Dr. Pottenger's Experiment.

Ever heard of Dr. Pottenger's cat experiment? Well, if you haven't, you're going to today! It's really quite interesting and really gives you something to consider. Wikipedia is obviously public knowledge, so here is a brief summary of the study taken from there.

Pottenger's cats

Pottenger used donated laboratory cats to test the potency of the adrenal extract hormones he was making. The adrenal glands of these cats were removed for the experiments and Pottenger noted that most of the cats died during or followng the operation. He was feeding the cats a supposedly nutritive diet consisting of raw milk, cod liver oil and cooked meat scraps of liver, tripe, sweetbread, brains, heart and muscle.

When the number of donated cats exceeded the supply of food available, Pottenger began ordering raw meat scraps from a local meat packing plant, including organs, meat, and bone; and fed a separate group of cats from this supply. Within months this separate group appeared in better health than the cooked meat group. Their kittens were more energetic and, most interestingly, their post-operative death rate was lower.

At a certain point, he decided to begin a controlled scientific study. Pottenger conducted studies involving approximately 900 cats over a period of ten years, with three generations of cats being studied.

[edit]Meat study

In one study, one group of cats was fed a diet of two-thirds raw meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil while the second group was fed a diet of two-thirds cooked meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil. The cats fed the all-raw diet were healthy while the cats fed the cooked meat diet developed various health problems.

• By the end of the first generation the cats started to develop degenerative diseases and became quite lazy.
• By the end of the second generation, the cats had developed degenerative diseases by mid-life and started losing their coordination.
• By the end of the third generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases very early in life and some were born blind and weak and had a much shorter life span. Many of the third generation cats couldn't even produce offspring. There was an abundance of parasites and vermin while skin diseases and allergies increased from an incidence of five percent in normal cats to over 90 percent in the third generation of deficient cats. Kittens of the third generation did not survive six months. Bones became soft and pliable and the cats suffered from adverse personality changes. Males became docile while females became more aggressive.
• The cats suffered from most of the degenerative diseases encountered in human medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.

At the time of Pottenger's Study the amino acid taurine had been discovered but had not yet been identified as an essential amino acid for Cats. Today many cats thrive on a cooked meat diet where taurine has been added after cooking. The deficient diets lacked sufficient taurine to allow the cats to properly form protein structures and resulted in the health effects observed. Pottenger himself concluded that there was likely an "as yet unknown" protein factor that may have been heat sensitive.

[edit]Milk Study

In another study, dubbed the "Milk Study," the cats were fed 2/3 milk and 1/3 meat. All groups were fed raw meat with different groups getting raw, pasteurized, evaporated, sweetened condensed or raw metabolized vitamin D milk. The cats on raw milk were the healthiest while the rest exhibited varying degrees of health problems similar to the previous cooked meat study.

This particular Pottenger cat study has been cited by advocates of raw milk as evidence that it is likely healthier for humans than pasteurized milk.

[edit]References

[edit]Books

• Pottenger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition. ISBN 0-916764-06-0
• Fundamental Chemistry in Lab. ISBN 0-673-07877-9

[edit]

So, what do you think? If you have time, you could do some research and find that there are some opposing thoughts to this study. They have come up with multiple reasons why the study wasn't good or valid, but bottom line: it matters what you put into your body. So, take it for what it's worth, and consider yourself a little more educated today!

Temperature

I've been asked many times about the temperatures of food and what is considered raw. I've also heard some comments recently about how some cooking methods don't really destroy the foods. In response to this, I wanted to talk about temperature today! We might as well talk about heat since it's been unexpectedly warm for this time of year in Wisconsin. And I am NOT complaining!!
I've been a registered nurse for 12 1/2 years now and have spent most of my experience between the emergency department and the cardiothoracic intensive care unit. I'm telling you this, because even in the medical profession, we care about temperature. Obviously, a fever or high temperature is the body's way of fighting a virus or bacteria that has invaded it, but if it gets too high, we start to worry. I can remember caring for septic patients in the ICU that required cooling blankets to keep their temps down. Somewhere around 107 degrees, depending on who you ask or where you read,  brain cells begin to die, so we do not want to see this high of a temp in a person.

