Heat Destroys Vital Nutrients

Eighty million species on the earth (about 700,000 of which are animals)
thrive on raw food. Humans are the only ones that apply heat to what they
eat. Humans on average as a race, die at or below half their potential life
span of chronic illness that is largely diet and lifestyle related.
Domesticated pets also are fed cooked, processed, packaged food that
likewise is denatured by heat. As a consequence, they suffer human-like
chronic ailments including cancer, arthritis and other degenerative
diseases.Lets start out thinking about a bag of dry pet food /kibble. Lets
say the first ingredient is chicken. or usually better, chicken meal. How do
you think the chicken gets from its live state, feathers and all into a
little piece of dried kibble? Most pet food comes from multinational
companies which also own human food concerns. Like it or not, this allows
them to profitably use waste products from the human food chain. Many pet
food manufacturers use good quality ingredients, others do not. Unless they
own and control their own rendering plants, they are dependent on the
quality controls and integrity of rendering facilities. The raw materials
e.g. carcasses are first rendered. This is the process of processing raw
animal material on an industrial scale to remove moisture and fat (note:
some rendering plants produce a meat slurry rather than a dry product). Some
rendering plants are linked to a particular kind of slaughterhouse; e.g.
those near poultry processing plants may deal exclusively with poultry
by-products, some specialize in fish products. In the USA, independent
renderers process raw material from small packing houses, supermarkets, etc;
packer renderers process raw material from only the species they are
slaughtering, poultry processors process poultry by-products while protein
blenders purchase and dry rendered tankage from the preceding processors as
a the raw material for their own process. The raw product is blended in
order to maintain a certain ratio between the contents e.g. animal carcasses
and supermarket rejects. The carcasses are loaded into a stainless-steel pit
or hopper and an auger-grinder at the bottom grinds up the ingredients into
small pieces. It is a larger version of the old table-clamped meat grinder
used in the days before food processors. The pieces are taken to another
grinder for fine shredding. The shredded material is cooked at 280
Fahrenheit for 60 minutes (US figures, those in Britain and Europe may
differ but, remember this temp and time). Meat melts off of bones to produce
a soup or slurry. Yellow greasy fat or tallow rises to the top and is
skimmed off. Some pet food manufacturers use this slurry. Otherwise, the
cooked meat and bone go to a press, which squeezes out the remaining
moisture and pulverises the product into a gritty powder. The grit is sifted
to remove excess hair and large bone chips. The end products are yellow
grease, meat and bone meal..

In my opinion, it is no coincidence that since 1950, as processed food
proliferated for both humans and pets, that cancer rates in the United
States have steadily increased and are now at the highest point in history
(for pets as well as humans). The effect from consuming overly cooked food
is minimal nutrition. The body is forced to raid its dwindling supply of
nutrient reserves and remains hungry for quality nutrients after a typical
meal This leads to further hunger even though the stomach is full. The
result can be chronic overeating and rampant obesity now seen in our dogs as
well as ourselves nationwide.Scientific Research shows what
Denaturising/Cooking Does to Protein:

Cooking denatures protein. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica,
denaturising is a modification of the molecular structure of protein by heat
or by an acid, an alkali, or ultraviolet radiation that destroys or
diminishes its original properties and biological activity.

Denaturising alters protein and makes it unusable or less usable. According
to Britannica, protein molecules are readily altered by heat:. Unlike simple
organic molecules, the physical and chemical properties of protein are
markedly altered when the substance is just boiled in water. Further: All of
the agents able to cause denaturisation are able to break the secondary
bonds that hold the chains in place. Once these weak bonds are broken, the
molecule falls into a disorganized tangle devoid of biological function.
Again, according to Britannica the most significant effect of protein
denaturising is the loss of the its biological function. For example,
enzymes lose their catalytic powers and haemoglobin loses its capacity to
carry oxygen. The changes that accompany denaturising have been shown to
result from destruction of the specific pattern in which the amino acid
chains are folded in the native protein. In Britannica is the
acknowledgement that "cooking destroys protein to make it practically
useless" There are two ways to denature the proteins: chemically using
digestive enzymes, or through the use of heat. Via heat, the body does not
have the recombinant ability to utilize damaged denatured protein components
(amino acids) and rebuild them once again into viable protein molecules.
Some Physiologists claim that cooking and digestion are virtually the same:
that cooking is a form of predigestion where heat is used to hydrolyze
nutrients that would otherwise be hydrolyzed at body temperature through
digestion. This due to the enormous heat exposure during cooking, that
denatures the protein molecule past a point of being bioactive, however,
body heat is too low to effect the protein molecule so adversely.

