>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.

>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 recommend that you read a book published three years ago by a
physician  "Le lait, une sacre vacherie"; I can lend it to you if you can't
find it or if OS/OP. The author has really made a good  case against  milk
consumption  and derivatives...

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

>4) Milk is not a necessary staple (except for infants). Anyway, I don't like
>to be dependant on a particular food might it be milk, avocado or cassia.

>5) That some babies are intolerant to cow's milk doesn't prove milk is
>harmful: first, babies are never fed with raw milk.

In the countryside you might still  find small cattle raisers who might give
raw milk to their children on account of its superior quality. Masai
children drink raw milk.
When the prevalence of the  intolerance is reported to be as high as 2/3 of
the children population and 6/7 of the adult population, you are entitled to
wonder.

>Remarks about cooking:

>1) Burger talks a lot about Maillard molecules, and considers their existence
>as a good argument against cooking.
He is just being faithful to his Master.

>However, Maillard molecules (and
>Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) only appear at high temperatures,
>not in boiled and steamed veggies.

This is precisely why the first historically recorded attempt to raise
infants under an instinctively selected diet included boiled and steamed
vegetables and cereals, but no grilled meat and gently cooked (stewed)  RAF
. Burger perfectly knows the story but he doesn't tell his audience for fear
that people will say : "if instinct also works with some cooked foods , why
bother eating raw..." I heard him talk about this subject with his lawyer in
an aside, during a  break, the day he appeared in front of the Court, back
in April 96 (actually that was the last time I saw him). He doesn't like to
be opposed that kind of argument. You can hear it from  the tone of his
voice which then  expresses some agitation ...

>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.

>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.

The best proof that wheat is not natural is that it doesn't grow from the
stem again , after it has been harvested once . you have to sow it every
single year ...or so I've been told

>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.

I've tried it and I didn't like it. Chances are that you will also find
better tasting cereals...

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

No clues.

>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.

We do not enzymes to digest ANY kind of milk. Otherwise intolerance would
not be so ubiquitous

>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.

Ain't that a good exemple of what PAt calls "sophistry" ?

My opinion : if our biology had not been  so immensely flexible, the current
homo sapiens population of the entire planet  would proabably   be what it
used to be  10 000 years ago : a few hundred thousand people...

Cheers
Denis