>If cooking food is so bad for you, then why are healing tinctures > made from boiling the roots of herbs? > jean-claude I don't know where this question comes from , but it made me want to answer it from my perspective. I think you are right to question the fact that cooked food is bad for you , because cooking is not bad , it is just fondamentally useless. It is not as good as raw. it doesn't give you the best. I believe there are certain nutrients in barks and other highly fibrous substances that can be an exception to this. In these cases the heat can unlock the door to the healing elements within the food. Micaela