From http://www.berkeleywellness.com/healthy-eating/nutrition/article/are-cooked-carrots-better-raw "C ooked carrots are more nutritious, but you still get plenty of nutrients from raw carrots. Cooking, especially prolonged boiling, does reduce the vitamin content of vegetables. But carotenoids, such as the beta carotene in carrots, are more readily available when vegetables are cooked, chopped, or puréed. Cooking and processing help release the carotenoids, which are bound to the cell wall “matrix” of the vegetables. Once you eat them, your body converts these carotenoids into vitamin A. The same is true of tomatoes. For example, studies have found that people consuming an ounce or two of tomato paste end up with more than twice as much lycopene (another carotenoid) in their blood as when they ate larger amounts of fresh tomatoes. Ounce for ounce, processed tomato products such as sauce, paste, or juice contain two to 10 times as much available lycopene as fresh tomato