Raw foods can be pretty good for you. Some of the nutrients in vegetables can be washed away or destroyed by cooking. Since some raw foods are good… all raw food must be better… right? Actually… no. Human beings can’t get enough nutrition or energy from raw foods alone. Up to half of women on raw foods diet have bodies in the condition of persistent famine to such a the degree that they stop menstruating.

This is even after the raw foodists go through very elaborate preparations as extreme as actually rotting some of their foods to soften them up in hopes of making them easier to digest.

Cooking opens food up to the digestive processes. It denatures proteins so they can be more easily absorbed. Cooking breaks down starches into digestable forms. Recent studies are showing that humans can’t live by raw foods alone. Other studies show that something around 85% of raw foodists admit to “cheating” regularly.

Raw foods certainly can help with weight-loss but a 100% raw food diet is an impossible way of life. Even so… the movement is gaining strength with a kind of religious fervor. I wonder if the rituals of raw food preparation combined with the feelings of spiritual elation that are associated with religious fasting contribute to the belief in their system?