The Perils of cooked and processed food

Human diets have never before contained so many altered foods. One must only go into a grocery store to see the endless shelves of processed foods stripped of almost all their nutrients, PLUS most contain substances completely foreign to our bodies such as MSG and trans fats (the bad fats!). The irony is most people can eat up to 4000 calories a day and still be extremely deficient in vitamins and minerals. This deficiency can drive us to crave and graze on junk food all day in attempt to correct our deficiencies and never be totally satisfied. Therefore we can see why adding nutrient rich foods to our diet can calm cravings, balance mood swings, increase energy, strengthen the immune system and help weight loss!

Processed foods = any food substance which was man made in a factory with altered or refined ingredients and packaged to sit on shelves for in stores for weeks or months e.g. cookies, cereals, microwavable ‘instant’ meals. Most are filled with preservatives, sodium, artificial flavours and colorings and hydrogenated oils and contain corn and soy fillers most of which are generally modified.

Did you know: domestic animals that eat the processed foods humans feed them will eventually develop some of the same dietary illnesses that plague humans such as arthritis, obesity, diabetes and cancer! Pets can also benefit from a raw food diet just as much as humans can, I am going to put our dog Lucy on a raw food diet for dogs too as she is overweight for her little Maltese body!

Cooking depletes the nutritional content of our food by damaging the nutrients and vitality as well as making it more difficult to  assimilate the remaining nutrients.

At 45-48C the enzyme begin to break down and lose their catalytic power.

At 57C we destroy the vitamins and phytonutrients (antioxidants). Minerals are not affected by heat but if we boil our food minerals will be lost in water. Just think human skin burns and our skin cells die at 54C!

At around 71C the sugars in carbohydrate-rich foods such as potatoes and grain products begin to caramelize making them less effective as an energy source.

Cooked vegetable have also lost much of their fibre content which makes them less effective at sweeping our digestive system. While cooking may decrease contents in foods, certain toxins and carcinogens are formed when high heat is used. Heated high fat and high protein animal foods creates advanced glycation end products (AGEs) which have been shown to increase blood pressure, create wrinkles and accelerate aging. Heating starched with oils (like when making french fries, breads, cookies) creates acrylamides, a substance responsible for giving foods their brown colour when cooked yet also known to cause cancer in laboratory animals. 

Cooking meats creates heterocyclic amines (HCAs) which is another carcinogenic compound most abundant in well done, fried and BBQ meats. HCAs have been linked to stomach, pancreatic, colorectal and breast cancers according to the National Cancer Institute. The body has a number of mechanisms to protect us from cancer development but the more regularly we eat these foods such as on a daily basis week after week and year after year, the more likely we are of acquiring these cancers by overwhelming our bodies protective mechanisms. Hence unfortunately cancers are on the rise, but it is up to ourselves to stop it! 

In the 1930s, a Swiss scientist Dr Paul Kouchakoff studied the effects of leukocytosis (a rise in white blood cells). In leukocytosis, white blood cells rise quite significantly after eating cooked, canned and especially processed foods BUT after conducting over 300 experiements, Dr Kouchakoff showed that this response does not occur after people at raw foods. Leokocytosis is a normal response in the body in an inflammatory response or in infections such as by parasites and even strenuous exercise and pregnancy. The study although old is only just coming back for use as evidence into benefits into raw food diets. There may be a number of reasons why this study was neglected but may ultimately be put down to the fact that with our high consumption of cooked and processed foods the digestive leukocytosis has become a common phenomenon and not pathological. However, the increase in white blood cells is our bodies reaction to a foreign invader in cooked and processed food! The good news is it can be reduced by increasing the proportion of raw food in your diet, furthermore eggs, rare or smoked meats and milks and yoghurts were not known to produce leukocytosis. 

But what does leukocytosis do? It is basically one of your bodies way of saying it is under stress. Symptoms depend on the underlying cause and the extent of leukocytosis but may all include bruising, fever, lethargy and weakness,dizziness, sweating, and fainting. However these symptoms can be due to numerous conditions or deficiencies and should not be used to make specific diagnoses. It is always important to check with a medical health practitioner if such symptoms are experienced.