By attending to the excretion and elimination of unwanted substances is the first step to good health.
The greatest or most important health step that one can take is to put the body into an extended and deep elimination mode - to eliminate everything that is unwanted and obstructing the functions of the body.
When the body is thoroughly cleansed and magnetized by the power of breath, the mind becomes calm, insight is enhanced and there is greater harmony in the entire system.
The body must be cleansed from the filth of civilized food so that the flow of innovation and inspiration is not impeded.
Man is suffocating, suffering and sinking, in a swampy sea of saturating, silting, sticky, slippery, sloppy slicks of sludgy slime.
Cleanse the system so that purified mind is forever inspired.
Miracles are wrought on an empty stomach.
Good habits last a lifetime, bad habits are short-lived, you won't live long enough to enjoy them.
He who loves his stomach does not love his life.
Health is the balance between assimilation and elimination.
Eyes must sparkle with the laughter of inner cleansing.
Truth comes in small segments to one who is attuned.
More murders are enacted in the kitchen than anywhere else.
In ten minutes you can eat so badly that you will become an invalid for a week.
Internal purification is best when we drink an abundance of light water for it to create a healing pressure as it flows through the body like a silken thread.
A mind totally in harmony with a body functioning with rhythmic clocklike efficiency is something that man unknowingly is searching for.
It has been truly said that magic is wrought on an empty stomach. For if the digestive tract is always stuffed with food, and the bloodstream saturated with food essence, breathing, nerve and blood circulation is impeded.
To learn the truth listen to the sermon and song of an old and trusty preacher - nature. It is everything that is logical, simple, effective, intelligent and powerful; but it will not be denied by man-made philosophies, religions, commercialism and laboratory produced substances.
One obtains the best results from food eaten when all the previous meals have been well assimilated and its residues have been eliminated from the body. As it is written in the New Testament do not put new wine into old skins.
Though not generally accepted, illness is fed by what we imbibe through the air, from the food and liquids we take. Conversely, as illness, including germs and viruses cannot live in a clean environment, the solution is to abstain from food for a while and replace it with large amounts of clean water to purify the entire system.
In the same way that hunger or thirst cannot be appeased by one meal or one glassful of water during our lifetime, so health and fitness cannot be stored. It has to be earned by rational living every day of our life.
When we can breathe deeper and slower, its effect on the mind is so pronounced as it releases life's treasures, not of coins and gems but of effulgent, lucid and clear thinking.
You can eat enough of the wrong foods in ten minutes to make you an invalid for a week. As one meal takes 24 hours or more to be fully digested and for its residues to be eliminated, the body can feel the harmful effects for that length of period.
There is no more satisfying way of living than by refraining from food and also drink if we are not hungry or thirsty. With a little discipline in this regard and providing we choose natural food when we do eat, we will become less body conscious as our mind can now function with all the freedom in creative endeavours and our everyday tasks.
Man will only to realize the truth about illness and health, something that has evaded him since the dawn of time and which he still has not accepted, by placing himself on a thorough internal elimination regime. It makes no difference what his illness is called and he can even be a so called healthy person. They will be shocked by the unceasing flow of unwanted toxic and slimy matter that is excreted from every aperture of their body. It is amazing that this truth was understood by the ancient yogis of India and their method the six shatkarmas is perhaps the greatest legacy that the old world has bestowed on contemporary man.
Life is breath and breath is life. Accordingly it is more a breathing mechanism than anything else. It is certainly the body's most predominating feature.
Man reaches his full potential when our consciousness is bathed with innovative inspiration delightfully experienced with each breath.
When you are attuned in this way, and as you grow in awareness of life's infinite range of logical and intelligent segments, truth will be forever your companion. It is out of this never exhausting supply that man has discovered and invented what he has or has streamlined the way he does things.
Thinking after gathering all the relevant facts, and allowing the subconscious to weave its unique brand of magic, is waiting for that gleam of light to flash on the mind which it usually does unexpectedly.
The easiest way to achieve success is to find a simple formula, easy to keep uppermost in the mind and perform. In the search for higher health, waiting for natural hunger and thirst, even if we do not imbibe anything for the entire day fits this bill perfectly. When the inner activities of the body do not always have to contend with the intake of food, it can perform its higher duties more efficiently. It is therefore, true that one is more satisfied when this rule is followed as it concurs with the axiom that magic is wrought on an empty stomach.
Language is magical because it it is the only thing that can express or capture consciousness and awareness our most prized possession — the meanderings of the mind, the fleeting and frail ethereal essences called thought and thinking that unceasingly flow in diverse and unexpected ways.
The mind cannot be forced but it can be fooled.
A wise man learns from the mistakes of others; a fool doesn't even learn from his own.
After gathering all the relevant information, thinking is waiting for the subconscious to weave its unique brand of magic by flashing solutions unexpectedly on the mind.
Outwardly you will be silent, but within your master will speak to you in the voice of a roaring rapid and resounding waterfall.
Nothing is more detrimental to man's advancement and well-being than an untruth which is given authoritative approval.
We shall continually chant so that we and our children shall never forget that we are sons of the morning, children of the light.
Knowledge is light but knowledge from light is most revealing of all.
Lesson |
Author(s) |
Lesson 1 - Introduction To Life Science As A Way Of Life |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 2 - The Nature And Purpose Of Disease |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 3 - Introducing The Life Science System For Perfect Health, Part I |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 4 - Introducing The Life Science System For Perfect Health, Part II |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 5 - Introduction To Nutritional Science |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 6 - The Immense Wisdom And Providence Of The Body |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 7 - Carbohydrates - Fuel For The Human Body |
Marti Fry |
Lesson 8 - Proteins In The Diet |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 9 - Vitamins: The Metabolic Wizards Of Life Processes |
Dr. Alan M. Immerman |
Lesson 10 - The Role Of Minerals In Human Nutrition |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 11 - Fats In The Diet |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 12 - The Role Of Acid And Alkaline Substances Within The Body |
Norman Allard, D.C. |
Lesson 13 - Air, Sunshine, And Natural Light Essential To Health |
Dennis Nelson |
Lesson 14 - Water Transports Nutrients To All The Body Cells |
Austin L. Brooks |
Lesson 15 - The Roles Of Rest And Sleep In Supplying Body Needs |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 16 - Nutrition, Mind And The Emotions |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 17 - Exercise And Its Beneficial Role In Nutrition And Digestion |
Dr. Norman Allard |
Lesson 18 - Ascertaining The Human Dietetic Character, Part I |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 19 - Ascertaining The Human Dietetic Character, Part II |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 20 - The Physiology Of Digestion |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 21 - Symptoms During Dietary Transition |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 22 - The Principles Of Digestive Physiology |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 23 - Application Of Food Combining Principles |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 24 - Selection And Storage Of Most Wholesome Foods Section One |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 25 - Selection And Storage Of Most Wholesome Foods Section Two |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 26 - Preparing And Serving Foods For Best Nourishment Section One |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 27 - Preparing And Serving Foods For Best Nourishment Section Two |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 28 - The Elixir Of Life: An Exploration Of Food Conditions, Body Conditions, And Eating Conditions That Beget Euphoric Health And Long Life |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 29 - Why Condiments Should Not Be Included In The Diet |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 30 - Sugars And Other Sweeteners May Be Worse Than Bad |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 31 - Refined And Processed Foods Are Hazardous To Your Health |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 32 - Why We Should Not Eat Meat |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 33 - Why We Should Not Eat Animal Products In Any Form |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 34 - The Harmfulness Of Beverages In The Diet |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 35 - Junk Foods: A Case Study On Molasses |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 36 - Junk Foods: A Case Study Of Garlic And Onions |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 37 - Fermented And Putrefied Foods In The Diet; Studies Of Other Junk Foods |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 38 - Sociological Benefits And Economic Ramifications Of The Avoidance Of Junk Foods |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 39 - Food Supplements |
Robert W. McCarter, Ph.D. |
Lesson 40 - The Dangers Of Drug Medication: Over-the-Counter And Prescription Drugs |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 41 - Thanks For Not Smoking |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 42 - Why Herbs Should Not Be Used |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 43 - Cooking Our Food |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 44 - Overeating: Fasting Fanaticism And Diet Fanaticism |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 45 - Introduction To Fasting |
Dr. Alan M. Immerman |
Lesson 46 - When To Employ Fasting; Determining Who Should Fast; How Long And How Often |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 47 - How To Preside Over A Fast |
Dr. Henry E. Stephenson |
Lesson 48 - How To Break A Fast; After The Fast |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 49 - The Organic Garden; Avoiding Commercially Produced Foods - Why? |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 50 - The Pluses In Orcharding: How To Get Started |
Rebecca Caisse |
Lesson 51 - Chemicals In The Household Environment |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 52 - Chemicals In Our Air |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 53 - Solar Energy And Your Health |
Margaret Flynn |
Lesson 54 - Weather And Human Well-Being |
William C. Lloyd |
Lesson 55 - Prenatal Care For Better Infant And Maternal Health And Less Painful Childbirth |
Joyce M. Kling |
Lesson 56 - Normal Feeding Of Infants; Feeding Babies Under Abnormal Conditions Until Weaning Age |
Joyce M. Kling |
Lesson 57 - Weaning The Infant; Feeding Children |
Joyce M. Kling |
Lesson 58 - Fasting Children During Disease |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 59 - Teaching Children About Healthful Living |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 60 - Self-Sufficiency And Natural Hygiene |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 61 - Nutrition And The Skin |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 62 - Healthy Eyes And Teeth |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 63 - Nutrition And The Hair |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 64 - Stress Management: The Life Science Approach |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 65 - There Are No Cures |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 66 - Contagion, Epidemics |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 67 - How To Practically Withstand Hospitalization With The Least Harm; What Treatments To Accept, Reject |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 68 - First Aid And Natural Hygiene |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 69 - Nutritional Approach To Overcoming Addictions |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 70 - Colds, Flus, Upper Respiratory Ailments |
Hannah Allen |
Lesson 71 - Allergies, Hay Fever, And Other Chronic Diseases |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 72 - Rheumatic Diseases |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 73 - Sugar And Carbohydrate Metabolism Disease |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 74 - Diseases Relating To The Heart And Circulatory System |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 75 - Cancers, Tumors |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 76 - Ulcers |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 77 - Gastrointestinal Diseases |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 78 - Reproductive Problems Of Men And Woman |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 79 - The Laws Of Life |
Randy Williams |
Lesson 80 - Adjustment To Hygienic Living Within The Family |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 81 - Socializing And Natural Hygiene |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 82 - The Adolescent And Hygienic Living |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 83 - Senior Citizens Living Hygienically |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 84 - The Basic Four Diet |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 85 - The Dangers Of A High-Protein Diet |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 86 - The Supplement Approach To Nutrition |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 87 - Chiropractic, Homeopathy, and Osteopathy |
Susan Hazard, Ph.D. |
Lesson 88 - The Vegetarian Diet |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 89 - Introducing Clients To The Need For A Lifestyle Change |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 90 - Psychology And Practical Aspects Involved In Making A Change In Lifestyle |
Margaret Flynn |
Lesson 91 - Methods For Inducing A Lifestyle Change |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 92 - Planning A Transition To Better Living |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 93 - Teaching Your Clients About Fasting |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 94 - Exercise And Children |
Enrique Manuel Foster |
Lesson 95 - Exercise In Sickness And Recuperation |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 96 - Corrective Exercises And Their Application |
Elizabeth D. McCarter, D.Sc. |
Lesson 97 - Devising A Lifestyle That Includes Vigorous Activity |
Mike Benton |
Lesson 98 - Exercise Programs For The Healthy |
T.C. Fry |
Lesson 99 - Restructuring The Way We Produce Our Foods - Part I |
Margaret Flynn |
Lesson 100 - Restructuring The Way We Produce Our Foods - Part II |
Margaret Flynn |
Lesson 101 - Harmonizing Society, Culture, and Lifestyle To Save Our Planet |
Margaret Flynn |
1.2. An Introduction To Life Science
1.3. An Inquiry Into The Philosophy, Principles, And Practices Of Life Science
1.4. Discussion Of The Medical Approach To Health And Disease
Article #1: The Return To Perfection by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Welcome! It is my privilege to introduce you to the science of health known by the descriptive term “Life Science.” It is also known as health science, Natural Hygiene, Hygiene, and other terms.
At the outset it is wise to delineate just what Life Science is—just what grounds it covers.
Life as we know it is possible and became possible because certain favorable conditions are and were present. Some of these conditions include favorable temperature, presence of oxygen and other gases and minerals, presence of water, absence of lethal substances, etc. Life Science is the study of all the conditions which make life possible. Because present-day life seems to be losing touch with those conditions which made life possible, Life Science brings us “back to our roots,” so to speak. We should endeavor to meet life’s requisites so that we can lead a joyous existence.
Science is not the cold dispassionate pursuit many of us have been led to believe. Rather, it is personal, and relevant to all that we are involved in. When we turn our studies upon ourselves so that we may have a very personal science, we begin to arrive at the essence of Life Science.
Science as represented today is not the warm practical medium we speak of here. Science that we can’t use and benefit by is hardly science. Life Science is the exploration and elaboration of those elements and influences we can invoke to exalt our lives and being. Certain truths are applicable to our being. Studying and systemizing these truths so that we can be guided by them is our aim here. That which begets correct results is scientific.
That which begets wrong results is unscientific.
Life Science concerns itself with those principles and truths applicable to human life so that we may observe and avail ourselves of them. We are of the firm conviction that only by scientific living can we realize the loftiest joys and the destiny which is our birthright.
Animals in nature are creatures of instinct. Following the guidance of instinct, they are correctly self-directed to meet their needs. Thus they thrive optimally in accord with their environmental possibilities. Inborn guidance is, in effect, Life Science or a science of life for nature’s creatures.
Humans have infinitely more potential for happiness and goodness than nature’s simpler forms of life. We are endowed with immeasurably more sophisticated faculties.
These superior endowments can keep us in a state of euphoria during a long life.
Life Science must be for humans what inborn direction is for animals. We, too, have instincts, but we are far more than these basic impulses of life. Unfortunately, we not only fail to follow our instincts but we often reject them in our living practices. Our instincts have been vitiated and perverted by unwholesome conditioning in a world that is quite berserk by sane standards. When humans act contrary to instincts they are being unscientific. When their practices are in accord with their instincts—with their inherent biological adaptations—they are living scientifically. Life Science is as simple as that.
Obeying our natural instincts is part and parcel of Life Science. We believe nature did not err in instilling in us guiding instincts. We contend that humans, with our as yet fledgling intellects, do the erring that begets our sickness and suffering.
Life Science is an intellectual endeavor. We are far enough along that we can determine what is good and what is bad for us. We are profound enough in our knowledge to construct a science of life that will guide us to realize the happiness and the destiny that should be ours.
Life Science is, therefore, a way of life that rightfully concerns itself with every facet of human life and human well-being. Only such a thoroughgoing philosophy and concern can be a true science of life.
In introducing Life Science as a true philosophy of life thoroughly in accord with the facts of existence, the question arises as to how its validity was determined. The surest way of assessing the correctness of any system is to put it to the test. Does it work? If it works, it must be deemed valid. If it does not work, then it must be unscientific.
Life Science began with success. From its beginnings as a new, but not yet complete, healing science it developed until today it is a full-blown scientific system touching upon everything that relates to human well-being. That it is valid is beyond doubt—Life Science works perfectly!
To capture the essence of the science of healthful living, I feel it appropriate to quote from a most notable hygienist, Dr. Keki Sidwha. He’s been a Hygienic practitioner in Great Britain for almost twenty years.
“In spite of all the great advances in many branches of science, we are still in a period of prehistory, a dark age, in our thinking about health, disease and healing. What the world sorely needs is a new concept of health. A different orientation of thoughts, words and deeds than we have been led to accept for umpteen generations is now urgently called for.
Natural Hygiene, a life science, is that branch of biology which investigates the conditions upon which health depends and the means by which it may be sustained in all its virtue and purity, while we have it, and restored when it has been lost or impaired.
Before physiology developed, the rules of Hygiene were instinctive, traditional, and empirical. Today these rules are based on the growing knowledge of physiology and biology. If we had perfect knowledge of the laws of life and applied them in a perfect system of Hygiene, disease would be impossible and never occur. In this sense Hygiene is the science of intelligent and healthful living.
Natural Hygiene refutes the present-day ideas that disease and ill health are inevitable in people’s lives, depending on chance and circumstances outside their own control and domain. Natural Hygiene is a way of life, a philosophy of living. Health can only be obtained through healthful living; it cannot be bought across the counter of a drugstore, not can it be found in a physician’s office or in a hospital. We contend that healing is a biological process which is continuously going on inside every organism.”
This brilliant expression of the Hygienic stand by Dr. Sidwha deserves immortality. His salutary contributions to the science of healthful living will achieve immortality in our annals. Certainly this statement embodies the essence of hygienic philosophy.
The following is a concise statement of the philosophy, principles and practices of Life Science.
Therefore, LIFE SCIENCE regards the body and mind as the Inviolable sanctuary of an individual’s being. LIFE SCIENCE holds that everyone has an inalienable right to have a pure and uncontaminated body, to be free of abnormal compulsions and restraints, and to be free to meet his/her needs as a responsible member of society.
1.3.1 The Concept of Innate Individual Worth
1.3.2 The Concept of Happiness and Ideal Health as Normal
1.3.3 The Self-Evident Concept of Self-Government In All Organisms
1.3.4 Life Science as a New Concept of Healthful Living
1.3.5 Life Science as a Broad-Based Science of Life
Life Science holds that we are born naturally innocent and naturally good. The first two paragraphs of the concise statement we heretofore printed in exposition of Life Science’s philosophy, principles, and practices states this.
Scientific studies of babies and youngsters have pointed to one inescapable conclusion. As gregarious creatures, humans are naturally empathetic, altruistic and moral, i.e., humans are naturally righteous toward one another in keeping with their gregarious instinct.
Humans are woefully perverted by unnatural conditions within the context of civilization. They are made vicious by inhumane influences such as deceptive practices, exploitation, insecurity, and other baneful conditions in a society gone mad.
Individuals usually strive to present the appearance of upright character to others. This bespeaks our innate urge and conviction that we should be righteous. Life Science holds that if a society of assurance exists these innate virtues will assert themselves naturally.
Life Science holds that life was developed to be a long joyous event from birth until a natural death. Happiness and health flow from ideal life conditions. Ideal life conditions ate normal in the environments of our development. However, such is the human intelligence that it has made almost all environments over the face of the globe inhabitable. Many arts, artifices, and artificial environments have been created to satisfactorily supplant the wonders, beauties, and beneficience of a natural environment in many habitats though, in truth, such artifices are never completely wholesome substitutes.
Life Science holds that humans developed to their high state because they adapted so well to the environment and its possibilities. This means that health is normal and natural when the conditions to which we are adapted are met. Superb excellence in humans flows from ideal life conditions and the superlative health begotten of them.
Simple observation of the development of complex organisms from the union of sperm and ovum is indicative that the powers of life reside within. Without anything from the outside other than needed raw materials, the organism has the inner direction to fashion itself from a fertilized ovum into a mature adult.
This implies an inherent character that embraces the following capabilities:
These faculties and powers are self-evident upon the simplest observation of yourself or other organisms. This concept and its axioms should ever be borne in mind when dealing with clients. The confidence needed in dealing with your own problems should you have any, or with the problems of your clients, can be derived and reinforced by referring to these self-evident truths.
Life Science may be said to be a reassertion of the conditions best suited to human life. In pristine nature, humans lived what we now call Life Science because of primal urges—on the instinctual level. They lived as gatherers of fruits from vine, stalk, and tree.
With the development of intellect, humans became ever more versatile in dealing with the forces of nature. But this eventually led to human alienation from both nature and our biological heritage. Though most humans observed much of their pristine endowment well into the civilization of the Christian era, the dark ages of medieval times brought on the renunciation of nature and earthly considerations. Humans became poorer in the observation of the elementary needs of life. Human needs on earth were contravened in the name of religion and salvation.
Fortunately, the dark ages did not wipe out humankind. Near the end of the dark ages the unnatural and inhumane conditions under which European civilization lived decimated the population with plagues. Great plagues were not due to any kind of contagion. The only thing contagious in the times of the bubonic and black plagues was widespread modes of death-dealing living practices.
Hygiene or Life Science as a philosophy and outlook survived the dark ages when the twin human scourges of medical and religious superstition saddled most of what we refer to smugly as the civilized world. In many parts of the world our biological mandate was fairly well maintained, notably in tropical cultures of the Far East and in isolated pockets here and there. It was preserved among many traditions and cultures in part.
Well before the Christian era Pythagoras elaborated a rather extensive philosophy of living on all planes of life. Among them was perhaps the best formulated statement of Hygienic living until this time. While the Greeks, of whom Pythagoras was one, were heavy on fruitarianism, they were also heavy into the incipient practices that begot the modern goliath of medicine.
The philosophy of Pythagoras gave rise to Appolonius and the Essenes, an ascetic culture that was vegetarian/fruitarian in practice. Much of Essenian philosophy and practices were preserved in the New Testament and is quoted in the sayings of Christ. The thin thread of Hygienic philosophy survived and received a modern impetus from the greatest universal genius of all times, Leonardo da Vinci, who was a vegetarian/fruitarian.
Though medical beliefs remained relatively unscathed while the areas of religious domination were receding during the Renaissance, some elements of the Hygienic philosophy survived.
I reiterate that our natural heritage was largely unaffected by the medical outlook in many areas of the world, notably in the Far East. But healthful living as a philosophy of life in the Western Culture did not exist as such.
It was not until the time of Dr. Isaac Jennings in 1822 that Hygiene as a formalized philosophy of life had its beginnings. Not until the consummate genius of Drs. Graham, Trail, Dewey, Tilden, and Shelton did the philosophy and science of health become fully ascertained.
Life Science is not new from many perspectives, although it is relatively new to what we call civilization. But it is totally new for most who learn it the first time. Now it is alien to our culture because of its relative rarity. At this time Life Science, even though in accord with our pristine being, is in eclipse because of medical thinking and a commerce that trades upon pathogenic fare.
It is our hope to teach enough dedicated individuals this science of health to assure that humanity thrives in health and enlightenment. In pursuing this course you are asked to be the torchbearers of a way of life whose time has come.
By no means is Life Science confined to dietary principles as you might gather from association with today’s Hygienists. Few Hygienists involve themselves with the expansive aspects of Life Science as a philosophy embracing every facet of human well-being.
Dietary concerns are but one area of Life Science’s dominion. It also includes mental and emotional well-being, as well as social and economic well-being. It includes environmental factors or ecology and is coextensive with all factors that touch upon human welfare. While this course is nominally on the specific area of nutrition, nutrition is but a small part of the all-encompassing philosophy of Life Science.
Self-healing is the only healing. Throughout nature we see animals with cuts, bruises, broken bones, and other injuries undergo healing. Obviously this healing is effected by internal faculties and powers, for in nature, animals seek out a quiet secluded spot and rest. They undergo almost no activity. They partake of no food.
Instinctively an injured animal will abstain from all indulgences that detract from the full application of the body’s energies and faculties to the reparative/restorative process. Likewise, humans when placed under the same conditions in keeping with our nature and disposition undergo healing in a fraction of the time that occurs when regular activities are pursued.
Healing is always and ever a biological process. Our task is but to establish the conditions so that the body may conduct the process more quickly and efficiently. The inherent programming, intelligence, and power that developed a fertilized ovum into a wonderfully and beautifully built creature is all the healing power that is needed. Conditions favorable to the exercise of these powers can be established. As a health practitioner/nutritionist it will be your role to know and apply these conditions.
Much suffering and grief result from the idea that the body can be helped by the application of substances, conditions, and treatments abnormal to the body. It will be your role to rescue the victims from harmful practices as well as set them on a right course for health recovery and maintenance.
Life Science holds that everyone is an independent entity unto himself or herself within the context of society. Everyone should be entirely free—fettered in no way—within the context of enlightened self-interest—within the context of our symbiotic mandate on earth.
Every man, woman, and child must be regarded as capable of carrying on life’s affairs for himself or herself. It is not our role to judge or impose ourselves on others but to help if our aid is sought. We should not impose ourselves on anyone no matter how wise or unwise, or how good or bad such imposition is or would be. We must accord to everyone the prerogative of leading their lives as is their bent and capability so long as their pursuits do not impinge upon the birthright of others. The golden rule should be our rule of conduct.
While it may seem unwise to grant the same privileges and prerogatives to both the genius and the relatively unlettered, nevertheless a society is not free in which either are denied their right to pursue opportunities on an equal footing. The capable are bound to succeed and should offer aid to their biologically crippled or less favored brethren.
For all its drawbacks and advantages we must always respect everyone as supremely sovereign. Whatever they do or decide, however good or bad their acts or decisions, in their own interests, we must pursue a role of non-interference. We may, by example, seek to inspire and motivate. But to impose ourselves and our precepts on others is reprehensible.
1.4.1 The Erroneous Notion of “Cure”
1.4.2 “Cures” Do Not Deal With Causes
1.4.3 “Cures” Do Not Furnish the Needs of Life
1.4.4 “Cures” Destroy Body Vitality
1.4.5 Medical and “Healing Art” Approaches Are Deadly And Deadend
The idea behind medicine is more than 2,500 years old and, like most ideas from behind the dark ages, it’s very unscientific. The premise is that the body is like a machine that can be repaired by outside agencies. The machine goes wrong because of invading entities. In ancient times these entities were evil spirits, demons, and devils which had to be exorcised. By and by these evil spirits became known as little beasties called microbes, germs, bacteria, viruses, and yet other appellations.
Medicine today has the concept of “cure,” a word that has been perverted from the original of “care.” Medicine itself means a curative or healing substance. The idea behind the use of medicine is that the “medicine” acts within the organism, that it seeks out the trouble, routs the invaders and effects in some manner the necessary healing. The medical concept of the modus operandi of drugs which they call medicines is very hazy at best. But medicine is the harmful practices that men do to try to help ailing people.
People go to physicians for medical intervention. They want to get “fixed up.” They’re ailing. Something must be done lest they suffer grave consequences or death. Medical practitioners take advantage of the clients—they play upon their fears. They applaud their clients for coming to them when they did. They flatter them for this bit of “wisdom” and assure them that, if they do not do something soon, grave dangers will ensue. The medical man always has a course of treatment to suggest, invariably a prescription of drugs and tests.
The idea is that the tests will reveal what is wrong and thereby determine what drugs to prescribe or what steps to take, as in surgery.
That their beliefs and practices are, on the whole, precisely contrary to biological science seems never to enter their minds. We’ll treat medical concepts in depth at a later time but here, suffice it to say, there is no healing other than self-healing. All modalities can interfere with healing but none can aid healing.
Can you imagine trying to develop a drug to “cure” drunkenness without going to the root of the whole matter, i.e., the drunkard’s drinking habit? How can we deal with drunkenness if the drunkard continues to drink?
This is what happens with the medical approach. They try to remedy effects or symptoms without dealing with causes. In reality they drug, butcher, and purge while almost totally ignoring basic causes of physiological problems. They resort to crippling surgery and treatments running into the thousands of dollars when the problems can be simply and inexpensively solved by a change in life practices.
You’ll learn herein that nothing happens without sufficient cause. You’ll learn that all affections of the body must be caused and the cause is almost always initiated by the sufferer. You’ll learn that unless cause is discontinued the problem will always develop again, ever more serious.
In learning nutritional and health science you’re basically learning to do two things: 1. to remove causes of problems and 2. to establish the conditions of health. Since these two steps are so very easy overall, that is one reason we can confidently bestow upon you a degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the end of the lessons. If you’ve mastered the understanding of cause and effect in nutrition and health—that diseases are suffered because the sufferer has indulged or been subjected to cause and that health results when reasons for health are dominant—you’ll be a mountain among a throng of mole hills called health care professionals.
To be returned to health the body must be provided with its requirements. First, those substances, influences, and practices which beget illnesses and disease must be discontinued. Secondly, it is necessary to bring to the client the essentials of health. Very simply these are pure air, pure water, correct diet, sunshine, exercise or wholesome activity, adequate rest and sleep, emotional poise, security of life and its means and yet other factor elements and influences.
If you reflect upon medical procedures it is obvious they do not try to ascertain causes that are inherent in lifestyle and practices. They do what an auto mechanic does—they try to find out which cylinder is missing and then proceed as if the body can be repaired much in the manner of a vehicle. They rarely advise about practices and beliefs which cause problems. Since most medical men are financially oriented, it is wise that they do not teach correct habits. They’d be out of business if their clients became well.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton must be proclaimed the greatest oracle of Hygienic philosophy, principles, and practices unto this day. He has noted that now we have more medical discoveries than ever before; we have more medical practitioners than ever before; medical men enjoy more respect than ever before (at least until recent years) and yet, for all this, we also have more disease and suffering than ever before.
Why is this so?
Because, very simply, drugs destroy. They never build. It is not within the province of drugs to create cells and replace body tissue. Medical men would be the first to tell you this for they’ve studied physiology too. But yet they act as if their drugs perform some kind of magic that will effect healing.
What do drugs, when administered, really do?
In truth, drugs do nothing other than form chemical unions with body compounds and fluids. When these chemical unions occur, the body suffers distress. When the character of a substance is determined as harmful by the body, it goes into a frenzy. When it does this, it is stimulated. Sometimes the body has a reaction of depression in which case it is sedated or narcotized. This means function has been inhibited or paralyzed. In both cases the reaction is one of self-protection against an unwelcome intruder, in this case a poison even though it is called a medicine.
In causing an emergency in the body, drugs are harmful. The body must redirect its energies from the healing process which it is conducting. The symptoms for which the drugs or medicines are administered are evidences of the body’s self-conducted healing process. When drugs are ingested or injected, the body must leave off partially or wholly the cleansing/healing efforts and attend to a greater threat which the drugs represent. When healing efforts are discontinued the symptoms disappear. Physicians interpret the disappearance of symptoms as a “cure” or a healed condition. They thus mistake drug or poison effects for healing effects. In reality the body has more problems than before. For now it has, additional to its prior problems, the problem of expelling a terrible poison too.
We readily recognize that drug addicts take illicit drugs and eventually become physiological wrecks as a result. Also the drug addict loses moral values. Thinking ability is lessened and almost totally redirected to acquiring the addictive drugs and to the spell the body casts when they are taken.
What we also recognize is that physician-prescribed drugs have precisely the same actions. What we do not recognize is that the prescriptions, administrations and treatments of all so-called healers have the very same effects whether the medics be called physicians, homeopaths, chiropractors, osteopaths, herbal doctors, acupuncturists, or whatever. Their modalities devitalize while their ignorance of cause likewise continues to devitalize and destroy. Because treatments are more or less deadly and because causes are left intact by those who treat the diseased, the situation gets progressively worse. Those who get better do not become so because of the treatments. Better health comes from self-healing which occurs despite, not because of, treatments.
Under medical and other care, recovery takes place about 90% of the time. Medical men, just as do herbologists, chiropractors, osteopaths, etc., attribute healing to their intervention. But the unrecognized truth is that witch doctors have a much higher “cure rate” and that Hygienic practitioners have a nearly 100% recovery rate! As a Hygienic practitioner or health professional following the dictates of a true health science, you’ll realize a nearly 100% success rate. Healing always takes place to the extent of residual healing potential when causes are discontinued and the conditions of health instituted.
1.5.1 Delineation and Description of Health
1.5.2 Beauty as Reflecting Health
1.5.3 Fullness of Function as a Barometer of Health
1.5.4 The Possibility of Perfect Health for Humans
Can we define health?
Yes, we can. Conventionally, a lack of obvious disease is regarded as a state of health. In actuality about 99% of our peoples are diseased in some manner or other regardless of appearances.
Health may be defined as having fullness of function. Health means complete well-being, inner and outer harmony, vigor, strength, mental acuity, in short, total fitness.
Perhaps no better statement of health has ever been made than that of Dr. Herbert M. Shelton. I’m happy to quote his definition:
Health is a condition of perfect development, a state of wholeness and harmonious development and growth, an adaptation of part to part of the organism, or organ to organ, with no part stunted and no part in excess.
In this state of organic development lies the perfection and symmetry of beauty. Beauty is but the reflection of wholeness, of health. It is easy to demonstrate that the forms and proportions of humans and every animal and plant which are in their highest and most useful state are the most beautiful and therefore the most healthy.
When every bone is of the best form and size for its service in the total organism, there is perfect proportion. When every muscle is fully and proportionally developed, with just enough of fat and the cellular tissues to round out the muscles, we have the highest beauty of form. When the texture of the skin is finest, when the circulation of the blood most vigorous, the blood well-nourished and freed of all waste, there is the glow and charm of the finest complexion.
The highest beauty is the expression of the highest health. Partial beauty, fading beauty or decaying beauty—these are but expressions of partial, fading or decaying health.
When we suffer any impairment or impediment we cannot be said to be in a state of health. We can be in a relatively high state of health but to the extent we do not enjoy perfection of body function, we are not healthy.
We live in a nation where disease is the norm of life rather than a rarity. In taking up a health career it is our duty to make health the norm and disease a relative rarity.
I refer you to text material included in this lesson for a fuller discussion of what health is. Therein appear two articles by the dean of health teachers, Dr. Herbert M. Shelton.
Though our standards of beauty are rather low today, they still, nevertheless, take note of the exceptionally beautiful. Beauty, as a reflection of health and well-being, should be the norm, not the exception. How many women have we seen whom are so lovely and beautiful that we are drawn to them as a magnet? How many men are so wholesome, so fit and handsome that they, likewise, are irresistible to their female counterparts? I daresay such men and women constitute less than 1% of our peoples.
The ability to appreciate beauty is highest in humans. And humans would normally be the epitome of beauty if they lived in keeping with their birthright, that is, their biological mandate. We readily recognize beauty in birds, flowers, and other life in nature. But our fellow humans, whether aged or young, whether nice or disagreeable, are, for the most part, in some way repulsive to our aesthetic senses. Forty percent of our population are repulsively overweight. This is but one impact of the ugliness that characterizes an unhealthy population.
I’ve seen “monsters” transformed as if by magic upon undergoing as little as a month’s Hygienic care. Fatness and ugliness both were overcome with the restoration of a relatively high level of health.
One of the “miracles” you can hold forth to your would-be clients is that of handsomeness or beauty. That quality will be tremendously enhanced in those whom you help to achieve a high level of health.
While it is not always true that athletes are superb examples of health, it is true that all in superb health are quite athletic. Suppleness, agility, stamina, strength, and vigor are qualities essential to a state of health.
Physiological function will be ideal in every respect to someone in full health. A sense of euphoria, of joy, and of total well-being is a condition of health. Healthy people usually wear smiles and pleasant countenances. Glumness and a downcast disposition personify inner unhealthfulness. Nothing sabotages beauty, function, happiness, and well-being as a body shot through with the poisons or toxins borne of bad living practices.
Life Science holds that perfect health is the norm of life. We hold that all creatures in nature adapted perfectly to the conditions of life under which they developed. They changed to cope with their environment and their food supplies.
In nature, perfect health is the norm of existence. Animals have no knowledge or concept about healthful living. They live healthfully naturally by doing only what their instincts bid them do.
It would seem that with a technological society at the apex of development human health would have kept pace and be better now than ever. The contrary is true. Humans are probably unhealthier now than at any time except the immediate past, that is, the last ten to twenty centuries. In the Dark Ages and Medieval times health was at an overall low.
Technological progress builds upon itself, and it is a credit to the human heritage that we still have, even though in a degenerated state, sufficient intelligence to develop and husband a highly technological society. Even though affected by physical degeneracy, the brain is always the least affected of organs in famine, disease, starvation, and physical debilitation.
Perfect health is possible if the conditions of health are ideal. With our intelligence and extensive technology we can create the conditions for healthful living practically anywhere in the world where humans live.
Over eons of time, organisms have developed to cope with changed environmental conditions and food supplies that varied environments were capable of producing. Environments range from the ideal to the impossible for every creature on earth, even microbial forms of life. Perfection arises from adaptation—from coping with conditions. Adjustments to every vagary of nature created organisms that functioned perfectly.
In humans and animals we witness what is obvious: health is normal and natural. We see animals in nature being born, living their natural life spans and dying naturally without once suffering the infirmities of sickness. And for all our modern pathogenic practices we see humans more or less well most of the time. In view of my Hygienic experience and by my observation of hundreds of others who remain sickness-free under the Hygienic regime, there is but one inescapable conclusion: health is a normal condition of life. It is our birthright.
Life Science is truly a science of life for it is based soundly and scientifically upon our biological requirements for thriving in perfect health.
This is the outlook which you are studying in this course and being asked to advocate and follow in your professional career.
Let us now explore Life Science’s beginnings.
Life Science or Natural Hygiene had its awakening in 1822 when Dr. Isaac Jennings, who had a medical practice in Derby, Connecticut, despaired of drugging. In his many years of practice he was distressed to see his patients become worse from the drugging modality. His patients died and many became chronically afflicted. His yearning to help his fellow beings was sincere.
Dr. Jennings noted that as physicians became older they drugged less and less. He did likewise and found his patients were faring better under less drugging. Then he quit prescribing drugs altogether and found that it wrought miracles.
When patients with problems came to Dr. Jennings he would dispense pills of colored flour and vials of tinted waters. He gave strict instructions for their use just as other physicians gave detailed instructions for the ingestion of drugs. But, in Dr. Jennings’ case, he made a prescription that was to launch a great health movement and an infant science. In 1822 at age thirty-four Dr. Jennings gave his patients placebos with instructions to take them at specified hours of the day with a glass of water. His prescription was that no food could be taken, or else the pills would not work. His patients were ordered to do this for a number of days and then return for a checkup. Upon return they would be terminated from the regimen or continued on it “a few more days.”
Under Dr. Jennings’ new modality, his patients invariably became well. While other physicians lost patients by the graveyard full, his thrived. The ailing flocked to him from far and near.
The success of his “no-drugging” system astounded Dr. Jennings as much as it did his patients and colleagues. Wisely, in his initial years, Dr. Jennings did not reveal his “secrets.” Instead he sought the rationale for his success. He called his treatments “the leave alone” method while professing to dispense pills of unnamed composition. They came to be regarded as pills with magic curative properties.
From this rather inauspicious start, Dr. Jennings began to develop a few laws relative to his observations and experience. He called the system that flowed from the employment of these laws “orthopathy,” or correct affection. He formulated many of the “laws” of life and named some of them as follows:
Dr. Jennings, to his credit, saw disease not as an attack from some malevolent entity but as lowered vital energy or vital energy redirected to other purposes. His new outlook ventured that disease was caused by an ebb of the body’s energy supply. In essence he was correct, but his explanations were quite formative for it remained for successors to build upon the foundations he built. Dr. Jennings may rightfully be ascribed as the father of Natural Hygiene or Life Science, for he is the first to attempt a systematic ascertainment of the physiology of health and disease.
The next illustrious forefather of the science of health was Sylvester Graham. He was born six years after Dr. Jennings in 1794. He was a very sickly boy. Becoming healthy was an obsession with him which led him to study health. He became well versed in anatomy and physiology. Before coming onto the health scene, he was a Presbyterian preacher. In 1830 during the temperance movement, he lectured in Philadelphia on the physiological evils of alcohol. As a firebrand orator he was amazingly effective with large audiences. In Philadelphia he expanded his knowledge of physiology and health and became acquainted with the teachings of a “vegetarian” group who abstained from animal foods and products and many modern ways of preparing foods. This group was known as the Bible Christian Church and based its mode of life on Biblical commands.
In the great cholera “epidemic” of 1832 Sylvester Graham rose to fame. He literally took on the whole medical fraternity of New York City and the interests supporting the medical system. While the medical men were advising New Yorkers to abstain from fruit and to cook their food thoroughly, Dr. Graham was advocating eating more fruits in the raw state. He advocated open windows, more light, and fresh air and other healthful measures which were contrary to medical teachings. It is noteworthy that those who followed Dr. Grahams’s teachings were not affected by the cholera epidemic, whereas those who followed medical bidding died wholesale.
His fame as a health lecturer was well established in 1832 and he, more than anyone else, gave health science a tremendous impetus. He was in demand as a lecturer over the whole Eastern seaboard. He appeared before audiences of several thousand. People flocked to his lectures and listened to them raptly for hours in seeking salvation from disease and suffering.
So effective was Dr. Sylvester Graham in his lectures and writings that books and magazines blossomed presenting the “Graham system.” The first health food stores came into existence to sell foods which he advocated. Special eateries and living facilities were established for those who wanted to follow his system. The name of Graham became synonymous with the Hygienic diet and Hygienic living.
Where Dr. Isaac Jennings approached health and healing from the point of view of helping people regain health, Dr. Sylvester Graham was instrumental in teaching the touchstones of healthful living so that people would not become ill in the first place.
During the 1840’s, Dr. Jennings and Dr. Graham were joined by perhaps one of the greatest geniuses the movement has produced, Dr. Russell Thacker Trall. His was an inquiring methodical mind that ever sought the rationale and scientific basis for the concepts and findings developed by his predecessors. Thus he brought the Hygienic system to a standard that could thoroughly challenge the medical system. Dr. Trall delivered a lecture in the Smithsonian Institute to some of the nation’s highest dignitaries in 1863. The title of the lecture was THE TRUE HEALING ART. It made quite a ripple during the time. Dr. Trail is the originator of the famous challenge which, though oft-repeated, has never been accepted by a single physician unto this day. This challenge is stated below:
The new system of health did not discriminate against women. In fact it encouraged women to participate in the movement on an equal footing with men. Among the notable women in this new movement were such luminaries as Florence Nightingale, Mary Gove, Harriet Austin, Susanna May Dodds, Ellen White (guiding light of the Seventh Day Adventists), and Louisa May Alcott, the famous author whose brother became an M.D. and a Hygienic professional.
In the 1870’s the medical profession adopted the Pasteurian germ theory with a passion. People found it much easier to blame their problems on little mysterious beasties rather than on their mode of living. No matter what they did they were absolved of responsibility for their condition. The germ theory made them unfortunate victims of malevolent entities over which they could exercise little control.
With the ushering in of the “germ era” came about the decline of Hygiene. While the philosophy remains alive and still receives a good following, it has been in continual decline relative to our population. In recent years there has been growth in the ranks of those practicing Hygiene in their lives, but there are yet only a few thousand devoted Hygienists.
The revival of Natural Hygiene in the 1920’s owed much of its impetus to the efforts of Bernarr McFadden and Dr. Herbert M. Shelton. Though there were some great Hygienists in the early part of this century, notably Hereward Carrington, Otto Carque, John H. Tilden, and Linda Burfield Hazzard, Dr. Shelton became the acknowledged voice of Hygiene with the publication of his immortal book, “Human Life, Its Philosophy And Laws”, in 1927. Though Dr. Shelton built upon the shoulders of his predecessors, he produced such a wealth of literature with new findings and thoughts that he added more to the science and art of healthful living than any other person. He had the benefit of new findings, and his fertile mind generated a new body of knowledge based on them.
Today the Hygienic movement still survives though it cannot be said that it thrives. A few thousand Americans practice it conscientiously. A greater multitude pay lip service to it and practice healthier living because of it. But, by and large, Hygiene is almost completely out of the mainstream on the American health scene.
In this lesson we cannot hope to more than summarily deal with Hygiene’s history. Books on the history of Hygiene are practically nonexistent. It must be picked up in fragments here and there from books and magazines that make reference to the past. You’ll pick up the history of Hygiene throughout your studies. Perhaps, someday, a history will be published.
What do the words Natural, Unnatural, Normal, and Abnormal really mean?
Natural or normal is that to which we became accustomed while living in a pristine state of nature and that to which our bodies were adapted. That which is contrary to our adaptations, that is, to our biological heritage, is abnormal and unnatural.
What are biological adaptations?
Biological adaptations is a term to describe the faculties an organism has developed to meet its requirements in the environment in which its growth has occurred. What is natural to an organism depends on its environmental adaptations.
Would you say carnivores are biologically adapted to meat-eating because of the structure of their teeth and other body structures?
Yes, I’d say that. Animals that live primarily upon meat have developed the tools or faculties for securing their food supply and best digesting it for their physiological needs. Animals that have claws and fangs are usually carnivores.
Are we adapting to our present environment?
Probably, but not perceptibly. A social adaptation or accommodation is not physiological and anatomical adaptation. Biological adaptations are slow and often require hundreds of thousands of years to come about. For example, when humans started eating meat, they did not during all their meat-eating days over a period of several thousand years develop fangs, claws, or the concentrated hydrochloric acid solution that characterizes meat-eating animals. You need but look at Eskimos to see confirmation of this. Animals adapt very slowly to changed conditions. On the other hand if there is a failure to adapt or the change is too quick, the danger of extinction exists.
In nature there are checks and balances. Isn’t something like the black plague a natural check on the population?
No. In nature there are no such things as checks and balances in that context. In normal circumstances there are periods of famine and periods of feast. When there’s famine, death overtakes many of the organisms that are victims of the scarcity. When there’s a feast, a rapid multiplication occurs. Organisms in nature live in symbiosis with each other and a balance exists amongst them according to the food chain. For instance, if you study and witness insect hordes, you’ll learn that when they are thriving on abundant vegetation there is a corresponding increase in their predators, that is, birds and other animals that feed upon insects. When the insect population is practically wiped out the predators decline in numbers. These are the only kinds of checks and balances that exist in nature. Nothing can exceed its possibilities.
What you call calamities cannot be in any sense referred to as natural. A plague or any sickness or disease is not natural. It happens because an organism has lived contrary to the laws or principles that apply to its life. When we contravene the laws of our existence, we will incur disease. Diseases or plagues are in no sense checks and balances. If humans live in pathogenic perversions they’ll develop diseases and die amidst plenteousness.
What is your opinion of holistic health?
Those who are striving for something better than the medical system with which they’ve become disillusioned must be admired for both their perspicacity and their courage in undertaking an independent course. We Hygienists may not agree with the course or courses they’ve chosen as an alternative, but we hold they have every right to pursue it as is their bent and persuasion.
The word “holistic” derives from the word “health” which, again, means “whole,” “complete,” or possessing fullness of function. The word “holy” also derives from the word whole or healthy, although we have lost sight of this.
What we call “holistic health” in current society is a catchall of all modalities. The term is a tautology. It’s like saying “healthy health.” But the holistic movement involves M.D.’s, homeopaths, chiropractors, osteopaths, naturopaths, herbologists, acupuncturists, polarity therapists, foot reflexologists, and just about anything else that attaches itself to the movement. The holistic health movement embraces anyone who wants to join it.
Hygienists who bring their philosophy with them are not accepted in the holistic movement. To be accepted into the movement you must be of a “curing” frame of mind, that is, basically medically oriented. This movement is therapy-oriented rather than health-oriented. However, some of the practitioners in the movement, notably the naturopaths, do recognize that we must remove the causes of disease in order to establish a basis for health. Even some chiropractors are enlightened in this regard. There are, in fact, practitioners in all schools that recognize the real needs of the human organism and advise their clients of these needs.
We call ourselves wholistic. To us this means that we embrace every facet or condition that touches upon human welfare. In the sense that we recognize that health is realized only by the length and breadth of the living regime, we’re wholistic. But we do not identify with the current movement that calls itself holistic.
I think you’re wrong about all healing being self-healing. I’ve personally seen a woman who had a leg ulcer for over a year. Topical application of comfrey poultices healed it in less than ten days. How can you deny that?
I do not deny that the leg ulcer healed, and I do not deny that the comfrey poultice was the agency that precipitated the healing process of the leg ulcer. But the body is probably worse, not better for the treatment.
What happens physiologically to cause the ulcer in the first place? Why do they sometimes persist only to heal later? What happens when the agency of toxic materials such as in garlic, aloe, comfrey, or in pharmacological preparations are applied and the ulcer is healed?
The comfrey poultice neither caused nor healed the ulcer. The body created the ulcer in the first place just as it creates a boil, fever, pimple, or other so-called infection. The body creates these conditions as outlets for an extraordinary load of toxic materials. As long as the body is burdened with toxicity that it cannot eliminate through normal channels, it will utilize vicarious outlets, i.e., outlets other than normal. As long as the practices introduce into the body toxic materials and the sufferer’s habits are such as to cause the body to retain its own metabolic wastes, then the body will protect itself against a death-dealing situation by getting rid of its problems any way it can.
An ulcer is created in two ways. First, a lesion can be created by the body through self-autolyzation of its tissues. The body causes the self-digestion of a hole to the surface in the case of a boil or pimple. It is the body that forces toxic materials into the hole it has created to the surface. It is the body that creates the tremendous pressure necessary to keep the pus and debris near the surface in the form of a boil until drainage or expulsion occurs.
Just so it is the body that causes the ulcer in one way or another. Probably the leg ulcer was caused by the body’s collection and concentration of poisons in a given area until the cells and tissues of the area were totally destroyed. Then the body utilizes the open sore as a drainage outlet much as a teakettle will discharge its steam through a blown hole after the hole is blown. When aloe vera, comfrey, or certain pharmaceutical preparations are applied, they do not solve the body’s problems. Herbs and drugs have not the intelligence or power to create cells and new tissue to bridge the chasm or gulf that constitutes the ulcer or lesion.
What happens is that the poultice or drug application applied to an open sore poses a new danger. Absorption of poisons from the outside causes the body to change strategy. Where it had been exuding poisons to keep them low, the body is now absorbing poisons there. To obviate this new threat the body closes up the dumping ground and seals it off from the outside by scarring it over.
Though the body healed the ulcer, it is now worse off than before. It is retaining the toxic material previously expelled through the open sore or ulcer. Either it must now create a new extraordinary outlet or suffer the retention of the toxic materials it previously expelled through the ulcer.
Had the ulcer sufferer fasted, the ulcer would have healed more quickly than with the application of a poultice. Moreover, the body would, under the fasting condition, be free of the input of toxic materials and toxigenesis due to enervating habits. Under this condition it can accelerate expulsion of toxic materials through regular channels. Once the level of toxicity has been reduced below a certain tolerance level, the body will promptly proceed to heal the ulcer. Healing takes place much more quickly under the fasting condition than any other. While fasting, the body can concentrate its energies and its material resources to the healing process, thus affecting healing much more speedily.
So, the comfrey poultice did not do anything other than become a source of irritation. The body “closed up shop,” so to speak, at the ulcer site and did business elsewhere. Keep in mind that all healing is a body process and never that of drugs. And let us not mistake the drug nature of comfrey. It contains pyrrholizidine and allantoin, two quite toxic alkaloids or glycosides.
Are you telling us we’d get along better without doctors and healers? Does not nature furnish natural remedies for our problems?
I just furnished an example of the physiological modus operandi of the body under the influence of toxic materials. I had hoped that would suffice to dispel any ideas that healing can be effected by extraneous agencies.
Yes, we would be better off without physicians, miscalled doctors, and so-called healers. We do need teachers to help people see their errors concerning health. We need teachers to get them on the right biological track so they can lead healthy and happy lives. Nature never developed humans or other animals so that remedies are needed in the first place, and it never created remedies in the second place. These interpretations errant humans have ascribed to disease and healing phenomena are based on illusory appearances. The only remedy for any ailment is the capacity of the body to right itself once the assault upon it has been discontinued.
Aren’t diseases caused by germs and viruses? Surely you can’t mean that millions of physicians the world over are wrong about this?
We’ll get into the depths of these matters in subsequent lessons. But the answer is no: germs do not cause disease. They can, at worst, complicate them secondarily. Bacteria are our symbiotic partners in life. Partners accommodate each other for mutual benefit. Viruses as an entitative existence are a medical myth. If diseases are caused by uneliminated metabolic debris, which is what so-called viruses are, then the medics have a point. But we Hygienists call that metabolic debris retained wastes, not viruses. “Viruses” are nothing more than the proteinacious debris of spent cells. Their accumulation can precipitate a healing crisis in the body. When this occurs, the body is likely to transport bacteria to the scene to aid it in cleaning up the mess, but the bacteria did not cause the problem. The habits and practices of the sufferer must be looked to as the real culprits. Once these deleterious habits and practices are discontinued, there will be no further toxic accumulations and thus the need for disease or healing crises will cease to exist. Sickness-free health will exist thereafter.
You say that disease is abnormal. Everyone has been sick at some time or other. Haven’t you ever been sick? If everyone gets sick, wouldn’t you say getting sick is a rather normal thing?
Yes, it is undeniable that disease and sickness are normal in our society. That is one reason there’s a great need for enlightened Life Scientists to be on the scene. We can put an end to this misery.
Let us not, however, confuse what is normal in nature and what is normal in a vitiated society.
Disease is a normal body response to an abnormal toxic condition. But the toxic condition is, let us recognize, abnormal.
You talk about Life Science as a cure-all. Aspirin will cure a headache, at least for a while. Can Life Science cure a headache?
Those practices which, aggregately, we term Life Science, are, indeed, a panacea, a cure-all. Correct diet and health practices build health, not disease. Aspirin does not “cure a headache.” The problems remain as before plus the toxic presence of the aspirin itself. Aspirin merely causes our body to paralyze or incapacitate the nervous system. Just because you remove thermometers does not alter the temperature. The fact that the body finally expels the aspirin from its domain and reinstitutes the processes that give rise to another headache is ample indication that drugs solve no problems.
Under the Life Science regime all causes of headaches are removed. Causes of health are instituted. This is the ultimate solution to the problem of disease and suffering. When there are no causes there can be no disease. When only the causes of health are indulged, only health can result.
Beauty Fades with Loss of Health
A Perfect Instrument Perfect in Every Respect
Living in Accord with Natural Law Produces Perfect Health
Health-Sapping Perversions Begin Early In Life
Bad Practices Produce Human Wrecks
Disciplined Correct Life Practices Will Restore Pristine Perfection
Our word health is derived from the Saxon word for whole. Heal is derived from the same word and means to restore to a state of wholeness, soundness, integrity. Holy comes from the same root and signifies wholeness and purity of mind. Taken in its fullness of meaning, health means completeness and perfection of organization, fitness of life, freedom of action, harmony of functions, vigor and freedom from all stain and corruption—in a phrase, it is “a sound mind in a sound body.”
Health is a condition of perfect development, a state of wholeness and harmonious development and growth and adaptation of part to part of the organism, of organ to organ, with no part stunted and no part in excess. In this state of organic development lies the perfection and symmetry of beauty. Beauty is but the reflection of wholeness, of health. It is easy to demonstrate that the forms and proportions of man and of every animal and plant which are in their highest and most useful state are also the most beautiful.
When every bone is of the best form and size for its service in the total organism, there is perfect proportion; when every muscle is fully and proportionately developed, with just enough fat in the cellular tissues to round out the muscles, we have the highest beauty of form; when the texture of the skin is finest and the circulation of the blood most vigorous, the blood well nourished and freed of all waste, there is the glow and charm of the finest complexion. The highest beauty is the expression of the highest health.
Partial beauty, fading beauty, decaying beauty—these are but the expressions of partial, fading or decaying health. They represent unsatisfactory and painful states of existence. Beauty belongs to glowing health and perfection of organization. It is impossible for us to separate these ideals. We cannot picture health in terms of the conventional, for contemporary man is far short of this wholeness of organization and vigor of function that is health.
If we try to picture health what do we see? A form of perfect symmetry and proportion; a clean, smooth, semi-transparent skin, with the red blood shining through, especially in the cheeks and ends of the fingers and toes; glossy hair that is full of life; clear, bright eyes that are full of expression and dance with life; rosy lips that smile with the joys of life; pearly white, sound, even teeth; a breath that is as sweet as that of a flower in the springtime; freedom from disagreeable body odors, indeed, where health is perfect, emitting an agreeable aroma; a body that is filled with activity, delighting in work or exercise; and a happy, courageous, mirthful, and hopeful disposition, and a desire to help others.
Such a picture of health can come only from the orderly, regular and perfect performance of the functions of life—from a sound heredity, a congenial environment and conduct that conforms with the constitutional nature of man. Health is the perfect combination of bodily organization, intellectual energy and moral power in harmonious unity. It means perfect organization of brain and nerves that are as finely proportioned as the bones and muscular system. In a healthy person we would expect to see the symmetry and proportion of head of the Cro-Magnon, not the asymmetry and disproportion of head of modern man.
As every organ of the body is essential to wholeness and integrity of structure and vigor of function, no organ can be spared. Not merely must the nutritive and drainage systems be perfectly adapted to the requirements of the brain and body, but the smallest and apparently least important parts of the body must be harmoniously and fully developed. As Dr. Nichols so well expressed it: “The smallest instrument out of tune brings discord into the harmony of life.”
How is such a high state of health to be attained? How may we assure wholeness and fullness of development; vigor of function and freedom from disease and suffering? How may man be returned to that soundness and integrity of structure and vigor and force of life that he knew in the morning of his existence? If contemporary man is so lacking in health that he is but a puny specimen of manhood, how can he be restored to his pristine power and majesty? In a word: How may man be healed?
It should not require argument to convince the intelligent man and woman that this can be done only upon a basis of law—natural law—specifically, upon a basis of those laws that operate to make human life possible. All laws operate to make human life possible. All laws essential to the welfare of man are written in his own constitution. Every rule of human conduct, to be valid in promoting human welfare and happiness, must be in harmony with his nature. No law, no social custom (convention), no moral precept can have any reality to man that does not accord with his highest welfare. If it is not intimately related to man’s highest fitness—physical, moral and intellectual—it cannot correspond to his highest ideals of truth, duty and enjoyment.
The unperverted instincts of wild animals living in their natural homes are the laws of their lives. There seems to be no reason to doubt that man’s instincts were once equally perfect guides in his ways of life. But if this was ever true, it certainly is not so today. Man’s instincts have been so smothered and buried beneath a layer of cultural baggage that they no longer constitute reliable guides to him in his way of life. They have been “conditioned” until they are misguides.
Nonetheless it is true that even now instincts are fairly reliable guides to conduct in the young. But we begin the process of perverting these instincts almost from birth. Instinct does not leave us unwarned when we take our first smoke, but social usage demands that we ignore the warning and suppress the vigorous protests of instinct. We must learn to smoke, even now that we are aware that the end may be death from lung cancer. Today we may get our first smoke second-hand as mere infants. Smoking in the house has become almost universal. Many babies are sickened and even killed by the unintelligent practice of fathers and mothers filling the house with the poisonous fumes of burning tobacco.
We are not left unwarned by our first effort to develop alcoholism. The first drink of beer is obnoxious. Wine both smells and tastes fermented, and it is. The first drink of brandy or whiskey burns and bites, it smarts and stings as it goes down, there is protest every inch of the way. But we ignore these protests, we disregard these warnings, we are determined to “grow up,” and the only way this can be done in our society is to become an addict of one or more kinds.
Coffee and tea are reproaches to both our sense of smell and to our sense of taste. They produce a “high” state that shouldnot be mistaken for vigor and well-being; they interfere with sleep, keeping us awake for hours. But we ignore these warnings of the faithful sentinels of life. We suppress the urge to flee from such poisons. We are determined to belong. We want to be “one of the gang” even if we have to wreck ourselves in the process.
We have learned to take the miserable fragments of natural-foods with which the food processors and refiners have flooded the market, fragments that lack all appeal to our gustatory sense, and to add sweetening, colorings, flavorings, etc. to them to make them appeal to the senses of sight, smell and taste in spite of their unfitness to serve the needs of human nutrition. We eat them, little thinking that they do not represent true foods or that they may prove to be actually hurtful. We have found ways to get unfit substances by the guards that stand at the entrance to the alvine canal. We have found ways to deceive ourselves and to wreck ourselves without knowing that we are doing it.
For the evils of ignorance the remedy is knowledge—for the evils of false ideas the remedy is truth. For the source of truth and knowledge we have nature—especially human nature. Only when truth and knowledge are universal can we expect men and women to cease injuring and destroying themselves in riotous indulgence in tobacco, alcohol, and foodless food. In the spread of Natural Hygiene lies the hope of the future.
Health does not consist merely of the absence of symptoms of illness. It is a state of positive well-being that is evidenced by a constant state of euphoria. It is rarely, if ever, experienced by humans today.
We could well divide the people we meet into the following categories:
The first three groups constitute the vast majority of our population. Perhaps only a mere handful of our youth could fall within the last category. Great vigour and the buoyant feeling of well-being are extremely rare in our populace.
Health is a state of soundness and integrity of organism; vigour and efficiency of function; and excellence of mental faculties. Much of this well-being springs from antecedent heredity but that is merely the base requisite to building and maintaining health.
Health manifests itself by such a feeling of tone in the entire organism that the body fairly glows with it and bespeaks it at every turn. There is cleanliness and sparkle to the eyes, clearness and fine color to the skin, vigor and activity and bounce to the step, and an evident feeling of joy of living that is infectious.
We witness traces of the pristine vigor and well-being in our youngest children. Rarely do we observe exuberant physiological excellence beyond the age of six. If we really want to see vigor we must watch the young of animals.
This vigor is possible to humans throughout most of their lives.
2.3. Toxemia Is The Universal Cause Of Disease
2.4. Natural Hygiene Or Life Science Care Of The Ailing
Article #1: A True Perspective Of Health And Disease by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #2: The Nature Of Disease: Its Cause And Purpose by Dr. Hereward Carrington
Inasmuch as we’re having only one lesson specifically on the subject of disease, I bid you to study hard and absorb it well, for nearly all your clientele will suffer disease in one form or another.
In this lesson we will ascertain what disease is, what brings it about, what purposes it serves, and why it ends at all in view of the fact that it is supposed to be an occasion when malevolent microbial entities have gained a destructive foothold in our bodies. We will explore how a body in descendancy (as it is said to be in disease) and microbes in ascendancy reverse these tendencies.
In physiological terminology, disease means deviation from normal. That means that the body has deviated from regular functions. In a state of disease the body has rechanneled or redirected its energies so that it has less than usual energy for functions normally engaged in.
Your service to your clients will largely depend on your ability to recognize whether a disease is constructive or degenerative. I repeat: this is not difficult. You will, regardless of these conditions of disease, still proceed by guiding your client into healthful practices, healthful practices being the universal panacea.
If diseases are remediable and reversible as most of them are, it is constructive. When disease can no longer be reversed through body remediable processes, it is degenerative. For instance, an arthritic’s bony deposits can usually be autolyzed and restored to near normal. But when ankylosis has occurred due to destruction of bone and cartilage and subsequent fusing, healthful practices will restore health except for the ankylosis—it is rarely reversible. However, many diseases commonly regarded as degenerative can be corrected by the body, most cases of arthritis being among them.
Disease affects the whole body, not just a part. Disease serves an important body purpose. The body initiates remedial diseases to accomplish a goal. The goal serves the whole body, not just an organ, area, or part. For instance, we can know we have diseased kidneys. But, in actuality, the whole body is diseased. The fact that the symptoms are noticeable only in the kidneys does not mean that the rest of the body is unaffected—it means that the kidneys are the focal point for the eliminative effort, the point at which toxic matters are put out of the body.
Everything that affects any part of the body affects the whole organism. If we have a bad back, the whole body is affected. We are concerned about the welfare of our toes, fingers, ears, legs, eyes, arms—we defend our whole being because our whole body is a single unit. There are no isolated parts about which we are unconcerned, either at the conscious or unconscious level of intelligence. We defend it all at all levels because it is all of us.
We don’t have a disease here or a disease there. It’s suffered all over. An inflamed appendix has been overloaded with toxic materials because the body is overloaded. Body intelligence puts the overload out through all channels of elimination, but despite this the load is so great the appendix is burdened with more than it can handle. This condition is the same in all remedial diseases where a local organ seems to be the only thing affected.
The body itself institutes the crisis known as disease. Life Scientists call this process a “housecleaning” or healing crisis. Such a procedure by the body is instituted when bodily integrity is compromised or threatened by an accumulation of uneliminated toxic materials. The level of vitality and the extent of the overload determine the type of crisis. Given high vitality as in an infant, a very low level of toxicity is tolerated. In infants, colds are frequent. Given low vitality as in most older people in our society, colds are a rarity. Because so few older people maintain vital bodies, the toxic overload drags them down into chronic diseases, degenerative diseases, and unsuspected pathology that leads to unexpected death or a “sudden onset” of cancer.
The body must be in a toxic state before it will institute a crisis. Neither bacteria nor anything else starts and sustains a crisis. Microorganisms are incapable of unified action; in fact they cannot exist where there is no food (soil) for them, and living cells are not soil for bacteria.
Bacteria are helpless against living cells. An “invasion” by bacteria such as we imagine in contagion never takes place. The bacteria that proliferate in a crisis are with us all the time. We harbor uncounted billions of microorganisms in our intestinal tract, on our skin, in our mouth and nose and other body cavities. Thus, the body is the ONLY, actor in the crisis of elimination or cleansing called a disease.
Bacteria and viruses cannot be blamed for disease.
Blaming disease on viruses or bacteria is an easy cop out. It’s not good business to tell a client that they have caused their own miseries, so the medical profession has blamed suffering on everything but the individual’s own failure in the game of living.
The body creates a crisis in response to a body need to free itself of toxic matters and repair damages. Consequently, the body withdraws energy from normal body activities and redirects them to the healing crisis.
I could tell you that I am suffering a disease at this moment. I’m not at ease with my larynx as you’ve noticed in my trying to clear my voice. I ate some cabbage for my evening meal. It was very sharp as it had some mustard oil in it, without doubt. Typically any irritant in the throat, esophagus or windpipe will occasion the flow of mucus which encompasses the irritant for the purpose of ejecting it from the body. In my case now, the body has started a mucus flow to clear the passage of what was regarded as toxic or irritating substance. This is a minor disease or unease. But it is disease and the body reacted to maintain its functional integrity.
The body will reject anything that’s irritating. For example, if dust is put into your nose, the body will secrete mucus to surround and eject the dust irritant. Or you may sneeze. In both cases, the body is acting defensively. Thus, all remedial disease is body-defensive action.
Bacteria do not invade organisms for they’re always within the organism. Even after we’ve lost our intestinal flora after fasting, bacteria are still there. Bacteria can in many cases do what bears and many other animals do—hibernate or become dormant. Pasteur was not the father of bacteriology as many people think. Antoine Bechamp was the father of this science. Bechamp was a scientist in the true sense of the word. He took what he called microzyma from the chalk cliffs of France. He found that, upon furnishing water, warmth and other nutrients, the microzyma proliferated. These microorganisms had been entombed for ten million years in a state of dormancy. So bacteria have certain qualities for survival that most are not aware of.
The celebrated Dr. Lewis Thomas who heads the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute said, “pity not the man who has caught bacteria; pity the bacteria that was caught by the man.” This is to say that humans furnish a very rough environment for bacteria. The body keeps them restricted within certain bounds. The body controls bacteria at all times. The body is master of its domain.
Bacteria do not control the body as medical people have led us to believe.
Following are two paragraphs from a “bible” on Natural Hygiene, Dr. Shelton’s first major work, Human Life: Its Philosophy and Laws.
“For ages the study of disease has progressed. One by one the various systems and system complexes that are presented by the diseased human body have been studied with painstaking care in both living and dead bodies. The study of pathology has reached a degree of perfection unknown to most of the collateral sciences that form what is called the science of medicine. Knowledge of pathology increased by leaps and bounds after the invention of the microscope, until today pathology is one of the most important studies for the medical student. Physiology, anatomy, histology and biology are all made subservient to pathology.
“The study of disease has fascinated the student for ages. Health has received scant attention. Strange as it may appear, health has been considered of so little importance as to be unworthy of investigation. No schools ever existed for teaching the conditions of health. Medical schools existed to train the student in a knowledge of disease and cures. Even today no school exists that has as its purpose the teaching of the conditions and requirements of health. The conditions of a healthy life are but little understood by the various healing professions and still less so by the general public. Health is not in the professional line of the physician.”
The medical world is preoccupied with treating disease with drugs that are currently in fashion. Their seeking out of bacteria and “viruses” as culprits in disease reminds me of a little joke we heard back after the Second World War. It goes like this.
During the Second World War a German civilian worked in a concentration camp. One evening he pushed a wheelbarrow to the exit gate for inspection by a guard. The wheelbarrow was loaded with rags. The guard, very conscientious about his job and the security of the camp and its assets, methodically went through the rags but found nothing. So he waved the worker through the gate.
The very next day the worker came through with a wheelbarrow of newspapers. The guard repeated the previous careful examination. The following day came a wheelbarrow of leaves. Again the same thorough inspection.
The day following this the worker came to the guard pushing a heavy load of dirt. The guard was not going to be fooled. He made the worker dump the dirt and spread it out, then laboriously reload it on the wheelbarrow.
The next workday came another load of newspapers. The guard was very suspicious that the worker was sneaking something out. So, in addition to other procedures, he tapped the handles and other places for concealed material that the worker might be stealing. But nothing was found.
This went on almost every workday for a year. On occasion the guard systematically searched the wheelbarrows but never found anything of value being removed from the camp.
By and by the war was over. A while later the former guard met the former construction worker on the street.
He went up to the worker and stopped him abruptly with this smiling demand:
“Hans, you have to tell me something. I’m no dummy. You were stealing something from the camp. I could never find it. Now that it doesn’t matter, why not let me in on it?”
Hans replied, “Why, dummkopf, you saw it with your own eyes. I was stealing wheelbarrows.”
Such blindness characterizes the medical profession. The purpose of disease is so evident that the medics can’t see it. They are looking for something that doesn’t exist, and they have no idea, after countless millions of man hours of chasing microbes and similar deadends, that viruses as living entities do not exist.
So they have gone into the phenomenon of disease elaborately and have chronicled over twenty thousand different diseases. They name them after the area that is most affected. Sometimes they have multiple names because of the number of organs or organ systems or tissues which art affected.
2.3.1 The Seven Stages of Disease
2.3.2. Viruses And Bacteria—Their Role In Disease
2.3.3 Disease Complicated by By-Products of Symbiotic Bacteria
Actually, there is only one disease, no matter how it manifests itself. And the disease, which we call constructive disease, is occasioned by the body itself and is known as a crisis of toxemia or healing.
There are several stages of disease. The underlying cause of disease in all stages is toxemia. Although toxemia may arise from many sources, it basically exists because of insufficient nerve energy to sufficiently eliminate exogenous poisons and body wastes. Toxemia is not broad enough a term to cover the whole poisoning process for it means poison in the blood. Actually toxicosis exists. Tissues, cells and interstitial spaces are also toxic-laden. In short, the whole body is toxic.
Diseases present many different aspects because they evolve with the progressing deterioration of the organism that suffers them. Disease has seven distinct stages. These stages correspond to the distinct differences of each stage of evolution.
The first stage is not even recognized by physicians as a disease. Life Scientists call it enervation. Most people call it nervous exhaustion. Enervation is a state in which the body is either not generating sufficient nerve energy for the tasks the body must perform, or the tasks the body must perform may be greater than the normal nerve energy supply can cope with. In any event, the body becomes impaired, and an impaired body generates less nerve energy if the conditions of overwork or under-generation persist. Most people know when they are nervously exhausted.
Enervation can be caused by depletion of nerve energy in any of hundreds of ways. Sleep regenerates nerve energy. Obviously, insufficient sleep will not supply us with our needs. It will not fully recharge our batteries. We need sleep to regenerate nerve energy for the brain and nervous system.
Nerve energy is a form of electricity measurable in millivolts. Sleep laboratories have successfully substituted electricity in place of the body’s own. When this is accomplished it is called electrosleep. It takes only two hours out of twenty-four to fully restore nerve energy in this manner.
Demonstrating that nerve energy is electrical is easy. If you mashed your finger, a message would immediately go to the brain and back would come a command to remove the finger from that which applied the pressure. Moreover, the brain would command the entire balance of the body to cooperate in the extraction of the finger from the offending pressure. Only electricity is capable of such speedy transmission. No chemical process or circulatory process is capable of this dispatch. It occurs only through a network of nerves with conductive abilities, and electricity is the only form of energy it can conduct. If you take a weak voltage and hook up to it while holding someone else’s hand, the other person gets a shock immediately when you touch the live electrical source. I don’t think anyone can doubt that we do generate electricity, and that is the form of energy we use to conduct our physical and mental activities. Sensations are transformed into electrical stimuli and forwarded to the brain. The brain interprets these and sends out commands based upon the interpretation. Thus, if you put your finger to a hot object, the finger is commanded in a flash to withdraw from it.
The foregoing is to demonstrate that the body is primarily an organism that works on the amount of electricity it generates and which it has in its reserves. If this supply is depleted or otherwise insufficient to cope with the needs of the body, then body functions become impaired, including the processes of elimination of both endogenous metabolic wastes and exogenous poisons introduced into the body. This impairment begets further impairment including diminishing the body’s ability to restore depleted nerve energy. The body starts going downhill. The next stage of this decline is called toxemia.
When toxic substances from whatever source saturate the blood and tissues, the lymph system and interstitial fluids, then the conditions of toxemia and toxicosis exist.
As functioning organisms, we generate a tremendous amount of toxic by-products. We generate enough carbon dioxide to kill us within a few minutes. If our lungs failed to function, carbon dioxide buildup and lack of oxygenation would overwhelm us quite quickly. We can accommodate only so much carbon dioxide. And this is but one of many waste products. There are trillions of cells in the human body. Tens of billions of these expire every day. They are replaced by new cells. The old cells are broken down by lysosomes, enzymes that reside in a little organelle within the cell itself. Upon cell death, these enzymes break the cell down into many smaller components for elimination. These components are cell debris. Some of these components such as iron, protein, and amino acids are recycled by the body. Some 95% of the body’s iron needs and 70% of its protein needs are met by recycling. Certain other of the body’s needs are met by recycling as well. This will give you some idea as to the immense providence and wisdom of the body in meeting its needs. Other components of the decomposed cell are the RNA and DNA. These are toxic while in the system. If they accumulate as they do in most humans in today’s society, a condition of intoxication (toxemia and toxicosis) exists. These are what medical people call viruses, and they mistakenly attribute to this dead debris the powers of life and malevolence.
Tissue and blood saturation with toxic materials can be caused by both internally generated wastes and pollutants taken in from the outside which the body has not been able to eject from the vital domain. Intoxication occurs when we overload the body with toxic materials from the outside, or we fail to observe our capacities, and overwork, get insufficient sleep, or are subjected to great stress, or when any number of other factors deplete the body of nerve energy or prevent its sufficient regeneration. For instance, stresses, emotional shocks, or traumatic experiences can drain our bodies of nerve energy very quickly. It’s just like shorting out the battery of a car.
At some level of intoxication we begin to experience the next stage of disease which is called irritation.
Irritation results from toxic materials being sensed by our nerve network. Most of us pay this stage little mind, and certainly physicians do not pay it heed. When we feel itchy, queasy, jumpy, uneasy, or when we have bothersome but not painful areas, irritation exists. Tickling of the nose is a form of irritation. Collections of mucus along the mucus membranes irritate, although irritation is not painful. It is a gentle prod that moves us to seek comfort, to establish freedom from it. For instance, the urge to urinate or defecate is a form of irritation due to accumulation of wastes greater than the body feels comfortable with. However, the urge is not painful unless it is ignored until it creates too much pressure in its area. Near painful irritation forces us to deal with the problem.
When a person drinks too much alcohol we say that he or she is intoxicated. That’s a good example of exogenous intoxication. While all alcohol intake is damaging to the organism, the body can speedily eliminate a small amount before much damage has occurred. Increase the intake, and the elimination is proportionately less and the damage proportionately greater. The first drink of alcohol occasions only irritation which we also call stimulation. But any toxic material, be it salt, caffeine, or condiments will irritate or stimulate. This is a condition wherein the body sets in force its defensive mechanisms and accelerates its internal activities. This might well be likened to an alarm aboard ship where all hands are summoned. A frenzy of activity results in a bout with enemy forces. Unfortunately, this often makes us feel good or hyper or even euphoric. It is distressing to see a euphoric condition arise out of a situation that is damaging to the organism.
If the causes of enervation/intoxication/irritation remain in force and the body can’t cope with it the body initiates a responsive crisis called inflammation.
This is usually the stage in which physicians recognize pathology. It is the stage where sufferers are keenly aware of a problem, for it involves pain. As well, it involves bodily redirection of vital energies. The intestinal tract is closed down. Energy that would normally be available for activity there is pre-empted and redirected to the massive effort to cope with a severe condition of intoxication. Lest the integrity of the organism be dealt a mortal blow or crippled, the body musters its all to the emergency.
In inflammation, the toxicants have usually been concentrated in an organ or area for a massive expulsive effort. The area becomes inflamed due to the constant irritation of the toxic materials. When inflammation exists we are said to have an “itis,” appendicitis, tonsilitis, hepatitis, or nephritis for example. Note that the “itises” just cited are all due to overburdening of four different organs of purification and elimination.
The names of “itises” are usually after the organ or tissue area that is inflamed. Thus if we have a cold we have rhinitis. If we have inflammation of the sinus cavities we have sinusitis. If we have inflammation of bronchial tissue we have either bronchitis or asthma. And so it goes. We have these peculiar pathologies because in each case the body elected to eliminate the extraordinary toxic load through the organ affected. For instance, asthma exists because the body has selected the bronchi as an outlet for toxic materials. The condition is chronic because the toxic condition is unceasing. While the sufferer continues to intoxicate himself or herself, the body continues to eliminate the overload through the bronchi or alveolar tissue.
Inflammation or fever is a body crisis response to a life-threatening situation. The body and the body alone creates the fever. It is an evidence or symptom of increased and intense body activities directed at cleansing and repair. The extraordinary energies employed for a fever are at the expense of energies normally involved in digestion, work or play, thinking and seeing, etc. Fever is a healing activity. The idea of suppressing it is equivalent to hitting a drowning man over the head so he’ll cease his struggles. For instance, if rhinitis or influenza sufferers are drugged it amounts to hitting the body’s healer over the head. Thus, the eliminative effort is suppressed, and the toxicity increases until other organs, usually the lungs, become saturated—not only with the toxicity but the drugs administered as well. When body vitality reasserts itself a condition known as pneumonia is likely to result.
Inflammation is the fourth stage of disease and is the body’s most intense effort to cleanse and restore itself. The next stage of disease is destructive and degenerative. It will result if the causes of general body intoxication are continued.
Ulceration means that a staggering amount of cells and tissue structures are, being destroyed. Physiological systems are wiped out due to the body’s inability to live in an unceasing toxic media. Where tissue is destroyed there remains a void. An example is a canker sore of the mouth. Lesions or ulcers can occur in other areas of the body also. These conditions are often intensely painful, for there are exposed nerves.
While the body may use an ulcer as an outlet for extraordinary toxic buildup thereby relieving itself, it will heal the ulcer if causes are discontinued, or if the toxicity level is significantly lowered. This process of repairing the damage is like patching up pants with holes in them. This patching up process is called induration.
Induration is a hardening of tissue or the filling in of tissue vacancy with hard tissue. Scarring is a form of induration. But in this stage of disease, there is direction and purpose in hardening. The space is filled, and the toxic materials that threaten bodily integrity are encapsulated in a sac of hardened tissue. The ulcer and the toxic materials are sealed off by the hardening of the tissue around them. This is a way of quarantining the toxic materials, often called tumor formation. It is this condition that is diagnosed as cancer nineteen times out of twenty when, in fact, no cancer exists.
Induration is the last stage during which the body exerts intelligent control. Should the pathogenic practices which brought matters to this stage be continued, cells and tissue systems go wild. They survive as best they can on their own. Cells become parasitic—living off the nutrients they can obtain from the lymph fluid but contributing nothing to the body economy. They have become disorganized. Their genetic encoding has been altered by the poisons. Thus, they are not capable of intelligent normal organized action within the context of a vital economy. When cells go wild in this manner, the condition is called cancer.
The endpoint of the evolution of disease is cancer. It is the last stage of disease and is usually fatal, especially if the causes that brought it about are continued. Cessation of causes and indulgence of healthful practices may arrest it, for they can so revitalize the body that they may even destroy the cancer cells. It’s all relative. Cancer cells live in a hostile environment but still divide and flourish as long as nutrients are available to them. Cancer cells may be regarded as cells that have become independent and have reverted to the status of uncontrolled primitive cells—cells that live entirely on their own as do protozoa.
These stages of disease are quite distinct in their characters, yet the lines are more or less arbitrarily drawn. This often happens in attempts at categorization where one form evolves into another. The dividing lines have no clear-cut delineation.
People sometimes ask when cancer begins. Hygienists or Life Scientists say that it begins with the first cold or rash of childhood. The first crisis a baby endures begins the pathological chain that leads to cancer. This evolutionary chain begins then because the phenomenon of life is one constant violation of the laws of life from beginning to end.
After reviewing the seven stages of disease it should be obvious that bacteria and so-called viruses do not cause diseases. Viruses do cause diseases if you call toxic waste materials of decomposed body cells viruses. Decomposed cell debris is precisely what virologists and physicians are calling viruses. They regard viruses as living entitities when, in fact, medics have not in all history observed any quality of life they ascribe to viruses. What is called virus is always dead. It’s never been observed to be alive. It doesn’t have the first prerequisites of life, that is, metabolic and control mechanisms. Even bacteria have that. I repeat that what is called viruses are nothing more than components of decomposed cells.
Some people insist that syphilis is caused by bacteria, more specifically spirochetes. Though the term spirochetes has given way to viruses called Herpes these days—that’s today’s fashion—it was easy to demonstrate that spirochetes were never responsible in the first place. When you ask a bacteriologist which comes first, the soil or the bacteria, he will answer that the soil must exist first for bacteria to thrive, for bacteria are presented a deadly environment by living cells. So, bacteria never exist in a proliferating state where there is no food or soil for their propagation. They multiply when there is feast, and they die off when there is famine or adverse environment, hence, bacteria no more create their food supply than flies cause garbage. The garbage must preexist the flies and, on the same order, the garbage or soil on which bacteria thrive in our bodies must preexist their presence and propagation. In other words, they do not cause the condition—they are there because of the condition.
When the body has a highly toxic condition such as inflammation, it will absorb bacteria from the intestinal cavity and transport them to the point where deadly materials have been concentrated. The bacteria then symbiotically assist in breaking up these toxic materials for elimination. Of course, the excreta of bacteria are toxic, too.
Ignorant physicians regard these bacteria not as our symbiotic partners in the process of combating disease, but as the cause of the disease. Koch destroyed Pasteur’s original theories by his four postulates. The first two state that if a disease is caused by a certain type of bacterium, then that form of bacteria must always be present when the disease exists. The other says that the disease must always be occasioned by the presence or introduction of the bacteria said to be responsible. Although these cardinal principles are self-evident, so many exceptions existed as to disprove totally the germ theory of disease-causation. Koch laid down his postulates in 1892; the medical profession never has given them credence. To this day the profession clings to the disproven germ theory except that germs in the form of bacteria are taking a back seat to an even more elusive entity called a virus.
Bacteria exist in a multitude of strains, forms, and metabolic capabilities. Bacteria are versatile and in many cases change forms and lifestyles in keeping with the character of the soil available to them. Round bacteria can become rod shaped and vice versa.
It used to be said that pneumococcus caused pneumonia. But it was noted that this type of bacteria was absent in nearly half the cases. Moreover, administering the bacteria to healthy organisms never occasioned pneumonia. The plain fact that bacteria are in the human body as they are everywhere else is not recognized by the medical profession. Bacteria are symbiotic partners of all creatures in nature. In order to come to exist in nature in the first place, humans had to establish a state of symbiosis with all natural forces.
In the second place, if bacteria invaded organisms and laid them low as they’re supposed to do—if the body could be laid low while in a state of health—then the impetus or momentum the bacteria had built up would become more pronounced and overwhelming as the organism receded in disease. It would be a one-way trip the same as vultures picking the bones of a cadaver. If bacteria and viruses cause disease, once they have overwhelmed the body and actually debilitated it, how does the much weakened body regain ascendancy? If you were to inquire into this deeply and pursue it to its logical conclusions, you’d find that, once a body has lost the battle while in a state of health, it’s going to lose the war after being disabled.
At their strongest, bacteria complicate disease because the byproducts of bacterial fermentation or putrefaction are deadly poison. In fermentation the by-products are lactic acid, acetic acid or vinegar, and alcohol. Putrefaction involves nitrogenous foods or proteins. The by-products of rotting protein are ammonias, indoles, skatoles, purines, etc. They are toxic within organisms, although the body can normally eliminate these poisons. In fact, our feces and urine are loaded with the by-products of protein decomposition, both from our body decomposition and bacterial decomposition.
You’ve heard of the ideal of living in a germ-free environment. That is an impossibility, of course. Trillions of bacteria are in and on our bodies at all times. If we were free of these minute organisms, we’d soon die. They perform many essential services for us which will be discussed in a later lesson. Suffice it to say that we live symbiotically with bacteria.
Bacteria are wrongfully blamed for our own indiscretions. It’s the rare medic who doesn’t find a scapegoat for his client and remove responsibility for problems from the shoulders of the sufferer.
Medical logic is not very logical. According to medical thinking, bacteria or viruses invade our bodies and destroy our cells. It would seem that our body defenses permit this by their intimations. It would seem that once these invading entities have a headstart they would not stop destroying the rest of the cells of the organism, especially as the first strike has crippled the organism and lessened its ability to defend itself. By medical logic, the bacteria are there in greater numbers, for they proliferate astronomically when they’ve found a feast situation. How can the body reverse this situation and recover?
The medics believe that they administer drugs that kill off the bacteria so that the body can have a chance to recover. Also, they have people believing that medicines are healing agents or that they assist in healing.
When you start asking deep penetrating questions into the causes of disease, the medical theories fall of their own weight. They cannot be sustained in the face of self-evident truths. So we have to find the rational basis for disease causation.
Disease has a sole unitary cause. It is instituted and conducted by the body itself. It is the only organized entity capable of coordinating the various processes of disease. Disease is occasioned when toxic materials that we have generated within or taken in from without are uneliminated due to the body’s inability to cope with them. These debilitate and devitalize the organism until, at a point where it can no longer tolerate the growing toxic load at its mean level of vitality, the body institutes a crisis, redirecting its body energies to the enemy within.
Let’s go back to pneumonia. Physicians worry that when a person has a cold or the flu, it will become pneumonia. It occurs so many times among their patients that they make “heroic” efforts to prevent this. They administer drugs galore. Yet, pneumonia occurs so frequently despite the drugging that doctors feel powerless in the face of pneumonia, one of the primary causes of death in our society. The question arises: what causes pneumonia then? Does pneumococcus survive the drug onslaught and cause pneumonia anyway?
If colds are, as we teach, a cleansing process, how does a body that is in crisis get yet worse? If the body is eliminating toxic materials profusely through the respiratory tract as in colds and flu, then how do the lungs also become contaminated?
All cases of colds and flu recover very quickly if the sufferer goes to bed in an airy room with lots of natural daylight. Almost total rest is called for. Total abstention from food but plenty of pure water is needed. Under these conditions debility ceases in from one to three days. But, if the sufferer refuses to rest and continues to eat the same bad food that contributed heavily to the crisis in the first place, the eliminative effort may be less than the continued toxic buildup, in which case pneumonia may be a concomitant. But, if the sufferer goes to a medic and gets drugged in addition, the body turns its attention to eliminating the drugs. It may cease the cold or flu altogether in face of the greater enemy. The continued toxic buildup spreads to the lungs. The drugs and toxic materials may concentrate so strongly in the lungs as to cause death or to set the stage for cancer. Many autopsies reveal people who have had pneumonia or who have smoked or lived in highly polluted air have tumors, indurated sacs of lung tissue which encapsulate toxic substances in the lungs. Many cases of long fasts have been conducted in which pneumonia had been suffered many years before. The drugs that had been given had been noted to make their exit from the lungs during the course of the fast as the body autolyzed the tumors and expelled their contents.
Yet, despite the obvious causes of pneumonia, medical professionals are still saying that pneumococcus causes pneumonia when, in fact, more than 25% of pneumonia cases never have pneumococcus. Now that medics are getting more and more away from the germ theory of disease causation they’re invoking viruses as the culprits. This is true only if by viruses we mean uneliminated metabolic wastes. But when you start probing into what viruses are and how they cause disease, you might call this the “evil spirit” theory of disease, for the medics imbue viruses with all the qualities of malevolent spirits.
Such blindness characterizes the medical profession. The purpose of disease is so evident that medics can’t see it. Just as with the guard in the concentration camp, they are looking for something that doesn’t exist and they overlook that which they see so plainly all the time.
Medical researchers have chronicled over 20,000 different diseases. They name almost every variation. They have multiple names because of the number of organs or tissue systems that exhibit symptoms. All of this is only one disease. And the disease, which we call constructive disease, is occasioned by the body itself and is known as toxemia or toxicosis.
Just as there is one universal cause of disease there is one universal panacea! In mythology Asclepius had two daughters. Both were goddesses. One was the goddess of health and she was called Hygeia. The other daughter was Panacea. She was the goddess of healing. The name itself, in Greek, means all-healing or universal healing.
While these goddesses are mythological, they do represent valid concepts. Panacea can be achieved by a return to natural practices. Fasting is the quickest way to invoke the universal panacea. Just as the universal disease is a toxic-laden body, the universal panacea is establishing the most ideal conditions under which the body can cleanse itself of the toxicity and repair the damages suffered. Fasting is the answer. It works in all cases of constructive disease, that is, disease where organic damage of an irremediable nature has not occurred.
Some great luminaries have long since rediscovered the Grecian panacea. Dr. Jennings first employed it until Dr. John Tilden elaborated on it in his scholarly book, Toxemia Explained. Dr. Hereward Carrington wrote a few very illuminating volumes about Natural Hygiene. But Dr. Shelton probed deeper and farther afield than did all those before him. He built upon the shoulders of all who went before him and added a touch of his own genius. In our text section some observations of Dr. Carrington are presented. Here is a quote from Dr. Herbert M. Shelton about the nature of disease:
“The Hygienic system teaches that disease is a remedial effort, a struggle of the vital powers to purify the system and recover the normal state. This effort should be aided, directed, and regulated if need be, but never suppressed. What is this mysterious thing called disease? It is simply an effort to remove obstructing material which we call toxic materials from the organic domain and to repair damages. Disease is a process of purification and repair. It is remedial action. It. is a power struggle to overcome obstruction and to keep the channels of circulation free.”
Actually disease is really more than this if we view it in all aspects. Dr. Carrington has simplified Dr. Shelton’s presentation somewhat. He says the following:
“Disease is an attempt of the body to free its cells and circulatory system of clogging and toxic materials. It is a desperate body rallying its remaining resources to the task of purgation and restoration.”
We have many illustrious forebears in the elaboration and creation of what we call Natural Hygiene or Life Science. Most notable among our forebears have been some truly great women. While women were spurned in the medical profession, the Hygienic movement was truly an enlightened and unfettered one. It welcomed women with open arms and, if we leave the renegade M.D.’s aside, their numbers almost equal those of male Hygienic professionals.
How many of you have heard of Louisa May Alcott? Yes, all of you have. But how many of you know that she was a Hygienist? That her father was a Hygienist? That her brother William Alcott was a professional Hygienist and was also a brilliant writer?
I’m sure you’ve all heard of Florence Nightingale, who gave new dignity and direction to the profession of nursing. She was a Hygienist.
How many of you have heard of Ellen White? She was a Hygienist who founded the religion we know today as the Seventh Day Adventists.
There are many unsung heroines among women who were Hygienic professionals. Mary Gove, Susan Nichols, Linda Burfield Hazzard and others were a credit to both the profession of Hygiene and to womanhood.
Perhaps the most famous Hygienist of the fair sex was Florence Nightingale. Her daring on the battle fields of eastern Europe still draws our admiration for the courage of her convictions. The British were fighting the Russians and more soldiers were dying behind the battle lines than on them. The physicians and their treatments were killing off the wounded and ailing faster than the Russians.
When Florence Nightingale arrived on the battle scene she really took charge despite the physicians. What she did was a very simple thing: she went to the rooms of the wounded and ailing and opened the windows for fresh air. She would not permit drugs. She gave the patients water which was against medical policy at the time. She rejected heavy feeding and, in fact, for many, any feeding at all. Being confined to a battlefield hospital had been a death sentence before. Now almost all the wounded and sick became well speedily. It’s all history and Florence Nightingale became famous because of her tremendous success employing the mere rudiments of Hygienic methods. This is all the more phenomenal when you consider that Ms. Nightingale lived in a medical age and in a man’s world. She defied the medics and won. She was truly a pioneer Hygienist. The world, despite its poverty on the health scene, is still richer for her having been amongst our forebears.
In order to understand disease, we must understand health. Health is the enjoyment of full faculties and functioning power. Disease is not the opposite of health but an expression of healthy vitality while under the burden of toxicosis. Disease is a body-instituted and conducted crisis for the purpose of purifying and repairing itself.
Disease is caused by indulging in practices or being subjected to materials and influences not normal to the human organism: that to which we are not adapted will cause disease.
It is a misconception that we have to fight disease. It will not occur unless it is caused. A huge catalog of materials and influences which are abnormal to the body could be given, but it’s not that complicated. We need only to maintain the simple needs of life which build and sustain health. We should consume only pure water as thirst demands and wholesome raw ripe fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds as genuine hunger dictates. We are frugivores, and it is to a diet of fruits as nature delivers them that we are biologically adapted.
Further, we are adapted to pure air, sunshine, rest and sleep, pleasant environment, emotionally balanced companions - in short we are adapted to a harmonious world. We are so constituted that health results when all our physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic needs are met. Thus diseases other than degenerative ones may be said to be body crises for the purpose of restoring health.
The cause, purpose, and nature of disease have now been delineated. Certain questions will be explained below.
STUDENT: Is it true that diseases are not contagious in any sense?
INSTRUCTOR: That is correct. Diseases are not contagious in any sense simply because they are body instituted. We cannot transfer our toxic load to someone else. That should be self-evident. A Hygienist can go into a sickroom and not suffer a bit for it. Obviously most physicians and nurses and other people go to the sickrooms, even those housing the most so-called contagious diseases. They never contract the disease or suffer even though on occasion medics claim they do. You cannot transfer your toxic materials to another person unless you have it drawn out of you and injected into the person. The medics do, indeed, do that in transfusions. But the contagion here is medically induced rather than occurring within the realm of natural possibilities.
It is said that colds, flu, leprosy, and a number of other things are contagious. As we learn more, diseases become less and less contagious. Asthma, cancer, psoriasis, meningitis, poliomyelitis and a long list of other diseases have come off the contagious list. Measles, chicken pox, and other affections are still on the list of diseases said to be contagious. The only thing contagious about these diseases is medical ignorance. That is the most contagious of all.
The reason that there seems to be “epidemics” is that the true contagion is an epidemic of similar bad habits. We all eat pretty much the same junk, are subjected to the same seasons, the same type of housing and, in many other ways, indulge the same health-sapping practices. It’s no wonder that many of us suffer the same diseases. Like causes beget like effects. Of course this is modified in the human situation by the diathesis of each individual.
Thus we see that, within the context of a given family or group, people have more or less the same bad habits and suffer the same diseases.
This business about incubation periods of germs and viruses is strictly medical mythology. We’ll get into the depths of that and study it methodically in later lessons.
To what are plagues and epidemics attributed? Today’s epidemics are for the most part invented and publicized in America by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a federal service that does yeoman service for the medical profession. When the drug companies want to sell lots of flu vaccine, measles vaccine, etc. they get CDC to release the scare propaganda that stampedes the public into the physicians’ offices for shots. To entertain the thought that vaccines injected into people makes them immune is an absurdity not worthy of serious consideration—it is a species of voodooism.
Epidemics today result, I reassure you, from mass indulgence of the same bad habits and subjection to the same pathogenic living conditions. It’s no accident that almost 90% of the affections labeled generally as colds and influenza occur within a seven-month period of the year.
The reason epidemics occur in winter and not in summer should be obvious. If anything, microbial life is more active in summer just as we are and their functions are depressed in winter. But lo and behold, microbial forms of life are said to be more active and to cause epidemics. That’s nonsense of course. In the winter we eat less wholesome food—we eat more junk. We do not exercise as much. We stay indoors and breathe foul air. In the summer we get more sunshine, more exercise, more fresh air, fresh ripe fruits—in short we live more healthfully in summer and less healthfully in winter. Conditions cause us to so live as to generate our diseases. General conditions cause general ill health. It is not contagion of germs but contagion of pathogenic conditions that create what are termed plagues or epidemics.
Hygienists or Life Scientists deplore the medical practice of feeding the ailing and drugging them too. When ill, the continuance of feeding alone is enough to thwart the healing forces within. But the addition of drugs so destroys vital powers that the body must often redirect its purification efforts to freeing itself from the more virulent poisons administered. Thus it is seen that medical professionals are death-dealing rather than being life-enhancing.
Yes, drugs kill bacteria. But they’re just as deadly to all forms of metabolic life. That which deranges and destroys the metabolic functions of bacteria usually does likewise to the cells of all forms of life. Even physicians will tell you that drugs have no effect on viruses. Of course they don’t have any effect on what they call viruses because that is dead cell debris that can’t be made any deader.
In conclusion I assure you that disease is not something to fear. That’s like being scared of your own body. If you fear anything fear your disposition to indulge in unwholesome foods and unwholesome living conditions.
Are indigestion and acidosis diseases or just passing little crises?
These are diseases even though usually of short duration. Anything that puts us at unease is disease. While there is no such thing as acidosis because we’d die long before our body fluids reached the acid stage, there is such a thing as hypo-alkalinity. A reduction in alkalinity from a pH of 7.40 to as little as 7.35 is enough to bring on coma and another five to ten points lower may cause death.
Indigestion and what is called acidosis are usually caused by eating foods in incompatible digestive combinations and in eating a predominantly acid-forming diet. These are the primary causes of these complaints.
You said that diseases are not contagious. If so how do you explain away venereal disease? That’s proven to be contagious.
I’ve responded to this in a way before but I’ll go over these grounds again. Conventional thinking has it that gonococcus and spirochetes are transferred from one person to another during the sexual act. The “infected” person will then develop either gonorrhea or syphilis. Even the medical profession is deserting this long held belief today in favor of the herpes virus as causing what is called venereal disease.
First, syphilis is a figment of the medical imagination. Most of what is described as syphilis in the books of yesteryear were effects of mercury and sulfa drugs which the profession administered so liberally. What is described as gonorrhea is no more serious than the canker sores of the mouth. Both are eliminative steps by the body. The ulceration and suppuration represent the fifth stage of the evolution of disease. The so-called contagious factors, bacteria, are there because of the disease, not the cause of it. In fact something like 20% of those who suffer venereal diseases have neither gonococcus nor spirochetes. Saying that a pimple, ulcer or pustule in the sexual area is caused by either bacteria or viruses is like saying boils are caused by the same when it is generally agreed that boils are a result of filth in the body. Both are the same processes but occur in different areas of the body. Besides it must be recognized that the autolysis of tissue and the creation of inflammations and boils are body actions, not bacterial or viral actions.
It is not true that venereal diseases are contagious. The U.S. Navy conducted experiments wherein it was shown that so-called infected persons could not infect healthy persons. When I was with a vice squad in Japan we had cases of so-called infected prostitutes who had been with dozens of GI’s, none of whom contracted the disease. On the other hand there are many who have infections in the sexual area who have not been in contact with anyone, especially in small children who do sometimes have infections in the sexual area.
The concept of contagion is unproven despite appearances. It is a medical scareword that stampedes customers into the offices of medical practitioners. It’s much like insurance companies who like to see fires and pay off for that makes it all the easier to sell insurance.
It seems rather impudent of you to say millions of scientists, doctors, researchers and teachers of medical science are all wrong. Isn’t it just possible that you’re wrong about disease being body action instead of bacterial or viral action? Isn’t it just possible that the medical people who’ve been around so long are really right?
Old myths die hard, don’t they? The older and more revered the myth, the harder it is to dispel. Your question would have done well nearly five hundred years ago when Copernicus presented his heliocentric theory of the solar system. It’s just difficult to believe that everyone can be wrong. But I insist that the whole profession operates on a wrong premise. The fact that fasting will enable an organism to heal quickly in injury or illness and drugging will defer or prevent healing altogether is some indication of the error of the medical school of thought. The very word medicine is a misnomer. The word means healing agent or substance. There is not such an agent or substance. Healing is always the sole prerogative of the affected organism. There’s not enough intelligence and know how in the collective knowledge of the world to effect the knitting of a bone within an organism. Healing is, I repeat, entirely a body process.
The impudence lies not with me but with those who deny the obvious and plainly evident truth. Age does not make beliefs true, and truth never changes with age. The belief that the world was flat was accepted by millions over nearly two thousand years but that did not flatten the world. Likewise if the masses of our people do not accept obvious truths, truths that account for everything in health and disease and are demonstrable when put to the test, then it is those who deny the obvious that are impudent. Should I repeat an old refrain: “I’d rather be right with a persecuted few than wrong with many.”
I know about the swine flu hoax but is the measles vaccination really a hoax too? If children are exposed to the measles they get it; but if they have been vaccinated they don’t get it, right?
It’s general knowledge that the swine flu vaccination was a hoax. It is only a question of time before people will learn of the tetanus hoax, the rabies hoax, the whooping cough hoax, the measles hoax and other medical hoaxes.
If children are exposed to others who have the measles they don’t “catch” it. It is not something that is contagious. What is “contagious” are the food habits, that cause it (any unhealthful living habits, wrong food combinations, stress, etc.). But children usually do not have measles if their system is too drugged and devitalized. And that’s what happens when they’re vaccinated. They cannot conduct the simple eliminative crisis called measles. If they cannot have measles they’ll sooner or later have something worse—like cancer! Measles is a body instituted and conducted crisis to get rid of toxic accumulations. Vaccinal interference destroys the vitality necessary to have measles.
Measles is helpful, not hurtful. The body creates the measles and keeps the process in force until body cleansing has been completed. Contrary to medical myth, the body will not harm itself by conducting this or any other crisis. This is more than can be said for the vaccines, which are poisonous in themselves.
The harm said to be derived from measles is actually from the “heroic” drugging and treatment administered by the medical profession. Measles and other acute diseases are helpful body functions; the body is grappling with an overload of toxic materials. Vaccinations and drugging add to these toxic materials. They are never a “preventive” or an antidote. They can make matters worse but they have no intelligence or ability to help under any circumstances.
If vaccinations don’t give us immunity, how about the antibodies vaccinated organisms produce? Don’t antibodies really defend against a virus as in the case of measles?
This reminds me of a joke that goes like this: An Air Force Colonel who commanded a fighter wing was inspecting his pilots one Saturday morning. He stopped by a Captain and Lieutenant who piloted and co-piloted a plane. He asked the Captain: “What would you do, Captain, if your plane caught on fire and you couldn’t open the overhead canopy?” The Captain repled: “Sir, I’d eject through the canopy.” The Colonel rejoined with “You idiot, you’d be squashed to death in the process.” Then he turned to the Lieutenant and asked him what he’d do. The Lieutenant meekly said, “Sir, I’d go through the hole the Captain made.”
Of such substance is this question. The truth is that the body does not create new defensive faculties in responses to a poison. Rather it has its defensive faculties destroyed. Putting a question that way is like saying that the body creates antibodies to defend against tar and nicotine in cigarette smoking because the body can tolerate ever greater quantities without the same ill effects as with the first cigarette of life. The body can’t tolerate smoke any better after a thousand smokes than after one. The body no longer defends against the pathogenic poisons of cigarette smoke simply because its defenses have been destroyed, not built up.
Medical researchers will tell you that “antibodies” are merely presumed and not something actually demonstrable in the laboratory as a new body faculty. They are presumed because, when vaccines are administered, most recipients no longer get the disease. This is because the body’s defensive faculties are destroyed, not enhanced. The body’s ability to conduct the simple cleansing crisis known as measles is so debilitated by the vaccinal poison that it retains what would normally be expelled. It’s no accident that cancer is now the number one killer of our children. When simple cleansing cannot occur, the body all the more quickly evolves to the next and succeeding stages of disease.
Antibodies are, I repeat, a medical myth, a figment of the medical imagination.
Well, you’ve just admitted that vaccines lower the incidence of measles. Isn’t that a good thing since measles can cause brain damage?
How can I get this across that measles are not a bane but a boon. If the body is filthy inside, a cleansing is a good thing. Measles are a cleansing process. The body conducts the crisis called measles and it is doing so to help itself, not hurt itself. The body never injures itself except where injury is necessary as the lesser of two evils. Brain damage does not occur from a cleansing crisis. Rather, it is the drugs that are administered in such a crisis that are responsible for the damage. Physicians damage many people with their drugs and conveniently place all blame on the body’s noble reparative efforts rather than take responsibility.
How can you prove that a sickness is caused by toxicity rather than germs? Do you base your statement on laboratory proof or on empirical observations?
Were germs the cause of disease there would be no remission. If they had the power to successfully attack living tissue and proliferate enough to lay a person low as is commonly supposed, then the results would be like the effects of rotten apples amidst good ones—they’d all soon be bad. Humans simply would not survive the ordeal and there would be no human race.
Should we fast people who were laid low with a germ-caused disease the fasting would not kill off the germs. Just as a rotten apple can spoil the good ones so, too, the germ proliferation would continue whether we are eating or fasting. Actually people who fast recover health rapidly whereas, if they continue to eat and take drugs, they recover slowly if at all.
Actually there have been fasts conducted under laboratory conditions in many hospitals and university medical centers with controls. It has been proven beyond doubt that the body cleanses itself under the condition of fasting and heals two or three times speedier when fasting than in alimentation and/or drug therapy. Medical experimentation with fasting has been conducted at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. You won’t have to delve much into the literature on fasting to come up with the results observed. All medical research has proven the truth of the toxemia causation of disease regardless of the misinterpretations of the researchers. Researchers usually interpret their data to suit those who are paying for the experimentation, usually drug companies or drug beneficiaries. If the experiments are too contrary to the ends sought they are usually buried quietly. Both laboratory evidence and empirical observations substantiate that disease is a body reaction to intoxication rather than germs.
How can we convince our clientele that they’re responsible for their diseases and that it is not just a bit of bad luck that has befallen them?
Fortunately, you don’t have to lay the load of responsibility on your clients’ shoulders. Your clients will at first be “cure-minded” and want a way out of the dilemma. You can point out the positive way back to health without getting into culpability. You can have them fill out an extensive questionaire which we’ve developed and the answers to which are advance weighted so that you can suggest changes in the customer’s living regime. You can make the process one of adventure and exploration by holding forth the benefits to be obtained by doing this and this and not doing that and that anymore.
Dr. Jennings had people fasting under a deception. He gave them bread and sugar pills, what we’d call placebos, and instructed the taking of water with them four or five times daily. With that he advised bed rest, fresh air, etc. He cautioned against taking anything with the pills other than water, otherwise they would not work. The results his clients realized were nothing short of miraculous. His patients were recovering 100% while his medical colleagues who were into heroic drugging lost patients in epidemic numbers.
You can impute health magic to certain foods or limited diets, even a distilled water diet. But you can assure a healthful outcome only within certain parameters. Hence the client will likely go along with you in the matter of his welfare just as he or she goes along with every charlatan in the medical or other fields of the so-called healing arts.
I reiterate that you can make a game of this, i.e., make it an interesting adventure rather than an onerous chore. The education and whyfore can follow the results. People are interested in results and you are there to show them how. People believe in the magic of nutrition and we’re going to teach it to you as it really is. We’ll teach it to you so that you can guide your clients back to health most speedily, not only in matters of diet but diet within the context of a thoroughgoing health regimen. You can always give instructions that are completely appropriate and straightforward that will enable the client to quickly regain health. Yet you can do it in such a manner as to make it exciting enterprise. You’ll cultivate this confident manner of knowing just what is called for by sympathetic and empathic consideration of your client’s problems as related to you through questionaire and verbal complaint.
I find no fault with the toxemia explanation of disease but it seems too utterly simple to be for real. Do you think our clients will go for this?
I must repeat that your clients aren’t interested in theories or explanations. They’re looking for results, a magic carpet from a state of disease to a state of health. Just wave the magic wand of nutritional salvation before them within the context of a thoroughgoing health regime and they’ll usually follow it religiously. Your expertise will awe them and once word of mouth has gotten around about the miraculous results your guidance makes possible, clients will flock to you.
We live in a day of sensational discoveries and “miracle medicines.” Remarkable new cures and near-panaceas are frequently announced. Snake venom, artificial fever, frozen sleep, the sulfonamides, penicillin, streptothricin, blood plasma, powerful X-rays and ever more comes before us almost daily—these compete with sports, movies, politics, crime and other publicity for free newspaper space. So much is claimed for this parade of “miracle cures” and so many new discoveries are made relatively that the public is kept constantly keyed up with open-mouthed and wild-eyed expectancy. Perfect health via the medical promises seems always just around the corner.
At long last, “science” is staging a powerful and winning Blitz-Krieg against our ancient and most implacable foe—disease. With remarkable and sensational discoveries crowding so closely one upon the heels of another, the time is surely not far distant when universal health will prevail and disease will have disappeared from the human scene.
Not only is ours an age of remarkable “cures,” it is also a time of equally remarkable preventatives. We now have so much “successful” vaccines and serums that there is no longer any need for anyone ever to suffer from many of the “diseases” that were previously so common. New serums are frequently discovered. We may look forward hopefully to the time when all “disease” will be conquered.
Surgery, too, has made rapid strides. It has grown much more daring. Today it invades physiological precepts which only a few years ago it would not have touched. With the newer advances in surgery added to the new “cures” and the new serums and vaccines, we have an almost ideal combination for the “conquest of disease.” What these three groups of anti-disease weapons lack in power and effectiveness is completely compensated for by the many glandular products (hormones), and by vitamin and mineral combinations that are claimed to do so much for the sick. Surely, there is no reason to doubt that the Golden Age has arrived.
The intelligent and informed reader, however, will notice one very important defect in all these methods of “cure” and “prevention.” He or she will quickly detect a deficiency for which no amount of shouting can compensate. It is this:
None of these methods of “cure” or “prevention” are designed to affect or even touch the basic causes of disease.
Drugs may suspend vital activity such that symptoms disappear but they do not remove cause. They may kill germs but they also kill off patients. They do not clear up the systemic condition that permits bacteria to thrive and grow in parts of the body where they are not normal. “Frozen sleep” may temporarily check the growth of a tumor or cancer, but it does not and cannot remove the causes of cancer. Powerful X-rays may destroy a cancerous growth but they also destroy healthy tissue and cause further cancer while leaving intact the causes of disease. It cannot be emphasized too much that:
If a modality does not remove causes, it does not “cure”.
Serums and vaccines are admittedly capable of doing much harm, but they do not remove the causes of disease. Therefore, they do not enable us to “avoid” diseases, even those for which they are administered. We need to know that:
If they do not enable us to avoid the causes of disease, they cannot prevent disease.
Surgeons may pull a tooth, extract the tonsils, cut out the gall-bladder, excise the appendix, sever and remove the ovaries and seminal vesicles, drain the sinuses, etc. but they do not thereby remove the causes of disease. Mopping up the water from a leaky faucet does not remove the causes of the leak. Removing effects of cause likewise does not remove the cause. It is time for us to understand the following:
If surgery does not remove the causes of disease, it cannot “cure” the disease. There is no “cure” short of removal of causes.
Cutting out an organ, suppressing a symptom with a drug (medicine), destroying a growth, removing a stone—these processes touch effects only. They fail to restore health for three very vital reasons:
We must look to constructive natural agencies, forces, and methods for “prevention” of disease and recovery of health. We must cease relying on destructive, unnatural or anti-natural measures, forces, agents and processes. Agents such as drugs that produce disease in the well cannot possibly produce health in the sick. Disease-producing agents and measures are not health-preserving. The popular methods of “prevention” and “cure” neither prevent nor restore health. Witness the ever-growing army of sick and suffering in spite of the ever-increasing size of our army of physicians, nurses and hospitals, and the ever-growing list of “cures” and “miracle drugs.”
To be healthy, do not indulge the causes of disease. Only madness can lead us to attempt to be free of disease by submitting to means which cause yet more disease.
To “cure” disease, remove the causes of disease. It is the worst kind of folly to attempt to cure disease by ignoring its causes and employing modalities which are in themselves causes of disease.
To build health, employ the causes of health. It is absurd to attempt to build health by employing means and measures that are known to impair and wreck health.
For over forty years this writer has helped the sick and suffering back to health and has taught them how to remain well. I have employed a system called NATURAL HYGIENE. For over forty years my health school has been host to over 40,000 people. Dr. Shelton’s Health School has been employing the health-building system of NATURAL HYGIENE with only successful results. At the Health School we have received a great preponderance of people who have suffered for years and “have tried everything” without avail. Our success in building good health in the great majority of these sufferers has been remarkable.
At the Health School we have no “cure” at all. We recognize that only nature (normal forces and processes of life) restores health. We accord to nature the conditions and the opportunity to restore health. We recognize that in nature and nature only exists the power of healing. The forces and powers of nature constitute the true panacea. Ours is a plan of living and a program of education that restores our guests to harmonious living with nature. If this plan of care seems too simple, too easy or not heroic enough, just think this over:
If this plan were ineffectual we would not have succeeded where all others had failed.
I implore you to intelligently consider the preceding statements. Lay aside your previous conditioning and prepossessions. Do some real honest-to-goodness thinking. Then, when you thoroughly understand NATURAL HYGIENE, give it a fair and honest test. Heed the ancient admonition: “Prove (test) all things, hold fast that which is good (true).”
An old adage has it that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof.” The proof of the truth of the principles presented in NATURAL HYGIENE and of the value of the practices built thereon is in making use of it. “The wise will understand.”
Primitive peoples, as we know, believe disease represents the entry into the patient’s body of some evil spirit or entity—which was caused to enter it by some malevolent voodoo man or witch doctor. The unfortunate victim remains so afflicted until he rights a wrong, appeases the witch doctor, or secures the services of another whose “magic” is more powerful than that of the original spell-caster. When once this “evil spirit” has been removed, he is well and strong again; if he fails in this, he dies!
Strange as it may seem, a modified form of this same belief underlies public thinking and constitutes a basic belief of many physicians. True, we no longer believe that an “evil spirit” has entered into the body of a sick person, but it survives in the form of thinking that disease is an “entity” of some sort which is caught and which can be driven out or expelled by suitable medicines— something in a bottle! When this entity has been expelled, the patient is “cured.” Such is the popular conception...
As opposed to this, the Hygienist believes that so-called “diseases” represent merely the bodily states or conditions, nearly always self-caused which are manifested in a series of symptoms, but which are in themselves the very processes of “cure.” As Dr. Emmet Densmore stated, in his book How Nature Cures:
The hygienic system teaches that disease is a remedial effort, a struggle of the vital powers to purify the system and recover the normal state. This effort should be aided, directed and regulated, if need be, but never suppressed... What is this mysterious thing called disease? Simply an effort to remove obstructing material from the organic domain, and to repair damages. Disease is a process of purification. It is a remedial action. It is a vital struggle to overcome obstructions and to keep the channels of circulation free...
Precisely the same idea was expressed by Miss Florence Nightingale, in her Notes on Nursing, when she said:
Shall we begin by taking it as a general principle that all disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied by suffering; an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed—the termination of the disease being then determined?
So-called disease is, therefore, in the vast majority of cases, merely a curative effort on the part of Nature; it is the process of cure itself—manifested in a set of symptoms. Attempting to “cure” a disease, in the ordinary sense of the word, leads us to a ridiculous paradox: viz., an attempt to “cure” a “curing” process! The disease IS the “cure.” The outward manifestations, the symptoms we notice, represent merely the outward and visible signs of this curative process in action. Any attempt to deal with or smother these symptoms merely retards the process of cure to that extent. Instead of treating symptoms, we should aim at the disease itself—or rather at the causes of the so-called disease. These are really the dangerous factors involved, and those which have brought about the abnormal conditions noted. Once we have removed these causes, the disease (so-called) disappears, and the symptoms vanish. The patient is then restored to health.
Viewed in this light, everything becomes simple! Toxins and waste material of all kinds accumulate in the body, over a period of weeks, months or years—finally reaching the point when they must be expelled or deterioration sets in. This violent expulsive effort on the part of nature produces a series of characteristic symptoms. The body attempts in every way possible to expel these poisonous substances— through the bowels, the kidneys, the skin, the lungs, etc.—with the result that these organs are overtaxed and break down under the load. Clogging and toxemia then set in more seriously than ever, and the patient is really ill. Obviously, the only way to relieve this condition is to stop adding to the waste material the body must eliminate, and assist it in every way possible to dispose of what is already there. Once the body is given a chance to “catch up,” so to say, and cleanse itself to some extent, the violence of the internal upheaval will subside, and as this becomes more normal, the external symptoms will lessen and the patient is then said to be “convalescent.” If this process continues, he ultimately becomes “cured.”
I have used all these terms in a loose sense, because hygienists believe that the so-called “disease” is itself the process of “cure”—as we have seen. What we really mean is that certain causes have been removed, and as they are removed the effects disappear... What are these causes, and how are they removed?
The human body is creating certain poisons within itself by the very process of living. If these poisons were not constantly being excreted we should die. Normally, they are disposed of through the various eliminating organs—the bowels, kidneys, skin, etc. If this balance is maintained, the person remains well. If, however, the poisons accumulate more rapidly than they can be disposed of, abnormal conditions develop. These conditions are the so-called “diseases.”
Now, it should be obvious that the speediest way to regain health, when this condition develops, is to stimulate the eliminating organs, and at the same time introduce no new poisons into the system. The former is accomplished by means of exercise, bathing, water-drinking, etc. But it is highly important to prevent the entrance into the body of material which might further clog and block it. The material is our food, and obviously so; for, aside from air and water, this is the only material we ever introduce into our bodies, under normal conditions.
The necessity of fasting in times of stress thus becomes evident. Food supplies us with essential nutriment, it is true; but if the body is in no condition properly to utilize this food, it merely decomposes, creates poisons and is pushed through the body without really benefiting it. The thing to do, therefore, is to withhold food, so long as this abnormal state lasts, thereby giving the eliminating organs a chance to dispose of the surplus material already on hand, and at the same time rest the internal organs, permitting them to accumulate a certain store of vital energy, which would otherwise be expended in the handling and disposal of this extra mass of food-material. The system thus becomes cleansed and purified. It is the simplest and most effective means known to us—and is the course prescribed by nature when she deprives us, at such times, of our normal appetite.
Practically all diseases thus have a common basis and a common origin. There is a unity and oneness of disease, based on a common denominator. This, in a word, is toxemia. The differing diseases, so-called, are but the various means by which nature tries to expel this poisonous material; and the symptoms noted are the outward and visible signs of such curative action. Naturally developed inherent healing powers alone “cure”—whether it be a cut finger, a broken bone or a so-called “disease.” All that the physician can do is to assist Nature in this remedial effort. Anything which tends to reduce symptoms merely prolongs the effort to that extent. Give Nature a chance, and she will heal in every case. A “cure” will invariably follow—whenever such “cure” is at all possible.
Most drugs so destroy vitality that body efforts as evidenced by symptoms are stopped. Pain is a warning signal—calling attention to a certain local area which is in dire distress. But this condition is merely a localized manifestation of a general condition. As Dr. Samuel Dickson remarked: “Properly speaking, there never was a purely local disease.” Rectify the general body condition, and the local manifestation will disappear. No matter what they may be or where located, they will vanish when the body as a whole is normal.
Drugs do not act upon the body; they are acted upon by the body. The action we perceive is the reaction of the body against the drug. It is the effort on the part of Nature to expel the poison introduced into the living organism... Much the same is true of stimulants. These seem to impart “strength” to the body; but as we know, this is a false strength, denoting merely the waste of the vital energies. If you dig your spur into a tired horse, it will run faster to the corner; but no one thinks that the spur has supplied the horse with fresh energy. It has simply caused the poor animal to expend its reserve energies more quickly. It is the same with stimulants. The false feeling of strength which they impart is fictitious. The same is true of many drugs; and the same is true of food, which also acts as a stimulant, giving us a false feeling of strength when a meal is eaten! It is because of this fact that many people feel “weak” when food is withheld.
The simple, basic idea back of the hygienic system is that practically all “diseases,” so-called, are but the varied manifestations of a single underlying cause; and that, when this cause is removed, the symptoms automatically vanish. This cause is toxemia: waste materials and foreign poisons in the body.
3.1. The Essentials Of Life Listed
Article #1: The Importance Of Pure Water by John H. Tilden, M.D
Article #2: Are Humans Drinking Creatures? by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #3: Ama Says Fresh Air Bad For You by Frances Adelhardt
Every factor in human well-being is also an element of nutrition. All needs are really nutritive needs. Deprivation of any single need may mean our demise or impairment of our growth, development or health. A single factor insufficiently or incorrectly supplied can lead to disease and suffering.
Most people are aware of the essentials of life. But they lose sight of these fundamentals as being factors and influences that are necessary to well-being within the context of society. Therefore, they’re likely to violate the very laws of their existence and contribute to their own sickness and suffering.
When in a state of disease, most people do not realize they have brought it upon themselves. They are aided in placing blame outside themselves by a profession that takes the stance that they’ve had an unfortunate bit of bad luck or they have been invaded by some microbial enemy. Though the needs of the ill differ from those of well people only in that their conditions must be made favorable to recuperation, both ill people and the medical professionals undertake a course of treatment that compounds sickness. Both the physician and the sufferer enter into an attempt to poison the ailing body back into health. The fact is that drugging only makes a body worse.
The causes of health are very simple. Our needs do not change substantially when we become ill. Even illness itself won’t occur if the needs of our bodies and minds are properly met.
The nineteen factor elements for optimal well-being are listed as follows:
Let us explore the first two of these needs in detail.
3.2.1 Air Contents Normal to Humans
3.2.2 Today’s Air Is Loaded With Pollutants
3.2.3 Many Americans Pollute Their Homes and Bodies by Smoking
3.2.4 Normal Air Is Continually Cleansed by Forces in Nature
3.2.5 Air Was Originally Brought to Its Present Consistency By Bacteria
3.2.6 Air Pollution in the American Home
3.2.7 What We Can Do to Insure a Constant Supply of Fresh Air
Pure air is relatively free of pollutants. It contains only the normal amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, inert ozone, formaldehyde, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ammonia and particulates, all of which the body is well-equipped to handle.
In other words, there is always water vapor, some carbon dioxide, and a minute amount of carbon monoxide in the air. Carbon monoxide isn’t healthful in any sense, but we are equipped to handle it as naturally found in the air from natural sources. There are also particulates in the air including dust or the debris of decomposing products. Pollens, fragrant emanations and other natural effluvia are also present. There are inert gases in air—free gases in very, very minute percentages. Some may be inorganic and toxic, but many come from forms of life. All of these constituents are not a part of the air’s chemical composition but are held suspended in it. They are known as variable components.
Air is composed of nitrogen (78.1%), oxygen (20.9%) and fractional parts of less than 1% of argon, hydrogen, methane, nitrous oxide, xenon, krypton, helium and neon.
Humans have adapted to impurities in air over millions of years. Unfortunately, air today is loaded with immense amounts of pollutants not normal to our adaptations. Even those which we are equipped to handle in minute amounts often pervade the air in overwhelming quantities.
For example, carbon monoxide is often in the air in urban areas in amounts sufficient to seriously affect well-being. In these same areas are huge amounts pf lead, hydrocarbons, and other unwholesome substances in quantities that we cannot handle. Today we get only a fraction of the oxygen-rich air we need for good health. Compounded with the problem of the general pollution of outdoor air, we tend to stay in our homes and workplaces where we constantly inhale our own aerial excreta and staggering amounts of pollutants otherwise generated.
Many Americans subject themselves to lung pollution from tobacco smoke. Smoking is a deadly, poisonous habit, a narcotic addiction that slowly kills. Nonsmokers are harmed by the fumes as well as smokers.
We should get as much fresh air as circumstances permit. The ideal is to live in completely fresh air in a pristine state of nature. If nothing changed in our current circumstances except that we lived in fresh air constantly, life expectancy would rise by many years.
Normal air in nature has its fresh life-giving consistency because it is continually cleansed by the forces of nature. Particulates are continually taken up into the air due to activity in the form of wind and breeze. But, just as constantly, they are dropped down when the air masses become relatively tranquil.
For example, ozone constantly gets into the air but rises to the very top of the atmosphere where it remains. Methane gas constantly rises into the atmosphere from decaying organic matter, but other factors will decompose it back to some other form. Of course, much methane gets trapped within the earth by rock, by liquid overlay, and by other factors. Ozone and methane are both toxic, but it’s rare that a great amount of them assault us at any given time or place.
There are certain bacteria called anerobic bacteria. They’ve been around for a few billion years and were the first type of life on this planet. Anerobic bacteria were photosynthetic in the beginning because there was no organic matter for their soil. It is theorized that these bacteria were able to take on the spark of life, utilizing minerals, light and water.
It is not ours to conjecture too much about the derivation of the original form of life, but perhaps it was some kind of anerobic bacteria that could use sunlight as the spark of life. These bacteria began using water, sunlight and inorganic substances with which oxygen was associated. They could synthesize these raw elements into their life needs. One of the by-products of their metabolization was free oxygen. In time the great amount of oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere that gives it the consistency it now has.
Theory has it that life began in the water medium. No oxygen was present in the earth’s gaseous mantle because all oxygen was bound in some compound until the bacteria freed it. The original bacteria evolved into many different forms of bacterial life and into many forms of plant life. All cells are said to be composed of many bacterial cells that united and cooperated for the greater good. Essentially, all life is symbiotic, that is, it is fundamentally in harmony with all other life from the most minute microbe to the largest of the Earth’s creatures.
On a practical level, we are concerned with air quality so that we can benefit from it all the more. We seek means by which to take in plenty of air in its purest form. With knowledge and understanding we’ll be able to help others conduct themselves in their environments so as to be optimally free of polluted air. Anything that gets into the lungs which the lungs have not been equipped to handle efficiently and naturally is a poison. The lungs have a tremendous capacity for expelling particulates and pollutants. But they can be devitalized by the pollutants and stressed by unceasing efforts to remove extraordinary types and amounts of impurities. The lungs will eventually be overwhelmed and lung diseases often result. You may have heard of black lung, brown lung, emphysema, pneumonia and other ailments of those who live and work in polluted environments. This is especially true of those who work in coal mines, who smoke or who live in highly-polluted cities such as Los Angeles or New York. The lint and dust in cotton mills is notorious for destroying the lungs of those who work in them.
You may know, or know of, people who have lung cancer, emphysema and other afflictions because they smoke, work in asbestos plants or work or live in other heavily-polluted environments. While an atmosphere laden with innocuous dust is pathogenic if exposure is unceasing or for long periods, many substances such as asbestos, tobacco tars and poisons are very virulent in themselves. Despite the lungs best efforts at ridding themselves of these poisons, they are always seriously and deleteriously affected.
Most homes in America are very polluted places. They have filthy air. (The words filth, poison and pollution are fairly synonymous terms in this context.) People who smoke deliberately and knowingly are intentionally poisoning themselves. Smokers do not seem to recognize that tobacco smoke is very toxic and is one of the biggest polluters of all. But most forms of pollution are unintentional, even unknown.
Humans must have sufficient fresh air. We often read of people jumping from hotel rooms to their deaths on a sidewalk in preference to the tortures of smoke inhalation and fierce heat. In many cases there is no heat and even no imminent danger of suffocation, yet agony and fear prompts the death jump. Yet, all too often, smoke inhalation alone kills. How many times have you read reports of people who die in homes, untouched by anything but smoke?
Cleansers and detergents are used heavily in almost all homes. All of these substances are poisonous although some are less toxic than others. Some exude almost no odor. They are called biodegradable or ecologically-viable cleansers, detergents and soaps.
There is much carbon monoxide in many homes. Carbon monoxide is one of the primary pollutants which emanates from auto exhausts; it is very deadly in the human system, binding the oxygen in the blood. Carbon monoxide also destroys animal and plant life. Plants cannot assimilate it and it actually causes leaves to wither. In the home carbon monoxide is a by-product of cigarette smoke, heating units, and cookstoves that use anything but electricity—and more.
Air that contains sulfur dioxide is extraordinarily poisonous. It is to be found mostly in the air of industrial areas that burn coal. In these areas homes are very likely to be polluted with sulfur dioxide as well as with the extraordinary aerial pollution to which most American homes are subject under conventional modes of living.
Air pollution is becoming quite an issue, especially in some parts of America. In the East, acid rains are a problem for food raisers of all kinds. They are also destructive of buildings, autos and everything else. In the Los Angeles area rare forests and plant life are dying off due to the highly-polluted air. Many crops in that area are adversely affected. Gardeners as well as growers are just giving up. Los Angeles is becoming an area in which neither plant life, humans nor other animals can thrive healthily.
The purity of air is of great importance. Polluted air is a great source of debility and disease. Pure air is necessary for best health. It behooves us to have the best air possible. Unfortunately, the most polluted air is to be found in the Average American home!
Polishes, waxes and other household items give off a large amount of gases. Whether pleasant or unpleasant they’re usually poisonous. Aerosols and sprays have become widespread in their use in our homes. Even “foods” such as artificial creams, toppings, etc. come in aerosol containers. The vaporizer is usually a fluorocarbon and/or vinyl chloride. Both substances are toxic and a highly toxic material is used to thin these substances to make them aerate or expand when pressure on them is relieved.
Chlorine is a deadly poisonous element. During World War 1 it was used as a weapon. Many fighters succumbed to it. Even though chlorine is dilute in city water, we can still taste it. Most water supplies have been treated with this toxic element. How many times have you run bathwater or showers and gone into the bathroom to be assaulted by accumulated chlorine? In bleaches and in some other compounds that are frequently used in laundering and cleaning, high concentrations of chlorine are usually released.
Most people do not realize it, but certain types of plywood and other products in their homes are bonded with formaldehyde, which is in insulation, plywoods and plastics. Formaldehyde is given off as a particulate in the air. It may be given off for years in homes and trailers. This substance is quite toxic and many deaths have been attributed to breathing it. Formaldehyde is especially likely to be found in new homes, trailers, mobile homes and new rooms where plywoods and bonded plastics are used.
Oven cleaners are particularly toxic. They’re designed to cut grease and to act as solvent for other debris on enamel. Their fumes are particularly toxic.
Cosmetics are a very big source of pollution in some homes, especially where there are hair sprays and products containing fluorocarbons. The substances sprayed are usually very toxic in themselves, for they have copolymer residues of vinyl acetate. These residues are toxic when inhaled. Fumes from cosmetics that are in contact with the air may smell pleasant but they’re also toxic. The only substances that are not toxic in our bodies are pure air, pure water and wholesome food. Anything else in our bodies is toxic and possibly a contributory cause of pathology.
Deodorants are extensively used in America, some one billion dollars worth annually. That’s enough to mask quite a bit of body stench. Healthy people do not use deodorants because they emit relatively non-malodorous smells.
Deodorants and antiperspirants are used in minute amounts and the basic ingredients are quite toxic. They consist of a formulation of drugs designed to inhibit the body’s secretory functions. This inhibition of body functions occurs because the deodorants are so toxic that the body keeps skin pores closed lest absorption of the toxic drugs occur.
Aside from their presence on the skin, deodorants give off particulates and vapors which are toxic to users and to others. They’re particularly poisonous in homes because their pollutants tend to become cumulative. Air in homes, especially in winter, is retained for long periods of time and thus becomes stale as well as accumulating effluvia from the household.
Insect repellents are often used in homes. While they’re not immediately as deadly to humans as to insects, the fact that they are deadly to insects establishes their poisonous relationship to all living things. Insect poisons should never be used in the home except under conditions of nonoccupancy.
As additional camouflage for odoriferousness and for its perfumes, many women use powder. Powders are formulated around a base of dust. There are toxic drugs in the formulation as a rule and the dust itself is also toxic. Its fumes or gases are toxic. Anything that gets into or on the body other than those substances normal to it are usually toxic and occasion irritation or intoxication. Usually their toxicity is on a low order, but they can cause pathology in sufficient concentrations. Added to other pathogenic factors of which there are multitudes in the human system and environment, maladies often develop. Certainly extraneous substances worsen and exacerbate existing pathology.
Carpeting can also be a source of pollutants. Long after the dust and odors that they normally give off may have subsided, the synthetics of which they’re made decompose and pollute the air. The dust, dirt, filth and debris which carpets accumulate and the excreta that results due to their bacterial decomposition assault us. Among the poisons likely to accumulate in our homes from bacterial decompositon are carbon dioxide, methane gas and ammonia. Any decaying substance, whether it’s garbage, meats or other foodstuffs, pollute the air with the byproducts of bacterial activity.
Electric motors in appliances give off pollution. Clothes driers give off carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide if they use gas. All drugs and “medicines,” especially those that are sprayed into the mouth and nose, are toxic.
Preservatives and additives added to foods to enhance appearance, retard spoilage, etc., are toxic. In cooking their gases permeate our household air and are additional sources of pollution.
Volatile oils, especially from polishes; mustard oil, onions, garlic and other pungent herbs; teas and drinks, etc., are not wholesome in the lungs. If you eat an onion or a piece of garlic, the lungs are one of the eliminating organs through which their toxic components are expelled. The oils of frying foods are not only toxic and very carcinogenic, but, when inhaled, they tend to coat the lungs. Heated oils give off acrolein. While it may smell fine, it is really a trojan horse, for its pleasant odor is contrary to its toxic nature.
Cleansers are used almost universally. Most are chemical formulations that have a number of poisonous substances. Ammonias are usually a primary component, and they are very deadly.
It is possible for the airborne grease from frying foods to accumulate in the lungs. Workers in kitchens who fry food, even if they do not smoke, are likely to have lung problems faster than those who smoke. Grease is not easily expelled from the lungs. For example, a person who works in a fried chicken outlet and uses a fry-o-lator several hours each day may develop a chronic cough and even pneumonia from inhalation of aerated grease from cooking oils. (There are also many other causes of lung maladies and coughing.)
Mechanics get a different type of oil and grease on their hands. These oils are akin to the fats in foods. Mechanics do not leave oil and grease on their hands for very long, though many work with it throughout the day. They recognize the dangers because they suffer its irritations. Most mechanics scrub their hands frequently. Yet they suffer many problems, including skin cancer on their hands. Cells and tissues cannot withstand the unceasing assaults of oil toxicity.
Home air pollution occurs from anything that is burned, cooked or heated (except for boiling water). Stoves and heaters that produce heat by combustion within the home are especially heavy polluters. Wood stoves give off a lot of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, tars and other toxic particulates. If you can smell anything, you can be sure that the air is being polluted. However, some gaseous pollution is odorless. Combustion within homes is dangerous on two counts. Some of the pollution that occurs has just been listed. The other count is the partial use of oxygen from inside air. Partially deoxygenized air may not furnish our oxygen needs sufficiently.
Alcoholic drinks give off an effluvia that is unwholesome in the lungs. Of course, it is worse to drink alcohol. Alcohol, like the mustard oil of onions and allicin of garlic, is not used by the body because it is indigestible. The lungs are utilized as one of the avenues of excretion of alcohol. This is obvious because you can smell alcohol on the breath of anyone who has partaken of it. Breathing alcoholic fumes is not healthful and can occasion ill effects, especially for those subjected to breathing alcohol as in breweries.
Condiments, seasonings, spices, sauces and gravies are almost all toxic in the lungs. Black pepper, for instance, is toxic in the lungs, far more so than when in the stomach. All these substances stimulate and irritate when raw. But when heated their toxic components are liberated into the air, and some very toxic effects can result. Most condiments in the intestinal tract occasion irritation, indigestion and other discomfiting effects, especially laxative or diarrheal effects. These latter effects occur because the inflamed intestines rush the noxious matters, including food in the tract, to the nearest exit—the bowels. When condiments are in the air, due to diffusion in the air or due to heating, the irritation to the lungs is similar.
Perhaps you’ve heard of pruritus anus. This merely means itchiness of the anal region. It may be caused by body elimination of toxic materials through the skin in the anal region. However, it is more than likely due to the toxic components of condiments irritating the skin at the exit point. These can be deposited there by fecal matter before it is cleared from the area. Hot peppers and black pepper can cause this but so can any other condiment. The amount of irritation these occasion on the skin and in the anal region is an indication of their toxicity in the intestinal tract.
Cooking, brewing, boiling and baking of foodstuffs, especially as concocted in the average American home, occasions the pollution of home air with gases, particulates, tars and other unwholesome effluvia. Cooking destroys foodstuffs, and much of their substance is passed off into the air during the process. Cooked foods are harmful when ingested. Their aerial by-products are also harmful in the lungs no matter how much we say savor their fragrance.
Americans are inclined to bring all kinds of chemicals into their homes. Chemicals in the home, wherever stored, slowly oxidize and vaporize, unless tightly capped. But sooner or later they are opened for use. Some chemicals are quite common, notably toothpaste, gargles, lotions, cleansers, lighting fluids and antiseptics.
Antiseptics can also be called antibiotics. They’re not in any way anti-septic because the term means “against poison.” They’re actually antibiotics for, indeed, they are destructive of life. They destroy bacteria wholesale. Likewise, antiseptics destroy living cells of skin, mouth and lungs. If any odor can be detected from so-called antiseptics, the substance will be harmful.
If all the foregoing sources of home pollution are not enough, there are human wastes and air usage to be considered. Humans give off toxic wastes from lungs and skin throughout the day and night. These wastes include carbon dioxide, carbonic acid and minute amounts of other exudates. Also, the air expelled from the lungs is oxygen-depleted. In closed homes (as they’re likely to be in winter) the air becomes polluted from our own effluvia and de-oxygenized from breathing. We’re likely to breathe and rebreathe spent air and its load of toxic wastes. All this, coupled with the multitude of other pollutants in homes and the outside air taken into homes makes the average American home a very polluted place.
As a health practitioner, you will want to recognize all the deleterious factors to which humans are customarily subjected. You will be looking for causes of problems from all sources. Knowing that the air quality in homes, outdoors and in factories can contribute to pathology is essential. You may take it for granted that most areas of inhabitation in America are polluted to some extent.
By now you may be asking: “How can we insure that we get as much pure air as possible into our lungs in this polluted world?” Air that doesn’t have more impurities than normal in nature is automatically pure.
Our message is that it is really impossible to have really pure air in this day and age. We can place ourselves in situations where we have the purest air possible. To get the freshest possible air we should keep our windows open. We should so live and conduct ourselves as to keep our home air free of all those processes and products that pollute it. There is no insurance that we’ll have the best air possible no matter what we do or where we go but, relatively speaking, we can have pure air in the outdoors far from civilization, for nature is constantly cleansing the air.
If we live in colder climates where we must live in closed spaces for energy conservation, we can get heat exchangers. A heat exchanger brings in fresh air from the outside and removes air from the household. Through a dual piping and radiator system, the heat of the outside air is transferred to the incoming air to the point of equalization.
As an example, let’s say the outgoing air is 72° and the incoming air is 32°. The air will tend to equalize at some temperature in between. The incoming air will tend to equalize at a temperature lower than their normal nominal midway point. This means some additional energy must be expended in heating incoming air to the desired temperature.
When you measure the benefits of heat exchangers in terms of health and the energy conserved through their employment, the cost is a good investment. In energy saved they’re worth their cost in a few seasons. In terms of health they pay for themselves many times over very quickly.
Using a heat exchanger is just one thing we can do to insure more fresh air. Most of us can go out and exercise or play in fresh air most days. When we exercise heavily and vigorously in fresh air, we completely oxygenize our systems (in addition to gaining a multitude of numerous other benefits).
Exercise ventilates our entire body. Run, jog or walk. Play an outdoor sport. Any sustained activity that greatly accelerates body function will ventilate your system. Especially important is the oxygenation of our capillary system which results from exercise. Faster and more vigorous blood circulation insures better capillary health due to greater oxygen uptake and rejuvenation of function. Stagnation of the capillary system is a primary contributor to deterioration and disease. The intake of fresh air in conjunction with exercise is of inestimable value.
A device for improving air quality that is becoming popular is the negative ion generator. Research indicates that negative ion generators may have positive benefits, especially in the area of human response. Humans experience euphoria and well-being in ionized atmospheres. But little research has been done to determine whether the effects are beneficial or drug-like. No evidence has been developed to suggest that either negative or positive ions are any more or any less healthful than the other. What has been determined is that negative ions precipitate dust, participates and toxic materials from the air. If so, this is a positive benefit. I seriously doubt that ionized air gives a drug effect. In a very polluted home a negative ion generator might be helpful. Air cleaners that precipitate particulates, dust and other forms of pollutants are of benefit. Filters are also helpful. As health practitioners, you very well might have to live in or near a population center most of which are polluted, in order to reach more people. When we must place ourselves in a polluted environment, we must suffer the consequences. We can reduce the effect by employing all the technology we can in cleaning our air supply in polluted areas. Just as we are apt to close up our homes and pollute our air, likewise we can close up our home and bring in fresh air that has been purified or filtered. Then we should refrain from in any way contaminating our inside air supply.
Most auto pollution is along highways in most of our country and where there are concentrations of autos. In other areas the air is often stagnant and the exhaust pollutants of the auto become cumulative, sometimes until the air is deadly as in the Los Angeles area. The only suggestion we can make for avoiding carbon monoxide poisoning is to stay away from it. But this suggestion is of little value if you live in Los Angeles or New Jersey or similar areas. In low-pressure areas, carbon monoxide concentrates along the ground.
New Jersey, which is called “The Corridor State,” has more auto traffic per square mile than any other state. It also has the most concentrated population. Further, it has heavy concentrations of chemical industries. So polluted is its air in industrial areas and along major highways that it is called “Cancer Alley.” More cancer occurs in New Jersey than in any other state. Cancer among people who reside near highways in New Jersey is three to four times that of the average American.
These facts tend to indicate the dangers of, carbon monoxide. They are indicative that, along with all other causes of cancer, carbon monoxide and its concomitant pollution might be the additional straw that breaks the camel’s back and causes cancer.
Water deserves treatment equally as much as air. In fact, inasmuch as breathing is an automatic process and drinking is a consciously-directed process, water deserves more attention. Though every aspect of our well-being deserves adequate attention, those areas wherein our health is more likely to be endangered or undermined should receive the most detailed treatment. Getting the water we need is one of those areas.
Besides wholesome foods, only three items should ever be taken into our bodies. These are air (about which we’ve spoken), sunshine (which we’ll speak about in another lesson), and water. We’ll take up this subject next. At this stage suffice it to say that anything in or on the body other than wholesome foods, air, water and sunshine-all essential body nutrients—is unhealth! This stricture may seem severe. But we cannot exceed the limits of our adaptations. To do so is to subject ourselves to pathological consequences.
Your role as a health practitioner is to keep yourself and your clients in a regime of living as free as possible of the dangers inherent within the context of a “civilized” society. The word “civilization” is in quotes, for what kind of society can be said to be civilized if it harbors grave dangers for its members?
As promised, let’s move on to the subject of water. What is water? What is its role in the body? Why do we need it so vitally? What kind or kinds of water should we have? What is the best source for our water requirements? As we get into the subject we’ll endeavor to answer these questions.
The expression pure water is used throughout our treatment of the subject of water. If there’s anything everyone wants, it is pure water. No one wants impure water. Yet, most people drink anything but pure water. Pure water is purely water-only water and nothing but water.
The purest water is distilled water. Inasmuch as an individual lives as he should he will get all or almost all his water needs from a diet of proper foods. Therefore, very little distilled water will ever need to be consumed. Distilled water should be a secondary source of water. Humans are not naturally water-drinking creatures, for they have absolutely no equipment for it as have natural water-drinking animals. Therefore, the proper diet for humans is necessarily water sufficient. A correct diet must contain the pure water that we require.
Fruits contain the purest water of all and also are the finest foods of all. The water in fruits is completely pure; that is, it is without any trace of inorganic minerals or other matters that are likely to combine with body fluids and clog up blood vessels, cells or interstitial spaces. Most Life Scientists are primarily and almost wholly fruit-eaters. (Bear in mind that many so-called vegetables are actually non-sweet fruits and that, technically, nuts are fruits, too.) Because we were almost exclusively fruit-eaters in a pristine state of nature and because a fruit diet is water sufficient, humans never developed water-drinking mechanisms.
Why does the body need water? What role does water play in the body? Why is impure water harmful to the body?
The primary role of water in the body is as a transport medium. It is also the medium for storage of needed organic compounds and electrolytes within the cells. This is accomplished by the water holding molecules and nutrient reserves in suspension.
Impure water harms the human organism because the impurities are invariably poisons. While our foods contain water, water from non-food sources is not our medium for food or nutrients. Minerals in water are dissolved from soil and rock and have no more virtue in the human body than if the soil or rock itself was eaten. The body simply cannot handle inorganic minerals. Inorganic minerals circulate in the body as poisons. Anything at all in water aside from wholesome foods is, therefore, a pollutant or a poison.
Thus, people who drink water are likely to imbibe a plethora of poisons. Different people drink water for different reasons. For instance, many health seekers drink spring water, well water, sea water and other kinds of water in the mistaken belief that it is healthful.
Let’s take a closer look at water drinking in America and examine certain probabilities in regard to water-drinking.
Most Americans drink liquids and most liquids taken contain inorganic minerals, fluorine, chlorine and other so-called “chemicals of purification.” Bacteria in water are far less harmful than the chemicals that are used to destroy them. Their presence in water usually indicates that the water contains organic matter, but bacteria in water are no more harmful than those we constantly take in by air or those which populate our intestinal tracts. However, water we drink should be pure. No water system in this country furnishes pure water. Invariably it is polluted in some harmful way.
Drinking tap water is fraught with dangers. The US. Public Health Service released the results of research and surveys of waters from various water systems in the U.S. Over eighty carcinogens were found. Most of these were from the breakdown of chlorine in water systems or its combination with other chemicals. Chlorine itself is a carcinogen. Chemicals from agricultural fertilizers, chemical industries, pesticides and homes pollute our waters. Sulfur, iron, gypsum, calcium, magnesium and other inorganic minerals are toxic in themselves. Purification systems, so-called, do not remove these minerals. They are designed to remove bacteria, which are far less harmful. Purification systems add chemicals rather than remove them (except in some systems where the water supply is deadly at its source). This is especially true of some waters in Louisiana and New Jersey.
Fluorine is added to water, not as a purifier, but as a mass medication. This waste product of the chemical and metals industries has been rammed down our throats, so to speak, in the mistaken belief by many that it will prevent tooth decay. Obviously, it doesn’t work, for tooth decay is just as rampant today as before—in fact, it t is worse than ever. Fluorine is in the water of more than half our population’s water supplies. Inorganic fluorine compounds are carcinogenic and deadly. Poisons are never the basis of health. Our teeth are sabotaged by dietary practices also.
As mentioned earlier, many people think mineral water, well water, spring water or other impure water is just what we need. Spring water, waters from mountain streams and waters to which certain minerals have been added are quite popular. In New York City and in some other places, such waters are the rage. Many people in these places will not touch their city water supply for drinking purposes. But processed waters which have had mineral concoctions added and waters from springs and mountain streams are in vogue. While these waters with their mineral content cannot possibly be as harmful as the mineralized and chemicalized water supplies, they are, nevertheless, very unwholesome. Distilled water is available in New York City but it is relatively neglected in favor of so-called natural waters.
Many waters, especially imported spring waters, are prized for their peculiar tastes. Some waters are carbonated to give them extra attraction. But all such waters are harmful. Pure water is pleasant to drink and has no taste or kick whatsoever. If you’re thirsty, pure water is the most satisfying of all, even without any taste thrill.
Though you should get most of or all your water from your food, you should never try to get anything from water but water.
For the purposes of emphasis and enhanced understanding, we will repeat what has already been stated about water: Anything in water as drawn from tap, well, spring or stream is inorganic and harmful. The body cannot digest or metabolize inorganic substances. Other than air, water, and sunshine, the body cannot utilize anything except organic compounds as found in food. All else is poisonous. Inorganic materials cannot be utilized; they clog up our bodies if not eliminated, and they combine with body fluids, oils, compounds and wastes and form substances that cake our vascular system. They are deposited in our joints and muscles, interstitial spaces, organs and lymphatic system. Both deranged foods, that is, those that have been cooked and processed, and impure water contain inorganic minerals, which are harmful to our organism.
People with the debris of impure water and cooked food in their systems usually do not eliminate all of it. When these substances are in an active state, that is, when they are circulating in the system, the body is in a frenzy. Leucocytes (white blood cells) proliferate, pulse rates increase, and often enough, these people are stimulated. The stimulation usually begins within 15 to 30 minutes after drinking or ingestion and lasts until the materials are eliminated or sidetracked in the system—as in plaques which form in arteries.
Just as impure water contains harmful, non-usable inorganic minerals, so do cooked foods. This topic will be covered in depth in a later lesson.
There are several schools of thought in this country that advocate drinking mineral-containing water such as well water, spring water and mineral water. They say that mineral-containing water is needed because the body requires the minerals from it. In addition, they say that distilled water causes heart attacks and leeches needed minerals from the body, causing tooth decay, pyorrhea and osteoporosis and that distilled water is dead water and fish cannot live in it. They contend that water containing minerals will correct these problems as well as preventing them from happening in the first place.
Proponents of mineral-containing water attribute the superb health of the Hunzas to mineralized water. The Hunzas are one of the healthiest peoples in the world. They supposedly drink a frothy white mineralized water from glacial runoff.
Of course there are valid responses to these arguments. To the implication that we need the minerals in impure water, we point out that, if our diet is proper, we get more than we need of minerals of all kinds. Further, the minerals in water are totally unusable, thus making them a toxic burden within instead of nutritional. Water is needed in the body for itself, not for any incidental impurities it may have picked up from soil and rock.
Rather than distilled water causing heart attacks, it is the other way around. Distilled water does not leave behind any indigestible debris from unusable inorganic minerals. Those who drink mineral-containing water are often found to have heavy plaque in their systems. The rejected minerals which the body cannot use often combine with cholesterol and other fatty substances to form plaque. These block the arteries. The rejected minerals are also likely to be put aside in the body in spaces that exist. Notably is this so in the cranial cavity where the spaces of lost brain cells are filled in by minerals, thus leading to ossification of the brain. This is a cause of senility.
How pure water could leech minerals from the body has received a thorough refutation from physiologists. An important thing to remember about water and everything else put into the body is that it is done unto by the body. It does not do unto the body. Those substances which seem to act on the body, as in the case of unmanageable acids, compounds and chemicals, are poisons. The body is the master of its domain. Following this reasoning, soft water does not leech minerals from the body. The body uses water. Water doesn’t use the body. Water and other foodstuffs are under the control of the body while in the body. The body does what it wants to with water. It excretes the water if it’s not needed. Along with the water it excretes mineral matter that it no longer requires. The kidneys are the final arbiters of what will be excreted and what will be returned to the body economy for use. For instance, the body recycles about 95% of its iron regardless of the water we drink. It also recycles many other mineral compounds or salts. The body is very conservative with its nutrient supplies.
An example is eating watermelon. If you eat watermelon, your urine will be completely clear. There will be almost no mineral matter in it to color it. The very pure water of watermelon that is unneeded by the system is speedily expelled. Very little mineral or other matter will be in it, for the body is doing unto the water. The water does not circulate freely in the body. The body retains or expels the water according to its need.
On the other hand, if you are fasting or under any other condition in which you’re not taking water from food and the body is conserving its water supply, your urine will become very dark yellow because the body is giving up more wastes and more mineral matter relative to the water it is expelling.
What the Hunzas (or North Pakistan) drink is not responsible for their health. Water is a need of life but total health is dependent on healthful living. Water is but one element of many. Travelers who have gone there find that the Hunzas really drink very little water. They’re primarily fruit eaters. The water they do drink is permitted to settle first. As the glacial runoff comes rushing down the mountains it picks up minerals as debris rather than holding them in solution. That is, the water has silt in suspension rather than minerals in solution. This silt is the basis of Hunza health, true, but because it is deposited on their fertile gardens, not because they drink soil and rock in their water. The water itself comes from relatively pure snow. Very few minerals are in solution by the time it has rushed from the heights to their catch basins below. Only a few minutes of time in contact with minerals accounts for the mineral complement of these waters.
Again, how can waters be responsible for a condition of health? If drinking water was the secret for great health, then all we’d have to do is drink the kind of water we need and not worry about food, exercise, sleep or anything else. Water would take care of everything. Healthful living would be unnecessary.
Next let’s examine the argument that pure water is dead water and that fish can’t live in it. As you know, many fish live in the ocean. We can’t drink sea water, for we’d quickly die. It has a heavy complement of minerals - sea water is richer in minerals than any water in the world. Other fish live in rivers, creeks, ponds and lakes. You don’t drink water out of rivers, ponds and other places where fish live. Such waters contain the excrement of fish and other creatures, decaying leaves and other organic matter. In fact, we don’t drink from fishy waters for a very good reason: It’s unfit to drink. Further, water, whether fish live in it or not, cannot be described as living or as dead. In short, there can be no living water, for it is an inert lifeless compound at all times.
It is true fish cannot live in distilled water. Distilled water has no air in it. Neither does it have the food supply a fish requires. Thus it can be seen the argument is without any merit.
To repeat: If we’re eating the diet to which we’re biologically adapted, we do not have to drink water except on those occasions when we must use unusual amounts of it to refrigerate ourselves as in heavy physical labor in hot weather.
Why do most Americans drink so much water and other liquids? Cooked food eaters require copious amounts of water. People who take in so many irritants or poisons as found in heat-deranged foods; in condiments, especially salt and other seasonings; and in unsuitable foods such as grain and animal foods, need this water to help hold toxic materials in suspension so that they offer less harm to cells and tissues.
People who eat a wholesome diet require less water than people who eat an unwholesome diet. On wholesome diets there is usually sufficient water in the foods to meet all needs whereas, on an unwholesome diet, abnormal amounts of water are required to help cope with the irritants, stimulants, excitants or poisons within.
Edema or dropsy, for instance, is a disease of those who eat cooked foods and/or salts and other condiments. The body takes on extra water to hold these toxic materials in suspension. Until the body can dump these they are stored in likely areas, often the feet and legs. A few days of fasting enables the body to catch up on its housecleaning. It thus will expel the waters and purify its fluids and tissues.
This concludes our examination in depth of the first two essentials of life, air and water. In the next lesson we’ll keep up consideration of other of life’s essentials.
With the catalog of things you’ve listed I feel uptight even considering using a bar of soap around the house. Isn’t there anything we can use that is non-polluting with which to clean house, floors, clothes, dishes and our bodies?
Yes, there are products that are relatively non-polluting and which yield excellent results. For cleaning clothes you should consider Basic-L from Shaklee products. For cleaning floors, dishes and even cars a solution of Shaklee’s Basic-H will do wonders. Amway and other companies also produce similar non-polluting biodegradable products.
For your body you need no soap or cleanser. A good fiber brush or washcloth is all you need while under a shower or in a bathtub. If you want to use a cleaner on your body, Shaklee’s Basic-H is fine.
Can’t we use any cosmetics at all?
Of course you can use cosmetics, but keep in mind that not one is healthful. Moreover they are unneeded by a healthy person. They detract rather than add to beauty. And they only compound skin problems for an unhealthy person. Beauty is natural. When in health your eyes and skin radiate their condition, just as they look sallow, pallid and in poor tone when unhealthy. We advise against the use of cosmetics under all conditions. Also, skin creams and oils of all sorts, including suntan oils and lotions only complicate the problem they are used for and cripple the body’s oil producing ability.
I have a friend who smokes a pack and a half of cigarettes daily, drinks beer and eats junky foods. He appears to be in excellent health and is quite active. By all that you’ve said he should be a corpse. How can you explain something like this?
How old is your friend?
34.
Your friend is still, obviously, only a babe relative to potential and is still living on youthful capital. He might continue this pattern for another five, ten or even twenty years, but the penalty for not meeting life’s needs correctly must sooner or later be suffered.
When you read the disease statistics and see the human wreckage resulting from the tobacco, alcohol and junk food habits, you’ll know that most humans exhaust their endowments rather quickly, even in their thirties, and succumb to cardiovascular problems, chronic cough, cancer or other degenerative diseases.
Most smokers know the dangers of their habits but feel themselves to be exempt from them—it’s something that always happens to the other person. All sins against our bodies must be paid. There is no dispensation in nature.
You’ve condemned deodorants. Are they very harmful? What is a person to do to control body odor?
Deodorants are poisonous. Their toxic effects cause the skin pores at points of application to close up so as to exclude their chemicals from the inner sanctum. This prevents body perspiration and exudation. They are properly called anti-perspirants for this reason. A person who has body odor should strive to go to the source of the problem. Body odor is not natural. Healthy persons do not have body odors. Foul smells are produced by a foul system. Clean up the body and it ceases to exude unpleasant smells.
Do you mean that people who have body odors, bad breath and so on are really sick inside?
That is the case. Healthy cells, tissues, fluids and organs do not smell rotten or foul. Obnoxious odors come from decomposing materials.
Just the other day I read that distilled water, because it’s heated in the distillation process, causes leukocytosis just as cooked food does. As you advocate distilled water, what do you say to this?
This is untrue. Leukocytosis, the proliferation of white blood corpuscles, results from poisons entering the bloodstream. The inorganic debris resulting from cooked foods will cause this malady, but distilled water causes no decomposition or poisonous substances. The distilled water was water before, during and after the process of distilling. It was not changed except that impurities it held before distilling have been left behind. The truth is that mineralized water causes leukocytosis. The inorganic minerals of water are toxic and cause a toxic reaction by the body. Leukocytosis is but one of the body’s defensive mechanisms against toxic materials. Those who employ this argument are trying to defend the use of mineralized waters, but there is no defense for using impure waters.
I’ve heard it said that distilled water will cause heart attacks. In fact, this claim was made as a result of a scientific study in England. Do you deny this?
Yes, investigators of the report found that, in a certain English city whose people drank hard (heavily-mineralized) water, the death rate from heart attack per 100,000 was 436 per year. The death rate in a nearby city that had soft water (water with fewer minerals) was 448 per year, just 12 deaths more. This implies that perhaps soft water causes heart attacks and minerals in solution prevents them. But these investigators found the following significant omissions from the report: The soft water drinkers had a lead pipe system throughout the city whereas the hard water drinkers had a copper pipe system for the most part. Lead is much more toxic than copper.
Does fluoridation really make teeth stronger and healthier?
Absolutely not! Fluorides in an inorganic form are toxic. Ingested fluorides have an affinity for calcium. Insofar as they unite with calcium they destroy bone and teeth. The body defends against fluorides by, at first, hardening the bones and teeth. Then they become brittle and break down under ordinary eating. St. David’s, Arizona, has natural fluorides to the extent of about eight parts per million of its drinking water. Perhaps there is no worse example of poor teeth in America than there. About 50% of America’s drinking water has been fluoridated for some 30 years. For all that, America’s collective mouth is still the biggest disaster area of the body! Nearly 99% of Americans have bad teeth. One in every seven have no teeth at all. Inasmuch as almost all of these are adults, that means one in every five adults have no natural teeth.
Water is not looked upon as food by laymen, but it should be classed with food. It certainly is fully as important. An individual may live 40 to 100 days without food whereas survival beyond seven days without water is unlikely.
Water should be obtained from normal food sources as much as possible. It is easy enough to get our water needs from fresh fruits and vegetables, as most of these foods carry about 90% water.
The amount of water taken into the system by the average person amounts to from three to four pints daily. This can vary under different circumstances. In the summer more fluid is used than in the winter. Water is utilized by the body as a refrigerant through evaporation and, consequently, we require more in the summer. On the other hand we are more inclined to consume higher water content foods in the summer such as melons, peaches, grapes, tomatoes, etc.
Laborers consume more water, of course, because physical labor generates internal heat that must be reduced through evaporating water from the lungs and skin.
Water enters into the composition of every tissue and forms about 65% of the weight of the body. It is obvious that this percentage must vary in different individuals for many reasons.
Water should be recognized as one of the most important foods, for it is essential to the body.
Rainwater is soft and supposed to be the purest of natural water, though this is doubtful due to widespread air pollution. Few people relish the taste of rainwater, for it has a peculiar taste. The fact of the matter is that most people are accustomed to water with some mineral content that gives it a little taste; but, on the other hand, they will shun waters of heavy mineral content, especially if those minerals be gypsum, sulphur, iron, etc.
What is called “hard water” is in fact water that is heavily laden with minerals. Wells in limy sections of the world furnish water heavily charged with lime. Such water is not good to drink. People in such locales will be troubled with limy deposits in the body if they drink such water.
It is necessary to secure as pure water as possible. It is just as necessary as securing pure food. Nothing should be taken into the body that is not as pure as can be had. Impure water is the source of many diseases and general body degeneration.
Drinking Not Natural to Humans
Evidence Indicates Drinking as Perversion
Historic Attitudes Toward Water
Many Animal Species Do Not Drink Water
Humans Have No Natural Drinking Equipment
“What a stupid question!” exclaims the reader, “Everybody knows that humans are drinking creatures and always have been.”
It is quite true that universally, throughout history, in all countries, in all climates, at all seasons of the year and at all ages of life, humans have been drinking animals. It is equally true that all the evidence afforded us by protohistory reveals that throughout the protohistoric period, humans were universally drinking animals. Existing so-called savage cultures are commonly looked upon as survivals of prehistory. If this position is a valid one, then the evidence that is afforded us of the practices of prehistoric humans would reveal that they were universally drinking creatures.
If we view the animal kingdom, we discover that there are animals that drink and animals that do not drink. Even many desert animals do not drink water. There are also animals that do not inhabit the deserts that do not drink. It has been seriously suggested that by his constitutional nature man belongs to the non-drinking section of the animal kingdom. This is to say, water drinking by man is an acquired and not a native practice. Many have taken this suggestion seriously and have refrained from drinking water for periods of years and have advocated the non-drinking practice for all.
Dehydrated protoplasm is lifeless dust. It seems to be true that where there is no water, there is no life for plants and animals and microscopic beings require Water in order to carry on the functions of life, that they may live. Nobody denies this. The question in issue is not the reed for water, but the source from which it is to be derived and the manner in which it is to be taken.
In 1815 a book by William Lambe, M.D. of London was published under the title Water and Vegetable Diet. In this book Dr. Lambe attempted to show the advantages of a vegetable diet over a flesh diet or a mixed diet and the advantages of pure soft water over hard water. At the same time and in this same book he raised the question: Is man a drinking animal?
Perhaps no one had asked this question before. But the question has been argued both pro and con by numerous intelligent men and women since Dr. Lambe propounded it, and it is still being argued, sometimes rather heatedly. Let us, at this time, consider some of the reasons put forth by Dr. Lambe for considering water drinking an acquired practice.
As was the custom of his time, Lambe begins his consideration by quotations from the ancient works attributed to the legendary Hippocrates and reveals the fear of water in acute disease which gripped the profession for so long had its origin at the very beginning of the medical system. He quotes “Hippocrates” as saying: “I have nothing to say in favor of water drinking in acute diseases: It neither eases the cough, nor promotes expectoration in inflammation of the lungs; and, least of all, in those who are used to it. It does not quench thirst, but increases it. In bilious habits it increases bile and oppresses the stomach; and is the most pernicious, sickening and debilitating, in a state of inanition. It increases inflammations of the liver and spleen. It passes slowly, by reason of its coldness and crudeness; and does not readily find a passage either by the bowels or kidney.”
Following the quotation from Hippocrates, he quotes Van Swieten as saying: “While girls are daily sipping tepid water liquors, how weak and how flaccid do they become!” Lambe says: “And the same writer positively affirms that, by the abuse of tea, coffee and similar liquors, he had seen many so enervate their bodies that they could scarcely drag their limbs; and many had from this cause been seized with apoplexies and palsies.”
Thus it will be seen that the evils that flow from drinking tea and coffee are attributed, not to the poisons contained in these brews, but to the water which composes most of the brew. Water and not caffeine and theine and the other poisons of tea and coffee is the evil.
Lambe next considers popular prejudices and tastes concerning water and its salubrity or lack of it as it is derived from various sources and contains, according to its source, different mineral or organic matter. He points out that many people in many parts of the world are very fastidious in their selection of the water which they drink, preferring water from one well or one stream or one spring and rejecting water from other sources. Lambe examines the drinking of mineral laden waters from marshes and swamps and the drinking of stagnant water and ascribes many evils to this habit. Many of the things he attributes to such water drinking are now known to be due to other causes; but even if he had been correct in all of his guesses, these facts could not properly be used to condemn water drinking. They condemn, not water, but impurities sometimes contained in water and form a basis for the condemnation of drinking, not water, but impure water.
Lambe suggests that the evil effects of water drinking have been the chief cause that has induced man to turn to alcoholic liquors. To escape from the evils of water drinking man plunged into the greater evils of alcoholism. It is not to be doubted that in some parts of the world where the inhabitants drink much beer and wine, there is a strong tendency to refrain from water drinking, not because water is regarded as essentially unhealthful, but because the waters of these areas are regarded as impure and unwholesome. Let us turn, however, to Dr. Lambe’s effort to establish the soundness of his no-drinking plan.
He says:
“Having condemned water and attempted to show experimentally its noxious influence upon the system; having condemned spirits and fermented liquors, from the authority of the most enlightened medical writers and the common experience of mankind, it must follow that there is no species of drinking which I approve. And, indeed, I have already ventured to assert that drinking is an unnatural habit; in other words, that man is not naturally a drinking animal.
“To those who cannot raise their views above the passing scene, who think that human nature must necessarily be in every situation the same as they observe it in their own town or village; to those, in short, who look for knowledge in the prattling of the drawing room, or the gossip of the grocer’s shop, I know that this appears a strange, if not a ridiculous assertion. We say, with great confidence, that water is absolutely necessary both to man and beast. But the strength of the evidence is not equal to the positiveness of the assertion.
“In fact, we know very little about the habits of animals, except of those whose natures we have changed and corrupted by domestication. All that the natural historian can do with regard to the wild species is to describe their forms and such of their qualities as have fallen under observations; these last must of necessity be very imperfect. Imperfect, however, as it is, we know enough to be certain that the assertion of the necessity of the use of water to animals is, to the extent to which it is carried, absolutely groundless.”
“ ‘I have known an owl of this species,’ (the brown owl) says M. White, ‘live a full year without any water. Perhaps the case may be the same with all birds of prey.’ There was a llama of Peru shown in London, a year or two ago, which lived wholly without liquids; it would not touch water. In some of the small islands on our coast, on whir-there is not a drop of water to be found, there are, I am told, rabbit warrens. Bruce says, ‘That although Zimmer (an island of the Red Sea) is said to be without water, yet there are antelopes upon it, and also hyenas in numbers.’ To account for this, he suspects that there must be water in some subterraneous caves or clefts of the rocks. This, however, is only supposition. The argali, or wild sheep, from the country in which it is found, it is certain, does not drink. Mr. Pallas says of it, ‘This animal lives upon desert mountains, which are dry and without wood, and upon rocks where there are many bitter and acrid plants.’ He further says of it, ‘There are no deer so wild as the argali; it is almost impossible to come near it in hunting. They have an astonishing lightness and quickness in the chase, and they hold it for a long time.’ How wonderfully, therefore, is this animal deteriorated by domestication, and by being forced to live in situations and to adopt habits unsuited to its nature!”
“Let us, therefore, consider man again, for a moment, as we may suppose him fresh from the hands of his Maker, and depending upon his physical powers only for his subsistence. We must suppose every animal so circumstanced, to be furnished by nature with organs suited to its physical necessities. Now I see that man has the head elevated above the ground, and to bring the mouth to the earth requires a strained and a painful effort. Moreover, the mouth is flat and the nose prominent, circumstances which make the effort still more difficult. In this position the act of swallowing a fluid is so painful and constrained that it can hardly be performed. He has therefore no organ which is naturally suited to drinking. He cannot convey a fluid into his mouth without the aid of some artificial instrument. The artifice is very simple, it is true. But still the body must be nourished anterior to all artificial knowledge. Nature seems therefore fully to have done her part toward keeping men from the use of liquids. And doubtless on a diet of fruits and vegetables there would be no necessity for the use of liquids.
“If it be true therefore that other animals require water, it would not follow that man, whose organization is different, would require it likewise. But we, in fact, know very little about the habits of animals. Our common domestic animals certainly drink. But it appears, as far as my information extends, that common water has the same effect upon them as upon man; and that they are more or less healthy, according to the purity of the water which they use.”
Dr. Lambe violates one of the cardinal principles of logic, to wit: Nothing can be used as evidence until it is known, when he predicates his argument for man as a non-drinking animal upon what was not known about the drinking habits of animals. Some of the observations which he records were faulty and these constitute a very insecure basis upon which to found important conclusions. It is now well known that many of the animals which he considers non-drinking animals do drink in the wild state. It should also be noted that animals that do not drink, many of them living upon the desert, do not become dehydrated for lack of drink, whereas man, under the same circumstances, dies from dehydration as certainly as does the cow or horse. His argument that if man were intended to drink, he should have been born with a plastic straw in his mouth or a silver chalice in his hands, is hardly valid. It is true, however, as he points out, that with an abundance of juicy fruits and succulent vegetables in his diet, man can go, under ordinary circumstances, for long periods without drinking. In doing so, he does not go without water, but obtains his water free of organic and mineral contamination, in the form of fruit juices and vegetable juices. It is doubtful that this would suffice on the desert; it is certain that hard physical labor in the summer’s sun will create a demand for water that such eating will not provide. Under such circumstances, one may be able to obtain all the fluid necessary by drinking fruit and vegetable juices between meals, but this constitutes eating between meals and is certainly a greater evil than would be the drinking of occasional glasses of distilled water.
Fruit and vegetable juices should be regarded as food, not as drink, and should be taken as part of the fruits or vegetables containing them. Separated from the organic combination in which they occur, they lose much of their value. Drinking fruit and vegetable juices between meals definitely leads to overeating and most certainly disturbs the process of digestion.
It would be folly to try to meet the demand for water in the fever patient by filling him with fruit and vegetable juices. Pure soft water certainly does not have the effect in these cases described by the legendary Hippocrates. Neither does water affect the fasting individual in the manner described in the so-called Hippocratic writings. To condemn water drinking because in certain pathological states drinking distresses the patient is similar to condemning food because in certain pathological states eating causes distress. It is similar to condemning sunlight because in certain diseases of the eye, exposure to light causes distress and pain. The true test, as all Hygienists know, of the value of any substance or practice is its use or its rejection by the healthy organism.
In the February issue of Moneysworth appears the headline “Too Much Fresh Air Can Become Health Problem.” The article is based on a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
What ills are attributed to fresh air? Listed in this article are insomnia, nightmares, weakness, exhaustion, heart irregularities, dizziness, numbness of hands and feet, shortness of breath, chest pains, yawning, stomach discomforts, muscle cramps, stiffness and anxiety.
This report is of the same warp and woof of a previous report that was discussed in Issue 3 of Total Well-Being: Medical opinion holds that “oversleeping” is unhealthful. Medical opinion here is that the body will “oversleep” if permitted and that sleep beyond 7 to 8 hours will lead to assorted illnesses—substantially the same ones as fresh air supposedly causes!
We need to breathe and we need to sleep to stay alive, but the medicos are telling us that we mustn’t overdo it! They apparently put breathing and sleeping in the same category as eating, which we must also do to stay alive. We all know that overeating is harmful. But eating is a voluntary action. We are always consciously aware of it. If we would eat only when hungry and stop eating when hunger disappeared, we could not overeat. The body is self-regulating when its instincts are followed. But we eat for other reasons than hunger and genuine need, so our overeating results in health problems.
Now what about sleeping? This normal bodily need and function is also regulated naturally. We become sleepy when sleep is needed. If we don’t fight it off by taking pep pills or coffee, we naturally drop off into a state oi unconsciousness when our bodies need sleep. And we win remain in this state until our nerve energy is sufficiently recovered—unless our sleep is prematurely put to an end by a jangling alarm clock or other disturbing influence. It is impossible to sleep if we do not need sleep. Sleep cannot be “stored up” for future use.
Air is another of the normal needs of life, and breathing is nature’s way of supplying our bodies with air. Breathing is the most automatic and unconscious of all our bodily functions that supply life’s needs from outside sources. We can go for weeks or months without food and for days without water, but going for only a few minutes without air results in death. Air is such a constant necessity that breathing must be done unconsciously while we sleep.
Now medical expertise is telling us in this article that if we breathe too much fresh air we can become sick!
To be sure, there is such a thing as overbreathing. We can do forced deep breathing, but after a few minutes of it the body responds to our folly by cutting off oxygen to the brain. Hallucination and unconsciousness follow, putting an end to the conscious forced breathing, after which normalcy is restored.
This overbreathing is not what the physicians are talking about, for they say, “Hyperventilation—taking in air in excess of that required to maintain normal oxygen levels in the blood—is an unconscious action on the part of the individual...” How do they say we can “over-breathe?” By getting too much oxygen in our air. This is why they claim that too much fresh air is bad for us.
Just what is fresh air? It is the opposite of stale air. Stale air is air that has been breathed and expelled. The life-giving oxygen has been appropriated by the body, and carbon dioxide, a waste product, is given off along with other waste gases of elimination. If one had his head enclosed in a plastic bag that was sealed at the neck and he had to constantly breathe and rebreathe the same air, he would not live long. It would be much the same as trying to live on one’s own feces and urine. Stale air, then, is polluted air. The air that most of us breathe in unventilated buildings and outdoors in metropolitan areas is further polluted by tobacco smoke, factory smoke, automobile exhaust, aerosol sprays and many other contaminants. Fresh air is air that is without such pollutants. Country air is called fresh because plants and trees growing there absorb the carbon dioxide and expel oxygen. What a wonderful symbiosis exists here! Plant life and animal life are constantly supplying each other with the needs of life. The air waste product of one is the necessity of the other.
Are the medicos telling us that nature goofed? Is there too much oxygen in the air for our health? Did nature mess up on her proportions? And should we regulate this imbalance ourselves by making sure that we breathe enough stale polluted air along with our fresh air? Well, they have actually stated that too much fresh air can cause health problems, so they really mean that we can get sick if the air that we are breathing does not contain some pollutants. Now aren’t all the cigarette smokers going to love that! When they blow smoke in our faces or cloud up the offices that we must work in, they can tell us that they are performing a service for us, for haven’t physicians said that air too fresh and pure is a health hazard? And this after the same medical profession has told us that smoking can cause cancer—and made the cigarette manufacturers post a warning on cigarette packages.
Physicians have observed that certain ailments and discomforts follow a person’s change from a stale-air situation to a fresh-air situation, and so, without understanding the nature of these changes or the reasons for them, they conclude that fresh air is bad for us. What they fail to recognize is this salutory physiological principle: When the body’s condition is improved, the body begins improving itself!
Most of us are living at only part of our health potential. Our bodies are clogged up with uneliminated debris and toxins. This morbid matter cannot be eliminated because of lack of vitality, and vitality is lacking because the body is getting insufficient rest, sleep, fresh air, etc.
The body begins a housecleaning when its circumstances are improved. When the body gets more sleep, better food, more rest and more fresh air, its vitality is enhanced. With increased vitality the body is better able to cope with life-threatening toxins. The expulsion of accumulated toxic matters occasions symptoms which are commonly mislabeled disease and recognized as dangerous. If we believed that such symptoms (which are actually healing crises) really were dangerous, then we should also believe that drug addiction is healthful and getting off drugs is a health hazard because the withdrawal symptoms experienced are pains, headaches, nausea and other illnesses. We should also believe that smoking is healthful because smokers who don’t get their accustomed dose of nicotine suffer nervousness, irritability, sleeplessness, headaches, etc. Fortunately, we know that drug addiction and smoking are injurious to our health, and we know that it takes a bit of pain and discomfort to break such habits. We also know that it is desirable to do so and not a health hazard.
It should occur to us that polluted air is also a drug—a poison—and most of us are so steeped in air pollution that s it amounts to an addiction. So when we indulge in fresh pure air and fail to get our usual dose of contaminants, we may suffer various discomforts which are actually “withdrawal symptoms” similar to those suffered by the dope addict. In both cases the real disease is toxemia, while the withdrawal pains, which are symptoms of toxin elimination, are a healthful sign.
If we will but suffer through these discomforts and the bodily housecleaning that they indicate, we will soon be more vital than before—just as the dope addict is in better health after he quits his habit.
It should be self-evident that no amount of polluted air could ever be healthful. The kind of illogical reasoning which says that pure air is unhealthy might be expected from those who have dethroned reason and ask us to believe that drugs restore health. It dates back to the previous century when medical advice would have us keep doors and windows shut while sleeping. Remember-the night air was supposed to be bad. At that time it was also popular medical practice to keep doors closed and shades drawn in sick rooms. Patients were denied fresh air and light and left to languish in their own effluvia. When feverish and suffering from thirst, they were denied water. No wonder so many of them died.
Be assured that fresh air is a healthful agency, and the symptoms it begets as noted in the AMA report are evidences of body improvement-not body destruction. Don’t be taken in by error just because such reports are published in a prestigious journal.
Physicians think that they can regulate all our natural functions. They want us to think that they are wiser than the intelligence of the body when they tell us how much we should sleep, how many calorics we should eat, how many glasses of water per day we should drink, and now, how much fresh air we should breathe!
Our own instincts, reason and common sense are far better guides than any such advice that comes from the medical profession. Remember the AMA is a trade association that is in business to make money. Their business flourishes on sick people—not healthy ones. Their advice and their ministrations can make us worse, but they can never make us better (except in the case of mechanical repairs). Under no circumstances can they confer upon us improved health. Only our own practices can lead to health.
So use your own good sense. Sleep when sleepy, drink water when thirsty, eat only when hungry and breathe the cleanest, purest air you can.
Our scientists agree that city air today is a deadly mixture of smoke, soot and fumes, which include carbon monoxide gas, sulphuric acid gas, benzene, methane, sulphur compounds and other dangerous chemicals too numerous to mention.
In addition, city air is saturated with the fumes of motor cars, trucks, buses, gas engines, etc. This exhaust consists of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, lead oxide, lead carbonates, free gasoline and complicated benzene chain compounds of the hydrocarbon series.
Let us consider just one of these many poisonous gases, carbon monoxide, and tell only a small part of the damage it does to the body. Tasteless, colorless, odorless, invisible to the eye, this gas takes and has taken a terrible toll of lives in our cities.
The large cities have a huge smoke-blanket over them that holds down these toxic gases and particulates. Especially is this so in damp weather. It tends to smother the people in it.
U.S. authorities have demonstrated a concentration of 0.62 parts of carbon monoxide per 10,000 cubic centimeters of air at street level in busy sections of cities of 500,000 population or more.
There are few poisons more deadly than carbon monoxide. Air containing as little as 150th of one per cent will cause headache, and 120th of one per cent may cause total collapse.
Dr. L. Burns examined blood specimens of more than 20,000 persons to discover the effect of carbon monoxide gas on the body. He said: “Carbon monoxide gas seeps into the blood through the lungs and mixes with the hemoglobin to such an extent that the blood cannot perform its normal function of carrying oxygen to the rest of the body.”
The hemoglobin of blood has an affinity for this gas about 300 times greater than for oxygen, making the absorption of the gas by the blood very rapid indeed.
The first symptoms of this poisoning are headache and weakness. More serious symptoms appear as the condition progresses. People are told in food propaganda to eat this and that kind of food to offset weaknesses, as that could overcome poisoning effects.
Scientists at Harvard found that the average man can endure carbon monoxide only until his blood is one-third saturated. The danger of the gas was shown by the way it affected one of the scientists. He had just completed some tests requiring a high degree of skill and was feeling no ill effects of the gas when he suddenly collapsed and had to be carried out and revived.
Small concentrations of the gas can soon bring a man to the breaking point. Five per cent of autos and closed trucks on the roads have sufficient concentrations of the gas to be a menace to drivers and passengers. There is no natural nor acquired immunity to the gas. Repeated exposures produce the same effect each time.
The Chicago Health Department reported that in certain sections of that city the sulphuric acid gas in the air rots clothes hung on wash lines and eats away building stone and metal guttering.
These acids and gases in the air corrode and destroy in time everything they touch. They eat up stone and steel; they eat up clothing and metal guttering; they eat up the body by destroying cells and tissue. Many symptoms of the eating process appear as “mysterious diseases unknown to medical science.”
The corrosive acids in the air attack cells and tissues, throat, nose, lungs, brain. They attack the heart, liver, spleen, kidneys and sex organs.
They attack the blood corpuscles and cripple them so seriously that they cannot carry on their normal function. That condition medical art terms “anemia.” And for that they prescribe various iron preparations, vitamin B-12 and other nostrums.
These acids and gases affect the nerves, and the resulting pains medical art calls “neuritis.” As the nerves weaken, paralysis may result in whole or in part. And they have treatments for that while the cause continues. They affect the cells of the muscles, producing dull pains that puzzle medical art, and medical doctors cover up by terming it “rheumatism.”
The acids and gases attack the tissues of the joints and the medical art calls it “arthritis.” They attack the tissues of the air cavities of the cranial bones, and medical art calls it “sinusitis.” They attack the throat, and medical art calls it “laryngitis,” “tonsilitis,” “diptheria,” etc. Hoarseness often follows, and in time one’s voice weakens, or may be entirely lost.
Sulphuric acids and gases attack the cells of the blood vessels of the heart and medical art calls it “heart disease.” They attack the cells of the pancreas, and medical art calls it “diabetes.” They attack the cells of the lungs, and medical art calls it “tuberculosis.”
Names, names—names that mean nothing aside from indicating the part of the body wherein degeneration is most serious and active from the action of the poisons absorbed from the air. Medical art, ruled largely by superstition and guesswork, and being nothing more than an updated version of ancient voodooism, makes a confusing mystery of what it calls disease. They do this for greed and profit, often, and sometimes from ignorance. The problem is readily solved by recognition of a few simple, basic principles.
The air of the Los Angeles area is exceptionally bad. The Los Angeles Herald said: “Heavy clouds of smoke close to the ground, intermingled smarting fumes that make people bleary-eyed and gasp for breath.”
That account stated that “bleary-eyed men” were watching the factory chimneys to discover the source of damaging acrid fumes that killed small animals in the affected areas. During the worst of the “gas attack,” nine out of ten persons on the streets were “bleary-eyed” from the smarting fumes. This black pall of smoke makes a ceiling over Los Angeles from 1,500 to 2,000 feet thick and extends outwards for as many as sixty miles.
John F. Gernhardt, M.D., of Los Angeles, stated that more than 30 persons died in the city of heart attack in 24 hours. Polluted air was the cause. It paralyzes the breathing centers of the brain and breathing stops. That is not heart attack.
The press reported that Southern California has lost about 60 percent of its valuable sunlight due to the smoke pall hanging over that area.
Still air, like still water, grows stale, stagnant and poisonous. Doctors appear not to know much about this. The maladies it causes are still attributed to viruses and germs.
Windstorms, tornados and hurricances are cosmic processes of air purification. And plants continuously detoxify and reoxygenize our air. These are yet other secrets of nature not yet discovered by the medical art.
But the discovery was made by a layman who did some thinking. He wrote a book that was published in 1944. It was titled Floating Air. It is hard to get a copy now, as medical art dreaded the valuable health guidance it contained and high-pressured the Post Office Department to put it out of circulation.
This man first tested his theory on poultry and was able to relieve in a few hours bad cases of croup and kindred respiratory ailments. That was bad news for medical art, and it had to be suppressed. There were no money-making possibilities in prescribing fresh unpolluted air.
In his chicken house this man put an electric fan to keep the air in motion, thus dissipating the foul fumes of poultry droppings, the inhalation of which makes chickens sick. How many poultry raisers know that?
Very simple. Too simple, It’s a deep dark secret of nature the doctors seem not to have discovered. We can be poisoned by the fumes of our own effluvia.
Many who drop dead or die suddenly are not afflicted with heart disorders as doctors claim. The cause of death is foul air.
The annual report of the Bernard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital asserts that city dwellers, breathing polluted air, “develop lung cancer” at a rate three times greater than inhabitants of rural districts.
The Mellon Institute of Pittsburgh issued a report of a two-year survey covering the damaging effect of polluted air on human health. The report said: “The inhalation of polluted air results in a gradual absorption by the body of the poisonous products. The insensible intake results in a condition of slow-poisoning which insidiously eats away at vital tissues.”
Physicians go the other way. They favor still air. They favor the bad and condemn the good. They seem instinctively aware of what’s good for their practice.
This man who knew that what applied to chickens also applied to humans put an electric fan and ventilators in his bedroom. This drew in fresh outside air and drove out the stale inside air.
Most homes and bedrooms are filled with stale air, unfit to breathe. People follow the advice of doctors and keep windows closed to keep out those “deadly drafts” of fresh outside air.
Even the gases and vapors expelled by the body are poisonous and pollute the home and bedroom, regardless of whether from lungs, or bowels, or the pores of the skin. When these facts are known, it is easy to understand why people get up in the morning with cold, sore throat and other respiratory disorders.
They blame the weather; so do the physicians. But it does not affect the animals who live out in it! The actual cause is the polluted air in home and bedroom.
So remarkable were the good results this man obtained that he was inspired to build his “miracle cabinet,” consisting of a bed with enclosed sides and top, well ventiliated and introducing air electrically with a fan through special vents.
He used the cabinet first for patients with respiratory ailments such as colds, hay fever, sore throat, diptheria, asthma, influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis. The good results were amazing, and he was encouraged to treat in the same manner patients with all kinds of disorders: fever, mumps, measles, rheumatism, neuritis, diabetes, etc.
His remarkable success proved that good, fresh air in motion will “cure” the sick who failed under other regimens that left them in the same polluted air. He got patients well after medical doctors had declared them incurable physical wrecks. He proved what a few great Doctors have declared: that there is no disease. There are just two conditions of the body—good health and the lack of it.
The symptoms of bad health the doctors are trained to study, group together and give them names (diagnosis) that mean nothing and term them diseases that are trying to kill the patient.
The scheme is supported by centuries of false teaching by which medical art has created a false psychology. They have taught that diseases are “entities” that attack us and mean to kill us. We enlist their aid in fighting these armies of invaders intent on our demise. For them this is very profitable. And just the opposite for us. Medical art is one of the biggest frauds on earth.
The truth bears repeating: Sicknesses are the body’s cleansing and reparative efforts. They are friends, not enemies. If you would avoid the crisis of sickness, then don’t indulge the causes of sickness. Polluted air is a primary cause of illness and disease.
The surprising results of the man’s work and air shocked the medical art. Drugs, vaccines and serums would become obsolete if people learned of this. Something had to be done.
It was better that one good “man should die for the people,” than that the medical art should perish. So the heat was turned on the Post Office Department and “this man died for the people.” His great work of helping the sick, after medical doctors had failed, came to a sudden and inglorious end.
In such cases big publications carry lying propaganda that a certain quack who was a menace to the people has been cast into oblivion. And the people believe this. Medical propaganda leads people to believe that medical art is trying to rid the world of so-called disease. In truth they are trying to end their competition. Who can be so silly as to believe that any organization or institution is working to bring about its own end?
The reason why people do believe it is because “better schools make better communities.” That is another one of the lies taught in the schools, and people just grow up in it from childhood.
The facts show that all methods not taught in orthodox medical schools, regardless of their value and effectiveness, are banned and crushed by the medical art and their allies, and unorthodox practitioners are usually put in prison—all for the protection of the public health.
This may not be Russia, but many Russian methods are used to dispose of those who interfere with the money-making schemes of big business.
4.2. Cleanliness Is An Essential Of Life
4.4. Sleep Is An Essential Of Life—The Role Of Sleep In Life
4.5. Food Is An Essential Of Life—The Role Of Food In Health
4.6. Excersise And Activity Are Essential To Well-Being
4.7. Rest And Relaxation Are Essential To Health
4.8. Sunshine Is An Essential Of Health
4.9. Recreation And Play Are Health Essentials
4.10. Emotional And Mental Well-Being Are Necessary To Health
4.11. Assurance Of Life And Its Means Is Necessary To Health
4.12. Pleasant Environment Is Necessary To Well-Being
4.13. Creative Useful Work And Its Role In Life
4.14. Self-Mastery Is Necessary To Best Well-Being
4.15. Gregariousness Is An Element Of Health
4.16. Motivation: Having Purposes Or Causes To Serve
4.17. Expression Of Natural Instincts Relative To Health
4.19. About This Survey Of Life’s Essentials
Article #1: The Importance Of Body Temperature by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
The first two lessons dealt with the Life Science outlook on health and disease. The third lesson stated the essentials of life and presented in-depth scrutiny of two of these needs, namely air and water.
This fourth lesson encompasses seventeen other essentials of life in summary form. Exhaustive treatment of any single aspect of life’s needs is not intended. Rather, it is intended to acquaint you preliminarily with each life need presented. Subsequent lessons will plumb the depths of the essentials treated in this lesson.
Assuring your body of all its needs might be likened to the care that must be lavished upon highly complex jet liners. Every item of equipment aboard the jet must be in working order and have an adequate supply of its needs in order to operate as designed. The jet may operate with many of its systems knocked out but it is crippled. Crippling of certain systems may send it to its doom. And so it is with the body.
The human body consists of approximately 125 trillion cells which live together harmoniously. Cells live both for themselves and for the welfare of the organism of which they are a part, and they are specialized into tissues and tissue organizations that perform services for every other cell and cell organization throughout the organism.
As a health professional aware of the many faculties of the body and the full needs of the organism, you’ll undertake to assess your clients’ compliances and transgressions of their needs. You’ll endeavor to guide your clients into thoroughgoing compliance with their biological needs and total rejection of their transgressions.
With this purview in mind, we proceed to consider an important essential of life: Body cleanliness.
4.2.1 The Need for Cleanliness
4.2.2 A Clean Body Is Necessary to Health
4.2.3 Body Elimination Must Be Equal to the Need
4.2.4 The Body’s Daily Cleansing Cycle
4.2.5 A Brief Look at the Body’s Primary Organs of Elimination
The body operates most efficiently when it is unfettered. Filth on the outside of the body most people will not tolerate. They readily appreciate external cleanliness and most keep themselves impeccably clean. While there is much to be desired regarding the ways in which most people maintain external cleanliness, nonetheless they are imbued with the necessity of a clean body—at least on the outside.
However, more important than external cleanliness is internal purity. Internal filth damages the body in two ways:
Thus we can see that for best performance the body must not be hampered physically or chemically in its operations.
The sum total of all the processes whereby the body is cleansed or kept pure is called elimination or drainage. Elimination is the sequel of feeding or alimentation. Ideally the body must eliminate the unusable debris from food ingestion, spent cells, the wastes of metabolism and extraneous substances that may be admitted in some manner. The more thoroughly elimination is effected, the purer is the body.
A thoroughly clean body is necessary to realize the highest level of function—to achieve the highest level of health. Inasmuch as the basic cause of disease is body toxicity, we need to realize the importance of keeping our bodies clean internally as well as externally.
Obviously, to remain free of burdensome accumulations, both physical and chemical in nature, the body must have full use of its eliminative faculties. If these faculties are impaired by lack of nerve energy, if they have been disabled by toxic materials or if ingestion of toxic matters exceeds ability to cope, then elimination is likewise impaired. Accumulations further vitiate the elimination process until the body must undertake an eliminative crisis (disease) to free itself of its morbid load.
We Americans are habituated to many eating and drinking practices that fill our bodies with alien materials that must be eliminated. Alien materials always take their toll on the eliminative organs. Nonfood materials are usually inherently toxic, especially the alien substances the average American eats and drinks. A constant load of toxic materials taxes the eliminative faculties. Thus we Americans wallow in toxic materials from exogenous sources and, due to their impairing influences, from endogenous sources, too.
By waste we mean all end-products of all the metabolic activities occurring in every cell and organ of the body. Elimination must equal the processes of supply if balance and health are to be maintained. Just as we can be made sick by living in rooms with our fecal and urinary accumulations, so, too, can we be made sick internally if elimination does not occur apace.
To cope with its eliminative needs, the body must enjoy conditions favorable to elimination. As well, it should not be taxed with toxic materials from without.
Eliminative processes never cease. Every exhaled breath is an act of elimination of toxic gases. The skin exudes some small amount of wastes continuously. But there is one time in each day when the body heightens its eliminative processes. This time is, roughly, from three to four o’clock in the morning until from ten to twelve o’clock noon.
The body’s stepped up elimination during this time is evidenced in many ways. A particularly toxic person may have a furred tongue upon arising. Hunger will not be in evidence. But, if the body is fed just the same, the eliminative processes are depressed though the tongue may still remain somewhat furred.
The body passes through rather distinct cycles daily. These are roughly as follows:
4:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. — eliminative
12:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. — alimentary
8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. — assimilative
In view that few studies of these phases of physiological activity have been made, little is known about them. The information presented here comes from studies made in Switzerland. These cycles are consistent, more or less, with the way things are with healthy humans who observe the natural norm of working days and sleeping nights. Thus we eat when hungry. This is followed by body assimilation and, upon completion, the body turns its energies to elimination of wastes.
You should strive to master physiology and anatomy to understand the body and how it operates. You will learn much about these subjects as called for in each lesson. Nonetheless, it would be wise to consult basic books on anatomy and physiology. Despite its medical orientation, Reader’s Digest publishes some excellent books on how the body works. We advise you to acquire and study them.
The organs of elimination are as follows:
There are occasions when the body will undertake massive eliminative measures. The respiratory system and mouth may be utilized in vomiting; the bowels in diarrhea; the mucous membranes as outlets from the circulatory systems (lymph and blood); the kidneys are used for diuresis; and the skin is sometimes used for diaphoresis and eruptions.
2.6 Supplementary Organs of Elimination
We have cited the regular organs of elimination. Those nonregular organs through which the body eliminates in crises are called vicarious organs of elimination. As mentioned, the tongue, skin, respiratory system and mucous membranes (internal skin) are pressed into eliminative tasks in emergencies. The body can cause ulcers or lesions for the purpose of elimination, or it may utilize ulcers caused by tissue destruction as an extraordinary outlet. In emergencies the body may press any tissue system or organ into service as a vicarious organ of elimination. These may be the eyes, sinuses, bronchioles, lungs and so on.
2.7 The Liver as an Organ of Detoxification
The liver detoxifies internal wastes and also attempts to detoxify exogenous poisons. It passes these detoxified materials either through tubes to the small intestine for passing on to the colon or back to the bloodstream for forwarding to the kidneys where they will be excreted in the urine.
An example of liver detoxification may be seen in the case of alcohol ingestion or its formation within the body by bacteria due to indigestion. The stomach and intestines do not digest alcohol. Alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream as alcohol and circulates until eliminated. The liver detoxifies the alcohol to a great extent and passes it on to the kidneys for excretion. The liver, the body’s foremost chemical factory, varies its chemicals to the need in neutralizing or detoxifying poisons in the blood which pass through it.
2.8 Cleanliness at the Cellular Level
A book we heartily recommend you acquire is Dr. Lewis Thomas’ The Lives of a Cell. Though the cell is generally regarded as the basic unit of life it may not be, for it contains bacteria-like components that act as living entities.
So varied and multitudinous are the functions within a cell that one can spend a lifetime of fascinating study of them. It is said that their operations are more complicated than the most marvelous computer systems—more varied and complicated than the activities in a major city like New York City.
The cells take on supplies and they defecate. It is the lymphatic system, not the bloodstream, that constantly bathes the cells in a liquid medium. From the lymph fluids the cells derive their nutrients by diffusion, pinocytosis and phagocytosis. The cells pass their wastes back into the lymph. Cell wastes are partially detoxified by the lymph organs in preparation for passing them into the bloodstream. The bloodstream, in turn, transports the wastes to the lungs, liver and kidneys for excretion.
Cells are self-cleansing of their metabolic debris. They expel it to the lymph fluids through carriers that, our physiology books tell us, are not yet clearly understood.
2.9 Illnesses as a Cleansing Process
The body keeps itself clean by thousands of different techniques employed by an army of faculties. A hundred trillion cells represents quite a population to be served. It is an unimaginably large aggregation of living units cooperating as an entitative organism for the good of each and every cell and for the organism as a whole.
Due to unnatural practices or influences, humans frequently accumulate toxic substances in their bodies beyond normal capacity for elimination. When the accumulation becomes intolerable within the context of residual vitality, the body will preempt its nerve energy and redirect it to the task of extraordinary elimination or cleansing. When the body does this, disease exists. Acute disease is a body process. The energies normally available for muscular or nervous (brain) activities, digestion, etc. are preempted and redirected. Hence, the sick person has little or no energy for normal pursuits.
When a person is ill, fasting is indicated as a remedial measure. People should also fast periodically even when not ill to help the body effect extraordinary cleansing and healing.
2.10 How the Body Becomes Befouled
There are more ways to accumulate filth in the body than we can chart. Basically, all unwholesome influences and practices debilitate body eliminative faculties and especially lower the body’s supply of nerve energy. The key to keeping the body clean is a way of life that neither distresses nor pollutes it.
2.11 Normal Activities of Life Essential to Internal Cleanliness
The eliminative capacity of the body is truly immense. The body has over-capacity in almost all its faculties. We can live well with one lung, one kidney, etc. The organism thus has safety margins to insure survival.
Most of the world’s people manage to exceed their generous capacity for elimination. Therefore, the necessity for illness or healing crises in order to remove excesses that accumulate. If we live within our capacities as developed in nature, our system will never become befouled in the first place; hence, there is never the necessity for a healing or eliminative crisis—disease.
The living practices that are attuned to our adaptations will not fetter the organism; rather, they will enable us to thrive optimally. Those acts and indulgences which are contrary to human adaptations are bound to interfere with normal functions in many ways, the result of which is to burden the organism with uneliminated toxic materials.
Health depends on internal purity, and this, in turn, depends on practices that promote health rather than practices that result in the retention of morbid matters.
2.12 Fasting as an Extraordinary “Housecleaning” Measure
Whether the organism is befouled or not, fasting is a constructive condition! During the disease process, fasting is imperative to efficiently restore high-level function. In health, fasting rests the faculties, rejuvenates the cells and heightens functions.
Since all diseases have the same underlying cause; that is, body intoxication, there is a nigh universal remedy for the condition. Fasting affords the body the rest it needs so that it may redirect its energies to the task of “housecleaning.” Under the condition of the fast the body will expel retained wastes and impurities. A thoroughgoing rest is, thusly, an almost 100% effective remedial measure.
4.3.1 The Need for Temperature Maintenance
4.3.2 Normal Temperature Is the Best Functioning Temperature
4.3.3 Questions as to What Constitutes Normalcy of Temperature
4.3.4 Keeping the Body at a Comfortable Temperature
4.3.5 Some Problems of Temperature Maintenance
4.3.6 Types of Clothing to Use for Warmth
The human body has been developed in nature over eons of time to maintain homeostasis, chemical and mechanical consistency and a consistent temperature. The body operates best at a temperature range between 97° and 99°F. Various parts of the body vary in temperature.
Warm-blooded animals have many mechanisms that maintain temperature. Skin, hair and wool act as insulators to help maintain body temperature. Overheating is guarded against by perspiration and respiration. The body, in an intoxicated condition, may institute accelerated function to free itself of unwelcome toxicity. In this case it may also increase the metabolic rate, hence increase temperature. Heightened temperature is called fever.
The body maintains temperature through a basal metabolism controlled by many sensors throughout the body that act as thermostats.
While bodies have been drastically reduced in temperature and overheated greatly and survived, the prevailing view is that serious deviation from normal temperature will cause the body to fail in some way to supply cells with needed oxygen and nutrients, thus impairing them. Notably is this true of brain cells which, if destroyed for any reason, are not regenerated. They are lost forever. It is generally accepted that a brain temperature exceeding 108-110°F destroys brain cells. While cases of overheating beyond this range have been recorded without damage, overheating is to be avoided. Cooling is far less harmful than overheating. At a temperature of 118°F enzymes begin to be destroyed and other body fluids become labile.
Frequenters of turkish baths and saunas sometimes experience surface temperatures of 140 degrees without apparent damage, but it is doubtful if the skin temperature actually ever reaches more than 110-115°F due to the body’s capacity to cool itself. Needless to say, all overheating is unhealthful. Those who live in climates that reach 110-120°F during the day are not in danger, for the body can easily maintain its temperature by its refrigerating faculties, especially in view that humidity is usually low in most areas where such high temperatures are likely to occur. High humidity inhibits evaporation which is necessary to body cooling.
The generally accepted normal body temperature is 98.6°F. We do not have a uniform temperature at all times. At or near the end of a night’s rest, with lowered metabolism the pulse is considerably lower than when active and the body temperature may be somewhat lower.
When the body has been vigorously active for an extended period, as in sprinting or running, the internal body temperature may rise to 105°F. This is not dangerous, for the body quickly normalizes this temperature when a state of relative rest is resumed. The body creates fevers that have been known to go as high as 108°F. The body will not create conditions that will injure itself.
It has been observed that, when they are crippled, humans will devise crutches. The use of crutches further cripples the organism. This may be readily observed in individuals who use a crutch because one leg has been disabled. The disabled and unused leg will atrophy while the extraordinarily used leg will overdevelop.
Humans have become dependent on artificial means of temperature maintenance. In nature humans can live at extremes of temperature comfortably in their naked condition. Indians survive temperatures in the freezing range with vigor in many areas of South America.
But, because most of us are not physically able to cope with extreme cold, we must employ clothing to help maintain warmth. Warmth must be maintained lest we suffer functional disturbances due to reduced temperatures.
A comfortable temperature must always be maintained. Deliberate cooling or heating of the body is exhausting of nerve energy and lowers the body’s functional abilities.
There are conditions under which temperature maintenance is difficult. One such condition is the fast. A person who is fasting must be kept warm. While fasting, a person can easily become chilled. The body’s lowered metabolic rate will not produce sufficient heat to maintain warmth under all conditions. It is, therefore, important that fasters have sufficient clothing and bedding to maintain warmth.
Clothing should be loose fitting, as a rule. Being bound by tight-fitting clothing is unhealthful. Clothes should be equal to the warming task required. If you live in Alaska, heavy wool clothing may be required, whereas in Texas light cottons do for most of the year.
Cotton, linen and wool are to be preferred over other type of materials though silk and other natural fibers are also very good.
Clothing that is white or light-colored is preferred over dark colors because they admit more light. Natural light on the body (and eyes) is healthful.
Clothing that is binding, tight fitting or otherwise constricting is unhealthful. Belts, girdles, garters, etc. should be avoided.
Synthetics sometimes cause poisonous reactions in the body. Synthetic clothing and plastics should not come into contact with the skin.
Porous clothing made of natural fibers are always to be used when possible for both wear and bedding.
When the body becomes chilled the skin pores close and other body reactions take place to protect against chilling as much as possible. In these instances, energies being redirected to temperature maintenance may result in temporary neglect of regular chores of elimination. The skin normally respires and the closing of pores throws an additional burden of elimination onto the respiratory system. If the body is already toxic, the added toxin retention may reach a level that will trigger a body cleansing crisis, such as a cold or flu.
Inasmuch as there are other lessons devoted specifically to the subject of sleep and its great significance, we’ll touch upon sleep only briefly here.
Sleep is the condition under which the brain generates nerve energy with which to conduct body activities. The deeper the stage of sleep into which the body enters, the more efficiently can nerve energy be generated. There are five stages of sleep if we include the R.E.M stage, popularly called the dream stage, when there are rapid eye movements. Other stages are named after the brain wave frequency. The threshold stage of sleep is the alpha stage and the deepest stage is delta wave sleep.
As nerve energy is the spark of vitality for vigorous activity and high level function generally, adequate sleep is very essential to well-being.
Several later lessons are devoted to the subject of food. We will not, therefore, treat it extensively here.
In no other area of life practices are our transgressions against ourselves so great as in the food we ingest. Consequently, most diseases of humanity arise largely because of eating wrong foods.
Food supplies us with essential nutrients other than the three inorganic ones we need. Even water, an inorganic food, can normally be obtained in quantities needed from a proper diet.
Correct diet consists of mostly fruits. Constitutionally humans are frugivores or fruitarians. Wholesome ripe fruits contain all the food factors necessary to sustain human life at the highest level.
All our food should be eaten raw as nature delivers it to us. All heating of foods destroys vital nutrients. Suffice it to say that nature did not equip humans or any other animals with stoves.
The essential categories of nutrients we require are as follows: (NOTE! These percentages are relative to total food intake by DRY WEIGHT!!!! Further, they are approximations.)
Like water, fibers in food are a neutral factor. Cellulose, of which fiber is composed, is indigestible and is passed on through the body. Contrary to popular impressions, we do not have to have a high fiber diet in order to have bowel movements. We are not defecating machines—neither are we hay balers. Wastes will be expelled as they accumulate sufficiently to require voiding.
Condiments, seasonings, free oils—in short, anything and everything except whole ripe fruits with some vegetables, nuts and seeds, all in the raw state, should never pass the lips.
Humans live to function and functioning is the very essence of life. That which is not used is abused. Human faculties were developed for use. Disuse results in atrophy and loss of function. Without exercise, well-being ceases.
Abilities, intelligence and every aspect of well-being are greatly enhanced by exercise. Almost every account of exercise speaks of its marvelous benefits to the body. Activities should be daily indulged that bring all the body’s some 700 muscles into play.
The subject of exercise is exhaustively treated in a later lesson.
In present-day society there are many tensions and stress-producing situations. Relaxation, which also involves rest, should be indulged two to four times daily for periods of from 15 to 30 minutes. The body recoups under rest and relaxation.
If eyes are bleary or the eyelids heavy, relaxation for a few minutes with the eyes closed will accomplish wonders. A nap is even better, for little revitalizes the body as well as sleep.
Sleep should be obtained daily to the extent that sleepiness dictates, whether this be as little as six hours or as much as ten hours. The healthier an individual, the less sleep required (to a point). As a concomitant to sleep the body obtains rest. Rest enables the body to catch up on its eliminative activities and to resupply its stores of body starch (glycogen) for the following day’s energy needs.
While sleep regenerates a fund of nerve energy, rest enables the body to restock physical stores as well as to “clean house.” Relaxation relieves tension buildup. A period of vigorous exercise followed by relaxation will perform even more dramatic results.
While it is known that vitamin D is created through the agency of sunshine and ergosterol in the cutaneous tissues, little else is known of the benefits of sunlight. Of late it has been discovered that natural light from the sun is of immense benefit in vision compared to vision debility under unnatural light.
Another lesson will present the subject of sunshine in depth.
Just as the body is rejuvenated by rest, sleep, relaxation, fasting and other healthful measures, it is also kept young by constructive games, hobbies and participation sports.
Americans are more likely to dissipate themselves during leisure hours than participate in body and character building activities. The pursuit of sex in an overstimulated society is of a debilitating nature. Watching TV for the most part amounts to adult babysitting.
There are many Americans who swim, run, play ball, enjoy hobbies, participate in drama, attend cultural events, hike, participate in sports, garden, master musical instruments, compete in games that require strength and so on. Unfortunately they are a minority. Most Americans are inclined to spectator rather than participant activities. Even many of the participant activities such as drinking, carousing, etc. are destructive of human faculties.
Recreation and play can further the development of humans. In the fresh air and sunshine we can participate in numerous games of play, sports and exercise that are truly healthful and that promote well-being. Unfortunately, most of our people seek out sensuosity for its sake and suffer as a result.
They bring suffering and inconvenience upon those who make better use of themselves too, for, in society, acknowledge it or not, we are our brother’s keeper more than we realize.
In reviewing your clients’ habits, it is always wise to have a look into their leisure time pursuits. Many may be dissipating and debilitating.
While emotional and mental well-being are born of the physical conditions of the body already cited, they are also vitally dependent upon other influences. While emotional and mental well-being are dependent on physical well-being, physical well-being is also dependent upon emotional and mental well-being.
Our division of humans into a multitude of entities (physical, mental, emotional, etc.) is erroneous. Rather, we are a unitary organism with many aspects to our being. Nonetheless, we use these categorizations for the sake of convenience in communication.
“Feeling like a million” is an emotional and mental condition which is the exhibition and expression of the well-being of our tout ensemble or our faculties in toto. Just as nutrition is dependent upon the condition of all body faculties, so, too, are all body faculties dependent upon nutritive repleteness. The emotional and mental aspects of our lives will be treated in depth in a later lesson.
Humans are creatures of providence almost the whole world over. Equatorial peoples have no need of providing for the future as have northern peoples but are, nevertheless, provident in many ways. On the other hand, northern peoples are often overly provident. They provide against needs, both real and imagined. This has made many northern peoples acquisitive at the expense of humaneness. Of course acquisitiveness in itself is not the sole evil but is a contributing factor to valuing possessions over fellow beings.
Our basic needs are food and shelter and the productive facilities for making them. We have yet other needs which we strive to satisfy plus many pursuits that engender yet other wants.
Ours is a society of abundance. Within the capabilities of our means of production is a surfeit of goods and services beyond our capacity to use and consume them. Our distribution system is not compatible with our productive capacities, hence there are gross inequities in the amount of the goods and necessities various of the world’s peoples receive. Some are almost totally deprived by circumstances attendant upon these inequities while others are surfeited beyond any possible need.
These inequities give rise to anxieties, worries and concerns that seriously impair health. Even many in what would be considered good circumstances are assailed by fears that they will not be able to maintain their circumstances. Qualms, fears and concerns about loss of the requisites of life are a drain upon the mental and emotional well-being of a majority of people. Worry is a disease of our society.
In tropical climes we see tribes and groups of people living “hand-to-mouth” among plenitude. They always have the needs of life at hand. They are carefree, happy and playful. They do not work much, for their style of life does not require much.
The farther north we travel, the more humans become provident and acquisitive until we reach such a harsh environment that almost all endeavors are directed at providing the basic needs of life and little more.
In conducting your professional practice, you may find it wise to delve into your clients’ economic and social concerns as sources of tension, stress and enervation. This will be explored further in subsequent lessons.
Humans fare better in environments in which the needs of life are abundant. However, these needs are so varied within the context of our culture as to be difficult of ment in this lesson.
Environment means the total context of our setting. It includes not only our homes, grounds, climate, geography, etc. but also our family, neighbors, associates, acquaintances and, indeed, everything and everyone that makes up the social and economic atmosphere in which we live.
Humans are naturally aesthetic and love beauty in everything. Beauty in environment is essential, not only in the physical surroundings, but also in the persons who people it. Happy people beget happiness in the lives of those whom they touch.
Our social environment is far more important than our physical environment. Humans always dream of better physical environments but achieve happiness primarily within the context of their social circle regardless of climate and geography. Inasmuch as human industry creates special environments for living that are pleasing, we can live rather happily while insulated from the harshness and sparseness of clime and geography.
Thus it can be seen that the environment of most concern relates to the social circle in which we situate ourselves.
Naturally and normally humans have within them certain qualities that we regard as virtues. All are naturally imbued to perform those labors that are productive of their needs. This is readily seen in tribal societies. Within complex societies where we lose sight of the products of our productive efforts-where we have been instilled with ambitions to consume without corresponding opportunities to produce, we tend to parasitism upon the productive efforts of others.
Unfortunately, our society legalizes parasitism upon the economic body. That is one of the characteristics of our society that begets inequities that breed crime, ugliness, poverty and other life-sapping features.
Work which we can directly relate to fulfilling a need is most deeply satisfying. If it calls upon our innermost resources and abilities, it is even more satisfying and fulfilling. People most happy and contented are those who have created lovely homes with gardens, orchards and beautiful flowerbeds and grounds.
When our creative urges are elicited, we humans can create wonders, not only for our enjoyment and welfare, but also for the pleasure of those with whom we are associated.
In your relationships with your clients you’ll find that some absorbing pursuit may be suggested that will greatly benefit their health and well-being. In this society creativity is lacking in too many lives. Encourage some creative and productive hobby or pursuit in the lives of those whom you serve.
Self-mastery means self-control. It means keeping passional influences within the bounds of propriety. Intelligently guided responses to situations and yearnings that may arise within our vitiated society—a society with inhumane and unhealthful values—is essential to our welfare. Unbridled pursuits in any direction, especially those that have been commercially tied to our appetencies for food, sex and sensualism are usually exhausting of our precious resources, further pervert and vitiate us and beget conditions of disease and suffering.
The joys of self-mastery are unknown to most. Most of our people are apt to act unthinkingly in response to impulse and an aroused appetency for some sensual delight. You might well explore the qualities of self-mastery your clients exert in their lives. Wisdom dictates that you encourage in them self-discipline for their better well-being.
Humans are social creatures. To achieve our highest level of happiness and well-being, we must belong to a group or circle. We must be in association with others in some manner. Sheer aloneness or being forsaken is deadly to well-being. Even the mental giants amongst us suffer. There are very few Robinson Crusoes.
Our requirement is for associates with whom we can identify. In this day of specialization we tend to restrict ourselves to circles that run along cultural, occupational or special interests. In rural areas neighbors are the basis for associations even though occupations may be different. In large cities cultural pursuits and special interests may be the basis for associations and, more so, occupational lines.
While people can survive rather well alone if they develop some consuming hobby or pursuit, most people are not capable of this within today’s society.
You’ll do well to probe the social life of your clients. Lack of social life in any form can be a detriment to welfare. Likewise, people of dour dispositions can adversely affect those with whom they associate. It may be a case of “not what’s wrong with you but who’s wrong with you.”
Encourage your clients to participate in social activities in conjunction with friends or acquaintances.
Few humans are content with feelings that the world will not be a better place for their having been in it. Most of us are imbued with urges to improve and excel. Most humans strive to better both themselves and their environment. Failure to cultivate goals leaves an individual indifferent and most likely a useless drone in life and society, neither good for self or society. People without ambition and objectives are usually dullards and dissipators.
In observing others whom we serve, it is wise to assess their drives and ambitions. If they lack these, the will to live may also be lacking. People who consult others in health matters have a will to live but may not be sufficiently endowed with aims in life to make living a challenge.
Needless to say, the healthiest and happiest people amongst us are those who are striving to fulfill ambitions and meet life’s challenges.
Just as you may be motivated by an urge to help others and receive reward and recognition for it, others are motivated by any of a multitude of objectives. A great artist may thrive on recognition and appreciation while a ditch digger may have pride not only in his service but in some hobby or other constructive activity.
Without purpose in life there is little drive to live it. We Life Scientists hold that life is sacred and should be imbued with meaningfulness.
This is rather broad territory. While we have instincts to survive and thrive which have had prior considerations in this and the previous lesson, there is also the instinct to procreate our kind. This instinct must be given voice if we are to realize the utmost well-being. While self-discipline can normally control the mating instinct so that it does not exceed its need, it must, nevertheless, have adequate expression. Few there are amongst us who can sublimate an excessive primal urge to more constructive pursuits.
Next to our transgressions in food indulgence stands our collective dissipation in pursuit of sexuality. Most of this amounts, not to satiation of actual need for sexual expression, but satiety of a sexual appetite aroused and stimulated in a society gone awry. Our society regards sexual sensuousness and indulgence as an end in itself and it is stimulated to overindulgence because of dietary and other factors that represent life-threatening factors. The body responds to these life-threatening factors by bringing to the fore and emphasizing survival mechanisms, the act of reproduction being one of the foremost.
Basically, the instinct to reproduction is for one purpose only—the perpetuation of the species. In animals the sexual act occurs only during that time when the female ova are ripe for impregnation. Only in humans has the instinct been perverted and then only within the context of certain societies, ours being among them.
You, as a health professional, need to recognize the heavy role sexuality plays in well-being. There are many among us who feel inadequate because they cannot enjoy mating as often as they would like. The urge may be for excessive indulgence or it may spring from inadequacy. In any event, the role of unsatisfactory sexual relationships in disease and poor health must be recognized. A return to health always restores sexuality but, in the face of overindulgence, it is not possible to restore health. Reorientation of the client must be made so that limitations in this area are recognized and respected.
Why should a fruit-laden orchard of aromatic fragrance be so lovely and beautiful? Why should a dry barren rocky gulch present such an inhospitable and ugly facade?
Anything that promotes life and its values is appreciated, treasured and deemed beautiful. Anything that is untenable and harmful to life is looked upon as ugly with but few exceptions.
In keeping with this, it would seem that all creatures have standards of beauty. But the greatest capacity for appreciation of beauty is inherent in those creatures that have the greatest capacity for life. We proclaim ourselves undisputed aesthetes among all in the animal kingdom. This is not necessarily true. Almost everything in nature has great beauty. Dolphins (porpoises), whales and other creatures have a very high order of intelligence and likewise appreciate beauty.
That which is fit for food is beautiful to us as it is available to us in nature. That which is poisonous and unfit for food usually has no aesthetic appeal. For purposes of food we do not ascribe beauty to a squirrel. Yet the squirrel fascinates as a lovable and beautiful creature. A peacock is a beautiful and lovely bird. We admire it for its great beauty. Yet it is difficult for us to visualize ourselves breaking its neck, stripping it of feathers and eating it as natural as meat-eaters do—skin, bone, flesh and guts, all raw and uncooked. We can’t do that. The picture is an ugly one. It is in discord with our welfare.
The human sense of beauty is, as far as we know, unparalleled. The visual and sonic arts have been highly cultivated. The development of art has been constructive, healthful and ennobling for humankind.
In assessing your clients’ practices, it is wise to survey their cultural dispositions. Everyone has an aesthetic sense —everyone has a sense of beauty. This is a saving grace, for it is an inroad to inspiring and motivating people. Almost everyone appreciates beauty in themselves most of all! Life Science as a way of life will restore health. Simultaneous with rejuvenation, much beauty is restored.
The list of the essentials of life presented here is not complete. These are some of the salient ones. Also, some aspects of life’s essentials presented may be somewhat redundant, for some imply others presented.
But, as you will have noted, the needs of life are simple! Nothing is complicated about it. It seems self-evident that these are the essential means for a happy and healthy life. We can see that the science of health does not come from so-called scientific laboratories but, instead, proceeds from the lap of nature.
As Life Scientists or Hygienists we maintain that these requisites were developed in our sojourn in nature and that, just because we have exceeded natures’s provisions with our own industry, we have not exempted ourselves from need of these basic essentials.
In yourself and your clients you can pursue no wiser course than invest these factors and influences in your life and theirs.
With the catalog of things you’ve listed I feel uptight even considering using a bar of soap around the house. Isn’t there anything we can use that is non-polluting with which to clean house, floors, clothes, dishes and our bodies?
Yes, there are products that are relatively non-polluting and which yield excellent results. For cleaning clothes you should consider Basic-L from Shaklee products. For cleaning floors, dishes and even cars a solution of Shaklee’s Basic-H will do wonders. Amway and other companies also produce similar non-polluting biodegradable products.
For your body you need no soap or cleanser. A good fiber brush or washcloth is all you need while under a shower or in a bathtub. If you want to use a cleaner on your body, Shaklee’s Basic-H is fine.
Can’t we use any cosmetics at all?
Of course you can use cosmetics, but keep in mind that not one is healthful. Moreover they are unneeded by a healthy person. They detract rather than add to beauty. And they only compound skin problems for an unhealthy person. Beauty is natural. When in health your eyes and skin radiate their condition, just as they look sallow, pallid and in poor tone when unhealthy. We advise against the use of cosmetics under all conditions. Also, skin creams and oils of all sorts, including suntan oils and lotions only complicate the problem they are used for and cripple the body’s oil producing ability.
I have a friend who smokes a pack and a half of cigarettes daily, drinks beer and eats junky foods. He appears to be in excellent health and is quite active. By all that you’ve said he should be a corpse. How can you explain something like this?
How old is your friend?
34.
Your friend is still, obviously, only a babe relative to potential and is still living on youthful capital. He might continue this pattern for another five, ten or even twenty years, but the penalty for not meeting life’s needs correctly must sooner or later be suffered.
When you read the disease statistics and see the human wreckage resulting from the tobacco, alcohol and junk food habits, you’ll know that most humans exhaust their endowments rather quickly, even in their thirties, and succumb to cardiovascular problems, chronic cough, cancer or other degenerative diseases.
Most smokers know the dangers of their habits but feel themselves to be exempt from them—it’s something that always happens to the other person. All sins against our bodies must be paid. There is no dispensation in nature.
You’ve condemned deodorants. Are they very harmful? What is a person to do to control body odor?
Deodorants are poisonous. Their toxic effects cause the skin pores at points of application to close up so as to exclude their chemicals from the inner sanctum. This prevents body perspiration and exudation. They are properly called anti-perspirants for this reason. A person who has body odor should strive to go to the source of the problem. Body odor is not natural. Healthy persons do not have body odors. Foul smells are produced by a foul system. Clean up the body and it ceases to exude unpleasant smells.
Do you mean that people who have body odors, bad breath and so on are really sick inside?
That is the case. Healthy cells, tissues, fluids and organs do not smell rotten or foul. Obnoxious odors come from decomposing materials.
Just the other day I read that distilled water, because it’s heated in the distillation process, causes leukocytosis just as cooked food does. As you advocate distilled water, what do you say to this?
This is untrue. Leukocytosis, the proliferation of white blood corpuscles, results from poisons entering the bloodstream. The inorganic debris resulting from cooked foods will cause this malady, but distilled water causes no decomposition or poisonous substances. The distilled water was water before, during and after the process of distilling. It was not changed except that impurities it held before distilling have been left behind. The truth is that mineralized water causes leukocytosis. The inorganic minerals of water are toxic and cause a toxic reaction by the body. Leukocytosis is but one of the body’s defensive mechanisms against toxic materials. Those who employ this argument are trying to defend the use of mineralized waters, but there is no defense for using impure waters.
I’ve heard it said that distilled water will cause heart attacks. In fact, this claim was made as a result of a scientific study in England. Do you deny this?
Yes, investigators of the report found that, in a certain English city whose people drank hard (heavily-mineralized) water, the death rate from heart attack per 100,000 was 436 per year. The death rate in a nearby city that had soft water (water with fewer minerals) was 448 per year, just 12 deaths more. This implies that perhaps soft water causes heart attacks and minerals in solution prevents them. But these investigators found the following significant omissions from the report: The soft water drinkers had a lead pipe system throughout the city whereas the hard water drinkers had a copper pipe system for the most part. Lead is much more toxic than copper.
Does fluoridation really make teeth stronger and healthier?
Absolutely not! Fluorides in an inorganic form are toxic. Ingested fluorides have an affinity for calcium. Insofar as they unite with calcium they destroy bone and teeth. The body defends against fluorides by, at first, hardening the bones and teeth. Then they become brittle and break down under ordinary eating. St. David’s, Arizona, has natural fluorides to the extent of about eight parts per million of its drinking water. Perhaps there is no worse example of poor teeth in America than there. About 50% of America’s drinking water has been fluoridated for some 30 years. For all that, America’s collective mouth is still the biggest disaster area of the body! Nearly 99% of Americans have bad teeth. One in every seven have no teeth at all. Inasmuch as almost all of these are adults, that means one in every five adults have no natural teeth.
Warmth is one of the necessities of life. Vital activities are possible only between certain narrowly defined limits of temperature. Cold inhibits and excessive heat suspends them. Body heat is energy. It is employed not just in resisting cold, but also in accelerating cellular activities. Temperature, within certain narrow limits, is so absolutely essential to life that all functions are excited by any attempt at its variation. Animals are roughly divided into two major classes: warm-blooded and cold-blooded. This is according to whether they have means of producing and maintaining their own temperature or are dependent upon the surrounding medium (water or air) to provide it.
The invertebrates, although they breathe oxygen and circulate fluids throughout their bodies, have no red blood corpuscles and are cold-blooded animals. Fishes and reptiles, vertebrates with red blood cells, are also called cold-blooded animals, although they are able to maintain an internal temperature above that of the surrounding water or air. Invertebrates have no heat of their own, but receive their temperature from the surrounding media and adapt to it. Except for fishes and reptiles, whose heat-producing and heat-regulating powers are very limited, we may say that all vertebrates are warm-blooded, having red corpuscles, while the reverse is true of the invertebrates which have no red corpuscles.
It may be suggested that since animals can live without red corpuscles and exist without internal heat, the primary office of respiration is more universal than to provide for the production of animal heat. Using a popular phrase in biology, heat production is only a “secondary adaptation.”
If we look at a large number of lower animals, we find them to be small and living in water. This medium directly and powerfully reduces them to its own temperature, and they are surrounded and permeated with water. In the radiata water actually mingles in large quantities with their digested food, so that they must of necessity remain at or very near water temperature. Even if they possessed sources of heat within themselves, it becomes evident that heat production cannot be the great end of respiration in these animals. Its primary function must be something very different from this.
If we take a second look at these animals, we discover that large numbers of them, especially those that live in fresh water, vary in temperature with the medium in which they live. Often they vary to a great extent, being sometimes near the freezing point and at other times fifty to one hundred degrees above it. Although a particular temperature may be best for each of them, still, many of them can live an active life in temperatures seventy, sixty, fifty and even forty degrees less. It is obvious that the small extent they could raise the temperature of their bodies above that of the water, when it is forty or fifty degrees, would be of no great importance. In their case at least, there must be some more important end for respiration than production of heat.
Heat supplies a necessary condition of vital activity. The activities of cold-blooded animals rise and fall as the temperature goes up or down. The higher the temperature, providing it does not go so high so as to destroy life, the greater the activity. If it becomes very cold, they suspend activity. It is not in inorganic chemistry alone that heat promotes the energy and intensity of action. In “vital chemistry,” that is, in living functions, the same phenomenon is observed. An elevation of temperature accelerates all vital functions, both in the cold-blooded and in the warm-blooded animals. A similar thing is seen in plants.
Acceleration of activity increases with the rise in temperature until the temperature reaches a certain variable optimum, after which any added increase in temperature reduces activity. The rate of activity for some of the lower forms may become so great as the temperature rises that they “live too fast” and wear themselves out.
When temperature is lowered, vital activities are lowered. In the cold-blooded animals, some of which may be frozen for long periods and then revived, all activity ceases after the temperature is reduced below a certain variable minimum. Most of the warm-blooded animals die when frozen, their vital activities ceasing before they reach the state of freezing.
Higher animals are not so dependent upon the surrounding temperature. They are not only equipped with internal sources of heat and mechanisms to control its production and radiation, but they also in most instances have outer coats of hair, feathers or wool to protect them from the cold. They possess means of lowering heat production and increasing heat radiation if the external temperature or their own internal heat due to activity is increased. (By the operation of the same internal heat-regulating mechanism they produce fever when needed.)
Thus, while the very form and habits of the lower orders of life are determined by external surroundings, the forms and habits of life of the higher animals are very largely determined by powers within them. These often prevail over powerful antagonistic forces without.
The lower animals are more or less slaves to the external world; the higher animals make the external world serve them. It should be noted that this independence of the higher animals, this internal energy, is in great measure due to a capacity for maintaining their normal temperatures amid the changes in that of the surrounding water and air.
The uniform temperatures maintained by higher animals promote and secure a constancy, precision and energy in the nutrition of their tissues, and in the vital functions that supply the animal with resources to carry on active life in the face of opposing influences in the world.
A brief glance at the method of maintaining body temperature may be helpful. In the chapter on respiration we learned of the office of oxidation in the production of heat. It is necessary that we understand that the body is capable of both increasing and decreasing its rate of heat production as the external temperature falls or rises. These processes are rigidly controlled by the nervous system and fail only in greatly enervated and diseased organisms.
But the body also increases and decreases the radiation of heat from the body as need arises. While oxidation warms the body, evaporation (as in sweating) cools it. These physiological processes are carried on in relation to vital wants. The human body, to narrow our considerations at this point, is based upon a system of self-regulation and equipoise, and its temperature relations are beautifully provided for. In a cool atmosphere less heat is lost by evaporation and more produced within the body, while a reverse process is seen in a warm temperature.
In all changes of temperature outside the body, some compensatory effort is required. But if our other relations are correct, the internal heat-regulating capacity of the body will be efficient. The maintenance of the heat-making mechanism of the body is an indispensable condition of health. Feeble and sick individuals who find it difficult or impossible to maintain normal temperature in a cold climate need to be kept warm. Chilling inhibits all functions of life and reduces their already greatly reduced stock of energy. The escape to a warm climate is no mere luxury for such persons. Warmth of some degree is certainly a normal requisite of life. But experience and experiment have shown that when the temperature of the surroundings is out of all proportion to the needs of the body and to its capacity to adjust itself, the body must and does suffer. There is not only discomfort, which normally causes us to seek relief from extremes of heat or cold, but there is some expenditure of energy in resisting extreme temperature.
In lands where fogs, frost and darkness cramp the energies of man, as well as in regions where excessive and long-continued heat depresses his vital activities, life is handicapped. By means of clothing, housing and artificial heating arrangements, we are able to live in cold climates. By means of cooling systems and a reduction of clothing, we live more comfortably in hot regions and seasons. But none of these arrangements are ideal. A warm climate serves man best; first-class habits of living enable him to live better in whatever climate he resides.
Do you dress for success? Are you a fashion follower or a “clothes horse?” Is your clothing bought for style and status or comfort and durability?
Like food, shelter and the other necessities of life, clothing can be as natural or unnatural as we choose. Just as the businessman who orders steak at a luncheon to impress others with his financial success, there are people who wear the latest styles in clothing and name brands to make impressions.
However, from the body’s standpoint, clothing serves two functions only: 1) To protect us from climatic variations, and 2) To protect the skin from injuries. Clothing is not a necessity if we live in an agreeable climate and a non-threatening environment. If we need to cover the body, clothing should be chosen for only these reasons:
Clothing is comfortable if it allows unrestricted natural movement. High-heel shoes are not comfortable. They throw the body out of alignment and place undue strain on the feet and calves. They make a woman’s natural gait into a wiggling, mincing movement which prevents full strides. Neckties are not comfortable. They serve no protective function. Instead, they may restrict circulation about the neck and create tension and headaches.
All tight clothing, be it jeans or pantyhose, prevent natural air circulation over the body. Vaginitis and yeast infections have increased as rapidly as the popularity of the smothering pantyhose. All underwear, especially, should be of light natural fibers that allow the skin to breathe.
Most shoes are made from leather and are tightly-laced or high-topped. Again fresh air is shut off from the skin and fungus and odors result. Belts bind the waist. Brasieres constrict the chest. In fact, fainting was very widespread in the nineteenth century not because of the gentility of the women, but because the corsets they wore were so tight they could not take a deep breath.
The human metabolism depends upon the free flow of air over the exposed skin. Tight, constrictive clothing blocks air and sunshine. We become trapped in an envelope of toxic gases emitted from the skin during its process of elimination.
If we desire harmony with our environment, we must wear clothes made from natural fibers. Synthetic materials do not allow the skin to “breathe” and are responsible for many of the heat rashes experienced in the summer. The plastic diapers used on babies are the culprits behind diaper rash. Our skin is repelled by the synthetic clothes that prevent natural body moisture from evaporating.
Synthetic fibers are also made from non-renewable resources and harm the environment. Such “natural” materials as leather and furs require the slaughter of animals, either directly or indirectly. Wearing leather and furs while espousing a meatless diet makes the ethical vegetarian an unconscious hypocrite.
This leaves us with cotton, linen, straw, and wool as optimum materials for clothing. These are from renewable resources (wool does not involve the killing of the sheep), and they allow the skin to breathe. They require no undue exploitation of the environment or animals.
Aesthetic pleasure is also a valid reason for choosing our clothes. We humans have a deep love of beauty and this love should be expressed in our living surroundings and personal effects. Clothing should be pleasant to the eye, colorful, and pretty without being merely ornamental. Beautiful clothes, of course, cannot hide the ugliness of a diseased body or unhappy mind, nor should beauty be confused with fickle style.
The most aesthetically pleasing clothes are those that are simple and have stood the test of time. Sexual attributes should not be emphasized by clothing, nor should they be hidden, unduly. No piece of clothing in the world is as beautiful as the healthy body. Neither artifice nor deception can improve upon nature’s work.
So, are you suited for health?
You are if you wear clothing made from natural fibers which are comfortable, pleasing to the eye, and simple. Give your body as much freedom from clothes as possible. Nudity, when weather and personal feelings permit, can be an important factor in regaining health. Overdressing is much like overeating—it weakens the body’s natural vitality.
A warm smile, sparkling eyes, healthy hair and a radiant complexion are the best attributes in your wardrobe. The rest is only window dressing.
You may eat the finest food, get daily exercise, sunshine, fresh air, pure water, proper rest and sleep, live in a near-perfect climate, and yet be miserable and unhappy. Why? Because life is more than bread alone, more than creature comforts, more than well-disciplined physical health procedures. Total health and well-being depends upon so many factors—each important and necessary. Each demands a share of our time and energy. But, unless we watch our mind and emotions at work, our psychological responses, our inner urges and demands, a complete state of health and happiness will surely elude us. This is to say that the physical and mental are tied together as one. They are not separate. But, much of the time we treat them as if they were. Actually, we can only separate them for the purpose of discussion. Since, as Dr. Shelton has remarked, “The human being is a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual unit, and not a mere bundle of separate and more or less antagonistic elements. Health is a matter of vital, nutritive and physical hygiene.”
So let’s examine that part of us which is not too often talked about at our conventions, or written about in Hygienic literature. Perhaps this may be because of the complexity, the vastness, and the difficulty usually experienced in trying to explain it satisfactorily. By no means do I consider myself an expert in this field. I am merely a bystander, noticing what is going on with myself, wondering about it, and asking questions which have led me to some rather satisfying answers over the years. I would like to share them with you.
Let’s begin at the beginning. What is it that most of us are seeking? What are we after? Why is it that we often go from one religion to another? Why are we engaged in trying different disciplines, gurus, masters and mystics? Could it be that most of us are searching for a permanent state of peace, happiness, satisfaction, security, or the ultimate: God? Whatever it is, it is described by many names. But, since the name is not the thing, it really doesn’t matter what we call it. Maybe we could simply refer to it as permanent happiness. Before we get involved in the search, as to whether there is such a thing, should we not want to understand the person that seeks this happiness?
In order to know the seeker, I must first know myself. I must want to see how my mind works: why I think as I do, react as I do, and so on. No book, no person, regardless of how intelligent, gifted or famous can help me. It’s a do-it-yourself process. I must see it for myself, first hand. No other method that I know of has been found that works unless I step in the direction of knowing myself. If I can see that my mind works as it does, because of my conditioning, I have taken a giant step towards freedom and eventual transformation. Conditioning is the cause of my beliefs, my patriotism, my politics, my attitude towards others, and towards the world. In fact, I am the world! Getting in touch with this knowledge of myself reveals why I think in the particular way that I do. It exposes to me the background of all my thoughts. It enables me to perceive the reasons for my hurts, bitterness, jealousy, and disappointments. It reveals the source of my conditioning, which lies behind all my relationships.
We come into the world, as a baby, equipped to start life as a human being. Within us are all the human characteristics and attributes which have been in existence for over two million years. Along with these, we also inherit the tendencies and instincts of the animal. They go back and back, into the timeless past, perhaps to the origin of life on earth. And, before that, to life in the sea, where it is possible that all life began.
Our subconscious or unconscious mind contains the images and memories that lead to self-preservation, fear and violence. These are gleaned from the lives of our ancestors who have preceded us. From the moment of birth, or even before birth, we begin to gather knowledge through our senses. We learn by observation, imitation and instruction. The conscious mind now makes its appearance. It becomes evident that both subconscious and conscious are one.
History and further study reveals that in spite of some two million years of human life, and 2,000 years of religious training, the animal instinct of even the cream of society is still the driving factor. In the course of time we are cautioned to resist these animal emotions as they come up, and to subdue them or control them. To get this message across to us, we are instructed in various ways. In religion, for example, we absorb the instruction through pictures, sayings, books and in places of worship. Depending on where we grow up, in what part of the world, we learn about Jesus, Allah, Buddha and so on. So that, at an early age the Christian child has no doubts about Christ being the true God. In turn, the Muslim boy or girl will think of Allah as being the only God. And, as a member of a Buddhist family, the youngsters grow up regarding Buddha as the Most Compassionate One. Children of other religions are also brought up in a similar way. Thus, each child is indoctrinated with the faith and beliefs given to him by his parents and teachers. As they grow and mature, most of them stand ready to lay down their life for these beliefs. Conditioning is now well underway. It goes on in every area of our lives, from birth to the grave. It colors our thinking and actions. It touches our lives in so many subtle and obvious ways. It motivates our feelings, our political leanings, our way of speaking, walking, eating, going to the bathroom, and even our dreams.
As we grow up we begin to take a stand on issues. We gather a few facts and figures and then come to a decision. It’s either right or wrong, so help me God. Our decisions become more solid as we grow older. With some of us, we write them in granite. We become fixed as the stones on which they are inscribed. We defend and justify them, sometimes even to the end. Examples in any field could be used, but since we moved into our conditioning through religion, mentioned before, let’s pursue the matter further.
For instance, some say emphatically that there is a God. Others, just as strongly point out that there is no God. Both cannot be right. If one is true, the other is false. To see the truth, we are not in a position to accept or deny. If we do either, that ends the investigation. To find out for sure, I must admit that I do not know. I really don’t! True research begins from there.
Now, how do we go about our search for the truth? Much depends on how we investigate, but even more important is—how do we listen? Say we go to a lecture or talk. The speaker says something. Immediately we tend to agree or disagree. Or, we compare him with someone else, and what he is saying, with something we may have read or heard. Accordingly, we nod and shake our heads. Throughout the talk our mind continues to talk also. Have you noticed how the mind is continually yakking with us? This constant chatter of the mind causes our attention to be divided between what the speaker says and what our mind is saying. If our listening is to put us in touch with the facts, we must give our entire attention to what is being said. In this way, and this way only, do we come to understand the speaker and what he is really saying.
We find ourselves agreeing or disagreeing according to our conditioning. Listening, that is proper listening, demands that we be aware of what is being said without the bias of our conditioning. In other words, being aware, without choice is necessary to get the full impact. I must neither agree nor disagree, as I listen. I must not judge or evaluate to any degree. I must listen, pay attention, be aware, with my whole heart, mind, body, nerves, senses, everything!
If I am able to do this, I see that eventually my mind and its chatter slows down. I listen and watch my thoughts as they pass through my mind, as I would watch a movie. I greet each thought as a friend. Welcome it to my mind. Investigate it. Challenge it. Question it. Pursue it to the very end, without hurry or anxiety. See it for what it is, and then let it move on, pass away, drop dead, to return no more. If I am successful in following each thought from rise to fall, I soon begin to take notice a slowing of the thinking process. This entirely normal way of handling thought is within the ability of everyone. After a period of time, perhaps several weeks, a month or so, depending on your interest and attention, the mind becomes silent. Thinking comes to an end. There is no further chatter to disturb our listening and observing. If, perchance, a thought does enter the mind, see it for what it is, treat it hospitably, and let it die away. These moments of non-thinking will gradually lengthen. The ease of doing this extends itself. This could be called a state of pure listening, pure observing. Pure because there are no thoughts to contaminate the mind while it is listening and attending to the speaker, or the situation at hand.
So far as I know, this is the only way to be in direct touch with a speaker. It works effectively when used in any situation or relationship. You don’t have to use any effort to do this. It happens by itself. There is no method or system to bring it about. One merely listens, watches, observes, becomes aware, gives his complete attention to the thought at hand, to the feeling experienced, and notices its passing. Understanding our thoughts leads to further understanding of ourselves. And, by understanding ourselves, we can better understand the other fellow. Eventually, this culminates in a radical change or transformation within, which radiates outward, and extends to every facet of our life. So that the things we are unhappy about, clear up in the process of daily living. We don’t have to use willpower, control or any tricky stuff. Pure listening and observing without the distraction of thought, puts us in touch, moment by moment, with exactly what is taking place.
There’s a lot more to experiencing mental and emotional poise. I must find out who I really am. I must discover that the ego, the self, the “I” is not an entity, but merely my memory. That thinking is great when applied to everyday use, for solving problems, technical engineering, finding my way home, recognizing friends and family...but it gets in the way when we want to observe, be aware and sensitive to life that is going on all around us.
Poise means balance, equilibrium, stability, ease of mind and body. Mental and emotional poise is a normal state of being, in which we experience harmony and ease within ourselves. It does not mean we have no challenges or problems. We are faced with these even in the vigorously healthy state of being at peace. It means we need not be hurt or disturbed in any way by them. It means also that life is a joy, and each moment offers us another opportunity to learn, to love, and to understand.
5.1. What Constitutes Nutrition (Definitions And Concepts)
5.2. Food Is An Element Of Nutrition
5.3. Physiological Criteria Foods Must Meet
5.4. Nonfood Nutritional Factors
5.5. Discussion Of Conventional Nutritional Teachings
5.6. Discussion Of Human Eating Habits The World Over
5.7. Negative Nutrition: Harmful Foods And Practices
5.8. A Survey Of Unconventional Dietic Schools And Their Fallacies
5.9. The Physiological Necessity Of Proper Food Combining
Article #1: The Paradise Diet by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #2: The Elements Of Nutrition by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #3: Nutrition, A Hygienic Perspective by Ralph C. Cinque, D.C.
5.1.1 Nutrition Is the Sum of All Processes That Promote Growth and Function
5.1.2 Nutrition Is Modified By the Entire Spectrum of Life Conditions and Activities
5.1.3 Nutrition Involves the Processes of Growth, Development, Supply and Invigoration
Conventional attitudes regard nutrition as being almost exclusively involved with foods and feeding, but this is only one facet of the nutritional scene (albeit an important one). At the outset it is prudent to define what nutrition is and, in view of the many misconceptions, what nutrition is not.
Nutrition does not mean food only. Nutrition is the sum of all the processes that supply, develop and sustain an organism’s faculties and functions at the optimal level of existence. In short, nutrition is the total of all that supplies life’s needs. It embraces all requirements for perfect health and supplying these requirements constitutes nutrition.
The sum of nutritional processes adds up to our health quotient; that is, our state of health equals the total of the nutritional processes that created it.
Anything that modifies nutrition or the processes of supply and usage also modifies health. Everything we get involved in or do in all spheres of life affects in some way our nutritive disposition, either for the better, for the worse or equivalently.
With respect to foods and feeding, we have specific adaptations for acquiring and processing particular foods to meet our nutritive needs. Anything that changes in the whole process affects our nutrition and, consequently, our health.
Because of its importance, we re-emphasize: Nutrition is largely dependent upon our health and, likewise, our health is dependent on nutrition.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton has defined nutrition as follows:
Perfect nutrition is dependent on perfect organs, perfect functions and normal health. Each is dependent upon and grows out of the other. All processes and functions are interdependent and interact harmoniously for mutual well-being. They cannot be taken apart and categorized. Every aspect of life is but a part of a unified whole.
This idea of interdependence and interaction leads to the principle that the appropriate way to recover and develop strength and vigor is through the activities and processes that give rise to growth. We recover arid develop strength and vigor in the same way that we keep well, in the same way that a babe grows into vigor and adulthood. The powers and forces that brought us into being, that sustain us in existence, that cause us to grow through all the phases of life to manhood and womanhood, are sufficient to restore us if health becomes impaired.
As stated earlier, food constitutes only a part of the needs of life. It constitutes some of the raw materials which become part of the overall nutritive processes. When the body receives food, it breaks it down mechanically and chemically into components which can be absorbed and synthesized by the organism into special substances to meet the special needs of the organism.
Many people believe that foods have different actions in the body. However, this is erroneous. Foods do not act in the body but are, instead, acted upon by the body. To be appropriated the food must lose all its character. It is mechanically crushed, comminuted and mixed with digestive fluids, then chemically reduced to basic components for absorption, synthesis and use.
Let us again review nutrition as Dr. Shelton has expressed it in yet another definition:
Nutrition is a vital process carried on only by a living organism. It is a process of growth, development and invigoration. To eat good food and enough of it, to drink pure water and breathe pure air, in and of themselves, are very desirable, but something more is needed in order to acquire health, strength and vigor. Nutrition is dependent on function. We can have better nutritive function only when we have a capacity for better nutrition.
Food is of value only in its physiological connections with air, water, sunshine, rest and sleep, exercise or activity, cleanliness and wholesome mental and moral influences—in short, all the natural or normal circumstances which we know to be necessary for the preservation of health.
What Dr. Shelton is saying is but a reiteration of what has been emphasized here, that the better your health the better will be your nutrition and the better your nutrition the better will be your health. Every factor and condition of life must be supplied optimally to assure best health.
Again, to highlight its importance, we repeat that food does not use the body or do anything to the body. The body does unto the food and uses it. In creating foods, plant life designed them to be utilized by animals in exchange for a service to the plant. This is symbiosis. Human service to plants is the incidental broadcast of their seeds. Was ever a reward so great for such a small service?
As a nutritionist you must ever keep this in mind: Foods do nothing in the body. They have no powers of cleansing, healing or anything else. Foods have no will or purposes of their own. To be consumed and used is their inherent design.
A body that is impaired is unable to properly process and use food. To the extent that the impairment causes withdrawal of functional energies from digestive processes, the body is unable to be fed. When the body’s nutritive functions are in any way impaired, and this will usually be evidenced by depressed or lost appetite, make this a standing rule: do not partake of food. Guide clients away from food. Missing a meal or a few meals is most constructive.
If the body is in any abnormal condition, food should not be taken or given. In fever, pain, emotional upset, fatigue, worry, sleeplessness and many other conditions, the body is unable to muster the needed energies for the processes of digestion, appropriation, and assimilation. In such conditions the body does not create the condition of hunger or give rise to appetency.
Our capacity to receive, process and assimilate food is necessary to the nutritive process. In the absence of functional energies in these areas, feeding results in lowered body energies and the waste of foodstuffs. It is passed on to the bowels and the body is worse off for it.
To appropriately receive, digest and assimilate foods, other physiological needs must also be present. Oxygen, water, digestive fluids, nerve energy and a multitude of other factors and influences must favorably coalesce to effect these processes. Should any impairment in the nutritive faculties exist, the interference may prove insurmountable and result in indigestion.
This leads to this inescapable conclusion which you must ever bear in mind: proper nutrition is dependent upon and is affected by the entire spectrum of the organism’s activities and conditions.
5.3.1 Food Adaptations of Various Species
5.3.2 Range of Food Processing Capabilities
5.3.3 Food Adaptations of Humans
5.3.4 The Dietary Requirements That Determine Our Ideal Foods
Every creature in nature has become adapted to securing and nourishing itself on particular foods. All natural equipment and faculties dispose to this specialization. Humans are not exceptions to this rule. Because we have developed tools using our capabilities and can supply ourselves with an abundance of anything on earth as food does not in any way alter our physiological adaptations and specializations.
Every creature has basic nutritive requirements. Our biology books detail these rather impartially and correctly for animals. But the books and teachings that concern human nutrition do not deal impartially with the subject. Our educational establishment is the captive of our mammoth industrial complex. This means they prostitute their teachings to cater to the needs of those whose grants support them. Thus, human nutrition as taught in our society is dictated, not by physiological faculties and needs, but by the wishes of those food industries that stand to gain from the miseducation that panders to their products.
The food specializations of various species are categorized by general designation. Some of these categories are as follows:
As you’re aware, the bee lives on the nectar of blossoms and flowers and the pollen with which it becomes incidentally contaminated. All the bee’s equipment befit it to seek out flowers, land upon or hover over them, withdraw nectar the flower has secreted especially for the bee, and to return to its hive where it shares its harvest with other bees, the surplus being stored as honey. The bee is excellently equipped to meet its needs amply in this manner. Humans cannot meet their needs this way. Neither can cattle, horses or pigs. They’re equipped in their own special ways to meet the needs of their adaptations.
As a sidelight on the symbiotic relationship of life, we might note that the flower created the nectar for the bee in exchange for a service. The flower or blossom is a step in the plant’s creation of seeds. Before a seed can be formed, fertilization must take place and to insure this fertilization the bee is enticed by nectar. Incidental to the taking of nectar the bee contaminates itself with pollen. At the next flower the bee contaminates the flower’s pistil with this pollen. This incidental fertilization is the service the plant induced the bee to perform with the nectar secretion. Who said plants weren’t smart?
Humans are endowed with certain natural capacities and limitations in the acquisition, processing and utilization of foods. Human development (which endowed us with our faculties and capabilities) specialized and restricted our equipment and capabilities for food gathering and processing to certain foods just as in the case of other animals. The faculties of most creatures are developed so as to make disposition of surpluses or to survive scarcities. Surpluses are either stored as reserves or are excreted. Redundancies beyond needs and ability to readily excrete founder humans and other animals that are so unwise as to overeat.
In ascertaining the criteria that a food must have to satisfy human needs, we must be cognizant of the capacities and capabilities of the organism as well as the properties of the food.
Humans are classified as frugivores because they have the equipment to harvest and efficiently process only a class of foods called fruits. Humans are not alone in this class. For millions of years humans subsisted solely, exclusively and only on fruits. That is the way it was expressed by Dr. Alan Walker of Johns Hopkins University, an anthropologist who conducted extensive research into the dietary background of humans. Even though humans have eaten foods outside their dietary adaptations off and on for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years and have eaten some cooked foods for tens of thousands of years, there has been no physiological change that would justify straying from our natural dietary.
Our adaptations are strictly as fruit-eaters as you will see in subsequent lessons.
Natural foods for humans must satisfy the following criteria and nutrient needs:
First and foremost the food must be toxin-free. None of the compounds and substances in the food should present a digestive problem. The body must have enzymes adapted to handle every substance within the food. Toxic substances are those which the body cannot use as food. Substances that the body cannot use but which it cannot prevent absorption of (as in alcohol, cholesterol, drugs, etc.) are toxic.
The food must be edible in its living or raw state as nature delivers it up for us as food. If we cannot eat our fill of a food in its raw state with relish and make a meal of it that meets all or most of our nutrient needs, then it is not a natural food for humans and should be shunned in favor of foods that do.
Foods of our adaptation have great sensory appeal. They are a delight to the eye, their aromas tantalize the sense of smell and their substance is an unqualified gustatory delight.
Foods of human adaptation undergo practically no digestion in the stomach and humans can absorb the chyme and chyle of their natural foods with very little chemical elaboration in the stomach and small intestine.
While ease of digestion necessarily also implies efficiency of digestion, this entry relates to another aspect of efficiency. That which is eaten represents a certain amount of energy potential. To derive this energy from food, the body must expend energy to obtain it. The ratio of energy obtained relative to energy expenditure determines the ratio of efficiency.
For instance, we spend a mere 30 calories of energy in the process of appropriation, chewing, absorbing, transporting and assimilating 400 calories of watermelon. On the other hand, we may spend 280 calories in the digesting meat to obtain 400 calories. The efficiency with which we handle foods with monosaccharides versus the inefficiency with which we handle protein foods indicates most emphatically the types of food to which we are naturally adapted.
In processing food for use, we expend two kinds of energy. We expend metabolic energy, which is the chemical and mechanical energies expended, and we expend nerve energy. For instance, we use very little nerve energy in digesting watermelon. But, in processing foods to which we are not biologically adapted, an enormous expenditure of nerve energy is occasioned. Meats may cause nervous exhaustion due to the body’s frenzied activities in dealing with proteins, uric acids and other toxic substances in them. Though we may feel exhilarated while expending nervous energy just as we feel “a pick-me-up” when taking coffee (which really drains nerve energy), the stimulation occasioned by eating unsuitable foods such as meat is an indication of the inefficiency with which the body handles it.
Our natural foods must supply us with our protein requirements of about 25 grams daily. The less protein eaten down to the point of adequacy, the better. Protein is taken into the body for replenishing amino acid components needed for a multitude of applications. There are three things you should keep in mind relative to protein digestion:
We must not feel compelled to eat protein foods as such in order to achieve protein adequacy. Almost every food natural to humans has about 4% protein dry weight, an ample amount to supply our needs. Further, most of our natural foods contain the amino acids we need.
Some 30 vitamins have been determined to be needed in various quantities in the human diet. The vitamins must be in the diet in an organic context with other nutrients to be useful.
Our only source of the minerals of life is from food. Only in food are they in the organic context which we can use. Under no circumstances can the body make use of inorganic minerals as might be ingested with water, supplements or powdered rock (as with dolomite).
Those food factors which the body requires but cannot itself synthesize are said to be essential. The essential fatty acids are linoleic, linolenic and arachidonic. Essential fatty acids are unsaturated fats. They occur in practically every fruit, nut, seed and vegetable in ample quantities to supply human needs.
The energy we expend must be derived from our food intake. The foods which most efficiently and easily supply our caloric needs are those with high monosaccharide content. Sweet fruits are at the top of the list in meeting these requisites.
Foods to which we are biologically adapted normally meet all our water needs. This is obvious, for we have no water-drinking faculties other than suction which is necessary for swallowing food. Fruitarian species normally do not drink water.
We require foods that are alkaline- or base-forming when metabolized. Almost every food of our adaptation is base-forming, even if it has an acid pH in its natural state. Should we eat any acid-forming foods, such as nuts, they should be offset at the same meal with alkaline-forming foods such as green leaves or other vegetable fare.
These are the criteria or requirements for foods that are natural to the human dietary. Only fruits, and especially sugar-containing fruits, meet all these needs ideally. Nothing else meets all these requirements. As further lessons will demonstrate, the requisites of life can be amply met on a totally fruitarian regime.
The first part of this lesson has emphasized the great breadth of the nutritional scope and perspective. This introduction is but a preview of some nutritional factors. In-depth treatment is given to most aspects of nutrition in subsequent lessons.
Among the nonfood nutritional factors are the following:
Inasmuch as you’ve already had a glimpse of nineteen essential factors and influences for great health in a previous lesson, and they included the above, the details will not be repeated here. You may refer back to lessons three and four if necessary. The above listing is to emphasize the great dependence of proper nutrition upon other needs of the body (besides food) being appropriately met. Nutrition does not occur in a vacuum. It is not an independent process. It involves the organism in every aspect of its being.
As perhaps you know or may have long suspected, and as was stated earlier in this lesson, conventional nutritional teachings are distorted to accommodate the “food” industries that dominate America. In fact, these distortions and fabrications predominate, not only in America, but also in most of the Western world.
If we follow conventional nutrition, we are bound to end up with malnutrition and toxemia and the pathologies they lead to. As Life Science serves no commercial masters, it has no interests to be served in teaching you false concepts. Further, we do have the benefit of knowing the truth. With respect to conventional nutritionists, it might be said that “It is better to be ignorant than to know so much that isn’t so.”
The recommended dietary allowances of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council reflect the many fallacies to which a wrong philosophy of nutrition leads.
First, the RDAs are educated estimates and are sometimes revised upwards or downwards in view of “new findings.”
Second, the board has been very liberal in its allowances. In almost every case, the allowance or suggested daily intake is two to ten times the amount needed by healthy persons. Likewise, they are far in excess of the needs of unhealthy persons, for unhealthy persons usually have impaired nutritive faculties, do not function as efficiently as do healthy individuals and should have a physiological rest in the form of a fast.
Third, the allowances are based on conventional diets which are comprised largely of cooked foods. Not only are cooked foods so deranged that a substantial portion of their nutrients are not usable, but they so vitiate the nutritive faculties as to impair them and lower their efficiency.
Healthy individuals eating a raw diet of proper foods have highly efficient nutritive faculties and thrive on a fraction of the intake on which the RDAs are based for conventional eaters.
The pathology and suffering resulting from the abominable nutritional concept of the four basic food groups is a national disaster! This concept and its promotion stems from a national policy of catering to industrial behemoths rather than to the welfare of consumers. While today’s “food” industries are outgrowths of incorrect eating going back into the past, the justification for them is relatively recent in origin. The concept has been to acclaim as science the eating of “foods” that cover, not human needs, but the gamut of foods produced by powerful food interests.
The basic four food groups are as follows:
Eating specified amounts from each of these groups daily is proclaimed “balanced nutrition.” In truth it is a “balanced market” for the commercial “food” interests that share the food market. The selection of foods in the typical American diet has nothing to do with meeting human needs. The typical American diet is gravely pathogenic and is mostly responsible for our deplorably diseased population.
In subsequent lessons you’ll learn why milk and all milk products are unfit for human consumption and the physiological grounds for this unfitness. You’ll also learn why all meats, eggs, fish (and legumes except sprouted) should be rejected as items of diet. Additionally, the relative unsuitability of grains and grain products (compared with fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds) in the diet will be highlighted. Bread, cereals and other starchy foods, if included in the diet, are a far less than ideal part of the diet.
To comment on group four, we point out that some vegetables can be added to the human diet with benefit, though their rich content of nutrients is really unneeded if we partake liberally of fresh raw fruits (and abstain from eating unwholesome foods).
Tubers such as potatoes constitute a large portion of the vegetable intake in America. Inasmuch as most tubers are cooked to make them palatable, and cooking significantly lowers the nutritive value of the food, they, like cereal grains, are less than ideal as foods. In addition, many other vegetables, such as onions, garlic, radishes, spinach and others contain toxic substances (such as mustard oil in onions and garlic and oxalic acid in spinach) that make them unsuitable as foods.
So, while certain vegetables (such as lettuce, celery, broccoli, cabbage and others) may supply “nutrient insurance,” many, if not most, vegetables have liabilities that make them less than ideal, even undesirable, as foods. Besides, we can obtain most, if not all, the nutrients we need from fresh ripe fruits, especially if we also include the non-sweet fruits often called vegetables (such as tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, etc.) plus a few nuts and seeds in our diet of fresh fruits.
It bears reiterating that the items of diet to which we are not biologically adapted are, to some degree, pathogenic. Subsequent lessons will probe the ill effects of wrong diet in greater depth.
Most of us are keenly aware of American eating practices. A typical breakfast may include every member of the four basic food groups. The typical American breakfast usually includes from the meat group ham, bacon or sausages and eggs, from the grain or cereal group bread (toasted or untoasted) and/or some pastry or perhaps a donut, and a bowl of cereal. From the fruit and vegetable group may be an “appetizer” in the form of grapefruit, an orange, orange juice or cantaloupe. Also from this group may be some fried potatoes and possibly banana or other fruit on top of the cereal. From the milk group there is usually milk for cereal, cream for the coffee, butter for the toast and perhaps a glass of milk on the side. Sugar, salt, pepper and other sweeteners and condiments may be added.
An American lunch usually includes a meat dish with servings of vegetables, tubers or grains on the side. It usually includes bread and may include milk, ice cream, butter and other dairy products. An American dinner is not substantially different than an American lunch except there’s usually more of it.
The typical American diet is heavy on members of the four food groups promoted in America as nutritious fare. There has not been in all history more pathogenic fare than this!
5.6.1 The Origins of Paradises and Edens
5.6.2 The Origins of Today’s Eating Practices
Diets vary widely over the face of the globe. We have the Lapps and the Eskimos who live pretty much as carnivores on one end of the spectrum, and we have groups of peoples in the equatorial regions who live as almost total fruitarians at the other end of the spectrum.
Up until relatively recent times in human history, humans have been primarily fruitarians. To this day in Java and other Malaysian islands there are enclosures known as para desas where people live among fruit-bearing trees. (The word paradise derives therefrom.)
All over Europe and much of the Far East there were walled enclosures of heavy stone where people resided and tended orchards. These were called paradises or edens. The walls kept out animals, helped capture and retain the sun’s heat and protected against winds and frosts.
Many words with roots of ava, and aval (such as Valhalla and avalon) evolved from terms born of a fruit culture. Valhalla originally meant apple hole or a place where apples were stored. Avalon merely meant the land of apples. The cultivation of fruits had attained scientific status long before formal histories were kept. We know of them through folklore legends and the remains of the incredible stone walls of these edens.
If humans are natural fruitarians, how have they come to stray from the diet of their physiological adaptation? .
In nature, such animals as gorillas, cattle and horses will die of starvation rather than eat flesh; but chimpanzees and some other fruit-eating animals will rend and eat another animal on occasion.
Humans, in addition to being possessed of a strong survival instinct, possess extraordinary intelligence to employ in support of that instinct. About three to four million years ago humans begin wandering out of their homelands in tropical regions. In time they peopled most of the earth accessible to them. Over the whole globe, according to geological records, climate was hospitable and favored their frugivorous habits. The remains of tropical plants have been found in Alaska and other northerly latitudes.
Due to some cataclysmic event or events that resulted in cold and freezing temperatures and ice ages, humans in northerly climes retreated south. Those that remained had to survive on the fare available to them or perish. For a part, this meant meat and animal products. Humans had to learn providence against the seasons and to survive on the foods available in harsh seasons or disappear from the scene. This led to meat-eating and to the use of non-fruit foods. These dietary perversions, born of necessity, became fixed in many peoples and gradually spread to people who had no necessity to resort to non-fruitarian diets. Despite this, many pockets of people throughout the world never deserted their natural fruit diet and remain fruitarians unto this day.
Even such a harsh seasonal climate as found at the 8,000 foot level in the Himalayas in Northeast Pakistan has a fruitarian culture, that of the Hunzas. While the Hunzas do partake of some pulses and grains, theirs is primarily an ecoculture of orchards, and their dietary consists mostly of apples, apricots and other fruits that thrive in their climate and growing season.
The use of meat and animal products, grains, roots and other non-fruitarian fare has arisen in relatively recent times in human history and undoubtedly originated in the adversity humans faced in certain climates, especially northerly ones. The cultivation of grasses for grain is only a few thousand years old, perhaps less than ten thousand.
If you were a Mongolian you’d probably be a nomadic appendage to an animal flock. You’d have some vegetables but, for the most part, you’d fare on meats, cheeses, milks and milk products.
If you were among groups of people in tropical Brazil and other tropical cultures, you might live almost entirely on a banana diet, on breadfruit or on some other fruit. The same might be true if you lived on many Pacific islands or Indian Ocean cultures.
If you lived in Southern China you might adopt a diet heavy in fruits, rice and vegetables, whereas in Northern China you might adopt a diet heavy in fruits, soybeans and vegetables.
Eskimos and Lapplanders live almost exclusively on animal fare. With the exception of some areas where fish is consumed extensively, most Asian cultures are vegetarian and fruitarian. Most Asian countries have what is called a rice economy, though some Asian cultures utilize other grains and legumes as staples.
Europeans, immediate ancestors for most Americans, are heavily into grain culture and make it a substantial part of their diet, though they also partake heavily of fruits and vegetables. Meat and animal products form but a small part of the diets of most Europeans. English-speaking people the world over are the heaviest meat-eaters with the exception of Argentinians and Finlanders.
When we look at the world’s healthiest people we observe the Hunzas, Vilcabambians, Abkhasians and other primarily fruitarian cultures. These peoples are healthy for more reasons than just fruit-eating, however. They also live mostly in the outdoors in rather unstressful circumstances.
Wherever you look at cultures and their dietary practices of long standing, you find that people have adopted as foods that which they can most easily cultivate and harvest in their regions. They fare well or poorly in accord with the beneficence or lack of it in their dietary.
Faculties usually require hundreds of thousands of years to develop. Who knows how many millions of years were required to develop human hands to the present stage? In some of our primate relatives the hands have yet to reach the facile stage which humans have attained.
In physiology changes are equally slow in coming about. Humans may eventually adapt to cooked foods and meats just as jackals and buzzards adapted to the roles of scavengers of dead rotting meats. But we might first become extinct! Many creatures have not survived drastic dietary changes. The weakness and diseased condition of most present-day humans is ample warning that our dietary is incorrect and death-dealing with portents of disaster for that part of humanity that indulges in it. The evolvement of adaptations to new foods may not occur at all or so slowly as to be of no good consequence.
In view of the ecological and health benefits of fruit culture and its ease of cultivation, it behooves humans to stay with the diet that developed them into the magnificent creatures that they were, that some are and all can be. By consuming fruits we’ll thrive and, at the same time, place a demand on the marketplace that will spur the development of orchards and even more fruit!
5.7.3 Processed, Refined and Preserved Foods
5.7.4 Foods Not Suited to the Human Dietary
Foods have varying degrees of beneficence in the human diet. They also have varying degrees of pathogenicity in the diet. Our finest foods are the raw materials of our nutritive processes. Our worst foods are vitality-sapping junk the body must struggle to contend with.
Condiments are substances used to enhance or modify flavors and tastes. That could include sugar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, vinegar, onions or anything else added to a dish to alter its flavor. In using the term today, we mean specifically pungent substances that are excitants, not whole foods that we’d eat liberally of for their own sake.
If we cut up bananas and then mix in some diced mango, the flavor enhancement is really stunning. Yet we would, not refer to the mango as a condiment. It is a food that we could make a meal of for its own sake. Likewise, tomatoes and nuts or avocado added to a vegetable salad really give the salad zest. Yet we do not usually call tomatoes, nuts or avocados condiments, for they are whole foods, any of which we can easily eat alone as a meal.
Thus condiments narrow down to those substances that are used exclusively and only to modify flavors. Vinegar, salt, pepper, basil, MSG, mint, sage, garlic and hundreds of other herbs and substances are used only as excitants to the taste buds.
There is one quality about all condiments that make them unfit for the human diet: they are all pathogenic. As excitants or stimulants they are inherently poisonous. The body has thousands of guardian angels. The fact that taste buds and other cells and senses of the mouth, esophagus and stomach are put into a frenzy by certain substances is a warning. Accelerated functions and senses make us more aware of flavors in the foods condiments are combined with, but the excitation is a guardian faculty broadcasting an alarm. If you were trying to eat salt, pepper or vinegar in and of itself, you wouldn’t get very far. They have no food value at all and, in fact, are indigestible! And that’s the key to the body’s objection to them. Body senses can detect the difference between foods and nonfoods. Foods are welcome and those items which the body cannot utilize for lack of enzymes to digest them or because of an outright anti-vital character, the body becomes excited or stimulated as a response. Unfortunately, humans have become so perverted as to seek this excitement as an end in itself. Many, if not most, people are seeking kicks.
Anything which the body treats as an anti-vital substance; anything which it cannot digest and use easily and efficiently; anything that presents problems by making chemical unions with body fluids and cells that excite and stimulate, are to be shunned. They all fulfill the definition of drugs which is another name of poisons. Discontinuance of them by habitues begets “withdrawal” symptoms just as occurs in deprived drug addicts.
Nature seasons foods natural to our palates with all the taste-satisfying nutrients we require. Flavors galore abound in them. Artificial seasonings do not really enhance their taste. Only a perverted palate seeks the kicks and “thrills” that are unnatural to our dietary.
Cooking creates diseases on several counts. The most salient are as follows:
The body cannot build really healthy cells and tissues with poor quality materials. That which must be cooked to be palatable is not worthy of the human diet. Cooking makes it less so! Shun cooked foods and guide your clients to raw foods. Living foods of our adaptation are the road to magnificent health, and anything less than the ideal results in development, growth and functions that are less than ideal.
Thus cooked foods as articles of diet are pathogenic in that they poison us on one count and result in deficiencies on yet another count.
Anything used as food that is not in its original natural state has been tampered with.
Processing is altering or preparing foods or both.
Refining means “making finer” or reduction to a purer state. Thus white flour is refined wheat. Though some chemical processes are used in making it white, essentially the process of refining of wheat flour is mechanically accomplished by milling. Refining sugar is the extraction of sugar from sugar cane or beets and, through cooking and chemical processes, obtaining sucrose.
Preserving involves treating foods so they will be usable for a much greater length of time than is normal in nature.
The processing of foods involves anything that alters foods (including steps that do not alter them significantly or nutritionally). While the shelling and vacuum packing of nuts is processing, these processes do not detract from the value of the nuts. On the other hand, cooking fruits and adding sugar, preservative chemicals such as salt, etc., and then sealing them in cans and jars are very destructive processes. Drying the same fruits alters the fruits so that they can be preserved but does not alter them so significantly that they’re, a liability in the human diet. Most processed foods in the marketplace are unsuitable in the human diet in the first place before any alteration, refining or preserving occurs. Examples of this are processed meats, refined cereals, pasteurized and homogenized milk, etc.
Canned foods have a shelf life of years and years. But they are not acceptable in the human diet even if they were good foods prior to canning. They might be acceptable only against the reality of eating them or starving to death. If canned foods only are eaten, death is rather quick and certain. That happened to many who were involved in the great Alaska gold rush, to those who were involved in the digging of the Panama Canal and to others in similar projects. This contrasts with excellent health that results from a diet of proper foods eaten in the raw state.
Freezing is a method of preserving foods. Frozen foods are not as wholesome as fresh foods. Their primary drawback is that the freezing bursts many cells and occasions degeneration due to oxidation. Freezing does not affect some foods at all, notably foods with low water content or very oily in texture. Dates, dried fruits, nuts and seeds may be frozen and kept fresher. Dried fruits, though not as wholesome as their fresh counterparts, are wholesome. Nuts and seeds are well-preserved by lack of moisture and air in their own shells. Vacuum packing and a nitrogen media do not harm many foods and preserve them with food values intact.
Some foods are coated with paraffin, oils, waxes and other preservatives. If these substances have not penetrated the protective skin or covering and can be readily removed, they are suitable for food if they meet other dietary criteria. Removal may be accomplished by a bath in a mild solution of hydrochloric acid, vinegar, chlorox or even very warm water in some cases. If the solution is warm it will be chemically more active and more readily unite with the oils, waxes or paraffins. Moreover, the warmer the solution the more likely waxes and paraffins are to liquify.
Processing, refining and preserving are done commercially to give foods longer shelf life, to change their structure so as to make them marketable, to make them more palatable, to enhance flavors or for a number of other reasons. However, refining renders foods deficient in one or more ways even if they were suitable items of diet to start with.
