Black people (Black Americans) are by far the most obese people on the planet! Especially African-American women! It's epidemic!
Black Americans are sick for many reasons, but especially for reasons pertaining to diet (what they eat)! They don't know what to eat! They don't know to eat foods based upon or in alignment with their bio-genetic makeup."
It seems every week there’s a new report telling us of the latest ‘superfood’. Maybe it’s the goji berry, spirulina (seagreens)or raw cacao. Problem is that many of these exotic ‘superfoods’, although tasty, nutritious, and fun to try, are expensive, and cannot always be obtained locally, let alone grown locally.
My belief is that many, more mundane, plant foods that can be
eaten by humans are superfoods! Take any fruit or vegetable, sponsor a
university research department to analyse it and carry out studies on
its effect on health over years (as has happened to watercress, broccoli
and blueberries in recent years), and – hey – new superfood! That’s
because the plant foods that have been designed for human consumption
are full of precious substances designed to nourish us and protect us
from disease. And we can obtain these superfoods in our own localities,
even amongst the ‘weeds’ in our gardens! Do you really think they have
identified all the amazing things in our foods yet? 
But, meanwhile, through cooking we’re happily destroying not only
the substances scientists have identified, but probably crucial
substances it could take them thousands of years to discover... Cooking damages and destroys the precious raw materials our bodies need
Cooking damages and destroys the amino-acids that our bodies need to build protein. It damages and destroys antioxidants that help protect us from cancer. It damages, destroys (or makes less assimilable) vitamins and minerals. The vitamins in our foods need other substances in the foods to work effectively. Our bodies need those precious things in foods to work efficiently. If they don’t get them, or if they get them in the wrong proportions, they start to work less efficiently. Then, either dramatically, and early in life (as in a heart attack) or gradually, and later, after a lifetime of tedious ‘minor ailments’, our bodies splutter to a halt.Of course every so often we hear of someone who has lived to 100 on a diet of full English breakfasts, whisky and fags. I reckon these people are kept alive as an IQ test for the rest of us – do we copy the one exception to the rule, or the millions that aren’t? In damaging and destroying precious things our bodies need, cooking contributes to minor and major illness, and premature death. It even robs us of substances needed to make serotonin, sometimes called the ‘happiness’ chemical; it depresses us! We are biochemical creatures. The food that goes into our mouths affects us physically and psychologically in every way.
Cooking = heating to a temperature higher than that of a hot day
Scientific studies have shown that, generally, around 115F is the temperature at which certain substances in our foods start to become damaged or destroyed. Roughly speaking, that's the temperature in direct sun on a very hot day (well, depends where you live!).In fact, raw fooders generally try to keep food to a temperature close to body temperature, ie between 95 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
This is what cooking does to some of the precious substances in our food:
Damages amino-acids. Our bodies need amino-acids to make protein. Heat denatures them, meaning that the molecular structure is altered, rendering them unusable, or less usable, by our bodies and resulting in the generation of mutagens. The irony is that people who think they need to eat meat ‘for protein’ damage the amino-acids through cooking!
Destroys or damages vitamins. Most people know that boiling destroys many vitamins. In fact, it destroys 97% of B vitamins in general, and Vitamin C. OK, so you never boil your vegetables…you steam them (or roast them?). Look at this. A study by Arthur M Baker, MA (NHE Self-Health Care systems and author of ‘Awakening Our Self-Healing Body’) tells us that when food is cooked above 117 (Fahrenheit remember..) for 3 minutes or longer, 30-50% of vitamins are destroyed, and most vitamins lose their capacity to function once they have been subjected to heat surpassing 131 F.
Some examples:
| Vitamin B1 (thiamine) | Calculations from baked cookies revealed 90% of B1 lost. B1 is decreased by roasting, braising and frying. |
| Vitamin B2 | Destroyed if cooked with baking soda/powder |
| Vitamin B6 | Destroyed by roasting |
And did you know that when, for example, we eat grains that have had the B vitamins cooked out of them, our bodies then need to raid our Vitamin B reserves to metabolise them? So, by eating cooked foods, we not only destroy the vitamins in the foods, but put our own stores under strain!
