You Are What You Eat is Wrong!
. . . to be totally accurate, the statement should be:
” You are what you can absorb from the food you eat.”
The digestive tract converts the food you eat into nutrition to sustain the body.
The processes involved in the conversion of food to nutrition are fully dependent on the interplay of enzymes (both from your food and digestive enzymes produced by the body), stomach acids and microbes.
Enzymes Are the Currency of Life.
Dr. Edward Howell, (Enzyme Nutrition, Avery Publishing, WaWe NJ., 1985) identifies three types of enzymes:
- metabolic enzymes,
- digestive enzymes and
- food enzymes which exist in raw, unprocessed, uncooked food.
Dr. Howell writes: “. . . Enzymes are protein molecules that catalyze chemical reactions. All living things depend on the swift completion of thousands of biochemical, enzyme reactions every hour.”
We are completely dependent on these metabolic enzymes for every bodily function:
- Energy
- Alertness
- Memory
- Thought
And, hundreds of other activities are totally dependent on enzymes.
Howell continues“. . . Organs, in the body, secrete digestive enzymes to break down the food we eat, but many of these enzymes are damaged or excreted during the process of digestion, absorption and elimination and are not recycled.”
We depend on food enzymes to replace these damaged and lost enzymes.
Enzymes, while very powerful, are fragile. Cooking and processing foods destroys the raw food enzymes.
Dr. Howell writes “ … a diet composed of cooked and processed food, in which the natural enzymes are destroyed, leads to enzymes insufficiency and stresses the organs which secrete enzymes. A lifetime of eating “dead foods” is a contributing factor in the decline from health.”
Digestion is more complex than it may seem
. . . since more than 80 million Americans are paying the price for failures along the digestive tract.
Most people would rather not think or talk about matters of digestion: the pain, gas, bloating, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea. They choose to suffer the consequences of neglecting this aspect of their health – quietly. Too bad – doing nothing only compounds the situation.
