Digestive enzymes health benefits are numerous when you eat a lot of raw food in your diet. No matter how we try, we cannot expect to be healthy on a diet of only cooked food. You see the problem is that cooking food denatures most all the enzymes contained within it.
Does this mean that cooking your food is wrong?
Do we have to eat like a rabbit if we want to be healthy? Well some people, the “raw foodists” for example, would most probably say so. I’m not for one moment saying they are wrong, and I’m totally sure there would be a whole heap of benefits, but if you are like me you just can’t come at eating a full raw food diet.
As a nutritional consultant, from everything I’ve learned, you need to continually be eating raw foods together with cooked foods for superior health. You see, cooking definitely has some benefits also. Some foods are easier for us to digest when they are cooked, but eating only cooked foods will deplete your enzyme store.
It’s like this… every time you eat foods where the enzymes have been killed through cooking, your body needs to draw on the enzymes it can produce. For example… if you eat an apple, the apple comes already packed with its own supply of enzymes so that you can digest that food. But if you cook the apple, you kill the enzymes.
Although cooking does destroy certain nutrients, the great thing is it’s easier to absorb other nutrients. Another interesting fact is that cooking destroys harmful anti-nutrients. Anti-nutrients are responsible for binding up minerals in our body… they generally cause havoc with us being able to make use of the minerals. So as you can see, there are for’s and against’s.
OK… Let’s look at digestive enzymes health benefits:
- They boost your immune system
- Stimulate action to destroy abnormal cells in your body (cancer?)
- Reduce arthritic pain
- Protects your heart
- Protects your circulatory system
Now I don’t know about you, but this all sounds fantastic to me. I want that. To me it’s important to keep as many of the enzymes alive as I can.
Many foods come literally packed with enzymes
They include nuts and seeds as well as fruit and vegetables. We need to have some every day. We can choose to have salads instead of cooked vegetables, or as I do, choose to have salad with every cooked meal.
Why is it that we tend to think of a meal in this particular order?:
- Meat
- Cooked vegetables
- Salad
If we have salad it’s an add-on… or an after-thought… “Would you like fries (salad) with that?”
We are so into thinking of pair-ups like:
- Fish and chips
- Meat and potatoes
- Curry and rice … and many more…
This is how we are used to pairing up foods, and any thought of salad is definitely an after-thought, or not a thought at all.
We need to up our intake of good clean healthy salad vegetables and as there is such a huge variety to choose from, let variety be the key. It doesn’t mean that every meal has to be made up of lettuce, tomato and cucumber! There are such a lot of different salad veges that we should be able to make a different type of salad each time we make one. That’s good news don’t you think?
Article: The best Superfoods
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Another idea… rather than eating sweet sugar ladened desserts, eat some sweet and yummy fruit. Now there’s an original thought! 🙂 But really, we can do this a lot of the time. Not that all desserts are bad… I have found some that definitely add value to your meals. We’ve just got to realize it’s important to think outside the square.
We need to THINK about what we eat
We must become aware of what goes into our mouth. We have become so used to just eating for the sake of eating, that we give little thought to what our body needs.
Over to my car example… imagine if we were only aware that our car needed something to drink but we gave no thought to what it drinks. As I’ve said somewhere before we could mistakenly give it orange juice. Now I know you are saying “that’s ridiculous!” but the truth is that we pour anything and everything down our food pipe… fluid and food… without thinking, and sometimes without knowing, what it is we need to keep us healthy. Many times we need to say “No!” – that food/drink is not fit for human consumption. But do we?
It takes a lot of conscious thought and effort to turn it around
This is why I recommend we make one change at a time. Let’s change one habit. Once that habit has been established we can work on another. The quicker we begin to apply these changes, the sooner we will experience superior health. If you are going to take a life-time to make the changes, well what can I say…
So making the changes one at a time is great, as long as we are continually pushing forward.
Think about how many enzymes are in the raw food we eat
I mean, is it locally grown or has it travelled countless miles to arrive on that shop shelf. Unfortunately, with each extra day after the food has been picked, the amount of enzymes present become less. Take cold storage for example… is that food really fresh?
