Ellie:
>Cells have small strutures called lysosomes, which contain hydrolytic
>enzymes that digest the proteins, carbohydrates and lipids in the cell
>when the cell is injured. When foods are not cooked so that the enzymes
>are destroyed, these enzymes digest the food. This is what happens when
>meat is aged, for example.

I agree that many raw foods do ripen/age/whatever much differently (from
the inside out) than denatured foods which tend to be acted on by microbes
(from the outside in).

>When you chew the live food, it begins to
>self-digests before your body's enzymes continue the process. This makes
>eating raw meat, for example, more efficient.

Perhaps this is so if it is aged. But fresh meat, like a green banana (or a
raw sweet potato if it isn't tasty), is probably not very "efficient" at
all.

At least you are admitting that raw food is digested by the body's enzymes
when consumed--which is a far cry from the raw foods digest themselves line
of Wes and others of his simplistic ilk.

>And the raw food does not
>have the harmful substances formed during cooking, substances the body
>can't use and therefore make the body toxic when the food is overly
>cooked.

This is more of a double-edged sword methinks. Cooking helps on the
parasite/pathegen issue and perhaps "nuetralizes" some relatively
troublesome substances which we don't know about in animal foods, just as
it does in many plant foods (some of which are toxic raw, but not when
cooked or otherwise processed).

The similarity in flavor between, for example, aged meat and cooked meat
(especially the "melted" flavor of aged fat and cooked fat) may hint that
the breakdown of meat by enzymes (aging) and by heat (cooking) are not
dissimilar--or maybe close enough not to matter that much. Who knows? I
don't, but Howell may not either.

If it is true that European instinctos grow tumors when eating "too much
raw meat" then maybe there is an advantage to eating cooked meat--since the
paleofolks eat lots of cooked meat and don't report tumors. Maybe there is
a trade off with some as-yet-unknown health problem down the line with
cooked meat, but it may well be that there are pros and cons to both cooked
and raw food items in any category (though I admit that I can't see much
point to cooking fruit ;)).

Cheers,
Kirt



Secola  /\  Nieft
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