Aaron Sugarman wrote:
> << Certainly intriguing, but I'd be looking for a little more evidence. >>
>
> Of course ;), but it's happened to many people I know who've gone raw, and the
> thousands and thousands before us.  It's a remarkable change.  Life altering.

I should really have said *better* evidence, as well as more. Citing examples
of people (even millions of people) whose health improved after switching to
a raw food diet offers very little evidence regarding the value of ingesting
enzymes. It actually offers only limited evidence of the value of raw diets!
To convince me (or anyone), you should provide examples of people who kept
eating the *exact same* foods as always, only they stopped cooking them. I
suspect that this would be the case in a small minority of the cases you
describe.

> <<Can you point me to this research?>>
>
> Dr Meyer at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital found that as one ages their
> enyzme saliva content decreases so that a 27 year old has twice as many
> enzymes as a 77 year old.  A lower enzyme content is also found in people with
> diseases.  As cooked food requires the body to produce more enzymes for
> digestion, you can imagine how that causes premature aging...

Actually what I'm thinking is that just because old people have fewer
enzymes, it doesn't follow that people with fewer enzymes will become old.

Also, I'm wondering why cooked food requires the body to produce more enzymes
for digestion. Is it because the enzymes already in the food are destroyed
by cooking? But if there are enzymes in the food that facilitate digestion,
why doesn't food digest itself while sitting on the kitchen counter?

> Dr Kollath of the Karolinska Hospital in Stockhold found that when animals
> were put on a cooked diet similar to the western diet, initially they seemed
> ok, then they developed degenerative disease at an earlier rate.  Dr.
> Pottenger found the same several decades ago in his famous experiments with
> cats.  After 3 or 4 generations on a cooked diet, the cats were infertile.  It
> took the children of the second generation cats returned to raw foods to
> restore the health of the cats over several generations.

Interesting, but I don't see how it's very good evidence for the importance
of ingesting enzymes. Cooked food may be inferior in other ways that have
nothing to do with enzyme content.

> Peter Rothchild, PhD has found in a double blind study that there was a 70-90%
> increase in blood levels of serum glutathione peroxidase after giving these
> people oral wheat sprout concentrates.  This means that the enzymes in the
> sprouts were absorbed through the digestive tract.
>
> One study reported in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that 70% of
> plant amylase is active in the small intestine after it was ingested orally.

This is definitely more like what I was hoping for. A good starting point for
research, thanks.