False Science Used by Raw Foodists to Promote Their Diet

Over the years, I’ve evolved from a very idealistic, somewhat naive view of raw food nutrition, based on the radical energy of my early twenties, to a more mature and complete understanding of the whole picture today.

The problem is that most people starting out on the raw food diet are still hanging on to misinformation, and receive bad advice from raw food authors that is not based in science, but rather in what I call “raw food lore.”

In the end, the raw food diet may very well provide great benefits, but not for the reasons raw foodists claim. Let’s review the most glaring pieces of misinformation that are common in raw food circles and that make this diet the laughingstock of the scientific community.

Remember, the fact that all these “facts” are completely false does not undermine the actual benefits of the diet. Rather, it can mislead raw foodists into making choices that are less than excellent. It also undermines the credibility of the movement, which is often seen as more of a circus of clowns than a true health movement.

#1: “Cooking destroys digestive enzymes.”

By far the biggest raw food myth is that of digestive enzymes. I remember when I first got into raw foods, I was told that cooking anything above 115 degrees Fahrenheit destroyed those living enzymes, and that’s why we get sick. I believed it, even though there wasn’t a shred of true science behind it.

The reality is that although plant enzymes exist, they are made for the survival of the plant itself. For example, enzymes in bananas transform the starch in a green banana into sugar as it ripens. Those enzymes are not necessary for humans, as we produce our own enzymes to digest food.

Even if you could somehow prove that food enzymes are beneficial when isolated, those same enzymes in foods are denatured and deactivated as soon as they reach our stomach. They can’t resist the high acidity of the human stomach.

It’s also false to believe that the human body has a limited supply of enzymes that “runs out” as it gets older. This ludicrous idea was propagated by the mysterious “doctor” Howell, who wrote a famous book on enzymes, which, by the way, has no real scientific references to support any of its claims.

Enzymes are also not alive. They are just proteins that catalyze chemical reactions which could not take place without their presence. Enzymes can only work under very specific conditions, such as the right temperature, pH, and the presence of other co-enzymes. Plant enzymes themselves will only work under a different set of parameters than our own digestive enzymes, which ultimately renders them useless after we eat them.

#2: “Fruits and vegetables are the human-specific diet”

The raw food diet is often promoted based on the idea that humans once lived on a pure raw food diet in perfect health, and as they discovered cooking, and eventually agriculture, their health began to deteriorate, culminating in the current state of bad health people experience today.

Every single discovery in the study of human evolution disproves this fantasy.

First of all, there is credible evidence that humans have been cooking for a very long time. A recent discovery2 showed that the extinct early hominid species homo erectus was cooking food, which would place cooking as beginning over 1.9 million years ago.

It’s true that homo erectus did not evolve into homo sapiens, but is an extinct cousin family. However, the research shows that cooking is much more ancient than we originally believed.

Researcher Professor Richard Wrangham argues in his book Catching Fire that cooking food enabled humans to evolve. Why?

Because it enabled us to get more calories and not spend 60-75% of our time looking for food and chewing it, like other apes.

Our digestive system even adapted to this change by becoming shorter, allowing for much quicker digestion than in other apes and removing the ability to extract much nutrition from insoluble fiber, much of which is already broken down by cooking.

Cooking gave humans an unmatched advantage by making available calorie denser storable foods that could not be consumed otherwise (like tubers), thus allowing for year-round food in a single place.

Modern raw foodists also eat a diet that is nowhere close to that of other apes. We do our own version of cooking and processing with blenders, dehydrators, and other modern appliances, making fibrous vegetables, and even fruit, easier to digest.

#3: “Humans are the only species who cook their food and the only species who suffer from degenerative diseases!”

I never fully believed the myth that wild animals don’t suffer from disease, but it is still a commonly seen argument for a raw food diet.

Wild animals do suffer from a wide range of diseases, but typically some of these could be avoided in the context of modern medicine. In other words, deaths by parasites and infectious disease are common.

Generally, it is true that wild animals don’t suffer from common degenerative diseases that affect humans, such as heart disease.

However, wild animals do die of various kinds of cancer, even if they don’t live in polluted areas.

