The whole point about digestive enzymes is that they help predigest the raw foods while in the upper stomach. Sure, they get destroyed once they reach the lower stomach-area, but by then they've already had some effect(for c.30 minutes:-

 

http://www.realmilk.com/enzyme.html

 

 

That's the trouble with a cooked-food diet. It involves the human body having to make an extra effort to produce enzymes all on its own in order to digest the unhealthy cooked-foods it consumes. The result is that a very large number of older people are therefore forced to take additional enzyme supplements to make up for the fact that their own body's enzyme-producing capabilities have become seriously compromised.

 

Now, according to Weston-Price, the healthiest hunter-gatherer tribes he visited, all incorporated some form of raw animal food in the diet(along with raw plant foods) - and those raw foods were rich in enzymes. There's no reason to believe that Palaeolithic tribesmen were different in this regard - and it would explain why such tribesmen didn't need the copious amounts of enzyme-supplements that so many followers of cooked-diets inevitably require as they age.

 

Re the claim that digestive enzymes in the  meats of living animals would kill those animals:- That's just ridiculous.  If that were truly the case, we'd all be dead along with all other animals and plant-life, billions of years ago. Enzymes are useful for certain specific functions(such as breaking down dead tissue), but they are not all-inclusive in their function.

 

 

Another point made by many Raw-foodists is that raw aged meats/plants is much easier to digest than even fresh, raw meats as the former include a lot more bacteria in them. While the gut does annihilate most bacteria, it doesn't annihilate all of it, so that the aged, raw foods can help replenish the bacteria in the gut. Needless to say, many followers of cooked-diets often have to eventually take extra bacterial supplements(less effective than bacteria-rich raw foods, IMO) in order to cope with their wrecked digestive systems, after being decades on such processed, bacteria-deficient diets.


Geoff





 
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 13:45:04 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: enzyme loss in boiling meat?
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> Eating digestive enzymes may be great (to aid in digestion), but any other
> enzymes are unlikely to make it through the gut undigested (and hence
> denatured) and into the blood. How many digestive enzymes do you really
> think you'll find in raw meat? If there were such enzymes in the flesh of
> an animal wouldn't they break down the animal's muscle tissue during life?
> 
> The list of enzymes in wikipedia sounds great, but taking almost any of them
> (any but the ones that are active in the stomach) should be no more
> beneficial than taking an equivalent amount of any other protein. Taking
> great pains to "preserve" such enzymes in food just so that they can be
> digested in the gut seems like a waste of energy.
> 
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Geoffrey Purcell
> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> 
> > There are, indeed, enzymes in raw foods, but no enzymes in cooked foods,
> > due to the excess heat destorying them.
> >
> > This gives an idea of the various classes of different enzymes that exist:-
> >
> > http://www.healthboosters.com/archive/digestive_enzymes.htm
> >
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_enzymes
> >
> > re enzymes/hot weather in other post:- Like I said, enzymes only start
> > getting
> > damaged at c.40 degrees celcius, and completely destroyed at c.60 degrees
> > celsius. So, on most hot days, enzymes would be unaffected.
> >
> > Geoff
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Visit my Training blog:
> http://karateconditioning.supersized.org

_________________________________________________________________
View your Twitter and Flickr updates from one place – Learn more!
http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/137984870/direct/01/