But the final insult is in “embalming” foods with preservatives to protect from spoilage, bacterial degeneration or oxidation. Preservatives are, one and all, poisonous. That is the character of a preservative. It must be an antibiotic, an antioxidant or have some quality to maintain appearances of wholesomeness. Needless to say, that which is poisonous to bacteria is likewise poisonous to human cells. That which is poisonous interferes with digestion as much as do deranged portions of cooked foods.
As a rule/steer away from all preserved foods and give preference to fresh ripe fruits with some vegetables, seeds and nuts.
Food processing is also done in the home, as well as commercially, for, as stated earlier, it comprises anything done to alter foods from their original form. Cooking, grinding, chopping cutting, peeling and blending are all at-home food-altering processes. Of these, however, cooking is by far the most destructive of foods’ nutritional value and is, therefore, the primary at-home process to avoid (or keep to a minimum). Even the other at-home processing should be limited to some extent. For example, you may serve juices sometimes but whole fruits (and vegetables) most of the time. Or you may prepare cut-up salads sometimes but, serve whole fruits or vegetables most of the time. A larger portion of the nutrients are left intact in whole foods as a rule. One notable exception to this, however, is sesame seeds. Because they are so tiny, they normally do not get thoroughly masticated, even by very conscientious eaters. Therefore, grinding them and using them immediately may be a beneficial at-home process. Food preparation will be studied in depth in a future lesson.
Any food that does not meet all the criteria heretofore cited is not a food of our natural adaptation. Foods of our adaptation meet our needs in every respect. Only fruits meet all our various needs.
Humans would not survive very long on a total meat diet. Shorter yet would be our lives if we ate a meat diet that had been cooked—well-done. We can survive two to three times as long on our fat reserves as we can upon an exclusive diet of meat. The body lives very poorly on a protein diet, being only about 30% efficient in converting proteins into fuels (carbohydrates), our primary need. This compares with about 90% to 95% efficiency in converting the sugars of fruits into energy.
Humans cannot live on condiments and seasonings, raw of cooked. Condiments are used for their poison content, not for their nutrient content. Nor are we physiologically equipped to live on milk or milk products, eggs, fish or other animal products. Also, we are not suited to handle a diet heavy in fats and proteins, even if they are consumed totally raw, something most unlikely in our society because it can abide unnatural foods only if denatured by cooking. We need fats and proteins only in small amounts. Larger amounts are a toxic burden, tax our digestive systems and use up too much vital energy.
Humans cannot live on herbs in the current frame of reference because they, like condiments, are toxic and do not possess food values for the most part. Vegetables or plant fare as leaves, stalks, stems, grasses, etc. cannot comprise the mainstay of the human dietary because we cannot obtain our caloric needs from these types of foods. Few vegetables appeal to the palate as such anyway. Some vegetables, notably lettuce, are prized because of their relative sweetness and texture. Chlorophyll is normally bitter and we’re turned off by bitter substances. Our natural foods appeal to our senses, and none appeal to our senses as do fruits, a sure indication that fruits are our natural preference because of natural adaptation. In the cooked state, vegetables appeal more because of the conversion of their starches to dextrin, a form of sugar.
A diet consisting almost entirely of oily foods is not suited to our needs. We can utilize a small amount of oil with benefit. This need can be met incidental to primarily carbohydrate fare. Oily foods are handled very slowly. (Digestion usually takes four to six hours.)
While oils are highly concentrated sources of calories, the body cannot make use of them with the facility it utilizes monosaccharides. Those who eat heavily of nuts and oily fruits exhibit problems and are not as healthy and vigorous as those on primarily carbohydrate fare.
There are groups of people who practically exist on coconuts. But they are eaten at a stage when the oils have not been formed to any extent. The coconuts are still primarily carbohydrates.
Starches also comprise an incidental part of our diet. We cannot survive on an exclusive diet of raw starches. First, we have a very limited capacity to digest raw starches. In light of this capacity, we cannot meet our needs for fuels and other nutrients on a raw starch diet. Secondly, most starches are contained in microglobules of cellulose that neither chewing nor digestion will break down. Hence we are not naturally equipped to eat raw starches as are birds with craws or animals that have a plethora of starch-splitting enzymes.
Our ability to utilize grains, tubers and other starchy foods relies upon the agency of cooking. However, some of these foods, notably the turnip, rutabaga, sweet potato, carrot and others, can be utilized raw only because of their sugar content. The traditional potato is entirely unsuitable, being repulsive to normal tastes when raw. Raw grains are repulsive to normal tastes for the same reason—we reject starch foods naturally with our natural equipment that evaluates foods beneath a conscious level. We can force ourselves to eat these foods and even pervert ourselves to the point we value them just as we value condiments and drugs. But this is contrary to our nature, not in accord with it.
Humans cannot utilize milk in its raw or cooked state. Raw we do not have the enzymes (rennin which ceases to be secreted in humans at about age three, the proper weaning age) to break down casein with which milk proteins, calcium and other nutrients are bound. At about the same age we lose the ability to secrete lactase, an enzyme that reduces lactose, the milk sugar, to monosaccharides. Therefore, most of our people are said to be “lactose intolerant.” We cannot utilize fermented milk products because lactic acid and putrefaction by-products are toxic to humans just as they are to the bacteria that excreted fermentation by-products as bacterial defecation. There are very few products of bacterial activity that we can use. (Vitamin B-12 is a notable exception.)
Humans cannot live well on exclusive vegetarian fare even if it includes fruits referred to as vegetables (such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, squashes, pumpkins, etc.). Foods that must be cooked are third- and fourth-rate foods and should form no part of the dietary. Only the stark reality of being deprived for inordinately long periods of proper foods should force us to eat foods that are less than ideal in the diet.
Seeking out wholesome organic foods free of unnatural fertilization and pesticides is most laudable. But it is relatively meaningless and ineffective if a person then proceeds to take organic foods and cook them. Much of the advantage is wiped out. Organically grown foods are always superior to their nonorganic counterparts undergoing the same amount of processing, cooking, etc. But it is preferable healthwise to eat conventional produce uncooked than organic produce in a cooked state.
Many health seekers believe food supplements are necessary because we have deficient soils. We do have truly deficient soils, as they would not produce foods that require the minerals in which they’re deficient. We have many soils, even in their virgin state, that are deficient in something or other that makes them unsuitable for certain plants or trees. We have many soils that have lost the capability of growing corn, potatoes, wheat and other staples but which will still grow grasses and legumes. These soils can be built up very quickly if certain minerals are judiciously added (using organic methods). The deficient soil/deficient food complex is fostered among health seekers by fractionated food purveyors who are peddling a synthetic manufactured supplement or so-called natural supplements, both of which are far inferior to whole foods. Supplements can in no way make good any partial deficiency that may exist. The synthetic supplements are not usable in any circumstances, and the body treats them as drugs. It is the stimulus of drug effects that we mistake for health effects. We mistake the energy an exhausted horse shows under the whip as beneficient when, in fact, it is pathogenic. Even if part of the supplements are obtained from organic sources (as a fraction of a given supplement, say 5 to 10% only) so they can be represented as natural, they are still worthless. They’re also worthless if extracted entirely from organic sources. The body uses nutrients in context with other nutrients as a team. The shameful reality is that these supplements are obtained, as a rule, from the same products grown on the same “deficient” soils about which they warn us.
Health seekers often buy waste products that are sold as health products. An example of this is the beer manufacturers’ waste product—brewers yeast. Another example is the waste product of sugar manufacturers—molasses, which is a totally unusable and harmful product. Some health seekers buy or have bought the wastes of other manufacturers, too, especially the wastes of cheese manufacturers and meat processors. Whey, liver, gelatin and other wastes are thought to be healthful when, in reality, they are worse than worthless.
Many health seekers also buy minerals from unusuable sources. Many drink sea water, eat sea salt, drink hard mineralized waters, eat molasses, dolomite and/or take mineral supplements. All these contain inorganic minerals which are not only not usable by the body but which harm it grievously. In seeking health, many people fall victim to pathogenic practices foisted upon them in the name of health.
Many health seekers are likely to (or do) fall victim to alternate schemes of drugging. They are often persuaded to take a multitude of herbs and toxic plants because they are supposed to cure or prevent disease. Molasses and other waste products are also touted as medications. However, the truth is that health is built only by healthful practices. Diseases do not have to be prevented for the body will not initiate and conduct diseases unless the need exists. If everyone discontinued those practices that pollute their bodies, there would be no occasion for disease. In any event, so-called medication can never help and will only cause further harm to the body.
Among the many pernicious plants and herbs touted as healthful because of their toxin content, not their food content, are onions, garlic, comfrey, aloe, cayenne peppers, mints and innumerable others. In seeking health, many concerned individuals end up further polluting their bodies, thus creating more disease.
Humans are not naturally drinking animals, for we have no natural equipment for that practice. Drinking is done artificially with the aid of tools. Our natural diet is usually water sufficient.
In addition, drinking as practiced today is almost totally pathogenic. Drinking pure (distilled) water is not pathogenic, but substances which occasion its drinking are usually pathogenic. (Sometimes, of course, extraordinary heat and/or vigorous activity lay the bases for drinking pure water.)
Most drinking is of poisoned drinks. Sugared and flavored drinks are toxic, as are coffees, cocoas, sodas, beers, wines, whiskeys, teas of all kinds, etc. Even fruit and vegetable juices are far less than ideal because they represent fragmented rather than whole foods.
Most drinking amounts to drug habits rather than acts supplying needed water. It bears reiterating that almost all drinking is pathogenic.
5.8.2 Supplementation and Special Foods
5.8.3 Herbs Used as Alternate Medications
5.8.5 The Bircher-Benner School
There are many schools of thought concerning the content of the human diet. We have viewed conventional eating which embraces the concept of the four basic food groups. Other schools are called macrobiotic, vegetarian, fruitarian, vegan and yet others. Let’s take a brief look at some of these one by one.
This school was founded by George Oshawa, a native of Japan. The emphasis is on a so-called perfect diet consisting mainly of cooked rice, along with some cooked vegetables. Such a heavy diet of cooked rice provides primarily fuel (carbohydrates), but carbohydrates from cooked foods also render the toxic by-products of heat degeneration. Very few fruits are included in this diet, and, while the macrobiotic diet is a great improvement over conventional diets on many counts, it is far from ideal.
Even a brief discussion of the macrobiotic diet would be incomplete without the mention of the concepts of yin and yang. These concepts represent many sets of qualities, such as acid & alkaline, sweet and salty, and hot and cold. Without going into the subject, suffice it to say that, in macrobiotics, determinations of wholesome foods are made based on this yin-yang concept.
This might well be called the megavitamin or megafeeding school. Even though the only way to render a deficient diet adequate is to eat a diet adequate in natural nutrient factors, this school goes beyond that.
They say that if it’s a good thing there is no such thing as too much. For example, the RDA for vitamin C may be 60 milligrams daily. People in this school, such as Dr. Linus Pauling, advocate up to 10,000 milligrams daily. If 4,000 international units of vitamin A are the RDA, the megavitamin people advocate 100,000 to 200,000 units daily.
However, the body cannot use more than it needs, and it must excrete that which is in excess of needs. But the massiveness of the dosages is just one aspect of the harm wreaked by the supplementation advocates. The synthetic products that dominate the market are treated as outright drugs by the body! Even if these supplements were extracted entirely from natural sources, they’d still be unusable. The body uses foods, not individual nutrients. It uses them synergistically as nature puts them up, not as extracted or laboratory synthesized and compounded in imitation of nature.
Some health seekers eat poisonous plants daily in the belief that they need “medicines” for health. Entrepreneurs harvest weeds from the wilds and from cultivated fields by the hundreds of tons for people who believe in “natural medicines.”
Herbs are not consumed for their nutrients and none could be consumed as foods in themselves. Death could result from an “overdose” if too much of any of these were eaten as a food. People have died on rather small amounts of some herbs.
There are about 25 million people in this country who eat only fruits and vegetables or who consume either what is known as an ovo- or a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. Vegetarians who eat no animal foods whatsoever are called vegans; lacto-vegetarians include dairy foods in their diet; ovo-vegetarians include eggs but not dairy products; and lacto-ovo vegetarians include both eggs and dairy foods in their diet.
Many, if not most, vegetarians are ethical vegetarians, but this is especially so with the vegans, as they refuse to cause suffering to animals. Vegetarians may eat lots of cooked foods, or they may consume an all-raw or almost all-raw diet. Many, if not most, vegetarians use herbs, especially if they are vegetarians for, or partly for, health reasons. Some vegans are Natural Hygienists. The common bond of vegans is non-exploitation of animals.
Vegetarians generally are healthier than the population at large, for, while many of their practices are not healthful, per se, they are less harmful than those of conventional eaters. Some vegetarians will eat just about any kind of non-animal food, even alcoholic beverages (really drugs and not foods) and junk foods (also more like drugs than foods in the system). These people are vegetarians, not for health reasons, but for moral reasons relating to the killing of animals. However, most people who are vegetarians are more health oriented than non-vegetarians.
This school is essentially a vegetarian school that is heavy on grains with some fruits.
The founder of this school, Arnold Ehret, reasoned that anything which results in mucus formation is unhealthy. This reasoning is correct, for anything that causes the system to secrete mucus is an indication that toxic or unwelcome materials are in the organism. Ehret thought that the foods themselves formed mucus, however, when, in fact, the organism creates the mucus in response to unwelcome foods.
Through trial and error Ehret discovered that a diet of non-oily fruits and some vegetables built high-level health and function and did not result in mucus formation. Thus he called his diet the mucusless diet.
Ebba Waerland of Sweden spent most of his life studying the touchstones of health. He was greatly influenced by the Bircher-Benner school and advanced their dietary philosophy to include more fresh raw vegetables and fruits. However, though he still advocated the use of various grains, he recommended they be prepared in a more conservative manner.
In many of his teachings Waerland added to the science of nutrition and health and paralleled the teachings of the Natural Hygienists. As a worldwide traveler and a deep student, he undoubtedly was well acquainted with the philosophy and practice of Natural Hygiene and added to his own system those features he liked. Especially did he advocate fasting as a course to follow during illness (and in good health!) as a health measure.
There are relatively few raw food fruitarians, but there is much interest in fruitarianism and sentiment for it. Humans are naturally frugivores and there is a sound basis for fruitarianism. But, except for the most ardent of fruitarians, most are likely to eat some nuts and vegetables. Many fruitarians are Natural Hygienists, though many Natural Hygienists are not fruitarians. The primary difference between the fruitarians and the fruit-eating Hygienists is that many fruitarians do not adhere to principles of compatible food combining. Raw food fruitarianism is a fast burgeoning element in our society though, as yet, their numbers are only in the thousands.
This dietary school embraces many divergent outlooks on dietary fare. All Hygienists advocate a mostly raw diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts, although some advocate the eating of cheese and raw egg yolks. Some Hygienists advocate “complex carbohydrates” as important items of fare. They feel that conservatively cooked rice, squashes, potatoes, yams and other starches are good in the diet if eaten in conjunction with hearty vegetable salads. Likewise, they are often heavy eaters of nuts and avocados if consumed in conjunction with a hearty salad of green leafy vegetables and some fruit fare popularly considered vegetables.
Hygienists originated and fostered the concepts and practices of food combining. Also, they advocate regimes in which diet comprises only a part. As a Life Scientist you’ll also call yourself a Natural Hygienist, for these are identical philosophies. But the dietary score has yet to be settled in practice although many Hygienists are idealistic raw fruitarians. It is our endeavor in this course to present data sufficient to settle this score for you. Even the least healthful Hygienic diet is such a great improvement over conventional diets that those who adopt it must improve their health. Almost no one is so far down the road of life that they cannot improve dramatically upon the adoption of the Hygienic regime, even if they adopt a less than ideal version of it.
As a health professional you must keep in mind that anything less than ideal begets less than ideal results. But, on the other hand, every improvement you inspire in your clients will result in corresponding improvement in well-being.
Like the herbal school which looks upon herbs as medicines, this school tries to employ foods as therapeutic tools. There are those who swear by the use of raw egg yolks; there are those who swear by blended salads, often with egg yolk. Many look upon fruits as cleansing foods. A multitude of foods are taken with the idea that they will prevent or “cure” diseases.
We must repeat that foods are raw materials which the organism acts upon. They have no actions of their own, much less cleansing and healing abilities.
This school advocates a diet heavy in or consisting primarily of juices extracted from fruits and vegetables. It was founded nearly a century ago, and Benedict Lust was one of its luminaries. Today N. W. Walker is perhaps its most articulate exponent.
Juices are fractionated foods subject to oxidative deterioration. Oxidation occurs quickly. For example, orange juice can lose up to 60% of its vitamin C within an hour after juicing. Iron is oxidized very quickly in all foods. This may be observed visually if an apple is broken open and exposed to air. Oxidation creates toxic byproducts. An example of this is cooking, which is a much accelerated process of oxidation as well as heat degeneration.
Juices are not whole foods. Many valuable nutrients are lost in the pulp. Further, those who “drink” their foods are often guilty of consuming inordinate amounts of it to secure satiety. While we can safely partake of several pounds of watermelon and like amounts of some juices, there are other juices that a few pounds of constitutes far too much food. Carrot juice drinkers are notorious over-eaters.
Nature did not furnish humans with juicers outside of those implicit in chewing.
There is a small school that believes that blended salads three times a day are beneficial in the human dietary. While blending involves the whole food, it still has the objection of oxidation and enzymic degeneration.
Blended foods are never as tasty as their whole counterparts, even if eaten immediately after blending because enzymes and oxygen degenerate foods and destroy their goodness so quickly.
As you can see, there are many different schools of thought on diet and nutrition. The macrobiotic school is based on the concept of yin and yang and is rooted in Oriental tradition; vegetarian diets are based either on the ethics of killing animals or on the unhealthfulness of meat (and, for some vegetarians, dairy foods and/or eggs) or both; the mucusless diet is determined by which foods do and don’t result in mucus formation by the body; and the herbalists and “foods as medicines” schools base their diets on the supposed curative properties of foods.
However, the only diet that is totally based on sound physiological principles, that is based on science and not on tradition, is the Natural Hygienic diet, which is the same as the Life Science diet. Some Hygienists are fruitarians, most are vegans and all are vegetarians. Oftentimes individuals adopt and popularize diets that reflect their own individual ideas and experiences with diet, and the best of these diets have some commonalities with the Hygienic diet.
The diet of the Natural Hygienists is the only one that is particularly concerned with food combining, and this aspect of the diet is not only unique, but it is based on physiological principles.
5.9.1 The Chemical Character of Digestion and the Rules It Decrees
5.9.2 Differing Digestive Times Dictate Selectivity in Food Combinations
One of the cardinal principles around which Natural Hygiene/Life Science is built in dietary practices is that of food combining when more than one food is eaten at a meal. Humans are capable of digesting with great ease a single food of their adaptation. However, when more than one food is consumed at a meal, the foods thus combined must be compatible in their digestive chemistry.
If the digestion of a meal’s various items requires differing digestive tasks, digestion will suffer. Digestion may be retarded and vitiated whether or not we are aware of it, whether we suffer the discomforts of indigestion or fail to feel them. Indigestion may be suffered beneath the level of awareness for decades before its debilitating effects show up as diseases and symptoms. On the other hand, the sufferer may be keenly aware of distresses resulting from indigestion on practically a meal-to-meal basis.
The ill effects of wrong eating and improper food combining are commonly treated with a raft of drugs, primarily antacid drugs such as Turns, Rolaids, bicarbonate of soda, poisonous aluminium preparations, Milk of Magnesia and so on.
Further along in this course a complete lesson is devoted to food combining. The physiology of digestion recognizes that different foods present dissimilar digestive tasks. For instance, protein foods require an acid medium for digestion. Pepsin, the protein digestive enzyme, requires an acid gastric secretion, more specifically hydrochloric acid. Starchy foods, on the other hand, require an alkaline medium to enable the enzymes of salivary amylase (ptyalin) to perform their digestive task. Below a pH of 4.0, starch digestion is totally suspended. Pepsin will not break down proteins at a pH higher than 3.0. Thus starchy foods and protein foods are incompatible in digestive chemistry. From this physiological fact of life emerges this feeding rule: Do not eat a protein food and a starchy food at the same meal.
There are many foods that do not combine with others. It is the practice of many to eat oils and sugars together. Sugars undergo no digestion in the stomach and melons and sweet fruits may stay in the stomach as little as ten minutes or remain for as long as thirty to forty minutes. They are expelled rather quickly and absorbed very quickly from the small intestine. Oils remain in the stomach for several hours for processing before being forwarded to the small intestine for further elaboration. If eaten with fruits they hold up the sugars and fermentation is very likely to occur, thus vitiating the meal.
Even different fruits have differing digestive tasks. The body readily digests acid fruits and it also readily digests sweet fruits. But acids must first be changed and become alkaline before absorption can occur. This involves some delay in the stomach. Any delay in the stomach of a sweet fruit may dispose to fermentation. Thus, again, combining foods improperly may vitiate digestion and contribute to physiological problems, immediately and down the road, if unhealthful physiological practices continue.
Sweet fruits have their own digestive characteristics. Watermelon is perhaps the fastest digested of sweet fruits. Other melons are passed through the stomach quickly, too. But bananas, grapes and apples may remain in the stomach for two or three times as long. Hence, if bananas, apples or grapes are eaten with melon, fermentation and upset stomach may result.
Humans are adapted to a narrow spectrum of the world’s foods, just as are most other animals. Our anatomy and physiology are highly specialized to handle efficiently the fruit foods of the earth. We have developed limited capacities to digest oils, proteins and starches. But under no circumstances are we primarily protein-eaters, starch-eaters or oil-eaters.
Inasmuch as some 85% to 90% of our diet by dry weight is for the purpose of fueling our body, it behooves us to eat primarily foods that most efficiently furnish our fuel requirements. Inasmuch as foods of our natural adaptation furnish this ratio of fuel values relative to other necessary nutrient factors within their context, we can most healthfully devote ourselves to a raw fruitarian regime.
Many, including a great number of Hygienists, will object to the all-fruit diet and cite supposed dangers that fruits are inadequate in the needs of life, especially proteins, essential fatty acids, mineral salts and vitamins. Thus they advocate green leaves and other vegetables, seeds and nuts and even cheese. They condemn “the more is better school,” yet tend to side with them in practice.
Close scrutiny of our physiological character decrees that we eat sparingly of nonfruit foods. It is erroneous to assume that the fruit diet is deficient in the needs of life, as will be demonstrated in other lessons.
The body supposedly uses eleven calories per day per pound of weight for metabolic purposes only! Hunza men who have superb physiques and perform labor that would exhaust our best on a daily basis have a total intake of only about 1,900 calories per day, about 12 calories per pound of weight! There must be some terribly wrong calculations here or else the needs of healthy individuals for fuel values is far below our diseased average.
In Vilcabamba, caloric intake is lower yet, being only about eight to ten calories per pound of weight per day. The average caloric intake there is about 1,350 calories per day. The Peruvians of Vilcabamba work hard in their gardens and fields, as do the Hunzas.
The work these two groups of people do would require, according to our nutritionists, from 3,500 to 7,000 calories a day! Something is amiss! In dealing with your clients, you’ll keep these facts in mind. The less feeding, down to a point, the more efficient the body is. This is even true if you’re feeding highly efficient fruits rather than very inefficient meats and other high protein/fat foods that dominate in our American diets. Keep in mind that our high-powered dairy, poultry, cereal and meat industries have a heavy bias in having our populace consume as much of their products as possible. Perhaps they have influenced the RDAs so that people are pushed to overeat on their products.
What are our real protein needs and how can we possibly get these from fruits? Fruits aren’t protein foods.
Tests conducted by Professor Chittenden of Yale and others indicate that an average man requires about 25 grams of protein daily. There are people in some South Pacific Islands and elsewhere that live primarily on starch foods, especially cassavas. Their diet is low in protein—only about 15 grams daily. Yet these people are reported to be in excellent health. The body has the capability to recycle most of its protein wastes. Cassava, the main starch food eaten by these South Pacific people, has only about 1/5th of 1% protein, about one sixth of that of bananas. Moreover, these people cook their cassava. They are said to eat six to ten pounds of this food daily.
Our real protein needs are about 25 grams daily. The average fruit contains 1% protein. We should eat 2,500 grams of fruits daily, about five and a half pounds with water content. For an average man, this is not a tremendous amount of food. The average American consumes about seven pounds of food daily and ingests 94 grams of protein. Moreover, this diet is so heavy in fat that about 44% of America’s caloric intake is derived from that source.
True, fruits aren’t protein foods. But neither are we protein eaters as are carnivores. But look at those who do eat protein foods such as meats, cheese, etc. They are a diseased lot. In fact, most Americans are sick and the fact that they daily take in about four times their protein requirements is a contributing factor.
Fruits, we repeat, furnish us amply with our protein needs in an easily used form. This is particularly true if you include avocados and/or nuts, both of which are technically fruits.
You’ve never had one good word to say about drugs. In fact, you’ve knocked them so much and carried the definition so far as to make almost everyone a drug addict of one kind or another. If they were so harmful, surely we’d all be long since dead.
Humans are a hardy lot. They represent an aggregation of some hundred trillion cells with thousands of guardian angels. The impulse to life is great. We have a tremendous capacity for eliminating poisons. Despite this, most of us are diseased. How many assaults of food poisoning from condiments and cooked foods can we withstand? Most Americans have 50,000 to 70,000 bouts of leucocytosis before they die from it in the form of some degenerative disease, usually cancer or cardiovascular problems. We cut our life potential in half. If drugs had any value in the organism they would be foods, not drugs. Drugs are one and all poisonous regardless of their source. Almost every American is hooked on drugs of some kind.
Is there a science of correct feeding? It seems that the term nutrition covers much more than correct feeding.
There are two technical words that have to do with feeding, whereas nutrition covers all processes of supply and elimination and everything that effects those processes. Orthotrophy means correct feeding. Ortho means correct and trophy means to feed. Aristophagy means best eating. In the sense that correct feeding is the best eating, both words mean the same.
Don’t certain types of foods help you get well? Juices and fruits help you clean out. Garlic is well known to help high blood pressure cases. Aloes helps heal wounds and ulcers.
Can you imagine a fruit or a fruit juice with an inborn intelligence and will such that, when consumed, instead of being digested, it goes into the blood stream and promptly starts rounding up toxic materials and putting them out of the body? Let’s emphasize again and again that foods do not act in the body, that all the action is from the organism. Chemical actions may occur from chemicals in ingesta, yes, but any actions other than body actions are toxic actions.
However, fruits and juices are so easily digested and used and introduce so little food debris into our bodies that they do leave the body with extra energy to perform its duties. When freed of the burdens eliminating toxins from polluting foods and digesting unsuitable foods, the body devotes itself to extraordinary cleansing with the extra energies available.
Garlic does not help high blood pressure. In the presence of allicin and mustard oil, two of the toxic substances in garlic, the organism dilates its blood vessels to more quickly circulate blood and expel these toxins. The heart beats faster and leucocytosis occurs, sure signs of the toxicity of allicin and mustard oil. These substances freely permeate all body cells and tissues. They are not digested and used but excreted through the kidneys, bowels, skin and lungs.
After expulsion the blood pressure will be just as high as before if the same regime that caused it remains in effect. The garlic has helped nothing. Rather, it has complicated an already diseased situation. The drug effects of garlic are mistaken for beneficial effects. The problem is not solved by garlic, and high blood pressure is not the problem. Rather, it is but a symptom of the problem. The problem remained even though the symptom was lessened or suppressed.
Aloes applied to ulcers and wounds do not heal them. The toxic material in aloes, aloin, is absorbed by the body when applied to the skin and to open sores (which the body uses as an ejection site for toxic wastes and ingesta). When the poisons begin coming in from the outside the body closes the wound promptly, shutting down eliminative operations at the site. While the poisonous aloes have been the occasion for the body closing the wound, they have not healed the wound but were a source of a poisonous alkaloid. The body does the healing.
I read recently that an 80-pound chimpanzee was so strong that two handlers could not subdue it: Are they so strong? What kind of super foods do they eat?
Chimpanzees in nature have the strength to do acrobatic feats and handle their weight with such ease and facility as to put humans to shame. A four hundred-pound gorilla has about thirty times the strength of a 180 pound man. This attests not so much to the strength of these animals as to the degeneration and weakness of humans. In nature we were equally strong. We can achieve this strength again if we adopt our natural diet and practices akin to those that we developed in our natural habitat.
A substantial part of the diets of chimpanzees and gorillas consists of fruits. This is fruit-power for you.
Will an all-fruit diet cause nervous breakdowns and nervous problems as I’ve so often heard?
You will find no evidence of this among fruitarian societies or among fruitarian animals. Diets that are sufficient in the raw materials we require are the basis of health. They cause neither health nor ill health. Nervous breakdowns can come from nutrient inadequacy and from stressful situations, especially those that constantly drain the organism of nervous energy. In this society, millions have nervous breakdowns. We have only a few thousand fruitarians and they are faring well rather than poorly.
What is wrong with eating starchy foods? Doesn’t cooking change the starch to usable sugars?
We actually use very little of the starch components in starchy foods, as most of the starch is not penetrated by our digestive amylases and thus is not broken down. The starch that is available cannot be digested to a great extent by humans because they quickly exhaust their limited supply of salivary amylase or ptyalin. Thus we fail as starch eaters.
Cooked starches are dextrinized, and more of the fuel values are available to us, yet, on the other hand, much of the food components are degenerated by heat and are, therefore, toxic in the system.
We’re not meat eaters, then why do we secrete hydrochloric acid and pepsin?
Proteins from whatever source (meat or nuts, for example) require the enzyme pepsin and an acid medium in which to be digested. We need only small amounts of protein and we digest it with an efficiency ratio of only about one to two. Animals that live on protein diets have hydrochloric acid solutions so strong that unchewed flesh is readily digested. A tiger’s stomach secretes a hydrochloric acid solution some 1,100% more concentrated than that in humans. Again, proteins form but a small part of the diet of humans in nature, whereas tigers eat heavily of proteins in the meat, bone and offal of their prey.
How do you, as a fruitarian, manage to control your hunger? Fruit meals leave me mostly unsatisfied. Further, I feel empty and ravenously hungry within an hour or two after eating fruits. I have to eat five or six times a day if I’m on fruits just to keep my hunger under control. If I eat some nuts or an avocado right after my fruits I feel satisfied, though.
I’ve eaten a diet of 80% to 90% fruit for many years now. I rarely eat my first meal of the day before noon and I rarely eat more than two fruit meals in a day. Further, I eat about three or four meals weekly with some avocado or perhaps nuts and a hearty salad. I find my desire for vegetables and nuts waning and my desire for fruits increasing with the years. I feel very comfortable after fruit meals whereas sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable after vegetable meals. I sleep more and feel more sluggish when I’ve had a nut and vegetable meal. I don’t feel as alive, alert and zippy on mornings after vegetable and nut or avocado meals.
On occasion I have eaten a salad and nut meal at noon. As a result I usually missed the evening meal because even the best foods repulsed me—I had no hunger. It’s as if my body closed down digestive operations. That is how “satisfying” vegetables and nuts are to me.
The fact that most people mistake irritation and vital symptoms of recovery for hunger does not mean hunger exists. An emptiness in the stomach means that the food has been passed from it. That is not hunger. Hunger is felt in the mouth and throat just as thirst is. It is not unpleasant and it urges us to eat just as thirst urges us to drink.
What we commonly mistake for hunger that drives us to eat are pathological symptoms not unlike the “withdrawal” symptoms of tobacco, coffee, alcohol, condiments and other drug addictions that drive us to go back for another fix. When the body is without its fix for a while, it begins clean-up operations. These usually involve unpleasant symptoms that drive us to get another fix. Another fix engages the body in activities that depress vital functions, especially eliminative functions. Thus we are satisfied for a while, in fact, quite a while in the case of foods that are not of our adaptation.
The fact that fruits are so easily digested and used permits the body to quickly reassert its vitality and devote itself to the cleansing and eliminative processes. The symptoms are not pleasant as the body restores itself from the effects of a previously unsuitable diet. We thus try to smother those symptoms with another meal. Those symptoms do not constitute hunger. Eating suppresses them in the same way that a cup of coffee suppresses the hangover of previous coffee-drinking.
As a mostly fruitarian I rarely experience any demand for food before noon and I’m satisfied until the evening meal. Sometimes I miss the noon or evening meal and I’m not particularly uncomfortable from the lack of food. I think most of this so-called hunger is psychological and pathological in nature.
You have said that the Vilcabambians of Peru get along well at hard labor on 1,300 to 1,400 calories daily. It’s well known that hard working men need 3,000 calories and more a day. How can that few calories support vigorous work which these people are supposed to do?
Let us think about this. The world’s healthiest and longest lived people eat a primarily carbohydrate diet. They eat very little protein foods in the form of legumes and very little oily foods in the form of legumes and nuts—in fact they consume almost no oily foods. Contrast this with Americans, especially laboring men, who take in 40% or more of their calories as fats and oils and a substantial part of the remainder in protein foods, especially meats, eggs and cheeses. Obviously the human organism isn’t very efficient in dealing with these foods, as the studies indicate.
Further, we must recognize that the average American is a walking pathological museum, requiring far more energy just to deal with the pathology than healthy people. Further, impaired organisms do not operate efficiently, whereas healthy people operate efficiently and make full use of their foods.
How can you build muscle on a total fruit diet?
The average man uses about 75 grams of protein daily. Of this he needs only about 25 grams from the diet. The remaining 50 grams is obtained by recycling wastes. Fruit amply furnishes the 25 grams needed from outside sources daily. The healthier an organism becomes, the better use it can make of its nutrient supply. It is a myth and a delusion that we need more protein than normal to build muscles. It’s like saying that we need more bricks to build a house than the plans call for. Once the structure has been built, replacement and additional bricks are needed but little.
How can we get vitamin B-12 from fruits? Vegetarians are warned about the lack of vitamin B-12 in vegetables and certainly fruits have none of this vitamin.
There’s no vitamin B-12 in grass either, yet cattle have plenty of vitamin B-12. Almost no food in nature has vitamin B-12 in it.
We get our vitamin B-12 needs the same as other creatures in nature. We were not cheated in this regard. We do not have to eat animal products as the meat and dairy industries urge us to do. The bacteria of our intestines create vitamin B-12 which we absorb just as with other animals.
Almost all cases of anemia and B-12 deficiency occur in meat-eaters, not in vegetarians, which, if it happens, is given publicity like you wouldn’t believe.
Shouldn’t we eat locally-grown fruits for best nutrition? Animals in nature must live on locally-grown fruits and, as you have said, they’re very healthy.
Here in Texas that would be great advice and we can do it. Our forefathers did that to a great extent on self-sufficient farms. But, as fruitarians, this is not presently possible. We must get our fruits from subtropical sources during the winter season. Of course we can develop and preserve our fruits, especially by drying and secondarily by freezing.
But fruits do not necessarily make us less healthy if they have been grown in other areas. Tropical bananas properly grown furnish no less nutritive benefits if eaten 2,000 miles away from their growing area as if consumed in that area. Nutritive adequacy is the need. Local produce may and may not be nutritively adequate. A good mix of foods from various soils is more likely to give us adequacy.
Aren’t whole wheat products good to eat? The first Hygienists advocated whole wheat bread and other products. Graham advocated it so strongly that whole wheat flour came to be known as Graham flour. Why has that changed with Life Science?
By the end of the nineteenth century Hygienists had already begun to reject wheat as an unwholesome food no matter how eaten. Dr. Densmore and others began advocating an all-fruit diet with some nuts. Humans can’t eat wheat raw and, even if cooked, the gluten protein component is almost wholly indigestible.
According to an ancient tradition, when man first appeared he lived in a beautiful orchard in which grew fruits of many kinds and all of which were pleasing to the eye and good for food. For an undetermined length of time he lived in this beautiful area of the earth and satisfied his physiological needs by trees.
According to this tradition, he was expelled from the garden and condemned to live upon the green herbs of the field. The indications of this story would seem to be that herbs are a second choice as articles of diet for man. It is common to scoff at this ancient tradition and label it a fairy tale, but it may possess more truth than poetry.
The noted anthropologist Edward B. Taylor, in Vol. I of his Primitive Culture, stresses a very important psychological fact in relation to traditions, legends, myths and folklore. Questioning the popular belief that man is possessed of a boundless power of creative imagination, he says, “The superficial student, mazed in a crowd of seemingly wild and lawless fancies, which he thinks to have no reason in nature or pattern in the material world, at first concludes them to be new births from the imagination of the poet, the storyteller and the seer.” Then he points out that a more detailed study of such things reveals that there is a cause for each fancy, an education that has led to the train of thought, a store of inherited materials from out of which the fancies and thoughts of poet, seer, storyteller, etc., has taken shape. This is to say, the human mind works with the materials it has on hand and does not create something out of nothing.
In this same vein, the author of the article on the myths of Sumer in the Larousse Encyclopedia of World Mythology says, “Sumerian mythology drew its material from the permanent principles of Sumerian culture. ...The myth and the form it adopted were a function of the society from which it stemmed. It told of creation in terms of human experience. Its very elements were those at the basis of Sumerian society. ...”
This statement, that the myths of a people mirror the ways of life of the people, if applied to all mythologies, should prove fruitful in their interpretation. It should not be assumed that a people gather their myths and traditions from thin air or that they are purely imaginative creations.
If we can accept as valid the principle that the traditions, legends, myths and folklore of a people are reminiscences of past experiences, that they mirror for us actual conditions through which the people have passed, we are practically forced to accept the ancient and well-nigh universal tradition of paradise as a report, blurred, no doubt, by the passage of time, of a period when the human race resided in some favorable locality and lived upon the “fruits of the trees of the garden.” A tradition that antedates the beginning of recorded history and that is possessed by almost all people cannot be lightly cast aside as a figment of the imagination of a poet or of some designing priest-craft.
It is impossible to account for the origin, persistence and widespread existence of a tradition that early man was a frugivore on the basis of the hypothesis now so widely held by anthropologists, that early man was a carnivore and offal eater. Such a being should have left us traditions of swarms of locusts, ponds filled with fish, happy hunting grounds and other rich repositories of their favorite sources of animal foods, with occasional mention of dead elephants or sick horses around which they gathered and feasted. Not fruits, but brutes, not figs, but pigs should be featured in the myths and legends of a carnivore.
It may be objected that tradition and legend constitute a flimsy base upon which to erect a philosophy of human diet. A more scientific basis may be demanded. To this I reply that none of the many scientific bases for correct human dietary practices that have thus far been offered possess as much validity as the paradise tradition. The paradise tradition possesses the virtue of being in conformity with the evident dietetic character of man as revealed by comparative anatomy and physiology. It also agrees in principle with the basic eating practices of man throughout history. Man’s diet throughout the historic period in all favorable regions of the earth has been predominantly fruitarian.
Many efforts have been made by men and women in the present century to live upon a diet composed exclusively of the fruits of the trees. These efforts have not been without success, but they have rarely been completely successful. From South Africa comes the news—the Pretoria News, February 22, 1971—that some research has been done into the effects of an all-fruit diet. Under the headline “Fruit diet worked well,” the News summarized the findings of the researchers in the following words: “A team of research workers have come to the conclusion that pure fruit diets now receiving wide publicity cause weight to level off more or less at the ‘theoretically ideal’ weight for the subject, according to an article in the latest issue of the South African Medical Journal.”
The item does not indicate the time through which the experiment was carried out but does state that the diet consisted of fruit juices, fruits and nuts. It says “a considerable number of the subjects claimed their physical condition improved while they were on the diet. Some were convinced that their stamina increased and that their ability to undertake strenuous physical tasks and to compete in sports improved.”
No doubt, in view of the known nutritive values possessed by tree fruits and nuts, which are also fruits, it is entirely possible to be well and adequately nourished upon such a diet, providing only that one has a sufficient and varied supply of fruits and nuts. If one lives in a climate where the fruit and nut supply is abundant throughout the year, he should have no difficulty in providing himself with adequate nourishment without eating vegetables and without taking animal foods of any kind. Man’s expulsion from his primitive paradise was probably due to climatic change that reduced his fruit supply and necessitated his constant search for means of survival.
Commenting upon the African experiment, in the July 1971 issue of Health For All (London), Dr. Harry Clements says “It is true that such a diet would be possible in a subtropical climate with its abundance of fruits and nuts, but it would not be so easy in a climate like we have in this country, to maintain an all-the-year-round complete fruit diet on indigenous fruits. Of course, we should bear in mind that a limit is set on food by the use we make of it. There is no doubt that the kind and amount of fruit grown in this country could be vastly increased if we saw the need for it and regarded it as an important part of our diet rather than merely as a trimming to a meal. On the other hand, no climate is better adapted than ours for the growth of vegetables and salads which can play so important a part in proper nutrition.”
Dr. Clements further says: “It is interesting to recall that in the latter part of the last century a Natural Food Society existed in this country, its object being stated as follows: ‘The Natural Food Society is founded in the belief that the food of primeval man consisted of fruit and nuts of subtropical climes, spontaneously produced; that on these foods man was (and may again become) at least as free from disease as the animals are in a state of nature.’ The main contention of this Society was that the starchy foods, especially those made from cereals are ‘unnatural and disease-inducing foods and the chief cause of the nervous prostration and broken-down health that abound on all sides.’ ”
The Natural Food Society to which Dr. Clements refers was organized and spearheaded by Dr. Emmet Densmore and his wife, Helen. This society not only promoted fruitarianism but also propagated Dr. Densmore’s no-starch dietary. Dr. and Mrs. Densmore edited and published a magazine devoted to fruitarianism and general Hygienic work. Densmore found that the fruit supply in England was not adequate to meet the nutritive needs of man throughout the whole of the year. After some experimentation, he suggested supplementing the fruit diet with milk and cheese. He even went so far as to endorse the Salisbury meat diet. Because of his frequent shifts of opinion about diet, he gained the reputation of being eccentric. When he returned to America he practically retired from active work in this field. When Mr. Carrington was preparing his work, Vitality, Fasting and Nutrition, he attempted to engage Dr. Densmore in correspondence about fasting and feeding, but Densmore declined to lend his services to furthering this work.
Dr. Clements recalls as interesting the fact that in America Dr. John Harvey Kellogg maintained that fruits, with the addition of nuts (which, I should point out, are also fruits), constitute an adequate diet that will sustain human life for its normal lifespan. He mentions what he calls the therapeutic use of fruit by Dr. Tilden and by Kellogg. Dr. Kellogg, Cajori and Ragnar Berg demonstrated experimentally the biological adequacy of the proteins of nuts. With the exception of the hickory nut, they all contain an adequacy of amino acids to support growth and reproduction.
In the halcyon days before World War I, a professor in a German university, after much thought and study, concluded that the coconut tree is the tree of life, mentioned in the paradise tradition. Professor Englehart (I have forgotten his first name) lectured and wrote on the subject and finally took a group of German men, women and children to a German possession in the South Sea Islands, where they expected to live exclusively upon a diet of coconuts. According to his accounts, the experiment was proving very satisfactory. He wrote very glowingly upon the success of the coconut diet. Dr. Benedict Lust published an English translation of Professor Englehart’s book under the title, Cocovarianism. The experiment was brought to an abrupt end by World War I. Professor Englehart and his group of cocovarians were all pacifists and Dr. Lust told me that when the War broke out the Kaiser’s government had them all shot. In a world dedicated to war, it is dangerous to be opposed to war.
I do not think that there has been a single period of five-minute duration during my lifetime of seventy-six years that there has not been fighting somewhere in the world. There have been five or six major wars in the world during my lifetime and brush fires innumerable. There may be some connection between man’s choice of war as a way of life and his choice of flesh as a diet. In spite of his constant fighting, all the evidence points to the conclusion that man was originally a peaceable being. European man conquered America with considerable ease due to the fact that the original inhabitants of these western continents were, for the most part, peaceable peoples who had not learned the arts of war. Many of the tribes refused to fight, even in self-defense, but permitted themselves to be annihilated and driven westward rather than learn the arts of war. Many so-called primitive people, and not merely those in America, have retained their original peaceable character. War is as foreign to man’s original way of life as flesh-eating.
Someday, after we have abolished social systems that breed war, it may be possible for students of the subject to determine whether or not man learned war at the same time he learned to kill and eat animals. The two practices have much in common, although we do find some flesh-eating tribes, such as the Eskimo, who have remained peaceable. Certainly the fruit diet, with its cultivation of fruit, is incompatible with human slaughter.
It is doubtful that the fruit diet can ever be entirely satisfactory in those regions of the earth where long and severe winters prevail. Man must, it seems probable, continue to rely heavily upon herbs and perhaps grains and legumes for a part of his diet. This is not to say that fruits and nuts are not suitable for a cold climate, but that the supply of these foods in cold climates is not sufficiently abundant throughout the whole of the year, and, except for nuts, cannot be stored and kept in adequate quantities to meet the needs of a large population through the winter months. There is no food factor in vegetable and animal products that is not also available in fruits. Cold climates are simply unsuitable to the cultivation of fruits. Some nuts do thrive well in climates that are cold much of the year. Although a nut diet has been advocated, it is doubtful if such a diet would be ideal. The paradise diet would seem to be an ideal one for a paradisiacal climate.
Nutrition is the cardinal function of organic evolution and growth. It is the sum of all processes by which raw materials (foodstuffs) are transformed into living structure and prepared for use by the body. It is the appropriation of nutritive material by the plant or animal and its transformation into cell substance and structural units. It is the means by which food is transformed, in the case of plants, into sap, pulp, woody fiber, leaf, flower, fruit and seed, and, in the case of animals, into blood, muscle, bone, nerve and gland.
It is the process by which living organisms develop, grow, repair and maintain themselves, wounds and broken bones are healed, functions are carried on, and reproduction accomplished. It is the process of converting food into cell substance. This occurs in living organisms and nowhere else, and in the case of man, vegetable substances are transformed into human tissues.
Organic existence is perpetual creation (or evolution, if you prefer) and renewal. There is no resting, only continuous activity. Nutrition is the grand process by which creation and renewal are accomplished. Though we can observe the results, we know little of the process.
Let us think of an egg composed of material previously prepared by the nutritive processes of the hen out of which a new bird is to be made: Nutrition is the process by which the simple homogeneous material of the egg is transformed into the complex heterogeneous structures of the bird. But a microscopic speck of the egg, the germ, is alive. It is this germ that begins the work of nutrition by which it grows and becomes two cells, by which the process of cell division is continued and, finally, differentiation, organization and integration are accomplished.
In the seed of the plant a similar process takes place. The germ of the seed is microscopic in size, the remainder of the seed being prepared food. Utilizing the stored food, the plant germ evolves into the complex structure of a young plant. Thus, in the plant as in the animal, nutrition is the process of converting food into cells and organs.
Nutrition is a highly complex process carried on by all living organisms from the smallest, simplest one-celled organism to the most complex organism in nature: man. Food is not nutrition, but the chief material of nutrition. Water, oxygen and sunshine are nutritive materials, while activity, rest, sleep and warmth are vitally important to normal nutritive processes. Vital structures and functional products can be created only out of food, but it is the process of nutrition that builds and maintains organic structure.
Viewing the whole domain of live-vegetable and animal-nutrition is the fountain out of which flow structure, function, capacity, strength, growth, development and reproduction. It is the process of building, repairing and vitalizing organs and organisms. All structure is made by processes of nutrition; all repairs are accomplished by nutrition; it is through nutrition that we come to have organs in the first place; it is only through nutrition that they are constantly repaired; it is through it that we come into being and maintain life.
The tissues of man are woven on a loom that no Eastern rug designers or Western carpet machinery can rival.
Where strength is needed, an iron-like power of resistance is given to man’s tissues, though these strands of fiber are finer than spider’s thread. Yet where elasticity is required, the fibers rival rubber in flexibility.
The size and development of a man’s muscles and the strength and functioning power of his nerves are the products of nutrition. Even his brain is a product of this process. The human infant, like the bird in the egg, starting as a single cell, grows organs and other parts by the process of nutrition, deriving its food supply, water and oxygen from its mother’s blood. After birth, utilizing food, it develops and grows to maturity by processes of nutrition. Reproduction, which is merely discontinuous evolution and growth, is achieved by the process of nutrition.
The digestive system should not be thought of as the nutritive system. The respiratory system supplies the organism with needed oxygen. If it is cut off, even for a very few minutes, the whole nutritive process comes to a halt and cannot be started again.
In man and other higher animals, the many and varied functions contributing to the grand overall process of nutrition are, to a great extent, each performed by a separate organ. In the human system there are a large number and variety of organs, each of which fills a peculiar and appropriate function. In the human sphere the viscera may be regarded as a tree, the digestive system of which represents the roots, the lungs, the leaves, the blood and lymph, the sap. Given the organic structure that circulates the juices, choosing the best food and refining it, we finally arrive at human structure.
As we are primarily interested in human nutrition, I shall attempt to picture in broad outlines by use of the following diagram, the means by which the body appropriates its foods:
Substances Appropriated | Ways of Appropriation | Results of Appropriation |
Food | Locomotion | Development |
Air (oxygen) | Prehension | Growth |
Water | Mastication | Repair |
Sunshine | Deglutition | Maintenance |
Digestion | Healing | |
Absorption | Reproduction | |
Respiration | ||
Circulation | ||
Assimilation |
The organs and secretions involved in this work of appropriation and the preparation of raw materials for use are: hands, teeth, tongue, salivary glands, esophagus, stomach, gastric glands, small intestines, intestinal secretions, pancreas, pancreatic juice, liver, bile, villi, lacteals, lymphatic system, heart and vascular system, the several ductless glands and their hormones, the nose, bronchioles, lungs, diaphragm, chest walls, long bones and skin.
The long bones, in which the red blood cells are formed may be properly regarded as part of the body’s nutritive system. Millions of these cells are formed daily and are essential in removing oxygen from the lungs to the body’s cells, then carrying carbon dioxide from these cells to the lungs. Without this process in the bones, oxygen could not reach the other bodily cells.
Because the skin is the channel through which we receive the sun’s rays and regulate their uses, this investing membrane may be properly included in the body’s nutritive system.
It will thus be seen that in the higher animals, especially in man, a great number and variety of organs and organ-systems and their functions are subservient to the overall process of nutrition, and all of them converge towards a common center.
Certain functions like digestion, circulation and respiration are common to all types of animals, who must receive, elaborate and circulate the materials necessary to build and sustain their tissues. Locomotion and prehension are essential parts of the nutritional process in most animals. Locomotion is denied to some forms of animal life, and these depend upon water and waves to bring their food supplies to them.
In the final analysis, the whole body is engaged in carrying on the process of nutrition, every part contributing to the whole and no part selfishly assimilating alone. Some parts, however, are more involved than others, especially in the preparatory work. Reciprocity and mutual service characterize the work of the bodily organs. The lungs take in oxygen for the whole body and not for themselves alone; the stomach digest food for the entire organism and not merely for its own food needs; the heart receives and circulates the blood throughout the body, not merely through its own tissues. The living organism is a model of cooperation.
The production of food is a reciprocal process, plants and animals being co-equal partners in the vital synthesis. For this the forests and their myriad inhabitants have been industriously working since the beginning of life on our globe; for this the flowers have been working since they were self-sown from the miraculous garden; for this the bees and birds and wind have been pollinating flowers since the beginning of organic existence; for this the birds and mammals have scattered seed. From time immemorial, for this the soil bacteria and earthworms have labored incessantly throughout uncounted ages; for this the un-cropped earth has rested in the balmiest latitudes, while the great sun, supporter of all life, has poured her tropical spirit upon its unexhausted islands, so that spring, summer and autumn provide us with an abundant supply of tasty green leaves, delicious fruits packed with food values and baited with delightful aromas, delicate flavors and pleasing colors, and with tasty, life-sustaining seed.
Not in the animal alone is assimilation in progress. The plant is the prime assimilator, absorbing the minerals of the soil and the nitrogen and carbon of the air, the fertile soil being the great storehouse of plant food and the source of their many aromas and flavors. The animal returns the soil’s fare, as fertilizer and carbon dioxide, to the original storehouse from which it was taken. In the great workshop of nature we witness progressive assimilation and refinement: The pioneer plants prepare the primitive soil for the advent of the higher plants; the higher plants refine and synthesize food for the animals above; these, in turn, compensate the plants in a variety of services for the goods received.
Through every change, by secret processes, the surface of the planet is steadily fitted for a greater edifice of society. All things normally work together for the good of the whole. Even the wrathful violators of her fundamental law of reciprocity serve her ends.
The mineral kingdom supports the plant kingdom, which in turn supports everything above it. Living plants arise—rich, delicate and lovely from the ground—created from a few simple elements. Through the subtle alchemy of life, disintegrated rock becomes stems and leaves, flowers and seeds with power to reproduce themselves. In the plant this amounts to taking the lifeless materials of air, water and soil and raising them to the status of living structure.
The animal appropriates parts of the plant and transforms them, by the subtle alchemy of animal nutrition, into sentient flesh and blood. As a result of processes of living plants and animals (assisted in the initial stages by bacteria), which we call collectively nutrition, sentient flesh is made from what otherwise would remain inert stone. The oxygen, nitrogen and carbon of the air plus the minerals of the soil are passed through the leaves and trunks of herbs, trees and other growing things. Each enriches its tissues through a division of labor and succession of touches at least as great as the processes employed in the laboratory in the manufacture of synthetic products.
Animals cannot appropriate the raw materials of the soil and air, except for oxygen and water. They cannot utilize the carbon and nitrogen of the air but must receive carbon (carbohydrates) and nitrogen (proteins) from the primary producers: the plants. These elements must be refined and synthesized by the plant and transformed into substances that the animal can appropriate. The earth might as well be bare granite and the atmosphere untinted gas if the vegetable kingdom lacked organic qualities to bestow upon the animal in the foods it turns out in great profusion.
The assumption that plants do not impart to the elements of the air and to water and soil, qualities that they do not possess in their gaseous and mineral states, is a form of ungratefulness in the inhabitants of any land whose fields are laden with fragrance and savoriness each year.
Plants, like factories, feed us and clothe us; they spin out our cotton in their looms and turn out their fruits and juices in profusion. Whether it be fruit and flavor for our bodies, or beauty and symbolism for our minds, plants support us. They yield up their substances to be transformed into new substances by us.
Thus, in the normal course of the nutritive processes of nature, vegetables draw their sap from the underground, from the dark scurf of the mineral kingdom; whereas, the animal takes its nutrient juices from among the children of the air, light and motion, from the succulent tops and fruits of the vegetable kingdom, from the results of an elaborate predigestion in the bosom of the earth and sun-kissed leaves of the plant.
By the marvelous processes of plant nutrition, lifeless matter drawn from air, water and soil has been raised to the status of living structure. Undergoing further refinements, transformations and organization in the animal, it is raised to the status of dynamic structure. The inert and unorganized is now highly organized and alive. The breath of life has been breathed into the structure and it has become a living soul. Such is the marvelous end-result of plant and animal nutrition.
The following article by Dr. Ralph Cinque is reprinted from Dr. Shelton ‘s Hygienic Review.
Nutrition has become a popular subject, indeed, a fad. Never before have people been so concerned about being well nourished. The barrage of information that is being promulgated in books, magazines, newspapers, talk shows, etc., about food and nutrients is, of course, commercially motivated. Consequently, the knowledge that most people have about nutrition is a mixture of facts, half-truths, exaggerations and outright fallacies.
Our purpose in this writing is not to discuss all of the intricacies of nutrition. The reader is referred to any of the standard texts on the subject for his information. Instead, our objective will be to investigate nutrition from a Hygenic viewpoint. We want to consider nutrition not as a sequence of chemical reactions but, rather, as a process of life. We want to put aside, for the time being, the specific role of various vitamins and minerals and consider the overall process by which the body attains nourishment.
Strictly speaking, nutrition refers to the processes by which the cells of the body utilize the components of foods. Nutrition does not refer to the processes by which food is eaten, digested, absorbed, transported and circulated. Nor do all of the changes that the components of food undergo metabolically constitute nutrition. Glycogenesis, for example, the process by which the liver and muscle cells convert glucose into glycogen, removes glucose from the circulation and makes it unavailable to the cells. Therefore, it must be regarded not as a nutritional process but rather as a process of food storage. Only those processes by which the cells oxidize foodstuffs for chemical energy or utilize substances to manufacture cellular constituents and secretions can be considered nutritional. All of the processes that precede the actual utilization of nutrients by the cells must, therefore, be considered as antecedents to nutrition. They make nutrition possible. They must occur in order to make nutrients available to the cells. They are vitally important, but they do not constitute nutrition.
Nutrition takes place at a cellular level. It results from the diffusion and active transport of nutrients from the tissue fluid that bathes the cells into the cellular protoplasm. At this point, nutrition begins. It is only here that the body derives any real use from the food eaten. Up to this point, there has only been an expenditure of energy in processing and transporting food in preparation for cellular assimilation. But, at the cellular level, there is finally a compensation for the physiological work done previously in relation to food.
Nutrition is not something that we can directly influence. We cannot force it to happen. If the organs of the body effectively perform their roles in relation to food, then, and only then, will optimal nutrition occur. All that we can do is supply an adequate amount of high quality food under favorable conditions. The rest depends upon what the body does with it. We do not nourish the body; the body nourishes itself. No one is a nutritionist; the body is the only nutritionist because only the body itself can accomplish nutrition.
If we recognize that nutrition takes place at a cellular level and that an elaborate and complicated sequence of events must occur beforehand, it should be obvious that the quality of physiological performance is as vitally important as the quality of food eaten. If nutrition is a distant link on a long physiological chain, a break at any point in that chain will suspend nutrition, partially or totally. Hygienists are well aware that food is of no value until it is digested and absorbed. For example, consider the diabetic, who may be fully capable of digesting, absorbing, transporting and even generating sugar from internal sources. In the absence of insulin, the active transport of sugar is impeded, and, as a result, the abundant supply of sugar is unavailable to the cells. The infant with phenylketonuria (PKU) lacks a specific metabolic enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of phenylalanine into tryosine, and consequently tremendous amounts of phenylalanine and its by-products accumulate in the blood. These disrupt body chemistry and may bring about mental retardation.
Obviously, interference at any point on the physiological assembly line can thwart the final outcome and defeat the ultimate objective, which, of course, is nutrition. Therefore, what can we think of a “nutritionist” who decides that a protein deficiency exists and has the patient take some protein powder dissolved in water every day in order to enhance nutrition? This kind of “shotgun approach” does nothing to enhance nutrition. On the contrary, it disrupts nutrition by adding one more enervating influence to the life of the individual, an influence that stresses various organ functions and biochemical processes.
Our task is not just to provide nutrients but to provide them in a gentle manner that maximize the efficiency of our organic functioning in order to promote the most effective utilization of food. The manner in which we eat, the conditions that prevail at the time of the meal, the state the food is in and the way in which it is prepared, the abundance of nerve energy, the presence of hunger—these factors have as profound an effect upon nutrition as nutrients, per se. We cannot emphasize too strongly that it is not what we eat, but what we appropriate at a cellular level that determines the state of our nutrition.
Therefore, as Hygienists we must recognize that nutrition involves a great deal more than food, that every aspect of our lives affects the state of our nutrition. This would include the manner in which we eat, sleep, exercise, emote, rest, think, etc. Those who ingest large quantities of extracted and concentrated nutrients have a very distorted view of nutrition and show a lack of understanding of the biological facts of life.
Now that we have defined nutrition, we shall discuss its nature and characteristics. We have already stated that the cells of the body are bathed in tissue fluid and that it is from the tissue fluid that they extract nutrients. The cells also exrete their wastes into the tissue fluid. So there is a constant movement of materials across the cell membranes in both directions. This movement is a continuous, fluid and constant process. It is not sudden. It does not occur in starts and stops. It is happening all the time, at mealtime and between meals, during the day when we are active and at night when we are sleeping. It speeds up under some conditions and at other times slows down, but it never stops. It is completely controlled, determined and regulated by the body.
The body is like a food store with a large cold storage room in back. As the consumers remove items from the shelves, the owner replenishes the shelves with wares from the storeroom. The owner may also be receiving a delivery of fresh goods daily, but these are used to replenish his reserves in back and not to stock his shelves directly. The food that he makes directly available to his customers comes from his storage room, so that if by chance a delivery fails to arrive one day it will have little or no effect upon the availability and selection of foods in his store. His own reserves are more than ample to supply his needs for several days.
A similar situation exists within the body. The body is constantly drawing upon its reserves to maintain the chemical constancy of its tissue fluids so that at no time are the cells subject to being depleted. The body is not directly dependent upon raw materials to accomplish nutrition because it is constantly living upon its reserves. Eating replenishes these reserves. The body is much less dependent on food than most people think.
The common notion is that the only thing that maintains normal blood sugar levels is the frequent ingestion of food. The tremendous magnitude of the body’s ability to make sugar available from glycogen and certain amino acids, and its capacity to rely more heavily on fat combustion, if necessary, is often overlooked. Most hypoglycemics think that the distress that they experience between meals is the result of an inherent need for infrequent meals. They fail to recognize that their symptoms are manifestations of impaired organ functioning, enervation and toxemia. What they require is not more food, but more rest.
It is a well-known fact of physiology that stored food within the body is in a constant state of flux. Fat stored within fat cells, for example, is constantly being consumed and replenished. Obese individuals with vast midrift bulges think that they have been living with the same fat for years. They don’t realize that they have been continually using and replenishing their fat, and that this year’s fat is entirely different from last year’s fat.
If the body is not directly dependent upon meals to accomplish nutrition, what affect does eating a meal have on nutritional processes? We have already stated that the availability of nutrients depends upon the composition of the tissue fluid and that tissue fluid is a filtrate of the blood. Therefore, the composition of the blood and tissue fluid must remain constant in order for the fluidity of nutritional processes to be undisturbed. When we ingest a meal, the products of the meal are obviously markedly different from the composition of the blood. The body constantly seeks to nullify change in its blood chemistry as a result of the ingestion of a meal.
Converting excess glucose into glycogen and gradually releasing it into the bloodstream in response to the body’s constantly fluctuating needs for sugar is one way in which the liver “buffers” the effects of eating a meal. Taking a large quantity of Vitamin C may temporarily achieve “super-saturation,” but the body will immediately go about excreting the excess and re-establishing normal tissue levels of ascorbic acid. This requires usually no more than several hours. The liver also removes excess carotene (provitamin A) from the blood and stores it, but, as we all know, people have varying capacities to do this. Some turn orange after one glass of carrot juice, while others car drink a quart at a time without a noticeable affect. All of the food materials that are absorbed into the blood are first transported via the portal circulation to the liver where they are processed before entering the general circulation. The body seeks to minimize the impact at a cellular level that would otherwise occur from eating food.
Quoting Ian Fowler from his excellent article, “Fundamentals of Feeding” which appeared in Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review in June 1978, “Consuming extracted and artificially concentrated items results in a sudden influx of nutrients which necessitates rapid accommodation and adjustment of blood nutrient levels, of liver metabolism, adrenal, pancreatic functions, and so forth. This is debilitating, inefficient, wasteful and enervating.” This profound and explicitly stated fact of physiology will never be taught by vitamin manufacturers, health food store owners, “metabolic nutritionists,” or “orthomolecular psychiatrists.” All they will ever teach people is how wonderful calcium is and how much Vitamin X the body needs. The fact that taking their products exerts a tremendous stress upon the body, that it is a shock to the system to be suddenly overwhelmed with “megadoses” of vitamins, that taking unnaturally concentrated nutrients tends to disrupt and not enhance nutrition, is not the kind of knowledge that promotes vitamin sales. Even eating whole natural food constitutes a slight stress that requires internal adjustments to restore homeostatis. Why magnify this stress by consuming large quantities of concentrated nutrients? Nutrition is not a matter of violently battering, dosing, saturating or treating the body with nutrients. “Nutritional intensity” is not our objective. Our objective is to gently supply needs. Let the body establish its own blood levels of Vitamin C, calcium, etc. Eat a simple diet of whole natural foods with a preponderance of raw, succulent high-fiber foods. This will minimize the rate at which nutrients are introduced into the blood and thereby minimize what Dr. Alex Burton, a well-known Hygienic practitioner in Australia, refers to as “nutritional shock.” Why not make the process of appropriating nutrients as easy as possible for the body? Why not harmonize with the body’s internal processes instead of trying to thwart them?
We might also consider that when we consume isolated nutrients, we offset rations of various nutrients and that this constitutes an additional stress. It is known, for example, that the body requires ten times as much niacin as it does thiamine or riboflavin. Therefore, when we consume a large quantity of extracted thiamine, we produce a relative deficiency of niacin. We should note that the proportion of various nutrients in natural foods parallels the body’s needs for different nutrients. Natural foods contain many times more niacin than thiamine, which is in keeping with the body’s needs.
Other important nutrient ratios include: sodium/potassium, calcium/phosphorus, iron/copper, Vitamin E/selenium, zinc/molybdenum and Vitamin C/bio-flavinoids. The proportion of these nutrients within natural foods accurately reflects the body’s needs; thus, the greatest synergy of nutrient utilization is achieved. The body requires many times more potassium than sodium, and this is exactly what we find in natural foods. Processed foods that are loaded with sodium disrupt the delicate balance between these two mineral elements that exists at the neuronal membrane, thereby impairing the function of the nerves. Diets that introduce excessive amounts of phosphorus into the system may produce a relative deficiency of calcium even though an adequate amount of calcium may be consumed. A deficiency of copper prevents a thorough utilization of iron.
The important point to realize is that nutrients are utilized in concert and that it is the total ensemble of the diet that determines the state of our nutrition. Consuming isolated nutrients is more likely to do harm than good. This is true even in relation to proteins and amino acids. It is now known that the body has a limited tolerance for sulphur-containing amino acids and that excesses can be very taxing on the liver. Plant proteins, which contain a lesser proportion of methionine and other sulphur-containing amino acids than do animal foods, are not only less burdensome on the liver but they more accurately supply the body with the proportion of amino acids that it was designed to process.
Understanding the physiology of nutrition will quickly dispel misconceptions that exist about the role of foods. One common misconception is that foods (or nutrients) have specific effects on different organs and tissues. “Vitamins for the hair” are a popular drugstore item, and glandular extracts that supposedly “feed” specific organs are peddled by practitioners of all the various so-called “schools of healing.”
If we consider that the cells obtain nourishment from the tissue fluid and that tissue fluid is a filtrate of the blood, then it should be obvious that all of the different organs and tissues are on a mono-diet of blood. The blood supplied to the kidney is virtually the same as the blood supplied to the big toe, which is identical to the blood supplied to the left elbow. The cells are capable of extracting from the tissue fluid (hence, the blood) nutrients in the proportion that they require, but all of the cells are fed from the same table. The differences that exist in the chemical composition of different tissues come about as a result of active processes of the cells themselves in selecting the nutrients that they require. It does not result from any assumed differences in their food supply. Therefore, eating fish because it is “brain food” or taking adrenal gland extract because “it has the exact proportion of nutrients required to rebuild the adrenal gland” flaunts ignorance of the most fundamental laws of physiology. Health food notions that “beet juice is good for the kidneys,” or “wheat grass juice cleans out the liver,” are equally as ridiculous. All a food or juice can possibly do is contribute to the blood nutrient pool. It can not have specific effects on specific organs. Remember also what was mentioned earlier, that the body constantly seeks to nullify any changes in its blood chemistry as the result of the ingestion of a meal. The rationale of “nutritional therapy” is as much a fantasy as the rationale of any other form of therapeutics. Foods do not act on the body. The body acts upon foods. Nutrients do not act on the body or perform roles within the body; they are used by the body. The body itself is the only active agent in nutrition.
Nutrition is an autonomic function, that is, it takes place below the conscious level. Just as digestion, absorption, circulation, glandular secretion and other autonomic functions take place without conscious perception or awareness, so also do the processes of nutrition (at a cellular level) occur without our direction or participation. Everyone will admit that stomach function will only produce symptoms when it is impaired. No one will deny that under ideal conditions we are totally unaware of the functions of our livers, intestines, etc. These are autonomic functions and they do not produce symptoms.
Nutrition is the same way. It is an autonomic function. Just as the digestion of food does not produce symptoms, the appropriation of nutrients, internally, should not produce symptoms. However, when digestion is disrupted symptoms arise and, likewise, when nutrition is disrupted symptoms arise. Russell Thacker Trail stated in 1871 that “Pure and perfect nutrition implies the assimilation of nutriment material to the structure of the body, without the least excitement, disturbance or impression of any kind that can be properly called stimulating.” Here is a profound statement to come from a man who lived over 100 years ago, before the explosion of knowledge about nutrition and biochemistry began at the turn of the century. Yet he realized then what few people realize today, that any specific effects that occur from the ingestion of foods or nutrients are the results of stress and irritation and are not the result of an enhancement of nutrition. If a person is manifesting the symptoms of a cold, and taking vitamin C aborts those symptoms, this effect can no more be regarded as nutritional than can the effects of taking aspirin. The vitamin C is having a pharmacological effect (that is, a drug effect), not a nutritional effect. If a woman has severe menstrual cramps and taking dolomite relieves her symptoms, it is foolish to think that a need for calcium has been satisfied. The calcium is exerting a pharmacological effect. Crude calcium was one of the first drugs used as an anesthetic in surgery because it impairs the conduction of nervous impulses and thereby reduces sensibility. To call this nutrition is a shame, a travesty, an outright lie. Any food or nutrient that “suddenly gives you pep,” “makes you feel warm all over,” “cures your headache,” “helps you sleep” or has any other specific effect should be avoided like the plague. It is obviously irritating, disrupting and enervating.
6.1. What Constitutes Body Wisdom And Providence?
6.2. Cell And Brain Programming
6.3. Knowledge, Expertise And Resources For Healing Processes
6.4. Programming The Intellect For Exuberant Well-Being
6.1. What Constitutes Body Wisdom And Providence?
6.1.1 Cell Wisdom and Providence
6.1.2 Multicellular Intelligence and Intercellular Relationships
The human body is possessed of an intelligence and order that is incomprehensible to our intellects. While many humans are vain and will not admit to an inability to know and understand, let’s face it—we are all finite in our capacities. We cannot comprehend the concept of infinity and we are mystified by many realities of existence.
From miseducation, ignorance, vanity and authoritarianism amongst our professionals flow arrogance and incorrect action that brutalizes those whom they profess to serve. From intellectual wisdom and understanding flow humility, kindness and other humane virtues. Wisdom recognizes our finite nature and admits to ignorance, an act of humility. Humility does not stifle the innate drive to seek knowledge. Rather, humility is born of a realization that spurs the quest for greater wisdom. True wisdom motivates us to continual exploration and improvement.
This lesson treats an area largely unexplored and uncharted. When we view the vastness of the incredible multitude of faculties possessed by the human body, we must stand in awe of the enormous intelligence displayed in each of the quadrillions of processes conducted within the body daily . We must stand in wonderment at the precision we observe. We cannot help but conclude that the body operates on principles that manifest the reign of law and order within the organic realm. We must observe that we are constituted on such an order as to comply in every act with the universal laws of existence.
We want to charge you with an overwhelming realization of the enormity of innate intelligence—of inherent body wisdom that exceeds by thousands of times the intellectual powers we arrogantly boast of. So vast is this innate intelligence that it is positively staggering. The immensity of inborn intelligence is not an easy subject to present. Very few studies touch upon this subject. However, we can delineate and point out some of the many manifestations of inherent body wisdom.
In this lesson, you will become aware of an internal providence that should be respected. So great are our body endowments that you should adopt this attitude: Never interfere with the vital domain. You cannot possibly help it—you can only harm it. All the knowledge and wisdom of civilization to date does not equal the intelligence exhibited by the operations of a single cell within the body! The best you can do is to order the external environment to make it more favorable for the organism. The only thing you can do for the body is to leave it intelligently alone! It knows what it is doing. You don’t!
Providence is the ability to anticipate needs and provide for them. This providence may be instinctual, as in the case of the bear that stores tremendous amounts of fat in preparation for hibernation or the squirrel that stashes nuts, acorns and seeds, or it may be due to acquired wisdom, as in the case of humans who store foods during plenitude in preparation for the season of scarcity.
The body is always provident. All providence exhibits wisdom.
Reproduction of kind is providence. It is provision that the species shall survive. The complexities of reproductive provisions defy human inquiry and intellect in their profundity and detail.
Nutrition and elimination are provisions insuring that the organism survives. Likewise, the complexities and subtleties of these many provisions defy human inquiry and intellect, though compliance is easily accomplished.
The immensity of the wisdom exhibited in all things so staggers the human intellect that many often retreat into the comfort of some all-encompassing outlook that relieves them of the burden of inquiry, assessment and understanding.
As students of this course, you are undertaking to delve into life’s provisions sufficiently to ascertain a valid course for uplifting yourself and fellow beings to the uttermost possibilities.
Wisdom is really a difficult word to assess and define. It can be said to be all-knowing and all-understanding within a given sphere. Wisdom is at once the comprehension of a matter in both depth and breadth and an expertise or mastery that enables the possessor to pursue a correct course of action.
In pursuing this study, we must not confuse inherent wisdom or intelligence with intellect and acquired wisdom. The ability to think is a property of the conscious intellect. It involves wisdom and intelligence of a different order than the wisdom which is the subject of this lesson.
While there are books on body wisdom and its inherent programming, these books have little substance. This sphere of our existence is little explored, though the mechanisms of inherent wisdom have been charted extensively. What we can do here is to, by observation and deduction, invoke your realization of the colossal wisdom of the body.
Body wisdom comprises the multitude of faculties within the body that recognize, communicate and effectively respond. For example, if you bite into a luscious apple, the whole system is coursed with delight. If you bite into an apple that has been injected with a solution of caustic soda, you’ll immediately recognize the danger, begin spitting and sputtering and run for water to dilute and remove the deadly poison that contacted your mouth tissues. Rejection of toxic matters is just as natural as delighting in beneficent materials and influences.
The wisdom of a single cell is said to exceed all the accumulated knowledge of the human race so far! Each cell is, quite literally, a city in itself. It is a self-contained organism. The membrane is like the wall around a great city. Within are numerous inhabitants, many of them enjoying an existence within the cell on the order as the cell enjoys within the body. These forms of life, called mitochondria, have independent metabolic systems and can thusly be said to operate symbiotically with the cell and in concert with each other. All the components of a cell act for their mutual welfare and for the welfare of the cell as the host organism.
If we marvel at the extensivness and complexity of the cell, then we must be even more astonished with the human body. The human body is said to possess 125 trillion cells, give or take a few trillion. (Some texts say there are 75 trillion and others say there are as many as 300 trillion cells in the human body.)
To say that the cell is a self-contained city in itself is no exaggeration. Cells vary in size from midgets to giants. But even the smallest cell is about one billion times the size of its smallest component! There are thousands of organelles within each cell. These are the cell’s life support system. Among these organelles are mitochondria which appear to be an independent form of life within the cellular context. Mitochondria are analogous to, or like, bacteria in their organization and functions.
A cell seems to be a city of specialized bacteria united into an organic unit to maintain a favorable environment and to more effectively secure the needs of existence.
Additional to its mitochondria, a cell has many organelles (functioning systems within their own membranes) that complement the mitochondria in making the cellular organism self-sufficient in its operations. Thus the cell, like the human body, requires only that its needs be supplied within the context of a favorable environment. Just as humans strive to create favorable environments for themselves, cells have long since ordered their environment by organizing into a super city known as a body. The human body can be said to be the super city.
The wisdom manifested in the faculties, organization and operations of a single cell stun the intellect. By observation we must admit that it is there and regard it with respect, even if we do not know or understand it.
If wisdom characterizes the seemingly infinite faculties of the cell, then think of the wisdom that unites a hundred trillion of them into an organism! Think how great must be the wisdom that guides the destiny of each and every cell within the body complex.
Cells are organisms within themselves. They contain mitochondria which have the characteristics that would earn them the ascription of an organism, too! Thus, if the human body contains over a hundred trillion cells, and each cell contains a complement of mitochondria, then there must, in reality, be several quadrillion organisms within the human body. If a cell is a colony of sophisicated bacteria that have banded together for their mutual welfare, then the body may be said to be made up of sophisticated cells that have banded together for their mutual welfare.
Cells have allied themselves within a unit we call an organism to specialize in functions in complementary coordination for mutual good. If we hypothesize that bacteria have confederated and specialized in carrying on the functions that make the cell a self-contained functioning organism, then cells have likewise affiliated and specialized to better create an ideal environment and to secure the needs of life.
If we observe the life cycle of a tree, we must marvel at its tremendous intelligence. From an acorn that sprouts and slowly grows over the years into a stately oak, we see the unfolding of an intelligence that is beyond our knowledge and understanding. Within the genetic encoding of each and every cell of the acorn and the resulting tree is the knowledge, understanding and operational expertise to secure needs from environment, to fashion them precisely into its specific requirements, to utilize them and to eliminate the wastes.
In making alliances with other cells, a supra-cell coordinator is created to coordinate the activities of the cells. This is called the nervous system or brain in multicellular organisms.
What kind of intelligence does it require for the body to recognize food and secrete the correct enzymes for its digestion? What kind of intelligence is required to create the enzymes?
When we start asking questions exhaustively, we begin to discover the immeasurable wisdom and providence of every faculty of life.
Below is an excerpt from a physiology text. It is quoted merely to highlight certain body processes so that we might divine some of the body faculties and the intelligence they exhibit:
Often tissues of the body regress to a much smaller size than previously. For instance, this occurs in the uterus following pregnancy, in muscles during long periods of inactivity and in mammary glands at the end of the period of lactation. Lysosomes are probably responsible for much if not most of this regression, for one can show that the lysosomes become very active at this time. However, the mechanism by which the lack of activity in a tissue causes the lysosomes to increase their activity is completely unknown.
Another very special role of the lysosomes is the removal of damaged cells or damaged portions of cells from tissues-cells damaged by heat, cold, trauma, chemicals or any other factor. Damage to the cell causes lysosomes to rupture, and the released hydrolases begin immediately to digest the surrounding organic substances. If the damage is slight, only a portion of the cell will be removed, followed by repair of the cell. However, if the damage is severe, the entire cell will be digested, a process called autolysis. In this way the cell is completely removed and a new cell of the same type ordinarily is formed by mitotic reproduction of an adjacent cell to take the place of the old one.
What this really means is that body parts not in service atrophy and that it is believed that lysosomes are responsible for regression or atrophy. But, whether or not we divine the wisdom of loss of unused faculties, there is an intelligence that creates and regresses faculties involved in pregnancy, lactation and musculature.
In the paragraph that follows, we will study one way in which the body uses lysosomes for special purposes. As you may already know, lysosomes are powerful digestive enzymes the body creates, stores and uses. When a cell is to be scrapped, the old cell is autolysed (self-digested) and the remnants are passed off as wastes into the lymph and then into the bloodstream. The wastes may be recycled in part and excreted in part. The point here is that cells have their own “self-destruct” mechanisms in the form of lysosomes.
The processes described evince tremendous body intelligence in their performance. The vital domain does not tolerate unneeded baggage. Therefore, it disposes of the useless and the surplus to the extent it can. Cells that are crippled are either repaired or replaced. High-level function is the objective of the body. The welfare of the remaining cells decrees that they dispatch crippled cells if not repairable.
The body secretes lysosomes and uses them for special purposes. Let’s examine a boil or carbuncle. The little hole that extends from the body surface to the fleshy interior represents a real body disaster! But the purposes served decree the ravage that the body inflicts upon itself. When there is deadly toxic accumulation that threatens the integrity of the organism—when this toxic accumulation cannot otherwise be eliminated through regular channels of elimination—the body autolyzes a tube, hole, passage, duct or fistula-like opening to the surface. Perhaps a hundred million or so body cells will be destroyed by lysosomes. After the completion of the tube, the body collects the toxic material and forces it to the surface through the specially-created duct. There it is quarantined until drained or detoxified.
In fasting, for instance, lysosomes are utilized in destroying and digesting growths. The materials destroyed are utilized as food. These growths may be breast tumors, cancer cells, warts, cysts, etc.
The order of intelligence involved in sensing errant conditions, communicating them to the brain, assessing the reports, determining a course of action and responding with coordinated orders to all the body cells and systems involved to effect a result is beyond human comprehension. We can only intimate the vastness of the wisdom involved with our limited concepts and expressions.
This is just one of the many kinds of body wisdom that further fortifies the Life Science stricture: Leave the body intelligently alone.
For us to comprehend the magnitude of the brain’s dominion and the cooperation of each cell member of that dominion, we’d have to have an intellect infinitely more developed than it presently is. The limits of intellect leave too much that is “not clearly understood.”
In one of the articles used as text material in this lesson, it is pointed out that the body possesses some 125 trillion cells. Each cell consists of a multitude of organelles or life support systems that keep the cell functioning. This article points out that it is difficult for us to conceive a few thousand people getting together and cooperating harmoniously in all things. If that seems difficult, then imagine all the four billion individuals on earth acting in unison. But then, compared with the body, that is nothing! Can you imagine 36,000 earths, each with four billion inhabitants, acting in unison?
Only with such staggering thoughts as these is it possible to grasp some idea how infinite is the, knowledge, understanding and expertise of the human brain. It coordinates the activities of an astronomical number of cooperating cells. We emphasize the word cooperating because all cells are completely subservient to the brain, which, in turn, serves the whole organism. The brain exists as the controller of the body cells collectively. It serves the cells by providing them with needs they cannot obtain on their own.
Sometimes a cell may become “independent” in that its control mechanisms are affected and it either no longer possesses innate intelligence or can no longer focus its innate intelligence to cooperative endeavors. Such a cell becomes a parasite cell in that it draws from organic stores but is so “crazy” it cannot contribute to function. It is called a cancer cell. Its operations disrupt physiological harmony rather than contribute to it. A cancer cell is created by continual assault by toxic substances that eventually derange and destroy its encoded blueprints and intelligence. When such a cell exists, the brain will bring the residual powers of the organism to destroy the errant cell.
The brain, though the creature of its cellular constituents, is nevertheless supreme in the organism of which it is a part. The cells have created it as president to preside over and direct their affairs.
As the supreme faculty of the body, the brain is protected and served by its cell constituency preferentially. The brain thus is treated royally. It receives the best of everything; it is served and kept operational, even if this means the sacrifice of millions upon millions of cells. Thus, we can say the brain is the kingpin behind the human show.
Each cell has a blueprint called genetic encoding. As a matter of fact, each mitochondrion within the cell has its own genetic material, too. This encoding enables the cell to reproduce itself faithfully. Further, it enables the cell to perform chemical, mechanical and electrical activities with exactness. The cell is a chemical factory performing more chemical feats than all the chemical factories in the world combined. Incredibly, it performs them within its membraneous confines, the volume of which is so small as to be undetectable to our eyesight.
The intelligence of a cell does not have to be learned. A new cell comes into existence just as experienced and knowledgeable as the cell that begot it. The intelligence is inherent and is automatically transmitted to progeny. The endless duplication of phono discs might be compared with cell replication. The programming is within.
The brain and central nervous system, likewise, are possessed of most of the knowledge, programming and expertise needed for operating an infinitely complex organism. The programming necessary to internal operations is automatically transmitted through reproduction of genetic codes in the developing organism. We marvel that the blueprint for the whole organism in all its incomprehensible number of faculties and functions exists within a fertilized ovum. Our stupefaction must be thorough when we realize that the microscopic fertilized ovum has all the instructions encoded that will create a grown “human being with 125 trillion cells. A perfectly developed and symmetrically formed organism of 125 trillion cells will result from the blueprint born of the union of sperm and ovum.
Everything about this organism is at all times perfect in faculties and functioning potential. It is faithful in every detail of the blueprint. It carries within all the accumulated experience and knowledge of billions of years of development. It will reliably produce a human being to the highest standard to which humans have developed. The perfect precision with which millions and trillions of formulas, processes and procedures are exactly transmitted and performed (some for just once in the whole life of the forming organism) is truly mind-boggling. (All this presumes no vitiating interference from toxicity or injury.)
We can throw up our hands and dismiss probing into such baffling complexities because of their irrelevance to the practical plans of human existence. Indeed, we can! We can live in bliss and never inquire once into our origins or the intricacies of our being. Humans lived happily unaffected lives in nature, just as animals, long before we plumbed the depths of our bodies and minds. Hence, we do not pursue this course to teach the profundities of the organism. You can procure books on physiology, biochemistry, cytology, anatomy and kindred subjects if you choose to do so. But that will add little to your effective knowledge of how to guide errant humans. That know-how is much simpler and easier, at least insofar as it involves learning.
Our objective is to imbue you with an awareness of the extensiveness of inborn intelligence and an understanding that it is to be trusted implicitly at all times and in all cases. Never be so presumptive or arrogant as to imagine that you can second-guess the body. Neither you nor anyone else can. While we can fathom the vast intelligence within, we cannot begin to substitute for it. We cannot help it a smidgeon. All that we do to the vital domain constitutes morbid interference.
The brain consists of fifty billion cells that are the most highly developed of any known. They have the potential to live for hundreds of years. They do not reproduce as do other body cells—they do not reproduce at all. But even the healthiest of us lose perhaps a hundred thousand of our brain cells daily. At this rate, it would take 150 years to lose 10% of our brain capacity. But humans often squander this precious heritage and become senile in their sixties, seventies and eighties, still in the relative youth of life’s potential, with loss of perhaps more than 50% of their cerebral matter.
On the conscious level, we are babes in the woods. While our intellects have been millions of years in developing, cell intelligence has been developing for billions of years, and our subconscious faculties have been hundreds of millions of years in development. Our infant intellects are at a stage where it can most appropriately be said that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” If the human race survives long enough, we may come to a general intellectual level consonant with Life Science ideals. We may all come to realize that our own well-being is indelibly bound in following nature’s mandates—in living in complete harmony with our fellow sojourners—in total non-exploitation of humans or of other creatures.
Some 100,000 different proteins are synthesized within the body. The blueprints or formulas for these proteins exist within almost every cell. The exact procedures involved for making these proteins most efficiently are a part of cell encoding or programming.
Likewise, the cells have a wealth of abilities—to store and use all the raw materials they need, to create the compounds they need and will need, to create the energy they need, to create and apply the energy commanded of them in behalf of the organism—the multitude of capabilities of the cell overwhelm the intellect. It is said that if all the processes and capabilities of the cell were to be taken over by a computer, a computer of the dimensions of New York City could not cope with them.
A cell might better be likened to a self-contained universe rather than a self-contained city.
Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) is the source of energy for most cell functions. Most ATP is created by the specialized organelles called mitochondria. Mitochondria create this complicated molecule, ATP, which “fires” when given a proper signal. When the ATP is used, the resulting spent molecule is recycled or “reloaded” for reuse. The know-how, providence and expertise involved in these chemical processes stagger the imagination.
At every level of its being, the body has highly-developed sensors that can readily recognize that which is good, bad or indifferent. All our senses coalesce to recognize foods, dangers, pleasurable and enticing situations, unpleasurable and repulsive situations, and so on.
Externally, our conscious faculties and intellect fulfill sensory and cognitive roles. Within the vital domain there are millions upon millions of specialized faculties for sensing the electro-chemical-mechanical nature of everything that enters.
Nerves translate all sensory data into electrical impulses and transmit them to the brain for a coordinated and purposive response that will effectively deal with the situation.
To provide an example, let us propose that many cells are short of an amino acid needed to synthesize a crucial protein requirement. This need is communicated to the brain, which relays a message to cells for inventories of surplus amino acids. Those required for deamination and reamination into the needed amino acids are directed to the liver, where deamination is conducted and the new amino acid is synthesized. The order of intelligence that can perform these immensely complex inventory and chemical activities makes our intellects, as marvelous as they are, look rather miniscule by comparison.
The body has some 50 billion brain cells. It has billions of nerve cells involved in message transmission. Messages travel within and around the body with the speed of electricity—nerve transmissions are almost all electrical. There are chemical communications within the body as well.
If we viewed a city like New York with eight million inhabitants, millions of telephones, hundreds of exchanges and thousands of switchboards, we can only begin to understand how intricate and complex are the body communications systems. The body has a communications system that serves at one time the equivalent of 36,000 earths, each earth having over four billion residents! Each of those inhabitants has a telephone.
If you knew what was involved in turning over during the night during sleep, you’d be astonished. An area of the body involving countless billions of cells becomes cramped or distressed in some way. An urgent request goes to the brain—rather, the brain has been monitoring the situation all along. But movement is not initiated as long as matters remain within certain parameters. When the situation threatens the integrity of certain areas, the brain, entirely beneath the level of wakefulness, will mobilize trillions of cells that comprise hundreds of muscle systems and effect a shift of body weight to a more comfortable position.
We have commented upon the brain as the kingpin in all body operations. The brain is the supreme creation that trillions of cooperating cells have devised to serve them as a master communications and coordinations center. The brain has been developed to administer the many needs within. As well, the brain has been developed to aid the organism to deal with the external world on its own terms.
The thoughts we have on a conscious level are marvels when viewed from one aspect. But our intellects are hardly capable of conducting more than one line of thought at a time. In comparison, the brain conducts millions of processes simultaneously beneath the level of awareness! This service never ceases, going on every second for our entire lifetime. The busyness of the brain in serving the equivalent of 36,000 earths with four billion inhabitants each is unimaginable. We can only hint at it.
For example, one of the brain’s responsibilities is overseeing the maintenance and circulation of the blood—among a few million other things. And speaking of a few million things, while you read this sentence your body has created 10,000,000 new blood cells! That is, it creates ten million blood cells per second! The body has some 25 trillion blood cells, and their average life expectancy is only about thirty days. Blood maintenance and circulation have unimaginable intelligence behind them.
The luxury of abstract thought is possessed by only a few creatures on earth. Some races of humans, notably the negrillo or pigmy, are said to be incapable of mastering abstractions. Yet there are other creatures, most notably whales, dolphins (porpoises) and elephants, who may be able to think in abstractions. Perhaps even dogs and wolves are capable of abstract thought. We don’t really know much about the subject. Certainly no other creatures approach the capacities of humans for abstract thought.
The brain is absolute master of all the cells within its domain. Yet it is totally subservient to its cells and is very responsive to their needs. But the organic order of the body system is such that the brain is at the very apex in importance. While the brain was the last development of the human organism, it is the first in importance. Every cell, tissue and organ system other than the heart are slowly sacrificed, in critical periods such as starvation, that the brain might survive. When the brain can no longer survive, death occurs.
The brain is the prime instrument in establishing, supplying and maintaining the needs and stable environment of the trillions of cells. Each cell has yet other organisms that thrive within its internal environment called mitochondria. The brain exists for every cell in the body and, in turn, the brain’s welfare is dependent upon the well-being of the cellular system it serves.
6.3.1 Body Actions Always Are Right Actions
6.3.2 Intervention of Intellect in Body Affairs
6.3.3 Building Confidence in Inherent Faculties
Can anyone doubt, after a study of the countless control mechanisms within the body, after observing what happens with predictable reliability when cuts, broken bones and other injuries are suffered, that the body is completely self-repairing?
Can anyone not see that the body has vast resources, that it is completely self-sufficient and that it is fully capable of coping with internal exigencies that beset it to the exclusion of all other agencies?
Can anyone of average intelligence not see that any intrusion upon the vital domain is grossly wrong? That it obstructs and interferes with processes revealing far more wisdom and expertise than we can ever hope to master?
Can anyone doubt that all body action is intelligent, purposeful action?
Can anyone doubt that symptoms of sickness evince body action in purifying and healing itself? Can anyone doubt that, in conducting disease processes, the body is manifesting wisdom and physiologically correct remedial activities?
Can anyone doubt that an organism with the power to develop itself into a superb human being from a fertilized ovum is less than capable of managing its internal affairs?
Can any person presume a knowledge of internal needs better than the body itself?
It is very unwise, even dangerous, for anyone to presume an ability or knowledge superior to that of the body. Leave the body intelligently alone!
It has been said in jest that “we are our own worst enemies.” The facade of a joke often conceals an element of truth.
What humans often do relative to their bodies reminds me of a story. Two husky men were going down the street. They observed a huge piano apparently stuck in a doorway and two workmen inside trying to move it. They offered their help and started struggling to get the piano into the house while the two workmen inside struggled also. After about half an hour of fruitless efforts, one of the workmen inside yelled for a break so they could get their heads together on this thing. Upon convening, one workman commented that he’d never had such great diffculty in getting a piano out of a house before.
“Getting it out of the house?” asked one of the volunteers. “We been trying to help you get it into the house.”
When we deem our intellects superior to the obvious demands of the body in a crisis, we exhibit gross ignorance. The only way to help the body is to cooperate with it, to meet its needs in accord with its condition. That is the only wise thing to do. This means “leave the body intelligently alone” to do its thing in full confidence that all body action is right action.
If you hold your breath or force yourself to breathe in a manner that is contrary to normal breathing, you are interfering in a vital body process. Not many people hold their breaths long nor perform forced breathing (often called deep breathing) such that they underventilate or hyperventilate their bodies and beget hallucinations and acapna.
The body is the best arbiter of its needs. It is autonomous and operates from a cumulative fount of wisdom that we can never hope to emulate.
Often the body will make its demands upon us in some gentle manner, such as in thirst, sleepiness, hunger, etc. But when we figure that wine, beer or soda pop are just fine as ways to satisfy thirst, we are imposing upon the body a health-sapping burden. The body demanded water, and only water, in thirst. To supply it with anything other than water is a mistake.
At some time in our past the current superstition about diseases began. The present idea about disease is the result of a gradual evolution from the ideas of evil spirits and demons. The people who held these ideas admitted that they were wrong by the fact that they changed their minds and replaced them with new ideas. However, the new ideas have the same roots as the old ideas and are, therefore, equally wrong.
The misconception that still prevails in matters of sickness or disease is that the body is being attacked. The misconception further holds that the attacker or attackers must be counterattacked and routed from the body. Under this misconception many people have been harmed (by drugs). Death occurs in some cases. In fact, when physicians go on strike, the death rate usually plummets by 50 to 60%!
One of the prime dicta of the Hygienic philosophy is noninterference in the body. Each cell of the body possesses more knowledge and expertise than the whole of the human race collectively on the conscious level. Our voodooistic rituals with drugs are based on conjectures about what the body should be doing or what it needs when ill.
It bears repeating that sickness is vital body action. It is right action. The body initiates and conducts the disease process to accomplish physiological objectives. To mistake that action as an attack by an invader that must be routed is disastrous in practice.
Refrain always from second-guessing the body—what it needs or what should be done. We’ll repeat over and over: “Leave the body intelligently alone.” Establish the external conditions of health based on the body’s capabilities of the moment and that’s all. That is a simple enough dictum to follow.
This lesson cannot pinpoint body wisdom any more than have our many researchers and thinkers. We know its there and we perceive how extensive it is when we explore it. But, by and large, most of our population is unaware of their bodies’ tremendous faculties. They violate the laws of their being and then seek “help” when problems arise.
Not only must you build your confidence in the unfailing powers of the organism, but you must establish this confidence in your clients. There are many approaches to accomplishing this. Methods that make a deep impression are to be preferred. Among the educational aids Life Science is developing are graphic presentations depicting the incredible powers within.
When the resources and powers of the body fail to restore health under favorable conditions, then the condition is irremediable. Life Science is the court of last resort for many who have tried everything but healthful living. Many turn too late—they’re already over the hill.
Everyone can benefit by the employment of healthful practices within the context of their condition. As a professional, you cannot promise miracles but you can say truthfully that the methods you propose are the only factors that will enable the body to rebuild health.
Dr. David Reuben, M.D., has authored two best-selling books. One, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nutrition, contains much erroneous guidance. But it also shatters many commercially-fostered myths in the field of foods, feeding and nutrition.
The following quote from the book illustrates the body’s needs and powers:
Look at it this way. A plain old apple contains 191 known chemical compounds, each of which plays an important role in human nutrition. When you eat that apple, over 1,300 chemical reactions occur to break it down into its component molecules. Those molecules are then dispatched to exactly the areas of the body where they are required. The pectin goes to the large intestine, the vitamin C is sent to the skin, the vitamin A goes to the retinal area of the eyes, and so on times 191. You don’t make it happen because you don’t even know it’s happening. There are 160,000 edible plants on this earth—you didn’t put any of them there. But most of them help keep you alive. Your digestive system was designed by God—not by you, not by IBM and not by a government agency. It can take almost any animal that walks by or any plant that springs up in an empty field and convert it into brain, bone, heart, muscle and energy to keep you alive. Even the most arrogant and self-important “scientist” must admit that a Being far wiser than any human must have devised and implemented that will-uncomprehended nutritional system.
So don’t think that the people who make instant breakfasts or imitation orange juice or yucky white imitation bread have the slightest idea what your body needs. That applies as well to those who turn out vitamin pills and nutritional supplements. Those fumbling human brains cannot improve on the Master Design that brought you here and allows you to survive from day to day.
Pick up any book on physiology, nutrition, biology, cytology, biochemistry, anatomy and related sciences. Each attests to the multitude of activities the body conducts. Each bespeaks the orderliness and precision with which the activities are conducted; each witnesses the enormous wisdom—the vast know-how and expertise posessed within; each tells of the multitude of faculties and resources within the body.
However, for a person who elects to make a practical application of the world’s most needed expertise, a pursuit of esoteric knowledge would be luxurious entertainment. Most of it is meaningless, for we cannot change nature. It does not need to be changed. We can always rely on it. The multitudinous processes and relationships proclaim the unalterable reign of law and order within. All body wisdom is based soundly upon the immutable physical relationships of matter. Entitative existence depends entirely upon fixed principles and undeviating physical relationships. Bodily survival depends upon taking charge of and utilizing needed natural substances in accord with invariable laws.
The order of intelligence evinced in the mastery of nature’s forces dwarfs our intellects beyond our ability to comprehend. The best we can do is bend our knees in awe and acknowledge our inner wisdom and resources as our master. We must make our intellects totally subservient to our bodily wisdom. Our intellects will thrive ever more if we learn to cooperate with our inner wisdom.
By teaming up with your body intelligence in all matters, you can become a winner in the game of life. You can help others become winners in the game of life, too!
By now you are no doubt persuaded that the body is constructed for perfect operations.
The body is a perfect instrument within the environment of its adaptation when its needs are correctly furnished. Because intellect often misinterprets body processes and actually contravenes its needs—because cumulative institutionalized errors regard the body and its needs incorrectly, much suffering and disease prevail today.
Learn to trust the body implicitly. Learn how to properly supply it and know that it will perform correctly whether in struggle or great health. Struggle is occasioned when the body is incorrectly supplied or interfered with. Lacing our bodies with toxic fare, miscalled food and drink, is incorrect supply, and the administration of drugs, treatments and anti-vital modalities constitutes gross interference.
From wrong intellectual programming flows errors that undermine and destroy health.
The purpose of this course is to present you with ready-made programming you can employ in helping your clients reprogram themselves so that they may enjoy wonderful health.
Clients will seek you out because they want to free themselves of nagging problems and suffering. They are not necessarily looking to change their habits or programming—they want to be made well within the context of their status quo—most are fixed in their habits (programming) and resist changing their ways. Even if they wanted to, most are in situations that do not make breaking habits an easy matter.
To break bad habits, it is wise to take an individual out of the mold in which the habits were forged and indulged and place that person for awhile in an environment where only good habits can be followed. Within a directed or controlled environment, all the experiences are usually pleasant—even happy, memorable occasions. Those who are fasting or living within the atmosphere of a health retreat improve themselves, enjoy fellow guests and enjoy body rest. Frequently they are in a heady state. Tensions that ordinarily beset them within conventional society are relaxed and often nonexistent.
Within the context of a euphoric paradise, clients improve rapidly. Their intellects are largely reprogrammed in support of an inner drive to continue the benefits and happiness realized.
More healthful living has been inspired in Americans at health retreats than any other single way. The great value in establishing a controlled and ideally directed environment for health seekers is thus evident. Nothing reprograms the mind so quickly or so well as living and doing in rapport with others going in the same direction.
If the body has the wisdom you say, then why should it ever get sick?
The body becomes sick because of its wisdom. You must not look upon sickness as a punishment or as a stupid thing. The body always strives to the highest level of well-being as possible. If it becomes loaded with toxic substances due to whatever reason, it requires a lot of wisdom to withdraw energies from many normal channels, redirect it to purification processes and accomplish expulsion of morbid matters. If the intellect insists on unhealthful habits, including stuffing on pathogenic substances, what would happen if the body were equally unwise? Morbid matters would collect until sufficiently concentrated to dispatch the organism.
Isn’t the cell the smallest unit of human life? You have said there are yet smaller forms inside the cell. Please comment on this.
There are other inhabitants within a cell. These are called mitochondria. Each mitochondrion fulfills the qualities of life, i.e., it has its own metabolism, nucleus, genetic material (DNA) and so on. Just as the atom becomes complicated with protons, mesons, electrons and neutrons and becomes even more complicated when formed into molecules, so too, the human body seems to be at least a three-step organization with mitochondria, cells and, finally, the organic whole.
How can you say that everything the body knows is already programmed into the fertilized ovum? Wouldn’t you say a minor detail like 1,500 miles of specialized tubing called blood vessels in our bodies is the result of a far greater wisdom and power than could possibly be blueprinted on a pinhead?
It is as easy to say things one way as the other. Both truth and misconceptions can be reduced to words. However, intellectual honesty bids me to say that what we observe is evidence only of itself. In the matter of reproduction we observe the microscopic fertilized ovum carrying within all the blueprints needed to create a perfectly functioning adult with millions of times more faculties than just the 1,500 miles of circulatory tubing.
Thank you for bringing to our attention an additional aspect of the body’s really immense programming and how that programming is so readily reproducible. Because we cannot understand how the complexity of a human organism can be blueprinted into a fertilized ovum does not mean it is not there. It merely pinpoints another facet of how limited are our intellects. We can see the unfoldment of this blueprint in all its detail as it develops a human being. We cannot see any other agency involved nor can we logically infer it.
You have intimated that the body has infinite intelligence. Is this really the case?
No. The body has very finite intelligence, and that wisdom relates to internal and external matters only to the extent that it must alter its operations of the moment to maintain equilibrium or an ideal internal environment. Relative to our intellect, internal wisdom is infinite in my portrayal only because it is so much more vast, relatively. I would also impress you with this: Despite its imperfections, we must marvel that we have the luxury of the intellect. Intellectual faculties are at the very apex of body intelligence. That they have been vitiated and misdirected does not detract from them.
You’ve said that bacteria have been around for billions of years and that they have evolved to being part of the human body. Aren’t you assuming Darwin’s theory is scientific?
I know of the great controversies of our day on creationism versus evolution. Darwin’s theory is that life forms evolved and developed. This is out of the class of being a theory in view of the many types of plant and animal life humans have developed by guided breeding. Recognizing that development can be guided is also to recognize that it can happen without guidance from the human intellect.
What do you have to support your statement that the death rate goes down 50% to 60% when doctors go on strike?
There were two physicians’ strikes in Israel, one in Holland, one in Belgium, one in Canada and several in the U.S.A. In every case the death rate went down sharply. You have our book, The Myth of Medicine. Why not take time out and read it. You’ll find substantiation in its pages.
How are we going to get people to fast if that is the only way to help them.
Clients will seek you out because they are looking for benefits. Fasting is but one condition under which great benefit can be derived. If the client really needs a fast, it is a procedure to be outlined to him/her in honest terms with the benefits that always accrue correctly portrayed. Not all clients who should fast will do that, but that is their responsibility. You will have done your duty to your client by introducing them to the solution to their problems and by making your best effort to present that solution as a simple, easy and desirable way to go.
The following is based on the writings of the great Natural Hygienist, health educator and true Life Scientist, Dr. Herbert M. Shelton.
Living organisms are fully self-sufficient and self-governing entities. Supplied appropriately with the needs of life, they thrive in perfect health, completely free of disease.
From conception all living organisms are endowed with a built-in program for a full, fruitful and joyous life.
Living organisms are self-programmed to meet all life’s needs within environments of their adaptation.
All living organisms are self-directing, self-constructing, self-defending, self-preserving, self-maintaining and, in the event of injury or illness, self-repairing or self-healing.
The healing principle is always in the living system itself.
The only power that can heal is the power that repairs; the only power that can repair is that power that produces; the power that now produces is the power that originally and always produced. The power that constructs a full-grown individual from a fertilized ovum is the only healing power!
Healing is, therefore, a continuous, unceasing and exclusively intrinsic power of every organism.
The power that produces an organism and keeps it alive and functioning is the only power capable of governing, maintaining and healing it.
Mastering and relying upon this great power within will yield a life of bliss and goodness with complete freedom from ailments and suffering.
The simple, self-evident truth enunciated in this article embodies a long train of guiding principles that can enable you to avert miseries, woes and suffering.
Knowing your tremendous inner capabilities frees you of many burdensome illusions and provides a key to true life enhancement.
Recognizing the truth and implications of this lesson’s text is the basis upon which you can immeasurably improve your life and its circumstances.
Recognizing the fundamental truth outlined herein sets the stage for fulfilling the obligation you have to yourself and fellow beings, that of reorienting and reprogramming yourself for superlative well-being.
Standing in the way of total well-being for all too many who otherwise have the knowledge, the understanding and the dedication to achieve their highest potential are many ingrained bad habits, physiological addictions and erroneous concepts.
“Tis better to be ignorant than to know so much that isn’t so.”
Humans are creatures of habits. Habits are conditioned responses which we rely upon for personal efficiency. We spend many years from infanthood on learning responses to many thousands of situations and circumstances.
With set response patterns we do not have to go through time-loss and trouble in solving problems anew every time we face them—we humans solve our problems once and for all and adopt the solutions as fixed and automatic responses known as habits. When situations reoccur, we unconsciously employ our habit patterns.
That many of these habits amount to error fixation and that our accommodations to many of these habits amount to life-destroying perversions gives rise to the need to reprogram ourselves.
Most of our habits are learned from people who learned from others back into the murky reaches of time. Habits are always adapted and employed in accord with our own peculiar abilities.
Likewise, we learn most of our concepts and misconcepts from others and adopt them in the shape or fashion our individual peculiarities dictate.
Habits are wonderful, for they are the foundation upon which our advanced human attainments have been built. As the most programmable beings in existence, we have more “conditioned responses” to carry us through more and greater complexities than other creatures in existence. By and large, our habits are constructive and get us along in this world remarkably well.
On the other hand, there are many “klunkers” in our personal armentarium that sabotage our well-being.
Thus it follows that we can perform no better than the limitations of our self-programming. Our programming is at the same time our boon and our bane. To the extent that it guides us correctly, it is a boon. Insofar as it locks us into wrong conceptual frameworks, perverted outlooks, unwholesome practices, vitiated and antisocial dispositions and many other self-defeating characteristics, programming is a bar to our well-being.
It is unfortunate that most or all of us are incorrectly attuned to a greater or lesser extent in many of our life programs.
But we are fortunate in that we, like computers, can be reprogrammed for better performance and more rewarding results.
If you want to capitalize upon the colossal potential within yourself, then you must reprogram yourself.
Reprogramming yourself is difficult because you will be burdened heavily by the weight of previous conditioning and the drives, good, bad and indifferent, which initiate and impel your activities.
You’ll have to dispel a lot of myths and superstitions which infest your concepts and burden your thinking processes. What you take for granted is difficult to overcome. But you must and can do so.
To reprogram yourself for a better life on a higher plane of existence, the first order of business is to admit to yourself that you could harbor a lot of beliefs and practices that are responsible for your and your fellow beings’ generally poor condition and overall suffering.
We all know mental anguish and frustrations. These will flow from lives not led in accord with the course our innate nature decrees.
You can reprogram yourself to understand and practice the course you must follow. You can avoid those pitfalls that hamper you from assuming the position on the pedestal that all humans should occupy.
Following are the steps necessary for the ordinary person to become a Life Scientist, that is, to become an individual who conducts his or her life activities in accord with the dictates of the human biological heritage:
The greatest engineering feat of which we know anything is the building of a complex animal organism from a microscopic ovum. Think, for instance, of the marvels of the human body with its pulleys and levers to perform mechanical work, its channels for distribution of food and drainage of sewage and its means of regulating its temperature and adapting its actions and functions to its varied environments and needs. Its nervous system and the eyes, ears, etc. are constant sources of wonder. We regard the radio as a wonderful invention, as indeed it is, but we are all equipped with more wonderful “sending” and “receiving” sets than any radio manufacturer will ever produce. All human inventions have their protypes in the animal body.
In studying the wonders of the body, its structures, functions, development, growth and its varied powers and capacities, it is well to keep in mind that the building and preservation of all these things is from within. The power, force or intelligence that evolves the adult body from the fertilized ovum is in the body, is part of it and is in constant and unceasing control of all its activities. Whether it is an intelligent power or a blind energy, it works determinately toward the latest results in complexity of structure and function. In development and maintenance, and in health and disease, the movements of life appear to be guided by intelligence more often than the conscious intelligence of man. Indeed, unless we grant that something can come out of nothing, that intelligence can come out of that which has no intelligence, we must believe that the conscious intelligence of man is a subordinate part of that broader intelligence that evolves his body and which inheres in it.
If we view a few of the engineering feats performed by the body in cases of injury and disease, we are forcibly struck with the truth of Sylvester Graham’s remark: “In all these operations the organic instincts act determinately, and, as it were, rationally, with reference to a final cause of good, viz., the removal of the offending cause.” Some of these wonderful feats have been presented to you in previous chapters. We will here present a few of a different class.
To begin with, let us consider the natural healing of a wound, scratch or broken skin. We have become so accustomed to this familiar phenomenon that we have come to regard it as an almost mechanical process. But a close examination of the process shows us the presence of that same marvelous intelligence that built the body from a tiny microscopic speck of protoplasm to its present state.
Whenever the skin is broken or cut there is an exudation of blood which coagulates and forms an airtight scab. This scab serves as a protection to the wound and remains for a shorter or longer time as is needed.
Underneath this scab a wonderful thing occurs. Blood is rushed to the injured part in large quantities. The tissues, nerve and muscle cells, etc. on each side of the wound start multiplying rapidly and build a “cell-bridge” across the gap until the severed edges of the wound are reunited. But this is no mere haphazard process. Everywhere is apparent the presence of directing law and order. The newly-formed cells of the blood vessels unite with their brothers on the other side so that, in an orderly and evenly manner, the channels of circulation are re-established. In this same lawful and orderly manner the connective tissues reunite. Skillfully, and just as a lineman repairs a telegraph system, do the nerve cells repair their broken line. Muscles and other tissues are repaired in a similar manner. And what is a wonderfully marvelous fact to observe, no mistakes are made in this connective tissue, but each tissue connects with its kind.
After the wound is healed, when a new skin has been formed so that there is no longer any need for the protecting scab, nature proceeds to undermine and get rid of it. As long as the scab was useful it was firmly attached to the skin so that it was not easy to pull it off, but when there was no longer need for it, it was undermined so that it fell off of its own weight.
What more evidence than this does one require to know that the same intelligent power that built our bodies is also the power that heals it? What better evidence do we want that the healing process is accomplished in the same orderly manner and by means of the same functions with which the body is built, maintained and modified to meet its present needs.
We get a still more wonderful view of how nature performs her work if we observe the healing of a fractured or broken bone. If an arm or leg be broken, this same marvelous intelligence that has brought us from ovum to adulthood immediately sets about to repair the damage done. A liquid substance is secreted and deposited over the entire surface of the bone in each direction from the point of fracture. This section quickly hardens into a bone-like substance and is firmly attached to the two sections of the bone. Until nature can repair the damage, this “bone ring” forms the chief support whereby the limb can be used. By the same process of cell multiplication which we saw in the healing of the wound, the ends of the bone are reunited. The circulatory channels are re-established through the part. It is then that the “bone ring” support is softened and absorbed, except about an eighth to a quarter of an inch about the point of fracture.
If you strike your finger with a hammer, a very painful bruise is the result. There is an effusion of blood under the surface, with inflammation and discoloration. The tissues are mangled, the cells are broken and many of them are killed. But does the thumb always remain so? No. As time passes, new tissues are formed to replace the dead ones and the dead blood and tissue cells are carried away by the bloodstream. The inflammation subsides, the pain ceases and the bruise is healed and soon forgotten. Thus again is manifested the marvelous intelligence of the power that superintends the workshop which we call our body. Once again we watch its work and see its marvelous efficiency as a workman.
A similar manifestation of the body’s self-healing, self-adjusting and self-repairing powers is seen in the common accident whereby a sliver becomes embedded in the flesh. If it is not removed immediately, nature, or vital force, does a skillful little piece of engineering and removes it for us. Pain and inflammation are soon followed by the formation of pus, which breaks down the tissues, towards the surface of the body. Gradually increasing in amount, the pus finally breaks through the overlying skin and runs out, carrying the sliver along as a souvenir.
A remarkable engineering feat is presented to us in abscess formations. Ordinarily the abscess is limited by a thick protective wall of granulation tissue which prevents the abscess from spreading and prevents rapid escape of the pus into the circulation.
In appendicitis the loops of the bowels around the appendix form friendly adhesions. They adhere together and form a strong wall against further spread of the trouble. Within this enclosure the abscesses form. The line of least resistance normally is into the bowels so that practically every case, if not interfered with by meddlesome doctors, will rupture into the bowels and the pus will pass out with the stools.
Where the ice bag is employed for one or two days prior to the usual operations, there is a noticeable lack of effort on the part of nature to wall off the appendix from the rest of the abdominal cavity. However, where the ice bag has not been employed, a distinct walling off of the acutely inflamed and gangrenous appendix from the general peritoneal cavity is found. So greatly does the ice bag interfere with the curative and protective operations of nature that one of the leading abdominal surgeons of this country declares: “I have entirely discarded the use of the ice bag, and in cases brought to me in which it has been used, I always announce beforehand that I expect to find a gangrenous appendix and am seldom surprised. Clearly the ice bag should never be used in cases of actual or suspected appendicitis.” Nature can do her own work in her own way, and all our so-called aiding of nature amounts to is nothing more than meddlesome and pernicious interference.
Acute inflammation of the liver usually terminates in resolution, but sometimes it terminates in suppuration with abscess formation. This is more apt to be the case in hot climates. The amount of matter discharged from an abscess of the liver is sometimes enormous, and it is wonderful to see in what ways nature operates in getting rid of it.
There are several channels through which the pus may be sent out of the system. The inflammation may extend upward until an adhesion to the diaphragm is accomplished. A dense wall of scar tissue is first formed around the abscess. The abscess then extends through the diaphragm to the lungs, which become adherent to the diaphragm. Liver, diaphragm and lungs form one solid piece. A tight union of these organs prevents the pus from pouring into the peritoneal or pleural cavities. A hole is eaten through the lung and the pus is poured into a bronchial tube and is coughed up, emptying the abscess and leaving a clean hole. The wall of scar tissue thrown up around the path of the abscess grows stronger and contracts until, finally, only the scar remains, it having closed the hole, and the patient is well.
The abscess may be directed downward or to the side of the liver. In such a case the process is the same except the liver becomes united to the stomach, the intestines or the walls of the abdomen by adhesions produced by inflammation. If it adheres to the stomach or intestine, the abscess will perforate into these and the pus will pass out in the stools. If it becomes adherent to the wall of the abdomen, the abscess will “come to a head” under the skin and the pus will be discharged on the surface of the body. In either case cicatrization follows and the patient is well. In some cases the abscess discharges into the gallbladder and passes from there into the intestine. It has also been known to “point” on the back.
It sometimes happens in weak individuals that nature is not able to make proper connections along the line of march and the pus ends up in the pleural cavity, resulting in empyema, or in the abdominal cavity, where it results in peritonitis and, usually, death.
Another daring engineering feat is often accomplished by nature in the case of gallstones that are too large to pass through the bile duct directly into the small intestine. She frequently causes the gallbladder to adhere, by means of inflammation, to the wall of the intestine. An ulcer forms, making a hole through both the wall of the gallbladder and the wall of the intestine. The stone slips through into the intestine and passes out with the stools. The hole heals up and all is well again. In other cases the stone may be sent out through the abdominal wall and skin, on the outside of the body.
An unusual piece of engineering which shows, in a remarkable manner, the ingenuity of nature in her efforts at prolonging life in spite of every obstacle, is recorded by J. F. Baldwin, A.M., M.D., F.A.C.S., in a surgical paper dealing with blood transfusions. He performed an operation on a middle-aged woman who had been having frequent hemorrhages from her bowels for several years. He says:
At the operation I removed a snarl of small bowel, making the usual anastamosis. Examination of this snarl showed that there had been an intestinal obstruction, but nature had overcome it by ulceration between adherent loops of the bowel above and below the obstruction. The ulcer persisted, however, and it was its persistent bleeding that caused her anemia. She made an excellent recovery and got fat and hearty.
It looks like a real intelligence at work when nature causes two folds of the bowels to adhere together and then ulcerates through them in order to make a passage around an obstruction. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the ulcer would have healed, leaving a passage, and the bleeding stopped, had the opportunity been afforded it. Nature probably cried out day after day in unmistakable language for the cessation of feeding long enough for her to complete her engineering feat. But this was never given her. The ulcerated surface was kept constantly irritated with food, and drugs as well.
Abscesses everywhere in the body are limited and walled off by the formation of a thick wall of granulation tissue. Gangrene is also walled off in the same manner. The necrosed portion then sloughs off; nature grows new tissue to take the place of the destroyed tissue and the place is healed.
Encapsulation is the process of surrounding a body or substance with a capsule. A cyst or capsule consists of a cavity lined according to its origin by endothelium (in preexisting cavities of connective tissue—exudation cysts) or epithelium (in pre-existing epithelial cavities—retention cysts) with a fluid or semifluid content.
Those of chief interest to us here are known as distention cysts and are divided into:
(a) Retention cysts, which are due to the obstruction of the excretory ducts of glands. The cavity becomes filled with the secretion of the gland which later becomes altered and circumscribed by a fibrous wall. These may develop in any glandular structure, as pancreas, kidneys, salivary glands, mammary glands, sebaceous glands (wens).
Around a foreign body like a bullet, such a capsule forms. There is first inflammation and perhaps suppuration. But if this fails to remove the bullet, a capsule of tissue also containing fluid is formed, and the bullet is rendered innocuous. A similar thing frequently happens in the lungs in the case of germs. Rausse thought this fluid was a variety of mucus and thought that chemical or drug poisons were enveloped in this same “musus” to render them harmless and that they were then deposited in the tissues. He says with regard to the face that this theory cannot at present be demonstrated:
This theory is founded upon the incontrovertible principle of nature in the alimentary and organic world, that nature operates similarly under similar circumstances. Hence, the theory here offered loses none of its certainty because we are unable to recognize with the unaided eye, on account of their minuteness, the inimical atoms and the minute network around them, and to exhibit them by section.
—Water Cure Manual, p. 92, 1845.
The encapsulation of exudates, excretions, extravasions, disintegrating tissues, germs, parasites, bullets and other foreign bodies renders them harmless. The process and structure it evolves are plainly defensive measures. They once more remind us of the many and varied emergency measures the body has at its command.
The formation of gallstones and other stones is in itself an engineering feat that serves a useful purpose and even extends and saves life. In the lungs, for instance, in those who have tuberculosis, the affected spots are often the seat of the formation of stones. When this takes place, the disease in that part ends. Medical authorities consider that nature employs this means to wall up the tubercle bacilli.
The formation of stones in the gallbladder and kidneys, just as in the lungs, is the end result of inflammation and undoubtedly serves a definite and useful purpose. Sometimes, it is true, they are made so large that they are the source of much trouble, but it is safe to assume that they are never made larger than the gravity of the situation demands. Most gallstones are small enough that they pass out without causing pain, and the individual is never aware that he or she has had them. A large number of people examined at autopsies are found to have gallstones in the gallbladder and were never aware that they had them. They never cause trouble until they go to pass out and only then if they are small enough to get into the gall duct but too large to make the entire passage. A stone that may easily travel through the common duct may be forced, with extreme difficulty, through the small opening of the duct into the intestine. This causes severe pain. As soon as the stone is forced through, the pain ceases. (The sufferer then thinks that it was the last treatment he employed that relieved the pain and “cured” his troubles.)
A thrombus is a small blood clot formed inside a blood vessel. The condition is called thrombosis and the vessel is said to be thrombosed. They are the result of injury and inflammation and may completely plug the vessel.
In the intestines are many small glands composed of lymphoid structure just as are the tonsils of the throat. They are known as Pyer’s patches. In typhoid fever these patches are swollen or enlarged (hypertrophied), and frequently they suppurate. They may slough off. This peeling off may result in a hemorrhage or it may not, depending on whether or not all the vessels in that locality are tightly thrombosed. If they are all tightly thrombosed, no hemorrhage occurs. If the work of sealing the vessel is not complete or perfect, then a hemorrhage occurs with more or less loss of blood before it finally ceases. This is but another evidence of nature’s engineering work. These thrombi may later be swept into the general circulation and carried to some vital spot where they are too large to pass through the artery and may there cut off the blood to parts of the organ, causing it to die of starvation. Starvation would only occur in cases of stopping of an “end artery.”
“Anastamosing” arteries would soon establish sufficient collateral or compensatory circulation to supply the part with blood.
If heat or friction of sufficient intensity and duration is applied to the skin, a blister forms; that is, a watery exudate or serum is poured out of the surrounding tissues and circulation into the “space” between the dermis and epidermis and detaches the dermis from this, raising it up and thus protecting the tissues beneath. The accumulated fluid holds back the heat or, in the case of sunburn, the actinic rays, and protects from the friction. This little piece of engineering work is quite obviously a defensive work. In both burns and sunburn, inflammation and healing follow the blister, and in the case of sunburn pigmentation occurs to protect from future sunburn.
Of a similarly defensive nature are corns and callouses that form on the feet and hands or any other surface of the body that is subjected to constant friction. The clerk who deserts the store for manual labor finds his hands are tender and blister easily when he handles tools. However, before many days have passed, the skin on his hands has become thickened and hardened, ultimately becoming almost horn-like. When this occurs, he finds that no reasonable amount of hard work blisters his hands.
Tumors likely begin in this same manner. They probably begin as hardening and thickening of the tissues at a point of irritation as a means of defense.
Hardening and thickening of the tissues occurs in any and all parts of the body to resist constant irritation. This can be seen in the mouth, stomach and intestines of those who employ salt and condiments. It is seen in the constant use of drugs. Silver nitrate, for instance, if repeatedly employed, converts the mucous surface upon which it is used into a kind of half-living leather. Other organs harden and thicken as a result of toxic irritation. Toxemia, with or without the aid of external irritation, often necessitates, at certain points of the body, the erection of greater than ordinary barriers against it. When the normal cells of a local spot become so impaired that they no longer successfully resist the encroachment of toxins, not only are the usual defense processes brought into activity, but also, since a more than usual condition is to be met, nature calls into play her heavier battalions. She begins by erecting a barrier of connective tissue cells. Then, with a slowly-yielding fight against the toxins, she continues to erect her barriers. This may continue until the tumor becomes so large as to constitute a source of danger itself. Were it not for the erection of this barrier, the causes against which it is erected would destroy life long before they ultimately do. The tumor actually prolongs life.
A process similar to this is seen in plants that have been invaded by parasites. The large, rough excrescences seen on oak trees form about the larva of a certain fly. This fly lays its eggs beneath the bark of the tree. The larva which develop from the eggs secrete a substance that results in the formation of the huge tumorous mass. Large tumor-like masses form on the roots and stalks of cabbages as a result of parasitic invasion. The olive tree also develops tumors from a similar cause, while cedar trees present peculiar growths called “witches’ brooms” as a result of a fungus growing on them. There are many other examples, and they are all quite obviously protective measures. Tumor formation is undoubtedly due to a variation in the complex relations determining normal growth and is of a distinctively protective nature. A tumor is not a source of danger until it begins to break down.
In inflammation of the kidneys due to the impairment of kidney function, the normal constituents of the urine are decreased. They remain in the blood instead of being eliminated. Due to the necessity of removing from the circulation, the salts, etc., that are normally eliminated through the kidneys, and due also to the necessity of keeping these in dilute solution so long as they remain in the body, and to the equal necessity of removing them from the circulation, drospy develops in various portions of the body, particularly in the tissues immediately under the skin. It may also collect in the cavities of the body. When kidney function is restored, the dropsical fluid is gradually absorbed into circulation and eliminated.
An aneurism is an inflated portion of an artery. If the walls of an artery become weak at a given place, they either burst, some of its coats are strengthened or else it becomes bulged out due to the pressure of the blood from within. The body at once sets about to protect itself by forming a vail of new tissue around the aneurism. Should it rupture so that the blood finds its way along between other organs, a wall of scar tissue is thrown up around the aneurism to limit the escape of blood. This is called a dissecting aneurism.
Thus we might continue giving example after example of the wonderful engineering feats of the body and show with what marvelous powers and works it meets emergencies and protects its own vital interests. When we consider the wonderful mechanism of the human body, the certainty with which all organs perform their allotted work, the marvelous ingenuity with which the body meets emergencies, its almost limitless powers of repair and recuperation, we develop a large respect and admiration for the healing powers of the body and learn to view with contempt and disgust the means that people employ in unintelligent efforts to “cure.”
Well did Jennings affirm:
But at every step of her (nature’s) downward progress (in the face of pathoferic causes she cannot overcome), her tendency and effort have been to ascend and remount the pinnacle of her greatness; and even now, in the depth of her degradation, the tendency of all that remains of her, of principle or law, power and action, is still upwards.
7.2. Classification Of Carbohydrates
7.3. The Role Of Carbohydrates In The Body
7.4. How Carbohydrates Are Digested And Used By The Body
7.6. Why Starches Are Less Than Ideal Sources Of Carbohydrates
7.7. Why Fruits Are The Ideal Source Of Carbohydrates
7.8. Amounts And Variety Of Carbohydrates Needed By Humans
7.9. Disease Conditions Related To Carbohydrate Consumption
Article #1: Carbohydrates by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #2: Digestion Of Foods by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #3: Starches Are Second-Rate Foods by Marti Fry
Article #4: The “Staff Of Life” by Marti Fry
Article #5: What’s Wrong With Wheat by Marti Fry
Article #6: Fruit - The Ideal Food by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #7: Are Humans Starch Eaters? by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Before embarking on a study of carbohydrates—their role in the body, their sources, etc., we will begin by highlighting the importance of carbohydrates, defining what carbohydrates are and learning how they are formed, as well as glimpsing at a brief history of carbohydrates in the human diet.
As mentioned in the RATIONALE earlier in this lesson, even the process of digestion could not occur without the energy provided by carbohydrates. Without carbohydrates we would not be able to think or move and our heart couldn’t beat.
Whether it be digestion or circulation, thinking or walking, all life activities are dependent upon carbohydrates. When insufficient carbohydrates are available from the diet, the body converts fat reserves to carbohydrates for its use, and amino acids are utilized as carbohydrates instead of being used to make body protein.
As the lesson title implies, carbohydrates provide fuel, or energy, for the human body. These organic (carbon-containing) compounds are an integral part of both plant and animal life, and, as stated above, life as we know it could not exist without them.
Carbohydrates are made up of three elements: carbon, hydrogen and oxygen—carbohydrates. As you will learn in a later lesson, fats are also comprised of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, but they have less oxygen and more carbon and hydrogen than carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates, along with proteins and fats, comprise the major components of living matter and are used for maintenance of cellular functional activities and as reserve and structural materials for cells. Because they are the primary source of energy for the animal kingdom, carbohydrates are particularly important in a study of nutritional science.
Carbohydrates are formed by green plants in the process of photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, plant chlorophyll, plant enzymes, sunlight, carbon dioxide from the air, and mineralized water from the soil combine and, in a complicated process, synthesize carbohydrates. Humans obtain their carbohydrate needs most efficiently from the plant world.
In the past and in some parts of the world today, people’s diets consisted largely of carbohydrate foods, especially those growing locally. In most of the Western world today, however, meats and other protein/fat foods comprise a disproportionate part of the diets of many people, and processed and refined carbohydrate products are being consumed in lethal quantities.
While people do survive, at least for a relatively short lifespan, on diets high in proteins and refined carbohydrates, this survival is low-level survival, with suffering from illnesses of numerous varieties being considered the norm. A high-level state of health and well-being is possible only if our needs are met in keeping with our biological adaptation and if destructive practices are removed from our lives. The further we carry this, the healthier and happier we will be, for joy is supposed to be our primary experience in life— not suffering.
During the past 70 years or so, more and more food processing and refining establishments have been created, and they are producing horrendous qualities of highly-refined, highly-processed and highly-chemicalized so-called “foods.” An extremely large proportion of these “foods” are carbohydrates—that is, they provide energy in the form of calories. But they are not real foods because they lack many of the elements from the original food source that make a food a food. For example; the germ and bran are removed from wheat, leaving only starch; and the vitamins, minerals and fiber that need to be with the starch to make the wheat a whole food are missing. Removing natural food components and then attempting to put them back by adding specified amounts of synthetic vitamins and minerals, by using bran separate from the whole wheat berries, and by taking food supplement pills and powders is the height of absurdity. First of all, it’s not effective, and secondly, it’s expensive, time-consuming and, most of all—UNNECESSARY!
Even physiology texts, which are medically oriented rather than health oriented, say that a casually selected diet of carbohydrates is likely to be poor in the essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Life Scientists/Natural Hygienists recognize the necessity of high-quality carbohydrates in the diet and the need to eschew the products marketed by the food industries; Hygienists advocate a return to a high-carbohydrate diet consisting of whole foods, with fiber intact, that provide our needs for complete proteins, vitamins and organic minerals.
7.2.2 Glucose (also known as dextrose or grape sugar)
7.2.3 Fructose (also known as levulose or fruit sugar)
7.2.7 Maltose (also known as malt sugar)
Carbohydrates, also known as saccharides, are classified according to the number of single carbohydrate molecules in each chemical structure. Carbohydrate compounds having just one carbohydrate molecule are called monosaccharides; compounds with two carbohydrate molecules are called dissarcharides; and those compounds containing more than two carbohydrate molecules are named polysaccharides. All carbohydrates either are monosaccharides or can be hydrolyzed (broken down) into two or more monosaccharides.
For further understanding of these different classifications of carbohydrates, the monosaccharides and disaccharides can be grouped together and compared with the polysaccharides. This can be done because monosaccharides and disaccharides have certain things in common.
For one, they are both water soluble. In addition, they have a sweet taste and a crystalline structure. The monosaccharides and disaccharides are called sugars and all share the suffix, -ose, meaning sugar.
Polysaccharides, in contrast to mono- and disaccharides, are insoluble in water, do not taste sweet and do not form crystals. Also, they do not share a suffix and have no group name (such as sugars, in the case of mono-arid disaccharides). They are sometimes called starches, but this is technically incorrect because there are many other classifications of polysaccharides besides starches (cellulose and glycogen being two and dextrin being another).
These are the only sugars that can be absorbed and utilized by the body. Disaccharides and polysaccharides must be ultimately broken down into monosaccharides in the digestive process known as hydrolysis. Only then can they be utilized by the body. Three monosaccharides are particularly important in the study of nutritional science: glucose, fructose and galactose.
This monosaccharide is the most important carbohydrate in human nutrition because it is the one that the body fuses directly to supply its energy needs. Glucose is formed from the hydrolysis of di- and polysaccharides, including starch, dextrin, maltose, sucrose and lactose; from the monosaccharide fructose largely during absorption; and from both fructose and galactose in the liver during metabolism.
Glucose is the carbohydrate found in the bloodstream, and it provides an immediate source of energy for the body’s cells and tissues. Glucose is also formed when stored body carbohydrate (glycogen) is broken down for use.
In the plant world, glucose is widely distributed. It is found in all plants and in the sap of trees. Fruits and vegetables are wholesome food sources of glucose. It is also present in such unwholesome (to humans) substances as molasses, honey and corn syrup.
Fructose, a monosaccharide, is very similar to another monosaccharide, galactose. These two simple sugars share the same chemical formula; however, the arrangements of their chemical groups along the chemical chain differ. Fructose is the sweetest of all the sugars and is found in fruits, vegetables and the nectar of flowers, as well as in the unwholesome (to humans) sweeteners, molasses and honey. In humans, fructose is produced during the hydrolysis of the disaccharide, sucrose.
Galactose differs from the other simple sugars, glucose and fructose, in that it does not occur free in nature. It is produced in the body in the digestion of lactose, a disaccharide.
Disaccharides, on hydrolysis, yield two monosaccharide molecules. Three particular disaccharides warrant discussion in a lesson on nutritional science: sucrose, maltose and lactose.
The disaccharide, sucrose, consists of one molecule of each of two monosaccharides—glucose and fructose. Sucrose is found in fruits and vegetables and is particularly plentiful in sugar beets (roots) and sugarcane (a grass). Refined white and brown sugars are close to 100% sucrose because almost everything else (including the other kinds of sugars present, the vitamins, the minerals and the proteins) have been removed in the refining process. Maple syrup and molasses are, like refined sugars, unwholesome sweeteners; both contain over 50% sucrose. It almost goes without saying that any foods, so-called, containing significant amounts of refined sugar are high in sucrose.
This disaccharide, unlike sucrose, is not consumed in large amounts in the average American diet. It is found in malted cereals, malted milks and sprouted grains. Also, corn syrup is 26 percent maltose and corn sugar is 4 percent maltose. None of these “foods” is wholesome, with perhaps, the exception of sprouted grains.
Maltose occurs in the body as an intermediate product of starch digestion. (Starch is a polysaccharide.) When maltose is hydrolyzed, it yields two molecules of glucose.
This disaccharide is found only in milk. Human milk contains about 4.8 g per 100 ml and cow’s milk contains approximately 6.8 g per 100 ml. When lactose is hydrolyzed it yields one unit of the monosaccharide glucose and one unit of the monosaccharide galactose. The enzyme lactase is needed to digest lactose, and this enzyme is not present in most, if any, people over age three. This is one of the many reasons why milk is an unwholesome food for people over three years of age.
Like the disaccharides, the polysaccharides cannot be directly utilized by the body. They must first be broken down into monosaccharides, the only sugar form the body can use.
Polysaccharides contain up to 60,000 simple carbohydrate molecules. These carbohydrate molecules are arranged in long chains in either a straight or in a branched structure. There are four polysaccharides that are important in the study of nutritional science: starch, dextrin, glycogen and cellulose.
Starch is abundant in the plant world and is found in granular form in the cells of plants. Starch granules can be seen under a microscope and they differ in size, shape and markings in various plants. The starch granules of wheat, for example, are oval-shaped; whereas the starch granules of corn are small, rounded and angular.
These starch granules are laid down in the storage organs of plants—in the seeds, tubers, roots and stem pith. They provide a reserve food supply for the plant, sustain the root or tuber through the winter and nourish the growing embryo during germination.
Most starches are a mix of two different molecular structures, amylose and amylopectin. The former has a linear structure and the latter has a branched or bushy structure. The proportion of the two fractions varies according to the species of plant. For example, potato starch and most cereal starches have approximately 15-30% amylose. But the waxy cereal grains, including some varieties of corn plus rice and grain sorghum, have their starch most entirely as amylopectin. The starches in green peas and in some sweet corn varieties are mainly amylose.
The polysaccharides, as mentioned earlier, are not water soluble as are the mono- and disaccharides. Though not water soluble, starches can be dispersed in water heated to a certain temperature. The granules swell and gelatinize. When cooled, this gelatin sets to a paste. The jelling characteristics of starches are considered to result from the amylose present, while amylopectin is considered to be responsible for the gummy and cohesive properties of the paste.
There are several “varieties” of this polysaccharide. Dextrins are most commonly consumed in cooked starch foods, as they are obtained from starch by the action of heat. Dextrins are intermediary products of starch digestion, also, and are formed by the action of amylases on starches. They render the disaccharide maltose on hydrolysis.
Glycogen is the reserve carbohydrate in humans. It is to animals as starch is to plants. Glycogen is very similar to amylopectin, having a high molecular weight and branched-chain structures made up of thousands of glucose molecules. The main difference between glycogen and amylopectin is that glycogen has more and shorter branches, resulting in a more compact, bushlike molecule with greater solubility and lower viscosity (less stickiness or gumminess).
Glycogen is stored primarily in the liver and muscles of animals. About two-thirds of total body glycogen is stored in the muscles and about one-third is stored in the liver.
Like starch and glycogen, cellulose is composed of thousands of glucose molecules. It comprises over 50% of the carbon in vegetation and is the structural constituent of the cell walls of plants. Cellulose is, therefore, the most abundant naturally-occurring organic substance. It is characterized by its insolubility, its chemical inertness and its physical rigidity. This polysaccharide can be digested only by herbivores such as cows, sheep, horses, etc., as these animals have bacteria in their rumens (stomachs) whose enzyme systems break down cellulose molecules. Humans do not have the enzyme needed to digest cellulose, so it is passed through the digestive tract unchanged.
7.3.1 Carbohydrates Supply Energy
7.3.2 Carbohydrates Provide Fuel for the Central Nervous System
7.3.3 Carbohydrates Provide Fuel for the Muscular System
Five subheadings follow in this lesson subdivision, but there is actually only one basic role of carbohydrates in the human diet: to supply energy. It should always be kept in mind that carbohydrates or calories alone cannot adequately supply our energy needs, for we must have our carbohydrates in combination with other needs, such as proteins, water, vitamins, minerals, fats, etc. This means that a diet of refined sugar, refined rice, flour products and other “food fragments,” though it supplies calories, cannot satisfactorily comprise the bulk of anyone’s diet. A person on such a diet would suffer many problems, for the organism is not capable of living long or well on bare carbohydrates alone. They must be obtained in combination with the other essential food factors to be truly useful in the overall energy production and nutrition of the organism.
The body uses carbohydrates directly from the monosaccharide glucose. Glucose is in the blood and extracellular fluids (lymph) and can be made from glycogen. Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles and in smaller amounts in the other organs and tissues of the body. Energy is derived from glucose by the splitting of the glucose molecules into smaller compounds and oxidizing these to form water, which frees quite a large amount of energy.
When carbohydrates needed for the functioning of the central nervous system, the muscles and the other body systems and functions are insufficient in the diet (as during a fast or on a weight-loss diet), stored adipose tissue (fat) is broken down into glucose to make up the caloric deficit. Some amino acids, instead of being used to make proteins, are deaminated and used as carbohydrates to supply energy. The formation of glucose from amino acids is called gluconeogenesis. This phenomenon enables one to maintain normal blood sugar levels during a fast.
Practically the entire fat store of the body can be used up without detriment to health. Because of this fact, and the fact that the body can also create carbohydrates from amino acids, fasting is a very safe practice from the standpoint of maintenance of normal blood sugar levels, of normal neurological functioning and of meeting all the body’s various energy needs.
Nerve cells are very dependent upon glucose for their functioning. According to physiology texts, the glycogen in nervous tissues remains constant and is not mobilized for conversion to glucose. When insufficient carbohydrates are consumed to meet the energy needs of the central nervous system, besides the occurrence of gluconeogenesis, another phenomenon occurs during a fast of three weeks or more: The cells of the central nervous system adapt their metabolic apparatus to use ketone bodies in place of glucose. (Ketone bodies are substances synthesized by the liver as a step in the metabolism of fats.) The nerve cells obtain their needed functional energy from these metabolites. This explains why patients with blood sugar problems (diabetes or hypoglycemia) do not suffer ill effects during a fast. In fact, they benefit by fasting. (This topic will be discussed in depth in a later lesson.)
Carbohydrates provide the major fuel for muscular exercise. Fats and proteins can be used only indirectly—by first being converted into carbohydrates. For this reason, a proper diet should consist primarily of carbohydrates—not primarily of proteins and fats as are commonly consumed in conventional nonvegetarian (and some lacto- and lacto-ovo vegetarian) diets.
The muscles use the glycogen present in the muscle cells and glucose in the bloodstream. However, glycogen from the muscles is more efficiently used than glucose because the breakdown of glycogen for use does not require energy input at the time, whereas a certain amount of energy is used to bring the blood sugar into the metabolic system of the muscles. (It does require energy to build up the glycogen supply in the first place, but this happens during periods of rest when plenty of energy is available.)
If a diet high in carbohydrates is not consumed, tremendous muscular exertion over long periods and/or extreme and prolonged stress (as being stranded for weeks in Antarctica) can result in accelerated breakdown of body protein and stored body fat. The protein breakdown is evidenced by an increased excretion of nitrogen in the urine, and the fat breakdown is evidenced by a rise in the level of ketone bodies in the urine and in the blood. The blood sugar level is simultaneously lower.
The body works much more efficiently from carbohydrate intake than from broken-down body protein and fats because protein and fat molecules, when used as fuel, yield less than their total caloric value in the form the muscles can use. The remaining portion is used for the conversion of these molecules into suitable fuel. This conversion takes place in the liver and adipose tissue, which supply the body’s organs with fuel via the bloodstream.
The fact that the body can and will use body fats and proteins when the supply and stores of blood sugar and glycogen are not great enough to meet the demand for energy exemplifies two facts: 1) The organism is provident. It has many back-up arrangements for survival in emergency situations when sufficient carbohydrates are not available. 2) An appropriate balance between supplying body needs (such as rest and carbohydrates) and expending energy (muscular, nervous or other) should be strived for to attain optimum health and well-being.
It has been found that people who are accustomed to doing prolonged or strenuous work have larger stores of glycogen (and of phosphate esters) in their muscles than those not accustomed to much physical activity. It is, therefore, beneficial to do regular vigorous exercise to increase our storage of muscle glycogen. We will then be prepared to expend energy for longer and more strenuous exercise—whether it be in an emergency or in pursuing pleasure.
Physiology textbooks refer to this so-called role or function of carbohydrate in the body as “its protein-sparing action.” However, it is incorrect to attribute action (other than chemical action) to carbohydrates or other inanimate substances. Besides, “sparing protein” is not a function or role of carbohydrates at all. Carbohydrates simply furnish our fuel or energy needs—and nothing more.
What is being said in the textbooks is that proteins consumed will be used for tissue building and maintenance rather than being used as an emergency source of energy as long as the carbohydrate intake is sufficient. This is true, but it is only another way of saying that carbohydrates are the primary and most efficient source of energy or fuel and that it is best not to try to meet our fuel needs from proteins. It is stating the true fact that carbohydrates, not proteins, supply our primary nutrient needs.
“Sparing proteins” is not a separate and distinct function or role of carbohydrates any more than preventing scurvy is a separate and distinct function of vitamin C in the body. Vitamin C supplies body needs, but its role is not prevention of scurvy or of anything else. Viewing nutrients as preventative agents of diseases is another way of saying that diseases are normal, that they are an inevitable part of life that will and must occur unless prevented by the proper nutrients. That is a backwards way of viewing health—it’s the disease approach, or the medical approach. Just as good things happen to us if we think positive thoughts and visualize success, harmony, etc., good health will exist as long as we live healthfully—and that includes consuming the correct amounts of the foods to which we were biologically adapted in nature to eat.
In short, the so-called “protein-sparing action” of carbohydrates is not only not an action, but sparing proteins is not a distinct role of carbohydrates separate from their energy-providing role.
“Dietary fiber” is a fairly new term coined to describe the cellulose inside plant cells. Cellulose is known to be indigestible by humans, though it is digested and used for energy by herbivores. The claims made about “the beneficial role of dietary fiber in preventing diseases” are so popular and so widely made that they are practically accepted as fact. However, cellulose, though in fact a carbohydrate because it is utilized as such by herbivores, does not serve the role of a carbohydrate in human physiology. Because it cannot be digested and utilized by humans, it cannot provide us with energy—and providing energy is the only role of carbohydrates in human nutrition.
The above statements may come as a surprise to most readers—but read on and we’ll clarify further.
It has been observed that certain so-called primitive tribes in Africa and elsewhere who consume diets high in fiber are less likely to develop certain colon diseases and metabolic disorders than their kinsmen who live in urban areas and eat low-fiber foods similar to those consumed in so-called developed countries. Based on the high correlation between low-fiber diets and human gastrointestinal diseases, many hospitals and clinics have changed their dietary management of diverticulosis. They are experiencing good results with a diet containing more instead of less cellulose.
We do not deny that high-fiber diets are more wholesome as a rule than low-fiber diets, nor do we deny the fact that people who consume diets closer to nature and therefore higher in fiber (cellulose) have fewer gastrointestinal diseases and a lower rate of bowel cancer. What we argue against is the thinking that the fiber itself is primarily responsible for the prevention of these diseases and disorders.
Since cellulose is indigestible, it cannot be utilized by the body as a nutrient. It is simply passed through with the other wastes. Its presence or absence in the feces is insignificant. What is significant is how much and what kinds of toxins are there (and elsewhere). The ingestion of too many toxins from all sources, as well as the retention of toxic wastes produced within the body, results in diseases. The presence or absence of indigestible plant fibers does not prevent or cause diseases.
Processed, highly-refined, so-called foods (they do contain carbohydrates) do not deserve the label foods because they are not whole foods. Parts of processed foods are missing—they were removed intentionally in the refining process. (Fiber [cellulose] is one of those missing parts.) This makes them incomplete or fragmented foods. Eating fragmented foods results in problems in the body. Therefore, they should not be eaten.
Refined sugar and products containing refined sugar, as well as refined flour products, are the most salient examples of processed food fragments that produce toxic effects in the body. Being devoid of vitamins and minerals in their natural form (the only form they can be used in), these products are like drugs within the body. In addition, calcium and other minerals, as well as B vitamins, must be utilized by the body to metabolize refined products. Because the refined products are devoid of nutrients except carbohydrates, calcium is taken from the bones.
Most “civilized” diets contain cooked foods, foods not normal to humans, refined and processed foods and drugs and medications. Refined sugar, flours, white rice and processed cereals are some of the worst culprits, but there are many, many more sources of toxins in the diet. Also, incompatible food combinations result in the production of toxins in the stomach and elsewhere in the digestive tract, and these toxins also contribute to gastrointestinal disturbances and diseases.
Much more could be said about the sources of toxins within the body that result in disease, but this has been discussed in previous lessons and will also be further discussed in future lessons. For now, it is sufficient for us to explain that low-fiber diets not only lack the natural cellulose which should be left intact in the whole food, but they also contain or give rise to a host of toxins that result in disease conditions. It is not the lack of fiber itself that causes diverticulosis and other gastrointestinal problems but the overall unwholesomeness of the foods ingested in so-called civilized society. (Of course, you should understand that what is eaten is only part of the picture and that how it’s eaten, how much is eaten, the amount of exercise, sleep, fresh air, etc., indulged are also important factors in human nutrition.)
7.4.1 Introduction to Digestion
7.4.2 Salivary Carbohydrate Digestion
7.4.3 Starch Digestion in the Intestine
7.4.7 Regulation of Blood Glucose Concentration
Before discussing carbohydrate digestion in particular, let’s give a little attention to digestion in general. Complete and thorough digestion of foodstuffs is extremely important for good health. A tremendous amount of toxin elimination and accumulation puts a great stress and burden upon the organism and results in a large variety and number of diseases. This happens both directly, from the presence of accumulated toxic substances that the body was unable to eliminate, and indirectly, from a decrease in the body’s digestive capabilities due to overworking the digestive system and depleting the body’s supply of vital energy.
It is, therefore, important for us to do everything we can to insure thorough and complete digestion of all foods eaten. This can be done by eating primarily (or only) easily digested and uncomplicated foods such as fruits; by eating compatible combinations of foods; by eating moderate amounts of foods; by eating at well-spaced meals; by abstaining from drinks during or too soon before or after meals; and by refraining from eating while under stress or emotionally upset.
One of two things happens to foods that do not get thoroughly or completely digested: 1) Sugars may ferment or 2) proteins may putrefy (rot). These processes result from bacterial activity which breaks down (decomposes) undigested or undigestible foods in preparation for their elimination from the body. The “trick” to, getting nourishment (nutriment) from the foods you eat is to see to it that they, get digested quickly, before the bacteria (present within every healthy digestive tract) have a chance to decompose them. The results of bacterial decomposition are toxic and do not provide nourishment. Foods that don’t digest relatively soon after ingestion will ferment or putrefy and contribute to body toxicity and disease.
Keeping the above facts about digestion in mind, let’s take a look now at carbohydrate digestion.
Disaccharides and polysaccharides must be digested before the body can use them, while monosaccharides do not require digestion. For this reason, as well as for other reasons (to be discussed in depth later in this lesson), our best source of carbohydrates is from fruits. Fruits require much less of the body’s energies and render primarily monosaccharides that, as stated, need no digestion.
Digestion is both a mechanical process (chewing) and a chemical process (enzymic actions). The class of enzymes that hydrolyze carbohydrates are broadly known as carbohydrases. We will be concerned in this lesson with carbohydrases known as amylases.
While the digestion of all types of foods (proteins, carbohydrates, fats, etc.) begins in the mouth with the mechanical process of mastication, certain carbohydrates—namely, starches and dextrins—are the only food types whose chemical digestion begins in the mouth. Here an enzyme known as salivary amylase or ptyalin, secreted by the parotid glands, is mixed with the food during the chewing process and begins the conversion of glycogen, starch and dextrins into the disaccharide maltose.
What happens when the starches, dextrin, and glycogens that were not converted to maltose in the mouth and what happens to the maltose when these carbohydrates reach the stomach depends upon several factors—what other types of foods are eaten with the starch, how much food is being eaten and how fast, the emotional condition of the eater and the condition of the eater’s digestive system. If a relatively uncomplicated starch such as potatoes or yams is eaten alone or with nonstarchy vegetables, and no proteins (as meats, cheese or milk, or even nuts or seeds or acids (as tomatoes, lemon or lemon juice or vinegar—as in salads or salad dressings) are consumed with the starchy food, salivary amylase (ptyalin) can and will continue the digestion of starches and dextrins in the stomach for a long period.
For thorough digestion and consequent good health, this continuation of starch digestion by ptyalin in the stomach is a necessity. Therefore, for good health, it is important to consume starchy foods at separate meals from protein foods and acids. (This and other facts relative to the topic of food combining for good digestion will be discussed in depth in later lessons.)
Briefly stated, ingestion of protein foods causes a secretion of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, and hydrochloric acid destroys ptyalin; that is, it destroys the amylase activity and substitutes acid hydrolysis. Physiology texts state that “if this acid hydrolysis was continued long enough it could reduce all the digestible carbohydrates to the monosaccharide stage. However, the stomach empties itself before this can take place.”
The acids of tomatoes, berries, oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, pineapples, sour grapes and other sour fruits and the acid of vinegar will, like hydrochloric acid, destroy our only starch-splitting enzyme, ptyalin. Therefore, these foods also inhibit starch digestion. For good digestion and consequent good health, acids should not be eaten at the same meal with starches.
Another factor that can impair salivary starch digestion is the drinking of water or other liquids with or too soon before or after meals. Water or other liquids do not aid in the digestion of foods. On the contrary, they interfere with digestion by diluting the digestive juices and cause them and their enzymes to be passed through the digestive tract too quickly for digestion to occur.
To summarize this aspect of starch digestion, taking proteins, acids, water or other liquids with starches interferes seriously with their digestion by the salivary amylase, ptyalin. This first stage of starch digestion is of great importance because there is a great likelihood that the food will be acted upon by bacteria and ferment before it reaches the intestine where further starch digestion can take place. Digestion, rather than fermentation and its resulting toxic byproducts, is much more likely to occur soon after the food is put into the mouth than further along in the digestive tract.
From the above, you can see why thorough mastication of food is so important when starches are eaten. No one who seeks health should eat starches in a hurry, nor should they have them with a beverage or with proteins or acids, for good digestion of foods is imperative for good health.
A special note should be made here about glycogen—animal starch. Glycogen should not be consumed by health seekers because much disease results from the ingestion of animal flesh and animal products. This will be discussed in depth in later lessons. For the purposes of this lesson, suffice it to say that glycogen ingested cannot be digested in the stomach because, of the hydrochloric acid that will be secreted to digest the protein, which is the primary nutritive component of foods that contain glycogen. Therefore, whatever glycogen that is not converted to a disaccharide by the salivary amylase, ptyalin, must be converted in the intestine. The likelihood of the glycogen reaching the intestine without fermenting before it can get there is small. This is just one of the many hazards of consuming animal flesh and animal foods.
Now that we have discussed starch digestion by the enzyme ptyalin, let’s get into starch and sugar (disaccharide) digestion in the intestine.
Whatever carbohydrates make it to the intestine quickly enough to escape fermentation by bacterial action will be acted upon in the first part of the small intestine, the duodenum, by pancreatic amylase. This enzyme, secreted by the pancreas, converts any remaining dextrin and starch to maltose. The reason this amylase can act in the intestine is because of the more alkaline medium which prevails there. As stated earlier, amylase must have a somewhat alkaline medium to do its job and is destroyed by acids.
At this stage in the digestive process, that is, after the polysaccharides (starch, dextrin and glycogen) have been converted to the disaccharide maltose, maltose and the other disaccharides (sucrose and lactose) must be converted to monosaccharides since, as stated earlier, the body can absorb and use sugars only as monosaccharides. This is accomplished by the amylases maltase (to convert maltose), sucrase (to convert sucrose) and lactase (to convert lactose). These amylases are secreted by the wall of the small intestine and are capable of splitting the particular sugars for which they were designed to the monosaccharide stage.
Even though some substances (water, ethyl alcohol, small amounts of monosaccharides) may be absorbed into the bloodstream through the mucosa (mucous membrane) of the stomach, most absorption of the soluble products of digestion occurs in the small intestine. There the absorptive surface is increased about 600 times by villi, which are fingerlike projections in the lining of the small intestine. Each individual villus contains a network of capillaries surrounding a lymph vessel, and each cell on the surface of the villus is made up of smaller units called brush border cells or micro villi.
Substances or nutrients pass through the intestinal membrane through the process of osmosis in one of two ways: 1) diffusion or 2) active transport. Substances and nutrients in the intestinal tract that are in higher concentration than across the membrane in the blood and lymph pass through by diffusion. This is a simple osmotic process in which no energy has to be expended. Fructose is absorbed by diffusion.
Active transport is the osmotic process used when substances or nutrients are absorbed from an area of lower concentration across a membrane to an area of higher concentration. This process requires energy for the absorption, as well as a “carrier” to transport the substance. The carrier substance is thought to be a protein or lipoprotein (a combination of a protein and a fat). Glucose and galactose are absorbed into the bloodstream by active transport. Monosaccharides are absorbed by the capillaries, which empty into the portal vein, which in turn carries them directly to the liver.
Metabolism is the term used to describe the many chemical changes that occur after the end products of digestion have been absorbed into the body. There are two phases of metabolism: 1) anabolism, which is the chemical reaction by which absorbed nutrients are utilized for replacement of used or worn-out body substances (maintenance) and to create new cellular material (growth), and 2) catabolism, which includes the chemical reactions whereby cellular materials are broken down into smaller units. An example of anabolism is the use of monosaccharides to build up stores of muscle and liver glycogen, and an example of catabolism is the breaking down of these glycogen stores to supply energy to the muscles during physical exersion. Anabolism and catabolism occur simultaneously in the body cells.
The body’s immediate needs determine whether carbohydrates that have been digested and absorbed are used for immediate energy, converted and stored as glycogen or changed to fat and stored in adipose tissue.
Glucose is the principal sugar used by body cells and tissues. It is, therefore, important to know the sources of this nutrient. It may come from carbohydrates or from noncarbohydrate sources. Following are the four primary sources of glucose:
The liver, the pancreas and the adrenal glands play roles in keeping the blood sugar level at a normal concentration of around 90 mg. per 100 ml.
In essence, the liver serves as a “buffer” organ for blood glucose regulation because it keeps the blood glucose level from rising too high or falling too low.
Insulin greatly enhances this facilitated transport of glucose through the cell membrane. In fact, only a very small amount of glucose can combine with the carrier in the absence of insulin, whereas, in the presence of normal amounts of this hormone, the transfer is accelerated as much as 3-5-fold. (Larger than normal amounts of insulin increase the rapidity of glucose transfer as much as 15-20-fold.) As you can see, insulin controls the rate of glucose metabolism in the body by controlling the entry of glucose into the cells.
Three hormones are involved in increasing the concentration of glucose in the blood when necessary: norepinephrine, epinephrine and glucagon. Norepinephrine and epinephrine are secreted by the adrenal glands and glucagon is secreted by the pancreas. These hormones cause liver glycogen to split into glucose, which is then emptied into the blood. This returns the blood glucose concentration back toward normal.
Energy is derived from glucose in one of two basic ways: 1) by oxidation and 2) by glycolysis. By far the major amount of energy from glucose is released in a series of reactions in the cells in the presence of oxygen; but some energy from glucose is released by a process called glycolysis. This is an involved process which does not require the presence of oxygen. (A detailed explanation can be found in a physiology text such as Physiology of the Human Body by Arthur C. Guyton, M.D.)
Not only are fats converted to carbohydrates for energy when carbohydrate intake is inadequate, but when carbohydrates are consumed beyond need, the excess is converted to fat and stored in adipose tissue. Also, the B-complex vitamins and the mineral calcium are known to play an integral part in carbohydrate metabolism.
Prior to the widespread processing of foods, humans did not suffer as a result of their lack of knowledge about the existence of the B vitamins because in nature there is a union between the vitamin B complex and carbohydrates in foods. This union was broken by the industrial processing of foods.
As will be discussed in greater depth in later lessons, taking vitamin B complex supplements or using so-called “enriched” processed food products will not and cannot substitute for whole foods in their natural state. It is, therefore, very important for health-seekers to consume unprocessed foods—also uncooked, as cooking is an in-home method of food processing that is very destructive of the quantity and quality of vitamins and other nutrients in foods.
B-complex vitamins are also depleted (and/or not synthesized in the body) when various drugs and medications are taken, most notably birth control pills, alcoholic beverages and antibiotics. Other drugs also deplete B vitamin supplies and/or hinder the synthesis of B vitamins in the intestine. A future lesson will be devoted to the effects of various drugs and medications upon nutrition.
Physiology texts also mention the fallacy of regarding any one B vitamin in the complex as more important than another because of the fact that the normal chain of events, physiologically speaking, can be broken by a lack of any one of the B vitamins. The texts also recommend a dietary supplement containing all the factors to “avoid the evils of modern food refinement.” It is appropriate to make a comment here on this subject: It is fully possible, in fact, easily possible, to “avoid the evils of modern food refinement” much more completely and many times more effectively as far as good (healthful) results are concerned than by eating refined foods and taking supplements. Actually, it is not only easily possible and desirable to completely avoid ever eating refined foods, but it is essential for anyone who wants and expects to regain and/or maintain good health. It is not possible to have truly high-level health while continuing to indulge those very practices which undermine it, and eating processed foods and taking food supplements both undermine health.
Please make special note of the above, for it is one of the most important facts you need to completely understand and accept if you are to bring yourself and your clients to a high level of well-being.
Calcium is taken from the bones and teeth to meet the needs for this important mineral in carbohydrate metabolism. Dental caries, osteoporosis and other bone diseases result.
7.5.1 Carbohydrates Are a Component of Every Food
7.5.2 Carbohydrates Are a Primary Component of Some Foods
As mentioned earlier in this lesson, carbohydrates, along with proteins and fats, form the major components of living matter. They maintain the functional activity of the cells and serve as structural and reserve materials. Carbohydrates provide the primary source of energy for humans.
There is not a single living thing—plant or animal—that does not contain carbohydrates in some form. Though the quantity and form of carbohydrates varies, the presence of carbohydrates as an integral component of life is constant. This means that all foods are potential sources of carbohydrates. However, some foods are better sources than others, and this is what we will discuss now.
Most foods can be readily classified according to the organic compounds (proteins, carbohydrates, fats, etc.) they contain in greatest abundance. These classifications are not only useful for identifying where to obtain the nutrients we need, but they are also invaluable in selecting compatible food combinations for best digestion and nutrition (to be discussed in depth in a later lesson).
Starch-containing foods can be divided into four classifications:
Starchy Vegetables
All kinds of potatoes are in this classification. Also included are yams, winter squashes (such as buttercup, hubbard and banana squashes), pumpkin, caladium root, taro root, cassava root and Jerusalem artichokes. (Note: Technically, squashes and pumpkins are fruits.)
Mildly starchy vegetables
This classification includes carrots, cauliflower, beets, rutabaga and salsify.
Cereal grains
This includes all cereals, whether they’re whole or refined, raw or cooked. Examples are wheat, rye, barley, rice, millet, buckwheat and oats.
Legumes
This includes peanuts, lentils, peas and beans.
Because some nonsweet foods such as nuts, bell peppers, squashes, cucumbers and tomatoes are technically fruits, fruits can be divided into two classifications: 1) sweet fruits and 2) nonsweet fruits. In our discussion of carbohydrates, we will limit our discussion primarily to the sweet fruits, even though the nonsweet fruits do contain some sugar.
For purposes of food combining for digestive compatibility, the sweet fruits can be divided into four groups: 1) sweet fruits, 2) subacid fruits, 3) acid fruits and 4) melons. The fruits in each category and how to combine them for best digestion will be discussed in a future lesson on correct food combining.
7.6.1 Many Digestive Steps Use More Body Energy
7.6.2 There Is a Greater Tendency to Overeat on Starches
7.6.3 Many Digestive Steps Take Longer and Fermentation Can More Readily Occur
7.6.4 Starches Are Poorly Digested Raw But Cooked Starches Are Unwholesome
7.6.5 Starches Are Usually Unpalatable Raw
7.6.6 Some Starch Foods Also Contain a Significant Amount of Protein
There are many reasons why starches are less than ideal as sources of carbohydrates for humans.
A larger amount of the body’s limited supply of nerve energy is used up when starches are used for fuel than when fruits are used because starches are, as you know, polysaccharides and must be broken down (digested) into monosaccharides before the body can use them. Fruits contain a preponderance of monosaccharides, which, as you also know, need no digestion at all. Therefore, fruit eating leaves more of the body’s energies available for other activities. This explains, in part, why people feel so “light” when they eat fruits and so heavy when they eat beans or bread.
Because starches usually lack the amount of water content found in fresh fruits, it is much easier, to overeat on them than on fruits. It takes larger amounts of starch foods to get the same feeling of fullness that you get from a fruit meal. When starches are consumed, it is best to use only one kind of starch at a meal, as this helps control the tendency to overeat on starches.
For good digestion (an important prerequisite for good nutrition), not only do foods need to be compatibly combined with one another, but they also need to be digested fairly quickly. As stated earlier, food that remains in the stomach too long will be decomposed by the bacteria that reside there.
The only starch-splitting enzyme secreted in the saliva, as previously stated, is ptyalin, also known as salivary amylase. The available amount of this enzyme is somewhat limited, and it is unlikely that large amounts of starch foods can be completely digested by salivary amylase, even if no proteins or acid foods are eaten with or too soon before or after the starches. Therefore, complete digestion of the starches eaten, especially if more than a very small amount is eaten or if they are eaten with protein or acid foods, is dependent upon the starch-splitting enzymes in the intestine—pancreatic amylase. However, the likelihood of indigested starches reaching the intestine without first fermenting in the stomach because of the action of bacteria there is rather small. Conditions of emotional or mental stress or anxiety, lack of sleep or rest, eating too fast or a digestive system weakened by years of past abuse are some of the reasons why fermentation may occur before undigested starches can reach the small intestine for digestion by the pancreatic amylase.
Fruits, on the other hand, if eaten with other fruits of like character, pass through the stomach very quickly into the intestine, where their monosaccharide content is rapidly and efficiently absorbed. Unless fruits are eaten with slower-digesting foods such as fat/protein foods (such as nuts, seeds or avocadoes) or starches, they are not likely to ferment in the stomach. Their need for almost no digestion makes it possible for the body to pass them through the digestive tract quickly, before fermentation by bacteria can occur.
Only very small amounts of raw starches can be digested because of the nature of the starch granule. Even the most thorough mastication of raw starches breaks open only a small fraction of the starch-containing globules, as each of these globules has a thin but strong protective cellulose covering which acts as a protective membrane for the plant’s storage product (starch).
Neither salivary amylase (ptyalin) nor pancreatic amylase can commence digestion of the starch until it is released from its globule. These starch-containing globules are, therefore, not digested at all and must be eliminated from the body as so much debris. Undigested materials such as these are toxic in the body and pose an eliminative burden without providing energy or other value.
Cooking makes starches more digestible. As stated earlier, starches are not soluble in cold water and need to be heated to break down the cellulose coverings that surround starches. Heat also converts some of the starches to dextrins, and the more and longer heat is applied to the food, the greater will be the amount of starch that is converted to dextrins by this method. Undextrinized starches which have been freed by heat from their protective globules will be hydrolyzed (digested) by the salivary and pancreatic amylases. The resulting dextrins are large polysaccharide molecules that yield the disaccharide maltose upon hydrolysis. Maltose is, in turn, hydrolyzed into molecules of the monosaccharide, glucose.
Despite the greater digestibility of cooked starches, cooking is a very unwholesome process for many reasons, some of which were mentioned in previous lessons and more of which will be elaborated on in a future lesson dedicated to this subject. Basically, cooking destroys vitamins, partially or completely, depending on which vitamins are involved and how long and hot the cooking is; it converts minerals from their usable organic state back to their unusable (and therefore harmful) inorganic state; and it deranges (or deaminizes) the proteins present. (Starch foods do contain small amounts of protein, as protein is a component of all living matter.)
To summarize, while cooking might improve the digestibility of the starches in starch foods, it certainly does not improve the usability of the other nutrients and components of the food. On the contrary, it renders the minerals and proteins present at least partially toxic and unusable. Therefore, we recommend that neither raw starches nor cooked starches be included as part of an optimum diet.
In the case of legumes such as lentils and beans, however, there is one alternative: sprouting. The starches in legumes are converted in the sprouting process at least partially to dextrins, which can be hydrolyzed by body amylases into the appropriate sugars. Grains which have not been processed (whole grains, in other words) can also be sprouted, but usually with less success because they often sour before their enzymes can complete the conversion of most of the starches to sugars.
The only starch foods we recommend are sprouted lentils, sprouted mung beans or sprouted azuke beans. A later lesson on food preparation will discuss sprouting in more depth.
Because we are physiologically fruit-eaters, most of us are not especially fond of nonsweet foods, at least not compared with how much we love sweet foods. We are not physiological starch eaters, and this is evidenced by our disinterest in foods such as raw potatoes, grains, beans, etc. Most starches just don’t taste that good in their raw state.
Carrots, sweet potatoes and yams are notable exceptions, however, because these tubers, in addition to containing starches, also contain enough sugars to give them a sweet flavor. The main problem with eating these vegetables is that their sugars are likely to ferment in the stomach while they are held up there with the starches, which digest more, slowly than do the sugars. As stated earlier, sugars are normally passed swiftly through the stomach to the intestine for immediate absorption, but if they get held up in the stomach they ferment because of bacterial action. Carrots, sweet potatoes and yams may be used juiced, as long as they are eaten alone or about a half hour before a meal of compatible foods.
Some of us enjoy certain mildly starchy raw vegetables such as cauliflower and carrots. Eaten in moderate amounts, these vegetables are fine. Grated carrots and/or cauliflower flowerettes are nice additions to vegetable salads, but these salads should not contain nuts, seeds or tomatoes, which are poor combinations with even mild starches.
Remember: Although some starches can be sprouted or juiced, and others may be fine in moderation, especially if they’re only mildly starchy, starches are, as a rule, unpalatable and indigestible raw and unwholesome cooked. As stated earlier, humans are not biologically adapted to starch eating.
A future lesson on food combining will discuss in detail why it is unhealthful to consume starch foods and protein foods in the same meal. Basically, the two kinds of foods require very different digestive environments and enzymes, starch requiring ptyalin and an alkaline digestive environment, and protein requiring the enzyme pepsin and an acid digestive environment. Both foods cannot be digested simultaneously, and if eaten together or close to the same time, protein digestion will occur, at least partially, leaving the starches and sugars to ferment because of bacterial action in the stomach. Fermentative byproducts interfere with the protein digestion in progress, and protein digestion will most likely be incomplete. Undigested protein will putrefy (rot).
Most foods contain either a predominance of one factor or the other. For example, tubers and grains contain predominately starches, whereas nuts and seeds can be classified as protein/fat foods. But there are some foods which contain a lot of protein along with a lot of starch. Examples of some of these foods are beans of all types, peas and peanuts. Unless these foods are sprouted, which converts their starches to more easily digestible sugars, they are to a large extent indigestible. This is why beans are often referred to as the “musical fruit.” They ferment and putrefy in the stomach and intestine, and this is an unwholesome occurrence because fermentation and putrefaction byproducts are toxins which must be eliminated as quickly as possible so that the body doesn’t suffer great harm from them. Much body energy is used up in toxin elimination, energy that could be much more wisely used for other activities. Also, not all toxins are eliminated before some harm has resulted.
Wheat is the most popular of the grains used in this country, especially commercially. But this popularity is undeserved because wheat poses special digestive problems that make it unwholesome. Basically, besides the digestive problems that wheat shares with the other starchy foods, the special problem with wheat is that it contains gluten, a protein substance that humans do not have the enzyme to digest. As you know, undigested substances are toxic in the human body and must be eliminated at a great expense of vital energy.
We might add at this point that beets are a mildly starchy root food that have a special problem: They contain too much oxalic acid which the body neutralizes by binding calcium. We recommend that you not use beets as an item of diet.
A later lesson will discuss in depth which foods are acid-forming and which are alkaline-forming and why we should have a predominance of alkaline-forming foods in our diet. Suffice it to say here that most grains and legumes are acid-forming and, for this reason, should be eaten in extreme moderation, if at all.
Grains contain phytic acid, a substance which binds calcium and iron, both in the grains themselves and the body stores of these minerals. This fact only complicates and aggravates the problem of calcium being taken from the bones and teeth by the body in the metabolism of carbohydrates that have been refined and their minerals, therefore, removed.
Anyone concerned about getting enough calcium should not eat grains. People who suffer with nervousness, sleeplessness and/or cramps may already be experiencing some of the symptoms of calcium deficiency. Getting carbohydrates from fresh fruits, and consuming dark green leafy vegetables, possibly along with a few occasional nuts, seeds and/or avocadoes, will insure adequate intake of usable calcium. Consuming grains in addition to the wholesome foods mentioned above is defeating of your purpose and is to be discouraged.
Fruits are the ideal source of carbohydrates because they are the foods humans are physiologically and anatomically adapted to eating. (These adaptations will be discussed in greater depth in a later lesson.) Humans have a natural “sweet tooth” because that’s our inherent nature. We’re supposed to eat fruits, mostly sweet fruits. Incidentally, we can enjoy some nuts, seeds, vegetables and sprouts. But sugar-containing fruits should be the primary items in our diet.
The sugars in fruits, being mostly monosaccharides, pass through the stomach and are absorbed through the walls of the intestine without undergoing any digestion. This leaves a great surplus of body energy available for living and all the activities that make living a joy. We should not waste our precious energies digesting complicated, heavy foods unless it’s a matter of life or death. Instead, we should eat simply of our natural foods—fruits—and use our energy for higher-level pursuits of life.
Fruits, except for dates and dried fruits, contain significant amounts of water in its purest and most delicious form. Therefore, they supply most, if not all, of our needs for water. Cooked starches, on the other hand, are water-deficient and make us thirsty, especially if they’re eaten with added salt or soy sauce and/or in very large amounts. Water is an extremely important need of life, and pure water as is in fruits is the only kind we should have. (Distilled water is also acceptable and is, in fact, the only kind of water we should obtain from nonfood sources. The subject of water will be treated in depth in a later lesson.)
Fruits do not have to be cooked or seasoned to taste great. In fact, they should never be cooked, though they can be dried for storage purposes. It is easy to make a meal on fruits, even mono-meals (just one fruit type at a meal), for other foods added to the fruit meal do not enhance it. Fruits are so delicious that they don’t need enhancement and they digest so easily and quickly, eaten with each other or alone, that fermentation and the resulting toxicity of fermentation is unlikely to occur.
Since carbohydrates, quantitatively speaking, are the greatest nutrient need we humans have, it follows that fruits, loaded with sugars, should comprise the bulk of our diet. Fruits, besides being replete with ample carbohydrates, have relatively small amounts of proteins, vitamins and minerals—in just the right amounts for the specific needs of humans. If (anything other than fruits are eaten, it should be small amounts of nonsweet fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts.
When most people think about amounts of carbohydrates to consume, they think in terms of calories—units for measuring heat. One calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree Centigrade. The amount of heat liberated by a complete breakdown of a food into its metabolic end products is expressed in calories.
For purposes of this course, however, calories are unimportant. Obtaining them is important, but numbers are not. Texts say that an average person needs a minimum of 1800 calories per day for just existing and more for any activities indulged. But, as mentioned in an earlier lesson, the variance is so great when it comes to individual needs, and people on conventional high-protein diets that include meat, etc., require so much extra energy to handle the constant input of toxins, causing an additional variance between “norms” and the actual needs of a truly healthy person, that the guidelines in the texts are practically useless. Besides, humans have always been able to get all the calories they need without counting them—and without even knowing about their existence.
So, in this section, we will take a more practical approach to the question of how much carbohydrate we need in our diet.
Because protein, minerals and vitamins are present in sufficient quantities in carbohydrate foods to meet our needs for these nutrients, virtually the entire human diet can consist of carbohydrate foods (fruits). Some individuals, for various reasons, may find it desirable to include some protein/fat foods such as nuts, seeds and/or avocadoes and/or nonsweet fruits and/or vegetables in their diet of sweet fruits. However, if these foods are eaten, they should not be consumed with, immediately after or less than four hours before sweet fruits—to insure proper digestion of all foods involved and, specifically, to insure that the fruits pass quickly through the stomach to the intestine for absorption rather than getting held up by slower-digesting foods in the stomach and fermenting.
Whether an all-fruit diet is consumed, or other foods are included in the diet, the fact remains that an all-carbohydrate diet will amply supply not only all our energy (carbohydrate) needs, but it will also supply the proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals we need. (Fats are easily obtained by an occasional avocado, a nonsweet [oily] fruit.)
As far as food variety goes, foods grown on different soils in various locations will provide the broadest range of nutrients possible. Eating foods from one locale only, if not organically grown, could result in nutrient deficiencies, especially if only one or a few kinds of foods are consumed. This is probably not a concern for most people in the U.S., however.
While a diet consisting of a broad variety of wholesome natural foods may provide interest and a broad range of nutrients and nutrient combinations, it should be remembered that most foods to which we are biologically adapted contain most of the nutrients we need—in varying amounts. People worldwide have been known to live in excellent health on diets consisting of primarily or only one or a few foods. Some examples of such foods are coconuts, dates and bananas. There is much proof that a large variety of foods is not necessary for good health, though there is nothing to be said against variety, as long as the foods are wholesome, raw and correctly combined.
The following plus many more diseases are considered, by the medical world and by some lay people alike, to be either caused by or related to carbohydrates of various kinds in the diet. At this place in this course, we will not delve into any depth on these disease conditions, as they will be treated in separate later lessons. Here we will just briefly mention a few of the more common conditions related to carbohydrate consumption.
Humans, like the other mammals, provide milk for their young from their mammary glands. This milk is perfectly suited for the very specific needs of the developing human infant, but it is not designed to meet the needs of calves or kids or other baby mammals. It is meant for feeding human infants only. While the above statement may seem ridiculously obvious, it is not as obvious to many people that human babies should not receive milk from cows or goats except in emergencies where human milk is simply unavailable. In those exceptions, milk from another species of mammal is preferable to no milk at all.
The reason we introduce the subject of lactose intolerance the way we did in the above paragraph is to show two things: 1) how far we have strayed from nature in feeding cows’ milk to our human babies and 2) that mammary milk is specially created for babies up to three years of age and is not designed for humans above that age.
The idea that we need calcium, fats, proteins or anything else from milk beyond the age of three is not only entirely false and totally ungrounded in fact, but it has caused a tremendous amount of harm and suffering for humans. “How did these ideas get started and popularized so widely, then?” you may ask. The simple but sad answer is that the, dairy industry is primarily responsible. (This entire subject will be treated in greater depth in a future lesson devoted entirely to the subject of milk and dairy products in the diet.) As incredible as it may seem that so many people would actually put profit before human health, it is, nonetheless, true.
The problem of lactose intolerance is very widespread. The fact that from 18% to 100% of various peoples across the globe exhibit symptoms of lactose intolerance exemplifies the extent of the problems of consuming nature’s formula for calves. Large numbers of people experience symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea and flatulence (excessive formation of gas in the stomach or intestines). Many so-called allergies, skin disorders, so-called upper respiratory “infections,” hay fevers and numerous other diseases—in fact, all diseases—are caused largely or to some extent by the toxic substances resulting from the inability of most (if not all) humans over age three to utilize the sugar, lactose, found in milk.
After age three, most, if not all, people do not secrete the enzyme, lactase, which is needed to break down the disaccharide, lactose, into the simple sugars, glucose and galactose. As you know, undigested sugars are fermented in the stomach and intestine by bacteria. However, it is not the bacteria that are causing the problem, for they are doing what their role in nature requires of them. The bacteria simply play their part in preparing the offending substance, in this case, lactose, for elimination from the body. The cause of the problem is the ingestion of food not appropriate for humans over three.
The solution is obvious and simple, but the powerful and influential dairy industry will do (and does) everything it can to keep this information a secret and to try to disprove it. Besides this, governments are on the side of industry, and individuals in government who can’t be coerced to change are removed from positions that enable them to act in favor of human health.
It is a common misconception that the overall health of people is more dependent upon maintaining the jobs and industries that are now in operation than maintaining physical health. Too many people like to think that the connection between eating wrong foods and disease conditions of all kinds is only vague and questionable, when, in fact, the connection is very direct and the solution very simple. People like to think that some vitamin, some drug or some other kind of treatment will “cure” diseases and alleviate symptoms. Then they can go on indulging unhealthful practices and not disturb the status quo. But there is just no getting around the fact that, if we are to have better health, we must change our eating and living practices. No so-called “cures” or other treatments can even approach “making up for” healthful living. To try to do so is a futile effort. Change is really not so difficult if more people could just accept the idea that it is necessary and beneficial to everyone, both in the long run and in the short run.
To get back to the subject of lactose intolerance, can you see why most or all people do not digest lactose? Milk is not a natural or wholesome food for humans over age three; neither are other dairy products. While not everyone exhibits the clinical symptoms of lactose intolerance, the health of everyone suffers in some way as a result of milk consumption—if they drink milk or otherwise use milk or dairy products.
As stated earlier, the problems of milk and dairy products in the diet will be discussed in much greater depth in a future lesson on the subject.
One more item might be added here before we close this subject: Texts say that milk to which the enzyme lactase has been added and fermented dairy products are tolerated by lactose intolerant people. They list foods such as yogurt, buttermilk and cottage cheese. Suffice it to say here that all dairy foods are very unhealthful, including those listed above, and many symptoms other than those of lactose intolerance result from the consumption of unwholesome foods.
Galactosemia is another disease condition related to milk, or lactose, consumption. This disorder, labeled “an unusual hereditary disorder,” occurs in infants. Galactosemia is among the diseases that supposedly result from “inborn errors of metabolism.” In this condition, a specific enzyme (p-galactose-uridyl-transferase) is lacking, so the infant cannot properly digest the sugars in milk. Specifically, the monosaccharide galactose, which does not occur free in nature but results from the hydrolization of lactose from milk, cannot be converted to glucose.
Infants with this disorder vomit when they’re fed milk and other dairy foods. They become lethargic and fail to gain weight. Their liver and spleen become enlarged (from overwork), cataracts develop and they become mentally retarded. In severe cases, death can occur. The solution to this problem is a milk- (and other dairy products) free diet, according to the texts. What is fed to babies instead of milk is not listed, but we would recommend freshly-made fruit juices in season, perhaps along with (at separate feedings, of course) homemade nut, seed or soy milk, depending upon the infant’s tolerance to these. (The subject of care and feeding of infants and children will be treated in more depth in later lessons.)
Dental decay is generally attributed to the consumption of too much sugar. However, the sugars in fresh ripe fruits, even in very sweet fruits such as dates and dried fruits, will never cause dental decay. The reason for this is that it is not sugar itself that causes cavities; rather, it is the consumption of refined sugars and other refined foods, such as refined flours and white or polished rice, that results in dental caries. The consumption of meats, dairy foods and other acid-forming foods in great excess of alkaline foods (fruits and vegetables in their raw state) is also an important contributing factor to dental decay.
As mentioned earlier in this lesson, calcium is needed in the metabolism of carbohydrates. Refined foods lack minerals, including calcium. The body is forced to draw calcium from its own reserves, and these reserves are depleted rather quickly if refined foods are eaten more than “once in a blue moon.” If this occurs, the body must then draw the needed calcium from its bones and teeth—hence, cavities!
Meats and dairy foods, as well as whole grains, are acid-forming in the body. Calcium is needed to neutralize the acidity and maintain the normal blood alkalinity of 7.40 pH. After the calcium available in the body is used up, this mineral is taken from the bones and teeth.
As you can see, fruits are to be preferred over grains, meats, milk or dairy foods as sources of carbohydrates. Their sugars will not cause cavities, but fragmented foods (refined products) and unnatural foods (meats, milk, dairy, grains) will! From the standpoint of maintaining body calcium, the best choices of starch foods would be the tubers—potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, and carrots.
No one ever need fear dental decay, even on a diet of sweet fruits. The important factor here is not to eat processed or refined foods or foods that are not suited to our biological adaptations. (The subject of sugar and other sweeteners will be treated in greater depth in a future lesson.)
Much could be said about this disorder, but we’ll treat it more thoroughly in a later lesson. At this point, suffice it to say that diabetes mellitus, defined as the insufficient production of insulin needed to metabolize sugar, has in common with dental caries the fact that it is caused by an unhealthful diet containing refined sugars, flours, grains and other unwholesome foods. Depending upon an individual’s condition, special care and provision may have to be made for the diabetic who is going on the Life Science regime. Those using insulin, especially in very large amounts, should consult an experienced Hygienic professional before making very great changes in diet.
This condition is also known as low blood sugar and is often a predecessor to diabetes. It, too, will be treated in depth in a future lesson, so we will say little about it here. True hypoglycemia is caused by the same things as cause diabetes. However, people are often diagnosed as hypoglycemic when, in fact, they just have a case of body toxicity. The symptoms of hypoglycemia are many and can also occur when a person is not actually suffering from this condition—hence, the incorrect diagnoses in many cases.
Contrary to popular opinion, most hypoglycemics can fast and benefit greatly by it. Since so many people suffer with this condition, this is good news indeed!
I was under the impression that the primary nutrient humans need is protein—for the maintenance of body cells. You say carbohydrates are our primary nutrient need. Why this discrepancy?
The discrepancy exists because our protein need has been overemphasized and our carbohydrate need underemphasized. In the field of nutrition, as in other fields, fads come and go. The excessive concern about obtaining adequate protein has so permeated the minds of most people that it has become a very dangerous preoccupation. It is dangerous because too much protein in the diet is very harmful and is the cause of much of the disease and suffering so many people are experiencing.
Why has our need for protein become so exaggerated? Why is our need for carbohydrates underestimated?
The meat and dairy industries, with the support of the government, are largely responsible for the “protein fashion.” Their message has become a part of the public education systems—its textbooks, its universities, everything it teaches. They want us to believe that those foods which are most unhealthful, foods such as meat, fish, eggs, milk and cheese, are the most important part of our diet. Secondarily, carbohydrates from grains and breads are promoted—this mostly for the benefit of the refining and baking concerns that bring us Wonder Bread, Cheerios, Pop Tarts, etc. Fruits and vegetables are given very low priority, as the money to be made from marketing these foods is much less than from the nonperishable “foods” and the animal products.
Why have carbohydrates been underemphasized? For one thing, most people, being naturally attracted to sweet things (we are natural biological fruit eaters), manage to get more than enough carbohydrates in their daily diets. This is especially so when we consider the quantity of sugar (refined sugarcane or beets) in the average diet. Desserts, breads, pastas and cereals are quite popular, though these kinds of carbohydrates cause disease because of their nutritional lack of vitamins, minerals, fiber, water, etc., and for other reasons.
Also, a large number of people in our country are weight conscious, and carbohydrates have been named as the culprit. But excessive proteins are even worse than excessive carbohydrates! While weight may be lost on a high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet, the harm being done to the organism is more than the harm from keeping the excess fat. The key is to consume natural carbohydrates in the form of fresh fruits rather than processed products. Anyone desiring to lose weight can easily do so on an all-fruit or mostly-fruit diet—and gain excellent health while doing so. It’s the quality of the carbohydrates consumed that makes the difference. Fresh fruits just don’t cause people to gain weight, even if large amounts are eaten.
One more note on this subject: One physiology text condones the high-protein diet, even though it states in the same chapter that carbohydrates are the most efficient fuel foods. The reasoning for this is that “adequate nutrition is possible ... if the need for calories, essential food factors, vitamins and minerals is met.” Of course, they are referring to the body’s ability to utilize proteins as carbohydrates if the intake of carbohydrates is insufficient. As you know, this is an extremely inefficient, wasteful process that is also harmful. The harm caused by excess protein and animal foods will be discussed in more depth in later lessons.
You spoke of losing weight on a fruit diet, but isn’t it true that a person will gain weight on any kind of diet as long as the calories taken in are greater than the energy expended?
Yes, it is definitely true that a person will gain weight if they consume more calories than they expend. However, anyone who is serious about losing weight must pursue an exercise program of some sort. While a person can lose weight by dieting (or fasting) alone, the loss of excess fat must be accompanied by an improvement in overall health if it is to be worthwhile—and an exercise program is essential to good health, even if it’s taken up after a fast.
Because fresh fruits contain much more water than other sources of carbohydrates, they provide satisfaction and a feeling of fullness after relatively few calories are consumed. (Of course, this is not true of dates or dried fruits, which should either be excluded from a weightloss diet or taken in moderation.) It is almost impossible to consume more calories than you expend on a fresh fruit diet—assuming you are active and get daily exercise. The subject of losing weight will be discussed in depth in a later lesson, also.
Is it possible for a person to gain weight on the diet you advocate?
Yes. Except in rare (relatively) cases where emaciation has occurred, gaining fat is usually not desirable. Many studies have shown that exceptionally lean people have longer lifespans and fewer diseases than people we would consider of “normal” weight. As a rule, lean is best. The important factor is the building of muscle, which can be done with the use of weights, along with a well-rounded exercise program (stretching exercises and aerobic exercises) or to a lesser degree without the use of weights. Body muscle can be developed in any number of ways—from swimming or running (or both) to calisthenics or tennis. Ideally, your program should include some resistance exercises (weights, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, etc.), some aerobic activities and some stretching exercises, and should work all the body muscles. A truly attractive body is not one with five or ten pounds of extra fat, but one that is firm and filled out by normal musculature.
For those people who are emaciated and do need to gain fat, this should not be rushed. In addition to obtaining generous amounts of exercise (as outlined briefly above), the excessively thin person should make sure his or her life is not too stressful. Also, he or she should consider a fast if there is a chance that adequate calories have been consumed but the body is unable to use them. A physiological rest may be needed more than tremendous amounts of food in this case.
When it comes to eating, people of all body weights should eat normal amounts of healthful foods. Weight gain or loss is a body activity that will occur naturally if we provide the normal and proper conditions of life. Gaining or losing weight is not something we do; rather, it is something the body does. We just provide our needs, and the organism will normalize itself.
Feeding the people in the United States and in the world would not be possible without the food processing industries. There wouldn’t be enough fresh fruits to feed everyone. The diet you propose is totally impractical. How do you answer to this?
I’m glad you asked that question! The food processing industries are not in business to see that a larger amount of food is available to the world’s people. Rather, they are in business to make money. Everyone would be better fed, even on a diet of grains, which is very inferior to the fruit diet, if they were consumed in their whole form rather than processed. Foods are more nutritious before they are processed, so people would be healthier if it weren’t for these industries.
The food processing industries do not increase the quantity of food available, either. It is the food growers (farmers and orchardists) who insure that people get enough food. The following topic will be discussed in depth in later lessons, but here we will say that fruit culture and organic gardening could feed the world’s population more than adequately if the money and labor now used for food processing (destruction) was instead used for growing fruits and vegetables by organic means. This would, of course, have to happen at least somewhat gradually, but it is possible if enough people agreed to it. The whole world could become The Garden! Wouldn’t orchards and vineyards of fruit and nut trees be more appealing to the senses in every way than food refining plants and factories?
People’s health could improve so much that the drug industry could also divert it’s money and labor to healthful endeavors. Hospitals could be turned into schools, hotels, gyms! As you can see, the possibilities are enormous— and exciting!
No, our natural diet is far from impractical. The earth is perfectly equipped for the growing of fruit and nut trees and vegetables. Food could also be supplied to those areas where little or no food can be grown in some seasons by using money and manpower for effective food distribution. Nuts, seeds, dates, dried fruits and seeds and beans for sprouting all ship and store relatively well.
I and many other people have more regular bowel movements because we include bran in our diet. Would you consider this a fairly wholesome part of some people’s diet because of its anti-constipation effect?
Absolutely not! Bran is a food fragment; that is, it is only part of the whole wheat berry. It has many sharp edges which irritate and cut the delicate tissues within the gastrointestinal tract. Humans require their carbohydrate in the form of usable sugars—not in the form of indigestible cellulose.
As far as regular bowel movements go, you will definitely have them on a diet consisting primarily of the foods of our biological adaptation—fresh fruits. It is not for you, me or anyone else to decide how large or how frequent our bowel movements should be—this is strictly a body process that should remain entirely on a subconscious level. We should never have to think about it at all, let alone talk about it. And on the proper diet, you can be sure that everything is happening as it should within your body, for, as you know, the inherent intelligence of your body is great. Our only responsibility is to provide the normal needs of life—and then just live. The body will take care of its own needs.
I’m hypoglycemic. There’s no way I could ever go on the fruit diet you advocate. I can get my carbohydrates from starch foods, can’t I?
Yes, you can get your carbohydrates from starch foods. Because of the special problems of such starches as grains (phytic acid; their acid effect), beets (oxalic acid, which binds calcium) and beans (also contain much protein, which makes them digest very poorly), you should stick to lightly-steamed potatoes, yams, cauliflower, carrots and sweet potatoes rather than using grains, beans or beets. They can also be eaten raw or juiced if you like. You may include sprouted seeds and beans, such as chick peas (garbanzos), dry peas, mung beans, alfalfa seeds, etc., as well as lots of vegetables and non-sweet fruits and some nuts, seeds and avocados in your diet. However, do not overdo on the oily foods (nuts, seeds, avocados). Rice and millet are the best of the grains, and can be used in moderation, especially with large raw vegetable salads that contain vegetables such as lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale, celery, etc., but that do not contain nuts, seeds, avocados, tomatoes or starch foods. (The rice or millet is sufficient starch for one meal.) Other relatively wholesome starch foods you may want to consider to insure more variety (if variety is important to you) are winter squashes, pumpkins, caladium roots, taro roots, cassava roots and Jerusalem artichokes. Rutabaga and salsify are also wholesome starch foods. (You may not be able to obtain some of the foods listed above, but keep your eyes and ears open.)
Keep in mind that starches are not ideal foods for humans, even hypoglycemic humans. Starches remain second-rate sources of carbohydrates. For best results in using them, use just one kind of starch food at a given meal and follow correct food combining rules (as briefly explained in this section, but to be discussed in greater depth in a later lesson) and chew your food well. Also, refrain from drinking anything during or within 2-3 hours after your meals. Understand that you cannot obtain optimum health on a diet consisting of cooked starches as your primary source of carbohydrates.
I recommend that, as soon as possible, you take a supervised fast. Hypoglycemics can and do fast—and with excellent results. Many can return to a normal diet that includes lots of fruits. Most or all can include fruits as a substantial part of their diet, though their intake of the very sweet fruits such as dates, dried fruits and persimmons may be restricted. Some fruits contain much less sugar than others and can be tolerated well by “recovering hypoglycemics.”
Whether you fast or not, if you begin living and eating more healthfully, you will be able to eat some fruits, at least in moderation, right away or very soon. As your body begins to normalize and gets rid of stored up toxins that contribute to your problem, you will be able to consume a larger and larger proportion of fruits in your diet. A hypoglycemic does not have to remain hypoglycemic forever. Health results from healthful living—so live healthfully and you will get well.
The following segment on carbohydrates was written by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton in his book, Orthotrophy in a chapter on food elements.
This is the name given to certain organic compounds of carbon that are produced by plants in the process of growth from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, with the oxygen and hydrogen in proportions to form water. In everyday language we know the most important of these carbohydrates as starches and sugars. As will be seen later, carbohydrates are complex substances composed, in most instances, of simpler substances, or building blocks, called sugars. Chief among the carbohydrates are:
Fruits—Bananas, all sweet fruits, hubbard squash, etc.
Nuts—A few varieties—acorns, chestnuts and coconuts.
Tubers—Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, artichokes, parsnips, etc.
Legumes—Most beans, except some varieties of soybeans, all peas, peanuts.
Cereals—All grains and practically all cereal products. (Gluten bread is not a carbohydrate.)
Grains and legumes are classed both as proteins and carbohydrates. This is due to the fact that they contain enough of each of these food elements to be placed in both classes. Nuts, for the same reason, are classed both as proteins and as fats. Milk, commonly classed as a protein, is really low in protein. It may with equal justification be classed as a sugar or carbohydrate. All foods contain more or less carbohydrates, as they all contain more or less protein. Most foods contain some fats, but there is none in most fruits nor in the green leaves of vegetables.
Carbohydrates, like proteins, are composed of simpler compounds known as simple sugars or monosaccharides. According to their composition, these are classed as follows:
Starches and sugars are well known to everyone, as they are found in all fruits and vegetables. Sugars are soluble carbohydrates with a more or less sweet taste. When heated to a high temperature they form caramel. Sugars are crystalloids; starches are insoluble and are colloids. Glycogen and milk sugar are the only carbohydrates of animal origin and even these are derived originally from the plant. Animals are incapable of extracting carbon from the air and synthesizing carbohydrates.
While the sugars are all soluble, raw starch is insoluble. Boiling will render part of it soluble. This, however, hinders its digestion. Starch is converted into a disaccharide in the mouth, and this is converted into a monosaccharide in the intestine.
The body cannot use starch. It must first be converted into sugar before it can be utilized by the cells. This is done in the process of digestion and begins in the mouth. Disaccharides and polysaccharides are converted into monosaccharides in the process of digestion, as carbohydrates can be absorbed and assimilated only as monosaccharides. Starch must first be converted into sugar, and the complex sugars must be converted into simple sugars before they are absorbed. The body’s need for sugar may easily be supplied without eating commercial sugars and syrups or any form of denatured carbohydrate. Child and adult alike should eat only natural sweets and starches.
Sugar is the most important building material in the plant world. A characteristic difference between plants and animals is that, whereas the animal is built up largely out of proteins, the plant is built up largely out of carbohydrates. Plants may be truly said to be made of sugar. They contain various minerals and some nitrogen, but practically the whole fabric of the plant or tree is composed of sugar in some form. Sugars are essential constituents of all plants without which they cannot exist. Indeed, sugars are the most important and most abundant building materials in plants. Out of the immature or sap sugars, plants build their roots, stems, flowers, fruits and seeds. The finished plant is almost literally made of sugar.
Nature produces sugars out of three gases—carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen and hydrogen in proportions to form water are taken from the water in the soil. Carbon is taken from the carbon dioxide of the air. Out of these gases, or out of this fluid and gas, the plant synthesizes sugar, a thing the animal cannot do. The green coloring of plants is due to the presence of a pigment known as chlorophyll. This pigment takes part in a chemical process known as photosynthesis, by which carbon dioxide (or at least the carbon in the carbon dioxide), with the aid of sunlight, is united with water to form sugar. Recent experiments have shown that enzymes contained in the leaves of the plants are the chief agents in the production of this sugar. Some plants can produce sugar in the absence of light.
Not only the starches of plants, but also the pentosans, the woody fibers, cellulose and gums are made of sugar and may be reconverted into sugar. When carbohydrates are stored for long periods, they are stored as starches. When they are used, they are reconverted into sugars. Corn, peas, etc., are sweet (full of sugar) before they mature. The sap of the corn is also sweet. The sap of the cane plant is very sweet. In the matured state corn, cane seed and peas are hard starch grains. In the germinating process the starch is reconverted into sugar. As starches these seeds will keep for long periods of time; as sugars they would not keep until the following spring. It will be noticed that the enzymes in seeds do not require ultraviolet rays and acid to bring about this reconversion, any more than do the enzymes in digestive juices.
Fruits are ready for immediate use and, if not used soon after ripening, tend to decompose rapidly. Grains are intended for storage. It is significant that fruits are composed of insoluble starches and are usually rich in acids before they ripen. In this state they are usually avoided by animals. The starch is reconverted into sugar in the ripening process. This arrangement protects the seed of the fruit until it is matured and ready for dispersal. Then the fruit is ripened and made ready for food.
The animal, like the plant, builds its carbohydrates out of sugar. All starch foods must be converted into sugar (in the process of digestion) before they can be taken into the body and used. Animal starch (glycogen) is made from sugar. It, like the starch of grains, is a storage product. Like the starch of grains, it must be reconverted into sugar before using. The sugar in milk may be made from starches.
The matured fruit sugars of plants, especially those of fruits, are particularly appropriate for food. They are never concentrated and are always well balanced with other nutrients. They are built up out of the immature sugar and impart to both fresh and dried fruits their delicious flavors. Matured sugars in flowers are collected by bees and made into honey. Fruit sugars are, in truth, export products produced by plants.
All the sugar the body requires may be obtained from fresh ripe fruits. This is especially so during the summer months. During the winter months when fresh fruits are not so abundant, dried (but unsulphured) fruits are excellent sources of sugar. These should not be cooked. Owing to the absence of water, dried fruits are more concentrated foods than fresh fruits and should not be eaten in the same bulk.
Just as fruits are savoured with their matured sugars, so vegetable foods are savoured with the immature juices (saps) of the plants. In the plants, as in the fruits, the sugars are combined with vitamins, mineral salts, fiber and other elements of foods.
It is essential to emphasize that sugars constitute but one of the ingredients of plant life and are never put up in their pure state. In fruits and plants they are always combined with and balanced by other ingredients, particularly with salts, vitamins and water. Man, not nature, produces concentrated sugars. Man, not nature, separates the minerals from sugar. Sugars should be eaten as nature provides them.
Commercial syrups and molasses are concentrated saps. Besides being concentrated, usually by the use of heat in evaporating the water, they are deprived of their minerals and vitamins and have preservatives, artificial colors and flavors added and are often bleached with sulphur dioxide, with which they become saturated. Commercial sugars—maple, cane, beet, milk—are crystalized saps. They, too, are unbalanced, commonly bleached and thoroughly unfitted for use. So concentrated are these syrups and sugars, so denatured and so prone to speedy fermentation in the digestive tract, that it is best not to employ them at all. If they are used, they should be used very sparingly. The same rule should apply to honey. This food of the bee contains all the other nutritive elements in very minute quantities, being largely water and sugar with flavors from the flowers. If it is eaten, it should be taken sparingly.
What a difference between eating sugar cane and eating the extracted, concentrated and refined sugar of the cane! It is said that it takes a West Indian native an hour to chew eighteen inches of cane from which he derives the equivalent of one large lump of sugar—less than the average coffee-drinker puts into a single cup of his favorite poison. (The boys and girls of Texas and Louisiana can chew sugar cane faster than the West Indian native, it seems.) In thus securing his sugar, the cane eater secures the minerals and vitamins that are normally associated with sugars—he does not eat a “purified” product.
Sugar is regarded as an energy food, but it is a remarkable fact that the heavy sugar eater prefers to watch athletic games to taking part in them. We, of course, have reference to the heavy eater of commercial sugars. They seem to stimulate and then depress the muscular powers.
It has long been the Hygienic theory that the catarrhal diseases are based on carbohydrate excess—sugar excess, as all starches are converted into sugar in digestion. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that the British Medical Journal for June 1933 carried an article discussing “the relation of excessive carbohydrate ingestion to catarrh and other diseases,” in which it was pointed out that during World War I, the incidence of catarrhal illnesses was reduced seemingly corresponding with the great eduction of sugar consumption. The writer of the article concludes that “restriction in the use of sugar would result in improvement in the national health as regards catarrhal illness, as well as in other directions.”
Enzymic Limitations Necessitate the Combining of Compatible Foods
Bacterial By Products Poisonous
Digestive Enzymes Extremely Specialized
Digestion a Step-By-Step Process
Chewing Is First Digestive Step
Some Enzymes Destroyed By Acids and Alkalines
Some Factors That Inhibit Digestion
Foodstuffs as we eat them constitute the raw materials of nutrition. As proteins, carbohydrates and fats, they are not usable by the body. They must first undergo a disintegrating, refining and standardizing process (more properly a series of processes) to which the term digestion has been given. Although this process of digestion is partly mechanical, as in the chewing, swallowing and “churning” of food, the physiology of digestion is very largely a study of the chemical changes foods undergo in their passage through the alimentary canal. For our present purposes, we need give but little attention to intestinal digestion but will concentrate upon mouth and stomach digestion.
The changes through which foods go in the processes of digestion are affected by a group of agencies known as enzymes. Due to the fact that the conditions under which these enzymes can act are sharply defined, it becomes neccessary to give heed to the simple rules of correct food combining that have been carefully worked out on a basis of the chemistry of digestion.
Long and patient effort on the part of many physiologists in many parts of the world have brought to light a host of facts concerning enzymic limitations, but, unfortunately, these same physiologists have attempted to slur over their importance and to supply us with fictional reasons why we should continue to eat and drink in the conventionally haphazard manner. They have rejected every effort to make a practical application of the great fund of vital knowledge their painstaking labors have provided. Not so the Natural Hygienists. We seek to base our rules of life upon the principles of biology and physiology.
Let us briefly consider enzymes in general before we go on to a study of the enzymes of the mouth and stomach. An enzyme may be appropriately defined as a physiological catalyst. In the study of chemistry it was soon found that many substances that do not normally combine when brought into contact with each other may be made to do so by a third substance when it is brought into contact with them. This third substance does not in any way enter into the combination or share in the reaction; its mere presence seems to bring about the combination and reaction. Such a substance or agent is called a catalyst and the process is called catalysis.
Plants and animals manufacture soluble catalytic substances, colloidal in nature and but little resistant to heat, which they employ in the many processes of splitting up of compounds and the making of new ones within themselves. To these substances the term enzyme has been applied. Many enzymes are known, all of them, apparently, of protein character. The only ones that need interest us here are those involved in the digestion of foodstuffs. These are involved in the reduction of complex food substances to simpler compounds that are acceptable to the bloodstream and usable by the cells of the body in the production of new cell substance.
As the action of enzymes in the digestion of foodstuffs closely resembles fermentation, these substances were formerly referred to as ferments. Fermentation, however, is accomplished by organized ferments—bacteria. The products of fermentation are not identical with the products of enzymic disintegration of foodstuffs and are not suitable as nutritive materials. Rather, they are poisonous. Putrefaction, also the result of bacterial action, also gives rise to poisons, some of them very virulent.
Each enzyme is specific in its action. This is to say, it acts only upon one class of food substance. The enzymes that act upon carbohydrates do not and cannot act upon proteins nor upon salts nor fats. They are even more specific than this would indicate. For example, in the digestion of closely related substances such as the disaccharides (complex sugars), the enzyme that acts upon maltose is not capable of acting upon lactose. Each sugar seems to require its own specific enzyme. The physiologist, Howell, tells us that there is no clear proof that any single enzyme can produce more than one kind of ferment action.
This specific action of enzymes is of importance, as there are various states in the digestion of foodstuffs, each state requiring the action of a different enzyme and the various enzymes being capable of performing their work only if the preceding work has been properly performed by the enzymes that also precede. If pepsin, for example, has not converted proteins into peptones, the enzymes that convert peptones into amino acids will not be able to act upon the proteins.
The substance upon which an enzyme acts is called a substrate. Thus starch is the substrate of ptyalin. Dr. N. Phillip Norman, Instructor in gastroenterology, New York Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital, New York City, says: “In studying the action of different enzymes, one is struck by Emil Fischer’s statement that there must be a special key to each lock, the ferment being the lock and its substrate the key, and if the key does not fit exactly in the lock, no reaction is possible. In view of this fact, is it not logical to believe the admixture of different types of carbohydrates and fats and proteins in the same meal to be distinctly injurious to the digestive cells? If, since it is true that similar but not identical locks are produced by the same type of cells, it is logical to believe that this admixture taxes the physiological functions of these cells to their limit?” Fischer, who was a renowned physiologist, suggested that the specificity of the various enzymes is related to the structure of substances acted upon. Each enzyme is apparently adapted to or fitted to a certain definite structure.
Digestion commences in the mouth. All foods are broken up into smaller particles by the process of chewing, and they are thoroughly saturated with saliva. Of the chemical part of digestion, only starch digestion begins in the mouth. The saliva of the mouth, which is normally an alkaline fluid, contains an enzyme called ptyalin, which acts upon starch, breaking this down into maltose, a complex sugar, which is further acted upon in the intestine by maltase and converted into the simple sugar dextrose.
The action of ptyalin upon starch is preparatory, as maltase cannot act upon starch. Amylase, the starch-splitting enzyme of the pancreatic secretion, is said to act upon starch much as does ptyalin, so that starch that escapes digestion in the mouth and stomach may be split into maltose and achroodextrin, providing, of course, that it has not undergone fermentation before it reaches the intestine.
Ptyalin is destroyed by a milk acid and also by a strong alkaline reaction. It can act only in an alkaline medium, and this must not be strongly alkaline. It is this limitation of the enzyme that renders important the manner in which we mix our starches, for if they are mixed with foods that are acid or that provide for an acid secretion in the stomach, the action of the ptyalin is brought to an end.
Stomach (gastric) juice ranges all the way from nearly neutral in reaction to strongly acid, depending upon the character of the food eaten. It contains three enzymes-pepsin, which acts upon proteins; lipase, which has slight action upon fats; and rennin, which coagulates milk. The only one of these enzymes that needs concern us here is pepsin. Pepsin is capable of initiating digestion on all kinds of proteins. This is important, as it seems to be the only enzyme with such power. Different protein splitting enzymes act upon the different stages of protein digestion. It is possible that none of them can act upon protein in stages preceding the stage for which they are specifically adapted. For example, erepsin, found in the intestinal juice and in the pancreatic juice, does not act upon complex proteins, but only upon peptides and polypeptides, reducing these to amino acids. Without the prior action of pepsin in reducing the proteins to peptides, the erepsin would not act upon the protein food. Pepsin acts only in an acid medium and is destroyed by an alkali. Low temperature, as when iced drinks are taken, retards and even suspends the action of pepsin. Alcohol precipitates this enzyme.
Just as the sight, odor or thought of food may occasion a flow of saliva, a “watering of the mouth,” so these same factors may cause the flow of gastric juice, that is a “watering of the stomach.” The taste of food, however, is most important in occasioning a flow of saliva. The physiologist, Carlson, failed in repeated efforts to occasion a flow of gastric juice by having his subjects chew on different substances, or by irritating the nerve endings in the mouth by substances other than those directly related to food. In other words, there is no secretory action when the substances taken into the mouth cannot be digested. There is selective action on the part of the body and, as will be seen later, there are different kinds of action for different kinds of foods.
In his experiments in studying the “conditioned reflex,” Pavlov noted that it is not necessary to take the food into the mouth in order to occasion a flow of gastric juice. The mere teasing of a dog with savory food will serve. He found that even the noises or some other action associated with feeding time will occasion a flow of secretion.
It is necessary that we devote a few paragraphs to a brief study of the body’s ability to adapt its secretions to the different kinds of foodstuffs that are consumed. Later we will discuss the limitations of this power. McLeod’s Physiology in Modern Medicine says: “The observations of Pavlov on the responses of gastric pouches of dogs, to meat, bread and milk have been widely quoted. They are interesting because they constitute evidence that the operation of the gastric secretory mechanism is not without some power of adaptation to the materials to be digested.”
This adaptation is made possible by reason of the fact that the gastric secretions are the products of about five million microscopic glands embedded in the walls of the stomach, various of which secrete different parts of the gastric juice. The varying amounts and proportions of the various elements that enter into the composition of the gastric juice give a juice of varying characters and adapted to the digestion of different kinds of foodstuffs. Thus the juice may be almost neutral in reaction or it may be weakly acid or strongly acid. There may be more or less pepsin according to need. There is also the factor of timing. The character of the juice may be very different at one stage of digestion from what it is at another, as the varying requirements of a food are met.
A similar adaptation of saliva to different foods and digestive requirements is seen to occur. For example weak acids occasion a copious flow of saliva, while weak alkalies occasion no salivary secretion. Disagreeable and noxious substances also occasion salivary secretion, in this instance to flush away the offending material. It is noted by physiologists that with at least two different types of glands in the mouth able to function, a considerable range of variation is possible with reference to the character of the mixed secretion finally discharged.
An excellent example of this ability of the body to modify and adapt its secretions to the varying needs of various kinds of foods is supplied us by the dog. Feed him flesh and there is a secretion of thick, viscous saliva, chiefly from the submaxillary gland. Feed him dried and pulverized flesh, and a very copious and watery secretion will be poured out upon it, coming from the parotid gland. The mucous secretion poured out upon flesh serves to lubricate the bolus of food and thus facilitate swallowing. The thin, watery secretion, on the other hand, poured out upon the dry powder washes the powder from the mouth. Thus, it is seen that the kind of juice poured out is determined by the purpose it must serve.
As we previously noted, ptyalin has no action upon sugar. When sugar is eaten there is a copious flow of saliva, but it contains no ptyalin. If soaked starches are eaten, no saliva is poured out upon these. Ptyalin is not poured out upon flesh or fat. These evidences of adaptation are but a few of the many that could be given. It seems probable that a wider range of adaptation is possible in gastric than in salivary secretion. These things are not without their significance to the person who is desirous of eating in a manner to assure most efficient digestion, although it is the custom of physiologists to gloss over or minimize them.
There are reasons for believing that man, like the lower animals, once instinctively avoided wrong combinations of foods, and there are remnants of the old instinctive practices still extant. But having kindled the torches of intellect upon the ruins of instinct, man is compelled to seek out his way in a bewildering maze of forces and circumstances by the fool’s method of trial and error. At least this is so until he has gained sufficient knowledge and a grasp of proved principles to enable him to govern his conduct in the light of principles and knowledge. Instead, then, of ignoring the great mass of laboriously accumulated physiological knowledge relating to the digestion of our foodstuffs, or glossing over them as is the practice of the professional pysiologists, it behooves us, as intelligent beings, to make full and proper use of such knowledge. If the physiology of digestion can lead us to eating practices that insure better digestion, hence better nutrition, only the foolish will disregard its immense value to us, both in health and in disease.
Have you noticed how often we state that fruits are the foods to which we are biologically suited? We rank them as first-class foods and we rank starchy foods such as tubers, legumes and grains as second- or third-class foods. One reason for this, as you may know, is that most starchy foods have to be cooked to make them tasty. Of course there are exceptions to this:
But despite these exceptions, starchy foods are not ideal for humans. Unlike sugars from fruits, which pass almost directly from the stomach to the small intestine for absorption, starches must be converted to sugar for the body to unlock their energy potential.
Most animals secrete starch-splitting enzymes called amylases, derived from the Latin word meaning—you guessed it—starch-splitting. In humans, starch digestion begins in the mouth: Our saliva contains an amylase called ptyalin, from the Greek word ptyalon, meaning saliva. Ptyalin, also called salivary amylase, changes starch chemically into maltose, a complex sugar.
Many other animals, such as pigs, birds and other starch eaters, but not humans, secrete other additional amylases to insure complete starch digestion. To be sure bf adequately digesting the starch we humans consume, we must chew our food very, very thoroughly so it becomes well-mixed with saliva.
The starch that’s converted to maltose by salivary enzymic action is further broken down in the small intestine by the enzyme maltase into the simple sugar, dextrose, for the bloodstream can absorb only simple sugars, never starches or complex sugars. (Dextrose is dextrorotatory glucose.)
Only 30 to 40 percent of the starch eaten can be broken down by ptyalin in the mouth. If starches are eaten with (or close in time to ingestion of) acid fruits (citrus fruits or tomatoes) or with protein foods, the ptyalin in the saliva that’s swallowed with the food cannot further break down the starch into simple sugars.
This is because ptyalin can only act in an alkaline environment and the stomach environment becomes acid when proteins are consumed. The acids in fruits will also inhibit the secretion of ptyalin. Hence, you should take care to eat starchy foods (if you eat them at all) with vegetables and not with acid or protein foods to insure the best possible digestion.
We do secrete a pancreatic amylase in our intestine to digest starches not handled by salivary amylase (ptyalin). But starches, often partially decompose in the stomach before they get to the intestine.
In addition, there’s a problem relative to human starch digestion and this is another reason why starches are usually cooked or sprouted (besides for taste):
According to The Textbook of Medical Physiology by Arthur C. Guyton, M.D.:
Most starches in their natural state, unfortunately, are present in the food in small globules, each of which has a thin protective cellulose covering. Therefore, most naturally-occurring starches are digested only poorly by ptyalin unless the food is cooked to destroy the protective membrane.
If cooking can destroy the protective membrane around the starch cells, what is it doing to the food’s value? Cooking changes the minerals and proteins into unusable forms and destroys most vitamins!
Chewing only partially damages the protective covering of starch globules and so raw starches can only be partially digested. While undigested foods cause pathogenic problems in the human body, the toxins ingested when we eat cooked foods (deranged vitamins and minerals) cause even greater problems.
In light of how the human body uses starches by changing them to simple sugars through a complicated and only partially effective process, why not consider getting all your carbohydrate needs from fresh fruits which are already in the form of simple easily-digestible sugars? We don’t need starches at all and can thrive more healthfully without them.
This article is reprinted from The Health Crusader, Better Life Journal’s predecessor.
We have stated many times that wheat and bread are unwholesome foods for several reasons: Wheat, the seed of cereal grass, is a starchy food that the body cannot digest properly and fully because we secrete only a limited amount of ptyalin, the enzyme that starts digestion of starches, and we secrete no enzyme to break down gluten. Also, wheat and breads are almost always eaten with sugars and/or proteins, all of which then end up in producing indigestion and pathogenic conditions inside the body.
Unless you sprout whole wheat berries, wheat must be cooked to be eaten; and cooking renders the food’s nutrients mostly unusable and quite toxic. Whole wheat flour, even if freshly ground, lacks in nutritional value because of the great loss of nutrients due to oxidation of the burst food cells.
Despite these convincing reasons why we shouldn’t eat bread at all let’s talk about bread a bit further. The wheat bread sold in stores is likely to be only 25 percent wheat, the other 75 percent of the flour being bleached white flour. But you can’t tell this by just looking at the bread, for it may be colored with caramel to make it look darker like 100 percent whole wheat bread. The label has to say “whole-wheat flour” or else it’s only partly whole wheat.
This is bad enough but there’s worse news: The high-fiber breads that are becoming so popular these days contain powdered cellulose, a cheap byproduct of the paper industry. Even nonhygienic minded “health” writers warn against consuming artificial fiber.
The paper mills are selling this powdered cellulose to food processors as a “bulking agent” for cookies, cakes, pastas and breakfast cereals, as well as for bread. The human body wasn’t designed to digest this waste product of the paper industry. Your best bet is still to stay away from products which contain “bulking agents,” sugar or honey, salt, preservatives, colorings and wheat.
Most people think that whole grain breads are the “staff of life”—that we need to eat bread to be healthy. However, this has been found to be untrue. Even 100 percent whole wheat is unhealthful. Many doctors have their patients merely eliminate grain products (including whole wheat bread) from their diets because this helps many people lose weight.
Medical research has proven that wheat is one of the causes of colds. Families were asked to give up bread and grains for one year. What happened was that no one in these families suffered any colds that year. Another study has shown that wheat is a main contributor of eczema, hives, migraine headaches and various “allergies.”
Of course we know wheat is an indirect cause of diseases; that is, it is usually cooked and otherwise processed such that it contributes to body toxicity. This starchy food is almost always combined improperly; that is, it is eaten with honey, sugar or fruit as in breads, pies, fruitcakes, cereals, etc., or with protein foods such as meat, cheese, milk, yogurt, nuts, seeds, etc.
Consequently, poisonous byproducts of indigestion are created in the stomach. The toxins resulting from fermentation (starch) or putrefaction (proteins) accumulate with other toxins and bring toxemia, the sole cause of disease.
A research undertaken by Dr. Alvarez of the Mayo Clinic states, “Bread can pass though the whole of the small intestine without being digested at all!” Also, wheat interferes with the absorption of other foods, as does salt. Life Scientists know that years of eating wrong combinations of wrong foods gradually impair the body’s digestive abilities.
When people eat a lot of bread they get filled up. Thus they eat less of the fruits and vegetables that have the proper nutrient and vitamin contents. So, as J. I. Rodale says in his book, The Complete Book of Food and Nutrition, “This whole thing about the importance of bread as the staff of life leaves me cold. I think the average person is better off to entirely restrict the use of bread.”
Mr. Rodale also stated, “What is the best program for a person who wishes to live to 120? I say don’t eat bread. It is the worst form of starch ... It is not an edible starch.”
Tradition has it that man’s original diet was fruit. While we have no written history of a period when man lived on a fruit diet, there is plenty of evidence to substantiate the view that he once did so. We do know that fruits have historically constituted an important part of man’s diet in most parts of the earth from remote times. Only within recent centuries, and then only in certain parts of the earth, has the notion that fruits have little food value come about.
Most fruits are abundantly supplied with sugar and it is quite possible to gain weight on a fruit diet. Some fruits, like the avocado and most nuts (nuts are also fruits, technically speaking) contain considerable fat. While few of the pulpy fruits are abundantly supplied with protein, some of them do contain a higher percentage of protein than mother’s milk. Practically all nuts are rich in protein of high biological value. One does not have to eat animal foods in order to supply himself with an abundance of all the amino acids required.
In the last century a veritable fruitophobia arose both in Europe and America and people refrained from eating fruits because they supposedly caused disease. Fruits were accused of causing various diarrheal diseases, even typhoid and cholera. It is a fact that a large excess of fresh fruit will result in loose stools, but this is not an objection to fruit eating. One has only to cease taking the fruit in excess to have the bowel looseness cease.
The body does not have to contend with sepsis or poison when an excess of fruit is eaten as when excesses of proteins or starches are taken. Excesses of all types are harmful, but an excess of fruit is far less harmful than an excess of bread or flesh. The prejudice against fruits, however, arose not so much out of the results of excess, as out of the faulty combinations in which they were eaten. Fruits are best taken at a fruit meal and should not be combined with starches or with foods rich in protein or fats, including nuts.
In the last century the idea arose that certain diseases such as rheumatism, gout, lumbago, arthritis, etc., were acid diseases. Acid fruits were forbidden on the ground that they helped to produce these diseases. This error about fruits is as dead as are those who promoted it, and it is somewhat surprising to have it revived at a time when our knowledge of foods is so much greater than it was in the last century.
Under the promptings of this revived notion, when people are told that their gastritis, arthritis, etc., arises out of acidity, many mistake this to mean that they arise out of taking acid fruits. They especially reject oranges, grapefruit, lemons, pineapples and similar acid fruits, lest these produce arthritis in them or aggravate the arthritis from which they already suffer.
The fact is that fresh fruits and vegetables, whether burned in the air or metabolized in the body, are alkaline. On the other hand, a diet of flesh, oils, sugar and denatured starches (white flour, polished rice, etc.) provides an excess of acids—sulphuric, etc. Even such acid fruits as oranges and grapefruit are alkaline when metabolized in the body. When fruit is cooked and sugar is added, the fermentation that follows gives rise to acids that add to the acidity of the body. (All canned fruits have been cooked and most have been sugared.)
As important as water is in the processes of life you do not need to drink large quantities of it. Under the usual circumstances of life the water in fruits and salads will supply all the water needed or nearly enough, if these are eaten as they should be. The pure water of fruits and vegetables is much better for physiological purposes than the water supplied by the water systems of our cities and towns.
Fruits appeal to the eyes, the nose and the mouth. Their beauty of color, their richness of aroma, and the deliciousness of their flavors make them ideally suited to man’s gustatory delight. There is a rich variety of them and they ripen at various seasons of the year, so that there is but a small part of the year in which they are not abundant. Beginning with the many varieties of delicious berries in the springtime and progressing through the varied assortments of cherries, peaches, plums, nectarines, figs and mangoes of the summer season, to the apples, pears, persimmons, oranges and grapefruit of the fall and winter season, nature provides us with a pleasing assortment of delicious foods that may be enjoyed by everyone and that are easily digested by even the most sensitive stomachs. By the exercise of a little intelligent care in selecting and combining these foods, one may be assured of better health.
In his efforts to establish, to his complete satisfaction, the normal diet of man, Dr. Emmet Densmore pursued a line of reasoning that we may consider with profit. First, he noted that animals in their natural state live upon foods which are spontaneously produced by nature and require no cultivation. Man, on the other hand, he noted, lives upon foods that are produced by cultivation. Man does not live upon the spontaneous products of nature, but lives artificially.
The thought then occurred to him that, if nature has provided a natural food for all the animals below man, perhaps she has also provided a normal food for man. He assumed that nature has produced foods that are as normal to man as grasses are to the herbivore, or as flesh is to the carnivore. This was certainly no unreasonable assumption but is based on the principle of the unity of nature. It is based upon the fact that man, as much as the lion or the deer, is a child of nature and that, like these animals, his normal requirements are found in nature.
If man, like the other animals of nature, is constituted for a certain type of food, what is that food or what is that type? What, in other words, is the normal food of man? He sought for his answer in several directions. Scientists were agreed that man’s original home was in a warm climate, either in the tropics or the subtropics. Without tools and without fire, he must have lived in a part of the world where the spontaneous productions of nature could be obtained by him with only the “tools” with which he is physiologically equipped and could eat without artificial preparation.
“If man first lived in a warm climate,” he reasoned, “and, if like other animals, he subsisted on foods spontaneously produced by nature, these foods must have been those which grow wild in such a climate, quite probably such foods as are still spontaneously produced in such localities. The woods of the south, as is well known, abound in sweet fruits and nuts.”
It will be seen at a glance that this line of reasoning led straight to the fruits of the trees as man’s normal diet. But man does not live on a fruit diet. Indeed, the greater part of his diet has long been cereals and animal foods. Let us, then, see what Densmore found about cereals.
“It is taught by botanists that wheat is an artificial product developed from some grass plant not now known. Moreover, cereals are the product of the temperate zone, not of those regions where there is no winter, and it was, therefore a necessity of man’s sustenance when he was without agriculture, without tools and without fire, and had to depend upon foods spontaneously produced by nature, that he live in a region where his natural foods were produced at all seasons of the year. This narrows or confines the inquiry to two articles of diet—fruit and nuts.”
He next noted that these foods need no additions, no sweetenings, no seasonings, no preparations, to appeal to the olfactory and gustatory senses of man. “If the dishes that are set before a gourmet,” he said, “those that have been prepared by the most skillful chefs, and that are the product of the most elaborate inventions and preparations, were set beside a portion of the sweet fruits and nuts as produced by nature, without addition or change, every child and most men and women would consider the fruits and nuts quite equal if not superior in gustatory excellence to the most recherché dishes.”
Analysis showed that these foods contain the proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and minerals that are essential to human nutrition. Subsequent analysis has shown them to be abundant in the various essential vitamins. Sugar, he noted, is the chief carbohydrate of fruits and nuts. In what way does this diet differ from the diet of civilization? Let us see how Densmore viewed this.
“Instituting a comparison between sweet fruits and nuts on the one hand, and the diet of civilization on the other, I soon detected an essential difference. I saw that bread, cereals, and vegetables are the basis of the diet of the present day and that starch is the chief element of these foods. Scrutinizing the component parts of fruits and nuts, I saw that these fruits contain very little starch, and hence I perceived that I had brought to light a fact that was not unlikely to bear an important part in the solution of the problem before me.”
Thus, by a simple process of reasoning upon well-known facts of nature, he had arrived at the conclusion that, while man’s normal diet as represented in the spontaneous products of nature contains little starch, the cultivated food plants of civilized man were abundant in starch. This led to the question: “What are the effects of starch upon the system?” “Wherein,” he asked, “Does a diet that is without starch differ physiologically from one in which starch is the predominant element?”
Seeking a reply to this last question, he noted first of all “that the two foods (fruits and starch or cereals) involve a different process of digestion.” “Sweet fruits are composed largely of glucose, with a fair proportion of nitrogen ...” cereals are composed largely of starch, with a higher proportion of nitrogen. The carbohydrate in nuts is largely sugar. If fruits and nuts constitute man’s normal diet, as his reasoning had concluded, the starch diet is not his normal diet.
But he was met by one of the most convenient arguments that the evolution hypothesis has supplied its votaries. “Since man, by artificial contrivance and agriculture,” it was reasoned, “has developed and employed cereals and starchy vegetables as the basis of his diet, he has reversed what appears to be the natural order.” Densmore examined this contention in the light of anatomy and physiology and found that man’s digestive organs have undergone no alterations in structure and function to adapt him to the starch diet. “The orangutan and the several species of long-armed apes, which have, apparently since time began, fed upon nuts and fruits to the exclusion of cereals and starchy vegetables, have today the same digestive apparatus in substantially the same proportion of parts as man, after his thousands of years of cereal eating. This fact is undeniable evidence that man’s organs have not undergone essential modification or change by these centuries of unnatural diet.” Evolution just didn’t evolve so readily.
Analyzing the various mono-diets that were then popular and for which much was claimed in the way of their benefits to the patient, Densmore noted that the Salisbury meat diet, the grape diet, and the milk diet each were nonstarch diets. They were simple and, at the same time, they met another requirement of a diet—ease of digestion. “At the foundation of these diets,” he said, “I was gratified to find the same basic fact that the diet is essentially nonstarch and one in which bread, cereals and starchy vegetables are reduced to a minimum.” The Salisbury diet was, to quote Densmore, “entirely free from starch.” He says of the Salisbury diet that it was “a uniform diet.” It was usually considered that a variety of food is necessary both for the invalid and the robust. The triumphs of the mono-diets fly in the face of this commonly received axiom.
Can it be true, then, as Densmore contended, that invalids, and especially those suffering with digestive disease, are invariably benefitted by being placed on an exclusively nonstarch diet?” If man’s digestive organs had undergone the modifications suggested by the defenders of the starch diet,” he reasoned, “starch foods would naturally be those best adapted to man’s restoration; but if, as we contend, the race has been, during all these thousands of years of cereal eating, perpetually straining and overcrowding the powers of the second stomach (the duodenum) and thus deranging the digestive apparatus—and if man is seen to be at once benefitted by discontinuing that diet, and by taking a food which is digested in the first stomach—these facts tend to confirm the view that the adoption of a nonstarch diet is in conformity with man’s physiological structure and needs.”
What he denominated food fruits consisted chiefly of sweet fruits—dates, figs, bananas, raisins, prunes, apples, nuts. Fruits and nuts, with the addition of green vegetables, constitute an adequate diet, furnishing all the food-factors needed by man’s organism, and whoever eats a diet of this kind will be better off than he who eats a great variety of foods, from soup to nuts, from all the kingdoms of nature. It is not sufficient comment upon the abnormality of the modern diet that fruit is relegated to the last place on the menu and is all too often used merely for ornamental purposes?
Prior to Sylvester Graham, the medical and conventional view of fruit was well expressed by a noted British physician thus: “for decorative purposes fruit equals flowers.” Fruits were thought of, also, as relishes, but were not supposed to have any food value. “Bread and meat” were symbolic of nutriment, and those who could afford to do so often sat down to meals consisting of several types of flesh foods. Puddings, porridges and similar articles of diet were classed with bread.
“The ordinary dried figs of commerce,” said Dr. Densmore, “contain about 68 percent glucose, which, when eaten, is in the identical condition that the starch of cereal food is converted into after a protracted and nerve-force-wasting digestion.” He correctly observed that the sugar of fruits is predigested. Many of them require no preparation at all to render them ready to enter the bloodstream; others have to be reduced to simpler sugars, a process that takes place in the intestine. There is certainly good common sense in his thought that foods that are “predigested by nature” and are ready for absorption and assimilation upon ingestion and place less tax upon the digestive system than those foods that are prepared for assimilation only after a complicated and laborious process of digestion.
But, as man is equipped with ptyalin in the saliva and with starch-splitting enzymes in the intestine, it may be urged that starch may be thought of as constituting a normal part of his diet. It was the thought of Dr. Densmore that man’s normal starch-digesting equipment is just sufficient to enable him to digest the small amounts of starch that normally exist in the fruits and nuts that constitute his normal diet. This thought is that, while man is equipped to digest a certain amount of starch, a predominantly starch diet such as is eaten in much of the world today is not normal to him, and that the best form in which he should secure his carbohydrates is sugar.
In this connection, sugar means the sweet fruits produced by old mother nature herself, not the processed sugars of commerce. Sugars, whether in the form of sugar (crystals-brown or white) or in the form of syrups that have been separated from their associated nutrients and that have been concentrated and changed, do not constitute ideal foods for man or beast. The maple sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar, milk sugar and fruit sugars of commerce and the syrups and molasses that are freely eaten, whether from cane or maple sap, do not constitute really good foods for man. Honey, even when pure and unchanged, is not a good food for man for much the same reason, and for added reasons. It is a fine food for bees.
It was believed in Densmore’s day and it is still believed that toasting starch, as in toasting bread, dextrinizes it, thus rendering it more easily digested. Although the toasting of bread spoils much of the food value that remains in it after the first baking, and converts part of it into charcoal, precious little dextrinization occurs. Densmore, accepting the dextrinization of bread by toasting, said: “the sweet fruits are removed a step beyond. If there was some method by which a piece of toast could undergo a second transformation and the dextrin be converted into glucose, it would then in all probability be substantially as easy of digestion as the sweet fruits for the simple reason that it would already be glucose; in a word, no digestion would be necessary.”
Certainly, as he contended, sweet foods would be far better for the weakened individual and the invalid, with lowered digestive powers, than would be a diet of starches. If there is one starch food that may be regarded as an exception to this rule, it would be the potato, as its starch is more easily and speedily converted into sugar than the starch of cereals, legumes, etc. But Densmore goes further than a consideration of the interests of the invalid when he says, “it would seem plain that a human being in apparently robust health is much more liable to remain so upon a food that is adapted to his organism and that is of easy digestion, than upon one that is a foreign body and that must undergo a protracted and difficult digestion before being of use to the system.”
8.3. How Much Protein Do We Need?
8.5. The Importance Of Amino Acids
8.7. Protein And The Optimum (Life Science) Diet
Article #1: The Question Of Proteins By Arnold DeVries
Article #2: Protein by Ralph Cinque, D.C.
Article #3: The Superiority Of Plant Foods by Ralph Cinque, D.C.
Article #4: The Question Of Protein by Dr. Ralph Bircher Benner
The role of protein in the diet is often an emotional issue. If you wish to confirm this, try to take a steak away from a meat-eater. “But I need my protein” he cries. Tell your friends you are a vegetarian. They may look worried, disturbed—“Where do you get your protein?” they ask, as if you might drop dead at any time.
Perhaps never have so many been so confused over a subject about which they know so little. Much of the information the general public receives about protein comes from special interest groups such as the meat-packing and dairy industries. Consequently, the average person believes that eating large quantities of meat, eggs, milk, cheese, etc., is desirable. They may be full of poisons; they may cause cancer: they may cause heart disease—but, they all furnish that magical substance called protein.
If we are to separate emotion from reason, and propaganda from facts, we must educate ourselves about the true need of the body for protein. We must discover how much protein we actually need, how we can best get it and, after all, just what it is.
Protein is needed by the body for only two reasons: I) growth and 2) tissue repair and replacement. Protein is not necessary for muscular energy, increased activity or as a source of fuel.
Proteins support normal growth and maintenance of the body tissues.
Perhaps the role of protein in growth is best exemplified in the development of babies and newborn animals. A relatively high amount of protein is found in the milk of lactating mothers to insure healthy tissue growth in the young child. The protein needs are highest when growth is the fastest. For instance, compare the protein content in mother’s milk after the first six months of birth:
Time After Birth | Percent Protein |
From the 8th to 11th day | 2.38 |
From the 20th to 40th day | 1.79 |
From the 70th to 120th day | 1.49 |
At the 170th day and later | 1.07 |
Notice that the highest protein contents occur during the earliest stages of growth to allow for rapid development of the baby. As the growth of the child begins to slow, so does the protein content found in the mother’s milk. It is also interesting to note that the percentage of protein found in mother’s milk is approximately the same as the protein content of most fruits and vegetables. For example, grapes have a 1.3% protein content, raspberries 1.5%, dates 2.2% and so on.
We can also find a relationship between the protein content of the milk of lactating animals and the growth rate of their young by studying the following chart:
Number of Days for Newborn to Double Its Weight | Average Protein Percentage In Mother’s Milk | |
Man | 180 | 1.6 |
Horse | 60 | 2.0 |
Calf | 47 | 3.5 |
Kid | 19 | 4.3 |
Pig | 18 | 5.9 |
Lamb | 10 | 6.5 |
Dog | 8 | 7.1 |
Cat | 7 | 9.5 |
The highest need for protein in the diet occurs for most animals during the above periods when the newborn is doubling its birth weight. It is important that we realize the protein content in mother’s milk, the optimum food nature has provided for rapid growth of the young, is far below the usual foods that are recommended because of their high protein content (such as meat, nuts, legumes, grains, etc.). Protein is indeed important for growth, but we might well question the alleged necessity for concentrated, high-protein foods.
The second role of protein is in the repair of tissues or replacement of worn-out cells. After an organism reaches its full growth (usually between 18 and 22 years for humans), protein is needed only to supply the loss incidental to tissue waste. Cell degeneration and waste occur primarily because of toxicity in the body. If we adopt a lifestyle and diet that introduce a minimal amount of toxins into the body, then tissue waste will decrease significantly. As a result, actual protein needs will also diminish.
After an individual reaches adulthood, the only protein needs are for the repair and replacement of tissues that have deteriorated, due largely to body toxicity.
Protein is not used directly as fuel for the body or for muscular activity. In muscular work, excretion of nitrogen as a result of protein usage increases only very slightly. Instead, it is the excretion of carbonic acid and absorption of oxygen that increase. These changes indicate that an expenditure of energy is derived mainly from non-nitrogenous foods (such as carbohydrates and fats) and not, from protein.
It is true that the body can use protein to generate fuel for physical activity, but it does so by breaking the protein down into a carbohydrate form. Protein is used as fuel only when there is either an excess of proteins or a lack of carbohydrates. When this occurs, the body splits off the nitrogenous matter from the protein molecule and uses the remaining carbon contents to produce fuel. This process not only involves a net loss of energy, but it also places an unnecessary strain on the liver, kidneys and other organs to eliminate the unusable nitrogenous wastes.
It is for this reason that the popular high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets result in weight loss and also why they are dangerous. Since the body has to expend so much energy in converting the excess protein into the needed carbohydrates for fuel, a net loss occurs in the body and the dieter loses weight. At the same time, he also places a heavy burden on his kidneys to eliminate all the uric acid generated by this protein breakdown and simultaneously overworks an already exhausted liver.
If more physical activity is anticipated, it is only necessary to increase the carbohydrate intake of the diet. Proteins are very poor in fuel-efficiency and do not aid directly or efficiently in muscular activity.
No other area of nutritional needs has been surrounded by so much controversy as the daily protein requirements. Nutritionists and scientists have made protein allowance recommendations that have varied as much as 600%. To arrive at a realistic estimate of our protein needs, we first need to understand how some of the current protein standards were derived. We then need to study the actual protein intake requirements of healthy human beings following a traditional diet that has been in effect over several generations. In this manner, we can see how many of the protein allowances today have been inflated beyond normal health needs.
In the late nineteenth century. Baron von Liebig was the first person to separate foods into proteins (nitrogenous substances) and carbohydrates/fats (non-nitrogenous substances). Since the muscles are composed chiefly of protein. Liebig concluded (incorrectly) that proteins supply muscular energy and the amount of protein consumed must be related to bodily activity. In fact, it is actually the non-nitrogenous foods that supply the best fuel for muscular activity.
Liebig was one of the first scientists to make a recommendation for protein intake. He determined the body’s protein requirements by measuring the actual amounts of protein consumed by a group of men engaged in physical activity who ate a heavy diet. He reasoned that by measuring the protein intake of men who ate more than average and worked harder than usual, he could arrive at a safe recommended allowance of protein for all people. Such a technique for establishing a standard is somewhat akin to clocking race car drivers in order to establish a safe speed for schoolzones.
Anyway, based on this experiment Liebig determined that about 120 grams of protein daily would satisfy the needs of a moderately active adult. To obtain 120 grams of protein, a person would need to consume about 17 eggs or a pound and a half of meat or twenty ounces of almonds per day.
Following Liebig, Voit in 1881 performed a series of experiments on dogs and likewise determined that we should consume between 100 and 125 grams of protein a day. Doubtless, dogs can safely consume 125 grams of protein per day. The protein requirement for a growing puppy is five times as great as that for a growing baby. Voit, unfortunately, did not adjust his results to account for the differences between humans and dogs.
From the very beginning, we can see that protein requirements were artificially determined and excessively high. As early as 1887, experiments in Germany showed that 40 grams of protein was a sufficient daily amount about one-third of the current recommendations. The old standards of Liebig and Voit, however, were already firmly fixed in the minds of the medical establishment, and the belief persisted that a high-protein diet was conducive to health anyway, so why lower the recommendations?
After many more experiments proved that a daily protein intake of 30 to 40 grams was entirely sufficient, the establishment finally revised its recommendations down to 60 or 70 grams. Although only one-half of the early estimates, this figure is 50% too high, even by conservative nutritional standards. Today, with the support of the meat, dairy and egg industries, the protein allowances still remain around 70 grams per day. It should also be noted that a typical American meat-eater consumes about 93 grams of protein daily—more than anyone else in the world on the average.
Perhaps a more reasonable way of establishing true protein needs is to study the daily protein intake of groups of people who: 1) maintain a reasonable level of good health and 2) have followed a traditional diet over a long period of time. Even this method tells us little about what amount of protein a person must have, but it is an interesting case study that probably has more validity than laboratory experiments on dogs, etc.
For instance, in Japan there are farming districts where dietary habits have been established for hundreds of years (unlike most Western diets which have fluctuated and changed rapidly over the past eighty years or so). In these districts, a primarily vegetarian diet was followed, consisting of many greens, plums, wild fruits, roots and occasionally fish in small amounts. These farmers were in excellent health and performed heavy manual labor all through the day. They consumed an average of 37 grams of protein per day, about half the official recommendation.
On various islands in the Pacific are tribes of people who have followed the same diet for dozens of generations—fruits, roots and tubers. They enjoy excellent health and consume about 15 grams of protein a day.
Finally, a study was done by Dr. Jaffe of the University of California at Berkeley on the effects of a non-meat diet over several generations. He studied several generations of fruitarians, ranging from young children to adults whose diet consisted principally of all raw fruits, supplemented by occasional nuts and some honey. Their diets supplied them with about 24 to 33 grams of protein a day. None exhibited any signs of protein deficiency, nor of any other nutrient deficiency. In fact, he discovered all of them to be in exceptional health.
Obviously, if large groups of people around the world are existing in good health on 15 to 35 grams of protein a day, and have done so over several generations and hundreds of years, then protein recommendations of 70 grams can only be deemed excessive.
During the last sixty years, several researchers (Rose, Boyd, Berg, et al) all independently proved that between 3.7% and 4.65% of the total food intake was all the protein necessary to maintain good health. These percentages are equivalent to about 24 to 30 grams of protein.
Careful investigations by Dr. Max Rubner, director of the Hygienic Institute of the University of Berlin, showed that only 4% of the entire caloric intake had to be in the form of protein. On a 2,500 calorie diet, this is about 100 calories of protein or about 28 grams.
Although Natural Hygiene and Life Science do not endorse gram-counting, calorie-counting or a preoccupation with minimal daily requirements, it seems that a reasonable estimate of the protein needs of an adult is probably in the 25 to 30 grams daily range — or about 1 gram per five pounds of body weight. If a person eats a varied diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts, he is assured that he will meet this protein requirement, along with all the other nutrient needs.
It is important that we have a realistic idea of the body’s true protein needs because of the damage that may occur when we eat far beyond those needs. Almost every American consumes an excessive amount of protein, even by highly-inflated government standards. A protein-deficient diet is rare in this country, although nutrient-poor diets are the norm. Protein poisoning from an excessive amount of protein is more common than a true deficiency.
When protein is consumed in greater amounts than can be processed by the body, toxicity results from the excessive amount of nitrogen in the blood. This extra nitrogen accumulates as kinotoxin in the muscles and causes chronic fatigue.
Proteinosis, or acute protein poisoning, causes headaches and a general aching. Various symptoms of protein poisoning, such as a burning of the mouth, lips and throat, rashes, etc., are very similar to the symptoms attributed to allergies. In fact, many so-called allergies may be cases of protein poisoning instead.
A high-protein diet eventually destroys the entire glandular system. It overworks the liver and places a heavy strain on the adrenals and kidneys to eliminate the toxins it creates. In many people, symptoms of arthritis have disappeared after they adopted a low-protein diet.
It is for these and other reasons that protein supplements should never be used. Protein supplements, by supplying the body with an excessive amount of nitrogen, throw it out of balance and can actually contribute to other nutritional deficiencies. The body must try to eliminate the protein it cannot use that is found in these supplements, and an additional burden is placed on the body.
Also, protein supplements are made from fragmented foods such as soy powder, dried egg whites, powdered milk, etc. When foods are eaten in a processed and fragmented state, they tend to oversupply the body with some nutrients while creating a deficiency of other nutrients. Consequently, protein supplements, besides supplying an excessive and harmful amount of protein, also disrupt the body’s nutritional balance.
Brewers yeast, a popular high-protein supplement, contributes to uric acid formation in the body. It is a waste product of the brewing industry, resulting when the barley is turned into malt. The industry then has no use for it. It is a “dead” food, because it’s heated before marketing to destroy the yeast organisms. Dried egg whites result in constipation; soy powders have enzymes which actually inhibit the absorption of some of the amino acids; using powdered milk results in the formation of mucus (to aid in its removal from the body), and so on. All of these commonly-used protein supplements will be discussed in later lessons. None of them is ever necessary and they should never be included in the diet.
We know now why we need protein in our diet, but what actually is protein? If you ask the average person what is the first thing that comes into his mind when you say “protein,” he will most likely respond with “meat.” Is protein simply meat or eggs or nuts?
Protein is one of the three categories for all foods, the other two being carbohydrates and fats. Proteins are highly complex compounds of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and small amounts of sulphur or iodine. They are present in the protoplasm of every living cell and are involved in every organic activity of an organism.
There are many different types of proteins within the bodies of animals and plants. For example, all plants have at least two different types of protein, and within the human body are over 100,000 different kinds of proteins. Although all of these proteins differ in their molecular structure, they all have approximately the same chemical composition of 53% carbon, 22% oxygen, 17% nitrogen, 7% hydrogen and 1% sulphur, iodine, etc.
The principal vegetable proteins are albumin (found in fruits and vegetables), gluten (in wheat and cereals), legumin (in peas and beans), globulin (in nuts) and mucleo-protein (in peas and beans), globulin (in nuts) and muco-protein (in seeds). Some of the animal proteins are casein (found in milk and dairy products), gelatin (in bones and tendons), fibrin (in blood) and myosin (in the flesh of animals).
All of these proteins are composed of amino acids. An amino acid is simply a substructure of a protein compound. You can think of protein as being chains of amino acids that are linked together to form one structure.
For example, a protein compound known as globulin exists in pumpkin seeds. It is composed of the following elements:
Element | Number of Atoms in the Molecule |
Carbon | 292 |
Hydrogen | 481 |
Nitrogen | 90 |
Oxygen | 83 |
Sulphur | 2 |
Within this globulin protein molecule are chains of amino acids that make up the compound.
In the following example, an amino acid called isoleucine is contained within this protein molecule. It is composed of the following elements:
Element | Number of Atoms in the Amino Acid |
Carbon | 6 |
Hydrogen | 13 |
Nitrogen | 1 |
Oxygen | 2 |
You can see that many amino acids are necessary to form one protein compound. In many cases, several different types of amino acids are in the same protein molecule. It is these amino acids that are important to the body, and this is what the body uses protein for.
When you hear the word “protein” now, you should think of “amino acids.”
Many different proteins are known, but all of them are constructed from 23 principal amino acids. These amino acids are the building blocks of all vegetable and animal protein. A molecule of protein may contain as many as several hundred or even thousands of these amino acids. These amino acids are linked together within the protein molecule in a unique fashion known as peptide linkage. A specific protein contains a variety of amino acids linked together in a sequence specific to that protein.
The body cannot use or assimilate protein in its original state as eaten. The protein must first be digested and split into its component amino acids. The body can then use these amino acids to construct the protein it needs. The ultimate value of a food protein, then, lies in its amino acid composition. It is the amino acids that are the essential nutrients. The proper study of the role of protein in nutrition can only be done with a thorough understanding of the amino acids.
Amino acids are the end products of protein digestion. When protein is eaten, enzymes in the stomach and small intestine begin to break the linkages within the protein molecule and produce shorter and shorter chains of amino acids. Eventually, the amino acids are in a simplified enough chemical form so that they can pass through the intestinal walls into the bloodstream. They are then carried by the portal vein to the liver for elaboration and passed on to the blood, lymph and cells. The cells synthesize the amino acids into proteins as required.
This simplified description of the digestion and assimilation of protein applies to exogenous protein. Exogenous protein is the term for protein obtained through the diet or from outside of the body.
Protein may also be obtained from within the body. This is called endogenous protein. Endogenous protein does not come directly from the foods we eat, but from the synthesis of proteins from within the body.
Obtaining protein from the diet is common knowledge. The fact that the body can synthesize protein from its own proteinaceous wastes, however, is not widely known.
As the body’s cells undergo their natural catabolic processes, they produce proteinaceous wastes in the form of spent cells and other by-products of their own metabolism. These proteinaceous products enter the lymph fluid.
Other cells in the body are able to ingest these spent proteins and to digest them in vesicles (“stomachs”) of their own formation. The body’s cells are thus able to break these proteinaceous wastes down into amino acids and use them to synthesize their own protein.
Endogenous protein (or protein from within the body) is an important source of amino acids that is often overlooked by conventional nutrition writers. Many times, up to two-thirds of the body’s total protein needs are supplied through endogenous protein and not from exogenous dietary sources.
From the digestion of proteins in the diet and from the recycling of proteinaceous wastes, the body has all the different amino acids circulating in the blood and lymphatic system. When cells need these amino acids, they appropriate them from the blood or lymph. This continually-circulating available supply of amino acids is known as the amino acid pool.
The amino acid pool is like a bank that is open twenty-four hours. The liver and the cells are continually making deposits and withdrawals of amino acids, depending upon the concentration of amino acids in the blood.
When the number of amino acids is high, the liver absorbs and stores them until needed. As the amino acid level in the blood falls due to withdrawals by the cells, the liver deposits some of the stored amino acids back into circulation.
The cells also have the capacity to store amino acids. If the amino acid content of the blood falls or if some other cells require specific amino acids, the cells are able to release their stored amino acids into circulation. Since most of the body’s cells synthesize more proteins than are necessary to support the life of the cell, the cells can reconvert their proteins into amino acids and make deposits into the amino acid pool.
Between the deposits and withdrawals by the liver and cells, there is a continual flux of amino acids in the blood and plasma. This circulating source of amino acids, as well as the potential availability of the amino acids stored within the liver and the cells, makes up the important amino acid pool. This pool of amino acids is very important in understanding why complete proteins are not necessary in the diet and will be discussed later in this lesson.
The following descriptions of the amino acids include their most important functions and some of the food sources in which they are found.
ALANINE — Is a factor in regulating the adrenal glands and insuring healthy skin, particularly the scalp. It is found in almonds, alfalfa sprouts, apples, apricots, avocadoes, carrots, celery, cucumbers, grapes, lettuces, oranges, strawberries, sweet peppers and tomatoes.
ARGININE — Is used in muscle contraction and the construction of cartilage. It is essential in the functioning of the reproductive organs and in controlling the degeneration of the body cells. Arginine is found in alfalfa sprouts, beets, carrots, celery, cucumbers, lettuces, parsnips, potatoes and turnips.
ASPARTIC ACID — Is used in cardiovascular functions and in the retarding of tooth and bone destruction. It is found in almonds, apples, apricots, carrots, celery, cucumbers, grapefruits, lemons, pineapples, tomatoes and watermelons.
CYSTINE — Is used in the formation of red blood corpuscles and is involved in hair growth and the functioning of the mammary glands. It is found in alfalfa sprouts, apples, brazil nuts, beets, brussels sprouts, cabbages, carrots, currants, cauliflower, filberts, kale, pineapples and raspberries.
GLUTAMIC ACID — Is used in maintaining blood-sugar levels. Anemia will not occur if this and other nutrients are obtained and used. Glutamic acid is also a factor in the secretion of gastric juices. It is found in brussels sprouts cabbages, carrots, celery, green beans, lettuces and papayas
GLYCINE — Is a factor in forming muscle fiber and cartilage and in regulating sex hormones. It is found in alfalfa sprouts, almonds, carrots, celery, okra, oranges, potatoes, pomegranates, raspberries, turnips and water melons.
HISTIDINE — Is used in manufacturing glycogen and in the control of mucus. It is a component of hemoglobin and semen. It is found in alfalfa sprouts, applet, beets, carrots, celery, cucumbers, endive, papayas, pineapples and pomegranates.
HYDROXYGLUTAMIC ACID — Is similar to glutamic acid and is a factor in controlling digestive juices. It is found in carrots, celery, grapes, lettuces, plums, raspberries and tomatoes.
HYDROXYPROLINE — Aids in liver and gallbladder functions, in emulsifying fats and in the formation of red blood corpuscles. It is found in almonds, apricots, avocadoes, brazil nuts, beets, carrots, cherries, cucumbers, coconuts, figs, grapes, lettuces, oranges, pineapples and raisins.
IODOGORGOIC ACID — Is a factor in all glandular functions. It is found in carrots, celery, lettuces, pineapples and tomatoes.
ISOLEUCINE — Aids in the regulation of the thymus, spleen, pituitary and the metabolism. It is also a factor in forming hemoglobin, lsoleucine is found in .avocadoes, coconuts, papayas, sunflower seeds and almost all nuts.
LEUCINE — Counterbalances the isoleucine amino acid and is found in the same food sources.
LYSINE — Aids in the functions of the liver, gallbladder and pineal and mammary glands. It is also a factor in fat metabolism and in preventing cell degeneration. Lysine is found in alfalfa sprouts, apples, apricots, beets, carrots, celery, cucumbers, grapes, papayas, pears and soybean sprouts.
METHIONINE — Aids in the functioning of the spleen, pancreas and lymph glands. It is a constituent of hemoglobin and tissues and is found in apples, brazil nuts, cabbages, cauliflower, filberts, kale and pineapples.
NORLEUC1NE — Balances the functions of leucine. Synthesized within the body if needed.
PHENYLALANINE — Is involved in the functions of the kidneys and bladder and in eliminating wastes. It is found in apples, beets, carrots, pineapples and tomatoes.
PROLINE — Involved in manufacturing white corpuscles and in the emulsifying of fats. It is found in apricots, avocadoes. almonds, beets, brazil nuts, carrots, cherries, coconuts, cucumbers, figs, grapes, oranges, pineapples and raisins.
SERINE — Aids in the tissue cleansing of the mucus membrane and in the lungs and bronchial. It is found in alfalfa sprouts, apples, beets, carrots, celery, cucumbers, cabbages, papayas and pineapples.
THREONINE — Aids in the balancing of amino acids. Threonine is found in alfalfa sprouts, carrots, green leafy vegetables and papayas.
THYROXINE — Involved with the activity of the thyroid, pituitary and adrenals and in metabolic functions. It is found in carrots, celery, lettuces, tomatoes and pineapples.
TRYPTOPHANE— Involved in the generation of cells and tissues and in the pancreatic and gastric juices. Tryptophane is also a factor in the optic system. It is found in alfalfa sprouts, beets, carrots, celery, green beans and turnips.
TYROSINE — Is a factor in the development of the cells and tissues and in the generation of red and white blood corpuscles. It is also found in the adrenals, pituitary, thyroid and hair. Food sources of this amino acid are alfalfa sprouts, almonds, apricots, apples, beets, carrots, cucumbers, cherries, figs, lettuces, sweet peppers, strawberries and watermelons.
VALINE — Involved in the functioning of the mammary glands and ovaries. It is found in apples, almonds, beets, carrots, celery, okra. pomegranates, squashes and tomatoes.
We can say that, generally, the amino acids serve five functions in the body:
Of the 23 amino acids, eight are termed essential. These are isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophane and valine. It is also said that a ninth amino acid, histidine, is essential for infants.
An “essential amino acid” is an amino acid that the body cannot produce by reduction (oxidation) from another amino acid. In other words, an essential amino acid must be found in a food source and cannot be produced within the body.
The remaining 15 amino acids are termed “non-essential.” but this term is somewhat misleading. They are essential to our health and well-being, but it is not essential that they be present in the foods we eat (provided that there is an adequate supply of the essential amino acids in our diet).
Now that we have an understanding of the amino acids, we can intelligently discuss one of the biggest myths in nutrition—the necessity of eating complete proteins.
A complete protein is usually defined as* a single or combined protein source which has all eight of the essential amino acids. Meat, for example, is said to be a complete protein, and so are eggs, dairy products, soybeans and many nuts. It has been suggested by some individuals and groups that a complete protein (or a combination of proteins that will provide certain proportionate amounts of the eight essential amino acids) be eaten at every meal to make sure that we obtain all eight of the essential amino acids, preferably in certain proportions.
This idea of a “complete protein” has been so heavily advertised by special interest groups, such as the meat and dairy industries, that the average person believes he must eat meat (or at least milk and eggs if a “vegetarian”) or at the very least prepare protein combinations such as grains and beans or take protein supplements in order to get enough high-quality protein. All of these beliefs are false and. in fact, may lead to practices which increase the toxicity in the body.
This is an important concept in understanding protein needs: It is not necessary for all eight of the essential amino acids to be present in one food or even within one meal in order to obtain our full protein needs. As we have discussed, the body has its own amino acid pool to draw from to supply amino acids which may be missing from dietary sources. Needed amino acids may be withdrawn from those already in circulation, or the necessary amino acids may be released by the liver or other cells into the circulatory system. The amino acid pool thus acts as the supplier of the essential amino acids missing from incomplete proteins. This fact is proven by observing patients after lengthy fasts who exhibited not a protein deficiency, but a restored protein balance.
Only the carnivorous animals in nature eat “complete proteins.” Most of the vegetarian animals eat grass, tubers, fruits, grains, etc. and often of a limited variety. Yet they never exhibit signs of protein deficiency. In fact, protein poisoning from eating high-protein foods is far more common among Western man than is protein deficiency.
The “complete protein” idea also falls apart if we realise that the amino acids in many of the so-called complete protein foods cannot even be fully used by the body. Meat as eaten, for example, is usually only the muscle meat of the animal, which is particularly low in some of the essential amino acids. The soybean has an anti-enzyme factor which blocks or inhibits the assimilation of some of its essential amino acids. Proteins which have been cooked or heated (such as meat. fish, eggs and most dairy products) may lose-up to 50% or more of their essential amino acids due to the creation of enzyme resistant linkages caused by the cooking. So we can see that many of the so-called “complete proteins” are not even completely used by the body.
If you are truly concerned about eating a food that has all eight essential amino acids which are in a form easily used by the body, we would suggest some of these wholesome foods.
All contain the eight essential amino acids:
Fruits | Nuts | Vegetables |
Bananas | Almonds | Alfalfa Sprouts |
Tomatoes | Coconuts | Bean Sprouts |
Dates | Filberts | Carrots |
Sunflower Seeds | Eggplants | |
Walnuts | Sweet Potatoes | |
Brazil Nuts | Broccoli | |
Pecans | Cabbages | |
Corn | ||
Okra | ||
Squashes |
There are many other foods suitable for the human dietary which also contain all eight essential amino acids.
It should be emphasized, however, that it is not necessary for one food or one meal or one day’s intake of food to contain all eight essential amino acids. We do not need to eat meat, cheese or soybeans to obtain complete protein, nor do we need to mix grains and beans or milk and cereals to get a complete protein in one meal.
A varied diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts can furnish us with all the essential and non-essential amino acids, along with all the other nutrients we need. And, it can do so in the most wholesome foods suitable for the human diet and in a form most readily and efficiently used.
8.7.2 Wholesome Proteins Are Non-Toxic
8.7.3 Wholesome Protein Foods Contain A Wide Variety of Nutrients
8.7.4 Wholesome Protein Is Easily Digested and Assimilated
So far we have discussed what protein is, why we need it and how much we require. Now it is time to examine the optimum diet for obtaining all our protein needs. A diet consisting of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts can furnish us with the highest quality protein in a form that is readily digested and assimilated.
The protein in this diet is best for the human body for the, following reasons:
The Hygienic or Life Science diet includes proteins only in their raw form. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts do not require cooking to increase their palatability or digestibility.
When proteins are subjected to high heat during cooking, enzyme-resistant linkages are formed between the amino acid chains. Consequently, the body cannot break these amino acids down for its use. What the body cannot use, it must eliminate. The cooked proteins then actually become a source of toxic matter within the body.
When wholesome protein foods are eaten raw, the body can make maximum use of all the amino acids without the accompanying toxins of cooked foods. It should be noted that some high-protein foods, such as soybeans and lima beans, have naturally occurring toxins which are said to be neutralized by heat. It is best not to eat these types of proteins since the cooking process does not totally remove the toxic effect these foods create.
Proteins consumed in the Hygienic diet are also free from the poisons and toxins that often accompany other protein sources. We have already mentioned the toxins present in many legumes (which, incidentally, are best neutralized by sprouting the legume instead of cooking it). Similarly, most grains (with the exception of young fresh corn) cannot be digested when eaten raw. The cooked grains, however, still contain the toxic by-products from inhibitory enzymes present in the grains. Although legumes and grains are not a proper part of the Life Science diet, they are not nearly as toxic or poisonous as the other traditional protein sources:. meat, milk, dairy products, fish and eggs.
Not only do meat, milk, dairy products, fish and eggs contain naturally-occurring toxins injurious to the body, but they are also often poisoned during the producing and selling of them. Since the unsuitability of these foods is discussed elsewhere in this course, only a few facts about their drawbacks as protein sources need be mentioned:
Proteins consumed in the Hygienic diet occur in wholesome foods which contain a wide variety of needed nutrients. Many of the traditional high-protein foods such as meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, grains, etc. are usually poor in many vital nutrients.
For example, meat is an exceedingly poor mineral source; cow’s milk is so iron-poor that a growing baby must use its own stored iron supplies in the spleen for normal growth; grains are so low in sodium that people add salt to them for palatability.
On the other hand, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts are rich sources of all the minerals, vitamins and enzymes we need, besides being a source of high-quality protein. The Hygienic diet provides us with a totally balanced supply of all vital nutrients as they naturally occur within whole foods. For instance, for efficient protein use, an adequate amount of carbohydrates must be present. Otherwise, the proteins are converted to carbohydrate fuel for the body and the protein is not used for its original purpose. Meat is so poor in carbohydrates that much of its protein must be used as a secondary and inefficient fuel source for the body. Fruits, vegetables and nuts, however, have a large supply of natural carbohydrates so the body can use all the protein contained within these foods for its original purpose and not create toxic byproducts through unnecessary protein conversion.
Protein in the Hygienic diet is easily digested and assimilated, The Life Science diet stresses the importance of eating compatible foods for ease of digestion. Since protein digestion is the most complex gastric process, it is important that protein foods be eaten in proper combinations with other foods.
For instance, naturally occurring high-protein foods such as nuts, seeds and avocadoes should be eaten with non-starchy and leafy green vegetables for the best results. Salad vegetables aid in the digestion of concentrated proteins and “also supply high-quality amino acids of their own.
In a typical diet, proteins are often combined with starches: meat and potatoes, grains and beans, milk and cereal, and so on. Starches and proteins require completely different digestive environments and enzymes, and when eaten together, neither is fully digested or used by the body. As a result, most protein eaten in a conventional diet which ignores proper food combining is not fully digested by the body.
The protein in a Hygienic diet is of sufficiently high quality to meet all the body’s requirements. All essential and non-essential amino acids may be obtained from a diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts.
A varied diet of these wholesome foods eaten in their natural state can provide all our protein requirements without concern for the exact number of grams of protein consumed. It is not necessary when eating a natural diet to be preoccupied with obtaining any specific nutrient. They are all supplied in abundance, including protein. Simply for the sake of scientific validity, and not as a regular practice, we have chosen some examples of Hygienic menus in order to analyze their protein contents.
All of these menus and suggestions have been devised to furnish 30 grams of protein to an adult weighing 150 pounds. This is equivalent to one gram per five pounds of body weight. More or less protein may be required, depending upon body weight, metabolism, body toxicity, etc.
Food | Ounces | Grams of Protein |
Breakfast | ||
Grapefruit | 14.0 | 2.0 |
Lunch | ||
Persimmons | 7.0 | 1.6 |
Pear | 3.5 | 0.7 |
Dates | 7.0 | 4.4 |
Dinner | ||
Vegetable Salad | 11.0 | 7.4 |
Kale | 4.0 | 6.0 |
Squash | 3.5 | 1.1 |
Avocado | 9.0 | 6.8 |
Total prams of Protein | 30.0 | |
Breakfast | ||
Oranges | 16.0 | 3.8 |
Lunch | ||
Almonds | 3.0 | 14.0 |
Celery | 8.0 | 2.0 |
Dinner | ||
Bananas | 18.0 | 6.5 |
Dates | 6.0 | 3.7 |
Total Grams of Protein | 30.0 | |
Breakfast | ||
Figs (fresh) | 16.0 | 5.4 |
Lunch | ||
Avocado | 9.0 | 6.8 |
Tomato | 8.0 | 2.5 |
Broccoli | 6.0 | 7.1 |
Lettuce | 4.0 | 1.7 |
Dinner | ||
Apricots | 12.0 | 3.0 |
Cherries | 12.0 | 3.5 |
Total Grams of Protein | 30.0 |
Of course, we do not suggest that food be weighed or eaten in ounces; nor should we eat according to predetermined menus. These are only suggestions as to what one person might desire to eat in a day. If he did so, he would obtain 30 grams of protein with all the essential amino acids.
It is better to eat according to hunger and body need and not according to grams, ounces or nutrient charts. When presented with a variety of wholesome foods, the body naturally selects the foods it needs to satisfy its particular requirements at that time.
When I stop eating high-protein foods I feel weak. Doesn’t this prove we need these foods?
Actually, just the opposite. High-protein foods create an enormous amount of toxins in the body. When we stop eating those foods for a period of time, the body has an opportunity to eliminate those toxins. It is the elimination of the poisons from the body caused by a previous high-protein diet that causes this weakness—not a lack of protein. It is best to fast (for short periods of time or one longer fast) and allow the body to rid itself of these toxins. Then, you will feel quite strong eating those foods normally thought to be low in protein.
Is protein combining harmful. I read a good book about it.
Unfortunately, most books on protein combining suggest eating two or more concentrated protein foods together at the same time. Different proteins require different digestive processes, and combining two heavy foods, like grains and beans for example, makes the body work too hard. Some protein combinations, like milk and cereals, for example, are so indigestible that little if any good can come from eating them. Quite simply, the ideal protein combinations are those that require the same digestive processes. Nuts and leafy greens, for example, complement each other’s ammo acids and at the same time are agreeable food combinations.
I can’t digest nuts and seeds. Can I still get my protein from this diet?
Most definitely. Nuts and seeds are concentrated proteins—all the foods in the Hygienic diet contain protein. If you eat a calorie-sufficient diet of fruits, vegetables and sprouts, you can obtain all the amino acids that you require. Avocadoes are sometimes better tolerated than nuts and seeds, and they too have a high concentration of protein. In time, as your health improves, you will probably gain greater digestive abilities and you will be able to eat moderate amounts of nuts and seeds.
Shouldn’t we eat a high-protein breakfast?
I can’t imagine why. The idea behind a high-protein breakfast is that it will give us “energy” throughout the day. Actually, it has the opposite effect because protein digestion is the most complex digestive process of all. If you want energy in the morning, eat a high-carbohydrate breakfast of fruits. Better yet give your body a rest from food in the morning. Soon you will be able to function at a higher level of energy than when you ate a heavy breakfast.
I’m a weight lifter, and I feel that I need protein supplements. Aren’t I an exception?
Weight lilting and other strenuous physical activities primarily call for an increase in the consumption of natural carbohydrates for muscle fuel. While it is true that protein is used in building muscle tissue. I must refer you to the gorilla or the elephant. These are well-muscled animals. They eat no high-protein foods, take no protein supplements and drink no special protein drinks. In fact, they build their musculature from greens and fruits. If you feel that you need concentrated protein. I suggest seeds or nuts in moderation. Athletes who eat a very high-protein diet (as is the ease with weight lifters) often develop gout later in life and experience severe kidney problems.
The following is an excerpt from a book by Arnold DeVries called Fountain of Youth.
The building blocks of protein consist of 23 amino acids. Eight of these have been proven to be essential for the support of life and growth. A few others are “convenient” in the sense that animals thrive better if they get them. Proteins which contain all of the essential amino acids as well as the convenient ones, are called complete or first class. A food which contains complete protein will support life and growth if used as the sole source of protein in the diet. The foods which contain incomplete protein will not in themselves support life and growth.
It is often claimed that the difficulty of obtaining complete proteins on a fruitarian diet makes such a diet dangerous except when in the hands of an expert. But this is really not so. A child living upon the fruitarian diet could hardly keep from getting sufficient complete protein if he simply used the plant foods according to his own instinctive desires. After all, there is an abundance of plant foods which supply us with complete proteins of the highest biological value. The researches of Cajori, Van Slyke and Osborn have known conclusively that the protein of most nuts is of the very finest type and contains all of the essential and convenient amino acids. Among the nuts possessing complete proteins are butternuts, pecans, filberts, Brazil nuts, English walnuts, black walnuts, almonds, pine nuts, chestnuts and coconuts.
In addition to being complete, the protein of most nuts is of high biological quality. Investigations at Yale University and the research work of Dr. Hoobler of the Detroit Women’s Hospital and Infant’s Home both demonstrate the superiority of nut protein. The methods of research used by Dr. Hoobler provided a most delicate biological test of the protein of food, and it showed that the protein of nuts not only provides greater nutritive efficiency than that of meat, milk and eggs but that it is also more effective than a combination of the animal proteins.
Coconut globulin is perhaps the best of the nut proteins. Johns, Finks and Pacel of the Protein Investigation Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that this protein produced supernormal growth in young rats when used as the sole protein in the diet. In other words the rats grew more rapidly than when given cheese, meat, eggs, milk or any other high-protein food. McCandish and Weaver have also found that the protein of coconuts is superior to that of other foods and claim that coconut meal is of greater value than soybean meal. As the soybean is equal in biological value to any of the animal proteins, this would mean that the coconut protein is in a class by itself and is perhaps the finest protein known.
No fruitarian need have any worries over his protein supplies. Any well-balanced selection of plant foods should meet the body’s protein needs very well; in fact, it will meet them far better than the omnivorous diet, for it supplies the protein in just the right amounts.
All available evidence indicates that a low-protein diet composed of plant foods is most conducive to the best health. In the 19th century two great German scientists, Justus Freiherr von Liebig and Karl von Voit, carried out experiments to determine how much protein the body requires each day. Liebig assumed that, because muscle is composed largely of protein, we should use a diet which is very rich in this dietary factor. Later Voit carried out experiments with dogs, the result of which led him to believe that the daily human requirement is 118 grams.
It is now known that the conclusions of Liebig and Voit are not accurate. Muscles can be built from plant foods, which are relatively low in protein content better than from animal flesh. And the experiments with dogs carried out by Voit can hardly be applied to human beings, for the protein requirements of dogs and other carnivorous animals differ from those of the frugivorous animals.
The most accurate present day estimates of the body’s daily protein requirement vary from about 22 to 30 grams. These estimates are based upon experiments with humans. Prof. Henry Sherman of Columbia University places the daily requirement at 30 to 50 grams, but it is probable that the other estimates, which include those of the Swedish scientist Ragner Berg, are more nearly correct. However, even 30 to 50 grams of protein is not much. It could easily be supplied by a diet of plant foods.
Dr. Mikkel Hindhede, of Denmark, made the first mass application of a diet very low in its protein content to an entire nation. During World War I this doctor was made Food Administrator of Denmark. In an effort to prevent food shortages, he greatly lowered the production of livestock and fed the plant foods to the human population rather than to the animals. As an average of only 10 percent of the value of plant foods is recovered in the milk, eggs and meat of the animals, it is obvious that this involved a great saving from the standpoint of nutrition. But Hindhede eventually discovered that the diminished use of animal foods meant far more than that. Within one year’s time the death rate had decreased 40 percent. In addition, the Danish people experienced less disease. When thousands of people throughout Europe suffered influenza, Denmark was not affected. The other nations, using their high-protein diets consisting largely of animal foods, suffered greatly and their people died by the thousands.
Nuts are rich in protein, but they are not used to such an extent in the fruitarian diet that the body receives an excess of this material. The normal desires of the fruitarian call for a wide variety of plant foods with no particular dependence upon nuts. Fruits are the chief foods used and the desire for nuts is in accordance with the body’s need for protein. Meat, eggs, milk and cheese are all unneeded high-protein foods. Their excessive protein acts as a burden to the body and favors the development of disease.
The following article is from The Health Crusader.
“Pro-tein: any of numerous naturally-occurring extremely complex combinations of amino acids that contain the elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, usually sulfur and occasionally other elements (such as phosphorus or iron); an essential constituent of all living cells; is synthesized from raw materials by plants but assimilated as separate amino acids by animals.”
Most of what was in the past believed to be true about the body’s need for protein has, in recent years, been shown to be false. This is true particularly in regard to the amount of protein the body requires.
The first well-publicized study of protein needs was done by the German physiologist Voit at around 1890. Voit studied healthy, young, physically active German men who were eating their conventional diet. He found that they maintained “nitrogen balance” on a diet containing 120 grams of protein daily. For years this was accepted as the standard.
Urinary nitrogen (in the form of urea, uric acid, creatinine and other substances) is derived almost wholly from protein metabolism. Voit assumed that the amount of urinary nitrogen excreted reflected the body’s needs. He observed that when the German males reduced their protein intake significantly, they initially excreted more nitrogen than they consumed, a state he referred to as “negative nitrogen balance.” Had he continued his experiments longer, he would have discovered that these same subjects would have re-established a nitrogen balance at the lowered intake level.
Today we know that it is not valid to determine needs on the basis of excretory levels. The body excretes the residues from materials it has merely disposed of. Whatever amount of nitrogen we consume in the form of protein must ultimately be eliminated. When an enormous excess of nitrogen enters the system, the body merely deaminizes the amino acids, converting the amino radicals into ammonia, urea and other by-products of protein breakdown. The remaining ketogenic or glucogenic acids then undergo combustion in the same manner as the fats and carbohydrates, rendering calories.
High-protein diets actually accelerate the turnover of proteins in the body, causing a metabolic bonfire that may mistakenly be regarded as a state of well-being. When one reduces the amount of protein consumed, it takes time for the body to re-adjust its metabolism, to reset its thermostat, so to speak. This is why a state of negative nitrogen balance may temporarily ensue.
During World War I the Danish government hired a physiologist by the name of M. Hindhede to study protein needs. The hardships of the war had made animal foods scarce and prohibitively expensive. A people who had been accustomed to eating lots of meats, eggs and milk were forced to rely upon grains and vegetables, especially potatoes, to sustain themselves.
Hindhede’s task was to determine how little protein people could consume and still maintain health. He did extensive studies on young and old alike over a period of several years and concluded that 60 grams of protein a day was more than adequate to meet the body’s needs. Even the lowly potato, Hindhede said, contained enough high-grade protein to supply body needs (assuming that total caloric intake was adequate).
The orthodox scientific community vilified Hindhede. (He is even left out of the 1963 Encyclopaedia Britannica, while Voit is in it and his discoveries praised.) Imagine, cutting the Voit standard for protein need in half! More recent studies, however, based upon verified patterns of enzyme synthesis, collagen turnover and muscle metabolism have drastically reduced the Hindhede figure. Guyton’s Physiology (considered the standard in the field) maintains today that 30 grams of protein a day is fully adequate. Other respectable sources cite figures in the 20s, but even Guyton figure of 30 grams is significantly lower than the daily allowance of 70 grams recommended for active adult males by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council. This 70 grams includes a considerable “safety factor” (to allow for some degree of malabsorption).
Many if not most Americans are consuming in excess of 100 grams of protein a day despite the much lower recommendation. Eliminating the by-products of this protein overload places great stress upon the body. The liver and kidneys bear the brunt of the punishment. Fats and carbohydrates burn clean, leaving a residue of only carbon dioxide (which is relatively innocuous and is readily excreted by the lungs) and water (which is hardly a waste product). Protein metabolism, on the other hand, leaves non-oxidizable waste products such as urea, uric acids, etc. It is a much greater burden for the body to process great surpluses of protein than to process excesses of fat or carbohydrate. It behooves all of us to consume no more protein than we need so as to prevent premature aging and the deterioration that comes from organ abuse.
Another mistaken concept regarding protein needs has to do with protein quality. For decades it was held that only animal proteins contained a full complement of all eight essential amino acids (those we cannot synthesize from other amino acids) to meet the body’s needs. Although most natural foods do contain all eight essential amino acids, the claim was that the proportion of one amino acid to the others was not right. It was observed that animals grew and matured more rapidly on animal proteins than on vegetable proteins, so vegetable proteins were declared to be inadequate. Speed of development and size were considered to be a direct reflection of nutritional thoroughness.
Today we know that weight and size are not necessarily the best indicators of health and well-being, that gigantism is just as pathological when spread throughout a population as it is when it occurs in an isolated individual. We know that an individual’s body is not immediately dependent upon the content of his meals in order to maintain nutrition. Referring again to Guyton’s Physiology, radioisotopic studies have shown that at any given time protein synthesis utilizes two-thirds endogenous amino acids (from the blood circulatory pool) and one-third exogenous amino acids (as derived from meals). In other words, in regard to protein, the body is always living upon its reserves and the purpose of eating is to replenish those reserves. It matters not whether a given meal provides the exact proportion of amino acids because the body is fully capable of withdrawing from reserve sources whatever amino acids are needed to balance out the dietary supply.
Frances Moore Lappe stated in Diet For a Small Planet that one must combine different proteins at the same meal or otherwise preclude the possibility of utilization. Ms. Lappe said that consuming single vegetable proteins would not provide adequate nutrition. This idea, however, has been shown to be false, not only by physiological calculations, but also by the empirical evidence gained from observations of countless numbers of people around the world who live and thrive on simple vegetable diets. The experience of Hygienists in this country also provides proof of the sufficiency of simple combinations of non-animal foods.
Many common foods that we don’t generally regard as sources of protein actually supply substantial amounts. The case of the potato has already been cited. Even more impressive are green leafy vegetables, which supply 3-6% protein of high-biological value, on the average slightly more than cow’s milk and several times more than mother’s milk. Eating a large raw vegetable salad every day can alone supply most of the protein the body needs. Eating a variety of whole natural foods that supply an adequate number of calories would, by necessity, supply an adequate amount of protein. The problem isn’t how to get enough protein, but how to avoid getting too much.
Another widely-accepted but incorrect idea is that athletes and hard physical workers require more protein than less active people. Actually muscular activity entails no increase in the rate of protein catabolism (breakdown). Urinary creatinine is considered a reliable indicator of muscle breakdown, and it has been found that physical activity does not significantly increase creatinine excretion. Nor does it significantly increase the excretion of urea. What physical activity does entail, however, is a rapid utilization of muscular glycogen. It is carbohydrate replenishment that vigorous activity calls for, not protein.
The average American consumes two to four times as much protein as he needs, and cancer (which is characterized by runaway protein synthesis) is killing one person in four. Cutting down total protein in general and animal protein in particular is a desperate need. It is important to realize that all of the marvelous amino acids contained within flesh foods were derived from the animals diet. Other animals are just as powerless to synthesize the essential amino acids as we are; and we are just as capable as they of deriving our amino acids directly from the only producing source: plants.
This category could also be designated the detrimental effects of animal foods. All animal products (with the exception of mother’s milk) have certain negative features which make their dietary use questionable. Consider, first of all, the effect that animal foods have upon protein consumption. Even modest use of meat, fish, eggs and dairy foods tends to create a protein overload, and this is one of the most dangerous dietary excesses.
Research has shown that high-protein diets actually promote aging and early degeneration. Too much protein exerts a tremendous burden upon the liver and kidneys. It also leaves acid residues in the blood and tissues which must be neutralized by sacrificing indispensable alkaline mineral reserves.
The process of aging is characterized by the transfer of calcium from the bones to the soft, tissues, that is, to the arteries (arteriosclerosis), to the optic lens (cataracts), to the ureters (kidney stones), to the skin (wrinkles), to the joints (osteoarthritis), to the valves of the heart (producing valvular stenosis and insufficiency), to the tendons and ligaments (producing frozen shoulder) and to other sites. This, of course, leaves the skeleton osteoporotic, leading to the development of stooped posture, a kyphotic spine, spontaneous fractures and other maladies that are so common to the elderly. High-protein diets (due to the accumulation of phosphoric, sulphuric, uric and other acids) accelerate this demineralization of bone and bring about calcific deposits in the soft tissues.
One could argue that nuts and seeds contain as much protein as meats, eggs, etc., and therefore they are as likely to create an excess. However, most people are easily satisfied eating a few ounces of nuts or seeds every day, whereas few people will eat just a few ounces of yogurt. Restaurants serve up to a pound of meat at a sitting, along with other foods. Cottage or ricotta cheese is eaten in huge quantities, even by many so-called vegetarians. The simple truth is that animal proteins tend to promote overeating more so than do plant proteins.
The relationship between high-protein diets and cancer has been clearly established by studying both animal and human populations. Remember that cancerous cells are characterized by runaway protein synthesis and rapid cellular division. Protein synthesis is accelerated by increased protein intake, so it is not surprising to discover that cancer bears a close tie to excess protein. There is a direct correlation between the amount of protein in the diet and the incidence of cancer on a worldwide basis. Americans, Australians and West Europeans, who ingest the largest amounts of protein, also have the greatest incidence of cancer, whereas the rural Chinese, the East Indians and native peoples of Latin America have the lowest cancer incidence. This is no casual relationship and it cannot be written off by blaming it on the “stress of modern life.”
Animal products are loaded with the worst kind of fat—saturated, cholesterol-laden animal fat. A mountain of evidence has been accumulated relating high animal fat intakes with the development of cardiovascular disease (which is characterized by the deposition of saturated fat and cholesterol in the intimal layer of arteries), and many different malignancies including breast cancer, colon and rectal cancers, and cancer of the liver. Even such diverse conditions as multiple sclerosis and diabetes have been related to the consumption of animal fats. As we have already stated, heated animal fats have been shown to be even more carcinogenic, and considering that Americans take all of their flesh, milk and eggs well cooked, it’s no wonder that one in four eventually succumbs to cancer. Paradoxically, those people who subsist on low-fat, low-protein, largely vegetarian, unrefined diets experience very little cancer. The incidence of cancer, cysts, tumors and heart disease among American Seventh Day Adventists is approximately half the national average. This is quite remarkable considering that only about half of this group are thought to be vegetarian.
Flesh, fish, yogurt and cheese contain various putrefactive products resulting from their bacterial decomposition. Putting partially-spoiled food in the body can hardly be considered a Hygienic practice, despite the arguments of the fermented food enthusiasts. Flesh also contains considerable quantities of the end products of metabolism (like uric acid) which are held up in the tissues at the time of death. These wastes are poisonous, irritating and burdensome to the body. Considering also that animal products tend to be reservoirs for pesticides, herbicides and various other drugs and inorganic contaminants, there are many good reasons to avoid using them.
Excerpt from an article by Ralph C. Cinque, D.C., entitled “Hygienic Considerations in the Selection of Foods,” which was published in Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review.
“Believe those who seek the truth; suspect those who have found it.”
—Andre Gide
Gide’s admonition seems to me nowhere more applicable than in the controversy over protein. In pertinent research literature, which it has been my duty to examine critically and without bias for the last 40 years. I have seen the most respectable kind of work and such a shameful pile of ignorance, much of it written by the most respected authors, as I have never seen in any other scientific field. The conclusions contradict so fantastically that the reader finds himself holding his head in despair. The textbooks, though, naturally don’t reflect these contradictions. They merely repeat the results of agreements, and a lot doesn’t appear in them for the simple reason that “what may not be must not be!”
First the basic question: “How much protein does a human being need to stay healthy and perform well? What is the daily requirement, the minimum, the optimum, for a standard body weight of 70 kg?”
At the turn of the century, the respected opinions were those of Rubner and Voit: we need 120-160 grams per day. But Chittenden showed in human experiments that best performance and health were possible on 50 grams, and Hindhede set the figure at 30. Forty years later. A. Fleisch, president of the Swiss Wartime Nutrition Commission, wrote in his book Nutritional Problems in Times of Shortage (Basel, 1947) “No quantity in the physiology of nutrition is so uncertain and finds such extreme advocates as the need of the human organism for protein.” Today, after a quarter century during which mountains of pertinent research have been published every year, the situation is exactly the same. Or worse.
In Russia, Jakolev set up a minimum requirement of 141-163 grams. Kuhnau saw an optimum of 200. Kofranyi of the Max Planck Institute proved that complete nitrogen balance and performance ability could be maintained on 25 grams, and Oomen and Hipsley found a population that develops not just full health, but magnificent muscular structure and corresponding physical performance, on a mere 15-20 grams. Elvehjem insists that the optimum is near the minimum.
In the meantime, the American Research Council’s Food and Nutrition Board agreed on a daily requirement for adults of 70 grams. This number is. in fact, found in their tables. Sherman, a member of the Board, described the way this figure was arrived at. The evidence pointed toward a much lower amount, somewhere a round 35 grams. But if the protein requirement had been set so low, there would have been a public outcry. And so a corresponding “margin of safety” was adopted, and “70 grams” was published. Because the scientific basis for this was non-existent, the word “recommendation” was used instead of “requirement.” But who knows how this recommendation came into being? And it was publicly interpreted as the requirement, in fact as the minimum. Thus, not long ago Stranskky and Krucker in the Therapeutische Umschau (Therapeutic Review) expressly listed 70 grams of protein per 70 kg of body weight as the “minimum dosage ... which is indispensable for the maintenance of vital biochemical processes.” Sherman had good reason for writing about the “high-protein mentality” of nutritional specialists. It’s not unusual for a doctor to prescribe three eggs and yogurt for breakfast, plus meat at each meal, and patients often fear a protein deficiency if they’re asked to stay away from meat for a few days.
No less confusing is the matter of evaluating protein quality and whether animal or plant protein is preferable. According to the textbooks, vegetable protein is inferior. At least a third, preferably half, of the protein intake supposedly should be from animal sources, and the public unconsciously thinks “meat” when it hears “animal,” though, of course, milk and eggs are also “animal sources.” The presumed inferiority of vegetable protein lacks binding scientific proof. If scientists had studied the geography and history of nutrition as well as they conducted their chemistry and animal experiments, they would never have fallen into this dogma. There have been and there are now populations numbering in the millions in various parts of the world, it is known from penetrating research, that have lived and developed enviable health and strength for centuries and even thousands of years on a purely vegan diet.
The quality and requirement of protein depend on several factors, for instance on healing, which can considerably lower the quality of the protein. The usual heating of meats results in a significant decrease in essential amino acids. The same is true of drying and preserving. It probably isn’t acceptable to eat raw meat to avoid these degenerations; but eating other raw foods contributes no small amount to reducing the total need for protein.
Raw food decreases the need for protein in yet another way: the usual, everyday diet requires 6-8 grams of protein per day for the synthesis of digestive juices. But raw foods are easily digested, thanks to the enzymic content, thus economizing on digestive enzymes. Vitamin A has a “decisive relationship to protein metabolism.” Protein deficiency damage is extensively conditioned by vitamin A deficiency. An everyday diet using margarine is as a rule deficient in vitamin A. It is similar to vitamin K, which like provitamin A is most richly present in fruit and is best assimilated in a raw diet with full-value oil.
We could go on, and repeatedly come back to the central question of protein economy.
Protein economy begins with the feeding of babies. In the early 50s nature failed the test of American medicine. It was found that breast milk contains 60% less protein than the infant needs. A “formula” was created with 2 1/2 to 3 times the protein plus added salt. Today we know that it wasn’t nature but science that flunked: The devastating consequences soon appeared: kidney damage, hyperacidity with osteoporosis, dangerously high phenylalanine and tyrosine content in the blood, poor protein metabolism and increased acceleration with consequent stressful disparity of physical and mental growth. An attempt has been made to transfer advertising concepts of growth and weight gain rates to actual human beings—and it fell through. There was a harmful habituation to the wear and tear of a high-protein diet. The frugal use of protein was not learned. From birth on, the child was being burdened with both “stress conditioning factors” (Selye), high protein and salt. Important developmental phases were shortened by accelerated growth and this, according to Portmann, works against the development of the “super-type” (Wellek), that human type which is most needed in our timer who is not just able to analyze but also grasp the whole of a phenomenon in its form and essence.
To return to stress theory: “It is a matter of experience,” wrote A. Fleisch, president of the Swiss Wartime Nutritional Commission, in his book Nutritional Problems in Times of Shortage (Basel, 1947) “that increased protein consumption also lowers the number of calories taken in.” The stimulating qualities of protein—especially meat protein—lead to over-estimation and over-consumption, which are not justified by nutritional physiology because they lead to “luxuriant combustion”—an inefficient “burning off” of excess. There must be another, especially stimulating, irritative effect of eating meat above and beyond the irritative effects of excess protein (specific-dynamic effect) and the extractive and general products of roasting. This irritative effect, which has since been isolated, is caused by uric acid, a very strong irritant on the sympathetic nerves. And so in meat we have a strongly hypermetabolizing three- to four-fold irritative effect.
This has contributed to its reputation as “strength food,” far above its actual nutritive value. (“Meat broth” means the same as “strength broth” in German.)
Our contemporary situation demands the mobilization of our best powers to overcome the crisis of existence in our culture. I believe we have reasons for reconsidering our use of stimulants, which has become continuous and excessive. Continuous prickling of the ergotropic nervous system, which seems to be a vital necessity in these times, is no sign of strength. It stands in the way of the regenerative work of the trophotropic nervous system. This is the main reason why we renounce all stimulants including meat. Regeneration demands detoxification and metabolic economy. This is also true in athletics, where the last degree of performance must be extracted. This refers not only to alcohol, about which the French learned bitter lessons at two Olympiads, and nicotine and other stimulants—it is just as true of meat, and this is proved by the proportionally unheard-of string of international athletic records set by vegetarians. The advantages show up with special clarity in high mountain exercise. Some typical consequences of conversion to a protein-economical, full-value diet are a 10-20% reduction in oxygen requirement and a 30% lower calorie requirement with correspondingly improved performance, recovery and adaptation ability. I personally was surprised to find this out while climbing 17,343 foot high Ixtacihuatl. Indian populations living at 13,000 feet in the Andes highlands hold stubbornly to their ancient carbohydrate diet “in spite of the well-meaning advice from the!” World Health Organization Council. They race bicycles at that altitude for distances of 150 miles at an average speed of 25 mph. Similarly the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico run 90 miles at seven mph, with no heart expansion or shortness of breath. Experience has taught this highland people to stick to carbohydrates. Even rats that were taken to high altitude’s suffered deficiencies in nutritional utilization on a high-protein diet, but not on lower-protein fare. The luxuriant combustion and hypermetabolizing effect of an excess-protein diet occur at sea level too, but they have immediate practical significance in the high mountains.
A further turn was taken in the protein question with the recent rise of amyloidose research. Schwarz, a professor of physiological pathology in Frankfurt, described the storing and slowly destructive effect of the penetration of tissues and organs by amyloid. This is a waxy, fatty protein mixture considered “the most important and perhaps decisive cause of decline with age,” in so-called diseases of old age and specifically, atheromatosis. Katenkamp and Stiller called this amyloidosis “extraordinarily pervasive in every kind of deposited tissue.”
In amyloidosis must lie the key to healing of those diseases of old age which have previously been casually unclarified. It is clear that amyloid consists exclusively of degenerate protein reduction by productions which could be the result of excess protein. Excess protein must be quickly burned, but cannot be sufficiently eliminated. Amyloid contains rich amounts of the amino acids tryptophane and tyrosine. Five to ten times as much tryptophane and five to seven times as much tyrosine are found in the dry substances of meat as that of vegetable protein sources. It remains to be investigated whether other sulphurous amino acids play a similar role, and what the amyloid situation is among populations living on protein-frugal diets. All the essential amino acids, especially the sulphurous, can cause damage in overdoses, through creation of poisonous substances or other disturbances. On 70 grams of protein a day containing all the essential amino acids, there can be excessive intake of some amino acids. The connection between amyloidosis and excess protein is easily proved by animal experiments. It is produced with special ease in case of high cholesterol intake and intestinal poisoning (pathological microorganisms in the intestines create amyloid-dissolving antigens). Amyloid is created, according to Katenkamp and Stiller, in wrongly nourished mesenchyme cells with increased protein production and formation of “pathologically fine fibrillary sclero-protein”; here we should remember that regeneration of the mesenchyme as well as that of pathological intestinal flora are best accomplished by raw diet.
In this connection it should be mentioned that in investigations at Harvard, an excessive amount of the aromatic amino acid methionine was discovered to favor the formation of nearly insoluble protein bodies, and hardening of the inner surface of the arteries. The human need for methionine, which is found most abundantly in meat, egg and cheese protein, and which is three times as abundant in cow’s milk as in breast milk, has been set much too high (at 930 mg/day) by the F.A.O. according to Kofranyl and is actually just 273 mg/day. Excesses of the amino acid tryptophane—which, as mentioned, is seven to ten times more richly present in meat and eggs than in plant sources—are, as proved on radioactive molecules, eagerly, consumed by cancer cells, which produce serotonin from it, block tryptophane metabolism and have been demonstrated to lead to a strong increase in cancer-producing ortho-aminophenols.
Bone atrophy (osteoporosis) is extraordinarily widespread among us; it begins in childhood, is almost considered a normal accompaniment of aging and is conceived as quickly increasing. Extensive scientific literature deals with the possible causes. Wachmann and Bernstein of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University investigated all previous research results in the Lancet and arrived at the considered conclusion that a protein-rich, and especially meat-heavy diet plays the strongest role in the genesis of osteoporosis, more so even than denatured carbohydrates and fats. It is caused when the function of the bone system as a reservoir of basic minerals is continually overstrained. This corresponds to the fact that athletes who eat much meat are especially susceptible to arthrosis. Helas found among 20 professional football players who were observed for 18 years, 100% incidence of ankle arthrosis and 97.5% incidence of knee arthrosis. A negative lime balance is easily produced in experimental animals by increased protein supply, and they then die of disease associated with lime deficiency. The Walker group found in investigation among the Bantu tribe, that on an almost purely plant-source, low-protein diet there were no signs of calcium deficiency and no weakening of the bones.
Further work during recent years makes Ragnar Berg’s acid-base theory, once set aside, again pertinent. The eminent importance of potassium and magnesium is emphasized by several authors. These two basic mineral substances are known to be deficient in an everyday diet rich in meat, eggs, cheese, fat, sugar and grains, but richly present in a full-value diet rich in vegetables and raw foods. One-sided chemical fertilization and refinement detract from these good effects. Also, animal protein-rich diet and alcohol consumption both hinder the absorption of magnesium from the intestine and correspondingly raise the magnesium requirement. The “magnesium deficiency syndrome.” which has been prevalent now for 20 years, includes arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, migraine, eclampsia, the leaching of calcium from teeth and bones, liver damage and disturbance of the neuro-muscular vessel system (Holtmeyer).
Strangely enough, the old Haig uric acid theory is also making a comeback. It seemed at one time to have been rendered invalid when no raised uric acid level was found in the diseases listed by Haig, except for gout. But now it has turned out that the reason for this was simply the introduction of new medicines for rheumatism, and that the evaluation of all uric acid tests on blood must be preceded by at least eight days during which anti-rheumatism medicines have been omitted. Uric acid has again assumed a position among the chief factors causing arterial blockage diseases—including rheumatism, kidney disease and cancer, as well as the amyloid formation, discussed above.
Naturally, the kidneys a re deeply involved in all the above factors from birth on in the child, and this has been especially true since the early ‘50s, when protein and salt-enriched baby foods were introduced. No wonder athletic medicine services in the U.S.A have had to treat an extraordinary number of kidney injuries and kidney breakdowns after athletic competitions and that the American Heart Association arrived at the conclusion that “almost all instances of these diseases”—arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and coronary disease “are significantly related to the kidneys,” and that, therefore, “more than half of the population die of kidney disease.”
Only two more subjects still deserve a short mention, since they make the protein question particularly topical at this time.
First, environmental pollution. The individual has no or insufficient, effect on changing this situation. But what he can do is to put the defense and detoxification organs of his own organism in the best possible condition first by detoxifying his body, and then by making it more powerfully reactive by dietary economy and raw food. Not everyone can supply himself with unsprayed and rationally fertilized food, but he can and must consider that meat and eggs have been far more contaminated since the 1960s than plant products—a result of conversion to industrial production. Anyone who fully understands the extent to which, for example, meal is treated will certainly forego these products. Besides pesticides, meat is treated with tetracycline, chloramphenicol, estrogen, tranquilizers, preservatives, plus metabolic toxins of the fattening process.
Second, and finally, what Sherman wrote two decades ago now applies to a much greater extent. “Feeding grain and potatoes to animals represents an enormous waste of nutritional production potential; and more than that, every person with a social and international sense of justice must become most deeply conscious of the fact that our excessive meat and egg consumption is a leftover from the times of colonial exploitation habits. If we ourselves do not see the provocative injustice in this situation for poorer classes and peoples, they themselves will certainly feel it with increasing intensity.”
This article is reprinted from Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review. The Review, in turn, reproduced it from The Hygienic Practitioner, the Journal of the British Natural Hygiene Society. Winter, 1974.
9.3. A Study Of Each Individual Vitamin
Article #1: Caution: Megavitamins May Be Dangerous To Your Health by Dr. Alan Immerman, D.C.
Article #2: Vitamins And Disease Causation By Marti Fry
Article #3: Why RDAs Are Too High by T.C. Fry
Article #4: Vitamin B-12 And Your Diet By Dr. Alan Immerman
Article #5: Do We Need To Take Vitamins? By Alan M. Immerman, D.C.
Article #6: Antivitamins And Vitamin Antagonists By Marti Fry
Article #7: What To Do About Vitamin Antagonists By Marti Fry
9.1.1 The Role Of Vitamins In Human Nutrition: A Hygienic View
9.1.2 Hygienic Perspectives On Vitamins Compared With Medical Perspectives — Marti Fry
The role of vitamins in nutrition is one of the most widely misunderstood subjects in a study of nutritional science. Today, in this age of technology, industry, food products, pills, powders and potions, vitamin supplementation is considered essential for good health in most circles—from the medical circles to the holistic groups and naturopaths. Some advocate a multiple vitamin each day from the drug store; others promote several bottles of a variety of vitamin tablets from the natural foods stores or distributors. Some say we also need to get a balanced variety of minerals in our supplementation program, and others say we also need a protein powder supplement. Both of the latter emphasize the need for a “complete” nutritional supplementation program and not just vitamins alone.
The cons of using food supplements and why they are harmful and unnecessary will be treated in greater depth in a later lesson. Here we will only note that the current preoccupation with vitamins is totally inappropriate and that, while vitamins are necessary, they are amply supplied in natural raw foods of our biological adaptation.
Keep in mind, also, that foods are not to be prescribed in place of supplements as “cures” for symptoms that people often interpret as vitamin and other nutrient deficiencies. Foods should be consumed as much for their carbohydrate (calorie) content as for their vitamin, mineral or protein content. Also, the importance of the water and the undiscovered nutrients in whole fresh foods should not be underestimated. At all times foods should be considered in their entirety and not as specific sources of specific vitamins and other nutrients.
In the following lesson, foods particularly rich in each vitamin will be listed, but this is not so you or your clients can eat certain foods to obtain certain vitamins; rather, it is just to show you how the foods of our biological adaptation (fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds) provide adequate amounts of all the known vitamins that we need.
In a national bestseller, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Nutrition, Dr. David Reuben pooh poohs our preoccupation with vitamins by pointing out that if we took all the vitamins we need in the quantities recommended (which is much higher than actually required), a whole year’s supply would not fill a thimble!
For further perspective as to the minuteness of our quantitative needs, let’s look at vitamin A. It is recommended that the average adult get 5,000 international units daily to meet needs. One IU weighs one microgram, or one-millionth of a gram, and there are 28 1/2 grams in an ounce. Therefore, 5,000 IUs of vitamin A equal one 5700th of an ounce. If 5,000 IUs were supplied in the diet every day, it would be more than fifteen years before we would have consumed a single ounce!
Or look at vitamin D. This vitamin is formed by the interaction of sunlight and ergosterol in the skin. Our needs are met by so little sunlight that Dr. Reuben has pointed out that while a vitamin D deficiency could occur to a black nun living in Norway, it is an unlikely occurrence in most cases.
Dr. Reuben has observed that, despite the atrociousness of most diets, it is difficult to keep from getting enough vitamins. We can’t avoid repleteness of some vitamins even if we try. Let’s examine vitamins B-12 and K as examples. Scientists who tried to test for these deficiencies could not create them. Why? Because bacteria in the gut formed an ample supply of these vitamins.
Or examine vitamin C. A single ounce will meet our needs for about 2 years. Despite a denatured diet of deranged and depleted foods, most Americans get enough vitamin C from vegetable salads, slaws and fruits to meet needs. Scurvy hasn’t been observed in ages, though some symptoms of vitamin C deficiency have been noted in smokers.
Americans think in terms of deficiencies when, as Dr. Reuben says, almost no American physician has ever witnessed a case of beriberi, pellagra, rickets, scurvy or other disease due to vitamin deficiency.
We Hygienists recognize that deficiency is not the problem nearly so much as is toxemia. The reason why toxemia and not deficiency is the cause of symptoms is twofold. First, some vitamins are depleted because they play a role in the body’s detoxification of harmful substances within. Vitamin C is a notable example of this. Secondly, drugs and drug-like substances, such as coffee, teas, colas, aspirin, medications, junky foods, sugar, alcohol, birth control pills and, in fact, all non-food substances, interfere with the body’s absorption and/or utilization of vitamins and other nutrients. Also, certain foods contain toxic substances and should not be consumed. Notable examples of this are foods containing mustard oil—onions and garlic.
The causes of symptoms of ill health that are blamed on vitamin and mineral deficiencies are really drugs and drug-like (toxic) substances ingested—and not vitamin or mineral deficiencies at all! This is a key fact to keep in mind. So, instead of prescribing food supplements or recommending certain foods containing large amounts of certain vitamins (or minerals), which is legally outside the purview of non-physicians anyway, the Hygienic practitioner will simply have the client eliminate the causes of toxemia and consume a wholesome natural diet that contains no toxic substances. Not only will the real causes of disease symptoms be removed and health be regained, but also a natural diet of all or mostly raw foods of our biological adaptation will supply ample amounts of all the vitamins we need—without the expense or harmfulness of supplements.
Let’s look at vitamin B-12 as an example. Its insufficiency results in pernicious anemia. Most sufferers are meat-eaters who obtain B-12 from their diets. So what gives?
Toxemia has impaired the body’s ability to absorb vitamin B-12. The body has numerous substances that are engaged in active transport of nutrients from one medium to another through separating membranes. The transport mechanism for vitamin B-12 is called intrinsic factor. It is loss of this factor that accounts for B-12 deficiency and anemia. Pernicious anemia is due to toxemia, not deficiency. A fast will restore the lost faculty in almost all cases, and the anemia disappears even before the end of a fast! Such are the powers of the body when liberated from the baneful influences of toxicity.
Vitamins are absolutely essential in our diet—make no mistake about that. But, if we’re on a proper diet of mostly fruits with some vegetables, nuts and seeds, we do not have to worry any more about vitamins or other nutrients than we have to worry about each heartbeat, the secretion of bile, or millions of other physiological processes.
As this is a course not just in nutritional science, but also in Natural Hygiene, or Life Science, it is appropriate that we point out how the Hygienic perspective on the subject of vitamins differs from the generally accepted conventional perspective.
Thanks to scientific research and experimentation, we have learned a great deal about vitamins (and other nutrients). In fact, thanks to the efforts of “science,” we have “discovered” the existence of vitamins. We are now able to make a large variety of statements about vitamins—their functions in the body, approximate amounts needed and many other interesting facts.
However, it should be kept in mind that “science” or technology is also responsible for the refining and processing of foods that led to the discovery of vitamins. What the texts fail to note overtly is that many humans (and animals) have suffered (and, in some cases, still suffer) because of the tampering with foods by food industries, who are usually in intimate association with the scientific laboratories. Oftentimes the scientific studies done relative to nutrition are done in laboratories and research centers owned, operated and/or supported by the food processing and refining firms.
The point is that “science” does not always do the favors for humanity that they lead most of us to believe they do. Much suffering has stemmed from “scientific meddling” in the regular order of nature. This is not to condemn the efforts of scientists as much as it is to enlighten students of nutritional science of certain realities. We are not saying that scientists should stop studying phenomena, but that their approach and motives ought to be changed so that humans are truly benefitted by their efforts instead of allowed to believe they are benefitted while much suffering and harm is done. A shockingly high portion of scientific study is done to discover new drugs (poisons) to “cure” diseases, when, in fact, diseases cannot be “cured.” The causes of disease must be removed and then the body will spontaneously heal without interference by drugs, medications, herbs, colonies or anything else.
A look in physiology and nutrition texts shows that, while many facts about vitamins have been discovered, much more is unknown than is known. Not only that, but much of what is “known” is based on studies in which many animals and some humans have had to suffer. The rationale is that, in the long run, a greater number of living creatures, especially humans, will suffer less due to the greater store of knowledge.
However, this rationale is to be seriously questioned because the reality is that humans suffered less disease before “science” became so advanced and before technology started refining rice and flour and sugar and marketing these products, along with milk and other unwholesome foods, to the people of the world. In other words, humans, in their pristine state, do not need the supposed benefits of so-called “science” to maintain radiant, sickness-free health. Fresh, untampered-with raw foods of our biological adaptation, not from the food industries, but from the garden and trees, will amply provide all our needs without the need for scientific studies. We certainly do not object to studies that uncover interesting information for our entertainment and use, but we do object to the thinking that we are dependent on and forever grateful to “science” for making it possible for us to live healthfully. We can live much more healthfully without science—at least the way science’s priorities stand today.
This is the basis of Natural Hygiene. It involves a simple, wholesome lifestyle and diet that is in full harmony with our needs. Diseases will not occur if the simple, basic laws of life are not violated. If orchards predominated our lands instead of cattle, drug industries, food industries, chicken farms and dairy farms, etc., it would be a lovely and healthful world!
Life Science is, however, scientific. The basic laws of life and principles of Life Science are all provable in scientific laboratories. Many have already been proved. There is absolutely nothing unscientific about Hygiene. In fact, the attempts of so-called “scientists” to discover drugs to “cure” diseases is unscientific in that these efforts are not based on the laws of life. As stated earlier, the ingestion of drugs and medications can result in only harm and can lever, under any circumstances, bring about true health.
As stated in Lesson 5, a tiny cell has more intelligence than a team of scientists seeking “cures.”
Perhaps the most revolting aspect of the medical/scientific approach to vitamin study is the preoccupation with deficiencies, and especially with deficiency diseases. The grotesque photos in texts of people suffering with various “deficiency diseases” graphically illustrate the distorted perception the medical scientists have of the role of vitamins—“to prevent horrible deficiency diseases.” That whole concept of “prevention” is erroneous, as has been stated in earlier lessons. Deficiency diseases are not normal or natural and do not have to be “prevented.” We have only to live in accord with the laws of life and nature, and we will be healthy—as nature intended.
A conventional/medical study of vitamins, as presented in textbooks, leads people to think in terms of deficiencies when they think about vitamins. But the study of vitamins should not be a study of deficiency diseases; it should be primarily a study of their role in human nutrition. In fact, identifying individual vitamins and naming the deficiency, disease connected with the lack of each is totally unneccessary. All we really need to know is that they are present in sufficient quantities in natural foods and that we will meet our needs for them on a natural diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, sprouts and seeds. It is also well to realize that food processing, storage and preservation destroy Vitamins in foods and that drugs and drug-like substances deplete vitamins in the body and interfere with their absorption and utilization.
Vitamins are organic compounds which the body needs to function normally. They cannot be manufactured by the body (with few exceptions); therefore, they must be supplied by food. In their absence, disease will develop.
The first vitamin was discovered in 1897 by a Dutch biologist named Eijkman. He found that when bran was removed from rice, people consuming the refined rice developed beriberi, a serious disease. Eijkman also observed that when people ate the rice with the bran intact, no beriberi resulted. This finding directed Eijkman and other scientists to chemically analyze rice for the substance which, when not present in adequate amounts, resulted in the development of beriberi. Thiamine, named vitamin B1, was discovered to be this mystery substance.
In the following years, scientists found that there are many chemicals in food which are necessary for maintenance of health. One by one, as they were discovered, names were given to these chemicals As a group, they were named “vitamins.”
It is crucial to understand that scientists have not isolated every substance in food that is essential for normal functioning of the body. Thus, we must depend on food, not vitamin pills, for good nutrition. There is no vitamin pill that contains all the vitamins the body needs.
Vitamins function in the body as coenzymes. To understand this function, consider an analogy. Suppose you were trying to build a house. The size of the house is strictly limited by your budget. You begin the process by buying the major raw materials: cement, wood and outdoor siding material. Once you have laid the foundation and framed the walls, you go to the store and buy all the windows you need. The number of windows is obviously limited by the spaces you have built in the walls for windows. For proper function of the house, you need windows.
Vitamins are like the windows in the house. Your body has a need for vitamins (windows) when it is trying to manufacture something: new tissue, energy, etc. (a house). Your body determines the exact amount it wishes to produce and brings together just enough raw materials for the purpose of construction (cement, wood, etc.). The body manufactures the necessary amount of apoenzyme (window frame) to combine with the vitamin coenzyme (window) to form an active enzyme. The active enzyme then makes a chemical reaction progress quickly (it catalyzes the reaction) leading to the formation of the desired end-product.
“Vitamin function” is a commonly used phrase, as is “vitamin action.” Yet these expressions convey a misconception Vitamins cannot act, since they are inert chemical substances. In any and all physiological processes, it is the body that acts. Vitamins are used by the body for many purposes. Usually, vitamins combine chemically with other substances, thereby fulfilling the mandate of the body. It is crucial to remember that it is the body that acts on the vitamin, not the vitamin that acts on the body.
Although this lesson discusses vitamins exclusively, it is important to realize that vitamins do not function alone or in a vacuum within the body. Vitamins work together; for instance, production of energy by the body when food is burned in the cells depends not only on vitamin B1, but also on vitamins B2 and niacin.
Furthermore, vitamins work together with all other nutrients such as fats, carbohydrates and proteins. For instance, vitamin B6 is needed for the normal metabolism of protein. So, even though this is a lesson on vitamins, don’t think of vitamins alone when you consider the functioning of the body. Vitamins are only one small part of the metabolic machinery of the body.
The discovered vitamins will be studied one by one. You will learn about their discovery, measurement, chemistry, physiology, functions, requirements, sources, effects of deficiency and effects of excess.
Vitamins can be categorized according to their properties. The two basic groupings of vitamins are the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) and the water-soluble vitamins (vitamin C and the B-complex vitamins).
Certain common characteristics distinguish the fat-soluble vitamins from the water-soluble vitamins:
Vitamin A is also needed for normal skeletal and tooth development, for formation of sperm, for the normal progression of the reproductive cycle of the female, for formation of the adrenal hormone cortisone from cholesterol, and for maintenance of the stability of all cell membranes.
There are many other important roles of vitamin C: It is needed for normal cellular metabolism and enzyme function, for the normal metabolism of iron and folic acid (a B vitamin) and for the formation of adrenal gland hormones.
If the diet contains sufficient amounts of niacin, and if a person suffers from any of the aforementioned symptoms, taking extra niacin will have no beneficial effect.
Is the conventional American diet generally deficient in vitamins, and is this the major health-destroying aspect of this diet?
No. While the conventional American diet has been shown to be deficient in vitamins in many cases, this is not the major problem with this diet. The major problems result from excess intake of toxins, calories, fat, protein and sugar. Taking vitamin pills will have no beneficial effect on the problems resulting from the excesses in the American diet.
Should I take vitamin pills?
A person eating a diet of whole, unrefined foods, mostly uncooked, has no need for supplements.
When the necessary amount of vitamins is supplied in the diet, will additional vitamins help?
Definitely not. The body can use only a limited amount of vitamins as supplied in food. Excess vitamins often cause damage to the body.
Are extra vitamins needed because of stress, smoking and pollution?
Yes, and the extra amounts are easily supplied from food.
A deficiency of a vitamin will lead to development of a certain disease, for instance night blindness and vitamin A. If the diet contains enough vitamin A and a person still develops eye disease, will additional vitamin A solve the problem?
No. Taking vitamin A will only correct a vitamin A deficiency and the problems associated with such a deficiency. There are multiple causes of eye problems and all the other symptoms that develop when there is a vitamin deficiency.
I know that too much of vitamins A and D can be harmful, but I heard that you cannot take too much of the water-soluble vitamins like vitamins C and B. Is this true?
No. Although excesses of vitamins C and B will be eliminated rapidly from the body, there will be damage to the body before and during their elimination.
Surprising as it may sound, vitamins—especially the fat-soluble ones—when taken in unnaturally large quantities, can be dangerous to your health. In fact, megavitamin therapy carries risks similar to those of other drugs. Just as with other medications, the taking of large amounts of vitamins can cause side effects and other more serious health problems.
For years I took large daily doses of many vitamins. I read many of the magazines which are sold in health food stores and I believed what I read. I was convinced that large doses of vitamin C would “prevent” and “cure” colds and that some of the B-complex vitamins would calm my emotions “naturally” with no side effects. I believed that large amounts of vitamin E would prevent heart disease and delay the aging process. Fortified daily as I was, I was certain that I was doing myself a world of good, even though I didn’t feel better while I was taking the supplements in such large doses.
Then it happened: I put down my health food store paperbacks long enough to read a few scientific textbooks and journal articles. I studied the biochemistry of vitamins (I have a B.S. in chemistry) and I read scientific studies which investigated the possibility of side effects from taking vitamins. I was more than a little surprised by what 1 found.
First, what is a “megavitamin”? I consider it to be a level of dosage that one could never get from food. For example, if you ate a large amount of fruits and vegetables, you could get 500 to 1,000 milligrams (.5 to 1 gram) of vitamin C per day from food. Although the RDA (recommended dietary allowance) is only 60 milligrams, it is possible to get ten, even 20 times this amount from foods. Therefore, in the case of vitamin C, I would use the term megavitamin to describe something in the neighborhood of 2 grams per day. While this may seem extraordinarily large, bear in mind that some self-appointed authorities recommend that we take 5-10 grams of vitamin C per day.
In large doses, vitamins act like drugs, not nutrients. If you eat more than the amount required, your body won’t be able to use them. In its wisdom, the body will try to eliminate the excess, but too much of an overload may cause the excess to remain in the bloodstream, causing drug-like effects.
Megavitamin proponents argue that the requirement for vitamins differs from one person to another (biochemical individuality). This is true. But the conclusion that some people must, therefore, take megadoses of vitamins is false. Taking the recommended dietary allowances of vitamins fulfills the body’s needs since the RDAs have been formulated with full awareness of biochemical individuality. The RDA compensates so well for the fact that some people need more of a certain vitamin that it has even been occasionally criticized for being too generous, for instance in the RDA for vitamin E.
Megavitamin proponents claim that large amounts of vitamins are used as nutrients. A nutrient is a substance that is used in normal physiological processes and causes no harm to the system. Other chemicals, such as drugs, are not used by the body and do cause harm. Scientific studies have shown that megavitamins can cause harm to the body. Therefore, I classify them as drugs.
Our bodies are capable of using nutrients supplied in the proper amounts. But when a nutrient is supplied in too great an amount, havoc is the result. We have all heard of the rare cases where someone has drunk too much water and died. The same is true with vitamins: too much of a good thing is harmful.
Experiments such as the following have often been repeated. Megadoses of vitamin B3 (niacin) were given to large groups of experimentees for a number of weeks at a time. Before and after the dosage period, blood was drawn from the subjects and analyzed for many chemicals. At the end of the experiment, scientists found that up to 45% of the subjects had liver damage, 50-66% had abnormally high levels of blood sugar, 62-78% had unsafe levels of uric acid and 20-40% had “gastrointestinal distress” (stomachaches). Though it may be hard to swallow that our old friend niacin is harmful in large doses, swallow it we must if we want to align our beliefs with reality.
Niacin has been recommended in large doses to lower blood cholesterol levels and to control schizophrenic symptoms. I suggest that better ways be found to deal with these problems (such as eating less meat and eggs to lower cholesterol).
Megadoses of vitamin C are also potentially harmful. Consider the following side effects: destruction of red blood cells; irritation of the intestinal lining; kidney stone formation; interference with iron, copper, vitamin A and bone mineral metabolism; interference with the reproductive tract, causing infertility and fetal death; diabetes; and something called rebound scurvy. Scurvy is vitamin C deficiency disease. If you take large amounts of vitamin C for a long time (many months, at the least), your body will increase its level of elimination of vitamin C (more evidence that your body doesn’t want it around). If you then decide suddenly to stop taking vitamin C cold-turkey you will become deficient in this vitamin because it takes a period of time (many weeks sometimes) for your body to adjust downward its level of elimination of vitamin C. Does this sound safe? I would rather have a cold any day than the possibility of the side effects of megadoses of vitamin C. Besides, a cold is actually a detoxification process that shouldn’t be interfered with by use of anything, even it is a supposedly friendly vitamin.
The third vitamin that has been investigated in depth is vitamin E. Megadoses of this vitamin (over about 100 IU per day) have been found to cause deposits of cholesterol in blood vessels; elevations of blood fat levels; interference with the bloodclotting process; enhanced growth of lung tumors; interference with absorption of vitamin A and iron; gastrointestinal disturbances; skin rashes; interference with thyroid gland function; and damage to muscles. Thus, megadoses of vitamin E also function as drugs, complete with side effects.
All nutritionists recognize the hazards from large doses of vitamins A and D: Megadoses of vitamin A have been known to cause the following negative effects: fatigue; generalized feeling of sickness; stomach discomfort; bone and/or joint pain; severe headaches; insomnia and restlessness; night sweating; loss of body hair; brittle nails; constipation; irregular menstruation; emotional instability; dry scaly and rough skin and other effects. Megadoses of vitamin D can cause nausea, diarrhea, weight loss, kidney damage and other problems.
I have no argument with those who claim that megadoses of vitamins will change the way you feel. They may, although in most cases there is no solid scientific proof that they will. But the way you feel is not in itself a valid criteria with which to judge megavitamins. If it were, then we could endorse drugs as completely beneficial. Both drugs and megavitamins may change symptom patterns. If you take vitamin C, there is a slim chance that you may experience a reduction in cold symptoms due to an antihistamine (not nutritional) effect. If you have arthritis arid take cortisone, you will experience a reduction in joint pain. But both these substances have side effects; and neither of these substances are getting at the cause of the health problem, just the symptoms. In fact, both are causes of other problems!
And there is even more: By treating yourself with vitamins, you may mask a serious disease until it has progressed to the point of no return. For instance, if you are anemic from vitamin B12 deficiency and you take folic acid, the folic acid will correct the anemia but you will have continuing subtle nervous system damage from the B12 deficiency.
Megadoses of vitamin C interfere with tests for sugar in the urine (a common indicator of severity of diabetes) and for blood in the stool (a test for cancer of the large intestine, among other things).
Once you find out what your problem is, I have one bit of advice: Don’t try megavitamins for a solution. If they give you any relief, it will only be symptomatic: the cause of your problem will remain untouched. And the megavitamins may cause even further disruption of your health because of the many harmful side effects they can have.
Conventional medical practice attributes disease causation to: 1) bacteria or viruses; 2) hereditary or genetic disorders; or 3) deficiencies of vitamins or other nutrients. They do not blame disease causation on the habits and lifestyles of people who get diseases—except in the cases of deficiency diseases. Food supplements are supposed to solve the problems (“cure” the diseases) resulting from nutrient deficiencies. Sometimes nutrient-rich foods are also or instead recommended. For example, oranges or tomatoes may be recommended in cases of vitamin C deficiency or carrots or other orange foods for vitamin A deficiency, etc. However, with the popularity of food supplements today, especially among “alternative health groups,” but also among conventional practitioners, pills are more often prescribed or recommended.
The error made by conventional medical and “health” practitioners is even worse than prescribing or recommending vitamin pills. They do not recognize that the true cause of diseases in most cases is not bacteria, viruses, hereditary or genetic disorders or nutrient deficiencies—rather, diseases result from enervation and toxemia; that is, lowered nerve energy, retention of toxic metabolic wastes, and consumption of toxic substances (wrong foods, drugs, etc.).
Even the “alternative healers,” though many recognize that diseases are body-created processes for elimination of toxins, think more in terms of nutrient deficiencies and food supplements than of removing the true causes of most diseases—body toxicity. Supplying the normal needs of life as recommended by the Life Science health system while simultaneously removing the causes of diseases is the only way health can be restored effectively and permanently.
The idea of getting more vitamins, protein or other nutrients to prevent or overcome diseases is erroneous. Most diseases are not deficiency diseases as so many people believe today. Also, vitamins are not specific detoxifying substances that assist the body in eliminating its pathogenic toxic load. In massive amounts they are like drugs that add to the body’s toxic load and must be expelled. In normal amounts as supplied in wholesome, raw foods, they play many varied roles. It is really foolish to tamper with normal body functioning in any way, including the use of vitamin supplements which do not go to the root—do not deal with the cause—of disease any more than do drugs or medications.
Before entering into a discussion of how RDAs are set, it is appropriate to distinguish between Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) and Minimum Daily Requirement (MDR). These are not the same, though MDRs are usually set unduly high, as are the RDAs.
RDAs are set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council. Minimum Daily Requirements are mandatory on labelling of processed foods. They are required by the FDA, who has published the MDRs. MDRs generally closely parallel the RDAs. Supposedly the minimum requirement is the least amount you can ingest and adequately meet need. RDAs are recommended as intake to be on the safe side. RDAs are, therefore, higher than MDRs.
In setting RDAs, the NRC has criteria for each nutrient, vitamin or mineral. For instance, it figures vitamin C need based on what is required as a minimum. Say this minimum is set at 15 milligrams daily, which is the generally recognized minimum in much of the world. The NRC figures there is perhaps a 30% difference between individuals in their vitamin assimilation abilities. Thus they add on 30% to this minimum.
Further, the NRC gives a biologic value of about 2/3 to dietary vitamin C (could this be due to cooking or due to synthetic C or both, making 1/3 not available?) Instead of 19.5 mg, we now have 30 mg. As a margin of safety, the recommendation allows an extra 100%.
Thus, a man of say 154 pounds is said to need 60 mg of vitamin C daily. This is the RDA when, in point of fact, the needs of a healthy person are amply met on an intake of 15 to 20 mg daily. But, as this water-soluble vitamin in its natural form is easily excreted, there is no great danger in an intake of 60 mg daily. In fact, a natural diet furnishes 200 to 500 mg daily.
While establishing an RDA some four times in excess of what a healthy individual really needs is not harmful in the case of natural vitamin C, in other cases the RDA is positively pathogenic! This “generosity” amounts to recommended overfeeding. In people’s minds the RDA becomes a mandatory minimum and they add on perhaps another 100% just to be sure! In the case of protein this is a great contributing cause of widespread disease!
As a Hygienist, be ever cognizant of those principles that go like this: The healthier you are, the more efficient your body becomes up and down the line. On a proper diet the biological value of nutrients is at or near 100%! The food will not be deranged by cooking or processing. Further, it will be 100% in accord with human digestive adaptations and capabilities. The healthy person will have about 100% uptake of dietary intake up to an optimum point and nearly 100% usage. Hence most RDAs are some 200% to 1,000% too high at the least!
Why get into a meaningless numbers game when all that we need in nutrients to repleteness is amply furnished with a great margin of safety by a modest diet consisting mostly of fresh fruits with some vegetables, nuts, seeds and perhaps some dried fruit. All, of course, must be eaten in the raw or live state to assure nutrient integrity on the one hand and non-toxicity on the other.
If you do not eat animal foods of any kind your fears about dietary deficiency in this highly publicized vitamin will be allayed by this report.
Do we get enough vitamin B12? This is a major concern to people who consume no animal foods (vegans). Much of their worry arises from the wide publicity given to statements like the following which appeared in the prestigious journal, Nutrition Reviews: “Strict vegetarianism in western countries is a form of food faddism which can have serious consequences” due to the possibility of a vitamin B12 deficiency. What are the facts?
First of all, it cannot be said that vegans consume too little vitamin B12 unless it can be shown they have a definite deficiency of this vitamin. Therefore, in order to understand the facts, we must decide how we will determine who is deficient. To be diagnosed as having a dietary deficiency of vitamin B12, all the following five criteria must be fulfilled:
The finding of a vitamin B12-deficient state without fulfillment of every one of these criteria cannot be blamed solely on the diet. This is because all of the following can also cause a vitamin B12 deficiency: stomach disease (interferes with production of intrinsic factor, a chemical necessary for normal absorption of vitamin B12), intestinal disease (may interfere with normal absorption), kidney or liver disease (may increase loss of vitamin B12 from the body), use of alcohol or tobacco, use of some drugs such as neomycin and oral contraceptives and a multitude of other problems. Unless these problems are ruled out by fulfillment of the five criteria, a dietary cause of a vitamin B12 deficiency cannot be diagnosed.
Let’s take a few examples. Say a 58-year-old man on a vegan diet goes to his doctor with signs of nervous system disease. It comes out in the history that this person is a vegan so the doctor presumes that the disease is from dietary vitamin B12 deficiency and prescribes large doses of vitamin B12 supplements. But, without investigation of this person’s ability to absorb vitamin B12, his disease cannot be said to come from dietary deficiency alone. He could have pernicious anemia—deficiency of the intrinsic factor needed for absorption.
Or consider the vegan who has routine blood analysis done and it is found that his vitamin B12 level is low compared to the standard American range. The doctor would probably warn this individual of the grave consequences of continuing on his diet, even though this person feels fine. This individual cannot be classified as vitamin B12-deficient, however, because he has no symptoms of the diseases associated with a vitamin B12 deficiency.
As a third example, let’s consider the most complex case: a vegan with a vitamin B12 deficiency-associated illness, normal absorption as reflected by use of routine absorption testing (the Schilling test) and disappearance of symptoms after ingestion of vitamin B12 supplements of routine dosage. Wouldn’t this be a clear case of dietary vitamin B12 deficiency? Not necessarily—it could be a case of poor absorption not revealed by routine testing. A case like this occurred where the fault in absorption was not detected until sophisticated methods were used.
Short of sophisticated testing available only in research centers, the only way this fault in absorption, and probably many other similar faults, would be discovered is by experimental oral administration of small amounts of vitamin B12, as opposed to the large amounts routinely used. For this reason, fulfillment Of criterion No. 5 (positive response to consumption of small amounts of vitamin B12) is essential for a diagnosis of dietary B12 deficiency.
As simple and full of common sense as are these five criteria, we see many cases in the medical literature in which one or more of them have not been fulfilled. For example, Smith in 1962 investigated twelve vegans and found vitamin B12-associated illness in three of them.
He did not, however, check to see if they were able to absorb vitamin B12 efficiently; thus his diagnosis of dietary vitamin B12 deficiency is unconvincing. There are even cases presented as dietary vitamin B12 deficiency in which no accurate diet history is reported to show that no vitamin B12-containing foods have been eaten.
Verjaal, et al., in 1967, presented the case of a vegan with nervous system disease which the researcher attributed to the diet without checking absorption or the response to small amounts of oral vitamin B12. Connor, et al., in 1963, discussed two cases in which he also failed to investigate absorption.
In preparing this article, I have reviewed every article discussing cases of reported dietary vitamin B12 deficiency, and I can say that lack of fulfillment of all five criteria, as in the articles just described, is the rule, not the exception.
On the other hand, many studies have reported vegans with normal vitamin B12 status and complete health. Hardinge, et al., in 1954, studied 26 vegans and found them to be healthy. Ellis, et al., in 1970, studied 26 vegans and found the same.
Roberts, et al., in 1973, investigated 322 Indian vegans during pregnancy. All but one were perfectly healthy and this one was not studied to determine whether she could normally absorb vitamin B12. Sanders, et al., in 1978, studied 34 vegans and found no sickness.
The conclusion must be that the vast majority of the studies which have reported abnormal vitamin B12 status in vegans have not been thorough enough to prove the problem was from the diet only, and that, on the the other hand, many studies have found normal vitamin B12 status in vegans. Though this is hard for a western nutritionist to accept, no Indian doctor would have the slightest problem with it.
Indians, for the most part, are not pure vegans, as they consume small amounts of dairy foods. These amounts, however, fall far below the amounts that would be needed to supply adequate amounts of vitamin B12 if western dogma is valid.
Yet, in India, vegetarians have lived for ages and have begotten and reared healthy children who, in turn, have never eaten fish, fowl or meat. There is no evidence to suggest that such a vegetarian population consuming adequate lactovegetarian food is any way different from the non-vegetarians.
As Dr. David Reuben points out, the news that an almost-vegan diet is dangerous “will come as a surprise to 500,000,000 Hindus, most of whom don’t eat any meat or animal products at all from the moment they are born until the moment they die (with the exception of mother’s milk for a while). The Hindu religion has been around for over 10,000 years, or about 98 centuries longer than modern American medicine.
But how do vegans get their vitamin B12? Since it is produced only by bacteria, and vegans don’t eat the animals that had the bacteria growing in their second stomach (rumen), what is the source of this vitamin B12?
There are no definite answers to this question, but the fact that most vegans are healthy shows one of the following answers must be applicable: Absorption of the vitamin B12 routinely produced by bacteria living in the intestine (supposedly they live in a area where the vitamin cannot be absorbed, but an adaptation may occur in vegans); no loss of vitamin B12 from the body, thus no need for additional dietary vitamin B12; ingestion of vitamin B12 in water (from the well or the distiller) due to bacterial contamination; accidental ingestion of insects or bacteria containing vitamin B12; presence of vitamin B12 in root vegetables due to absorption of vitamin B12 from the soil where it was produced by bacteria; presence of vitamin B12 in soil on poorly washed root vegetables; presence of vitamin B12 in seaweed (all but green) and/or contamination of plant foods with vitamin B12 produced by bacteria.
It is true that vitamin B12 is produced only by bacteria, but these bacteria are almost everywhere, and for this reason vitamin B12 has been found in some samples of many vegetables.
A vegan diet, therefore, does not have “serious consequences” as threatened by Nutrition Reviews; it is quite the reverse, as contrariwise it has such “beneficial consequences” as vegans not having to fear any risk of ever suffering cardiovascular disorders or colon and breast cancer. The low fat intake of vegans minimizes the chance of these diseases. The threat of a vitamin B12 deficiency is more often than not hypothetical rather than actual.
It is important to emphasize that deficiency may be present only if a person has low blood vitamin B12 levels plus illness associated with vitamin B12 deficiency. Indications of a low vitamin B12 level by itself will not interfere with attaining a long and healthy life with full capacity for normal reproduction. The contrary has never been proven to be so, unless the deficiency is accompanied by illness as discussed above.
A few months ago I picked up a copy of a promotional magazine in a health food store. This magazine, Better Nutrition, contained an article entitled “The Care and Feeding of Vitamins,” which addressed itself to the need for taking daily vitamin supplements. Since this is a subject about which I get many questions, I thought I would discuss this issue. The article on vitamins was in a question and answer form; I will give an alternative opinion in the same form.
I eat a good diet, why should I lake vitamins or other supplements?
ANSWER: The Better Nutrition article (to be referred to as BN) stated that “your idea of a ‘good diet’ may not include all the essential nutrients” and that with pollution, stress, chronic illness, drugs and food of low nutritional value (presumably from conventional farming methods), it is reasonable that “a number of distinguished nutrition experts” believe that we should take supplements.
MY ANSWER: It is no doubt true that many peoples’ idea of a “good diet” is inadequate. The nutritional orthodoxy believes that enriched flour is entirely adequate even though many nutrients are removed by processing and only a few are replaced by enriching. But this does not mean that supplements should be taken, but rather that proper foods should be chosen! Also, there is no proof that pollution and stress increase vitamin needs. If drugs increase vitamin need, the obvious answer is to discontinue their use if at all possible. Drugs have many harmful side effects besides increasing vitamin needs.
Also, the mention of nutritional values of foods grown with today’s conventional farming methods brings up an important point. Plants synthesize all the vitamins they need from carbon dioxide, water and sunlight. Therefore, foods grown conventionally will have the same amounts of vitamins as those grown organically.
Finally, in all respect for the “distinguished nutrition experts” who believe that supplements are needed, it would be far preferable to choose the proper foods; many equally distinguished experts support this position.
How much do I need of vitamins and minerals?
ANSWER: (BN) Official recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) ... are for perfectly healthy 22-year-old men and women ... anyone not perfectly healthy and not 22 years of age may need more.
MY ANSWER: This statement in BN poorly reflects the intent of the National Research Council in establishing the RDAs. The RDAs are for the vast majority of people, not for a small group. In setting these figures, the National Research Council estimated the requirements of the nutrients and then established recommended intakes in excess of requirements so as to “exceed the requirements of most individuals.” The RDAs have even been criticized as too ligh in some cases! In any case, it is quite easy on a properly chosen diet to far exceed the recommended intake of vitamins. There is no need for nutrients in pill form.
Isn’t it possible to get too much of vitamins or minerals?
ANSWER: (BN) Not if you take reasonable amounts ... there is no record of any damage from large amounts of vitamin E. Vitamin C and the B vitamins, being water soluble, are excreted harmlessly if you happen to take more than you need.
MY ANSWER: False again. Although there probably is no direct harm from taking small amounts of vitamins, there is indirect harm. For one, many who take supplements tend to be less cautious with their diet because they feel protected by the pills. This is false security, as there are many substances needed by humans which are not yet in vitamin/mineral tablets. Some substances known at the present time include vanadium, nickel, tin and silicon; also, as any research biochemist will admit, there are probably many vitamin-like substances which will be discovered to be essential as the years go by, and they are not yet in supplements, even the supposedly “natural” supplements from food sources. So the threat of deficiency remains unless care is exercised in choice of foods.
Also, to state that there is no danger from large doses of vitamins E, C and the B complex is to display ignorance of present scientific knowledge. Megadoses of niacin (B3) may damage the liver, raise the blood sugar and uric-acid levels and cause other problems. Megadoses of vitamin C may cause: irritation (leading to diarrhea), kidney stones, problems with mineral metabolism (iron, copper, calcium and phosphorus), and possibly infertility and fetal death. Large doses of vitamin E may elevate the blood fats (high blood fat levels are associated with heart disease), interfere with vitamin A and iron metabolism, interfere with thyroid gland function and cause severe fatigue, perhaps due to muscle damage.
I have heard that some vitamins are incompatible with others and will cancel out their good effects, so they should not be taken together.
ANSWER: (BN) Basically, take your supplements and don’t worry about it.
MY ANSWER: When one tries to provide proper nutrition by extracting nutrients from food and taking them in various proportions and quantities, there is indeed a risk of creating imbalances. The best way to supply vitamins to the body is to eat them as nature provided them: in foods.
Should old people and children take vitamins?
ANSWER: (BN) “To produce strong bones, teeth, muscles and perfectly functioning organs,” children should take vitamins. “Old age is stress ... so taking supplements is even more important.”
MY ANSWER: Both groups definitely need vitamins. But is it too old-fashioned to suggest that they get their vitamins from food at 1/1000 the cost and in a preferable form?
To conclude, then, a proper diet, consisting of mainly raw fruits and vegetables, will supply amounts of vitamins far in excess of the recommended daily allowances. Pollution and stress should be avoided, but their effects are not compensated for by taking supplements. Fruits and vegetables available in the supermarket have enough vitamins to support health in its highest state.
Also, there are many possible sources of harm from megadoses of vitamins, even the water soluble ones such as vitamin C and the B complex. Therefore, avoid these.
An antivitamin is simply “a substance that makes a vitamin ineffective.” A vitamin antagonist is essentially the same thing as an antivitamin. It is a substance that lessens or negates the chemical action of a vitamin in the body.
Following are some examples of antivitamins, or vitamin antagonists.
Blood-thinning medications and other drugs, including aspirin, phenobarbitol, arsenicals and dicumarol (a drug used medically to retard bloodclotting), destroy vitamin A in the body.
Vitamin A is also depleted when nitrosamines are formed in the stomach from the union of nitrites with secondary amines and when the mucous membranes of our respiratory passages are exposed to air pollutants (carbon monoxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead, hydrocarbons, etc.) In addition, mineral oil used as a laxative absorbs vitamin A and carotene (a naturally-occurring substance in foods which is used by the body to make vitamin A), thereby destroying it.
The amount of vitamin K needed by humans is very small, and a deficiency is highly unlikely because this vitamin is in a wide variety of commonly eaten plant foods and is synthesized by bacteria in the intestinal tract. However, antibiotic therapy (the taking of any antibiotics such as penicillin, streptomycin, tetracyclin, Chloromycin, Terramycin, etc.) suppresses bacterial growth and, consequently, the synthesis of vitamin K.
Other vitamin K antagonists include the drugs dicumarol and hydrocoumarol, which are used by medical people to relieve thrombosis (abnormal formation of blood clots in the blood vessels). Because the chemical structure of these antivitamins is similar to that of vitamin K, they act as anticoagulants by interfering with the synthesis of pro-thrombin and the other natural clotting factors.
It is well known that cigarette smokers have lower vitamin C levels than nonsmokers. A Canadian physician, Dr. W. J. McCormick, tested the blood levels of vitamin C in nearly 6,000 smokers. All had below normal readings. the March 9, 1963, issue of Lancet, similar findings are revealed by a group of three researchers. Frederick Klenner, M.D., has been quoted for many years as saying that a single cigarette can deplete as much as thirty-five milligrams of vitamin C from the body. (Calcium and phosphorus, both minerals, are also depleted in cigarette smokers.)
Because vitamin C reacts with any alien substance in the bloodstream, all drugs and pollutants can be considered to be vitamin C antagonists. Some of the foremost vitamin C antagonists include ammonium chloride, stribesterol, thiouracil, atropine, barbituates and antihistamines. Alcoholic beverages are also vitamin C antagonists, as are all stresses (surgery, emotional outbursts and upsets, acute pressures, extremes of heat and cold and all drugs).
Cortisone is an antagonist of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). Since the body needs B vitamins to metabolize sugars, B vitamins are depleted when refined sugar or flour is consumed because refined sugar and flour, are devoid of B vitamins that existed in the beet, cane or grain before refining. Specifically, the body’s supply of vitamin Bl, vitamin B2, biotin, choline, niacin and the mineral magnesium are depleted when refined sugar and flour are consumed.
Alcoholic beverages are antagonists of thiamin and the other B-complex vitamins, and coffee is another popular beverage that is a B vitamin antagonist—because it contains caffeine and other noxious substances, one of which is chlorogenic acid. Inositol deficits may occur among coffee drinkers, too, as well as deficits of biotin and thiamin.
Raw fish and raw shellfish, including oysters, are also B-complex antagonists. This is one of many reasons not to eat the Japanese dish, sashime (raw fish) or any other raw seafoods.
Birth control pills are antivitamins, especially of the B vitamins riboflavin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12 and folk acid. Two Indian physicians discovered that women taking oral contraceptives had much lower levels of riboflavin than a control group who used no oral contraceptives. These contraceptives are especially damaging to vitamin B12 and folic acid. (The estrogen in oral contraceptives is also an antagonist of vitamin E.)
The most potent folacin (folic acid) antagonist is aminopterin. This substance has been used in the medical treatment of leukemia, a disease in which there is a marked increase in the production of leucocytes (white blood cells). Though aminopterin has, in some cases, resulted in a temporary relief (remission) of leukemia, it does not “cure” this disease. This is because there are no “cures;” there is only body healing—and antivitamins interfere with body healing but never help it.
Most, if not all, vitamin antagonists (all drugs and other stresses) are also mineral antagonists. A specific mineral antagonist is oxalic acid, which is present in too-large amounts in spinach, rhubarb, beets and beet greens, Swiss chard and chocolate. Oxalic acid is a calcium antagonist. Calcium binds the oxalic acid in the body in order to render this toxic acid harmless. In doing so, the calcium is unavailable for its normal uses in the body.
All kinds of stresses are vitamin antagonists. Drugs are serious stress producers in the body because the body must exercise great effort in expelling them as quickly as possible, lest they damage tissues and cells and interfere too much with normal functioning. In addition, surgery, accidents, overly exhausting work or exercise, exposure to extreme’s of heat or cold, and emotions such as fear, hatred, anger, worry and grief all produce great stress on the body. The B vitamins (thiamin, niacin, folic acid, pantothenic acid and vitamin B12) and vitamin C, as well as proteins and minerals, are all depleted and/or unassimilable as a result of stresses on the body. But don’t think for a minute that the other vitamins can be properly or fully utilized when the body is under stress—they can’t!
Aspirin interferes with digestive processes and can result in stomach bleeding. It interferes with blood-clotting and lessens the ability of cells to absorb glucose for heat and energy. It depletes most, if not all, nutrients and results in especially high losses of vitamin C and the B vitamins plus the minerals calcium and potassium.
Besides being a vitamin K antagonist, the antibiotic penicillin is also an antivitamin of vitamin B6. The antibiotic streptomycin is a folic acid antagonist and the antibiotic streptomycin inactivates manganese, a mineral which is needed for the functioning of many enzyme systems.
Diuretics are drugs prescribed medically to promote weight reduction or to relieve pressure of retained fluids. Even so-called “natural” diuretics, including herbal types, are harmful, for all diuretics result in great losses of B vitamins, vitamin C, other vitamins, and the minerals potassium and magnesium. Diuretics would never be prescribed to anyone on a natural diet containing no rock salt or sea salt, as these salts are poisonous and cause the body to retain fluids to hold the salt in suspension so it doesn’t harm cells and tissues.
All laxatives, including the herbal types, are vitamin antagonists. Mineral oil is perhaps the most devastating laxative. It absorbs vitamin A and carotene, as well as the other fat-soluble vitamins (vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K). It also absorbs calcium and phosphorus, carrying them out of the body. (Hospitals today still use mineral oil as a laxative for their patients, one of thousands of reasons why hospitals are antivital places.) Laxatives will never be used by people on a natural all-raw diet of fruits, vegetables, sprouts, nuts and seeds.
Most people regard soil, air and water pollutants as “unavoidable” antivitamins that necessitate the use of vitamin supplementation. However, not only are the vitamins from fresh whole foods more than adequate to meet our needs when our diet is all or mainly raw foods of our biological adaptation (as described in the Life Science health system), but they will also meet our needs adequately despite our polluted air and water.
Besides this argument against food supplementation, we can control completely the water we drink by drinking only pure distilled water. To some extent we can also control the quality of the air we breathe by keeping the pollutants out of our homes and/or by locating away from the pollution of cities and other highly-populated or polluted centers. Foods not grown organically are “fed” (via their soil) synthetic chemical fertilizers which contain excessive nitrogen. This excessive nitrogen increases the crop yield, but the ultimate health costs are high—too high. Nitrates and nitrites are formed, and these pollutants are potent antivitamins.
Dr. E. E. Hatfield revealed, from his results in an animal research project, that nitrates and nitrites systematically and subtly reduce the vitamin A stored in the liver. They also prevent formation of this vitamin in our body from its precursor, carotene, which is present in much produce. Also, according to Dr. W. M. Beeson of Purdue University’s Department of Animal Sciences, fruits picked green contain far higher amounts of nitrates and far less carotene than tree and vine-ripened fruits.
Nitrites join with amines in the stomach, forming nitrosamines. Nitrosamines are highly carcinogenic, though not necessarily moreso than other pollutants and drugs. As often and as much as possible, purchase organically-grown produce and/or produce that has been fully ripened on the tree or vine.
Keep in mind, too, that buying organically-grown foods and then cooking them, seasoning them, or taking any kind of drugs or medications whatsoever makes little sense. You are far better off not to concern yourself with whether or not your food is or isn’t organically grown and just discontinue use of any and all drugs and medications. The ideal, however, is to both discontinue drugs and to purchase organically-grown foods when possible.
Nitrites, chlorine, flourides, inorganic minerals and many other harmful substances found in city, spring, well and other nondistilled waters are all antivitamins. Therefore, only distilled water should be drunk.
Antivitamins found in polluted air, especially city air, are carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, lead, ozone, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. Vitamin A and vitamin C are both depleted when the body is exposed to air containing these pollutants, as is vitamin E. Arsenic dust, found on commercially-grown produce, is an antagonist of the B vitamin PABA (para-aminobenzoic acid). This vitamin is important for the growth of valuable bacteria in the intestines, for the metabolism of proteins, for manufacture of red blood cells and for healthy skin and hair.
This has been only a partial listing of a few specific vitamin antagonists or antivitamins. In reality, any substance that is not food of our biological adaptation and any living practice that is not in accord with our physiological needs is a vitamin antagonist—in fact, a nutrient antagonist. All substances and practices not normal (physiologically, not in the commonly-used meaning of what is widely practiced) to humans interferes with normal functioning, including the normal use of vitamins in the body.
If you’ve read any popular health books or magazines, you’ve no doubt heard about vitamin antagonists, or anti-vitamins. They are portrayed as “thieves out for the highest stakes: your health and well-being.” They are described as criminals. However, while these descriptions may make for colorful writing, they do not point to the real culprits. Even worse, they point their readers to harmful and ineffective solutions to the problem.
Drugs, medicines, pollutants, stresses, refined sugar and flour, coffee, alcohol, the Pill, etc. are inert, lifeless substances, and they are not anxiously waiting to get into human bodies where they can ravage and plunder and make off with booty. People are the real culprits, the thieves. From the consumer or user to the manufacturer, inventor and promoter, people are the living beings who are responsible for depleting their own vitamin supplies and rendering vitamins consumed nonusable. Humans are responsible for the living practices that so enervate their bodies that assimilation of nutrients is impaired. We are responsible for informing ourselves (and others) of a healthful lifestyle.
Popular health magazines make statements such as the following from Bestways (September 1981): “Drugs are antagonists in many ways. They destroy nutrients, cause them to be used up quickly, keep them from being absorbed, rush them through the system before they can do the most good, and sometimes replace them chemically.”
What they’re saying is that drugs interfere with normal body functioning. Drugs are vitamin antagonists, however, only if humans consume them. We humans do not have to consume any drugs. Therefore, we need not deplete our vitamin stores, etc. We need only avoid drugs and eat wholesome foods in appropriate amounts. Pollutants that are unavoidable (such as soil and air pollutants) cannot deplete our vitamin stores and intake to the extent that we need concern ourselves about deficiencies or consider using vitamin supplements.
The best way (and the only healthy way) to deal with the problem of vitamin antagonists is to stay away from the physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, etc. that prescribe and sell drugs and medications. We should also do the best we can to live in a healthful environment and lead a stress-free lifestyle. The idea that we can counteract the harmful effects of drugs and other stresses with the use of vitamin and/or mineral supplements is entirely erroneous. A proper diet and lifestyle will simultaneously supply the nutrients we need and include no vitamin antagonists or anti-vitamins. Health results from healthful living—that’s a fact to keep in mind at all times!
Healthy people require less of all nutrients because their bodies make more efficient use of them. Not only that, but healthy people eat wholesome foods that furnish more nutrients. Thus, their needs are lower and their supplies are simultaneously higher than that of unhealthy people.
Certain societies of the world, notably some West Indian and Carib tribes of the world, have been thriving on 15 to 20 grams of daily protein intake, far less than is considered necessary. These people live on foods such as cassava, manioc and other starchy roots that contain only .2 to .3 percent protein. Just as they thrive on an “abnormally” low protein intake, they also thrive on a vitamin intake that would quickly result in deficiencies in our stressful and self-poisoned people.
For the reasons that other societies can thrive on diets that would make ours deficient, there are those within our society who so live as to parallel the healthful groups in other lands. Thus, a raw food fruitarian within our society that has a highly efficient body requires but a fraction of the vitamins as his counterpart who eats meats; dairy and poultry products; cooked foods; condiments and seasonings; refined, processed and preserved foods, and who may have one or several drug habits such as tobacco, alcohol, coffee, medications, etc.
The seeming unfairness of this situation is that, though raw food fruitarians eat less than half as much as their perverted cousins, their intake of usable vitamins, minerals and other nutrients are usually much greater though their needs are much lower.
The healthier our lifestyles, the less vitamins we need in the face of greater supply, whereas the less wholesome our lifestyles, the greater our needs in the face of lowered supply and lowered ability to utilize.
Vigorous exercise activity on a regular basis slightly increases our need for vitamins on the one hand but, on the other, so fine-tunes our system that they vastly increase their efficiency in uptake, assimilation and usage. With all other life factors properly observed, including a proper diet of mostly fruits with some vegetables, nuts and seeds, body toxicity is very low. All other needs are correspondingly lower due to the higher efficiency of the organism.
Being emotionally balanced is normal. Abnormal emotional conditions vitiate and drain our resources and heighten our need for vitamins while at the same time impairing our ability to utilize them. Thus can be seen the enormous benefit of establishing self-mastery and a becalming philosophical outlook.
A proper diet of mostly ripe raw fruits and some raw vegetables with raw nuts and seeds not only furnishes us with problem-free eating, but it also heightens body efficiency, thus lowering need. On the other hand, the nutrient values obtained from this proper diet are greater by far than conventional diets, even in the face of intake amounting to less than half that of conventional feeders.
Vitamin utilization is more efficient if intake is of those foods to which we are biologically adapted. Our digestive expenditures are lowered and body energy needs are likewise lowered. More nerve and chemical energy are available for the regular pursuits of life. Less sleep is required to restore “our fund of nerve energy in view of decreased need and increased efficiency of generation when faculties are operating better.
Vitamin intake is greater on a proper diet, while vitamin need decreases on several accounts. The big bonus is increased body efficiency that makes better use of nutrients.
You can read much in conventional health magazines about smokers requiring more vitamin C, about alcoholics requiring more B-Complex vitamins and so on. Peddlers of vitamins highlight greater need for vitamins by those on drugs, both habitual and medical, in order to induce drug users to purchase vitamin supplements. However, vitamin utilization is the least of the ill effects of drug habits, whether they be alcohol, tobacco, coffee, condiments and seasonings, medicinal, recreational or internally created drugs from the toxicity of retained metabolic wastes.
There would be no argument against drugs if the destruction of vitamins within the body were their only evil because our natural foods would more than compensate for the loss. But vitamin depletion is only one of the minor effects of drugs. They are far more destructive to the organism itself!
Drugs are a three-edged sword! For practical purposes we must classify sugar, white flour, processed and refined foods, cooked foods, meats and animal products, coffee, condiments and seasonings, tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, herbs, inorganic minerals, prescribed and over-the-counter drugs, synthetic foods and supplements, etc. as drugs.
The first bad effect of so-called “foods” that have drug effects is less vitamin intake, even if they are “enriched.” The second effect is that the body requires extra vitamins in order to deal with the toxicity. Thirdly, and even worse, these substances impair our ability to utilize vitamins.
Some by-products of drug use are loss of sex potency; interference with vitamin utilization; loss of vital senses such as taste, smell, eyesight, hearing and touch; increasing ugliness of both appearance and disposition; and loss of mental faculties.
Stress might be likened, in its effects upon the body and its fund of nerve energy, as crossing the wires to a battery. The battery shorts out and is quickly drained. Stress thusly requires more body resources on one hand, while impairing body functions on the other hand. When the body is bereft of a normal fund of nerve energy and other faculties, there is a great increase in uneliminated body wastes. Toxemia arises and problems proliferate.
Emotional upsets are perhaps the most stressful experiences of all. Cultivating self-mastery and a philosophical attitude lowers our liability in the face of stress.
Toxins within the body have drug effects. They interfere with vitamin uptake and usage while simultaneously increasing need for vitamins in order to cope. Further, they impair the faculties involved with vitamin assimilation and usage.
A theme that runs through the observations of vitamin antagonists can be expressed as principles that are highly instructive:
Thus, again, we can see demonstrated that bad practices proliferate bad results.
10.2. The Minerals In The Body
10.3. Organic And Inorganic Minerals
“We have become so accustomed to the practice of dividing foodstuffs into their various nutritive factors—proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, vitamins, etc.— that we often miss the importance of the whole food.”
—Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
As we begin our lesson on minerals, it is important to keep Dr. Shelton’s observation in mind. Phrases like “iron deficiency” and “calcium-rich foods” are all too common in the study of minerals, and they represent a fragmented view of our diet and nutritional well-being.
A mineral deficiency rarely exists by itself in a vacuum, nor can a single food be recommended exclusively because of a particular mineral content. The study of minerals by themselves necessarily leads to a fragmented view of nutrition, and the student should not be quick to attribute conditions in the body solely to a mineral deficiency, nor should he choose certain foods entirely because of their mineral content.
Instead, it is more important to realize that minerals have an interdependence between many other various elements of food and with the complex actions of the organism itself. Minerals are not isolated food factors, but parts of the nutritional whole.
The broadest definition of a mineral is that it is something that is “neither vegetable nor animal.” It has also been defined as a “solid homogeneous crystalline chemical element or compound” such as iron, copper, carbon, aluminium and so forth. For this lesson, we define a mineral as follows: A naturally occurring inorganic element in the soil which is transformed into an organic compound for use and assimilation by the human body.
Notice that there are two parts to the definition: 1) We are concerned only with those minerals that are directly usable by the human organism and that are vital to the healthy functioning of the body. 2) We make a very important distinction between the inorganic form of the mineral as it occurs in the soil and the organic form of the mineral as it is used by the human body. This difference between organic and inorganic mineral forms is the crucial point in understanding mineral nutrition, and is discussed at length later in this lesson.
We still do not know all the minerals that are present and utilized within the body. We do, however, recognize twenty-eight minerals that have definite uses in the body, and twelve other minerals whose uses are not fully understood.
The following thirteen minerals are found in appreciable quantities within the body and are listed in the order of their total percentages of the body’s composition:
Mineral | Percentage of total body weight |
Calcium | 2.00% |
Phosphorus | 1.00% |
Potassium | 0.40% |
Sulfur | 0.25% |
Chlorine | 0.25% |
Sodium | 0.25% |
Fluorine | 0.20% |
Magnesium | 0.05% |
Iron | 0.008% |
Manganese | 0.003% |
Silicon | 0.002% |
Copper | 0.00015% |
Iodine | 0.00004% |
The other following minerals are sometimes referred to as “trace minerals” because of the minute amounts present in the body:
Trace Minerals
|
||
Zinc | Titanium | Argon |
Cobalt | Tin | Beryllium |
Molybdenum | Silver | Boron |
Aluminium | Rubidium | Cerium |
Chromium | Nickel | Helium |
Lead | Mercury | Lanthanum |
Neodymium | Neon | Scandium |
Selenium | Strontium | Vanadium |
Of the twenty-eight recognized minerals, recommended dietary allowances have been determined for only six: Calcium, phosphorous, iodine, iron, zinc and magnesium. The rest of the minerals are also important to the functioning of the body, but the exact body needs are too indeterminate to list.
We will discuss all the major minerals and some of the trace minerals as to their uses in the body, the recommended daily allowance (if known), the deficiencies caused by their absence and the Food Sources of these minerals.
This is the traditional approach to studying minerals and is a basis for understanding some of the other facts in this lesson. However, this approach does have some shortcomings, and we should note them.
First, their use in the body: No mineral is used in isolation within the body. All minerals interact with other minerals, vitamins, enzymes and so on. It is overly simplistic to say that “iron builds rich blood” or “calcium makes strong bones.” For instance, copper must also be present for the iron to be used in blood-building. Likewise, a certain amount of phosphorus must also be present along with the calcium to build bones. However, it is also a fact that certain minerals are utilized by the body as nutrients for specific organs moreso than other organs. Also, the body uses certain minerals in performing certain body functions. Nonetheless, in studying an individual mineral, keep in mind that it is only a part of a whole complex process.
Next, the effect of a mineral deficiency: A mineral deficiency rarely exists in a vacuum and is seldom the only cause for a condition exhibited by the body. Often, a mineral deficiency occurs even when there is an abundance of the needed mineral in the diet, but the body cannot digest nor assimilate the mineral. Mineral deficiencies are discussed at length later in this lesson.
The recommended allowance of a mineral: This can be almost meaningless. Mineral requirements depend upon individual constitution, climate, type of work, personality, age, sex, body weight, level of health and hundreds of other factors. There can never be one recommended allowance of a mineral that applies to everyone. All given Recommended Allowances may vary considerably and they should not be considered as “law.”
Finally, Food Sources of a mineral: Minerals are abundantly supplied in all foods natural to man’s diet (fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts and sprouts). There are certain mineral-rich foods such as calf liver, clams, milk, etc. that are not suitable for the human organism, and any mineral content they may have is negated by the harmful effects they have on the body. Only suitable foods for man are listed in this lesson as sources of a particular mineral. Note also that the mineral contents of foods are calculated upon a fixed size portion (e.g., 100 grams, 4 ounces, etc.). This type of calculation unfairly favors the concentrated foods such as dried fruits, seaweed, nuts, seeds, etc. When choosing such foods keep in mind that ounce for ounce, a person normally eats a larger amount of the less-concentrated foods.
Use in the Body: Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the body. Almost 99% of the body’s calcium is in the skeletal structure and the teeth. Calcium is essential for the clotting of blood, the action of certain enzymes and the control of the passage of fluids through the cell walls. It is also essential to normal heart action and muscle contraction.
Effect of deficiency: Calcium deficiency results in retarded bone and tooth development and a fragile skeletal structure. Nervous irritability and muscle sensitivity are, also signs of calcium deficiency. Since calcium is needed for bone and tooth growth, children especially need an adequate calcium intake.
Recommended Allowances: The National Academy of Sciences has made the following recommendations for daily calcium intake:
Men and Women | 800 milligrams |
Children | 800 milligrams |
Teenagers | 1200 milligrams |
Infants | 500 milligrams |
Pregnant and Nursing Mothers | 1200 milligrams |
Food Sources: The following foods are high in calcium content:
Sesame seeds | Oranges |
Green vegetable leaves | Strawberries |
Almonds | Papayas |
Figs | Most nuts |
Sunflower seeds | Most seeds |
Broccoli | Most green vegetables |
Apricots | Most fruits |
Dates |
Use in the Body: Phosphorus occurs in the protoplasm and nucleus of every cell. It is used in more functions than any other mineral in the body. Phosphorus is necessary to metabolize fats, carbohydrates and proteins. It is used with calcium in the building of bones and teeth. The building of nerve tissue and brain cells requires phosphorus. Like calcium, the largest amount of phosphorus is found in the bones.
Effect of deficiency: A deficiency of phosphorus affects the skeletal structure similarly to a calcium deficiency. A lack of this mineral may also result in mental fatigue and a feeling of depression resulting from exhausted nerve energy.
Recommended Allowances: The following are the official Recommended Allowances for daily phosphorus intake (revised 1974):
Infants | 400 milligrams |
Children | 800 milligrams |
Teenagers | 1200 milligrams |
Adults | 800 milligrams |
Pregnant and Nursing Mothers | 1200 milligrams |
Food Sources: All seeds and nuts are excellent sources of phosphorus. In addition, the following foods contain a high percentage of phosphorus:
Coconuts | Apples |
Peaches | Pears |
Apricots | Avocados |
Broccoli | Green vegetable leaves |
Figs | Carrots |
Dates | Mung bean sprouts |
Cabbage | Beets |
Squash | Persimmons |
Use in the Body: Potassium is a factor in tissue elasticity, healing injuries in the body, liver functioning, normal bowel activity and regular heart rhythm. It is used in regulation of nerve and muscle action and is needed for intercellular fluid balance.
Effect of deficiency: A lack of potassium often results in liver ailments, pimpling of the skin and the slow healing of sores. Weak muscular control and incomplete digestion also accompany a potassium deficiency.
Recommended Allowances: No official recommendations exist for potassium, but unofficial sources estimate the body’s daily potassium needs at about 3000 milligrams for adults and 1500 milligrams for children.
Food Sources: Potassium is abundantly supplied in a proper diet, and non-meat eaters should never have a problem in obtaining sufficient potassium. The following foods are especially rich in potassium:
Apricots | Green vegetable leaves |
Sunflower seeds | Tomatoes |
Peaches | Bananas |
Almonds | Carrots |
Raisins | Beets |
Dates | Nectarines |
Figs | Cabbage |
Avocados | Lettuce |
Pecans | Almost all fresh fruits |
Papayas | Almost all fresh vegetables |
Melons |
Use in the Body: Sulfur is found in the hair, nails, cartilage and blood. It is essential in digestion and elimination, bile secretion, and the purification and toning of the system.
Effect of deficiency: The lack of sulfur may result in inhibition of functioning. It also results in restricted growth, eczema and poor growth of the nails and hair.
Recommendes Allowances: No official recommendations are made for sulfur. Almost all diets contain adequate amounts of this mineral.
Food Sources: The following foods are rich in sulfur:
All cabbage family members | Cucumbers |
Lettuce | Pineapples |
Avocadoes | Peaches |
Tomatoes | Watermelon |
Carrots | Strawberries |
Apples | Oranges |
Use in the Body: Chlorine is required for digestion and elimination. It is needed for normal heart activity and osmotic pressure in the blood and tissues.
Effect of deficiency: A lack of chlorine results in disturbed digestion and in waste retention. Also, a chlorine deficiency may manifest in pyorrhea.
Recommended Allowances: Unofficial estimates place daily chlorine needs at about 500 milligrams.
Food Sources: Sodium chloride (salt) and chlorinated drinking water are not sources of organic chlorine and are poisonous to the body. The following foods are good sources of organic chlorine:
Tomatoes | Coconuts |
Celery | Bananas |
Kale | Pineapples |
Turnips | Raisins |
Lettuce | Mangoes |
Avocados | Strawberries |
Watermelon |
Use in the Body: Sodium is utilized in the formation of digestive juices and in the elimination of carbon dioxide. It is needed in the osmotic pressure, maintenance of water balance and proper nerve function. Sodium is also necessary for the utilization of iron.
Effect of deficiency: A sodium deficiency can result in indigestion, arthritis, rheumatism and in gallbladder and kidney stones. Muscle cramps and nausea also accompany a lack of sodium.
Recommended Allowances: Sodium is usually plentiful in most diets. No official recommendations are made, but unofficial estimates of the body’s daily sodium needs are about 500 milligrams.
Food Sources: Sodium chloride (table salt) is not a source of organic sodium and is poisonous to the body. The following foods are good sources of organic sodium:
Strawberries | Sunflower seeds |
Celery | Broccoli |
Carrots | Melons |
Raisins | Cabbage |
Kale | Lettuce |
Beets | Peaches |
Sesame seeds |
Use in the Body: Flourine is found in the bones, teeth, blood, skin, nails and hair. It is essential to the body’s healing processes.
Effect of deficiency: A lack of flourine in the diet can result in tooth decay, weakened eyesight and spinal curvature.
Recommended Allowances: No recommended, allowances exist for flourine.
Food Sources: Flouridated water is not a source of organic flourine; it is injurious to the health. The following foods contain high amounts of organic flourine:
Almonds | Carrots |
Vegetable greens | Exists in some quantities in all plants |
Use in the Body: Magnesium is found in the blood albumen, bones and teeth. It is employed in carbohydrate metabolism and elimination. Magnesium is necessary for strengthening the nerves and muscles and in conditioning the liver and glands.
Effect of deficiency: A lack of magnesium contributes to nervous conditions and irritability. A poor complexion, heartbeat acceleration, digestive disorders and soft bones may also indicate a magnesium deficiency.
Recommended Allowances: The following reccommendations are made by the National Academy of Sciences:
Infants | 60-70 milligrams |
Children (1-4 years) | 150 milligrams |
Children (4-6 years) | 200 milligrams |
Children (7-10 years) | 250 milligrams |
Males (11-14 years) | 350 milligrams |
Males (15-18 years) | 400 milligrams |
Males (19 older) | 350 milligrams |
All females | 300 milligrams |
Pregnant and Nursing Mothers | 450 milligrams |
Food Sources: The following are good sources of magnesium:
Almonds | Cherries |
Dates | Green vegetable leaves |
Bananas | Beets |
Walnuts | Avocados |
Raisins | Pears |
Raspberries | Broccoli |
Mangoes | Canteloupe |
Use in the Body: Iron is found primarily in the hemoglobin of the body and is closely connected with the quality of blood. About two-thirds of all the body’s iron is in the bloodstream, with the remainder distributed in the marrow of the bone, the liver and the spleen. Iron is also used in the building of bones, brain and muscle and in the carrying of oxygen throughout the body.
Effect of deficiency: The most dramatic sign of an iron deficiency is anemia and paleness of complexion. A lack of sufficient iron also results in limited growth and a low vitality level.
Recommended Allowances: The Official recommended daily allowances for iron (revised 1974) are:
Children (1-3 years) | 15 milligrams |
Children (4-10 years) | 10 milligrams |
Males (11-18) | 18 milligrams |
Males, Adult | 10 milligrams |
Females (11-50 years) | 18 milligrams |
Females (51 and over) | 10 milligrams |
Food Sources: The following are good sources of organic iron:
Sesame seeds | Figs |
Peaches | Green vegetable leaves |
Apricots | Lettuce |
Raisins | Mung bean sprouts |
Walnuts | Broccoli |
Almonds | Berries |
Dates | Cherries |
Use in the Body: Manganese is chiefly found in the liver, kidneys, pancreas, lungs, prostrate gland, adrenals, brain and bones. It is used in the metabolism of carbohydrates, and in strengthening tissue and bone. Manganese, like iodine, is used in thyroxine formation in the thyroid. It also seems to be connected with regulation of the blood sugar level.
Effect of deficiency: It should be noted that the National Academy of Sciences has officially stated that no one has observed a manganese deficiency in humans. In laboratory experiments with animals, an induced manganese deficiency produced restricted growth, glandular disorders and defective reproductive functions.
Recommended Allowances: No official recommendations are made for manganese. Unofficial sources place the body’s daily manganese needs at about 15-25 milligrams for adults and 2-15 milligrams for children.
Food Sources: Manganese is found in significant quantities in the following foods:
Bananas | Leafy vegetables |
Beets | Carrots |
Celery | Squash |
Cucumbers | Nuts |
Use in the Body: Silicon is found in the blood, muscles, skin, nerves, nails, hair, connective tissue and teeth. The pancreas is especially rich in silicon. Silicon is also noted for its use in antiseptic action.
Effect of deficiency: Insufficient silicon in the body may result in baldness or the graying of hair. Skin irritations and rashes may develop easily. Hearing and vision may also be affected, and the teeth may decay.
Recommended Allowances: No official daily allowance has been determined for silicon.
Food Sources: Silicon is often concentrated in the skins and outer layers of vegetables and fruits. The following are good sources of silicon:
Lettuce | Beets |
Strawberries | Carrots |
Cucumbers | Tomatoes |
Sunflower seeds | Cabbage |
Celery | Watermelon |
Cherries | Apples |
Apricots | Bananas |
Figs | Grapes |
Pears |
Use in the Body: Copper is found in the liver, gallbladder, lungs and heart. It is essential primarily for the absorption and metabolism of iron.
Effect of deficiency: A deficiency in copper results in the same effects as an iron deficiency, such as retarded hemoglobin production, general debility, limited growth, etc.
Recommended Allowances: No official recommendations are made for copper allowances. Some sources have estimated about 2 milligrams per day. Very few cases of copper depletion have been observed in humans.
Food Sources: All of the following foods contain a significant amount of copper:
Nuts | Sunflower seeds |
Raisins | Sesame seeds |
Leafy vegetables |
Use in the Body: Iodine is found mainly in the thyroid gland. It is essential for the formation of an organic iodine compound called thyroxine which regulates some of the metabolic functions. Iodine is required in the oxidation of fats and proteins and for circulatory functioning.
Effect of deficiency: An iodine deficiency is partially responsible for goiter (the enlargement of the thyroid gland) and cretinism (a subnormal metabolism). A lack of iodine also leads to sensitivity to toxic accumulations, low physical and mental activity and a susceptibility to nervous disorders.
Recommended Allowances: Daily iodine needs are very small. The following are the Daily Dietary Allowances (revised 1974):
Infants (0-5months) | .035 milligrams |
Infants (5-12 months) | .045 milligrams |
Children (1-3 years) | .060 milligrams |
Children (4-6 years) | .080 milligrams |
Children (7-10 years) | .110 milligrams |
Males (11-14 years) | .130 milligrams |
Males (15-18 years) | .150 milligrams |
Males (19-22 years) | .140 milligrams |
Males (23-50 years) | .130 milligrams |
Males (51 over) | .110 milligrams |
Females (11-18 years) | .115 milligrams |
Females (19-50 years) | .100 milligrams |
Pregnant & nursing mothers | .125-.150 milligrams |
Food Sources: Iodine is found in high amounts in all sea vegetation. The following are also good sources of iodine:
Swiss chard | Kale |
Turnip greens | Strawberries |
Squash | Peaches |
Mustard greens | Lettuce |
Watermelon | Bananas |
Cucumbers | Carrots |
Spinach | Tomatoes |
Pineapples | Grapes |
Use in the Body: Zinc is found in the brain, genital organs, thyroid, liver and kidneys. It is needed in the healing of wounds and in the transfer of carbon dioxide from the tissue to the lungs. Zinc is also required in the manufacture of insulin and in the regulation of blood sugar.
Effect of deficiency: A lack of zinc may result in mental depression, prostrate troubles and absence of taste. A zinc deficiency may also result in defective intestinal absorption and restricted growth.
Recommended Allowances: The allowances for zinc as recommended by the National Academy of Sciences in 1974 are:
Infants (0-5 months) | 3 milligrams |
Infants (5-12 months) | 5 milligrams |
Children (1-10 years) | 10 milligrams |
Adults | 15 milligrams |
Pregnant and Nursing Mothers | 20-25 milligrams |
Food Sources: Zinc is found in the following foods:
All seeds and nuts, especially pumpkin seeds |
Sprouted wheat |
Most green and yellow vegetables |
The functions and daily allowances of the other minerals in the body have not yet been fully understood. All are important to the health of the human organism, however, and should not be disregarded.
These minerals, often called “trace minerals,” will usually be found in sufficient quantities in diets which contain adequate amounts of the major minerals. Like the major minerals, all requirements of the trace minerals are supplied in a varied diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts.
Most knowledgeable people today recognize that the body must have certain minerals to accomplish its work and preserve its health. However, only a few realize that these minerals must be in their organic state to do us any good at all.
Please understand these facts:
Because inorganic minerals and organic minerals have the same chemical compositions, they were confused by the early nutritionists. The mineral, iron, in the bloodstream has the same chemical composition as the mineral, iron, in a nail—iron is iron, after all. However, these nutritionists incorrectly reasoned that there were no other differences between these two forms of iron. As a consequence, there actually were iron mineral supplements that consisted of surplus powdered nails.
Perhaps you have heard the expression, “mad enough to chew nails.” In this case, mad or unbalanced is certainly the correct word.
These nutritionists made an error in reasoning by assuming that a chemical similarity in minerals also meant there was a nutritive similarity between organic and inorganic minerals. While it is true that the same minerals found in the human body are also found in the soil and water it is wrong to assume that the minerals in the soil are food for man. We are not soil eaters—we are plant eaters.
It is necessary that the minerals in the soil be elaborated into organic compounds by the plant before they can be |assimilated by the body. The various mineral compounds produced by the chemist differ in their structure and in the relative positions of their component molecules than those produced in the plant.
Over sixty years ago a German scientist named Abderhalden conducted a series of experiments comparing how several species absorbed different forms of iron. He found that animals fed with food poor in iron, plus in addition of inorganic iron, were unable in the long run to produce as much hemoglobin as those, receiving a natural iron-sufficient diet.
While the inorganic iron may be absorbed into the body, it is not utilized in the formation of hemoglobin, but remains unused within the tissues. Abderhalden also concluded that any apparent benefit of the inorganic iron resulted from its stimulating effect.
Chemically, it is true that iron in the bloodstream and iron in nails are the same and that calcium in rocks (known as dolomite) is identical to calcium in the bones.
However, it is a grave error to believe that the body can digest and assimilate and utilize powdered nails and crushed rocks.
The idea of administering inorganic minerals as foods and remedies for man started with the German scientist Hensel in the early twentieth century. Later the homeopaths expanded upon his idea and made numerous artificial mineral preparations called cell salts, which are still sold today as popular “cures” for mineral deficiencies. Today mineral supplements exist in many forms and come from many sources. They are all useless.
Mineral supplements are of no benefit to the body because they are: 1) inorganic and 2) fragmented.
Because mineral supplements are inorganic, the body cannot assimilate or use them. In fact, the body must work harder to compensate for the inbalance created by ingesting these supplements. The body accelerates its eliminative activities and works hard to expel these foreign substances. This stimulation is often mistaken for the “beneficial action” of the supplement. Actually, the supplements are not beneficial—they are harmful—and they are inanimate and therefore incapable of acting (except chemically).
As health consumers have grown more aware of the differences between organic and inorganic minerals, so have producers of these supplements. Consequently, there are now mineral supplements which are advertised as coming from “organic” sources. These are equally useless because they exist in a fragmented state, extracted from the sources within which they naturally occur.
Minerals do not work in isolation. When they are extracted from their natural sources, the other co-existing vitamins, minerals, enzymes, etc., are not also extracted. Even if they were, the process of laboratory extraction destroys any vital benefits that may have been associated with the minerals.
Minerals must be consumed in their natural, unfragmented and organic state to be of any use to the body. The best mineral supplements are those naturally occurring in mineral-rich foods in their unprocessed state—fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts.
Like mineral supplements, mineral waters cannot provide any beneficial minerals to the body. Any minerals contained in such waters are inorganic and must be expelled by the body. Should an excess of these inorganic minerals be consumed in the water, the body cannot rid itself of them fast enough and they are deposited within the body.
These inorganic mineral deposits lead to kidney and gallstone formation, hardening of the arteries, arthritis, heart trouble, ossification of the brain and other serious diseases. The unexpelled mineral matter from mineral-containing waters combines with cholesterol to form plaques. These plaques lead to cardiovascular problems, and they join with uric acid to cause arthritic and rheumatic complaints.
The body cells can use only pure (distilled) water—such as that found in fruits and plants—and they reject all inorganic minerals consumed in mineral-laden waters.
When mineralized waters are drunk, a condition known as leukocytosis occurs within the body in thirty minutes to three hours after drinking. Leukocytosis is the proliferation of white blood cells which are the body’s first line of defense against foreign and harmful body substances—in this case, the inorganic minerals in the water.
Mineral waters cannot furnish the body with any needed elements other than the water itself. The remaining inorganic minerals are either eliminated through the skin, kidneys, etc., or they are deposited within the body where they may cause eventual harm.
Sea water is our “richest” mineral water, yet it is poisonous. Similarly, all other mineralized waters are simply dirty waters, contaminated with inorganic matter which is pathogenic to the body.
Even plants, when in their embryonic state, cannot use inorganic minerals in the soil, but instead feed on the organic compounds contained within its seed. Not until its roots and leave? are grown can a plant utilize the inorganic minerals of the soil.
The changing of inorganic matter into organic matter takes place principally in the green leaves of the plant by means of photosynthesis. Only by the presence of chlorophyll is the plant able to utilize the inorganic carbon molecule and convert it with hydrogen and oxygen into the organic combinations of starch and sugar. And, ultimately, the plant combines nitrogen and other mineral elements from the soil into more complex organic combinations. Only the chlorophyll-bearing plants have the ability to assimilate iron, calcium and other minerals from the soil and to use the resulting combinations to construct nucleo-proteins.
Vital changes occur in all minerals as they pass into the structure of plants. These changes cannot be isolated by normal chemical laboratory processes which destroy living plant tissues to analyze them. Such crude methods of studying the role of organic minerals in an organism is somewhat akin to the old medical practice of dissecting cadavers to look for evidence of the human soul.
So far we have discussed the differences between organic and inorganic minerals and how inorganic minerals cannot be used by the body. Such inorganic mineral forms as supplements and mineral waters are therefore useless in correcting mineral deficiencies. We might now ask what causes a mineral deficiency in the first place.
A mineral deficiency only occurs for two reasons: 1) improper diet and 2) inability of the organism to assimilate and use the mineral.
An improper diet can be defined as the habitual consumption of foods that are incompatible with our biological heritage, or the eating of usually wholesome foods in a processed state.
For example, we are not biologically adapted to meat-eating because our digestive juices are not strong enough to digest the bones and cartilage of the animal along with its flesh. Consequently, meat-eating humans only get the flesh of the animal and neglect the bones, blood and cartilage—unlike naturally carnivorous animals. It is the bones, blood, cartilage, etc. that contain many of the minerals that are needed by carnivorous animals. Humans who eat only the flesh of animals thus receive a diet very poor in sodium, calcium, sulfur, magnesium and iron.
This is not an argument for eating animals in their whole state—blood, bones, and all—but a serious question of the value of flesh-eating as practiced by humans.
Like meat, grains are also very poor in sodium. Because of these sodium deficiencies, people salt grains and meats to make them more palatable. They add an inorganic chemical, sodium chloride (salt), in an effort to correct the inherent sodium deficiency within these unnatural foods. Of course, the body cannot use sodium in this inorganic form, and it must try to eliminate it. Grains, then, being minerally unbalanced, are not a good food for the human diet.
Foods that are usually regarded as wholesome and mineral-rich can also be rendered minerally unbalanced by processing them. For example, the potato, while not an optimum food, is an acceptable addition to the diet in its whole state. It, too, is somewhat sodium deficient, but its skin is a storehouse of many other minerals. When peeled, boiled or fried, the potato loses much of its mineral content and becomes an unfit food.
A truly mineral-rich diet, then, should consist of food best suited and natural to the human diet which are consumed as they are found in nature with a minimum of processing or preparation.
Although an improper diet is usually viewed as the main cause of a mineral deficiency, it is also important to realize that a mineral deficiency can occur even when there is an excess of minerals in the diet. Although the minerals may be present, the body, for some reason or other, is unable to digest and assimilate them. In this case, a metabolic deficiency occurs.
For example, in cases of pernicious anemia, which is often viewed as a serious iron deficiency, there is often an excessive amount of iron-containing pigment in all the organs. Post-mortem diagnosis of several anemic patients showed that there was enough iron stored in the spleen to correct the deficiency in the body. The mineral was present, it just was not being metabolized.
Also, in cases with fasting anemic patients, it has been discovered that their number of red blood cells improve and iron is utilized more efficiently while on a fast. It is interesting to note that this occurs when the patient is not receiving any iron at all in his diet. The fasting condition enables the patients to metabolize the iron already stored within their system.
Similarly, in cases of patients with rickets, a condition often associated with a calcium deficiency, improvements were noted in their conditions after they had fasted for a length of time. They were allowed exposure to sunshine in. sufficient amounts to develop Vitamin D within their bodies. The presence of Vitamin D then allowed them to use the calcium within the body more effectively. These patients were suffering more from a “sunshine deficiency” than from lack of a certain mineral.
Many factors may cause an individual to be unable to assimilate and use the minerals present in his diet. Personal habits, working environment, state of mind, manner of cooking, overworked emotions, lack of sleep, overeating, worry, grief and so on are all causes of impairment of the metabolic process.
To allow the body to assimilate and use the minerals in the diet, the individual may need to correct his habits of living. He may need a physical or mental rest or even a complete physiological rest which can only happen while fasting.
One last cause of a mineral deficiency should be noted—not because it is a common cause, but because it may be an important consideration for those people who are attempting to grow all their food for self-sufficiency. That cause is: The exclusive consumption of foods which are grown on minerally poor soils.
If the soil itself is minerally deficient, it will be difficult to obtain the minerals we need from the plants grown on that soil. The mineral content of soils in certain locales may be deficient in one or two important minerals. As a result, there can be a wide range of mineral contents in the same variety of food, depending upon the soil in which it was grown. Consider, for example, the variations in these minerals as found in grapes grown in different soils:
Percent ot total Mineral Matter Grapes Grown on different Soils |
|
Sodium | From 0.29 to 10.54 percent |
Calcium | From 1.70 to 22.60 percent |
Iron | From 0.05 to 1.68 percent |
In this one example you can see how the mineral content of a food can vary up to 35 times, depending upon the soil in which it is grown.
Proper mineral nutrition begins with proper agriculture, and the commercial fertilizing methods of adding chemical nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid ignore the many other mineral elements required to grow healthy plants.
People who eat fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds grown n a wide variety of soils rarely have to worry about developing a mineral deficiency because of a single soil deficiency. Those people who do grow and eat all their foods from a single soil source should make compost to insure that their soil contains all the essential minerals needed for good health.
All mineral needs may be supplied to the body by eating a varied diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts as they are found in their natural unprocessed state.
Before these minerals can be efficiently used, it may be necessary to give the body a complete physiological rest through fasting. A fast will enable the body to increase its metabolic powers.
Given that we lead our lives in a healthy manner, free from undue emotional and mental stress, we should have no trouble at all satisfying all our mineral and other nutritive needs from a simple Hygienic diet.
The efficiency of a Hygienic diet in supplying all of our mineral needs can best be illustrated by analyzing the mineral contents of two typical daily menus. These menus were taken at random from Herbert Shelton’s book Superior Nutrition, and the reader is referred to this source for more examples of the Hygienic dietary.
The first menu is a summer menu and the second is a fall-winter menu. The amounts of each food below were chosen to be the similar amounts an adult woman or man might eat. For increased mineral or nutritive content, the amounts of food eaten could also be increased in accordance with environment, type of work done, physical constitution, etc. All mineral content estimates were made on the conservative side.
SUMMER MENU
Meal | Food |
Breakfast | Watermelon |
Lunch | Bibb lettuce |
Yellow squash | |
Sunflower seeds | |
Dinner | Cherries |
Nectarines | |
Bananas |
MINERAL CONTENT OF FIVE ESSENTIAL MINERALS
CALCIUM | 400 milligrams |
IRON | 18.2 milligrams |
MAGNESIUM | 16 milligrams |
PHOSPHOROUS | 1150 milligrams |
IODINE | .245 milligrams |
FALL/WINTER MENU
Meal | Food |
Breakfast | Oranges |
Grapefruit | |
Lunch | Lettuce |
Asparagus | |
Chard | |
Almonds | |
Dinner | Persimmons |
Apples | |
Grapes |
MINERAL CONTENT OF FIVE ESSENTIAL MINERALS
CALCIUM | 600 milligrams |
IRON | 18.9 milligrams |
MAGNESIUM | 458 milligrams |
PHOSPHOROUS | 800 milligrams |
IODINE | .235 milligrams |
Looking over the mineral contents of these two daily menus, we discover that they usually supply anywhere from 100 to 180 percent of the officially recommended allowances, except for calcium, which totals 70 - 90% of our daily requirements.
It should be noted that calcium needs on a vegetarian diet (such as this one) are significantly less than the calcium requirements for a carnivorous diet, upon which the official recommendations were based. Consumption of flesh causes the body to excrete calcium to neutralize the toxins within the meat and the uric acid formed. Calcium needs are less on a vegetarian diet.
By adhering to a diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts, a person need never worry about obtaining sufficient minerals in the diet. In fact, this is the most minerally-rich and efficiently utilized diet for humans.
You said that even mineral supplements from organic sources are fragmented and therefore not wholesome. Isn’t there sometimes a need for a megadose of a particular nutrient when there is a severe deficiency?
First, remember that a deficiency of an individual mineral rarely exists in isolation. If a person, for instance, has a “calcium deficiency,” it may be because there is not enough phosphorous in the diet which is used by the body together with calcium, or a Vitamin D deficiency may be responsible for the exhibited calcium deficiency. By supplying a large amount of a specific mineral, you ignore the other accompanying needs of the body.
Finally, along with this idea is the concept of the “law of minimum.” This law states that the body is able to use a certain nutrient only to the extent that other necessary nutrients are available. If, for example, you had only enough copper in the body to aid in assimilation of 10 milligrams of iron, taking 30 extra milligrams of iron would do the body no good. Nature provides the minerals and other nutrients we need in a perfectly balanced combination within foods. When we introduce large amounts of minerals, vitamins, etc. in a fragmented form, we throw the body out of balance.
But I’ve taken dolomite for years and no longer suffer from the signs of calcium deficiency I had before. Why is that?
When mineral supplements, etc. are added to the diet, it usually is a sign that an individual has become aware of problems within the body. Consequently, along with the taking of supplements, a person often improves his diet, his exercise program or whatever. These changes are what improve a condition, not the supplements.
Supplements and pills of all forms often have a placebo effect upon the individual. That is, you believe you are getting better by taking an external agent—a supplement. Dolomite’s chief effect is to cause the formation of stones in the body from the inorganic calcium it contains.
If we get all the calcium we need from fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts, why does the National Dairy Council say we need milk and milk products? Other health organizations say the same thing.
Milk is such an inappropriate food for humans that some reason has to be given for drinking it. Since calcium is its most abundant mineral, the National Dairy Council has based its campaign on this fact. First, the calcium in dairy products, and especially in pasteurized products, is not completely assimilable by the body. The calcium in chocolate-flavored milk quickly forms stones of calcium oxalate within the kidneys. Cows’ milk cannot even be digested by over 80% of the world’s population because they lack the necessary enzyme. Within the milk itself are so many other harmful items (casein—used in glue making, artificial hormones to induce lactation, etc.) that any value obtained from the calcium is completely negated.
Almost the entire health community advocates the use of food supplements, including minerals, because they realize that most people will not eat the strict diet you advocate. How can people who don V eat the most healthful diet still get the minerals they need?
I believe that even people on a typical “junk food” diet can be convinced to eat one or two pieces of fruit a day or a small raw salad or a handful of raisins. There are more usable minerals in a single apple than in a whole bottle of mineral supplements. You simply cannot get the minerals you need from a bottle or a drugstore. Only the diet can supply needed minerals. If a person is unwilling to adopt a healthy diet, then at least let him eat a small amount of “real” food each day. The body will work hard to make do with any minerals in their natural food form, no matter how small the amount.
It seems quite clear that the vital importance of the organic salts of foods was established by men who were outside the regular folds. The older physiologists and physiological chemists gave no attention to them. In the tables of food analysis they were regulated to the “ash” column and ignored.
At the present day their importance is everywhere recognized. It is no longer thought that only the “nutritive values”—proteins, carbohydrates, fats—are important.
Animals fed on foods deprived of their salts (minerals) soon die. In the same manner, they die if, to these demineralized foods, are added inorganic salts in the same quantities and proportions as are found in the ashes of milk. The salts must come to the body in the organic form. These inorganic salts are not used except in the presence of vitamins.
Berg has pointed out that there does not exist one single complete analysis, either of the human organism or its excretions or of our foodstuffs. Not everything is known about the function of minerals in the body and of some of them almost nothing is known. Some of them, such as zinc and nickel, apparently perform functions similar to those of vitamins. Prof. E. V. McCollum showed that animals deprived of manganese lose the maternal instinct, refuse to suckle their young, do not build a nest for them, and even eat their young. Their mammary glands do not develop properly and they are unable to secrete proper milk for their young. Here are effects commonly attributed to vitamin deficiency.
This “ash” enters into the composition of every fluid and tissue in the plant and animal body and without even one of these minerals, life could not go on. They are of the utmost importance. They serve a number of purposes. They form an essential part of every tissue in the body and predominate in the harder structures such as bones, teeth, hair, nails, etc. The bones consist largely of calcium phosphate. They are the chief factors in maintaining the normal alkalinity of the blood as well as its normal specific gravity. They are also abundant in the body’s secretions, and alack of them in the diet produces a lack of secretions. They are also used as detoxifying agents, by being combined with the acid waste from the cells. The wastes are thus neutralized and prepared for elimination. Their presence in the food eaten also aids in preventing it from decomposing. Acidosis produced by the fermentation of proteins and carbohydrates often comes because the mineral salts have been taken from the food, thus favoring fermentation.
In a simplified sense we may consider the blood and lymph as liquids in which solids are held in solution—much as salt is dissolved in water. The cells, which are bathed at all times in lymph, are also semi-fluid with dissolved matter in them. If the lymph outside the cells contains much dissolved solid, as compared to that within the cells, the cells shrink in size. If there is more dissolved solid within the cell than without, the cell expands and sometimes bursts. In either case the result is pathological.
If the amount of dissolved solids within and without the cell are equal, so that internal and external pressure are equalized, the cell remains normal. It falls very largely to the minerals of the food to maintain this state of osmotic equilibrium.
The waste formed in the body, due to its normal activities, is acid in reaction. The greater part of the work of neutralizing these acids is done by the mineral elements—the “ash.”
These minerals enter into the composition of the secretions of the body. The hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice, for example, contains chlorine. Clotting of the blood does not take place without the aid of calcium or lime.
The mineral matters in food undergo no change in the process of digestion, prior to absorption, as do proteins, fats and carbohydrates. They are separated from these other elements in the process of digestion and pass directly into the blood.
If our foods do not contain enough of the right kinds of mineral salts we simply starve to death. It does not matter how much “good nourishing food,” as this is commonly understood, that we consume, if these salts are not present in sufficient quantities we suffer from slow starvation, with glandular imbalance or disfunction, more disease and other evidences of decay. McCarrison showed, definitely, that foods and combinations of foods that are inadequate and unsatisfactory in feeding animals are equally as inadequate and unsatisfactory in feeding man.
Life and health are so directly related to these salts, of which little enough is known, that we can never have satisfactory health without an adequate supply of them. We may be sure that each salt has its own separate function to serve, while certain combinations of them have long been known to serve vital services in the body.
No drug salts can be made to take the place of those found in food. As Dr. William H. Hay, says: Nature provides all her chemicals for restoration of the body in the form of colloids, organic forms, and man has for a long time sought to imitate her in this, but he has not been so very successful that we are now able to insure the recouping of the mineral losses of the body by any artificial means, and must still depend on nature’s colloids as found in plant and fruit.” Well or sick, no compound of the chemist, druggist or “biochemist” can recoup your mineral losses.
11.6. The Use Of Fats In The Optimum Diet
Article #1: A Natural Diet And Sunlight Could Save Your Life By Dr. Zane R. Kime, M.D.
Fat makes up a larger caloric portion of the American diet than any other foodstuff. The average American’s food intake is 40% fat. He eats animal foods rich in fat; he tosses his salads in fat; and he spreads his bread with fat. When he eats out, he patronizes fast food restaurants that deep-fry and grill-fry most of their food in fat.
He lives off the “fat of the land” and “high on the hog,” and he suffers from some of the most serious health problems in the world. His arteries become clogged with cholesterol, his breathing becomes short and he dies in what should be his prime years.
Fat is not the only culprit in the American diet, and indeed fat is not “bad,” just as proteins and carbohydrates are neither good nor bad. Fat is needed in the diet. It is present in every food we eat—even cucumbers, watermelons and apples have fat.
It is the particular sources from which people get their fat and the way in which fat is utilized in the diet that is “bad,” or at least unhealthy.
What you will learn in this lesson is what fats are, how the body uses them, how they are digested and how they should be obtained in the diet. This is the type of understanding we need to evaluate intelligently the role of fats in the human diet.
Fats, or hydrocarbons, are one of three food categories, the other two being proteins and carbohydrates.
Fats are composed of the same three elements as carbohydrates—carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. However, they are much poorer in oxygen and richer in carbon and hydrogen than are carbohydrates. Because of this higher carbon and hydrogen content, fats have a greater heat or energy equivalent than carbohydrates.
The fats found in plants are manufactured from water and carbon dioxide with the aid of chlorophyll, much in the same manner that the carbohydrates in a plant are produced. The fats found in humans and animals come from two sources: 1) from the fats in the diet and 2) from the metabolism of excess carbohydrates into fat. The greatest amount of fat in the body usually comes from carbohydrate metabolism.
As far as the human digestive process is concerned, fats are composed of two components: 1) glycerin (or glycerol) and 2) fatty acids.
Glycerin is the energy source of fats and is metabolized much in the same manner as are the carbohydrates. The glycerin is broken down into sugars which may be used by the body for fuel.
The fatty acids are often spoken of as chains of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen atoms. Simplistically speaking, the fatty acids are to fat what the amino acids are to protein. These chains of fatty acids have links within them where additional hydrogen, oxygen or carbon atoms may be attached to the chain.
If hydrogen is attached to these links, the fat becomes it more solid. This is called hydrogenated fat.
All the solid vegetable fats, such as Crisco, margarines, etc., are hydrogenated. If oxygen is attached to one of, these fatty acid links, the fat becomes rancid. Thus, fats left exposed to the air begin to oxidize and become rancid rapidly.
Fat that is unsaturated is composed of fatty acids in which one or more of the carbon atoms in the chain do not have all of their accompanying hydrogen atoms. In other words, unsaturated fatty acids have open available links in their chains.
These open links in fatty acid chains are important. The body is able to combine various nutrients with the fatty acid chains through these open links. This combination of nutrients and fatty acids allows both of them to be transported through the body where they can be used in building cell structure.
Animal fats contain very little unsaturated fats. The chief sources of unsaturated fatty acids are nuts and seeds. Almost all vegetable fats in their natural state have a high proportion of unsaturated fatty acids.
The term polyunsaturated means that there is a large number of fatty acids which have two or more open links in their chains. These vegetable polyunsaturated fats are used in making margarine and shortening. This is done by the process of hydrogenation.
Hydrogenation causes liquid fats to become solidified by introducing hydrogen atoms into the open links of the fatty acid chains. If a fat becomes completely hydrogenated, it is rock-hard. The process is controlled, however, so that varying consistencies of hydrogenated fats can be produced.
The hydrogenation process consists of heating the fats and oils to a temperature of 212 to 400 degrees. Hydrogen is then mixed in, along with Some catalytic agents, such as nickel or platinum. The fatty acids then take on the hydrogen atoms and begin to solidify.
The heating of the oils during this process destroys any vitamins that might be present. The addition of the hydrogen atoms fills the open links in the fatty acid chains and thus prevents nutrients from binding with the acids. As a result, hydrogenated fats can supply only empty calories and no nutritive value.
Since hydrogenated fats cannot become rancid (nor can they support life), they are manufactured extensively. Margarine, cooking fats, processed cheeses, lard and peanut butter are but a few products subjected to hydrogenation.
The saturated fats are found chiefly in animal fats. Saturated fats are solid at room temperature, unlike the liquid unsaturated fats. Saturated fats are found in animal flesh, dairy products, eggs and coconuts. It should be noted that the saturated fats in coconuts have a different chemical structure.
Like hydrogenated fats, the saturated fats cannot enter into a nutrient bonding within the body. Consequently, they cannot be used effectively by the body in cellular composition than the saturated animal fats metabolism. The saturated fats are usually empty calories that contribute to a fat build-up within the body. They serve no useful function.
Accompanying the saturated animal fats is cholesterol, which can be considered a “cousin” to the fat family. Since cholesterol is generally discussed in terms of fats in the diet, this is an appropriate place for its inclusion.
Cholesterol is not a harmful substance as such. The body uses it in all of its tissues. It occurs in the brain, spinal column and skin. Cholesterol is part of the raw materials from which bile salts, sex and adrenal hormones and vitamin D are made. It combines with proteins to enable fats to be carried to the cells.
The liver produces all the cholesterol the body needs for its functions. In an average adult, about 3,000 milligrams of cholesterol are produced each day, regardless if cholesterol is present in the foods eaten or not.
When additional cholesterol enters the body through diet, an excess occurs. Typically, a person consuming animal products ingests about 800 milligrams of cholesterol a day. This extra cholesterol is deposited along the walls of the arteries throughout the body.
As these deposits grow, a condition known as atherosclerosis or “hardening of the arteries” occurs. The arteries become constricted and circulation is seriously impaired. This impaired circulation contributes to a wide variety of problems, including loss of hearing, baldness, shortness of breath, dizziness and heart attacks. All tissues the body are harmed since a reduced amount of oxygen and nutrients reach the cells.
Atheroschlerosis now affects a majority of Americans, regardless of age. Autopsies of infants less than one year old, many of them fed commercially prepared baby formulas, revealed large amounts of cholesterol already deposited within their arteries.
There is absolutely no need for saturated fats or cholesterol in the diet. The body manufactures all of its cholesterol needs. The consumption of additional amounts in the form of saturated animal fats destroys the health of the body at the cellular level.
Fat digestion takes much longer than the digestion of carbohydrates and somewhat longer than the digestion of proteins. A raw salad consisting of nonstarchy vegetables can be digested within two to three hours. When free fats such as corn, sesame, peanut or other oils are added to the salad, digestion is delayed for another two or three hours.
Coating our food with free oils inhibits the natural digestive processes by preventing digestive juices access to these foods until the oils are digested. Consequently, by the time the oils or fats surrounding the other food particles are digested, the elementary carbohydrates or proteins in the vegetables have begun to ferment (carbohydrates) or putrefy (proteins) in the stomach.
Free fats, unlike carbohydrates, require special digestive action before absorption. This is because the end products of all digestion are carried in a water medium (that is, the blood and lymph). Free fats are not soluble or transportable in these water mediums until they undergo special changes.
After fats leave the stomach, they enter the duodenum of the small intestine. Their presence causes the stimulation of the gallbladder, which forces bile down into the small intestine. The bile emulsifies, all the fats in the intestines.
The emulsified fats are then split by enzymes into fatty acids and glycerol. At this point, the fats can be absorbed through the intestinal mucosa. During absorption, the fatty acids and glycerol recombine with a small amount of protein to form microscopic particles of fat called chylomicrons.
The fats in the form of chylomicrons are now soluble enough to enter lymph circulation. The fatty acids are converted to the liver to acetate or ketone bodies as an energy source for the cells.
The fat which is not used immediately for the body’s energy needs is stored primarily in adipose tissue. Adipose tissue is a special kind of tissue (found mainly around the stomach, thighs and buttocks) which contains the necessary enzymes to continually produce and release new fat to meet the body’s needs.
11.4.1 Fats Supply Heat and Energy
11.4.2 Fats Provide Padding and Insulation
11.4.3 Fats Aid in Absorption of Fat-Soluble Vitamins
11.4.4 Fats Are Sources of the Essential Fatty Acids: Vitamin F
Fat is used in the body in four main ways:
Each gram of fat supplies nine calories. This is more than twice the amount of energy supplied by a gram of carbohydrates. The body uses fat in much the same way as it uses carbohydrates. That is, fat is used mainly as an energy food.
Fats are converted to energy by being split into fatty acids and glycerol. Glycerol is then converted to either glucose or glycogen. At this point, the usual processes of carbohydrate metabolism take over to produce needed energy from the glucose and glycogen.
While fats may supply twice the caloric energy of carbohydrates, we find that they must undergo a longer digestive process before they are ready for an essentially carbohydrate metabolism. In general, carbohydrates do a more efficient job of providing the body with readily usable fuel. Fats are valuable in that they may provide a form of stored energy, but strictly speaking, they are not a necessity in the diet as far as a fuel source goes.
Fats, however, are usually more extensively stored within the body than are carbohydrates and may be converted into fuel when the body’s carbohydrate reserves are depleted. In fact, this is exactly what occurs when a person goes on a diet, fasts, or is exposed to extremely cold weather. As the stored carbohydrate reserves in the liver are exhausted, the body’s fat reserves are metabolized for a new supply.
It should be understood that these fat reserves in the body do not simply come from the fat that is eaten in the diet. When an excess of carbohydrates is eaten, it is converted by the body into fat and stored.
In this way, the body can store and use fat without having a large amount of fat in the diet. The fat deposits could be viewed as a carbohydrate bank, where deposits and withdrawals are made as necessary.
We can see that fat within the body is an important energy and heat source, but strictly speaking, fat in the diet is not an essential outside source for this fuel.
Within the body, fat deposits provide padding and support for the organs and insulate the body from cold.
For instance, a certain amount of fat is necessary in the buttocks. A loss of most of the fat in this body area actually makes sitting down uncomfortable. Fat tissue is also a special type of connective tissue that aids in the support of certain organs, such as the liver.
Most animals in nature experience an increase in their fatty tissues with the advent of the cold weather. This fat may be used as a fuel source during the winter months when food is naturally scarce and help in the insulating of the body.
This function of fat in the body should not be confused with the role of fat in the diet. Fat reserves in the body do not necessarily come from fat intake in the diet but may instead be developed from the carbohydrates consumed.
Some of the vitamins are termed “fat-soluble.” This means that fatty compounds must be present in the intestines for these vitamins to be absorbed. The fat soluble vitamins are A, D, E and K. The other vitamins (B, C, etc.) are termed “water-soluble.”
If these fat-soluble vitamins are obtained from the foods in which they naturally occur and eaten in an unprocessed state, they will be readily absorbed by the body. The wholesome foods which contain these vitamins also contain the necessary fatty compounds for their absorption.
If these vitamins, however, are extracted (as in supplements) or occur in foods which have been fragmented, processed or subjected to heat, then their absorption will be impaired. Heating fatty foods, for example, renders almost all of the fat-soluble vitamins useless.
Even if no fat is eaten, the body can manufacture most of its fatty acids from fruit and vegetable sugars. There are three fatty acids, however, that the body is said to be unable to synthesize. These are called the essential fatty acids.
The three essential fatty acids are linoleic acid, arachidonic acid and linolenic acid. The linoleic acid is generally thought to be the most important and has been termed absolutely essential to life by some nutritional researchers. The arachidonic acid can act as a fairly good substitute for linoleic acid. The third acid, linolenic, is said to be only a partially satisfactory substitute for linoleic acid in that it can support growth but cannot aid in the other functions that linoleic acid performs.
Collectively, these essential fatty acids are sometimes referred to as vitamin F. The fatty acids or vitamin F are considered necessary for normal glandular activity, especially the adrenal glands. The adrenal and sex hormones seem to require the presence of these fatty acids for their manufacture.
The essential fatty acids are thought to be involved in many of the body’s metabolic processes. They promote the availability of calcium and phosphorous to the cells and help form the fat-containing portion of every cell’s structure. They are also considered a factor in growth and in reproduction.
A lack of vitamin F (the fatty acids) is said to contribute to skin disorders, gallstones, loss of hair, impaired growth and reproductive functions, kidney and prostate disorders and menstrual disturbances.
Since the fatty acids are also said to aid in the growth of intestinal bacteria which help produce the B vitamins, the symptoms of a B-vitamin deficiency may be related to a lack of fatty acids in the diet.
No minimum requirement for vitamin F or the essential fatty acids has been established. The National Research Council has stated that about 1% of the total daily calories of about 2200-2800 per day should consist of unsaturated fats to provide a margin of safety for the intake of essential fatty acids.
The following wholesome foods contain the shown percentages of linoleic acid, the major fatty acid. In general, if the intake of linoleic acid in the diet is adequate, then all other fatty acid needs are also well satisfied.
Food | % Linoleic Acid |
English walnuts | 40 |
Sunflower seeds | 30 |
Black walnuts | 28 |
Sesame seeds | 22 |
Pumpkin/squash seeds | 20 |
Brazil nuts | 17 |
Pecans | 14 |
Almonds | 11 |
Filberts | 10 |
Pistachios | 10 |
Cashew nuts | 3 |
Avocados | 2 |
Coconuts | 1 |
Raw sweet corn | Trace |
It is interesting to determine how much of the above foods would supply the 1% caloric intake of unsaturated fatty acids (in this case, linoleic acid). This is not to suggest that we accept this “1%” figure as an absolute or even as a necessity at all.
However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume a daily intake of 2500 calories. At this level, official figures tell us we should have 25 calories of unsaturated fatty acids. By examining the total amount of linoleic acid available in the nuts and seeds in our previous chart and knowing their calorie contents per ounce, we discover that anywhere from one-half to an ounce and a half of these nuts and seeds would give us 25 food calories of linoleic acid.
That is not the sum total of all the unsaturated fatty acids in these foods, nor is it the total of all the other fats we get in our daily diet. It is merely a statement that even if one-half to an ounce and a half of these nuts and seeds were consumed each day, and nothing else, we would still surpass all official recommendations for essential fatty acid intake.
This does not mean that we must eat this small amount of nuts or seeds each day. We should always eat only what the body needs or requires and not become involved with calorie counting or food weighing.
All fresh fruits, for example, contain between 0.5% and 1% unsaturated fat. Some fruits are higher in fat (particularly the avocado which may be 15% to 22% fat). If fruits alone were consumed, we would still have no difficulty meeting the government suggestion that we make 1% of our diet unsaturated fats.
The term free oils refers to those fats and oils which are separated from the foodstuffs in which they naturally occur. For instance, peanut oil is a free oil and likewise we can say that lard is a free oil (although somewhat solid).
Free oils in the diet are of vegetable, animal or chemical origin. Some of the free oils are definitely poisonous to the body. The others, while less harmful, have no place in the human diet.
Some examples of free vegetable oils are corn oil, olive oil, safflower oil, almond oil and the generic cooking oils which may be a mixture of vegetable oils and added chemicals. These are the most commonly used oils in the typical vegetarian diet which excludes all animal fats.
The fat content of these extracted oils is 100%. No proteins or carbohydrates are contained in these oils. Actually, very few minerals are present and only vitamins E and F are present in any amount. We see that these extracted oils are very lopsided nutritionally—they supply oil, but little else. They may be likened to white sugar or white flour as refined products.
In addition, these extracted oils are very susceptible to pesticide residues. Many of the free vegetable oils have chemicals added to them to prevent them from becoming cloudy or going rancid. Unfortunately, however, almost all free oil undergoes a certain amount of oxidation and becomes rancid regardless of the preservative methods used.
The great majority of all vegetable oils are heat-extracted. That is, they are raised to high temperatures in their manufacturing process in order to expel the oils from their vegetable sources. This heat causes a breakdown in the oil’s original composition which renders it nutritionally unfit.
Even most of the so-called “cold-pressed” oils sold in health food stores have had a certain amount of heat applied. Although the amount of heat used in these “expeller-pressed” oils (which is really what they are instead of “cold-pressed”), is somewhat lower than conventional methods, it is still high enough to destroy the oil’s original composition. Usually, only olive oil and avocado oil have any chance of being extracted without heating methods of some kind.
All free vegetable oils, with the exception of olive oil, have been added to the human diet only in the past hundred years. The human constitution is simply not adapted to handle these large quantities of free oils. .
Even olive oil, the traditional favorite of many health enthusiasts, cannot be recommended. Unless obtained from strictly organic sources, most, olive oil is mixed with other oils and petroleum products. These additives are considered normal by the government and no labeling of their presence is required.
No free oil, not even vegetable oils, should be included in a healthy diet.
The most common free animal oils are lard and butter. Strictly speaking, these are not pure oils or fats. Butter is about 87% fat, while lard is 94% fat. Because of their high fat content and their use outside of their naturally occuring sources (milk and meat), they will be discussed as examples of free animal oils.
The reasons for abstaining from animal free oils (or any animal fats) are basically the same as those for avoiding all animal products in the diet.
Like human beings, animals tend to store the accumulated pesticides, chemicals and additives from their diet in their fatty tissues. Consequently, lard and all animal fats are a concentrated reservoir of environmental poisons.
The animal fats are usually superheated during their extraction and tend toward rapid rancidity almost immediately.
Butter is usually colored and salted and is suspect to the hormonal and additive contamination from the cow.
Like all animal fats, the animal free oils are high in cholesterol which may eventually result in destruction of the cardiovascular system.
No free oil, and certainly not free animal fats, should be included in a healthy diet.
This is a new one. Thanks to the synthetic food industries and the availability of petroleum by-products, free oils made from chemicals are being introduced into the diet. These chemical oils appear in ice cream, artificial coffee creams, artificial butter, etc.
Strangely enough, the people who consume these chemical oils often do so out of a concern for their health. They seek to avoid cholestrol and instead eat chemicals produced by the petroleum industries.
The plastic margarine and imitation coffee cream and ice cream that people eat may have a worse effect than the animal products they purport to replace. At least butter and cream have been a regular part of some people’s diet for hundreds of years. Most of these chemical oils have been on the market for less than ten years. No one has any idea as to the eventual harm they may cause.
The eating of these chemical oils is done to satisfy a purely psychological need. They are devoid of nutrition and undermine the body’s health.
No free oil, and absolutely never any chemical oils, should be included in a healthy diet.
Although a lot of fat is consumed in the typical American diet in the form of free oils, the largest amounts of fat are consumed from eating those foods which have been cooked with fat.
French fries, potato chips, doughnuts, cakes, snack foods—almost all the “convenience” foods and junk foods eaten—contain high percentages of heated fats.
When fats and oils are heated to a high degree as in cooking or frying, they become carcinogenic—capable of causing cancer. Healthy cells may become cancerous, that is, “go wild” if the diet is high in heated oils because heated oils are extremely toxic.
The digestive processes for the assimilation of fats require that the fats be emulsified. Fats that have been heated in cooking cannot be emulsified or digested. Since they cannot be used by the body, these overheated fats must be eliminated. Fats which have been subjected to a high degree of heat are difficult for the body to break down and expel. If the body has no use for a substance and cannot effectively eliminate it from the system, then the body stores the substance where it can do the least harm or walls it off by creating a tumor around it.
Besides the heated fats themselves, the foods that are saturated with these cooked fats are also indigestible and poisonous. Starches such as potatos, pastries, breads, etc. that are soaked in hot fat become impossible for the body to convert to sugar—the essential part of starch digestion. These foods then are worse than nutritionally useless since they also place a strain upon the body to eliminate them.
Any food values associated with oils or fats are lost when they are heated. As fats reach 350 degree temperatures, the standard range for frying and cooking, they begin to decompose totally and lose all their vitamins and minerals. They also prevent the absorption of any other fat-soluble vitamins and so contribute to the nutrient starvation of the body.
Now that we have discussed the harmful effects of animal fats, free oils and heated fats, we should examine the wholesome sources of fat in the diet. First, there are no such things as “fat-free foods.” All foods that are part of the human dietary contain fat. Every cell of every living plant and animal contains fat.
There are, of course, different fat contents in different foods. The following chart shows the fat content of foods natural to the human diet:
Food | % of Fat (by Calories) |
Fruits (Apple) | 3 |
Vegetables (Spinach) | 15 |
Mother’s milk | 55 |
Avocados | 77 |
Seeds (Sesame) | 70 |
Coconut (Mature) | 79 |
Nuts (Hazelnut) | 81 |
Nuts and seeds that are fresh, unroasted and unsalted are acceptable high-fat foods. If digestion permits, these should be eaten fresh in their whole state. If used as a nut butter or dressing, they should be made at home immediately before eating. All manufactured nut and seed butters, even those labeled as “raw,” undergo some degree of oxidation and become somewhat rancid.
When eaten, nuts and seeds should be masticated thoroughly. For ease of digestion, only a single variety of a nut or seed should be eaten at one meal. These high-fat foods combine best with leafy green vegetables and other non-starchy vegetables. They should not be eaten with starchy vegetables, fruits or avocados.
Coconuts, although rich in saturated fats, may be added to the diet in small quantities and also combined with leafy green vegetables. Coconuts should not be combined with fruits, as is sometimes done, to avoid fermentation of the fruits.
Avocados are another wholesome high-fat food. They are best eaten with nonstarchy vegetables. The nutritive value of an avocado and nuts is quite similar; the avocado simply has a higher water content.
Olives are the only other fruit besides avocadoes that have a high fat content. They are a wholesome food only if eaten in their natural dried state. Unfortunately, sundried natural olives are very difficult to locate. Olives that are canned, bottled or pickled are indigestible and should not be eaten. Olive oil, while perhaps the potentially less harmful of all the free oils, has no place in the optimum diet.
Although no specific amounts of these foods are recommended, it should be noted that many practitioners of Natural Hygiene suggest that no more that three to four ounces of nuts or seeds be eaten daily or no more than one avocado. The body appears to have difficulty in handling much larger amounts. Of course, this also means that one may certainly eat less than these amounts or no amount whatsoever. These are not recommendations for eating these foods daily, but suggestions that these foods should be consumed in limited amounts.
Just how necessary is fat? Can we live without it?
First, we must make an important distinction between fat in the body and fat in the diet. Fat in the body is absolutely necessary for our health. It exists in every cell and performs a vital role in our metabolic functions. We could not live without it. Now fat in the diet is a somewhat different matter. It is also omnipresent. It is in every food we eat. The fat needed in the body can also be formed from the carbohydrates in the diet. Fat in the body does not have to come from high-fat foods.
I like salads, but I couldn’t make a meal out of them unless I add salad dressings. Aren’t there some acceptable salad oils?
The only acceptable oil for a salad is the oil as it naturally occurs in the complete wholesome food. When you use extracted vegetable oils, you are coating all your foods with a layer of rancid fat. Free oils are simply too unstable and fragmented to be used safely.
There are, however, some acceptable alternatives. I would first suggest eating a small amount of nuts or seeds or avocado along with your salad. By adding a small amount of these high-fat foods, a salad can give you the “full feeling” which is caused by the slow digestion of the accompanying fats. The second alternative, while not as good, is to blend a few nuts or seeds or avocado with a tomato and/or a small amount of distilled water. This makes an acceptable salad dressing substitute if used immediately after making.
Nuts and seeds are hard for me to digest. How can I get my fats?
By eating a calorie-sufficient diet of wholesome foods. It is not necessary to eat high-fat foods to obtain fat in your diet, nor should we feel obligated to eat any foods, even wholesome foods, because of some particular nutrient value. Eat only what you can relish and digest. Many Life Scientists go for months without eating high-fat foods, especially during the warmer seasons.
I’m underweight. Shouldn’t I eat high-fat foods to gain weight?
Many underweight problems arise from metabolic instead of dietic problems. Fats are difficult to digest. If your powers of digestion and assimilation are somewhat weak, as is often the case with underweight people, fats are not good foods to eat. The best foods for weight gain are not the high-fat foods, but the high-carbohydrate foods. Sweet fruits such as bananas, dates, figs, grapes, raisins, etc. are the best high-carbohydrate foods for weight gain.
Fats play a variety of roles in the health of the body. Most diets today have an excess of fats, which contributes to a number of diseases and problems. The fat intake in a diet should be limited as much as possible.
A deficiency of fats in the diet is a nutritional rarity. Usually this can only occur after a period of nutrient starvation or from a metabolic impairment. Fats are present in every food we eat.
High-fat foods are difficult to digest and should be consumed in small quantities. Only wholesome high-fat foods should be eaten at all. This means that no animal fats, free oils or heated fats should ever be included in the diet.
A diet consisting chiefly of fruits and vegetables eaten in their natural state, possibly supplemented by moderate amounts of seeds and nuts (at separate meals) can supply us with all the fats we need and optimally meet our other nutritive needs as well.
A leading physician with a degree in nutrition offers some guidelines for the optimal diet—a diet which can actually reverse some of the ailments associated with aging.
Several research centers here in the United States have been developing a diet that can reverse hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis). Some authorities now believe that this same diet may dramatically aid in prevention and treatment of heart disease, appendicitis, diverticular disease, gallstones, hypertension, varicose veins, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, hiatus hernia, hemorrhoids, certain types of cancer, colitis and obesity.
This diet is a very natural diet. It is a vegetarian diet. It is low in fat and protein and high in complex carbohydrates such as potatoes, beans, corn, fresh fruit and most other unprocessed foods. Refined foods should be eliminated.
A natural food is one that comes with all its bulk and all its fiber plus all the vitamins and minerals. The vitamins and minerals are there to help metabolize and digest the natural food. Nature intended that we take in the bulk and the fiber plus the vitamins and the minerals and other nutrients all together to have a harmonious nutritional balance.
Foods that are not natural and not included in the diet include those that have been processed or have passed through a chemical factory. Examples abound. A walk through any supermarket will reveal aisle upon aisle of highly refined, overprocessed foods which, unfortunately, are the mainstay of the American public’s diet. The most prevalent, of course, are white sugar and refined (white) flour.
Once part of a natural food, sugar cane or sugar beets, refined sugar is almost universally used in processed foods. The health consequences of sugar consumption are well known. But while less visible, its more subtle effects are equally insidious.
The Standard American Diet (SAD) also contains too much refined protein. Meat, as a “prime” example, contains lots of protein, but little else. It is a concentrated food, but not a particularly good one in terms of overall balance. Many other products advertised as “high in protein” would also fall into this category of overly refined foods. This includes all protein supplements.
Quite simply, a diet of complex carbohydrates—beans, rains, fruits and vegetables—will provide sufficient protein (and indeed superior nutrition) for an adult. The protein scare is a lot of hype. It is not necessary to supplement a natural foods, vegetarian diet, as it is virtually impossible to get a protein deficiency if one is eating enough calories. It is not necessary to complement amino acids in every meal if one is eating a variety of whole natural foods in a day’s time.
Oil is another example of food that is refined no matter what its process of extraction is, since it no longer is a whole food. The oil is an extract of a vegetable or animal product in which all the bulk and fiber are removed, plus many of the vitamins and minerals. All that is left is a pure chemical that is classified as a triglyceride. Numerous diseases now are being recognized as associated with too much oil in the diet, and this includes sesame, safflower, soy, olive and other commonly used oils. It takes many ears of corn to produce one tablespoon of corn oil. Essential fatty acids are needed in the diet but can be adequately supplied by whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes where they are in a water-soluble form. The oil in a nut, for example, is water-soluble; the extracted oil from a nut, no matter how it is processed, is no longer water-soluble. The body seems better able to utilize properly the oil in its water-soluble form, but seems to have serious complications with the non water-soluble, extracted, refined form. The association of a diet high in oil—whether saturated or polyunsaturated—and disease is actually well documented, though this is not well known to the public.
The average American has a cholestrol level somewhere between 150 and 300 mgm. percent. The average American also has a very high rate of heart attack, stroke and other chronic degenerative diseases. The World Health Organization, in studying many developing countries, has found that their cholestrol levels are much lower than this American average. Many developing countries have cholesterol in the area of 90 to 120 mgm. percent. It is the feeling of some authorities that cholesterol levels of about 140 can begin to produce hardening of the arteries.
To reverse or prevent hardening of the arteries, a low-fat diet is necessary. A diet low in fat means that it is low in all fats—saturated, unsaturated and polyunsaturated. This would eliminate from the diet many of the products that are highly advertised and can be bought in most any supermarket, such as margarine, mayonnaise, oils, most of the salad dressings, butter fat as found in most of the dairy products, and egg yolks.
Meat is very high in fat, at least 44%. Commercially processed nut butters should be minimized in the diet, as they have been so finely ground that the oil has separated from the original nut and therefore is no longer in its original water-soluble form. It would be acceptable to eat nut butters if one were able to grind them less finely in order that there be no separation of the oil from the nut being used, whether almond, sesame, cashew or peanut (a legume).
Many of the harmful effects of saturated fats also appear when polyunsaturated fats are used. In addition, the polyunsaturated fats have many of their own harmful effects. Some people still believe that polyunsaturated oil is good because it lowers the cholesterol level in the blood. Indeed, many doctors even prescribe tablespoons of corn oil or other types of oil every day to help lower blood cholesterol. Polyunsaturated fats will indeed lower the serum cholesterol. According to research done by Dr. Scoll Grundy, it moves the cholesterol from the bloodstream into the tissues, where it’s more harmful.
Dr. R.A. Swank from the University of Oregon has published a number of studies showing the effects of fat in causing the red blood cells to stick together. After feeding some hamsters a meal of cream, he noticed that the little red blood cells started sticking together. They would not pass through the capillaries, but would block them off. Since the red blood cells carry oxygen to the tissues, he also found there to be a great decrease in oxygen in the tissues. Following a high-fat meal, the oxygen content of the tissues of the brain was measured and found to be markedly decreased.
Dr. Meyer Freedman found that both saturated and unsaturated fats caused this sledging or sticking together of red blood cells. His article in the JAMA stated that substitution of the unsaturated for the relatively saturated fats did not lessen the interference in capillary blood flow. If such interference in the flow also occurs in the critically important collateral vessels of the coronary circulation in cardiac patients, then the ingestion of unsaturated fats could lead to disaster as readily as ingestion of saturated fats.
In another article in JAMA, Dr. Peter Kuo described a study he had conducted on patients who had angina pectoris. This is a pain in the chest that is caused by a lack of blood supply to the heart. He took fourteen patients and fed them a high-fat meal. All of his patients had angina, but it was an intermittent thing and was easily controlled by their heart medications. However, after the high-fat meal, these patients all experienced a tremendous increase in chest pain, and they actually had changes in the electrocardiograms and their ballistocardiograms.
Some have recommended unsaturated oil as a treatment for heart disease. Dr. G.A. Rose of England studied a large group of people in which he added corn oil to their diets to see if this would protect them from developing heart disease. His study concluded that corn oil cannot be recommended as a treatment of ischemic heart disease and that it is possibly harmful.
Supporting this theory was an article in the American Heart Journal stating that polyunsaturates have increased in the average American diet almost threefold over the past three decades without the slightest decrease in heart disease mortality.
The National Heart and Lung Institute admits that any difference in the effects of saturated versus polyunsaturated fats in heart disease is strictly intuitive, and based only on personal impressions and fragmentary conclusions with unscientific proof.
The Food and Drug Administration has gone on record saying, “It is a violation of the law to make any claim that polyunsaturates could prevent or treat heart disease.” Several researchers have shown that polyunsaturated fat will inhibit the white blood cells.
Other researchers have observed native people who drank lots of milk which contained its own butterfat in the form of cream (although it rises to the top, it still is water-soluble); they nevertheless had low cholesterol counts. Another group of people were subsequently studied substituting a cube of butter each day for its equivalent in milk (one cube of butter for two quarts of milk). The result was a rise in cholesterol. The solid form of the butter was no longer water-soluble.
In November 1977 Dr. Howard of the University of Cambridge published his studies on cholesterol and dairy products in Lancet. He concluded that of all the dairy products only butter raised the cholesterol levels when ingested.
The theory then might be formulated, based on Dr. Howard’s study, that cholesterol in its water-soluble form does not raise cholesterol levels. In order to check this, a series of experiments was performed at a small college. Following are the tests and results:
Eighteen young men on a natural vegetarian diet of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, avocadoes and whole grain were checked for their cholesterol level which was 120 to 300.
They were then divided into three groups.
Five weeks later, the results were:
As mentioned before, some authorities feel that cholesterol above 140 can begin to produce hardening of the arteries. The above study may therefore be significant in explaining why lacto-ovo vegetarians may develop hardening of the arteries.
Although lacto-ovo vegetarians have lessened their risks of heart diseases and hardening of the arteries due to omitting meat in their diet, they nevertheless would improve their risks by eliminating or at least minimizing some of the dairy products such as butter, as the fat is no longer in its soluble form.
On the other hand, neither is milk desirable, especially regular commercial milk, because it has been pasteurized and homogenized at high heat and enriched with vitamin D (which is really a hormone, like a steroid). Protein-fortified milk is especially undesirable, as it has been fortified with dry milk, and even nonfat milk contains cholesterol.
Cholesterol oxidizes when dried, and it may actually produce cholesterol. Dried milk or any dried animal product should be omitted from the diet.
Prairie dogs have been used to study the effects of different types of fats and cholesterol in producing gallstones. On a high-fat diet, the prairie dogs seemed to develop gallstones easily. When they were placed on a diet that was low in fat and cholesterol, the gallstones dissolved.
Gallstones in humans do not seem to be limited to high saturated fat content in the diet. Dr. R. A. L. Sturdement reported a significant increase in gallstones in men fed a diet that was rich in safflower oil. Dr. T. Osuga wrote that corn oil alone, without cholesterol in the diet, produced gallstones.
According to Dr. R. K. Bout well, the stimulating effect of fat on the rate of formation of certain types of tumors is well established. Dr. Pickney, previously mentioned in regard to polyunsaturates in the diet and its relation to heart disease, also wrote about the epidemiologic association between a diet high in polyunsaturates and the increased incidence of cancer, especially gastric, in humans. He discussed his research in the American Health Journal showing that 78% of the people who used more polyunsaturated fat also showed marked clinical signs of premature aging. In addition, they looked much older than their chronological age. In the same group, 60% reported that they had had at least one or more skin lesions removed because of suspected malignancy after having altered their dietary fat.
Dr. Ernest Winder of the American Health Foundation states that both epidemiologic and animal data suggests that colon cancer is due largely to high fat consumption. (Refined foods lacking in bulk and fiber also have been linked to bowel cancer, and studies made in Japan have correlated high fat diets with cancer of the breast in women—Veg. Times Ed.)
Dr. Bauman, in the American Journal of Cancer, showed that an increase in the fat content of the diet accelerated the appearance of tumors caused by ultraviolet radiation. Dr. Bausch repeated the study using corn oil and got the same results. Ultraviolet light is found in sunlight. The current understanding is that excessive exposure to ultraviolet light is responsible for skin cancer, when in fact, as these studies show, the true culprit may be a high-fat diet in combination with ultraviolet light.
Fats turn rancid in the tissue. Fats that are oxidizing damage the tissues, thus stimulating cancer (and aging of the skin). Oxidation is prevented in nature with vitamin E in its natural state: in nuts, whole wheat, seeds, legumes, etc. Vitamin C, carotene and selenium also help.
Unsaturated fats eventually turn rancid due to air, heat and sun. All the elements are present when refined polyunsaturated oils are in the tissues: the heat and oxygen are provided by the body and the sun’s ultraviolet rays accelerate the oxidation of the fat in the body. Without the oxidation of rancid fat in the tissues, the sun is beneficial for a healthy body.
Exposure of the body to the sun is vital for optimum health. It is a natural source of vitamin D (which is different form that artificially ingested as an additive in milk). Most times of the year as little as about fifteen minutes exposure on the face will give more than the recommended daily amount. Contrary to popular belief, vitamin D can be stored in the body. Even on cloudy or foggy days, 80% of the ultraviolet rays come through; however, the rays are locked entirely by glass windows. Nevertheless, special glass can be ordered called UV-Passing Plexiglass that is very good.
In a natural diet where no sugar or fat of any kind is added, obese people will lose weight even though they are eating all they want. They are allowed to have potatoes, ice, bread, fresh fruit and any other natural food in any quantity that they want. However, they should restrict the amount of avocadoes, olives and nuts that they eat on this diet. There are built-in safety factors in the natural food provided for us that prevent us from becoming obese.
Our bodies are designed to eat a low-fat diet. When we add extra fat to the natural diet, we start to gum up the beautiful machinery we were given. There is an abundance of natural fat in the unrefined grains, legumes and other vegetables that more than meets our need for fat in the diet. It is impossible to get a fatty acid deficiency if whole grains, legumes and other vegetables are included in the diet; it is not necessary to add any extracted oil to provide the fat that is needed in the diet. Because our bodies were designed to eat a low-fat diet, a high-fat diet will cause nothing but trouble, whether the fat is of animal or vegetable origin. Probably the biggest proof we have that a low-fat diet is essential is the miracle that happens in patients lives when they are placed on a diet free from margarine, mayonnaise, grease and oil of all kinds.
Diseases that are caused by artherosclerosis are markedly proved. The world of medical research is only now discovering the tremendous power in a natural vegetarian diet.
Editorial Note: Grains and legumes are not needed in the diet to assure enough fat and essential fatty acids. Fruits, nuts, seeds and avocadoes all contain plenty.
The subject of fats in the diet is one that receives little attention, especially compared to the attention it should receive! Along with refined sugar and flour chemicals, all of which are very antivital and disease-causing, fats should be listed. This is not to say that all fats are very toxic. But it is to say that the only ones that aren’t are those contained in raw (uncooked, unheated) natural foods to which humans are biologically adapted to eating—avocadoes, nuts and seeds plus all fruits and vegetables recommended in the Life Science diet.
When considering toxic substances that are eaten, the reason most fats should be included as toxic is because all fats become highly carcinogenic when heated. Even rancid fats, as in stale nuts or seeds, are harmful and should not be eaten. Nuts or seeds should never be eaten roasted, either.
Atherosclerosis, heart disease, cancer, senility and arthritis are just a few of the most serious diseases with which many Americans (and people the world over) are plagued. These diseases would not have become a problem to anyone if our people had not eaten heated fats and oils. Frying is the worst way to cook foods, though all cooked foods are pathogenic. Remember: All foods contain some fat. Therefore, any food that is cooked, even if it’s not fried, contains a carcinogen—heated fat. This is one of the most serious of the many problems with cooked foods.
A question not raised by most Life Scientists is whether we really need high-fat foods such as nuts, seeds or avocadoes in our diet at all. Our need for fats is so low, and the presence of fats in all foods so ubiquitous, that it is likely that we would fare better if we would not include nuts, seeds or avocadoes in our diet.
Yet, Hygienists recommend up to four ounces of nuts or seeds or one avocado per day in the diet.
For one thing, they are delicious raw. Secondly, and most important, they are very satisfying, keeping the sensation of hunger away for a longer time than other fruits or vegetables.
Many people, including some Hygienists, have difficulty digesting nuts and seeds. Most have little or no trouble with avocadoes. This could be, as one professional Hygienist has stated, because most of us have weakened digestive capabilities as a result of so many years of wrong eating and living practices. In any event, no conclusive statements can be made at this time. More research would perhaps be in order.
It is certain that humans can fare well without high-fat foods in their diet. But is it practical? Can people feel satisfied without including either oils (fats) or starches in their diet? Can a diet of nonfat and nonstarchy foods satisfy? If it can meet our needs—which there is no doubt it can and does—then it follows that it should satisfy. Perhaps it would take months or years for a person to become accustomed to this type of ideal diet.
This is an area that will warrant further study by professionals in the field. One thing you can be sure of, however, is that the amount of fat needed in the diet is extremely small and should be met only from raw foods. No foods should be eaten that will leave an oily film on a plate or bowl that will not wash off with water and a cloth or sponge—without any kind of soap or detergent. That is to say that only water-soluble oils should be consumed. These are the only oils that will not cause diseases in the human body.
For a long and healthy life, keep your fat consumption to a minimum; consume only water-soluble fats; and stay away from free oils and nut butters except those you make fresh yourself without adding free oils. You’ll be many times further ahead healthwise than the lacto or lacto-ovo vegetarians who still consume many foods that are in many ways as harmful or almost as harmful as animal flesh. You will become healthier than you’ve ever been in your entire life!
It is well known that most meat eaters trim the fat off meats because they have an aversion to it. This is not without a sound physiological basis.
However we witness millions eating foods fried in oils and fats. Millions eat foods smothered in oils, butter, margarine and other fats. Oils and fats constitute about 40% of the American caloric intake.
For this heavy indulgence Americans pay dearly. Indigestion is an American institution. Pathogenic effects are rife. It is said that 50% of all American meals result in indigestion. Antacids are a multi-billion dollar business. At the door of oils and fats can be placed much of the blame.
Humans are constitutionally frugivores. All the fats needed in the human system are self-created from the raw materials furnished by carbohydrate foods just as cattle elaborate their fats from a grass diet. It is not necessary that humans eat oils or fats of any kind to have the body oils and fats necessary for great well-being. One of the chief complaints of many who eat sugar and wheat products is that it turns into unwanted fat, thus indicating how efficiently our organisms convert carbohydrates to the oils and fats we need.
Fruits we digest with dispatch, efficiency and comfort. Most are discharged from the stomach in from 10 to 30 minutes, whereas oils and fats lay heavy on the stomach for hours before digestion really begins.
To be sure, our diet can profit from certain foods with an oil content. From nuts and seeds we can obtain the linoleic and linolenic acids that we need. But if nuts, seeds and avocadoes constitute a mere 1 1/2% to 2% of our diet, that is ample.
Professional Hygienists point out that the body’s needs for oil are very small. All condemn free oils, that is, oils out of context with the food in which nature developed them.
Most Americans eat oils and fats with foods that are of a differing digestive character than oils. In the combination of bread and butter or bread and margarine or bread and peanut butter—quite common combinations, the bread requires an alkaline medium for its digestion. Within two or three hours starches are usually ready to pass into the intestinal tract for appropriation. Fats and oils usually do not begin to digest until about the fourth hour.
Hence, when oils and fats are eaten with other foods such as starches they coat the food particles such that little or no digestion results, but indigestion does! By the time the oils or fats surrounding the other food particles are digested, the starches and sugars are food for bacteria instead of us. Bacteria convert carbohydrates into poisonous acids (especially acetic) and alcohol. Our stomachs become a fermenting mess. Caustic bicarbonates end the process by killing off the bacteria and neutralizing the acids.
But this is merely a first step in a chain of problems. Indigestion is bad enough, and employing antacids begets yet other problems. Fats degenerate into butyric and other acids. This begins a long train of pathology that can exhibit as inflammations, ulcers and eventually cancer. Rashes, pimples, biliousness, a “tired feeling” and other complaints are often a direct result of a heavy oil or fat meal.
Fats are often in association with cholesterol, another form of alcohol. We create this in our bodies for our own needs, but we cannot handle foreign cholesterols as true meat-eating animals do. To be sure, cholesterols are found only in animal fats such as cheeses, butter, eggs, meat and animal products such as milk, ice cream, etc. When the cells reject alien cholesterol, it combines with blood contents, especially wastes and inorganic minerals, and forms plaque in the circulatory system.
Free oils and fats are a disaster in the human digestive tract no matter how eaten. Oils on salads, popcorn, bread and other foods (most of them unwholesome in themselves) interfere with digestion as heretofore stated.
When we eat fried foods, we are invariably inviting disaster. Even before eating such foods, the heat of cooking has converted some of the fats or oils to acroleic acid (or it has become acrolein) which is deadly poisonous and carcinogenic in humans. Fats in animal foods are always bad for us. Oils in vegetable and fruit foods should be eaten rarely, say not more than once every two or three days. We handle nuts, seeds and avocadoes fairly well, but our need for them is small. Further, great caution must be employed in eating such foods. Always eat them with vegetables, never with foods that contain a carbohydrate complement. Tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, cabbage family members and green leafy foods such as lettuce combine best with these oil-bearing foods.
It is noteworthy that legumes are heavy in oil but, once beans and pulses are sprouted, their fat content is converted into easily digestible vegetable matter.
There is no truth to the widely circulated belief that oils are good for dry skin. In digesting oils and fats, the body converts them to sugars anyway. Then it reconstitutes them to its specific needs in the body’s own chemical factories. Thus dry skin is the result of impaired function of the sebaceous glands, not a lack of oil in the diet.
Oily foods should not be used as fuel foods. Carbohydrate foods serve us amply in this regard. Loading up on oily foods will not enhance the performance of athletes or manual workers. Their need for the oils and proteins of concentrated foods such as nuts, seeds and legumes are no greater than for sedentary people. It is well to repeat again that carbohydrate foods supply this best, and fruits are our most wholesome and efficient sources of carbohydrates.
Only one meal in any given day should contain a heavy oil-bearing food. And only one concentrated oil-bearing food should be eaten at a meal. Thus, if you eat an avocado with a salad, your oil license for the day has run out. If you eat two to four ounces of nuts or seeds with a salad, your oil license has expired, not only for the meal, but for the day.
Studies have shown that peanut oil is more “atherogenic” than even cream from cow’s milk in inducing arteriosclerosis in monkeys. It has been suggested that free oils actually promote the deposition of cholesterol and other lipids in the arterial walls.
Proceed with caution with oils. Never eat them outside of their natural context and then eat them in restriction as above noted.
12.2. Body Maintenance Of Normal pH
12.3. Acid And Alkaline In The Diet
12.4. Acute Conditions Involving Acid Alkaline Imbalances
12.5. Case Histories Of Acid Indigestion Due To Improper Diet
12.6. The Acid-Alkaline Ratio In The Diet
12.7. Considerations When Working With pH Imbalances
Article #1: Alkalinity And Acidity Of Foods In Metabolic Reaction
Article #2: Acid/Alkaline: Clearing Up The Confusion By Marti Fry
When we talk about acid-base balance, we are referring to the pH balance (degree of acidity or alkalinity) of substances or of the body. The symbol pH is used after numbers that measure the degree of the acidity or alkalinity of solutions. The acidity or the alkalinity of a solution is determined by the number of hydrogen ions (H + ) it contains. The smaller the pH value of a solution; that is, the smaller the number preceding the symbol pH is, the greater is the acidity of that solution. Likewise, the larger the number in front of the symbol pH is, the greater is the alkalinity of the solution.
Any neutral solution, such as water, will have a pH value of 7.0. Solutions which have a pH value below 7.0 are acidic in nature. Solutions which have a pH value above 7.0 are considered to be alkaline, or basic.
The human body must continuously deal with many different substances in the bloodstream. Each substance has a range of concentration which can vary within certain limits without creating an imbalance of normal bodily functions. Certain substances, such as blood glucose, can vary up to 200%, while certain other substances, such as blood calcium, are constricted to a much narrower range of deviation.
The balance in the blood of acidic and alkaline components can be only moderately altered without creating a very serious physiological instability. Therefore, it is crucial that the body, while controlling degrees of pH in organs, glands and other areas of the body, simultaneously maintain this strict range of balance in the pH of the blood. The following chart best illustrates the pH ranges of different areas of the body:
Body Area | pH Value |
Gastric Juice | 0.9 |
Gallbladder Bile | 5.4-6.9 |
Urine | 6.0 |
Saliva | 6.3-6.8 |
Feces | 7.0-7.5 |
Intestinal Juices | 7.0-8.0 |
Pancreatic Juices | 8.0 |
The blood is slightly alkaline, with a pH of 7.35 to 7.4. Many of the enzymes that facilitate metabolic reactions operate optimally only in solutions of specific alkalinity. When there is a deviation from this level of alkalinity, whether higher (referred to as alkalosis), or lower (referred to as acidosis), severe malfunctions can occur. These malfunctions are manifested by slower enzymatic reactions, and thus a decrease in synthesis of specialized molecules, such as vitamins, proteins, etc. There is also an impairment of the production of ATP molecules that are needed for energy and are made from glucose.
The major effect of acidosis is disorientation due to the depression of the central nervous system. Inversely, the major effect of alkalosis is extreme nervousness, eventually leading to convulsive reactions, namely tonic spasm. This spasm is referred to as tetany, and usually develops primarily in the musculature of the forearm and face, then spreads over the muscular system of the entire body. Tetany results from over-excitability of the central and peripheral nervous systems due to alkalosis.
In order to maintain a proper pH in the bodily fluids, and so that acidosis or alkalosis will not manifest, three major physiological control systems exist within the body. The first mechanism involves a buffer system for the hydrogen ion fluctuations. All bodily fluids are supplied with acid-base buffers which combine with any acid or alkaline substance and prevent excessive change in the hydrogen ion concentration.
Another mechanism the body uses to maintain normal pH is within the respiratory system. When the hydrogen ion concentration (H + ) changes measurably, the respiratory system is immediately stimulated to alter the rate of pulminary ventilation. This brings about a change in the quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2) within the system. High levels of carbon dioxide in the system, as created when holding the breath or due to physiological impairments of respiration, increase the acidity of the bloodstream. Any disease that interferes with normal breathing, such as emphysema or asthma, will impede the release of CO2 from the lungs and, subsequently, this CO2 will combine with water to form carbonic acid. This increases the concentration of hydrogen ions, and thus the acidity of the blood is simultaneously increased.
The last of the three major physiological control systems of the body to maintain normal pH involves the kidneys. When the (H + ) (hydrogen concentration) deviates from a normal value, the kidneys excrete either an acid or alkaline urine. This serves to help readjust the (H + ) of the bodily fluids back toward the normal value.
The key point to keep in mind when you are trying to understand the terms acidosis and alkalosis is that, as was previously mentioned, when the hydrogen ion concentration (H + ) is above normal, there is a state of acidosis and when the (H + ) falls below normal, we have alkalosis. If either acidosis or alkalosis occur within the bodily fluids, the buffer systems; namely, the lungs and kidneys, the organs that influence the acceptance or excretion of hydrogen ions, will attempt to regulate the imbalance. In a normal, healthy individual, any increase or decrease in (H + ) will be modified so that the pH of the blood does not fluctuate from its normal range of 7.35 to 7.45. If, however, either the lungs or kidneys fail to function properly, the end result is often acidosis or alkalosis.
Acidosis and alkalosis both have numerous causes. As mentioned above, one or more of the body’s buffer systems may be impaired in some way. Thus, acidosis or alkalosis may occur. Also, acidosis or alkalosis may result because of improper respiration (breathing), improper diet or both.
An example of respiratory alkalosis is when a person ascends to a very high altitude and proceeds to overbreathe because he is aware of the low oxygen content in the air. This overbreathing results in an excessive loss of CO2, referred to as a mild state of respiratory alkalosis. If such a situation persists and the individual fails to acclimate, eventually the balance of acid and alkalinity in the blood may be altered.
Both diarrhea and vomiting are considered to be some common causes of metabolic acidosis. During diarrhea, large amounts of sodium bicarbonate, an alkaline substance, are secreted from the gastrointestinal tract; and during vomiting, there is a loss of alkaline substances deep within the gastrointestinal tract.
However, diarrhea and vomiting are processes the body uses to speedily eliminate highly toxic materials from the body so these toxins cannot harm the tissues. Diarrhea and vomiting are not themselves causes of acidosis. Rather, they result from the same offending substance(s) that the acidosis results from.
It is important that you understand that body actions to expel toxic materials (acute illnesses, so-called “infections,” fevers, etc.) are not harmful processes. What is harmful is what occasioned the body to perform in such an expedient manner.
As students of Natural Hygiene, you must realize that the pH balance within the body is a result of the entire physiology of the body working in harmony. So, while this lesson will deal primarily with dietary influences on pH, be aware that you must utilize all areas of Natural Hygiene. This includes not only diet, but also pure water, fasting, exercise, fresh air, sunshine and mental poise. All of these must be integrated to form a lifestyle which can allow the body to carry out its physiological duties as effectively and efficiently as possible.
To sum up what we have discussed in this section, the pH in the blood and tissues is directly related to the concentration of (H + ) within the body. This range and balance of pH in the bodily fluids is quite narrow and delicate. Even slight deviations from these values can lead to major physiological complications. Several mechanisms, as expressed by McNutt’s Nutrition and Food Choices, regulate this intricate balance.
We have already discussed briefly these first two mechanisms. In order to understand the latter two, we must begin our study of dietary influences upon the body’s acidity and alkalinity.
When nutritionists talk about acid- or alkaline-forming foods, they are referring to the condition of the food after ingestion. There are many food substances which are acidic in their natural form that become alkaline when broken down within the body.
A physical description of an acidic substance would be “sour or sharp to the taste buds.” Litmus paper is a simple means to determine whether a substance is acidic. Acidic substances such as vinegar, lemon juice, grapefruit juice, tomato juice, tea, coffee or sour milk will all turn blue litmus paper red. The red coloration is an indication of the substances acidic characteristics. Alkaline substances, on the other hand, will cause red litmus paper to turn blue. However, when acid and alkaline substances are mixed together, they neutralize each other, forming water and salt.
Generally speaking, the metabolic processes of the breakdown of foods from the vegetable kingdom change in character from acidic to alkaline, while the foods from the animal world change from alkaline to acid during metabolism.
All foods contain within them a combination of both acid-forming and alkaline-forming elements. The particular influence a food will have on pH will be determined simply by which elements are dominant, the acid elements or the alkaline elements. These elements, when broken down, will either release (H+) ions, and thus create an acidic medium, or they will accept and combine with (H+) ions, creating an alkaline medium.
Keep in mind the following basic concepts:
These elements are either acid-forming elements or alkaline-forming elements. The acid-forming substances are sulphur, phosphorus and chlorine, while the alkaline formers are sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium and iron.
Most proteins contain sulphur, as well as phosphorus, within their chemical structures. When metabolized, these substances are broken down into phosphoric acid and sulphuric acid, which must then be neutralized through various chemical reactions. Another by-product of protein metabolism is uric acid. (Uric acid has been found to have a major influence on the development of arthritis; in particular, gouty arthritis.) Uric acid must be neutralized and excreted from the kidneys. Because of these toxic by-products of protein metabolism (phosphoric, sulphuric and uric acids), and for many other reasons not mentioned here, protein foods, and especially animal products, are acid-forming. Most grains and dairy products, also high in protein, are, like meats acid-forming.
Within the plant kingdom, the organic acids found in fruits and vegetables are metabolized and eventually become carbon dioxide and water. The alkaline elements such as potassium, calcium, sodium and magnesium remain. Although many fruits are acidic in nature, when broken down into their constituent elements, the acids are rendered neutral and the alkaline elements are dominant. Therefore, the end result of the organic breakdown and digestion of fruits and vegetables is alkaline in nature.
Since we are constantly supplying acids and alkalies to our bodies through the various foods we eat, it is very important that we consider the balance between these two extremes. If we consume excessive amounts of acid-forming foods, such as animal and dairy products, the body must tap its alkaline reserves (buffer salts) in order to maintain the proper pH. The kidneys, lungs and entire physiology is overworked in the process of excreting the neutralized acids from the body. This strain eventually leads to a depletion of buffer salts and the breakdown in the physiological functions of various organs, including the kidneys. Many different organ malfunctions are referred to as “disease,” while the underlying cause, acidosis (due largely to faulty diet), has been overlooked. The point to keep in mind is that any food, drug or condiment that is extremely acidic in nature utilizes alkaline reserves and overworks the various organs. This type of dietary abuse may be tolerated for a period of time, but eventually the body will no longer be capable of handling this overload and will slowly begin to break down.
Following is a reference list categorizing some common foods as being either acidic or alkaline within the body.
ACID FORMERS
Most Grains | Fish* |
Beef* | Cheese* |
Poultry* | Eggs* |
Most nuts (walnuts, pecans, brazils) | |
Most legumes (peanuts, lentils) |
(* Not wholesome foods)
ALKALINE FORMERS
Vegetables | Fruits |
Greens (lettuce, spinach, etc.) | Citrus fruits |
Carrots | Bananas |
Tomatoes | Melons |
Potatoes | Strawberries |
Celery | Apples |
Cabbage | Apricots |
Broccoli | Figs |
Beets | Dates |
Sprouts | Plums |
Peaches | Pears |
Foods that are beneficial in maintaining body pH are fruits and vegetables (preferably in their raw form), plus unprocessed nuts and seeds.
I have refrained from giving you a complete list of all the specific acid and alkaline-forming foods, because this author feels that it is most important for you, as a student of Natural Hygiene, to grasp the major concepts and apply them to your life. Please refer to Composition and Facts About Foods by Ford Heritage for more specific details.
The following rules will supply a conceptual basis from which to apply the dietary philosophy of Natural Hygiene.
FOODS TO AVOIDFOODS TO EAT
These should be fresh and unprocessed.
If you simply follow these rules, your body will benefit from a diet rich in all the essential proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. It will do this without having to deal with foods that deplete alkaline reserves and simultaneously overwork the buffer systems and organs of the body. These simple rules, combined with all the other areas of Natural Hygiene, will insure a condition in which your body can maintain a balanced state of health and well-being.
Every year the number of prescriptions written for acid-alkaline imbalances continues to increase. Antiacids, alkalizers, specific digestive enzymes, etc. remain popular as household “remedies” for many acute digestive disorders. The temporary relief experienced by these so-called remedies is interpreted by the majority of sufferers as being a cure for the problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. These drugs work in much the same way as a lazy housecleaner sweeps the dust under the rug; that is, covering up the symptom, but not eliminating the cause.
Our bodies are like the rug in that they will only allow the drugs to cover up the problem for so long. Eventually, these acute digestive disorders will become chronic, resulting in a more difficult condition for the body to deal with. So, what was once simply a minor case of acid indigestion or heartburn becomes a major digestive ailment. The stomach, liver, small and large intestines, kidneys and pancreas can all be seriously impaired, both from consumption of an improper diet and from the use of drugs that cover up an overly-acidic diet and the, consequent indigestion.
Almost anyone who has been eating the standard diet of meat, dairy foods and refined and processed foods will suffer in varying degrees from an acid-alkaline imbalance. Add to this fare: alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and condiments, and the percentages will rise even higher. As a Hygienic practitioner, you will begin to witness miraculous results when working with people suffering from these acute imbalances.
A young female, age 26, came to my office complaining of a dull, aching stomach pain. This pain seemed to manifest whenever she ate a large meal. At times this pain would work its way up the esophagus, causing discomfort under the ribs and around the heart.
These symptoms, along with lack of vitality, occasional constipation and mood fluctuations, had been plaguing the patient for about eight months. Investigation into her diet indicated that she was consuming a great deal of dairy products and sweets. After placing the client on a short fast, her diet was changed to include mostly fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. I also put her on an exercise program. After three weeks, the client’s pain had completely subsided and her vitality, mood swings and constipation had improved dramatically.
A male client, age 31, entered my office complaining of severe gas whenever he ate. He was also passing pieces of food in his stools, indicating an imbalance in the digestive juices. This condition has been going on for about three years and was gradually becoming worse. A case history showed that the client was consuming dairy products, refined sugar and some meats in excess, as well as combining his foods improperly.
The client was placed on a fast and then placed on a Hygienic diet with proper food combining. Gradually, over the next month-and-a-half, the client’s condition improved to the point where his stools were normal and he was no longer experiencing his gas problem.
A 32-year-old female came to me complaining of multiple problems. She had been suffering from bladder infections for over eight years. Along with this, she was taking allergy shots twice weekly and digestive enzymes to aid in her sluggish digestion. The client was unable to eat food without experiencing an “allergic” reaction and a flair-up in her bladder region. Her mood swings were radical, depending upon what she ate, and she periodically lost her ability to concentrate.
Her case history showed that she was eating a very inconsistent diet, rotating her foods to reduce allergic sensitivity to them. After a five-day fast the client was placed on a Hygienic diet and on an exercise program, and she began fasting one day a week. Within a month she was off her allergy shots and digestive enzymes. Her bladder was feeling much better, and within two months her symptoms had completely disappeared.
The body will maintain a proper pH balance at all times because it must do so for proper functioning. The organism is designed that way. In order to make the body’s job easy—and so expend less energy and have more energy for other activities, the diet should consist of foods that have an appropriate acid-alkaline ratio, at least 80% alkali and not more than 20% acid.
This balance is maintained by the lungs, kidneys and buffer salts. However, to limit the wear and tear on the lungs and kidneys, and so as not to deplete the body’s buffer salts, our diet should consist of foods that best match our organism’s acid-alkaline ratio. A diet of fresh ripe fruits, along with raw vegetables and nuts and seeds, is optimum. The amount of nuts and seeds in the diet should, of course, be rather small relative to the less concentrated foods—fruits and vegetables. Also, the amount of vegetables should be smaller than the amount of fruits because fruits provide the calories we need, whereas vegetables do not.
Fruits should be eaten alone or with each other at a meal, and vegetables can be eaten at a meal with either nuts, seeds or avocados. An example of a menu that insures a good acid-alkaline balance is as follows:
Breakfast: Melon
Lunch: Grapes, bananas and dates
Dinner: Large vegetable salad of lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, broccoli and sprouts
The important point to keep in mind is that the alkaline-forming foods are the most natural and beneficial foods for humans. As a Hygienic practitioner, it is important to understand that even if some people will not completely adhere to a totally Hygienic regime, any improvement in the acid-alkaline ratio will be an improvement of their well-being.
When a client comes to you complaining of fatigue, nervousness, insomnia, hyperactivity, emotional swings, lethargy, frequent colds, abdominal discomfort, etc., it’s fairly certain that part of their problem is an acid-alkaline imbalance. If this is the case, you, the Hygienic practitioner, must educate your client and help him to eliminate the causes of his problem. You should start out by explaining that the two major reasons for their particular problem are:
It is important to explain the benefits of a more alkaline diet and how it is truly the only way to eliminate the cause of their problems.
The Hygienic practitioner should also take into consideration the client’s overall vitality. If their digestive systems are in a weakened state, a fast may be in order. This will allow the organism to rest, get rid of toxins that interfere with normal functioning and to regain normal functioning abilities.
If a client complains that he or she suffers indigestion when he or she eats acid fruits such as oranges, grapefruits, pineapples, etc., he or she will benefit by fasting. People who have this difficulty have impaired digestive abilities due to past practices and diet. Again, a fast will enable the organism to regain normal functioning abilities.
Even if a client is unable or unwilling to fast for any reasons, he will still improve by staying on a healthful diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. However, improvement will occur more slowly than if the client fasts. Nonetheless, as the client’s condition improves, he will find it easier and easier to eat and enjoy these wholesome and delicious fruits.
If your clients will adhere to the basic Hygienic format, they will experience major transformations in their health and well-being. Not only will the major symptoms clear, but your clients will become increasingly disease-free and will find that the quality of their lives will dramatically improve. It is necessary that we preserve our pH at a level of maximum physiological efficiency, and this can be achieved easily through the Hygienic program.
The following is a sample of a basic three-day plan:
DAY ONE
Breakfast
Oranges
Lunch
A fresh green salad with romaine lettuce, broccoli, cabbage and tomatoes Dressing: either lemon juice or an avocado mixed with lemon
Dinner
Fresh fruit salad of bananas, apples, nears and chopped pitted dates
DAY 2
Breakfast
Citrus fruit(s) or pineapple
Lunch
Assorted sliced fresh fruits: bananas, peaches, apples, pears
Dinner
3-4 oz. pecans
Vegetable salad with tomatoes sprouts, celery, and lettuce
DAY 3
Breakfast
Grapes
Lunch
Green salad with vegetables: romaine lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumbers and avocado with lemon juice
Dinner
Assorted sliced fruits: Apples bananas, cherries, mangos, nectarines, etc.
Eating raw foods can be fun! People forget what an assortment of delicious raw foods there are.
Keep in mind that you should always eat melons alone. There are so many different kinds of delicious melons: honeydew, cantaloupe, crenshaw, sharlyn, cassaba, watermelon. The body digests melons very rapidly, and thus many people find them to be the ideal breakfast food.
I got the impression that the “acid-forming elements” and the “alkaline-forming elements” you refer to are particular minerals, the acid-forming ones being sulphur, phosphorus and chlorine and the alkaline-forming ones being potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium and iron. Why is the study of acid and alkaline separate from the study of minerals?
Your impression is correct. Also, your question is a good one. It is important to remember that the human organism is a whole entity, even though it is composed of various glands, systems, etc. Also, foods are whole, even though they are composed of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals. Yet, it is customary and convenient to study the various parts of the whole, always keeping in mind that the whole is greater than the total of all its parts.
The subject of acid and alkaline should have been at least briefly discussed in the lesson on minerals. But is an important and large subject that also warranted a lesson in itself. Hence, this lesson!
You said to avoid refined and processed foods because these foods are lacking in alkaline minerals. Does this mean that refined and processed foods are acid-forming?
No. Refined and processed foods are usually devoid of both the alkaline minerals and the acid minerals. This means they are more likely to be neutral than acid-forming in the diet. However, like the acid-forming foods, foods devoid of most minerals upset the acid-alkaline ratio of the body, but in a different way: Vitamins and minerals are needed for the metabolism and consequent efficient use of foods eaten. When carbohydrates are eaten, but the nutrients needed in their metabolism and utilization are not supplied in the way that nature intended, the body must draw upon its reserve supplies and then on the minerals in the bones and teeth. Since the body’s reserve supplies are quite limited, consumption of refined and processed foods results in minerals being drawn from bones and teeth and in a myriad of health problems, from hypoglycemia and diabetes, to dental caries, osteoporosis, nervousness and depression.
The reason why the body does not keep a larger reserve of vitamins, minerals, etc. for metabolism of refined and processed foods is obvious: We are not naturally designed for eating fragmented foods; that is, foods that have had some components removed in processing or refining.
People who advocate a macrobiotic diet claim that rice is the perfect food in that it best harmonizes with the body’s needs as regards acid and alkaline. Yet the macrobiotic diet is entirely different from the Hygienic diet—and you do not advocate the use of rice in the diet at all! Please explain.
In a diet based on grains, rice is one of best of the grains as regards the acid-alkaline Indeed, it is far less harmful in the diet than is wheat, the Western world’s staple grain. In that regard, the macrobiotic diet is less harmful than the conventional American diet. In fact, the macrobiotic even has a few things in common with the Life Science (natural) diet: For one, neither dietary regime, in its pure interpretation, advocates sweeteners of any kind. Nor does either dietary school advocate dairy foods, eggs or meats (except fish, in the case of macrobiotics).
However, it must be understood that macrobiotics is based on tradition, economic lack and many false premises, whereas the Life Science regime is based on science and nature and not upon economic considerations or tradition. Sea salt is advocated by the macrobiotic school. However, scientific fact is that all salt in inorganic form, which sea salt and rock salt both are, is poisonous and is responsible for many diseases and health problems. This is why soy sauces and miso, both containing salt, are very harmful foods. Rice is rather bland without soy sauce or other flavorings. Also, it has to be cooked, a distinct health disadvantage. Rice is deficient in water and in the wide variety of vitamins and minerals that can be found in fresh raw fruits and vegetables. Rice also lacks the flavor and the attractiveness of fresh fruits and vegetables. Just looking at a few of the facts, you can readily see which foods nature intended for humans and which came to be used by humans as a result of lack, ignorance and tradition.
Macrobiotic cooking also uses oils for sauteeing foods and for making tempuras.
That’s correct. As you have learned in previous lessons, heated oils are very toxic within the human organism and lead to many serious diseases, including cancer.
Will including grains in the diet disturb the body’s acid-alkaline balance?
First, we should repeat that the body has built-in buffer systems for maintaining its normal pH balance. Most foods will stimulate these systems to maintain normal pH. However, some foods cause the body’s buffer systems to work extra hard because certain foods (those not normal and correct to the human dietary) render too many acids upon metabolism, most notably, meats, dairy products, eggs, etc.
Grains are also acid-forming, as a rule. Therefore, if you eat them, eat them in extreme moderation (nor more than once every two or three days). We recommend that you have your grain portion in place of a portion of nuts, seeds or avocados, since grains are very poor combinations with these foods. Grains, if eaten, should be consumed with raw nonstarchy vegetables and not with fruits or sweeteners. Nor should they be salted because, as stated earlier, salt is poisonous in the human organism and leads to health problems.
Isn’t it okay to use a little baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) mixed with distilled water in case of indigestion that may occur even if foods are correctly combined or in cases where incorrect combinations cannot be avoided, like when you’re a guest at someone else’s house?
Absolutely not! Baking soda and all commercially-sold antacid preparations are very harmful when taken often, for they cause alkalosis by depleting the body’s acid-forming minerals. Remedies of any kind should never be used! The law of dual effects says that a secondary effect follows on the heels of the primary effect of any drug (baking soda is one). What this means in this case is that a worse case of indigestion will occur in the next meal after the baking soda was used.
You should always avoid incorrect combinations, even when you are a guest at someone else’s house. Correct combinations are usually possible or can be politely requested. You may have to pass up certain dishes or pass up invitations if you really want to become and/or remain healthy.
If you get indigestion despite correct food combining, you would benefit by a fast. A fast will give your digestive system a chance to rest and heal so that it can better do its job. It is also advisable to eat smaller meals, to chew your food well, to eat easy-to-digest foods such as raw fruits and vegetables and to be sure you are relaxed during mealtime. Your food will digest best if you do not exercise very vigorously immediately before or after a meal and if you are not overly stressed or anxious before, during or after your meal.
When foods are eaten, they are oxidized in the body resulting in the formation of residue or ash. In this residue if the minerals sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium predominate over sulfur, phosphorus, chlorine and uncombusted organic acid radicals, they are designated as alkaline ash foods. The converse of this is true for foods designated as acid ash.
Numerical values of alkalinity or acidity are determined in long, painstaking analytical laboratory work. The concentrations of the various elements are determined separately and then computed in terms of equivalents. The excess of one group of minerals over the other is expressed as cubic centimeters of normal acid or base (alkaline) per 100 grams edible food. The values obtained are called degrees of acidity or alkalinity.
(most alkaline reaction) | |
43.7 | Fig, dried |
41.6 | Lima bean, dried |
36.6 | Apricot, dried |
25.3 | Raisin |
20.4 | Swiss chard |
20.3 | Prune, dried |
17.5 | Dandelion greens |
16.4 | Soybean sprouts |
15.8 | Spinach |
15.0 | Taro corns & tubers |
14.2 | Cucumber |
14.0 | Lima bean, fresh |
13.5 | Almond |
12.1 | Peach, dried |
11.1 | Beet |
10.7 | Avocado |
10.5 | Kale |
10.4 | Chive |
10.2 | Carrot |
10.2 | Rhubarb |
9.9 | Endive, (escarole) |
9.6 | Date |
9.1 | Chestnut |
8.6 | Parsnip |
8.5 | Granadilla |
8.5 | Lemon with peel |
8.5 | Coconut meat, dry |
8.5 | Rutabaga |
8.4 | Onion, mature dry |
8.3 | Tomato, ripe |
8.2 | Peach, fresh |
8.2 | Plum |
8.1 | Celery |
8.1 | Watercress |
7.7 | Blackberry |
7.7 | Guava |
7.7 | Lemon |
7.7 | Bamboo shoots |
7.7 | Iceberg lettuce |
7.5 | Cantaloupe |
7.5 | Coconut milk |
7.4 | Loganberry |
7.4 | Pea, dried |
7.3 | Sweet cherry |
7.3 | Leek |
7.2 | Potato |
7.1 | Orange |
7.0 | Lettuce: Cos, Losseleaf |
6.7 | Pricklypear |
6.7 | Sweet potato |
6.6 | Apricot, fresh |
6.5 | Turnip |
6.4 | Grapefruit |
6.2 | Nectarine |
6.2 | Common cabbage |
6.0 | Banana |
6.0 | Coconut meat, fresh |
6.0 | Kohlrabi |
5.8 | Pineapple |
5.7 | Raspberry |
5.7 | Tangerine |
5.5 | Gooseberry |
5.0 | Mango |
4.9 | Quince |
4.9 | Mushroom |
4.8 | Sapodilla |
4.8 | Snap bean |
4.8 | Radish |
4.5 | Orange juice |
4.5 | Eggplant |
4.5 | Okra |
4.3 | Brussels sprouts |
4.2 | Broccoli |
4.2 | Horseradish, raw |
4.0 | Sour red cherry |
4.0 | Lemon juice |
3.9 | Red cabbage |
3.5 | Pomegranate |
3.4 | Pear, fresh |
3.2 | Cauliflower |
3.2 | Chicory |
3.2 | Pumpkin |
2.8 | Winter squash . |
2.7 | Grapes |
2.7 | Savoy cabbage |
2.6 | Strawberry |
2.2 | Apple |
2.2 | Watermelon |
1.8 | Sweet corn |
1.3 | Pea, fresh green |
.1 | Olive oil |
(neutral reaction) | |
.1 | Asparagus |
.2 | Chinese waterchestnut |
.8 | Sorghum grain |
1.4 | Blueberry |
2.1 | Filbert |
2.3 | Cress |
3.2 | Brazilnut |
3.8 | Oliver, green pickled |
4.3 | Artichoke globe |
4.3 | White bean, dried |
7.8 | White rice |
8.5 | English walnut |
10.3 | Jerusalem artichoke |
10.5 | Lentil |
10.6 | Peanut |
10.9 | Wheat grain |
11.3 | Rye grain |
(most acid reaction) |
From Composition and Facts About Foods
The purpose of this article is to clearly and simply explain the meaning of acid and alkaline and to explain why a study of the acid-alkaline balance, or pH balance, is important in the study of health and healthful living.
Acid and alkaline are words used to differentiate two classes of minerals with differing chemical compositions. One class of minerals contains a relatively large number of hydrogen ions. These minerals are the acid-forming minerals. They include sulphur, phosphorus and chlorine. The other of these two classifications of minerals contains a relatively small number of hydrogen ions. These minerals are the alkaline-forming minerals. They include potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium and iron.
Substances contain both acid-forming and alkaline-forming minerals. Whether a substance is classed as acid or alkaline depends upon which type of minerals predominate in the substance. Substances that have approximately equal amounts of acid and alkaline (base) minerals are neutral. Water is neutral.
Foods may be acid before ingestion but alkaline after metabolism, or they may be alkaline before ingestion but acid after metabolism. The former is generally true for fruits and vegetables, while the latter is generally true for animal foods.
The human body is maintained slightly alkaline, and alkaline foods are our normal diet and therefore a healthful diet. When we refer to alkaline foods, we mean foods that leave an alkaline “ash” after metabolism—fresh fruits and vegetables, primarily, as well as some nuts and seeds. Ingestion of animal foods results in many acids, most notably uric acid, sulphuric acid and phosphoric acid. The presence of these acids causes the body’s buffer systems (those organs that maintain normal body pH) to work extra hard, whereas the consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds does not overwork the body.
The body’s major buffer organs are the kidneys and the lungs. If either of these organs is impaired for any reason, or if a diet containing an excess of acid-forming foods is consumed, acidosis may occur. Acidosis is by far more common than alkalosis. An excess of acid-forming foods does not directly result in acidosis, however. Rather, this practice results in overworking the kidneys and lungs and depleting the body’s supply of buffer salts. Then the body’s ability to neutralize excess acids from acid-forming foods becomes impaired.
Alkalosis may result from lung or kidney impairment or from overbreathing, but it does not result from consumption of too many alkaline-forming foods, as there is no such thing as too many alkaline-forming foods. These foods are our normal dietary and they always contain a proper balance of base (alkaline) and acid minerals. Alkalosis may occur, however, if antacid preparations are frequently taken.
Acidosis and alkalosis are both pathological conditions that need never occur. However, acidosis is rather common because so many people consume a diet heavy in acid-forming foods such as meats, milk, cheese, eggs, etc. and because so many refined foods are consumed (sugar, flour, rice, wheat, etc.).
Acidosis is the predecessor to almost all, if not all, diseases. This is not because acidosis causes diseases, but the same unhealthful practices that result in acidosis also are the causes of diseases. Illnesses are body processes to set a wrong internal situation right. They are carried on by the body in order to eliminate harmful toxins and to correct imbalances, including over-acidity in the body. Therefore, no “cures” should be sought. The body should be left alone to carry out the cleansing process without interference from drugs, foods, etc.
If you suspect that your body is overly acidic, all you need do is fast one to five, days and/or consume only fresh fruits and vegetables, uncooked and without seasonings of any kind. The body is fully capable of correcting all internal imbalances and will automatically do so as soon as the cases of the problem are removed (and, in some cases, before the causes of the problem are removed, as a matter of life or death).
From a practical standpoint, you need not concern yourself with the degree of acidity or alkalinity of the foods you eat. Just eat a wholesome diet of uncooked fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, and you will be providing your body with exactly the kind of nourishment it needs and was designed to handle.
Throughout recorded and unrecorded time (history and prehistory), humans have made use of the beneficial effects of the sun. Playing and/or relaxing in its illuminating rays have been as much a part of natural living as the procuring of food and water or any other necessity of human life. Indeed, humans originally existed without clothing on any part of their body and were sun-kissed throughout the years of their lifespan.
Positive evidence of the use of the sunbath is offered to us by many of the ancient civilizations. It is known that the Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans all were aware of the hygienic use of the sun and equipped their cities with sun gardens for this purpose. Akhenaton of Egypt, Zoraster of Persia and Hippocrates of Greece all looked upon the sun as a great force and worshipped it as a god. An example of this worship is given to us by the Egyptians, whose first temple was erected in honor of their sun god. It was located in a city called On, east of the Nile, and its name was later changed to Heliopolis—City of the Sun.
The ancients knew of the effects the sun had on strengthening the body, including the muscles and nerves, and extensive instructions were given in this regard by Herodotus. The Romans applied this knowledge in the training of their gladiators, giving them regular sunbaths. It is also known from the writing of Philostratus that the Olympian athletes were required to take sunbaths.
In the old German epic poem, the Edda, we learn of the hygienic use the Germans made of the sunshine, carrying their sick to the sunny mountain slopes for exposure to its rays. An account has also been recorded regarding the Incas of Peru using the sunbath in the treatment of syphilis.
In the third century, A.D., Mithraism, or sun worship, came very close to being accepted as the universal religion. It was very similar to Christianity in many essential respects. The final triumph of Christianity practically ended the sunbath, even though it was so widely employed by the peoples of that time. The sunbath was viewed by Christians as a “pagan” ritual. This condemnation of the sunbath could be considered the beginning of an era known as the Middle Ages, or the Dark Ages, where and when many of the desirable features of ancient civilization were destroyed and replaced by an antinatural philosophy and culture. During this thousand-year reign, only the Jewish and Arabian physicians preserved the sunbath in their care of the sick.
Regarding the modern phase of sunbathing, there was a dual origin—one of these in Europe, the Other in the United States. First we shall discuss the European phase: Waldvogel, of Bohemia, advocated sunbathing as far back as 1755, but he had few, if any, followers. Madame Duhamel, in 1857, believed in the use of the sunbath to aid children in their recovery from tuberculosis. Dr. Lahmann of Germany employed the “Sun and Air Cure” in his institution, as did Bilz in his world-famous sanitarium, as early as 1872-73. But the person who is given credit as the originator of the modern practice of sunbathing is Arnold Rikli, who prescribed sunbaths to his patients at his institution, established at Weldes Krai on the Adriatic Sea in 1855. He wrote seven books describing his methods, the principal ones being translated into the Spanish, French and Italian languages.
The first series of observations relating to the effects of sunlight on disease were made by Dr. Loncet of Lyons, France, about 1890-1900. In 1911, Dr. Rollier, a Swiss physician, also did some work in this area. Both of these people enjoyed favorable results, and, as a result, sunbathing has continued to grow in popularity in all parts of Europe.
One last name should be mentioned, that of Dr. Finsen of Denmark, whose comparative experiments with the rays of both sunlight and artificial light became largely responsible for the vast array of artificial lighting apparatus used in the treatment of disease.
In the United States, the first advocate of sunbathing was Sylvester Graham, a pioneer hygienist, who not only discussed the importance of sunshine, but also the detrimental effects of clothing. He presented his ideas in his masterful work, “Lectures on the Science of Human Life,” first published in 1843, stressing the benefits of sunshine on bone growth and development.
Another hygienist, Dr. Russell Trall, placed great emphasis upon the power of sunlight in both health and disease. His writings, published around the mid-nineteenth century, clearly show a deep awareness and understanding of the need for sunlight and its value in cases of rickets, scrofula and anemia.
Although credit is generally given to Huldschinsky, who in 1919 proved the definite value of sunshine in overcoming rickets, Dr. Trail was actually about seventy years ahead of him in making this discovery. Additionally, Dr. James C. Jackson and Dr. Dio Lewis both used the sunbath in caring for their patients at around the same time as Dr. Trail. These facts point out that these individuals were using the sunbath previous to Dr. Loncet’s observations as to the effects of sunlight in disease between 1890-1900. Actually, the sunbath has been employed in this country for over a hundred years, especially among the pioneer hygienists who have not received their due recognition.
Both plants and animals make use of the catalytic powers of sunlight, attaining the highest form of their development in the neighborhood of the equator, where the sun’s rays are most abundant. At the equator, life exists in greatest profusion, but as we approach the higher latitudes, where nights are longest throughout the many winter months, we notice life consists of poorly-developed forms or is absent altogether.
Sunlight is an essential nutritive factor to both plant and animal life. Under its influence, plants both excrete and absorb oxygen. Their leaves are able to absorb carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into plant substances by transforming the carbon dioxide into formaldehyde. This in turn is polymerized to sugar, thus forming a carbohydrate. This is the process of photosynthesis, and both chlorophyll and xanthophyll are associated with this process, making the green color of plant life.
Additionally, the conversion of starch into sugar during the ripening process of fruits requires the action of both the heat and light of the sun for perfection. The beautiful coloring of the flowers, stems, leaves and fruits of plants are all dependent oh sunlight for their production. When deprived of it, the result is an inferior plant, pale or colorless, that is said to be etiolated.
The colors of butterflies, birds and animals are also determined by light, as is their complete development. An example of this was given by Dr. Trail. He pointed out that in the tadpole the process of metamorphosis is arrested if it is deprived of sunlight. It is unable to develop into a frog; rather, it continues to grow as a tadpole. Complete absence of light results in blindness and even eyelessness.
Sunlight also enables the animal body to assimilate calcium, and it is because of this that it is of great value in the prevention of rickets and tuberculosis. A lack of calcium is associated with both of these conditions. This assimilation of calcium may be observed by comparing chicken eggs of various birds. Those raised in the sunlight produce harder and thicker shells than those not so exposed.
The influence of sunlight is also intimately related to the number of red cells and hemoglobin in the blood. An insufficiency of light will cause an increase in the serum or watery portion of the blood and a corresponding decrease in the quantity of blood fibrin and red Corpuscles, resulting in anemia. But with sufficient sunlight, the oxygen-carrying power of the blood is increased, the circulation of the blood is improved, and consequently the, blood’s power to repair and build tissue is increased. Sunlight’s influence on the muscles is to add to their size and quality and to enhance their contractile powers by improving the condition of the entire body, including the nerves that control the muscles. In addition, by improving the overall health and vitality of the body, sunshine is the finest cosmetic, helping the body to smooth away wrinkles, to strengthen and tone the skin, and, at the same time, to insure a soft, delicate texture and overall beauty. It may also be said that, in general, the pigmented skin is stronger, contributes to the health of the entire organism and, therefore, is subject to fewer diseases, and is less sensitive to heat and cold.
Regarding the pregnant mother and her unborn child, it must be noted that the benefits to be derived from sunlight are greatest during periods of development and rapid gains in flesh. Sunshine, again, by improving overall health and vitality, aids in, the skeletal development of the baby and helps preserve the normal alkalinity of his/her blood. Additionally, its influence on the unborn will aid in promoting sounder sleep; deeper, slower breathing; diminished blood pressure; and an increase in urinary excretion. Sunbaths before and after childbirth will increase the mother’s ability to nurse her child, with an improvement in the quality of the milk. It will produce better general health in the mother and prevent the loss of blood, making for a more painless delivery. Another benefit is that pregnant mothers who get sunlight will not experience tiredness, backaches and loss of appetite.
It has been shown that after a fast or a wasting illness, obtaining sufficient sunshine will enable the body to build higher quality flesh. It will also enable the body to most efficiently digest and assimilate food. This is not to imply that we should wait to become sick to make use of the sun’s rays. The sun is not a therapeutic agent; it is an essential of good health and nutrition. Sunlight is of value in all states and conditions of the body and in all stages of development. Its importance must be relegated to that of hygiene, and it should not be thought of as a specific “cure” for a disease condition.
We spoke earlier of the great importance sunlight plays in proper bone development. This is due to the fact that only through the aid of sunlight, particularly the ultraviolet rays, may the laying down and fixation of the calcium and phosphorus salts be accomplished in an ideal fashion as to make for the transformation of cartilage into bone. On the other hand, when insufficient sunlight is obtained, the result is defective, misshapen, brittle and easily broken bones, a condition known as rickets.
Sunlight also proves invaluable in cases of glandular inactivity, favorably affecting irregularities of ovulation, pubertal difficulties and impotency. Acne, a condition representing a glandular disturbance of the skin, is also noticeably aided by sunlight, as is the condition of psoriasis. Also, as sunshine aids in increasing the coagulating power of the blood, it is of inestimable value to sufferers from uterine hemorrhage. Additionally, if cautiously applied, the sunbath can be very valuable in some nervous affections.
Suntanning is the bronzing or browning of the skin due to a deposit of pigment or melanin granules around the nuclei of the epidermal and basal cells. This process of pigmentation is the most important protecting mechanism against sunburn because it prevents the overabsorption of ultraviolet rays.
Just as chlorophyll is formed as a light screen in plants, humans deposit a brown pigment, called melanin, when in the presence of sunlight. This pigment deposit absorbs the visible and ultraviolet rays, converts them into rays of less energy and lower vibration, and then passes them onto the deeper cells of the epidermis. A combination of the infrared and ultraviolet rays will result in the deepest pigmentation.
It must be understood in this context that the sun’s rays do not produce pigment; rather, they occasion its formation. Pigmentation is a physiological process, pigment being manufactured within the body from the elements of food and deposited in the skin by the processes of life. The tanning process is totally dependent upon the body’s ability to make use of the sun. A lack of response may commonly be seen in cases of leukoderma, where the white patches of skin fail to produce pigment.
The second protective mechanism the body uses against too much sunshine is a thickening of the corneum, the uppermost layer of skin. This process is undesirable, as it results in harsh, dry, coarse skin. It is largely to avoid this dryness that olive oil and other commercial preparations are used on the skin, but it is )far wiser to avoid excessive exposure by retreating to the shade.
We must distinguish between suntan and sunburn. This latter is a true burn and injures the skin just as if it was fire or scalding water. An inflammatory process results and may be accompanied by severe blisters, general discomfort, and later a peeling of the dead tissue. As in other burns, there are three degrees of sunburn. A first degree burn produces redness due to an excess of blood in the skin, causing much or little discomfort, depending upon the severity of the burn. In second-degree burns, the skin becomes intensely red and painful to the touch and may be accompanied by diarrhea, fever and/or vomiting. Blisters may develop and then burst, discharging their fluid contents over the body. There is also much itching and finally peeling of the skin. A third-degree burn results in a sloughing dermatitis and may end in death. Complications may develop, such as inflammation of the brain, stomach and intestines; blood poisoning; and hemorrhages.
Sunbaths play a vital role in the life processes of human nutrition, the tanning process being coincident with them. There is a tendency to overexpose the skin to acquire a “good tan,” and this should be avoided, as it will enervate the body, lessening the value of the sunbath.
The untanned body should begin with exposure to the solar rays of about ten minutes a day and increase gradually until an hour or more may be taken without harm. Too much sun will result in restlessness and decreased nerve tone. Additional precaution must be taken by blond and red-haired people, as they do not pigment as readily as dark-haired people. Heliophobes, those individuals who redden and blister and are cautioned to stay out of the sun, should still take sunbaths but do so for short periods during the early morning or late afternoon hours to avoid large amounts of ultraviolet rays.
The sunbath should be taken in an entirely nude state or with scanty attire, preferably without glasses or hats, as the eyes and hair also benefit. Sunglasses render the eyes more sensitive to the sunlight and ultimately impair the vision, whereas it has been found that gazing directly into the sun greatly benefits weak eyesight. It is also known that sunlight accelerates the growth of hair.
Suntan lotion or olive oil on the skin is unnecessary and should not be used. These will prevent all the ultraviolet rays from being absorbed and will inhibit the oil-secreting glands of the body from working properly. They will not prevent the injurious effects of excessive sunbathing, nor will they provide for a uniform tan. Remember, it is not mere tanning that we seek, but a general revitalizing of the entire organism, not confined to the skin alone.
Suntan lotion or olive oil on the skin are unnecessary and should not be used. These will prevent all the ultraviolet rays from being absorbed and will inhibit the oil-secreting glands of the body from working properly. They will not prevent the injurious effects of excessive sunbathing, nor will they provide for a uniform tan. Remember, it is not mere tanning that we seek, but a general revitalizing of the entire organism, not confined to the skin alone.
If the sunbath is taken at the beach, additional caution must be exercised, as the reflection from the sand and water cause more sun rays to strike the body. Thus, burning will result more quickly. Neither a thin haze over the sun nor a cool breeze will prevent the ultraviolet rays from reaching us. It is important to understand in this context that it is not the sun’s heat from which we benefit (except secondarily on a cold day), but rather its light. The hot sun is very exhausting and should be avoided, and like other animals we should instinctively seek the shade at these times.
Those people living in colder climates must take advantage of the warmer months to secure an ample supply of sun-made reserves to carry them through sunless periods. This is not to say that the body stores up sunshine, but rather it stores up substances produced with the aid of sunshine to be used in times of stringency. Along with vitamin D, other materials are synthesized in the body with the aid of the sun’s rays. These body reserves will be adequate as long as the general mode of living throughout the year is not enervating. All forms of excesses, dissipation of the emotions, lack of rest and sleep, sexual excesses, overwork and/or an improper diet will waste these reserves.
Some additional precautions should be noted in the case of invalids or generally weak individuals. If the sunbath leaves the person feeling weak or depressed or with an increase in any of his/her symptoms, then it has been overdone. Fever, headache, weariness, loss of appetite and sleeplessness may all be considered signs of excess. In those individuals suffering from asthma or tuberculosis, a difficulty in breathing may be experienced. Nervous patients may not be able to sleep due to a stimulating effect caused by too much sun. The end result for securing the sunbath should be to produce a better feeling in the individual, not worse. A person’s need for sunlight is dependent upon their ability to make use of these light rays. Overindulgence of the sunbath will lend to additional enervation and serves no useful purpose.
Sunlight, when broken up by means of a prism, is found to be con posed of the color bands of the spectrum—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. These different colors represent different rates of vibration, increasing as we go from red to violet, while their wavelengths decrease. These visible rays give us sensations of light, color and heat. In addition to these color rays, sunlight also contains other rays not perceptible to our ocular sense and therefore invisible. The wavelengths immediately shorter than visible violet and those immediately longer than visible red are both invisible to humans and are called ultraviolet and infrared, respectively.
Regarding the heating power of sunlight, it is found to be greatest at the red end of the spectrum where it blends with the infrared rays, while the greatest chemical activity takes place at the violet end, blending with the ultraviolet rays. These invisible rays of the sun are the most beneficial ones. However, the complete color spectrum, blended in perfect proportion so as to produce white light, is needed for ideal growth and development of both plants and animals.
Artificial light does not radiate a complete spectrum but instead produces a light with an excess of one or more of the color rays. In the case of incandescent lighting, most of its light is yellow, orange and red, whereas the standard “cool white” fluorescent light emits mostly yellow-green light. The various so-called “sunlamps” produce either too much ultraviolet or too much infrared radiation and are definitely harmful. They may cause headaches, third-degree burns and severe conjunctivitis.
The effects of artificial lighting have been noticed in both plants and animals. John Ott, of the Time Lapse Research Laboratory, discovered that the apples on a branch of a tree under artificial light grew larger than those growing under natural light, but they did not mature or ripen. Despite the addition of many chemical products to produce more color in the fruit, the fruit never acquired color until exposed to ultraviolet rays from the sun.
Further observations made by Ott revealed that the ratio of the sexes of plants was affected by different wavelengths of the spectrum. Experimenting on a pumpkin vine raised in a basement under a skylight and a cool, pinkish, white fluorescent light, it was noticed that the female pumpkin-producing flower turned yellow, then black and finally dried up and dropped off the vine. Consequently, the vine did not produce fruit. When these lights were replaced with tubes containing more blue in them, the female buds developed bountifully, while the male buds dried up, turned black and dropped off the vine at an early stage. The usual ratio of male to female buds on a pumpkin vine is seven to one respectively; however, in these artificially-lighted plants, normal reproduction could not take place.
In general, it has been observed that plants grown in artificial light lack the rugged constitution of plants grown under natural lighting conditions. Their growth may be stimulated by subjecting them to longer hours of light, as compared to the natural light cycle of the revolving earth. But this forced growth produces plants bearing flowers and fruit of lesser quality and color appeal than those grown in sunlight.
The animal world is also adversely affected by variance of light wavelengths. In an experiement conducted to determine the effects of different light on animals, 1000 mice were used and divided among three different light environments: Those receiving natural daylight produced an equal amount of male and female offspring; those under white fluorescent bulbs produced 70% females and 30% males; and those under pink fluorescent bulbs produced 30% females and 70% males. This latter group did not thrive as well as either of the two other groups. All those exposed to the pink light quit breeding two months earlier and died one month earlier than those exposed to the white light.
As these experiments were made with a strain of mice in which malignancy develops in 98% of them, almost all the mice did succumb to cancer. However, those mice under natural daylight developed cancer two months later than those under the white fluorescent bulbs, and three months later than those under the pink fluorescent bulbs. An additional effect was noticed: Those mice receiving the pink light gave birth to young which were smaller in number and size than those mice receiving natural light.
Other investigations have shown that light definitely affects the pituitary gland, as well as other areas in the midbrain and hypothalamic regions. In the early 1920’s, William Rowan demonstrated that the varying seasonal lengths of the daylight was responsible for the migration of birds. In other studies conducted by Bochenek, Marburg and Gudden, it was shown that light may occasion reaction on the entire endocrine system of an animal via nerve impulses originating in the retina and reaching other areas of the brain by way of accessory optic pathways. Thus, artificial light, not being of the same quality as natural light, can play havoc with the endocrine system via the nerves.
A study was conducted involving some elderly men at a nursing home who spent most of their time indoors under the influence of unnatural lighting. They found that these men suffered a severely diminished ability to absorb calcium; yet when the lights were replaced with special bulbs designed to simulate sunlight, their calcium absorption was increased by 15% within a month. Even more disturbing research conducted by scientists has indicated that fluorescent lighting can cause genetic mutations, cancer and death in the cells of many life forms, including humans.
Aside from the facts concerning the direct negative effects of unnatural lighting; we must also consider their more indirect effect on our body rhythms. Their presence, by turning night into day, tend to imbalance the circadian rhythms—the regular cycles of rising and falling body temperature, variations in body chemicals, etc., that naturally occur approximately once every 24 hours. The result may be what three West German photobiologists have called “light stress.”
All plants and animals require alternating periods of light and dark so that some vital processes may rest while others become activated. The anabolic activities during the night can take place efficiently only when not interfered with by lighting, which will continue to occasion activity in the living cells. The result is that the processes of growth and repair are interrupted, resulting in the necessity for disease, and the body is robbed of a certain degree of life force.
Experiments testing the influence of artificial light on fish revealed that, when exposed to too many hours of light, the fish ceased to reproduce. When time exposed to light was cut down gradually over a period of weeks, the fish resumed reproduction if exposed to pink light, but not under the slightly bluish white light. Also, under the pink light, the ratio of female to male offspring was 80 to 20 respectively and the development of the secondary sex characteristics of the male offspring was retarded.
Regarding humans, some scientists suspect that the age at which girls reach sexual maturity might be influenced by the artificial illumination of nighttime. It has been noticed that in countries experiencing long winter nights, girls are now reaching sexual maturity months or years younger than their grandmothers did. Apparently, their normal maturation cycle is being interfered with by the introduction of artificial lighting into their lives, thereby increasing the rate at which they mature.
From this information, we may understand the importance lighting plays in our daily lives and we may also suspect that all the effects of artificial lighting have yet to be uncovered. A true science of health must endeavor to ascertain all aspects of life and living and their ultimate effects on human health.
Air is the gaseous substance that makes up the atmosphere of the earth and provides every living thing with its breath of life. Plants receive oxygen through their leaves; insects breathe through tiny openings in their bodies; frogs breathe partly through their skin; fish absorb oxygen out of the water as it passes over their gills; and humans receive their supply of oxygen partly through the skin, but largely through the lungs. The independent life of a body does not begin until it takes its first breath and this function of breathing continues until the end of life. This is the process of respiration, and it must be considered the primary function of the living organism. We can live many weeks without food and some days without water, but if the function of breathing is interfered with for only a few minutes, our life quickly ends.
Respiration is an automatic, involuntary process, being regulated according to the body’s internal needs. With healthy lungs, we breathe normally and rhythmically, yet unconsciously, as the process is beyond our conscious control. At rest we breathe slowly and less deeply. As activity is increased, breathing becomes more rapid, with greater excursions of the diaphragm and chest to allow for increased oxygen intake.
But the respiratory movements are not confined to the chest alone; they are systemic motions pervading the whole trunk. It is known that the rhythmic pulsations of the heart synchronize with the movements of the chest in respiration. These breathing movements also constitute an important factor in the circulation of the blood, as we may experience in the case of a drowned person being resusitated by artificial respiration, by which circulation and heart action are restored.
By far, the largest organs in the body are the lungs, designed and adapted to their work of receiving air and nothing else. They fill the thorax from the collarbone to the lowermost ribs and from the sternum in front to the spine in back. When the chest wall is raised through the action of the muscles of the chest, and when the diaphragm is depressed, the chest cavity expands, this forms a vacuum, and the air rushes into it. Conversely, when the chest wall contracts and the diaphragm is raised, the air is forced out of the lungs. Coincidentally with this process, the blood flows through the lungs, picking up oxygen, carrying it to the ceils and giving off carbon dioxide that it has brought from the cells. This whole process is automatic and is regulated by the body’s need for oxygen.
A normal pair of lungs contain approximately a billion tiny air cells. If these cells were all spread out on a flat surface, they would cover an area 40 x 50 feet. The average man inhales daily approximately 777,000 cubic inches of air, and in this same time 125 barrels of blood are purified in the lungs. Here the poisons and impurities of the body are brought by the blood and cast off. Also, the blood absorbs a fresh supply of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and the essence of sunlight to be conveyed to all parts of the body to furnish the trillions of cells with the normal stimulation to activate its various functions. This is a continuous process, and if it is interfered with, the result could be fatal. When respiration is obstructed, the lips quickly turn bluish-purple due to the rapid collection of carbon dioxide gas in the blood. In only a few seconds, if respiration is impeded the blood will turn almost black in color, signifying a great increase in poisons.
Carbon dioxide is composed of one part carbon and two parts oxygen and is not easily detected, as it is colorless, odorless and tasteless. For every 2,500 parts of atmospheric air, there is one part of carbon dioxide. When the air we breathe contains 3% carbon dioxide, a drowsy feeling occurs, and when it is present in larger quantities, death quickly results. If the organism does not promptly eliminate carbon dioxide, every cell becomes weakened and the entire body suffers. Carbon dioxide gas is present in all charged drinks, in beer and fermented liquids, in baking powder cookery, in self-rising flour products, in yeast bread and in all fermenting products.
At each exhalation the lungs discard enough gases, consisting of carbonic, lactic, hydrochloric, phosphoric and other acids, to poison a barrelful of air. In every 24-hour period, the amount of carbon dioxide eliminated by the lungs is equal to a lump of charcoal weighing eight ounces.
With this in mind, consider also that every person in a room needs 3,000 cubic feet of fresh air an hour to insure purity. In the case where several occupy a room not adequately ventilated, we inhale the exhalations of others and ourselves, and the amount of carbon dioxide contained in the air increases, making it more dangerous to breathe. This is the principal reason why patients in hospitals develop diseases of the lungs such as influenza and pneumonia. The early symptoms of mild carbon dioxide poisoning are sensations of uneasiness and oppression, drowsiness, sneezing, headache and coughing.
Under the laws of accommodation, our bodies are equipped with powers to enable it to tolerate for a time an atmosphere so poisonous that it could cause a vital person to pass out if it were suddenly entered into. This principal was illustrated by an experiment by Claude Bernard in which he used a bird placed under a bell-glass, providing it with enough oxygen nor three hours, but then removing it at the end of the second hour and replacing this bird with a fresh, healthy one. It was shown that the latter died instantly, as it did riot have sufficient time to accommodate itself to the vitiated environment of the bell-glass.
In addition to carbon dioxide, our bodies also must deal with the poisonous fumes of modern industrial cities. City air contains such chemicals as carbon monoxide, sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, hydrocyanic acid, benzene, methane, etc. The Cincinnati Post of April 1946 stated that in the month of March the amount of soot and ash that fell on that city was equal to 2725 tons or 227 railway carloads. It amounted to enough to cover a 40 x 150 foot, 75 foot deep lot.
Another interesting fact: A professor H. H. Sheldon of New York University once erected an apparatus in the Times Square theatrical district that drew in air at roof level. In one week, the apparatus cleaned 341,250,000 cubic feet of air, removing from it 12 cubic feet of solid matter composed of dust, soot and tar and weighing 37 pounds.
All the protection one has against polluted air is to exhale it through deeper breaths, but this should be done actively through movement. Ernest T. Seaton, in his story of the coyote, tells of this animal’s protective instincts after ingesting some poisonous bait. It instinctively knows there is but one way it can overcome the poison, and that is by vigorous exhalation. If it can run long enough and fast enough before the poison does its deadly work, the lungs will eliminate the poison and the animal will survive.
H. B. Meller of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research said: “When it is known that one takes about 30 cubic inches of air into one’s lungs in each inhalation, or about seven times the weight of food and water consumed, it can be understood why more people are weakened, devitalized and poisoned by the pollution in the air they suck into their lungs than by all the ingredients in the food they eat and the water they drink.” When the air we breathe is fresh and pure, it brings life into the body, but when it is filled with poisonous gases from industrial waste, etc., it leads us to ill-health and premature death.
The press of August 19, 1939, stated that these poisonous gases and acids in the air of the city of Paris were “eating away and disintegrating the historic monuments of that city. The rapid decay of \ these stone monuments dates from about 1900. Since that time, the smoke and fumes from factories, river tugs, motor cars and trucks and heating plants have steadily increased. The smoke, mixed with the exhaust of motor cars, trucks and buses, produces a compound of sulphuric acid gas that chemically attacks everything that it strikes.”
Until about seventy five years ago, fresh air was considered by physicians as being dangerous to the sick, especially during the night, and all windows were kept closed and all air holes were plugged up to prevent any air from entering. Thanks to the work of the early pioneers of hygiene such as Graham, Trall, Densmore, Page, Oswald and others, most people of today are aware of the importance of adequate ventilation at all times.
Although the Greeks and Romans were able to manufacture glass, they did not use it to obstruct their windows. Instead, they allowed the free passage of light and fresh air to enter their dwelling houses. It was not until later periods, called the Middle Ages, that the fear of night air and of other natural instincts including a fear of eating uncooked foods became predominant, and habitual indoor life between closed walls became customary. This grew out of the philosophies and religions of the day that preached anti-natural doctrines.
Oxygen is essential to the highest physical and mental development of humans. This may be provided through free ventilation and exercise in the open air. Although there seems to be more need for fresh air during the daytime while we are active than during the night when we are inactive, this is hardly an argument for sleeping in unventilated rooms. In sleep, nature seeks complete rest and reduced oxygenation. This is provided for by decreased breathing, and should not be accomplished by the breathing of foul air.
Regular and continuous breathing is essential to meet the needs of life, and it is for this reason that we should live, dress and carry ourselves in ways that do not interfere with the process of breathing. Five minutes of deep breathing twice a day will not compensate for inadequate breathing the rest of the day. It is what we habitually do all day that counts in the long run, rather than any five-minute breathing sessions. Proper and sufficient breathing depends upon a number of factors, including health of nose, throat, chest, lungs and abdomen; proper body posture; freedom of movement of the chest and abdomen (lack of restrictive clothing); well-ventilated homes, bedrooms, etc. and ample exercise in the out-of-doors.
In this light, mention should be made that exercises to develop the chest and to increase its capacity for oxygen are well advised. Modern life generally does not adequately develop the musculature and framework of the chest, and it is for this reason that the modern man or woman’s breathing reserve is small compared to that of wild animals and those people of more primitive societies. Regarding our breathing apparatus, the normal nose permits adequate amounts of air to enter the lungs through but one nostril under ordinary conditions. When under great stress, as when running, the additional nostril should provide for the ingress of sufficient air, providing both nostrils are normal. Generally, mouth breathing is a symptom of disease, as in adenoids, polyps, nasal catarrh, a cold, etc. Every day we should take advantage of the cleanest air available in the particular vicinity in which we live. It is important that we do some exercises that will promote greater oxygen intake. This will also enable us to throw out additional poisons from our lungs and help to keep our breathing functions in a healthier condition.
Are specific deep breathing exercises recommended for greater intake of oxygen?
If you are referring to a passive form of deep breathing not associated with total bodily movement, then the answer is no, they are not recommended. We must understand that the rate of breath is automatically controlled through the respiratory center in the medulla of the brain. The more carbon dioxide that is contained in the blood, the more this center is stimulated, with a corresponding increase in the rate of breathing. Conversely, oxygen inhibits this center so that the more oxygen the blood possesses, the slower we breathe. Thus the breath rate and the volume of oxygen are always automatically adjusted to the body’s true needs. Deep breathing “exercises” that do not involve great muscular exertion will not provide for any more air into the body than the blood can take up according to its needs. Passive deep breathing “exercises” do not force anything out of the body, nor do they “feed” the nerves or regenerate the body in any way. Such activities may result in mental confusion and various other symptoms and are best discarded. Active deep breathing, that which is coincident with various bodily movements such as hiking, running, swimming, etc., occasion a greater need for oxygen and are beneficial. The body’s normal response to this need is met through an increase of breath rate and volume of oxygen intake.
Do all forms of artificial lighting produce detrimental effects upon our health and, if so, what can we do to minimize these effects?
Yes, all forms of artificial lighting negatively affect our health, but most of us must spend some time under their influence in order to live in this society. A few things may be done with regard to fluorescent light bulbs that will lessen the potential hazards associated with their use. First, we may use solid plastic covers over the lighting fixtures to help filter out excessive ultraviolet light rays. Secondly, and more importantly, we may use and encourage others to use some of the more recently developed broad-spectrum fluorescent lamps instead of the more commonly used “cool white” fluorescent bulbs. The former more closely simulate the full spectrum that is offered us by sunlight, and they should prove to be less harmful.
How may one obtain sufficient sunlight during the cold winter months of the temperate zones?
Humans originally came into existence when the conditions of the environment harmoniously agreed with their constitution. This was in such a climate as to allow for living without clothing, so as to be sun-kissed throughout the years of their existence. Nowadays, many of us inhabit less comfortable areas of the world and may only experience these life-giving rays part of the year. A possible solution during the winter is to construct a solarium or close off an area in such a way as to keep the wind out but the solar rays in. Through the use of reflecting the rays, we may additionally produce more heat in this specialized area, thereby making it more comfortable for the sunbath. We may also secure some sunlight through an open window if conditions permit. But probably the most important consideration is that we live healthfully throughout the months so as to secure adequate nutritive reserves, and not dissipate our nerve energy through food and/or sexual indulgences or lack of adequate rest and sleep. This will prove to be of paramount importance for maintaining good health during those months not as suitable to humans.
Lesson 13 has discussed many reasons why humans need sunshine on a regular basis. Sunshine has been described as one of the basic essentials of life and a valuable factor-influence in all states and conditions of the human body. It is needed for assimilation of calcium and phosphorus salts and for the production of vitamin D in the skin.
While sunshine and other nutritive factors obtained on a regular basis result in fewer diseases, especially rickets, tuberculosis, anemia, insomnia, acne, psoriasis, leukemia, high blood pressure and reproductive disorders (irregular ovulation, pubertal difficulties, impotency, uterine hemorrhage, etc.), it cannot be considered a specific “cure” for any disease condition, and it will not protect us from other destructive habits we may indulge.
Excessive sunshine, especially under the sun’s most intense rays, is not healthful and should be avoided. It may result in sunburn, dry, coarse skin and nervousness. In short, too much heat and sunlight is enervating. Tanning should not be considered the primary objective of sunbathing, and suntan lotions or oils should not be used because they will clog the body’s skin pores and inhibit the oil-secreting glands of the body from working properly.
Lesson 13 also gave a history of sunbathing and the use of sunshine for improved health, nerves and muscles. The practice of sunbathing was just about lost during the Middle Ages, however, and its revival was brought about in large part as a result of the efforts of Hygienic pioneers, including Graham and Trail.
Lesson 13 explained that artificial lights do not produce a complete spectrum of light, and they upset natural body rhythms that are tuned to the light of nature. Artificial lights produce an excess of one or more of the color rays, and they interfere with normal reproduction in plants and animals...
The anabolic activities that take place efficiently only at night when riot interfered with by artificial lighting are disturbed by the use of artificial lights. Therefore, the processes of growth and repair of cells and tissues are hindered and the body is robbed of some of its life force. Additionally, Lesson 13 stated that sunlamps are harmful and should not be used.
Air as a primary, and the most immediate, need of life, was discussed in this lesson. It must be obtained in ample amounts and it must be free from pollutants, including the exhalations of ourselves and others. This means that good ventilation is necessary inside buildings, and we should refrain from using polluting substances in our homes and offices. The fact that we consume more weight in air than in food and water combined makes it evident why people are so devitalized by air pollutants.
Lesson 13 described the lungs and how they work to take in oxygen and eliminate carbon dioxide and other toxins. It was explained that the heart works in harmony with the lungs. The symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning were described, and the body’s process of accommodation was explained and illustrated. Also, some of the major air pollutants in cities were listed and their damages described.
The need for adequate ventilation during sleep was discussed, and the need for outdoor exercise was highlighted. Lesson 13 also explained why passive deep breathing “exercises” should not be indulged but vigorous exercise should be obtained. Suggestions were made on how to avoid the harmful effects of artificial lighting and on how to obtain adequate sunlight during the cold winter months of the temperate zones.
Most important for the preservation of health and vitality are sunlight and air. They are just as necessary for growth and perpetuation of life as are liquid and solid food. “When the sun does not enter, thy physician enters,” says an old proverb. It has been found that the greatest mortality occurs in the narrow streets of cities and in houses having northern exposure. The inhabitants of southern mountain slopes are stronger and healthier than those living on the northern sides. Inhabitants of secluded valleys where the sun rises late and sets early are generally afflicted with peculiar diseases, chiefly due to a lack of direct sunlight and its salutary power to dissipate and decompose noxious vapors that accumulate in dark and low places.
The sun indeed is the great and ultimate source of all power that manifests itself in the inorganic as well as in the organic formations of matter. Plants require sunlight above all for the completion of their complicated organic combinations. While the lowest species of organic life, such as fungi, are capable of developing darkness, the higher plants, which principally support animal life always depend upon the rays of the sun for the processes of assimilating the elements of soil and atmosphere. They require especially the non-illuminating ultraviolet rays, which we know to be most active in the production of electrochemical effects.
Likewise, the animal body is to a large extent directly dependent upon sunlight for its growth and healthy development. It is a well-established fact that, as the result of an insufficiency of light, the fibrine and red blood corpuscles become diminished in quantity, while the serum or watery portion of the blood is increased, inducing leukemia, a sickness characterized by a great increase in the number of white blood corpuscles. A total exclusion of the sunlight induces the severer forms of anemic diseases, originating from an impoverished and disordered state of the blood.
Of the many experiments that have been made so far to demonstrate the beneficial effects of sunlight, the one conducted by John Blaytonis is the most remarkable and significant. In order to determine whether the indirect or diffused daylight, perhaps during a longer period of time, has the same effect as the direct sunlight, he selected twelve bean plants of the same variety and in the same stage of development. Then he planted them near one another in such a way that six always had full direct sunlight, while the others received only the diffused daylight. In October, the pods were harvested, and the weight of those grown in the shade or diffused light compared with that of those exposed to the sun rays was found to be in the proportion of 29:99; that of the dried beans 1:3.
This result was expected, but in the following year, when all the plants grown from the same seed received the full amount of the direct sunlight, the surprising fact was ascertained that those which had been raised in the shade yielded only half the amount of the previous year’s harvest, while in the fourth year they blossomed but did not mature. The deprivation of direct sunlight during one summer weakened the stock to such a degree that the species became extinct after four years.
The lesson of this experiment may be applied with great benefit to humans and their daily habits. The highly beneficial effect of sunbaths, if judiciously taken, is demonstrated by the above example in the best possible manner. A dwelling place that admits the sunlight during all hours of the day is, therefore, one of the first conditions for the preservation of health.
Statistics show that the tenament house districts of the large cities to which sunlight has very slight access have the greatest infant mortality and have many cases of rickets and tuberculosis. If it were not for the constant renewal of the population from the rural districts, the city dwellers, especially the poorer classes, would die out in the course of a few generations. All mothers should realize the importance and benefits of sunlight and use every opportunity to admit the direct rays of sun to their living and sleeping rooms whenever and wherever this is possible. Sunlight and fresh air are primal factors on which the normal development and health of the child depend.
Frequent exposures of the naked body to the sunlight will greatly assist the system in the performance of all physiological functions. It will especially insure an even distribution of the blood. Such an adjustment of the circulation is necessary for the normal functioning of all organs. People should make it a practice to expose their nude bodies frequently to sunlight and fresh air in order to keep in the best possible physical condition. Public parks should have enclosures where sunbaths and airbaths can be taken, and these should become an adjunct of every modern progressive city.
Sunlight can kill cells in our bodies if the cells are exposed too much to the very intense rays of the sun. Moderation and discrimination should always be exercised. Sunbaths are best taken in the morning, and an eastern exposure should be selected for the purpose.
Equal attention should be paid to a continuous supply of fresh air during day and night. Not many persons seem to realise the absolute necessity of the electrifying, life-giving oxygen for the maintenance of vitality and health It has been only a century and a half ago (1774) since the English scientist, Priestly, and the French scientist, Lavoisier, discovered that we live by means of a chemical process of combustion in which the blood unites with the inhaled air, yielding the products of combustion that we exhale as aqueous vapor and carbonic acid gas. This chemical action corresponds to that which we find in the case of a burning candle or a lamp fed with oil. If the supply of air is cut off, we will be suffocated, just as the flame of a lamp is extinguished if the air is prevented from passing to it. A person may live more than sixty days without food and a few days without water, but when deprived of air or oxygen, they die within a few minutes. This proves that pure air is the most necessary of all the essentials of life.
Atmospheric air consists of two gases, viz.: nitrogen and oxygen; the former serves only to dilute the oxygen. Besides these two elements, the air always contains some aqueous vapor, carbon dioxide and ammonia. On an average, 100 volumes of air contain: 78.35 vol. of nitrogen (N); 20.77 vol. of oxygen (O); 0.84 vol. of water vapor (h3O); 0.04 vol. of carbon dioxide (CO2); 0.0001 vol. of ammonia (NH3); and traces of other gases (ozone, etc.).
There are also various kinds of microbes in the air, according to moisture and temperature, causing fermentation and chemical disintegration of organic substances. The composition of air, i.e., its proportions of nitrogen and oxygen, is the same all over the surface of the earth. The degree of moisture or humidity in the air varies according to location and temperature. Carbon dioxide is always present, even in mid-ocean and forests, but its quantity is very small, ranging from three to four parts per ten thousand by volume.
In closed rooms, however, where numbers of persons are present and at the same time gas and coal are burned, the percentage of carbon dioxide rapidly increases. At the same time, the air is filled with other more poisonous gases, such as ammonia and albuminoid ammonia, while the amount of oxygen is gradually lowered. All these facts should be seriously considered in the proper ventilation of living rooms, schoolrooms, etc. The following table gives the average amount of carbon dioxide in 10,000 parts found in the air of different localities:
Ocean and forests | 0.3 |
Cities, open streets | 0.4 to 0.5 |
Bedroom during night, Window partly open | 0.8 |
Bedroom during night, Window closed | 1.2 |
School-rooms | 1.5 to 3.0 |
Hospitals | 2.8 |
School-room, 70 occupants at close of school hrs. | 7.2 |
Churches, during services | 3.5 to 7.0 |
Churches, if heated by furnaces | 20.0 to 30.0 |
Theatres, crowded meeting rooms | 25.0 |
Workshops, ill-ventilated | 30.0 |
These figures show how little attention is paid to proper ventilation, and they explain the constant increase of pneumonia and similar diseases. The importance of pure air becomes still more obvious if we consider the wonderful anatomical structure of the respiratory organs. The lungs, into which the air is drawn, consist of two rounded, oblong, somewhat flattened masses of cellular substance. They are situated in the cavity of the chest, which communicates with the atmosphere through the windpipe (trachea). The trachea, as it descends from the throat, branches off into large tubes, and these branch again and again into smaller and still smaller ones and finally into hairlike vessels.
Through these the air penetrates into the remotest parts of the cellular substance. Around each visible extremity nearly 18,000 cells are clustered, each of which is connected through these minute tubes with the external air. The cells vary in size. They have an average diameter of about one one-hundredth inch. Their total number has been estimated at about six hundred million. The wall of these cells is very thin; they are mere air vesicles.
The internal surfaces of all these cells together form an area of about one hundred sixty square yards of thin cell-wall. Over the whole of this surface, minute blood vessels branch out, almost entirely covering it. Along these tiny vessels the blood continually flows and, in its course, absorbs through their walls the oxygen of the inhaled air.
It is in the delicate membrane of these blood vessels that the change from venous into arterial blood is effected. The venous blood must be changed continually because it is an impure fluid containing matter that has already served for the support of life in the various parts of the body. Carbon dioxide and other gases are given off, and the oxygen of the air enters, the cells of the lungs and is absorbed by the minute vessels that spread over the cell walls. Within these vessels the oxygen combines directly with the hemoglobin of the blood, and by means of the action of the heart, proceeds with it in ceaseless currents through the arteries and veins.
To a certain extent the skin also absorbs oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide, the amount being about one-thirtieth of that excreted by the lungs. Besides, the skin gives off other gases, water and solid matter, amounting to from one to two pounds during the day. In summer people perspire more than in winter. During exercise or exertion more water is lost than at rest. All parts of the skin should be brought frequently in immediate contact with the external air. There are several million pores in the skin acting as little sewers through which various waste products of the system are constantly excreted. The clothing and particularly the underwear should be porous to permit free circulation of the air. Closely woven linen or cotton shirts, if covered with heavy woolen clothes, cause the retention of waste matter that is partly reabsorbed by the system and thrown back on the lungs and kidneys, overworking and weakening these organs.
As has been shown that in ill-ventilated and often tobacco-laden public halls, churches, schoolrooms, theatres and workshops, the air thrown off from the lungs is rendered still more noxious by the emanations of the skin. People, on leaving such places, feel the contrast between the inside and outside air and erroneously blame the fresh air as being responsible for their “colds,” which are but the result of the inhaled poisonous gases and their unsanitary methods of living in general.
Many persons sleep with closed windows because they cherish the old delusion that “night air is dangerous.” After a few hours they begin to breathe the exhaled air over again. In the morning they get up with a “tired feeling” and have to resort to “eye-openers” which make their condition still worse. It is during the night when we are at rest that the lungs redouble their efforts to inhale the life-giving oxygen to recharge the human dynamo. It is therefore even more essential to insure an adequate supply of pure air during the night than in the daytime. There is absolutely no danger of “catching cold” from cold, fresh air. On the contrary, the bodily heat, which results from combustion, is increased by an abundant supply of oxygen. A “cold” is really but an effort of the system to cast out impurities, chiefly through the mucous membranes of the throat and nose. Few persons realize that the amount of air taken up by the system daily outweighs that of the solid food.
The changes that have taken place in the composition of the exhaled air are indicated by the following table:
Constituent |
Inhaled Air
|
Exhaled Air
|
Volumes percent
|
||
Nitrogen |
78.35
|
78.85
|
Oxygen |
20.77
|
16.00
|
Carbon dioxide |
00.04
|
04.35
|
Exhaled air is also saturated with water vapor and contains traces of ammonia and organic matter varying with the diet, climate and occupation of the individual. Under normal conditions, if the blood is rich in the essential organic salts, the lungs absorb through the medium of the red blood corpuscles twenty-four and one-half ounces of oxygen during twenty-four hours, while they give off twenty-eight ounces of carbon dioxide retained in the lungs. Children need relatively more oxygen than adults, as the tissue changes are more active during the growth of the organism.
The adult man of average weight at each inhalation draws in about one pint of air, and during twenty-four hours he averages fifteen respirations a minute. Thus he takes in two gallons of air a minute or 120 gallons an hour, amounting to about 2,880 gallons or 384 cubic feet a day. This volume of air would fill a room measuring a little over seven square feet. The weight of this volume is about thirty pounds and contains about seven pounds of oxygen, as the latter forms 23.2 percent of weight of the atmosphere. Of the total amount of inhaled air, the human body takes up oxygen at the rate of 4.78% by volume or 5.25% by weight, while exhaled air contains 4.34% of carbon dioxide by volume or 6.5%, by weight.
Of the total amount of oxygen inhaled, the body generally absorbs from eight to ten ounces (one-third) during the activities of daytime, while during sleep in the open air or in well-ventilated rooms, the quantity may be doubled to sixteen ounces. It may be noted here, incidentally, that the absorption of oxygen depends largely upon the number of red blood corpuscles in a given quantity of blood. During severe muscular exertion, respiration is also increased in frequency and in depth, and the volume of air exchanged may be from five to seven times greater than during a period of rest.
Experiments have been made by German scientists showing the effect on oxygen consumption of walking on a level and climbing. The following figures give the quantities of oxygen consumed during one minute, the subject being a man of 125 pounds weight:
Form of Exercise
|
Oxygen Consumption
|
Standing at rest
|
16 cubic inches
|
Walking on a level
|
48 cubic inches
|
Climbing
|
78 cubic inches
|
It appears that walking increases the consumption of oxygen threefold and climbing nearly fivefold over that consumed at rest. These facts illustrate the influence of muscular activity upon the bodily metabolism and the incidental purification of the system from waste matter. Regular exercise in the open air during all seasons of the year is one of the most important factors for the preservation of health and the prolongation of life.
14.1. Water Is The Essence Of Life
14.2. Water’s Role In The Body
14.3. Other Body Uses Of Water
Water is the prime essence of life! The functioning of our planet is dependent upon its massive reservoirs of water and its complex system of atmospheric water dispensation. In our oceans, rivers, underground aquifiers, and streams, water prevails and abounds. No one would argue with the statement that without water, life as we know it would be impossible. Even if life were possible without water, most of the beauty of life would be lost in its absence. Dull, barren rocky landscapes devoid of vegetation would be prevalent everywhere. The clouds that color rosy and multi-hued in our sunrises and sunsets would be nonexistent.
The fact is that water is a major need of all forms of life. Fortunately for us, in most places on Earth, water is abundant. There’s water in all of the foods we eat. Even dry foods like nuts and seeds have water content. Fruits possess plenty of pure water which is ideal for human functioning.
How does our body use water? What is the best kind of water for its functioning? These are questions this lesson addresses.
14.2.1 How Body Water Is Obtained
14.2.2 Minerals In the Body Fluids
The average adult is composed of almost 60% fluid. That’s more water than the total of all other substances in the body! Our body’s water is obtained from the fluids we drink and from the water content of the foods we eat. It is also obtained from the body’s internal oxidation reactions. The oxidation process occurs in the combining of hydrogen in the food we eat with the oxygen we breathe. Some animals are dependent on the oxidative water they produce for their very existence.
The water within our body contains many materials in solution; that is, it contains many substances dissolved in it. The complement of minerals dissolved in the body fluid are referred to as salts. These salts include sodium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, chlorine, phosphorus and other elements. They possess electric charges and are thereby referred to as electrolytes.
Some salts possess positive electrical charges and others possess negative charges. These charges, inherent in the salts, are part of the regulatory process in the movement of fluids within the body. The positively and negatively charged particles exist1 in equally balanced amounts in the body. The resultant charge between the particles is therefore neutral.
It is true that the balance of salts is crucial to the proper functioning of the human organism. It is, however, not necessary that we udd substances such as table salt, baking soda, mineral supplements or mineralized waters to our diet in order to assure ourselves of the proper complement of salts. Our bodies, as you will remember from Lesson 10 on minerals, can assimilate and utilize only organic minerals as are found in foods. Adding table salt to the diet is literally adding a poison I We’ll discuss this in more detail later in the lesson.
About three-fourths of the body’s fluid is stored within the cells and is known as cellular fluid. The extracellular fluid is composed of plasma and interstitial fluid.
Blood plasma, a clear, yellow-colored fluid, is approximately 92% water. The plasma carries within it a huge volume of substances. It transports mineral salts and carries carbohydrates, proteins, gases, enzymes, fats and hormones. There are certain plasma proteins that are always present in the plasma. Other materials are in a constant state of change. The amounts of food materials (such as glucose), carbon dioxide and nitrogen wastes are constantly changing in the plasma.
Interstitial fluid is similar to plasma except it does not contain the plasma’s complement of proteins. However, interstitial fluid does contain glucose, minerals and urea and it continually bathes the cells. Through this bathing, the cell is supplied with all its needs for existence.
In addition to the circulatory system formed by the blood, yet another system exists and flows through the lymph vessels. The lymph circulation, along with the blood, is responsible for the flow and mixing of the extracellular fluid. One of the major functions of the lymph vessels is the return of the proteins to the circulation after they leave the bloodstream. The lymph provides the only routing whereby these “plasma proteins” can be restored to the circulation. Another part of the lymphatic system consists of small filtering organs called lymph nodes, which filter the lymph fluid as it passes through.
The fluids in our body are true life-keepers and can be likened unto an ocean in which literally trillions of cells, themselves largely water, are immersed. Within this “ocean” the materials we need for our survival are carried. In addition, the same system is responsible for carrying away our wastes, such as nitrogen, unusable minerals and other toxic substances.
The nutrients our body needs are broken down from foodstuffs in the digestive system. After they are broken down they are water-soluble. This means they can be mixed with water and dissolved in it. When the nutrients are, put into solution, the pass through the capillaries (small tubes) within the intestinal wall. The blood flowing in these walls picks up the tiny particles of nutrients. Through the circulatory system, the nutrients are finally distributed by the extracellular fluid bathing the cells.
When the nutrients are finally distributed by the circulatory system to the cells, how do they make themselves available for use by the cells themselves?
It is the responsibility of the circulatory system to distribute the nutrients and bathe the cells with them. The process by which needed materials are absorbed (and also by which wastes leave the cell) are known by the names diffusion, osmosis and active transport.
Diffusion is merely the arbitrary movement of particles through the cell walls. The movement of the particles is limited by the size of the pores of the cell wall (cellular membrane). The cellular membrane is a semipermeable membrane—it allows only certain substances in particular forms to pass through it. This factor is very crucial to the cell’s existence. If the cellular membrane did not have the capacity to keep some substances outside of the cell and others permanently inside, the cell would be no different in composition from the fluid surrounding it, and it would not be able to maintain its distinct life.
Osmosis refers to the particular process in which the balance of salts takes place. Water tends to go where the greater concentration of salt lies; in other words, water will pass through the semipermeable membrane from a lesser concentrated salt solution to a greater concentrated solution. The result is that the proportion of positive and negative electrolytes is balanced. An easy way to remember the term osmosis is that it’s a fancy way of saying that in cellular metabolism, water goes where the salt is.
At this point, mention should be made that this action of water is not an intelligent one done by the water. Water is utilized by the body; it is itself an inert substance and does not act upon the body.
In addition to osmosis and diffusion, a process called active transport occurs, in which electrolytes move across the cellular membrane from an area of lesser salt concentration to an area of great salt concentration.
Fluids constantly flow through the cellular membranes in both directions—both into and out of the cell—through these processes of diffusion, osmosis and active transport. However, the total amount of cellular fluid and the total amount of extracellular fluid remain at a constant balance during this interchange. There is a real need for this precisely balanced flow of fluids between the cellular fluid and the extracellular fluid, so that the cells within the body do not continually shrink and expand.
An example illustrates the importance of this balance of fluids. If the cells were immersed in distilled water, they would grow to the point of bursting because distilled water is so much less dense than the fluid in the cells! Conversely, if the cells were surrounded by e strong salt solution, the cells would lose their water and shrivel up. These examples are an impossibility in the functioning of our organism, but they do point to the need for the proper balancing of both the amounts and types of fluids to which our cells are exposed.
Now let’s see what happens when the processes of diffusion, osmosis and active transport occur within the body. Glucose, or blood sugar, is a primary nutritive factor derived from foods. It is the immediate fuel of the cells of the body and is distributed by the extracellular fluids. The liver is responsible, among other things, for regulating the amount of blood sugar that reaches the cells. It also forms proteins from amino acids, which are then dissolved in the plasma. These plasma proteins float in the watery part of the blood and are easily absorbed by the individual cells, which break it down again into its component amino acids.
Minerals can be directly absorbed from the small intestine and put into the bloodstream without undergoing chemical change.
Thus far we have been discussing water’s role in delivering nutrients to the body’s cells. Water plays an equally significant role in removing the wastes of the body.
One of the more persistently produced wastes by humans and animals alike is carbon dioxide. The body has uses for a small amount of carbon dioxide, but would expire could it not expel its excesses! In the process of carbon dioxide expulsion, the cells firstly allow their excess carbon dioxide to diffuse into the extracellular fluid. Later the lungs exhale the unneeded carbon dioxide. Blood is able to carry carbon dioxide because carbon dioxide is easily dissolved in the blood’s water.
Another waste that the body continually produces is nitrogen. Nitrogen is basically a by-product of protein metabolism. The elimination of nitrogen is not as simple as that of carbon dioxide; it cannot merely be discharged as nitrogen gas. Our organism has not developed the capacity to discharge nitrogen. If nitrogen were combined with hydrogen in the bloodstream, it would form the extremely toxic substance ammonia. The ammonia would then itself poison the body. Therefore, nitrogen must be expelled in a form that is not itself toxic to the human body. Ammonia combines with carbon dioxide, itself a waste product of humans, to form urea. Urea itself is a solid, but it is easily dissolved in the water within the bloodstream.
Urea would quickly reach a toxic level within the body were it not for the functioning of the kidneys. It is the job of the kidneys to filter the blood. They also return to the bloodstream the substances in blood that the body needs. The waste products, including urea, are not reabsorbed but are mixed with water to form urine, which is afterwards expelled through the bladder.
As stated earlier, nitrogen is a by-product of protein metabolism. It costs the body energy to expel this substance in the form of urea. A person following the Life Science regime and eating a diet of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds will not have as many proteinacious wastes as someone eating a conventional diet of processed foods, meats and dairy products and thereby will expend less energy in expelling these wastes. The urine of a person who is eating a conventional diet high in protein is apt to be darker and thicker than the urine of a person who eats Hygienically.
One of the major reasons the water balance in the body is so crucial to our health is water’s direct relationship to the temperature regulation of the body. Some. animals, such as the camel, actually undergo large differences in body temperature dependent on the air. temperature around them. Yet an internal temperature change of even a very few degrees can mean death to a human being.
A “normal” human adult gains about two and one-half quarts of water daily. To maintain bodily balance, one also loses approximately the same amount. This water is gained from food and liquid sources, and also, from oxidative sources. Oxidative water is merely water that is formed by the chemical reaction of hydrogen combining with oxygen within the body.
The body loses water through the kidneys and bowels. It also loses water through the lungs, and through the skin as perspiration. Perspiration cools the skin when it evaporates, which helps to maintain body temperature, but it can be dangerous or even fatal if the body loses too much water. On an extremely hot day we may lose as much as a quart of water per hour through perspiration. Losing eight quarts by this method would mean death.
When water is lost by the blood, the blood becomes denser. When this happens, water is drawn into the capillaries from the intercellular fluid so that the blood can maintain its flow and carry away unneeded heat in the body.
The skin stops the evaporation of the water in the body. It is the structure from which 85% of the body’s heat is lost. Sweat is a clear fluid, mostly water, and it may contain toxins. Sweat is excreted through the pores of the skin. Heat is lost by radiation and the evaporation of sweat from the skin. Typically we may lose a pint of water daily due to sweat.
The body needs water for the proper functioning of its glandular systems. The salivary glands in the mouth and the glands in the tongue help prepare food for digestion and keep the mouth moist.
The hypothalamus, located within the brain, regulates the conservation, replenishment, and elimination of water. It can be affected by the type of water you drink, since inorganic mineral deposits can impair its functioning. Also easily damaged by impure water are the thyroid, the adrenals and the pituitary glands.
The pancreas has as its function the manufacture of digestive juices and insulin, and it utilizes water in their manufacturing.
The uses of water in the body are so multifarious that we can’t begin to list them all here!
Since water is so important to the proper functioning of our organism, it’s crucial that we come to an understanding of when to drink, how much to drink and what kind of water is best fit to drink.
Firstly, we should stress that there are no hard and fast rules as to how much water a person needs. Those people eating of man’s natural dietary—raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds—will certainly need less water than a person eating a conventional diet of meats, breads, cooked foods, etc. A person accustomed to the Hygienic diet partakes of a diet that is basically water-sufficient. Under most circumstances, the foods themselves contain enough water for optimum functioning. The naturally ripened fruits that we eat typically contain upwards of 80% of the purest distilled water. Such water is ideal for human consumption.
There are instances, nevertheless, in which a person subsisting on the Hygienic dietary might need additional water. Such times would include days of heavy toxin elimination and during a fast. We also may need additional water when exerting ourselves in the hot sun. The body will determine its particular water needs and manifest this need as thirst. We should readily accommodate our thirst with water of the purest kind.
A person who eats a typical American diet containing processed junk foods, salt and seasonings, cooked foods, etc., must drink a great deal more water than someone partaking of a Hygienic diet. This is true because the typical American diet is far from being water-sufficient. The high salt content in most of these “foods” requires the body to demand a large amount of additional water to hold the salt in solution so that it won’t harm body tissues. The same is true of many of the condiments and spices such as pepper and garlic, commonplace in processed foods.
More insidious food additives such as monosodium glutamate must also be kept away from the cells in a highly diluted form so that they are not immediately toxic. Even a moment’s thought will reveal that the body considers such substances as toxic; or else why keep them in diluted solution? Even in such a diluted solution, some of the toxic materials may cause damage. It would seem sensible to avoid such toxic material, thereby saving the energy needed for their elimination.
Some health advocates prescribe that we drink anywhere from three to eight, or even more, glasses of water daily. My suggestion is: Listen to your body! Partake of a diet that is basically water-sufficient in itself. If you find that you need water in addition to the water you get from foods, let your thirst guide you as to how much you should drink.
Now we must consider when to drink. Drink only when really thirsty, and never drink during a meal or directly afterwards. If you must drink near mealtime, it is suggested that you drink at least thirty minutes before eating or two hours after eating. When drinking with meals, we often have the tendency to swallow food that is only partially masticated. In addition, the water will hinder the process of digestion by diluting the digestive juices. Of course undigested or partially digested food is toxic and cannot be assimilated.
The importance of water in our diet has been well established. Although it is best for us to obtain our water from food sources, sometimes we need additional water.
For example, when a person works in the sun for several hours on a hot day, his need for water will be proportionately greater than the water content of most foods. When the need for additional water exists, what kind of water should be taken?
Most folks in this country drink the water that is easily available to them. Commercial “purified” tap water is easily available and is used for drinking water by the majority of people. Nevertheless, few of those drinking such water are aware of exactly, what constitutes the water they are drinking. At least in the United States, most people drink their tap water without giving it a second thought.
Any person who carefully considers the nature of tap water and its constituents will be unlikely to continue to drink it. Besides the barrage of chemicals added to the water at the “purification plant” (which we’ll go into later), in most cases the water must travel through an intricate web of pipelines before reaching its destination. These pipes pose the additional danger of adding even more unneeded materials to the water.
Through man’s continual disregard for the purity of his environment, almost all of the natural waters of the earth are contaminated by chemical pollutants. For instance DDT has been found in the far reaches of the North Pole area. Among the pollutants of our natural water are: soap, wood pulp, oil, sulfuric acid, copper, arsenic, paint, pesticides and even radioactive wastes! Among the most prevalent inorganic minerals in our waters, which are unusable by and toxic to the body, are calcium, magnesium, sodium, chlorine and sulfur.
It is unfortunate that so many pollutants are in our natural waters. What is even more unfortunate for the tap water drinker is that still more chemical pollutants are added to the commercially available water supplies. These chemicals are added supposedly in a effort to purify the water and kill its “disease-producing bacteria.” The chemicals are more harmful, though, than the bacteria they’re supposed to rid the water of!
Let’s take a closer look at the major methods commonly used in water treatment.
Sometimes this filtering is done by a process called reverse osmosis, whereby the purer water is transported towards the area of least salt (mineral) concentration. This process is literally the reverse of normal osmosis and is done by artificial means of transport such as water pumps.
The idea of removing hardening minerals from the water we drink is in accordance with Hygiene. But we just can’t agree with this methodology. Anytime unnatural substances are added to the water, our chances of ingesting these chemicals substances are increased. Since it is true that our body can use only the water content of the water we drink, it is best to avoid water that has been chemically softened.
Reasons aplenty exist, however, for the avoidance of fluoride. If excessive fluoride consumption persists, teeth stains and mottling of the teeth, eventually resulting in brittleness, can ensue. The Mayo Clinic department of Orthopaedics wrote that, although fluoride administration has been shown to stimulate new bone formation, the bone formed thereby is poorly mineralized.
Fluoride is mainly stored in bones, and it increases skeletal mineralization. In tests with animals, it has been found that abnormal amounts of bone formation occurred in those animals to which fluorine was administered. Fluoride can contribute to the calcification of ligaments and tendons—even eventually contributing to the spine become a solid column of bone.
In addition to bone storage, fluorine can be stored virtually anywhere in the body, including the aorta, the main bloodflow artery of the heart. There is considerable evidence that fluorine impairs kidney function. In some studies, fluorine has been linked to genetic damage, birth defects and cancer. Fluorine can even react with the hydrochloric acid in the stomach and turn to highly corrosive hydrofluoric acid. This acid can lead to hemmorhaging in the upper gastrointestinal tract!
Clearly, the harmfulness of fluorine in our waters is abundant! Surely the dubious benefit of “protection of the teeth” cannot compare to the known health detriments of fluoridation.
Fluoride, as it is added to water, is in an inorganic, unassimilable form. Although fluoride can be found in the bodies of people with healthy teeth, it is also sometimes found to be absent. What has been stated above is ample cause for the avoidance of fluoride and its concurrent pathological effects.
We’ve not even discussed all the possible problems to be found in tap water. Its toxins include lime, soda ash, fluorine, chlorine and sulfur. Some city water supplies have been found to contain many other substances thought to be carcinogenic. Perhaps the most important thing to remember about tap water is this: It’s more than just water! The chemicals added to the water are unusable poisons; the inorganic minerals in that water are little better! Let’s relegate our tap water to uses other than for drinking, and our health will benefit immeasureably.
It is our hope that this discussion of tap water has convinced you of the merits of its avoidance! Let’s continue our discussion of other types of water you might consider drinking.
Lots of folks are proclaiming the health benefits of sea water and sea salt. They say the complement of minerals in sea water is similar to our blood. Yet sea water is not a food; its drinking occasions vomiting and can produce death. Sailors will die of thirst before drinking it. All its elements are in an inorganic form (see the next section on mineral waters) and are unusable by and toxic to the body. Its salt content requires extra pure water to keep the salt in solution away from body tissues. We’re best off avoiding sea water as well!
A huge controversy exists concerning the beneficence of mineralized water in the diet. This subject is fully discussed in the book The Great Water Controversy by T.C. Fry, Herbert M. Shelton and others. Some of the most important things to remember about mineralized waters are:
Let’s go into this subject a bit more fully. Minerals are only usable to the body as they are found in organic forms of life such as plants. Only plants form the link between the earth-minerals and animal life! We cannot digest rocks. Although inorganic minerals may have the same chemical composition as the organic minerals, they differ in structure and in the relative position of the component molecules. This difference is crucial, for it determines the usability of the substance by the body.
How does a plant transform earth’s inorganic minerals into usable forms? First, the plant takes in sunlight, carbon dioxide, water and elements from the earth. By the process of photosynthesis, the plant’s chlorophyll captures the sunlight and forms carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide. In the process of the growth of the plant, the minerals from the earth become organically part of the plant itself. Then, and only then, can the minerals be considered assimilable by the body.
What can be more refreshing than a soothing summer shower? Rainwater was once a prime choice for drinking. However, we must begrudgingly recognize that the “waste products” of all the technological boons of mankind have befuddled our waters. Our atmosphere is polluted badly, and rainwater tends to absorb and wash these toxins out of the air.. Although that’s great for the air, it makes rainwater drinking unfeasible in most circumstances. If you have a heavy rainstorm and begin collecting water several hours into it, chances are the water will be good (unless you live in an area where the. air is severely polluted). Otherwise, rainwater is, best avoided for drinking.
Most well waters are heavily laden with inorganic minerals. When this is the case, well water is best left in the ground or used only for cleaning, swimming and bathing.
Some spring waters are heavily mineralized; others are fresh and soft. When you buy spring water from the store, there’s little way of knowing just what you’re getting. Soft pure spring water can be good to drink—but unless you know it’s soft and pure, pass it up!
Distilled water is the purest water available. Nothing but water is in it. When the need for additional water other than what we get from our diet exists, distilled water is unequivocally the best choice for drinking.
Perhaps the most prominent objection to the use of distilled water, is that distillers are not to be found anywhere in nature, although the process is a natural one. For great health, it is necessary that we partake of foods, air and sunshine as they are found in nature. To the great discredit of exploitative humankind, our natural waters have been fouled to the point of toxicity with the waste matter of our so-called “advanced” civilization. It is for this reason that it’s dangerous to drink even rainwater! Distilling water is perhaps our only real choice in insuring the purity of our drinking water. Nevertheless, it is a shame that we must use unnatural mechanical procedures to make pure water available to our bodies once more.
The proponents of hard water drinking have claimed that distilled water is dangerous to drink because it leeches out minerals from the body. There is some truth in this statement, but not the way they mean it. Distilled water does aid the body in removing harmful, disease-producing inorganic minerals from the tissues and bones where those not eliminated are stored. However, distilled water does not leech out the organic minerals that have become part of our cellular structures. We must remember that the body chooses what it does with the water that is ingested. The water does not act upon the body. It is the body that acts upon the water! The body will relegate the proper usage of the pure distilled water it receives.
Fresh raw fruits are our best source of pure water. The plant itself has already done the distilling! There are no intermediate steps needed.
Our body is about 60-70% water; fruits are typically 80-90% water! Vegetables are high in water content, too. If we eat an abundance of fresh raw fruits, including melons in the hot seasons, little or no water for drinking will be needed!
There are no “dry” foods. Sunflower seeds are approximately 5% water. At the other end of the scale, watermelon is around 92% water. It’s sweet and delicious, too!
Here are some typical water contents of easily available fruits and vegetables:
Food | Percentage Water Content |
Avocados | 73% |
Grapes | 81% |
Bananas | 75% |
Oranges, Peeled | 86% |
Peaches | 89% |
Strawberries | 90% |
Celery | 94% |
Broccoli | 89% |
Lettuce | 95% |
Tomatoes | 93% |
Cucumbers | 95% |
Carrots | 88% |
Even “dry” vegetables have high water content. Potatoes are almost 80% water.
If nuts and seeds are eaten, the possibility of need for additional water increases. Pecans are about 3% water, cashews 5%, almonds about 5%, and brazil nuts are about 4% water.
The water in raw fruits is preferable to that found in vegetables. The water in vegetables, especially the water in the leaves, has not been distilled by the plant to as great an extent as in the case of fruits.
When you need water, such as when you’re fasting, working in the sun, or if you’ve deviated from a water-sufficient diet (heaven forbid!) then you need pure distilled water. Distilled water may be purchased commercially. However you should be careful in its purchase and usage. If it has any odor, color or taste, it should not be used.
The best way to ensure your pure distilled water is truly pure and distilled is to do your own distillation. However, you should take care to purchase the proper noncontaminating distilling equipment.
Distilled water is obtained by a mechanical method in which water is first heated to boiling. Then the resulting vapor, which has separated from the boiling water, is collected. In the process, the chemicals and sediments in the water are removed, leaving only the water.
Since distilled water has a fantastic ability to dissolve metals and minerals, it should only be stored in glass or stainless steel. We suggest you store it in a narrow-necked container so it will have as little contact with the air as possible; also, keep distilled water from air contact by keeping the container closed.
High-quality steam distillers, using stainless steel and glass components, should be used in distilling water.
Now you have done a good deal of thinking about what type of water is best fit to drink. As a less burdensome (and hopefully more fun) way of reviewing some of these ideas, let’s now listen to a group of drinkers and see what they have to say about the virtues and vices of drinking their respective beverages.
The setting for the following conversation is in the living room of a home shared by three young men. It’s Friday evening, and some friends and neighbors have come by to celebrate the beginning of the weekend.
Frank: Ahhhh! There’s nothing like a refreshing cold beer to start the weekend right!
Ted: I don’t believe it. (disgusted voice) No matter how much I tell you that beer is bad for you, you still guzzle the stuff. Man, that alcohol goes right into your stomach lining! Not to mention it’ll raise havoc in your whole digestive tract.
Frank: Aw, I’ve been drinking beer for years and I’m never sick.
Julie: C’mon Frank, I’ll go to the sink and get you some water. Maybe that’ll please your worried friend.
Ted: With, all the chemicals in that stuff, you might be better off with the beer!
(At this point John and Amy enter the room.)
John: I couldn’t help overhearing your little discussion. I started drinking spring water a couple of years ago. It’s full of minerals which I’m sure we need. You want some, Frank?
Frank: Nope. You just don’t get that good feeling from water that you get from beer. Besides, this beer is made from spring water. Does that make you feel better, Ted?
Ted: No way. Mineralized waters, including spring water, are full of inorganic minerals. Those minerals are poison to your body. And, oh yes, Frank, just because you’re never showing the symptoms of illness doesn’t prove you’re not sick. Maybe your beer drinking proves that you are sick though (laughs).
Julie: Ted, you’re just never satisfied. I went to the faucet to get a drink. I suppose I’m going to die because of that?
Ted: Well, you might. All the toxic chemicals in tap water are best avoided. How many miles of pipeline did that have to go through?
Ann: Well, I’m drinking some distilled water.
Julie: Let me have a taste (Sips the water) It tastes like nothing!
Ann: That’s right! Pure water has no odor or taste. And it doesn’t have any inorganic minerals to clog up your system or be deposited in your body.
Ted: Well, Ann, you’ve got the right idea in my opinion. As long as you’re going to drink at all, you’re best off drinking distilled water.
Frank: What do you mean, “as long as you’re going to drink?” You’d die if you didn’t!
Ted: Not necessarily. If you eat mostly raw fruits and vegetables, which is man’s natural diet, you will need little or no more water than is found in the foods you eat. Frank: Yeah, right. Anybody wanna go for a burger?
We can’t hope to legislate the behavior of everyone around us. Ultimately the choice for what we put into our body is individually ours alone. “What’ll it be, Mac?”
If fluorides in the water are supposed to help fight cavities, why does an excess of them result in brittling of the teeth (and bones)?
In truth, adding fluorides to water is an economic measure, not a health measure. Fluorides are industrial waste products for which a market was created for the economic advantage of the people in industry. It’s not that it’s wrong to seek profit or economic advantage; however, it is when it’s at the expense of people’s health.
The fact is that fluorides in water do not help fight cavities. The tests that supposedly proved that were no doubt done by researchers who had a vested interest in the results or who were paid off by those with a vested interest. It is sad but true that this kind of thing goes on.
While “excess” fluorides will result in brittle teeth and bones, smaller amounts cause problems of all kinds, too. As stated in the lesson, fluorides are toxic. All toxins are carcinogenic and interfere with normal body functioning. Anyone seeking health should stay completely clear of known toxins, including fluorides.
You spoke of water containing impurities, and you mentioned inorganic minerals, chemical additives and softening agents. Are there other impurities in water? If so, what are they?
Anything and everything in water is an impurity. The main reason why waters usually contain so many impurities is because water easily dissolves many substances. That is to say, many substances are water-soluble.
The most salient impurities in water include both living and dead organic matter, including bacteria; corrosion products from pipelines, including lead, zinc, copper and iron; carbon dioxide, which enables water to take calcium, magnesium and lead into solution; iron and manganese, which are taken into solution in the absence of dissolved oxygen; and algae.
Some of the impurities in water make it taste very bad or give it an unappetizing color. Organic matter may decompose and make water smell unappealing. Inorganic minerals in water make it hard, and hard water, because it’s already holding so much in solution, is not as good for washing and cleaning as is soft water. For the purposes of this course, keep in mind that impurities in water are toxic in the body and contribute to the need for diseases.
You spoke of hard water and soft water. What do you mean by those terms?
Soft water is water that is deficient in or free from inorganic mineral substances, such as calcium and magnesium salts, that prevent lathering of soap. Hard water is water that contains enough calcium, magnesium and other mineral salts to prevent the lathering of soap.
As you can see, water does not have to be devoid of minerals to be labeled “soft.” It only has to be “deficient in” minerals, to the extent that soap will lather, to be labeled “soft.” Needless to say, distilled water is the softest water there is, since it is devoid of inorganic minerals. However, not all soft water is distilled or good for drinking. Many spring waters are softer than most well waters. Sea water is hard water, as are mineral waters, by definition. In fact, hard water is just another word for mineral water—or vice versa.
As a final note, I might mention that water that is softened by addition of chemicals is more harmful than waters that are naturally soft or are distilled. Naturally soft waters are harmful to whatever extent they contain any impurities. As stated in the lesson, distilled water is the only water fit for drinking.
What kind of water should be used for bathing?
The water used for bathing is not so crucial as is the water used for drinking. Soft water is preferred over hard water because its greater solubility means that more dirt, oil, etc., from the body can be taken into solution in the water. Hence, you can get cleaner more easily when you bathe with soft water.
You presented an entire lesson on water without mentioning the use of water in enemas, colonics, etc.! Please speak on these subjects.
The only place where water should enter the body is through the mouth. The body does its own cleaning of its internal parts. Putting water in parts of the body where it doesn’t belong constitutes interference with normal body processes. It is enervating to take enemas or colonics, and enervation leads to toxemia and disease.
The symptoms of enervation that people experience after an enema or colonic are usually mistaken for symptoms of well-being. This is a common error, but one that needs to be corrected if health is to be obtained. An analogy can be made between enemas and drugs. Amphetamines, also know as “uppers,” definitely give a feeling of well-being. Yet, they do not bring health and, in fact, are extremely detrimental to the health. Just because something makes you feel good (at first) does not mean it is good for you. It could be that it’s stimulating and enervating you and setting the stage for disease.
Water, from the dew that distills on the rose leaf to the ocean that heaves its vast tide around the world, is one of the many wonders of existence. It makes the beauty of our silvery clouds and golden sunsets; it spans the heavens with the hues of the rainbow; it dances to earth in April showers; it murmurs in brooks and thunders in cataracts; it waters the earth, bids plants to grow and carries our commerce over vast seas. Without it the earth would have forever remained one vast, barren rock—a lifeless desert upon which the winds would sweep up the dust.
Water has given the earth its covering of soil and carpeted this soil with verdure. Deprived of water, plants droop and wither; without water, animals thirst and die. No wonder an early writer has left us the thought that at the dawn of creation the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. There is no life without water.
The foregoing eulogy of water is paraphrased from Dr. Thomas Low Nichols. We need only add that, without water, no seed could germinate, no plant could grow. What wonder, then, that water has so often been worshipped as the source of life. The Egyptians worshiped the Nile, the river that made possible their yearly crops, their life and civilization. The Hindus worship the Ganges. Are these people doing other than paying tribute to one of the basic elements of living structures and functions?
Water is a primal need of all forms of life. We have previously emphasized the fact that the cells require a liquid home and that dehydrated protoplasm is as lifeless as dust. It is only in a liquid environment that sperm and ovum can meet and mingle; it is only in a fluid medium that cellular reproduction can take place in the complex body; it is in a liquid medium that the embryo evolves towards maturity. It is only by being dissolved in water that the elements of vegetable matter take on their beautiful forms and colors.
The mystic motto of Thales, “Ariston men hydor” (the best of all things is water) might, perhaps, be explained by the fact that dehydrated cells are as lifeless as dust. In a similar vein, Goethe said of the elements of liquids: “They come from heaven and rise to heaven, returning again to earth.” Water is so essential to life that none of its functions can be carried on without it.
Deprive man of water and he is soon reduced to a few pounds of dust. His body is about 70% water, his blood 90%. Water forms the greater part of his brain and nerves. The eyes are composed of little sacs of transparent water. Water not only enters the composition of all his tissues, but those tissues that have least water also possess little vital endowment.
Bone, which is the most passive tissue of the body, has much less water than muscle, which is very active. Water is the grand agent of all man’s vital functions. It is essential to the process of assimilation and disassimilation. A lack of water soon manifests itself in failure of function. Not a particle of nutriment can enter one’s blood and from there is taken to the cells until it is first dissolved in water. It is water that carries nutriment to the cells; by water, also, the body carries its waste from cells to be excreted. Those who have worshipped oceans and rivers have not been so far wrong in regarding water as a sacred element.
The fountains of Greece were chosen as sites for her temples. Water was the symbol of purification among the Jews; in baptism it became a similar symbol among the Christians. How appropriate was the symbol! It is not only the best medium with which to cleanse the surface of the body, but it is the only medium by which internal waste can be carried to the organs of excretion. It is the only medium capable of circulating in all of the tissues of the body and penetrating their finest vessels without irritation or injury.
Without water, the blood, lymph and tissues could not be kept sweet and clean. It might almost be said that water literally cleanses the tissues.
As water is being constantly lost from the body in its excretions—sweat, breath, urine, feces, mucus—there is need to frequently replenish the supply. Water is the only drink, although we do not take as drink all the water we use. All other fluids we take are either foods (fruit and vegetable juices, milk, soup, etc.) or poisons (beer, wine, whiskey and other alcoholics, tea, coffee and poisoned soft drinks).
There is water in everything we eat, so that under many circumstances of life, it is possible to get all the water the body requires in foods without the necessity of taking other water. While fountains bubble and rivers run, water will not be abandoned by those who love the welfare of their body.
Man’s lifelong water requirement is associated with his continuous secretion and excretion. He expels water through the lungs each time he exhales; he loses water through his skin continuously; he loses water through the kidneys just as continuously; he loses water through the bowels and mouth at all times. Because of this continuous loss of water, he must replenish his supply at intervals, the frequency of replenishment depending on the rate of loss. Water evaporation through the skin is hardly noticeable when he is resting; if it is warm or if he is very active, he sweats more; hence there is greater water loss.
The evaporation of water from the skin is a most important arrangement for control of body temperature. Man’s normal body temperature is supposed to be 98.6°F., although there is reason to think that this, like all the other “norms” of life that have been accepted, may be slightly high. Heat regulation is of great importance to the body. But sweating serves another important function; namely, that of maintaining normal water balance of the body. Too much or too little water in the fluids of life means trouble. If there is too much water, increased sweating helps to reduce this; if there is too little water, reduced sweating helps to conserve the water supply.
It is said that water is the life-supporter and that more should be taken than thirst demands. But no good reason has yet been offered for the implied principle that thirst is an unreliable guide as to how much water is needed. Dr. Trall stated: “Only a very small quantity of water is necessary as a drink, provided our dietetic and other voluntary habits are physiologically correct. The vast quantity usually taken to the stomach is called for by the feverish and inflammatory state of the system produced by concentrated food, flesh, salt, spices, etc.” There is no fixed quantity of water that one must drink during the day. The amount needed is determined by a variety of factors. Age, sex, temperature, activity and the character of food eaten are the chief factors that determine the amount of drink required. It is, therefore, stupid to lay down any hard and fast rule (such as one must drink six glasses of water a day) about the amount of water needed. When it is hot and we sweat more, we drink more; when it is cold and we sweat less, we drink less. If we are active and thus sweating more, we need more water than when we are inactive and sweating less. Thirst guides us in drinking as hunger guides us (or should) in eating.
That drink which has no fumes is good for us. It leaves us to sing over our daily labors with ruddier cheeks, purer feelings and brighter eyes than alcohol can bestow. When water is neglected for Old Port, and sleep is traded for stimulants and narcotics, when the beauties of nature and the virtues of walks in the country are exchanged for the “thrills” of intoxicants, not only are the real pleasures of life greatly reduced, but the powers of life are also lessened. Water is the great cleanser and purifier. This has received recognition in religion as in daily life; it is the great thirst quencher and menstruum of vital activities.
Water serves its various functions in. the body in proportion to its purity, and not in ratio with which it is laden with minerals and organic substances. Mineral waters and waters that carry quantities of organic impurities are, to the extent that they are thus laden, unfit for use. The old medical notion that water so foul the cows won’t drink it is good medicine, is but another of the false notions that have been fostered by this profession. The present-day notion that only drugged water (water that has had iodine, lime, chlorine and fluorides added) is fit for human use, is a damaging fallacy.
Not many years ago, mineral springs, sulphur springs and hot springs were special resorts of invalids. When, in some out-of-the-way spot, a farmer found a spring with water so strongly impregnated with “bad smells” and “foul taste” that thirsty cattle would not drink it, he imagined himself possessed of a prospective fortune. Here is a pool, he would say to himself, with water possessed of curative properties. A hotel would be erected near the pool or spring, physicians would send patients there to drink the water and bathe in it, and many remarkable cures would be reported.
The faith in the curative or medicinal virtues of mineral waters simply means that the fundamental principle of drugging—that poisons are medicinal—has been applied to drink and that impurities have been mistaken for wholesome properties.
Animals, like man, if forced to drink offensive water from springs, learn, as man does, to relish it. It is just possible that they learn, also like man, thereafter to find the pure, soft water they once relished to be flat, insipid, unendurable. We know that animal tastes are susceptible to perverse cultivation as much as are man’s.
We pollute our water supply as persistently as we do our air supply. Our cities drain their sewage into the rivers and lakes and into the waters along the beaches of the country. Many beaches have had to be abandoned, so great has been the pollution. Some of our lakes smell to high heaven with the odor of sewage. Commercial concerns, manufacturers, etc., drain the refuse of the factories into the streams. Poison sprays poured over the vegetation of the country are washed down to the streams and lakes. With one stroke we poison the soil and the water. Spraying kills plants, birds, bees and many forms of animal life.
It has been found that many of the detergents, germ killers, insecticides, herbicides, various solvents and other synthetic chemicals now so freely employed in our determination to solve all our problems by poisoning the whole world, pass unchanged through (sewage) treatment plants to water courses and unchanged through water treatment plants to consumers.
Some of the detergents seep through the soil into wells, enough sometimes to cause the water to foam when shaken. Even more ominous than these sources of water pollution are the radioactive substances in fallout and from plants engaged in industrial production of fission products. Modern industrialism is rapidly destroying all of our natural resources in the name of “progress,” “development,” etc., but actually, for the profits it derives from exploitation of the workers and natural resources of the nation.
Rainwater, soft water from an uncontaminated spring (many springs do not provide soft water) or distilled water are the only waters fit to drink. Filtration removes all impurities suspended in water, but it does not remove those held in solution. We are told that distilled water is dead. There is no such thing as live water. We are told that distilled water, being free of minerals (dirt), leeches the salts from the tissues of the body. Were this true, the only water that is fit to drink would be that which is fully saturated with minerals.
Short of complete saturation, the water would still have a tendency to rob the tissues of their minerals. Ordinary drinking water, containing some mineral matter, would merely rob the tissues of fewer minerals than does distilled water. Water serves, in the blood, to carry minerals to all the cells of the body. Not the crude mineral matters of the soil, but organic salts of foods are the substances it should carry to the cells. There is no evidence that distilled water does not yield up these salts to the cells as readily as does mineral-laden water.
William Lamb, M.D., of England took the position that man is not normally a drinking animal, but that sufficient water for all his purposes is contained in fruits and vegetables and that these should constitute his diet. More than 50% of our food is pure water. Why, then, do we have frequently to take in water other than that contained in our foods? Because we are constantly giving off water in the form of sweat, urine, vapor in our breath and water in our stools, and we give off more than the food supplies.
This is not always true. Many factors determine the amount of water the body loses, and in many instances the food supplies all the water needed. In other instances, it does not. A man working in the fields in the heat will pour out such quantities of water that he will need extra supplies. A stenographer working in an air-conditioned room and taking a diet containing much water may not need any extra water. Our diet, in fact, is often much too dry and may be improved without resort to beer, coffee or tea; but there remain many conditions in which life is glorified with a glass of cool, clear, soft water.
It is advocated in some quarters that fruit and vegetable juices be taken instead of water. This is an irrational program. There seems to be some thought associated with this practice that water is, somehow, an evil. The relations of water to the living, healthy organism and the purposes it serves in the various functions of the body are proof that water is both safe to use and essential to life. As it constitutes the greater portion of the body, there is no reason to fear it. The hydrophobic individual who drinks fruit and vegetable juices instead of water is certainly eating between meals. He is certain to overeat and unbalance his metabolism. Substituting fruit juices for water is not altogether unlike the effort to substitute the oxygen in foods for the oxygen of the air.
It should be understood that milk is not a drink, but a food. We get milk from animals who have prepared it for the nourishment of their young. Fruit and vegetable juices are also foods, not drinks. Liquid foods should be understood as such, and should be thought of as drinks. Soups are also liquid foods. Coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate beverages, soft-drinks and similar beverages should be understood to be, not drink, but poison.
It is possible to drink too much water and it is possible to take too little. Both extremes are hurtful.
We come to the habit, a cultivated one, of drinking with meals. Our rule should be never to drink with meals.
Water, fruit juices, vegetable juices, soups and other fluids taken with a meal inevitably dilute the digestive juices and alter their pH. This retards the processes of digestion. Coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate drinks and all drinks that contain toxic substances and not only dilute the digestive juices, but also add the inhibiting effects of tannic acid, caffeine, theine, theobromine, etc., to the retarding effects of liquids in general. Such substances with meals cannot be too strongly condemned.
In some quarters, drinking immediately before meals is condemned. If this condemnation is applied to all liquids except water, Hygienists can endorse it. But water remains in the stomach such a short time after ingestion that it may be taken five to ten to fifteen minutes before a meal without interfering with the digestive process. The other liquids (which are either foods or poisons) are not so quickly expelled from the stomach. The current practice of drinking vegetable juices and fruit juices shortly before meals is ruinous to starch and protein digestion.
It is generally safe to drink an hour to an hour-and-a-half after a fruit meal. (We formerly said drink could be taken half-an-hour after a fruit meal, but in many cases fruit remains in the stomach longer than this.) Starches require a maximum of two hours to digest in the stomach, so it is usually safe to drink that long after a starch meal. Proteins require about four hours for gastric digestion. It is wisest to wait that long after a protein meal before drinking.
15.4. What Determines The Quality And Quantity Of Sleep We Need?
15.6. Dreams And Their Role In Sleep
15.7. Establishing Conditions Most Favorable For Sleep
15.8. Sleep Problems In Adults And Their Solutions
15.9. Sleep Problems In Infants And Children With Suggested Solutions
15.10. Nostrums, Medications And Drugs Adminstered For Sleep Problems
15.11. Our Biological Clock And Sleep
15.12. Improving The IQ Through Sleep
Article #1: How To Put Yourself To Sleep Easily By A.F. Willat
Article #2: Rest: A Much-Neglected Health Factor By Hereward Carrington, Ph.D.
Rest and sleep are two essentials of life that have an importance unrecognized by most people. Sleep and rest are indulged because the need for them overtakes rather than because of an enlightened awareness of their role in well-being.
This lesson endeavors to teach the physiological bases for rest and sleep. Their significance can then be better appreciated.
Sleep is an infant science in that it has not been long studied. The 50 to 100 sleep researchers in this country think of themselves as pioneers, and in a sense they truly are. Also, they are medically oriented, as are most people, unfortunately. Now, about 30 years after sleep research began, sleep researchers have uncovered relatively little knowledge of what sleep is about. However, they do occasionally unearth a gem or two of useful knowledge.
The restorative roles of rest and sleep are everywhere admitted, but the physiological mechanisms are not clearly understood by researchers. Hopefully this lesson can prove not only enlightening but also furnish you guidance you can turn to benefit for yourself and your clients.
Rest is a period of inactivity during which the faculties can restore expended nerve energy. When we create wastes faster than our body can eliminate them and deplete our energies faster than our faculties can restore them, a period of inactivity enables the body to catch up on its homework. Physical and mental inactivity can be called rest.
There are many different kinds of rest. Some are:
Essentially, rest is the curtailment of energy expenditure and waste generation. This permits the body to redirect energies to cleansing and restoration.
To relax means to cease or decrease exertion. The word has broad connotations, and recreation or play might be called relaxation. Generally, relaxation means to let go of that which stresses the body and to undertake a course that does not tense or stress. Relaxation is a variant form of rest.
The cells of the body require rest but not necessarily sleep, but the brain and nervous system sleep. Cells require periodic rest so that they may cope with their eliminative and restorative functions.
Many people are apt to confuse the words rest and sleep as being synonymous. Rest, as we have seen; means cessation of activity. Sleep necessarily implies rest due to the immobilization of the body, but the condition of sleep exists only when consciousness has ceased. However, we should note that not all forms of unconsciousness are sleep. Coma, catalepsy and stupor must not be confused with sleep.
Our foremost sleep scientists have not settled upon an answer to this question. Obviously sleep is loss of consciousness. But what more is there to it? Why should awareness cease? Does not the brain conduct millions of processes continuously even though it has lapsed into unconsciousness?
Sleep scientists have several theories about what sleep is: One is that the neurons become fatigued and simply lower their activities below the level required for consciousness. Another is that the brain inhibits the reticular activating system.
Another theory is that the brain and nervous system operate on nerve energy, a form of electricity. The body, like an electric car, needs to be recharged at night. Sleep is a partial shutdown for recharging.
Dr. Nathaniel L. Kleitman of the University of Chicago has concluded that the body generates nerve energy during sleep and that we sleep for this purpose. All other writers and researchers observe and attest to the restorative powers of sleep but do not suggest the physiological basis for these powers.
Among the texts you have is Better Sleep for a Better Life. This book details man particulars on the whyfore and conditions of sleep. We shall not repeat them here. We sleep because the brain requires, we may presume, a state of unconsciousness for the regeneration of nervous energy.
Experiments with electrosleep indicate that the body generates low-level electricity during sleep. So far, researchers have not discovered where the body stores its electricity.
The primary purpose of sleep seems to be the generation of nerve energy. That seems to be the only reasonable explanation, for most researchers agree that sleep is a restorative. The vitality of the organism is restored under the condition of sleep.
Guyton’s Textbook of Medical Physiology takes the position that sleep occurs because of neuronal fatigue. He says that, when one of the millions of parallel neurons in the feedback circuits falls out of activity, the lowered level of excitability of other neurons starts a chain of depressed activity that results in sleep. More particularly, wakefulness is attributed to the excitability of the reticular activating system, which is, a network of neurons, and sleep is attributed to lack of excitability.
Perhaps this does chronicle the mechanism of sleep, but other passages in the same physiology text appear to negate this position. Nerves or neurons perform twenty-four hours daily, just as the heart muscles. They need no rest or sleep. Only a certain part of the brain needs sleep, for the brain and nervous system continue to conduct millions of processes under the condition of sleep.
It appears that the faculty of wakefulness must cease in sleep and that neurons are only partially inactivated. Moreover, it is known that the brain is active during sleep except for those areas of the brain involved with consciousness. Some body processes are conducted more vigorously in sleep than in wakefulness.
Guyton is unable to explain what causes fatigue in neurons since, in theory, they are not subject to fatigue. He says: “We still need to explain the cause of fatigue of neurons after 16 hours of wakefulness and their recovery of excitability after 8 hours of sleep.” Perhaps the depletion of nerve energy causes fatigue in neurons.
Sleep is primarily for the purpose of generating nerve energy or low-level electricity. Many other beneficial purposes are also served during sleep. The physiological rest obtained during sleep is extraordinarily valuable. During the prolonged rest of sleep, the body restocks its cells and organs with fuel, replaces cells that have lost their vitality and rids itself of extraordinary toxins that may have been uneliminated the previous day. Thus, the value of sleep is manifold.
The benefits of sleep may be chronicled as follows:
Undoubtedly there are other benefits of sleep, but these ire the salient ones. For instance, the body uses less nerve ‘energy and generates less waste when asleep.
We can accept sleep as being absolutely necessary without question. But, as well, getting enough sleep is an essential of life. It is impossible for a healthy person to oversleep but undersleeping is an evil of our, times—a transgression most of us commit against ourselves.
When we undersleep, not enough nerve energy is generated to meet needs. We use more nerve energy when we are awake longer and generate less with less sleep, other conditions being equal. When our nerve energy is squandered to meet excessive consciously-directed activities, then nerve energy for unconscious body activities is not available. This may mean poorer digestion, impaired elimination and so on—the body must suffer generally.
With adequate sleep enough nerve energy is generated to meet our normal needs. The question of what constitutes adequate sleep and how to best obtain it is very important. The book, Better Sleep for a Better Life treats this subject in depth. In this lesson we’ll endeavor to explore other materials to reinforce the wealth of observations in that book.
To be sure, the views offered on sleep in texts and books are few and mostly noncommittal to any stance or position. What scientists really know about sleep amounts to very little, and their views or theories are rather timid.
A view of sleep that is interesting is expressed in The Complete Book of Sleep by Diane Hales, a sleep researcher who has haunted many sleep laboratories looking for revelations on the subject. Her observation about sleep is instructive: “We think of sleep as being passive and uniform, but it actually consists of cycles of complex activity. We think our bodies and brains rest during sleep, but in fact our muscles tense, our pulse, temperature and blood pressure rise and fall; we are sexually aroused; our senses evoke a world of sights and sounds. We think that in sleep we shed our fears and feelings, but our personalities set our sleep patterns, and our sleep shapes how we feel and act. We accept sleep as commonplace, yet when we cannot sleep, we yearn for it more fiercely than for the rarest treasure. We are able to go without food or water or companionship more easily than without sleep.”
On the all-important question of what sleep is or why we sleep, Ms. Hales is silent, though the book asks these very questions. One speculation ventured is that nature instituted sleep to keep animals quiescent during darkness so as not to injure themselves; so as to survive the perils of darkness. But a most compelling observation is made by Dr. Allen Rechtschaffen of the University of Chicago. He poses the question: “If sleep doesn’t serve an absolutely vital function, then it’s the biggest mistake the evolutionary process ever made. How could sleep have remained virtually unchanged as a monstrously useless, maladaptive vestige throughout the whole of mammalian evolution while selection has, during the same period of time, been able to achieve all kinds of delicate finely tuned adjustments in the shape of fingers and toes?”
What a good question! To ask the question is to acknowledge that nature does not err and has definite purposes in developing our faculties.
Other observations made by Ms. Hales are worth noting: “But if there is a timeless need for sleep, what is it?
This question remains one of the most perplexing biological riddles. Aristotle thought that we sleep because of cooling of the vapors of the head. Freud thought sleep was a symbolic journey back to the security of the womb. Pavlov thought of it as a conditioned response. Others have argued that we sleep to repair the ravages of the day, or the purge our brains of extraneous information, or to conserve our energy. Sleep may be maintenance time for our bodies or a sort of dress rehearsal for our brains.
“Perhaps none of these explanations is correct. Perhaps they all are, for it may well be that sleep—like waking—has many functions. We may be making an enormous and costly mistake by assuming that our nights are any less significant or complex than our days,” says Ms. Hales.
I have previously cited Dr. Arthur C. Guyton’s text on sleep. Two theories he presents about the mechanism of sleep are worth reviewing. These theories relate to the physiology of going to sleep.
“The first belief is that sleep is a passive process, occurring when the neuronal mechanisms that cause wakefulness become fatigued and therefore succeed to a lower level of activity. The second theory is that active centers in the brain transmit signals into the reticular activating system to inhibit it and thereby produce sleep.”
The primary difference between the two theories is that one assumes that the usual slow wave sleep (delta sleep) results from decreased excitability of the reticular activating system due to fatigue, while the other holds that sleep results from active inhibition.
While Dr. Guyton favors the first of these theories, your instructor favors the second. The brain actively seeks sleep when its nerve energy falls below a certain level.
Another theory of sleep holds that we sleep in order to have dreams, so that our “mental mix” may be sorted out. Cited in support of this theory is the gravely ill effects resulting from denial of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, that stage of sleep during which dreams are conducted. After a few days without REM sleep, test subjects were depressed, less alert, garrulous and unable to concentrate. In short, they suffered many of the same effects as if they had suffered a big deficit in their “sleep account.”
Simply stated, the brain sleeps in order to regenerate a fund of nerve energy. Nerve energy is the “money of account” for human vitality.
15.4.1 Conditions That Promote Efficient Sleep
15.4.2 Conditions That Interfere With Sleep
The amount of sleep that a person needs varies according to the individual’s body and his or her sleeping conditions. Some people fare nicely on five or six hours of sleep daily, while others require eight or nine hours daily. Why the difference? Sleep needs vary with every individual and every circumstance. People sleep more in winter than in summer! Why should that be so? Mental workers sleep more than physical workers! What causes that? People who work and sleep outdoors get by with one to two hours sleep less than those who work equally arduously indoors and sleep indoors. Why? To answer the above questions, one must understand the intricacies of nerve energy expenditure and the conditions that enable the body to most efficiently regenerate it.
The most efficient sleep is termed sound sleep, slow-wave sleep; delta sleep, stage four sleep or deep sleep. Deep sleep produces about twice the amount of recuperation as does lighter stages of sleep.
Since most Americans are toxic, it is doubtful that sleep researchers have examined the sleep of very many truly healthy people. The data the researchers have charted as normal really reflects the average of unhealthy people.
Truly healthy people sleeping under ideal conditions require less sleep than less healthy individuals. This is due to several factors. Firstly, a healthy person needs less recuperation due to less energy expenditure. Secondly, a healthy person is capable of a greater proportion of very sound sleep because of less internal body disturbance. Thirdly, a healthy individual can regenerate nerve energy faster due to the increased efficiency of the person’s faculties.
The ideal conditions of sleep are determined by both internal and external circumstances. The more comfortable the sleeper, the sounder their sleep will be. Pure air occasions less sleep and quiet surroundings promote deeper sleep. Also, the less light in the sleeping area, the less disturbed will be the sleep.
Certain internal conditions favor or disfavor sleep. A person with a toxin-free body sleeps more readily and more soundly than a toxin-laden individual. For example, insomnia will often result from drinking coffee. The distress and stimulation from the caffeine may inhibit sleep, especially sound sleep. The body must expend energy in expelling the caffeine. At the same time, it generates less nerve energy because of lack of sound sleep.
Another condition that interferes with sleep is eating at bedtime. The primary reason for sleep is to regenerate nerve energy. However, if a person eats before sleeping, his/her body will direct much of its energies towards the digestion of the food. Since the brain is involved in digestion, less sound sleep will result. Additionally, the body will suffer a deficit of nerve energy because less was regenerated during the digestive process than would have been if the food had not been eaten.
Anything that is in the sleeper’s environment or body that disturbs the senses or uses more nerve energy than normal interferes with sleep, thus making it less efficient and effective.
The book Better Sleep for a Better Life details specific conditions that interfere with sleep.
Those who sleep in fresh air invariably report better sleep and a lesser need for sleep than those who sleep inside their homes. Why should this be so? Stated very simply, any improvement in sleeping conditions improves sleep. When a person sleeps in fresh air, the body receives its oxygen needs in a relatively pure state. Air inside homes is likely to have less oxygen and more pollution than fresh air. Impure air furnishes less of our needs and gives the body more problems than does fresh air.
It is very beneficial to sleep by open windows in a quiet environment so that fresh air flows freely during sleep. If the environment is noisy, it is wise to have the house ventilated so that fresh air is continuously funneled to and through the bedroom. Even polluted air from the outside is better than stale air trapped indoors. Sleeping is also improved by working in a fresh air environment during the day.
Exercise is a blessing that we should indulge regularly. Optimally, we should exercise daily, but certainly not less than four times weekly. Performed as much as possible within our limitations, exercise confers only benefits and no liabilities. Exercise in the form of jogging, calisthenics, gardening, bicycling, swimming, brisk walking, etc., up to about half an hour daily, takes no time from our waking moments! Sleep needs are reduced by about that amount!
Exercise “fine-tunes” the organism. Elimination is so accelerated by exercise that extraordinary body cleansing occurs. The body not only eliminates extra carbon dioxide generated during vigorous exercise, but it also occasions the removal of accumulated toxins ingested from nonfoods and drugs and toxins created as a result of overeating, eating wrong combinations, eating under stress, etc.
A pure, less toxic body needs less nerve energy. Less expenditure of nerve energy means less nerve energy need be generated, hence less sleep is required by a person who exercises regularly.
Foods that require less digestive and assimilative energy use less nerve energy. Foods that are associated with toxic materials, such as cooked foods, condiments, additives, etc., give the body eliminative problems. Eliminative problems require a great deal of nerve energy to be properly dealt with. For example, a single bout with alcohol can exhaust the body for a day or two. The need for sleep is greatly increased so that the body may recuperate its energy.
Here are some salient principles you should keep in mind relative to diet and sleep requirements:
Fasting individuals require only three to five hours of sleep daily after fasting for a short time. People who eat meat, condiments and cooked foods and who overeat require inordinare amounts of sleep. Despite the extra sleep, they are usually not well rested because they have a perpetual deficit of nerve energy due to their unwholesome practices.
You should not eat for at least two hours prior to bedtime. Though meals do sometimes occasion drowsiness and sluggishness, due to the redirection of blood supply to the digestive organs, we should not expect to sleep well while the body is conducting digestive and assimilative tasks.
Eating beyond the body’s need imposes an enervating task upon the body. Processing and disposing of food requires a great deal of energy. Improper combinations or unwholesome foods usually end up in a pathogenic mess that drains the body’s resources in eliminative efforts. This drain of energy results in poor sleep and in a correspondingly greater need for sleep. An enervated individual who sleeps 12 hours daily may be less rested than a healthy person who gets only six hours!
Relaxation is a great prelude to sleep. In a relaxed state, we drop the cares of the world and let go. Also, muscular tensions are released. When we take it easy and let go of tension, the body redirects its energies to its most needed tasks.
The cares of the world may be difficult to drop. I personally find it easy to let go of them by doing a few words on a crossword puzzle, solving a few chess problems or by pursuing some other consuming interest. Then I lay down, close my eyes and let myself go limp as if I were a bag of sand.
Somnolence comes quickly when the need for sleep exists and the demands upon the brain have been lowered as much as possible. Tensions, worries and stresses increase the need for sleep while simultaneously making it more difficult to fall asleep.
Many excellent relaxation methods can be practiced with benefit. One method that does not help you fall asleep so much as it helps you perform everyday activities in a relaxed and efficient manner is the Alexander Technique. There are instructors in many major cities.
People who are tense and who have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, besides improving their diet and getting more exercise and fresh air, should search for and find a relaxation method that will help them.
In America, bedding usually consists of an innerspring mattress over box springs, sheets, a pillow with pillow case and blankets and/or quilts.
For body comfort, the softer the mattress, the better. Of equal benefit is airiness. A soft innerspring mattress meets these conditions ideally. A thin cotton mattress on top of a foam, air or waterbed mattress works well too. The body is disturbed by pressure points, hot spots, cold areas and areas deprived of air. The body, like the lungs, will suffocate without fresh air. While the skin requires only a fraction of the air required by the lungs, it requires it nevertheless. Plastic materials deny the body air.
Body exudates then collect and irritate the skin, thus causing a lighter stage of sleep and frequent body shifting to overcome the discomfort.
Fabrics that breathe, such as cotton, solve this problem. Sleep should be conducted on cotton surfaces with lots of circulation underneath. Cotton sheets, blankets or materials should be used for cover.
Sleep is more efficiently conducted when the body is comfortable in temperature and when it is physically at ease. If the air temperature is warm, nude sleeping is ideal. Indoors, a fan may prove valuable if the air is very warm. If the temperature is in the sixty- to seventy-degree range, light-weight cotton pajamas or nightgowns will permit the warmer air radiating from your body to rise through the coverings into the cooler air outside the covers. Thus circulation is assured.
Perhaps you know that sleeping on concrete would provide very few contact points between the body and the concrete. The body’s weight would rest on these points, thus creating pressure points that interfere with blood circulation and skin respiration. Distress of the areas in contact would soon occur and thus rouse the brain into a lighter stage of sleep in order to conduct a body movement.
On the other hand, a very soft bed permits the underside of the body to make rather even contact with the sleeping surface. Optimal air circulation can occur on the underside if cotton is underneath, and body weight is evenly distributed so as to cause no uncomfortable pressure points.
In nursing homes and hospitals, very hard beds are used. This is in keeping with the current medical philosophy. Bed sores frequently occur, with resulting “infection.” Rather than “infection,” what really happens is that oxygen-starved cells and tissues that are under constant pressure die and suppurate due to decomposition. No one should be confined to bed all the time. Daily fresh air and sunshine on the body is of inestimable importance. Neither should the body lay on hard or overly firm surfaces.
To sum up, bedding should permit optimal air flow and maintain an even, comfortable body temperature and even distribution of body weight over the underside.
For many reasons, our night’s sleep may be inadequate. Our daily activities may involve an extraordinary amount of stress that squanders nerve energy. Heavy body toxicity may unduly drain the body of nerve energy. When any of these conditions render us drowsy, sleepy, listless or “down,” we need a nap. Many people resort to stimulating drinks (coffee, tea, colas) or foods (nonfoods such as chocolate, toxic foods such as meat, etc.) to “perk” them up. Stimulants of these kinds only exacerbate the problem rather than solving it. They further drain nerve energy even though the drain may not be evident at the time.
A nap of from a few minutes to an hour not only rests the body, but it also permits the brain to substantially renew its fund of nerve energy. In many countries around the world, the siesta is a normal practice. A one- or two-hour nap after midday refreshes people in many parts of the world. This napping practice contributes to their health and well-being.
It is said that a half-hour nap during the day is worth a whole hour of sleep at night. There is truth in this. Further, it is better to take an hour for a nap and perform efficiently in the afternoon and evening hours rather than forego a needed nap and drag through the whole afternoon. The added efficiency more than offsets the extra time applied when one is not alert or is not feeling good.
The noon nap originated in prehistoric antiquity. Among the ancient Greeks, the first meal of the day was ordinarily of fruits. This meal was followed by a period of sleep—a nap. When rest and sleep are taken during the heat of the day, the meal is better utilized and the body is renewed. Animals in nature also observe “siesta” during the heat of the day.
The healthful custom of taking a nap after noontide has been largely destroyed by the needs of industrial society. This loss has, to a great extent, contributed to our ill health and stimulative habits that make industrial nations so highly stressed and diseased.
Why do we dream? What physiological purposes are served by dreams?
Many students of the subject have ventured explanations. Sigmund Freud has, in the last century, described dreams as “the. guardians of sleep.” This author favors that view.
The dream stage is called REM sleep. This denotes a period of time during which there are rapid eye movements. These periods always occur after a period of deeper sleep. They last from a few brief moments up to half an hour. Dreams usually occur in 90-minute cycles throughout the night. However, some cycles are devoid of dreams, especially at the beginning of the night if the sleeper is very exhausted. Later, 90-minute cycles usually have the REM stage or a stage of dreaming.
Cited in the book Better Sleep for a Better Life are cases of only delta wave sleep on a fluidized air bed. Dreams did not occur and sleeping time was cut in half. This is very instructive in view of the many theories afloat about the purposes of sleep and the necessity of REM sleep or dreaming to insure our well-being.
Dreams are said to be necessary for “sorting out and classifying” the previous day’s impressions or data input. They are said to be analogous to the rezeroing of an analog computer in preparation for new problems and input.
Study and reflection upon the whyfore of dreams have led me to believe that they serve a valid physiological role. We note that, under ordinary sleeping conditions, the body has a 90-minute sleeping cycle. However, this cycle is nonexistent when sleep is most efficiently conducted, and extraordinarily tired people may fuse the cycles at the beginning of the night. This would seem to indicate the nonnecessity of dreams where sleep conditions favor the objectives of sleep. Dreams seem to be a tool the body uses when sleep is still needed but is threatened.
For example, when we have a full bladder during the night, we may, prior to wakening, have a dream during which, vicariously, we urinate. The dream has supplied ersatz satisfaction to the urge and thus preserved sleep. However, this may only delay the inevitable. But the purpose o prolonging sleep has been served. Dreams of eating, drinking, defecating and discharging other body urges are commonplace. Especially common are dreams of sexual fulfillment.
It is reasonable to conjecture that parts of the brain that are aroused by stimuli are quieted by vicarious fulfillment through dreaming.
In guarding against premature wakefulness, dreams also often tranquilize or becalm the mind. Consider the following, example: Dave had been trying to solve a problem during the day, and he was rather intense and involved with it. His brain had become very involved with the problem, and the impulses to solve it arose again and again, even during his sleep. When these impulses become strong enough to interfere with sleep, his mind “artificially” supplied an answer to allay the impulses and thus preserve sleep.
I have solved problems during sleep too often to recount. However, most of the solutions have proven impractical! It is the rare dream that supplies an answer that is applicable to the problem that besets us. Nevertheless, even a wrong solution is sometimes helpful in giving insights and setting the stage for a solution.
To conduct the processes of sleep for most efficient regeneration of nerve energy, dreams appear to be mechanisms the body uses for calming the mind when problems and other stimuli would otherwise disturb sleep.
So far we have been discussing the various conditions favorable to sleep, as well as those that interfere with sleep. One of the foremost prerequisites for sleep is that we be sleepy. As obvious as this is, many people try to sleep when they are not sleepy! We should drink when thirsty, eat when hungry, defecate and urinate upon urge and, likewise, sleep when sleepy.
In a nutshell, we should have our “nest” so prepared that it optimally furnishes the conditions for the soundest sleep. Among other conditions, this means:
On the other hand, sleeping with another has its liabilities. The movements and noises of the sleeping mate may disturb sleep. If this is the case, an extra bed should be utilized.
The conditions for favorable sleep are more elaborately presented in the booklet, Better Sleep for a Better Life.
Though it seems wise to title an entry as above, it is really superfluous to list the solution to sleep problems when they are, as a rule, no different than other disease problems. Most sleep problems arise from violating the conditions favorable to sleep that you have been studying and from violations of life’s laws. Thus, the solution to sleep problems is really the same as it is for other diseases that arise from the same violations.
Insomnia is an inability to sleep. Obviously, this interferes with the body’s ability to recoup the nerve energy it needs for the following day’s activities.
If an individual complains about an inability to sleep and that he or she is not well-rested, the person is suffering from insomnia. Many physicians have noted that insomniacs really do sleep but don’t realize it. Although this is true, many sleep specialists are now discovering that insomniacs’ sleep is very low grade and is not very restful. Moreover, it may be punctuated by periods of wakefulness. Most insomniacs are not wrong about their problem existing. Too many physicians dismiss the patient’s problem and prescribe sleeping pills or tranquilizers which ultimately make the problem worse by adding to the body’s toxic load.
Rather than immediately searching for methods to induce sleep, you should first look for the causes of the problem. Insomnia results when an individual is assaulted by too much stimuli. Stimuli can result from improper sleeping conditions, but are usually due to body toxicity. This toxicity results from both autogenous sources and from ingested materials. Drugs and drug-like substances are foremost offenders. These include caffeine, condiments, chocolate, soft drinks, cooked foods, wrong foods, over-the-counter and prescription drugs, etc. The solution to insomnia is simple: Discontinue causes! Remove the conditions that interfere with sleep, and implement the conditions that promote it.
Insomnia is usually overcome in a few days during a fast and will not recur if a regime of healthful practices is adopted. A good night’s sleep can be had by almost anyone who discontinues body-disturbing practices and institutes healthful practices.
A is a prefix meaning against or without and pnea means breath. Hence, apnea is a condition of being without breath.
During sleep many individuals will miss one or more breaths—they simply stop breathing momentarily. This stoppage of breath usually lasts only a few seconds, but it can last a minute or two in some individuals. The fact that the breath stops at all indicates a less than normal body condition. The longer the period of breathlessness, the more pathological the body’s condition. This condition may occur dozens of times during a night in sufferers.
Apnea may occur because the brain is not issuing the proper commands to the lungs and body mechanisms to inhale and exhale. In the case of sufferers from multiple sclerosis, these signals may be misdirected. Or, apnea may be caused by growths or abnormal obstructions. Where these conditions occur, a choking sensation quickly alerts the brain and often awakens the sleeper. Apnea interferes with sleep and may be a significant factor in insomnia. If frequent breathlessness occurs, the body sounds its alarms. The sleeper must be brought to a phase of lighter sleep, even wakefulness, to restart breathing. Fasting and healthful living almost always restore the body to normalcy, thus overcoming apnea.
Snoring is not normal! A multitude of conditions can be responsible for snoring. Enlarged tonsils or adenoids may block the air passage sufficiently to cause the loud “flutter” of snoring. Most snoring occurs because the soft palate, when relaxed, flutters in the diverted current of air. Diverted air may be due to growths, fatty tissue in the throat, nasal deformities or other swelling.
Most fasting people who have previously snored are surprised when the condition disappears. The condition does, however, speedily return if the person returns to its causes. But many have overcome it permanently.
Flabby muscles or fatty growths may cause the condition. Fasting usually causes autolysis of the fatty tissue. A vigorous exercise program that includes head exercises sometimes corrects the condition.
Snoring is almost always present in those who suffer apnea although most snorers do not suffer apnea. The causes of snoring and apnea are sometimes one and the same, i.e., obstructions in the air passages. Solutions to snoring are rare but the surest is a healthful regime of living.
Narcolepsy is a “seizure of numbness.” It is an uncontrollable urge to sleep that may come upon the sufferer without warning. Such a sudden urge to sleep may cause an accident or may disrupt activities, though usually the sufferer has enough warning to situate himself/herself harmlessly.
An urge to nap should not be confused with narcolepsy. Even in a healthy person, sleep can be induced if the person suffers a considerable sleep deficit.
Incorrect actions of body control mechanisms are eliminated when the modifying influences of drugs and body toxicity are discontinued and removed. Fasting and a healthful regime will provide the answer to these problems.
Sleep problems in children are extensive in our society. These include extended wakefulness, crying, abnormal demands for food, apnea, head-banging, nightmares and soon.
Almost all of these manifestations spring from an abnormal body condition begotten of, today’s criminal treatment of children. To feed babies anything other than mother’s milk is a tragedy. Freshly expressed fruit juices might be substituted for a feeding of mother’s milk here and there, but even that is not advisable before six months of age. All other feeding is a disaster for the infant. Inoculating and drugging infants is criminal in every sense of the word. Feeding them starches, cooked foods, caffeine and other such fare wrecks their delicate but vital faculties.
Formula-fed babies who are started on cereals within two months of birth, who are given cooked and condimented meats and other unfit foods and are drugged develop many pathologies. These manifest as the “usual childhood diseases” and as sleep problems.
An infant that does not feel right will not act “right.” Abnormal behavior comes from abnormal conditions. Usually, a short fast will enable the child’s body to cleanse itself. A proper regime of living that includes exercise (yes, even for an infant!), correct foods for the age, fresh air and sunshine, ample sleep, etc., will further improve the child’s conditions.
Almost everyone has advice for insomniacs, including other insomniacs—but usually their advice just doesn’t happen to work in their particular case! One of the latest fads is to take a heavy dose of the amino acid L-tryptophan before retiring. This fad came about as the result of an inquiry as to why drinking a glass of milk seemed to cause sleepiness in those who had sleep difficulties. However, milk is not heavy in this amino acid, hence there must be some other explanation as to why people become sleepy after drinking milk.
Anything that requires extra blood and nerve energy makes us drowsy, especially if taken at or near our regular sleep hour. Tryptophan itself is a fractionated product and as much as half an ounce will cause vomiting and diarrhea. The mechanism whereby sleep is hastened by a heavy dosage of tryptophan is probably from a drug effect, despite medical protestations that there are no side effects. The fact that a small amount of tryptophan will cause vomiting is indication enough that it does indeed cause drug effects.
The list of sleeping pills, tranquilizers, barbituates, aspirin compounds, antihistamines, antipsychotic and antidepressant compounds, chemicals and herbs supposed to induce sleep makes fearful reading. Perhaps we should add alcohol to this list, since it also seems to make people sleepy.
The truth is that drugs do not make us sleepy so much as they induce coma or a comatose state. Drugs bring us nearer to death, and there is little difference between the amount of these drugs needed to put us into a comatose state and the amount needed to produce death! Sleeping pills are all harmful. Natural sleep is the only sleep we should seek and we should pursue this by entering upon an /entirely natural regime of living.
Everything done to cause us to lose consciousness is unnatural. Unnatural responses to needs merely intensify problems instead of solving them. The treating professions prescribe drugs that ultimately make matters worse for the sufferer. Those who advise the use of herbs or special foods make the same mistake. Instead of advising the sufferer to discontinue those practices which cause insomnia, those who would “treat” the symptoms leave causes intact and tinker with modalities that cause drowsiness or coma.
There are over 50 million Americans with sleep problems, almost one in four. People who suffer insomnia usually have a number of other complaints as well. Sleeplessness is but one symptom of body toxicity. Remove the toxicity and all complaints disappear simultaneously. Fasting enables the body to free itself of toxic materials and a healthful regime will not impose toxin buildup.
Humans are diurnal creatures, that is, they conduct their conscious activities during the day. We are instinctively sleepers by night. The pattern of night/day sleeping continues even in subjects who are continuously kept in the dark for weeks at a time. The circadian rhythm is not disturbed by unceasing darkness. Experiments with subjects I kept in rooms without lighting for up to two weeks did not shake the rhythm, though subjects have had their rhythms lengthened and shortened while staying in caves lit with artificial daylight. The change in rhythm they experienced corresponded with the shortened or extended “days.”
Our sleep patterns gradually change when we change time zones, or when normal activities are changed by advancing or regressing the clock.
Your intelligence quotient depends upon how efficiently and intensely the brain operates. It is well-known that caffeine will temporarily intensify and excite thinking until the letdown comes. Many stimulants will intensify mental activities. Good health will naturally intensify and enhance mental activities without providing a “letdown.” Nothing in the world will sharpen mental acuity as will a few days to a few weeks of fasting. Mental acuity arises from two primary conditions:
Hence, the more adequate our sleep, the more nerve energy we’ll have for the brain and for more intense thought processes. When “you’re sharper than a tack” your body is purer and your nerve energy greater than at other, mentally duller times.
Have a rejuvenating sleep!
Is oversleeping really bad for you? I hear a lot lately that too much sleep can make you sick.
There is no such thing as oversleep. The body will not sleep beyond need. Consciousness returns when need has been met. We can’t control that. However, we can by many devices shorten our sleep and simply refuse to get enough.
Sleep is a restorative agency, not a pathogenic practice, Medical men have said that fresh air is bad for you because it has been proven that city dwellers moving from polluted cities to vacation areas in fresh pure air get sick. Calling oversleeping pathogenic is similar to calling fresh air bad for you.
This attitude comes about because medical opinion regards disease as a war against the body by invading forces such as bacteria or viruses or both. Disease and sickness are not recognized as a body-instituted cleansing and repair process. When the body’s vitality is increased by fresh air or by heightened nerve energy derived from sleep extraordinary to normal, the body uses the opportunity to start a healing crisis.
Rather than regarding sleep as an enemy of well-being, you should regard it as one way in which to more quickly help reestablish physiological normalcy. When in the relaxing and reassuring atmosphere of a fasting institution, many fasters start off by sleeping most of the time, sometimes for up to a week. When their bodies are sufficiently cleansed, they cannot sleep as much as is regarded normal. Note that in the case of heavy sleeping they could do so only because the body needed it to regenerate the increased nerve energy to restore normalcy. When normalcy has been reestablished, they find it impossible to get the amount of sleep they regard as normal. Thus we can see that oversleeping is myth, that the body will not, indeed, conduct the sleep process beyond need.
What’s so great about napping?
I can do no better than quote from the illustrious longtime Hygienic professional, Dr. V. Virginia Vetrano. Here are her observations on the immense value of napping and of getting additional sleep when it is needed.
Napping is extremely important to every individual from birth to 140 years old. Taking a siesta after lunch improves digestion, absorption and assimilation and promotes better health through better nutrition. Taking naps prevents excessive fatigue and promotes better and more efficient work. Resting and napping actually increase our productivity. Taking a ten-minute rest break every hour helps us to get more done in less time. When one is fatigued, mental acuity and physical powers are greatly diminished. Resting, including napping, sharpens the mind and body. By napping and preventing excessive fatigue, we are less nervous and irritable at night and we can fall asleep more quickly. It has been shown that there are fewer marital problems in those people who rest after lunch than in those who must put in long days without an afternoon nap or rest period.
If you go to bed exhausted, the body must first recuperate before it can begin its anabolic processes, cell renovation, cell renewal, healing and repair. A rested person going to bed will be more fully recuperated in the morning. A person going to bed exhausted will wake up only half refreshed, and must face another day without relaxation, so he is never fully revitalized, repaired, or replenished. As a consequence, toxemia and disease ensue.
Learn to nap and learn to rest. Rest during your coffee break and part of your lunch break, instead of stimulating yourself with too much food and beverage. Rest again until refreshed, upon arriving home from work. Teach yourself to work in a relaxed state, free from all tension. You will notice a definite physical and mental improvement when you secure more rest and prevent fatigue.
You’ve said that sleep regenerates nerve energy. My biology book says sleep is for resting fatigued nerves that have been overwhelmed by toxin accumulation. It also says that the fatigue is caused by the need to restore deranged body chemistry, that is, restore potassium/sodium balances. Do you agree with this?
I became a student of the sleep process in my early days as a Hygienist. I noted that, at first, I was sleeping so much that, even when working, my sleep was sometimes most of the day. Later, after a fast of 12 days I noticed that I was going to bed at a normal hour but waking four to five hours later and unable to sleep further. I tried to find out why and thus steeped myself upon the subject.
I do not regard nerves any more fatiguable than the heart, which is on duty for 24 hours daily. I regard the body as keeping its nervous system in better order than its heart for that is equally vital. Body processes are conducted 24 hours daily and if the nervous system fatigued and “conked out,” this would obviously not be possible. The nerve restores its chemical normalcy after transmitting an electrical impulse in fractions of a second. It does not need eight hours in which to restore normalcy.
Toxin accumulation does not itself cause sleep. It does occasion a greater expenditure of nerve energy. A faster who has thoroughly cleansed his or her body will sleep three to five hours daily. But, as we know, a very toxic individual can drag around and deny needed sleep. Toxin accumulation would not cause sleep anyway but coma as in intoxication by alcohol or other drugs.
The body sleeps when its nerve energy reaches a critically low level. An ordinary battery will stop supplying sufficient spark to operate the auto’s electrical system long before it is dead. Before normalcy is established, the battery must be recharged. This appears analogous to what occurs in the body!
You will note that I speak in these matters with a note of certainty and finality. After many years of researching the subject and reading all the researches and conclusions, you don’t have to be a genius to see where the truth lies—it becomes as obvious as the nose on your face. It yells at you, quite literally. When you’re following a wrong premise and give it power regardless of facts, you’ll always arrive at a wrong conclusion. I definitely regard your biology book as wrong.
Why don’t we get electrosleep devices if it supplies us with the nerve energy we need?
Russians, Israelis and even Americans have conducted extensive research on electrosleep. The published researches I’ve read have failed to give many specifics, though much can be inferred.
There can be little doubt that those subjected to electricity in millivolt ratings can derive from this source a supply of electricity to use as their own as if it were regenerated under the condition of sleep. Those who have obtained electrosleep seem to have been able to pursue normal activities for 22 hours out of 24. Keep in mind that normal activities drain us of nerve energy and that the extra five or six hours of activity daily uses extra nerve energy. That extra nerve energy, as well as that which is normally expended in a sixteen or seventeen hour day, must be supplied by the electrosleep. Electrosleep seemed to do this for the subjects, since when they were taken off electrosleep, they quickly became eight-hours-per-day sleepers again!
I could find nothing in these researches that would indicate what happens to humans when the routines of their normal circadian rhythm are altered by electrosleep. The question of value of electrosleep must be weighed carefully against any liabilities it might have. More extensive studies into electrosleep must be made and published before its true value can be determined.
Does sexual indulgence really make us sleep more?
Yes, we need more sleep because of sexual activity. There is a great intensity of nerve energy expenditure in the sex act. Under normal circumstances the male will, quite literally, exhaust himself and will often collapse in sleep. The body gets quite a “high” during the sexual climax because it secretes narcotizing endorphins. The overall effect lowers nerve energy to such an extent that the body demands sleep almost immediately to restore the expenditure. Nothing can equal the sex act as a “sleeping potion!” Moreover, the regeneration of sperm in the male requires a great body expenditure of both resources and nerve energy. Those resources are of the finest materials obtainable from the body reserves and cells. The body gives its very best to the reproduction of the species. Nature has placed the survival of the species ahead of individual survival.
Isn’t sex good for you?
Occasional sex indulgence is good for both the psyche and body faculties. Its frequent indulgence will, to put it in lay terms, “burn us out.” Sexual activity draws upon nerve energies the body requires for its most vital activities. If sexual indulgence persists, the familiar syndromes of enervation, toxemia, irritation, inflammation, ulceration, etc. ensue. Prostate cancer can be a result of excessive sexual indulgence in men. So-called general diseases are due to accumulated body toxins as a result of venery.
Sex can be both good and bad for you. Keep in mind hat the conjugal act in animals occurs only when the female is in heat and only for the purpose of procreation. We have a culture that makes sexual activities an end in themselves. This practice may not be harmful if it is not overdone. It is very difficult to pronounce any standards upon these matters.
Doesn’t sleep do the same thing as rest?
While the body rests during sleep it does lot, under the condition of rest only, accomplish what it does under the condition of sleep. Rest enables the body to catch up on its metabolic activities, whereas sleep is primarily for the purpose of nerve regeneration.
I’ve read Better Sleep for a Better Life. It was a revelation for me. Why don’t scientists take note of it, especially its information about sleep being for regenerating nerve energy? I haven’t read any other book that says this.
I have said previously that Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman has formulated the theory that sleep is for the regeneration of nerve energy. He may have found this idea in Hygiene. Dr. Shelton said fifty years earlier that sleep restores nerve energy. Perhaps Dr. Kleitman’s findings were like those of the noted Uri Nicolayev of Russia, who fasted many schizophrenic patients with celebrated results. He was a student of Dr. Shelton’s writings and merely applied them in practice. Insofar as Dr. Kleitman has taken note of the Hygienic position, science has recognized the role of sleep.
I’ve heard it said that dreams should be taken seriously because there is always some deepseated meaning in them. What are your thoughts about this?
Right off I’ll tell you the best thing about dreams is that they don’t come about in reality and have no overtones of significance. The only thing you should take serious about dreams is their role in saving the condition of sleep until it is more or less replete. Dreams are the body’s “lightning rod” that satiates vicariously disturbing impulses that arise in the body. Dreams “ground” the stimulating impulses that would normally prematurely return us to wakefulness.
Is it true that nightmares can be caused as a consequence of atrocious foods or upset stomach ? What causes nightmares?
Nightmares or terrors during sleep can arise from many impulses in the body including those generated by the distresses of a meal that cannot be digested but which gives problems instead. Fitful sleep results from poor body conditions such as in indigestion but also from aches, pains, inflammations and other body pathology. Nightmares may arise from fears that are not allayed during waking hours. Nightmares are nothing more than dreams that the body conducts to preserve sleep.
Do water beds give you the equivalent of an extra hour of sleep as most salesmen for them claim?
If air circulation and warmth are properly met, this statement is true. The water bed enables full body weight to be evenly distributed over the entire underside instead of at a few contact points as on floors and hard beds. This extra comfort disturbs the body less than when there are pressure points as in much conventional bedding. The body can more efficiently conduct the sleeping process due to fewer disturbing factors.
If you have difficulty going to sleep when you feel that you need it, and your brain is so active that you cannot stop thinking and it is keeping you awake, you can overcome the trouble by following in detail a certain routine of thinking positively. The reason you have this problem is because something important is on your mind at the time.
Some persons fall asleep easily because they do not take life so seriously and do not worry about other people and their troubles. They are not so “unselfish” and just accept life as it shows up. So, for those persons who are always concerned about others troubles, the following procedure will put you to sleep very easily.
When you are thoroughly convinced that you really need some sleep, all you have to do is to purposely mix up your thoughts so completely that you won’t know what you were thinking about. It’s that simple, and you need only put your mind on a simple, routine system of thinking which is so easy to follow that it becomes almost automatic to continue it after you have been interrupted by the interjection of unintentional and unrelated thoughts.
Before trying to follow this method, you should put your body in a natural, relaxed position with nothing to disturb your comfort. Lie directly on your back in a straight position and place your arms alongside your body so that the blood can flow freely. Then place your legs in a straight position to get rid of all the possible kinks and bends in all other parts of the body.
Put a pillow under the head, but not under the shoulders. Now, slowly take deep breaths so your lungs fill with air. Then exhale all the way to empty them completely. Inhale again to fill the lungs normally, and then try to inhale a little more after that. Exhale normally, and then try to exhale still more.
Your next step is to imagine walking over to a blackboard with imaginary chalk in your hand and slowly draw a vertical straight line from near the top to the bottom of the board. Do this several times more, as naturally as you can. Now, imagine that your are slowly drawing the figure two (2) extending the full height of the board. Do this a few times in your natural handwriting that you can be proud of. It must be done easily. Next, do the same with the other figures, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Any other routine system of mixing up your thoughts could be as effective, but this method has been used for a long time and is perfectly satisfactory.
If you do it very slowly, you’ll probably be asleep before you know it, and when you wake up you won’t remember what figure you drew last.
Doing the thinking rapidly will only keep you awake. Using ten seconds or more to draw each figure will stop your thinking, you’ll become drowsy, and then lose consciousness entirely.
Even if you should wake up in the middle of the night, you will be able to put yourself back to sleep more easily than before.
You must never doubt your ability to have this routine plan work. Don’t think about it. Just do it, and know that if you follow the directions correctly it will put you to sleep every time.
Some New Highlights On This Subject
A wise oriental once said: “He who can perceive inaction in action, and action in inaction, is wise among men.”
It is during the hours of rest and sleep—when we seem to be most passive—that something within us is intensely active, recharging us with vital energy for the next day.
When we are active, we are expending energy; when we are seemingly inactive, we are receiving it. For “energy is always noted in its expenditure, never in its accumulation.”
Animals instinctively know this. So do babies! As the Irishman once remarked, “They sleep a good deal of their waking day.” We spend a third of our lives in sleep, and its remarkable recuperative effects are well-known. Have we not all had this experience? We are tired—fatigued. The head nods for only a few moments, and yet we feel refreshed, invigorated. Those few seconds have changed our whole outlook on life.
But it is not always necessary to sleep in order to obtain these beneficial results. Rest will revitalize us, too; but must be the right kind of rest. Complete relaxation with the eyes closed is a part of this formula—but only a part of it. There is a technique of rest, as there is for anything else. The best results are obtained only from the right kind of rest. How should one go about insuring this?
First of all, a few obvious essentials. The room in which we are attempting to rest should be as quiet as possible, and the light subdued. There should be a feeling of certainty that there will be no distraction and disturbances. The muscular system should be relaxed, and this may be accomplished by going over the body in thought, relaxing every part of it in turn as we come to it. (Deep breathing exercises will help in this.) Certain areas should receive particular attention, as they are points of tensions; the solar plexus, the back of the neck, the jaw, the throat, the shoulders. Go over the body several times in this way, relaxing each point in turn as you come to it.
Recent researches have shown that merely closing the eyes rests the brain and mind in a peculiar way. An electric rhythm starts as soon as the eyes are closed, and ceases immediately when they are opened. What the exact purpose and nature of this rhythm are, still remains to a great extent a mystery, but one might well imagine that they serve to clear “negative charges” from the brain. At all events they denote recuperation. The activity of the senses, and particularly the eyes, prevents this from occurring.
Fatigue is of two kinds: muscular fatigue and fatigue of the nerve cells. The former is easily overcome by a short period of rest; every athlete knows this. Exhaustion of the nerve cells, however, is another matter; this is deep-seated, and time is required to recharge the tiny “batteries.” It is this lowering of energy in the nerve cells that leads TO physical and even mental trouble. Carried to an extreme, it leads to “nervous breakdown.”
This life-energy of ours should be carefully conserved. When it is riotously expended it must be replenished. If not, we run into trouble. Overwork, sexual excesses and prolonged strain waste the energies. But more important than all these are the emotions. These are the factors which short-circuit the nervous system and exhaust its reserve energies the most quickly. Any amount of thinking will never tire us, providing emotions are not associated with these thoughts.
All strong emotions have this effect. It is well-known that fear, worry, anxiety, anger and similar powerful emotions will have this result, but so will intense excitement and foolish enthusiasm! Take a football game. The players become tired, but a brief period of rest refreshes them, and they are ready to “raise hell” that night. But the spectators are exhausted! High tension over too long a period has this effect. And it is the same in our everyday lives. As Dr. Trall once remarked, “A life cannot be both intensive and extensive.” A relatively calm and peaceful life will insure longevity; and in the meantime will insure freedom from nervous depletion and breakdown.
All this does not mean that normal enthusiasms should not be indulged in, or that one should become a jellyfish, devoid of energetic thinking and acting. Provided destructive emotions are not present, these would represent merely a wholesome, healthy life. But, just as powerful feelings can drain the cell-energies rapidly, less powerful ones, sustained over long periods, will exhaust them slowly. Fears and worries particularly have this effect. So will frustrations, resentments and inner disharmonies. These will fight against one another and ultimately devitalize their host completely.
There is an old saying that a man can climb mountains all day and be relatively fresh at the end of it, whereas if he has to wash dishes for ten minutes he is exhausted! The reason for this, of course, is that in the first instance his whole being is working in unison, wheras in the latter case he is fighting against himself. His conscious mind forces him to perform the activity while his subconscious mind is resenting and resisting it. The result is that he is like two mules hitched to opposite ends of a rope, pulling against each other. Result: They get nowhere. But hitch them up in tandem, and they will pull you out of the rut. It is this internal emotional conflict which wears down the energy of the nerve cells and in time produces dire results.
No one should be ashamed of lying down for a few minutes some time during the day, closing the eyes and relaxing. This is especially true of elderly people. It rests the heart, equalizes the great blood-lake and restores the energy of the brain and nerve cells. More important still, it will prevent you from becoming fatigued. Towards the end of the day, “tiredness” seems to progress in almost geometrical ratio. That is why it is necessary to go to bed at a reasonable hour, if one has to get up early. If one is tired after sixteen hours, the seventeenth hour will fatigue you far more than one-sixteenth of the waking day, and the eighteenth hour still more, and so on. Those last two or three hours are often the ones which make all the difference between a normal life and one which is headed for ultimate physical and mental trouble.
Two other important factors should be noted in this connection. The first is that a complete change of mental interests will often act as a great reenergizer. Perhaps new areas in the brain are involved; more probably the conscious and subconscious mind are now working in harmony, rather than in opposition.
Whatever the cause, the fact remains that a man may be tired out at the end of a day’s work, but as soon as he begins tinkering with his hobby he is no longer exhausted. Travel has much the same effect. A complete change of mental scenery will work wonders in the way of rejuvenation, as we all know.
The second essential for complete internal rest I have rarely seen mentioned anywhere—and yet it is highly important. The vital organs of the body need rest, too, just as our external muscles do. I refer particularly to the digestive organs. It is now generally acknowledged that we all eat far more than we need, in order to maintain the physical and vital wastes of the body. The amount of energy required to convert and digest this quantity of food must be prodigious, and this energy must be drawn from the general fund. A little judicious fasting will work wonders in restoring this vital expenditure. Many people are chronically tired for no other reason: they keep themselves constantly fatigued because of this internal overactivity of the digestive organs—even during the hours of sleep, when a “late supper” is indulged in. Giving these vital organs a rest is highly essential. The benefit to be derived from occcasional fasting or semi-fasting are attributable largely to this—the rest given the organs of digestion at such times. The rejuvenating effects of these periods of abstinence and self-discipline have been noted by many who have given them a fair trial. Doubtless you can do the same.
Rest—external and internal—is a fundamental requisite for a healthy, normal life. The human protoplasm needs rest. It must have it. Nothing else will take its place. The human heart beats approximately 100,000 times every day—every twenty-four hours—and yet (if not abused) it can continue to function in this way for eighty or a hundred years. Why? Because, between each beat, your heart rests. It is a momentary rest, it is true, but enough to permit its recuperation. Activity and relaxation should alternate. That is the law of life. Obey this law, and health, harmony and happiness should be yours!
The motto of the early Hygienists—“health by healthful living”—was comprehensive and included within its scope the whole way of life. It did not refer to a plan of eating or a system of exercise or to any other single facet of life. From the time of Graham forward, it was fully realized that every facet of life was as important as every other if one hoped to maintain good health. It was also understood that all the elemental needs of life had to be met in keeping with the needs and capacities of the sick organism if health was to be restored.
Among the important elements of a valid Hygiene was rest. Hygiene places great emphasis upon the importance of rest. Rest, in which is included sleep, is nature’s great restorative process, just as activity and excitement constitutes her great exhaustive process. Activity is necessary to the highest expressions of organic life, but it must be alternated with periods of rest, or else the organism wears itself out.
In life, two simultaneous processes are in continuous operation. First, there are the processes of growth, development and replenishment; second, there are the processes of wear and tear. Collectively, these two processes constitute metabolism. To the process of wear and tear, the term catabolism is applied. Catabolism is dominant in periods of activity. Anabolism is the term applied to the process of replenishment, development and growth and is dominant during periods of rest and sleep. Neither of these processes is ever entirely passive during life, but, in general, it may be said that when one process is at the height of its activity, the other is at its lowest point of activity. Anabolism may be said to be the period in which the body renews itself, replenishes itself, refreshes itself and prepares itself for renewed activity.
It will thus be seen that when we say rest is a cessation of activity, we mean only that it is a cessation of certain forms of activity. The anabolic processes are intensely active during periods of rest and sleep. In states of sedations, narcosis, drug-induced hypnosis, anesthesia, etc., when physical and mental activities are greatly reduced or almost suspended, anabolic activities are also greatly reduced or nearly suspended; hence it is that drug-induced inhibition of the activities of life does not result in refreshment and renewal of the body. These states leave the body depressed, languid and unfitted for further activity. Normal rest and sleep, on the other hand, produce alertness, freshness and a feeling of vigor and prepare one for further action. It may thus be seen how important rest and sleep are to the replenishing processes of life.
The infant and young child require much rest and sleep, perhaps primarily because the anabolic processes are at their greatest intensity. This is to say that in those periods of life when development and growth are greatest, anabolism is most intense; hence, much rest and sleep are required. The invalid also requires much rest and sleep, not primarily because anabolism is more intense in the body of the invalid, but because it is less efficient and requires a longer period of time in which to accomplish the same recuperation and renewal. It is a cardinal principle of Hygienic science that nothing is remedial except those conditions which economize the expenditure of the forces of the organism. Those invalids who vainly imagine that they can exercise themselves into vigor usually succeed only in wasting their already depleted stock and work so hard at getting well that they keep themselves enervated. There are times when the invalid needs exercise, but first of all and foremost in the ranks of his current needs, is rest.
We divide rest into four kinds: physical rest, which may be obtained by discontinuing physical activity, going to bed and relaxing; sensory rest, which is secured by quiet and by refraining from using the eyes; mental rest, which is secured by poising the mind, this is to say, by ceasing to worry and to fret and by the cultivation of mental equilibrium; and physiological rest, which may be obtained by reducing physiological activities. This last form of rest, may be best obtained by either greatly reducing the amount of food taken or by abstaining from food altogether.
When our primitive ancestors had performed a certain amount of work, they became tired and weak, even sleepy, and were thus forced to rest. By thus regularly and properly meeting the demands of their bodies from rest, they were reinvigorated and made, ready to resume their work. But a time came when man learned to force his body to continue activities after fatigue demanded a halt. He learned to lash his organism with stimulants. Without stimulation the brain grows weary and the physical demand for rest becomes so great that we lie down and rest and sleep. But to drive the body and mind with stimulants is to exhaust these. Activity, even strenuous activity, does not injure man so long as, by natural living, he possesses the power to work. When fatigue calls for rest, he will rest. Injury results when, by the use of stimulants, he forces himself to continue working after nature has demanded a cessation of work. If he lashes himself with stimulants, he will overtax himself and not rest when he should. We see a graphic illustration of this in the common coffee-break of today. A few minutes out from activity is provided the worker who, instead of taking advantage of the, opportunity to rest, fills up on stimulants and foodless cooked foods. The result is that the coffee-break, instead of proving a boon, becomes a bane.
To rest a whole day, when greatly fatigued, either of body or mind, is both agreeable and beneficial. A much longer period of rest is required by the invalid who perhaps, is greatly devitalized and much enervated from long indulgence and overactivity, excesses, stimulation and emotional excitement. These profoundly enervated individuals may require weeks or even months of rest before organs that have been lashed into impotency will rest into full functioning power.
Physiological rest, which is more commonly known as fasting, is best taken under competent supervision. This is especially true if the period of abstinence is to be a lengthy one. Most people may safely take a few days of fasting without expert supervision, but these frequently spoil the results of their fast by the overeating which they practice immediately thereafter. Indulgent individuals, who are lacking in self-control, should be supervised even during a short fast; otherwise, they are likely to receive but small benefit from their period of abstinence.
The chronically tired, exhausted individual, seeking to rest, should retire to some quiet, secluded place, preferably in the country, where the air is pure and disturbances are at a minimum, and go to bed and relax. If he is not sick, he need not spend his whole time in bed; but if there is any marked ailment from which he seeks to recover, he should realize that the more nearly he can approach the immobilization of the embryonic period, the more rapid will be his recovery. He should abstain from all stimulants, both of a chemical and emotional nature. The noise and excitement of radio and television programs interfere with rest, with poise and with sleep, thus preventing recuperation and retarding recovery.
Our noisy civilization, which is growing more noisy day by day, is as great an evil as are air pollution and water pollution. If we could practically hibernate and effectively insulate ourselves against newspapers, magazines, television and radio and other sources of noise and excitement, we would refresh and replenish ourselves in a much shorter time and with greater efficiency.
For years I have stood out against the employment of all methods of artificial stimulation (irritation or excitation) of the body of the sick person because such methods tend to exhaust the energies of the patient. One of my critics says of this: “The loss of ‘vital power’ which seems to be a bogey man of Dr. Shelton is not so bad as he paints it. The body is not a static but a dynamic machine constantly regenerating and losing ‘vital power’ or energy.” We may rant the truth of his statement that the body is a dynamic machine constantly generating and losing energy, without being compelled to grant his contention that it is helpful to waste, by stimulation, the energy of the body as it is generated.
The power of the body to generate energy is limited, the power of the sick body to generate energy is crippled, he sick person, and especially the chronically sick person, suffering from nervous fatigue as the result of a previous state of energy. He is not helped by any measure that further depletes his energy-stores. Stimulation is a forced draught upon the energies of the body. It compels the expenditure of energy, not in doing useful work, but in consisting the stimulant. If it is long continued or often repeated, exhaustion is the result. The depletion of the body’s energies is commensurate with the amount of stimulation it is subjected to.
The opposite practice, that of conserving the patient’s energies through rest, is a far more rational and an infinitely more successful practice. A workman returns home in the evening very tired from a hard day’s toil. We do not prescribe a stimulant for him, but rest and sleep. A sick man comes to us with a tired organism after weeks, months, or even years of overwork, stimulation, dissipation, etc., and we pursue the opposite course. We tell him that he needs more stimulation, that his organs need to be made to work more. We begin a course of treatment that consists of stimulating the skin, the kidneys, the colon, the nervous system, etc. Sometimes, if le is not too badly depleted when he comes to us, we succeed in whipping up a short-lived simulation of health, very often, indeed it is the rule, we see our patient grow progressively worse from the first.
The very fact that a period of depression (a reaction), commensurate with the prior period of stimulation, follows every period of stimulation should reveal to us the true wasteful character of stimulation. If we grant that anything is gained during the period of stimulation, we must see that this is lost in the reaction. The more we seem to gain the more we actually lose.
The stimulation afforded by any stimulant grows progressively less and the subsequent depression progressively greater as the use of the stimulant is continued. Stronger and more frequent doses or a new and different stimulant must be resorted to, and the period of recuperation must be longer.
Another serious objection to the stimulation practice is that it deals with effects only and tampers with the functions of the body and ignores the causes of the troubles present. It seeks to restore health by forcing increased action in the body, rather than by correcting or removing the causes of the disease.
Suppose we assume that we are dealing with a highly toxic patient and it is desirable to eliminate the accumulated toxins from his body. If we set out to do it by stimulating his organs of elimination, but ignore the cause of the toxic state, we would be in the same position as that of the man who attempts to dip a fountain dry without cutting off the water supply. He dips and dips until he is exhausted, only to find that there is as much water in the fountain as when he started. Indeed, if there were no other outlet for the water, the longer he dipped and the more tired he became, the faster would the water accumulate, for, as his fatigue increased, his dipping would fall off and the water would gain on him increasingly. In just the same way we whip up the organs of elimination to greater and greater effort and keep up the process until these organs and, perhaps, the whole organism are exhausted, only to find that the body is as toxic as ever. Indeed, due to the impairment of function that inevitably results from these stimulating measures, the body becomes increasingly more and more toxic.
There is no more effective method of increasing elimination than that of rest. Increased activity increases the production of waste; decreased activity lessens the production of toxins. Increased activity expends energy; rest and sleep conserve energy. The more an organ is stimulated, the less able it becomes to perform its functions. Give it sufficient rest for recuperation, replenishment and repair and its vigor and functional efficiency are increased.
Much energy is consumed in physical activity. If rest is substituted for activity, the energy commonly spent in physical activity is available for use in doing other and, for the moment at least, more important work. Nature does not cut off the appetite, prostrate the patient and cut down mental activities, sexual activities and sensory activities, in typhoid, for instance, for nothing. These are all conservative measures—designed to conserve the energy commonly expended in these forms of activity, in order that it may be available for use in the, at present, more important work of recovery.
Activity consumes the substances of the body, is vitolytic; increased activity increases the consumption of body substance. During rest, the cells, the tissues and the organs are repaired, replenished and renewed. Rest is vitogenic. Resting organs are better able to repair their damaged structures than stimulated organs. Rest and sleep are the great representative restorative processes.
The actual storing up of the energy reserves or the energy sources of the body takes place during rest. Activity expends and rest recuperates the body’s supplies. The stimulation (irritation and excitement) of an already depleted body only hastens the exhaustion of the few remaining energy-stores and brings on the final collapse sooner than it would have occurred otherwise. The more the body is stimulated, the sooner it reaches the state of complete collapse. The weaker the body is, the less able it is to withstand the “action” of stimulants—the greater is the necessity of “doing nothing” intelligently.
Only those who have had sufficient experience with both the stimulating (wasting) practice and the resting (conserving practice to enable them to judge the merits of the two practices are in a position to pass judgment upon them. Anyone who has not completely abandoned the stimulating practice and employed only the conserving practice on hundreds of patients and over a period of years, and who, in the face of this lack of experimental knowledge of the practice, proclaims the superiority of the stimulating practice and employed only the conserving position as were the armchair philosophers of the pre-Baconian period—he simply does not know, and cannot know, what he is talking about; he is only spinning, spider-like, a fantastic theory out of the web of his fancies.
16.2. How Foods Affect Mental And Emotional Health
16.3. Emotional Aspects Of Diet And Digestion
16.4. Methods For Overcoming Negative Emotional Conditioning
16.5. The Optimum Diet For Mental And Emotional Health
Article #1: About Emotions And Health By Marti Fry
Article #2: Fruitarianism For Health And Long Life By Dr. O.L.M. Abramowski
Proper nutrition is not only the foundation of physical health, but it is also the prerequisite for emotional and mental well-being. “A sound mind in a sound body” is how the Greeks of two thousand years ago expressed this relationship. Today we have such terms as psychosomatic, holistic health, dietetics and so forth that also point out the growing awareness that the health of the mind is inseparable from the health of the body.
Nor should this observation be surprising in the least. Illnesses and poor physical health give rise to feelings of anxiety, worry and depression. And, similarly, mental stress and emotional upset can contribute to the many sicknesses commonly thought to be physical in origin. So interdependent are the health of the body and mind that there can be no such thing as a “depressed healthy person” or a “schizophrenic physically sound individual.”
It can be said that radiant physical health begets perfect emotional and mental poise and a calm, clear mind produces physical well-being. There is no disputing the fact that a healthy mental and emotional state can be insured through good nutrition.
The fact that mental well-being depends upon nutrition should be obvious if we realize that the quality of our blood determines the quality of our thoughts. Like all other organs, our brain receives its sustenance in the form of oxygen and nutrients carried in the bloodstream. If the blood is almost wholly withdrawn from the brain, unconsciousness occurs. If the brain is drained of blood for a short time, death results.
When the oxygen content of the blood drops due to poor respiration, the oxygen available to the brain also drops, and we become listless and apathetic. Our mental processes become slow and confused.
If vital nutrients are missing from the bloodstream, or if toxins are being circulated through the body, the brain is as surely affected just as the liver, kidneys, bones and muscles are.
In extreme cases of a toxic bloodstream or poor nutrient availability, mental illnesses result. These illnesses are obvious to even the casual observer. However, in the more subtle cases of “blood poisoning” brought about by faulty nutrition, the mind is also intimately affected.
In fact, the majority of the population has never enjoyed complete mental health because their bloodstreams, which nurture the brain, are in a constant state of pollution. Few people have experienced the crystal clarity of acute mental perception that accompanies a purified bloodstream. Consequently, most people accept their daily fears and frustrations as natural. With optimum nutrition, however, such a compromise in our mental well-being is unnecessary.
Emotions, too, play an intricate role in nutrition—both by affecting our choice of diet and by influencing the use of nutrients within the body. In fact, perhaps the most important reason why optimum nutrition is not universally applied is that eating has so many emotional connotations. To many people, eating and food are connected with the emotional states of pleasure, pain, reward, punishment and so forth.
All of us have pleasant or unpleasant associations with food, and we resist changing these associations. As a consequence, the average person often thinks that proper nutrition means giving up those foods they emotionally favor and eating those they hate. “If it tastes good, it’s fattening” is the common joke among dieters.
Not only do these emotions influence our choice of diet, but the diet in turn influences the emotions. Certain foods play havoc with the blood sugar level, sending people into periods of depression or irritability. Other foods make calm children noisy and hyperactive, while certain foods, such as a chocolate candy bar, have been known to trigger schizoid attacks in susceptible individuals.
Clearly, nutrition plays a vital role in our mental and emotional health. By studying this role in detail, we can discover the optimum diet and the proper mental and emotional attitudes that promote total health in the individual.
In an interesting story about a family who followed an optimum diet of chiefly fresh fruits, complemented by some nuts and seeds, the three children in the family had been following a predominantly all-fruit diet for several years. During that period, they were extremely well-behaved. They were kind and gracious to their parents and to each other. They cooperated in their work and play with no signs of irritability.
As an experiment, the mother one day fed the children several slices of whole wheat bread. Within an hour after the meal, the children were fighting among themselves and had several outbursts of anger and emotional fits.
Coincidental? Perhaps, but consider that many people are allergic to wheat products and that wheat eating is usually associated with warlike populations. (See the observation made by J. I. Rodale later in this lesson.)
The point here is that when a person follows a pure, high-quality diet, any substandard foods consumed will quickly make their presence known by their effects on the mental and emotional states.
Not only does wheat eating result in health problems and consequent emotional and mental disturbances, but also eating foods high in fat tends to dull the mind and cloud the thinking. Fat digestion is so demanding that much blood is diverted away from the brain to the digestive system. As a result, the thinking processes become slower and a mild form of depression occurs.
The above examples represent only mild cases. When extremely poor-quality foods are eaten, their effects on the mind and emotions are much more dramatic—sometimes causing complete mental breakdowns and personality transformations. Unhealthful foods and their effects will be discussed later.
The effects of food on the mind have been studied for many thousands of years by Oriental philosophers. Many of these philosophers have gone so far as to categorize the effects that many commonly-eaten foods have on the mental state.
Although Western science has only recently discovered the relationship between mental states and nutrition, people in the Eastern countries have been aware of the effects of diet on the mind since around 4000 B.C.
The Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu text on spiritual conduct, classifies foods into three types:
Pure foods, which consist primarily of fresh fruits and vegetables, are said to bring calmness and tranquility to the mind. These foods are reputed to increase the clarity of mind and sweetness of disposition. They are especially recommended by those desiring spiritual growth and a meditative mind.
Stimulating foods including spices, meat, eggs, onions, etc., are said to create animal passions and to cause a restless, unsatisfied state of mind. These foods contribute to nervous disorders and emotional outbreaks.
Impure foods which include putrified, processed and preserved foods, decrease thinking capacity, dull the senses and contribute to chronic mental ailments. They accelerate the aging process and cause early death.
Regardless of our particular beliefs in religious systems, we should appreciate the painstaking observations made over thousands of years by these students of the diet and the mind. They have long known, as is being discovered by scientists, that the quality of our food directly affects the quality of our thoughts.
In his series on Diet and War, J. I. Rodale provided a correlation between a country’s tendency toward war or peace based on its national dietary. He discovered that the national attitude was more warlike and aggressive in proportion to the amounts of sugar, meat, wheat and rye products consumed by its populace. Throughout history, it has been the meat-eating nomads who have made war on the peaceful agrarian tribes.
Basically, foods affect our mental and emotional state in two ways:
As for some examples, eating grapes furnishes the blood with readily-assimilated natural sugars and minerals that are conducive to mental activity; consuming white sugar, on the other hand, depletes the body of B-vitamins, and this leads to nervousness and mental depression. Eating fresh raw foods places little or no toxic matter in the body; whereas eating preserved and cooked foods saturates the bloodstream with toxins that poison the body and interfere with brain function.
We can deduce from the above observations that optimum nutrition for physical, mental and emotional health consists of selecting those foods that, first, can supply the body with all of its nutrient needs and that do not interfere with the nutritional balance, and, second, contribute little or no toxic by-products.
Foods that disrupt the nutritional balance of the body and toxify the system are the nutritional culprits of poor mental and emotional health. Most of these culprits are actually “nonfoods” (such as sugar, alcohol, caffeine drinks, etc.) and have no legitimate place in the human diet.
Every day millions of people ingest various substances that have no food value at all. Worse yet, these “nonfoods” not only do not supply any needed nutrients, but they also rob the body of vital minerals, vitamins, etc. As a result, eating these nonfoods cheats the body of nutrients and has profound harmful effects on the mind and emotions.
Perhaps the most pervasive and insidious nutritional robber is white sugar.
Sugars occur naturally in most of our foods. Fruits especially are high in sugars that supply the body and mind with high-quality fuel. Sugars in their natural forms as they occur in fresh, unprocessed foods are a valuable part of the diet.
Refined white sugar, however, is a chemical menace because it lacks the essential minerals and B-vitamins for its metabolism. As a result, the body surrenders its own minerals and B-vitamins for use in metabolizing refined sugar.
The sugar-caused depletion of vitamins and minerals from the body upsets the body’s nutritional balance and predisposes the individual to mental and emotional illnesses that have their roots in nutrient deficiencies.
White sugar causes emotional outbreaks, especially in children and adolescents. Interestingly enough, it was discovered that the juvenile offender in Chicago on the average consumed over three times more white sugar in his diet than did the nonoffender. Schools that have removed their carbonated drink and candy machines have discovered that vandalism and absenteeism also decrease.
Long-term sugar consumption, as indulged by the majority of the American population, leads to chronic blood-sugar level problems that may manifest as diabetes or hypoglycemia. People with such blood-sugar problems are prone to periods of depression, irritability and nervous attacks. Many times they actually experience “nervous shakes” as their blood-sugar level slides and rises.
An abnormal plunge in blood-sugar levels is insidious—it sends shock waves through every cell in the body and affects the brain and nervous system most of all. An erratic mental state results, and some of the accompanying symptoms are: headaches, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, restlessness, crying spells, nervous breakdowns, excessive worry, inability to concentrate, depression, forgetfulness, suicidal thoughts, illogical fears, allergies and so on.
Besides sugar, some other nutritional robbers are the cigarette, the cup of coffee and the martini.
Nicotine, as obtained from smoking tobacco, adds to metabolic dysfunctioning. It impairs the absorption of vitamin C and interferes with the blood circulation. By constricting the blood vessels, nicotine robs the brain of its essential nutrients, particularly blood glucose, its major fuel. In fact, not only does nicotine inhibit vitamin C absorption, but it actually destroys some or all of the vitamin C already in the blood. One of the mental effects of vitamin C depletion is increased irritability. Smokers tend to be quick to irritate and often exhibit emotional outbursts.
The drug, caffeine, found in coffee, tea, cola drinks and chocolate, causes nervous disturbances, including anxiety. One to three cups of coffee contain enough caffeine to cause anxiety and other emotional disturbances. Caffeine also stimulates insulin secretion, thereby disturbing the blood-sugar level in the body.
Alcohol, too, disturbs the blood-sugar level. In fact, low blood sugar occurs in 70-90% of all alcoholics. As a result of studies, it was also discovered that most alcoholics suffer from a niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency that leads to periods of depression and feelings of lack of self-worth. Such emotional states may then lead to more alcohol drinking in an effort to escape these feelings.
All of the above-mentioned nutritional robbers tend to be self-perpetuating; that is, they create the very conditions that often make the user of these items return to them. Caffeine withdrawal symptoms, for example, can be halted by drinking another cup of coffee. The irritability caused by smoking is soothed by another cigarette. The “shakes” caused by a period of sobriety can be removed by another slug of whiskey. The crashing blood-sugar level created by sugar intake can be temporarily raised by a candy bar or other sugary “food.” In short, all of these nonfood items are actually addictive drugs just as opium and heroin are. If we are truly concerned about the “drug problem” in America, it would be best if we set our own house in order first. This would remove the cause of many of 6ur mental and emotional problems that result from faulty nutrition.
16.3.1 How Negative Emotions Inhibit Digestion
16.3.2 How Positive Emotions Enhance Digestion
16.3.3 Emotional Factors and the Foods We Choose
16.3.4 Food Likes and Dislikes
16.3.5 Emotions and the Quantity of Food We Eat
So far we have discussed how nutrition affects the mind—specifically, how a nutrient deficiency may contribute to a mental or emotional illness. It is equally important to realize that, while diet does affect our mental and emotional well-being, our emotional state in, turn, in influences both our choice of diet and how well our food is digested and assimilated.
Depressions, worry, nervousness, anxiety, tension and other negative emotions are all based on the primary emotion of fear. Worry is fear of the unknown; anxiety is fear of upcoming situations; tension is fear of people or demands made by people; nervousness is fear of one’s own inability to adequately handle the responsibilities of daily living, and so on.
When primitive man was afraid, he usually tried to run away from the source of the fear. When animals are afraid, their first impulse is to flee. Modern man, however, has fears about the intangibles in life. Most of his fears are due to internal factors, not external, and he cannot run away from them.
Although human fears have moved away from concern about the wild jungle animals to worries over mortgage payments, etc., the physiological responses to these fears have not changed in millions of years.
Panic is an extreme manifestation of fear, and it is instructive to trace the physiological changes in the organism that accompany this emotion.
As soon as a threat to the organism is manifested as a strong fear, a complex chain of events begins that eventually affects every cell in the body.
First, the hypothalamus gland near the brain transmits a series of strong signals through the spinal column to nerve centers throughout the body. In the throat, large amounts of thyrotopic hormone is released into the system to stimulate the organism. Near the kidneys, a flood of adrenocorticotropic hormone is produced as the adrenal glands are called into action. These hormones then trigger a series of programmed responses throughout the body.
The blood vessels in the skin and the digestive system undergo a rapid constriction to direct the blood to the muscles in the arms and legs (hence, the term “pale with fright”). This prepares the body for the “flight or fight” response to the fear.
Simultaneously, the spleen is contracting and pouring out a large amount of white corpuscles and platelets into the bloodstream in order to take care of any anticipated injuries. The liver also forces out a stream of blood sugar to feed the extreme demands made by the aroused system.
The saliva in the mouth dries up since there is no desire for food in the presence of fear. The nostrils expand to take in more oxygen and the eyes dilate to take in more visual stimuli. In extreme fear, the abdominal gases move downward and force any stool or urine in the system out, thus lightening the body and preparing it for flight.
The emotion of fear produces the proper physiological reactions in the body so that it may run quickly away or fight if it is cornered. These types of changes in the body are actually very beneficial if there is an imminent danger of physical harm.
These same reactions occur, usually to a lesser degree, for an intangible fear as for a physical threat.
If we worry about bill collectors or rush-hour traffic, our bodies go through similar physiological reactions to when our lives are physically threatened.
Now let’s look a little closer at the relationship between fear and digestion.
First, it is obvious that no one whose life is in danger is going to have an appetite.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton once described an experiment performed on a cat that had just finished eating. The cat’s stomach was observed with X rays, and digestion was proceeding normally. A dog was then brought into the room and the cat took notice. Immediately all digestive processes in the cat halted. Its stomach ceased moving and the digestive juices stopped secreting. When the dog was removed, the cat’s digestion resumed.
Food cannot be digested or assimilated in the presence of fear. If we eat when we are worried, depressed, tense or fearful, the digestive system cannot handle the food properly. It may be only partially digested and lay fermenting or putrefying in the stomach.
We should never eat when we are emotionally upset or “out of sorts.” If we are uncomfortable in body or mind, we should not eat until we feel better and regain our poise.
Additionally, it is not a good idea to try to eat while driving a car, discussing business or personal problems, reading disturbing news, watching television or in any situation that may give rise to intense emotions.
Several years ago, a man was diagnosed by the medical profession as having terminal cancer. He was told that he probably had about six months to live.
He was released from the hospital and he ended his medical treatment as he went back home to live. For the first month or so, he was very depressed and laid in bed all day watching television. He was in constant pain.
Each day in the late afternoon he watched the cartoon programs on television before the evening news. He always laughed at the cartoons and noticed that by the end of the show his pain was not as noticable. It did return, however, as he watched the evening news.
He decided that there might be a relationship between his laughing and the subsidence of pain. He installed a videotape machine and then bought all the funny movies that he remembered from his youth.
He watched all the slapstick comedies he could find for hours at a time. He bought dozens of joke books and read them. He made it a point to laugh as much as possible during his waking hours.
Gradually, his pain left him. After six months, he was still alive and his cancer had been arrested.
Happy emotions do influence physiological processes in the body, just as do negative emotions. When we are cheerful, carefree and happy, we rarely become sick. One of the results of a happy disposition is improved digestion.
When we feel positive about ourselves and our surroundings, we relish our food more and it is more easily assimilated. Surrounding ourselves with good companionship, pleasant conversation and a wholesome environment makes eating a pleasure, and digestion progresses easily.
When we are relaxed, our stomach and other organs are less tense; they feel less constrained and can perform their tasks more easily. In fact, the physical act of laughing after a meal allows the food to pass more readily through the digestive tract.
We should make every effort to surround ourselves with pleasant emotions and thoughts before and during meals. Prayer, meditation or a period of silence before beginning a meal can help us to “wind down” our activities. By establishing a quiet period before we begin eating, we remove ourselves from the hurried emotions and past thoughts of the day. We take time to renew ourselves spiritually before we renew ourselves physically. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs or lack of beliefs, it is simply common sense to observe a period of emotional poise and mental quiet before eating. This may take the form of a prayer, an affirmation about the food we are about to eat, or simply a period of quiet silence where we anticipate the enjoyment of the upcoming meal.
Eating an optimum diet would be simple if we were all rational beings, freed from emotional conditioning. However, in the realm of diet, it is often the emotions and past habits that are king and queen instead of reason and clear perception.
We eat ice cream, spicy foods, candy and other destructive foods primarily because of emotional needs and emotional associations with these foods—not because of any true physiological need or premeditated reason.
People form emotional attachments to foods as a result of childhood experiences, past associations or self-conditioning. Consequently, certain foods are often eaten during particular emotional states, such as depression, etc., or in hopes of inducing a specific emotion, such as contentment or happiness.
For instance, ice cream is often associated with the rewards of childhood. When we were children, ice cream represented a treat or perhaps a sign of parental approval or indulgence. “If you’ll be good, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone,” is a common promise of harried parents.
Thus, at an early age, ice cream is associated with “being good” and with parental approval. Consequently, when we have been good (such as staying on a good diet for a few weeks), we decide to play both parent and child and reward ourselves with a bowl of ice cream. Similarly, if we are feeling depressed or overwhelmed by life’s problems, we may eat other childhood “reward” foods to temporarily escape our adult troubles.
Holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving are intimately associated with strong emotions and certain festive foods. So strong is this emotional association of food with holiday fun that some health-conscious individuals may eat turkey, pastries and sweets on a holiday in an effort to capture the childhood memories of days long past, as well as for parental approval in the present.
Please note that no value judgement is placed upon the emotional associations and attachments to food. To a certain extent, all of our food likes and dislikes are based upon emotions. Few people eat out of purely rational reasons, nor is it necessary to do so. What is necessary, however, is to be aware of the role emotions play in our food choices. If we are eating certain foods that are not conducive to health because of a disturbed emotional state, we should be aware of our behavior and try to approach our problems in some other manner besides food.
Foods themselves cannot satisfy emotional needs. If we are depressed, eating chocolate chip cookies may stir the memories of a carefree childhood, but they do not remove the cause of that depression. Indeed, the foods we are eating may be creating the emotional problems we are trying to escape from.
For example, in our culture, most children are brought up to associate sweet, sugary foods with approval, love, affection, etc. A child is often given candy as a reward. This type of conditioning becomes an internal pattern which is carried over into adulthood.
When grown-up people feel lonely, bored or in need of reinforcement, they may buy an ice cream cone or put money in the nearest carbonated drink machine. They eat the sugary reward food and feel somewhat better emotionally for a few minutes. This illustrates that a negative emotional state, (boredom, insecurity, loneliness, etc.) may influence the selection of and eating of nonfood items (candy, cookies, snack foods, etc.).
These nonfood items then contribute to a nutritional imbalance which may, in turn, re-create the emotional state that one is trying to escape from. For instance, the refined sugar in sweet foods gives a temporary rise in energy and a false emotional “high.” After this energy surge, the sugar has the effect of depleting the body of B-vitamins and other nutrients. This sugar-created depletion then sets the stage for additional emotional distress and depression.
A seemingly inescapable cycle is thereby created: A person is continually eating sugar-filled foods in an effort to escape the depression that the foods themselves are helping to create.
Many of our food cravings and our dislike of certain foods arise from past emotional associations. There are many teenagers and young adults today who refuse to eat vegetables because, as children, they were scolded by their parents if they did not clean their plates of all the overcooked, lifeless vegetables served them.
Now that they are older, they associate their refusal to eat vegetables with independence from their parents.
A man of this writer’s acquaintance will not eat fresh fruit of any sort. As a young child he was forcefed watermelon by his parents as punishment for not eating his supper.
As another example, the widespread use of dairy products has its roots in emotional childhood associations. Young children were told by their parents (who were told by the dairy industry) that “milk makes you strong.” School teachers had posters of the “Basic Four” food groups, with milk prominently displayed. The drinking of milk is also associated with being bottle-fed as an infant. Milk drinking may then become the bridge between the emotionally stressed life of the adult and the carefree world of the child.
Not only are our food choices determined in a large part by our emotions, but so is the amount of food we eat and the manner in which we eat. When we are stressed or nervous, we tend to bolt our food down, thereby eating “on the run” and scarcely taking time to chew our food, properly.
Overeating, too, is chiefly an emotionally-caused problem. Food for the overeater becomes both an escape from dissatisfaction with life and a drug to desensitize the emotions. Compulsive eating when no true hunger is present serves as a form of sensory indulgence little different from alcoholism, drug addiction or sexual excess.
The compulsive eater often uses food as an emotional salve. Most commonly, it is used as a substitute for feelings of love and affections. Chocolate candy bars and potato chips may replace meaningful personal relationships in the overeater’s life. Food no longer is used as fuel and nutrients for the body, but becomes an easily obtainable form of pleasure that can be indulged in with a minimum amount of social disapproval.
Overeating results primarily from a negative self-image. Compulsive eaters often believe that they are unworthy of being loved. To prove this to themselves, they often become obese and unattractive. They reason, “No one wants me now because I am unattractive. I am fat.” By becoming physically unattractive, the obese person is able to avoid facing the real problems behind their lack of love or affection. These problems may be real or imagined psychological unattractiveness or a personality disorder.
Since overeating is often an emotional problem, it can be effectively solved only through a change in the emotional state of the overeater. If compulsive eaters can change their food choices so that they are at least overeating on healthy foods, and not “junk foods,” they will at least avoid the additional emotional problems that the “junk foods” create. The chief solution to obesity is the development of a more positive self-image and an understanding that the person is deserving of love and affection.
Like the overeater, the compulsive dieter or undereater also usually suffers from emotional or psychological problems. The phenomenon of “anorexia nervosa”—dieting to the point of starvation—has become an increasingly common problem, especially among young women.
Whereas overeating often comes from a desire to “reward” oneself, undereating is often an attempt to “punish” oneself or the people living around the undereater (particularly the parents). By withholding needed food, the undereater punishes himself for either real or imagined personal shortcomings. Undereating becomes a method of punishing the parents in particular, because the refusal of food is a rejection of the most basic child-parent relationship—that of nurturing.
Of course abstaining from adequate food intake to the point of starvation is the extreme result of an emotional disturbance. It should be pointed out that controlled fasting undertaken for reasons of health is not the same as an erratic and prolonged nutrient-deficient and calorie-poor diet.
Although not so extreme as anorexia nervosa, millions of Americans regularly place themselves on diets that are trumpeted in the latest magazines and paperbacks or in mimeographed office newsletters. Often these self-prescribed diets are so poor in vital nutrients and high in empty calories that they cause serious damage to the kidneys, liver, stomach, etc. As a consequence, the mania for dieting among Americans is creating a nation of mental and emotional misfits.
Let’s clarify the difference between fasting and dieting for weight loss. Many weight-loss diets as published in the popular press permit the dieter to continue eating harmful, low-calorie foods while simultaneously reducing the amount of beneficial foods in the diet. As a result, severe nutritional inbalances occur that may contribute to emotional problems. In comparison, fasting allows the body to reestablish its nutritional balance. So successful is fasting in this regard that it has been used to treat severely emotionally-disturbed patients who had nutrient inbalances throughout their bodies.
In many weight-reducing diets, the person is allowed to have all the coffee, tea or diet drinks desired since these drinks have no calories. Such drinks severely disrupt the already disturbed blood-sugar level and may plunge the dieter into deep depression. Add to this that a dieting person usually increases his smoking habit (if he already has one), and the stage is set for additional nutritional inbalances.
One popular diet instructs the person to give up all carbohydrates (such as fresh fruit and vegetables) and eat only protein (such as cooked meat). This invariably results in protein poisoning, metabolic disturbance, mental confusion, lack of emotional poise, and liver and kidney damage. Incidentally, it is just such a diet that was used by the ancient Chinese to break down the emotional resolve and mental health of their captured prisoners.
Most weight-loss diets make the same nutritional mistakes that lead to emotional problems. First, they ignore the differences between refined carbohydrates (which supply incomplete calories and little or no vitamins or minerals) and unrefined carbohydrates (which have calories that provide essential nutrients). Second, many of the foods recommended are “reward foods,” such as a small slice of pie, a few vanilla wafers, some raspberry jam, etc. These types of foods are included in these diets to entice the person to stay on the diet. Literally, he is allowed to have his cake and eat it too, although not without accompanying difficulties.
What happens on many weight-loss diets is that the dieters grow irritable, depressed and confused. They deprive themselves of needed nutrients by filling up on low-calorie nonfoods that contribute to the nutritional inbalance. The nutrient deprivation and toxic by-products created by these diets often produce drastic personality changes. It is not uncommon to hear the spouses of many dieters remark: “I’d rather have you fat and happy than the way you are now.”
Israeli researchers performed a study on ten men and women who were committed to a psychiatric institution as a result of the mental and emotional problems caused by their erratic dieting. They discovered that drastic weight reduction through conventional dieting had its most devastating effect on the nervous system. Six of the ten dieters had never suffered from emotional problems prior to this first attempt at weight loss.
Weight loss and weight control can be accomplished without accompanying negative mental and emotional changes by fasting or by consuming a proper diet. Supervised fasting not only produces a loss in weight, but it also allows a nutritional balance to occur in the body for continued mental and emotional health. The eating of low-calorie, high-nutrient foods such as, fresh raw fruits and vegetables allows the weight to normalize without denying the body needed nutrients.
One last area of dieting and the mind needs to be covered, especially since it is most applicable to those persons who are truly concerned about their diet and are searching for a way to improve their overall nutrition. This area is the relationship between personal pride, or “ego,” and the diet we adopt.
Almost everyone is emotionally attached to the diet they follow. I have heard people who dine exclusively at “fast food” restaurants defend their diet with nutritional charts of french fries and chocolate malts. Meat eaters argue that humans are naturally carnivorous. People who follow a macrobiotic diet believe fervently that grains should be a major part of our diet.
Each group is intensely emotional about the diet they adopt. They believe that they exclusively are correct, and they have a lot of personal pride invested in their chosen diet.
This is especially true of people who have actually taken the time to investigate the effects of diet on health. When they finally discover “their diet,” they often become blinded to reason. They embrace their new diet as a mother clutches her newborn, and they will defend it with as much emotion (though scarcely with as much reason).
This is not to imply that there is no optimum diet. Most certainly a best diet does exist, and it is the one that promotes physical, mental, and emotional and spiritual health better than all others. Such a diet, however, can only be recognized and evaluated when we divest ourselves of passionate emotion and self-invested ego.
This is very difficult to do. We are all attached to our personal ideas and theories. We all like to believe that we are right. No one likes to realize that he has been mistaken about a cherished belief, be it political, religious or nutritional.
However, if we are to push beyond emotional and personal identifications with diet and understand the proper role of nutrition in health, then we must be open-minded and be willing to let go of past beliefs when they no longer serve us.
Certainly, personal experience and education can help us in choosing the proper diet. Difficult as it may seem, however, we must approach the idea of optimum nutrition with as few preconceptions and prejudices as possible.
Only when we are mentally and emotionally “clear” will we be able to recognize the correct path to proper diet and, indeed, proper living.
We have seen how many poor diet habits are connected with emotional conditioning from childhood and in our adult lives. To change our eating habits and to adopt a better way of nutrition involves changes on an emotional level as well as changes in our daily activities.
Awareness is the most valuable method we can use in overcoming emotional associations with destructive foods such as sweets, fried foods, etc. If we are conscious of why we want a bowl of ice cream, we are in a better position to deal with that desire. By recognizing the impulse as arising from past emotional conditioning and not from a current real or physiological need, we are better able to change our habits.
Along with this awareness is a need for education about the foods we desire or avoid. If we understand how eating white sugar forces the body to utilize its own supply of vital nutrients for its metabolism, we are less likely to eat it. If we know the many health benefits of raw foods, we are in a position to learn to enjoy them for that sake. So we must first educate ourselves about proper nutrition and then develop an awareness about the foods we put into our bodies.
Another important method for overcoming emotional conditioning is the development of a positive self-image. Many people indulge in self-destructive eating habits out of a desire to punish themselves for “not being good enough.” If people see no worth in themselves, they will have a difficult time in wanting to improve their health through a change in diet. The desire for good health often indicates a developing positive self-image. Many people suffer from feelings of inadequacy or inferiority. They do not feel they deserve optimum health. What we need to realize is that radiant health and well-being is a birthright of all human beings. Each of us deserves to be totally healthy in mind, body and soul, and we must regain this birthright through proper nutrition and a positive emotional attitude.
Along these lines, the use of affirmations and meditation can be useful in developing the positive emotional environment we need for making these changes in our diet and in our lives. Affirming the qualities we wish to develop within ourselves is a powerful method for overcoming past emotional conditioning. For example, if we have weak willpower in resisting destructive foods, we can say to ourselves daily:
I am strong in will and restraint.
I eat only those foods good for me.
These statements are called affirmations. An affirmation is simply a positive statement we make about ourselves. By using these positive statements, you can affect many changes at the emotional and mental level.
You should devise the affirmations that are suitable for you at a particular stage in your life. It is important that you state the emotional qualities you desire in a positive manner. For instance, instead of saying, “I will not worry,” it is better to state: “I am calm, serene and centered.” It is also beneficial if these statements are phrased in the present tense, as if they are now occurring.
These affirmations may be written daily or they may be repeated silently or out loud. Casually they should become a part of your daily life for several weeks to work effectively.
Affirmations are not magical, nor are they simply “self-hypnosis.” They are an effective method for surrounding yourself with a positive environment and a healthy mental state in which to grow. They allow you to assume responsibility for your own emotional health, and they serve as a direct means of activating your latent powers. They are a form of a personally devised self-therapy that have only positive, nonharmful results.
Affirmations are the link between our conscious mind and our hidden emotions. As we consciously direct our energies toward a desired quality, we tend to attain that goal. If affirmations are used regularly and in good faith, we can rapidly outgrow those harmful emotional states that hinder our personal growth.
In 1865 Louis Pasteur made a discovery that is the basis of the “germ theory” of disease. This theory of disease suited modern man’s ego quite well. No longer did he have to blame himself for the sicknesses caused by his own transgressions of the natural laws of health, but he could instead blame the germs that invaded his body.
The germ theory effectively shifted man’s own personal responsibility for his health onto the shoulders of the medical profession who knew how to kill the offending germs. Consequently, man soon perceived his own personal health as something that was no longer in his hands.
This type of thinking asserts itself in other areas as well. If we feel mad or out of sorts with the world, it is always the fault of our parents, our spouse, our boss or the government. Somebody or something causes our emotional and mental problems. It surely isn’t us, we think.
This desire to blame the failure of interpersonal relationships, or even complete emotional and mental breakdown, on “outside” factors such as hidden stress, poor home environment, etc., also allows us to shift the responsibility away from ourselves and to some other person or event. As a result, we seek outside help for these problems in the form of therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, etc.
The fact is, however, that a body that is properly cared for with good nutrition is able to withstand the major causes of emotional and mental illnesses, just as it is able to withstand the major causes of physical diseases.
If we assume responsibility for our own health and supply the body with the highest life-giving nutrition, we can also insure ourselves the peace of mind and stability of emotions that allow us to withstand stress and the other causes of mental and emotional illnesses. A properly nourished person can withstand factors that might provoke mental or emotional outbreaks in less-well-fed people.
In an article on marriage failures, Dr. Cecilia Rosenfeld stated: “One of the prime causes of marital discord—nutritional deficiency—is too often overlooked. In my own practice, I have found that, in a surprising number of broken marriages, spouses suffered from a blood-sugar imbalance. Many of those husbands and wives showed symptoms of irritability, violent temper, abnormal sensitivity and extreme fatigue. Corrective nutritional guidance dispelled these unpleasant symptoms for many spouses—and in the process, often bolstered their crumbling marriages.”
Along the same line, Dr. Joseph Nichols, president of the Natural Food Associates, wrote: “The unhappily married are often suffering from dietary deficiencies more than from the kind of social incompatabilities traditional therapists seek to explore.”
Blaming our problems on a demanding boss or argumentative spouse then is somewhat akin to ascribing all our physical problems to invisible germs. If we desire good mental and emotional health, we must work for it and assume full responsibility for this facet of our well-being as well. We must create the proper conditions for mental and emotional stability through proper diet and nutrition. This is where an optimum diet helps.
At this point, it is useful to summarize what we have learned so far about the relationship between nutrition and the mind and emotions in order to determine what constitutes an optimum diet.
First, to insure mental and emotional well-being, the diet must supply all needed nutrients in the form of unprocessed whole foods. Nutritional supplements are useless; they cannot be effectively used by the body and cannot be used to fill in nutrient gaps caused by a poor diet.
Second, all “foods” (nonfoods) that rob the body of nutrients must be eliminated in order to maintain the nutritional balance crucial to mental and emotional stability.
Third, foods that leave heavy toxic by-products in the bloodstream must not be eaten if we wish to avoid poisoning our body and our mind. Even small amounts of these toxins are enough to induce depression in most individuals.
Fourth, foods should be eaten in a harmonious environment with a calm, relaxed disposition.
Finally, foods should be eaten out of true physiological need when hunger is present. They should not be eaten as emotional substitutes, for stimulation or as a means of “escape.”
Perhaps the most pressing need is the elimination of all nonfood items from the diet. These nonfoods include white sugar, white flour, alcohol, salt, condiments, and all heavily-processed foods. These foods alone are the major causes of mental and emotional illnesses, and they perform no positive function in the body whatsoever.
Most, health-minded individuals and health-oriented dietary systems condemn these nonfoods as explicitly harmful. Nonfoods are indefensible from the standpoint of good nutrition and must be immediately eliminated from our diet if we wish to regain our natural mental and emotional stability.
The second priority is the elimination of all foods that leave toxic by-products in the body. Some of the foods which leave toxins in the body are: all foods with chemical additives and preservatives, meats, eggs, dairy products, herbs, artificial and preserved foods, fried foods, cooked foods and certain noxious vegetables such as onions, garlic, etc.
For those people who have not yet adopted a vegan diet (that is, a diet free from meat and all animal products), it is of extreme importance to eliminate all foods containing additives, preservatives, etc., in order to decrease the toxic overload that eating animal products produces. Animal products, and meat in particular, prevent full mental tranquility due to the amount of toxins both naturally contained in them and artificially added to them.
In addition to following a vegan diet, the amount of cooked food should be decreased and eliminated. Eating cooked foods results in a state of mental lassitude and deprives the body of the full nutrient range contained in the foods. For a remarkable state of mental clarity, a raw food diet is highly recommended.
What we discover after examining the above observations is that an optimum diet should consist primarily of the following foods: fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts eaten in an unprocessed state and in an harmonious environment.
These foods provide a full range of all needed nutrients; they leave little or no toxic by-products in the body; they do not result in body loss of any nutrients; nor do they upset the body’s natural nutritional balance. They provide the foundation for total physical health and promote an optimum state of mind and excellent emotional health.
These foods alone will not guarantee total well-being—no diet can do that—but they will give us the needed foundation for mental and emotional health.
Whenever I’m depressed, I just want to eat and eat. I know it’s bad, but what can I do to stop this?
First, it’s important to realize that most depression is caused by a morbid preoccupation with the self. You need to “get out of your self” to effectively combat depression. Food is just a way of trying to distract yourself from your depressive thoughts. Instead of eating, I suggest that you exercise vigorously. It has been discovered that intense activity, such as running and other exercise, is an effective way to deal with depressive tendencies. Also, you can tackle a chore that you have been putting off, or just try to help out another person. These are much more positive ways of dealing with depression than moping and eating.
I’m a businessman and I have to take clients out to lunch. I try to sell them on my ideas and I usually get a bad case of indgestion. What do you think?
Unfortunately our society tends to make eating into a business or a required social affair all too often. If you must conduct business while eating, then I would suggest that you make sure you choose foods which are easily digested, such as salads or fruits. In addition, concentrate on the actual chewing of each mouthful of food. If you direct your attention as much as possible to the physical sensation of eating, you will be more relaxed as you eat. Always eat lightly and in small quantities if you must dine in a potentially tense situation.
I’m a little overweight and I resent you implying that it’s because of an emotional problem. My mother and grandmother are also overweight, and it just runs in the family. I’ve been told it’s glandular.
It’s interesting that people think fat may be inherited or that it is “natural.” No animals other than humans are obese. No other animals experience glandular disorders that cause weight gain unless they were fed an inadequate and unnatural diet. It is true that obesity runs in the family, but this is because poor dietary habits are transmitted from parent to child—not because of some predisposed glandular condition. True, you may not feel emotionally “sick,” although resentment itself is not a healthy motional reaction, but your weight problem will make it difficult to maintain a high level of emotional well-being. As an experiment, why not fast for a few days and then adopt the optimum diet. I guarantee you that your “inherited glandular problem” will disappear and that you will not suffer from weight problems again.
Sometimes I find myself crying a lot for no apparent reason. Can a diet cause this?
A diet that radically affects the blood-sugar level can certainly make a person easily moved to tears land breakdowns. If you will eliminate all sugar, caffeine, nicotine and alcohol from your diet, you will most likely experience a lot more emotional stability. Blood sugar quickly normalizes on a natural diet with none of the above-listed artificial foods.
Sometimes I follow a good diet for days at a time, and then I just go on a binge and eat all those yummy foods I’ve been denying myself. I feel bad afterwards, and I want to stop this pattern.
The most important thing is to first stop thinking of those harmful foods as “yummy” or that you are “denying” yourself of them. Chocolate ice cream, candy bars, pies, pastas, etc., are not treats—they are poisons. You have been conditioned to think of them as reward foods. They harm your body and result in your feeling bad after you eat them. When you try to stay on a good diet, do not be too hard on yourself. We all must unlearn a lot of harmful emotional associations with foods. Most people occasionally feel that they simply must have that “forbidden food.” When you get these feelings, stop and look at your emotional state. Are you anxious? Nervous? Worried? If you are experiencing any negative emotional state, stay away from the food you are craving. The craving is a sign that you are trying to use the food as a substitute for facing your emotional problems.
Herbert M. Shelton, the father of modern Natural Hygiene, wrote an article entitled “Emotions and Health” for his magazine, Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, in October of 1978. He describes the relationship between our mental and emotional states and our physiological processes, especially the process of digestion: “Under emotional stress, any or all of the digestive secretions—saliva, gastric juice, pancreatic juice, intestinal juice, bile—may be checked, and the digestion in process when this inhibition occurs is temporarily, at least, suspended.”
Dr. Shelton says the reason digestion is checked during stress is because the manufacture and flow of the secretions needed in the digestive process depends upon nerve energy. Nerve energy “is transmitted to all the organs of the body through an intricate network of nerves. Emotional stress or shock interferes with both the generation and transmission of nerve energy.” (Italics are ours.)
He goes on to say: “If the shock or strong emotion comes when eating is in progress, there may be a sudden loss of desire for food and eating will be discontinued. In many cases, great grief, fear, or shock will result in the food in the stomach being vomited. It is not likely that emotions check the actions of enzymes that have already been poured out upon the food in the stomach and intestine, but they inhibit the secretion of added juices that may be needed. Certainly the muscular activities of these organs are inhibited or suspended.
“This impairment of digestion will last during the entire period of shock or strong emotion and until nervous balance is restored. If enervation is profound, reaction may be slow in developing so that the undigested food undergoes fermentation and putrefaction. Next to overeating and wrong eating, mental influences cause most of the digestive impairments with which people suffer.” (Italics are ours.)
“These functional impairments eventually result in organic change. Organic changes are endings resulting from repeated toxemic crises.”
After explaining the relationship between the emotional-mental condition and bodily processes such as digestion, Shelton tells us how we can use this knowledge. “Our Golden Rule is this: If not comfortable in both mind and body from one meal to the next, miss the next meal. If you are worried, apprehensive, grieved, angry, jealous, depressed, irritable, grouchy, petulant, fearful, or otherwise mentally distressed, wait upon the recovery of poise before eating. This is as important as not eating when in pain or when there is fever. It is as important as not eating when fatigued. Good digestion depends upon emotional poise.”
Shelton also advises us that we are better off eating light, easy-to-digest foods such as fresh fruits than heavier foods, such as proteins (flesh or even nuts or seeds) or starches, when we anticipate the possibility of upcoming emotional or mental stress. He says that, to avoid discomfort and poisoning from undigested or partially digested food in our system, “there are times and occasions when we should not eat at all. If we anticipate a shock to our nervous system or if one is unavoidable, we will find it much wiser to meet the emergency with an empty rather than with a full stomach.”
However, it’s not just to avoid temporary discomfort that we should refrain from eating or eat very lightly during or in anticipation of a stressful situation. We should follow this rule for the sake of our long-term health also. Not only is digestion inhibited during stress1, but so is excretion (elimination). Continuous or frequent mental or emotional stress, “by inhibiting the functions of life—secretion and excretion—build chronic disease.” Shelton recommends that we “free ourselves of our imaginary troubles and ingrowing grouches or learn to control our eating.” He stresses the following point: “To cease eating, to miss a few meals at exactly the right time—the psychological moment—thus avoiding indigestion and the resulting poisoning, will do more to prevent illness than almost anything else that may be named. It is important, therefore, that we learn to adjust our living habits and particularly our eating habits to our mental stales.”
Dr. Shelton says that a “big reason why so many epidemics of colds, tonsilitis, diptheria, measles, scarlet fever, etc., follow so closely upon the heels of the holiday season” is because a large quantity of the least wholesome foods are eaten during a time of great excitement. He says, “Overexcitement and overeating build a septic state of the Prima Via, poisoning the entire body.” In the words of Dr. Weger, a medical doctor turned Hygienist, you are “either poised or poisoned.” He was, of course, referring to the retention of wastes during stress. Dr. Shelton says, “But, if there were no other evil effects of overworked emotions than that of checked or inhibited digestion, this alone is quite enough to result in disease. The ductless (endocrine) glands have their functions disturbed by the emotions, so that the whole process of nutrition is impaired.”
While a balanced mental state and a calm emotional disposition often reflect a healthy physical condition and wholesome attitudes toward self, others, and life, poise is also necessary in order to maintain a high level of physical health. When great excitement or stresses do exist in our lives, however, let’s follow Shelton’s “Golden Rule” and miss the next meal. Let’s remember that “good digestion depends upon emotional poise.”
Great as the improvement is in my bodily condition, the change for the better in my mental and intellectual faculties has kept pace with it. My father, when past fifty years, became a hypochondriac and also looked at life from a very gloomy point of view. When I approached the half century, I too, developed this pessimistic inclination, and I had quite accepted my fate—that I was to be an outspoken hypochondriac.
I was dissatisfied with myself and my surroundings and gave up the hope of ever reaching a better condition. Every year onwards seemed to prove to me certainly that life was not worth living!
Especially did I notice this despondent mood on awakening in the morning, when sometimes an actual fear of impending disaster would get hold of me and render my life absolutely miserable.
All this is gone now; hypochondria and despondency are long left behind. Out of the pessimist preparing for death has developed an irrepressible optimist who feels he should live a full century and spread the joyful gospel of health and rejuvenation among suffering humanity with all his youthful vigour and endurance.
Intellectually, the improvement is just as marked—my memory is vastly improved and I can concentrate my thoughts now as I never could before. Out of a decided follower of authority, public Vaccinator, etc., I have developed into a self-thinking critic, an intellectual seeker after truth. I have been able not only to get rid of an incalculable amount of old and erroneous ideas, but to go in for quite a few fields of study and observation with a zest and interest I had not known since my days at the University:
Time never hangs heavily now; all my different occupations, studies and enterprises are treated with the same absorbing interest. Still, I find time for play and exercise with the very fascinating babies in my family and for a social chat with friends in the evening. I have no fear of any disease nor any common everyday accident, as I now know my body creates the disease and is quite able to cope with accidents. I make my plans with the firm conviction that many useful years are yet in store for me and that mine should be a green old age with a quiet, painless death as the closure of my visible existence when the doors open into Life Eternal.
When people show symptoms of mental instability or mental sickness, we invariably swallow the old gobbledygook that modern psychiatry with its drugs, injections, electric shock treatments, prefrontal lobotomy or psychotherapy a la Freud, Jung or Adler will right all the wrongs in a few short sessions. But if the truth be told, and it’s time we were told the truth, psychiatry as practiced today is falling apart at the seams.
Both psychiatry and psychotherapy are branches of orthodox medicine. Medicine was once based mainly on magic and still is. Plato, the Greek philosopher, believed that the womb or hysteros had a strong desire to produce children. If it remained sterile for long after puberty, it became temperamental. It started to flow around, and hysteria was attributed to this cause. Hippocrates (the so-called Father of Medicine) prescribed valerian to drive the womb back to its rightful place. In England some physicians still prescribe a mixture of valerian and bromide as a treatment for mentally depressed women. Valerian is a depressant!
Another example of physician—and drug—induced mental and emotional problems was observed in a survey. People who had taken barbiturates for one year or over had chronic psychiatric and physical complaints and made increasing demands for barbiturates. Barbiturates make people more anxious and more depressed in the long run.
Harry Solomon, a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University, banned all barbiturates, and his patients became much more competent. It has been suggested and suspected that the taking of barbiturates addles the brains of young human embryos and affects the intelligence of the child. Yet, hospitals, doctors and psychiatrists prescribe these drugs in order to “cure” depression, insomnia and anxiety. Treatment by drugs is nearly always assumed to be good, both by the physician and the public, until proved otherwise—this takes some proving and some time—meanwhile the damage has been done.
That mental and nervous disorders spring out of our misbehaviour in life and unnatural living habits, as much as physical disorders, has to be drummed into the minds of the public as much as into the medical profession. Bad nutrition; lack of exercise; polluted air; lack of sunshine; insufficient rest and sleep; enervation; and mental and emotional habits; and the taking of drugs, medicines and social poisons like tea, coffee, chocolate, cocoa and alcohol, all lead to toxemic tissues, resulting in breakdown of brain cells and nervous tissues.
Instead of dealing with these primordial causes of our lack of well-being, the medical profession doles out pills and/or so many sessions on the analyst’s couch, both causing further trouble, apart from waste of time and money.
No one knows how much illness and death is attributable to alcohol. The middle-course alcoholic has nearly four times as much sick leave from work as does an average person, and his life expectancy is reduced by ten or twelve years compared with the average. In Britain, about 1% of the population, i.e., nearly 350,000 people, are alcoholics, and a quarter of these show mental and physical deterioration. In America, the percentage is higher, 47%. Psychiatrists, with all their panhandling of substituting one stimulant for another, one drug for another, are unsuccessful at stopping people from drinking. So far, physicians have been more successful at causing addiction than at curing it.
The blame for drug addiction of all kinds can and should be rightly laid at the door of:
Drug companies are not charitable institutions. Our aches and pains, our mental discomforts and our insomnia are their gold. Not surprisingly, their most profitable drugs are those that have the public gently but surely hooked on taking them, as they ensure a regular and enthusiastic clientele. The drug companies, the breweries and the tobacco companies all exploit our addiction to various chemicals. The mind-bending process, already started from early childhood, gets its final coup de grace with the stress, strain, rat race, and political and social injustices of our modern-day society.
17.1. The Philosophy Of Exercise
17.2. Effects Of Exercise On The Bodily Systems
In order for health to be achieved and maintained, there must exist a proper balance between rest and activity. As certainly as rest follows exertion, so too must activity follow repose. It is on our own two legs that progress, growth, and true health are achieved. If we rest too much and do not balance our rest with the proper amount of physical activity, we can never achieve and maintain our true health potential.
Normal physiological functioning within the human body is dependent upon nutrition, drainage, warmth, and freedom from violence. In order to insure proper functioning for all the cells, body fluids should be in perpetual motion. Exercise is essential in maintaining this grand vital circulation and in giving tone to all vital functions and perfection to all vital changes. It also secures a proper supply of blood to every part of the body, keeps the lymph moving normally and maintains the general health of the entire system. Exercise serves to strengthen and nourish all the various organs and systems of the body. It is, in fact, the most important component of the Hygienic regime for developing vital tonicity for the entire body. When exercise is neglected, all the various muscles, organs and glands and the circulatory and respiratory systems become weakened and sluggish, leading to a decrease in physiological efficiency.
Exercise is much more than simply developing strong muscles. It is body building in the complete sense of the term. Every cell and fiber is involved. The heart, kidneys, liver, skin, hair, eyes, etc., including the brain and nervous system, are stimulated and strengthened in these various functions. The tone and quality of the entire system is improved. The skeletal system, for example, depends upon exercise in order to maintain its size, strength, and physiological functions.
When a part of the skeleton is placed in a cast due to a fracture, muscle tear, etc., in order to prevent further damage and allow time for healing, the bone and surrounding musculature begins to atrophy, reducing the size and strength. However, when the cast is removed and motion is once again possible for the area, the muscle and bones respond by regaining their normal structure and function The development of respiration; the powers of digestion and assimilation; and the strength of the heart and efficiency of elimination depend largely upon physical exercise. The blood and lymph improve, respiration is deepened, and the lung capacity is increased through exercise.
When a specific part of the body is put into action, the body responds by sending more blood, nutrients, and nerve energy to that part. This response leads to overall improvement in the nutrition and drainage of the particular part involved. As the metabolism is increased, there is a consequent improvement in the tone and qualities of the tissues involved. Exercise is the most effective and efficient means for bringing about this result throughout the entire system.
The main concept for understanding the philosophy of exercise is: If we do not exercise, muscles begin to lose their tone, becoming weak and flaccid. In time, these muscles can atrophy to the point of wasting away. This same situation is true for the entire body. Not only do the structural parts of the body suffer from lack of exercise, but their function is impaired as well. By an irrevocable law of life—growth, development and strength of mind and body are acquired through exercise. Exercise is as essential to physical vigor, strength and development as air is to life. Exercise is cumulative in its benefits. If practiced correctly and consistently, strength and endurance along with coordination and agility become our reality. Posture is improved, which assures a correct relationship between the bonqs, muscles, organs and all other tissues of the body. A dimension of grace and poise along with an increase in beauty and symmetry is established and maintained. Most importantly, an overall feeling of joy and happiness from living life to the fullest is experienced. Exercise causes muscles that are tight and tense to be stretched, adhesion to be broken up, and nerve energy to be balanced and improved. It hastens the absorption and expulsion of various growths and deposits. Because of the intimate relationship between mind and body, the benefits derived from exercise on a physical plane also improve the qualify of the mind.
The effects of different exercises upon the body are extremely varied. Certain exercises develop great strength, others improve our endurance, agility, flexibility, speed, etc., but no one exercise can do it all. Therefore, it is very important that our exercise program be diverse enough to achieve all the benefits.
If deformity is to be corrected, one can learn specific exercises which will aid in correcting the problem. Some of the various deformities which benefit from corrective exercise are: round or stoop shoulders, spinal curvatures, innomonate abnormalties, bow legs, knock knees, club-foot, flat feet, various organ deficiencies, etc. These types of corrective exercises should only be performed under the watchful guidance of a skilled instructor.
Where a person is suffering from some chronic ailment or recuperating from acute symptoms, exercise can play an important and vital role in restoring the individual back to health.
At one point during the history of man, our ancestors were forced to produce great amounts of physical exertion in order to survive. But as civilization has grown and developed, and with technology creating more sedentary jobs, a large proportion of society now reaches maturity without experiencing a great deal of physical exercise. As a result, America has become a nation of fat and flabby weaklings, growing old prematurely and suffering a great deal from the ill effects produced from physical inactivity. Whereas more and more individuals are leading sedentary lives behind a desk, others are forced to overwork their bodies, thus creating injuries. Along with this imbalance, the ever-increasing specialization in work is leading to overuse of some parts of the body and neglect of other parts. As a result of this imbalance within our society, some substitute for the work of securing food, defending property, running from predators, etc., must be created. For it is nature’s will that we have exercise. Nature will remove the muscles and render any limb entirely useless that has ceased to exercise. But if we begin to make efforts in restoring the integrity of the inactive body part, nature will once again restore what she originally took away.
Society today is geared towards the development of the intellect. The prevailing feeling today is to ignore physical culturing simply by covering it up with stylish clothing and gaudy cosmetics. However, we need only to open our eyes and compare the soft, flabby, unshapely bodies of the average adult with the fine symmetrical bodies of the well-developed man or woman to realize where true ugliness lies. There is no beauty or joy in beholding a skinny, malnourished physique or a fat barrel-shaped torso that is the rule and not the exception of present day society. We idolize the creative, witty, and intellectual giants of our society, ignoring the fact that they are often weak and sickly individuals. Although we should give credit to these intellectuals for their achievements, many of these people develop their mind while ignoring their body. No one can give his best intellectual ability to the world if his body is not functioning properly. The thought of our world leaders sitting around a table, smoking, drinking, and eating constantly while deciding the fate of the world is extremely frightening. This human body of ours is responsible for carrying on the works of nutrition—digestion, assimilation, disassimilation and excretion of waste. If any of these functions are impaired, the brain, which is the organ of the mind, is also impaired.
The importance of keeping the body at a high degree of physical perfection while obeying all the laws, rules and requirements of nature is of greatest necessity. Our full potential can only be achieved when a powerful intellect is backed up by a powerful physical body — a body where the organ and tissues are strong and vigorous enough to sustain the mind, even during its most strenuous activity.
As has already been mentioned, there is a normal and inseparable relationship between the mind and the body. When there is an imbalance between these two, then the potential of both suffers. Nature has joined them together in a bond that is intimate and very delicate. The mind is dependent upon the body not only for its nourishment from the blood, but for the sensory stimulation it provides through the eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue. Nature has inseparably harnessed body and mind together so that they pull together in perfect concord. So long as they are allowed to do this, only good can come.
The importance of exercise can never be overemphasized. As practitioners of Natural Hygiene, you must always make your clients aware that complete health will never be maintained without regular exercise. Many schools of so-called natural healing spend a great deal of time on diet, vitamins, herbs, and techniques of body manipulation, but few ever deal with the value of exercise. Perhaps it is because the concepts and truths are too simple and not esoteric or sophisticated enough for these intellectually-oriented approaches. The philosophy of Natural Hygiene embraces the simple truths of life, and recognizes that life is motion and that we soon lose that which we don’t use. As this lesson progresses, we will discuss in more detail many of the benefits derived from exercise. The fact that exercise decreases nervous tension, increases the clarity of the mind, leads to more efficient use of organs and systems, produces more power, endurance and flexibility, etc., makes it a very important component of the Hygienic system.
Exercise, as an integral part of Hygiene, must be considered in wholistic terms. Whatever forms of physical culturing we are involved in, it must influence the entire body in a balanced manner. The weight lifter who engages only in that activity but not in any other form of physical activities will have highly-developed muscles but a poorly developed cardiovascular system.
In order to insure a balanced program of physical conditioning, three types of exercise must be utilized. These are contraction, stretching, and aerobic exercises. Each type is unique and provides benefits not offered by the other two. In proper combination, these three types of exercise will provide the essentials for developing a strong, healthy body.
Like most animals, man is endowed with the ability to move in relationship to whatever situation arises, as well as the ability to move different body parts in relation to each other. As a result, we are capable of maintaining various postures and counterbalancing the effects of gravity. We are also capable of transferring mechanical energy to the outer world by doing work as well as by absorbing various mechanical effects. These skills are the result of the ability of the skeletal muscles to transform chemical energy into mechanical energy during their contractions.
The human body is composed of many different individual muscles, each with its own particular job to do. From a functional point of view, however, the mass of skeletal muscles in the organism may be looked upon as one large organ of movement, which constitutes about 40% of our total body weight. The reason for this consideration is that most activities, especially those connected with more vigorous activities such as athletics, are the result of the integrated activity of nearly all the muscles in the body. Thus, as Hygienic practitioners, you should develop exercise programs that will utilize all the various muscles. A program that includes stretching, contracting and aerobic exercise will fulfill this requirement.
Though the skeletal muscles function like one large organ, the instantaneous distribution of activity is continuously changing as the individual muscles are called into action or released into passivity, depending upon how our central nervous system responds to the particular activity.
Individual muscles, in most cases, act as a functional unit with other similar muscle groups. These groups are usually categorized as flexors, extensors, supinators, etc. In most situations, it is possible to determine one or a few prime movers. These prime movers are then assisted by synergists and are controlled or stopped by antagonists that are placed on the other side of the instantaneous axis of movement. So even though it is anatomically possible to define individual muscles, a functional or physiological subdivision of the individual musculature is not possible.
The skeletal muscle is made up of a series of different sense organs: mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, pain receptors, etc. Of these, only the mechanoreceptors have been thoroughly studied. The two major mechanoreceptors are the muscle spindles, situated in the center of the muscle, and the Golgis tendon organs located within the tendons.
All skeletal muscles in the body are made up of numerous muscle fibers. In most muscles these fibers extend the entire length of the muscle. Each muscle fiber is enervated by a mixed nerve (motor and sensory) located in the middle of the fiber. Each muscle fiber contains several hundred to several thousand myofibrils. Each myofibril in turn is made up of myosin and actinfilaments, which are specific protein molecules responsible for contraction. The myofibrils are suspended inside the muscle fiber in a matrix ailed sarcoplasm.
The muscle spindles are suspended in a network of connective tissue that is parallel with the muscle fibers. During exercise, the skeletal muscles are continuously undergoing lengthening and contraction. When a muscle fiber is lengthened, sensory impulses are generated and the muscle spindle becomes excited. On the other hand, when a muscle fiber is contracted, the effects of the muscle spindle become inhibited. This response of the muscle is known as the dynamic stretch reflex.
The dynamic stretch reflex is caused by the potent signals originated from key receptors located in the muscle spindle and transmitted by the primary nerve endings of these same spindles. When a muscle is suddenly stretched, a signal is transmitted through these primary endings to the spinal cord and will continue as long as the degree of stretch increases. The end result is a reflex contraction of the same muscle from which the muscle spindle signals originated. Thus a sudden stretch of a muscle causes reflex contractions of the same muscle returning the length of the muscle back toward its original length.
The muscle spindle is also responsible for the “negative stretch reflex.” When a muscle is shortened (contracted), exactly the opposite effect of the dynamic stretch reflex occurs. Upon contraction, the muscle spindle becomes inhibited, thereby discouraging the further shortening of the muscle. Thus the negative stretch reflex opposes the shortening of the muscle in the same manner that the positive stretch reflex opposes lengthening of the muscle. Therefore, it is the muscle spindle reflex that maintains the relative length of a muscle.
The Golgi tendon is entirely an inhibitory reflex and functions exactly opposite from the dynamic stretch reflex. Located within the muscle tendons (that portion of muscle which attaches to the bone), the Golgi tendon is stimulated by relative muscle tension. This is different from the muscle spindle, which is responsible for detecting relative muscle length. The Golgi tendon detects tension transmitted into the spinal cord causing reflex effects on the specific muscle involved. When muscle tension becomes extreme, as in extreme physical exertion, the inhibitory effect from the Golgi tendon organ can be so great that it causes reaction and is a protective mechanism which prevents tearing of the muscle from its bony attachment.
The following points should not only help in summarising what has just been discussed, but should also provide a conceptual picture of the role of skeletal muscles in exercise.
It is important to look at the muscular system in a wholistic manner. Though it is possible to develop individual muscle groups with specific exercises, this can only cause an imbalance with various other muscle groups that are not simultaneously developed. Therefore, it is important to provide a balanced and consistent exercise which will provide the necessary strength, flexibility and endurance to the entire muscular system. The end result will be a muscular system that is highly developed and functioning in harmony with all the other systems of the body.
The functions of the skeletal system are complex and varied. Besides providing a structural frame that muscles, nerves, organs and all other various tissue can surround and attach to, the skeletal system provides storage for many nutrients and produces blood cells. Bone tissue continually undergoes a process of bone destruction and repair. Large osteoclastic cells are continuously engaged in destruction of bone cells and osteoblasts continuously repair the damage.
According to Wolff’s law, bone develops its greatest strength along the lines of greatest stress and strain. An increase in physical activity stimulates osteoblastic (building) activity, while a decrease favors an increase in osteoclastic (destructive) activity. In this manner the osteoclastic cells are encouraged to remove the useless bony structures and osteoblasts are stimulated to replace them with stronger bone in the region where greater strength is required. The more activity an individual individual engages in, the stronger and more durable the skeletal system becomes.
In our society, as an individual becomes older, his or her level of physical activity dramatically decreases. As a result, the bony structure begins to demineralize, leading to a weakening of the entire structure. As the individual becomes weak and feeble, the bons may begin to spontaneously fracture. Had the individual maintained his or her exercise program, he or she would not have become dependent upon others to provide the movements no longer available to him.
The lungs can be expended and contracted by (1) downward and upward movement of the diaphragm to lengthen or shorten the chest cavity and by (2) elevation and depression of the ribs to increase and decrease the diameter of the chest. Inspiration takes place when the diaphragm contracts, pulling the lower boundary of the lung cavity downward, increasing its longitudinal length. Expiration takes place automatically when the diaphragm relaxes, allowing the elastic recoil of the lungs to draw it back upward. During normal inspiration, respiration takes place simply by contraction of the diaphragm. However, the mechanical means by which respiration takes place during exercise is a little more involved.
As we’ve already mentioned, normal inspiration takes place principally when the diaphragm contracts, thereby pulling and lengthening the lungs. This creates a lower pressure in the lungs that is automatically filled by the higher atmospheric pressure outside the body. Usually, expiration is an entirely passive process; that is, when the diaphragm relaxes, the elastic structures of the lungs, chest cage, and abdomen force the diaphragm upward.
During exercise, a greater demand is placed upon the mechanical structures of respiration. More muscles come into activity in order to increase the amount of oxygen now needed by the rest of the body. During inspiration, not only does the diaphragm contract, but muscles from the chest, neck and spine also contract and aid in the process. Expiration is no longer passive; it is aided by contractions from the abdominal muscles as well as from the lower rib muscles. From a mechanical point of view, if these various muscles are not strong and capable of functioning efficiently and effectively, the tissues of the body will not be supplied with sufficient amounts of oxygen during exercise.
During respiration, oxygen is taken into the lungs from the atmosphere. In the lungs oxygen is exchanged with CO2 (waste product from cell metabolism) from the bloodstream. The oxygen is carried to all the tissues in the body in order to nourish and provide the necessary component for developing energy necessary for cell functioning. The overall ability of the lungs to exchange gases from the blood is expressed in terms of its diffusing capacity. In the average individual, the diffusing capacity for oxygen under resting conditions averages about 21 milliliters/minute. However, during strenuous exercise, the diffusing capacity for oxygen increases to about 65 ml/minute, or three times the diffusing capacity under resting conditions. In order for this to happen, three bodily functions must take place:
The more an individual exercises, utilizing increased respiration, the more efficient the diffusing capacity will become. During rest or slight activity, only a small portion of the lung is used, resulting in a significant portion becoming dormant. The same holds true for the circulatory system where a significant number of blood vessels are not utilized. This disuse will lead to a decrease in the ability of the system to provide the necessary oxygen for the tissues even during the slightest degree of activity.
During strenuous exercise, the average individual may require as much as 20 times the normal amount of oxygen. Due to the increase in cardiac output, however, the time that blood remains in the area of gas exchange is greatly reduced. As a result, the oxygenation of blood could suffer for two major reasons: the blood remains in contact with the lungs ,for shorter periods of time, and far greater quantities of oxygen are needed to oxygenate the blood. However, the blood is almost always fully oxygenated when it leaves the lungs even during the heaviest of exercise, due to two major factors:
As you can see, with exercise, the lungs and their structural synergists become stronger, more resilient and much more efficient. More tissues in the body are oxygenated while simultaneously more blood vessels and lung tissue are utilized. The lungs are interdependent upon all the other systems of the body. Only when all these systems are functioning smoothly and efficiently can we achieve the high levels of health and enjoyment that life has to offer.
Perhaps the single most important factor that we must consider in relation to the cardiovascular system is “cardiac output.” Cardiac output is the quantity of blood pumped from the heart into the aorta each minute. Venous return is the quantity of blood flowing from the veins back to the heart each minute. Although blood can temporarily increase or decrease in central circulation, the total cardiac output must be equal to venous return. The average cardiac output for normal young males is about 5.6 liters/minute. When including all adults and females, the cardiac output is an average of approximately 10% less than that of the normal male. Since cardiac output changes with body size, the output is commonly stated in terms of the cardiac index. The cardiac index is determined by cardiac output per square meter of body surface area. The average cardiac index for adults is about 3.0 liters per minute per square meter.
When a person rises form a reclining to a standing position with the muscles becoming taut, as if preparing for exercise, the cardiac output rises 1-2 liters per minute. Cardiac output usually remains almost proportional to the metabolic body rate; the greater the degree of activity or the muscles and organs, the greater will be the cardiac output. Therefore, the work output during exercise increases in linear proportion to the cardiac output. In bouts of very intense exercise, the cardiac output can rise as high as 30-35 liter per minute in a well-trained athlete.
This is 5-6 times the normal value.
During heavy exercise, tissues can require as much as 20 times the normal amount of oxygen and other nutrients hat are transported via blood. Thus, transporting enough oxygen from the lungs to these tissues may demand a minimal increase in cardiac output of five to six times its normal value! Since this is far greater than the normal, instimulated cardiac output of the heart, several factors which will insure this massive increase of cardiac output during this heavy exercise are called into play. They are as follows:
In summary, an intricate setting of background conditions of the cardiovascular system insures the required blood flow to the muscles during heavy exercise. These conditions include increased activity of the heart muscle. The local vasodilation in the muscles occurs as a direct consequence of muscular activity and finally sets the level to which the cardiac output rises. Thus, it is mainly the muscles themselves that determine the amount of increase in cardiac output, up to the limit of the heart’s ability to respond.
The heart, like any other muscle, can be strengthened or weakened, depending upon the amount of activity or exercise it undergoes. According to Starling’s Law, the heart is an automatic pump that is capable of pumping far more than the normal value of 5 liters per minute of blood which returns from peripheral circulation. Thus, the primary factor that determines how much blood will be pumped by the heart is the amount of blood that flows into the heart from systemic circulation, which is greatly enhanced by physical exercise. After a certain point, averaging about 15 liters per minute, cardiac stimulation (such as the stimulation of exercise) is necessary for this increase in the permissive level to which the heart can pump. Exercise greatly increases the effectiveness by which the heart provides blood and thereby oxygen and other vital nutrients to all areas and tissues of the body.
In juxtaposition with this increase in cardiac efficiency, these vital blood pathways are cleaned out and overall circulation is enhanced. Like any muscle, when there is an increase in activity and usage, there is an increase in size or musculature enlargement. Heavy athletic training causes the heart to enlarge, sometimes as much as 50%. Coincident with this enlargement is an increase in the permissive pumping level of the heart that may be as great as 20 liters per minute (as opposed to the maximal normal level of 13-15 liters per minute). So, when exercise is integrated into each day of our lives, there is an overall long-term increase of effectiveness of the entire cardiovascular system.
In summary, exercise greatly increases the demand of blood flow to the muscles and tissues. To insure this required increase of blood flow, there must be an increase in arterial pressure and an overall, increase in the activity of the heart muscle. As a direct consequence of muscular activity, there is local vasodilation of the muscle tissue involved that sets the final level of the rise in cardiac output. This rise is vital in the insurance of muscular efficiency. The heart acts like any other muscle in that it can be strengthened and enlarged with heavy exercise or weakened by neglect. As Hygienic practitioners, it is important to realize the relevance of exercise in providing blood, oxygen and other vital nutrients, to all areas of the body and enhancing overall cardiovascular efficiency in circulation. Only with maximal cardiovascular efficiency can we maintain our strength, endurance and clarity of mind.
Generally speaking, during heavy exercise there is a constriction of blood flow to certain organ systems that are not as immediately involved in the physiology of exercise as are the musculoskeletal, cardiovascular and respiratory systems. The organs of the gastrointestinal tract and the kidneys in particular are affected by the detour of blood flow and energy during exercise.
Severe exercise appears to have at least two principal effects upon the kidneys: diminished urine flow, and diminished renal (kidney) blood flow. When the blood volume becomes too great, the cardiac output and arterial pressure increase. This has a profound effect on the kidneys, causing loss of fluid from the body and blood volume to return to normal. Conversely, if blood volume falls below normal with a decrease in cardiac output and arterial pressure, the kidneys retain fluid and the progressive accumulation of fluid intake rebuilds up to the normal blood volume. During severe exercise, the rise in body temperature causes increased sweat and respiratory loss of water, which intensify kidney changes. The sweat excreted during heavy exercise contains 300-600 mg. of urea per liter (a concentrated waste product that is diluted by the kidneys to prevent poisoning of the system), thus to a considerable extent compensating for the decrease of excretion of urea through the kidneys during exercise.
During heavy exercise, there is a great reduction in renal blood flow, and a slight alteration in the filtration rate of the kidneys. The reduction of renal blood flow is progressive for at least 30 minutes after the start of exercise and is directly related to the severity of the exercise. (Chapman, 1948 a.b.).
This drop in renal blood flow can be explained by the diversion of blood to the working muscles and the brain. Recovery of renal plasma flow is considerably slower than is the recovery of pulse rate or blood pressure (Chapman et al. 1948). The resting kidney has a large inbuilt safety margin so that the renal blood flow can be drastically altered without significantly altering the functioning of kidney filtering.
It appears that strenuous exercise inhibits both secretory and motor functions of the stomach. Studies done by Campbell, 1928 came to an early conclusion that exercise of moderate intensity (such as running 1-2 miles slowly) inhibited both secretion of gastric juice and the rate of gastric emptying of its contents. Lighter exercise (such as walking) did not change the rate of gastric excretion and actually appeared to enhance the rate of emptying into the stomach. The amount of exercise required to inhibit gastric function varied with the physical fitness of the individual. To generalize their findings, “exercise which produced no discomfort helped digestion, and exercise which produced discomfort delayed it.” These observations were extended later in the century, concluding that all types of exercise after a meal prolonged the final emptying time of the stomach more than the same activity preceding the meal. When flouroscopically examined immediately after exertion, the stomach appeared either totally inactive or had only feeble peristaltic movements. Recovery, however, was prompt and emptying was greatly accelerated during the second hour after exercise.
In summary, there is evidence that heavy exercise has certain effects on kidney functioning. The sweat excreted during heavy exercise contains a high concentration of urea, thus compensating for the decrease of urea excretion via the kidneys during exercise. When there is an increase of sweat and respiratory loss of water, there is an intense change in the kidneys. Also, during extreme exercise, there is a drop in renal blood flow due to the diversion of blood to the brain and working muscles.
It also appears that strenuous exercise inhibits both secretory and motor functions of the stomach, although the amount of exercise required to inhibit gastric function is dependent upon the physical fitness of the individual. Though exercise tends to temporarily inactivate stomach function during exertion, there is a prompt recovery and acceleration of function in the post exercise hour.
Unlike the aerobic and stretching exercises, when we talk about contraction exercises we are considering primarily the development of muscular strength and endurance. Muscular strength refers to the amount of force that one can generate in an isolated movement of a single muscle or group of muscles. The greater the muscular strength of an individual, the greater the amount of force he or she will be able to generate. Muscular endurance refers to the amount of time an individual can perform a particular contraction of force, i.e., how many sit ups, push ups, curls, etc. Muscular endurance involves a specific muscle or group of muscles, unlike cardiorespiratory endurance, which involves the total body.
Muscular strength and endurance can be developed by any one or combinations of three different modes of physical contraction exercises. These forms are termed isometric, isotonic and isokinetic contractions.
Isometric training involves muscle contractions against a resistance, greater than the force that can be applied where no movement of body parts takes place. Pushing against a sturdy wall or a parked car results in contractions of the muscles involved, but will not lead to any perceptible movement of the body or the objects involved. Numerous exercises can be devised simply by applying force by different parts of the body upon common objects around the house as a source of resistance.
Isotonic training involves the actual movement or lifting of a steady resistance through the range of motion of the various joints involved. A classic example of isotonic exercise is the lifting of weights.
Isokinetic training involves a constant speed of movement against a variable resistance. The strength of a muscle varies at different angles as a result of change in the angle of pull and perspective leverages.
Thus when we lift a constant resistance, the muscle is not exercised to the same extent at the middle of its motion as it was at the beginning. In other words, if we are curling a 50-pound weight, the closer we come to completing that curl, the stronger the muscle becomes. During isokinetic training, the resistance changes to match the strength of the muscle at each point in the range of motion.
Research has shown that each of the three forms of strength-training procedures produce substantial increases in strength, power and muscular endurance. In comparing the different forms as to which offers the most complete program, very little has been written on isokinetics. This is due to the fact that it is a relatively new science and is not totally understood., So, most of the comparison is between the isometric and isotonic procedures, and is as follows:
As mentioned earlier, research on isokinetic training is limited. However, a major advantage to this form of training over the other two forms is in the area of rehabilitation. Isokinetic exercise allows the muscle to exercise through a full range of motion with varying degrees of resistance. The resistance will depend on the strength of the the muscle at different angles in the range of motion. Although more research needs to be undertaken, isokinetic procedures appear to be just as effective as either isotonic or isometric—perhaps even moreso.
As Hygienic practitioners you should keep in mind that while contraction exercises are extremely beneficial in muscle strength and endurance, these procedures do very little for the development of the rest of the systems in the body. In fact, without balancing the contraction exercises with aerobics and stretching, these procedures could even be harmful. Keep in mind strong muscles and a weak heart do not make for a good combination. Develop exercise programs that utilize contraction training one day, aerobics and stretching the next. In this way you will be utilizing different areas daily while allowing other areas a chance to recover.
Along with the other two categories of exercise, stretching is of crucial importance. Regardless of how superb and strong a physique may appear, without proper extension and stretching of the muscle groups, there will be an imbalance of posture. Additionally, there may be a muscle-bound disequilibrium which could deter the overall well-being and mental poise of the individual.
Stretching should be done in a slow, static manner. The body itself provides necessary weights and counterweights through a variety of balanced static postures. Stretching postures must maintain proper vertebral extension. If done correctly, stretching brings steadiness, health and lightness to the limbs. A thorough stretching program exercises every muscle, nerve and gland in the body. It secures a fine physique which is strong and elastic without being muscle-bound. In turn, stretching postures reduce mental and physical fatigue and soothe the nerves. Only when the body is fit and flexible can it serve as a vehicle of mental poise. Physical abuse and bodily disuse result in atrophy and dysfunction of the delicate mind-body interactions that lend us the ability to live and function in a constant state of total well-being.
Flexibility can be defined as the range of possible movement without a joint or a sequence of joints. A study (Kras, H.1972) done on several hundred adults who had complaints of chronic lower back problems revealed that approximately 80% had severe muscle weakness and joint inflexibility diagnosed as the cause, while only 20% had a specific anatomical disease or lesion as the cause. Thus, there is an obvious tendency in our society to neglect the body through lack of physical exertion including stretching and flexibility exercise.
Following is a summary of some recent research done on flexibility and exercise. (H.H. Clarke, 1975-76). There is little agreement among researchers with regard to the definition and limitations of “normal” flexibility. Flexibility is highly specific and varies for each joint or joint group. Thus, the flexibility of certain joints cannot be used to generalize the flexibility of other areas of the body. Although specific data is not available, there is a relationship between flexibility measures and differences in sex and age. Although flexibility can be increased with persistent exercise, the magnitude of increase is a very individual matter and is dependent upon the specific types and forms of activity. The connective tissues primarily responsible for resistance to movement include muscle, ligaments, joint capsules, and tendons. (These terms are sufficiently defined in the definition section.)
Research, logic and experience indicate that stretching exercises are effective in improving flexibility. Although many athletes and physicians still view such tragedies as muscle pulls, tears and strains as inevitable within a heavy exercise program, there is a growing awareness that these injuries are not accidental and can be predicted and thus prevented. Many of the top professional football teams (i.e., Steelers, Broncos, Redskins, etc.) now employ “flex” coaches to direct the players in stretching exercises. This is a prevention against injury.
An important factor to remember while incorporating a stretching routine into your daily exercise program is not to stretch or strain beyond a “pleasant tension.” There will be/some discomfort initially, due to the trauma of the stretch to the unconditioned muscles, but the pain will most likely be in the form of a nagging ache or dull pull. “Pleasant tension” refers to a slight, dull discomfort of the muscle as a whole, with no accompanying sharp or burning sensations. When there is a sharp localized sensation in the ligament, back off; this is more than “pleasant tension.” In other words, stretch just beyond what is comfortable. It is important not to hold tension while stretching; this defeats the purpose. Stretching, like all other forms of exercise, is a release. While holding a stretching posture, if you feel tension in a specific area, concentrate on relaxing that area, and releasing that tension. One should not hold the breath while stretching; instead, breathe normally. Oftentimes an exhalation is conducive to the release of tension. One other important point about tension: Don’t hold tension in your face. There is a tendency while releasing tension from the legs, back, arms, abdominal region, etc., to transfer the tension and sensation of discomfort to the face. Thus, often times one may find oneself with a furled brow, squinted eyes and clinched teeth. Let this tension go, along with the rest of it.
Stretching should be slow, consistent, sustained and static. Stretching should not be ballistic. Dr. Herbert deVries, Ph.D, lists some advantages of static stretching exercises:
There is less danger in going beyond the safe limits of stretching when doing static exercise because the exerciser moves into the position slowly and stops before harm is done. With ballistic exercises, the exerciser may realize too late that he or she has passed the limit. Also, the energy costs for slow, static stretching is lower than for rapid ballistic stretching, so the exercises aren’t as tiring to the athlete.
Furthermore, static stretching tends to relieve muscle soreness, while ballistic exercises may cause severe muscle soreness. Thus, it is recommended, when integrating stretching into your exercise program to increase your overall flexibility, be consistent and static in your movements. Listen to your body as you flow into the postures, never letting the tension accumulate, but rather relax into the stretch. Your body will let you know what your individual “pleasant tension limit” is, and don’t take the stretch any further. You will not achieve the extreme position of the stretching posture overnight. It takes persistence, patience and cautions.
As Hygienists, we want to improve our level of vitality, strength, and endurance and then maintain it. If a person is overly tense or unable to sleep, their vitality and endurance will decrease. Conversely, when tension and stress cease, vitality increases. Stretching enhances the quality of life by giving us flexibility and endurance while enhancing our mental poise. We were born with a potentially wide range of motion; however, many people are caught in the laziness of today’s society and do not use but rather abuse their potentials of strength, endurance, aerobics and range of motion. The high quality of life that is available to all of us thereby is reduced to laziness. Through exercise and the other requirements of Hygienic living we gain our health. Health is not a commodity which can be purchased with money. Instead it is an asset to be gained by hard work and proper living practices.
A wild cat, such as a tiger, lion, cougar or panther, stretches, runs, leaps, etc. every day. It is trim and vital and has an incredible endurance level. Place this animal in a zoo and, though its stretching continues, its physique “goes to pot” and the cat becomes lazy. Why? Its aerobic exercise has ceased.
An individual’s capacity for sustaining heavy, prolonged muscular work is dependent upon the supply of necessary oxygen to the working muscles. The word ‘aerobic’ literally means “with oxygen.” Therefore, “aerobic work” is defined as work performed when sufficient oxygen can be supplied by the body to reduce the necessary performance of the task. According to Cooper, 1970, the most beneficial aerobic exercises include jogging, running, swimming, cycling, brisk walking, handball and basketball. The aerobic demand for these various forms of exercise is highly dependent upon the amount and rate of the work performed.
Aerobic exercise is a mandatory component in the overall Hygienic program of exercise. Some of these aerobic activities are far less demanding than jogging or swimming or some of the other exercises mentioned above. Low-intensity aerobic exercises, such as walking, must be of longer duration, but they are highly effective and are certainly regarded as aerobic activity. Choosing an aerobic type of exercise is dependent upon individual considerations such as age and level of physical fitness. Nearly anyone, regardless of physical condition, can effectively contribute to his/her own method of aerobic fitness.
Aerobic training activates many wonderful changes in the body. Your lungs will process more air with less effort, your heart will grow stronger and pump more blood with each beat, the number and size of the blood vessels carrying blood and nutrients to the body tissues will be increased, tone of the blood vessels and muscles will be improved and total blood volume will be increased.
The earliest to develop and most natural forms of exercise are walking and running. Primitive human beings survived by being able to walk or run great distances. We still have the bodily structure that was designed to cover 25 or more miles a day, but today our body rebels as soon as we attempt a 30-minute walk, let alone a 15-minute jog. We marvel at the stamina of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, who race at high altitudes in kickball games and relays that often last up to two days and cover one to two hundred miles. Perhaps our fascination with their stamina is a subconscious recognition of our natural potentials. According to Dr. Thaddeus Kostrubala, M.D., for 3 million years the genus of homo sapiens had to run to survive. He also says that our femur thigh bone is designed specifically for running.
In order to zero-in on specific characteristics of aerobic activity, some advantages of a well-planned jogging or running program are briefly mentioned below. Running should be done for 30-45 minutes four or five times weekly. Keep in mind that the length of the work out must be gradually worked into and thus will vary with the individual. The advantages of integrating a running program to your life are rich and many.
A running program is a simple, effective way to stimulate the circulation and exercise the heart. It provides a gentle, steady and prolonged demand on the heart, more so than does a series of short, choppy, ballistic exercises. Running exercises many parts of the body simultaneously. It can be adapted to the age and physical fitness of the individual and can be performed at nearly any time or place. Another advantage of running is that it requires no special facility or equipment, therefore the costs are minimal. Running is a good therapy to reduce anxiety and depression.
A runner’s feet hit the ground 1600 to 1700 times during each mile. This can be rough treatment if done improperly. There are many criticisms of running as an exercise due to the high rate of injury. A recent Runner’s World poll reveals that 22% of runners suffer from knee injuries, 20% from achilles tendon injuries, 10% from shin splints and 9% from forefoot strain and fracture. It is a current consensus among experts who practice sports medicine and run or jog themselves that most of the injuries are due to overwork, faulty shoes, weakness, lack of flexibility and improper running techniques. According to Dr. George A Sheehan, M.D., running causes a loss of flexibility in the back of the legs. Because of this lack of flexibility, exercises that stretch the muscles in the entire legs and back are a necessary component in the exercise program. It is possible to increase your chances of avoiding injury by not running on a hard cement surface, selecting high-quality running shoes, performing stretching exercises to counteract the lack of flexibility caused by the contractile reactions of running and by improving the overall muscle strength of the major muscle groups involved.
Regardless of what form of aerobic exercise that you chose to adhere to, take the necessary cautions to prevent injury, be persistent with it, and the benefits of aerobic fitness will enhance your total well-being.
Aerobics is not a total physical fitness program. It must be integrated into a consistent exercise program which also includes stretching and contractile, strength building exercise. Though these three categories of exercise often overlap, all three (aerobics, stretching, contractions) are necessary for maximum health and joyful living.
Some of the first accounts of athletics and nutrition go back to the early Olympic Games in Greece. It was indicated (Harris, H.S., 1966) that there was a considerable insistence by Greek doctors on the importance of the diet that led to a keen interest in the diet of their athletes. Very little meat was originally consumed in Greece. The diet consisted of whole grains such as barley or wheat, eaten in cereal or bread form, and a variety of vegetables, such as onions, carrots, cucumbers, marrows, beans and various green leafy vegetables. Fruit was abundant, especially grapes and figs, apples, pears and nuts. The pomegranate was a prize. Although the Greeks did consume large amounts of goat milk products, adequate nutritional requirements were contained within the former food groups.
During the 1900’s there developed the popular belief that any form of sustained muscular exercise required an abundance of meat foods. It was postulated that during exercise the substance of the muscle was consumed, and therefore hard work would remove a considerable portion of the muscle material that could only be replaced by eating animal protein. However, a study was done in Zurich (Eggleton, 1948). Two scientists climbed one of the Bernese Oberland peaks, one living on a nitrogenous-free diet (free of meats), while the other ate a diet containing nitrogenous foods. They found that when they were resting quietly, the amount of nitrogen excreted was not increased by their physical effort, either during or following the climb. This served as the basis for the modern outlook on the relationship of muscular performance to nutrients, which is that the muscle oxidizes the sugar and fat for the production of its energy, and does not use up its own substance. Thus, it is only when the muscles are chronically inactivated or during starvation that the muscle tissue is actually used up.
Energy requirements are obviously dependent upon the amount and quality of the expended energy during various tasks. This is also modified by other factors. For instance, energy requirements vary widely with age. A newborn baby requires less total energy than either a full-grown man or woman.
Individuals vary to a certain extent in their caloric requirement, and in certain diseased states this variance is even greater. In colder climates, there is a greater loss of heat to the surrounding air, and thus more caloric intake is required to balance this offset. In a warmer climate, less heat is radiated by the body and therefore less calories are needed.
As previously stated, there is a difference between the caloric requirements for carrying out various types of physical exertion. Some items of interest from the original data published by Mary Schwartz Rose in the United States are noted below. In a healthy human being, sleeping generally requires 65 cal./hr.; standing relaxed requires 105 cal./hr.; light exercise, 170 cal./hr.; walking slowly, 200 cal./hr.; walking moderately fast, 300 cal./hr.; severe exercise, 450 cal./hr.; running slowly, 570 cal./hr.; an very severe exercise, 600-650 cal./hr.
Studies done just following W. W. II (Eggleton, 1948) indicated that a robust man doing heavy industrial work can metabolize 4000 calories of food during a working day. This raised the question of whether one variety of food is better than another in making up the calories consumed. Eggleton says that a good deal of evidence from the work on muscles and muscle extracts indicates that carbohydrates are the main fuel for exercise although some studies show that a proportion of the muscle fibers do utilize some fat for energy.
It is estimated that pure carbohydrate provides 1800 cal./lb. and so does pure protein; but pure fat provides 4200 cal./lb. The belief of these heavy laborers is that every time meat is consumed, a certain amount of fat is also consumed, and thus the total amount of food required to provide the same amount of calories is less when eating meats, than when eating just carbohydrates and proteins.
It is clear to see that our society is obsessed with caloric intake, with total disregard to the quality and composition of the foods which are consumed. There is much controversy about the composition of diet for athletes. Much of the controversy concerns the amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrates consumed and their relationship to exercise and athletic performance. When discussing the quality of diet with regard to these three nutrient groups, we must examine two salient questions: (1) Whether an excess of one of these three nutrients is more important than any of the others, when pertaining to exercise, and (2) Whether the consumption of one or the other of them on the day of exercise or the athletic event is likely to be of much significance.
As far as the latter question is concerned, the only substance which is likely to have a significant effect when taken before an event is sugar. By sugar we mean the simple sugar from fruits are most readily used, and then the more complex sugars which are broken down from starches (carbohydrates).
A study was done on the relationship of breakfast to athletic performance (Holdi & Synn, 1946) concerning the carbohydrate intake of swimmers with relation to a 100-yard swim. The results showed that the compositon of the meal, as far as carbohydrates were concerned, did not effect either the blood sugar level at the end of the swim or the performance. They concluded that the energy reserves of the body were more important than the composition of the pre-swim meal. The implications are that a long-term maintenance of a quality diet has a much greater effect on performance than does the administration of a quality meal just prior to exercise.
Another study (Karpovich, 1941) showed that the amount of carbohydrate metabolized in exercise is dependent upon the amount of carbohydrate in the diet, and the lower the carbohydrate in the diet, the higher the amount of fat metabolized. Karpovich also claims that when energy is derived from fats, the work performed is actually 10% less economical than when the energy is derived from carbohydrates. There is also little doubt that protein or fat, since they need such a long digestion period, produce little benefit when administered just before an athletic event.
In regard to the former salient question of whether an excess of the three nutrient groups (carbohydrates, fats, proteins) is more important than any of the others when dealing with activity, we find that all three substances are equally important and are readily available in appropriate amounts in the Hygienic diet.
Though recent trends in nutritional advice tend to overemphasize protein, all protein in our bodies does not come from outside protein sources. There is a constant interchange of carbohydrates, fats and proteins within our bodies. Food is used not only for the formation of the body, but also for the energy expended in daily exercise and activity. Though carbohydrates and proteins are somewhat interchangeable, carbohydrates are more readily required in volume during physical, metabolic exercise than proteins.
For the utmost efficiency in exercising and for physical exertion, we need a good deal of both simple and complex carbohydrates in our daily diet. Through the gradual decomposition of monosaccharides (simple sugars) and polysaccharides (complex sugars or carbohydrates), our metabolism and activity level is sustained. Therefore, it seems that the ideal diet for an active person or an athlete is based on fresh fruits, vegetables (including leafy green vegetables and roots to maintain the necessary amount of protein and calcium), nuts and seeds.
As mentioned earlier, we find that in many societies there is too much emphasis on caloric intake, with little regard to quality and composition of diet. We must consider that some foods convert into calories at a higher rate than others. For instance, simple sugars contained in fruits convert to calories more readily and thus caloric discharge ceases much sooner, than do more complex sugars contained in many vegetables and legumes, which are more slowly converted and burned into calories. Meat and dairy products are even more slowly broken down and converted, and cause a lot of wear and tear on the digestive organs. In this respect, a diet centered around fresh fruits, vegetables and a small amount of nuts and seeds is far superior to a diet centered around meat and dairy products.
Why is it necessary for me to integrate all 3 of the major categories of exercise into my exercise program?
Certain exercises, such as weight lifting only done on the upper body, or running, develop a few individual muscle groups. The causes an imbalance with the other muscle groups that are not simultaneously developed. For example, weight lifters often become muscle-bound because of their excessive contraction exercises (building strength and endurance) that leave no room for flexion and extension of those tightened muscles. One of my patients actually had broken blood vessels (bruises) on the surface of the skin from being so muscle-bound that it infringed on the circulation. We have found that integrating the proper combination of contraction, stretching and aerobic exercise into daily life and being consistent with it will provide the necessary strength, flexibility and endurance in the muscular system, maintaining an optimal level of functioning so that it may harmonize with the other systems of the body.
Why are people so obsessed with caloric intake, rather than the quality of the food they eat?
In today’s society there are many fads and fad diets that insinuate that the only relevant factor in weight loss is caloric consumption. With this assumption, many people feed their dieting bodies a set number of calories, but calories consisting of highly refined foods and often non-nutritional substances. Their bodies are forced to feed off of this refined food, but the energy derived from a low nutrition diet is less efficient. It seems logical that the quality of food is directly related to the quality of activity. Note that these effects are long term (over a long period of time) and that one wholesome pre-exercise meal is likely to have little immediate effect on the quality of exercise. It seems, however, that people are realizing more and more the superficiality of caloric consumption exclusively and the great importance of the quality and composition of food consumed.
I once knew a man who exercised every day. His routines were sometimes as long as three hours, yet he never missed a day. I asked him one time what he was training for, why he stayed in such good shape. He merely replied: “I’m staying in shape for life.” I then asked him how he was able to do it, how he managed to face such a gruelling workout day after day without a miss. He said simply: “I enjoy doing it. I look forward to my workout everyday.”
This sounded logical, but I still went away with the impression that he had some unusual powers of self-discipline and self-motivation. Not many people in the world could do what he did. He just didn’t seem to have the same motivation problem that most of us have.
Motivation is indeed a serious problem for all but a select few. But how do we overcome this motivation problem? How do we become more consistent with our daily exercise programs? Is there an ideal exercise program that will help us do this? This paper is designed to help answer these questions.
For the past four years, I conducted a study on Exercise. I wanted to find out why it is so hard for people to motivate themselves to exercise. I talked to many people—some who were jocks and some who weren’t. All, I found, agreed on the same thing: Exercise is important but hard to do. Rarely did I find anyone who was satisfied with his degree of consistency. I heard many excuses and alibis. They ranged from overcrowded schedules and personal problems to physical ailments, mental stress and plain laziness. However, in reality, all these were nothing more than the motivation problem in disguise.
Being a former professional athlete myself, I know how it feels to be in good physical shape. I want to stay in good shape all the time. But now that the ole coach isn’t around to drive me, it’s hard to psych myself up for the workouts. If I don’t have anyone to work out with, it becomes twice as hard. The daily routine becomes as appealing as facing the Sahara Desert. Many others feel the same way.
Based on the information I gathered, I concluded that the motivation problem is linked directly to the exercise program itself. The more the person enjoys the exercise, the sport or the workout, the easier it is for him to get involved and challenge is the main attraction. The desire for exercise because we need it is, at best, secondary.
Obviously, the root of the motivation problem is in the head. Exercise Reform is a head trip—mind over matter. We are basically lazy creatures, prone to do only what is convenient and enjoyable. We just naturally need fun reasons to do things. The key, then, to Exercise Reform, is to find some way to make the workout as convenient and enjoyable as possible. An exercise program has to be designed to accomplish this. It has to be tailored to the average person with a busy schedule, to the person who doesn’t play sports, who is faced with the task of working out on his own, often without the support of a workout partner, felt, if I could devise such an ideal program for myself, to overcome my own motivation problem, perhaps it would work for others as well.
It took the better part of a year to design such a program. I tried many different time schedules, different exercises and routines. Finally, I arrived at a comfortable program and spent the next three years experiencing it and studying the results. I am now convinced that it’s the ideal program I was looking for. It has solved my own personal motivation problem—I consider it a complete success. The results of the past year, especially, leaves no doubt that almost anyone can achieve the same success.
Anyone can win out in his motivation struggle with his own personalized exercise program. However, in designing such a program, the person must focus on three main areas: He must: 1) choose a suitable time of day to work out; 2) choose the proper exercises for his program; and 3) focus on building the program into his bodily system. These are the three keys to consistency in the Exercise Reform.
As we consider the first of these keys, we are trying to choose the best time of day to work out. In doing so, we must focus on the most important thing: We must choose a time of day when we cannot be disturbed or interrupted by anyone or anything. This must be our time, a sacred, inviolable time that we devote entirely to ourselves.
However, finding a suitable time slot in a busy schedule is not easy. It seems we must give up something. Giving up an hour’s sleep in the morning is the most logical thing to give up. For the lark, the day person like myself, giving up an hour’s sleep in the a.m. is not hard. Most day people enjoy getting up early. But for the owl, the night person, it may pose a serious problem. But once over this obstacle, the owl, like the lark, will find many advantages and rewards connected with the early a.m. workout. Early a.m. is the most ideal time of day to work out for the following four reasons:
First, we must get up in the morning anyway, usually for reasons other than our own. But getting up an hour early is getting up because we want to, for our own reason—to work out and maintain our good health. This also eliminates the chance of oversleeping, causing us to be late for work and other commitments.
Second, getting up an hour early clears the workout away before the regular daily activities begin. This eliminates unforeseen complications such as changes in schedule, minor illnesses, extra tiring days, etc. from causing cancellation of late scheduled workouts.
Third, in the early a.m. the stomach is empty and exercise does not complicate digestion as it would from exercise later in the day.
Fourth, in the summer, morning workouts are coolest, more comfortable and less taxing to the body than workouts during the heat of the day. (During the winter, indoor exercising with the use of the indoor runner’s treadmill prevents cancellations of the routine due to extra cold mornings.)
I personally find the early a.m. workout the most peaceful and enjoyable experience of the day. I get up at 4:20 a.m. and jog for an hour from 4:30 to 5:30 a.m. This really puts me on top of the day, clears my head, keeps me mellowed out and in balance all day. I find I’m much more alert and aware of life; I’m able to experience it to the fullest and enjoy it more. My appetite is better, and at the end of the day I rest better. But if I feel sleepy during the day, I take a short nap, especially if I went to bed late the night before. This eliminates another common excuse for postponements and cancellations.
Once you overcome the obstacle of getting up an hour early, you too will find the early a.m. is not only the most enjoyable time of the day to work out, but the most ideal, all things considered. It’s the only time of day when no one can disturb or interrupt you: They are still in bed. And once you have established this “sacred” time of day, you have taken the first big step toward consistency in your Exercise Reform.
Once our time of day is settled, we must then focus on the next of the keys—the routine itself—what kind of exercises we’ll be doing. We are looking for a few good exercises for our ideal routine. Our most important consideration here is to select exercises we find enjoyable to do. They must, however, be exercises that will provide us with a good upper and lower body workout. The routine must be both simple and effective, and it must not be too time consuming. If we hate our exercises, we will soon dread and hate our routine as well. A troublesome conflict will then arise, and, instead of looking forward to our workout, we begin finding more and more excuses for postponement and cancellations. This is an unnecessary conflict and burden on our lives. It is the most common cause for failure in Exercise Reform because it undermines our motivation. It robs us of the joy of exercising and all the little rewards our daily exercise programs brings to our lives.
We know we must exercise our bodies for good health. It is up to us, then, to devise an exercise routine that keeps us exercising consistently—not for the need of it, but for the enjoyment of it. That’s why I have adopted a routine I find thoroughly enjoyable.
My principle exercise is the jog. It is the most complete and enjoyable exercise we can do. It requires only a few supplementary exercises to give us the balanced, ideal routine we are looking for. In addition to my daily jogging routine, I add four sets of fifty pushups for my major upper body supplementary exercise. I do a set of these every quarter hour during the jog. After the hour jog is over, I add the supplementary exercise routine consisting of four torso-limbering exercises: Toe-toucher, Windmill, Sidebender and Trunktwister. I do only one set of each of these exercises and only twenty repetitions per set. This takes about five minutes and my routine is done. The important thing here is that the workout is over at the time I’d normally be getting out of bed. After a shower and perhaps a fruit breakfast to complete the a.m. preliminaries, I look forward to the day with great expectations, unbelievable energy and a positive attitude that makes life a real joy to live.
An hour’s jogging, of course, is a goal to work up to. It should be done gradually, depending on age and physical condition. This goes for choosing the exercises and number of repetitions as well. The main thing is to choose supplementary exercises that work the upper body to supplement the jog if it is being used as the principle lower body exercise in the program. These exercises must be simple, effective, not too time consuming and, most of all, they must be enjoyable to do. The routine then becomes enjoyable, something we look forward to each day. In this way we take the second big step in solving the motivation problem in our Exercise Reform.
Once we have decided when we’re going to exercise and what exercises we’re going to do, getting the program built into our system is relatively simple. All that is required is that we become loyal to our newfound routine for a few months. The principle of “building it in” is to make the exercise program a way of life, an integral part of our life activities. We want the workout to become a necessary bodily function like eating, sleeping, defecating and urinating. These bodily functions are so much a part of our life activities that we do them each day and scarcely notice. That’s the way it must be with our exercise routine. We must do this routine each day if we expect it to become a vital bodily function.
Some people advocate alternating exercises or even the routine itself every other day. I disagree. The key to consistency is building the routine into the system. This can only be achieved by doing the routine, like all other bodily functions, every day.
Trying to become consistent with our Exercise Reform should be looked upon as a project, an exercise in goal-setting and self-discipline. That is the way I approached it. The first year while I was still designing my program, I allowed myself one miss per week. At first it was hard to maintain this level of performance. Gradually, however, my body became accustomed to the exercise and my mind to the routine. The workouts became easier and easier to do because the workout had become built into my system. The second year I allowed myself only one miss per month. This was easy. The routine by then had become effortless, very enjoyable and rewarding. The third year I missed only three days. I was so much into the routine by then that I wouldn’t have missed a workout for anything. It just never occurred to me to miss. Last year, the fourth and final year of the study, was a complete success—not a single miss—complete mastery over the motivation problem. I was indeed staying in shape for life and was enjoying every minute of it.
Such excellent progress can also be yours once you’ve completed the third big step in your Exercise Reform—once your workout has become like a bodily function, completely built into our system.
The three steps you have just taken in your mind can be taken just as easily in reality. You too can achieve success in your desire to become involved in your own Exercise Reform. It doesn’t matter that your daily schedule is crowded. It doesn’t matter if you’re not an athlete or in good physical shape.
Even if you must work out alone—you can succeed. In designing your own exercise program, all you need do is focus on these three steps: (1) Choose a time of day when you cannot be interrupted by anyone or anything, and think seriously about the early a.m. hours for your workout. (2) Choose exercises for your routine that are simple, effective and not too time consuming. But most of all choose exercises you like and will enjoy doing every day. (3) You must do your routine faithfully every day until it becomes built into your system like a vital bodily function.
Following these steps should produce the desired results—the ideal exercise program you have been looking for, the program that helps you overcome the motivation problem and keeps you exercising consistently, not for the need of it, but for the sheer enjoyment of exercise. In this way you too will have no trouble “staying in shape for life.”
That daily exercise is essential to develop and maintain good health is one Hygienic principle upon which there seems to be universal agreement. Even the medical profession encourages regular exercise as a means of prolonging youthfulness and promoting cardiovascular well-being. The overall merits of regular exercise are fully recognized, and we have no need here to further expound upon them.
However, there exists a great deal of confusion regarding the relationship between exercise and health. Many people equate health with physical conditioning. The classical American model of male health is represented by a robust well-muscled physique, with erect posture, great strength and power. Without necessarily deriding this ideal, I must insist that it is not synonymous with health. There is not always a direct proportion between the level of physical conditioning and the level of overall health. Physical conditioning is only one aspect of health. The best athlete is not necessarily the most healthy. The one who runs ten miles is not necessarily in better health than the one who runs only five, or one, or for that matter, none at all.
I once overheard a well-developed body builder relate to his companion that he was subject to occasional episodes of gout. Every few weeks one or the other leg and foot would swell up and produce agonizing pain. He would be crippled for days at a time and would have to resort to large doses of aspirin and other pain-killers in order to obtain relief. This incident made a tremendous impact on me because this particular body builder had an absolutely splendid physique. His muscular development, his posture, his body weight, his carriage, his symmetry, and his proportions were virtually ideal. He had the physique of a Greek god. By all popular notions, he was a picture of health. Yet, it should be obvious to the readers of this article that his health was far from perfect. Gout does not develop without causes, and being well-muscled does not lessen its implications or severity. How ironic that in the process of building an admirable outward condition, he built a morbid internal condition. It is likely that his interest in body building prompted him to follow a high-protein diet and to use protein supplements, liver extracts, etc., and that these practices were mostly responsible for the development of gout.
Although it is true that those who engage in regular physical activity achieve greater longevity than those who are largely sedentary, it has not been shown that superb athletes achieve greater longevity than those of moderate ability. With the exception of cardiovascular diseases, the incidence of degenerative diseases among athletes (such as cancer and arthritis) is approximately the same as for non-athletes. Lou Gehrig died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Babe Ruth died of cancer. There have been many outstanding athletes who have died tragically of crippling diseases.
Acute diseases are equally as common among athletes. Many an athletic contest has been postponed due to colds and flus. Tennis star Jimmy Connors was recuperating from a month-long bout of mononucleosis right before one of the Wimbledon tournaments, and some have suggested that this was a factor in his loss to Borg.
Despite strong evidence to the contrary, the popular notion today is that exercise will insure us against disease. We are told that as long as you run everyday, you can eat all the fatty meats you want and not develop arteriosclerosis, for the running will keep down blood cholesterol and prevent arterial plaquing. We are told that playing tennis regularly will enable the body to “burn up” the caffeine and other toxic alkaloids of coffee and cola drinks, so drink all you want. Regular exercise will keep down blood pressure, so why cut out salt? Exercise diligently, perhaps excessively, and ignore every other aspect of Hygiene. That is the advice we receive from many of the “experts.”
As Hygienists, we must stress the fact that exercise does not insure against disease and it does not remedy disease. All it can possibly do is supply the body’s need for activity. If the individual who exercises but ignores proper diet fares better than the one who neither exercises or eats correctly, we can account for this by recognizing that the latter ignored two life essentials while the former ignored only one. Exercise does not undo the effects of dietary abuses, but a lack of exercise may compound the effects of dietary abuses.
The body has physiological needs that can only be met through vigorous physical activity. The development of muscular strength and endurance, a powerful heart, great respiratory capacity, vibrant circulation, thorough lymphatic drainage and superb neuromuscular coordination all require the influence of regular exercise. However, from the standpoint of overall health, there is a limit to the amount of good that the body can derive from regular exercise. The body’s actual physiological needs for exercise are not as great as some people believe. We do not have to become marathon runners in order to avoid cardiovascular disease. One can achieve high-level health without ever developing outstanding athletic capabilities. Of course we have no objection to vigorous physical training, and we recognize that it is the only way to enhance performance. Possessing great strength, speed and endurance is practical and desirable even if it doesn’t guarantee great health or longevity.
Vigorous exercise entails a tremendous energy expenditure. This expenditure is compensated for in the physiological benefits that we derive from exercise. The amount of energy that we can safely expend in physical activity depends upon the level of our overall health and vitality. The invalid, who is in great need of rest, can only engage in brief and mild periods of exercise without enervation. The seasoned athlete, on the other hand, may be able to perform amazing feats of strength and endurance without dissipation. It is difficult to designate arbitrarily what constitutes excess in the realm of physical activity because individual factors are the most important considerations. What is excessive for one person may be unproductive for someone else.
The initial effect of exercise is to deplete the body of nerve force and tissue substance. The secondary and lasting effect, however, is to strengthen and build the body. This occurs while resting as the body prepares for future episodes of activity. Exercise must be vigorous in order to be effective. Slow walking, sauntering along on a bicycle, casually twirling the extremities—these activities are of little value. Subjecting the body to stress (within reasonable limits) is what exercise is all about. Exercise must be invigorating, strenous, challenging and taxing in order to occasion dynamic physiological changes. Only by placing great demands upon our bodies can we acquire great strength and stamina.
A short period of vigorous activity is more beneficial than a long period of mild activity. A short but hard run will build greater power than a long slow jog. It is also less depleting. Lifting a heavy weight a few times will build greater strength than lifting a light weight many times. A good exercise regime will provide for both endurance, the ability to sustain an activity over a long period and strength, the ability to overcome resistance in a single instance, as well as speed and agility. A well known jogging expert advised a woman recently to run slower in order to increase her jogging distance to ten miles. My advice would have been just the opposite, that is, to run a shorter distance harder, thereby deriving greater physiological benefits and less profound exhaustion.
Determining the best manner in which to train depends upon what one’s objectives are. The person who is exercising for general health and fitness will have different goals than the one who is trying to achieve excellence in some particular sport. Obviously, one can only become a great long-distance runner if one habitually runs long distances. One can only become a great cyclist if one cycles regularly. Great swimmers become so only by putting in many hours in the pool. Developing outstanding capability requires participation far in excess of the body’s physiological needs for activity. However, expenditures of this kind can be made without depleting the body as long as the individual gradually subjects his or her body to greater stress, and makes a point to secure enough rest and sleep to fully compensate for the added exertion. For example, one should not attempt to run long distances (30 to 40 miles per week) while going to school full time and working (as I once tried to do). It is possible to become progressively more enervated even as one’s level of conditioning improves. However, for the individual with a less hectic schedule, who is able to rest 9 to 10 hours every day, such a running program may be entirely constructive.
Unfortunately, many runners do overexert themselves. The effects of excess vary from mild to severe strains and sprains. Pronounced physiological depression marked by weight loss, loss of libido, insomnia, amenorrhea ‘in the female, and digestive disturbances have resulted from an overly strenuous training schedule. These problems are usually resolved easily by securing more rest and curtailing one’s activity. In some instances, too rapid progression is found to the crux of the problem.
Which activities are best from a Hygienic standpoint? As always, we refer the argument back to Nature. Those activities that conform with physiological principles relating to joint motion and body mechanics are most desirable. Formal exercise is really just a substitute for natural activities that we would perform in a state of Nature. All natural activities require total body participation. When we run, jump, climb, swim, etc., our bodies are acting as a unit, even though certain muscle groups may be playing a predominant role. Such activities not only strengthen and condition us, they enhance body energy, coordination, balance and freedom. By entailing a fluidity of motion, these activities enable us to avoid excessive strain and tension. In contrast, activities that entail rigid postures, isolated muscular efforts, and limited ranges of motion, may have the opposite effect, that is, to increase tension and to stress the joints and muscles.
Perhaps running is the most natural human activity. Like deer, human beings are running animals. We are capable of running great distances smoothly, effortlessly and efficiently. Certainly we are not aquatic animals and bicycles never grew on trees. Team sports are popular because of cultural influences, not biological inclinations. Running is considered to be the most superb exercise for strengthening the heart, lungs and circulation. It is not necessary to run great distances in order to derive these physiological benefits. Running 2 to 3 miles every other day is fully adequate to achieve optimal cardiovascular conditioning. Those who wish to run greater distances can do so, but no one should feel compelled to run longer than this for health reasons. Running sprints, running up hills, running up stairs and other variations are likely to be of greater value than just jogging. Running alone is not adequate for good conditioning. Such activities as vigorous calistenics, weight training and gymnastics round out an exercise program that includes running. This is particularly important in regard to developing the upper torso and extremities, which are largely undeveloped by running.
When is the best time to exercise? Again, we must apply Hygienic reasoning. Eat when you are hungry. Drink when you are thirsty. Rest when you are tired. So it would follow that you should exercise when you feel vigorous. It is a mistake to use exercise as a stimulant, to perk ourselves up through exercise when our bodies are actually calling for rest and sleep. A feeling of relative vibrancy should precede and occasion our workouts and not vice versa. If we feel languid, we should rest until our energies have been recuperated to the point that we feel like becoming active. If you happen to feel all washed out on any given day, it would be unHygienic to force yourself to exercise in spite of it. Just as we can rouse up an appetite by eating, even in the absence of hunger, so too can we rouse up a feeling of invigoration by exercise, but the latter is just as artificial as in the former. Get in tune with your body and seek always to supply your body’s needs as they fluctuate in the course of daily life. There is really no best time to exercise, just as there is no best time to eat. Some mornings I feel inclined o start running right out of bed, and I do so. Other mornings I feel no such inclination, so I postpone or cancel my usual run. Learn to live with a flexible schedule in regard to exercise, and for that matter, all aspects of Hygiene.
Can a person attain great athletic ability eating fruits, nuts and vegetables? The answer is a qualified yes. I was introduced to Hygiene by two brothers, both in their 30’s, who had been Hygienists for many years and who were excellent runners of marathon caliber. Eating Hygienically lends itself to great athletic achievement, particularly in endurance activities. A high alkalinizing diet, composed largely of fresh fruits and vegetables, enhances one’s oxidative powers and one’s ability to sustain muscular effort. On the other hand, such a diet promotes rather slender body build. I have never met a raw fooder with a “Charles Atlas” physique and doubt that I ever will. For one thing, the diet is too low in protein. Secondly, raw vegetable foods do not stimulate anabolism the way cooked foods do. Yet, lean muscularity may be closer to the biological norm for physical development than the immense size that we generally associate with classical body building. It is unlikely that human beings in a state of Nature, living on the spontaneous products of the trees in a gentle climate, would tend to massive physiques. Peoples throughout the world who are known for achieving great longevity tend, as a rule, to be rather slender. Keep in mind that I do not object to weight training or bodybuilding, but only to the excessive bulkiness that many weight lifters develop.
Many Hygienists are too thin and underdeveloped. In most cases, barring pathological causes, this is the result of an overly restrictive diet, both in regard to quantity and variety of food and to inadequate physical training. In all fairness, however, we must recognize that the paucity of outstanding athletes among Hygienists is due mostly to the paucity of Hygienists. Yet, Hygiene has not been without its talents. Among our practitioners, for example, Dr. Sidhwa is a first-rate long-distance runner. Dr. Burton is a prominent cyclist in Australia who competes regularly in grueling races. Dr. Benesh is a veteran physical culturist who, at the age of 67, engages in weight training, running and vigorous calisthenics. The last time I visited him, he said apologetically that he was running only six miles a day, but added quite candidly, “I try to take it at a fast clip.” Dr. Shelton, himself, was an outstanding weight lifter and had a rugged build that matched his personality.
What role does exercise play in the recovery of health? I believe that it plays a greater role than some Hygienists think. Unfortunately, many Hygienists are preoccupied with food and fasting. To them, life is one great cleansing. They live from one fast to the next one. Or they consume themselves in concerns over food in between. Purification becomes their greatest goal in life, elimination the ultimate purpose in living. They fail to see fasting for what it is—a temporary expedient that enables us to secure a foundation from which to build ourselves. The only contests they wish to enter are fasting marathons. They never give their bodies a chance to enter a building phase. They deny themselves, by their imbalance, the opportunity to grow, to develop a physique, to acquire great strength, speed and endurance. Instead of practicing Hygiene so as to live, they live so as to practice Hygiene—a most unHygienic endeavor. It is no wonder that such individuals remain weak, puny and pedestrian in their lives.
Among feeble children, particularly, I have found exercise to be of greatest importance in building vigor and promoting growth and development. Those with weak digestion can derive much benefit from engaging in vigorous physical workouts. The role of exercise in promoting recovery in tuberculosis, and other respiratory problems, is well known. Exercise strengthens not only our muscles, but our entire organism, including our minds. It is possible that exercise has a more profound effect upon the organism than any other single Hygienic factor.
18.2. Necessity Of Different Approaches To Nutritional Science
18.3. Understanding The Role Of Foods In Nutrition
18.6. Summary Of Criteria Relative To Goodness
18.7. Ratings Of Generally Available Foods
Article #1: Are We Vegetarians Or Fruitarians?
Article #2: Research Yields Bombshell Of A Surprise!
Article #3: Are We Meat Eaters?
The next two lessons are complementary in that both endeavor to establish, beyond refutation or doubt, all the particulars of human dietetic character. Once you’re aware of correct dietary fare you’ll be able to render one of the greatest services possible in America today! You’ll be able to teach your clients how to eat for health rather than for disease, suffering and early death, that is now so commonplace in America.
In no area of our living regimes do we transgress our biological mandate as grievously as in the matter of diet. If our correct diet is fruitarian fare, then America consumes less than 10% of its correct dietary. Since the bulk of America’s fruit is consumed by less than 25% of our populace, it should come as no surprise that there is such a great preponderance of disease amongst us.
In sallying forth into the world to bring the message of healthful living to others, you must be armed to the hilt with the knowledge to substantiate the truths you’ve learned. Moreover, you must understand the principles so well that you can readily adduce the truth for anyone who approaches you from some esoteric aspect of diet.
People are very little impressed by facts, unfortunately. Nevertheless, you should be cognizant of the facts! You should also learn emotional approaches which have a profound and abiding effect upon the client. Remember that the nature of your emotional approaches should be gentle, not hostile. Remain alert to the emotional state of your client. Help the client to remain comfortable by addressing him/her as a spectator to third party practice rather than as a guilty participant.
In the latter part of this lesson, some emotional approaches are suggested. Should you wish to impress your client with the correctness of the dietary you will guide him or her to, you might embody the emotional approach in a narrative around your own experiences with others. Most Americans have addictions to pathogenic fare, i.e., cooked and fried dishes, condiments, fermented foods, etc. Americans are “hooked” on so many abominable dietary practices that we can marvel only that they survive as well as they do.
Today’s “nutritionists” are subservient to the “basic four” food concepts. While this concept may look good on paper, it is a disaster in practice, because most of America’s health problems stem largely from its observance. According to these nutritionists, we do not have any fixed dietary as have most animals in nature. Rather, humans are considered to be some sort of omnivorous creature above all the laws of nature. Many assert we have definite carnivorous leanings. Quite a few nutrition experts have termed our incisor teeth “fangs,” in defense of the erroneous position that humans are meat eaters.
To term our incisor teeth fangs or even to liken them to Tangs is an outrage even to the most superficial observer.
Humans are well-equipped in all their anatomical features to gather fruits, but most unsuited to capture animals and rend them. Fangs and pointed teeth that penetrate and kill, rip and tear are a feature of all carnivores except birds.
Let’s put this matter of human carnivorism on a personal level. Can you picture yourself quietly stalking a rabbit and pouncing upon it? If it should slip away, can you picture yourself exploding with a blinding burst of speed that may be 30 to 50 miles per hour for the short distance needed to overtake your prey? Can you picture yourself catching the rabbit in your mouth, and then sinking your fangs deeply into its vitals, crushing and killing it? Can you picture yourself ripping the animal to shreds and swallowing it in bloody bits and chunks without thorough mastication? Can you savor the animal’s blood, guts, bones and organs? If you cannot carry out this practice with gusto and delight, you are not of a meat-eating disposition.
You must admit that we are not anatomically equipped as carnivores. You must also admit that the idea of attacking, killing and rending animals on the spot does not appeal to humans psychologically—we are not natural killers. What most of us do not realize is that we are not only psychologically but also physiologically unsuited to utilizing meat as a food.
When a natural carnivore swallows hunks of carrion unchewed, the flesh is digested in the stomach of the carnivore with ease and facility. Should we swallow large hunks of flesh without chewing, we’d digest very little of it before putrefaction set in. This putrefactive material would cause us many problems until it could be expelled from the intestinal tract. Why does a carnivore so readily digest something we can handle almost not at all?
Flesh is a proteinaceous food that is digested in an acid medium. Humans, relative to carnivores, secrete a very weak hydrochloric acid and little of the protein-splitting enzyme, pepsin. Carnivorous animals have a concentration of these flesh-digesting media 1100% greater than humans! Should a lion swallow your hand whole he would quite readily digest it. Should a human do the same thing, I leave to your imagination what would happen. Digestion is among the things that wouldn’t happen!
There are hundreds of anatomical features that we humans have which place us among frugivorous animals. We are anatomically fruit eaters. Not everyone will admit our lack of claws and fangs and possession of gentle sensitive hands suits us for fruit gathering rather than animal catching. They fail to see that our likeness to fruit-eating creatures places us in the fruit-eating camp. Most people fancy that we’re in no animal camp at all—we’re humans, gods of a special sort not heir to the principle that apply to animals. They consider us to be not animals at all—just humans!
Aspects of being that disturb most people are best not aroused or discussed. In tutoring people in the ways of health, you must often assume an experienced stance wherein you give guidance. You must exhibit a certainty about the beneficial result that will accrue from the healthful measures you teach. Thus you can adroitly steer clients to our correct dietary and related health practices by tactfully and confidently suggesting a regime that will enable them to become healthy in short order. When it comes to diet you’ll develop your own operating methods for effectively teaching it to others and inspiring them to adopt it.
Let’s return to our consideration of humans as meat-eaters. Natural meat eaters have built-in equipment with which to apprehend, capture, kill and rend their quarry. Claws and fangs are very much a part of a carnivore’s equipment. Let’s consider the human mouth. We couldn’t catch an animal in our mouth or dispatch it that way if we tried. Two witnessed dogs catch other animals many times by charging them and snapping their powerful jaws on them at a vital spot. I’ve seen these dogs sink their fangs deep into the throat of animals must larger than themselves and inflict fatal wounds. A human could not grab an animal in its mouth as does a dog, coyote, wolf or cat. Even biting a live animal with our teeth and mouth opened to the fullest would not permit for the insertion of any animal other than very small ones. And, if the animal was alive, we might have more damage inflicted upon us than we could inflict except with the brute strength of our hands and arms. On the contrary, the human mouth is excellent for biting into fruits or the insertion of fruits and chewing. Obviously we are adapted for eating small items. Lesson Seven has demonstrated that our diet naturally consists of fruits.
The anatomical features that distinguish humans from carnivores such as cats, dogs, eagles, jackals and other carnivorous animals are many. There are few features wherein we are alike. Humans are also very dissimilar to omnivorous animals such as hogs, bears, and the like. Almost everything about these animals is different from humans.
We are also very dissimilar anatomically to grass-eaters. We all know we are not grass-eaters. We reject the idea of eating grass and weeds, the natural dietary of cattle and other herbivora. It’s completely contrary to our nature to do so. Eating animal carcasses in their freshly killed or putrefied state is equally contrary to our nature. Psychologically, such actions do not appeal to us. Practically, such a way of life is impossible. We are unique as humans. Nevertheless, we are remarkably like apes in our anatomical features and our physiological processes. Apes are primarily fruit-eaters. Could it not be that we are similarly developed because of similar dietary adaptations? Do not dietary adaptations, more than anything else, determine the features and characteristics of all creatures? Are humans really an exception?
Keep in mind that our mental disposition matches our anatomical and physiological disposition. What we admire naturally (as contrary to acquired perversions) is in accord with our dietary. Our aesthetic standards attribute beauty to fruit trees, and fruit but not to dying and bleeding animals. We savor fruit and are repulsed by blood. We do not savor grass or insects.
Probing this subject narrows our natural dietary down to fruits. In ascertaining our natural dietary you must envision us in a state of nature. Cookstoves were not furnished as part of our natural equipment!
Neither were the many tools and devices we now use. We were once like the apes today—tree-dwellers who lived upon the fruit of the trees, namely fruits and nuts. We functioned totally with our natural equipment for acquiring and eating foods.
Most of the anatomical features that differentiate us from carnivores, omnivores and herbivores have little meaning to people who have been steeped in meat-eating, as most Americans have been. But it takes on meaning when we can relate it to our attitude to. meat-eating on the natural level. Most people cannot stomach the idea of eating animals in the way that natural carrion-eaters do. The idea of raw blood, offal, bones and flesh is repulsive, especially if the eater must apprehend, capture and rend the flesh.
Simple facts about our physiology may impress people who suffer the results of meat-eating. For instance, osteoporosis, which nearly 100% of Americans suffer in some form, may be due in large part to meat-eating. The body must draw base minerals from bones and teeth with which to neutralize the acid end-products of meat-eating.
One of the most telling facts is rather simple. About 5% of the flesh volume of all animals consists of waste materials that are normally eliminated by the kidneys—uric acid, a precursor to urine. Uric acid is a poison to humans, not only because it is a toxic waste product but because it is non-metabolizable.
All carnivorous animals secrete the enzyme uricase. Uricase breaks down uric acid so that it can be eliminated quite readily. Unfortunately, humans absorb uric acid when meat is eaten. The uric acid stimulates the body like caffeine or other drugs until the body neutralizes it by drawing upon alkaline reserves. In the absence of such reserves, the body draws upon bones and teeth.
What happens to the calcium urate crystals that are formed as a result of this neutralization? For the most part, the body excretes them. Inasmuch as they’re in the circulating media of blood and lymph, the body does not eliminate them with dispatch, especially in view of the enormity of the eliminative tasks of most people. Hence the body “buries” the crystals “under the rug,” that is, it shunts them aside to areas in which they do the least physiological harm. The body has a tendency to concentrate neutralized uric acid as calcium urates in the joints, lower back and the feet. These deposits lead to arthritis, bursitis, lower back pains, gout, rheumatism, etc. Once an arthritic sufferer recognizes this bodily process as the cause of his suffering, he is usually quite willing to give up meat-eating. Fasting will, in most cases, enable the body to slowly autolyze these deposits and return to normal. A proper diet will not cause such a condition in the first place nor after correction has been realized.
All transgressions of our natural diet have pathological results whether evident or not. The body functions perfectly within the context of its natural dietary and other healthful practices.
Be forewarned that many people are difficult to persuade. They will not believe you against all the dead weight of habituation and wrong practices. But our natural dietary is not a matter of belief. It is a matter of knowledge—of being armed with the truth about our dietary character. This lesson and the next will yield many nuggets with which you can arm yourself.
These classes in nutritional science will approach the subject from many interesting aspects. The aim is to make you an expert in matters of nutrition. This involves a great depth of understanding as well as knowledge. This lesson will endeavor to supply both understanding and knowledge.
In understanding the role foods play in the nutritive processes we must establish criteria for the efficiency with which we can handle different types of foods and the needs they meet. To simplify your understanding of the value different foods have, we have signed numerical ratings to the various food properties, mastering an understanding of the properties of foods that make them proper raw materials for our bodies we so easily gain the knowledge we need for nutritional expertise.
I could tell you that by weight of intake, we should eat 97% luscious ripe fruits (including tomatoes, peppers, cumbers and avocados), 1% nuts (which are also fruits) and 2% vegetables (leaves, stems and stalks). Then I could say that is all that you need to know about our dietary. In truth that statement does effectively summarize our dietary. However, you’ll still be learning about the intricacies and subtleties of diet and human nutrition long after having completed this course and having studied such conventional and unconventional literature on the subject. Nutrition is still a formative and exploratory science.
With this lesson we’re going to approach the subject in such a way that we can utilize a rating chart and determine whether a food is good or poor in the diet, and readily determine why it is a good or poor food.
Naturally these things are based very much on subjective experience. They are also based on studies and familiarity with the experience of others as well as on the infant science of nutrition.
You will not have to look very closely to see that those foods which our other lessons have pointed out as those of biological adaptation receive the very highest ratings, being, quite literally, perfect foods. The criteria which foods must meet to be beneficial in human dietary include the food’s edibility, aesthetic and physiological conditions, and nutritive factors.
Foods that contain antivital or harmful factors will be rated according to our body’s ability to deal with these factors. These factors merit minus ratings on the charts. Obviously, we eat for nutriment and not for poisons. The degree of toxicity is thus rated.
Any food must be relished by the unperverted palate in its natural, raw or living state just as Nature delivers it to us. In Nature we were developed on and thus adapted to a totally living food diet. It is imperative that we observe our adaptations. While we will consider some foods in a cooked state as notated on the listings, the rating reflects the lower nutritive values of cooked foods accordingly.
Delectability of food is also a good guide to its value in human nutrition. We must be able to eat our fill of any single food—to make a meal of the item in and of itself for its own sake—if it is to be considered a proper food in our dietary. Palatability or deliciousness is a very valid guide to a food’s fitness. Foods should be a gustatory delight. We call this quality “taste appeal.”
In considering the physiological aspects of food digestion, we must consider two factors: the ease and efficiency of digestion. Ease of digestion refers to the ease with which the body handles a given food without pathogenic factors setting in. Efficiency of digestion means how well the body system obtains its needs from a given food relative to the energy it must expend to obtain its needs. For example, the body easily processes vegetables but does not efficiently make use of their nutritive content.
The nutrient complement of the food is rated according to how well it furnishes our needs, not according only to its amount of nutrients. The nutrient complement we have considered includes all nutrients except fuel values. The nutrients considered, which are proteins, vitamins, mineral salts and essential fatty acids, are given four categories.
For the purposes of rating, each category is given equal value. I am the first to admit this is an arbitrary system. This system is not reflective of the respective values of the nutrients in any absolute sense.
There are other factors that we could consider in determining suitability of foods in human alimentation. One significant factor is the role of foods in maintaining body pH. Some foods are alkaline-forming (acid-binding) and others are acid-forming in metabolism. Acid-forming foods place a heavy burden on the body. Humans require a diet preponderately of foods that are alkaline-forming in their metabolic reaction.
Let’s review the criteria for rating the value of foods. This time we’ll append the rating values for foods based on their usefulness in the human dietary.
Water content of foods, while important, does not enter into rating value. We are not natural water drinkers. Water has a neutral value. Nevertheless, most proper foods possess water sufficient to meet our needs. Nuts, seeds and dried fruits are exceptions to this rule. All meals eaten should consist of such foods as will render them water sufficient. Our water needs are ideally supplied by our diet.
We have not given any weight to these considerations because the value of a food in the human nutritive processes is not determined by this factor. Because other factors considered herein are congruous to their goodness (alkalinity) or badness (acidity) we have let these other considerations stand.
There are many valuable nutrients in acid-forming foods, particularly in nuts. Conversely, there are many alkaline-forming foods that are of little use in the human diet. Therefore this criterion is ignored in our deliberations and ratings.
Let’s review the criteria for rating the value of foods. This time we’ll append the rating values for foods based on their usefulness in the human dietary.
ENTRY NUMBER | CONSIDERATION | RATING VALUE |
1. | TOXICITY | Minus (-)0 to 100 |
2. | EDIBILITY IN THE RAW STATE | Plus 0 to 10 |
3. | TASTE APPEAL (Deliciousness) | Plus 0 to 10 |
4. | EASE OF DIGESTION | Plus 0 to 10 |
5. | EFFICIENCY OF DIGESTION | Plus 0 to 10 |
6. | PROTEIN ADEQUACY | Plus 0 to 5 |
7. | VITAMIN ADEQUACY | Plus 0 to 5 |
8. | MINERAL SALTS ADEQUACY | Plus 0 to 5 |
9. | ESSENTIAL FATTY ACIDS | Plus 0 to 5 |
10. | FUEL VALUE | Plus 0 to 40 |
NAME OF FOOD | (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | (7) | (8) | (9) | (10) | TOTAL RATING |
ALMOND | -10 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 77 |
APPLE | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 40 | 95 |
APRICOT | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 40 | 98 |
ASPARAGUS | -20 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 13 |
AVOCADO | 0 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 93 |
BANANA | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 100 |
BARLEY (cooked) | -35 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 40 | 29 |
BEAN, Green | ,5 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 15 | 46 |
BEAN, Sprouted | -5 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 | 51 |
BEAN, Dried, Cooked | -40 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 35 | 19 |
BEET, Raw | -20 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 14 |
BEET GREENS | -40 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 0 | -13 |
BERRIES w/seeds Generally | 0 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 35 | 93 |
BRAZIL NUT | -5 | 10 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 80 |
BROCCOLI | -5 | 10 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 53 |
BRUSSELS SPROUTS | -10 | 10 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 0 | 31 |
CABBAGE, Common | -10 | 10 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 31 |
CANTALOUPE | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 40 | 98 |
CARROT | -5 | 10 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 30 | 71 |
CASHEW (Slightly heated) | -20 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 62 |
CAULIFLOWER | -5 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 15 | 53 |
CELERY | -5 | 10 | 5 | 7 | 1 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 36 |
CHARD, SWISS | -40 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 0 | -10 |
CHERIMOYA | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 40 | 98 |
CHERRY, Sweet | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 40 | 99 |
COCONUT (Hardened) | -10 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 67 |
COLLARD GREENS | -5 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 39 |
CORN, Fresh Sweet | 0 | 10 | 5 | 9 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 93 |
CUCUMBER | 0 | 10 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 50 |
DANDELION | -40 | 10 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | -2 |
DATE | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 40 | 95 |
EGGPLANT | -15 | 10 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 29 |
EGGPLANT, Steamed | -15 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 14 |
FIG | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 99 |
FIG, Dried | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 40 | 96 |
FILBERT (Hazel Nut) | -5 | 10 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 80 |
GARLIC | -80 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | -70 |
GRAPEFRUIT | 0 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 25 | 78 |
GRAPES, Generally | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 40 | 97 |
KALE | -5 | 10 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 44 |
LETTUCE, Leaf | -5 | 10 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 46 |
LETTUCE, Iceberg | -5 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 37 |
MANGO | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 40 | 97 |
MELONS (See Cantaloupe and Watermelon) | |||||||||||
MILLET, Steamed | -10 | 0 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 40 | 60 |
OKRA | -10 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 | 53 |
ONION | -60 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 10 | -32 |
ONION, Cooked | -40 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 10 | -13 |
ORANGE, Pulp | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 1.0 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 40 | 97 |
PAPAYA | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
4 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 40 | 95 |
PEA, Sweet Fresh | 0 | 10 | 7 | 9 | 1 9 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 40 | 93 |
PEACH | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 40 | 95 |
PEANUT | -30 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 42 |
PEAR | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 40 | 94 |
PECAN | 0 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 87 |
PEPITAS (Pumpkin and Squash Seeds) | 0 | 10 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 84 |
PEPPER, Sweet | 0 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 59 |
PERSIMMON | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 40 . | 97 |
PINEAPPLE | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 40 | 93 |
PLUM | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 35 | 88 |
POPCORN, Dry Popped | -20 | 0 | 5 | 8 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 40 | 48 |
POTATO, Irish | -10 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 20 | 21 |
POTATO, Irish, Steamed | -20 | 0 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 40 | 50 |
POTATO, Sweet | 0 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 78 |
RICE, Brown, Steamed | -20 | 0 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 40 | 41 |
RUTABAGA, Peeled | 0 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 25 | 63 |
SESAME SEEDS | 0 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 80 |
SPINACH, Raw | -30 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 2 |
SPROUTS (Alfalfa, Sunflower) | 0 | 9 | 5 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 50 |
SQUASH, Summer Steamed | -20 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 20 | 31 |
SQUASH, Winter Steamed | -20 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 40 | 52 |
STRAWBERRY | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 30 | 88 |
SUNFLOWER Seeds | 0 | 8 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 85 |
TANGERINE | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 40 | 94 |
TOMATO | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 20 | 94 |
TOMATO | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 20 | 79 |
TURNIP, Peeled | -10 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 20 | 44 |
TURNIP GREENS | -30 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
WALNUTS, English | -10 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 40 | 74 |
WATERMELON | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 40 | 97 |
WHEAT | -30 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 20 | 5 |
WHEAT, Cooked lightly | -40 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 40 | 26 |
BREAD, White | -60 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 40 | -5 |
EGGS, Cooked | -40 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 40 | 15 |
HONEY, RAW | -50 | 10 | 10 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 40 | 16 |
MEAT, Beef, Cooked | -60 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 15 | -36 |
MILK, Pasteurized | -40 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 40 | 14 |
SALT | -100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -100 |
SUGAR | -50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 40 | -10 |
You have given a very low rating to vegetables and even suggest that we limit our intake to about 2 to 5 %. You’ve said before we eat vegetables as insurance or protective foods. If they’re such good protective foods why not make them half of our food intake? If they really protect us, I think they’re good for a bigger share of our dietary intake.
Vegetables rate much lower since, in examining the charts, it is obvious that they lack many qualities of prime foods. Many vegetables have some toxic factors. They are not savored as are exquisite fruits. They are not digested with the ease and efficiency of fruits. They furnish us no energy at all in most cases. Some actually use more of our energy to process than we can get from them! I calculate that 90% of our eating should be involved in obtaining fuel values. The other 10% should be in association and would be proteins, fat, and minerals with vitamins and other food factors included. Foods such as vegetables fail to furnish caloric values. Nutrient insurance s all they can possibly furnish. Even in this consideration, we really don’t need them.
You equate protein with vitamins, minerals and fatty acids. Isn’t protein more important than that?
Proteins are the building stones of all living beings. They compose some part of every living cell, fruits included. Yet protein is not more important than other food factors that we ingest, neither relatively nor absolutely, infants thrive on mothers milk which is about 1.2% protein. As long as we get that amount of protein with all essential amino acids amply represented, we’re getting as much as we need.
I don’t think we need as much protein as a growing baby. If we get 1% protein from a diet that averages seven pounds of food a day we’ll be getting 32 grams of protein, though this represents about 50% less than the U.S. RDA, it is still more than a healthy body can make use of. It is wise to point out that the body is capable of meeting about 70% of its protein needs by recycling its own protein wastes. There are thriving pockets of people in the Caribbean who are superb specimens of healthy humans lat have an intake of only 15 to 20 grams of protein daily.
What should we do if a client comes to us who is overly thin and on a protein-deficient diet?
In the field of practice, you’ll have many clients that are deficient in many ways, proteins included. One person can have a well rounded diet on a single food and get all he or she needs of every food factor. Another person might subsist on a diet which supplies four or five times our protein needs but, if the diet is cooked or fed to a metabolic cripple, the protein may be largely unavailable. You will not be dealing with deficiencies, per se. In most cases where there are some body reserves you’ll advise the client to fast as long as indicated and then realiment the client on a diet of proper foods prepared and served in a manner we have taught you to observe. Your clients’ bodies are their sole remedial means. If the conditions for healing and regeneration are established, you must leave them entirely alone. Anything other than this practice will constitute interference. Protein deficiencies are not nearly as likely as other deficiencies and none of these are as likely as toxemia. Toxemia will be the condition of nearly every client you’ll get.
How do you determine which nutritive factors a client is deficient in? If most Americans are sick in some way and malnourished, how would I tell what is wrong or what the deficiency is?
In view of my previous response I think the question should be declared already answered. But I bid you, as professional health practitioners, not to get into diagnosing. You don’t have to know, in most cases, the particulars of a client’s deficiencies. These deficiencies may actually be the result of chronic toxemia that has lowered the person’s capacity for assimilation and utilization of foods. If the client is thin, start him out on a diet of easily digested fruits, especially melons, oranges, grapes and other succulent fruit fare. A mono diet of a single fruit would be in order, or at the very least, mono meals. A simple diet of proper foods will give the body some surcease and enable it to purify itself of its toxic burden and to repair damage and rebuild tissues. Don’t expect instant results or miracles, because it’s often a slow process. The client should take little food while in the eliminative state. When hunger increases, the diet should have its caloric values increased by greater intake or by more concentrated foods such as bananas, figs, dates, or raisins.
Should a client have reserves of fat, and most of your clients will be either normal or overweight, induce them to undertake a fast so the body can eject its toxic load with more facility. Then, after an appropriate period of fasting, start feeding them on a small amount of a single fruit and increase that as indicated.
You’ll learn more about these methods in our lessons on fasting as a part of nutrition. Further, you’ll learn that your response to all deficiencies, illnesses, and morbid blood and tissues will be much the same. You’ll vary your guidance and establish healthful conditions for your client in accord with his physiological circumstances. The variations will be very few. Just a few patterns will emerge that you can master thoroughly.
You’ve got a great idea about rating foods as you have. But you give some very low ratings to some good things, especially to lettuce and celery, which you praise so much. Below what rating would you refuse to eat a given food?
Keep in mind that this chart is primarily intended to appraise the value of a food in the human diet on its merits when eaten alone. There are some fine complementary foods such as lettuce and celery that may be added to other foods to achieve certain nutritional objectives. For instance, when lettuce and celery are added to an apple meal, the combination supplies needed additional protein and mineral salts. These two vegetables do not interfere significantly in the digestion of many fruits. Ideally, we should eat primarily foods of the highest rating with some secondarily-rated food. A few nuts should be eaten on occasion. The avocado is a fruit of nut-like consistency that is extraordinarily wholesome. I would say that I would refuse to eat anything rated below 30 and I would not eat higher-rated cooked items. Further, I would be cautious about eating some highly rated foods that had toxic materials in them. This especially applies to cooked foods where an inorganic mineral complement has been created, and where food derangements have taken place that will give the body digestive problems additional to those encountered in the finest foods.
I’d like to know more about the unprocessed mineralized water in vegetables. Why is this so harmful?
Our bodies cannot use inorganic minerals. The body treats inorganic minerals as poisons and utilizes its energies in trying to expel them. Whether the raw minerals come from hard water, from fresh leaves, stems and stalks or from the by-products of cooking decomposition, the body cannot use them. Instead, they create an eliminative problem. If uneliminated these minerals are likely to combine with fatty substances and harden, thus ossifying the brain and clogging arteries and veins. It is said that herbivores are short-lived because of the abundance of inorganic minerals in their food.
What do you have against spinach to rate it so low? I’d rather eat raw spinach than a cooked potato, which you rate much higher.
Spinach contains oxalic acid and unprocessed raw minerals, like all other leaves. Fruits, on the other hand, have pure water — they are finished products. Oxalic acid cannot be metabolized with any degree of facility by the body. To neutralize it, the body draws upon calcium supplies, even calcium from the bones if necessary. Oxalic acid gives a peculiar taste that is readily recognized. I know of no normal palate that can abide it. The calcium of spinach is more than offset by its oxalic acid content. Spinach is not a food you can live on. You’d have a calorie deficit with every meal of it. If a few leaves of it were added to a salad or to some starch, fat or protein meal, there is little to object to.
Dr. William Howard Hay said all diseases are the result of acid-alkaline imbalance. Why don’t you tell us which foods are acid-forming and which are acid-binding? Think how important that is if a client is suffering acidosis.
If a client suffered true acidosis he would be dead. Over-acidity is readily corrected by fasting or by a simple diet of mono fruit meals. Causes of acid-alkaline imbalance are eating foods that are predominantly acid-forming, notably cereal foods, meats, dairy and poultry products, seafood and even nuts.
Within a day or two of going on a proper diet, the acidotic condition is corrected. Celery happens to be a heavily alkaline food that helps a lot. So, too, are figs which are rich in alkaline salts. The worst thing that can happen is to use drugs or antacids. This does not solve the problem. While relief may ensue, the cause, an acid-forming diet, yet remains. Fruits and vegetables quickly establish an alkaline balance.
I’ve heard so much about how important salt is in the diet. You give it all zeros and give it a minus 100. Does this apply to sea salt or vegetable salts too?
You can readily determine just how important salt is in the diet when you see physicians in this country putting hundreds of thousands on salt-free diets. If salt were essential, no one could do without it. Salt is not digestible or usable. It stays in our bodies until we can in some way eliminate it. The body takes on extra water to hold it in suspension so it offers less harm to cells. It deserves all zeros for, in addition to rating all zeros, it has harmful effects that create disease, notably congestion, high blood pressure, edema and other conditions that earn it a big minus rating.
Sea salt is equally as poisonous as the refined variety. It is extracted from sea water and, in addition to salt, it contains other minerals that are in an inorganic and unusable state. As you perhaps know, sailors prefer death through dehydration rather than death from drinking sea water.
Vegetable salts are dehydrated vegetables that are ground up and are often mixed with additional salt. These are also unwholesome in the diet.
You gave honey a good rating in every department except nutrient content and toxicity. Why did you do this?
The bee laces its honey with several acids, some for which only the bee has enzymes for reconversion. Such acids are poisonous to bacteria and humans alike. That’s one of the bee’s ways of preserving its food supply. Those acids earn the toxicity rating even though, of its six acids, about half are metabolizable. If you tried to make a meal of honey only, you’d find it tasty and fully calorie sufficient. But you’d probably get a bellyache unlike any you’ve ever had in your life. You would probably get other problems too. Honey is very poor in nutrients right down the line. It has practically no protein, vitamins, minerals or essential fatty acids. Only the pollen that is incidentally in the honey has any appreciable amount of nutrients. Honey is, literally, sugar water the bee has obtained from flowers as its reward for performing a service. The sugars in honey are primarily levulose and fructose. The bee dehydrates and thus concentrates them. Honey is developed by bees for bees. Nature did not make us dependent upon the industriousness of bees for our sustenance.
I love turnip greens in my salad. You have given them a zero rating in the diet, which means they’re worthless. How do you come to that? There are some northern peoples, especially in Northern Europe, who practically live on turnip greens and turnips.
Turnip greens will not long sustain life. They are one of the richest green leaves in nutrients, yet they furnish no calories. Further, they contain unprocessed mineral water and mustard oil that makes them toxic in the diet. Turnips have relatively little mustard oil and are rather wholesome in the diet. They contain a complex sugar instead of starch as their fuel component. A meal can be made of turnips and relative good health will result compared to a conventional diet. Yet by no means are they an excellent food. There are many other foods that are better.
You gave oranges a nearly perfect rating. As far as I know, oranges are a high water content, low calorie food. How many oranges would you have to eat a day to live on them?
That is a most appropriate question since we have rated this as a food you could fare well on in and of itself. To illustrate this point, a Florida man lived on oranges and only on oranges without ill effect for six years. In fact he was described as being robust in health all the while. The weight of the oranges you should consume to sustain yourself would have to be about 10 pounds of peeled oranges daily. That is about 20 oranges. That would give you 2,250 calories, 45 grams of protein, 1800 milligrams of calcium, 2,250 milligrams of vitamin C, 9 grams of fats, 18 milligrams of iron—in short, a surfeit of all our needed nutrients. As a great lover of oranges I can’t consider such a diet as being unpleasant. I’ve consumed a mono diet of oranges myself for periods of up to two weeks and find them a most excellent food. I was coming off a fast at the time and gained almost ten pounds of weight on them.
How can you rate fruits so high when it is aid we can’t get enough protein, calcium or iron out of them?
I think I just indicated the falsity of your statement by citing oranges as being more than replete with the nutrient needs of life. Oranges furnish about twice our real protein needs, ten times our iron needs, about 100 times our real Vitamin C needs, and about 9 times our calcium needs. Keep in mind that the Recommended Daily Allowance is usually from 100% to 500% higher than our real needs in a healthy condition. Almost any fruit you can name, when eaten in an amount sufficient to supply your caloric needs, also supplies you amply with other nutrient needs.
That is surprising, but my question is along the same lines. Why do you give the same fuel value rating to dates and watermelons? According to my food composition handbook, a 100 gram serving of dates has 274 calories and a 100 gram portion of watermelon contains only 26 calories. How can a 90% difference end up with the same fuel value rating? Also, this same book shows turnip greens as having 28 calories per 100 gram serving, more than watermelon, yet you give turnip greens a zero fuel value rating. Can you explain these discrepancies?
There are reasons that our ratings are more or less correct despite these apparent discrepancies.
Keep in mind that water is a neutral factor in foods. If you took all the water out of watermelon, 100 grams of its residue would contain about 340 calories. This corresponds to the caloric content of 100 grams of dates without water content. Watermelon has about 13 parts water for each part of solid. Five pounds of watermelon contains about 600 calories, which is about the same as eight ounces of dates. Both would be considered ample servings.
In the summer you need more water and less calories. Watermelon fills the bill well in that regard. In the winter, you need more calories and less water. Dates are a valuable addition to the diet at that time.
Turnip greens occasion the use of more body energy in processing and expelling than can be appropriated from them. Most of their calories are in cellulose. True, they yield 28 calories of heat when burned in a firebox. Humans can’t get all of that energy out of turnip greens. Watermelon, on the other hand, is composed of simple sugars which we can make 100% use of. There is a greater than 900% energy gain over the energy expended in digestion and appropriation of watermelon.
I hope this response clears up the seeming discrepancies in our ratings chart.
How would you rate brewers yeast as a food?
I’d rate it below zero. It loses out on every count, even though it has lots of protein and nutrients. Unless disguised, brewer’s yeast is repulsive stuff. Even if disguised, it is indigestible. When we eat brewer’s yeast, bacteria decompose it resulting in the formation of gases and poisonous by-products of protein decomposition. Your urine will turn yellow within an hour of taking it, showing that it has been excreted rather than digested and used. Because it is not digested, it can furnish no nutrients. It gives, instead, drug effects which many mistake for nutrient effects. Keep your clients off this junk the brewers industry has foisted off on health seekers as a food.
Dr. Airola says that garlic is a real miracle food with great healing properties. Many other health authorities say the same thing. You classify it as very toxic from the beginning. In fact you give it ten rating points as a food and 80 demerit points as a poison! Who am I to believe, you or Dr. Airola? He’s a well known authority on nutrition and, until my introduction here, I’d never heard of you. I’ve always heard garlic is a wonderful medicinal food, not a poison. It is usually recommended as one of the first foods to add to the diets of sick people. Can you justify your stand?
I imagine Copernicus had an extremly hard time about his concept that the world was round in an age when all the authorities said it was flat and when everyone believed it was flat. But we know valuable truths arise first in the minds of a few and gradually spread to the masses.
Garlic is treasured for its drug effects, not its nutritional effects. It contains two potent poisons, mustard oil and allicin. These poisons earn garlic its minus rating.
As a food, I doubt that anyone can manage to eat a single bulb of garlic by itself. Consider garlic as a food in itself. If you tried to eat enough to obtain the fuel values you needed, presuming of course an amount of garlic was eaten to represent our caloric needs, you’d probably not survive the ordeal!
When anyone praises the medicinal value of something, they’re talking about drug effects, not nutritional effects. It is absurd to speak of anything as having healing properties. Healing is totally, exclusively and only a faculty of the organism and belongs to absolutely nothing outside of the organism. Dr. Airola is praising a drug as a food and in matters of healing, does not seem to understand physiology.
I would advise you to believe no one. Investigate matters for yourself. To believe is to be credulous. To know is to be virtuous. Learn the “nitty-gritty” of everything. Don’t rely on so-called authorities. Remember, every wrong system of the past and present had and has its authorities. Don’t trade on authority. Trade only on the truth you can ascertain.
I don’t ask you to believe me. I ask you to examine everything I say and question it just as you are now doing. Put everything to the test. You’ll betray the trust of your clients if you guide them wrongly. Learn the truth so that you may truly help them.
Isn’t it possible, in view of our knowledge of nutrients and tasty natural foods that combine well, that we can create meals far more wholesome and delicious than just any single food item? For instance, an avocado with greens and tomatoes really tastes great and gives us a complete range of our needs.
Yes, we can construct meals. The rating charts are based on the outlook that, in nature, we were adapted to certain fare and that we ate primarily or only of that fare during its season as is the case with present day animals. But the fact that we can construct well-rounded meals does not mean they are more wholesome than a single food with a high rating. The meal you suggest is an excellent one. However I would advise not to eat an oil/protein salad meal such as you suggested more often than once every other day. The body is very provident and conserving. It’s a lot wiser than our wildest imaginations can lead us to contemplate. For instance, if you’re having steamed potatoes, then the addition of such auxiliary fare as cucumbers, bell peppers, broccoli, lettuce, and celery is judicious. If you’re having nuts or avocadoes the addition of the same salad fare plus tomatoes is also justified. Our bodies usually handle vegetable fare rather easily. Yet our bodies are inefficient at getting much food value from vegetables other than a goodly part of their rich nutrient load.
Isn’t it unhealthy to eat only one food at a meal? The law of the minimum says we must get all our nutritional needs in each meal for that meat to do us good. Why not balance out every meal as recognized nutritionists recommend?
I assure you that our “recognized” nutritionists are about as far off in this matter as in the foods they’re placing their stamp of approval on in America today. I presume you’ve heard of Dr. Frederic Stare who chairs the department of nutrition at Harvard. He claims we should eat for enjoyment. He says such a practice is the healthiest thing to do, and has renamed junk foods joy foods. I hope you aren’t giving credence to these “recognized” nutritionists who’re busily engaged in selling our health down the river—for a price of course.
The balanced meal concept is based on ignorance and assumptions. The law of the minimum has nothing to do with what we eat at a given meal. I repeat that the body is immensely wise, provident and conservative. Did you know that about 95% of our iron needs can be met from recycled iron? That about 70% of our protein needs can be met from recycled proteins? That the body, contrary to what nutritionists tell you, maintains amino acid pools? That, contrary to what we’re told, it stores vitamin C in the adrenales? That the body carries about a five year supply of Vitamin B-12 and receives its supply from bacterial activity in the lower intestine just as is the case with other animals? The law of the minimum applies to the least available needed nutrient at time of synthesis.
When you recognize these factors you begin to realize that the balanced meal concept is incorrect and unnecessary. It gets us into eating protein/carbohydrate/oil and other incompatible combinations at the same meal. Instead of getting a “balanced” meal we get an indigestible mess. In fact, about half of America’s meals end up with some degree of indigestion, from mild to severe. That’s why the makers of antacids are so many and so rich that they can advertise widely on TV, radio and in other media. If we don’t digest our meals, it should be obvious we’re not going to get the nutrients we need from them either. Obviously the balanced meal concept is a fallacy.
On the other hand, the foods of our adaptation are the building blocks of balanced meals. These foods give us nutrients in proportion to our ability to handle them. Our development in nature has been built around the foods that best serve us. It might be said we adjusted so as to thrive on them. While the proteins, fats and starches as may exist in fruits are, in a sense, incompatible, they are so organized and our adaptations are so tailored that we handle them with ease and efficiency. Thereby we receive their full goodness while getting our primary need, calorie-rich carbohydrates.
If we get less than our needs of a nutrient at one meal, the body’s reserves and providence will carry us on stored past surpluses. Until another meal is indulged that again furnishes us a surfeit of that nutrient, our reserves will cc less, that’s all. We’d best eat of foods of our adaptation as do the animals in nature and worry not. That is the message you have to get across to your clients as well.
Our nutrient needs are much smaller than the world at large wants to admit. This “the more the better” philosophy has sabotaged our collective health. When we get all we need of anything, that is enough. Enough is all we need. Surpluses of proper foods eaten in the regular course will cause problems. If we overeat on wrong foods and foods incompatible with each other we compound the problem immeasurably. Because this is so often the case, it’s no wonder that America is such a sick nation! More than 80% of our ill health is attributable to dietary indiscretions. If we corrected our dietary errors alone the health of this country would improve by more than 80%. That’s because our dietary fare represents the ever-whelming burden that breaks the camel’s back of health, so to speak.
At this point in our study of the character of our natural dietary, I feel it is important to address this question: are we vegetarians or fruitarians? The true answer to this question is extremely important. Nothing could possibly contribute more to your success as a health practitioner than the mastery of the knowledge of our dietary character.
There are about twenty million people in this country who call themselves “vegetarians.” Most vegetarians fuel their bodies with what is called vegetarian fare. That is, they fancy themselves as a class of herbivores or plant eaters. We Life Scientists contend that we are not ruminants or herbivores.
Why are we delving into such a narrow-ranged inquiry? There are many amongst us, even those who call themselves Hygienists or Life Scientists, who feel that vegetable fare is proper for humans. If I felt that were true, I would not be pursuing this inquiry. Of course, that does not mean, ipso facto, that I’m right. I will nevertheless endeavor to demonstrate that vegetarian fare lacks the most fundamental requirement for human food and that it fails to meet many necessary criteria to be the basis of the human dietary.
In our life practice and those we endeavor to instill in others, we must strive for dietetic perfection. The best diet, as a component of a well-rounded health regime, will yield the greatest measure of health. From that abundant health springs the greatest joys in life. That which is good is also beautiful. That which is wholesome makes us wonderful for ourselves, for others and for society. An ideal diet is the basis for the best possible level of health. Thus this inquiry is conducted for the purpose of ascertaining what constitutes an ideal diet.
Our natural foods must necessarily appeal to ALL our relevant senses. It follows that our natural foods must delight our eyes, be of a fragrance that tantalizes our olfactory senses, and be of such titillating quality to the taste buds as to be ambrosia. Eating should always be a gustatory delight. Our development in nature was such that discomforts and unpleasantness were never a condition of life. Only when we deviate from our natural adaptations do we suffer. Hence it is a truism that our natural foods are enchanting to the eye, captivating to smell, ecstatically delicious to eat and harmonious in the body. This truism invites comparisons based on sensual involvement in the selection and consumption of foods.
When we were entirely the children of Nature, we did not have utensils or cookstoves as a part of our endowment. We had to eat our foods as we found and gathered them in nature. So the ascertainment of the value of foods is necessarily based on the condition in which foods come to us from nature, in their living or raw state, at the peak of perfection. The comparisons I am about to set forth must be valid for you only if they relate to your preferences.
Which would you prefer? The aromatic sweet flesh of a properly ripened pineapple or a head of broccoli? Would you rather have a delectable sun-ripened peach or a few raw collard greens? Would you prefer a stalk of celery or a bunch of purple concord grapes? Which entices you the most, a colorful juicy orange or spinach greens? Does a head of cabbage attract you as much as a properly ripened, brilliantly yellow and brown speckled banana? Which lures your eye most for beauty, a large red delicious apple or a freshly dug carrot? Does a basket of brussels sprouts turn your head as much as a basket of strawberries? Is the heavenly delicacy of a Cornice pear matched by anything you’ve ever eaten from the lettuce family?
If you’ve ever eaten a cherimoya, mango, mangosteen, soursop, sapodilla, fig, date, watermelon, cantaloup, honeydew or other mouthwatering delights, you know well their joys. Can you compare the eating of any single vegetable in its raw state to eating any of these heady delights? Can you not see that, in order for a food to be a natural item of human dietary, we must be capable of relishing that food eaten by itself in the raw state?
Not only must the food be a gourmet experience in its living state but our fill of it must furnish us with most if not all our nutrient needs. This is a most vital consideration.
Can you name a single vegetable that you’d ravish, as a full meal of itself in its raw state? Almost any vegetable that you can name fails in the first prerequisite of a food: it must furnish us amply of our fuel requirements. Almost every vegetable you name does not furnish us with any significant amount of caloric values. All green leaves, regardless of their calorie rating, yield us no net increase in calories. The energy of digestion and assimilation often exceed the calories obtained therefrom. Most of the calories of vegetables are bound in indigestible cellulose. Ruminants with four stomachs, true herbivores, can digest cellulose and thereby obtain fuel and nutrient values. We humans become as thin as a rail if we try to sustain ourselves on vegetable fare.
The potato, a tuber, is regarded as a vegetable. If eaten raw, it cannot be relished. Moreover, its starches cannot be utilized for two reasons. First, most of its food values are inaccessible to us because they are encapsulated in cellulose membranes. Secondly, those values which are freed quickly exhaust our supply of the starch-splitting enzyme, ptyalin (salivary amylase).
Cereal gains, which are popularly regarded as vegetables even though they are not, have the same drawbacks in digestion as does the potato. Grains occur in an edible state but a day or two in their cycles. Otherwise they’re inedible except upon heavy soaking or sprouting. Even when soaked or sprouted, every grain is deficient in one or several aspects of its nutrient complement. Most also offer digestive problems. The gluten of wheat, for instance, is indigestible. We simply don’t possess the enzymes to break it down. Wheat protein is bound as gluten. Further, most grains contain phytic acid, which we cannot handle. They bind calcium and thus rob us of that mineral salt.
An examination of every vegetable reveals it, when it stands on its own, as unsuited for human sustenance in some significant aspect or other. Fruit, on the other hand, supplies us amply with all our needs including proteins, mineral salts, vitamins, fuel and other vital food components, known and unknown.
We can relish fruits in their raw ripe state without any special preparation beyond pitting and/or peeling. I know of very few vegetables that would even begin to furnish our needs amply that we can make a meal of, even if we did relish them. Turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, fresh sweet corn, sprouted legumes and fresh sweet peas (where starch has not set) would be some of the near exceptions.
Without cookery and condiments most vegetables are unappealing. We must jazz up their lack of taste appeal with stimulating herbs or unwholesome flavorings, fats, seasonings, etc. We must deceive our senses in order to consume vegetables. Condiments and cooking are very destructive to our health.
Most vegetarians eat fruits, even a preponderance of fruits, yet call themselves vegetarians. Many vegetarians consume fish, milk and dairy products and eggs and still fancy themselves vegetarians. Of course these products are not even vegetables. Vegetables are plants. But the seeds of plants, the legumes, the grains, certain fruits such as cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are regarded as vegetables though technically they are not.
Not all fruits meet the proper criteria as food for humans. Nuts and avocados are suitable as food but we could not sustain ourselves on them whereas we can sustain ourselves indefinitely on grapes, bananas, oranges, figs, dates and many other fruits. We’d never make it on fruits such as cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and squash any more so than we can make it on cabbage or celery.
A good indication of what our natural foods are can be determined by the natural preferences of a child that has been fed nothing but its mother’s milk. Does it like cereals or bananas? Apples or cabbage? What will a child go for if let to choose its own food? In my experience such a child always has chosen fruits. When served vegetables, my child found them a chore to eat, though he ate them to some extent.
We have considered vegetables and fruits based on aesthetic appeal and fuel requirements. There are other touchstones for consideration which we shall now explore. Humans are classed as frugivora or frugivores or fruit eaters because of their anatomy, their primate character, their digestive faculties, their psychological disposition and their background in nature. Research has shown that we had an arboreal past—that we were once tree dwellers. At that time we depended upon the products of tree, and later upon the fruits of stalk and vine, for our sustenance.
For example, Dr. Alan Walker, an anthropologist of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, has done research that shows that humans were once exclusively fruit eaters. By careful examination of fossil teeth and fossilized remains of humans with the aid of electron microscopes and other sophisticated tools, Dr. Walker and other researchers are absolutely certain that our ancestors, up to a point in relatively recent history, were total fruitarians. These findings were reported in depth in the May 15, 1979 issue of the New York Times.
These findings complement other findings and verify the consistent scientific classification of humans as frugivora.
Creatures that live in accord with their biological heritage do not develop disease. They live out their normal life spans and die natural deaths. Humans have by and large strayed from their natural dietary and for that reason suffer disease and early death. Humans who undertake to live on their natural dietary and observe other modalities of healthful living also live unto a ripe old age and die a natural death. Although it is a rarity, people who touch base with life’s requisites have lived well past 100. In Hunza such a lifespan is a rule rather than the exception, even though their dietary is far from ideal.
Green leaves and stalks contain a greater concentration of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients than fruits. But they also contain, in most cases, compounds we cannot handle well. Lettuce contains minute amounts of a poison called lactucarium, which is a soporific. It is contained in a milk-like substance, just as in the poppy. Large amounts of lactucarium can be gathered and converted to substances resembling opium and heroin.
Celery has bitter properties in the leaves which make them repulsive to the normal palate. Anything that disagrees with our taste buds has, ipso facto, been rejected at that point. That is not to say, on the other side of the ledger, that a pleasant taste is the sole criteria by which to select foods, even with foods as they occur in nature, our taste is the surest guide we have if our taste buds are unperverted.
I deeply believe that we can add certain vegetables to our diet in small quantities with some benefit, most notably lettuce and celery. Their wealth of vitamins and mineral salts as well as their high quality protein amply supplement and insure adequacy of a fruitarian diet. Our bodies handle small amounts of such vegetable fare rather efficiently and without protest. In conjunction with a vegetable meal certain fruits can also be added, especially bell peppers, tomatoes and avocados. Secondarily we can add nuts on occasion or seeds such as pumpkin, sesame id sunflower. These seeds have the same dietetic character as nuts even though humans probably never ate them in nature.
It is well to always keep in mind that we are not naturally herbivores, graminivores, carnivores, insectivores or omnivores. Neither are we oil, protein or starch eaters except incidentally. Our protein needs are met amply from fruits but the occasional addition of nuts, seeds and greens insures dietary protein adequacy. However, we do not handle concentrated foods containing oil, proteins and arches with any great degree of efficiency. They are best eaten infrequently, perhaps two or three times weekly as Proteins require about 70% as much energy to digest and assimilate as they furnish whereas sweet fruits are so efficiently handled that the body is able to utilize over 90% of their caloric energy after deducting energies expended in ingestion and assimilation. Moreover, proteins are not used for energy as long as carbohydrates and fats are available.
That to which we are physiologically adapted is also most effectively and efficiently utilized. Vegetables, I repeat, yield us no calories as a rule though we do obtain from them a plethora of nutrients. Even so, fresh ripe raw fruits furnish us amply of our needs including proteins, vitamins and mineral salts. Even our very small need for essential fatty acids is well met by fruits. When we meet our requirements, that’s enough. Enough is all we need. Oversubscription can be like overloading a truck or a mule—it is very taxing and damaging.
Though vegetables are not natural to our dietary I must reiterate this observation: Not all vegetables are bad in our diet for they are consonant with our needs. On the same order, not all fruits are good for us. Many fruits are poisonous. Some, though not poisonous, are not handled well, such as oily fruits like Brazil nuts and pecans, high protein and fat content nuts and seeds such as almonds and sunflower, and starchy fruits such as pumpkins and chestnuts.
No natural food in the world rivals fruits for exquisiteness and wholesomeness. Inasmuch as tables of composition of foods show fruits replete with our needs, and inasmuch as we can more efficiently make use of the nutrients of fruits than any vegetable, legume or grain, we can safely confine ourselves to completely fruitarian fare with great benefit.
While the condition and quality of fruits available in our marketplaces are lamentable, the same goes for everything else sold as foods! So we are still better off with fruits. Some fine quality fruits can be obtained and we should concentrate upon those. Dried fruits have considerable goodness too. We should complement our fruit meals with some dried fruits, especially if we’re in need of high caloric intake.
I believe the points made herein support overwhelmingly that we are fruitarians. Thus I rest my case.
THE CARNIVORA | THE OMNIVORA | THE HERBIVORA | THE ANTHROPOID APES | MAN |
Zonary placenta | Placenta non-acciduate | Placenta non-deciduate | Discoidal placenta | Discoidal placenta |
Four Footed | Four Footed | Four footed | Two hands and two feet | Two hands and two feet |
Have claws | Have hoofs | Have hoofs (cloven) | Flat nails | Flat nails |
Go on all fours | Go on all fours | Go on all fours | Walks upright | Walks upright |
Have tails | Have tails | Have tails | Without tails | Without tails |
Eyes look sideways | Eyes look sideways | Eyes look sideways | Eyes look forward | Eyes look forward |
Skin without pores | Skin with pores | Skin with pores (save with pachyderms as the elephant | Millions of pores | Millions of pores |
Slightly developed incisor teeth | Very well-developed incisor teeth | Well-developed incisor teeth | Well-developed incisor teeth | |
Pointed molar teeth | Molar teeth in folds | Blunt molar teeth | Blunt molar teeth | |
*Dental formula 5 to 8.1.6.1.5 to 8 5 to 8.1.6.1.5 to 8 |
Dental formula 8.1.2 to 3.1.8 8.1.2 to 3.1.8 |
Dental formula 6.0.0.0.6 6.1.6.1.6 |
Dental formula 5.1.4.1.5. 5.1.4.1.5. |
Dental formula 5.1.4.1.5 5.1.4.1.5 |
Small salivary glands | Well-developed salivary glands | Well-developed salivary glands | Well-developed salivary glands | Well-developed salivary glands |
Acid reaction of saliva and urine | Saliva and urine acid | Alkaline reaction, saliva and urine | Alkaline reaction, saliva and urine | Alkaline reaction of saliva and urine |
Rasping tongue | Smooth tongue | Smooth tongue | Smooth tongue | Smooth tongue |
Teats on abdomen | Teats on abdomen | Teats on abdomen | Miammary glands on breast | Mammary glands on breast |
Stomach simple and roundish | Stomach simple and roundish large cul-de-sac | A stomach in three compartments (in camel and some ruminents four) | Stomach with duodenum (as second stomach) | Stomach with duodenum (as second stomach) |
Intestinal canal 3 times length of the body | Intestinal canal 10 times length of the body | Length of intestinal canal varies according to species, but is usually 10 times longer than body | Intestinal canal 12 times length of the body | Intestinal canal 12 times length-of the body |
Colon Smooth | Intestinal canal smooth and convoluted | Intestinal canal smooth and convoluted | Colon convoluted | Colon convoluted |
Lives on flesh | Lives on flesh, carrion and plants | Lives on grass, herbs and plants | Lives on fruit and nuts | Lives on fruit and nuts |
*The figures in the center represent the number of incisors upon each side
The prestigious New York Times newspaper, in its May 5th issue, surprised your editor more by printing an article than the surprise they express by the findings revealed.
The gist of this article is some research done by an Anthropologist, Dr. Alan Walker of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
Dr. Walker has come to the startling conclusion that early humans were fruit eaters—not just fruit eaters but exclusively and only fruit eaters—eaters of nothing but fruit. This comes as quite a bombshell from a noted publication that has a vested interest in a heavy meat-eating society.
By careful examination of fossil teeth and fossilized remains of humans with the aid of electron microscopes and other sophisticated tools, Dr. Walker and other researchers are absolutely certain that our ancestors, up to a point in relatively recent history, were fruitarians.
Hygienists are not necessarily fruitarians but all will tell you that humans are, by physiology and anatomy, Frugivores. A cursory study of biology will reveal this, even if written by meat-eating professors, which most of our Biologists are.
The scope of the article is rather far flung. They trace humans through history as expanding to herbiage and nuts and, finally, to meat as a full-fledged omnivore.
But the essence of the article is that, though we undertook omnivorous eating practices, our anatomy and physiology have not changed—we remain biologically a species of fruit eaters.
Our dietetic character is established by our disposition toward fruits. Our natural diet has great eye and taste appeal. It passes from the stomach in digestible form in from 10 minutes to 30 minutes after ingestion.
Contrast this with concentrated fat and protein foods which take three to five hours to pass out of the stomach.
We do not have the four stomachs that herbivores usually have. This rules out most herbiage.
We have only one starch-splitting enzyme versus a multitude of them in omnivores and starch-eating animals. Our ptyalin is very limited. This rules us out as starch-eaters which includes grains or cereals. We are not graminivores.
Neither are we carnivores. It is repugnant to our thoughts to kill and eat an animal while it is yet warm and bloody, to eat its brains, heart, offal and blood as true carnivores do. True carnivores do not chew meat—they have in their digestive tracts a hydrochloric acid so concentrated, about 1100% more so than ours, that it will digest the flesh from our hands if they swallowed them. But our acids are so weak we digest meat poorly even if we chew it thoroughly. Even then we cannot handle uric acid except at great expense to our vitality and well-being. Cholesterol plays havoc with our circulatory system. So don’t think we’re natural meat-eaters. We’re suffering very dearly for our dietary indiscretions—America has more sick people than any country in the world.
Can you imagine the dismay with which our meat and dairy industry not to mention our extensive junk food industry will view such damaging propaganda? Can you not see how many advertisers will have second thoughts about placing advertising in the New York Times?
Well, it doesn’t quite work like that. The junk food advertising in the New York Times amounts to about nil. It is a newspaper that “prints all the news that’s fit to print.” It serves a cultured, aware audience.
But one of the surprising things that came out of this article is its attribution of the harmfulness of our shift from our natural diet of fruits to other items of food that range from eggs and insects to milk and meats.
I have checked with many Life Scientists in other areas of the country. Not one has seen nary a mention of these universally significant findings. I’ve examined our local papers. You’d never know about it. After all, our local papers serve the industries that a general knowledge and observance of these findings would destroy outright.
Most Hygienists/Life Scientists do not make sweet fruits their primary item of diet. Few do. Your editor’s diet has been only 70% to 80% fruitarian, perhaps more if you consider nuts, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, avocados, eggplants, and other such items as fruits, which they are. Then your editor’s diet might be considered about 95% fruitarian with the balance being the green leaves and stalks of lettuce, celery, kale, collards, Chinese cabbage, sprouts, broccoli and cauliflowers.
Actually we all naturally have a “sweet tooth” and it is with reference to fruit-eating that we are frugivores.
When I was a youngster I was accused of wanting to eat only desserts and leaving the good substantial food to waste. Now I’m sort of intrigued by all-dessert meals in fact I eat so many of them now I sometimes go days with nothing but. Now that the melon season is upon us plus all the other goodies, I’m afraid my vegetable and nonsweet fruit eating are going to take a back seat. In the mulberry season your editor ate only mulberries for two or three days running on several occasions.
The salutary truths contained in these findings will be hedged by most who learn of it. It will be said that fruits do not supply us with sufficient proteins or nutrients or no longer do. Much will be said but this does not negate the truth. It will all be in defense of wrong learning and wrong notions. Even many Hygienists/Life Scientists will pooh-pooh an all-fruit diet.
If you don’t go along with an all fruit diet, then why not add some greens, sprouts, nuts and seeds? But you should make your diet of mostly fruit. You’ll attain to a high state of health, mental well-being and functional vigor. If you eat a salad every second and third day with a protein, that’s often enough to assure more than adequate nutriment.
Almost any argument can be effectively destroyed on the emotional level. When you invoke a picture of realism in the presentation of argument it will either build or destroy your argument. The truth should win out regardless of what side of an argument you’re on.
Hygienists have often been taunted with “I don’t want any of your rabbit food.” An emotional rejoinder that leaves them agag is “I’d prefer it to your buzzard food.”
Some folks will tell you humans are meat-eaters and that they personally are meat-eaters. Of course they’re not true carnivores. You can create revulsion in them for meat-eating by simply telling them: “When you can take a live rabbit and crush its head in your mouth, start chewing it up and eat it, hair, skin, bones, brain, gristle, guts and all, then you can tell me you’re a meat-eater. Until you can do that with relish, get off your phony argument.” That will really floor them.
Another sure argument that will floor your detractors or intellectual protagonists is to ask some pertinent but innocent question. You might ask your meat-eating argumentative friend if he or she secretes uricase. Of course few will know what you’re talking about. “Uricase? What’s that?” they may ask. You counter, “You don’t know what uricase is and you’re telling me you’re a meat-eater? Uricase is an enzyme that is secreted in the intestinal tract of all carnivorous animals! Humans do not secrete this enzyme. Thus, when humans eat meat they cannot break down toxic uric acid. When uric acid is absorbed it creates havoc in the body. To neutralize uric acid the body must draw upon its reserves of valuable alkaline minerals, especially calcium.” Because grain and meat-eating humans have a predominantly acid-forming diet, the body must oftentimes get the necessary base minerals from its bones to neutralize the acids. The resulting calcium urates cause kidney stones, accretions in the joints that result in arthritis and, in all events, osteoporosis of both bones and teeth.
You can thoughtfully adduce many arguments when you are “homed in” on the criteria for our natural diet. For instance, you might ask your detractor to picture a three year old child in a playpen. Into the pen we place a rabbit and an apple. Will the child be hostile to the rabbit, kill and eat it and play with the apple? Or will the child eat the apple, and befriend and play with the rabbit?
It is said there is no winning an argument. “Convinced against his will a man remains of the same opinion still.” But, if there are spectators who observe out of interest, the arguments are telling. When eating meat in the future it will be difficult for him or her to eat it without conjuring up the picture of blood, offal, bones, hair, etc.
America’s dairy industry has no intention of letting Americans become weaned. We are to remain sucklings all our life.
One of the most telling arguments against milk drinking is to elucidate the realities of milk-drinking. Consider the following statements. Milk would be much fresher and more wholesome if taken directly from the teat of the cow as it is done in nature by calves. The fact that a person suckles vicariously does not make it suckling any the less. It’s no different than paying someone to kill your animals for you. When you pay the butcher you pay everyone—and you’re a killer by proxy just as much as someone is who buys a contract for someone else’s death.
Should anyone argue seriously that milk is the one perfect food you can agree with them that this is true—for a calf. Then you might inquire if their bodies secrete rennin and lactase. These enzymes respectively break down the casein of milk, the calcium/protein component and lactose, the milk sugar. Humans normally cease to secrete these enzymes at about age three, and thereafter can no longer handle milk. It’s no accident that our number one “allergy” is milk. The body properly objects to substances it cannot use for food.
Yes, milk may be the one most perfect food but that does us no good if we can’t digest and use it. Further, when our bacterial flora decompose it, fermenting part and putrefying part, the by-products of decomposition will cause many problems we didn’t bargain for.
Grains are grass seeds. The grains of today are rather tall, but they’re huge compared to the seeds from which they’re developed. Grains have been cultivated and eaten humans for only about 8,000 years.
In nature we did not eat grains or grass seeds. We did not develop any gathering or digestive equipment for grains. Natural grain eaters must be able to efficiently gather, grind and digest grains. Humans fail on all counts. Our teeth handle grains poorly. In fact, humans refuse to chew tasteless and hard grains. Even so, humans, not being starch eaters, cannot digest more than a handful of grains, if that much. True starch eaters secrete a plethora of starch-splitting enzymes in copious amounts. Humans secrete one starch-splitting enzyme, salivary amylase (ptyalin) which is quickly exhausted. After a mouthful or two of starch, the eater palls and stops.
Nope, we’re not grain eaters. The way we do eat grains by mechanical gathering, refining, cooking, etc. makes them palatable but more pathogenic.
19.1. Humans Developed To Their Hight State Entirely On Fruits
19.2. Fruits Still Best Meet Our Needs Despite Their Present Lower Quality
19.3. Some Charges Made Against Fruits And Fruit Eaters
Article #1: Fruit Eating By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #2: Fruit: Best Food Of All by William L. Esser
Article #3: Proteins In The Fruitarian Diet By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
19.1.1 The Evidence of Paleontology
19.1.2 The Evidence of Anthropology
19.1.3 The Evidence of Archaeology
19.1.4 The Evidence of History
19.1.5 The Evidence of Legends and Traditions
19.1.6 The Evidence of Anatomy
Humans declare themselves to be the highest form of animal life. Paleontology teaches that hominid forms of life appeared on Earth some sixty million years ago. Distinct human forms have been identified from fossil finds dating back about four million years. Pre-hominid beings were insect eaters but, as some types of pre-hominids took to the trees, they gradually became fruit eaters.
Fruit eaters, proving quite harmonious to the needs of fruit-bearing trees, stimulated the growth of better and more nutritious fruits. Evolving trees developed the bearing of fruits as a viable way of existence.
The interplay between fruit-eating animals and fruit-bearing trees begot an ever greater profusion and variety of fruits. Myriads of different fruits were developed to attract fruit eaters. In this symbiotic relationship, trees grew fruits as foods for animals in exchange for a service—the service of seed distribution, thus insuring survival of kind.
On the other hand fruits proved such wonderful fare for fruit eaters that they became the raw materials for superior growth and endowment. Our ancestors of sixty million years ago weighed just a few pounds. They thrived so well on the fruit diet that they became too heavy for tree life. These precocious developers were called primates. The brains of certain branches of primate life, notably those branches which became humans, developed rapidly and became quite large relative to other forms of life.
Let us examine how this symbiosis between humans and fruit trees created the superb creatures which we regard ourselves as being.
Paleontology is that branch of science which deals with fossil remains. Inasmuch as our objective is to establish that fruits are our natural fare and that we thrive best on an all-fruit diet, we’ll refer to fossil evidence that particularly affirms our adaptation to fruit.
Dr. Alan Walker of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland examined the fossil remains of humans. After making detailed examinations, especially of the teeth, he concluded that humans were exclusively and only fruit eaters. Walker’s examinations were detailed in the May 15, 1979 issue of The New York Times. His findings came like a bombshell into our culture, where fruits are relatively sparse in the diet.
Anthropology is the study of humans. The study of anthropology involves the origin and development of humans in cultural, social, physical and racial aspects.
Anthropologists have established that human culture, social organization and body adaptations arose from a background in nature as a fruit-feeding animal. Humans, like their primate and simian cousins in nature, are clannish in social organization. Most of their acculturization involves the beauty of their natural foods, fruits, and the trees which produce them. Physically, humans developed on fruits just as our simian and other primate relatives in nature. In consequence anthropologists and biologists have classified humans as frugivores or fruit eaters.
Archaeology concerns itself with the artifacts of past peoples and civilizations. Archaeology also confirms our fruit growing and consuming past. Archaeological finds show that we’ve been heavy eaters of fruit from remotest antiquity. On the other hand, we’ve eaten grains only for the past six to ten thousand years. Our meat-eating past as civilized peoples has been limited to recent times and has usually been confined to those peoples living in the far North. Most of the world’s peoples still consume little or no meat. Grains have become a practically universal diet, though there are pockets of tuber, legume and fruit eaters.
Throughout Europe the mounds and great stones attest to fruit cultivation. Much pottery from ancient times has upon it inscriptions and drawings of fruit. Fruit-gathering and storing vessels are found over much of civilized earth. The records left by our ancestors attest to the great role fruits played in our dietary.
Much of our recorded history was destroyed during the destruction of the great libraries of Alexandria and Carthage. What remains tells us of great gardens and orchards. Herodotus, the Greek historian, records that Greeks were heavy eaters of olives, figs, dates, grapes, apples, oranges and other fare. This noted historian wrote: “The oldest inhabitants of Greece, the Pelasgians, who came before the Dorian, Ionian and Elian migrations, inhabited Arcadia and Thessaly, possessing the islands of Lesbos and Lakemanas, which were full of orange groves. The people with their diet of dates and oranges lived on an average of more than 200 years.”
Another Greek, the poet Hesiod, said, “The Pelasgians and the people who came after them in Greece, ate fruits of the virgin forest and blackberries from the fields.” Plutarch, the Greek biographer, observed: “The ancient Greeks, before the time of Lycurgus, ate nothing but fruits.”
Pythagoras, one of the wisest of the ancient sages, is credited with being the father of mathematics, modern astronomy, philosophy and other sciences, and was perhaps the greatest, of all Greeks. His fare was almost entirely fruits. He left his mark on the world as no other man before him did. He was the author of the philosophy of the Essenians from whence originated many of the principles of Christianity as we know it.
Much of our history indicates that our ancestors were fruitarian. But, history books today omit or falsify our past and our fruit-eating nature. Biology and physiology books are also so altered. Even such a simple word as frugivore has been omitted from most current dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Much of organized religion had its origins in sun and tree worshiping societies. Apollo is a god of the apple tree. His name means apple. Avalon means the fabled island of apples. The Garden of Eden was an orchard. Its walls corresponded with the ancient “para desa” or walled orchards. These walls kept the orchards intact from animals and retained the day’s heat to protect against the night’s chill.
The most fabled land of fruits was Java. After this land was named, Japan, Hawaii and many other countries paid homage to Java as their homeland. Israel was once the land of Yahveh (YHVH), which may be pronounced the same as Java. Such names as valhalla (originally avalhalla) merely means “apple hole” or a place for apple storage. Many places throughout Europe as well as many of the pagan deities have names that correspond with Java and the names of fruits.
Henry Bailey Stevens has created an excellent book, The Recovery of Culture, which gives evidence of our fruitarian past as found in lingering legends and beliefs. Sir James G. Fraser’s The Golden Bough is the most thoroughgoing publication ever on the origins of deities, beliefs and rituals. A reading of The Golden Bough will quickly reveal that most systems of reverence were built around climate, the sun, trees and the fruits they produced.
What we are is attested to by our anatomical makeup. Our physical character has been determined by our arboreal past.
Fruitarians of the mammalian primate order have revolving joints in their shoulder, wrist and elbow joints. These allow for free movement in all directions. They have hands and fingers with apposable first digits (thumb) for grasping and gathering the product of trees. Fruit gatherers and tree dwellers have stereoscopic binocular vision. This makes possible vision that is precise in its ascertainment of positions of limbs and objects. Frugivores developed larger brains than their animal counterparts. All have only two mammary glands and usually have only one offspring per pregnancy. The teeth of humans are identical in almost every respect to our anthropoid relatives in number, kind and usage. We do not here intend to prove the biological relationship of our simian relatives. We only wish to prove that our teeth are practically identical to acknowledged frugivora.
Anatomically, humans are in most particulars unlike herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Every organ and system differs radically because each is suited to the animal’s respective modes of food acquisition, eating and digestion.
The structures of humans attest them to be in every respect fruitarians. This fact is irrevocably confirmed by the functions of the human body. Every alimentary function is geared to a fruitarian dietary.
In keeping with other frugivora, human saliva is alkaline. An alkaline environment of the mouth and, consequently, the stomach, is chemically necessary to handle starches which are sometimes incidental to fruits. Further, it initiates the neutralization of the acids of many fruits.
In contrast, the saliva of meat-eating animals is of an extremely acid character. Proteins such as those found in meats require an acid medium for their digestion. The high acidity of the saliva of carnivora greatly assists in dissolving and digesting flesh with almost no mastication.
The natural food of humans is readily absorbed without any digestion other than the proteins, fats and starches incidentally it. The simple sugars of fruit undergo no change in the stomach or duodenum, being absorbed directly as fructose and glucose as it exists in fruits.
The fare that is recommended by conventional nutritionists is classified into the “basic four food groups.” The foods listed under the “basic four” present nearly impossible digestive tasks to the body, especially when combined into a single meal as advocated. Over 50% of the meals eaten in America result in indigestion. The cause for this indigestion is the eating of wrong foods wrongly combined.
Even if eaten alone, legumes result in digestive problems. We are not physiologically equipped to handle the heavy concentration and combinations of fat, starch and protein found in legumes.
Indigestion and gas result from the eating of legumes, especially if they’re eaten with foods other than green leaves, stalks and stems.
Even if eaten alone, meats will digest poorly and invariably undergo putrefaction to some extent before absorption. Even if eaten alone, grains and starchy foods stress the human digestive faculties.
Inordinate amounts of mechanical, chemical and nerve energy are required for the digestion of grains, whether eaten raw or cooked.
Physiologically, meats furnish us practically nothing except amino acids. Almost no energy is derived from flesh when man eats it. The amino acids of proteins will be broken down for energy only in the absence of carbohydrates and fats, which are our primary sources of energy. Hence, ingestion of protein foods beyond our small need of 20 to 30 grams daily is without justification and in practice is generative of pathological by-products.
Foods other than those of our biological adaptation usually have some indigestible components that make them toxic in the human body. For instance, milk is pathogenic to humans. We do not have the enzymes rennin and lactase to break down casein and lactose respectively. Wheat is pathogenic because we do not have enzymes to break down phytic acid and gluten. Other grains are similary pathogenic. Vegetables often have toxic substances, notably oxalic acid, mustard oil, allicin, aloin, glycosides, toxic alkaloids, etc.
When we consider human physiology, we must do so within the context of nature rather than in the environment of modern acculturization. Thus, we must consider foods that we would have eaten raw in the natural state in our pristine environment as being consonant with our physiological faculties. All the evidence points to fruits as being the food of our adaptation. The evidence points to nothing else—no insects, no grass, no grain, no leaves, stems or stalks, no animals, no tubers or roots and not even any nuts! The most conclusive evidence submitted has stated that we were exclusively and only fruit eaters.
Humans secrete a paucity of enzymes as compared with meat-eaters, omnivora, starch-eaters, etc. We secrete a very weak solution of hydrochloric acid necessary for meat eaters. We secrete very little of only one starch-splitting enzyme, amylase (ptyalin). And our ability to digest fats is also very poor. We have the ability to efficiently handle only one type of food—foods comprised of monosaccharides or simple sugars. Only fruits meet this requirement.
Fruits are said to be “cleansing” foods. The fruits do, not, of themselves, cleanse the body. The ascription is earned because the body handles fruits so efficiently it can redirect much of the energy that had been expended on wrong foods to the tasks of extraordinary elimination. Further, raw fruits or their juices do not leave any toxic substances in the body.
Fruits are our ideal food and the only foods capable of meeting our physiological capabilities in every respect.
Of all the areas that have been explored as to our dietetic character, this aspect of our being has received scant attention. Fortunately, our psychological disposition has not changed with respect to our dietary nature, just as our physiology and anatomy are the same today as they were millions of years ago.
Imagine yourself in a state of nature today without tools, without any ability to make a fire—with only the resources of your natural equipment in a very food-rich environment. Let us say that, in your immediate area, there are open spaces and trees. Let us presume that a substantial number of these trees bear fruits and nuts. Let us presume that in the open spaces grow grass, tubers and weeds. Let us further presume that the environment has a prolific fauna of birds, rabbits, squirrels, hogs, deer and other creatures.
Picture yourself in this environment. Can you imagine for a moment that you would delight in the capture of a deer with your bare hands under the speed you could develop by running or by surprising the deer and pouncing upon it, then sinking your “fangs” into it and dispatching it by a fatal bite to its jugular vein, heart or other organ? Would you relish a bloody face and body while you feasted upon flesh, offal, bones, blood and organs? Would this delight your palate, or does the very idea repulse you?
Can you imagine gathering the miniscule seeds of grass for hours on end for sufficient calories to meet your bodily needs? And then more hours of laborious chewing a few hard grains at a time to ensalivate and comminute them preparatory to digestion?
Can you imagine digging tubers and eating them as tuber eaters do? Unwashed—with soil and tuber too. With your snout, you’d unearth the tubers and quickly dispatch them, digesting them readily with copious quantities of the four to six starch-splitting enzymes that true starch eaters have. Do you relish this, or does the very idea repulse you?
Do you think you’d relish weed eating? Do you think you could get your requirements from these precursors to today’s vegetables?
Or would you warm to the idea of taking ripened bananas directly from the stalk? Of plucking ripe figs and mouthing them in the tree’s shade? Of breaking open luscious melons and eating their sweet succulent nectar?
Just think what appeals to you most and what is most repulsive to you. You can readily determine, from your own feelings, our psychological disposition toward improper and proper foods when you consider them and your relationship to them in a totally natural context.
If you see a squirrel, is it your natural disposition to snatch and eat it, or to be kind to it? Do you have the heart to try and kill the charming little creature? Does anyone who has yet within him/herself a streak of humanity have the nerve to do that?
The world has become very much perverted. People actually do relish the sight of packages of beefsteak, chicken legs and breasts and other prepared and embalmed carrion.
Despite these perversions, it is the rare person that does not look with favor upon watermelons, cantaloupes, pineapples, strawberries and other fruits. Despite their eating perversions, most peoples’ palates are easily won back to fruits by taking them through a fast and then realimenting them on fruit fare. Fruits are not only our best foods, they are our only biologically-mandated foods.
19.2.1 Tables of Composition of Fruits Compared to our Recommended Daily Allowances
We often hear the cry today that we cannot subsist on fruitarian or fruitarian/vegetarian fare today because of the lowered quality of this type of foodstuff due to artificial fertilizers and pesticides, among other things. This argument is quickly disposed of in two ways. First, whatever may be said against this kind of fare on this account usually goes double for the fare the eater is partaking of in its stead. Secondly, one may cite the actual components of fruits and demonstrate in a most convincing way that fruits contain all our needs in the quantities determined to be essential in the human dietary.
In support of this lesson’s message we are happy to introduce you to the composition of some of our most common fruits. So that this comparison will have meaning for you, we have chosen 1 1/2 lbs. dry weight as the given amount of each food. This amount of food yields, in the case of fruits, about 2,400 calories, more than enough to sustain a very active healthy person even though less than the RDA. Fruit yields far more calories than conventional foods.
The average American eats about seven pounds of food a day. More than 40% of this caloric intake is in the form of fats. The average American has a caloric intake of 3,380 calories per day. We have listed the RDA for various food components as well as our actual needs as determined by realistic norms for fruit-eaters and in light of RDA’s of other countries.
It must be distinctly understood that the RDA’s listed are for a 150-pound man and that the needs of women and children will vary from this. Heavier men will usually require more than the RDA’s listed.
This table of food composition has numbers assigned at the headings. Following is the legend for those numbers.
Food | Wt. Lbs. | Cal. | Pro | Vit.A | B-1 | B-2 | Nia. | Vit C | 10 Calcium | 11 Mag. | Pho | Pot | Iron |
RDA, 150 lb Man (moderately active) | — | 2,700 | 70 | 3330 | 1.4 | 1.6 | 15 | 60 | 800 | 300 | 800 | 3000 | 10 |
Actual Needs | — | 1800 to 2,250 | 25 | 1,500 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 6 | 25 | 200 | 100 | 200 | 1,500 | 5 |
One-year Infant Needs |
— | 1,000 | 15 | 1,000 | .4 | .6 | 6 | 25 | 150 | 100 | 200 | 700 | 2 |
Human Milk | 3 | 1,050 | 15 | 4000 | .5 | .8 | 8” | .60 | 450 | 150 | 190 | 700 | 1.5 |
Apple | 9.5 | 2520 | 9 | 4050 | 1.4 | .9 | .5 | 315 | 315 | 280 | 450 | 4900 | 13 |
Apricot | 10 | 2350 | 46 | 124,000 | 1.4 | 1.8 | 2.7 | 460 | 782 | 550 | 1060 | 12926 | 23 |
Avocado | 5 1/2 | 4450 | 56 | 7550 | 2.8 | 5.0 | 40 | 360 | 260 | 1170 | 1100 | 15700 | 15 |
Banana | 6 | 2380 | 31 | 5300 | 1.4 | 1.6 | 19 | 280 | 224 | 924 | 726 | 10460 | 20 |
Cantaloupe | 17 | 2310 | 54 | 261,800 | 3.2 | 2.4 | 48 | 2540 | 1078 | 1232 | 1232 | 19320 | 31 |
Dates, Dried | 2 | 2450 | 20 | 450 | .8 | .9 | 20 | 0 | 530 | 520 | 560 | 5800 | 27 |
Figs, Dried | 2 | 2450 | 38 | 720 | .9 | .9 | 6.3 | 0 | 1130 | 640 | 690 | 5760 | 27 |
Grapes | 8 | 2440 | 36 | 3650 | 1.8 | 1.1 | 11 | 146 | 440 | 220 | 730 | 6228 | 15 |
Mango | 8 | 2442 | 26 | 177600 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 40 | 1295 | 370 | 670 | 480 | 6990 | 15 |
Orange | 11 | 2450 | 50 | 10000 | 5.0 | 2.0 | 20 | 2500 | 2050 | 550 | 1000 | 10000 | 20 |
Papaya | 13 1/2 | 2340 | 36 | 105000 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 18 | 3360 | 1200 | 720 | 960 | 14000 | 18 |
Peaches | 14 | 2360 | 38 | 93000 | 1.2 | 3.0 | 62 | 434 | 560 | 620 | 1180 | 12400 | 31 |
Pear | 9 | 2440 | 29 | 800 | .8 | 1.6 | .4 | 160 | 328 | 287 | 440 | 5200 | 12 |
Persimmon | 6 | 2430 | 22 | 79000 | .9 | .6 | .3 | 410 | 460 | 260 | 780 | 5700 | 15 |
Pineapple | 10 | 2390 | 18 | 3200 | 4.0 | 1.4 | 9 | 785 | 800 | 600 | 370 | 6700 | 23 |
Watermelon | 20 | 2390 | 46 | 54280 | 2.7 | 2.7 | 18 | 640 | 640 | 730 | 920 | 9200 | 46 |
For comparison purposes let’s now consider some foods you’d never under any circumstances eat 1 1/2 pounds of (dry weight) but which might be added to the diet on some occasions with advantage insofar as it gives you excellent nutrient insurance.
Food | Wt. Lbs. | Cal. | Pro | Vit.A | B-1 | B-2 | Nia. | VitC | 10 Calcium | Mag. | Pho | Pot | Iron |
Kale | 12 | 2050* | 225 | 485000 | 8 | 13 | 105 | 10100 | 9800 | 2000 | 5040 | 21000 | 112 |
Iceberg Lettuce | 33 | 1960* | 135 | 49800 | 9 | 9 | 45 | 905 | 3020 | 1660 | 3320 | 26425 | 75 |
Looseleaf Lettuce | 25 | 2050* | 148 | 216000 | 7 | 7 | 35 | 2050 | 7700 | 1700 | 2850 | 30096 | 158 |
Celery | 25 | 1940* | 103 | 27400 | 3.5 | 3.5 | 35 | 1025 | 4250 | 2510 | 3190 | 38870 | 34 |
Broccoli | 14 | 1980* | 223 | 155000 | 6 | 15 | 56 | 7000 | 6400 | 1480 | 4820 | 23680 | 68 |
Almonds | 1 1/2 | 4200 | 130 | None | 1.7 | 6.3 | 25 | None | 1640 | 1900 | 3530 | 5400 | 33 |
Pecans | 1 1/2 | 4800 | 64 | 900 | 6 | 1 | . 6 | 14 | 510 | 1000 | 2030 | 4220 | 17 |
Sunflower Seeds | 1 1/2 | 3950 | 168 | 350 | 14 | 1.6 | 38 | None | 840 | 270 | 5250 | 6400 | 50 |
* These items would yield few if any calories. In fact, you’d probably expend more calories in processing most of these foods than you’d obtain from them.
I feel these listings serve as sufficient examples to indicate that fruits, with certain exceptions, meet our needs. Apples may be seen to be the most deficient of the fruits. Yet there were whole cultures of ancient times that subsisted on a diet that was about half apples!
If we eat a varied diet of fruits, the excesses of one, in view of the body’s ability to husband excesses, compensates the deficiencies of the other. So we might paraphrase an old saying: “Eat and be merry. Eat and don’t worry. Eat correctly without sorrow and you’ll enjoy many a tomorrow.”
An examination of the peoples the world over who live active lives and thrive on from 1,200 to 2,000 calories per day affords us grave suspicions as to our supposed calorie requirements. Raw food fruitarians rarely eat more than 2,000 calories per day even if they labor hard and long!
These considerations, of course, resolve nothing. There are serious discrepancies between what conventional nutritional science says we need and the actual needs of raw-food fruitarians.
These charts have been prepared and presented to establish that fruits, as our natural foods, supply our real needs amply. They often supply many times over what we are said to need by conventional standards such as the Recommended Daily Allowances.
We do not support the idea that “more is better.” To have a margin of safety is an excellent practice, but gluttonizing on nutrients overloads and burdens the body unduly. This burdening occasions pathological problems. The body is wise beyond our comprehension and provident beyond our knowledge. It flourishes on fruit fare and will never suffer any of the grave consequences said to result therefrom. Supplying the body with enough, is all that we need concern ourselves with.
19.3.1 “Fruits Are Protein-Poor”
19.3.2 “Fruits Have Too Many Free Acids”
19.3.3 Those Who Subsist on Fruits Become Neurotics
19.3.4 Fruits Are Too Poor in Iron and Cause Anemia
19.3.5 Those Who Eat Only Fruits Suffer Nutritional Imbalance and Deficiencies
19.3.6 Fruit Eaters Cannot Maintain Weight and Are Too Thin
19.3.7 Fruit Eaters Become Over-Alkaline and Suffer Alkalosis
Most Hygienists/Life Scientists may be called timid fruitarian idealists. They are all too willing to admit, even proclaim, that we are naturally frugivores and that our ancestors lived either on nearly all or completely fruitarian diets. “A fruit meal is the ideal,” they espouse. Yet most of these same people are unwilling to try subsisting on fruits! Some Hygienists think we must supplement the fruit diet with some cheese, others think we must have some vegetables. Still others think fruits are great but should be supplemented with nuts (which are also fruits botanically).
The “consensus” diet that we have advocated consists of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Nevertheless many Hygienists eat seeds, nuts, sprouts, green leaves, stalks, stems, tubers and grains almost to the exclusion of fruits! These peoples fruit intake largely consists of avocados, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash.
When asked why they do not eat more fruit despite giving lip service to fruit as the ideal, most Hygienists will tell you that although fruit may be alright for short periods of time as a “cleansing” or “elimination” diet, it is not to be taken except as a luxury. These are the charges made against fruits:
Taken together, these statements sound like quite an indictment. Yet, almost the same charges were made by the medical profession against both fruits and vegetables 150 years ago. Fruit eating was then said to result in fevers, biliousness and other maladies. Fruit was treated as a dessert or as a decorative accessory.
Of course this indictment has never been heard by tribes and peoples who subsist almost totally on bananas, custardy coconuts (before its fats and fibers form), dates, figs and similar fruits. Orangutans of the East Indies live exclusively on fruit and are the most intelligent and human-like of our primate relatives.
How can one defend the concept of fruit as our natural food? Is this stance hypocritical? Is there substance to the aforementioned charges? Is fruit really our natural food after all? Is it possible that it no longer supplies our needs? Has the human constitution changed? Here we have many questions arise that need answering.
The charge is made that fruits are protein poor. It is true that if you compare a banana in the dry state with its 5% protein content to a soy bean in the dry state with 35% protein, the banana is, indeed, protein poor. But the protein content of any food has relevance only to our need of it as an item of diet. So we must understand our need for protein relative to our diet.
A growing human baby gets a mono diet of its mother’s milk for many months before it touches any other food. Mother’s milk for her rapidly developing infant contains only 1.1% protein. Surely no one can argue that a grown person can require more protein than a growing child relative to its weight or as a percentage of its diet. If anything, the grownup who has attained full development requires less protein than a nursing tot. A grown person might get adequate protein on as little as half a percent of his or her dietary content.
The RDA for protein is said to be 70 grams daily for an average man of 150 pounds. This figure is well over twice the actual human need. In fact, it is about three times the actual need as established by tests by Dr. Chittenden of Yale and Dr. Hinhede in Denmark and many others. Further, there are groups of physically-robust people in the Caribbean who thrive on an average intake of about 15 grams of protein daily. (They eat cassava or manioc.) Keeping in mind that the body can obtain up to 70% of its protein needs by recycling its proteinaceous wastes, it becomes somewhat evident that protein needs in humans have been overblown. The meat, dairy, poultry and fish industries have made their mark, even on those who reject animal products as items of food.
Can we continue to say that fruits are protein poor? In view that, if protein is one per cent of our diet, our protein needs are amply met, then fruits are protein adequate! When we’ve eaten some 2,250 calories worth of almost any fruit except apples, we’ve also ingested some 25 to 40 grams of protein. Inasmuch as most fruits do contain all the essential amino acids, I would adjudge that fruits meet human needs for protein amply.
History bears out beyond refutation that humans have been fruit eaters during their entire sojourn on earth excepting a period beginning during the ice ages. Even then, a preponderance of our ancestors still ate fruits. Most migrated south to warmer climes and continued to eat fruits. Grain eating is not more than 10,000 years old. Meat eating, though much older than that, was mostly confined to northerly peoples. Almost all mythology is built around trees and climatic factors that affected trees. Only relatively recent mythologies connect humans to grain culture and animal husbandry.
The charge that fruits have too many free acids is false and rather pointless. Fruits have no free acid. All are organic. Vinegar, cheese and fermented milk are substances with free acids, namely acetic and lactic acids.
Humans are primarily sweet fruit eaters. Yet even grapefruits, plums, sour cherries, sour grapes, lemons, limes and other acidic fare have no free acids.
The human body metabolizes most acids in fruits very well. Benzoic acid, tannic acid, oxalic acid and prussic acid, none of which are free acids and all of which are rare in fruits, are among those acids that give humans metabolic problems. Humans handle citric, tartaric and malic acids very well. These are the primary fruit acids: Perhaps the occasions when fruit acids give problems occur when acid fruits such as lemons, strawberries, pineapples or grapefruit are eaten along with sweet fruit such as bananas, dates, figs, raisins, persimmons or non-fruit fare.
The third charge that those who subsist on fruits become neurotics is simply ridiculous. If fruit is, as we contend, a perfectly wholesome food furnishing all the needs of human life, then it will occasion nothing but great health. While we are the first to affirm that nervous malfunctions or neurosis have physiological bases, we also point out that these problems stem from toxemia in almost every such case. They often, but not always, precede neurosis. Most neuroses are complicated by anxieties, insecurities, worries and other emotional disruptions begotten by an inhumane social system. I daresay we have uncounted millions of neurotics and few are fruit eaters. Unfortunately, our psychologists do not recognize the physical basis of neurosis and give credence almost completely to emotional, social, economic and mental factors. Physical derangements often lay the groundwork for mental derangements. Hence the charge that fruits cause neurotics is a charge which I don’t think has ever been substantiated.
There are fruit-eating societies of humans in this world and descriptions of them bespeak the most peaceable, congenial and harmonious dispositions of any peoples on earth.
The charge that fruits are too poor in iron and cause anemia is likewise without foundation. The body can recycle up to about 95% of its iron supply and needs very little from the outside. It is said that our RDA of iron is some 10 milligrams daily. This, like other RDA’s, is some two to three times too high. Nevertheless, oranges sufficient to meet our caloric needs supply about twenty milligrams of iron daily. In fact, if you compared all the fruits and their iron content, you’d find every one meeting the RDA for iron with surfeits. A food that might be said to be deficient in iron by these RDA’s is, of all things, a mother’s milk!
Should fruits be charged as being Vitamin B-12 poor, then the same can be said of all foods, even the foods that animals eat. Only meats and certain kinds of algae have what is termed sufficient Vitamin B-12. But if animal fare such as grasses, leaves, grains, herbs and fruits do not furnish animals with vitamin B-12, how do their organs come to be so rich in it? Why are the organs of fruit-eating primates rich in it? How is it that fruitarian societies are not anemic from lack of Vitamin B-12? The truth is that humans, like all other animals, obtain ample supplies of Vitamin B-12 from bacterial production in their intestines. Even garlic eaters usually do not destroy enough of their symbiotic bacterial flora to deny themselves of an adequate supply of Vitamin B-12.
So I adjudge the charge that fruit eaters are anemic to be without any substantive evidence whatsoever.
The charge that fruit eaters will suffer nutritional imbalances and deficiencies likewise finds no basis in fact. Fruits, eaten judiciously according to their seasons, furnish us with every nutrient factor, known and unknown, in plenteousness. Those ancient Greeks whom we admire so much for their statuesque bodies, were fruit eaters. Most ate heavily of apples, dates, oranges, olives, figs and grapes. The Greek and Roman gods are ascriptions born of reverence for fruit trees and food-bearing plants.
The charge that fruit eaters are too thin is not borne out by even the simplest investigation. Personally, I’ve gone down into the 120-pound range and came back to the 150-pound range with excellent muscular development, on a diet almost entirely of fruits. My wife has to watch her intake of heavy-calorie fruit foods, especially nuts, lest she become too heavy. As previously pointed out, the Greeks thrived on fruitarian diets. Pythagoras, one of the giants of Grecian literature, philosophy and mathematics, was a fruitarian and had a whole school of followers who, likewise, were fruitarians. Actually, the teachings of Pythagoras very much parallel the teachings of Gautama Buddha, whose teachings Pythagoras was conversant with. Buddha was, in essence, a tree worshipper as were fruitarian societies. Bacchus is portrayed as heavily overweight and this is attributed to fig gluttony.
The charge that fruit eaters are over alkaline and often suffer alkalosis is, likewise, baseless. We humans can harmlessly excrete excess alkaline substances but, if we get excess acid-forming substances as from meats, animal products, cereal foods, etc., we really have problems. The body must rob its bones, teeth and other alkaline structures for the alkalis, mostly calcium, necessary to neutralize the acids generated from acid-forming foods. The maker of this “alkalosis” charge simply ignored physiology. It ill becomes vegetarians or fruitarians to make such a charge.
Fruits are said to be deficient in calcium. To investigate this I made charts of a number of fruits and their composition. Our fuel needs can be met amply by fruits. Calcium and a plethora of other nutrients are a component of every gram of fruit food. When we have eaten sufficient fruit to supply our caloric needs, say about 2,250 calories, how much of our RDA for calcium have we met? The RDA is set at 800 milligrams per day for a 150-pound man. This, like other RDA’s, is some two to four times too high. Nevertheless, let’s look at some fruit foods and their calcium content when 2,250 calories worth have been consumed.
Oranges, a widely-consumed fruit, have about 2,050 milligrams of calcium, 2 1/2 times the RDA. Apples have 315 mg. Apricots have 782 mg. Cantaloupes have 1,078 mg. Figs have 1,130 mg. Bananas have 224 mg. and banana-eating societies have excellent bone formation by all standards. Grapes have 440 mg., dates have 530 mg., mangos 370 mg., pineapples 785 mg., watermelon 640 mg. and so on down the line. Obviously fruits supply us amply with our calcium needs. The saying that fruit eaters suffer stunted growth does not withstand serious inquiry. As previously noted, statuesque Greeks were fruit eaters.
Fruit eaters are not usually fat, brawny hulks as are grain, milk and meat eaters. The question arises: are these standards forming a criterion of health or pathology?
Let me cite an example. Murray Rose, an Australian who set swimming record after swimming record, was primarily a fruit eater though he partook of some seaweeds and vegetable fare.
Now if we confirmed fruitarians were to start making charges against those who want to eat “exciting” foods such as, cooked dishes, often laden with condiments, vegetables, cereals and even dairy products such as yogurts, and cheeses, many could be well-substantiated. Wrong foods create toxemia.
The illnesses that beset almost all Americans amply attest to this fact. Even those who pride themselves on a vegetarian diet or a “health” diet or even a Hygienic diet often find themselves suffering toxic conditions. Toxemia arises out of practices that cause toxins to be ingested, generated and/or retained. Fruit eating is universally said to be cleansing and promoting the function of elimination, and it is recognized for its non-toxic nature.
As far as I’m concerned, you’ve nailed down the cause for fruitarianism. But isn’t it impossible to nourish yourself well with the general low quality of fruit today? With all the artificial fertilizers, insecticides, and depleted soils, how can we hope to be well-nourished on fruits?
Even with these definite detractions, eating low-quality fruits is still the best we can do if we cannot procure organically grown fruits. Whatever can be said against fruits on this score goes double for everything else other than fruits. This problem does not only exist with fruits!
Should you have fears in this matter, you can invoke insurance in the form of super nutrient-concentrated foods such as green leafy vegetables and nuts.
Keep in mind that there has been little deterioration in fruit quality since the tables of composition were made that are reproduced herein.
You mentioned that some doctors found we needed about an ounce of protein a day, less than 30 grams. Who are these doctors and how did they prove it?
One such doctor was Dr. M. Hinhede of Denmark, who was entrusted to the nutritional welfare of that country for the duration of World War I. Having conducted many experiments on a mono-potato diet, among others, he maintained subjects in fine health for protracted periods while doing hard physical labor. (Some oil on the potatoes and green leaves were also eaten.) The protein intake of his subjects was 30 to 40 grams daily. When he took over as the “food czar” of Denmark, he decreed that animals cease to be reared as food and that the land be devoted to vegetarian fare. He effectively put Denmark on a low-protein diet. As a result, the health of Danes greatly improved, the death rate plummeted and there was never a food shortage. He wrote a book, Protein and Nutrition, which presents his studies.
Professor Russell H. Chittenden of Yale University was one of the pioneers of nutritional research. He conducted many varied experiments. These experiments involved diets, restricted diets and limited protein intake. In his Nutrition of Man we learn of his experiments with his fellow professors and students on food intake. We learn how he reduced food intake severely yet his subjects still continued to grow and thrive.
Chittenden reduced the protein intake of Yale athletes to a mere 25 grams of protein daily, yet they continued to gain weight, became more muscular and performed better than before. Among the many experiments he conducted were competition between his vegetarian athletes and meat-eating athletes. The vegetarians, on the average, outperformed the meat eaters by a large margin.
Is there any harm in adding a meal of sunflower seeds and a salad of vegetables to a general fruitarian program?
Having been on fruitarian fare for a long time and then having a meal of sunflower seeds and tomatoes, with some vegetables such as broccoli and celery, I can attest to its tastiness. All tables of composition say I’m getting more than enough of everything I need. They don’t tell about the extra sleep required after even a moderate meal of such fare, nor the drowsiness the following morning, nor the mental dullness nor the physical disinclination to activity.
I would say this indicates in part a body that is accommodated to fruitarian fare—in fact, one that has a marked preference for fruitarian fare! It can handle such food, but it greatly burdens the system. Unaccustomed expenditure of energies and nerve force produce what is, in effect, a hangover.
I would say that for one accustomed to fruitarian fare there is some harm in indulging in such a meal. Yet the books show that there is great nutritional gain to be had by eating such a meal. Personally, I find I’m better off without it. The definitive answer remains to be rendered in this matter.
I just love potatoes about any way they’re prepared. Are potatoes so terribly bad if eaten with vegetables?
I’ve just cited what Dr. M. Hinhede of Denmark did for millions of people on a diet heavy in potatoes. He kept one man in good health for 12 years on a mono diet of potatoes.
Potatoes are not our natural foods. The cell coverings of their starches prevent our access to the potato’s food value if they’re eaten raw. Cooking breaks the cells and releases the starch which, by the heat, has been partially dextrinized. But the heat required to break down cellulose does far more damage than that.
Potatoes are not a wholesome food. However, they are far less harmful than the conventional American diet. Fruits are far superior on every count. When you consider that the body must digest and convert the starchy/dextrinized potato to glucose for body use, does it not seem far better to eat fruits whose sugars are already in the form of glucose (fructose or levelose)? NO digestion is needed for fruits—just eat and appropriate.
What about eating the seeds of fruits? Pumpkin seeds and nuts are actually the seeds of fruits, not the fruit itself. Is it good to eat the seeds of apricots, apples, peaches, grapes, melons and so on?
During our millions of years sojourning in nature, there is evidence that our dietary consisted of some nuts that were primarily oily and proteinaceous and had little or no starch. I want to emphasize that nuts were usually secondary and constituted a very small part of our diet. As fruit eaters, we obtained our water needs from our fare and thus developed no water-drinking equipment as a part of our anatomy. Had we been nut and seed eaters, this would not have been the case. Thus it may be said that we are incidentally nut and seed eaters.
I advise you to limit your and your clients’ intake of nuts to small portions on rather infrequent occasions, certainly not more than three or four times weekly. This is meant to apply to an oily fruit, the avocado, as well, because it has the same consistency as some nuts. Apple, peach and apricot seeds are outright poisonous. Melon seeds are not relished, though the melons themselves are great. Pumpkin seeds are of about the same consistency of nuts, as are sunflower and sesame seeds. Grape seeds should not be eaten. In the use of fruits, keep in mind that the fruit adequately supplies our needs. Our symbiotic role in nature—our implied compact with trees—is to eat the fruit as our reward for distributing the seeds.
I feel you’ve proved your point about fruit being our natural food. But where do you find anyone today who lives on just fruits? Hasn’t everyone gotten off base?
Yes, it’s true that fruitarians are so rare that they seem nonexistent. I would consider myself fruitarian, though I eat perhaps 2 to 3% vegetable fare such as lettuce, celery, broccoli, sprouts and bok choy.
There are other fruitarians in this country, especially in California, Florida and Hawaii. There are tribes and societies of fruit eaters in the Amazon of Brazil and in the Southwest Pacific. There are some fruit eating societies and groups in Europe and Africa, some in Asia and some in Australia. But, relatively, fruitarians are very rare.
Indeed, almost everyone is off base. Likewise, almost everyone suffers some physical problem.
How do you suppose fruits developed in the first place?
There is symbiosis or mutual cooperation and harmony in nature. It is not a jungle where only the fittest survive its vicissitudes, as is widely thought. There are few vicissitudes in nature.
Trees bearing fruit developed alongside creatures that demanded fruits. Trees responded to this beneficial patronage by developing even more profuse amounts of luscious fruits. Those creatures demanding a variety of fruits fared better and better as they grew and improved, thus demanding even more fruits.
We observe in nature how symbiosis works by noting that bees are specifically provided nectar by flowers. The bees, in gathering this nectar for food, contaminate themselves with pollen from the anthers of the flowers. When they visit other flowers they perform the service of spreading the pollen to the stigma of the flower pistil. This facilitates pollination, a valuable service. As you know, without bees, flowers of trees will not be pollinated to any great extent. Likewise, without fruit-eating animals there would be no fruit trees. The development of fruits and fruit eaters was mutual and parallel.
You’ve spoken about fruits without their water content. If you don’t consider water, what amount of proteins, mineral salts, fatty acids and vitamins should our foods contain to meet our needs?
Let’s look at a fine food, bananas. Let us consider 1 1/2 pounds, or 680 grams, of dry weight bananas. The protein content of this amount of bananas is 31 grams, or about 4.5% of total dry weight. Its mineral matter comprises 22 grams, or about 3.3%. Its fats amount to about 5.2 grams or about .8%. Its carbohydrates amount to about 610 grams which is, as you can see, about 90% of the total weight. The rest is unusable cellulose, which is neutral in character in the human body. That is, it is neither harmful or helpful.
Inasmuch as bananas are excellently qualified to meet our needs, you can see that our primary need is for fuel values. Other nutrients, though being equally essential, comprise a small percentage of the whole.
Are dried fruits as good as fresh fruits? Should we eat them at all?
Dried fruits are never as good as fresh ripe fruits. Yes, we should eat dried fruits when the fresh fruits available to us do not meet our caloric needs. Dried fruits have lost a substantial part of their vitamins and some of their minerals due to oxidation. Dried fruits are good primarily for their fuel values. They are usually ultra-sweet and thus serve as wonderful desserts when eaten with other fruits.
If we get all the Vitamin B-12 we need from bacteria in our digestive canal, then why do vegetarians have less B-12 than do meat eaters?
There could be many reasons for the variance in amount of B-12. The body takes up from the ileum the amount it requires for use and storage. While both meat-eaters and vegetarians have about a five-year reserve supply of vitamin B-12, the levels of B-12 in the blood stream of meat-eaters is much higher than that in fruit-eaters and vegetarians, Meat eaters represent a pathological norm. They may have more B-12 in the system because of increased need due to their condition, or it may be that their bloodstream is contaminated by the meats they eat as well as being profusely supplied by intestinal bacterial activity. The higher amount of B-12 may be due to both increased need and increased supply.
We must regard nutrients in regard to our need for them. Getting enough is all that is necessary.
Why are vegetarians warned so much about Vitamin B-12 deficiency? Why do so many use cheese, eggs and other dairy products to get Vitamin B-12?
Many vegetarians fall victim to the propaganda of commerce. Such unsuitable items of diet ruin health—not enhance it.
How does the body rob its bones and teeth of calcium ? Isn’t that a ridiculous statement to make?
When the body is in an emergency situation that requires base mineral salts for food metabolization, it does autolyze its teeth and bones for the needed base organic salts. Some such emergency situations include ingesting white sugar, or acid neutralization as in uric acid from meat, or when its supply is exhausted due to an acidotic diet sparse in alkaline minerals. This is how osteoporosis and osteomalacia occur.
If Hygienists and Life Scientists give only lip service to fruit as the ideal, what do they really eat?
They do eat a lot of fruit, but it usually comprises considerably less than half of their intake. Much of their intake is in nuts, salads, steamed potatoes, rice, cheese, steamed squash, steamed sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli and steamed corn. While most eat around 50 to 80% raw, I would regard the 20 to 50% eaten in cooked form far less than ideal.
When I eat fruits, especially bananas, I get gas. Why is this so?
When you get gas, that means you’re not properly absorbing the sugars of the bananas. Bacteria are fermenting it. I usually eat bananas alone and do not have this problem. I sometimes eat bananas with other fruits and with celery and lettuce. I still do not have this problem. If your body is not absorbing the sugars available from bananas, there must be some physiological faculty involved that is not functioning properly. I suggest that you fast for a period of time and then try bananas again a day or two after breaking the fast.
Fruits do not cause gas. Failure to absorb their carbohydrates makes them available to our bacterial flora which create gas. Overeating, of course, can cause quite a bit of gas. Eating wrong combinations can cause lots of gas. That food material that is not absorbed will be dealt with by intestinal flora which ferment and/or putrefy it in accord with the character of the food.
I’ve tried a few fruit meals for a few days running. They don’t stay with me very long and I get hungry again very quickly. Is that normal?
It is normal to absorb meals of fruits quickly. But it is abnormal to be hungry again immediately after such a meal has been appropriated, for the body usually shuts down the appestat upon having absorbed its needs of sugars and nutrients.
There exist several possibilities as to why you feel hungry so quickly. Possibly you’re mistaking appetancy for hunger. Possibly you have gastric irritation. Possibly your body has not yet accommodated to fruit meals and still has irritations that drive you to yet seek the old satisfactions and stimulations. But it is unlikely that the fruit meals are not supplying your needs or that you are feeling true hunger as a result of your bodily needs.
Demonstrated irrefutably in this lesson is the nutritional adequacy of fruits in supplying human needs.
In the previous lesson we demonstrated that fruits are the only foods that meet, all relevant criteria for a human food. This lesson has shown that specific nutrients for which RDA’s have been established are contained amply within the various fruits available to us on our markets.
Further, this lesson has dealt with charges made against fruits as foods and refutes them on a charge-by-charge basis. The lesson shows that the charges are groundless and are of a nature as might be inspired by the meat, grain and dairy industries who have a commercial interest in promoting their products.
Fruit is food. Indeed, fruits are among the few substances produced in organic nature that seem to be designed specially to serve as food. The old medical prejudice against fruit, so strong during the last century that cities passed ordinances against bringing fruits into the cities during the summer months, was hammered down by Hygienists, and Americans learned to relish fruits. Unfortunately, in certain Hygienic circles this old anti-fruit prejudice has been revived. Some of our Hygienists have developed a groundless fear of a number of wholesome fruits.
Fruits supply the body with an abundance of minerals, sugars, vitamins and, in the case of some of them, considerable high-grade protein. The sugar in fruit is ideally associated with minerals and vitamins and need not be rejected as one does (or should) refined sugars. Fruit sugar is superior as human nutriment to honey, which is so ludicrously lauded in many quarters. Indeed, honey, when compared with the sugars of fruits, ranks about on the level with white sugar.
Most fruits are abundant in minerals, also containing important trace minerals, so that they form important and vital ingredients in the diet of the growing child. Most of them are deficient in calcium, but this is easily compensated from other wholesome sources. Fruits are commonly rich in vitamin C but contain less of other vitamins. They are, however, on the whole, excellent sources of vitamins.
They are commonly low in protein, rarely containing over two to two and a half percent and many of them containing much less than this. The date, banana, avocado and a few other fruits contain small amounts of excellent proteins. Supplemented with nuts and green leaves, their proteins become valuable additions to the diet. A fruit and nut diet is improved by the addition of green leafy vegetables. A large green salad each day makes such a diet almost ideal.
Most fruits contain more or less acid—such as malic, citric, tartaric, etc., being present. The prejudice that has grown up around fruits is a revival of the medical prejudice against acid fruits. They were declared to cause “acid diseases,” and were regarded as especially objectionable in rheumatism.
Fortunately, the body is able to oxidize the organic acids of fruits, at least of those fruits that we commonly use as food. These leave an alkaline ash upon being oxidized. There is often some difficulty with the acid of prunes, but there is no ground for the prejudice that has been revived against oranges, tangerines, lemons, grapefruit, tangelos, tomatoes and similar citric-acid bearing fruits.
The acids of berries are also easily oxidized and these, also, leave an alkaline ash. The acid radical of organic acids is expelled as carbon dioxide through the lungs; the alkaline salts left help to alkalinize the blood. Teeth have been kept uninterruptedly immersed in lemon juice for as long as six months and the acid had no effect on their enamel. There would seem to be no foundation for the idea that eating oranges or drinking orange juice injures the teeth.
It should be generally known that when acids are taken into the mouth there is a copious outpouring of an alkaline saliva, which bathes the membranes of the mouth and the tongue. This secretion of saliva is kept up long after the acid has been swallowed. Any acid left on the teeth or in the mouth is quickly neutralized by the alkaline saliva. We are too prone to overlook the body’s own provisions for its safety.
In the late spring and summer, when such fruits as peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries, the various berries, canteloupes, watermelons, grapes, figs, etc., are plentiful, it is well to make a large part of the diet fruits. In the fall, when pears, apples, persimmons and the citrus fruits come into season, these should constitute a large part of the diet. Certain of these fruits, like the tomato, grapes, oranges, and grapefruits are plentiful throughout most of the year and may be eaten all the time. The avocado is abundant through most of the year, but is best eaten during the cooler periods of the year. Such sundried fruits as figs, dates, raisins, peaches, apricots, pears, etc., may be freely eaten during the winter months.
The melons make an excellent breakfast during the season of the year when they are ripening. They are best eaten alone. A large piece of watermelon makes an adequate breakfast, even for the physical worker. Canteloupe, banana melon, casaba, cranshaw and the Persian melon, in season, make a delightful and satisfying breakfast. If more food is desired for breakfast, it should be taken half an hour after eating the melon.
Nearly all of what we see of so-called allergy to fruits is indigestion resulting from wrongly combining the food eaten. Fruits with starches, fruits with sugar, fruits with proteins, and similar combinations are prone to decompose, producing gas, discomfort, skin eruptions. Melons with other foods may cause marked distress—eaten alone, they digest with the greatest of ease. In very young children there may sometimes be a short period during the development of a child, when its digestive system cannot handle a certain fruit, for example, an apple. It is well to leave some fruits out of a child’s diet until its development has progressed to a point where it can easily digest the fruit that gives trouble.
Great improvement in the ability to digest and handle foods follows a fast. It is no uncommon thing to find that an individual who has trouble with a particular article of food, can take it with the greatest of ease after a fast. If we can learn that what is called allergy is not a permanent possession, but that when its causes are removed, it ceases, we can understand that it is possible for us to become able to enjoy any wholesome food. It amazes those who are “allergic” to strawberries, for example, to see no trouble develop if they are placed on a strawberry diet.
When fruit is eaten with a meal of bread, flesh, potatoes, butter and the rest of the usual meal, the fruit usually being taken at the end of the meal, but often at the beginning, the indigestion and discomfort that result from such combining of foods will almost certainly be blamed on the fruit, which may be the only wholesome article of diet in the meal. The discomforts following such a meal may range all the way from a little gas formation that scarcely attracts the attention of the eater, to a painful indigestion accompanied with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The fruit, kept away from the other foods, and eaten as a fruit meal will digest easily and result in no discomfort.
Fruits that are peeled and sliced and permitted to stand for long periods of time before eating are hardly wholesome foods. They change color, lose flavor, undergo oxidation with resulting loss of food value and tend to decompose readily. Fruits added to breads, cakes, pies and various other kinds of pastires can also occasion considerable indigestion and distress. In this latter case, not only is the food spoiled in preparation and cooking, but the combination is indigestible. Fresh fruits, with cleaning as the only preparation, are most easily digested. The addition of sugar, syrups, honey and other sweeteners to fruits can also result in indigestion and discomforts.
Fruits have fallen into disrepute with many people for the reason that they find that they suffer with discomfort after eating them. It was Dr. Dewey who said that fruits demoralize digestion. He was especially opposed to eating apples. This trouble with fruits grows out of the practice of wrongly combining them. Strawberries and melons are commonly singled out as fruits that “I am allergic to,” and these foods are wholesome and toothsome. If taken alone as in the case of melons, or properly combined as in the case of strawberries, they almost never cause any trouble. Skin rashes and intestinal disturbances that often follow the eatings of fruit or that follow a particular fruit may, almost always, be traced to wrong combining. In the few cases where this is not so, a correction of the way of life, so that normal digestive power is reestablished, soon enables the individual to eat fruit. I do not think that there is anyone who cannot eat freely of fruits if due care is taken in combining them.
Of all the foods that we can eat, fruits are the best in every respect. They are objects which enchant the eye, delight the smell and thrill the normal taste beyond the sensation incited by any other food. In itself, fruit is perfect. It requires no preparation of any kind other than cleansing, coring or peeling. Cooking, seasonings, additions and substractions make it less, not more palatable.
Beyond its appeal to the senses, it possesses most of the essential proteins, minerals and vitamins necessary for maintaining health at its highest level. Obtained in large enough variety, fruits (with the addition of nuts which are also fruits) would be ample for the maintenance of ideal health.
Many facts indicate that humans were originally frugivorous or fruit-eating animals, not omnivorous as we are presently. That humans have strayed from their natural diet for the past few thousand years does not mean that organs have changed so as to be suited to the prevailing diet. The changes that have occurred are the weakening, softening and degeneration of a creature of true grandeur. If any change has occured, it is that we have become diseased creatures. We have lost our physiological excellence. For this reason, it is more important that we adhere more closely to our natural diet. The ruinous habits of eating must be dispensed with entirely. Only pathology has resulted from our unnatural dietary.
Fruits constitute our ideal diet and should comprise most of its bulk. Vegetables, nuts and seeds can be added with great benefit when the rules for food combining are observed. It is never the fault of the fruit. Fruit should be ripe at eating time. Overly-ripe fruits should be shunned. Fruit is most luscious and at the peak of perfection when it is plucked from tree, stalk or vine in a just-ripened condition. No store-bought fruit can approach freshly-picked fruit for quality or flavor.
Whenever possible, fresh fruit should be bought from the grower, rather than at the market which obtains much of its stock from storage houses. Those living in colder climates have little choice during winter time, however. Much care must be exercised in selecting the best available.
Ability to judge various fruits in the market to determine their fitness is an accomplishment which can only come with experience. Most fruits, regardless of whether they belong to the acid, sub-acid or sweet classification, possess an elating sweetness and flavor when they are ripe. Experience will teach you to judge a good apple among a whole bushel of inferior ones at a single glance. Care must be taken to avoid fruits which have been damaged by frost, blight, rot or any other similar influence. Fruits today are sprayed excessively against insects and before they are eaten, they should be carefully washed and brushed, in order to eliminate the poison from them.
Some unripe fruits contain starch and various other carbohydrate substances which are distasteful and unwholesome. On the other hand, decay sets in on over-ripe fruits, and the sugars are changed to carbon dioxide, alcohol, acetic acid and other harmful by-products. Over-ripe fruits deteriorate rapidly in their nutritive values. These changes, plus the loss of water, account for the sponginess and insipidness of fruit which has been stored for long periods of time.
Fruit is potentially alkaline. Alkalinity occurs after it has passed through the processes of digestion. If the fruit is of poor quality, improperly combined or the digestion is weak, it often remains in an acid and its absorption creates many unpleasant symptoms such as nervousness, sleeplessness, frequent urinating from bladder irritation, intestinal gases, mucus in the stools, throat irritation, etc. Most of the time, however, the symptoms which follow the eating of fruit are not the fault of the fruit, but of impaired digestive faculties. There are those who will eruct and experience flatulence and distress in the bowels regardless of what they eat. People so affected are ill and should put a stop to eating until their digestive system has recovered its powers. Fruits should not be haphazardly mixed with other foods, or even other fruits! Even the best digestion cannot successfully cope with indiscrimate and chemically-incompatible mixtures. A good policy is not to eat more than one or two kinds of fruit at a single meal.
Fruits can be divided into three classifications: sweet, sub-acid and acid. Sweet fruits can be combined tolerably well with sub-acid fruits but should not be as a matter of practice. But the combining of sweet fruit with acid fruit can prove quite distressful. For example mixing bananas and grapefruit or dates and oranges is worse than not eating anything. The best plan in combining fruits is to mix only fruits of the same classification. For example bananas, dates, figs and raisins are sweet fruits. Apples, pears, most grapes, mangos and papayas are among the sub-acid fruits. Berries, cherries, peaches, pineapples, etc., are among the acid fruits.
Melons of all kinds should be treated as a fruit category in themselves and should be eaten alone. Nuts may be eaten after the end of a fruit meal, preferably after a fruit meal of acid fruits. Lettuce and celery may be beneficially added to fruit meals in small quantities.
As with any food, chewing plays a vital part in the thorough digestion of fruits. Every particle should be systematically liquified, thereby insuring absorption and assimilation. This is doubly important when you realize that most fruits undergo no digestion in the stomach. The swallowing of carelessly-chewed food is a major reason why food lies in the stomach and ferments. The digestive juices are unable to break down large pieces of food and bacterial decay sets in. Drinking a glass of orange juice or any other fruit juice in one or two gulps does more harm than good. It should be sipped slowly and tasted, if eaten at all, not swallowed as though one were trying to quench a fire. Fruits should never be eaten cold. Room temperature is ideal.
Fruits should not be considered merely as a dessert or a between-meal refreshment, nor in the same light as the “apple a day keeps the doctor away” philosophy. They are due much higher regard. To take them as a “laxative” or to cleanse the bloodstream, or to take fruits in any way which savors of medicine instead of food is wrong.
Fruits are the finest kind of food. They should be treated as such. Sick people should not be eating. A sick body requires rest and fasting, not food, regardless of the nature of the illness. The major part of one’s diet should consist of fruit. It is the most delicious, wholesome and perfect food that can be had.
Can man get adequate protein from a fruit diet? This is to ask: If a man were to attempt to live as a strict frugivore, could he be adequately nourished? We put this question in relation to the protein of this diet because there is no question about the ability of a fruitarian diet to supply adequacies of fats, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins.
In an article entitled “Why I don’t eat Meat” by Owen S. Parrett, M.D., which has had wide distribution, the author says, “W.C. Rose of the University of Illinois, an authority in the field of protein, says that “less than twenty-five grams a day is all one needs.”
“If a man were to eat no meat, eggs or milk he would still get on the average 83 grams of protein a day. A woman would get 61 grams of protein a day. This fact was discovered in a research project made by Dr. Mervyn Hardinge of the College of Medical Evangelists under Dr. Frederick J. Stare of Harvard, well-known authority on nutrition.
“Dr. U. D. Register, leading biochemist, and Dr. Hardinge, both active in the field of human nutrition, said to me that fruit alone, if amply supplied in sufficient variety, would provide people with enough protein to meet the actual body demand.”
Many efforts have been made to live upon a diet of fruits only, usually with only marked degree of success. It has usually been found that such diets are improved by the addition of green leafy vegetables. It is probable that this need has resulted from an insufficient variety of fruits. Certainly when we consider the wide range of food substances included under the term fruit, there would seem to be no necessity for inadequacies in the diet of the fruitarian. Nuts, which are fruits, are nearly all rich in protein of high biological value, capable of supplying adequacies of all the amino acids essential to growth and reproduction.
The biologist defines a fruit as “a ripened ovary with or without associated parts.” To make this a bit more complete, a fruit is the matured ovary of the flower, its contents and all intimately connected parts. Fruits are often more complicated than this description indicates. In addition to the development of the ovary wall, the calyx may also become fleshy and envelope the ovary as in the apple and pear; or the end of the stem (receptacle) may enlarge and form a part of the fruit, as in the strawberry and blackberry. Tough shells or rinds may form for protection, as in nuts and lemons; or a delicious flesh may envelop a hard inner stone, as in the peach and plum. Some fruits, as the potato and peanut, are matured underground.
All of these developments serve to perform a few simple functions:
An animal eats the fruit and discards the seed at a distance from the parent plant. Edible fruits may thus be said to be the coin with which the plant compensates the animal for services rendered—that of dispersing the seed. A seed is a matured ovule enclosed in the fruit. Many fruits are merely mechanical devices to secure seed dispersal and are not edible. We need not consider these in our discussion of fruits.
A brief glance at the evolution of a fruit may help us in forming a clear picture of a fruit. The ovary grows as the seed develops, giving rise to a fruit. A fruit, in this sense, is not necessarily a fleshy edible product, but the seed-carrying organ of the plant. It is customary to include nuts in the category of fruits, although, it is the seed rather than the seed-carrying organ that we eat.
A fruit may consist of a single ovary with but one seed, as in grains, nuts, cherries, plums and peaches, or it may evolve from a single ovary which has several seeds, as the bean, pea, apple and orange. Then there are flowers which possess several ovaries which combine to form compound fruits like the strawberry or raspberry.
With the foregoing explanation in mind, it should not be difficult for each of my readers to answer himself the question: Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Fruits are all produced by plants and, in this sense, they are all vegetables. But they are special parts of plants and are classed as fruits because of this. The tomato, as the matured ovary of the tomato flower containing seed, is quite obviously as much a fruit as the apple or orange. The cucumber squash, pumpkin and similar foods are fruits.
Confining ourselves, in this discussion to edible fruits, and ignoring those fruits that serve only as seed dispersers and have no food values, fruits are either dry or fleshy, simple or compound, depending on the character and development of the ovary which formed them.
Thus it will be seen that the term fruitarian may be used in a wider sense than is commonly thought. Indeed, in a biological sense, it may be made to include eating practices that probably should be foreign to man. This is to say that there may be more than one fruitarian category in nature. We are justified in classing the grain-eating birds as fruitarian, but it is doubtful that grains should form a part of the normal diet of man.
There are fruits that are poisonous, some of them poisonous before ripening, others poisonous after ripening. These latter should be excluded from man’s diet. An excellent example of a fruit of this kind, one that is commonly eaten, is the cranberry. Sumac berries we refrain from eating, because, although tasty, they are toxic. Some plant substances are poisonous to some animals and not to others. An example is belladona, which, highly poisonous to man, is non-toxic to the rabbit after it is six weeks old. After this age the rabbit secretes an enzyme that enables it to digest the two toxins in the plant. Man produces no such enzyme.
In the same manner a fruit that may be poisonous to man may prove to be an excellent food for other animals. Nothing seems to eat the sumac berries. It may be possible that they are toxic to all forms of life. They are regarded as good herbal medicines, precisely because they are toxic. My readers should keep always in mind the rule of medicine: If the plant is non-toxic, it is food; if it is toxic, it is “medicine.”
It has often been said: “You are what you eat.” More appropriately, this should probably be: “You are what you digest and assimilate.”
Man eats everything. He considers himself an omnivore of the first order. Roots, nuts, tubers, seeds, eggs, blood, milk, fish, fowl, and fruit have all appeared on man’s plate. One culture eats worms and gnats with relish. Another culture considers decaying animals a delicacy. Man has practiced cannibalism both in the past and in the present.
And so man brags: “I can eat anything. I have an iron stomach.”
It is true that man’s physiology allows him to eat almost anything that does not immediately kill him. Sometimes even great quantities may be consumed, as witnessed by the champion crayfish eater of Louisiana who ate 63 pounds of crayfish tails at one sitting. It is a mistake to assume, however, that the body can digest and assimilate everything that passes between our teeth, or that foods doing no immediate harm will not eventually cause problems.
Consequently, most of what man eats is for naught, because much of the food eaten by the average human being is totally unsuitable for his digestive physiology. If we want to understand what foods are appropriate for man to eat, we must first understand the physiology of digestion and assimilation. We need to know how our body acts upon the food we eat. When we understand the principles of nutritional physiology, we can then determine the natural diet for man.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton gives us this definition of nutrition: “It is the sum of all processes by which raw materials (foodstuffs) are transformed into living structure and prepared for use by the body.”
No one understands these processes completely. The transformation of an apple, for example, into the cells that make up the brain, blood and bone is an event that defies scientific duplication. The changing of food into the person that is you could be considered a miracle—yet it is a miracle that happens repeatedly throughout every day.
We can follow food through the body as it undergoes processing by the digestive organs. We can give names to the various enzyme interactions and to the catalysts that accompany food absorption. We cannot, however, tell you how the life force present in a fruit becomes part of the life force that propels your body or awakens your consciousness. These are the limitations of the science of nutritional physiology, and we must keep our discussion within the scope of these boundaries.
From a purely physiological point of view, nutrition can be described by the mechanical and chemical actions of the body upon the food ingested. Notice that the body is active and food is passive; the body acts upon food—food does not act upon the body.
As Dr. Herbert M. Shelton states: “Food is inert substance and, therefore, has no power to make living organisms. It cannot act, but is acted upon. The living organism uses what it can of the food consumed and rejects the rest. A particular food may be good, but to feed more of it than can be utilized...is worse than useless.”
The idea that foods have in themselves no power to act upon the body distinguishes Life Science and Natural Hygiene from other traditional schools of nutrition. Many nutritionists still believe in “food therapy”—that is, that certain foods can perform specific actions upon the body to effect a cure or treatment. Life Science decrees that there are no “cures,” whether they be in the form of medicines, herbs, foods or juices; instead, the body is a self-healing mechanism. Hopefully, by studying the physiology of nutrition, you will be able to see the fallacy of regarding foods as active healing agents.
Nutrition is the physiological processes the body conducts as it transforms food into material for its own growth and maintenance. This lesson discusses these processes in the order that they occur in the body as food is appropriated, digested, assimilated and finally eliminated from the body.
Food enters the body through the mouth and exits through the anus. In between, it undergoes digestion (from the mouth to the stomach), absorption (from the stomach to the small intestines), and elimination (from the large intestine, or colon, to the anus). In most cases, these three stages of food processing take place in a total of about twenty-four hours in a relatively healthy individual. This journey takes place in what is on the average over fifteen feet of a single connected tube from the mouth to the anus.
This fifteen feet of elasticized tubing (which includes the esophagus, stomach and intestines) is said to be continuous with the outside environment. That is, there is one entrance from the outside world to the food tube (the mouth) and one exit (the anus) with no other outlet inside the body proper.
Food in this tube (usually called the gastrointestinal tract) is technically considered to be outside the body. As food passes through this tube, it may be partially absorbed by the body. At any time, the food itself may be rushed back out through the mouth (vomiting) or quickly expelled through the anus (diarrhea).
This is the reason that man can seemingly eat anything. His digestive-absorptive-eliminative tract, or tube, actually holds the ingested food outside of the body proper. If a healthy person should eat harmful foods, they may be carried through the body to the nearest exit without actually being absorbed or entering into the body from this tube.
However, many individuals, through years of improper eating, have degraded the natural power of the body to expel unsuitable foods. Consequently, the body gradually starts to absorb noxious substances from foods which a healthy organism would reject outright.
Consider this example: If a young infant is given a swallow of strong coffee, he or she will probably vomit it back up or experience immediate diarrhea. This is because the gastrointestinal tract of a young child is still sensitive and strong enough to actively inhibit such substances from entering the body.
People who have been vegetarians for several months will often experience this reaction if they, should attempt to eat meat again. A healthy body will try to protect itself from harmful non-food items.
The gastrointestinal tube is the pathway all food must follow in its process of digestion and assimilation. What occurs along this path is discussed in the next sections of this lesson.
Appropriation is the making of something into one’s own. Appropriating foods, then, is the act of taking food into the body. The first step toward digestion and assimilation of food is the physical selection of food. This selection is guided primarily by visual and olfactory cues.
Our first contact with food is visual. Young children originally try to discover what is good to eat and what is not by sticking everything within their field of vision into their mouths. If it tastes good, it is food and is swallowed. If not, it is spit out. While effective, this is not the best way to choose food. A variety of items such as rocks, dirt, loose coins, and so forth are often swallowed by children in their exploring quest for suitable food.
Gradually, the child learns to recognize food items by sight. An orange is orange and is for eating, and a baseball is white and is for knocking over breakable items. Very quickly, children learn to recognize food by visual cues alone, and adults soon take this aspect of food appropriation for granted.
Visual appearance of food is an important part of the digestive process. People start to salivate at colorful pictures of food dishes. If the food is pretty and served in a visually pleasing manner the amount of digestive juices secreted is greater than if the food appears distasteful or if it is served in unpleasant surroundings.
The visual appeal of an apple hanging on a tree in an orchard is evident; that same apple stuck in the mouth of a roasted pig, however, does not raise the same expectations in the eater.
Food that is simply unfamiliar is often automatically rejected. Some people refuse to eat yellow tomatoes because they “look funny.” Thereby they may miss a wonderful taste sensation.
All of this may seem obvious, but it is often overlooked in the physiology of nutrition. The body begins to respond immediately when food is placed within the visual field. If the food itself or the surroundings within which it is presented are unappealing, then actual digestion and assimilation of the blood will be impaired. If, on the other Hand, food is artfully presented in a visually pleasing manner, digestion is enhanced.
This does not mean that a lot of artifice should be used in preparing food. On the contrary, if food is naturally attractive, such as fruits or vegetables, then a minimum of ‘stage dressing’ is required. Notice that advertisements for steaks and hamburgers prominently feature salad with vegetables, their attractive colors of red, green and yellow to contrast with the distastefully brown or black meat. Digestion, or lack of it, begins with the eyes.
The nose is the next organ involved in the physiology of digestion. The fragrance of food stimulates the olfactory nerves, which in turn starts the salivation process. This does not mean, however, that food must be overwhelmingly ‘fragrant,’ as is the usual case with cooked foods and spices and onions.
Smelling food is actually a subtle experience that may require re-educating the sense of smell if it is jaded by over-seasoned cooked food. An apple gives a subtle bouquet of odors to whet the appetite. The smell of ripening bananas or a bowl of strawberries is more enjoyably overwhelming to the healthy individual than is the stench of onions and garlic piled upon burnt meat.
The eyes and the nose, then, are the first organs used in the process of digesting and assimilating food. It is important, therefore, that time be taken to appreciate and select food according to its appearance and smell.
After food is chosen according to sight and smell, it is brought towards the mouth and saliva starts to secrete. The mouth is the first step in the digestion of food proper.
The digestion of food can be viewed as two concurrent processes: 1) Mechanical, or the actual movement of food as it is broken down into smaller particles; and 2) Chemical, or the splitting of food into its simple nutritive components. In the mouth, mechanical digestion is performed by the actions of the teeth and tongue, while the saliva furnishes the first step of chemical digestion.
The teeth perform the first mechanical operation of digestion. Food is first bitten by the incisor teeth at the front of the mouth. Then the canine teeth (next to the front teeth) shred the food into smaller parts as it is passed back to the bicuspids, which continue tearing it into smaller portions. Finally, the molar teeth (in the back of the mouth) finish the grinding and crushing of the food.
Chewing by the teeth increases the surface area of the food so that it may be more easily penetrated by the digestive enzymes. Chewing the food is a very important part of digestion. Not only does it break {he food down into more easily digestible...particles, but it also stimulates nervous impulses that cause the secretion of gastric juices, and thus prepare the digestive system for the food to be swallowed.
The teeth are very powerful. The front teeth, which tear and shred food, can exert a force of up to 80 pounds. while the grinding molars can apply 100 to 250 pounds of force against food particles!
At the same time that the teeth are doing their work, the tongue is performing the other aspect of mechanical digestion in the mouth by moving the food back and forth, from side to side and mixing it with the saliva.
The salivary glands help perform chemical digestion in the mouth. There are three pairs of salivary glands in the mouth. They continuously secrete saliva to keep the mouth from drying out. During the day, these glands produce from 1 to 1 1/2 quarts of saliva.
The saliva prepares the food for swallowing by lubricating it with mucin, which gives saliva its slippery characteristic. Imagine how hard it would be to swallow food “dry” without this natural lubrication.
The first digestive enzyme is also contained in the saliva. It is called ptyalin or amylase. This enzyme starts the digestion of starches in foods, Ptyalin helps convert starch to a sugar called maltose.
Since this enzyme is the major factor in starch digestion, all starchy foods should be chewed thoroughly and mixed well with saliva. Human beings, however, are not well adapted to eating starches, so the amount of starches in the diet should be restricted.
Saliva also has a solvent action upon food. It is only after the food is somewhat dissolved that it can be tasted.
In addition to ptyalin, saliva has an enzyme called lysozyme that digests bacterial cell walls, thus killing certain microorganisms. Saliva also has a cleansing action as its constant flow helps to dissolve and remove food particles from the teeth.
After mechanical and chemical digestion has progressed to a certain point in the mouth, the tongue gathers the food together into a small ball and then elevates the mass of food back into the pharynx of the throat. This is the first stage of swallowing and the beginning of the food’s journey down to the stomach.
After food rolls off the tongue, it is no longer under voluntary control. It is now moved through the system under the control of the involuntary nervous system. Short of self-induced vomiting, it is now up to the wisdom of the body to move the food as it sees fit.
After leaving the tongue, it will take about 8 seconds for the swallowed food to reach the stomach. Most of this time is spent traveling down a tube called the esophagus.
The food passes down this tube in a peristaltic (wave-like) motion. These peristaltic waves are strong enough so that even if suspended upside down, a person can swallow about a half-ounce of food and it will work its way against gravity into the stomach. This is why astronauts can eat in “free fall” or zero-gravity. This is also why they must eat in small sips or swallows, being careful not to take in over a half ounce of food per swallow.
Pure liquids can move down the esophagus in only one second, eight times faster than the peristaltic waves move the solid food.
The food passes from the esophagus into the stomach through an opening called the cardiac orifice. As soon as food enters the stomach, a hormone called gastrin is released into the bloodstream.
This hormone is carried to the gastric glands in the stomach which causes them to secrete digestive juices. These gastric juices help in the chemical digestion of the food, while the rhythmic contractions of the stomach contribute to the mechanical process of digestion.
The gastric juices in the stomach are secreted at the rate of two to three quarts per day. These juices contain primarily hydrochloric acid (HCl) and digestive enzymes.
The hydrochloric acid makes the stomach a very acid environment with a pH factor between 1.5 and 3.0 (as compared to pure lemon juice, with a pH factor of 2). This acid environment caused by the HCl secretions serves two, functions: 1) it acts as a denaturant in digestion of proteins; and 2) it kills small parasites that are often found in all foods.
Three primary enzymes are also present in the gastric juices. The first is pepsin, which aids in the hydrolysis of proteins. The pepsin enzyme begins breaking down complex proteins into their simpler forms. It does not actually split the proteins into amino acids (the end-product of protein digestion), but it prepares them for that process which occurs in the intestines. The pepsin enzyme works best in a fairly acid environment. An acid environment is also conducive to protein digestion.
The second enzyme is called lipase. This aids in the hydrolysis of fats. Lipase starts the digestion of fats by aiding their breakdown into glycerol and fatty acids. The lipase enzyme works best in a more neutral pH environment than does the pepsin enzyme.
The third enzyme, found only in the gastric juices of infants, is called rennin. Its primary function is the hydrolysis of milk proteins. Adults do not have the rennin enzyme in sufficient quantity to digest milk products. Consequently, the only time milk should be used in the diet is during infancy and young childhood. Even at these times, the only suitable milk is that from the lactating mother. Milk from cows, goats, etc. is not of the same composition as is mother’s milk and should not be consumed by humans of any age.
These three enzymes, along with the gastric juices, are mixed into the food by the mechanical actions of the stomach. The stomach contracts in waves at the rate of three per minute. The stomach has a capacity for holding up to two quarts of food in volume. When a person is fasting, the actual volume of his or her stomach may be less than two ounces.
The gastric juices mixed in by the contracting and relaxing stomach are initially stimulated by the thought, sight, smell and taste of the food. This occurs before any food has actually entered the stomach. These juices are sometimes called the “appetite juices”, and they may be suppressed if the food appears unappetizing, smells bad, or is eaten in an unpleasant environment.
Digestive secretions in the stomach are increased by attractive and well-liked foods as well as by a state of contentment and happiness. The secretions are decreased by large meals, large amounts of fat, poor chewing, poor appearance of food and negative emotions.
In the presence of intense pain, fear, or depression, gastric juices may be almost completely suppressed for up to twenty-four hours. This fact alone is reason enough not to eat when upset or feeling out of sorts.
The stomach empties at the slow rate of about 3/100 ounce for each peristaltic wave. At three waves per minute, it can take up to five hours for two pounds of food to leave the stomach.
The emptying time of the stomach also varies with the type of food present. Water and liquids leave the stomach most rapidly. Carbohydrates empty more quickly than proteins; proteins, in turn, leave the stomach more quickly than fats.
Within five minutes after fat enters the stomach, a hormone called enterogastrone enters the bloodstream and travels to the stomach, “this hormone inhibits the motion of the stomach and causes it to empty at a much slower rate.
Not all foods undergo the same digestive processes in the stomach, and not all foods leave the stomach at the same rate. Proteins digest in an acid environment, while fats need a neutral environment. Carbohydrates leave the stomach at a faster rate than proteins, and so on.
Even among the carbohydrates (fresh fruits and vegetables), digestion time may vary a great deal. Below is a chart listing the time that various foods remain in the stomach:
Food | Minutes Held In Stomach |
Parsley | 75 |
Lemon | 90 |
Grapes | 105 |
Tomato | 120 |
Carrot | 135 |
Almond | 150 |
Apple | 165 |
Banana | 180 |
Peanut | 195 |
Eggplant | 210 |
Persimmon | 225 |
Turnip | 240 |
Since different foods require different sets of environments in the stomach to digest properly, it is reasonable to assume that if these foods are put into the stomach at the same time, difficulties could occur. That is exactly what happens.
Consider the all-American cheeseburger. A bite of it might contain a starch (bread) a protein (meat), a fat (cheese), and an acid (tomato), what happens when a single bite of this hits the stomach?
The starchy bread was probably not chewed very thoroughly in the mouth and the starch-digesting enzyme had little chance to do its work. So, the bread reaches the stomach in an unprepared state. The meat will require a very acid environment to digest. This makes it difficult for the starch to digest, since acids are inimical to starch digestion. The fat in the cheese requires a more neutral environment than the meat protein to digest, and its fat content causes the stomach to slow its digestion. At the same time, the acids in the tomatoes interfere with the starch digestion of the bread.
In this single bite, there are over seven different types of food requiring four different sets of enzymes and digestive conditions, and all digest at different rates!
At best, such a conglomeration of food in the stomach will slow digestion down to the point of fermentation. This will lead to autointoxication. At worst, the food simply becomes half-digested and is pushed sluggishly through the system, releasing its poisons and gases throughout the body.
The same people who would never mix water, kerosene, or oil with their gasoline for their car will sit down to a meal and give their stomachs a mixture of mashed potatoes, steak, butter, and beer.
Fortunately, the stomach does not break down as fast as an abused automobile. But the stomach’s resilient quality causes people to think they are getting away with their dietary indiscretions.
If different foods are to be put into the stomach at the same meal, they should at least be of the same type that requires the same set of digestive conditions. Ideally, of course, only one food should be eaten at a meal to insure optimum digestion.
Since food combining is such an important area, it is covered in a separate lesson in this course.
The small intestine consists of about 9 feet of inch tubing coiled in the abdomen. This tubing leads from the stomach to the large intestine. It is in the small intestine that most of the digestion and absorption of food occurs.
Food passes into the small intestine from the stomach by entering the duodenum. The duodenum is the smallest segment of the intestine, being only 8 inches long. Food travels through the small intestine by weak contracting waves of motion that propel the food toward the large intestine.
The other two segments of the small intestine are the jejunum, which is 3 feet long and connects the duodenum to the ileum, the final 3 feet of the small intestine.
The small intestine interior has many folds. Along the surfaces of these folds are tiny finger-like projections called villi.
The villi of the intestine move back and forth, like thousands of tiny tentacles, passing through the food as it is moved along the intestinal tract. The villi play an important role in the absorption of food from the small intestine.
Through the center of each villi is one or more fine white vessels called lacteals. The lacteals are part of the lymphatic system. Their principal function is probably the absorption of fat.
As food passes through the small intestine, it is taken up, or absorbed, by structures in the wall of the intestines, especially the villi, and is then secreted into the lacteals. Some of the digested food is absorbed by the numerous blood vessels that line the villi. This digested food directly enters the bloodstream.
As digestion progresses in the small intestine, portions of food are moving in large quantities into the capillaries of the intestinal villi. Blood from the intestines containing these products of digestion is collected in the portal vein, which is connected to the liver.
The liver removes the excess glucose from the blood (glucose being one of the end-products of digestion) and stores it as glycogen, to be used later in normalizing the blood-sugar level and for supplying energy. It also attempts to detoxify harmful elements in the food (such as pesticides), and regulates the level of nutrients available to the body.
The liver is one of the master organs in the body. It receives all the end-products of digestion. The bulk that remains behind after the vital elements are extracted by the villi in the intestine and sent to the liver is then pushed down toward the large intestine. Normally, most of the contents of the intestines have been absorbed by the time the food reaches the middle of the jejunum segment of the intestine, or about 3 feet along the 9 feet of tubing that makes up the small intestine.
The tone and motility of the small intestine is increased by foods served at room temperature, fibrous foods, and high-carbohydrate, low-fat foods. Movement is slowed by cold, dry, and high-fat foods.
The small intestine joins the colon in the region of the right groin. At this juncture is the ileo-cecal valve whose purpose is to control the speed of passage of substances from the small intestine and to prevent any wastes from returning to it from the large intestine. The ileo-cecal valve opens into the colon into a pouch known as the cecum, the first receptacle for waste residue.
At the tip of the cecum is the appendix. Due to the appendix’s position near the waste receptacle, toxins from a diet high in meat, heavy starches, etc. can contribute to its inflammation which may result in a condition known as appendicitis.
If a person suffering from appendicitis simply abstains from all food (fasting), then the\body can conduct its housecleaning and clear up the inflammation without removal of the appendix.
From the cecum, the large intestine ascends on the right side to the middle of the abdomen, then crosses to the left side and descends again. These three sections are called the ascending, transverse and descending colons.
One of the chief functions of the colon is the reabsorption of much of the water used in the digestive process. If all the water in which the digestive enzymes were secreted was lost in the feces, man would have to drink liquids continually.
If too much water is expelled with the feces, then a condition known as diarrhea exists. Diarrhea happens because of an irritation in the stomach and small intestine due to unsuitable food or inflammation. In this case, the colon expels all of its waste residue upon entry without holding it for water reabsorption.
On the other hand, if the waste material moves too slowly through the colon, then excessive water is reabsorbed and the feces become hardened. This is called constipation.
Waste material may move too slowly through the colon for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most usual reason is that peristaltic nerves are paralyzed by toxicity from decaying foodstuffs.
Another reason for the slow movement of waste through the colon is that the passageway has become very small due to poor tone or to hardened feces clogging the intestinal walls.
After several years on a conventional low-fiber diet, the average adult continually carries around about ten to twenty pounds of fecal material on the colon walls. In many instances, the distended abdomens in overweight individuals are not due so much to fat as they are to accumulation of feces over a period of years. Autopsies on much individuals have sometimes revealed over fifty pounds of fecal material in the body!
When the body is abused by the modern diet, the colon often suffers the most. Fortunately, a diet high in natural fiber (that is, raw fruits and vegetables) can greatly aid the body in restoring the health of the intestines.
The last portion of the large intestine is the rectum. This segment serves as a storage chamber for the feces until defecation. The feces are eliminated from the rectum through an opening called the anus.
And so the journey of food through the body is completed. Many healthy individuals process the food from the mouth to the anus in about sixteen to twenty-four hours. Most adults eating a conventional diet, however, generally take from forty-eight to seventy-two hours for their food to complete its journey. Much of this added delay is due to incompatible food combinations and lack of colon vitality.
Now that we’ve followed the bodily journey of food from its beginning to end through the gastro-intestinal tract and learned about some of the physiological processes that accompany this journey, we will proceed to determine an optimum diet, one that promotes digestive efficiency and general well-being.
A wealth of information exists about the physiology of food digestion and absorption. Unfortunately, the science of nutrition has often depended upon “rat experiments” and artificially induced deficiencies, rather than upon the true needs of humans, to determine dietary requirements.
A more reasonable approach to determining the true dietary nature of humans is to study human anatomy and physiology. By studying human physiological nature, certain characteristics of the proper diet can be deduced that are in accordance with the inherent nature and anatomical makeup of humankind. This approach does not depend upon contrived experiments, nor is it already biased by what the majority of people believe a traditional diet should be. Instead, human physical capabilities and predispositions are the chief factors in determining true dietary needs.
The diet of most animals is largely determined by their food-gathering equipment. The long neck of the giraffe enables him to feed upon the foliage of trees. The teeth and claws of the lion are its means of killing and rending animals for its meals. The eagle’s eyesight and power of flight make this creature a formidable predator of ground rodents.
So, it is salient to ask, how are you physiologically equipped to obtain your food? You have no sharp claws for tearing, no pointed teeth for slashing, nor are your eyes or sense of smell very well developed for hunting. You cannot run fast enough to chase down your prey nor can you naturally swoop through the sky or dive deep into the ocean.
You do have a marvelous set of fingers with an oposable thumb and limbs for reaching and climbing. Actually your food-gathering capabilities are very similar to the chimpanzee’s!
Only man can plant and harvest. He can peel oranges and bananas and pick berries and grapes. He can climb the trees for fruits or gather the vegetables from the ground. Of all the creatures on the earth, man is most ideal for being a gardener and caretaker of the plants and trees.
Man’s hands set him apart from the other animals in his food-gathering capabilities. Man appropriates his food by picking fruits from trees or by planting vegetables. It is the hands of man that are used to obtain his food, and the most natural things for such a being to eat are those foods that can be gathered and harvested—the fruits, vegetables and nuts of the earth.
Man’s teeth are not curved or sharpened like those of the wolf or tiger, nor are they wide and flat like those of the grass-and-grain-eating animals. Instead, they are shaped most similar to the fruit-eating monkey’s.
The saliva in man’s mouth has a different acidity entirely than that of the meat-eating animals; it is much less acidic. Nor is man’s saliva as efficacious in digesting starches as is the saliva of grain-and-tuber-eating animals.
Man’s mouth is actually best suited for eating succulent vegetables and fruits.
If a dog swallows a bone and it proceeds to its stomach, it will be completely dissolved by the dog’s strong gastric juices. Carnivores may safely gulp hunks of meat whole because of the high acidity of the juices in their stomachs.
Humans have choked to death on similar chunks of meat. It is interesting to note that almost all of the fatal chokings on food have involved pieces of meat (vegetarians, beware: peanut butter is a close second on fatal food chokings).
Unlike the grass-and-grain-eaters (such as cattle), man’s stomach cannot process large amounts of cellulose. He cannot regurgitate and re-chew his food as does the cow, for example.
Nor can man’s stomach digest a mixture of all different types of food. Each food requires its own special set of digestive conditions in the stomach. Notice too that little or no starch digestion occurs in the stomach, and that fat digestion is a lengthy process that is only successful for small amounts of unheated fats.
Obviously, anything in the world can be put into the stomach, and probably has. However, the physiology of the stomach is such that only foods in compatible combinations can be effectively digested.
The length of man’s intestines is much longer than that. of the carnivore’s. This is because meat tends to putrefy rather quickly in the intestines and must be expelled quickly. Man’s lengthy intestinal tract cannot handle low-fiber foods such as meat quickly. Consequently, such foods decrease the motility of the intestines and fermentation results, along with eventual constipation.
Cancer of the lower intestines occurs only among populations of meat-eaters. It is virtually unheard of when a diet high in natural fiber (raw fruits and vegetables) is adopted.
Constipation also disappears on a high-fiber diet. Fruit-and-vegetable-eating animals maintain excellent tonality of the intestines and usually experience a natural bowel movement after each feeding.
Let’s review the physiology of digestion so that we may determine the optimum human diet. First, it is obvious that man is built to be a gardener and harvester of fruits, vegetables and nuts. He does not possess the physical apparatus that the carnivorous animals have. Second, the teeth, saliva and digestive enzymes of man point to a diet consisting mainly of fruits and non-starchy, vegetables.
Third, the length of the small intestine is too long to handle putrefying meat and is too short for grasses and grains. Humans should eat a high fiber, high-moisture diet to insure health of the small and large intestines.
From these observations, it is evident that the optimum articles of diet for man are fresh fruits and succulent vegetables. Strictly speaking, based upon man’s digestive physiology, the following raw foodstuffs make up the optimum diet, listed in order of preference:
The following foods, while not optimum, can be handled by man’s digestive physiology in small amounts when properly combined:
The next foods, while sometimes eaten on a vegetarian, diet, are not well adopted to man’s physiology and place an undue strain on the organism:
These foods are definitely disruptive of man’s health and are not compatible with his physiology:
The person desiring optimum health should eat exclusively from the first list of foods. These foods are most compatible with human physiology. Within this category, foods should be eaten in moderate amounts and in proper combinations.
The ultimate diet that is most conducive to human physiology and that promotes the highest level of health is the mono-fruit diet; that is, the eating of a single variety of fruit for each meal.
I have just started the diet of fresh fruits and vegetables recommended in this lesson, but I’m experiencing diarrhea. What’s wrong?
Nothing, actually. It is perfectly natural to have alternating periods of diarrhea and constipation when you are first changing your diet. Your entire intestinal tract is being swept clean by a high-natural fiber diet and its tone is improving to the point where it can do some much-needed “housecleaning.” The diarrhea you are experiencing is probably occurring due to the elimination of very old fecal deposits along the colon walls. Some people, however, have periods of diarrhea because their intestines are very sluggish due to years of abuse. They are not ready for a natural diet high in fiber and roughage. If you feel that this is similar to your case, try eating foods such as bananas, avocadoes, melons, etc. that are low in roughage. Eventually, your intestines will be toned-up enough so that you experience a normal bowel movement after each meal.
I don’t really understand this business about putting only one food at a time in my stomach. Seems pretty boring!
Of course, meals should be enjoyable and satisfying. While the mono-diet is the ideal diet, it may be difficult for the person used to the average mixed diet of meat, potatoes and gravy to suddenly eat only grapes or bananas for lunch. If this is the case, continue eating your usual foods, but make sure that they are combined for better digestion. In other words, instead of having mashed potatoes and bread (two heavy starches), try a baked potato and salad for ease of digestion. Gradually, as the diet improves, you will be attracted toward simpler eating without feeling like you are making a “sacrifice.”
It makes sense that our anatomy is most like that of the fruit-eating animals. But, it seems like man can adapt to anything. Whatever he wants to eat, he can get away with.
If you are satisfied with the low-level of health “enjoyed” by modern man, then it is difficult to make a complete diet change. Consider this, however: very few individuals have experienced the highest state of well-being that accompanies radiant health. People transgress natural dietary laws almost from birth. Consequently, if you think good health is merely the absence, of painful symptoms, you are missing the point entirely. Optimum health produces such marked improvements in physical, mental and emotional health that it becomes a joy to live according to the laws of nature. True, you can eat anything you want—that is man’s free choice. However, you can only achieve perfect health by living in accordance with the innate dictates of your own physiology.
21.2. Some Unpleasant Symptoms And Their Causes
Article #1: What To Expect When You Improve Your Diet By Stanley S. Bass, D.C.
21.1.1 “In Sickness and in Health ... ”
21.1.2 The Obstacle To Good Health
It was three o’clock in the morning. My wife was not beside me in bed.
From the bathroom came a series of gags, groans and wretching noises. Finally the lavatory was turned on and water was splashed about.
My wife slipped back into bed. “Blah,” she moaned, “I didn’t know getting healthy made you so sick.”
That was several years ago when my wife had changed over from the typical American diet of high-fat and fried foods to a diet centered around fresh fruits and vegetables.
The fatty foods in her old diet had caused her gallbladder to become clogged with noxious bile. Now that she had improved her diet, her body had a chance to clean out the old deposits of bile and pre-gallstone materials.
The old bile salts had been released into her digestive system in an attempt to eliminate them once and forever. The inconvenient time of three A.M. was when her body chose to clean the toxins out by vomiting.
Afterwards, however, she felt very good. Since this time, she has no longer suffered from gallbladder attacks and her digestion of wholesome fats has greatly improved.
At the time of her induced sickness, however, she was confused. Why would she suddenly become violently ill when all she had done was to improve her diet and take better care of herself? This is one of the mysteries of health improvement that needs to be explained fully so that you know what to expect when the body finally gets an opportunity to heal itself.
Most people do not mind making sacrifices if they feel they will be rewarded eventually for those sacrifices.
People seeking health decide to sacrifice their old comfortable diet patterns and habits from a desire to be rewarded by good health.
Imagine their surprise when they discover that after improving their diet, they sometimes feel much worse (for a temporary period). They feel betrayed and disappointed. “Why do I feel so terrible when I’m trying to do all the right things?” is a common complaint.
Why should the recovery of health and the improvement of the diet cause unpleasant symptoms? Why shouldn’t we be rewarded with immediate good health and radiant well-being as soon as we change our “evil ways?”
Unfortunately, good health is not immediate—but then again, neither did poor health occur immediately.
Think about this. Didn’t you feel healthy and free from pain as a young child? Have you noticed how small children have an endless supply of energy and are oblivious to physical discomforts, such as cold, that would make an adult suffer? Now look at some of our older citizens. Some of them are so crippled with arthritis they can hardly move. Every day is the discovery of some new pain or some developing crisis in the body.
Poor health and illness is progressive; it does not occur overnight. Good health and well-being is also progressive; It may take weeks, months, or years.
To understand this a little more, let’s look at how the body does its work in cycles.
Like all aspects of nature, the body has its own individual cycles. There are biological rhythms within the body that dictate periods of tissue repair, tissue growth, waste elimination, and so forth.
We cannot rush the body through its cycles, nor can we expect it to progress in a linear fashion as if racing to a specific goal. Healing occurs in cycles. Some days the body has a high-energy level and it rebuilds damaged tissues. On such days we may feel great. On other days, the body must do its housecleaning and remove accumulated toxins. When this happens, we may experience low levels of energy or even depression.
Most people lead a lifestyle and follow a diet that inhibit the body in its cyclical work. For instance, when the body is trying to clean house via a cold, people become impatient. They try to suppress the cleansing cycles with drugs or food and the body must sometimes abandon its efforts.
The body behaves in a sort of up and down motion as it conducts its healing processes. One day it may cleanse heavily and we feel rotten. The next day, the toxins have been removed and we feel great. We feel so great, in fact, that the body decides to dig a little deeper and remove some of the older toxins, and then we feel worse. This is a continuing cycle in the process of healing, but do not despair: Once a certain level of health has been reached, we do not notice the cycles as much and they cause progressively less discomfort.
Why does the body go through these cycles? How does it know what to do next to promote our healthful recovery? And, still, why do we have to feel bad as we get well?
Your body wants to survive forever; it wants to be free from all pain and illness; it actively desires complete healing to take place within it at all times. Your body is your friend and partner in your effort to regain health.
The body has the innate capacity, knowledge and wisdom to heal itself at any time—if it is allowed to do so.
The body possesses its own healing ability and the wisdom to direct this ability. The only thing we must do is to let the body conduct its work with as little interference as possible. We can furnish it with the highest-quality food when it needs it or withhold food when it does not desire it. We can exercise and rest the body, and give it fresh air and sunshine.
Other than that, all we can do is wait intelligently and not become alarmed by the symptoms of its healing or try to suppress those symptoms.
The body will not try to kill itself, nor will it allow healing to progress in such a manner as to cause us serious discomfort. but the body is wise enough to want to accelerate the healing process as rapidly as possible. This may involve major cleansing efforts when literally pounds of old stored toxins are dumped into the system to be eliminated.
If you have faith and trust in your body’s ability to heal itself, the unpleasant symptoms which may accompany this healing become more bearable and are not a source of fear or misgiving.
Ultimately, we must let our body perform its health-restoring work at its own pace. We must believe that the body alone is capable of performing all the needed healing functions.
The human body has perfected itself over millions of years and through thousands of generations.
It is the perfect healing system. The cellular intelligence that drives the body is infinite in its capacity. We need not have any fears about its wisdom or ability to restore itself to the highest-possible level of health and well-being.
A two hundred and seventy-five pound woman was admitted to the hospital after she complained about “indigestion” pains.
Two hours later, she gave birth to a child. She had no idea that she had been pregnant.
An elderly man complained of a continual dull headache for weeks. He went to a doctor who asked him about his habits, activities, and so on.
Upon repeated questioning, it was determined that the man had not experienced a bowel movement in weeks. He was not even aware that he was constipated and that this might be the source of the headache.
We might find such stories amazing, but to a certain extent they are true for everyone. Most people today have such a low level of body awareness that they do not realize they are suffering from poor health until a severe blow lays them low.
Unless illnesses and disease propagate to a dramatic climax, many people are unaware that anything is even wrong with the body. Modern man has become desensitized and removed from his own body.
A lack of body awareness accompanies a sickened condition. In fact, it is this absence of consciousness that permits the body to degenerate. If a person is attuned to his body’s needs, he becomes aware when something is going wrong and he can fast, change his diet, etc.
Increasing good health also increases our awareness of the body. As the major pains and aches disappear, we become more sensitive to all the body’s needs. The minor irritations that were not noticed previously may now enter our awareness.
For example, suppose you had a slight headache or an ingrown toenail. At the same time, you were suffering from a violently bleeding ulcer that caused you to vomit every two or three hours.
Do you think you’ll notice that headache or sore toe? No, you’ll be too busy worrying about the ulcer to pay any attention to the other minor pains.
After the ulcer is gone, however, you might suddenly realize, “My head hurts, and, boy, does my toe feel bad!”
This is exactly what happens when the body goes through its healing process. As you gain health, you become more aware of the minor pains that may have plagued you for years.
In fact, these little aches may have been around so long that you’ve grown used to them. After the diet is changed and the body improves, these aches may enter your awareness again.
It’s not that your increasing health has given you any new pains, but that the new body awareness that accompagnies an improvement, in condition allows you to notice these old problems.
The new sensitivity is a blessing. Now your body can tell you what it needs, what to avoid, and what habits to discontinue. If you have stopped eating meat, for instance, your body will become more sensitive to the harmful effects of such food. If you were to eat that same food again, you might become sick. This is the body’s way of saying, “That stuff’s no good for me, and I’m strong enough now to let you know.”
Body awareness is one of the first gifts of health. This new feeling should not be mistaken for morbid sensitivity. It is your guardian angel that will guide you past the pitfalls of poor foods, unhealthy practices, and other life destroying habits.
21.2.2 Some of the Toxins in Your Body
21.2.5 Salt and Other Condiments
21.2.7 Heavy Metal Elimination
21.2.8 Meat-Eating and the Acid Body Condition
Suppose you have made the decision to change your diet and improve your health. You understand how the body heals itself and you are more aware of its needs. Yet, you may not have complete faith in your body.
A splitting headache, chills, nausea, a dripping nose, increased body odor, reappearance of old aches and pains, rashes, boils, drastic weight loss—all the symptoms that can shake the faith of the most sincere health seeker.
Without proper understanding or support, you could panic at these symptoms and believe your new diet or way of life is the cause of them. You might revert to your old unhealthy practices because you became afraid.
Thousands of people have experienced the same sort of problems as they improved their health. Books about fasting and dietary changes should be read so that you may feel reassured. Case histories, such as the one below, may help you understand these changes.
Larry was a college junior and had become a vegetarian after graduating from high school. He had tried to improve his diet, but college life put him under stress and so he started drinking coffee in the evening to stay awake and study. After staying up late, he felt tense so he started smoking marijuana for relaxation and to get to sleep.
He also had little time to prepare lunch, so he got in the habit of eating a quart of fruit flavored yogurt for lunch every day.
When the summer came, Larry decided to kick his coffee and marijuana habits. The hot weather was also making him feel uncomfortable eating dairy products, so he gave up his daily yogurt. He had been suffering from sore throats and nasal congestion, and he changed over to a diet of raw fruits and vegetables to allow his body to cleanse itself.
The first day of his new diet Larry felt pretty good. He had distilled water for breakfast instead of the usual two cups of coffee and ate fresh fruits for lunch. He had a salad for supper and went to bed early to get plenty of rest. The next morning he woke up feeling miserable. He had a sharp headache that raced up his neck behind his ears. He could hardly breathe. His sinuses were clogged shut. He felt worse than he had in weeks.
The headache stayed all day and into the next day. Now he noticed he had developed a hacking cough that convulsed him. He started spitting up hardened balls of mucus from this lungs.
The third day his nose was continually draining. As fast as he could blow it, his nose would clog back up. All the time, his headache had never left him, even when he tried to sleep.
By the fourth day, the headache had subsided a little.
His cough had worsened, however, and now pieces of hardened gray material were being expelled from his lungs.
“I can’t stand it!” he thought, “Why am I feeling so miserable as soon as I gave up my bad habits?”
Why indeed? First, Larry’s headache is a symptom of caffeine withdrawal. Coffee, tea, cola drinks, and other caffeine-containing substances are addictive poisons. When a person drops his caffeine habit, changes occur in the vascular and nervous systems. These changes occur as the body tries to renormalize itself and eliminate the poisons. Headaches often accompany caffeine withdrawal, and some people who give up their coffee habit may experience edginess and irritability for a few days.
Larry’s clogged nose and sinuses were related to the consumption of dairy products. Mucus buildup occurs when milk is consumed. After such foods are eliminated, sinus drainage may occur for two weeks or more. The elimination of old mucus is a healthy sign for such deposits may become the breeding places for many diseases.
The coughing and spitting of hardened phlegm resulted from the cleansing of the lungs of the tar deposits which had been caused by smoking. Smokers lungs are often crusted black with tar and chemical deposits. When smoking is stopped, the lungs try to cleanse themselves and the old deposits are expelled by coughing. This is why a cough should never be suppressed. Coughing is one method that the body has of expelling toxic wastes from the system.
After about two weeks, Larry started to feel better than ever. He had plenty of energy without his coffee. His nose, throat, and lungs felt so much cleaner that he had no desire to smoke or eat dairy products. He had suffered for awhile, but now he was reaping the rewards of improved health.
Everybody is a walking time bomb. Each person carries within him the seeds for disease and illness. These seeds are the environmental and dietary toxins that may be stored within the body and which may spring full force into a debilitating disease.
What are some of these toxins, and where do they come from? How can we get rid of them? What symptoms can we expect when they start to leave the body?
Surprisingly enough, one of the largest sources of body toxins is the drugs people take to fight disease (or so they think). Medicinal drugs are very strong—they have to be to overcome the body’s natural defense system.
When such drugs are taken, they must either be eliminated from the body or stored within it for later elimination.
As a person’s health improves and all such medicines and drugs are discontinued, the old toxins may enter the bloodstream for elimination. The circulation of these old drug toxins in the system may produce bewildering symptoms that could alarm the health seeker.
For example, an elderly man had been taking a form of digitalis (a heart stimulant) for several years. He discontinued the drug as he improved his health through exercise.
After a few days off the drug, he experienced erratic heart beats, a racing pulse and chest pains. He was frightened and wondered if he should take his old drug again.
He was reassured that these symptoms were due to his body trying to renormalize itself and eliminate the old toxins from the heart drug. Sure enough, after a few days his heartbeat became steady and regular as the drug toxins were finally eliminated.
Every drug used, whether legal or illegal, leaves its mark upon the body. As the body regains health, the drug deposits are put into circulation for elimination. Since a combination of past drug deposits may enter the Bloodstream at once disconcerting symptoms may arise. Drug detoxification can be a lengthy process, but it will be aided by fasting and a diet high in fresh fruits.
Be forewarned: Old drugs that were taken even many years ago may reappear in the bloodstream as they leave fatty tissues and the organs. Drug toxin elimination may express itself in a series of rashes as they leave the body through the skin.
Heavy smokers or coffee drinkers may experience similar symptoms when they withdraw from their drug. Nervous irritability and emotional outbreaks are common symptoms of these drug addicts when they are detoxifying.
Nicotine and caffeine damage the nervous system and upset the vascular system, so symptoms such as headaches, edginess, and extreme lassitude may be expected. Such symptoms from these drugs usually lessen after three to ten days.
Once salt use is stopped and the health improves, old salt deposits in the body exit through the skin and kidneys. Sometimes the elimination is so intense that a person may have a continual salty taste in the mouth for days. The skin may become crusted with salt or it may smell of the particular condiment that is being eliminated (such as onions, peppers, or vinegar).
In Mexico, corpses have been found in the desert that were untouched by buzzards and hyenas. The reason? The people had eaten such large quantities of hot peppers all their lives that their skins were actually too spicy for the scavengers to eat. Condiments can never be used by the body, and so they must either be stored or eliminated when the health is improved.
Salt elimination may also cause a temporary rise in blood pressure. People who go on salt-free diets may actually experience a slight increase in their blood pressure as the heavy elimination of salt begins. Later the blood pressure renormalizes itself and eventually becomes below the norm on a salt-free diet.
Eliminating sugar from the diet may make a person feel slightly nervous and hyperactive until the energy levels adjust to a sugar-free diet.
Mood changes, however, are usually more noticeable than any physical symptoms when sugar is eliminated. Reformed sugar addicts may feel periods of unaccountable depression as their blood sugar level tries to right itself. Getting off the sugar roller coaster, with its rapid rises and falls in blood sugar levels, is easier when a diet high in raw foods is followed. Such a diet renormalizes blood sugar levels and promotes tranquility of emotions.
Almost every person is poisoned by deposits of heavy metals in the body. Lead, aluminum, copper and arsenic collect in organs throughout the body. Because of their heavy weight, they are difficult to eliminate, and may cause discomfort as they leave the body.
Lead enters the body through auto exhaust, paints and canned foods. Aluminum may come from preparing or storing food in aluminum containers. Arsenic is present on sprayed foods, and so on.
Since these metals are heavy, they, tend to remain in the body until a cleansing diet or fast is followed. As these metals come out, headaches and a general achiness all through the body may occur. The gums may hurt and the kidneys may throb as these metals leave the organs and bones.
Occasionally, you can actually taste the metal that is being eliminated. Lead, especially often leaves a metallic taste on the tongue when it is leaving the body.
Heavy-metal poisoning can make you feel uncomfortable all over, and it is very common due to all the environmental toxins. As you eliminate these metals, bear the uncomfortable body aches and realize that they are leaving your body forever.
Meat-eating creates an acid condition in the body. When meat is eliminated, the body tries to reestablish its naturally-healthy, alkaline condition. As the acid condition of the body changes to one of alkalinity, symptoms may arise that may confuse the new vegetarian.
A sour, disagreeable odor may emit from the body as the acids leave or are neutralized. Hair may fall out and the breath may turn foul. Urine may be very dark and a sharp, bitter taste may be in the mouth.
Weakness of the arms and legs may occur. Many people contuse this weakness for protein deficiency. Instead, the weakness has resulted from a consumption of too much acid-forming protein in the past. The body’s energies are directed toward neutralizing these old toxins and so you may feel weak for a temporary period. Once the toxins are taken care of and an alkaline condition is reestablished, then strength returns to the limbs.
The discomfort of an over-acid body caused by meat-eating can be quickly overcome by a high-alkaline diet, such as fresh fruits and vegetables.
Most people who change their diet and improve their health may experience one or more of the symptoms described below. Depending upon your past health, these symptoms may be mild or intense, short-term or long-term, temporary or recurrent.
As you improve your health, however, and stay on an optimum diet, all symptoms will gradually disappear.
Under no circumstances should these symptoms be halted by drugs.
Relief from some of these symptoms may come through fasting and rest primarily.
Moderate exercise is also beneficial, if your strength allows. Sleep and freedom from stress is vital.
Sunshine and fresh air will also aid in detoxification.
A headache is the body’s chief warning signal of body toxicity. The toxic load in the body has increased so fast that poisons are circulating in the bloodstream and cause irritation to the brain and nerves.
Aspirin should never be taken for a headache. For some relief, lay down and rest with a cool, damp cloth across the eyes and forehead. Fasting may also help. Have someone massage the neck and temple. Avoid all stress at this time.
When food is not being digested properly or is passing right through your body, then it is time to stop all food intake. This is your body’s way of telling you it doesn’t require any nourishment at this time, but instead is busy cleaning.
Careful food combinations and avoiding heavy foods are advised.
Diarrhea should not be halted by medicines. Rest and abstinence from food are your best resorts.
A new diet may occasion temporary constipation. Brisk walking of at least one mile a day will help end this problem.
Eating foods naturally high in water and fiber will eventually remedy this condition. If little food is eaten, drink distilled water whenever thirsty.
On a diet of fruits and vegetables, constipation disappears, never to return.
Weight loss is entirely normal when the diet is improved. Some individuals become alarmed when their weight falls rapidly. In most cases, this is not a cause for alarm.
From five to fifteen pounds of water weight alone may be lost when salt is completely eliminated from the diet. In some individuals, five to twenty pounds of old fecal matter may be eliminated from the colon. All of this is useless weight, and you should say, “Good riddance!”
The body will also try to eliminate all diseased tissue in an effort to rebuild a healthy body. It will try to strip itself down to the bare foundations and then begin to add on only healthy tissue.
Weight loss may occur for six months to a year. Exercises for muscle growth, such as weight lifting and swimming, will help rebuild the body with lean, muscular tissue. Be sure that your diet includes sufficient amounts of sweet fruits that are high in calories to balance out the low-calorie salads.
Usually, you can expect to weigh about twenty pounds less after you renormalize your body from the typical high-meat and fat diet of most Americans.
Almost all the symptoms experienced during a dietary change are due to the body’s efforts to detoxify itself as rapidly as possible!
You can help in this process by fasting and getting plenty of rest. Be sure you get all the sleep you want and try to avoid stressful situations. During detoxification, you need as much peace and privacy as possible.
Never halt any symptom with medication. It will only reappear later in greater intensity.
Above all else, cultivate a positive attitude about what you are doing. Do not feel like you are punishing yourself or that you are making any great sacrifices. You are recovering your health, and that is the greatest reward that can be expected.
Realize that your sincere efforts will give you health beyond your expectations. Do not dwell upon your temporary discomforts. Instead, indulge in positive activity, such as exercise, gardening or helping others.
All symptoms will pass in time. The pain today will be a memory tomorrow. The discomforts you endure now mean an absence of suffering, later. You are healing yourself with your courage and wisdom. You have much to be thankful for.
21.3.1 Fasting - The Quick and Easy Way
21.3.2 Fasting - A Case History
21.3.4 A Rapid Change in Diet - A Case History
Now that you have an understanding of the symptoms that may occur when the diet is changed and health improves, you can evaluate the various ways in which the diet may be modified.
The intensity of the symptoms experienced is often related to the method used for the dietary transition, such as fasting, gradual diet improvement, quick diet changeover, and so forth.
A prolonged supervised fast is the quickest way to make the transition to health. Dietary changes can be made more easily after a period of fasting. Fasting, however, can be accompanied by intense symptoms, and the reactions experienced while fasting may alarm the first-time faster. For this reason, a lengthy fast should be undertaken in the presence of an experienced practitioner. Unsupervised fasts from three to five days, however, may be safely undertaken by people who are educated in the mechanics of starting and breaking a fast.
Below is a case history of a person who used fasting to make the dietary transition:
“I had tried to improve my diet off and on for several years. One day I would eat fresh fruits and salads. The next day it would be ice cream and potato chips.
Or maybe I would last a week on a good diet. Then I’d go out and eat Italian food for a reward. Then I’d eat healthy for a day or two, and the next day I would fix a huge cheese casserole.
I was always seesawing. Finally, I said ‘Okay, this is it. No food at all for a few days.’
I went on a seven day fast and drank only distilled water. After the fast, I felt so clean and wonderful that I didn’t want to mess up my body with junky foods.
I tremendously enjoyed fruits and unseasoned salads after my fast. I wasn’t craving all that cooked food. I made myself a promise that if I ate cooked foods one day, I would fast the next day. This helps me to break the momentum that would otherwise wreck my healthy diet.
Fasting is the easiest way to get back to a healthy diet and stay on it. It’s much easier for me to change from a ‘no food diet’ (fasting) to a ‘raw food diet’ than it is to start over again from my old cooked food, junk diet.”
Some people desire to make as rapid a change as possible in their diet. This is admirable. After all, if your house is on fire, you don’t want to linger, but to get out as fast as you can. So it is with an unhealthy diet—you don’t want to drag your feet when your health is in question.
You do want to succeed, however. Unfortunately, rapid changes in the diet often fail. Changing the diet overnight is extremely difficult, although a few individuals have done just that.
Caution is advised if you want to make major and sudden changes in your diet. Your mind might be ready, but your body may rebel. After all, you wouldn’t expect a lion to suddenly start eating hay for breakfast. True, eventually a carnivorous animal can thrive on vegetarian fare, but it is usually introduced gradually. Man, however, is naturally fruitarian/vegetarian, so he will have an easier time in changing his diet, but still be aware that some people do not take to rapid changes in their diets, habits, living arrangements, or anything else for that matter.
If you want to go from a meat and potatoes diet to a raw fruit diet in a few days, fine; but be aware that your body may react so strongly that you could become discouraged and feel very sick. If such a rapid change is intended, it is best to fast before attempting it.
Remember that your present state of health is the result of years of bad living habits and poor diet choices. It may be unreasonable to expect your body to change completely overnight.
Here is a case history of one person who did make an almost overnight change in his diet:
“I’ve always been an all-or-nothing person. I’d do something 100 percent or I wouldn’t do it at all.
I had been on a conventional diet, eating lots of fast foods, and getting most of my meals out of cans and packages. I didn’t pay much attention to what I ate, just so it filled me up.
“Then one summer my brother died from cancer of the colon. It shook me up. I started reading and found out that cancer of the lower intestine usually occurs when a low-fiber diet is eaten, like meat, dairy products, fast foods—in other words, my kind of diet.
That was all it took. One day I had been eating hamburgers, and the next day I was eating only oranges. Pow! I was an overnight fruitarian.
I nearly died. I had diarrhea continually for five days. Everything I ate came right out. I guess I should have fasted, but I didn’t know anything about that. I just kept eating fruits.
I weighed 185 pounds. After a few months, I was down to 110 pounds. I was a walking skeleton. People stared at me.
I found myself continually weak. Climbing up a single flight of stairs took several attempts.
There were days when I felt like I was going crazy. All my family and friends looked like strangers. My own face even looked unfamiliar to me.
I had so many toxins circulating in my system that I could not think straight. This lasted about six months? Finally things started to change.
I started gaining weight and getting my strength back. In fact, I had more energy than I ever had in my life. I would wake up before sunrise and run several miles. I became continually happy and was always smiling.
Today I honestly don’t know howl went through those six months. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone be so radical as I was. I believed I came close to killing myself.
Don’t be too tough on yourself; you took this long to get sick, so take your time to get healthy.”
This method may take the longest time, but it produces the least intense symptoms. The disadvantage of changing the diet slowly is that people may backslide too easily, or their health may be so poor that they can’t afford to wait a long time. Since the symptoms of healing are spread out over a long period of time, it may be years before the person feels truly healthy. Still, this is an easy way to change the diet for those who do not want to experience the strong reactions sudden changes entail.
Symptoms will occur even with a gradual transition. Depending upon how you lived in the past, these symptoms may reoccur for several years or until an optimum diet is strictly followed for a length of time.
Gradual changes in the diet are fine, provided that continued/forward movement toward a goal is maintained. If you take two years, for example, to eliminate all meat from your diet, you might be more susceptible to eating it again after you thought you had given it up. As long as you are definitely improving your diet every week and are not fooling I yourself, then your progress is probably satisfactory.
The best thing about changing the diet over a period of months is that you have the time to educate yourself about the symptoms you may be experiencing. You are also more likely to stick with your improvements if they are implemented over a period of time and are made a part of your lifestyle. Some people change their diet one week, but are back to eating the old foods the next week. Slow, sustained progress is better than fast, erratic changes.
Here is a case history of a person who slowly changed her diet:
I was fifty-three years old when my husband and I decided to change our diets. We had recently retired to our country home, and we decided it was time to take better care of ourselves.
We became vegetarians almost by accident. We were working hard outside in the summer with our garden, and we would get so hot that we didn’t want to eat meat.
Besides we had so many garden vegetables that it was easy to make a meal on them.
The first summer we ate meat maybe twice a week. About the only effect we noticed was a strong desire for afternoon naps.
During the fall and winter, we stayed on our twice-weekly meat diet, and started to eliminate all sugar from our diet. I really noticed an improvement when we stopped using sugar. I also cut back on our salt to help my husband’s blood pressure.
When the spring and summer came, we started eating more fresh foods and these took the place of our bread, milk and eggs. Since we never ate out, being away from the city, we avoided most rich foods.
Finally by the following fall, we had just about stopped eating any meat unless guests came by. We eating a salad at about every meal, and I stuck to only cooked food per meal.
We just kept feeling better and better. The bursitis in my shoulder disappeared and my husband lost his pot belly after all these years.
When the next spring and summer came around, we became total vegetarians and started having complete days with only raw foods. Every now and then, we would steam or bake a few vegetables.
Our diet is still not perfect I but all the improvements we’ve experienced encourages us to continue as far as possible. We’re lucky, I guess. We have plenty of homegrown produce and get to stay outside a lot. But I think anybody can start to make improvements in their diet and health—no matter how small.”
Body purification is a lifelong process. Your body will always strive to a higher state of health. It will always be eliminating toxins as soon as they become present.
Consequently, you can always expect some cleansing symptoms to occur even after you have achieved a high state of well-being. The symptoms, however, will be of a much shorter duration and of a much lower intensity.
For instance, that cold you used to get each year for a week may only last two days or one day. You may only notice a temporary cleansing lasting only a few hours or overnight instead of the ten-day periods of sickness that used to plague you.
Gradually, all the old symptoms will disappear. Your body will/be in such a high state of health that you will experience little discomfort during its cleansing cycles.
You will have passed through the suffering and pain of toxic elimination. You will have reached the birthright of every human being—perfect health.
I’ve tried to change my diet several times. Each time I would be fine through the day, but by supper time I would feel depressed. What’s happening?
A mild form of depression is very likely to accompany a change in diet. There are two reasons for this. First, by the end of the day during which you ate wholesome foods, the body has had a chance to eliminate a large amount of toxins. These toxins are circulating in the bloodstream before they leave the body, and tend to depress the mind. A little vigorous exercise an hour or so before the evening meal and productive, relaxed pursuits after supper can effectively combat these temporary periods of depression.
The second reason for such mild depression is that you are making a major change in your life, and consequently you are losing a part of your old identity. We often identify with foods we eat and feel that they define who we are (for example, “I’m a meat and potatoes man,” or “My family was raised on fresh bread”.). As certain foods vanish from our diet, we sense a temporary loss which is overcome by reading inspirational health literature and educating ourselves about the harmfulness of our old foods.
I fasted once for four days and got the worst headache of my life. I could hardly stand up. I got scared and broke my fast. Is that okay?
Make no mistake—a radical change in the diet or a period of fasting may sometimes give rise to symptoms that can scare you silly. This is especially true if you have had little experience in this area or have no friends or relatives you can talk to. It certainly helps to have a knowledgeable person you can confide in and be reassured by.
Whether or not it was “okay” to break your fast is really up to your body. Perhaps your body was telling you to slow down and to break your fast and continue with a slower cleansing method. More than likely, however, had you continued for another day or two, your headache might have vanished forever.
Educate yourself and try again. You can do it!
I ate a bunch of mangoes last summer and I got a rash all over my thighs. Is this an allergy symptom?
It’s not an allergy symptom—it’s a symptom of an overly toxic body. Mangoes did not cause the rash, but instead allowed the body to get rid of old toxins.
Skin rashes, boils, eruptions, etc., are extremely common as the diet is changed and toxins come out. Do not confuse these skin problems with allergies. People are not allergic to wholesome foods—they are “allergic” to the toxins and poisons in their bodies.
When Diet Improves, the Body Casts Out Accumulated Toxins and Unfit Tissues
If I were asked, “which is the area of greatest misunderstanding and confusion in the field of nutrition?”, I would immediately be forced to reply, “It is the failure to properly understand and interpret the symptoms and changes which follow the beginning of a better nutritional program.”
What is meant by a better nutritional program? It is the introduction of foods of higher quality in place of lower-quality ones. For example—if a person replaces a protein-rich food such as pork with beef, the beef may be considered the superior of the two due to its easier digestibility, lower and less-saturated fat content, etc.,—chicken is superior to beef, and fish is superior to chicken because of its more rapid digestion and lower-saturated fat content. Lima beans, lentils or chick peas which are eaten at the same meal with vegetables are superior in all the nutrients mentioned. Then we ascend to the nuts and seeds which are eaten in the natural state (raw and unsalted). To summarize—the closer the food comes to its raw, unfired form, the higher the quality is. In this condition, all the enzymes are found intact. The amino acids are in their finest form. The minerals, vitamins, trace elements, carbohydrates and life force are present. This life force, in turn, is capable of reproducing tissue which is full of life and longer lasting in structure.
This same classification of quality which we analyzed in relation to protein-rich foods applies to the carbohydrates (the starches and sugar-rich foods), the fats, the mineral-rich foods (vegetables), etc.
The quality of a nutritional program is dramatically improved by omitting evil and toxic substances such as coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, salt, pepper, etc.
What is the relation of quality of foods to recovery from illness? It is this in a nutshell—the higher the quality of food that we eat, the quicker we recover from disease—provided we are able to properly digest and assimilate the quality level. To this must be added the knowledge of: (a) proper food-combining, (b) proper order of eating the different kinds of food at a meal (e.g. the most easily digested food should be eaten first, the more complex one second and the most-concentrated item last), (c) the correct quantity of food to be consumed (of each type) in the meal, and (d) the correct time for eating (when hungry, and not by the clock).
Now what happens when a person follows these rules and makes a decided improvement in the quality of the food consumed? Remarkable things begin to happen to the body (as well as the mind). The amazing intelligence present in every cell of the body, the wisdom of the body in its operation immediately becomes manifest. The rule may be stated thusly: When the quality of the food coming into the body is of higher quality than the tissues which the body is made of, the body begins to make room for the superior materials which it uses to make new and healthier tissue. This is the plan of Nature—of evolution. The body is very selective and always aims for improvement—for better health. The body always tries to produce health and always will, unless our interference is too great. Only then do we fail to recover and degenerate further into disease. The remedial nature of many conditions such as colds, fevers, cuts, swellings, and injuries, furnish endless examples of how the body tends toward health—always—unless we do something to stop the process.
What are the symptoms or signs which become evident when we first begin to omit the lower-grade foods and instead introduce superior foods—those which are more alive, more natural than we are accustomed to? When the use of a toxic stimulant such as coffee, tea, chocolate or cocoa is suddenly stopped, headaches are common and a letdown occurs. This is due to the discard by the body of the toxins called caffeine and theobromine which are removed from the tissues and transported through the bloodstream to the eliminating organs. When the blood coagulates through the brain during its many bodily rounds before the noxious agents reach their final destination for elimination, these irritants register in our consciousness as pain—in other words, headache. The letdown is due to the ower action of the heart—the resting phase which follows the stimulation or more rapid heart action forced upon the body by certain poisons called stimulants. The more rapid heart beat (or pulse) produces a feeling of exhilaration and the slower action produces a depressed state of mind. Usually, within three days, the symptoms vanish and we feel stronger due to the recuperation which follows. To a lesser extent, the same process occurs when we abandon lower-quality foods and replace them with better foods. Lower-quality foods have undergone more reparation. Spices, salt and other ingredients have been added and they tend to be more stimulating than less-prepared and more-natural foods. Animal foods such as meat, fowl and fish are more stimulating than cheese, nuts and vegetable proteins. Consequently, the withdrawal of stimulation which follows the abandonment of animal food produces a slower heart action—a resting base—which registers in the mind as relaxation or a decrease in energy. This initial letdown lasts about ten days or slightly longer and is followed by an increase of strength, a feeling of diminishing stress and greater well-being.
Now, let us return to the symptoms which occur in the process of regeneration.
The person who starts a better diet, stays on it for three lays to a week and then quits will say, “Oh! I feel better on the old diet—the new one made me feel weak.” He ailed because he didn’t give his body a chance to adjust and complete its first phase of action—recuperation. If he lad waited a while longer, he would have begun to feel letter than before he started.
During the initial phase (lasting about ten days on the average to several weeks in some), the vital energies which are usually in the periphery or external part of the body much as the muscles and skin begin to move to the vital internal organs and start reconstruction. This shunting of much of the power to the internal region produces a “feeling of less energy in the muscles which the mind interprets as some weakness. Actually, the power is increased, but most of it is being used for rebuilding the more important organs and less of it is available for muscular work. Any weakness which is felt here is not true weakness, but merely a re-deploying of forces to the more important internal parts. Here it is important for the person to stop wasting energy, and to rest and sleep more. This is a crucial phase and if the person resorts to stimulants of any kind, he will abort and defeat the regenerative efforts of the body. It is important that he have patience and faith here and just wait it out, and after a while he will get increasing strength which will exceed by far what he felt before he began the new program. Success in recovery or improvement of health hinges upon the correct understanding of this point—realizing that the body is using its main energies in more important internal work and not wasting it in external work involving muscle movements. Be wise—take it easy here and relax. Just coast in your work and social obligations until you’re out of the woods.
As one continues on the improved dietary and gradually raises the food quality, interesting symptoms begin to appear. The body begins a process called “retracing.” The cellular intelligence reasons something like this—“Oh! look at all these fine materials corning in. How wonderful—now we have a chance to get rid of this old garbage and build a beautiful new house. Let’s get this excess bile out of the liver and gallbladder and send it to the intestines for elimination. Let’s get this sludge moving out of the arteries, veins and capillaries. These smelly, gassy brain-stupefying bowel masses have been here too long—out with them. These arthritic deposits in the joints need cleaning up. Let’s get these irritating food preservatives, aspirins, sleeping pills and drugs out of the way, along with these other masses of fat which have made life so burdensome for us so long. Let’s get going and keep going till the job is done—till we have a beautiful house and from then on we’ll keep it a beautiful, ideal model house.”
During the first phase (called catabolism), the accent is on elimination, or breaking down of tissue. The body begins to clean house-to remove the garbage deposited in all the tissues-everywhere. During this period the body “removes the ashes from the furnace preparatory to getting a better fire.” Here the accentuation is on removal of the gross and immediate body obstructions. Wastes are discarded more rapidly than new tissue is made from the new food. This becomes evident as weight loss. This persists for a while and is then followed by the second phase-called stabilization.
Here the weight remains more or less stable. During this phase the amount of waste material being discarded daily is equal to the amount of tissue which is being formed and replaced by the newer more vital food. This occurs after the excess of obstructing material in the tissues has been removed. This stage persists for a while and is then followed by a third phase-a building-up period (called anabolism) wherein weight starts to go up, even though the diet is lower in calories than it was before. At this point, much or most of the interfering wastes have already been discarded-the tissues which have been formed since the diet was raised in quality are more durable and do not break down easily.
Also, new tissues are now being formed faster. This is due to the improved assimilation and increase of enzyme efficiency which resulted from the recuperation of the digestive mechanism-made possible by the ceasing of wrong food combining. The body’s need for the usual amounts of food decreases and we are able to maintain our weight and increased energies with less food. Many are able to function very efficiently on two meals a day and eventually even on one meal a day. As the body progressively increases in efficiency and decreases in tissue breakdown under exercise, so do we gradually need less and less food to maintain life. The higher the percentage of raw food one lives on, the slower the rate of tissue degeneration which one evolves into. A sick body requires a gradual, carefully-worked-out entry into this stage- where one is able to live on a 100% unfired (raw) diet.
Returning to the symptoms which occur on a superior nutritional program-people who have had tendencies in the past to recurring skin rashes or eruptions will frequently tend to eliminate poisons and harmful drugs through the skin with new rashes or eruptions. If they go to a physician now who is not familiar with this aspect of nutrition, he will diagnose it as an allergy. They ask, “How come I’m eating better now than I did before and instead I’m getting worse?” They don’t understand that the body is “retracing.” The skin is getting more alive and active. It’s throwing out more poisons more rapidly, now that the body has more power, which is saved by the discontinuation of those hard-to-digest meals. These toxins being discarded are saving you from more serious disease, which will result in-if you keep them in your body too much longer-possible hepatitis, kidney disorder, blood disease, heart disease, arthritis, nerve degenerations or even cancer-depending upon your structural weaknesses. Be happy you’re paying your bills now on an easy-payment plan.
With some, colds which haven’t appeared for a long time may occur, or even fevers. This is nature’s way of housecleaning. Understand that these actions are constructive, even though unpleasant at the moment. Don’t—but don’t try to stop these symptoms by the use of certain drugs, or even massive doses of vitamins, which will act as drugs in huge concentration. These symptoms are evidence of a remedial process. Don’t try to “cure” the remedial process! These are not deficiency conditions or allergic manifestations—not if you’re eating properly in quality, quantity, combination and sequence. Here is where experienced advice is of great value. Unfortunately there are few books present today which give full guidance to the average reader. Try to find guidance through a doctor or teacher who has the requisite experience in this most confusing of all subjects-nutrition in relation to health and disease.
You may be eating perfectly in quantity, quality and observing all the correct rules, and still symptoms will occur. Those who have lived better lives in the past-who have eaten better foods and who have abused their bodies less with overeating, will have reactions ranging from almost none at all, or very mild, to symptoms which may be uncomfortable or acute. Those who have lived worse lives and poisoned themselves more will experience more severe symptoms if their liver, kidneys or other important eliminating organs have been damaged. When they have been renovated to the point of fair working order, they will no longer produce symptoms.
Headaches may occur at the beginning. Fever, colds, the skin may break out, a short interval of bowel sluggishness, occasional diarrhea, feelings of tiredness or weakness, disinclination to exercise, nervousness, irritability, negativity or feeling mentally depressed, frequent urination, also may occur. However, the great majority of people find their reactions tolerable and are encouraged to bear with them because of the many improvements which have already occurred and are becoming more evident with each day. This acts as an inspirational force to them.
The symptoms will vary according to the materials being discarded, the condition of the organs involved in the elimination and the amount of energy you have available. The more you rest and sleep when symptoms are present, the milder they are and the more quickly they are terminated. Be happy you are having symptoms. Realize deeply that your body is becoming younger and healthier every day because you are throwing off more and more wastes which would eventually have brought pain, disease and much suffering. Those who have the worst symptom-reactions and follow through to their successful termination, are thus avoiding some of the worst diseases which would have eventually developed had they continued their careless eating habits.
Don’t expect to go on an ascending scale of quality improvement in the diet and think you will feel better and better each day until you reach perfection. The body is cyclical in nature and health returns in a series of gradually diminishing cycles. For example—you start a better diet and for a while you feel much better. After some time, a symptom occurs, you may feel nauseous for a day and have a diarrhea with a foul-smelling stool. After a day you feel even better than before and all goes fine for a while. Then you suddenly develop a cold, feel chills and lose your appetite. After about two or three days (assuming you don’t take drugs or do anything else about it) you suddenly recover and feel better than you did for years. Let us say this well-being continues for two months, when you suddenly develop an itch or rash. You still don’t take anything special for it. This rash flares up, gets worse and continues for ten days and suddenly subsides. Immediately after this you find your hepatitis is gone and your energy has increased more than ever before. The rash became an outlet for the poisons in the liver which produced hepatitis. This is how recovery occurs, like the Dow-Jones Average at the beginning of a bull-market recovery. You feel better, a reaction occurs and you don’t feel as well for a short while. You recover and go even higher. And so it goes, each reaction milder than the last as the body becomes purer, each becoming shorter in duration, feeling better than ever before and lasting longer, until you reach a level plateau of vibrant health. Here you become relatively disease-free and are filled with ever-increasing joy, life and the happiness which comes from sheer well-being. The mind opens up and expands to ever-higher horizons and your soul will shout for joy. You begin to love the world, the universe and everything in it. This is the natural state of the mind—blissful, joyful and at peace with the universe—and it can only be attained by alignment with biological laws. The first laws we must learn to obey are the laws of Nature. We must learn to eat simple, pure and natural J foods properly prepared and combined, and our bodies in return will cast off the evil we have taken in during our lives.
Nowhere is the principle of forgiveness of sins more manifest than here—in our own bodies—when we forsake our evil and destructive ways of eating (the defiling of the temple of the soul). God (or Nature, if you please) gives us a whole new chance for a new glorious life. All repentance must begin here in the body, through purer diet and natural foods. Then, just have faith, sit back and watch what happens. Before your own eyes, you will see signs daily that will cause you to wonder at this vast intelligence in operation that staggers the comprehension. The mysteries of the body, the operations of Nature, the vital forces working in Nature and the Cosmos are far beyond what our minds are prepared to understand at present.
Every great physician or scientist who ever lived marvelled in awe and humility at the wonders of Nature. Yes, we are, “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.” Let us give ourselves a chance to experience what it means to be really healthy and fully alive—to feel the joy of living by aligning ourselves to (God’s) Nature’s laws as intended for man, through the eating of natural (normal) foods. This indeed is the prime prerequisite in man’s physical, mental and spiritual unfoldment.
—Reprinted from HYGIENIC REVIEW
22.1. The Basis Of The Food Combining System
22.3. The Chemistry And Physiology Of Digestion
22.5. The Crux Of Food Combining
Article #1: Skin problems? Tell me about them! By Richard Hill
Article #2: The Hygienic Diet By Dr. Alec Burton
Article #3: Food Combining By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #4: Protein-Starch Combinations by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #5: Basic Considerations In Food Combining By Virginia Vetrano, B.Sc.
The food combining system, as a whole, is simple and easy to understand. It logically evolved from the study of gastric physiology and the actions of enzymes and digestive juices. Hygienic food selection and the principles or food combining are based on the nutritional needs of humans and the limitations of our digestive systems. It is not what we eat, but what we digest and assimilate, that determines the nourishment our bodies receive. Food combining is based on the discovery that certain combinations of food may be digested with greater ease and efficiency than others.
Correct food combinations result in an immediate improvement in health by lightening the load of the digestive organs. Better nutrition is assured, and there is better digestion, less fermentation and putrefaction, more comfort, less distress and less gas. So-called food allergies often disappear as a result of proper food combining. (See article in the Case History section of this lesson. This article was written by Richard Hill, a young man who had to learn the hard way.)
Fermentation causes irritation and poisoning. Proper food combining removes fermentation as a cause of indigestion (though there are many other conditions that can cause digestive problems, such as overeating; eating hurriedly or when tired, worried, angry, fearful, grieved, etc.; or when you are in pain or have a fever or inflammation).
The successful results obtained through the utilization of me food combining rules can be explained and substantiated by the facts of physiological chemistry, particularly the chemistry of digestion.
No food program, nor any food combining program, will cure disease. Healing can be effected only by removal of the causes of disease. Incorrect food combinations can be an important cause.
Food is any substance which is eventually convertible into such end-products as tissues, body fluids, etc., and can be utilized by the organism in the performance of its functions. To be correctly classified as a food, a substance must:
For example, some plants contain large amounts of oxalic acid (see definition) and should not be used as food. Many plants which contain smaller (nutritionally insignificant) amounts of oxalic acid are excellent foods. On the other hand, tobacco, which is a plant, contains proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins and water, which are the constituents of food. But tobacco also contains considerable quantities of poisons. Dr. Shelton says that one of these is one of the most virulent poisons known to science. Therefore, tobacco cannot be a food.
Nutrients in foods are chemical substances of known composition and structure, classified as carbohydrates (such as sugar, starch and glycogen); lipids (fats); proteins (amino acids linked together); salts (minerals); and vitamins, needed in small quantities (or, traces) by the body. In addition, foods contain indigestible materials—cellulose (fiber).
Water, oxygen and vitamins, together with proteins, carbohydrates, fats and minerals, form the constituents of the body—the blood, tissue, bones, organs, muscles and so forth. Foods must be taken into the digestive tract and prepared for use by the organism before their constituents may be used by the body.
In our discussion of food combining, cooked foods and flesh foods will be mentioned. Uncooked foods from the plant kingdom constitute the ideal Hygienic diet, for those not yet ready to use exclusively raw plant foods, information on food combining of other foods is included.
People with impaired digestion may have been advised to avoid raw food. If serious pathological conditions exist, or if there are organic limitations caused by surgery, it would probably be advisable for such people to seek the help of a Hygienic doctor. Most such people can be helped by Natural Hygiene, but some of them may need careful supervision in changing from conventional eating and living patterns.
People whose digestive impairments limit the use of uncooked food should utilize raw foods to whatever extent they can while they aim for restoration of as much normal function as possible. The rational approach to such restoration of normal function is not drugs or surgery, but rest and fasting, followed by a gradual implementation of improved eating and living practices, adapted to the limitations of that individual.
The goal should be the gradual achievement of a diet predominating in uncooked foods, because the nutrients available in raw foods are several hundred percent greater than those remaining after food has been cooked or otherwise processed. More details about the damage done by cutting, cooking, seasoning and flavoring food will be given in future lessons.
Raw foods improve the total inner environment. Sluggish bowels begin to move, eventually cleaning out waste that may have been lodged in the folds of the intestine for months. The layer of mucus that forms in the intestines when cooked food predominates is removed, greatly increasing efficiency in the absorption of nutrients. Food wastes don’t stay in the bowel long enough to putrefy. The transit time of raw food in a healthy body is 20 to 24 hours, while cooked food may take three days or longer.
Many scientific researchers arid medical doctors now, recognize the value of raw food, both in health maintenance and for improvement or remission in chronic illnesses.
John M. Douglass, M.D., internal medicine specialist at the Southern California Permanente Medical Group in Los Angeles says, “It’s a sad commentary that we think we can compensate with a pill for all the heat-labile nutrients and enzymes that are lost in cooking.” He says also that experience shows that the raw food diet works for many diabetics, although it’s not always easy for them to follow and must be planned carefully.
Dr. Paul Kouchakoff, medical researcher of the Institute of Clinical Chemistry, Lausanne, Switzerland, revealed circa 1930 that after eating cooked food, the human body develops leucocytosis, the abnormal proliferation of white blood cells. Leucocytes are created and rushed to the intestine. When he fed patients on an 80 percent raw diet, no leucocytosis developed.
More details about Dr. Kouchakoff’s experiments, and other reports about the phenomenally superior value of raw food, will be given in future lessons. The above preliminary information is included in this lesson so the student may, at the outset, be motivated to apply his newly-acquired knowledge of food combining principles to the best food available, which, undeniably, is food that is utilized in its unchanged raw state.
The 80 percent raw food diet: For those who are not yet ready, or willing, to change to an all-raw diet, a good start would be the achievement of an 80 percent raw diet. For most people, this is not difficult to achieve. It can be appetizing, interesting, varied, satisfying and economical. The information in the two lessons on food combining will contain all the details you need about utilizing both raw food and (if you use it) cooked food, so that you may work out your goal of eventually achieving an all-raw diet, even if you must take a roundabout route by first implementing the 80 percent raw diet.
The best and quickest way to achieve an 80 percent raw diet is to never eat cooked food more than once a day, and as part of only one meal. One should try for more and more days on raw food only. Even the people who are coping with digestive problems may eventually achieve these goals as they learn to apply the principles of Natural Hygiene to their own needs.
Foods vary widely in character and nutritional constituents. In order to intelligently implement the principles of food combining, reference points are necessary. A food classification chart will be included with Lesson No. 23, listing and classifying specific foods. In this current Lesson No. 22, we will classify the broad categories in which foods can be placed. This classification of food categories will provide clarification and greater understanding of our discussion of the principles of digestive physiology and chemistry that decree correct food combining.
Proteins: All foods contain some protein, and the amounts of protein in different foods vary widely. We classify as protein foods those that contain a comparatively high percentage of protein—these are the concentrated protein foods. Such foods include:
The less concentrated proteins include avocados, olives, coconuts and milk. Combination foods (starchy proteins, to be combined as starch) include legumes, grains, peanuts and chestnuts: Green vegetable proteins (to be combined as starch) include peas in the pod, lima and other beans in the pod, and mature green beans in the pod. Sprouts contain significant amounts of protein, especially in the early stages. (More about sprouts later in this lesson and in Lesson No. 23)
Bananas (1.1 percent) contain almost as much protein as avocados (1.3-2.2 percent) and olives (1.4 percent). Dried fruits (2-5 percent) may contain twice as much protein as avocados. Broccoli (3.6 percent), brussels sprouts (4.9 percent), collards (4.8 percent), sweet corn (3.5 percent), kale (6 percent) and a number of other vegetables contain more protein than avocados. Romaine lettuce (1.3 percent) contains valuable protein. None of these foods are classified in the protein category, but should, nevertheless, be regarded as excellent sources of protein.
Starches: The carbohydrates are the starches and sugars. The combination foods (starchy proteins) referred to under the protein category are classified as starches for purposes of food combining. These include dried and fresh legumes, grains, peanuts and chestnuts. The starchy vegetables are potatoes, mature corn, parsnips and salsify, as well as Jerusalem artichokes; the mildly starchy vegetables are carrots, globe artichokes, beets, winter squash and several others (complete list in the classification charts in Lesson No. 23).
Nonstarchy and green vegetables: Lettuce, celery, cabbage, broccoli, summer squash, turnips, green beans, kale and a long list to be found in the classification charts.
Fats: The recommended fats are nuts, seed and avocados. No other fats are recommended. (See charts)
Fruits: Divided into three categories—sweet fruits, subacid fruits and acid fruits. Bananas, persimmons, sweet grapes and fresh figs, as well as all dried fruit, are in the sweet fruit category. Sweet apples, sweet peaches, pears, sweet cherries, some grapes and several other fruits are subacid fruit. Citrus, pineapples, strawberries and all tart fruits are in the acid fruit category. (See classification charts for complete listings.)
Tomatoes: Acid fruit without the sugar content of other acid fruits. Used with vegetable salad or any green nonstarchy vegetables, but not at a starch meal. May be used with nuts or seeds, as well as with avocados.
Melons: Watermelon, canteloupe, honeydew and many others. (See charts)
Syrups and sugars: All kinds of sugar, syrup and honey—not recommended.
For food to be utilized by the body, it must first undergo a series of processes which we call digestion. After we perform the only really voluntary actions involved in the process of nutrition—putting the food into our mouths, chewing and swallowing—the balance of the digestive process is the function of the autonomic or involuntary nervous system.
The changes which foods undergo are largely effected by enzyme and digestive juices. The conditions under which “such action” can occur are sharply defined, and this is the logical foundation of the food combining system. Physiologists have ascertained the details of the chemistry of digestion through long and painstaking labors. It has remained for the Natural Hygienists to make practical application of this great fund of vital knowledge. Knowledge of the physiology and chemistry of digestion can lead us all to a food program that will insure better digestion and better nutrition.
Enzymes are proteinaceous organic catalysts in all living organisms, both plant and animal. Our digestive juices contain enzymes that accelerate chemical reaction by catalytic action, without themselves being used up in the process.
Digestive enzymes can be used over and over again but eventually are replaced by the body. There are many different kinds of enzymes, and digestive enzymes are not the same as the enzymes in raw, unprocessed food. Digestive enzymes break down the complex substances we ingest into simple components that can be utilized by the body.
There are five types of digestive enzymes in the human body.
It is not necessary to memorize the names of these enzymes, but the information about the, action of the different types of digestive enzymes will help you to understand the underlying rationale of food combining.
Each digestive enzyme is specific in its action. It acts only upon one class of food substance. Each stage in the digestion of food requires the action of a different enzyme, and the various enzymes can perform their work efficiently only if the preceding work has been properly performed.
Body chemistry is, to a large extent, determined by the the food we eat. When certain foods are eaten regularly, the digestive enzymes and secretions are of a character to handle those foods. When the diet is altered, more and more of the digestive juices secreted will be of a character to digest the foods in the new diet, and less and less of the digestive juices will be of the character to digest the foods in the old diet.
The type of digestive juice fitted for the digestion of one type of food is of no value in digesting another type of food. Therefore, it is essential that food be taken in combinations that do not interfere with enzymatic action.
Digestive speed and efficiency vary with individuals and circumstances. However, certain general statements can be made. Fruits pass through the stomach quickly; low-protein and low-starch vegetables also pass through the stomach rapidly, with little change; vegetables containing much starch must be retained in the stomach longer, for more thorough digestion; and proteins require a still longer time »for gastric digestion. Fruits may remain in the stomach for thirty to sixty minutes, low-protein and low-starch vegetables a little longer, concentrated starches about two hours and concentrated proteins approximately four hours. Some foods may take five or six hours or more to leave the stomach. Some examples are combination starch/protein foods like legumes (including beans), grains, cooked cabbage and flesh foods.
Most digestion occurs in the stomach and small intestine. Digestion, especially starch digestion, actually begins in the mouth, with mastication and insalivation of the food. This sends the proper signals for the release of the digestive juices suited to the character of the food eaten. Digestive juices are present in the saliva and in the gastric secretions of about five million microscopic glands in the walls of the stomach.
The digestive glands supply different enzymes and juices of varied strength and character and with specific timing, depending on the different foods ingested. The digestive juices may be more or less liquid, of varying degrees of acidity or alkalinity and with complex and elaborately contrived variations.
After food is masticated, insalivated and swallowed, gastric digestion is initiated. Involuntary movements of the stomach slowly mix the food with gastric juices secreted by the glands in the walls of the stomach. Pepsin, a protein-splitting enzyme, and hydrochloric acid are separated, as well as lipase, a fat-splitting enzyme, mucus and diluting juice, along with other factors needed in the digestive process. An alkaline secretion protects the walls of the stomach from the acids. Mucus is a natural lubricant that is secreted by the cells of the mucous membranes lining all of the hollow organs of the body. It keeps the body tissues moist and prevents them from drying and cracking.
A brief review of the process of digestion will help in understanding the food combining rationale. Gastric secretion is continuous (except during fevers, gastric inflammation, pain or strong emotions; fasting is indicated when any of these conditions are present). Of course, gastric secretion is unnecessary when no food is taken.
Hunger and the sight, smell, taste or thought of food stimulate gastric secretion. Usually about three pints of gastric juice is secreted every twenty-four hours and about half this amount is required to digest a hearty meal. If you eat more than two hearty meals daily, your account will be overdrawn.
As the process of digestion continues in the stomach and the food is mixed with the digestive juices, water (from the body’s reserve supply) is added to the mixture in a process called hydrolysis. During hydrolysis, digestive enzymes separate carbohydrates into simple sugars, and proteins into their constituent amino acids.
Since digestion is a mechanical as well as a chemical process, some cellulose is an important part of the diet. Although cellulose cannot be digested by humans (no enzyme secreted by humans is capable of splitting cellulose), it serves as bulk in the propulsion of food through the digestive tract. Cellulose also provides the bulk needed in the efficient elimination of food residues. Juices and refined foods contain little cellulose. However, too large a quantity of cellulose is also undesirable. Therefore, we should use fresh fruits and, when using vegetables, strive to obtain the young, tender vegetables, as these contain smaller amounts of cellulose.
Food residues, fibrous materials and particles not thoroughly masticated proceed on to the colon. Peristalsis (wave-like muscular contractions) propels the food mixture back and forth in the stomach. Periodically, the most liquid portion of the mixture is discharged into the duodenum where it meets a very acid fluid. The resultant semi-liquid mixture, known as chyme, then proceeds further—into the small intestine—where it meets a very alkaline mixture of pancreatic juice, additional digestive enzymes and bile. (Bile is secreted by the liver and stored in the gallbladder to be used when needed, particularly for emulsifying fats).
The intestinal glands secrete a juice containing enzymes similar to pancreatic enzymes. Virtually all absorption should occur by the time the food passes through the small intestine, and the residue proceeds into the large intestine (the colon).
Through all these processes, the peristaltic contractions continue, longitudinally and circularly, and propel the chyme along the alimentary canal. As you can see, foods are not digested when they have passed out of the stomach. A large part of the work of digestion takes place in the small intestine. But the role of gastric digestion is an important one in preparing the food for the next stage in the digestive process.
Coffee, tea and other such toxic infusions cause a premature emptying of the stomach and thus cause foods to leave the stomach before gastric digestion is complete.
Digestion is governed by physiological chemistry, and this must be considered in the planning of meals that are compatible with the physiological limitations of the digestive glands and their secretions. This lesson will help in understanding the principle that the digestion of different foods requires digestive juices of different characters.
The study of the processes of digestion reveals the specific action of the digestive enzymes, the careful timing of their secretion and the adjustment of the strength and character of the digestive secretions to the character of the food upon which they are to act. Carbohydrate foods receive a juice rich in carbohydrate-splitting enzymes, protein foods receive protein-splitting enzymes, and so forth.
Starch digestion begins in the mouth with the action of the enzyme ptyalin (alpha amylase) which converts (or else begins the process of converting) starches into sugar during mastication and insalivation. The salivary secretions accompany the food to the stomach and salivary digestion of starches continues in the stomach for a long time, if the food was eaten under correct conditions.
If ptyalin is the only agent in the body capable of initiating starch digestion (and this is not certain), or whether it is simply the body’s first opportunity to initiate starch digestion, we must not disregard its importance. The chewing process in the mouth should mix food with saliva, but people have the tendency to swallow the mass too quickly to permit the enzyme to complete its action. This necessitates the continuation of the salivary action in the stomach.
It is important that starches be eaten dry, not moist. So, you should eat steamed or baked potatoes dry rather than in potato soup. The eating of liquids with starches promotes the tendency to swallow moist starch without thorough mastication, insalivation and emulsification, processes that are particularly needed for the digestion of starches. Drinking liquids or eating liquidy foods softens the food artificially and may also cause you to eat more food than if you had eaten it dry. Drinking at meals dilutes the digestive juices and also prevents thorough mastication and insalivation of the food.
If the ptyalin is destroyed or its action is inhibited and the digestion of starch is interrupted, the partially digested (and probably somewhat fermented) starch proceeds to the duodenum, where further starch-splitting enzymes are secreted. Starch that escapes digestion in the stomach may later be acted upon by pancreatic and intestinal enzymes, provided too much fermentation has not already occurred. It is also very possible that the interrupted gastric digestion may never be completed.
Ptyalin requires either an alkaline or neutral medium. Ptyalin is destroyed by even a mild acid. If fruit acids—or any acids—are taken with carbohydrates, especially with such as potatoes, beans, bananas or dates, digestion will be inhibited or prevented and fermentation may occur. Oxalic acid diluted to one part in 10,000 completely arrests the action of ptyalin. Significant amounts of oxalic acid are contained in rhubarb, spinach, Swiss chard, beet greens and purslane.
The acetic acid in a teaspoonful of vinegar can suspend salivary digestion. Tannic acid (in coffee and tea) inhibits starch digestion, as do drug acids. The combination of citric, malic and oxalic acids in tomatoes (which are released and intensified by cooking) interferes drastically with starch digestion.
People take oranges and grapefruit as part of a meal that includes cereal and/or bread, later complain that they feel great distress after such a meal and conclude that they cannot eat citrus fruit. Such a conclusion is based on their experience of a wrong combination—not of a wrong food. Fermentation frequently does occur as a result of eating acids with carbohydrates. All students of food combining know that this combination produces bad effects such as gas, sour stomach (hyperacidity) and contributes to great difficulty in digesting starches.
When foods are eaten in such incompatible mixtures, and the efficiency of digestive enzymes is inhibited, it is subjected to decomposition in the digestive tract. If the digestive enzymes cannot perform their intended functions of breaking down and hydrolyzing the food (adding water from the body’s reserve supply), bacterial decomposition may occur, resulting in fermentation and the production of alcohol and acetic acid. Sugar, particularly, will readily ferment into alcohol, especially when combined with acids or protein. Natural combinations of citric acid or malic acid or other natural fruit acids combined in the whole fruit with fructose (also called levulose or fruit sugar) do not cause fermentation unless eaten with starches.
Alcohol, acetic acids and putrefying substances are byproducts of decomposition.
Putrefaction may be defined as the decomposition (as opposed to digestion) of protein matter by micro-organisms, producing malodorous and toxic substances.
Fermentation is the decomposition of sugar and starch, and their conversion by microorganisms into carbon dioxide, alcohol and acetic acids. Dr. Shelton says that digestion reduces food to the diffusible state without depriving it of its organic qualities, while fermentation renders food diffusible by reducing it to an inorganic and useless state. Digestion puts food in a solution, but fermentation disintegrates it.
A simple way to avoid production of these poisonous substances in the digestive tract is to learn, and implement, the Hygienic rules for food combining. They are perhaps of even greater importance than food selection. Persistent adherence to food combining principles has been known to reduce, or even eliminate, many digestive, nasal, skin and other problems, even in some people who have not changed to the Hygienic diet. It is obvious that elimination of incompatible food combinations is a giant step in the right direction. Efficient digestion and good health can be possible only when we eat in such a way as to offer the least hindrance to the work of digestion.
The digestion of carbohydrates is so different from that of protein that, when they are mixed in the stomach, they interfere with the digestion of each other. Protein digestion starts in the stomach and acid enzymes are secreted when protein is eaten. Proteins require an acid medium for digestion so, upon ingestion, hydrochloric acid is secreted in order to activate pepsinogen; this immediately stops the digestion of starches.
Almost all foods contain some protein but, when we speak of protein foods in our study of food combining, we are referring to concentrated proteins like nuts and seeds, cheese, flesh foods, etc. (See Classification of Foods in Lesson No. 23 for help in identifying concentrated protein foods, concentrated carbohydrate foods, etc.)
The normal digestion, absorption and metabolism of protein requires thorough mastication of food, in order to break it down for propulsion through the digestive tract, and for action by the digestive enzymes. As previously indicated, hydrochloric acid and pepsin (and other acid gastric juices) are secreted for the initial phases of protein digestion in the stomach, and other enzymes, such as trypsin, continue the digestion in the small intestine in a slightly alkaline medium. Protein-digesting enzymes are also secreted by the pancreas.
Before the body can use proteins, they must be reduced to their constituent amino acids (the building blocks of protein). The body must break down the complex proteins in foods and synthesize its own protein out of the amino acids. Food combining rules are of major importance in the consumption of protein, since the complexity of this food element would seem to suggest that it be eaten only under ideal conditions.
Free hydrochloric acid to the extent of only 0.003 percent is sufficient to suspend the starch-splitting action of ptyalin. Only a slight further increase in acidity not only stops the action, but destroys the enzyme. All physiologists agree that even a mild acid destroys ptyalin. It has never been shown that saliva is capable of digesting starch without the presence of ptyalin.
The function of the gastric protein-splitting enzymes, such as pepsin, are prevented by an alkali. The physiologist Stiles says, “The acid which is highly favorable to gastric digestion is quite prohibitive to salivary digestion. The power to digest proteins is manifested only with an acid reaction and is permanently lost when the mixture is made distinctly alkaline. The conditions which permit peptic digestion to take place are, therefore, precisely those which exclude the action of saliva.”
The presence of undigested starch in the stomach interferes with the digestion of protein. Physiologists have shown that undigested starch absorbs pepsin, which is necessary for the digestion of protein.
Dr. Richard C. Cabot of Harvard wrote: “When we eat carbohydrates, the stomach secretes an appropriate juice, a gastric juice of different composition from that which it secretes if it finds proteins coming down.”
Single articles of food that contain starch-protein combinations (grains, legumes, and a few others) are less difficult for the body to handle than when two foods are eaten with opposite digestive needs. The body is able to adjust its juices, both as to strength and timing, to the digestive requirements of combination foods. The first response by the body is the releasing of an almost-neutral juice for digestion of the starch. After gastric digestion of starch is completed (about two hours), hydrochloric acid is secreted for digestion of the protein. The two processes do not go on simultaneously—rather, the secretions are minutely adjusted, in both character and timing, to the varying needs of the body to digest the complex food substance.
Such complex food substances are not ideal foods. They are usually cooked, and the fact that they require such complicated adjustments puts an additional strain on the body. Simple uncooked foods are easier for the body to process and offer the least hindrance to the work of digestion.
Beans: “Because of their complex character, beans, a protein-starch combination, tax the digestive powers more than simpler foods, but the gas, discomfort and other trouble that so commonly follow, eating them is not due so much to the beans themselves as to the company they keep. Baked beans are preferable to beans that are boiled and taken saturated with water. If taken thus relatively dry, well chewed and eaten in proper combinations, beans are readily digestible.” This article about beans, which was published by Dr. Shelton in 1971, is evidently a somewhat revised opinion. In his Volume II of The Hygienic System, published in 1935, he suggested that beans should not be used.
I personally was formerly unable to tolerate lentils or beans of any kind, even when sprouted. I eliminated all legumes from my diet for about six months, after which I carefully experimented with small amounts, properly combined, until I seemed to build up my ability to digest them. Today I can eat sizeable servings of cooked or sprouted legumes (which I seldom do) and I have no problem with them.
When two foods are eaten that have different or even opposite, digestive needs, the precise adjustment of digestive juices to meet requirements becomes impossible. Eating proteins with carbohydrates (sugar or starch) produces the same abortive situation as combining acids with carbohydrates, since protein digestion requires the secretion of acid enzymes and juices. All acids, including those in food and the acid protein-digesting juices, destroy ptyalin, the starch-digesting enzyme.
Arther Cason, M.D., D.P.H., F.R.S.A. (London), writing in the April, 1945 issue of Physical Culture, mentions two groups of experiments made by him and his aides which showed that eating protein and carbohydrate at the same meal retards and even prevents digestion. He made control tests in which digestive rates were recorded, and a final analysis of the feces was made. He says, “Such tests always reveal that the digestion of proteins when mixed with starches is retarded in the stomach; the degree varying in different individuals, and also in the particular protein or starch ingested. An examination of the fecal matter reveals both undigested starch granules and protein shreds and fibers, whereas, when ingested separately, each goes to a conclusion.”
As indicated by Dr. Cason, there is an individual variation in the response to certain food combinations. This would seem to account for the fact that certain people exhibit overt symptoms from the use of certain food combinations, while others do not. However, the mere fact that overt symptoms are not observed is not proof, per se, that the food is being properly utilized.
Potatoes are said to be the least objectionable of any starch to be used with protein. Dr. Shelton is of the opinion that it is the rapidity with which potato starch digests that makes its combination with protein less objectionable than the combination of other starches with protein. Potato starch digests in ten minutes under ideal conditions and it would seem that the potato starch digests before the gastric juice can accumulate in quantity sufficient to interfere.
Even so, Hygienists have rarely been observed to use potatoes with nuts—either potatoes or nuts are so satisfactory as, an accompaniment to a salad that most of us would ask, “Why would we need both?”
22.4.1 Acid-Starch Combinations and Protein-Carbohydrate Combinations
22.4.2 Protein-Protein Combinations
22.4.3 Protein-Fat Combinations
22.4.4 Fats in Combination with Other Foods
22.4.5 Acid-Protein Combinations
22.4.6 Sugar with Starch, Protein and Acid Fruit
22.4.7 Starch-Starch Combinations
22.4.8 Acid Fruits, Subacid Fruits, Sweet Fruits
The preceding discussion leads up to the presentation of the first two food combining rules, which I consider to be by far the most important of all these rules and the ones which should be thoroughly understood and implemented at all possible times.
Two concentrated proteins of different character and composition (such as nuts and cheese) should not be combined. Gastric acidity, type, strength and timing of secretions for various proteins are not uniform. Since concentrated protein is more difficult to digest than other food elements, incompatible combinations of two different concentrated proteins should be avoided. Some people with impaired digestions find it necessary to limit themselves to only one variety of nuts/and or seeds at a sitting, but other people may find, upon experimentation, that two or three varieties of nuts or seeds may be used at the same meal, if desired.
Our need for concentrated fat is small and moil protein foods already contain a good deal of fat. Most nuts contain about 10 percent to 20 percent protein, and about 45 percent to 70 percent fat. Avocados contain about 1.3 percent protein (Florida varieties) to about 2.2 percent or a little more (California varieties) and 11 percent to 17 percent fat. Most other protein foods are high in fat, including cheese, eggs and flesh foods. The only protein foods not high in lat are legumes, skim milk cheese and lean meat.
Fat has an inhibiting influence on digestive secretion and lessen the amount and activity of pepsin and hydrochloric acid, necessary for the digestion of protein. The fat may lower the entire digestive tone more than 50 percent. Since most proteins already contain a good deal of fat, it would certainly be contraindicated to add more to the meal.
Fats also delay the digestion of other foods and, if used with starch, it will delay the passage of the starch from the stomach into the intestine. Fat not only inhibits the secretion of gastric juice—it also inhibits the physical actions of the stomach. Too much fat taken with a meal results in acid eructations and a burning sensation in the throat. When fats (avocados or nuts) are eaten with green vegetables, preferably raw, the inhibiting effect of fats on gastric secretion is counteracted and digestion proceeds quite normally. The use of fat (avocados) with starch is considered acceptable, provided a green salad is included in the meal.
Avocados: Though not a high-protein food, avocados contain more protein than milk. They are high in fat and the small percentage of protein they do contain is of high biological value. They are best used with a salad meal. Since they are so high in fat that they tend to slow down the digestion of foods normally requiring a shorter digestion time, they are perhaps only a fair combination with subacid and acid fruit. They are usually considered a poor combination with sweet fruit, especially dried sweet fruit. However, let us consider some recent work on this subject.
In an article on this topic, Dr. Vetrano says that exceptions may sometimes be made in combining avocados with fresh sweet fruit, such as bananas, but that avocados should not be combined with dried sweet fruit, unless it has been soaked overnight. She also says, “Eating avocados with salad enhances their digestion. The next best combination for the avocado is taking it with subacid or acid fruit. The fat in the food does not seem to interfere with the emptying time of the stomach and we have excellent results with this combination. The protein, which is about 2.1 to 2.5 percent, is not sufficient to interfere with the digestion of fruit. It is even better when lettuce leaves and celery are eaten with the fruit and avocado. By diluting the fats and the sugars with the lettuce, the emptying time of the stomach is not depressed.
Those who have weak stomachs with poor muscle tone would probably do better by taking avocado only with vegetable salads. If lettuce is taken with a sweet fresh fruit and avocado, even these digest well. It is probably best to never combine avocado with sweet dried fruit unless it is just a small amount of both eaten with a great deal of vegetables.”
Since the avocado is low in protein, it may also be used with potatoes or other starch foods. Some people like to use avocado with the potato instead of using butter. However, I must reiterate, the best way to use avocado is with the salad.
Avocados should never be used with nuts, which are also high in fat, nor should they be used with melons.
The only fats we have considered here are nuts (a protein/fat food) and avocados (a low-protein/fat food). Other fats will be listed in the food classification chart in Lesson 23, but they are not recommended for regular use. Most of them should never be used.
Citrus, (tomatoes: see discussion), pineapple, strawberries and other acid fruits should not be eaten with nuts, cheese, eggs or meat. Acid fruits inhibit the flow of gastric juice. The digestion of protein requires an unhampered flow.
This is one rule that has given rise to some disagreement and controversy. Although Dr. Shelton includes in this rule the prohibition of citrus and tomatoes with nuts and cheese, he goes on to say that nuts and fresh cheese do not decompose when used with acids, but have their digestion delayed. He also says that acids do not inhibit the flow of gastric juice any more than does the oil of nuts or the cream of cheese.
Many Hygienists use tomatoes with nuts and believe they cause no problem. Citrus fruits present a different situation, due to the sugar in the fruit, which can ferment if its digestion is delayed by the nuts. Various experiments with the use of citrus fruits combined with nuts have produced differing results. Some Hygienists continue to use citrus with nuts.
If sweet oranges are used at the same meal with nuts, the precaution of waiting thirty to sixty minutes after eating the citrus is sometimes observed. Grapefruit might be better suited to combining with nuts, since it usually has a much lower sugar content.
Citrus fruit is best used alone but may be combined with other acid fruits; nuts are best used with salad.
Dr. Shelton modified this rule somewhat on Page 52 of Food Combining Made Easy: “Although green vegetables form the ideal combination with nuts, acid fruits form a fair combination with these foods and may be taken with them.”
Dr. Percy Howe, of Harvard, says: “Many people who cannot eat oranges at a meal derive great benefit from eating them fifteen to thirty minutes before the meal.”
Dr. Vetrano is convinced from her experience at the Health School that nuts should not be used with citrus fruit and she discontinued this practice some years ago.
A corollary of this same subject is the use of some subacid fruits with nuts or cheese-primarily tart or semi-sweet apples, although some other fruits which are usually considered subacid are sometimes used in this way. The same principles would apply as with the use of oranges with nuts, provided the sweeter subacid fruits, such as Delicious apples, are not used.
Such acid-protein combinations as sour salad dressings and acid fruit drinks used at conventional meals serve as a check to hydrochloric secretion.
The sugars in sweet fruit should be tree to leave the stomach quickly, in perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, and are apt to ferment if digestion is delayed by mixture with other foods.
Sugar-starch combinations cause additional problems.
When sugar is taken, the mouth quickly fills with saliva, but no ptyalin is present. Ptyalin is essential for starch digestion. If starch is disguised by sugar, honey, molasses, syrup or sweet fruit, the signals are scrambled and digestion is impaired.
Monosaccharides and disaccharides ferment more quickly than polysaccharides. (See definitions) No digestion of sugars takes place in the mouth or stomach; fermentation is inevitable if sugars of any kind are delayed in the stomach awaiting the digestion of starch, protein or acid fruit.
Sugar also has a marked inhibiting effect on the flow of gastric juice and on gastric motility. No other food depresses the action of the stomach and the desire for food as does sugar.
This rule is probably more important as a means of avoiding the overeating of starches than as a means of avoiding bad combinations. But it is true that starch foods may differ greatly. If two different starches are eaten together in small quantities, this is thought to not cause problems.
Slightly starchy vegetables may be combined with more starchy vegetables (e.g. carrots with potatoes), but not with combination foods (starch/protein foods) such as grains and legumes.
This is an acceptable combination, though some subacid fruits are rather high in sugar and the acid fruit may delay the sugar’s normally quick exit from the stomach. However, there is no sharp line of division between the acid and subacid fruits. If combining subacid fruit with acid fruit, it is better to use only the less subacid fruit.
The acid fruits are those with the tart flavors, for example, citrus, pineapple, strawberries, and certain varieties of apples and other fruits. Tomatoes are also considered acid fruit (without the sugar content of other acid fruit). Tomatoes should not be combined with subacid fruit, nor any other kinds of fruit.
They are best combined with the salad at a meal at which no starchy foods are served. Do not use acid fruits with sweet fruits, as previously indicated.
Acid fruits are best used alone (a single variety), but if used in combination with other acid fruits, this is considered an acceptable combination.
There is no sharp line of division between subacid fruits and sweet fruits. When using subacid fruits with sweet fruits, it is best to use the sweeter varieties of subacid fruit. The subacid fruits are those that possess a slightly acid flavor (but not tart), such as pears, certain apples, grapes, etc. Grapes, for example, can be acid, subacid or sweet. The sweet fruits are those that are rich in sugar and taste sweet-bananas, persimmons, sweet grapes, and so forth, and all dried fruit.
Some people prefer to eat bananas alone, but most people have no difficulty in combining them with subacid and other sweet fruit at a fruit meal. Dr. Shelton says, “While I have found that bananas combine fairly well with dates, raisins, grapes and a few other sweet fruits and with green leafy vegetables, such as lettuce and celery, I have noted that they digest best if eaten alone. This calls, to mind the fact that Tilden, also, after much testing of the matter, reached the conclusion that bananas are best eaten alone.”
Dried sweet fruits should be used sparingly. Use but one kind at a meal, in small amounts, combined only with subacid fruit and/or fresh sweet fruit and/or with lettuce and/or celery. Overeating of dried fruits .will often bring on symptoms similar to a “cold”. The sugar concentration is naturally greater in fruits which have been dried. Some dried fruits, esp. dried apricots, should be soaked overnight to replenish the missing water. Dates are usually used without soaking, figs or raisins can be used either way. If they are rather hard, soaking will soften and improve them.
Dr. Vetrano recommends using as little soaking water as possible, soaking one side at a time, so all water will be absorbed, thus avoiding loosing flavor and nutrients. It is important that the water used for soaking be distilled water.
Sweet fruits combine fairly well with subacid fruits, provided the subacid fruits are on the “sweet side,” for example, use Delicious apples, not Macintosh or Jonathans, with sweet fruit.
It is best to have these fruits at a fruit meal combining only with lettuce and/or celery. Since fruits are usually high in acids or sugars, they do not combine well with other foods.
It is best not to combine fruits with vegetables (especially cooked vegetables), proteins or starches because if such a combination of food is eaten, the digestion of the fruit will be delayed and subject to fermentation. Lettuce and celery, however, may be combined with any fruit except melon, and will cause no problem.
Dr. Vetrano says, “Taking green uncooked vegetables with a fruit meal is perfectly all right. Even though some charts state that subacid and sweet fruits combine fair to poorly with green uncooked vegetables, the feeding practices at the Health School indicate that these are good combinations, indeed, even enhancing digestion of the fruit in some conditions of impaired digestion.”
Any nonstarchy vegetables may be combined with proteins or starch, except tomatoes, which should especially not be used with starches. The green leafy vegetables combine very well with most other foods. They are excellent food and should be used in the diet.
Lettuce and other green and nonstarchy vegetables leave the stomach with little change—they pass through the stomach rapidly unless delayed by oily dressings or foods that require a more thorough gastric digestion. Lettuce and celery are good combination with fruit because all of these foods require little gastric digestion.
However, even if these vegetables are held up in the stomach with other foods, as when using salad with nuts, there is no fermentation.
Eating a large salad of fresh raw vegetables (three or four varieties) daily is an excellent practice. Dr. Shelton says, “A large bowl of salad each day is required by everyone.”
This rule has been somewhat under question in recent years. I personally have found that eating melons alone is an excellent practice, and have even found it advisable not to mix two different varieties of melon at the same meal.
Many people who have complained that melons did not agree with them have no trouble handling them when eating only melon at a meal. Yet, certain Hygienic professionals are offering some post-fasting people more than one variety of melon at a meal (even melons in combination with grapes or other subacid fruit) and some Hygienists follow this practice. If you want to experiment with these combinations, do it sparingly and carefully. But if you have a history of digestive problems, don’t do it at all.
Melons are more than 90 percent liquid and leave the stomach quickly if not delayed and fermented by combining with other foods. Dr. Vetrano says, “Melons are best taken alone because the sugar and other nutriments are in a less stable form than the nutrients of other fruits. Orange juice may be kept in the refrigerator for an hour with little change in flavor, but if you refrigerate watermelon juice for only ten minutes, its flavor, color and composition markedly change. It decomposes much more quickly than other fruits. Consequently, if it is held in the stomach awaiting the digestion of other foods, it will decompose (ferment) and cause a great deal of gastric distress. Eating watermelon with nuts can really be troublesome.”
Dr. Shelton says, “Because of the ease with which melons decompose, they do not combine with any food, except, perhaps, with certain fruits. We always feed them alone, not between meals, but at meal time.”
He also says, “It is probably a great misfortune that we do not always feel the direct effects of imprudent eating immediately following a meal. For example, there are large numbers of people who have discomfort, even great discomfort following a meal in which melons are eaten with other foods, but there are many others who do not. This latter group can see no connection between their life of imprudent eating and the breakdown of their health in later years. Their apparent impunity prompts them to defy all the same rules of life.”
Other sprouts should properly be classified in the same category as the original seed, even though the sprouting process has somewhat lowered the protein and carbohydrate content.
During the sprouting process, the carbohydrate and protein components of the sprouting seed tend to diminish, and the composition becomes more like a green vegetable instead of a legume, grain or seed. However, this is not uniformly the case. Sprouts which progress to the green leaf stage, such as alfalfa and mung beans, are high in chlorophyll, and alfalfa sprouts, particularly, may be freely combined as a green vegetable. Mung bean sprouts still retain enough of the property of legumes so that they are best eaten without other proteins or starches. These sprouts may be included in the low protein/starch category.
Lentils, soybeans, garbanzos and other miscellaneous beans and grains should be allowed to sprout only very briefly, until just a small sprout is showing—no longer than the seed, at most. The change in character is therefore much less than for those sprouts which are sprouted to the green leaf stage. Sprouts are high in protein in these early stages. They should therefore be classified, with some expectations, according to their original food categories, namely, as protein or combination protein/starch foods.
Sprouted sunflower seeds may, of course, continue to be classified as protein. In the case of lentil, soybean and garbanzo sprouts, they could be classified as low protein, since the starch tends to diminish and the protein remains in significant amounts in the early stages of sprouting.
I would classify sprouted grains as combination foods, their original category, to be combined as starch.
My experimentation with these sprouts, and my research on the subject, leads me to these conclusions as the best way to classify and combine them. More detailed information about sprouts and sprouting will be given in a future lesson.
This rule is included because it is one of Dr. Shelton’s food combining rules, and because this lesson on food combining may be helpful to those still on a mixed diet. Hygienists do not drink milk. Adults do not need any kind of milk. Infants need their mother’s milk; if this is not available, they need a substitute. (More about this in a future lesson.)
Dr. Shelton says that the use of acid fruits with milk does not cause any trouble and apparently does not conflict with its digestion. This would also apply to clabber (sour milk) or yogurt, which may be preferable to milk for adults.
Many adults (and some children) lack the enzymes lactase and rennin necessary for the digestion of milk. Lactase catalyzes the conversion of lactose (milk sugar) to the glucose and galactose which can be utilized by the body. Rennin is a milk-coagulating enzyme, which many adults no longer secrete.
This is also the reason that cheese is considered preferable to milk, although no dairy products are recommended for regular use.
The thymus gland, which also has a function involved in the digestion of dairy products, reaches its maximum development during early childhood, and usually degenerates and becomes vestigial in adults.
None of these products are recommended. If any milk products are used, they should be raw (unpasteurized) and should not be used on a regular basis. Yogurt cultures, particularly, can inhibit the body’s own natural production of beneficial intestinal flora.
Dr. Shelton says that either sweet milk or sour milk (clabber) is a fair combination with acid fruit or subacid fruit, and that clabber is even a fair combination with dried sweet fruit.
Dr. Vetrano says that occasionally there are sick people with gastrointestinal problems who must temporarily be placed on milk, if they cannot take a fast of sufficient length for complete healing.
More information about the inadvisability of using fermented foods like yogurt, clabber or cheese will be included in a future lesson.
When we say that foods are fair combinations, this means that they are permissible for those with unimpaired digestions. Good combinations are good for the weakest digestion.
Poor combinations should never be employed, unless, perhaps, they are used occasionally by people with the best digestions. Some combinations are so bad that no one should ever use them.
Examples of these precepts will be given in Lesson No. 23.
If we want to eat several foods at the same meal, it would seem logical that trouble could be avoided, or at least minimized, by ingesting together those foods which are compatible; that is, those which require approximately the same conditions for digestion—including length of time, type of enzymes and digestive juices, and degrees of alkalinity or acidity.
When foods are eaten in incompatible combinations and fermentation results, alcohol is produced in the digestive tract, with the same consequences as imbibing it and with the same potential for liver damage.
The existence of such a still in your body may not be illegal, but it is certainly contrary to the laws of nature!
It is important to remember that all of the senses have a role in digestion. Seeing, smelling, touching, tasting—and even thinking about food—all help in sending the proper signals for the secretion of the digestive juices and their adaptation to the character of the food.
Complicated mixtures of food interfere with this process of digestion, make it less efficient and may cause digestive problems. When we compound the problem by adding seasonings, the true taste of the individual foods is further disguised. This makes it extremely difficult for the digestive system to supply secretions that can cope with such meals and digestion is inhibited and impaired.
The glands react to the foods eaten to the best of their ability. They interpret the signals they receive and supply the best secretions they can muster to preserve the health and the integrity of the organism. When a saturation point is reached, due to continuous bombardment from intolerable food combinations, the ability of the overworked digestive system to make the necessary adaptations is reduced or destroyed, and disease is the result.
Optimal digestion requires that we eat in such a way as to offer the least hindrance to the work of digestion by making the best use of our knowledge of the chemistry and physiology of digestion and of the limitations of the human digestive system.
Raw, fresh, whole, ripe fruit; chlorophyll-, vitamin- and mineral-rich raw, leafy green vegetable, sprouted seeds and raw, unsalted nuts and seeds are essential and valuable—they are the best of foods. Eat them in accordance with food-combining rules, masticate them thoroughly, don’t complicate them with oily dressings, and your body will easily accommodate this food program and progress toward optimal health.
People with serious digestive problems should consult a Hygienic professional and probably undertake the healing that only a prolonged, supervised fast can produce. Afterwards, they too can look forward to utilization of the Hygienic food program on their way to better health.
I’ve heard that food combining is an individual matter. Why can’t I ignore it unless and until I have symptoms?
That’s the rationale of many people, especially people who stay on conventional diets and eat junk foods. Is it better to avoid damage to your body, or would you rather wait until damage is done, and then try to correct it? Most people already have damaged their bodies long before symptoms appear. It would be much more prudent and sensible to take the best possible care, as soon as you can, of the only body you will ever have in this life, rather than to wait until the road back is long and arduous, and when you would probably have to start with a prolonged fast.
You say an occasional deviation is not too important. How often is occasional?
“Occasional”, or infrequent, means different things to different people. A man once said to me, “I eat meat occasionally,” and when I asked him how often, he said he eats it once a day. If you do something unwise even once a week, I would call that regularly rather than infrequently. Once a month is less frequently, of course, and might be tolerated fairly well by a healthy body. Actually, the degree of harmfulness of a dietary indiscretion depends on the extent of your deviation and the state of your health. Are you speaking of bending the food combining rules, or do you mean going to a restaurant and gorging on a conventional meal? And, what is even more important, can you afford to deviate? If you are having problems, you would be foolish to do things that can only make those problems worse. For most people who feel they can “afford” to “deviate” “occasionally”, it would be best to save such deviations for occasions when they find themselves in unusual situations when such a choice is the lesser evil.
You say not to have more than one concentrated food (protein, starch, sweet fruit) at a meal. Is it all right to have some meals without any concentrated food?
Yes, an excellent choice for the first meal of the day (for most people) is melon or juicy fruit only. Yet, some concentrated foods, especially concentrated proteins, have a place in the food program (See Mono Diets, Lesson No. 23). Starch meals are less important, and dried sweet fruit should be used sparingly. Including concentrated protein foods (usually nuts and seeds) in some of the meals enables the body to obtain a balance of the nutrients it needs. (See sample menus, Lesson No. 23)
I seem to lose weight on an all-raw-food diet, but hold a better weight if I eat some cooked food.
Usually, persistent adherence to an all-raw-food diet eventually results in improvement of assimilation, and one gradually puts on, and retains, more weight. However, if you have a tendency to be thin, or if some impairments cannot be completely overcome, you may have to settle for a leveling off at a weight lower than you prefer. If you feel well, the best thing to do is ignore your weight. In some instances, for emotional or physical reasons, it may be advisable to use a small percentage of cooked food. But most people will be much better off if they can decide to stay with an all-raw-food diet. Those who are convinced that they maintain better weight, feel better or have more energy if they use some cooked starches, legumes or grains, will probably be happier on an 80-90 percent raw-food diet.
Perhaps I was vain, but having my face covered with red, or red and yellow oozing lumps made me a little self-conscious and depressed. The old platitude, “Beauty comes from the inside” sounded nice, but talking with people and FEELING their eyes on the big “honker” on my nose or that “headlight” on my chin didn’t do much for my self-confidence, especially if I was talking to a girl I was hoping to impress. All this may sound like teenage trauma. But I was almost 27 years old and things were worse than ever. This wasn’t my only problem. I was plagued with hay fever, migraine headaches, prostate trouble, poor vision and several other complaints. But my pizza-like complexion was my main concern and secret shame.
After 14 years of this “teenage” malady I was depressed and baffled. There was nothing I (or anyone else) could do for me. The slow but sure disfigurement I was stuck with was something I couldn’t accept. Only fellow acne sufferers will understand my desperation and secret anguish. I’ve talked with many grossly fat people, asking if they would trade their excess weight for a chronic skin condition. So far not any would even consider it. And many of these people had contemplated suicide over their weight.
I really had given it my best shot. I had applied gallons of Clearasil, Oxy 5, 10 and 15, washed with Stridex, alcohol, witch hazel, distilled water and special skin soaps and cleansers. I washed many times a day. I was a voracious reader and tried every method and treatment I could find in those 14 long years. I was given various prescription drugs by dermatologists. The labels warned of dangerous side effects. Sometimes I would get temporary relief, usually not.
Next I tried health food store “cures.” I developed a library and gathered glib knowledge from all the “experts” and their methods. I hunted down all the herbs (red clover, golden seal, cayenne, etc.) supposed to cleanse the system. I drank them from morning ‘til night. I drank a half-gallon of carrot juice each day. It turned my palms orange, but did nothing for my skin. I did various other juice combinations. They did nothing. I stopped eating chocolate, nuts, fried foods, white sugar, white flour. I even gave up all fruits for a year.
I graduated from Clearasil and smeared my face with green, red and yellow clays, separately and in combinations. I took activated yeast every morning just before my vitamin ritual. I was assured my problem was a vitamin/mineral deficiency as well as an unclean system. I took megadoses of A, B complex, C (with bio-flavonoids and Rutin), D, E, folic acid, K, multi-minerals, chlorophyll, wheat germ oil, brewer’s yeast, lecithin and protein powders, using my handy pocket pack. The few times I forgot caused me as much anxiety as the heart patient who forgets his nitro-glycerine.
Then I began to “fast.” I took so-called “juice fasts,” ones with products designed to clean out my colon. I took enemas of warm watery cold water, herb water and distilled water. I drank gallons of water to flush out my system. I tried “organic blood salts” and several other surefire cures. I was getting plenty of fresh, Los Angeles air and sunshine.
Next I got serious. I had said I’d pay a million dollars to solve my problem. Now I began to pay it on the installment plan to a young chiropractor into “natural healing.” I got adjusted, x-rayed, diagnosed as having adrenal stress, given new vitamin/diet combinations. I took the glucose tolerance test and was diagnosed a hypoglycemic. (Since then I’ve never met anyone who took the test that was not so diagnosed!) This was the time I went on my no-sugar, no-nuts and no-fruit diet for a year.
I was as bad off as ever and switched to an older naturopath/chiropractor. He put me back on fruit, different vitamins and juices. When this didn’t work he hit the problem with everything he had—more adjustments, x-rays, ultrasound, cold packs, hot packs and, finally, colonic irrigations with and without oxygen! I took these three times a week. It was expensive and embarrassing. But I was determined to get well or die trying. I was that desperate. After all the discomfort and expense my complexion was worse than ever.
I didn’t give up hope. I returned to my library and came across a little book I hadn’t paid too much attention to. It had seemed technical and too different. It was called Food Combining Made Easy by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton. Having nothing to lose, I tried this silly thing. Within a week my face started to clear up. It continued to get better. I stopped the colonics, adjustments, ultrasound and all the other things. Looking for more books by Dr. Shelton, I found Fasting Can Save Your Life at a health food store. I ordered more Shelton books from Natural Hygiene Press. I began to understand the basic ideas of Natural Hygiene and dove in with both feet. It was working where nothing else had. I gave away my vitamins and herbs, got back to 2 or 3 meals a day (from 5 and 6). I washed only with warm water.
I knew I had stumbled onto a new way of life and found people with no cures to sell. They had an understanding of the laws of life. They had a system where one can return to harmony with these laws and achieve total health. I made arrangements to fast under the supervision of Dr. Virginia Vetrano. I fasted at the Chateau Des Sages for 14 days. I listened to lectures and tapes and I learned more about Natural Hygiene. I wanted what these people had. I returned home with my skin more clear than it had been in 14 years. My hay fever and migraine headaches also were gone. At last my search was over and I reached the happy-ending.
I wish I could stop here saying everything was fine. But, I had more learning to do! I stayed with the Hygienic program for three months with never a pimple or sniffle. I thought I was “cured.” I began to stay up late and “just this once” eat wrong food combinations. Within five months I was living worse than before I had discovered Natural Hygiene, junk foods and all. “Clear Skin!
Anything Goes!” I was headed for a fall and I fell hard. It wasn’t easy to start back. But after some bad acne days, I was able to get back on the Hygienic Path. This was, in part, with the help of a certain anonymous group of overeaters. They gave me the tools to deal with the mental blank spot that preceeds that first compulsive bite. Thanks to them I found my way back and everything cleared up again. I learned that I’m never “cured,” but only healthy so long as I obey those Unbending Laws of Life.
I hope anyone with a similar, or any, health problem will take time to look into Natural Hygiene. I had to try everything else first. Maybe someone out there, who reads this, will be able to skip some disappointments and start in on a new, healthy life. I’ll be glad to talk and write and answer questions for anyone who asks for help. This way, by passing the word along, I hope to pay back a little of the joy I have received through Natural Hygiene.
The above article is reprinted from Naturally, the Hygienic Way.
I have never liked the term “The Hygienic Diet.” It implicitly suggests a diet designed for everyone which is specific, inflexible and stereotyped. Hygienically, diet represents a means of affording the organism adequate nourishment and, in order to accomplish this, there may be a thousand different diets which will provide the necessary materials of use in adequate proportions. Diet is merely a vehicle that provides the nutrients the body requires for the maintenance of its health and life. Diet does not cure disease. Diet per se does nothing. It is passive. It is acted upon by the organism. The purpose is to secure from it the necessary nutrients the body needs for growth, development, repair of wear and tear, reproduction and the maintenance of its functions. To speak as though diet performs some function by itself is erroneous. There is no such thing as an eliminating diet, implying in some way that diet is responsible for elimination. Elimination is a physiological process; it is performed by the organism, not by the food it consumes.
A diet should consist of those materials that are essential to the organism’s survival. These may be broadly classified into proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins. Providing that all of these are secured in adequate amounts, in a form which is usable, the organism will have the necessary materials to work with. If they are supplied deficiently or excessively, nutritional stresses will be incurred. To the extent that they are excessive or deficient, consequences will accrue depending upon the activity of the individual organism. Obviously there are considerable limits of toleration, varying from one individual to another. The organism can tolerate slight excesses and occasional deficiencies, at these times drawing upon its own nutritional reserves, but prolonged deficiencies and substantial excesses will incur consequences of malfunction.
The means whereby the various materials that the organism requires for its health and life are supplied are not of prime importance. Of first importance is the fact they are supplied. This does not mean that we can take refined and processed foods as being good sources of the materials that we require. What it does mean is that, providing the necessary materials are available to the organism in the diet consumed, free from noxious extraneous substances, in a form which naturally occurs, not tampered with by the food refiner and processor, the organism will be securing the necessary nourishment. It is important that we get away from the idea that specific foods and specific diets have healing properties or have special properties other than the mere presence of nutrients needed by the organism. The idea that we should take beet juice for anemia, cabbage juice for ulcers or parsley for the kidneys is a vicious reactionary hangover from the medicating superstition. Nor is it desirable that we study the analyses of various foods and select our diet according to some chart which indicates that a particular food is rich in a particular nutrient. This is not good nutrition. From this practice we may learn that wholegrain cereals are rich in iron but we may not discover that the presence of phytates renders the iron unavailable to the organism.
We should attempt to secure our nutrients from a wide variety of foods although obviously not at the same meal. Over a period of time, eat as wide a variety of foods as is practicable. Introduce new foods into the diet. I am speaking here of course of natural foods and by that I mean foods that are provided by the plant or tree in nature, i.e. fresh fruit and vegetables. In fresh fruits and vegetables, I also include nuts which are botanically classified as fruits. Some of the nuts which are in common use are not, strictly speaking, nuts. The peanut is a legume. However, if we select our protein from almonds, brazils, hazels, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, etc., these will supply the essential amino acids required for growth, development, repair and reproduction. To avoid any argument about the importance of taking all of the necessary amino acids at the same meal, eat a variety of nuts, but be careful not to overeat. An amount of 3 to 4 ozs. daily is quite adequate. Some additional protein will be taken in the small quantities present in fruits and vegetables. In some cases this might be quite significant. It is desirable to keep one’s diet simple, not to have a wide variety of foods at a single meal, but to limit the variety to perhaps four different types together with some concentrated food such as nuts for protein.
Many people can survive quite well on two meals a day. One fruit meal and one somewhat large salad meal together with protein. This does not mean, however, that one cannot have two fruit meals or two salad meals. It may be varied as desired. Two fruit meals may be taken one day and two salad meals may be taken another day. If one is on a 3-meal-a-day program, a fruit breakfast is usually the most desirable, but there is no real objection to a salad breakfast; For the remaining two meals, these may comprise a further two fruit meals or two salad meals, or one fruit and one salad meal. Some protein with one of the meals is desirable and I usually recommend 3 to 4 ozs. of nuts. Basically the Hygienist is arguing that the natural diet of man is comprised of fresh uncooked fruits and vegetables (which includes nuts) and insofar as he deviates from this, he increases his chances of incurring trouble. Dairy products, cheese, yogurt, milk, eggs, butter, represent compromises and if taken at all should be used sparingly. Flesh such as meat, fish and fowl represent a departure from food normal to man. The arguments in support of this are involved and extensive and it is not appropriate for me to discuss them here, but it is incumbent upon me to state categorically that flesh foods do not constitute a part of the normal diet of man. Their use then represents a compromise. The extent to which one compromises, and by this I mean the extent to which one consciously and volitionally departs from what is accepted as the ideal, is the extent to which consequences will and must follow.
Among the most dangerous and health-impairing nutritional habits, I consider the following:
I personally view the diet containing a large proportion of fresh raw fruits and vegetables accompanied by 3 to 4 ozs. of concentrated protein as being the most satisfactory. The diet may have to be manipulated in various ways, in disease and during the process of recovery. What I am here discussing represents certain basic principles of dietetics which are generally applicable to the sound and healthy. The diet of the invalid may have to be modified considerably and frequently as their strength and weakness alternate, as the energy ebbs and flows, as the needs fluctuate from day to day. Considerable knowledge and skill is required in order to feed the sick adequately without imposing nutritional burdens which prove enervating and contribute to the misery of the sufferer. In acute disease it is relatively simple: abstain from food, i.e. fast. But in the case of the chronic sufferer, the problem is far more complex. Fasting may be employed, but there are limits to its practical nutritional reserves, and the extent of the toxemic load. Very few chronic sufferers are likely to recover during a fast. The fast merely provides a foundation for the reconstruction of health and in some cases it may require several fasts to provide this foundation, and the periods of feeding in between are most crucial. Progress may be inhibited if mistakes are frequent and serious. Correct feeding after the fast in recovery from chronic disease is an extremely critical and sensitive process requiring an accurate assessment of the nutritional needs and capacities of the invalid, and whilst there can be no mathematical accuracy applied to the provision of nutrients, it must always be kept clearly in mind that we do not nourish the organism by providing nutrients but by providing foods. The organism is constructed to ingest and digest foods and thereby assimilate nutrients. We do not secure health by feeding nutrients but by providing foods which contain nutrients. The difficulty is encountered in providing the right food in the proper proportion under the correct conditions, at a time when the organism is capable of using them.
People phone me and ask “Can I eat fried potatoes? Fat and starch are all right together?” Now there are two points I wish to stress here:
Even if I say you can eat something does not make it either good or right. Some people try to persuade me to let them eat certain foods as though I am in some way responsible for physiological processes in relation to food. When I am asked these questions I often reply “What do you think?” Then they are forced to refer to their knowledge of Hygiene which usually compels them to accept the facts of reality.
People will argue that they are in some way special, the usual laws of life have to be “bent” a little in their case. These are all the subterfuges of compromise. There are only two types which are special, male and female. There are special periods such as infancy, pregnancy and lactation, but this does not mean that lettuce and apples are good at one time and fish and chips at another. Such periods require modifications of feeding but not of food. The exception is infancy when the infant secures his fruits, vegetables and nuts through his mother. He is eating them indirectly instead of directly.
Instead of confining himself to the compounds or combinations that are turned out by nature, man turns out compounds and combinations of his own, a thing that no other animal in nature does. The animal makes a meal on whatever his instincts demand at the time and does not fill up on many kinds of food at a meal. The general rule, to which there may be an occasional exception (I have failed to find one), is for them to get but one food at a meal. Even the most simple things mixed together are not as good as they would be if taken separately. For it is only thus that we can eat as little or as much of a particular food as the body demands.
We are prone to follow custom and acquired habits in our eating practices and to ignore (commonly we do not know) the inhibiting effects of a variety of conditions and circumstances upon the process of digestion. Much of the alleged scientific defense of customary eating practices is but a lingering survival of ideas formed when little was known of the process of digestion.
It was long thought that the gastric juice was the only solvent of aliment. The office of the saliva was unknown and the other digestive juices with their several enzymes were unknown long after Beaumont discovered the work of the gastric juice. Thus it came to be held that the action of the gastric juice was the same on all articles of diet. It was thought that in some manner, not then understood, bile did aid in the digestion of fats and oils.
The British health reformer, Andrew Combe, accepted the view of Beaumont that saliva is lacking in alimentary solvent. (These solvents are today called enzymes). “The agent of chymification,” said Combe, “is the gastric juice.” It should be noted at this point that Graham took the opposite view. He held that saliva does contain a ferment or solvent. It is a strange thing that at this late date when the importance of the work of the salivary amylase, ptyalin, in the digestion of starch is well known, medical writers, in attempting to discredit Graham, list his differences with Beaumont as one of his mistakes. They are determined not only to discredit Graham, but also to discount the importance of salivary digestion. Recently I read the statement that “digestion begins when food has been swallowed.” Physiologists, physicians and gum-willies all seem to be determined to minimize the importance of salivary digestion. Even the importance of chewing of food in the mouth, which is a part of the digestive process, is negated.
In the effort to defend modern eating customs a number of imaginary activities are pictured as going on in the stomach. Beaumont showed long ago that the gastric juice quickly becomes intimately mixed and blended with the food in the stomach by the motions of the stomach. These continuous motions are in two directions—transversely and longitudinally. It is now customary to deny that the gastric secretion is quickly mixed with the food ingested. This denial is necessary if food combining is to be discredited. Indeed, all enzymic limitations are ignored in the effort to combat the Hygienic heresy that certain combinations of foods may be digested with greater ease and efficiency than others.
In his Air, Food and Exercise, Rabagliati tells of witnessing the vomiting of a salad at 5 A.M. in about the same condition it was eaten at 7:30 the preceding evening. He mentions that the salad “had rather too much vinegar on it.” Acids not only destroy ptyalin and thus stop starch digestion, but they also inhibit the secretion of gastric juice and retard protein digestion. It is the part of dietetic wisdom to avoid eating acid foods (vinegar is not a food, but a poison), with protein. Because acids destroy ptyalin, it is well to avoid eating acid foods with starches.
An acid gastric juice is required to digest proteins. An alkaline medium is required for the work of ptyalin. For these reasons, protein foods and starch foods should not be eaten together. If a natural protein-starch combination, such as beans or cereals, is eaten, the body can so adapt its digestive juices to the digestive requirements of such a food that it is digested without too much trouble. If an artificial protein-starch combination is eaten, this adaptation cannot take place. Because of their complex character, beans, a protein-starch combination, tax the digestive powers more than simpler foods, but the gas, discomfort and other trouble that so commonly follow eating them, is not due so much to the beans themselves as to the company they keep. Baked beans are, of course, preferable to beans that are boiled and taken thoroughly saturated with water. If taken thus relatively dry, well chewed and eaten in proper combinations, beans will be found to be readily digestible.
A test meal of soup, beef-steak and potatoes remained in the stomach for three hours. The same meal with sugar remained for five hours. Sugar, like acids, has a marked inhibiting effect upon the flow of gastric juice and upon gastric motility. The meal of soup, potatoes and steak was sufficiently difficult of digestion, but when the sugar was added, it became more so. In our regular eating habits we ignore, or do not know these simple facts. We tend to eat as those around us eat and we refuse to listen to the voice of those who seek to instruct us in the art of better eating. Perhaps this is the reason that it has been said that our people’s favorite dessert is baking soda. I think that Alkaseltzer has now supplanted baking soda as an after-meal tid-bit, largely due, no doubt, to the fact that few homes use soda any more, since little home baking is now done.
When we were children, our mothers would not permit us to eat sugar, candy or cookies before a meal. As she expressed it, “it spoils the appetite.” The fact is that no other food depresses the stomach and the desire for food as sugar does. The so-called “energy break” in mid-morning and mid-afternoon, when sugar or candy is taken to renew lagging energies, is no different from taking a coffee-break for the same purpose. This practice of taking sugar has been dignified with the high-sounding title: “The Scientific Nibble,” but it is a fallacy. It is certainly a mistake to eat sugar, syrups, cakes, candies, pies, sweet fruits or honey with proteins.
Fat, like sugar and acid, also inhibits the secretion of gastric juice and the physical actions of the stomach. Too much fat taken with the meal results in acid eructations which leave a pungent, burning sensation in the throat. Fat inhibits gastric secretion. We have a great army of gastric invalids who overeat on butter and other fat, take sugar or acids with proteins and then are told by their physician that they do not have sufficient hydrochloric acid. The physician gives them hydrochloric acid to take and tells them that once this acid has been “lost” it cannot be regained. How does the physician know? Has he ever tried removing the cause of gastric hypo-secretion? Has he ever tried restoring the patient to health to see if his glands will function normally? Has he ever tried correcting the patient’s eating and living habits? The answer to all of these questions is the same. He has never made such attempts. He has been content to palliate the symptoms of his patient and leave causes untouched.
People often consult us who are taking hydrochloric acid upon the advice of a physician, who has explained that there is no possibility of them ever regaining the tone of the stomach and that they will have to take the acid the rest of their lives. They are fully convinced that this is true and it is no easy task to disabuse them of the fallacy. It is true, of course, that if they have taken the acid for a prolonged period, the practice itself has resulted in so much deterioration of the gastric glands that secrete hydrochloric acid, that the chances of full recovery are greatly reduced. The practice should never be started in the first place and only the grossest kind of ignorance or criminal indifference to a sick person’s welfare will ever prescribe such a treatment for the sick.
Fruits, because of their peculiar combinations, are best eaten at a fruit meal and not combined with starches, fats or proteins. As a rule they are abundant in either acids or sugars, hence do not combine well with other foods. As they undergo very little digestion in the mouth and stomach they should not be held up in the stomach awaiting the completion of gastric digestion of other foods.
There is no sharp line of division between the acid and subacid fruits. Neither is there a sharp line of demarkation between sub-acid fruits and sweet fruits. The gradations between these classes of foods are almost imperceptible. The acid fruits are those with the most tart flavors—lemons, grapefruit, oranges, pineapple, sour apples, tomatoes, and similar fruits rich in acid. The sub-acid fruits are those that possess less acid flavors-pears, sweet apples, apricots, fresh figs, some grapes, sweet peaches, cherries and nectarines. The sweet fruits are those that are rich in sugar (sweet in taste)—persimmons, bananas, figs, dates, raisins, sweet grapes, mangoes and papayas. The avocado is a fat.
Tilden recommended eating the banana alone. He especially enjoined milk with this fruit, but said that it does not seem to go well with any other food. Although bananas do not give any special difficulty in digestion, if eaten with other sweet fruits, such as dates or sweet grapes, the same cannot be said for melons, which should be eaten alone. It is probably a great misfortune that we do not always feel the direct effects of imprudent eating immediately following a meal. For example, there are large numbers of people who have discomfort, even great discomfort following a meal in which melons are eaten with other foods; but there are many others who do not. This latter group can see no connection between their life of imprudent eating and the breakdown of their health in years. Their apparent impunity prompts them to defy all the same rules of life.
At frequent intervals, some chemist or physician comes forward with the announcement that there is nothing to the idea that people have better health if they do not combine starch and protein foods in the same meal. They are sure to tell us that laboratory experiments show that digestion is carried out almost as quickly where these foods are combined as where only one is taken at a time. They are likely to add that experiments with certain patients verify this opinion of theirs.
We have in these announcements, two groups of men invading a field and posing as authorities therein, to which they are alien. Chemists know nothing of feeding man or animal. They should stick to chemistry. Physicians are not trained in dietetics. They know nothing of feeding the well and the sick. They are trained in the black art of poisoning the sick. I will not say that they should stick to this practice, but I will say that they should cease trying to pass themselves off on the public as authorities in fields outside their own.
Of what value are their laboratory experiments? Very little. A laboratory is not a human being. It is not a human digestive tract. The laboratory experiment cannot be substituted for the actual work of digesting a meal. Even feeding test meals and pumping out the stomach contents, or viewing the stomach through the X-ray is not a satisfactory approach to the solution of the problems involved in the heterogeneous and haphazard mixtures of foods commonly consumed at a meal.
What can be learned from feeding one meal to a subject, or even from feeding a few such meals to a few subjects? One such meal may not bring any distress to the subject. Indeed, we see many people eating such meals regularly for years before they develop discomforts therefrom. But the constant repetition of heavy protein-starch meals taxes their digestion to the limit and, sooner or later, results in discomforts and diseases galore.
Dr. Tilden once pointed out that nearly all such experiments are carried out by physicians and chemists who use the potato as the starchy part of the diet, and, he adds, “I have often stated, the potato is the least objectionable of any starch to be used with protein, on account of its potash content.” My own view is that the potash content of the potato is not concerned in the matter at all. Potato starch digests in ten minutes under ideal conditions. I am of the opinion that it is the rapidity with which the potato starch digests that makes its combination with protein less objectionable than the combination of other starches with protein. It seems to be that the potato starch digests before the gastric juice of the stomach can accumulate in such quantity as to materially interfere with the digestion of the starch. Whatever the true explanation, the fact still remains that potato with protein, though objectionable, is less so than some other starchy foods with protein.
The man who has fed thousands of patients, old and young, and has had an opportunity to study the effects of diets and food combinations upon the health and diseases of these people is in a far better position to judge the accuracy of the contention that protein-starch combinations are not conducive to good digestion and good health, than are the chemists who feed nobody and the physicians whose great work is that of poisoning the sick.
Those of us who have made these observations know well that correct food combinations result in an immediate improvement in health by lightening the load the digestive organs have to carry. We know that we see better digestion and less fermentation and putrefaction. We see more comfort and less distress. There is less gas and little or no odor to the gas.
I do not believe that such experiences are worth anything if they cannot be explained by correct principles. Unless they can be explained by the facts of physiological chemistry, particularly the chemistry of digestion, we may be only deluding ourselves. On the other hand, if our rules of food combining are soundly rooted in physiology, they are worthy of more than a passing notice.
It is frequently objected that nature, herself, combines starches and proteins and if nature does, we may do so also. This objection is not valid. It is based on the untenable assumption that everything in nature is designed or intended for food. The great representative examples of protein-starch combinations in nature are cereals and legumes. These are the very foods that are most prone to decompose in the digestive tract when eaten. Neither of them constitute the best of foods and neither of them is readily digested. While a diet of cereals or a diet of legumes is inadequate in several ways, there is reason to believe that some of the inadequacies that result from such dietaries are results of the failure of digestion, a failure that is probably the result of the protein-starch combination.
Physiologically, the first steps in the digestion of starches and proteins take place in opposite media—starch requiring an alkaline medium, protein requiring an acid medium in which to digest. The enzyme ptyalin (salivary amylase) that initiates starch digestion is active in an alkaline medium only and is destroyed by a mild acid. On the other hand, pepsin, the enzyme that initiates protein digestion is active only in an acid medium. If starches and proteins are eaten together, the acid gastric juice destroys the ptyalin and puts an end to salivary digestion of starch. That the presence of the undigested starch in the stomach interferes with the digestion of protein is shown by the presence of undigested protein in the stools. Physiologists have shown that undigested starch absorbs pepsin and this will surely interfere with digestion of protein.
If a food that is a natural protein-starch combination is eaten alone, the body is capable of modifying its digestive juices and timing their secretions in such ways that digestion can go on with a fair degree of efficiency. But when a starch food and a protein food are eaten at the same meal this precise adaptation of the digestive secretions to the character and digestive requirements of the food is not possible. There is a marked and important difference between eating a food that is a natural protein-starch combination and eating two foods, one a protein, the other starch.
When starches and proteins are eaten together, there is a fermentation and this results in fouling the whole digestive tract. Fermentation means irritation and poisoning. If starch is eaten without protein, the gastric (stomach) secretions will not be acid, or will be so weakly acid that they will not interfere with salivary digestion. In this case here will be no fermentation, except from other causes, such as overeating, hurried eating, other wrong combinations, eating when fatigued, worried, angry, fearful, grieved, etc., eating immediately before beginning work, eating when in pain, fever or when there is inflammation, etc. The causes of indigestion are legion.
When the artificial protein-starch combination is eaten, not only undigested starch, but undigested protein will be found in the stools. The presence of undigested starch and protein in the stools is of far greater importance in determining the digestibility or indigestibility of a food combination than is the emptying time of the stomach. “Research” workers have found that the protein-starch combination delays the digestion of protein four to six minutes. This would seem to be unimportant, and I believe it is unimportant. If this brief delay in protein digestion represented all there is to the matter, we could forget the whole thing and continue to eat haphazardly. But starch digestion is important, also. Then there is the fact that the delay in emptying time of the stomach is no criterion of the completeness with which gastric digestion of protein has been done.
Physiologists resort to a number of “dodges” to escape the obvious implications of the facts of the physiology of digestion. A fine example of this is contained in Physiology by V.H. Mottram, professor of physiology at the University of London. He says that when the food in the stomach comes in contact with the gastric juice no salivary action is possible. He says: “Now gastric juice digests protein and saliva digests starch. Therefore it is obvious that for efficient digestion the meat (protein) part of a meal should come first and the starchy part second—just indeed as by instinct is usually the case. Meat precedes pudding as being the most economical procedure.”
Why should it make any difference what order in which we consume the various foods at a meal? Mottram explains it in this way: “the distal end of the stomach is that in which the churning movement that mixes the food with gastric juice takes place ... But the food in the quiescent end is still under the influence of the saliva, while the food in the motile end comes into contact with the acid gastric juice and no salivary action is possible.”
This means that if you eat your protein first so that it will be down in the lower end of the stomach and consume your starch last so that it will be in the upper part of the stomach, the protein will be digested below while the starch is digested above.
Assuming that there is any absolute demarkation between the food in the different parts of the stomach, and this assumption would be false, it is still not true that people in general, either instinctively or otherwise, consume their proteins and starches in this manner. Perhaps in England it is customary to eat meat at the beginning of a meal and pudding at the end, just as we have a similar practice of taking a dessert at the end of a meal in this country; but it is likely to be the practice there as here of eating bread and meat together. When the average man and woman eats flesh or eggs, or cheese, he or she takes bread with the protein. In eating hamburgers, sandwiches, hot dogs and similar dietetic abominations, it is certainly not the custom to consume the protein first and then, at the end of the “meal” eat the bun or other bread. The protein and starch are eaten together and are thoroughly mixed in the mouth in the process of chewing before they are swallowed.
For good digestion, let us eat our proteins and starches at separate meals.
The Hygienic rules of food combining are based on certain facts of the physiology of digestion that are well-known to the orthodox biologist and physiologist. Although these specialists in science never make any effort to make a practical application of their knowledge to the everyday task of living, the known limitations of the digestive enzymes make it important that some consideration be given to these in our eating habits. What I have to say in the remainder of this article is based squarely upon the current teachings of standard physiologies, as I learned them in my studies of science prior to my graduation, but a few weeks ago, from the University.
The human digestive tract is divided into three cavities: the mouth, the stomach and the intestines. Each of these cavities possesses its own characteristic digestive juice or juices with which to do the digestive work of the particular cavity. Thus the work of digestion may be divided into three steps or stages, the work of each cavity preparing the food for the advanced work of the next. Although physiologists and biologists tend to think of salivary and gastric digestion as relatively unimportant, many facts, which I shall discuss in a future article, indicate that the efficiency and satisfactoriness of intestinal digestion depend upon the thoroughness with which salivary and gastric digestion have been carried out. With this thought in mind we shall begin our studies of the digestive processes.
Digestion is essentially a process whereby large molecules are broken down into smaller molecules by the process of enzymatic hydrolysis. Hydro (water) lysis (to loosen), means to loosen up by water, or to cleave large molecules into smaller ones by adding water. The organic catalysts (enzymes) are necessary to speed up hydrolysis. Without enzymes, very high temperatures and strong chemicals are necessary to produce hydrolysis, but these destroy food values. In the stomach hydrolysis occurs in comparatively low temperatures and in a short while. The thesis is that it takes a year or more to hydrolyze foods without enzymes. Unfortunately the end-products are never really the same. Thus we see that enzymes are of primary importance in digestion.
Without chemical digestion, the animal organism would derive no benefit from foods. The food must be reduced to the size necessary to pass through the mucous membrane of the intestine and it must be changed into substances that can be assimilated and used by the organism, such as simple sugar, resulting from carbohydrate digestion; glycerol and fatty acids, derived from the fats of our diet; and amino acids, derived from proteins. Without good digestion we rob ourselves of many important elements and permit decomposition and putrefaction which cause various and sundry troubles.
Enzymes are organic catalysts composed of complex protein; hence, the requirement of amino acids for their synthesis. (A catalyst is a chemical agent that, when added to reacting chemicals, greatly speeds up their reaction and may be recovered practically unchanged at the end of the reaction.) The vitamin molecule is also said to form part of the enzyme molecule. There are extracellular enzymes (exoenzymes), such as the digestive enzymes, and glycogenase, found in the liver, is an example. Exoenzymes are secreted from the cells that produce them, and they perform their activities outside the cell. Endoenzymes do their work inside the cells that produce them.
Each enzyme is specific in its action; by this is meant that it acts upon one class of food only (fats, carbohydrates or proteins) and upon no other, or upon one class of products of previous enzymic activity. Indeed, each one of the different sugars requires its own specific enzyme. They perform their work best at body temperature.
Each enzyme is capable of acting only in a medium of a certain pH. The pH of a substance is the measure of its acidity or alkalinity. An alkaline substance is one in which the hydroxyl ions (OH) are in excess of the hydrogen ion (H). If the hydrogen ions are in excess, the substance is acid. If the hydroxyl and hydrogen ions exist in equal concentrations, the substance is neutral. For convenience, the physiologist expresses the concentration of hydrogen ions with the chemical symbol pH. Measuring the relative concentration of hydrogen and hydroxyl ions with the potentiometer, substances with a pH of seven are neutral, becoming increasingly acid as the pH falls from seven to one and increasingly alkaline as the pH rises from seven to fourteen.
Enzymes exist in an inactive form designated as proferment or zymogen, within the cells that produce them. Some may remain inactive until activated by activators (an inorganic activator) and kinases (organic activators). Others are converted into active enzymes at the moment of secretion. There are also coenzymes, where the action of an enzyme is dependent upon the presence of another substance as in the case of the dependence of pancreatic lipase upon bile salts. It was formerly thought that bile has an antiputrefactive action, but it is now thought that the greater amount of putrefaction of proteins and carbohydrates in the absence of bile is due to the fact that fats are not digested off the food, thus protecting them from the digestive juices. This allows the foods to undergo bacterial decomposition, the end-products of which are toxic. The above should indicate the importance of not eating fried foods and of not saturating your bread, potatoes, and other starch with butter, margarine, oil or other fat.
Food, upon being received in the mouth, is subjected to communition and insalivation and is thus reduced to a soft mass known as a bolus. The first enzyme with which the bolus comes in contact is ptyalin or salivary amylase. This enzyme begins starch digestion, changing the starches to dextrine and maltose, if given sufficient time to continue its action in the stomach. I shall speak more of this later. The bolus acquires a neutral or slightly alkaline reaction that is essential to the continued action of the salivary amylase. If the saliva is distinctly acid, it immediately stops salivary digestion and the first step in converting starch into usable sugars is arrested.
After food has been masticated and insalivated, the bolus is sent through the esophagus to the stomach where gastric juice is poured out in large quantities (an average of 1.5 to 2.5 liters a day). It is a thin, colorless fluid with a definite acid reaction (pH of 0.9 to 1.7), containing protein, mucin, inorganic salts, about five percent hydrochloric acid, and the enzymes pepsin and gastric lipase. If no protein is eaten, the juice is almost neutral in reaction.
Shortly after food enters the stomach, contractions begin in the middle region, passing down to the lower end called the pyloris. These actions thoroughly macerate the food with the gastric juice, forming the thin liquid mass now called chyme. The fundus or upper end of the stomach exerts pressure on the food in it so that it constantly pushes the food further into the more active or prepyloric and pyloric end of the stomach. In thin way, all the contents of the stomach become a liquid chyme and are thoroughly mixed together. There can be no separation in the stomach of one part of the meal from the other. A blender also has the churning action only at the bottom but shortly after the motor is turned on all the contents are thoroughly and evenly mixed. The churning motion in the lower part of the stomach, the addition of an enormous amount of fluid, plus the constant pressure of the fundus, (which the blender lacks) upon the food is more than enough to ensure the thorough maceration of the food.
As previously stated, the enzymes of the stomach are pepsin, and gastric lipase. Pepsin, which initiates protein digestion, requires an acid medium in which to work. It is secreted as the zymogen pepsinogen and rendered active by the hydrochloric acid of the gastric juice. Pepsin is active only in the presence of hydrochloric acid and the hydrochloric acid may be destroyed by alkali such as baking soda, etc. Pepsin hydrolyzes proteins through several stages into proteoses and peptones, which are inabsorbable and must undergo further hydrolysis in the intestine by other proteolytic (protein splitting) enzymes.
The stomach enzyme, gastric lipase, asserts its activity upon fats, breaking them up into fatty acids and glycerols, but the action of this enzyme is inhibited by an acid medium. Physiologists believe that fats undergo little or no digestion in the stomach because of the acid gastric juice, but Hygienists have shown that, with proper combinations, fats can be digested in the stomach. The very fact that a fat-splitting enzyme is contained in the gastric juice, indicates that it is there for a purpose and, if in a medium of the right pH, it will exercise its properties. Fats and proteins are a very bad combination since proteins require a very acid medium for digestion and this would inactivate gastric lipase. Fats also inhibit gastric secretion, it is thought possibly by the production of a hormone called enterogastrone. But where fats are eaten with green vegetables, preferably raw, the inhibiting effect of fats on gastric secretion is counteracted and protein digestion proceeds quite normally.
Salivary digestion or the action of ptyalin or salivary amylase upon starches occurs while chewing and swallowing food and for a brief time after it gets into the stomach. This is not sufficient time to complete salivary digestion. Unless starch-protein combinations are avoided, salivary digestion of starch is not completed. We have learned that pepsin, that acts on proteins, needs an acid medium in which to work, and salivary amylase, that digests starches, needs an alkaline medium. Then, if protein foods, such as nuts, cheese, etc., are eaten with starches, such as potatoes or bread, the gastric secretion will be acid because of the presence of the protein food, and will speedily bring to a halt all starch digestion in the stomach. The starchy food will be left incompletely digested until it reaches the small intestine for further hydrolysis, providing it has not undergone fermentation and decomposition. It must be remembered that it is during this waiting period, because of the temperature of the stomach, that fermentation and decomposition are most likely to occur. The end-products of bacterial decomposition are always poisonous.
When a starch is eaten alone, that is without protein, as for example, a potato, a gastric secretion, the pH of which is practically neutral, is poured into the stomach, and salivary digestion will combine in the stomach uninhibited. Other acids besides hydrochloric acid destroy salivary amylase. Free acids of fruits, such as those of oranges, grapefruit, pineapples, tomatoes, lemons, limes, sour apples, sour grapes, sour berries, etc., and the acid of vinegar as well as drug acids, destroy salivary amylase. The eating of acid fruits and the taking of vinegar-containing dressings suspends salivary digestion. The drinking of orange or tomato juice with the starchy breakfast cereals that conventional eaters consume, is hazardous.
Salivary and gastric (stomach) digestion, if carried out properly, prepares the food for intestinal digestion, where enzymes of the succus entericus (the secretion of the intestinal glands) and the pancreatic juice and the coenzymes of the bile take over. In the intestine, the end-products of hydrolysis are reached and the food is ready for absorption, which also takes place in the intestine.
Succus entericus, the intestinal secretion, contains four or five enzymes and has a marked alkaline reaction. The enzymes are as follows: enterokynase, which activates trypsin (the protein-splitting enzyme of the pancreatic juice); erepsin, which completes the work of pepsin and trypsin, hydrolyzing peptides to their constituent amino acids. The hydrolyzing enzymes of the succus entericus hydrolyze disaccharides, which are double sugars, into monosaccharides, which are simple sugars such as glucose and fructose. Without the hydrolyzing enzymes, to convert disaccharides to monosaccharides, the disaccharides would be eliminated by the kidneys because as such they are non-usable by the tissues.
Maltase acts upon maltose, and dextrine, which are products of the salivary digestion of starches. Two other hydrolyzing enzymes are sucrase, which hydrolyzes sucrose to glucose, and fructose, and lactase, the milk sugar enzyme. Sucrose is cane sugar, but it is also found in vegetables, the juices of many plants and some fruits. Most fruits contain the monosaccharides glucose and fructose. (If combined properly, fruits are the easiest of foods to digest, because their sugars are already in an assimilable form, needing no further hydrolysis. They need only to be absorbed and used.) Lactase acts upon milk sugar (lactose), hydrolyzing it to glucose and galactose.
Other constituents of the succus entericus are nuclease, which hydrolyzes the nucleic acid components of neucloproteins and secretin, which is a hormone that I need not discuss in this short article.
Bile serves many important functions in the small intestine. It is an alkaline fluid, pH about 6.8 to 7.7, consisting of water, bile pigments, bile acids, bile salts, cholesterol, lecithin and neutral fats. Secretion of bile in the liver is continuous but it enters the duodenum only when chyme is present. Bile may be considered a coenzyme of pancreatic lipase as pancreatic lipase combined with bile splits fats more rapidly than it does alone. Bile helps in the absorption of fatty acids by combining with them, making them more soluble, hence more easily absorbed. Bile is needed in facilitating absorption of many fat soluble vitamins, especially vitamins D, E and K. Bile has many other functions not concerned with digestion.
The pancreatic fluid enzymes are trypsis, pancreatic amylase and pancreatic lipase. Trypsin hydrolyzes proteins into proteoses, peptones and polypeptids and, given enough time, under favorable conditions, will continue its action until the necessary amino acids are reached. The more efficient and complete peptic digestion has been in the stomach, the more likely will trypsin and erepsin be able to complete the hydrolysis of proteins. Normally, proteins should be hydrolyzed into proteoses and peptones by gastric digestion. Under favorable conditions, proteins may be passed into the intestine without peptic digestion. Physiologists think that the enzyme trypsin of the pancreatic juice can initiate protein digestion and may reduce these proteins to proteoses and peptones, polypeptids, dipeptids and, finally, amino acids. It is reasonable, however, to think that thorough peptic digestion of proteins before they are expelled from the stomach assures the completion of their hydrolysis in the intestine, thus avoiding putrefaction.
The Hygienist does not agree with the thought of physiologists that salivary and gastric digestion are unimportant. The thoroughness with which enzymes do their work depends upon the amount of time they have in which to work. Obviously, therefore, thorough peptic digestion of protein will shorten the time required for the completion of protein hydrolysis in the intestine.
The several enzymes of the pancreatic and intestinal juices that complete the digestion of proteins, carbohydrates and fats in the intestine, function only in an alkaline medium. The chyme from the stomach is acid, but bile from the liver and the pancreatic juice, both of which are alkaline, quickly provide an alkaline environment for the action of the enzymes in the intestine. We need not concern ourselves with combinations, as they relate to intestinal digestion, except to point out that the best preparation for intestinal digestion is good salivary and gastric digestion. Food combining is, therefore, of greatest importance as it relates to salivary and gastric digestion.
Dr. Vetrano recommends using as little soaking water as possible, soaking one side at a time, so all water will be absorbed, thus avoiding losing flavor and nutrients. It is important that the water used for soaking be distilled water. If any water remains after soaking the fruit, you can drink the water.
Sweet fruits combine fairly well with subacid fruits, provided the subacid fruits are on the “sweet side,” for example, use Delicious apples, not Macintosh, or Jonathans, with sweet fruit.
It is best to have these fruits at a fruit meal combining only with lettuce and/or celery. Since fruits are usually high in acids or sugars, they do not combine well with other foods.
23.1. The Food Combining System
23.4. Mono Meals And Mono Diets
23.5. Application Of The Food Combining Rules
23.10. Food Classification Charts
Article #1:Your Probing Mind By Dr. Virginia Vetrano
Article #2: Proteins In Your Diet! By Dr. Alec Burton
Article #3: Food Combining By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #4: Chlorophyll And Hemoglobin By Viktoras Kulvinskas
Most of the food combining rules were first set down long ago by such Hygienic pioneers as Doctors John H. Tilden and William Howard Hay, and they have been tested in practice by modern Hygienic doctors and many thousands of lay people. This empirical testing has resulted in some modifications of the original food combining principles. Other modifications continue to be evaluated as “gray” areas and are studied and tested.
What is needed by neophytes and old-timers alike is accurate, up-to-date information, clarification, simplification and a common-sense approach—a way to eliminate confusion and anxiety.
This lesson discusses meal-planning principles and their application. You will be given all the details you will need in order to learn to apply these principles. This lesson will also lead you through numerous examples of the correct application of each of the food combining rules that were discussed in Lesson 22.
Meal planning advice is intended merely as a guide to enable the individual to work out his own menus. The object is to understand the principles of food combining so that you (and your students) will be independent and never at a loss, no matter where, in preparing meals from the foods at hand.
Food availability varies with location, season, climate, altitude, soil and market factors. If you know how to combine your foods correctly, you may usually select compatible combinations anywhere—at the market, at the home of a friend or relative, or even at a public eating place. An intelligent adult should learn these principles and learn to apply them. Soon the practice becomes habitual—almost automatic.
We will start with an outline of how to plan your daily food program.
If you have Dr. Shelton’s book, Food Combining Made Easy, you will notice (pp. 55-57) that his daily menus usually include a breakfast of fruit, a starch meal for lunch, and a protein meal for dinner. He even includes such items as lamb chops and eggs on some of the menus (simply to show how to combine animal products, if you use them).
My daily menus (in this lesson) will also include three meals, even though it is best to eat only two meals on most ( days. Many people do better with two meals daily, some do better alternating between two and three meals (two meals one day, three meals the next, etc.).
On days that you eat two meals, you may use the menus as a guide, selecting two meals each day from the variety offered. I would suggest selecting one fruit meal and one salad meal, being sure to include enough protein foods, according to your needs.
My menus will not advocate the use of a starch and a protein every day. My recommendation is to have some concentrated protein most days, and salad every day. Some people get along quite well with concentrated protein every other day, others need some every day. The amount of concentrated protein you need depends on how much you take at each sitting, your tolerance, and the efficiency of your assimilation. How much concentrated protein you need also depends on whether you are eating all raw food.
The proteins to be found in almost all vegetables and many fruits, though usually not concentrated, are of high biological value when eaten unchanged (without cooking), and are an important source of dietary protein. People on all-raw-food diets may need less concentrated protein, but it is an individual matter. Your own needs may best be ascertained through personal experimentation.
On the other hand, people who eat some cooked starches and cooked combination foods should realize that these are supplementary sources of dietary protein, and that it may not be necessary to also use concentrated proteins on every day when concentrated starches or combination foods are used. Again, this is an individual matter.
But four ounces of nuts or seeds at one meal, a serving of brown rice at another meal, and a serving of dates at a third meal on the same day, may easily result in overburdening the body with too many concentrated foods, and too much protein.
How much concentrated protein you need is also dependent on another extremely important factor. How active are you? How much regular vigorous exercise are you getting? Everyone should make it a point to use the body energetically every day. People who engage in little physical exertion need less food, particularly less protein. Sedentary people who consume more food, especially more protein, than their bodies are capable of metabolizing efficiently, are incubating future serious pathological problems.
I find that I personally need to take some concentrated protein almost every day. I usually can eat only two ounces of nuts and/or seeds at a sitting, supplementing my protein needs at other meals with other lower protein foods, such as large green salads and avocados. I use alfalfa sprouts with almost every salad meal, and sometimes use lentil and mung bean sprouts.
My recommendation includes a program that does not utilize concentrated starches or combination foods (whether raw, sprouted or cooked) more than four or five times weekly. You will note that the menus which include some cooked food indicate cooked foods not more than four times weekly. It is hoped that cooked foods will gradually be de-emphasized even more.
I am not, by any means, saying that Dr. Shelton’s fruit-starch-protein daily menus may not be applicable to some people, nor am I saying that some people may not use more fruit and less concentrated foods than are included in these menus. I am simply offering suggested alternatives, determined through research and practical experience of many years and by many people.
Study the daily menus in this lesson, compare them with Dr. Shelton’s and others, if you wish and determine, by experimentation, which daily meal plan is best for you.
Breakfast: Starting with breakfast, you have three ways to go, with many variations of these three basic choices. The first choice—the best choice for most people—is the “no-breakfast plan.” That would mean you would be eating only twice daily.
The second choice is a light breakfast of one kind of juicy fruit—citrus or melon or any subacid fruit, such as grapes—no dried fruit. Fresh fruits are the best choice for the first food of the day—one or two varieties. They should be eaten whole, uncooked and unjuiced. Eat until pleasantly satisfied, not stuffed. Three to five oranges, or a grapefruit and two oranges, or one-eighth of a medium watermelon, or a medium cantaloupe or honeydew melon, or one pound of grapes, should be maximum amounts for an all-fruit first meal of the day. Most people would want less.
The third breakfast choice is for people who find that they do better with a more substantial breakfast. This is preferred by some men (and also a few women), and especially by individuals who will be away from home during the day and will perhaps be unable to obtain good food conveniently. This plan might also be preferred by those who find that they feel better if they eat some protein early in the day—notably, people who might have the problem of low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). However, many people who have had hypoglycemia (or have been diagnosed as hypoglycemics) have successfully progressed to the two-meal-a-day plan.
This more substantial breakfast might consist of citrus or other acid fruit, such as pineapple or strawberries followed by raw, unsalted nuts and/or seeds. It might be advisable to wait thirty minutes or longer before eating the nuts, to allow the sugars in the fruit a chance to leave the stomach. This is a precaution often taken by people with impaired digestions. Maximum amounts of fruit in such a meal should be about half the quantities used when eating only the fruit. Two to four ounces of nuts and/or seeds may be used. Lettuce and/or celery would be an excellent addition to this meal.
This type of more substantial breakfast, or brunch, might be more advantageously used around noon, rather than early in the morning, if the circumstances permit, and if you are willing to postpone eating until after you have done something to “earn” your meal.
Luncheon: Now we get to luncheon, where we again have multiple choices. Even if you have not eaten breakfast, you might prefer to have a lunch of juicy fruit or melon. If you choose melon (most people do better with melon only, only one kind) eat as much as you want, but stop before you are uncomfortably full. Some people have no problem when combining more than one kind of melon, or combining melon with certain subacid fruits. (See Lesson 22.)
If you decide on a mixed fruit lunch, this is an excellent and satisfying meal, if you are careful about the combinations. You should not use acid fruit with sweet fruit; for example, don’t use oranges and bananas at the same meal. Your mixed fruit lunch could consist of grapes, peaches, apples or other fresh subacid fruit—one or two varieties (two or three pieces)—plus one or two bananas and/or one-half of a medium avocado. It is better to choose either the bananas or the avocado. Lettuce and celery also make an excellent addition to this meal, especially if you are including avocado.
If desired, you could also have a small serving of figs, dates, raisins, soaked dried apricots, or other dried fruit, if you have not had avocado. Or you could occasionally have acid or subacid fruit, lettuce and celery, and four ounces of cheese, if you use it. If you do use cheese, use it sparingly and rarely. Actually, lettuce and celery may be used with almost any fruit meal, but I would not recommend their use with melon.
Another type of luncheon, especially if you have had a fruit or melon breakfast, would be a salad meal. You could have as much salad as you want, consisting of one or more dark green varieties of lettuce: Romaine, Boston, Bibb, leaf, or any garden lettuce (not pale iceberg head lettuce), plus tomatoes, cucumber, celery, or any nonstarchy vegetables, along with or followed by avocado or nuts or seeds.
The Evening Meal: New we get to the evening meal, where the choices are almost infinite. Much depends on what you have already eaten. If you have already eaten your fill at breakfast and lunch, you need very little additional food, perhaps none.
If you ate a citrus and nuts breakfast, and a salad and avocado lunch, you might want a mixed fruit supper. If you had a fruit or melon breakfast and a salad and nuts lunch, you might want a salad and avocado supper. If you have not yet had any nuts that day, you could have salad and nuts for supper.
If you are still using cooked food, it is better to eat it in the evening, after the day’s work is done, when you may rest and relax, and accomplish better digestion. Many people have a tendency to overeat of the cooked food—so eat a large salad first; this may help you to eat more conservative amounts of cooked food. Try to avoid second helpings, and stop before you feel stuffed. In any event, it is preferable to eat raw food before cooked food, juicy food before dry food, and easy-to-digest food before foods that need more time for digestion (such as starches, proteins and fats).
It is true that all the food will be mixed in the stomach, but the so-called “Ideal Order of Eating” is helpful to some extent.
Eat raw food before cooked food. Raw foods contain live enzymes, which influence digestive efficiency; cooking destroys all enzymes. Moreover, the consumption of raw foods stimulates gastric enzyme secretion, which is necessary to initiate good digestion. Besides, the more raw foods eaten as the first course, the less cooked foods will be eaten.
Eat juicy foods before dry foods. During the process of digestion, hydrolysis occurs—that is, the combining of the food with liquid from the body’s reserve supply. Juicy foods contain some of their own liquid, which facilitates the initial processing of the food mixture. (Do not take water with dry foods as an alternative—this causes problems—see Rules for Drinking.)
Eat easy-to-digest foods before foods, that require a longer digestion time. The digestive process starts while the meal is being consumed, and the most liquid portion of the food mixture, the chyme, leaves the stomach at intervals. Thus, some of the easy-to-digest foods may be processed and leave the stomach before the end of the meal. Even if this does not occur, if the concentrated foods are eaten last, you may possibly eat less of them, which would be an advantage for many people, especially those who have a tendency to overeat of the concentrated proteins and starches.
An exception may advantageously be made in the case of eating salad alternately with nuts, rather than consecutively. Many people find that eating the salad along with the nuts actually aids digestion, and also eliminates the dry or thirsty feeling that sometimes follows the eating of nuts after the salad. Do not use the tomato or lettuce to moisten the nuts to help get them down. The nuts must be thoroughly chewed.
Dr. Vetrano’s article on the “Sequence of Eating” indicates that she does not attach importance to the sequence of eating concentrated foods and less concentrated foods. You might want to experiment to determine your own preference.
When combining several fruits at a meal, it is a good idea to eat the sweetest variety last. (Oranges after grapefruit; bananas, persimmons, dates, figs, after grapes, plums, apples etc.) If you follow a sweet fruit with one that is less sweet, the comparison actually seems to make the less sweet fruit usually taste acid or sour.
On the other hand, I sometimes like to eat a small amount of subacid fruit after the sweet fruit to dilute the excessively sweet taste at the end of the meal. Either way, there is no food combining principle involved—please yourself.
If you sometimes would like to eat fruit in combination with a mixed vegetable meal, the best way would be to eat the fruit first, and then, if possible, delay at least fifteen minutes before eating the other foods, starting with the salad.
As previously indicated, exceptions to this arbitrary “eating order” are not serious. After all, it does all go into the same stomach, and is quickly combined into a mobile mixture, the chyme.
Drink no beverage except pure water, only when thirsty, and not with meals, as drinking at meal time dilutes the digestive juices and retards digestion. Most beverages commonly consumed are loaded with harmful substances, interfere with the digestion and assimilation of foods, and may be addictive and destructive of vital organs.
No particular amount of water is necessary; thirst is the best guide. Hygienists usually drink very little water because no spices or seasonings are used, and there is so much liquid in foods as provided by nature. If thirsty, one may drink ten to twenty minutes before meals, one-half hour after a fruit meal, two hours after a vegetable or starch meal, and four hours after a protein meal. It is best to sip water, not gulp.
If one ignores the feeling of thirst that sometimes follows a meal and resists the impulse to drink, the thirst may soon disappear, having been satisfied by digestive secretions, and good digestion will be accomplished (since the digestive juices will not have been diluted). If very thirsty, and you feel that you must drink, try a few sips, instead of gulping large quantities of water. Drinking water with meals, or directly after meals, causes the stomach to dilate, and may lead to chronic indigestion, gastritis, ulcers, or even cancer.
Juices: Foods should not be juiced for use as a beverage, but should be eaten in their whole state. If exceptions to this rule are occasionally made, it should be with the full awareness that this fragmented food does not contribute anything “extra” to your health or nutrition, and is definitely a compromise of Hygienic principles.
In fact, this bombardment of the body with concentrated portions of fragmented foods may actually cause unpleasant, even serious problems. If carrot juice is consumed in large quantities, it may cause carotinemia and discolor the skin—the liver cannot handle too much of it. I have seen yellow palms (a symptom of carotinemia) that, fortunately, disappeared when the juicing habit was discontinued (prior to irreversible damage).
If you do insist on using juices, it would be best to follow the following guidelines: Never use large quantities of juiced foods and don’t use them as part of your regular food program. If you use juice occasionally, four to six ounces of vegetable juice may be taken twenty to thirty minutes before the evening meal at which a salad and, perhaps, some cooked food are eaten. Fruit juice— preferably fresh-made at home—may occasionally be used prior to a fruit meal. However, keep in mind that juices, either fruit or vegetable, are not beverages but fragmented foods.
The only time juices are indicated as part of a Hygienic program is when breaking a fast (though many people do very well in breaking a fast on whole fruit) or, very judiciously, as a temporary elimination diet. See Dr. Vetrano’s article “Mono-Eliminating Diets”. More details about the inadvisability of juicing foods will be given in a future lesson.
Pure water: The only beverage which should be used when thirsty is pure water. Avoid chlorinated city water, if you can. Don’t drink fluoridated water; do whatever you must to avoid it. Using fluoridated water in cooking is even worse, as it concentrates the fluorides, causing the water to be even less safe for use. Osteoporosis can occur from drinking fluoridated water. Sodium fluoride inactivates magnesium and some amino acids, and inhibits enzyme activity. Never drink artificially softened water because the miscellaneous inorganic minerals and impurities have been replaced by salt.
Minerals in water inhibit the absorption of the water. The minerals are inorganic substances and must be eliminated by the body. They are usually suspended particles of dirt and stone. These inorganic minerals are usable only by plants, which convert them to organic minerals, thus usable by man.
Professor Henry Sherman, in. his book. The Chemistry of Nutrition, says he doesn’t like to refer to such elements as calcium and iron as minerals, which may imply that they come directly from the mineral kingdom.
He says that these elements are usable by humans only when they occur organically in plant tissues—as complex, organized structures within the plant. This is the way in which these elements are adaptable to animal life, and this is the way we can make the best possible use of them.
Pure water from a rock spring is excellent; fresh rain water (if it could be gathered unpolluted) and distilled water are best. More detailed information about water, beverages and drinking are given in another lesson.
People with efficient digestions can withstand modifications more freely; people with impaired digestions need to utilize as ideal an eating pattern as possible.
No cooked food could even come close to the nutritional value of foods which are used as they grow in the garden and orchard. If you do use some cooked foods, choose the best available and prepare them conservatively and correctly. Lessons 24, 25 and 26 will help in the selection, storage, preparation and serving of foods for the best nourishment. This lesson will simply provide a preliminary outline of foods which may be cooked.
The variety of acceptable cooked foods is quite extensive. It includes such meals as broccoli and lentils, or green beans and steamed or baked potatoes, or eggplant casserole, vegetable chop suey, a mixed vegetable casserole, or thick bean or vegetable soup. Baked parsnips, beets and carrots have a delightful sweet taste and need no seasonings. You may select globe artichokes, cauliflower or sweet corn—the choices are many.
Plain steamed vegetables need no seasoning if they are not overcooked; most vegetables cook in ten minutes or less. Casseroles may require some seasoning, but we use no salt or pepper. Season with parsley, celery or sweet bell pepper. Recipes for casseroles will be included in the lesson on food preparation.
The best way to use whole grains is to sprout them.
Even those people who cook some of their vegetables should try to use as many as possible in the raw state. Try young sweet corn or sweet potatoes uncooked. Ground (Jerusalem) artichokes are delicious raw. Raw young sweet peas or edible pod peas are delicious uncooked. In fact, the edible pod peas are a gourmet delight. Of course, all meals that include some cooked food should be preceded by a large raw salad.
Individual needs: The foregoing suggestions for meals including uncooked and cooked foods are generally applicable to people not suffering from serious pathological problems. This program may have to be adjusted in various ways to provide for the nutritional needs and capacities of those whose health is impaired. It is not necessary or advisable to try to conform to a “blueprint” program. Certain people may have emotional needs, or other reasons, for requiring other foods.
We must think in terms of careful consideration of the needs of the individual. It is important to see each person in relationship to his emotional as well as his physical needs, and in relationship to his total life situation.
23.3.3 Two Weeks of All-Raw-Food Menus - First Week
23.3.4 All-Raw-Food Menus - Second Week
23.3.5 Menus Which Include Some Cooked Food - First Week
23.3.6 Menus Which Include Some Cooked Food - Second Week
23.3.7 Recap of Concentrated Foods in Sample Menus (Number of Times Used Each Week)
Eat as much salad as you want—but don’t stuff yourself. Use one or two varieties of lettuce from among the dark garden varieties, such as Romaine, Bibb, Boston, leaf or any garden lettuce (except iceberg). Endive or escarole may be included as a variety of lettuce, if it is not bitter. In addition to the lettuce, choose two or three salad vegetables from among the following: celery, cabbage, cucumber, sweet pepper, or any young, tender greens (kale, turnip, dandelion, collard). Broccoli flowerets and leaves are particularly good salad vegetables. Cauliflower flowerets are also very good in the salad. Green beans, peas, chayote, zucchini or yellow summer squash are good choices when young and tender. Raw carrots or sweet potato may be used except with a protein meal; tomato may be used except with a starch meal.
Breakfast | Lunch | Supper | |
Sunday | Strawberries | Salad Raw sweet corn (young/tender) Raw carrots Alfalfa sprouts |
Salad Tomatoes Raw broccoli Macadamianuts |
Monday | Oranges | Salad Wheat or rye sprouts Avocado |
Salad Tomatoes Alfalfa sprouts Almonds |
Tuesday | Papaya | Lettuce Blueberries (or other subacid berries) Persimmons Fresh or dried figs |
Salad Raw turnips Alfalfa sprouts Lentil sprouts |
Wednesday | Cantaloupe | Lettuce, celery Pears Sweet plums Soaked dried apricots |
Salad Tomatoes Raw zucchini squash Cashews |
Thursday | Kiwi Fruit Filberts |
Watermelon | Salad Alfalfa sprouts Edible pod peas Raw cauliflower or carrots Avocado |
Friday | Fresh ripe pineapple | Salad Alfalfa sprouts Raw cauliflower Jerusalem artichokes Avocado |
Lettuce Peaches Papaya Bananas |
Saturday | Casaba melon | Lettuce Grapes Apricots Dates |
Salad Tomatoes Alfalfa sprouts Pecans |
Breakfast | Lunch | Supper | |
Sunday | Honeydew Melon | Lettuce, celery Jonathan apples Plums Avocado |
Salad Tomatoes Alfalfa sprouts Pecans |
Monday | Fresh ripe pineapple | Salad Tomato Alfalfa sprouts Sunflower seeds |
Lettuce, celery Pears Grapes Dates |
Tuesday | One grapefruit Two oranges |
Salad English peas Raw broccoli Avocado |
Salad Tomato Alfalfa sprouts Brazil nuts |
Wednesday | One or two grapefruit Pecans |
Watermelon | Salad Raw chayote Alfalfa sprouts Mung bean sprouts |
Thursday | Mangoes | Lettuce Cherries Bananas Dried soaked apricots |
Salad Edible pod peas Coconut |
Friday | Strawberries | Salad Alfalfa sprouts Raw sweet potato Raw cauliflower Avocado |
Salad Tomato Raw broccoli Filberts |
Saturday | Grapes | Lettuce Peaches Fresh figs Persimmons |
Salad Tomato Alfalfa sprouts Almonds |
Breakfast | Lunch | Supper | |
Sunday | Watermelon | Salad Tomatoes Eggplant casserole With cashew nut topping or Mixed vegetable casserole with sesame seeds |
Lettuce, celery Apricots Cherries Bananas Raisins |
Monday | Grapes | Salad Alfalfa sprouts English peas (raw) or Lentil or mung bean sprouts Avocado |
Salad Tomatoes Raw broccoli Pecans |
Tuesday | Honeydew melon | Lettuce Red Delicious apples Persimmons Bananas |
Salad Alfalfa sprouts Lentils with steamed yellow squash |
Wednesday | Grapefruit Filberts |
Watermelon | Salad Edible pod peas (raw) Alfalfa sprouts Avocado |
Thursday | Fresh ripe pineapple | Salad Young tender raw kale Wheat or rye sprouts Avocado |
Salad Green beans (raw or cooked) Raw carrots Steamed or baked potato* |
Friday | Oranges Lettuce Avocado |
Lettuce, celery Grapes Persimmons Dates | Salad Tomatoes Alfalfa sprouts Sunflower seeds |
Saturday | Kiwi fruit Almonds |
Casaba melon | Salad Alfalfa sprouts Vegetable chop suey Brown Rice |
* Sweet potatoes may be eaten raw, but white potatoes should not. It is advisable to dextrinize the starch in white potatoes, by cooking, to render them suitable as food. |
Breakfast | Lunch | Supper | |
Sunday | Honeydew melon | Salad Globe artichokes (raw) Steamed broccoli Alfalfa sprouts |
Lettuce, celery Strawberries Cashews |
Monday | Raw fresh pineapple | Salad Tomatoes Raw yellow squash Macadamia nuts |
Celery McIntosh apples Plums Avocado |
Tuesday | Grapefruit Almonds |
Lettuce Cherries Peaches Dried figs |
Salad Alfalfa sprouts Vegetable stew with garbanzo beans |
Wednesday | Strawberries Oranges |
Salad Edible pod peas Sweet potato Avocado |
Salad Tomatoes Alfalfa sprouts Pecans |
Thursday | Kumquats Winesap apples |
Lettuce, celery Grapes Bananas Soaked dried apricots |
Salad Alfalfa sprouts Steamed or baked butternut squash Green beans (raw or cooked) |
Friday | Cantaloupe | Salad Alfalfa sprouts Avocado |
Salad Tomatoes Raw broccoli Almonds |
Saturday | Grapefruit Oranges |
Lettuce Golden Delicious apples Fresh figs Bananas |
Salad Alfalfa sprouts Kasha (Buckwheat groats) or (Wild rice casserole) or (Millet casserole) |
Raw Food Menus | Menus With Some Cooked Food | |||
First Week | Second Week | First Week | Second Week | |
Concentrated Protein/Fat (Nuts and Seeds) Use 2 to 4 oz. |
5 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
Combination Foods Starch/Protein (Coconut, Lentil Sprouts, Lentils, Mung Bean Sprouts, Rice, Wild Rice, Kasha, English Peas, Garbanzo Beans) |
1 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
Starch foods (Jerusalem Artichokes, Globe Artichokes, Corn, Carrots, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes) Use 1/2 to 3/4 cup |
3 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
Fat/Protein (Avocado) Use up to 1/2 Medium Size |
3 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
Concentrated Sweet Fruits (Dried Fruits) Use sparingly, e.g. up to 8 dates |
3 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Primitive man, in his pristine life in the forest, probably ate one food at a time, depending upon the availability of the food. Eating only one food at a meal is known as a monotrophic meal. If all meals over a period of time consist of a single food, such as oranges or grapes or watermelon, this would be called a monotrophic or “mono” diet.
There are advantages to the use of monotrophic meals, and it is recommended that at least the first meal of the day be a mono meal and preferably be of one kind of juicy fruit or melon. Obviously, the digestion of a mono meal would not be subject to the adaptation problems that are sometimes experienced (even to a minimal degree) when so-called compatible foods are combined. For instance, even when several subacid fruits are combined, there may be subtle or overt differences in degrees of alkalinity or acidity, or in liquid or sugar content, or in digestion time. Most fruits lend themselves very well to monotrophic meals. It would be advantageous to program at least one mono meal daily—for the first food of the day.
I do not endorse the use of a monotrophic diet for extended periods or regularly for several days every week, nor do I endorse the regular or extended use of a diet consisting of all monotrophic meals, i.e., each meal consisting of a single food, e.g., one kind of melon for one meal, grapes for another meal, romaine lettuce for another meal, alfalfa sprouts for another meal. I do not believe this would be conducive to optimal nutrition, nor do I believe that all types of Hygienic foods lend themselves optimally to this usage. For example, romaine lettuce and nuts or seeds combine well; this combination has been observed to produce more efficient digestion of both foods.
Several days on a mono diet, followed by several more days on monotrophic meals, immediately following a prolonged fast—or, perhaps, during a flareup of digestive problems—may prove to be very beneficial. But people who implement diets consisting of all mono meals usually concentrate on fruit and neglect nuts and green leaves. This can be damaging, even disastrous. Such a practice may ultimately result in protein deficiencies and other serious pathological problems.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton says (The Hygienic System, Volume II, Orthotrophy, Page 223): “As there are no pure frugivores, all frugivores eating freely of green leaves and other parts of plants, man may, also, without violating his constitutional nature, partake of green plants. These parts of plants possess certain advantages, in which fruits are deficient. Actual tests have shown that the addition of green vegetables to the fruit and nut diet improves the diet.”
In the June 1976 issue of Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, Dr. Shelton says: “If man is a frugivore, as we have tried to demonstrate, then his natural diet should consist of fruits, nuts and green vegetables. The inclusion of tender, succulent green leaves, stems and flowers should not be considered a violation of his constitutional nature, as practically all animals in nature consume green foliage of one kind or another. For example, the frugivora consume large amounts of wild celery and other leafy plants along with their fruits and nuts. At times, even the carnivora consume large amounts of vegetation. Green leafy plants may be regarded as a wild card throughout nature. Whatever else an animal eats, whatever else it is specifically adapted for, some green leafy food is invariably included in the diet.
“Besides being specifically adapted to his digestive mechanism, fruits are also appealing to man’s visual, olfactory and gustatory senses. They require no cooking, no dressing, no seasoning, no utensils, and hardly any cultivation, considering the abundance of wild fruit trees. Could any other food be more natural for us? With the addition of nuts and green vegetables, the fruitarian diet is as nutritionally sound as it is biologically correct.”
Green leafy vegetables are more abundant in alkaline minerals than fruits. They are an excellent source of calcium, iron and other valuable minerals. They are rich in vitamins and contain small amounts of protein of the highest quality and biological value. They are the richest source of chlorophyll, such as only green plants can provide.
The analysis of chlorophyll shows it to be almost identical with the blood hemoglobin, except that the blood contains iron and chlorophyll contains magnesium. Increasing the amount of green leafy vegetables in the diet has been known to aid the body to correct secondary anemia.
The scientist, Frans Miller, wrote, “Chlorophyll has the same fast blood-building effect as iron in animals made anemic.” The regenerative effect of crude chlorophyll from green leaves (not pure chlorophyll) was demonstrated through numerous scientific experiments in this country and abroad. (See Viktoras Kulvinskas article on chlorophyll.)
Green leaves convert sunlight into food by a process called photosynthesis, aided by the green pigment chlorophyll. Photosynthesis is the production of carbohydrate, in the presence of carbon dioxide, water and light. Since only green plants can do this, they are the most important things on our planet,, because they make possible the continuity of life.
Dr. Virginia V. Vetrano says (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, January 1975, Page 116): “The Hygienic doctor has always advocated that some vegetables, particularly leafy vegetables, be eaten along with the fruit and nut diet, mainly because of the protein content in leafy vegetables. Most individuals have a difficult time adjusting to eating only nuts for protein and take an insufficient amount of protein at first; proteins of high biologic value are easily supplied by adding green vegetables to the diet.”
Dr. Vetrano has also repeatedly advocated the regular use of nuts in the diet—in fact, they were served at the Health School every day. She is convinced that this source of concentrated protein is a necessary part of the daily diet. She says that whole nuts should be used, but that freshly-made nut butter or ground nuts can and should be used, if an individual does not have good teeth. (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, February 1976, Page 135).
Dr. Shelton had many young people come to him during the time that Arnold Ehret’s dietary system (The Mucusless Diet) was in the heyday of its popularity. These young people had been on his low or no (concentrated) protein diet for several years or longer and were suffering from weakness, ease of fatigue, and transverse and longitudinal ridges in their fingernails. After studying their problems for a while, he came to the conclusion that the problem was nothing more than a protein deficiency. He fasted them for three days, added protein to their diets, and they all recovered. (Dr. Vetrano, Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, October 1974).
I myself have repeatedly encountered individuals who, for as long as six months to a year after a fast, were becoming weaker and more enervated with each passing day—even having fainting spells. In every case, they had been convinced that concentrated proteins (nuts and seeds) were unnecessary, even inadvisable. When they added nuts and seeds to their diets, spontaneous and continuous improvement followed in every case.
Dr. Burton says (See his article “The Hygienic Diet” in Lesson 22): “I personally view the diet containing a large proportion of fresh fruits and vegetables, accompanied by three to four ounces of concentrated protein (nuts and seeds) as being the most satisfactory.” He says we should attempt to secure our nutrients from a wide variety of foods, though, obviously, not at the same meal.
True that protein deprivation has to be prolonged and extreme in order to produce obvious signs of its inadequacy. Dr. Burton also makes the point that the varying needs and capacities of individuals must dominate in establishing requirements.
Eat a variety of Hygienic foods. Overeating of citrus and other fruits may be more easily avoided if it is thoroughly understood that a meal program which includes a variety of Hygienic foods, including fruits, nuts and seeds, green leafy vegetables, and sprouted seeds, is the best road to optimal nutrition.
It is not difficult to fall into the trap of the overeating of fruits. They are the most delightful of foods. They are also among the finest and best of foods, if properly used.
In many respects, I empathize and even tend to agree with those who maintain that the delights and nutritional value of fruits are unsurpassed. If, in addition, nuts, seeds and sprouts, and chlorophyll-rich green leaves are not neglected, optimal nutrition would be assured.
Dr. Esser really brings it all together with this sage observation: “Fruits and nuts are the perfect foods for man, but in the civilized areas of the world it is virtually an impossibility to obtain a sufficiently rounded supply for perfect nutrition and health. Therefore it is necessary to supplement them with vegetables. It will be found that vegetables are delicious and succulent.”
I know it was a great relief to me, after my 29-day fast, when I was (after almost two weeks on fruit juices and fruits) at last given something to eat that was not sweet. When I was permitted to have at least one salad meal every day, with nuts or avocado or coconut or raw sweet corn, my improvement, weight gain and energy multiplied.
Recap: Monotrophic fruit meals are excellent; a total, diet of monotrophic meals is not advisable. Since the usual monotrophic meal consists of one kind of fruit or melon, it would seem that at least one meal daily (or, at the very least, one meal every second day) should consist of several salad vegetables and a protein (or possibly a starch).
But keep it simple! The less complex our food mixtures, and the simpler our meals, the more efficient will be our digestion, ‘and the better our health. Few foods at a meal, with sufficient variety of different types of foods over the period of several meals to insure that the body gets all the nutrients it needs, is the ideal Hygienic food program.
Relationship of the diet to the acid-alkaline balance of the body: In general, the diet should consist of at least 75% alkaline-reacting foods and 25% or less of acid-forming foods. Most foods with high protein content are acid-forming. Adherence to a varied Hygienic diet, and to the other principles of Natural Hygiene (especially regular, vigorous exercise) will enable your body to adequately monitor its own acid-alkaline balance, since there is a buffer action in the organism which serves to maintain an equilibrium between alkalinity and acidity. Minerals play an important part in the regulation of this function.
Animal proteins, which contain sulfur, uric acid and other acid end-products, tend to leach the tissues of their alkaline salts. These alkaline salts (minerals) are particularly needed by the cells to buffer and render such end-products less acid, and thus less irritating to the cells and tissues.
The alkaline properties of vegetable and nut proteins help to maintain the acid-alkaline balance of the body. Thus, correct eating (and exercise) are the keys in maintaining the acid-alkaline balance. Eating vegetables helps to maintain your acid-alkaline balance. If only fruits are eaten, the balance tends to swing to the alkaline side eating only proteins swings it to the acid side. Bananas are neutral if you are in good health, but otherwise they are slightly alkaline.
“Elimination diets,” which can be mono-diets, are often referred to under the misnomers “juice fasts” or “fruit fasts.” Diets that are not stressful on the body and allow it to better perform its eliminative functions are sometimes useful when urgent symptoms require the temporary cessation of normal food intake, and it is not possible to go to bed and fast. However, the substitution of a long-term juice or fruit diet, when a fast is indicated, may be unwise and wasteful of the body’s energy, because this does not accomplish the striking long-term benefits of the fast with nothing but distilled water. Nevertheless, a temporary juice diet or fruit diet may be indicated in some cases. If serious problems exist, a professional Hygienist can help to make this choice or decision.
There are other types of “elimination diets” (some not monotrophic) that are sometimes prescribed where a fast must be postponed, or should not be undertaken at the particular time.
“Elimination diets” are low in proteins, carbohydrates and fats. This causes the cells to use stored reserves to meet their requirements. During such a diet, the body can eliminate toxic matters and accumulated wastes, but never as efficiently or thoroughly as it would during a fast. The fast is always more efficacious in eliminating toxic wastes than is any kind of elimination diet. Greater benefit can be expected from one week of a complete fast than from two or three weeks of an elimination diet.
Further, a mono diet (the use of one food only—such as citrus, grapes or watermelon) may result in the production of imbalances in the body. During a total fast, the body is better able to monitor its own nutrition in a more balanced manner from the use of nutriments stored in the body.
A total fast increases metabolic efficiency. For example, the process of energy release from glucose (stored as glycogen in the liver) which is at 25% efficiency when eating, is increased to 45°/o efficiency when fasting (according to Dr. Alec Burton).
On a monotrophic diet, there is often a tendency to feel hungry and unsatisfied, while, during a total fast, hunger pangs usually disappear.
As you can see, the uses of monotrophic diets are limited. (See Dr. Vetrano’s article “Mono-Eliminating Diets”.)
23.5.1 Carbohydrates with Acids or Proteins
23.5.3 Examples of Menus That Do Not Violate Food Combining Rules No. 1 and 2
23.5.4 Examples of Menus That Violate Food Combining Rules No. 1 and 2
23.5.5 Protein-Protein Combinations
23.5.6 Protein-Fat Combinations
23.5.7 Menus That Do Not Violate Food Combining Rule No. 4 No Fat with Protein
23.5.8 Menus That Violate Food Combining Rule No. 4
23.5.9 Fats in Combination with Other Foods
23.5.10 Menus, That Do Not Violate Food Combining Rule No. 5 Fats with Other Foods
23.5.11 Menus That Violate Food Combining Rule No. 5 Fats with Other Foods
23.5.12 Acid-Protein Combinations
23.5.13 Menus Illustrating Food Combining Rule No. 6 Acid Fruits with Proteins
23.5.14 Sugar with Starch, Protein, Acid Fruit
23.5.15 Menus That Do Not Violate Food Combining Rule No. 7
23.5.16 Menus That Violate Food Combining Rule No. 7
23.5.17 Starch-Starch Combinations
23.5.18 Menus That Do Not Violate Food Combining Rule No. 8 One Concentrated Starch at a Meal
23.5.19 Menus That Violate Food Combining Rule Nr. 8 One Concentrated Starch at a Meal
23.5.20 Acid Fruits, Subacid Fruits, Sweet Fruits
23.5.21 Menus Illustrating Food Combining Rule No. 9
23.5.21 Acid Fruits, Subacid Fruits, Sweet Fruits
23.5.22 Menus Illustrating Food Combining Rule No. 10
23.5.23 Fruits with Vegetables
23.5.24 Fruits with Vegetables
23.5.25 Menus Illustrating Food Combining Rule No. 12
23.5.28 Menus Illustrating Food Combining Rule No. 14
23.5.29 Milk, Clabber and Yogurt (Not Recommended)
You will note that the discussion of a particular food combining rule will frequently overlap and dovetail with other food combining rules, since they are all closely interrelated.
Since starch digestion begins in the mouth with the action there of the enzyme ptyalin and requires an alkaline or neutral medium—while protein digestion begins in the stomach, where acid enzymes are secreted when protein is eaten—the first two and most important food combining rules seem obvious.
Carbohydrates include starches, sugars and cellulose. Lesson 22 demonstrated in great detail how incompatible combinations such as protein with carbohydrates reduce and inhibit the efficiency of digestive enzymes and subject the foods to decomposition in the digestive tract.
Some illustrations of combinations at the same meal which can produce this abortive effect are:
This means that when people eat meat and potatoes together, or a meat sandwich, they are not only consuming foods that cause problems when eaten separately (meat, bread), they are also compounding the problem by ingesting them at the same meal with foods that require different conditions for digestion.
Tomatoes (acid fruit without the sugar content of other acid fruits) may be used with the vegetable salad or with any green or nonstarchy vegetable. They may also be eaten with protein/fat foods like nuts, cheese and avocados.
This seems to contradict Food Combining Rule No. 6, prohibiting the acid-protein combination. However, in actual practice, most Hygienists do use tomatoes with nuts and avocados rather freely. Both Dr. Shelton and Dr. Vetrano have come to consider these combinations acceptable and even desirable.
But Food Combining Rules Nos. 1 and 2 are extremely important, and there is general agreement among Hygienic professional and lay people that acids should not be used with starches nor with foods which combine concentrated starches with concentrated proteins (grains, legumes).
Since soy beans are higher in protein and fat, but lower in carbohydrates than other beans, there might be some possibility of combining them with tomatoes. I have experimented with this combination and have rejected it for my own use.
Any meal which includes cooked starches, or any cooked food, should begin with a large green salad. If you do use cooked foods, you should always use some raw food at the same meal, preferably as the first course.
Foods in the slightly starchy category, such as carrots, are best used with starchy vegetables like potatoes. When eating starch/protein foods, such as rice or beans, it is best to use green or nonstarchy vegetables only. Green and nonstarchy vegetables contain very small amounts of proteins and carbohydrates, and thus will not further complicate the digestion of the combination foods.
Protein Content | Carbohydrate Content | ||
Concentrated Protein Foods: | Almonds | 18.6% | 19.5% |
Sunflower Seeds | 24% | 19.9% | |
Cashews | 17.2% | 29.3% | |
Starch/Protein Foods | Brown Rice | 7.5% | 77.4% |
Wild Rice | 14.1% | 75.3% | |
Fresh Coconut Meat | 3.5% | 9.4% | |
Starchy Vegetables | Yam | 2.1% | 23.2% |
Potato | 2.1% | 17.1% | |
Mildly Starchy Vegetables | Winter Squash | 1.4% |
12.4% |
Carrot | 1.1% | 9.7% | |
Nonstarchy Vegetables | Cauliflower | 2.7% | 5.2% |
Summer Squash | 1.1% | 4.2% | |
Romaine Lettuce | 1.3% | 3.5% | |
Sweet Fruits | Banana | 1.1% | 22.2% |
Dried Date | 2.2% | 72.9% | |
Subacid Fruits | Apple | .2% | 14.1% |
Peach | .6% | 9.7% | |
Acid Fruits | Orange | 1.0% | 12.2% |
Pineapple | .3% | 13.7% |
Composition and Facts About Foods, by Ford Heritage, lists the protein and carbohydrate content of most common foods. You need not become an expert on these fine points, unless that is your desire. The food classification and food combining charts in this lesson will be adequate to help you to become enough of an expert in the food combining system to enable you to plan properly combined meals, and to teach others to do the same.
Carbohydrate Menus (No Acid or Protein) | Protein Menus (No Carbohydrates) |
Bibb lettuce Celery Cucumber Sweet potatoes (raw or cooked) Water chestnuts |
Romaine lettuce Celery Tomatoes Raw broccoli Pecans |
Romaine lettuce Sweet pepper Edible pod peas Sweet corn (raw or steamed) |
Boston lettuce Sweet red pepper Tomatoes Kale (raw or steamed) Sprouted sunflower seeds |
Boston lettuce Raw carrots Brussels sprouts (raw or steamed) Potatoes (steamed or baked) |
Young, sweet cabbage Cucumber Alfalfa sprouts Tomatoes Cashews |
Celery or cabbage Raw turnips Green beans (raw or steamed) Raw yellow squash Cooked rice |
Ruby leaf lettuce Celery Raw zucchini squash Soy bean sprouts |
Boston lettuce Sweet pepper *Tomatoes *Sweet potatoes |
NO-NO! (Acid with starch) |
Bibb lettuce Celery *Peaches *Sweet corn *Almonds |
NO-NO! (Starch with protein, fruit with starch, fruit with protein) |
Romaine lettuce Celery Broccoli *Oranges *Jerusalem artichoke |
NO-NO! (Acid fruit with starch) |
Cabbage Cucumber *Tomatoes *Lentil sprouts *Rice |
NO-NO! (Two combination starch/protein foods; acid with combination foods) |
Leaf lettuce Celery *Dates *Pecans |
NO-NO! (Sweet fruit with Protein) |
Cabbage Celery Alfalfa sprouts *Potatoes *Sunflower seeds |
NO-NO! (Starch with protein) |
Bibb lettuce Cucumber Sweet pepper *Millet *Cashews |
NO-NO! (Protein with combination starch/protein food) |
Ruby leaf lettuce Cabbage Yellow squash *Acorn squash *Soy beans |
NO-NO! (Starch with combination protein/starch food) |
Gastric acidity, and type, timing and strength of secretions for various proteins are not uniform. Therefore, do not combine nuts with cheese, nor any of the following concentrated protein foods with each other: nuts, avocado, soy beans, cheese, eggs, flesh foods.
Alfalfa sprouts, which are considered a green vegetable, may be used with a concentrated protein.
For optimal digestive efficiency, only one variety of nuts or seeds should be used at a sitting, but, if digestive problems are not a factor, it may be possible to eat two or three varieties together without harm. Some personal experimentation in this area is indicated. You may desire to combine one variety of seeds with one variety of nuts, or not to use high-fat nuts like brazils or macadamias by themselves. I have had good results in combining such high-fat nuts with lower-fat nuts or seeds. It might also be useful to combine expensive nuts like macadamias or pignolias with lower-priced nuts or seeds, in order to be able to afford the indulgence and variety of including the higher-priced nuts in the diet.
Some high-fat nuts are:
Macadamias | 71.6% Fat |
Brazils | 66.9% Fat |
Pecans | 71.2% Fat |
Some lower-fat nuts and seeds are:
Almonds | 54.2% Fat |
Pignolias | 47.4% Fat |
Sunflower seeds | 47.3% Fat |
Pumpkin seeds | 45.8% Fat |
Sesame seeds | 52.2% Fat |
Do not combine cashews with other nuts; the cashew is a part of the cashew apple and is not a true nut. It has a higher carbohydrate content than true nuts, having 29.3% carbohydrate and 17.2% protein. By contrast, for example, the almond has 19.5% carbohydrate and 18.6% protein.
Actually, the cashew is the pistil of the cashew apple. The whole raw cashew has within its shell a thick caustic liquid. In preparing cashews for marketing, they are “parched” to dissipate the acid, and then shelled. While not exactly “raw”, they have not been subjected to the “roasting” (deep-frying) given “roasted nuts”, and are considered good Hygienic food. They are combined in the same manner as nuts and can be eaten with a salad.
Peanuts, of course, are not nuts. They are combination starch/protein foods, and are combined as starch.
If you experience any problems in learning to eat and digest nuts, it would be best to use only one variety at a sitting. Start out with small quantities, one to two ounces, and use only with salads. If you do have problems with nuts, experiment and find those you handle best and use mostly those. You will eventually build, up your nut-digesting ability and be able to use more varieties.
Most people have no problem with sunflower seeds. Those who do can begin by using them slightly sprouted. Just soak overnight, drain and let them progress until just a small sprout is showing. Complete sprouting instructions will be given in Lesson 26, Preparing and Serving Foods.
Although the pecan is a high-fat nut, it is easy to chew and seems to agree with most people. Cashews are also easy to chew and most people enjoy the sweet taste.
Almonds are valuable nuts, and have a somewhat alkaline reaction, whereas other nuts have the acid reaction commonly found in protein foods. However, they are hard and more difficult to masticate thoroughly. Problems may be avoided by thoroughly masticating and insalivating these nuts.
It does not seem necessary to give examples of menus which do or do not violate Food Combining Rule No. 3. It should suffice to repeat: eat but one protein food at a meal, and do not combine nuts, avocados, soy beans, cheese, eggs or flesh foods with each other.
For the conventional eater, this means do not use cream, butter or oil with meat (any flesh foods), eggs, cheese or nuts. For the budding or experienced Hygienist, the fat foods are avocados and nuts. Of course, nuts are also a principal protein food. Avocados also contain small amounts of excellent protein. Since the Hygienic “fat” foods are really protein/fat foods, it would certainly be inadvisable to add more fat to the meal. You learned in Lesson 22 that fat has an inhibiting influence on digestion. We have also emphasized that we do not use two proteins at the same meal. So, it is obvious you would not use nuts and avocados at the same meal. This would also apply to cheese, if you use it—do not use cheese with avocados or nuts.
However, in implementing the “no protein-fat combination” rule, it must also be borne in mind that you should not use cream, butter or oils with protein foods, whether they are protein/fat foods (which most of them are) or whether they are among the few low-fat protein foods (legumes, skim milk cheese, lean meat).
Boston lettuce Celery cabbage Cucumber Pecans |
Sweet, young cabbage Cucumber Sweet pepper Alfalfa sprouts Cheese |
Romaine lettuce Cucumber Celery Tomato Avocado |
Kale Cucumber Celery Soy pecan sprouts |
Cabbage Tomato Celery *Avocado *Pecans |
NO-NO! (A fat/protein with a protein/fat) |
Boston lettuce Celery cabbage Tomato *Cheese *Walnuts |
NO-NO! (Two protein/fat foods) |
Leaf lettuce Kale Cucumber Celery *Cooked soy beans with butter added |
NO-NO! (Fat added to high protein combination food) |
Romaine lettuce Sweet pepper Broccoli *Cheese *Avocado |
NO-NO!(A protein/fat food with a fat/protein) |
Too much fat taken with a meal results in discomfort and digestive problems. The best way to use fats, in moderation, is with raw green vegetables. If fats are used with other foods, adding raw green leafy vegetables to the meal will help to counteract the inhibiting effect of fats on gastric secretion.
In Lesson 22, it was pointed out that the use of avocados (low protein/fat) with starch is considered fair, provided a green salad is included with the meal. Nuts (high protein/fat) are not used with starch. The best way to use avocados or nuts is with the salad meal.
We also concluded that, while the use of avocados with subacid or acid fruit is ordinarily considered only a fair combination, it has been found that including salad vegetables, especially lettuce and celery, in the avocado/fruit meal enhances its digestion, and it becomes a quite acceptable combination.
Bibb lettuce Celery cabbage Cucumber Tomato Avocado |
Leaf lettuce Celery Cucumber Potato (steamed or baked) Avocado |
Romaine lettuce Celery Sweet pepper Alfalfa sprouts Avocado |
Peaches Apples Lettuce Celery Avocado |
In the above menus we are using avocado only as an example of the correct combining of fat. We are not using nuts (high protein/fat) as examples of fat with other foods, because when we combine nuts with other foods, their protein content is our primary concern. As for other fats (butter, oil, etc.), they do not really belong in a list of Hygienically correct menus.
Cucumber Green beans *Steamed potato with butter *Avocado |
NO-NO! (Two foods high in fat) |
Bananas *Dates *Avocado |
NO-NO! (A fat/protein with dried sweet fruit—this would be somewhat better if lettuce and/or celery were included.) |
Carrots Buttered cooked sweet corn Avocado |
NO-NO! (Two foods high in fat) |
Salad with oil dressing Rice Avocado |
NO-NO! (Two foods high in fat) |
There is some variation in practice as to the use of citrus or other acid fruit with nuts. Dr. Vetrano has discontinued this practice, but it is still used by other Hygienic professionals and lay people. Those with digestive problems should certainly avoid this combination. The student should carefully re-read the text of Food Combining Rule No. 6 (in Lesson 22) for an understanding of this subject.
Those with unimpaired digestions can probably decide on an individual basis whether they should experiment with this combination. The choices would be (a) no citrus with nuts, (b) eat citrus, wait one-half hour to one hour before eating the nuts, and (c) eat the citrus and nuts together. The best practice is (a), because it is not good Hygienic practice to eat a meal in “relays.”
If you do use citrus and nuts at the same meal, it would be a good idea to include some lettuce and/or celery.
The same reasoning would also apply to other acid fruits, such as pineapple, strawberries, tart apples, etc. The less sugar they contain, the less objection there is to combining them with nuts.
The same reasoning would apply to the use of citrus or other acid fruits with other protein foods, such as avocado or cheese.
People who use eggs or flesh foods should avoid the use of any fruit at the same meal. The use of these foods causes enough problems without also adding the extra problems of combining the fruit acids and sugars with the flesh foods.
Sour salad dressings and acid fruit drinks are bad with any meal, but are particularly bad with protein meals because they check hydrochloric acid secretion.
Lettuce
Celery
Tomato
Brazil nuts (or other nuts, or avocado, or cheese, if you use it)
Lettuce
Kiwi fruit
Almonds
Lettuce
Grapefruit
Avocado
Somewhat tart oranges, pineapple, strawberries or apples, combined with nuts, avocado or cheese would also be fair combinations.
Very sweet oranges, pineapple, strawberries or other fruit, combined with nuts, avocado or cheese would be bad combinations (too much sugar with protein).
Sugar with protein, starch or acid leads to fermentation, a sour stomach and discomfort. When protein or starch foods are combined with sugars, they may remain in the stomach almost twice as long as is normal. Use sweet fruits only as indicated in Food Combining Rule No. 10.
The same principle applies to the use of any sugar, honey, molasses or syrup, which are especially prone to ferment if used with mixed meals. Of course, these types of sugars should not be used at all—with anything. Refined sugar robs the body of B-vitamins and throws a “monkey-wrench” into the digestive machinery. The other “sweeteners” are almost as bad. A future lesson will discuss in detail the harmfulness of sweeteners.
Sweet Fruits with Foods Requiring a Long Digestion Time
Lettuce Grapes Bananas |
Lettuce Sweet mangos Persimmons |
Celery Cherries Delicious apples Dates |
Celery Lettuce Pears Peaches Raisins |
Sweet Fruits with Foods Requiring a Long Digestion Time
Jonathan apples Strawberries Bananas |
NO-NO! (Acid fruit with sweet fruit) |
Plums Oranges Dates |
NO-NO! (Acid fruit with sweet dried fruit) |
Sweet corn Persimmons Figs |
NO-NO! (Starch with sweet fruit) |
Apples Raisins Pecans |
NO-NO! (Protein with sweet fruit) (Many people have said
they like to eat this combination, but it should be avoided, as it is quite incompatible.) |
This rule may be important principally as a means of avoiding overeating of starches, but it is a good rule to follow. Never combine a concentrated starch with a combination food (starch/protein food) such as grains or legumes. Never combine two combination foods at the same meal (such as rice with beans).
Slightly starchy foods may be combined with concentrated starches but not with combination foods. Potatoes with carrots, green beans and a large green salad is a good combination (if you are using cooked food). Brown rice would be better combined with broccoli, yellow squash and a salad.
Two mildly starchy vegetables may be combined if no concentrated starch is used, e.g., globe artichokes and carrots, or beets and edible pod peas.
Ruby lettuce Carrots Celery Raw Broccoli Globe artichoke |
Celery cabbage Cucumber Edible pod peas Sweet corn (raw or cooked) |
Cabbage Sweet pepper Cucumber Green beans (raw or cooked) Potatoes |
Bibb lettuce Celery Cauliflower (raw or cooked) Yams (raw or cooked) |
Romaine lettuce Celery Sweet pepper Cauliflower (raw or cooked) Butternut squash |
Boston lettuce Cucumber Water chestnuts Parsnips |
Bibb lettuce Sweet pepper Kale *Sweet corn *Potatoes |
NO-NO! (Too much starch—unless corn is young, green and freshly picked) |
Celery cabbage Cucumber *Cauliflower *Acorn squash * Jerusalem artichokes |
NO-NO! (Too much starch) |
Leaf lettuce Celery Broccoli *Sweet potatoes *Rice |
NO-NO! (Starch with combination starch/protein food) |
Cabbage Celery Cucumber Zucchini squash1 *Potatoes *Chestnuts |
NO-NO! (Starch with combination starch/protein food) |
Tomatoes should not be used with subacid fruits. The acid fruits are those with the tart flavors (see Food Classification Chart in this lesson). The less sweet subacid fruits are some grapes (those which are neither sweet nor sour), some varieties of apples, most mangos, and any fruit on the subacid list which is not really sweet.
Lettuce
Oranges
Apples
Celery
Pineapple
Peaches (if not sweet)
Lettuce
Strawberries
Plums (if not sweet)
Tomatoes Bananas |
NO-NO! Acid with sweet fruit |
Grapefruit Sweet cherries |
NO-NO! Acid with sweet fruit |
Oranges Delicious apples |
NO-NO! Acid with sweet fruit |
The sweeter subacid fruits are any fruits on the subacid list that have a marked sweet taste. See Food Classification Chart for a list of the sweet fruits. Dried sweet fruits should be used sparingly—one kind at a meal—and in small quantities.
Lettuce Delicious apples Bananas |
Lettuce Pears Persimmons |
Celery Sweet grapes Dates |
Celery Papayas Figs |
Tart apples Bananas |
NO-NO! (Acid with sweet fruit) |
Tart mangos Dates |
NO-NO! (Acid with sweet fruit) |
Tart grapes Persimmons |
NO-NO! (Acid with sweet fruit) |
Tart peaches Figs |
NO-NO! (Acid with sweet fruit) |
Lettuce and celery combine well with all types of fruit except melon. It is best to use two to four varieties of fruit at a fruit meal, plus lettuce and/or celery. These green leafy vegetables may even enhance digestion of the fruit.
Menus Illustrating Food Combining Rule No. 11
Lettuce
Celery
Sweet grapes
Pears
Bananas
Lettuce
Sweet apples
Sweet cherries
Fresh figs
Celery
Papayas
Sweet peaches
Persimmons
Broccoli Yellow squash Apples Dates |
NO-NO! (Fruits with vegetables other than lettuce and celery) |
Lettuce Pears Sweet corn Bananas |
NO-NO! (Fruits with vegetables other than lettuce and celery) |
Lettuce Blueberries Green beans Potatoes |
NO-NO! (Fruits with vegetables other than lettuce and celery) |
Green leafy vegetables combine well with most other foods. They are excellent food and should be used in abundance. Do not combine any vegetables with melon.
A large daily salad is an excellent part of your food program. The dark green leafy vegetables are the best for salad—Romaine, Boston, leaf or Bibb lettuce, green celery—to which may be added cucumbers, sweet peppers, raw broccoli, raw turnips or raw cauliflower. Raw carrots may be added if u is a starch meal; tomatoes may be added if no starch or combination foods are included in the meal.
Lettuce
Celery cabbage
Cucumber
Tomatoes
Nuts
Lettuce
Celery
Sweet pepper
Raw broccoli
Avocado
Lettuce and/or celery with any fruit
Lettuce Celery Watermelon |
NO-NO! (Do not combine salad vegetables with melon) |
Tomatoes Celery cabbage Honeydew melon |
NO-NO! (Do not combine salad vegetables with melon) |
They do not combine well with any food, except, perhaps, with certain fruits. Those with unimpaired digestions may wish to experiment with the use of grapes or other subacid fruits with melon. It is really best to take melon alone, especially watermelon. Melon decomposes much more quickly than other fruits and, if held up in the stomach awaiting the digestion of other foods, will decompose and cause gastric distress.
Never eat watermelon with nuts. There are a number of different kinds of melon, and it is better to eat your fill of one kind as one meal.
I am not giving any examples of melon with subacid fruits. 1 do not really recommend using melon with any other foods, since 1 believe this is a good rule for most people. Those who wish to experiment with the use of melons with subacid fruits should do so very carefully, testing one subacid fruit (in small amounts) at a time. (See Dr. Vetrano’s comments on this subject.)
Other sprouts should be classified somewhat in the same category as the original seed, even though the protein and carbohydrates are less concentrated. (Review the discussion of sprouts in Lesson 22.)
Alfalfa seeds, sprouted | Green vegetable |
Mung beans, sprouted | Green vegetable protein/starch (combine as starch) |
Grains, sprouted, sprouted | Mildly starchy combination foods |
Sunflower seeds | Protein |
Soy beans, sprouted | Protein |
Lentils, sprouted | Protein |
Tomato Lettuce Alfalfa sprouts Nuts |
Celery Cucumber Avocado Mung bean sprouts |
Cabbage Sweet pepper Broccoli Sprouted soy beans |
Lettuce Celery Cauliflower Green beans Sprouted wheat |
Lettuce Cucumber Sprouted mung beans* Nuts* |
NO-NO! (Protein with combination food) |
Celery Sweet Pepper Sprouted rye* Nuts* |
NO-NO! (Protein with combination food) |
Cabbage Celery Sprouted sunflower seeds* Potatoes* |
NO-NO! (Protein with starch) |
Lettuce Tomatoes* Lentils, sprouted* Rice* |
NO-NO! (Acid and protein with combination food) |
This rule is included because it is one of Dr. Shelton’s food combining rules, and because this lesson may be helpful to those still on a mixed diet. Please review the text in Lesson 22 on Food Combining Rule No. 15. I hope you will decide not to use milk, clabber or yogurt.
I am not including menus for the best ways to combine these foods, but will simply say they are best used alone, but are a fair combination with acid or subacid fruit.
Golden Delicious apples Thompson seedless grapes Lettuce and celery Bananas |
Lettuce Cucumber Sweet peppers Alfalfa sprouts Nuts |
Jonathan apples Pears Lettuce Avocado (Avocado with fruit) |
Lettuce Cabbage Green beans Potatoes Avocado (Avocado with starch) |
Cherries Lettuce Avocado Soaked dried apricots (Avocado with dried sweet fruit—the fact that it has been soaked and that lettuce is included with the meal improves it somewhat.) |
Celery cabbage Cucumber Mung bean sprouts Nuts (It would be better to use alfalfa sprouts with nuts.) |
Grapes Avocado Bananas Dates (Concentrated fat with too much concentrated sugar.) |
Lettuce Celery Cabbage Rice Potatoes (Starch with combination starch/protein food) |
You may detect discrepancies if you compare the different food charts and classifications of foods as interpreted by various authors and professionals. For instance, you may see butternut or acorn squash listed by one author as starchy, and mildly starchy by another author.
If you are really concerned about it, you can refer to Composition and Facts About Foods, by Ford Heritage, or Composition of Foods, Department of Agriculture Handbook No. 8. You can then make your own decision.
Sweet potatoes with 26.3% carbohydrates, yams with 23.2% carbohydrates and potatoes with 17.1% carbohydrates are all considered starchy foods. Carrots with 9.7% carbohydrates and beets with 9.9% carbohydrates are considered mildly starchy. Winter squash (butternut, acorn, etc.) has 12.5% carbohydrates. Would you classify it with the 17.1% potatoes or the 9.9% beets? It’s not too important, since starches may be used together, if desired, provided the total quantity of starch at the meal does not exceed, say, 15% of the meal.
Cauliflower, with only 5.2% carbohydrates, is listed by some as mildly starchy, yet its carbohydrate content is less than that of broccoli or brussels sprouts.
Another case in point is the coconut. Dr. Esser classified it as protein, but Dr. Shelton combines it as starch. It is actually a combination food, and is usually combined as a starch. But when we look it up in the food charts, we find that fresh coconut contains 9.4% carbohydrate and 3.5% protein; dried coconut contains 23% carbohydrate and 7.2% protein.
By comparison, almonds contain 19.5% carbohydrate and 18.6% protein; pecans 14.6% carbohydrate and 9.2% protein; these, of course, are classified as protein foods.
Brown rice contains 77.4% carbohydrate, 9.6% protein; fresh lima beans contain 22.1% carbohydrate and 8.4% protein; these are combination foods, and are combined as starch.
It seems to me that the coconut, with three times as much starch as protein, should be combined as starch. But, since fresh coconut only has 9.4% carbohydrate, perhaps the idea that its starch content is unimportant is a valid one. What do you think? My own method is to think of it as a combination food, and I don’t use tomatoes or other acid fruits with coconut—it seems the safest interpretation.
If you see other such discrepancies, you may either disregard them and use the food either way, or, if you are uncomfortable about it, get a reference book and look it up. It can be a great satisfaction to resolve such discrepancies in your own mind by tracking down the correct information.
You may also occasionally come across an error in food combining charts; for example, on page 321 of The Hygienic System, Volume II, in one place starch is said to be a bad combination with subacid fruit and in another place on the chart, it is said to be a fair combination. I would say that the use of any fruit with starch would be contraindicated.
The food combining charts in this lesson are as accurate as I could make them, and I hope they will be helpful to you and your students.
Don’t try so hard that you become nervous and anxious. Do the best you can. Avoid the worst combinations (dates or bananas with nuts, potatoes or grains with tomatoes, or grain with nuts) and everything else will gradually fall into place.
Occasional indulgence in incorrect food combinations is no cause for anxiety, even though it is not ideal—a healthy body can cope with occasional exceptions. It is what we do daily, habitually, that will make the difference.
Don’t make food the focal point of your life. Above all, the student should not become overly preoccupied with food. Eat your meal and forget it. Let your friends eat their foods and don’t give them a lecture at the dining table. You may have to parry their questions about your eating habits by explaining that you don’t like to enter into these discussions at mealtime, but will be happy to answer their questions afterwards.
If you take a moderate attitude, the enjoyment of dining out, entertaining or eating at a friend’s home need not be eliminated from your life. Sometimes, with good planning, little or no compromise will be necessary.
Do your best at home, and partake, somewhat selectively, when with your friends. Even if you decide to “go all the way” in Natural Hygiene for optimal health, and never make exceptions at home, it is not necessary to act superior and critical when in company. You can partake enough not to be too conspicuous without really hurting yourself. Just be alert not to carry your indulgences too far, or to loose sight of your goal. You might even find that your friends respect you and are interested in your desire to cooperate with the needs of your body.
As for your family, their participation in proper food and good food combining is up to them. You can make better food available, but don’t try to force them to eat anything or to eat in a particular way. They may gradually want to follow your example, or they may never do so. It’s not all that hard to provide simultaneously for your needs and theirs. It’s certainly worth the effort if it’s going to improve your health.
As you progress in Natural Hygiene, your understanding and application of Hygienic principles will become increasingly synchronized, and you will find it easier today than yesterday, and easier tomorrow than today!
Pecans
Almonds
Brazil nuts
Filberts or hazelnuts
English walnuts, butternuts, heart nuts
Black walnuts
Macadamias
Pistachios
Pignolias (Pine nuts)
Indian nuts
Beechnuts
Hickory nuts
Cashews
Soy beans (fresh, dry or sprouted)
Sunflower seed sprouts
Lentil sprouts
Garbanzo sprouts
Avocados (may also be classified as a fat and as a neutral fruit)
Olives
Milk (not recommended)
Peas in the pod
Lima and other beans in the pod
Mature green beans in the pod
Mung bean sprouts*
* Mung beans sprouted to green leaf stage—green vegetable starch/protein
** Classified as starches for purposes of food combining
Sunflower seeds
Sesame seeds
Pumpkin and squash seeds
Cheese (raw milk or unprocessed)
Eggs
All flesh foods except fat
Beans:
Peas
Lentils
Peanuts
Chestnuts
All grains:
Wild rice
Rice
Buckwheat
Millet
Wheat
Rye
Barley
Soy sprouts (Combine as protein)
Lentil sprouts (Combine as protein)
Sunflower seed sprouts (Combine as protein)
Alfalfa sprouts (may be combined as green vegetable)
Mung bean sprouts*
All seed, bean & grain sprouts
Combine seed & bean sprouts as protein —except alfalfa
Combine grain sprouts as mildly starchy
* Mung beans sprouted to green leaf stage—green vegetable starch/protein
Peanuts
Chestnuts
Coconuts
Dry beans
Dry peas
Lentils
Peas in the pod
Lima & other beans in the pod
Mature green beans in the pod
All grains and all foods containing grains:
Wild rice
Brown rice
Buckwheat groats
Millet
Oats
Wheat
Rye
Barley
White potatoes
Yams and sweet potatoes
Mature corn
Jerusalem artichokes
Parsnips*
Salsify (Oyster plant)*
Mildly starchy vegetables
Carrots
Globe artichokes
Beets
Rutabaga
Edible pod peas
Winter squash (acorn, butternut, hubbard, banana, etc.)*
Pumpkin*
Water chestnuts
Sprouted grains
* Parsnips (17.5% starch) and salsify (18%) are sometimes listed as mildly starchy or even nonstarchy vegetables, but since they contain as much starch as the potato (17.1%) they should properly be classified as starchy.
Winter squash (12.4%) and pumpkin (6.5%) are shown on some charts as starchy, but their starch content is quite a bit lower than potatoes (17.1%). 1 would consider them mildly starchy (or you could consider winter squash as borderline).
* Cauliflower is sometimes listed as mildly starchy, but with a starch content (5.2%) lower than broccoli (5.9%) and Brussels sprouts (8.3%), it properly belongs in the nonstarchy category.
Lettuce
Celery
Cabbage (young, sweet)
Celery cabbage
Cucumber
Cauliflower* (see * above)
Escarole (if not bitter)
Sweet pepper
Broccoli
Rappini (similar to broccoli)
Brussels sprouts
Kale
Collard greens
Dandelion greens
Turnip tops
Mustard greens (if young and mild)
Okra
Kohlrabi
Turnips
Eggplant
Green corn (if not mature, and if eaten less than 2 hours after picking)
Green beans (young & tender)
Zucchini (and all other summer squash)
Yellow crookneck squash (and all other summer squash)
Chayote
Bok choy
Alfalfa sprouts
Spinach
Swiss chard
Beet tops
Rhubarb
Bitter cabbage
Endive
Escarole
Irritant foods (unless very young and sweet)— should not be used often or in large quantities
Parsley
Watercress
Chives
Scallions
Onions
Leeks
Radishes
Garlic
Mature mustard greens
Fats delay digestion—may take up to four to six hours. The need for fat is small, and the best sources are whole foods like nuts and avocados.
Edible (protein/fat foods) seeds, nuts and avocados
Not recommended, though used occasionally by some Hygienists.
Butter
Cream
(Oils are used occasionally by some Hygienists, but are not recommended. Use unrefined cold-pressed oils, preferably stable oils like olive and sesame oil, less likely to be rancid. Oils are fragmented, concentrated foods, and are best omitted)
Olive oil
Sesame oil
Sunflower seed oil
Corn oil
Peanut oil
Cottonseed oil
Safflower oil
Butter substitutes (not recommended)—oleomargarine and the hard white hydrogenated “vegetable” shortenings commonly used in frying and baking are particularly pernicious substances, which the body is not equipped to handle.
Fresh:
Bananas
Persimmons
Thompson grapes (seedless)
Muscat grapes
All sweet grapes
Fresh figs
Dry:
Dates
Figs
Raisins
Prunes
Apricots
Peaches
Apples
Cherries
Bananas
Litchi “nuts”
Carob
All dried fruit
Some unusual or tropical fruits not listed— sweet taste is a good indication of its classification.
Sweet apples (Delicious)
Sweet peaches
Sweet nectarines
Pears
Sweet cherries
Papayas
Mangos
Apricots
Fresh Litchi “nuts”
Sweet plums
Blueberries
Raspberries
Blackberries
Mulberries
Huckleberries
Cherimoyas
Some grapes (neither sweet nor sour)
Some unusual or tropical fruits not listed.
Oranges
Grapefruit
Pineapples
Strawberries
Pomegranates
Lemons
Kiwi fruit
Kumquats
Loquats
Carambolas
Loganberries
Gooseberries
Cranberries (not recommended—they contain benzoic acid)
Limes Sour apples Sour grapes Sour peaches Sour nectarines Sour plums Sour cherries
Tomatoes—acid fruit, without the sugar content of other acid fruits. Used with vegetable salad or any green or nonstarchy vegetables, but not at a starch meal. May be used with nuts or cheese, but not with meat, milk or eggs. Some unusual or tropical fruits are not listed—acid (or sour) taste is a good indication of its classification.
Watermelon
Honeydew melon
Honey balls
Cantaloupe
Muskmelon
Casaba melon
Crenshaw melon
Pie melon
Banana melon
Persian melon
Christmas melon
Nutmeg melon
Brown sugar
“Raw” sugar
White sugar
Milk sugar
Maplesyrup
Cane syrup
Corn syrup
Honey
None of these substances are recommended.
How many mildly starchy vegetables may be used with a concentrated starch?
Preferably only one, e.g., potatoes and carrots. However, if no concentrated starch is used at the meal, two (or perhaps even three) mildly starchy vegetables might be used together, e.g., globe artichokes, carrots and water chestnuts, together with a large green salad.
What percentage of a meal should be of concentrated proteins or starches?
A small percentage, say 10 or 15%.
If I want to eat home-made bread, cake or pie occasionally, how should they be combined?
Cake or pie is such a conglomeration of ingredients, there is no way to properly combine them.
I have an 85-year-old mother who lives with me. How far should I go in trying to convince her to accept the Hygienic food program and food combining?
You can’t (and shouldn’t try to) force anyone at any age to eat your way. You should not nag elderly people to change their ways. If she is receptive to gentle persuasion, that is fine, but arguing about what foods she should eat may do more harm than good.
Why is it that conventional foods stay with me longer, and what can I do to feel more satisfied for a longer period of time between meals, so I can resist snacking?
First of all, to have foods “stay with you” is undesirable. When you eat a conglomeration of foods that are diffficult to digest, you have given your body a lot of work to do to try to get rid of the mess. No wonder you don’t feel like eating again for a long time! Food mixtures that take many hours to digest are apt to ferment and cause problems When I first changed to a properly combined Hygienic diet, I noticed the “empty” feeling at certain times, but I soon came to realize that it was a good feeling to know that gastric digestion has been efficiently accomplished, and that the stomach would now have chance to relax and rest before it would have to deal with the next meal. The “empty” feeling doesn’t necessarily signal the need for food.
Of course, it is unusual to feel “empty” very soon after a protein meal. My digestion has improved so much that I am delighted when my stomach feels empty 3 1/2 or 4 hours after eating nuts and a raw salad. In my earlier years of Hygienic eating, it took five or six hours or longer to achieve that happy state of “emptiness.”
It is true that for those who feel more satisfaction and less desire for unwholesome foods after a meal that takes longer to digest, it might be advisable to have a protein meal at noon instead of in the evening. A properly combined protein meal will not cause the complicated problems common in digesting conventional meals, but it does remain in the stomach and intestines much longer than fruit or starch meals, thus giving people a satisfied feeling and preventing them from snacking on junk foods or sugars between meals.
In recent years, Dr. Vetrano served the protein/fat meal (nuts) at noon at the Health School. (See article, “Protein Meal at Noon,” by Dr. Virginia Vetrano, in this lesson.)
I personally prefer to defer eating foods which require long digestion time (proteins or combination foods or starches) until the evening meal. During the day, when I am most active, I don’t like to have a “full” feeling. In fact, when I am scheduled to give an afternoon lecture, I usually don’t eat at all until after the lecture. Sometimes I might eat the orange or a small piece of melon a couple of hours before the lecture. When I am scheduled for an evening lecture, I might eat a light fruit meal a couple of hours beforehand.
When I eat a meal which includes protein or a combination food or starch (following a large salad, of course), I prefer to be able to relax and rest afterwards, if at all possible. I find this works best for me.
I do make some occasional exceptions to this rule, depending on my program for the day. If I am going to be away from home in the evening and unable to have my leisurely evening meal, I might eat a protein meal before leaving home, as my noon meal. Sometimes I simply take a bag of salad and some nuts with me.
What are your feelings about a “mono-eliminating diet, ” e.g. oranges or grapefruit?
An “eliminating diet,” mono or otherwise, is useful when for some reason a genuine fast cannot be taken. Bear in mind that the fast is always more efficacious and more rapid in permitting the body to rid itself of toxic wastes than any kind of eliminating diet. One week of a complete fast is probably more beneficial than two or three weeks of an “eliminating diet.”
It is often thought that one can do the “eliminating diet” on his own, bypassing the service of a Hygienic doctor. While I am not trying to make people more dependent upon doctors for everything, I am trying to stress the fact that most people have insufficient knowledge of their condition and the “elimination diet,” and often damage themselves by the improper application of Hygiene. Many people come to me after having placed themselves on an “eliminating diet” and carrying it out for too long. Many people tend to vascillate back and forth from one type of “eliminating diet” to another; and from stuffing to underfeeding so long that real deficiencies are produced and health is not regained. They do themselves much harm and come to me suffering with the same problems for which they started the diet, as well as suffering with deficiencies. The pathetic thing is now they are too thin to fast for speedy recovery of their health and too sick to eat. What do you do with them? They’ve gotten themselves in real trouble and have actually made themselves sicker and unable to be helped by the Hygienic doctor until they carry out his or her instructions in Hygienic living and have eaten properly for a year or more.
Juice diets, and the orange or grapefruit diet may be used judiciously with beneficial results, but these should not be carried out for months at a time, nor should a person go three or four days out of every week on a juice diet over a long period of time. He will become weak, and run into deficiencies.
Is it true that the food I eat today is not digested, assimilated and put to use until several hours later? Why then does eating nuts early in the day give me a protein kick and in general help me to feel more satisfaction and less desire for unwholesome foods?
Eating protein foods, especially nuts, satisfies for many physiological reasons. One of them is probably because of their high fat content. Fat seems to be used for energy longer than carbohydrates before being stored by the body. Sugars and starches are absorbed and gotten out of the small intestine and circulation quickly, and then rapidly converted into glycogen in the liver. Perhaps, with nothing in the intestines to be absorbed, hunger is again manifested. Proteins take quite a bit longer for digestion and absorption, and perhaps this is another reason why they satisfy more. Once they have been absorbed through the digestive epithelium, however; the amino acids are readily taken up by the cells. In spite of this, they still satisfy and prevent people from desiring junk foods or sugars between meals. This is one of the main reasons that we began serving the protein meal at noon instead of in the evening at the Health School.
In what order should you eat foods?
Formerly it was thought by a few Hygienists that it was necessary to eat the least concentrated food first and the most concentrated food last. The reason for this was that the foods were supposedly layered in the stomach, and it was thought best not to mix them; to permit the juicier foods to be evacuated from the stomach first. It has been shown, however, that food does not stay in layers in the stomach, and the pyloric valve does not open with each peristaltic wave so that food will become mixed in the stomach even if you eat the most concentrated food last. For instance, let us say that you eat some subacid fruit first. The pyloric valve stays tightly shut for fifteen minutes after the beginning of a meal, then it begins to open and pass a tiny bit of food to the duodenum. Each time there is a contraction of the stomach, the food is pushed forward toward the pylorus (the lower end of the stomach). As the valve opens only occasionally and not each time the peristaltic wave pushes food toward it, the food is pushed toward a closed valve. The food cannot get out of the stomach at the valve, so it streams back toward the upper end of the stomach, thoroughly mixing with the food eaten last. Even if some food empties from the pylorus when it opens, only a small amount is evacuated and the rest is propelled backward to be thoroughly mixed with the contents of the upper stomach. Eat your foods in proper combinations, and you won’t have to worry about the sequence in which you eat them. Food becomes mixed in the stomach regardless of sequence of eating.
It is wise, however, to remember to chew your foods well, and separately. That is, do not use a tomato or lettuce to moisturize nuts to help get them down. Chew your nuts well, and alone; swallow them. Between mouthfuls of nuts you may eat some salad foods. Never use the moisture of the less concentrated foods to help liquify nuts or other concentrated foods. The salivary glands will secrete sufficient moisture of the proper kind for this purpose and your foods will be better digested.
Sometimes it is wise to eat the least sweet fruit first when eating three fruits at one meal, otherwise the last part of the meal may be less tasty. If you eat dates first, for instance, and then take apricots, which are less sweet, you may not enjoy them as well after the very sweet fruit because of the unavoidable comparison of sweets.
Why do you eat melons alone?
Melons are best taken alone because the sugar and other nutriments are in a less stable form than the nutrients of other fruits. Orange juice may be kept in the refrigerator for an hour with little change in flavor, but if you refrigerate watermelon juice for only 10 minutes, its flavor, color and composition change. It decomposes much more quickly than other fruits. Consequently, if it is held in the stomach awaiting the digestion of other foods, it will decompose (ferment) and cause a great deal of gastric distress. Eating watermelon with nuts can really be troublesome.
One should not take watermelon with other more concentrated fruits. The more concentrated the food is, the longer it takes to propel it from the stomach, and if the melon is held in the stomach mixed with the other fruit, then it also will be held in the stomach for a longer period of time. Watermelon must be evacuated from the stomach as rapidly as it would be if eaten alone. If eaten with foods that slow its evacuation time from the stomach then it will ferment in the stomach and cause trouble.
Can you eat watermelon seeds?
Watermelon seeds can be saved and eaten if desired. There is some nutrient inside the hard shell, but the shell itself is composed of indigestible cellulose, and I do not think it wise to consume so much cellulose. In wild nature, animals would not normally try to chew something so hard and indigestible. Primates eat the fruits and spit out the hard seeds. Man, unfortunately, has the ability to analyze foods, consequently he discovered nutrients in the seed, so he tries to eat the seed, forgetting that most of the watermelon seed is indigestible, and may serve only to irritate the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. Many seeds of fruits are poisonous; they contain benzaldehyde and cyanide.
Why is innpt advisable to take nuts with acid fruits?
We no longer serve nuts with acid or subacid fruit mainly because of the sugar content in the fruit. When fruit is held in the stomach awaiting the digestion of nuts, it has a tendency to ferment, and cause digestive troubles. The sugar content of organically grown citrus fruit is very high, and high concentrations of sugar inhibit gasiric secretion thus also interfering with protein digestion. It was formerly thought that the citrus didn’t interfere with protein digestion but with greater study, observation and reflection, thoughts have changed.
Acid fruit such as tomatoes and grapefruit may not be deleterious, because of their diminished sugar content. Even if one eats the citrus thirty minutes prior to taking nuts, in most cases, there will still be a great deal of fruit in the stomach. The pyloric sphincter stays tightly shut for approximately 15 minutes after a meal begins. After fifteen minutes, the stomach begins gradually to evacuate, and then not rapidly. The food gets mixed in the stomach. If you desire nuts in the morning for breakfast, then it would be best to take them at least one hour after finishing your citrus or other fruit.
What kind of beverage do you suggest besides water?
Many years ago Dr. Shelton pointed out that water is the only drink. All other substances are either food or poison. If you are thirsty, you should drink pure water. If you are hungry, you should eat. If you are thirsty it doesn’t mean you must eat a piece of watermelon, unless you are hungry at the same time. Drink only when thirsty and eat only when hungry. Poisonous soft drinks, coffee, tea, and other unnourishing beverages, and other poisonous fluids should never be used to quench a thirst. Pure water is best.
Are there any subacid dried fruits?
The sugar concentration is naturally greater in fruits which have been dried. Some fruits that are considered subacid are considered as sweet fruits, after drying, unless they are soaked to replenish the missing water.
This short thesis on proteins is intended to clarify some of the confusing issues at present dominating the so-called science of nutrition, and especially to present to hygienists a rational view of the importance of protein and its indispensability to normal health and well being.
It has been of considerable interest to me to study the various diets offered by the numerous food reformers over the past two decades. Many of these diets have had nothing more than enthusiasm to support them and several have been completely impractical. One of my chief aims is to present a program which will have a genuine practical application based on sound physiological principles. I have frequently been identified with a movement which stresses the need for protein. I do not wish to reject this identification but to elaborate its basis.
My argument is not as some have supposed, that a high protein diet is desirable, but that an adequate amount of protein is necessary. Few, if any, students of the subject would quarrel with this, although much current argument revolves around the term ‘adequate’. There is considerable disagreement among nutritionists as to the optimum protein requirements and when one consults the literature on the subject, it is distressing to find so many assumptions replacing facts.
Some discussion has also arisen as to whether there is such a condition as protein deficiency. Those of us with experience of fasting are aware of the fact that the organism can maintain nitrogen needs throughout an extensive period without food. This seems inconsistent with the well-publicized statement that the body does not store protein, and in the sense in which it stores carbohydrates as glycogen in the liver and muscles, and fat in the organs and cutaneous tissues and elsewhere, this is probably correct. But as tissue structures are broken during the fasting process, materials (amino acids) are made available for utilization. It is true that protein deprivation has to be prolonged and extreme in order to produce obvious signs of its inadequacy, and even here it is not necessarily only a problem of protein.
The complex physiological processes involved in digesting, absorbing and assimilating the materials ingested is such that it is unwise to make predictions about the effect of an isolated food element. Rather, the hygienist is inclined to study the total impact of food on the organism and strive to relate the theoretical concepts of nutrition to a practical situation. It is necessary to dissociate ourselves from nutrients in feeding our patients and deal with foods that are complex parcels of numerous nutrients. In addition the hygienist has always, stressed the need to consider the feeder. In nearly all diets and nutritional studies, the individual variations of those consuming the food is overlooked. Notable exceptions to this exist, but only in a general way, such as the dietetic control of the diabetes, diets for obesity, the regulation of diet in phenyl-ketonuria and so on. This maneuver is not so much a consideration of individual needs and capacities as a therapeutic approach to disease, that is, treating symptoms. Such an action may be justified on practical grounds but it has serious theoretical inconsistencies and is objectionable philosophically because it does not radically solve any of the most crucial problems.
Because of the serious deficiencies of generalizations, hygienists are often reluctant to make specific extensions of their principles. Consequently, at this point, I should absolve myself from apparent infallibility in the pages that follow wherein I have made categoric statements concerning qualities and quantities of food. There is always the individual consumer, whose ever varying needs and capacities must dominate his requirements. Hygiene, in its proper role of education, should teach us to respect our limitations and learn our needs, so that we can adequately supply them. What I have suggested should remain a tentative generalization requiring individual modification.
An inadequate diet may be a temporary necessity. By this I mean that food, and particularly protein which is more difficult to digest than many other food elements, should be consumed within individual capacities rather than according to charts, tables and graphs. There are times when the organism will be unable to utilize satisfactorily an adequate amount of a nutrient, and less will suffice. A consequent loss of weight and possibly energy may result, but this could conceivably be even greater if the extra food is forced into a reluctant feeder. Fasting usually, but not always, involves some loss of weight (this may be disputed, but the apparent contradiction involves fluid changes and not flesh). It is a procedure employed in special circumstances; it is most effective when the desire for food is lacking, when there is a dimished capacity to use food. The feeder must therefore learn to balance his diet and balance his intake. As we no longer live in a natural environment, one that would supply all our needs selected according to inherent demands, some knowledge of food and feeding is essential, if we are to maintain health and vigor. Man’s success or failure depends upon the use of his rational faculty. He can choose to respect his bodily (mental, emotional and physical) needs and supply them, or he can ignore them and suffer the consequences.
Conventional nutritionists argue that protein must be eaten with a carbohydrate, otherwise the amino acids derived therefrom will be broken down by the liver (de-amination). This is called the ‘protein sparing’ effect of carbohydrates. If this is true, (and the experiments the claim is based are highly suspect), only a small quantity of carbohydrate is necessary. As indicated earlier, we do not eat nutrients and an examination of analyses of vegetable proteins reveals that they contain sufficient carbohydrates to provide the required conditions to prevent deamination. Animal proteins, on the other hand, do not. Their carbohydrate content is negligible.
Proteins combine best with nonstarchy vegetables. They should not be eaten with concentrated carbohydrates, either starch or sugar, nor with concentrated fats. Their use with fruit is not generally advocated.
Hygienists are almost unanimous in their agreement that nuts represent the best source of protein for man. It is a fact that people have developed tremendous muscular strength and vigour on an exclusively vegetarian diet. There are no special properties in animal foods which confer superiority over vegetable sources of nutrients. It may be categorically stated that vegetable proteins, especially nuts, have the following advantages over animal products:
The grains and cereals do not represent any art of the natural diet of man. They are not essential to life and health and should certainly be omitted from the diets of infants and young children. Where they are included, they should be eaten whole, unprocessed and dry. The habit of eating cereal products with milk or other fluids such as juices is objectionable and conducive to fermentation. If they are included in the diet, thorough mastication is essential.
Cereal proteins are almost invariably incomplete and should not be used.
An intelligent reader who has done much personal experimenting with foods and diets writes me as follows:
“It is surprising that of all the foods I’ve eaten, I find the banana the best and the least troublesome. Of course I’m talking about the ungassed banana. The gassed ones do give me some trouble, even such easily digested foods as the orange, apple, grape, etc., if overeaten, will cause distress. I realize one should not overeat on any food, but I do find that the ripe banana even if eaten to excess does not seem to do me any harm. Also, the banana seems to be a complete meal all by itself. It eaten with other foods, it can cause trouble. It really can’t be appreciated unless eaten alone. Even if combined with sweet fruits (dates, figs, raisins, peaches, grapes) it is not digested as well as when eaten alone. It seems to be a good food for both the hard laborer and sedentary worker. I am praising this fruit because by most people it is looked upon as ‘monkey food’ and of little importance as far as nourishing the body. I don’t know how long one can live on the fruit alone, but I think with the addition of some nuts or seeds and some leafy vegetables one could probably maintain good health. This should be a comparatively simple diet; not too expensive. Since I do not have the facilities for cooking and preparing elaborate meals, “I think this could be the type of diet I can live on.”
This reader’s experience verifies my own. While I have found that bananas combine fairly well with dates, raisins, grapes and a few other sweet fruits and with green leafy vegetables, such as lettuce and celery, I have noted that they digest best if eaten alone. This calls to mind the fact that Tilden, also, after much testing of the matter, reached the conclusion that bananas are best eaten alone. Tilden’s view, like that of the writer of the foregoing letter, was based upon tests made with the ungassed banana. Gassed bananas do not ripen and can hardly be said to form desirable additions to man’s diet.
The green banana is an almost insoluble starch; the ripe banana (ungassed) is a predigested sugar. It is quite probable that it is this sugar that makes a poor combination with other foods. As the gassed banana does not ripen, but rots instead, while still in the starch stage which is practically insoluble, it would seem quite natural that it should give trouble in digestion, even if eaten alone.
The banana, which contains about 1.30 per cent protein, is abundant in most of the minerals required by the body and is rich in vitamins. Dr. Carios Arguello, of Nicaragua, introduced me to a native strong man, while I was visiting in his country a few years ago, who stated that he lived largely on bananas, eating them in large quantities and that he found that they sustained him in health and strength as none of the other foods did. He had one advantage over those of us who live in the United States; namely, he could get his bananas tree ripened and fresh from the banana tree. This is an advantage of considerable importance.
For ages men have puzzled over the question - “What makes grass green?” About a century ago, chemists named the green pigment in growing plants chlorophyll.
A certain belief evolved about this green fluid. The fact that herbivora build hemoglobin (blood cell pigment) on a diet composed of leafy greens invites the hypothesis that derivatives of chlorophyll may be used in making hemoglobin. A Dr. Abderhalden, in his textbook, suggests that blood pigment might be made from plants.
Added to this biological relationship is the chemical similarity between chlorophyll and hemoglobin This was suggested by Verdeil in 1851, though on the basis of invalid evidence. It was substantiated in 1879 by Hoppe-Seyler, who showed a similarity between hematin and chlorophyll derivatives.
Willstater’s work between 1906 and 1913 identified chlorophyll as an unstable water soluble magnesium compound characterized by ester groups of methyl and phytyl alcohol. He further showed both chlorophyll and hemoglobin to be closely related; both had some phyrrole fragments.
The years of research that were stimulated by Verdeil’s hypothesis culminated in the series of brilliant investigations by Hans Fisher, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930. He and his co-workers finally established the correct structure of hemin, part of the hemoglobin, by synthesis, and showed the true relationship to chlorophyll. They observed that the chlorophyll molecule closely resembles hemin, the pigment which, when combined with protein, forms hemoglobin. The latter is present in the red corpuscles of the blood, and by carrying oxygen to the tissues, makes the production of energy and life feasible. One of the major differences between chlorophyll and hemin is that chlorophyll contains magnesium, while the hemin molecule contains iron for the central atom. Note, hemoglobin is one of the most important constituents of cells; it makes up three quarters of the solid content. Owing to the close molecular resemblance between chlorophyll and hemoglobin, it was believed by Frans Miller, another scientist, that chlorophyll is nature’s blood-building element for all plant eaters and humans. He writes: “Chlorophyll has the same fast blood-building effect as iron in animals made anemic.” This has led to a great deal of controversy.
What exactly is anemia? According to Webster’s dictionary, anemia is a condition in which there is a reduction of the number of red blood corpuscles or the total amount of hemoglobin in the blood stream or both. Thus, anemia is an excellent vehicle for the study of the relationship between food and hemoglobin count.
The first scientist to demonstrate the regenerative effect of chlorophyll on animals was Dr. Emil Burgi, who, in 1916, observed that rabbits rendered anemic by bleeding recovered more rapidly when chlorophyll was added to their diet.
Scott showed that a diet of milk, white bread and chlorophyll rebuilt blood faster than bread and milk. Scott and Delor noted that iron-and-copper-free alfalfa extract relieved milk induced anemia.
Patek and Minor, in clinic study with a rare type of anemia caused by pigment scarcity, observed a small positive increase in hemoglobin concentration on intravenous injection of chlorine derivative. Dr. Fisher in Germany announced that for some time he had been using chlorophyll in the treatment of anemia with promising (although by no means conclusive) results.
In another clinic study, Dr. Patek used fifteen adult patients with chronic hypochronic anemia. They were given chlorophyll and allied substances, and were placed on house diets free of meat and eggs, whereas the diet was adequate in all other respects. The crude chlorophyll was a tar-like substance extracted from alfalfa leaves. It was found that chlorophyll alone was not effective. When chlorophyll and its derivatives were administered, there was an increase in hemoglobin and improvement in the sense of well being.
Other workers have reported curative effects of chlorophyll and its derivatives in a wide variety of anemias: protein deficiency, hemorrhagic, phenyl hydrazine poisoning, pernicious, hypochronic of unknown etiology and “experimental nutritional anemia” of unidentified character. Some of the reports are based on clinical studies, while others are the results of animal experimentation.
J. Howell Hughes and A.L. Latner, from the Department of Physiology, University of Liverpool, in a highly discriminative experiment, finally resolved the question of the blood regeneration capacity of chlorophyll. Rabbits were made anemic by daily bleeding, reducing the hemoglobin level to two-fifths of the normal value. The rabbits were split into two groups. The experimental received in diet chlorophyll in oil, the control only oil.
They performed five experiments. Three were with varying degrees of pure chlorophyll, one with large doses of crude chlorophyll (unrefined), and one with magnesium-free chlorophyll derivatives. The following is a summary of their findings.
Thus we see how chlorophyll can aid in rebuilding the bloodstream. Without correcting all the causes of anemia, the chlorophyll results are temporary in nature and not consistently workable with every individual. If, however, the individual was to be placed on organic live foods and on one of the richest crude forms of chlorophyll, then the results are always the same, and the anemic condition disappears. Rev. Ann Wigmore, in clinical studies, has proven this many times.
24.1. Changing To A Nutritionally Superior Diet
24.8. Storage Of Nuts And Seeds
Article #1: Does Freezing Harm Foods? By Marti Fry
Article #2: Your Probing Mind By Dr. Virginia Vetrano
Article #4: Imagine Avocados—As A Dieter’s Delight By Lincoln Kaye
It is relatively simple to plan an optimally nutritional diet. For optimum nutrition, eliminate the denatured foods, and enjoy the greatest possible variety of raw fruits and vegetables, as they are seasonably available, plus approximately two to four ounces of raw, unsalted nuts and seeds per day, in addition to sprouted seeds and grains.
If you persevere in adhering to this all-raw food diet, you will eventually achieve the highest pinnacle of health possible for you. Those who are willing and able to quickly progress to an all-raw food diet from the plant kingdom will have amazing and seemingly miraculous health improvement and potential for longevity.
If you are not yet willing or able to change to the all-raw food diet, a good start is the 80-90% raw food diet. If you have been a conventional eater and now concentrate on the use of uncooked foods to this extent, you will achieve a radical improvement in your food program, and, consequently, in your health.
As indicated in Lesson 22, an 80% raw food diet is not difficult to achieve. It can be appetizing, interesting, varied, satisfying end economical. The best plan is never to eat cooked food more than once a day, as part of one meal. Try for more and more days on raw food only.
The English poet, John Dryden, said, “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”
As indicated in Lesson 22, the body chemistry is largely determined by the food that is eaten. When the diet is altered and the new diet maintained for a given length of time, the enzymes, body fluids and glandular secretions become increasingly adapted to the influences and requirements of the new food-just as they necessarily adapt to the junk foods that are eaten. The important difference is that the adaptation to the junk foods involves health deterioration, while the readjustment to a nutritionally superior diet is in the direction of improved health.
If you live on a conventional diet, which by all the recognized standards is said to contain enough nourishment, that diet will still fail to support normal physiology. The percentage of raw food is usually very small and, except for the fresh fruits and vegetables (usually a very small amount), practically everything in the conventional diet has been denatured.
Long-term storage of food, careless handling in shipping, and the refining, preserving and cooking processes destroy delicate and tender vital food factors and flavor. These altered foods become dull, flat and insipid, requiring seasonings to make them palatable. A future lesson will discuss in detail the destructive effects of all these processes.
The addition of vitamins to such diets will not render them adequate. Humans have not learned to create living substances. They cannot synthesize living substances in the laboratory, only chemical imitations. Neither can they extract them, in the kitchen or in the laboratory, without greatly impairing or destroying their food value. A more comprehensive discussion of the futility of the use of food supplements to replace missing elements in food and the actual harm that they can cause, will be given in a future lesson.
A plausible argument has been offered that foods which are not organically grown are deficient in vitamins and minerals, and therefore we should take supplements. The superiority of organically grown foods is undeniable, but this problem cannot be solved, or even palliated, by taking nutrients out of their proper context.
Furthermore, whether or not an orange is organically grown, it still contains Vitamin C—the orange cannot be grown without it. It is true that the total nutritional value is impaired by the use of the chemicals, yet it is not totally destroyed.
But, as to the argument that commercially grown foods are practically devoid of nutrients-that is not biologically possible. Fresh, good-tasting food must contain substantial quantities of nutrients, regardless of how it was grown.
You should certainly make Herculean efforts to grow your own fruits and vegetables to the greatest extent possible. For whatever food you cannot grow yourself, you should try to secure as much organically grown as possible. For the rest, you should obtain the freshest, best quality obtainable, and you will achieve far better health than conventional eaters, plus a “serendipity” bonus: Dr. Burton says that Hygienists can save up to 30% on their food bills and up to 74% on their medical care bills. This lesson will help you in your quest for the best food available.
Some people have misgivings about changing to a vegetarian diet. They may be worried about complete proteins, essential amino acids, or obtaining all of the amino acids at every meal. These are groundless concerns. All nuts, except the hickory, contain complete proteins, with all the essential amino acids—verified through experiments by Cajori, Kellogg and Berg. In addition, a generous supply of raw green leafy vegetables, sprouted seeds and grains, and raw fruits, will assure an adequate supply of all nutrients needed in the diet.
These nutrients are stored in the body and utilized by the cells as needed. If the body were not capable of storing nutrients, we could not fast for lengthy periods. Nowhere in Nature is there any evidence of the necessity for complicated maneuvering to obtain all of the essential amino acids at each meal.
You may be concerned about Vitamin B-12 and fearful that, on a preponderantly vegetarian diet, you might become a victim of pernicious anemia. But the fact is that more meat eaters than vegetarians suffer from this affliction. Pernicious anemia appears to arise, not from a shortage in the diet, but from impairment of the ability to absorb B-12. Study after study has revealed that this deficiency is due not to dietary inadequacy, but to failure to absorb the vitamin from the intestinal tract.
Putrefactive bacteria can destroy friendly bacteria, thus inhibiting the synthesis and absorption of B-12. Putrefaction in the digestive tract can be caused by the ingestion of flesh foods, bad food combining or overeating of concentrated proteins.
A more exhaustive analysis of the myths surrounding Vitamin B-12 will be given in a future lesson. In this lesson, it is simply desired that you establish in your mind that the foods recommended for your selection are the best of all possible foods.
A future lesson will deal at length with the destructive effects of flesh foods.
For the present, in order to establish in your mind the advisability of omitting flesh foods from your shopping list, a few points on this subject will be made.
The best protein foods for humans are raw, unsalted nuts and seeds. Dr. Hoobler, who did some research at Yale University, proved conclusively that the protein of nuts and seeds provides greater nutritive efficiency than that of meat, milk and eggs. And of course, nuts and seeds have the distinct advantage over animal foods of being delicious in their fresh, raw state.
John A. Scharffenberg, M.D., Director of Community Health Education at San Joaquin Community Hospital, Bakersfield, California, has marshaled the scientific evidence against flesh foods in his book, “Problems with Meat.”
A meat-based diet is deficient in natural carbohydrates and fiber, high in saturated fat and excessive in protein, resulting in bone degeneration and greater work for the kidneys and liver. It can lead to calcium and vitamin deficiencies and a shortened life span.
Dr. Lendon Smith, M.D., from Portland, Oregon, incorporates in his writings many of the same ideas Hygienists have been advocating for years. On the Phil Donahue show (WTSP-TV, September 8, 1980) he recommended using nuts, seeds and legumes instead of meat. He said a bowl of lentil soup has as much good protein as a beefsteak. In fact, he emphasized that meat is not a good food, and his family does not use it more than once or twice a month. He said milk causes many problems and that people should eat as much raw food as possible—raw fruits, vegetables and nuts and seeds. He advised that foods processed by humans should be avoided, and he specifically mentioned the lack of nutritional value of boxed cereals. He declared that when a person gets sick, there is always a diet, component in the cause, and he advocated fasting one to four days for alleviation of minor problems.
It is true that it is possible to experience a protein deficiency on a poorly-planned diet. An adequate supply of protein in the diet is indispensable to normal health and well-being, and a protein-deficient diet will certainly not contribute to your health and longevity. But an adequate diet is not dependent on animals for food, nor is it necessary to play a numbers game with amino acids at each meal. My book, “The Happy Truth about Protein,” gives more details on this subject.
In fact, humans are dependent on the plant kingdom for their nourishment. If they do not get it first-hand by eating plants, they get it secondhand by eating animals that have eaten plants.
A study by the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Defense Fund revealed that the breast milk of vegetarian women contained significantly lower levels of pesticide residues than that of meat-eating women. This could have a relationship to the ability of the fiber in the plant foods to help in the removal of pesticides from the body. Another reason for lower pesticide residues in the bodies of vegetarians is the fact that plants contain lower levels of pesticides than do flesh foods.
Vegetables and nuts contain about 1/7 the pesticide residues of flesh foods, fruits and legumes about 1/8 as much, and grains about 1/24 as much. This is due to the concentrating factor, as the contaminant goes through the additional link in the ecological chain, and the animal concentrates the pollutant in its body.
Actual tests in Great Britain have shown the pesticide level to be highest in meat-eaters, lower in lacto-vegetarian (that is, vegetarians who use dairy products) and lowest in total vegetarians.
The Environmental Protection Agency did a study (about 1979) with laboratory rats, showing that dietary fiber helped remove pesticides from their bodies. The study pointed out that fiber is not just an inert substance that provides “roughage,” but has some qualities that are just coming to light.
This particular study showed that pectin (a form of fiber found in fruits and succulent vegetables) could significantly affect the body’s metabolism of at least one pesticide—lindane. (Organic Gardening, July 1979)
The best source of dietary fiber is whole foods. The use of a fragmented food, such as bran, in an attempt to add supplementary fiber to a deficient diet, only causes more problems. It is not in a form readily acceptable by the body without stress, may cause a loss of vital mineral elements, and its action is similar to that of a laxative, ultimately resulting in inhibition of the body’s ability to act for itself.
An intelligently planned vegetarian diet has none of the disease problems associated with the use of meat, and provides a dependable source of all the nutrients, including protein.
If you eat a generous amount of raw food and include approximately two to four ounces of nuts and seeds daily, as well as sprouts, greens and fruits, you cannot help but get an adequate supply of protein, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, hormones-and chlorophyll, such as only green plants can supply. And this is a foolproof diet that will contribute to health improvement and longevity.
Even those who have a sizeable organic garden must track down and purchase many of the foods they require. When the weather is warm, take along a picnic coder with ice for transferring perishable food. Much damage can result from alternately cooling, warming, and again cooling your produce. It is even a good idea to carry a cooler when the weather is cold if your car is heated.
Your greatest concern will be produce—good quality fruits and vegetables. It is sometimes possible to locate organically grown produce, but if not, get the freshest, best quality obtainable and you will still come out ahead, as there will be much less waste. Sometimes you can, just by trying and not giving up, locate individuals in your own area who are growing organically for their own use and have some surplus to share. If your local health food store has a bulletin board, you might try to reach these local growers by expressing your interest there in contacting them.
It is not always practical to have fresh produce shipped in from distant cities, but there are some instances when it is advisable to do this. If you live in a climate where the growing season is short, produce can be shipped by air freight from California but the transportation cost may be greater than the cost of the food. If you join with other people and buy in bulk quantities, it might be more economical. Even when buying food locally, you may find that starting a food-buying co-op would be very worthwhile if this enables you to buy direct from a wholesale food distributor in your area.
You can grow some of your own food. I once grew lettuce in a large crate on the porch. You can find some local sources of organically grown food. Locally grown produce, in season, is always the best—fresher, better-tasting because it is not picked prematurely, and more economical. You can at least obtain organically grown nuts and seeds from distant shippers, and sometimes from your local health food store.
For that portion of your food that you cannot obtain organically grown, just get the best quality obtainable, selected, stored and eaten in accordance with Hygienic principles, and, as previously indicated, you may rest assured that your health will be far better than that of those on conventional diets.
Shop around and find the stores or produce departments that do the best job in your area. Get friendly with the produce people and they will cooperate with you in your efforts to locate the best produce, especially when they learn that you do all your major purchasing in the produce section. You might even be able to persuade the owner of a produce business to keep his eyes open for organically grown food from local farmers who come to the wholesale produce markets, or even to locate organically grown produce in distant cities, and have it shipped in to sell at retail. We developed such a source in our area in Florida and enjoyed a plethora of organically grown produce for five years—last year the man retired, and we are still trying to replace him.
In season, shop the transient roadside truck merchants—early in the morning, before the sun has done its wilting job on the produce. You will probably have to shop the supermarkets for some of your produce. Most produce managers will allow you to break open the pre wrapped packages of produce and select the best, especially if you are a good customer. Sometimes, if you ask, they will bring out fresher produce from the refrigerator and allow you to select directly from the crates.
This lesson will continue with information on how to judge and select your produce and other foods. You will not need to be greatly concerned about additives in packaged, frozen or canned foods, because you will not be using these items. If you do buy anything that is packaged, frozen or canned, be sure to read the labels and don’t buy anything that contains chemicals.
Fruits are the most delightful of foods. They are also of great nutritional value because they possess most of the essential minerals and vitamins necessary for optimal health.
A variety of fresh fruits are available throughout the year. Fortunately, bananas are always in season. They are a staple part of the Hygienic diet, being high in nutritional value and even containing 1.1% protein, about the same as mother’s milk. Most other fruits have a season in which they are most economical and flavorful.
Good watermelons start coming in May. Pineapples and strawberries are also in season at the same time, and the oranges and pears are still available and reasonable in price.
In June, a plethora of fruits appear: a variety of all kinds of melons, peaches, cherries and berries. As oranges and pineapples dwindle—around July—the grapes, nectarines and plums come in. All through the summer, you have a veritable horn of plenty of many varieties of fruit.
Then, in the fall, the apples are in season, along with the citrus and pears, while the grapes are still available.
The information in this lesson about the peak seasons of specific fruits and how to choose them wisely will help you not only to get the best for your money, but also the best for your health and nutrition.
Since the average diet is too high in protein, adding fruit to the diet is beneficial. A fruit diet is “cleansing” because it is lower in protein. This results in the cells drawing upon the body’s store of nutritional reserves, and initiating the elimination of the accumulated wastes and poisons, much of which are the by-products of the over-consumption of protein. The fruit, though, is not itself cleansing; it merely causes less burdening of the body than most food, and allows the body to do its own “cleansing.”
Fruits contain large percentages of sugars and free acids that are favorably utilized by the body, unless consumed in greater amounts that can be processed efficiently.
Claims are made that certain fruits have “curative” or “magical” properties—that such fruits as apples, apricots, papayas or grapes will “cure” what ails you. Hygienists know that food is used for its nutritional value, not for some hoped-for special influence on the body. Apples, apricots, papayas and grapes are excellent fruits and should be used, along with other varieties of fruits, as they become seasonally available.
The trouble with many fruits available today is that they are picked while still immature and thus never have a chance to develop properly to their full potential of taste and nutritional value.
The season for marketing fruit has been overextended, and out-of-season, expensive and tasteless fruit is often available. Don’t buy fruits out of season.
Unfortunately, most fruits are grown in soil that is fed chemicals to increase productivity, and the fruit is sprayed with chemical pesticides. The thick rind of pineapples, melons, bananas, mangos and avocados gives the underlying flesh natural protection against most of the chemical sprays. For other fruits, you cannot do much more than give them a thorough washing and scrubbing, and hope for the best. Peel them, if you like. If you must peel your fruit, don’t cut too deeply; try to discard the thin skin only. The greatest concentration of nutrients is just under the skin.
Grapes and cherries have no protection against high levels of chemical residues. Don’t eat large quantities of these fruits unless organically grown, and don’t eat them every day, in season.
Apples, pears and plums are commonly waxed to give them a glossy look—it is best to peel them.
Fruit is most luscious if it is picked from the tree when it is just at the peak of its ripeness. Wherever you live, try to have and nurture some of your own fruit trees. No store-bought fruit can approach freshly picked ripe fruit for flavor and quality.
Whenever possible, buy fruit from the farmer—you may get fruit almost as good as you could grow yourself. You might even be fortunate enough to find a local organic fruit farmer.
Most people are dependent on markets for most of their fruit. It is necessary to cultivate the ability to judge the ripeness and quality of the fruit you buy. This ability will come with experience, though the best of us can sometimes still be misled.
There are several things to check. First, if it’s fresh, it looks fresh, not wrinkled or blemished. The color should be characteristic of the ripe fruit. If it is misshapen, it is usually inferior in taste and texture, and there will be more waste. Medium sizes are generally better than very large or very small.
Ripe fruits, regardless of whether they belong to the acid, subacid or sweet classification, possess a certain sweetness, and, in most instances, it is possible to judge ripeness by appearance, fragrance, touch, and, of course, taste.
Unripe fruit is highly indigestible and usually quite unpalatable. It may contain starch and other carbohydrate substances which are distasteful and unwholesome. Overripe fruits may be even worse. When decay begins, the sugar is changed to carbon dioxide, alcohol and acetic acid (fermentation) and the fruit rapidly deteriorates in wholesomeness, nutritional value and taste. It loses water and becomes spongy, mealy and insipid.
Fruit is potentially alkaline, that is, it produces an alkaline ash after it has passed through the process of digestion. If the fruit is of poor quality, or unripe or overripe, especially if it is fermented, it produces an acid reaction in the body and its absorption creates many unpleasant symptoms, such as nervousness and insomnia, as well as digestive and “allergic” problems.
If fruit doesn’t taste right, discard it. It is better to “waste” some food than to waste your health.
Since vine-ripened fruit is too soft to withstand much handling en route from farm to supermarket, most fruit bought in the market was picked when mature (we hope!) but not yet ripe. Most of the fruit available in supermarkets is not intended to be eaten immediately, but needs a day or two at room temperature to fully ripen. Problems in attaining proper ripeness occur when fruit is picked before it is fully mature. Usually, an indication of the beginning of the ripening process is a signal to pick the fruit for marketing.
Most ripe fruits have lost all traces of hard spots, but are not mushy. Many ripe fruits exude a delightful, but delicate fragrance. As a rule, you should buy fruits which are almost ripe, and eat as soon as flavor peak is reached (or refrigerate when ripe and eat as soon as possible thereafter).
Bananas, avocados and some other fruits may be purchased green and ripened at home. Fruits which are to be ripened at home may be “displayed” on trays on the kitchen counter during the day, and put into brown paper bags at night, to shelter them from insects. To accelerate ripening of very hard fruit, put it in a brown paper bag with an apple or banana (day and night). Apples and bananas emit a kind of natural ethylene ripening gas.
Most fruits will be discussed specifically in this lesson. When available, varieties of specific fruits are listed, no attempt is made to list every variety grown. For such complete listings, see Rodale’s How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method. Some exotic tropical fruits which are not generally available in the marketplace are omitted, principally because no first-hand information is available about them, other than that which is included in Dr. Esser’s Dictionary of Man’s Foods and other reference books which give no marketing information.
The peak season for apples is October through March. The principal varieties of eating apples include Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Pippin, Golden Grimes, McIntosh, Jonathan and Winesap. The peel is rich in vitamins, but, if purchased in the supermarket, it will probably be waxed and contain pesticide residues. In fact, I myself never use commercially grown apples. It is my understanding that more pesticides and chemicals are used on apples than on any other fruits, and that the tree itself is poisoned, so that any insect that bites the apple will die. The human who eats the apple will survive, but I choose not to eat such apples.
Winesap, McIntosh and Golden Grimes apples are available in the fall, Jonathans and Delicious in the winter. Delicious apples are the sweetest.
Apples should be firm and crisp with bright and shiny skin. Color is a sign of maturity in apples—high color indicating maturity—and only apples picked when mature will have good flavor and texture. Apples that yield to pressure on the skin will have soft, mealy flesh. Bruised areas are usually a sign of rough handling or exposure to frost.
The apple is an excellent food, nutritionally speaking. It is also one of the most practical, since it can be shipped and stored for many months, though, of course, long storage results in some loss of nutrients.
The peak season for apricots is June and July. Apricots are a nutritionally excellent food but they have a very short season and a very short life. Look for (but you will seldom find) plump, juicy-looking apricots, with a uniform golden-orange hue. When ripe, they will yield slightly to gently pressure. If the fruit is hard, pale yellow or greenish yellow, these are indications that it was packed too soon and will never progress to the proper ripeness and delicious taste. They will simply become mushy or rot.
Larger apricots tend to ripen more quickly. Avoid fruit that is green at the stem end. Apricots are ripe when they turn from yellow to orange.
Once I found a crate of “just-right” large apricots at the wholesale market in Tampa, in time to be served at a Hygienic luncheon for the members of our local American Natural Hygiene Society chapter. That was about seven years ago, but I still remember the luscious taste. It is almost impossible to find such apricots in the markets, unless you happen to be in the right place at the right time, and know enough to recognize and quickly acquire them. Apricots are rarely found in the markets at their best, because of premature harvesting.
Ordinarily, we must settle for sun-dried, organically grown soaked apricots, which are an acceptable substitute, and much better than the disappointing “fresh” apricots usually available. Buy dried apricots from Jaffe Brothers or at a health food store. Dried fruit sold at supermarkets has usually been treated with sulphur dioxide or hydrogen peroxide, to preserve the fruit and retain the bright color. These substances destroy the value of the food and cannot be washed off, since the chemicals are absorbed into the fruit.
Experiments conducted by dr. H. W. Wiley, formerly chief chemist of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, demonstrated that the use of sulphurous acid in food is always harmful. It degenerates the kidneys, retards the formation of red corpuscles, and destroys the vitamins in the fruits.
California avocados are available all year, with a slight peak in December through June. Florida avocados are available July through March. California avocados have a thinner skin and are more buttery and less watery than Florida varieties; they also have a better flavor and contain perhaps twice as much protein.
It is very important to eat the avocado when just ripe, when it has a buttery consistency and a mild flavor. When unripe, it is hard and practically inedible. It is best to buy your avocados hard and firm, so that ripening conditions can be controlled. Ripen at room temperature in a tray on your kitchen counter—this usually takes two or three days. When there is a slight yielding to gentle pressure on the skin, it is time to enjoy them. Dark avocados are somewhat soft to firm when ripe—if very soft, with black spots, they are usually rotted. Green avocados are softer when ripe (while still retaining their characteristic green color).
Select avocados of uniform color and free of cracks. Irregular brown markings have no effect on the inside of the fruit. Don’t buy avocados with dark, sunken spots in irregular patches or cracked surfaces, which indicate decay. By law, avocados cannot be picked before a date that is supposed to insure that the fruit will be mature before being harvested, so commercially grown avocados should always ripen properly. With careful handling, they do ripen properly most of the time, although sometimes you get a “bad batch” which darkens and rots.
Fortunately, the thick, tough skin of the avocado affords some protection against chemical sprays, though it is true that the roots of the tree itself are bound to absorb chemicals from the fertilizers and sprays. The rule for avocados is the same as previously indicated: Use organically grown fruit whenever you can get it—otherwise, do the best you can. But, with avocados, at least the flesh has not been exposed to poisonous sprays.
An interesting fact about the avocado: An acre of land will yield a larger amount of food when planted to avocados than it will when planted to any other tree crop known at present. (Dr. William L. Esser)
Dr. Esser maintains that the avocado is one of the most valuable foods which nature has given to man and is of special value to vegetarians. It is higher in protein and fat than any other fruit (except nuts). Of course, the fat is more digestible than animal fat. In Guatemala, the avocado is used in place of meat. (Avocados, though botanical, members of the fruit family, are also classified as fat/protein food.)
The principal difference between avocados and nuts is that avocados are about 75% water, and nuts contain only about three to five percent water. Further, all nuts except the almond (and the coconut and chestnut, which are not classified as true nuts) are acid in metabolic reaction, while avocados are alkaline. The diet should predominate in alkaline foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables—perhaps 80% should be alkaline in reaction. However, the high fat content of the avocado should be a signal that it should not be used excessively. One-half of a medium-sized avocado at a sitting should be adequate, and they should not be used every day.
Bananas are available all through the year. It is best to buy them green for ripening at home, where ripening conditions can be controlled. Bananas are usually “gassed” to facilitate ripening. Sometimes it is possible to buy “ungassed” bananas, but it is somewhat doubtful whether they truly have escaped the gassing process. They may have been acquired before having been subjected to “ripening chambers” in this country, but is my understanding that some of the fruit has already been gassed on the vessels carrying them from the tropics.
Bananas, at least, have a good protective skin, so the flesh isn’t exposed to chemical sprays. I usually buy the greenest bananas I can find. I put them in a brown paper bag overnight, and expose them to air during the day (on my kitchen counter).
Select bananas free from surface bruises, with skin intact at both tips. Ripen at room temperature. When the skin is bright yellow speckled with brown, the starch will be changed to fruit sugar, and the fruit will be tender, sweet, and easy to digest. Fruit that ripens with brown speckles may not have been gassed, as I have been told that gassed bananas ripen with dark streaks and blotches instead of the brown speckles. I have found that speckled fruit uniformly delightful in taste, so I am inclined to give some credence to this speculation.
Don’t buy bananas which are bruised, discolored, or dull and grayish, which means they have been held in cold storage and will never ripen properly. Sometimes bananas that are ripe and ready for eating are sold at reduced prices. We usually are glad to get them, though they must be used that day or the next day. Overripe parts can be cut away; the rest is fine.
We have two stools of banana trees in our yard (in Florida) and harvest small, flavorful bananas some years (when the previous winter’s frost has not been too severe).
Peak season June through August. Although they differ in shape or color, these small berries, which often grow wild, are similar in general structure and buying considerations. Freshness and ripeness are prime concerns. Good bright color for the species, plumpness and tenderness, indicate ripeness. Usually, however, the problem is over-ripeness. The berries are also easily mashed. The small containers of berries are expensive and may contain a large percentage of moldy, spoiled berries. If the container is stained or wet, don’t buy it. Don’t wash the berries until you are ready to use them. They are very fragile and perishable and won’t keep long. Ripe raspberries drop their cores, leaving little hollow cups. Blackberries don’t. When blackberries are red, they are not ripe.
Fruit season August-September. Available occasionally. Cactus fruit grows on a very large type of cactus. The fruit is smaller than an average sized pear, purplish in color, and covered with small thorns (or spines). The edible, juicy, pulpy fruit is red, and somewhat enjoyable, but not necessarily worth the trouble of dealing with its thorny coat, which makes it difficult to assess its ripeness. I have not seen the thornless variety developed by Luther Burbank. The taste of cactus fruit is slightly tart and it has many fine seeds. It is necessary to cut out the areas with the little spines in order to handle the fruit.
This is practically unknown in most U. S. markets, because it is very delicate and does not withstand shipping. I am including it although I have not yet been successful in ever tasting this fruit. Dr. Esser says it surpasses all other fruits, and I encourage you to try it if you ever find it available to you. It is prolific in tropical countries, haying originated in Ecuador and Peru, and spreading to Mexico, the West Indies, Africa, India and Polynesia. Weak attempts to cultivate it in some parts of the U.S. have not been particularly successful. This fruit attains its highest perfection on the slopes of the Andes.
The shape of the cherimoya is irregular, sometimes round, sometimes cone-shaped. The skin is delicate, dark green when ripe. The edible part is whitish yellow, juicy and filled with many brown seeds. The taste reminds one of the pineapple, though it is perhaps more delicious and delightfully fragrant.
The peak season for this fruit is June and July. Eating cherries appear in May, but one should wait until June for the dark, sweet, flavorful ones, which will also be priced lower by then. Small size cherries are not a good buy; the pit is the same size as in the larger cherries. The most important sign of maturity and sweetness in cherries is a very dark color. They should be bright, glossy and plump and the stems should not look dark and withered. Cherries decay rather quickly, and should be used soon after buying. If you see soft leaking spots or surface mold, don’t buy them. Tart cherries are not suitable for eating. Remember that cherries are heavily sprayed and have no tough, peelable skin for protection. Wash them thoroughly and eat sparingly—not every day during the season.
Peak season, December through June. Color of the skin is no indication of quality or ripeness. The skin of the first crops of mature oranges in November is green or greenish, but mature oranges are ready for harvest and eating, even when the skin is green. They are, however, not as sweet as oranges harvested a month or so later on. California growers “orange” their green fruit by gassing; Florida shippers put the oranges through a colored wax bath (a “non-toxic” food coloring and wax), because they believe the added color will make the fruit more saleable and the wax will improve the keeping quality. Some fully ripened fruit even turns green again late in the season. Lucky people who live near orange groves can get uncolored, freshly picked oranges, and, possibly, even organically grown oranges. Organically grown oranges are usually the sweetest.
Organically grown oranges are available if you want to go to the trouble and expense of having them shipped in. See addresses in an earlier part of this lesson.
Firm, heavy oranges are full of juice. Avoid lightweight fruit and very rough surface, which usually signifies a thick skin and a smaller orange. There are many varieties of oranges. In Florida, we get navels, temples, tangelos, valencias, tangerines, and pineapple oranges. There are several varieties of tangerine oranges, including the mandarin, the honey murcott and the satsuma. Tangerines are best when they are a little loose in their skins, but not pulpy around the ends. Tangerines peel very easily, the skin being very loosely connected. Temple and tangelo oranges are also rather easy to peel.
Florida oranges disappear from the market about May, but oranges from California are available all through the year. Several varieties of California oranges are usually available, including navels and valencias. Oranges grown in the United States outside of California, Florida and a small strip of southwest Arizona, must either be very hard varieties, or must have artificial winter protection or heating. Some oranges are thus successfully cultivated in southern Texas, the northern interior of California, and elsewhere. I have received brochures offering shipments of Texas oranges. Jaffa oranges from Israel are sometimes available.
Peak season, November through April. Grapefruit are really available throughout the year, and are ripe and of consistently good quality, though the price will be higher when they are out of peak season. This is one fruit in which color and blemishes have little relationship to quality, although it is said that rusty looking marks on the skin are an indication of sweetness.
Grapefruit should be firm, thin-skinned and heavy for their size. The smoother the skin, the thinner. A coarse surface and pointed end are signs of thick-skinned, less juicy fruit, but it may still taste good. Wrinkled and rough skin will indicate tough, dry fruit. Skin defects are of no importance, except for large, soft, wet spots. If discolored at the stem end, or if the skin breaks easily, decay has begun. Popular varieties are Marsh, Ruby Red and Duncan. Although the Duncan has many seeds, it is the best in delicious flavor. Indian River (Florida) fruit is considered superior in flavor and quality.
Available in the south in the fall and winter. Some are suitable for eating, some only for making preserves. Some are ovoid, some spherical. A spherical variety native to Florida is very sweet and one can even eat he skin, which is thin, sweet and spongy.
The major crop becomes available in the spring and summer; they are sometimes available in November-December. Available mostly in southern markets. They are usually lemon-colored (unripe) and the clear, watery pulp is too tart and astringent, and they seldom ripen satisfactorily. When orange-colored, they are ripe and pleasantly acid-sweet, with an agreeable flavor. If picked at full maturity, they are good eating.
This fruit is somewhat of a novelty to behold. It has a waxlike surface with deeply ridged sides, and when hanging on the tree, carambolas resemble lanterns. A cross-section or slice of the fruit is star-shaped, since the fruit has an oval, five-angled shape. Carambolas are not citrus fruit, but are acid fruits resembling the citrus in appearance and taste of the flesh.
Available throughout the year. Peak season May through July. The habitual use of this strongly acid fruit is not advisable. It can not only cause erosion of the dental enamel, but it tends to retard digestion. Use of lemons in salad dressing is less objectionable than vinegar, but it is better not to use salad dressing at all. Recipes for salad dressings made without vinegar or lemon will be given in Lesson 26. Lemons with a rich, yellow color, reasonably smooth skin and heavy for their size are the best.
Available year-round, peak season June-July. Comments about lemons also apply to limes.
Peak season, October through December. Cranberries are not recommended for use as food because they contain considerable quantities of malic and benzoic acids. Benzoic acid is a white, crystalline acid used in perfumes, dentrifices and germicides, and to season tobacco. Cranberries cannot be enjoyably used in their natural, raw state unless considerable amounts of sweetening are used, or unless combined with other sweeter fruits, such as oranges. Cranberries are classified as acid fruit, but are best excluded from the diet.
Not usually available, except in the dried state, or in jellies and jams. Currants grow wild and in gardens in temperate climates. The wild species are small and very sour, but the larger garden varieties have an agreeable acid flavor. The currant resembles a tiny grape, or when dried, a small raisin. There are three varieties, red, white and black. The red variety is richest in mineral content.
Available all year. Dried fruits are rich sources of natural sugar, plus all the vitamins and minerals in the fresh fruit. The drying process preserves the fruit by removing about 50% of its water. Almost all of the nutrients remain. Dried fruit is particularly high in iron.
Select only fruit which has been sun-dried, and which does not contain sulfur dioxide or other additives. Fruit which has been dried by artificial dehydration (heat evaporation) is usually dipped into a sulfur dioxide bath to keep it from darkening. Golden raisins, and any dried fruit that is light in color, have been treated with sulfur dioxide. Almost all dried fruit is fumigated during storage or shipping. Dates are usually, pasteurized to prevent molding. Preservatives are not necessary in these products, but some processors add sorbic acid as a preservative, and some add corn syrup or honey to keep them from drying out. Don’t buy any dried fruit that contains sorbic acid, sweeteners, or any additives.
Dates usually only reach us in the dried state. The Calavo and Dromedary brands, available in supermarkets, don’t have any additives. The varieties available in health food stores usually don’t have any chemicals or sulfur dioxide, but they are sometimes honey-dipped. Some of the popular varieties are Deglet Noor, Medjool, Khadrawi, Barhi, Halawi, Zahidi and Bread dates. Some of the varieties are very large and of superb flavor, but they are seldom available, and quite expensive. I usually buy my organically grown dates from Jaffe Brothers, and “fill in” by purchasing a few at the health food store.
The two most popular domestic varieties are Calimyrna, the native California variety, which is light in color and sometimes large and succulent; and Black Mission figs, which are purplish black, with pinkish meat, and are usually small. Calamata strings, imported from Greece, are uncured. Smyrna and Kadota figs are sometimes available. We have a Kadota fig tree on our property, and get a large crop of figs of large size and excellent flavor. We eat figs every day when they are ripening, give large quantities away to friends and neighbors, and freeze the rest, without heating or sweetening. We eat them just barely thawed, and they arc not as good as freshly picked raw figs, but they are a welcome addition to our fruit meals in the winter. We buy organically grown dried Calimyrna figs from Jaffe Brothers, and sometimes buy dried figs from the health food store.
Sun Maid Thompson seedless raisins (except the “golden”), and Sun Maid muscats, sultanas and currants, are sun-dried without the use of chemicals. S&W raisins (the dark kinds) are also free of sulfur dioxide. Monukka raisins are large choice raisins available in health food stores. I buy my raisins from Jaffe or Covalda or the health food store.
Sun-dried, unsulfured apricots are usually very tough and dry and must be soaked overnight to make them palatable. I am very fond of soaked, dried apricots, because they have an excellent flavor and are less sweet than most dried fruit. If dried apricots have an even color and bright, attractive appearance, they have been sulfured.
No unsulfured prunes are available in supermarkets, but some are available from Jaffe, Covalda and health food stores. Prunes are high in oxalic acid and their usage should be limited.
Dried Dark Cherries, Dried Bananas, Dried Apples, Dried Peaches and Dried Pears are also available at times. Select only unsulfured fruit.
Dried Litchi Fruit and Dried Carob Pods are also sometimes available. The dried litchi tastes somewhat like the raisin. The shell surrounding it looks like a small brown ball (the shell is red in the fresh state), and the fruit surrounds a large, hard seed. Dried carob pods are hard, stringy, and chewy, but if they are not too dry they have an agreeable taste. The color is dark brown and the dry fruit encloses a number of small, hard, shiny seeds. Carob powder (available at health food stores) is often used as a replacement when a flavor similar to chocolate is desired.
Peak season, July and August (but rarely available). Figs should be plump and fairly soft, but not mushy, and with no breaks in the skin. The softer they are without being rotten or fermented, the sweeter they will be. If they are fermented, they will smell vinegary. Buy for immediate eating—they are extremely perishable. Figs can be green, yellow, pink, violet, brown or black. In chemical composition, the fig closely resembles that of human milk, especially in regard to the proportion of mineral salts. (See article on figs in this lesson.)
I have found fresh figs for sale about five or six times in my entire life, where I have lived in Indiana and Florida. They may be available more often in other areas of the country. Now that we have our own Kadota fig tree, we enjoy this delicacy regularly; we have one major crop in the spring, and a minor crop in the fall-winter season. We harvest enough to share with friends and neighbors, and put some in our freezer to enjoy during the winter. Our Kadota figs are green until ripe, when they swell, turn yellow and soften. (See “Dried Fruits” for additional information about figs.)
Seldom available. The wild varieties are covered with spines, but the large cultivated varieties are completely smooth. American varieties are mostly inferior in size and quality to European species, some of which are almost as large as hen’s eggs. Really good ripe gooseberries have a delightful, acid-sweet taste, but I have never found these good gooseberries.
Peak season, July through November. The most common varieties are Thompson seedless (early green), Tokay and Cardinal (early bright red), and Emperor (late, deep red). Other varieties are Ribier (dark blue), Red Seedless, Concord, Catawba, Salem, Delaware, Jessica, Muscadine, Malaga, Muscat and Sultana. The first grapes will not be as sweet as those available later. Green grapes are sweetest when the color has a yellowish cast. Red grapes are best when deep red. All grapes should be well-colored, firm and plump, and still attached to the stem. Look for the powdery “bloom.” Avoid bunches with small undeveloped berries (they’re sour). When the best grapes are available, around early fall, we find Thompson and Red Seedless to be the sweetest and most flavorful, with Ribiers running a close second. Later in the season we have to settle for Emperors, which are usually fairly good. We don’t care much for Tokays, but use them occasionally, because they are available late in the season when the other varieties are gone.
Grapes are nutritionally among the best of fruits, but it is too bad that they are so heavily sprayed that they should be eaten sparingly, after thorough washing. You might want to go to the trouble of peeling them, to at least get rid of the worst of the chemicals.
Available through the year. The New Zealand kiwifruit is about the size of a hen’s egg. It has a thin brown furry skin. Squeeze very gently to check ripeness—it should give a little. The kiwifruit is growing in popularity. If you have never tasted a kiwi, you are in for a treat. When cut in half or sliced, it has a surprising, unusual and attractive appearance—emerald green flesh, with tiny seeds clustered around a light, creamy center. It has a wonderful, delicate, strawberry-like texture and a fresh, tangy flavor all its own. This fruit was formerly known as Chinese Gooseberry. Although most of the kiwis are imported from New Zealand, California is also growing the fruit, with about a thousand acres now in production. The November 1, 1981 Florida Market Bulletin contains a picture of a pair of kiwifruit growing in Florida—it didn’t say just where. The article says that, as far as the editor could tell, these were the first pair of kiwifruit to be documented growing in Florida.
Fruit season mid-June—mid-July, seldom available. The fresh litchi (also spelled lichee, lychee, leechee, lichi, laiche) is a grape-like fruit which hangs on the tree in beautiful red clusters, and is luscious when fully ripe. Some of the trees are grown in yards in southern and central Florida. The skin is a thin, leathery shell (hence the name litchi nut, which is often used), purplish-red to bright red when ripe. The flesh is white, similar to the grape, with a sweet taste, jelly-like consistency, and excellent flavor and aroma, surrounding a large hard seed.
Peak season January-April, but seldom available in markets. They are grown in yards in southern and central Florida. We have one in our yard which yields a large crop of excellent fruit. The loquat is sometimes called the Japanese Plum, looks more like a small apricot, and tastes slightly acid, or subacid when totally ripe. Loquats are one to three inches in length, have a pale yellow to orange color and somewhat downy skin. The flesh is also yellow to deep orange in color, and the fruit generally contains three or four seeds. The loquat is very juicy and has an excellent flavor when fully ripe.
Peak season, May through August. Mangos can be bought green and ripened at room temperature. It is best to select mangos which are starting to show some signs of ripening, rather than totally hard and green, or totally ripe. Completing the ripening at home under controlled conditions will usually result in better-tasting fruit. The color of the flesh varies from light lemon to deep apricot. In the best varieties, the flesh is smooth and juicy, with an excellent flavor. Such a properly ripened mango, eaten at the peak of its rich, pungent flavor, is delectable. The flavor is somewhat reminiscent of peaches, but much more exotic.
The Haden is a superior variety. The Kent is notable for its smooth texture. In some of the less desirable varieties, the flesh is full of fibers and the flavor unpleasant. The excellent Haden fruit is plump and oval-shaped and often has a rosy blush. When ready to eat, it is yellow and orange, only slightly firm, yielding to gentle pressure. The Haden has a fair amount of fiber, but excellent flavor. The Carrie is a large, green variety of good flavor and texture, and is fiber-free. It turns a paler green and develops dark speckles as it ripens. When ripe enough for full flavor and enjoyment, it is slightly firm, yielding to pressure. Mangos have a tough peel which is a good protective coat against sprays.
Peak season, June through August. Medium to large cantaloupes are usually sweeter and tastier than small ones. Heavy fruit will be juicier, but not necessarily sweeter. Pleasant aroma is the key to ripeness and superior flavor. The melons should yield to pressure, especially at the blossom end. The network of veins in the rind should be thick, coarse and stand out in bold relief, and the rind color should be a yellowish shade, not green. Avoid cantaloupes with smooth spots. If a cantaloupe was not mature when picked, some of the vine stem will adhere to the fruit. In order to be sweet, the mature cantaloupe must be free of the stem, with a smooth, shallow depression where the stem grew. If the melon is mature when picked, it will reach excellent eating quality if ripened at room temperature for a few days.
Don’t buy overripe melons, indicated by widespread softening. They will be tasteless and watery. Small bruises are not significant, but large bruises will affect eating quality.
Peak season, August and September. These melons are a variety of Musk Melon, and look like oversized cantaloupes, but are somewhat rounder with a finer netting. They can be grouped with cantaloupes for selection and use information. As the Persian melon ripens, the dark green rind under the netting turns lighter green and the rind gives under light pressure. Avoid those with dark or greenish black netting. Persians have a dark orange flesh.
Peak season, July to November. They are best in September and October. Casabas are not netted like the cantaloupes, nor smooth like the honey dews. Instead, they are profusely marked with longitudinal corrugations. Skin color varies with the variety. Golden Beauty casabas are pointed at the stem end, with green skin that turns to yellow at maturity. They will have a yellow-gold color and a slight springiness at the blossom end when fully ripe. The ripe flesh of a casaba can be either white, yellow or orange in color. Although sweet flavored, the flesh is not as sweet as a honey dew, nor does it have the musky aroma and flavor of the cantaloupe. Casabas do not “slip” from the vine at maturity; rather they are harvested by cutting the stem when the melons are reasonably mature and held in storage until the blossom end becomes soft. The flesh of an unripe casaba tastes like a cucumber.
Peak season, August and September, although available July through October. The crenshaw (not cranshaw) is a variety of the casaba. It is a slightly wrinkled, dark green fruit that turns pale yellow-tan at maturity. It has shallow furrows, but the rind is much smoother than that of the Golden Beauty casaba. When fully ripe, it is golden yellow, yields to slight pressure, and has a strong, sweet aroma. The flesh of the ripe crenshaw is a rich orange color, and it has a juicy, rich, rather spicy taste. The crenshaw is large, up to nine pounds, with a rounded blossom end and pointed stem end.
Peak season, July through September. The best honey dews start coming in July. Before then, the tendency is to pick them too soon and they never progress to the lovely, delicate sweet flavor that is characteristic of a good honey dew. This melon is quite large and may be oval to round in shape. The rind is smooth and firm. When at the peak of flavor, sweetness and ripeness, honey dews are creamy white with yellow areas—with no green at all—and have a velvety surface and a sweet aroma. It is best to buy honey dews fully ripe, rather than to depend on ripening them at home. If there is “give” at the blossom end, and the color is right, take it home and use it in a day or two. Patches of slightly raised netting mean exceptional sweetness. If honey dews are stark-white or greenish, or if they feel hard, or look shiny and smooth, they were picked too soon. The flesh should be light green and very juicy, and sweet! A good honey dew is the queen of melons. Small damaged areas will not lead to further deterioration, if you plan to use the melon immediately.
The smaller round Honeyball melon has much the same characteristics as the honey dew, except for its size.
Peak season, May through August. Look for a slightly dull green appearance (not shiny and not really dull), with a velvety bloom on the rind. Dark green or shiny watermelons are unripe. The underbelly, where it has rested on the ground, should be yellowish or amber, not stark white or greenish. The melon should be symmetrical, with full, round ends. These signs are not totally reliable, but if used as a criterion, will usually result in the selection of a good melon. Some people use the thump test—a flat, dead sound when thumped is said to indicate ripeness. If the melon is cut, it is easier to choose—select firm, juicy flesh, with a good red color and no white streaks or mealy or softening areas; seeds should be dark brown or black.
There are a number of other exotic varieties of melons, which are available from time to time. If in doubt, or inexperienced with these expensive melons, look for one that has been cut open.
Peak season, July and August. The nectarine tastes like a peach, but has the smooth, glossy skin of a plum. The color ranges from a red blush to completely red. If the color is rich and bright, it will be sweet. In recent years, I have found most nectarines to be dull in color, very hard, and impossible to ripen to an acceptable state. These nectarines have probably been picked too soon. If the color is right, but the fruit is too firm, it should ripen properly. The flesh of the ripe nectarine is yellow, like the yellow-fleshed peach. Don’t buy dull-colored or shriveled fruit, or fruit with evidence of soft spots or mold. I prefer peaches, but good quality, tasty nectarines, without the fuzzy skin of the peach, are welcome.
Since olives are not available raw, all of them having been either pickled or salted, and the bitterness having been removed by potash or lye, they are not recommended for use as food. Dr. Esser says it would be a fine food in its natural state, fully ripened on the tree and sun-dried, so that some of the bitterness would be naturally removed.
Some of this fruit is available all year. Small Hawaian papayas are available most of the time. Larger Florida papayas are best during the months of July through October (or later), depending on the weather. Papayas are also grown in Texas, and some in California. The fruit on our papaya tree usually starts ripening in the late fall, and then it is a race between the ripening and the frost (which can kill all the fruit). Size and shape of Florida papayas vary; they may weigh from one-half pound to ten pounds. The flesh may be yellow to orange-red. Select fruit that has some golden yellow or orange streaks, which is a sign that it has not been picked too green and will be apt to ripen properly. If you select papayas with at least 35% of the skin streaked yellow, they will ripen completely in two to three days at room temperature. When a papaya is totally yellow to orange and yields to gentle pressure, it is ready for eating. Don’t buy mushy papayas, or fruit with dark patches, which signify age and decay. If not picked too soon and if ripened properly, the flavor is sweet and luscious. Otherwise, it may be bland and tasteless.
Not usually available in markets. The trees usually grow in thickets along river banks in central U.S. valleys. We picked some in Indiana. It is an odd looking fruit, cylindrical with obtuse ends, from three to five inches long and from one and a half to two inches thick. The skin is brown, with dark patches when ripe. The flesh is creamy yellow, very soft, somewhat gritty and very sweet; it contains two to eight large glossy black seeds. It is somewhat similar to the cherimoya.
Peak season, June through September. Select peaches with areas of yellow and no green at the stem, and that are fragrant, plump and fairly firm or beginning to soften. The best place and time to buy excellent, flavorful peaches is in Georgia in the summer. Don’t buy hard, green peaches which were picked too soon and will never ripen properly. Ripe peaches turn reddish instead of yellow and feel soft to the gentle touch. The flesh is usually yellow, though there are some white-fleshed peaches. If you buy peaches that are ripe or almost ripe, you may find that they have deteriorated by the time you get them home. Don’t buy bruised peaches. Unless used immediately, they will soon be garbage. If possible, buy local tree-ripened peaches that are slightly underripe. If you can get them organically grown, good for you! Peaches are heavily sprayed, but they can be peeled, which helps somewhat. European peaches are said to be superior to American varieties. California produces more peaches than any other of the United States.
Our peach tree produces large quantities of delicious white-fleshed fruit.
Peak season, September through November. Cold storage Anjou, Bosc and Cornice pears are available as late as May. The more fragile Bartlett pears are available through November. Select firm unblemished pears. If they are too hard, they may not ripen, so there should be just a little “give” to slight pressure. Avoid wilted, shriveled pears. Spots on the sides or blossom ends indicate an overripe or mealy pear. A ripe, crisp pear is flavorful eating, but you probably will not enjoy a hard or mealy pear. Some pears are somewhat gritty. This grittiness is not consistent by variety and may sometimes be found, in different varieties. The tiny seckel pears available in the fall are an excellent flavor treat and are never gritty. The Bartlett—a medium early pear—is large, green to yellow, and is the most popular commercial pear, though its flavor is only medium, and it becomes quite mealy if not used at its peak of ripeness. It turns yellow when ripe. The Anjou is medium to large, has smooth green skin with a faint blush. The flesh is white and sweet, with a fine flavor. It is one of the later pears. The Bosc has a long, tapering neck and a russet skin. It is juicy, with a rich aroma and fine flavor. It is a late pear. The Cornice is a choice, flavorful pear of high quality. It is available in midseason, and is large, roundish, green-yellow to yellow, with a delicate blush. Pears are not usually waxed. Scrub well before eating.
The small native persimmon is seldom available in markets, but the trees grow wild, and if you can spot these trees, the persimmons are free for the taking in October, November and December. They are hardy, and grow in tropical or temperate climates. The fruit averages about one inch in diameter. The peak season for Japanese persimmons is October-November. They are grown in our southern states, appear in the markets in the fall, and are available for only a short time—a month or two. They are tomato- or conic-shaped, up to four inches in diameter and three inches high (sometimes wider than they are high) and orange-colored. A thin, membranous skin covers the orange-colored flesh. Persimmons are astringent when green, but become sweet when fully ripe. The flesh, when ripe, is very soft (sometimes almost liquid) and of very sweet and pleasant flavor. Japanese persimmons may have as many as eight elliptic, flattened, dark seeds, or they may be seedless. Some varieties have dark flesh, which is crisp and meaty and never astringent. These are edible before maturity. Some of the entirely dark-fleshed varieties improve as they soften, like Hyakume and Yeddo-ichi; others are best when still hard, like Zengi. But the more common, light-fleshed Japanese persimmons, or those with mixed light and dark flesh, should not be eaten until they reach the custard-like consistency of full ripeness. The “puckery” substance in the immature persimmons is tannin. As the fruit ripens, the tannin forms into crystals which do not dissolve in the mouth, and the astringency disappears. When they are thoroughly ripe, persimmons are very soft and difficult to handle. They should be picked when still a little firm, and the ripening finished at room temperature. Most of the Japanese persimmons available in the markets are picked too soon, and though they will still soften and ripen at room temperature, they never attain the optimal flavor of the persimmon which is picked at the proper time, just before they are ripe.
The small native American persimmons may also be harvested just before they are ripe, or they may be left hanging on the tree into the winter months. Even if frozen on the tree, the fruit is of excellent flavor when thawed. If the fruit is left to ripen and drop, it is at its peak, if it can be rescued quickly from the ground.
Peak season for this fruit is March through June. Good pineapples may also be available at other times during the year. Unless pineapples are mature when picked, they will not ripen properly. They may become soft, but never sweet. They may simply rot. Select pineapples that have begun to display some gold, orange-yellow or reddish-brown coloring. Some varieties are ripe when still green, but the best and most flavorful pineapples display the change in color from the base up, as they ripen. If the yellow color has spread to 15 or 20% of the fruit, then it’s ripe. A ripe pineapple should have a fragrant (but not fermented) odor and a slight separation of the eyes when ready to be eaten. The spikes should pull out easily and the fruit should be plump and heavy for its size. Soft spots or an unpleasant hint of fermentation in the odor are signs of overripe fruit. Pineapples with pointed or sunken eyes, dull yellow-green color and a dried-out appearance are immature. Fruit allowed to ripen completely before picking is a flavor treat most people in temperate climates never experience. A considerable amount of pineapples used to be produced in Florida, as much as half a million crates, but this Florida commercial pineapple has disappeared. Most of the fresh fruit now comes from Puerto Rico, Honduras and—especially—from Hawaii. I have found Dole pineapples, air-expressed from Hawaii, to have the best flavor. They are the most expensive, but are almost always deliciously sweet and juicy. The Dole Company maintains that all their pineapples are plant ripened and that the Dole pineapple is ripe and ready to eat—regardless of shell color. I still try to pick one which is turning orange-yellow—I believe they taste best; and I always pick one that has the characteristic pleasant fragrance.
Available intermittently. These look like oversized bananas, but they must be cooked before they can be eaten. Green and yellow plantains are very starchy. They must turn black before they are mature enough to be sweet, and they must still be cooked.
Peak season, July through August. Varieties of plums differ in flavor and appearance. The skins may be green to purple-red and the flesh yellow to red. There are many varieties of plums, and sometimes as many as six to eight varieties are available at the same time. During the course of the season, as many as thirty different varieties of plums may be featured in markets. Some are juicy and hard; others are soft and sweet; still others have a rich flavor. Select unblemished plums that have good color for the particular variety, a slight glow to the skin, and that yield to gentle pressure. Most plums are picked prematurely and will never reach their optimal delicious flavor. Avoid immature fruit, which is hard and poorly colored. Even if it softens, it will be very tart and lack flavor. Of course, don’t buy overripe fruit which is soft, leaking and decayed. Plums are commonly waxed to give them a glossy look. It is best to peel waxed fruits. Plums should be eaten in limited amounts, because of their high content of oxalic acid.
Peak season is in the fall. The fruit season is all year in south Florida. Fruit is picked after it has changed color to yellow and/or dark red, and is held in cold storage to ripen. If permitted to ripen on the tree, it may split. The fruit is round and flattened, irregularly six-sided, about the size of an orange. The tough, leathery skin encloses numerous small, red, juicy flesh bodies which contain small seeds. The flesh becomes quite sweet when thoroughly ripe. Some people don’t bother with the pomegranate, feeling it is too tedious and difficult to eat. A simple way to eat the pomegranate is to carefully squeeze or knead it until soft, without rupturing the skin, but liquefying the red, sweet flesh. Carefully puncture the skin to avoid squirting and suck out the delightful sweet-acid juice. When ripe, it is easy to rupture the flesh bodies with slight pressure of the thumb.
Peak season, March through June. Rhubarb is not recommended for use as food, because it cannot be eaten raw; even cooked, it requires much sweetening, in addition, it is a poor food because it is quite high in oxalic acid. The plant bears red petioles (fruitstalks) with large leaves, and bears no fruit in the usual sense. The fruitstalks are cooked into preserves or sauce or pie filling, and, therefore, most people think of rhubarb as a fruit, although, botanically, it is a vegetable. Diced rhubarb is usually combined with strawberries or apples for pie filling. The leaves are not used at all, as they contain large amounts of oxalic acid salts which may be fatally poisonous. As indicated above, the fruitstalks also contain enough oxalic acid to be rejected as food.
Peak season is April through June. In the far south, strawberry plants may be set out either in the fall or early spring, but the fall plantings yield a small harvest. Strawberries are usually expensive and of poor quality when out of season. Medium to small berries are sweeter than large ones, as a rule. Select dry berries with stems attached, showing full, red color, bright luster and firm flesh. They should be all red, with no whiteness around the tip, and with a bright green cap. If most of the berries in a basket are of reasonable quality, it is probably the best available. Be sure to sort out any decaying or green berries as soon as possible. Don’t wash them until you use them.
Foods that are refrigerated should be handled with special care. Bacteria in such foods can multiply rapidly under adverse conditions. Most of your fresh produce should be kept refrigerated (unless it needs ripening at room temperature).
Dry mixes—like Vegebase (dried vegetables used as seasoning)—which can be safely stored in a cabinet, should not be kept in cabinets above the stove.
Don’t taste any food that doesn’t seem right. You don’t even have to swallow the food to be poisoned by the toxins produced by certain types of bacteria. In some cases, even the food’s taste is no indication of safety. When in doubt, throw it out.
Don’t expect your refrigerator to do things it was never meant to do. You may have thought that refrigeration would destroy most harmful bacteria in food. Refrigeration will retard the growth of the bacteria found in food, and inhibit their multiplication and ability to spread or produce a poison, but bacteria or poison present in food may still be there even after refrigeration.
The same is true for freezing, probably even to a greater extent. Freezing does not kill bacteria in food; it simply stops their spreading. The bacteria will become active and again continue to spread as the food is thawed. Food should be used as soon as possible after thawing.
Cooked foods deteriorate rapidly, even in the refrigerator. It is important to have accurate thermometers in your refrigerator and freezer. The refrigerator should be set at about 42 degrees, the freezer at zero. The motor and refrigerating unit should be kept free of lint and dirt. These substances cut off the air supply, overwork your refrigerator, and reduce efficiency.
The gaskets (the rubber insulation) around the doors should be flexible. Stiff, cracked and damaged insulation allows air seepage. Make a test with a dollar bill. Hold it halfway in the door, shut the door, and see if you can easily pull the bill out. If so, the gasket is allowing air to escape and should be replaced.
Check your freezer. Frost buildup of one-fourth inch or more actually serves as insulation against keeping foods well frozen. All items to be frozen should be tightly covered or wrapped in a moisture-resistant material.
Where you place the food is important. Some foods should be kept colder than others, and food placement affects air circulation and efficiency of the refrigerator. Keep in full view, so that you won’t overlook them, those foods which should be used quickly.
It is best not to stack foods on top of one another if you can avoid it, and refrigerator shelves should not be covered with material which reduces or prevents air circulation.
Produce should be kept in the lower compartments to prevent crystalization. Food should be arranged so that the oldest is used first. This is important for safety, flavor, texture and nutrition.
Of course, the refrigerator should be kept clean and free of odors. An open box of baking soda, changed every few months, will absorb odor.
A Hygienist soon learns that it helps to have two large refrigerators. We keep the extra one in our garage. While the ideal would be to pick or obtain food for each day as needed, most of us cannot readily attain this ideal.
In order to buy and store organically grown apples by the bushel; fifteen pounds of organic potatoes and carrots at a time; a year’s supply of nuts in the harvest season; a good supply of citrus fruit when the citrus season is waning, etc., these precious foodstuffs must have the best of storage facilities. This will not only minimize food losses, but will preserve as much as possible the food’s value and flavor. As well as being refrigerated, they must be watched and culled, being sure to use them before they have a chance to degenerate. All of these foods store quite well, with an occasional apple or orange starting to break down prematurely. By and large, we have learned to minimize waste, and we enjoy a maximum supply of excellent food the year round, much of it organically grown.
Dr. Esser recommends that, wherever possible, the best idea is to build a large walk-in refrigeration unit in a shady spot or a place where the storage room can be set into a hill, or underground with steps leading down to the door. He gives specifications for building such a unit in his book, Dictionary of Man’s Foods. He suggests, as one alternative, a storage room in the cellar of your house, and also gives specifications for this type of storage room. He suggests other alternatives, among which is the method we use—an extra refrigerator or two in a garage or basement.
Fresh fruits and vegetables call for careful handling. Most of them keep at maximum freshness in a refrigerator where it is cold and humid, and the sooner they are refrigerated after purchase, the longer they will stay fresh.
In discussing the storage of fresh fruits and vegetables, reference will be made to using pliofilm (plastic) bags for storage. Some Hygienists advise against the use of plastic bags or plastic anything. I don’t use plastic dishes or plastic water jugs, but I still use plastic bags and plastic wrap. It is my opinion (or perhaps it is wishful thinking) that no significant transfer from plastic to food occurs, except in the presence of heat or acid. I use covered glass jars or containers whenever possible. If protecting a cut watermelon with pliofilm, people who feel very strongly against its use may thinly slice away the surface that has been in contact with the pliofilm.
The plastic storage bags available in supermarkets have proved indispensable in my kitchen. It is a good idea to double these bags, squeeze the air from the bags and close them tightly with wire “twists.”
Perhaps you will like Dr. Vetrano’s suggestion: Put a fine mist of water on your vegetables, put them in a brown paper bag, and then in a plastic bag.
Do not wash any fruit before storing, and don’t remove stems first. Sort it carefully and use any damaged pieces immediately. Fruit that is purchased locally should not be bought in large quantities. A week’s supply should be the maximum; more perishable fruits like peaches should be purchased in smaller amounts.
Most fruits should be held at room temperature (out of direct sunlight) until they reach the desired degree of ripeness, and then refrigerated for a few days if necessary. (Ideally, the fruit should be used as soon as possible after it is fully ripe.) Thin-skinned fruits ripening in the kitchen must be covered at night, as they may attract insects. Fruits with tough outer coverings (bananas, avocados) need not be covered. Use brown paper bags for this purpose, not plastic bags, which cut off air. Don’t wash fruit until you are ready to eat it.
Apples may be stored in the refrigerator without prior ripening. If they were mature when picked, they will ripen in the refrigerator, and most apples will keep well—some varieties better than others. Much depends on their condition when they are stored. Usually Delicious apples are not considered good “keepers” but we have had excellent experience with our Golden Delicious apples. Maximum storage time is supposedly a few weeks, but we have ordered large enough quantities to last two months or longer, with good results.
Most ripe fruits keep best at quite low temperatures (above freezing, of course). If you set your refrigerator at about 42 degrees, it will be suitable for most of your foodstuffs.
There is one important precaution to take when storing apples. They emit a kind of ripening gas, which can spoil other foods. Therefore, apples should be stored covered, or in pliofilm bags, if there is any other unwrapped food in the refrigerator. Unwrapped apples will also absorb odors from other produce, and they will keep longer if stored covered or bagged.
Some fruit, such as grapes, pineapple and watermelon, will not ripen after picking. These should be stored unwashed in the refrigerator as soon as possible, and used within a few days. Maximum storage time for grapes in good condition is five days, but they need to be culled daily. Grapes may be stored in an open container. We use an oblong plastic refrigerator storage box. A whole ripe watermelon may be used gradually over a period of several days. A ripe pineapple should be used in a day or two.
As previously indicated, it is best to buy a ripe honeydew melon, instead of trying to ripen it at home. I have had the frustrating experience of holding honeydew melons for weeks—if you buy melons that do not have the signs of ripeness previously described, they may never get ripe. Other melons—other than watermelon and honeydew—can be ripened on your kitchen counter, then stored in the refrigerator. When ripe, use as soon as it is possible, within two or three days.
Ripe unwashed peaches and nectarines will keep fairly well in the refrigerator for a few days (if just barely ripe and not overripe). Peaches and nectarines must be carefully watched and culled.
They may be stored in an open bin or container.
Other ripe fruits may be stored in the refrigerator (cherries, apricots, papayas, plums) from several, days to a week, depending on their condition when you move them to the refrigerator. Keep watching, culling and using them. Most fruits may be stored in open bins or containers.
Berries are very perishable, and should be bought for immediate use. Strawberries may keep a day or so, a little better than blackberries or raspberries. Blueberries, if in good condition, may keep a few days. Berries, including strawberries, must be tightly covered.
Japanese persimmons should be eaten when ripe; they do not keep well. They may be stored in the refrigerator a day or two after fully ripe, in a covered container. If you have too many to use before they spoil, they may be frozen successfully, but with some loss of flavor. The small native persimmons freeze very well; they may taste even better after having been frozen, if eaten before they are thoroughly thawed.
Fresh, ripe figs need to be eaten immediately—they are extremely perishable—you might be able to store them for one day in a covered container.
Once bananas are ripe, their life can be prolonged for several days by storing them in the refrigerator. Bananas (like apples) emanate a ripening gas and should be covered or bagged if other uncovered foods are stored in the refrigerator. Bananas also emanate a strong odor. Bananas stored in the refrigerator will turn black and look unattractive, but they will still be “good eating” for several days. If you have too many to use up quickly, they may be frozen. Recipes for different ways to use ripe bananas will be given in Lesson 26.
Avocados may be stored in the refrigerator after ripening, but not too long—about three days maximum. If you find that they have gray, black or brown spots when you cut them, cut the darkened areas away and test the good-looking green part by taste. If you have too many avocados that will ripen too fast, try storing them in the refrigerator in their hard state and bring them out to ripen as needed. They will last quite a long time. This will be fairly consistently successful with avocados and will sometimes also work with mangos. Other fruits will usually not ripen successfully after having been chilled.
Citrus fruit will keep well for several weeks, sometimes much longer. They may be stored in open bins or containers in a cold room or the refrigerator. Do not store in closed bags.
Kiwifruit may be stored in the refrigerator for two or three days after it feels soft enough to eat. Litchi fruit is a little tart when mature and freshly picked. It sweetens as it ripens and should be used before the bright red outer covering starts to deteriorate. It may be stored in the refrigerator for a few days after it has attained its full sweetness. Loquats are tart early in the season but have a bright orange color when ripe; they are firm with a little yielding when pressed. Ripe loquats may be stored in the refrigerator for a few days. These fruits may be stored, covered or uncovered.
Mangos may be stored in the refrigerator when ripe, depending on their condition, and may last for quite some time, if they are still a little firm when stored. I recently had a mango that I kept in the refrigerator for two weeks after ripening and it was still perfect, sweet and luscious when it was used by my husband, Lou, the day after breaking his 29-day fast. The mango season was about over and I had saved it for him, hoping it would not deteriorate; he said it was the best one he had ever tasted.
Ripe pomegranates may be stored in the refrigerator for a week or so.
These storage tips are generalized, of course. You will need to develop judgment and expertise in nurturing your fruit, which will come through practice.
All varieties of dried fruits will last a long time if properly stored in the refrigerator. Refrigerate your basic supply as soon as it arrives. Store it in tightly closed containers or pliofilm bags, transferring small amounts for current use to smaller, more accessible containers, so that the larger supply will not be subjected to frequent “out-again and in-again” changes of temperature. I have never noticed any loss of flavor, nor had any spoilage, even when I have occasionally had supplies almost a year before they were all used. I buy them mostly from Jaffe, and buy a good supply when the varieties we like are available. Of course, you should always use the oldest supplies first.
In nutritive value, nuts are superior to any other food that we know. According to scientific investigations by Professor Myer E. Jaffa, of the University of California; Professor F.A. Cajori, of Yale University; Van Slyke, Osborne, Harris, and others, the proteins in nuts are superior to those of animal origin.
Nuts are clean, sterile and free from putrefactive bacteria and the waste products that abound in flesh foods (uric acid, urea, etc.). Nuts are free from trichinae, tapeworm and other parasites and infections due to specific organisms.
The planting of nut and fruit trees, wherever possible, would serve a triple purpose: 1. beauty, 2. shade, and 3. excellent food.
The importance of the thorough mastication of nuts cannot be overemphasized. The nut is a dense, concentrated, high protein food and its digestion is more complicated than the digestion of fruits and most vegetables. It is important that every particle be thoroughly masticated—the stomach has no teeth, and even small particles pass through the alimentary canal undigested, because of the inability of the digestive juices to penetrate hard substances. For those with dental problems, nut butters or ground nuts, made from fresh raw nuts, are a suitable substitute.
Nuts should be regularly included in the diet, approximately two to four ounces daily, or in greater or lesser amounts, according to individual needs. Lactating mothers, and people who have undergone prolonged periods of fasting, might need a greater amount (if not beyond their digestive capability) in the initial post-fast period. People on all-raw food diets with the greater nutritional potential of all raw food, might get along well on less. People who use legumes and grains as sources for some of their protein (or cheese) should use similar amounts of nuts. The nuts, of course, should not be used at the same meals as legumes, grains or cheese. The amount of nuts used is an individual matter, subject to some experimentation.
It is best to buy nuts in the fall, when the new crops are available. The growers, wholesalers and retailers will be handling and storing the nuts until the next fall, in any event, and it is best to obtain your annual fresh supply and do your own storing.
We buy most of our nuts from Jaffe Brothers in October. If we must fill in later, we patronize the local health food store, which does an excellent job of maintaining refrigerated supplies of shelled nuts.
Some people buy a majority of their nuts in the shell, some prefer the convenience of shelled nuts. Unshelled nuts keep longer, but shelled nuts, if properly stored, usually stay reasonably fresh all year. It is difficult to judge the quality of nuts in the shell, and some nuts are difficult to shell.
It is often possible to contact growers of locally grown nuts and purchase those nuts in season directly from the growers. If you do this, you will probably need to dry or “cure” them. This is done by spreading them in an airy place for two or three weeks. Then they will require storing in a cool, dry place. The kernels should be removed from the shells and processed as soon as possible. This is done by putting the kernels into a large flat pan (preferably in a single layer) and into a 140 degree oven for four to five hours, until they feel perfectly dry. Then they can be stored in a covered container, in the refrigerator. These fresh nuts, well-processed, will stay in top condition until the next harvest, or even longer, with no apparent loss of flavor. Not everyone is willing to go to all this trouble, and, of course, there will be varieties of nuts you wish to use that are not grown locally. When you purchase unshelled nuts, presumably they have been put through some kind of drying or “curing” process.
If you buy nuts from your local health food store, you can usually get a discount for a quantity purchase of ten pounds or more of the same variety. Sometimes, if you are a regular customer, you can get the 10% discount, even when you buy, say, only five pounds at a time.
It is usually inadvisable to purchase your nuts in supermarkets, but there are some exceptions. The shells of most unshelled nuts sold in supermarkets have been bleached, treated with lye and gas to soften and loosen the kernels, and possibly colored and waxed. Some supermarkets do carry untreated nuts and seeds. Read the labels for some guidance, but I am not sure how reliable that is.
Shelled nuts in supermarkets are not refrigerated, and unless you purchase them when the shipments first arrive, are subject to more rapid deterioration than refrigerated shelled nuts.
Since nuts are not as perishable as produce, it is a good idea to buy the best, by mail, from Jaffe Brothers or some other reliable source. They have shelled or unshelled nuts available, some organically grown, and all much better quality than are available elsewhere.
Of course, all of your nuts should be raw and unsalted. So-called “roasted” nuts are actually “French-fried” and heavily salted. You should not use “dry-roasted” nuts either. Heated fats may be carcinogenic, and nuts are high in fat.
Pumpkin seeds and such nuts as macadamias, pignolias (pine nuts) and pistachios are excellent, but usually so expensive that it is much more practical to utilize sunflower seeds and such nuts as pecans, almonds, filberts, Brazils, walnuts, Indian nuts and cashews. You can use any nuts that are raw and unsalted.
If you particularly like any of the more expensive varieties, you could have some on hand for use in small quantities, as a treat, along with other less expensive nuts. It is a good idea to use as many varieties as possible (not all together!) from time to time, because the different varieties of nuts and seeds vary in their content of nutrients, particularly certain amino acids. For example, Brazil nuts and filberts (hazel nuts) contain greater amounts of the essential amino acid, methionine, than any other nuts, while the almond contains a greater amount of the essential amino acid, valine, than do other nuts.
The bitter almond contains considerable quantities of prussic acid and is not recommended. Other varieties of almonds are excellent food, but the brown skin still contains small quantities of prussic acid, so it is best to blanch them. Blanched almonds are sometimes available, but it is much better to do your own blanching. (Instructions in Lesson 26.)
The almond is one of the best of all nuts, and a rich source of protein. It is the only one of the true nuts that has a somewhat alkaline reaction in the body.
The cashew is not really a nut—being the pistil of the cashew apple, which has been heated to make it edible—but it is used and classified as a nut.
Peanuts, coconuts and chestnuts are in different categories than the nuts mentioned above.
Peanuts belong to the legume family. They are not as good food as true nuts, nor do they have as good a flavor in their raw state. Some people enjoy raw peanuts and use them, but they are subject to some of the same problems encountered with other legumes (difficulty in digesting, producing gas in the digestive tract). Some Hygienists use raw peanuts (and raw peanut butter, which, when used, “should be made fresh at home and used quickly, so it does not become rancid). Ordinary supermarket peanut butter should not be used. The peanuts are made indigestible by long periods of roasting and large amounts of salt are often added. Then the peanut butter is hydrogenated, so the oil will not separate and rise to the top. Those who do not enjoy the flavor of raw peanuts and raw peanut butter sometimes use peanut butter made to order from slightly roasted peanuts in the health food stores. This is much better than the heavily roasted, salted, hydrogenated variety, but is still not recommended for regular use.
Coconuts contain the only saturated fat in the plant kingdom. Coconut meat is best when it comes from the, fresh coconut. Dried coconut which has not been treated with chemicals is available from Jaffe, Walnut Acres or your health food store. Coconut meat is alkaline in metabolic reaction.
Fresh coconuts are available in supermarkets. Their peak season is October through December.
Coconuts should be heavy for their size and sound full of liquid when shaken. Examine the eyes (the three small circles at one end). If you detect wax over one or more eyes, or any evidence of tampering, the coconut has been opened, the coconut liquid drained and the coconut refilled with water. The extracted liquid is used in manufacturing certain pharmaceuticals.
Chestnuts are available in supermarkets In the fall and early winter. The chestnut is usually roasted before eating, though some varieties (those not bitter) can be eaten raw. The chestnut is alkaline in metabolic reaction. Instructions for preparation will be included in Lesson 26.
Peanuts, coconuts and chestnuts all contain starchy protein.
The principal edible seeds are sunflower, pumpkin, sesame and squash. We use mostly sunflower seeds, which are the best buy and are very high in nutritional value. A meal containing, sunflower seeds and dark, green lettuce plus tomatoes and other nonstarchy vegetables, is excellent. If you are really concerned about getting all the nutrients at one sitting, including all the essential amino acids, this is about as close as you can get. Of course, Hygienists know that it is not necessary to get all the nutrients at one meal, and most attempts to do this result in overeating and some atrocious food combinations.
Actually, no conventional meal supplies all the nutrients, not even the much-vaunted “complete and high quality protein.” Much of the food served in conventional meals is cooked or otherwise processed, thus destroying all the enzymes, and damaging and altering all the other nutrients. The so-called complete protein of animal foods would only apply to the entire animal. Muscle meats (most commonly consumed) and organ meats are deficient both in protein and calcium. After separation and heating, the amino acids from enzyme-resistant linkages, and the biological value of the protein has dropped some 50%.
A well-planned Hygienic diet does provide all of the nutrients, and provides a very favorable sodium-potassium ratio and a favorable calcium-phosphorus ratio.
No food is complete in itself, but sunflower seeds come very close. These little kernels contain practically the whole spectrum of important nutritive elements, including quality protein. They also contain about every known vitamin except Vitamin C—and even develop this one when sprouted.
Moreover, sunflower seeds contain highly digestible polyunsaturated fatty acids. They contain Vitamin E, which prevents the rancidity of the oils contained in the seeds, and this is one of the few sun-following plants which contain Vitamin D. Sunflower seeds contain generous amounts of Vitamin A, B-complex factors, Vitamin K, and a bonanza of minerals and trace elements, including potassium, iron, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and zinc.
The American Indians used sunflower seeds for food long before white men arrived. In Middle Eastern countries, they’re included as a regular course at meals, much as we serve salads. In Russia, sunflower seeds are the national snack, as regular as popcorn and peanuts here. Russian czars are said to have fed their soldiers successfully on two pounds of the seeds daily in their rations.
Sesame seeds pose some problems. They are small and perhaps difficult to masticate, and therefore some people like to grind them and sprinkle them over the salad. Unhulled, or brown, sesame seeds are somewhat toxic and should not be used. The usual hulled, white sesame seeds are even worse, because bleaches and toxic solvents are used to remove the hulls;
Acceptable hulled sesame seeds, hulled mechanically, are now available. If you want to use sesame seeds occasionally, these are the ones to get.
If you buy the best and freshest nuts available, in season, you can store them until the next year’s harvest. Unshelled nuts may be held at room temperature for a few months, sometimes as long as six months, except in very warm weather.
Formerly, I stored my reserve supply of nuts in the freezer, where they remained stable and fresh-tasting. We never observed any loss of flavor or texture. Of course, nuts do not freeze, even in the freezer, because their water content is very low.
When a food is frozen, its water content expands, causing bursting of the cell walls, and spilling of the contents, thus destroying the cell. When the food is thawed, a loss of texture is observed. A loss of nutrients also occurs, due to oxidation. Decomposition speedily follows thawing if thawed food is not used immediately. There is also some deterioration which occurs while the food is frozen.
Nuts do not contain enough water to expand and burst the cell walls. Nuts which have not yet been harvested seem to suffer no damage from being stored at freezing temperatures and remain fertile after having been exposed to below freezing temperatures. The question is, does the situation change after harvesting, and can the freezing temperatures then have adverse effects?
Calvin Arnold, director of Agricultural Research in Monticello, Florida, says that freezer storage is the best way to maintain the quality of pecans, in or out of the shell. He says that if they are frozen soon after harvesting, they can last several years. He warns that you should not ever try to refreeze them after thawing. This would seem to indicate that changes do occur as a result of freezing.
In March 1977, I read a report in Consumers Digest which led me to change my practice of storing nuts. This report pointed out that nutrient loss is caused by very high and very low temperatures, and that freezing temperatures particularly destroy Vitamin E. Since Vitamin E is a significant factor in nuts and seeds, I decided to discontinue the storage of nuts in the freezer. Results: excellent!
As of this writing, November 1981, I have just finished last year’s supply of shelled pecans, which had been stored in moisture-proof pliofilm bags in my refrigerator, and started on my fresh supply. Amazingly, they both tasted about the same: fresh, tasty, crisp and flavorful. There was no sign of rancidity and no loss of flavor or texture from the year’s refrigerator storage at about 42 degrees.
We buy our seeds (sunflower, sesame, pumpkin) as needed, usually five or ten pounds at a time, from Jaffe or the health food store, and store them in the refrigerator of course. We use more than sixty pounds of sunflower seeds in a year (two people), so we don’t attempt to buy the whole year’s supply at one time. We use sesame and pumpkin seeds in quite small quantities.
If you are still “sold” on storing your nuts in the freezer, you might compromise by storing a several months’ supply in the refrigerator and the balance in the freezer.
Chestnuts are quite perishable. They lose moisture and spoil. If fresh, they will keep in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for up to a week.
Fresh coconuts, in the shell, will keep at room temperature for a month or more. They will keep longer, in moisture-proof pliofilm bags in the refrigerator, depending on how fresh they are. After a coconut is opened, the coconut meat will stay fresh a few days in a jar, submerged in the liquid from the coconut, or submerged in water. For longer storage, fresh grated coconut can be submerged in the coconut liquid and frozen in containers.
Dried coconut may be stored in the refrigerator, in a moisture-proof bag, for a month or longer; in the freezer, almost indefinitely. It is never a good idea to store food in the freezer more than six months to a year.
Peanuts, shelled or unshelled, will keep in moisture-proof containers in the refrigerator for at least several months. Peanut butter is a different story, of course. If you use peanut butter, it is best to make it or get it fresh in very small quantities, as peanut butter, or any nut butter, is subject to rancidity. If necessary, nut butters may be stored in the refrigerator for about a week.
Are English walnuts and black walnuts preferred varieties?
They are both more acid in metabolic reaction than other nuts, so it would be advisable to use them only occasionally.
I find sesame seeds difficult to chew. Is it advisable to grind them?
It is all right to grind and sprinkle them on your salad. Some people are able to chew them well, but if you don’t, they will pass through your system without assimilation.
Is it better to use frozen organically grown fruit, or fresh fruit that is commercially grown?
If it is your own fruit, and you have rushed it from the tree to the freezer, without heating, sugar or other additives, and you eat it just barely thawed, it is quite a good product, but never as good as the freshly picked fruit, eaten ripe and fresh from the tree, with no loss of flavor, texture or nutrients. If you use this frozen fruit, you should also use some other fruit that is not frozen—even though it is not organically grown—to be certain to obtain from this fruit whichever nutrients may have been damaged or destroyed in the freezing and thawing process.
In the winter in the north, there are few varieties, of good quality fresh fruit available. What should I do about fruit meals at that time?
I can tell you what we do. Of course, citrus is available all winter, and it is possible to have organically grown citrus shipped from Florida. We live in Florida and use citrus regularly until melons are again available. We do realize that people who live in the north may not find citrus as agreeable or well-tolerated as people who live where the citrus grows.
I have told you how to get organically grown apples. We get enough to last most of the winter. We use some grapes, and some pears. Bananas are always available. Avocados are usually also available. Kiwifruit is now available through the year, and you can usually find pineapples also.
In the winter we usually use more dried fruit. When a variety of good fresh fruit is available, we use dried fruit only occasionally. In winter, we like to use more of the less-sweet varieties of dried fruit, such as organically grown dried apples (when we run out of fresh ones), organically grown raisins (when we don’t have grapes), organically grown dried cherries, and soaked organically grown dried apricots. We also use some dates and figs, sparingly, because they are so sweet. We use only one variety of dried fruit in the course of one day.
We also use some of our frozen peaches and frozen figs from our own trees.
We know for certain that heating foods (that is, cooking) destroys foods by changing their chemical and organic structure. Proteins are coagulated (fused and hardened) and their amino acid molecules are broken up (deaminized), thus making them unusable. Carbohydrates (starches and sugars) become partially or wholly caramelized, though this is not readily detectable in the earlier stages of cooking. Caramelized sugars are indigestible, hence toxic to the body. Minerals are changed to their unusable and poisonous inorganic state and vitamins are largely, if not wholly, ruined.
The question arises whether the opposite extreme, freezing, likewise alters the chemical and organic structure of foods. Let’s pursue this method of food preservation.
First, we should note that freezing does not affect foods of little water content—nuts, seeds, dried legumes and dried fruits lose nothing by freezing. In nature, seeds and nuts remain fertile no matter how cold it gets. The more water a food contains, the more it is adversely affected by freezing.
When a food is frozen, its water expands. This causes two immediately destructive occurrences:
In addition to bursting the cell walls of foods and thus allowing oxidation to occur, two other things happen:
Oxidation of burst cells is the foremost cause of food deterioration during frozen storage. Frozen foods never taste as good to an unperverted palate as their fresh counterparts, even if no additives and pre-freezing treatments are employed. This is, of course, due to their deterioration while frozen.
While microorganisms such as bacteria are also inert during freezing, they become active just as soon as they are thawed. Hence, frozen foods, once removed from the freezer, decompose much more rapidly than do fresh foods. As mentioned, this is because of the bursting of the cell walls of the food when its own water expands and because of the subsequent decomposition through oxidation, self-destruct lysosomes and the final cleanup crew, bacteria.
It is well to repeat that food is rapidly destroyed when cell walls are burst, whether by cooking, blending, juicing, mashing or freezing. Oxidation occurs when cell contents are exposed to the air, and if temperatures are favorable, the cells’ own lysosomes self-destruct its components.
Does this mean that banana “ice cream,” fruit “smoothies” made with frozen bananas, and other frozen foods aren’t truly healthful? Well, unfortunately, YES! Frozen foods have a similar effect on our organism as lightly steamed foods. Frozen foods should be used in moderation if at all. They may be helpful in inducing people to change over to their natural diet, especially people who are not willing to give up frozen treats such as ice cream Or some kind of dessert. Banana “ice cream” is a fair substitute and is far less harmful than frozen products containing additives, sugar, milk, honey, etc.
Also, remember that in our stressful environment, foods which digest quickly give us fewer problems than foods slow to digest (cooked foods, frozen foods and foods rich in oils and proteins such as nuts and seeds).
Frozen food must remain our stomach until it is warmed to body temperature. This delay can lead to fermentation of fruit sugars before the food reaches the small intestine for absorption. If we become emotionally upset (angry, irritated, annoyed, frustrated, etc.) while there is food in our stomach, digestion will be suspended and discomfort may follow.
Easily and quickly digested foods such as fresh fruits, on the other hand, will result in much briefer and less intense discomfort if you experience any stressful emotions.
Whenever you wonder which foods are best for humans, just look to nature for answers. Nature’s only food storage and preservation method is drying. Fruits and berries will dry on the tree or vine if birds, insects or humans don’t get to them first. Peas, beans and other legumes will dry when left in their pods. Dried foods which are frozen are not harmed because of their extremely small water content: there’s not enough water to expand and burst the cell walls.
Nature provides us with food during every season. Thanks to modern transportation and refrigeration methods, people in northern climates can eat relatively fresh food the year round. Unsulphured dried fruits are available in many health, food stores. In most cases we are better off using fresh or dried foods than foods which have been frozen.
I heard that sunflower seeds must be regarded as a cereal product and that, although they contain good protein, etc., they really are not good Hygienic fare and should not be used very much. What is your opinion?
Although sunflower seeds are plant seeds, they are not grass seed. The chemical composition of cereal and sunflower seeds is quite different. Most cereals contain from 60-70% carbohydrate, 7-16% protein, approximately 7% fat and 1-3% mineral matter. The composition of sunflower seeds is 19.9% carbohydrates, 47.3% fats and 24% proteins. There is a higher percentage of protein in sunflower seeds than in cereals and a much lower percentage of carbohydrates. Sunflower seeds also contain more fat than ordinary cereals, thus making their composition more like nuts than cereal. They are very easily digested and should definitely be used in the Hygienic diet.
I have just read of the unhealthful effects of food packaged in plastic. Is plastic next to food truly detrimental to our health?
Yes. Foods, being composed of semi-solid materials and most of them containing acids, will have a tendency to absorb some of the poisonous chemicals from the plastic. Food that has been adjacent to plastic should not be eaten.
Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, and sulphur are some of the common elements used in making plastics. The plastic chemist gets his elements from such substances as coal, petroleum, and cellulose from cotton fiber. Salt, air and water are also used. Fillers are added to the plastic resin before the finished product is made. Some fillers which are added are wood flour, cotton, asbestos, mica, and cold plasticizers are often added to make what would normally be a hard plastic into a soft pliable plastic. Coloring agents are also added. Transparent sheets of plastic are usually basically composed of formaldehyde and urea. If used with acid foods, the plastic tends to dissolve into the food and render it toxic. No fumes seem to exude from cold plastics. However, allergic dermatitis and other ailments are often developed in those working with the chemicals used in the manufacture of plastics.
Although carnivores, whose digestion is adapted to flesh, can live successfully on a frugivorous diet, the frugivores do very poorly on a flesh diet. Is the above statement entirely true? If so, could you explain why?
It is a well-known fact that carnivorous animals living naturally in the jungles partake mainly of fruits during certain seasons of the year. Otto Carque and many other naturalists think that, in the beginning of life, there were no carnivorous animals, and that they became so because of the ice age or other stressful changes in the environment. We see a change in dietary habits today in the anthropoid apes. As they are squeezed out of their natural grazing areas by civilization and forced to live in too small a grazing area, a few of the group will be found partaking of eggs, or termites, or ants or sometimes they will kill a smaller animal and eat it like a carnivore.
The observation indicated by the question is quite true. Carnivorous animals can be fed vegetarian diets and thrive in excellent health as a result of the diet. The reason for this is that vegetable fare produces less wear and tear on the organs of purification and elimination than does animal fare. The kidneys, liver and digestive glands are worked less and the animal is better nourished by vegetables than when he is fed flesh and animal products, cooked and lacking in alkaline minerals.
When you place man on a diet for which he is not adapted, this places a stress on his organs of purification and elimination. As he has never adapted to the carnivorous diet, his liver is smaller than that of a carnivore and he cannot detoxify and purify the poisonous products inherent in flesh food as well as a carnivorous animal. His kidneys are also smaller and become diseased from the overwork caused by a diet too high in protein and toxic material incident to the consumption of flesh, eggs and other animal products.
Please comment on the current craze for high roughage foods, like eating bran every day.
Many years ago Graham and other health-minded pioneers emphasized the importance of whole foods, containing all of their natural bulk. It was their idea to teach people to eat unprocessed foods such as fruit, vegetables, nuts and whole wheat containing all its bran. Constipation, they said, stems from eating foods which have been robbed of their bulk by processing.
Commercial-minded citizens soon found a means of exploiting this idea. “Put some bran in your diet and ban constipation forever.” From then until now people have been prodding their bowels to action by using bran. This was not the idea behind Graham’s education. He was urging that the entire diet be changed and that it include the bulk of all natural unprocessed foods. He was not advocating fragmentation of foods.
Actually, using a lot of bran overworks the bowels, and it is totally unnecessary if one is on a natural diet containing all unprocessed and uncooked foods. Bowels will function as they should when foods natural to man’s digestive tract are eaten. The whole wheat berry contains the bran natural to it. The bran is the skin of the wheat. It should be taken in proportion to the wheat if wheat is eaten, not as a fragment of a part of the wheat.
Is the transparent skin covering each section of grapefruit and orange of any nutritional value? Should it be eaten?
The skin covering sections of an orange may be and should be eaten with the orange, but the skin of the grapefruit has a bitter quality, and the general Hygienic rule is that if a substance is bitter to the normal unperverted palate, then it usually has a toxic quality to it and should be shunned as food, even though it may contain minerals and vitamins. The blossom of the poppy plant, containing opium, also contains minerals and vitamins. Just as the animals in the wild rely on their taste buds to guide them to their natural food, so man must rely on his sense of taste. Instinctively we do not like bitter things and would shun them if we were not wrongly educated.
What a treat figs are when picked fully ripened from the tree. I have experienced this a number of times and cannot think of a meal more satisfying.
Historically, the fig has been used as food for thousands of years by many cultures throughout the Mediterranean area. This is considered to be its native habitat, although it can be cultivated in all warm, temperate zone climates.
There are four main commercial varieties: the Black Mission, the Adriatic, the Kadota and the Smyrna, of which the Calimyrna is a variety. These can be distinguished from one another by their unique coloring. The Black Mission is dark purple or black-skinned with pinkish meat; the Adriatic is green-skinned with meat resembling raspberry jam; the Kadota is also green-skinned but the meat is light colored; and the Calimyrna is gold-skinned with light brown meat. (I am not familiar with other Smyrna varieties.)
In chemical composition, the fig closely resembles that of human milk, especially in regard to the proportion of mineral salts. Quoting from Otto Carque in his masterful treatise, Rational Diet, he says, “While the percentage of fat in mother’s milk is higher, the fig contains more fruit sugar, thus furnishing the same amount of heat units per ounce. It will also be noted that the important elements of sodium, iron and sulphur are contained in larger proportion in the fig than in milk and wheat.”
“The growing child, on account of increasing muscular and mental activity, needs more of these elements to carry on the process of oxidation and elimination. These elements must be more frequently renewed than others, and a sufficient supply of them in our food is a matter of great importance. In all cases of physical and mental exhaustion, the fig is, therefore, of exceptional value in replenishing the vital forces of the body.”
So if you are fortunate enough to have access to this exceptional taste treat, please enjoy figs as a, fruit meal with other sweet fruits, or better yet, eat them alone and appreciate their unique flavor.
Reprinted from Fruition, Issue 6
Avocados have an image problem.
Everybody knows they’re good, but this isn’t enough.
Say avocado, and most weight-conscious people say “no thanks.” Let’s face it—they have a lot of calories. But it’s not as bad as you thought; you get a lot of nutrition for those calories.
A 1-pound avocado supplies 70 percent of an average adult’s daily needs for Vitamin C, a fifth of needed Vitamins A, B1 and B2, a third of the daily Vitamin B3 requirements, and generous portions of such vital minerals as iron, phosphorus and magnesium.
All this comes at a relatively high calorie cost-about 480 calories in the 1-pound Florida avocado. This reflects the avocado’s makeup, which is about 12 percent oil and 8 percent carbohydrate—more like a nut than fruit.
But, as fattening foods go, an avocado’s calories are relatively “clean.” The fats occur in simple, easily assimilated molecules that are cholesterol-free and low in sodium.
Avocados are among the most ideal between-meal snacks for dieters, according to experts at the Institute of Bariatrics (fat studies) at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Miami Beach. Since most people eat them fresh, “the essential fatty acids in the avocado remain unrefined. They retain the nitrogen compounds that act as chemical ‘tags,’ to let the liver know how to break down and use them.
“The fats in the avocado will not be turned into bulge. They’ll become energy reserves, lining membranes for the nerves... The same goes for the carbohydrates in the avocado. They’re complex carbohydrates of the type that everybody needs. The body knows what to do with them.” But many remain skeptical. As one Weight Watchers International director explains it, “I’m no more of a nutritionist than anyone else in our group. We’re all just former fat people.”
“But I DO know that avocados are definitely off our list, at least in the beginning stages of our weight-loss program. They’re simply too fatty.”
The avocado is still largely unknown outside the Western Hemisphere. Europe’s culinary Bible, Larousse Gastronomique, dismisses it as a nut-like fruit “much prized by the Americans.”
But Latin Americans have traditionally taken a different view from Europeans, esteeming the avocado even in pre-Columbian times.
Legend has it that the 16th century Aztec emperor Montezuma entertained Hernando Cortes with a feast featuring avocados upon the conquistador’s arrival in Mexico.
The Spaniards, entranced with the new fruit, were supposed to have murmured “bocados”, meaning “what a mouthful!” Which accounts, we are told, for the avocado’s name.
The Random House Dictionary of the English Language offers a different—and more plausible-story of the word’s origin. “Avocado” is reportedly a corrupt pronunciation of the Nahuatl Indian word for testicle.
If so, the allusion might be to the fruit’s appearance or its supposed aphrodisiac properties.
Unripe supermarket avocados can be hurried along if buried in a bin of flour or rice or put in a paper bag.
They’re ripe when they yield a little to the touch. Don’t wait until they start developing dark or soft spots; that means they’re starting to spoil.
Never cut an avocado before it is ripe; the flesh will be hard and bitter and will never mature. Fully ripe avocados will keep for a few days chilled. They don’t freeze well unless pureed.
If you’re only using half an avocado at a time, leave the seed in the remaining half to keep it from spoiling in the refrigerator. After it has been cut, the fruit will discolor a little; scrub it with a slice of lemon or lime to somewhat restore its bright chartreuse color.
The avocado’s leathery shell makes a natural—even elegant—dish from which to spoon the tender flesh. A halved avocado, garnished with just a little lemon juice if desired, can make a satisfying light lunch or snack unto itself.
Part of what makes it so elusive is the chameleon quality of an avocado’s flavor. The cup-shaped depression left when the pit is removed is an ideal spot for adding whatever you wish. The fruit also takes on some of the flavor of whatever you add.
What are “natural” foods? It depends with whom you talk. The term has varied meanings to consumers. Food companies have established definitions to suit their own products. Retail outlets from food stores to health food outlets have their own idea of what “natural” foods may or may not be.
The federal government has no established standards for the use of the term, though guidelines for its use have been proposed in the food advertising regulations of the Federal Trade Commision (FTC), expected to be acted upon by Congress this fall.
But for now the term is up for grabs, and that’s a confusing situation.
“Natural foods are those that do not contain any man-made substances or any chemical preservatives,” says Dick Peterson, a food shopper who seeks out “natural” foods. “Fresca is a totally unnatural drink,” according to Peterson. “I gave up drinking, it when I read the ingredients listed on the can,” he said. “It’s just like Chemistry 101.”
Another consumer also described the term by what it isn’t. In her mind, Jell-O with its artificial coloring, flavoring and sugar, is exemplary.
Others see “natural” as foods which are organically grown with natural fertilizers. Artificial coloring is prohibited in some people’s definition. Added sugar is considered a no-no by others.
Ever since the term natural became a selling point, food companies have tempted shoppers with products so labeled. But definitions and standards vary among food companies. Quaker Oats, for example, has developed a definition of natural as it applies to its products. It states that “A food or a blend of foods derived entirely from components as they are found in nature (water lost on dehydration excepted) may be considered as natural. Such food or blend of foods may be processed to the extent that inedible or non-nutritive substances are removed, or if only inconsequential amounts of nutrients are removed, or if only the form of the food is changed.”
Pillsbury discourages the use of the term natural when referring to its products, although two of them, bottled apple juice and unbleached flour, are touted as natural. Its use of the term relates to a product that has a minimal amount of processing, or as with unbleached flour, the product is “naturally” aged. Kraft uses the term natural on its cheese products to distinguish them from the processed variety. The company also has a group of dairy products promoted as natural. These products are formulated with ingredients that are not synthesized. “We try to use the term natural only as we think consumers perceive it,” a legal spokesman for the company said.
If the FTC food regulations are adopted as proposed, a standard for the use of the term in advertising would provide these boundaries for determining the claims in food advertising: “Advertising shall not represent that a food is natural or a natural food if: (1) Such food has undergone more than a minimal processing after harvest or slaughter, where minimal processing may include: the removal of inedible substances, the application of physical processes (e.g., cutting, grinding, drying or pulping) that change only the form of the food; and/or processing necessary to make the food edible or safe for human consumption or to preserve it; (2) Such food contains any artificial flavorings, color additive or chemical preservative (as defined by the Food and Drug Administration) or any other artificial or synthetic ingredient; (3) Such food is composed of two or more ingredients and one or more of such ingredients could not be represented as natural or a natural food in accordance with this paragraph.”
But these probably are not the final standards for advertising natural foods in the FTC regulations, which also address the use of such terms as energy and calories, organic foods, health foods, fatty acids and cholesterol. The FTC proposal has yet to be modified to reflect the opinions of consumer, food company and health food groups who responded during the public comment period.
There is concern by the FTC staff as well as such groups as the Institute of Food Technologists that if a food is labeled “natural,” it will imply the product is superior to processed foods in terms of nutrient content and safety.
The Department of Agriculture in the state of Maine recently passed a regulation introduced and supported by the organic farmers and gardeners association in the state, which wanted to police their own industry. The law establishes guidelines for the use of the terms natural and organic on food labelling or advertising, and sets down definitions of “minimal processing” and “raw agricultural commodity.”
It prohibits the use of the term health food on product labeling or in advertising, but allows the use of the term to identify a store or restaurant as such. Additionally, it prohibits that a food advertised as natural or organically grown make claims that it is superior in nutrient content or safety.
In Maine, growers, processors and sellers must keep records of crop locations, additions to soil, ingredients and suppliers for two years after the food is sold and which must be supplied on demand to the State Department of Agriculture.
Enforcement is left to the courts, but there are some loopholes in the law, according to Daniel Harlan, assistant to the commissioner of agriculture. The law allows for certification but does not say who will do the certifying of products. It also states that the Department of Agriculture has no “affirmation obligation” to enforce the regulation. The regulation does not go into effect until January 1980, and Harlan expects some adjustments will need to be made as “we get experience.”
Whatever the outcome of the Maine regulation and the proposed federal guidelines for advertising, it’s likely that fewer products will carry the term “natural” in the future.
Chicago Tribune
25.2. Storage Of Fresh Vegetables
25.3. Purchasing And Storing Seeds For Sprouting And Ready-To-Eat Sprouts
25.4. Selection And Storage Of Dried Grains And Legumes
25.5. Bread—General Information
25.6. Butter And Oil—General Information
25.8. Packaged, Frozen And Canned Foods—General Information And Storage
Article #1: Well! You Wanted To Know By V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Vegetables are a very important part of an optimally nutritional diet, and can be the most enjoyable part of a meal if properly chosen and prepared.
Dr. Shelton says, “A large raw vegetable salad with each dinner is one of the most important elements of the diet. As a preventive of disease, it is far superior to all the vaccines and scrums ever devised.”
Vegetables are anabolic (bodybuilding) foods, yet, unlike most protein foods, they are almost consistently alkaline in reaction, have very little fat and contain adequate amounts of dietary fiber.
Green leafy vegetables are the richest source of chlorophyll, as well as minerals and vitamins. They also contain small amounts of protein of high biological value, which is easier to assimilate than concentrated proteins.
A diet containing excessive amounts of protein and carbohydrates would not be nearly so harmful if balanced with a generous amount of vegetables.
Vegetables add variety to the menu and play an important role in the nutrition of humans.
Vegetables are best when eaten immediately after they are picked from the garden. Try to at least grow some of your own lettuce (many vegetables can even be grown in crates, if there is really no garden space available), or find someone in your area who can share with you. Green leafy vegetables are so important that it is worth going to some trouble to assure a supply of the best available. All vegetables have the most to offer nutritionally and have the best flavor when organically grown and eaten in the raw state immediately after harvesting. The more time that passes after harvesting, the more chemical changes occur which alter the nutritional composition and the taste.
Fresh vegetables are usually transported rapidly from field to market in chilled vans to keep them at maximum quality. If handled properly at the wholesale and retail levels, they can reach you in fairly good condition. Unlike fruit, the concern is freshness, not ripeness. It is incumbent upon you to learn to pick the freshest and best, and to reject poor quality vegetables that have been mishandled or that have just been on hand too long. Even when you must depend on conventional sources for your produce, you can become a wise, canny, selective, knowledgeable shopper, and you and your family and dinner guests will eat the best food available.
If it’s fresh, it looks fresh—not wilted, wrinkled, drooping or otherwise blemished. The color should be characteristic of the variety. The degree of maturity is also important. Most vegetables are best when slightly immature; if large and mature, they are usually tough.
As with fruits, most of the vegetables available in the markets have been treated with heavy doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Washing can somewhat decrease those that remain on the outside surface, though nothing can remove the residues which are absorbed through the roots. Some vegetables can be peeled, but it is sad to have to remove the skin and thus lose the nutrients which lie immediately beneath it.
Some vegetables have their own protective coating, like podded peas and beans. Vegetables like lettuce can be washed only lightly to remove dirt and sand, and used “as is.” Unless you grow your own, or obtain organically-grown vegetables, that’s the best you can do. You will still be healthier and better nourished than nonvegetarians, and, as previously explained, chemical residues in the bodies of vegetarians are considerably lower than in the bodies of meateaters.
Some vegetables may also be waxed. Watch for the wax coatings on cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, parsnips and rutabagas. Either try to buy unwaxed vegetables, or peel them. If you must peel, don’t cut too deeply. Try to discard only the thin skin. The greatest concentration of nutrients is just beneath the skin.
Red coloring may be added to sweet potatoes or to some new white potatoes. Don’t buy colored vegetables.
Potatoes and onions are frequently treated with an anti-sprouting chemical. If the potatoes look fresh and good, and a few are showing signs of tiny sprouts, that would seem to indicate that they have not been treated. I pick those that are not sprouting, of course.
Tomatoes may be picked green and gassed in the van on the way to market. You can tell by the color and the taste. Tomatoes that were not picked prematurely will ripen to a deep-glowing red color, the flesh will not be mushy, and the taste will be superb.
If you locate a source of “organically grown” vegetables, check the source to try to find out if they really are as represented. Usually, there are certain indications, certain differences in appearance and taste. In any event, don’t accept vegetables that are poor quality or old just because you have been assured they are organically grown.
Keep trying to find organically grown produce, but in the meantime these lessons can help you pick the freshest and best of what is seasonably available.
Peak season is March through May. Artichokes are grown in California and, while they are shipped all through the year, they are best from March through May. This vegetable is usually cooked. Select firm, compact, tightly closed heads that are heavy in relation to size, with green, fresh-looking leaves. Size is not related to quality or flavor. You may sometimes find artichokes with frost discoloration on the outer leaves. The inner leaves are still good and unaffected. Reject artichokes with brownish soft spots near the stem or on leaf edges.
This plant has potato-like tubers which are delicious eaten raw. It is crisp and tastes a little like a fresh water chestnut. It also has a delicate flavor when cooked. Dr. Vetrano has expressed the opinion that the starch in Jerusalem artichokes is not readily absorbed by the body.
Peak season is March through June. Asparagus is usually cooked, but it is delicious raw. Select deep green, well-rounded spears with compact, tightly closed tips. The young slim tips are the most tender and best tasting. Avoid wilted, limp, flat or angular stalks. They are usually tough and stringy. Use asparagus as soon as possible; it is very perishable. Dr. Esser says the wild asparagus is a real delicacy. He also says that cultivated asparagus is the choicest of all spring vegetables and should be in every home garden. However, Dr. Burton has expressed the opinion that the fact that the eating of asparagus causes the urine to emit a foul odor, is indicative of this vegetable’s unfavorable reaction in the body, and that he would recommend using it sparingly, if at all.
Peak season is May through October, particularly June and July. Available all year, but of poor quality out of season. Select beans with both ends intact. They should have a pliable, velvety feel, not hard or tough. The color should be fresh and bright-looking and the pods should be young and snap easily. If they are limp and flexible, shriveled or dull, with brown rust spots and serious blemishes, don’t buy them. Young snap beans are delicious raw.
Lima or cranberry beans in the pod are sometimes available. Sometimes other podded beans are available, such as fava beans. Baby limas can be eaten raw. Mature limas, cranberry beans and fava beans have a rather tough skin, and are usually cooked. Cranberry beans are very easy to hull for cooking. Fresh podded beans require no soaking, and cook in half an hour or less. Select fresh-looking unblemished dry pods.
Peak season is June through August, but they are available all year. Small beets are young, sweet and tender and can be eaten raw. The roots should be firm with a smooth surface and dark red color. Wilted leaves indicate less freshness, but the bulbs, if firm, are still satisfactory.
The tops (leaves) are high in oxalic acid (like spinach) and it is not advisable to use them often. A few young tender leaves may be used in the salad. Remove the leaves as soon, as you get the beets home. Allowing the leaves to wilt while still attached to the roots robs the roots of some nutritional value.
Peak season is October through May. The quality of broccoli available at other seasons is not as good. (Select firm stalks with dark green or purplish green compact clusters of buds, tightly closed and not on the verge of flowering. None of the buds should be opened enough to show the yellow flower. Stems should not be too thick or tough. Avoid buds that are spread, yellow or wilted. The leaves and tender buds may be eaten raw.
Peak season is September through February. These look like miniature cabbages, but the raw flavor is not as good as that of sweet raw cabbage or broccoli. They can be eaten raw by chopping and mixing into the salad. Select tight, firm, unblemished heads with a bright green color, and no faded yellow soft or wilted leaves. If crisp and green, the outer leaves may be a little loose.
Available all year. Supply peaks in January and runs low in August and September. Select heads that are compact and heavy, with outer leaves that are deeply colored (green or red) and free from blemishes. The outer leaves may be loose and are usually discarded, since they are very tough. If the outer leaves are missing, the cabbage is not fresh, and will probably not be sweet enough to be eaten raw. When green cabbage turns white, it is old. Dark spots also indicate age. Cabbage should be light green (or red for that variety). The three varieties of cabbage are the common green variety, red cabbage, and green savoy cabbage, which has crinkly leaves. Red cabbage and savoy cabbage are usually more expensive, but we prefer a nice, sweet, fresh head of green cabbage. Although darker colored vegetables usually contain more nutrients, Dr. Vetrano says that green cabbage is of greater nutritional value than red cabbage. Avoid cabbages that have had the butt end excessively trimmed, because this causes dehydration. Do not eat bitter cabbage—it contains irritants.
Available all year. Organically-grown carrots are often available through health food stores, but they are usually very large, overly mature carrots suitable for juicing, which is why the health food stores carry them. Young, tender carrots fresh from your garden are the best for eating raw. Carrots with the green tops still on are sometimes available in certain produce sections and, of course, they are fresh. Otherwise, select firm, smooth carrots with a good, rich, orange color. Avoid flabby or shriveled carrots, or those with large green areas. Good carrot taste comes from the bright orange area where sugar is stored. The nutritional value of the carrot makes it an important vegetable.
Peak season is September through November, low May through August. Cauliflower is available all year, but its price and quality are better in season. Select compact to solid heads with white to creamy white clusters (and fresh green leaves, if they have not been removed). Cauliflower accumulates black smudges as it ages. If not too many, they can be scrubbed or cut off. Cauliflower eaten raw should be the freshest possible. If it is spotted, or the green leaves are getting dark and withered, it’s old.
Available all year. Select crisp, thick, unblemished stalks with as many green leaves as possible. If the stalks are cracked or loose, don’t buy them. Avoid limp, rusty celery. Celery is one of the best of the salad vegetables, being succulent and juicy. Try to find celery that is medium green in color. If it is dark green, the taste is very strong, and if it is white (blanched), it is of low nutritional value.
Available all year. This is an excellent salad vegetable, if not too mature and tough. Select crisp, light green heads, with no wilted, yellow leaves.
Occasionally available. This is a member of the squash family. It is light green, has white, juicy flesh, and is delicious eaten raw, like a cucumber. It is native to tropical America, but can be grown in gardens on the southeast coast, from South Carolina southward, and in southern California.
Various Chinese vegetables are available in some supermarkets. Celery cabbage (listed separately) is also known as Chinese cabbage. The water chestnut (also listed separately) is another Chinese vegetable. Bok choy and suey choy are quite frequently available. Bok choy looks a little like celery cabbage, but has very dark green, wide leaves at the top. Suey choy looks like a shorter, plumper version of celery cabbage. Neither of these is as good in the salad as some other vegetables, but they are popular for use in chop suey and give a wider variety of ingredients for vegetable chop suey. Young shoots of the bamboo plant are much like asparagus, but are seldom found fresh in this country except in areas with Chinese and Japanese populations. Other unfamiliar but excellent Oriental vegetables, such as Arrowhead, water bamboo, and unusual squashes, may be found near these communities. Chinese vegetables are interesting and nutritionally valuable additions to the menu.
A mild member of the onion family, perennial and hardy. Sometimes available in markets growing in pots. Hygienists do not recommend onions, which are irritants when eaten raw. Chives may be mild enough for occasional use by people with unimpaired digestions. Easy to grow in the garden. May be dug up, in the autumn, in small clumps, potted and kept growing in the house.
Peak season is May through September. Best months vary according to local season in your area. Don’t buy corn out of season. Corn begins to lose its delicate, sweet flavor immediately after harvesting, and unless it is really fresh and in its prime, it will have tasteless, starchy kernels, instead of kernels filled with sugar-sweet milk. In fact, corn is considered a green vegetable when freshly picked, and converts its natural sugar to starch in only two hours, so that it then must be classified as starchy. When freshly picked, it is delicious raw. People who buy their corn in supermarkets rarely know the fine flavor of fresh corn, but, occasionally, I have been lucky enough to be on hand for a fresh shipment of sweet, tender corn which we could enjoy without cooking. Select corn with rich green tightly folded husks, and brown dry silk. The stem should not be dry or discolored. Pull down the leaves a bit to check the kernels, which should be plumb and milky, uniform in size and color, with no bare spots. If the kernels are large, the corn is usually tough. Small, delicate kernels are the tenderest. If the milk spurts from a pierced kernel, the corn is fresh and sweet. Don’t buy ears of corn which have been husked; this causes the flavor and nutritional value to dissipate rapidly. Color varies from white to yellowish to yellow, and is not a reliable indication of quality.
Available all year with a slight peak in May and June. If you buy cucumbers in season in your area, you will be more likely to find them unwaxed. The European or English cucumber is long and slender, has few seeds, and sometimes reaches a length of more than three feet. It is almost seedless because it is asexual, grown wholly in greenhouses. The common garden variety comes in many sizes and shapes. Small, young cucumbers are best for flavor and quality. Some supermarkets feature packages of fresh “pickling” cucumbers, which are unwaxed, small in size and contain small, tender seeds. Inspect these packages carefully; if you get them shortly after packing, before they have had a chance to deteriorate, they are excellent. If you must buy waxed cucumbers, select the smaller sizes, and be sure to peel them. Don’t buy cucumbers which are beginning to turn yellow, or which have withered ends or mushy spots. Cucumbers are low in nutritional value, since they are more than 96% water, but they are good food, nevertheless, containing valuable nutrients, and are delightful additions to the salad, offsetting other more concentrated foods. Foods with high water content, like cucumbers and watermelon, help to comprise the water-sufficient Hygienic diet.
Available all year, with a slight peak in August. The tough skin of eggplant affords it some natural protection against chemical farming. Although the skin is edible, I usually peel eggplant, because it is often waxed. If it doesn’t feel waxed, and you want to use the skin, scrub it as best you can. Select firm, bright, shiny, heavy eggplants with a uniform rich purple color, with no brown or bruised spots, or cracked or shriveled skin. Select small-sized eggplants whenever possible. The larger ones are apt to be over-mature, perhaps bitter, and containing large hard seeds that are best removed. Small, soft, light seeds are fine and add to the tastiness of this food. Some people use raw slices of eggplant as a sandwich with tomatoes, sprouts and other foods as a filler, but unless the eggplant is quite young and tender, with very tiny, soft seeds, it will probably be best cooked.
Available all year. Members of the onion and garlic family are irritants when eaten raw, due to the presence of considerable amounts of mustard oil. Habitual use can impair the digestive system and weaken the organs of elimination.
Superstitions about the curative powers of garlic and onions are not based on fact. A great “purifying” process does occur when raw garlic and onions are eaten, which is a Herculean effort of the eliminating organs to get rid of the poisonous allicin and irritating mustard oil contained in these bulbs. Allicin is similar to digitalis, in that the body’s reaction to the poison creates a stimulating effect to certain organs. Both of these substances get into the cells, tissues and blood. Since the body cannot make use of such poisonous substances, it calls upon the kidneys, lungs and liver to try to dispose of them, which abuses, overworks and impairs these organs. Garlic and onions are useful as companion plants in the garden to repel insects.
Available all year. It is advisable to avoid foods which contain harmful substances in significant amounts—for example, foods high in oxalic acid. This poisonous substance is a calcium antagonist, and forms crystals which may develop into gallstones or kidney stones in some individuals. Please don’t interpret this information to mean that if the analysis of a plant reveals minute amounts of undesirable substances, it must be stricken from the dietary. If this were true, we would be left with few foods, since some minute amounts of such substances may be found in many good foods. For instance, some over-zealous researchers have been advising against the use of lettuce, because it has been found to contain microscopic amounts of a substance resembling laudanum, a sedative. Hygienists emphatically advise the use of dark green leaves, with the exception of those containing large amounts of oxalic acid or other toxic substances. The dark green leaves of romaine, Bibb, Boston and leaf lettuce are excellent foods and should be used in substantial quantities. Beet greens, spinach, and Swiss chard are so high in oxalic acid that it is inadvisable to use them as food. Small immature leaves of spinach and beet greens are lower in oxalic acid, and a few may be used in the salad. Mature mustard greens contain large amounts of mustard oil, an irritant. Very small mustard green leaves may occasionally be used in the salad. Watercress is too strong and pungent to the taste. Dr. Vetrano says that it is probably due to the large amount of sulphur it contains. Any vegetable that is strong and has a pungent, unpalatable flavor is not eaten by Hygienists. The bitter and pungent taste is nature’s way of warning against them.
Young, sweet garden chicory, endive and escarole are suitable for salads—when mature they are bitter and contain concentrated acids and irritants. Sorrel has edible leaves, but should not be used because it contains much free acid, especially oxalic acid. Pokeweed has young purple shoots, which resemble asparagus, and is used in salads by some people. It is high in oxalic acid; contains toxic substances, and should not be used. Comfrey does not form a part of the Hygienic diet because it has astringent qualities which occasion actions by the body to dispose of these substances. Any plant that occasions vital abnormal actions of the body (as does comfrey) is toxic and should not be used. It is well to be alert against the potential harmful effects of the so-called herbs, which are said to have “curing” properties. Hygienists do not accept the premise that certain plants have such properties. They believe that only the self-healing power of the body, and its continual efforts toward self-preservation, can help to restore health. If certain substances cause a reaction by the body, it is because the body acts to eliminate the threat of those substances. In 1978, the English organization which had been promoting comfrey sent out a warning, saying comfrey had been found to contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which possibly can cause liver cancer “if eaten over a long period of time.” Dr. Vetrano has been warning about the poisonous alkaloids in comfrey for a long time. Hygienists use only foods which are pleasant-tasting and mild, which have no irritating properties, and do not cause the body to react in any way other than to digest and metabolize them. So which greens (other than lettuce) does that leave that are truly good and can be recommended whole-heartedly for use in salad? Small, tender leaves of broccoli and the small tender leaves of kale are the best. Collard, dandelion and turnip leaves are also excellent when sweet, tender and immature. The mature leaves of broccoli, kale, dandelion and turnip may be cooked. If not too mature, bitter or stringy, endive and escarole may also be cooked.
This is grown as an annual spring and fall vegetable. It has a pale green or purple turnip-like swollen stem which grows just above the ground. It has a wonderful flavor when eaten raw and is excellent for salads. It may also be cooked.
Peak season is September, November and in the spring. The taste is similar to that of onion—only milder and sweeter, more delicate and tender. The mature plant produces a stem two inches or more in diameter, and from ten to twelve inches tall, resembling a large, over-sized scallion. As with all members of the onion family it contains the irritant, mustard oil, and should not be eaten raw unless very mild and sweet. It is usually served cooked or used to flavor soups and stews. Select crisp, firm leeks with medium-sized necks and an even, light green color.
Peak season is March through August; available all year. Iceberg lettuce has a crisp texture, and the head is easier to wash than other leafy varieties that must be washed one leaf at a time. It is also the most-readily available, but it is certainly not the best. It lacks much taste, and is much lower in nutritional value than the varieties of lettuce which open to the sun’s rays and produce dark green leaves. Romaine (Cos) lettuce has broad, tender dark green leaves and a loose head. Butterhead lettuce, including Boston and Bibb, has soft, waxy-looking leaves, and is quite succulent. For those with impaired digestion, or chewing difficulties, butterhead lettuce has little fiber and is crisp and crunchy.
As an illustration of the greater nutritional value of romaine and butterhead over iceberg, consider the following figures:
Protein | Calcium | Iron | Potassium | |
Romaine | 1.3% | 68 mgs. per 100 grams | 1.4 mgs. per 100 grams | 264 mgs. per 100 grams |
Boston | 1.2% | 35 mgs. per 100 grams | 2.0 mgs. per 100 grams | 264 mgs. per 100 grams |
Bibb | 1.2% | 35 mgs. per 100 grams | 2.0 mgs. per 100 grams | 264 mgs. per 100 grams |
Iceberg | 0.9% | 20 mgs. Per 100grams | 0.5 mgs. per 100 grams | 175 mgs. per 100 grams |
Iceberg head lettuce has a few outer dark green leaves, which are usually discarded, and the blanched interiors are used, most of it pale, almost white. Leaf lettuce or any variety of garden lettuce is excellent. Even iceberg lettuce grown in home gardens is greener than that found in most stores, and all the outside leaves are used.
Select fresh looking lettuce with no rusty or wilted leaves and with a minimum of damaged edges. The softer the lettuce, the sooner it should be used. Buy butterhead or leaf lettuce for immediate use. Romaine will stay crisp longer. Several varieties of lettuce should be used, varying it from salad to salad, to insure more complete mineral intake. Lettuce should be used in generous quantities.
Available all year with a peak season from March through May and a low July through September. Dr. Esser says that mushrooms are indigestible and generally pass through the digestive system unchanged, and although fairly rich in nutrients, little of them are usable. He says that mushrooms may be eaten, but there are many other true foods which are more deserving of a place on the menu than this edible fungus. If you use them as a novelty, or for the taste or flavor, select young (small to medium) mushrooms. The caps should be closed around the stem, and should be cream-colored or white. As the mushroom ages, the cap pulls away from the stem. Avoid wide open caps and dark “gills” (under the cap), those seriously pitted or discolored, and those with a spongy texture.
Peak season is June through September. Okra is grown and marketed primarily in the south. Small, young pods may be eaten raw, but some people find them unpleasant and “slimy.” Various methods of cooking reduce or neutralize the sliminess, especially by combining with tomatoes. Select small, young green pods, free from blemishes and with tips that bend with very slight pressure. They should be under three inches long, preferably smaller. Avoid pale pods and tough pods with stiff ends. As okra begins to age, it turns yellow-white, then black.
Available all year, peak May through August. Ordinary yellow globe onions, which are mostly used for cooking, are quite uniform in quality. The outer, paper-like layers are thin on fresh onions, thicker on those from storage, but there isn’t much difference otherwise. White onions fall into two categories—grano, which are round and granex, which tend to be flat. In general, the granos are hotter than the granex. The larger Spanish onions (yellow or white-skinned) and Bermuda onions (purplish red) are milder and somewhat sweeter than other varieties, and are often used raw. However, as previously indicated, raw onions are irritating because of their content of mustard oil.
Available all year, slight peak October through December. Unless very young and sweet, parsley contains an excess of oxalic acid. It is usually as a garnish, but if young and sweet, it should be eaten since it is rich in nutrients. Select bright green, crisp leaves.
Peak season is October through April. This is really a winter vegetable, but is on the market throughout the year, generally waxed. I don’t buy waxed parsnips, but watch for the unwaxed ones. This vegetable is usually not tasty and tender enough to be eaten raw, unless very young. Select small or medium-sized, well-shaped, firm parsnips, free of surface blemishes. Avoid large ones which can be tough and woody, and those that are flabby.
English green peas in the pod or black-eyed peas in the pod. Peak season is March through June. Small, young, fresh, bright green, recently harvested peas have the best and sweetest flavor. These will be delicious in the natural raw state, straight from the pod. Overripe peas have a flat, starchy taste, similar to raw peanuts. Select pods that are bright green and velvety to the touch. Be sure to check to see if they snap open easily. They should be well-filled without being swollen. Black-eyed peas in the pod are sometimes available, but are not popular because they are very difficult to hull. Can be eaten raw if young and fresh.
This is a gourmet treat, somewhat expensive to buy, but very easy to grow in the garden. Use when just barely mature—they are really delicious. Select bright green, unblemished peas whose green color has not begun to fade.
Peppers are available all year, mostly green. Slight peak is June through September. Red sweet bell peppers are available intermittently, pimentos rarely. Although most of the sweet peppers on the market are green, those that are fully ripe, and much sweeter and more flavorful, have a bright red color. Buy sweet red bell peppers for immediate use since they deteriorate rapidly when red-ripe. Check carefully around the stem for softness and mold. Green peppers will keep longer. Peppers are frequently waxed. Peppers and pimentos are excellent salad vegetables and are high in Vitamins A and C. Select firm, bright, heavy, unblemished peppers with strong color and full, plump shape. Pimentos are squat-shaped, and when fully ripe, are even sweeter than ripe red bell peppers. Hot peppers, e.g., bananas, chili, jalapenos, are not recommended.
Available year round. “New” potatoes are small potatoes, freshly harvested and often not fully matured. The outer skin is very thin. A little peeling of the skin is normal and does not affect quality. New potatoes can be white or red (or dyed red). They are very tender, high in sugar and low in starch, and spoil rather rapidly. “All-purpose” potatoes are used in various ways, while “baking” potatoes are considered most desirable for producing the best baked potato which is not mealy or dry. As potatoes age, the skin becomes thicker, more wrinkled and drier. A smooth skin indicates a freshly-dug potato; otherwise it has been stored. It is best to bake oval, brown-skinned potatoes from storage.
Look for firm, solid potatoes with no green areas. Green areas mean the potatoes have been exposed to sun while growing, or exposed to light too long. These green spots, as well as potato sprouts from the “eyes”, contain solanine alkaloids which can cause a variety of symptoms, from mental confusion to cardiac depression. If the potato has very small green areas, they can be cut off, but if they are widespread, the potato will be bitter (and toxic!) and should be discarded.
As previously indicated, potatoes have sometimes been treated with sprout-retardant, so try to find organically-grown potatoes. Otherwise, do the best you can, selecting your potatoes in accordance with instructions previously given earlier in this lesson. It is better to buy “dirty” potatoes; pre-washed ones have lost some vitamins and absorbed some water. Besides, if they haven’t been washed, they may not have been treated with sprout retardant.
Immature new potatoes from the home garden are a gourmet treat. White potatoes are not suitable for eating raw; the starch should be dextrinized by heating.
Available all year, slight peak May through July. Unless young and sweet, radishes contain enough sulphur (similar to mustard oil) to irritate the digestive tract. Larger radishes are pungent in flavor and contain woody fiber which is difficult to digest and creates gas. When they are too hot to be eaten entirely alone, it is best to avoid them. People, with impaired digestions should avoid radishes altogether. If you use them, select medium-sized, firm radishes. Avoid large, flabby or spongy ones. Small red radishes may be sharper than the medium-sized.
Available intermittently. Similar to broccoli, but much stronger in flavor. It grows in long, slender stalks. We prefer the milder flavor of broccoli.
(Described under FRUIT—Lesson 24).
(Note: The leaves are not used at all, as they contain large amounts of oxalic acid salts which may be fatally poisonous).
Sometimes available. The fleshy white roots resemble parsnips, and they taste is said to be reminiscent of the oyster. If the leaves are young and crisp, they may be eaten with the salad.
Also called green onions. Pick in May. These are a special variety of hardy onions which do not form bulbs. If young and sweet, they may be used occasionally by people with good digestions. They are usually harvested when eight to ten inches high and half an inch thick. The outer leaves are peeled off and the inner leaves with the white stems are used. If you use them, select fresh firm scallions with bright green leaves.
Some forms available all year. Popular varieties include green zucchini, yellow crookneck, yellow straightneck, and greenish-white pattypan (scalloped cymling squash). The small, immature squash are tender and flavorful and are excellent in salads. All parts, including seeds and skin, are edible. Select those with good color, that are heavy for their size, with a rind soft enough to puncture with a fingernail. Buy for immediate use—they don’t keep well. Avoid zucchini with damaged or black spots, and yellow squash that is starting to turn orange.
Peak season is October and November. Popular varieties are acorn and butternut, available all year. There are many other varieties available during the winter season. Some are buttercup, hubbard, delicious, banana, turban and spaghetti squash. Select squash that is heavy for its size, with a tough, hard rind. These keep well for weeks.
Available year round, peak in November, low May through July. Yams are moist and sweet with a bright orange flesh. Regular sweet potatoes are paler, less moist, and less frequently available. Select small or medium-sized ones, without cracks or damp areas. They’re best if they taper at both ends. Plump ones are the most moist. They should be firm, well-shaped, with a smooth, bright and evenly colored skin, and with no wax or artificial coloring. Shriveled discolored ends, sunken, discolored areas, and wet soft spots are signs of decay. Sweet potatoes and yams decay more rapidly than white potatoes and should be bought for use in the near future.
Peak season June through August. Tomatoes are on the market all year, but most of them are not worth buying. The best tomatoes are generally the locally-grown varieties, which have matured and begun to ripen before picking. Tomatoes which show some red on the vine are mature. The poorest quality tomatoes are those which are picked green and ripened by ethylene gas; they are either hard or mushy, and tasteless. The crates and cartons in which such tomatoes are shipped are labeled vine-ripened, but the tomatoes are generally packed green as grass.
The skin of a good tomato is smooth, glossy and bright; the flesh is firm, but not hard. Vine-ripened tomatoes develop a deep-red color and a fresh tomato fragrance. When poor quality hothouse tomatoes are the only ones available, it is better to do without. If, on occasion, you just must have tomatoes, the hothouse varieties are better than the prepackaged hydroponic tomatoes. Hydroponic vegetables are grown without soil, using only water and chemicals. The resulting product should be avoided. Ripe tomatoes should be eaten as soon as possible. If you’re selecting them to eat another day, select partially ripened tomatoes and finish the ripening at home. The small cherry or plum tomatoes are very perishable and should be used quickly. Some are highly acid, while others are almost sweet. Some are very juicy, while others are meaty and almost seedless. There are many varieties of tomatoes. The yellow and orange varieties are said to be less acid-tasting. I have never seen any white tomatoes, but I have read about them, and I understand they contain less acid than the other varieties.
The most popular turnip has white skin with purple shading at the top. The flesh is white. When small, tender and fine-fleshed, they are suitable for use in salads. The tops are not usually available in markets; if occasionally available they are large and mature and not suitable for eating without cooking. The best turnip roots and leaves are the young and tender ones, fresh from the garden. Turnips should be used sparingly, because they contain a large amount of sulphur. Rutabagas are large and white or yellow-fleshed (the yellow are more common). They are members of the turnip family, but have a sweeter taste. They are usually coated with paraffin, and are not usually eaten raw. Fresh sweet rutabagas, when available without the paraffin coating, would be fine in the salad. Select turnips that are small to medium in size; firm, smooth and fairly round. Select rutabagas that are not too large and are heavy for their size, firm and round to slightly elongated. Large turnips may be strong in flavor, and coarse, pithy and fibrous. Cooked rutabagas have a characteristic taste, a little strong, enjoyed by some, disliked by others. The larger rutabagas tend to be pulpy, quite strong, tougher and harder.
Available all year. Fresh water chestnuts are available in supermarkets, but very expensive. This is a delicious vegetable, with a soft, shell-like outer covering, and a sweet, white, crunchy flesh. Most people are familiar with the canned variety which is used in Chinese and Japanese cuisine. Canned water chestnuts have an unusual characteristic: they retain their crunchiness. We occasionally buy fresh water chestnuts. They sell for about $1.50 for a container of six to eight. They are each about the size of a macadamia nut, and after paring the black shell-like skin, they are even smaller. The sweet, crisp, juicy taste is a treat.
Bags of cut-up vegetables are available in supermarkets for use in salads or chop suey. Don’t buy them. Some contain preservatives; even if they don’t, they are oxidizing, turning rusty and rapidly-losing freshness and nutritional value.
It is better to serve most salad vegetables without cutting them up in small pieces. For vegetable chop suey, cut up your vegetables as you need them. Enough nutritional value will be sacrificed in the cooking process, without starting out with limp ingredients.
I have seen sealed plastic bags of shelled black-eyed peas in water and vinegar. You will probably not be tempted to buy them, as they will most likely appear rather strange and unappetizing, just as they did to me. They are much worse than either frozen or canned black-eyed peas. As previously indicated, fresh black-eyed peas in the pod are sometimes available.
Lettuce should be as fresh as possible. Of course the ideal would be to have lettuce picked fresh from the garden before the meal. If you are buying lettuce, get a three, or four days’ supply, but wash only as needed. (If you don’t want to wait to wash the lettuce at meal time, wash enough for a day or two and store in tightly closed pliofilm bags in your crisper. The stored lettuce should not be wet, nor totally dry. It will keep best if slightly moist.) Your unwashed supply of lettuce may also be stored in pliofilm bags in your crisper. The softer the lettuce, the sooner you should use it. Bibb, Boston and leaf lettuce wilt sooner than romaine.
If it is necessary to store lettuce for longer periods of time, a different method may be used. When we lived in Indianapolis, we ordered organically-grown lettuce from California in the winter once a month, and we kept it fresh with very little deterioration for a week or longer, by storing in layers in the crisper drawer, covered by damp paper towels, watching and culling daily, and adding water to moisten the towels as they dried.
Sweet red ripe bell peppers and cucumbers are very perishable and don’t keep well in bags. They tend to become slimy when bagged. I store them loose in the crisper drawer; they seem to last longer this way. Sweet green bell peppers last a little longer. I also store tomatoes loose in the crisper drawer.
Store celery or celery cabbage in pliofilm bags. Add a few drops of water to the bag. Don’t buy more than you can use in three or four days.
Broccoli turns yellow in a few days. If very fresh when you get it, it may last an extra day or two. I have a very large-lidded plastic refrigerator storage box, which I find convenient for storing broccoli, cauliflower, summer squash, brussels sprouts, eggplant, etc. Always put summer squash, broccoli and eggplant on the top layer, since they are more fragile than other items. If you don’t have such a box, use pliofilm bags.
Cabbage will stay fresh for a week or longer if stored in a pliofilm bag in your refrigerator.
For best quality corn, buy it the day you plan to eat it. If it must be stored, leave it in the husk, and put in a tightly-closed pliofilm bag; store it in the refrigerator.
Eggplants damage easily. Store in the refrigerator, but protect from bruising, as indicated previously. They will keep well for only a few days.
Store peas in pliofilm bags in the refrigerator; shell immediately before using. Use within a few days.
Green beans lose their bright green color and deteriorate rapidly. Store in a pliofilm bag in the refrigerator; use as soon as possible. The same applies to wax beans, pole beans and Italian green beans. They all deteriorate rapidly and should be used within a few days. If freshly picked, they may last a little longer—but if you are lucky enough to get freshly-picked beans in any of these varieties, you ought to eat them the same day, if possible, to take advantage of the freshly-picked flavor and optimal nutrition. And, since they are so fresh, you will be able to eat them without cooking.
Globe artichokes and asparagus deteriorate rapidly—use as soon as possible. Asparagus may be stored a day or two, fresh artichokes a little longer. If you must store asparagus, wrap the butt ends in a damp paper towel and place in a pliofilm bag in the refrigerator. Store artichokes in the refrigerator in a pliofilm bag.
Jerusalem artichokes will keep in the refrigerator in a pliofilm bag for about a week, sometimes longer.
Okra is quite perishable, but will keep for two or three days in a pliofilm bag in the refrigerator.
Parsley will stay green a few days in a pliofilm bag in the refrigerator.
Fresh water chestnuts are very perishable. If you buy these sweet, juicy, expensive treats, eat them right away.
Fresh podded beans (cranberry beans, lima beans, etc.) can be stored in the refrigerator in pliofilm bags for a few days, depending on how fresh they are. It might be better to remove them from the pods, where they tend to become slimy, if you must store them for several days.
The chayote will keep well for a week or more in the crisper drawer.
Greens (kale, collards, etc.) do not keep well and should be used quickly. They wilt and grow yellow. Store in pliofilm bags for two or three days.
Kohlrabi keeps well, like a root vegetable. Remove the tops and store in a pliofilm bag in the refrigerator.
Mushrooms are very perishable—it is best to use them within a day or two after purchasing; store in a pliofilm bag in the refrigerator.
Potatoes: Some experts on the storage of vegetables say that potatoes should be stored in a cool, dry place, but never in the refrigerator, although some of them do advise that freshly dug or new potatoes with thin skins keep best in the refrigerator.
The Department of Agriculture says that white potatoes will keep several months if stored in a cool, dark place with good ventilation at 45 to 50 degrees. Higher temperatures will cause shriveling and sprouting, and exposure to light will cause greening (evidence of the presence of solanine, a poisonous alkaloid). As previously indicated, don’t buy potatoes with the “sunburned” spots. If potatoes are stored at below 40 degrees, they will dextrinize—that is, develop a sweet taste as starch changes to sugar, after which they will spoil rapidly. Cooking potatoes also serves to dextrinize the starch.
If you live in a warm climate—or for summer storage of potatoes or other root vegetables anywhere—where are you going to find a constant, dependable temperature of over 40 degrees and under 50 degrees? I have heard about root cellars for this type of storage, but, lacking a root cellar, my only solution is a refrigerator with the proper storage temperature. If I try to store them in my kitchen or on my patio, I lose them right away. My refrigerator preserves them very well. I store them in tightly-closed pliofilm bags.
Sweet Potatoes, other root vegetables, miscellaneous: Other root vegetables, such as carrots, turnips, rutabagas, and beets also keep best at around 40 degrees and a relatively high humidity—in the refrigerator, of course, in tightly-closed pliofilm bags. Be sure to cut the tops off your root vegetables before storing them, because the roots deteriorate as the greens wilt. If you set your refrigerator at about 42 degrees, it will be safe for all your food.
Sweet potatoes and winter squash are another matter—they require warmer, drier conditions, not lower than 50 degrees. It is best to keep them in a cool place in the kitchen or on the patio. Sweet potatoes will keep a few days to a week, hard-skinned winter squash a little longer.
Summer squash is quite perishable, but may be stored in the refrigerator in pliofilm bags for several days.
Alfalfa seeds, sunflower seeds, mung beans, soy beans and lentils are the most popularly used for sprouting. They can be purchased from Jaffe or your health food store. Instructions for sprouting a variety of seeds and legumes will be given in Lesson 26.
Sprouting seeds may be stored in moisture proof containers for a long time.
It is best to sprout your own, but ready-to-eat sprouts are available in health food stores, most supermarkets, and (more and more, of late) on salad bars in restaurants.
In buying ready-to-eat sprouts, the key is freshness. Check to be sure they are crisp, not wet and slimy(thus fit only for the garbage). Good, fresh alfalfa sprouts are often available in plastic containers. Sometimes mung bean sprouts, or mixed sprouts, are also available. The alfalfa sprouts usually have the desirable green leaves; the mung beans usually do not. The mixed sprouts are not as good as individual varieties; first of all, when you sprout alfalfa, lentils, radishes, watercress, wheat and sunflower seeds together, some of them will be sprouted for too long a period for their variety, and some not long enough. (See Sprouting Instructions, Lesson 26). The mixture is also a bad one from the standpoint of food combining, and the radish and watercress sprouts are too strong, with too much irritating bite.
If you sprout your seeds at home, they may be stored in covered containers in the refrigerator for about five days. If you buy your sprouts, be sure they are fresh and dry, and store them in your refrigerator, but don’t count on their remaining in edible condition for longer than several days.
Cooked grains and legumes may be used in the transitional diet but should be phased out as soon as possible. They are acid forming and difficult to digest.
A large variety of dried grains is available. Rice is the most popular but, unfortunately, most people use the bleached variety. Brown rice is of much greater nutritive value and does not contain poisonous bleach residues. It also is a better value, because a cup of raw brown rice will produce considerably more cooked rice by volume than will a cup of raw white rice. Long grain rice cooks up light and fluffy; medium grain rice is slightly more starchy and moist; short grain is even stickier.
Other whole grains are available (particularly in health food stores), such as millet, barley, wheat and rye. Triticale is a hybrid between wheat and rye. Cornmeal made from corn which has not been denatured is available in health food stores, but corn and other foods which have been ground into flour or meal are not recommended, because such products are subject to rapid rancidity.
Buckwheat groats are grouped with the grains, although not really a grain, and not a “wheat.” They are actually the fruit, rather than the seed (as most grains are ) of the buckwheat plant.
Wild rice is the aristocrat of grains. It is very expensive. I watch for ads in Organic Gardening magazine and buy it directly from producers in Wisconsin or Minnesota. Wild rice is higher in protein than brown rice.
Brown rice is probably the best of the grains (except, possibly, wild rice) and is the staple article of food in the diet of more than half of the world’s people.
But all grains are excessively acid-forming and require much time and energy for digestion. Wheat, rye and buckwheat may be sprouted and eaten raw. Lesson 26 will discuss methods of cooking the various dried grains.
Jaffe Brothers carries organic brown rice, organic millet, organic whole kernel wheat, organic whole kernel rye, organic whole kernel buckwheat for sprouting, organic buckwheat groats for cooking and organic popcorn (not high in nutritional value, but relatively harmless when unsalted and not buttered).
The variety of dried legumes is large. Beans: lima, white beans (marrow, great northern, navy, pea and peanut bean), kidney, pinto, garbanzo, cranberry, azuki, black turtle, fava. Soy and mung beans are not usually found in supermarkets, but are available in health food stores. Peas: whole or split green or yellow, black-eyed, chick peas (another name for garbanzo beans). Lentils are legumes which are similar to peas.
Organically-grown unfumigated green split peas, soy beans, mung beans and lentils are available from Jaffe Brothers.
It is better to use fresh beans and peas, when available, since they have an alkaline rather than an acid reaction. Fresh legumes are easier to digest than those that have been dried, and their nutrients are more easily assimilable by the human digestive system. Dried beans become more digestible when they are sprouted. Bean sprouts may be eaten raw. Lentils seem to be tolerated somewhat better than beans by most people, but it is best to use them sprouted and eat them raw. Lesson 26 will discuss methods of cooking dried legumes.
Store grains in moisture-proof containers or bags in the refrigerator where they can be stored for a long time. It is never a good idea to store any food for longer than six months to a year. Buy supplies as available and needed and try not to buy more than you will use in a few months. Use grains intermittently, rather than regularly; their keeping qualities are an important factor, so that several varieties can be on hand.
We prefer to use fresh lima or cranberry beans, when they are available, and of course we use fresh peas in the pod regularly, and sometimes, fresh edible podded peas.
Bread is not recommended. Grain is not a Class A food, being difficult to digest, and causing “allergic” problems. Wheat, rye, barley and oats contain a substance called gluten, which is the source of many of these problems. The best way, to use grains is to sprout them and eat them raw. Wheat and rye berries and oat groats may be sprouted—the soaking and sprouting is said to neutralize the gluten, but some people still have problems with wheat and rye, even when sprouted. Oats seem to cause fewer problems, and rolled oats may be eaten raw.
Grain, ground into flour, and baked into bread along with other ingredients, including yeast and sweeteners, is not recommended. Some gluten-free breads are sometimes available, but, while these cause little or no “allergic” problems, they are still not the best food.
Oils: Eat your salads without dressings. We have been loving our salads “undressed” for many years and I make dressings only occasionally when we have guests, at which times we eat them also, and on the next day, gladly go back to our undressed salads. When I do make these salad dressings for my guests, I don’t use any oil, but make them by combining, avocados with tomatoes or cucumbers. Recipes for such salad dressings will be included in Lesson 26.
Butter is sometimes used to a minimal extent by Hygienists who use cooked food, but it is not recommended. If you use all raw food, you will have no need for butter.
Vegetable oil margarine is hardened by hydrogenation (see definition), and many other ingredients are added to produce an imitation of butter, resulting in an artificial product that is difficult, or impossible, for the body to deal with efficiently. Nickel is used as a catalyst when hydrogenating oils, and traces of contamination with this metal remain to be ingested. Margarine is definitely not recommended, even for occasional use.
These will be discussed in detail in a future lesson. For the purposes of this lesson about the proper selection of wholesome foods, it should suffice to say that no sweeteners are recommended, together with a very brief discussion of the contraindications.
The sweeteners are: brown sugar, “raw” sugar, white sugar, milk sugar, maple syrup, molasses, date sugar, cane syrup, corn syrup and honey.
If you are on an all raw food diet, you will have no need for any sweeteners.
The Dole Pineapple Company published a booklet in 1976 called the “Shrewd Shopper’s Produce Guide.” It contains much valuable information about the selection and storage of fresh produce, but, even more interesting to Hygienists are some quotations from this booklet which indicate their understanding of the superiority of fresh foods (even though the Dole Company markets canned foods as well). The following quotations could have been written by a Hygienist:
“Fresh produce provides the major portion of essential water-soluble vitamins. These must be replenished daily. Fresh produce provides bulk and fiber to help clear blood vessels of cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease, and fresh produce helps keep bowels functioning normally.
“Nutritionally, there is rarely a question about the superiority of fresh over processed produce. The less a fruit or vegetable is changed, including over-washing, the more food value it retains. Yet we somehow think packaged foods are more convenient—in fact, just the opposite is the case.
“Convenience” refers to the time and energy spent in preparation. Since there is very little time spent preparing fresh produce in its more nutritious, best tasting, lushest form, it certainly is one of the most convenient food forms.
“Many Americans have no idea how rich, varied and delicious fresh vegetables can be, quickly steamed...or even crisp and raw.
“One drawback with frozen vegetables is their expense. Another is that improper blanching before packaging may destroy up to 50% of the Vitamin C in vegetables; cooking destroys even more. Also, packages usually call for salted water to bring out flavor. If salt is added to vegetables during cooking, juices that carry water-soluble vitamins (like Vitamin C), minerals, sugars and flavors are drawn from the vegetables. Which means you pay more for less flavor and nutrition.
“Canned vegetables lose much of their color when they are cooked in the canning process...Each time a vegetable is reheated, it loses more of its precious water-soluble vitamins and minerals.
“Compare the cost of a ten-pound bag of potatoes with freeze-dried, instant or frozen potatoes. You may pay up to eight times more for packaged potatoes which may have lost at least 50% of their Vitamin C. Processors ‘enrich’ their products, but can’t duplicate valuable trace elements. Moreover, because no human nutritional quantity values have been established for trace elements, there are no guidelines. Which means fresh produce is even more essential.”
The advice of the Dole Pineapple Company is clear. Buy and utilize fresh produce. That is also the advice given in this lesson, and the practice of all Hygienists.
It is not recommended that packaged, frozen or canned foods ever be used, but there are always the inevitable questions about exceptions and compromises, so let’s deal with them here.
Sometimes even fresh produce comes pre-packaged. Although that is not the best way to buy produce, you may occasionally buy some of these pre-packaged items. Be sure to look at the dating code.
You might buy pre-packaged dried fruits, legumes, or grains in your health food store. Read the labels. Don’t buy anything containing preservatives or chemicals—or anything you don’t understand.
When buying any prepackaged item, be sure the package hasn’t been tampered with, or broken open.
It is possible you might be tempted to buy frozen food in an emergency. Think well before doing so. Frozen foods may have been partially thawed and refrozen in shipping and handling. And what has been added? How will it taste, compared to fresh food? If you still want to consider buying it, read the label. You might change your mind.
If you ever do buy frozen food, select clean packages that have no signs of having been partially thawed and refrozen.
But always remember, any time you compromise and decide to use anything other than fresh food, you are doing it for some reason other than to provide the best nutrition. Are you sure that is what you want?
Storage: If you do ever use packaged, canned or frozen food, you will need to know where and for how long you may store them. Packaged foods should be stored according to directions given for the specific item involved, usually in the refrigerator, tightly covered or bagged to keep out moisture. The fewer packaged foods you use, the better.
Frozen foods must, of course, be stored in the freezer. It is best to buy no more than you will use in the immediate future. Frozen produce is not subject to as many dangers as frozen flesh foods, but there can still be deterioration and spoilage. The fewer frozen foods you use the better.
Canned goods will, of course, keep quite a while if properly processed and if the can is not bulging, rusted, dented or otherwise damaged. If it is bulging, don’t open it, don’t taste it, don’t even let the contents touch your hands. The bulge indicates botulism.
Undamaged canned goods are said to keep almost indefinitely, but it is best to use them within six months to a year. Better yet is not to use canned goods at all.
I have a large organic vegetable garden and several fruit trees. Every year I have a surplus of produce in season, and share with my friends and neighbors, but still, I always have much left over. I usually freeze my wonderful organically-grown figs, peaches and strawberries without any sweetening or heating, and we eat them just barely thawed. They are delicious that way. You don’t approve of buying frozen foods which may be blanched, sweetened, or otherwise treated, but what do you think about these home-frozen fruits?
I do believe that this a good way to have some of your excellent organically-grown fruits out of season and, since there is so little loss of taste, it would be a shame to waste them. If they are frozen quickly, immediately after picking, the vitamin loss would also be minimized. However, do not depend on your frozen fruit for your entire supply of fruit in any season. You should also use as many fresh fruits, of good quality, that you can incorporate into your diet, so that you will be sure to also get a good supply of whichever nutrients are damaged or lost by the freezing temperatures. Freezing, however, is less damaging than cooking.
I have heard that foods which are members of the nightshade family should not be used.
Tobacco is one member of the nightshade family. But a group of foods habitually used by Hygienists are also members of this family. These foods are white potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers and eggplant. It is claimed that certain arthritics are “allergic” to these foods and experience remissions when they are omitted from their diet. It is also claimed, principally by advocates of macrobiotic vegetarianism, that these foods should not be used by anyone.
They advance the contention that all of these foods contain solanine (see definition). Hygienists agree with warnings against the use of potato sprouts or green areas on white potatoes, because of the concentration of solanine they contain, but not that the foods mentioned should not be used. Thousands of Hygienists do use these foods, and do not suffer with arthritis. We have used these foods frequently for many years, and we have no symptoms of arthritis or other disease.
If people who are suffering with arthritis wish to experiment with eliminating these foods from their diets for a period of time, there is no reason they cannot do so, as there is a plethora of other Hygienic foods from which to choose.
The macrobiotic diet is considered by Hygienists to be grossly inadequate, even dangerous. It consists principally of cooked grains, especially brown rice, with very small amounts of other foods. They favor the elimination of salads and fruits. They make the astounding declaration that the best diet would consist of 100% grain, but for those not eating all grain (probably no one actually does eat all grain), they allow sauteed vegetables and soup. They favor the use of salt and soy sauce, and, in spite of the thirst-producing diet of cooked food seasoned with salt and soy sauce, they recommend that very little water be taken, less than one-half pint daily.
Hygienists use very little water, since the Hygienic, mostly raw-food diet, without seasonings, is a water-sufficient diet. But it would be very difficult to abstain from drinking on the diet recommended by advocates of the macrobiotic diet.
If I must choose between wilted, organically-grown lettuce, and fresh, crisp commercial lettuce, which is better?
I really don’t like to make such a choice, but would be inclined to say that probably the fresh, crisp commercial lettuce may taste better and have more nutritional value. If the wilted outer leaves of the organically-grown lettuce can be stripped off, exposing some green, crisp lettuce beneath it, that could be used. But if it is broken down all the way through, it is not much good.
Is using vinegar or lemon juice, and honey with salads, then eating it with a starch, a bad food combination?
Yes. Starches and acids should not be mixed. The enzyme, salivary amylase (ptyalin) digests starches in an alkaline medium and for a very short time only in a neutral medium. It is quickly destroyed in an acid medium. Therefore, vinegar, which contains acetic acid, interferes with starch digestion because it inactivates salivary amylase.
The reason it is necessary to insure good digestion of food is because if it isn’t digested, bacteria decompose it in the stomach and intestines with the formation of toxic products. Since bacteria are living cells, they form waste products and these are very toxic to humans. These, unfortunately, are absorbed in the small intestine and cause enervation. Not being useful nutrients, these toxic wastes must be expelled from the body at a great expenditure of nerve energy, thus producing enervation. The toxemia which ensues from enervation, which checks elimination, causes destruction of normal functioning tissues of the body. Disease is the result. In addition these waste products are irritants and cause gastritis which after many years may result in ulcers and finally cancer.
Lemon juice is an acid and also upsets or impairs starch digestion. Lemon juice is not a poison, however, and if you are not eating a protein or a starch you may indulge once in a while in a little unrefined oil with lemon juice on a salad. But, if you are eating either a starch or a protein with your salad don’t indulge in a dressing. For more perfect digestion it is best to always eat salads without dressings of any kind.
Strict Hygienists never use oil. Oil is a fragmented food and never as wholesome as the whole food. The term “cold-pressed” should never be taken literally. It only means the first pressing, not that the food has not been heated. Foods are heated to extract the oil from them. Heated oils become carcinogens if heated long enough, and should never touch the delicate membranes of your gastrointestinal tract.
Oils have gone through many other processes also, such as dewinterizing, deodorizing, and detastizing. These processes are aimed at preventing the oil from solidifying in a cold temperature and to give them a bland tasteless flavor, supposedly “ideal” for cooking. The odor of the original food is also processed out of it for the same reason. After all these processes, oils are no longer fit foods for people.
Honey has a singular history. Hygienists don’t use honey because it combines poorly with most foods and contains formic acid (a preservative secreted by the bee), which also impairs digestion and is poisonous. Honey is lacking in the minerals necessary for humans and will cause cavities almost as easily as white sugar, besides creating an acid condition if indulged in excessively.
Modern honeys are mass produced, as are many other of our food products, and because of this, quality suffers. Beekeepers have the tendency to pinch pennies as does everyone else in business, with no thought of the consumer. They purchase old leftover candies from candy manufacturers or other businesses, melt them down and feed them to their bees, including the preservatives, shellac, coloring agents, artificial flavorings and all other poisonous chemicals that go into candy these days. The bees in turn produce a more toxic honey. They also eventually sicken and die and the beekeeper can’t understand why. With or without all the poisons, honey is food for the bee, not for people. We must eat those foods which we were designed to eat or suffer disease and die prematurely.
When we learn to eat those things to which we are physiologically and anatomically adapted, instead of searching the heavens, the oceans, forests, rivers and streams for exotic delicacies of the palate, we will begin to glow with health. Instead of wasting time searching high and low for materials out of which to artificially prepare foods for the starving world, we should be planting our gardens and orchards to fulfill this great need.
Fruits, nuts, and vegetables are the foods to which we are anatomically and physiologically adapted, and which have minerals and vitamins in proportion one to the other to meet our special needs, and we don’t make a mess of the ecological system by eating them. On the contrary, we are fulfilling our part in the ecological system by eating them. By staying with the foods to which we are constitutionally adapted, we also maintain the proper cycle of the elements. Honey is not among the foods that humans should eat.
Good food combining is not that difficult to learn. Study just a little every day and soon you will know how to make your own Hygienic menus wherever you go no matter what foods are available.
Is the digestion of pasteurized milk difficult?
Pasteurized milk can’t be completely digested as can unpasteurized, so in that sense it is harder to digest and handle. The proteins in cooked milk coagulate, come to the surface, and form the skim with which you are familiar. Some protein is lost in the pasteurizing process, because some proteins coagulate. Coagulated protein is harder to digest than that which has not been hardened. Calcium and other minerals in pasteurized milk tend to form insoluble precipitates that are neither digestible nor absorbable, and therefore are lost to us as nutrients. With the idea of improving milk, toxic irradiated ergosterol is added. If you must have milk at least drink it unpasteurized, and take it alone.
Why are the nutritious foods such as watercress, comfrey and parsley not included in the Hygienic diet?
Any vegetable that is strong and has a pungent, unpalatable flavor is not eaten by Hygienists. Any substance that can’t be enjoyed by the normal sense of taste is considered toxic. The normal taste buds don’t appreciate these substances and warn us against such foods that have toxic substances in them. These bitter and pungent substances are not relished normally and it is Nature’s way to cause us to avoid them.
Watercress is too strong and pungent to the taste and any vegetable which is that strong should not be used because of an excess of certain substances. It is thought that the sharp taste of watercress is due to the large amount of sulphur contained therein. An excess of sulphur in foods is not healthful.
Parsley is eaten by Hygienists but it is not eaten in excess because of the high quantity of oxalic acid it contains.
Sorrel is generally used in salads, but Hygienists avoid it because it contains much free acid; especially oxalic acid. It contains between three and four parts per thousand of oxalic acid.
Comfrey does not form a part of the Hygienic diet because it has astringent qualities which occasion wasteful vital actions designed to rid the body of the toxic substance. Comfrey is used as a healing agent by herbalists because of these properties. Any plant that occasions vital abnormal actions is toxic and should not be used.
Do you approve of yogurt?
Hygienists as a rule eat no yogurt. In order to make yogurt, milk has to be heated and this causes a precipitation of the minerals in the milk, rendering them insoluble and not absorbable. Consequently there is an objectionable loss of food value. Pasteurized and powdered milk is generally used for the commercial product, making it doubly poor food.
What is poke-weed?
Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is a tall herbaceous plant that grows wild in North America, mainly in the Southern States. The weed has juicy purple berries and a purple root, which is used in making some drugs. The young purple shoots, which resemble asparagus, are used by some people in the spring or early summer in salads; but they are high in oxalic acid. It is best to shun any plant used as a medicine, as it always contains toxic substances.
The Hygienic system does not favor foods high in oxalic acid such as rhubarb, cranberries, chard, beet greens, and spinach. What actually is oxalic acid and how does it disrupt the digestion?
Oxalic acid (C2h3O4) is an organic acid that is widely distributed throughout the vegetable kingdom. It is sometimes found combined with calcium in the form of an oxalate, instead of as a free acid. Sorrel, spinach, rhubarb, cacao, black tea and pepper contain from two to four parts per thousand in the fresh material. It was formerly thought that tomatoes were high in oxalic acid but they have been found to have less than .0005 parts per thousand. Their sour taste is due to citric acid. Cashew nuts also contain an appreciable amount of oxalic acid.
Calcium oxalate is found in the leaves of many plants that we eat, such as spinach, beet tops and swiss chard. It is also found in lichens. The oxalic acid from food will be circulated in the body in the form of a free acid or as a salt of the acid, usually a calcium salt. People in good health can oxidize the oxalic acid, that is, their bodies can break it down into carbon dioxide and water as it does other organic compounds. If metabolism is perverted by excess toxins in the body, then oxalic acid cannot be properly handled. In excess it interferes with digestion by inhibiting enzymic actions. If the oxalic acid is not broken down chemically before it reaches the kidneys, it may predispose to the development of calcium oxalate stones. Ragnar Berg, the Swedish biochemist states, “The amount of oxalic acid in cocoa and black tea is especially high and an over-indulgence in these drinks combined with an acid-forming diet, will greatly favor the formation, or the deposit, of urates and oxalates in the kidneys and bladder...All conditions that favor the increase of uric acid in the body, such as a high flesh diet, combined with demineralized foods, will also contribute to the formation of oxalates.”
What is uric acid and how do oxalic acid and uric acid differ?
Oxalic acid is a natural acid found in foods. Uric acid is a decomposition product. It is an end-product of protein metabolism.
Since the body forms its own nucleic acids and the breakdown products of nucleic acids are purines which in turn are changed into uric acid, there will always be a certain amount of uric acid in the blood, but more than what the body will form itself can be hazardous, as uric acid tends to precipitate into stones.
26.1. Evaluation Of The Various Stages And Methods Of Preparation Of Uncooked Foods
26.2. Priority Of Food Preparation
26.3. Preparation Of Foods Without Cooking
Article #1: Well, You Wanted To Know By V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Article #2: Some Fundamentals Of Food And Feeding By Ian Fowler
Article #3: Vegetable Salads By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #4: Hypoalkalinity By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
The less preparation to which foods have been subjected, the better nourishment they provide. Even when foods are not cooked, there are many methods of preparing them which are progressively more damaging to their nutritional value.
Shredding, grinding, blending and juicing all critically impair the nutritional value of the food. Even cutting up the food causes some loss of nutrients, as each cut edge is exposed for oxidation to begin. The smaller the pieces, the greater the fragmentation—the more widespread the oxidation and damage.
Shredding, which produces a greater number of exposed surfaces, is obviously more destructive than cutting up. Grinding is even worse, producing smaller particles. Blending breaks the food down even more, and juicing extracts only the juice, discarding all the fiber.
All these processes deprive the body of part or all of the chewing exercise, which is necessary for the secretion of salivary enzymes and for sending signals for the secretion of gastric digestive juices.
In addition, vital food elements are impaired or destroyed. Oxidation of food is intended to occur within the body, and when it is allowed to occur before the food is eaten, the body is deprived of important elements. Blending, grinding and shredding cause significant losses of Vitamin C as the fragmented foods are exposed to the air, and as much as a 50% loss of Vitamin C within a few minutes after food is juiced.
Even “over-washing” of fresh foods will result in significant impairment of nutritional value. Fresh foods should be washed as rapidly as possible in fresh, clean water. Fruits should be quickly scrubbed under running water. No food should be allowed to soak; this leaches valuable nutrients.
Green leaves, especially lettuce, lose crispness, quality and nutritional value if allowed to remain in water more than a few seconds. Just swish the lettuce through the water, while rubbing off the sand and dirt with your fingers; a final quick rinse is more than adequate. You don’t have to eat “sandy” lettuce, nor limp, overwashed lettuce.
Nor should you use any of various substances in the water to wash off the contaminants; this creates the additional problem of removing the washing compound. If the food is organically grown, there is no problem. If it is not, you cannot do more than quickly wash it in clean water.
Nothing will remove residues of chemical fertilizers or sprays, and your efforts to do so will only further impair the produce. Get the best quality of food that is available to you, wash it quickly and enjoy! If it is selected in accordance with Hygienic principles, your health will still be better than that of conventional eaters, even though not all of your food is organically grown (and, yes, even if little of your food is organically grown).
Recapping the various stages of raw-food preparation prioritizes them in the following order:
We receive many requests for special recipes for transitional food programs to provide greater variety in a raw-food diet, and for ideas and instructions in the preparation of special menus and treats. Such menus, recipes, ideas and instruction are therefore included in this lesson.
It is hoped that the student will gradually realize that simple meals are the best, and will come to delight in luscious fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts. Included in this lesson is a special section on sprouting.
26.3.3 Coconuts (Classified as Starchy Protein)
26.3.6 Additional Recipes for Vegetables Combined with Nuts, Avocados, etc.
Most fresh fruits should be served whole after scrubbing under running water. What can rival the appeal to the eye and to the taste than a bowl or tray of beautiful, colorful, fragrant whole fruit?
Apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums should be served whole, with sharp knives for peeling and cutting if necessary or desired. The fruit should be eaten unpeeled whenever possible, but if fruit is not organically grown, it is a difficult choice.
Grapes and cherries, of course, require no preparation other than washing.
Some citrus fruit is easy to peel (tangerines, murcotts, mandarins, tangelos, temples). Other citrus may be cut at the table. No sugar on grapefruit! (Nor other sweetening.)
Berries should be served whole. Serve strawberries with caps and stems attached. No sugar! (Nor any other sweetening.) Fruit that is not sweet enough to eat without added sweeteners is not ripe enough to eat.
Serve persimmons whole—fully ripe, soft and luscious. I like to cut this fruit in half and spoon away from the skin. My husband, Lou, just bites into the fruit, discarding the skin as he eats.
Nature provided bananas with a wonderful coat, protective and easy to remove—no problems there. Serve them golden, brown-freckled and whole.
Cut ripe, buttery avocados in half at the table and eat with a spoon out of the half (or quarter) shell. If you want to peel the avocados, quarter them and remove the skins from each quarter. Serve the sectibus on a platter, or arrange them on lettuce leaves or other salad vegetables. Serve fresh, soft, ripe figs whole.
Serve delightful, emerald kiwi fruit whole. Cut it in half at the table and spoon out of the half shell.
Fresh litchi fruit is easy to peel at the table. Loquats require no peeling.
Florida papayas are sometimes very large. Cut in wedges and remove seeds immediately before serving. I have seen some people eating the seeds of the papaya, and heard them stoutly maintain that the seeds are “loaded” with nutrients and should not be discarded. I believe the taste of papaya seeds is ample evidence that they are not intended to be eaten. The plethora of nutrients which they undoubtedly contain are intended for the fruit which the seeds are programmed to produce.
Just-right ripe mangos are a treat any way you serve them. They can be cut in half, slicing over the large flat seed on both sides and eaten with a spoon. They can be peeled and sliced, but don’t waste whatever clings to the peel and seed, though you may have to hang over the sink to eat it.
Joy Gross demonstrated (at the American Natural Hygiene Society national conventions) an attractive way to serve mangos. With a sharp paring knife; score the flesh of the halved mangos in cubes, without cutting through the skin. Invert the two halves (turn them inside out). Beautiful! And delicious!
Melons, of course, will have to be cut immediately before serving. Small melons may be served whole.
Prepare pineapple immediately before serving in the following manner: Cut a thin slice from the bottom. Cut in quarters lengthwise, either leaving the top on as a decoration, or removing it. Prepare each quarter as a separate serving by separating the flesh from the skin with a sharp knife and slicing the remaining wedge into segments. Serve on the rind (pineapple boats). Serve with forks for removal of the segments and serrated grapefruit spoons for scraping out any flesh remaining on the rind. Don’t put the rind to your mouth—use a spoon. The eyes of the rind are razor sharp and can cut your lips, mouth and tongue.
Pomegranates may be served whole, and may either be cut and eaten in sections, cutting into segments as you eat, or the juice may be sucked out through a carefully punched hole (look out, it’ll spurt all over you) after carefully kneading it until it is entirely soft. Don’t be too rough, you may inadvertently break it open.
Dried fruit may require some advance preparation.
Dates and raisins may be presumed to be clean enough to eat as they come from a sealed package. For those who doubt this, a quick rinse just before eating may allay their misgivings.
Dried figs are usually soft enough to eat without preparation. Rinse, if desired. If figs are hard, they may be soaked in distilled water for several hours, or over night.
Dried apricots and peaches are greatly improved by overnight soaking. In fact, unsulphured apricots and peaches are almost inedible unless they are soaked.
Dried apples are very tasty—not too sweet. Soaking makes them too mushy.
Dried prunes, cherries and pears may be used either way—as they are, or soaked.
Dried bananas are excellent as they come from the package—soaking is not necessary or desirable.
Dried litchi fruit needs no preparation—just crack open the nut-like outer skin and find the raisin-like fruit inside.
Dried carob pods are sometimes too dry to be really palatable, but usually are soft enough to chew on. I have not tried soaking them.
Ideally, recipes (especially for fruit) are not necessary nor desirable. We know that many people will want fruit recipes for a variety of reasons:
These might also work out better for parties or groups of people, because they are perhaps more economical, more convenient, or more “liberal” for conventional friends.
Acid Fruit: Oranges, pineapple, strawberries and kiwi fruit. This can be prepared an hour or two in advance to serve to guests. The juice from the oranges should keep the other fruit from drying out or discoloring. Use whole strawberries, fairly large pieces of fresh pineapple, and orange sections. Serve slices of kiwi fruit alongside—don’t put the kiwi fruit into the salad. Or use the decorative slices of kiwi fruit as a garnish.
This salad can be served to luncheon guests, along with nuts or avocado along with a salad bowl of romaine lettuce, buttercrunch lettuce and celery. (Of course, these same foods could be served more Hygienically by putting out bowls of oranges and strawberries, platters of pineapple boats and kiwi fruit halves, along with the bowls of greens and platters of avocados or nuts if desired.)
Other Acid Fruit Combinations: Winesap, Jonathan or other tart apples. Put cubes of mild cheese on toothpicks and arrange in a circle on each apple. (Or just serve trays of apples and trays of avocados, nuts or cheese.) Serve with bowls of lettuce and celery.
Oranges, avocados and romaine lettuce—this combination is an excellent meal any time of the day.
Subacid and Sweet Fruit: Combine berries (blackberries, raspberries, etc.—not strawberries) or dark sweet cherries or dark purple grapes with two or three of the following: sliced papayas, peaches, nectarines, apricots, sweet plums, apples, pears.
If this can be prepared immediately before serving to guests, arrange fruits attractively on romaine lettuce leaves, either on platters or individual service plates.
If it must be prepared an hour or two in advance, put together as a fruit salad, and moisten with apple, cherry or grape juice. For this purpose, you may have, to use bottled juice from a health food store, which usually does not contain additives, and will be of quite good taste and quality, although, of course, usually pasteurized. Or add dried soaked cherries or apricots and the juice in which they have been soaked.
This fruit salad can be served with, ripe Japanese persimmons, whole ripe bananas (or you can add sliced bananas to the fruit salad just before serving), and either avocados on the half or quarter shell or platters of dates, figs, raisins or other dried fruit. Also set out a salad bowl of two varieties of lettuce and some celery.
Fill halves of large papayas with subacid fruit salad for a party buffet. Or fill wedges of large papayas or smaller papaya halves with subacid fruit salad for individual servings.
Arrange wedges of papaya, avocado and apple (sweet or tart) in a circle on a bed of romaine or Boston lettuce.
A very attractive way of serving melon buffet style with less of the mess of rinds is to cut open and shape a watermelon as a basket with a handle. That is, instead of cutting it in half, make the cuts lengthwise a little short of the halfway mark, to leave a handle-like section about three inches wide.
Melon balls can be made of the red flesh, but a better way is to cut small wedges and arrange them in the watermelon basket, along with wedges of several other varieties of melon, such as honeydew, casaba, cantaloupe, etc. Don’t mix any other fruit in the watermelon basket. Instead, provide bowls and trays of other varieties of fresh fruit for those who don’t wish to partake of the melon, or for those who sometimes mix melon with other fruit at the same meal.
This is excellent for an afternoon reception or evening party.
(Sometimes combined with other uncooked foods)
Although the following are not cooked, their nutritional value has been substantially impaired by blending, freezing, etc. These recipes are provided as alternatives to conventional cakes, pies, puddings, ice creams and other desserts.
Compote or Pudding: Soak dried figs (or dried apricots) overnight. Remove stems and blend with the soak water. Add fresh (or frozen) bananas and blend. If too thick, add distilled water—if not thick enough, add more bananas. Serve topped with sliced bananas. The fig pudding will be quite sweet, the apricot pudding less sweet. This may also be made by blending bananas with any other subacid or sweet fruit. Keep very cold until served. This may be served with fresh subacid or sweet fruit (not acid fruit or protein).
Apricot-Prune Whip: Soak dried apricots and pitted prunes overnight. Blend the next day with the soak water. Serve plain or with sliced bananas.
Frozen Banana Treats: Break ripe bananas in halves or thirds. Dip in carob syrup (carob powder mixed with distilled water) and then roll in grated coconut, and freeze. These may be eaten without thawing—they do not freeze hard. Remove from freezer about ten minutes before eating.
Raw Applesauce: Wash, quarter and core sweet juicy apples (do not remove skins). Put in blender a few pieces at a time with a small amount of apple or grape juice. Other fruits maybe combined with the apples. This should be prepared immediately before serving, to keep color and flavor, or keep very cold until served.
Banana “Ice Cream”: Whenever you have a surplus of ripe bananas, peel and freeze them while in tightly-closed plastic bags. They may be converted to “ice cream” by putting them through a Champion juicer (using the homogenizing blank instead of the juicing screen); or in a blender. The Champion juicer method is preferable. The blender method may require a small amount of liquid to get it started. Other frozen or fresh fruit may be combined with the bananas (peaches, cherries—not strawberries).
Ideally, nuts should be served in the shell, with nutcrackers, picks and bowls for debris. Some people prefer the convenience of shelled nuts, and, if they are purchased fresh, in season, and properly stored, I must admit to their many advantages—especially in the case of the hard-shelled varieties.
Pecans, almonds, walnuts and Filberts are easy to shell, but the quality of the shelled varieties is more uniform. Shelled nuts, of course, take up less space, and are, therefore, easier to store. Shelled nuts are easier to serve, easier to eat, and there is no debris to clear from the table (and usually the floor, as well).
Pistachios in the shell (whenever available unsalted, which is not often) should be shelled as you eat them. They are so easy to shell that there is no excuse for buying them shelled, unless you just can’t find any unsalted, in the shell. Interesting note: Dr. Shelton says that, unlike most other protein foods, pistachios are non acid-forming (alkaline-forming when digested).
Indian (monkey) nuts are tedious to shell. Pignolias (without shells) have a taste similar to that of Indian nuts.
Sunflower seeds are available in or out of the shell. They are tedious to shell, usually done with the teeth.
Special nut crackers are available which simplify the opening of hard-shelled nuts like Brazils, hickories and macadamias. Black walnuts are a special problem and usually must be opened with a heavy hammer on a large stone. I have heard it suggested that black walnuts be well wrapped and laid in the driveway, so that the car could be run over the package. A vise might be the best solution for cracking black walnuts.
Another suggestion for cracking hard-shelled nuts appeared in Organic Gardening magazine. The suggestion is to soak them for ten or fifteen minutes in a hot (or boiling) water bath prior to cracking. If they have been dried and stored for several weeks, sprinkle with water and place with a damp cloth in a tight container for twelve to twenty-four, hours before cracking. This will also soften the nutmeats for removal in larger pieces.
Most almonds should be blanched, as their brown skins contain a strong astringent (prussic acid). Almonds which do not have a bitter taste are relatively safe to consume in limited quantities, but it is still better to remove the skins.
To blanch, put almonds in a large strainer with a handle. Dip in boiling water for about one minute; then dip in cool water. If this does not loosen the skins sufficiently, repeat the process. Skins should slip off easily.
If the almonds are not bitter, and it is not convenient to blanch them at the particular time, the skins may be partially scraped off with a sharp knife. You might also like to scrape some of the brown skin off filberts or Brazils, which may improve the taste, though these skins are not toxic. Dr. Shelton recommends removing the skins of Brazil nuts.
Although most nuts are acid in metabolic reaction, Ford Heritage and other references list almonds as being alkaline in metabolic reaction. Dr. Shelton (The Hygienic System, Volume II, Orthotrophy, p. 147) disagrees, and says that almonds are definitely acid-forming, although not so much so as animal proteins. The comparative degrees of acidity of nuts with animal proteins are: walnuts (one of the most acid nuts) 8; chicken, 11.2; beef, 9.8; eggs, 12.
The only nuts Dr. Shelton calls alkaline-forming are the pistachios. Although the skin of the almond contains prussic acid, and should be removed, Dr. Shelton recommends it as one of the finest of nuts.
Sometimes, dental, digestive or other problems may necessitate the preparation of ground nuts or nut butters—or these might be needed for young children. Children should learn to chew their nuts (thoroughly) at as early an age as possible.
Ground Nuts are quite dry. If they are to be used, it may help to use a half grapefruit along with a serving of ground nuts. Squeeze some of the juice over the ground nuts, and roll some of the grapefruit sections in the nuts. This results in quite a palatable meal.
Another possible way to use ground nuts is to eat with whole strawberries, dipping each bite of strawberry into the ground nuts.
Nut Butters: To make nut butters, grind the nuts in nut mill or blender a little longer (beyond the ground nut stage). This produces an oilier mixture which can be patted into a butter with a spoon. The longer and finer you grind the nuts, the oilier they will be. If necessary, add a very small amount of oil after removing from the grinder. Sesame oil (buy cold-pressed) is a pleasant-tasting and more stable oil.
It would be better to make nut butters without the use of added oil. Try a tiny amount of distilled water instead, and see how you like it. Almond, pecan or sesame butter may require a little oil (or water). Cashew butter or peanut butter are oily enough without it. (Peanuts are not really nuts, but are starchy proteins, similar to legumes. Neither are cashews really nuts, being the pistils of cashew apples.)
Brazil nut butter is too oily by itself, but mixes well if ground with walnuts. The taste of each is improved by the combination.
Nuts ‘n’ Seeds Butter: Sunflower seeds and sesame seeds have an excellent taste when used whole, but, somehow, they are less tasty when ground into butter. They combine well in a nuts ‘n’ seeds butter. Use one cup of nuts (any kind except cashews or peanuts), one-half cup of sunflower seeds and one-half cup of sesame seeds. Grind together. A very small amount of oil (or water) may be necessary.
Nut and seed butters may be served on celery strips, lettuce leaves, sweet pepper slices, cucumber slices or other nonstarchy vegetables, or they may be eaten with a spoon.
(Sometimes used for infants or for special problems.)
2 cups water
1/2 cup nuts
Blend as thoroughly as possible. If this is to be used for an infant, it may be necessary to strain it through cheesecloth.
To open a coconut, drive a clean large nail through two of the three “eyes” or soft spots, and drain off the liquid. The liquid may be filtered through filter paper (coffee filters are fine) to remove any bits of husk, and it may be drunk immediately or stored in the refrigerator a short time, not more than a day or two. The shell may be cracked with a hatchet or hammer, or in a vise. If the coconut is placed in the freezer for an hour or so before cracking (after removing the liquid), it will crack and come away from the shell more readily.
Break up the meat in small pieces and eat out of hand. The pieces may be stored a short time in the coconut liquid or in water (not more than a day or two).
Peel the pieces before eating if you have trouble with tough skins. Coconut maybe grated if used shortly after preparing. Grated coconut may be used in salads.
Coconut is sometimes used with sweet fruits. (See recipe for nondairy coconut carob ice cream.) While coconut with sweet fruit is not an ideal combination, it seems to work out fairly well, in most cases. Don’t use coconut with nuts or with acid or subacid fruits.
Unlike most nuts, coconuts are alkaline in metabolic reaction. Coconut oil, unlike other vegetable fats, is naturally highly saturated.
The only other saturated vegetable fat is palm oil, which you will find included in the labeling of many packaged products. The label usually says “one or more of the following oils has been used in the preparation of this product: corn oil, cottonseed oil, palm oil....” So it is impossible to tell which oil has actually been used. Palm oil, like coconut oil, is highly saturated.
The fact that coconuts contain saturated fat is not a contraindication for their use as food. This information, however, is of value in planning a diversified Hygienic diet. Saturated animal fats are not recommended. Fresh coconut is an excellent food.
Some people who find coconut meat difficult to chew may enjoy using this palatable coconut milk occasionally.
Blend two cups warm distilled water with one-half cup fresh peeled coconut, and cool in refrigerator. Blend again and strain through cheesecloth or Nylon mesh. If stored in refrigerator, it will separate, but may be stirred with a spoon before drinking. Do not store more than a day or two.
Blend one cup coconut milk with one small banana and/or one tablespoon carob powder and/or several dates and/or two ounces sweet cherry or sweet grape juice. The juice adds an extra “fillip.” The amounts and combinations of ingredients depend on how sweet you like it.
Chestnuts are starchy protein, and are alkaline in metabolic reaction. They are usually “roasted,” but may be eaten raw if they are a nonbitter variety. To remove the thick skins, blanch in boiling water and let stand about two minutes. Remove a few at a time from the water and cool slightly, then peel with a paring knife. Roasting will also loosen the skins. Recipe for roasting chestnuts will be included in the lesson on cooked food recipes.
Most vegetables may be served raw and as nearly whole as possible with no dressing as part of a “finger salad.” They should be washed immediately before serving.
These vegetables include, but are not limited to, all varieties of lettuce; celery; all varieties of cabbage; celery cabbage; cucumbers; carrots; sweet peppers and pimentos; tomatoes; Jerusalem artichokes; English peas; edible podded peas; young, tender green beans; broccoli florets and leaves; cauliflower; young turnips; young, tender beets; young, tender kale, collard or turnip greens; yellow crookneck squash; zucchini squash; sweet potatoes or yams; asparagus; young, tender sweet corn. A few vegetables are not particularly tasty when used uncooked, such as Brussels sprouts, eggplant, okra, globe artichokes and white potatoes, although some people do use these raw. White potatoes should not be eaten raw, but should be steamed or baked to dextrinize the starch.
Combine three to five vegetables as a salad for one meal.
(Vegetables Combined with Nuts, Avocados, etc.)
If you must have salad dressing (get out of the habit as soon as possible), the following are better than bottled salad dressings or the use of vinegar.
Some of these dressings may also be used as dips or spreads (or guacamole—avocado dip).
For this, use one or two large leaves of romaine lettuce, and choose from a variety of fillings:
Choose one of these:Avocado
Nuts (Ground or whole)
Seeds (Ground or whole)
Cheese (if you use it)
Combined with one or more of these:Tomatoes
Sweet Pepper Strips
Cucumber Strips
Celery Strips
Sprouts
Roll up the filling inside the lettuce leaves, wrapping it up. This may be eaten like a sandwich.
Medium-sized pieces of lettuce (two or three varieties)
Cut-up red cabbage
Sliced sweet red pepper or pimento
Sliced celery
Choice of sliced young tender zucchini or other summer squash or a few broccoli florets
Choice of a few edible podded peas or young tender green peas or a few olives
Garnish with pignolia nuts and sunflower seeds and alfalfa sprouts or raw milk cheese slices and avocado slices and alfalfa sprouts.
Serve with Vegebase and oil dressing or cucumber sour cream dressing, if desired.
Combine optional amounts of:
grated coconut
grated carrot
grated cabbage
chopped celery
(if desired, a few raisins may be added)
Moisten with coconut liquid or coconut milk (or yogurt, if you use it). This may be served with a large green salad and globe artichokes for a satisfying company meal.
For entertaining, you might serve trays of finger salad with salad dressings on the side. Or serve large bowls of salad cut up as little as possible, with salad dressings on the side. Or serve celery sticks with dips.
Leaves of lettuce or other greens may be separated under running water, rinsing away as much of the sand and dirt as possible, assisted by your fingers. A quick dip in a sinkful of cold water and another quick rinse should clean up the sandiest leaves.
The more delicate buttercrunch lettuce varieties (Bibb, Boston) should be handled carefully and washed even more quickly to avoid losing crispness and nutrients.
Lettuce should never be soaked in plain or acidulated water. This will only extract the vitamins and make it limp and unappetizing.
Separate celery strips from the stalk, rinse under running water, dip in cold water, using brush at the same time to dislodge the dirt from the crevices. Another rinse should finish the job. Discard pithy or damaged portions.
Remove the tough outer leaves from cabbage and you will usually find a clean head underneath. Rinse the head if you like, and cut wedges for serving.
Remove celery cabbage strips as needed. A quick rinse and brushing will clean them up quickly.
Scrub cucumbers with a vegetable brush. Remove peeling, if waxed. I don’t use waxed cucumbers. Some supermarkets carry packages of “pickling cucumbers” all through the year—small, unwaxed cucumbers with small seeds. If they are fresh (and they often are), they taste like fresh-picked garden cucumbers, and the peel is tender and edible.
Scrub carrots with a brush—don’t peel. Small, young ones are best for salad. If you can find them with the tops still on, those are freshest. If you must shred your carrots, do it at the last possible minute.
Tomatoes—ah, tomatoes! When they are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad they are horrid.
Hydroponic tomatoes? Thumbs down! Hothouse tomatoes? Not much better—sometimes barely acceptable. Deep red, vine-ripened tomatoes? Oh, yes! Wash them under running water, serve whole and enjoy!
If you must slice or quarter tomatoes, do so at the table, or at the last possible minute before serving.
Red or green sweet peppers (preferably ripe and red, which are the sweetest) and pimentos: wash under running water and cut in half to inspect condition. This is necessary, because deterioration may exist without outward signs. If deterioration has occurred, cut away ruthlessly, and use only firm, hard flesh.
Scrub Jerusalem artichokes or sweet potatoes (or yams) vigorously. Serve in small amounts in the salad. The artichokes are crisp and easy to eat. If you must shred the sweet potatoes, do it as close to eating time as possible.
Edible podded peas need only a quick washing. English peas: serve fresh young garden peas in the shell. If they are larger and from the supermarket, you may prefer to hull and cull them.
Broccoli and cauliflower florets need only a quick rinsing or dip in water and perhaps a little cleaning up with a sharp paring knife. The smaller broccoli leaves are also a bonus salad vegetable of high quality. The larger, tougher leaves require some steaming.
Small young turnips may be scrubbed and served whole—also, small young beets.
Small young green beans should be washed quickly and culled.
Asparagus should be rinsed, dipped and rinsed again to remove the sand.
Scrub yellow crookneck and zucchini squash lightly to avoid damage.
Strip husks and silk from young, tender sweet corn—you might use a tooth brush lightly. Rinse, and enjoy.
Raw mushrooms may be used in salads, but are not recommended because they pass through the digestive system unchanged. If used, wash by holding briefly under running water. If necessary, finish cleaning up with a sharp paring knife. Do not soak or peel.
26.4.1 Advantages of Sprouting
26.4.2 Miscellaneous Sprouting Information
26.4.4 AIfalfa Sprouts and Mung Bean Sprouts
26.4.6 Avoiding Sprouting Problems
A sprout is a germinating seed. It is the tiny shoot that emerges from the seed, the first visible evidence of the materials stored within the seed, programmed to create life.
I don’t agree with people who believe sprouts to be the most perfect food—I am inclined rather to go along with Dr. Shelton’s belief that sprouts should be regarded as an excellent bonus food, but not to be relied upon as a replacement for foods grown to a more mature state, with benefit of earth and sunlight.
Cathryn Elwood’s chapter on “Vitamin-Rich Sprouts” in Feel Like A Million gives excellent information on the progressive and accelerating nutritional value as the sprouts progress.
Sprouting is fun! It is exciting to watch the growth (in a jar or other type of sprouter on your kitchen counter) into vitamin-, mineral- and protein-rich green vegetables, loaded with enzymes and chlorophyll. As the tiny seeds multiply in volume (one to two tablespoons of alfalfa seeds fill a quart jar with sprouts), a wonderful salad ingredient, with an abundance of Vitamins A, B and C, is being grown. Alfalfa sprouts are also a splendid source of Vitamins D, E, G, K and U. Vitamin C is especially high in lentil and mung bean sprouts after three days. However, lentil sprouts should be harvested when the sprout is no longer than the seed, while mung bean sprouts should be allowed to grow long enough to produce green leaves.
The sprouted seed contains far more vitamins than the dry seed, multiplying dramatically through the sprouting period. Research at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania revealed phenomenal increases of Vitamin C as sprouting progressed, and an increase in Vitamin C even during storage in the refrigerator. Riboflavin, niacin and other B vitamins were also increased during sprouting.
Dr. Paul Burkholder of Yale University found that the total Vitamin B content is increased 100% during the sprouting process.
Vitamin-conscious people, please take note; Hygienists need not be concerned, leaving that to nature and the Hygienic diet.
Sprouts are also noted for their high-enzyme activity. During germination, proteins are broken down into amino acids and some new protein is synthesized. During sprouting, much of the starch is converted to natural sugars. In many seeds, fats disappear and are replaced by carbohydrates, improving tremendously the digestibility of sprouts over seeds.
Phytic acid in whole grains is antagonistic to the absorption by the body of calcium, iron and other minerals. Soaking and sprouting neutralizes the phytic acid, so sprouted grains not only provide increased nutrients, but elimination of the threat of phytic acid also.
Viktoras Kulvinskas says that iron may become unavailable to the organism due to the resultant insoluble compound formed when the iron unites with phytic acid. “The acid combines well with calcium, iron, zinc and other minerals, which reduce significantly their absorption into the, bloodstream. Similarly, oxalic acid of spinach can reduce significantly the availability of calcium. Phytin is very frequently present in many seeds and may constitute up to 80% of the phosphorus content of the seed. The absolute amount of phytin varies in species and families. Hence, eating a diet rich in seed, besides the high protein complications, can result in a tremendous loss of important minerals, in spite of the fact that seeds are rich sources of such minerals. However, the mineral losses because of the high phytin concentration become insignificant if one sprouts the seeds.”
Professors A.M. Mayer and A. Poljakoff-Mayber of the Botany Department, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, found that most of the phytin disappeared in the sprouted seeds studied and that there was an increase in desirable forms of phosphorus compounds, especially in lecithin.
The dry seed is characterized by a remarkably low metabolic rate, but even the moistening of the seed triggers tremendous changes. Drs. Mayer and Poljakoff-Mayber describe the process which results in such important changes: “As soon as the seed is hydrated, very marked changes in composition in its various parts occur. These changes occur even when the seed is placed in water without any nutrients, and in complete absence of assimilation. The chemical changes which occur are complex in nature.
They consist of three main types: the breakdown of certain materials in the seed, the transport of materials from one part of the seed to another, especially from the endosperm to the embryo or from the cotyledons (the first pairs of leaves) to the growing part, and lastly the synthesis of new materials from the breakdown products formed. The only substances normally taken up by the seeds during germination are water and oxygen.”
Cathryn Elwood says, “One of the chief advantages lies in the fact that sprouting can give us a new crop of delicious food every two to four days—a crop that needs no thought to soil conditions, composting techniques, blight, bugs, weeds, storms, sprays; one that can be grown any season and in any climate and is simple to harvest and store for future use.” She says they have valuable protein, compare favorably with fresh fruits in antiscorbutic (Vitamin C) properties, have no waste, are excellent raw (and could be lightly cooked, if desired, in about three minutes). One pound of seed increases to six or eight pounds of food, and so the price drops way down.
All sprouted seeds, legumes and grains can be eaten without cooking. Some people find sprouted soybeans unpalatable, in which case they may elect to steam them briefly to slightly alter the taste.
“Sprouties,” as Cathryn Elwood calls them, are not only convenient, economical, easily grown—any time, anywhere—they are also an easily available source of organically-grown food. If you do not use organically-grown seeds, be sure they are, at least, untreated.
I have found alfalfa seeds, sunflower seeds, mung beans, azuki beans and lentils easiest to sprout; we like alfalfa sprouts best and use them freely, mostly with salad vegetables. Many people with impaired digestions, who have trouble with other nuts and seeds, find that sprouted sunflower seeds are well tolerated.
Garden peas, soy beans, garbanzo beans and wheat and rye berries may also be sprouted, with just a little experimentation and practice. Most whole nuts, seeds, beans and grains may be sprouted, although shelled nuts are difficult, sometimes impossible, to sprout. As previously indicated, all may be eaten raw after sprouting, and may be stored in the refrigerator for about five days. Sprouted beans, raw or cooked, are less gassy than unsprouted beans, which, of course, must be cooked.
Eat sprouts from rye, wheat or other grain berries (seeds) in 24 hours or so, when but a short sprout is showing. (Grains sour readily.) Harvest sunflower seeds when sprouts are no longer than seeds, preferably even shorter. Eat lentils in two or three days, sprouts no more than one inch, preferably less.
Garbanzo and soy bean sprouts are especially high in protein but are not easy to work with; sprouts should be short—they also may sour. Rinse frequently to preclude souring, say, four times daily, even more if weather is hot.
Lentil sprouts are also high in protein, and they are easier to handle.
Mung beans are easy to sprout and will be ready in about four days, with sprouts about two inches long and showing green leaves (see sprouting instructions).
Alfalfa sprouts will also be ready in about four days, with sprouts of about two to three inches and green leaves.
Seeds and legumes for sprouting are available in health food stores, also in some supermarkets. Don’t sprout mixed varieties, because different seeds, legumes and grains require different treatment.
This is the simplest and easiest sprouting method: Wash seeds thoroughly. Put one to two tablespoons of alfalfa seeds (or three to six tablespoons of beans, or one-half cup of wheat, rye or other grain) in a quart jar with the purest possible water (preferably distilled) about three times the volume of the seeds. Soak overnight, or six to ten hour (alfalfa, lentils and wheat or other grains about six hours; mung, garbanzo or soy beans ten hours or longer). Soak longer in cool weather, less in warm weather. The soak water should not be cold. One source advises changing the water should not be cold. One source advises changing the water halfway through the soak period.
Cover the jar with a stainless steel mesh and jar ring, or cheesecloth or nylon mesh held on with rubber bands or a jar ring. (The jar ring has a tendency to rust before long, so the rubber band is somewhat better in that respect).
Next morning (or at the end of the soaking period) drain and rinse the sprouts (without removing the mesh covering). Set at an angle to drain (prop up bottom end of the jar about an inch). Then rinse two to four times daily through the mesh; fill the jar with water from the tap, empty and shake very gently to disperse the seeds around the jar. I will repeat: sprouts require more frequent rinsing in warm weather, less frequent in cooler weather. Cover the jar with a small towel so that the seeds will have air and warmth, but not light, as they put out their first roots.
After three days (or when leaf appears), remove towel so light (not direct sunlight) will green up the leaves (chlorophyll). This may take eight to twelve hours or more, after which they may be eaten or stored in the refrigerator to eat at a later time. Actually, they may be eaten at any stage in the sprouting process, but they are at their best when the twin leaves are dark green. Only alfalfa and mung bean sprouts are sprouted to the green leaf stage. Other sprouts are used sooner, without green leaves, per previous instructions.
When sprouts are ready for harvesting, hulls may be floated off, if desired. In any event, the sprouts should be given a final rinse, and then allowed to drain on a paper towel before storing. They will keep longer if stored only slightly moist, not wet.
You will note that I have recommended using the soak water for your plants. Although the soak water has been found to be rich in minerals, vitamins, enzymes and amino acids, it is foul-tasting. Some people advocate drinking this soak water, or using it by combining with other foods.
Dr. Alec Burton (Australian Hygienic Professional) believes that this soak water should be regarded as a waste product and discarded, but there is certainly no reason not to make use of its nutrient content for your garden, which will then return the nutrients to you when you harvest your vegetables.
Although the nutrients in the soak water have been leached from the seeds, the tremendous multiplication of nutrients occurring in the seeds as they are sprouted more than compensates for this loss.
Another option is to avoid the loss of nutrients by osmosis into the soak water by utilizing only enough water in presoaking the seeds so that all the water is absorbed into the seeds.
However, we do use the soak water when dried beans are soaked prior to cooking, which may seem inconsistent. Some authorities do advocate discarding this water also. But the soak water from the beans, if used, would be used in the preparation of the cooked beans.
There may be some validity to the suggestions to use the soak water by-product of the sprouting operation by mixing with other foods, especially if you are using cooked foods, such as soups or casseroles.
However, it seems to me that there is a basic difference in these two situations. If the bean soak water is discarded, there go a plethora of vitamins and minerals which have leached into the water! But, in the case of the soak water from the sprouts, the loss is adequately replaced and multiplied during the sprouting process.
As previously indicated, there is some disagreement as to whether or not to discard the water in which beans are soaked (usually overnight). Advocates of discarding the bean soak water say that although you will be discarding some nutrients, you will also be discarding many of the oligosaccharides that cause flatulence.
Those who advocate cooking the beans in the soak water believe that the marked and complex chemical changes in composition which occur in the beans as a result of hydration and soaking (the process described by Drs. Mayer and Poljakoff-Mayber—referred to previously) are also accompanied by alteration of the nature of the breakdown products, from which new materials are synthesized.
I have experimented with using and discarding the soak water, and have noticed no problem with flatulence when the soak water is used in cooking the beans; in fact, there doesn’t seem to be any difference at all.
I am a good subject for this experiment, because for many years I was unable to tolerate legumes, either cooked or sprouted, because all legumes, even lentils, caused me distress. I eliminated legumes from my diet completely for about six months, and then restored them slowly and carefully. Now I use legumes (cooked or sprouted) occasionally, in moderate amounts, with no problem of flatulence.
You may decide to experiment with both methods—that is, using or discarding the soak water. I don’t believe either method will affect your health and well-being. In fact, I doubt that you will notice any difference. I will welcome comments and reports as to the results of your experiments.
There are many other types of sprouters—some, makeshift but efficient (a bowl with a plate to cover and drain—instructions later) and some more sophisticated. I have an excellent sprouter which was made out of a clear plastic shoe box with an opaque cover. For draining, six 3/16” holes were drilled along one bottom end, a screen was cemented over them (inside the box); and ten larger holes (1/4” diameter) were drilled in the lid, along the sides. A small piece of wood is used in propping up the end without the holes and screen, when draining. The alfalfa and mung bean sprouts grow straight up and beautiful, instead of tangling inside a jar.
Health food stores have two quart sprouting jars available with stainless steel mesh screens in plastic screw tops which, of course, do not rust.
I also have a decorative, sprouting sphere called “Little Green Acre,” which the folder says “provides light, humidity and air circulation in balanced harmony for trouble-free sprouting, and is specifically designed to utilize those light rays in the spectrum which enhance sprout growth.” I do find it superior in many respects to other sprouting methods, but it is expensive, and you can do quite well sprouting alfalfa, sunflower seeds, azuki beans, mung beans and lentils in a jar. You may find your sprouts do better in the two quart wide-mouthed jar with plastic screw top and stainless steel screen, rather than the one quart Mason jar. The sphere does prevent souring of the more difficult to sprout soy beans and grains, and does not require as much attention—rinsing and changing the water in the base just once a day.
Regarding the garish color, mine is half ruby red (top half) and half purple. When I bought mine (introductory price at a Vegetarian Society Convention), it was also available in ruby red and green.
This sprouter produces a generous harvest of beautiful, straight-up green-leaved alfalfa sprouts, which can be harvested gradually, if desired. It is excellent for all varieties of sprouts.
Another excellent sprouter is the “Kitchen Garden Sprouter.” It is ten inches in diameter and two and one-half inches deep. Water flows through the bottom as the sprouts are rinsed. It has a removable divided tray to make four different compartments for sprouting different seeds simultaneously without mixing.
After soaking and draining the seeds, put them in a, bowl, fill the bowl with water from the tap, cover with a plate and invert and drain. Allow the bowl to stand with the dish on top to keep the seeds at high humidity, but the plate should not fit so tightly that there is no air circulation.
Fill the bowl with water and drain two to four times daily. For better bottom drainage, try inserting a strainer or colander in the bowl.
Another bowl method is the use of a clay bowl in a pan of water. The clay bowl (or flower pot) absorbs enough water to keep the sprouts moist but not wet.
Some people use these bowl methods very successfully, others prefer more sophisticated sprouters.
Sprouts can also be grown in sand or soil. Sunflower seeds and buckwheat are especially recommended for this use. Plant in boxes or in the garden, allow to grow to about two to three inches tall, and snip off the green leaves for the salad. Soy beans, being subject to spoilage when sprouted the usual way, will obviously do better when sprouted in sand or soil.
I have heard that blended salads have the advantage of enabling the consumption of greater amounts of green vegetables than would be possible if eaten whole. If one eats a regular raw salad, and an additional amount of blended salad, would you still object to the use of the blended salad?
If there is no dental problem (or other problem involving the use of whole raw foods), there is no reason why all the salad desirable or necessary cannot be eaten as intended by Nature. When one has a feeling of surfeit (or, preferably, before such a feeling) after eating salad or any food, he should stop eating, not force more food into his body by “drinking” it. The use of blended salads often results in bombarding the digestive system with more bulk than can be comfortably or efficiently handled. Blending foods does not result in making them easier to digest. It does bypass the necessity for chewing, but the food arrives in the stomach without sufficient insalivation and without any signals for the secretion of the necessary gastric enzymes and digestive juices.
Even though I personally experienced serious digestion problems, relived by a 29-day fast in 1967, today I eat mountains of raw salad and experience no problems as a result. When my body signals I have had enough, I stop eating. I have experimented with the use of additional blended salads, with negative results—cramps and discomfort. Even if overt symptoms do not occur as a result of “stuffing” with blended salads, future problems may be incubating. Enjoy your salads in their most appetizing and healthful form—whole, succulent and delicious.
Why do you object to the use of hydroponic vegetables, and yet you approve the use of sprouts, which are also usually grown without soil or sunshine?
It is true that sprouts are also grown without soil or sunshine, but they are harvested before there is a necessity for the nutrients provided by the soil or sunshine.
If seeds are grown beyond the sprout stage (to maturity or near-maturity), it becomes necessary to provide such nutrients. Hydroponic vegetables are provided with these nutrients through the use of chemicals added to the water in which they are grown.
How much dried fruit should be used as part of the regular Hygienic diet?
Most dried fruit is very sweet. Such concentrated sweets should be used sparingly. Fresh whole fruit is better food, and much more acceptable to the organism, especially in warm weather. In seasons when fresh fruit is not plentiful, or in cold weather when one may feel the need for some more concentrated food, dried fruit may be used in slightly greater quantities. We never use dried fruit more than once in the same day, sometimes not at all. A reasonable amount (used with fresh fruit and lettuce and/or celery at a fruit meal) would be six to eight medium dates, three to five medium figs, four to six medium soaked apricots, two or three tablespoons of raisins, etc. If occasionally used with salad only and no fresh fruit, the quantities could be increased to about half again as much, if well tolerated. Overeating of dried fruit can bring on symptoms of a cold.
If one never gets beyond a “transitional” food program, can improved health be expected?
Usually a transitional food program (eating less and eliminating all or most animal products and all junk foods, and utilizing a large percentage of uncooked food) will result in some health improvement, but, after a certain plateau is reached, no further progress can be expected unless further improvements are initiated. If one expects significant health improvement, significant and continuing progress toward true Hygienic living is necessary. However, if a transitional food program is accompanied by a regular, vigorous exercise program, and attention to the other facets of Hygienic living (unpolluted air; pure water; adequate rest and sleep; sun baths and air baths; mental and emotional poise; pleasant and secure environment; creative, useful, rewarding activity; meaningful relationships with other people; personal control and self-mastery; recreational activity; comfortable temperature; natural light; moderation in all activities; and dealing with illness by rest and abstinence from food, rather than the use of drugs and treatments) much greater progress toward optimal health can be achieved.
If serious problems exist, it is highly inadvisable to indulge in any compromise to true Hygienic living. An impaired organism should be offered only those foods which will provide maximum nutritional value in return for the work that must be performed in processing these foods.
Can people with conditions such as arthritis or high blood pressure be “cured” by changing to a strict Hygienic food program, using mostly raw food?
Hygienists do not believe there are any “cures”—Hygienists merely assist the body to heal itself. Most people who are really in trouble must start out with a, therapeutic fast (usually fourteen to thirty days). Pathological conditions may sometimes respond to the change in diet, along with a regular, vigorous exercise program and other changes in lifestyle, provided drugs are not used. However, it may take a long time before any progress is observed. If the pathologies are serious and aggravated, the changes in diet and lifestyle will not accomplish the desired results within any reasonable length of time, if at all.
Are there any recommendations for variations in summer and winter diets?
Summer and winter diets must of necessity be slightly different because of the different varieties of fruits and vegetables that are available during these seasons. There are more varieties of fruit in summer than in winter. In the summer, one can rely solely on fresh fruit for carbohydrates whereas in the wintertime it may be necessary to use some dried fruit. In very cold climates one may increase the protein intake as protein has a tendency to cause more body heat to be manufactured thus keeping the person warm. Carbohydrates and fats also help produce more body heat but not to the extent as do protein foods.
What about dried foods and their needed soaking time?
Unsulfured dry fruits are good foods and may be eaten in the dry state, soaked or slightly rehydrated. However, when fresh fruits are available they should be used in preference to the dried.
To soak dried fruits, use distilled water only. Place them in a bowl rather than in a jar or glass and put only enough water for the fruit to soak up so there will be very little remaining when the fruit is ready to eat. Usually eight to twelve hours will be adequate soaking time for most dried fruits. Actually, you can suit yourself and stop the process by putting them in the refrigerator and by controlling the amount of water you place on them. If you like them very soft, then use a lot of water. If you prefer them a little more firm, then use less water.
I prefer a method I devised myself. Not liking the tasteless water left when soaking fruits the ordinary way, nor the tasteless fruit after it absorbed water, I decided to just barely rehydrate the fruit. First, wash the fruit, then rinse it in distilled water. Next, place the fruit one layer thick on a flat plate or tray with about one eighth of an inch of distilled water in it. Cover to keep the fruit damp. Turn the fruit occasionally when the top looks dry. In about two hours the fruit is a delicious chewy soft consistency-not too soggy nor too hard. I think fruits rehydrated in this manner are much more savory than the soggy mushy tasteless mass that they become when completely soaked. If you prefer more softness add more water and let them stand longer. Turn the fruit approximately every half hour so it can soak up a little more water. With this method no sugar is lost into the water, as the water is all consumed by the fruit, none being left over to sap out the sweetness and nutrients. If you like delicious chewiness, try rehydrating your fruits in this manner instead of soaking.
What to eat? Food! Fresh food! Natural foods. But what are natural foods? Cow’s milk, honey, polar bear liver? No! Natural foods are not only foods unchanged by artifice but foods natural to man, that is, “natural” in the same sense as “grass is natural food for cows.” Ideally our food should be palatable, unprocessed, uncooked and uncontaminated with pollutants, synthetic flavors, condiments, dyes, pesticides, preservatives, heavy metals, nitrates, plasticizers, etc. Our food should consist largely of raw fruit and vegetables, that is, food which is chemically and physically constituted in accord with our design or the “way we work best.” Evidence directly implicating refined carbohydrate food in the development of Western patterns of disease is now substantial and cogent. In particular a diet rich in refined carbohydrates is almost certainly a significant causative factor in appendicitis, varicose veins, diverticulosis, bowel cancer, coronary heart disease, acne, diabetes, obesity, gallstones and piles.
Food is essentially composed of fiber, nutrients, flavor substances, water and poisons. The sugar-coated drug of a physician may be composed of the same classes of substances as may tea, coffee, cocoa and medicinal herbs, but we can hardly glorify them as foods because the nature and quantity of poisons they contain detract greatly from their nutritional value. Even synthetic foods and cooked food containing all known nutrients will not support life over successive generations. Animals that only consume such food become progressively deformed and infertile with each generation. Such food has understandably been called foodless food. Food is more than the sum of its constituents, for those are determined by destructive analytical techniques.
We should try to consume mostly living food that contains as little poison as possible. All food contains both artificial and natural poisons. So don’t be discouraged if you discover that Brazil nuts contain oxalic acid. They do. Most fresh vegetable material does. But little of the oxalic acid from it is absorbed. However, some vegetable material contains “potent” poisons, e.g. “medicinal” herbs; these should be avoided. We should aim to meet our nutritional needs, while consuming as little poison as possible.
Some foods—indeed almost all foods—are claimed, by somebody, as having “therapeutic qualities” or “healing forces.” If this were true, eating a mixed diet would constitute preventative treatment in the form of preemptive multiple cures! Indeed some “foods,” such as tea, coffee, cocoa, peppermint, foxglove, belladonna, are used as stimulants, diuretics, etc., for they contain potent poisons (drugs) and represent primitive medicines. Caffeine, theophylline, theobromine, atropine, digitalis, are drugs which can be isolated from the above herbal sources and their administration is followed by physiological changes similar to those which follow the consumption of their parent herb.
No sophistry about “mineral balance” or “radiations” can make poisonous herbs nonpoisonous or anything other than injurious. Many people have double standards concerning drug use, e.g. marijuana is bad, alcohol is okay. Many people in the alternative health care fields have similar double standards. Tea and coffee are bad but peppermint and chamomile have “healing properties!” Similarly, some of the medical profession are reluctant to relinquish the hope that alcohol, coffee or tea. etc. have “curative” values.
To speak of food and to use food as “medicine” is to transfer to food all the misconceptions about drugs; to replace the notion “drugs can fix you up” with “food can fix you up.” Food is material for use by the body, food does not do anything, it is done unto—digested, absorbed, metabolized. The consumption of a particular food or foods cannot substitute for the removal of poor foods from the diet or for the removal of non-dietary causes of disease such as cigarette smoking, lack of sleep, inactivity.
Advising the sick to change their diet is not necessarily advising diet therapy unless we think of “therapy” as everything a sick person does in the hope of getting well. This understanding of “therapy” obscures important distinctions. For example a few years ago the most common medical dietary recommendation to those with diverticulosis was “avoid coarse foods-they irritate the bowels.” Now that it is “proved” that lack of “coarse” foods “causes” diverticulosis, many physicians advise those with diverticulosis to “eat more coarse foods”—a complete about-face. The former dietary recommendation constituted “diet therapy,” for the aim was to reduce symptoms rather than to provide needs or to remove causes and so, like all therapies, made things worse. The older dietary recommendations were therapeutic, the Hygienic dietary recommendations provide the needs of the body and omit unfavorable factors. A diet change (even a Hygienic one) understood as “food medicine” or “diet therapy,” like drug therapy, blinds the sick and the well to the realization that the primary prerequisite for better health is the removal of the extra-bodily causes of disease. Applied to diet, this means that the avoidance of specific foods is usually more important to recovery than the eating of specific foods.
Overheard casual conversation:
“Doesn’t poor old Mrs. Jones look unwell.”
“Yes, the doctor says she’s malnourished.”
“Well, I suppose when you live alone you don’t feel like cooking for yourself.”
This illustrates a common misconception: that “good nutrition” and cooking go together. In general, cooking is undesirable. During cooking some nutrients are lost through oxidation, denaturation and leaching. In addition, some are converted to noxious substances, such as hydrocarbons and nitrosamines. Some nutrients are also converted to a variety of substances called secretagogues-substances so named because their presence in the stomach, even in minute amounts, evokes a vigorous secretion. Some secretagogues are partly broken-down food elements, for example, peptones (from protein). The upshot is that when cooked food is eaten, an untimely, excessive and inappropriately constituted (e.g. too acid) digestive juice is poured into the stomach and intestine.
The process of denaturation and splitting of food elements which occurs when food is cooked is often unwittingly called “predigestion.” Cooking tends to “soften” the food, which encourages poor mastication and a whole train of consequences (see previously). Softened, denatured food moves slowly along and so tends to putrefy and ferment readily, especially if it is also refined and concentrated and not accompanied by a substantial amount of raw food. Cooking also tends to dehydrate the food, hence its consumption is frequently accompanied by thirst. This leads to drinking with meals and the drink is usually tea or sometimes fruit juice, which is frequently “incompatible” with the cooked food. Many popular methods of cooking, for example, boiling vegetables, result in the addition of aluminum from the pot and fluoride from the water. It has yet to be demonstrated that either of these elements is constructively involved in cellular life processes. Their, poisonous nature has been demonstrated repeatedly. Cooking also “drives off,” leaches and destroys the flavor substances and organic salts, hence encouraging:—
It is conceivable that a particular raw food diet that is nutritionally inadequate may be improved by addition of certain cooked foods. For instance, a protein-deficient raw food diet may be improved by adding cooked meat or egg yolk. But an adequate and suitable raw food diet may be preferable.
These tend to denature and precipitate enzymes and proteins, rendering enzymes ineffective and protein less digestible. Condiments are irritants which occasion an abnormal protective secretion of fluid and mucus instead of normal digestive fluids. Constant use of condiments leads to secretory impairment and insensitivity to flavor substances. So those who use condiments regularly, or smoke, or drink alcohol, cannot perceive the flavor nuances of raw salads and many fruits. So, commonly, raw food is called, “tasteless herbage” or “rabbit food”—unless that “rabbit food” is mutilated as coleslaw and/or polluted with oil, salt and vinegar—the very things that have led in part to the sensory deterioration.
Common salt (sodium chloride) is perhaps the most frequently used condiment. In natural foods sodium and chloride ions are present in low concentrations and are avidly and easily absorbed.
Providing the kidneys are in reasonable condition, they rapidly excrete all salt added to food. However, chronic intake of added salt leads to impaired ability to excrete it, with consequent fluid retention. Table salt is also implicated in the development of some forms of “high blood pressure.” In short, our so-called “mineral metabolism” works best on low intakes of sodium and chloride; so low, in fact, that a deficiency of these elements cannot be produced simply by feeding natural foods, no matter how little sodium and chloride they contain. Indeed if you develop kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure, or high blood pressure, a low-salt diet is medically recommended. Too late. Don’t wait; omit salt from your diet now.
A large raw vegetable salad with each dinner is one of the most important elements of the diet. As a preventive of disease, it is far superior to all the vaccines and serums ever devised. Salad eating, at least in this country, is a recent innovation and had its origin among those who have been dubbed food faddists. The addition of a suitable salad to a meal always improves the nutritional value of the meal.
At the turn of the century cooking was much worse than now and the diet more gross-flesh, bread and potatoes or beans three times a day, with an assortment of side dishes, cakes, pies, etc., that would have made a meal for a 600-pound boar, all jumbled together in the most abominable combinations. It was an era when a flesh, bread and potato diet with such accessory foods as butter, cream, mayonnaise, sugar and sweet desserts were the most common reliance of the people. Fresh fruits and vegetables were scarce in the diet.
At that time the medical profession was horrified at the thought of eating uncooked fruits and vegetables. There were germs on them! “There are typhoid germs on all uncooked vegetables.” But under the leadership of the “cranks,” “faddists” and “quacks” the people took to eating these raw foods, and as the fresh foods entered the diet the germs vanished. No typhoid resulted from eating these germ-laden foods. Today, even the most bacteriophobic physicians eat these foods uncooked, the only food they refuse to eat without first heat-sterilizing is milk. (It also supposedly contains typhoid and tubercular germs.)
Although popular eating is less gross than formerly, people still overeat. They have relieved their stomachs and bowels to some extent but have thrown the burden on the liver, pancreas and ductless glands. Today the people are eating far more raw (uncooked) fruits and vegetables. Lettuce, cucumbers, celery, apples, strawberries, citrus fruits, etc., are raised in enormous quantities and shipped by trainloads to all parts of the country. Trainloads of lettuce are now raised where wheelbarrow-loads were formerly raised.
Until well within the lifetime of the author the medical profession advised never to eat “raw” fruits and vegetables because of the germs they carried. Not until it was discovered that raw fruits and vegetables were the best sources of vitamins did they cease to warn against the germ-laden uncooked fruits and vegetables. (And this discovery came only after the profession was forced to recognize that people were getting well on diets of uncooked fruits and vegetables.) Indeed, they are still issuing the old warning when one goes into Mexico, India, China and elsewhere.
For physicians to have told their patients to accompany their beefsteak with a large combination salad of uncooked, non-starchy vegetables would have subjected them to ridicule. It would have been too easy for the people to trace the advice to its source in the hated diets of the faddists. So, they retired to their laboratories and came up with the discovery (the faddists had beaten them to the discovery) that the virtues of such a meal are due to the vitamin content of uncooked foods.
At those mutual admiration gatherings of physicians, called conventions, much is said, between smoking and drinking bouts, about diet, but in practice, the subject is avoided like the plague. It is a safe estimate that no less than 90% of the medical profession is giving no attention to diet, other than to ape popular sentiment on the subject. Many of them “believe in diet,” but, as with the weather, they “do nothing about it.” Every day the sick tell me that their physicians have advised them to eat what they please—that food has nothing to do with sickness.
One can listen to a physician talk loud and learnedly about vitamins, amino acids, food blends, calories, etc., and easily become persuaded that he knows what he is talking about. This is a mistake. The garrulousness of the profession is an acquired habit in the effort to see how much they can say about a subject of which they know nothing. Whole libraries of technical literature bear witness to their success.
The present-day hospital is a chuck-house, overfeeding its inmates on the same kinds of “good nourishing foods” that filled the hospitals in our grandfather’s day. In these institutions there is no “newer knowledge of nutrition.” Feeding a person who is said to be starving on such things as gelatin, alcohol, beef, tea, puddings, white bread, canned fruits and vegetables, pasteurized milk and such is a sure way of guaranteeing that the starvation shall be continued and accentuated.
To supplement a diet of this kind with vitamin pills and expect the patient to be well-nourished is the height of the ridiculous. Sooner or later the misled people are going to discover that vitamin pills are not satisfactory substitutes for uncooked fruits and vegetables. The medical profession resisted the effort to popularize the uncooked diet and science came forth with vitamin pills as a substitute, but the results of the pills have not been satisfactory. Vitamins should come from the orchard and garden, not from the drug store.
Nature turns out her products in a state of physiological balance and when we eat our foods as she produces them, they are not sources of trouble. But when we extract portions of her products, as when sugar is extracted from cane or beet or white flour is extracted from wheat, we eat an artificial product that is out of balance, lacking in many of the essentials of nutrition. The remedy for such a state of affairs is to eat whole, that is, unprocessed, unrefined and uncooked foods grown on fertile soil.
Vegetarianism comes in for much criticism and condemnation from the medical profession, which knows nothing about the subject of diet. When vegetarianism is defined as a system of diet that excludes flesh and the matter is allowed to rest there, with no well-defined rational or scientific adjustments of foods to the needs of the well and the sick, it can and will turn in many dietetic failures. When commercialism is permitted to force upon vegetarians a decided cereal bias, so that grains are prepared in many different ways to appeal to the palates of vegetarians, the vegetarian diet becomes decidedly unwholesome. Fortunately, in more recent years vegetarians have taken more avidly to uncooked nonstarchy vegetables and to fresh fruits. Among the health-conscious vegetarians, at least, better eating practices are in vogue.
A salad of uncooked, non-starchy vegetables should accompany every protein and every starch meal. The common practice of eating shrimp salad, potato salad and similar salads will not suffice. Indeed, such dishes hardly merit the name salad. The salad should consist of such foods as lettuce, celery, cucumbers, green and red peppers (the nonpungent varieties), cabbage, tomatoes and other non-starchy vegetables. These foods should be served fresh and without salt, vinegar, olive oil, mayonnaise or dressings of any kind. Such “foods” are not recommended for salads nor to be eaten in any other way. Tomatoes should form part of the salad only when starches are not part of the meal.
To assure a plentiful supply of minerals and vitamins, a large salad, as suggested above, should accompany each protein and each carbohydrate meal. The customary salad consisting of two leaves of wilted lettuce and a slice of half-ripe tomato, topped off with a radish or pickled olive and a spoonful of greasy foul-tasting salad dressing, is not only unwholesome but does not meet the vitamin and mineral needs of a canary. A salad should be part of the most enjoyable food of a meal and will be if proper choices of salad materials are made.
Reprinted from the Hygienic Review
Acidosis is the term misapplied to a lessened alkalinity of the body fluids. The fluids of the body are normally slightly alkaline. A lowering of the alkalinity of these fluids is more properly termed hypoalkalinity. Acidosis or hypoalkalinity is defined as a condition characterized by a deficiency of fixed alkalies in the body, which leads to an increased production of ammonia in the urine and a high acidity.
Acidosis is not acid blood, for the blood never becomes acid during life. An alkaline blood and lymph is necessary to life and health and for the blood to even reach the point of neutrality would cause speedy death.
The normal ratio between the alkalies and acids of the body is approximately 80 to 20—80% alkali and 20% acid. This proportion is maintained in balance by the so-called “buffer salts”—sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium—from which either side may draw as need arises. When this “buffer” or “balance wheel” is in normal order any excess of acids in the body is promptly neutralized. It is only when there is a deficiency of these salts that troubles may arise. A shortening of the relationship between these is wrongly termed acidosis.
The body will not tolerate any free acid for a minute, except in the stomach during the process of digestion. All acids are instantly “bound,” by being combined with alkalies, to render them harmless. The body makes use of every resource at its command to preserve its alkalinity for the reason that its cells can thrive only in an alkaline medium and cannot possibly thrive in an acid medium.
Since we supply acids and alkalies to our bodies through food, the matter of a balance between acid foods and alkali or base foods is important. If an excessive amount of acid food is eaten, the blood is forced to draw upon its alkaline reserve, its “buffer salts,” in order to maintain its normal alkalinity. When we have taken more acid into the body than we can “bind” without sacrificing some of the bases of the tissues, blood alkalinity falls below the normal level and we have hypoalkalinity or acidosis.
Every food eaten leaves behind it an ash after it has been used by the body. The ash is either acid or alkaline. Eating too much acid-ash food, or eating it over long periods of time, results in storing acid-ash in the cells and in depleting the body of its alkaline reserve.
Acid-ash foods are all meats, eggs, cheese, milk (in adults), all cereals and cereal products, legumes (except in the green state), nuts, and all denatured foods of all kinds. Denatured foods have been robbed of their bases.
The alkaline-ash foods are fruits (except cranberries, prunes and some plums), all green vegetables and milk (in infants). Fats and oils are classed as neutral foods.
Severe acidosis may be produced experimentally by deficient diets, but such severe states are seldom met with in life, except in famine. Maignon has repeatedly shown that an exclusive protein diet is positively toxic even in the carnivora. Whipple, Slyke, Birkner, and Berg have shown the same thing.
The medical administration of acids, such as salicylic acid (often in aspirin), benzoic acid, boric acid, sulphuric acid, etc., leads to a dangerous loss of bases, for these acids can be rendered harmless and subsequently eliminated only after being combined with alkaline elements. Hydrochloric acid, prescribed by physicians in supposed gastric hypoacidity, also leaches the body of its bases and aids in producing acidosis.
Free acetic acid, as found in vinegar, if consumed in quantities, may lead to symptoms of acid poisoning. It is even more injurious to health than alcohol. The body is called upon to sacrifice its bases to neutralize the acid, while it has a particularly destructive effect upon the red corpuscles and may produce anemia.
A diet poor in bases, or food that has been robbed of its bases, has the same deleterious effects. The meat diet, as used in civilized countries, is of this type. An exclusive muscle-meat diet, when fed to dogs, will not maintain health and growth. If dogs are fed on meat from which the juices have been expressed, “emaciation ensues after a time, toxic symptoms set in, death speedily follows, and post-mortem examination shows in the skeleton changes characteristic of osteomalacia and osteoporosis.” (Osteomalacia is softening of the bones; Osteoporosis is the rarefication—decrease in density—of bone due to enlargement of its cavities or the formation of new spaces.)
I was very interested to read the article by Dr. Vetrano on sprouts in the September issue of the Hygienic Review, and there is much “food for thought” in it. However, I cannot agree with the conclusions drawn, apparently largely based on the letter from “N.P.” These are totally inconsistent with the facts given in Ford Heritage’s book that he cites as his authority.
On page 1 of the book Composition & Facts About Foods, Heritage specifically points out that dashes given in place of numbers in his tables do not mean zero nutriment contents: “In some cases information was not available at the time of assembling this material. This is indicated in the tables by a dash (-). It is hoped that such missing information may be forthcoming at a future time.” N.P. has totally misquoted these in his letter, rendering the dashes instead, as “0”; this is not as they appear in the book, for in each and every case cited (pages 26-27, soybeans) Heritage lists the missing ingredients with a dash (-), meaning simply that such information was not available to him. This is not surprising, with the interest in sprouts being a fairly recent phenomenon, and with not much of this interest in the orthodox circles from which Heritage drew his information. Clearly, then, the supposedly vanished elements have not “gone anywhere”; they simply have been unlisted due to lack of that specific information.
But let us look at the supposed “loss of Vitamin B” which Dr. Vetrano has mentioned. I refer exclusively to Heritage’s tables, these being the sole expert or factual source cited by either Dr. Vetrano or N.P. We must realize that in the process of sprouting, the dried out (and in that state, virtually inedible) seed has been returned to a viable condition, through restoration of its lost moisture. In the specific case of soybeans, some additional water has been absorbed (as it naturally would be from damp earth), to reconstitute the seed to somewhat more than the percentage of water found in the original fresh soybean. The water content percentages are: fresh, 60.2%; dried, 10.0%; sprouts, 86.5%. This water content is the missing key that has eluded both Dr. Vetrano and N.P., and led them to jump to faulty conclusions about “missing vitamins.”
If we began with (for example) a single ounce of dried soybeans (seeds), and then reconstituted the water through soaking and sprouting, we would then have a total food weight of approximately six ounces of soy sprouts. The dry (non-water) material present would originally have been 90% of one ounce, or .9 oz. It would still remain roughly 9 oz., but would now be distributed throughout six ounces of food, the balance being the added water content. Percentagewise, all nutriments but water will have been cut by a factor of 6:1, but they have not “gone anywhere”; they are still there as before. Dry material would now be about 14% of the total, compared with 90% of the old dry weight. Using the factor of 6:1 as a convenient round figure, we proceed.
About of the actual weight of fat has been burned up, as “fuel” for the new life; this is of insignificant nutritional content for the purposes of this discussion. The calcium content, which was 226, should now have dropped to about 38 (mgs. per 100 gm. portion); but we note it is listed by Heritage as 48. Clearly, we have no net loss of calcium. There is some loss of iron and phosphorus noted in the chart, the iron content being slightly less than expected, and the phosphorus about 2/3 of what could reasonably be expected from the 6:1 dilution. So we may have lost 1/3 of the phosphorus.
Let’s look at the feared Vitamin B losses. This is very revealing: it is exactly the opposite! Thiamine (B-1) was 1.10 mgs. per 100 grams; now diluted at 6:1 with water, it must be around .18, but is in fact listed at .23, a gain of over a quarter of the original amount present. Riboflavin (B-2) is listed originally (dry state) as .31; in 6:1 dilution with water it should be .05. But it has a shot up to .20, indicating four times the net amount of riboflavin as compared to the original amount in the dry 1 oz. of seed.
Percentagewise the concentration in the 6 oz. of food has dropped to 2/3 of the former content, but we nevertheless have a total amount of Vitamin B-2 that is 400% of the original amount.
Niacin is listed at 2.2 mgs. originally, which would theoretically be diluted by sprouting to less than .4 mgs. But again the reverse is true, for the figure is .8 for the 6:1 water-diluted sprouts, showing a doubling of total niacin present in the six ounces of sprouts, as compared with original content in the 1 ounce of seeds. Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) content is unavailable in Heritage’s charts, for the dry state, but Dr. Vetrano admits that this is increased. It is not, however, the “only vitamin increased.” The Vitamin A content was originally given as 80 international units per 100 grams edible portion. In the sprouts it is still 80 units per 100 gms., but remember that we now have six ounces of sprouts, thus we have SIX TIMES the original net international units of Vitamin A; even though the percentage would still be identical to the former percentage, we have nontheless six times the available quantity of nourishment in regard to this important vitamin.
I hasten to add that these additional net amounts of vitamins did not have to “come from somewhere” outside the seed; it can easily be understood as a matter of natural processes of rearranging molecules and compounds, synthesizing relatively nonuseful raw materials into more useful (for human nutrition) materials. The same thing occurs within the intestines of humans, producing B-12, for instance.
Protein content must also be taken in the light of the same 6:1 formula, allowing for the great increase in water content to bring the seed to its viable and edible condition. Thus, we had a figure of 34.1% dry protein, now 6.2% for the sprouted soybean. Yet, we see no complaints that most of our protein has vanished into thin air, or been leached out through osmosis. It has gone nowhere at all; it is simply comparing the same amount to a percentage of 1 oz. or a percentage of 6 oz. of total food. An analogy of this apparent paradox of “vanishing nutriments” is seen among the legumes as well. Dried peas and beans are often cited as having enormous protein contents, based upon hasty scanning of charts listing dry weight. This makes them a very good buy, dollar wise. But when reconstituted with water to make them edible, of course, the content of protein is fractionated along with everything else, rendering them a fairly good source of protein (percentagewise), but certainly no “super-food” in protein content. Similarly, dry seeds can be a good value, as you add water yourself; if you buy presprouted seeds, you pay for convenience, as 5/6 of what you buy is water. Perhaps we shouldn’t mind this, as much of the Natural Hygienic food (such as fruits and salad items) is largely water anyway.
In regard to overpricing among health-food sources of seeds, it should be noted that the cheap open-market seeds sold for flour-making (for example) often are so stale they will not sprout at all, or at least have a high proportion of “dead” seeds. Freshness is very important; organic growing without sprays may also account for some of the additional cost. If N.P. can buy seeds at 1/5 the price in small quantities, which are equal in quality for sprouting purposes, we would be delighted to learn of his source. We do not sell them, but we do use them, and would be glad to save even more on sprouting.
We can see no major objection to Dr. Vetrano’s method of sprouting seeds in white sand, but it should be noted that this would add nothing to the nutritional value of the sprouts either; the sand would merely act as a holder for the sprouts and the moisture; it might also be difficult to separate the grit from the sprouts. We feel the sprouter-jar method is cleaner in this respect, and see no drawback in having sprouts that are curled instead of straight. This probably comes about from tumbling in the jar, preventing the sprouts from consistently growing in the same direction. This would have nothing to do with nutrition.
So, to summarize: the vitamins do not “go anywhere”; they are manufactured by these busy little new lives from cruder materials within the seeds themselves, apparently. There is no vitamin loss in terms of net material available for human consumption, and it is a fallacy to use the dry material percentage of vitamins as a yardstick without allowing for the six-fold increase in water content. Allowing for this, there is a fair to tremendous increase in Vitamins A, B-1, B-2, niacin, and C, properly disregarding the specious dry seed percentage which is not available to us in that state. Otherwise, obviously you could say the same criticism of any natural food. One could take, say, bananas, dry them out, and say that the dry bananas are so much more nutritious than natural bananas. This ignores the fact that if you eat the dry food, you must then drink correspondingly greater amounts of water to supply your body’s moisture needs, and you would then be right back where you started!
As we have noted, there is some loss of nutriment by osmosis if seeds are soaked. We have already experimented with utilizing only the proper amount of water in presoaking of seeds for sprouting, so that all the water is absorbed into the seeds. This would preclude any possibility of osmotic loss into the water, of any nutriment; and we are now advising fellow Hygienists to follow this simple precaution to avoid the possibility of such loss. We thank Dr. Vetrano for drawing our attention to this possibility, but this should satisfy that sole objection to the use of the sprouts.
Regarding N.P.’s objection to sprouts being grown “without any sunshine,” this is simply not true of the better sprouting methods. Sprouts are generally grown in subdued light for the first 2 or 3 days, corresponding to the germination period in the earth; but it is advocated that they be placed in at least indirect sunlight (skylight) for the last day or so, and this is analogous to the new shoot peeping up through the earth. At this time, it turns green and begins the chlorophyll photosynthesis chemical reactions, exactly as any new plant would. I trust this will all help to dispel any fears that any fellow Hygienists may have about possible “vitamin losses” through sprouting. As we have shown, all vitamins cited experience a moderate to great increase through sprouting, in terms of amounts available for humans.
Editor’s Notes: When harmony and cooperation are urgently needed for the advancement and good of Natural Hygiene, why should the leaders demonstrate contention and a lack of the poise stressed in the pedagogy of Hygiene? Why split hairs over the method of sprouting seeds?
Soy beans, being subject to spoilage, must obviously do better when sprouted over well-dampened sand. A method which lessens soaking and rinsing of seeds seems desirable. Since eye appeal is advocated in serving food, why not have straight, green, hearty-looking sprouts? Dr. Vetrano says the sand readily leaves the sprouts when water is poured over them, and if necessary, the sprouts are dipped up and down in the water for a moment. Until the method is tested, why not withhold contradiction and accept her discovery?
In actual practice, much of the sprouting is done away from the light.
To compare bananas, which must be dried artificially, with beans, which are dry naturally in the ripening process, seems a poor analogy.
We can be thankful that a natural process makes food appropriated by cereal grass-eating animals, along with other seeds, acceptable to the human digestive system. But, while enjoying this fascinating bonus viand more or less frequently, we’ll depend for our sustenance chiefly—added to fruits, nuts and non-sprouted seeds—on the broad leaves and other fresh green vegetables from the garden (organic, we hope), because of their free exposure to air, soil and sunlight.
What a marvelous full provision we have in the Hygienists’ diet, unspoiled by cooking and processing.
Elegant simplicity!
How to buy and ripen them. How to prepare, combine and service them. Important considerations as an item of diet.
“The avocado is Nature’s butter!” I’ve heard this comment from several lovers of this fine food. And many of them use it just as if it were butter, spreading it on cooked potatoes, bread and other foods. Needless to say, cooked foods are less wholesome in the diet than unfired foods. Also, avocado does not combine well with all foods. Digestive problems and poor health result from eating a rich food like avocado in incompatible combinations.
Yes, avocado does have a consistency much like butter and is far more wholesome than butter. But it should be thought of as a food in itself and not as a butter substitute.
Many Hygienists/Life Scientists are confused about how to combine avocado with other foods. Some food combining charts show it as both a fat and a protein while other charts show it as a fruit of a very special character, a fruit in a category by itself. Some Hygienists combine avocados with other fruits. We’ll try to clear up this confusion.
The avocado is made up of the same basic elements as nuts. Both contain a large amount of fat and protein. Even though both are technically fruits, we treat them differently and separately from other fruits because their dietetic character is determined by their heavy protein/fat content. Therefore, avocados should be treated like nuts in food combinations.
The main difference between avocados and nuts is that avocados are about 75 percent water and nuts contain very little water, only three to five percent. For example, let’s compare the avocado with the pecan. Except for the difference in water content, these foods are almost identical in make-up. There are two other differences that are worth considering, too:
Despite its broader range of nutrients and its alkaline-forming character in the diet that make it preferable to nuts and seeds, avocado should not necessarily always be eaten in place of pecans and other nuts and seeds. It is good to eat a wide variety of foods over days, weeks and months. This assures a variety of nutrients as well as a more interesting diet.
We should eat nuts with green leafy vegetables, tomatoes, cucumbers and other nonstarchy raw veggies. The same is true for avocados. We should eat them with lettuce, celery and such non-sugar fruits as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc.
Avocados should not be eaten to excess because we would get too much fat and protein if we ate too many. One-half of one a day or one every two or three days is enough. They should be the only protein/fat food at the meal and the only protein meal of the day. It is not necessary for most people to eat a protein/fat meal every day. The high energy level and leanness that go along with a diet relatively low in fat and protein is desirable. However, we do require a small amount of the essential fatty acids that are abundant in avocados and nuts.
If you have nuts or seeds, three to four ounces is the most that should be eaten in a day. If you choose avocado, one average-size one is a reasonable serving portion. In fat and protein content, one medium avocado is equivalent to about one and a half to two ounces of nuts. Many people feel more satisfied after eating an avocado than such a small amount of nuts or seeds. This is very much in the avocado’s favor because we are better off healthwise with less fat and protein in our diet and more sugar-containing fruits. We should get most of the energy (calories) we need from sugar-containing fruits, not from nuts, seeds or avocados. This is true even if you do heavy labor. Our fuel requirements are best met from carbohydrates, namely sugar-containing fruits.
Avocados average about 69 cents each throughout their season, sometimes being a dollar each out of season (winter—December-February) and as little as 49 cents each at the height of the season. They are not the most economical food. Sunflower seeds are a much better buy. But I personally prefer avocados over nuts because taste and ultimate wholesomeness are my primary considerations in buying food.
If you buy avocados on a weekly basis it is best to buy hard green ones. They will become somewhat soft to the touch and dark colored when they’re ripe. There will be no hard spots. They will ripen in about two to four days at room temperature. If too many become ripe at once, you may refrigerate them one to three days without much further ripening or deterioration. However, avocados do deteriorate rapidly once they’ve ripened. For this reason it isn’t wise to buy avocados that have already ripened in the store unless you plan to eat them the day of purchase.
Good avocados have a consistent yellow-green color throughout. If part of the flesh has turned grey, black or brown, cut out those portions. If the taste isn’t great, don’t eat it. In time you will become an expert at picking out good avocados and knowing how to ripen and store them.
We have been describing the Hass avocado, which is the most popular type on the market. But there are other varieties, none of which compare well with the Hass in flavor. The Fuerte variety is probably second best to Hass avocados. Bacon avocados are also sometimes available. Bacon and Fuerte avocados have smoother skins than the Hass, much less flavor, usually, and a higher water content and less fat and protein. For instance, Hass has about 75 percent water content and other varieties may have around 83 percent.
The avocado may be prepared and served in many ways. One of the favorite ways is to serve it on the half shell, spooning out the flesh. Just cut the avocado in half lengthwise, cutting around the pit. Then remove the pit with the point of your sharp knife.
Another method for serving avocado is to quarter it around the pit and then twist off the quarters and remove the pit from the final quarter in the same way it is removed from a half. Next remove the skin from each quarter. The sections may be served on a platter along with other salad vegetables, or they may be cubed into a cut-up salad. Many people make cut-up salads and simply spoon the flesh of the avocado out of half-shells into the salad bowl.
Yet others make guacamole with avocado by mashing it and possibly adding tomatoes. Or they make a dressing by blending it with tomatoes and other veggies. Guacamole and salad dressings made with condiments such as garlic, cayenne, onions, etc. are not wholesome because of the irritating and poisonous nature of these seasonings.
Avocados are becoming a part of the diet of many Americans. This is good, as the avocado is a delicous, creamy-textured fruit that provides wholesome nutrition. If you’re not already an avid avo fan, try out this wonderful food!
27.2. Preparation Of Cooked Foods
Article #1: Your Probing Mind By Virginia Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Article #2: Hygienic Considerations In The Selection of Foods By Ralph C. Cinque, D. C.
Article #3: How To Get More Food Value for Your Money By Marti Fry
In Section One of this subject, it was emphasized that shredding, grinding, blending, juicing and over-washing of foodstuffs impair their nutritional value. Cooking, of course, is the most destructive process of all.
When food is heated, all of the enzymes are destroyed. Very little, if any, Vitamin C can survive the process of cooking. Other vitamins and minerals are also impaired.
Amino acids (the building blocks of protein) are radically changed. The protein in raw nuts and seeds, and uncooked fruits and vegetables, are readily available to the body and are therefore said to be of high biological value. As the various stages of digestion occur, the long chains of amino acids are split for use by the body in synthesizing its own protein.
But when proteins have been cooked, or otherwise processed, they coagulate into enzyme-resistant linkages, so that cleavage by the body is inhibited and liberation of the amino acids for body use may not occur. This can result in putrefaction—decomposition of protein matter by micro-organisms, producing malodorous and toxic substances, evidenced by foul-smelling bowel movements.
The subject of the contraindications to the use of cooked food will be treated in greater depth in a future lesson.
At no time should we compromise the three major tenets of the Hygienic food program:
Admittedly, because of various anatomical, physical (or emotional) weaknesses and defects, not everyone can adhere to the philosophical dietary ideal with complete success. (See “Hygienic Considerations In The Selection of Foods” by Dr. Ralph C. Cinque, in the Supplementary Text Material section of this lesson.)
However, it is of major importance that the student first understand what constitutes an ideal diet—before he can be competent to make decisions about deviations from this ideal—either for himself or for others.
Realizing that many people may not be ready, or willing, to immediately embark on an all-raw food program, Lesson 27 includes recipes for more or less conservatively cooked foods.
Less harmful substitutes for conventional recipes are provided, to enable people who insist on using cooked foods to do it with the least possible destruction of nutritional value compatible with the desired result.
27.2.1 Cooking at High Temperatures
27.2.8 Eat as Much Raw Food as Possible
27.2.9 “Cooking” at Low Temperatures
The general rule is: the higher the temperature, the greater the destruction of nutrients. However, cooking a long time at low heat causes more damage to food than quick-cooking by bringing water to the boiling point, then reducing the heat and steaming for ten minutes or so.
Pressure cooking, involving the highest temperatures, is the most destructive of nutrients, and should never be used.
Microwave cooking is a threat to humans because of leakage of the microwaves. People with pacemakers are warned to stay away from these appliances when they are in operation. This warning is necessary because of the danger of leakage.
Besides, it is not really known whether the microwave produces destructive changes in the food. And what’s the rush? Most vegetables steam to a tasty, crisp-cooked state in ten minutes or less. Don’t use microwave ovens.
A person who worked in a restaurant kitchen several years ago told me that someone came in one day to monitor the microwave ovens with a device that detected leakage and found one of them to be “leaking like a sieve” (as he put it). Of course no one knew how long it had been leaking like this, exposing the kitchen workers!
A 1978 report from Dr. Arthur Upton, director of the National Cancer Institute, confirmed warnings against charcoal broiling. He cautioned that this may be a source of cancer-producing substances; charring of the surface of the food produces a tar fraction like the tar in cigarette smoke, and another dangerous substance is formed by breakdown of amino acids.
Dr. David Kriebel, research associate at Washington University in St. Louis, also warned against charcoal broiling in 1978. He said that heat applied from underneath and fat dripping into the coals result in the formation of a known carcinogen—benzopyrine—which rises onto the surface of the meat.
The advantage of stir-frying in a heavy skillet or wok is that the food is cooked only three to five minutes until crisp and tender. Usually this method works best for vegetables.
The disadvantage is that the oil is heated, and, while the oil is not maintained at the high temperatures used for French frying, it is still highly inadvisable to use heated fats.
I have sometimes successfully stir-fried some vegetables using water only, but it is tricky.
Steaming vegetables in as little water as possible only until tender-crisp (about five to ten minutes) preserves nutrients better than baking. Root vegetables can be steamed until the starch is dextrinized and the flesh is palatable, and will require longer cooking time (about 20 to 30 minutes).
Baked root vegetables require higher temperatures and longer cooking times, resulting in greater destruction of nutrients.
There is almost no excuse or reason for cooking fruit. I almost omitted the word “almost”. There may be some exceptions—I can think of one. Plantains (similar to bananas) are fruits, and do require cooking, if you use them. They are ripe when very dark, and may be steamed or baked until the starch is dextrinized.
As for baked apples and cooked applesauce, it is a shame to cook good, organically grown apples. Commercial apples, however, are not much good raw or cooked. But it is possible that some extremely debilitated people may temporarily be unable to tolerate the raw fruit and therefore resort to cooked fruit.
Some people think they must cook dried fruit—not so! Buy untreated dried fruit and soak overnight or longer—it will be tender and palatable.
Dates, moist figs, dried bananas and dried apples require no soaking—they are much better and tastier without soaking. Dried raisins, prunes or cherries may be used either way. Dried apricots, peaches, pears and hard, dry figs should be soaked.
Saturating fruits with sugar and baking them into pies is a sacrilege.
Nuts should be eaten without any roasting, frying or other cooking. Cashews (not really nuts, and not really raw) may sometimes be used as a topping for casseroles. (See Eggplant Casserole recipe.)
Chestnuts (starchy protein) may be eaten raw, if not bitter, but are delicious roasted. If you prefer them that way, prepare them as follows: wash and discard those that float. With a sharp knife, make a slash along the flat side in each chestnut. Put in boiling water, boil five or six minutes. Bake in a covered dish for about 20 minutes at 375 to 400 degrees (or until skins are slightly browned). Both skins (the outside shell and the inside skin) can then be removed together, either by hand pressure, or by using a knife, usually leaving the nut whole and unbroken. Chestnuts may also be cooked or steamed until tender—this takes less time than roasting (baking)— perhaps about ten minutes.
Cooking at any temperature destroys all the enzymes—they are inactivated by a temperature only a few degrees above body temperature.
Dr. Paul Kouchakoff, a Swiss researcher, found that a largely raw food diet offsets the adverse effects of cooked food, so as not to cause leukocytosis (an excessive number of white corpuscles in the blood). Most people can tolerate a diet of 80% raw food with 2OKo cooked food, as a transition diet (with the goal of eventually progressing to an all-raw food diet, or, at least, to less, and less cooked food). The critical temperatures at which most cooked foods become subject to production of this “pathological” reaction (leukocytosis) is 191 to 206 degrees.
There is a way to “cook” food and dextrinize starch without heating the food to these critical temperatures. Many years ago, before I knew about Natural Hygiene and the “no-breakfast plan” (or fruit only for breakfast), I used to prepare my breakfast the night before by putting wheat or rye berries, or wild rice kernels, in a wide-mouthed thermos, pouring boiling water over it, and quickly capping the thermos.
It is my understanding that this method produces a temperature of perhaps 150 degrees in the food, although it was always soft and fluffy and ready to eat the next morning. This method of preparation also neutralizes the phytic acid in the wheat and rye. (Phytic acid is antagonistic to calcium and other minerals, as pointed out previously.)
An article in The Health Crusader revived my memory of this practice. The article stated that this method could be used for brown rice by soaking it overnight, draining in the morning, then putting it in a wide-mouthed thermos, pouring boiling water (distilled), over it, and quickly capping the thermos. The rice will be soft and fluffy in time for the evening meal. Potatoes or yams or other vegetables can also be “cooked” in this same manner. Experimentation will determine the length of time necessary to tenderize the various vegetables.
The next best way to cook food is steaming. Most vegetables may be steamed unprepared, whole and uncut. Very large carrots may be cut in two or more pieces, rutabaga may be cut into medium-sized pieces.
I previously used a steam marvel (a stainless steel perforated platform inside the pot), but discontinued the practice for the same reason that I discontinued the use of all metal cookware. I use Corning ware for some purposes, but I prefer my tight-lidded, porcelain-enameled “Show pans”.
The stainless steel steam marvel darkened the steaming water, so it was obvious that there was some leaching of tiny metal fractions.
Steam vegetables in a very small amount of water a very short time. This requires care and watchfulness, but the vegetables are not drenched with contaminated steam.
Dr. Vetrano agrees on this point. She says she does not use the steam marvel, or any rack, for several reasons. It tempts you to add more water than necessary, the water becomes steam, condenses on the lid and flows down over the vegetables anyway. Without the rack and all that water, the cooking juice tastes better and the vegetables taste better.
She suggests the use of three layers of the discarded outer leaves of lettuce to protect the vegetables from burning, in which case very little water will be necessary.
Steam just long enough to slightly tenderize without losing shape or color. (See Dr. Vetrano’s article in this lesson.)
Other types of cooking, at higher temperatures, and for longer periods of time, are progressively more destructive and less advisable. However, some recipes will be included in this lesson for casseroles and other combinations that require such less advisable cooking methods, and are intended to serve only as replacements for even worse cooking practices, since many people will not be weaned away from conventional meals immediately, and require recipes other than those for simply prepared, lightly steamed vegetables.
In all cases, the least destructive method of preparation will be recommended, consistent with the preparation of tasty vegetarian meals which will be acceptable for transition meals, reluctant families, children, or entertaining.
Many years ago I discarded my aluminum “waterless cooking” pans, having been convinced that the leaching of aluminum fractions into the food was harmful. About eight years ago, I stopped using my stainless steel cook ware, having seen evidence that even stainless steel cookware leached metal fractions (as previously described in the use of a stainless steel steam marvel, and also confirmed by other reports).
I used Corning ware for a long time, finding it less than satisfactory, because the lids are riot tight enough. Now I am using “Show pans,” a good quality of heavily enameled ware, with tight covers. These utensils spread heat quickly and evenly and hold the heat. Very little water is required, and a vapor seal forms between the edges of the pot and the cover. The oxidation is thus minimal and the vegetables are tenderized in a short time. Flavor is retained, and loss of vitamins and minerals is minimal.
It is my understanding that no leaching occurs in the use of glass, Corning ware, or enameled cookware. If enameled cookware is chipped, it should be discarded. Good quality enameled cookware is highly chip-resistant.
Leafy vegetables (or any vegetables) should never be cooked so long that they change color. Cook as short a time as possible, and serve immediately.
The practice of adding bicarbonate of soda to vegetables to preserve their green color destroys their food value and taste, impairs their digestibility, and is certainly not necessary.
Butter, cream or oil should never be added to vegetables while cooking—fats should never be cooked. If you must use them, add when serving. A small amount of butter is preferable, to oil. Better yet—try using a piece of avocado instead—it is tastier, and far superior nutritionally. Eggplant is an excellent and tasty vegetable, but requires extra care in preparation (see recipes). If very young and sweet, eggplant may be used raw. Use slices as a sandwich for tomatoes; sprouts, lettuce, or any other raw food.
If soups are used occasionally, they should be thick, not watery.
Potatoes, yams, salsify, rutabaga, kohlrabi, beets, carrots and parsnips may be steamed or baked. Steam whenever possible. Steaming is faster and preferable nutritionally, Steamed potatoes and other root vegetables retain more nutrients—because of lower heat and shorter cooking time. Scrub clean and steam in skins. The red color of steamed beets seeps into the steaming water unless cooked whole, with skin intact.
Baking sometimes produces a tastier product—my husband and I love baked potatoes and sometimes indulge ourselves. Baked carrots, parsnips and beets are also delicious, and may be indulged in occasionally.
Carrots, parsnips and beets sometimes spatter the oven, so a covered dish should be used. This also shortens the baking time. Select beets about two inches in diameter, or cut in half. These three vegetables will all bake in about thirty minutes or less, and are a delicious combination when used together. They have a special sweetness when baked.
For greater nutritional value, steam these vegetables, or eat carrots and beets raw (or grated, which some people find necessary, into salads. Any grating should be done immediately before eating). Young garden parsnips may also be eaten raw. If you like these vegetables baked, use occasionally as a special treat.
Potatoes may be, baked in an open pan. Pierce white potatoes with a fork before baking. Bake without foil or any coating. Scrub well, and bake in open pan in 400 degree oven. Small potatoes take about 45 minutes, large ones one hour or longer. Baking time may be reduced by cutting potatoes in half.
Another “trick” for reducing baking time of white potatoes is to plunge them into very hot water for two or three minutes before baking. Bring water to boiling point and remove from heat before inserting potatoes. I would suggest reserving this method for use in emergencies only, when time is limited. If you need the potatoes sooner than they can be baked, it would be better to steam them instead.
Always preheat the oven to the desired temperature before inserting the vegetables which are to be baked.
New potatoes (little, round, red or small white potatoes) are high in sugar and low in starch and cook very quickly. They steam in about 10 minutes, and bake in 15 or 20 minutes, depending on size. If you eat raw white potatoes, new potatoes are preferable. However, white potatoes shouldn’t be eaten raw.
Fresh green lima beans (or other fresh, podded beans or peas): Buy in the pod, shell them, and steam until tender. Fresh green peas are delicious raw.
Yams, Sweet Potatoes, Butternut or Acorn or Hubbard Squash: These may be steamed or baked. Squash may be halved, quartered, or cut up for steaming. For baking, bake sweet potatoes or yams whole. Cut squash in half (or, in the case of very large squash, cut up in serving size pieces); remove seeds if you wish. Bake squash cut side up to conserve juices. Bake squash in covered pan as it may spatter the oven. Whole sweet potatoes or yams in an open pan will not spatter the oven if you don’t leave them in too long. Sweet potatoes, yams and winter squash take about thirty minutes to bake, depending on size.
Globe Artichokes: These may be baked in the oven in a covered casserole—no added water is necessary. Just wash and put in casserole wet. Bake at 375 to 400 degrees until just barely tender. Length of time depends on size—45 minutes average. Or steam in as little water as possible; it will take more water than most other vegetables, and will take 15 or 20 minutes, depending on size. The usual way of cooking artichokes, covering with boiling water, is faster, but much more wasteful of nutrients.
To eat artichokes, pull off the leaves, one at a time, and scrape off the tender edible flesh at the base with your teeth. The larger outer leaves are not as tender as the inner leaves. When you reach the “heart,” scrape out the fuzz called the “choke” and eat the remaining heart, which is the most delicious part.
Tasty steamed vegetables: Broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, yellow crookneck or zucchini squash, Brussels sprouts, etc.—add parsley, diced celery and celery leaves and/or sweet bell pepper to any vegetable, if desired. Steam in a small amount of water until just barely tender—still crisp, and color unchanged. Do not overcook. This is worth repeating and re-emphasizing. If not overcooked, no seasoning should be necessary (even if no parsley, celery or sweet pepper have been added).
Overcooked Brussels sprouts are actually repulsive. Overcooked cauliflower is almost as bad. Don’t cook cabbage at all. Cooked cabbage takes a long time to digest, and I can’t think of any reason to cook it. Cooking certainly doesn’t improve the taste (nor the digestibility or nutritional value). If overcooked, it is quite unpalatable. If steamed slightly and still crisp and green, it is barely acceptable.
When vegetables of the cabbage family (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage) are overcooked, they are not only unpleasant to the taste (and smell), they also cause digestive distress.
Corn on the cob: Green corn freshly picked is delicious eaten raw, if not too mature. Several hours after picking, it is no longer a green vegetable. The sugar has turned to starch, which should be dextrinized by heating. If reasonably young and fresh, it is dextrinized and tender in only a few minutes (two to five minutes). If more mature, it may be necessary to steam as long as ten minutes. Usually, steaming longer than ten minutes actually makes mature corn tougher.
Asparagus: Raw asparagus tips are delicious. Snap off the white ends with your hands; they break easily near the edible part. To cook, place in pan at an angle so the tips are not in the water. The tough, discarded ends can be used to prop up the tips. Steam two or three minutes, till barely tender.
Greens: Kale, turnip, dandelion, collard, and broccoli leaves. For greatest nutritional value, eat young tender greens raw. Larger, more mature greens may be steamed in a very small amount of water until just tender. Add diced turnips to turnip greens. Very small turnips are usually mild and sweet enough to be eaten raw. Diced celery and/or sweet pepper may be added when steaming greens. No seasoning is necessary.
Do not use cooked mustard or spinach greens. Mustard greens have a characteristically sharp taste, since they contain mustard oil, an irritant. Spinach, beet greens and Swiss chard are too high in oxalic acid, a calcium antagonist. Small, immature spinach leaves (or mustard or beet greens) may be used raw occasionally in salads. Swiss chard, which is extremely high in oxalic acid, should never be used.
Kale is an excellent green, especially when young and immature, and eaten raw. Broccoli leaves are also greens of high nutritional value. Eat as many as possible raw. Very large broccoli leaves may be steamed.
Jerusalem artichokes, chayotes, kohlrabi: Eat them raw! They have a pleasant taste when steamed slightly, but have a much better taste when uncooked.
Use cooked celery only to season other cooked vegetables—otherwise eat it raw. Strong celery tops may be slightly steamed as an individual vegetable.
Tender celery cabbage should be eaten raw—if tough and stringy, steam it slightly.
Okra: Sometimes palatable raw, if immature. Usually cooked with other foods (soups, casseroles, as a thickener). Tomatoes tend to reduce or neutralize the “sliminess”. If you don’t like okra, forget it! Foods which have properties that require “neutralizing” are best avoided anyhow.
Use cooked tomatoes seldom, if ever. Cooking tomatoes accentuates their acidic properties.
Salsify (oyster plant): Steam until just tender.
Don’t ever cook fresh, raw water chestnuts. I can’t think of any possible reason or excuse for cooking this delicious food. It is so excellent and succulent raw, and cooking would really rob it of most of its exceptional qualities. Just compare fresh water chestnuts with canned water chestnuts. The canned variety does, surprisingly, retain its crispness, but the sweet, juicy flavor is gone.
Lettuce is sometimes steamed or “wilted.” Very tough blemished outer leaves might be used as a steamed vegetable, but raw dark green lettuce leaves are of great value and should be a staple of the daily diet.
The purpose of “wilting” lettuce with water, heating or vinegar is somewhat nebulous. It completely destroys its delightful crispness, and the use of vinegar adds a toxic ingredient. The enjoyment of wilted lettuce appears to be either a habit, a perverted taste, or a concession to dental or digestive impairment, though it would seem to cause more problems than it ameliorates.
If lettuce must be broken down for temporary adaptation to dental or digestive problems, a less destructive method would be the use of the blender. Even though oxidation would occur, at least no vinegar or water would be added, and destructive heat would not be applied.
If chicory, endive or escarole are too tough or unpalatable to be used raw, they may be slightly steamed and used as a cooked green vegetable.
Raw, crisp, juicy cucumbers are an excellent addition to salads—even people with impaired digestions can tolerate them if they avoid overmature ones with large seeds and tough skins. Cooking would destroy their palatability and most of their value.
All seasonings are unhygienic. Raw foods require no seasoning. Lightly steamed or baked individual vegetables should require no seasoning.
When several foods are cut up and combined into a casserole, stew or soup, we are getting farther away from the simplicity of Hygienic food preparation and the pleasant, natural, individual flavors of foods. It is then that we are confronted with “seasoning” problems.
Many people request recipes for such casseroles, stews or soups, for use during the transitional period to Natural Hygiene, to meet the demands of their families, for variety, and for special occasions. Such recipes are therefore included in this lesson, with the admonition that they be used infrequently, and not as a regular part of the diet.
These dishes may be “seasoned” with parsley, celery tops, sweet bell peppers. Tomatoes may be used, sparingly, as seasoning for dishes which do not contain any starches or starchy proteins. Garlic and onions may be used as seasonings, if desired, if care is taken to precook them for twenty minutes; this eliminates the irritation of the mustard oil they contain. Do not use garlic or onions as seasoning if they cause subsequent distress or aftertaste, which they sometimes do. If you do season with garlic or onions, use very sparingly.
Dr. Esser says that occasional, limited use of garlic as a flavoring in the preparation of a cooked food, or rubbing it over a salad bowl, is harmless and inconsequential.
Vogue Vegebase is available in health food stores. It is mostly dried powdered vegetables, and, if you must use a prepared seasoning, Vegebase is preferable to the use of salt, pepper, or other preparations. The sooner you can get away from the use of all such preparations (including Vegebase), the greater will be your progress toward the ideal. All seasonings, even the mildest, are irritants to some extent.
