Good afternoon, my name is Shmane Lenny, I'm owner of Shmane's Model Health and we are back to enlighten your life away at this week's podcast. So maybe this will answer some questions for you, maybe it will dry out some questions, but let's get into it. This week I was asked to cover eating raw vegetables, good or bad idea, let's see. So it's quite controversial topic.
It's been under much debate for the last couple of years. I know I've had a couple of debates between myself and some of my colleagues in the health industry and one of us makes way one way and the other the other way, but let's take a little bit more luck into this. Because over the past few years there has been a movement e-vegetables raw rather than cooked. The rationale is that cooking destroys nutrients and enzymes found in raw vegetables.
While there is some true to this statement, it doesn't actually mean a lot. Just because you can test the food in a lab to see how many nutrients are intact does that mean that your body is up taking those nutrients or that they are bioavailable. So for example if you were to eat a handful of rocks which are probably very dense with minerals, more dense than vegetables and you eat those rocks, it doesn't mean that you're going to uptake those minerals. Just because those rocks may have more minerals than a handful of vegetables doesn't mean that you're going to uptake all of those minerals or benefit from them.
The truth is cooked vegetables are much more easily digested and their nutrients more bioavailable than raw. So this means cooking may destroy some nutrients but the nutrients that remain, they're more bioavailable or easily absorbed and used by the body. They're having studies that have shown that cooking many vegetables actually boosts the antioxidants they supply to the body. As human beings we have been cooking food for a millennium.
It is part of our evolution and can be ultimately healthier for us. You can prove this for yourself. If you eat half a pound of raw broccoli, see how you feel. I know I react not so well with raw broccoli.
I will experience good issues, cramping, bloating. It's not very nice. So I try to avoid cooked broccoli or raw broccoli where I can. But if I eat or you eat half a pound of well cooked broccoli then you won't experience any distress or good issues at all.
So studies are shown now that the more you actually cook your vegetables the more of them you can eat which is a good thing. So if your goal is to maximize health, your muscles or your fat loss then you're going to cook your veggies. So you can boil them, steam them, saute them and limit your raw vegetable intake. This can be seen particularly beneficial for females that have any thyroid issue.
Cooking your vegetables will be more beneficial for you than eating them raw just because of some of the oxalates that they contain and how they can affect your thyroid hormones. So a large serving of well cooked broccoli or spinach will deliver more nutrients to your muscles if raw because now it is more bioavailable. The broken down fiber of cooked vegetables is excellent for your digestion which of course facilitates increased protein assimilation or synthesis and breakdown and uptake. So what this means is that large servings of well cooked vegetables will help you break down your proteins a lot better.
So making your overall results if you're away chaining a lot better. So better recovery, better health and ultimately more muscle growth. So the debate is still going to be out there. I've no doubt there will be a couple of coaches saying no.
I recommend my clients eat raw and some will say no cooked. I personally wear possible as my clients to cook their greens and their vegetables where they can. And then when we're having raw vegetables it's very few in between maybe some cauliflower, maybe some carrots, maybe some tomato, and some salt. Maybe some tomatoes but we even know then in the cases of those foods we do not uptake their antioxidants or lycopene as well as we would if they were cooked.
So ultimately the decision is up to you on what you want to do. I will just offer you some guidance but I hope that clears it up a little bit for you and just maybe put you in the right direction of where you might be going with your intake of vegetables. And how can you benefit from them optimally and make sure that you're absorbing its uptake as many nutrients as you can and not letting anything really go to waste. So I hope you have a great happy week.
Be healthy, be safe and message me if you have any questions that you would like me to cover and of course please share because I'm sure there's somebody out there that this would enlighten. Okay, I'll chat to you guys soon. Bye!