F. M. Pottenger conducted a study of the effects cooked and processed foods had on the dental structure of animals. The study lasted for 10 years and revealed far more alarming results than Pottenger had expected. Pottenger kept 900 cats in strictly controlled conditions whereby he had total control over their diets. All cats were fed on meat and milk but one group received them in their raw state while the other group was consistently fed them cooked. The cats fed on raw food produced generations of healthy kittens throughout the 10-year study. The cats fed on the cooked version developed the same diseases common to humans such as cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease, glandular malfunctioning, kidney disease, sexual impotency, paralysis, pneumonia, arthritis, difficult labors and such severe irritability that they became aggressive and difficult to handle. The first litter of kittens to be born to the first cooked food group suffered abnormalities and demonstrated very poor levels of overall health. The second generation was born diseased or dead. By the third generation the females were sterile. The excrement from the cats fed on raw food was used as fertilizer and resulted in healthy and strong plant growth. The plants fertilized with the excrement from the cats on cooked food produced week and stunted plants. The results were first published in the American Journal of Orthodontics and Oral Surgery. Later Pottenger repeated the experiment with while mice and found the results to be identical.

Dr. Weston Price was an American dentist who devoted 20 years of his life traveling round the world and studying "primitive" societies. He wrote up his findings in his famous book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. In his book he explained that the average diet amongst these people consisted of simple, fresh and largely uncooked foods. Typically, these foods were gathered and eaten immediately. He examined the teeth and bone development, the incidence of caries and the overall health status of the people he studied and compared them to those in the “civilized” world. Dr Price concluded that “...a diet based on cooked and processed foods creates appalling problems with human health.”

Dr. Paul Kuchakoff was from the Institute of Clinical Chemistry in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 1930 he conducted a study that revealed how leucocytosis (a proliferation of white blood cells) occurs when cooked foods are consumed. This, he concluded, demonstrates that the body considers cooked food to be a toxic threat and fights it as such.

Dr. Howard Loomis repeatedly experienced Dr Kouchakoff’s findings while working with hundreds of patients. He concluded that over simulating the immune functioning three to four times per day by the ingestion of cooked foods is definitely a stress on the system.

O. Steiner was also a Swiss researcher. He fed guinea pigs their usual diet but subjected it to the cooking process first. The animals soon demonstrated anemia, scurvy, goiter, dental caries, glandular degeneration and (once pasteurized milk was added) arthritis.

Dr. Szekely went on to treat 123,600 people (17% of whom were diagnosed as being ‘incurable’) by applying the principles of a raw plant based diet. 90% were recorded as having regained their health.

Professor Karl Eimer, director of the Medical Clinic at the University of Vienna studied the effect of a 100% raw diet on athletes. He placed his subjects on a two week program of intense physical training while they continued to consume their usual cooked diet. Their athletic performance was monitored and evaluated. They were then put on a 100% raw diet and continued their training. Without exception the athletes demonstrated improvements in reflex speed, flexibility and stamina. Eimer, and his colleague Professor Hans Eppinger, concluded that raw foods increase cellular respiration and efficiency. Their findings were reported in the July, 1993 edition of Zeitschrift fur Ernahrung entitled Klinik Schwenkenhacher.

Dr. Gearson in 1958, after many years of study and research into the effects of a raw food diet on cancer, he wrote in “A Cancer Therapy – A Result of 50 Cases”: “The studies showing that nutrients are destroyed by subjection to heat are too numerous to mention.”

Viktorus Kulvinskas, a well known researcher in to the benefits of a raw diet states; 80% of a foods nutrient value is destroyed by cooking.’

Other studies show some variation but most agree that subjecting foods to the heat of cooking results in:
* Up to 96% loss of thiamine (B1)
* Up to 97% loss of folic acid
* Up to 72% loss of biotin
* 70% - 80% loss of vitamin C

The Max Plank Institute of Nutritional Research in Germany states that only 50% of any protein in a food is available to the body once it has been cooked.

Dr. William Neusome from Canada’s Department of Health and Welfare Food and Research Division found in his experiments with pesticides that cooking transforms certain fungicides into cancer causing compounds.

Dr. Gabriel Cousens reports that browned and burned food becomes carcinogenic. He observes that this comes primarily from heated protein matter. Experiments were done feeding animals isolated chemicals from burnt/browned food. The animals all developed cancer.

Dr. Kollath conducted experiments while searching for a diet that was conducive to healing. He discovered that raw foods alone, and distinctly not vitamin or mineral supplementation, restored sick animals back to health from their “half-health” condition (meso-health).

Researchers from the Linus Pauling Institute reported that a raw diet, when fed to mice, had the same anticancer properties as high doses of vitamin C.

Additional Indication that a Diet of Raw Plants is the Superior for Human Health

It is recorded that Pythagorus (500 BC) used a diet of raw plants to heal people with digestive disorders. One of the first clinics to advocate a diet of raw plants was the clinic of Max Bircher Benner in 1897. Bircher Benner experimented with his own health problems first. He suffered from jaundice and an “inability to eat.” Having successfully achieved a recovery he began to recommend the same diet to patients of his that had digestive disorders. The outcome was the same: recovery.

In the early 1920’s a doctor by the name of Max Gerson, M.D. healed his own migraines and “incurable” lupus by consuming a diet of raw plants In 1928 he cured Albert Schweitzer of diabetes and his wife of tuberculosis via the same raw plant approach.

This information is but an iceberg tip of a massive and ever-expanding array of evidence that a diet of raw plants is the optimum diet for human health.

The governors of Healthful Living International are either doctors or they have attained similarly high academic status within the health field. Their joint mission is to bring authentic and scientific information to those in search of superior health, and to bring clarity to the mist of falsehoods veiling so much of today’s vegetarian and vegan world.