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Raw Enzyme argument

Please can anyone help with this? I went to stay with friends who are vegetarian and I said I was trying a new raw diet, to which one of them said he would look up raw food and recipes and the like. I felt happy and wondered if they might even try raw foods themselves, (I think she would have) but when I got there, I was told that of course, enzymes are proteins and proteins are broken up by our stomach acid (correct of course), so that the good feeling we get from raw food is more likely to be the placebo effect. Well, I was, and he still is, a biomedical scientist but at that particular instant I couldn’t think of any counter-argument (went completely brain dead for half an hour). All I could say, lamely, was that thanks to Ani Phyo, I have found I can eat vegan food which I would have found impossible otherwise. So, when I got home, I started looking up stuff. So far, my counter-argument is: 1) all fruits/veg have their own enzymes that help break down foods, thereby taking the burden off our own digestive systems. 2) if Helicobacter pylori can live in the stomach (and cause ulcers) then so can some enzymes and 3)...erm, haven’t got a 3. Sure there must be more evidence? Please help, they are coming to stay this weekend and I desperately want to have a showdown in my favour!!

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Comments

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    Hi Debs, I have a lot of problems with the enzyme agument too, of course enzymes are proteins and are broken down in the stomach. If whole enzymes pssed into our blood stream we would make antibodies to them. Helicobacter pylori have special cell walls/membranes that allow them to resist stomch acid. Some enzymes may survive in the stomach for a while and have benificial effects (bromalin for eg) but most won’t. Also: enzymes do many different jobs, as you know, all an enzmyme is, is a biological catalyst, most of which are not for beaking down molecules, many of them are for adding bits to molecules for example.

    However: I am personally of the opinion that may of the reasons raw food is better for us is to do with nutrients not being destroyed by heat first, before getting inside us.

    For example heat denatures proteins and non-denatured (i.e. raw) proteins are easier to digest. Vitamin C is also destroyed be heat (any juice that says high in vit c and is pasturised is only high in degraded vit c, no use to anyone). I am sure that there are lots more nutients (esp phyto nutrients and micro nutrients of which we currently know very little) that are also destroyed by being heated.

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    Try doing some research on acrylamide in food (only gets made in food thats heated, as you prob know acrylamide is deadly toxic) and aussies having more stomch cancer from all the BBQ (i.e. burnt) meat that they eat. Also there are bacteria and shrimps and crabs that live in thermal vents, which are close to boiling point, these animals are adapted to the heat and can tolerate it, but we and our food are not adapted so we would die! i am not sure if any of the points in these two posts helps you win your argument (isn’t it anoying when you know you are right but don’t knoe all the reasons why) but good luck trying!

  • cool, i shd have asked you on the other thread! Yep, he can’t argue with that. From what he was saying tho, it was that there was all this tra la about enzymes and it was all he focused on. i felt like it was me that put the enzyme argument up in the first place at the end of the banter sesh, when I hadn’t even mentioned it. Do you ever get that feeling in an argument? Thanks tho, very grateful..

  • pianissimapianissima Raw Newbie

    i think the raw food movement is too focussed on enzymes. better arguments for me:

    1. i feel like a different person. i never get sick now.

    2. we are the only animals who heat their food. we’ve been socialized into thinking that is normal, but it really isn’t. cooking is a very popular, but a very bad idea (Juliano!)

    3. even the most unintelligent eater could put these in order of most nutritious to least: steamed cabbage, cabbage salad, fried cabbage. we all recognize that heat destroys nutrients and thus try to minimize the damage if cooking. so why cook at all? (Chris Calton’s argument)

    and they’ll say… bio-availability (use a blender!), the more lycopene in tomatoes arguments (eat more raw tomatoes!)

    also, you don’t have to feel like you have to rationally explain yourself to convert others. i’m sure most of us started this on a leap of faith and are now glad we did. lead by example, not by rule.

    =)

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    Yes, very true pianissima, I hadn’t got round to thoses sorts of arguments but they are all true too! I personally like the lead by example method very much, when I was just a vegi and had not even heard of RV, (i am not anywhere near100% btw but trying) my bf at the time went vegi without me even trying to convince him, just because he said I was so healthy and looked so good! I prefer the softly, softly method. Also letting people try lots of nice RV food!

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    Also personally I think the enzyme argument makes RV’s look unscientific and “fluffy” and is not going to help win over many people.

  • Oops, looks like i repeated myself a wee bit there!!!!!

    absolutely true pianissima, i suppose because I am new to raw, people see me on some fad or other so it is early days. I agree I feel loads better when I eat raw, which is not all the time, but when at home I am doing quite well, I think. I will note it all down though, just in case he looks like he’s up for a fight!

