Effects of Cooking, by Herbert Shelton

Effects of Cooking, by Herbert Shelton

Speculations upon the origin of cooking are, perhaps futile. I have suggested that it
may have developed out of ancient black magic - that it was an effort to impart the
magic properties of fire to food. Certain it is, man did not cook his foods until after
he learned to use fire and it was probably long thereafter, before he cooked much
of it.
Someone has said: "Cod made man and the Devil made cooks." A British writer
says: "Just try to imagine what a powerful lever the Devil possessed when he
invented cooking and persuaded the primitive savages to seek after extraneous
foodstuffs which could only be eaten if they were softened and made tasty by
means of heat." Accepting the Devil as merely the personification of evil, he is
undoubtedly the Father of Magic.
Simple prolonged heating of foodstuffs, especially at a high temperature and
doubly so in the presence of water, either that contained in the foods themselves,
or that added in the process of cooking, certainly results in a number of important
changes in the foodstuffs which render them less and less valuable as foods. Even
those foods that are regarded as fairly thermostable are certainly damaged by
prolonged heating so that a diet that may be adequate in the uncooked state may
be very inadequate after being thoroughly cooked. (High degrees of heat in the
presence of water produces hydrolysis.)
At about 145 degrees Fahrenheit certain properties of plant life are destroyed. A
leaf of cabbage, for example, if immersed in water that can be easily borne by the
hand, will wilt, showing that part of its cellular life is destroyed at that low
temperature. The heat to which such foods are subjected in cooking may be
increased or prolonged until all the properties of the plant are destroyed. Many

articles of food which are baked in an oven are subjected to a very Intense heat
ranging from 300 degrees F. to 400 degrees F. Much of their food value is
destroyed, thereby. Bread that is browned in an oven is half-destroyed, being partly
charcoal, tar, and ashes. If it had been left in an oven twice as long it would have
been entirely destroyed. At every step in the process of cooking from the time the
food is put in or upon the stove until it is entirely destroyed, if it be permitted to cook
that long, destructive changes take place that impair its food value and unlit it for
use by the body. I propose here to discuss the most important of these changes in
the following order:
(1) Cooking coagulates (hardens) the proteins of milk, eggs, meat, etc., making
them tough and, with the exception of egg protein, less digestible, while impairing
their food values.
Protein digestibility is decreased by cooking, except in the case of egg whites. If
egg white is just curdled it is rendered more easily digestible - if it is boiled hard it is
made difficult of digestion. Meat protein is hardened at 1600 F. Meat is more easily
digested raw than cooked. Milk protein is coagulated at 145 F. and becomes less
digestible than raw milk.
Sensitive amines are supposed by some to be saponified by heat, especially in the
presence of water. Becoming a bit technical, for which I apologize to my lay
readers, the amine group is replaced by the hydroxyl group in the foodstuffs and it
has been shown that the hydroxides cannot be reaminised by the animal body.
This means that the protein has been reduced to useless substances. It is said that
while among the synthetic amines there are many which, owing to peculiar
structural conditions, the amine group is readily detachable, no such substances
are known among the natural amines. This is not wholly true, for it is known that
water in which meat has been boiled contains more ammonia than was
demonstrable in the meat. There is unquestionably a splitting off of certain amines.
To assume that this has no bearing on nutrition in the absence of direct proof of
such effect does not seem to me to be justifiable.
When either cystin or cystein are heated in the presence of water the sulphur is
split off so that, as Berg says: "both cystin and cystein are 000 rendered valueless
for nutritive purposes, inasmuch as sulphydration cannot be affected in the animal
body." He says that this decomposition of the sulphhydril group of amino acids by
heat in the presence of water "does actually occur."
I quote the following from Vitamins by Ragnar Berg: "the experiments of Francis
and Trowbridge and those of Trowbridge and Stanley have shown that when meat
is boiled even for a comparatively brief period, organic phosphates are transformed
into inorganic.
Berg says: "Besides the sulphur group, we have reason to suppose that the food
contains other groups of substances with a readily modifiable composition. We are,
however, certain that the proteins, and especially the neucleoproteins, contain
thermoliable mixed organic compounds." He mentions certain phosphates that are
rapidly transformed by the cooking process and points out that while the body is
capable of taking the more complex phosphates and reducing them to lower
stages, it is unable to reverse the process. Only plants can do this.
Simple prolonged heating of foodstuffs, especially at high temperatures or under

pressure, produces the following effects.

