Are there natural laws of nutrition?

“Man is a social animal”, “everything depends on culture”, “everything is just a matter of conditioning”…

Cultural relativism has a good reason: as everything would be relative to the conditioning undergone by the individual, it would be absurd to speak of natural laws of human behavior, particularly in terms of food. This language was said to me by many pseudo-philosophers of gastronomy, during conferences or television shows¹. Let’s try to see what exactly is going on.

First, it is clear that the human organism needs food to survive². If we deprive an individual of all food, he declines³. This alone demonstrates that there are natural laws, the first of which is that the organism must be nourished to carry out its functions.

Can we then say that the organism must be fed correctly to accomplish its functions correctly? The thing seems obvious today, but there was a time when man was given total freedom: what he ate had no influence on his health, only pleasure, social bonds, conviviality⁴.

What is a natural law?

Our culture has become so far removed from nature that we no longer always know how to recognize its laws. We sometimes come to deny their existence, in the name of an anthropology which sees in human intelligence - capable of modifying nature through all kinds of artifices - a reason to no longer distinguish between natural law and paradoxical functioning.

However, we can define criteria allowing this limit to be drawn. A phenomenon comes under a natural law when:

• it is regularly observed under certain given conditions (for example, an unpleasant sensation systematically appears when raw food is consumed beyond a certain limit);
• it is observed in all individuals, regardless of their eating habits (European, Asian, African, vegetarian, etc.);
• it is independent of the will of the observer - the variation of flavor cannot be eliminated by an act of concentration;
• any obstacle to its spontaneous development results in a measurable change in its manifestations: consuming beyond the limit identifiable by the change in flavor regularly leads to digestive disturbances.

In our example, we can thus define an alloyesthetic mechanism obeying a law of negativation when food intake exceeds the digestive potential⁵.

This mechanism can be further specified: if the quantity of consumable food before negativation varies from one individual to another depending on their real needs - for example if the calories consumed increase with energy expenditure - then the alloyesthetic mechanisms ensure regulation of nutritional intake. And if, in the long term, this regulation results in a verifiable nutritional balance (blood balance, absence of obesity, normal inflammatory tendency), we can affirm that consuming food in an unmodified form constitutes a natural law of nutrition.

Any natural law concerning living things can finally be related to genetic programming: if the alloysthetic phenomenon disappears in individuals carrying a mutation or a brain lesion, we can consider it as genetically determined - and its absence of regulatory function in the face of processed foods is then interpreted as a genetic maladaptation to culinary artifice. Here we take the example of gustatory alliesthesia, but the reasoning applies to any system.

The same reasoning applies to all biological or psychological phenomena: each time certain situations favor vital functions and others produce disorders or trauma, the limit between these two classes makes it possible to define a natural law - essential for distinguishing what is culturally normal from what remains harmful, despite the suffering too often associated with this confusion.

The example of toxic molecules resulting from cooking

I remember a comedian from Lausanne who, after one of my lectures, told me: I, Mr. Burger, do not feed on molecules!⁶ At the time, the idea that food could contain harmful molecules from cooking was hardly widespread. It is now widely demonstrated.

As early as 1917, the chemist Maillard, researching the origin of the flavor of grilled potatoes, observed that heat generated all kinds of new molecules. These “Maillard molecules” remained in the shadows for a long time, until research on diabetes defined, at the end of the century, AGEs (Advanced Glycation Endproducts) — molecules resulting from reactions between proteins and glucose in the blood in cases of hyperglycemia. It then took another decade to understand that these same AGEs are formed especially during cooking, pass into the blood, and cause damage there. The discovery of acrylamide in 2002 marked a milestone: chips and fries contained quantities a thousand times higher than the limit set by the WHO for water disinfection⁷. More recently, ALEs (Advanced Lipid Endproducts) — fats altered by heat — have been added to the list, with equally proven toxicity.

The simple fact that cooking produces toxic molecules demonstrates that there are limits beyond which foods are harmful to health — that is, natural laws of nutrition. This follows from the definition of a natural law stated above: it describes a condition necessary for maintaining health, or sufficient to induce functioning disorders in the body. We can therefore state: it is not natural to cook food, particularly at high temperatures; foods processed in this way do not correspond to the genetic data of the human body.

My detractors have long objected that cooking at moderate temperatures would be safe, since they cause fewer chemical reactions. However, recent work shows that AGEs are already forming in numbers at 100°C — which calls into question cooking in water, pressure cookers and even steam. And since AGEs also appear in the blood of diabetics at 37°C, it is not only the temperature that matters, but also the concentration of glucose – omnipresent in culinary preparations via sugar and starches.

In the end: if cooking generates harmful molecules, and if a raw diet is sufficient to ensure health, we can state the following natural law: the human organism needs a raw diet to ensure its correct functioning.

Beyond biochemistry: organoleptic characteristics

It is not only the molecular nature of foods that matters, but also their organoleptic qualities: a useful but not very tasty product is eaten in small quantities; a harmful but overly attractive product is consumed in excess. So what happens when we prepare food to make it as palatable as possible — and, conversely, when we avoid any preparation that enhances its natural flavor?

Only experience allows us to answer: it is enough to compare the nutritional balance obtained with a prepared diet to that obtained with a diet without preparation, as instinctonutrition dictates[^11]. The first method has been tested universally on humanity, as well as in the laboratory on a few cages of guinea pigs, and has resulted in a significant percentage of overweight or obesity. The second, on the contrary, ensures a regular height and weight balance, provided that you are listening to your body.

A more precise criterion is that of inflammation: with a diet without preparation, the inflammatory tendency is maintained spontaneously within limits such that the classic signs — edema, erythema, pain — do not appear in the event of lesion⁸.

This authorizes the statement of another natural law, complementary to the previous ones: the human body needs a raw and unprepared diet to spontaneously ensure correct nutritional balance.

The definition of the natural laws of nutrition is therefore essentially based on empirical observation: it is by recognizing the limits whose transgression induces functional disorders that we can define the conditions guaranteeing the correct functioning of the organism. These limits are determined by genetics more than by cultural conditioning, as shown by their universality and their independence in relation to previous types of diet.

Instinct therapy ultimately only defines these natural laws and teaches their application, in particular the different causes of involuntary transgression which could compromise its beneficial effects.