Hi Ellie,

thanks for your comments, and welcome to the list.

> I am not an organic chemist, but have some experience in research in
> biochemisty, and had some colleagues who were organic chemists. My
> understanding of how organic reactions occur is that there is a
> theoretical equilibrium constant for all organic reations, so that when
> two molecules exist together, a reaction may start at any temperature.
> Heat or sun merely speed up the reaction, so that a temp. of 105F isn't a
> point at which Maillard's molecules suddenly form.

I am afraid I forgot most of the few notions of chemistry I ever had,
but what I remember is that if A, B, C, D are electrolytes in
solution, and the reaction is A+B --> C+D, the concentrations at
equilibrium satisfy a law of the type K=([C]^c[D]^d)/([A]^a[B]^b).

But not all chemical reactions are on that model (and the proteins in
food are not in solution). For instance, take combustion
X+O2 --> CO2+H2O+NO2+energy+... (X can be a protein, a sugar, a
cow...) That reaction occurs when enough energy has been brought (a
barrier of potential has to be crossed); but if you mix
CO2+H2O+NO2+... you will never get a protein or an animal (for reasons
of entropy).

And even if all the molecules present in bread were present in raw
wheat, the immune system may only have the ability to eliminate the
tiny amount of abnormal molecules that are naturally present.

> Unless we have leaky guts, proteins don't enter the blood stream except
> maybe a few dipeptides or small polypeptides. Whether we are adapted to a
> protein food would depend on whether we have enough specific hydrolytic
> enzymes to break the peptide linkages in that protein, not whether our
> own protein is similar to that of the animal we eat (Burger's
> theory).

Theoretically, given the fact that 20 amino-acids exist, the number of
possible hexapeptides is 20^6=64000000, which is quite a lot. Maybe we
are genetically adapted to those which come from "original" food, but
our immune system is not able to eliminate cow's milk's polypeptides,
which are 1] non "original" 2] too close from our own proteins to be
recognized as foreign.


> I suspect that our intstictive taste is
> so brilliantly designed that we naturally choose those foods which
> contain the amino acids we need for our specific protein makeup and which
> are digestable by our enzymes. So if raw milk tastes good to us, it
> should be what we need. What do you all think?
>

Alas, a food is more complex than a collection of amino-acids. I am
not sure all the gluten-intolerants find raw wheat particularly
bad; our tastebuds are not designed to recognize non original proteins.

Best wishes,

Jean-Louis