1. The disaminisation (deaminization) of vitally important amine compounds.
2. The decomposition of similar sulphur compounds (and perhaps of substances
belonging to other unstable groups.)
3. The metamorphosis of metaphosphates and pyrophosphates into
orthophosphates.
The first two of the above listed effects renders it impossible for the foodstuffs to be
assimilated to form cell-substance, for the unstable groups in the food mixture will
have been destroyed.
In considering the evils that may flow from deaminization of proteins (or of amino
acids) by the cooking process, it is probably Important that we think primarily of the
effects of cooking upon the essential amino acids. Berg's conclusion, however,
after reviewing the evidence, is that deaminization is not as important as the
change of organic phosphates into inorganic.
Prof. Charles Bichet, of the Paris Academy of Sciences, fed raw beef juice to
tubercular patients and reported excellent results from this diet. He concluded
however, that cooking meat interferes with the perfect assimilation of it that might
otherwise occur. Rare beef has no vitamin value and its iron is said to be very
poorly utilized by the body. This is probably not so of the iron in raw beef.
The British sociologist, Anthony Ludovici, recounts an instructive experience with
cats. He bred cats for the purpose of studying the process of birth. He discovered
that cats actually enjoy the process of birth, that they purr while their kittens are
being born. Mr. Ludovici realizing that animals never cook their foods, took it for
granted that his cats should have raw meat. Then, on one occasion, he was called
away to the country and left one of his female cats in the care of some friends.
When her kittens were born shortly after his return, her flanks heaved helplessly for
several hours and she groaned almost like a human being. He despaired of her
ever delivering her kittens. Inquiry revealed that his friend had fed the cat on
cooked meat, vegetables, bread and milk and milk puddings. Further investigation
revealed that not merely the happiness of cats during parturition but of other
animals also, is inseparably connected with optimum condition during gestation pregnancy. He found he was able to produce pleasurable or painful parturition at
will by feeding his cats in different manners and keeping them indoors or outdoors.
He discovered that he could do the same thing with bitches and, upon inquiry
among shepherds, discovered the same thing among sheep. He tells of difficulties
among cows and horses fed in certain very unwholesome ways. I have never seen
difficulty in cows, and I have watched the birth of many calves, but these cows were
supplied with good pasturage and were outdoors all through gestation. Not merely
raw flesh foods, but uncooked foods of all kinds, are best for food.
In Vol. 39 (pages 21-31), 1939 of the Transactions of the American Therapeutic
Society F. M. Pottenger, M. D., and D. C. Simonsen recount the results of some
experiments which they performed with cats. For a lengthy period of time they fed
two groups of cats on similar quantities of meats and vegetables. The only
difference between the diets of the two groups was that the meat of one group was

uncooked, that of the other group cooked.

These men report that all the cats that received the uncooked flesh led normal
lives, appeared perfectly healthy and were able to reproduce themselves
throughout the length of the experiment which ran through several generations. On
the other hand, none of the eats fed cooked meat were able to maintain good
health for any length of time, nor were some of the second and third generations
able to reproduce. All of the cats eating cooked flesh developed very serious
troubles, such as softening of the bones, including those of the skull, bowed legs,
rickets, curvature of the spine, paralysis of the legs, thyroid abscesses, convulsions,
cyanosis of the liver and kidneys, enlarged colon, degeneration of the motor nerve
ganglion cells throughout the spinal cord and brain stem, with some cells affected
in the cerebellum and cerebral cortex.
The reader's attention is directed to the cumulative effects of this diet. A diet that
seems adequate in one generation may turn out to be very inadequate if carried
out through a few generations. It should not be thought that because a particular
mode of eating seems adequate for an individual that it will not produce serious
results in the children or grandchildren. Long ago it was said: "The fathers have
eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge."
(2) Cooking alters the fats in food rendering them less digestible and converting
some of them into poisons.
Fatty emulsions tend to break down when exposed to heat, while fats exposed to
high temperatures are made less digestible. The application of heat to fats and oils
of all kinds develop free fatty acids which are not only non-assimilable, but are
often poisonous.
(3) Cooking causes a great loss of the soluble minerals in the food.
It has been shown that when meats are boiled, from 20 to 67% of their salts are
found in the broth. When these are baked 2.5 to 57.2% of the mineral is found in
the drippings of the meat. The meat is already predominantly acid-forming, before it
is subjected to these processes.
When potatoes are peeled and soaked in cold water before boiling 38% of their
mineral matter is lost. Green vegetables, when boiled and the water in which they
are boiled is poured off or rejected, lose practically all of their soluble minerals.
White flour, denatured corn-meal, polished rice, and all other denatured or
demineralized foods have lost most of their minerals. Beans and peas, cooked in
the usual manner lose much of their mineral content.
Prof. Snyder showed that 100 lbs. of cabbage contains 7.5 lbs. of solids, more than
one-third of which - 2.50 or 3 lbs. - are lost when cooked in water. Spinach has a
solid content of 10%, of which, nearly one-fourth is lost when cooked in water.
Carrots cut into small pieces and cooked in water lose 20% to 30% of their weight.
If rice is boiled and the water poured off, it loses so much of its valuable nutriments
that Native Indian soldiers preferred to drink the liquid and leave the rice for the
British.
Milo Hastings writing about some cooking experiments conducted in the laboratory
of the department of agricultural chemistry of the University of Wisconsin, says:

"In this interesting investigation sixteen kinds of vegetables were cooked in three
different ways. One lot of each vegetable was boiled in enough water to cover the
cut up vegetables. A second lot was cooked in twice as much water. A third lot was
steamed without coming in contact with the water except such water as would
collect on the vegetables by the condensation of steam.
"The raw vegetables and those cooked in these different fashions were all carefully
analyzed for the total amount of food elements, of protein and of calcium,
magnesium, phosphorus and iron. The results showed that all food elements are
lost to a much greater extent in boiling than in steaming.
"The general average of loss of total nutriments was three times as great in boiling
as in steaming. The loss was naturally greater from the leaf vegetables than from
the root vegetables. Cabbage seemed to suffer more than any other type of food in
the experiment. The reason for this is that cabbage, when cut up for cooking is cut
across the leaf structure. Spinach suffers less because the leaves are cooked
whole. Cabbage cooked in the larger volume of water lost 60 % of its total dry
matter, 62 % of its protein, 72% of its calcium, 60% of its phosphorus and 87 % of
its iron. In other words, when one eats cooked cabbage, he is getting only a third of
the value of raw cabbage, to say nothing of the destruction of the vitamins. Even the
steaming process of cooking cabbage gives none too good a record, as this
showed losses of from 22 to 48% of the above listed food elements.
"In the case of spinach the loss of iron is of especial interest as spinach is the
richest known source of food iron. Boiling in enough water to cover showed a loss
of 48 % of the iron in spinach. Cooking in twice that much water showed a loss of
57% of the spinach iron. Steaming showing a loss of 25 % of the iron.
"Not all foods showed such large losses from the cooking, thus potatoes, even
though pared showed only 9% loss of total food in boiling and only 4% loss in
steaming.
"This investigation will certainly help to explain why the ordinary boiled vegetable
dinner, such as is served in the unprogressive restaurants, is such a flat tasted and
washed out affair. Nearly half of the valuable mineral elements have probably been
poured down the sewer along with the dish water. Clever cooks make sauces for
such washed-out vegetables that may compensate for the loss in tastiness of the
natural ingredients, but only intelligent cooks try to prevent such losses."
Berg says: "the mere steaming of vegetables for five minutes dissolves out so large
a proportion of the inorganic bases that the residue contains an excess of acids.
Simultaneously the vitally important complettins (vitamins) are entirely dissolved
out of the vegetables."
(4) Cooking destroys the elementary plant form, tearing down go structure,
changing its composition and bringing about certain destructive changes in the
element-groupings in all foods, returning part of these elements, especially the
organic salts, to their inorganic and, therefore, useless state, so that a large part of
their mineral content is lost.
Plant processes take the unorganized elements of the earth and air and organize
these into related compounds, which, then, become available for animal life.
Without vegetation there could be no animal life, for the reason that soil and rock
are not available substances for animal replenishment. This being true, it is only

natural to conclude that once plants have organized these elements into forms
available for animal sustenance, any process which returns them wholly, or in part,
to their primitive condition renders them, to that degree, unfit for food, and more or
less disease producing. That cooking brings about more or less oxidation and
disorganization in every oxidizable substance in foods of all types, admits of no
doubt. When nutriment has been oxidized in the body, the resulting "ashes" cease
to be usable and are eliminated. What reason have we to believe that food
oxidized outside the body is more fit for use? Ralph E. Sunderland, chemist and
food scientist, declares oxidation to be the chief destroyer of foods and explains the
matter thus:
"The same elements (the sixteen chemical elements composing the human body),
are the component parts of technically 'fertile' soil in which they are present in
inorganic form and as such are not assimilable by the human body, else we could
look directly to the soil for our substance. In order to convert these inorganic
elements or minerals into a form which can be assimilated by the human body it is
necessary for nature to create from the soil vegetation in which these same
elements are present in organic form. In vegetation they remain organic until, by
oxidation, they return again to their original inorganic form ready to produce more
vegetation.
"True food is totally organic substance. If that organic substance is permitted to
become, to any degree, inorganic, it simultaneously becomes to that degree
useless as food.
"All organic minerals oxidize when they come in contact with oxygen and moisture.
That is, they thus become inorganic again.
In ordinary room-temperature the process of oxidation proceeds; but in the
presence of heat oxidation is very greatly increased. Therefore, the cooking of
vegetation in the presence of the oxygen of the air - the condition under which all
home cooking and most commercial cooking occurs - changes a large part of what
was organic and useful as food into inorganic oxides which cannot be assimilated
by the human body."
French investigators found that when milk is boiled the complex calciummagnesium carbono-phosphate it contains, is decomposed and precipitated in an
insoluble form. This means that a natural organic salt which is directly assimilable
and available for immediate bony growth, is changed into a form almost impossible
of assimilation.
McCollum and Parsons in this country, found that the precipitated salts cling to the
walls of the vessel or container so that part of them are actually eliminated from the
milk. The excess of bases in the milk is thus greatly reduced. As this excess is low
in even the best of milk, the double robbery of alkalis occasioned by boiling has
grave consequences.
It is a fact, therefore, that the longer foods are cooked and the higher the
temperature to which they are subjected, the more oxidation takes place and the
greater is the destruction of the food. I may add, also, that efforts to cook out of the
presence of the oxygen of the air, though not as destructive as the common forms
of cooking, produces great ruin to the food. Cooking onions, cabbage, cauliflower,
etc., oxidizes the sulphur. These foods should never be cooked.

