The Scientific Basis of Genesis and Evolution
Scientists argue that the creation of Earth, seas, light, dry land, and the various creatures in the seas, in the air and dry land were not they know from the geological point of view. This caused me to read Genesis again and again. The more I read the first chapter of the Bible on Creation, the clearer it became to my mind that there was nothing wrong with it, especially the order of the sequence in geological time and the order of the appearance of plants, sea creatures, the birds of the air, followed by the animals and mammals on dry land, and only finally Man (Adam) and women (Eve) appeared. What’s wrong with this order? There is nothing there that conflicts with what we know from Science.
My understanding:
To the best of my understanding on botany, zoology and on evolution, this was the exact geological time scale in which all the plants and animals need to queue up one after another before they can survival in the primordial environment of Earth some 4.54 thousand million years ago when Earth was first created from what scientists believe.
The more I read Genesis, the more fitting it became to what we know. It just falls into one beautiful piece of how life came to Earth, step-by-step, group-by –group before they can survive and thrive from the beginning.
There was nothing wrong with that order exactly as Charles Darwin described in his Origin of the Species. There was not a single flaw in that appearance of all the living creatures. They all emerged one-by-one in groups as scientists have been telling us all the time.
Let’s examine the order again:
Naturally in the beginning the Earth was without any form if it was a chunk of molten material spun out from the Sun by a passing star or other causes as scientists believe. Natural it was, without any definite shape but just as if it was a big chunk of molten glass is taken out from the furnace in a glass-making factory. What’s wrong with that? Obviously it is void of anything on it as much as we don’t expect to find any bacteria on a chunk of molten glass just taken out from the fiercely hot furnace? You will have to let it cool first before anything can be deposited inside. That was what God told us, and this is very logical.
As the Earth slowly cooled over billions of years, water began to condense on its surface, but they will boil off again. It was still a very hot surface thus giving off a lot of steam which shrouded the entire surface of Earth with water as thick hot steam above and condensed water below. There was thus no division of waters above as semi-steam mixed semi-water (very thick mist, cloud and water vapour), and the half condensed water on the surface below.
As water tried to condense, it would again boil off to the mix with the steam mixture above. Thus there was no clear division under such state which is water (sea) and which is sky (firmament). Everything was just semi-water and semi-air because conditions on Earth were still very hot.
As the cooling continued, water vapor began to escape and condense in the earth's early atmosphere. Clouds formed and storms raged, raining more and more water down on the primitive earth, cooling the surface further until it was flooded with water, forming the seas.
It would take probably about 100,000 million Earth years more for Earth to slowly cool off for the steam to slowly settle down as sea below, revealing a clearer sky (firmament) above.
Once the steam and the mist settled as the Earth further cooled, the sky with less clouds, mist and rain above settled, a clear sky can now be clearly seen. Being able to then see clearly, we can now visualize the day as made up of morning and evening and night. In short, He separated the day from night.
6 And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." 7 And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day Genesis 1:6-8)
How does the above account of Creation conflict with what geological scientists believe?
Even before that the light from the stars and the galaxies were already there except you may not be able to see them yet with so much of rain, hot steam, clouds, mists cycling between the waters below the firmament and the skies above enveloping the entire Earth. It was nothing but just a ball of boiling water, hot and thick steam everywhere. You can’t differential what was above and what was below.
There was no horizon or clear division dividing what was supposed to be the sea as we know it today, and what was supposed to be the sky and atmosphere with less water content. But as the steam slowly over billion of years of cooling settled. The division then became apparent:
‘And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." 7 And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so.’
Even the day and night, light and darkness became apparent after the Earth cooled sufficiently to allow steam to condense into the oceans and seas to reveal night from day, with the firmament (sky) above, and the waters (oceans and seas) below became clear.
‘And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.’ 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day’. 9
If not for the slow cooling and condensation of the thick steam, mists and clouds, even the day was not apparent. Probably it could never be seen as everywhere there was just haze, and the entire Earth was very, very dark and hazy indeed.
Once the seas are formed from condensation, the land began to appear above the waters by geological upheaval by tectonic plates colliding below the ocean floors. Earth was much hotter during the Hadean and Archaean eons so convection in the mantle causing the land to rise above the waters (seas) must have been faster. It started at Earth's formation about 4.6 billion years ago (4600 Ma).
And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11
Isn’t that not logical? Isn’t that exactly what was described in just two sentences (verses) in Genesis (Genesis 1:9-10). There is nothing wrong with that. You don’t expect the Bible to spend so much time and space to write entire books, publications and journals on ancient geology like geologists do to describe unnecessary details to fill up entire national libraries. The important mission of the Bible will be lost then. The Bible is a book on salvation, not a science book.
Living things appeared:
Once water is introduced into the climate, life may exist. Bacteria, algae, fungus, and then plants formed first. After that came swarms of living creatures, great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, like fish, and later and every winged bird according to its kind.
Sea creatures like fish and other seas monsters must arise from the sea first before moving onto dry land with animals like the dinosaurs that could roamed the earth. Other creatures like birds and other flying creatures then evolved from the reptiles and dinosaurs that can live during the transient period both in the water and dry land.
Other higher land animals like mammals… ‘cattle, and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground’ then began their appearances.
And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens." 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." 23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. 24 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good 26 (Genesis 1:21-26).
Only after all the plants and animals were created, Man (Adam and Eve) began to come last. Isn’t this exactly what scientists also discovered and believe that the evolution of Man came last?
Satan out to blind us:
How can with all those brief descriptions in Genesis, there is conflict between Science and Religion as scientist argues. They must be terribly clouded in the eyes and blind-folded by Satan who is all out to question, confuse and prevent them from thinking logically.
All these order of appearances, the plants first to remove the excess of carbon dioxide to convert them into oxygen by photosynthesis for all other animals to come later are all in exactly the same order of appearances what scientists know from fossil remains in the geological time scale, and their order of evolution as described by Charles Darwin in his publication on ‘The Origin of Species’ This order is also as exactly described in Genesis. There is absolutely no conflict between Science and the Bible if we read this and think clearly.
God’s Infinite Time Scale is incomparable:
The only difference is the time scale which to the scientists, life on Earth took millions of years to evolved species by species, but which according to the Bible, was created in the same large groups in just 1-2 ‘days’. Please be reminded once again, this is measured in God’s Days which is almost an Eternity. I have explained this at length and there no need to repeat this. The problem is scientists are very blind. They are so used to measure everything so accurately, specifically and precisely, that they use only their human judgment that everything was measured according to human time scale of a mere few billion years. Their eyes are so clouded that they forgot God has a different time scale which is eternity – time without an end.
Five billion years to Man was just a Watch in the Night:
The problem scientists do not agree is the time taken. They say that it takes over 4.5 thousand million years for the heaven and the Earth to be formed, but the Bible says it took God just one day (Genesis 1:6). I can’t imagine how idiotic and blind these scientists are. They interpreted the Bible literally without understanding its deep, deep meaning.
Bible is Not a Book on Science:
The Bible is not a book on astronomy, astrophysics, geology, zoology, botany or any of that stuff. The Bible is a very important book on the salvation for mankind to prepare him for eternity, and the entire Bible concentrate on his theme only. Scientists can write tons and tons of books on various scientific subjects to fill out all the details the Bible has no choice but to leave out, and concentrate only on the most important mission and message to mankind, that is to prepare him for an eternal life after death.
Even the creation of heaven and earth together is given in just one sentence (one single verse) in the first verse of Genesis and no more. It was a horrendously stupendous act of Architecture and Engineering of His handiwork which He only put it in one sentence without unnecessary going into details.
Mission is on Salvation, not on knowledge:
If scientists like, there is nothing to stop them from studying the details of His awe-inspiring and stunning handiwork. They can write volumes and volumes of scientific discoveries to fill up entire libraries on this planet. But that is not God mission in the Bible. His much, much more important mission is to save mankind from eternal death, and not write a science book on how the universe, earth and life was created.
God does not use wall clocks and calendars:
God has all the time for Himself, and is not restricted by our human Earth’s days and years. Our days are restricted by our limited Solar day of 24 hours, and our Tropical or Solar Year of 365.25 Solar Days.
There is also no reason why God need to use our clocks and calendars as yardstick to measure time.
For a thousand years to man is like a day to God (2 Peter 3:8).
This means that, even 100,000 million years or even a peta (1015), exa (1018), zeta (1021), yotta (1024) years or even much, much longer in our human time scale, may be just few hours, a few minutes, a second, or even a infinitesimal fraction of one second to God. It could easily be as short as a micro (10-6), nano (10-9), pico (10-12), femto (10-15), atto (10-18), zepto (10-21), yocto (10-24) of one second or much, much shorter for God. This is because to God, time has no end.
To God, time is infinitely eternal. He can wait as long as He wishes, and what we humans described as a billion, a trillion, or a quadrillion years could well be just ‘First Day, Second Day, Third Day’ and so forth for Him. So there is no way we can use our clocks and calendar as a yardstick to match his Eternal Time Yardstick.
Biological example:
Let me give you an example. The lifespan of an adult mayfly varies from just 30 minutes to one day depending on the species. Another example is the gastrotrich which is a tiny 0.06 - 3.0 mm animal abundant in fresh water and marine environments. The average life span of a gastrotrich is about three days. So when scientists conduct an experiment on these animals, surely they do not use their short life-spans as a yardstick for time measurements. The scientists would obviously use their time shown on their clocks and calendars to describe how long they live. Isn’t this reasonable that God uses His own clock?
To these two animals their time scale and lifespan may be 100, a 1,000 or a million years, just as we may say in geological time scale, during the Hadean / Precambrian super-eon started 4570 million years ago when Earth was first formed, which to God may be just a fraction of a atto-second ago, or just Day 1 in Genesis.
Slow to us but fast to God:
To us humans everything is very, very slowly evolving just like it took procaryotes, protists, fungus and algae to first appear on Earth during the early Cambrian period, until the first grasses, then whales appearing during the Eocene Epoch about 40.4 million years ago, before the flowering plants and mammals 33.9 million years ago during the Oligocene Epoch. But it could be a few minutes to God (measured in His time yardstick).
Millions of Years for us, but a Day or two for Him:
May be it was only during the Middle Age , somewhere between the Pliocene Epoch that and Pleistocene Epoch around 5.3 – 0.5 million years ago that humans like Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Methuselah, Noah, and down the list of descendants to Moses and so forth came into being.
Like the rest of the animal and plant kingdom where almost an infinite variety of them are found on the surface of Earth today through the slow process of evolution, humans too may have being evolved into a large variety of races, feature and skin characteristics spread out all over the world.
Multiply and be fruitful:
We do not know much, but we believe that Homo sapiens (wise man) which modern man (Homo genus) walking on two legs (bipedal primates) belongs 160,000 years ago, were capable of thinking. They maybe genetically related descendants of Adam and Eve. The human genomes are identical world-wide, except variations in the gene sub-types among the races.
Chimps are not humans:
But any other human-like hominids (great apes) such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, genetically, and bio-chemically cannot be considered as humans as we know it. They belong to sub-human genera even though they are classified as members (hominids) of the family of humans called hominidae. There is clear distinction and biological differentiation between Man and animals. They are not related with definitive missing links between them. Evolution of the different species is entirely different from the continuous changes we can observe from an egg, into an embryo, before becoming an adult. The link is very smooth and seamless, telling us they are the same organism. But this is not with hominids – apes and humans.
Social and biological differences:
Creation as described in Genesis, as I believe, include not just Adam and Eve and their (human) descendants, but also other human-like creatures like chimpanzees, apes, gorillas, orangutans as part of the overall creation of all kinds of creatures by God, even though the Bible did not specifically name all of them. There is just no reason why God cannot create other human-like hominids as part of other creatures to multiply and thrive among Adam and Eve, because they are biologically, genetically, bio-chemically, physiologically, psychologically, anthropologically, and socially so different from us humans. No human wants to be classified in the same biological capacity as apes. In short, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Methuselah, Noah, and down the list of descendants to Moses were not apes, but humans with social and thinking capacity who happened to be created also among apes, and other creatures, just as we are among other hominids completely unchanged we see today.
Darwin was not God:
There is no reason why Adam and Eve were evolved from apes and other sub-human hominids? In short, they were all created separately. In my eyes I see no conflict between the long-winded accounts on the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin, and one by God on Creation.
There is an astronomical difference between an Eternal God who created not just the animals, plants, and everything on Earth, but the entire Universe through the inspired writing of Moses who merely summarized the entire creation of Heaven and Earth in just a few pages, and a mortal human being like Charles Darwin who published volumes on his evolution theory. That is the difference between God and man.
No change even after 50 million years:
No change between sub-human hominids and humans was observed even after 50 million years. Humans and living apes living together used to be thought to have occurred 15 to 20 million years ago, or even up to 30 or 40 million years ago. But modern humans thriving on Earth after Adam and Eve may have spread some 200,000 years ago, with full modern behaviour around 50,000 year ago. We are still uncertain, but some scientists believe this was the time frame between the existence of humans and sub-human hominids on Earth.
But even after 50 million years, apes and gorillas continued to remain as apes and gorillas, and humans remain as humans like you and I. There is no link between the two God’s creations
by jb lim
A hind thought
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Apple in Bible: Lost in Transition
The Bible Lost in Transition
An e-mail circular I received recently from a friend Ir. Tan Seng Koon who argued with another person that no where in the Bible does it says that the apple was the first fruit created.
Ir. Tan was perfectly right. Neither does it says anywhere that the apple is the forbidden fruit Eve was told not eat. Neither does the Bible say that the apple is lowly-rated as claimed by someone in the e-mails exchanges I received.
Where in these two verses did it mention ‘apple’ or ‘forbidden’ or ‘the first fruit’?
“You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." 18. (Genesis 2: 17-18).
Adam’s apple:
Neither does Adam’s apple, caused by Adam having eaten the forbidden fruit in Garden of Eden and having the apple stuck there in his throat? Adam’s apple is actually just a laryngeal prominence or a protrusion in the neck formed by the angle of the thyroid cartilage surrounding the larynx.
This is usually more prominent in adult men than in women and in prepubescent children. It has nothing to do with an apple stuck there.
The only explanation I can offer right now as I type this sentence as to why children before puberty do not have Adam’s apple, is because young children are innocent, ignorant and sinless. They are still at the age of learning and gathering knowledge. In short, because they have not eaten the ‘fruit of knowledge’ as adults do, they do not have the ‘forbidden apple’ stuck in their throat as in Adam and Eve. Okay, I am just joking about Adam’s apple.
Myths and distortions:
Unfortunately all these myths came only from people who interpreted the Bible in their own special way. Such belief misdirects others in the same way. It is the same way Satan who came in disguise as a serpent misdirected Eve. She in turn misdirected Adam to do the same. This is one of the Devil’s clever ways to confuse people to draw them away from God. That is the major reason why there are so many religions in the world to divert people’s beliefs.
Apple is a low-rated fruit?
Furthermore, where in the Bible did it say the apple is a low-rated fruit? On the contrary, I thought the adage says ‘an apple a day, keeps the doctor away’? All these beliefs are contradicting each other, created only by people who have their own ideas and thinking. In fact there are dozens of references on the health-protective values of an apple. It is not a low-rated fruit.
Evolution is not life itself:
Naturalists believe that life on earth was due to evolution and survival of the fittest. But they stopped at telling us how life first came into being on Earth? Evolution does not tell us how the first spark of life first jump started the chain of evolution from the first life to the next until we have a wide variety of living creatures on this planet. They conveniently kept quite about this extremely difficult but very crucial question. No one dared ask a scientist this question.
A body without life inside:
Instead, they continue to write volumes of books on biology, biological sciences and all about evolution. But they avoid answering the first and most important question as exactly what life is? How do we define life, and what is it exactly that makes a living thing tick? Is it some kind of mysterious living force, some kind of unknown energy, qi, vital force, or anything like that living inside a body?
Just say living or dead, that’s all?
Scientists pretend that life is always there, and there is no need to answer that question. No question should be asked. So they can continue to write tons, and tons of books on biology, zoology, botany, microbiology, DNA, physiology, etc, etc. They filled up entire libraries in this world on books and periodical on biological science, but none of them define or explain what exactly is this vital force or life residing inside a living body.
No question should be asked why all these organism posses something living called ‘life’ residing inside, but can leave the body on death at any time? Scientists refuse to answer this question. They try to avoid it because they will be confronted with something they cannot explain or answer.
Science teaches us to accept only the physical:
This is like asking people to accept only a physical body without a vital force residing inside. This is like forcing us to accept the existence of a body but we should not question what happened to the head and the brain which actually controls the physical body. What is this mysterious vital force(s) inside a body that make it come to life?
The Bible is not a Science book:
The Bible is also not a book on chemistry, anatomy, nutrition, food science, agriculture, botany, zoology, etc. Neither is it a book on the origin of the species, on natural selection, about survival of the fittest, or anything that deal with evolution.
Neither is the Bible a book on geology, paleontology, or on cosmology to allow it to describe and explain exactly how God created the heavens and the earth. It does now deal with how the water below was separated from the heaven or sky above till dry land appeared. It is not a book on geology, hydrology or metrology.
Neither is the Bible about quantum mechanics, cosmology, or theoretical physics to tell us in detail how light first came into being
Just a simple and humble message to mankind:
The Bible simply tells us in a very simple and humble manner that God created all that without troubling us with unnecessary details on nuclear fusion and nucleo-synthesis in the stars, and how nuclear fusion generate heat, light, and other sources of energy across a wide spectrum of electromagnetic waves.
God feels there is no need for all that; else the entire purpose of the Bible to save mankind from ultimate destruction and death will be lost. God only wanted to pass the message to tell us the essence on how to gain eternal life when life ends for us in this world.
In just one or two simple verses, He let us know that He created everything for us and that He provided all the essential things for us to live a temporary life in this world. That’s all He wanted us to know without troubling us with unnecessary details on science and all those stuff. A psalmist tell a little more about God’s creation is:
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament
sheweth his handywork. (Psalm. 19:1)
His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof (Psalm 19:6).
The entire heaven is revolving:
This above last verse sounds to my mind; it is not the Sun or the Moon that is making a circuit around the sky as many would read it. The still small voice in me strongly tells me to say it loudly that it is the entire heaven (universe), and not just our Galaxy alone He created, that is revolving from one end of the universe to the other end of the other without any intervention or energy or heat to brake this motion (circuit).
This may be something new yet to be revealed to the cosmologist and astronomer. One day they will know, but right now, as long as we still remain on this Earth, our eyes can never be opened to know entirely.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthian 13:12)
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. (Col.1:16-17).
He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing (Job 26:7)
Earth hangs on nothing:
Almost 3500 years ago Job stated in chapter 26 verse 7 that the earth hangs upon nothing. However, various civilizations recorded that either the earth was situated on the back of Atlas (in Greek mythology), or that it was on the back of an elephant which was standing on the back of a turtle, which was supposed to be swimming in some kind of a cosmic sea (in the culture of India), or that the earth was flat being held up by pillars (in the Egyptian culture).
However, as true science progressed, it is now proven that the earth really does hang upon nothing. This means nothing physically holds Earth up as the above verse reveals.
