• H&R Moderators: VerbalTruist | cdin | Lil'LinaptkSix

Oxidation: Is Food Really So Fragile?

Ataxia said:
Firstly, to be pedantic, his definition of oxidation is way off. Oxidation is loss of electron(s) (therefore a gain of a charge) of an atom/ion in a reaction (e.g. heterolytic cleavage). This is one of the first things you learn in chemistry!

It's an interesting concept though. Where's the proof though? I thought a "doctor" would have learned to reference!

A study into this by professional chemists (Not some Hindu quack "doctor") would be interesting.

PS. I should have just posted this quote from the site for anyone in doubt about the veritably of the source:

The alarming effect which acid rock music had been shown to have on plants made Mrs. Rettallack wonder whether the nationwide craze for it among the younger generation might be extremely deleterious to their development. One longhaired musician, peering into the rock-suffused biotronic chamber, said to her; "Man, if rock is doing that to plants, I wonder what it is doing to me?"

This isn't a forum to spread your religious propaganda.

How can you associate one article by one man with everything on an entire website? The quote you're using to discredit Herbert M. Shelton and his article is from a book called The secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It has nothing to do with his article. Maybe that article isn't in the best of company...I myself don't agree with everything on that site (Iit came up in a search result, and I found that one article to be interesting), but what are you trying to prove by referencing an unrelated article?

...Typical of a narrow-minded skeptic...

Also, Herbert Shelton is not Hindu nor am I. It's kind of immature to just assume I'm hindu and tell me not to spread my religious propaganda.
 
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Tranquil Soul said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tritoch
Why not? Peanut butter does have a distinctly different flavor than just plain, roasted peanuts (the best way to judge that is with the natural peanut butter, not the commercial, and I've had both--many brands). Almond butter tastes a lot different from almonds (I have tried both raw and roasted almon butter, as well as both raw and roasted almonds).

hmmmm. Maybe it's the copious amounts of added salt, not to mention everything else.

oxidation my arse.

Um, they do make unsalted peanut butter--which I have tried, and I prefer it FYI--besides, most peanuts sold are salted, so your aregument doesn't make any sense. Either way I've tried salted and unsalted peanuts and peanut butter. Also, you don't mention almond butter, which is another example of a nut butter not tasting the same as the nuts themselves--further supporting the article.
 
atlas said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tritoch
Why not? Peanut butter does have a distinctly different flavor than just plain, roasted peanuts (the best way to judge that is with the natural peanut butter, not the commercial, and I've had both--many brands). Almond butter tastes a lot different from almonds (I have tried both raw and roasted almon butter, as well as both raw and roasted almonds).

Thanks for your good input, milk82. I really didn't think this article would endure as much criticism as it did, I mean, it's only common sense that food rots if you leave it out too long--an unpeeled banana will rot more quickly than a peeled one; a shredded leaf will decay more quickly than an unshredded leaf...

The author is simply taking this well-known "phenomenon" a step further, and saying that a significant loss of vitamins takes place during the process, and like I said before, before the food just downright goes bad.


atlas responded:

Another reason your logic is plawed. Peanut butter doesnt taste different from peanuts because of oxidation, it tastes different because your tounge has much better access to flavanoids (stored within cell walls), than it does when you just chew it. This is a well understood phenonenom with foods like onions and garlic. Large, uncut pieces in food will taste mild, mined, chopped, or diced pieces taste spicey.

So even if you chew and chew and chew peanuts you don't get the same amount of access to the flavonoids? I HAVE done that (and, no, it doesn't make them taste like peanut butter, but I don't think it's because your mouth isn't capable of breaking the structure to provide the same amount of access to the flvonoids) because, believe it or not, I've long wondered why peanut butter tastes different from peanuts. If it's flavonoids that are responsible for the flavor then I believe that it's matter of the flavonoids being altered, not how accesable they are.

Perhaps, going with the philosophy of this article, the reason that peanut butter tastes different from peanuts is because peanuts are altered during the process of being turned into peanut butter by undergoing oxidation.
 