(5) Cooking renders starches less digestible and more prone to fermentation.
Cooked starches are said, by many, to be easiest of digestion. Toasted bread is
said to be dextrinized. Are these things so? It has long been known that animals
digest raw starch best and that they do not fare well on cooked foods. Farmers quit
cooking food for their animals years ago. Mio Hastings says
"Closely akin to the idea of predigesting cereals by roasting and toasting them are
the old notions that raw starch is indigestible and that all home cooked starchy
foods need very long, tedious periods of cooking. This idea was almost universal a
generation ago and is probably still taught in school text-books, which are usually a
generation behind.
"I got suspicious of the idea that humans couldn't digest raw starch when I was in
college and read about experiments in cooking grain for farm animals, in which the
scientists proved that the cooked foods were less digestible than uncooked foods for animals.
"The human food teachers came back by saying that man's digestive system has
been changed by long ages of cooking and had lost the power to digest raw starch.
So I tried it, and did my college thesis with a series of experiments on the digestion
of raw versus long cooked cereal starches. I found out that my own particular
digestive organs worked just like the pigs' and cows'. Worse yet for the popular
theory, my mother insists that I wasn't descended from raw turnip eaters, but that
our folks came over in the next ship after the Mayflower and had been cooking as
long as the rest of them."
The Department of Agriculture, in Washington, conducted experiments which
revealed that raw corn, rice and other starches are digested in amounts up to eight
ounces, daily. Raw potatoes showed digestibility of seventy-eight per cent.
Kellogg, Langworth and Devel have each shown that raw starches digest quite
easily. The Scotch Highlanders have, from time immemorial, eaten their oatmeal
simply scalded. Hon. W. N. Beaver for many years a magistrate in Papua, New
Guinea, says that the natives of Kiwai formerly ate their rice raw.
Raw cabbage digests in two hours whereas it requires four hours for cooked
cabbage to digest. As almost everybody has difficulty with cooked cabbage and
almost nobody has trouble with raw cabbage these differences are common
knowledge.
High temperatures are required to change most sugars although the sugar of milk
is changed in pasteurizing.
Actual feeding tests have shown that the brown crust of bread has less food value
than the soggy inside. In other words the most thoroughly cooked portions of food
(any food) are less valuable as food than the less cooked portions.
The facts are that cooking renders starches less digestible, while boiling them so
that they are saturated with water, prevents all salivary digestion. Very little
dextrinization of starch is produced by cooking. It is the office of the salivary
enzyme (ptyalin) to perform this work and we profit by permitting salivary digestion
to digest our starches. Toasting bread charcoalizes rather than dextrinizes it.
(6) Cooking destroys the vitamins in foods and impairs or completely destroys their
anti-neuritic, anti-scorbutic, etc., factors.
Before vitamins were ever heard of and before it was found that cooking destroys

or impairs vitamins, the advocates of eating of all food raw held that, besides the
ordinary chemical elements in foods, there was something else which they termed
life, which was destroyed by cooking. For example, Prof. Byron Tyler had an article
in The New York Herald, Sunday, October 14, 1900 entitled "Cooked Food is
Humanity's Greatest Curse," in which he proclaimed that "cooked food is dead
food." That these men were right in principle is now undoubted. The "life" of foods
was undoubtedly those qualities now called vitamins.
Raw food advocates also contended that man cannot use inorganic substances
and that cooking returns food elements to their inorganic state. The change in the
meaning or use of the word organic has resulted in much confusion, but the truth
announced by our predecessors is unimpaired and cooking does, as they claimed,
both disorganize food and return part of it to its inorganic (as they understood the
term) state, thus making it useless to the body. There can be no doubt about this.
Although reports on this conflict considerably, cooking undoubtedly destroys
vitamins. Berg says: "Since the complettins (vitamins) C and B and the anitneuritic
D are readily soluble in water, they are dissolved out in the first boiling."
Vitamins are very delicate and unstable things and are lost and destroyed in many
ways. Foods that are cooked and held over to the next meal lose some or all of
their remaining vitamins. Dried foods have lost much of their vitamins in the drying
process. Canned foods that are cooked and stored in the warehouses lose their,
vitamins. Canned foods and dried foods have very little to no protective power.
There are many methods of cooking. How much of the vitamin content of a
particular food is lost in cooking depends upon: 1. the method of cooking
employed; 2. the temperature to which the food is subjected; 3. the duration of the
cooking time; 4. the abundance or relative abundance of oxygen that reaches the
food while it is cooking; 5. the pressure to which it is subjected; 6. the presence or
absence of light; 7. how much the food is cut up before being cooked; and 8. the
kind of vessel in which it is cooked.
Riboflavin is destroyed in appreciable amounts when meats and vegetables are
cooked in the presence of light. This vitamin is lost to but slight degree when the
foods are cooked in the dark or in a closed container. The loss of pantothentic acid
from cooking Is moderate to slight in vegetables but is up to one third in flesh foods.
Pyrodoxin losses are moderate for flesh, much smaller for vegetables and it is
claimed that the amount of this vitamin is increased by cooking in a few vegetables.
Cooking causes a very high loss of biotin from flesh, even as high as 72% Its loss
in vegetables is reported by some investigators to be only "moderate to negligible."
vegetables are cooked they lose as high as 59% of their inositol. Flesh foods loose
less of this vitamin. Folic acid losses in cooking are very great for most foods. From
one third to one-half, even as much as two-thirds of niacin is lost from meats in
cooking. Some investigators deny this, saying the loss of this vitamin is slight.
Perhaps these differences of opinion grow out of the use of different methods of
cooking in making their tests.
Studies of the -foods served to patrons of restaurants have shown that the average
loss of vitamin C from vegetables is 45 per cent; of thiamin is 35 per cent. Heat and
cooking them in water and throwing away the water accounted for these losses. An
additional loss of about 15 per cent of vitamins occurs when the vegetables are

