Scientific Studies

Raw Food Diet Study
An Investigation of Over 500 People Who Have Eaten a Raw Food Diet for Over 2 Years
BY LENKA J. ZAJIC

Inspired by her own positive experiences going raw, Zajic went on to obtain a Masters in Vegan and Live Food Nutrition from the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona, where she conducted an in-depth 500-participant survey of raw foodists. The study’s findings showed that people who followed an 80 to 90% raw foods diet for 2 years reported marked improvements in immunity, digestion, allergies, weight moderation, chronic illness, and mental, and emotional well-being.

Based on these results, it was concluded that people who have been on a raw foods diet for two years or more experienced and generally continue to experience significant improvements on many physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. There appear to be very few, if any, consistent negative effects or areas of serious concern that can be identified from this preliminary study.

Says Zajic, “There seems to be no question that, at least initially, eating a raw foods diet can reduce or cure many health complaints.”

(Lenka J. Zajic, “An Investigation of Over 500 People Who Have Eaten a Raw Food Diet for Over 2 Years”)

The Benefits of Eating Uncooked Food
by Dr. Bernarr, D.C., D.D.

When food is cooked above 118 degrees F for three minutes or longer, its protein has become denatured, its sugar has become caramelized, its natural fibers have been broken down, which means it will take longer to move through the intestinal tract, up to 90% of its vitamins and minerals have been damaged or destroyed, and 100% of its enzymes have been destroyed. Cooked food depletes our body's enzyme potential and needlessly drains the energy we need to maintain and repair our tissues and organ systems, and shortens our lifespan.
Dr. Virginia Vetrano writes, "Heating any food, destroys much of its vitamin, mineral, and protein content, and poisonous inorganic acids are formed. The all uncooked diet is most healthful."

Marilyn Willison, of Hippocrates Health Institute, writes, "We should not cook our food. During this apparently harmless process, vital enzymes are destroyed, proteins are coagulated (making them difficult to assimilate), vitamins are mostly destroyed with the remainder changing into forms that are difficult for the body to utilize, pesticides are restructured into even more toxic compounds, valuable oxygen is lost, and free radicals are produced. According to Viktoras Kulvinskas, nutrient losses can be as high as 80% or more. Other studies suggest that cooked proteins (coagulated) are up to 50% less likely to be utilized by the body."

Dr. Francis M. Pottenger Jr., wrote about his experiments with 900 cats over a period of ten years. Pottenger fed some of the test cats raw meat and other test cats he fed cooked meats. Pottenger wrote, "Cooked meat fed cats were irritable. The females were dangerous to handle, occasionally biting the keeper..." The cooked meat fed cats suffered with "pneumonia, empyema, diarrhea, osteomyelitis, cardiac lesions, hyperopia and myopia (eye diseases), thyroid diseases, nephritis, orchitis, oophoritis (ovarian inflammation), arthritis and many other degenerative diseases." Over the years, the cooked food group gave birth to more unhealthy kittens, and became less able to conceive at all.
No cooked food is benign. Cooked foods act malignantly by exhausting your bodily energies, inhibiting your healing, and decreasing your alertness, efficiency and productivity.
Cooked foods suppress the immune system. The heat of cooking destroys vitamins, enzymes, minerals, nucleic acids, and damages fats, making them indigestible. The fatty matter becomes a local irritant.

The heat disorganizes the protein structure, leading to deficiency of some of the essential amino acids. The fibrous or woody element of food (cellulose) is changed completely from its natural condition by cooking. When this fibrous element is cooked, it loses its broom-like quality to sweep the alimentary canal clean. The fibrous matter is changed from its natural state to an irritant. Raw food has the best balance of water, nutrients, and fiber to meet your body's needs.
Cooking causes the inorganic elements to enter the blood, circulate through the system, settle in the arteries and veins and deaden the nerves. After cooking, the body loses its flexibility, arteries lose their pliability, nerves' ability to conduct electrical signals diminishes, the spinal cord becomes hardened, the tissues throughout the body contract, and the human being becomes prematurely old. In many cases this matter is deposited in the various joints of the body, causing joint disease. In other cases, it accumulates as concretions in one or more of the internal organs, finally accumulating around the heart valves.

