In recent years, many newspapers and magazines have reported that eating raw vegetables is beneficial for health, can help prevent diseases, and even guard against cancer. It is also said to improve conditions such as insomnia, memory decline, aging, and high blood pressure. The reasoning behind this is that fresh vegetables contain substances that fight viruses, kill bacteria, and strengthen the body. However, these substances have low heat tolerance and can be easily destroyed when heated.
Indeed, eating raw vegetables preserves their nutrients from being destroyed by heat, allowing for greater absorption of nutrients, which is certainly beneficial to the body. But this is only one side of the issue; we must also consider the other side.
We know that vegetables cannot grow without fertilizer. In rural China, commonly used organic fertilizers are mainly manure and garbage, which contain large amounts of pathogens such as dysentery, typhoid, and tuberculosis bacteria, as well as viruses like hepatitis, influenza, and polio, in addition to various parasite eggs including roundworms, hookworms, and pinworms. Through fertilization, these pathogens can easily attach to vegetables. Furthermore, with the widespread use of pesticides, vegetables may contain residual pesticides. Vegetables contaminated by these pathogens and pesticides, when eaten raw, can easily lead to illness. Some vendors, in pursuit of profit, wash vegetables in pond sewage or even in wastewater discharged from hospitals and factories, causing them to be contaminated with large amounts of harmful pollutants.
Although vegetables contaminated with these pollutants may be washed multiple times with tap water, it is impossible to remove them completely. Moreover, tap water in cities is not "pollution-free." Therefore, eating raw vegetables even after washing them with tap water is still harmful.
In foreign countries, the promotion of eating raw vegetables like radishes, beets, cauliflower, mushrooms, and bean sprouts is because they are pollution-free vegetables cultivated through "pollution-free farming methods," making them naturally beneficial to eat raw. However, the production of pollution-free vegetables has not yet been widely adopted in China. Given the current specific conditions of vegetable production in our country, eating raw vegetables is not advisable because the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.
Therefore, it is not advisable to promote the consumption of raw vegetables in China at present. To preserve the nutrients in vegetables from being destroyed by heat, one should focus on cooking methods and techniques. One must not sacrifice health for the sake of culinary pleasure.