Hi guys, I am searching for scientifically based reasons to eat raw - any good links or ideas?

My diet became high raw naturally after I started to eat primarily fruits, because they are the most delicious when fresh and raw. I could not cook anyway :) It was ~16 years ago, I didn't know at that time, what happens to food by heating and still had roasted nuts quite often, and sometimes preserved fruit and  boiled grains.

5-6 years ago I learned about successful raw-foodist and went raw higher, and it feels right. However, there is not much scientific research has been made as far as I know to explain this phenomenon, but I want to try to gather all facts together and review the reasons why people make this choice.

Why raw Food?

Objective reasons (more or less :)

High temperature destroys nutrients

Many nutrients (vitamins, enzymes) are completely or partly destroyed by warming up food even insignificantly.

Cooking a vitamin C rich food for as little as ten minutes wipes out up to half of its vitamin C potency.   Up to 50% of Pantothenic Acid may be lost during cooking (due to leaching) and up to 80% as a result of food processing and refining (canning, freezing, milling etc.). About 25% of the thiamin (B1) in food is lost during the normal cooking process. Cooking losses of processed foods may range from a few percent to nearly half the vitamin B6 originally present. Considerable losses of folic acid occur through heating. To a large extent, frying destroys the vitamin E in vegetable oils. And so on.

Dr. Li Tang, Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York:

Cooking can reduce 60 to 90 percent of ITCs [isothiocyanates, which are known to lower cancer risk].

Plant raw materials supply polyphenols to the organism to the greatest extent and thus contribute to an improvement in health state of people.

Small number of studies suggest that cooking may actually increase the release of some nutrients.

For broccoli, for example, steaming actually increased its content of glucosinolates, a group of plant compounds touted for their cancer-fighting abilities.

There are probably many more components of food that we do not know yet about that are demaged by heating.

Toxins created by heating

Wai Genriiu, New Substances In Prepared Food:

Due to heat, cooking or preparing food creates new substances. Most of these new substances come from proteins reacting with carbohydrates. Some of these substances cause cancer or brain diseases and impair neurotransmitter function and metabolism.

Almost all cooked or prepared foods contain substances that influence benzodiazepine receptors in the brain, and indirectly lots of other neurotransmitters. They can even become mutagenic. How much HCA originate depends on how much protein the food contains and on how much the food is heated.

Maillard molecules

The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, usually requiring heat. The reaction is named after the chemist Louis-Camille Maillard who first described it in the 1910s. High temperature, low moisture levels, and alkaline conditions all promote the Maillard reaction. Maillard reactions happen noticeably around 310°F (155° C), but may happen by room temperature. In the process, hundreds of different flavor compounds are created. The Maillard reaction products change the color and flavor of food. Amino acids and carbohydrates may be lost. End-products can be mutagenic, toxic or carcinogenic. The reactions can be hardly prevented, and only by removing the sugars or the amino acids, or making the product very acid or alkaline. In some cultures cooking made with spices with some protective qualities:

Some of the Maillard reaction products (pyrolysates) are known mutagens/carcinogens; they play an important role in the development and progression of diabetes and age-related degenerative diseases; they also destroy important essential amino acids. Spice turmeric, an important ingredient in the food preparation, blocks the formation of hazardous Maillard reaction products and its mutagenic activity.

Results from in vitro studies demonstrated that at least some of the dietary melanoidins, Maillard reaction products, are degraded by intestinal microorganisms, possibly influencing their growth rate. The absorption and excretion rates of individual Maillard reaction compounds have been investigated, and the studies show that at least 30% of the ingested dose of low-molecular-weight compounds are absorbed.

They also occur in the human body as a step in the formation of advanced glycation end-products (AGE). Formation of AGEs is proven to contribute to a wide range of human diseases that include ocular diseases, diabetic complications, pulmonary fibrosis, and neurodegeneration. Within the retina the accumulation of AGEs has been associated with age.

