> Aria Nadii wrote:
> >
> > What about the occurrence of leucocytosis when eating cooked food as
> > opposed to eating the same food in it's raw state? I have read about
this
> > in many books which make a case for a raw food diet.
> >
> > Does this also have no scientific basis at all?

Never heard of it, so I can't comment. There are
other things that happen while cooking -- besides
reducing the amount of vitamins, turning the fiber
into mush, etc. --, like the creation of acrylamide:

http://society.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4416095,00.html
The findings suggest that it forms naturally in foods when they are fried or
baked, and scientists believe it also occurs in roasted, grilled or
barbecued food. Frying for longer than usual increases levels of the
chemical but limited research indicates it does not occur in raw or boiled
food.

From: "Rob Bartlett" wrote:
> > As Dr. Howell pointed out in his book,
> > Enzyme Nutrition...
>
> "...several examples [are provided] where Howell's claims are based on
such
> outdated science (which is still harked back to by his proponents today)
as
> to completely invalidate a claim by that very fact, let alone the logical
> problems which also riddle much of Howell's theory."
> details: www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-2b.shtml#enzymes
>
> Rob

A couple of things from that link were issues I had with Howell,
but overall, there are many things that could be well refuted.
Maybe I will take the time to do so at some point.

Outside of his own research, Howell relied quite a bit on the
research of others (and at times he even admitted that the
results had not been duplicated by other researchers). There
are volumes of data on the pancreas size of wild animals
vs. domestic animals (which indicates that the organ
is working harder). Here is one small example of the many
given in Enzyme Nutrition:

                PANCREAS WEIGHT OF WILD MICE
           COMPARED TO LABORATORY WHITE MICE

                          Body              Pancreas    Number
                         Weight             Weight         of
Species              Grams               %           Specimens

8 Wild Species         37.1          0.32                 141
Laboratory Mice        30.8          0.84                 11

Authority: Dieterich et al.

-=-=-=-=-

Also interesting (but unrelated, to some degree <g>):

Table 3.2

MORBIDITY OF BREAST-FED AND BOTTLE-FED BABIES

                               Breast-fed   Partially     Breast-fed
Bottle-fed
Morbidity                  37.4 %         53.8 %       63.6%
(20,061 subjects)
Adapted from C.G. Grulee et at., "Breast and Artificial Feeding,"
Journal of the American Medical Association, 103 (10):735, September,
1934.

But anyway, Howell is hardly the first person to ever stumble
upon this:

   Weston A. Price reported in his book, "Nourishing Traditions" that
   all of the people's he studied worldwide included much raw food in
   their traditional diets and were almost entirely free of the degenerative
   diseases that are rampant in our junk food society, such as tooth
   decay, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, digestive
   disturbances, etc.

Isn't Weston Price a darling of the paleo dieters?

Jay