Causes mineral loss and renders minerals less assimilable by the body. Although minerals in general are less susceptible to damage than vitamins, significant losses of magnesium, selenium and other minerals can occur through cooking. Minerals can be lost to cooking water and juices. Also, heat causes cleavage of complexes that render minerals less absorbable by the body.
Destroys antioxidants
Antioxidants are substances that fight the ‘free radicals’ that can cause cancer. Many antioxidants lose their anti-cancer qualities when heated. For example, 90% of the antioxidants in broccoli are destroyed by microwaving.
Fire destroys
Cooking creates toxins
A toxic substance is something that when ingested may destroy life or injure health.Is cooked food poison? Raw fooders have been made lots of fun of in the past for saying that it is. However, although we won’t fall down dead immediately from the effects of a cooked meal, cooked food and its by-products injure our health in various ways, contributing to many illnesses and premature death. Hence, cooked food in general may accurately be described as poison, albeit slow-acting poison.
I've already discussed above some of the ways in which cooking can harm our health. Here's another: when the molecular arrangements of foods are altered by heat, ‘free radicals’ form (they’re molecules ‘gone awry’). When the molecules of vitamins and minerals are deranged by heat, carbon is liberated. They turn into inorganic ash-like form - toxic to the body.
Arthur M Baker explains how fats are rendered carcinogenic through heating food above 117 F for longer than 3 minutes: heating changes the fats and these changed fats are then incorporated into cell walls, interfering with the respiration of the cell (which can lead to cancer and heart disease).
Arthur M Baker also explains how when amino acids are heated ‘coagulated protein molecules tend to putrefy as bacteria in the body feed upon this dead organic matter. Bacterial enzymatic by-products are carcinogenic.’
When fats (hard and oils) are heated to high temperatures fatty acids are converted to transfatty acids. Even unsaturated fats then begin to behave like saturated fats, raising cholesterol levels. Very high temperatures (as in deep frying) applied to oils generate hydrocarbons that can cause cancer. And, if the oil is reheated, the fat may develop cancer-producing agents acrolein and benzopyrene.
Fresh fears have been raised over the safety of cooked foods
(Daily Telegraph 3.12.07)
For many years now scientists have known about acrylamides – substances created by cooking that can cause cancer. It’s only recently that further studies have resulted in this news reaching the mainstream media, making headline news in national newspapers in 2007. The Daily Telegraph reported that acrylamides, caused by frying, roasting or grilling, could double the risk of ovarian and womb cancer in women. A spokesman from the Foods Standard Agency is quoted as saying that it was not possible to avoid the chemical entirely ‘since acrylamide forms naturally in a wide variety of cooked foods, it is not possible to have a healthy balanced diet that avoids it’.
Oh isn’t it?
It's sad, although also quite amusing, hearing scientists talk of the 'advantages' of cooking. Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (reported in The Economist Feb 2009), describes raw foodists as 'faddists' and says that 'without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body's energy) can't keep running.' (At time of writing mine's done three years so far, so guess it'll conk out pretty soon.)
Cooked food dehydrates us
Are you fed up with being told you have to drink eight glasses of
water a day? Does anybody do that? Well, if you’re on a cooked-food
diet, you need to be doing that! That’s because when food is cooked 80%
of its water content can be lost. Dehydration has been linked to many
major diseases (Dr Batmanghelidj ‘Your Body’s Many Cries for Water’).
Now, if you have an apple in the house, go eat it, and be aware of how
much water you are gulping down at the same time…There is so much debate about the relative merits of bottled, ionised, distilled water etc. But the very best water for our bodies is found within raw foods (their roots filter out impurities as they grow).
When we receive an imbalance of (denatured) protein, fat and carbohydrate, because the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants have been damaged or destroyed through cooking, when we receive nutrients in proportions different from those the foods were designed to give, there are consequences for our bodies!
When the precious substances in our food (our bodies ‘raw materials’) which have been put there to nourish and protect us, are damaged and destroyed, we suffer illness and disease.
If someone or something wished to cause the premature demise of as many people as possible, and to cause as much suffering as possible along the way, what better way than to hide something so deadly in something that can so delude the senses, be not only socially acceptable but virtually mandatory in many societies, and something that human beings teach others to do, from babyhood!
If you want life,
as opposed to ‘existence’,
eat your food as nature intended –
beautifully, deliciously, purely,
RAW
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