Raw foods are easily digested, requiring only 24-36 hours for transit time through the digestive tract, as compared to 40-100 hours for cooked foods. This unnatural transit time increases the threat of putrefaction and disease. When you eat cooked carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, you are eating numerous mutagenic (carcinogenic) products causes by the cooking process. Dr. Karl Elmer experimented with top athletes in Germany, producing improvement in their performance by changing to a purely raw food diet. Dr. Douglas Graham achieved similar results with athletes he trained. Raw food provides you with more strength, energy and stamina.
On raw foods, the mind (memory and power of concentration) will be clear. You will be more alert, think sharper and more logically. Raw foods will not leave you with a tired feeling after the meal. There is a tendency toward sleepiness after a cooked meal. Raw foods require less total sleep, and achieve a more restful sleep.

When we treat foods with thermal fire, we lose up to 97% of the water-soluble vitamins (Vitamins B and C) and up to 40% of the lipid soluble vitamins (Vitamins A, D, E and K). We need only one-half the amount of protein in the diet if raw protein foods are eaten rather than protein foods which are cooked. Heating also changes the lipids. These changed fats are incorporated into the cell wall and interfere with the respiration of the cell, causing an increase in cancer and heart disease.
When grasses are separately covered with fertilizers that are both raw and cooked, the grass grown with the raw fertilizer grows 400% more tonnage over that grown with the same amount per acre of cooked food fertilizer.

After eating cooked foods, the blood immediately shows an enormous increase of leukocytes of white blood cells - corpuscles. The white blood cells are a first line of defense and are, collectively, popularly called "the immune system". This spontaneous multiplication of white corpuscles always takes place in normal blood immediately after the introduction of any virulent infection or poison into the body since the white corpuscles are the fighting organisms of the blood. There is no multiplication of white corpuscles when uncooked food is eaten. The constant daily fight against the toxic effects of cooked food unnecessarily exhausts the body's strength and vitality, thus causing disease and the modern shortness of life.
Cooked foods quickly ferment and putrefy in the intestinal tract. On a raw food diet you will experience the elimination of body odor and halitosis. Cooked food causes allergies.

Raw foods are delectable. There is no need to jazz them up with unhealthful additives and condiments as is needed with cooked food. These flavor-enhancing additives can irritate your digestive system and over-stimulate other organs. Avoid these harmful additives: sugar, salt, pepper, spices, condiments, ketchup, mayonnaise, dressing and toppings.
Hannah Allen wrote, "Raw foods contain enzymes, which influence digestive efficiency - cooking destroys all enzymes. Moreover, the consumption of raw foods stimulates gastric enzyme secretion, necessary to initiate good digestion. Besides, the more raw foods you eat as your first course, the less cooked foods you will be able to eat. Ideally, we should never cook any foods."

Arthur M. Baker in "Awakening Our Self Healing Body", writes, "Overly cooked foods literally wreck our body. They deny needed nutrients to the system since heat alters foodstuffs such that they are partially, mostly, or wholly destroyed. Nutrients are coagulated, denatured, caramelized, and rendered inorganic and become toxic and pathogenic in the body." Baker adds, "Virulent bacteria find soil in dead food substances only and cannot exist on living cells. Cooked food spoils rapidly, both inside and outside our body, whereas living foods are slow to lose their vital qualities and do not as readily become soil for bacterial decay."

