>> 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, [log in to unmask]