>> Jean-Louis! Your english is remarkable. Did you have a native english
>> speaker do any editing? or was that all your own?

>It was my own, but it took quite some time...

Impressive.

>I don't doubt that cigarette is toxic (that tar accumulates in the lungs is a
>well-known fact). Drugs are toxic too, of course. The question is whether the
>same applies for cooked food.

I don't know either. I suppose it is a continuum of trade offs (excepting
cheesitos and Snicker's bars)

>> So anyway, you made no mention of the instincto bit about body odors being
>> a clue to the nature of detox. What do you think?

>FWIW, all animals have an odor (body and stools), humans are not an exception.
>An unpleasant odor is not necessarily the proof that some bad stuff is being
>detoxified. I guess it is usually produced by end-products of bacteria
>metabolism (like in the case of bad breath). Now, why the bacteria thrive more
>on "denatured food", I don't know.

It may be that more of the denatured stuff is being thrown off so the
bacteria have more to eat....?

>Anyway, an odor is just an odor. More important is how you feel, rather
>than how
>you smell...

I agree, up to a point. (I have some high school students who certainly
test that theory ;))

>> Instincto seems to have its troubles, but not so much deficiencies (as is
>> so evident in raw vegan regimes) as misplaced idealism [...]

>Your "deficiencies" is ambiguous here ;-)

The classics: B-12, zinc, EFA's etc

>> Many of the symptoms can be seen as signs of deficiency, but I do suspect
>> that symptoms which throw off material such as colds, skin eruptions, etc.
>> will be shown to have _some_ basis in detox--though certainly not 100% so.

>Perhaps, but one of my points was to show that some symptoms are simply
>allergic reactions. In the watermelon example, it may well be that the grain proteins
>were gone a long time ago, but the immune system has still kept some
>memories of that. Eating the watermelon triggers runny nose, etc., which is in a sense a
>kind of detoxification, but the body is a priori throwing off watermelon
>allergens, NOT old stuff.

Who knows? One idea is a good (or speculative) as the other in many of
these matters--until someone looks _very_ carefully at what is being thrown
off in a cold or pimple or ear wax or whatever. Saying something is an
allergy is no more useful than saying it is a detox. _If_ future research
showed that allergies were reduced/eliminated under mostlty raw regimes, it
seems detox might be a more explanitory hypothesis.

>> I agree. It appears to me that the medical model emphasizes the "causative
>> agents" (bacteria, viruses, and lately genetics) to an un-useful extreme.
>> Whereas most raw diet theories (including instincto) emphasize "terrain
>> issues" to an un-useful extreme (ie, disease can not happen in a pure body
>> etc). There is no need to choose one theoretical stance over the other, but
>> perhaps only admit that both models have something to say about the reality
>> of it.

>Yes. Instincto ("all germs are beneficial") is even more extreme than NH
>("germs are innocuous") [AFAIK, no experiment has ever proved that a virus could be
>useful in any way]. But at least, instincto has the merit of adopting an
>evolutionary perspective, and bringing in the issue of foreign proteins. But
>given the (relative) success of cooked Paleo diets, I see little evidence that
>cooked food or meat are toxic.

Yeah, it is still a relatively open issue for me...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Cheers,
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