I have been a 100% raw food eater, for over 50 years.
Don's Comments: I've been eating a 100% uncooked plant-based diet for over ten years, and the results have been so remarkable that you couldn't pay me to eat cooked food. People who add copious amounts of uncooked fruits and vegetables into their diet, and who eliminate much of the cooked "food", enjoy vastly improved health.

top of page

Am J Clin Nutr 1995 Dec; 62(6):1221-7
Antioxidant status in long-term adherents to a strict uncooked vegan diet.
Rauma AL, Torronen R, Hanninen O, Verhagen H, Mykkanen H.
Department of Clinical Nutrition, University of Kuopio, Finland.

Antioxidant status was investigated in 20 Finnish middle-aged female vegans and in one male vegan who were following a strict, uncooked vegan diet ("living food diet"), by means of a dietary survey and biochemical measurements (blood concentrations of vitamins C and E and beta-carotene, and the activities of the zinc/copper-dependent superoxide dismutase and selenium-dependent glutathione peroxidase). Values were compared with those of omnivores matched for sex, age, social status, and residence. Antioxidant supplementation was used by 4 of 20 female vegans and by 11 of 20 control subjects. Based on dietary records, the vegans had significantly higher intakes of beta-carotene, vitamin E, vitamin C, and copper, and a significantly lower intake of selenium than the omnivorous control subjects.

The calculated dietary antioxidant intakes by the vegans, expressed as percentages of the US recommended dietary allowances, were as follows: 305% of vitamin C, 247% of vitamin A, 313% of vitamin E, 92% of zinc, 120% of copper, and 49% of selenium. Compared with the omnivores, the vegans had significantly higher blood concentrations of beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E, as well as higher erythrocyte superoxide dismutase activity. These differences were also seen in pairs who were using no antioxidant supplements. The present data indicate that the "living food diet" provides significantly more dietary antioxidants than does the cooked, omnivorous diet, and that the long-term adherents to this diet have a better antioxidant status than do omnivorous control subjects.

Raw Vegetables Protect Against Cancer

A review of 206 human epidemiologic studies and 22 animal studies on the relationship between fruits and vegetables and cancer risk found that: RAW VEGETABLES ARE THE NUMBER ONE PROTECTIVE FOOD AGAINST CANCER. Steinmetz KA, Potter JD. Vegetables, fruit, and cancer prevention: a review. J Am Diet Assoc 1996 Oct;96(10):1027-39 World Cancer Research Fund, London, England.

Raw Food and Immunity - Shifting from a conventional diet to an uncooked vegan diet reversibly alters fecal hydrolytic activities in humans.
Gaisbauer M, Langosch A.
Klinik in der Stanggass, Berchtesgaden.

Uncooked food is an integral component of human nutrition, and is a necessary precondition for an intact immune system. Its therapeutic effect is complex, and a variety of influences of raw food and its constituents on the immune system have been documented. Such effects include antibiotic, antiallergic, tumor-protective, immunomodulatory, and anti-inflammatory actions. In view of this, uncooked food can be seen as a useful adjunct to drugs in the treatment of allergic, rheumatic and infectious diseases.

top of page

Consequences of a long-term raw food diet on body weight and menstruation: results of a questionnaire survey.
Koebnick C, Strassner C, Hoffmann I, Leitzmann C. Institute of Nutritional Science Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Germany. Corinna.Koebnick@ernaehrung.uni-giessen.de

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between the strictness of long-term raw food diets and body weight loss, underweight and amenorrhea. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study 216 men and 297 women consuming long-term raw food diets (3.7 years; SE 0.25) of different intensities completed a specially developed questionnaire. Participants were divided into 5 groups according to the amount of raw food in their diet (70-79, 80-89, 90-94, 95-99 and 100%). A multiple linear regression model (n = 513) was used to evaluate the relationship between body weight and the amount of raw food consumed. Odds of underweight were determined by a multinomial logit model. RESULTS: From the beginning of the dietary regimen an average weight loss of 9.9 kg (SE 0.4) for men and 12 kg (SE 0.6) for women was observed. Body mass index (BMI) was below the normal weight range (<18.5 kg/m(2)) in 14.7% of male and 25.0% of female subjects and was negatively related to the amount of raw food consumed and the duration of the raw food diet. About 30% of the women under 45 years of age had partial to complete amenorrhea; subjects eating high amounts of raw food (>90%) were affected more frequently than moderate raw food dieters.
CONCLUSIONS: The consumption of a raw food diet is associated with a high loss of body weight, a healthful and positive change in the context of pandemic and gross cultural overweight.

