Enzymes and Rawfoodism

In this day and age we always measure the foods worth by its protein, calories, fat and carbohydrate content. But we forget the most important thing LIVE ENZYMES.
"life is something that has been built up about the enzyme. its a corollary of enzyme activity". Live enzymes are crucial to our health, vitality and beauty. THEY ARE THE CATALYST FOR EVERY HUMAN FUNCTION. There is 5000+ different enzymes.

For example:
1) Live enzymes help repair your DNA.
2) They repair and prevent wrinkles
3) help even out your skin tone
4) Help us assimilate the nutrients in the food
5) help speed up detoxification cause they free up more metabolic energy

we were born with enzymes, but it gets depleted over time by our eating, eating cooked food, lifestyle and lack of Raw nutrition. And the consumption of empty calories and animal products.

Try to eat as much raw fruits and vegetables as you can. Dont be afraid to eat fruit either, they contain the live enzymes that help break down the sugar. SO ITS NOT BAD FOR YOU.
#rawjuiceguru #rawjuicegurutip #liveenzymes #enzymes #raw #vegan#rawvegan

Kale: great for you raw and cooked. (Photo: rocksunderwater/Getty Images)

“I’ve heard from friends that cooking vegetables destroys all of the enzymes. Should I consider a raw food diet?”

—Ariel Jackson

Raw-foodists eat a diet that consists completely (or mostly) of foods—such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and sprouted legumes—that are uncooked. That’s not to say there’s no processing involved. Some warming is allowed, although food can’t be heated above a certain temperature or its natural enzymes are destroyed (more about that later). Most raw-foodists are vegan, but others do eat raw eggs and raw cheese made from raw, or unpasteurized, milk. With all the peeling, chopping, extracting, blending, dehydrating, soaking, fermenting, and grinding that goes on, raw-foodists can spend more time in the kitchen than people who actually cook their meals.





And raw-foodism (aka rawism, live diet, or living diet) is no longer a fringe category in the diet world: A whole new wave of converts has embraced this approach to health and wellness. It’s not new, of course; the history of raw-foodism is too long and colorful to get into here, but its proponents included the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and Swiss physician (and creator of muesli) Maximilian Bircher-Benner, who founded a lifestyle reform movement based on raw food in the late-19th century.


There are many different degrees and versions of a raw foods diet, but, in general, it is rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Many foods, in fact, are more nutritious when eaten raw, as heat degrades some key players, including vitamins C and B6. Since all highly processed food—i.e., the stuff that fills most supermarket shelves—is off limits, you’re eliminating the saturated fat, trans fats, sugar, sodium, and extra calories that can get you in a boatload of trouble. That alone is huge, in my book. That said, though, raw-foodists, especially those who are vegans or fruitarians, really need to make sure they get enough vitamin B12, calcium, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids.


And, unfortunately, several principles of raw-foodism are based on misunderstandings about basic human biology and nutrition. I don’t have the space or time to go into all of them here, but there are a couple of biggies. One of the major misconceptions is that a raw foods diet is the most “natural” way to eat.


Think about it: We all know the marketing buzzword natural is essentially meaningless, right? Aside from what it signifies on cereal boxes and packages of chicken parts (“precisely nothing” is the correct answer), as I mentioned in a recent column on the Paleo Diet, early humans survived and thrived on many different diets. And just a few years ago, renowned Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham made the compelling case that learning to cook food was the catalyst in human evolution. In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, he argued that cooked food, with its high caloric density and high digestibility, enabled us to evolve our large brains and made us the species we are today. “Fossil evidence indicates that this dependence arose not just some tens of thousands of years ago, or even a few hundred thousand,” he wrote, “but right back at the beginning of our time on Earth, at the start of evolution.” We’ve had plenty of time to adapt, in other words.


Raw food diets have often been reported in nonindustrialized societies. Perhaps the most famous example of this occurred in the 1940s, when nutritionist Edward Howell (more about him in a minute) popularized the notion that the traditional Inuit diet was dominated by raw foods. Upon further study, however, that and other, similar, claims have been found to be exaggerated or false. Inuit men on the hunt would eat raw fish, for instance, and some soft (i.e., spreadable) foods such as blubber and liver were preferred raw, but a substantial cooked meal was the norm at night.


