Talk:Raw foodism

Claims section

In the claims section which gives various claims held by raw food proponents, most of the claims are actually false. I don't have time to add sources to rebut every one of these fringe claims, but the stuff about enzymes is entirely irrelevant. Arnold E. Bender covers this in his book Health or Hoax "Many diet books advocate eating raw food as a source of enzymes. In fact, although raw fruit and vegetables do contain many enzymes, they are inherent to the plants and are of no use to us. As enzymes are proteins, they are simply digested like any other protein in our diet." (p. 15), whilst it is true that cooking can destroy enzymes, this makes no difference to a healthy diet because "The body makes all the enzymes we need, even when the diet is as poor as it is in some developing countries, so taking extra is useless." (p. 61) HealthyGirl (talk) 16:10, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

The claims about "cooked foods contain harmful toxins" is also cherry-picked, because so do natural foods, in fact natural foods contain more toxins than cooked foods. As Bender reports "Almost every natural unprocessed vegetable contains harmful substances, although in small amounts. There is oxalic acid in spinach, potatoes, watercress, parsley, coriander and even lettuce... The list of harmful substances found in nature is almost limitless. Sweet potatoes contain ipomearone (which damages the liver and lungs), mace and nutmeg contain myristin (which causes hallucinations and if eaten in quantity by pregnant woman can affect the baby in the womb). This chemical is even found in bananas, parsnips, celery, black pepper, and fennel. The enormous number of toxic compounds in food is exemplified by a group of chemical called pyrrolizidine alkaloids. About 150 of these are found in a wide variety of plants eaten by animals... A vast number of plants naturally contain oestrogens - soy beans, Mexican yams, carrots, potatoes, cherries, plums, garlic, parsley, green beans, peanuts, wheat, rice, oats, barley and even ordinary apples." (33-34). HealthyGirl (talk) 16:39, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

The above claims are not supported by modern science per se, let alone other diet authors. The enzymes in raw fruits, raw vegetables, and even raw meats help break down the food as it ages/rots - also enzymes are not just proteins, they are protein catalysts. For example, most grasfed-meat farmers allow the raw meats to be left in chill-rooms(at c. 2 degrees Centigrade) for several weeks before sale in order to allow the enzymes in the meats and other bacteria to predigest/break down the raw meats in order to make them tastier and easier to chew. Also, raw foodists have pointed out that enzymes in raw foods help predigest the raw foods while the latter are in the upper stomach. Obviously, once the raw foods are in the lower stomach etc., then the body's enzymes start working. Interestingly, older people often have to take extra enzymes in pill form once their own enzyme-creating organs start to fail. For those, eating fermented, raw foods would allow them to reduce enzyme supplementations. [1]

Another obvious point:- one reason why people cook foods is in order to preserve the foods so that they last longer in the fridge etc. They achieve this by destroying all the enzymes and bacteria via precooking the foods. Vorlon19 (talk) 12:44, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

The above is wholly inaccurate. In actual fact, cooked foods contain far more toxins than raw foods. Here is a list of most of the heat-created toxins created by cooking:-

Advanced Glycation End Products(AGEs).They are called "AGEs" because they are heavily linked to age-related diseases. Nitrosamines Heterocyclic Amines polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons(PAHs) Advanced Lipoxidation End Products(ALEs). Acrylamides

Heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are, incidentally, also byproducts of car-exahust fumes and cigarette-smoke. Raw vegetables do contain tiny negligible amounts of toxins but these are mostly trapped in the cell-walls, only released via juicing.Raw fruits and raw animal foods do not contain such toxins. Vorlon19 (talk) 12:44, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Not a reliable source.

