You know what I love? I’ve been weighing and measuring my food and living Bright for 22 years now. I’ve been helping people that whole time to know that following a Bright Line Eating plan is healthy, liberating, and effective. And over the years, science keeps proving us right. 

For example: eating three meals a day. We’ve been saying that for far longer than the science that showed that you needed fasting windows between meals. Eating discrete meals is so much healthier than grazing all day long. 

Likewise, eating a balanced macronutrient profile is so healthy for you. You’ve got five distinct appetites: carbohydrates, protein, fat, calcium, and salt. You are driven to eat more food if you don’t get enough of any of these. That means that restricting any macronutrient will backfire and ultimately result in overeating, or even bingeing. And in Bright Line Eating, we support this balanced profile.

Today I want to talk about another case where science and Bright Line Eating agree: eating both raw and cooked foods, especially vegetables. The science shows that this is the most nutritious option, and Bright Line Eating supports this as well.

With some food there’s no question as to how you’ll eat it. You don’t, for example, cook yogurt. Similarly, you are going to eat brown rice or beans cooked, not raw. 

The big question is vegetables. Is a raw diet really healthier? I’ve known people who were swayed by the raw food movement, which says that cooking food denatures the enzymes and makes it less healthy. Is it true? 

It’s not. There’s lots of evidence that eating both cooked and raw food is best because some vegetables are more nutritious when you cook them, and others are healthier when they’re eaten raw. 

I recently learned, for example, that bell peppers have 75 percent more antioxidant activity when eaten raw. I’ll often have two to three ounces of bell pepper at lunch, and I just eat it raw and crunchy. 

I also learned that spinach is best eaten cooked, because cooking releases eight times more calcium. So I eat cooked spinach. I do six ounces of cooked vegetables at both lunch and dinner and six ounces of raw, for a total of 12 ounces of vegetables at each meal. In Bright Line Eating, we say “produce is produce” and you have the freedom to make up the mix to suit yourself. 

I make a dish at dinner with tempeh done in an air fryer and cooked spinach. I break the tempeh strips in half like and pinch them together with cooked spinach as the filling. I love it, and it’s so healthy. Having learned what I did about spinach, I prioritize adding cooked spinach to my diet. 

Another one is mushrooms. They are better for you when cooked because there is a toxin in raw mushrooms—agaritine—that gets killed when the mushrooms are cooked. So I have a dish I make with cooked organic mixed mushrooms, garlic, and balsamic vinegar. It’s delicious. 

Carrots and tomatoes have more antioxidant activity if they’re cooked, too. I haven’t incorporated that yet, but that’s okay. I still get benefits if I eat them raw.

Onions and garlic are better raw, but that’s tricky. I add red onions to my salads every night. At least once ounce of pure, raw red onion. And I’ve been buying jars of pickled garlic, which are easier to eat raw than plain garlic. I do pickled garlic with my finger food at lunch. 

That’s just a smattering of evidence to show you how to make this work. If you want more details, the Food Revolution Network has a blog called “Raw vs. Cooked: The Healthiest Way to Eat Your Veggies.”

I avoid freaking out about this. I’m 50, and I know I am healthy. My body is evidence of that. I’m doing well because I eat this way. 

As long as I’m beautifully, immaculately Bright, my nutritional well-being is 95 percent taken care of. And that’s more than a passing grade. That’s a solid A. I sometimes tweak at the margins, but I do not freak out over eating raw carrots or tomatoes, just because they might be better cooked. 

So it’s fine to learn more about nutritional optimization, but don’t go down the rabbit hole of obsessive focus on nutrition to the point where it’s harmful. And don’t worry if you go out to a restaurant and someone puts raw mushrooms in your salad. You’re Bright—and that’s what matters.