Regardless of how you prepare them, vegetables are full of fibre, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that help sustain your health. That said, vegetables can sometimes be slightly more nutritious (in the sense that their vitamin or mineral content is higher) when prepared a particular way.
Pros for cooked? Some nutrients in fruits and vegetables are bound in the cell walls and cooking breaks those walls down, releasing the nutrients so your body can access them more easily. Pros for raw? Cooking denatures or destroys some nutrients in fruits and vegetables meaning that consuming them raw may preserve higher nutrient content. But while from a food science and nutrition nerd perspective it’s pretty cool to know what maximises what, when it comes to your health it's important to understand that just because preparing a veggie a certain way may maximise x nutrient, it doesn’t mean that preparing it a different way won’t provide you with any nutritional value at all and makes that vegetable any less amazing for your body. Ultimately, you just need to eat more veg. However which way you can get it down you. In my opinion, the less complicated we make nutrition for the general public the better. There’s always a place for specific and individualised nutrition and fun facts, but in my opinion, me giving you a big list of what to have cooked vs what to have raw isn’t going to be of much help in the grande scheme of things. It’s just more noise and confusion to distract you from doing all you need to do, which is eating more plants. So what’s my advice? Eat a variety of veg cooked in a variety of different ways. Some weeks you may have more raw than cooked and vice versa. It’ll all balance out. It doesn’t matter. Just find a way to get them on your plate. And if your still a ‘urgh vegetables’ person you just haven’t learnt how to cook them properly. I’ll let you in on a few secrets... Seasoning and good quality fat make the world of difference. Don’t over boil - steam. There’s not much that doesn’t taste good roasted. Salad tastes less like ‘fridge' at room temperature.