Vegan diet in physiological health promotion.
Hänninen O, Rauma AL, Kaartinen K, Nenonen M.
Department of Physiology, University of Kuopio, Finland.

We have performed a number of studies including dietary interventions and cross-sectional studies on subjects consuming uncooked vegan food called living food (LF) and clarified the changes in several parameters related to health risk factors. LF consists of germinated seeds, cereals, sprouts, vegetables, fruits, berries and nuts. Some items are fermented and contain a lot of lactobacilli. The diet is rich in fiber. It has very little sodium, and it contains no cholesterol. Food items like berries and wheat grass juice are rich in antioxidants such as carotenoids and flavonoids. The subjects eating living food show increased levels of carotenoids and vitamins C and E and lowered cholesterol concentration in their sera. Urinary excretion of sodium is only a fraction of the omnivorous controls. Also urinary output of phenol and p-cresol is lowered as are several fecal enzyme levels which are considered harmful.

The rheumatoid arthritis patients eating the LF diet reported amelioration of their pain, swelling of joints and morning stiffness which all got worse after finishing LF diet. The composite indices of objective measures showed also improvement of the rheumatoid arthritis patients during the intervention. The fibromyalgic subjects eating LF lost weight compared to their omnivorous controls. The results on their joint stiffness and pain (visual analogue scale), on their quality of sleep, on health assessment questionnaire and on general health questionnaire all improved. It appears that the adoption of vegan diet exemplified by the living food leads to a lessening of several health risk factors to cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Rheumatoid patients subjectively benefited from the vegan diet which was also seen in serum parameters and fecal analyses.

top of page

Ling WH, Hänninen O.
Department of Physiology, University of Kuopio, Finland.

We studied the effect on fecal hydrolytic activities of adopting an uncooked extreme vegan diet and readopting a conventional diet. Eighteen subjects were randomly divided into test and control groups. In the test group subjects adopted the uncooked extreme vegan diet for 1 mo and then resumed a conventional diet for a second month. Controls consumed a conventional diet throughout the study. Phenol and p-cresol concentrations in serum and daily output in urine and fecal enzyme activities were measured. The activity of fecal urease significantly decreased (by 66%) as did cholylglycine hydrolase (55%), beta-glucuronidase (33%) and beta-glucosidase (40%) within 1 wk of beginning the vegan diet. The new level remained throughout the period of consuming this diet. Phenol and p-cresol concentrations in serum and daily outputs in urine significantly declined. The fecal enzyme activities returned to normal values within 2 wk of resuming the conventional diet. Concentrations of phenol and p-cresol in serum and daily output in urine had returned to normal after 1 mo of consuming the conventional diet. No changes were observed in the control group during the study. Results suggest that this uncooked extreme vegan diet causes a decrease in bacterial enzymes and certain toxic products that have been implicated in colon cancer risk.

Black raspberries “aid cancer treatment”
Posted in Cancer, Dietary Supplementation, Nutrition on Thu August 28, 2008

Consuming black raspberries can alter hundreds of genes and so slow the growth and spread of cancer, it has been claimed.
In news that may be of interest to anti-aging physicians, researchers from the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center found that the fruit contained a mix of preventative agents. The scientists conducted their research, published in Cancer Research, by looking at the effect of freeze-dried black raspberries on genes that were altered by a chemical carcinogen in an animal model of esophageal cancer.
It was found that the activity of some 2,200 genes in the animals' esophagus was altered in one week and 460 of these were restored in the creatures that ate the dried fruit.
Principle investigator Gary Stoner said: "We have clearly shown that berries, which contain a variety of anticancer compounds, have a genome-wide effect on the expression of genes involved in cancer development."