The problem with this argument is that although it contains a grain of truth, it leads one to believe that a raw food diet is the only way to perfect health. Raw foodists do die from diseases, and in some cases those diseases have nothing to do with their diet (or could not be improved through dietary changes alone). Raw foodists have a lifespan that is quite average in general. This is not something that has been scientifically proven, but a personal observation of mine. If most raw foodists reached a very advanced age, I would have heard about it by now.

I would avoid the “wild animals” argument, because humans are so different from wild animals in so many ways that we can’t possibly compare ourselves to them anyway.

Wild animals don’t wear clothes… Should we try not to either?

#4: “Cooking food turns it into poison.”

Cooking food does affect it at the molecular level. In some cases, raw foods that contain real poisons are rendered edible by cooking. For example, raw kidney beans are poisonous, but by soaking and cooking them we destroy the enzyme inhibitors that can cause serious food poisoning if those beans are eaten raw.

On the other hand, cook some steak over the grill, and you’ll create a series of new, carcinogenic compounds that were not present in the steak before, and we saw a few pages ago that acrylamide, produced by high-heat cooking of carbohydrates, is carcinogenic.

Certain methods of cooking, such as steaming, appear rather innocuous. Of course, raw foodists will say that we don’t know yet what possible toxic compounds are created in any form of cooking, so steamed broccoli could be just as bad as barbecued meat, just for different reasons. This is, of course, pure conjecture, and most likely not true.

If cooked food were truly toxic, the human race would have disappeared a long time ago. This argument doesn’t do a lot of good for the credibility of the raw food movement.

#5: “Cooking destroys the natural live energy in food.”

Some raw foodists have used the “vital energy” argument to promote a raw food diet. The idea is that raw foods contain some kind of vital force that is destroyed by cooking.

To prove their point, they will show you Kirlian photographs (a special type of photography that captures a sort of “aura” around an object), showing the difference between raw and cooked foods. Raw foods appear bright with a beautiful aura, while the aura of the same foods when cooked appears dead, with depressing colors.

Kirlian photography uses a high-voltage source connected to a photographic plate. The object being photographed will be in contact with the plate. Because low current electricity is used, the technique is harmless.

According to Media College:

Small coronal discharges are created by the strong electric field at the edges of the object. The frequency of the electricity excites electrons in the object so they ionize the surrounding air.

Objects must be conductive for this technique to work. The object can be moist (e.g. a living thing), or conduct metal. A dry non-conducting object will not produce the effect. (…)

Many paranormal enthusiasts still claim that the aura captured by Kirlian photography is some sort of “life force.”

However this is easily debunked:

#1: Kirlian photographs can be taken of anything moist or conductive, including coins, paperclips, etc.

#2: Kirlian photographs taken in a vacuum (where no ionized gas is present) show no aura.

#3: Some people claim that a living object slowly loses its aura after it dies. This is more easily explained by the fact that it loses its moisture.

Because raw foods have a high moisture content, they appear more vibrant under Kirlian photography than their cooked counterparts.

#6: “Raw foods are easier to digest than cooked foods.”

It is true that some raw foods are much easier to digest than some cooked foods, but in most cases this is not true.

One example: starchy foods are easier to digest cooked than raw. This category includes potatoes, rice, and pretty much all grains. No population could ever survive eating these foods raw, as we only digest a tiny percentage of the raw starch, compared to most of the cooked starch. Raw starch probably won’t harm you, but you just can’t digest much of it.

Most of the world’s population lives on a starch-based diet, because it is simply a more reliable source of calories.

When raw foodists try to take some grains or beans and eat them raw, I always laugh. I’ve seen recipes that called for soaking rice to “sprout” it, and then turning it into a dish. But raw rice, even when soaked and sprouted, has very little nutritional value, because we don’t digest most of what’s in it. At least raw rice is not toxic, unlike many kinds of beans that can put you in the hospital if you eat them raw (such as kidney beans).

Does that mean I don’t support a raw food diet? Absolutely not! I just think we need to remove the false science from it in order to avoid making big mistakes and taking it to an extreme. 

I expand on this in my new book Raw Freedom. Read it at 50% off using coupon code JULYFREEDOM.