The enzymes that usually digest proteins can not easily remove AGEs. Some may be attacked by the body's scavenger cells, macrophages, bu it could, but it can stimulate unwanted side effects in the surrounding tissue.

Acrylamide

One of the Maillard reaction products is acrylamide, a potential toxic compound which is only formed at temperatures above 180 °C, especially in baked or fried products, alsoin crisps and breakfast cereals.

Cooking of food is a major source of the background dose of acrylamide in humans. An evaluation of cancer tests of acrylamide and available data for its metabolism leads to the estimation that the background dose of acrylamide is associated with a considerable cancer risk.

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs)

Alan R. Gaby, MD:

A group of chemical compounds that form during cooking are believed to accelerate the aging process and to contribute to heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and the organ damage caused by diabetes and kidney disease. ... The chemicals in question, advanced glycation end products (AGEs), are created when a sugar molecule hooks onto one of the amino acids of a protein or when a sugar combines with certain fats or other compounds in food. AGEs also form within the human body when glucose fuses to proteins, fats, or DNA.

AGEs form as food browns during cooking, primarily when foods high in protein or fat are subjected to high temperatures. Cooking at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time creates more AGEs than cooking at lower temperatures for longer periods of time. Also, exposure to dry heat produces more AGEs than cooking in liquid.

PAH, HA, NOC

The main groups of food carcinogens resulting from high-temperature processing are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), heterocyclic aromatic amines (HA), and N-nitrosamines (NOC).

PAHs are products of the incomplete combustion of organic matter and therefore occur commonly in temperature-processed foodstuffs. Direct contact with flames drastically increases PAH content, while boiling in water appears to generate the smallest amount of PAH. PAHs are considered to be the most potent carcinogens for humans.

Addiction

Due to heat, cooking or preparing food creates new substances. Some of these substances cause cancer or brain diseases and impair neurotransmitter function and metabolism.

Donald Mottram, University of Reading, UK:

"And in baking bread, the centre of the bread does not reach 100°C. You would only really get acrylamide in the crusts - but they're the tastiest part."

That's interesting. Our attraction specifically to the taste of the Maillard reaction products could indicate an addiction. We all may be addicted to unusual quantities of certain ingredients in the food, without having means to realize the danger. Smokers love the tabaco flavor, cola-drinkers love their sugar-highs, chocolate-lovers think they can't live without the next portion.

Many of new substances created in cooked food are heterocyclic amines (HCA), and many of them are directly or indirectly physically addictive.

Physician and health researcher Dr. Neal Barnard in his book Breaking the Food Seduction gives fascinating insights into the chemical reasons behind cravings. He suggests to eat whole plant food to prevent blood sugar dips that can lead to cravings. If you desperately want something, it may be that you are simply hungry. Cravings is not a question of willpower or psychology—it’s a matter of biochemistry.

Whether you’re drawn to chocolate, cookies, potato chips, cheese, or burgers and fries, we all have foods we can’t seem to resist—foods that sabotage our best efforts to lose weight and improve our health.

Imitation

Basis of our nutritional behavior forms during early childhood by observation and analysis of food choices and reactions to them of people around us (I heard it in a lecture, cannot find the source right now). Thus, we basically rely on culture we are happened to be born into. And if our authority figures are mistaken, we are in mislead, and in trouble, because habit, emotional attachment and addictive substances in food do the rest.

Unfortunately, we cannot rely on tradition: there are too many people having serious illnesses caused by improper diet. We cannot rely on new methods and arts of food manufacturing either: businesses are not concerned with our long-term flourishing, they try to deliver us immediate satisfaction. And for some industries it is even better to get us ill - they can sell us drugs and services suitable for that sad situation.

