them. I will update via the blog when I make some progress.
until then,
Be Well,
Ward Willison
allbodycare.com
Kelowna Acupuncture & Other Natural Therapies
Cover picture By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28641121