have not earned the evil reputation of cooked calories. Ripe bananas will not make you fat\
The Fourteenth Edition of Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines an enzyme as \living cells but capable of acting independently. Enzymes are complex proteins that are capable of inducing chemical changes in other substances without being changed themselves. Enzymes are specific in their action. They will act only upon a certain substance or a group of closely related chemical substances and no other. Each enzyme has an optimum temperature at which it acts with greatest efficiency, and is influenced by the reaction of the medium in which it acts, there being an optimum degree of acidity or alkalinity. Enzyme activity can be retarded or inhibited by low temperatures, high temperatures, and the presence of salts of heavy metals, dehydration, and ultraviolet radiation. Several hundred enzymes have been identified but as many as a thousand are thought to be present in mammals.”
Professor Artturi Virtunen, Helsinki biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, showed that enzymes are released in the mouth from raw vegetables when they are chewed: they come into contact with the food and start the act of digestion. And these food enzymes are not denatured by stomach acid, as some researchers have suggested, but remain active throughout the digestive tract. (Optimum Nutrition Bible, page 91).
So what's the big deal about getting these digestive enzymes from the diet as opposed to using the body's organs to supply the digestive enzymes? According to the research done by Dr. Howell,
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enzyme expert, each individual has what he calls an \potential or enzyme bank account\life ends. How does one's enzyme bank account get depleted? According to Dr. Howell, \
\Enzyme Nutrition points out that each one of us is given a limited
supply
of
bodily
enzyme energy at birth. This supply, like the energy supply in your new battery, has to last a lifetime. The faster you use up your enzyme supply, the shorter your life. A great deal of our enzyme energy is wasted
haphazardly
throughout life. The habit of cooking our food and eating it processed with chemicals; and
the use of alcohol, drugs, and junk food all draw out tremendous quantities of enzymes from our limited supply. Frequent colds and fevers and exposure to extremes of temperature also deplete the supply. A body in such a weakened, enzyme-deficient state is a prime target for cancer, obesity, heart disease, or other degenerative problems. A lifetime of such abuse ends in the tragedy of death at middle age\Enzyme Nutrition, Introduction pages ix and x).
\length of life is inversely proportional to the rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential of an organism. The increased
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use of food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential.\(Dr. Edward Howell, The Enzyme Nutrition Axiom). One of the keys to a healthy, long life is to consume dietary enzymes so that the body conserves the metabolic enzymes and uses them for other functions.
\remarkable thing about the eventual bankruptcy of the enzyme account is that it can proceed quite painlessly, without immediate symptoms. The only warning may be a belated malfunction or breakdowns in some organ far removed from the digestive tract. But the diagnostician unaware of the importance of enzyme nutrition would have difficulty in connecting such a referred process to the true, underlying cause. This is how an assortment of human ailments may get started\
Enzymes can also disarm free radicals. \mangos and grapes contain enzymes called peroxidase and catulase which help disarm free radicals\(Optimum Nutrition Bible, pages 91-92). Some mushrooms, sweet corn and raw honey also contain these enzymes along with amylase. However, when these foods are cooked, the beneficial enzymes are destroyed.
There are some foods that contain enzyme inhibitors. For example, lentils, beans and chickpeas contain trypsin-inhibitors that prevent protein from being completely digested. However, this anti-enzyme factor is destroyed either by sprouting or cooking them. The same is true for grains rich in phytates that can bind beneficial minerals. If these enzyme blockers are not inactivated, they can cause an enzyme drain on the body and cause intestinal gas. Nuts with brown skins such as almonds contain enzyme inhibitors. Soaking
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the nuts deactivates these inhibiters (This is covered in detail in the chapter on nuts).
“Previously, food was considered to have no effects except for the production of heat and energy from fats and carbohydrates and the repair of tissue by proteins. Now it is known that food can change organs and tissues, including glands, for better or worse. The fact that food can change the size and weight of these important glands (pituitary, testicle, ovaries, pancreas, adrenal, thyroid) has been demonstrated over and over again by careful experiments during past years. Professor Jackson and co-workers at the University of Minnesota fed white rats a diet containing 80 percent sugar (enzyme free) and reported marked differences in the size and weight of all principal organs and glands\(Enzyme Nutrition page 104).
\enzyme-free, refined items of food caused the most drastic deviations in pituitary gland size and appearance. When animals were fed diets greatly restricted in enzymes, the damage in the pituitary was identical or similar to that found in human beings subsisting on conventional food with greatly lowered food enzyme intake\(page 106). The Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, edition 17, (page 1516) says the following about the function of the pituitary gland. “The pituitary is an endocrine gland secreting a number of hormones that regulate many bodily processes, including growth, reproduction, and various metabolic activities. It is often referred to as the master gland of the body…” It has been proven that a predominantly cooked food diet can make one?s “master gland” that regulates so many bodily functions, shrink!
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Do you think that this could be a contributing factor in the cause of the diseases of modern society? I do.
Dr. Howell explains how a predominately cooked food diet causes an enlargement of the pancreas. \pancreas must send messages to all parts of the body looking for enzymes it can reprocess into digestive enzymes. It may even invade the warehouse of the precursors. In a pinch it will beg, borrow or steal them. When it finds them it has work to do. Changing metabolic enzymes into digestive enzymes means extra work for the pancreas. It must get bigger, just as muscle grows from more exercise.\\way, your brain, heart, arteries, all organs and tissues suffer from an enzyme labor shortage\Enzyme Nutrition, page 81.)
Dr. Howell has assessed more than fifty reports submitted in the scientific periodical literature on nutrition and brain weight over a number of years. He found that animals fed a diet, \with various vitamins and minerals, \but completely free of food enzymes had consistently lower brain weights than animals fed a diet consisting of a mixture of cooked and uncooked foods (page 76).
I very rarely indulge in cooked foods, but if I do, I consume a dietary supplement of plant-based enzymes in veggie capsules. These pills help me digest the enzyme free food so that my body does not have to generate as many digestive enzymes, therefore keeping my system from this burden. If you decide to go this route, beware of animal based enzymes. They may come from the pancreas of a pig or other animal. One popular product is Ox bile (from the stomach of an Ox). These enzymes work only in a particular
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