Raw food diet: Encyclopedia II - Raw food diet - Criticism

Raw food diet - Criticism

Raw food diets have been criticized in the mainstream medical community as being too harsh and restrictive. Critics of the diet argue that a raw food diet requires special care to include the recommended amounts of several important vitamins and nutrients, including vitamin B-12 and protein. They say that any restrictive diet can lead to nutritional deficiency, if adopted for an extended period of time without special attention to essential nutrients.

Much of the research advocating raw food diets has been criticized. Critics say that food enzymes cannot be fully utilized by the human body, since they are destroyed during the digestive process. Also, some nutrients are only fully released in cooking, including lycopene in tomatoes, and beta carotene in carrots. It is also argued that humanity has been cooking for such a long time that the human body can hardly be ill-adjusted to cooked food. Furthermore, many claims of enhanced "enzyme activity" ignore the vast and specific roles that enzymes play in physiological processes. Also, any enzyme ingested, whether raw or cooked, is rapidly digested into inactive peptides in the stomach. Critics also say that the research supporting raw food diets is out-of-date.

In response, advocates point to studies which show that some nutrients in food are either damaged or made indigestible through the heating involved in cooking (see McKeith 2000 p 165 ff for references). They also assert that since no other species cooks its food, it is impossible to estimate how long it would take to adjust to such a diet, or even to know whether it is possible. Indeed, they claim, there is evidence from Pottenger and Lucas [1] that eating cooked food can have genetic effects which are undesirable in cats, although cats, being exclusive carnivores, may not be a valid comparison to humans in terms of diet and digestion.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Criticism", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki