COOKING FOR HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT
by Dr. Lawrence Wilson
© March 2023, LD Wilson Consultants, Inc.
All
information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment,
prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.
Contents
Definition Of Cooking
Cooking Is A Complex Science And Art
Development And Cooking
General Rules – How To Tell If Food Is Properly Cooked
Steaming
Pressure-cooking
Stir-Frying
Boiling
Infrared And Induction Cooktops
Baking, Roasting, Barbequing, Deep-Frying
Microwaves
__________________________
Definition of cooking. Broadly speaking, cooking is any type of alteration of food from its natural state for the purpose of enhancing its nutritional value or other qualities.
Cooking is more than just heating food. Cooking also includes adding pressure, soaking it, cleaning it in various ways, mixing it properly, churning it in the case of butter, and a few other procedures.
AN EXACT SCIENCE
Cooking is a very exact science. BEWARE: What is called ethnic cooking, gourmet cooking and even healthy or health cooking is often little more than a mixed up collection of recipes that have been suggested by the Rogues for the purpose of destroying peopleŐs health. We know this is a very negative perspective, but it is true.
As a result, most people undercook or overcook their food, or mix it improperly. This destroys health just as surely as does eating poor quality or spoiled food.
We wish to correct this serious problem. This article presents the science of cooking in simple terms, with simple recipes that produce healthy food.
Cooking should be rather simple and fast, in most cases. Some foods require longer cooking times, such as dried legumes or beans. Otherwise, cooking should be rapid and very simple.
DEVELOPMENT AND COOKING
Cooking is critical for development! Raw food may alleviate some symptoms, but it will not cause development, and in fact it gets in the way. Raw food is too yin and does not provide enough nutrients.
The more often you cook, the faster you will develop. So, ideally, cook each day rather than eat leftovers. Also, if possible, cook several times a day.
The reasons for cooking food are to:
- Increase its digestibility
- Enhance its nutritional value
- Enhance its safety
Let us discuss each of these areas.
COOKING TO INCREASE DIGESTIBILITY
This involves breaking down tough fibers found in most vegetable foods. It also involves maintaining natural substances found in many foods that assist digestion of the food. One reason overcooked food is not good is that helpful substances have been destroyed.
These chemicals are not mostly enzymes as some experts claim. Many of them are mineral compounds that feed the bacteria in the intestinal tract, that kill various types of germs in the food, and that signal the body as to which enzymes to secrete to digest the food.
Others are cofactors such as vitamins needed to digest and utilize the food. Still others are fibers that are helpful for the body.
Overcooking is one of the worst errors of most peopleŐs cooking. This applies mainly to meats, eggs and dairy products, although some people ŇkillÓ their vegetables, as well. The raw food advocates are right that overcooking kills food.
However, they donŐt realize that cooking can have great benefits that cannot be achieved in other ways. This applies especially for grains, beans and vegetables.
Cooking may involve adding substances to food to help digestion. This occurs with some fermenting processes used to make cheese, yogurt and kefir. It also occurs by ŇagingÓ certain foods, meaning to leave them alone at certain temperatures and humidity for a few hours to a few weeks or even months.
COOKING TO ENHANCE NUTRITION
This is complex biochemical science. However, to summarize, adding heat breaks down tough vegetable fibers and releases the nutrient so they can be absorbed easily by human beings.
Raw food advocates. Some of these people are malicious liars. We are sorry to be so blunt, but they do a lot of damage.
Raw food advocates point to the animals as evidence that humans, too, should not cook their food. This is total nonsense!
Animals donŐt have the luxury of cooking, so they have evolved a number of ways to break down tough fiber that we do not have. The methods include prolonged chewing, chewing the cud (throwing up the food and chewing it some more), extra stomachs, gizzards, elaborate enzyme systems designed to break vegetable fibers such as cellulose, and much more.
Carnivorous animals also often first eat the intestinal contents of the creatures they kill. This is a form of eating ŇcookedÓ food that is one of natureŐs best methods of feeding some animals. They also often eat the parts of the their prey that are easiest to digest. Some also eat first the pancreas and liver of their prey so they acquire more digestive enzymes with which to digest their meal.
The raw food people either donŐt know this or donŐt want you to know it or you would cook your food. If animals could talk (they can communicate) they would tell you immediately they wish they could cook their food!
