Retaining Nutrition

Cooking foods at low temperatures, little to no water and oxygen is key to preserving nutrition and flavor of our food. When plants taste good, people stick eating healthy for a lifetime! It's win win!!!!

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​Most researchers indicate at least a 50% loss of vitamin B in cooked foods. Some losses, such as thiamine, can be as high as 96% if food is boiled for a prolonged time. Biotin losses can be up to 72%, folic acid up to 97%, Inositol up to 95%, vitamin C up to 70 to 80%. Cooked proteins have only 50% bio-availability compared to uncooked proteins. As other food-quality factors decrease with time, foods also lose nutrients during storage and shipping. Exposure to light and heat breaks up the sensitive vitamin molecules; they are destroyed and cannot be regenerated. The anti-oxidant vitamins, especially vitamins E and C, are destroyed by oxygen in the air. Some nutrients are volatile and evaporate during normal drying.

The calculated intake of vitamins based on standard nutritional tables is inaccurate. Nutritionists normally take the values for raw foods and reduce them by 25%. This is not a true representation of the nutrient loss. Dr. Paul Kouchakoff of the Institute of Clinical Chemistry studied the influence of cooked food on our blood. Human bodies are very sensitive to harmful influences and react against them immediately. This is easily demonstrated by the analysis of blood during an infection, following trauma, and with exposure to noxious chemicals. The blood's response to these challenges to the homeostasis, or natural balance of the body, is to increase the number of leucocytes (white blood cells), to fight the invader. This phenomenon in relation to food had been known before the landmark work of Dr. Kouchakoff: the ingestion of food would cause a rise in the number of leucocytes in the blood. It was called digestive leucocytosis and was considered to be a normal physiological response to eating. But Dr. Kouchakoff went beyond the simple observation of the digestive leucocytosis and made a remarkable discovery. He found that unaltered food (i.e., not been overheated or refined in any way) caused no reaction from the blood.

But food that had been heated beyond a certain temperature (unique to each food), or food that was processed, always caused a rise in the number of white cells. He called this not a digestive leukocytosis, but a pathological leucocytosis, a reaction to a foreign invader. Kouchakoff tested a great variety of foodstuffs including water, salt, vegetables, cereals, nuts, honey, raw eggs, raw milk, raw fish, raw meat, butter, sour milk, etc. None of these, if fresh, unrefined, and not overheated, caused any reaction, but were seen as friendly foods not to be fought. These same natural foods, altered only by heating, caused a rise in the white blood count (leucocytosis), an expected reaction when dangerous foreign invaders invade the body. But the worst offenders, heated or not, were the processed foods--those foods that had been extracted, purified, stabilized, enriched, homogenized, sterilized, or otherwise changed from their natural state. These not only caused a reactive leucocytosis, but they elicited a change in the numerical relationship of the various types of white blood cells, a mobilization of the killer cells to fight a dangerous enemy! This included pasteurized milk, chocolate, margarine, candy, white flour, various concentrates, and any other processed food extant at the time, which was minuscule compared to what we eat today. Dr. Kouchakoff found that one way to at least soften the blow to the system of eating altered foods was to chew them thoroughly.

Each food has a critical temperature above which the food is no longer seen by the body as friendly. Some of the findings are highly significant, as they help to answer questions that have bemused us for years. Does boiling water (distillation), for instance, decrease its nutrient value? If Kouchakoff's findings have significance in relation to our health, then our methods of preparing and cooking food are clearly detrimental. The critical temperature for water is only 191° F, far below the 212° F used to distill water. The critical temperature for milk is also 191° F, but in the sterilization process now used to make packaged milk as free from deterioration as steel ingots, the milk is flash sterilized to a temperature of 281° F! That's almost 100 degrees over the temperature where the destruction of nutrients begins.

Protein

Six of the eighteen essential amino acids (Phenylalanine, Lysine, Threonine, Histidine, Tryptophane, Methionine) are heat labile meaning that when a certain amount of heat is applied (as in cooking), these particular amino acids are first denatured (unraveled) and then coagulated to an insoluble state in which they cannot be utilized by the body in the formation of polypeptide chains needed for cellular repair or replacement.

Even the denaturation involves structural changes in the protein molecule, which results in a loss of species specificity. The denaturation alters viscosity, surface tension and replicative utilization of biologically active proteins, which includes hemoglobins, myoglobins and enzymes as well. Digestive enzymes attack denatured proteins much differently than undenatured proteins and coagulation renders the protein irreversibly insoluble. So a source of raw protein with all the natural amino acids is helpful...properly balanced and readily available to the cells.

Cooking protein foods destroys four-fifths of the protein value. Heat, acids, trypsin and hydrolysis all cleave polypeptide chains, which make up enzymes--the functional units of cellular metabolism. As a result, some of the amino acids are denatured or lose their characteristic folding and the important catalytic activity is lost. So cooking of protein foods, prior to ingestion, can denature or unfold some of the amino acids required for cellular enzyme biosynthesis. A deficit of Iron, Copper, Zinc, Magnesium, Manganese, Potassium, Nickel, Molybdenum or Selenium, impairs enzymatic production and or function. Another remarkable finding was that if a cooked foodstuff is eaten along with the same food in the raw state, there is no pathological reaction. The raw food will neutralize the detrimental effects of the altered food.

If you cook foods at a temperature of 190°F or less, you will not elicit the digestive pathos's reaction in the blood. When foods are cooked, the energy fields are not able to resonate immediately with the body, so the body responds defensively until it can reorganize the energetic fields of the cooked food into patterns it can resonate with and absorb.

If a food is commercially processed and then cooked, not only does the white blood cell number increase, but there is a change in the ratio of the different white blood cell types to each other. He found that the critical temperature for initiating leukocytosis was when food was heated at around 191° F. Interestingly, the leukocytosis needed as little as 50 milligrams of cooked food to be initiated.

https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/pureed-vegetables-much-fiber-fresh-1295.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25442619/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3704564/?_escaped_fragment_=po=5.%2055556

https://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/030314p10.shtml

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049644/

https://www.kron4.com/news/why-cooking-methods-affect-aging/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19820033/

https://www.seleneriverpress.com/historical/influence-of-food-cooking-on-the-blood-formula-of-man/

https://www.ijstr.org/final-print/nov2013/Effect-Of-Heating-On-Vitamin-C-Content-Of-Some-Selected-Vegetables.pdf

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15055922/

Semi-vacuum is a very healthful way to cook food. Food cooked the semi-vacuum way is a reduced oxygen environment with little added water and cooked at low temperatures.

The three elements- heat, oxygen and water, most responsible for reducing the nutritional content of conventionally prepared foods are of much lesser scale in semi-vacuum style cooking.

Cooking in a vacuum, oxidation is significantly reduced, preserving the qualities of essential polyunsaturated fatty acids. Moisture and flavors are also preserved in the same manner. Cooking semi-vacuum is all about using less of everything- fat, oil, salt, spices and water, this all translates into foods with more retained natural minerals and essential vitamins.

“As with all foods, freshness and minimal processing intervals greatly affect the nutritional profile. Food items prepared using semi-vacuum highlight fresh textures and lively flavors, making healthful food more interesting to consume. Because dishes are richer in taste, semi-vacuum cooking appeals to the palate, while still maintaining valuable nutritional properties of fresh, wholesome foods.”

Cooking at lower temperatures for a shorter time is the essence of semi-vacuum cooking and has many benefits:

• Foods retain their natural moisture better, shrink less and are more tender. • Natural flavor, color and aroma are retained for better sensual values.

• Healthy minerals and vitamins are not destroyed during the semi-vacuum cooking process.