Enzyme Nutrition - Softcover

The medical and health procedures in this book are based on the training, personal experience, and research of the author. Because each person and situation is unique, the author and publisher urge the reader to check with a qualified health professional before using any procedure where there is any question as to its appropriateness.

The publisher does not advocate the use of any particular diet and exercise program, but believes the information presented in this book should be available to the public.

Because there is always some risk involved, the author and publisher are not responsible for any adverse effects or consequences resulting from the use of any of the suggestions, preparations, or procedures in this book. Please do not use the book if you are unwilling to assume the risk. Feel free to consult a physician or other qualified health professional. It is a sign of wisdom, not cowardice, to seek a second or third opinion.

Cover art by Tim Peterson

Cover design by Rudy Shur

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Howell, Edward, 1898–

Enzyme nutrition.

Includes index.

1. Enzymes—Therapeutic use. 2. Nutrition.

1. Murray, Maynard. II. Title. [DNLM: 1. Enzymes. 2. Nutrition. QU 135 H859e]

RM666.E55H68      1985      616.8’54      85–11222

ISBN 978-1-101-66252-6

Copyright © 1985 by Edward Howell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Foreword

As a researcher, reporter, and author of over twenty books on nutrition, health, and related subjects, I feel privileged to be able to introduce the concept of food enzymes to you as presented by Dr. Edward Howell in this book. Here is how my own introduction to this excellent work occurred. I read an interview of Dr. Howell on the subject of Food Enzymes in the Healthview Newsletter, published in Charlottesville, Virginia. This interview was so impressive, I asked for permission from the editors of the newsletter to write an article about Dr. Howell and enzymes in Let’s LIVE magazine, of which I am a contributing editor. After receiving permission, I wrote the article for the June 1977 issue of Let’s LIVE. The response of the public to this information, which stated how enzymes could aid health and prolong life, was so strong that the magazine editors stated that “this article has drawn more comment from the readers than perhaps any article in Let’s LIVE history.” This is due, I am sure, to the helpful potential of the use of enzymes in the daily diet, as explained by Dr. Howell in this book, Enzyme Nutrition. More recently, due to many requests of old and newer subscribers who had heard about the enzyme information, this article was repeated in the August 1980 issue of Let’s LIVE. At the time of the writing of the June 1977 article, the only source of the information appeared in the Healthview Newsletter and the Let’s LIVE magazine. At that time, suggestions were given that Dr. Howell was at work on a complete book on the subject. Many scientists and doctors wrote me asking for information, as well as for the address of Dr. Howell, who had not yet finished the book. This book is now finished, and the full story of how enzymes can help human (as well as animal) health is at last revealed.

This information is a new addition to the history of nutrition and the betterment of health, now available to scientists, doctors, and you, the general public.

Linda Clark, M.A.

Introduction

In the early 1900s, Casimar Funk discovered the vital importance of vitamins in human nutrition and health. Some years later, researchers looked at the then unknown role of minerals and trace elements in health. Again, the nutritional picture took on a new dimension. This book is an attempt to bring into the light the most important nutritional discovery since vitamins, minerals, and trace elements, and perhaps the only solution to our present health crisis—food enzymes. The study of food enzymes in nutrition and human health has been a ‘sore eye’ to both scientists and nutritionists alike. For enzymes operate on both chemical and biological levels, and science cannot measure or synthesize their biological or life energy.

This biological force is the very core of every enzyme. Various names such as life energy, life force, life principle, vitality, vital force, strength, and nerve energy have been offered to describe this energy. Without the life energy of enzymes we would be nothing more than a pile of lifeless chemical substances—vitamins, minerals, water, and proteins. In both maintaining health and in healing, enzymes and only enzymes do the actual work. They are what we call in metabolism, the body’s labor force.