Just as in brain cell damage/death with high temperatures, food is also destroyed if subjected to high heat. Consider these temps:

Raw fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts begin to have breakdown of  living enzymes at 107 degrees! Same as brain cells!! Wow! That is not that hot when you think about most cooking methods. By 122 degrees, the food will be completely dead. Most raw food resources will tell you to keep heat under 118 degrees, but to be perfectly safe and undestroyed, temps should remain under the 107 degree mark. Keep in mind that the temperature of boiling water is 212 degrees. And if you think steaming is a better choice, think again! The temperature of steam is around 212 degrees as well.  You could use your oven, but depending on what type of oven you have, heat settings only go as low at 225 degrees. All canned and frozen vegetables are also heated/blanched prior to packaging. If you are a milk drinker, you should know that during pasteurization, milk is heated to 160, far beyond the cutoff of living foods! So, it's easy to see how most Americans are eating completely dead food.

The best way to heat foods, if necessary, is to use a dehydrator set on a low heat setting.

Here's a little science experiment I read about on the Hallelujah Acres website. The directions said to buy  5 raw carrots. Cut about 1/2 inch below the stem on carrot #1, and place it in a shallow bowl of water without cooking it. The other carrots are to be cooked using 4 different methods (steam, boil, oven, fry etc.), then also cut 1/2 inch from stem and also placed into a shallow bowl of water. The uncooked carrot is supposed to actually grow, while the cooked carrots will not. Here is the results of my experiment.

 I chose to steam one carrot, because it's generally thought to be the best cooking method. I steamed the whole carrot for 15 minutes.

 I cut the top off of my raw carrot.

 I placed the raw carrot in water.

Steamed carrot in front and raw carrot in back. I took pictures of them side by side, then placed them each in their own pan. 

I placed the tops in a pan, just to show the difference in looks after steaming.

Raw carrot green. 

Cooked carrot green.

 The picture below, shows the carrots after 5 days of sitting. The top pan is the steamed carrot, which looks pretty disgusting if you ask me. The bottom pan contains the raw carrot, which still looks quite fresh. The water in the pan with the steamed carrot turned very cloudy, and although you can't tell, it started to smell pretty nasty. The raw carrot was actually still edible.

 This is a great experiment to show just how "dead" cooked food is! It starts to rot very quickly, unlike the raw carrot, which still contains it's living enzymes.

I'm glad you can't smell this guy!

Acidity vs. Alkalinity

From www.vegetarian-nutrition.info

You can read about this subject (and I definitely have) all over the Internet, but sometimes it's not explained well. I have to give kudos to Trevor Justice from the Vegetarian Health Institute for doing such an amazing job explaining this whole pH thing! So, I will do my best to bring this info to you in the least complicated blog post I can!

I've been mentioning pH, acidity, and alkalinity in several posts, so as promised, let's get started! Let me start off by telling you that you don't want a large acid load in you diet. Your body will have to work extra hard to neutralize these acids, and it does that by leaching alkaline minerals (calcium and magnesium) from your teeth, bones, and muscle. This does not mean that you shouldn't eat citrus fruits. That's where it gets slightly complicated.

Let's go back to high school for just a second to review pH. pH is expressed on a scale where a pH of 7 is neutral, which is the pH of pure distilled water. Anything less than 7 is acidic, and anything greater than 7 is alkaline. Got it?!

