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From:
Wes Peterson <[log in to unmask]>
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Raw Food Diet Support List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 2 Nov 1998 19:02:20 -0600
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Is Your Body Demanding Food Enzymes?
By Dr. Edward Howell

The following article was written by Dr. Howell late in his life, in
attempt to make clear his revolutionary food enzyme concept.

In spite of all I have written about food enzymes since 1936, common
misconceptions
persist and distort their significance in nutrition. Let me restate that
all animal and
vegetable foods in their natural state contain non-caloric elements in
addition to proteins, carbohydrates and fats. In the order of their
discovery and recognition as indispensable food elements, they are
minerals, vitamins, and enzymes. It is obvious that merely discovering
that foods are endowed by nature with any particular non-caloric food
material should constitute all the proof needed to establish this
substance as a protector of the health and well-being of living
organisms, including the human race, during the whole lifespan. This is
because constituents of unprocessed natural foods have had countless
eons of time to mold and shape the form and function of living organisms
and have created a dependence to fill a need. Therefore, to remove any
part of natural food from the normal diet could not be sanctioned
because of the possibility of harm to the health and well-being.

This had been shown by the history of nutrition. Not very long ago, the
only elements
considered necessary for wholesome nutrition were protein, carbohydrates
and fats.
Minerals were considered unimportant and ignobly characterized by
chemists as "ash"
because they were all that remained after food was burned in the
laboratory. Vitamins and enzymes in foods were unknown. The fiber of
foods was removed and discarded because
fiber was believed to be too coarse for the human digestive tract. Many
people formerly
believed that vegetables were fit food only for rabbits and cows – not
humans. The
immigrants flooding here from Europe during the early years of this
century, foolishly
embraced white bread with open arms. In the backward, unindustrialized
countries, only the wealthy ate white bread, the common people having to
be satisfied with whole-grain bread, of whose health value they were
ignorant. The bran of wheat, which we now value as necessary food fiber,
along with the valuable wheat embryo or germ, were removed and
found their way into rations for cattle and hogs, proving to serve as
excellent nutrition for these animals.

For over a hundred years, enzymes had a reputation as being important in
the digestion of food, and that was all. Their area of operation was
believed to be limited to the stomach and intestines. It was not
realized until recently that the work enzymes do in the digestive tract
is only a minor part of their complete duties in the bodies of animals
and human beings. Enzymes are the active agents in metabolism – in
anabolism and catabolism. Enzymes are the actors behind the scenes in
the immunity processes. They power your thinking, breathing, sexual
activity – your very life. Thousands of different enzymes – metabolic
enzymes – are involved in everything going on in the heart, lungs,
liver, arteries, blood, muscles – in all organs and tissues. Your body
is expected to make all of these digestive and metabolic enzymes.

But while the body is required to produce less than a dozen essential
digestive enzymes,
functioning only in the food canal, it must furnish thousands of
metabolic enzymes to
service the multitudinous activities of the entire organism. Metabolic
enzymes do work,
they are workers. They take absorbed food products with their minerals
and vitamins, and
build them into tissues. They repair the body and aim to keep the organs
healthy.
Furthermore, through substrate action, metabolic enzymes remove worn-out
material from
the cells, keeping everything in repair. It can be recognized that this
is a far bigger job for enzymes than merely digesting food in the food
canal, part of which should be done by food enzymes, or if need be, by
other exogenous enzymes, meaning supplemental enzymes. So which are more
important in the body, digestive enzymes or metabolic enzymes? Let us
beware about permitting a metabolic enzyme labor shortage to form, which
can induce our problem diseases.

If metabolic enzymes are more important, then why must they play second
fiddle, and have
second call, in the allocation of the body’s resources? Why are
digestive enzymes kept rich by having first call on the limited enzyme
potential of the organism, while the more important metabolic enzymes
must be satisfied with what is left? I must emphasize that the reader of
this treatise is an owner of the serviceable and precious metabolic
enzymes. Smart owners will not force their digestive enzymes to do work
meant for food enzymes if this extra burden on the digestive enzymes
requires the body to put a strain on producing their multi-functional
metabolic enzymes and not have enough of them to carry on their
important functions. If you were a biological engineer, responsible for
efficient operation and health of human organisms, is it not logical
that you would see to it that the digestive enzymes be given less work
by allowing food enzymes, or supplemental enzymes, if need be, to do
more digesting, as evolution, or the God of nature’s laws, ordained?

