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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 | 6 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.