held for long periods on the steam table before serving them. Restaurant eaters are
advised to concentrate on raw vegetables and to eat early before foods have stood
for prolonged periods on the steam table.
Cooking foods under high pressure is rapidly destructive of their vitamins.
Prolonged cooking is also very destructive of vitamins.
Quick-cooked vegetables lose less of their vitamins and minerals. The longer they
are cooked and the longer they stand after cooking, the more of their value they
lose. They should be eaten soon after cooking is completed.
Cooking green soy beans causes a loss of 48 per cent of their Vitamin C. Sprouted
soy beans lose 70 per cent of their original content of C. Thiamin and caroline are
also lost in the processing and cooking of soy beans.
The antiscorbutic qualities of milk are more or less completely lost if the milk is
pasteurized, boiled, condensed or dried. Dried quickly at a high temperature milk
seems not to lose its antiscorbutic qualities, but it loses in food value in other ways.
When it is boiled its antineuritic powers are destroyed even more rapidly than its
growth-promoting powers. Barnes and Hume showed that the drying of milk
reduces its antiscorbutic efficiency to about two-fifths the original. The impairment
of the antiscorbutic qualities of milk by the condensing process is great enough that
young monkeys, fed on a diet of condensed milk, develop infantile scurvy. Typicail
scurvy is produced in adult monkeys and guinea pigs by this same diet.
Hess and Unger found that the most actively antiscorbutic vegetables lose their
efficacy upon drying. The excess of bases and the water soluble antiscorbutic
vitamin C are leached out of the vegetables by the bleaching process. Soldiers fed
on preserved vegetables develop scurvy. An outbreak of scurvy in a Rummelsburg
orphanage was referred by Muller to the use of dried vegetables and pasteurized
milk. Fresh vegetables resulted in recovery. When soup. tablets and dried
vegetables predominate in the diet, malnutritional cedema develops. Canned or
preserved fruits and vegetables lose their antiscorbutic qualities.
Heating white cabbage impairs its antiscorbutic quality while twenty minutes of
boiling the juice of cabbage notably reduces this quality; an hour's boiling
completely destroying it.
According to Givens and McClugage, finely minced raw potatoes may be boiled for
fifteen minutes without appreciably affecting their antiscorbutic qualities, but these
are greatly impaired by one hour's boiling. Quick cooking of foods at a high
temperature brings about less damage to the food than prolonged cooking at a low
temperature.
In the case of seeds, such as nuts, beans, peas, grains, etc., the germinating
principle is destroyed so that cooked seed will not germinate.
The following account of some experiments with raw and roasted corn was
published during World War I: "In order to find out the place of maize in war bread
two French physicians carried on extensive feeding experiments with pigeons.
They reached the conclusion that highly milled maize is responsible for at least
three deficiency diseases.
"Weil and Mouriquand published the results of some experiments on the

