If you’re confused like the rest of us by the raw food craze, really trying to eat healthy, but not wanting to torture yourself by eating raw cabbage, here are two simple tips about eating raw.

1) Many foods gain nutrient potency when cooked. For example: the nutrient lycopene, in tomatoes, is more readily absorbed by the body when cooked (tomato sauce, etc). In foods such as the potato, starches become more digestible through cooking.

2) Many foods exercise/>lose nutrients when cooked. Boiling your broccoli is nutritional suicide. In fact, you’ll exercise/>lose 77% of the nutrient value of broccoli if you boil it because you’ll be draining out the vitamin juice: or “glucosinolates.” These are organic compounds found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli that help eliminate cancer causing agents from the body. If you want to cook your little green trees, steaming is the most ideal way to preserve all the healthy vitamins and minerals.

Still unclear? Here’s the bottom line: foods are most valuable when eaten both raw and cooked. The “raw food-ism” craze is beneficial to the extent that it steers you away from highly processed, toxic foods. But if you can’t fathom your red peppers raw but adore them in chicken fajitas from Uncle Julio’s, ain’t no nutritionista gonna tell you to eat a cookie instead.

P.S. Raw sugar doesn’t count. Both raw and cooked, it is still sugar. Bummer.