In the second of a series of articles on live food, Nutritionist Belinda Rennie looks at how to begin “living in the raw” by harnessing the power of enzymes in raw food to revive the body and reverse the ageing process.

“Living in the raw” means making a conscious shift to eating less cooked and processed foods and eating more fruits and vegetables, fresh juices, nuts, seeds and sprouts. It also means including naturally fermented food products containing beneficial bacteria such as miso made from soya beans. It all sounds like some kind of fad approach to eating but on the contrary it is the best way to help prevent degenerative diseases like cancer and heart disease.

This is because raw foods contain enzymes that are living proteins. These food enzymes work in conjunction with over 50,000 other enzymes in the body that have the ability to speed up metabolic processes, digest food, detoxify the body and help in healing and repair.  Just thinking requires special enzymes.

The beauty of eating raw food is that it comes packaged with its own food enzymes that assist in the digestion of that particular food. Therefore you don’t have to use up the body’s valuable supply. When you eat raw food you are taking in the plants own energy and incorporating it into your own body. Compare that to chronically overeating processed, refined “dead food” that depletes enzymes and the body’s store of vitamins and minerals – overfed but undernourished.

The best way to begin living in the raw is with breakfast. Commercial cereals have lots of tempting health claims, “vitamin fortified, low fat, high fibre” yet very few are made from unprocessed wholegrains and most are very high in sugar and salt. Try making your own porridge or bircher muesli by soaking whole oats overnight in soya milk/low fat yoghurt with nuts, seeds and dried fruit:

Raw breakfast

50gm/2oz rolled oats

enough soy milk (diluted 1/3 with water) to cover oats

1tbs chopped almonds

1 tbs of sunflower seeds/pumpkin seeds

1 tbs of ground linseeds

dried figs/raisins/apricots/dates

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and add honey to taste. Before serving the next morning add extra soy milk/water and grated apple or other fresh fruit. It keeps for two to three days. Warm it slightly in the oven before serving. Makes one serving.

back to top

Another way of making a living breakfast is to blend fruit with live yoghurt containing beneficial acidophilus bacteria to make a smoothie. Adding some New Zealand Manuka honey which contains active enzymes plus soaked almonds gives the smoothie a sweeter taste.

Enzyme supplements

In addition to eating live food and not overeating, using digestive enzyme supplements is a great way to build up the body’s reserve of enzymes. Live plant enzymes as well as enzymes derived from animal sources contain amylases to digest starches, lipases to digest fat and proteases to digest proteins. By using digestive enzyme supplements, the organs that produce their own enzymes like the pancreas and liver can divert their power to other places in the body taking the stress off the entire digestive system.

Why use enzyme supplements?

1. If you are eating mainly cooked, microwaved or irradiated foods, taking supplements compensates for those lost or destroyed in the cooking process.
2. The amount of enzymes available to the body decreases with age, illness and stress. Supplementing with enzymes can help neutralize free radicals and slow the ageing process as well as speeding the recovery from illness.
3. Digestive enzymes can assist in complete digestion of proteins, carbohydrates and fats stopping food fragments from leaking into the bloodstream causing inflammatory and allergic reactions.

Proteolytic enzymes or proteases such as are bromelain from pineapple and papain from papaya break proteins into free amino-acids and their uses are far-reaching. They can:

1. Engulf and destroy foreign particles including parasites, protect mucous membranes and enhance the immune system.
2. Reduce swelling and edema, act as an anti-inflammatory to reduce pain and help recovery time from injury.
3. Reduce the rate of metastasis of cancer.
4. Acts like aspirin to decrease clotting and improve blood flow.

It is important to see your health professional for advice before taking digestive enzyme supplements. There are some situations where people would be advised not to take enzymes:

Eating living or raw foods on a daily basis starting with breakfast is an ideal way to improve your overall wellbeing, help prevent illness and rejuvenate your body.

back to top