Cooking

Humans were once a higher, superior kind of being. What is left is only a remnant of the original--the result of cooking, subsequent degeneration, and bad breeding. From the beginning, internal corruption, created by cooked food, has deprived most people of their ability to think clearly. It is foolishness to destroy essential constituents by cooking and processing and actually believe that the strength of a race can be increased on cooked food. People do not want to admit that the human organism will remain free from debilitations if they are fed exclusively on natural foodstuffs from childhood onwards. Food scientists at most prestigious universities are quick to defend food additives (preservatives) along with pasteurization, homogenization, and chemical devitalization of our food supply. They speak of natural foods, organically grown foods, raw milk, natural-complex vitamins and anything else that supports life and maintenance of health as faddism. Those who suggest natural products and/or natural health approaches are called incompetents and quacks. A human is not maintained by food intake, but rather, by what is digested.

The refining and otherwise processing of food, and "improved" cooking methods like microwave ovens and gas and electric ranges, have rendered the modern diet enzyme deficient due to the effective destruction of the enzymes in foods by these appliances and processes. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to how the lack of enzymes in our food relates to imbalances in our organs, and the resulting diseases. Scientists believe that animal life goes back several hundred million years. Yet even the most primitive living form in the evolutionary scale took in enzymes as part of its food. It could be no other way, because enzymes are components of living matter. No living organism, either animal or vegetable, could exist without hundreds of enzymes in its make-up.

A human baby, like an infant animal, is given raw food having a full complement of enzymes, from the breasts of its mother. If it needed cooked food for survival, it would have been provided with it. But in fact, a newborn infant has no need for cooked food. A cooking stove, which is a human invention, does not come permanently attached as a part of the anatomy of a newly born infant! Perhaps early man first learned about fire in equatorial jungles by having to cope with forest fires caused by lightning. Or he may have gotten some original education by coming close to hot lava flows from an active volcano. Later, man's original dread of fire turned to awe and pleasant anticipation after he tasted the carcasses of burned and roasted animal victims of these occasional natural disasters. Early man had several million years to get acquainted with fire and the use of stone, bone, and wood implements. This knowledge enabled him to add larger animals to his food supply. While his teeth or nails were of no use in ripping off the hide to get at the meat, the sharpened edges of abundant stones served well. Gradually, a new world beckoned: concentrated protein from the meat; clothing and shelter from the skins. Man could now migrate to sparsely populated northern regions, where he used warm clothing and made fire when needed.

Every invention must be suspected of harboring potential health hazards unless proven otherwise. It is the misuse of fire by man in the form of cooking that is to be considered. Any kind of heat treatment of food in the kitchen destroys enzymes. Slow or fast baking, slow or fast boiling, stewing, and frying all destroy 100% of the enzymes in food. Vigorous boiling takes place at 212° F. Frying is done at a much higher temperature, and in addition to destroying enzymes, it also damages protein, or forms new chemical compounds with unknown and possibly pathogenic possibilities, imposing still more burden upon the metabolic enzymes. Although baking takes place at 300° to 400° F, it is in dry heat, so the effect is no more destructive than at boiling temperatures. Enzymes are completely destroyed at all of these temperatures, however. The thermal death point of protoplasm (living matter) occurs at 118° F. This same temperature also blisters the skin, and prevents subsequent germination of seeds when they are immersed for a half-hour. Comparing 118° with any of the cooking temperatures, you can see that the enzymes in foods have not the slightest chance of escaping destruction under any kind of kitchen heat exposure.

Anyone who has studied anatomy, physiology, neurology and biochemistry will readily admit that the human body is a neuro-biochemical plant--a composite of tissues, fluids and organs that exist in a living state by virtue of neuroelectric and biochemical reactions and in which thousands of different reactions take place simultaneously every minute of our lives. These chemical reactions are interdependent; if one fails to proceed properly, many other reactions are affected, which can result in sickness or disease. Good health thus means that all the reactions must take place at the right time, in the right place and in the proper proportion. Being biochemical in nature, the body operates on biochemicals--LIVE CHEMICALS in contrast to dead or lifeless chemicals. Those factors are derived from whole, natural, uncooked and unprocessed foods. Cooking and processing alters biochemicals to dead chemicals. The body cannot properly function if it's fueled with dead chemicals rather than live, complex biochemicals.

