> The way I see it, the link between enzyme-deficiency among older people
> and the fact that they all eat cooked-diets is the most likely explanation
> available(after all SAD diets and palaeo diets involve so many differences
> to each other that the only common thread is the cooked-aspect - an
> example would be comparing a cooked-vegan diet to an atkins diet, both
> being reasonably popular and who also are featured in various food-science
> studies).

You said this before.  It's still false.  There are many similarities in
the diets of SAD eaters, not just one.  For example, they are all very
likely to consume large amounts of sugar, which has many deleterious
effects on the organs of the body, including the pancreas.  Although there
are many differences in detail among SAD diets, they all involve large
amounts of grain-based foods, significant amounts of dairy, large amounts
of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, and so on.  To say that cooking is the
*only* factor likely to have relevance to enzyme-deficiency among older
people is simply not justified without more direct support.

And there still remains the question: Just how widespread is enzyme
deficiency among the elderly anyway?  Do we have any data on that?  What
percentage of people over, say, age 65 need enzyme supplementation?  Do we
have even a rough estimate?  That information would be highly relevant to
this question.

> . The only way to disprove it would be to show proof that non-SAD-eating
> palaeodieters suffered far less from such enzyme-related issues than
> SAD-eaters.

The burden of proof is on the person who puts forward the pancreatic
exhaustion theory in the first place.  You have claimed that cooking is
the *best explanation* for the need for enzyme supplementation in the
elderly.  For that claim to have any believability at all, you need to (a)
document that this need in the elderly is in fact widespread; and (b) show
that rawists are in fact *less* prone to pancreatic exhaustion than
SADists and paleodieters who cook.

> Re comment:- :"Except for meats.  Are we in agreement that there are no
> digestive enzymes
>> in meats?"
>
>  What about the edogenous proteases in raw muscle-meats etc.? Seems a
> rather wrong assumption.

I stand corrected.  It's still unclear to me what role these play in human
digestion.  After an animal is slaughtered, aging makes the meat more
tender, due to the action of these enzymes.  So aging itself could be
considered a form of "pre-digestion", but then all meat is aged to some
extent, and it's far from clear that 30 minutes or so of additional aging
in the cardia of the stomach makes any material difference.

I've spent several hours now looking for primary source research on food
enzymes and predigestion.  So far, I've only found advocacy and sales
sites, all using the same text and linking to the Enig page; no citations
to the actual scientific literature.  That doesn't mean it isn't there;
I'll keep looking.

Todd Moody