WHY DO WE EAT COOKED
FOOD??? Some facts that we must question,
if we are concerned for our health
From the book Cancer Proof your Body by
Ross Horne (now out of print)
We recommend
Ross Hornes latest books, please ask your local bookshop.
Cooked foods, especially those high in protein, can begin to
putrify. The byproducts of putrification are toxins that are
absorbed into
the bloodstream and deposited at body sites far removed from the intestinal
tract.
Valuable
enzymes in live raw food help keep the blood clear of poisons. It has been
estimated that 80% of diseases are
caused by improperly digested foods and
their by-products being absorbed into the body. A diet containing mostly
cooked food has proven to
be detrimental in more ways than one. Cooking my suit the taste buds, but
it destroys nutritional
components, vitamins, minerals and natural
enzymes protective against cancer and in so doing 80% of the nutritional value
of
the food is lost, mainly devoid of enzymes, as found in raw food.
According to Paul Kouchakoff ,
MD, of the Institute of Clinical Chemistry, Lausanne, the white blood cell
count of a healthy
person increases to a level proportional to the
degree to which the food has been heated or processed, and may double
or
even treble. This effect is called 'leucocytosis'.
As civilization 'progresses' and
food becomes more and more preserved, processed and cooked, and generally less
and less natural,
so humans everywhere display more signs of disease, much
earlier in life.
All that cooking is good for is
that it enables people to utilise grain for food and it renders edible other
unsuitable foods such as meat
and potatoes. Thus cooking enables a lot of
people to sustain themselves on the only foods available to them, but in return
there is a
penalty to pay.
Reference has already been made
to the problems encountered by eating cooked food. And the subject has been
explained in depth
in two previous books, The Health Revolution and
Improving on Pritikin. In brief, the natural digestive process utilises
enzymes
existing in raw food which, when the food is eaten, perform a
considerable amount of predigestion (breaking down the food) in the
upper
cardiac section of the stomach before the main digestive system gets to work on
it. Thus a great load is relieved from the
pancreas, the organ that produces
the main supply of digestive juices.
This natural benefit is
entirely missing when cooked food is consumed, because cooking destroys enzymes
and, not only that, the
pancreas is doubly penalised because of the
difficult nature of the sort of food anyway when compared to the natural food
the human
system is designed for. Thus as described by Dr Edward Howell in
his books The Status of Food Enzymes in Digestion and
Metabolism
and Enzyme Nutrition, the human pancreas is invariably
hypertrophied and twice its proper size compared with the relative sizes of
those
in wild animals and is accompanied by changes in the gonads, adrenals,
pituitary and other ductless glands.
Another adverse effect of
cooking is that it renders minerals in the food less assimilable, and when
cooking water is poured down the
sink some of the minerals are lost all
together.
Dr Max Garten, in his book
The Health Secrets of a Naturopathic Doctor, described how his health
had not much improved by becoming
a vegetarian; and how this led him to try
a completely raw food regime. He said:
The results were electrifying;
within a few days I felt much stronger with a return of my former enthusiasm.
Many of my patients
whom I had
been able to convert to this new diet also reported similar results.
Dr Garten observed that
putrefactive bacteria in the colon increased (and therefore the odoriferousness
of the stool) not only with the
eating of meat but also with the degree of
heat used in cooking all food, and with this increase came the appearance of
aches and pains.
He said:
It could only be deduced that
certain agents in the diet were either missing or had been altered by the heat.
The respective protein
content of
the vegetarian diet had also been found to be indicative of changes in the
intestinal flora, legumes such as
beans,
lentils, peas etc. equally
contributing to the display of putrefactive changes.
Thus, although vegetarians are
usually healthier and outlive meat eaters, they may not maintain very good health
or live to a very advanced
age if they continually cook their
food.
THE
VERDICT
There is a association between the cooking and processing of
food and the incidence of all diseases, including cancer. And, as proven in the
sanatoriums around the world, the best recoveries from the chronic,
so-called "incurable diseases" are made on diets composed of raw fruits
and
vegetables. This shows that, when vital organs are at their lowest stage of
function, only such a diet makes it possible for the vital organs
to
provide the proper body
chemistry to maintain health.
That being the case, so
must raw food provide the maximum benefit to anybody whether sick or
well.