A child accepts things without understanding:
No young child in this world would question his natural father how he is able to bring home money, food, clothing, pay for his upkeep, pay for his education, pay for this and pay for that? No father would explain all these to his young child about his job, how he does it, what happens in the office, how he pays tax to the government, how did he trade his expertise, skill, goods, business for the money and the provision which he finally brings home to feed his family?
There is no need for any parent to explain all these complicated things to his young child, and there is also no need for a child to know all these highly complex procedures of earning a living. All the parent is interested is to be able to provide for his child and family, and the child be able to lie secure in trust of his parent so that he can continue to receive all these provisions for his day-to-day living.
That’s all God wants us to know:
That’s all God wants us to know, and not question Him. This is exactly what God has done for us. There is no need to question the ability of God, a Creator of the Heaven and how He did it. If a child wants to know later in life, he can go to school, the university, to the library and read plenty of books about earning a living and how things work, or are manufactured for him, and so on to get the provision.
Knowledge and traveling is increasing exponentially:
Today we have countless institutions of higher learning, libraries, volumes of books, fast access to information through the Internet and Information Technology. Today countless millions of people are traveling all over the world, across vast oceans and continents in extremely fast jet planes.
They shuttle to and fro all over this planet and communications between peoples across this planet in just seconds by the click of a few buttons via Internet, mobile phones, fax machines, radios, televisions, and satellite communications. They achieved all these at unprecedented speed and rate never before in the history of mankind.
But in doing so we are also damaging the environment and cause global warming. All these have been told and warned to us by God even before Jesus Christ. It is so lucidly clear the end times are nigh.
‘But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased’ (Daniel 12:4)
Global warming:
At the same time, this Earth is slowly warming and heating up. All these do not look good for our survival in near future. It is like a movie coming to life.
"As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world." (Matthew 13:40).
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." (2 Peter 3:10).
"And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." (Revelation 20:9).
There are many other verses and references in the Bible how Earth and even the entire Universe will be burnt up. Just the above three verses as examples will do.
The Bible is meant for saving mankind from eternal death:
Instead, the Bible is wholly devoted on the history of mankind towards God, their sins, and the path they need to take for their salvation and eternal life. If you are a cosmologist, you will understand how horrendously complex the universe (heavens) is, and yet the Bible made it so simple for us to understand by telling us that God created everything for us in just a few verses in Genesis. You can instantly see how humble God is. All these horrendously complex creation He just use a few verses to let us know, but He spent the entire Bible to tell us His fears and worries about our salvation. It only tells us our fate to face eternity without salvation is far, far more important to Him than His entire physical creation of heaven and Earth.
Life in eternity is far more important than earthly knowledge:
God does not intend to trouble us with unnecessary complicated technical details about creation. The Bible is for the humble and uncomplicated mind to understand because the most important objective of the Bible is our salvation throughout all eternity. This is the most important message God continuously stressed to us in our short life.
It is not the technical details about evolution, how the land was separated from the waters, how light was first created, how nucleo-synthesis in the stars gives out heat, light and energy, and so on that worries Him. It is our salvation that is far more worrisome to Him.
Else the entire purpose of the Bible to lead us into eternal life will be lost with unimportant technical details about creation, evolution, about the floods, about this and that mountain, name of this or that animal, and how many animals entered into the Ark. Even God who created the entire heavens with horrendous complexities did not give unnecessary details. So why do we need to trouble our lives and souls about them.
God is extremely humble and modest about His handiwork. Knowledge on all these for you and I is not going to save us from eternal darkness and death.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." 18 (Genesis 2: 16:18).
“You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" 2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" 4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die.5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.7 (Genesis 3:2-7).
We can see the word ‘apple’ was not even mentioned in Genesis as Ir. SK Tan pointed out in an e-mail to his friend, with a copy to me.
No specific name of fruit or animal was mentioned:
We can also clearly see there is no mention of the name of any fruit in the above verses. The verses did not even tell us which food or tree was good for gaining knowledge and wisdom except ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’.
Noah Ark:
Neither did the Bible mention any name of animal(s) or the total number to be brought into Noah’s Ark.
Yet it is people who started to put words into God’s mouth by painting pictures of giraffe, lions, dinosaurs, birds (except dove or raven), cattle, etc that went inside the Ark. Why start drawing pictures of various animals entering the Ark inside children’s books, and then start calculating the size of the Ark and the animals the Ark could hold and so on? How do we know which specific animals were ushered into the Ark? It is not even mentioned in the Bible?
The broad words "And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark" (Genesis 6:19)
When did Noah build the Ark?
Neither did it say whether the rains flooded only the area around Mt. Ararat, where Noah’s Ark was presumed found resting.
“The ark rested . . . upon the mountains of Ararat" (Genesis 8:4).
The Ark was discovered in eastern Turkey presumably (with some doubts) by Ron Wyatt in 1986 or was it the Turkish and Chinese explorers from a group called Noah's Ark Ministries International who actually made the discovery earlier?
Radiocarbon-dated the wood taken from the discovery site—whose location they're keeping secret claimed that the purported ark was about 4,800 years old, which was claimed to coincide roughly with the time of Noah's flood, implied by the Bible. No confirmation on this date was shown. We just do not know.
How many animals?
In the past there were back and forth arguments among Ir. Tan Seng Khoon and another of his friend whether or not Noah took in dinosaurs into his ark, and whether his ark could possibly hold so many animals. I have yet to think about this.
But for the moment, all I can say is that the selection of the species is a continuous process that takes hundreds of millions years to evolve. It is not an overnight affair as many people mistakenly interpreted the accounts given in Genesis as Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3…and so on. Perhaps just only one type of a living creature each was created initially with no mutation into different species of animals or even race of mankind then. Mutation into various varieties and species probably came in much, much later over millions of years, various species of the same animal or even different race for humans (humans are biologically classified as ‘animals’). The Bible does not give us the dates, the periods and length of time. What is a thousand years to man is just a day to God.
‘With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’ (2 Peter 3:8).
‘For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night’ (Psalm 90:4)
Unfortunately people interpret the Bible, time, period and so on literally in the physical sense according to their wall clock, Julian, Gregorian and Solar Calendar etc. They become very blind figuratively speaking, and they only measure and count everything physically according to what they see, measure and what they currently understand.
Same as Nicodemus:
This reminds me of Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews and Pharisees who came to Jesus by night. He could not understand what was meant by ‘being born again’ Nicodemus was a man of great learning and power, and yet despite his intellectual understanding, and great power among the Jews, he interpreted what Jesus told him literally in a physical sense.
He was just blind spiritually. He could not see the spiritual aspect of ‘being born again’, and the deep, deep meaning behind it. He used his limited human understand to see and interpreted literally what Jesus actually meant. Nicodemus could only see like everybody else, everything only in the physical sense and only in this dimension. He could not see and read holistically.
Did Noah bring in a pair of dinosaurs?
Thus back to the same issue whether it was creation or evolution, and many people, including Ir. SK Tan and Simon argued whether Noah took in a pair of dinosaur into his ark. Many people question this literally.
My answer for them is that the dinosaurs have already died millions of years before even Noah was born. The Ark was claimed to be found by Ron Wyatt in 1986. We cannot get confirmation on this. I was told Ron was fraud.
It was also reported that it was actually the Turkish and Chinese explorers from a group called Noah's Ark Ministries International who found the Ark in Mt. Ararat. Either one, there is no confirmation.
It was also reported that radio dating of the Ark if indeed it was found, gave the Ark around 4800 years old. Again, we do not know how true this was. But if this was true, then Noah came far, far later after all the dinosaurs have already disappeared from the surface of earth around 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period. If that was true, that meant there was no question of Noah bringing in the dinosaurs, or a pair of giant reptiles into the Ark? Think this carefully.
Creation comes and goes as life and death:
No where in the Bible did it say that all the living creatures on Earth were already completely created, and there was nothing left to be created, or need to be altered into a new a better and more adaptable species after that? Animals and plant emerged, adapt to the environment, died and better hardy species and kind came after that, and began to multiply and spread throughout the world after that. The older ones then died again and new species then arose, then wave after wave of different types of plants and animals, including different human races began to occupy the surface of this world.
Various creatures on earth come and go in waves. They give rise to generations after generations of plants and animals over millions of years before they slowly began to cover the entire earth with a large variety of different living things (plants, animals and different human races). This took several million years.
The Bible did not say that all the wide, wide variety of life including spices, and sub-species, and variant sub-types were all created in ‘one human day’ But God did tell them to ‘multiple’ and be ‘fruitful’
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (Genesis 1:22)
Hence we can see the generations of life on earth is actually a continuous process of ‘multiplying and multiplying’ and bearing ‘fruits after fruits’ This process of duplicating is an endless process over millions of years which most people interpret it literally as ‘one day’
The process of multiplying and bearing fruits and offspring give us such a wide, wide variety of life today than what was initially first created. Perhaps in the beginning there were limited numbers of just one type of life each. Plants and animals then were so very few in types without much variety to choose from.
Maybe Noah need not have to have so many types, and sub-types, and colours and shapes of the same animal into the Ark? One representation of each kind and pair is good enough, and such numbers are drastically limited with just a pair each. That was exactly what God told Noah.
Gold fish and fruits:
I remember when I was small, I knew only one type of gold fish, and all of them were red in color. But now gold fishes also come in yellow, white, and even totally in black colour. Some have even mixed colors on their bodies.
This is the same with fruits such as duku, langsat, and mangoes to name a few. Now we have cross-breed of duku-langsat, and mangoes of all varieties in colors, fragrances, shapes, succulence, etc, etc. The same is with rambutans where the flesh can now be easily peeled off from the seed, probably with better variety of cross breeding.
When I was a child all these varieties are not available. These new varieties are the result of adapting to changes, multiplying and fruiting into new varieties, species into totally different strains which were never there before.
This is what I feel about the initial ‘creation’ emerging out to form ‘a huge variety of totally new species’ Does this answer initial creation and later evolution into different types of animals into their thousands which were never there before. It is just a matter of creation and evolution merging together into variety and harmony. At least this is how I see it.
The lamps:
Another way to make this easier to understand is like this. Take an analogy of thousands or millions of unlit lamps in endless rows. All the lamps were unlit initially. Then came a flame (spark of life) to light up the first lamp to begin life. The first lamp then passes the flame (life) to the next unlit lamp to start a different lamp slightly different in color and brightness from the first one. The second one then pass on the flame over to the third lamp, and so on.
By the time tens of thousands or millions of lamps were lighted, they all have different colors, brightness, stability, length of life, etc. The first generations of lamps would be then have exhausted its fuel by the time several hundreds of other lamps were lighted. Most of them would have exhausted their duel, and the lamps were extinguished (died, like all animals including the dinosaurs). Then the second wave of earlier lamps died off, and so on.
By the time the flame lit up all the millions of lamps, new and more adaptable lamps would have been created to last longer. This is somewhat like better and better devices through better and better technology are brought into the market. Life on earth is exactly like that with better and better species being evolved.
The Genesis and evolution of life:
But in the beginning (Genesis), only a few lamps of limited edition were available to light up the place (Earth). It was only through repeated multiplication - (‘multiply and be fruitful’ as God ordered) that millions of lamps (millions of species of life) were all lighted up into different colors, shapes and brightness as in Darwin’s “Origin of the Species’ recorded.
If we look at the evolution of life in this light, how does Creation in Genesis conflict with the Evolution of Life as myopic scientists and lay people alike argue? Their argument is totally beyond me. To me, as I have explained here, there is order, and harmony between the two. Evolution is to me, is just an extension of the initial creation of life on Earth over a very long period: What is a thousand years to man, is just a watch in the night for the Creator. All these were not done in a day (literally) as written in Genesis. Scientists misinterpret the Bible. Spiritual enlightenment is beyond the human understanding of scientists who insist only on objective measurements.
Myopic Scientists:
Scientists are generally narrow-minded, myopic, and spiritually-blind. They become so specialized that they no longer can see a whole picture holistically
The four blind men and the elephant:
Scientists today are just like the four blind men trying to describe an elephant. They become far too specialized that they cannot see the whole picture anymore. They all speak different technical languages when trying to solve a problem. Not only scientists confuse themselves, but they mislead and confuse others and the lay people too who depend on them for knowledge and information. Scientists need to wake up, pray hard, and ask God to open their eyes and see a problem broadly.
Multiply and be fruitful:
Just as we have a huge variety of the same fruits, flowers, vegetables, cats, dogs, fish, tigers, elephants, today, they all initially probably originated from one and only one species each. They may all even start from just a single simple life form, like bacteria or algae. They then mutated into higher forms of life as we know it.
This is also creation just like we create a cake by putting all the necessary ingredients together initially. Then on baking, all the separate ingredients combined chemically by heat and evolved into a cake. This is also creating and evolving at the same time into a cake. There is no difference between the two, except the usage of words on how we create a life first and evolve the rest later. They may be like ‘one lamp’ initially, until the flame spread (evolved) from lamp to lamp. Don’t all these scientists who advocated ‘selection of the species’ understand this simple concept? It really beat me from the way they un-holistically argue. They were all just the 4 blind men and the elephant.
New organisms still evolving:
In fact even now scientists are still discovering new DNA and new organisms in the ocean waters never known before. They even managed to created ‘synthetic life’ as researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute did by inserting synthetic DNA into Mycoplasma capricolum that were then able to grow naturally. But this does not amount to creating life artificially. I need to explain in detail and at length on molecular biology and how this works at another time.
The different human races evolved after Noah and his family:
So were human races evolved and spread over the surface of the Earth after Adam and Eve. Actually it was after Noah after the great flood that wiped out all the descendants of Adam and Eve that new forms of highly intelligent human life came to populate Earth after ‘the children of gods’ came and mated with the daughters of men on Earth. After they were wiped out by the floods, the races were evolved through random selection, in-breeding, and through the process of survival of the fittest.
There was actually inbreeding for human race because only Noah and his family were left to marry among themselves. This may have brought about recessive genes in the generations of families that came after. The dormant and recessive genes may have given rise to different races of people on Earth today; some races are few in numbers, but are highly intelligent and adaptable, such as the Jews, while most of the other races are not. It is these races who are meek, illiterate, and poor, live in poverty that they multiple in great numbers and populate the Earth today.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5)
I believe that is one of the reasons why we see a wide variety of races spread out over the world today due to inbreeding among Noah family members. This gave rise to a lot of recessive genes, while he good ones are fewer in numbers.
This in turn gave rise to various races with different colors, features, different intelligence and ability to succeed challenges. Especially those Caucasians in the west have a far greater advantage over many other races in Africa, Middle East, Indonesia, etc whose genetic stock have left them far behind the western Caucasians.
But initially they all could have come from just one race, but some generations were left behind due to the same stock of inbreeding among the same community and race. The evolution of different human races is exactly like having gold fish of entirely different colors or cats and dogs of different breeds. The human race is biological the same as the rest of the other animals. Humans are zoologically animals.
Simple verse without the anthropology:
Which verse claimed that animals, living creatures, including the different races of people do not come (born) and go (died away) after the first initial creation of Adam and Eve, and that, all living creatures (including Man) will multiply and spread over the surface of Earth.
‘And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;’ (Genesis 26:4)
Briefly told as it is not a book on Science:
The accounts of Creation in the Bible are so very brief, and there is no space to describe all the details. I say again, the Bible is not a science book, and it is not meant to be one. It is much more urgent and far more important than describing science and creation. It is about salvation for mankind for time without end. We need to save our skins and souls by not proving unnecessary theories in science for which we can only see darkly through a glass (1 Corinthian 13:12).
Time scale of God is not human time scale:
Then again what is ‘one day’ to God may be 5 billion or sextillion years to us mortal humans. To God, time is eternal; to man our life span at maximum is just 120 earth years measured using our human calendars and wall clocks?
Why should God to whom time is without end (eternal) for Him to take our time scale to measure time and years according to our days and years? Just think how reckless, arrogant, and idiotic we are. Our eyes are blind, and our minds folded up, and tied up tightly by Satan. There is no escape from Satan cunning ways. Satan just limits our thinking.
Open unto us that God could easily use any one of the 100,000 million stars in our own Galaxy or any of the 1022 (1 followed by 22 zeros or 10 sextillion galaxies of His heavenly Creation as His yardstick to measure time.
He created the heaven, the galaxies and all. He is at liberty to use the time scale in which any of His galaxies take to revolve round once. To us this is called a Galactic or a Cosmic Year. But to God, this may just be a fraction of one second, but to us this would be 226 millions of years over a radius of about 26 thousand light-years through which a galaxy spins. A Solar Year to us is 365.25 Solar Days. But to God, this time span may be far less than a tick of a second, maybe a pico-second or shorter?
Time without end: it is relative:
For God, time is Eternal which cannot be measured. Can’t we still understand that time is relative as Einstein told us? It can lengthen as in time dilation, or it can shorten and contract according to the speed of motion as prescribed in Einstein Theory of Relativity. Can we not understand this until this day. Einstein took all that trouble to explain this to us and yet we still equate our time the same as that of God.
When God said ‘one day, second day, third day…6th day they could actually be up to 5000 million years for Him to do His job in the slow process of creation or evolution. The myopic eyes of biological scientists find it very hard to understand this. They always argue on the same disparity of time. Einstein, a theoretical physicist is completely different from a biologist like Charles Darwin who was born before Einstein. A few years after Darwin died, Einstein was born. They could not see eye-to-eye. Darwin’s ‘millions of years’ was contracted and shorten by Einstein Theory of Relativity.
God’s time-piece:
There is thus no reason why God needs to use Earth’s years as His time-piece? Why should God? After all, He created the entire Universe or heaven, and He called it just ‘one day’ which to our short-sighted thinking interpret it to mean 24 hours or a Solar Day on our Gregorian Calendar. Naturally this conflicts with their (the idiotic biological scientists) thinking.
Can’t we see and interpret things clearly without using our myopic human mind? Maybe not! As long as we still remain a human in this world we see things in a very childish way, and everything we see or think are understood only very dimly or darkly. But everything will suddenly become very clear to us when we depart from this world, and we see everything spiritually from another world in another dimension.
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child; I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:11-12).
Global or local flood:
On the question whether or not the flood inundated the entire world I cannot answer this question right now as I type out this sentence? I need to examine what was written in the Bible, think over it, do some research on my own later, think carefully again before answering this question. Right now I am writing on some thing else, but I shall come back on this issue later.
But for the moment, as far as we know, when it rains extremely heavily for months on end in one part of the world, like it is now (June – July 2010) in the mid region and southern parts of China there is flooding only in these parts of China. It does not even affect other parts of China, let alone affecting Malaysia or any other part of the world.
In fact there was drought elsewhere. So why start all the guess work whether China, India, Mt Everest, Africa were also flooded during the great flood of Noah’s time? We need to think carefully over this. The whole world in Noah’s time may just be in his small part of world around the current Middle East. Traveling elsewhere was then extremely limited
Moreover, the highest mountain currently - Mt. Everest may or may not even be formed as yet. Mountains are usually formed by upheaval of land mass from the ocean floors. We do not even know if Africa, Europe, Asia, SE. Asia, Oceana even existed as yet because no calendar date was given in the Bible. Even if all the continents have already appeared when it was separated from the waters, the question is, when did it happen?