COOKING FOR SAFETY
This means killing bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasite eggs found on some foods. It also involves washing off other foreign matter that gets on or in food. It also involves removing poisonous parts of some foods, such as the eyes of potatoes and some organs of a few animal foods.
OTHER REASONS FOR COOKING
Here are more subtle reasons for cooking that are very important to understand.
To make the food more yang. Yang is an Oriental word that means warmer and more compact. Today it also means more balanced and healthier because food and our bodies are too yin.
Making the body more yang is critical for development, even if it destroys some vitamin C, vitamin E and a few other nutrients. We cannot emphasize too much how important it is to eat more yang food today.
To increase the etheric energy in the food. Properly cooking most food enhances the amount of etheric energy the food contains. This is a subtle form of energy that is vital for health. For details, read Etheric Energy.
To obtain more souls. Certain souls like to live in foods. When the food is cooked correctly, except for dairy products and other fats, it attracts more of these special souls. This is very beneficial.
To improve the flavor of foods. For example, rutabaga has a slightly disagreeable taste that goes away when it is properly cooked. Grains become sweet with cooking. Garlic loses its very pungent taste when cooked.
GENERALITIES
1. Add sea salt at the end of cooking, and not earlier. This works better for most food. We like Hawaiian Bamboo Jade sea salt.
Sea salt is a very important product to supply minerals. It does not matter that they are ŇinorganicÓ. Never use table salt, which is a refined, mineral-deficient junk food.
2. Water for cooking. For steaming, any kind of water will work. If you will drink the water, such as with boiling vegetables, then preferably cook with spring water or carbon-only filtered tap water. Distilled water is also okay for cooking.
3. For the fastest development, cook as often as possible. However, it is okay if you are busy to cook once a day. Most food can sit out in the kitchen during the day, without refrigeration, as long as you eat it that day.
4. Leftovers. We donŐt recommend leftovers that are more than one day old if you want to develop quickly.
5. Eating in restaurants. Homemade food is generally much better for you than almost all restaurant food. It is tempting for restaurants to cut corners, such as using inferior food or adding chemicals to flavor the food.
The worst offenders in this regard are the fast food and some less expensive chain restaurants. The Ňmom and popÓ restaurants tend to be a little better.
SPECIFICS
These change as we learn more. For specific instructions for each type of food, go to Food For Daily Use.
HOW TO TELL IF FOOD IS PROPERLY COOKED
Vegetables should be soft, not hard or crunchy. However, they should retain most of their color. If they are grayish or ragged looking, they are overcooked.
Meats require very little cooking. Do not overcook meats.
Fish are extremely delicate to cook. This is one reason we like and recommend sardines in a can. We especially like the little brisling sardines – King Oscar and Tiny Tots are two brands. We also like and recommend the Polar brand of smoked herring that comes in a can. Both are cooked fresh and properly cooked.
Eggs should be cooked only by soft-boiling, poaching or lightly fried so that the yolks are runny. Hard-cooked eggs are difficult to digest and hard cooking of eggs damages the yolks a lot!
Grains and dried beans require more cooking so they are soft. Do not eat raw grains such as granola. Raw grains are impossible to digest properly.
We also donŐt
recommend sprouted grains, beans or seeds, which contain a poison. Occasional mung bean sprouts are better,
but are not a preferred food for development. To read about the development diet, read Food For Daily Use.
GENERAL TIPS ABOUT COOKING METHODS
Lower-temperature cooking methods and cooking with water are best. Other methods produce toxic chemicals such as advanced glycation end products.
Low-temperature methods are pressure-cooking and steaming. We no longer recommend crock pots. This is another low-temperature method of cooking. However, it usually overcooks food.
PRESSURE COOKING
This is the very best method of cooking meat and vegetables. All you really need to prepare the development diet is a pressure cooker.
Warning, 12/2/20. We just became aware that some pressure cookers are ruining the food. We donŐt know how this is occurring, but at this time we suggest only using a stove-top cooker made by Presto, TFAL or Fissler. Avoid Instant Pots because some are not working right and wreck the vegetables.
Advantages: Food cooks in about 1/5 the time it takes to steam or cook with a crock pot. Pressure-cooking preserves nutrients well due to its speed, food tastes good, and cleanup is easy.
