Excerpts taken from Living in the Raw by Rose Lee Calabro

So what is it that is so miraculous about eating a raw diet?  The secret is Enzymes.

“Enzymes are types of protein catalysts that have to be present for life to exist. They perform a multitude of functions in the body, both metabolic and digestive.”¹   A good analogy of this would be, “an enzyme can be compared to a skilled worker who has been trained very well to perform a specific task. Without him, all work stops.”

“Enzymes appear in large numbers in living foods, slightly smaller numbers in raw foods, and do not exist in processed foods.  This is because enzymes are very sensitive to heat.”  They’re actually destroyed if heated above the temperature of 118 degrees.  Enzymes are one of the factors that give living foods their healing abilities because they do not require the body to use any of its own energy reserves to digest, assimilate and eliminate the food, which means that it can spend that energy doing more useful things like healing the body.  “Without enzymes, human life as we know it is not possible.  And the more enzymes there are, the merrier we are.

What happens when we eat, enzymatically? Within moments of the time that we begin eating, “an increasing number of enzymes appear in our digestive systems, especially our stomachs and upper small intestines. These enzymes play the very important role of breaking down our food.  You may be asking yourself, ‘Where did the enzymes come from?’  There are two possible sources: those in your food or those provided by your body.”

If you eat something that is cooked then “all of the enzymes for digestion have to be borrowed from your body’s cells.  This borrowing of enzymes also drains your body of its enzyme reserve.  At birth, we are given a supply of enzymes, and they are not naturally replenished.  Many of the maladies we associate with aging are actually symptoms of a diminishing enzyme reserve.  Eating enzyme-rich living foods gets your body off the hook for that particular meal, letting the foods essentially digest themselves.”

When eating cooked foods, it is very important to combine your foods properly, otherwise you will have an enzyme war going on in your digestive system as each “borrowed” enzyme is fighting against another.  “Remember that some of these borrowed enzymes are not ‘experts’ in digestion – they were actually trained for other roles in your body.  This creates two problems: your meal will be incompletely digested, which means you won’t get all the nutrition possible, and the original task of those enzymes won’t be completed.”

“Dr. Robert Young is a renowned microbiologist who has spent many years researching the relationship between mycotic infections (those started by yeast, fungus, and mold) and the onset of disease.  Interestingly, he has discovered that if one’s enzyme count drops below the level necessary to maintain a healthy cellular environment, a backup system activates dormant yeast and fungus spores in these cells, triggering a fermentation process as a self-defense mechanism.  This is bad news for the body, unless the enzyme count can be restored to these cells in a timely fashion, they are eventually destroyed by the fermentation process, and unless the cells are removed (or cleansed), they become a source of toxicity in the body.  More and more health professionals recognize this as a prominent source of sickness and disease in our societies today.”

 “So, a first simple rule: as the enzyme levels in your body drop as a result of eating a meal of mostly processed food, so does your energy.  Over the years, your body’s ability to replace the enzymes that were recruited for digestion diminishes, and chronic ailments and diseases appear.