26 Acidic Wastes: The Real Culprit
in an interview in the March–April 2000 issue of New Life magazine,
stated that in the 1920s a number of physicians in the United States and
Europe successfully used enzyme treatment for cancer.^9 With the discov-
ery of radiation, however, Beard’s enzyme protocol was forgotten.
The emphasis on raw fruit and vegetables worked to the advantage
of Kelley’s and Gerson’s cancer patients for several reasons. First, by
supplying the digestive system with enough protein-digesting enzymes
to break down the protein in the diet, the protein-digesting enzymes
produced by the pancreas were free to kill off cancer cells. Second,
since large quantities of low-calorie fruit and vegetables must be eaten
to satisfy hunger, they supply the body with large quantities of enzymes.
Third, solid fruit and combination fruit and vegetable juice detoxify
the liver and neutralize the acidic-waste-fi lled fl uid that cancer cells
feed on.
But fruit and vegetables are low in calories, so they have correspond-
ingly low enzyme levels. They are nevertheless the best source of
enzymes for cancer patients who can’t eat large quantities of raw meat,
dairy products, and raw, unfi ltered honey, all of which are rich in
enzymes.
When my maternal grandfather was an engineering student at the
University of Berlin, he developed indigestion. He undertook a cure by
eating nothing but raw beef (steak tartare) for several months and had
no more stomach problems thereafter. Until the end of his life, my
grandfather made what he referred to as scraped meat once a week. He
used round steak because of its low fat content, and he scraped the meat
from the fi ber with his hunting knife. He then added the yolk of a raw
egg to the mixture and spread it on buttered brown bread topped with
raw onions. The raw beef cured my grandfather’s indigestion by sup-
plying his digestive system with the protein-digesting enzymes that the
overworked, malfunctioning enzyme-production machinery in his pan-
creas was not producing in suffi cient quantities. The raw beef cure was
not my grandfather’s idea. At the time he was a young man living in
Germany, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, physi-
cians understood that raw foods had healing properties and used them
as therapeutic agents to cure disease.
In 1930, the German government passed legislation to the effect that
honey was not to be sold for table use unless it contained the starch-
digesting enzyme amylase. The Netherlands passed a similar law in 1925.