It is also important to remember that most of the senses have a role in digestion. Seeing, smelling, touching and tasting the food all help in sending the proper signals for the secretion of the digestive juices, and their adaptation to the character of the food. Complicated mixtures of foods interfere with this process and make it less efficient as well as digestive problems.
When we compound the problem by adding seasonings (perhaps required for “fancy” recipes or because of jaded appetites), the true taste of individual foods is further disguised. It thus becomes extremely difficult for the digestive system to supply secretions that can adequately cope with these meals, and digestion becomes inhibited and impaired.
If Vegebase (or any seasoning) is used, it should be added just before serving. Cooking with seasoning tends to toughen the food.
27.3.10 Spaghetti Squash with Sauce
27.3.12 Vegetable-Sesame Casserole
27.3.13 Zucchini Cheese Casserole
27.3.15 Protein Vegetable Chop Suey
27.3.17 Millet-Squash Casserole
27.3.18 Vegetable Soup or Stew
27.3.19 Vegetable Soup or Stew with Rice or Wild Rice (or Barley)
27.3.20 Vegetable Soup with Potatoes
27.3.21 Vegetable Soup with Fresh Podded Beans or Peas
27.3.23 Summer Squash-Sesame Seed Soup
27.3.30.1 Soybean Casserole (or any dried beans)
27.3.30.2 Crunchy Soy Bean Treat
27.3.30.3 Soybean Loaf (or Garbanzo Bean Loaf)
27.3.30.4 Bean Soup (Dried Pea Beans, Navy Beans, Cranberry Beans, etc.)
27.3.32 Clabber or Cottage Cheese
27.3.33 Desserts (If You Must!)
27.3.33.1 Uncooked Fudge Brownies
27.3.33.3 Fruity Banana Coconut Cream Pie
27.3.33.5 Coconut-Carob Pudding
27.3.33.6 Coconut-Carob Ice Cream
Note: None of these recipes are recommended for regular use. The farther away we get from eating plants as they grow, the greater the destruction of nutritional values These recipes are provided as less harmful substitutes for conventional recipes.
Cookbooks often suggest soaking eggplant or dredging it with salt to draw out the “bitter juices”. Do not soak or salt eggplant. If the eggplant is fresh and not over-mature, it will not be bitter. Select small to medium firm eggplants with shiny skin and deep color. Most eggplant is not tasty when eaten raw. As previously indicated, very young sweet eggplant may be sliced and eaten raw as a sandwich with fillings of sprouts or other raw vegetables. There are many excellent cooked dishes that can be prepared with eggplant, and it is a favorite of many vegetarians who use cooked food.
Slice in half-inch slices, spread out on cookie sheet. Run distilled water on slices so they are quite wet on both sides. Sprinkle Vegebase sparingly on both sides. Broil lightly on both sides. Turn off broiler and let slices remain in hot oven about ten minutes longer to become slightly more tender. Can be eaten plain as a nonstarchy vegetable, or just dotted with butter before serving.
Or, if desired, put a thick slice of raw tomato (or raw sweet red bell pepper) on each steak and a slice of Swiss unprocessed mild cheddar cheese. Leave in warm oven until cheese is just barely melting, or lightly brown under broiler.
Variation: Summer squash (cut in half lengthwise) or turnips (thick slices) may be prepared the same as eggplant steaks.
2 medium diced eggplants (unpeeled) (dice in rather large pieces)
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and cut up
4 strips celery, sliced
1/2 sweet pepper (red or green) diced
Vegebase (to taste) (start with one-half tablespoon)
Place all in casserole, add about one inch of water. Steam (covered) on top of stove about three minutes. Add eight ounces of ground cashew nuts (on top). Bake uncovered in 373 degree oven about 20 minutes or until cashews are slightly browned. If eggplant is softer than you like it, try (1) steaming a shorter time than three minutes or (2) browning cashew nut topping under broiler (instead of baking). Serves three or four.
Broil eggplant slices slightly (barely lightly browned). Prepare desired amount of Spanish sauce (see recipe), Grind desired amount of cashew nuts. Put Spanish sauce ground cashews and broiled eggplant slices alternately in casserole (in layers), ending up with Spanish sauce and light sprinkling of ground cashews over the top. Lightly brown under broiler. Should be crumbly, with little or no liquid.
Suggested quantities to serve three or four:
1 large or 2 medium eggplant or 3 or 4 small eggplants (small or medium eggplant are best, large ones may be bitter)
1 recipe Spanish sauce
10 to 12 ounces ground cashews (by weight)
Cut raw eggplant in half lengthwise. Scoop out flesh in as large pieces as possible, leaving about one-quarter inch of flesh on the shells. Moisten the pieces and the half shells with distilled water and arrange on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle sparingly with Vegebase. Slightly brown under broiler.
Cut pieces of eggplant into smaller pieces (about one inch). Combine with Spanish sauce (see recipe—one recipe of Spanish sauce for approximately two medium eggplants). Mixture should be moist but not wet.
Put several tablespoons of this mixture into each half-shell. Cover with ground cashews. Alternate two more layers of mixture and ground cashews, with cashews on top. Brown slightly under broiler, End leave in hot oven five minutes longer to tenderize half shells.
Variation: Sliced Polly-O All Natural Mozzarella Cheese can be substituted for the ground cashews.
8 ounces cashew nuts
2 small to medium tomatoes, peeled and cut up
2 strips celery, sliced
1 teaspoon Vegebase
As little water as possible
Blend all together. Start with one-half cup water, add more water if necessary; mixture should be quite thick. Spread thickly on broiled eggplant slices (eggplant steaks—see recipe) and brown very slightly in broiler. This quantity is enough to cover slices from two medium eggplants. This mixture can also be used as a topping for other nonstarchy vegetables.
4 or five medium tomatoes (peeled and sliced)
1 sweet pepper (preferably red) diced
4 strips diced celery
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
10 medium mushrooms (optional)
Vegebase to taste (optional). If Vegebase is used, use sparingly.
Add small amount of water, about one-fourth cup or less. Tomatoes will supply most of liquid necessary to steam this mixture for just a few minutes, just long enough to slightly tenderize the ingredients. May be used with any nonstarchy vegetable.
To use onions as an ingredient of this Spanish sauce, precook the onions for 20 minutes before adding to other ingredients.
Use tender young yellow crookneck or zucchini squash or both. Slice slantwise (oval slices) about one-fourth inch hick. Place in casserole with enough distilled water to wet slices thoroughly. Pour off most of excess water. Sprinkle wet slices with Vegebase (sparingly). Sprinkle with paprika (optional). Bake at 375 degrees ten minutes covered, ten minutes uncovered until slightly brown (or brown under broiler). If firmer squash is desired, cut thicker slices.
Cut into small florets. Steam in minimum amount of water about six to eight minutes until just barely tender. Then toss with small amount of Vegebase and brown slightly under broiler. (If desired, sprinkle with paprika before)
Sauce:
Diced sweet red pepper
Parsley, chopped
Diced celery
Mushrooms
Small fresh sliced onion, if desired
If onion is used, precook for 20 minutes. In wok or skillet, stir fry all ingredients in small amount of water—no oil. Cover and allow to steam a few minutes.
Bake spaghetti squash whole at 375 degrees—20 to 30 minutes, depending on size. Cut in half before serving. Run a fork through the hot flesh and it separates into spaghetti-like strands. Put mound of sauce in each cavity. (Seeds may be removed, if desired, before adding sauce.)
Long grain rice cooks up light and fluffy—medium rice slightly sticky, and moist short grain rice even stickier.
1 cup Long Grain Rice
3 cups cold water
Saucepan with tight lid.
Bring water to boil, add rice and boil for one minute. Turn heat down, cover tightly, and simmer about thirty minutes or until water is absorbed and rice is fluffy and tender. To prevent sticking, don’t stir. If fluffy and tender but not dry, put in warm oven uncovered for a few minutes.
1 cup Long Grain Brown Rice
2 1/2 cups cold water
Bring water to a boil, pour over rice, cover and bake in 375-degree oven forty minutes or until dry and fluffy. Add more water if necessary (check after 30 minutes to see whether additional water is necessary.) If rice is tender, but too wet, uncover for five minutes or so.
3/4 cup Long Grain Brown Rice
1/4 cup Wild Rice
4 strips sliced celery
1 large diced sweet red pepper
1/4 pound sliced mushrooms (optional)
3 cups cold water
2 teaspoons Vegebase (or Vegebase to taste)
Bring water to a boil, add brown rice, cook five minutes, (simmer). Add wild rice and other ingredients. Bake covered in 375-degree oven about forty minutes, or until rice is tender and fluffy. Check after 30 minutes to see whether additional water is necessary. If rice is tender, but too wet, uncover for five minutes or so.
3 large sweet red peppers
4 strips diced celery
2 sprigs chopped parsley
1/4 pound sliced mushrooms
Vegebase to taste
Steam all but peppers five minutes in small amount of water. Add to plain cooked mixed wild and brown rice (see recipe). Cut peppers in half, remove seeds, and spoon in rice mixture. Bake in covered casserole in 375-degree oven until peppers are tender (about ten or fifteen minutes).
A few pieces of celery top, chopped
A few sprigs chopped parsley
1 large sweet red pepper, sliced (sweet green pepper may be substituted)
4 strips sliced celery
2 large strips celery cabbage and/or an equivalent amount broccoli florets and leaves
3/4 cup freshly shelled green peas
2 large carrots, cut up in bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup cauliflower florets
1/4 cup Jerusalem artichokes, cut up in chunks
Vegebase to taste (add Vegebase just before serving)
Blend half of the peas in one cup of water. Add the balance of the peas whole, and the other ingredients. Steam ten minutes. Serve over cooked or baked brown rice. Sprinkle alfalfa sprouts, raw snow peas and raw water chestnuts over each serving. If raw snow peas and raw water chestnuts are not available, use frozen snow peas (if desired) and canned water chestnuts, in which case they should both be added to the pot to heat up before serving. Snow peas and water chestnuts, even if not raw, add a crisp tastiness to vegetable chop suey. Serves three or four.
Green beans or broccoli
Cauliflower florets
Sliced summer squash, zucchini, yellow crookneck or Pattypan (or thinly sliced turnips)
Sesame Seeds and Vegebase, half and half, mixed
Steam green beans (or broccoli) and cauliflower in small amount of water for five minutes. Sprinkle with small amount of Vegebase and sesame seed mixture. Top with slices of squash or raw turnips. Sprinkle with balance of Vegebase-sesame seed mixture. Brown lightly under broiler. (Squash or thin turnip slices will tenderize under broiler.)
4 medium zucchini
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and cut up
4 strips celery, sliced
1 small sweet pepper, diced
Vegebase to taste
Place all in electric skillet (or casserole on top of stove). Steam until tender, about six to eight minutes. Turn off heat. Lay slices of unprocessed cheese over top. Cover and serve when cheese is just barely melted.
1 cup lentils
4 strips diced celery
1 small diced sweet pepper
2 cups water
Vegebase to taste
Steam lentils approximately 15 minutes or until almost tender. Add celery and pepper and steam five minutes longer. Do not overcook. Add Vegebase before serving.
A few pieces of celery top, chopped A few sprigs of chopped parsley
1 large sweet pepper, sliced (red preferred) 4 strips sliced celery
2 large strips celery cabbage and/or an equivalent amount of broccoli florets and leaves
3/4 cup freshly shelled Green Peas
1 cup of sliced Bok Choy or other Chinese vegetables
1 cup mung bean or soybean sprouts
Vegebase to taste (add Vegebase just before serving)
Blend half of the peas in one cup of water. Add the balance of the peas whole, add half of the bean sprouts and all of the other ingredients, except the Vegebase, which is to be added just before serving. Steam for ten minutes. Serve over the remaining raw bean sprouts, or sprinkle the raw bean sprouts on top. Cooked unsprouted soybeans may be substituted for the bean sprouts, and served with alfalfa sprouts. See suggestions for snow peas and water chestnuts in Starch Vegetable Chop Suey recipe, which may also be used with this Protein Vegetable Chop Suey. Serves three or four.
1 cup lentils
A few pieces celery tops, coarsely chopped
4 strips sliced celery
A few sprigs parsley, chopped
1/2 cup coarsely chopped kale or Bok Choy
3 cups water
Vegebase to taste
Simmer lentils 20 minutes, add vegetables, simmer five minutes longer. Soup should be thick, not watery. If too thick, add a little more water. Add Vegebase before serving.
1/2 cup Millet, browned slightly (dry) in skillet
2 cups boiling water
Cook about 20 minutes, then add four strips sliced celery, one small sweet bell pepper, diced, and cook about five minutes more. Add three sliced zucchini squash and cook a few minutes longer until tender and all water is absorbed. Add Vegebase to taste before serving.
Soup should be very thick, even less water for stew. Start with a small amount of soaked garbanzos, beans, or split peas. (See bean instructions.) Cook beans or peas until soft, add vegetables ten minutes before serving, except add summer squash two minutes before serving. If onion is desired for seasoning, add at least twenty minutes before serving, while beans are softening.
Any combination of vegetables may be used, with the exception of tomatoes.
(An economical way to use wild rice)
Omit beans or peas. Cook rice separately until tender. Cook vegetables five to ten minutes, as in previous recipe, and add rice and Vegebase. (Barley may be used instead of rice, using the same method.)
Omit beans or peas. Cook cut-up potatoes (unpeeled) until almost tender, add vegetables and cook five to ten minutes longer, add Vegebase.
Cook fresh beans or peas until almost tender. Add vegetables, cook five to ten minutes longer. Add Vegebase to taste.
Tips for Vegetable Soups or Stews: Start with small amount of water, you can always add more. If using dried beans or peas, don’t use starchy vegetables like potatoes or carrots. Fresh podded beans or peas may be used with carrots, if desired. Never use cabbage in soup or stew. If cabbage family vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts) are used, great care must be taken not to overcook them. Celery, green beans, kale, Bok Choy, carrots and parsley are especially good in soup. Parsley may be cooked in the soup, or add a small amount of raw chopped parsley before serving.
1 1/2 cups broccoli florets
1/2 cup tender broccoli stems (do not use tough fibrous parts)
1 small onion, sliced
1 clove fresh garlic, chopped
3 strips sliced celery (with celery tops)
3 sprigs parsley (chopped)
1 small sweet red pepper, cut up
1/2 cup cashews (ground fine in mill or blender)
4 cups water
Vegebase to taste
Precook onion and garlic ten minutes, add broccoli stems and cook five minutes more; add celery, parsley and red pepper and cook two or three minutes longer. Add the raw broccoli florets, the cooked vegetables and liquid to the ground cashews and blend. Place mixture in soup pot with enough additional water to total approximately four cups liquid. Simmer a few minutes until it thickens. If too thick, add more water; if too thin, add more ground cashews. Add Vegebase to taste.
Same ingredients and instructions as fox Broccoli-Cashew Soup. Use approximately one-fourth to one-half cup of sesame seeds to eight medium zucchini or yellow squash. Or try using half sesame seeds and half cashews for a different flavor.
Blend two medium potatoes (unpeeled) with one small onion in three cups water. Heat until it thickens—it must be watched, it can easily burn. Cook over slow burner for about ten minutes, stirring to prevent burning. Add optional amounts of cut-up broccoli, diced celery, celery tops, parsley and sweet red pepper, and continue cooking for ten minutes longer. If too thick, add more water. Add Vegebase to taste before serving.
Cut up two leeks or four large spring onions (white part only) and put in blender with two medium cut-up potatoes (unpeeled), one large cut-up carrot, and two cut-up strips celery. Add one cup water and blend. Put in saucepan, add one to 1 Vi cups more water. Heat to boiling point and turn down to barely simmering for ten to fifteen minutes or so (until thick). Add Vi cup heavy cream (preferably un-pasteurized). May be served hot or cold. Add Vegebase just before removing from the heat. Serves two or three.
1 cup dried green or yellow split peas
3 to 4 cups water
1 small chopped onion
1 or 2 cloves minced garlic
Combine and simmer for approximately one hour. If desired, mash before adding other ingredients. Add two strips sliced celery, two sprigs chopped parsley, one small chopped sweet pepper, and simmer five minutes longer. If desired, add sliced zucchini or yellow squash and simmer two minutes longer. Soup should be very thick. Add Vegebase before serving. Serve with sprinkling of alfalfa sprouts.
Cook sliced beets slightly (about five to ten minutes). Put in blender with small amount of raw beets. Suggested amounts: two large beets cooked, two small beets raw. Add to blender mixture two strips sliced raw celery, two small raw carrots. Use water from cooked beets and add more water as necessary to blend. Should not be too thin. Add Vegebase. Chill. Add sour cream or yogurt to taste before serving.
Buckwheat isn’t a wheat—it isn’t even a grain, but it is used as grains are used. It is a cultivated annual herb, native to Siberia, grown chiefly in the Eastern United States, Northwest Europe and in the mountainous districts of Japan. The groats are actually the fruit rather than the seed (as most grains are) of the buckwheat plant.
It is sold as raw (light) buckwheat groats, roasted (dark) buckwheat groats, ground buckwheat groats, and buckwheat flour. The dark groats have a distinctive taste which most people either love or dislike intensely. The light milder groats taste a little like barley.
Buckwheat flour sold in supermarkets, and buckwheat pancakes in restaurants, may not even contain any buckwheat, but may be a combination of corn, rye, wheat and other ground cereals. Buckwheat groats are available in health food stores and natural food stores.
Buckwheat is usually associated with pancakes, but Hygienists usually use the groats in casseroles.
3/4 cup buckwheat groats
4 strips sliced celery
1 small diced sweet pepper
If light buckwheat groats are used, brown them slightly (dry) before cooking. Pour approximately 3Vi to 4 cups boiling water over combined ingredients. Simmer until tender—do not overcook. Be watchful so it won’t burn—may need more water. Serves three or four. Add Vegebase to taste before serving.
Since most people who enjoy buckwheat associate it with pancakes, I have endeavored to offer the least harmful recipe possible for buckwheat pancakes. This recipe is a long way from Natural Hygiene, and should seldom, if ever, be used.
1 tablespoon dry yeast
1 tablespoon honey or other sweetener
2 cups Buckwheat flour
(ground in blender or mill from light raw buckwheat groats)
1 to 2 cups water or raw potato water or unpasteurized buttermilk (raw potato water: one small diced potato (unpeeled), put in one cup measure, fill with warm distilled water, and blend. Good substitute for milk.) Batter should be thin
Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water with honey. Let stand ten or fifteen minutes or longer (until bubbly). Add balance of liquid. Add flour. Mix well. If baked on natural soapstone griddle, no oil or butter will be necessary. If baked on regular uncoated griddle, add approximately one tablespoon melted butter or oil to batter, and it may be necessary to also lightly oil the griddle. The griddle should be hot enough for water to jump around. If water disappears, it is too hot.
Soften yeast in 1/4 cup water with half of honey. Let set until bubbly. Add balance of liquid and flour. Beat. Batter should be thin. Pour batter into large pitcher, cover, and set in warm place overnight. In morning, add other half of honey. Stir thoroughly. Bake.
These may be made with almost any combinations of vegetables and nuts (and/or seeds). If any starchy vegetables are used (such as carrots), combine with ground raw peanuts. If no starchy vegetables are used, combine with ground sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, pecans (or other nuts).
Suggested ingredients: Celery, Sweet Pepper, Parsley, Cauliflower, Carrots, Green Beans, Broccoli, Bok Choy, Turnips, Kohlrabi.
Coarsely shred vegetables by hand or in food processor. It will be necessary to blend approximately half of the vegetables in a small amount of water and combine them with the shredded vegetables. Add ground nuts and/or seeds. If too dry add more water; if too wet, add more nuts. Shape into patties and broil on both sides until slightly browned. These make great “sandwiches” between leaves of romaine lettuce and are good hot or cold. They do not hold together as well as burgers that use a raw egg in the mixture, but, if handled carefully, are quite acceptable, and taste great.
Soybeans contain about three times as much protein as other beans, and little or no starch. Dried soybeans take a long time to cook—they may take 3 1/2 to 5 hours. Dried soybeans should be soaked overnight in distilled water to cover, in refrigerator. Next day, add more water to cover (use the soaking water) and cook until desired softness is attained, adding more water as necessary. If the soybeans are to be used in a baked casserole, or ground, or chopped, they should not be cooked until soft, but removed when still rather firm and chewy. Cooking time may be shortened (perhaps halved) by freezing after soaking (in soaking water) several hours or over night.
Some nutritionists advocate longer soaking of soybeans (24 to 48 hours) and the discarding several times of the soaking waters, in order to be certain of the destruction of the toxic anti-enzyme factor that is said to block the digestion of proteins. The longer soaking time shortens the cooking time.(All dried beans should be soaked, preferably overnight, before using.)
Green soybeans will take much less time to soften, probably from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on variety and condition, and need not be soaked. Other beans fresh from the pod (limas, cranberry beans, black-eyed peas, etc.) will soften more quickly, and only need a brief cooking period—no soaking.
Sprouted soybeans (or other sprouted beans) may be eaten raw, or steamed a short time to improve their palatibility.
Please refer to Lesson 26 for a discussion on using the soaking water versus discarding it. You will find it in the section on sprouting.
Soak one cup dried soybeans overnight in two cups distilled water (in refrigerator). Cook until just firm and chewy. Add two strips diced celery, a few chopped celery leaves, a few sprigs of parsley (chopped), one small diced sweet pepper. Add enough water to cover. Cover casserole and bake in 375-degree oven until done, with lid removed during last half hour of baking. Soybeans may take an hour of baking.
This recipe may also be used for any dried beans. Add Vegebase before serving. Dot with butter if you use it.
Soak and cook dried soybeans as usual (see Soybean Instructions)—not too soft, should still be rather firm and chewy.
Grind or chop to consistency of coarsely chopped nuts. Add diced celery (about two strips per three servings); a few chopped celery leaves; a few sprigs chopped parsley; one diced sweet pepper. Place in casserole or loaf pan. Add the soybean liquid and/or water to almost cover. Bake uncovered in 375-degree oven until lightly browned and liquid is absorbed. Add butter when serving, if you use it—also Vegebase to taste.
Soak and cook dried soybeans or garbanzo beans as usual—not too soft, should still be somewhat firm and chewy. Grind or chop to consistency of chopped nuts (not too coarse). Add diced celery (about three strips per three servings); a few chopped celery leaves; a few sprigs chopped parsley; one diced sweet red pepper; about one-half cup broccoli florets, cut up in small pieces; and about one-half cup zucchini squash, cut in thin half slices per three servings). Mix ingredients together lightly, add Vegebase to taste, and add enough cooking liquid from the beans (and/or water) so it will hold together. Put in loaf pan, top with slices or strips of sweet red pepper or pimiento. Bake uncovered in 375-degree oven until lightly browned, but still somewhat moist (about twenty minutes).
Soak one cup dried beans overnight in two cups distilled water (in refrigerator). Add two cups water. Cook until almost soft. Add more water as needed. Add one clove chopped garlic and one small sliced onion and cook ten minutes longer. Add four strips sliced celery, a few chopped celery leaves, a few sprigs chopped parsley, one small diced sweet pepper, and an optional amount and variety of sliced vegetables (bite-sized pieces). Cook ten minutes longer. If too thick, add more water. Add Vegebase to taste before serving.
Use any beans fresh from the pod: Limas, Soy, Black-eyed Peas, Cranberry Beans, or any other freshly shelled beans.
Cut up and place in bottom of pot: four strips celery, two medium yellow summer squash or zucchini squash. Sprinkle with one teaspoon Vegebase. On top of cut-up vegetables, put one cup of beans which have been precooked for ten to fifteen minutes until almost soft. Over top, sprinkle one teaspoon Vegebase. Add water carefully around side about halfway up. Cover and bake in 375-degree oven for one-half hour. Uncover and bake a little longer (if you like it drier). If you like it quite dry, use less water. Serves two or three.
Rice Crackers made of brown rice and water only (no salt or leavening) can be purchased in health food stores, or you can make them yourself.
Grind brown rice in blender or grinder, add a little Vegebase (if desired), and add enough water to hold it together into a dough. Roll very thin between two sheets of wax paper. Place on cookie sheet, and mark off into cracker size with knife. Bake at 325-degrees for about ten minutes or until pale or golden brown.
Put whole raw milk in individual cups or glasses (covered with thin cloth or paper towels) in a warm place (about 75 to 85 degrees) about 30 to 48 hours (may take less time or longer, depending on milk and temperature) until thick and custardy. (Don’t move it, mix or stir.) Sour cream will be on top. This will keep in the refrigerator about five days. The secret of successful clabber is an even warm temperature. Clabber may be eaten with the fruit meal.
If you are not successful in producing clabber without a “starter”, use two tablespoons of natural sour cream per quart of raw milk, mix well, and proceed as above. Usually this clabber sets in twenty-four hours. (Or use two or three tablespoons of Borden’s Buttermilk, or try adding lemon juice to the sweet milk to start the souring or clabbering process.)
For cottage cheese, put clabber in cheese cloth or nylon net bag and let drip six to eight hours.
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 cup grated coconut
1/2 cup carob powder
1/2 cup raisins (soaked 15 minutes)
8 medium dates (more or less, depending on how sweet you want it)
water (as necessary)
Blend or grind oats into flour, add carob powder and coconut, add soaked raisins to dry ingredients. Blend carrots and pitted dates in minimum amount of water. Add to the dry ingredients, mixing well. Add as much water as necessary to make a thick drop cookie consistency. Drop by teaspoonfuls on pliofilm and roll up in groups of four or six, or drop into miniature paper muffin cups or paper petit four cups. Refrigerate, if to be used same day. Otherwise, store in freezer. These do not need thawing.
If you like them sweeter, use more dates. If less sweet, use fewer dates. Actually, proportions of all ingredients are optional. No cooking or baking is necessary, because all ingredients (including the rolled oats) are excellent uncooked.
Moisten fresh grated coconut and pat into pie plate for crust. Chill for an hour or so.
Blend bananas and pitted dates in as little water as possible (mixture should be quite thick) and pour over the crust. Put coconut liquid in blender and add small pieces of peeled coconut until the mixture is thoroughly blended and thick. Spread over the pie. Top it with shredded coconut and pitted dates, whole or sliced. Chill for at least two hours.
Mix equal parts of fresh grated coconut and chopped dates and pat into pie plate for the crust. Moisten with water, if necessary. Chill for an hour or so. Fill with sliced bananas. Blend any subacid fruit with unpasteurized cream and pour over the sliced bananas. (Mixture should be thick.) Top with whipped cream and sprinkle with grated coconut. Chill for at least two hours before serving.
1/2 cup sweet cherry juice or sweet grape juice or sweet apple juice
3/4 to 1 cup water (or a little more, if needed)
1 large or two small bananas
1 large or two small avocados
4 tablespoons carob powder
15 to 20 pitted dates (depending on size)
Blend dates in juice and water. Add pieces of avocado a little at a time, while blending, then add slices of banana and carob. If more liquid is needed to blend, add as little water as possible. Should be very thick and creamy. Will freeze in refrigerator-freezer without ice. crystals if thick enough, and if served shortly after freezing. If not served the same day, thaw slightly before serving.
Blend eight ounces warm distilled water (or coconut liquid, or mixed) with eight ounces raw, peeled, cut-up coconut meat. Add eight cut-up dates. Blend. Add enough carob powder to make quite thick (approximately eight tablespoons—more or less). May be chilled or frozen. If frozen, remove from freezer one hour before serving.
Blend one cup of warm distilled water with one cup of fresh coconut and cool in refrigerator. Use more water, if necessary. When cool, blend again. Add ten or more cut-up soft dates and enough carob powder to make quite thick. May be frozen or eaten as is. If frozen, remove from freezer one hour before serving.
Blend eight ounces unpasteurized cream or unpasteurized half cream and half milk with eight cut-up dates. Add one or more bananas, if desired. Add enough carob powder to make it quite thick. May be chilled or frozen.
Blend twelve cut-up dates with flesh from one large or two medium mangos, or four or five medium sweet peaches, or two or three medium bananas. If necessary, add one or two tablespoons unpasteurized cream to start blending. Whip eight ounces unpasteurized cream, fold into the fruit mixture. Freeze in ice cube trays, stirring twice during the freezing process to prevent the formation of ice crystals.
Blend eight ounces raw cream or raw half and half with seven or eight cut-up dates. Add one or two bananas, if desired. Add enough carob powder to make it quite thick. May be frozen or eaten as is.
Not recommended, but preferable to punch recipes using artificial flavorings and/or alcoholic ingredients. This is the only recipe in the dessert section of this lesson that is (basically) not uncooked, the juices having been pasteurized, although a few of the previous recipes contain a small amount of such unpasteurized juices, along with the other ingredients, which are uncooked.
Mix three parts of unsweetened pineapple juice with one part of cherry juice (from health food store). Add small amounts of crushed pineapple (unsweetened) and whole fresh strawberries or soaked dried cherries. The taste is delicious and will satisfy (more or less) those who just must have a party drink.
“Before” | “After” |
1 ounce chocolate | 3 tablespoons carob powder + 1 tablespoon oil |
1 cup sugar | 3/4 cup honey (reduce liquid in recipe by 1/4 cup and lower oven temperature by 25 degrees) |
1 cup sugar | 1 cup molasses (reduce liquid by 1/3 cup) |
1 cup sugar | 3/4 cup date sugar |
1 tablespoon flour (used as thickener) | 1 tablespoon potato starch |
1 package active dry yeast or 1 cake compressed yeast | 1 tablespoon active dry yeast |
1 cup heavy sour cream | 1/3 cup butter and 2/3 cup sour milk |
1 cup thin sour cream | 3 tablespoons butter and 3/4 cup sour milk |
1 cup sour cream | 1 cup plain natural yogurt |
1 cup butter | 2/3 cup oil |
1 small fresh onion | 1 tablespoon dried minced onion, rehydrated |
1 small garlic clove | 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder or 1/2 teaspoon dried garlic, rehydrated |
These equivalents may be used as substitutes in recipes. Some of them are only a little better than the original ingredients. Some are no better—for convenience only. If you must make ice cream or baked “treats,” the best sweetener would be seeded, cut-up dates, blended with some of the liquid of the recipe, in optional amounts, the less the better.
When we eat cooked food in restaurants, we don’t know how it has been booked. It may have been cooked in a pressure cooker, a microwave oven, a charcoal broiler, or aluminum cooking utensils may have been used. How can these hazards be determined and avoided?
If you eat cooked food in a restaurant, it is not only subject to the hazards you mention, but it will also contain salt, probably sugar (even in vegetables), and probably pepper and other irritants. It may also contain monosodium glutamate; corn starch or flour for thickening; or other unknown additives. The only way to avoid all of these things is to avoid eating cooked food in restaurants. If you do decide to partake, do the best you can, depending on circumstances. A baked potato is fairly safe, except for the sprout retardant on the skin, and the aluminum foil in which most of them are baked. Order it to be served uncut—otherwise you may find a piece of aluminum foil in your mouth. Sometimes you can get a plain cooked vegetable without seasoning.
Some restaurants cook certain dishes to order, and you can request “no seasoning.” In most Chinese restaurants you can get vegetable chop suey with raw bean sprouts and snow peas and without monosodium glutamate, or corn starch or seasoning. Some “natural food” restaurants do a fairly good job. Some salad bars are fairly good.
But any time you eat, in a restaurant, be prepared to compromise. Sometimes, rarely, you can find a friendly rand cooperative restaurant owner or manager who will do things your way. Good luck!
Most conventional nutrition charts advise against using nuts, because they are so high in fat. Why do Natural Hygienists use so many nuts?
Conventional diets contain so much fat already (mostly animal fat) that any additional fat is contraindicated. Of course, conventional diets include flesh foods as the major protein source, while Hygienic food programs look to nuts and seeds for concentrated protein. The major sources of fat in the Hygienic diet are nuts, seeds and avocados, which contain unsaturated fat (which conventional nutritionists admit is superior to animal fat). It is true that even Hygienists should not gorge on nuts and avocados, but should eat them sparingly.
Since nuts and seeds are also the major sources of concentrated protein in the Hygienic diet, they are important elements of the food program. Some Hygienists use two to four ounces of nuts and/or seeds almost every day, which would be considered maximum amounts. Many Hygienics use them less frequently, perhaps three or four times weekly (sometimes even less) and get along very well.
Is it advisable to eat a protein meal and a starch meal every day?
No. That would comprise a large amount of concentrated food on a daily basis. Most people would, sooner or later, find that this practice would overburden their digestions. A protein meal three or four times weekly and a starch meal two or three times weekly would be adequate for most people (many would want less), planning protein and starch meals for different days, and filling in with fruit and salad meals. Some people might want up to four or five protein meals weekly and four or five starch meals weekly. This would be quite a lot of concentrated food, and would involve using both a protein meal and a starch meal on some of the days. Actually, starchy meals should not necessarily be included on a regular basis. They are filling, satisfying meals at the time they are eaten, but such foods as grains and legumes (even, to some extent, when sprouted) burden the organism with their digestion.
Potatoes are much easier to digest, and are a good choice for a cooked starch meal, but should not be used everyday, nor in large quantities. Sweet corn (unless freshly picked) is starchy; fresh peas are starchy; both can be eaten without cooking.
The coconut, starchy protein, eaten raw, is a good food to use for some of your starch meals. Chestnuts, another starchy protein, can be used for starch meals when in season. But you certainly don’t need a protein meal and a starch meal on a daily basis.
Why should the oven be preheated to the desired temperature before inserting your vegetables which are to be baked?
The cooking time will be shortened.
How, and in what, should you steam vegetables?
If you must compromise and cat some cooked food, then you should steam most vegetables whole and uncut, not grated or sliced, etc. Most vegetables need no preparation for steaming except to be well cleaned. Very large carrots may be sliced in two; rutabaga may be cut into medium-sized pieces; and large beets or turnips may be cut in quarters. Save the outer leaves of the lettuce that are not sufficiently pretty or that are cracked a bit too much to be savory in a salad; wash them well and place approximately three layers of them in the bottom of your cookware. Place the whole, uncut, cleaned vegetables on top of the lettuce leaves. Cover and start the flame moderately high. After two minutes turn the flame down to medium. Add no water to the pan. The water clinging to the lettuce and inside the cells of the lettuce forms the moisture for steaming the vegetables. No extra water is needed except perhaps when steaming large potatoes or carrots, etc. Then you may choose to use a steam rack.
We do not use the steam marvel or a steam rack for all vegetables for several reasons. First, it tempts you to add more water to the casserole. The water becomes steam, condenses on the lid and flows down over the vegetables anyway. Because of a use of more water than necessary for steaming, the vegetable is tasteless when the vegetable is done, and you throw it away, thereby losing valuable nutrients.
Whereas, if the vegetable is steamed in only the water clinging to lettuce leaves and the vegetable itself, it will be concentrated at the end of the steaming process. This cooking juice will taste good because it is concentrated and contains many minerals and vitamins and may be eaten with the vegetable. Lettuce prevents scorching, if you fail to watch the cooking time carefully. The lettuce is used only as a base upon which to cook other foods, and it should not be eaten with the food which you steam.
Spinach, beet tops, and other leafy vegetables have a surplus amount of water on their leaves after washing, which must be poured off prior to cooking. As the cellulose breaks down in these foods from the heat, much fluid leaks out into the cooking vessel and prevents burning and serves as water for steaming the vegetable itself. Consequently, no lettuce leaves are necessary for this type of vegetable. All types of small summer squash require lettuce leaves at the bottom in order to steam them whole without scorching. Steaming vegetables whole without cutting them at all saves minerals and vitamins.
The less you cook the vegetables, the better for you, so steam them just enough to warm then, without changing their natural shape or color.
We do not advocate the use of aluminum, stainless steel, or teflon. Aluminum combines with the acids in the foods forming poisonous aluminum compounds. Stainless steel cookware contains nickel and chromium that bleed into the foods when used. Teflon is highly poisonous as it contains fluorine and gives off poisonous gases under certain conditions. If chipped, and pieces enter the food, it could be very toxic. The only utensils left to cook in which have no known strike against them are opaque glass ware and fine baked enamel ware. If the enamel is chipped, it is best to purchase new cookware.
Please explain why fried foods are not good for you.
Cooking food by any method destroys much of its vitamin and mineral content. Some minerals are lost in the vapor; some are converted into inorganic minerals, which are no longer usable and therefore toxic, and others are lost into the cooking water. Vitamins are destroyed in much the same fashion.
Frying is even worse on food because oil, requires a higher temperature to boil than water. The higher the temperature, the greater the destruction of food. When frying food, it is usually cooked to a “golden brown” or a little darker. This beautiful golden brown that people love so much is a cancer producing substance. The brown on any food that has been browned by cooking is carcinogenic.
In addition the oil itself becomes a carcinogen. It has long been known that heated hydrocarbons can cause cancer. The longer they are heated and reheated and heated again, and the higher the temperature the more carcinogenic they become. Oils are hydrocarbons. The next time you desire french fries just remember that fast food chains change their oil only once a week or less. Also remember that there is more cancer of the stomach and colon than any other area of the gastrointestinal tract. Foods, the decomposition products of foods, and poisonous chemicals from cooking foods are retained in the stomach and colon for a longer period of time than in any other part of the gastrointestinal tract. Their irritating effects probably play a major role in the development of cancer of these organs.
Are spices harmful to one’s health?
Yes, they are. It is much better to refrain from using spices. Some spices are extremely poisonous while others are only moderately so. A substance is a food if it is capable of being used by a particular living organism in any of its metabolic processes. If a spice contains poisons and other substances that cannot be used by the organism in making living cells or in any of its functions then it becomes a poison in relation to the living organism, even if it contains minerals, vitamins, proteins and other nutrients. Spices contain substances which cannot be used by the body and if a substance can’t be used, it wastes precious nerve energy in expelling it to prevent damage to the body’s vital organs. Spices are harmful in proportion to their toxin concentration. They waste nerve energy and cause enervation in proportion to the amount of energy expended in excreting the noxious substances.
Because of the toxic substances contained in spices, they cause irritation to the lining of the stomach and intestines. In fact some of them, such as mustard, cause bleeding of the stomach worse than aspirin, when taken in large quantities such as the amount some people put on their hot dogs.
Spices do not enhance digestion as we have been taught. On the contrary, because of the irritation they produce digestion is impaired. Besides the irritation to the gastrointestinal tract which may lead to inflammation and ulceration, spices irritate all the tissues inside the body with which they come in contact.
The latest theory in the production of arteriosclerosis is in line with Hygienic theory-that arteriosclerosis begins with an initial irritation, followed by inflammation of the arterial lining with the deposition of fatty material and finally calcium. Spices are definitely irritants and to continue using spices when you know how they are irritants to every tissue with which they come in contact is tantamount to saying “I don’t care if I get arteriosclerosis, or gastritis, ulcers or cancer.”
Lesson 29 will discuss the harmful effects of condiments in more detail.
The selection of foods for optimum health requires that many factors be considered, including nutrient content, ease of mastication, deglutition, digestion, absorption and assimilation, presence or absence of irritant, the amount of vegetable fiber (which could be too little in the case of refined foods, or too much in the case of mature kale), gustatory satisfaction to the unperverted taste, and the effect on blood alkalinity. An ideal food would contain a broad array of nutrients, would be delicious, would contain a moderate amount of fiber, would be easy to eat and digest in the raw state, would possess no irritants or digestive antagonists and would leave an alkaline ash after metabolism. Applying these criteria, we find that there are virtually no perfect foods. Most fruits and vegetables, for example, contain at least minute amounts of oxalic acid, which is a mild irritant and which has a binding effect on calcium. Tannic acid is contained in the skins of some nuts (particularly almonds) and this, too, is a mild irritant. Lettuce is said to contain lactucarium, a mildly toxic alkaloid with soporific effects. This is particularly true of head lettuce. Beans contain trypsin-inhibitors, aflatoxins and purine bodies which raise serum uric acid levels. Grains contain much phytic acid which binds minerals like zinc and iron, impairing their utilization by the body. It should be obvious that perfect foods (like perfect health) are a theoretical ideal, not a reality.
From a Hygienic standpoint, there are three major tenets that guide us in the selection of foods. These tenets enable us to construct a diet that is philosophically and physiologically ideal for the human species. We will admit beforehand that due to various anatomical and physiological weaknesses and defects, not everyone can adhere to the philosophical dietary ideal with complete success. However, before alterations and deletions are made, it is important that we determine what constitutes an ideal diet, a truly natural diet, and then be guided accordingly. Our three major tenets are that:
These three principles summarize Hygienic philosophy regarding food selection, and we will expound upon each in turn.
The fact that whole natural foods are superior to refined foods such as white sugar, white flour, polished rice, requires no substantiation to the readers of this magazine. However, we must emphasize that any fragmenting of whole food destroys nutrients and lessens the suitability of that food as an article of diet. Whole carrots contain more complete nourishment than carrot juice. Brown rice is better food than rice polishings. Whole wheat is superior to wheat germ. Consider the following experiment conducted by Weston A. Price, D.D.S., the renowned author of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
“Three cages of rats were placed on wheat diets. The first cage received whole wheat, freshly ground, the second received a white flour product, and the third was given a mixture of bran and wheat germ. The amounts of each ash, of calcium as the oxide, and of phosphorus as the pentoxide and the amounts of iron and copper present in the diet were tabulated. Clinically, it was found that there was a marked difference in the physical developments of these rats. The rats in the first group, receiving the entire grain product, developed fully and reproduced normally at 3 months of age. These rats had very mild dispositions and could be picked up by the ear or tail without danger of their biting. The rats fed upon white flour were markedly undersized. Their hair came out in large patches and they had very ugly dispositions, so ugly that they threatened to spring through the cagewall at us when we came to look at them. These rats had tooth decay and they were unable to reproduce. The rats fed upon bran and wheat germ did not show tooth decay, but they were considerably undersized and they lacked energy. The wheat germ was purchased from the miller and hence was not freshly ground. The wheat given to the first group was obtained whole and ground while fresh in a hand mill. It is of interest that notwithstanding the great increase in calcium, phosphorus, iron and copper present in the foods of the last group, the rats did not mature normally, as did those in the first group. This may have been due in large part to the fact that the material was not freshly ground, and as a result they could not obtain a normal vitamin content from the embryo of the grain due to its oxidation. This is further indicated by the fact the the rats in this group did not reproduce, probably due in considerable part to a lack of Vitamins B and E which were lost by oxidation of the embryo or germ fat.”
This account demonstrates how important it is to distinguish between the nutrient content of a food and its overall biological effect. It has been shown repeatedly that eating wheat bran impedes iron absorption, despite the fact that it contains abundant iron. This may be the result of mechanical factors, or, perhaps it is the result of the high phytate content of the bran. In any case, it proves that foods cannot be evaluated solely on the basis of mathematical tables of nutrient analysis.
At first glance fragmented foods may seem to be more nourishing than whole foods. Dried apricots, for example, score much higher in calcium and iron than do fresh apricots. Quite obviously, if we extract the water from the apricots, we can triple or quadruple the number of fruits we are comparing, and thereby shore up higher nutrient values. This seeming enhancement is, of course, a figment of the mind. Whole foods offer the most complete nutrition. Powdered whey is a nutritional shadow of whole milk. Extracted chlorophyll is a lifeless fraction of green leaves. Lecithin granules are a denatured fragment of soybeans. These various extracts and concentrates are inferior to the whole natural foods they supposedly improve upon. Processing incurs drastic nutrient losses as a result of heat, oxidation, chemicals, and enzymatic destruction. It is correct to say that these foods have been devitalized. Only whole natural foods contain the amount and proportion of nutrients that the body requires. Only whole natural foods are acceptable in a Hygienic diet.
Although some foods seem to be rendered more digestible by cooking, it is a fact that most foods are rendered less digestible. Furthermore, any food that is difficult to eat and digest uncooked is not a normal constituent of man’s natural diet. Cooking partially or totally destroys the nutrient content of food. Water-soluble vitamins, like ascorbic acid and pantothenic acid, are particularly susceptible to thermal destruction, but it is to some extent true of all vitamins. What may be more important, however, is the fact that cooking alters the proportions of the various vitamins contained in foods. For example, cooking alters the natural ratio between thiamine and niacin in foods. This occurs because thiamine is readily destroyed by moist heat, whereas niacin is more resistant. Therefore, cooking not only lowers the vitamin content of foods, it also modifies vitamin ratios, which are a very important feature of whole foods.
Minerals may be rendered nonuseable by the body as a result of cooking. A good example of this is the effect that pasteurization has upon milk. The complex organic salts of calcium and magnesium, in conjunction with carbon and phosphorus, are decomposed by heat, resulting in the precipitation of insoluble calcium phosphate salts. These inorganic salts are not assimilable by the body. This is one of the reasons why dental decay has reached epidemic proportions among milk-guzzling Americans.
Cooking tends to deaminize proteins and denature their secondary and tertiary configurations. With the exception of eggs white and certain dried legumes, they are rendered more difficult to digest by cooking. Subjecting fats to heat produces toxic cyclic hydrocarbons and free fatty acids, both of which are highly irritating. Heated fats and oils have been shown, by countless experiments, to be highly carcinogenic. No informed person will consume heated fats in any form.
Cooking causes a great loss of the soluble minerals in foods and drives off part of the food into the air as gases (this is particularly true of sulphur and iodine). Cooking softens vegetable fiber which may hamper intestinal motility, and promote fermentation and putrefaction. Although cooking adds to the palatability of some foods (e.g., yams, asparagus, zucchini, grains), most foods are rendered less palatable by cooking, which gives rise to the use of unwholesome flavorings, condiments, dressings, etc.
On the basis of these considerations and others, a diet, in order to be considered Hygienic, would have to consist of at least predominantly uncooked foods.
This category could also be designated the detrimental effects of animal foods. All animal products (with the exception of mother’s milk) have certain negative features which make their dietary use questionable. Consider, first of all, the effect that animal foods have upon protein consumption. Even modest use of meat, fish, eggs and dairy foods tends to create a protein overload and this is one of the most dangerous dietary excesses. Research has shown that high protein diets actually promote aging and early degeneration. Too much protein exerts a tremendous burden upon the liver and kidneys. It also leaves acid residues in the blood and tissues which must be neutralized by sacrificing indispensable alkaline mineral reserves. The process of aging is characterized by the transfer of calcium from the bones to the tissues, that is, to the arteries (arteriosclerosis); to the optic lens (cataracts), to the ureters (kidney stones), to the skin (wrinkles), to the joints (osteoarthritis), to the valves of the heart (producing valvular stenosis and insufficiency), to the tendons and ligaments (producing frozen shoulder) and to other sites. This, of course, leaves the skeleton osteoporotic, leading to the development of stooped posture, a kyphotic spine, spontaneous fractures and other maladies that are so common to the elderly. High protein diets (due to the accumulation of phosphoric, sulphuric, uric and other acids) accelerate this demineralization of bone and bring about calcific deposits in the soft tissues.
One could argue that nuts and seeds contain as much protein as meats, eggs, etc., and therefore they are as likely to create an excess. However, most people are easily satisfied eating a few ounces of nuts or seeds every day, whereas few people will eat just a few ounces of yogurt. Restaurants serve up to a pound of meat at a sitting, along with other foods. Cottage and ricotta cheese is eaten in huge quantities, even by vegetarians. The simple truth is that animal proteins tend to promote overeating more so than do plant proteins.
The relationship between high protein diets and cancer has been clearly established by studying both animal and human populations. Remember that cancerous cells are characterized by runaway protein synthesis and rapid cellular division. Protein synthesis is accelerated by increased protein intake, so it is not surprising to discover that cancer bears close tie to excess protein. There is a direct correlation between the amount of protein in the diet and the incidence of cancer on a world-wide basis.
Americans, Australians and West Europeans, who ingest the largest amounts of protein, also have the greatest incidence of cancer, whereas the rural Chinese, the East Indians and native peoples of Latin America have the lowest cancer incidence. This is no casual relationship and it cannot be written off by blaming it on the “stress of modern life.”
Animal products are loaded with the worst kind of fat—saturated, cholesterol-laden animal fat. A mountain of evidence has been accumulated relating high animal fat intakes with the development of cardiovascular disease (which is characterized by the deposition of saturated fat and cholesterol in the intimal layer of arteries), and many different malignancies including breast cancer, colon and rectal cancers, and cancer of the liver. Even such diverse conditions as multiple sclerosis and diabetes have been related to the consumption of animal fats. As we have already stated, heated animal fats have been shown to be even more carcinogenic, and considering that Americans take all of their flesh, milk and eggs well cooked, it’s no wonder that 1 in 4 eventually succumbs to cancer. Pandemically, those peoples who subsist on low fat, low protein, largely vegetarian, unrefined diets demonstrate the greatest resistance to cancer. The incidence of cancer and heart disease among American Seventh Day Adventists is approximately half the national average. This is quite remarkable considering that only about half of this group are thought to be vegetarian.
Flesh, fish, yogurt and cheese contain various putrefactive products resulting from their bacterial decomposition. Putting partially-spoiled food in the body can hardly be considered a Hygienic practice, despite the arguments of the fermented food enthusiasts. Flesh also contains considerable quantities of the end products of metabolism (like uric acid,) which are held up in the tissues at the time of death. These wastes are poisonous, irritating and burdensome to the body. Considering also that animal products tend to be reservoirs for pesticides, herbicides, and various other drugs and inorganic contaminants, there are many good reasons to avoid using them.
There are just 5 classes of foods that meet all of the criteria established by our three major tenets. These are: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts. A diet comprised of these foods would abound in every nutrient known to be required, with the exception of Vitamin B-12, and most people apparently can derive enough of this from bacterial synthesis in the intestines. However, we should note that soil bacteria also produces B-12 on the surface of roots, so that adding stringy roots grown in organic soil (with abundant microbial activity) to the diet would constitute a pre-made plant source of B-12 that would be a perfectly acceptable addition to a Hygienic diet. Supermarket vegetables would not be adequate for this purpose.
We should note, in closing, that adding some cooked food to the diet (like baked potatoes and brown rice) or limited amounts of animal foods (such as uncooked, unsalted cheese), although not strictly Hygienic, may be required in some pathological conditions. Certain people would experience a drastic and undesirable weight loss were they to make an immediate transition to a 100 percent uncooked, all plant food diet. For these people, eating a baked potato now and then represents not a mere compromise but rather a necessary modification of their Hygienic regimen. Quoting Dr. Alec Burton, “We must adapt the system to the needs of the individual and not adapt the individual to the needs of the system.”
With this acknowledged, let us state in conclusion that a diet, in order to be considered Hygienic, would have to consist predominantly (if not exclusively) of uncooked foods of vegetable origin, eaten whole.
If you’re like most people you want to get the most for your money. This includes your food purchases too. Many of you have already learned that eating your food raw is the best way to get the most nutritional value from it. Perhaps you’ve also discovered that your doctor, hospital and prescription bills have gone down (or, hopefully, disappeared altogether).
When you learn that the body heals itself and that drugs, whether they’re prescribed by a doctor or sold without a prescription, always harm your body and never help it, you realize that going to a doctor or a drugstore is the opposite course from what you should take.
In the Health Crusader you have been learning:
Even if the first-rate and second-best foods are more expensive in the store, they are still the best value for your money because they give you the most and harm you the least. Now let’s say you eat only top-rate foods and you eat them raw. Is this everything you can do to get the most for your money? No, there’s more!
Many of you have already learned that most organically-grown foods contain larger amounts of high-quality proteins, minerals and vitamins than the majority of commercially-grown produce. But there’s one more consideration and this is in the area of food preparation.
As you may know, there is a great loss of vitamins and usable protein and minerals when food is cooked. This is the result of two serious occurrences:
These two occurrences happen only when the cell walls (or some of the cell walls) are broken, as by heating, freezing, cutting, blending, juicing or mashing. The cell contents are exposed to the oxygen in our air; and vitamins, minerals and proteins chemically combine with the oxygen and are rendered unusable to us in providing the nutrition they’re supposed to. Also, the lysosomes go to work to break down the cell components before your body gets a chance to use them.
Be aware that these lysosomes within food cells are destroyed by heat over 120 degrees. They become incapable of any kind of activity, constructive or destructive. But while it is true that raw foods are far superior to cooked foods, the processes of oxidation and enzymic breakdown also come into play when you eat raw foods, but to an insignificant extent.
When the cell walls are burst by methods other than heat, such as by cutting, mashing, blending or juicing, the vitamins, minerals and other food components are destroyed both by the cells lysosomes and by oxidation.
For example, when you bite into an apple or pear many cell walls are broken and oxidation occurs. However, you will get more nutrients from an apple or pear eaten this way than from the same apple or pear that has been cut up into a fruit salad. This is because many more cell walls are broken, usually for a longer period, when fruits are cut up into a salad. (The same is true for vegetables, of course.)
What’s true for cut-up foods is also true for mashed, blended or juiced foods. Blending and juicing break open the protective walls of almost ail the cells, in the food, causing a considerable amount of nutritional value to be lost. That is one reason we recommend that you either not blend or juice foods or else do it sparingly. (The other reason is ecological.)
You may want to mash avocados to make “Vegemole,” a salad dressing or a dip; or you might want to make a cut-up salad. But in the case of both avocados and other foods you are better off blending, juicing, cutting up or mashing them only occasionally—for variety or for guests, reluctant family members, or people without teeth or with other special problems.
So remember, when you are preparing foods a great way to get the most value from your food is to eat it whole. “Finger salads” of whole fruits or vegetables that you don’t cut up are considerably more nutritious than cut-up salads. This is because of the oxidation and enzymic action that occur when foods are cut up. Why not eat whole foods more often and get more nutrients for your money and with less fuss and muss?
28.2. Achieving Natural Life Potential
28.3. Food And Short Or Long Life
28.4. Factors That Shorten Life
28.5. Exercise And Vigorous Purposeful Activity As Life Essentials
28.6. Mental And Emotional Factors In Living A Natural Life Span
28.7. Happiness, Enjoyment And Pleasure As Factors In Realizing Life Potential
28.1.1 The Idea of an Elixir Vitae
28.1.2 Examples of “long-lived” peoples
To set the correct perspective for this lesson it is wise, at the outset, to point out there really is no elixir of life except by comparing normality with the low standards of life prevailing. There is no such thing as long life—that is, no one can outlive the human potential. There is the human potential and anything short of that potential must properly be called shortened life. This potential is better called the natural or normal human life span and anything less than the realization of the normal human life span is premature death. Mature death is a natural death, a death resulting from the simultaneous cessation of life activities by the body’s major organs. It is painless and free of suffering.
This lesson concerns itself with the touchstones that assure health, the necessary conditions of a normal life span. The lesson also examines the abuses heaped upon the human body that cause loss of health and thus shorten life.
Legends of elixirs come down to us from prehistoric times. Undoubtedly the idea of elixirs was spawned by shamanism. Shamanism was a generalized practice of ministering unto human aspiration and credulity. Shamen were medicine men and theologists rolled into one. Their craft and livelihood depended upon exploiting the human propensity to believe and trust. They thrived by foisting upon those they “served” magic healing potions which find their counterparts today in Pharmaceuticals (magic weeds) and herbalism. They allayed inquiries into human origins and destinies by fabricating new belief systems based upon legends and rituals that commanded homage of the times. This arm of shamanism evolved into the priesthood while the other arm evolved into what is called medicine.
Stories of long-lived peoples circulated for there were, indeed, peoples who lived long, relatively, in certain areas of the world. Shamen, who were really extraordinary confidence men, took advantage of this wish to believe, this hope for long life, by attributing long life to substances which had curative powers. Hence anything that, in reality, drugged the human constitution was credited with curative virtues and could have been a candidate for use as an elixir vitae.
Water with toxic minerals early came to be regarded as an elixir vitae. Drinking of these waters and bathing in them were supposed to furnish the curative powers the body needed for good health and long life. To this day, many waters are regarded as curative of human ills and possessed with the power of conferring long life.
Many shamen promoted their brews and concoctions as curative and capable of conferring long life. These brews were generally concocted from herbs which the shamen jealously guarded as trade secrets. Somewhere in murky prehistoric times came the idea that rejuvenation could come from eating analogous parts of animals. If sexual powers were to be resuscitated, the eating of animal testicles were thought to restore male, sexual prowess. Eating of brains was thought to restore mental powers, and so on. Today these voodooistic ideas have their counterparts in so-called glandulars.
In early history, alcoholic spirits came to be regarded as elixirs. Anything containing alcohol was a curative agent and also a substance that conferred long life. The idea that alcohol was a curative agent survived well into the 19th century and the belief’s vestiges remain today.
In the middles ages, alchemists, sought philosopher’s stones and new chemicals with which to transform base metals into gold or silver and with which to restore health and perpetual youth.
In the age of exploration, courageous men blazed new pathways in uncharted lands in search of the fountain of youth and fabulous foods with curative powers that would confer long life. Ponce de Leon was such an explorer who discovered Florida in search of a fabled fountain of water in Florida that would cure ailments and confer perpetual life in a youthful state.
Today we have many laboratories searching for an elixir vitae to give humans long life. Many concoctions have been hailed as elixirs. One of the foremost is procaine (same as novocaine), popularly called Gerovital, meaning, literally, long life. That long life can proceed from the employment of any substance while the causes of shortened life are indulged is, of course, impossible. No substance can confer long life in the first place.
The priesthood arose when a certain class of shamen assumed the role of intermediaries (favored or privileged representatives) between the gods and beleaguered humans. Their role was to curry favor with the gods by direct intercession on behalf of ailing clients. At least that is what they had the sufferer or long life seeker believing. They performed rituals and incantations in behalf of those who subscribed to their services. Those who stuck with administrations of “magic weeds,” brews and concoctions were the precursors of today’s medical practitioners.
Simply stated the idea of an elixir of life springs from hopes for long life. The wish is father of the belief.
For the past two thousand years the Bible has spoken of very long-lived people, including Adam and Eve. Methuselah is said to have lived 969 years. But these ages become immediately suspect when we learn that women were said to have had their firstborn at ages ranging from 120 to 200 years. In those times, as today, many centenarians lived quiet, frugal lives in certain areas of Eastern Europe and in Western Asia. Travelers brought news of these people and many legends arose about their existence. Just as we have one-track minds today, then, answers were sought for this remarkable longevity in Some food, substance, ritual or other single practice.
In most countries of the world there are those who have surpassed a hundred years of age. Their longevity has excited much curiosity and inquiry as to their “secret.” Even to this day an outstanding practice of a centenarian is searched for to account for extraordinary longevity. If the oldster is a wine drinker, the wine is likely to be characterized as responsible for the longer life. The fact the oldster breathes, sleeps, is active, eats frugally, etc. is likely to be ignored. Why shouldn’t geriatric personnel emphasize as elements of longevity those life factors that everyone possesses? There must be some “secret” factor.
That humans have a natural life span potential of 140 years to 160 years is rarely taken into consideration. The yearnings of most for long life are becalmed by the promise of eternal life—not here but in the hereafter. Long life does not become important here if it is but the prelude to eternal bliss in another paradise.
Biologically, humans have inherent faculties that will carry them well past the century mark. The weakest organs of the human body are the kidneys and they have a life potential of 300 years or more according to geriatric specialists. Some long-life specialists feel the human organism is so perfect there’s no reason it should ever die. Of course, the view does not take into account the limits of cell regeneration.
In view of the fact that there are societies in which oldsters reach well past 100 years of age and that authenticated life spans well past 150 years of age exist, there is no denying that humans can live past 100 years of age. Inasmuch as most creatures in nature live five to eight times the age of maturity which is, in humans, about 22 to 25 years of age, and inasmuch as humans have lived longer than 150 years, then it is quite logical and scientific to conclude that humans are normally endowed with a life potential of about 150 years.
Thus it becomes apparent that those who live their life potential are not long-lived but that, on the contrary, those who do not achieve their life potential are short-lived! The inquiry thus takes on a new perspective. The search then comes to embrace not only those factors that assure achievement of life potential but those factors that are destructive and, as a result, shorten life.
28.2.1 Causes of Shortened Life
28.2.2 Primary abuses of modern humans
28.2.3 Healthful Living as the elixir vitae
28.2.4 Outdoor Life essential to best health
28.2.5 Living in a distress-free environment
Our study now must turn more to those practices which cause premature death as well as the delineation of those practices normal to our being which assure realization of natural life potential. Your clients will expect your guidance not only in matters of health, but also as an “authority” in related matters, longevity being one of them. This lesson is designed to make you competently conversant with the subject.
In a word, life is shortened in humans when deviation from our biological heritage occurs. Just as the engine life of a car will be shortened by wrong fuels, poor maintenance and abusive use, so too will our bodies become clogged and disabled by wrong foods, improper life practices and applications that deplete energies and faculties. Just as the engine is designed to operate under certain conditions, so too has the human organism developed within certain adaptational parameters. Anything that impairs health also shortens life.
Unfortunately, human abuse begins before conception. Degenerated men and women conceive in bodies that are almost invariably wracked by the ravages of unceasing toxicosis. While healthy by the pitiful norms of our society, very few parents-to-be have even a modicum of health.
During the fetal period, mothers are likely to get little if any exercise, eat of fare unfit for man or beast and indulge in many toxic habits that are endemic to our country. Moreover, mothers are likely to be drugged frequently in many ways, especially by their physicians. Births are especially fraught with dangers for both mothers and infants because of the “manipulative” drugs employed for hospital/physician convenience. Every antivital act against mother and infant impairs both, undermines health and shortens life.
As likely as not, the baby will be put on some formula that will fail to yield nutrients—formulas are even worse than the milk of diseased mothers.
After babyhood with indisposing and unwholesome formulas, baby usually undergoes introduction to a plethora of unwholesome foods. Junk foods make an early appearance in baby’s diet. Unnatural animal products, meats, and cereals are likely to be added to baby’s diet at from two to four months. These should never be in anyone’s diet in a whole lifetime but, even if they were normal items of human diet, baby shouldn’t be fed anything other than mother’s milk until the time teeth have erupted. Of course, a mother who cannot lactate must either secure the services of a wet nurse (second best), or feed baby raw goat or cow’s milk (third best with goat milk being the better of the two) along with a diet of freshly expressed fruit juices. Inasmuch as sweet fruits undergo no digestion, their sugars are absorbed as they are by baby. Fruits that are well-prepared may be fed to baby but only as a last resort. Fruits, animal milks and nut milks are superior to commercial formulas.
Almost all youngsters suffer the many “usual childhood diseases” because they have been subjected to many usual childhood abuses. All impairing factors, it bears repeating, undermine health and shorten life.
Early in life, youngsters are introduced to corrosive beverages, fried and cooked foods, condiments, side-stream cigarette smoke and a host of other debilitating influences. As likely as not, youngsters will be corralled via the automatic babysitter known as a television set. Instead of becoming active and participating in life, instead of developing and becoming educated and trained in life’s activities, most children are becoming passive misfits. The tragedy of the situation is highlighted by two research projects conducted by a sample of noted physical fitness expert, Bonnie Prudden. In 1954, she tested a sample of our youngsters and found that a shocking 58.6% could not pass a minimum physical fitness test. In 1978, she again made the tests. This time a shocking 86.2% could not pass the same test! If that does not point out the direction in which we’re travelling, the gravity of the problem and the herculean nature of the task before you and other health-aware people, then it’s not likely that anything else will. The tragedy of our children is a national tragedy—a worldwide tragedy!
That long life can be achieved only by healthy people should be self-evident. That those perpetually encumbered with impairing influences resulting from unhealthful practices cannot survive as long should be equally self-evident. Thus it becomes obvious that humans can realize their life potential by living healthfully and that any deviation will result in suffering and shortened life.
Healthful living involves touching base appropriately with every need of life in all aspects of our being. Our basic requirements are as outlined in the earliest lessons, i.e., pure air, pure water, adequate sleep and rest, sunshine and natural light, foods of our biological adaptation, vigorous activity, temperature maintenance, pleasant environment, a nondistressing lifestyle, belonging to a group of similar disposition and so on.
Almost every long-lived person of note has worked out of doors in gardens and orchards. Being a gardener myself, I can assure you that nothing overcomes stress so quickly as a half hour to an hour’s work in the garden. Reestablishing identity with the basic environment and its providence becalms as nothing else can.
Encourage those whom you serve to start gardening, taking walks and hikes in the country or undertake other activities that give them more fresh air, sunshine, exercise and identity with nature. Just as plants that have their roots with earth mostly severed wither and die, so too do humans suffer when they lose touch with those fundamental requisites of life. Just as nonuse of body parts are abuse, so toe is the loss of touch with the outdoors and warm congeniality with peers abuse.
Perhaps it is incorrect to say we should live in a stress-free environment inasmuch as our superb human adaptations have been spurred by stress—by the need to cope. However, distress consists of situations and events with which we cannot cope or which impose great difficulty upon the organism. Continuous distress will speedily exhaust the organism and contribute to its early demise.
In our society the greatest distress arises from our peculiarly rapacious economic system that keeps most of us in more or less constant insecurity. Assurance of life and its means exists for relatively few Americans, even for the affluent. In an exploitative society few have situations that are so secure that distress does not occur. Even those who have ideal situations are potentially distressed by the plight of their brethren. Perhaps no people on earth are more insecure than modern day Americans.
An assessment of life and its possibilities in a somewhat detached objective manner establishes a perspective that makes most of our problems trivial. For example, if you’ve read astronomy and you imagine the vast reaches of space, our personal affairs and problems are small in that light, though, subjectively, the whole world revolves around us and our concerns.
Helping establish a philosophical outlook upon the world and the foibles of humans will enable many to better conduct their lives. When we can view most of our brethren objectively as being weak creatures given to inconsequential and dissipating activities for the most part, that gives us the impetus to tune ourselves in with nature and saner peers—to make ourselves more virtuous and exemplary.
Imbuing our lifestyle with the basic essentials of life heretofore presented will enhance health and life expectancy. Perhaps the most important of the essentials is belonging to a peer group. Humans are gregarious and mutual appreciation among peers establishes the condition upon which all can thrive.
Basically, ailing clients can be turned around by such simple steps as fasting, reorienting their lifestyle to include the requisites of life in their best form, and unburdening them of debilitating practices. But the problem usually always extends to the emotional, social and economic planes as well. Hence a philosophical overview should always be explored with clients.
Get clients physically, socially and emotionally active on constructive courses that establish their basic rapport with nature and a peer group. Get them involved in activities such as gardening, hobbies and crafts, etc. that bring their innate human drive to fruition in creativity and meaningful service.
A study of the world’s healthiest and longest-lived peoples reflect a society of individuals rather secure in the needs of life. Sharing, mutual reinforcement and assurance from a peer group does not create the distress and insecurity as exists in exploitative societies.
America is a highly exploitative society wherein few deep and abiding friendships exist. You will find it difficult to help your clients order their lives in contravention of an aggressive economic system that is by its nature divisive. Most healthy and long-lived peoples are close to the land and nature. They secure their livelihood directly from the soil—from Nature. They live in harmony with their relatives and neighbors—they have a society that does not continually assault them with demands that stress and strain them.
The most constructive steps you can assist clients with are in reorienting their living practices to healthful ones. Secondarily, you can set forth the many influences you note in their lifestyle that tend to distress them and cause problems on every plane of their being. The nineteen essentials of life cited and elaborated upon in Lessons 3 and 4 should be taught to every client so that understanding of their importance is assured. Guidance and suggestions as to how these needs of life may be implemented should be undertaken, tailored as much as possible to the peculiar needs of each client.
The most immediately rejuvenating and healthful changes you can effect in clients’ lives involve guiding them to fasting, vigorous exercise and an all-raw diet consisting preponderantly of luscious fruits with a few vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Always keep in mind that, as a practitioner of Life Science, you must strive to imbue your clients with a knowledge and understanding of their needs in every facet of life that bears upon their welfare.
Consciously and unconsciously, in accord with our needs, we all seek the comfort and assurance of life and its means upon reasonable expenditure of physical labor. We seek this amongst those whom we recognize as peers—those with interests and disposition largely paralleling our own.
Establishing identity and standing in a peer group is difficult within the context of a society that places values upon individual economic achievement and standing rather than upon the humanness of merit of every individual. When clients are brought to the realization of the conditions of our society—when they can be imbued with a philosophical overview of their circumstances so that they can better understand and cope with it, than the bases for a less stressful and debilitating existence has been established.
Many individuals of my acquaintance have joined in communities with individuals of similar interests and drive. The experience of facing the world with others rather than facing its imposing awesomeness alone has reawakened their will to live and given them new ambitions and drives. Nothing rejuvenates, enlivens and renews life so effectively as a community of peers who live in cooperation and harmony.
28.3.1 Food—Our area of greatest deviation from natural norms
28.3.2 Biologically correct foods eaten raw are true elixir
28.3.3 Cooking among worst treatments of our food
28.3.5 Toxic fare - recreational drugs
28.3.6 Toxic fare - wrong foods
28.3.7 Haphazard food mixtures generate toxic products
28.3.8 Guidelines for more nutrients and less toxicity from eating
Even though there are many debilitating influences that prove detrimental to our populace and cause our brethren much suffering, nothing looms so large in individual degeneration as dietary practices. In no other area do we flaunt our biological disposition so flagrantly. Therefore it is appropriate that you become steeped, in nutritional science and concern yourself most intimately with the feeding practices of those whom you serve.
Of all the human deviations from correct biological observation of our needs, no perversion is so deviant and destructive as that which Americans undergo in their dietary practices. Our physiologically correct diet as frugivores is a diet of fruits eaten in the delicious ripe raw state. Many of us are deficiency minded and feel the fruit diet inadequate even though it is not. To qualm such feelings, the addition of a few vegetables, nuts and seeds adds an extraordinary amount of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and proteins to nutrient intake. Not that fruits do not supply all our needs and better, it’s just that a psychological need is met. What do we find our brethren eating? What contributes to their pathology more heavily than anything else?
There are no real elixirs. There are no miracles. There is no magic. There is normal and abnormal—right and wrong. Because most Americans are so addicted to wrong habits of eating, a return to natural and normal eating practices results in such dramatic improvements as to be proclaimed miraculous. Our natural dietary consists of delicious fruits. All else is deviant and either less than ideal or downright pathogenic.
For our purposes, we may regard the fruitarian regime the elixir of life, but only because this is the greatest single improvement that can be made in our lives.
In getting clients on to the fruitarian diet, you can suggest that they try a purification diet. Of course this is merely an semantic entree, for they’ll soon enough learn that fruits do not purify or cleanse the body per their reputation but that, on the contrary, they are handled so efficiently that more body energies can be devoted to cleansing and healing. Fruits do not yield up toxic debris which other foods do. Hence the results of fruitarianism are true rejuvenation. Fruits are the true elixir of life insofar as there may be said to be one.
Among the worst curses Americans have visited upon themselves is that of cooking. Not only is it a gross evil in itself but it is often the agency that makes palatable that which should never be in the diet in the first place.
These are two primary evils that cooked foods wreak upon our bodies:
If cooking may be said to ruin our foods, condiments are ruined even if eaten raw. The American proclivity to use stimulants and flavor modifiers is rank, rampant and pathological. Foremost among the condiments that help destroy health are salt, herbs, spices, pepper, vinegar, gravies, dressings, sauces, seasonings, etc. The ingredients which vitiate the human intestinal tract and body are:
While condiments may be said to be recreational drugs because of the “kick” they give, there are drugs partaken of strictly for their kicks. Among these drugs are tobacco, alcohol, coffee, chocolate, teas, sodas, beverages, marijuana, cocaine, opium, heroin and other so-called hard drugs. Drugs prescribed and nonprescribed are often taken as recreational drugs. Among these are tranquilizers, amphetamines and so on.
Americans often lament why so much misfortune and suffering should befall them. While making their utterances, they are often active in some drug habit that is contributing heavily to their problems.
Anything put into our bodies other than that to which we as frugivores are physiologically equipped to handle is more or less toxic fare. It is either toxic of itself or it is of such a character as to pose difficulties that lead to enervation and toxicosis.
The dietary errors of our times embrace both types of violations—not only is wrong fare usually intrinsically toxic, but also burdens the system so much that enervation results as well.
Foods which we do not digest well tax the system and lead to an enervated state, especially when these foods interfere with or prolong sleep as they often do. Troubled sleep denies us regeneration of normal nerve energy.
Ordinary cow’s milk, for instance, which is touted as such a perfect food, is quite toxic in the average human intestinal tract because we do not have the enzymes rennin or lactase with which to digest it. Thus lactose and casein are toxic themselves and, because of bacterial breakdown, beget toxic by-products.
Most foods of today have been cooked, preserved, processed and prepared in such a manner as to either add and/or create toxicity—not that they wouldn’t have been good foods in their natural state.
Potatoes, for instance, are a third-rate food—still quite high on the scale, with very conservative cooking. But, with the addition of heated oils in cooking, they become rather saturated and indigestible.
Both the oil and the potatoes thus become sources for pathogenic substances.
Combining foods indiscriminately often involves meals of incompatible foods. Most Americans eat sweets, proteins, fats and starches at every meal. Statistics show that over half the meals eaten in America result in intestinal discomforts due to indigestion.
When indigestion occurs, bacteria take over and decompose the various food components. The byproducts of bacterial decomposition are quite toxic, these being acetic acid, lactic acid and alcohol in the case of carbohydrates and ammonias, purines, skatols, indoles and other deleterious substances in the case of proteins and yet others in the case of fats.
When the foods eaten in bad combinations should be omitted from the human diet even if eaten alone, the situation is worsened.
The perpetual assault upon human well-being from this source alone is enough to create considerable pathology and shorten life.
The more foods we consume of our biological adaptation, the more nutrients we derive. Foods which we are biologically equipped to efficiently handle are readily digested and their nutrients swiftly absorbed. They offer no toxicity inasmuch as our digestive enzymes breakdown every component that could offer problems. Fruits are the only category of foods that fill this bill ideally.
When we eat ideal foods in an uncomplicated manner, we obtain their goodness and create no problems. This is conducive to health which is a prerequisite to prolonged youth and long life.
Dr. Georgi Z. Pitskhelauri is a Russian gerontologist who has been researching those factors responsible for the long life of Abkhasians and others living in and around the Caucacus mountains. His studies show that centenarians:
Dr. Pitskhelauri reports this in such a way it is clearly obvious that:
Those factors which shorten life seem to predominate in our society. Thus it behooves you as a practitioner to recognize those influences which destroy health and bring on early death. While these life-sapping factors are multitudinous, they arc easily recognized for their anti-vital character. Let’s explore some of them.
Relatively pure air is our foremost need of life.
It has been said that the world’s air has been contaminated to some extent. Penguins at the South Pole have been found to be contaminated somewhat by particulates generated thousands of miles away in industrial complexes.
Even though pure air may be impossible in today’s world, we are able to breathe much better air overall by taking a few steps to better the air quality in home and workplace. Outdoor work and outdoor sleeping are two measures that will vastly improve the quality of the air we breathe. Further, the light we’ll be using will be from the sun. Natural light is wholesome whereas artificial lighting of all types is less wholesome.
We have had lessons dealing with the subject of air and the multitude of pollutants that beset it in homes and cities. I suggest that you review these.
While our nasal and lung faculties have a certain capacity for purifying air, it is a talent best little employed. Certainly it is debilitating to continually assault this capacity with heavily polluted air until these faculties are destroyed. Pure air is essential to best health and to long life.
On the obverse side of a congenial and assured social environment of peers is perhaps the most demoralizing influence of all. In a condition of strife, bickering, lack of mutual appreciation, economic insecurity, aggressive and exploitative individuals and groups, humans wither. This leads, of course, to enervation, disease, suffering and early death. The social and economic situation must be one where the means of life are readily available for reasonable efforts. Where the products of one’s labors are consumed in a community of peers—where relative sufficiency and stability exist within the social group with which one identifies, gregarious, creative and constructive tendencies are met. We feel useful and a part of our environment rather than a consuming/nonproductive member.
Our social situation more than anything else generates positive or negative emotional states. Negative emotions destroy us whereas reinforced and positive feelings are a prerequisite of well-being.
An adverse social setting is perhaps the most demoralizing and debilitating influence, and economic conditions are usually the soil from which social situations develop. Of course this can be good to bad.
Most Americans are perpetually distressed by earning less than will satisfy their wants. An exploitative society strives to create an even greater market for its products. The promotion of products somehow imbues most people with the idea that happiness can be realized if they have I this and this and that. This unceasing quest for more and more mirrors the basic unhappiness of most of American society’s members. The propaganda of commercial promoters drives us to seek happiness in possessions.
Further, the nature of the economic system can be most vitiating. Ours has often been characterized as “a dog eat dog” system. Competitiveness has driven many to play the game viciously. People who are by economic circumstances forced to work in an atmosphere of maximum production and minimal pay feel the injustice. In turn, this gnawing sense of revulsion and resentment is a cancer upon emotional well-being that leads to physical debility.
The longest lived peoples in the world are largely self-sufficient. They live mostly on their own products, yielding little if anything to “bosses,” landlords, owners, stockholders, etc. Their life is generally simple economically. Simplification of lifestyle leads to economic independence which is often a key factor in exuberant well-being and long life.
In addition to polluted air, vitiated social and economic environments, we may be subjected to life-sapping forces from our working and living environment of which we are little aware. These may be summarized briefly as:
Ferreting out the multitude of unwholesome influences that debilitate clients can be an onerous task. Informing your client of the many possible disturbing and dangerous elements in his or her surroundings may enable the individual to remove himself from subjection to them. On the other hand, they may not be able to free themselves from unwholesome influences and a knowledge of them may cause a worrisome preoccupation and unconscious sense of danger that amounts to the reverse placebo effect. The reverse placebo effect is the belief that harm is being done which becomes so depressing as to be harmful. It is the power of negativity that affects us deleteriously.
Ideal in the human environment are natural influences that we identify as supplying the needs of life. Trees and plants, especially food-producing ones, are aesthetic and life-enhancing. An environment that is totally bereft of our natural values as might be found in buildings, streets and alleys have adverse influences upon humans. Deeply inherent in humans is our pristine place in nature and the negation of its salubrious influences destroys the qualities and values needed for healthful living and long life.
Many of us in both home and workplace have chemicals, oils and soaps coming in contact with our hands and other body parts. Needless to say, anything that is not normal to the body can cause derangements that detract from health. Any chemical or toxic material that interferes with vital body activities at any point can cause many pathologies including cancer.
Working and using unsafe equipment often inflicts little cuts, abrasions and bruises upon clients. All such injuries are life-sapping and take their toll upon us.
When dealing with clients, survey their entire lifestyle in the search for factors that contribute to human suffering.
28.5.1 Vigorous activity as a rejuvenator and fountain of youth factor.
Inactivity is characteristic of the nonliving while purposeful activity gives evidence of life. Inactivity other than that needed for rest, relaxation and sleep tends to atrophy our minds and bodies. From infanthood, humans should be involved in numerous activities that develop mental and physical faculties.
Unless we experience vigorous activity in our work, hobby or recreation, a vigorous program of contrived exercises is essential to well-being. Constructive activities that daily exercise most or all the body’s parts are most desirable. Gardening, work and pursuits that involve lifting, stretching, shifting, accelerated breath and pulse are, as a rule, health-building.
Even though we may be involved in activities that develop our muscles and mental acumen, it is still desirable to take brisk walks or runs that build and maintain endurance. The many benefits of running alone are innumerable—they’re still being discovered and catalogued. In short, life is activity and you’ll do well to encourage and foster it in the lives, of those whom you are privileged to touch.
When we examine the vast literature on exercise, we encounter a wealth of evidence that highlights its enormous benefits. Vigorous activity’s role in fitness and well-being could be ranked among the top three essentials of life though, in reality, it is not as vital as many other life factors. But, unless heavy physical activity is a part of an individual’s life, health will be lost and a much shortened life will result. Thus regular and vigorous activity is absolutely essential to healthful living and long life. Without it, neither will be realized.
Dr. Cureton of the Physical Fitness Laboratory of the University of Illinois made perhaps more experiments with exercisers than anyone else. His findings related to the benefits that exercise bestows read like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There are many rewards and everyone can share them, even handicapped persons. Among his many noteworthy contributions to the science of physiology is the discovery that, by the age of 25, the average American has lost 25% of his capillary circulation fitness and, by age 35, 60%. This is tragic, of course. Poor circulation results from lack of usage of musculature. The relatively inactive lives we lead account for this.
Energy and health decline with declining circulation. Poorer sleep, posture, digestion, chronic fatigue, increase in ailments, our disposition and a general decline characterize inactivity. It bears repeating over and over that one must either “be fit or be damned.” It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an inactive person to be healthy and long-lived.
There is a silver lining to this typical American predicament. Through fasting, proper diet and exercise program, and observance of the other essentials of life appropriately, almost everyone can be rejuvenated unless the powers of life are almost totally lacking.
Perhaps a personal observation is in order. When I was in New York, an associate had a son who was only twelve and tipped the scales at about 180 pounds. I was told this obese boy who stood only five feet five inches tall had two interests in life—eating and watching TV. This boy was shipped to summer camp for two months in the Catskills where he was among over fifty other boys. He was given chores to perform. He was put on a mostly vegetarian diet and permitted only three meals a day. He hiked, ran, played volleyball, baseball and other games vigorously. He did this daily for two months. Can you imagine his parents’ surprise and delight? During these two months, their son increased in height two inches and lost weight down to 130 pounds. He had developed both curricular and athletic interests and wanted to become a professional baseball player. From thereon in life he thrived and today, more than twenty years later, he is a successful businessman who is an superb example of physical fitness.
Most of your clients will be of more advanced years than this but the benefits of exercise can be realized in nearly everyone—they’re just slower in coming. You can be instrumental in rescuing many from a kind of hell of their own making and involving them in vigorous activity will be one of your primary tools.
We are fond of pointing out the immense benefits of fasting. Vigorous activity also yields many salutary benefits and, coupled with fasting and other salubrious practices, will rebuild anyone that has the spark of life still remaining.
To illustrate this, there are cases of retirees who have recharged and rejuvenated themselves. A few years back, an 88-year-old woman entered and finished a marathon, beating out women who were in their forties and fifties! She had not even begun to run until after eighty years of age!
Never underestimate the power of exercise to turn a client’s life around. And of this you can be sure: you’ll meet very few who get enough vigorous physical activity.
How many articles have you noted of athletes dying of heart conditions, cancer and other problems? There are many. In recent times I’ve read about an 18-year-old star athlete in Bastrop, Texas, dying of a coronary. I’ve read of a football player only 20 years old at Southwest Texas State in San Marcos having serious cancer. I remember the famous coach, Fairchild, of the University of Oklahoma, dying at age 37 of cardiovascular problems. The same thing happened to a professional football player for the Detroit Lions.
These men were extraordinarily fit because of their exercise arid heavy activity. But they were filled through and through with the ravages of chronic toxicosis. While exercise is a very healthful measure, it is not a cure-all for heavy meat-eating, heavy drinking of alcohol or soft drinks, or the use of other toxic fare.
Thus we get warning after warning from physicians to “take it easy” when obviously exercise is required. They often tell us exercise can kill. The truth is that exercise is rejuvenating, life-restoring and life-extending. Persistence in life-destroying dietary and poison habits is what sabotages and kills the body, not constructive habits. At worst, vigorous exercise can be the agency that puts the body to the test which it fails. Chronic toxicosis is the culprit, not the exercise. Other healthful measures must be taken in conjunction with an exercise program.
Every life essential must be appropriately observed. Some of these life essentials are rather nebulous, especially as they relate to emotional and mental factors.
The basis for healthy emotions and an admirable mental disposition is born of all the other factors of life. The sense of belonging, expression of the creative and procreative urges and security of life are essential to our emotional and mental well-being.
With clients you should search out environmental and social factors that destroy well-being as well as ascertain these that build well-being. Very frequently you’ll find a dearth of influences that build confidence, self-reliance and other attributes of well-being.
You should encourage your clients to develop a hobby. Few pursuits can be as uplifting as organic gardening and orcharding. Not only do they furnish wholesome food, but they also involve the individual in vigorous, creative activity, self-reliance and self-assurance, and they yield a plethora of other benefits.
Encourage your clientele to get deeply involved in some hobby that keeps them physically active, draws upon their creative talents and furnishes them appreciable rewards.
28.6.1 Self-mastery essential to emotional equilibrium
28.6.2 Security of life and its means are essential to health and long life
28.6.3 Social and environmental compatibility are essential to well-being
28.6.4 Community of peers in life pursuits essential to highest well-being
We humans have a tendency to be very upset if the world does not go as we want it to without considering how realistic our expectations and wishes are. Pleasant emotions are essential to health, but nothing will undermine overall well-being so quickly as distressing emotions.
Emotional states are our responses to life situations born of our disposition, most of it beneath the level of consciousness. Emotional responses reflect our maturity and bearing.
Unless we have developed a framework of a philosophical overview—one that gives rise to reflection and a deliberately charted course in our affairs, we’re likely to be buffeted by the winds of every emotion that arises. Emotions arise as responses to situations—they are mechanisms for dealing with external affairs, for directing our reactions and actions, attitudes and personal indulgences.
Emotions are powerful influences for dominating our course in life. Emotionally-directed individuals arc all too often enervated and debilitated when their expectations are not met.
Self-mastery means that we are aware of our feelings that tend to push us hither and yon but, more importantly, we ascertain by rational contemplation the elements that tend to drive us, and logically assess and contrive that course which will yield us the most benefits with the least expenditure of resources.
Self-mastery is absolutely essential to well-being and long life in a social/economic environment as exploitative as ours. People who hang their emotional well-being on everything “going their way” will be shattered when adversity occurs as it often does in our society.
The surest way to develop self-mastery is the realization that you are in total control of your affairs relative to all that is outside of you. Once you’ve trained yourself to stop, reflect and chart a course relative to any matter that rears itself, you can then take a philosophical approach to everything that affects you—and you can help your clients develop a similar attitude.
Most humans are provident. As provident creatures, we like to know where our next meal is coming from, so to speak. We want to know that our immediate and long-term future is provided for. Unless we’re sure, most of us worry and fret, to our great detriment. Worry is an enervating lapse into emotional solutions to our concerns rather than rational ones. Worriers are not only inimical to their welfare but to the well-being of those whom they touch as well.
Long-lived peoples live in a largely unexploited situation where the needs of life are. assured by rather easily expended productive efforts. The simple life does not give rise to the concerns that a complex industrial society engenders.
Unless we have a philosophical attitude that encompasses plenitude and scarcity, one that prepares us to cope with the vicissitudes of our society and economy, we’ll have many emotional crises that tear us apart.
In dealing with your clients, try to ascertain their social and economic disposition. Most people are beset by economic worries that lay them low. I’ve witnessed many a businessman turn grey almost overnight from a business that was going awry due to an adverse marketplace.
Try to inspire and motivate your clients to develop a philosophical approach to social and economic problems and, on the other side, make themselves self-sufficient to the extent they can.
Humans usually adapt to fit in with the social and environmental circumstances that develop them. Thus we see societies all over the world whose members usually have the same outlook and disposition. We go to India, Japan, China, Tibet, Arabia and any number of other countries and we observe a great diversity of peoples and economies. Though poor by our standards, most Asians do live rather secure lives amongst their peers. The average Thailander or other Asian in a tropical/agricultural economy lives reasonably assured of the needs of life. The relationships of individuals in their societies are rather stable at the community level at least. In America, we have a rather unstable society that drives a substantial part of its members to disposition and escapism as a means of coping with or blotting out the reality of the ugly head of economic and social adversity.
In our society we are more likely to be driven by economic concerns than by human consideration. There are so many individuals in our society who will commit inhuman and inhumane acts in behalf of self-aggrandizement that it agitates and aggravates almost our entire social structure.
Societies and economies oriented to serving everyone and their needs are essential to optimum well-being. At the very least, they must not tend to deny their members the rewards or products of their efforts.
In our society that is so disruptive to individual and family stability, we must make extraordinary efforts to harmonize with the circumstances that befall us.
“Man is not an island unto himself” has been sagely observed. This is in accord with our gregarious disposition. Humans, need other humans for their best welfare. Alone we wither. There is little motivation in life where meeting our own needs are concerned. As gregarious creatures we are mutually concerned about the welfare of others on a natural level. Within aggressive societies such as ours, our natural disposition becomes vitiated and perverted.
For our highest well-being we should all seek those of similar interests and disposition. It is especially comforting to live among those of similar intellectual and economic interests. We see religious societies wherein its members are stable and self-assured. We see intellectual circles in which members find mutual reassurance and satiation of drives and interests.
The world’s longest lived peoples live on their own land for the most part and are subsistence gardeners/ farmers/orchardists. Their interests are heavily weighted, to agrarian societies.
We should, for our best well-being, situate ourselves within the context of others of similar interests and pursuits.
These terms characterize our disposition. They are not concrete terms but describe a quality of our being.
These life qualities arise from the overall situation of life. Euphoria is produced by “all systems being in harmony,” physical, mental, emotional and otherwise. To achieve these qualities, our life needs must be adequately met in all spheres. We must be free of disturbing factors in all aspects of our being.
A happy disposition is normal and natural to humans. Its absence is an attest to errant disposition or factors that impinge upon it.
Disenchantment with the prospects of life is occasioned by factors that undermine our well-being. Chronic toxicosis causes suffering that destroys our happiness and that of others as well. Chronic body toxicity vitiates the body and creates a negative life disposition. A sick body makes a miserable member of society that depresses not only the individual but those who become involved with or touch that individual. Just as a smile is a most infectious agent, a miserable individual can cast gloom upon those around.
Suffering makes individuals miserable and misery loves company, even if it has to create it.Many of your clients will be suffering from the throes of disease. One of the most salutary services you can perform for them is to persuade them to change environments for one to two months to go through a lengthy fast, rebuild some semblance of health and undergo an attitudinal change that makes happiness and enjoyment virtues after all.
Many people harbor the attitude that virtues of life are strengthened by the adversities we suffer. Many feel that pleasures and joys are inherently sinful or unimportant in the scheme of things. They thus make themselves miserable and attempt to impose their outlook upon others.
You’ll meet a multitude of types in your professional sojourn. Vitiated people travel some rather strange paths. Giving their lives new pathways to trod calls for consummate insight and skill. Our endeavor in these lessons is to teach you about everything that bears upon human well-being.
If a smile is the most contagious thing around, then happiness radiates itself like the sun on a clear day. If misery is born of a diseased condition having its basis in toxicosis, happiness is born of a vital body condition having its basis in physiological adequacy.
Thus you’ll endeavor to turn your suffering clients lives around so as to First establish the physiological bases for well-being and then, as much as possible, reach the ideal in life conditions.
When all is well in all aspects of our being, only euphoria can result. Thus when we systematically change the practices of a client from pathological to healthful, there will be a more or less complete reversal of the client’s feelings and disposition. Of course you’ll find that there are some psychologically and physiologically handicapped individuals beyond total redemption, but even so, you’ll probably find many areas in which improvement is possible, meaning restoring more happiness to a lost life.
Life is meaningful when we enjoy it. As a Life Science professional, you will be instrumental in helping people to make themselves happy.
There is no proof that a raw food diet of fruits and certain vegetables, seeds and nuts, in correct combination, without herbs and spices, promotes health and longevity. Show me a group of people over the age of 100 who have been living according to your principles.
In situations like these you can put the onus of the negative on the questioner. You can haul out such statistics as presented in The Myth of Health In America and show that these problems are caused by cooked foods, condiments, wrong foods, etc. Better yet, ask the questioner why this should be so. You can point out Kouchakoff’s experiments that show cooked foods to be pathological because they cause leukocytosis.
But, of course, you can get books about the Hunza and Abkhasia. These are mostly raw food eating people, especially the Hunzas living where they have no fuel to speak of. Hunzas are a healthy long-lived people with a great percentage of their population over 100 years of age. Their primary fare consists of apricots, apples, mulberries, peaches, grapes and other fruits with some vegetables, pulses and grains. For practical purposes, the Hunzas are fruitarians.
Ask your questioners what cooking does to food. Ask them if it enhances their nutritive qualities or destroys it. If it enhances it, then the more you cook food, the better its quality, of course, and ashes would be best of all.
Quote number one from Bragg is idiotic. “Even our best organically grown foods are deficient in many nutrients. That is why I eat cooked foods and use natural food supplements to get nutrients into my body to withstand all the pressures which all of us must endure in this decaying super-civilization.”
If the best foods are deficient, then cooking them only makes them all the more deficient and adds the dimension of toxicity from whence arises leukocytosis. Food supplements are a dangerous delusion for they do not supplement. They are mostly synthetic and unusable. Even if they were usable, they are useless out of context from the foods in which they’re normally found. Dr. Roger Williams of the University of Texas has pointed out that vitamins do not work in isolation but must all be brought together to work as a team. Fractionated vitamins are impotent and synthetic vitamins are never usable.
Fruits and vegetables, even if lower in nutrients than centuries ago, still have far more vitamins and minerals than humans need.
The question states there is no proof that raw foods without herbs and spices promotes health and longevity. The question is asked from a stance of prevalent cooked food eating and condiment usage as if, a priori, these are the foods of health and longevity but there is plenty of proof that they are the articles of disease and shortened life.
Early man, living in a pristine environment, even if he did eat ONLY raw fruits and vegetables, seeds and nuts, did NOT carry around a food combining chart. Ho w did he get so far?
Living in a pristine environment, humans ate their meals at the source, that is, directly from tree, vine and stalk. Eating their fill of the fruit or fruits that were in season did not involve food combining. Most meals were mono-meals and even the fare for a whole day consisted of all fruits—our ancestors were total fruitarians as scientific evidence has shown.
Food combining is basically unnecessary to those who are eating properly—food combining is for those who mix food, something humans did not do in the beginning. Combining fruits according to their character comes rather naturally. We do not desire to eat bananas and grapefruit together—today, we tend to eat bananas with other sweet fruits despite our unnatural perversions that subvert natural inclinations.
How can you say that your principles are correct when “long-lived peoples” of the world eat a diet in opposition to those principles?
How can you ask such a question and offer in evidence testimony that confirms those very principles? There is practically no food processing, cooking or otherwise in Hunza. The testimony shows that fruits and selected vegetables are eaten raw and fruits constitute the bulk of their diet. Because of their isolated situation they are not subjected to the junk foods of commerce. The Hunzas, Abkhasians and Vilcabambians of Peru live healthfully in most aspects of their being, food being but one primary facet of healthful living.
Long life and health comes from what people do right, not what they do wrong. To the extent that we indulge in healthful practices, only to that extent do we enjoy health. Disease and ailments are an evidence of error and anyone who suffers colds, headaches, constipation and other problems is an example of the error of living. There is no defense for dietary and other perversions for a person who is suffering because of those very perversions.
Depriving yourself of junk foods and nonfoods is like depriving yourself of hell. What do we seek, hell or heaven? We make our own.
People have been using garlic and onions for thousands of years. They have hastened healing with them. If, when seriously ill, garlic is given and the patient recovers, why then does not the disease return when the patient recovers?
Yes, people have been eating garlic and onions for thousands of years. People have been sick and diseased for thousands of years and continue to be so despite all the garlic and onions eaten. You can demonstrate to yourself that the primary “medicinal” factors of garlic are mustard oil and allicin. These substances are indigestible. They readily permeate tissues and cells. They are excreted through the lungs and kidneys as the same substances that enter the body—as mustard oil and allicin. If they were digested and used, those who eat these obnoxious lily family members would not stink to high heaven. If you crush a clove of garlic in your hand and hold it a few minutes you’ll have garlic breath within ten to fifteen minutes, demonstrating the permeability of cells and tissues by these pernicious substances. Use and control of anything that gets into the body which it cannot digest, is difficult.
We don’t need penicillin or bactericides in our bodies. Killing off our symbiotic bacterial flora is harmful, not helpful. TB is a disease wherein the body dumps its toxic materials into the lungs in the same way that asthmatics have their extraordinary toxicity exuded through the bronchioles or the sinus sufferer excretes toxins through the sinuses. Garlic has no intelligence at all and could not heal TB under any circumstances inasmuch as TB is a body-instituted measure to cope with body toxicity. Garlic will so drug the body as to reduce, its vitality and increase its accommodation to both the garlic and the toxicity. But we’re less healthy for that, not more healthy. It is a fabrication to say the body will be free of disease if its causes are still indulged.
Fasting enables the body to speedily eject its toxic load whereas drugs, including garlic’s allicin and mustard oil, tend to suppress elimination.
Why are dairy products bad when almost everyone who is long-lived uses them?
This is not true, of course. The Hunzas do not use milk except for children and this is from mother’s breasts. The Vilcabambians do not use dairy products. Among the world’s longest-lived peoples, only the Eastern Europeans use dairy products. And to attribute their long life to these products is like attributing their long life to the wine and tobacco many of them also use. The fact is they have long life not because of these things but despite them. It’s what they’re doing right, not what they’re doing wrong, that keeps them alive so long. Undoubtedly they’d live much healthier and longer if they did everything right.
We have humans living to be in excess of 100 years on fruits alone. We have Orangutans living to be 125 to 150 years on fruits alone. Is not this an argument for eating fruits alone?
Regaining health while on goat’s milk means, if we study such cases, that all those dietary practices which contributed to previous pathology were dropped—causes were discontinued. Suckling goats is not as healthy as eating fruits. Shouldn’t we take two groups of individuals as controls, put one on a mono diet of goat’s milk and the Mother on a diet of fruits and see how they fare?
Because most humans lose the ability to secrete lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose, and because almost all lose the ability to secrete rennin, the enzyme that breaks down casein, we cannot thrive on milk. Please note that those long-lived peoples did not use fresh milk but fermented milks. Those who take fresh milks, raw or pasteurized, suffer much disease.
Dairy products are not wholesome. America consumes more milk and milk products than all the rest of the world combined. By all standards we should be the healthiest but, on the contrary, we’re the most diseased, as statistics attest.
How can grains, especially breads and cereals, be bad, when almost all the centenarians use them in one way or another?
This is not true. The Vilcabambians eat only corn of all the grains and little of this—their primary foods are fruits and potatoes. The Hunzas eat very little grain because they have little room for growing grain. Fruit trees are the most productive of food and the Hunzas eat a preponderance of fruit.
A characteristic of all centenarians is that they are not gluttonous eaters of anything—they eat abstemiously.
Americans are among the biggest grain and meat eaters in the world. Why aren’t we or the Canadians or Australians or other grain-eating countries noted for longevity? The Chinese and Japanese live heavily on rice but their longevity hardly exceeds ours. What are the supposed virtues of grain? It must be eaten cooked and largely devitalized. It furnishes calories and most of its products are deficient unless eaten with lots of raw greens and vegetables.
The Finns are a vigorous but not a long-lived people. They are heavy fat and grain eaters and have disease conditions rivaling our own country. More Finns die of heart attacks than do Americans. Whoever holds up the Finns as examples of healthy long-lived peoples is awry in the belfry.
What possible reason can you give for advocating water fasts as opposed to juice fasting?
Fasting involves a diet of only water, whereas a better term for juice fasting might be “juice feasting.”
In the water diet, the body shuts down the digestive tract and devotes its energies to bodily rehabilitation. On the juice diet, it must continue to carry on digestive and eliminative functions in the intestinal tract.
Under a complete fast, beneficial results are obtained quicker by a ratio of three to five to one over that of juice dieting. Further, cleansing and healing can be accomplished on the water diet that cannot be accomplished at all on a juice diet.
Juices are fragmented and incomplete foods and fail to furnish many of the needed nutrients that are bountiful in the whole foods. Further, juices exposed to oxygen rapidly oxidize with the result that their nutrients are lost. Moreover, those oxidized nutrients are transformed into toxic products, especially the minerals which are often largely returned to an inorganic state.
The body greatly improves on a simple diet but, I repeat, improvement is much quicker and more profound on a water diet with benefits being realized that may not be realized at all on a juice diet.
A juice diet for 20 to 40 days is of immense benefit but 10 to 12 days on a water diet will yield even greater benefits. The lies about fasting are many and the supposed advantages of juice dieting are nonexistent. Because of their oxidized and deficient nature, the juice dieter may suffer drug effects which are often confused with beneficial effects.
When we modify our diets or fast, we seek maximum benefits and water dieting is superior to everything else. After a few days on the water diet, hunger goes away and we have no urge to eat. On the juice diet, there are periods of intense hunger and periods when hunger is absent. If juices are not taken when hunger is absent and water taken instead, the fast is great. But if foods are taken when hunger disappears, even be it juices, the purposes of the body are thwarted.
How can you say that too much starch and protein is bad when the Irish people use them in large amounts and suffer no ill effects?
The Irish live mostly on potatoes with some fish. They are not gluttons as are Americans and they conservatively cook their foods. They are not noted for their longevity and few centenarians are among them. In fact, their health is hardly better than our own. They are vigorous outdoor people. Most heavy laborers are. But how many athletes are really healthy people in this country? Athletes die young like most other Americans because hey partake of about the same diet as most Americans.
In reading the book you submitted, it would appear almost everyone in the world is healthy but we Americans. The truth is that most of the world is unhealthy except for little pockets of people here and there who enjoy relatively better health.
There are a multitude of factors that contribute to health and food is only one. While food can undermine health no matter how good other practices are, it cannot assure health no matter how perfect if all other practices are bad.
Starch must be cooked to be eaten. We cannot handle raw starch except in small quantities. Cooking dextrinizes starches. All starches must be converted to simple glucose and fructose before it can be absorbed. This is done at great expense to the body. Why not take fruits that are glucose and fructose to begin with? There are no good arguments for starch-eating.
What goes for starches goes three-fold for proteins. While there are proteins in every food, most human protein eaters cook and degenerate the protein content anyway. The proteins are coagulated and the amino acids deaminized. The body is only about 30% efficient in using protein as energy whereas it is about 90 to 95% efficient in converting fruits. And as far as the protein needs of the body go, about 70% can be secured from recycling our own metabolic wastes whereas actual needs are met amply from fruits. Proteins in excess of our needs putrefy in the digestive tract and, if absorbed as amino acids and are excessive, the body must tax itself greatly in decomposing them and ridding itself of the toxic by-products.
Those who insist on their perversions to the point of being hopeless are choosing a life of suffering.
If mineral waters are harmful, the Hunzas would have been dead a long time ago.
This, of course, is the most idiotic of all conclusions. First, inorganic minerals cannot be used by the body. Iodine and many other minerals are absolutely essential in human nutrition but, in inorganic form, are rank poisons. The body can use them only in organic context.
The Hunzas are not great water drinkers, their diet being mostly water sufficient. Secondly, their water starts out as pure a short distance from their uptake of it and it is full mostly of sediment, not minerals in solution. They settle out the sediment just as any sane person would—who wants to drink sand and minute rock debris? Who wants to drink soil?
During the brief run down the mountains, the water picks up lots of sediment but few minerals in solution. And, to top it off, Hunzans drink very little water anyway. Certainly, raw materials and rock are not healthful.
Human mineral needs are only about 8 grams daily by the doubled and tripled standards of RDAs. Yet a normal diet of raw foods furnish intact about 20 to 25 grams of organic minerals daily which the body can use.
Be it noted that the fabulous waters the Hunzas get from their glacial runoff is available only for a few hours a day during the warm months, being totally unavailable most of the year.
Why are herbs so harmful? If so, how did Li Chung Yun live to be 256 years old?
If Gotu-kola and Ginseng teas were the only vice of this long-lived sage, then we should not marvel at his longevity. Little is said about his diet except that it was vegetarian. Does it not sound reasonable to attribute health and longevity to healthful living instead of to wines, cigarettes, fermented and rotted products, teas, toxic botanicals (both these herbs are listed in books on botanical medicines as possessing toxic substances).
Those who continue to indulge in their vices under the purblind rationalization that long-lived peoples had this or that vice usually end up with heart conditions and/or cancer which do them in at an early age. Rationalizing our vices and perversions will not deliver health.
Why do Bulgarians live so long when they do everything you advise against?
This question embodies a falsehood. They do not do everything I advise against. On the contrary, their lives are far more healthful than that of the average American. Your documentation of what they’re doing wrong indicates they’re doing mostly right. Only about 3 to 4% even partake of meat at all. Most live on fresh fruits and vegetables according to the published material you sent. Especially stressed was their consumption of sunflower seeds. Bulgarians do partake of fermented milks but it is not by any means the predominant part of their diet. Their hard work in the out of doors and their relatively stress-free society are not debilitating but, on the contrary, very healthful.
Beware of people and writers who want to credit health and longevity to the oddball perversions people may have rather than to their preponderance of healthful living practices which are the only basis for health and longevity.
29.1. Condiments, Seasonings and Spices
Article #1: Are Any Condiments Acceptable In the Hygienic Diet? By T.C. Fry
Article #3: Here Are Some of the Reasons Why You Should Not Use Condiments
Article #4: Using Condiments Is Like Wearing Makeup By Marti Fry
The ancient Egyptian mummies are masterpieces of the embalmer’s art. For thousands of years, the bodies of kings and queens have been preserved by an intricate process that was once a closely guarded secret of the priests. Exotic substances, “magical” potions and hard-to-find agents were used to tighten the flesh around the corpses of royalty and preserve them from decay over the centuries.
Today we know what those exotic ingredients are that caused the flesh to petrify. In fact, you probably eat those same preservative substances each time you eat in a restaurant, prepare cooked foods or buy processed foods. Salt, vinegar, oils, spices and various herbs—all found in most American kitchens—were originally used by the Egyptians to embalm their corpses. Only now, we are using the same items to preserve, petrify and embalm the bodies of the living.
Making mummified corpses was the original use of seasonings that modern man now sprinkles so liberally over his food. What effects do these spices have on the living organism and how did their use begin?
Spices, salt and seasonings were first used to preserve food and to disguise the taste of food that had gone bad. Rotting meat and old vegetables that had been heavily spiced could be eaten without disgust. Salted food could be carried for weeks without decay.
The use of spices became prevalent in Indian and Chinese food at about the same time these countries elevated cooking to a “fine art.” The European countries later adopted the spice habit of the Eastern countries as they began to process and cook more and more of their foods.
These items used in cooking are known as condiments and they seem to have had their start at about the same time man abandoned his diet of primary fresh and seasonal foods and started to use more and more meats, cooked and processed foods.
A condiment is generally something “extra” that is added to a food for “flavor” or taste stimulation or even for its preservative properties (like salt and vinegar). In other words, condiments are used for the taste “satisfaction” that it might provide and not for any nutritional value.
Is a condiment also a food? Generally not. A substance that is eaten is either a natural part of the human dietary or it is a nonfood item that is used for some reasons other than nutritive ones. Condiments have little or no nutritional value.
A true food may be eaten in such quantities that it can be a complete meal by itself. You can eat all you desire of a natural food, to repletion and satisfaction, and suffer no harmful effects. Of course, you can overeat any food, natural or otherwise, but generally speaking, you can certainly eat several mouthfuls of a natural food quite safely.
There is no way that you can eat several mouthfuls of salt, cinnamon, vinegar, black pepper, cayenne or mustard. In fact, a few bites of most condiments can prove fatal.
If condiments must be used in such small and careful amounts, how can they be considered foods for the body? The fact that we can eat a small amount of salt or pepper, and not drop dead, does not mean that these foods are any less poisonous. Instead, we’re taking nonlethal doses of these condiments. Just the same, they still exert a disruptive effect on the well-being of the body no matter what the quantity eaten. A poison is a poison, and a little will kill us just as surely, (although more slowly) than a lot.
If you are ever in doubt if a substance is a suitable food or a condiment to be avoided, simply ask yourself this question: Could I eat a mouthful of this enjoyably? If not, it should be avoided.
The greatest living proponent of Natural Hygiene, Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, described the true nature of condiments and food seasonings in his book Human Life: Its Philosophy and Laws in the following manner:
“Among the unwholesome substances demanded by perverted taste are the condiments and ‘relishes.’ These things possess little or no food value and there does not exist a single excuse for their use.
“They blunt and deprave the sense of taste, so that the natural flavors of foods are neither detected nor appreciated. They overstimulate and weaken the glands of the mouth, stomach and intestine. They irritate the lining membranes of the alimentary canal, causing these to thicken, toughen and harden, and they impair their functional powers. They create a fictitious desire for food and induce overeating. They create a false thirst, one that cannot be satisfied with water. They retard and derange digestion.
“They disguise the food eaten. When the food is camouflaged by salt, pepper, mustard, vinegar, nutmeg, spices and other condiments, the digestive juices are not appropriately adapted to the food eaten. Digestion suffers as a consequence.
“No one need ever develop a craving for these substances and where it is already developed, it can be easily overcome if one will give up their use and persist in abstaining from them for a time. When the sense of taste is restored to normal, you will find fine, delicate flavors in foods that you never knew existed.”
If you eat in a restaurant, use any processed foods or shop in a supermarket, you’re going to be exposed to condiments. There are hundreds of flavor enhancers, spices and seasonings added to almost all of our foods. To avoid them, you’ll have to prepare your own food from fresh ingredients.
Why do we use so many condiments?
When foods are processed or cooked, most of their natural flavors are lost. This is the reason that foods which are cooking smell so strongly—all the flavors are being cooked out of them into the air. The food that remains behind is flavorless and flat. Salt, spices and seasonings are used to re-add “flavor” to the food that was cooked away. The condiments substitute for the natural flavors present in wholesome foods.
Some foods such as meat and grains often have so few appealing natural flavors to begin with that condiments are used to make them “more palatable.” This should be an indication that these foods are not suitable for the human dietary.
Fresh, raw fruits and vegetables are full of subtle flavors and aromas. When eaten in their unprocessed state, these foods provide a full range of taste and olfactory stimulation without the need for artificial and added flavorings.
Since there are so many condiments in use today, only the major ones will be discussed. A listing of other widely used condiments will also be given according to their classification so that the student may learn to recognize the wide range of condiments that exist.
Salt is the most widely used condiment in the world. Last year Americans ate over 275,000 tons of table salt, and on the average each person in this country consumes five times as much salt as any other world citizen.
Many men, women and children in this country eat an average of 10 to 12 grams (almost one-half ounce) of salt every day. America also has over 25 million people suffering from hypertension or high blood pressure, the third major cause of death in this country.
There is a connection.
Table salt is an inorganic mineral compound composed of sodium and chlorine. It has antibiotic and preservative properties. Although not generally thought of as a poison, salt is deadly to all living organisms. A fatal dose of salt is usually about four ounces taken at one time. This is only eight times more than the average person eats over a day’s time.
Salt is probably the most ubiquitous seasoning in the world. You’ll find it in almost every processed, prepared or preserved food. We even put it in our pet food and baby food. Even if no extra salt is added at the table, the average American diet will still contain over six times what most nutritionists consider “safe” levels of salt usage.
There is no safe level of salt use.
If salt is so bad, why do we use it. all? Is there really a need for salt in the diet?
Salt use has been defended on these four misconceptions:
Let’s look at each one of these beliefs and see if they are based upon any truth.
The most common defense for salt is that the body has certain sodium and chlorine mineral needs that the sodium chloride (table salt) crystals are thought to fulfill. Sodium is used by the body to maintain a water balance, to integrate nervous functioning and to aid in the formation of digestive juices. Chlorine helps sustain normal heart activity, plays an important role in the body’s acid-alkaline balance and aids digestion and elimination.
Salt (sodium chloride) cannot be used by the body to meet any of these mineral requirements. Salt is an inorganic mineral that cannot be metabolized by the body. Salt enters the body as sodium chloride, it circulates in the body as sodium chloride, and it leaves the body as sodium chloride. At no point is it broken down into sodium and chlorine and used by the body.
Sodium chloride is a very strong and stable molecule. It cannot be broken down in the digestive tract or by the liver. The body cannot use the bonded sodium chloride molecule in any way. The body can use organic sodium and organic chlorine as found in living food (vegetables, fruits, etc.), but it can never use the inorganic sodium chloride compound.
So, if the body cannot break salt down, if it cannot use it in any way, if it only must be eliminated from the body in the same form as which it entered the body, then how can salt be termed “necessary” for life?
Moreover, salt eating has only been around for the last few thousand years of man’s millions of years of existence. Primitive man did not eat salt. The American Indians never used salt until the white man introduced it. Many cultures today have never seen a salt shaker. Thousands of Hygienists and health-minded people in this country eat not one speck of salt.
Can you still believe that salt is essential for life?
Even if people are convinced that salt is of no nutritional use, they will still defend it as a flavor enhancer. “Salt makes my food taste so much better,” is the common justification for salt eating. But can salt add flavor to your food?
Taste a pinch of salt. What flavor does it have? Is it appetizing and does it have a nice taste? No. Then how can it add flavor to food if it has no flavor of its own?
Salt performs its “flavoring” by actually irritating the taste buds on your tongue. By inflaming the tongue, salt makes the taste buds more sensitive through chemical irritation.
It’s like burning all the skin off your hands so you’ll have more sensitive fingers. Ever notice how a sore and inflamed spot on the skin is more sensitive than surrounding areas? Salt does the same thing to your taste buds—it makes them sore and sensitive. Consequently, you notice taste stimulation more, but you’re not experiencing the actual flavor of food in any greater amount.
Salt can’t add flavor or anything else to your food. It’s a chemical. A chemical can’t give you or your food anything extra, except perhaps some irritating stimulation that is mistakenly identified as “flavor.”
Salt has been defended as an important aid in food digestion.
Consider this: your body alone digests food. The enzymes and gastric juices produced by the body interact chemically with the food you eat as one of the stages of digestion. Sprinkle some salt on a tomato slice. Does the salt digest the tomato? Does it do anything! No. Salt is an inert substance—it is a nonliving, inactive mineral. How can an inorganic crystal enter into such an organic process as digestion?
Even traditional nutrition no longer believes that salt by itself is a digestive aid, but they do state (as recently as 1980) that the chloride ion in salt helps form the hydrochloric acid in the stomach which is used to digest food.
This, too, is faulty reasoning. The chlorine in salt cannot be metabolized by the body in any way. It does not enter into any body process. It remains bonded to the sodium atom. Now organic chlorine as found in living foods can be incorporated in the production of hydrochloric acid, and thus “improve” digestion. The chlorine in salt, however, is inorganic and cannot help the digestive function in any way.
Instead, here is what happens during the digestive process when salt is eaten:
In short, salt does not enhance digestion; its presence in the body actually retards digestion.
In Japan where salted and pickled foods are a dietary mainstay, the incidence of stomach cancer is higher than any other place else in the world. There is a definite link between high salt use and stomach cancer.
Does a cancerous stomach sound like digestion is being improved?
Since salt is found in the blood, people think that we must consume it for healthy blood. There are “salts” in the blood, and sodium chloride is among these other mineral salts. But does this prove that table salt is an essential ingredient of the bloodstream?
Most people have eaten so much salt all their lives that there is a continual circulation of sodium chloride through the bloodstream. The reason that the salt is in the blood is that the body is constantly trying to eliminate it from the system.
A typical salt-eater has so much salt in the body that the body can never catch up on its elimination. We are probably capable of excreting around 200 milligrams of salt a day through the kidneys (this is about as much salt as can be placed on the end of a sharp-pointed knife). Most people eat fifty times that much. So where does all this extra salt go? It’s stored in layers beneath the skin to be eliminated by perspiration, and it is also continually circulating in the bloodstream, waiting to be processed by the overworked kidneys.
Of course there is salt in the bloodstream. There are also pesticide compounds, drug poisons and environmental toxins as well. Does this mean (hat these are also an essential part of the blood? The bloodstream circulates wastes and poisons for elimination if we put them into the body. Salt is just another one of these toxins that we have introduced into the body.
Organic mineral salts are also in the bloodstream, and these are used by the body for a number of functions. Inorganic table salt, however, is only a poison that the body must try to eliminate.
Amazingly enough, many nutritionists today still recommend that everyone consume a minimum daily requirement (MDR) of salt. The most frequently estimated MDR for salt is 200 milligrams. Most Americans consume fifty to seventy-five times that much every day. In fact, no national diet anywhere in the world contains less than this MDR for salt.
Consider this: if salt cannot be used by the body, if it is poisonous, if it is implicated in a wide variety of diseases and disorders, then why should we consume a “minimum required amount” each day? Not only that, but conventional nutritionists also state that an infant’s salt needs are relatively greater than an adult’s needs! Does anyone need a poisonous substance, especially a child, in no matter how small an amount?
For an even more surprising twist of logic, consider the actions by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs regarding salt use by the American public.
In 1977, this committee recommended that salt consumption be reduced to 3 grams a day (still 15 times more than official MDR levels). In response, a task force of 14 scientists representing various food processing industries issued a statement that read in part “only 3 grams of salt per day would provide an unpalatable therapeutic-type diet that would require exceedingly careful selection of foods from a limited list.” After this statement, the Senate committee decided to revise its official recommendation to 3 grams per day.
Still later, upon inquiry from the president of the Salt Institute, the committee stated that the 5 grams recommendation was for additional salting that might be used above the already 3 grams of salt present in a typical American diet. So now the recommendation for total daily salt intake stands at 8 grams per day (or about 1/3 ounce).
Perhaps you can see how such figures as “MDRs” and “government recommendations” should be taken with a “grain of salt.”
The important thing to remember is that if you would eliminate all inorganic table salt from your diet and consume “0” grams a day, you would experience a higher level of health and add years to your life.
Salt was originally used as the first food preservative. It was discovered that when meats and vegetables were salted, decay was decreased.
Food often spoils depending on its “water activity” level. Food can either be dried to reduce its water activity or it can be salted. Salt affects the water activity in food so that bacterial growth is prevented. In other words, salt is an antibiotic.
Antibiotic means literally “anti-life.” Salt is precisely that; it destroys bacteria and it will destroy the living cells in your body as well.
If you cannot always have fresh foods, there are better ways to preserve food than salting. Drying food or storing it at low temperatures is the best way to prevent bacterial growth. There is absolutely no reason to add salt to food preserved in other ways, such as canned or frozen foods, since this is only done for “flavoring.”
Hypertension (high-blood pressure) is one of the most common illnesses today. It accompanies coronary heart disease, stroke, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.
A 35-year-old man with blood pressure 14% above normal has lost 9 years of his life expectancy. A 45-year-old man whose pressure is 17% above normal runs twice the risk of a heart attack and four times the risk of a stroke as a healthy individual.
When the diet consists of 2.8% salt, as is typical of Americans, it is described as “frankly hypertensigenic and life-shortening.”
Salt is a strong diuretic and causes water to be used from the blood and lymph to excrete it through the kidneys. This is why salt makes us thirsty—the body demands more water in order to flush an irritating substance from its tissues.
The continued use of salt causes a severe afflication of the kidneys called “nephritis.”
Salt causes inflammatory swelling of the glands.
It contributes to constipation and indigestion.
It is a factor in many skin diseases.
It is deposited throughout all the fluids of the body, which causes extreme irritation, injury and death to billions of cells.
It is toxic. It is poisonous. It cannot be used by the body in any amount.
Don’t limit your salt use—eliminate its use.
Hot peppers are often used to spice up dishes, especially in Mexican, Oriental and Indian cooking. Cayenne or red pepper is perhaps the most popular, and it is also often recommended by herb enthusiasts as a general “cure-all.”
Jethro Kloss, an herbalist and author of Back To Eden, described cayenne pepper as “one of the most wonderful herb medicines we have...it is good in all forms of diseases, and is almost a certain remedy for all maladies.” He and other herbalists have advised us to gargle with cayenne pepper, put it on open wounds, use it for ulcers and to sprinkle it in our socks to keep our feet warm. There has been a lot of promotion for cayenne pepper and many people have been convinced that it can be used for all manner of ailments.
The truth is that cayenne pepper, along with all other hot peppers, chilies, etc., contain harmful alkaloids which are even more injurious than the common black pepper. When cayenne and hot peppers are eaten, the body is thrown into an emergency state in an attempt to eliminate the toxic oils and substances in the peppers.
Suppose a young child eats a hot pepper, what happens? Most likely, he will cry, he may vomit or experience diarrhea, and he will certainly feel like his mouth and stomach are on fire. He will not be anxious to repeat the experience. A child’s body is still pure and sensitive enough to detect the harmful substances in hot peppers. An adult who has abused his digestive system for a number of years on a conventional diet merely experiences that momentary burning warning which is the weakened body’s signal to avoid the hot pepper.
All hot peppers contain a poisonous alkaloid called piperidin and a harmful crystalline substance known as piperin. Hot peppers also have acrid resins and volatile oils which irritate the digestive and urinary tracts. Cayenne pepper also contains an alkaloid called capsicin which irritates the body so severely that circulation is rapidly increased in order to remove it from the system.
This is why hot peppers make you feel “warm”—the body drastically increases circulation to remove all the harmful pepper alkaloids as expeditiously as possible.
Cayenne has probably achieved its reputation as a “beneficial” condiment for two-reasons: it is initially painful (burning) to eat, and it causes a mucus outflow from the body.
Since hot peppers are burning, irritating, and only able to be eaten in small quantities, we think that they must be a “powerful” medicine. In other words, if it burns so much, it must be doing us some good, right? Since all nonfood and medicinal substances are distasteful, the strong taste of cayenne is associated with a medicinal action. It’s strong and it burns going down, so it must make us tough and strong if we can eat it—or so the reasoning goes. The idea of “strong” medicine and “powerful” foods is a carryover from the primitive beliefs in magic and superstition, but it still remains with us today.
Second, because there is a mucous outflow when cayenne is eaten, people often think that the pepper is cleaning out old mucus deposits from the body. Instead what is actually happening is that the cayenne is such a powerful irritant, the body secretes extra mucus in order to eliminate the harmful alkaloids. Cayenne only causes additional mucus to be produced as a defensive measure by the body. This extra mucus coats the harmful substances in the peppers in order to protect delicate body tissues. Foods don’t eliminate mucus from the body; the body eliminates mucus from the body.
Since the body is stimulated into emergency action by the cayenne, people mistake this stimulation for proof that the pepper is making them “strong.” The body feels more vital after eating the pepper, and this is because the system must go into an unnatural overdrive in order to eliminate the foreign substance. Eating cayenne pepper for “strength” makes the same sense as beating a dying horse to make it move faster. Motion increases to escape the inflicted punishment, but death is only hastened.
Cayenne pepper and other “hot” foods cannot impart any additional healing powers to the body. The body alone can heal itself, and stimulating it with poisonous alkaloids hardly seems wise.
Cayenne pepper is an irritant, and any stimulating effects it may produce are done so at the expense of the body’s well-being.
There are many different cooking spices, such as nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, cloves, mace, and so on. All of these spices contain harmful volatile oils and acrid resins which irritate the digestive tract. The net effect of using these spices in foods is that the body tries to hurry the irritating spices through the gastrointestinal tract to minimize the harmful effects.
This is why spices are thought to help the digestion of food—in reality the food, instead of being properly digested, is simply speeded toward the nearest exit for rapid elimination. Spices are stimulants and irritants and their presence in food negates most of the nutritional value of the food eaten.
Cinnamon is the bark of the cinnamon tree which is powdered and dried. It contains one to two percent volatile oils and a considerable amount of tannin which gives it the bitter aftertaste. Tannin is an astringent that is also found in common tea. It is toxic to the human system.
Nutmeg is the powdered kernel of the fruit of the nutmeg tree. The outer covering of the kernel is used to make the nutmeg spice, while the inner coat is used to make the spice called mace.
Nutmeg is fatal in large doses, leading to convulsive seizures. Large nonlethal doses produce prolonged hallucinations similar to psychedelic drugs.
Mustard is made from the seed of the mustard plant. Besides the harmful vinegar, salt and other condiments in table mustard, the seed itself contains certain alliaceous oils like the garlic and onion plants. These oils are very irritating to all tissues of the body and produce a disagreeable odor.
Horseradish has the same undesirable oils and properties as mustard.
Vinegar is the result of acetic fermentation of alcoholic liquids. Vinegar is very injurious to the digestive organs, and it does not matter if it is white vinegar, cider vinegar, or whatever its source.
Vinegar reduces the number of red blood cells, greatly retards digestion and assimilation, and harms the kidneys. When used in conjunction with starchy foods, digestion is completely suspended and fermentation rapidly results.
There are numerous other condiments, and some of them, such as garlic, onion, herbs, etc., are discussed in detail in other lessons. To help you identify various condiments, the following table and categories may prove useful.
Class | Examples |
Aromatic | vanilla, cinnamon, clove, parsley, bayleaf, rosemary, caraway seeds, cumin seeds and most herbs. |
Acrid or Peppery | black and white pepper, cayenne, chilies, curry, allspice, ginger. |
Allylic or Alliaceous | garlic, onion, mustard, horseradish, chives, leeks. |
Acid | vinegar (white, cider or wine), capers, gherkins. |
Animal | caviar, anchovies, beef boullion. |
Mineral | salt (earth, sea, or chemical), and all salt-based seasonings (miso, soy, tamari, etc.) |
There are many other food items that are also used as condiments by themselves, such as relishes, mayonnaise, pickles, chutneys, spreads, dips, etc. All of these contain a high percentage of the above-listed condiments and should be strictly avoided by any person desiring good health.
The best seasoning is a hearty appetite.
Can you name any safe salt substitutes?
If I were hitting you in the head with a hammer, would you ask me to stop or to use a softer hammer? Seriously, you don’t need a substitute for a poisonous substance. By using such items as potassium chloride salt, kelp, herb seasonings, and other substitutes, you’re still keeping the salt-shaker habit alive, and you’ll never be able to develop an appreciation for the natural flavors of wholesome foods. When you eat fresh foods in a mostly raw state, you’ll have absolutely no desire for salt or for any “substitute.”
Now, I’ll give you a second answer. Yes, there are some alternatives to salt and seasonings that you can use as you are becoming established on a fresh food diet. Freshly squeezed lemon juice stimulates the taste buds like salt, but without the irritating and harmful effects. A little lemon juice over nonstarchy foods is a permissible alternative to salting until your taste buds come back alive.
You might also consider eating those fruits and vegetables that are high in organic sodium and mineral salts. Celery, beets, carrots, cabbage and dried figs are high in organic mineral salts, particularly sodium, and may help you away from the salt habit. A salad with chopped celery and lemon juice, for example, creates s very salty taste.
After you have been off salt for a few weeks, you won’t miss it all. If you start using “substitutes,” however, you’re still perpetuating the seasoning habit and it may make it more difficult for you in the long run.
What about black pepper? You didn’t discuss this in the lesson.
Black pepper is not an actual pepper, but is made from the dried berries of a tropical shrub. Whereas hot peppers like cayenne and chilies are primarily stimulants, black pepper is chiefly an irritant. It has particularly harmful effects on the intestinal tract.
Allegedly, black pepper is 47 times more detrimental to the functioning of the liver than is alcohol. White pepper, often used by gourmets, is simply the ripened berries of the pepper shrub.
I guess I can see how you would need few if any seasonings on a raw food diet. Fruits are delicious without any salting, etc. But what about raw vegetable salads? These are so boring without some kind of interesting dressing.
A raw vegetable salad can be made very flavorful and enjoyable without any condiments. The secret? Eat your salad whole. Don’t cut it up into a hundred pieces and then mix it all up. Simply eat each vegetable, like a tomato, broccoli stick, etc., as a separate piece. When you cut, chop and mix your salad, you are losing the individual flavors of each vegetable. By the third bite, the whole salad tastes the same—there is no flavor or texture contrast.
A whole salad, uncut, requires no dressing. Take one bite of one vegetable, then a bite of another, and you can be suitably “entertained” without spicy and oily dressings. You can also eat a few nuts, seeds, or avocado with your salad—also in their whole form if teeth permit-along with the whole vegetables. Believe me, when you eat a “finger salad”—all whole vegetables—you get more enjoyment and less vitamin loss than if you chop and mix everything up in one big bowl.
Condiments, dressings, etc are usually desired when the original flavors and integrity of a food are lost. Eat your foods whole, and you can appreciate all the wonderful subtle flavors that are there.
It seems that since we use such small amounts of seasonings that they couldn’t be all that harmful, I mean, a little pinch of something couldn’t hurt you that much.
You can only use a “little pinch” because condiments are such potent and strong nonfood items. This should tell you something. Even a very small amount of a condiment will disrupt the natural digestive processes. The human organism is very sensitive to all toxins and poisons. As you refine your diet, you’ll begin to notice the undesirable effects of even those “small amounts” that you previously used.
Very frankly this is an area in which I have not done much research and do not propose any. Why? Because condiments are stimulants (irritants) that cause the taste buds to go into a frenzy—they become “super charged.”
The taste buds become so sensitive to the substances being eaten—including the flavors of the condiment or condiments—that we become more intensely aware of the flavors. The simple truth is that we should not be eating food that requires condiments to camouflage, modify or heighten its taste.
Salt is America’s favorite condiment. It has no food value. It is not digested. It is eaten merely for its taste—its ability to give the illusion of flavor where the food’s innate flavors and mineral complement are largely or wholly missing. Salt is poisonous, though it usually kills its victims slowly.
The catalog of condiments is long. Vinegar, herbs, catsup, aromatic seeds, seasoning, salts, dried peppers, pickles, mustard, sauces, relishes, onions, dressings, garlic, shallots, spices, etc. all fall under the heading of condiments. Some have food value and some don’t. But one thing they all have in common is that they all contain poisonous compounds. These compounds irritate not only the taste buds but other body cells and tissues as well.
Dressings are usually loaded with condiments. Basically they have an acid (vinegar as a rule), a fat (oil, mayonnaise, egg or other), sugar or honey, salt and other spices. They are a dietary abomination and render food with which they are combined mostly indigestible despite the “terrific” taste.
As a fruitarian, most of my intake is of fruits and they need absolutely nothing extra. Nothing can make my pears, apples or grapes taste any better—they taste wonderful just as nature delivers them.
When I eat vegetables I usually eat no more than three or four kinds at a time. In the raw condition they have a plentitude of flavors which I enjoy immensely. No condiments are needed! For example, you can’t improve upon a really good head of broccoli! It has it all.
Condiments do, indeed, add “zest” to the taste of cooked and processed foods and make palatable those foods we should not be eating at all (meat, cheese, bread, eggs, etc.) But irritants which goad the taste buds also destroy the taste buds. This calls for a bigger dose of condiments the next time around. It eventually comes to this: We eat food merely as a medium for our condiment addiction! As well as leading to jaded taste buds, condiments are pathogenic. They are really drugs no matter what form they come in— plants (herbs), salt, vinegar or whatever.
Condiments are, according to Webster’s, “something added to enhance the flavor of food; especially a pungent seasoning.” Note the definition of condiments includes anything that’s added to enhance food flavor—pungent seasonings and other things. These other things may include some foods that are perfectly good, such as lemons, limes, tomatoes, sweet peppers, avocados, parsley, celery, Chinese cabbage family members (bok choy, nappi cabbage, etc.) and some other wholesome foods. Even though these foods offer no objection in themselves most of them are not foods you’d try to make a meal out of.
Bananas, grapes, apples and other fruits can be eaten to repletion without any “additives” (i.e., condiments) and they are thoroughly wholesome for us humans. On the other hand, nuts, seeds or avocados, if eaten, should be eaten with a salad. And a salad can always be jazzed up (made tastier) by adding dressings made with some of the foods listed in the paragraph above.
For example, you can eat nuts with a salad containing tomatoes, sweet peppers, celery, bok choy and lettuce. It will be very tasty and super rich in a long list of nutrients, notably vitamins A, C, B, E, and K, and minerals including iron, calcium and trace minerals.
As s rule, reject condiments. Whole raw foods taste fine in themselves, one food at a time. If they don’t give you any “kick,” then you must give your sensing mechanisms a rest and the opportunity to rejuvenate. Fasting will accomplish this and a raw food diet will do it too. But the taste buds regenerate more slowly while on the raw food diet than when fasting.
The need of salt (concentrated sodium chloride) in human health and nutrition is another of the great myths of modern times.
Salt is a deadly poison, a terrible abusive irritant to human tissue. This can be confirmed by anyone by sniffing salt water and experiencing the terrible burning sensation as the delicate sinus membranes are irritated, by putting salt water into the eyes and experiencing the burning sensation while observing the rush of blood to the eyes to protect their delicate membranes (bloodshot), by putting salt on an open wound and experiencing the terrible burning sensation as the tissue is irritated and destroyed, or by drinking a concentrated salt solution and experiencing vomiting as the body acts to repel this foreign and toxic substance.
Salt is not synthesized or processed in any way in the body and serves no useful purpose. It enters as sodium chloride, it is stored as sodium chloride, it is excreted as sodium chloride. It leaves a trail of destruction from the time it enters until the time it can be excreted.
When excessive salt (that which the body cannot immediately excrete) is deposited everywhere in the fluid medium of the billions of living body cells causing extreme irritation, injury and death to the cells, the cells send forth a desperate SOS signal and the person gets thirsty and drinks a lot of water. This water is carried by the blood and deposited in the tissue fluids to dilute the devastating effects. This results in excessive body fluids, edema.
The body takes every opportunity to excrete this salt—constantly through the urine, at even limited or almost no exertion by profuse sweating, through crying (tears), etc.
The salt deposits throughout the body cause cells to contract and discharge their life fluids and other vital elements resulting in hardened tissues, shriveled blood corpuscles, hardened arteries, arthritis, ulcers, blindness and distorted vision, hyper-aesthesia of the nerves, high blood pressure, tumors, cancer, psoriasis, neuritis, heart defects, extreme edema and innumerable other degenerative conditions too numerous to list.
In one experiment one of the authors ate typical restaurant salads (with the usual amount of salt in the dressings) for one meal and supplemented the salad meal with a few “no salt added” crackers (containing only whole wheat flour and salt in the baking of the crackers themselves) with commercial old fashioned peanut butter which contained only ground peanuts and salt. The next day his one-meal for the day consisted of his usual fresh vegetable salad without any dressing or seasoning supplemented by a bowl of commercial soup containing the usual amount of salt plus some of the same kind of crackers and peanut butter eaten the previous day.
The author’s thirst became very pronounced during both days and he drank a considerable quantity of distilled water (his only drink).
The results of only this relatively small amount of consumed salt were astounding. The body retained a great deal of liquid to dilute the harmful irritation of the salt and resulted in the gain of eight pounds in body weight in only 2 days. In addition the absorption of so much water to counteract the salt damage resulted in a much less than usual amount of liquid in the feces leading to a drying-out or compacting effect as the first signs of constipation—a condition the author never experienced during eight years of a salt-free diet.
In addition to the above effects, signs of indigestion and ‘heart burn’ occurred after each meal as digestion was impaired, and, since all body cells were affected by the salt, a feeling of dullness and loss of energy resulted—conditions which never occurred during many years of salt-free dieting. Other noticeable effects were the puffing and bloating of the face and around the eyes.
The two-day (only two meals) experiment was so extreme in its negative effects that the author ended it and resumed his regular no-salt diet. It required approximately two days for his body to eliminate the accumulated salt and water and return to its normal weight and health.
Salt is a true anti-biotic (against all life, a killer). It was formerly used as an embalming agent. It is used today as a ‘preservative’—killing the bacteria (life) to prevent the natural decomposition of dead organisms.
Cramps initially experienced as salt is removed from the diet or rapidly excreted from the body are nothing more than “withdrawal symptoms.”
A healthy person on a salt-free diet will experience these same cramps if he eats salt.
Salt eating is an addiction begun prenatally and shortly after birth as the parents force salt into the baby to the extreme repulsion and disgust of the child. After a few weeks of forced eating the baby’s body becomes so weakened that it forms a craving and addiction. This continues throughout its life.
In order to fully understand the disaster of salt eating, let’s briefly follow the path of salt from the time it enters the mouth until it is excreted from the body. Remember, salt has nothing to do with the sodium needs or excesses of the body. Salt is sodium chloride first, last and always from the time it enters the body until the time it is discharged. If it were broken down into its primary constituents, sodium and chlorine, as it passed through the body the tragedy would be complete since both inorganic sodium and inorganic chlorine are highly destructive to life and would immediately render a human lifeless.
As the salt enters the mouth in food or drink (or as a deadly salt ‘pill’) the cells of the lips and lining of the mouth (including gums and tongue) are severely irritated, with many killed and the rest seriously weakened.
In a healthy body the first line of defense will be instantly activated with a severe and intolerable stinging and burning sensation as the tissue cells are destroyed and the irritation and distress is imposed upon nerve cells. The natural response to such sensation is to spit out the substance responsible for it so that the destruction will not proceed any further. A weak, unhealthy, salt-addicted and taste-perverted body is so depraved and depressed in its defensive capabilities that it not only tolerates but also demands more of the destructive addictive substance.
The cells of the mucous membrane of the throat, esophagus and stomach are the next to suffer the tragedy of death and destruction. As the irritant moves into the stomach the body’s second line of defense goes into action.
A healthy body will instantly signal a sensation of nausea and trigger violent contractions of the stomach to cause vomiting and prompt elimination of the salt. A weak unhealthy body will tolerate the irritation and permit it to continue its journey of destruction as some of it is absorbed (assimilated) into the mucous membrane tissue and thence into the bloodstream, and the rest is emptied into the duodenum.
Upon reaching the duodenum, cellular distress is once again repeated. Since the trap door from the stomach has closed the only way for prompt discharge of the salt poison is through the intestines and bowels. A normal healthy body will respond with violent contractions of the intestinal muscles which produce a profuse flow of fluid from the mucous membranes to dilute the salt irritation and a rapid propulsion of the salt solution, and everything (all other ingested substances) suspended in it or ahead of it, through the intestines for a violent watery discharge from the anus (diarrhea). A weak unhealthy body will of course fail to actively respond to the salt, and the salt solution and imperfectly digested foods will be absorbed (assimilated) through the intestinal walls and thence into the bloodstream.
At this point the healthy body has rid itself of the salt irritant by spitting it out, vomiting it up and/or excreting it in the form of diarrhea. The weak unhealthy body, on the other hand, has dully accepted the poison and passed it through the stomach and intestinal lining, destroying and injuring millions of cells as it goes. All digestive tract tissue cells have suffered as have all involved blood and lymph capillary cells. The blood carries the salt all over the body creating havoc with every cell. The kidneys which normally filter out small amounts of salt which accidentally accompany digested food into the blood are not equipped to handle large amounts since its own cells are destroyed and injured by the irritant. The liver, which filters and chemically detoxifies many poisons and toxins tries but is helpless to do anything with the very stable and strong sodium chloride molecules and suffers severe damage as the salt passes through it. The heart suffers. The brain suffers. All body cells suffer.
Once the salt is trapped in the body’s circulating fluids the body response is one of extreme thirst as the cell population screams and cries for relief from the destructive foreign irritant. Most of the fluids consumed by the person are quickly assimilated and dilute and expand the volume of blood plasma, resulting in higher blood pressure and pulse rate. This in turn forces more fluid into tissue spaces to dilute salt concentrations in an effort to relieve cell distress. The fluid accumulates and remains as edema.
The trail of distress, destruction and tragedy is total, having adversely affected every cell in the body. All surviving bodily defense mechanisms are activated to eliminate the salt through tears, sweat, urine, and mucus (excreted in the digestive and respiratory tracts).
More consumed salt intensifies the progressive destruction and deterioration of cells and leads to functional and structural failures through the body.
Makeup is used by many women (and some men) for several reasons. It highlights the eyes with eyeliner, mascara and/or eyeshadow; the cheekbones with blusher and the lips with lipstick. Foundation, usually a flesh-colored liquid, is used to give an even and unblemished appearance to the entire face.
Many of us are aware that the “natural look” is better, both aesthetically and health-wise. Irritating, often carcinogenic, substances on delicate facial skin and near the eyes and on the eyelashes are unnecessary and phony.
The healthy glow that comes from plenty of sunshine, exercise and wholesome foods; a loving disposition and enough sleep, rest and relaxation, mirrors true health. A healthy person is a beautiful person. Makeup is used to give the false impression of healthful beauty.
If you wear make-up but decide to stop using it, it may take you a while to get used to the “new you.”
At first you might not like the natural you because you’re not used to it. But in time you’ll see the phoniness of the makeup on other people as repulsive, not attractive as it used to seem.
Condiments give a very similar effect to foods as makeup does to faces. They give enhancement that is false. They make the foods seem better-tasting than they really are. With condiments you can eat low-quality or cooked foods and try to fool your taste buds into thinking they’re getting something really good.
Condiments, like makeup, are irritating and harmful end often carcinogenic. You would be much further ahead to purchase higher-quality foods and eat them in their uncooked state. The foods of our natural biological adaptation are wonderful and don’t need seasonings. Likewise, you are attractive naturally and don’t need make-up to enhance your appearance.
30.3. Sugar: Where Does It All Come From?
30.5. Some Final Thoughts about Sugars
Article #1: Why Honey Is A Harmful Food By T.C. Fry
Article #2: More About Honey By T.C. Fry
Article #3: Blackstrap Molasses: Super Junk Food By T.C. Fry
It’s a white crystalline powder. It was originally smuggled in from the Far East and was sold at the equivalent of $12,000 per pound. Its early users soon became addicted. Gradually its use spread throughout the population. At first it was a luxury for the rich, but gradually it was produced in large quantities at cheaper prices so that anyone could afford it.
The health of all its users deteriorated rapidly. Not only did they suffer physically from sugar use, but their mental and emotional states were disturbed. They became irritable, sickly, obese and borderline schizophrenic.
The white powder was not cocaine or heroin—it was sugar.
Today the average American eats his or her weight in sugar every year. The typical American eats 50 teaspoons of sugar each day, most of it hidden in processed and packaged foods. Probably more health problems can be traced to sugar use than any other single item eaten today.
How did America’s deadly love affair with sugar begin? Why is it so bad for you? Most people shrug off the warnings about sugar and continue to use it. “I have to feed my sweet tooth,” they say. “I crave sweets. It must be natural or I wouldn’t want them.”
And to a certain extent, they’re right. It is natural to desire sweet foods. You should feed your sweet tooth, but you should eat the foods naturally sweet in wholesome sugars—fresh fruits. In a natural state, our diet would consist of a large amount of fresh fruits and some vegetables. In nature our sweet tooth would be well fed.
However, in the last two hundred years refined sugars have gradually replaced the natural sugars in our diet. Instead of grapes and apples, we eat corn syrup, sacharin and cyclamates to satisfy our natural desire for sweet fare.
Refining means to make “pure” by a process of extraction or separation. Sugars are refined by taking a natural food which contains a high percentage of sugar, and then removing all elements of that food until only the sugar remains.
White sugar is commonly made from sugar cane or sugar beets. Through heating and mechanical and chemical processing, all vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, enzymes and, indeed, every nutrient is removed until only the sugar remains.
Sugar cane and sugar beets are first harvested and then chopped into small pieces, squeezing out the juice which is then mixed with water.
This liquid is then heated and lime is added. Moisture is boiled away, and the remaining fluid is pumped into vacuum pans to concentrate the juice. By this time, the liquid is starting to crystallize and is ready to be placed into a centrifuge machine- where any remaining residues (like molasses) are spun away.
The crystals are then heated to the boiling point and are passed through charcoal filters. After the crystals condense, they are bleached snow-white, usually by the use of cattle bones.
During these refining processes, 64 food elements are destroyed. All the potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron, manganese, phosphate, and sulfate are removed. The A, D, and B vitamins are eliminated. Amino acids, vital enzymes, unsaturated fats, and all fiber are gone.
To a lesser or greater degree, all refined sweeteners such as corn syrup, maple syrup, etc. undergo similar destructive processes. Molasses are the chemicals and deranged nutrients that are a byproduct of sugar manufacture.
When you eat a refined carbohydrate like sugar, the body must take vital nutrients from healthy cells to metabolize incomplete food. Sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium are drawn from various parts of the body to make use of the sugar. Often so much calcium is used to neutralize the effects of sugar that the bones, which are the body’s storehouse of this mineral, become osteoporatic due to the withdrawn calcium. The teeth, too, are likewise affected and they lose their components until decay occurs and hastens their loss.
When sugar enters the stomach, glutamic acid and other B vitamins are denied to the body. The loss of these specific vitamins results in a confused mental state and a tendency to become sleepy during the day.
Since refined sugars are removed from their natural sources (which contain the necessary nutrients for their metabolism), sugar-eating causes the body to deplete its own stores of various vitamins, minerals and enzymes. Not only does sugar provide no needed nutrients, it causes the body to rob itself of already present vital elements. Sugar is both an imposter and a thief.
If the body is lacking the vital nutrients used to metabolize sugar, the result is failure to properly handle and expel poisonous residues such as lactic acid. These wastes accumulate through the brain and nervous system, which in turn accelerates cellular death. The bloodstream becomes overloaded with waste products, including incompletely metabolized sugar, and symptoms of carbonic poisoning result.
All of the untoward effects of refined sugar metabolism play havoc with the mind and emotions as well as the body. Research studies have demonstrated a link between juvenile criminal behavior and sugar consumption. A majority of the nation’s prisoners are “sugarholics” and erratic emotional outbreaks often follow a sugar binge. As early as the 1940’s, Dr. John Tintera discovered a relationship between sugar-eating and schizophrenic behavior, as well as other mental illnesses. The effects of sugar-induced depression are well documented in William Dufty’s book Sugar Blues.
The endocrinologist John W. Tintera was very emphatic in describing the relationship between sugar and the whole person. He said: “It is quite possible to improve your disposition, increase your efficiency, and change your personality for the better. The way to do this is to avoid refined sugar in all forms and guises.”
Sugar usage has been associated with so many different diseases and metabolic disturbances that it would be difficult to discuss them all in this lesson. However, four of the more common ailments related to sugar consumption can be briefly covered in this lesson. The reader interested in finding out more about the relationship between sugar and disease should consult the book Sweet and Dangerous by Dr. John Yudkin.
The connection between sugar and tooth decay is probably better known than any other hazard of sugar consumption. Sugar eating contributes to tooth decay because its metabolism by the body requires extra calcium to be drawn from the bones and teeth, thereby weakening the teeth and making them susceptible to decay. Not only white sugar, but all refined carbohydrates have been implicated as a cause of tooth decay.
Sugar makes you fat because it supplies only calories, thus causing the body to overeat to obtain its needed nutrients. When you fill up on foods high in sugar, the body must have additional foods (and consequently calories) to get the nutrients it needs.
One pound of apples contains 263 calories, whereas one pound of candy typically has about 1800 calories. A chocolate bar has eight times as many calories as does a banana, ounce for ounce.
Fruit also supplies fiber and bulk to help make you feel “full.” Sugar is fiber-free; you’ll never experience a sense of physical fullness even after eating two cups of sugar. Consequently, you can overeat on sugar very easily.
If Americans would just eliminate sugar and all refined sweeteners from their diets, they would experience dramatic weight loss.
Diabetes is the failure of the pancreas to produce adequate insulin when the blood sugar rises. Concentrated amounts of sugar cause a rapid rise in blood sugar. Eventually the pancreas can be worked to exhaustion trying to compensate for the unnaturally large amounts of sugar introduced into the body by way of white sugar and other concentrated sweeteners.
In a study of 16,000 people in the Mideast, Dr. Aharon Cohen discovered that among a population who had no past history of diabetes in themselves or in their immediate families, a significant percentage of them developed the disease after they introduced white sugar into their traditional diets.
Sugar-eating has also been associated with another metabolic disease, hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia occurs when the body overreacts to the amount of sugar in the blood, and too much insulin is released. This condition often results when people have eaten concentrated amounts of sugar on a regular basis, and have “fooled” the pancreas into over-responding too often to the sugar level in the blood. Refined sugars are a no-no for hypo-glycemics and diabetics.
In countries where there is a high amount of sugar consumption, there is also a high incidence of heart disease. The theory behind this is that high amounts of sugar cause the insulin in a body to convert blood glucose (sugar) into fatty acids and triglycerides (a kind of blood fat). People on a high-sugar diet develop a significantly higher level of fats in their blood than those who eat no sugar. This high fat content in the blood is believed to be related to the development of atherosclerosis. Sugar may also contribute to heart disease by increasing the blood pressure-raising effects of a high-salt diet.
Since sugar is a totally useless, destructive, addictive drug that is directly responsible for many debilitating diseases, why is its use tolerated or allowed? Our government shows little sympathy for the pushers of cocaine, heroin, amphetamines and other white powder drugs. Why then are food manufacturers allowed to dose their products with a sweet white poison that kills more people than all the illegal drugs combined?
Sugar is a cheap additive and food filler. As prices of raw food materials have increased, manufacturers of convenience and packaged foods add more and more sugar as an inexpensive extender. During the 1960’s, for instance, the amount of sugar used in processed foods doubled.
Clearly there is a strong economic basis for putting so much sugar in packaged foods. The food processors and sugar industry have sought to justify this practice by hiring various spokesmen who defend sugar as an acceptable food. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each year in a propaganda effort by the food and sugar industry to defend and promote the use of this refined sweetener. Advertising alone can sometimes convince the public that a harmful substance, like sugar, might have some legitimate use in foods.
Even twenty-five years ago, I remember seeing an ad for Baby Ruth candy bars that stated, “For QUICK ENERGY eat Baby Ruth candy! It’s full of dextrose!” Dextrose is simply another refined sugar made from corn starch, no better than white sugar. Sugar has always been defended as a food on one basis alone: it is a “fast fuel”; it gives you a “surge of energy” and “needed calories.”
Sugared cereals were promoted for breakfast a few years ago because they were “full of instant energy to start your day.” Finally the government cracked down on the manufacturers for so unashamedly pushing their sugar products as something that might be beneficial. Sugar has always been defended and promoted on the fact that it has calories. That it does, and absolutely nothing else.
Consuming these nutrient-empty calories is dangerous—it’s like racing a car on high-octane gas without any oil or water in the vehicle. You’ll go fast for sure (ever notice a person who is jumped-up on sugar?), but you’ll burn out in a very short time.
Still, sugar-cereal manufacturers, fast-food operators, and the processed food industry have to show a profit, and if it’s by deceiving the public, well they can always find a person with credentials eager to sell their services.
Consider these amazing statements by Dr. Frederick Stare of the Harvard School of Nutrition:
“Calories are energy, and I would recommend that most people could easily double their sugar intake daily. Sugar is the cheapest source of food energy, and I predict it will become much more prevalent in the diets of the world. People say that all you get out of sugar is calories, no nutrients. Like many foods, I expect it to be fortified in the future. There is no perfect food anyway, not even mother’s milk.”
Can you picture this someday? “NEW! Fortified sugar, with vitamins A, B and C added! Better than Mother’s Milk!”
Readers should be aware that the Sugar Foundation regularly contributes large amounts of money to Dr. Stare’s department of nutrition at Harvard University.
There will always be sweet lies about sugar and refined sweeteners. There will always be defenders who can be had for a price. But the truth remains: sugar will kill you just as surely as anything you can eat.
Out of all this sugar, 20% of it is consumed in soft drinks alone: Many breakfast cereals are 40% to 50% sugar. The following table can give you a general idea of how much sugar is “hidden” in food.
Most people do not know that they regularly eat large amounts of sugar. “I never add sugar to my food or drinks,” they say, “so how can I be getting that much sugar?”
Actually, over three-fourths of the 128 pounds of sugar most people eat each year is in processed foods. You never see it and you have no control over the amounts added. Sugar is used in packaged foods to prevent spoilage, to retain moisture, to maintain texture and appearance, and, of course, as a sweetener. It’s an all-around, cheap filler.
So how much “hidden” sugar is in the American diet? About one-third of a pound every day or about 600 calories. One-fifth or more of the total food intake each day comes from refined sugars.
Food | How Many Teaspoons of Sugar? |
Cherry pie (1 slice) | 14 |
Soft drinks (16 ounces) | 10 |
Chocolate milk (1 cup) | 6 |
Canned peaches (2 halves) | 4 |
Jelly (1 tablespoon) | 3 |
Candy bar | 18 |
Fudge (1 square) | 4 |
Chewing gum (1 stick) | .5 |
Doughnut (1) | 4 |
Cake (1 slice) | 15 |
Cookie (1) | 1 |
Icecream (1 cup) | 12 |
The foods in the preceding table are only some of the more well-known sugar-containing foods. Many processed and packaged foods, however, contain sugar, such as most canned vegetables, frozen fruits, breads, food mixes and additives, baby food, salad dressings, peanut butter, and almost any food sold on the grocery shelf.
Foods prepared in restaurants and fast food places also may contain high amounts of sugar. French fries, for example, are often soaked in a sugared solution before they are frozen and shipped.
So, how can you eliminate sugar from your life? Simple. Buy no processed or packaged foods, be careful when dining out, and never add it to any foods or drinks you prepare.
Don’t worry about “healthful” substitutes—there aren’t any. You don’t need refined or unrefined sweeteners in any form. You don’t need to gradually taper off or reduce your refined sugar intake. You can stop immediately, today, and suffer no withdrawal effects.
Sugar use is indefensible. Not only should it be avoided, but it never should have been introduced into the diet in the first place.
Although we have been discussing common white table sugar, there are several other refined and unnatural sweeteners and sugars that you should also eliminate for optimum health. Some are the more common “health” substitutes for white sugar, such as brown sugar, raw sugar and maple syrup. Some are the more recently introduced artificial sweeteners such as saccharin and cyclamates. Others are the close sugar-relatives, like dextrose and corn syrup. And one is that favorite food of health enthusiasts—honey. Let’s now look at the other sweeteners in the diet and see how they are harmful to the body.
30.4.1 Sugar From Corn: Dextrose and Corn Syrup
30.4.2 Fructose—the Sugar From Fruits
Often in “health” food recipes, you’ll see the use of raw sugar or brown sugar in place of white sugar. These two sugars have a bare minimal amount of vitamins and minerals—almost none, actually, but still more than white sugar. Brown sugar is just white sugar colored with a little molasses and raw sugar is simply white sugar that may be missing one of the many refining steps that all sugars go through. Another partially refined sugar is turbinado sugar.
All of these “cousins” are also sucrose—the same as white sugar, and the differences between all of them are so slight as to be indistinguishable. It’s like arguing what will get you the least drunk—whiskey or scotch. The use of these sugar cousins is usually confined to those people who already know better than to use white sugar in the first place, but they attempt to assuage their guilt by using these equally harmful substitutes.
Made from cornstarch, dextrose (also known as glucose) is a leading contributor to the adulteration of food. Dextrose is mixed into a wide variety of processed foods. As early as the 1920’s, Dr. Harvey Wiley stated that flooding the stomach with dextrose creates an artificial situation that would require an additional half-dozen pancreases for our body to cope with it. The sugar refining interests influenced Congress so that dextrose (or glucose) was allowed to remain a legal food additive.
The liquid sugar form made from cornstarch is called corn syrup. It, too, is a widely popular food additive used in items such as frozen vegetables, pancake syrups, wines, and even aspirins.
Corn syrup is usually added along with salt, sodium citrate, citric acid, algin derivative, and artificial flavorings and colors, so the consumer gets a triple-deadly dose of food additives.
Fructose is commonly known as “fruit sugar” and is the predominant sugar in fresh and dried fruits. Along with grape sugar, dextrose, and levulose, fructose is classified as a monosaccharide carbohydrate with the chemical formula C6H12O6.
Fructose is a natural sugar, and it is found in many fruits along with wholesome nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, enzymes, etc. It is the energy component of fruits, and the liver converts it to glucose which is then either used for immediate fuel needs or is stored as glycogen for later energy use.
For each molecule of fructose, the body forms one molecule of glucose, and thus the energy needs of the body can be efficiently met by natural fruit sugars.
Fructose when it is consumed in whole fruits is a wholesome fuel. When it is made into a refined powder or separated from the sucrose of which it is a part, fructose is a disruptive toxin.
In recent years, fructose has increasingly been refined and made into a fine white powder and sold as a “safe”, sugar substitute. While fructose use is promoted because of its presence in fruits, it is no different from white sugar because it is refined from white sugar.
In its refined state, fructose is a concentrated and toxic carbohydrate that has been stripped of all vital nutrients. It is a fuel devoid of nutrients, and is certainly not “health promoting.”
Refined fructose is very soluble and is absorbed by the mucosal cells of the intestinal tract at a rapid rate. This quick absorption fructose, without any co-existing nutrients, can cause the same harm as sucrose, or common white sugar.
Refined fructose intake can result in several toxic effects, such as: disrupted liver protein synthesis, acute hypoglycemia, elevation of blood fats, and general metabolic disturbances.
When you eat fructose along with other nutrients in the form of fruits, you are receiving a high-quality and complete body fuel. When refined and stripped of nutrients, “pure” fructose becomes a disruptive toxin in the body.
If it comes from a tree, it must be okay for you to eat, right? Wrong. While maple syrup comes from a natural source (like fructose and sucrose for that matter) and it does contain some nutrients, it still is a nutritionally unbalanced food. It undergoes high-heating and adulteration in its processing and manufacture.
Besides being concentrated and deadened by high heat, maple syrup may also be contaminated by paraformaldehyde which is used during the tapping process to destroy bacteria. Formaldehyde compounds are poisonous and certainly should not be eaten in food.
Maple syrup is rarely a pure food; other sugars and sweeteners may be mixed in and added without telling the consumer. Sugar, corn syrup, and other refined sugars can be used to stretch out the more expensive maple syrup. Maple syrup is not a pure and unprocessed product; high heating alone makes it inferior and undesirable in an optimum diet. The sugars present in the syrup have become concentrated beyond their natural strength by the introduction of heat in its manufacture. Maple syrup seems to be especially popular with vegans (people who eat no animal products, such as honey), however, they should be aware that maple syrup is still a refined sweetener that has no proper place in the human dietary.
Molasses is another highly heated sweetener like maple syrup. This food item is discussed in detail in another lesson as an example of a “junk food” product, so we will not go into detail in this lesson about it. Its use is chiefly promoted because it is a concentrated source of minerals (usually iron); however, the same process which concentrates the minerals (high heat, etc.) also destroys them. Further, pesticides and chemicals used in growing and processing are concentrated in the product. It becomes a heated, dead food that is a storehouse of toxic chemicals as well as toxic minerals. In addition, the high-sugar content of molasses is caramelized. It is poorly handled by humans. Molasses has no benefits. It is pathogenic from other nutritive aspects.
What could be more natural than honey? Health seekers have sung its praises for years, and it is promoted as a beneficial, healing food. Is honey a perfect food, easily digested, and toxin-free as so many writers would have us believe?
Actually, honey is little better than most of the other refined sweeteners and sugars. True, it can be had with little processing and no heating, but does that make it a natural food for man? The truth is that honey contributes to tooth decay, obesity, diabetes, and other diseases that white sugar use has been linked with.
Honey is defended as a wholesome food because it has been used for a long period, much like milk and dairy products. Like milk, honey is a food that is produced by an animal to feed its own species. It is not a natural food for man—it is a natural food for bees.
Honey is produced by the bees modifying the nectar of flowers with formic acid produced within their bodies. The bees regurgitate the honey after mixing. Water is evaporated from the honey by air currents generated by the wings of worker bees. The nectar is usually vomited up several times before it is mixed enough with the bees’ own preservative secretions.
The honey is also produced with various enzymes to meet the special needs of the bees themselves; consequently, the changes that occur in the production of honey are not amicable to man’s metabolism.
Bees are often robbed of their food product and forced to live on sugared water by their keepers. Often, poison sprays such as carbolic acid and benzaldehyde are sprayed into the hives (and onto the honey) to chase the bees away so that they may be robbed.
Most commercial honey is heated, filtered and processed. Even bees cannot live on heated honey for long. If fed such honey, the bees sicken and die. Honey may also be adulterated with white sugar syrup, corn syrup and other additives, so honey is rarely the “pure” product it’s advertised to be.
Honey is almost pure sugar and water. There is a minute amount of mineral material in honey, and it is this mineral content that health enthusiasts point to as a justification for using honey instead of white sugar. This argument is faulty because the mineral content is so low that you would need to eat 200 tablespoons of honey a day to meet your calcium requirements, 91 tablespoons for your potassium needs, and 267 tablespoons to satisfy your phosphorous needs. Obviously honey has minimal nutritional value for humans.
Honey has also been shown to destroy teeth even faster than white sugar. A study at Oregon State University demonstrated that some honeys may contain cancer-causing substances that the bees have extracted from certain flowers. Other honeys have been associated with botulism, an often fatal form of food poisoning.
Honey is not for the health-seeker; indeed, it is not for any human being. Honey is not for the birds either—it’s for the bees. They made it, let them eat it.
All the sweeteners discussed so far have been derived from plant sources either directly (corn syrup, white sugar, maple syrup) or indirectly (honey). Two popular sugar substitutes, however, come from coal-tar.
In 1879, a substitute for sugar was discovered that was 300 times as sweet as white sugar. Called saccharin, a pill the size of a pinhead can sweeten a cup of coffee.
In 1970, researchers at the University of Wisconsin reported a link between saccharin use and cancer of the bladder. Based upon this and other studies, the F.D.A attempted to ban the sweetener in 1977. A public uproar developed, however, because with the removal of saccharin from the market, there would be no way for diabetics and other people on a sugar-restricted diet to obtain concentrated sweeteners (or so the reasoning went). Congress therefore imposed a ban outlawing the removal of saccharin but required stores to post a notice indicating that products containing saccharin were sold there.
Needless to say, this artificial sweetener is dangerous enough to be banned, and should be avoided by ail people.
A relative of saccharin is a group of sweeteners known as cyclamates. Cyclamates were promoted in the 1950’s as a way for obese Americans to satisfy their sweet tooth without paying the price in calories. Cyclamates are 30 times sweeter than sugar and had been manufactured as early as 1937.
By 1969, about 175 million Americans were consuming 20 million pounds of cyclamates every year. In the next few years, medical reports stated that injury to fetuses, diarrhea, and damage to kidneys, the liver, the intestinal tract, the adrenal glands, and thyroid could be traced to cyclamate use.
Cyclamates were finally banned in 1969, about 14 years after their harmfulness was first revealed. Unfortunately, the refined sugar products, equally dangerous in their own way, are still allowed to be sold. Perhaps in a few more years, an enlightened public will demand the removal of white sugar and other sweeteners from their foods as well.
Why do human beings want sweet foods in the first place? What are some safe ways to satisfy our sweet tooth?
Dr. Gary Beauchamp of the University of Pennsylvania stated that our sweet taste has served us well in the course of evolution. Our sweet tooth allowed us to know when foods like fruits and berries were ripe and ready to eat. It guided us to the selection of naturally wholesome foods. Our sweet tooth and desire for sweet foods is perfectly natural and desirable.
In recent times, however, our sweet tooth has become perverted. Dr. Beauchamp says that now “we’ve separated the good taste from the good fun,” and our sweet tooth is leading us astray with the introduction of refined and supersweet artificial sugars in the diet. Actually, refined sugars and the like achieved their stronghold first in countries where there was not an abundance of fresh sweet fruits. White sugar has served as a poor and dangerous substitute for fruits in climates where fruits were no readily available. Fortunately in today’s world, we are now able to satisfy our sweet tooth naturally, but we’ve been deceived so long by the artificial and refined sugars that it takes some time to readjust our taste.
Once refined and artificial sweeteners are eliminated from the diet, you will gradually re-acquire your naturally discerning taste and avoid all such refined and unnatural sugars with little effort. They will cease to appeal to you as you re-discover the natural sweetness and goodness of fresh fruits.
Humans naturally seek to eat sweets. Thus the act of sweetening foods is to meet our biological adaptation to sweet fruits.
One of the foremost evils of using sweeteners is on the grounds of incompatible combinations. Anything sweet naturally does not require sweetening and anything that we sweeten is intrinsically incompatible with sweets.
We are not natural fat or oil eaters. We get this incidentally but sufficiently from our proper foods of fruits. We are not natural protein eaters. We obtain our needs incidentally but sufficiently from fruits. We are not starch eaters. We have a limited capacity to digest starches—a capacity that was developed very poorly—sufficient to handle starches incidental to fruit-eating. The ptyalin of the mouth is so poor in its digestive capabilities that it digests less than 5% of the starch. Final digestion of starch must be carried on with pancreatic amylase in the small intestine.
While simple sugars such as fructose and glucose require no digestion, sucrose must be broken down into these respective monosaccaride components before absorption can occur.
Mixed with fats, starches or proteins, all sugars, simple or more complex like sucrose, are an abominable combination. The sugars are held up while the more complex foods are being digested. They quickly ferment, forming vinegar and alcohol. This is toxic enough in itself but the digestion of the foods with which they! are mixed is then vitiated so that marked indigestion occurs.
There are no counts justifying the use of sweeteners. Our yen for our natural sweet fare should be sated with our natural sweet fare.
Remember: when you eat fruits, you not only satisfy your sweet tooth, but you supply the body with the finest fuel available along with a storehouse of valuable nutrients and elements. Say good-bye to the sweet imposters, and hello to a new life of health and well-being as you eliminate sugar forever from your diet!
Well, you’ve pretty well eliminated any possible sweetener I could use. Isn’t there anything we can use to add extra sweetening to our food that isn’t harmful?
If you are having fruit meals, you can add dried fruits for a concentrated sweet flavor. In connection with that, you can also consider date sugar as probably the least harmful of all concentrated sweeteners. Although made entirely from dates, date sugar is still not an optimum food because it is usually dried at a high temperature before being powdered.
Another difficulty with using any added sweetening to foods is that it generally leads to unsuitable food combinations, unless the foods are fruits (which probably don’t require extra sweetening in the first place).
If you’re eating a proper diet, high in fresh fruits, your sweet tooth will be well satisfied without any concentrated sugars.
My husband is a diabetic, and we’ve been using artificial sweeteners instead of refined sugars. We’re going to stop now since we’ve learned about the carcinogenic (cancer-causing) properties of these additives. But can he start to eat a lot of fruit, since he is diabetic?
Fructose, as it exists in fruits, has a greater advantage for diabetics than other sugars. Unlike other sugars, fructose does not require insulin to get into the liver and the body cells. So when you eat fresh fruits high in fructose (natural sugar), there’s no sudden demand for insulin, which diabetics cannot produce in adequate amounts. Similarly, fructose in fruits is also an ideal sugar for hypoglycemics. Remember, don’t get this confused with the refined fructose (the white powder) which should not be used by diabetics, or anyone else for that matter.
I’ve heard so many good things about honey. I just can’t believe it could be as bad for you as you say. We have our own bees, and I think they give us the best sweetener available.
People who have milk cows frequently make the same statement when they are told about the harmfulness of milk products. People that hunt and kill their own meat also think that because they are getting their product “fresh,” it must somehow negate the bad aspects of the food.
I congratulate you on having bees around. They perform a very vital job in the garden and orchard by pollinating these plants. But why do you want to rob them in return and eat a food that was made by the bees for themselves alone to eat? Every species has its own food to which it is uniquely adapted. We humans are best suited for the fresh fruits and vegetables of the earth; that is our physiological nature. Bees are best suited to the honey that they make with their own body secretions.
It often takes a long time for the realization that cow’s milk (another animal food) is not suitable for man to eat, even if it is fresh and unprocessed.
The simple truth is that if you are eating a natural and optimum diet of chiefly fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, you will have no desire for a concentrated sweetener like honey in the first place.
This may sound silly, but what about desserts or candies? Without some kind of sweetening, you take a lot of pleasure out of eating. How could I ever make a cake for instance?
You’re not going to like this answer, but you really shouldn’t be eating or making these foods in the first place. I repeat, if you are eating a sufficient amount of fresh or dried fruits throughout the day, you’re not going to want cakes, pies, cookies or candy. You can make a whole meal one big “dessert” if you have an all-fruit meal.
People desire pastries and other sweets when they have neglected the fruit part of their diet. However, don’t use fruits just as a dessert for a conventional meal; this is a poor food combination. Make fruits a whole meal in themselves once, twice or three times a day. You’ll never want pie or cake again once you’ve re-educated your taste buds.
It is, of course, true that honey is a wonderful food—for bees! The popularly fostered idea among health seekers that honey is a wholesome, nutritious and natural sweet for humans is fallacious.
Honey is the product of the bee’s stomach. The bee ingests pollen from flowers and, in its stomach, mixes it with formic, manite and other acids. Then the honey is deposited in cone cells and, by the wind created by a multitude of bees wings, substantially dehydrated.
Without these acids and the drying, honey would readily ferment and prove unusable for the bee which must have a dependable food supply for up to eight months in some of the harsher climates. Because of these acids and dehydration, honey is impregnable to bacteria. It is rather poisonous in the human digestive tract.
As a food for us honey is woefully mineral and vitamin deficient. Humans require infinitely more food factors than bees.
While honey contains several very desirable sugars, these have been rendered toxic by the protective acids imparted to them by the bees. These acids are the bees’ preservatives. Humans do not have the enzymes to break these acids down, as have the bees, and must rob their bodies of vital base-forming minerals to neutralize the acids.
When humans eat honey, it immediately begins to reabsorb moisture from the stomach and stomach flora. It destroys our symbiotic bacterial population wholesale. Several tablespoons of honey makes most people very sick.
In humans honey, more so than cane and beet sugars, is acid-forming and decalcifying. The body draws calcium from its teeth and bones, if necessary, to neutralize the acids introduced and formed.
Manite acid of honey is a protoplasmic poison. It interacts with protein and from this, forms alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid.
As eaten, honey is an atrocious food. It is usually added to starches and proteins as a sweetener. It readily ferments when held up in the stomach with other longer-digesting foods. The byproducts alcohol, ammonia and carbonic acid are deleterious to human health.
Honey is, therefore, neither a nutritious nor a safe food. Life Scientists should not use honey as a part of their diet.
Ida Honorof publishes a newsletter entitled “Report to the Consumer.” She usually goes into a subject in-depth and certainly she is one of the most outspoken persons in America on environmental concerns.
Anyway, in March she published an extensive article about honey. She recommends it in place of sugar. But, to her credit, she gives us a very frank appraisal of honey as a food and points out that better sugars are to be found in organically grown fruits.
First, she points out that, though pesticides are toxic to bees, not all bees succumb to toxic substances and that today’s honeys cannot be called organic in any sense—most honey has pesticide residues in it. Bees gather this from flowers along with the nectar and pollen.
Then there’s the matter of the nutritiousness of honey. It has only minute quantities of nutrients though it has “nutritional merit.” Ms. Honorof says, “Many people converted to using honey, often excessively, despite the fact that to the human body, honey is hardly different than refined sugar—remember honey was meant for the bee.” Which is to say that honey is not our natural food but natural food for the bee.
She quotes a famed bee specialist, Colonel Clair of Hawaii. Some of the data she quotes turns out to be very revealing, a lot more than honey promoters would appreciate.
First, most beekeepers rob their bees of practically all the honey and substitute for it water and sugar or wastes from candy factories. Anything sweet and cheap is substituted for the honey taken from the bees. The result is diseased bees. Further, the chemical industry has begun furnishing “medicines” or drugs for beekeepers just as they have furnished “medicines” for humans.
We Life Scientists have great concern for bees. They are our symbiotic partners in Nature. And the despoliation of bees must lead to our own—we are very much despoiled and depraved already.
It seems the worst enemies of bees these days are uninformed beekeepers who try to exploit bees to the maximum. They are paid for their hives by orchardists. Then they rob the bees of honey too. That doesn’t mean the apiarists are making it rich but it does mean the poor bees are being meanly used, not only to their detriment but to ours! Of course this applies only to most beekeepers who supply in huge quantities the refined honey on supermarket shelves.
Ms. Honorof’s article is in many ways revealing. One of the closing highlights is that honey, itself, is practically non-nutritious. It is the pollen grains in the honey that bear most of the nutrient complement.
Colonel Clair, her source of information, cautions against using heated honey altogether. He praises honey for its “antibiotic qualities.”
That praise must be, to thinking people, damnation! For antibiotic means “against life.” While they mean antibacterial, the word is correct, for an antibiotic is truly against all life.
But the clincher is the final admonition: “Honey must be eaten sparingly, in very small amounts.” Our own admonition is: If anything must be eaten in moderation or sparingly, it should not be eaten at all.
The sales job the aluminum and chemical industries did to put their poisonous wastes, that is, fluoride compounds, into much of the nation’s drinking water as a health measure must, by all standards, be called masterful even though fraudulent.
But, by comparison, you must positively applaud the sugar industry in selling its primary waste product to “health consumers” who pride themselves upon their food savvy, fastidiousness and awareness. In fact the sales job done on the “health food crowd” is so good the sugar industry gets more money from their poisonous waste than from the primary product, unwholesome white sugar.
The extent of the esteem in which blackstrap molasses is held merely points up the gullibility, credulousness and generally uncritical thinking with which “awakened” people accept “health claims” if they come from the “right” quarter.
Of course it is fitting that you and I should not have to be concerned with our food any more than the air we breathe. We should be able to accept all the food we eat as uncritically as the animals in their natural habitat eat the foods of their adaptation. That’s the way it should be! For there are more productive, cultural and joyful pursuits in life than immersing ourselves in concerns about our stomach and what to put into it, our bowels and their business, our liver and its business, etc. Under the circumstances it is proper that we be deeply concerned. But our concern must be bolstered by deeper thinking than that which so readily endears such a pernicious product as blackstrap molasses.
Talk about candy, primarily a white sugar product, being a junk food, it can’t even hold a candlestick to blackstrap molasses! Blackstrap is over 50% sucrose itself and that’s the least of its drawbacks in the human diet! Anything bad that can be said about white sugar and candy goes double and triple for blackstrap molasses.
With candy at least you have sugar that has gone through only two or three cookings. And the chemicals used in its extraction are in the molasses, not in the sugar. Further, candy often has the virtue of having some nuts or nut butters, fruits, etc. in it. But, nevertheless, candy’s reputation as “sugared junk” is well deserved.
But if candy is junk, then molasses is super junk! For molasses has more of the same evils that candy has plus some evils that candy and white sugar never had (unless it contains molasses which some candy and brown sugar does) and it has none of the “redeeming qualities” that some candy has.
I have several “health” publications that go into ecstasy over this “natural health food.” A natural health food, mind you! And some mighty big names in the “health field” lend their endorsement—in fact almost all the big names in the popular health field would consider themselves remiss if they had not sung the praises of blackstrap molasses.
Before we get into the nitty gritty of just what blackstrap molasses represents and how this foul-tasting waste product came to be so popular, let’s investigate that “natural” angle.
When we speak of a natural food we mean, of course, a natural food for humans.
Now Nature has been, on the scene for who knows how many eons of time. Blackstrap molasses has yet to reach its 300th birthday! Nature came mightly late in providing us with this wonder food! Nevertheless, let’s put blackstrap molasses to the “natural” test.
These are only some of the criteria for a natural food of humans. How does molasses stack up against these yardsticks?
So much for the “naturalness” of blackstrap molasses. It doesn’t meet one single criterium as a natural food for humans. And certainly a food that is not natural to humans cannot be healthful for humans. Moreover, you wouldn’t consider putting an unnatural, unhealthful food into your body, would you?
For more detailed information on molasses, see Lesson 35 - Junk Foods: A Case Study On Molasses
31.1.1 What Are Refined Grains?
31.1.2 Why Are Refined Grains Harmful?
31.1.3 Food Processing and Grain Products
31.1.4 The Early History of Grains
31.1.6 The Fall of the Roman Empire
31.1.7 Refined Grains and Dental Cavities
31.1.10 Are Homemade Breads Any Better?
31.1.11 The First “Health” Food
31.1.13 It Used To Be A Grain Of Corn
31.1.14 Why Do People Eat Prepared Cereals?
31.1.15 The Real Harm of Breakfast Cereals
31.1.16 And It’s Indigestible Too...
Every day the scientists looked in on their cage of mice. Each time one or more dead animals had to be removed from the cage. After about sixty days, more and more mice were dropping dead. One of the scientists looked worried.
“I don’t know how much more of this experiment they can take. We may end up killing all of them in the next few weeks if we don’t stop.”
The other scientist nodded his head. “It seems cruel, I know,” he said, “but I think we’re discovering something important here. This diet we’ve got them on should tell us a lot more about proper nutrition—or rather, what poor nutrition can do to an animal.”
The second scientist sighed. “You’re right. Here’s their meal for today.”
“The same as yesterday?”
“Yes, and the same as the day before and the day before that. You know that’s the only food we’re feeding them for ninety days.”
The younger scientist took the food and tore it into pieces and dropped it among the mice. They moved sluggishly toward it and sniffed it. Some were huddling in a corner, sick and barely able to move.
He finished feeding the mice their experimental diet. He brushed the crumbs from his hands. “Guess I better get another loaf of bread to feed them again tomorrow. Same brand?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said the older scientist, “Just so it’s white.”
After a ninety-day diet of white bread, 40 of the 64 mice were dead. The survivors had developed many of the diseases of “modern” man—heart problems, anemia, and extreme nervous disorders.
White bread, breakfast cereals, flours—all refined grain products contribute-greatly to this nation’s ill-health. Yet studies indicate they make up one-third of the average person’s total carbohydrate intake each day.
A refined grain, or its product, is made by processing a natural whole grain so that some of its nutrients are lost. Flours, breads, cereals, noodles, pastries—almost all grain products have been refined in some way or another.
White rice, corn grits, wheat flour, hominy, a piece of toast, a cookie, the bowl of snap-crackle-and pop each morning—all are examples of refined grain products. ALL are harmful additions to the diet.
Refined grains and their food products are substandard foods for several reasons:
And perhaps most important of all, refined grain products are nutritionally imbalanced. It is because of this imbalance that these foods are responsible for several degenerative diseases. Calcium-leaching from the bones and teeth occur because of the altered phosphorous-calcium balance in these products. Sugar and refined grain products are primarily responsible for all tooth decay in this country, as well as the major cause of brittle bones in the elderly.
In natural organic foods that are eaten in their whole and unprocessed state, all the elements for proper nutrition are in their proper balance. This balance is completely destroyed in the refining process of grains.
For example, the mineral cadmium always exists along with the mineral zinc in foods. The zinc acts as a balancing mineral for the cadmium and prevents it from being absorbed in too large amounts by the body. Cadmium, in excessive amounts, is hazardous to human health (it is one of the poisonous elements in cigarette smoke, for instance). When grains are refined, the zinc mineral is destroyed but the cadmium is not; so, you get a massive absorption of cadmium without the balancing effect of the zinc when you eat refined grains.
As another example, both iron and copper minerals are destroyed when grains are refined. Copper is necessary for the utilization of iron by the body to build a healthy bloodstream. Inorganic iron (useless to the body anyway) is added back to the stripped flour, but of course the copper is not. You can’t fool around with the natural balance of nutrients in foods, and then hope to restore them or negate the harmful effects created by this processing.
The B-vitamins, vital for the health of the nerves and body, are quickly destroyed by any refining of the grain. Interestingly enough, the body requires B-vitamins to metabolize or use these grain products (which is why they are present in the food in the first place). If these vitamins are removed from the grain products, then the body must rob from the current supply of B vitamins in the body so that these refined grains can be digested.
Not only are refined grains and their products nutritionally deficient and imbalanced, they can also contribute to a loss of vitamins and minerals already present in the body.
Two of the most popular ways of eating refined grains are in the form of bread and cereals. We’ll look at these two products in great detail so that we can understand why refined grains have no place in a healthy diet.
Food processing is used to describe everything from home cooking to sophisticated food-manufacturing processes. Actually, anything we do to alter the original state of food, be it cooking, blending, refining, or adding a hundred chemical ingredients, is a form of food processing.
When we talk about food processing and grains, however, we are mostly concerned with food refining. Refining is the breaking down of a whole food into various parts. Grains, for example, are often eaten in the form of flour products such as breads, pastries, etc. Few people in America eat grains in their whole forms as they are harvested. Whenever foods are eaten in fragmented, refined, or processed form, a lower level of health invariably results.
Food is man’s most immediate point of contact with nature. As such, it must be suited to the laws that govern our body. While the human body is a remarkably flexible instrument, it cannot adapt to foods that have been radically altered from their natural form. Grains, as we shall see, are probably not an optimum food for man anyway; when they are processed, refined, and altered, they can become injurious.
When beginning the study of a subject such as this, it is useful to get a historical perspective. Fortunately, one area of food processing has been well documented for several thousand years: bread making. Bread is probably the first refined and processed food product eaten by man. We can understand the effects of refined grains on the body if we study the history of bread-eating from ancient times to the present.
As long as primitive man could live in areas where fresh food was available for 12 months of the year, he had little need for agriculture. Fruits and vegetables, the mainstay of early man’s diet, were well supplied in a semi-tropical environment. Foraging and food gathering were the main methods used to acquire food.
With the changing of the climate and the migration of primitive tribes, new food gathering methods had to be devised. Man needed to find some way to store nutrients for periods of time when no fresh foods were available. Seeds, such as cereal grains, seemed to be one way of solving the food storage problem, and so man became agricultural in lifestyle.
Grains were probably among the first cultivated crops. They were not as tasty or beneficial as the fresh fruits and vegetables, but they could be grown in large amounts for storage in climates where the winters were harsh.
This development occurred only about ten thousand years ago—a very short length in the half-million year or so span of, man: With this growing of grains, cooking developed. If cooking had not started, it is doubtful the cereal crops would have been of much use to man. Cooking, the first food processing, developed simultaneously with grain agriculture.
Early grain processing seems to have consisted of either toasting the whole grain, or heating it up in watery mixtures, such as porridges or gruels.
By the time of recorded history, however, man had learned to process the grains farther and farther until he was finally able to make bread from his crops.
Until about 3000 B.C., grains were pounded in mortars to make a rough meal from which the bread could be partially sifted. This meal was then mixed with water and heated to form a porridge.
The Egyptians developed a grinding process in which the grain was crushed between two rolling stones. This allowed the endosperm of the grain to be reduced to a fine flour so that it could be sifted finer and finer from the coarser bran. This produced a flour that was refined enough for baking or bread-making purposes. As you can see, bread is a relatively new food in the diet of man. The loaf of bread, “staff of life,” has only been around for the last five thousand years or so, or less than 1% of man’s existence.
The Greeks improved upon the grain-grinding process with rotary grindstones, and by 500 B.C., combined flour mills and bakeries were operating in Athens. Bread was being sold commercially, and already there were different types of bread one could buy (such as coarse barley bread for slaves, wheat for the upper classes, etc.)
It was the Romans, however, who gave us our first “white bread.”
During Roman civilization, flour milling technology rapidly developed, and soon the Romans were making four or five commercial grades of flour. The finest flour, almost a creamy color and not quite as white as that of our white bread, was sold only to the upper classes. Interestingly enough, the wrestlers and athletes of that time were fed the coarser grade of flour “to keep their limbs strong.”
Of course the “finer” or more refined flour eaten by the Romans had far less nutritional value and was a more fractured and fragmented food than had been eaten by man until that time. The Romans associated their new white bread with goodness, purity, nobility, and birth. These emotional feelings of refinement, higher living, snob appeal, etc. soon became inseparable from the texture, taste, and appearance of the white bread. As in modern times, the rich or upper class were the first to adopt the highly refined foods as a mark of “class distinction.” The health of the Roman upper class degenerated through the years—some blame it on the lead content in their cooking vessels, and others point out their fondness for the new white bread. Whatever the reason, as the health of its leaders failed, the empire itself crumbled.
After the Romans, it was 1500 more years before the “art” of flour refining reached this height again.
So, what can we learn from this bit of history? Have we proven anything, other than that man became increasingly “sophisticated” in this bread-making abilities? Fortunately, we can trace the health of man as he began eating more and more refined products.
By studying the skulls and tooth remains of ancient, man, from 3000 B.C. all the way to the twentieth century, researchers have been able to devise a table showing the amount of tooth decay experienced by man during various time periods. Let’s look at the figures:
Time Period | Percent of Teeth With Cavities |
3000 B.C. | 3% |
2000 B.C. | 4.5% |
1000 B.C. | 5% |
100 A.D. (Roman) | 11% |
1000 A.D. | 5.5% |
1950 A.D. | 24% |
It is no coincidence that the Romans had more cavities than any other ancient people; they also ate more highly refined flour products. After the “art” of flour refining was lost with the fall of the Roman Empire, notice that dental cavities decreased by half, or almost back to their level before refined flour products were introduced. Then, less than a thousand years later, the cavities’ percentage of modern man has increased five times over most ancient peoples. Needless to say, there has been an enormous increase in the amount of increasingly refined flour products in the last few hundred years. Do you think there is a connection? Many people do.
As poor as refined flour and bread products have been throughout history, they were still able to support life, if not enhance it. With the nineteenth century, however, the quality of bread became so poor that it was anti-life, or destructive.
In 1826, an experiment was conducted with the newly developed white bread of industrial England. The researchers discovered that “a dog fed on fine white bread does not live past the 50th day. A dog fed on the coarse whole bread lives and keeps his health.”
In the nineteenth century, mass production of bread began in earnest. In fact, the first assembly line in the world was devoted to making bread sea biscuits for English crews. This mass production of bread required that the product have good storage qualities.
This extended storage time for bread is the most often cited reason for the amount of refining done to the flour. The nineteenth century miller and baker discovered that the germ of the wheat contains oils and these oils go rancid over a period of time. The germ and the aleurone layers of the grain also contain the major food value of the grain, and these attract rodents and bugs. Remove the nutrients, refine the flour even more, and the rats and insects will leave it alone. They know what many humans still don’t know: that such refined flour products cannot support life and are worse than worthless to eat.
This removal of the wheat germ and other nutritive factors from the bread as a convenience to the baker and not the customer marked the beginning of an era in food production. As bread-making progressed in the 1800s and 1900s, any changes made in the process were always done for the benefit of the producer. The consumer just, had to unconsciously adapt his taste to the type of bread that was best suited for mass production and rapid turnover. Bread was the first “technological” food; it was industrial food for the masses, cheap in cost and devoid of nutrition: the first junk food.
Bad as the bread was in the 1800s and through the mid-1900; it became much worse after the end of World War II. The chemical warfare banned in the war in Europe was just transplanted to the bakeries of America as the bread-makers began to slowly poison their customers with all sorts of new additives, bleaches, and preservatives.
Even refined flour still has natural yellow pigments (such as carotene—a precursor of vitamin A). The millers discovered they could remove this color and make their flour even whiter by bleaching it. They started blowing chlorine gas into the flour after it was milled.
Chlorine gas, a deadly poison if inhaled, not only bleaches the flour but also reacts with other molecules in the flour. Many potentially toxic chlorinated lipid compounds are formed from this chlorine gas, such as dichlorostearic acid.
Chlorine also destroys major portions of Vitamin E as well as an important amino acid in the bread protein, methionine (which is classified as “essential” for human nutrition).
Other chemical oxidizers are added to bleach and “mature” the flour, such as nitrogen dioxide, bencoyl peroxide, potassium bromate, potassium iodate, and azocarbonamide. Are they dangerous? Well, Germany banned all such oxidizers back in 1958, 24 years ago!
For softness and that white-bread texture, mono- and diglycerides are added to the bread dough at the rate of about 1/4 pound per year per person consumption. The effect is to make the bread more “plastic” or squeezable—nobody knows the effects on those that eat such additives.
What has happened since World War II is that man, for 5000 years previously, mechanically altered the wheat molecule by pounding and grinding. Now he has been chemically manipulating and reorganizing the wheat molecules. These chemical alterations in our food must have serious and long-time effects on those that eat such foods.
Out of the 100 pounds or so of commercial bread eaten each year by the average person, he also eats besides the refined flour such things as 2 pounds of salt, 3 pounds of sugar, 2 pounds of skim milk powder, 2 pounds of yeast, 1 pound of “enzyme-activator,” 1/2 pound of sulfate, chloride and bromate chemicals, and 1/4 pound of other food additives. When all of these chemicals and nonfoods are eaten together, a multi-toxic effect occurs that has never been thoroughly studied by scientists.
By now, most health-conscious people know that commercial breads (even ‘whole-wheat’ and organic ones) are health-destroying foods. So, these people often make their own bread. Does this make bread a “good” food?
Actually, no. Unless these people freshly grind their flour from organic, whole grains immediately before they make bread, they’re still going to be using a substandard, toxic, and probably rancid flour.
Even if they use freshly ground flour, they still must add such things as salt, a sweetener, maybe some yeast, possibly eggs, milk, etc., and the product has been transformed into a mishmash of indigestible food combinations. All bread is usually cooked as well, which also adds to its toxicity.
Some people who feel that they must have bread have managed to compromise by making an uncooked product using only sprouted grains. Used in moderation, this is a marginally acceptable food. Due to its starchy and indigestible nature, however, such foods are not needed nor recommended for an optimum diet. If bread is ever included in the diet, it should be eaten as a starchy food and combined with leafy and nonstarchy vegetables.
The best way to use grain foods is not in bread, crackers, pasta, or whatever, but in their raw sprouted state. However, grains are only eaten when such foods as fruits, vegetables, sprouts, nuts or seeds are in short supply or not available.
In the late 1880s, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg ran a sanitarium for vegetarian Adventists. Searching for a healthy meat substitute for his patients, Dr. Kellogg invented “Corn Flakes” in 1895.
One of Kellogg’s patients, C.W. Post, was experimenting on himself to devise a “food cure.” He came up with “Grape-Nuts,” and the breakfast cereal industry was born.
Within five years, Post’s cereals were making over a million dollars a year, and Kellogg had taken over the town of Battle Creek, Michigan, with his cereal factories. Up in Niagara Falls, Nabisco’s Shredded Wheat had arrived on the scene, and the dietetic character of the nation was being slowly molded.
These three cereal companies were almost solely responsible for making refined cereals a major part of the American diet. The cereals were originally promoted for their supposed health benefits, and industrialized America was ready for its first convenience foods. Breakfast cereals had become the first commercial “health” food.
Television commercials tell us that if we eat one cup of this or that specially fortified cereal, we’ll get 100% of almost all our vitamin and mineral requirements. They don’t tell you that these vitamins and minerals are inorganic fillers and additives which have been laced through a sugar-coated product that is destructive to our health and well-being.
Nor do they tell that the reason they add those vitamins, etc. is because all the original nutrients in the grain have been heated, rolled, puffed, squeezed and sugared out of existence. The vitamins and minerals are added so the manufacturers can justify the prices they charge for a product that is Only slightly more nutritious than the box it comes in.
And the cereal manufacturers really blow their own horn about these miniscule amounts of nutrition by the advertising on the boxes and on television. If your chief source of nutritional information about breakfast cereals has been the charts and panels on the sides of cereal boxes, then the following facts may open your eyes to one of the biggest food frauds of the twentieth century.
What is a corn flake? How is it made?
First, the kernels of corn are soaked in lye. Lye is a caustic, corrosive substance that will burn skin off your body. It’s used in making rayon, soaps, and—breakfast cereals.
After the soaking, the kernels are blasted by live steam. Then a flavoring syrup full of mostly white sugar is poured over the soaked and steamed corn.
Next, the kernels are dried until they’re hard. Then they’re run through huge rollers that press down with 75 tons of pressure to flatten them out. Now they’re ready to be toasted, heated and flaked one more time. Then they get their last dosing of preservatives, additives and chemicals and are packaged up in a brightly colored box with a picture of an athlete, animal, or cartoon character on the front.
Originally you had a grain of corn, fairly rich in protein, phosphorus, Vitamin A, and the three major B vitamins. Now you’ve got a sugar-frosted flake that has no original vitamins, few minerals, and an altered protein that is harmful to the body. What’s more, you’re probably paying five to ten times as much for this processed, denatured food than you would if you had just bought the original whole grain.
The American public has been completely sold on the healthfulness of eating an early morning breakfast and on eating cold cereals as a convenient, nutritious breakfast food. Consider what Richard Carter, author of “The Unappetizing Truth About Dry Cereals,” says about cereal consumers.
“As they put this mixture into their mouths, many of the feeders actually glow with a sense of well-being. Decades of tradition and millions and millions of dollars in advertising have trained them to regard their ready-to-eat breakfast cereals as the last word in morning nourishment. Any suspicion that the stuff is nutritionally inferior to other breakfast foods, like fresh fruits, is bound to be dispelled by the sales literature printed on the brightly-colored boxes.”
So people eat breakfast cereals because: 1) they feel that they should eat something every day as soon as they get up, according to conventional nutrition; 2) cereals require a minimum of preparation and are easy to eat; 3) people believe that the cereals themselves furnish “minimum daily requirements” due to the added vitamins and minerals.
In response: 1) Most people would be better off if they did not eat first thing in the morning; this is the body’s time to clean house and it is not ready to digest food. Greater health could result if people would adopt a sensible “No-Breakfast” plan, and ate more nutritious foods later in the day. 2) Fruits are far superior to cereals as a nutritious breakfast food, and they are the ultimate convenience food—no milk, no bowls, no preparation or clean-up whatsoever. 3) Added nutrients to food (“fortified” foods) are riot utilized by the body like the naturally occurring organic elements. They in no way replace or serve the same functions as do vitamins, minerals, and co-existing nutrients in natural foods.
For many people, breakfast is the same almost every day of the week. Most people eat breakfast out of habit. They rarely make a conscious decision as to what to eat first thing in the morning, and so if they eat cereals they do so almost every day.
The cereal habit is also hard to break not only because of mental habits, but because the high-sugar content of the cereals can create a physical, addictive habit as well. The most popular cereals are 25% to 50% refined white sugar, which makes them sweeter than chocolate candy. Granolas, or health food cereals, are hardly better; with their high honey and maple syrup content, they, too, may be 20% to 30% concentrated sugars.
Eating such heavily sweetened breakfast cereals first thing in the morning plays havoc with the blood-sugar levels, and creates the conditions for a life-long sugar addiction.
Not only is breakfast cereal an abysmal food by itself, it’s usually eaten with such foods as milk and fresh fruits so that it becomes virtually indigestible.
Besides being a totally unsuitable food, pasteurized milk that is poured over cereal combines very poorly with any other food. Milk is a protein with a high fat content. Cereals are refined starches and sugars. Putting those types of foods together in the stomach is a sure invitation to acid indigestion.
Fresh fruits are generally acidic or sub-acidic in nature. Mixing them with starchy cereals creates a fermenting environment that negates any health benefits of the fruit to begin with. Better to just eat the fruit and forget the cereal.
If anything is to be eaten early in the day, it should be easily digested, high-fluid foods such as fresh fruits. Refined starches clog the body and their waste products create a feeling of heavy lassitude that lasts throughout the day.
So far, we have discussed mostly refined grain products, such as flours, breads, and cereals. There is little disagreement among health-minded people that such refined grain products are harmful and should be completely eliminated from the diet. But what about whole grains? Are unrefined grains, like rice, corn, and wheat, eaten in their whole state beneficial and optimum foods?
If we strictly apply the test of an optimum food which is that it be palatable and nourishing in its raw state, then grains fail. Raw grains, except when they are in their young milky stage or sprouted, are virtually indigestible and high in phytic acid which tends to bind calcium, iron, and zinc and make them unavailable to your body.
Grains are also unbalanced in potassium and sodium. Grain-eaters often try to balance the sodium-deficiency of grains by adding salt which is an inorganic poison. In general, grains are deficient in the alkaline minerals, too rich in nitrogen and phosphoric acid, and tend to acidify the system.
The starches in grains are hard to digest (about ten times more difficult than potato starches) and are prone to fermentation.
Grains, according to Otto Carque author of Rational Diet, are incapable of building strong bones and teeth. Man cannot live exclusively on grains for any length of time and maintain the best of health. If grains are eaten, they must be accompanied by green leafy vegetables to supply needed alkaline elements.
Grains contain the largest amount of starches of all foods. Humans are not naturally starch-eaters. We only have one starch-digesting enzyme, and that is found in the saliva. Starches are difficult foods to digest, and we would do better to look to other foods, such as fruits, vegetables and nuts for our energy and carbohydrate needs. Starches are not a necessary part of the diet. There is not a particle of starch in the entire constitution of your body.
Grains are a relatively new food in the human dietary—hardly 10,000 years old—and refined grain products have really only been around for 200 years in their present form. Man prospered very well before the advent of grain foods, so they cannot be defended as an essential part of the diet.
In fairness, it must be noted that grains, because of their storage capabilities and other considerations, have formed a major part of the world’s diet for many different populations. Grains, in their whole form, are not being degraded as an unsuitable food for man—but they are not optimum foods. As long as fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds are available, grains can be eliminated from the diet forever.
With a reorientation of agriculture from the mono-grain crops to the more productive tree crops (fruits and nuts), the world’s population could be better nourished in a more ecological fashion.
Although most grain consumed in America is in the form of breads or cereals, other products are used in large amounts. White rice is generally polished whole rice. This polishing strips away many of the B vitamins and some of the protein—about the same thing that happens to refined wheat. White rice is a nutritionally unbalanced food and should never be eaten.
Corn meal may also be degermed (refined) and then subsequently “enriched” just like the white flour from wheat grain. Eating such refined corn meal was one of the causes of pellagra in the South, or so it was speculated many years ago. Refined corn also causes a B vitamin depletion in the body, the same as refined wheat flour.
Pasta such as macaroni, spaghetti, noodles, etc. are usually made from semolina which is a refined white flour made from wheat. It, too, is like eating “white bread.”
Of course, all such pastries like cookies, cakes, pies, doughnuts, and other such desserts are made with both refined flour and refined sugar and are “double-trouble.”
For improved health, all such flour products, whether made from white flour or whole-wheat flour or whatever, should be eliminated from the diet. Once a grain is made into flour, rapid deterioration of the food starts, regardless of the amount of any additional refining or processing.
Are you telling me that I should never eat another slice of bread? I always eat bread with about every meal. What could be wrong with that?
Whether or not you eat bread, or any food, is something only you can decide. We only try to present facts upon which you can base a rational decision. Most people eat foods without knowing the true nature of the food itself. Bread is a good example of this. Bread has been on the table for hundreds of years. It is a familiar food, so much that we frequently confuse its familarity with its necessity.
Most bread eaten today bears no resemblance to the bread of the past. You’re eating a slice of fortified chemicals in a plastic, pasty form. This includes most whole wheat and other “organic” breads sold today as well as white bread.
Even if you can get “good” bread or make your own, bread is not a recommended food. For one thing, as you yourself said, people tend to eat it with every meal and all sorts of foods. Bread is a very starchy food, and if it is eaten at all, it should only be consumed with leafy green vegetables and little else.
There are better ways to eat grains, if you wan! them, instead of in bread or any flour products. Once you grind grains into flour, you’ve begun the total destruction of a food that was not optimum to begin with.
Of course, we’re not “telling” you to do any one thing or the other, nor are we saying something is “wrong” or “right.” We only wish to present the facts, as we currently understand them, about grains and grain products. You are to evaluate that information, and make your own decision as you see it for better health.
Most people in the world make grains a major part of their diet. Japan has rice, Mexico has corn, Europe uses wheat. Are you saying all these people are wrong?
Again, it is not a matter of right or wrong. When foods are in short supply, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, grains have served as a substitute for optimum nutrition. We should not allow a substitute to become a standard simply because it is widely used. Then, too, remember a distinction is made between whole grains and refined grains. If all these people had eaten refined grain products for all these years, I doubt if there would be many people left in the world today.
In America, Argentina, and New Zealand, for example, meat-eating is more widespread than grain eating. Do sheer numbers make a practice advisable or not? We’re not playing a numbers game with nutrition—good health and diets are not dictated by majority rule.
My children just won’t eat anything except cereals for breakfast. When I try to give them something else to eat, they become cranky and cry and refuse to eat it. What should I do?
There have been very few incidents where children immediately drop dead when not fed breakfast. If your children refuse to eat a healthy breakfast (usually fresh fruits), then serve them nothing at all. Better to go without food than to eat the sugared, chemical mess that is disguised as food in cereal boxes.
The fact that the children complain, whine and cry should indicate to you that they have become “addicted” to the sugar in the cereals. When their blood-sugar renormalizes and they kick the cereal habit, they will welcome wholesome foods such as bananas or grapes or melon for breakfast.
What’s worse—white flour or white sugar?
An interesting question. I hope you’re not considering eating the less harmful of the two! Actually, you often find these two items used together in foods—like in cakes, pies, doughnuts, cookies, pastries, and so on. The sugar rots your teeth and destroys your nerves while the white flour constipates you and gives you an acid stomach. I know of few white foods that exist in nature. White sugar, white flour, salt, cocaine, heroin, refined fructose—all the white powdery, grainy “foods” are drugs and poisons. Mushrooms I suppose are one of the few natural “white” foods—but even these are often poisonous and substandard foods for humans. So if your food doesn’t have attractive colors (like yellow, red, green, etc.), you should probably avoid it (this would of course mean not eating black, grey and browned meats).
There are a number of “foods” which may be classified as pure starch: bleached flour, degerminated corn meal, corn-starch, white rice, “instant mashed potato” powder, dextrose, etc. When these refined starches are introduced into the body, a high percentage of the starch is quickly broken down into simple sugars. The sudden flood of sugar into the bloodstream stimulates the pancreas to produce an excess of insulin. The insulin rapidly burns the sugar, causing the blood-sugar level to drop far below normal. A prolonged state of low blood-sugar has been known to cause brain damage. Even short periods of low blood-sugar may cause trembling of the hands, temporary loss of visual control, alternating spasm and weakness in the muscles over the whole body, and many other effects.
Unfortunately, most people in the “highly advanced” nations are eating an ever-increasing proportion of foods composed primarily of pure-starch, sugar, salt, and plastic fat.
Many people have read of explosions in coal mines (from coal dust), but how many people have heard about explosions in flour mills? Many mill workers have discovered, the hard way, that one pound of white flour (suspended in air) has more explosive potential than one pound of T.N.T. The ignition factor may be a spark from the brushes of an electric motor.
Over the past one hundred years, dozens of flour mills have been blasted to bits, each of them destroyed by less white flour than the average American eats in one year.
The explosive potential of refined white flour indicates its chemical nature. It is a highly reactive chemical mixture when certain factors are added.
The human body has hundreds of chemicals involved in the act of living. Add to this the highly reactive chemical mix commonly called “white flour” and all manner of physical derangements will occur.
Such as used in icings and fillings for doughnuts, cookies, and cakes.
One flavoring product, labeled Imitation Strawberry, listed the following ingredients: Vanillin and other aldehydes, ethyl butyrate and other esters, oil lemon and other essential oils, Butyric and other organic acids, benzodi-hydropyrone, ionone and other ketones, alcohol, propylene glycol, water, artificial color and 0.1% benzoate of soda.
This chemical concoction is only the flavoring; there is also additional artificial coloring added to the “food.”
A point to ponder: Most of these chemicals are made from coal and crude oil. Remember those news spots on television showing all the sea birds, fish and clams which died from ingesting crude oil from tanker spills?
The basic grains used worldwide are wheat, rice, oats, rye, barley, millet, corn. Grains have been the mainstay of whole populations—particularly rice and wheat. The reason for this universal reliance on grains is the ease of cultivation, the short growing and maturing time and the facility of bulk transportation and storage for long periods of time. Grains used today are generally refined products and constituted almost exclusively of starch.
Cereals and grains, in their whole grain dry state, may contribute beneficially to the diet of man. But it must be pointed out that even in their most complete state they are not a necessary food and are quite inferior to true foods for man—vegetables, fruits and nuts.
Refined flour (made from any of the grains) is a devitalized substance not suited for human consumption. In fact, it contributes to the general degeneration of those who consume it. It has become one of the principal items in the diets of modern men in the form of bread, rolls, cakes, cookies, spaghetti, etc. There is no way that such devitalized flour can be ‘revitalized,’ ‘enriched’ or in any way improved by the addition of elements needed in nutrition (vitamins, minerals, etc.). It remains a nonfood, pure starch, of the worst order. Breads and pastries as the “staple” of the diets of modern life are the source of much of the physical distress of man.
Cereals in the form to be soaked and cooked and the roasted flaked cereals in common use today are produced from denatured grains and are a true curse to mankind. These devitalized substances, further adulterated with sugar, salt, preservatives, chemicals, coloring and artificial flavoring, are contributing to the rapid proliferation of disease among modern man.
Cereals and cereal products (starches) are among the most difficult substances to digest when eaten alone. When eaten in combination with protein, the results are disastrous, resulting in extreme fermentation, gas, acids and intoxication.
Cereal starches require about 10 times longer to digest than do potato starches—the longer the digestion period, the more the fermentation.
Cereals, grains and all concentrated starch foods are unwholesome for human consumption and should be carefully omitted from any health-promoting diet.
32.1. The Principle Hygienic Concern Is Optimal Health
32.2. The Best Fuel For The Human Body
32.3. Flesh Foods Cause Degenerative Disease
32.4. Vegetarianism Is Receiving More Attention
32.5. The Evidence Is Mounting
32.6. Modern Methods Accentuate Risks
32.7. Eating Low On The Food Chain
32.8. Meat-Based Diet Presents Complex And Grave Nutritional Problems
32.9. A Healthful Diet Without Meat
Article #1: Osteoporosis: The Key To Aging by Robin Hur
Article #2: Vegetarian Mother’s Milk Safer
Article #3: Booklet Review - Meat And The Vegetarian Concept, Part I
Article #4: Booklet Review - Meat And The Vegetarian Concept, Part II
Article #5: Scientific Vegetarian Nutrition
Article #6: What’s Wrong With Your T-Bone Steak? by Alvin E. Adams, M.D.
Article #7: Fishitarian Or Vegetarian? The Difference Might Be Fatal! by Bob Pinkus
Article #8: The Facts About Vitamin B12 by Robin Hur
Article #9: Wolf! Wolf! by V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Article #10: The Vitamin B12 Hoax by V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Article #11: It’s A Lie! Vegans Are Not Lacking In Vitamin B12 by V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Article #12: A Normal Source of Vitamin B12 by V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Article #13: Well! You Wanted to Know! by V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C
Article #14: Case History: How We Suddenly Became Vegetarians by Arthur S. Harris, Jr.
Article #15: Dark Humor: Rigor Mortis on the Dinner Plate by Coleman McCarthy Washington Post
In the study of Natural Hygiene, we are concerned primarily with lifestyle and eating patterns which will result in optimal health and longevity. Much has been written about the “Vegetarian Alternative,” and the many reasons for avoiding the consumption of meat—all flesh foods: beef, veal, lamb, poultry and fish. Such reasons run the gamut from compassion and humanitarianism, ethics and morality, religion, aesthetics, ecology, conservation of resources (land, water, energy, food), economics—and better health.
In this lesson, we will be concerned with the anatomical, physiological, pathological and nutritional reasons for eliminating flesh foods from the human diet, and why optimal health is not possible on a meat-based diet. We will discuss the health problems that can be caused by the consumption of flesh foods, and the vibrant health that can be attained (or regained) by adherence to Hygienic principles of living and eating—without flesh foods.
The human body can be maintained on a conglomerate assortment of foods, or our race would have long since vanished. A gasoline engine can operate on kerosene, but it will clog up, parts will wear out sooner, and its serviceable life will be greatly reduced.
The human body will also work best and last longest when fed the fuel intended for man and on which he will best survive: raw fruits, raw vegetables, raw unsalted nuts and seeds, and sprouted legumes and grains. The biological equipment of humans is such that the body is much more capable of obtaining complete and optimal nutrition, without threat or stress, from plant foods.
It is a fact that all nutritive material is formed in the plant kingdom—animals have the power to appropriate but never to form or create food elements. Plants can synthesize amino acids from air, earth and water, but animals—including humans—are dependent on plant protein, either directly by eating the plant, or indirectly by eating an animal which has eaten the plant.
A plant-eater utilizes one-tenth of the energy stored in his food—a meat-eater utilizes from meat only one-hundredth of the energy that was originally stored in the primary source, the plants. (Robert H. Dunn, M.D., M.P.H., Director of Preventive Medicine, Washington Adventist Hospital, Introduction to Meat on the Menu: Who Needs It? by Raymond H. Woolsey, published 1974.)
Out of the amino acids found in plant and/or animal tissues used as food, the living organism synthesizes the numerous proteins needed by the cells and tissues of its own body. There are no amino acids in flesh that the animal did not derive from the plant, and that man cannot also derive from the plant.
Those who eat animals get only the nutritional elements which the animals have obtained from vegetation, and are of necessity deteriorated with the impurities. and putrescence invariably present in their blood and tissues.
When you eat foods from the plant kingdom, you receive the amino acids in ideal combinations with other substances which are essential to the full utilization of protein: carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, enzymes, hormones—in addition to chlorophyll, which only plants can supply.
The best sources of concentrated protein for many are raw, unsalted nuts and seeds. In the raw state, all enzymes are intact and the amino acids are wholesomely alive and unchanged. They contain all the vitamins, minerals, trace elements, carbohydrates, hormones—and the life force necessary for the human organism to produce tissue and other body constituents of the highest quality.
32.3.1 Anatomical and Physiological Basis for Rejecting Flesh Foods
32.3.2 Morbid Results of Eating Flesh Foods
The habitual and frequent use of large amounts of flesh foods in the diet is actually one of the causes of degenerative disease in a substantial percentage of the population. The decrease in, or elimination of, flesh foods from the diet is one of the important steps toward optimal health.
Man’s anatomy and physiology are poorly adapted to the processing of meat, and it cannot be done without some putrefaction (in addition to the putrefaction already present in the meat at the time it is consumed). The result is toxemia, which is the starting point of degenerative diseases like gout, arthritis, heart disease, hardening of the arteries, stroke, osteoporosis, cancer, etc.
There is a sound anatomical and physiological basis for the recommendation against the consumption of flesh foods. The human anatomy and digestive system are totally dissimilar from those of carnivores, which have sharp claws and teeth for killing and tearing. Carnivorous animals have short intestinal canals, and strong secretions of hydrochloric acid, so as to quickly digest and expel the waste products of the flesh they consume, before putrefaction can occur.
Flesh-eating animals also have the enzyme uricase, which breaks down uric acid into a harmless substance called allantoin; man does not possess this enzyme. Vegetable proteins, including nuts and seeds, contain enough carbohydrates to render this enzyme unnecessary.
The carbohydrate content of nuts also prevents a process called de-amination. Because the carbohydrate content of flesh foods is negligible, conventional nutritionists advocate eating protein with a carbohydrate since it is thought that the presence of carbohydrates is necessary for the digestion of protein and, when none are present, the liver will break down some of the amino acids and convert them to carbohydrates. If this is true (and the experiments have not been conclusive), then it is obvious that the nuts supplied to us by Nature come completely packaged along with their digestive requirements, while flesh foods do not.
Lesson 18 of this course includes a preliminary discussion of this subject and contains an interesting chart, “Classification of Animals,” which is an effective demonstration of the fact that man is not a carnivore.
One of the comparisons that is made in this chart is the length of the alimentary canals, which are three times the length of the body in the carnivora, ten times the length of the body in the omnivora, and twelve times the length of the body in the anthropoid apes and in humans. These figures, of course, are approximate. Gray’s anatomy gives the length of the human alimentary canal as approximately thirty feet.
Hereward Carrington, in The Natural Food of Man, says that some have made the blunder of calling the proportionate length of the human alimentary canal one to six instead of one to twelve, by doubling the height through measuring humans while they are standing erect. He says, “This measurement is evidently wrong, for it includes the length of the lower extremities, or hind legs, whereas, in other animals, the measurement is made from the tip of the nose to the end of the backbone.”
The human digestive tract is about four times as long as in the carnivorous animal. The gastric juices of humans have less active antiseptic and germicidal properties. The intestine of the carnivore is short and smooth, to dissolve food rapidly and pass it out of the system. The human digestive tract is corrugated or sacculated, for the express purpose of retaining the food as long as possible in the intestine until all possible nutriment has been extracted from it.
These (and the other anatomical and physiological characteristics of the human digestive system) are the worst possible conditions for the processing of flesh foods. The excessive secretion of bile (necessitated for the digestion of flesh foods) may result in the premature breakdown of the liver, and the large quantities of uric acid created by a flesh diet may have disastrous effects on the kidneys. Dr. Robert Perk says that the excess of uric acid “causes contraction of the minute blood vessels, resulting in high arterial tension and often the blocking of the blood vessels by the uric acid. This results in serious interference with the circulation and blood supply to the tissues and throws great strain on the vital organs, especially the heart and kidneys.” (Scientific Vegetarianism, Szekely, p. 44.)
Meat is the most putrefactive of all foods. Flesh, when eaten by humans, tends to undergo a process of decay in the stomach, causing a poisoning of the blood. Putrefaction in meat eaters is evidenced by bad breath, heartburn, eructations, and the foul stool and odorous emissions—absent in vegetarians—and it is probable that the attempts of the body to eliminate these wastes has a profound influence on the shortening of man’s life span.
If the body fluid that bathes our cell’s is overloaded with waste, causing an excessive secretion of bile—fatigue, weakening and aging are the inevitable results. The accumulation of toxic substances in the body causes the deterioration of the intestinal flora, and the blood vessels gradually lose their natural elasticity—their walls become hardened and thickened. Irreversible damage to the organism proliferates.
Meats contain waste products that the animal did not get to eliminate, and toxic hormones and fluids released into the blood stream and tissues at the moment of the death of the terrified animal.
An animal’s cellular life continues after death. The cells continue to produce waste materials which are trapped in the blood and decaying tissues. The nitrogenous extracts which are trapped in the animal’s muscles are partially responsible for the flavor of the cooked meat.
Humans who eat the livers of the animals are bombarded with an even greater concentration of waste products and toxic substances. The liver, being the filtering organ of the body, is loaded with elements the body cannot use, which are trapped in the liver and remain there. Liver eaters are treated to higher concentrations of mercury and artificial hormones, plus other “goodies” that remain in the animal’s disposal system.
Liver increases, even more than muscle meat, the amount of creatine in the urine. Creatinuria (abnormal amounts of creatine in the urine) is involved in endocrine (glandular) disorders.
Meat not only harbors the bacteria infecting the living animal, but it may also carry molds, spores, yeasts and bacilli picked up during postmortem handling.
A book on meat processing explains that the flesh becomes more tender and palatable by the process of ripening, hanging and maturing (aging). Vic Sussman, in The Vegetarian Alternative, pp. 149-150, says, “Few meat eaters would like to hear the words putrefaction, rigor mortis, and rotting applied to their sirloin and pot roast. But flesh is flesh, though the euphemisms ripening, toughening and enzymatic action are kinder to the ear.”
Trained government inspectors use sight, smell and touch in a constant battle to protect meat eaters from intentional and accidental abuses. But effective regulation of flesh food is enormously difficult. Sussman says (p. 151) “Even the most conscientious inspectors are forced by circumstances and the pressure of time to let suspect carcasses leave the plant.”
Those who eat processed meats also get many of the odds and ends of the animals—eyes, ears, bladders, lips, udders, snouts and parts of the bones and skin. Not even a meat inspector can tell from what part of the body the sausages and frankfurters came—it is all meat tissue, and all legal. (Woolsey, Meat on the Menu…, pp. 21-22.)
In his pediatrics textbook, Dr. Emmet L. Holt of New York City says that if two dogs were put on a leash and one fed water and the other beef tea, the dog getting the water would live longer, because beef tea does not contain any nourishment if the fat is skimmed off, but does contain urinary wastes, which poison the dog.
Owen S. Parrette, M.D., in Why I Don’t Eat Meat, p. 13, says that when he was a medical student, the class was given glass test tubes to be used for growing bacteria that are present in human diseases such as typhoid, staphylocci, and bubonic plague. “The professor had us make up some beef tea, pour a little into each test tube, and place a cotton cork on top. We sterilized the tubes and later inoculated them with these dangerous bacteria. The germs all thrived on the beef tea. It was a perfect medium for them.”
Carrington also says (p. 109), “Meat-eating is the more or less direct cause of various diseases.” The tapeworm embryos are carried by beef, pork and fish. The deadly trichina parasite is found mainly in pork, but also in fish, fowl and other meats. Trichinosis closely resembles cerebro-spinal meningitis. Tuberculosis has been communicated from cattle, typhoid fever from oysters. Epilepsy has been traced to meat-eating.
Twenty-six diseases, including salmonellosis, staphylococcus and psittacosis, are known to be common to both man and poultry. (Meat on the Menu..., Woolsey, p. 27.)
Since little or no progress has been made in eradicating these dangers, the only people who are immune are those who never eat meat. Authorities recognize that the basic problem is with the nature of the product itself. The National Academy of Science reports, “Reluctantly, we are forced to recognize the infeasibility of eradicating salmonellosis at this time.” (“An evaluation of the Salmonella Problem,” National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 1969)
The late Dr. John Harvey Kellogg said, when he sat down to his vegetarian meal, “It is nice to eat a meal and not have to worry about what your food may have died from.”
In addition to directly causing certain diseases, meat-eating also predisposes the body to disease. In pestilences of any character, meat-eaters are the chief sufferers. Wounds heal far more rapidly in vegetarian soldiers. Carnivores are far more subject to blood poisoning than are vegetarians. Vegetarians survive major operations more frequently than meat-eaters. (Carrington, pp. 111-112).
John A. Scharffenberg, M.D., in Problems with Meat says, “Meat is a major factor in the leading causes of death in the United States, and probably in similarly affluent societies. In fact, next to tobacco and alcohol, meat is the greatest single cause of mortality in the United States.” He makes this statement on p. 101 of his well-documented book, in summarizing “the formidable and persuasive scientific evidence we now have.” He marshals this scientific evidence of the disease potential of meat and the relationship of meat to these specific problems: atherosclerosis, cancer, decrease in longevity or life expectancy, kidney disorders, osteoporosis, salmonellosis, and trichinosis. He quotes an editorial statement in the Journal of the American Medical Association: “A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions.” (Editor: Diet and Stress in Vascular Disease, JAMA, 76:134-35, 1961).
Several more recent, well-organized studies have identified the risk factors of atherosclerosis and heart attacks: a 1970 study by twenty-nine voluntary health agencies, in cooperation with the American Medical Association (these study groups consisted of many of the nation’s top scientists); a 1977 study by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs: a twelve-year Finnish Mental Hospital Study (Effect of cholesterol-lowering diet on mortality from coronary heart disease and other causes, Lancet 2:835-38, 1972); and a 1975 study comparing Seventh Day Adventists who had different dietary habits. The Seventh Day Adventist study revealed a 64% vulnerability to coronary heart disease in meat-users, 40% for lacto-ovo-vegetarians, and 23% for total vegetarians. The 1977 study by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs reported the significant deleterious influence of. the consumption of dietary cholesterol (animal fat) and recommended the increased use of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and a decrease in the use of foods containing saturated fat (animal fat).
A consideration of an article from Today’s Health, published by the American Medical Association, appeared in the February 1975 Readers’ Digest. The article states: “Americans are meat eaters by tradition. Yet statistics show that vegetarians in this country are thinner, in better health, with lower blood cholesterol, than their flesh-eating fellow citizens. They may even live longer.”
The article mentions studies by Dr. Frederick Stare (!!) of Harvard and Dr. Mervyn Hardinge, Loma Linda, California School of Health, indicating that vegetarians have consistently lower levels of cholesterol. (It is rare indeed that Dr. Stare is ever “caught” criticizing the conventional diet.)
Quoting further from the article: “Meat eaters also may be bothered by poor elimination. Food with a low fiber content, such as meat, moves sluggishly through the digestive tract, making stools dry and hard to pass. Vegetables, by contrast, retain moisture and bind waste bulk for easy passage.”
The article cites documentation of the excellent health and longevity enjoyed by the Hunzas of Pakistan and the Otomi Indians of Mexico, confirmed by field investigations of these nonmeat cultures.
Reference is made to the experiences of Denmark and Norway, where the general health of the people improved when vegetarian diets were adopted during World Wars I and II, including a significant reduction in heart disease. “Both nations, however, reverted to meat diets as soon as the crises passed, and subsequent studies showed that the temporary health advantages apparently subsided.”
Remember, THIS INFORMATION WAS PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION IN 1975. Since then, vegetarianism and low-fat diets in general have been receiving more attention, and reports are trickling down of medical doctors who are recommending eliminating meat from the diets of arthritis and cancer patients, and even of medical doctors who are acknowledging the health benefits of vegetarianism for themselves and all of their patients.
Autopsies performed in Korea showed that 75% of American soldiers had hardened arteries, regardless of their age. Korean soldiers, on a simple diet of vegetables, grains, and very little meat, showed essentially no hardening of the arteries.
Worms are found in fish taken in the cold waters of Yellowstone Lake, and even in fish taken twenty miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Parrette’s Why I Don’t Eat Meat, published in 1972, says on page 17, “On the desk in in front of me is a clipping from a recent Los Angeles Times entitled “Disease Causes Halt of Some Trout Imports.” The article tells of the California Fish and Game Department turning back six tank cars of rainbow trout fingerling that were shipped into California to stock our lakes and streams, but were found to be infected with liver cancer ... Rabbits are susceptible to diseases of many kinds. As a lad, I had a friend who used to hunt rabbits and sell them. I often helped him clean them and noticed that nearly all the cottontails were infected with tapeworm.”
The rapid rise of leukemia in cattle calls our attention to the fact that blood cancer, or leukemia, is now a major cause of death among children in the United States.
Meat has been implicated in a wide variety of factors and processes known to be associated with cancer, including the following:
It has been demonstrated that cancer can be transmitted from one (animal or human) species to another.
When one considers the evidence of the cancer-causing potential of meat, it seems incredible that it is ignored by so many intelligent people. Malignant tumors are found in animals. Many years ago I saw a tremendous tumor on the “innards” of a chicken that had been sold at the City Market in Indianapolis. I witnessed the noisy altercation between the indignant customer who was returning the chicken and the proprietor of the stand. An .exchange was made, and the returned chicken was dipped in water and returned to the sales counter.
In addition to cancerous tumors in fowl, there is a carrier form which is impossible to detect except by painstaking laboratory experiments. “The conclusions drawn must consider the possibility that all chickens show the basic microscopic lesions of lymphomatosis.” (Dr. Eugene F. Oakberg, Poultry Science, May, 1950, p. 434)
Colon cancer is acknowledged to be the predominant type of cancer in the United States and the second leading cause of cancer mortality. An article in the Wall Street Journal several years ago tells about a study of colon cancer by Dr. William Haenzel, Dr. John W. Berg and others at the National Cancer Institute, as a result of which Dr. Berg said, “There is now substantial evidence that beef is a key factor in determining bowel cancer incidence.”
Scientists have reported evidence that two characteristics of meat-based diets are specific influences in colon cancer:
Dr. Ernest L. Wynder, president of the American Health Foundation, and a long-time cancer researcher, reported long ago that the results of his studies had convinced him of the cancer hazards of diets high in animal fats. On March 31, 1982, Dr. Wynder, now renowned as the health detective who first linked smoking and cancer a generation ago, reiterated his findings. He said that a low animal fat, high fiber, fresh fruit and vegetable diet helps fight both cancer and heart disease. He said that the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute also recommend such a diet.
Sussman (The Vegetarian Alternative, p. 61) gives documented reports about experiments with an anti-cancer enzyme, which can be produced by the liver, depending on the components of the diet. Dr. Leo Wattenberg of the University of Minnesota School of Medicine isolated the dietary elements that increased ability to produce this enzyme. The agents (called indoles) that induced formation of this enzyme were found in alfalfa, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, celery, turnips, broccoli and cauliflower. Citrus fruits also contain similar enzyme-inducing agents (flavones) and beans and seeds yield a type of plant protein (lectins) that also has demonstrated cancer-resisting effects.
Dr. Anthony B. Miller, director of the National Cancer Institute of Canada, said: “Evidence suggests that certain foods, particularly high intake of dietary fat, are associated with increased risk of colorectal, pancreatic, breast, endometrial, ovarian, prostate and possibly renal cancer.” He also recommends increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Although these doctors aren’t specifically advocating totally vegetarian diets, it is interesting to note that more and more “conventional” professional people are warning against high consumption of animal fat, and recommending increased use of fresh produce.
Hygienists, of course, prefer not to use any part of the animal as food, and find it difficult to understand how so many people can ignore the overwhelming evidence against the use of flesh in the diet.
Most of the deleterious influences of meat-eating which have been discussed thus far apply to any flesh foods, even those which are raised the “old-fashioned” way, without chemicals or hormones. The “modern” methods of producing and marketing flesh foods, and fish taken from polluted waters, increase the risks astronomically.
Those who eat processed meats are not only treated to sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite (which, together, form cancer-causing nitrosamines in the body), they also get sodium sulphite. Sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite are used as preservatives to retard the putrefaction process in processed meats (frankfurters, salami, bologna, sausage, etc.) The food can still spoil, but it is not as obvious.
Consumer Reports, February 1972, p. 76, reported that, after studying samples from thirty-two brands of frankfurters bought in supermarkets throughout the United States, researchers stated: “Food experts generally agree that putrefaction has set in when a frankfurter’s total bacteria count has reached ten million per gram. With that as a yardstick, more than forty per cent of the samples we analyzed had begun to spoil. One sample tested out at 140 million per gram.”
Dr. Charles C. Edwards, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, testified before a House Subcomittee in March 1971, stating that sodium nitrite is potentially dangerous to small children, can cause deformities in fetuses, can cause serious damage to anemic persons, and is a possible cause of cancer.
Sodium sulphite is used to give meat a fresh, red appearance, even after it has become rancid and turned black. This chemical will change it back to bright red, and will also “miraculously” eliminate the strong odor of putrefaction.
Dr. Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest says that sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite in processed meats have caused numerous cases of blood poisoning (methemoglobinemia), many reported in medical journals. He says that meat contains residues of more than a dozen chemicals used to fatten the animals— all of them proven in the laboratory to cause cancer.
The chemicals and hormones are mixed and administered on the farms by stockmen, who often use greater than recommended amounts, and fail to withdraw drugs far enough ahead of slaughter.
Both penicillin and tetracycline are routinely used in poultry and cattle feed. When the FDA moved toward restricting the addition to animal feed of antibiotics that are also used to combat human diseases (because of the consequent growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria), the meat industry was outraged at the proposal.
Most laws relating to “wholesome” meat apply only to their processing. Some local laws apply to monitoring of sanitary conditions in the market. After that, the consumer is at the mercy of the retailer. Labeling, classification, pricing are variable and undependable. “Economical management” by market owners does not always include discarding spoiled meat. Mold can be washed off, or the meat can be recycled by cutting up, grinding, adding spices, or cooking to disguise color, odor and taste.
“Hearings before a Senate Investigating Committee in 1969 revealed that a major, brand-name, nationally famous meat packer on the West Coast accepted unsold meats from retailers and repackaged and recirculated them. Reasons for returning included moldy, sour, discolored, slick and slimy.‘” (Woolsey, “Meat on the Menu...” p. 38).
Charcoal broiled steaks contain an average of nine micrograms of benzopyrene, a cancer-producing agent. The fat dripping into the fire changes the chemical properties of the fat and the benzopyrene goes up in the smoke from the charcoal and coats the steaks.
Eating low on the food chain significantly reduces the threat of pesticide residues. Tests in Britain have shown the pesticide residue levels to be highest in meat eaters, lower in lacto-vegetarians, and lowest in total vegetarians.
This is due to the concentrating factor as the contaminant goes through the additional link in the ecological chain, and the animal concentrates the pollutant in its body. The meat eater may eat in a few minutes the pesticides that an animal has accumulated over a lifetime.
A study by the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Defense Fund revealed that breast milk of vegetarian women contained significantly lower levels of pesticide residues than that of meat-eating women.
Further research by author Nat Altman disclosed that vegetables and nuts contain about 1/7 the pesticide residues of flesh foods; fruits and legumes about 1/8 as much; and grains about 1/24 as much.
32.8.1 “Complete Protein” Status of Meat?
32.8.3 Meat is Highly Stimulating and Innutritious
Even beyond the grave dangers presented by meat-based diets is the misconception that meat is an ideal nutritional source against which vegetable proteins are measured and found wanting. The fact is that it is much more difficult to have even a reasonably good diet with meat than without it.
In the first place, even the much vaunted “complete protein” status of meat is, at best, based on a colossal error (if not a hoax). The complete protein of the animal could exist only if the animal were consumed raw and whole. Meat-eating animals eat the blood, bones, cartilages, liver, etc. of their prey—not just the muscle and fat. They eat it raw—so that they do not lose any of the mineral elements. The muscle meats (most commonly consumed by humans) are grossly inadequate as a protein source.
On the other hand, humans who eat the livers of the animals don’t win either. As previously indicated, those who eat liver are exposed to greater concentrations of morbid substances. Even though liver is touted as an optimal source of such substances as iron, Vitamin A and Vitamin B-12, it can hardly be regarded as anything remotely resembling wholesome food.
For years, conventional nutritionists have maintained that complete and optimal nutrition is assured on a diet using animal foods as the primary source of protein, and that a vegetarian diet presents many problems. Dr. Scharffenberg produces well-documented scientific evidence (Problems with Meat) indicating that the truth is exactly the opposite.
Meat is one of the main sources of food that provide little fiber—flesh foods lengthen the average transit time through the gastrointestinal tract from thirty hours to seventy-seven hours.
Colon cancer patients produce more than normal amounts of bile acids which enhance cancer growth. A more rapid transit time through the digestive tract reduces exposure time to these acids.
Meat contains virtually no carbohydrates and is excessively high in fat and concentrated protein.
Dr. Bircher-Benner, the great Swiss physician, said, “Meat does not give strength. Its composition is one-sided, lacking certain minerals and vitamins, and it introduces too much fat and protein into the system, disturbing the balance of nutrition and giving rise to intestinal putrefaction.”
Hereward Carrington, The Natural Food of Man, p. 114, says, “In the first place it must be pointed out and insisted upon that meat is a highly stimulating article of food, and for that reason, innutritious. Stimulation and nutrition invariably exist in inverse ratio—the more the one, the less the other, and vice versa. The very fact, then, that meat is a stimulant, as it is now universally conceded to be, shows us that it is more or less an innutritious article of diet, and that the supposed “strength” we receive from the meat is due entirely to the stimulating effects upon the system of the various poisons, or toxic substances, introduced into the system, together with the meat. It is for this reason that those who leave off meat and become vegetarians experience a feeling of lassitude and weakness for the first few days—they lack the stimulation formerly supplied, and now notice the reaction which invariably follows such stimulation. This feeling of weakness, or “all-goneness,” is therefore to be expected, and is in no way a proof that the diet is weakening the patient. Let him persist in his reformed manner of living for some time, and he will find that this reaction wears off, and that a general and continued feeling of energy and well-being follow.”
Protein is the most complex of all food elements, and its utilization is the most complicated. People with impaired digestions will find it preferable to ingest a lesser quantity of concentrated protein, which they are capable of utilizing, rather than a greater quantity, which not only cannot be processed efficiently, but which may poison the body. When protein is eaten in greater amounts than the body is capable of utilizing, the organism is subjected to the toxic byproducts of protein metabolism, which it has been unable to eliminate—and the inevitable result is degenerative disease.
The tremendous amounts of protein frequently recommended—75 to 100 grams daily (or more)—are far in excess of the body’s needs, and are the source of much trouble.
The famous nutritionists Dr. Ragnar Berg, Dr. R. Chittenden, Dr. M. Hindehede, Dr. M. Hegsted, Dr. William C. Rose, and others, have shown in extensive experiments that our actual need for protein is somewhere around thirty grams a day, or even less. Many leading contempporary scientists and nutritionists in Europe, such as Dr. Ralph Bircher, Dr. Bircher-Benner, Dr. Otto Buchinger, Jr., Dr. H. Karstrom, Prof. H.A. Schweigart, Dr. Karl-Otto Aly, and many others, are in full agreement with the findings of Drs. Berg, Chittenden, Rose, et al, and are recommending a low protein diet as the diet most conducive to good health.
The Seventh-Day Adventists and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who advocate a low animal-protein diet, have fifty to seventy per cent lower death rates than those of average Americans. They also are reported to have a much lower incidence of cancer, tuberculosis, coronary diseases, blood and kidney disease, and diseases of the digestive and respiratory organs.
Bone calcium is at dangerously low levels in those using meat as compared to vegetarians, especially in people over fifty. A high-protein diet (especially meat protein) increases the urinary excretion of calcium. Thus vegetarians are less prone to osteoporosis (porous bones).
H. J. Curtis’ Biological Mechanism of Aging gives documentation of the role of high protein diets, particularly animal protein, in causing osteoporosis. Calcium is transferred from the hard tissues (bones) to the soft tissues (arteries, skin, joints, internal organs and eyes). The transfer of calcium to the soft tissues results in catastrophic fractures, hardening of the arteries, wrinkling of skin, arthritis, the formation of stones, cataracts, high blood pressure, degeneration of internal organs, loss of hearing, senility and cancer.
A study of elderly female vegetarians at Michigan State University showed they lost less bone to osteoporosis than a group of the same age that ate meat.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that when the protein intake of young men was raised to 140 grams per day, they all proceeded to lose bone calcium, even though they took liberal amounts of calcium and magnesium supplements and protein extracts which contained no fat and little phosphorus—the supplements didn’t help at all.
Young men had strong bone retention with protein intake of around fifty grams per day—only a reduction in protein consumption avoids the threat of osteoporosis.
Athletes who eat much meat are especially susceptible to arthrosis, a degenerative process of the joints. Among twenty conventional-diet professional football players who were observed for eighteen years, 100% incidence of ankle arthrosis and 97.5% of knee arthrosis were found.
A negative lime balance is easily produced by increased protein supply. The eminently important minerals—potassium and magnesium—are known to be deficient in an every day diet rich in meat, eggs, cheese, fat, sugar and grains, but richly present in a full-value vegetarian diet predominating in raw food.
Examples are repeatedly cited of robust and apparently healthy individuals who are heavy meat-eaters. Dr. L.H. Newberg of Ann Arbor University found that when he fed large quantities of meat to test animals, they grew bigger and more alert than other animals on a vegetarian diet. But three months later these animals contracted kidney damage and died, while the vegetarian animals lived on healthily and happily. (Wade, C., Vegetarianism, Herald of Health, LXXII, Ap. 1967, p. 14)
Accelerated growth = accelerated maturity, accelerated degeneration and accelerated demise. Rapid growth and short life go together, verified by repeated studies and experiments.
Since rapid maturation occurs as a result of high protein diets, this produces earlier onset of menstruation. Girls who start menstruation before thirteen have a 4.2 times greater incidence of cancer than those who start several years later. In countries with higher meat fat consumption, breast cancer mortality rates increase, and there is a higher incidence of colon and prostate cancer.
It must be emphasized that diet alone is not the single component in cancer and other degenerative diseases, but optimal nutrition does play a fundamental and preventive role, and faulty dietary habits play a causative role.
Kofranyi of the Max Planck Institute in Russia proved that complete nitrogen balance and performance ability could be maintained on 25 grams of protein daily, and Oomen and Hipsley found a population that develops not just full health, but magnificent structure and corresponding physical performance on 15 to 20 grams of protein daily.
Dr. Bircher-Benner describes the method used by the American Research Council’s Food and Nutrition Board to agree on a daily requirement for adults of seventy grams, found in their tables.
Sherman, a member of the board, said that evidence pointed toward a much lower amount, somewhere around thirty-five grams. But if the protein requirement had been set so low, there would have been a public outcry. And so, a corresponding “margin of safety” was adopted, and “seventy grams” was published. Because the scientific basis for this was nonexistent, the word “recommendation” was used instead of “requirement.” Of course it was publicly interpreted as the requirement, in fact, as the minimum.
“The smallest amount of food able to keep the body in a state of high efficiency is physiologically the most economical, and thus best adapted for the body’s needs.” This is the Chittenden concept, stated years ago by Russell Henry Chittenden, which applies forcibly to protein. The average American diet contains 45% more protein than even the National Academy of Sciences recommends, and is certainly not “best adapted for the body’s needs.”
Flesh eating is defended almost entirely on the premise that it is a source of superior proteins. The truth is exactly opposite. The pathological effects of encumbering our bodies with the proteins of other animals is Nature’s method of vetoing these proteins for human consumption, in order to promote the stability of the human species and to protect the health of the individual. Dr. Herbert M. Shelton says (Animal Foods—booklet) that allergy and anaphylaxis (see definition) are not mysterious; they are due to long-standing poisoning of the body by excess or inappropriate protein foods.
Animal proteins are often not reduced to their constituent amino acids, but are absorbed in more complex form. Absorption by the body of such partially digested proteins poisons the organism, and so-called “allergic symptoms” may be the result—or gout, arthritis, cancer, or any one or more of a host of degenerative diseases.
A meat-eater must also be concerned about digestive problems caused by too little dietary fiber; circulatory problems due to excessive cholesterol deposits from animal fats; loss of bone mass due to inadequate ingestion and retention of calcium; deficiency of vitamins and minerals; and inadequate carbohydrate intake (without increasing calories).
The Senate Committee recommended fifty to sixty per cent of daily calories from carbohydrates, but, actually, it should be more like ninety percent (provided, of course, that they are natural and not refined).
It is well-nigh impossible to solve such problems on a meat-based diet.
Dr. Scharffenberg says, “In contrast, contrary to conventional belief, it is simple for a vegetarian to maintain a healthful diet. There is no worry about cholesterol and little concern about saturated fat. Fiber and carbohydrate are adequate without any special calculation. HOW IRONIC THAT FOR SO LONG IT HAS BEEN THOUGHT THAT IT WAS THE VEGETARIAN WHO HAD DIFFICULTY.
IN LEARNING TO GET ADEQUATE NUTRITION... THE OLD WORRIES ABOUT A VEGETARIAN DIET BEING PROTEIN-DEFICIENT ARE GROUNDLESS AND SHOULD BE LAID TO REST.” (Caps mine—author)
The intelligently planned meatless diet has none of the disease problems of flesh foods and provides a dependable source of all the nutrients—including adequate protein.
Complex judgments or computations, such as are necessary in planning a meat-based diet, are obviated. It is extremely difficult for meat eaters to maintain a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, high in carbohydrates and fiber, and containing adequate calcium to compensate for the effects of meat in increasing excretion and transfer of calcium.
One of the favorite arguments of flesh eaters is that proteins from the plant kingdom are “incomplete,” because no one plant food contains all of the twenty-three identifiable amino acids (although the carrot, with twenty-two amino acids, comes quite close). Studies of man’s physiology, and the effects of his consumption of foods from the plant kingdom, have shown conclusively that it is not necessary to consume all of the amino acids at one sitting, not even the eight (some references say ten) “essential” amino acids that are not fabricated within the body.
The foods we eat are processed by the body, and the amino acids, vitamins and minerals, and other nutrients are reserved in a pool for later use as needed. When we eat, we replenish the reserves in this pool, to be drawn upon by the cell as required. We do not live upon one protein food, but upon the protein content of our varied diet, which supplies all of the protein needs of the body. Guyton’s “Guidance Textbook of Medical Physiology” is authority for this important information. The book contains five pages showing that amino acids are picked up from the bloodstream and cells of the body.
If you have read Diet for A Small Planet, you are familiar with Frances Moore Lappe’s assumption that it is necessary to consume all the “essential” amino acids at each meal, and her complicated “solution” to this “problem” for vegetarians by combining certain foods from the plant kingdom to form complete proteins, resulting in some abominable food combinations, which, of course, do not take into account human digestive limitations.
Nowhere in Nature is there any evidence of the necessity for such complicated maneuvering to obtain optimal nutrition. Not only are humans not dependent on the animal kingdom for their nutrition—it is also not necessary to play a numbers game with nutrients or foods at each meal.
New knowledge has completely reversed the old theory, which was based on studies between 1929 and 1950 that used purified amino acids. We eat foods—not purified amino acids Recurring studies reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association and other medical journals (since 1950) show that it is not necessary to feed complete protein at each meal. One such study by E.S. Nasset, reported in World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics 14:134-153, 1972, indicated that the body can make up any of the amino acids missing in a particular meal from its own pool of reserves, as long as a variety of foods are included in the diet.
Only gelatin and isolated protein factors are completely devoid of one or more amino acids. “Vegetable protein foods are not lacking totally in any specific amino acid.... the average vegetarian ingests adequate amounts of protein, and the amounts of essential amino acids in the diet not only meet the minimum requirements—they more than twice exceed them.” (Scharffenberg, Problems with Meat.)
There is also a proliferating availability of additional documentation of the fact that humans and animals fast for lengthy periods, and that, instead of suffering protein deficiency, the end of the fast finds them with restored protein balance. Those individuals who have experienced prolonged fasts (of perhaps fourteen days or longer) invariably have experienced remarkable improvement and hardening of the nails of the fingers and toes. During my twenty-nine day fast in 1967, I marveled at the improvement in my own finger nails, which lengthened and hardened, a new experience for me.
If the body were not capable of storing amino acids, this obviously could not have occurred during a period of abstention from all food. Nor could this have occurred if the protein supply were dependent on continuous and simultaneous external sources of all the essential amino acids.
It is true that protein is not stored in the body in the same sense that excess carbohydrate is stored as glycogen or fat. But the body can compensate for temporary deficiencies by withdrawing what it needs from the pool of materials within the organism—as material is sloughed off intestinal walls, from digestive secretions, and from the autolysis of old cells, fat, etc.
Many foods from the plant kingdom contain so-called “complete” proteins; that is, humans may obtain from them all of the essential amino acids which they cannot synthesize, but from which other amino acids may be synthesized as needed.
The argument that the best source for protein is meat because the analysis of animal protein (amino acids, particularly) is much closer to that of the human body than is plant protein is an excellent argument for cannibalism. If that contention were true, all animals would be best nourished by eating their own species since, obviously, that would be the only source of identical protein and their best source of optimal nutrition. I believe that even the heartiest flesh eaters would find this idea repugnant.
Besides, it must be remembered that no human can use the protein in the form in which it is consumed. It must always be disassembled into its constituents and reassembled or synthesized into the particular protein required by the cells and tissues of the new host. As previously explained, cooked and coagulated animal protein presents great difficulties in this necessary breakdown of the long chains of amino acids.
All nuts, except the hickory, contain complete proteins. This has been verified by experiments by Cajori, Kellogg and Berg. Sunflower seeds and sesame seeds are in the same category. Peanuts, beans, and a long list of vegetables also contain all the essential amino acids: carrots, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collard greens, fresh corn, cucumbers, eggplant, kale, okra, peas, potatoes, summer squash, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. This listing is by no means complete. Most vegetables, of course, contain lesser amounts of amino acids than do concentrated proteins like nuts, seeds and legumes. Soybeans (which may be sprouted and eaten raw) contain all of the essential amino acids—in fact, a higher quantity of all amino acids (weight for weight) than meat or eggs.
Some grains do not contain all of the essential amino acids (as far as has been presently determined). When grains are used together with an abundance of raw green vegetables, whichever amino acids are missing from the grains are well supplied by the green vegetables. But remember that you do not need to concern yourself about securing all of the essential amino acids at one sitting.
An adequate supply of protein in the overall diet is indispensable for normal health and well-being. But such an adequate supply of protein is not dependent on killing animals for food, nor upon using a calculator to add up the amino acids at each meal.
Use a variety of the available Hygienic foods—choosing from fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts—not all at each meal, of course—or even necessarily, every day—but over the course of the weekly diet.
Dr. Hoobler, who did some research at Yale University, demonstrated the superiority of nut protein. It was he who proved conclusively that the protein of nuts not only provides greater nutritive efficiency than that of meat, milk and eggs, but that it is also more effective than a combination of these three animal proteins.
Fruits and vegetables, though containing relatively smaller amounts of protein in their natural state, are excellent sources of supplementary amino acids for complete and optimal nutrition.
The protein in raw nuts and seeds, and in uncooked fruits and vegetables, are readily available to the body, and are therefore said to be of high biological value. During the process of digestion, the long chains of amino acids (the building blocks of protein) are gradually broken up for the body’s use in synthesizing its own protein (as any species must do).
It must be reiterated and re-emphasized: when proteins have been cooked or preserved, they are coagulated. Enzyme resistant linkages are formed which resist cleavage, and the amino acids may not be released for body use. In this case, the protein is useless and/or poisonous to the body, becoming soil for bacteria and poisonous decomposition byproducts.
Since the nutrients available from raw food are several hundred per cent greater than those available from food that has been cooked or otherwise processed, and since, obviously, flesh foods are usually not eaten raw by humans, this in itself would be an important reason why first-hand protein foods from the plant kingdom, which may be eaten uncooked, are superior.
Raw food decreases the need for protein in yet another way: the usual conventional diet requires six to eight grams of protein per day for the synthesis of digestive juices. But raw food, with all the enzymes intact, economizes on digestive enzymes.
Nuts are subject to few contaminating influences; they supply everything we can get from flesh foods, in better form, better condition, cleaner, more easily used, and without the risk of eating chemicalized or diseased flesh foods. And nuts can be eaten without cooking or processing.
Utilization of nuts is best if eaten with uncooked plant foods of high biological value, such as large green salads. Sprouted grains and legumes are excellent supplementary sources of protein of high biological value.
In abnormal conditions, as after a prolonged fast, recovery from a debilitating disease, during lactation or pregnancy, or during weight training, a slightly greater amount of protein may be necessary, if not in excess of the digestive capabilities of the body. Concentrated proteins are more difficult to digest than most other foods, and must be consumed within individual limitations rather than according to charts.
Some people are fearful that a diet which does not include animal proteins will be deficient in Vitamin B-12, and that they may become victims of pernicious anemia. Beef and beef liver are said to be the finest sources of B-12. Well, where does the herbivorous cow get this vitamin? Vitamin B-12 is manufactured by the friendly bacteria in the animal’s intestinal tract. This is true for all vegetarian animals, including the human being, as well.
A deficiency of Vitamin B-12, which is a forerunner of pernicious anemia, is not necessarily due to dietary inadequacy. A report released from a Vitamin B-12 Conference stated, “Pernicious anemia appears to arise not from shortage in the diet, but from impairment of the ability to absorb Vitamin B-12.” (Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 71st Scientific Meeting, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, January 5, 1952, p. 295)
Study after study has shown that the deficiency of Vitamin B-12 is due to the lack of absorption of the vitamin from the intestinal tract, due to the absence of “intrinsic factor,” a substance which is normally present in the gastric juices.
Putrefactive bacteria can destroy friendly bacteria, thus inhibiting the synthesis and absorption of Vitamin B-12. The principal cause of putrefaction in the digestive tract is the ingestion of cooked animal protein (though putrefaction can occur as a result of bad food combining, overeating of any concentrated protein foods, chemical additives and drugs).
There have been repeated instances of improvement in the condition of the blood as a result of fasting, plus subsequent improvement in the diet, especially when flesh foods are eliminated.
The myth that plants do not contain B-12 has been propagated and fostered by vested interests. The truth is that B-12 is found in plants in very small amounts. This is consistent with the fact that our need for Vitamin B-12 is miniscule (under one microgram (a millionth of a gram) daily, and the body can store it for two to eight years. (Vitamins of the B Complex, 1959 U.S. Department of Agriculture Yearbook of Agriculture, Section on Food, pp. 139-149) Robin Hur’s article in this lesson suggests that our actual need for Vitamin B-12 is considerably less than one microgram per day.
Vitamin B-12 has been found in significant amounts in many plant foods, some of which are bananas, dates, greens, peanuts, and particularly sprouts and raw sunflower seeds.
A correspondent to the New England Journal of Medicine (12/7/78, p. 1319) notes that vitamin B-12 is manufactured by micro-organisms, making it possible to obtain B-12 from certain seeds and nuts, and from soybeans. He also cites synthesis of the vitamin in the digestive tract of humans when adequate amounts of unheated seeds are eaten, and points to healthy babies who are breast-fed by strict vegetarian mothers.
In studies on vegetarian humans, Dr. Wolfgang Tiling discovered the synthesis of B-12 in the intestines of children on a soy milk diet.
Dr. Karl-Otto Aly of Sweden examined the Hunzakuts and they showed no B-12 deficiency symptoms, though they have been almost 100% vegetarians for 2,000 years.
Dr. Alec Burton (Australian Hygienic professional) has seen countless people go for 25 to 30 years on vegetarian diets, and never display a deficiency of Vitamin B-12.
Current research at Loma Linda University found excellent B-12 levels for tested vegans (people who eat plant foods only), who eat all, or most, of their food fresh and unheated. Vitamin B-12 is water soluble, and therefore best obtained in raw foods.
Studies have demonstrated that Vitamin B-12 is heat sensitive and normal cooking can destroy as much as 89% of it. High consumption levels of fat and protein, refined foods and tobacco increase the need for B-12, while at the same time interfering with the synthesis and absorption of B-12. Thus the conventional meat-eater may indeed be a more likely candidate for Vitamin B-12 deficiency and pernicious anemia than the individual on an adequate vegetarian diet.
I have known a number of people who were found to be deficient in B-12 and who were receiving injections of this vitamin, but they were all flesh eaters. I have never known a Hygienist or vegetarian who was receiving these injections.
The list is long of children who nursed at their vegan and Hygienic mothers’ breasts, and grew into exemplary specimens of perfect health: Dr. Virginia Vetrano’s daughter and granddaughter, Helen Lamar’s son, Dr. Bressak’s children, Jay Dinshah’s children, and others.
Vitamin B-12 (Cobalamin) is the only vitamin that contains a mineral—cobalt. It has been hypothesized that supplying this mineral to growing plants will increase their potential for being a source of the natural phenomenon which results in the production of Vitamin B-12.
Dr. Scharffenberg (p. 84, Problems with Meat) says: “The reality of the problems” (with meat-based diets) “is evident in the high mortality from cancer and atherosclerosis, among other disease problems, which makes it tragically obvious that it is not easy for the average person to learn how to eat properly on a meat diet.”
A summary of the specific health reasons for eliminating flesh foods from the diet follows.
As indicated at the beginning of this lesson, there are many other arguments against the use of flesh foods. In addition to the reasons listed there (that are not specifically health-related), the following should be included:
The poet Shelley maintained that there is no disease, bodily or mental, which a meatless diet does not mitigate. He said, “On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and only malady.”
How can I be sure I am getting enough protein? What percentage of the Hygienic diet should be concentrated protein—nuts, seeds or legumes?
First of all, don’t forget the considerable protein in sprouts, bananas, potatoes, and, of course, a variety of vegetables. Most foods (including fruit) contain some protein, even though they are not thought of as protein foods because they do not contain concentrated protein. Concentrated protein foods usually contain somewhere between eight and twenty-five per cent protein. Actually, the protein in the foods that are less concentrated is easier to digest and assimilate than that of any concentrated foods (concentrated proteins, starches, dried fruits).
Dr. Scharffenberg says that if 10% of a vegetarian diet contained concentrated proteins, the person would be getting approximately 56 grams of protein daily. If the concentrated protein were reduced to 5%, the individual would still be getting approximately 34 grams of protein daily—no deficiencies there! Even the Food and Nutrition Board regards 56 grams as the recommended daily allowance and 34 grams as the minimum required daily allowance. Hygienists know we need even less.
Dr. Scharffenberg calculates that about 28 grams would be enough to maintain nitrogen equilibrium, based on a calculation of a nitrogen loss each day equivalent to 20 grams of protein of 100% biological value. Hygienists know that the biological value of uncooked proteins is highest, and it is well-nigh impossible to come up protein-deficient on a Hygienic diet that includes a small percentage of concentrated protein foods. A vegetarian might be protein-deficient if he regularly ate a considerable percentage of “cheat foods” containing refined sugars and starches.
The following two studies indicate:
- The average vegetarian ingests adequate amounts of protein. (Hardinge, M.G.; Stare, F.J.; “Nutritional Studies of Vegetarians, I. Nutritional Physical and Laboratory Studies.” J. Clin. Nutr. 2:73-82, 1954.)
- The amounts of amino acids in the diets of vegetarians not only meet the minimum requirements— they more than twice exceed them. (Hardinge, M.G.; Crooks, H.; Stare, F.J.: “Nutritional Studies of Vegetarians, V. Proteins and Essential Amino Acids.” J. Am. Diet Assoc. 48:25-28, 1966.)
Can humans be infected with diseases of plants?
There is absolutely no evidence that diseases of plants can be transmitted to humans.
I am under the impression that only hogs are injected with trichinosis—and that other meats do not carry these larvae.
The trichinae do originate in the hog. But, in 1974, New Jersey had more cases of trichinosis from beef than from pork. It seems that kitchens use the same knives and meat grinders for the beef and pork, and the trichinae may be thus transmitted to the beef. Studies by the New Jersey Health Department and the National, Center for Disease Control showed that as many as 8% to 20% of stores had beef contaminated with pork. (National Communicable Disease Center: Trichinosis Surveillance, Atlanta, May 1969)
Is the “Prudent Diet” the same as the Hygienic diet?
No, but it is several steps in the right direction. The Prudent Diet is one that was used by Dr. Norman Jolliffe of New York City’s Bureau of Nutrition in an “anti-coronary” club. Dr. Jolliffe was successful in reducing the incidence of heart problems by one-half during a ten-year period. The Prudent Diet is low in meat, cholesterol, saturated fat and calories, and high in fruits, whole grains, vegetables and legumes.
How would you rate the health hazards of meat as compared to other health hazards?
I believe Dr. Scharffenberg’s Health Hazard Poll is fairly accurate. He rates the various health hazards as follows:
25% Tobacco
25% Meat
15% Dairy Products, Eggs, High-Fat Foods
10% Obesity
10% Lack of Exercise
15% Alcohol, Tea, Coffee, Stress, Sugar, Snacks, Lack of Sleep, etc.
Dr. Scharffenberg includes “No Breakfast” in the final 15%, which I left out, because Hygienists know this is definitely not a health hazard, but an excellent practice. I am in basic agreement with Dr. Scharffenberg on his other factors, except that I know that lack of exercise deserves a larger percentage. Alcohol, a metabolic poison, should also be much higher on the pole.
My Health Hazard Poll would look like this:
30% Tobacco and Alcohol
25% Flesh Foods
25% Lack of Exercise and Obesity
10% Dairy Products and Eggs
10% Tea, Coffee, Stress, Sugar, Snacks, Lack of Sleep, etc.
Isn’t it true that when meat is “bled,” as in kosher meats, all or most of the toxic wastes are drained off?
Some may be, but not enough to really matter, especially as far as urea and uric acid are concerned. Most of the flavor of meat is due to these wastes. If all the blood were really drained off, the meat would be almost tasteless. Besides, many of the waste products are trapped in the tissues themselves. In addition to the urea and uric acid, there are large amounts of adrenalin produced during the pre-slaughter and slaughtering, dead and virulent bacteria, contamination from fecal matter, and, of course, various chemicals and hormones. There is no way to make meat really fit for human consumption.
I know that a vegetarian diet is said to regulate (or actually lower) the serum cholesterol level. Is there documentation for this claim?
A diet high in fiber increases the amount of lipids (fatty substances) eliminated by the body in the feces. Plant sterols—substances with a chemical structure similar to that of cholesterol—appear to help in the regulation of the human cholesterol level. Pectin (contained in fruits and vegetables) has also been shown to actually lower abnormal serum cholesterol levels. Fifteen grams of pectin eaten daily (corresponding to the upper level found in natural fruit and vegetable diets) result in an average decrease by 5% of the serum cholesterol in a three-week period. (Unmeat, Stoy Proctor, p. 16.)
Four studies (among many others) which have been published and reported in scientific journals, documenting these phenomena, are listed below:
- A. Keys, F. Grande, J.T. Anderson, “Fiber and Pectin in the Diet and Serum Cholesterol Concentration in Man,” Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Proceedings, Vol. 106 (1961) p. 555.
- A.R.P. Walker and U.B. Arvidsson, “Fat Intake, Serum Cholesterol Concentration, and Atherosclerosis in the South African Bantu,” Journal of Clinical Investigation, Vol. 33 (1954) p. 1358.
- C. Joyner, Jr. and P.T. Kuo, “The Effect of Sitosterol Administration Upon the Serum Cholesterol Level and Lipoprotein Pattern,” American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Vol. 230 (1955) p. 636.
- Knut Kirkeby, “Blood Lipids, Lipoproteins, and Proteins in Vegetarians,” Acta Medica Scandinavica, Supplementum 443 (1966) p. 70.
I have been under the impression that meat-eating maintains bodily heat in the winter, and in cold climates. I note that vegetarians often are bothered by air conditioning, while meat-eaters are comfortable.
You have it backwards. Vegetarians maintain body heat well, while meat-eaters are continually in a more or less feverish condition.
Dr. Trall pointed out that ordinary vegetarian foods contain all the carbon and hydrogen requisite to sustain the animal (or human) heat in all climates, and under all circumstances of temperature; and if every surplus carbon or hydrogen is taken into the system, it is, of course, thrown off; and when a large amount of surplus carbon and hydrogen is taken, the labor of expelling it is attended with a feverish excitement—which, instead of warming the body permanently, only wastes its energies, and renders it colder in the end. (Carrington, The Natural Food of Man.)
Carrington says, “All the conditions requisite for the due regulation of the animal” (including human) “temperature are: good digestion, free respiration, vigorous circulation, proper assimilation, and perfect depuration; in two words—good health.” (p. 115)
Osteoporosis, which means “porous bones,” is the foundation of the entire so-called “aging” process; it produces the decrepitness of old age and it leaves in its wake a maelstrom of age-related degenerative conditions. Osteoporosis results from an insidious process of bone demineralization, which, over a period of many years, robs the bones of up to half of their original calcium content. The bones are left frail and weak, and to make matters worse, much of the lost bone calcium ends up in the walls of the blood vessels, the skin, the eyes, the joints and various internal organs.
The calcium that finds its way to the blood vessels causes hardening of the arteries; that which ends up in the skin causes wrinkling. In the joints the errant bone calcium takes the form of arthritic deposits, in the eyes it takes the form of cataracts and in the kidneys and bladder it becomes what we know as stones. Thus, osteporosis is (literally) the source of a broad range of degenerative processes.
The development of osteoporosis has now been linked to cancer, but even before the discovery of the cancer ties, gerontologists had concluded the “aging” process centers on the transfer of calcium from the hard tissues (bones) to the soft tissues (skin, arteries, joints, retina, etc.) It follows that keeping the bones intact, that is, prevent osteoporosis, is tantamount to preventing the degeneration of aging itself.
It is doubtful the bones of Westerners ever reach full maturity. It is beyond doubt, however, that at some stage of adulthood, their bone calcium begins to ebb and be carried away in the bloodstream. In time, the entire skeletal structure becomes porous, frail and weak. As members of that weakened structure, the vertebrae tend to yield to the load of the torso, so the back is wont to become crooked, compressed and painful. Such are the earmarks of osteoporosis, and with its onset, the individual tends to become stooped and normally loses inches off of his or her height. Spontaneous fractures of the vertebrae are common, as are fractures of the hips, arms, and legs. All of the bones are left vulnerable to breaks, which, when they do occur, are slow to heal.
A study at the University of Tennessee indicates that women usually develop osteoporosis following menopause but that men normally do not contract the disease until their early sixties. Other research indicates both sexes experience serious bone losses at much earlier ages.
Grim reports concerning the attrition of bone calcium in America should not be taken to mean that osteoporosis, nor for that matter what we call “aging,” is unavoidable. Poor posture is the hallmark of osteoporosis, and Sula Benet describes the Abkhasians posture as “unusually erect, even unto advanced ages.” Elderly Abkhasians are unbothered by spontaneous fractures, but as horsemen and mountain climbers, they do sometimes break bones and when such breaks do occur, they are wont to heal rapidly and completely, which would not be the case if they were suffering from osteoporosis.
Vilcabamba centenarians are, in Grace Halsell’s words, “known to have healthy bones.” Hundred-year-old Vilcabambans still work in the fields, bending the whole day, and show no ill effects. Ms. Halsell reports never having heard of an elderly Vilcabamban’s having fallen and broken an arm, leg or hip. She adds that she saw not one Vilcabamban who limped or was disabled.
Other groups that manage to avoid osteoporosis include the Hunzas and Yucatan Maya. Like the Abkhasians and Vilcabambas, these groups live in traditional ways and take low-protein, primarily vegetarian diets. And from the way groups taking flesh-based diets decline with age, there is little doubt it is the diet of the Hunza, Abkhasians, et al. rather than their lifestyles, that enables them to circumvent osteoporosis.
The heavy meat eating Masai males, Eskimos, and Greenlanders apparently develop osteoporosis at very early ages. The Eskimos normally become bent, shrunken and disabled in their late 20s while Greenlanders become decrepit in their 30s. The most interesting case, however, is that of the Masai. The tribe’s males spend their formative years roaming with their herds, drinking the animals’ blood and milk, and eating only small amounts of plant foods. Then, at the age of 20 or so, they take off to do a two-year stint as warriors, during which time they try to live on flesh alone. Following the warrior stint, and while still in their early 20s, they migrate to the tribes’ villages, arriving at the villages with bent backs, diminished heights and debilitated bodies, whereupon they are cared for by the villages’ women until they die. Now here’s the rub: the tribe’s females, who remain in the villages while the males are out subsisting on flesh and making war, raise and eat plant foods, and remain remarkably free of osteoporosis.
Research linking osteoporosis and high-protein diets is upending the foundations of modern nutrition. In the words of Drs. Ammon Wachman and Daniel Bernstein of Harvard, “the association (of meat-based diets) with the increasing incidents of bone mass loss with age is inescapable.” They go as far as to say “it might be worthwhile to consider” a diet emphasizing fruits and vegetables and only a moderate amount of milk. The head endocrinologist at the Jewish Hospital in St. Louis acknowledges that “vegetarians suffer less osteoporosis than people who eat lots of meat and have high-protein intake.” The relationship between high-protein intake and loss of bone calcium was the subject of a major address before the nation’s nutritionists in April. The speaker was Dr. Helen Linkswiler who, as head of the Nutrition Department at the University of Wisconsin, pioneered in protein-calcium research. Dr. Linkswiler and her colleagues are firmly convinced high-protein intake causes the bones to ebb.
Sharing that opinion are a growing number of nutritionists including two of the world’s leading authorities on protein and calcium, Doris Calloway of Cal-Berkeley and Mark Hegsted of Harvard.
In the first protein-calcium studies (now just eight years old) it was found that a protein intake of 140 grams per day caused young men to lose their bone calcium at a rate of 3% of total bone mass per year. The subjects evidenced no capacity to adapt to the high protein intake, and at the rate they were losing calcium, they would have had no bones at all by their mid-fifties.
Subsequent studies showed young men experienced no bone losses when they were put on diets containing less than 50 grams of protein per day; but when their protein intake was raised to 95 grams per day, their ability to keep their bones intact depended on the amounts of calcium and phosphorus, the 95 grams of protein per day resulted in relatively small losses of bone calcium. But when the diet contained more realistic (albeit still favorable) levels of calcium and phosphorus, the 95 grams of protein per day resulted in calcium losses amounting to 2% of total body calcium per year. At that rate it would take the young men about 15 years to develop severe osteoporosis. It should be pointed out that the average protein intake of young American males exceeds 95 grams per day.
Studies with young women began only recently, and their peak protein intake was scaled down to 100 grams per day. It had been predicated that the presence of female sex hormones would protect the young women from serious bone losses, but this proved not to be the case. The young women responded to 100 grams of protein daily in essentially the same way the young men had responded to much higher intakes.
It is noteworthy that every single individual involved in one of these protein-calcium studies has responded to increased protein intake with decreased calcium retention. And, so far, all such studies have been conducted with young adults, who by virtue of their age, should be relatively resistent to bone deterioration. What is more, the reported losses were, in all cases, understated, for they took no account of sweat losses, nor did they make any allowances for any calcium that may have been deposited in soft tissues (measurements focused on what was excreted rather than what ebbed from the bones.) And with one exception, the experimental diets were fortified against loss of bone calcium through the presence of abnormally low amounts of phosphorus. Thus, the results of these studies actually tend to understate the effects of protein on the bones.
There is, of course, more to “protein foods” than just protein. Animal products are all high in phosphorus, and with the exception of dairy products, they all have very low calcium-to-phosphorus ratios. All animal products are high in chlorine and sulfur, low in manganese and magnesium, and with notable exceptions, they are high in fat and low in Vitamin C. Surprisingly, everyone of these characteristics tends to impair bone development and/or retention.
The relationship of phosphorus intake vis-a-vis calcium intake to bone development and retention has been the subject of extensive research. It has been found that when the phosphorus content of the diet is not excessive, a high calcium-to-phosphorus ratio promotes strong bones.
When, on the other hand, the phosphorus content of the diet is very high, bone deterioration is unavoidable.
High-phosphorus diets effect substantial rises in the level of phosphorus in the blood; and in what amounts to an effort to control the ratio of calcium-to-phosphorus in the blood, the body responds to a rise in blood phosphorus by removing calcium from the bones and releasing it into the bloodstream. Boosting intake of conventional calcium sources (dairy products) does nothing to alleviate the situation. Calcium absorption drops sharply when intake is elevated, so little of the added calcium actually reaches the bloodstream. Moreover, dairy products are high in phosphorus as well as calcium, and almost all of the phosphorus does get into the bloodstream. Thus the addition of dairy products to a diet already high in phosphorus may actually speed up the rate of bone deterioration.
Studies indicate the phosphorus content of typical diets is 20 to 100 percent above safe levels; moreover, calcium-to-phosphorus ratios are less than half what they should be. Meat and dairy products account for two thirds of the total phosphorus in typical diets. Eliminating just the meat would reduce total phosphorus intake to acceptable levels—it would also bring a dramatic increase in calcium-to-phosphorus ratio.
Phosphorus tends to acidify the blood. Chlorine and sulfur have the same effect, so when intake of one or more of these three minerals is excessive, the body goes in search of a buffering agent. Without some means of buffering the blood, a single overload of one or more of these minerals could cause severe acidosis, and even death. The body contains four minerals that can act as buffering agents, but only two of these, namely potassium and calcium, are available in quantity. Unfortunately, excesses of the acid-forming minerals are almost always accompanied by a rise in blood potassium levels, and since further increases in serum potassium could have dire consequences, the body tends to call upon its calcium bank (i.e., the bones) for a buffering agent.
The mechanism that initiates the removal of calcium from the bones also puts a halt on the excretion of calcium by the kidneys. The result is a rapid rise in blood calcium, which tends to bring about the deposit of calcium in the soft tissues in the form of kidney and bladder stones, arthritic deposits, etc. Thus, the acid-forming minerals are capable of triggering the entire “aging” (i.e., calcium transfer) process.
Foods that contain an excess of the acid-forming minerals (phosphorus, chlorine and sulfur) over and above the alkaline-forming minerals (calcium, potassium, sodium and magnesium) are said to have an “acid ash.” Foods that are on balance, alkaline in nature are said to have an “alkaline ash.” Protein itself forms an acid ash and this may explain why high-protein intake causes the bones to give up calcium.
All so-called “protein foods,” including milk, tend to acidify the blood. Without exception, they are rich in the three acid-forming minerals; moreover, all of their chlorine, and a major segment of their phosphorus, lies external to their protein. Thus, they have an acid-forming capacity which is independent of their protein. It follows that protein foods, such as beef and eggs, would be expected to cause even greater bone losses than isolated protein extracts, which served as the principle sources of protein in all but one of the aforementioned protein-calcium studies. And in the one study in which meat did serve as the protein source, calcium losses were indeed accelerated.
The addition of fruits and vegetables to the diets of young men taking 140 grams per day cut their bone calcium losses by 25 percent. Fruits and vegetables have an alkaline ash, so their addition to an acid-forming high-protein diet would tend to cut the need for bone calcium as a buffering agent.
Typical diets have a strong acid ash. The first step to alleviating this situation is to eliminate from the diet those items with really high acid ashes, namely meat, eggs, fish and poultry products. Without these, normal diets would be tolerably close to neutral and the individual would be in a position to work towards a truly good diet—which means, among other things, an alkaline ash diet.
Inactivity is still another, and possibly important, cause of skeletal erosion. Extended bed rest led to calcium losses at a rate of 6% of total bone mass per year in young men. On the other hand, exercise tends to enhance calcium retention and it has been shown that low-protein, low-fat diets boost endurance and engender spontaneous activity. High-fat, high-protein diets cut endurance and promote inactivity. It’s just not a good day for the meat group.
The integrity of the bones depends on the supply of a number of minerals, including manganese and magnesium. An adequate supply of manganese enhances the strength and density of developing bones, while an adequate supply of magnesium tends to prevent bone calcium from ending up in the kidneys and bladder as stones.
Ironically, cow’s milk is used to induce both manganese and magnesium deficiencies in animals.
Manganese-deficient milk left young rabbits with bowing front legs and a bone structure that was weak and porous. Magnesium-deficient low-fat milk induced kidney stones in 97 percent of a group of rats; it can offer no solace to milk drinkers that researchers believe the protein in milk played a role in the stone formation. In all fairness, though, it should be pointed out that milk is not the only dietary item that is low in manganese and magnesium: all animal products are markedly low in both minerals; in fact, the entire American diet is dreadfully low in both.
High-fat intake tends to inhibit calcium absorption through the formation of insoluble calcium compounds of the gut. Calcium absorption is aided by the presence of Vitamin C which tends to keep calcium in an absorbable state. It hardly needs pointing out that animal products are grossly high in fat and scurvy-low in Vitamin C.
The ties between animal products and the entire “aging” process (i.e., the transfer of calcium from the bones to the soft tissues), and osteoporosis in particular, make the cornerstone of the “four basic food groups” look like a tombstone. To recoup, normal diets contain enough protein to produce rapid bone losses, even among young adults. They also contain enough phosphorus to cause debilitating bone deterioration; and they have a calcium-to-phosphorus ratio that would be expected to both thwart bone development and speed deterioration. Normal diets have an acid ash capable of producing both bone deterioration arid the accumulation of calcium in the soft tissues:
Animal products are the principle source of the protein, the phosphorus, the low calcium-to-phosphorus ratio, and the acid ash in normal diets. What is more, animal products tend to effect bone-degenerating inactivity and deficiencies of bone formation-dependent manganese and stone-preventing magnesium. On top of this, animal products are very low in Vitamin C, which aids calcium absorption, and overloaded with fat, which inhibits calcium absorption. It’s a one-sided picture, but it’s a one-sided scene—and it bears a message of hope.
