Jean_louis:
>-Meat cooked at high temperatures (like frying) is significantly more
>mutagenic than meat cooked at lower temperatures [5,6,8].
>-Apart from mutagenicity, it is known that Maillard molecules destroy
>(partially) some essential amino-acids, like lysine, among other adverse
>consequences [9].
>-Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons  - They are chemical compounds that
appear in foods cooked at high temperatures (like in grilled meat), as
well as smoked foods [22]
>-Obviously, cooking destroys more or less some vitamins and minerals,
>depending on cooking time and method.
>-Trans-fatty acids (margarines and hydrogenated oils) are eliminated. These
>fats are known to interfere with omega 3s absorption.

Jean-Louis, I enjoyed very much reading your excellent overview of the down
sides of eating cooked foods and with all the research you have come up
with lately, I reckon we now have enough to put together quite a
comprehensive "cooked" file in the archives consisting of the best of the
messages (consisting mainly of scientific references) relevant to this
subject from the past 2 1/2 years.  I do not know when I might have the
time to do this myself so if you or anybody else are able to take on this
project please let me know.

The obvious question from all this is that if cooking is so bad how come so
many people are able to maintain excellent health well into their years on
a cooked diet?

It would seem that over time even the strongest immune system would succumb
to the many burdens eating cooked foods puts the body under and that if
eating raw was so much healthier that the health & longevity of people on
raw food diets would surpass that of those on cooked diets considerably.
As this most often is not the case, it is obvious to me that whether the
diet is cooked or not is a lesser determining factor for health. To
illustrate my point I read recently about a Danish village of 7000
inhabitants of which 7 were centarians.  I am familiar with the Danish diet
and I doubt that these old people ate even 5% raw. Granted, only relatively
few people have been on a raw diet for any length of time, yet rather than
barely achieving average life expectancy, I would expect at this point that
more than just one raw food eater (Norman Walker died at 109) to have made
it beyond the 100 year mark.

Unless individual health and longevity were minor factors in the survival
of the human species, if it is so much healthier to eat raw, one would
expect it to have been an evolutionary advantage, yet with the possible
exception of the eskimos, no known native peoples, historic or
pre-historic, have ever been known to have lived on a mainly raw diet - at
least not since fire became a viable option in preparing foods.

Any thoughts on this are welcome.

Best, Peter
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