What are "enzymes"?

What are "enzymes"?

Susan Silberstein & Marilyn Joyce (Health and Nutrition Educator & Heath Counselor) gives expert video advice on: How much protein do I need? and more...

Enzymes are absolutely critical for every metabolic reaction in the body; they are the catalyst for every metabolic function. There's nothing in our body that would happen without enzymes and there are enzymes specific to everything that goes on throughout the entire body. You also do get enzymes from foods you eat, you know the raw foods. Once you cook a food or you process a food there's no more enzymes in that food, but in raw fruits and vegetables, for example, they're very high in enzymes that are necessary for digestion and assimilation of the food that you're eating. We also produce enzymes in our body. There is some research that indicates that we may only have a certain amount that we can produce in the course of our lifetime. I'm not absolutely sure about that, but if that's the case, that would be a real good reason for us to make sure that we get the enzymes also from the food we eat. In the old days, you know, a long time ago primitive man only ate things that were wild that were full of these enzymes. Today, with all our processed food, we're not getting all of those enzymes the way we should be getting them, in our diet.