Q. In addition to environmental chemicals, what sort of toxicity is associated with the foods we eat?
A. In addition to exogenous environmental toxins (e.g., pesticide residue, antibiotic residue, etc.), toxic substances can also be produced via cooking methods, as well as internally due to the inefficient digestion of foods. As examples, altered protein structures from meats cooked at high temperatures are known to contain potentially harmful substances called heterocyclic amines (HCAs), and starch–based foods cooked at high temperatures are known to contain a similarly harmful substance, acrylamide. As we shall see, even food–based nutrients such as iron pose a toxicity risk in some situations.
In the broadest sense, it could be said that almost all foods pose some toxicity risk. If we tried to completely avoid food–based toxins, the result would be a near–starvation diet – obviously not a valid solution. It's important to remember as well, that unlike modern agricultural chemicals, food–based toxins are nothing new to our food supply. Our primitive ancestors, for example, likely cooked meats over an open flame, without succumbing to the modern diet–related disorders often associated with such practices.
For this reason, rather than attempting to engineer an overly restrictive and unbalanced diet to avoid food–based toxins, it makes more sense to investigate protective elements which can counter–balance them. Fruits and vegetables, for example, provide numerous protective elements against these toxins, but most people would admit to rarely consuming these foods sufficiently. This is just one reason that our modern burden of food–based toxins may be greater than ever before.
Where food–based toxins do much of their damage in the intestines, it's probably no coincidence that colon cancer is one of the most characteristic diseases of the industrialized world. The intestinal damage caused by food–based toxins may explain why so many detoxifying protocols and supplements place such an emphasis on the use of laxatives. Merely stimulating bowel movements, however, doesn't meaningfully address the problem. The first step in neutralizing toxins produced by cooking and inefficient digestion involves altering the bacterial population of the intestines to one which fosters healthy and complete digestion of foods. Various dietary fibers and polysaccharides have this effect as they act as a selective growth medium for "beneficial" intestinal bacteria.
Additionally, the green plant pigment, chlorophyll (and related chemicals), may also offer protection against many food–based and intestinally–derived toxins. Research has found, for example, that the administration of cruciferous vegetables, chlorophyll, and yogurt (a source of beneficial bacteria) helped to neutralize mutagenic DNA damage to colorectal cells caused by heterocyclic amines (HCAs) in cooked meat:
Quote from the above study:
...the inhibitor diet decreased nearly twofold the DNA damage in target colorectal cells.
Ultimately, the real solution to body detoxification begins with ensuring proper digestion, thus reducing the production of food–based and intestinally–derived toxins.
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