Here's some examples: (again, thanks to Trevor Justice)

 pH                         Substance

Acidic Substances:

1.0                         Stomach acid
2.2                         Lemon juice
2.4                         Vinegar
4.0                         Wine and Beer
4.5                         Tomatoes
6.6                         Milk

Neutral Substances:

7.0                         Distilled water

Alkaline Substances:

7.4                         Human blood
8.0                         Sea water
8.3                         Baking Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate)
10.5                        Milk of Magnesia
11.0                        Ammonia
12.0                        Soapy water
13.0                        Lye (“drain cleaner”)
14.0                        Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH)

In case anyone ever tells you to take a product to make you more alkaline, it's not really true. Only your diet can do this. Your body is very talented at keeping your blood's pH between a tight range of 7.35-7.45.  Our blood is rich in powerful acid-buffering molecules, like bicarbonate and hemoglobin, that immediately help neutralize the acids that are generated from food or metabolism.

When referring to "acidic foods," it doesn't mean that their pH is lower than 7, in fact it doesn't really matter what their pH is to begin with, because it's dropped into our stomach which contains hydrochloric acid. Due to the extreme acidity of your stomach, nothing can change the pH of your stomach or your blood for that matter. Foods consumed, especially those high in protein, cause the stomach wall to excrete hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid is so potent it can eat through linoleum. Hydrochloric acid allows the protein-splitting enzyme, pepsin, to break down protein into it's amino acids building blocks. These amino acids will then be reassembled by your liver. Because everything that enters your stomach is mixed with hydrochloric acid, it's all acidic. Next, they will travel to your small intestine, where they are mixed with bicarbonate-rich secretions from your pancreas. This helps to neutralize them. These secretions bring the pH range of the food to 8, where they can be easily digested. So, no matter what you eat, it's acidic in your stomach and alkaline in your intestine.

So, why are some foods "acid forming?" Proteins like meats and dairy, along with flour, most beans, nuts, and grains contain a large amount of sulfur-containing amino acids. (this is a condensed version) They also contain high energy-phosphorus containing compounds. When combined with water, both of these (sulfur and phosphorus) create acidic compounds. (sulfuric acid and phosphoric acid) So, when these high protein foods are metabolized the sulfur and phosphorus left behind combine with cellular water and sulfurous and phosphoric acids. This leaves an "acid ash," which is why they are "acid forming." This acid must be neutralized to protect the pH of our blood.

This neutralization takes place almost instantaneous and occurs in two places: your blood stream and your bones. In your blood stream, albumin and hemoglobin along with other molecules, quench the acidic hydrogen ions to maintain a safe blood pH of 7.35-7.45. Next, bone surfaces of your skeleton take up the acidic hydrogen ions through the blood that flows into your bone matrix and neutralizes them. This neutralization in your bones happens because calcium atoms are borrowed from your bone tissue, hence paying a high price. This steady drain of calcium leads to osteoporosis, which is quite common, especially among women. Hormone imbalances, lack of weight-bearing exercise, deficiency of vitamin D, K, boron, and manganese also lend to the increase risk of osteoporosis. So, the reason you want to reduce your intake of acid-forming foods (meat, dairy, sugar, refined flour,grains) is to protect your bones.

So, getting back to the pH of food. Most foods that are acid-forming, (sugars, meat, and dairy products) taste good to most people, but the produce that "acid ash" once eaten.  Although citrus fruits like grapefruit and lemons taste acidic, they are actually alkaline-forming once eaten.

Alkaline forming foods should make up about 80% of your diet to help pay benefit to strong bones and healthy bodies. It's also better for your kidneys since they are responsible for excreting these acids. Eating a high alkaline diet has even been shown to restore bone health.

Here's an example of an acid/alkaline food chart that can be very useful in making healthy choices for that 80% alkaline-producing foods you need to consume! I have this same chart hanging inside one of my cupboard doors.

Here's some simple solutions to help you get started:
Juice lots of vegetables, especially green varieties.
Supplement with a morning green powder
substitute table salt for sea salt
substitute almond butter for peanut butter
substitute apple cider vinegar for balsamic vinegar
stay away from dairy and animal proteins as much as possible

Well, I certainly hope you feel educated and not overwhelmed! I tried to present the least complicated information on this topic. Whether you make any changes or not, it's great to just be informed of how certain foods will negatively or positively affect your body. Have an alkaline day!!