To Iguana--GCB's theory about low-temp cooked food being worse that heavily-cooked food is highly suspect. Not that I don't think he's a tremendous pioneer in the area of diet but I just don't buy that theory.
I really find it hard to believe that people would be healthier eating food roasted in at oven at 400 F for 3 hours, than if the food were lightly steamed for about 5 minutes.
Call me crazy, but it just seems obvious.
I think this issue is very complex. First we should distinguish between nutritional value and toxicity. Pure carbon has a very low toxicity but no nutritional value; some cooked stuffs contain a lot of valuable nutrients, but also heat-induced toxins. You can live on lightly cooked food, but not on carbonized stuff.
As all the files containing the meticulously collected data of the experiment I quoted have been lost, it should be done again to be better able to separate the variables. BTW, it’s incredible that the scientific community does not undertake such quite simple experiments.
Anyway, what can be inferred is that there’s neither linearity nor direct correlation between cooking temperature and food toxicity. Common sense is often misleading: for example, it goes against the theory of special relativity, was used against the heliocentric theory and the idea the Earth isn’t flat but spherical
“because the things and people on the other side would stand upside-down”.