Disadvantages: It is easy to overcook food in a pressure cooker. A little more care is needed to operate a pressure cooker. Also, be sure to depressurize the cooker quickly when the timer rings. For details, please read Pressure-Cooking.
STEAMING
This is a gentle, but somewhat slow method of cooking. It is not as yang as pressure-cooking, however. Here are three ways to steam food:
1. The best method: Place a little water (no more than half an inch) in the bottom of a saucepan, frying pan or wok.
Then place vegetables or meat in the pot or frying pan. Bring the water to a boil. Then turn down the heat and cover the pot.
Let it simmer for 30-40 minutes. Most of the water will evaporate, and you can drink the rest if you like.
Advantages. More of the souls in the food tend to remain in the food using this method. With the other two steaming methods, some souls leave the food as the steam rises, which is not beneficial.
Also, it is easy to brown the food first, and then add the water and steam the food for the remainder of cooking.
2. Buy a metal steamer basket and place it inside a steel or other cooking pot. This turns any pot into a steamer. You simply put a little water into the bottom and use it on the stove top. You must set a timer of the food will overcook.
3. Buy a plastic electric steamer. These work well, are easy to clean, and have a timer so the food will never burn.
CROCK POTS
We formerly recommended crockpots because they are easy to use. However, they tend to overcook food, so we donŐt recommend them any more.
STIR-FRYING OR WOK
Advantages. Fairly simple and food can be tasty. The oil holds in the etheric energy, to some degree, and seals in odors and tastes.
Disadvantages. Often vegetables and even meats are not cooked enough. This is common in Chinese and Thai cooking, which is largely based upon the use of the wok.
Also, this method requires oils or butter. Do not heat olive oil. It turns toxic. Vegetable oils are okay, as is butter. Restaurants may reuse the same oil for hours, and this definitely produces harmful chemicals.
We do not recommend stir-frying very much except for cooking strips of chicken. A better idea if you want some of the effects of stir-frying or wok cooking is to brown onions or other foods with a little oil in a frying pan or wok. Then add water and steam the food for about 30 minutes or more until the vegetables and meat are thoroughly cooked.
BOILING
Vegetables and meats can be boiled. However, a better method is sometimes called braising. One puts a ground lamb, turkey or beef patty in about ½ inch of boiling water for only about 5-7 seconds on each side. The inside is very rare, but if it is natural, grass fed or organic meat, we find it is safe to eat this way. We would not use this method with standard ground beef, which contains much more bacteria.
Advantages. It is a simple method.
Disadvantages of boiling with a lot of water. Many minerals and some other nutrients will leave the food and go into the water. If you boil vegetables, be sure to drink the water you cooked them in. It will contain many minerals.
However, do not drink a lot of liquid with meals. So ideally, if you boil food, pour off the liquid and have it as a drink between meals.
INFRARED COOKTOPS
These are the familiar Ňglass-topÓ electric burners. They are fine.
INDUCTION COOK TOPS
This is a newer method of cooking in which the burner vibrates a metal pot to cook the food. We donŐt recommend these. They appear to give off electromagnetic fields that damage the food somewhat.
BAKING, ROASTING OR BARBEQUING, BROILING AND DEEP FRYING
These methods are not recommended. They cook at a much higher temperature that damages the food more. All of them also tend to produce toxic chemicals in the food called advanced glycation end products or AGES. Using these methods once in a while is fine, but do not use the high temperature methods regularly.
MICROWAVE OVENS
Do not use microwave ovens. They damage food. They also can emit harmful electromagnetic fields.
GOURMET COOKING
This is not needed! Do not become dependent upon exotic recipes with many ingredients and strange tastes and combinations of foods. These are all more yin, more difficult to digest, and also a waste of time and energy.
The best cooks use simple, very high quality ingredients, and simple combinations of ingredients.
HERBS AND SPICES
Do not put a lot of spices in your food. To flavor food, use sea salt after cooking most all food. Sea salt is very important for the development program to supply extra minerals.
You may use a little bit of a spice or condiment. That is all that is needed if the spice is fresh.
If a spice or herb is old, throw it away as they all become rancid and harmful for health after about 6 months in the cupboard. Spices will last longer in the refrigerator, but even here they become rancid after a year, or so.
KITCHEN CLEANUP
All detergents are somewhat toxic. We recommend avoiding all of them!! For details, read Detergents.