In related news, Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center has revealed that the natural compound curcumin, which is found in turmeric, may reduce the growth and spread of cancer cells.

top of page

Acta Physiol Hung 1999;86(3-4):171-80
Vegan diet in physiological health promotion.
Hanninen O, Rauma AL, Kaartinen K, Nenonen M. Department of Physiology, University of Kuopio, Finland.

The rheumatoid arthritis patients eating the LF diet reported amelioration of their pain, swelling of joints and morning stiffness which all got worse after finishing LF diet. The composite indices of objective measures showed also improvement of the rheumatoid arthritis patients during the intervention. The fibromyalgic subjects eating LF lost weight compared to their omnivorous controls. The results on their joint stiffness and pain (visual analogue scale), on their quality of sleep, on health assessment questionnaire and on general health questionnaire all improved. It appears that the adoption of vegan diet exemplified by the living food leads to a lessening of several health risk factors to cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Rheumatoid patients subjectively benefited from the vegan diet which was also seen in serum parameters and fecal analyses.

Fibromyalgia syndrome improved using a mostly raw vegetarian diet: an observational study.
Donaldson MS, Speight N, Loomis S.
Hallelujah Acres Foundation, Shelby, NC, USA. michael@hacres.com

BACKGROUND: Fibromyalgia engulfs patients in a downward, reinforcing cycle of unrestorative sleep, chronic pain, fatigue, inactivity, and depression. In this study we tested whether a mostly raw vegetarian diet would significantly improve fibromyalgia symptoms. METHODS: Thirty people participated in a dietary intervention using a mostly raw, pure vegetarian diet. The diet consisted of raw fruits, salads, carrot juice, tubers, grain products, nuts, seeds, and a dehydrated barley grass juice product. Outcomes measured were dietary intake, the fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (FIQ), SF-36 health survey, a quality of life survey (QOLS), and physical performance measurements. RESULTS: Twenty-six subjects returned dietary surveys at 2 months; 20 subjects returned surveys at the beginning, end, and at either 2 or 4 months of intervention; 3 subjects were lost to follow-up. The mean FIQ score (n = 20) was reduced 46% from 51 to 28. Seven of the 8 SF-36 subscales, bodily pain being the exception, showed significant improvement (n = 20, all P for trend < 0.01). The QOLS, scaled from 0 to 7, rose from 3.9 initially to 4.9 at 7 months (n = 20, P for trend 0.000001). Significant improvements (n = 18, P < 0.03, paired t-test) were seen in shoulder pain at rest and after motion, abduction range of motion of shoulder, flexibility, chair test, and 6-minute walk. 19 of 30 subjects were classified as responders, with significant improvement on all measured outcomes, compared to no improvement among non-responders. At 7 months responders' SF-36 scores for all scales except bodily pain were no longer statistically different from norms for women ages 45-54.
CONCLUSION: This dietary intervention shows that many fibromyalgia subjects can be helped by a mostly raw vegetarian diet.

Antioxidant status in long-term adherents to a strict uncooked vegan diet.
Rauma AL, Törrönen R, Hänninen O, Verhagen H, Mykkänen H.
Department of Clinical Nutrition, University of Kuopio, Finland.

top of page

Uncooked, lactobacilli-rich, vegan food and rheumatoid arthritis
Nenonen MT, Helve TA, Rauma AL, Hanninen OO.
Department of Physiology, University of Kuopio, Finland.

