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Virtually all chronic degenerative diseases are caused or aggravated by digestive problems. After the most extensive study on nutrition ever undertaken by the government, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs concluded in its 1978 report entitled "Diet and Killer Diseases," that the average American diet is responsible for the development of chronic degenerative diseases such as heart disease, atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, stroke, etc. Many of the most common health complaints revolve around a 20-foot, mucus-lined tube that directly interfaces us with our environment. This is no mystery: This is the gastro-intestinal tract, affectionately abbreviated "GI." The job of the GI is to alchemically transmute the food we eat into our flesh, blood, actions, thoughts and feelings... with a little help from our friends the salivary glands, the pancreas, the liver, and most importantly RAW FOOD -- all of which provide ENZYMES.

Enzymes are delicate dynamos. Delicate because they are destroyed by temperatures over 118 degrees (some by as little as 105 degrees), which means that they may not survive even light steaming. Dynamos because they are powerful biochemical catalysts; they speed burning or building reactions in the body according to need. They are specialized proteins, often with long complicated names ending in -ase.

The three primary digestive enzymes are protease, lipase and amylase which digest, respectively, protein, fat (lipids), and carbohydrates (which includes sugars). Amylase comes from the salivary glands: carbohydrates start digesting right in our mouth. Have you ever chewed a piece of bread or potato for an extra moment before swallowing, and tasted how sweet it is? (It is a good idea to chew our foods thoroughly; literally making juice in our mouths before swallowing.) Lipase is synthesized principally in the liver and protease comes from the pancreas.

Although the enzyme-producing organs continue to function over the entire course of a healthy life, they eventually wear down, especially with the "standard American diet" (which, in the naturopathic community, we call SAD.) Dr. Francis M. Pottenger's nutritional studies have shown that a regular diet of cooked or canned foods causes the development of chronic degenerative diseases and premature mortality. Professor Jackson of the Dept. of Anatomy, University of Minnesota, has shown that rats fed for 135 days on an 80 percent cooked food diet resulted in an increase pancreatic weight of 20 to 30 percent. What this means is that the pancreas is forced to work harder with a cooked food diet. "Although the body can manufacture enzymes, the more you use your enzyme potential, the faster it is going to run out..." wrote Dr. Edward Howell, who pioneered research in the benefits of food enzymes. A youth of 18 may produce amylase levels 30 times greater than those of an 85 year old person.

Enzymes are what make seeds sprout. Sprouts are, in fact, one of the richest sources of enzymes. Other excellent sources are papaya, pineapple and the aspergillus plant. Science cannot duplicate enzymes, because they are the stuff of life itself. Only raw food has functional "live" enzymes. Therefore the liver, pancreas, stomach and intestines must come to the rescue and furnish the requisite digestive enzymes to the individual nourished solely on a cooked food diet.

This extra activity can be detrimental to health and longevity because it continually taxes the reserve energy of our organs. Furthermore, cooked food passes through the digestive tract more slowly than raw food, tends to ferment, and throws poisons back into the body. Colon cancer is second only to lung cancer as a killer in America and is related, in various ways, to eating enzyme-deficient cooked food. Prolonged intestinal toxemia may manifest the following symptoms: Fatigue, nervousness, gasto-intestinal discomfort, recurrent infections, skin eruptions, hormonal disturbances, headaches, arthritis, sciatica, low back pain, allergies, asthma, eye, ear, nose and throat disorders, cardiac irregularities, pathological changes in the breasts, and so forth. All of these conditions have been shown to respond to therapy directed to correcting the bowel toxemia.

 Of course, it is important to have fiber in the diet to scrub the colon walls clean, but even more important are the enzymes which will allow proper digestion and assimilation of vital nutrients. Cooked food often passes into the bloodstream as unsplit molecules that are deposited, as waste, in various parts of the body. If it is a fat molecule we know it as cholesterol plaque; if calcium, arthritis; if sugar, diabetes. White blood cell count rises dramatically after ingesting a meal of canned or cooked foods ("digestive leukocytosis"). Elevated WBCs are correlated to bacterial infection, inflammation and depressed immunity. Raw foods do not produce this reaction. All raw foods contain exactly the right enzymes required to split every last molecule into the basic building blocks of metabolism: Amino acids (from protein), glucose (from complex carbohydrates) and essential fatty acids (from unsaturated vegetable fats).

You are what you ate: Eat living foods (at least once daily!).

Article by Emily Kane N.D., American Association of Naturopathic Physicians.,

Veggies Lose Nutrients in the Microwave .

 

An article from the Oct. 16, 2003 issue of the "Health Day News" reports on new research that shows different ways of preparing, storing and processing vegetables can affect how good they are for you.  The data for this article came from two studies that appeared in the November issue of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.  The studies report that several different processing procedures and cooking can reduce antioxidants, which are cancer-fighting compounds, normally found in vegetables.

Antioxidants are plentiful in vegetables and work to eliminate free radicals, which can damage cell DNA and contribute to various diseases. That's why eating fiber, fruits, and vegetables, all of which contain antioxidants, can help prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease.

One of the studies showed that broccoli, for instance, lost 97 percent of flavonoids, 74 percent of sinapics and 87 percent of caffeoyl-quinic derivatives (three different types of antioxidants)  when it is zapped in the microwave. When boiled the conventional way, not in a pressure-cooker, broccoli lost 66 percent of its flavonoids; when tossed in a pressure cooker, it lost 47 percent of its caffeoyl-quinic acid derivatives.  Steamed broccoli, on the other hand, lost only 11 percent, 0 percent and 8 percent, respectively, of flavonoids, sinapics, and caffeoyl-quinic derivatives. 

Cristina Garcia-Viguera, lead author of the research paper noted that the advantage of steaming vs. conventional boiling is that you're "Not using water directly in contact with the vegetable. The nutritional compounds don't go into the water. Once the compounds are in the water, the temperature destroys them much easier."  The damage from a microwave occurs because it heats the inside of the vegetable. That, combined with the fact that you normally use water when microwaving, can cause the destruction of the valuable nutrients.

Vegetables that are blanched before freezing (a common processing technique) can lose up to one third of their antioxidants. Frozen storage can also cause losses, though these losses are much smaller.