When proteins are subjected to high heat during cooking, enzyme resistant
linkages are formed between the amino acid chains. The body cannot separate
these amino acids. What the body cannot use, it must eliminate. Cooked
proteins become a source of toxicity: dead organic waste material acted upon
and elaborated by bacterial flora.

When wholesome protein foods are eaten raw, the body makes maximum use of
all amino acids without the accompanying toxins of cooked food.

According to the textbook Nutritional Value of Food Processing, 3rd Edition,
(by Karmas, Harris, published by Van Nostrand Reinhold) which is written for
food chemists in the industrial processed food industry: changes that occur
during processing either result in nutrient loss or destruction. Heat
processing has a detrimental effect on nutrients since thermal degradation
of nutrients can and does occur. Reduction in nutrient content depends on
the severity of the thermal processing. Protein molecules under ideal eating
and digestive conditions are broken down into amino acids by gastric
enzymes. Every protein molecule in the body is synthesized from these amino
acids. Protein you consume IS NOT used as protein: it is first recycled or
broken down into its constituent amino acids AND THEN used to build protein
molecules the body needs. There are 23 different amino acids. These link
together in different combinations in extremely long chains to create
protein molecules, like individual rail cars form a train. The amino group
gives each amino acid its specific identifying characteristic that
differentiates it from the others. Excessive heat sloughs off or decapitates
the amino group. Without this amino group, the amino acid is rendered
useless and is toxic.

Cooked vs. Raw Food and Pottenger's Cats

Dr. Francis M. Pottenger Jr. MD wrote about his experiments with 900 cats
over a period of ten years. Pottenger fed raw meat to a portion of his test
cats, and fed cooked meat to the other test cats. Pottenger wrote, Cooked
meat fed cats were irritable. The females were dangerous to handle,
occasionally biting the keeper.

Cooked meat and a pasteurized milk diet led to progressive degeneration of
the animals. He compared healthy cats on raw foods with those on heated
diets with mention of parallel findings among humans in Dr. Weston A. Price's
worldwide studies. Behavioural characteristics, arthritis, sterility,
skeletal deformities and allergies are some of the problems that were
associated with the consumption of all-cooked foods. The cooked meat fed
cats suffered with pneumonia, empyema, diarrhoea, osteomyelitis, cardiac
lesions, hyperopia and myopia (eye diseases), thyroid diseases, nephritis,
orchitis, oophoritis (ovarian inflammation) and many other degenerative
diseases. No cooked food is benign. Cooked foods act malignantly by
exhausting energy, inhibiting healing, and decreasing alertness, efficiency
and productivity.

Dr. Kouchakoff of Switzerland conducted over 300 detailed experiments, which
pinpointed the pathogenic nature of cooked and processed foods. Food heated
to temperatures of just 120 to 190 degrees F (a range usually relegated to
warming rather than cooking which, nevertheless destroys all enzymes),
causes leukocytosis in the body. Leukocytosis is a term applied to an
abnormally high white corpuscle count.

Without getting into this too much, lets get back to our protein source. How
healthy is the chicken or turkey or "meat meal" being rendered and going
into your pet's food in the first place? In some countries, road kill which
is too large to be buried along the roadside is sent for rendering. This is
an efficient method of disposal. Condemned material from slaughterhouses
goes for rendering: animals that died in transit, diseased animals or animal
parts, blood, hair, feet, head and any part of the animal unsuitable for
human consumption.In Canada, the denaturing chemical is Birkolene B and its
composition remains secret. In the U.S. carbolic acid (potentially corrosive
disinfectant, toxic), creosote (used for wood-preservation or as a
disinfectant, toxic), fuel oil, kerosene and citronella (an insect repellent
made from lemon grass) may be used. In other countries, the meat is simply
dyed e.g. blue or green using a non-toxic dye. James Morris, a professor at
the School of Veterinary Medicine at Davis, California, stated that any
products not fit for human consumption were very well sterilised so that
nothing can be transmitted to the animal. Many believe this to be a naive
statement especially after the British BSE situation. In the UK, cattle feed
was believed to be well sterilized until BSE emerged; the causal agent was
not destroyed at the sterilizing temperature. The size of the rendering
batches greatly dilute any drugs or chemical substances which may be present
in the source animals.

The pet food market benefits pet owners (convenience, ready-made balanced
diet) and also benefits human food industries and animal farmers by
providing a market for by-products. It is not a new trade. In Britain half a
century ago, ill or old livestock ended up at the knackers (small scale
slaughterhouse) and often ended up being fed to hounds or farm dogs. Many
towns had a "cat's meat man" who sold skewers of waste meat to cat owners
for a couple of pennies.