The "culinary art" has many methods to imitate sweetness and tender structure of fruit, exaggerating the taste with various additives, and lately with chemicals that copy natural flavors and enhance them, that can confuse us completely, and make us choose a fat over-sweetened cake with coffee over a perfectly ripe juicy fruit. We also seem to lack the ability to recognize the possible negative effects of such foods (dehydration, obesity, and serious health problems) and must rely on our minds and will to make the right choice.

According to pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene, to change our food preferences and to accept and enjoy beneficial foods we need to re-introduce them in our diet more and more times as we get older. If you don't like some fruit or vegetable in it's raw form, it is not a ground to believe that your body does not need it - this food may just be unrecognizable to your system, your protective instincts against unknown and potentially poisonous foods may play a role. But after 10-15 times testing and eating even small amounts you may start to love it. Kids often do.

Additives

By choosing simply raw whole fruit and vegetables we avoid all those traditionally and factory made meals with either too much salt, or fat, or sugar, or anything else in them.

Evolution

Use of fire

It is a common sense notion that eating raw is "natural", we are just evolutionary more evolved to eat unprocessed plant foods which could be found in nature in abundance. The period of food cooking by humans must be much shorter in the historical scale of that eating raw. Archaeological evidence for established use of fire dates back only about 128,000 years. It is unknown when our ancestors went from using fire for warmth, light and protection from nocturnal predators to cooking. But genetic adaptation may take plays in 1-2 thousand years period, maybe even less, considering epigenetic regulation.

There is a challenge to the hypothesis that the control of fire preceded cooking by a significant period:

...The greater the preference shown by a raw-food-eating hominid for the properties present in cooked food, the more easily cooking should have been adopted following the control of fire. Here we use great apes to model food preferences by Paleolithic hominids. We conducted preference tests with various plant and animal foods to determine whether great apes prefer food items raw or cooked. We found that several populations of captive apes tended to prefer their food cooked, though with important exceptions. These results suggest that Paleolithic hominids would likewise have spontaneously preferred cooked food to raw, exapting a pre-existing preference for high-quality, easily chewed foods onto these cooked items.

Social norms

Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist and ethnologist, in "The Raw and the Cooked", 1960, says that culinary ceremonies are not inborn but acquired phenomena. He examines thought categories embedded in a set of myths extracted from native communities in Latin America. Among the categories to be explored he notes the raw and the cooked. Through ethnographic observation he comes to conclusion that it is social convention that determines what is food and what is not. The less the food is transformed, the higher its social status. For example, roasted food is considered more aristocratic than boiled food since its transformation involves only fire, as opposed to boiled food where both water and oil are used.

We could suggest that starting eating raw may be liberating for individuals.

There is a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard and that thinks that cooking defined humanity as a species:  Richard Wrangham, the author of a book "Catching Fire" points to the adaptations humans have made and define humans as the "cooking apes" and claims that Darwin (among others) missed the point in assuming that cooking has been a late addition to the human skill set. Wrangham says that eating cooked food made digestion easier, the energy that we formerly spent on digestion was freed up, enabling our brains to grow larger. He says: "We are cooks more than carnivores". He also notes that cooking "trapped women into a newly subservient role enforced by male-dominated culture" - that could be a reason for girls to stop cooking ;)

Human structure

We have short, thin fingernails and small “canine” teeth.

Carolus Linnaeus, (1707-1778), a Swedish naturalist and botanist:

Man's structure, internal and external compared with that of the other animals, shows that fruit and succulent vegetables are his natural food.

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), Regne Animal, Vol 1, p73:

The natural food of man, judging from his structure, appears to consist principally of the fruits, roots, and other succulent parts of vegetables. His hands afford every facility for gathering them; his short but moderately strong jaws on the other hand, and his canines being equal only in length to the other teeth, together with his tuberculated molars on the other, would scarcely permit him either to masticate herbage, or to devour flesh, were these condiments not previously prepared by cooking.

Jared Diamond, a professor of anthropology at UCLA, has written that the notion of man the hunter is a romantic myth - our earliest ancestors lived on the wild fruit, nuts, seeds and tubers that they gathered (which were raw).

