Isn't cooking interesting? With a few basic pieces of equipment, a stove and
some pots and pans, you can radically transform your food, play with it, and
turn it into something totally different. Think about the difference between
a raw potato and a potato after it's been baked. What a metamorphosis! What
used to be this crunchy, juicy, earthy thing is now creamy, sweet and mealy,
and it melts in your mouth. It fills you up like nothing else, and all of this
you couldn't have achieved without this little magical feat you operated using
your stove (just assuming that some of you still use stove, but I'm sure you
are beyond that, aren't you?).
So you went on and cooked your food, added a pinch of this and a pinch of that
in the pots and pans, fried a few things, boiled some others, and operated all
of these miracles that transformed these rude material into some actual cuisine.
Who in fact would even bother to eat a raw apple when you can bake it with cinnamon,
brown sugar, and make it a real treat?
But the question we ask now is: What really goes on, behind the scenes, when
we cook our foods? What is it that happens at the molecular level that turns
this raw potato into the food we know as baked potato? What is it that can make
us go past our repulsion for raw meat and eat with delight a grilled steak?
Thusly we can bring up the theme of this article: science and the art of cooking,
with (unfortunately) its implication on human health.
Cooking has always been considered an art, where every possible way to transform
the foods has been permitted, as long as it succeeded in creating some eatables
that are pleasing to the palate.
This so-called art had the benefit of being able to use the rich natural world
to operate its marvels. It is possible, using the molecules contained in foods,
and transforming them using fire, to create countless new molecules that were
not present before in these foods. These new molecules are the true offsprings
of cooking, and their implication on human health is quite scary.
Science is just starting to analyze these new creations of the cooking art,
and can't even seem to see the end considering their gigantic number.
I am not talking here about the composition of foods, to which I show no interest
in this articles. There are plenty of books already out there discussing the
composition of cooked foods, in terms of fats, protein, carbohydrates, minerals,
and vitamins. The real question I am bringing up is : how the diverse methods
of the cooking art operate at the molecular level to transform foods in their
raw state?
Cooking & Science
Chefs rarely are men and women of science, and it might even scare them to think
of their art as cold science. But science is amazing in the way that its laws
only ask to admit that our universe is composed of molecules, which are in themselves
composed of atoms. Life is constituted of cells, which are constituted of molecules.
We know this since college. We also know that atoms are linked together by chemical
reactions more or less strong according to their type: between the atoms of
a same molecule, the forces are generally strong, but between two different
neighboring molecules, the forces of attraction are not as strong.
Often, when we heat something, we break only the forces playing against the
neighboring molecules; water into ice, for example, is a stalking of water molecules.
When we heat ice, the energy that we bring suffices to break the links between
the water molecules, and thus create a liquid where the molecules, although
forming a coherent mass, are moving from one another. However, in the liquid
formed, the molecules are not transformed. The molecules of water are identical
to the molecules of ice. Then when we heat water over 212 degrees (100 Celsius),
it evaporates, because the heat that has been brought is enough to break the
forces of cohesion between the water molecules. But again, within each molecule,
the atom of oxygen is still linked to two atoms of hydrogen. This type of transformation
is physical in its nature, and not chemical: the water molecule stays a water
molecule.
But what the average chef doesn't know is that, during the cooking process,
chemical reactions occur -- molecules in foods are being disassociated, rearranged,
and new molecules are being created.
Which brings up to the following question:
What exactly are these molecules created through cooking, and what do they do
to our health when they enter our bodies?
The Maillard Molecules
I am not the first person to ask this question.
"In 1916, an American, chemical engineer, by the name of Maillard, decided
to isolate substances that give cooked foods their distinctive flavors, such
as the tastes of bread, chocolate, coffee, etc. After having singled them out,
he hoped, no doubt, to produce them artificially in order to add them to industrial
foods and enhance the appeal that they could have to the consumer's taste buds.
So in order to complete his scheme, he had to determine the exact structure
of these new molecules. He quickly found out that these molecules resulted from
very complex, haphazard chemical reactions between sugars and proteins, and
one could produce them quite easily by heating any food even to moderate temperatures.
"It is not possible to see with the naked eye what happens in a saucepan
on the molecular level. When a chemist combines two substances in a test tube
and subsequently heats the compound over a Bunsen burner, it boils, clouds,
changes color or explodes accordingly. In each case, a new compound has been
produced. Heat causes the molecules involved to collide, and repeated collision
causes divalent bonding in order for new molecules, and hence a new substance,
to form. The same goes for cooking, except that myriad molecules are brought
together instead of just two.
"In an ordinary baked potato, there are already 450 by-products of every
description. They have even been named 'new chemical composites.' So far, around
50 such substances were studied and turned out to be either peroxidizing, antioxidizing,
or toxic and possibly even mutagenic, meaning that they are liable to wreck
cell nuclei and set up cancer. What was ascertained for broiled potatoes, which
involves a fairly straightforward preparation, becomes much more serious with
more sophisticated cookery. Sliced potatoes baked with cheese is a case in point.
Heating releases an awesome array of chemical reactions -- 450 substances in
potatoes and probably many more in cheese which is a highly intricate biochemical
complex. Not only will those unwanted molecules stack up their effects, but,
moreover, they will combine among themselves in every possible way -- meaning
that tens of thousands of abnormal substances will spring out of a cooked dish
calling for mere potatoes and cheese. Just think of elaborate recipes where
one clocks up endless chains of sundry ingredients jumbled together helter-skelter."