And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. (Genesis 1:9)
This appearance of dry land from the seas was presumably by geological upheaval of masses of land pushing them upwards from the ocean floors. This is what we can guess.
Perhaps dry land was all one big undivided land mass that later drifted away by shifting of tectonic plates beneath the Earth’s surface to form separate continents?
Unfortunately no date of any of these events was given in the Bible, and without the dates there is no way scientists can determine when these geological events took place, and whether or not we can match the events to coincide with the accounts recorded in the Bible. So why guess when we do not have records?
God is extremely patient:
I have explained what is ‘one day’ to God may be 5 billion years for us mortal humans here on Earth? To God, time is eternal; to man our life span at maximum is just 120 earth years measured by our human calendars and the clock on the walls. Why should God to whom time is without end (eternal) for Him to measure time and years according to our days and years of our lives.
Just an example before we go. Does a scientist who does a medical experiment with rats in the lab uses the life span of a rat to record the length of his experiment, or does he record his experiment according to our clock? Think carefully. We can’t use our Earth’s time and equate it with those of God. How arrogant!
Just think how idiotic, yet egotistical we are? Our eyes are spiritually blind, and our minds folded up. Like followers of some religions, we are tied up tightly by Satan to force us to follow ritually. We are confined to our physical dimensions. There is no escape from Satan cunning ways to deceive us through religion
I shall continue my thoughts on some of these puzzles later in three articles I am currently still writing. They are:
1. Creation or Evolution
2. The Mysteries of Life
3. Jesus first miracle
Please wait for them to be posted into this blog.
Amen!
jb lim
An e-mail circular I received recently from a friend Ir. Tan Seng Koon who argued with another person that no where in the Bible does it says that the apple was the first fruit created.
Ir. Tan was perfectly right. Neither does it says anywhere that the apple is the forbidden fruit Eve was told not eat. Neither does the Bible say that the apple is lowly-rated as claimed by someone in the e-mails exchanges I received.
Where in these two verses did it mention ‘apple’ or ‘forbidden’ or ‘the first fruit’?
“You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." 18. (Genesis 2: 17-18).
Adam’s apple:
Neither does Adam’s apple, caused by Adam having eaten the forbidden fruit in Garden of Eden and having the apple stuck there in his throat? Adam’s apple is actually just a laryngeal prominence or a protrusion in the neck formed by the angle of the thyroid cartilage surrounding the larynx.
This is usually more prominent in adult men than in women and in prepubescent children. It has nothing to do with an apple stuck there.
The only explanation I can offer right now as I type this sentence as to why children before puberty do not have Adam’s apple, is because young children are innocent, ignorant and sinless. They are still at the age of learning and gathering knowledge. In short, because they have not eaten the ‘fruit of knowledge’ as adults do, they do not have the ‘forbidden apple’ stuck in their throat as in Adam and Eve. Okay, I am just joking about Adam’s apple.
Myths and distortions:
Unfortunately all these myths came only from people who interpreted the Bible in their own special way. Such belief misdirects others in the same way. It is the same way Satan who came in disguise as a serpent misdirected Eve. She in turn misdirected Adam to do the same. This is one of the Devil’s clever ways to confuse people to draw them away from God. That is the major reason why there are so many religions in the world to divert people’s beliefs.
Apple is a low-rated fruit?
Furthermore, where in the Bible did it say the apple is a low-rated fruit? On the contrary, I thought the adage says ‘an apple a day, keeps the doctor away’? All these beliefs are contradicting each other, created only by people who have their own ideas and thinking. In fact there are dozens of references on the health-protective values of an apple. It is not a low-rated fruit.
Evolution is not life itself:
Naturalists believe that life on earth was due to evolution and survival of the fittest. But they stopped at telling us how life first came into being on Earth? Evolution does not tell us how the first spark of life first jump started the chain of evolution from the first life to the next until we have a wide variety of living creatures on this planet. They conveniently kept quite about this extremely difficult but very crucial question. No one dared ask a scientist this question.
A body without life inside:
Instead, they continue to write volumes of books on biology, biological sciences and all about evolution. But they avoid answering the first and most important question as exactly what life is? How do we define life, and what is it exactly that makes a living thing tick? Is it some kind of mysterious living force, some kind of unknown energy, qi, vital force, or anything like that living inside a body?
Just say living or dead, that’s all?
Scientists pretend that life is always there, and there is no need to answer that question. No question should be asked. So they can continue to write tons, and tons of books on biology, zoology, botany, microbiology, DNA, physiology, etc, etc. They filled up entire libraries in this world on books and periodical on biological science, but none of them define or explain what exactly is this vital force or life residing inside a living body.
No question should be asked why all these organism posses something living called ‘life’ residing inside, but can leave the body on death at any time? Scientists refuse to answer this question. They try to avoid it because they will be confronted with something they cannot explain or answer.
Science teaches us to accept only the physical:
This is like asking people to accept only a physical body without a vital force residing inside. This is like forcing us to accept the existence of a body but we should not question what happened to the head and the brain which actually controls the physical body. What is this mysterious vital force(s) inside a body that make it come to life?
The Bible is not a Science book:
The Bible is also not a book on chemistry, anatomy, nutrition, food science, agriculture, botany, zoology, etc. Neither is it a book on the origin of the species, on natural selection, about survival of the fittest, or anything that deal with evolution.
Neither is the Bible a book on geology, paleontology, or on cosmology to allow it to describe and explain exactly how God created the heavens and the earth. It does now deal with how the water below was separated from the heaven or sky above till dry land appeared. It is not a book on geology, hydrology or metrology.
Neither is the Bible about quantum mechanics, cosmology, or theoretical physics to tell us in detail how light first came into being
Just a simple and humble message to mankind:
The Bible simply tells us in a very simple and humble manner that God created all that without troubling us with unnecessary details on nuclear fusion and nucleo-synthesis in the stars, and how nuclear fusion generate heat, light, and other sources of energy across a wide spectrum of electromagnetic waves.
God feels there is no need for all that; else the entire purpose of the Bible to save mankind from ultimate destruction and death will be lost. God only wanted to pass the message to tell us the essence on how to gain eternal life when life ends for us in this world.
In just one or two simple verses, He let us know that He created everything for us and that He provided all the essential things for us to live a temporary life in this world. That’s all He wanted us to know without troubling us with unnecessary details on science and all those stuff. A psalmist tell a little more about God’s creation is:
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament
sheweth his handywork. (Psalm. 19:1)
His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof (Psalm 19:6).
The entire heaven is revolving:
This above last verse sounds to my mind; it is not the Sun or the Moon that is making a circuit around the sky as many would read it. The still small voice in me strongly tells me to say it loudly that it is the entire heaven (universe), and not just our Galaxy alone He created, that is revolving from one end of the universe to the other end of the other without any intervention or energy or heat to brake this motion (circuit).
This may be something new yet to be revealed to the cosmologist and astronomer. One day they will know, but right now, as long as we still remain on this Earth, our eyes can never be opened to know entirely.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthian 13:12)
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. (Col.1:16-17).
He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing (Job 26:7)
Earth hangs on nothing:
Almost 3500 years ago Job stated in chapter 26 verse 7 that the earth hangs upon nothing. However, various civilizations recorded that either the earth was situated on the back of Atlas (in Greek mythology), or that it was on the back of an elephant which was standing on the back of a turtle, which was supposed to be swimming in some kind of a cosmic sea (in the culture of India), or that the earth was flat being held up by pillars (in the Egyptian culture).
However, as true science progressed, it is now proven that the earth really does hang upon nothing. This means nothing physically holds Earth up as the above verse reveals.
A child accepts things without understanding:
No young child in this world would question his natural father how he is able to bring home money, food, clothing, pay for his upkeep, pay for his education, pay for this and pay for that? No father would explain all these to his young child about his job, how he does it, what happens in the office, how he pays tax to the government, how did he trade his expertise, skill, goods, business for the money and the provision which he finally brings home to feed his family?
There is no need for any parent to explain all these complicated things to his young child, and there is also no need for a child to know all these highly complex procedures of earning a living. All the parent is interested is to be able to provide for his child and family, and the child be able to lie secure in trust of his parent so that he can continue to receive all these provisions for his day-to-day living.
That’s all God wants us to know:
That’s all God wants us to know, and not question Him. This is exactly what God has done for us. There is no need to question the ability of God, a Creator of the Heaven and how He did it. If a child wants to know later in life, he can go to school, the university, to the library and read plenty of books about earning a living and how things work, or are manufactured for him, and so on to get the provision.
Knowledge and traveling is increasing exponentially:
Today we have countless institutions of higher learning, libraries, volumes of books, fast access to information through the Internet and Information Technology. Today countless millions of people are traveling all over the world, across vast oceans and continents in extremely fast jet planes.
They shuttle to and fro all over this planet and communications between peoples across this planet in just seconds by the click of a few buttons via Internet, mobile phones, fax machines, radios, televisions, and satellite communications. They achieved all these at unprecedented speed and rate never before in the history of mankind.
But in doing so we are also damaging the environment and cause global warming. All these have been told and warned to us by God even before Jesus Christ. It is so lucidly clear the end times are nigh.
‘But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased’ (Daniel 12:4)
Global warming:
At the same time, this Earth is slowly warming and heating up. All these do not look good for our survival in near future. It is like a movie coming to life.
"As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world." (Matthew 13:40).
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." (2 Peter 3:10).
"And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." (Revelation 20:9).
There are many other verses and references in the Bible how Earth and even the entire Universe will be burnt up. Just the above three verses as examples will do.
The Bible is meant for saving mankind from eternal death:
Instead, the Bible is wholly devoted on the history of mankind towards God, their sins, and the path they need to take for their salvation and eternal life. If you are a cosmologist, you will understand how horrendously complex the universe (heavens) is, and yet the Bible made it so simple for us to understand by telling us that God created everything for us in just a few verses in Genesis. You can instantly see how humble God is. All these horrendously complex creation He just use a few verses to let us know, but He spent the entire Bible to tell us His fears and worries about our salvation. It only tells us our fate to face eternity without salvation is far, far more important to Him than His entire physical creation of heaven and Earth.
Life in eternity is far more important than earthly knowledge:
God does not intend to trouble us with unnecessary complicated technical details about creation. The Bible is for the humble and uncomplicated mind to understand because the most important objective of the Bible is our salvation throughout all eternity. This is the most important message God continuously stressed to us in our short life.
It is not the technical details about evolution, how the land was separated from the waters, how light was first created, how nucleo-synthesis in the stars gives out heat, light and energy, and so on that worries Him. It is our salvation that is far more worrisome to Him.
Else the entire purpose of the Bible to lead us into eternal life will be lost with unimportant technical details about creation, evolution, about the floods, about this and that mountain, name of this or that animal, and how many animals entered into the Ark. Even God who created the entire heavens with horrendous complexities did not give unnecessary details. So why do we need to trouble our lives and souls about them.
God is extremely humble and modest about His handiwork. Knowledge on all these for you and I is not going to save us from eternal darkness and death.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." 18 (Genesis 2: 16:18).
“You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" 2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" 4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die.5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.7 (Genesis 3:2-7).
We can see the word ‘apple’ was not even mentioned in Genesis as Ir. SK Tan pointed out in an e-mail to his friend, with a copy to me.
No specific name of fruit or animal was mentioned:
We can also clearly see there is no mention of the name of any fruit in the above verses. The verses did not even tell us which food or tree was good for gaining knowledge and wisdom except ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’.
Noah Ark:
Neither did the Bible mention any name of animal(s) or the total number to be brought into Noah’s Ark.
Yet it is people who started to put words into God’s mouth by painting pictures of giraffe, lions, dinosaurs, birds (except dove or raven), cattle, etc that went inside the Ark. Why start drawing pictures of various animals entering the Ark inside children’s books, and then start calculating the size of the Ark and the animals the Ark could hold and so on? How do we know which specific animals were ushered into the Ark? It is not even mentioned in the Bible?
The broad words "And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark" (Genesis 6:19)
When did Noah build the Ark?
Neither did it say whether the rains flooded only the area around Mt. Ararat, where Noah’s Ark was presumed found resting.
“The ark rested . . . upon the mountains of Ararat" (Genesis 8:4).
The Ark was discovered in eastern Turkey presumably (with some doubts) by Ron Wyatt in 1986 or was it the Turkish and Chinese explorers from a group called Noah's Ark Ministries International who actually made the discovery earlier?
Radiocarbon-dated the wood taken from the discovery site—whose location they're keeping secret claimed that the purported ark was about 4,800 years old, which was claimed to coincide roughly with the time of Noah's flood, implied by the Bible. No confirmation on this date was shown. We just do not know.
How many animals?
In the past there were back and forth arguments among Ir. Tan Seng Khoon and another of his friend whether or not Noah took in dinosaurs into his ark, and whether his ark could possibly hold so many animals. I have yet to think about this.
But for the moment, all I can say is that the selection of the species is a continuous process that takes hundreds of millions years to evolve. It is not an overnight affair as many people mistakenly interpreted the accounts given in Genesis as Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3…and so on. Perhaps just only one type of a living creature each was created initially with no mutation into different species of animals or even race of mankind then. Mutation into various varieties and species probably came in much, much later over millions of years, various species of the same animal or even different race for humans (humans are biologically classified as ‘animals’). The Bible does not give us the dates, the periods and length of time. What is a thousand years to man is just a day to God.
‘With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’ (2 Peter 3:8).
‘For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night’ (Psalm 90:4)
Unfortunately people interpret the Bible, time, period and so on literally in the physical sense according to their wall clock, Julian, Gregorian and Solar Calendar etc. They become very blind figuratively speaking, and they only measure and count everything physically according to what they see, measure and what they currently understand.
Same as Nicodemus:
This reminds me of Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews and Pharisees who came to Jesus by night. He could not understand what was meant by ‘being born again’ Nicodemus was a man of great learning and power, and yet despite his intellectual understanding, and great power among the Jews, he interpreted what Jesus told him literally in a physical sense.
He was just blind spiritually. He could not see the spiritual aspect of ‘being born again’, and the deep, deep meaning behind it. He used his limited human understand to see and interpreted literally what Jesus actually meant. Nicodemus could only see like everybody else, everything only in the physical sense and only in this dimension. He could not see and read holistically.
Did Noah bring in a pair of dinosaurs?
Thus back to the same issue whether it was creation or evolution, and many people, including Ir. SK Tan and Simon argued whether Noah took in a pair of dinosaur into his ark. Many people question this literally.
My answer for them is that the dinosaurs have already died millions of years before even Noah was born. The Ark was claimed to be found by Ron Wyatt in 1986. We cannot get confirmation on this. I was told Ron was fraud.
It was also reported that it was actually the Turkish and Chinese explorers from a group called Noah's Ark Ministries International who found the Ark in Mt. Ararat. Either one, there is no confirmation.
It was also reported that radio dating of the Ark if indeed it was found, gave the Ark around 4800 years old. Again, we do not know how true this was. But if this was true, then Noah came far, far later after all the dinosaurs have already disappeared from the surface of earth around 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period. If that was true, that meant there was no question of Noah bringing in the dinosaurs, or a pair of giant reptiles into the Ark? Think this carefully.
Creation comes and goes as life and death:
No where in the Bible did it say that all the living creatures on Earth were already completely created, and there was nothing left to be created, or need to be altered into a new a better and more adaptable species after that? Animals and plant emerged, adapt to the environment, died and better hardy species and kind came after that, and began to multiply and spread throughout the world after that. The older ones then died again and new species then arose, then wave after wave of different types of plants and animals, including different human races began to occupy the surface of this world.
Various creatures on earth come and go in waves. They give rise to generations after generations of plants and animals over millions of years before they slowly began to cover the entire earth with a large variety of different living things (plants, animals and different human races). This took several million years.
The Bible did not say that all the wide, wide variety of life including spices, and sub-species, and variant sub-types were all created in ‘one human day’ But God did tell them to ‘multiple’ and be ‘fruitful’
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (Genesis 1:22)
Hence we can see the generations of life on earth is actually a continuous process of ‘multiplying and multiplying’ and bearing ‘fruits after fruits’ This process of duplicating is an endless process over millions of years which most people interpret it literally as ‘one day’
The process of multiplying and bearing fruits and offspring give us such a wide, wide variety of life today than what was initially first created. Perhaps in the beginning there were limited numbers of just one type of life each. Plants and animals then were so very few in types without much variety to choose from.
Maybe Noah need not have to have so many types, and sub-types, and colours and shapes of the same animal into the Ark? One representation of each kind and pair is good enough, and such numbers are drastically limited with just a pair each. That was exactly what God told Noah.
Gold fish and fruits:
I remember when I was small, I knew only one type of gold fish, and all of them were red in color. But now gold fishes also come in yellow, white, and even totally in black colour. Some have even mixed colors on their bodies.
This is the same with fruits such as duku, langsat, and mangoes to name a few. Now we have cross-breed of duku-langsat, and mangoes of all varieties in colors, fragrances, shapes, succulence, etc, etc. The same is with rambutans where the flesh can now be easily peeled off from the seed, probably with better variety of cross breeding.
When I was a child all these varieties are not available. These new varieties are the result of adapting to changes, multiplying and fruiting into new varieties, species into totally different strains which were never there before.
This is what I feel about the initial ‘creation’ emerging out to form ‘a huge variety of totally new species’ Does this answer initial creation and later evolution into different types of animals into their thousands which were never there before. It is just a matter of creation and evolution merging together into variety and harmony. At least this is how I see it.
The lamps:
Another way to make this easier to understand is like this. Take an analogy of thousands or millions of unlit lamps in endless rows. All the lamps were unlit initially. Then came a flame (spark of life) to light up the first lamp to begin life. The first lamp then passes the flame (life) to the next unlit lamp to start a different lamp slightly different in color and brightness from the first one. The second one then pass on the flame over to the third lamp, and so on.
By the time tens of thousands or millions of lamps were lighted, they all have different colors, brightness, stability, length of life, etc. The first generations of lamps would be then have exhausted its fuel by the time several hundreds of other lamps were lighted. Most of them would have exhausted their duel, and the lamps were extinguished (died, like all animals including the dinosaurs). Then the second wave of earlier lamps died off, and so on.
By the time the flame lit up all the millions of lamps, new and more adaptable lamps would have been created to last longer. This is somewhat like better and better devices through better and better technology are brought into the market. Life on earth is exactly like that with better and better species being evolved.
The Genesis and evolution of life:
But in the beginning (Genesis), only a few lamps of limited edition were available to light up the place (Earth). It was only through repeated multiplication - (‘multiply and be fruitful’ as God ordered) that millions of lamps (millions of species of life) were all lighted up into different colors, shapes and brightness as in Darwin’s “Origin of the Species’ recorded.
If we look at the evolution of life in this light, how does Creation in Genesis conflict with the Evolution of Life as myopic scientists and lay people alike argue? Their argument is totally beyond me. To me, as I have explained here, there is order, and harmony between the two. Evolution is to me, is just an extension of the initial creation of life on Earth over a very long period: What is a thousand years to man, is just a watch in the night for the Creator. All these were not done in a day (literally) as written in Genesis. Scientists misinterpret the Bible. Spiritual enlightenment is beyond the human understanding of scientists who insist only on objective measurements.