Enzyme Nutrition points out that each one of us is given a limited supply of bodily enzyme energy at birth. This supply, like the energy supply in your new battery, has to last a lifetime. The faster you use up your enzyme supply, the shorter your life. A great deal of our enzyme energy is wasted haphazardly throughout life. The habit of cooking our food and eating it processed with chemicals; and the use of alcohol, drugs, and junk food all draw out tremendous quantities of enzymes from our limited supply. Frequent colds and fevers and exposure to extremes of temperature also deplete the supply. A body in such a weakened, enzyme-deficient state is a prime target for cancer, obesity, heart disease, or other degenerative problems. A lifetime of such abuse often ends in the tragedy of death at middle age.

The purpose of this book is to educate scientists, health activists, and lay persons about the enzyme theories that Dr. Howell calls the Food Enzyme Concept. Along with his book The Status of Food Enzymes in Digestion and Metabolism, it is the first significant scientific attempt to prove the necessity of raw foods in human nutrition. In it he tells us what enzymes are, how they keep us alive, and the consequences of the present enzyme-deficient diet. In a highly readable and entertaining style, Dr. Howell exposes the crippled attempts of modern medicine to heal disease and its failure to attack the root of the problem. His conclusion is that many, if not all, degenerative diseases that humans suffer and die from are caused by the excessive use of enzyme-deficient cooked and processed foods. With all the billions of dollars spent on university and private research, it seems amazing that the cause of our current health crisis could be so clear-cut and simple. Yet the scientist or lay person who reads this book must respect the conclusions of Dr. Howell and the hundreds of contributing researchers as a significant contribution to the fields of human nutrition, degenerative disease, and aging.

In Chapter 1, the book gives an overview of the Food Enzyme Concept. This is followed by a discussion of the elusive life principle in enzymes and what Dr. Howell refers to as the enzyme bank account or potential. Each of us is given a limited supply of enzyme energy at birth that must last us a lifetime. Key to his theory that man could live longer and be healthier by guarding against loss of his precious enzymes is the example of wild animals in nature, who statistically outlive man and die of only a handful of natural causes. Howell goes on to show that bodily enzyme depletion and aging go hand in hand in both laboratory animals and humans.

Chapter 3 tells us what enzymes are and what they do in our body: they are the workers responsible for every activity of life; even thinking requires enzyme activity. Also in Chapter 3, the enzymes in foods are listed and their use in traditional recipes worldwide is explained in detail. The chapter also shows how animals harness the enzyme power in food by burying or covering it, thus allowing the food enzymes to predigest it, before they return to eat it. In this way they preserve their own precious enzyme supply.

Two important discoveries are discussed in Chapter 4, the food-enzyme stomach and the Law of Adaptive Secretion of Digestive Enzymes. The latter states that the body calls for exactly the quantity and type of enzymes needed according to the character of each meal eaten. This replaces the false theory of parallel secretion of enzymes which claimed that the organism’s three main enzymes, protease, lipase, and amylase, are all secreted in equal amounts regardless of the type of food eaten, raw or cooked. The existence of the food-enzyme stomach in animals and humans is the key to the Food Enzyme Concept. Howell shows that what was formerly called the “idle” cardiac portion of the human stomach is really a non-glandular food-enzyme stomach where sizable quantities of starch and other nutrients are predigested by salivary ptyalin and food enzymes for up to one hour before undergoing the more widely known functions of digestion. The crops of birds, worms, and grasshoppers, the forestomachs of cattle, sheep, and other ruminants, and the huge non-glandular forestomach of the whale are all examples of food-enzyme stomachs in animals.

One fatal process may be the cause of all humanity’s bodily ills. If you haven’t guessed already, it is the cooking of food, the subject of Chapter 5. Prolonged heat over 118° F kills enzymes; cooking temperatures destroy 100 percent of the enzymes in food. What is left is enzymeless food that makes up the bulk of the modern enzyme-deficient diet. With such heavy withdrawals of enzymes needed to digest an almost-all-cooked diet, it’s not hard to see how we become metabolically enzyme-poor even in middle age: heavy withdrawals and skimpy deposits lead to eventual bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the glands and the major organs, including the brain, suffer most from the unnatural digestive drain on the metabolic enzyme potential. Howell shows how the pancreas swells to meet the great demand for its juices while other glands also abnormally adapt, and how the brain actually shrinks on the all-cooked and over-refined diet.

