I know this topic was brought up a lot in the past year, but I have been reading more on the topic and feel it requires another look. Initially, I was trying to find research on the difference in nutrient value of cooked vs uncooked foods. Most studies I found had to do with frozen vs canned, but many brought up different cooking methods as well as just raw foods (mostly dealing with fruits and vegetables).
Basically, it seemed that depending on the food (thus the nutrient content of that particular species) frozen, steamed, and boiled foods had very similar nutrient contents. It seems this has to due with the fact that most vitamins and minerals are very reactant to either sun light, water (including water in the air), or oxygen. Some of the foods studied lost up to 90% of certain nutrients before being consumed.
Keeping in line with this particular curiosity, I found a documentary "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" that has to do with fasting and only drinking fresh, organic fruit and veg juices (He even caries his juicer in his car). Though this may be a bit extreme depending on your body type and lifestyle, it does seem to hold some interesting truths for health concerns. One such idea that most of us likely hold is that the closer a food source is to it's original, natural state the healthier (IE: more nutrient value) it will have. It's stated that American diets are approximately %60+ processed foods. In my experience, this is a generous number.
Previous thread can be found at
www.atlasinitiativegroup.org/forum/agriculture/1769-raw-food.html
If you are curious to see a simple example of the nutrient value just Google "Highest nutrients per calorie" for sites, or even just click the images tab and see tables.
