Raw food – yes or no?

Raw food - yes or no? Do we really need to blindly follow trends?

The world was not predetermined for cooked food and almost all health problems result from consuming thermally treated food. Why?

Enzymes make this world alive! Everything revolves around enzymes, there would be no world without them. They can disintegrate food, any organic material, wood (cellulose) or even plastic. Enzymes are destroyed by cooking, thus disturbing the natural balance. When consuming raw food we also bring natural allies into our body!

This thesis is especially favoured by raw food fans and is very tempting. However, things are a little bit different; humans, animals and plants all have their own different enzyme systems. They are not incompatible, yet supplementary. For instance: papain from papaya and bromelin from tropic leaves can serve for medical purposes.

The use of cooked (roasted) food puts constant pressure on enzyme production which can cause acute deficiency in the human body.

The largest world poisonings with thousands of endangered lives occurred as a result of using thermally untreated food, not to mention parasites.

Raw food fans support their arguments with tests conducted at the University of Minnesota in the USA, where it has been found that cooked food in tested animals resulted in a 30% higher production of pancreas enzymes. Such "forcing" exhausts the body and the higher the exploitation, the shorter the lifetime.

The adaptability of the enzyme system has in this case certainly been forgotten. The Indian cobra, for example, eats other snakes together with their skin, which you must admit requires very strong enzymes. After that it can be without food for 7 days. If there were no adaptability, such snack would cause total enzyme deficiency.

Due to the very fear of enzyme lack, raw food fans eat wheat germs (sprouts). During the sprout process all possible enzymes are created in the seed. Only food in its raw state contains "active" enzymes so they believe that by eating raw sprouts the body will make use of these enzymes! Of course, here the fact that enzymes are organic molecules that are active only until the stomach digests them is neglected.

Raw food fan groups

Among the raw food fans there are groups that differ from each other.

• The group that mainly consumes sprouts and call themselves "Sproutarians" are quite numerous.
• Then there are "Living Fooders" who belong to the group of vegans. They use sprouts, fermented food and some mixed food, neglecting everything else.
• "Natural hygienists" consume raw fruit, vegetables, sprouts and seeds.
• There are also "Instinctive Eaters" inspired by the food of the prehistoric man, who consume food only on the grounds of smell and taste (interestingly seafood is also included here).
• A special and extremely large group are the "Fruitarians" who eat mainly fruit (about 75% of the daily intake) justifying it with the fact that, for example, a bear can grow big and become dangerous only on fruit.
• Very similar are juice fruit fans who due to the large intake of liquids are called "Liquidarians". Such food luckily lasts for a shorter period and has the purpose of "purifying" the body.
• "Vitarians" are a totally new group who promote that food has to come mainly from fermented milk products (yoghurt, kefir and buttermilk) with little raw vegetables and fruit.

Of course, it is not necessary to specially mention those who eat raw eggs, raw fish and shell-fish, or even raw (live) shrimps. This only supports the rule that everyone is the master of their own stomach.

Spoilage of raw food

Raw food "fails" on infections. We did not start thermal food treatment just for fun, yet out of need.

Cooking destroys enzymes from food but makes food safer. Cooking destroys microorganisms, toxins, drug residues ...

At the end of the 19th century mortality from food poisoning was extremely high, but not diagnosed. There was no television, no telephone, so nothing was known. Children who were persuaded by their parents to drink uncooked cow milk, would get bowel tuberculosis and people (sportsmen) who started eating raw eggs often had problems with salmonella. Those who drank sheep or goat milk would get the Bang disease or Brucella Melitensis.

A huge amount of food regularly deteriorated due to the process of deterioration as there was no way of preserving it. There are two basic findings that enabled mankind a sigh of relief - Appert's sterilisation pot and the pasteurisation procedure for milk.

The genius chemist Louis Pasteur was the first man who realised that infected food was dangerous, primarily raw food. It can only be preserved and secured by cooking.

Napoleon was the first person who realised (based on his own experience) that there is no war without preserved food, so he ordered the manufacture of sterilisors. Death of soldiers caused by intestine infections at that time was worse than from war operations. Chlorinating water reduced or completely stopped mass epidemics caused by intestine diseases.

The first imperfect technological procedures for food treatment were followed by others, more precise, all up to the sterilisation of spices by ion radiation. Cooked food is safe, and everything else which is written about it, is less important. Apart from microbiological pollution, cooking destroys the largest amount of pesticide residue, of which many are carcinogenic, various vegetable and animal toxins, veterinary medicine residue and other.