practicability of maize as the chief constituent of bread and the possible relations
between maize diet and pellagra. The authors had already shown that decorticated
(hulled) cereals, grain and legumes when fed to pigeons and fowls as an exclusive
diet lead to paraplegia, paralysis and death. The cause of the latter is believed to
be the depreciation of a ferment contained in the cortex of the grains, which is as
essential to nutrition as sufficient calories, protein and mineral matter.
"The authors fed whole maize to a pigeon aged six months as the sole diet for a
period of 240 days. The bird, shut up in its cage showed great activity and vigor.
Control pigeons living exclusively on entire wheat, barley, rice and oat grains were
well nourished and vigorous.
"When a mixture of whole grains was heat sterilized (120 degrees Centigrade), the
birds survived ninety days and died paralyzed, but a certain addition of raw grains
prevented beriberism. One-third part of raw grains appears to give perfect
protection.
"Pigeons were now fed on decorticated, highly milled maize. The latter was refused
and the birds were artificially crammed with it. After a period of sluggishness flight
became impossible (thirty-third day) and death, preceded by paralysis, soon
followed. Emaciation had also taken place. Hence, both cooking and decortication
deprive the grains of vitamins or ferments."
Berg points out that a mixture of equal parts of soy bean, wheat, wheaten bran,
sun-flower seeds, hemp seeds, and rye meal (a mixture which is perfectly
adequate in the crude state), proves conspicuously inadequate after it has been
made into a paste with water and then baked.
In his experiments with monkeys McCarrison showed that cooked foods, the same
as deficient and ill-balanced foods, produce, within a short time, diarrhea, or actual
dysentery. The monkeys so fed lost appetite, developed anemia, unhealthy skin,
loss of body weight and all the vital organs began to atrophy. He pointed out that
"among the pathologic processes resulting from deficient and ill balanced food are
the impairment of the protective resources of the digestive tract against infection,"
and added that there is good reason to believe that the prolonged use of
moderately faulty food will lead to these results as certainly as the less prolonged
use of more faulty food."
(7) Cooking drives off part of the food into the air as gasses.
That the cooking of milk, even pasteurizing it, greatly impairs its food value is well
known. Eggs and vegetables, like cabbage, cauliflower, onions, etc., rich in
sulphur, have their sulphur oxidized. They should never be cooked. Phosphorus is
also oxidized. The iron in food is ruined as food.
Iodine and manganese are oxidized at low temperatures.
Cooking produces changes in the sulphur content of eggs that cause it to form gas
in the intestine of many who eat them. This gas is not only offensive, it is harmful.
(8) Cooking changes the flavor and odor of foods and renders them less palatable.
It is often argued that cooking adds to the palatability of food. This is, at least, not

true with most foods and we have noticed that the others are not palatable after
being cooked unless they have been flavored, spiced, sweetened, peppered,
salted, etc., or have had mustard, catsup, horseradish, or some form of dressing
added. The fact is we are always kidding ourselves into believing that the things we
are in the habit of doing are the very things we should do; that the things we have
learned to like are the things that are best for us, and we consciously or
unconsciously resist any proposed change, even, if there are plenty of evidences
that the change would be for the better.
The relish for food is often a mere matter of habit. Those accustomed to eating
cooked foods find they do not relish certain foods in their uncooked state. This calls
for a reeducation of the sense of taste.
(9) Cooking food wastes much of its food elements and renders it less nutritious.
This is quite contrary to the popular notion. However, as we have just seen,
cooking robs food of much of its value and adds nothing to it. It does not increase,
but in most cases decreases, its digestibility.
The United States Department of Agriculture's Bulletin, No. 22, says: "Ladd, while
connected with the New York State Station, reported analysis of cooked and
uncooked clover, hay and corn meal and determination of digestibility of the same.
These showed that the percentage of albuminoids and fat and the relative
digestibility of the albuminoids were more or less diminished by cooking. The
experiments made by our experiment stations in preparing food have been mostly
with pigs. At least thirteen separate series of experiments in different parts of this
country have been reported on the value of cooking or steaming food for pigs. In
these cooked or steamed barley meal, corn-meal, and shorts; whole corn, potatoes,
and a mixture of peas, barley and rye have been compared with the same food
uncooked (usually dry). In ten of these trials there has not only been no gam from
cooking, but there has been a positive loss, i. e., the amount of food required to
produce a pound of gain was larger when the food was cooked than when it was
fed raw, and in some cases the difference has been considerable."
Was not Dr. Oswald right, then, when he declared: "For even the most approved
modes of grinding, bolting, leavening, cooking, spicing, heating and freezing our
food are, strictly speaking, abuses of our digestive organs." And not of our digestive
organ only, but of the whole body. Cooking is the oldest and most widely used
method of denaturing our foods.
TARS
Tars are complex heterogeneous substances that are derived from a variety of
sources. Any organic compound that is subjected to great heat, as in frying or
roasting, undergoes decomposition with the formation of highly complex black tar.
Most people are familiar with the tar formed in the burning of tobacco in cigarette,
pipe and cigar. The bowl of the pipe and the pipe stem become clogged with the
sticky, and foul smelling stuff.
Tar forms in coffee while it is being roasted; it forms in the cereals, beans and fruits

when these are roasted in making coffee substitutes. Coffee drinkers and drinkers
of coffee substitutes daily take tar into their bodies just as the smoker gets tar into
his mouth, throat, lungs and blood.
THE SCIENCE AND FINE ART OF FOOD AND NUTRITION
If potatoes, beans, peas, etc., become dry in cooking and get scorched, tar forms.
Scorched toast has tar in it. In frying potatoes, eggs, meat and other foods tar is
often formed unless great care is exercised not to overheat these foods. Meats
roasted in an oven that is too hot get black on the outside. Tar is formed.
Tar is an irritant. It is one of the irritants that is known to result in the formation of
tumors and cancers. It would be profitable to know what percentage of the tumors
and cancers that exist today owe their origin to the tars taken into the bodies of
almost everyone who eats cooked foods and drinks coffee or coffee substitutes.
Living in smoky cities and inhaling the smoke takes tar into the lungs. This as much
as tobacco smoke, may contribute to the production of cancer of the lungs.
COOKING AND DIGESTIBILITY
The manner in which foods are cooked alters their digestibility. Cabbage, for
example, cooked in one way is easily digested; cooked in another manner is
almost indigestible.
Much of the indigestibility of cooked foods results not so much from the cooking,
per se, as from the mixtures that are jumbled together to cook. Take the Southern
practice of cooking beans, greens, cabbage, etc., with a large piece of fat, salt
bacon, as a example of concocting indigestible mixtures; or the method of frying
potatoes (starches) in fat.
COOKERS
The waterless cooker is the best cooker that has been devised. This should not be
confused with the pressure cooker. Rapidly growing in popularity, this expensive
and dangerous (they some times explode) pressure cooker is the worst cooker
ever invented. Cooking foods under high pressure rapidly destroys their vitamins.
The old fireless cooker that cooked foods at a low temperature over a long period,
was a very destructive cooker. Frying pans and boilers are among the worst
cooking utensils. Several different types of waterless cooker are available. The
reader may choose his own. I have no prejudices against the aluminum cookers,
but if the reader is afraid of this form of cooker, the stainless steel cooker is very
efficient.
FROZEN FOODS
Frozen foods are new but are rapidly becoming very popular. The deep-freeze
refrigerator that enables people to freeze their foods in their own homes, is also
becoming popular. Is this the great boon to mankind that the promoters of the
frozen food industry claim?
Some foods are completely ruined by being frozen. Frozen lettuce, frozen bananas,
frozen oranges and many frozen greens are completely unfitted for use as food. It is
inevitable that all foods shall be more or less damaged by the freezing process,
despite the claims to the contrary. Quick freezing does cause loss of some of the

vitamins. Although it is common to deny that freezing causes a loss of vitamins, it is

readily admitted by the defenders of the process that the process of thawing out the
foods before using them causes considerable vitamin losses. If, then, they are
cooked, there are greater losses. Frozen foods should be used when fresh foods
are not available, yet I see people buying frozen corn or frozen strawberries, etc.,
while these foods are in season.