We tested the effects of an uncooked vegan diet, rich in lactobacilli, in rheumatoid patients randomized into diet and control groups. The intervention group experienced subjective relief of rheumatic symptoms during intervention. A return to an omnivorous diet aggravated symptoms. Half of the patients experienced adverse effects (nausea, diarrhea) during the diet and stopped the experiment prematurely. Indicators of rheumatic disease activity did not differ statistically between groups. The positive subjective effect experienced by the patients was not discernible in the more objective measures of disease activity (Health Assessment Questionnaire, duration of morning stiffness, pain at rest and pain on movement). However, a composite index showed a higher number of patients with 3-5 improved disease activity measures in the intervention group. Stepwise regression analysis associated a decrease in the disease activity (measured as change in the Disease Activity Score, DAs) with lactobacilli-rich and chlorophyll-rich drinks, increase in fiber intake, and no need for gold, methotrexate or steroid medication (R2=0.48, P=0.02). The results showed that an uncooked vegan diet, rich in lactobacilli, decreased subjective symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. Large amounts of living lactobacilli consumed daily may also have positive effects on objective measures of rheumatoid arthritis.

Br J Rheumatol 1998 Mar;37(3):274-281

The Secrets of the Cooking Pan
by Frederic Patenaude.

Isn't cooking interesting? With a few basic pieces of equipment, a stove and some pots and pans, you can radically transform your food, play with it, and turn it into something totally different. Think about the difference between a raw potato and a potato after it's been baked. What a metamorphosis!
What used to be this crunchy, juicy, earthy thing is now creamy, sweet and mealy, and it melts in your mouth. It fills you up like nothing else, and all of this you couldn't have achieved without this little magical feat you operated using your stove (just assuming that some of you still use stove, but I'm sure you are beyond that, aren't you?). So you went on and cooked your food, added a pinch of this and a pinch of that in the pots and pans, fried a few things, boiled some others, and operated all of these miracles that transformed these rude material into some actual cuisine.

Who in fact would even bother to eat a raw apple when you can bake it with cinnamon, brown sugar, and make it a real treat? But the question we ask now is: What really goes on, behind the scenes, when we cook our foods? What is it that happens at the molecular level that turns this raw potato into the food we know as baked potato? What is it that can make us go past our repulsion for raw meat and eat with delight a grilled steak? Thusly we can bring up the theme of this article: science and the art of cooking, with (unfortunately) its implication on human health.
Cooking has always been considered an art, where every possible way to transform the foods has been permitted, as long as it succeeded in creating some eatables that are pleasing to the palate. This so-called art had the benefit of being able to use the rich natural world to operate its marvels.

It is possible, using the molecules contained in foods, and transforming them using fire, to create countless new molecules that were not present before in these foods. These new molecules are the true offsprings of cooking, and their implication on human health is quite scary. Science is just starting to analyze these new creations of the cooking art, and can't even seem to see the end considering their gigantic number. I am not talking here about the composition of foods, to which I show no interest in this articles. There are plenty of books already out there discussing the composition of cooked foods, in terms of fats, protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins. The real question I am bringing up is : how the diverse methods of the cooking art operate at the molecular level to transform foods in their raw state?

Cooking & Chefs rarely are men and women of science, and it might even scare them to think of their art as cold science. But science is amazing in the way that its laws only ask to admit that our universe is composed of molecules, which are in themselves composed of atoms. Life is constituted of cells, which are constituted of molecules. We know this since college. We also know that atoms are linked together by chemical reactions more or less strong according to their type: between the atoms of a same molecule, the forces are generally strong, but between two different neighboring molecules, the forces of attraction are not as strong. Often, when we heat something, we break only the forces playing against the neighboring molecules; water into ice, for example, is a stalking of water molecules. When we heat ice, the energy that we bring suffices to break the links between the water molecules, and thus create a liquid where the molecules, although forming a coherent mass, are moving from one another. However, in the liquid formed, the molecules are not transformed. The molecules of water are identical to the molecules of ice. Then when we heat water over 212 degrees (100 Celsius), it evaporates, because the heat that has been brought is enough to break the forces of cohesion between the water molecules. But again, within each molecule, the atom of oxygen is still linked to two atoms of hydrogen. This type of transformation is physical in its nature, and not chemical: the water molecule stays a water molecule.

