Enzyme Nutrition, by Dr. Edward Howell was published back in 1985 by the Avery Publishing Group of Wayne, New Jersey. I have just gotten through it. He describes some amazing eating habits of many humans and all animals. If a python, for example, chokes down a pig, that animal may not have been dead when he swallowed it, but will soon suffocate inside the snake's stomach. No snake has enough digestive enzymes to break down that pig into the four food groups. It relies on the autolysis of the cells of the ingesta. The enzyme in all cells just waiting for us to shut down is called cathepsin. The intestines of the python have some proteases, lipases, and amylases, along with some acid to dissolve the bones. But there is no way that snake is going to get any benefit out of the meal if the meal doesn't help out a little bit. Apparently Mother Nature wants all of us to dissolve eventually when we are no longer useful on the earth, and become minerals and organic material for the following generations.
Eskimos (Indian term meaning "he eats it raw") do not have firewood nor charcoal for a barbecue. They eat raw or fermented and autolyzed meat. Howell says, "he practiced conservation of body enzymes by arranging for outside enzymes to help digest his food." They stored the meat until it underwent some autolysis and produced new flavors: "walrus meat tastes like old, sharp, rich cheese." After a walrus hunt, they would have a dinner of raw clams eaten right out of the stomach of the walrus. The raw whale blubber had its own lipase that broke down the fat into fatty acids, usable by these hardy people. They had clean blood vessels until our civilization caught up with them.
The African Masai do well on raw blood and milk from their cattle. People and animals who eat cooked foods have larger digestive glands than those who eat foods raw. The body has to compensate for this lack of food enzymes.
What have we learned? Eat more raw foods. Taking the proper vitamins and minerals is not enough if you do not have the appropriate enzymes to help you digest the foods down to their basic, non-allergic simple carbohydrate, fatty acids, and amino acids. If you have dyspepsia, you may need to take some digestive enzymes along with your meals.
Raw meat for us civilized folks would probably give us parasites. Do pythons get trichinosis?
Lendon H. Smith, M.D.
Portland, Oregon
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