Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Pigs Prove That Enzymes Make You Skinny

It's true. A study done on pigs show that the presence of enzymes in food make you skinny. So what's the skinny on this story?

Here's the deal: cooked foods don't have enzymes, and pigs fed cooked food (potatoes) got fat while pigs fed raw food (again, potatoes) didn't get as fat. Specifically, according to E. Howell in "Enzyme Nutrition: The Food Enzyme Concept":

"Technical men in the business of extracting the maximum profit from farm animals found it was not economical to feed hogs raw potatoes. The hogs would not get fat enough. Cooking the potatoes, however, produced fat hogs that brought ... a fat profit."

Why Do Cooked Foods Make Pigs (and You) Fat?
So according to the studies, cooked food makes pigs fat. Cooked food makes people fat, too. That's because cooked foods are raised to a high temperature that literally kills the enzymes that occur naturally in food. Our bodies require enzymes to properly digest food, and when we don't have enough enzymes, the food we eat literally rots in our guts, adding to weight gain and the appearance of a beer belly.

Specifically, other studies show that:

1. Canned foods lack enzymes and often over-stimulate the endocrine system, promoting weight gain (E. F. Kohman in "Comparative experiments with canned, home cooked, and raw food diets" in the Journal of Nutrition).

2. Laboratory rats fed a diet of processed and enzyme-less protein, fats, and carbohydrates increased their percentage of body fat (V. Korenchevsky, "Pathology and Bacteriology").

3. Overweight people may be deficient in lipase, a fat-digesting enzyme that also helps in the overall metabolizing of fats (Tufts University School f Medicine).

Scary Enough?
Yikes! The results of these studies are enough to scare anyone. What I've learned in my years of nutritional counseling is that a proper diet that has plenty of enzymes plus the raw materials the body needs to stay health (vitamins, minerals, trace-minerals, and antioxidants) does more to help weigh loss than any diet plan.

Sure, a healthy common-sense diet is good for any body, but most people I've seen with weight problem are generally lacking in raw foods, quality nutrients, and enzymes. A friend of mine, Viktoras Kulvinskas, is fond of saying, "Don't dine without enzymes!" and I definitely agree with him.

Enzyme Therapy for Weight Loss
If you want to lose weight, enzyme therapy is a good place to start. It's a natural therapy that anyone can do because it's made of the raw materials your body uses. To practice enzyme therapy for weight loss, you need to start with a high-quality enzyme source, an enzyme that works well even in the very acidic environment of the stomach. Once you've got that:

1. Take 500-1000 mg of the enzymes just before each meal with spring water.
2. Take the same amount between meals.

The enzymes you take with meals will help your body digest the food you eat and extract the maximum nutrients from the food. The enzymes you take between meals will "scavenge" throughout your body and help flush toxins, which often results in weight loss.

The moral of this story? Don't dine without enzymes. In fact, don't start or end your day without enzymes. Don't leave home without enzymes! Get the picture?

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Photo credit: Gluttonous *