From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris) Newsgroups: sci.physics,misc.consumers,sci.med,sci.life-extension Subject: Where There's Smoke (was Re: Microwave oven - big fight over process) Date: 1 Oct 1999 04:16:41 GMT In <7t0jf5$dvm$1@agate-ether.berkeley.edu> kts@socrates.berkeley.edu (Katie Schwarz) writes: >Jim Carr <jac@ibms48.scri.fsu.edu> wrote: >>pooua@aol.com writes: >>> >>>(It is worth noting here that the reason that so many >>>Asians get esophagal cancer is the build-up of nitrates >>>in their cooking oil when they fry so much food over >>>smoky fires.) >> >> It is also true that all cooking alters the food chemically, >> and the same tests that show nasty new things in microwaved >> food will also show those things in food cooked other ways, >> not just from smoky fires. > >*Are* there tests that show nasty new things in microwaved food? I >know I've read articles in Science News about nasty cancer-promoting >things formed by grilling. They had weird names like "IQ", something >like that. Dr. Steve Harris might know. Comment: Yes, microwave ovens don't heat food as hot, so you lose fewer vitamins, but also don't get those nice brown caramelized, charbroiled, glazed tastes which are in fact Maillard reaction products of aldehyde ends of reducing-sugars, creatine, lysine amino groups, etc. What food chemists spend all their time wishing they could make cheaply. What your creme brule' cook does with that brandy or that propane torch, in the back room. Basically, they are hydrazides which go on to form other more stable nasties, chiefly the ones you are thinking of, the heterocyclic amines. The "IQ" you're referring to is one of those-- an aminomethylImidazoQuinoline, say that three times fast. All these things, plus the polycyclic aromatics, seems to stick into your DNA like a slug sticking in a vending machine, and that's not good. For then the strand breaks and the cell maybe mutates trying to fix it. This first aldose-amine condensation reaction even happens at normal temps in your body-- you're always fixing up glycated Maillard products before they go on to become yellow gunk which your cells can't get rid of. "Advanced glycosylation end products," also known as "AGE" products-- how's that for a snappy ad campaign for a scientific theory which hasn't been proven? But whether or not caramelizing your arteries ages you, the end result is sort of the same, so I suppose in that sense it doesn't matter. Pay attention to your blood sugars as you would your cholesterol. In the end, you'll thank me. The threshold for the diagnosis of diabetes keeps going down, year after year, as they find more effects of chronic high sugars. Sure, if you were a parakeet or bat you'd have a glucose of 2 or 3 times what you do, and metabolically live several times longer, true enough. But that's because Ma Nature invests a lot less repair energy in critters with brains than critters with something really useful, like wings. Though brains get us some metabolic time, to be sure. You win some, you lose some. And yes, I think all this taste for smoked barbecued this and grilled that, a nasty part of the human condition, which seems to include one pleiotropic tendency after another. A pleiotropic tendency being one that has good effects when you're young and bad effects when you're old, but nature selects for it because evolution (Mother Nature, bless Her Crone-ish Heart) cares whether you survive when you're young, and but not much later. So you get gifts like your taste for fat and calories. And in this case, I think a genuine built-in taste for products of fire. Which we've lived with for a million years-- as long as it took for grizzlies to become polar bears. You don't think your tastebuds can change a bit? Yes it's long enough to have genetic tastes for it. Goodness knows, animals that eat meat don't really care one way or the other if it's cooked. But all humans seems to. Fire makes us powerful, and we're programmed to like it the way we monkeys are programmed to like sugar, fruit flavors, and cola nuts. And pretty colors. Fire and fire smells and sights attract us like catnip. I have a little just-so theory that one of the too little understood reasons we die early of smoking (which a fifth of the world's present population eventually will) is not just the nicotine, but also has a lot to do with the reason everybody laughs at: taste. The