New wave of anti-meat studies in newspapers

[Nation]

I've come across several recently on the front page of many news websites/newspaper. They are getting even more ridiculous than before, look at this one

"Eggs worse than KFC Double Down"
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/11/03/15935426.html


"Single egg yolk can double coronary risk: study
Three researchers say it's a myth that dietary cholesterol is not a concern for heart, stroke"

They suggest replacing meat with sunflower oil.

[TylerDurden]

The trouble is they are only partially right but for the wrong reasons. All those anti-meat studies focus on cooked and processed meats which invariably contain hefty amounts of heat-created toxins in them, which raw meats do not.

[cliff]

They base there reasoning on not eating eggs on the fact it contains a decent amount of cholesterol, yet they ignore every other nutrient...

Chris masterjohn just posted a really good blog post about the connection between choline deficiency and fatty liver disease.  Seems these dietary recommendations are really hurting us as we are told not to eat the foods richest in choline(egg yolks and organs) and people actually listen to that garbage.

tyler most these anti-meat studies are observational studies and are probably largely false or very skewed for the most part.  Not saying Heat created toxins may not be a part in the puzzle but we don't really have a lot of conclusive evidence for that.  Chris masterjohn actually just put out another blog posting recently that debunks a lot of the AGEs stuff.  Excess consumption of fructose, PUFAs and deficient diets are a whole different story.

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/cholesterol-blog.html for the blog posts

[yuli]

I am beginning to hate all studies with a passion, everything I read I don't believe anymore, to make a real study just try it out on yourself and you will know. All these studies are done with one bias or another behind them, grrrr.

[yuli]

... most these anti-meat studies are observational studies and are probably largely false or very skewed for the most part.  Not saying Heat created toxins may not be a part in the puzzle but we don't really have a lot of conclusive evidence for that....

Exactly! Yes AGEs are bad mmmm-kay, being born and breathing air is bad too...its all dependent on so many things, we cant offer a complete solution by stating such simple things - like only eat raw meat and your problems will be solved, or don't eat any plant foods and your problems will be solved, it sounds the same as the studies saying don't eat cholesterol and eggs and your problems will be solved. Basically it makes people sound stupid.

They can't even tell me HOW MANY AGE's are produced when you sear the average steak, c'mon, we are afraid of something so much yet we don't know what it is or how much of it we can really have (seeing as we have it naturally in our body), we can't even measure it or let people know which foods contain how many AGEs, and exactly how many AGEs you get rid of in how long fasting? If we can't know that then avoiding anything with an AGE like the plague is stupid IMO.

For all we know a certain amount of AGEs may be good for us! But we don't know cause we don't even know which foods have how much as we are too dumb to measure them. I can't even go to the doctor and measure my AGE level, why not, how useless is that.

That is why I just try to do it in moderation, I eat lots of raw stuff, and cooked stuff sometimes as well as long as its good food.
I have seen plenty enough young looking healthy people that die old and consume some AGEs, so people need to relax.

Its good to eat raw food a lot, that is of no doubt, but to shun cooked food like plague because of these AGE monsters, I think then thats being in fantasy land, I don't see any AGE-non-eating people that are so more super healthy then any healthy eating people that consume some AGEs, really there is not much difference.

I know Tyler you will disagree but thats just my opinion and at least you can see my reason for thinking as I do.

[laterade]

I am beginning to hate all studies with a passion, everything I read I don't believe anymore, to make a real study just try it out on yourself and you will know. All these studies are done with one bias or another behind them, grrrr.

I think it is quite freeing once you become comfortable with trusting your instincts.
Studying studies takes up too much time anyway, and you will always find another that conflicts. This is not to say studying is a complete waste of time, just luxury. People usually only study ideas that support their predetermined position anyway.

[TylerDurden]

There is, of course, a  huge amount of difference. As I pointed out already, there are now literally 1,000s of studies focusing on the harm done by heat-created toxins derived from cooking(which are easily found via just  a little effort by looking at pubmed and similiar sites). Here is just a small sample thereof:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods

As for the amount of AGEs in foods, that , of course, depends on how much a food is cooked etc., though I have in the past noted 1 or 2 online tables, here and there, listing rough amounts of AGEs in cooked foods of various kinds. The obvious, logical step is to simply eat all foods raw and thus avoid any potential issues, of course.


Cliff, I am afraid that Chris Masterjohn and similiar gurus like Ray Peat are extremely biased on the subject. For example, the studies they refer to which damn fructose invariably concentrate wholly on refined fructose, such as found mainly in corn-syrup, or highly processed PUFA-rich vegetable-oils. These gurus then make a disgracefully false premise in stating that therefore all fructose, even unprocessed fructose and all vegetables, even raw, unprocessed solid vegetables, are bad.

As for the studies damning cooked foods, particularly saturated fats, there are now so many online that it is absurd to even suggest that they must all be wrong. Science is determined by the number of studies favouring each particular side. When, as in this case, there are 1,000s of studies damning the consumption of cooked foods, including cooked meats, and very, very few studies showing benefits therefrom, then it is only logical and scientifically plausible to assume, for now, that raw foods are healthier.


As regards those 1,000s of studies, while some are flawed re methodology(just like some of those studies favouring cooked meats) there are too many which are solid in scope for them to be arbitrarily dismissed. (Please don't mention Taubes as he himself has been exposed as a complete hypocrite in the media and damned as unscientific in the extreme, judging from 2 very scorching articles online.


I should add that the only flaw re the 1,000s of studies damning cooked meats is that they, in much the same way as those pro-cooked-meat-advocates, made a false assumption:- they only studied the consumption of cooked-meats and yet ignorantly stated that all meats were to blame(as they wrongly assumed that no one ate raw meat as a major part of their diet). As for those studies dalning saturated fats, they merely made 1 false assumption, though their actual results were right on target, as such.


"The formation of exogenous (outside the body) advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and oxidation products generated during cooking may be a confounding factor that some studies may not have controlled for. It has been suggested that, "given the prominence of this type of food in the human diet, the deleterious effects of high-(saturated)fat foods may be in part due to the high content in glycotoxins, above and beyond those due to oxidized fatty acid derivatives." The glycotoxins, as he called them, are more commonly called AGEs.[32]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Confounding_factors

[TylerDurden]

I think it would be a good idea to post, on rawpaleodiet.com, a really detailed analysis of the harm done to food(and indirectly to human health) by cooking. I realise long-term RVAFers have already read much of the scientific data on the subject, but it would be useful to simply make a link to 1 huge article, when mentioning raw benefits to newbies,  rather than rehash stuff already discussed here ages ago. There is already a lot of diverse info on the web, anyway, re pointing out that 2 types of heat-created toxins found in cooking(heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons/PAHs) are also toxins found in cigarette-smoke(and also car-exhaust fumes in the case of PAHs) etc., so it's a good idea to keep as much info on the subject in 1 spot.

[cliff]

There is, of course, a  huge amount of difference. As I pointed out already, there are now literally 1,000s of studies focusing on the harm done by heat-created toxins derived from cooking(which are easily found via just  a little effort by looking at pubmed and similiar sites).

Show me just one study that inconclusively links AGEs to any form of disease.  For us to prove that AGEs have any harm we would have to have one group that doesn't eat AGEs and one that does, does this study exist?  I dunno but I would love to see it.  Now don't think what I'm saying is that heat created toxins have no role in disease but you claiming that its pretty much one of the biggest contributors without conclusive evidence is laughable.

Cliff, I am afraid that Chris Masterjohn and similiar gurus like Ray Peat are extremely biased on the subject. For example, the studies they refer to which damn fructose invariably concentrate wholly on refined fructose, such as found mainly in corn-syrup, or highly processed PUFA-rich vegetable-oils.

Chris masterjohn just posted a recent blog post regarding a study comparing starches, honey and refined glucose/fructose in the same concentrations as honey.  Guess what starch and honey had similar effects on health while the fructose/glucose mixture had greater negative effects on health. So I don;t think that his position is that fructose=fruit/honey etc. These people aren't gurus imo but they have some decent insights and there research isn't null and void because you say so.

[yuli]

.... Science is determined by the number of studies favouring each particular side. When, as in this case, there are 1,000s of studies damning the consumption of cooked foods, including cooked meats, and very, very few studies showing benefits therefrom, then it is only logical and scientifically plausible to assume, for now, that raw foods are healthier.....

That is why following these studies is faulty! Exactly because all studies are made to favor a particular side. Studies are like history, they are stories based on peoples biases, thats all, everyone has to come to their own conclusion of what works and what doesn't. Who cares if there are many studies on the subject? There are just as many studies, detailed and scientific ones, that say eating lots of whole grains is a very good diet, how is that any different. 

Of course there will be fewer studies showing benefits of meat (raw or cooked), they are always trying to tell us not to eat much of it anyway.

If they can use AGEs as an excuse to make people eat less meat then they will do it. How great is that? They can stop people from eating raw meat by saying it will kill you, and they can stop people eating cooked meat because OMG AGEs! lol....I can see where they are going with this.

How many studies are showing eating raw meat will make you sick, that also bullshit, as much bullshit as eating cooked meat will make you sick, no.... eating too much cooked meat will maybe make you sick, how much is too much? Measure for yourself man.

