Extreme Cuisine: Raw food advocates point out that cooking depletes the enzymes, vitamins and minerals in food, but their critics say cooking can often aid the digestion of nutrients, writes Haydn Shaughnessy.
In a 1970s episode of Star Trek an unusual alien race appeared before Mr Spock and Capt James T Kirk. This race suffered no illness, engaged in no hostilities, avoided anger and generally exuded good karma.
Of course, they existed in a psychological state rather than a physical one, which is like saying they were a really good idea.
Much of what passes by us in health writing seems like a good idea too. For a classic example of what passes for reality, rather than ideology, here is a little story.
A couple of weeks ago I was in France, eating abundant fresh fruit and vegetables from the market stalls, and engaging with the Perigord's fascination for duck, magret or confit. The minute I surrendered to the idea of going home, I went out for a pizza. The result was a day of indigestion and the feeling of being overcome by my diet rather than being fuelled by it.
As somebody who coins some income from writing about healthy eating, I confess I can never keep it up for as long as I should. Over the years this has typically been the case with raw food, something the average reader might think is hardly a good idea at all.
So why eat raw?
The answer is that we do all the time. We eat fruit raw, salads raw, we drink juices and we eat fermented foods that have not been cooked, such as cheese (though raw food purists won't touch any animal products). We also eat nuts, sometimes in chocolate bars, other times not.
There is, however, an argument for taking a more conscious approach to eating raw food. All foods have a natural enzyme mix and the enzymes help us digest and absorb nutrients within the food.
Cooking destroys enzymes and makes digestion more difficult than it needs to be. The argument rounds out with a warning about destroying vitamins in the cooking process (true) and losing minerals (partly true).
For some people, like restaurateur Juliano Brotman, raw is also a philosophical journey. He lives in California.
The Extreme Cuisine philosophy addresses balance at all times. We are not what we eat, but to be philosophically attuned to life, we have to be philosophical about food. We can bring balance to all aspects of what we do. For raw food to be a thoroughly good idea, it has to be a matter of balance.
There is evidence that we don't eat enough raw food. Many food sources, as we know, lack the levels of vitamins and minerals they used to contain. And cooking depletes them further. For years I've thought this could only be true of vitamins. Vitamins are vulnerable and delicate, but minerals - surely these trace elements of the metal and stone kingdom survive a little boiling?
The answer is that they can, but they get leached away in the cooking liquids. A study reported on the food website, World's Healthiest (www.whfoods.com), showed that spinach loses more than 50 per cent of its potassium content when cooked for a few minutes.
In the US, the Institute of Medicine, a federal advisory body, has recommended that adult Americans should increase their intake of potassium. The simplest and cheapest way to do this would be to eat more raw food.
Dietary changes also point the way towards the need to eat more raw foods. In Ireland, we now eat considerably less potatoes than in the past. Potatoes were one of the great sources of potassium, even though half of it leached into the water. We need to compensate.
But, say critics, cooking can actually help what's known as the bioavailability of nutrients - in other words, it can help us to digest them. This is thought to be the case with beta-carotene from carrots in particular. A little steaming goes a long way towards making a carrot bioavailable.
Equally, a tomato's lycopene content (which snuggles up to the prostate, gents, and protects it from cancer) needs a little warm over before our bodies maximise the intake.
The correct balance of foods is problematic in regard to potassium and sodium intake. In non-developed parts of the world, potassium intake exceeds sodium. In western society, we have reversed this natural balance. Likewise, some experts now blame hypertension not so much on excess sodium but on calcium deficiencies. Magnesium deficiencies are thought to fuel the current epidemic of allergies.
It's clear that our diets aren't rich enough in some of the essential minerals and that a quick and easy step to reversing that is not to cook, though you'd be a brave chef if you served raw spuds
Two chefs who have made a cuisine out of raw food are Brotman (mentioned above, author of Raw: The Uncook Book) and Jeremy Safron (The Raw Truth).
A raw food website with video and audio shows from leading chefs is available on the web at: http://gliving.tv/greenchefs/.
My proposition is that every meal should have a raw element: fruit, raw grains lightly soaked and the trusty side-salad, but also sauces and dips made of raw ingredients.
To increase your raw food intake but also to keep it balanced, it helps to have new equipment.
I recently took up dehydrating food and I have a flaker - a mill for making oat flakes each morning (I'm also going to try it on buckwheat soon).
One warning before approaching raw food - be wary of complex ingredient lists. Not that they imply a meal is difficult to make; the great thing about raw food is that once you compile the ingredients, you just mix.
Raw chefs have a tendency though to use complex ingredient lists as a way of compensating for the lack of food synergy achieved during cooking.
Complex ingredients mess up the satiety signals from our brains. In the world of psychologically ambient aliens it doesn't matter, but in the real world it makes you fat.
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Recipe: Raw ketchup
This is a great way to get raw food into everybody's diet. It's a simple ketchup substitute which will have the kids dipping into something healthy. Use a muli to juice the tomatoes.
I adapted this recipe from Juliano Brotman's Raw: The Uncook Book.
Using raw sauces brings balance to cooked food.
You will need:
- Half a dozen plum tomatoes
- Half a medium-sized onion, finely diced
- Three sun-dried tomatoes, finely diced
- A half-inch cube of ginger finely diced
- Juice of two limes
- Eight basil leaves
- Three cloves of garlic
- Six dates (big and juicy if you can find them)
- A little crystal salt or Soy sauce
- A drop or two of maple syrup - to your taste
Method:
Push the tomatoes through the muli and then put the diced onion into the juice.
Chop the dates finely. I soaked mine in the lime juice for a while and then used a fork to really work the juices from the dates.
Crush three cloves of garlic and mince them with the basil leaves and ginger in a pestle and mortar, along with a little salt.
Combine all these ingredients into the tomato juice and add iced sun-dried tomatoes and maple syrup.
If you haven't used the lime juice yet, put it in now.
If you're not convinced by the coarse texture, put the lot into a blender and make something that looks like the Heinz version.