Frugivores

Frugivores - species whose diet consists primarily of fruits. Most primates are predominantly frugivores, hence they eat raw plant matter (fruit). Humans are primates and it could be better for them to nurture themselves this way due to specificity of the gut morphology and other digestive processes.
(See more in Why fruit only - Frugivores).

David John Chivers, Peter Langer, The digestive system in mammals: food, form, and function:

Humans are only omnivorous thanks to food processing and cookery; ...

Veganism

By avoiding animal products we free ourselves from necessity of food sterilization, because those foods are the most dangerous. We feel better psychologically by following the basic for most of us moral rule to not kill.

The idea that cooking make us hunt was formulated in 1825 by French gastronomist Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: after our ancestors started cooking meat became more desirable, leading to a new importance for hunting. He says also: "It is by fire that man has tamed Nature itself". Our new knowledge of ecology gives us totally different perspective on our abilities and dangers of "conquering"nature.

Human diseases

Prevention

Multiple studies that suggest that eating fruit and vegetables is necessary to stay in good health are made on fresh plants.

Twenty-eight studies examined the relationship between raw and cooked vegetables and risk for various cancers. Twenty-one studies assessed raw, but not cooked, vegetables and cancer risk. The majority of these assessed risk of oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, esophageal, lung, gastric, and colorectal cancers. Most showed that vegetables, raw or cooked, were inversely related to these cancers. However, more consistent results were found for oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, esophageal, and gastric cancers. Nine of the 11 studies of raw and cooked vegetables showed statistically significant inverse relationships of these cancers with raw vegetables, but only 4 with cooked vegetables. The few studies of breast, lung, and colorectal cancers also suggested an inverse relationship with both raw and cooked vegetables, but these results were less consistent. In the two studies of prostate cancer, there was no association with either raw or cooked vegetables. One of two bladder cancer studies found an inverse relationship with cooked, but not raw, vegetables. Possible mechanisms by which cooking affects the relationship between vegetables and cancer risk include changes in availability of some nutrients, destruction of digestive enzymes, and alteration of the structure and digestibility of food.

American Cancer Society:

Many studies have found that high intake of fresh fruits and vegetables is associated with reduced risk of stomach cancer.

Harvard School of Public Health:

Eating plenty of vegetables and fruits can help you ward off heart disease and stroke, control blood pressure, prevent some types of cancer, avoid a painful intestinal ailment called diverticulitis, and guard against cataract and macular degeneration, two common causes of vision loss.

Most people should aim for at least nine servings (at least 4½ cups) of vegetables and fruits a day, and potatoes don't count.

Researchers at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo found that among both smokers and nonsmokers, those who ate this minimal amount of raw veggies had a 40 percent lower risk to get bladder cancer. But the team did not find the same effect for cooked vegetables.

Observations

Professor Albert Schweitzer, world renowned doctor to the peoples of Africa, in his "Briefe aus dem Lam-barenespital" (Letters from the Lambarene Hospital) in Africa, 1954:

We had to perform thee first appendicitis operation on a native of this region. How it turned out that this so frequent sickness of white people did not occur in the colored of this country cannot be convincingly explained. Probably its still exceptional occurrence is traceable to a change in the nutrition. Many natives, especially those who are living in larger communities do not now live the same way as formerly - they lived almost exclusively on fruits and vegetables, bananas, cassava, ignam, taro, sweet potatoes and other fruits. They now live on condensed milk, canned butter meat and fish preserves, and bread.

The date of the appearance of cancer, another disease of civilization, cannot be traced in our region with the same certainty as that of appendicitis. We cannot state decisively that formerly there was no cancer at all, because the microscopic examinations of all tested tumors revealing their real nature, has only been in existence here for a few years. Based upon my own experience, going back to 1913, I can say, if cancer occurred at all it was very rare, but that it became more frequent since. However, it is not spread as much as it has among the white race in Europe and America.