I am eating raw meat and cooked meat and I am doing great! Cooked chicken - gimmie it! Raw steak - gimmie it! lol

Of course raw eating people will say any cooked food in any way is the devil, how surprising 
You can't assume anything because of how many studies are done on it, it is better to assume things based on how you feel, using your own instincts, your brain, and studying yourself, the people around you etc. basically you should know that anyone following any diet will have a bias to that diet and favor a side, its the way people are, we all want an easy solution or a complete answer, but we can't have one, so we need to make up stories, studies etc.

WTF is a guru anyway, and when does someone transition to becoming a diet guru? Tyler are you guru too? I think you might be 

[yuli]

....There is already a lot of diverse info on the web, anyway, re pointing out that 2 types of heat-created toxins found in cooking(heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons/PAHs) are also toxins found in cigarette-smoke(and also car-exhaust fumes in the case of PAHs) etc....

That doesn't prove anything either....Mercury is in fish and we can eat lots of fish without getting mercury poisoning.
You can smoke one cigarette every other day and live to be 100 years old, one of the longest living woman smoked 2 cigs a day right up until she died. I forgot her name she has an article on wiki.
How does eating one cooked chicken leg compare to smoking a cigarette? Do we know that. NO we don't know that.
Besides, I know a person that smokes every day and exercises a lot, his lung capacity is better then the average non-smoker, and he can kick their asses, its a matter of a lot more variables then just one simple by-product is what I am trying to say.

[TylerDurden]

That doesn't prove anything either....Mercury is in fish and we can eat lots of fish without getting mercury poisoning.
You can smoke one cigarette every other day and live to be 100 years old, one of the longest living woman smoked 2 cigs a day right up until she died. I forgot her name she has an article on wiki.
How does eating one cooked chicken leg compare to smoking a cigarette? Do we know that. NO we don't know that.
Besides, I know a person that smokes every day and exercises a lot, his lung capacity is better then the average non-smoker, and he can kick their asses, its a matter of a lot more variables then just one simple by-product is what I am trying to say.

  Actually it does prove a hell of a lot. For one thing, there are now so many studies damning smoking(or indeed air pollution) re negative health-effects therefrom that it is very difficult to deny this convincingly. Whereas for the mercury-claims, the science damning mercury-in-fish notions is incredibly weak with the well-known Seychelles study debunking the whole notion that mercury in trace amounts is toxic. Very poor, very lame comparison, I'm afraid.

As for the exercise comment, that is just incredibly lame. Of course, there are ways to reduce toxicity such as eating less cooked foods or doing some exercise, but most people do not practise these methods anyway, and the fact that exercise reduces AGEs to a small extent does not mean that cooked foods are not toxic in and of themselves - to assume such is a classic case of  false logic.

[TylerDurden]

Show me just one study that inconclusively links AGEs to any form of disease.  For us to prove that AGEs have any harm we would have to have one group that doesn't eat AGEs and one that does, does this study exist?  I dunno but I would love to see it.  Now don't think what I'm saying is that heat created toxins have no role in disease but you claiming that its pretty much one of the biggest contributors without conclusive evidence is laughable.

No, what you have just stated is absolutely laughable(and I think you meant conclusive, not inconclusive!). If you had bothered to do some simple online research, you would by now have found some online studies which not only show that AGEs cause health-problems( I just recently posted 1 link containing references to a dozen such studies,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods


There are plenty of other studies which show that those who lowered their AGE-intake by adopting diets with low levels of AGEs, invariably improved their health-problems as a result, which is pretty conclusive.
but some searching on pubmed would reveal 1,000s more, of course). And it has already been shown in some studies that lowering AGE-levels leads to improvement in certain conditions while increasing them makes conditions worse(sample:-

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/53/7/1813.abstract

The info on AGEs is now mainstream:-

http://www.diabetesaction.org/site/PageNavigator/Complementary%20Corner/complementary_december_06

so anti-AGE diatribes by such as Chris Masterjohn are really just crackpot, fringe notions.

Chris masterjohn just posted a recent blog post regarding a study comparing starches, honey and refined glucose/fructose in the same concentrations as honey.  Guess what starch and honey had similar effects on health while the fructose/glucose mixture had greater negative effects on health. So I don;t think that his position is that fructose=fruit/honey etc. These people aren't gurus imo but they have some decent insights and there research isn't null and void because you say so.

