A recent study showed that cooked, pureed carrots have 34% more phenolics, a type of antioxidant, than raw carrots. Heating softens carrots, which allows more phenolics to be eleased from the cell walls.
So my q., which is a 1-carrot q., is as noted above. Won’t these same phenolics be released uring the digestive process? I mean if they are in the cell walls, they are in the cell walls, and digestion plus body temperature should tweak them out. What’s the difference? Unless, some of the carrot passes through undigested. Well, there is more roughage (fiber) in a raw carrot, but fiber is good for you too. So maybe you do lose a few phenols. On balance, you’re still ahead with the extra fiber, right?
Here is how I understand it. Humans cannot digest cellulose (the cell wall of plants). Cooking breaks down cellulose, making the nutrients in the cells available.
Different plants have different levels of “digestablity” for humans. We can’t digest grass at all. We can digest raw potatoes, but get very little nutrition from them. Cooked potatoes provide much more nutrition.
Some plants provide quite a bit of nutrition when eaten raw. But research is starting to show that they provide even MORE nutrients if cooked. Of course, this is early in the game and who knows what the next study will show.
