A LESSON IN DIGESTIVE PHYSIOLOGY
Each and every time you consume food, your
body is going to go through a number of different
processes all aimed at breaking that food down.
Digestion is a highly complex process and in
order for you to reap the nutrients your food
provides, it needs to be completed smoothly and
effectively.
When we look at all other species, they eat their
food raw. If you’re a tiger living in the wild, you
prey on zebra and when you catch one, you eat it
raw. If you’re a cow, you’re feasting on grass all
day long, another raw source of nutrition.
It’s only humans that have come to cooking their
food, which is where the problem begins.
Now, I’m not telling you to go eat a raw chicken breast or start requesting your steak to be
blue rare. Far from it. But what I am going to tell you is that you may not be actually
delivering the protein to your muscle tissues like you think you are.
Foods in the raw state, as we see in the wild, contain all the digestive enzymes that are
necessary in order to break that food down in the stomach. These digestive enzymes are
designed to help break down all the foods we eat into smaller molecules, which our body
can then absorb and utilize as it is meant to be.
When we heat our food however, many of these digestive enzymes are destroyed (Gatellier,
P., & Sante-Lhoutellier,V., 2009). So now you have a whole load of protein delivered to your
body without a way to break it down. In addition to this, heating certain proteins can also
lead to them becoming denatured, which then renders them nearly useless to your body, if
not dangerous in some cases. One study published in the British Journal of Cancer noted
that barbequed meat was positively associated with renal parenchyma carcinoma,
illustrating that it could potentially put you at a higher risk for kidney cancer development
(Colt, J.S. et al. 2011). In addition to this, another study published in the Cancer Epidemiol
Biomarkers noted that when ‘well done’ or ‘very well done’ meats were most often
consumed in subjects, there was a 1.26 fold increase risk of incidence of prostate cancer
(Cross, A.J. et al. 2008).
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