Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

Eat to Live 43

chemical absorption and that eating vegetables without a high-fat

topping is not as nutritious since the phytochemicals are not ab-

sorbed. This is not accurate. When vegetables are cooked, or eaten

with fat, some nutrients are more efficiently absorbed and other

heat-sensitive nutrients are lost or rendered less absorbable. Many

studies show that raw fruits and vegetables offer the highest blood

levels of cancer-protective nutrients and the most protection against

cancer of any other foods, including cooked vegetation.^28 Any advice

not recognizing that raw vegetables and fresh fruits are the two most

powerful anti-cancer categories of foods is off the mark.

Paul Talalay, M.D., of the Brassica Chemoprotection Laboratory

at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is involved with research-

ing the effect of cooking on phytochemicals. He reports "widely dif-

ferent effects on the compounds in vegetables that protect against

cancer."^29 These compounds are both activated and destroyed by

various cooking methods. Vigilante and Flynn have championed the

position that cooking foods in olive oil is the centerpiece of a healthy

diet, without adequate scientific evidence. Their interpretation of the

scientific literature perpetuates this fallacy. The result is more people

unable to lose weight successfully.

My advice is extremely different. I recognize that raw, uncooked

vegetables and fruits offer the most powerful protection against dis-

ease and I encourage my patients to eat huge salads and at least four

fresh fruits per day. Diets with little raw foods are not ideal. As the

amount of raw fruits and vegetables are increased in a person's diet,

weight loss and blood pressure are lowered effortlessly.^30

Additionally, raw foods contain enzymes, some of which can

survive the digestive process in the stomach and pass into the small

intestines. These heat-sensitive elements may offer significant nutri-

tional advantages to protect against disease, according to investiga-

tors from the Department of Biochemistry at Wright State University

School of Medicine.^31 These researchers concluded that "most foods

undergo a decrease in nutritive value in addition to the well-known

loss of vitamins when cooked and/or processed." Most vitamins are

heat-sensitive, for example 20-60 percent of vitamin C is lost, de-

pending on the cooking method.^32 Thirty to forty percent of miner-

als are lost in cooking vegetables as well.^33 Consuming a significant

quantity of raw foods is essential for superior health.

For the best results, your diet should contain a huge amount of

raw foods, a large amount of the less calorically dense cooked vege-

tation, and a lesser amount of the more calorically rich cooked starchy