Enzyme Nutrition [Paperback]

For all the cynics who think a raw food diet is a silly fad, they might have difficulty arguing the facts present in this book. For those who follow a diet such as the Hippocrates Diet, or who realize the value of adding fresh and uncooked or minimally-cooked foods to their meals, this book will be a valuable source of information as to precisely why, in a scientific sense, your endeavor to eat living foods is not only justifiable, but very wise.

There's more to life than the foods you eat, but there's not much more to death than the foods you eat. Most people dig their own graves with their knives and forks. By understanding both the harmful and healthful qualities of various foods and how they are prepared, one can greatly increase once chances of survival through the 21st century. Of course, first one has to avoid getting hit by a car or flying airplanes.

Howell's main idea about enzymes can be seen in the excerpts provided here. He believed that the proteins in enzymes were mere carriers for a 'vital energy' or 'life principle' which he called the enzyme potential. He also believed that we were born with this enzyme potential in a limited lifetime supply. Why did he believe in this bizarre theory? The excerpt provided gives a clue: in a book written in 1985 he was arguing against the enzyme theories of 1880 and 1890. He had missed the huge development in the knowledge about enzymes which had happened after 1950. He was stuck in the past.

Much of the material in this book is similar to his first book, "Food Enzymes for Health and Longevity" which was written in 1939 when he was 41. In his first book, he gave some references describing experiments where the enzyme activity appeared to be separated from the protein molecule. If he had stayed in touch with enzyme research he would have known that these crude experiments were disproved with more accurate equipment. In fact, the enzyme activity IS completely explained by the protein molecule. He would have learned about DNA and its role in enzyme production. He would have learned about ATP and its role in providing energy to enzyme activity. There is no 'enzyme potential' needed to explain the workings of enzymes - his theory was based on misinformation. If he had been a true scientist he would have discarded his enzyme potential theory and moved on many years before this book was written.

In this book he used faulty logic, drawing unjustified conclusions from bits of information from other people's research. The way he presented information from other sources is also questionable in several cases. It is easy to read his book and get the impression that he had supported his ideas with good references. But if the actual reference is read, it can be seen that he sometimes omitted details which would have weakened his case. For instance he talked about an old experiment by 'Jackson' where rats were fed a diet of 80% sugar and the pancreas size increased. He commented that this was an enzymeless diet, and he exclaimed about the calamitous effects of an enzymeless diet. But he didn't mention the fact that the control rats' diet was also enzymeless cooked food (containing 40% sugar). The difference between the rats on the two diets had nothing to do with enzymes in the food. He also ignored the fact that the paper's authors thought the change in the pancreas weight of those mice might not have been related to diet but to another factor in the experiment.