Your Monkey’s Diet  & Health

Part 1: Raw Food & Enzymes

Enzymes are complex proteins that serve as catalysts for various body processes. There are three types: Metabolic, digestive and food. Metabolic enzymes give your monkey’s body energy - to exercise, heal, think, vocalize and breathe, among other activities. Digestive enzymes, manufactured primarily by the pancreas, help break down food in your monkey’s stomach.

Food enzymes occur naturally in uncooked, non-irradiated vegetables, fruits and seeds and grains. These enzymes start the process of digestion in the mouth and upper stomach, significantly reducing the amount of digestive enzymes your primate needs to produce to break down the food.

Food enzymes are delicate substances. They begin to work at room temperature and increase in activity once in the mouths. However, cooking temperatures over 118 degrees destroys them. When monkeys are fed cooked food or processed foods, such as monkey chow and table foods, they have to provide all the required enzymes for digestion, a job that requires more energy than any other bodily process. Ever notice how tired and listless you feel after a large cooked meal? The extra digestion required to process the enzyme depleted food is sapping your energy just as it does the monkeys.

Living foods - fresh fruits and vegetables, germinated raw seeds and nuts, raw fats (such as flax and hemp seed oils), and raw protein such as sashimi (raw crabs eaten by Java macaques) - have active enzymes that supplement, instead of use up, the body’s supply. To gain health benefits like easy digestion and good energy levels for your monkey, the idea is to keep food at its enzyme peak.

Using raw organic foods for your monkeys will be an added health bonus!

 

 

 

Raw foods contain health promoting enzymes. Using raw organic foods for monkeys like this adult female squirrel monkey “Abby”, above and adult female mona guenon “Sasha” below, is an added health bonus!