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Tritoch said:
Um, they do make unsalted peanut butter--which I have tried, and I prefer it FYI--besides, most peanuts sold are salted, so your aregument doesn't make any sense. Either way I've tried salted and unsalted peanuts and peanut butter. Also, you don't mention almond butter, which is another example of a nut butter not tasting the same as the nuts themselves--further supporting the article.
where did I say I was talking about salted peanuts?

it's called the placebo effect my friend, learn to love it.
 
what it all boils down to is, who gives a fuck? I cook my vegetables, and my meat, and I am a healthy human being with no vitamin deficiencies. You will shorten your life more (or whatever bad side effects you are blindly preaching about) by worrying about this shit all the time and not just enjoying food the way it has been eaten for thousands of years.

by all means though, suit yourself and prepare food that way, but please don't try to preach it to others without providing evidence from sources far exceeding the reliability of yours.
 
Peanut butter also has a bunch of added sugar, not just salt ;) If you *really* wanted to compare, some health food shops grind up raw unsalted peanuts into a paste and sell it in tubs. I've tried it - it tastes like peanuts to me.

Also some foods are actually better for you cooked - tomatoes for example. Your body absorbs much more lycopene, a powerful antioxidant, from cooked tomatoes.

http://www.wholehealthmd.com/refshelf/foods_view/1,1523,41,00.html

... just two random facts I thought I'd chuck in.....
 
Tritoch said:
Um, they do make unsalted peanut butter--which I have tried, and I prefer it FYI--besides, most peanuts sold are salted, so your aregument doesn't make any sense. Either way I've tried salted and unsalted peanuts and peanut butter. Also, you don't mention almond butter, which is another example of a nut butter not tasting the same as the nuts themselves--further supporting the article.

It further supports the article that the taste of food changes when it starts to rot. The process of rotting is not something that changes the vast majority of the chemicals in the fruit - especially not to the point where our body cannot use them.

Indeed, the smells that rotting fruit give off attracts many different animals to eat them! It's is the fruit's way to ensure that the seeds inside are eaten and dispered far from the original plant by defecating.

Taking everything in this article as true, and not delving into the concepts behind the claims further shows the glaring oversimplification this article suffers from.

It's great that you are interested in health and improving your diet. I don't think there is a shortcut to truly understanding nuitrition and the chemistry involved.
 
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but...but

raw foods

ear candles

aura photographs

I was going to live forever. :(
 
Tritoch said:
How can you associate one article by one man with everything on an entire website? The quote you're using to discredit Herbert M. Shelton and his article is from a book called The secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It has nothing to do with his article. Maybe that article isn't in the best of company...I myself don't agree with everything on that site (Iit came up in a search result, and I found that one article to be interesting), but what are you trying to prove by referencing an unrelated article?

...Typical of a narrow-minded skeptic...

Also, Herbert Shelton is not Hindu nor am I. It's kind of immature to just assume I'm hindu and tell me not to spread my religious propaganda.

To be honest, I couldn't find that particular article on the site so I decided to read a few other articles to get a gist of ideology of the site (and from what I wrongly assumed the author of that article). My fallacy admitted.

I do not identify as a "narrow-minded" sceptic. I choose to use logic, reason and empirical evidence to interpret the world around me (I don't say "I believe" in them as I truly believe in nothing). I said I was open-minded to the idea in so many words but I'm not going to swing one way or another 'til there is an accredited investigation into it.

If the article hit a more speculative "what if" vein, I'd have took it seriously but he was spouting it like it was fact (it may well be; references?). It seemed very naive of someone of his academic rank. I guess it was meant to be a pop-article though, laymen don't ask for references.
 
Strawberry_lovemuffin said:
Peanut butter also has a bunch of added sugar, not just salt ;) If you *really* wanted to compare, some health food shops grind up raw unsalted peanuts into a paste and sell it in tubs. I've tried it - it tastes like peanuts to me.

