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THE
NUTRITIONAL APPROACH KNOWN AS THE
‘FOOD ENZYME CONCEPT’
Anonymous Contribution
The
book Enzyme Nutrition, by Dr. Edward Howell, is a classic in
the field of nutritional theory.
Its message has implications for health, longevity, ecology,
economics, and a myriad of other ancillary fields.
It is a work whose importance can only be appreciated when
current nutritional practice is understood as a great ‘dietary
experiment’ of unprecedented proportions.
Never in the history of humankind has there been as much
processing, refining, and adulteration of the food supply as is
currently happening. The
book Enzyme Nutrition tells why the manipulation of the food
supply may be catastrophic, as well as offering a sound rationale
for seeking and implementing alternatives to the current difficult
situation.
Howell’s book is as much a narrative of
developments in the field of nutritional research over the last 90
years as it is an exposition of a new theoretical position.
It is also a highly readable book that addresses issues of
food from the perspective of function, i.e. do we live to eat or eat
to live? Howell states that the human body is a product of millennia
using raw foods in their most natural state.
Its functional integrity demands foods that provide the
‘elan vital’ required to live.
Only living foods are able to provide the life force we must
have to perform our daily activities, maintain health, repair our
machinery, and replace our own species.
Howell demonstrates clearly that these functions are in
jeopardy due to the poor quality of our current food supply.
Living
enzymes are a third part of the food triad that has been
systematically destroyed by a marketing/transportation system whose
needs have been placed ahead of those it serves.
Freezing, cooking, irradiating, addition of chemicals, and a
thousand other strategies have been implemented to allow 2 percent
of America’s population to feed the other 98%.
The age-old problem of stabilizing foodstuffs for transport
and storage has resulted in an industry that removes the living
portion of food to facilitate its movement over long distances.
This has been necessary to get food from field to market
given the exigencies of handling, marketing and storage.
And entire marketing strategy has successfully anchored this
process in the minds and taste buds of the ‘civilized’ world.
The price we pay for the luxury of not tilling the soil,
however, may be greater than we understand.
Dr.
Howell presents information that lets each reader assess the
veracity of his claim, builds a convergent structure that explains
how each individual can exert more control over his food supply, and
suggests how such efforts may result in improved health and longer
lives. As we are well
aware, the current health care system is a disaster.
Dependence on foreign energy to operate our agri-businesses
is greater now than ten years ago, and government controls,
protections, and regulations related to foodstuffs and additives are
extremely questionable. Enzyme Nutrition offers extensive information about how we
can approach health and nutrition from a more objective viewpoint in
order to make individual decisions about health and diet.
Dr.
Edward Howell spent over 50 year of his life researching food
enzymes and how they affect the body.
His book was originally an 800-page tome including all of his
extensive research. The
book Enzyme Nutrition is the abridged version of his original
work.
Ann
Wigmore was a contemporary of Dr. Howell and a student of his work.
She researched his works among many of the works of other
advocates of raw foods during her lifetime.
She came to the conclusion that in the United States it is
hard if not impossible to eat a raw foods diet that is not
contaminated by chemical fertilizers and pesticides. She developed a diet that incorporated a small amount of
organically grown fruits and vegetables (although very expensive)
with easy to grow wheatgrass (as a mainstay), sunflower greens, and
buckwheat greens, and other sprouted nuts and seeds such as almonds,
fenugreek and others. She
opened an institute in Boston and grew all her wheatgrass and
sprouted greens inside. She
had great success in teaching people how to grow and implement this
diet and in turning around the disease process. The foods in her diet retained and provided enzymes.
In
simple terms, enzymes contain the vitamin, the mineral and in
Howell’s words “The enzyme complex harbors a protein carrier
inhabited by a vital energy factor.”
Only foods that are not cooked contain this vital energy
factor—i.e. raw fruits and vegetables.
Steve
Meyerowitz in his book Wheatgrass, Nature’s Finest Medicine,
says that “Grass
contains hundreds of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids,
phytochemicals, anti-oxidants, cellular RNA and DNA all in
concentrated form.”
Enzymes are an extensive subject. THE WHEATGRASS HABIT hopes
in future issues to provide more information about the specific
known enzymes in wheatgrass.
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