“It is indeed argued that our northern climate requires that food should be eaten hot as one means of maintaining the bodily temperature; but if this be true of man, it must apply with equal force to all animals; and since man alone seems to require hot food, the argument loses its force. In the polar regions the conditions of animal life show plainly that the natural process of generating heat is not by putting heated substances into the stomach, but by the normal action of the vital forces upon food taken in its natural state. Greater thirst is experienced after eating cooked than uncooked food, and this results both from the change that the food has undergone, and from the perspiration caused by the increased heat of the body. The artificial solution of the food impairs its nutritive properties, and weakens the natural functions of the body by depriving them of their natural employment; and this has been so long continued that we are now almost incapable of digesting uncooked grains, so that their enlivening and invigorating action is almost unknown.”
Dr Schlickeysen argues very strongly for what he terms the “electrical vitality” of food, which he contends—I think rightly—is ruined by cooking. He says:
“Finally—and this is a point which physiologists have hitherto quite overlooked—the food must contain a certain electrical vitality. Although the real origin and nature of the vital force is not yet known, we believe that it is closely related to electricity; not less so, indeed, than to light and heat. Electricity is abundant in all purely natural products, and indeed, everywhere where a free and uninterrupted exchange of the influences of light, heat, and air, exist. It is less abundant in closed dwelling and sleeping rooms than in the open air. An outdoor walk refreshes us, not only by the increased consumption of oxygen, but by the increased action of the electrical forces. The same vitality is stored up in uncooked plants and fruits, but it is greatly impaired by all our culinary processes. Fruits act also through their natural acids, their refreshing coolness, and the easy assimilation of their albuminous products, and other nourishing materials.
“By the ‘electrical vitality’ of food we do not mean its nutritive worth, nor indeed any material element of it, but rather an imponderable fluid, which is related to the vital and electrical forces of the human system. The organic vital force has not incorrectly been called the interrogation point of physiology, and the physiologists and chemists of the old school thought to maintain this force by supplying albuminoids to the system. The fact, however, is the reverse. The albuminoids demand rather a great expense of vitality for their solution and digestion. We know now, with great certainty, and by practical experience, that the human system is maintained and strengthened by the consumption of fresh air, fresh water, and ripe fruits, and grains; but these essential means of sustenance are reduced from the rank of vital to merely nutritive substances by any treatment that, through heat or otherwise, destroys their natural vitality. Our physiologists have not hitherto understood this difference between the vital and the merely nutritive properties of food, and hence, as we have already pointed out, have regarded foods as merely chemical substances. They have discovered and laid down with wonderful exactness, the chemical elements of the living body, and hence of the food requisite, according to their views, to its maintenance; but we hope to show that their methods and consequently their dietetic conclusions, have been one-sided, and therefore essentially erroneous. So long as the electrical vitality of food is overlooked, and the bearings of anthropology upon the question is ignored, a scientific system of diet must remain impossible.”[38]
This whole question of the injurious effect in cooking food may be summed up in a very few words. Heat destroys the life and vitality of the food, and practically nothing is left but the “ashes,” as it were, which are dead, inert, and comparatively of far less food value than the raw foods. It can readily be seen why this must be so. At a temperature of 150° F., certain properties of all organic substances are destroyed, or even at a temperature below this. This can readily be proved in the case of all living organisms, and it is also true, to a large extent, in the case of all vegetables, fruits, and other organic compounds, whose life is also destroyed at these high temperatures. A leaf of cabbage immersed in water not too hot to be borne by the hand will wilt. The effects of heat upon all flowers can very readily be seen. Their life becomes extinct, and the vital properties of all organic substances must be ruined by subjecting them to the tremendous heat necessary for cooking them. A large part of the nutritive value of the substance cooked is thus ruined, while, in many cases, valuable nutritive material passes out of the substance into the water in which it is cooked, or escapes altogether. It will thus be seen that, from the physiological and chemical sides of this question alone, there are many strong reasons for believing that the cooking of food is injurious, lowering its nutritive value, and
ruining many of its most valuable properties. But since fruits are almost the only form of food that can be eaten in a raw state—or rather as cooked by nature—this would indirectly prove that fruit is man’s natural diet, thus agreeing with his anatomical structure; and the fruitarian diet would, on the other hand, indicate that a raw-food diet is the best that man can adopt. When we come to consider the fact that no other animal cooks his food, and that the higher apes—man’s dietetic counterpart—eats his fruits and nuts in a raw state, we can readily see that there is no valid reason, apart from custom, for man cooking his food—so long as the natural or fruitarian dietary be adopted at all. It is curious to note the attitude various authorities have taken upon this subject, when writing of foods in relation to man’s relative place in nature. Thus, Dr Mattieu Williams, in his “Chemistry of Cookery,” p. 295, says:
“At the outset it is necessary to brush aside certain false issues that are commonly raised in discussing this subject. The question is not whether we are herbivorous or carnivorous animals. It is perfectly certain that we are neither. The carnivora feed on flesh alone, and eat that flesh raw. Nobody proposes that we should do this. The herbivora eat raw grass. Nobody suggests that we should follow their example.
“It is perfectly clear that man cannot be classed with the carnivorous animals, nor the herbivorous animals, nor with the gramnivorous animals. His teeth are not constructed for munching and grinding raw grain, nor his digestive organs for assimilating such grain in this condition.
“He is not even to be classed with the omnivorous animals. He stands apart from all as The Cooking Animal.”