I've been thinking on this. It's probably stupid but my mind sometimes latches onto these thoughts and gets philosophical.

The impression I get from many of the websites I've found is that "RAW", in relation to the raw food diet means not only uncooked but unprocessed. I think mostly because of how commercial processing can produce heat which can destroy the living energy of the foods, but that's not usually mentioned in the ones I've read. The dangers of processed foods (refined sugars, flours, etc.) are usually established but not the intricacies how processing causes this effect.

I think there's several things that most I've read/heard seem to agree on concerning processing as it relates to foods.
1) While their may be SOME nutrients that get released from cooking or processing, the benefit does NOT outweigh the "cost" as the benefit is usually so minimal.
2)Processing foods has a tendancy to cause a change in the food such as it literally poisons our system with toxins to the point that our body has to build up a protective system from the toxins and this actually prevents us from absorbing otherwise available nutrients that are needed by our bodies.
3) The exception to this is limited home processing in a fashion that doesn't heat up the foods. Green smoothies would be a great example of this. The cell walls of the plant get broken down by the blender or food processor in a fashion that allows our bodies easier access to the nutrients held within.

I haven't seen much in the discussion of HOW water is also an exception to the processing rule.

Think about it. Water is the most important nutrients in our lives. Our bodies are over 70% water. Yet with all the pollution abounding in todays society if we did not process and filter the water most of us don't have a natural watersource available that isn't some how affected by this problem.

I've even read articles on raw websites that chant the mantra "If you don't filter your water, your body will be the filter". This is a sad but unfortunate truth.

Humans, as a collective society, have almost eliminated the earth's ability to filter our water for us, as the ecology system was designed to do.

I wonder exactly how great is the task of reversing this and putting our planet back into repair enough where we can drink from it's artesian springs and its rivers without fear of toxins.

[rawfoodtrip.blogspot.com]
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[1) While their may be SOME nutrients that get released from cooking or processing, the benefit does NOT outweigh the "cost" as the benefit is usually so minimal. ]

I'd make two exceptions for this.

a. the high protein animal foods that we generally avoid: if you don't cook them, you can get worms, nematodes, salmonella, etc.

b. high starch plant foods: if you don't cook them, you might not get much food value out of them. This would include legumes, that are generally toxic when uncooked.

[I wonder exactly how great is the task of reversing this and putting our planet back into repair enough where we can drink from it's artesian springs and its rivers without fear of toxins.]

Heh. We'd have to eliminate almost all of the private transporation sector, industry and agriculture and most of the people, too. A sustainable population is estimated to be somewhere between 200 million and 1 billion. A single dairy farm can increase nitrate levels to unacceptable levels throughout an entire county. Ditto for a cement factory. So it's easy to give up dairy, but have you given up your car? A lot of people don't want cement plants in their counties but they don't seem to be willing to give up their cars, their use of the roads, etc.

My opinion:

-People need to be a lot less concerned about changing the world....and a lot more concerned about changing themselves and providing a good example. This is certainly work enough. If only a fraction of society could cut their addiction to processed foods - and grow their own.........then EVERY other hurtful industry would be reduced proportionately......maybe even damaged to the point of non-profitabiliy. Let's face it....until a damaging industry or practice can be reduced to being non-profitable....then some one will jump in the gap and continue the practice. LOL.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

arugula Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> [1) While their may be SOME nutrients that get
> released from cooking or processing, the benefit
> does NOT outweigh the "cost" as the benefit is
> usually so minimal. ]
>
> I'd make two exceptions for this.
>

I agree but the RV diet typically stays away from ALL animal products, even making vegan sushi. Its a pretty smart health practice (save possibly gourmet rv foods. They're fun but I wonder about their quality of health).

One thing I wonder about: I have about 10 vegan frends here locally, and several others world wide. Some argue that honey is ok but some argue that it is an animal product. I've always considered insects to be a type of animal. I know science categorizes them differently but they're a live oranism that has more than one sensory means and can and do move about. With that thinking I can't see using honey because the bee ingests the flower nectar and pukes it back out before fanning it to condense it. How can that be healthy?

[rawfoodtrip.blogspot.com]
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hehe bee puke hehe

everytime i see the honey argument i invision two little bees hovering over each other holding back each others wings .. you ok maaaaaaaaaan !! whoa wasnt that a partyyyyyyy?!

