Matt Hank

I would think most fitness professionals agree that it benefits all individuals to increase the amount of raw foods in your diet. Specifically I tell my clientele to increase the amount of raw produce in their diets. Raw produce is very nutrient dense (filled with vitamins, minerals, and other phytonutrients), compared to veggies that are cooked. It is hard to increase the amount of raw meats in your diet, unless you decide to have sushi for every meal. However, you should be careful not to overcook your meats because that can alter the protein content and create a carcinogenic effect in overcooked meats. Eating a diet high in raw foods, or live foods as some may call it, would theoretically require less calories per day because foods that are not cook are more nutrient dense. Here is an example: If you decide to have a salad for lunch loaded with veggies it may be 400 calories (let’s also say there is dressing on the salad). You would get more nutritional value out of this meal compared to a grilled chicken sandwich and fries which could be a 900 calories (depending on portion size of course). By eating more raw foods, you will be able to cut your calories and still receive the proper amount of nutrients.

Cooking food may actually destroy the nutritional components – such as certain vitamins can be destroyed, it can alter fats and carbohydrates, and even destroy protein effecting how much we can absorb from cooked meats. Simply put: Cooking food either alters or diminishes the nutrients that we can absorb within that food.

Don’t try to drastically change your entire diet off the bat, instead one place I would start with is adding more raw produce to your diet.

Train Hard-Train Smart
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 11:21 am and is filed under Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.