-- Guy Claude Burger, Manger Vrai.
Maillard Molecules & Health Hazards
It seems that shortly after Maillard discovered these molecules, that have since
been termed "Maillard's molecules," he tried to prove that they had
no adverse effect on human health. Some experiments quickly showed that he was
wrong, and all his work was swept under the rug, until 1982, when some research
appeared in scientific journals. Scientists now begin to foresee the possible
connection between the introduction of these molecules in the human bodies and
common diseases and health problems.
"As far back as 1916, Maillard proved that the brown pigments and polymers
that occur in pyrolysis (chemical breakdown by heat alone)... are yielded after
prior reaction of an amino acid group with the carbonyl group of sugars.
Though apparently simple, this reaction is, in fact, highly complex, itinerating
in a spate of successive reactions and forming melanoidins, which are brown
pigments that impart a typical color to whatever part of a food has endured
higher temperatures.
The number of substances generated as a result is most impressive, yielding
endless chains of new molecules: ketones, esters, aldehydes, ethers, volatile
alcohols, and non-volatile heterocycles, etc. These innumerable substances coalesce
into a complex compound and are endowed with differing biological and chemical
attributes: they are toxic, aromatic, peroxidizing, anti-oxidizing, and possibly
mutagenic and carcinogenic (DNA fractures can be oncogenic), or even anti-mutagenic
and anti-carcinogenic. This to say that heating causes widespread disruption
in the natural order of molecules. The research work backing up this article
evidenced over 50 pyrolytic substances in broiled potatoes, most of which originated
from pyroseines and thiazole. However, Derache also has it that "there
remain, all in all, some 400 by-products to identify." -- Manger Vrai
Weird Science
The Malliard reactions are one type of possible reaction occurring during common
food preparation, but not the only one. Cooked foods are the product of chemical
reactions, and most transformations operated by the culinary art are chemical
in their nature. When meat darken on the surface when cooked, it's the result
of a chemical reaction; when brown rice soften when boiled, it's again another
chemical reaction. Unlike water, the molecules in food are extremely complex
and fragile, leaving place for a huge amount of new chemistry in the cooking
pan
More than just one reaction, it's a mass of innumerable complex reactions, that
we simplify using the classifications of biochemists: carbohydrates, fats, protein,
water, minerals.
"The products of the Maillard reaction are innumerable and still mostly unknown. In 1990, a famous chemistry magazine dedicated a 20 page article on the Maillard reaction, describing number of flavors created in the procedure. The brown color that chefs try to option while sautéing foods in oil is a color created through the Maillard reaction: at the high temperatures reached by the fat, the reaction occurs, while it doesn't happen as much when we boil foods, temperature being then limited to the temperature of boiling water: 212 degrees. Quantity of researchers study these molecules which could be at the basis of a number of diseases." From the book: The secrets of the cooking pan.
Are we adapted?
There are a lot of reasons to believe that new molecules created during the
processes of cooking enter the blood stream without being properly digested,
since there are no enzymes adapted to their digestion. These molecules would
then accumulate in all part of the body to create number of diseases.
Since the raw-food and natural health movement has been in existence, authors
in the subjects have often talked about detoxification, without really explaining
the nature of the toxins coming out of the body. They always knew that under
a cooked food diet the individual accumulates in his body all sort of unwanted
materials. The whole idea of all the methods of body purification, such as fasting,
enemas, colonic irrigation, herbal cleanses, etc, is to remove these "obstructions."
Detoxification
Long term raw eaters know that foods and medicines taken a long time ago eventually
find their way out after a long time on a raw-food diet. A lot of our friends
have experienced the taste of medicines, candies, and other familiar cooked
food, during their detoxification period, and for no apparent reasons. Molecules
from denatures foods seem to get trapped inside the body, just waiting to be
removed later through the proper detoxification pathways, when the body has
the energy to do so.
It is quite safe to assume that there are no reasons for the body to be adapted
to the new molecules created in the process of cooking, due to their huge amount
and complexity, and the fact that they have entered human bodies only in the
past 10,000 years of human history.
"The Maillard reaction works simultaneously upon thousands of compounds;
combinations are innumerable, and products thus formed also are. We create molecules
to which no one knows exactly their effect on human health. Certain molecules,
in minimal concentration, could be at the origin of many serious health problems."
The Secrets of the Cooking Pan.
These molecules accumulate in all parts of the body, creating obstructions that
would lead to diseases, and, according to some research, contribute to the processes
of aging.
Conclusions
Nobody really knows what goes on in the cooking pan. We have been doing it for
so many years, without really stopping to ask ourselves the question. All the
scientific research done on the subject seem to prove that the compounds created
during the processes of cooking are extremely complex, numerous, and possibly
dangerous.
When we put some food in a stove or a over a frying pan, it may seem for some
of us like a very natural process. After all, everyone seems to be doing it,
and no one really stopped to ask some serious questions about the rightness
of it. But it now seems time for all of us to stop and ask ourselves the question:
"Is it really possible to keep eating cooked food and get away with it?"
References----------------------------
* Les secrets de la casserole -- Hervé THIS, Belin, 1993, ISBN 2-7011-1585-X, 222 p.
* "Pyrolysis and risks of toxicity" by Professor R. Derache, in "Cahiers de nutrition et de diététique" (Diet and Nutrition Journal), 1982, p 39.
* Manger Vrai, Guy-Claude Burger, Editions du Rocher, 1990, 462 pages