Dr. Francis M. Pottenger's nutritional studies have shown that a regular diet of cooked or canned foods causes the development of chronic degenerative diseases and premature mortality.

Deterioration

There is a correlation between the consumption of processed foods among primitive peoples of the world, and the corresponding rise in physical deterioration.

Teeth

Dr. Weston A. Price found that in folks where past generations had subsisted on raw, unprocessed food, the jaw formations were near perfect, dental arches were well formed, tooth structure was a work of art, carries were nonexistent, and all thirty-two teeth were intact.

In generations following the introduction of refined and processed foods into the dietary, certain degenerative changes in the mouth were noted:

1. jaw formations were malformed,
2. dental arches were misshapen,
3. tooth structure was uneven, faulty, and badly decayed,
4. many teeth in the mouth were missing.

Intestinal toxemia

Cooked food passes through the digestive tract more slowly than raw food, tends to ferment, and throws poisons back into the body. Prolonged intestinal toxemia may manifest the following symptoms: fatigue, nervousness, gasto-intestinal discomfort, recurrent infections, skin eruptions, hormonal disturbances, headaches, arthritis, sciatica, low back pain, allergies, asthma, eye, ear, nose and throat disorders, cardiac irregularities, pathological changes in the breasts, and so forth. All of these conditions have been shown to respond to therapy directed to correcting the bowel toxemia.

Enzymes

Some people suggest that enzymes in raw food help digestion, but I could not find any reliable scientific data to support this opinion. Normally these enzymes are just destroyed by digestive system.

Digestion enzymes are proteinaceous molecules that catalyze, that break down polymeric macromolecules into their smaller building blocks. Enzymes (catalysts) facilitate the reaction without being destroyed or changed in the process. Increasing the amount of enzyme decreases the time required for completing the process. Digestive enzyme are found in the digestive tract of animals (including humans) where they aid in the digestion of food as well as inside cells (also in raw food cells).

All plant products contain enzymes. They are responsible for both growth and post-harvest deterioration (wilting, discoloration, rancidity, etc.). Enzymes in food are destroyed by warming up from ~ 118 °F  (48 °C), and are totally destroyed by boiling. It is unclear whether these enzymes have anything to do with the digestive process after food is consumed.

There is a notion that consuming too many processed, cooked foods for several years exhausts the body's enzyme-producing glands, resulting in poor digestion and assimilation of food later in life.

It has been scientifically established that the body's ability to function properly is contingent on its supply of enzymes. When the supply of enzymes begins to run low a withering process begins to set in on humans, animals and even insects. ... It is suggested by many authorities that people get old before their time due to enzyme exhaustion and that some people are old at forty because of the lack of enzymes while others are young at 80 because of the abundance of enzymes.

It has been found that after the age of 40, the body’s natural enzymes become fewer and weaker. Scientists in the US (Chicago) found that old people generally only have 1/30^th as many enzymes as younger people and Dr. Eckardt of Germany discovered that the enzymes in the urine of old age are only half as strong as those in the prime of life.

Edward Howell, who pioneered research in the benefits of food enzymes, said that although the body can manufacture enzymes, the more one uses ones enzyme potential, the faster it is going to run out.

But some doctors think differently. Video by Dr. Tel-Oren, MD:

Some doctors claim that: "'Food enzymes' are not needed by the body, either for digestion or for any other purpose". Stephen Barrett, M.D., Robert S. Baratz, MD, DDS, PhD, Manfred Kroger, PhD:

...plant enzymes, when eaten, are digested just like other proteins. Processed foods can contain various amounts of enzymes that contribute to their spoilage.

But the same doctor claims that organic produce has no advantages and that avoidance of dairy products is an invitation to osteoporosis - both opinions were proven wrong. Therefore, his authority is under question to me. In any case, we should be careful with plenty of enzyme pills on the market - the companies may claim unsupported qualities for their products.