The trouble with the fanatical anti-PUFA/pro-cooked-SFA crowd is that they only cherry-pick 1 or 2 studies which damn fructose in fruit(though 99.9 percent of the time it focuses on refined fructose anyway), while blithely ignoring the 1,000s of other studies which show health-benefits for eating fructose-rich fruits and veg. Simply put, science favours the big battalions. When there are only a very few studies favouring 1 side, and 1,000s of studies favouring the opposite side, then scientists in general can be assured that the opposite side is right. After all, in science, it is perfectly possible to make 1 or 2 seriously flawed studies with bad methodologies supporting 1 side such as the pro-cooked-meat studies, but far, far more difficult to make numerous fatal mistakes in every single one of 1,000s of such studies.

[TylerDurden]

That is why following these studies is faulty! Exactly because all studies are made to favor a particular side. Studies are like history, they are stories based on peoples biases, thats all, everyone has to come to their own conclusion of what works and what doesn't. Who cares if there are many studies on the subject? There are just as many studies, detailed and scientific ones, that say eating lots of whole grains is a very good diet, how is that any different. 

Of course there will be fewer studies showing benefits of meat (raw or cooked), they are always trying to tell us not to eat much of it anyway.

WTF is a guru anyway, and when does someone transition to becoming a diet guru? Tyler are you guru too? I think you might be 

No, a guru is someone who demands money in return for providing supplements or books or advice or whatever. I do not ask for cash  so am not a guru, whereas Chris Masterjohn commands some fees at times so is one.

The above claim re studies reminds me of those kooks who claim that UFOs supposedly exist simply based on the fact that governments all over the world deny their existence. The whole point re science is that, while much of science is dominated by bias or incompetence or corruption, it advances by peer review etc. In other words, a foolish notion such as the pro-cooked-meat nonsense or Lysenkoism may well continue for decades, but there are too many different scientists with wholly differing viewpoints(not necessarily mainstream) who can do studies damning those viewpoints  over the years, for those ideas to be able to flourish in the long-term. You can claim, anyway, that some of those anti-cooked-meats studies are biased, but certainly not all of them as that would be illogical. And even 1 percent of all those studies way outnumbers any studies favouring the pro-cooked-meat claims.

[yuli]

Well if what I say reminds you of the cooks that think UFOs are real then what you say reminds me of the cooks that say raw meat will kill you and that grains are essential for a good diet, as its based on the same type of studies and the same faulty thinking.

And no, exercising and eating a good balanced diet is NOT lame Tyler! How is that lame? Then perhaps if more people were "lame" we'd have lots more healthier people around. Its not any more lame then eating exclusively raw untouched food to avoid all these horrible toxins which are sure to bring you to your early demise. 

I'd hardly call the fit and healthy people I know that include cooked foods and even smoke lame...why don't you go up to their face and try to convince them how lame it is what they are doing, and perhaps test out your strength and health as compared to them? heh heh

I would love to see two teams of people compete, one team all raw paleo, the other mixed cooked and raw paleo! Now that would be fun.

Really anyone that states any studies AGAINST YOUR studies you say is laughable....yeah like your opinions are somehow less laughable in comparison? How can that be, I just don't see it perhaps I am an idiot lol

Yes the info on AGEs is becoming "mainstream", and that will make it so much more valid as mainstream info is so true...right...

[TylerDurden]

Well, naturally, you may feel that maisntream ideas are all a load of nonsense, such as the notion that the Earth is round or that gravity exists etc., but most people, scientists included, view things differently. The point re proving the Earth is round or that cooked foods contain health-damaging toxins is that they have been proven by countless studies again and again. By comparison, the number of studies  in favour of cooked animal foods are so minuscule in number that one can safely state that they are likely flawed re methodology etc.


As for your silly claims re raw and cooked people competing, you are, as usual, conveniently forgetting that many cooked-eating athletes take steroids and other artificial substances that rawists generally avoid, so would have an unfair advantage. But, if cooked-foodists and rawists were to compete(without steroids and the like), all being aged c.50-70 and having done such diets their whole lives, there is good reason to believe that the rawists would win as the cooked-foodists would be so weighed down with AGE-related conditions like diabetes etc. by that stage, that they would have no chance.


And it is only you who have pretended foolishly  that we have suggested that eating cooked food kills. Nothing of the sort. We have instead pointed to cooked foods causing harm over a prolonged period, with no suggestion whatsoever  that cooked food is like cyanide or similiar  poison.

[yuli]

...Of course, there are ways to reduce toxicity such as eating less cooked foods or doing some exercise, but most people do not practise these methods anyway, and the fact that exercise reduces AGEs to a small extent does not mean that cooked foods are not toxic in and of themselves - to assume such is a classic case of  false logic.