Each plant, animal and human being can make the enzymes needed to do
that which needs
to be done in the organism. Any high school student knows that the human
digestive glands can make the enzymes needed to digest our foods. Some
well-informed students also know that human saliva and pancreatic juice
are fabulously rich in enzymes, far stronger than in any wild animal
living under the laws of nature. The uninitiated and perplexed reader
may reasonably ask why we need the enzymes in food when our digestive
enzymes, in the prime of life, can do the job so well. "Are not food
enzymes superfluous and nonessential," some people may ask. Even those
in high places have been beset by difficulties in discerning the hidden
facts. To clarify an otherwise muddled situation, is precisely why I
wrote this narrative. But before proceeding, it is urgent to call
attention to yet another important pillar in the Food Enzyme Concept.

Let me repeat again the vast difference between vitamins and enzymes in
food, and the
unique quality that separates enzymes from all other food factors and
establishes food
enzymes as very special food ingredients. I refer to their extreme
vulnerability to
destruction by heat. Whereas most food factors, including vitamins
suffer only minor or no demonstrable harm from heat preparation in the
kitchen or factory, enzymes are
completely destroyed by manufacturing or culinary operations. Enzymes
can withstand no
cooking, boiling, frying, roasting, stewing, broiling or pasteurizing.
Cookery destroys them to the extent of – not 99%, but 100%.

Now, permit me to return to the matter of why food enzymes are so
important and
indispensable to the reader’s present and future health – possibly even
more so where the digestive juices are overflowing with personal
enzymes. In the first place all of nature’s creatures welcome and
receive food enzymes, in every morsel of food, in addition to the
enzymes they produce. Fish are surrounded by enzymes as they swim in the
ocean water. Plants are dependent of free enzymes in the soil to help
make plant food, and suffer increased susceptibility to disease when
they must subsidize deficient soil enzymes with their own metabolic
enzymes. When you eat a raw food, the enzymes within it are immediately
released and begin to digest it in the mouth, even before being
swallowed, and before your own enzymes are even secreted.

The same happens with animals living on raw food. When birds, like the
chicken, swallow
intact wheat or corn seeds, they go into the crop. There the seeds swell
with moisture and the food enzymes inside the seeds begin to digest the
starch, protein and fat before the seeds reach the stomach of the bird.
Snakes and many other creatures eat their food by swallowing it entire
without chewing. Small snakes swallow live rats, frogs, and such. Large
snakes, such as the python, engulf live pigs. The body of the hapless
victim shows up as a large bolus in the midriff, causing an enormous
distention of the stomach of the snake, which allows no room for the
snake’s enzymes or acid to enter. Only after the digestive enzymes and
catheptic enzymes of the prey, which now belong to the snake, and have
become its food enzymes, have performed the ritual of predigestion, and
liquefied the body of the prey, can the snake’s enzymes find room in its
own stomach, to proceed with digestion.

Millions of fish swallow entire smaller fish every day as their normal
diet, while millions of birds gulp down entire fish or other organisms
to constitute their complete food intake. And thus the ritual of
predigestion by food enzymes is carried on in the entire animal kingdom.
A lion has teeth adapted only to tear away large chunks of meat from the
body of prey. He may tear off thirty pounds of chunks and then walk away
dragging a full belly to a sanctuary to rest, while the pressure from
the enormous distention of his stomach by the meat forms a coalescent
bolus which crowds out everything, giving no room for the lion’s acid
and enzymes to enter. The lion’s peptic enzymes and acid can find room
to get into its stomach only after the catheptic enzymes within the meat
itself have performed their role of predigestion and reduced the bolus
to a plastic or liquid consistency. Only then can the lion’s enzymes
carry on the digestive process from where the cathepsin stopped. It is
indeed a law of nature, tested and proven by millions of years that
enzymes within the food have been ordained by evolution, or evolution’s
God, to predigest food, and that your private enzymes were never
intended to do the job alone.

Must we pay a penalty when we alone, of the hundreds of thousands of
species of living
treasures on this earth, force our unaided, personal (endogenous)
digestive enzymes to
digest food, instead of letting exogenous (outside) enzymes do part of
the job by
predigestion, according to nature’s law? There is a penalty which is
inescapable and
cumulative. It is deceptively unnoticeable when we are young, but when
our bodies are
permanently called upon to make too many enzymes for digestion, the
stress of
competition for enzymes, forces our organism to produce less of the
other kinds of
enzymes needed to keep all organs and tissues in proper repair and
health.

In other words, if the body has very rich digestive enzymes, it must be
satisfied with poor metabolic enzymes. The organism cannot at the same
time make very rich digestive
enzymes, and very rich metabolic enzymes, but a hyper-secretion of one
kind can be
attained only at the expense of a hyposecretion of the other kind. The
old saying that the man with an "iron stomach" is the prime candidate
for an early heart attack, is
unfortunately quite true. When we flirt with the integrity of metabolic
enzymes, and abuse the enzymes’ potential, we are inviting the most
serious types of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc., to make
themselves at home in our bodies. Food-enzyme deficiency and its
aftermath must be recognized as the most serious and profound oversight
and omission in nutrition.

Since wild animals do not cook, what is there to prevent ingested food
enzymes from
predigesting the food of wild animals? This leaves the human race in the
unenviable and
isolated position of being the only living creatures forcing their
digestive enzymes to suffer the burden of unaided digestion of food,
which in turn is reflected in compromising the potency of metabolic
enzymes. Anything lowering the efficiency of metabolic enzymes, impairs
their ability to keep the organ systems healthy enough to ward off
disease. The fact that the health of people and their domesticated
animals does not measure up to the high standards of wild animals,
offers support to indications that the relative potency of metabolic
enzymes plays a key role in the health discrepancy. Professional
experience has shown that those domesticated and laboratory animals
eating a human-type diet, are plagued with a variety of human-type
serious diseases after they pass the middle of the lifespan. On the
contrary, wild animals are immune to our problem diseases, unless they
are exposed to toxic influences, or fed at our garbage dumps. The
animals of the deep jungle are singularly free of degenerative and
problem diseases which affect people and their pets and farm animals.

It is sometimes said that food enzymes or supplemental enzymes swallowed
with food
cannot do any work because the acid in the stomach prevents their
activity. This is true if the enzymes and very strong acid are mixed
together in a test tube in a laboratory
demonstration. But it is untrue when enzymes are taken into a living
body. The stomach
normally allows salivary enzymes, food and supplementary enzymes to
digest food for up to an hour. When they have finished their job of
performing predigestion, food enzymes and proper supplemental enzymes,
functioning at a lower pH, continue digestion of protein, carbohydrate
and fat for a longer time than salivary or pancreatic enzymes; salivary
digestion being restricted to starch. As the stomach acid level becomes
higher, the special acid enzymes, pepsin, can continue the digestion of
protein where the others left off. These facts have been elicited after
the stomach and upper intestinal contents were pumped out and examined
at various intervals following meals.

I have been able to show the dire consequences following use of the
enzyme-deficient diet by discovering that the pancreas must enlarge to
produce the vast quantities of enzymes necessary when the body is forced
to digest all of the food without outside aid. This does not harm the
pancreas at all, anymore than it harms a muscle when it must enlarge to
do more work. Similarly, when a government agency must enlarge to give
away more money to foreign governments, the only harmed parties are the
taxpayers. An enlarged pancreas can give out and waste more precious
enzymes than a normal organ, but this generous dispensation is not good
for the body as a whole because it strains the enzyme potential of the
whole body in its effort to produce a normal quota of metabolic enzymes
to keep all organs and tissues healthy and disease-free.

