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From:
Geoffrey Purcell <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Paleolithic Eating Support List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 24 May 2011 16:35:35 -0400
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I'm afraid that many of your claims have already been comprehensively debunked by scientists. Here's some  info:-

1)  It's perfectly true that people have had health-problems from doing the Primal Diet. This is because of the hefty amounts of raw dairy in that diet ( people with sever health-problems are more likely to have enhanced issues with food-intolerances/allergies, so raw dairy is a real no-no) - plus the primal diet contains hefty amounts of raw veggie-juices (some claim that juicing veg makes the antinutrients in veg more bioavailable as well). However, there are many RVAFers  going for perfectly healthy diets like the raw, palaeolithic diet who do not have these various health-problems and thrive on such diets.

I would say that a genuine detox is one in which one feels slightly better after the detox than before. Plus, a detox that always occurs immediately after intake of  a particular food cannot be genuine, and is more than likely to be a sign of allergy. Also, detoxes should gradually decrease to 0, over time, until they no longer appear. When Aajonus refers to constant detoxes occurring constantly for years, then, clearly, such are never genuine.


2) I'm afraid that the notion that all cooked food is more digestible or more bioabsorbable is seriously flawed. This mainly applies to things like grains. Scientists have already proven that raw meats are more digestible, NOT less, than cooked meats:-


"Another study has shown that meat heated for 10 minutes at 130 °C (266 °F), showed a 1.5% decrease in protein digestibility.[94] Similar heating of hake meat in the presence of potato starch, soy oil, and salt caused a 6% decrease in amino acid content.[95][96]

There are various scientific reports, such as one by the Nutrition Society,[97] which describe in detail the loss of vitamins and minerals caused by cooking.[26][27][28]"

taken from:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods_and_cooking

Even the rather fanatically anti-raw website, beyondveg.com, has grudgingly cited the above two studies, incidentally.

Also, as seen above in the  various reports on that website re nutrient-losses, that cooking mostly results in massive drops in the levels of many nutrients, such as vitamins/minerals etc. So, actually, pound for pound, a raw food has more nutrients than its cooked version, so one needs to eat smaller amounts of raw foods to get enough nutrients than if one ate cooked foods. Only exceptions are foods like grains which have hefty amounts of antinutrients in them which get destroyed by cooking, thus releasing some nutrients. Plus, cooking does seem to create "empty" nutritionless calories after using extreme heat.




3)  "Humans have been cooking food for longer than they were human". Very easily disproven. Judging from your other post, you are a  believer in Wrangham's notions despite him being ridiculed by most other anthropologists as being merely a chimp researcher etc.:-

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pennisi_99.html

Here's an article with many more links below each one:-

http://old.rawpaleodiet.com/advent-of-cooking-article/

http://old.rawpaleodiet.com/non-wrangham-theories-of-cooking-debunked/

Wrangham's theory of cooking leading to bigger brains has even been debunked on beyondveg.com:-

"ecent tuber-based hypothesis for evolutionary brain expansion fails to address key issues such as DHA and the recent fossil record. As a case in point, there has been one tentative alternative hypothesis put forward recently by primatologist Richard Wrangham et al. [1999] suggesting that perhaps cooked tubers (primarily a starch-based food) provided additional calories/energy that might have supported brain expansion during human evolution.

However, this idea suffers from some serious, apparently fatal flaws, in that the paper failed to mention or address critical pieces of key evidence regarding brain expansion that contradict the thesis. For instance, it overlooks the crucial DHA and/or DHA-substrate adequacy issue just discussed above, which is central to brain development and perhaps the most gaping of the holes. It's further contradicted by the evidence of 8% decrease in human brain size during the last 10,000 years, despite massive increases in starch consumption since the Neolithic revolution which began at about that time. (Whether the starch is from grain or tubers does not essentially matter in this context.) Meat and therefore presumed DHA consumption levels, both positive *and* negative-trending over human evolution, track relatively well not simply with the observed brain size increases during human evolution, but with the Neolithic-era decrease as well, on the other hand. [Eaton 1998]  " taken from:-

http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview1f.shtml

The notion is also destroyed when one considers a particular comment made on rawpaleoforum about giant pandas not having adapted to bamboo consumption despite them and their ancestor species eating the stuff for millions of years -pandas have carnivorous digestive systems:-

"Some foods seem harder for certain species to adapt to than others. For example, some plant foods appear to be very difficult for carnivores and certain omnivores to adapt to. Giant pandas have been eating bamboo for two million years, and its ancestor ate bamboo before that ("Remains Of Earliest Giant Panda Discovered," http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070618174710.htm), but giant pandas are still are not well adapted to it. So a bamboo diet is not a healthy diet for them, despite eating it for millions of years. Another example is the difficulty that humans have had adapting to grains, although grains have never been eaten by humans in general to the extent that giant pandas eat bamboo."


4) The ketogenic diet reference is only partially correct. True, such ketogenic diets do involve lower blood-sugar levels in the body which I read somewhere means the person concerned will have less glycation forming presumably(?) , but  cooking animal foods generates much higher levels of heat-created toxins than cooking plant foods(especially cooking animal fats) so that would negate the benefit somewhat.

Geoff

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