Every chemist knows that when certain proportions of particular chemicals are combined in the right circumstances, a predictable reaction will take place. A common example of this is the mixing of baking soda and lemon juice to produce carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas. This reaction occurs spontaneously when the reacting substances are mixed. However, most chemical reactions require some form of energy; usually heat. In other words, you have to heat up the substances to make them react. Most of the reactions that take place in the body require heat. One type of chemical reaction, called oxidation, releases energy in the form of heat and sometimes light. This occurs when a substance combines with oxygen (O₂).

A car engine heats up because when gasoline is combined with the O₂ in the air and oxidized in the engine's cylinders, considerable heat is released. A sudden oxidation reaction is called an explosion. Rapid oxidation is called fire, which produces both heat and light. When it occurs slowly, as in the tarnishing of a penny, only heat is released. The body obtains all of its heat energy through oxidation. In each living plant or animal cell, oxygen from the air is combined with a simple sugar, usually glucose, to produce water, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and energy. The water and CO₂ are of little use to the body and must be removed before they build up. It is energy that the body requires to fuel all of the other chemical reactions that take place in each cell.

In order for any chemical reaction to take place, the substances must be brought into intimate contact with each other. As long as the lemon juice remains in the bottle and the baking soda in its box, they cannot react. So it is within the body. The necessary raw ingredients are brought to the cells by the bloodstream, and they pass through the cell wall by a process called osmosis, as well as other forms of selective absorption. They float around in solution in the cytoplasm, the liquid interior of the cell, along with the raw materials for many different reactions. The problem then is to bring the right materials together so that the reaction can occur. The enzymes carry out this last step.

By eating most of our food cooked, our digestive systems have to produce all of the enzymes, thus causing an enlargement of the digestive organs. To supply such enzymes, the body draws on its reserve from all organs and tissues, causing a metabolic deficit. One can live for many years on a cooked food diet but eventually this will cause cellular enzyme exhaustion, which lays the foundation for a weak immunity system and ultimately disease. Raw food consists mostly of hydrophylic colloids. Hydrophylic means water loving, and a colloid is a suspension of solid particles in a gel-like fluid. Eaten uncooked, these colloids absorb large quantities of digestive juices, forming a gelatinous mass which maintains the mucosa of the stomach and digestive tract in a healthy state. The heat of cooking precipitates out colloids, making them hydrophobic (water-hating); the hydration capacity of the colloids is decreased, and they become less able to absorb digestive juices.

Colloidal cellulose and pectins in plants can withstand greater temperatures without being precipitated than can proteins; this is why cooking has a less pronounced effect on the digestability of plants than on animal foods. Heated either with or without air, deep fried oils create a great health hazard for humans. The dangers of frying, result from the oxidation that takes place when oils are subjected to high temperatures in the presence of light and oxygen in air. Free radicals are produced, which start chain reactions in the oil. Under frying conditions, many chemical changes take place in oils, including the production of trans- fatty acids, oxidation products of many different kinds, some of which are highly toxic and appear around tumors, and scores of other unnatural breakdown and polymer products. Many of these haven't even been identified, while the structure of others, which are toxic, is known. So many aspects of our food preparation involve fried and deep-fried oils that these are a major source of toxic fats in our diets.

It is our custom to pour oil into the empty frying pan, and let it sizzle for a while before adding the foods we want to fry, and during this sizzling time (sometimes the oil begins to smoke!) the oil is destroyed. The temperature reached is too high, with light-catalyzed oxidation reactions occurring rapidly. Oil kept at 215° C for 15 minutes or more consistently produces atherosclerosis in experimental animals. In commercial deep-frying operations, the same batch of oil is often kept at a high temperature constantly for days. Oils heated in the absence of air form cyclic monomers, which are toxic and found in deep-frying oils. Oils heated in air form less of the cyclic monomers, but produce other substances that are equally toxic. Over 10, 20 or 30 years, it is possible to accumulate enough altered and toxic products that the body's biochemistry is seriously impaired, and degenerative diseases occur. Shortening and margarine are not good substances to fry with because they are not good substances to consume.

Used in moderation, neither butter nor coconut fat creates any health problems. Baking is similar to frying. The temperature gets very high, and so butter or coconut fat should be used to line the baking pans. Cooking protein foods destroys four-fifths of the protein value. Without enzymes, biochemically active (live) foods become dead, chemical type, non-foods. Most all preservatives inactivate or destroy enzymes. Dr. Francis Pottenger M.D. reported in the American Journal Of Orthodontics And Oral Surgery Vol. 32, No. 8, Oral Surgery, 467-485, 1946, about his famous cat experiments, comparing cooked meat and milk with raw meat and milk and the variety of degenerative body changes resulting from a diet of pasteurized, evaporated and sweetened condensed milk.