Autolysis

What I don't understand, why nobody discusses the autolysis of food by it's own enzymes. Prevented from destruction, enzymes (ferments) in food cells would disunite big molecules in special conditions, digest them. I read (in another language), that enzymes in our digestive system may just activate enzymes in food and let the process go by itself, it must be energy efficient. Activated are enzymes in plant cells that are responsible for deterioration - but in our stomach specific conditions may be created to speed up the process and make it beneficial for us. Is there any validity to that idea?

Enzymes are normally bonded with cofactors - coenzymes derived from vitamins and metal ions (we call them microelements) - and they may be efficient as a whole:

Prosthetic groups are tightly bound to enzymes and participate in the catalytic cycles of enzymes. Like any catalyst , an enzyme–prosthetic group complex undergoes changes during the reaction, but before it can catalyze another reaction, it must return to its original state.

Karen DeFelice M.Sc., author of book "Enzymes for Autism and other Neurological Conditions":

...most plant enzymes are quite stable in the stomach environment and go to work. This gives the plant enzymes an edge on digestion over animal/pancreatic enzymes. Plant enzymes can be working on food for at least an hour before the food proceeds to the small intestine. Once the food enters the small intestine, plant enzymes continue to work.

Plant enzymes can be customized more because they are derived from plant or microbe sources. Pancreatic enzymes are limited to a ratio of proteases (proteins), amylases (carbohydrates), and lipases (fats).

In biology, autolysis, more commonly known as self-digestion, refers to the destruction of a cell enzymes. It may also refer to the digestion of an enzyme by another molecule of the same enzyme. ... Autolysis is initiated by the cells' lysosomes releasing the digestive enzymes they contain out into the cytoplasm. The cell then, in effect, starts to digest itself.

Digestive Leukocytosis

This is an interesting phenomenon, which is described only by one person in history, in 1930s, or at least I was not able to find any more proof to it, or any attempts by other scientist to disprove it. Few notes before we come to the "food leukocytosis" itself.

White blood cell count (WBC) rises after ingesting a processed meal. Elevated WBC count is correlated to bacterial infection, inflammation and depressed immunity. Raw foods supposedly do not produce this reaction.

Leukocytosis is a raised white blood cell count (the leukocyte count) above the normal range in the blood. Leukocytosis is very common in acutely ill patients. It is interesting, that the total number of white blood cells in peripheral blood samples increases during and immediately after exercise, and lowers only after a larger volume of exercise.

Bacteriologist Pavel Kouchakoff watching scurvy during long stay in the Arctic regions, has discovered that raw plant foods prevents food leukocytosis, that was considered earlier as physiological phenomenon, which occurs almost always when the cooked food touches the palate. This leukocytosis was seen in the fact that the walls of the intestines quickly concentrated white blood cells, as in a case of infection. This mobilization takes 1-1,5 hours and then stops.

Kouchakoff worked at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry, Lausanne, Switzerland. He held many experiments, analyzing the blood before and during meals. According to him, the number of WBC increased sharply at the use of cooked food, and does not change when using this food in its raw form. After that, he proven experimentally that commercially processed foods evoke even more active response. He also thought that by taking cooked food with raw one can reduce the defensive response.

Though, foods heated below certain temperature (between 87-97°C ~189-207°F - somewhat below the boiling point) for 30 minutes do not induce digestive leukocytosis (Kouchakoff, 1937).

In simple words, leukocytosis means that our body perceives the substance coming from the cooked food as alien. Antibodies bind them to form immune complexes that should be withdrawn from the organism. But for some reason it does not happen all the time, and they form amyloids, get deposited on the walls of blood vessels in the form of plaques, and in the organs and in fat. In the body lacks the resources - time and energy to get them out if the cooked food is taken frequently. Toxins accumule as the result. It can trigger delayed food allergy.