Those who theorize that food enzymes do not digest food in the human
stomach, thereby
confess ignorance of the fact that physiologists have fed test meals to
human subjects,
along with the food enzyme, barley amylase. Other physiologists fed test
meals and waited for the salivary enzyme, ptyalin, to work on them.
Later, the contents of the duodenum and stomach were pumped out and it
was learned that marked digestion of the food consumed occurred in both
instances. And a large portion of the enzymes fed with the food, were
recovered, proving that they were not permanently inactivated, and
proving furthermore, that theoretical prognostication can be dangerous.

There are those who surreptitiously proclaim that food enzymes cannot do
any work in the
stomach because all enzymes are proteins, and food enzymes are digested
as are other
proteins. But this argument very conveniently overlooks, or perhaps
tries to hide the fact, that if the enzyme complex had no special and
specific immunity against being digested because it contains protein,
what is to prevent one portion of the enzyme pepsin from being digested
by an adjoining and contiguous portion of the same enzyme while pepsin
functions in the stomach? Why do pancreatic proteolytic enzymes not
digest each other while they are at work reducing food proteins to amino
acids in the small intestine?

Further evidence that food enzymes have been ordained by nature over
countless millions
of years to help digest the food of all creatures, including human
beings, is supplied by special organs with no function except to serve
as food-enzyme stomachs. Food enzymes
are made up of proteolytic food enzymes to digest protein, amylolytic
food enzymes to
digest carbohydrates, and lipolytic food enzymes to digest fats. The
so-called killer whale, a member of Cetacea, has a food enzyme stomach
larger than any land creature. The
food-enzyme stomach of this whale has been found to contain more than a
dozen porpoises
and seals. In one instance this enormous food-enzyme stomach, which is
the first of the
whale’s three stomachs, and much larger than the others, was found to
house the bodies of 32 entire seals undergoing digestion by the seal
enzymes, which now belong to the whale, and are the whale’s
food-enzymes. The remarkable fact elicited by physiologists is that the
first stomach (forestomach) has no enzymes or acid of its own at all.
Its membranes have no glands to produce these agents for digestion. The
first stomach is simply a large reservoir which provides space for the
enzymes within the bodies of swallowed animals to digest their own
bodies to a sufficiently plastic or liquid consistency which enables the
food material to pass through a small opening connecting the first
stomach to the second stomach, which makes enzymes to continue the
digestion.

There are many wild ruminating animals, among which the cow and sheep
have been
domesticated. The cow has four stomachs, the first three I name
food-stomach or rumen,
while the fourth is the smallest and the only one making enzymes. In
ruminating animals
the food-enzyme stomach harbors protozoa which are tiny animals that
supply enzymes to
help food enzymes digest the bulky herbivorous diet. In contrast the
Cetacea (whale,
porpoise, dolphin) do not have digestive help from protozoa. Other
creatures with
food-enzyme stomachs are grain-eating birds, such as the chicken and
pigeon; various
species of monkeys with cheek or buccal pouches, and animals with
special body pouches.
Crop is the name given to the food enzyme stomach of grain-eating birds
and other birds
and insects.

For hundreds of years human beings felt quite sure they had only a
single stomach to
digest food. But scientists have found this is not strictly true, and
that humans have a
digestive organ functioning as two stomachs. The upper part, or cardiac
end, produces no
acid or enzymes and is a food enzyme stomach. It has been designed as a
reservoir to
receive food, and permit the enzymes in the food itself to predigest the
food for further digestion by the chain of enzymes along the digestive
tract. Therefore, the human being also owns a food-enzyme stomach. This
fact, along with the other evidence I have presented, establishes food
enzymes as cardinal digestive agents, making it impossible for anyone to
lightly brush them aside.

The foregoing avalanche of relevant information supports the recently
discovered law of
the adaptive secretion of digestive enzymes which proclaims that the
body values enzymes
highly and produces no more of them than it is forced to. If more
digestive food enzymes
are eaten, the body will automatically make fewer digestive enzymes and
can then produce
more metabolic enzymes, should they be needed. The body will therefore
be in a better
position to prevent or deal with the problems of killer diseases.

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