Enzymes are organic catalysts that increase the rate at which foods are broken down and absorbed by the body and help various metabolic functions in the body take place.. In fact EVERY metabolic function of the body is helped or supervised by metabolic enzymes. There are two major types: metabolic enzymes, and food enzymes. The metabolic enzymes that run the body are synthesized from raw food. This includes raw fruit, vegetables, nuts, grain, and even raw meat. All vitamins are enzymes, but not all enzymes are vitamins.

Dr. Edward Howel, a physician, biochemist, and author of "Enzyme Nutrition" & "Food Enzymes for health and Longevity" says, "When we eat cooked, live enzyme deficient food, the body is forced to produce enzymes needed for digestion. This stealing of enzymes from other parts of the body sets up a competition for enzymes among various organ systems and tissues of the body. The resulting metabolic dislocations may be the direct cause of many chronic incurable diseases such as obesity, heart disease, Cancer, and other degenerative problems."

He also noted that "The length of your life is inversely proportional to the rate of exhaustion of your enzyme potential, and the increased use of food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of your enzyme potential." IN OTHER WORDS: Raw fruits and vegetables will help you live longer & better.

Fruits and vegetables have Food Enzymes which keep them alive in much the same way that Metabolic Enzymes keep us alive. When we eat raw fruits and vegetables, we ingest these food enzymes and utilize them in our own digestive processes. Despite those who still believe that all enzymes are destroyed in the stomach, it has been proven that live enzymes do survive the journey through the stomach and start working in the small intestine. (I suspect that eating meat produces acidic enzymes which would destroy food enzymes much more readily than the alkaline enzymes produced by real food.) But, when we cook these "real" foods, we kill all their natural enzymes and our pancreas is forced to produce enzymes so that the cooked material can be digested. In time our pancreas becomes exhausted which in turn causes our immune system to grow weaker and leaves us more and more susceptible to chronic disease and the degeneration of old age.

So EVERYBODY LOVES ENZYMES? Well not really, your national produce suppliers are trying to NUKE them. (They are advancing legislation to allow IRRADIATION). Yes sports fans, enzymes are the fresh food seller's enemy! Live Enzymes are what make food spoil on the shelves BEFORE it is purchased! I mean who is going to buy a rotten apple? So if a grower can produce a fruit or vegetable that contains fewer Live ENZYMES, well it's shelf life is increased; a great advance in nutritional science! Now given the choice of a fruit that will spoil in a week, or one that will last for two weeks, which one do you think will be on your grocer's shelves?

Restaurant Chefs like to decorate their productions with red tomatoes. (You remember the tomatoes we used to eat? They kind of exploded when you tried to cut them, they were soft and moist, and they tasted so sweet!) Well look at what we have NOW!
Tomatoes that were designed by a geneticist to all ripen at once (Machine Picking). They have a tough skin (prevents bruising from mechanical picking), a firm core (pleases the Chefs), and a low enzyme count (doesn't rot as fast). Most of the nutrition in a "Natural" tomato comes in just as it turns bright red, and ripens, ON THE VINE; (that is what the vine does, kind of a pipeline from the soil). Commercially grown fruit are picked green and hard, stored in a cooler until the market price is high, shipped an average of 1500 miles, and killed with a noxious gas just before delivery (turns it bright red so it LOOKS good.)

It's not just fruits & vegetables either, some lobbyist guy is wandering around the Beltway (Washington) with an irradiated hamburger that was sealed in plastic (if I remember correctly) 15 years ago and it still looks fresh! I mean even if it was only 15 months ago, here is yet another great advance in JUNK FOOD packaging!