OMG, you still don't get what I am saying do you...
I am NOT saying that cooked foods don't contain toxins, what I am saying is that whether or not those toxins are relevant in small amounts when you are living a healthy life (which includes getting rid of those toxins on a constant basis naturally) is very very questionable being as there is much living proof against it.

Yeah most people don't exercise or eat a balanced diet, just like most people don't eat enough raw foods, what the hell is the difference then, they are screwed either way.
Is exercising and eating well in general harder then following a diet of exclusively wild raw untouched foods....nopers, the latter is more difficult, but they both will give good results BTW.

But still in your case a person that is healthy despite doing anti-raw things is laughable then people with all these dumb problems trying to eat wild food 100% and then still having dumb problems and blaming it on eating one sausage 3 months ago (ha ha now that is laughable)....what a bunch of baloney....

Forget about athletes and steroids, I am talking about the fact there are VERY FIT HEALTHY people without steroids and they don't eat 100% raw!!!
How come there are people that DON'T take steroids, DON'T have diabetes, still include some cooked food, and can still kick your ass?
You don't think such people can exists. Wake up and smell the roses.

Cooked food causes harm over a prolonged period if you include raw foods and are healthy? How prolonged? Till you're 100 years old?
And if you say you don't pretend that you act like cooked food is cyanide read some of your posts from before, cause it sure as hell sounds like it sometimes.

Living life also causes harm over a prolonged period of time, well duh, cause people have to die eventually, even healthy ones.

[Iguana]

Our former friend and member Alphagruis, physicist, clearly explained that question in a few words:
  

http://nutritionpaleocrue.net/forum/index.php/topic,10.msg19.html#msg19
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Ecologie-Alimentaire/message/5117
We have discussed many times here the real reasons being more than sufficient to explain why it is necessary to eliminate any food cooking:

- That creates a host of highly toxic and reactive molecules from nutrients (and thus destroying a large part, typically up to several tens%!) found there (not just the enzymes or protein, but also sugars, fats, vitamins, antioxidants and all what we do not yet know...)

- It destroys more generally the molecular order of the natural food which corresponds to a subtle arrangement of molecules against each other in space and atoms against each other inside molecules. From the perspective of the nature of life processes, cooking is a total absurdity which destroy in large part what has been built by the living organism who provided the food. Living beings create order (technically decrease entropy and increase free energy of the materials forming them) by synthesizing very complex and remarkable macromolecular structures, and it is precisely that order which gives them their value as food. Cooking a foodstuff just breaks that order, increases its entropy, decreases its free energy and thus its biological value.
(...)
Gerard

I quickly translate as well a part of what I wrote just above on the French Paleocru forum:

http://nutritionpaleocrue.net/forum/index.php/topic,10.msg18.html#msg18
Yet we know that heat can damage or destroy organic molecules. Fire and too hot a temperarture burn - that is to say they disrupt vital processes.

In our physical world, two antagonistic entities oppose: entropy and negentropy. The first slowly brings the universe into chaos while the second has led to increasingly complex and organized living beings. It would be wise to avoid generation of entropy in damaging our food by heating it above the critical temperature.

Life works since the dawn of time with complex carbon-based molecules that are fragile and with biochemical mechanisms that only work properly in a limited temperature range, between approximately 0 ° C and 45 ° C. While  heating, production of countless new chemical species, Maillard molecules or AGEs, increases exponentially. Little is known of most of these substances, except that among the tiny fraction that has been discovered and studied, some are particularly harmful, as acrylamide present in bread, crackers, crisps, French fries and other foods grilled at high temperatures. There is no evidence that new chemical species do not accumulate in our tissues and our cells, very likely causing many different diseases. AGEs are strongly suspected of contributing to cataracts, Alzheimer's disease, arteriosclerosis, osteoarthritis, diabetes, myocardial dysfunction, etc..

All food molecules are not damaged by cooking, but a certain percentage of them only, so that we may well live by eating mostly cooked stuff. The problem is that some peptides, for example, partly split because identified as normal but with a damaged recognition site may cross the wall of the small intestine and end up being stored in the cells. During his life, a human can ingest up to 70 tons of food. If a molecule in ten in this food is abnormal, it will ultimately represent 7 tons of potentially hazardous substances.

[TylerDurden]

Well, you clearly chose to misintepret my past posts. But then, you have been doing so, frequently, in the past, so no surprise there.

As for your other bizarre claims, being physically stronger does not imply greater health. That's just ridiculous. I mean someone could end up bench-pressing huge weights yet die of health-problems(it's happened before with bodybuilders due to unnatural practices such as dehydrating themselves before competitions etc.).

You are missing a rather obvious point. The amount of toxins that the body is able to get rid of each day is minuscule. While it is possible for someone on a 100 percent raw diet to get rid of the minimal traces of toxins in his/her body each day, if such a person loads their body every day, or most days, with cooked foods, then the load of toxins in the body will invariably increase, over time, until some health-problem inevitably occurs. In other words, it is no accident that many of the health-problems associated with toxins from cooked foods are those which are also associated with old age, given decades of cooked food consumption. Now, some people may deteriorate at a slightly slower or a faster rate on a cooked-food diet, due to personal habits such as exercise or caloric restriction or eating junk foods, but they will always get some health problem from cooked foods in the end, if they eat cooked foods regularly.

I think the problem is that you don't feel at all unhealthy on a mixed cooked/raw diet so you naturally think that the same applies to everybody else. Yet, others such as myself have deteriorated nastily on cooked animal foods. I suppose the key factor would be if you deteriorated at a faster rate when reaching old-age compared to those on a higher raw food intake but that could only be checked in a  few decades. But that sort of thing in general  would require long-term studies on RVAF diets and no scientist would dare to study raw-meat-eaters(as yet). For now, all I can safely state is that those who eat a higher percentage of raw(RVAF) usually do far better , on average, than those on lower-raw (RVAF)food intakes.

[yuli]

We wont know unless we really get a group of people 100% raw paleo for their whole life VS group mixed cooked-raw mixed paleo who both do proper exercise and compare them in every way possible (not just physical strength but mental strength, blood tests everything)! Now will will we....
   

As long as you are healthy and happy that is ALL that matters. Even if you can achieve that by eating cyanide, good for you!
Fuck what the studies say...all that matters is results you achieve and how you feel both mental and physically, and for everyone that may vary.

PS. If I misinterpreted you or others I apologize, it is easy to misinterpret people given nothing is really believable in this strange world. And everything we think is based on our own stupidity, scientific or not.

[Iguana]

As long as you are healthy and happy that is ALL that matters. Even if you can achieve that by eating cyanide, good for you!

Many people are healthy and happy for decades on partly cooked food. But sooner or latter so many fall into awfully painful diseases. Sure, we'll all die one day, but we can do it without long and terrible suffering.

[yuli]

For now, all I can safely state is that those who eat a higher percentage of raw(RVAF) usually do far better , on average, than those on lower-raw (RVAF)food intakes.

I agree with that, since including a huge potion of my diet in raw form (both animal and plant) I feel generally better even if I was not really sick before.
One thing I can say is that avoiding grain and breads cures completely the only real problem I had (pimples) lol

Many people are healthy and happy for decades on partly cooked food. But sooner or latter so many fall into awfully painful diseases. Sure, we'll all die one day, but we can do it without long and terrible suffering.

For sure. That is why I make a point of constantly paying close attention to my body and how I feel. Because you don't get sick and deteriorate all of a sudden after eating one sausage (if you do then I have to say you have problems even if you can say well thats cause I am so clean I can't handle a sausage), it happens over time, long time. For most people anyway. So I always analyze how I feel now as a pose to a year ago. I do try to strive to do what makes my body feel better but without striving for perfection, because I think that too can make us blind to particular issues.

....I think the problem is that you don't feel at all unhealthy on a mixed cooked/raw diet so you naturally think that the same applies to everybody else....

Not at all, I actually support the fact that what is working for me may be totally disastrous for someone else. It is only the fact that some people here say these ultimatums that makes me think they are full of crap.

In general I think you guys a have a lot of good points hence why I read what you type, even though I feel compelled to argue, I only do so because what you are saying is valid enough to be arguing with, and that alone is a good point 

[KD]

I can see the skepticism side. You got to figure that these things are much like political surveys..people call you up..and ask if you are busy. When you hang up, some dingbats with nothing to do who say 'no, I would love to talk' end up being the popular opinion. Scientific studies (on humans) try to be more accurate in regards to variables, but the human body and routine is so complex and individualized.

then of course there are indeed the long term studies like The China Study..where the raw data as one can recently see can be interpreted in many different ways, not to mention never really succeeds in isolating the right variables. At the same time, even though these studies can't figure out specifically without a doubt what the problems are outside a vacuum they can at least be a guide towards going in one direction or another in regards to some of these issues.

Like Cliff provided some info on fructose, now there are obviously nutritional camps on each side praising or damning fructose entirely, but if one can prove to a close degree through science that not all fructose is the same - that some are 'better' at least in regards to the issues associated with fructose - then that becomes useful information, at least until some other study comes out stating otherwise. People can still argue forever about the good or bad of fructose of course, but perhaps these studies can halt arguments claiming 'all fructose is the same'. So science can perhaps bring greater closure to debates sprung by science in the first place..



Pointing to long lived peoples as reasons to support x or y is I think in a way is unfair on par with the studies, because you are ignoring many factors that they might have going for them that others might not, just as the studies might wrongfully isolate one factor as causing the problems.

on the reverse, I think citing cooked fooders is fine for certain things (do it myself), for example to talk about issues of fat consumption or fructose or some of these same disputed other things. If the cooked or semi-cooked diet is providing a kind of obvious vitality that an all raw diet is not..then it is worth inspecting that raw diet based on it being high or low in this or that in spite of having less AGEs or other things. It wouldn't prove that cooking was 'harmless' per say even in moderation, that part is equally unknown.

I think its best generally to just focus on accurate information independent of lifestyle choices or degrees of harm. People here tend to be intelligent and can decipher whether to eat food or not based on the importance given to certain studies.

I think once one has a wide variety of scientific and empirical information from a variety of opinions at their disposal, THEN they can make the decision on just how damaging fructose or AGE's or other things are to them.

When it comes down to it..right now it seems the only arguments for cooking (of meat anyway) revolve around inaccurate science and go against everyday accounts and historical accuracy..I personally think its just kind of fun sometimes... I'm still open to the possibility of cooking vegetation and starches that the body does not break down as easily - could be possibly a benefit of cooking generally. If these nutrients turn out to be beneficial/necessary as per science or results, then there would finally be a serious reason to support cooking over the results of AGEs and other detriments.

[PaleoPhil]

TD, like you and Yuli I think there is benefit to raw foods and have experienced some myself. That's something that all three of us appear to agree on. So I don't want to come across as dismissing any benefits of raw foods. I do think that you undercut your own credibility when you carry your views and your supporting arguments and attacks on anyone who disagrees with you to extremes as you seem to have yet again, this time with Yuli. Not only that, by frequently venting against fellow RPDers, you undermine the forum itself. You're undermining your own cause and I get the sense that you're inadvertently sowing dissension within the ranks. Please try to remember that we're on the same team here.

Science is determined by the number of studies favouring each particular side. When, as in this case, there are 1,000s of studies damning the consumption of cooked foods, including cooked meats, and very, very few studies showing benefits therefrom, then it is only logical and scientifically plausible to assume, for now, that raw foods are healthier.

the number of studies  in favour of cooked animal foods are so minuscule in number that one can safely state that they are likely flawed re methodology etc.

If that were the case then it would follow that whichever hypothesis is supported by the most studies wins "for now" and all we have to do is tally up the numbers of studies and if there is a strong tilt in favor of a hypothesis by a large number of studies then the hypothesis must be assumed correct and, based on your behavior, we should then ridicule anyone who proposes alternative hypotheses or even publicly ponders them. Is it not possible that many of the 1,000s of studies could be wrong? What happens when the overwhelming majority of the studies do not support one of your pet hypotheses? Must you always then abandon them even if you feel that the studies don't fully address your points? There's much more to science than just tallying up which studies support which hypothesis, as Lex also tried to point out to you before, but you ignored his sage points:

Tyler,
I read the study that you posted about AGE's etc, and then did a bit of further research on my own.  All the studies I found only stated that AGE's are "believed" to have some negative affect or are believed to be "implicated" in health issues such as aging and heart disease, but no actual direct link or proof of cause and effect has been actually proven. ....

Case may be closed for you, but since none of the studies show any actual toxic effect from AGE's in the real world, and only discuss "theoretical" damage that free radicals "might" cause, the jury is still out for me.  Remember all those "1,000s of studies" that showed "strong links" or "connections" of cholesterol with heart disease - and they were all nonsense.

Yuli's and Lex's warnings against putting too much confidence in reductionist studies just because they support your existing bias are borne out by John Ioannidis' research, which suggests that innovation-quashing consensus based on studies can be badly misguided: "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/?tool=pubmed

Well, naturally, you may feel that maisntream ideas are all a load of nonsense, such as the notion that the Earth is round or that gravity exists etc.,

Yuli, I empathize with you, as Tyler has used various forms of this straw man tactic on me and many others. You obviously never claimed that the earth is not round or that gravity does not exist or anything nearly as extreme as that. I doubt anyone here takes him seriously when he makes such wild mischaracterizations.

When it comes to nutrition, it's best to avoid the fallacy of reductionist nutritionism (reducing complex food to its constituent parts or products). Citing studies that look at AGEs or other products of high heat cooking while ignoring the bigger picture makes the mistake of assuming that the sum of the parts always equals the whole.

Hayek wrote: "(I)n the study of such complex phenomena as the market [and the human body], which depend on the actions of many individuals [or other variables], all the circumstances which will determine the outcome of a process, for reasons which I shall explain later, will hardly ever be fully known or measurable." (The Pretence of Knowledge, http://mises.org/daily/3229)

From Nassim Taleb's "Opacity: What We Do Not See":

Wooton wrote (Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates): "there was a delay of more than two hundred years between the first experiments designed to disprove spontaneous generation and the final triumph of the alternative, the theory that living creatures always come from other living creatures...."

Nassim wrote: In the second century AD Alexander of Aphrodisias held it to be an inherent property of medicine. Medicine does not proceed by syllogisms to the effect that something necessarily and invariably is the case. Rather, medical propositions are concluded in terms such as "for the most part", or "in only a rare case". These expressions hold true generally, but not necessarily for the individual.

My speculation has been that cooking will eventually be shown to be more harmful than cooking advocates realize (and I feel somewhat vindicated when credible people like Stephan Guyenet, PhD and William Davis, MD increasingly take the downsides of high-heat cooking seriously and write about them), but it is just a speculation at this point and it's still highly controversial within the scientific community, despite what Tyler claims. I cannot claim that it's a fact without better evidence. The quality of studies is much more important than the quantity, as Ioannidis has shown.

[TylerDurden]

PP, as usual, you are talking nonsense re the above comments. It is perfectly valid and understandable that I should criticise people who advocate topics which are objectionable within RPD guidelines. Some arguments  are appalling:- for example, the lame mercury-in-fish argument, frequently debunked by many scientists, is used by vegans and others to claim that one should never eat raw seafood. This means that rawists, if they believed such lame nonsense, would feel obliged to cut out all raw seafood, which is actually a very healthy type of raw food that is particularly useful in many cases. So, it is perfectly  understandable that when someone makes lame, unscientific comments in favour of the Noble-Savage theory or some other pro-cooked-oriented or pro-raw vegan topic(or tries to rewrite history by previously pretending that cannibalism was not as prevalent as claimed in palaeo times), that one should naturally step in and criticise such a move. In the past, not doing so on other forums has usually led to various pro-cooked advocates eventually attacking rawists on raw forums by trying to pretend that cooking is OK and that any pro-raw argument must be wrong and that is unacceptable.


Your mention of Lex's unscientific comment is also appalling. For one thing, not only are there countless scientific studies showing that  a variety of medical conditions are made much worse  with increasing amounts of heat-created toxins , derived from cooking, in the human body(and also studies showing a decrease in severity of many conditions when AGE-levels in the human body were reduced) but also there have been studies showing how AGEs directly and negatively affect human cells in vitro, so it is just not scientific to pretend that heat-created toxins are not a problem.My citing of the more solid theories re gravity etc. is , of course, valid, as many pro-cooked-advocates seem to ignore the fact that one does not have to prove, beyond absolute doubt, a particular theory in order to make it part of scientific concensus, one only has to accumulate far more scientific evidence in favour of one's hypothesis than evidence favouring other viewpoints.The greater the difference between them, the more likely it is that  the one side with the larger studies is right, and the other smaller one  wrong.

The lame argument that all other studies are wrong, just because one says so, makes no sense. Even if one believes in conspiracy-theories such as that almost all scientific studies are biased or are flawed, that still does not exclude the common argument in science that the side with the highest number of studies in its favour is the best one, for now. To take an obvious example, let's say, there are 500 studies which favour the pro-cooked-meat-advocates and 40,000 studies favouring the notion of heat-created toxins causing some harm(given the studies I have already seen, this seems a reasonable rough assumption re ratios, though not numbers). Then, if 95 percent of all studies are biased or flawed or corrupt in some way, then 5 percent of 500 means there are only 25 excellent, well-done studies favouring the pro-cooked-meat side of things, and 2,000 excellent, well-done  studies favouring the notion that heat-created toxins, so that would still mean that the notion of heat-created toxins was far more likely to be correct. Now, one could pretend that absolutely all the studies favouring one side were a-ok, while absolutely all studies favouring the opposite side were totally flawed and corrupt(like Taubes tried to do but got heavily criticised for his fatal errors of assumption and his own personal bias) but this is physically impossible as human bias, flawed studies etc. appear all the time, favouring all kinds of different viewpoints, affecting all sides.

What cannot be denied, nowadays, is that cooking heavily causes harm to foods. That is now mainstream thought. Granted, there are still some delaying tactics with many scientists claiming, despite evidence of toxins in such foods, that boiled/lightly-cooked foods are somehow OK because they are "less worse" than well-cooked foods, but that is to be expected since humans have been eating cooked foods for so many millenia.