My research shows me that we should choose our food in the following order:
- Fresh locally grown produce
- Organically grown
- Pesticide Free
Let me explain it further:
- It means that on shopping day, try to go to the markets to pick up any produce you can that’s been locally grown. It’s better of-course if it organic, or at least pesticide free.
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- A second option after locally grown is to choose organic. Organic is not always the best choice because if it has travelled for countless miles/kilometers there’s a good chance it’s lost most of it’s nutrients. So nice to eat spray-free though.
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- Can’t find much organic? Then the next best option is to choose fruit and vegetables that are at least pesticide free.
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Try to buy when they are in season
You don’t want them to have sat in cold storage for ever and a day. This can mean that at certain times of the year you just have to go without… but it won’t hurt you… turn your attention to what is in season and enjoy that.
For me, one of the fruits I love is mangoes. How I look forward each year to when mangoes are in season! During the rest of the year any mango you can find is not worth it – no taste. Seasons are good, so make the most of them.
I believe balance is the key
A proper balance needs both raw and cooked foods. A good way to begin to add more raw to your diet is to think of all the wonderful varieties of interesting salads you can begin to add to either your midday or evening meal. And what about breakfast? Europeans eat salad vegetables at breakfast time… what a good idea! I’ve begun to try out more and more at breakfast time and I find it really refreshing. Chiefly when I have eggs… adding lettuce, cucumber, tomato, zucchini, spinach leaves etc make for a delightful looking plate which is great to eat. I’m finding it much more satisfying.
We need to break out of the mould
Just because something has been served up in a certain traditional way, doesn’t mean that we have to always follow suit. No, think outside the square and make your meals into something that the family is always commenting about. Good comments I mean. And they will! On top of that you will be building their health also which one day they will thank you for.
Remove all non-nutrient foods
You need to move out of your house all those cereal boxes and packaged goods that have no nutrient value in them at all. If you find you are tempted into buying them on shopping day, just simply stop going down that aisle. Try to shop around the edges of the supermarkets and shy away from the centre aisles. Good thinking there McDuff!
Let’s aim for more digestive enzymes health benefits! Share with me your thoughts please. Use the comments area down below to add value to these posts. Your thoughts count! I would love to hear from you.
Warm regards,
Marilyn Williams
Marilyn Williams
Greetings Marwil
You seem to have the makings of a very good site.
In this article you talked about so many things in addition to the topic of ‘enzyme health benefits are numerous’. There is potential for creating several posts from the information contained in this article. Each area could be presented in such a way that it would give it the attention due to it.
The reader should be informed or entertained with and by the content written. Afterwards, it might spur them into actions which would ultimately benefit the writer in the end. Ideally, isn’t this what we are here for?
Wishing you the best in your endeavor….
Thanks Lina for your comments… much appreciated. It is my intention to add to the topic as I go along and have them relating back to the main page/post. I’m very sure I could expand quite a bit on the content already written. It will happen over time… I hope. 🙂
I have never thought of eating raw food as a way of keeping from denaturing the enzymes. So this was an interesting take on food.
How would you compare the benefit of raw food with the risk of pathogens when you are not cooking food? As one of the most important reasons for cooking is to destroy pathogens that can make us ill (whether it is in meat or vegetables… they can be anywhere) do you find it better to eat raw vs the risk of getting sick?
Hi Travis… you bring up an interesting subject! I don’t know about you, but I would never consider eating raw meat no matter how pathogen free it was. Ugh! In actual fact, I’ve never considered risking getting sick from eating a salad. Of-course, I always wash my veges well, even if they are totally organic. In this day and age, while ever they are spraying “who knows what” about the skys, I don’t consider anything out in the garden to be free of pathogens or any other thing. My choice is to eat organic whenever I can, but as I say… I wash it well, even if I’ve grown it myself. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of someone getting sick from eating a clean salad… have you?
Hi Marilyn,
What a great article on the benefits of enzymes. I studied biology in college and I am very familiar with how enzymes work in the body, and how easy it is to denature (break down) enzymes when you cook!
I agree that you just have to find a balance in the foods you eat and how you eat them in order to make it all work.