Also some foods are actually better for you cooked - tomatoes for example. Your body absorbs much more lycopene, a powerful antioxidant, from cooked tomatoes.

http://www.wholehealthmd.com/refshelf/foods_view/1,1523,41,00.html

... just two random facts I thought I'd chuck in.....

8( I've tried all the peanut butter there is! In fact the peanut butter I love the most is the unsalted, unsugared, completely crude, natural variety! Like I said in a previous post, even before even laying eyes on this article, it always wondered me why peanut butter tasted different than just plain peanuts (all varietys taken into account 8) ).

At my local Whole Foods, you can actually make your own nut butters--they have machines set up with nuts in clear plastic containers above heaters/grinders for the processing (the machines kinda look like gumball machines). You pull down on a lever and the nuts are ground and heated, coming out of the machine as a butter. If you go by what this article says, what's happening is the heating speeds up the process of oxidation, thus altering the taste.
 
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lifeisforliving said:
Indeed, the smells that rotting fruit give off attracts many different animals to eat them!

Oh are you following a rotten fruit diet at the moment? Sounds like it's the key to longevity :D
 
Tranquil Soul said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tritoch
Why not? Peanut butter does have a distinctly different flavor than just plain, roasted peanuts (the best way to judge that is with the natural peanut butter, not the commercial, and I've had both--many brands). Almond butter tastes a lot different from almonds (I have tried both raw and roasted almon butter, as well as both raw and roasted almonds).
__________________________________________________

hmmmm. Maybe it's the copious amounts of added salt, not to mention everything else.
oxidation my arse.

Tranquil Soul said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tritoch
Um, they do make unsalted peanut butter--which I have tried, and I prefer it FYI--besides, most peanuts sold are salted, so your aregument doesn't make any sense. Either way I've tried salted and unsalted peanuts and peanut butter. Also, you don't mention almond butter, which is another example of a nut butter not tasting the same as the nuts themselves--further supporting the article. __________________________________________________

where did I say I was talking about salted peanuts?

it's called the placebo effect my friend, learn to love it.

Where did you say you were talking about salted peanuts? See the bold text ^ 8)
 
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Strawberry_lovemuffin said:
Also some foods are actually better for you cooked - tomatoes for example. Your body absorbs much more lycopene, a powerful antioxidant, from cooked tomatoes.

http://www.wholehealthmd.com/refshelf/foods_view/1,1523,41,00.html

... just two random facts I thought I'd chuck in.....

Maybe so, but the key word there is "some". Even if that's true, it would be wise to find out exactly which those food are. Let me just say this: I'm not trying to spread the "raw food movement" around. I'm not even on a raw food diet--at the moment I don't even believe in what is considered a true raw food diet. Herbert Shelton, the guy who wrote this article, was a pioneer of the raw food diet, however, but he actually was even more radical than most people on raw food diets today--chopping, grinding, and juicing are all big parts of the raw food diet and a good portion if not the majority of the diet entails handling food that way.

The reason I posted this article is because it's basically advocating fresh food, which is something I agree with.

By the way, I just read what that link said about cooked tomatoes and lycopene. It says that the lycopene content is INCREASED (it doesn't render it better for digestion, as you state) and it's increased only because cooking tomatoes removes the water, thereby making them less filling, smaller in size, hence more may be eaten, hence more lycopene may be absorbed (and a raw food follower would also add that it would destroy every other nutrient in the tomatoe and that a sun-dried--because the heat of the sun isn't as strong as the heat of a frying pan, or boiling water in a pot--or dehydrated tomatoes would be best.)
 
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LOL I just found a site that had these things to say about the author of this article:

"Dr. Herbert Shelton, the naturopath who popularized Natural Hygiene (a strict vegan and raw food diet -- though Shelton apparently didn't follow it himself as you'll learn later in this article)."

"Unlike the supposedly strict vegan Herbert Shelton, who spent the last ten years of his life beridden and suffering the agonies of an undiagnosed disease that resembles Parkinson's..."

http://chetday.com/healthgurus.htm

Even if he was a hippocrite, though, it doesn't mean he doesn't make a good point in his article. Besides, you can't believe everything you read, obviously... (according to quackwatch.com, he lived to 89...)