A current concern to owners is the use of cloned and GM animals. Cloning
animals is currently too expensive to be practical for food production, but
farmers could clone top-quality animals as breeding stock. Food products and
by-products from the offspring of clones and from clones themselves will be
indistinguishable from that from normally conceived animals and, in the US
at least (where the powerful food producers' lobby groups render food safety
groups largely impotent), will not need special labelling as to its origin.
In the USA, food animals are routinely dosed with antibiotics, anabolic
steroids and growth promoting hormones prohibited in Europe. The residue of
these chemicals enters the food chain and can cause allergic reactions (and
probably less obvious effects) in humans and pets. In Britain, pigs were
once routinely dosed with penicillin and the drug residue ended up in pork
products; my uncle, who was allergic to penicillin, suffered allergic
reactions to sausages made from pigs medicated with penicillin. Similar
allergic reactions might be overlooked in pets. The antibiotics are used
because animals reared in intensive conditions suffer disease through
over-crowding and from wading through their own waste products (the latter
results in the higher incidence of harmful E coli strains). As a result of
widespread antibiotic use, antibiotics are now present in low levels in the
environment and resulting in ever-stronger bacteria - the so-called
super-bugs - through mutation and natural selection. Supporters of organic
petfoods suggest that many of the digestive problems, skin conditions and
even behavioural problems in pets could be due to chemical residues in their
food. Within the European Union, pet owners should be cautious of imported
petfoods and of petfoods made with meat products sourced from countries
where growth promoters and antibiotics are routinely used . In general,
European Union countries place far more emphasis on testing food animals and
slaughterhouses for pathogens (e.g. E coli, salmonella, BSE) while American
food producers resist the routine testing of animals and processing plants
for these pathogens. As a result, many European pet foods may actually be
safer (i.e. the meat more stringently tested and controlled) than American
fast foods!

Prof. Dr. Sir John Whitman Ray B.A., ND., D.Sc., NMD., CT. MT.. CI, Cert.
Pers., PhD., B.C Dip N, MD. (M.A.), Dr. Ac, FFIM., Dp. IM., F.WA I .M., RM.,
B.E.I.N.Z., S.N.T.R., N Z. Char. NMP, N P A

Dr. Francis M. Pottenger Jr. MD

Dr. Kouchakoff of Switzerland

Dr. Weston A. Prices

Note: An excellent factual text about food production methods in the USA is
"Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. "The Food Scandal" by Caroline Walker
and "The Meat Machine" by Jan Walsh look at food processing methods in the
UK (the latter two books are now only available second hand). Although the
books were written about the human food chain, pet foods contain by-products
from the animals raised to feed humans.

So back to the process of making the pet food:

The raw materials e.g. chicken, lamb or cattle carcasses, are rendered. The
pet food manufacturers buy either the meat slurry or the dried meal produced
by the rendering plants. Canned, dry or semi-moist pet foods all contain
similar ingredients. The ratio of protein, fat and fibre may be different
and the amount of water present and the types of preservative used will
differ greatly. Canned food is more bulky which is good for bowel action,
but its soft texture means that teeth are not "exercised" which leads to
tartar build-up and gum disease. Dry food is then made with a machine
called an expander or extruder. The raw materials are blended and the
mixture is fed into an expander. It is then pressure cooked (steam,
pressure, very high temperature) into a paste which is extruded through
pipes which shapes blobs of paste into small biscuits or uniform shapes.
These are then puffed like popcorn and baked or dried, then sprayed with
fat, digests, vitamins and flavour enhancers. The cooking process kills
bacteria, but may be ineffective against heat stable toxins or prions
(causative agents in BSE). Non-extruded dry foods are baked and are denser
and crunchier and may require no coating of fats of flavourings, just
vitamins and minerals, etc that were killed in the baking process. Most
canned foods, especially budget varieties, are meat slurry which may or may
not have been texturized and which contains a gelling agent to solidify
them. A typical can of pet food may contain 45-50% meat or poultry
by-products. Some contain more water than others - those in jelly or gravy
containing the greatest amount of water. In order to compare different cans,
the water has to be removed and an analysis performed on the remaining dry
matter. Some labels provide a "dry matter analysis" to aid the comparison.
To make canned food, the ground ingredients are mixed with additives. The
meaty chunks are made using an extruder. The mixture is cooked and canned.
The sealed cans are sterilized by pressure cooking. Some food is cooked in
the can instead of beforehand. Cooking, rendering, drying, canning and
baking all destroy vitamins, amino acids and enzymes. The by-products used
as raw ingredients are poorer quality and contain less nutritional value
than the prime cuts of meat depicted on the label. Pet food manufacturers
therefore fortify the product with vitamins and minerals after the cooking
process. I am often berated for recommending a raw diet as being best for
our pets but after all my research and feeding my own pets this way for
years now, I can not help but believe that our pets would be much healthier
in the long run if fed live whole foods.



Redman




--
Neurotics build castles in the sky
Psychotics live in them
Psychiatrists collect the rent