Eating Overcooked Food Can Harm You

Have you burnt food before and instead of throwing it away, you scraped the hard side with a knife and ate the rest? I have done this many times.

We have all burned food before and some of us still burn food. Cooking food at the right temperature is just right and must be adhered to as overcooking depletes the structure of food making it indigestible.

While it is recommended to eat certain foods raw so that the body can get enough of the valuable nutrients the food contains, cooking is required to make certain foods edible. Cooking enhances flavour and digestibility of food, but when food is overcooked it has harmful effects on the eater.

Now let us talk about the many harmful effects of eating overcooked foods.

First of all when food is overcooked, the structural component is destroyed. This makes the food difficult to digest. For example, carbohydrates and proteins. When protein is overcooked it becomes tougher and stays longer in the gut making the digestive system work harder to break down the indigestible substance.

Food that is not digested rots and turns into harmful bacteria in the gut. This toxins become the cause for chronic illnesses such as stomach upset, candida overgrowth and other gastrointestinal irritations like heartburn and GERD.

The liver then suffers undue pressure to detoxify this built-up toxins produced by rotten undigested foods.

Undigested food in the form of macromolecules are often too large a particle to get into the cell to function thus the macromolecules move through the blood stream causing havoc in the body. Food allergies are triggered by the immune system's response to these macromolecules resulting in runny eyes, scratchy throat, itchy eyes, sinusitis and sneezing - common food allergy symptoms. They can also get to the brain and cause headaches, anger, fatigue, schizophrenia, and perspiration. These macromolecules can also go to the skin and cause acne, edema, psoriasis or rashes. These macromolecules can lodge anywhere in the soft tissues in the body and cause problems, straining whatever your weak link is.

When fatty acid is overcooked it turns into carcinogens and this carcinogenic compounds have cancer causing properties.

Lastly, overcooking destroys the nutrients in food and the most affected are the vitamins. Vitamins play a vital role in the human body, we are not able to make them ourselves and their intake in diet is essential for our body to function in a balanced way. Vitamins help the body turn food into energy and tissues, this the body can not do without.

Points to remember:

- Always cook food at the right temperature, to maintain taste and digestibility.

- Do as much as possible to eat raw foods.

- Add fresh vegetables to food after heating or microwaving as this can make up for nutrients loss in the process of heating.

- Any food left on heated surface will continue to cook and further deplete the structure of food making it indigestible.

- Minimize reheating food.

- Do not eat overcooked/burnt food, scrap it away because it does no good to your body.