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Can you eat Quinoa raw?
By Ken | May 24, 2008
Raw food is being touted as the best thing for you at the moment. There are Juice masters and raw food guru’s aplenty. I eat the vast majority of my vegetables raw and of course all my fruit.
This is really the best way as you do not cook out all the goodness contained. I was pondering how to prepared quinoa without cooking and it is possible with some quinoa grains and not others.
All you need to do is rinse the quinoa,soak it in cool water for 8 hours and rinse it once more. That’s it. It is still quite crunchy and if you have dentures I would forget it. But the benefit of preparing quinoa this way is of course you retain nearly all the goodness.
The other method of preparing raw quinoa is of course by sprouting them. I use quinoa this way from time to time but it is my least favourite way of eating it. It just doesn’t taste as good. If you have sprouted quinoa you know they barely change at all and the sprouts are tiny. Very unimpressive.
Topics: How to cook Quinoa | 10 Comments »
May 27th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I heard from a food scientist who did her doctorate on quinoa that eating quinoa raw actually has no additional benefits. In fact that the body absorbs the protein of quinoa better when it’s cooked. The enzymes (protein as well) that are deactivated with heat are more easily digested when cooked.
-Sergio
May 28th, 2008 at 12:00 am
That is very interesting – I would love to know more about that research. Thanks for your info. I am learning all the time. You would think that raw would be better wouldn’t you?
June 8th, 2008 at 10:52 am
[...] Quinoa is not bad for you if you do not cook it for a set amount of time. For certain foods such as kidney beans the instructions insist that you cook for a minimum set time to get rid of impurities but with quinoa you are quite safe. You can even eat raw quinoa [...]
January 3rd, 2010 at 12:33 am
You would not think that having it raw would be any better for you b/c raw food being better for you is just a crazy idea that nobody actually believes.
January 13th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Cooking food produces a number of carcinogens. It changes the chemical nature of the food quite significantly. Not only does it deplete nutrients in most foods, but it creates addictive substances. This is not true across the board, however. For spinach, for example, I usually eat some raw and some cooked, as there are nutrients released in the cooking that aren’t available raw, and vice versa.
January 29th, 2010 at 3:02 am
Raw Food is the only way to experience pure energy. Cooking kills enzymes and changes the chemistry of foods. Soaking Quinoa is the way to go if you want to be totally on it. You should be proud of yourself for having the nutritional and intuitive knowledge that you have.
April 14th, 2010 at 2:44 am
That’s why I eat a cannibal diet, so I can experience pure energy.
April 22nd, 2010 at 6:38 am
I was wondering if I could subsitute quinoa flakes for whole oats in a raw cookie bar recipe. Thank you.
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:15 pm
Almost all enzymes (ribozymes excluded) are proteins and proteins have very small temperature and pH ranges in which they can function. That being said, your stomach denatures these proteins so it doesn’t really matter if you are cooking it first.
As to the “cooking produces a number of carcinogens,” I would caution that this is probably only true when you are burning your food as this is a simple form of incomplete combustion and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) form when you do this. If you are simply heating it or steaming it this isn’t an issue.
I think the importance of the raw food diet is overstated. I have an anecdote to explain what I mean. In college I had a roommate who was a know-it-all and one day I was making some indian food and cooking the vegetables. Our other roommate pointed out that it looked healthy because of the massive quantity of vegetables and the fact that I was using less oil. Know-it-all scoffed and interjected that cooking destroys the nutrients in vegetables. I pointed out that he never eats vegetables and even if I am destroying 1/2 of the nutrients in my meal I am still getting more vitamins, minerals, fiber, cofactors, etc than he gets from his diet of cereal and burgers.
So, I say lets get the low-hanging fruit and spend the time we worry about eating raw vs. cooked and go for a jog. If you are a triathlete and need that extra 1-2% boost that may come from eating raw that is great, but for most of us there is easier intervention with bigger gains.
Sorry to lecture or preach. I only came on here to see if anybody else just toasts their Quinoa and eats it plain. Anybody?
June 29th, 2010 at 6:19 am
Hi folks.
With reference to the debate around raw/soaked/cooked quinoa and the resulting nutritional benefits:
In my opinion there is a significant difference between unsoaked quinoa and soaked (germinated) quinoa, with corresponding nutritional differences when ingested by humans. Both forms could perhaps be considered “raw”, depending on personal definitions/delineations of the word, but perhaps it’s worth recognising that there is a nutritional difference.