The "animals on raw milk and raw meat reproduced a homogeneous strain, the usual causes of death being old age or injuries from fighting." Those animals on cooked milk and/or cooked meat developed dangerous irritability, perverted or diminished sex interest, vermin, intestinal parasites, skin lesions, allergies, pneumonia, diarrhea, osteomyelitis, heart defects, near- sightedness, far-sightedness, kidney disease, ovary or testicle inflammation, paralysis, meningitis, arthritis and many other degenerative diseases, while those on raw milk and/or raw meat remained healthy and died of old age. In any event, cooking of food or milk definitely alters the biochemical quality by denaturing protein constituents. Dead foods (devoid of enzyme activity) have a much greater shelf life and, in turn, become much more profitable to the food industry. Fresh foods lose their nutrients rapidly because of enzyme decomposition.

Green vegetables lose nearly all their vitamin C in a few days when kept at room temperature. When buying foods at a market, be sure the food is locally grown and fresh. By eating foods in which the enzymes are still vital and alive, we maintain a continuous exogenous enzyme input into the system and therefore decrease the endogenous depletion of enzyme energy. If less enzyme energy is needed for digestion, there is more available for other bodily processes, such as body detoxification, metabolic function, dissolution of scar tissue and crystallized deposits in the tissues, digestion of excess fatty tissue, and regeneration. Therefore a raw food diet can actually add enzyme energy and material to the system.

If you take a potato and cut it into pieces and plant them in the ground, in most instances, they will grow into new potato plants. But, if you take a potato and boil it and then plant it, it will only rot in the ground. It is dead, it has been killed by heat, just like canned and bottled foods. As another example, peas, cooked garden-fresh, lose 56% of their vitamins by the time they are served; but canned peas lose 94% and frozen peas lose 83%.

The losses in each process are as follows:

FRESH CANNED FROZEN

56% in cooking 30% in the scalding 25% in the scalding

25% in the sterilization 19% in the freezing

27% in the liquor diffusion 15% in the thawing

12% in reheating 24% in cooking

Most researchers indicate at least a 50% loss of vitamin B in cooked foods. Some losses, such as thiamine, can be as high as 96% if food is boiled for a prolonged time. Biotin losses can be up to 72%, folic acid up to 97%, Inositol up to 95%, vitamin C up to 70 to 80%. Cooked proteins have only 50% bio-availability compared to uncooked proteins. As other food-quality factors decrease with time, foods also lose nutrients during storage and shipping. Exposure to light and heat breaks up the sensitive vitamin molecules; they are destroyed and cannot be regenerated. The anti-oxidant vitamins, especially vitamins E and C, are destroyed by oxygen in the air. Some nutrients are volatile and evaporate during normal drying.

The calculated intake of vitamins based on standard nutritional tables is inaccurate. Nutritionists normally take the values for raw foods and reduce them by 25%. This is not a true representation of the nutrient loss. Dr. Paul Kouchakoff of the Institute of Clinical Chemistry studied the influence of cooked food on our blood. Human bodies are very sensitive to harmful influences and react against them immediately. This is easily demonstrated by the analysis of blood during an infection, following trauma, and with exposure to noxious chemicals. The blood's response to these challenges to the homeostasis, or natural balance of the body, is to increase the number of leucocytes (white blood cells), to fight the invader. This phenomenon in relation to food had been known before the landmark work of Dr. Kouchakoff: the ingestion of food would cause a rise in the number of leucocytes in the blood. It was called digestive leucocytosis and was considered to be a normal physiological response to eating. But Dr. Kouchakoff went beyond the simple observation of the digestive leucocytosis and made a remarkable discovery. He found that unaltered food (i.e., not been overheated or refined in any way) caused no reaction from the blood.

But food that had been heated beyond a certain temperature (unique to each food), or food that was processed, always caused a rise in the number of white cells. He called this not a digestive leukocytosis, but a pathological leucocytosis, a reaction to a foreign invader. Kouchakoff tested a great variety of foodstuffs including water, salt, vegetables, cereals, nuts, honey, raw eggs, raw milk, raw fish, raw meat, butter, sour milk, etc. None of these, if fresh, unrefined, and not overheated, caused any reaction, but were seen as friendly foods not to be fought. These same natural foods, altered only by heating, caused a rise in the white blood count (leucocytosis), an expected reaction when dangerous foreign invaders invade the body. But the worst offenders, heated or not, were the processed foods--those foods that had been extracted, purified, stabilized, enriched, homogenized, sterilized, or otherwise changed from their natural state. These not only caused a reactive leucocytosis, but they elicited a change in the numerical relationship of the various types of white blood cells, a mobilization of the killer cells to fight a dangerous enemy! This included pasteurized milk, chocolate, margarine, candy, white flour, various concentrates, and any other processed food extant at the time, which was minuscule compared to what we eat today. Dr. Kouchakoff found that one way to at least soften the blow to the system of eating altered foods was to chew them thoroughly.