Myopic Scientists:
Scientists are generally narrow-minded, myopic, and spiritually-blind. They become so specialized that they no longer can see a whole picture holistically
The four blind men and the elephant:
Scientists today are just like the four blind men trying to describe an elephant. They become far too specialized that they cannot see the whole picture anymore. They all speak different technical languages when trying to solve a problem. Not only scientists confuse themselves, but they mislead and confuse others and the lay people too who depend on them for knowledge and information. Scientists need to wake up, pray hard, and ask God to open their eyes and see a problem broadly.
Multiply and be fruitful:
Just as we have a huge variety of the same fruits, flowers, vegetables, cats, dogs, fish, tigers, elephants, today, they all initially probably originated from one and only one species each. They may all even start from just a single simple life form, like bacteria or algae. They then mutated into higher forms of life as we know it.
This is also creation just like we create a cake by putting all the necessary ingredients together initially. Then on baking, all the separate ingredients combined chemically by heat and evolved into a cake. This is also creating and evolving at the same time into a cake. There is no difference between the two, except the usage of words on how we create a life first and evolve the rest later. They may be like ‘one lamp’ initially, until the flame spread (evolved) from lamp to lamp. Don’t all these scientists who advocated ‘selection of the species’ understand this simple concept? It really beat me from the way they un-holistically argue. They were all just the 4 blind men and the elephant.
New organisms still evolving:
In fact even now scientists are still discovering new DNA and new organisms in the ocean waters never known before. They even managed to created ‘synthetic life’ as researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute did by inserting synthetic DNA into Mycoplasma capricolum that were then able to grow naturally. But this does not amount to creating life artificially. I need to explain in detail and at length on molecular biology and how this works at another time.
The different human races evolved after Noah and his family:
So were human races evolved and spread over the surface of the Earth after Adam and Eve. Actually it was after Noah after the great flood that wiped out all the descendants of Adam and Eve that new forms of highly intelligent human life came to populate Earth after ‘the children of gods’ came and mated with the daughters of men on Earth. After they were wiped out by the floods, the races were evolved through random selection, in-breeding, and through the process of survival of the fittest.
There was actually inbreeding for human race because only Noah and his family were left to marry among themselves. This may have brought about recessive genes in the generations of families that came after. The dormant and recessive genes may have given rise to different races of people on Earth today; some races are few in numbers, but are highly intelligent and adaptable, such as the Jews, while most of the other races are not. It is these races who are meek, illiterate, and poor, live in poverty that they multiple in great numbers and populate the Earth today.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5)
I believe that is one of the reasons why we see a wide variety of races spread out over the world today due to inbreeding among Noah family members. This gave rise to a lot of recessive genes, while he good ones are fewer in numbers.
This in turn gave rise to various races with different colors, features, different intelligence and ability to succeed challenges. Especially those Caucasians in the west have a far greater advantage over many other races in Africa, Middle East, Indonesia, etc whose genetic stock have left them far behind the western Caucasians.
But initially they all could have come from just one race, but some generations were left behind due to the same stock of inbreeding among the same community and race. The evolution of different human races is exactly like having gold fish of entirely different colors or cats and dogs of different breeds. The human race is biological the same as the rest of the other animals. Humans are zoologically animals.
Simple verse without the anthropology:
Which verse claimed that animals, living creatures, including the different races of people do not come (born) and go (died away) after the first initial creation of Adam and Eve, and that, all living creatures (including Man) will multiply and spread over the surface of Earth.
‘And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;’ (Genesis 26:4)
Briefly told as it is not a book on Science:
The accounts of Creation in the Bible are so very brief, and there is no space to describe all the details. I say again, the Bible is not a science book, and it is not meant to be one. It is much more urgent and far more important than describing science and creation. It is about salvation for mankind for time without end. We need to save our skins and souls by not proving unnecessary theories in science for which we can only see darkly through a glass (1 Corinthian 13:12).
Time scale of God is not human time scale:
Then again what is ‘one day’ to God may be 5 billion or sextillion years to us mortal humans. To God, time is eternal; to man our life span at maximum is just 120 earth years measured using our human calendars and wall clocks?
Why should God to whom time is without end (eternal) for Him to take our time scale to measure time and years according to our days and years? Just think how reckless, arrogant, and idiotic we are. Our eyes are blind, and our minds folded up, and tied up tightly by Satan. There is no escape from Satan cunning ways. Satan just limits our thinking.
Open unto us that God could easily use any one of the 100,000 million stars in our own Galaxy or any of the 1022 (1 followed by 22 zeros or 10 sextillion galaxies of His heavenly Creation as His yardstick to measure time.
He created the heaven, the galaxies and all. He is at liberty to use the time scale in which any of His galaxies take to revolve round once. To us this is called a Galactic or a Cosmic Year. But to God, this may just be a fraction of one second, but to us this would be 226 millions of years over a radius of about 26 thousand light-years through which a galaxy spins. A Solar Year to us is 365.25 Solar Days. But to God, this time span may be far less than a tick of a second, maybe a pico-second or shorter?
Time without end: it is relative:
For God, time is Eternal which cannot be measured. Can’t we still understand that time is relative as Einstein told us? It can lengthen as in time dilation, or it can shorten and contract according to the speed of motion as prescribed in Einstein Theory of Relativity. Can we not understand this until this day. Einstein took all that trouble to explain this to us and yet we still equate our time the same as that of God.
When God said ‘one day, second day, third day…6th day they could actually be up to 5000 million years for Him to do His job in the slow process of creation or evolution. The myopic eyes of biological scientists find it very hard to understand this. They always argue on the same disparity of time. Einstein, a theoretical physicist is completely different from a biologist like Charles Darwin who was born before Einstein. A few years after Darwin died, Einstein was born. They could not see eye-to-eye. Darwin’s ‘millions of years’ was contracted and shorten by Einstein Theory of Relativity.
God’s time-piece:
There is thus no reason why God needs to use Earth’s years as His time-piece? Why should God? After all, He created the entire Universe or heaven, and He called it just ‘one day’ which to our short-sighted thinking interpret it to mean 24 hours or a Solar Day on our Gregorian Calendar. Naturally this conflicts with their (the idiotic biological scientists) thinking.
Can’t we see and interpret things clearly without using our myopic human mind? Maybe not! As long as we still remain a human in this world we see things in a very childish way, and everything we see or think are understood only very dimly or darkly. But everything will suddenly become very clear to us when we depart from this world, and we see everything spiritually from another world in another dimension.
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child; I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:11-12).
Global or local flood:
On the question whether or not the flood inundated the entire world I cannot answer this question right now as I type out this sentence? I need to examine what was written in the Bible, think over it, do some research on my own later, think carefully again before answering this question. Right now I am writing on some thing else, but I shall come back on this issue later.
But for the moment, as far as we know, when it rains extremely heavily for months on end in one part of the world, like it is now (June – July 2010) in the mid region and southern parts of China there is flooding only in these parts of China. It does not even affect other parts of China, let alone affecting Malaysia or any other part of the world.
In fact there was drought elsewhere. So why start all the guess work whether China, India, Mt Everest, Africa were also flooded during the great flood of Noah’s time? We need to think carefully over this. The whole world in Noah’s time may just be in his small part of world around the current Middle East. Traveling elsewhere was then extremely limited
Moreover, the highest mountain currently - Mt. Everest may or may not even be formed as yet. Mountains are usually formed by upheaval of land mass from the ocean floors. We do not even know if Africa, Europe, Asia, SE. Asia, Oceana even existed as yet because no calendar date was given in the Bible. Even if all the continents have already appeared when it was separated from the waters, the question is, when did it happen?
And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. (Genesis 1:9)
This appearance of dry land from the seas was presumably by geological upheaval of masses of land pushing them upwards from the ocean floors. This is what we can guess.
Perhaps dry land was all one big undivided land mass that later drifted away by shifting of tectonic plates beneath the Earth’s surface to form separate continents?
Unfortunately no date of any of these events was given in the Bible, and without the dates there is no way scientists can determine when these geological events took place, and whether or not we can match the events to coincide with the accounts recorded in the Bible. So why guess when we do not have records?
God is extremely patient:
I have explained what is ‘one day’ to God may be 5 billion years for us mortal humans here on Earth? To God, time is eternal; to man our life span at maximum is just 120 earth years measured by our human calendars and the clock on the walls. Why should God to whom time is without end (eternal) for Him to measure time and years according to our days and years of our lives.
Just an example before we go. Does a scientist who does a medical experiment with rats in the lab uses the life span of a rat to record the length of his experiment, or does he record his experiment according to our clock? Think carefully. We can’t use our Earth’s time and equate it with those of God. How arrogant!
Just think how idiotic, yet egotistical we are? Our eyes are spiritually blind, and our minds folded up. Like followers of some religions, we are tied up tightly by Satan to force us to follow ritually. We are confined to our physical dimensions. There is no escape from Satan cunning ways to deceive us through religion
I shall continue my thoughts on some of these puzzles later in three articles I am currently still writing. They are:
1. Creation or Evolution
2. The Mysteries of Life
3. Jesus first miracle
Please wait for them to be posted into this blog.
Amen!
jb lim
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Safety and Usefulness of Ozone as Food Sterilizer
Dear Mr. YK Tan,
Safety and Usefulness of Ozone as Food Sterilizer
Thank you for your question on the usefulness and safety of using Ozone Food Sterilizer (Ozonizer) for removing pesticides and bacteria on fruits and vegetables.
Whenever I am invited by a scientific organization to give a public lecture on health, food and nutrition, I always see companies selling health products, display organic foods, blood pressure sets, blood sugar and health and medical measuring devices outside the auditorium. One of them is this thing called ozone food sterilizers.
Your question:
As to your question on the safety and efficacy of using ozone to remove pesticides in foods is concerned, I really cannot give you the answer with a 100 percent certainty because of lack of scientific literature on it efficacy and safety. So what I give here is based on reduction from existing knowledge how the ozone may work.
As far as I know, the ozone emitted by these home devices is infused into the water where the fruits and vegetables are placed. The ozone being a very powerful oxidizing agent may destroy bacteria and the pesticides on the surface of the fruits and vegetables by its oxidizing-reduction action. What I am worried is the leaks of ozone which is triple oxygen molecule (O3) into the air when the machine is in use.
Ozone from its molecular structure is highly unstable and chemically very reactive as it breaks down into the much more stable oxygen (O2). The highly reactive singlet oxygen (O+) which is also liberated is a very powerful and damaging free radical to the lungs and body when inhaled. In short, ozone is highly toxic, probably more damaging to health than the trace amounts of pesticides in the food, fruits and vegetables it is trying to clean up.
What they don’t tell you:
The manufacturers of these home machines do not tell you this of course. They only tell you that their ozone sterilizers remove germs and pesticides. In some ways this may be true. But you need to ask a lot more questions than this. Some manufacturers also tell you that any ozone that leaks into the air from these machines remains reactive for only 15 minutes and is only in a small amount of 1-2 parts per million. This amount although small, but when inhaled for long periods of time can cause throat and lung irritation when such a machine is used often.
I do not doubt ozone does break down fairly quickly to ordinary oxygen. But that not the point. It is the safety concern of frequent t inhalation of ozone from these machines when used everyday. Why can’t health freaks and health extremists who go all out to use ozone to sterilize foods use ordinary running water from the tap to do the job much more efficiently? Water is always the best media for cleaning anything – anything at all. Over time, with the help of light, bacteria, and air, water can even remove even oil and stain, let alone mere traces of pesticide residues. Even without water pesticides will finally bio-degenerate on its own.
Water, a Universal Solvent:
To my mind, water is a very powerful universal solvent. Water covers three-quarter the surface of this planet, and water is the best cleansing agent. Nothing can wash off better than water. These machines are unnecessary man-made devices? I just cannot understand the logic of such claims that ozone will destroy bacteria and pesticides on fruits and vegetables when water itself, a universal solvent would be far more efficient. The action of water is powerful enough in washing off any water soluble substances sticking on any surface.
Water is so efficient that it can literally wash off anything, including insoluble oils, sand, mud and even stones and rocks if they are exposed to the erosion of water for a long time. Have you seen round and smooth pebbles on seashore, by the riverside, and in waterfalls made smooth by the action of water? Since water can even make stones and boulders smooth and round by its erosive action over a period of time, washing off soluble substances like germs and pesticides are absolutely nothing.
Pathogens from meat sources not in fruits:
Have you seen entire hills being brought down by the action of rain and water in a landslide? Need I say more? What is just small load of germs (most of which are not pathogenic) and traces of pesticides sticking onto the outside the surfaces of fruits and vegetables? These machines are mainly for cleaning fruits and vegetables.
Unfortunately food poisoning, whether bacterial or chemical in origin do not come from fruits and vegetables. Most food poisoning originates from meat products, poultry, shellfish and eggs, and hardly any from fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables are extremely poor source of media for bacterial growth. I shall write a little on this later.
Mechanism of action:
Ozone may work in destroying microorganisms through its highly reactive molecules similar to how chlorine works in sterilizing water. It does this by releasing one of its 3 oxygen molecules to oxidize the cellular covering of the microorganisms. The singlet oxygen attacks where the double bonds linkages are - the sulfhydryl groups of the protein and the phenolic rings in the cells. The phospholipids, intracellular enzymes, and genomic material of the cells are also targeted by ozone. The highly reactive and unstable singlet oxygen is a very powerful free radical. Because of its highly reactive nature, the singlet oxygen released by ozone during its breakdown, snatch away one of the electrons binding together the molecules of these materials, causing them to be broken up. This also causes severe cellular damage and death of the microorganisms.
Ozone compared to other chemical sterilization
The powerful antimicrobial property of ozone is partially due to its oxidation-reduction potential (2.07 V). This is higher than that of chlorine (1.36 V). Ozone has several advantages over chlorine and other chemical disinfectants. It is far more powerful as an oxidizing agent than ordinary oxygen. So powerful is it that it can even attack almost all metals except gold, platinum and iridium and render them into oxides at their highest state. An example is copper:
2 Cu+ + 2 H3O+ + O3 → 2 Cu2+ + 3 H2O + O2
Ozone has 3 oxygen atoms with a single bond on one side and double bond on the other.
Normally ozone will stabilize itself to form ordinary diatomic oxygen. It is more unstable in high concentration when the molecules are plentiful and closer to each other in order to share a pair of electrons in a double bond between two oxygen atoms
2 O3 → 3 O2 (two molecules of ozone becomes three molecules of oxygen)
If ozone escapes into the atmosphere from these machines, it may take at least half-an-hour for half of it to remain. In other words, its half-life is about 30 minutes in the atmosphere under standard atmospheric temperature and pressure, but its disassociation rapidly increases with increasing temperature and pressure. Thus the ozone that escapes into the air still remains in the air – especially where there is not much ventilation as in a kitchen.
Toxic waste:
Advertisements for ozone machines claimed that ozone can destroy microorganisms instantly and effectively. This may be true. But the question that needs to be studied carefully is whether or not they leave toxic waste products in the treated food and in the processing water. Manufacturers may claim they do not, but they have not shown us evidence that they do not.
When any substances, example pesticides, microbes, drugs, nutrients, etc, are broken down they merely change from one chemical substance to another. They cannot disappear from this planet into nowhere. It merely changes into another substance.
A (ozone) + B (pesticides) = oxygen +D (unknown). A + B can never be nothing (zero) unless both A and B are zero. To claim that they are destroyed without a trace is absolute rubbish. This would defile the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry that states that matter cannot be created or destroyed. In any chemical reaction, the reacting substances merely change from one form to the next. They don’t simply disappear. It is not freak magic
The question we need to address is, would the by-products after ozone acted on the pesticides or microbes be as toxic as or even more toxic than the pesticides themselves? This is not an easy question to answer as it requires very extensive, long term, and highly expensive toxicological studies which I do not think manufactures of these ozone machines (sanitizers) are prepared to invest and undertake a study.
Chain reactions from free radicals:
There is also a possibility of it singlet oxygen, by borrowing an electron from the material it is trying to destroy (bacteria, pesticides, etc.), and even nutrients in the food cause them to lose their own electrons by donating it to the singlet oxygen, thus making them becoming free radicals instead in the exchange. This causes a runaway chain reaction, each molecular fragment having lost one of its paired electrons; and borrowing it from the next available electron of other neighboring molecules to stabilize itself. This is like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Of course the singlet oxygen can ultimately find another similar partner (singlet oxygen) to share their electrons to make it more stable double-bond diatomic oxygen as I have already shown in the equation above. But this takes time for it to look around for a singlet partner.
Free radicals destroy everything:
Meantime, it will destroy anything that gets into its way – pesticides, bacteria, vitamins, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, carotenes, bioflavanoids, aromatic substances, anything at all that are found in the neighboring molecules. It will instantly oxidize and destroy all of them – including food values in fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, organs, tissues, etc, etc. Ozone is powerful, powerful enough to destroy anything at all including metals –let alone mere bacteria, pesticides. It may destroy valuable vitamins and nutrients in the food it is sterilizing.
It is claimed that ozone is safer and environmentally friendlier than most other chemical antimicrobials for the sterilization of food. But I am unsure of these claims, as I have yet to come across any study to support this. The only plus advantage of using ozone for sterilization is that only air or oxygen is needed to produce the ozone. There is no other chemical involved. This is true, and is the only plus point in using ozone sterilizers.
Safety issues of using ozone for food processing:
Albeit it is a colorless gas, ozone is readily detected by the human nose even at 0.01- 0.05 p.p.m. At low concentrations, it has a characteristic pleasant odor, similar to that of fresh air after a rain storm. At high concentration, ozone becomes an irritant to the airways, and can damage the lungs and respiratory system.
According to the The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Regulations, the permissible level of exposure to ozone in a workplace environment is 0.1 ppm during a normal 8-hour day (40-hour workweek). The short-term exposure limit is 0.3 ppm for exposure of less than 15 minutes (4 times per day). But they do not have any guidelines for those who use ozone-generating machines to sterilize or remove pesticides in foods at home.
Current situation in ozone applications of ozone for food perseveration:
Ozone has been used in an aqueous solution or gaseous form to surface decontaminates food, sterilize equipment, recycle wastewater. It has also been used to minimize pesticide levels on fresh produce. The microbiological count can be lowered, and the shelf-life of fruits, vegetables, cheese, eggs, nuts, and meats maybe be improved when treated with ozone or stored under ozone. Fresh foods may be kept longer under ozone. It has been used to control mold and bacteria in the air as well as on the surface of the foods
Studies needed:
As far as the removal of pesticides is concerned, studies have been done on specific pesticides like methyl-parathion, parathion, diazinon and cypermethrin. These were commonly used as broad-spectrum insecticides in pest control. Unfortunately their uses have resulted in high residual levels detectable in vegetables. It has been suggested that ozone can be substituted for chlorine to remove bacteria and mold from fresh fruits and vegetables in order them to be stored for a longer time on an industrial scale. But how safe is it? We do not know the answer unless exorbitantly expensive and very long-term toxicological studies are done independently, and the manufactures of these machines are not going to invest into such exorbitantly expensive studies. They are just interested in producing a machine and have them out into the market as fast as they could without any safety studies.
