Uncooked Foods

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 31, 1903

We have recently been requested to give our opinion regarding uncooked wheat bread. We have no acquaintance with this food personally, and can only consider the matter in the light of the principles involved. The statement is made in a circular issued by a manufacturer of uncooked wheat bread that “cooking not only destroys the vitality of the food, but makes it a poison.” “Eat uncooked, healthy, live food, and live; or unhealthy, cooked, dead food, and die. ‘There is no life without life,’ and no continuation of life without other life.”

This is all assumption, and gives evidence of ignorance of the real nature of foods and digestion. Many foods can be eaten raw with advantage, and no doubt the cook-stove is used too much; but that cooking converts foods into poisons remains to be proved.

The greater part of animate creation—the vegetable kingdom—gets all its nourishment from non-living matter. The air and soil provide oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen; and from these elements and a few others the plant builds up its complicated structure. From the non-living only, the plant gets all the material with which it makes up its living tissues. This fact itself is a refutation of the statement that “there is no continuation of life without other life.”

Again: is it supposed that wheat which has been masticated and subjected to the action of the gastric juice is still “alive”? Would it grow if planted? All physiologists know that in whatever form carbohydrates are eaten, they enter the blood current in the form of grape-sugar. Whether the food was some wheat eaten raw, or a baked potato, or a granose biscuit, or an apple, the result is the same so far as the final product is concerned: it all turns into grape-sugar, that is if it is taken into the blood at all. Quite often raw starch is not digested at all, and as a rule it is much harder to digest than cooked starch.

Again: whether an egg be eaten raw, or soft boiled, or hard boiled, the proteid material goes into the blood in the form of peptone. Whether the food be cooked or uncooked, the process of digestion destroys any life that may be present. So far as the final product is concerned, it matters little whether a food is cooked or

raw; the only difference is that with cooked foods less digestive effort is required by the system, as cooking is a process of partial digestion. Starch granules, which are very difficult of digestion in the raw state, are by the process of boiling broken open, so that digestion becomes a comparatively easy matter. Any one can try the experiment for himself.

First secure a solution of iodine containing one grain of iodine, two grains of potassium iodide to one ounce of water. When this solution comes in contact with undigested starch, it becomes blue. Fully digested starch gives no reaction to this solution; that is, it remains colorless.

If a bit of raw starch, wheat, for instance, be masticated for, say, one minute, it will yield a blue color when treated with the iodine solution, showing the presence of undigested starch. If, on the other hand, a little starch paste be masticated for awhile, it will yield no test for starch, and Fehling’s solution will show the presence of an appreciable amount of sugar. Nearly every one knows something of how a raw potato would go as a food. It is practically indigestible by the saliva, whereas cooked potato is very readily digestible.

If one understands that the living plant structures use no living food in their growth, and that the gastric juice cuts and corrodes the food until it is changed much more than cooking changes it, it will not be difficult to detect the fallacy of the raw food theory.

But we have nothing to say against the use of raw foods—foods in their natural state—much more than is usually practiced. Fruits and nuts especially (excepting the peanut), having little or no starch, are excellent raw, and are so eaten by many. The cereals, for most people, are much better cooked—and well cooked. The legumes, especially beans, require thorough cooking. Pacific Health Journal.