But what the average chef doesn't know is that, during the cooking process, chemical reactions occur -- molecules in foods are being disassociated, rearranged, and new molecules are being created. Which brings up to the following question: What exactly are these molecules created through cooking, and what do they do to our health when they enter our bodies?

The Maillard Molecules. I am not the first person to ask this question. In 1916, an American, chemical engineer, by the name of Maillard, decided to isolate substances that give cooked foods their distinctive flavors, such as the tastes of bread, chocolate, coffee, etc. After having singled them out, he hoped, no doubt, to produce them artificially in order to add them to industrial foods and enhance the appeal that they could have to the consumer's taste buds. So in order to complete his scheme, he had to determine the exact structure of these new molecules. He quickly found out that these molecules resulted from very complex, haphazard chemical reactions between sugars and proteins, and one could produce them quite easily by heating any food even to moderate temperatures. It is not possible to see with the naked eye what happens in a saucepan on the molecular level. When a chemist combines two substances in a test tube and subsequently heats the compound over a Bunsen burner, it boils, clouds, changes color or explodes accordingly. In each case, a new compound has been produced. Heat causes the molecules involved to collide, and repeated collision causes divalent bonding in order for new molecules, and hence a new substance, to form. The same goes for cooking, except that myriad molecules are brought together instead of just two. In an ordinary baked potato, there are already 450 by-products of every description. They have even been named 'new chemical composites.' So far, around 50 such substances were studied and turned out to be either peroxidizing, antioxidizing, or toxic and possibly even mutagenic, meaning that they are liable to wreck cell nuclei and set up cancer.

What was ascertained for broiled potatoes, which involves a fairly straightforward preparation, becomes much more serious with more sophisticated cookery. Sliced potatoes baked with cheese is a case in point. Heating releases an awesome array of chemical reactions -- 450 substances in potatoes and probably many more in cheese which is a highly intricate biochemical complex. Not only will those unwanted molecules stack up their effects, but, moreover, they will combine among themselves in every possible way -- meaning that tens of thousands of abnormal substances will spring out of a cooked dish calling for mere potatoes and cheese. Just think of elaborate recipes where one clocks up endless chains of sundry ingredients jumbled together helter-skelter." -- Guy Claude Burger, Manger Vrai.

Maillard Molecules & Health Hazards. It seems that shortly after Maillard discovered these molecules, that have since been termed "Maillard's molecules," he tried to prove that they had no adverse effect on human health. Some experiments quickly showed that he was wrong, and all his work was swept under the rug, until 1982, when some research appeared in scientific journals. Scientists now begin to foresee the possible connection between the introduction of these molecules in the human bodies and common diseases and health problems.

"As far back as 1916, Maillard proved that the brown pigments and polymers that occur in pyrolysis (chemical breakdown by heat alone)... are yielded after prior reaction of an amino acid group with the carbonyl group of sugars. Though apparently simple, this reaction is, in fact, highly complex, itinerating in a spate of successive reactions and forming melanoidins, which are brown pigments that impart a typical color to whatever part of a food has endured higher temperatures. The number of substances generated as a result is most impressive, yielding endless chains of new molecules: ketones, esters, aldehydes, ethers, volatile alcohols, and non-volatile heterocycles, etc. These innumerable substances coalesce into a complex compound and are endowed with differing biological and chemical attributes: they are toxic, aromatic, peroxidizing, anti-oxidizing, and possibly mutagenic and carcinogenic (DNA fractures can be oncogenic), or even anti-mutagenic and anti-carcinogenic. This to say that heating causes widespread disruption in the natural order of molecules. The research work backing up this article evidenced over 50 pyrolytic substances in broiled potatoes, most of which originated from pyroseines and thiazole. However, Derache also has it that "there remain, all in all, some 400 by-products to identify." -- Manger Vrai

Weird Science. The Malliard reactions are one type of possible reaction occurring during common food preparation, but not the only one. Cooked foods are the product of chemical reactions, and most transformations operated by the culinary art are chemical in their nature. When meat darken on the surface when cooked, it's the result of a chemical reaction; when brown rice soften when boiled, it's again another chemical reaction. Unlike water, the molecules in food are extremely complex and fragile, leaving place for a huge amount of new chemistry in the cooking pan. More than just one reaction, it's a mass of innumerable complex reactions, that we simplify using the classifications of biochemists: carbohydrates, fats, protein, water, minerals.