Fat soluble pesticides:
As to your question whether or not ozone can remove the pesticide impregnated wax on the outside of fruits, I do not know the answer. I need properly published research literatures to answer this. As far as I know, fat soluble pesticides like DDT (dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane), methoxychlor, aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, toxaphene, endrin, heptachlor, and lindane (gamma isomer of benzene hexachloride (BHC) are chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide group. But fat soluble pesticides are hardly used for agriculture purposes. Many of them are already banned. DDT is the best example.
DDT is fat soluble and is disseminated by air and water to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. When DDT enters a water environment, it is taken up by aquatic animals and becomes part of the food chain, accumulating and concentrating in the fat of predatory species including humans in their body fat. DDT was also found to remain residual in upper layers of soil, and they accumulate in many terrestrial animal species.
Toxicity of DDT:
But the absorption of DDT from the gut is poor. A large portion of ingested DDT is excreted unchanged in the feces. The remaining DDT excreted in the bile or stored in adipose tissue from which it is removed and gradually eliminated in the urine. DDT is metabolized by the liver. Since it is fat soluble, the absorption of DDT through the skin is enhanced when dissolved in an oil base solution or emulsion form, and may accumulate in the wax of skins of some fruits. DDT is rapidly absorbed by the lung especially when DDT is present as an aerosol.
Dieldrin may be absorbed from the skin in a dry powder. However, DDT is now longer in use after World War II due to its ease in getting into the food chain. So there is no question of any wax and fat soluble pesticides getting on to the skin of fruits when most of these fat-soluble pesticides are now banned for agricultural use, except perhaps in very small amounts and limited applications like in a can of aerosols for killing mosquitoes at home. Even now most household aerosols for mosquitoes, ants and house insects are made from water-soluble pesticides so that water can easily wash them off.
Pesticide Movement & their Mode of Degradation in Agriculture:
Actually a lot of pesticides do not find their way into our food. Most of them have already degraded before they can even enter the food chain. Very briefly, most of them have vanished before they can even be detected in the food. They are destroyed or have vanished by the following means:
• Runoff from the soil through rain or irrigation water
• Leaching into the soil where they are destroyed by soil bacteria
• Degradation by normal chemical breakdown
• Destruction by microbial action
• Destruction by physical means such as by the action of water (hydrolysis)
• Destruction by sunlight (photolysis)
• Destruction by heat of the Sun (pyrolysis)
• Or they simply evaporate away into the air (volatilization)
A little on the chemistry of ozone:
Ozone is highly reactive triplet oxygen molecule that can chemically destroy almost anything that it comes in contact with. This action is not just on pathogens or pesticides, but anything else that it can oxidize and act on. This includes vitamins, nutrients, plant natural compounds and phyto-chemicals of the fruits and vegetables themselves. After destroying and degrading them, they may also reduce the nutritional values of the foods. Ozone destructive action also includes damaging the DNA, cells, tissues, organs and body systems.
Ozone destroys almost everything, especially organic substances of biological origin, and hence its action is not just on pesticides, and bacteria. Do not think ozone is so specific and selective that it merely destroys pesticides and bacteria on the surfaces of fruits and vegetables and yet spares the vitamins, and other nutrients in fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and poultry?
Anything that ozone can oxidize and damage it will do so through its singlet oxygen radical nature. It will attack any molecule in the food just to quench its free radical nature. Ozone is not a sparer or a chooser. Of course manufacturer of these ozone sanitizers may not tell you this. They will highlight the machines destroy bacteria and pesticides. In some ways this may be true.
But they may tell you that the nutrients are inside, not outside the fruits and vegetables If that is the case, ozone only surface de-contaminate the food from the outside. If that is the case, what about those pesticides that have actually gone inside the food through systemic absorption? There the ozone cannot penetrate, and if they do, they will also destroy the nutrients inside at the same time. Ozone is not a selector. It will oxidize and denature everything in its path, including even metals.
Outside, but not inside:
But if the claim is that it will only cleanse the outside of the fruits and vegetables, the next question you need to ask, wouldn’t water, a powerful universal solvent that covers ¾ of this planet do the job much better. As I stress water is a very powerful and highly effective solvent for anything that is water soluble. Just imagine rubbing tons of (water soluble) salt and sugar onto your vegetables, and the next moment you decide to wash them off under a running tap. After 5-10 minutes under a tap, would you think (in your right mind) you could still have any salt and sugar sticking onto your fruits and vegetables? As I said earlier, water is the best and most effective medium for cleaning anything. The action of water can bring down an entire hill of mud, sand and boulders as in a landslide, let alone traces of pesticides residues sticking on the outside skin of your fruits and vegetables which are ‘kacang putih’ (peanuts) job to the power of water.
Deliberately adding free radicals into your food:
Not just that alone. By adding ozone to your food you are actually using a very powerful free radical which has an unpaired (single) electron linking two oxygen atoms together into your food.
Singlet oxygen is the lowest excited state of the dioxygen molecule. Although its lifetime in solution is very short - in the microsecond range, still singlet oxygen is extremely destructive. The singlet oxygen can destroy almost anything that is in a food, including the vitamins. This it does by snatching away an electron from fruits and vegetables (including meat, fish, poultry, etc) in order for it to form ordinary diatomic oxygen which is much more stable because it has a double bond.
As a result, the vitamins, phyto-chemicals and nutrients in the fruits may be damaged in order to contribute an electron to the ozone. This is no different from robbing Peter (fruit) to pay Paul (ozone).
Sterilizing fruits and vegetables:
It is also claimed that ozone sterilizers kill harmful germs and bacteria on your fruits and vegetables. Let me tell you two important things about bacteria:
Nonpathogenic or harmless bacteria make up over 70 percent of all bacteria, and only about 30 percent are pathogenic (disease causing). Not all pathogenic bacteria cause human disease. A lot of the 30 % cause animal and plant diseases. Even for those that cause human diseases only a very small percent actually are caused by eating contaminated foods. Almost all of them thrive in meat and poultry products, and hardly any are pathogenic that can live on fruits and vegetables you are trying to kill. Most pathogenic bacteria that cause human illness are from non-food sources, and enters the human body through other carriers.
Bacteria morphology and disease:
Those that cause human and animal diseases belong to Cocci, Bacilli and Spirlla. Cocci that look like seeds in groups under a microscope may belong to Staphylococci, Streptococci and Diplococci depending how they look like under a microscope – whether in chain or cluster together. Cocci cause boils, and pustules. Bacilli are responsible for disease like influenza and TB, while Spirillum causes disease such as syphilis. None of these are transmitted by fruits and vegetables, but by air, or by direct contact or biological fluids (blood, sputum, sex, etc).
Almost all the bacteria that cause food poisoning originate in meat, and meat products, including fish, eggs, milk and poultry. Hardly do the come from fruits and vegetables because plant sources are very poor nutrient media for pathogenic bacteria such as:
• Staphylococcus aureus
• Salmonella
• Clostridium perfringens
• Clostridium botulinum
• Vibrio parahaemolyticus
• Bacillus cereus
• Listeria
• Yersinia enterocolitica
• Campylobacter jejuni
• Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli
The only exception I can think of right now as I type this sentence is when you decide to leave all your fruits and vegetables in a place to allow rats to urinate on them which no sensible person will do. In that case, if you eat the fruits and vegetables unwashed (with water of course) and uncooked, then you will add one more to the list above, namely a bacterial zoonotic disease caused by spirochaetes of the genus Leptospira to give you a bacterial zoonotic disease called Leptospirosis (Weil's disease). For that matter Leptospira from rat’s urine does not only affects humans, but also a wide range of other animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. But nobody leaves their food for the rat to urine on them, and then use ozone to destroy the bacteria Leptospira.
Use water to wash off rat’s urine:
Even if the rat has passed urine onto your fruits and vegetables, you can also wash them off completely with running water, and then peel off the skin for fruits, and for the vegetables cook them properly. Water washes off everything completely including the smell of the urine, but I am afraid ozone merely changes the substance from urine into something else. You still need to wash off that ‘something else’ with plain water. In that case you might as well wash off everything with plain water from the start without any ozone, and then use water again to wash off that something else (by-product). It is like touch your nose by putting your hand round to the back.
Water borne diseases:
Of course we have also to think of water borne diseases that can also get into all foods due to contaminated water. That includes among a long list the following:
1. Amoebiasis
2. Botulism
3. Cholera
4. E. coli Infection
5. Giardiasis
6. Typhoid fever
7. Etc, etc
Else almost all food borne diseases is from unwashed and uncooked foods.
Prevention:
1. The first step in preventing food poisoning is to assume that all foods may cause food-borne illness. Follow these steps to prevent food poisoning:
2. Wash hands, food preparation surfaces and utensils thoroughly before and after handling raw foods to prevent recontamination of cooked foods. Wash your hands with just plain soap and running tap water, and not use ozone to wash your hands. Nobody does this. Be sensible.
3. Keep refrigerated foods below 40 degrees F.
4. Serve hot foods immediately or keep them heated above 140 degrees F.
5. Divide large volumes of food into small portions for rapid cooling in the refrigerator. Hot, bulky foods in the refrigerator can raise the temperature of other foods already kept there and has already been cooled.
6. Remember the danger zone is between 40 degrees F and 140 degrees F.
7. Heat canned foods thoroughly before tasting.
8. When in doubt, throw it out
Chemicals, heavy metals, parasites, fungi, viruses and bacteria can cause food borne illness. Bacteria related food poisoning is the most common, but fewer than 20 of the many thousands of different bacteria actually are the culprits. I have mentioned this above.
More than 90 percent of the cases of food poisoning each year are caused by Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella, Clostridium perfringens, Campylobacter, Listeria monocytogenes, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Bacillus cereus, and Entero-pathogenic Escherichia coli. These bacteria are commonly found on many raw foods. Normally a large number of food-poisoning bacteria must be present to cause illness. Therefore, illness can be prevented by (1) controlling the initial number of bacteria present, (2) preventing the small number from growing, (3) destroying the bacteria by proper cooking and (4) avoiding re-contamination.
Hygiene and preventive care much more important:
Poor personal hygiene, improper cleaning of storage and preparation areas and unclean utensils cause contamination of raw and cooked foods. Mishandling of raw and cooked foods allows bacteria to grow. The temperature range in which most bacteria grow is between 40 degrees F (5 degrees C) and 140 degrees F (60 degrees C). Raw and cooked foods should not be kept in this danger zone any longer than absolutely necessary. Undercooking or improper processing of home-canned foods can cause very serious food poisoning.
Since food-poisoning bacteria are often present on many foods, knowing the characteristics of such bacteria is essential to an effective control program.
Nutrient Media for Bacterial Growth:
Bacteria not necessary can grow on any food. Bacteria do chose the correct nutrient media to grow. As an example in a microbiological laboratory, most bacteria can only grow on certain nutrient media. Almost all bacterial media need some blood base. That is why we normally culture bacteria in the laboratory on specific nutrient media such as on Blood Agar (BAP).
This high-nutrient growth medium is made with 5% sheep’s blood. Blood Agar is not selective, and will grow a wide range of bacteria. This medium is, however, differential.
Some bacteria produce hemolysins, enzymes that can break down red blood cells (hemo = bood and lyse = to cut). Depending on the type of hemolysin, the red blood cells are either completely broken down (beta-hemolysis), or partially broken down (alpha-hemolysis).
Streptococcus pyogenes is a beta-hemolytic pathogenic bacterium and the causative agent of Strep throat. When plated on Blood Agar, S. pyogenes completely breaks down the red blood cells, leaving the areas of agar around its colonies clear and colorless.
Most normal throat flora either produce alpha-hemolysis, partially breaking down the red blood cells and creating a bruised appearance to the agar, or produce gamma-hemolysis (which means no hemolysis at all), leaving the agar is unaffected.
MacConkeys & Mannitol Salt Agars:
In addition to being selective, MacConkey’s and Mannitol Salt are also differential. Each has a nutrient additive, lactose (sugar) and mannitol (alcohol) respectively, as well as pH indicators that react when these food products are fermented by bacteria.
If the Gram- organisms growing on MacConkey’s eat lactose, they produce acidic metabolites (wastes) that trigger the neutral red pH indicator. This causes the bacterial colonies themselves to turn mauve or pink in color.
So if there are colonies of bacteria growing on MacConkey’s, it’s understood that they are Gram-. If those colonies are colorless, they are not lactose fermenters. If the colonies have a pinkish appearance, they are lactose fermenters.
Other media:
Bacteria growing on Mannitol Salt Agar are most likely Staphylococcus. But this media is also differential, containing mannitol and a pH indicator. If the colonies growing on Mannitol Salt Agar are a type of Staph that ferments mannitol, they produce acidic metabolic wastes that turn the originally orange-pink medium a bright yellow.
Pathogenic Staph, like S. aureus, is mannitol fermenters:
So if something is growing on Mannitol Salt, one can be reasonably sure that it is Staph, if the media turns yellow, this color change signals the presence of pathogenic Staphylococcus.
Summary:
In short, pathogenic bacteria are very choosy over what kind of a nutrient media is most suitable. They don’t simply grow on fruits and vegetables. So to use ozone to kill off pathogenic bacteria on the surface of fruits and vegetable do not make sense. You might as well wash them off with water.
I have written more than what you need in reply to your question. Before I sign off, I like to ask you a question.
Question:
Do you use soap and running water to take a bath, or do you kill the germs, body odor, body oil and dirt from your body using ozone in water? You might as well use hydrogen peroxide. You answer this question in exchange for what you asked me.
I leave it to you to decide.
jb lim
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Reply from Mr. YK Tan
Dear Dr. Lim,
Thank you so much for your reply in great details.
I am grateful that you have taken time to write on the subject and went beyond the ozoniser.
During the demo, I noticed that the strange smell produced when the machine was in action. That could be the excess ozone released during the "cleaning" process.
I like you explanation of the oxidation-reduction using the example of robbing Peter and paying Paul.
Yes, the whole subject could be summarised as per your last paragraph of taking shower with soap and running water. Cool.....
I wish to look forward to meeting you for a cup of coffee together with Mag in the near future.
Would appreciate if Mag could arrange for same if you have the time.
Once again, thank you for your reply.
Regards
YK Tan
-------------------
AE Consultant to me
show details Sep 13 (10 days ago)
Dear Dr Lim,
Thank you very much for such a long and detail write up including testing of bacteria types etc...
Wow, what a super man you are. If I were to meet you 40 years earlier it would have changed my career...
Warmest regards,
C K Cheong
-----------------------------------------------
On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Gwen Tanil wrote:
Dear Dr Lim,
I am really fascinated by your scientific articles and furthermore at your age, your ability to do research really puts someone at my age at a shame hahahhaa
I was particularly interested in the food part. If you can tell me the name of the seafood restaurant in Bagan Hylam ( as in your email) maybe one day I can take friends there.
Keep on sending the scientific and intellectual emails and keep on writing! You certainly a national treasure :)
God bless.
Gwen
Safety and Usefulness of Ozone as Food Sterilizer
Thank you for your question on the usefulness and safety of using Ozone Food Sterilizer (Ozonizer) for removing pesticides and bacteria on fruits and vegetables.
Whenever I am invited by a scientific organization to give a public lecture on health, food and nutrition, I always see companies selling health products, display organic foods, blood pressure sets, blood sugar and health and medical measuring devices outside the auditorium. One of them is this thing called ozone food sterilizers.
Your question:
As to your question on the safety and efficacy of using ozone to remove pesticides in foods is concerned, I really cannot give you the answer with a 100 percent certainty because of lack of scientific literature on it efficacy and safety. So what I give here is based on reduction from existing knowledge how the ozone may work.
As far as I know, the ozone emitted by these home devices is infused into the water where the fruits and vegetables are placed. The ozone being a very powerful oxidizing agent may destroy bacteria and the pesticides on the surface of the fruits and vegetables by its oxidizing-reduction action. What I am worried is the leaks of ozone which is triple oxygen molecule (O3) into the air when the machine is in use.
Ozone from its molecular structure is highly unstable and chemically very reactive as it breaks down into the much more stable oxygen (O2). The highly reactive singlet oxygen (O+) which is also liberated is a very powerful and damaging free radical to the lungs and body when inhaled. In short, ozone is highly toxic, probably more damaging to health than the trace amounts of pesticides in the food, fruits and vegetables it is trying to clean up.
What they don’t tell you:
The manufacturers of these home machines do not tell you this of course. They only tell you that their ozone sterilizers remove germs and pesticides. In some ways this may be true. But you need to ask a lot more questions than this. Some manufacturers also tell you that any ozone that leaks into the air from these machines remains reactive for only 15 minutes and is only in a small amount of 1-2 parts per million. This amount although small, but when inhaled for long periods of time can cause throat and lung irritation when such a machine is used often.
I do not doubt ozone does break down fairly quickly to ordinary oxygen. But that not the point. It is the safety concern of frequent t inhalation of ozone from these machines when used everyday. Why can’t health freaks and health extremists who go all out to use ozone to sterilize foods use ordinary running water from the tap to do the job much more efficiently? Water is always the best media for cleaning anything – anything at all. Over time, with the help of light, bacteria, and air, water can even remove even oil and stain, let alone mere traces of pesticide residues. Even without water pesticides will finally bio-degenerate on its own.
Water, a Universal Solvent:
To my mind, water is a very powerful universal solvent. Water covers three-quarter the surface of this planet, and water is the best cleansing agent. Nothing can wash off better than water. These machines are unnecessary man-made devices? I just cannot understand the logic of such claims that ozone will destroy bacteria and pesticides on fruits and vegetables when water itself, a universal solvent would be far more efficient. The action of water is powerful enough in washing off any water soluble substances sticking on any surface.
Water is so efficient that it can literally wash off anything, including insoluble oils, sand, mud and even stones and rocks if they are exposed to the erosion of water for a long time. Have you seen round and smooth pebbles on seashore, by the riverside, and in waterfalls made smooth by the action of water? Since water can even make stones and boulders smooth and round by its erosive action over a period of time, washing off soluble substances like germs and pesticides are absolutely nothing.
Pathogens from meat sources not in fruits:
Have you seen entire hills being brought down by the action of rain and water in a landslide? Need I say more? What is just small load of germs (most of which are not pathogenic) and traces of pesticides sticking onto the outside the surfaces of fruits and vegetables? These machines are mainly for cleaning fruits and vegetables.
Unfortunately food poisoning, whether bacterial or chemical in origin do not come from fruits and vegetables. Most food poisoning originates from meat products, poultry, shellfish and eggs, and hardly any from fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables are extremely poor source of media for bacterial growth. I shall write a little on this later.
Mechanism of action:
Ozone may work in destroying microorganisms through its highly reactive molecules similar to how chlorine works in sterilizing water. It does this by releasing one of its 3 oxygen molecules to oxidize the cellular covering of the microorganisms. The singlet oxygen attacks where the double bonds linkages are - the sulfhydryl groups of the protein and the phenolic rings in the cells. The phospholipids, intracellular enzymes, and genomic material of the cells are also targeted by ozone. The highly reactive and unstable singlet oxygen is a very powerful free radical. Because of its highly reactive nature, the singlet oxygen released by ozone during its breakdown, snatch away one of the electrons binding together the molecules of these materials, causing them to be broken up. This also causes severe cellular damage and death of the microorganisms.