See Toxin#Misuse_of_the_term and Detoxification_(alternative_medicine). --Ronz (talk) 14:30, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

• Vorlon19 wrote "The above claims are not supported by modern science per se". Yes they are, what you are promoting are just myths. I took the quotes in my original post from Arnold E. Bender's book. Bender was a leading expert on nutrition and well qualified to know what he is talking about. He exposed many of the myths associated with dieting. In response you have posted in a quack website by a fringe writer Jon Barron who doesn't provide a single scientific source for his claims. According to Steven Novella "Jon Barron is hardly a reliable source – he is just trying to sell his own quack detox programs. So he directly profits from the bad science he is selling." [2]. It seems you will uncritically read anything written on any pseudoscientific website and believe it without checking the claims but this is not my problem.

• The 'cooking destroys enzymes' claim is a misconception. As is pointed out there "Yes, heat destroys enzymes. But humans make their own digestive enzymes to break down large food molecules into smaller ones. The raw-enzyme logic itself breaks down when you consider that most humans cook food and that most humans are digesting that food reasonably well. Ironically for the raw vegan, most of the plant enzymes in raw food get destroyed anyway in the acid of the human gut... In reality, humans make new enzymes throughout their lifetimes." [3] HealthyGirl (talk) 14:56, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

• "Raw fruits and raw animal foods do not contain such toxins", there are toxins found in raw fruits. The Ackee fruit is one example, which is the national fruit of Jamaica. It is highly toxic, it contains natural toxins (see Hypoglycin A) [4]. HealthyGirl (talk) 15:14, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

The "raw fruits do not contain such toxins" issue. OK, granted, there are some toxic fruits and vegetables which humans anyway either do not eat or have to process in some way to avoid issues - so citing a few poisonous raw fruit is irrelevant since most raw fruits and raw veg that humans eat is not poisonous. What I meant was that raw foods of reasonably high quality do not contain the vast amounts of specific heat-created toxins found in cooked foods.Also, you cited  such toxins as oxalic acid etc. The trouble is that mainstream science/nutrition does not really recognise them as toxins but instead call them "antinutrients" and do not view them as seriously unhealthy unless they are present in huge quantities.BY contrast, advanced glycation end products now have 10s of thousands of studies confirming that they are far more harmful substances(by comparison to very much smaller amounts of largely harmless antinutrients like oxalic acid found in some plants which you cited) which speed up aging among other aspects. I already provided numerous studies previously on the raw foodism wikipedia page but there are plenty more.

Your claim re enzymes falls apart when one considers an obvious point, that many humans are now forced to take extra enzyme supplements in order to properly digest foods their human bodies no longer can. Which supports the logic of raw foodists who state that the enzymes in raw foods last in the upper stomach, doing their work re predigesting the raw foods, and only eventually when they reach the lower stomach do they get fully destroyed.

http://www.realmilk.com/health/enzymes/

As regards the E Bender guy, seemingly a James-Randi-like fanatic who attacked anything alternative(and given his death in 1999, is way, way out of date given current advances in science re nutrition.Never heard of him and I'm a Brit. 1 person cannot prove anything by himself anyway. By contrast, there are 10s of thousands of studies on advanced glycation end products, a type of heat-created toxin found in cooked foods - just search pubmed etc. with that term. I also previously cited a number of times the fact that heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are also found in cigarette-smoke and tar-pits and car-exhaust fumes, which rather backs up the point that they are toxins. Or are you one of those who believe that smoking is healthy for you?! As regards the "toxins" comment by Ronz, this is contrived and unfair. Those who practice alternative health mainly refer to toxins mainly as very-slow-acting poisons which have a much harsher effect in the long-term, although sometimes they refer to some toxins as being fast-acting in a few cases, whereas you choose to only classify toxins as fast-acting, deadly poisons. A matter of semantics. Vorlon19 (talk) 16:19, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

I realise that there were 2 camps in wikipedia, 1 which stated that only mainstream views should be included with anything non-mainstream being derided even if no actual facts were presented, and another camp  which believed that all viewpoints should be included and that all viewpoints should be given their due provided there was enough scientific evidence provided in each case. It seems to me that the 1st camp has been victorious for some time, so I think it wisest to just drop this and eventually post a raw foodism wiki page or whatever. Vorlon19 (talk) 16:19, 2 June 2016 (UTC)