    And will have a look at acrylamide too, very helpful and indeed educative (is that a word?), for me too. Had heard of it but not paid much attention. Thanks spr!

  • I think the subtle energy argument is much more persuasive than the enzyme argument. It is hard to dispute that the vibrational frequency of your food raises or lowers the vibrational frequency of your cells, just as music, meditation, prayer or other people’s energy can do.

  • pianissimapianissima Raw Newbie

    totally springleaf. i also appreciated your scientific explanations though. someone ALWAYS has a better science background than me, so i’ve personally stopped trying to reason that way. =)

    jenoz—nicely put. though not everyone “believes” in vibrations. which is ridiculous because it’s PHYSICS!

  • MeditatingMeditating Raw Newbie

    I think Pianissima makes a good point. I usually eat one and sometimes two non-raw items daily (like bread in a raw veggie sandwich). After 3 – 5 days of all raw, my energy level always increases. There has to be a reason for it.

    DEBS 60 – I remember my biology professor asking us one day if nature included superfluous creations. Was there anything that existed in nature that didn’t serve a purpose? He had articles written over time on the topic and they all indicated that the few things previously identified as useless were later discovered to have a purpose. I mention this as it relates to your question about the importance of enzymes.

    Here is a link to ENZYME ACTIVITY that animates the function (work) accomplished by enzymes and how cooking (denaturing) leaves them unable to perform their intended purpose. When enzymes can’t do their job, their workload is transferred to the body, and chance, which impedes proper digestion.

    Remind your friend that studies show the body has an automatic immune response to cooked but not raw food. Cooked food taxes the immune system and I suspect may lay the groundwork for the numerous auto-immune system diseases that result from overactive immune responses.

    Also, that good feeling we get from eating raw isn’t a placebo. There may be something unknown to science that is happening. We don’t know everything and it isn’t just about the enzymes.

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    Meditating: I had forgotten about the immune response to cooked food, which helps explain why raw is better. But. The enzymes in fruit and veg were not suposed to have the purpose of helping the body digest food. there is a difference between enzymes in plants and the digestive enzymes in stomachs. enzymes in plants are not in the most part enzymes that will help us digest food(some enzymes may help digestion in stomachs but that is not the reson plants have them). Plants use enzymes for every function in there systems. A spinach leaf makes enzymes in its leaves that help it grow and harvest the enery from sunlight. It does not make digestive enzymes in case someone/thing eats it. In fact if you could ask a spinch plant my guess is that it would prefer not to be eaten, but rather to produce flowers and seeds to ensure the continuation of the spinach plant family line.

  • CalebCaleb Raw Newbie

    I have been struggling with this myself. I can’t find much reserach that indicates the enzymes helps break down the food quicker and more efficiently. Eveverything I have read seen says our system has the enzymes needed to digest food and breaks it down and is able to re-use the enzymes killed when cooking. But that sounds in my mind just as valid as the raw vegan claim that it aids digestion. So, I am still not sure what to think about that. Doing more research though.

    But does anybody know how much nutrients is killed when cooking food. The only figure I have been able to find was in RawVolution, and he states 80%, but gives no resource for that. That figure sounds REALLY high. I don’t buy it. Anybody have any sources for that?

  • Oh wow, some interesting stuff here. Thanks all. So glad I’m not the only one confused by it all. I think it was in David Wolfe’s book he says that there is an enzyme that will help the fruit/plant start to decompose once it’s done its job (or at least I think that is what he meant). However, there is no reference for it. I had heard that once before, and I cannot for the life of me remember where it was quoted. Unfortunately, my arguee (another word I made up today??) is the kind of guy who would ask where that information came from. David Wolfe is an intelligent guy with some interesting and, in my opinion, groundbreaking things to say, but he probably won’t cut the mustard with my non-raw (yet ironically veggie) opponent. Will certainly quote the immune response to cooked food stuff, thanks Meditating. If you find anything Caleb, let me know by tomorrow 5pm stat!!!

  • beanybeeganbeanybeegan Raw Newbie

    A dear friend of mine had to take bottles of enzyme pills just to be able eat a small portion of something. The Doctor said it was due to her age. A week after eating 100% raw vegan she was able to throw her bottles away. So with what I have read on these post, this should not have happed, but it did, So then this is an unknown. Which means we don’t know it all, yet. Therefore, it would be hard to have a sensible debate on the subject. So why try.

  • Thanks Beany, anecdotal evidence is everything. If we are all feeling so much better on raw, that should be an argument in itself frankly.

  • CalebCaleb Raw Newbie

    Google Dr. Edward Howell http://www.google.com/search?q=Dr.+Edward+Howel…:en-US:official&client=firefox-a Some interesting finds there. I’m pretty busy at work so don’t have much time today, but started a quick search and found him. First actual MD I have found making statements supporting that enzymes are truly beneficial.

