Loftwings and Demons

While I often prefer cooked food from a taste perspective, and so this comprises the majority of food that I eat, I think that both cooked and raw foods have advantages and disadvantages from a health perspective.  My rough comparison is as follows:

Cooked Food
Pros
--can denature/destroy certain poisons
--can rid food of certain anti-nutrients
--can protect against certain types of food poisoning
--can make certain nutrients more bioavailable

Cons
--can create carcinogens (this often happens in the charred parts of foods, though the degree to which it occurs can vary widely)
--can destroy/reduce the amount of certain nutrients

Raw Food
Pros
--can preserve certain nutrients better
--avoids carcinogens produced by cooking (but not in general, as many, if not most, foods contain these in some amount even before cooking)

Cons
--less protection against food poisoning (though methods of protecting against food poisoning from raw foods exist, these may still change the food considerably or not provide the same degree of protection as cooking does)
--certain anti-nutrients remain in their original concentrations
--certain nutrients are less bio-available
--some foods commonly eaten cooked (eg. kidney beans) are poisonous in their raw state.

Wow, I really didn't realize before I made this list what the relative number of pros and cons would look like, lol.  Still my conclusion isn't to not eat raw foods, but just to be aware what the actual advantages and disadvantages are.  In order to know how to get the most out of a food, it's necessary to know the specifics about that food.  Like if a nutrient someone is concerned about getting is going to be destroyed by cooking, maybe it's best to eat the food raw.  But in other cases cooking will actually get the best nutritional value for the food, and that varies depending on the food being considered.  The safety considerations can be quite important as well, and again those will vary depending on the food in question and the situation.