Ozone compared to other chemical sterilization
The powerful antimicrobial property of ozone is partially due to its oxidation-reduction potential (2.07 V). This is higher than that of chlorine (1.36 V). Ozone has several advantages over chlorine and other chemical disinfectants. It is far more powerful as an oxidizing agent than ordinary oxygen. So powerful is it that it can even attack almost all metals except gold, platinum and iridium and render them into oxides at their highest state. An example is copper:
2 Cu+ + 2 H3O+ + O3 → 2 Cu2+ + 3 H2O + O2
Ozone has 3 oxygen atoms with a single bond on one side and double bond on the other.
Normally ozone will stabilize itself to form ordinary diatomic oxygen. It is more unstable in high concentration when the molecules are plentiful and closer to each other in order to share a pair of electrons in a double bond between two oxygen atoms
2 O3 → 3 O2 (two molecules of ozone becomes three molecules of oxygen)
If ozone escapes into the atmosphere from these machines, it may take at least half-an-hour for half of it to remain. In other words, its half-life is about 30 minutes in the atmosphere under standard atmospheric temperature and pressure, but its disassociation rapidly increases with increasing temperature and pressure. Thus the ozone that escapes into the air still remains in the air – especially where there is not much ventilation as in a kitchen.
Toxic waste:
Advertisements for ozone machines claimed that ozone can destroy microorganisms instantly and effectively. This may be true. But the question that needs to be studied carefully is whether or not they leave toxic waste products in the treated food and in the processing water. Manufacturers may claim they do not, but they have not shown us evidence that they do not.
When any substances, example pesticides, microbes, drugs, nutrients, etc, are broken down they merely change from one chemical substance to another. They cannot disappear from this planet into nowhere. It merely changes into another substance.
A (ozone) + B (pesticides) = oxygen +D (unknown). A + B can never be nothing (zero) unless both A and B are zero. To claim that they are destroyed without a trace is absolute rubbish. This would defile the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry that states that matter cannot be created or destroyed. In any chemical reaction, the reacting substances merely change from one form to the next. They don’t simply disappear. It is not freak magic
The question we need to address is, would the by-products after ozone acted on the pesticides or microbes be as toxic as or even more toxic than the pesticides themselves? This is not an easy question to answer as it requires very extensive, long term, and highly expensive toxicological studies which I do not think manufactures of these ozone machines (sanitizers) are prepared to invest and undertake a study.
Chain reactions from free radicals:
There is also a possibility of it singlet oxygen, by borrowing an electron from the material it is trying to destroy (bacteria, pesticides, etc.), and even nutrients in the food cause them to lose their own electrons by donating it to the singlet oxygen, thus making them becoming free radicals instead in the exchange. This causes a runaway chain reaction, each molecular fragment having lost one of its paired electrons; and borrowing it from the next available electron of other neighboring molecules to stabilize itself. This is like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Of course the singlet oxygen can ultimately find another similar partner (singlet oxygen) to share their electrons to make it more stable double-bond diatomic oxygen as I have already shown in the equation above. But this takes time for it to look around for a singlet partner.
Free radicals destroy everything:
Meantime, it will destroy anything that gets into its way – pesticides, bacteria, vitamins, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, carotenes, bioflavanoids, aromatic substances, anything at all that are found in the neighboring molecules. It will instantly oxidize and destroy all of them – including food values in fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, organs, tissues, etc, etc. Ozone is powerful, powerful enough to destroy anything at all including metals –let alone mere bacteria, pesticides. It may destroy valuable vitamins and nutrients in the food it is sterilizing.
It is claimed that ozone is safer and environmentally friendlier than most other chemical antimicrobials for the sterilization of food. But I am unsure of these claims, as I have yet to come across any study to support this. The only plus advantage of using ozone for sterilization is that only air or oxygen is needed to produce the ozone. There is no other chemical involved. This is true, and is the only plus point in using ozone sterilizers.
Safety issues of using ozone for food processing:
Albeit it is a colorless gas, ozone is readily detected by the human nose even at 0.01- 0.05 p.p.m. At low concentrations, it has a characteristic pleasant odor, similar to that of fresh air after a rain storm. At high concentration, ozone becomes an irritant to the airways, and can damage the lungs and respiratory system.
According to the The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Regulations, the permissible level of exposure to ozone in a workplace environment is 0.1 ppm during a normal 8-hour day (40-hour workweek). The short-term exposure limit is 0.3 ppm for exposure of less than 15 minutes (4 times per day). But they do not have any guidelines for those who use ozone-generating machines to sterilize or remove pesticides in foods at home.
Current situation in ozone applications of ozone for food perseveration:
Ozone has been used in an aqueous solution or gaseous form to surface decontaminates food, sterilize equipment, recycle wastewater. It has also been used to minimize pesticide levels on fresh produce. The microbiological count can be lowered, and the shelf-life of fruits, vegetables, cheese, eggs, nuts, and meats maybe be improved when treated with ozone or stored under ozone. Fresh foods may be kept longer under ozone. It has been used to control mold and bacteria in the air as well as on the surface of the foods
Studies needed:
As far as the removal of pesticides is concerned, studies have been done on specific pesticides like methyl-parathion, parathion, diazinon and cypermethrin. These were commonly used as broad-spectrum insecticides in pest control. Unfortunately their uses have resulted in high residual levels detectable in vegetables. It has been suggested that ozone can be substituted for chlorine to remove bacteria and mold from fresh fruits and vegetables in order them to be stored for a longer time on an industrial scale. But how safe is it? We do not know the answer unless exorbitantly expensive and very long-term toxicological studies are done independently, and the manufactures of these machines are not going to invest into such exorbitantly expensive studies. They are just interested in producing a machine and have them out into the market as fast as they could without any safety studies.
Fat soluble pesticides:
As to your question whether or not ozone can remove the pesticide impregnated wax on the outside of fruits, I do not know the answer. I need properly published research literatures to answer this. As far as I know, fat soluble pesticides like DDT (dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane), methoxychlor, aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, toxaphene, endrin, heptachlor, and lindane (gamma isomer of benzene hexachloride (BHC) are chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide group. But fat soluble pesticides are hardly used for agriculture purposes. Many of them are already banned. DDT is the best example.
DDT is fat soluble and is disseminated by air and water to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. When DDT enters a water environment, it is taken up by aquatic animals and becomes part of the food chain, accumulating and concentrating in the fat of predatory species including humans in their body fat. DDT was also found to remain residual in upper layers of soil, and they accumulate in many terrestrial animal species.
Toxicity of DDT:
But the absorption of DDT from the gut is poor. A large portion of ingested DDT is excreted unchanged in the feces. The remaining DDT excreted in the bile or stored in adipose tissue from which it is removed and gradually eliminated in the urine. DDT is metabolized by the liver. Since it is fat soluble, the absorption of DDT through the skin is enhanced when dissolved in an oil base solution or emulsion form, and may accumulate in the wax of skins of some fruits. DDT is rapidly absorbed by the lung especially when DDT is present as an aerosol.
Dieldrin may be absorbed from the skin in a dry powder. However, DDT is now longer in use after World War II due to its ease in getting into the food chain. So there is no question of any wax and fat soluble pesticides getting on to the skin of fruits when most of these fat-soluble pesticides are now banned for agricultural use, except perhaps in very small amounts and limited applications like in a can of aerosols for killing mosquitoes at home. Even now most household aerosols for mosquitoes, ants and house insects are made from water-soluble pesticides so that water can easily wash them off.
Pesticide Movement & their Mode of Degradation in Agriculture:
Actually a lot of pesticides do not find their way into our food. Most of them have already degraded before they can even enter the food chain. Very briefly, most of them have vanished before they can even be detected in the food. They are destroyed or have vanished by the following means:
• Runoff from the soil through rain or irrigation water
• Leaching into the soil where they are destroyed by soil bacteria
• Degradation by normal chemical breakdown
• Destruction by microbial action
• Destruction by physical means such as by the action of water (hydrolysis)
• Destruction by sunlight (photolysis)
• Destruction by heat of the Sun (pyrolysis)
• Or they simply evaporate away into the air (volatilization)
A little on the chemistry of ozone:
Ozone is highly reactive triplet oxygen molecule that can chemically destroy almost anything that it comes in contact with. This action is not just on pathogens or pesticides, but anything else that it can oxidize and act on. This includes vitamins, nutrients, plant natural compounds and phyto-chemicals of the fruits and vegetables themselves. After destroying and degrading them, they may also reduce the nutritional values of the foods. Ozone destructive action also includes damaging the DNA, cells, tissues, organs and body systems.
Ozone destroys almost everything, especially organic substances of biological origin, and hence its action is not just on pesticides, and bacteria. Do not think ozone is so specific and selective that it merely destroys pesticides and bacteria on the surfaces of fruits and vegetables and yet spares the vitamins, and other nutrients in fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and poultry?
Anything that ozone can oxidize and damage it will do so through its singlet oxygen radical nature. It will attack any molecule in the food just to quench its free radical nature. Ozone is not a sparer or a chooser. Of course manufacturer of these ozone sanitizers may not tell you this. They will highlight the machines destroy bacteria and pesticides. In some ways this may be true.
But they may tell you that the nutrients are inside, not outside the fruits and vegetables If that is the case, ozone only surface de-contaminate the food from the outside. If that is the case, what about those pesticides that have actually gone inside the food through systemic absorption? There the ozone cannot penetrate, and if they do, they will also destroy the nutrients inside at the same time. Ozone is not a selector. It will oxidize and denature everything in its path, including even metals.
Outside, but not inside:
But if the claim is that it will only cleanse the outside of the fruits and vegetables, the next question you need to ask, wouldn’t water, a powerful universal solvent that covers ¾ of this planet do the job much better. As I stress water is a very powerful and highly effective solvent for anything that is water soluble. Just imagine rubbing tons of (water soluble) salt and sugar onto your vegetables, and the next moment you decide to wash them off under a running tap. After 5-10 minutes under a tap, would you think (in your right mind) you could still have any salt and sugar sticking onto your fruits and vegetables? As I said earlier, water is the best and most effective medium for cleaning anything. The action of water can bring down an entire hill of mud, sand and boulders as in a landslide, let alone traces of pesticides residues sticking on the outside skin of your fruits and vegetables which are ‘kacang putih’ (peanuts) job to the power of water.
Deliberately adding free radicals into your food:
Not just that alone. By adding ozone to your food you are actually using a very powerful free radical which has an unpaired (single) electron linking two oxygen atoms together into your food.
Singlet oxygen is the lowest excited state of the dioxygen molecule. Although its lifetime in solution is very short - in the microsecond range, still singlet oxygen is extremely destructive. The singlet oxygen can destroy almost anything that is in a food, including the vitamins. This it does by snatching away an electron from fruits and vegetables (including meat, fish, poultry, etc) in order for it to form ordinary diatomic oxygen which is much more stable because it has a double bond.
As a result, the vitamins, phyto-chemicals and nutrients in the fruits may be damaged in order to contribute an electron to the ozone. This is no different from robbing Peter (fruit) to pay Paul (ozone).
Sterilizing fruits and vegetables:
It is also claimed that ozone sterilizers kill harmful germs and bacteria on your fruits and vegetables. Let me tell you two important things about bacteria:
Nonpathogenic or harmless bacteria make up over 70 percent of all bacteria, and only about 30 percent are pathogenic (disease causing). Not all pathogenic bacteria cause human disease. A lot of the 30 % cause animal and plant diseases. Even for those that cause human diseases only a very small percent actually are caused by eating contaminated foods. Almost all of them thrive in meat and poultry products, and hardly any are pathogenic that can live on fruits and vegetables you are trying to kill. Most pathogenic bacteria that cause human illness are from non-food sources, and enters the human body through other carriers.
Bacteria morphology and disease:
Those that cause human and animal diseases belong to Cocci, Bacilli and Spirlla. Cocci that look like seeds in groups under a microscope may belong to Staphylococci, Streptococci and Diplococci depending how they look like under a microscope – whether in chain or cluster together. Cocci cause boils, and pustules. Bacilli are responsible for disease like influenza and TB, while Spirillum causes disease such as syphilis. None of these are transmitted by fruits and vegetables, but by air, or by direct contact or biological fluids (blood, sputum, sex, etc).
Almost all the bacteria that cause food poisoning originate in meat, and meat products, including fish, eggs, milk and poultry. Hardly do the come from fruits and vegetables because plant sources are very poor nutrient media for pathogenic bacteria such as:
• Staphylococcus aureus
• Salmonella
• Clostridium perfringens
• Clostridium botulinum
• Vibrio parahaemolyticus
• Bacillus cereus
• Listeria
• Yersinia enterocolitica
• Campylobacter jejuni
• Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli
The only exception I can think of right now as I type this sentence is when you decide to leave all your fruits and vegetables in a place to allow rats to urinate on them which no sensible person will do. In that case, if you eat the fruits and vegetables unwashed (with water of course) and uncooked, then you will add one more to the list above, namely a bacterial zoonotic disease caused by spirochaetes of the genus Leptospira to give you a bacterial zoonotic disease called Leptospirosis (Weil's disease). For that matter Leptospira from rat’s urine does not only affects humans, but also a wide range of other animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. But nobody leaves their food for the rat to urine on them, and then use ozone to destroy the bacteria Leptospira.
Use water to wash off rat’s urine:
Even if the rat has passed urine onto your fruits and vegetables, you can also wash them off completely with running water, and then peel off the skin for fruits, and for the vegetables cook them properly. Water washes off everything completely including the smell of the urine, but I am afraid ozone merely changes the substance from urine into something else. You still need to wash off that ‘something else’ with plain water. In that case you might as well wash off everything with plain water from the start without any ozone, and then use water again to wash off that something else (by-product). It is like touch your nose by putting your hand round to the back.
Water borne diseases:
Of course we have also to think of water borne diseases that can also get into all foods due to contaminated water. That includes among a long list the following:
1. Amoebiasis
2. Botulism
3. Cholera
4. E. coli Infection
5. Giardiasis
6. Typhoid fever
7. Etc, etc
Else almost all food borne diseases is from unwashed and uncooked foods.
Prevention:
1. The first step in preventing food poisoning is to assume that all foods may cause food-borne illness. Follow these steps to prevent food poisoning:
2. Wash hands, food preparation surfaces and utensils thoroughly before and after handling raw foods to prevent recontamination of cooked foods. Wash your hands with just plain soap and running tap water, and not use ozone to wash your hands. Nobody does this. Be sensible.
3. Keep refrigerated foods below 40 degrees F.
4. Serve hot foods immediately or keep them heated above 140 degrees F.
5. Divide large volumes of food into small portions for rapid cooling in the refrigerator. Hot, bulky foods in the refrigerator can raise the temperature of other foods already kept there and has already been cooled.
6. Remember the danger zone is between 40 degrees F and 140 degrees F.
7. Heat canned foods thoroughly before tasting.
8. When in doubt, throw it out
Chemicals, heavy metals, parasites, fungi, viruses and bacteria can cause food borne illness. Bacteria related food poisoning is the most common, but fewer than 20 of the many thousands of different bacteria actually are the culprits. I have mentioned this above.
More than 90 percent of the cases of food poisoning each year are caused by Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella, Clostridium perfringens, Campylobacter, Listeria monocytogenes, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Bacillus cereus, and Entero-pathogenic Escherichia coli. These bacteria are commonly found on many raw foods. Normally a large number of food-poisoning bacteria must be present to cause illness. Therefore, illness can be prevented by (1) controlling the initial number of bacteria present, (2) preventing the small number from growing, (3) destroying the bacteria by proper cooking and (4) avoiding re-contamination.
Hygiene and preventive care much more important:
Poor personal hygiene, improper cleaning of storage and preparation areas and unclean utensils cause contamination of raw and cooked foods. Mishandling of raw and cooked foods allows bacteria to grow. The temperature range in which most bacteria grow is between 40 degrees F (5 degrees C) and 140 degrees F (60 degrees C). Raw and cooked foods should not be kept in this danger zone any longer than absolutely necessary. Undercooking or improper processing of home-canned foods can cause very serious food poisoning.
Since food-poisoning bacteria are often present on many foods, knowing the characteristics of such bacteria is essential to an effective control program.
Nutrient Media for Bacterial Growth:
Bacteria not necessary can grow on any food. Bacteria do chose the correct nutrient media to grow. As an example in a microbiological laboratory, most bacteria can only grow on certain nutrient media. Almost all bacterial media need some blood base. That is why we normally culture bacteria in the laboratory on specific nutrient media such as on Blood Agar (BAP).
This high-nutrient growth medium is made with 5% sheep’s blood. Blood Agar is not selective, and will grow a wide range of bacteria. This medium is, however, differential.
Some bacteria produce hemolysins, enzymes that can break down red blood cells (hemo = bood and lyse = to cut). Depending on the type of hemolysin, the red blood cells are either completely broken down (beta-hemolysis), or partially broken down (alpha-hemolysis).
Streptococcus pyogenes is a beta-hemolytic pathogenic bacterium and the causative agent of Strep throat. When plated on Blood Agar, S. pyogenes completely breaks down the red blood cells, leaving the areas of agar around its colonies clear and colorless.
Most normal throat flora either produce alpha-hemolysis, partially breaking down the red blood cells and creating a bruised appearance to the agar, or produce gamma-hemolysis (which means no hemolysis at all), leaving the agar is unaffected.
MacConkeys & Mannitol Salt Agars:
In addition to being selective, MacConkey’s and Mannitol Salt are also differential. Each has a nutrient additive, lactose (sugar) and mannitol (alcohol) respectively, as well as pH indicators that react when these food products are fermented by bacteria.
If the Gram- organisms growing on MacConkey’s eat lactose, they produce acidic metabolites (wastes) that trigger the neutral red pH indicator. This causes the bacterial colonies themselves to turn mauve or pink in color.
So if there are colonies of bacteria growing on MacConkey’s, it’s understood that they are Gram-. If those colonies are colorless, they are not lactose fermenters. If the colonies have a pinkish appearance, they are lactose fermenters.
Other media:
Bacteria growing on Mannitol Salt Agar are most likely Staphylococcus. But this media is also differential, containing mannitol and a pH indicator. If the colonies growing on Mannitol Salt Agar are a type of Staph that ferments mannitol, they produce acidic metabolic wastes that turn the originally orange-pink medium a bright yellow.
Pathogenic Staph, like S. aureus, is mannitol fermenters:
So if something is growing on Mannitol Salt, one can be reasonably sure that it is Staph, if the media turns yellow, this color change signals the presence of pathogenic Staphylococcus.
Summary:
In short, pathogenic bacteria are very choosy over what kind of a nutrient media is most suitable. They don’t simply grow on fruits and vegetables. So to use ozone to kill off pathogenic bacteria on the surface of fruits and vegetable do not make sense. You might as well wash them off with water.
I have written more than what you need in reply to your question. Before I sign off, I like to ask you a question.
Question:
Do you use soap and running water to take a bath, or do you kill the germs, body odor, body oil and dirt from your body using ozone in water? You might as well use hydrogen peroxide. You answer this question in exchange for what you asked me.
