>
> In uncooked plants, there is a ratio of  "secondary compounds" (i.e.,
> antinutrients and toxins) to "primary compounds" (i.e., macro- and
> micro- nutrients).  If that ratio is high enough, the food is inedible
> (to members of a particular species).  Cooking, in some cases, lewers
> that ratio to levels comparable to edible uncooked foods.  Those are
> precisely the cases in which cooking makes the inedible edible.
>
> I suppose in some cases, cooking improves the flavor of foods *because*
> it renders them edible, for example by bursting cellulose chambers in
> which starches are sealed.  Then when we eat the cooked vegetable it
> tastes sweeter because more starch reaches the tongue, where the
> salivary enzymes quickly begin the conversion to glucose.  Indeed, a
> case could be made that the reason why the starch-digesting enzyme is
> present in the saliva at all is to make starches taste good (since 99.9%
> of the conversion occurs later, after the food is swallowed).  And I
> suppose some secondary compounds do impart an "off" flavor, so that
> cooking would remove that flavor.  But I don't think I'm in a position
> to generalize this to all cooked foods.


cooking also create new compounds that doesn't exist in the first place by
combining the molecules thru heat ,(and this by the hundreds of new
molecules )  see maillard molecules . those compounds have cancerigenous
properties .we knows little about them  apart that those aromatic compound
have been used extensivelly by the food industry to sale more .

jean-claude