The prominent proponent of traditional foods and brilliant blogger, Stephan Guyenet, has mentioned glycation end-products (AGEs) as a potential cause of the link between processed meats and gastric cancer: "Nitrate: a Protective Factor in Leafy Greens
Cancer Link and Food Sources," Thursday, June 10, 2010,
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/06/nitrate-protective-factor-in-leafy.html. Stephan indicated that he will blog more about it in the future.
Combined with Dr. William Davis' recent comments about AGEs, this is quite a one-two punch in support of recognizing cooking (particularly modern, high-heat cooking in the presence of modern vegetable oils and refined carbs) as a factor in the diseases of civilization like cancer.
Stephan will likely argue that traditional forms of cooking sufficiently reduce the danger from AGEs, but this is still encouraging. I agree that traditional cooking methods tend to be less toxic than modern methods, but I see raw as generally even better when eating foods that don't require cooking to reduce their toxin levels or make them edible.