I leave it to you to decide.
jb lim
------------------------------
Reply from Mr. YK Tan
Dear Dr. Lim,
Thank you so much for your reply in great details.
I am grateful that you have taken time to write on the subject and went beyond the ozoniser.
During the demo, I noticed that the strange smell produced when the machine was in action. That could be the excess ozone released during the "cleaning" process.
I like you explanation of the oxidation-reduction using the example of robbing Peter and paying Paul.
Yes, the whole subject could be summarised as per your last paragraph of taking shower with soap and running water. Cool.....
I wish to look forward to meeting you for a cup of coffee together with Mag in the near future.
Would appreciate if Mag could arrange for same if you have the time.
Once again, thank you for your reply.
Regards
YK Tan
-------------------
AE Consultant to me
show details Sep 13 (10 days ago)
Dear Dr Lim,
Thank you very much for such a long and detail write up including testing of bacteria types etc...
Wow, what a super man you are. If I were to meet you 40 years earlier it would have changed my career...
Warmest regards,
C K Cheong
-----------------------------------------------
On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Gwen Tanil
Dear Dr Lim,
I am really fascinated by your scientific articles and furthermore at your age, your ability to do research really puts someone at my age at a shame hahahhaa
I was particularly interested in the food part. If you can tell me the name of the seafood restaurant in Bagan Hylam ( as in your email) maybe one day I can take friends there.
Keep on sending the scientific and intellectual emails and keep on writing! You certainly a national treasure :)
God bless.
Gwen
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
More on the Nutritive Values of Eggs
Dear friends,
Thank you for all your letters and enquiries. Pertaining to your question on eggs requesting my comments, sometime back someone asked me the same question about its effect on health. I have already written and replied to him or her in a lengthy article on this, supporting the nutritive and health benefits of eggs. I also gave scientific updates on more recent findings some of which are correctly given here as sent to me.
However the author of the article e-mailed to me, need to give at least some references of papers published in scientific journals to support the claims.
But just to super-summarize in just 13 lines without me having to go all over again explaining the complexities of physiology, biochemistry, nutritional pathogenesis related to eggs to repeat and waste time again, below are the yes points about eggs in human nutrition. But I have to leave out some minor no points since the positive benefits far outweigh its negative values.
1. Eggs and milk are among the best foods for the body especially to a growing child.
2. Eggs do not cause an elevation of blood cholesterol
3. Eggs do not clog up the coronary vessels as once thought. In fact the opposite is now true
4. Eggs are low in energy value, and is a factor to consider in the formulation of a caloric-restriction diet
5. Eggs protein quality is extremely high, and has a very high nitrogen-retention value. Hence it is extremely useful in post-surgical care, trauma, and in post-management of hypovolemic shock against negative nitrogen balance
6. Eggs contain vitamin D in its natural form. The benefits of vitamin D require several chapters on human nutrition in medicine to discuss. And I refuse to repeat
7. Eggs are cancer-protective, especially for breast cancer
8. Eggs are very rich in sulfur-containing amino acids methionine which is a very crucial amino-acid in blocking damaging free radicals. These are directly linked to the pathogenesis of heart disease, cancers, DNA damage, and all degenerative disorders, and accelerated aging.
9. Eggs protect against fatty liver, slow growth, macular degeneration (degeneration of the macula area of the retina in the eyes. This is responsible for central vision for reading, face recognition and detailed vision), edema (water retention), and various skin lesions
10. Eggs promote healthy growth of nails, hair and skin
11. Eggs are rich in tryphophan, selenium, iodine, and riboflavin (vitamin B2)
12. Eggs selenium content is cardio-protective against Keshan disease, cardiomyopathies (diseases involving the heart muscles, cardiomegaly (enlarged heart), myocardial dysfunction (poor heart function) and death from heart failure.
13. Eggs are protective against Kashin-Beck disease (osteoarthropathy), myxedematous endemic cretinism (mental retardation)
14. The list goes on…on!
Regards, and ask me no more on eggs. I have lots of other questions awaiting answers.
jb lim
4:35 a.m.
24 August, 2010
Thank you for all your letters and enquiries. Pertaining to your question on eggs requesting my comments, sometime back someone asked me the same question about its effect on health. I have already written and replied to him or her in a lengthy article on this, supporting the nutritive and health benefits of eggs. I also gave scientific updates on more recent findings some of which are correctly given here as sent to me.
However the author of the article e-mailed to me, need to give at least some references of papers published in scientific journals to support the claims.
But just to super-summarize in just 13 lines without me having to go all over again explaining the complexities of physiology, biochemistry, nutritional pathogenesis related to eggs to repeat and waste time again, below are the yes points about eggs in human nutrition. But I have to leave out some minor no points since the positive benefits far outweigh its negative values.
1. Eggs and milk are among the best foods for the body especially to a growing child.
2. Eggs do not cause an elevation of blood cholesterol
3. Eggs do not clog up the coronary vessels as once thought. In fact the opposite is now true
4. Eggs are low in energy value, and is a factor to consider in the formulation of a caloric-restriction diet
5. Eggs protein quality is extremely high, and has a very high nitrogen-retention value. Hence it is extremely useful in post-surgical care, trauma, and in post-management of hypovolemic shock against negative nitrogen balance
6. Eggs contain vitamin D in its natural form. The benefits of vitamin D require several chapters on human nutrition in medicine to discuss. And I refuse to repeat
7. Eggs are cancer-protective, especially for breast cancer
8. Eggs are very rich in sulfur-containing amino acids methionine which is a very crucial amino-acid in blocking damaging free radicals. These are directly linked to the pathogenesis of heart disease, cancers, DNA damage, and all degenerative disorders, and accelerated aging.
9. Eggs protect against fatty liver, slow growth, macular degeneration (degeneration of the macula area of the retina in the eyes. This is responsible for central vision for reading, face recognition and detailed vision), edema (water retention), and various skin lesions
10. Eggs promote healthy growth of nails, hair and skin
11. Eggs are rich in tryphophan, selenium, iodine, and riboflavin (vitamin B2)
12. Eggs selenium content is cardio-protective against Keshan disease, cardiomyopathies (diseases involving the heart muscles, cardiomegaly (enlarged heart), myocardial dysfunction (poor heart function) and death from heart failure.
13. Eggs are protective against Kashin-Beck disease (osteoarthropathy), myxedematous endemic cretinism (mental retardation)
14. The list goes on…on!
Regards, and ask me no more on eggs. I have lots of other questions awaiting answers.
jb lim
4:35 a.m.
24 August, 2010
More on Protein Quality
Dear friends,
Thank you for your so many compliments on my previous article. Maybe I was just too harsh to prescribe laws on what is good, and what is nutritionally inadvisable.
I was just trying to tell you nutritional truth about collagen and gelatin as its by-products on hydrolysis after boiling and cooking
Perhaps I may have given the wrong message by giving the impression that chicken, duck’s and pig trotters should not be eaten because of their poor protein biological value of zero or almost zero compared to reference protein from whole eggs and milk with a score of 100 which is the maximum biological and chemical score. Thus whole egg is used as a reference to compare the quality of all other proteins
These are scores nutritionists use to evaluate the quality of proteins by their limiting amino acids. In order to have a high score, all the essential amino acids must be there, else if one is missing or are present only small amounts – what we call ‘limiting amino-acids’ then the body is incapable of retaining it for growth, repair and development. If a particular amino acid is missing or not present in sufficient quantity, then its biological value and chemical score goes down from 100 (maximum) to zero as in the case of collagen and gelatin.
Limiting Amino Acids:
The measurement of protein quality is a very highly technical subject, and also very difficult to understand for those are not trained in nutritional medicine, nutritional biochemistry or clinical physiology. But I shall try to make it very simple to understand for the lay person using the analogy of a wooden water barrel made of wooden ribs sealing it from top to bottom.
Imagine this barrel is complete with all the ribs complete and intact. Such a barrel can contain water, wine or oil right to the brim. Imagine there are 9 ribs, each representing an essential amino acid to make the barrel complete (complete protein like whole egg protein). Suppose one of the ribs is broken somewhere at the top, say 10 % from the top with 90 % still intact from the bottom.
In that case, no matter how perfect the remaining 8 ribs are, it can only hold water up to 90 % of its maximum capacity. You can even pour the entire Pacific Ocean into that barrel; still it can only remain 90 % full at maximum. The rest of the water just leached out from 10 % of the broken rib. The lower the broken rib, the less water it can contain. Thus the ‘limiting amino acid’ to measure the quality of the protein to retain nitrogen in the body, is the ‘limiting level of the rib’ to hold water in that barrel. This measures the quality of that water barrel.
The meaning of ‘limiting amino acids’:
Please note that in a protein, it does not mean that all the amino acids in there are all complete (all the ribs in perfect condition), except with one amino-acid missing or partly complete. This is not true. In a protein all the amino acids may be there, or may not be there. They may be present in different levels as if they are the barrel ribs broken or partly complete at different levels. But the amino acid that has the lowest content among the rest, is the one that limits the value of that particular protein. That specific amino acid with the lowest content among all of them, or is completely absent in the protein, is called the limiting amino acid. In short, it is liken a water barrel with several incomplete ribs, but it is the rib that is the lowest that limits the barrel to contain water only up to that level. That is the meaning of ‘limiting’.
The brains of the Jews:
It is as simple to understand as that. Unfortunately when I was a postgraduate student in London, this was taught to us in a highly technical manner with so many mathematical and biological models to grabble in the calculations. It was really complex and highly intricate, and we have to strain our brains to the maximum capacity to understand and how to calculate both the quality and quantity of protein values, their absorption, retention and their metabolic utilization. It gave us all students a lot of headache trying to understand this world expert on protein utilization by humans and by animals. All my course mates at London University were already highly qualified doctors and research scientists coming from various countries, but this Jewish professor’s brain who taught us, beat us all to it with his highly complex research on proteins.
The Jews who literally heads all the university departments are a highly intelligent race. They won almost all the Nobel Prizes in Science, Medicine or Physiology, Literature, Economics and Peace. They are exceptionally brilliant, and powerful. Einstein was a Jew, as an example. The Bible says they are God’s chosen people. With God protection over them, no wonder no country can defeat them whether they are settled in Israel, Middle East or even in the United States. They are such a powerful and intelligent race.
Quality more important…
This means that no matter how much protein you eat, similar to pouring the entire Pacific Ocean into that barrel, the body just cannot retain them for growth, development and repair if only one of the 8 + 2 essential amino acids out of 20 + 2 in a protein is incomplete or totally missing. The body can hold as much protein as the ‘limiting amino acids’ in the protein it prescribes and limits.
In the case of collagen, two very important essential amino-acids called lysine and tryptophan are missing even though it is rich in glycine and proline which account for about 50% of the amino acids present in collagen. But because these two very important body building amino acids are missing in collagen, it is like having a water barrel with two of its ribs completely missing. How can this barrel store any water in the same way as how the body can retain the amino acids from collagen when these two very important amino acids almost completely missing. The body has no choice but to throw it out like any sensible person will throw away a water barrel with even just one of its ribs missing or almost all missing?
Thus it is not just how much protein-rich foods you eat that is important for health, but also the type and quality of protein you choose. Hence you may eat the entire Pacific Ocean of proteins on this planet, but the body will still throw all of them away if only one of the 9 essential amino acids is completely missing. An egg or a glass of milk is far better because of their protein quality. The body will keep all of them. It is as simple to understand as that.
Hence it is not the quantity of protein foods, but also the quality as well, with whole eggs and milk right on the top. These two foods are specially designed by Mother Nature for babies and young animals that depended solely on their mother’s milk, and the protein inside an egg for the un-hatch chicken or other egg-laying animals for their growth and development. No other protein-rich foods can beat these two for their protein quality. You can clearly see how logical Mother Nature gave us for our survival immediately after birth.
This analogy I give here is 10 million times easier to understand than the complexities of protein nutrition we have to crack our brains day and night to understand with endless discussions among ourselves as postgraduate students. Thank God, we all passed with a Postgraduate Diploma in Nutrition as Internal Students from the University of London in 1966.
Net Protein Utilization:
There is another measure to evaluate the quality of protein. This is called the net protein utilization (NPU). It is measured by the ratio of amino acid converted to proteins to the ratio of amino acids supplied, but this is affected by the amount of limiting amino acids present. We will not go into that, as it is meant for nutritionists only and not for ordinary housewives and consumers to understand.
The reason why I extended this article from the previous one is that I do not want you all to think that eating collagen or gelatin is completely useless for our health and should not be eaten. The reason is because as Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) asks 'do we eat to live or live to eat'.
Severe protein deficiency is not a problem in Malaysia:
My answer to this question is very simple: both. In situations like Malaysia there is really no shortage of food and proteins these days. Unlike in some deprived communities like in some countries in Africa, people, especially the children are very deprived of valuable good protein so important for their growth, development, and against diseases. The children before they even reach one year old they were already deprived of their mother’s milk (which is the best protein) when the mother gets pregnant again before the first child can be properly nourished and brought up. They suffer severely from a protein-deficiency disorder called kwashiorkor, and often from energy-deficient as well leading to another condition called marasmus.
More often than not, they are severely malnourished on both, leading the child with marasmic-kwashiokor (protein-energy malnutrition). This leads to very high infantile mortality. These children need very high protein diet which is not available to them when the mother took them off breast milk, and feed them on dilute solutions or porridge of cereal grains of cassava or maize with hardly any protein or very poor quality protein as in maize / corn. The child simply dies or fails to thrive. This is a very serious health problem.
Over-nutrition is the problem:
But in Malaysia the situation is almost the opposite these days. In the 1950s and earlier, to the 1970s health and nutrition status in the rural areas, especially in Kelantan were almost like those in African countries, albeit not as bad. Malnutrition due to protein, energy, iron and vitamin deficiencies were quite common in the rural areas, especially among the Malays and Indians in the estates, although the Chinese in similar areas are better off. This was due to rural poverty among the Malays and Indians living in the rubber estates and oil palm plantations in the rural villages respectively. But with the overall economic improvement in the country since the 1980s the situation changes quite dramatically in recent years. Instead of suffering from various deficiency diseases as in World War II, the people in this country are now eating far too much to the extent they suffer from diseases of over-nutrition and nutritional excesses.
Hardly anyone in Malaysia suffers from any of the protein and energy deficiencies anymore. In fact they are obese due to far too much food available to them that is beyond their physiological needs.
Fair ‘to live to eat’:
It is this group of people that eating collagen-rich foods will not compromise their daily nutritional needs for adequate protein. They have excess of proteins in their diet of meat, fish, chicken, eggs, soy-beans, legumes and eggs. They do not require extra proteins. By eating chicken and duck’s legs, joints and ligaments of beef, mutton and pork, albeit has little nutritional benefits except for taste.
Thus, consumption of these foods is not going to compromise their needs for extra quality proteins. Food consumption surveys showed most Malaysians, especially in the cities and urban areas, and especially among the Chinese who have a very rich diet of fish, pork and chicken, eating collagen-rich foods is not going to make any difference to their daily protein requirements. They already have enough from other sources, and pig’s totters are just for fun eating and enjoyment and nothing more.
Holistic and Psychological health:
Just as Alice in Wonderland asks 'do we eat to live or live to eat' the answer has to be holistic to our health. It is important to realize that psychological health is just as important as physical health and health and enjoyment is part and parcel of physical, mental and social well-being. Humans are not laboratory rats and animals that can thrive well with adequate synthetic diets and water. Rats reared in the laboratory for medical, drug, toxicological testing etc can easily thrive and reproduce when kept in cages, but given adequate food in the form of synthetic nutrients and water. But man eat food, not nutrients for the sense of enjoyment, psychological and social well-being besides ‘eat to live’
There is a big difference between synthetic nutrients for rats and complete and nice-tasting foods for humans. Laboratory animals can be kept alive throughout their natural life-spans by just artificial nutrients and water, but no similar trials has been done on humans, because humans are not rats. They demand food, not nutrients.
Once again, nutritionists need to remind themselves that man eat food, not nutrients.
jb lim
-----------------------
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Tan Seng Khoon ++ wrote:
Dear Dr. Lim JB,
Fantastic piece of Medical thesis. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, intelligent and deep are your scientific knowledge
I absolutely, completely and fully agree with you on all your views. No holes for any spear to go through. So David, your spears tak laku again.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Now that the nutrition law will come into effect, you will be higher in demand in the market for your services.
This is very very good news. I think one table for all. Pig trotter a must I suppose. Ha..ha..ha...
Rgds,
khoon.
Thank you for your so many compliments on my previous article. Maybe I was just too harsh to prescribe laws on what is good, and what is nutritionally inadvisable.
I was just trying to tell you nutritional truth about collagen and gelatin as its by-products on hydrolysis after boiling and cooking
Perhaps I may have given the wrong message by giving the impression that chicken, duck’s and pig trotters should not be eaten because of their poor protein biological value of zero or almost zero compared to reference protein from whole eggs and milk with a score of 100 which is the maximum biological and chemical score. Thus whole egg is used as a reference to compare the quality of all other proteins
These are scores nutritionists use to evaluate the quality of proteins by their limiting amino acids. In order to have a high score, all the essential amino acids must be there, else if one is missing or are present only small amounts – what we call ‘limiting amino-acids’ then the body is incapable of retaining it for growth, repair and development. If a particular amino acid is missing or not present in sufficient quantity, then its biological value and chemical score goes down from 100 (maximum) to zero as in the case of collagen and gelatin.
Limiting Amino Acids:
The measurement of protein quality is a very highly technical subject, and also very difficult to understand for those are not trained in nutritional medicine, nutritional biochemistry or clinical physiology. But I shall try to make it very simple to understand for the lay person using the analogy of a wooden water barrel made of wooden ribs sealing it from top to bottom.
Imagine this barrel is complete with all the ribs complete and intact. Such a barrel can contain water, wine or oil right to the brim. Imagine there are 9 ribs, each representing an essential amino acid to make the barrel complete (complete protein like whole egg protein). Suppose one of the ribs is broken somewhere at the top, say 10 % from the top with 90 % still intact from the bottom.
In that case, no matter how perfect the remaining 8 ribs are, it can only hold water up to 90 % of its maximum capacity. You can even pour the entire Pacific Ocean into that barrel; still it can only remain 90 % full at maximum. The rest of the water just leached out from 10 % of the broken rib. The lower the broken rib, the less water it can contain. Thus the ‘limiting amino acid’ to measure the quality of the protein to retain nitrogen in the body, is the ‘limiting level of the rib’ to hold water in that barrel. This measures the quality of that water barrel.
The meaning of ‘limiting amino acids’:
Please note that in a protein, it does not mean that all the amino acids in there are all complete (all the ribs in perfect condition), except with one amino-acid missing or partly complete. This is not true. In a protein all the amino acids may be there, or may not be there. They may be present in different levels as if they are the barrel ribs broken or partly complete at different levels. But the amino acid that has the lowest content among the rest, is the one that limits the value of that particular protein. That specific amino acid with the lowest content among all of them, or is completely absent in the protein, is called the limiting amino acid. In short, it is liken a water barrel with several incomplete ribs, but it is the rib that is the lowest that limits the barrel to contain water only up to that level. That is the meaning of ‘limiting’.
