Thursday, January 24, 2013

Raw Food and Enzymes

What is the difference between raw food and cooked food?  The only difference is the presence of the enzymes.  If you take a raw almond and a cooked or pasteurized almond to a lab to be compared, their nutritional value will be exactly the same.  The only difference is the enzymes or life force.

If you bury a pasteurized almond in the soil it will disintegrate in about three weeks.  If you plant a raw almond, however, it will not disintegrate but will remain through the winter and the spring rains can cause it to germinate to become a tree and bear many almonds.

Our bodies also contain enzymes.  When we eat raw foods full of enzymes we don't have to draw on our own finite supply of enzymes.  When we eat cooked and denatured food then we must draw on our own enzymes in order to utilize this food.  Once our enzymes are gone I'm told they are gone forever.  Thus people like me probably only have 25-30% of our enzymes left.

I want to be more protective of my precious store of enzymes and not squandor them unnecessarily.

Enzymes are large biological molecules.  They are responsible for thousands of chemical reactions that sustain life.  They act as catalyst in digesting our food.  Most enzymes are proteins.  Almost all the chemical reactions in our cells need enzymes in order to occur at speeds high enough for life.

Some things increase enzyme activity and some things decrease it.  Drugs and poisons are enzyme inhibitors.  Aspirin inhibits the enzymes that produce inflammation thus suppressing pain and inflammation.  In Nature Cure we consider inflammation to be a healing process and would not want to suppress it.

Enzymes are important to our bodies.  They regulate our cells and generate movement.  They are important in our digestive systems.  They break down starches and proteins so they can be absorbed by the intestines.  Different enzymes digest different foods.  Micro-organisms in the gut produce an enzyme to break down plant fiber.  Enzymes work together to create complex metabolic pathways and raise metabolism enough to take care of the cells.  A lack of enzymes leads to slow metabolism.

Enzymes are essential for balance (homeostasis).  Any malfunction of a critical enzyme can lead to a genetic disease.  A fatal illness can be caused by the malfunction of just one type of enzyme.

Raw food has a lot in common with our bodies.  Raw foods start to break down rapidly when exposed to high heat (over 118 degrees).  So would our bodies if we had a temperature that high.  Enzymes can no longer function after they are exposed to high heat.

Cooked foods are not optimal because their enzymes are damaged.  This requires us to use our own valuable enzymes to process the food.  The digestion of cooked food requires more energy than the digestion of raw food.  It passes through the digestive tract in half the time or less.

Eating dead food stresses and overworks the organs.  Sometimes they become unable to digest the food.

After eating cooked food the blood responds by increasing the number of white blood cells.  This is called digestive leukocytosis.  Researchers observed that this always occurs after meals are eaten, so it was considered to be normal.  No one knew why this happened so it was considered a stress reaction.

In 1930, researchers in Switzerland found that eating raw unprocessed food did not cause a reaction in the blood.  But if the food had been heated this always caused a rise in the number of white cells in the blood.

To health and happiness.

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