The Power of Enzymes
Yeah, I’ve tried a number of all-around digestive enzyme
supplements. The kind designed to be eaten with the
enzymatically challenging food… don’t know whether
it’s best before or after the food cause the bottles
never say but I’m guessing that it would be best to down
the enzymes capsules BEFORE the enzymatically dead food.
This way the enzyme pill is moved into the duodenum with
the first of the food, releasing its contents and
assisting with digestion when food first leaves the
stomach. No point in taking an enzyme pill with your
grapefruit, apple, live salad, live nut/seed smoothie
(;), etc. because they are enzymatically living foods.
Diary is an exception; I don’t care how much live
cultures are in my raw goat cheeses or yogurts (when I
have them), I MUST take a milk digestant enzyme pill
with them now that I’ve got some on-hand. I save my
enzyme supplementation for the dead grains, tubers,
meats, post-workout protein drinks, etc…
Since I’ve had a number of different enzyme pills I’d
like to share my opinion, granted that I haven’t tried
the more pricey of the enzyme pills out there. My
absolute favorite also happens to be competitively
priced, it’s called “Vibra-Gest” from “Nature’s Plus”
Source of Life line of products. I get 90 capsules for
under 13.00 US. One capsule contains:
lactobacillus acidophilus 100mg
bifidobacterium longum (50 million viable cells) 50mg
lactobacillus bulgaricus (50 million viable cells) 50mg
amylase 50mg
lactase 50mg
lipase 50mg
bromelain 35mg
papain 30mg
cellulase 30mg
protease 20mg
oxidase 10mg
diastase 10mg
maltase 10mg
phosphatase 5mg
Going comparison shopping it is difficult for me to find
anything much better for such a good price (actually,
this pill has the most variety of digestive enzymes I’ve
seen). I like the multi-vitamin from “Source of Life”
too, their mini-tabs with recommended dosage spread out
into six tablets does me good, I only take three at the
most in a single day. More than a multi; lots of other
goodies.
Today I got something new, some papain (from papaya)
enzyme chewable pills. It has some fructose and a filler
but I figured the pill is so small it won’t hurt me
(even though it has the dreaded “natural and artificial
flavors”). I’m wondering if it would be safe to grind up
the papain tablets in my mortar and pestle and mix it in
with lots of other herbs and spices into my ground
patties and meatloaf foods… letting the protein
digestive enzyme magic of papain do its work with the
other herbs, spices and seasonings to pre-digest the
ground meat for a few hours at room temperature to
facilitate the digestive process even before masticating
the food… Is papain safe after being cooked at
temperatures around 250 degrees (oven temperature)?