Each food has a critical temperature above which the food is no longer seen by the body as friendly. Some of the findings are highly significant, as they help to answer questions that have bemused us for years. Does boiling water (distillation), for instance, decrease its nutrient value? If Kouchakoff's findings have significance in relation to our health, then our methods of preparing and cooking food are clearly detrimental. The critical temperature for water is only 191° F, far below the 212° F used to distill water. The critical temperature for milk is also 191° F, but in the sterilization process now used to make packaged milk as free from deterioration as steel ingots, the milk is flash sterilized to a temperature of 281° F! That's almost 100 degrees over the temperature where the destruction of nutrients begins.

Protein

Six of the eighteen essential amino acids (Phenylalanine, Lysine, Threonine, Histidine, Tryptophane, Methionine) are heat labile meaning that when a certain amount of heat is applied (as in cooking), these particular amino acids are first denatured (unraveled) and then coagulated to an insoluble state in which they cannot be utilized by the body in the formation of polypeptide chains needed for cellular repair or replacement.

Even the denaturation involves structural changes in the protein molecule, which results in a loss of species specificity. The denaturation alters viscosity, surface tension and replicative utilization of biologically active proteins, which includes hemoglobins, myoglobins and enzymes as well. Digestive enzymes attack denatured proteins much differently than undenatured proteins and coagulation renders the protein irreversibly insoluble. So a source of raw protein with all the natural amino acids is helpful...properly balanced and readily available to the cells.

Cooking protein foods destroys four-fifths of the protein value. Heat, acids, trypsin and hydrolysis all cleave polypeptide chains, which make up enzymes--the functional units of cellular metabolism. As a result, some of the amino acids are denatured or lose their characteristic folding and the important catalytic activity is lost. So cooking of protein foods, prior to ingestion, can denature or unfold some of the amino acids required for cellular enzyme biosynthesis. A deficit of Iron, Copper, Zinc, Magnesium, Manganese, Potassium, Nickel, Molybdenum or Selenium, impairs enzymatic production and or function. Another remarkable finding was that if a cooked foodstuff is eaten along with the same food in the raw state, there is no pathological reaction. The raw food will neutralize the detrimental effects of the altered food.

If you cook foods at a temperature of 190°F or less, you will not elicit the digestive pathos's reaction in the blood. So, it is vitally important to eat raw vegetables with every meal, along with some lightly cooked (below 194°F) ones. When foods are cooked, the energy fields are not able to resonate immediately with the body, so the body responds defensively until it can reorganize the energetic fields of the cooked food into patterns it can resonate with and absorb.

If a food is commercially processed and then cooked, not only does the white blood cell number increase, but there is a change in the ratio of the different white blood cell types to each other. He found that the critical temperature for initiating leukocytosis was when food was heated at around 191° F. for 30 minutes. Interestingly, the leukocytosis needed as little as 50 milligrams of cooked food to be initiated. A 100% raw food diet would be ideal, but in the recognition that such a diet is difficult for most people to follow, a ratio of 80% raw to 20% cooked is adequate for supporting general health with less raw foods in a colder climate.

Teflon Frying Pans

Nothing may stick to Teflon, but new research suggests that the byproducts of the heat-resistant coating may be sticking around in the environment for a long time. Researchers in Canada have discovered that heating Teflon--the coating used in non-stick frying pans--and other similar compounds releases potentially harmful chemicals, including some linked to the destruction of the ozone layer and others that may linger in the environment for years and years. The precise environmental and health impact of Teflon and similar heat-resistant coatings is uncertain, but the findings suggest that continued use of the compounds may contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming.

After ozone-depleting compounds called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) began to be replaced with alternative chemicals called hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), scientists began to notice a rise in levels of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) in the atmosphere. It turns out that as the alternatives to CFC degrade in the atmosphere, they produce TFA, which persists in the environment over time and can be harmful to plants. But based on the amount of HFCs and HCFCs being used, Dr. Scott A. Mabury of the University of Toronto and colleagues realized that there was too much TFA in the environment to have been produced by these CFC alternatives alone. Mabury's team suspected that some of the extra TFA in the environment might be produced when Teflon and other so-called fluoropolymers are exposed to high temperatures. Besides Teflon, other fluoropolymers are used in ovens, engines, circuits and other devices exposed to extreme heat.