  • I bought fresh sqeezed orange juice the other day and my husband said the only reason to buy it was that it tastes better. He said the acidity of the juice kills the enzymes, so it no different than pasturized juice. He has a Masters degree in food science so it is hard to argue with him.

  • WinonaWinona Raw Newbie

    The juice of an orange, and thus an orange, is so acidic that it kills the enzymes? I find that exceedingly hard to believe. I’ve read Dr. Howell’s books, and he’s the master of showing the science behind enzymes. That’s a great place to start!

  • Cheers, everyone, well done Caleb, you did it well within the limit,lol!! I will have a look at that and sling mud 2mrw… wish me luck

  • MeditatingMeditating Raw Newbie

    Damn. You mean I may learned this stuff wrong and now I have to start over again. I hate that. Well, won’t be the first time. :)

  • achin70achin70 Raw Newbie

    I read Dr. Howell’s “Food Enzymes for Longevity” not too long ago, and he claims that food enzymes survive in the stomach for about 30 minutes doing what they do, and then the stomach acid is produced, entering the stomach and breaking down the food. :)

  • Aha, (light goes on), I think I read something similar written in Leslie Kenton’s book yonks ago…I will dig it out. However, no mention of said argument yet, but will let you know/.

  • Dr. Howell is the man. He was (is he still alive?) the world’s leading authority on enzymes. The stuff he learned is still not really taught in nutritional science. They are still taught the conventional wisdom and look at foods and nutrition from a very compartmentalized viewpoint.

    The “food enzymes” extant in foods spare our bodies from having to cannibalize our own systems and use our metabolic enzymes to aid in digestion. Most enzymes are destroyed at temps above 118F, some a little bit higher, vitamins at varying temps, proteins become denatured at higher temps, and some minerals.

    He says that we have a fixed amount of metabolic enzymes to work with in our lifetimes, a “bank account”, if you will, and death occurs when we run out (barring any other diseases, of course).

    Dr. Howell studied enzymes for 50 years, and by reading his short book you could become informed on how enzymes work and know more than a nutritionist in just a few hours! (Enzyme Nutrition: The Food Enzyme Concept, Avery Publishing Group, Wayne, New Jersey, 1985)

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    Augh! We do not have to “cannibalize” our own bodies to digest food! The body has a whole organ called the pancreas to produce digestive enzymes. As I have said before there are literally thousands of enzymes made in our body and each has a very specific function(click meditating’s link to learn more). Enzymes that help the body grow and function couldn’t help with digestion even if we were short of digestive enzymes as each enzyme can’t do more than one specific task. We do not have a “fixed amount of enzymes” as we have protein synthesis (enzymes are proteins) machinery in our cells which allows us to make more of any protein/enzyme which the body sences that it needs.

  • Argh indeed. Please, let’s be careful to keep our facts straight and not promote some unfounded theories. The readers will get confused and throw their arms up in despair…

    First, some clarification: Enzymes are both chemical and biological entities which cannot be duplicated in a lab. Enzymes are NOT proteins, but some enzymes have proteins. A protein is a large organic compound held together by peptide bonds. Functional proteins are only one kind of protein, and are not affected by digestive processes necessarily in the same way as dietary proteins. More on that later.

    There are three kinds of enzymes: digestive, metabolic, and food (ones occurring in food). Digestive enzymes have 3 main jobs: digesting carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Metabolic enzymes run our bodies, including all organs, tissues, and metabolic processes, including breathing, beating the heart, even thinking (true!). Food enzymes exist in the foods we eat and begin to break down food, starting the digestion process and helping the body from using its metabolic enzymes to aid in digestion.

    Springleaf apparently misread my entry. I said that enzymes “spare our bodies FROM having to cannibalize” our digestive enzymes, which means that we DON’T cannibalize our own enzyme stores to digest raw foods. This does occur with cooked foods, because they no longer have the food enzymes to begin the breakdown process, or as Dr. Howell put it:

    “food enzymes … help with digestion instead of forcing the body’s digestive enzymes to carry the whole load. The heat used in cooking destroys all food enzymes and forces the organism to produce more enzymes, thus enlarging digestive organs, especially the pancreas.” When this happens, the body “may be unable to produce an adequate quantity of metabolic enzymes to repair body organs and fight disease.”

    The body can only do so much to make up for this, and in most people is working hard to crank more and more digestive enzymes out of the pancreas, which is why the average human pancreas weighs much more as a percentage of body weight than any other animal on the planet (except for animals which are given cooked food and then the pancreas, when weighed after death, has enlarged as well).

