"cde" > wrote in message
...
> Nordo wrote:
> > There's a lot of blurbs on raw diets floating around the net, but I
> > haven't been able to find anything close to a how-to guide. Does anyone
> > know a website with a listing of what foods are best to eat to get a
> > rounded raw diet?
>
>
> You will probably need 3-5 kg of food per day, maybe more. It can be
8<
> Some of the carotenoids are considered to be best
> assimilated when cooked (beta carotene in green and
> orange vegetables and lycopene in tomatoes), although
> this is somewhat debatable because cooking turns the
> trans isomers into cis, which are less bioactive.

This is all rather hypothetical. Studies show repeatedly that raw food is
better than cooked:

1) Adzersen et al., Raw and Cooked Vegetables, Fruits, Selected
Micronutrients, and Breast Cancer Risk: A Case-Control Study in Germany
NUTRITION AND CANCER, 46(2), 131-137

"As shown in a recent meta-analysis, inverse associations
with breast cancer appear to be more consistent for vegetable
than for fruit intake. In contrast, a recent pooled analysis
of prospective cohort studies does not suggest that increasing
vegetable or fruit consumption during adulthood would be
associated with reduced breast cancer risk. In both of
these evaluations, there was no separation of effects of raw
and cooked vegetables. The inverse association with raw vegetable
consumption seen in our study confirms the results of
two other European studies (2,3), observing protective effects for
raw and null effect for cooked vegetables.

.. . . Significant breast cancer protective effects in this study
were found only with high consumption of raw vegetables
(>65 g/day) and whole-grain products (>47 g/day), whereas
the highest quartile of vegetable consumption (>113 g/day)
was of borderline significance (OR = 0.62, 95% CI =
0.38-1.02). This might indicate that a certain daily amount
of these plant foods is necessary to confer a risk-reducing
effect. The effect was attenuated by adjusting for vitamin
C, folic acid, and ?-carotene which likely indicates that the
examined components may in part affect risk but also that
there are other components in raw vegetables that exert protective
effects independent of these vitamins."

2) Katsouyanni K, Trichopoulos D, Boyle P, Xirouchaki E, Trichopoulou, A, et
al.: Diet and breast cancer: a case-control study in Greece. Int J, Cancer
38, 815-820, 1986

3) Franceschi S, Favero A, La Vecchia C, Negri E, Dal Maso L, et al.:
Influence of food groups and food diversity on breast cancer risk in Italy,
Int J Cancer 63, 785-791, 1995


> With vegetables, they are more digestible when cooked
> because cooking breaks down the fiber matrix, but it
> also destroys the protective phytochemicals.

Indeed, a poor exchange when one can juice most vegetables in a few minutes
and enjoy all their nutritive benefits, while using far less energy.

John