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

hehe bee puke hehe

everytime i see the honey argument i invision two little bees hovering over each other holding back each others wings .. you ok maaaaaaaaaan !! whoa wasnt that a partyyyyyyy?!

LOL!!!!

I just did a comparison of fresh v. dried apricots, equal kcal servings.

Compared to fresh, dried has

50% of the protein
63% of the vitamin A equivalent
78% of the folate
17% of the B3
50% of the B5

That's a lot of loss for something that isn't supposed to be all that destructive.

arugula Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I just did a comparison of fresh v. dried
> apricots, equal kcal servings.
>
> Compared to fresh, dried has
>
> 50% of the protein
> 63% of the vitamin A equivalent
> 78% of the folate
> 17% of the B3
> 50% of the B5
>
> That's a lot of loss for something that isn't
> supposed to be all that destructive.

Wow! that really is! They don't even list the enzymes in most nutritional lists. I wonder what it does to the enzymes. That's the most important part of eating living foods, getting the enzymes you normally don't. If drying foods loses that much in nutrients just think of what it can do to the enzymes.

[rawfoodtrip.blogspot.com]
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I think that many of them are destroyed in the stomach by the stomach's HCl secretion when food is present. But some may survive, like bromelain and papain. Or if they don't, whatever they get broken down into is still somewhat beneficial.

The chain is like this: proteins-peptides-smaller peptides-individual aminos. Since enzymes in foods are proteins and since mostly they work at neutral pH we can expect that most of them will be broken down on digestion.

I don't think that enzymes are the most important reasons for eating undaamged food.

I would say more generally, avoidance of damaged proteins is one reason to eat more uncooked food.

Another is avoidance of damaged fats.

A third is avoidance of damaged phytochemicals.

Another is avoidance of damaged vitamins.

Final reasons: avoidance of damaged sugars and starches.

Reasonably healthy people will excrete most of these damaged products. But probably not 100% of them. I am not sure how much we can gain by avoiding them entirely but I think it is at least a little bit.

That's interesting. I recall reading about how our body produces digestive enzymes in order to digest our cooked foods because we've destroyed the enzymes in the food. I can't remember where I read this but I gathered from it that the foods have the enzymes in them we need to digest them with and that as we eat foods fresh from the plant it doesn't deplete our own enzymes.

Is this incorrect?

Which enzymes are used for digestion, if at all and which enzymes are destroyed in the digestive process? Thanks .

[rawfoodtrip.blogspot.com]
[jugglingforjoy.com]

[I recall reading about how our body produces digestive enzymes in order to digest our cooked foods because we've destroyed the enzymes in the food. I can't remember where I read this but I gathered from it that the foods have the enzymes in them we need to digest them with and that as we eat foods fresh from the plant it doesn't deplete our own enzymes.]

Is this incorrect?

Yes, it is incorrect. We produce enzymes to digest our food.

In the mouth:
salivary amylase to begin breaking down carbohydrates.

In the stomach:
pepsin to start breaking down proteins

In the small intestine lumen (this is where most digestion takes place):
pancreatic amylase to break down disaccharides
pancreatic trypsin and chymotrypsin to break peptides down into smaller peptides
pancreatic carboxypeptidase to break down small peptides into aminos
pancreatic nucleases to break down DNA and RNA into nucleotides
bile salts from the liver to make fat globules smaller droplets, and pancreatic lipase to break the droplets into glycerol, fatty acids, and glycerides

In the brush border of the small intestine's epithelium:
further breakdown of disaccharides into monosaccharides
dipetidases, carboxypeptidase, and aminopeptidase continue peptide breakdown to make aminos
nucleotidases to make nucleosides from nucleotides
nucleosidases and phosphatidases to make nitrogenous bases, sugars, and phosphates

The enzyme activity present in plants is probably irrelevant to the digestive process, except that enzymes are proteins and can provide amino acids when they are broken down.

If you have powerpoint, there is a nice chart in .ppt format here, it's a few Mb IIRC:
[sps.k12.ar.us]

I am not sure how all the hoopla about plant enzymes got started, it's not a good argument for raw. Destruction of enzymes in plant foods is probably just a marker for damage in general.

cool Arugula an thanks for the link

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

Gosh arugula,
I sure missed you and all of your informative posts. Thanks for being more active here lately.
InnerBeauty

Yes, thank you for the link. I'm going to try to study it tonight. This is really helpful .

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