Jean-Louis:
>1) In his book, Burger describes an experiment he made with raw goat's milk.
>It was during a period when he was working in his farm, and he got wounded
>in the forearm. The infection soon began to progress towards the elbow.
>But Burger noticed that each time he stopped drinking milk, the size of
>the infected zone decreased, and that it increased when he resumed the
>consumption of milk. He drank milk until the infection went up to the
>shoulder, then stopped until it got down to the elbow. Then, he drank milk
>for a few days to check that the infection resumes its progression. After
>he stopped milk, his wound healed quickly.
>He also carried out similar experiments with other members of his family,
>concluding that the taste change is not efficient.

>2) One of my friends became a raw vegan one year ago. Before that, he was
>a cooked ovo-lacto-vegetarian, but now he seems to thrive on his new diet.
>His asthma has greatly improved. He didn't give up dairy for ethical
>reasons, but because he had carried out experiments with raw, organic
>goat milk's cheese: he noticed that he has asthma crisis only during the
>periods of cheese consumption.

>3) Experiments with suppression of bread and milk and disease recovery
>described in Burger's book.

Thanks for the intriguing anecdotes!

>Remarks about dairy products:

>1) Experiments where bread and milk have been suppressed don't prove that
>milk is harmful: maybe bread alone is to be blamed.

Quite.

>2) Personally, I wouldn't eat raw cheese, even if proved "safe", because,
>as it is not a natural food, the taste change probably doesn't come soon
>enough. Same thing for dried fruits, which are too high in sugar and thus,
>are tastier than fresh fruits.

I would eat it if it had a clear stop. But suspect the same as you have
written.

>3) Eating raw butter alone seems a bit odd to me, but that's not the most
>important point.

As opposed to not eating it at all, or opposed to not using it to flavor
veggies of in other "mixed" ways?

>With butter, or other extracts like fruit juices, although
>they have a taste change, the instinctive stop often comes too late. Burger
>relates the story of a man who got poisoned after drinking the juice
>and spitting the skin (without chewing it) of wild berries.

I appreciate that extracts need to be approached carefully, but from my
experimenting they just aren't so terribly evil when respected as the
partually denatured foods they are. It is a matter of degree: peeling a
cucumber makes it a sort of extract. I have seen monkeys "juice" citrus in
their mouth and discard the fiber. Eating mackerel belly flesh and not
eating the tail is an extract. To me, Burger's storys about poisoned
berries proving human instinct often support the idea that taste will _not_
protect us from all dangers more than of the evils of spitting out berry
seeds and skin. Indeed if it is true for berries, than shouldn't we at all
times eat the skins, not just with wild berries, but with even the skins
that Zephyr isn't eating? How about coconut husks and other nut
casings--even the wooden cassia pods themselves? Perhaps people getting the
shits from cassia have poisoned themselves by not discarding the seeds,
husks, and casing in favor of the black goo? ;)

>5) That some babies are intolerant to cow's milk doesn't prove milk is
>harmful: first, babies are never fed with raw milk. Second, when fed on
>a monodiet, the food should match as closely as possible to the body's needs:
>supposed a baby was on a monodiet of egg yolks, it would probably be seriously
>sick. But things are different for adults because dairy products are
>only a small part of the diet.

And further, butter has few of the protiens so implicated in raw dairy. The
fact that it is an extract may be in its favor as regards its utility (or
not) in the human diet. Since I no longer have any attraction to it, it
doesn't matter much to me, but if it became attractive again down the line,
I would consume it.

>1) Burger talks a lot about Maillard molecules, and considers their existence
>as a good argument against cooking. However, Maillard molecules (and
>Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) only appear at high temperatures,
>not in boiled and steamed veggies.

Yes. Peter straightened me out on this previously, and it seems to support
a line of thought somewhat different from the standard rawists lectures
about the evils of cooking...

>2) Anyway, even if I was sure I could eat mildly cooked food without
>undermining my health, I would still continue to eat raw for many reasons:
>   -unless salt and spices are added, and foods are mixed, cooked food is
>  not very attractive;
>   -cooking easily leads to overeating (although raw fruits too...);
>   -cooked food doesn't have any taste change;
>   -raw food is, on average, much more pleasant.

Having not eaten any cooked food for years, I have no experience to comment
about regarding the attractiveness of cooked veggies vs raw veggies. I
agree with you on all four principles in theory though.

>Remarks about wheat:

>1) Experiments with bread don't prove anything about wheat, since bread
>contains Maillard molecules which are not present in raw wheat.

>2) Experiments with raw, unsprouted wheat don't prove anything because
>wheat contains phytic acid which is toxic. I would only be convinced by
>an experiment with raw, sprouted wheat.

>3) Of course, there are gluten-intolerant persons, but the question is:
>does sprouted wheat cause troubles among gluten-tolerants?

You have a gift for getting to the heart of a matter! Doesn't Burger claim
that _sprouted_ wheat has no taste change? And that that is support for its
uniquely bad status even if raw? I think wheat will be shown to be (and in
many ways already has been shown to be) the worst of a bad lot: grains in
general.

>Remarks about milk and evolution:

>1) The goat, before the cow, has been domesticated less than 10000 years
>ago. Of course, milk is not usually a food for adult animals, but since
>we have got the genetic information to produce enzymes that digest milk,
>we just need some genes to tell us that this production should continue
>during adulthood.

One of Bruno's viral "DNA program updates" could suffice here.

>2) That our ancestors didn't eat X doesn't mean we shouldn't eat X. Our
>genetic material is more flexible than we might think: our brain was
>certainly not designed to prove theorems in mathematics.

As most people are proof of! ;) I love your comments and participation!!!
You truly seem to have an open, non-dogmatic mind. Going back to read your
"intro" post I find no mention of your occupation: do you have a scientific
background or are you just naturally keen in matters of "belief"?

Cheers,
Kirt