Soaking pots and pans quickly after using them helps avoid food sticking. Avoiding frying in oils also makes cleanup much easier. This is a great advantage of steaming and pressure-cooking.
Bon Ami powdered cleanser is excellent for cleaning everything and does not leave a film in the sink, as does detergent and other soaps.
We also recommend Extreme
18X by Naturoli. This is a
concentrate of soap nuts. It is a
detergent, but it is much less toxic than all other detergents. It seems
expensive, but you use very little of it.
It is wonderful as a wood polish, as well.
COOKING UTENSILS
Do your cooking on the stovetop rather than in the oven, which is much higher temperature. Pots can be made of glass, stainless steel, ceramic if good quality, or enamel over metal.
We donŐt recommend non-stick cookware or uncoated aluminum cookware. Aluminum tends to rub off uncoated aluminum cookware and is toxic.
USEFUL APPLIANCES
A pressure cooker is superb for the development diet. For details about them, read Pressure Cooking.
Steamers are inexpensive, easy to clean, and have a built-in timer so you wonŐt burn food.
A hand blender is useful to puree food without having to add water. This is excellent for cooked vegetables, for example.
LESS IMPORTANT APPLIANCES
A food processor is not necessary, but can be used to chop up some vegetables before cooking them.
A toaster oven is not necessary, but can be used to warm up food. A disadvantage is they are very hard to keep clean.
A juicer such as the Champion or others is good to make carrot juice.
Convection ovens cook food a little faster. That is their only advantage. They are good, but not necessary.
An electric meat grinder is not necessary, but it will make very fresh and good-tasting ground beef, ground chicken, ground turkey and ground lamb. The only problem is you have to clean it after each use.
VI. COOKING AND THE 7 SYSTEM
The effects of cooking and aspects of cooking can be understood well by using the 7 system:
THE EFFECTS OF COOKING:
Level 1. (yang). Physical effects of cooking include breaking down vegetable fiber, turning starches into sugars, and killing bacteria, and viruses and parasites. Cooking also concentrates some foods. The overall effect is to make the food more yang in macrobiotic terms.
Level 2. (more spin). Cooking speeds up the correct spin of the food. This imparts an excellent quality in the food, provided it is cooked correctly.
Level 3. (down). Most food grows from the ground upward. This imparts a slightly upward-moving energy to raw food. Cooking changes this to a more downward-moving energy. This is helpful because humans need to be moving energy downward, from the head to the feet.
Level 4. (relax). Food calms down a little from proper cooking.
Levels 5 (back and forth wobble), level 6 (impact) and level 7 (up and down wobble). The heat energy of cooking imparts certain vibratory qualities to food. This is particularly true if one pressure-cooks the food. This effect is subtle, but very beneficial for oneŐs health.
THE ASPECTS OF COOKING:
Level 1. Physical/chemical aspects. This includes the physical effects of cooking described above, as well as the physical effort, equipment and time involved in cooking.
Level 2. Emotional aspects. Cooking has an important emotional component because eating is such as basic emotional aspect of life. Cooking involves odors, colors and tastes that profoundly affect the emotions. It is one reason that changing oneŐs diet is difficult for most people.
Level 3. Power and control aspects. The ability to cook greatly increases oneŐs sense of power and control over oneŐs life because cooking is a basic life activity. This is an important reason to teach children and young adults basic cooking skills.
Level 4. Social aspects. Cooking is an important social activity. In many homes, the kitchen is the social center of the home because so much time is spent there.
Level 5. Creative expression. Cooking is a creative activity. You donŐt have to be a gourmet chef to cook creatively.
One expresses oneself through oneŐs kitchen creations. Never just cook mechanically. If you do, you will soon tire of it.
Level 6. Knowledge and wisdom. There is much to learn about cooking, and its effects upon food and health. This article is just an introduction.
Level 7. Spiritual/religious aspects. All the major religions discuss food and food preparation because they understand its importance.
Proper cooking of food is also essential for rapid development. Development is the full spiritual unfolding of a human being. It is a genetic upgrade that is programmed into our DNA.
Today, development requires a special diet because all of our food is somewhat low in nutrients and most contains too many toxic metals and toxic chemicals. For details, read Introduction To Development and Introduction To The Development Program.
Home
| Hair Analysis
| Saunas | Books | Articles | Detox Protocols
Courses
| About Dr. Wilson | The Free Basic
Program