Did you know that from thirty to eighty-five percent of the nutrition in foods is destroyed in cooking? Did you know that fresh, raw foods contain the highest level of enzymes? Did you know that unless you supply enzymes for your body, the enzymes present at birth in your body will eventually run out and you will die of degenerative disease? Each of us receives a supply of enzymes at birth. This supply is not limitless; it must supply our bodies with life sustaining enzymes for our whole lives.

What are enzymes and why are they so important?

"An enzyme is a biocatalyst - something that makes something else work or work faster. Chemical reactions are generally slow things, enzymes speed them up. Without enzymes the chemical reactions that make up our life would be too slow for life as we know it. (As slow as sap running down a tree in winter). For life to manifest as we know it, enzymes are essential to speed up the reactions. We have roughly some 3000 enzymes in our bodies and that results in over 7000 enzymic reactions. Most of these enzymes derived or created from what we think of as the protein digesting enzymes. But while digestion is an important part of what enzymes do, it's almost the absolute last function. First and foremost these body wide proteolytic (protein eating) enzymes have the following actions:

" Natural Anti-inflammatory

" Anti Fibrosis

" Blood Cleansing

" Immune System Modulating

" Virus Fighting"

William Wong N.D., Ph.D., Member World Sports Medicine Hall of Fame

Enzymes are needed for the digestion and absorption of foods as well as for the production of cellular energy. Enzymes are needed for most of the building and rebuilding that takes place constantly in our bodies. Metabolic enzymes are used by the heart, lungs, kidneys, immune system, and for brain functions; digestive enzymes convert protein, carbohydrates and fat into fuel to maintain our bodies. Requiring the body to supply digestive enzymes can reduce the supply of metabolic enzymes. Eventually, the body becomes enzyme-deficient, introducing weaknesses and disease. It is understandable that glands and major organs suffer most from enzyme deficiency.

We can prevent our bodies from depleting its own supply of enzymes by providing those enzymes in raw foods. Food enzymes will start the digestion process in the stomach, but if there are no food enzymes the body will have to produce enzymes for digestion and thereby deplete the supply of systemic enzymes. Get all of the good out of your fresh raw food, juice it. Juicing raw food provides more nutrition from your food.

Fresh, raw foods contain the highest level of enzymes. When we cook food it kills the enzymes, so we end up with dead food that will not replenish the enzymes we have used up in the body. From the time food is harvested the quality of the enzymes goes down. Enzymes are powerful biochemical catalysts, which speed burning or building reactions in the body according to our need. They are specialized proteins, often with long complicated names ending in -ase. Cooked food passes through the digestive tract more slowly than raw food, tends to ferment, and throws poisons back into the body. Colon cancer is second only to lung cancer as a killer in America and is related, in various ways, to eating enzyme-deficient cooked food.

"Following a strict vegetarian diet is not as important as eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. A vegetarian whose diet is mainly refined grains, cold breakfast cereals, processed health-food-store products, vegetarian fast foods, white rice, and pasta will be worse off than a person who eats a little chicken or eggs, for example, but consumes a larger amount of fruits, vegetables, and beans." Joel Fuhrman., MD, board-certified family physician specializng in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods.