Can cooked food be bad for you? The science, and the food, behind Boston’s raw food restaurant.
Anna Kushnir
Boston’s North End has been the home of Italian restaurants for generations. This February’s opening of Grezzo is a departure for this historic neighborhood. Grezzo is Boston’s first raw vegan restaurant, serving foods that have not been heated above 112 ^˚^F (44 degrees Celsius) and contain no animal or animal-derived products.
Each table at the restaurant is set with a laminated card listing 40 reasons to eat exclusively raw foods. These include avoiding nutrient loss from cooking and preventing the destruction of active enzymes in the food. The card also claims a raw food diet can cure a host of diseases such as diabetes and cancer, and increase overall health, appearance, and general wellbeing. More than just a diet, raw food is a lifestyle choice. Many raw foodists consider uncooked food to be “living food” that can nourish the body in ways that cooked, or “dead,” food cannot.
Alissa Cohen, the owner of Grezzo, is well known in the raw food world. Her website explains what she and other raw foodists think is behind these physical and spiritual benefits. She says that cooking destroys enzymes in food. “[This] is a problem because we need enzymes for every function in our body.” Raw food replenishes the finite reserve of enzymes in our bodies, according to the website.
Cohen’s use of scientific terminology begs the question: what is the science behind the raw food movement?
When asked whether people need enzymes found in raw foods for health and digestion, Roberta Durschlag, the director of programs in nutrition at Boston University, suggests that if raw foods contained active enzymes, they would not remain functional after passing through the acidic environments of the stomach and small intestine. “Enzymes are proteins and are going to be digested in the stomach,” she says. “None of the enzymes are going to be absorbed [in a functional form]. Once the food leaves the stomach, you don’t have any enzymes.”
Could raw food be richer in nutrients than cooked food? There is some evidence to suggest that heating food can reduce its nutrient content, depending on the type of food and the method and duration of cooking. For example, certain water-soluble vitamins, such as vitamins C and folate (important for fetal development), can leech into cooking water during boiling, in addition to being inactivated by heat, resulting in total nutrient losses as high as 60 percent, depending on the food (Leskova et al, USDA). Minerals such as zinc and copper, and vitamins such as niacin, on the other hand, are relatively unaffected by conventional cooking techniques.
Conversely, cooking can actually aid in the absorption of other nutrients, such as beta-carotene (the precursor of vitamin A), which is important for vision and immune function. In one study, researchers found that women absorbed more beta-carotene from heat-treated carrots and spinach than from untreated, unprocessed vegetables (Rock et al).
Food first
Science aside, Grezzo is a restaurant, so perhaps the more important question is: how is the food?
To start off, the dining atmosphere is unique. The chefs at Grezzo rely on dehydrators, blenders, and juicers to create beautifully presented and colorful dishes, all at or below room temperature. The tiny kitchen, devoid of stoves, burners, and clanging pots and pans, lends an air of serenity to the restaurant. One leaves feeling calm and full, but not fully satiated. This is surprising, considering the high fat content of the nut-based “cheeses” and “milks” that stand in for traditional dairy and egg-derived products.
Grezzo’s gnocchi carbonara is a raw vegan interpretation of an Italian classic, substituting nuts for cooked potato dumplings and cashew milk for the traditional egg-laden sauce.
The gnocchi carbonara is made up of cashew and pine nut dumplings in a cashew milk sauce, with dehydrated eggplant bits as replacements for bacon or pancetta, and fresh English peas for contrasting texture. The “gnocchi” themselves are smooth and creamy, with an intense nutty, almost falafel-like taste, while the nut milk sauce is rich but not heavy, as an original carbonara would certainly be. Overall, the dish has very little to do with the familiar carbonara, but it is difficult to stop eating.
Tangy homemade pickles rescue the lackluster papaya steak.
The papaya steak, with its promising name, is simply a large piece of fruit, carved to resemble a filet of salmon and lightly dusted with ground star anise. It tastes pretty much like a papaya.
The Land and Sea, a raw mushroom ragout atop almond milk “ricotta” and kelp is delicious. In the absence of heat, the various mushrooms remain distinct, each with its own flavor profile, while the ricotta is remarkably full-bodied and creamy. However the mushrooms leave a persistent bitter aftertaste, one not typically experienced with cooked mushrooms.
The rich brownie sundae is raw foodism at its best–rich but not cloying.
All is forgiven with the arrival of the fudge brownie sundae. The dense brownie, made from raw carob, coconut, and yet more nuts, is a chocolate dream. The vegan, coconut water-based gelato atop the brownie is light and just sweet enough to complement, but not compete with, the brownie.
Grezzo may not be the best lesson in nutritional science, but it does make you pause and think about what you are eating and why you are eating it. It’s worth returning to—if not for the enzymes, then for the food itself.