Heating Teflon and other fluoropolymers produces TFA and a wide range of other chemicals. Some of these include CFCs, which destroy ozone, and fluorocarbons, which may contribute to global warming by acting as "greenhouse" gases. Mabury noted that fluoropolymers also gave off larger versions of TFA that, like the smaller version, do not degrade in the environment. But it is possible that the larger compounds can make their way up the food chain, since fish can absorb the chemicals from water. Although regular-sized TFA does not seem harmful to people, several groups of researchers are investigating possible health effects of the larger versions, Mabury said. Teflon is the trade name for the polymer polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) used in electrical insulating tape; combustion engines; chemical apparatus and tubing designed to resist attack from most chemicals, and in non-stick frying pans and other cookware.

There have been stories about caged birds dying in kitchens after fires involving Teflon cookware, suggesting the emissions of toxic gases when this polymer is burned. This article is more serious because the researchers did not burn the Teflon but simply heated it. Presumably, typical cooking procedures would also heat the Teflon to the temperature range investigated by these researchers. Thus, this material that is perceived by most as being benign, could be a source of both significant indoor and outdoor air pollution. This is another nasty indication that the world of organofluorine compounds could be going the same way as their more famous cousins: the organochlorine compounds. In the latter case most of these products, such as organochlorine pesticides, solvents and PVC plastic (despite the toxic generating manufacturing processes that produce them) were perceived as benign.

However, they had several problems: They tended to be very persistent in the environment; they are fat soluble and resistant to normal detoxification processes in the liver; they accumulate and concentrate in body fat; the mother passes them on to the fetus through the placental membrane and then to the infant via breast milk. A number of them are endocrine disrupting chemicals (i.e. they interfere with the production or performance of hormones, which are the messengers produced in special glands to regulate body chemistry). When these substances are burned in any facility ranging from a back yard burner to a trash incinerator, they produce highly toxic byproducts including dioxins and furans ( PCDDs and PCDFs). Twelve of these compounds (or families of compounds) were the subjects of the POPs (persistent organic pollutants) treaty signed in Stockholm by many countries around the world, including the US. The bottom line is that nature doesn't make persistent things. Both in our bodies and in the environment, natural processes are constantly building up and breaking down all the chemical components used.

Nature attempts to protect itself from persistent fat-soluble substances by converting them to water-soluble substances, which can then be excreted through the kidney. If this strategy fails then they are stored in our fat. In the case of persistent (or permanent) water soluble substances like fluoride or lead, the body will excrete as much as it can through the kidney and what it can't ends up largely in our bones. However, in the case of both fluoride and lead other more sensitive organs like the brain and pineal gland may also have mechanisms which allow their accumulation.

There are two forms of fluoride found in human plasma: free (or inorganic) fluoride and bound fluoride. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, octanoic acid fully saturated with 15 fluorine atoms)...constitutes about 20-30% of the nonionic fluoride in human plasma.

This surface-active agent, which is a component of plasticizers, lubricants, wetting agents, emulsifiers and other products, appear to enter the body through contact with or ingestion of commercial products. It has a very long half-life (approx. 1.5 years) in human males. Thus the question raised by this new report in Nature is how many of the byproducts from heating Teflon are accumulating insidiously in our bodies like PFOA? Are any being passed onto the fetus? Will any of them turn out to be endocrine disrupters?

When you heat Teflon (PTFE) up to the sort of temperatures that you get in "state of the art" municipal waste incinerators (800°C) you get the formation of CFCs, the major greenhouse gas that has been banned as a refrigerant. When one considers the amount of clothing and fabric that is coated with PTFE (most artificial fibers described as "breathable") this could have major implications for waste incineration. Another aspect of heating PTFE in cooking utensils is the following: A standard method of producing an aerosol of ultra fine particles is to heat PTFE up to 480°C. This produces some gas-phase products, mainly HF (hydrogen fluoride). If PTFE is further heated up to 500°C other gas-phase products are produced, including perfluoroisobutylene and others, which are highly toxic. Ultrafine particles are defined as those below 0.1 microns (100nm) and it is being demonstrated that these have a toxicity all of their own, which seems to be associated with their high chemical reactivity (that, after all, is how we make heterogeneous catalysts!). It is appearing that the majority of the toxicity of particulate aerosols may be attributable to the ultra-fine fraction. This could have major implications for the use of Teflon (PTFE) coated cookware in the home and industry.

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