Thing I learned today: eating food raw instead of cooked = fewer calories

42carrots

I did not know this. I've been eating more raw food lately which was totally incidental and mostly for convenience really, so I decided to do a little research and found this article.
Thoughts/input?

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/12/08/why-calorie-counts-are-wrong-cooked-food-provides-a-lot-more-energy/#.VNgLfi7F5BA

Exerpt:
"To study how cooking (and processing, like pounding or chopping) affected calories, we turned to mice. They are a good species for this because their diet choices are rather similar to human food preferences. They like grains, roots, fruits and even meat; in the wild, there are populations of mice that get most of their food by eating live albatrosses [video]. Rachel Carmody led a study in which mice were given regular mouse pellets for six days at a time, interrupted by four days of eating sweet potatoes or beef. Half the time the sweet potato or meat was presented raw, and half the time cooked; half the time it was also pounded and half the time unpounded. She and Gil Weintraub carefully measured the exact amount of food eaten by the mice, and then calculated the animals’ gain or loss of weight over four days as a function of the weight of food eaten, using both wet weights and dry weights of food to check the results. For both meat and sweet potato, Rachel found that when the food was cooked the mice gained more weight (or lost less weight) than when it was raw. Pounding had very little effect."

SideSteel

I think that personal preference and adherence factors should dictate how the individual prepares his or her food.

42carrots

Well, sure. Still interesting information. Personally I think that as with most things, moderation is probably going to be the best bet. Eat only a raw diet and you're probably going to be missing out on important nutrients, but this article also suggests that incorporating more raw foods into your diet may be helpful in keeping you full and supporting your weight loss goals, if that's where you're at.

Another passage:

"The more highly processed our foods, the more calories we get out of them. If you want to gain weight, make sure you eat highly processed and well-cooked meals. If you want to lose weight, do the opposite. You can eat the same number of measured calories, but if the foods vary in how finely they have been ground or whether they have been cooked, the calorie counts will not tell you what you want to know.

The next wave of research will decide how profound the effects of cooking are. My best guess, based on studies of the increased digestibility of starch or eggs eaten cooked compared to raw, is that the increase in net calorie gain from cooking will prove to be in the region of 25­­–50%. That is only a guess, but I am confident it will be much higher than 10%. It is going to be exciting to find out."

earlnabby

Well, the other side of that coin is that you get more nutrition from many foods after they have been cooked. The best examples off the top of my head are tomatoes, carrots, dark leafy greens and the brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, etc)

SideSteel

42carrots wrote: »

Well, sure. Still interesting information. Personally I think that as with most things, moderation is probably going to be the best bet. Eat only a raw diet and you're probably going to be missing out on important nutrients, but this article also suggests that incorporating more raw foods into your diet may be helpful in keeping you full and supporting your weight loss goals, if that's where you're at.

Another passage:

"The more highly processed our foods, the more calories we get out of them. If you want to gain weight, make sure you eat highly processed and well-cooked meals. If you want to lose weight, do the opposite. You can eat the same number of measured calories, but if the foods vary in how finely they have been ground or whether they have been cooked, the calorie counts will not tell you what you want to know.

The next wave of research will decide how profound the effects of cooking are. My best guess, based on studies of the increased digestibility of starch or eggs eaten cooked compared to raw, is that the increase in net calorie gain from cooking will prove to be in the region of 25­­–50%. That is only a guess, but I am confident it will be much higher than 10%. It is going to be exciting to find out."

I'm not a researcher but I'd be very surprised if the differences are that high. I'd also be curious how applicable this feature is to foods that aren't vegetables, and I only mention that because 25-50% difference in vegetable calories isn't all that much.

At any rate, I have my doubts that there would be that big of a difference but I suppose we wait and see what the data shows.

42carrots

Yeah definitely. Personally I'm thinking this is helpful information for me on days when I've maybe had a huge, high calorie meal for breakfast for example, and want to be a little more careful about what I choose to eat for the rest of the day. I think it's definitely wise advice to ensure you're getting adequate nutrition on a daily basis. A lot of people feel guilt around food (just look at pretty much any thread on these boards!) so keeping in mind that loading up a little extra on raw foods won't impact your caloric intake quite a much is good to know. Not that I'll be eating raw eggs anytime soon

SideSteel

I actually differ a bit on this but I'll be careful to explain this so that I don't come across discouraging to you.

I think that if you enjoy eating raw vegetables vs cooked vegetables, or if raw vegetables increase your fullness cues more than cooked vegetables, then those are fine reasons to choose raw vegetables over cooked vegetables.

Since the differences in total energy intake between raw and cooked vegetables don't appear to be substantial in humans (that I'm aware of), I don't think I'd use that as a basis for choosing which preparation method you use for your vegetables.

So what I'm getting at is this -- suppose you (or anyone) reads this article and things "Oh my, I take in 20% fewer calories if I eat this broccoli raw instead of steaming it!" and that amounts to a savings of a whopping 15 calories, and you just don't really enjoy eating raw broccoli. I think it's not worth it.

This is what I was getting at with my original statement about letting preference dictate your food preparation methods.

Unless we have data showing that the differences are substantial, I'd file this under "doesn't matter".

SideSteel

I'll also add that it's definitely an interesting topic and worthy of discussion. My comments are aimed at the practical application of the article.

42carrots

That's an excellent point! I eat a mostly vegetarian diet (I do eat some fish) and there are times when I'm basically indifferent to whether I'm going to eat certain things raw or cooked, so for me it would probably be more on those occasions where I might go raw instead. I'm also now curious about something like overnight oats, which I have for breakfast sometimes. Based on this research it would seem as though soaking oats in the fridge is not comparable calorie-wise to cooking them, which I wouldn't have guessed. This could be considered a good thing if reducing calories is your goal, but I'm guessing it also affects other things like the amount of protein your body is actually able to use, which is not really a good thing. I know a lot of people love eggs on here, it would be interesting to see if research can demonstrate whether, say, very lightly cooked eggs yield fewer calories than a hard boiled egg, for instance. Especially for those of us who have low calorie limits (eg. mine is 1340 if I want to lose a pound a week), this type of information is valuable!

BWBTrish

With this kinda articles i would like to see a list of vegetables like raw carrots ..gram raw is 23 calories and cooked 26 or what ever it is. Cauliflower is raw ...and cooked.... spinach is raw...and cooked... etc etc

I looked for it clicked the links but couldn't find anything (yet)

Are we talking here about a tiny difference like 2, 5 or maybe 10 calories or like 50?

I am on a low calorie diet and get enough nutrition and food and i just cant imagine that i have to scrap my calories out of each corner like eating something raw because it has 2 calories less than cooked.
I like my veggies a lot raw or cooked or steamed or roasted.
My weight loss is for 4.5 months very stable and i eat both...Just how my mood is and what i want to eat that day.
I dont think eating more raw would have made, or make any difference for me.