On Fri, 30 Jul 1999 Jacques Laurin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> If we have the right to hope for a future adaptation to the new proteins of
> wheat, corn or cow's milk, it seams to me that it is a different story when we
> are talking about cooked food. Many new chemical species generated by the
> action of cooking, isomers for instance, differ too much from the natural
> molecules to expect our digestive enzymes to be active on them. Do we know what
> happens to the isomers that go through the intestinal barrier? I guess that at
> best, they are unusable but in many cases, they are probably dangerous.

Do these molecules really differ so much that there are no chances of
digesting them?  Cooked food rots quite nicely, which means that bacteria
and other organisms are degrading these compounds - surely similar
mechanisms could develop in other species?

Andrew Millard  wrote
> > ...so what is there in animal milk that gets into the body?

All the things you listed in reply are either present in different
proportions or absent from human milk: what is in animal milk that is not
in human milk and enters the body from the gut?

Andrew

 =========================================================================
 Dr. Andrew Millard                              [log in to unmask]
 Department of Archaeology, University of Durham,   Tel: +44 191 374 4757
 South Road, Durham. DH1 3LE. United Kingdom.       Fax: +44 191 374 3619
                      http://www.dur.ac.uk/~drk0arm/
 =========================================================================