Cooked Foods

So what happens when you cook food?
Why might a diet high in raw foods be better?

1. When food is cooked above 117 degrees F for three minutes or longer, nutritional damage takes place.
2. Proteins begin coagulating and delaminating - leading to deficiency of some essential amino acids
3. Carbohydrates caramelize: overly heated fats generate numerous carcinogens including acrolein, nitrosamines, hydrocarbons, and benzopyrene (one of the most potent cancer-causing agents known)
   
4. Cooked proteins are readily putrefied by bacteria in the digestive tract and give rise to some very potent poisons such as ptomaine's, leukomaines, mercaptans, indoles, skatoles, ammonias, hydrogen sulfide, putrescine, cadaverine and more. These are absorbed into the blood and cause myriad's of disease conditions
5. Minerals quickly lose their organic context and are returned to their native state as they occur in soil, sea water, rocks, metals and so on. In such a state they are unusable and the body often shunts them aside where they may combine with saturated fats and cholesterol in the circulatory system, thus clogging it up with their cement-like plaque. Over 90% of Americans have plaque in their arteries!
6. Natural fibers break down: cellulose is completely changed from its natural condition: it loses its ability to sweep the alimentary canal clean, 30% to 50% of vitamins and minerals are destroyed,
7. 100% of enzymes are damaged: the body's enzyme potential is depleted which drains energy needed to maintain and repair tissue and organ systems, thereby shortening our life span
8. Pesticides are restructured into even more toxic compounds
9. Valuable oxygen is lost: free radicals are produced
10. Cooked food pathogens enervate the immune system
11. Heat degenerates nucleic acids and chlorophyll
12. Cooked foods not only take longer to digest but often prove to be indigestible and unassailable as in the case of heated proteins. Cooked foods quickly ferment and putrefy in the intestinal tract while living foods are almost totally absorbed before they're oxidized enough for yeast and bacterial ferments and putrefaction.

As temperature rises, each of these damaging events reduces the availability of individual nutrients. Modern food processing not only strips away natural anti-cancer agents, but searing heat forms potent cancer-producing chemicals in the process. Alien food substances are created that the body cannot metabolize.

Sources: JuiceFeasting.com & living-foods.com