Putting enzymes to work for you is the focus of Chapter 6, in which Dr. Howell explains the enzyme diet, enzyme therapy, and weight reduction techniques using raw calories from enzyme-rich foods. Perhaps this is the first logical attempt to explain the cause of overweight. Howell’s solution is equally lucid: the substitution of raw calories for cooked ones as much as possible. Raw milk, bananas, avocados, seeds, nuts, grapes, and many other natural foods are singled out as being moderately high in calories and in food enzymes too. Enzyme supplements are suggested for use with all cooked foods, and in larger dosages, under supervision, in enzyme therapy.

The question of enzyme inhibitors in raw foods, especially seeds, is put to rest in Chapter 7. For while inhibitors do exist and can block the digestion of food elements by inhibiting enzyme activity, Dr. Howell discusses the best methods of eliminating them from foods altogether.

Finally, Chapters 8 and 9 turn to the problems of allergies and degenerative diseases. Cancer, arthritis, and heart disease are discussed in the light of enzyme therapy, fasting, and raw diets. Here again, the animal kingdom and native cultures provide us with a wealth of information: Whales, which carry a layer of fat up to six inches, yet have completely clean arteries, free of cholesterol; and the Eskimos, who sometimes eat several pounds of fat per day. Yet, medical officers in exploration teams unanimously found clean arteries and no obesity among them. How do the whales and primitive Eskimos escape the ravages of animal fats? Both eat fats raw, with their full complement of lipase, a fat-digesting food enzyme found abundantly in all raw foods containing sizable quantitites of animal or vegetable fat.

The causes of cancer, arthritis, and allergies are equally understandable in light of the Food Enzyme Concept, as are the remedial approaches and preventive measures.

As an author, lecturer, researcher, and former Director of the Hippocrates Health Institute, I have seen remarkable healings and improvements in health and energy levels in individuals following periods on raw food diets. In many cases dramatic results are often obtained within a month or less, especially in problems of toxicity, exhaustion, low energy levels, and overweight. Of course, accounting for the modern pace of life and the weakened human condition, it may be difficult and potentially harmful to adopt a totally raw diet for extended periods. However, Enzyme Nutrition offers a safe and practical alternative: the use of supplemental enzymes in addition to the cooked foods eaten. Under laboratory conditions, certain of these supplemental enzymes are capable of digesting over a million times their weight in cooked food. Does it not make perfect sense to let outside enzymes do some of the work and save your own limited supply of enzymes for the important work of cellular metabolism?

The Food Enzyme Concept of human nutrition is indeed a revelation—one which stands uncontradicted, even in this age of rapid advancement of technology and new methods of testing. Dr. Howell’s contribution to the understanding of enzymes and raw food research represents a giant leap forward in the science of nutrition, no less so than the monumental discoveries of vitamins and minerals. It is now up to the many dedicated scientists, health activists, and interested lay persons to apply this new knowledge of enzymes and further the potentials for healing, vibrant health, and longevity that Dr. Howell points to.

Stephen Blauer

Boston, MA      

The length of life is inversely proportional to the rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential of an organism. The increased use of food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential.

The Enzyme Nutrition Axiom

—Dr. Edward Howell

1

Introduction to Enzyme Nutrition

THE ENZYME COMPLEX

I adhere to the philosophy that both the living organism and its enzymes are inhabited by a vital principle or life energy which is separate and distinct from the caloric energy liberated from food by enzyme action. I would not like to think, when a person talks to me face to face, that it is the energy of the potato he has just digested that is producing his whimsical remarks and animated conversation. I prefer to believe that complex emotions, such as joy, sorrow, and anger, are powered by the same vital energy that the enzyme complex utilizes in metabolizing food—not by the caloric energy of a potato or other food. Emotions are capable of being expressed even in starving persons where there is no food in the body to supply caloric energy.

I define the enzyme complex in biological rather than chemical terms. The enzyme complex harbors a protein carrier inhabited by a vital energy factor. For almost a hundred years chemist...