We know that soaking of nuts helps bring down the phytic content and tanin content of the nut help in better digestibility but what about roasting of nuts? Does it help in anyway or it does more harm than good?
Cooking food increases bioavailability of nutrients; basically our bodies suck at fully retrieving nutrients from food. If we eat 100 grams of food and every bit of it is nutrients,we’ll say we absorb 20 grams of it if raw and the rest just gets processed and expelled (not giving exact ratios or values because I forget). By cooking though you break down the more stubborn cellular structures and enrich certain ones that aren’t fully utilized raw (similar to what you can see with fermenting of foods - some stuff dies but others enrich or become more accessible), so out of 100 you now utilize 50 or 75.Heat does destroy some nutrients that are heat sensitive though, so double edged sword. Nuts and seeds: I like raw but am pretty certain you get more from them roasted or cooked some other way (I saute them in whatever else im cooking).
Roasting nuts creates carcinogens and reduces the nutrients, so more harm than good.
https://myloveearth.com/roasted-nuts-are-carcinogenic–3-reasons-why-you-should-avoid-them
or if you like reading studies
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7300066/
How do so many people think cooking of food in general is bad for the nutrient content? It’s actually theory that we can only have such big brains because of cooking. Cooking is basically pre-digestion of your food. You might loose some but also gain some nutrients. For instance in raw tomato you get more vitamin c, but in cooked tomato you get more lycopene.
In many foods cooking breaks down toxins and sometimes you loose some nutrients.
Anyway: I roast nuts because they taste better when roasted. I also get slightly allergic reactions if the nuts are but heated well enough.
I think mainly, heating food reduces its nutritional value. Of course, cooking some foods also reduces their toxicity.
With nuts, they’re packed with good nutrients and healthy fats in their raw form, but eating too many could provide too many calories. Roasting nuts (and salting them) makes them extra tasty and thus increases the danger to the waistline!
Ferment them! And then roast for a better tasteBut PUFAs in nuts and seeda aren’t good esp when oxidizedFresh raw nuts contain vitamin E that regulates the harm from PUFAs, so if you can get them fresh, eat fresh