8)
 
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Tritoch said:
Where did you say you were talking about salted peanuts? See the bold text ^ 8)
OMFG you IDIOT. <see the bold text there?

I was talking about your statement that had inferred I was talking about salted WHOLE peanuts, and then I was talking about salted peanut butter.

I never said anything about salted whole peanuts in my previous posts, but I certainly did say something about salted peanut butter.

Learn to read, nimrod.
 
Strawberry_lovemuffin said:
Also some foods are actually better for you cooked - tomatoes for example. Your body absorbs much more lycopene, a powerful antioxidant, from cooked tomatoes.
QUOTE]

This reminds me of something else...

I'm pretty sure I've read Vitamin C in the form of ascorbic acid doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, however it is found in the brain. Only oxidized ascorbic acid can cross it, then it is converted back into the useable ascorbic acid. That's how I understood it, anyway.
 
Tritoch said:
By the way, I just read what that link said about cooked tomatoes and lycopene. It says that the lycopene content is INCREASED (it doesn't render it better for digestion, as you state) and it's increased only because cooking tomatoes removes the water, thereby making them less filling, smaller in size, hence more may be eaten, hence more lycopene may be absorbed.

Actually, no. That link confused the issue by talking about removing water and so on. Lycopene IS better absorbed by the body in cooked form, regardless of the weight/density issue. You could eat a bag of fresh tomatoes and still not absorb the same amount of lycopene as there is in a 1/4 cup tomato paste. It is a definite chemical change that happens which increases bioavailabilty.

Here this might be better:
http://www.lycopene.org/

I wonder if raw foodies will make an exception for tomatoes? Or would that throw the whole theory out of whack? ;)
 
Tranquil Soul said:
OMFG you IDIOT. <see the bold text there?

I was talking about your statement that had inferred I was talking about salted WHOLE peanuts, and then I was talking about salted peanut butter.

I never said anything about salted whole peanuts in my previous posts, but I certainly did say something about salted peanut butter.

Learn to read, nimrod.

Actually, I never inferred that you were talking about salted peanuts. I'll break it down for you so you can comprehend it:

It all began here...

Originally Posted by mik82
Trying to link the oxidation of flavour compounds with loss of nutrients is not a good idea.


to which I replied:

"Why not? Peanut butter does have a distinctly different flavor than just plain, roasted peanuts (the best way to judge that is with the natural peanut butter, not the commercial, and I've had both--many brands). Almond butter tastes a lot different from almonds (I have tried both raw and roasted almon butter, as well as both raw and roasted almonds)."...

to which you quoted me and replied:

hmmmm. Maybe it's the copious amounts of added salt, not to mention everything else.

oxidation my arse.


"...copious amounts of added salt, not to mention everything else." referring to peanut butter (right?)

I then responded to that by saying:

Um, they do make unsalted peanut butter--which I have tried, and I prefer it FYI--besides, most peanuts sold are salted, so your aregument doesn't make any sense. Either way I've tried salted and unsalted peanuts and peanut butter. Also, you don't mention almond butter, which is another example of a nut butter not tasting the same as the nuts themselves--further supporting the article.

^ See that bold text up there? That's where the misunderstanding lies. See, I wasn't inferring that you were talking about WHOLE peanuts, I mentioned whole, salted peanuts because you were basically saying that the distinction of flavor between peanut butter and peanuts is the salt ("...copious amounts of added salt..."--referring to peanut butter), but I was trying to tell you that that's not really the case because the majority of store-bought peanuts are "roasted, salted" because it sounded to me like you were implying that I was comparing unsalted peanuts to salted peanut butter. Either way, I've tried all kinds of peanut butter and peanuts and I can tell you that peanut butter just doesn't taste the same as peanuts. :D
 
Some antioxidants are only created in the crust of breads, due to the heat required for the reaction that creates them.

And yes I know you aren't talking about antioxidants, I am just giving one example of how heat can improve your food.
 
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