The Importance of Enzymes

There’s an aspect to Raw Food-Created Nutrients that is important, and it’s called the food enzyme theory. First, some background:

Back in the 1930s, when biochemists were discovering the last batch of vitamins and minerals like vitamin K and vitamin B6, researchers were also learning that proteins act as catalysts for all chemical reactions in the body. They called these proteins enzymes. Scientists initially identified eighty enzymes eighty years ago; today more than 5,000 enzymes have been discovered. Our minds can barely comprehend how complex the role of enzymes are when you consider that a single human liver cell contains at least 1,000 different enzyme systems.

Enzymes not only initiate chemical processes in the body by removing parts, adding parts, or just snipping off a piece to change their makeup, they do so quickly and efficiently. Without enzymes, life would slow to a standstill because chemical reactions inside our bodies wouldn’t happen fast enough unless enzymes were part of the mix. Enzymes seem to be particularly important for proper digestion, followed by tissue and organ repair.

Enzymes do their work by reducing the energy required for the individual reactions to take place. In other words, enzymes make it easier for two proteins to react together, which is an incredible circumstance when you consider that hundreds of thousands of reactions take place in the body every minute. For example, your central nervous system is busy processing information while your digestive system is processing your last meal. Your immune system is handling the many germs and particles that have entered your body, your heart is beating, and life-giving cells are being made and replaced as other internal systems carry out a multitude of other intricate processes. All of these functions involve thousands of different enzymes.

The late Edward Howell, M.D., and author of the seminal book Enzyme Nutrition, was among the pioneers who began studying the role of enzymes in the late 1920s and early 1930. After extensive clinical and laboratory research, he began sounding the alarm about the importance of eating the right foods to ensure a proper level of enzyme activity within the human body. He was particularly attentive to the role that digestive enzymes play in keeping us healthy because when the digestive tract goes off the rails, life can be miserable. Just ask anyone suffering from food poisoning or diarrhea resulting from the intestinal flora imbalance caused by taking antibiotics.

Digestive enzymes break down food so that our bodies can use the nutrients contained within that food. When food is swallowed, it moves to the stomach and then to the small intestine, followed by the large intestine. At each step along the way, specific enzymes break down different types of food. For example, an enzyme designed to digest protein has no effect on starch, and an enzyme active in the mouth may not be active in the stomach. Ideally, though, these enzymes work together, digesting food and delivering nutrients to cells to maintain their health.

To make sure that our bodies have the digestive enzymes needed to break down the proteins, starches, and fats in the foods we eat, Dr. Howell declared that it’s very important to eat certain raw and fermented foods high in enzyme content. The enzymes in raw food help jump-start the process of digestion and reduce the body’s need to produce digestive enzymes, he believed.

Raw foods are best since some enzymes are deactivated—a nicer word than destroyed—at a wet-heat temperature as low as 118 degrees Fahrenheit and a dry-heat temperature as low as 150 degrees. It could be a design of nature that foods and liquids at 117 degrees can be touched without burning yourself, but liquids over 118 degrees will burn you. Thus, there is a built-in mechanism for determining whether or not the food we are eating still contains its enzyme content, according to Sally Fallon, author of the book, Nourishing Traditions.

Cooking food destroys important enzymes, said Dr. Howell, and a diet composed exclusively of cooked food puts a severe strain on the body, drawing down its reserves. If the body is constantly overstimulated to produce enzymes that ought to be in foods, the result over time will be inhibited functions of the body and/or nutrient deficiencies. Humans eating an enzyme-poor diet, comprised primarily of cooked food, use up a tremendous amount of their enzyme potential in the outpouring of secretions from the pancreas and other digestive organs.

The result, according to Dr. Howell, is a shortened life span, illness, and lowered resistance to stress of all types. He pointed out in his book Enzymes for Health and Longevity that humans and animals on a diet comprised largely of cooked food, particularly grains, have poorer health that is evident when certain organs are examined postmortem.

“Dr. Howell formulated the following Enzyme Nutrition Axiom: The length of life is inversely proportional to the rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential of an organism. In other words, the increased use of food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential. Another sage rule can be expressed as follows: Whole foods give good health; enzyme-rich foods provide limitless energy,” wrote Sally Fallon in Nourishing Traditions. Unfortunately, our diets do not consist of these health-giving foods, and even if they did, the grains, fruits, and vegetables coming from our soil-depleted field don’t hold a candle to the nutritious bounty found in harvested crops prior to World War II.

While we could all stand to include plenty of raw foods in our diets—bountiful salads teeming with greens, tomatoes, and onions instead of cooked broccoli, baby carrots instead of crinkle-cut potato chips and sour cream dip, and a bowl of in-season strawberries and blueberries instead of a heaping helping of vanilla ice cream—the reality is that few people think “raw” when planning their menus. This is where supplements made from raw ingredients—such as Vitamin Code Raw Food-Created Nutrients —supplement the body with enzymes missing from cooked foods.

Enzymes are delicate dynamos. Delicate because many enzymes start to be destroyed when they reach a temperature of 118-140 degrees Fahrenheit, and they are obliterated when they stay at that temperature for even a miniscule period of time, which eliminates most steamed and cooked vegetables. Dynamos because these powerful biochemical catalysts are necessary for digestion, breathing, talking, moving, cellular energy, tissue and organ repair, neutralization of toxins, and brain activity. Dr. Howell said that although the body can manufacture enzymes, the more you use up your enzyme “potential”—meaning a regular diet of cooked, canned, or processed foods—the more you place yourself at risk for developing nutrient deficiencies that translate into serious health woes further down the line.