What Happens to Food when you Heat it?

Often people ask us for scientific proof that a raw-food diet is the ideal way to live. We often respond by telling them that the best proof is their own experience. Should they abandon their current eating habits and embrace a raw-food regimen for two years, they would be able to experience dramatic and positive results that no "magic pill" could provide. We might also tell them that although they might want to certify the validity of the raw-food theory, and they ought to do so, they never questioned what has been taught to them in the field of nutrition when they were in school, to verify its truthfulness.
"What happens to food when you heat it?" was the title of an article published in February 1996, in Dr. William Campbell Douglass' "Second Opinion," a newsletter containing articles on health, nutrition and medicine. This most interesting article is in response to a reader who asks if there is actual proof that cooking food is a danger to health. Dr. Douglass then recalls an interesting experiment that sheds some light on the subject.
"Dr. Paul Kouchakoff of the Institute of Clinical Chemistry studied the influence of cooked food on our blood. While the blood response to cooked food doesn't prove that cooking food is detrimental to your health, if the blood reacts in the same way that it would to noxious elements, it is an indirect indication of this. The human body, and that of all living things, is very sensitive to harmful influences and reacts against them immediately. This is easily demonstrated by the analysis of blood during an infection, following trauma, and with exposure to noxious chemicals.
"The blood's response to these challenges to the "homeostasis," or natural balance of the body, is to increase the number of leucocytes, white blood corpuscles, to fight the invader. Before the landmark work of Dr. Kouchakoff, it was known that the ingestion of food would cause a rise in the number of leucocytes in the blood. It was called digestive leucocytosis and was considered to be a normal physiological response to eating.
"But Dr. Kouchakoff went beyond the simple observation of the digestive leucocytosis and made a remarkable discovery: he found that unaltered food (i.e., food that had not been overheated or refined in any way) caused no reaction in the blood. But food that had been heated beyond a certain temperature (unique to each food), or food that was processed, always caused a rise in the number of white cells. He called this not a digestive leucocytosis, but a pathological leucocytosis - a reaction to a foreign invader.
"Kouchakoff tested a great variety of foodstuffs including water, salt, vegetables, cereals, nuts, honey, raw eggs, raw milk, raw fish, raw meat, butter, sour milk, etc. None of these, if fresh, unrefined, and not overheated, caused any reaction, but were seen as friendly food not to be fought.
"These same natural foods, altered only by heating, caused rise in the white blood count (leucocytosis), a reaction that is expected when the body is invaded by a dangerous foreign invader."
So science itself has the proof that cooking alters food at the molecular level to turn it into a poison. The body reacts to cooked food the some way it would react to a dangerous substance. Such experiments might reinforce our belief that raw-plant food is the only diet fit for humans, but don't you think that simple common sense is enough? We obviously cook food in order to alter it, so either the process improves the food, or degrades it. And I think simple logic shows us which option is the right one.