There's been a huge amount of research into the harm done by cooked foods long after Dr Howell/Koutchakoff and that pottenger study. And, on a regular basis, I see in the newspapers studies showing a higher mortality risk for (cooked-)meat-consumption though, of course they don't mention it's cooked most of the time. Here's 1 example:-
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/23/health/main4886238.shtml
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090323161109.htm
Now the sensationalist Gary Taubes has criticised many such studies though he has been crticised in turn by a number of people re his methods:-
http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/gary-taubes-tries-to-overwhelm
While there are various possibly valid objections raised by Taubes and others against such huge megastudies(such as the unsubstantiated claim that vegetarians normally lead healthier lives than cooked-meat-eaters re supposedly not smoking/not drinking etc.), there are far more interesting, smaller studies done on the specific damaging effects of heat-created toxins, such as showing that reducing the amounts of heat-created toxins such as AGEs/advanced glycation end products in the human body improves various health-problems, and that increasing the levels of such heat-created toxins increases inflammation and related health-problems. I can't mention all the studies done in 1 e-mail obviously(there are some 1000s done on such toxins). I would suggest googling pubmed under these terms:- "advanced glycation end products"(heat-toxins derived from protein/carbohydrate combination which are a leading factor in aging in humans(aka "AGEs"); advanced lipoxidation end products, a different type of AGEs(heat-created toxins derived from fat/protein combinations); nitrosamines(more a question of smoked meats and other processed meats with nitrite in them etc.; heterocyclic amines(present in cooked muscle-meats - and in cigarette smoke, incidentally);polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which, amusingly, are also a known industrial pollutant derived from coal-/tar-pits. Then there's oxidized cholesterol, another heat-created toxin derived from cooking:-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10712395
etc.etc.
Oh, and for those concerned re bacteria/parasite issues re raw versus cooking, I should add that more and more studies are confirming the hygiene hypothesis theory(it claims that lack of exposure to bacteria/parasites has led to a massive rise in diseases such as astham/allergies etc. etc.):-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
http://www.hygienehypothesis.com/
You do have a point re saturated fats-studies. It has been strongly suggested that saturated fats have been singled out when in fact it's the cooking-derived glycotoxins present in foods high in cooked saturated fats that may be the actual problem:-
"One confounding issue in studies(of saturated fats) may be the formation of exogenous (outside the body) advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and oxidation products generated during cooking, which it appears some of the studies have not controlled for. It has been suggested that, "given the prominence of this type of food in the human diet, the deleterious effects of high-(saturated)fat foods may be in part due to the high content in glycotoxins, above and beyond those due to oxidized fatty acid derivatives." The glycotoxins, as he called them, are more commonly called AGEs." taken from:-
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/12/6474.long
As far as signs appearing, all I can state is that heat-created toxins seem to feature heavily in studies on age-related conditions, implying that cooked diets speed up the rate of aging.
Geoff
> Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:43:16 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Dr. McDougall
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Geoffrey Purcell wrote:
>
> >McDougall isn't suggesting that all meat-eaters have such
> >diseases, AFAIK, just that eating meat does lead to such
> >illnesses. The number of studies damning meat-consumption
> >is too vast to be just dismissed. And given that there are
> >other studies which show that increasing animal-food-
> >consumption in one's diet(and thereby, logically, lowering
> >consumption of other(non-palaeo) foods) increases risk of
> >mortality etc., that means that the evidence is rather difficult
> >to dispute.
>
> The number of studies supposedly implicating saturated fat in heart
> disease is vast as well, but that doesn't mean they can't be
> dismissed, after a little close scrutiny. I'm not aware of a vast body
> of valid studies damning meat consumption. If you know of even one,
> let's see it and see if it can be disputed. On the other hand, studies
> are truly piling up, more and more every year, showing the benefits
> for all health markers of consuming fewer carbs and more protein and
> fat. Which generally means more meat--cooked meat, mostly. In my
> personal, ongoing study (n-1), what is all the cooked meat supposed to
> be doing to me? (So I can watch out for the signs...seriously!) (And I
> hope we're not going to drag out and dust off Howell's enzymes or
> Kouchakoff's leukocytosis.)
>
> cheers,
> Hilary
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