taste you don't get from the gum or the patch, or the pen in your mouth, or whatever. "I smoke for taste," haha. You don't laugh at me, doctor, when I say I eat smoked ham for the taste, or smoked fish, or smoked barbecue sauce to grill this and that. And got rid of my microwave, and bought a grill. Or got a grill element in my microwave. Hah. So, if I'm your patient, why is my habit of sucking smoke so funny? You'd predict it, as a humane and knowledgeable doctor. Would you not? I eat fat and sugar for the taste too, don't you know. My cat couldn't care less about sugar, and strange to tell, doesn't sit and stare stupidly into camp fires. Why is that, doctor? You say you don't? Right. I'll bet you do, too. And like to smell autumn leaves burning.... And stuff that smells like that. Maybe even gas fumes, who knows? My son's a doctor and I'm afraid that didn't make him a saint... Sure, I know there's a price to pay. Isn't the subtitle of Frankenstein "A Modern Prometheus"? And what did Prometheus do? I forget. But you pay for trying to use that kind of power. "Science, true daughter of old Time thou art, Who alterest all things with thy peering gaze-- Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart? Vulture, whose wings are dull realities....." Or is it the poet's liver? And probably raw liver, too. ---------- So yes, to answer your question, frying is bad for you eventually. As are a lot of things you like to do, El Charro. And for good reason. Drink your green tea, take your vitamin C and E, and selenium, and cross your fingers. And your legs. And stop that snacking on snack foods. Eat a vegetable. For what it's worth historically as trivia, the first epidemiologic link to cancer was indeed to a fire carcinogen-- a bunch of polycyclic aromatics, no doubt--- but not to those in cigarette smoke. Rather, the connection occurs in Sir Percival Potts' classic 19th century study of the incidence of scrotal cancer among London chimney sweeps. You think I'm making this up, but I'm not. This is not the world of Mary Poppins... Chim chimeny, chim chimeny Chim chim charee A Sweep is as lucky, as lucky can be-- Chim chimeny, chim chimeny Chim chim, charooo-- And lucky is `ee, if `e's still got `is two... SBH P.S. Chim chimeny chim chim. Charreee, chim chaaarrrr oooooooooooh.... From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.lasers,sci.electronics,sci.med,sci.med.nutrition Subject: Re: Microwave-emitting Food Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:44:20 -0600 Message-ID: <aeqjrj$sul$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> "TutAmongUs@theholeintheground" <TutAmongUs@theheartofthecheopspyramid.hol> wrote in message news:ug41hukemsgsir4o8bt0709fidq3ommd79@4ax.com... > On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 09:59:57 +0100, "Dirk Bruere" > <artemis@kbnet.co.uk> Gave us: > > >And we are in direct line of descent, inheriting their genetics including > >tolerance/preference for cooked food. > > > Tolerance, yes. Preference, no. I beg to differ. And it never became more clear than when microwave cooking became available, and people simply rejected the idea of never again eating anything that hadn't been brazed, broiled, charred, smoked, browned, caramelized, and whatnot. Forget the number of backyard barbecue grills that there are (1 for every 3 families last I looked)-- do you know how many TOASTERS there are in this country? Now: WHY? What does a bread toaster DO? In Germany toast is called Zweiback-- literally "twice baked." Can you name me ANY country where people use fire but don't traditionally like to put at least some already cooked things into the fire to improve their flavor by toasting the outsides? Characteristics of humans: tool-using and making, complex language, body adornment, incest taboo, etc. And I'll add one more: we like to toast and grill stuff. Not just boil and cook in water where you get no browning products. Toast and grill and broil. If it's in every culture, you have to suspect the proclivity (like our species' sweet-tooth) is in our genes. SBH -- I welcome Email from strangers with the minimal cleverness to fix my address (it's an open-book test). I strongly recommend recipients of unsolicited bulk Email ad spam use "http://combat.uxn.com" to get the true corporate name of the last ISP address on the viewsource header, then forward message & headers to "abuse@[offendingISP]." |