>Ian Billinghurst's dog-feeding book, Give Your Dog A Bone, makes it
clear
>that he believes the enzymes in meat play a very important bioactive
role-
>cooking inactivates them. ANY COMMENTS
>Ben Balzer

Well this isn't a comment to enzymes in meat, but more to the whole
idea of cooked versus uncooked food which you reminded me of.

If I understand the debate right the question is if a food is
digestable raw or not and then cooking is given as the opposite to
raw. But a really old method of treating food is fermenting it. This
has been done in cultures all around the world - with fruit,
vegetables and fish. (for ex. in Polynesia bread fruit was eaten fresh
for 9 months of the year and fermented the other 3 in holes dug in the
sand).

Basically anything fresh and organic will ferment in certain
conditions. Fermentation causes some of the proteins to break down,
without killing any enzymes, in fact with some vegetables the nutrient
level actually increases. It is lactic bacteria that causes this
producing lactic acid and enzymes. Small amounts of salt are added and
sometimes also a little water and then the natural lactic bacteria on
the surface of the vegetable does the rest.

Fermented vegetables were part of a staple diet in many areas in
Europe, but was lost with the advent of industrialisation. With the
cheap availabilty of sugar, fermented vegetables were also replaced
with "pickles". Today studies of poorer populations who still eat
fermented foods (lacking refrigeration etc) show that they have less
allergies and other health problems...

My personal experience of fermented vegetables is that they alleviate
many health problems - and maybe all the live bacteria in them
counteract some of the effect of grains? Certainly I noticed a marked
difference in my daughter eczema when she ate fermented carrots, even
befoe I knew what caused her problems. .


For those who wish to eat more raw but find some vegetables hard to
digest, I suggest fermented vbegetables. I am going to try to make my
own now this fall with winter carrots, garlic, white cabbage and
cauliflower.

Cecilia in Sweden