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Article 4. Are You Consuming Dead Foods?

Do you ever eat food that has been cooked, baked, boiled, microwaved or in
any other way heated or processed? Do you drink carbonated beverages?
If you do, you are robbing your body of metabolic enzymes - its very life force!

Are you feeling a little “dead” sometimes? Listless, without any get-up-and-go? It could be that you are eating food that’s quite dead. What you need is food that is alive with nutrients, with freshness and above all, with Enzymes. Sadly, the bulk of our food supply is contaminated: grown in artificially (chemically) fertilized soil, then sprayed with pesticides and other chemicals to ensure long shelf life. Then it is canned or frozen, packaged and bundled, with yet another dollop of preservatives to make it last even longer ….. and finally taken home and - if it isn’t really dead yet, it’s cooked again or reheated in the microwave - the final coup de grâce!

What are enzymes?

Enzymes are natural nutrients that your body need to properly perform virtually all of its primary functions. Your body has the ability to manufacture most of the enzymes, called “metabolic enzymes” it requires. Your body has a limited supply of enzymes, put at birth in your “enzyme bank account”. Most of the enzymes your body needs to digest food are not found in the body, but are supposed to come from the food you eat. These enzymes are absolutely essential to proper digestion and absorption. They enable the body to make full use of the food’s vitamins, nutrients and energy value, and without them, the food cannot be properly digested.

Research has proven that cooking, processing, irradiating, microwaving and other preservation techniques kill almost all of the natural enzymes in our food. Even many of the raw foods we eat today are enzyme deficient, since the soil they grow in has been robbed of basic nutrients necessary for enzyme production as a result of over-farming, pesticides, herbicides, etc. Without these enzymes, the food cannot be properly digested. Your body must actually “rob” enzymes from your personal enzyme bank account, and even use some of your metabolic enzymes, in order to attempt the digestive process. This reduces the amount of the enzymes available for bodily functions.

Without the specific enzymes Mother Nature designed for each food type, your body can only partially digest your food depriving you of the use of significant amounts of vitamins and minerals your good contains. It also deprives you of the ability to absorb the vitamins and minerals found in the nutritional supplements you may be taking. What’s more, your immune system reacts to undigested food particles as it would to any “foreign matter”, treating it as a hazard to health and springing into action to destroy it. This process puts tremendous stress on your immune system. Even if you are eating enzyme-rich food, habits such as drinking carbonated beverages could be affecting the enzymes before they ever get a chance to perform their function.

Your body does not actually want the proteins, carbohydrates or fats found in our foods. What it really wants is for the proteins you eat to be completely broken down into your body’s basic building blocks - amino acids. It wants the carbohydrates you eat to be completely broken down into energy-producing sugars. And, it wants the fats you eat to be completely broken down into vital fatty acids necessary for optimal health. Good digestion does this, if the necessary enzymes are there.

What are enzyme-rich foods? ....

All naturally fermented foods such as:
- home made* sauerkraut
- kim chee (kimchi) - Korean fermented vegetables
- sprouted foods: grains, legumes, seeds, nuts
- home made* yogurt and kefir
- raw plant foods - unprocessed (except for fermenting and sprouting)

* The term “home made” is used in defining sauerkraut and yogurt, because much of the commercially prepared products are deficient or devoid of enzymes because of the way they have been produced.

Given all the gloomy circumstances surrounding our food supply, there is however much that we can do to improve our digestive ability. Also, promoting raw foods does not mean a steady diet of raw carrot and celery sticks. Far from it. Rather, we promote creative ways of integrating raw foods into regular meals, or simply combining raw and cooked items. The following recipes will give you some basic ideas which you can adapt and expand on.

I am rarely without a jar of sauerkraut in my fridge. It is best bought in ethnic stores (Polish, Hungarian, German), where it is usually available in bulk. If buying it in a glass jar (avoid the canned North American variety,) read the label carefully. If the ingredients include vinegar and sugar, don’t buy it. And if you know someone who makes his/her own and will share it with you, you are indeed blessed! There is nothing more delicate than well made sauerkraut - and nothing more versatile

Quotes

It is easier to become addicted to a refined, processed food than to a whole food in its natural state.
(Carolee Bateson-Koch DC ND - Allergies: Disease in Disguise)

Feeding infant formula to babies increases the frequency of allergy.
(James Breneman MD - Basiocs of Food Allergy)

Edith Carter

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