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Is there some evidence that raw food is better for you? It's a lot more work to get through a giant bowl of cabbage than some sauteed in butter, but is it better for you? I imagine that there may be specific nutrients that don't survive heating, but is it significant?

Maybe the problem is the healthy halo on "fresh vegetables" in general.

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"Better" is not straightforward. In general, eating a lot of raw foods leads to weight loss, not because they are magic, but because they require a lot of work to digest, compared to cooked foods. Which points to one of the problems with the WaPo article - it uses "nutrition" in the narrowest sense of "containing nutrients". Obviously important, but not the only thing to consider. That head of lettuce may contain as much water as a bottle of Evian, and not much more in the way of nutrients, but it also contains large amounts of fiber, which is functionally important to our guts. There's a passing dig at eggplant for being watery and non-nutritious, but that ignores not just its fiber but also its antioxidants - https://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2004/040108.htm

Thank you. I completely agree that 'better' is not straightforward and am on record as claiming that 'healthy food' is silly, we should only care about 'healthy diets' (for example, simple salad isn't healthy if you have a protein deficiency).

Incidentally, green leaf lettuce has less than 5 grams of fiber for a whole head. So as far as it's use as a source of fiber, it seems underwhelming.

Thanks.

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