One benefit of cooking, by the way, is that it breaks apart cell walls in foods to release carotenoids that are otherwise unavailable. The carotenoid lycopene, for instance, is four to five times higher in cooked tomatoes than in fresh. As far as spinach goes, cooking both increases the lutein and beta-carotene and reduces the chemicals that inhibit the absorption of calcium and iron. Of course, boiling vegetables to death is going to have a negative impact on their nutrients, and overindulging in char-blackened red meat—which contains carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines—may increase risk for some cancers. But that’s where different cooking techniques come in handy: Steam, sauté, quick-braise, or stir-fry veggies, and perhaps slap fish on the grill instead of a steak.


Another fallacy revolves around enzymes, a special type of protein. All living organisms contain thousands of different enzymes, and each one triggers a very specific biochemical reaction. Central to raw-foodism is the near-mystical belief that the enzymes in raw food carry a “life force” that leads to increased vitality and other health benefits. This sciencey-sounding theory stems from the aforementioned Edward Howell, whose sources from the 1920s and ’30s were invalidated long ago. It is perfectly true that cooking destroys the enzymes in food, but you know what? It doesn’t matter.




7 Diet Myths Debunked!




First, the enzymes in plants are for the plants. They help with germination, photosynthesis, respiration, decomposition, and so on. They cannot help with any human body functions, including digestion. Our bodies produce their own digestive enzymes for that, about 22 of them. Second, the hydrochloric acid your stomach produces to break down food is so concentrated that one drop will eat a hole in a piece of wood. Very few of the enzymes in raw foods make it through that acid bath into the intestines, where nutrients are absorbed. Don’t believe me? Want to see my sources? Pick up any high-school biology textbook.


So what’s the take-away? Because many foods are more nutritious when eaten raw, it’s a smart idea to work them into your daily routine; raw nuts and cruciferous vegetables like kale, broccoli, and cabbage are a great place to start. And a diet that includes lots of plants, whether raw or cooked, is undeniably healthful. But the more outlandish raw-foodism claims are not borne out by legitimate science.




http://www.takepart.com




Virtually all living things—including those we cook and eat—contain enzymes. Enzymes, which act as the spark plugs for the vast majority of chemical reactions that make life possible, are asine qua non for life.




Although most food eaten in the United States has been cooked, which inactivates the enzymes it contains, all the plant and animal foods in our meals are derived from once-living, enzyme-abundant things.




Over 2,500 different kinds of enzymes are found in living things. All enzymes are proteins, very special kinds of proteins that act as catalysts. Enzymes give our body chemistry its vitality, literally giving our metabolism a jump start. Plus, as molecules that enable the breaking down of our food, they also play a critically important role within our digestive system. Enzymes in our saliva allow us to break apart starches. Enzymes in our stomach help us break apart proteins. Enzymes in our intestines help us break apart fats, proteins, and carbohydrates of all kinds.




When we eat fresh, uncooked foods, those foods can still contain active enzymes. When we chew a freshly picked leaf of lettuce, we break the cells in the leaf apart, releasing its nutrients, including enzymes. Enzymes are not automatically destroyed by the acids or temperatures in our digestive tract. Enzymes in the stomach—called gastric enzymes—are specially designed to function in the stomach's extremely acid conditions and are critical to our health. Our bodies can overheat from fever, extreme exercise or summer weather, but not to temperatures that will prevent the enzymes inside us from continuing to function.

Our digestive tract has specialized areas for absorbing large molecules, including enzymes (which are proteins), from food into our bloodstream. These areas house our M cells. M cells are specialized cells designed to selectively deliver large molecules from our intestines into our cells and bloodstream. The passing of enzymes from a mother to her nursing newborn is a good example of this M cell function. A mother's milk contains the milk sugar, lactose. An enzyme called lactase is needed to digest lactose, but an infant's body is not yet capable of manufacturing this enzyme. So, the mother sends lactase along with her milk, and in this way enables the baby to digest and absorb its lactose.




Ordinarily, we cook food at temperatures at least twice that of normal body temperature. For this reason, fresh, raw plant foods are our primary source of food enzymes. (Due to their high potential for bacterial contamination, most animal foods would be too risky for us to eat raw). While there have been no large scale, controlled studies to document the impact of enzyme-containing, fresh, raw plant foods on digestion and health, practitioners in fields of complementary, natural, and functional medicine have used enzyme supplementation successfully to help treat a wide variety of health problems and have long advocated the inclusion of fresh, organic, raw plant foods in the diet.




http://www.whfoods.com