    The human stomach can be functionally divided into an upper and lower portion, the upper of which produces NEITHER acids nor digestive enzymes. Rather, the foods we eat get their enzymes released from the initial act of chewing and salivary enzymes, and then stay in the upper stomach for a while while those food enzymes start to break the food down further. It is only later, when the digestive process is well under way that the foods then pass down to the lower stomach and get acted on further by the digestive enzymes and stomach acids.

    It may sound complicated at first glance, but read it again. It’s pretty straightforward, but the story in a nutshell: We evolved a mutually beneficial relationship with food over the course of millions of years to use the enzymes inherent in food together with our digestive enzymes to digest and get the nutrients from food. When those food enzymes are not present, our bodies work very hard looking for what they expect to be there and trying to make it, use it from elsewhere, and who knows what else. We’re pretty amazing creatures that we can even eat cooked food, but we pay the price for doing it in terms of impacted metabolic functioning, but that’s a story for another time.

    I can discuss more, but, again, read enzyme nutrition by Dr. Edward Howell.

    Peace!

  • greenghostgreenghost Raw Newbie

    Great Forum! Lots of juicy information. (no pun intended as it would be a really really bad pun at that), but seriously I love the entries. Thank you all for sharing.

  • Hello everyone! I just wanted to say that while I absolutely love raw foods and that way of living, I am a researcher by heart and love looking at both sides to an argument or idea…(much like the op). I found myself in a little bit of dogma early into eating raw as I’d search only for reasons why raw food was the ‘correct way’ as opposed to both perspectives. Once that feeling of “there’s no way this is wrong; 100% raw is the best way,” wore off, I began to question if it really was the best way long term. Not trying to convince anyone otherwise here – just laying out open-minded ideas for anyone interested in taking a further look by visiting the website below.

    It’s a different a perspective. It’s from a once 100% raw foodist. It does not degrade raw food, it simply offers explanations to information that some of us may take for granted. I highly encourage you read it. It’s wise to always keep your mind open. Even laws within science get rewritten. Happy reading. :)

    **Remember, he’s talking about long term 100%.

     

  • MeditatingMeditating Raw Newbie

    SEIZE – I too research many of the things I want to make decisions about, Unfortunately, there is no reliable consumer agency on these issues and research is subject to bias on numerous levels. Statements made by so-called health products are subject to the same flaws and unintentional misrepresentations.

    When this thread started, I realized (I think, I’m not finished researching) that the role of enzymes so many raw foodists refer to are not plant enzymes but digestive enzymes, which are not in raw foods.

    BEYONDVEG.COM appears to be a reliable source to me. I happened on an article there some months ago. When I decided to start researching the enzyme theory again, it came up in the queries. They confer the good and the bad on each topic, appear to have sincere motives, and hold to a rigorous standard to prove a claim.

    I don’t need a study to tell me that I feel better whenever I eat raw food; however, I have wondered if it has more to do with omitting processed food items, sugar, and dairy (although I still eat a little raw cheese on occasion).

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    The following quote is taken from a recognised Biochemistry Degree level text book.

    “the protein nature of enzymes was not generally accepted until the mid-1930s when John Northrop and Moses Kunitz showed there is direct correlation between the enzymatic activities of crystaline pepsin, trypsin and chymotrypsin and amounts of protein present, Enzymological experience since then has amply demostrated that enzymes are proteins (although it has also been shown that some species of RNA also have catalytic properties).” Biochemistry: Voet and Voet 1995

    The following link is for the wikipedia enzymes entry:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzymes

    And the following talks about proteins

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteins

    And a short article about how proteins are made.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_synthesis

    Indeed, proteins are “a large organic compound held together by peptide bonds” they are formed of amino acids, these are the entities which are held together by the peptide bonds.

    The body has very effecient sensing mechanisms and via feed back loops can simply make more of any digestive enzymes it senses it requires.

    Proteins that we consume in our diet are simply the enzymes and structural proteins that plants use to grow and support themselves, plants do no produce digestive enzymes in their leaves etc in case something eats them!

    Let me be clear here. I am pro raw. I think a raw food diet is the best way to acheve long term health. But the reason raw food is better for us is because the nutrients in raw food are not degraded (eg: the proteins are not denatured by heat) and therefore easier to digest, not because the enzymes contained in the foods can be used to digest our food.

    When researching important subjects like raw food it is important to look at a wide range of sorces, not just one. However, I am of no doubt that Dr. E. Howell has achevied amazing results with a raw food diet.

    Please note it is very easy to make proteins and ezymes in a laboratory setting! Large volumes of these products are avalible from compainies to aid researchers in the life sciences.

  • This is a great topic! I want to follow this topic, but there’s no check box at the top for me to do so :-(

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