Further laboratory tests revealed that food with an acidic pH, and slightly acid drinks cause leukocytosis (cooked and otherwise processed foods, usually has an acid reaction).

Hunza's example

Dr. Robert McCarrison in 1927, as a Director of Nutrition Research in India under the Research Fund Association, about  where the people of Hunza in the Himalayas:

During the period of my association with these people, I never saw a case of asthenic dyspepsia, of gastric or duodenal ulcer, or appendicitis, of mucous colitis, or cancer . . . among these people the "abdomen over-sensitive" to nerve impressions, to fatigue, anxiety or cold was unknown. The consciousness of the existence of this part of their anatomy was, as a rule, related solely to the feeling of hunger. Indeed, their buoyant abdominal health has, since my return to the West, provided abdominal contrast with the dyspeptic and colonic lamentation's of our highly civilized communities.

Animal examples

Non-human animals does not eat processed foods. If they are fed it, they develop human diseases typical for the given cuisine. More than that, cooked food seems to be addictive to animals, and they would not return to their normal diet after been introduced to heated food, even though they live less or die!

Human cuisines for rats

McCarrison on the experiment on rats on primarily raw diet (of Hunza):

During the past two and a quarter years there has been no case of illness in the "universe" of albino rats, no death from natural causes in the adult stock, and, but for a few accidental deaths, no infantile mortality. Both clinically and at postmortem, examination of this stock has been shown to be remarkably free from disease.

On a diet typical to that of the people of India (rice, pulses, and vegetables cooked with a variety of condiments) the over two thousand rats developed a variety of disease conditions: heart, kidney and glandular weaknesses, gastrointestinal disorders, ulcers, anemia, crooked spines, bad teeth, eye ailments, various skin disorders, and loss of hair.

On a diet typical to that taken by the poorer classes of England (canned meat, boiled vegetables, white bread, margarine, jarns and jellies, and sweetened tea) not only were a variety of disease conditions produced on the diet, but also the rats became hypertensive. They fought among themselves, and by the sixteenth day of the experiment the stronger rats were killing and eating the weaker ones.

Raw vs cooked choice

Professor M. I. Pevzner in Fundamentals of medicinal nutrition, (1949, p. 36):

The experiments in rats, for example, showed the following: if you take two groups of rats, and give one of them only raw eggs, and the other - hard-boiled eggs, those rats that are fed solely raw eggs remain alive, and those that eat hard-boiled, some time die. If one group of rats on a daily basis to give the same amount as the hard-boiled, so a raw egg that rats eat only hard-boiled eggs, without touching the damp, and after a while die.

The following experiment may show that primates can also switch to cooked root vegetables and meat, but apparently not in all types of food (e.g. fruit) they realize the difference:

Group of researchers at Harvard University gave a choice between cooked and raw food to a number of captive apes. Chimpanzees preferred cooked carrots, sweet potatoes, and beef over the raw alternatives. They did not express any preference in the case of white potatoes and apples. A few bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans were also tested, and except for a penchant for cooked beef, not many expressed a preference.

The findings concur with research showing that cats favor cooked meat and rats opt for cooked starch.

Increased pancreas

Professor Jackson of the Dept. of Anatomy, University of Minnesota, has shown that rats fed for 135 days on an 80% cooked food diet resulted in an increase pancreatic weight of 20-30%.

Potatoes for pigs

Cooked potatoes make farm animals gain more weight than raw:

Cooked potato is of approximately equivalent nutritive value to maize, whereas raw potato is usually associated with a reduction in animal performance. Cooked potato products are particularly appropriate for inclusion in pig diets.

Body weight normalization

It have been reported by many individuals that they resolved their weigh problems with raw diet. Many people lost weight just by switching to raw food.

Food for symbiotic gut flora

There is a data about our microflora, based on which we indirectly could assume that our symbiotic microorganisms live the best on raw plant matter. (See Microflora)