Md> Subject: veg-raw: re: overeating (fwd)
 Md> in a recent post, Roopali Garg <[log in to unmask]> inquired:

 >What (admittedly little) I've read about raw
 >foods talks about the 40 degree Celsius threshold level for not
 >deactivating enzymes.  I was wondering if dried fruit have "live"
 >enzymes or not, generally speaking.

    Where, indeed, does this 'living enzyme' myth come from??
    Enzymes are nothing more than proteins, chemicals, and as such
are no more or less 'alive' than any other chemical.  I believe
Hippocrates Health Institute has played a major role in propagating
the 'living enzyme' myth.  For decades, they touted the 'living
enzymes' in sprout soak water as beneficial when all it contained was
seed waste products and contaminants from the surrounding air.  Why
would someone believe that the rotting waste products from sprouting
seeds were beneficial to the human being??
    The enzymes in the any fruit are there to mediate the
particular fruit's biochemistry; and the fruit's biochemistry
certainly knows nothing about human digestive biochemistry.  Enzymes
are highly specific, that is they mediate only one particular
chemical reaction.  To assume a fruit enzyme whose job it is to build
the fruit, somehow also 'knows' about human biochemistry and is just
waiting to be called to serve humans is a bit over the edge.
    Assuming that enzymes are active in 'foods', being proteins, why
wouldn't they be digested along with all the other proteins??  Being
digested, they lose whatever enzymatic activity they had.  Since they
don't get into the blood, just how are they supposed to be of benefit
to the human whose biochemistry is eminently qualified to make its own
enzymes??

 > I find that right now, I can
 >eat three large, raw meals, many fruit snacks, and still be ravenous.
 >I had a hard time doing other things as my mind would continue to
 >think about food.  Any advice?

    How long have you been doing this?  Your body may be used to
decades of the old indigestible cultural meals which just sit in your
stomach for hours not digesting.  No doubt, you have (as we all were)
conditioned to falsely think that the 'lump', i.e. 'being full' is a
sign that you have eaten well.
    Since the raw food will digest faster and thus leave the stomach
faster, you misinterpret this lack of 'the lump' as your being
'hungry'.  It is NOT a sign of being hungry, just that 'the lump' is
no longer a major part of your life.  Get used to feeling light, empty
and energetic.  Dump the lump!

 >What about fermentation?
 >  Any other factoids about fermentation that I should know?.

    Bacteria eating dead material certainly can not make anything
beneficial to the human being.  Why would a rational person consume
rotting 'food', billions of living bacteria, billions of dead
bacteria, and the bacterial waste products??  They wouldn't.
    Fermented 'foods' were developed way before we knew anything about
bacteria from the observation that foods that caused digestive
problems, such as animal milk and soy beans, caused _less_ problems if
they rotted a little first; so these great traditions started.
    It's the same as the great meat myth; raw meat is indigestible,
set it on fire and one can eat it easier and it even tastes better.
So, this horrible error of eating cooked animal corpses was
institutionalized for hundreds of thousands of years down to the
present when we are now just starting to do the research that shows
what diseases are caused by this irrational practice.