Hi Sean, thanks for the comment. I’m happy you agree. If you make sure you’re receive plenty of raw fruit and veges, particularly at meal times, I don’t think we can go too far wrong. The other thing also is to make sure you don’t cook the life out of your veges… lightly steamed is best.
You topic is wonderful. Virtually everybody on the planet does not eat correctly. More to the point most people don’t know how to eat correctly and that is not their fault. Modern living promotes fast foods and easy fixes, which are most of the time not good for our bodies. You deal with a very important topic and I urge you to carry on and get your message out to as many people as possible.
Thank you Darryl for your encouragement… it doesn’t go unheeded! The more I’ve studied the subject, the more I’ve realised our whole eating is a very hit and miss affair. We allow our taste buds to dictate to us what we’ll have to eat today, with no thought on what we really need. As long as it “fills the hole” and we like the taste. I agree with you, it’s not the fault of the people as they just don’t know and all advertisements are aimed at getting a product sold… not how good it is for you (if it is).
A good mate of mine is into the enzyme idea with food as she insists that your digestive tract is not designed to handle the modern day western world diet of cooked and processed food. She strongly believes that the influence of enzymes can help with this sort of thing and erradicate stomach problems. What do you think about this?
Sorry Chris for being so long in replying… I’ve been away from my blog through unfortunate circumstances. I completely agree with your mate, we are definitely not designed to eat many of the “foods” we consume. Time to get back to real food. Enzymes really do help in a big way.
A good mate of mine is into the enzyme idea with food as she insists that your digestive tract is not designed to handle the modern day western world diet of cooked and processed food. She strongly believes that the influence of enzymes can help with this sort of thing and erradicate stomach problems. What do you think about this?
Sorry Chris for being so long in replying… I’ve been away from my blog through unfortunate circumstances. I completely agree with your mate, we are definitely not designed to eat many of the “foods” we consume. Time to get back to real food. Enzymes really do help in a big way.
Hello, thanks for sharing information about health benefits. If most of people would follow directions provided here and would use a common sense, word as disease would disappear.
People do not think what they eat. They want to please their taste buds. I am one of them. Instead of eating additional fruit, I go after piece of chocolate.
Raw food has enormous benefits, such as fiber, antioxidants, enzymes, minerals and vitamins. All the mentioned elements are in compact state as nature created them.
Thanks to your and other people’s blogs , human beings would think about their health and how to help themselves choosing right food.
All the best, happy writing, Nemira.
Thanks for commenting Nemira! If it’s chocolate you crave, please make sure it’s good 75% – 95% cocoa and then you’ll find you’re doing your body good! I still wouldn’t eat too much of it, but a couple of squares is great and extremely enjoyable. As long as you are eating well in other things, the antioxidants contained in chocolate makes it a very healthy addition to your diet.
Hello, thanks for sharing information about health benefits. If most of people would follow directions provided here and would use a common sense, word as disease would disappear.
People do not think what they eat. They want to please their taste buds. I am one of them. Instead of eating additional fruit, I go after piece of chocolate.
Raw food has enormous benefits, such as fiber, antioxidants, enzymes, minerals and vitamins. All the mentioned elements are in compact state as nature created them.
Thanks to your and other people’s blogs , human beings would think about their health and how to help themselves choosing right food.
All the best, happy writing, Nemira.
Thanks for commenting Nemira! If it’s chocolate you crave, please make sure it’s good 75% – 95% cocoa and then you’ll find you’re doing your body good! I still wouldn’t eat too much of it, but a couple of squares is great and extremely enjoyable. As long as you are eating well in other things, the antioxidants contained in chocolate makes it a very healthy addition to your diet.
I really enjoyed this article. It wasn’t simply a “oh here eat this, this is better because I say so” type of eat right claim. It was a more of here these are facts, take what you want from them and here’s the claims or proof to help you decide. And that’s what I expect when I’m looking for a way to eat better or alter my diet to get the most out of eating healthy , so I thank you.
That’s great Jovan! I’m happy that was your experience. I’ll definitely try to note that. Thanks. Marilyn