>
> >Moreover meat also is much more digestible after cooking.
>

No, it isn't.

At first, all our food, whether from animal or vegetable sources, was eaten
raw. Now cooking food has become a way of life. Most people in Western
society today would not eat uncooked meat. As possible pathogens would not
be killed, it may be unwise to eat raw meat. But, while boiling parallels
the first stages of digestion, and may be helpful in that process,
over-cooking in a way that chars food can present the digestive processes
with food that it has more difficulty digesting.

In 1838, in Canada, Dr. William Beaumont performed a remarkable series of
experiments on a man named Alexis St. Martin. St. Martin had an opening in
the front wall of his stomach from a gunshot wound. Even after the wound had
healed, there remained a small opening through which the mucous membrane of
his stomach could be seen and, through which, substances could be introduced
into the stomach or removed from it. Dr. Beaumont was able to introduce
foodstuffs through the opening and observe the rate of digestion. By so
doing, he found that raw beef digested in two hours, well done boiled beef
in three hours but well done roast beef took four hours. Similarly, raw eggs
were digested in one-and-a-half hours but hard-boiled eggs took
three-and-a-half hours.

In contrast, the cellulose which envelops cereal grains, and which is the
major constituent of all vegetable cell walls, was not broken down at all by
the digestive juices. Beaumont found that unless they were ruptured in some
way, their contents passed right through the body without the body deriving
any nutritional benefit from them. Cooking and chewing were both thought to
accomplish this task. But the billions of plant cells are microscopically
small. Chewing might rupture some of the cell walls but it would be a very
small percentage of the total, and very wasteful.

There is then the problem of the starch molecule itself: cooking is the only
means of breaking down starches so that we can digest them. As a
consequence, all vegetable matter, and particularly cereals and other
starchy root vegetables need not only to be cooked, but also to be well
cooked, before they can be digested.

> I don't know about you, but every time I used to eat cooked eggs, my
> stools would reek of sulfur (hydrogen sulfide?), but no such putrefactive
> odors occur after I eat a raw egg.

I always eat eggs cooked (in a variety of ways (because of the possibility
of salmonella) and I eat several extra large eggs every day. My stools have
little or no smell. They also leave me quite cleanly so that no paper is
needed, although I always use one piece to confirm this.

>Living humans appear unable to live on a diet of raw food in the wild.

Not true. There are many foods that can be eaten raw. As Bob says all foods
from animal sources can be eaten raw, as can many fruits and other plant
foods, although that may be somewhat wasteful.

>
> What's likely to "fall back" are your gum lines when you eat it.  In 10
> years of all raw, I have had NO new cavities or any increase in
> periodontal disease, yet my teeth are full of existing holes from my
> prior cooked diet.  I believe that cooked food is the primary cause of
> dental caries, which is certainly not a natural occurrence.
>

Certainly my gums and teeth were not good at the time I started to eat a
low-carb diet in 1962 when I was 26 years old. Since then I have had to have
very little work done. Now age 67 I still have all my own teeth and my
dentist always remarks how good my teeth and gums are.

Barry Groves
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk