In regards to eating meat

[Tenet Nosce]

A supplement company telling us we need to eat raw foods. And knowing that we are a lazy society they offer us pills.

Yes, I am familiar with Enzymedica. I think they have good products, but the rhetoric is a bit much. It sneaks up on ya in this FAQ, for example:

Enzymes are protein chemicals, which carry a vital energy factor needed for every chemical action, and reaction that occurs in our body. There are approximately 1300 different enzymes found in the human cell. These enzymes can combine with coenzymes to form nearly 100,000 various chemicals that enable us to see, hear, feel, move, digest food, and think. Every organ, every tissue, and all the 100 trillion cells in our body depend upon the reactions of metabolic enzymes and their energy factor. Nutrition cannot be explained without describing the part that enzymes play.

Well, that is certainly true.

Raw food provides only enough enzymes to digest that particular food. There are no extra enzymes in raw food to digest cooked or processed food.

I don't really get this claim, and I'm not sure of evidence to support it. Foods become foods because of the enzymes that a particular animal makes. This is why some animals eat certain foods, and to others the same food is poisonous.

Also, for example... the beneficial flora in the human gut depend upon the fact that we don't make enzymes that break down certain kinds of fiber. This fiber acts as food for them.

But if it weren't for some kind of enzyme produced outside of the food itself (by the human or the bacteria), those fibers wouldn't just break down due to their own enzymes.

This is completely influenced by the absence or deficiency of metabolic enzymes.

Produced internally. Not from the foods we eat.

Only if we eat the best of foods with the proper enzymes to assist in their digestion, can we alleviate stress on the entire system and increase the body's ability to fight off disease.

Only? Starting to lose me here...

Enzymes are vital to the ability of glands and organs to receive the specific nutrients they require to function properly.

Yes, the enzymes produced internally by those organs and glands. Which, by the way don't act to digest those organs and glands. That would be counterproductive.

Our body makes enzymes called metabolic enzymes. They are responsible for every action that takes place in our body including digestion.

Yes, as I said.

Enzymes are found in raw foods.

That is true.. but what does it have to do with the previous sentence where they were talking about the enzymes that the body makes?

However, there are just enough enzymes in each particular food to assist in the breakdown of that food.

Lost me again.

It seems that we inherit a certain enzyme potential at birth.

Very shaky statement there. Very shaky.

However, if we depend solely on our body to produce all the enzymes we need, our enzyme potential will be depleted at a much faster rate than nature intended.

Continuing to build on a weak premise...

To fortify your enzyme potential, you must eat raw foods as much and often as possible and/or take certain enzyme supplements.

Fortify my potential? Must? There's that word must again.

The body can make enzymes. However, [b]research confirms that it is self-defeating to obligate the body to make excessive amounts of highly concentrated digestive enzymes for digest due to the drain this places on the rest of the organs and tissues.

What an odd sentence. How are we obligating the body to make excessive amounts of enzymes again? They are starting to contradicts what they said earlier.

Stress and hard physical labor in hot temperatures seem to use up more enzymes, which could shorten your life.

Another dubious proposition.

To prevent this enzyme loss from shortening your life span, you have only one solution: you must provide enzyme reinforcements from an outside source in order to cut down the secretion of digestive enzymes and allow your body to make enough metabolic enzymes.

Must!! The only solution to prevent the "enzyme loss" within my organs and glands is to take digestive enzymes? What do digestive enzymes have to do with the enzymes in my organs and glands? Maybe there is a link but I don't think it is that straightforward.

Yes. Children usually eat the same enzyme-deficient foods as their parents.

Children are also producing much more digestive enzymes than their parents. Assuming all else is functioning properly.

Drinking pasteurized milk causes the baby's enzyme factory to begin using its reserve of enzymes from day one.

Building on the dubious claim of "enzyme reserves". The body makes enzymes. That's what it does. They even said so themselves.

Research is trying to tell us that we, which includes pregnant women and children, must eat raw foods that contain enzymes and/or take supplemental enzymes.

That study actually said nothing about the enzyme content of breast milk having anything to do with the results. Other than that, I agree with the actual conclusion of the study.

Lipase is the enzyme that aids the body in breaking down and storing fats.

Right... so how is it that lipase-deficient people get are getting fat if they can't even absorb fat in the first place?

Lipase also helps us to burn fat for energy.

But the lipase in our fat cells breaking down the fat is not affected by taking lipase in a supplement. The lipase doesn't get absorbed into the body and sent to the fat cell. The lipase in the fat cell needs to be made inside the fat cell.

By eating cooked foods, which have no enzymes, we will put weight on more abundantly than if we eat raw foods.

I'm as skinny as a rail.

For example, pig farmers will not feed their pigs raw potatoes because the pigs stay lean. Instead, the farmers feed the pigs boiled potatoes and the pigs become fat.

This is not a cohesive argument for anything.

Another reason why enzymes reduce obesity is because cooked foods cause drastic changes in the size and appearance of the pituitary gland.

Cause? Citation?

Researchers have found that enzymes affect our hormone-producing glands and hormones influence our enzyme levels.

Well sure, since enzymes affect everything in our bodies. Without enzymes, we couldn't make hormones. And without hormones we couldn't regulate enzyme production. That is how it all works.

But what does this have to do with the enzymes in food?

Cooked foods cause our pancreas, thyroid, and pituitary glands to exhaust their enzymes to digest our food.

The enzymes needed to digest our food actually come from the stomach, the liver and the pancreas.

This causes our body to become sluggish, leading to weight gain. Raw food calories are relatively non-stimulating to glands and stabilize body weight more so than cooked food calories.

Really, this kind of gibberish is what makes natural medicine so tough of a field to navigate. Everybody thinks they are an expert when they don't even have a firm grasp of human physiology.

But still, they make decent products.

The earliest records of (lacto) vegetarianism come from ancient India and ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE. In the Asian instance the diet was closely connected with the idea of nonviolence towards animals (called ahimsa in India) and was promoted by religious groups and philosophers. Among the Hellenes, Egyptians and others, it had medical or Ritual purification purposes.“

I am happy to see my little discourse was confirmed by Wikipedia!

One animal is not to be fed to another." —Edicts of Ashoka, Fifth Pillar

Must have been a rough time to be a cat.

Following the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in late antiquity, vegetarianism practically disappeared from Europe as it was in other Continents, except India

Hmm... that is curious if Jesus was promoting vegetarianism it seems really odd that it would disappear like that.