2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines

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Also mentioned on the side panel of an article called “Why Raw Sprouts May Be The Riskiest Food In The World” on amazingribs.com are:

“Other high risk foods”

Raw anything. In the language of food safety experts, cooking is the "kill step" that makes food safe. Raw foods can be contaminated in the field by wildlife, field workers, polluted water, and just bacteria in the air. Cooking then properly kills bacteria. Chief among the riskiest raw foods are:

Raw oysters. Food safety expert Bill Marler says that, because of warming sea waters, he has seen more foodborne illnesses linked to shellfish in the past five years than in the two preceding decades.

Precut or prewashed fruits and vegetables. Raw veggies and fruits are higher risk than cooked because the extra handling and the contamination of wash water increases the risk significantly. When heads of lettuce, for example, are dumped in a bath of wash water, if the chlorine content is not high enough (and it dissipates with heat, sun, and time), if one head of lettuce has bird poop on it, it can spread to other heads. This is a common problem that produce growers are working hard to solve.

Undercooked eggs. If the yolk is runny, the risk is much higher. If you must have runny yolks or if you must make egg nog with raw eggs, use pasteurized eggs.

Unpasteurized dairy products and juices. The growing fad for these products is very risky. Unpasteurized milk is a deadly serious risk for people with weakened immune systems, older adults, pregnant women, and children. From 1912 to 1937, 65,000 people died of tuberculosis from raw milk in England and Wales. We don't want to go back to those days. Read more facts and mythbusting at the FDA website.

Mark Bittman of the New York Times interviewed David Acheson, an MD who was the chief medical officer in Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the FDA. He said "only 5% of food-borne illness is linked to big outbreaks 95% is sporadic". He told Bittman that there are 1.5 million cases of salmonella in the US each year, and few are linked to outbreaks. Marler and Doyle and the Center for Disease Control and other safety experts only know when there is an "outbreak", when many people get sick and when they go to a doctor and when their doctor does the right tests and then reports the results to the authorities.

Some probably thought they had the "24-hour flu". Well there is no such flu. Look it up in WebMD. Zero hits. If you had the flop sweats and were on the toilet for a day or three, you probably had a food-borne illness caused by something you ate perhaps as long as a week ago. That's one of the reasons it takes so long to trace the cause of an outbreak.

FDA says "If you purchase a sandwich or salad at a restaurant or delicatessen, check to make sure that raw sprouts have not been added".

Two things from this article that caught my attention were: 

1.) Precut or prewashed fruits and vegetables. Raw veggies and fruits are higher risk than cooked because the extra handling and the contamination of wash water increases the risk significantly. 

2.) There was no mention of meat (probably due to being a barbeque website about amazing ribs), but there was a related article at the bottom Does Grilling Cause Cancer?. 

It threw me off when the high risks side panel of the amazingribs.com article read in bold “Precut or prewashed fruits and vegetables”, but then generalized “Raw veggies and fruits are higher risk than cooked because the extra handling and the contamination of wash water increases the risk significantly.” Precut or prewashed fruits and vegetables are different than raw fruits and veggies so that was a misleading statement to me. Furthermore, the handling of raw meat is also a lot higher health risk than handling lettuce.

According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “There is some evidence that raw food is healthier than cooked food. Cooking food destroys nutrients and enzymes, alters the structure and, thus, digestibility of food, and creates byproducts that may be harmful.”

The benefits and risk factors involved in a raw food diet were reviewed in a April 2020 article on MedicalNewsToday.com titled “The raw food diet: Should I try it?”.  

According to that article, 

“Many people on a raw food diet believe that it makes the body better able to prevent and fight diseases, especially chronic conditions.

A 2019 review reports that following a plant-based (but not necessarily raw) diet has significant benefits for physical health and disease.

Following a raw food diet can have a range of benefits, including improved health and weight loss. The next sections discuss some possible benefits.

A raw food diet tends to be high in fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, all of which are staples of a healthful diet. Eating a range of these foods will provide plenty of vitamins, minerals, and healthful fats, and protein.

Cooking destroys some nutrients, such as water-soluble vitamin B and vitamin C, so eating food raw ensures a better supply of these.”

There are different types of raw food diets and not all raw foods are equal as it also talks about the risks of some raw foods like sprouts, raw eggs, milk, seafood and some others. The CDC recommends always washing produce before eating since there can be cross-contamination and food poisoning from raw fruits and vegetables, however raw or undercooked animal products, including eggs and milk, are most likely to cause food poisoning.  It is interesting to point out that you can wash contamination off from produce, however you cannot wash contamination off from meat as it will spread the contamination.  According to the CDC, “Most raw poultry contains Campylobacter. It also may contain Salmonella, Clostridium perfringens, and other bacteria. Raw meat may contain Salmonella, E. coli, Yersinia, and other bacteria. You should not wash raw poultry or meat before cooking it, even though some older recipes may call for this step. Washing raw poultry or meat can spread bacteria to other foods, utensils, and surfaces, and does not prevent illness. Thoroughly cooking poultry and meat. You can kill bacteria by cooking poultry and meat to a safe internal temperature.”

Some of the Raw Food Dangers can also be found on WebMD.com.  The issue with animal products, besides the torture of the animal itself, is that rather it is raw or cooked it is a very high health risk. It must be cooked to kill the bacteria and contamination of the raw, at most times dead, animal product but when cooked causes chemical reactions and changes that adversely affect your health and DNA. It is important to understand that articles and websites are written by humans so if there is a motive or agenda behind it, as in a business that generates their income, it will not make a bold statement of anything that could hurt the business. As the case with amazingribs.com, since they did not want to deter their consumers, that “high risks” side panel failed to highlight the high cancerous risks when meat is cooked at high temperatures. Further down the side panel, you see in related articles, an article titled “Does Grilling Cause Cancer?”. The article starts out: 

“Every spring the uninformed popular media feel obligated to play Chicken Little and run the same old tired stories that grilling causes cancer. Does it? And why do we never see articles that say frying causes cancer?

These alarmist are usually written by reporters with little understanding of science, the articles are usually poorly researched, poorly worded, ill-informed, or motivated by a vegetarian agenda. Here is what I have learned by reading the research and not the same old articles by the popular media.

Bottom line: High heat cooking may increase health risks, indoors or out. In fact frying is probably worse than grilling, and there is probably zero risk to grilling if you do it properly as we teach it on this site.”

The bottom line is that the evidence that meat cooked at high temperatures does not come from articles that are poorly researched, poorly worded, ill-informed, or motivated by a vegetarian agenda. 

In fact, according to the National Institute of Health, National Cancer Institute, and National Library of Medicine:

“Heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are chemicals formed when muscle meat, including beef, pork, fish, or poultry, is cooked using high-temperature methods, such as pan frying or grilling directly over an open flame (1). In laboratory experiments, HCAs and PAHs have been found to be mutagenic—that is, they cause changes in DNA that may increase the risk of cancer.

HCAs are formed when amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), sugars, and creatine or creatinine (substances found in muscle) react at high temperatures. PAHs are formed when fat and juices from meat grilled directly over a heated surface or open fire drip onto the surface or fire, causing flames and smoke. The smoke contains PAHs that then adhere to the surface of the meat. PAHs can also be formed during other food preparation processes, such as smoking of meats (1).

HCAs are not found in significant amounts in foods other than meat cooked at high temperatures. PAHs can be found in other smoked foods, as well as in cigarette smoke and car exhaust fumes.”

So unfortunately, informing the public about the DNA mutation that is taking place from consuming meats is not on the Corporate marketing agenda.