"The products of the Maillard reaction are innumerable and still mostly unknown. In 1990, a famous chemistry magazine dedicated a 20 page article on the Maillard reaction, describing number of flavors created in the procedure. The brown color that chefs try to option while sautéing foods in oil is a color created through the Maillard reaction: at the high temperatures reached by the fat, the reaction occurs, while it doesn't happen as much when we boil foods, temperature being then limited to the temperature of boiling water: 212 degrees. Quantity of researchers study these molecules which could be at the basis of a number of diseases." From the book: The secrets of the cooking pan.

Are we adapted? There are a lot of reasons to believe that new molecules created during the processes of cooking enter the blood stream without being properly digested, since there are no enzymes adapted to their digestion. These molecules would then accumulate in all part of the body to create number of diseases. Since the raw-food and natural health movement has been in existence, authors in the subjects have often talked about detoxification, without really explaining the nature of the toxins coming out of the body. They always knew that under a cooked food diet the individual accumulates in his body all sort of unwanted materials. The whole idea of all the methods of body purification, such as fasting, enemas, colonic irrigation, herbal cleanses, etc, is to remove these "obstructions."

Detoxification. Long term raw eaters know that foods and medicines taken a long time ago eventually find their way out after a long time on a raw-food diet. A lot of our friends have experienced the taste of medicines, candies, and other familiar cooked food, during their detoxification period, and for no apparent reasons. Molecules from denatures foods seem to get trapped inside the body, just waiting to be removed later through the proper detoxification pathways, when the body has the energy to do so.  It is quite safe to assume that there are no reasons for the body to be adapted to the new molecules created in the process of cooking, due to their huge amount and complexity, and the fact that they have entered human bodies only in the past 10,000 years of human history.

"The Maillard reaction works simultaneously upon thousands of compounds; combinations are innumerable, and products thus formed also are. We create molecules to which no one knows exactly their effect on human health. Certain molecules, in minimal concentration, could be at the origin of many serious health problems." The Secrets of the Cooking Pan. These molecules accumulate in all parts of the body, creating obstructions that would lead to diseases, and, according to some research, contribute to the processes of aging.

Conclusions. Nobody really knows what goes on in the cooking pan. We have been doing it for so many years, without really stopping to ask ourselves the question. All the scientific research done on the subject seem to prove that the compounds created during the processes of cooking are extremely complex, numerous, and possibly dangerous. When we put some food in a stove or a over a frying pan, it may seem for some of us like a very natural process. After all, everyone seems to be doing it, and no one really stopped to ask some serious questions about the rightness of it. But it now seems time for all of us to stop and ask ourselves the question: "Is it really possible to keep eating cooked food and get away with it?"

References----------------------------
* Les secrets de la casserole -- Hervé THIS, Belin, 1993, ISBN 2-7011-1585-X, 222 p.
* "Pyrolysis and risks of toxicity" by Professor R. Derache, in "Cahiers de nutrition et de diététique" (Diet and Nutrition Journal), 1982, p 39.
* Manger Vrai, Guy-Claude Burger, Editions du Rocher, 1990, 462 pages

top of page

Two researchers, Blanc and Hertel, confirmed that microwave cooking significantly changes food nutrients.

Hertel previously worked as a food scientist for several years with one of the major Swiss food companies. He was fired from his job for questioning procedures in processing food because they denatured it. He got together with Blanc of the Swiss Federal Institute of Biochemistry and the University Institute for Biochemistry.