The brains of the Jews:
It is as simple to understand as that. Unfortunately when I was a postgraduate student in London, this was taught to us in a highly technical manner with so many mathematical and biological models to grabble in the calculations. It was really complex and highly intricate, and we have to strain our brains to the maximum capacity to understand and how to calculate both the quality and quantity of protein values, their absorption, retention and their metabolic utilization. It gave us all students a lot of headache trying to understand this world expert on protein utilization by humans and by animals. All my course mates at London University were already highly qualified doctors and research scientists coming from various countries, but this Jewish professor’s brain who taught us, beat us all to it with his highly complex research on proteins.
The Jews who literally heads all the university departments are a highly intelligent race. They won almost all the Nobel Prizes in Science, Medicine or Physiology, Literature, Economics and Peace. They are exceptionally brilliant, and powerful. Einstein was a Jew, as an example. The Bible says they are God’s chosen people. With God protection over them, no wonder no country can defeat them whether they are settled in Israel, Middle East or even in the United States. They are such a powerful and intelligent race.
Quality more important…
This means that no matter how much protein you eat, similar to pouring the entire Pacific Ocean into that barrel, the body just cannot retain them for growth, development and repair if only one of the 8 + 2 essential amino acids out of 20 + 2 in a protein is incomplete or totally missing. The body can hold as much protein as the ‘limiting amino acids’ in the protein it prescribes and limits.
In the case of collagen, two very important essential amino-acids called lysine and tryptophan are missing even though it is rich in glycine and proline which account for about 50% of the amino acids present in collagen. But because these two very important body building amino acids are missing in collagen, it is like having a water barrel with two of its ribs completely missing. How can this barrel store any water in the same way as how the body can retain the amino acids from collagen when these two very important amino acids almost completely missing. The body has no choice but to throw it out like any sensible person will throw away a water barrel with even just one of its ribs missing or almost all missing?
Thus it is not just how much protein-rich foods you eat that is important for health, but also the type and quality of protein you choose. Hence you may eat the entire Pacific Ocean of proteins on this planet, but the body will still throw all of them away if only one of the 9 essential amino acids is completely missing. An egg or a glass of milk is far better because of their protein quality. The body will keep all of them. It is as simple to understand as that.
Hence it is not the quantity of protein foods, but also the quality as well, with whole eggs and milk right on the top. These two foods are specially designed by Mother Nature for babies and young animals that depended solely on their mother’s milk, and the protein inside an egg for the un-hatch chicken or other egg-laying animals for their growth and development. No other protein-rich foods can beat these two for their protein quality. You can clearly see how logical Mother Nature gave us for our survival immediately after birth.
This analogy I give here is 10 million times easier to understand than the complexities of protein nutrition we have to crack our brains day and night to understand with endless discussions among ourselves as postgraduate students. Thank God, we all passed with a Postgraduate Diploma in Nutrition as Internal Students from the University of London in 1966.
Net Protein Utilization:
There is another measure to evaluate the quality of protein. This is called the net protein utilization (NPU). It is measured by the ratio of amino acid converted to proteins to the ratio of amino acids supplied, but this is affected by the amount of limiting amino acids present. We will not go into that, as it is meant for nutritionists only and not for ordinary housewives and consumers to understand.
The reason why I extended this article from the previous one is that I do not want you all to think that eating collagen or gelatin is completely useless for our health and should not be eaten. The reason is because as Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) asks 'do we eat to live or live to eat'.
Severe protein deficiency is not a problem in Malaysia:
My answer to this question is very simple: both. In situations like Malaysia there is really no shortage of food and proteins these days. Unlike in some deprived communities like in some countries in Africa, people, especially the children are very deprived of valuable good protein so important for their growth, development, and against diseases. The children before they even reach one year old they were already deprived of their mother’s milk (which is the best protein) when the mother gets pregnant again before the first child can be properly nourished and brought up. They suffer severely from a protein-deficiency disorder called kwashiorkor, and often from energy-deficient as well leading to another condition called marasmus.
More often than not, they are severely malnourished on both, leading the child with marasmic-kwashiokor (protein-energy malnutrition). This leads to very high infantile mortality. These children need very high protein diet which is not available to them when the mother took them off breast milk, and feed them on dilute solutions or porridge of cereal grains of cassava or maize with hardly any protein or very poor quality protein as in maize / corn. The child simply dies or fails to thrive. This is a very serious health problem.
Over-nutrition is the problem:
But in Malaysia the situation is almost the opposite these days. In the 1950s and earlier, to the 1970s health and nutrition status in the rural areas, especially in Kelantan were almost like those in African countries, albeit not as bad. Malnutrition due to protein, energy, iron and vitamin deficiencies were quite common in the rural areas, especially among the Malays and Indians in the estates, although the Chinese in similar areas are better off. This was due to rural poverty among the Malays and Indians living in the rubber estates and oil palm plantations in the rural villages respectively. But with the overall economic improvement in the country since the 1980s the situation changes quite dramatically in recent years. Instead of suffering from various deficiency diseases as in World War II, the people in this country are now eating far too much to the extent they suffer from diseases of over-nutrition and nutritional excesses.
Hardly anyone in Malaysia suffers from any of the protein and energy deficiencies anymore. In fact they are obese due to far too much food available to them that is beyond their physiological needs.
Fair ‘to live to eat’:
It is this group of people that eating collagen-rich foods will not compromise their daily nutritional needs for adequate protein. They have excess of proteins in their diet of meat, fish, chicken, eggs, soy-beans, legumes and eggs. They do not require extra proteins. By eating chicken and duck’s legs, joints and ligaments of beef, mutton and pork, albeit has little nutritional benefits except for taste.
Thus, consumption of these foods is not going to compromise their needs for extra quality proteins. Food consumption surveys showed most Malaysians, especially in the cities and urban areas, and especially among the Chinese who have a very rich diet of fish, pork and chicken, eating collagen-rich foods is not going to make any difference to their daily protein requirements. They already have enough from other sources, and pig’s totters are just for fun eating and enjoyment and nothing more.
Holistic and Psychological health:
Just as Alice in Wonderland asks 'do we eat to live or live to eat' the answer has to be holistic to our health. It is important to realize that psychological health is just as important as physical health and health and enjoyment is part and parcel of physical, mental and social well-being. Humans are not laboratory rats and animals that can thrive well with adequate synthetic diets and water. Rats reared in the laboratory for medical, drug, toxicological testing etc can easily thrive and reproduce when kept in cages, but given adequate food in the form of synthetic nutrients and water. But man eat food, not nutrients for the sense of enjoyment, psychological and social well-being besides ‘eat to live’
There is a big difference between synthetic nutrients for rats and complete and nice-tasting foods for humans. Laboratory animals can be kept alive throughout their natural life-spans by just artificial nutrients and water, but no similar trials has been done on humans, because humans are not rats. They demand food, not nutrients.
Once again, nutritionists need to remind themselves that man eat food, not nutrients.
jb lim
-----------------------
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Tan Seng Khoon ++
Dear Dr. Lim JB,
Fantastic piece of Medical thesis. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, intelligent and deep are your scientific knowledge
I absolutely, completely and fully agree with you on all your views. No holes for any spear to go through. So David, your spears tak laku again.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Now that the nutrition law will come into effect, you will be higher in demand in the market for your services.
This is very very good news. I think one table for all. Pig trotter a must I suppose. Ha..ha..ha...
Rgds,
khoon.
Would boiling or frying an egg damage it nutritive value?
Question:
An e-mail enquiry was received from Mr. Tan Khoon Seng as follows:
Concerning all those good things said about eggs and nutrients, may I know if they are destroyed if the egg is hard boiled or fried? Frying is intense heat. Will the heat destroy the good stuffs?
We can see that the albumin and yolk protein hardens when heated. So its structure is changed. Will these changes harm the natural good nutrients in eggs? If not, why not?
Your comment will be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Khoon
Answer:
Physical, not chemical changes to eggs:
No! Moderate heat over a short time like boiling an egg for 2 minutes, or lightly fry an egg does not alter its nutritive values. Heat merely alters the physical properties of egg protein by coagulating its albumin, but this does not change it nutritive values.
However high heat and cooking the egg, especially frying it with oil in open air over a long time does cause heat damage to the proteins, and irreversibly change its nutritive values. (Digestion of Heat-damaged Egg Albumen by the Rat by Jose Valle-Riestra and Richard H. Barnes, Graduate School of Nutrition, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850).
High temperatures not only physically and chemically denature the egg protein, but they also destroy almost all the vitamins, especially the heat labile B group of vitamins.
Nutritive values improve instead:
However moderate heat over short period just to cook or fry the egg on the contrary improves its nutritive value of the whole egg by inactivating a substance called avidin which is a glycoprotein found in the white of egg. This substance binds with one of the B vitamins called biotin and renders it unavailable to the body. Cooking destroys this avidin, and releases the biotin. This makes the egg more nutritive and more wholesome. However, this is compensated by the fact that the yolk contains a lot more of biotin, and it makes only a little difference even if the biotin in the white is not available because of the avidin. However, eating too much white of egg can lead to biotin deficiency.
Whole and wholesome eggs:
Egg should be eaten whole. I know of a lot of people who because of their ill-advised knowledge of nutrition throw away the best part of egg – the yolk, and eat only the white of egg.
I saw many of them doing this in front of me while we were on the same table for breakfast. Even though I did not know them as they were strangers on the same table, I still asked them why. They told me the yolk contains cholesterol and it causes heart disease. I then asked them how they knew that egg yolk contains cholesterol. They replied they got it from the Internet.
I then asked them why they thought that eating eggs high in cholesterol causes heart disease. They told me they also read this from the Internet. That’s the problem of people looking up information from the Internet instead of seeking the advice of a qualified health-care professional. I have previously written a lot on the myth of cholesterol, CHD, and health, and cited huge studies having concluded that dietary cholesterol neither raise or decrease blood lipids and serum cholesterol, and that ischemic heart disease is faintly correlated to elevated blood lipids. This was the conclusion in the follow up study from the immensely huge and longitudinal Framingham Heart Study. I don’t intend to repeat it anymore.
Raw and boiled eggs:
There is also some difference in the digestibility between raw and cooked egg in humans as assessed by stable isotope techniques. The study was conducted by Pieter Evenepoel, Benny Geypens, Anja Luypaerts, Martin Hiele, Yvo Ghoos, and Paul Rutgeerts from the Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Gastrointestinal Research Centre, University Hospital Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
They used 15N-dilution technique to demonstrate that the assimilation of cooked egg protein is efficient, albeit incomplete, and that the true ileal digestibility of egg protein is significantly enhanced by heat-pretreatment. A simple 13C-breath test technique furthermore proved to be a suitable alternative for the evaluation of the true ileal digestibility of egg protein.
However others claimed the opposite that cooked eggs are more digestible than raw eggs. However, they did not cite the literature where the studies were conducted. Every claim needs research and evidence-based studies
Avidin:
Except for this slight statistical difference on protein bio availability, eggs to the best of my professional opinion are equally nutritious whether eaten raw, or lightly cooked, except for the presence of a glycoprotein called avidin which blocks the bioavailability of a vitamin called biotin. Biotin is a member of the B group of vitamins. The cooking process deactivates the avidin in the egg, allowing biotin to be made available to the body.
The avidin-biotin blockage in the white of eggs is compensated by its yolk which is very rich in biotin. In fact the yolk contains one of the highest biotin content among all foods. Hence it is wise to eat the entire egg, the yolk and white together. Even the shell is a rich source of calcium. In fact it is so rich in calcium that traditional beliefs (as told to me by my mother when I was a child), that eating egg shell may cause may cause the flow of urine to be blocked.
This does make scientific sense to me as I see it now. The difficulty of micturition (urination) may be caused by renal calculi (stones in the kidneys) passing down into the urinary tract caused by excessive calcium leaching out into the urine and blocking the urinary passage-way with calcium stones. Of course I am aware of other causes impeding the flow of urine, like benign prostatic hyperplasia (BHP) or prostate enlargement. But we are not talking about this here. This is an irrelevant topic here.
Biotin deficiency:
Thus it may be true that eating too many raw egg whites by themselves may cause biotin deficiency, which is normally missed out in the diagnosis by doctors who are not competent in nutritional disorders unless they have additional postgraduate degrees in clinical nutrition to be clinically competent in nutritional medicine. In fact the assessment of nutritional status is one of the hardest and most challenging fields of medicine and even for a very well qualified and expert nutritionist.
Salmonella in eggs:
An added advantage of cooking an egg reasonably well, but not over fry it, is that it may prevent the risk of a food poisoning caused by a bacterial infection called salmonella. This is a serious health risk. Salmonella are gram stain-negative intracellular anaerobes (microbes) that cause a wide spectrum of gastrointestinal diseases. They include gastroenteritis, enteric fever (caused by typhoid and paratyphoid serotypes), bacteremia, focal infections, to a convalescent lifetime carrier state. The type of infection depends on the serotype of Salmonella and host factors. Each type is distinctly identifiable by its specific protein coating. They are known to cause disease in humans, animals, and birds (especially poultry) worldwide.
No more about eggs please!
Kindly do not ask me anymore things about eggs as I have a lot of other things I want to complete writing on other subjects and other work to do, but unable to do so because of all these distractions. My mails contain too many questions people ask off and on.
jb lim
An e-mail enquiry was received from Mr. Tan Khoon Seng as follows:
Concerning all those good things said about eggs and nutrients, may I know if they are destroyed if the egg is hard boiled or fried? Frying is intense heat. Will the heat destroy the good stuffs?
We can see that the albumin and yolk protein hardens when heated. So its structure is changed. Will these changes harm the natural good nutrients in eggs? If not, why not?
Your comment will be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Khoon
Answer:
Physical, not chemical changes to eggs:
No! Moderate heat over a short time like boiling an egg for 2 minutes, or lightly fry an egg does not alter its nutritive values. Heat merely alters the physical properties of egg protein by coagulating its albumin, but this does not change it nutritive values.
However high heat and cooking the egg, especially frying it with oil in open air over a long time does cause heat damage to the proteins, and irreversibly change its nutritive values. (Digestion of Heat-damaged Egg Albumen by the Rat by Jose Valle-Riestra and Richard H. Barnes, Graduate School of Nutrition, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850).
High temperatures not only physically and chemically denature the egg protein, but they also destroy almost all the vitamins, especially the heat labile B group of vitamins.
Nutritive values improve instead:
However moderate heat over short period just to cook or fry the egg on the contrary improves its nutritive value of the whole egg by inactivating a substance called avidin which is a glycoprotein found in the white of egg. This substance binds with one of the B vitamins called biotin and renders it unavailable to the body. Cooking destroys this avidin, and releases the biotin. This makes the egg more nutritive and more wholesome. However, this is compensated by the fact that the yolk contains a lot more of biotin, and it makes only a little difference even if the biotin in the white is not available because of the avidin. However, eating too much white of egg can lead to biotin deficiency.
Whole and wholesome eggs:
Egg should be eaten whole. I know of a lot of people who because of their ill-advised knowledge of nutrition throw away the best part of egg – the yolk, and eat only the white of egg.
I saw many of them doing this in front of me while we were on the same table for breakfast. Even though I did not know them as they were strangers on the same table, I still asked them why. They told me the yolk contains cholesterol and it causes heart disease. I then asked them how they knew that egg yolk contains cholesterol. They replied they got it from the Internet.
I then asked them why they thought that eating eggs high in cholesterol causes heart disease. They told me they also read this from the Internet. That’s the problem of people looking up information from the Internet instead of seeking the advice of a qualified health-care professional. I have previously written a lot on the myth of cholesterol, CHD, and health, and cited huge studies having concluded that dietary cholesterol neither raise or decrease blood lipids and serum cholesterol, and that ischemic heart disease is faintly correlated to elevated blood lipids. This was the conclusion in the follow up study from the immensely huge and longitudinal Framingham Heart Study. I don’t intend to repeat it anymore.
Raw and boiled eggs:
There is also some difference in the digestibility between raw and cooked egg in humans as assessed by stable isotope techniques. The study was conducted by Pieter Evenepoel, Benny Geypens, Anja Luypaerts, Martin Hiele, Yvo Ghoos, and Paul Rutgeerts from the Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Gastrointestinal Research Centre, University Hospital Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
They used 15N-dilution technique to demonstrate that the assimilation of cooked egg protein is efficient, albeit incomplete, and that the true ileal digestibility of egg protein is significantly enhanced by heat-pretreatment. A simple 13C-breath test technique furthermore proved to be a suitable alternative for the evaluation of the true ileal digestibility of egg protein.
However others claimed the opposite that cooked eggs are more digestible than raw eggs. However, they did not cite the literature where the studies were conducted. Every claim needs research and evidence-based studies
Avidin:
Except for this slight statistical difference on protein bio availability, eggs to the best of my professional opinion are equally nutritious whether eaten raw, or lightly cooked, except for the presence of a glycoprotein called avidin which blocks the bioavailability of a vitamin called biotin. Biotin is a member of the B group of vitamins. The cooking process deactivates the avidin in the egg, allowing biotin to be made available to the body.
The avidin-biotin blockage in the white of eggs is compensated by its yolk which is very rich in biotin. In fact the yolk contains one of the highest biotin content among all foods. Hence it is wise to eat the entire egg, the yolk and white together. Even the shell is a rich source of calcium. In fact it is so rich in calcium that traditional beliefs (as told to me by my mother when I was a child), that eating egg shell may cause may cause the flow of urine to be blocked.
This does make scientific sense to me as I see it now. The difficulty of micturition (urination) may be caused by renal calculi (stones in the kidneys) passing down into the urinary tract caused by excessive calcium leaching out into the urine and blocking the urinary passage-way with calcium stones. Of course I am aware of other causes impeding the flow of urine, like benign prostatic hyperplasia (BHP) or prostate enlargement. But we are not talking about this here. This is an irrelevant topic here.
Biotin deficiency:
Thus it may be true that eating too many raw egg whites by themselves may cause biotin deficiency, which is normally missed out in the diagnosis by doctors who are not competent in nutritional disorders unless they have additional postgraduate degrees in clinical nutrition to be clinically competent in nutritional medicine. In fact the assessment of nutritional status is one of the hardest and most challenging fields of medicine and even for a very well qualified and expert nutritionist.
Salmonella in eggs:
An added advantage of cooking an egg reasonably well, but not over fry it, is that it may prevent the risk of a food poisoning caused by a bacterial infection called salmonella. This is a serious health risk. Salmonella are gram stain-negative intracellular anaerobes (microbes) that cause a wide spectrum of gastrointestinal diseases. They include gastroenteritis, enteric fever (caused by typhoid and paratyphoid serotypes), bacteremia, focal infections, to a convalescent lifetime carrier state. The type of infection depends on the serotype of Salmonella and host factors. Each type is distinctly identifiable by its specific protein coating. They are known to cause disease in humans, animals, and birds (especially poultry) worldwide.
No more about eggs please!
Kindly do not ask me anymore things about eggs as I have a lot of other things I want to complete writing on other subjects and other work to do, but unable to do so because of all these distractions. My mails contain too many questions people ask off and on.
jb lim
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