Raw versus Cooked – Pottenger’s Amazing Cats
In 1932 American physician Francis M. Pottenger began carrying out experiments on cats, comparing cats fed on a cooked diet against cats fed on a raw diet. The experiment was over a 10 year period spanning several generations of cats. The results were overwhelming for raw versus cooked.
The cats were in 2 control groups with one group fed a diet of pasteurised milk, cooked meat and cod liver oil. This group developed degenerative ailments such as loss of teeth, brittle bones, kidney failure, thyroid dysfunction, heart disease, respiratory ailments and other chronic degenerative diseases normally associated with humans.
As this group of cats began to produce offspring, their litters were born weaker, had low birth weights and developed pronounced abnormalities in physiology and behaviour. After 3 generations, many of the pasteurized milk fed cats were born stillborn while the others that survived had become sterile and were unable to reproduce. As there was no fourth generation, the experiment had to end there.
The other group were fed on the same diet but the meat was raw and the milk unpasteurised. These animals were in great health, with good skeletal structure and appeared more vigorous in their behaviour. Their offspring was born healthy and continued to be so over several generations.
The results showed the negative effects of cooked foods on the health of an animal and how the effects can be life damaging and are passed through from one generation to the next.
One may argue that nutrition studies done on cats cannot be applied or used to verify the effects of cooked foods in a human diet. Below is Pottenger’s response to this statement.
“While no attempt will be made to correlate the changes in the animals studied with malformations found in humans, the similarity is so obvious that parallel pictures will suggest themselves.”
Pottenger then began to study the effects of nutrition on human health with particular focus on the level of degeneration and disease that occurred on a diet of chemically fertilised, processed foods and cooked proteins.
He established a successful practice in Los Angeles where he gained astounding success in curing his patients of resistant illness by advocating a diet of raw juices and raw foods.
My comment
Raw food is gaining in popularity and whilst my view is subjective I am firmly of the opinion that having a good percentage of raw in your diet is massively beneficial for your health and vitality and potentially for your off spring too. It took only three generations for the pasteurized milk fed cats to become sterile. That’s similar to the number of westernized generations today that have been fed on pasteurized milk and there are many young couples who are unable to conceive naturally and where infertility is a major problem. Could there possibly be a link here? It does give one food for thought on this matter.
In the next few years I predict that raw cuisine will feature with increasing prominence in our diets and studies will back up my belief.