We don’t have to face advanced age as less than skeletons of our former selves. It is clear, though, that walking tall and, painlessly into the years ahead requires our abstaining from meat, eggs, poultry and fish. Little is to be gained by switches to meat substitutes, synthetic eggs, etc.—we need to get away from the protein, the fat, the phosphorus and the acid ash, not simply take them in “vegetable” form.
We do need a good source of calcium in the diet, but we don’t need milk. Milk is, after all, merely a substitute, and a poor one, for dark green leafy vegetables. Collards, parsley, turnip greens, watercress, kale, mustard, spinach, etc. provide twice as much calcium as milk and yet they contain considerably less phosphorus. They have calcium-to-phosphorus ratios three to four times that to milk. And unlike milk, greens have a strong alkaline ash; what is more, they are excellent sources of manganese, magnesium, and Vitamin C. They are also free of the troublesome protein, fat and cholesterol of milk. As for the problem of excess protein, replacing the milk and cheese with a few ounces of greens (which is all that is necessary) would cut protein intake by 10-15 grams per day.
A few greens, including spinach, are high in oxalic acid, which may reduce the availability of their calcium. It is advisable to include at least one oxalate-free green (see earlier lessons on oxalic acid and which vegetables contain it and/or other irritant properties) in the diet, but there is no reason to avoid these vegetables completely. Vegetables are best taken raw, of course. Take them in salads, or enjoy their company and taste right in the garden.
We are going to hear a good deal more about osteoporosis during the next few years. The protein-calcium studies have upended the foundations of modern nutrition. Critics simply can’t find any loopholes in the results. No exceptions. No extenuating circumstances. No inconsistencies. In the words of one of the nation’s best known nutritionists: “I now realize we know almost nothing....” She went on to extol dark green leafy vegetables, leaving the impression they were a new thing to her.
It’s happening. Meanwhile don’t be fooled by claims you need a “protein source.” Stick with the juices, fruits, greens and sprouts; they’ll keep your bones intact, your soft tissues soft and your years without worry.
The breast milk of vegetarian women is significantly safer than that of meat-eating women, according to a study conducted by the Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
Last June, government and university researchers testified before a senate subcommittee that it is difficult, if not impossible, to find safe milk for new-born infants anywhere in the world. The researchers cited an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study conducted in 1975 which indicated that 99% of breast milk samples taken from more than 1,400 nursing mothers in 46 states, were contaminated with pesticides, such as Dieldrin and DDT, and other industrial compounds such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
PCBs are suspected carcinogens, and in low doses can cause sterility in animals. They are now widespread in the environment, because of accidental spills and deliberate, covert dumping of the chemicals into public water supplies.
For instance, a number of factories along the Hudson River have for years been circumventing state water purity laws by processing PCBs, benzene, chloroform, and other chemicals through municipal sewage treatment plants— despite the fact that such plants are incapable of filtering out toxic chemicals before dumping the water into the river.
This fall (however), the EDF tested breast milk samples from 50 predominantly vegetarian women, and found that the levels of pesticides such as DDT in their milk were only 1/3 to 1/2 those of mothers eating a conventional diet.
The levels of PCBs, however, were only slightly reduced from the average breast milk concentration of 1.8 parts per million—10 times higher than the maximum amount considered “safe” for babies.
The women chosen for the study ate milk and dairy products as well as fruit, grains, and vegetables, and a few ate fish as often as once a week.
The EDF researchers say they cannot explain why not eating meat should make such a difference in the pesticide levels of nursing mothers. They suggest that it’s probably that vegetarians eat more organically grown foods (foods grown without pesticides) than do most carnivores.
The foregoing article and headline (with a rather sensational sub-heading, “Meateaters Breast Milk Laced with Pesticides”) was found in a recent Earth Watch section of New Age Magazine.
It may be that some vegetarians eat more organically grown food, but this is a lame explanation for the reduced levels of pesticides as noted. In the last issue of VV, Nat Altman noted that dairy products contain “only about 2/5 the pesticide residues as (compared to) red-meat, fish, and poultry. Oils, vegetable fats, and leafy vegetables contain about 1/7 as much; fruits and legumes are about 1/8 as much; and the figure for grains and cereals is only 1/24 the pesticide residues found in meat.”
This is due to the concentrating factor as the contaminant goes through the additional link in the ecological chain; that is to say, an animal (or human) is likely to concentrate the pollutant in its body; it may also dispose of some of it in milk. Actual tests in Britain have shown the pesticide residue level in humans to be highest in. meat-eaters, lower in lacto-vegetarians, and lowest in total-vegetarians. It is very likely that the PCB levels would follow a similar pattern, as PCBs are not just industrial pollutants but are largely produced by the breakdown over the years, of DDT in the soil and environment.
Given the many proven advantages of breast-feeding by a healthy human mother, we do not feel that vegetarians should be stampeded into forsaking this practice that is so potentially beneficial for both mother and baby. Considering that the pesticide (and probably PCB) level of vegetable-source foods is such a small fraction compared to that of even the dairy products, it may well be considered by even lacto-veg. mothers to substitute leafy greens and other rich sources of nutriment, for dairy products, at least during pregnancy and lactation. Also, we cannot refrain from commenting that even eating fish “as often as once a week” could easily be a factor in keeping PCB levels up.
This review concerns the 20-page pamphlet, Meat and the Vegetarian Concept, published by the National Livestock and Meat Board.
Intended to refute various aspects of meatless diets, it has been circulated extensively to educators, nutritionists, media people, and other individuals throughout the USA.
The text itself is carefully written and attractively presented, and at first glance seems to offer very convincing arguments in favor of eating meat.
However, a careful reading reveals a plethora of inaccurate and incomplete data, outright distortion of fact, and even the tendency to create an argument where none, in fact, exists.
Because of the extensive distribution of this pamphlet and the highly misleading statements it contains, NAVS feels that a swift and factual response is warranted.
As the pamphlet takes a rather disorganized “shotgun” approach, a point-by-point analysis would be impractical. However, NAVS has requested 3 well-known vegetarians active in the movement to comment extensively on the main points, making full use of documented material from non-vegetarian as well as vegetarian sources.
The three are: Nathanial Altman (author of Eating For Life; NAVS board member); Robert Pinkus (director of Metropolitan Veg. Assn.); and H. Jay Dinshah (Pres. of NAVS).
NAT—Very often, meat industry spokespeople, such as the National Livestock and Meat Board, find it in their interest to classify vegetarians along with those few enthusiasts of the radical and nutritional unsound “Zen macrobiotic #7 diet,” which calls for the consumption of only brown rice. It should be made clear that macrobiotics and vegetarianism are not the same, as many macrobiotic diets involve the liberal consumption of seafood, such as fish, clams, shrimp and other crustaceans. In addition, certain vegetables such as eggplant are enjoyed by vegetarians but frowned upon by macrobiotic enthusiasts as “poison.” Fruit and salads are also generally avoided.
Thus, it is absolutely necessary to define our terms: Vegetarians do not eat the meat of domestic or other animals, whether it is beef, pork, veal, lamb, poultry, fish or other “sea food.” Most vegetarians—perhaps 90-95%—are either lacto or lacto-ovo vegetarians, eating such foods as eggs and/or dairy products in addition to plant foods. A small percentage of vegetarians—called “total vegetarians”—abstain from animal foods altogether, and consume only plant-source foods, such as grains, legumes, nuts seeds, fruits, and vegetables. “Vegans” are total vegetarians who also refuse to use nonfood animal products, such as leather, furs, silk, wool, and soon.
BOB—In his forward to this pamphlet, NLSMB President David Stroud (whose commercial interest in promoting meat-eating seems obvious) sets a very low tone in trying to equate vegetarianism with some vague and unspecified “commercial interest”; with “food fadism and nutrition quackery, higher grocery bills and complicated meal planning,” as well as potential poor nutrition. All of which could hardly be further front the truth.
While commercial interests have always abounded in human endeavors, seldom have they been less important as motivations (when they exist at all) than in today’s vegetarian movement, either with the average vegetarian or the more outspoken vegetarian advocates.
As we get deeper into this curious pamphlet, we shall soon see where the label of “nutrition quackery” rightly belongs.
A considerable saving can be expected on grocery bills for persons changing from a meat-based diet to a well-planned nonmeat diet, as noted briefly in Facts of Vegetarianism (10-cent booklet from NAVS).
Meal planning can, if anything, become much simpler, although with the tremendously increased available variety of natural non-animal foods that many newcomers to vegetarian living seem to “discover” for the first time in their lives, it often happens that one soon discovers that vegetarian dining can also be more fun and much more delicious.
VEGETARIAN VOICE—On page 6, the NLSMB dismisses, in a single paragraph, religious reasons for abstaining from certain or all types of meats, calling these “religious taboos.” Is the characterization fair and is it accurate?
BOB—The pamphlet cites Hindus, Moslems and Jews, and 7th-Day Adventists, in regard to opposition to some or all types of meat. Conveniently omitted are such groups as Trappist and Benedictine monks, Jains, Buddhists, Essenes, and others who at various times in history help to fill out the picture of widespread partial abstention or outright injunction against flesh eating.
JAY—First, I would point out that “poor sanitation” in meat handling is hardly limited to Biblical times or the Middle or Far East as this paragraph implies: indeed, it does not seem to be altogether unknown even nowadays.
We may sympathize with the embarrassed reluctance of the NLSMB to go into further detail about the shellfish, the swine, the vulture, etc., said to be stamped “unclean” and declared by their own Creator to be unfit for human consumption (even under the more liberal demands for flesh-eating raised by erring humanity); this was clearly due to their being much less fastidious in their dietary habits—i.e., the consuming of river sewage, the omnivorous scavenging of fecal matter or carrion—than the vegetarian creatures in general. (See Deuteronomy 14:3-21; also see Genesis 1:29-30.)
Doubtless, many of our friends in the movement who happen to be 7th-Day Adventists, will be surprised to be singled out and to learn that their reason for not eating meat is supposed to be “as an expression of their religious devotion.”
I commend to you the chapter on Flesh As Food, including, “Reasons for Discarding Flesh Foods,” in The Ministry of Healing, by Ellen G. White: the reader may judge whether the health reasons for vegetarianism presented so eloquently therein are mere superstitions or “religious taboos.” But it will be crystal clear why the meat promoters may wish the public to think so, especially when one considers the long and illustrious tradition of SDA researchers, dieticians, and M.D.’s in documenting and publicizing the superiority of vegetarian living, purely from the secular standpoint of better health and longevity.
In a recent year, the livestock feed production alone in the U.S. was 165 million tons, not including the wheat consumed by animals. One half of the total of all U.S. crops are fed to animals, including 86% of corn, oats, and barley, 90% of the non-exported soybeans, and 42% of the wheat Americans consume, for an overall consumption picture of 78% of all U.S. grains going to feed animals.
Nor does this include the huge areas of land misused for grazing purposes. And all this is IN ADDITION to any molasses-soaked old newspaper, silage, excrement, or whatever else they now call “recycled” feed, either experimentally or commercially.
JAY—Obviously, the 3:1 ratio cited in the NLSMB booklet refers to the very “best” meat producer—the chicken—although all fowl and fish are conveniently omitted when the board wants to convince Americans that they aren’t eating enough meat (p. 10). We are not going to say that the use of a 3:1 figure is a deliberate attempt to distort the facts; an alternative explanation would be that the experts of the National Livestock and Meat Board just don’t know the difference between a chicken and a steer, and hope the public will be just as much in the dark. So it might be an honest mistake.
Of course, it is not just vegetarians who are drawing the public’s attention to “preposterous stories” of the waste of grain in feeding food animals. But it is the practice, not the stories, that we find preposterous. The figures that Nat and Bob gave are corroborated in the special section on the “World Food Crisis” in the Nov. 11, 1974, Time magazine. It notes the 400 lbs. of grain eaten by a person in a year in a poor country versus an American consuming “five times that amount, mostly in the form of grain-fed beef, pork and chicken. The industrial world’s way of eating is an extremely inefficient use of resources. For every pound of beef consumed, a steer has gobbled up 20 lbs. of grain. Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer notes that “the same amount of food that is feeding 210 million Americans would feed 1.5 billion Chinese on an average Chinese diet.” This is a food ratio of 7:1, and it would be much worse but for the fact that “meat-eaters” do not eat only meat, but rather a mixed diet, and this helps keep the ratio down to “only” 7-to-l in this case.
The booklet does seem to confuse the protein-conversion ratio with the grain-to-meat conversion ratio, which is obviously not quite the same thing. In the 20 lbs. of grain cited by Time magazine, there might run, say, 2½ lbs. of protein (about 1/8). In the single pound of beef produced, it might run around 1/6 lb. of protein. So the actual protein conversion ratio (grain:beef) would run about 15:1, close enough to the 17:1 cited by Nat (allowing for reasonable variables), but five is as great as the meat propagandists would have us think, by their literary legerdemain of just lumping everything together as “meat” and claiming the greatest “efficiency” as if it represented an average. I feel we have every right to “beef” about this figures finagling, because that’s just too much bull to hide behind a little chicken.
Averaging out the food waste factors on the various types of meat—even including fowl—in the quantities actually consumed, you would probably come up with a rule-of-thumb average in the vicinity of that of Prof. Isaac Asimov’s estimated 90% waste, or 10:1 ratio overall (see “Our Wasted Land” in Facts of Vegetarianism, published by NAVS). You know, Dr. Asimov is a noted science writer, who is also in the top ranks of science-fiction authors. He used to be my favorite in the latter field until recently. But now I eagerly await further literary efforts of the NLSMB, as I find their creative style of subtly blending science with fantasy to be so much more imaginative and entertaining than even that of Dr. Asimov, providing one does not take them too seriously, of course.
In all candor, though, I must admit that we vegetarians must be stronger of conscience than of stomach. Personally, I don’t think I would have the guts to stand right up and look down on a starving sister or brother and say right out that I have “only” three lbs., or 10lbs., or 20lbs. of food, but I’d rather throw it to the pigs or the cows than share it with a human being. I don’t think I could bring myself to brag about the efficiency of “only” throwing two chapatties out of three into the dung-heap. It really takes a rare kind of cool to pour water from your overflowing canteen onto the desert sand in front of a fellow human dying of thirst. It really must have taken a lot of nerve for the NLSMB to make a statement like that.
This kind of machismo, we can all live without. But the real question is: can this hungry world live with it?
—continued from previous issue. Comments by Nat Altman, Bob Pinkus, and H. Jay Dinshah.
VV—On Page 7, the booklet (published by the National Livestock and Meat Board) claims that “the biological quality of protein found in animal foods is superior to that in vegetables” and implies quite strongly that vegetarianism is a major reason for people in developing nations suffering “rampant malnutrition—stunted growth, small brain development, and the disease kwashiorkor....”
NAT—What was omitted was the fact that there is absolutely no connection between “rampant malnutrition” etc., and a Vegetarian diet. The basic factors in malnutrition are either lack of the availability of nutritious vegetarian food or inadequate knowledge of nutrition.
Nutritional studies on the Hunzas, the Otami Indians in Central Mexico, the “old men in Vilcabamba,” Ecuador, certain tribespeople of South Africa, young girls in Appalachia, and other people in various parts of the world, all showed that one doesn’t need meat to ensure an adequate intake pf protein, calories, fat, and essential vitamins and minerals.
The booklet also failed to note the well-known fact that the biological quality of those plant proteins that are low in specific amino acids dramatically improves when combined with other plant-source foods, such as rice and legumes, or/grains and legumes. Most predominantly vegetarian people have been habitually combining these foods for thousands of years, and have enjoyed sound nutrition and excellent health.
The argument that because animal protein is much closer to that of the human body makes it preferable to plant protein is absurd. If this were true, all animals would be carnivorous if such a bizarre criterion needed to be met.
JAY—Worse than that, Nat; it’s a powerful argument for universal cannibalism. What could be closer to human flesh than human flesh?
But this whole scare about protein is pretty much of a red herring. It is most inaccurate to make a blanket statement that animal protein is superior to vegetable protein. They talk about “vegetables” as if vegetarians only ate carrots and turnips. Nuts and seeds generally have protein of roughly equivalent biological value to meat, and in greater proportion than in meats generally. Muscle meat is “deficient” compared to organ meat. And even leafy greens have a moderate proportion of protein of very high biological value. Nor does the term “incomplete” mean a protein is valueless by itself; only that even a single essential amino acid is a percentage point or more less than an arbitrary dividing line of 60% (for adults) or 70% (for children) of what is considered an ideal balance. The difference between a “complete” protein and an “incomplete” protein is not—as some would like us to believe—the difference between 100% and zero: it is often so marginal as to be meaningless for any practical relationship to the actual needs of the human body.
Nor is it even necessary that all the essential amino acids be present in the same meal (let alone the same food), as the body recycles amino acids from dying cells and maintains, in effect, a pool of amino acids. (See p. 383 of Laurel’s Kitchen.) For further information on vegetable proteins and their complete adequacy, see The Protein Problem, The Happy Truth About Protein, About Protein (in Facts of Vegetarianism), and the Vegetarianism special supplement to Life and Health magazine, all available from NAVS.
As for their view of malnutrition, they seem to just throw in “a deficiency of calories” as if it were a separate problem from the better-publicized protein deficiency. Actually, the former usually accompanies the latter, as it is a matter of just too little food available (see p. 385, Laurel’s Kitchen), a fact the meat people seem understandably anxious to obscure.
This reminds me of old Calvin Coolidge’s sage observation that when a lot of people were out of work, the result was unemployment. The NLSMB wants us all to know that when people are too impoverished to obtain enough vegetarian food, the result is malnutrition and starvation. But as we shall see, their “solutions” to such human difficulties seem more in line with the naive advice given by another historic figure, Marie Antoinette.
VV—On page 6 of the booklet, it is claimed that the conversion ratio is 3:1 for vegetable protein to animal protein in raising animals for food, and that much of the protein for feeding animals is obtained by recycling otherwise inedible “wastes” for feed.
NAT—Actually, the demand for meat in the USA contributes markedly to rampant malnutrition in the developing countries. Despite a world food deficit of over ten million tons, over 580 million tons of grains were fed to livestock in a recent year. In the U.S. alone, approximately 87% of all the corn, oats, barley, and grain sorghum crops are fed to livestock, not directly to people.
In converting this high-protein feed into meat protein, the productivity rate is far different from the 3:1 ratio claimed.
According to the June 6, 1968, issue of Chemical Industry it takes 1250 lbs. of plant protein to produce 75 lbs. of beef protein, an efficiency factor of just 6%, or a ratio of 17:1. The corresponding efficiency factor for lamb is 9% (11:1); for pork, 15% (6 2/3-to-l); while the most “efficient” protein converter is chicken, and even that only yields 2.5 lbs. of protein for every 8 lbs. of plant protein consumed, a factor of 32%, or a little less than 3:1. Something they do not mention is another serious barrier to good nutrition in developing nations. It is a well-known fact that many of the developing countries are utilizing their best land for cattle raising for export to the USA, instead of using this land for growing staple crops which could feed their hungry people.
In Guatemala, for example, where 75% of the children under five years of age are malnourished, nearly 23 million pounds of meat were sent to the USA from January to November 1976 (Foreign Ag. Calendar, USDA, of Dec. 1976). At present, Guatemala has a shortage of low-priced corn and beans, the staple foods of the peasant population.
BOB—The meat people admit that the ratio for protein conversion is “only about 3:1.” Even if true, what would be moral about even that ratio, in a world in which each year millions of humans die of diseases related to malnutrition?
A fact ignored by the booklet is that in a country such as India, the average person can only get about 400 pounds of grain per year, but can live by eating it instead of feeding it to animals. In America, the average meat-eater consumes 2000 lbs. of grain per year, but only 150 lbs. direct and the rest second-hand through animal products.
(NAVS Western Coordinator and Board Member Dixie Mahy reports on a 2-day class presented by Dr. Aly at the 23rd World Vegetarian Congress....)
Although a qualified medical doctor Dr. Aly utilizes vegetarian diet, fasting, and non-drug therapy. He stated that scientific thought is just now coming to favor vegetarianism, and that early scientific errors have been made which have taken a long time to correct.
Error #1) Scientists thought that since protein was the most important nutriment in the body for growth and repair, and that since animals were rather similar in construction to humans, meat was therefore the best food for the human body.
The error was that they did not realize that the body can build up its own human protein from proteinaceous food sources within the vegetable kingdom.
Error #2) Scientists thought that by refining carbohydrates—which the body needs for energy—it would make them easier to assimilate, e.g.: pure white sugar, white flour, polished rice, etc.
The error was that, most unfortunately, the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes are largely destroyed in refining, processing, or even in long cooking; and the body needs these nutriments.
Error #3) Scientists thought the body needed more dietary fat than it actually does, and began recommending too much in the diet.
The error was that, although the body needs fats, it gets an excessive amount of saturated fats as a result of high meat intake and saturated oils as a result of processing.
Dr. Aly discussed more fully the “protein myth” perpetrated by western scientists, who made two major errors on protein: As previously noted, proteins from the vegetable kingdom were considered inferior; and the protein minimum daily requirement was set at a figure far too high for the body’s actual requirements. (In addition, it should be noted, the RECOMMENDED daily amount was arbitrarily set at DOUBLE the supposed minimum amount proven adequate, -ed.)
In the East, the question was, “How little protein do we need?” But in the West, the question was “How much protein do we need?” Scientists are now starting to slowly correct their mistakes. Ironically, for example, they once recommended the optimum “to make sure” but today modern scientists recommend the minimum of before (1/2 the former recommendation) as the optimum of today.
Dr. Aly went on to state that meat is not a good energy source as it is not easily combusted and needs several enzymatic processes to metabolize, with lots of waste products, nitrogen waste, uric acid, and urea, which the body disposes of with difficulty. Waste from protein cannot be disposed of so easily as waste from carbohydrate. (Consider that carbohydrate breaks down easily with water, h3O, as a waste product which the body can easily get rid of through perspiration, or via the lungs or kidneys.) On the other hand, the kidneys are the only way of eliminating protein waste. When there is an overload, material is stored in all connective tissues, etc., throughout the body. This overload along with no exercise, will eventually destroy the kidneys and/or the heart.
Dr. Aly cited new scientific findings showing that the walls of capillaries are destroyed by waste products from protein and excessive protein which is stored there. These studies were made by Prof. Lother Wendt of the University in Frankfurt, Germany. (Unfortunately, these studies are only available in German at this time—a language spoken fluently by Dr. Aly—but hopefully they will be translated for American scientists, doctors, and nutritionists.)
Dr. Aly went into great detail showing how important the circulatory system is for good health, and how the combination of saturated fats and too much animal protein causes many diseases not usually thought of as being directly associated with it. The arteries, veins, and capillaries carry the nutriments and oxygen for all the cells of the body. Every cell is dependent on this circulatory system for its nourishment.
All waste products from the metabolic process are returned to the blood vessels to be eliminated from the body. Thus, good circulation is essential! The walls of the blood vessels need to be elastic, thin, permeable. When excess fats and amino acids are deposited on the walls of the blood vessels, the walls become thick, inelastic, and impermeable.
When the passageways become narrowed, occlusions can occur causing (for example) a coronary of the heart. Another less known effect, however, is the above-mentioned interference with cell metabolism. When the long chains of amino acids from animal protein along with saturated fats catch on the small pores of the walls of the blood vessels—especially the capillaries—the surrounding cells become undernourished.
Normally, the capillary walls should be 300 angstroms thick (an angstrom is a unit equal to 1/100,000,000 of a centimenter). If the walls become thicker, 500 to 1000 angstroms, nutriments and oxygen are unable to get to the cells adequately and waste products cannot get out. Even diseases such as cancer may be caused by this clogging of the vessels as these cells deteriorate and become susceptible to numerous diseases. There is also the theory that the body has to raise the pressure to force the blood through the clogged vessels, in order to get nutriments to the cells. Again, perfect circulation is essential to perfect health!
Dr. Aly feels that a person would be much less likely to get excessive amounts of protein from vegetable sources. Protein in general in the vegetable kingdom is not so highly concentrated as animal protein is, and he views this as a desirable feature rather than undesirable as was formerly thought. The body can make up its proteins provided the essential amino acids are present. He believes in complimentary proteins such as beans and corn, and felt that a vegetarian diet containing a variety of foods is adequate for promoting and maintaining good health. (It is also now known that so-called “complete” proteins are also widespread in the vegetable kingdom, as in most nuts and seeds, and leafy greens. Even “incomplete” proteins may often rank a mere few percentage points lower than an arbitrary dividing line, in one or two of the essential amino acids and thus be stigmatized as theoretically inferior—yet it is quite possible to utilize even such erroneously-classified “incomplete” protein foods as the only concentrated protein sources, without resorting to combinations at all. -ed.)
Dr. Aly did not feel that protein concentrates as a supplement are necessary in a balanced vegetarian diet.
Dr. Aly discussed the overuse of salt in the diet and its consequences. Natural sodium is needed in the body only in small quantities, one to five grams. Sodium is found naturally in foods, so one can live well without adding inorganic table salt to food at all. (See: chapter on Salt Eating in Dr. Shelton’s Vol. 11, chapter on Salt is Poisonous, in his Superior Nutrition, and Lesson 29 on eliminating condiments from the diet.)
Table salt (sodium chloride) causes osmotic changes in the blood. The tissues fill with fluids and then must be cleaned out through the kidneys and skin. At Dr. Aly’s clinic, he puts his patients on a modified fast, giving them fluids, juices, and water to get rid of the sodium chloride. (He prescribes an alkaline vegetable juice program—e.g. carrot juice—rather than a plain water-fast, as he feels the juice counteracts acidity.) Too much salt overtaxes the kidneys. Regular doctors give their patients diuretics which take fluid and salt away, but are harmful as they also take away essential minerals.
Salt causes more fluid in the blood vessels, and the body tries to force elimination of the fluid to get rid of the salt. The combination of salt, animal protein, and saturated fats—all so typical of the average American diet—forces the blood pressure to rise.
Dr. Aly discussed the importance of the intestinal flora in the lower intestines. Lactobacillus acidophilus is necessary in the intestines to help digest, food and to produce vitamins B12 and K.
The intestinal walls serve an important function in acting as “traffic police” to prevent poisons from passing into the body. He felt that allergies are caused by the loss of the flora in the intestines and poisons getting into the blood. He emphasized the beneficial effects of eating raw foods as they have their own enzymes for digestion, and these are destroyed by cooking. That is one reason why more food is needed when it is cooked.
He felt that a high-protein diet is not necessary if one has good intestinal flora. He cited the study of New Guineans of Mt. Hagen, who are very healthy people although they eat 15 to 20 grams of vegetable protein a day (compared to current recommendations of 45 to 55 grams for the average adult female and male). Amazingly, these New Guineans put out far more nitrogen than could be accounted for with their meager protein intake. Dr. Aly felt that they must have good flora and are producing their own protein.
Dr. Aly does not recommend such a small amount of protein for most people, as there are so many things in modern society that interfere with good intestinal flora. He felt, for example, that the artificial fertilizers have depleted the trace minerals in the soil, which are therefore deficient in the fruits and vegetables. Organic manure, for example, would be better; and bacteria in the soil would be just as necessary as in the intestines. He also felt that pesticides, artifical colorings, etc., are all carcinogenic, allergenic, and harmful to the health although they make things look good and sell better. He believes that additives destroy the natural intestinal flora.
Regarding vitamin pills, his view is that they contain what scientists know, but not what has not yet been discovered; and that the natural fruits and vegetables in a fresh state and organically grown if possible, are more desirable. He recommended that a strict total-vegetarian (using no dairy foods or eggs) eat three to five grams of parsley every day, as it helps the intestinal flora (which in turn produce vitamin B2).
Dr. Aly went into great detail regarding the superiority of natural unrefined foods. He cited studies by Prof. Burkitt, and the English studies by Cleave and Campbell, the Saccharine Diseases, which state that most diseases arise from abuse of refined products. They say that essentially the diseases are different symptoms of the same problem.
Dr. Aly demonstrated what occurs through the refining of a grain of wheat, for example. This takes away the vitamin E, essential fatty acids, trace minerals, the wheat germ, and an essence that scientists do not as yet know about. What remains is mainly carbohydrate. He asserted that scientists know about elements, but they do not know about the essence of life itself. Putting a few of the known synthesized vitamins back into the refined flour cannot make it equal to the original whole grain. Although scientists could even copy the wheat grain exactly as they know its component parts, it still would not grow. Yet grains found in tombs 4000 years old will still grow. There is a life essence locked in, which scientists do not know how to reproduce. That essence is destroyed by refining. (He added that grains can be stored in dry tins if kept cold and dark, but they will not store well after they are ground.)
Dr. Aly was adamant that if white sugar were banned, everyone’s health would improve. He explained, that there is a constant blood sugar level of 80mg in the blood, needed for muscles and organs. When white sugar is eaten and gets into the blood, it gives a high blood-sugar level of 150 to 200. Low blood sugar is bad—no energy—but the body has no use for high blood sugar either. The body takes it and stores it as fat. If an apple or an orange or an unrefined carbohydrate is eaten, it takes a longer time to get the sugar and energy; thus there is a normal rise in the blood sugar level. When refined sugar is eaten, it gets into the blood stream quickly, and the blood sugar level becomes too high; insulin is then secreted to break down the sugar and store it in the body as glycogen. Then the blood sugar drops below normal level, and there is a feeling of a lack of energy.
If a lot of refined sugar is eaten, the pancreas is overworked. People who eat refined sugars for “quick energy” are taxing their systems and not really getting lasting energy, because the body will over-react and drop the blood sugar level below normal, and they will then have less energy than before. Unrefined carbohydrates will provide an even, long-term energy level, and not the “yo-yo” effect of extreme high followed by extreme low.
Although honey, maple syrup, blackstrap molasses, dates and other dried fruits are in varying degrees better than white sugar as they have other nutriments, they too will cause high blood sugar if too much is eaten, as they are highly concentrated though not refined. (It is often recommended to soak dried fruit in pure water overnight, to reconstitute it in fluid content and reduce the sugar concentration, -ed.) He also felt that too much of fruit juices would not be good as the sugar gets into the bloodstream too quickly, and that it would be better to eat fresh fruit.
In summing up, the best diet for good health would be a balanced vegetarian diet containing a variety of (if possible) organically-grown fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and dairy products if desired.
Reprinted from the Vegetarian Voice, September/October and November/December 1976.
Flesh food in the diet is an important cause of disease and death among humans. Meat, Fish and poultry transmit bacterial and parasitic infections to man. Pesticides, antibodies, and hormones find access to our bodies through the meat we eat. Also, flesh foods, by their very nature, are harmful to human health because of the effects that cholesterol, animal fat, blood, and lack of fiber have on various body systems.
Flesh foods lack natural fiber found so abundantly in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Fiber is composed of cellulose. It is indigestible and therefore adds bulk and moisture to the stool. A high meat diet is low in residue-containing foods resulting in constipation with hard and infrequent stools. This in turn often results in the development of hemorrhoids.
Straining and increased tension in the smooth muscle of the colon wall are thought to be the cause of diverticulosis. The pouches of diverticulosis often become impacted with fecal material and may become infected resulting in abdominal pain. Diverticuli occasionally perforate or hemorrhage, requiring emergency surgery.
Meat in the diet is now suspected by many scientists to be a major cause of cancer of the colon. With a high meat diet the transit time of food through the gastrointestinal system is prolonged. Waste matter which should be eliminated promptly remains in contact with the rectal tissue for long periods of time. Cancer-causing compounds may be formed by chemical reactions or as byproducts of bacterial metabolism. These chemicals may initiate cancer in the colon wall. Cancer is the number two killer in the U.S., and colon cancer is the most common cause of cancer deaths. Seventy-five percent of all colon cancers occur within the last six inches of the colon where feces are stored.
The fat found in dairy products and all animals except fish is highly saturated. Saturated fats in the diet tend to raise the blood cholesterol and accelerate the development of hardening of the arteries by the process of arteriosclerosis. Wherever an artery becomes completely clogged because of this pathologic process, a disaster occurs in the tissue beyond the point of obstruction. A blocked cerebral artery results in a stroke, an obstructed artery in a leg may lead to gangrene, and an obstructed coronary artery results in a heart attack. Heart attacks and strokes are the number one and number three killers in this country but are only minor causes of death in countries where there is little or no meat in the diet.
The blood remaining in meat can be a source of potentially harmful compounds. The blood is the vehicle which carries waste products from the site of their formation to the organ of elimination or metabolism. The bloodstream carries carbon dioxide to the lungs for removal from the system, and it carries other waste products such as urea, uric acid, and creatine to the kidneys for elimination from the body. The blood, also, distributes hormones from the site of production to target organs. Blood in the meat you eat contains the waste products of the slaughtered animal. The removal or metabolism of these chemicals places an extra work load on your liver and kidneys. If the animal was in a state of excitement or fear when it was slaughtered, animal adrenalin and other hormones never reach their target organs but remain in the meat only to have an effect upon you as you eat your blood rare steak.
Many pesticides are fat soluble chemical compounds which are accumulated and stored in animal fat. After eating feed sprayed with pesticides, surprisingly high levels of these complex hydrocarbons are found concentrated in choice-cuts of meat. It has been estimated that 80% of the pesticides which find their way into the human diet come from the meat we eat.
Hormones and antibodies administered to animals to force growth and prevent disease are metabolized fairly rapidly by the animal. Frequently, however, animals are slaughtered before the drugs have been cleared from the animals’ systems, and humans are exposed unnecessarily to these compounds. Until recently, D.E.S. (Diethylstilbestrol) was mixed with feed to promote rapid growth and development in animals. Women who have taken this drug during pregnancy are likely to have boys who are sterile or girls who are susceptible to genital tract cancer. Residues of D.E.S. were frequently found in meat while its use was authorized by the F.D.A.
Outbreaks of Staphylococcal Enteritis, Shigella Dysentery, and Salmonella often have been traced to meat dishes improperly prepared or preserved. Oysters and shellfish taken from waters contaminated with human waste are a significant cause of Infectious Hepatitis.
Parasitic infections frequently are traced to a flesh food diet. Tapeworms are found in beef, pork and fish. Tapeworm infestations result in chronic disability, weakness, and anemia. Trichinosis is the most important parasitic disease transported by meat in the U.S. THIS COUNTRY HAS THE DUBIOUS DISTINCTION OF LEADING THE WORLD IN TRICHINOSIS. We have approximately three times as much trichinosis as all the rest of the world. About 16% of all adults in the U.S. are found to have trichinosis at autopsy. A heavy infection of trichinosis may cause death, but more often the only manifestations of trichinosis are chronic aches and pains which usually are passed off as a rheumatism or arthritis. Unfortunately, there is NO CURE for trichinosis.
Proper cooking can kill the parasites and bacteria found in meat but when meat, poultry, and seafood are eaten raw or only have a brief exposure to heat, one is inviting bacterial or parasitic disease.
If flesh foods were eliminated from the diet, there would be a significant decrease in the disease, disability, and death which result from the conditions that have been discussed herein. Good health is not an accident; it must be pursued with diligent effort. It results from adhering to a healthful diet, avoiding all that is harmful to health and using moderately those things which promote it. Eliminating or reducing flesh foods from the diet is a step toward better health.
A lot of people are becoming vegetarians these days. For a great many people the world food crisis provides sufficient motivation to change from carnivorous livestock-based diets to vegetarian diets. Some of those so motivated have contended that a diet which includes fish would be a smaller strain on the resources of the land to produce food for our planet’s large human population. This statement overlooks the fact that fish use plankton of plant origin as a primary food at the low level of the food chain. A plankton cultivation system arising from a future technology would be a much more efficient method of producing food for earth’s people than eating fish which are much higher on the food chain than plankton.
Plankton cultivation of course would require the development of a technology which did not remove this key planetary input from its role as an oxygen provider. Much of the world’s oxygen is provided by plankton. A plankton cultivation system could be developed without too much effort if it became necessary. To date it is not. The produce of the land if eaten directly can today supply more than enough food for all of the planet’s human inhabitants. We now have available about one acre of arable land per person on which to produce food for everyone now living. A vegetarian diet requires about half an acre per person; and half of that will provide a total vegetarian or “vegan” diet.
Jacques Cousteau has been quoted as saying that some 40% of the life in the seas has died in recent decades. Pollution has been a major factor in this devastation. So has so-called “overfishing” of the world’s waters. To the fish which is caught, any fishing is “overfishing.” The massive scale of modern fishing has led to a great increase over time in fish yields up until recent years. A few short years ago a decline in yields was noted even though fishing was being attempted on an even grander scale. Clearly the fish population is being decimated by fishing. Massive fish kills caused by pollution have also been reported in recent years around the world. Like other animals fish concentrate environmental pollutants the higher one goes up the food chain. Recently fishing the Hudson River was banned because of the presence of PolyChlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) in fish at levels up to 350 parts per million. FDA surveys of grocery store foods in 1972 had shown PCBs to be present at levels up to 35 pans per million in fish. A 35 part per million level constitutes 7 times the level of PCBs which sterilized mink whose diets included Lake Michigan Coho Salmon. Lake Michigan residents were warned not to consume more salmon. The PCB dietary levels of the mink were determined to have been 5 parts per million. That level caused complete reproductive failure in the mink. The mink ranchers have since switched to other foods for the mink. The presence of 70 times the 5 part per million level in Hudson River fish was blamed on General Electric which had been dumping the industrial chemical in the river for years. Widely used in industry, PCBs have also entered the environment through the burning of containers in which they have been used.
PCBs are used in plasticizers, adhesives, sealants, transformers, and a wide variety of industrial applications. A 1973 study by scientists at the Davis Campus of the University of California reported that PCBs were the environmental derivative of DDT degrading in the environment. Recognition of PCBs in walruses, seals and polar bears at the Arctic Circle had prompted the research of the Davis scientists. The Arctic Circle is thousands of miles from the nearest industrial application of PCBs. DDT has been used worldwide. Spread by wind and water, DDT is estimated to be present in every human being. The Davis team reported that the interaction of time, about four years, and sunlight causes DDT to break down becoming PCBs. Half the American population is estimated to have measurable amounts of PCBs. Concentrated up the food chain via fish and other animal products, PCBs like other pollutants, reach the consumers of these products in high levels. Fish kills caused by PCBs have been reported around the world. PCBs at low levels have also caused mutations in plankton.
A sampling of massive fish kills from various sources of pollution in recent years would paint a picture somewhat like this:
June 1968, 100,000 fish in the Stanislaus River in California including carp, catfish, sturgeon, striped bass, sunfish, shad, smallmouth black bass, hardheads, blue-gills are found dead in the river. The California State Fish and Game Department calls the fish kill the result of pollution.
August 12, 1968, a number called significant by the Virginia State Water Control Board is reported in fish killed in the James River because of toxic human-made chemicals introduced into the water.
August 29, 1968, 1,000 small fish of different species are found dead in Accabonac Harbor at Riverhead, Long Island, New York.
The New York State Bureau of Marine Fisheries calls pesticide spraying the cause of the fish kill.
Scuba divers off Sea Bright, New Jersey, in the spring of 1969, report a graveyard of crustaceans and fish at depths of less than 100 feet. Cunner, black sea bass, ocean pout, rock crabs, tautog, lobsters, mussels are among those found dead. Great migrations of fish and crustaceans away from the region are reported by other divers. A low level of dissolved oxygen in the water is estimated to be the cause of death.
The Rhine River in West Germany and Holland in June of 1969 is the site of a fish kill of perhaps 40 million fish. Endosulfan, a chlorinated cyclic hydrocarbon marketed by the Hoechst chemical firm as Thiodan, is the cause of the kill.
May 5, 1970: 349,000 plus fish die in Missouri’s Crooked Creek after a large quantity of toxic material is dumped into the water. Clordane and Malathion in Xylene is blamed for the kill. Ninety percent of the dead fish are orange throat divers and minnows. All other aquatic life in the stream is killed for a distance of two miles from the dumping. Snakes, turtles, tadpoles, crayfish and large numbers of frogs are among those killed.
December 18, 1970: millions of fish wash ashore dead off the Peruvian coast of Pisco. A thick layer of dead fish 15 feet wide is formed stretching nearly two miles. Flounders, “cabrillas” rays, “corvinillas,” ayanques, and “pintadillas” are among those killed. Toxic sewage is a suspected cause of the kill.
May 30, 1971: Large numbers of dying fish drift ashore between Jubail and Ras Tanura on the Saudi Arabian Persian Gulf. Hamoor, black sbaitee, and angel fish are among those killed. Large mature adults weighing from one to 10 pounds with some up to 20 pounds are the principal victims of the kill. A large octopus and a large barracuda are also found killed. The cause of the kill is not discovered to date. All of the fish have grossly inflated air-bladders. The network of blood vessels in the airbladder’s dorsal wall is enormously distended and filled with blood. All the fish have empty stomachs but were fat and seemed normal.
August 5, 1971: Lees River, Massachusetts is the site of a fish kill involving nine species of marine fish and two species of invertebrates. Over one million juvenile menhaden are killed. Lesser numbers of weakfish, cunner, American eel, tautog, oyster toad fish, white perch, silver-side and mummichog also die. Half a million prawns are killed. A depressed level of dissolved oxygen is blamed on industrial and commercial discharges. Excessive nitrogen, phosphorus and ammonia are found.
Metropolitan New York: Fish “caught” off the New York gap, the site of sewage dumping for large parts of the Metropolitan area, are being brought on board ship decks and breaking up on the decks. As a result the fish are being sold fillet rather than whole. The situation continues to date.
Clearly the dangers involved in eating fish ought to be reason enough to be truly vegetarian. The tragic case of the many Japanese children born deformed because polluted fish were eaten by the parents (of the Minamata, Japan children) is one which may be repeated more often as people continue to eat animals from the sea. Mercury is blamed for pollution of the fish in that case.
The fact that PCBs have been found to produce cancer as well as sterility, disfigurement, liver problems, and other horrors, ought to prompt officials to ban fish containing PCBs under the provisions of the Delaney Amendment. The Delaney clause states that chemicals found to cause cancer cannot be present in foods. If PCBs cannot be removed from “foods,” those containing PCBs should be banned from human consumption.
What of the ethical side of the question? Dolphins face extinction because modern tuna fishing catches and kills large numbers of them each year. We should be concerned about the tuna also. Each tuna is a living creature with a right to live. To a fish being caught the concept of “endangered species” is immediately reduced to one of “endangered individual.” Can we relate as well to fish as we do to land animals? As vegetarians we can see that land animals move, breathe, feel, think, live. Do we not also realize that fish do all of this too? Perhaps a few days in a so-called “seafood” restaurant might convince one that the bodies of the fish being consumed are indeed bodies of once living, breathing, thinking, feeling animals who happened to live in water. In Taiwan live puppies are found in cages as one enters a restaurant. One can then select the dog to be killed for one’s meal. The “chow dog” of old China is the original reason why chow mein has its name. In America and elsewhere in the world one can find live lobsters similarly displayed ready for murder, in the midst of restaurants. Aren’t both acts equally horrible?
We can look too, to the meaning of the word “vegetarian;” it is derived from the Latin vegetas—full of life! Clearly if we fill our bodies with the bodies of murdered fish we are full of death instead of life.
Fishitarian or vegetarian, which will it be? The choice belongs to us. The victims cannot vote. In a sense though we are all victims of the fish-eating habit whether we eat fish ourselves or others do. The continued fishing of the world’s waters may result in a disturbance of the already fragile eco-system of the waterlife of earth.
That fish and plankton are interdependent ought to be clear. Fish feed on plankton. Fish wastes and decayed fish become a basis for plankton nourishment. There is a symbiotic system among plants and animals in water just as there is on land. Plankton produce oxygen which is used by all life on earth. With increasing fishing removing fish from the waters of the world plankton may become a vanishing species. Without plankton earth would be deprived of vast amounts of oxygen. Without that oxygen it is likely that planetary extinction for all forms of life would follow. The continued plunder of earth’s waterways for fish is senseless and dangerous. Whether we remove animals at the top of the ocean food chain like whales or animals near the bottom of the food chain like krill which are a fish type of plankton, we are dangerously jeopardizing the planet’s ecosystem. Krill has been looked upon by some as a potential new food for people. Hundreds of millions of tons of krill may soon be “harvested” annually for human consumption. That these fish plankton are interlocked with plant plankton which produce oxygen should be clear. Removing them may endanger the continued existence of the plant plankton they have interplay with.
Even those who do not consume fish directly may be consuming them indirectly. Fish are now a major source of animal feed in America and other parts of the world. The use of animals and animal products as food actually involves the indirect consumption of many fish. Fish oils are also often used as a source of the Vitamin D added to milk. Some dairies use irradiated ergosterol, also called viosterol, as a vegetarian source of Vitamin D, but switch to fish oils as price dictates.
Conscience then dictates abstinence from animals and animal products in one’s diet. As a first step in one’s vegetarianism the elimination of all flesh as food is a good move. Fish, like other animals, belong in their native environment and not in our stomachs. As we are what we eat, if we do not eat corpses we are less likely to become corpses quickly ourselves.
Fishitarian or Vegetarian? Hopefully a wise choice to be vegetarian will be made by all of us.
Vitamin B12 is an essential nutrient; it is involved in the production of red blood cells and in the utilization of nervous system-dependent carbohydrates. The inability to absorb B12 leads to so-called “pernicious anemia” in which abnormal red cells are formed, while a lack of B12 in the diet raises the risk of damage to nerves of the spinal cord. Inasmuch as nutritionists report that there is little, if any, of the vitamin in plant foods it behooves strict vegetarians to assure themselves of adequate supplies of B12.
A Mt. Sinai researcher suggests adults need about 0.1 microgram of B12 per day. However, this recommendation is based on observations of individuals taking conventional diets. Normal diets contain gross excesses of fat, protein and refined foods, all of which tend to elevate needs for B12.
Indian researchers found that high-fat intake causes marked B12 deficiency in laboratory animals fed normal amounts of the vitamin; saturated fats, in which beef, eggs and dairy products are extremely high, had an especially severe effect. High protein diets tend to deplete the vitamin in the blood, liver and kidneys of laboratory animals; animal proteins evidently produce more rapid loses than plant proteins. A diet dominated by refined foods more than doubled the B12 needs of baboons. Diets high in animal products, fat and refined carbohydrates lead to conditions in which absorption of B12 is inhibited in humans also.
It appears adults taking low fat, whole food vegan diets should need no more than 0.05 micrograms of B12 daily. The National Research Council recommends adults take 100 times that amount, or 5 micrograms per day. With consistent inconsistency they recommend 1.0 microgram of B12 per day for infants, which is a high multiple of what breast-fed tots get.
It’s not altogether clear that nonsmoking vegans need any B12 as such in their diets. The vitamin is normally synthesized by bacteria in the lower regions of the digestive tract and nonsmoking vegans evidently develop the capacity to absorb adequate amounts of their bacterial supplies. British researchers report that only one nonsmoking vegan is known to have suffered from “manifest symptoms and signs” of B12 deficiency. On the other hand, the serum B12 levels of British vegans tend to be very low during their first few years on a vegan regime. And as long as serum levels remain low the possibility of neurological damage persists.
There are several ways in which vegans can protect themselves against declining amounts of B12 in their blood and elsewhere. They could of course take supplements, but supplemental B12 should not be necessary if the diet itself is a sound one. To this end vegans should avoid high levels of fat and protein and avoid tobacco and refined foods. These moves will keep B12 needs down and facilitate synthesis and absorption of the vitamin. As added precautions vegans can include good sources of cobalt and/or B12 itself in their diets.
Each molecule of Vitamin B12 contains a molecule of cobalt so the diet must include a source of cobalt if the intestinal flora are to synthesize the vitamin. Seaweeds are incredibly rich in cobalt: the amount of kelp it takes to flavor a single bowl of salad contains enough cobalt to synthesize a year’s supply of B12. And there is growing evidence that raising cobalt intake raises the body’s supplies of B12.
The serum B12 levels of rabbits rise when they are fed inorganic cobalt or hay and oats grown in soil containing normal amounts of cobalt. Hamsters fed inorganic cobalt and no B12 had relatively high tissue levels of B12 and seemed to be obtaining entirely adequate amounts of the vitamin.
The Cal-Berkeley researchers who conducted the hamster study reported their result to be “a new finding among the nonruminants.” Prior to this finding, though, a Russian researcher had reported that the combination of iron, vitamin C and cobalt had a positive effect on B12 deficiency in humans.
Vegans who want to get their B12 ready-made need look no further than their gardens. An ounce of the roots of leeks, beets, and other vegetables would provide .1 to .3 micrograms of B12 which is more than a day’s needs. By eating vegetables right out of the garden one inevitably takes in a little soil and healthy soil contains healthy amounts of B12.
When livestock are taken from open areas and put in feedlots, broiler “hotels,” and hog “factories,” the animals must be given supplemental B12 to compensate for their inability to nose (or beak) around the soil. All foods in the wild tend to pick up B12-bearing soil and micro-organisms. South African researchers discovered bats that live exclusively on fruit need as much of B12 as humans. The “fruit bats” get plenty of B12 when living in the wild but when brought into captivity and fed store-bought fruits they developed severe B12 deficiency.
Seaweed contains not only enormous amounts of cobalt, but rather substantial amounts of B12 itself. Concentrations vary widely, however, ranging from 0.004 micro-grams per gram for kelp to 0.6 micrograms per gram for calothrex parientina. Two ounces of the latter would provide an adult with a whole year’s supply of B12. It would require about a third of an ounce of kelp per day to obtain all one’s B12 needs in the form of active B12 from kelp. In view of the large amount of cobalt in kelp, though, vegans should need no more than sprinkling amounts of that (or any other) seaweed.
Seaweeds are actually species of algae. Other algae, including the “moss” that grows on the north sides of trees and the “scum” that builds up in ponds, are also good sources of B12. Algae from Lake Chad is dried into B12-rich cakes which have a taste and texture not unlike cheese. You can get a week’s supply of B12 from the water you take in while swimming in a fresh water pond or an unchlorinated swimming pool.
Greens and sprouts offer the broadest possible array of vitamins and minerals: if grown in soil rich in cobalt and iodine they are apt to provide everything the body needs except a source of energy. Vegans who raise their own food can assure themselves of adequate intakes of iodine and cobalt by enriching their soil with seaweed. Those who rely on store-bought foods can include a little seaweed in their diets. Both groups can boost their B12 intakes by eating, rather than discarding, the stringy roots of common vegetables and eating in the wild. AH vegetarians should avoid tobacco and refined foods and keep fat and protein intakes down; these moves will lower B12 needs, enhance absorption of the vitamin and insure the individual good health.
There are reports that greens and sprouts contain active B12. Comfrey was said to be a rather good source of the vitamin but British researchers claim they found no B12 in comfrey. Meanwhile, we have plenty of known sources of the vitamin in our gardens, forests, ponds, lakes and oceans. We need only reunite ourselves with our natural surroundings to abound in what our bodies need.
Wolf! Wolf! cry the media. Then everybody runs as fast as they can, including Hygienists and some Hygienic doctors.
There were too many people becoming vegetarians, so something had to be done to scare them away from this healthful and unprofitable practice. The animal-exploiting industry was probably behind the study which was done on the Vegans in England, and other studies that were done here in America and elsewhere.
Hygienists, vegetarians, and Vegans are all in a dither because of the newspaper stories in the regular media about the dire consequences of a strict vegetarian diet. Some are buying dulse. Some are eating brewer’s yeast; some are taking vitamin B12 supplements; and some are eating meat, cheese and eggs again because they are actually afraid.
Why should they be afraid? I’m not the least bit afraid. Our principles are either right or wrong. They have worked for Hygienists for over a hundred years, so how can they be wrong? I’ve seen these principles properly applied succesfully over and over again in pernicious anemia and other so-called “deficiency” diseases and I know for sure it is not the principles that are wrong.
We are going to devote much of this issue of the Review to exposing the vitamin B12 hoax. It must be done because unfortunately people will allow themselves to be tossed about like houses in a tornado instead of realizing that Hygienic principles are not wrong.
When the vitamin B12 scare occurred and the media kept telling us we couldn’t get our vitamin B12 from the diet to which we are anatomically and physiologically adapted, I immediately suspected something. To myself, I said: “If we can’t get vitamin B12 from our foods, or if bacteria cannot manufacture it in our intestinal tracts, then everything we are fighting for and everything we believe in is untrue. If we have to go out and become a coprophagous (manure-eating) animal and eat inadequately washed vegetables to secure our vitamin B12, then Hygiene as a science is invalid. We are either frugivores or we are not.”
Since numerous scientists for the past 200 years have shown us that we are primates, and that fruits, vegetables and nuts are the proper foods for people, then the fault lies elsewhere.
Dr. Shelton is not able to keep everybody in line because he is busy writing a book. He has not been keeping up to date on some modern issues.
Somebody has to help prevent people from being scared by the wolf call every time the medical profession, the meat packing industry, and the purveyors of so-called health foods cry “wolf!” So I’m going to do it.
For all those who will listen, I’m going to do my best to uphold the principles of Natural Hygiene in the future. This does not mean that our growth will be stifled as some claim simply because we stick to Hygienic princples. To insult Hygienic principles merely because they were discovered years ago is as foolish as casting aside Newton’s Law of Gravity because it was discovered years ago. The passage of time does not invalidate truth. We are going to look for the real cause of the problem and place the responsibility where it really belongs. We will get rid of causes instead of palliating symptoms with supplements.
For those people who are in doubt about Hygienic principles, I suggest that you study Hygiene more thoroughly. If it is wrong in this one instance then the whole system is wrong—and the whole system is not wrong.
The medical profession is screaming “wolf” and we are foolishly falling for it. Physicians are constantly bombarding the country with articles telling vegetarians that they must eat animal products such as meat, fish, eggs, or milk and cheese in order to make a sufficient amount of vitamin B12. They are grouping all vegetarians together and not discriminating at all. Just because there may be some sick vegetarians who cannot absorb vitamin B12 (and this is questioned by eminent scientists), it does not follow that all vegetarians cannot absorb this vitamin. Most people who have turned to vegetarianism were sick to begin with and this sickness is the reason they changed their diets. Most of them willingly state they have been healthier since changing than ever before in their lives. One or two vegetarians may seem to be a little low in Vitamin B12 but this does not mean that all strict vegetarians are, or ever will be.
I’m surprised that Hygienists are falling for the propaganda that is purposely put out to scare people away from becoming vegetarians. It is a scientific fact that we are frugivores and the frugivorous diet has been well established scientifically. We know the Hygienic diet of fruits, nuts, and vegetables is the diet that we are supposed to live on. We will be well-nourished and more healthy if we eat only those foods to which we are constitutionally adapted.
There are so few people who live strict Hygienic lives that I can’t say that anyone has superior health at the present time and in the present polluted environment. Simply because in our present polluted environment, where people are forced to overwork, very few people are living Hygienically does not mean that people cannot live Hygienically, and the fact that one or two Vegans (not Hygienic-Vegans) may be low in vitamin B12 does not mean that a strict Hygienist, living correctly in all other aspects, will lack vitamin B12.
Here is another thought: Nature puts very little vitamin B12 in foods meant for people. This should tell us something. If she put very little of this vitamin in food, it must mean that either we don’t need very much, or that we must rely on bacteria to form it for us. Also, who can say how much of this vitamin is necessary? According to medical sources only one microgram a day is adequate to “cure” pernicious anemia, so the minimum requirement has been set at this level. We may not need even this much. Just because some scientists took a group of conventional people on an omnivorous diet and determined the amount of vitamin B12 in their systems, averaged that, and came up with a figure, one cannot conclude that this is the amount of B12 necessary for normal healthy Hygienists, vegetarians, and Vegans. How many times has Dr. Shelton pointed out to us that taking the averages of anything from a group of sick people means nothing? Why should an average of B12 in a lot of people eating haphazardly and gorging daily on gore, guts and garbage made of animal bodies and their secretions, scare us to death? Have we no faith in the living organism? Have we no faith in the natural scheme of things? Are we forever going to let ourselves be blown hither and thither like a feather in the wind by every two bit scientist that comes along? Have we no faith in the principles of Hygiene? We should be standing firm like a mighty oak with our roots deeply planted into the solid foundation of Hygiene that Dr. Shelton structured so well for us. Instead, we are a group of wishy-washy people, frightened to death about one case of a vegetarian lacking vitamin B12. The papers capitalized on this one case to scare people into the meat markets and vitamin shops.
I’ve fasted numerous cases of people with pernicious anemia who have recovered their health by turning to Hygiene. I’ve never seen a Hygienist who had pernicious anemia. The flesh eaters supposedly secure plenty of vitamin B12. Why do they develop pernicious anemia? They are overloaded with vitamin B12. Why couldn’t they recover under medical care? They had had vitamin B12 shots, liver extract, and vitamin pills. Why did it not cure them? I’ll tell you why. Simply because life and health are more than one vitamin. Life is more than two vitamins. Life and health depend on a myriad of reactions and inter-reactions of materials and influences, not just one. Supplying just one element of the physiological needs of the body won’t produce superior health. It may mask symptoms sufficiently for a while to fool the physicians with the scientific minds, who believe in specific cures for specific diseases, but it never fools Nature.
We are in a world that is rapidly deteriorating. We are turning out children who are sickly and who have very little vitality. Because of the environmental pollution, they are sometimes lacking in digestive enzymes as well as one or more enzymes or hormones that are absolutely essential for health and sometimes life. You can’t blame Hygiene for this deterioration. The fault lies not in Hygiene, whose principles are eternally true, but in our wrong way of living and our polluted environment. How quick we are to point the finger at Hygiene and say; “It’s lacking. It must be changed. We must go forward. Hygiene must not be stifled.” I do not call sticking to basic principles being stifled. If someone feels he or she is dusting antiques when upholding the principles of Natural Hygiene then he or she doesn’t understand Hygiene, or he or she is looking for ways to compromise.
Instead of looking for the reasons why Hygiene may not appear to be valid, people immediately condemn Hygiene and revert back to their dirty, disease-producing omnivorous diet.
Instead of trying to prove the validity of the science of Hygiene, modern Hygienists seem to be busily engaged in trying to disprove it. With so little faith, how can we expect to grow?
Just because pollution in our environment from cars, nuclear plants, power plants, microwave stations, etc. causes some people to be born with deficiencies so they are unable to digest, absorb or utilize vitamin B12, one cannot infer that every vegetarian has this defect. Therefore, it is not true that every vegetarian needs to eat some dairy products in order to have sufficient B12.
Some Hygienists may complain that they don’t have the discipline to live Hygienically in an unHygienic environment. If they develop anemia, one cannot say that Hygiene is at fault; if Hygienic principles are violated, the individual must suffer. In addition we must not overlook the fact that some people say they are living Hygienically when they are not. We must delve deeply into their life history to see whether or not they are truly carrying out a Hygienic life. Nine times out of ten they are not.
Why do people with pernicious anemia recover their health when coming to the Health School? Simply because the cause of the anemia is removed and the conditions of health are supplied and the body heals itself. Why haven’t those supposed Vegans who developed vitamin B12 deficiency come for real Hygienic care instead of listening to researchers who are subsidized by the meat packing industry? Why do they think they have to take shots of vitamin B12 and resort to eating dessicated liver? Why do those who guide them assume they cannot, recover? Have they not thought of living completely Hygienically? Why do they not fast to see what the body can do before they fall prey to the vendors of medications and drugs? One reason is because they have been frightened to death and led astray by the vendors of palliatives.
I fasted one woman who had pernicious anemia and who was taking vitamin B12 and iron shots once a month. She was very sick before coming to the Health School but she recovered, not only from that trouble but from several other problems, at the same time. Why? Because disease is a unity and people don’t have just one disease. When a person is toxic the whole organism begins to deteriorate, and piecemeal treatment to hide symptoms is not satisfactory. Nothing short of total Hygienic care will suffice.
Let us not forget that Dr. William Howard Hay recorded 101 cases of pernicious anemia and only eight of those cases failed to recover—and these people were dying when they arrived for his care. Although these cases were recorded fifty to seventy-five years ago, we cannot ignore them. This date points out to me that there are changing conditions in our environment. Instead of condemning and questioning the science of Hygiene, as so many people are doing today, we should be seeking the true cause of the increase in cases of pernicious anemia, if there be such an increase.
I’ve been warning people since 1953 that our environment is lethal and if we don’t do something we won’t have a race left. Cleaning up our environment is almost more important, at this stage of the game, than Hygiene. The world is analogous to the body when given a dose of medicine (poison). An emergency situation has arisen and all bodily processes must be stopped for the more immediate emergency of getting the poison out of the system. Likewise, our Earth is rapidly becoming so poisoned that emergency measures must be taken before we are all killed. The race is deteriorating so fast that it is frightening. We’ve got to spread Hygiene on every front before much more deterioration takes place or it may be irreversible.
It is well known that the past few generations have abused their stomachs terribly. Each generation has been sicker than the last. When people become sick they begin the Hygienic diet without first fasting or permitting the body to heal itself. Consequently if they develop a deficiency because of impaired digestion the deficiency is attributed to the vegetarian diet. Actually the deficiency is due to the abuse given the body before becoming a Hygienist. We know that sick people who have been on vitamin B12 injections for years, without much benefit, can take a fast and get well. This recovery would indicate that they still had the power to secrete the intrinsic factor. It also indicates that possibly these people were suffering with a simple gastritis and that after fasting, their inflammatory condition healed, leaving them better able to secrete the necessary enzymes for good digestion, absorption and utilization. It is a fact the anemic get well while fasting and stay well if they continue to live properly. Why they get well is due to a number of factors. The blood picture improves while fasting, though no extraneous vitamin B12 is available. Let those screaming “deficiency” explain that.
The elimination of the toxic factor while fasting is extremely important for recovery of health. Removing toxemia, which is a great inhibiting influence on both digestion and the blood-forming organs is the prime factor in recovery. Toxemia causes lowered functioning power, not only of the secreting glands of the stomach but of every organ in the body, including the blood-forming organs. Lowered functioning power of the entire gastrointestinal system hinders digestion, and causes much fermentation and putrefaction. This in turn interferes with digestion and absorption of nutriments necessary for the production of blood, and also causes the absorption of toxic products of indigestion, producing more toxemia which in turn causes even less functioning and blood-forming power. Good digestion is necessary to remove the protein with which it is combined away from vitamin B12 so it can be combined with intrinsic factor for normal absorption.
Vitamin B12 is necessary in miniscule amounts. It is needed in such small amounts it is spoken of in micrograms, not even in milligrams. Regardless of what authorities say, this much we can secure through the Hygienic diet of fruits, nuts and vegetables. When people like Adele Davis, in Let’s Get Well, say that strict vegetarians who eat no animal foods should take 50 micrograms of vitamin B12 each week “while their stomach secretions are still normal,” they are unduly scaring some vegetarians.
Experiments reported in Gastroenterology in 1962 lead to the belief that laboratory rats on a diet deficient in iron soon “lost their ability to absorb vitamin B12.” This points out the totality of diet. Deficiencies seldom come single. There are many people with gastrointestinal problems who simply don’t absorb any of their food properly. These may be lacking in vitamin B12. Again, we see that it is not the System that is wrong, but the person. Correction must be aimed at the cause of the problem, not at the modifying Hygiene. If we modified Hygiene every-time someone got sick, there would soon be no Hygiene left and we would all be back in the treating business. We don’t change the Hygienic system or tell everyone who is eating Hygienically to take vitamin B12 just because there is someone who is sick and can’t absorb vitamin B12 temporarily. Just because there are a few individuals, not even Hygienists, who can’t absorb vitamin B12 it does not follow that everyone has to resort to taking vitamin B12 tablets or to eating yeast, or animal foods. Just because some vegetarians develop gastroenteritis from wrong ways of living, does not mean that they all do. We don’t change the entire Hygienic system and diet any other time just because some people are temporarily unable to digest certain foods. We permit them to recover their health and then they are able to take all the foods that are Hygienic. In short, we aim at restoring the sick person to health so he or she can function properly in the future.
Most sources state that vegetable products show no “measurable activity” when speaking of vitamin B12 or cobalamin. “No measurable activity” does not mean that there is no vitamin B12 at all in vegetables. Best and Taylor state that: “The extrinsic factor (vitamin B12) is present in liver, beef, rice polishings, yeast and other substances rich in the vitamin B complex.” They continue that: “It is also found in the intestinal contents of normal persons, as well as in the feces of patients with pernicious anemia. There is, therefore, no reason to believe that a dietary deficiency of this factor is the cause of disease.” Other authorities say the same. Many scientists condemn vegetable foods as lacking in vitamin B12, but they never state that there is absolutely no vitamin B12 in vegetable foods. Indeed, they wish us to believe that it is totally lacking and this is simply not true. The Heinz Handbook of Nutrition (page 111) gives the following inadequate table but even if we ate the small amount of 100 grams of green beans, beets, carrots, and peas, even leaving out the cereal products, we would have half of our so-called minimum daily requirement of vitamin B12, providing our digestion and absorption are normal.
Micrograms per 100-gr edible Portion
Green Beans | 0-0.2 |
Beets | 0-0.1 |
Bread, Wholewheat | 0.2-0.4 |
Carrots | 0-0.1 |
Oats | 0.3 |
Peas | 0.0-1.0 |
Soybean Meal | 0.2 |
The Heinz Handbook of Nutrtion states that, “A dosage corresponding to one microgram of the crystalline vitamin per day is sufficient for maintenance of a patient with pernicious anemia. This indicates the absorption of one microgram per day meets the normal requirement for adults.”
The Nutrition Almanac states that, “In nature, we find the B-complex vitamins in yeast, green vegetables, etc., but nowhere do we find a single B vitamin isolated from the rest. Natural forms of the B vitamins are preferable to the synthetic forms since the natural forms have all of the B factors, even those not yet known, plus valuable enzymes.” This is just another indication that people are mistaken when they state that vegetables do not have vitamin B12 in them. Simply because it exists in such miniscule amounts that it may escape detection by present day methods, does not mean it is absent.
Best and Taylor say that all the B vitamins are grouped together because they are found together in Nature. They couldn’t be separated one from the other for a long time, so they were thought to be one vitamin. He intimates that where other B vitamins are found there also will be cobalamin. “Twelve substances are grouped together because of their close association in tissues and because for a long time their separation proved most difficult: thiamine, riboflavin, nicotinic acid, pyridoxine, pantothenic acid, biotin, para-aminobenzoic acid, folk acid, folinic acid, cyanocobalamin, choline, and inositol. All have been isolated in pure form, and most of them have been synthesized in the laboratory.”
Another indication that vitamin B12 is in fruits, nuts, seeds and vegetables containing the other B vitamins is in Rodale’s book entitled The Complete Book of Vitamins (page 236). “As you know, the B complex of vitamins is called a ‘complex’ because, instead of being one vitamin, it has turned out to be a large number of related vitamins, which appear generally in the same foods.” We need such a microscopic amount of vitamin B12, it is not understandable why he urges people to eat so much liver and other foods containing vitamin B12, when excess is not necessary for health, in fact, an excess of anything has only proved to be detrimental to health. I suppose he is assuming everyone eats refined products, drinks coffee, smokes, and takes antibiotics; these practices do produce deficiencies, as some cause the excessive utilization of the B vitamins.
Recently researchers have been coming to the conclusion that Dr. Shelton came to many years ago regarding the “Intrinsic Factor.” Dr. Shelton surmised that it was poor digestion that prevented the people from absorbing vitamin B12 and that there was nothing mysterious about it and that the intrinsic factor was simply a normal supply of digestive enzymes. In other words, Castle, who discovered the Intrinsic Factor, which has never been isolated from gastric juice, was wrong in thinking that there was a particular substance in gastric juice necessary for the absorption of vitamin B12.
This “particular substance” is simply good digestion. Vitamin B12 comes combined with protein. In order for the vitamin to be absorbed the protein must be split off so that the vitamin can be combined with the necessary substances, thought also to be protein. Dr. J.G. Heathcote and Dr. F.E. Mooney of St. Helena’s Hospital, London, stated that, in spite of an enormous amount of work, there is very little agreement among researchers even on limited properties of the supposed intrinsic factor. They say that “it has never been isolated or identified.” This is still true. They “believe, therefore, that intrinsic factor as currently understood, has no real existence per se, and that the fundamental process preceding absorption of vitamin B12 is simply one of normal degradation or digestion of animal protein.” Rodale,
The Complete Book of Vitamins, page 241.
There are many causes of impaired digestion but suffice it to say that Hygienists should realize if they abuse their stomachs and intestines by overeating they may eventually suffer malabsorption problems.
It is well known that almonds, asparagus, beans, cashew nuts, figs, lentils, peanuts, pecans, avocado, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collards, fresh and dried peas of all kinds; plums, raisins, walnuts (black and English), contain vitamin B1. Since all the B vitamins are usually grouped together, in all likelihood there must be some vitamin B12 in these and other vegetable foods.
One of the problems with modern Hygienists is that they are afraid to eat nuts. They are so fearful of eating an excess of nuts that they eat far too few. We took Raven Rose Haag off all dairy products at the tender age of fourteen months and fed her nuts. She did not like nut milks and would not drink them so we blended her nuts and let her eat as much of them as she desired. She may have had an excess but her health never showed it. She grew perfectly. Those of you who saw her at the convention can vouch for the fact that her rosy cheeks, happy, smiling disposition and vitality certainly does not indicate anemia. She will be three years old in October.
There is no source that states that vegetables contain absolutely no vitamin B12. The Cyclopedia of Medicine says that vegetables contain practically no vitamin B12, in contrast to their high content of folic acid. Simply because animal foods are so very high in vitamin B12 causes all researchers to underestimate the fact that vegetables do contain vitamin B12. Although vegetables do not synthesize vitamin B, the soil bacteria do, and some sources state that the bacteria make the vitamin and actually hand it over to the higher plants. All the plant has to do is absorb it.
Not until we are furnished with a reliable source of information, and not until they have tested all fruits, vegetables and nuts, can we say that Hygienic-Vegans are unable to secure a sufficient amount of vitamin B12 from their diets.
According to most nutritionists and health authorities, strict vegetarians must take pills, or eat animal foods, or suffer with a B12 deficiency and die of neurological and blood disorders. This has not been proved by scientists and in another article I will definitely show this. Vegans are not suffering from pernicious anemia and they are healthy, in fact healthier than their meat eating friends.
Some animals secure their cobalamin (vitamin B12) by eating manure which is a very rich source, because it seems to be produced by bacteria in various parts of the guts of animals. Ruminants are furnished B12 or cobalamin by microorganisms which produce it in their digestive tracts. But in poor slighted humankind, the current thought is that the vitamin B12 produced by bacteria in his gut can’t be absorbed. This has been shown to be false and there are experiments that lead us to believe that cobalamin manufactured by bacteria in the intestinal tracts of primates can be absorbed.
A few years ago I wrote an article about vitamin B12 and I said that if vitamin B12 is not in fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts, and bacteria do not manufacture it where humans can absorb it, then we do not need it. The diet to which man is constitutionally adapted should furnish all the requisites of good nutrition. If it isn’t present in the diet and bacteria do not produce it where it is absorbable by man, then what can we think except that we don’t need it or Nature must have made a great big mistake. She neglected to take care of her most perfect creature.
We know Nature did not neglect man. I hold that the vitamin is in our foods. I also have facts which give me reason to believe that bacteria in the stomach, and in the upper and lower small intestine, produce it for us. I also believe that it is absorbed from the small intestine in humans and I have articles which show that, in at least one primate that was studied, this must take place.
You must rest assured that we do not have to resort to pills, algae or animal parts, to secure our Vitamin B12. Nature did not forget humankind. All this scare about vitamin B12 is just a big hoax and it is done purposely by newspaper and nutrition propagandists to keep people from becoming vegetarians, and to sell meat, dairy products, vitamins and sea weeds.
Eat your nuts, fruits, vegetables, and seeds in good combinations for proper digestion and absorption, all in the uncooked state, and don’t take antibiotics and you can be sure that you will secure a sufficient amount of all of the B vitamins and in the proper proportion, one to the other, so that the maximum amount can be absorbed and properly utilized. Don’t let yourself be pushed about by every fly-by-night “health authority” who knows nothing about Hygiene. Learn your principles and stand up for them! They are as true today as yesterday. Truth does not change.
Vegan Males Actually Had More Haemoglobin Than Conventional Men On An Omnivorous Diet
The Blood Count And Films Of The Vegan Subjects Were Essentially Normal
Female Vegans Were Not Weak: Their Physical Activity Was Considered Normal
None Of The Vegan Subjects Studied Had Vitamin B12 Deficiency
Six Healthy Subjects Were Breast-Fed By Vegan Mothers
Conclusion: The Present Study Finds No Lack Of Vitamin B12 In Vegans.
Diagnosis Of Vitamin B12 Deficiency And Disease Found In Vegans Is Questioned Even By Authorities
Never Believe The Final Conclusions Of A Flesh Eating Scientist
There has been so much controversy about Vegans having a vitamin B12 deficiency that I thought I would go to the sources of information myself and determine what was true and what was not true. I secured an article about Vegans at the University of Texas Medical School library, at San Antonio, and when I read “Haematological Studies on Vegans,” the article most often quoted by so-called health “authorities” showing that Vegans are deficient in vitamin B12, I was flabergasted. It does not say that Vegans are deficient in vitamin B12 at all. The tests did not show that these people were suffering from anemia. “The blood counts and films were normal in all the Vegans and no subject had a haemoglobin concentration below the lower limit of normality.”
“Although within the normal range, male (but not female) Vegans had lower values for erythrocyte counts and higher values for mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular haemoglobin than their controls.” This simply means that the red blood cell count was normal in male and female Vegans, but lower in Vegan males than in the control group. It also means that the haemoglobin in Vegan males was higher than in the meat eating controls, showing that their red blood cells could carry more oxygen than the omnivorous controls. Also their mean corpuscular volume was higher. The quote follows:
“Although the blood films were normal, a number of statistically significant differences were noted between the Vegans and their omnivore controls: in the male but not the female Vegans the mean values for erythrocyte count and packed cell volume were lower (R<0.01 and R<0.05) and the mean values for mean corpuscular haemoglobin and mean corpuscular volume were higher (both P<0.01) regardless of whether they were taking vitamin B12 supplements or not: the mean values for serum vitamin B12 concentration was lower in the Vegans not taking vitamin B12 supplements (P<0.01) and in those using foods supplemented with the vitamin (P<0.0l) but not in those taking vitamin B12 tablets; the mean value for serum folate was much higher in the Vegans (P<0.01); the mean erythrocyte folate concentration tended to be higher (P<0.05) in the Vegans not taking vitamin B12 supplements.”
In their discussion of these facts the scientists state that “the blood counts and films of the Vegan subjects were essentially normal, in agreement with Hardinge and Stare (1954a) West and Ellis (1966) and Ellis and Montegriffo (1970). The findings that male but not female Vegans tended to have lower values for erythrocyte counts and higher values for mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular haemoglobin are novel.” The researchers do not know what to think of this. They can’t understand why a vegetarian can have more hemoglobin than a flesh eater.
“Cotes, Dabbs, Hall, McDonald, Miller, Mumford & Saunders (1970) found no difference between the physiological response to exercise of female Caucasian Vegans and omnivores; no similar studies of male Caucasion Vegans appear to have been made and would be of interest.”
Actually the Vegans had normal erythrocyte folate concentration, which indicates no B12 deficiency. “The finding of lower serum vitamin B12 and higher serum folate values in Vegans is in agreement with previous reports (West & Ellis, 1966; Ellis & Montegriffo, 1970). Erythrocyte folate concentrations in Vegans do not appear to have been previously reported. The level of serum folate is often increased in patients with untreated pernicious anemia, while the erythrocyte folate concentration is abnormally low (Chanarin, 1969) apparently because vitamin B12 is necessary for the uptake of folate into the erythrocyte (Nutrition Reviews, 1975) In this study none of the Vegan subjects had an abnormally low erythrocyte folate concentration; this would suggest: first, that none of the subjects was suffering from vitamin B12 deficiency and, second, that the high serum folate concentrations found in many of the Vegan subjects were due to high dietary intakes of folate. This might explain why megaloblastic anemia was not encountered in our Vegan subjects.”
Who says that the Vegans were lacking in vitamin B12? Even those Vegans who were not taking supplements or foods supplemented with vitamin B12 had what is considered normal serum levels of vitamin B12. All their blood cells were normally structured, not overly large or undersized. “No subject had a haemoglobin value below the lower limit of normality (13.0 ng/l for males, WHO 1968; 11.5 ng/l for females, Chanarin 1969). No subject had a serum vitamin B12 concentration indicative of deficiency (less than 80 ng/l WHO 1968) or a serum folate level less than 2.5 ug/l. There was no evidence of macrocytosis or, microcytosis, no polysegmented neutrophils were seen and all the blood films were normochromic when examined.”
It is really pathetic and downright dishonest when newspaper reporters take half information and misinformation and spread actual lies to the public. These Vegans proved to be healthy in all ways despite not being strict Hygienists. It would be interesting to have a study of Vegan-Hygienists who live on all uncooked foods.
There appears to be some disagreement among the researchers. Rose (1976) claimed that megaloblastic anemia is a predictable consequence of the Vegan dietary habits adopted in Britain. But the findings failed to show it. “Vitamin B12 is a product of microbial synthesis and is not found in plant foods (Lester Smith, 1965) and therefore should be absent from Vegan diets.” If it was absent from Vegan diets, then why did they not develop anemia? Why did Hardinge and Stare (1945a), West & Ellis (1966), and Ellis & Montegriffo (1970) fail to find “any clinical or haematological evidence of vitamin B12 deficiency in their studies of Caucasian Vegans, although the serum concentrations of some of their subjects indicated deficiency.” They were not sick. Perhaps absorption was not quite up to par in some of them. However, they were not anemic. Perhaps what is considered normal vitamin B12 serum levels is too high. Vegetarians not smoking and not drinking coffee don’t require as much vitamin B12 as a conventional person who continually poisons himself or herself.
“All the Vegan and omnivore subjects seemed healthy when studied. The Vegan subjects had been on the diet for an average of seven years (range: six months—30 years).
The propaganda that every Vegan mother is lacking in vitamin B12 is sheer nonsense. Vegan mothers can nurse their babies as well as any omnivore and probably even better if they ate more raw foods and nuts. “Six subjects had been born of and breast-fed by Vegan mothers and weaned and reared on a Vegan diet. None of the Vegan subjects admitted eating meat, fish, eggs, milk products, or any other foods of animal origin.”
Some of the Vegans were taking food supplements containing vitamin B12 and some were taking vitamin B12 tablets but the important fact is that those not doing so came out just as well in the tests as those using supplements, “...ten subjects were taking neither tablets nor foods supplemented with the vitamin. The mean serum vitamin B12 concentration was higher in those Vegans taking vitamin B12 tablets than those using foods supplemented with the vitamin (421+70 ng/l (mean ± SE) compared with 253 ± 19; P<0.05). Four of the ten subjects who were not taking vitamin B12 supplements had normal serum levels of the vitamin (greater than 180 ng/l): their vitamin B12 values were 200, 230, 220 and 235 ng/l, and they had been on the diet for 2, 6, 3 and 4 years respectively.” If vitamin B12 is not in their diet then they are getting it from somewhere. It is probably in their diet and also being manufactured by their own microbial flora in their intestinal tracts. They are probably absorbing it very well.
“Vitamin B12 is the vitamin most likely to be deficient in Vegan and occasionally vegetarian diets. The present study has provided no evidence of pathologically low values of vitamin B12 in the serum of Vegans. In twenty-four of the subjects this could be attributed to their taking vitamin supplements or foods supplemented with the vitamin. There were, however, ten subjects who did not take supplements and it was, therefore, surprising that these subjects did not show evidence of vitamin B12 deficiency. Some Vegans may obtain the vitamin through the accidental ingestion of insects or from micro-organisms, that produce the vitamin in their food or as a result of poor personal hygiene. Alternatively, some Vegans may be able to absorb vitamin B12 which has been synthesized by their own, micro flora.” This is the usual way B12 is made. Recent evidence strongly points to the fact that primates absorb vitamin B12 manufactured by bacteria in their own intestines.
Researchers denigrate and insult people if people don’t respond the way they should to their current theories and hypotheses. To state that Vegans are dirty and that they don’t wash their vegetables well, and that their hygiene is poor is mudslinging. Vegans are among the thinking population. They are every bit as clean as omnivorous people, if not cleaner, because they probably realize that cleanliness is a part of a healthful program and many of them are thinking of health as well as of kindness to animals and people. I am sure that Vegans are absorbing some vitamin B12 that is synthesized by their intestinal flora.
I do not doubt the above subheading one bit. The conventional meat-eating scientists are so anxious to find something wrong with vegetarians that they blind themselves. The study I read intimates that the former diagnoses of blood and neurological disorders among Vegans were not very convincing. “A few cases of vitamin B12 deficiency, sometimes resulting in neurological symptoms, have been reported in Caucasian Vegans apparently due to dietary deficiency (Badenoch, 1952; Wokes et al. 1955; Smith, 1962; Hines, 1966; Verjaal & Timmermans-van den Bos, 1967; Winawer, Strieff & Zamcheck, 1967; Ledbetter & del Pozo, 1969; Misra & Fallofield, 1971. The results provided by Badenoch (1952), Wokes et al. (1955) and Smith (1962) are incomplete and their diagnoses of sub-acute combined degeneration of the spinal cord due to vitamin B12 deficiency are not convincing (Pallis & Lewis, 1974). However, this and other studies (Hardinge & Stare, 1954a; West & Ellis, 1966; Ellis & Montegriffo, 1970; Armstrong, Davies, Nichol, Van Merwyk & Larword, 1954) failed to find symptoms attributable to a dietary deficiency of vitamin B12. This would suggest that dietary vitamin B12 deficiency is rare among Vegans. ”
So you see, it was all a hoax. The second group of scientists did not confirm the findings of the first group of scientists. Flesh eating people, on a diet of refined carbohydrates suffer with the most cases of pernicious anemia. I am sure that if statistics were made of all vegetarians, one would find more cases are found in flesh eating individuals than in the vegetarians. One would probably also find that the vegetarians were healthier on the whole than flesh eaters.
Always read the fine print. Never believe the conclusions of flesh eating scientists. This is exactly how and why ordinary news media all tell lies. Reporters take one sentence from a research paper and enlarge and elaborate on this and make a wild tale that would cause you to believe that all vegetarians, and especially Vegans, are deficient in vitamin B12. This simply has not been proved. After saying that the Vegans were normal, the scientists who presented the present study have the gall to say: “However, as there is a possibility of developing symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency, Vegans should supplement their diets with the vitamin.”
The researchers won’t actually come out and say it but they state that the Vegans would probably be less prone to ischaemic heart disease. The researchers do condescend to say that the Vegan diet will only probably promote normal blood formation, after showing that it definitely DOES in their study. They are so afraid to actually admit anything that it is shameful. They prove that the diet is good but they can’t accept it. It is too foreign to their flesh eating minds, or they don’t want their backers to think they are swayed by their findings less the subsidies be withdrawn and they lose their jobs. Consequently they keep playing down their actual findings. The last paragraph of their conclusions follows.
“The health of Caucasian Vegans appears to differ little from that of omnivores (Hardinge & Stare, 1954a; Ellis & Montegriffo, 1970; Ellis, West & Saunders, 1976; Sanders, 1977). Pregnancy in Caucasian Vegans and the health of children reared on Vegan diets appear to be essentially normal (Thomas, Ellis & Diggory, 1977; Mumford & Ellis, unpublished observations; Sanders, 1977). Caucasian Vegans tend to have lower concentrations of serum cholesterol and triglicerides and less body fat than omnivores (Hardinge & Stare, 1954b; Sanders, 1977) which suggest that they may be less prone to ischaemic heart disease than omnivores, and according to Aries, Crowther, Drasar, Hill & Ellis, (1971), Caucasian Vegans are probably less susceptible to cancer of the colon than omnivores. The Vegan diet appears to be adequate provided it comprises a mixture of unrefined cereals, pulses, nuts, fruits and vegetables and is supplemented with vitamin B12 and D; such a diet will generally promote normal blood formation.”
I can’t believe it. After proving that the diets of Vegans not taking vitamin B12 supplements were normal, they still advise that Vegans take supplements. I guess they can’t believe their own facts and figures. What a pity! They might learn something if they could open their minds.
Vitamin-Deprived Baboons Had More Bacteria Working For Them
Humans Have Anaerobic Organisms Producing Vitamins In The Colon
It has long been difficult to produce a vitamin B12 deficiency in animals (Stokstad 1968). Yet, this is exactly what scientists tried to do to baboons in a study done by Uphill, Jacob and Lall, at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratories, P.O. Box 43640, Nairobi, Kenya.
In the manuscript written by Uphill, Jacob and Lall there are several contradictions. At one time it is stated that, “The production of vitamin B12 deficiency in animals is known to be difficult (Stokstad 1968) and in this laboratory the feeding of a vitamin B12-deficient diet to baboons over a two-year period resulted in the development of a subclinical deficiency of the vitamin (Siddons 1974).” Then they tell us how they produced the “subclinical” deficiency. “It was shown however, that the vitamin B12 deficiency was more severe in baboons fed a diet containing ampicillin, suggesting that the intestinal flora may play a part in the vitamin B12 nutrition of the baboon.” They never really found a deficiency in all the animals. Some animals actually had a high serum vitamin B12 level. Some writers taking the foregoing statement out of context will convince people that a vitamin B12 deficiency can indeed be produced in baboons, when it can’t. The so-called deficiency was subclinical and never caused disease in the animals. It was merely a low serum vitamin B12 level. Even if they had produced a real deficiency it would not have meant anything because the experimental diet was so inadequate in every known nutrient, containing only synthetic vitamins and minerals, that for all purposes the animals were just subsisting, and probably living largely on stored nutrients.
They continue: “In addition, a group of young baboons fed a vitamin B12-deficient diet were found to have high serum and liver vitamin B12 levels after 18 months, in comparison with older animals fed the same diet. The intestinal flora of young animals has been shown for many species to be different from that of adult animals (Smith & Crab 1961). This study was undertaken to determine whether there were any detectable differences in vitamin B12 production by the intestinal flora of the baboons which could explain these findings.”
They also state that, “Samples of gastric and small intestinal contents, obtained at laparotomy from two young vitamin B12-deprived baboons, contained varying quantities of vitamin B12. Many of the organisms isolated from these aspirates produced vitamin B12 in vitro. The highest levels of vitamin B12 were produced by anaerobic organisms.”
The experimental animals were fed a diet completely free of all nutrients except synthetic ones. It is a wonder that any of the baboons remained healthy. The basal synthetic diet consisted of vitamin free casein, sucrose, corn oil and a mineral salts mixture, together with a vitamin mixture. Some were given a diet deficient in vitamin B12 and some were supplemented with vitamin B12. If you are interested in the exact diets of all the animals, I suggest that you secure a reprint of the article. The feeding of the animals and separation into control groups were extremely varied and would take up too much valuable space to reprint it all here. Some had the basal diet supplemented with vitamin B12; others had a vitamin B12 deficient basal diet; and some had the basal diet but low in fat and containing sodium propionate; and some had ampicillin added to the vitamin B12 deficient diet. Both sodium propionate (a preservative used in baking goods) and ampicillin probably had detrimental effects on the microbial flora of the baboons’ intestinal tracts.
“Many intestinal microorganisms are known to produce vitamin B12, often in an amount in excess of the host’s requirements (Mickelsen 1956). However, the site of vitamin B12 production in the intestine is important when considering the potential availability of the vitamin to the host, since vitamin B12 absorption is reported to occur in the upper part of the alimentary tract (Matthews 1967). Ruminants, although feeding on a diet of plant material totally devoid of vitamin B12, have been shown to have high levels of the vitamin in their rumen contents (Hungate 1966). Due to the anterior position of the rumen, its content must pass through the remainder of the alimentary tract, so allowing maximal opportunity for vitamin absorption. In other mammalian species and in birds the densest intestinal microbial populations normally occur in the caecum and colon. Vitamin til2 produced by microbial action in these areas is considered to be excreted, unutilized, in the faeces. Coprophagous species are an exception in that they obtain a considerable part of their vitamin requirements by ingestion of their faeces.”
In the article quoted above, the authors skirt all around the truth, never quite willing to admit that baboons also have bacteria in the upper intestines that form vitamin B12. In the aforementioned experiment it was clearly demonstrated that baboons have the microbial flora in their stomachs and small intestines that produce vitamin B12. Even though they demonstrated that the baboons fed on a diet deficient in vitamin B12 nevertheless have vitamin B12 in their serum, they seem reluctant to admit that this can happen. They succeed in producing a near deficiency of B12 by feeding some of the animals 50 mg/kg of ampicillin a day (an antibiotic). Naturally this will destroy some of the bacteria and prevent vitamin B12 from being formed. Since all the B vitamins are interrelated, and since some are necessary for the absorption of others it is understandable how some older animals may be deficient, being on such a synthetic diet.
It was clearly shown that microorganisms capable of producing vitamin B12 were isolated from the gastrointestinal tracts of the animals who were deprived of vitamin B12. “A greater variety of organisms was isolated from baboon A. However, baboon B had eaten very little of the food offered to it 6 h prior to laparotomy.”
An interesting point observed was that yeasts were not the organisms that formed the most vitamin B12 in the baboons. “The levels of vitamin B12 produced by organisms isolated from baboon faeces are compared. A total of 126 strains of yeasts and aerobic organisms were isolated of which only 9.5% produced up to 1.0 ng/ml, vitamin B12. In contrast, of 123 strains of anaerobic organisms isolated, 48% of cultures contained > 1.0 ng/ml vitamin B12, and 23.6% of cultures, mainly Gram negative rods, contained >10 ng/ml. There were no noticeable differences in the types of faecal organisms isolated from controls or baboons fed any of the vitamin B12 deficient diets, with the exception of the group fed ampicillin. The faeces of these animals contained very few aerobic or anaerobic Gram positive organisms, the flora consisting mainly of aerobic and anaerobic Gram negative rods and yeasts. The patterns of vitamin B12 production by the faecal organisms were similar both within the vitamin B12-deficient groups, and between the vitamin-deficient and control groups.”
The group of baboons fed a vitamin B12 deficient diet showed that more bacteria capable of forming vitamin B12 were in their gastric juice samples. “Table 4 compares the vitamin B12 produced in cultures of organisms isolated from gastric juice samples aspirated 6 h after feeding, from vitamin B12-deprived and control baboons. The number of isolates obtained from the gastric juice samples from the control group was low in comparison with the vitamin deprived group. There were also fewer isolates producing the higher levels of vitamin B12 obtained from the control baboon gastric samples. No organisms producing > 10 ng/ml vitamin B12 were isolated from the gastric juice samples.” This definitely proves that bacteria capable of producing at least 10 ng/ml of vitamin B12 are in the babcon’s stomach and, therefore, there is. definitely a chance for absorption of vitamin B12 as the stomach contents move to the small intestine.
It is very possible that the bacterial flora of humans also produces vitamins for us in the stomach and small intestine where they can be absorbed, and not only in the colon. For several years now, I have held to this view, because it is well known that the ileum, that part of the small intestine nearest the colon, has a purpose. It begins to take on the anatomy of the colon. Less digestion and absorption of other nutrients occurs here. Recently it has been shown by experiments that this area is the greatest area of absorption of vitamin B12. Bacteria that produce the most vitamin B12 are those which grow in the absence of air, anaerobes, and these are present in the stomach and small intestine.
It is well known that anaerobic bacteria exists in the human digestive tract just as they exist in the baboon digestive tract. Vegans not taking supplements, who were part of an experiment, had no deficiency of vitamin B12. If it was not in their food as some scientists claim, then it had to be formed by the host’s microbial flora. “The highest levels of vitamin B12 were produced by the anaerobic isolates, in particular by Cl perfringens and some of the anaerobic Gram negative rods.”
Baboons have bacteria in their stomachs and intestines which produce vitamin B12. They are primates. So is humankind a primate.
This implies that people also have the bacterial flora to produce vitamin B12 and that this can be absorbed in the ileum.
There are anaerobic bacteria in human gingiva. Were they to make more studies on these bacteria, I’m sure they would find that they also produce vitamin B12. It is essential that we understand that the vitamin levels that the bacteria produced differed when the food they were fed was different. If these bacteria are fed properly in our own intestines I am sure that the levels of B12 would increase. If we humans live on the diet to which we are constitutionally adapted, not only will we be properly nourished, so will our bacterial flora, and they in turn will produce for us the necessary elements for a proper nutrition in levels far more than we actually need.
Vitamin B12 circulates. It is excreted with bile and reabsorbed like bile from the intestines. It can be used over and over again. It is stored in the liver. Our body is intelligent. It knows what it is doing.
The ileum has its purpose, even if we mortals can’t figure it out. Probably other even unknown nutrients are also formed for us in the intestines by bacteria. If we would quit feeding ourselves poisons, and eat a diet for which we are anatomically, physiologically and biochemically designed we would see a health unparalleled in modern times. Our health could equal that or surpass that of the animals in the wild if we would cultivate it half as much as we cultivate enervating habits.
“It has been shown that vitamin B12 was present in the stomach and upper intestine of two of the young vitamin B12 deprived baboons. In addition some of the microorganisms isolated from the gastrointestinal contents of these baboons were capable of producing in vitro large quantities of vitamin B12. However, gastric juice samples from all the vitamin deprived and control baboons contained organisms capable of producing vitamin B12 in vitro. No differences were detected due to different diets or age of animal, with the exception of the baboons receiving ampicillin. Therefore, the unusually high serum and liver vitamin B12 levels found in the young animals, but not in older baboons, remains unexplainable.”
I guess the researchers must be very careful about not assuming anything, this is why they are very careful in not stating that vitamin B12 is actually produced in vivo in the animals deprived of vitamin B12. But, organisms don’t cease functioning when they find themselves in the intestinal tracts of animals. To cease functioning would be to die and they were found alive very capable of producing vitamin B12.
After beating about the bushes for about a half hour, they finally come up with the above presumption.
“Vitamin B12 found in the gastrointestinal contents of vitamin B12 deprived baboons could be derived from ingested food, desquamated epithelial cells, digestive secretions or from the bodies and/or the secretions of the gastrointestinal microflora. Siddons (1974) reported that the vitamin-free casein used in these studies contained 0.004 ug/gr L. leichmanni growth-promoting ability, which, if it was due to vitamin B12 could result in each baboon receiving 0.01 ug vitamin B12 a day. The three baboons fed the soya protein diet did not receive even this minimal supplementation however, but the mean 18 H and 6 h fasting gastric samples also contained high levels of the vitamin. The vitamin B12 content of desquamated epithelial cells or digestive secretions is unlikely to account for all of the vitamin B12 found in the stomach contents of baboons deprived of the vitamin. These animals were showing evidence of vitamin B12 deprivation in their low serum and liver levels (Siddons 1974) but the mean vitamin B12 levels in their stomach contents 18 H after feeding were not significantly lower than those of control baboons. It would be impossible to state conclusively that the intestinal flora were largely responsible for the vitamin B12 found in the baboons stomach and intestine, since production of the vitamin by an organism in vitro does not necessarily mean that comparable levels would be produced in vivo. However, this study does provide presumptive evidence that the vitamin B12 found in the baboon stomach and upper intestine could have been produced by microbial action.”
Vegans also had lower serum levels of vitamin B12 but their high folate count made up for this and their blood cells were normal. Normal values for serum vitamin B12 for vegetarians and frugivores have not yet been established. If no disease develops and the animals and people remain healthy then evidently their supply of vitamin B12 is adequate.
They finally get around to making a few conclusions. “Assuming that the vitamin B12 produced by these organims in vitro was also being produced in vivo in the baboon stomach and upper intestine, it is possible that the vitamin was being absorbed and utilized to meet part of the animal’s nutritional requirements. Vitamin B12 produced by the Gram positive flora was unavailable to the baboons fed ampicillin and their vitamin B12 deficiency was increased.”
That they can’t really produce a vitamin B12 deficiency in baboons is clearly intimated in the following sentence. “This study suggests that the chances of producing a vitamin B12 deficiency in the baboon might be improved by a change in its feeding habits.” By operating on animals and cutting out normal body parts they can achieve their goal. “Smith (1956), showed that in fowls with ablated crops, the bacterial content of the alimentary tract was lower than in ordinary fowls.” Surgeons do the same in people. By cutting out over half of some of their patient’s stomachs, it’s very easy to produce a vitamin B-12 deficiency. There’s very little glandular tissue left to secrete digestive juices. To produce a deficiency of vitamin B-12 in baboons, the following is proposed: “Closure of the baboon facial pouches might also lead to a reduced intestinal bacterial population. In addition, the baboons used in this study were fed their daily ration in two meals with an interval of 5 hours between. The results show that vitamin B-12-producing organisms would therefore be present in the upper intestine for at least 12 out of every 24th. The feeding of only one large meal/day and a change of diet to a type less likely to cause an increase in the putrefactive and potentially vitamin B-12 producing flora could speed the development of vitamin B-12 deficiency in the baboon. Alternatively the gram positive vitamin B-12 producing flora can be eliminated by the daily feeding of small quantities of ampicillin.”
There is just no way to completely rid the digestive tract of animals and people of all its bacterial flora except by drugging the animal or person so much that you kill it, him or her. There were a total of 126 strains of yeasts and aerobic organisms that produced even more vitamin B-12. These were not only found in the colon. These were found in the stomach and small intestine of all the animals, those deprived of vitamin B-12 as well as the controls. Organisms producing vitamin B-12 found in the gastrointestinal aspirates of two young vitamin B-12 deprived baboons were yeasts, aerobic gram positive cocci, anaerobic gram negative cocci, micro-aerophilic gram positive rods, clostridium perfringens, other anaerobic gram positive rods (unidentified), aerobic gram negative rods, and anaerobic gram negative rods.
I hold the view that if these organisms produce in vitro vitamin B-12, they will do so even more readily in vivo because that is where they live and grow. It is their natural habitat and it is one of their metabolic functions to produce vitamin B-12.
Humans being primates, also have these same bacteria. They do the same things for us as for the baboons. Are we going to let ourselves be hoodwinked into eating practices that are not ideal just because of unproven propaganda? I venture to say that if a percentage of those with pernicious anemia were studied, that there would be more cases found among omnivorous people than vegetarians and on the whole the vegetarians would be the healthiest specimens.
What does vitamin B12 do in the body?
Where is vitamin B12 absorbed; Can it be absorbed from the stomach or colon?
Vitamin B-12 is known as the anti-pernicious anemia factor. It is also called the extrinsic factor of Castle. It was first isolated in 1948 from liver as a red crystalline compound which contains cobalt and phosphorus. It is a water soluble vitamin and functions as a coenzyme in metabolism.
It is called cobalamin because it contains cobalt. The central structure, which contains cobalt, is referred to as a “corrin” ring system. One type of cobalamin contains cyanide, but in the latest edition of The Review of Physiological Chemistry, (p. 180) by Harper, Rodwell, Mayes and Lange, they say that the “cyanide group as a component of vitamin B-12 is an artifact introduced in the procedure used to isolate the crystalline compound from natural sources. It (cyanide) does not occur in the vitamin molecule as it exists in natural materials.”
Cyanide is very toxic and the addition of cyanide to a vitamin does not seem to me to be desirable. It is known that this particular form of the vitamin is eliminated more rapidly than other forms and is not as effective as the other cobalamins, such as hydroxocobalamin. Some scientists think cyanocobalamin should be withdrawn from the market because it is not as effective as other cobalamins. (“Why Has Cobalamin Not Been Withdrawn,” Freeman, A. G., et al, Lancet 1 (8067) p. 777-8, Apr. 1978). This simply stresses the view that Dr. Shelton and I have held for many years. We have always said that the mere extraction of vitamins from natural foods changes their character and renders them unfit for use, in as much as they are no longer combined with natural substances as they were in the natural food and are therefore digested and metabolized differently. The extraction of cobalamin from natural sources actually adds a toxic substance, cyanide, to the structure.
By reacting cyanocobalamin with other substances, it can be made into other derivatives of cobalamin. “Substitution of the cyanide group with a hydroxy group forms ‘hydroxocobalamin’; with a nitro group, ‘nitrocobalamin’; and with a methyl group, ‘methylcobalamin’. The biologic action of these derivatives appears to be similar to that of cobalamin, although hydroxocobalamin (B-12A) is more active in enzyme systems requiring B-12 in experimental studies in vitro. Furthermore, although hydroxocobalamin given orally in large doses is absorbed as well as cyanocobalamin in similar doses, hydroxocobalamin is retained longer in the body; this suggests that hydroxocobalamin may be more useful for therapeutic administration of vitamin B-12 by mouth.” The fact that it is eliminated more slowly than cyanocobalamin from the body could mean two things; either that it is hard to eliminate or that cyanocobalamin is more toxic. Synthetic substances do not function in metabolism exactly like the natural substance. Synthetic vitamins may be used as substitutions and fool people temporarily by masking symptoms, but they never metabolize or function exactly like the natural substance and taking the so-called “natural” vitamins never produces health.
The B-12 coenzymes, called cobamides, have been isolated not only from “several bacterial cultures but also from the liver of various animals (mainly dimethylbenzimidazole cobamide). The best source is a culture of Propionibacterium shermanii (ATCC 9614). The coenzymes are inactivated and converted to the vitamin form by visible light or by cyanide ion, the adenine nucleoside being removed or replaced by the cyano group. The methods originally used to extract the vitamin included heating in weak acid, addition of cyanide ion, and exposure to light. As a result it is likely that the coenzymes were converted to the vitamin and thus overlooked.” (page 181, Review of Physiological Chemistry.) This brings to my minds a question. Perhaps they are not finding vitamin B12 in fruits and vegetables because it is in the coenzyme form or in another form or perhaps they are destroying it by their methods of finding it. The following quote brings out the fact that all the B vitamins are found together in nature.
The Nutrition Almanac, on page 18, warns that, “The most important thing to remember is that all the B vitamins should be taken together. They are so interrelated in function that large doses of any of them may be therapeutically valueless or may cause a deficiency of others. For example, if extra B6 is taken in 50-milligram potencies, it is important that a complete B complex accompany it. In nature, we find the B-complex vitamins in yeast, green vegetables, etc., but nowhere do we find a single B vitamin isolated from the rest. Natural forms of the B vitamins are preferable to the synthetic forms since the natural forms have all of the B factors, even those not yet known, plus valuable enzymes. Most preparations of single B vitamins are synthetic or, at least, no longer in their natural form. These synthetic B vitamins are used primarily to overcome severe deficiencies or serious physical conditions in which rapid results are needed. When taking supplements, it is very important to remember that the B vitamins exert many different effects upon each other; therefore, excesses and insufficiencies may be harmful.”
We heartily agree with The Nutrition Almanac. All our nutrients should be secured through natural sources as they all function together and have a relation one to the other, and only by eating natural foods can we get our nutrients in the proper proportions one to the other.
Vitamin B12 can be heated at 100 degrees centigrade for long periods under certain conditions. If vitamin B12 is placed in an acid solution in a pH ranging from 4 to 7, that is, in a solution acid up to neutral, it can be autoclaved (steam heat under pressure) with very little destruction of the vitamin. “However, destruction is rapid when the vitamin is heated at pH 9.0 or above.” A pH of 9 is very alkaline. Since vegetables are alkaline, this may mean that what little vitamin B12 is contained in vegetables is rapidly destroyed while cooking. This may be why researchers are unable to find this elusive vitamin in vegetables because they destroy it with heat in trying to extract it.
Vitamin B12 acts as a coenzyme in metabolism. Only three cobalamins have been isolated from mammalian tissues; and of these only two forms of vitamin B12 are known to act as specific coenzymes in mammalian systems. “The two reactions in mammalian systems that are shown to be vitamin B12 dependent are (1) the conversion of methyl-malonyl-Co A to succinyl-Co A; and (2) the methylation of homocysteine to methioninc, which also involves folate coenzymes.” A disease involving these conversions in metabolism is becoming more prevalent in modern times.
We must remember that vitamin B12 is an essential nutrient for all the cells of the body. It is necessary for the growth of all cells. Vitamin B12 with folic acid derivatives, are also necessary for DNA synthesis, and there are few who have not read of the importance of DNA to the body. When there is a complete lack of vitamin B12, cells can no longer divide, because their nucleus cannot mature. Without vitamin B12 the red blood cells cannot proliferate normally. They are malformed and they die more rapidly than normal cells.
Vitamins B12 is necessary for catalyzing the conversion of methylmalonyl-Co A to succinyl-Co A. Without these chemical transformations many serious symptoms develop.
A deficiency of vitamin B12 in humans causes the development of macrocytic anemia, and/or lesions of the nervous system. Sometimes both occur together. Sometimes the neurologic symptoms supervene without the development of anemia. Structural changes of the red blood cells are very reliable indicators of vitamin B12 deficiency. In this case blood tests may be valuable to determine whether or not you are properly absorbing vitamin B12. “In general, it may be concluded that when the intake of vitamin B12 is low, the demand for this vitamin in hemopoiesis exceeds that for any other clinically recognizable physiologic function. Macrocytosis is, therefore, a sensitive indicator of vitamin B12 deficiency.” (page 183, Review of Physiologic Chemistry)
It has been well established that vitamin B12 is absorbed from the ileum. But its absorption is dependent on a factor called the Intrinsic Factor (IF), first named by Castle. It is present in normal gastric juice. It is secreted by the parietal cells of the gastric glands and is found in the cardia and fundus of the stomach but not in the pylorus: that is, it is found in the upper part of the stomach.
The free vitamin (cobalamin) becomes bound to the intrinsic factor, which is thought to be a glycoprotein. The combination of vitamin B12 with the intrinsic factor results in the formation of a complex substance that resists intestinal digestion.
In foods, vitamin B12 comes combined with proteins, or the protein break-down byproducts, such as peptides. These must be split off by the processes of digestion before absorption can take place. The members of the vitamin B12 group are very large molecules and this is considered the reason it is necessary for them to be combined with intrinsic factor for absorption. The body must actively absorb the vitamin and the cobamides with the consequent expense of energy. They cannot be absorbed by mere diffusion across the intestinal mucous membrane, unless administered in huge doses.
“They are not lipid-soluble and, according to Wilson (1964), the molecules are too large to enter the hypothetical water-filled pores in the lipid membranes of the absorptive cells, so that any absorption by simple diffusion would appear to be precluded.”
Experiments conclude that, under physiological conditions, humans can absorb only about 2 ug/day of vitamin B12. Only after the vitamin is combined with intrinsic factor, can it cross the intestinal barrier. If high doses of the pure vitamin are given, however, some can diffuse through the intestinal mucous membrane because of discontinuities. A discontinuity is a sign of a damaged mucous membrane. In health all the membranes of the intestinal tract will be intact.
The intrinsic factor is a glycoprotein secreted by the parietal cells of the gastric mucosa and is necessary for the absorption of vitamin B12. The first stage of absorption is good digestion. The vitamin must be separated from the materials to which it is bound before it can be combined with the intrinsic factor. In food, B12 compounds are largely protein or peptide-bound and these must be separated from the vitamin by digestive juices before B12 can be combined with the intrinsic factor. Only after separation from the protein, to which it is bound, can the B12 compounds combine with the intrinsic factor. The third stage of absorption is to transport the vitamin B12 into the cells of gastrointestinal mucous membrane.
After vitamin B12 has combined with intrinsic factor it is in a complex form that fortunately resists further intestinal digestion. For normal absorption the pH must be neutral and calcium ions must be present. The vitamin has two receptor sites for absorption and one of them combines with intrinsic factor and the other with the ileal intestinal microvilli. The microvilli readily become saturated and this limits the absorption of vitamin B12 to about 1.5 ug after any one dose of the vitamin. The current thought is that the intrinsic factor is released by a “releasing enzyme” within the intestine, so that the vitamin can pass into the mucosal cell.
Absorption is limited and the maximal absorptive capacity in humans under normal conditions, is about 2.ug/day. Most sources state that humans require only 1 ug/day.
The vitamin, when given in large concentrations is thought to get into the body by passive absorption, but researchers attribute this to discontinuities of the lining of the intestines. About one percent of very large doses of vitamin B12, such as 3000 ug is absorbed passively. The intrinsic factor appears to be necessary for absorption of very small amounts, such as are found in food.
Vitamin B12 is absorbed mainly through the ileum, although there is only evidence that some absorption might also occur in the upper small intestine. Even though research physiologists transpose ileal tissue to other areas of the intestine, it still maintains its superior capacity to absorb vitamin B12. This supports my view held all along before reading this material; i.e. that the ileum had a function and since the colon couldn’t absorb vitamin B12, it was probably done in the ileum. It has long been known that bacteria produce vitamin B12 in the colon. If bacteria can do this in the colon why should they not also do so in the ileum, where the absorptive mechanisms are still in operation?
There are many reasons why vitamin B12 may be lacking. Most of them center around failure of absorption and not because the vitamins are lacking in the diet. Articles dealing with the pathology of absorption of vitamin B12 classify defects of vitamin B12 absorption into two main groups: (1) “those due to defective gastric secretion (i.e. lack of IF) and (2) those due to defective intestinal absorption.”
Naturally if most of the stomach has been excised by surgery there will be little intrinsic factor secreted and consequently little vitamin B12 absorption. “After partial gastrectomy, some IF-secreting mucosa usually remains, and severe impairment of vitamin B12 absorption does not usually occur unless the mucosa of the gastric remnant undergoes atrophy.”
Gastric atrophy accounts for malabsorption of many vitamins. Atrophy occurs after many years of irritation to the stomach mucosa by wrong ways of living and especially from wrong ways of eating. The stomach is the most abused organ of the entire body. When each year we pour in chocolate, coffee, tea, alcohol, hot peppers, chemicals, mustard, salt, aspirin, garlic, onions, drugs and other irritants by the tons how can we expect our digestive tracts to remain normal? When we eat all sorts of poor food combinations, so that instead of digestion we get indigestion, how can we expect any nutrients to be left for us? Bacteria use them. The stomach and intestines naturally become irritated and inflamed from all the decomposition products of bacterial decay.
Put some salt or any one of the above condiments into an open wound and you will readily understand the word irritant. Then when on top of all the above irritants we combine our foods so poorly that instead of digestion we get indigestion and its concommitant poisonous and irritating end products, we have double trouble. Gastric irritation goes from irritation, to greater irritation and finally inflammation, (gastritis or duodenitis, or gastroenteritis, or ileitis, or colitis or all at once.) When these conditions are severe, atrophy is only one consequence. Cancer is another. Ulcers are still another. After many long years of irritation and chronic inflammation, normal functioning cells of the digestive glands die, then digestion is naturally impaired. Not only will the stomach not secrete the intrinsic factor, if it indeed exists, but it will not digest the protein off the vitamin B12 to permit it to be combined with IF for absorption.
Juvenile pernicious anemia is a rare condition. The secretion of intrinsic factor is congenitally absent, but the other secretory functions of the stomach are usually normal. This is just another example of the fact that as a race, we are deteriorating. Recently I’ve read articles intimating that formerly humans were able to manufacture their own vitamin C. If this is true, then you can see how far the deterioration has gone. A missing enzyme here and there can make a world of difference when it comes to health and life. However, most of the pernicious anemia of childhood is acquired. In these cases it is noted that there is gastric mucosal damage. This again points to the fact that enervation, by wrong living habits, and especially poor care and feeding of children, causes toxemia with the development of diseases that impair the function of the gastrointestinal tract.
There are many reasons why vitamin B12 is not absorbed from the intestines; there are as many reasons as there are enzymes and catalytic reactions. Such diseases as idiopathic steatorrhea, coeliac disease, tropical sprue, and lesions of the small-intestinal wall, such as regional enteritis and intestinal tuberculosis, and intestinal resections—particularly when the ileum is involved, are reason enough for mal-absorption of all nutrients, not just vitamin B12. Other anatomical abnormalities such as small-intestinal diverticula, enteroanastomoses and blind loops of small intestine (blind-loop syndrome) also cause failure of absorption of vitamin B12. Experimental evidence leads researchers to believe that in some cases, especially when surgical blind loops are left in the abdomen and in cases of diverticulosis, where there are stagnating feces, that more bacteria thrive and these use up the vitamin B12 of the host. They also produce toxic factors, which interfere with the absorption of vitamin B12. Bacteria also deconjugate bile salts and impair mucosal function through the toxic effects of free bile acids. Recently cases have been reported of transport defects of vitamin B12 in children and young people. It is familial and associated with proteinuria. “It is quite distinct from juvenile pernicious anemia.” People who are infested with fish tapeworm also develop anemia. One reason is that the worm takes up vitamin B12 itself and produces a factor which splits vitamin B12 from intrinsic factor and then finally gastric atrophy develops from the lack of vitamin B12 itself.
Vitamin B12 and folic acid are very important to rapidly dividing cells such as those of the bone marrow and even those cells lining the gastrointestinal tract. They need vitamin B12 for multiplying rapidly, as they are supposed to. Vitamin B12 is also necessary for the absorption of other nutrients from the intestines. A lack of B12 depresses the function of the gastric mucosa. Some cases are attributed “to the production of a defective intrinsic factor or intrinsic factor: B12 complex as well as to a defective ileal receptor for intrinsic factor: B12 complex. ”
In short, most cases of pernicious anemia or a low level of vitamin B12 arise out of impaired function somewhere along the gastrointestinal tract and not because there is a lack of vitamin B12 in the diet, even in Vegans:
This brings us back to basic Hygiene. Remove the causes of disease and the body will heal itself. In these cases of impaired function, fasting, rest, exercise, and sunshine will restore the body’s ability to absorb vitamin B12 in all except those who have had their stomachs and intestines surgically excised or impaired by surgical blind loops, and those who were born not secreting the intrinsic factor or with a defect in metabolism of B12, such as those born with Methylmalonic Aciduria. Even in those cases where gastric or intestinal atrophy plays a part, the improved digestive capacity after fasting, with proper combinations of food, so that there won’t be so much decomposition of foods in the intestinal tract will improve absorption. Better food combinations means fewer of the types of bacteria that use vitamin B12 can exist so that the bacteria that do produce vitamin B12 can do their job properly. Less decomposition in the intestinal tract will promote the proper bacterial flora that make vitamin B12 instead of using it.
There are so many intricacies of digestion and absorption that are still unknown, that can go wrong when we are in ill health, that the only way to insure proper digestion and absorption is to maintain good health. No matter which way you look at it, it comes back td the same basic principles of right living. If you live Hygienically, eat uncooked natural foods—fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds—and secure all the other requisites of physiology then your body will function normally for you and it will absorb all the vitamin B12 necessary for health. Hygiene does not need to be changed. We’ve got to realize where the real fault lies and eliminate it. Dosing our people with vitamin B12 instead of removing causes is the same as giving drugs. If we start this, it won’t be long before we are among the poisoning profession. All it takes is that first blind compromise.
For forty-nine years I ate meat the way most Americans do—without questioning the practice from any point of view—health, aesthetics, ecology. You might say I had been indoctrinated into meat-eating by society. But four years ago at the age of fifty I gave up meat completely; my wife followed the next month and one of our sons a year later.
A six month’s trip to Mexico changed everything. On a tight budget, we drove down to Oaxaca and then to Puerto Angel living as inexpensively as we could. In Puerto Angel, we rented an adobe house for $16 a month and lived surrounded by Mexicans who slaughtered animals in the early dawn. Agonizing cries of animals in their last moments of life would pierce the predawn darkness. Then, not thirty yards from our hammocks, meat would be cut up. Suddenly we were confronted with the fact that meat comes from a corpse. In our naivete we had allowed ourselves to think meat came attractively wrapped from the A&P meat counter. Going to the nearby dusty town of Pochutla didn’t help. Here chunks of meat hung on hooks in open air stores with flies buzzing around.
We had been jolted out of our innocence. We stopped eating meat and made do with fantastically inexpensive vegetables and fruits, supplemented by dairy products.
Back in more civilized Oaxaca, we ate one or two American-style hamburgers but found them hard to get down. Visions of an animal being killed with a machete to the throat kept interfering.
Now, into Oaxaca flow a steady stream of young, knap-sacked Americans who sip capuccino on the zocolo and talk of cosmic consciousness, Mexican police, Vedic studies, and the Allman brothers. We picked up with a young couple into nutrition and spent days learning from them. They were, of course, vegetarians, but they expanded our awareness beyond health to point out that meat-eating consumed vast amounts of protein in a world with a protein shortage. They made us realize that an animal is a protein factory in reverse, consuming tons of protein-rich grains and soybeans to produce mere pounds of chemically-injected animal protein. By the time we left Mexico to return to New York, we were no longer meat eaters. Within a year we gave up fish and chicken, then Phyllis gave up eggs. Technically, I suppose we can be catalogued as lacto-vegetarians.
We are astonished when people ask us if we don’t feel weaker. They ask how we possibly get enough protein without good, red meat. When we tell our questioners that we feel better, cleaner, healthier and stronger than ever, we get those glazed-eye looks which say, “Veggies are brainwashed nuts!” But we know better and we know who the brainwashed really are—American meat-eaters who’ve never once questioned the practice of eating animal flesh as the mainstay of their diet.
WASHINGTON—Thanksgiving, America’s day of tribute to carnivorism, isn’t likely to have the same turkey-chomping merriment of years past. Marian Burros, the journalist-cook-dashing spirit who favors simplicity in her kitchen and factualness in her prose, has seen to that. She talked turkey the other day in the New York Times.
Birds served by Grandma, said Burros, are all but a vanished species. Most of today’s turkeys “have been frozen and filled with ingredients no self-respecting turkey should contain...Much of the flavor has been bred out of turkeys, so whether they are fresh makes little difference.”
For the fresh-is-better dreamers, Burros, whose current best-selling cookbook is Keep It Simple, salted her story with a Final complication: “If the turkey is freshly killed do not try to serve it the same day, for you will end up with one stiff bird, rigor mortis having set in; give a freshly killed bird two days to relax.”
When food writers begin sounding like morticians, a major advance for vegetarianism has been made. A circle is being closed. Marian Burros discussing the rigor mortis of Thanksgiving turkeys is not much different from George Bernard Shaw’s discourse on “animal corpses” as he beheld the meat-filled plates of his dinner companions.
It isn’t known whether this style of Shavian frankness helped cure England’s cadaver consumers of their ghastly habit. It may even have had the opposite effect: the harder Shaw was to swallow, the more his dinner mates sprinkled meat tenderizer on their steaks.
But this is different from the frankness currently found in the food pages of U.S. newspapers. The skepticism of a Marian Burros is likely to turn citizens into nutritional vegetarians, as against the creation of ethical vegetarians, which was the goal of Shaw. To skip the turkey and go straight to the yams and peas is an attempt to dechemicalize one’s body.
That turkeys and other meats have become so tasteless indicates that effectiveness of food technologists. In an earlier time, the birds, pigs and cattle that ended up on America’s tables were tasty because they were vegetarians themselves. But now the animals are forced to ingest chemicals: to grow fatter faster.
To become a nutritional vegetarian is to seek an escape from the food technologists who attack the animals. The attacks, it is discovered, are really on us. A turn to healthy food is a turn away from death food.
The ethical and nutritional vegetarian is now being joined at the table by the economic vegetarian. Ewen Wilson, director of economics at the American Meat Institute, talks about “income elasticity”: the more money a person makes, the more likely he’ll eat meat. The less money, the less meat. “The demand for meat has been slow this year,” Wilson says, “because of the economy. With a lot of people out of work, families cut back on meat.”
This is another circle making a full turn. Historically, man was a grain and berry eater. He moved against certain animals out of necessity. Plutarch writes in The Eating of Meat: “For my part I wonder what was the disposition, idea, or motive of the first man who put to his mouth a thing slaughtered and touched with his lips the flesh of a dead animal...Actually, the reasons those primitive people first started the eating of flesh was probably their utter poverty.”
Today, with economic vegetarians increasing in number, the challenge for these involuntary abstainers is to resist the feeling of deprivation. We have been conditioned by the false message that vegetarians are weaklings and flakos, while the eaters of red meat—and, on Thanksgiving, white meat—are the real articles. Real, perhaps, but not so healthy.
The conditioning is wearing thin, especially since the meat industry has few defenders once the propagandists are removed. As Mark Braunstein, in Radical Vegetarianism, a new and remarkably intelligent book, asks: “What philosopher has written a convincing text for the cause of carnivorism? What poet has lamented the misunderstood lives of the butcher and executioner?”
None. Which is why the food writers are feeling less and less restrained in discussing rigor mortis on the dinner plate.
33.6. Fish Liver Oil And Other Animal Food Supplements
33.9. Substitutes For Substitutes
33.10. Reject Animal Products For Optimal Health
33.11. Some Plants Also Should Be Rejected
Article #1: Milk by Dr. Alec Burton
Article #2: The Digestion Of Milk
Article #3: Well, You Wanted To Know! by V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Article #5: Excerpts from “Compassion: The Ultimate Ethic” by Victoria Moran
Article #6: What Happens To The Calf?
Article #7: ‘No veal’ campaign protests treatment of milk-fed calves by Michael J. Conlon
Article #8: Milk Surplus Continues To Grow As Price Climbs Ever Higher By Dan Carmichael
“The unfitness of certain substances for assimilative purposes is manifested by the anaphylactic symptoms that so frequently follow their use. Alimentary anaphylactic phenomena are confined almost exclusively to substances of animal origin. The more closely these animal substances resemble the human body in composition, the more frequently do they give rise to these phenomena. Thus flesh is the worst offender, eggs come second and milk is last.” (Herbert M. Shelton, The Hygienic System, Volume II, p. 168)
The above eloquent indictment of animal products lays the groundwork for this lesson. Flesh foods have been dealt with in Lesson 32. Honey, eggs, dairy products, and various animal-food byproducts will be considered in this lesson.
Hereward Carrington (The Natural Food of Man, p. 167) says that such animal products are open to all those objections which might be urged against the use of flesh foods, only in a lesser degree. He says, however, that the objections to these products are less serious and that they are certainly to be preferred to meat—but he still concludes that there are weighty objections to their use.
We shall examine these objections in depth, so that the student may judge for himself whether, in truth, animal products in any form should be considered a safe or desirable part of the food program. I believe you cannot help but agree with Dr. Shelton that “Little can be said in defense of the use of animal foods except in instances of dire necessity.”
Viktoras Kulvinskas (Survival Into The 21st Century, p. 228) says that though the high protein requirement for cancer growth comes, as a rule, from the dietary intake of animal carcass, it is also caused by eggs and dairy products.
He says that Dr. Szepsenwal showed in experiments with laboratory animals that the incidence of lymphatic cancer and lung adenocarcinoma is as high in the mice receiving egg yolk as those receiving egg white. “In the animals of both groups the lymphoid system of the abdominal cavity is the first to be affected ... the adenocarcinomas of the lungs, whether caused by egg white or egg yolk, are very extensive, frequently destroying the whole lungs.” (Szepsenwal, J.; J. Proc. Exp. Biol. and Med., 1957, V96, 332 and P.S.E.B.M. Feb. 20, 1963, V112, P1073)
Dr. White found, through experiments with laboratory animals, that high dietary intake of cystine (a non-essential amino acid found in high concentration in animal protein) produced incidences of almost 100% of mammary tumors. (White, F.R. and White, J.; J. Nat. Cancer lnst., 4:413 (1944)
Dr. Babson observed that on a diet high in casein protein (the major source being the dairy products), some forms of cancer grew five times as fast as other forms. (Babson, A.L., Cancer Res., 14:89, 1954)
The honeybee’s greatest usefulness is the pollination of endless numbers of crops. This occurs while the worker bee is engaged in its natural function of gathering nectar from flowers for the production of honey.
The nectar of the flowers is ingested by the worker bees and converted, by the addition of their own secretions, in special sacs in their esophagi, to the sweet, sticky substance we call honey.
This is regurgitated into the cells of the combs in the hives (built of beeswax by specialized worker bees), where it is aged and stored for future use—to feed the larvae and for subsistence in winter.
Bee honey is a complex substance, containing at least 181 known components. (Honey, A Comprehensive Survey, Edited by Eva Crane, MSc. PhD., p. 206)
Bee honey is composed chiefly of the simple sugars fructose (levulose), glucose (dextrose) and water; it also contains some more complex sugars (such as oligosaccharides and polysaccharides), some essential oils, several enzymes, various animal ferments (especially oxydase—oxydizing ferment) and acids. Honey also contains insignificant amounts of protein (amino acids and other protein constituents), vitamins and minerals.
Glucose crystallizes out of honey on standing at room temperature, leaving an uncrystallized layer of dissolved fructose. The fructose layer in crystallized honey ferments readily at temperatures of sixty degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Fermented honey is used in the production of honey wine or mead.
Honey to be marketed is usually heated by special processes to about 150 degrees Fahrenheit to dissolve the crystals, and is then poured into containers sealed against crystallization.
Bee honey is highly concentrated and stimulating, and is needed by the bees as fuel for their highly stressful and brief lives. Honey is an excellent natural normal substance for bees. Those who rob the bees to divert its use to humans are supplying an unnecessary and harmful substance. The popular belief that honey is a perfectly safe sweet for general and habitual use is a delusion.
Honey contains many acids which are injurious to humans. The sugar in honey is no less dangerous than any other sugars, refined or otherwise. The manite acid in honey renders its combinations with other foods even more injurious than ordinary cane sugar. (Dr. Shelton, The Hygienic System, Volume II, p. 168)
Honey is harmful to the digestion, the teeth and the nervous system. Honey, which is intended as a stimulant for bees, is also highly stimulating (and damaging) to humans.
The use of honey also causes an excess secretion of mucus. People with gastric or intestinal ulcers, or catarrhal conditions, should never use honey—neither should nervous and sensitive people succumb to its gustatory appeal—but they may have to learn the hard way.
The Hartbargers (Eating for the Eighties, p. 164) say that honey should not be fed to children. They say, “Many babies have trouble digesting honey and it has been shown to be a cause of botulism in infants. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta recommends that honey not be given to infants one year old or younger.”
Extravagant claims have been made for honey as a miracle cure. Various experiments have indicated antibiotic properties, which would, of course, also destroy friendly bacteria (such as those which aid in the digestion of food, as well as those which aid in the synthesization of Vitamin B-12).
These experiments and others for the treatment of burns and wounds, respiratory infections, digestive diseases, and malfunctions of the heart, are recounted in Honey, A Comprehensive Survey, pp. 260-263, concluding, “In general, the use of honey is less likely to harm a patient than most other preparations, and on many occasions it has proved beneficial.” This might be termed “damning it with faint praise,” and is from the chapter on “The Biological Properties of Honey,” written by a group of authors.
The actual nutritional value of honey is minimal, especially when compared to its potential for harm. Honey is poor in mineral elements and in vitamins. It has, about the same composition of minerals as white sugar, and is almost as devitalizing.
The clarifying process to make honey less cloudy removes thirty-five to fifty percent of the original vitamin content. More vitamins and minerals are lost by evaporation when the honey comes in contact with oxygen. Honey contains only insignificant (trace) amounts of iron, and not enough B vitamins for its own metabolism, and, when consumed by humans, robs the body of B vitamins and alkaline minerals.
At one point in Honey, A Comprehensive Survey, it is said that “all the knowledge and scientific research in this book endorses the ‘goodness’ of honey as a food for man.” The book contains 608 pages and sells for $52.50. Yet all that is really said in favor of honey as a food for humans has to do with its palatability, and the opinion that it is more “easily digested” and more natural than carbohydrates like, for example, sucrose. While stating that honey has valuable nutrients, it is admitted, perforce, that the amounts are so minute as to be insignificant, and concludes, “This need not surprise us, for honey is primarily a food for bees, not man.”
These quotations are from the discussion of the “Nutritive Value of Honey,” in the chapter on the “Biological Properties of Honey,” written by a group of authors (pp. 265-266).
Dr. Jonathan M. White, Jr., on page 199 of the chapter on the “Composition of Honey,” also says that “the levels of various vitamins are so low that they have no real nutritional significance.”
Much of the knowledge of honey acids has been obtained since the early 1950s. Formic acid was once thought to be the acid of honey, and it was thought that the last action of the bees in ripening honey was to add formic acid to preserve the honey.
It is now known that gluconic acid is present in honey in much greater amounts than all other acids; it is produced by the action of an enzyme in honey upon the dextrose in it. Except for gluconic acid, the sources of the various honey acids are not known. Many of them may already be present in the nectar.
Analysts seeking to measure the total amounts of the various acids in honey have encountered difficulties, leading to uncertainties or errors in the measurements. Consequently, information as to these proportions is not available.
Since I heard Dr. Alec Burton refer to some twenty or so acids in honey, many of which are harmful to humans, I have wondered which ones they are, and decided to research the subject and pass the information on to others who may desire it.
The following acids have been positively identified in honey:
acetic | gluconic | oxalic |
butyric | lactic | pyroglutamic |
citric | maleic | succinic |
formic | malic |
The following acids have been identified in honey without rigorous proof of their identity, and it is considered that they are probably present:
(from Honey, A Comprehensive Survey, Chapter Five; “Composition of Honey,” by Dr. Jonathan M. White, Jr., pp. 169-170)
Dr. Shelton also refers to manite acid in honey. (The Hygienic System, Volume II, p. 168)
“Honey is not tested for pesticide residue levels, and no tolerance level has been established for pesticides in honey. Neither has there been a tolerance set for the many residual antibiotics which remain in honey, after bees are drugged, to enable them to function after they’ve been fed waste candy products (which incorporate dyes, colorings and other chemicals) to compensate for man’s plundering of their hives.” (Ida Honoroff, Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, March 1980)
Ida Honoroff also recounts an interview with Colonel Clair, president of Hawaii Bee Keepers Association, on radio station KPFP-FM in Southern California. Colonel Clair stated that all honey contains pesticide residues— “There’d be no way to avoid that from nectar collected from plants which have been sprayed by pesticides.”
Of course, as explained in Lesson 32 (“Why We Should Not Eat Meat”), the pesticides are more concentrated in the honey than in the plants.
Colonel Clair feels that genetic failure among bees is the most dangerous threat of the modern practice of feeding them sugar and drugs, and various other practices, such as artificial insemination. The result is diseased bees, diseased honeycomb and diseased honey.
We don’t need honey, but we do need the honeybees for pollination of our crops. Another impending disaster?
Most people should avoid concentrated sweets altogether, but dates, figs, raisins, dried bananas, etc., are much better adapted to human nutrition than a product manufactured by bees for their own use.
Dr. Alec Burton emphasizes the inadvisability of the use of honey. He related an experience he had with a terminal cancer patient, whom he had kept alive for a lengthy period by the use of a program of all-raw foods. The man was doing very well and was able to function and do some work. However, his weight was on the low side. His well-meaning relatives and friends, noting his too-slender appearance, urged him to take some high-caloried honey, to increase his weight. He ate the honey—and died.
“Now,” Dr. Burton said, “I am not saying that honey causes cancer.” He explained that this is simply an illustration of the fact that cancer patients can frequently be kept alive for long periods on a totally raw-food plant diet, and that no deviations can be tolerated. Honey, especially, with its many harmful acids, can be disastrous to such a patient.
Honey is not recommended for anyone’s use. Its value is delusion, and its potential for harm is indisputable. Dr. Shelton does not recommend its use, but says that its vast potential for harm would be among those who are engaged in active outdoor work. Even for such people, it is almost impossible to find a food with which it can be favorably combined. If taken with fruits or grains, honey will cause fermentation. Honey also causes decomposition of protein foods, and the honey itself ferments from being held in the stomach long enough for the digestion of the protein. The least harmful combination, according to Dr. Shelton, is toasted bread. But he reiterates his warning against its use with any food.
Your best course would be to eliminate honey from your food program altogether—you don’t need it as a sweetener if you are eating simple Hygienic foods. If you occasionally prepare a recipe that does require a sweetener, dates would serve a better purpose.
Dr. Vetrano says that the occasional use of honey will not do great harm—but it should not be used as part of the regular diet.
Royal Jelly is a highly nutritious (for bees) secretion of the pharyngeal glands of the honeybee, which is fed to the very young larvae in a colony, and to all queen larvae.
Obviously, this substance is subject to the same objections as those against honey. Royal Jelly is sold at high prices in health food stores as a “miraculous” and “nutritious” food for humans. Don’t use it!
Eggs are in the same category as flesh foods, since they are, of course, fowl in embryo. A fertilized egg is a fowl before it is born; an unfertilized egg is the product of a bird’s sexual cycle.
Eggs from barnyard fowl (fertile eggs) are sometimes available in health food stores, and have some advantages over production-line eggs—but are hardly to be recommended as a food of optimal quality for humans. Even when the hens are allowed plenty of clean territory for running, adequate fresh, pure water, pure air and good grain—and cohabitation with the rooster—the resultant product (the egg) is apt to be less than optimal, even for non-vegetarians. The habits of the fowl are not clean— they will eat almost anything—eggs will sometimes taste of wild garlic which the hen has eaten.
On the other hand, production-line methods produce a particularly poor product, from the standpoint of nutrition and toxicity. Hens are fed arsenic to kill parasites and stimulate egg production.
About 95% of egg-laying hens are maintained in production plants. The routine conditions in egg production plants are certainly not conducive to producing eggs of high quality. Five fully grown hens in a twenty inch by twenty-four inch cage is routine in some hen batteries; some squeeze four hens into twelve inch by twelve inch cages. The hens cannot spread their wings or even turn around. Wire flooring often injures their feet, and hens have even “grown fast to their cages.” (Victoria Moran, Ahimsa, April/June 1982, quoting from Poultry Tribune, February 1974)
Hens are de-beaked at one week and again at three to five months, to prevent featherpecking and cannibalism, brought on by the overcrowded conditions. Food and water are provided mechanically; conveyors remove eggs and waste. Fluorescent bulbs provide seventeen hours of artificial daylight to stimulate laying. The millions of eggs sold in supermarkets are the products of these “hen farms.”
All eggs contain an excess of sulphur. Hereward Carrington (The Natural Food of Man, p. 173) says, “Persons who are subject to torpor of the liver would do well to refrain from the use of either eggs or butter; and those who have sound livers—and desire to keep them so—can take a hint.”
Dr. Shelton, also, says that eggs should certainly never be eaten by one whose liver and kidneys are not in perfect condition. He says that children, invalids, inactive people and those inclined to constipation should especially avoid egg whites.
The raw albumen contains a toxic protein substance, avidin (a biotin antagonist). Biotin is one of the B-complex vitamins. Avidin is inactivated by one minute of cooking.
Dr. Shelton says that raw egg whites produce in some stomachs almost deadly acids. He says that Vernon, Hetin and others have shown that raw egg white hinders the digestion of other substances.
“Bayliss, Professor of Physiology, University of London (The Physiology of Food and Economy in Diet) says that raw egg white contains some substance which, even in small amounts, hinders the action of the digestive fluids. Lemoine, a French authority, after careful study, says raw egg white contains a poison which damages the kidneys.” (Dr. Shelton, Volume II, page 170)
Boxers, marathon runners and other athletes sometimes use whole raw eggs (blended with fruit juices) as “high-protein training food,” and may give the impression that whole raw egg is an optimal food. You now know better!
Raw egg yolks are sometimes prescribed by Hygienic professionals as a temporary source of protein for people who are having digestive or other problems with the use of nuts as a protein source. Even though raw egg yolks are relatively innocuous and easily digested, their use should be confined to temporary emergency use, for many reasons (some already discussed and some additional factors still to be considered).
Dr. Virginia Vetrano (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, February 1977, p. 136) says: “Taking a raw egg yolk in orange juice is not the best way to take eggs, if one is going to eat them. Eggs, being an animal food, decompose very rapidly if not digested soon. Taking them with an acid fruit such as oranges or orange juice, inhibits the secretion of gastric juice, necessary for normal digestion, and predisposes to putrefaction.”
With further reference to the preoccupation of athletes with “extra protein,” the following interesting comment appeared in a 1978 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Association’s Department of Foods and Nutrition commented: “The ingestion of protein supplements by athletes who eat an otherwise well-balanced diet is of no use in body-building programs. Athletes need the same amount of protein foods as nonathletes. Protein does not increase strength. Indeed, it often takes greater energy to digest and metabolize the excess of protein. In addition, excess protein in the athlete can induce dehydration, loss of appetite, and diarrhea. Athletes DO have an increased requirement for calories.”
In Lesson 32, in the discussion of salmonellosis, I mentioned that, if you open and eat a raw egg, there is the risk of bacteria from the outside of the shell contaminating the egg. (Meat on the Menu, Who Needs It? Raymond H. Woolsey)
Since some Hygienic professionals sometimes prescribe raw egg yolks as a temporary protein source for some debilitated individuals who have problems with nut proteins, I once experimented with their use (three yolks per week), but abruptly discontinued the experiment when they produced a goodly crop of hives—some on my face. I mentioned this experience in a previous lesson.
In view of this evidence, it would seem that it would be best to avoid the use of eggs altogether, if at all possible.
If, for any reason, it is desired to use eggs sparingly or temporarily, the following precautions should be borne in mind:
33.4.2 Milk for the Human Infant
33.4.3 Modern Methods of Milk Production
33.4.5 Raw Milk From Healthy Cows (?)
33.4.6 The Truth About Calcium
All mammals take their mother’s milk during infancy. After they are weaned, they are sustained by other foods—most humans, however, have been convinced that cow’s milk is an ideal food for humans and should be used all through adult life. Recently, some medical men have been swinging away from this view, and blaming milk for a growing number of problems in children and adults.
There should be a transition period, during which a child eats other foods as well as nursing, but the time comes when milk is no longer needed. The use of dairy products by human adults is unique in the animal kingdom—man is the only animal that is never weaned—except, of course, for domesticated animals, who lap up saucers of milk.
The milk of each species is well adapted for the young of that species. Unpasteurized raw cow’s milk is an ideal food for calves; it contains a growth factor intended for the maturing of a calf, but which causes excessive height in young humans, and complicated problems in adult humans, such as excess secretion of mucus, excess secretion of urine, constipation, diarrhea, bowel impaction, nausea, gas and discomfort, m increased blood pressure, edema, and numerous digestive and respiratory problems.
Human milk is far superior to any other milk as food for the human infant. The chemical composition of cow’s milk is different from that of human milk in many other important respects. Cow’s milk is specifically adapted to the blood and chemical composition of the calf’s body.
The rapid body growth and small brain of a calf require different nutritional elements than the human, whose body grows and matures slowly, who lives several times as long, and whose brain is the most rapidly growing and best-developed of all species.
Human milk contains lecithin, and an abundance of the amino acid taurine, both important to brain development. Cow’s milk is deficient in both of these elements.
The milk of the nursing mother changes with the changing needs of the growing infant. Human milk is much lower in total protein than is cow’s milk, and is sweeter and higher in carbohydrates. The types and amounts of fats, vitamins and minerals also are radically different.
In the preparation of the infant’s formula, the cow’s milk is usually diluted with water and sweetened to lower the excessive protein and provide supplementary carbohydrates.
The protein content of human milk is about one-third as much as in cow’s milk, and is mostly albumin—while the protein in cow’s milk is mostly casein, which forms large, tough, dense, difficult-to-digest curds which are adapted to the four-stomach bovine digestive apparatus. Mother’s milk forms very small, soft curds which are easily digested by the infant.
The following comparisons are listed in Composition of Foods, Agriculture Handbook No. 8:
Human Milk U.S. Sample (100 grams) |
Fluid Whole Cow’s Milk (Pasteurized and Raw—3.7 per
cent Fat) (100 grams) |
|
Protein | 1.1 grams | 9.5 grams |
Carbohydrate | 3.5 grams | 4.9 grams |
Human milk contains much more (than any other milk) of the two amino acids, cystine and tryptophan, characteristics which render it superior for the human infant. Cow’s milk is deficient in iodine, iron, phosphorus and manganese. The minerals in mother’s milk are adequate for infants, but inadequate for adults.
Milk is splendid as the sole food for mammals during the period of their most rapid growth. A baby will ordinarily double his or her birth weight in 180 days with no other food.
Of course, mother’s milk can be impaired by the diet of the mother. Many cases of colic (gas and constipation) in babies are “miraculously” cured when the mother stops eating eggs, meat and other animal foods.
If a mother does not have enough breast milk, she should give the child what she has and supplement it. The question is—with what? This question is of even greater importance, if it is not possible to nurse the infant at all.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the infant should, even at very great cost, be nursed during the initial period, for as long as possible. Breast milk contains hormones needed by the infant, and contains white blood cells which protect against infections, intestinal disorders and respiratory diseases; and this protection extends into later life. The yellowish, watery fluid (colostrum) secreted from the breast during the first few days of nursing has an especially vital protective role.
Bottle-fed babies are much more susceptible to allergies. They contract the so-called “contagious” diseases more than twice as often, and enlarged tonsils and adenoids are much more common among them.
Repeated evidence from Europe during the wars in 1871, 1914 and 1917, revealed that when no cow’s milk was available, and the infants had to be breast-fed, the infant death rate dropped.
The nursing period of mammals varies according to the rate of their growth and maturity. Human growth is slowest and the nursing period should be longest. A baby should be nursed for at least nine months, and, if possible, up to two years, or even longer. Of course, the mother must eat correctly, exercise, and rest adequately. Green salads are of prime importance for the production of a good milk supply, and the nursing mother will need more protein. She should also slightly increase her consumption of distilled water to maintain her liquid requirement. Fresh, juicy, uncooked fruits will also provide additional liquid.
When the mother does not have sufficient milk, or when it becomes impossible for the mother to continue nursing, what is the best substitute? The old-fashioned “wet nurse” idea was the best—a substitute nursing mother.
Many vegans and Hygienists maintain that adequate infant nutrition can be maintained on vegetable milks, such as soya, sesame, and nut or seed milks. These vegetable milks are also sometimes used when a baby is “allergic” to, or unable to digest or utilize animal milk.
However, it may be necessary to use animal milk for some babies. Dr. Alec Burton says that, if human milk is not obtainable, infants should have the milk of another animal, because they must have galactose, which is found in combination with glucose in milk sugar, and just does not exist in the plant kingdom. In this case, goat’s milk is sometimes used, since it forms a smaller curd than cow’s milk, and is therefore easier to digest, and does not have the excess growth factor. Also, it is somewhat easier to obtain goat’s milk that is not pasteurized, from a goat that has not been fed drugs and antibiotics. Goat’s milk is, of course, subject to some of the same objections as cow’s milk.
It has been pointed out that practically no breast-fed infants die of “sudden infant death syndrome.” Authors Geoffrey Marks and William K. Beatty note that telling evidence has been accumulated implicating a deficiency of selenium or Vitamin E in this syndrome. Human milk contains up to six times as much selenium and twice as much Vitamin E as does cow’s milk, which contains even less when diluted for infant feeding. Marks and Beatty caution that this cannot be remedied by supplementation, because the tiny tract amounts of selenium required (or safe) leave no room for experimentation. (The Precious Metals of Medicine, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1975)
In 1979, the nutrition committees of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Pediatric Society issued a joint report, strongly favoring breastfeeding. They said that there are some things in Nature that simply cannot be duplicated, and gave the following reasons:
Pertinent to the subject of errors and abuses in the feeding of infants is an article by Rep. Morgan F. Murphy (D-III.) “Formulas Harm Third World Infants,” (Clearwater Sun, p. 9A, 10/2/79): “About two million babies in the world’s developing nations are suffering from what pediatricians call ‘bottle baby disease.’ It’s largely the result of an aggressive marketing campaign waged by infant formula manufacturers who want to increase sales in Third World countries.
“As a result, many mothers have needlessly given up breastfeeding to feed their babies an infant formula that is often diluted or contaminated, causing malnutrition, intestinal infection, pneumonia, dehydration—and sometimes death.”
The article explains that, since birth rates in the Western World have been declining, the manufacturers decided to expand into new markets. Drug companies, eager to increase profits through diversification, have acquired infant-formula companies. The companies found they could take advantage of increases in population in developing nations.
They promote their product through radio, newspapers, magazine and billboard advertisements, distribution of free samples, and offering gifts or money to health professionals to induce them to promote infant formula. These Third World countries now spend more than six hundred million dollars a year on infant formula, about twice what the U.S. spends.
This has produced serious problems. The formula is very costly for those with low incomes, causing mothers to dilute the formula to make it last longer. Result: malnutrition. Because of lack of refrigeration and other conveniences and knowledge, the formula often becomes contaminated and the child gets sick or dies.
The aggressive and misleading promotion of the product causes many women to believe that breastfeeding is less than adequate. “Cruelly, in the time it takes to use up the free samples, a woman’s secretion of milk may have become difficult or stopped altogether.”
The article concludes: “The promotion of infant formula raises doubts in nursing mothers, whose anxiety then inhibits the flow of their milk. In point of fact, as noted by the organization Clergy and Laity Concerned, a mother’s milk is free, always available, sterile, the right temperature and contains all the nutrition a child needs in the first four to six months of life.”
Present-day methods of producing milk involve the threat of milk from unhealthy animals, poor sanitation, poor methods of pasteurizing and handling bulk supplies, and drugs, including hormones and antibiotics, in practically all dairy products.
A cow normally would secrete enough milk to nurse her calf, about two hundred pounds of milk a year. Today she is allowed to nurse her calf for only three days, and has been developed into a milk machine, becoming pregnant often enough (a calf every year) to continue the secretion of milk, and fed and maintained for maximum milk production—up to 15,000 pounds of milk per year.
An Associated Press Report (printed in A.C. Press January 1, 1978) cites an article in the farm magazine, Wallace’s Farmer, to the effect that dairy cows are now becoming “flabby, heart-disease prone” due to the unnatural living conditions on dairy farms; “confined to inactive lives of eating, drinking, resting, being milked, and producing one calf a year.”
Researchers of the United States Dairy Association have come up with a “jogging program” consisting of a mechanical exerciser that keeps the animals walking at a controlled pace, while moving tailgates push the cows around a fenced ring. Some of the cows cooperate, some don’t. (Ahimsa, Oct/Dec. 1977)
I am not sure whether the predominating factor in the preceding paragraph is its “humor,” its pathos, or its asininity. Would it be too simple to just turn the cows out to pasture, letting them walk back and forth from the barn to the pasture, and letting them walk, run, jog, play, or just be— and relieve them of at least part of their confinement and slavery—and improve their health, in the process?
Overfeeding of cows on rich fare to constantly produce unnaturally large quantities of milk, forced long periods of milking, and the other circumstances of their slavery, are a drain on the organism. The cows become weakened and diseased, and they are then given massive doses of antibiotics, some of which can be found in the milk.
Dr. Alec Burton (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, July 1974, p. 253) says that milk has become more of an excretion of the cow than a secretion, that many drugs, including antibiotics, are present in the milk, and that practically all milk today contains traces of penicillin.
Milk also contains concentrations of pollutants from the environment, such as DDT and radioactive Strontium 90.
“University of Wisconsin researchers Philip Bushnell and Hector De Luca have found that the lactose in milk facilitates the absorption of lead, which is, of course, toxic. Increased lactose consumption led to increased lead absorption and more lead in tissues studied.” (Vegetarian Living, published by The Vegetarian Association of America)
Vegetarian Living also notes, “Researchers at the Wellcome Research Laboratories in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, have found two to five hundred nanograms of morphine in milk they tested. Pedro Cuatrecasas and Eli Hazum made the findings, based on immunological, pharmacological, biological and chemical test series.”
Whatever virtues raw milk may possess are seriously damaged by pasteurization. Heating the milk makes it even more difficult to digest and causes chemical and physical changes that destroy much of whatever nutritional value would have been available in the raw milk. The casein is coagulated and toughened, the vitamin and mineral components are spoiled and made unavailable to the body, and the lactic acid bacilli (beneficial intestinal flora) are destroyed.
In addition to pasteurization, milk is subjected to other processes, all of which impair its value; It is homogenized (so that the cream cannot be separated from the milk), sterilized and otherwise treated to render it “safe.” Even though it is illegal, milk is regularly adulterated, and the adulteration is never put on the label. This is a violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act, but the dairy industry remains free of persecution. (Dr. Shelton, Volume II, The Hygienic System, p. 174)
Dr. Shelton says, “One of the most common adulterations put into milk are the so-called ‘alkalinizers.’ These are used most during the summer months to mask the taste of the milk produced by the growth of the bacilli in it. This enables the milk industry to sell old milk as ‘fresh milk’.”
Unpasteurized milk is illegal in most states. Certified raw milk is available in some states. Dr. Shelton says (Volume II, p. 174), “Certified milk, produced by cows kept in sunless barns and fed on dry goods, is an especially inadequate food.”
Raw milk from Farmer Brown’s cow, Betsy, who grazes on an unsprayed pasture, and where immaculate standards of cleanliness are maintained, is probably the best obtainable.
But many people (children and adults) experience quick reactions when any milk is consumed. Excess secretion of mucus is quickly initiated, causing frequent colds, tonsillitis, bronchitis and asthma. Milk has also been a factor in the development of coronary artery disease. These and other problems (such as constipation, diarrhea, tetany) are inherent in the liberal use of the milk itself (even raw milk) and many people who use only small amounts of milk still suffer respiratory and other problems, which often, miraculously disappear when milk is eliminate in the diet.
Many people lack the enzymes lactase and rennin, necessary for the digestion of milk. Some adults who have used milk regularly all their lives may still be able to secrete these enzymes to some extent, and demonstrate no overt reactions when they drink milk (which does not, per se, prove that the milk is an optimal food for that person).
Lactose (milk sugar) comprises about 40% of the calories in breast milk, and about 30% in cow’s milk. Lactase catalyzes the conversion of lactose, a complex carbohydrate, into the simple sugars, glucose and galactose, which can then be utilized by the body. Humans who are deficient in this enzyme have difficulty in utilizing dairy products, especially milk. They may suffer pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and other problems.
This deficiency is very common in Japanese and Chinese people, and also exists in many blacks. Many children of all races have this deficiency, and handle milk poorly.
E.L. Cole, Jr., M.D. (St. Petersburg Independent, May 20, 1974) said, “Since so many children are allergic to milk, and because of the fact that 10% of the white population and 40% of the black population have a lactase deficiency, this raises the question of whether or not it should be eliminated from the school lunch program.”
Neil Solomon, M.D., in a more recent article (Clearwater Sun, June 25, 1981) said that “from 60% to 90% of black adults and members of other ethnic groups are lactose intolerant, compared with 5% to 15% of white adults.” He said that there are relative degrees of lactase deficiency, and the majority of persons are able to tolerate some small amounts of milk without becoming ill.
Rennin is a milk-coagulating (curding) enzyme which is secreted by glands in the stomach, and it is important in the digestive processes of infants because it prevents the too-rapid passage of milk from the stomach.
Rennin tends to diminish at about two years of age, when the baby has a mouth full of teeth, and when the salivary glands of the mouth begin the secretion of the enzyme ptyalin (alpha amylase) which is necessary for starch digestion. Intestinal starch-digesting enzymes also begin secretion at this time. These phenomena appear to signal the time for weaning and feeding solid foods. Rennin usually continues to be secreted in decreasing amounts for the next three or four years, for a transition period from the milk of infancy to solid food.
Dr. Shelton (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, August 1969, p. 275) says, “Even in early childhood, when there is still a supply of rennin in the stomach, taking flesh, eggs or other protein at the same meal with milk will tend to result in the secretion of a highly acid gastric juice that will destroy or inactivate the rennin and interfere with or retard milk digestion; hence the wisdom of our rule: Take milk alone or let it alone.”
People who lack rennin or lactase may be able to tolerate dairy products which have already been clabbered or coagulated—such as clabber, yogurt, buttermilk or cheese— but have problems when they try to drink milk. Dr. Shelton says that Berg and others have noted that adult organisms handle sour milk more efficiently, the characteristics of the milk having been greatly altered by the ferment of the bacteria. (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, August 1969, p. 276)
The thymus gland, which also has a function involved in the digestion of dairy products, reaches its maximum development during early childhood, and usually degenerates and becomes vestigial in adults.
The protein and fat of cow’s milk is so constituted that the enzymes of the human digestive tract fail to digest it completely, so that some of the elements are absorbed intact and cause trouble. (Dr. Burton, Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, July 1974, p. 253)
Sylvester Graham, early pioneer in Natural Hygiene, found that physical workers of various kinds—farmers, mechanics, etc., were more vigorous and active and had more endurance if they ate only plant foods and used no milk.
“In the earlier editions of his ‘The Newer Knowledge of Nutrition,’ before he became a highly paid consultant on nutrition to the National Dairy Products Co., Professor E. V. McCollum stressed the fact that milk is not an essential in the diet of man. He pointed out that the inhabitants of southern Asia have no herds and do not drink milk. Their diet is made up of rice, soy beans, sweet potatoes, bamboo sprouts, and other vegetables. According to Professor McCollum, these people are exceptional for the development of their physique and endurance, while their capacity for work is also exceptional. They escape skeletal defects in childhood and have the finest teeth of any people in the world. This is a sharp and favorable contrast with milk-drinking peoples. The professor found it expedient to delete these facts from all editions of his work published subsequent to his becoming consultant to National Dairy.” (Dr. Shelton, Volume II, p. 172)
The claim that milk is a protective food and that it will help bone development and prevent tooth decay has been demonstrated to be a fallacy. We are told that milk is a major source of calcium and if we don’t drink milk, our teeth will fall out and our bones collapse, and most people buy these ideas, hook, line and sinker.
“The calcium in cow’s milk is of too crude a nature to be easily assimilated by the more delicate, subtle human organism. Frequently, the coarser calcium attracts and absorbs the finer calcium in the human cells, robbing them of what little they had.” (Ian Rose, Faith, Love and Seaweed, quoted in “Feeding Vegan Babies,” Freya Dinshah, Ahimsa, Nov.-Dec. 1974)
This may be one explanation for the fact that tetany (muscle cramps) frequently follows the ingestion of milk. Some years ago, I drank three glasses of “good, raw milk” in one day, and experienced horrible muscle cramps in my hands, feet and legs.
My sister was a milk drinker, drinking several glasses a day all through her life, yet she lost all her teeth when she was in her early fifties. Although she drank pasteurized milk, this result was inherent in the milk itself (even raw), since the coarser calcium of the cow’s milk robs body calcium.
Calcium is abundant in plant foods and a good Hygienic diet provides many times the required amount of calcium, in better form, and more readily utilized by the human organism.
The late Henry C. Sherman, Ph.D., Sc.D., formerly professor of Chemistry, Columbia University (Essentials of Nutrition), said that the dark green leaves are a prime source of calcium, well utilized in nutrition.
“Calcium is not Cowcium,” says Vegetarian Living (published by the Vegetarian Association of America). There are many nonanimal foods in common use among Hygienists, each of which is as rich in calcium as cow’s milk, if not richer. Some of these are sunflower seeds, dried figs, pistachio nuts, Brazil nuts, filberts, almonds, kale and other greens; and the calcium in these plant foods is readily available to the human organism, without stress and threat.
Natural sunlight (Vitamin D) is vital to calcium absorption. Foods high in oxalic acid (such as spinach, chard, beet greens, chocolate, coffee) interfere with the absorption of calcium. Wheat bran (a fragmented food) inhibits the absorption of calcium. Such unnaturally large amounts of fiber can impair the body’s ability to absorb calcium and other important minerals. Natural sources of fiber (with few exceptions, some of which have already been mentioned in earlier lessons) don’t interfere with the assimilation of calcium and other nutrients. (Harland, Barbara and Hecht, Annabel, “Grandma Called It’ Roughage”—FDA Consumers Publication 78-2087, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, July/August 1977)
Be sure to note and differentiate among the various dark green leaves. Dark, leafy green vegetables contain considerable amounts of calcium, but they also contain varying amounts of oxalic acid. During food digestion, oxalic acid combines with calcium and forms an insoluble compound, calcium oxalate, so that the calcium passes out of the body without being absorbed. Those greens which contain large amounts of oxalic acid are therefore poor sources of calcium, since most or all of their calcium is lost to the body. They may even rob the body stores of calcium obtained from other foods. The “good guys” are romaine, buttercrunch and leaf lettuce; kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and collard. These vegetables contain significant amounts of calcium and negligible amounts of oxalic acid. In kale, broccoli and collard, calcium exceeds oxalic acid by a ratio of forty-two to one. Beet greens, spinach and Swiss chard have up to eight times as much oxalic acid as calcium. (Prevention, June 1980, p. 40)
It is worthwhile to take the time and effort to understand the importance of calcium, and its sources. Calcium is needed for proper bone and cartilage formation, for proper blood clotting, for muscle functioning, for hormone activation, for tissue formation. Calcium influences capillary permeability.
Calcium deficiency can cause headaches, heart palpitation, listlessness, sleeplessness, and affects nerve function and thought processes. Adequate calcium supplies can help to keep cholesterol levels in the normal range. Calcium activates numerous enzyme systems and normalizes the contraction and relaxation of the heart. It is essential in the maintenance of the delicate acid-alkaline balance.
During the years of growth, 99% of the available calcium is utilized in the formation of bones and teeth. Subsequently, extra supplies of calcium and other minerals are stored in the bones and drawn upon in emergencies for balancing the body chemistry. A small percentage of the body’s calcium is found in body fluids and tissues.
June M. Wiles, whose research on this subject is summarized in her excellent article, “Good Nutrition,” (Independent Press, September 10, 1975) says, “It is unfortunate that a majority of our medical practitioners, when seeing “too much” calcium in blood studies will take the patient off calcium instead of seeking to find why an excess is present. There is hardly such a thing as “too much,” especially the way we Americans eat.”
She says that it is probable that a deficiency of calcium may exist, because the body is incapable of retaining it. We must understand that other nutrients influence the absorption, utilization and stability of calcium. Calcium will be rejected by the body if Vitamins A, D, C, magnesium, phosphorus and dietary protein are absent or deficient.
Ms. Wiles says, “If more physicians would check first for these deficiencies before withdrawing calcium, I dare say the rate of individual recovery would increase 100%.”
A January 1981 Prevention article (p. 65) gives an interesting table of the nutritional value of four types of lettuce:
(100 grams or one serving) | Vit. A. (IU) | Vit.C (mg.) | Calcium (mg.) | Iron (mg.) |
Butterhead lettuce (Boston, Bibb) | 970 | 8 | 35 | 2.0 |
Romaine lettuce | 1,900 | 18 | 68 | 1.4 |
Crisphead lettuce (Iceberg head lettuce) | 330 | 6 | 20 | 0.5 |
Loose-leaf lettuce | 1,900 | 68 | 18 | 1.4 |
They are nearly equal in other vitamins, minerals, protein and carbohydrates.
“Peas and mung beans contain calmodulin, a protein which works with calcium in such vital processes as activating enzymes in the red blood cells, skeletal muscles and the brain, as well as controlling muscle and nerve action, blood clotting, cell mortifying and cell membrane functions.” (Vegetarian Living)
As we have so often emphasized, those who utilize an intelligently planned Hygienic diet, consisting mostly of whole, raw foods, need have no concern about deficiencies of any nutritional elements.
Carrington says, (The Natural Food of Man, p. 170), “Even if an animal is perfectly healthy, the milk partakes of the nature and general character and composition of the animal’s body,” and while this may not be actually diseased, it is doubtless in a more or less depraved condition—as are practically all domesticated animals, particularly the cow—during the confined period of winter. And the milk, being a secretion, naturally takes on the conditions of the body of the animal—as would any other secretion.
Carrington says, “Indeed, Professor L.B. Arnold, an excellent authority on all dairy matters, says, ‘Milk is the scavenger of the cow’s body.’”
Cow’s milk is usually used by adults as a beverage—it is not a beverage, but a food. In its raw state, unpolluted and unprocessed, it is an excellent food for calves.
It is emphatically not recommended for human consumption, especially adult humans.
David Reuben, M.D. (Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Nutrition, pp. 161-162) says: “Someone in Washington, D.C., once got the bright idea that black African tribesmen would eat better if we sent them some of our powdered skim milk. The Africans gratefully accepted the wonderful powdered skim milk from their American benefactors—they accepted tons of it, in fact. They mixed it with water and tried to drink it. They got sick. They tried to drink it again. They got sicker. They stopped drinking it.
“But they were poor people, accustomed to making the best of a hard existence. The powdered skim milk....did not go to waste....That particular tribe has the whitest mud huts of any tribe anywhere. Each day little black boys dip their brushes in fabulously expensive high-protein skim milk and carefully whitewash the brown mud walls of the family dwelling.”
Vegetarian Living says, “Humans who have not had milk as part of their hereditary diets do not have this inherited ability to deal with such an unnatural diet, and are lactose-intolerant. Most blacks, Jews, Southern Europeans and Orientals, as well as many Latin-Americans, are lactose-intolerant. Powdered milk sent as food aid to Latin America ended up being used to whitewash the houses there.”
Cream is essentially an animal fat, containing very little of the protein and other elements of milk. If consumed in large quantities, it would, in some respects, be even more injurious than milk. But, taken in very limited quantities, as it usually is, it is probably much less harmful than fats from the bodies of slaughtered animals. It is, of course, subject to most of the same objections as milk.
Butter is also an animal fat which is to be preferred to fats from the bodies of animals. Consumed in limited quantities, it is generally not extremely harmful. Again, it is subject to many of the same objections as milk.
Some Hygienists who are not on totally raw food diets use limited amounts of unsalted butter—and a few may also use some cream. Both cream and butter are burdensome to the digestion, and cause an excess secretion of mucus. Use should be sparing—or nil.
These are subject to many of the objections given for milk. As previously indicated, some adults are better able to tolerate “sour milk” which has been coagulated or acted upon by the ferment of bacteria. The question is: Should these fermented foods be used, or should they be considered “spoiled” or “rotten” milk? And is there a difference between naturally soured milk and milk soured by the introduction of a culture?
Raw milk contains natural lactic acid bacteria which, if left alone at room temperature, will grow and sour the milk. It is not always successful, however, since fluctuating temperatures may prevent proper clabbering (resulting in an odoriferous, unpleasant product). Most homemade clabber is made by introducing a culture, and commercial products such as sour cream, buttermilk and cheese are, of course, cultured.
Kefir is a slightly effervescent acidulous beverage of low alcoholic content made chiefly in southern Russia of cow’s milk that is fermented by means of kefir grains. A kefir grain is a small mass resembling a tiny cauliflower, occurring in kefir, containing casein and other milk solids, I together with the yeasts and lactobacilli that cause the characteristic kefir fermentation, and serving as a starter to induce this fermentation when introduced into fresh milk.
Kefir may be said to resemble clabber or yogurt. It is a dairy product, and subject to the same objections as all dairy products, except that it, like other clabbered products, may be better tolerated by adults than milk. It is also subject to the same objections as all fermented products.
Years ago, a friend gave me a kefir starter, and I made it a number of times. I found it somewhat unsatisfactory, since the grains must be lifted from the sour milk and saved for the next batch. The process of removing the grains broke up the custardy consistency into a messy, unappetizing product.
We also did not care much for the taste. I was rather relieved when the starter was lost when we moved to Florida.
When we ate some meals at Dr. Esser’s fasting retreat in 1967, he served clabber, sour cream, butter and cheese (sparingly). The clabber was homemade, using commercial sour cream as a starter; the butter was unsalted; and the cheese was an excellent-tasting ricotta. I don’t know what their practice is now. I have heard Dr. Esser say, at American Natural Hygiene Society Conventions, that he considers cheese to be a useful supplementary source of protein.
Some Hygienists are convinced that limited amounts of cheese should not be ruled out as a supplementary source of protein (where needed or desired); cheese and butter are usually included in the food items available at the American Natural Hygiene Society Conventions, for those who desire these foods.
It is usually recommended that cheese (if used) should be one of the following:
First Choice: Homemade cottage cheese, unsalted, made from unpasteurized milk.
Second Choice: Unsalted cheese, available in health food stores, made from unpasteurized milk, using vegetable rennet.
Third Choice: Ricotta cheese or cottage cheese marked 100% natural and containing no preservatives (we hope it’s true), available in many supermarkets.
Fourth Choice: Unprocessed cheddar or other mild cheeses marked 100% natural, or with labels which do not list any additives (although that does not always guarantee it is free of additives). Read the labels.
The last two groups would presumably all be made of pasteurized milk, and would also contain some salt. Occasionally, unsalted cheeses are available in supermarkets.
This substance, from the stomach of a newborn calf, is used in the processing of most commercial cheese. Sometimes rennet is obtained from the stomach of other newborn animals (e.g. hogs).
Some companies produce rennet less cheeses, which are made with vegetable coagulants. These cheeses are usually available in health food stores. Not all varieties of cheese can be produced with the vegetable coagulants. It is my understanding that it is not possible to produce the large holes in Swiss cheese unless the animal rennet is used.
I did not include yogurt with the other fermented dairy products because of some special comments that are pertinent to it alone. It is, obviously, also subject to the same objections given for other dairy products (unfermented and fermented), with the same stipulation that adults are better able to tolerate products which have already been coagulated.
Lactobacillus acidophilus bacteria, lactobacillus bifidus bacteria, and coli bacteria are normally present in the digestive tract of humans. They are sometimes called “friendly” or “beneficial” intestinal flora, and are necessary for human symbiosis and the proper absorption and utilization of foods. These natural intestinal flora can be adversely affected (or destroyed) by taking antibiotics.
There has been some evidence that using yogurt cultures for prolonged periods can also adversely affect the natural intestinal flora, or impair the body’s own ability to foster the development of such natural friendly bacteria. One research team at Johns Hopkins Hospital even discovered a relationship to cataracts.
Nutrition researcher Gordon F. Fraser, B.Sc. (“The Yogurt Scare Is For Real,” Let’s Live Magazine, August 1970) says, “Most commercial yogurts contain harmful bacteria, of other than human origin, called bulgaricus bacillus; these die out in the human intestinal tract, and do a great deal of harm to the system before dying.”
He says that this culture dominates and destroys the beneficial, necessary intestinal flora which help to utilize food particles, keep down pathogenic germs, stimulate peristalsis, detoxify and create a soft, smooth stool. Their main function is to aid in the nourishment of the cells and speed up the utilization of food.
Fraser maintains that negative reactions do not occur if the correct culture is used, provided it is not perverted in some way—by mixing with other cultures, or by the use of artificial additives, flavors, chemicals, etc. He says, “There is available in health food stores the correct and helpful bulgaricus culture which has not been altered by such conditions.” It is a liquid containing a natural live culture of lactobacillus acidophilus, the correct lactobacillus bulgaricus, lactobacillus caucasius, lactic acid and yeast in milk whey, all of which help to maintain a healthy intestinal flora. He says that California’s Aha Dena Certified Dairy and Walker-Gordon Certified Dairy in the Eastern United States use this product.
Does all this sound confusing to you? It certainly should make one uneasy about the regular use of any yogurt. Why risk inhibiting or impairing your natural intestinal flora? Why not, instead, stick to the Hygienic diet of all raw, or mostly raw, foods and have faith in your body’s own ability to develop and foster its own beneficial intestinal flora?
Whey is the serum, or watery part, of milk (containing lactose, minerals and lactalbumin) which is separated from the thicker, or more coagulable, part (curd), especially in the process of making cheese.
The late J.I. Rodale (Prevention Magazine) repeatedly maintained that, while dairy products were harmful and “allergenic,” the whey has none of the harmful properties, while retaining the “beneficial” characteristics of contributing to the body’s beneficial intestinal flora. He therefore promoted and endorsed the use of whey tablets as a food supplement.
I tasted the whey which drips out of the clabber in making homemade cottage cheese, and did not find it to my liking. Whey is still subject to many of the objections against other dairy products. In addition, it is fragmented, and used to supply the body the beneficial intestinal flora which a healthy body should synthesize from a normal diet predominating in raw foods.
The regular use of whey as a food supplement may thus serve to inhibit the body’s natural ability to provide these flora by making it unnecessary for the organism to function in this manner. Whey supplements are no more necessary than other supplements.
This is the difficult one for many people. Should one take the Alcoholics Anonymous pledge of “not even once” or cater to our human frailty by occasionally indulging in homemade or so-called “natural” products? The best choice, obviously, is to divorce yourself completely from this temptress.
Regular commercial ice cream, with its twenty to thirty additives, is a particularly pernicious product. Some of the so-called “natural” ice creams may not be quite as bad, but, upon reading the labels, I found only one supermarket brand that contains no additives (except sugar and sometimes salt). At least the law now requires listing these additives on the ice cream package—until recently it was not required.
Since the new law was passed, Farm Stores has discontinued advertising “natural” icecream.
Breyer’s is the only supermarket ice cream I have found that actually contains no “additives” for most flavors (except sugar and salt). Their Buttered Almond Ice Cream actually contains only milk, cream, sugar, almonds, butter and salt. I believe I have seen some of their flavors that do not even contain butter or salt—just milk, cream, sugar and natural vanilla, fruit or nuts.
However, from the Hygienic point of view, the sugar is about as bad (or perhaps almost as bad) as the chemical emulsifiers and preservatives. And the milk and cream are subject to the same objections as for all dairy products.
Homemade ice cream may be a little better, because you can choose your own ingredients, such as unpasteurized cream or milk, and dates for sweetening, or even “ice cream” made without dairy products. But it is still a concoction to be avoided. There are some recipes for ice cream in Lesson 27—some using dairy products—and some without the use of dairy products.
Banana “ice cream”—made by freezing bananas and putting them through a Champion juicer (using the homogenizing blank)—is the best “substitute” for ice cream—not as good as eating bananas in their natural state, but not really harmful. It is as thick and “creamy” as ice cream.
If banana “ice cream” (other fruits may also be used) temporarily satisfies your nostalgia or craving for ice cream, it serves a good purpose. Hopefully you will eventually progress to the total elimination of such compromises from your food program.
Gelatin is made from the skin, tendons, ligaments and bones of animals. It is considered an animal protein food, except that it is deficient in one essential amino acid, tryptophane. It has sometimes been recommended to people with problem finger nails, who eventually find that it not only doesn’t help their nails, it also causes other problems, due to an excess of an unnatural protein which is unbalanced and incomplete in an important and destructive way.
This product should never be used. If it is ever desired to produce a gelatinized dessert for a party, etc., vegetable gelatin (agar) may be used. Better yet, serve something other than a gelatin dessert.
(e.g. Dessicated Liver, Bone Meal, Bone Marrow, etc.)
The lesson on food supplements should eloquently refute the case for these substances. The items referred to above should be rejected both as animal products and as “pills” that promise much benefit, but deliver much harm.
I am including in this lesson Dr. Shelton’s grave warning against the use of cod liver oil. Most modern food supplements include halibut liver oil instead (which is no better). Dale Alexander (Arthritis and Common Sense) touts cod liver oil as a universal panacea. I well remember forcing this repulsive grease on my own child, in the firm belief that it was beneficial and necessary (long before I knew about Natural Hygiene).
Dr. Shelton (Volume II, p. 175) says that Agduhr and Malmberg both came to the conclusion that cod liver oil is harmful to the heart, and is often responsible for death in children. Agduhr tested the oil on rabbits and Malmberg used children for his tests.
“Agduhr, working with Dr. N. Stenstron, proved definitely by animal experimentation that cod liver oil produces pathological changes in the heart muscle. F. Hendricksen concludes, from his tests, that large doses may produce general cell degeneration throughout the body.
C.W. Herlitz, I. Jundell and F. Wahlgre, after conducting an extensive and elaborate series of experiments, showed that doses quite comparable with those given to children in ordinary practice, can produce considerable degeneration in the heart muscles. These men feel that the public should be warned of these dangers as well as of the dangers from radiated milk.”
I am also including the following information relative to bone meal. “C.S.P.I., the Center for Science in the Public Interest, in their news letter, ‘Environment and Behavior,’ has warned consumers, especially children and pregnant women, to avoid bone meal supplements because of lead contamination. Lead ingestion by humans has been connected to kidney failure, anemia and nervous system disorders. Unborn and young children could suffer from mental and behavioral problems from even low lead absorption levels; higher levels would be worse.” (Vegetarian Living)
Lard is obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of the hog. It is difficult for me to discuss lard in a restrained manner, because I find it so disgusting. It is a product of the worst of the meat animals, and it is the worst of the cholesterol-abundant, saturated fats. Since it is an animal product, it is included in this discussion, though I can’t believe any students of Natural Hygiene would ever consider its use. (Vegetarians who eat bean dishes in Mexican restaurants should be sure they weren’t cooked in lard, since this is often the case).
I hope that, as a result of this lesson, you will decide never to use animal foods in any form. If you should elect to occasionally use certain animal products which are somewhat less pernicious than flesh foods, be aware that less is better and none is best.
In the transition to a Hygienic diet, some people become concerned and disturbed about finding “substitutes” for animal foods—not realizing that the animal foods are the “substitutes”—a perversion of man’s natural diet. It is not necessary to search for substitutes that look, smell or taste like the animal-source foods. In fact, you can get into worse trouble by preoccupation with such substitutes.
If you eat lettuce, tomatoes, celery, cucumbers—if you eat bananas, grapes, oranges, melons—if you eat sunflower seeds, pecans, almonds, walnuts—you know exactly what you’re getting. These foods might not be organically grown, they might be sprayed, but they are in their natural form, they have not been adulterated, or robbed of their enzymes or nutritive value.
But if you eat manufactured foods, you really don’t know what you’re getting. All kinds of imitation foods are offered to the public—imitation cheese, non-dairy whipped topping, imitation eggs, imitation butter. If you don’t want to be “ripped off,” read the labels. Of course, much of the time the labels don’t tell the whole story. Better yet, use foods that have not been changed, and therefore need no labels.
Beatrice Trum Hunter reports that meat substitutes labeled “textured vegetable protein” are manufactured through a textile-like process, spinning soy bean fibers that can be shaped into meatlike products. The drastic alkali treatment to which they are subjected reduces the protein value, and an amino acid derivative is formed which is toxic. Levels of sodium are very high, calcium and zinc are less available, and the iron is bound up in a form of low availability to the body. The resultant product is much worse than meat. (Beatrice Trum Hunter, “The Great Nutrition Robbery,” National Health Federation Bulletin, August 1979)
If you want to use soy beans, use sprouted soy beans or Mung beans, or soak dried soy beans overnight and cook them. If you want to eat something that looks and tastes like meat, you’d almost be better off just eating meat itself, bad as it is, because the synthetic product is much worse. But the best plan would be to avoid the meat and the imitation meat products.
In 1965 the United States Department of Agriculture proudly announced a milestone: the birth of a calf from a cow reared on a totally synthetic diet—urea, corn starch, corn sugar, wood pulp, minerals and vitamins. The calf appeared normal at birth, and during the first fifteen days of its life it gained twenty-nine pounds. On the sixteenth day, it was found lying dead in its pen. An extensive postmortem examination failed to show the cause of death.
No animal products are necessary for optimal health. No imitations of animal products are necessary for optimal health. No deficiencies will be experienced on a Hygienic diet. There is a great danger of deficiencies in a diet predominating in animal foods and deficient in fresh fruits and vegetables. A horror story appeared in Better Nutrition, September 1977, about a woman who had six operations before it was discovered that all that was wrong was subclinical scurvy, due to a diet deficient in fresh fruits and vegetables.
Experience the delights of a plethora of varieties of fruits, and the delights of good health. The green leaves of Nature and the little sunflower seed kernels are treasure chests of nutrition.
A diet predominating in animal foods is admittedly poor in calcium unless milk and cheese are used. Yet the calcium of milk and cheese has been shown to be the frequent cause of calcium depletion instead of a source of supplying needed calcium to the body. (See previous quotation from Ian Rose, Faith, Love and Seaweed.) We have also learned from Professor of Chemistry Henry C. Sherman that the dark green leaves are an excellent source of calcium, well utilized in nutrition.
Dark green leaves, such as romaine, kale, etc. are almost incredibly rich in vitamins, minerals, enzymes and hormones, and they contain small amounts of easily-assimilated protein of high biological value. They are also rich in chlorophyll, which has a close molecular resemblance to hemoglobin, and is thus Nature’s blood-building element for all plant-eaters, including humans.
And the sunflower seed! No food is complete in itself, but the sunflower seed comes very close. Refer to Lesson 24 for details about the bonanza of nutritional elements sunflower seeds provide, including calcium and quality protein.
Previous lessons have shown the tremendous variety of plant foods to choose from and enjoy. So why in the world do we need to eat animals or animal products, when Nature has provided so adequately for our needs?
It must not be forgotten that not all products or derivations of the plant kingdom are recommended for use as food: (cranberries, chard, beet greens, spinach - see Lessons on oxalic acid); coffee, tea, chocolate, etc. hail from the plant kingdom too; as do oleomargarine and other hard vegetable fats, all of which are emphatically not recommended.
It should also be remembered that foods or plant products should not be used as medicines. Your health food store’s shelves abound with such “Miraculous cures” as apricot kernels, ginseng, etc. See the article “Plant Products and Effects” in this lesson.
When you abandon animal products, also bear in mind that you must judiciously select your foods from the plant kingdom, rejecting those which contain toxic substances in nutritionally significant amounts, and rejecting the use of foods or plants for medicinal or “curative” purposes. As you have learned, there are no “cures.”
The only source of healing is your own body, and the only way you can help is by providing ideal conditions for the implementation of its own self-healing power. Such conditions are optimum during a fast, and the healing effect is consolidated and multiplied when the fast is followed by Hygienic eating and living.
As health improves, the desire for animal foods, or imitations of (or substitutes for) animal foods will fade. The more knowledge one acquires, the less difficult the transition, and the more certain the attainment of the ultimate goal—to be the best you can be—the healthiest, the happiest, a fine example of Hygienic living.
Why do some Hygienic professionals continue to utilize egg yolks and cheese?
It is a question of accepting a compromise solution to a difficult problem. Dr. Vetrano says (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, January 1975, p. 116), “Most individuals have a difficult time adjusting to eating only nuts for protein and take an insufficient amount of protein at first.” She is, of course, referring to people who are endeavoring to adjust to the Hygienic food program. She suggests adding green vegetables to the diet, since they contain small amounts of protein of high biological value.
Dr. Vetrano also says (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, November 1974, p. 55), “The strict vegetarian diet is best for most people. There are occasional sick people with gastrointestinal problems who must temporarily be placed on milk (milk products—clabber or cheese), if they cannot take a fast of sufficient length for complete healing.”
When Hygienic professionals suggest the use of egg yolks or cheese, it is usually with the hope and intention of providing supplementary protein to those individuals who are not yet able to accept, digest or assimilate an adequate supply of protein from the plant kingdom.
Did the American Indians have a source of animal milk?
No. Indian children were usually weaned at about four years of age, and never again had milk. Cows were introduced into New England in 1624, but were seldom used for their milk at that time. “Cows were seldom milked at this time, being raised principally for their hides, secondarily for meat, and only incidentally for milk.” (Social Forces in American History, A.M. Simons), (quoted by Dr. Shelton, Volume II, p. 172)
What is the difference between Natural Hygiene and veganism?
A strictly Natural Hygiene food program is a vegan diet—that is, foods from the plant kingdom only. However, in actual practice, it is my impression that those who are known as vegans usually use grains (including whole grain bread) to a greater extent than do Natural Hygienists, and use more cooked food.
Is there any Hygienic objection to the use of prepared soya milk fortified with Vitamin B-12?
Prepared soya milk is a manufactured product, quite far removed from the soy bean as it grows. The Vitamin B-12 used in this product is “synthetic” and non-animal, though it is made by the same bacterial process as occurs in the bodies of humans and other total-vegetarian animals. If you have misgivings about having enough Vitamin B-12, the product mentioned would be less objectionable than the Vitamin B-12 from animal sources (liver extract).
However, Dr. Vetrano firmly believes that it is not necessary to use such artificial methods. She has repeatedly seen Vitamin B-12 problems disappear due to fasting and a Hygienic program of living and eating.
What is the purpose of emulsifiers in foods? Food additives worry me, and I don’t really understand most of them.
To emulsify is to convert unmiscible substances into intimate mixtures (as oil and water). Emulsifiers, stabilizers and thickeners are the substances that make cream seem thick, keep the oil and vinegar in salad dressings from separating, and generally give a smooth, uniform texture to bread, bakery products, ice cream, puddings, shortenings. As Dr. Michael F. Jacobson points out in his book, Eater’s Digest, some manufacturers use a recipe that automatically produces a food with satisfying texture and consistency. Other manufacturers of the same products rely on the above group of additives to cover up the fact that inferior ingredients or poor manufacturing practices make their product watery, lumpy or crystalline.“
Hygienists need not be concerned about additives if they use whole plant foods, mostly raw, and avoid packaged foods.
Eating May Be Dangerous to Your Health, by Dr. Jacqueline Verrett and Jean Carper, gives details about various other additives in foods, and says that “there is overwhelming evidence that chemicals in foods can cause readily noticeable structural defects in the newborn, such twisted spines, shortened limbs, incomplete skulls, absence of eyes, cleft palates, web feet.”
Hygienists have always adopted the position that milk is for infants, mother’s milk that is, and that this is the normal practice among all mammals. During the initial phase of life it is the invariable practice of all mammalian species to take the milk of their mothers following which they are weaned, and spend the remainder of their life sustained by other foods. Man, on the contrary, teaches that milk is an ideal food, essentially cow’s milk, and that after mother has performed her nursing, the cow should take over. In his feeding of infants, man has produced all types of formulae and means to usurp the natural habit of breast feeding. Even in his feeding of other mammals as pets man is wont to include milk in their diet.
Many women regard breast feeding as culturally regressive and primitive, something one should abandon as quickly as possible. They say it ruins their figure, that their breasts become atonic and pendulous. Such remarks are unfounded and other factors are responsible yet seldom are considered.
It is normal in nature for the mammal to breast feed into the post dentition period, that is well past the time the infant obtains a mouth full of teeth. Not just a few teeth but all teeth. Species of apes nurse for six or seven months although their first teeth have appeared at the end of three months. With mammals, there is a wide variation in the transition period, weaning taking place in many over a long period of time.
However, should milk constitute an integral part of the diet after weaning? Is milk a normal food for adults? The answer to both these questions is an unequivocal no!
Milk and milk products such as cheese and yogurt are viewed with suspicion by hygienists. Yogurt has possibly more to commend it than the other milk products and undoubtedly the changes wrought in the milk by the bacterial activity in producing the yogurt mitigate several of the unsatisfactory features of milk.
What are the unfavourable attributes of milk? Today milk is very much a processed product. It is pasteurized, homogenized, sterilized and otherwise treated to render it ‘safe.’ All these processes impair its value.
Historically it is revealed that the primitive animal of some time ago used to produce some 200 pounds of milk a year. The ‘modern’ cow may produce up to 15,000 pounds of milk a year, seventy five times as much. How has this influenced the quality? Milk has become more of an excretion of the cow than a secretion, and many drugs, including antibiotics are present; practically all milk today contains traces of penicillin.
There is also strong evidence to indicate that the adult gastric juice does not contain rennin, an enzyme which initiates the digestion of milk and which is abundant in the infant stomach. The protein and fat of milk is constituted in such a way that the enzymes of the human digestive tract fail to digest it adequately; some of the elements are absorbed intact and cause trouble. Milk also contains a high content of the chemical cholesterol and has been a factor in the development of coronary artery disease. Many people observe the quick action taken by the body when milk is consumed; much mucus is secreted or diseases associated with mucous membranes, asthma, sinusitis, bronchitis, etc. are aggravated. Milk is said to be a ‘mucus forming’ food and whilst I don’t favour this description, I do suggest that its presence in the body may be the occasion for greater mucosal activity.
Milk is often considered a major source of the vital element Calcium: if we don’t drink milk, our teeth will fall out and our bones collapse, or some such nonsense. Calcium is abundant in nature. Most of the foods, fruits, vegetables and nuts we recommend are excellent sources of calcium. It would have to be a very poor diet indeed that did not supply half a gram of calcium daily. A good hygienic diet would provide in excess of one gram.
Milk forms no part of the normal diet of man after the period of infancy and therefore our advice is—don’t drink milk.
The first step in the digestion of milk is that of coagulating or curding. Milk may be made to curdle by adding an acid to it, such as lemon juice or some other acid fruit juice or by the hydrochloric acid of the stomach. Normally, the coagulation of milk in the stomach of a young mammal is done by an enzyme secreted by glands in the stomach and known as rennin. This enzyme is especially abundant in the mucous lining of the stomach of young mammals and is extracted to be used in the manufacture of cheese.
The fifth edition of Harper’s Review of Physiological Chemistry (p. 177, 1955) says of rennin: “This enzyme causes coagulation of milk, and is important in the digestive processes of infants because it prevents the rapid passage of milk from the stomach. In the presence of calcium rennin changes irreversibly the casein of milk to a paracasein which is then acted upon by pepsin. This enzyme is said to be absent from the stomach of adults.”
Although, heretofore, it has been thought that the sole function of rennin is to coaugulate milk, it seems from Harper’s statement that it may be a true digestive enzyme. It changes casein to paracasein so that pepsin can act upon it. Enzymes are specific in their action. Each enzyme acts upon a particular type of food and certain of these can act upon a starch or a protein only after other enzymes have first acted upon them and changed them from their original composition. Harper’s statement seems to imply that pepsin acts upon paracasein rather than upon casein.
If this is the true relation of pepsin to the digestion of casein it means that rennin is essential to the efficient digestion of this protein. Rennin becomes of far greater importance in the digestion of milk than has heretofore been thought.
Rennin has been the subject of much controversy among physiologists. There was, first, the question: does rennin exist or does pepsin do the work ascribed to this enzyme? French and German investigators finally succeeded in establishing, to the satisfaction of everyone concerned, the existence of rennin as separate from pepsin. This did not end the controversy. While investigators now admit that rennin does, indeed, exist, many of them assert that it never exists in the human stomach, contending that it is found only in the fourth stomach of the calf.
In his Advances in Enzymology (London, 1954) Berridge defends the view that rennin is never found in the human stomach. He says that “Experiment tends to confirm the absence of rennin from human gastric juice.” On the other hand, Eusterman and Balfour, in The Stomach and the Duodenum (1936) state that, “according to a number of investigators, rennin tends to disappear from the adult stomach.” This statement implies that somebody, somewhere, found rennin in the human stomach, while its disappearance from the adult stomach has led to the suggestion that Berridge, who makes no distinction between infants and adults, made all of his experiments on adults.
In the second edition of his Textbook of Medical Physiology “1961” Arthur C. Guyton, M.D., says “rennin is found in the gastric juice of babies in large quantities, but it is present only to a very slight extent if at all in the gastric juice of adults. Also casein seems to be digested by babies much more easily than it is by adults, presumably because of rennin activity in the baby’s stomach.”
In the 1950 edition of The Physiological Basis of Medical Practice, Best and Taylor say that the rennin content of adults is “low” and provide us with the following data: “Rennin is especially abundant in the gastric mucosa of young animals, while pepsin is present in minimal amounts...The optimum pH for the action of rennin is between 5 and 6.5, and it is quite inactive at the pH of the gastric contents of the normal adult. In the infant, however, the pH of the gastric contents (5-6.5) is around the optimum for the action of this enzyme.
This indicates that the digestive processes required for the digestion of milk are somewhat different from those required for other foods and especially for other proteins. It is essential that the milk be coagulated and that the casein be converted into paracasein. I have seen two patients on a milk diet in which the milk did not coagulate, but was rushed along the digestive track into the colon and expelled in an unchanged fluid state. A glass of milk would be taken and in less than five minutes it would pass from the colon. Perhaps, in the absence of coagulation, milk would never be digested, but would pass through the digestive track too rapidly for the digestive enzymes to do their work.
In large numbers of other cases I have seen very large stools pass that were composed of large, hard milk curds that were white, apparently having undergone no digestion. Coagulation alone is not sufficient to assure the digestion of milk. In a few of these cases, the curds have been so large and there have been so many of them that bowel impaction resulted. We frequently see white curds in the stools of infants, indicating that, although the milk coagulated, apparently in a normal manner, the curds were not digested. We assume in these cases that milk has been taken in excess of enzymic capacity.
As rennin is active in low acid medium and is inactivated by the normal gastric juice of the adult, and as it is concerned solely with the digestion of milk, it should come as no surprise to us to learn that it is not secreted by the adult stomach. In this connection it should be stressed that the acidity of the juice poured into the stomach is determined by the food eaten. Milk taken alone will occasion the flow of gastric juice that is low in acidity. Even in early childhood, when there is still a supply of rennin in the stomach, taking flesh, eggs or other protein at the same meal with milk will tend to result in the secretion of a highly acid gastric juice that will destroy or inactivate the rennin and interfere with or retard milk digestion, hence the wisdom of our rule: take milk alone or let it alone.
Rennin is apparently involved exclusively in the digestion of milk and tends to disappear from the gastric juice (is no longer secreted by the stomach) when the normal time to wean the child approaches. Some physiologists say that the concentration of rennin in the adult gastric juice is low; others say it isn’t detectable. A two year old baby normally has a mouth full of teeth and can begin eating solid foods. At this age, also, the salivary glands begin the secretion of the enzyme ptyalin, which is necessary to starch digestion! Intestinal enzymes essential to starch digestion begin to be secreted at this time, also.
Thus, both the presence of adequate chewing apparatus and the secretion of digestive enzymes indicate that now is the time to begin the feeding of solid foods. In an article by a dentist, which appeared a few years ago, the author makes the statement that the baby should be weaned when the first two teeth are cut, as this signifies that solid foods are now to be taken. Of all persons a dentist should know that two teeth do not enable a baby to chew foods adequately. As these first two teeth are in the front (are biters and not chewers), the baby is certainly not physiologically or anatomically equipped for such chewing.
When the first teeth are through and the starch-splitting enzymes are being secreted, there starts a decline in the production of rennin; this is to say, its secretion begins to decline at the age of two. It continues to be secreted in decreasing amounts during the next three to four years, that is, during what I have called the transition period (see Hygienic Care of Children), in which the child is normally making the transition from the exclusive milk diet of infancy to the solid food diet of later life. During this transition period milk is normally taken. Should it surprise us to learn that when the child reaches the age at which it should normally be fully weaned its digestive glands cease to secrete the enzymes that are specially related to milk digestion?
One question comes to mind that I can find no data for an answer. It is this: Does the individual who continues to take milk regularly, from infancy into adulthood, continue to secrete rennin for a longer period of time than does the individual who is weaned at the normal weaning time of three to five years? This is to ask: Does the stomach continue to secrete rennin for an abnormally long period of time if the infant diet is persisted into late childhood and thereafter? Does the persistence of the need for rennin cause the body to continue to secrete it? If it does continue to secrete this digestive enzyme longer than normal, at what time of life does it disappear from the digestive juice of the stomach? If it continues to secrete rennin but in much decreased amounts, in those who continue to take milk, does this account for the fact that some physiologists find no trace of rennin in the subjects they use in their tests?
While the answer to this question (I have cut it up into several subordinate questions) may prove to be of no great practical value, it would prove interesting as well as instructive concerning the power of the body to adjust itself to varying circumstances of life, especially its power of the body to adapt its digestive juices and enzymes to the food eaten. Every such advance in knowledge of the chemistry of digestion provides us with added data to assist us in determining, not only the normal diet of man, but, also, and of equal importance, the normal mode of feeding.
Today’s nutritionists wholly neglect all natural indications of the normal feeding of man. One food is as good as another and any food is equally as good at any time of life as at another, providing the commercial manipulators of our foodstuffs can prepare it in a manner that it is acceptable to all ages. For example, although we know that during the first period of life after birth, even the lion cub does not eat flesh, our nutritionists do not hesitate to advocate flesh food for the human infant at a period of its development when the young carnivores of all kinds are still drawing their nutriment from the maternal font. Arrogance and egotism cause them to assume that they can improve the normal order of feeding. The results of their efforts are not encouraging.
While considerable confusion exists about rennin, there is one thing about which there is general agreement: namely, the adult human stomach has no rennin. Berg and others have shown that the adult organism does not use milk as efficiently as the rapidly growing organism and that, milk is base-forming in the infant and acid-forming in the adult. Berg attributed this to the more rapidly growing organism. May it not be, in light of the foregoing that the greater efficiency of the young animal in assimilating milk rests upon the fact that the infant and young child digest milk better? This suggestion derives support from the fact noted by Berg and others, that, adult organisms handle sour milk more efficiently, the characteristics of the milk having been greatly altered by the ferment action of bacteria.
Every indication of nature is contrary to the present dogma of the dairy industry and the medical profession that we must take our quart of milk every day so long as we live; that, even at the age of a hundred, we are not to be weaned. Nature indicates that we are to be weaned at an early age. In medical circles the tendency of the pendulum, just at present, is to swing violently and far in the opposite direction. In increasing numbers, medical men are blaming milk for a growing number of illnesses in children and adults. From being the all-good milk is rapidly becoming the all-bad. Certainly the assumption that invalids and convalescents, who have weak digestive powers, should be fed milk like an infant, because in their enfeebled condition they can handle milk better than other foods, is no longer tenable.
The Hygienist will see in all these facts a justification of Graham’s condemnation of the use of milk and milk products by the adult and his observation that the use of milk by the adult makes him logy and lazy. Trall also pointed out that milk is not a normal part of the adult diet. Those of us who have had an extensive experience with the milk diet, formerly so strenuously advocated as a near-panacea, will discover in the foregoing facts at least partial explanation of the many troubles that the milk diet produced. Polyuria, constipation, diarrhea, bowel impaction, nausea, much gas and discomfort, increased blood pressure, a water-logged state of the tissues (edema), catarrh, indigestion and other troubles arising out of “the harmless practice of overfeeding on milk,” necessitated all manners of manipulations to make it acceptable to patients.
From Dr. Shelton ‘s Hygienic Review, pages 274-276, Aug. 1969.
I have noticed that honey is stimulating. After giving just a teaspoon to my baby, I noticed that she would not sleep the rest of the day.
Your observations were correct. Honey is a stimulant. The excess of pure sugar and the formic acid it contains give honey its stimulating qualities.
It is often used by athletes exactly for this purpose, although it is thought of as “quick energy,” because the stimulating effect is not often understood.
Actually most people overeat for stimulating purposes, although they don’t realize it. Any eating which is done in the absence of genuine hunger causes bodily activity which is not compensated for by an addition of nutriment, as most of it decomposes and poisons the body. There is a net energy loss which results in enervation.
Could you explain the value of honey mixed with lemon juice when fasting?
Those who fast with honey, lemon and water are not fasting. They are on a restricted diet and not a good one. If they abstain from all food except minute quantities of honey, lemon and water, thus lightening the burden of digestion, undoubtedly the body will benefit from the absence of heavy and indigestible foods. Most of the time the honey is taken in huge quantities, and these types of “fasts” are decidedly harmful. The persons on this diet are enabled to continue working, and therefore secure no rest. Very few benefits, if any, are the outcome.
The closer one comes to a genuine fast, with water only, the greater the results. Beneficial results are more frequent and more quickly achieved when truly fasting. There are no means known as excellent as the genuine fast for recovery of health.
One may hate the thought of fasting completely and try all sorts of trick diets or juice diets rather than enjoying a real fast. People lose a lot of weight with these eliminating diets, wasting their reserves, and actually putting themselves into conditions where they are unable to fast. Consequently, it may take them years to recover, whereas if they had not played around and if they had fasted immediately, they would have recovered in a short time.
Why is raw honey not good for you?
Honey has about the same composition of minerals as white sugar. It is almost as devitalizing as is white sugar. This is why the honey bee can live on white sugar but not on brown sugar. Brown sugar has more minerals and will clog up the delicate digestive system of the bee. Honey does not combine well with any food. If taken with fruits, which do not need it, it will cause fermentation. If taken with cereals, it does the same thing. Honey also causes decomposition of protein foods and ferments itself from having been held in the stomach as long as necessary for the completion of protein digestion. Honey also contains a preservative besides being an animal product. The bees add some of their own secretions to their honey, and in the process, they add a preservative which is toxic to man.
Honey is an evaporated product and as such is not as nutritious as foods which have not been evaporated. Evaporated foods lose many minerals and vitamins during evaporation because these come in contact with the oxygen of the air and are rendered inorganic and non-usable to man. An occasional indulgence in honey will not be extremely detrimental to a person but to make a habit of eating honey daily will definitely rob the body of alkaline minerals and cause an excess of mucous.
Most people purchase light honeys and the mineral and vitamin content of these is extremely low. The darker honeys are more nutritious but less tasty. Another evil is that many honeys sold in the ordinary supermarket have been adulterated with corn syrup and white sugar. The clarifying process to make honey less cloudy removes up to 35 to 50 percent of the original vitamin content so the only “good” honey is the unclarified type sold in the hive.
If you rely solely upon fresh fruits for your sugar, you are much better off.
Viktoras Kulvinskas Own Case History From His Book “Survival Into The 21st Century” Pages 231, 234 and 235
While in college, I pushed myself to experience as much as possible. Born under the Piscean sky, of delicate constitution, this often proved disastrous. My living and eating habits were deadly.
By 1965, I knew all the nurses and doctors at the infirmary. They were very generous with tranquilizers, sleeping pills and pain relievers. These I added to fifteen cups of coffee and two packs of cigarettes per day, plenty of alcohol, chronic over-eating (by age 26 I was a chubby 190 pounds). In spite of many ailments, I always felt that one day I would be healthy.
A frightening experience shook me from this complacency. I was running up the stairs to a class on the fourth floor. Pain constricted my chest, but I made it to the office, poured a cup of black coffee and started to lecture.
My hands were shaking, perspiration poured from my face and armpits. I could not focus my thoughts. The pain in my heart was sharp. I did not think I would leave the room alive. By sheer force of will I managed to, finish the lecture.
Suddenly I knew what I must do without delay. I purchased some mild tea, fruits and vegetables. Then I drove to my log cabin, stopping to see my landlord. I told him that I was not well; that if I needed help, he would hear a continuous blast from a car horn which I would rig so it could be triggered from my bed. In that event, he should do whatever he thought necessary for me.
Walking up the two hundred foot incline to my cabin, I had to rest several times because of the sharp pain in my chest. My legs felt like lead. My varicose veins were screaming as if ready to burst.
I went to bed, but could not sleep. Since I was giving up coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, meat, milk and sleeping pills; I vaguely anticipated withdrawal symptoms. I lay clutching the car horn alarm for long distance companionship.
By 3 A.M., my nerves were on edge. I felt paralyzed inside my exhausted body. Headache, cramps and sweat came in waves. The palpitation of my heart increased. It started racing. I clocked it fearfully at 1:30, at which point I passed out.
I woke at 7 A.M., surprised and happy to be alive. I felt well enough to go back to school, but this was illusory; soon I felt exhausted. I went for a five-minute walk. All day, I wondered, what will the night be like? Will I survive it? Outside of knowing that drug withdrawal usually takes about three days, I had no knowledge of fasting, nor had I known anyone who had fasted.
For four days I experienced only minor discomfort, but the nights were sheer torture. However, as the days progressed, I began to feel more certain about my future. I increased the length of my daily walks and by the fifth day fell asleep at 11 p.m. from tiredness. By the seventh day I was running a few minutes and preparing the soil in the garden. I prayed, thankful to be alive to experience the simple delights of living.
During ensuing experimentation with diet, I discovered that my favorite food, milk (supposedly the perfect food) is a major source of colds and a factor in most respiratory disorders.
Pasteurized milk had been the staple in my diet in early childhood. For the first years of my life, doctors predicted my death as a matter of course. The milk diet (I know now) contributed to disorders of the respiratory and lymph system: tonsillitis, flu, pneumonia, diphtheria, colds, measles, mumps, bronchitis. On several occasions, I developed a high fever accompanied by large, running sores and boils (my body’s attempt to cleanse itself). For two months I was semiconscious during a bout of typhoid fever. Family love and strong will to live enabled me to survive.
Doctors continued to predict that I would never be healthy. They said my heart was permanently damaged by a triple dose of diphtheria toxoid given me by mistake. It would have killed a normal child, they said.
The poverty in post-war Germany made it difficult to obtain eggs, milk and meat. I spent much time barefoot in the woods gathering berries, mushrooms, nuts and wild fruit to contribute to our largely vegetarian diet. These simple foods restored my health.
During this detoxification period I had frequent colds and difficulty in eating. Once, within a 24 hour period, I developed a fever of 106 deg. F.; my skin became covered with sores. Because I fasted on liquids and rested, the condition disappeared within 3 days. Much of the past dairy-induced mucus was eliminated though the skin in the form of boils which grew into the size of plums taking about 3 to 4 weeks, followed by opening and discharge of pus. Within a period of a year I had 5 such events. This finished my basic body cleansing process.
Arriving in America at the age of ten, I embraced its luxuries: ice cream, milk, soda, white bread, hot dogs, candy, canned foods and processed bakery products. Within a year my skin became pimply, and I visited the dentist for the first time and developed severe colds. By the age of 16, I had varicose veins. At 19 I had a duodenal ulcer and tumors on my hand. I suffered migraine headache at least once a week. One of the outstanding characteristics of my diet was an excessive use of dairy products in the form of milk (up to three quarts a day), ice cream (on occasion I have eaten half a gallon), condensed milk, swiss cheese. I constantly spit sticky mucus.
Even after the healing crisis in my cabin, I continued this habit. Indigestion was sometimes so bad that I had to substitute lemonade for milk. In a few days my digestion would improve; then the desire to return to milk would become so strong I would repeat the pattern.
In the morning, after a few yoga postures, I would eat a breakfast of milk and cereal. Within minutes the great sense of well-being would vanish, replaced by a fuzzy head, runny nose and long congestion. Initially I supposed that I had not felt so well as I had thought. However, constant repetition convinced me that the culprit was milk.
I decided to resolve the problem. After three days of lemonade, I tried, on successive days, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, dried milk, condensed milk. Every one of them induced the same reaction.
Though I was working very hard at this time as a computer programmer, my body was sick. I suffered from insomnia, migraine, stomach ulcer, varicose veins, indigestion.
It seemed time to retire (very appropriately, for at the age of 29 I showed all the signs of old age—my hair was graying and I was losing it quite rapidly).
The books of Ehret and Drs. Walker and Warmbrand gave me hope. I wrote to the authors and met some of them personally. Dr. Warmbrand put me on a vegetarian diet and made chiropractic adjustments. Immediately my digestion improved.
One doctor introduced me to Ann Wigmore. At the Mansion I became acquainted with grass juice and sprouts. The meal, served in famine proportions, looked wriggly; but it satisfied my appetite and agreed with my body. I read “Why Suffer.” It opened visions of peace in the natural world and the power of the healing strength of grasses. I moved into the Mansion about one month later in May, 1968.
During the early stages of transition into vegetarianism, I had periodic bouts of cleansing reaction. Sweating was so profuse that I had to change my socks four times a day. On two occasions open sores discharged toxins stored for years. At times very irritable, I, found the best solution to be silence. Cramps were relieved by massage. Pain and headache responded to zone therapy.
With a cleansing diet my weight dropped, in a period of six months, from 160 to ninety-.five pounds. As my body started rebuilding I gained weight and now weigh 135 pounds.
Over the years, I have learned much about health and the needs of the body, but, like many busy people, I have neglected to pay enough attention to my bodily requirements.
One of the most important ingredients of health is adequate rest, which I have never obtained. Under city conditions, sunshine and pure air are not available. There never seems enough time for yoga, fasting, relaxation or meditation. My body has regenerated a good deal on the live food diet, in spite of these handicaps.
Now I have reached a time in life when the longing to be in the countryside is strong. Survival in the city is impossible. Next year, if the country is still intact, I plan to pursue the development of communities away from the city, in the north, the tropics and on islands, for surviving the crisis of this planet. We have little time left to prepare ourselves and our shelters.
However, survival into the 21st century is possible if we center our energies and apply the New Age teachings. This is the only task that has any meaning in our time.
Victor Kulvinskas
“The new ways are solidly established. About 95% of egg-laying hens, virtually all...turkeys and half or more of beef cattle, dairy cows and pigs are maintained in some type of factory system.”
Although factory farming has increased animal suffering tremendously and therefore adds fuel to the ethical vegetarian cause, it must be remembered that vegetarianism existed prior to mass-meat innovations, and its adherents eschew not just “farmed” flesh foods but also those obtained by hunting or fishing.
Up to this point, ethical vegetarians and vegans are of one mind. The difference comes in the vegan’s seeing the entire animal-food and products network as a single entity:
“True, cowhide is only a byproduct of hamburger, but if cows were killed for their skins, would their flesh be any more morally edible so long as you did not wear leather?
“And what about the veal floating invisibly inside every glass of milk...There can be no quart of milk where there is not cutlet of veal. If your lips are white with milk, it is because someone’s else’s are red with blood.”
The vegan is acutely aware that when most people stop eating meat, they increase their egg and cheese consumption markedly, “which means that any relief of suffering for the animals exists more in hope than in fact.” I am personally a prime example of this: it was after becoming a vegetarian, not as a meat-eater, that I could go into ecstasy over a cheddar omelet. I probably know every eatery in Chicago’s western suburbs that serves fluffy omelets. I even devised a system for protecting myself from the flat variety: a restaurant with linen napkins is sure to make fluffy omelets; with paper napkins, you take your chances! In any case, I presumed, as do most of the city-bred, that the cheese for my omelet came indirectly from a creature endowed by Nature with extraordinary abilities for milk manufacturing. It never occurred to me that the cow, like any mammalian female, produces milk for her young and must therefore periodically give birth to keep in lactation.
I shared with other urbanites the naive notion that only “surplus” milk is taken, after calves have nursed; but today almost no dairy cow is permitted to suckle her calf more than THREE DAYS, if that long. According to the 1965 report of the Brambell Committee, a British governmental commission which conducted extensive research into food-animal treatment in the British Isles, “Separating the calf from the mother shortly after birth undoubtedly inflicts anguish on both. Cattle are highly intelligent, and attachment between the call and the mother is particularly strong.”
A calf may go almost immediately for slaughter as veal; and the rennet from the stomach of a newborn calf is used in the processing of most commercial cheeses, rendering the product unsuitable for even lacto-vegetarian use in the strictest sense. (Some companies do now produce rennet-less cheeses which are made with vegetable coagulants; they usually must be purchased at health food stores and are more expensive than the mass-marketed brands.)
Early slaughter may be considered a more fortunate fate than that of the calves who go to white-veal units, where their 14-week lives are spent confined in wooden crates or stalls 22 inches wide by 4-1/2 feet long.
They are fed a liquid diet deliberately deficient in iron and certain vitamins, to promote the desired (anemic) paleness of flesh. Lack of roughage induces them to nibble at their crates and hair; and no bedding is provided, lest they eat it. (In deference to non-vegetarians concerned about this situation, we may state that many have boycotted veal; vegans applaud their efforts as far as they go, but urge them to go further.)
A few males may be reared for breeding, and those females deemed suitable for raising for dairying are fed milk substitutes to encourage their precocious development so that at 18 to 24 months the continuous cycle of pregnancies may begin.
These animals also will, of course, eventually be destined for the slaughterer’s; and it is curious to note that life in a beef herd is (comparatively speaking) usually much more enjoyable than that endured by dairy cows and their offspring. The calves of beef cattle are “allowed to suckle...and graze in the fields until the time comes for the fattening pens and the slaughterhouse, but the surplus calves from the DAIRY herds are often sent to market when a week old (or less) and bought for rearing in intensive beef units...encouraged to overeat and...kept closely confined so that the minimum proportion of the food is used up for their bodily functions.”
The vegan does not see this state of affairs as inconsequential or even as simply “unfortunate but necessary in a les than perfect world.” He regards egg production similarly. Probably no creature outside the vivisection laboratories is subject to a more pitiable life at the hands of modern man, than is the chicken. Those idyllic barnyard scenes with hens pecking outside a chicken coop and the rooster serving as a colorful alarm clock for anyone within earshot still exist in very limited number, but the eggs from those family farms don’t put a dent in the number of eggs consumers demand. To meet this, severely intensive systems have been devised since cage laying and indoor confinement began their rapid spread.
Originally, one-bird per cage was the rule. When production increased slightly with two birds and no decline was noted with three, four were tried; and now five fully grown hens in a 20x24-inch cage is routine in a mid-sized hen battery like the one I visited near Yorkville, Illinois. The 300,000 leghorns of “White Hen Farms” produce an average of 100,000 dozen eggs each week for a supermarket chain. (1,200,000 eggs, or four per week per hen. -ed.)
The “house” I was allowed to tour is an older 2-deck system (that is, 2 cages high), although White Hen’s more modern units are triple-tier, and some large batteries—boasting up to one million hens, sometimes packed as tightly as NINE to a standard cage—have hen tenements (henements?) 4 or 5 rows high.
White Hen manager Walt Schultz, a personable businessman, explained that “Higher densities are being researched—more layers per square foot of building...It’s the only way to be competitive. We have to increase capacity to be more efficient.” And efficient it is: that particular operation runs with 26 full-time and 18 part-time employees, only 8 of whom are actually involved in maintaining the (three hundred thousand) birds.
Chickens for such plants are obtained from primary breeders who cage-rear pullets to laying age. The males are spotted by “sexers” at hatching. “Usually they go into the discard box, where they are left to die. Sometimes they are returned to the incubator; the heavy door is closed, the fan is shut off, and they suffocate.”
At twenty weeks, birds ready to lay are transported to the egg farm where they will spend nine months in production. Feed and water are mechanically conveyed in, and eggs and wastes are similarly carried out. “Stimulighting” from fluorescent bulbs overhead provides 17 hours of artificial daylight believed to stimulate laying.
Overcrowded conditions—with a squeeze of 4 hens into cages of 1 square foot, reported at the Hainsworth Farm in Mt. Morris, New York—mean that the birds can not spread their wings (even one at a time!) and can scarcely turn around. Wire flooring often injures their feet, and hens have even “grown fast to their cages.”
Under such stresses, the instinctive social structure and “pecking order” cannot develop; the conditions instead lead to what the industry calls “vices,” notably feather-pecking and cannibalism. The British found the aforementioned “stimulighting” to aggravate this, so there dimming of lights—“twilighting”—is preferred.
On both sides of the Atlantic, birds are de-beaked at one week and again at 3 to 5 months when the beak grows back. This, according to the zoologist, F.W. Rogers Bram-bell in the previously quoted Brambell Report, “deprives the bird of...its most versatile member...between the horn and the bone is a thin layer of highly sensitive soft tissue, resembling the ‘quick’ of the human nail. The hot knife used in debeaking cut’s through this complex of horn; bone and sensitive tissue, causing severe pain.”
Every instinct—walking about, scratching the earth, dust-bathing, nest-building, mating, being part of a flock, experiencing the outdoors—is thwarted, and it all ends with the slaughterhouse and the soup can. (“Broilers” are not as yet raised this intensively on a large scale because the resultant sores and abscesses would diminish their market value.) Ironically, there are laws in both the United States and Great Britain stating that caged birds and animals be given adequate space for basic functions; in both nations’ statutes, however, the loophole exists excluding those kept for FOOD from “equal rights under the law.” (In other words, it is for songbirds, pets, those creatures who may normally be expected to elicit some feeling of kindness and sentiment in their owners anyway; it specifically excludes the very ones most in need of succor and most likely to be mistreated for profit. - ed.)
If “free-range” eggs were widely available (and reliably identifiable) at realistic prices, would those who are currently vegan use them? Some might (although they would then no longer be vegans) but most would still avoid them for the reasons early vegans did. To eat a fertilized egg is in effect to consume a chicken before it is born (“The ethics are borderline,” I was told); and unfertilized eggs, the products of a bird’s sexual cycle, can hardly be regarded as natural food for man.
Furthermore, vegans choose not to rear food animals themselves, and do not ask others to do this for them. Besides, there then must arise the insoluble dilemma of lacto-ovo vegetarianism: Given the demise of the meat industry, who is going to support hens past their prime, cows who can no longer produce milk, or the male chicks and calves who are now routinely killed at an early age? This is the question that vegan thought puts squarely before the vegetarians who, understandably, do not care for the question.
Reprinted from AHIMSA, April-June 1982
Few people realize that cows have to be subjected to yearly pregnancies so that the milk, cheese and cream that form a substantial part of the diet of the lacto-vegetarians and meat eaters may be produced. Many imagine that the cow is only relieved of her surplus milk after her calf has been satisfied, but hardly any cows in the dairy herds are allowed to suckle their calves for more than three days if at all. “Dairy calves are now nearly always reared by hand so that the milk which the cow provides can be sold.” “Separating the calf from the mother shortly after birth undoubtedly inflicts anguish on both. Cattle are highly intelligent, and attachment between the calf and the mother is particularly strong.” The calves, the inevitable byproduct of these continuous pregnancies, have five possible fates:—
Details of the ailments she can succumb to while meeting these demands make horrifying reading and so do the descriptions of the remedies used (see the various farming journals). Giving birth is often a prolonged and painful business for the cow to be rewarded only by separation from her baby. Cows often cry out and search for their calves for days after they are taken away. When after years of exploitation her milk yield drops then she is sent to the slaughter-house immediately. Worn out cow’s meat is not popular in this country so they are commonly sent abroad for slaughter.
Comparatively lucky are the cows and calves that can live out their lives and suffer their butchering near to the place of their birth. For most there are long wearisome journeys, rough handling and standing in market places before being taken to slaughter-houses or new farms. The modern slaughter-houses are often miles from the farms on which the animals are reared, and it is not deemed “economic” to feed animals that are going to be slaughtered. The “humane” killers lessen the pain of the death blows but not the terror of the waiting and the violence of the handling that must precede their use.
And all this to produce food for humans that is not necessary! Human babies should have their mother’s milk, and children and adults the solid food appropriate to their dentition and digestive systems. These can easily be selected from richly varied plant sources. For babies and children where necessary or desired, for invalids and those who still like to take milk, the Plantmilk Society, formed and served by men who were deeply moved by compassion for exploited animals, has promoted “Plamil” the milk of human kindness. Other nutritious plantmilks are also available. But the dairy industry is inseparable from the cruel exploitation and degradation of helpless, highly intelligent animals.
United Press International
WASHINGTON—The Humane Society of the United States is trying to discourage Americans from eating milk-fed veal because, it says, the animals are cruelly treated.
In a nationwide “no veal this meal” campaign, the society charges that most vealer calves raised for slaughter are isolated in narrow stalls and fed liquid diets low in iron “so the flesh stays ‘fashionably white.’ ”
The campaign features ads in The New York Times and New York magazine as well as business-type cards that are being distributed to consumers to leave in restaurants where milk-fed veal is served.
“Dear Restaurateur,” reads the card. “I enjoyed my meal here, but did not choose a veal entree because I believe milk-fed veal is inhumanely raised. I would prefer it if you did not offer this veal on your menu.”
The group says most white veal that winds up on the nation’s dinner tables “comes from calves raised in total confinement. Isolated in narrow stalls for their whole lives. Unable to turn around. Denied roughage.”
The society said that need not be the case.
Veal raised in Britain, it said, are “housed in group pens, provided straw bedding, permitted to feed at will and to ruminate. Whether American veal producers will decide to adopt this system is uncertain.”
It said one major domestic veal producer, Provimi Inc., had announced it will begin testing the British system as an alternative.
The society said it is urging support for legislation introduced by Rep. Ron Mottl, D-Ohio. His bill would establish a Farm Animal Husbandry Committee “to investigate how all farm animals—including veal calves—are raised under conditions of intensive confinement.”
It said this is the first piece of legislation introduced in Congress to address directly the welfare of farm animals.
(Reprinted from the St. Petersburg Times, Jan. 7, 1982)
United Press International
Milk is the most political food in America, the product of an industry that enjoys legalized price fixing and a system financed by tax dollars to the tune of more than $2 billion a year.
Dairy executives wince every time the facts are repeated. Demand for dairy products is declining dramatically, production is skyrocketing and it costs U.S. taxpayers $250,000 each hour for their government to buy the surplus.
National milk supplies are 10 percent above demand and it costs $5,319 more every hour to store the surplus—or more than $127,000 a day.
The system has been called “a national scandal” by numerous critics, including President Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman.
Even the critics, however, concede the odds are overwhelmingly against a major change. The dairy lobby has 1 heavy clout and last year alone contributed more than $2 million to congressional campaigns.
At the core of the system is a national network of milk cooperatives. The largest co-op—Associated Milk Producers Inc. (AMPI) of San Antonio, Texas—got caught in the Watergate scandal and its bagman carried $100,000 cash in an overnight case destined for Richard Nixon’s illegal “dirty tricks” fund.
After AMPI made “campaign contributions” to Nixon, the president allowed milk price supports to rise by 37 cents per hundredweight, which gave the industry an additional $105 million to $500 million.
The system works extremely well—for everyone except consumers. It is difficult to reform because its complexity is beyond the economic understanding of many voters.
American taxpayers are buying about $2 billion of dairy products this year that no one wants. But the government is committed by law under an entitlement program to buy the surplus—no matter how much is overproduced deliberately.
The figures are mind-boggling.
Current stocks of dairy products—cheese, butter and dry milk—would fill a train stretching from New York to Washington.
As of April 30, 1982, the Commodity Credit Corporation had 411.7 million pounds of butter in storage, 550.5 million pounds of cheese and 917.7 pounds of nonfat dry milk. The annual storage cost: $46.6 million.
Governmental warehouses across the nation are overflowing. Nonfat dry milk fills 180 huge warehouses. Another 127 are full of butter and 171 are overflowing with cheese.
The figure for butter is lower than normal because the government recently sold 220 million pounds to New Zealand—a dairy nation—at bargain prices.
Surplus dairy supplies have been increasing since 1979, when government expenditures jumped from $46 million to $1 billion in 1980, to $1.9 billion in 1981 and $1.9 billion this fiscal year.
Some of the surplus is rotting. Some of it is being sold at major losses overseas—losses that taxpayers are financing. Some of it is being given away.
In December, President Reagan ordered 100 million pounds of cheese given away, cutting annual storage costs by more than $16.8 million.
The government has discussed several other options to reduce the cheese surplus, including dumping it in the ocean or burying it.
Currently, the government is buying about 9 percent of the total U.S. dairy production. The total in 1981 for milk and ice cream was a record $18.1 billion, 9 percent more than the record set in 1980.
An AMPI executive, Leland Anderson, said 10 percent of the nation’s dairy farmers would go out of business if the price support system were abandoned.
“It’ll cause a drastic drop in production to the point where we won’t have adequate supplies,” said Anderson, the assistant to the AMPI manager.
“We would have chaos in the industry,” Anderson said. “Everybody would be trying to dump on the market to get sales and undercut everybody else. The product would become worthless.
“And the ultimate result is a certain number of people would go out of business,” he said. “Are you going to put 10 percent of dairy farmers out of business and have them looking for jobs in the cities where there, are no jobs?”
Critics say this means taxpayers currently are supporting one out of 10 of America’s dairymen.
Agriculture Secretary John Block is seeking congressional approval to give him flexibility to reduce government price supports to discourage even larger surpluses, but he has promised to make only a relatively small reduction.
Under current law, the support level is $13.10 per 100 pounds of milk. Block wants legislation giving him authority to set the support level—as opposed to specific minimum support levels mandated by law. He said he likely would not have to reduce the level lower than $12 per 100 pounds.
Time is short because the price support level is scheduled to increase again Oct. 1, despite the 9 percent overproduction.
Even before Block’s recent announcement, the dairy industry was mobilizing to defeat the administration’s plan which Block said would save taxpayers $700 million the first year.
The surplus milk program, designed to stabilize dairy prices, is regarded as the most expensive byproduct of America’s complex array of agricultural support programs.
The prices that milk processors must pay to farmers are set by federal milk marketing orders. Premiums are charged for drinking-type milk, which studies have indicated adds 2 to 8 cents per gallon to the retail price. The marketing order system makes price fixing legal.
Since the processor must pay the higher price anyway, the system keeps reconstituted milk uncompetitive with fresh milk—which, according to Consumer Reports, “is exactly what the dairy industry wants.”
To give consumers a lower-cost alternative to fresh milk, the Community Nutrition Institute petitioned the USDA in 1979 to hold a hearing on pricing reconstituted milk lower than fresh milk.
Estimates by the USDA itself showed consumers would save between $186 million and $339 million a year. But the USDA did not respond until April 1981 when it denied the petition, saying such a move would cause major changes in the dairy industry.
A source in the Office of Management and Budget says “The price support program raises the price of milk higher than it would be in a competitive market. It’s not a good deal for consumers. Also, large government purchases further increase the (retail) price of milk substantially—to the tune of hundreds of million of dollars, if not billions.”
The reason milk prices are a lightning rod for public criticism, AMPI’s Anderson says, is because of milk’s high profile as a staple.
“It’s the most visible food in America,” he said. “That’s why it has become the most political food in America. Everybody is concerned about the price of milk because they buy it every week.”
“It’s easy to say dairy farmers are ripping off the public, the government shouldn’t be in the program, we’d save billions of dollars if we didn’t have this price support program, co-ops and federal orders are causing consumers to pay more, all of that,” Anderson said.
“But when you really get right down to it, I think dollar for dollar, we’ve got a situation here that has produced a product that is good for consumers, that they want, that they expect to be available fresh.”
(Reprinted from the St. Petersburg Times, June 3, 1982)
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Some natural foods that are supposed to make you healthy could instead send you to the hospital, medical researchers are discovering.
Scientists browsing through health food stores across the country are finding a cornucopia of unsafe—even illegal —herbs, barks, roots, seeds and other substances plucked from nature.
“This idea of just going and eating plant extracts is very bad,” says Dr. Joseph Davis, chief medical examiner of Dade County. “There is a whole host of problems.”
New clinical reports of deaths and serious illness are forcing a second look at suddenly hip herbal teas, tonics and folk nostrums. Hospitals have reported health food victims from New York to Colorado.
Plants as common as alfalfa and as exotic as devil’s claw root, as harmless as parsley and as dangerous as apricot kernels are sold in health food stores with no warnings about their potential side-effects.
Vomiting, diarrhea, muscular weakness, hallucinations, rashes, severe allergic reactions, high blood pressure and death—all have been linked in recent medical journal reports to medicinal herbs found on health food store shelves.
Based on her 15 years of researching herbal teas from South America to South Carolina, Dr. Julia Morton of the University of Miami is convinced that cancer of the esophagus can be caused by drinking too many beverages rich in mouth-puckering tannin.
That includes teas as unusual as bayberry and as common as Lipton, as well as dry red wine. The tannin-cancer link remains controversial.
Not so with some other products, whose dangers are as unimpeachable as their naturalness.
State and federal agencies charged with protecting the public from hazardous foods and drugs admit they can’t keep them all off store shelves.
“There are lots and lots of things out there that shouldn’t be there,” says Joseph Perret, a consumer safety officer at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Apricot kernels — Rich in Laetrile, apricot kernels are considered illegal by the FDA when sold in health food stores. The FDA has seized tons of the kernels, which have killed at least three Americans by cyanide poisoning.
Mistletoe tea — Reputed in ancient times to be a remedy for epilepsy, mistletoe contains a poison similar to cobra venom. Children have died from eating mistletoe berries. So have mice sipping mistletoe tea in a university laboratory. The FDA seized a shipment of mistletoe tea two years ago as unsafe.
Pokeweed root — Sold as a powder in health food stores, touted for a variety of medicinal uses pokeroot also has killed children. The poison it contains also can cause diminished breathing and an inflamed digestive tract.
Sassafras bark and calamus — Both banned by the FDA in foods, they are known to contain cancer-causing chemicals. They can be bought in health food stores or ordered by mail from one of the country’s eight major herb wholesalers, such as Green Mountain Herbs of Boulder, Colorado.
Other health food items are legal because scientific research about their benefits or harms is scanty. Still others are safe if used properly, but food regulations forbid labeling that gives any food a medicinal ring.
Sometimes the distinction between a food and a drug is invisible. That has enabled a substance like apricot kernels to slip through the holes in the regulatory net.
It is true with other plant products as well. As long as something is sold with no advice on how it can help or harm medically, it is legally a food.
The irony for the fledgling herbal industry rests on this thin legalistic line between food and drug. The word “drug” itself comes from a German word meaning “to dry,” as in drying plants.
“We’re in a twilight zone,” says Mark Blumenthal, head of Sweetheart Herbs of Austin, Texas, and president of the Herbal Trade Association. Blumenthal, a 32-year-old vegetarian, started with a partner selling ginseng root out of a car trunk five years ago and now runs a $1 million annual business.
Reclassifying medicinal herbs as prescription drugs would ruin the herbal industry, insist suppliers such as Blumenthal. At last estimate of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, a new substance requires $50 million and nine years to reach pharmacies as a drug.
In its own defense, the herbal industry will ask the FDA to set toxicity standards and organize a research program to gather scientific knowledge about medicinal plants forgotten since the rise of the modern drug industry.
Already, industry researchers have scoured thousands of chemical and botanical journals to cull what little is known about the hundreds of herbs now sold.
Soon the Herbal Trade Association will issue its first policy statement against one of its products, pokeweed root, advising that it not be taken internally.
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Here is a list of some plant products sold in health food stores and their potential harmful effects:
Contain amygdalin, otherwise known as Laetrile. Hydrogen cyanide is released when swallowed. Can cause severe headaches, vomiting, weakness, disorientation and death.
Supposed to be used as a flea dip but often not labeled as such. Killed a young Colorado woman and caused sickness in two other women who took it trying to induce abortion. Center for Disease Control in Atlanta is investigating.
Irritate digestive tract.
All powerful laxatives that can cause diarrhea.
Contains nicotine. In grazing animals has caused loss pf appetite and muscular control, diarrhea, labored breathing, convulsions, coma and death.
In one case, doctors reported a person drank half a cup and experienced blurred vision, dry mouth, inability to urinate and hallucinations. Other common plants with euphoric or hallucinogenic effects when smoked or drunk in tea include catnip, juniper, lobelia and wormwood. Lobelia can be fatal.
Can cause severe allergic reactions in persons allergic to ragweed, asters or chrysanthemums. Goldenrod, marigold and yarrow tea also should be avoided by people with such allergies.
Can produce a bad skin rash in conjunction with exposure to sunlight if drunk as a tea.
It was banned by FDA in 1976 but now is considered possibly okay as a tea.
Should be avoided in pregnancy; has properties similar to the hormone that induces labor.
Can cause swollen and painful breasts, also high blood pressure with regular use of large amounts (several grams a day).
Contains coumarin, banned by FDA as food additive; sold in health food stores to fix scent of sachets and potpourris. Caused liver damage and growth retardations when fed to animals.
Sometimes sold as ginseng. Both considered poisonous. Mandrake root contains a hypnotic similar to belladonna. Snakeroot contains reserpine, which causes lowered blood pressure and “possibly severe depression.
Can produce violent digestive inflammation, muscular weakness, collapse and death.
Causes vomiting; overdose can be fatal.
Berries are the most poisonous and have killed children. Leaves and stems used in tea also contain toxins that in large doses can cause muscle and blood vessels to contract, leading to shock and heart arrest.
In fairness says Rob McCaleb, lab director at Celestial Seasonings, several points need to be made in herbs behalf:
Practically any medicine is toxic in large enough doses. The same is true for medicinal herbs. Foods can be toxic too: Prune juice is a well-known laxative, though not labeled as such, and it can produce diarrhea just like drinking senna leaf tea.
But Celestial Seasonings is cautious. The largest herbal tea company with $10 million annual trade, it sells no teas with banned or suspected substances.
The problem, as the industry sees it, is educating the public in sensible use of herbs, most of which are harmless and inexpensive.
The education process will take years. The first problem is that many of the books and pamphlets sold in health food; stores contain only erratic information about potential harms alongside lengthy statements extolling unproven claims of medicinal benefit. Very few books even contain specific instructions on how one would use the plant, i.e., the part(s) of the plant to use, how to prepare the plant, how much or how often one would use it, etc. One does not get the complete story when using just one source (or even several) for information. A book might list a number of herbs as being “good for the heart,” but if these herbs were researched more extensively, one would find that some are so potent that they actually affect the heart’s rhythm. Most books don’t go into such detail, but obviously, casual or misguided use of such herbs is dangerous.
Health food store operators are often little help. Most, like Peggy Childers, district manager for the National Health Food Central chain in Miami, are careful to say: “We do not prescribe in any way, shape or form.”
The potential danger of some plant extracts currently sold in health food stores is in dispute.
Ginseng is the best example. One of the hottest sellers in health food stores, it is reputed as an aphrodisiac and a general health tonic and stimulant.
Doctors use it in China to regulate blood pressure and blood sugar, but its only accepted medical use in the United States is in skin ointments. An estimated 5 million to 6 million Americans take ginseng regularly.
A new study by Dr. Ronald Siegel of UCLA found that long-term heavy ginseng users suffered frequently from nervousness, sleeplessness and, most significantly, high blood pressure.
The herbal industry believes those problems were caused more by the caffeine in beverages consumed along with the ginseng.
But no one can say for certain, and even an herbalist such as McCaleb says that studies of the benefits of ginseng have found, in most charitable phrasing, that it has “enhanced placebo effect.”
Two other popular herbal items sold in health food stores are camomile tea and alfalfa tea. The herbal industry believes both to be completely safe.
But camomile can produce severe allergic reaction to those allergic to ragweed, and alfalfa has caused problems with barnyard animals: bloating in cattle, retarded growth in chicks, decreased egg production by hens.
The Medical Letter, a newsletter that evaluates drugs for physicians, published in its April 6 issue the most comprehensive listing to date of the dangers of plant products sold in health food stores.
Dr. Walter Lewis of Washington University in St. Louis, a contributor to the article, is bothered by public ignorance of the hazard and upset by the FDA’s lack of action.
“They’re just absolute idiots,” he says of the FDA.
African tribes who use a substance like devil’s claw root, reputed to induce labor in pregnant women, control its use better than the U.S. government, which allows its unrestricted sale, he says.
Licorice root in small doses makes a tasty flavoring but in large amounts can cause heart failure. An ulcer drug derived from the root is available by prescription in Europe but not in the United States because of its side-effects.
“The irony,” says Lewis, “is that you and I can walk into a health food store and get all we want, completely uncontrolled, and a physician can’t dispense it.”
Tannin, a substance found in wine and tea, can soothe a sore throat. But the University of Miami’s Julia Morton found an atypical incidence of cancer of the esophagus in Curacao, coastal South Carolina and other areas whose inhabitants consumed large amounts of beverages high in tannin. The British put milk in their tea because it neutralizes tannin.
Tannin has produced cancer in animals when injected, but no studies have been completed on its effect when drunk by laboratory animals. The National Cancer Institute does not classify it officially as a carcinogen and has no lab tests scheduled.
Morton believes tannin is no danger if consumed prudently. Still, she has stopped drinking tea in the last few months. Her favorite beverage is water.
34.2. Harmfulness Of Common Beverages
34.3. Harmful Drinking Practices
Article #1: Warning! Don’t Use Commercial Juices!
We live on a planet whose surface is mostly water. About 70% of the earth’s area consists of oceans, lakes, rivers and other bodies of water. Your body is also mostly water. In fact, the human body is about 70% water. If you’re an average person, you have about 45 quarts of water or fluid in you at all times.
The water in your body is responsible for and is involved with nearly every life process. Digestion, absorption, circulation, and excretion—water is the primary transporter of nutrients throughout the body and is necessary for all the building functions. Water also helps maintain your body temperature and is essential for carrying wastes from the body.
You’ll lose about three quarts of water, on the average, each day in the form of perspiration, excretion, etc. If you live in a very hot or dry climate, you might lose as much as 10 quarts per day. This water must, of course, be replaced. Generally, three or four days is the longest person can go without replacing these fluids before serious lamage and eventually death occurs.
Unfortunately, modern man replaces these lost fluids in ways that may be harmful to him. Alcohol, caffeine beverages, soft drinks, hot and cold drinks, drinking with meals—all of these beverages and drinking practices contribute to poor health.
The purpose of this lesson is to inform the reader about the harmful beverages that are used, the harmful drinking practices that occur, and the correct way of obtaining fluids for the body.
Water is the only fluid that can be used by the body. It doesn’t require coffee, tea, milk, beer or soda pop for its functions. Everything that is drunk by man that is not pure water must either be classified as a food or as a poison.
If a drink is classified as a food (such as milk, fruit or vegetable juices, etc.) then it should be taken as a food, by self, and not drunk in addition to other foods. If a drink is a poison (such as alcohol, coffee, cocoa, soft drinks, etc), then you should ask yourself if you should drink it at all!
According to Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, water is the only true drink, and in his words: “The time to drink is when one is thirsty and when this time arrives, there is nothing to equal a glass of pure, clear, sparkling, cool water.”
Beverages and drinks are now used as forms of entertainment. They are consumed out of habit or for the ‘kick’ they provide in the form of alcohol, caffeine, or sugar.
Almost everyone drinks excessively, and there are several reasons for this. Many of the common beverages do not satisfy thirst; indeed, many of them with the sugar and chemical content induce more thirst. Alcohol actually dehydrates the body. People drink with meals; they drink when bored, and they also drink because they eat a diet that is deficient in natural fluids.
The most harmful beverages such as coffee, tea, cola drinks, and alcohol are discussed first. Then the beverages that are used as food substitutes (juices, herb teas, milk, etc.) are also evaluated for their suitability in the diet.
34.2.1 Coffee, Tea, and Caffeine
34.2.2 How Caffeine Affects You
34.2.3 Soft Drinks Are Hard Drugs
34.2.5 Herbal Potions and Drinks
Perhaps the two most popular beverages in America are coffee and tea. Less than 9% of the population drink neither coffee or tea. About half the people in the United States have two to three cups a day of these beverages, and another one-quarter of the population drinks 6 to 7 or more cups of coffee and tea every day.
These figures mean that over 200 billion doses of the drug caffeine are consumed by people in this country every year. Most people do not think that their morning cup of coffee or glass of tea at lunch is a drug. Yet caffeine is addictive, causes withdrawal symptoms when discontinued, and induces both psychological and physical dependence. It sure sounds like a drug, doesn’t it?
Caffeine is a stimulant of the central nervous system, similar to cocaine and amphetamines in this manner. It increases the heart rate and rhythm, changes the blood vessel diameter, and affects coronary circulation, blood pressure, urination, and other physiological functions.
As little as three cups of coffee have enough caffeine to increase the basal metabolic rate of the body as much as 25%. In other words, you are “speeded up” about one-fourth above your normal activity.
In 1973, a study on heart patients revealed that people who drank five or more cups of coffee daily had twice as many heart attacks as nondrinkers. Caffeine is now also a suspected factor in birth defects, diabetes, kidney failure, gastric ulcers, and cancer of the pancreas.
In large enough amounts, caffeine can kill you. The fatal dose of this drug is what is contained in about 70 cups of coffee. That may sound like a large amount of coffee, but it is not unusual for some coffee drinkers to consume about one-third that amount every day. About seven cups of coffee can produce acute toxic effects in individuals. Symptoms of caffeine poisoning include mild delirium, ringing in the ears, flashes of light in the field of vision, and trembling of the muscles.
“I’m mad at the world until I get my first cup of coffee,” is a statement heard more than once. Why? Because the habitual user of coffee becomes so addicted to his morning drug that unpleasant withdrawal symptoms occur even overnight.
Dr. J. Murdoch Ritchie, a drug researcher, states that caffeine is physically addictive and withdrawal symptoms are quite common. “Indulgence in caffeine-containing beverages leads to a condition of chronic poisoning, resulting in restlessness, disturbed sleep, cardiac irregularities, and tachycardia (rapid heart rate). The essential oils of coffee cause gastrointestinal irritation and diarrhea is a common symptom. The high tannin content of tea (another caffeine beverage), on the other hand, is apt to cause constipation.” The caffeine-beverages are both harmful and addictive.
Caffeine withdrawal can occur from just missing the “morning cup of coffee.” Symptoms of caffeine withdrawal are headaches, irritability, inability to work effectively, nervousness, restlessness and lethargy. When a regular user of caffeine drinks ends their use totally, he may experience tight headaches in the back of the neck area and be quick to anger or irritation. These symptoms usually pass in around three days or less as the body detoxifies from its habitual caffeine load.
Although coffee is mentioned as the most widely known caffeine beverage, tea also has a large amount of this drug. Usually tea has about half as much caffeine as a similar amount of coffee (unless strongly brewed), but since many people usually drank a larger amount of tea than coffee at one sitting, they still receive a large dose of the drug.
Interestingly enough, many parents instinctively realize that coffee and tea contain a strong drug, and so they deny it to their children for a few years. I remember at how “adult” I felt when I was allowed to have my first cup of coffee at fourteen years old. Young children instead are often given hot chocolate or cocoa in place of coffee. Yet cocoa and chocolate drinks have significant amounts of the caffeine drug as well.
Not only that, but the cola soft drinks contain large amounts of the drug—sometimes as much or more than that in a cup of coffee. Soft drinks, however, have more dangers than caffeine associated with them, and that is the next topic.
In the news was an account of a young boy who drank 64 bottles of a soda drink, one right after the other, to win a two dollar bet. A young girl was given a case of soft drinks as a prize for her scholarship. She drank the entire case that same day.
Over 250 soft drinks are consumed each year for every man, woman, and child in this country. Many people drink one or two such drinks a day as a regular habit. It is not uncommon to find people who drink over 100 ounces of cola, pop, or sodas every day of their lives.
Some drink it the first thing in the morning. Others have it as the last thing at night. Still others have it with every meal or all through the day.
Soft drinks are addictive. They are a drug. They do damage to the body. They furnish no nutrition. They are a menace to your health, and the only thing “soft” about them is how soft they can make your teeth by dissolving them.
Cola drinks were discovered in 1949 to contain a solution strong enough to dissolve iron. As for human teeth, Dr. Clive McCay of Cornell University showed that soft drinks can completely erode tooth enamel and make the teeth soft as mush within two days.
The bad ingredient in this case is phosphoric acid—an acid so strong that it can erode granite rock, and yet it is a common substance in all soft drinks.
Besides phosphoric acid, soft drinks also contain white sugar (usually an ounce or more per drink), artificial flavoring and coloring, carbon dioxide, and caffeine.
The carbonation, or carbonic acid, in the drink (which makes it “fizz”) was discovered by Dr. Hunter H. Turner to be a strong factor in the increasing number of nearsighted children and adults. Not only is the stuff bad for your teeth, but it destroys the vision as well.
There is so much sugar in a soft drink that heavy drinkers often get an extra pound of white sugar in their diet each day. Blood sugar levels shoot up and sink when soft drinks are consumed. The appetite is dulled, and valuable nutrients are depleted in an attempt to metabolize the sugar in these drinks. When soft drinks are taken with food, the sugar leads to fermentation instead of good digestion.
The coloring used in the drinks are usually coal tar derivatives. Almost every coal tar derivative that has undergone extensive testing has been labeled a carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, agent.
The caffeine in soft drinks is so high that a child who drinks 4 bottles within an hour has received .13 grams of this drug—an amount even termed excessive and dangerous by the medical establishment. Dr. D.G. Steyn of South Africa has demonstrated that cold drinks which contain caffeine (such as soft drinks) are actually more harmful than hot or warm caffeine beverages.
In the last twenty years, soft drink manufacturers have developed, “sugarless” drinks. Of course these are artificially sweetened. The sweeteners used are chemical products which also have been implicated as cancer-causing. Such drinks are often used by people desiring to lose weight. Unfortunately, while cutting down on calories, they may be building a tumor at the same time.
Soft drinks are not “soft”—they are hard on you and your health.
Of all the beverages with harmful effects, alcohol is probably the most widely known and frequently abused. Seven million people in this country have a serious drinking problem. Probably three to four times that amount use alcohol so much as to interfere with their normal lives.
Over 30,000 people a year are killed because of drunken drivers. Tens of millions of work hours are lost each year because of alcohol. We lose millions of dollars every year to alcohol and its related problems.
Alcohol is not a “safe” drug. It is an addictive drug. Out of every eight people who drink, one will become a life-long alcoholic. You cannot find such a high rate of addiction among any other drug users.
Yet alcohol is treated as a non-drug by the government. They issue licenses, collect taxes, and allow manufacturers to spend 300 million dollars a year to push the drug.
Alcohol destroys the liver, contributes to ulcers, enlarges the heart, and kills brain cells. It destroys both the body and the mind. Alcohol must be recognized as the killer it is and no longer treated as a social lubricant or “harmless” relaxant. It is a drug and has no place in a healthful lifestyle.
Witches used to have their special “brew.” They would toss toads and roots and hair and blood and herbs into a big pot and make their special tea. Today, people leave out the toads and blood but they still use the herbs, and they call their potion “herb tea.”
Most of the drugs and medicines used have originally come from herbs. Herbs are drugs. They are not foods. A tea made from these roots, bark and leaves somehow has achieved an unearned reputation of being healthy. Drugs are never health promoting. A tea made from drugs (herbs) cannot be health promoting.
People have been fooled. Health-seekers who would never touch a drop of coffee or an alcoholic drink put away cup after cup of this witch’s brew because they think herb tea must be good for them since the ingredients are plants.
Since herbs and their dangers are covered in a future lesson, you only need know that herb teas are not such safe and healthy drinks. They may be a stimulant or a depressant or a carminative or whatever, but regardless every herb is a drug and a poison and a drink made from them can in no way be considered suitable for human consumption.
Fruit and vegetable juices are the finest liquids we can rink—provided that they are obtained directly from the food itself and not artificially extracted.
Extracted juices, like those in bottles, concentrates, or cans, have undergone oxidation, deterioration, and fragmentation. An extracted juice is an unnatural food.
We are meant to eat fruits and vegetables, not drink them. We have a thirst center and a hunger center in our brain. When we drink something that was meant to be eaten, we confuse this mechanism. Our hunger center may tell us that we want to eat one orange. If we pour down a glass of juice containing three or four oranges instead, we are not listening to the true needs of the body.
This is one of the dangers of drinking extracted juices. They are so concentrated that it is easy to overload the body with one nutrient or the other. At the same time, these juices have no fiber.
Frozen concentrates, bottled and canned juices, or any juice made more than twenty minutes ago cannot be good for the body.
If juices are actively desired, then they should be made fresh, consumed immediately, and used only in the same quantities that you would eat them. For instance, it is quite possible to “drink” twenty or more carrots in a couple glasses of carrot juice. We’re not equipped to handle twenty carrots given to the body in such a short time. It would be better if two or three carrots were juiced and then sipped slowly.
Even the consumption of freshly made juices cannot be strongly recommended. If you’re hungry, eat. It you’re thirsty, drink, and when you drink, make it pure distilled water.
It seems like that everything you drink is not good for you. You might wonder what you can drink. First, realize that most drinking is due to a water-deficient diet. If you do not eat the wrong foods, you’ll probably want to drink very little. Often drinking is a social activity—much like eating. People like to offer drinks as a sign of hospitality.
If you experience true thirst, then your best choice for a drink is distilled water. Should you wish to offer someone something to drink or if you feel a desire for “liquid” nourishment, then freshly made juices may be sipped slowly in small quantities. These juices are actually foods and should be consumed as foods. No other foods should be taken with these fresh juices.
Other than these two liquids, it is difficult to recommend any other beverages. If you can break the habit of drinking with your meals and if you can eliminate the salt habit, then your drinking needs will be very slight and easily satisfied..
All of the drinking done by most people is pathological and results from a poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle.
Drinking merely replaces lost fluids in the body. Treat it as such and you will find that clear, cool water will satisfy you on all levels.
Besides the harmfulness of certain beverages themselves, the way in which they are consumed is also detrimental to health and well-being. Drinking with meals, drinking hot and cold beverages, and using drinks as substitutes for good nutrition are harmful drinking practices that should be avoided.
Drinking while eating is such a common practice that restaurants don’t ask if you’ll have anything to drink but what you want to drink. If no beverage is ordered with the meal, then water is routinely supplied.
Drinking while eating is a harmful practice because the beverage dilutes the digestive juices of the stomach. Since fluids leave the stomach faster than solid food, beverages tend to carry out the digestive juices of the stomach and the stomach is left without sufficient juices to carry on its work.
Drinking with a meal also encourages poor chewing of the food since it is frequently washed down in a swallow of water or whatever. Normally food must be thoroughly mixed with saliva in the chewing process for it to be easily swallowed. Beverages replace the role of saliva in this respect, and permit the gulping of half-chewed food.
Beverages are usually incompatible with the food eaten as well. Fruit juices, for example, are often drunk with starchy foods (such as orange juice and toast). The acid in the fruit juices suspend the digestion of the starches and indigestion is guaranteed. Milk, another popular meal beverage, requires its own complex digestive environment since it is more properly a food than a drink. When drunk with sandwiches, breakfast or whatever, fermentation of the milk occurs in the stomach.
Beverages with the meal would never be used if people took the time to thoroughly chew their food. Washing food down and diluting the digestive juices with fluids always result in only partial digestion of the food.
If thirsty, beverages may be consumed twenty to thirty minutes before a meal. After a meal consisting of fruit, water can be taken within thirty minutes; after a starch meal, two hours should pass before drinking, following a protein or fat meal, a full four hours should elapse before fluids are taken. In general, if thirst occurs before these times, it indicates that salted, spiced or unsuitable foods were eaten at the meal and should be avoided in the future.
If you or someone you know likes to drink a hot cup of coffee or tea, try this simple experiment: take a tablespoon of the hot liquid, just as you would drink it, and pour it onto the bare stomach. Most likely, you’ll experience intense pain and perhaps some blistering.
Ask yourself this question: if the hot liquid does this to the outside of my stomach, what must it be doing to the delicate and sensitive tissues on the inside!
Hot drinks destroy the sensitive nerve endings in the tongue. They benumb the senses so that discrimination of taste is lost. They scar the esophagus and stomach lining. They disrupt body temperature and digestion. Any liquid above 104 degrees (Fahrenheit) should not be drunk.
Similarly, cold liquids also disturb digestion. In fact, an ice cold drink can completely halt the digestive process. The inside of your body is a delicate, well-controlled environment. Digestion proceeds at a proper pace when this environment is kept constant. Pouring a glass of ice water into the stomach is like taking cooking food from an oven and sticking it into a freezer. You can bet that the cooking process is going to be seriously suspended, and so is the digestive process suspended when cold beverages are drunk. Nerve endings are also numbed by intense cold just as they are numbed by high heat.
Drinking iced water or beverages over ice is a habit that has only been recently acquired by modern man. Why he must have ice cold drinking water from fountains is a mystery. No other animal will drink extra cold or extra hot liquids; they wait until they have reached room temperature.
Remember that the inside of the body is a hundred times more sensitive than the outside. Why should you pour burning or freezing liquids into your stomach? Like many habits, drinking hot or cold beverages seems very silly and abnormal when you look at it in an unbiased way.
Another harmful drinking practice is using beverages as a substitute for proper nutrition. Drinks such as alcoholic beverages and soda drinks are full of empty calories. They supply little nutrition in the diet, but many calories. All too often, children use soft drinks for an energy lift instead of wholesome foods. Adults drink beer or mixed drinks in place of good nutrition.
Concentrated fruit juices are consumed instead of the whole fruit. Milk drinks like shakes and malts are downed in place of a wholesome lunch. It’s all too easy to fill the stomach up with needless beverages instead of eating a proper meal.
The problem with many of these beverages is that they so easily become habitual. People drink morning coffee instead of eating fruit for their liquid requirements. They have their soda drink every afternoon or their few bottles of beer. In little time, they have established a beverage habit that has replaced the good habits of nutrition and wholesome foods.
To suggest that drinking may be an unnatural or at least an unusual practice may seem foolish. After all, everybody drinks—or do they?
Not actually. There are some people who go for days or weeks without drinking a single glass of water or taking a swallow of any beverage. These people also eat an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables which have a naturally high water content and they eat no salt or other thirst-creating spices in their food. Consequently, they get all the fluids they need from fresh foods and never feel thirsty or have the need for a drink of water. This is not speculation or heresay; it is an observation of my own personal experience as well. During the last six months, for example, I doubt if I drank more than six glasses of fluids. I did eat large amounts of melons and many other fresh juicy fruits. These foods supplied me with an abundance of fluids or water from their tissues. Many other people who eat a similar diet of chiefly fresh fruits and vegetables also report little or no need for drinking fluids.
The animals that have the greatest need for drinking are carnivores or meat-eaters. Their high-acid meat diet requires frequent flushing of the kidneys to remove the waste products of the meat, and the concentrated nature of their meat diet usually means they do not get enough water in the foods they eat. These animals have lapping tongues so that they can get the water into the mouth quite easily. Man has no lapping tongue mechanism. He has no snout to put into the water to drink.
In fact, man is so poorly equipped to drink water that he invented the drinking cup so he could move the water in his mouth. The truth is that man has very little natural equipment for drinking. Man is not a drinking animal. To be sure, we can swallow water and we can catch some in our hands for this purpose. When compared to all the other drinking animals, however, man is short on the physiological necessities to facilitate drinking. He is like the ape in this respect—another animal that rarely drinks water in its natural habitat.
This is not to say that we should not drink water. Obviously, there are times when sufficient high-fluid foods may not be available to eat and we will need to supplement our fluid sources from water directly. During fasting specifically is the need greatest for drinking water since no foods are being eaten. Then, too, if we eat a conventional American diet with its high amounts of uric acid, toxins, salt, and other thirst stimulators, we will have to drink perhaps as much as the eight glasses of water a day recommended by certain nutritionists.
But the point is this: if you eat a natural diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables, you will rarely experience the desire to drink. Usually, when thirst arises and the individual is not in a fasting state or in a very hot environment, then it is due to an improper choice of foods.
Excessive thirst is caused by eating foods which are either deficient in natural fluids or high in salt, spices or their condiments. A high-protein diet also requires more fluid intake because the waste products of such foods require a large amount of water for their solution and excretion.
Foods become deficient in natural fluids either by cooking or drying them. Cooked foods lose their natural water in the steam that leaves them while cooking. Dried fruits, nuts, dried beans, peas, and other foods which have had their water content decreased by storage or drying are also “deficient” in water content.
The solution appears simple: don’t cook fresh foods and they will remain water-sufficient. If dried foods are eaten, they may first be soaked in distilled water or eaten with a compatible, high-fluid food (such as lettuce and nuts).
Most thirst occasioned by foods, however, is due to the salt that is added to them. The body tissues become deprived of water when salt is used. Salt is an irritant to all the cells of the body, and water is used to flush and transport this poison out of the system. This is why extra water is desired when eating salted foods—the body is attempting to remove this biocidal seasoning as quickly as possible.
Other strong spices and seasonings may also bring about a desire to drink. These, too, act as irritants to the delicate tissues of the body, and the water serves as a transporter.
To avoid unnatural and excessive thirst, eat your foods fresh, uncooked, and unseasoned.
One of the criteria for an optimum diet is that it should also be water-sufficient. That is, a good diet should also supply you with sufficient fluids so that drinking needs are minimal or nonexistent. One reason for this is that the best fluids for your body—the purest and most natural liquids—are the fresh juices of fruits and vegetables as they exist in the food itself.
The fluids of fresh fruits and vegetables contain superior minerals and natural sugars. They are easily assimilated and supply all the cells with all the nutrients they require.
By a wise selection of your food, you can supply all your body’s fluid needs with the best possible liquids.
Certain vegetarian animals that feed on wild grasses and fruits never drink water as long as they can find their natural food. Generally, these animals live on foods that have about an 85% water content. Mother’s milk contains about 87% water, and an infant feeding on this food alone never requires additional water. It appears that as long as foods are eaten which are from 80% to 95% water, thirst will not occur and all the body’s water needs will be met in a superior fashion.
Almost all fresh fruits and vegetables contain 80% to 95% pure water. These foods should form the majority of an optimum and water-sufficient diet.
Other foods may be included, such as seeds and nuts, provided that they are eaten with high-fluid foods in a compatible combination. For example, most nuts are 4% to 5% water. Lettuce is 95% water. If a sufficient amount of lettuce is eaten with a small quantity of nuts (say, 1 ounce of nuts and 8 ounces of lettuce), then a fluid average of 85% is maintained for the meal and thirst will not develop.
It’s really not necessary to be so concerned with figures, percentages, and proportions. A simple rule to follow is this: if a natural food is eaten that is low in water content, then it may be advisable to eat a salad, raw vegetables, fruits or whatever is compatible to balance the low-water food. Of course if your meal consists mostly of cooked, refined, or concentrated foods, then it may be impossible to balance them with water sufficient foods.
The optimum diet does not include salt, seasonings, or spices. All of these substances occasion thirst and cannot be utilized by the body.
If you eat an abundance of fresh, raw, unseasoned fruits and vegetables (supplemented by nuts and seeds if desired), then you will be satisfying all your water needs with the highest form of liquids. You will rarely experience thirst, have no desire to drink, and will enjoy the optimum level of health that is the birthright of every human being.
How much water or juice should I drink when I fast?
When fasting, you should always slowly sip pure distilled water whenever you are thirsty and drink until you are no longer thirsty. There is no fixed amount to drink or not to drink. You should not force yourself to drink while fasting, nor should you ever deny yourself a drink while going without food. Don’t try to “fill up” on water to ease your hunger pains—it won’t work.
By the way, if you’re drinking juices while fasting, you are not actually fasting. You’re on a juice diet. There is nothing seriously wrong with a juice diet, provided that the juices are made and used strictly fresh and that excessive amounts are not taken as a substitute for food. However, to get the benefits of a fast, you have to fast and take only distilled water—not juices.
Most doctors and nutritionists say we should drink 8 glasses of water every day for good health. What do you say to that?
If you eat what most doctors and nutritionists eat, that might be good advice! A typical American diet is high in salt and animal protein—both of these require copious amounts of water to keep the kidneys flushed and the tissues clean. Few people eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables to supply them with adequate fluids. I have no doubt that a diet of hot dogs, potato chips and ice cream would also require the addition of eight glasses of water per day. But if your diet is healthy, if you include high-water content foods, if you don’t use salt or animal proteins, then why flood yourself with water? Drink according to thirst, not by some recommendation or the other.
I become thirsty right after I eat, and then when I drink water, I get indigestion. Help!
You become thirsty after you eat only if you eat cooked foods, salted or spiced foods, or concentrated foods (like nuts). First, give up salted foods. You cannot get around this fact: salt-eating will always give you an unnatural thirst.
If you eat cooked or concentrated food, then you must eat a large amount of water-sufficient foods along with them. This usually means a large raw salad. Make sure you drink some water about an hour before you eat. This may help prevent thirst after eating. Of course if you eat a high-water meal of only fresh fruits or raw vegetables, you should never experience that after-meal thirst—or indigestion, for that matter.
I like to make blender drinks. You know, some fruits and nuts and things. Is this an okay beverage?
Blender drinks are not actually drinks—they are meals that you have first run through a blender. If you have chewing problems, poor teeth, or whatever, then this might be an acceptable compromise in your diet. If you must blend your foods, don’t “drink” them—eat them. Use a spoon and eat the blended food slowly, chewing each mouthful as well as you can and mix it with your saliva. Gulping down a blender drink is one way to indigestion. Also make sure that the foods you blend together are compatible foods to begin with. Nuts and fruits may not make an ideal combination in a blender drink. As we said, a drink (if it’s not water) is either a food or a poison. Blended up drinks are foods—separate meals—which should be eaten by themselves and immediately after preparing them to avoid oxidation and nutrient loss.
What can you say to people when they ask you what you want to drink?
Tell them you want a big glass of “sky-juice”—water in other words. If you are thirsty, drink it. If not, keep it beside you and don’t make a big deal out of drinking or not drinking. For many people, drinking is a social activity and an act of hospitality. If you graciously accept a glass of water with no further discussion, then everyone should be quite comfortable.
Bad enough that anyone should use freshly-pressed pure fruit and vegetable juices instead of the whole fruit or vegetable. But commercial juices are not only fragmented, but contain toxins as well.
What juices do you like? Tomato? Freshly squeezed is pretty bland stuff. The jazzed-up commercial juice always tastes thick and “exciting.” Of course the tomatoes used may be ripe, overripe, underripe and even partially rotten since any tomato may be turned into juice. Mixed well, no one knows the difference, especially after pasteurization and salt disguise the flavor.
Do you use commercially squeezed orange, lemon and grapefruit juices? It’s the fashion these days to use reconstituted juices. The juices are squeezed from oranges, grapefruit and lemons, peels and all.
The juices from the peels contain citron oil which is quite toxic in the human system.
Citrus trees, like other fruit trees, create a fruit to attract animal consumers. The seed is dispersed in the fruit for propagation by the eater of the fruit. The fruit/seed package is protected until the moment of ripeness by a skin against bacteria and insects. Citrus fruit skins contain citron oil (not to mention fungicides and insecticides) which is an excellent “antibiotic” and is repulsive and toxic to all creatures including humans. Commercial juicers squeeze this toxic juice into the mix with other parts of the fruit. Even the juices of the seed, which may contain hydrocyanide, etc. are pressed into the mix. The juices are then dehydrated and pasteurized. The resulting concentrate is frozen and shipped to points throughout the country for “reconstitution.” If you buy frozen concentrate and add water, you’re getting the same devitalized stuff.
It doesn’t matter if the juices come from cans or frozen concentrates. It’s all been heated, refined, condimented, preserved and otherwise ruined. It deserves to be left on the shelf.
There’s no reason why we can’t have all the fresh juices directly from the fruit. Most fruits can be shipped just as easily as the juices, although it involves more shipping volume and weight.
Of course this observation is for those that insist on juices—the best of juices are always second-rate to the whole fruit, the natural juice source.
Reprinted from Healthful Living, April 1982
The practice of drinking teas made from the leaves, the stems, barks, roots, flowers, seeds and fruits of plants is an old one. The practice was taught to mankind by the medical profession, which was, in its origin and for long after its origin, largely herbal in character. Due to the fact that some part of almost every plant contains a poison or two, it is possible to use some part of almost every plant known to man for its alleged “medical action,” both for the “prevention” and “cure” of disease. Faith in the healing virtues of herb teas lingers on in the minds of the people long after the medical profession, which originally fostered and cultivated this faith, has abandoned it.
Mint tea, alfalfa tea, horse mint tea, and other teas are in extensive use among a growing segment of our population and great numbers of these people are convinced that they can derive benefit from the practice of drinking these teas. A brief, instructive reference to some of these currently popular teas is given below, in Herbal Myths.
Reprinted from The Hygienic Review, August 1973
Juniper berry tea is “healthful, adding fluorine to the diet, increasing functional activity and increasing the secretion and flow of urine”—all of this means that it is a stimulant and that the kidneys are forced to expel it quickly.
Parsley tea has a “purifying action” and is a “diuretic” and “mild sedative.”
Papaya tea is a “fine tonic,” has a “rebuilding effect on the stomach and digestive tract,” and contains a “digestant” that is “capable of digesting many times its weight in protein food.” If you could find other “digestants” to take care of the other food factors, you could dispense with the secretion of digestive enzymes.
A delicious combination of lime leaves and papaya that you will always use, once you have tasted it, is sold to the public.
Then there is red clover tea which is “beneficial to the bloodstream” (a “blood purifier”) and “cleansing to wounds, boils and ulcers.”
Chamomile tea has a “soothing effect on the nerves and stomach” and is regarded as excellent for children.
Just plain lime tea, without the addition of papaya, “acts on the nervous system, allaying nervous excitement, invigorating and strengthening, and also soothing and relieving inflammation.”
Horse tail herb tea is “invigorating and strengthening.” It is an “alterative” and an “astringent.”
In spasms, mistletoe tea is said to “relieve nervous excitement.” (MISTLETOE IS ALSO POISON—See Article “Plant Products And Effects” in Lesson 33).
Then there is blueberry tea, an “exciting beverage with delicate fragrance,” made from the leaves of the blueberry, which “purifies.” It is an “antiseptic, a blood purifier and it soothes.”
Strawberry tea, made from the leaves of the strawberry, “provides many benefits to the urinary organs.” It is “astringent, tonic, diuretic, a bitter alterative.”
Sassafras tea, an “old favorite,” is described as a “wonder drug.” It is a “blood purifier” and an “aid to the skin”—at least, it is said to be.
Fenugreek tea seems to be one of the present day favorites. If we are to believe the advertising, great and increasing numbers of people are drinking this mild poison regularly. This tea “soothes minor irritations of the stomach and intestines, softens and soothes inflamed parts and relieves inflammaton. It is also good for those with excess mucus due to dietary errors.” I presume that you take this tea instead of correcting your dietary errors.
Mate, a caffeine-containing tea from South America, is highly praised because it “gives a pick-up like coffee.” Why not? It contains the same poison.
Desert herb is an old Indian tonic, often called squaw tea. Although almost all the medicinal virtues are attributed to this tea, it is listed only as “alterative, depurative and diuretic.”
Hop tea is both a “tonic” and a “sedative”—stimulates and inhibits—and is used for “relieving pain, allaying nervous excitement, and to abate fever.”
Flaxseed tea “relieves coughs and sore throats, painful urination and bladder inflammation. It is also good in dysentery.”
Sarsaparilla tea, an old-fashioned favorite, “purifies the blood and is used for affections of the chest.” Used for coughs for countless generations, it is “aromatic, depurative and alterative.”
Alfalfa tea is said to be especially valuable in rheumatism and arthritis. It is chiefly recommended for its “richness in minerals.” When mint is added to the alfalfa, this provides a delicious tea that gives all the “advantages” of the alfalfa plus the “sedative effects” of the peppermint leaves and the “aid” they give to digestion.
Nettle tea is a “diuretic” that has varied “properties.” Besides “increasing the secretion and flow of urine” (meaning the kidneys hurriedly eliminate it) it is “excellent for the circulation,” is a “tonic” and “relieves infections of the chest.”
For your constipation here is a “pleasant” herbal laxative that should be every bit as good as Inner Clean, Hood Lax, All-Lax, NR Tablets, Black Draught, or anything that grandmother used to brew. It is a curious combination of “freshly cut senna, mandrake root, boneset leaves and tops, elder flowers, sassafras bark, peppermint leaves and Mexican saffron.” Use this compound and “keep free from annoying symptoms arising from a constipated condition.”
Finally, here is a “tasty tea” made of a blend of alfalfa, peppermint and desert herb, which you are sure to like, once you have tried.
Dock root “purifies the blood and strengthens in a permanent manner, both allaying and preventing scurvy.” It is also an “astringent.”
Certainly from this list of drugs with their astringent, alterative, tonic, diuretic, digestant, soothing, sedative, purifying, emetic, laxative, etc. “actions,” you can find one or more that “will help you back to good health, even assist you in retaining good health.” If you read over the classifications of the alleged actions of these teas and fail to recognize the fact that they are drugs and are “recommended” as such, this is because you are unaquainted with so-called pharmacology and the herbal materia medica. They employ the technical jargon of allopathic medicine in describing the “effects” of their teas. What is a depurative, for example? It is “a drug for aiding a cleansing process.” An alterative is a “medicine” that “alters the processes of nutrition and excretion.” Such a drug is supposed to be capable of “restoring the normal body-functions.” A diuretic is a “medicine” that “increases the flow of urine.” How does it increase the flow of urine? Does it assist the kidneys? Does it add to the functioning power of the kidneys? It does neither of these things. It is a poison that is hurriedly eliminated by the kidneys.
Herbs are nature’s own products, we are assured. We could reply that rattlesnakes and cobras are also nature’s own products. They come to you “entirely natural.” I can hear the hiss of the rattlesnake as he strikes: “My venom comes to you entirely natural.”
Teas are made in two general ways. They are prepared as infusions and as decoctions. An infusion is the solution obtained when a substance is steeped in water to obtain its soluble principles. It is an old medical device used to extract the “medicinal” qualities of herbs. A decoction is a substance derived by the process of boiling. This is also an old medical device used to extract the “medicinal” qualities (the poisons) from herbs. Infusions are made by pouring hot water over the tea and permitting it to steep. Leaves, flowers and thin materials are prepared as infusions. Decoctions are made of the harder materials, such as barks, roots, chips, seeds, etc. These are boiled to extract their “soluble principles.” An aromatic is a substance with a spicy fragrance. Such substances are said to be “stimulating,” but they are often added to infusions and decoctions to make them acceptable to the sense of smell.
I shall not, at this time, consider all the alleged actions of these various teas. Enough has been said to reveal that they are recommended to the public as drugs and because they are supposed to have therapeutic actions. All such actions are actions of the body and are employed as means of freeing the body of offensive substances. An herbal laxative is laxative because of the laxative action of the bowels in expelling the herbs or the tea made from these. These are expelled because they are poisonous. It does not matter that there may be minerals and vitamins in the herb or tea; the very hurry to expel them from the body prevents their digestion and absorption. Nonpoisonous herbs are foods; poisonous herbs are supposed to be “medicine.” Do not permit yourself to be misled by the assertion that “current research is proving the value of teas, herbs and berries used in Grandma’s day.” Research seems to be able to prove anything it is paid to prove.
Review the Articles in Lesson 33: Natural Foods—They refer to them as “healthy,” but some are actually hazardous and Plant Products and Effects.
Some time ago, a magazine published by a religious organization came to my desk. It contained an article which traces chocolate from seed to candy bar. It opens by saying that “chocolate in its many forms has been a taste delight of millions.” It ends by saying: “Many have come to know the nutritional value of chocolate as well as enjoy it for its taste when mixed with sugar. The Creator has thus provided for his Creatures an unending variety of foodstuffs to sustain them and gratify their varied appetites.”
In between these two asinine statements is a brief story of the planting and cultivation of the Cacao tree, the harvesting of its crops and the preparation of the cacao beans for the factories. In the whole article there is not one word said about the poisonous quality of cocoa, nor does the article even hint that the sugar with which it is mixed is white sugar.
The thought comes to me that if the Creator prepared this substance for the use of His creatures, He might well have left the poison out of it. The article does say that the chocolate is bitter, but it fails to mention the fact that, without the addition of great amounts of sugar, the stuff is so bitter that none of the “varied appetites” of man would relish it. It is only by so thoroughly disguising its true character, as manifest in its taste, that foolish men and women can get the poison substance past the sentinel of taste.
Arguments such as that given in the magazine article can be made to sustain any vice or practice to which man may be addicted. We may assume that the Creator made tobacco to satisfy the varied tastes of man, or that he made opium for the same purpose. There is actually more nutritive value in the leaf of the tobacco plant than in chocolate. People do not eat chocolate for is alleged nutritive value but for its stimulating quality. The theobromine of chocolate is identical with the caffeine of coffee and the theine of tea. It is simply a poison and there are no conditions or circumstances under which it should be taken into the human body. Theological defenses of poison vices are always misleading.
Coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate and the caffeine-containing soft drinks should be classed together and it should be fully recognized that they produce evil and evil only, when introduced into the human system. None of these vices is very old but each of them is very wide-spread. People swallow these poisons under the delusion that stimulation is somehow beneficial.
Of coffee we read in medical literature that, “While a certain portion stimulates the nervous system, a large portion acts as a sedative, so that a difference in the quantity of the potion causes a difference in the kind of its effects.” It is impossible to explain this apparently contradictory behavior of coffee on the basis of the medical theory that “drugs act.” If caffeine is a stimulant, why is it less of a stimulant in large than in small doses? Indeed, why does it not stimulate in proportion to the size of the dose—why aren’t large doses proportionately more stimulating than small doses? Why does it apparently act the exact opposite in large doses from the way it acts in small doses?
We can find our answer only if we realize that the increased action that we designate stimulation is simply the extra effort exerted by the body in expelling the poison. This being true, and it is, so-called stimulants must necessarily and inevitably deplete the body’s powers in proportion to the expenditure their use occasions. Because the sick person is already greatly depleted, he is less able to bear the losses occasioned by the use of stimulants than is the well and vigorous individual.
Of theine, it is said that when given in small doses to either animals or man, it “quickens the circulation,” and “effects some degree of mental exhiliration and wakefulness.” But the “final result” is diminished excretion of carbon-dioxide—“the flow of blood through the capillaries is retarded.” Large doses “prove poisonous, causing painful restlessness, rigidity of the muscles, and general exhaustion.”
Thus, theine is pictured to us as a stimulant in small doses, a “poison” in large doses. What is there in the size of dose to change the character and quality of the substance? In what way does the size of the dose alter its relation to the vital structures? As soon as it is realized that stimulation is excited action in resisting and expelling the small dose, it will be recognized that the drug is a poison in doses of any and all sizes.
35.2. Molasses: A Super Junk Food
35.3. Harmful Chemicals In Molasses
35.4. Health Claims For Molasses
Article #1: Denatured Foods Destroy Life by Alfred W. McCann
Article #2: Junk Food Diet Result In Disease by Susan Hazard
By junk food we mean foods that have been so altered and impaired in the process of manufacturing, bleaching, canning, cooking, preserving, pickling, etc., that they are no longer as well fitted to meet the needs of the body as they were in the state Nature prepared them.
Let’s face it, we can’t improve upon Nature! But people still insist on trying and the results are disastrous. When we attempt to alter any food by adding or subtracting components or by heating or freezing, we are degrading that food to the extent to which we alter it. Nature prepared our foods perfectly suitable for our consumption in their whole unchanged state. When these food items are changed or altered in any way, they become denatured junk. Disease is the inevitable result from eating such foods.
Numerous animal experiments have shown that, while proteins, carbohydrates and fats are food elements, they are not in and by themselves food. Junk foods usually contain excessive amounts of the above named food constituents and little else. For example, candy would be almost purely carbohydrate. Butter (according to our definition this is a junk food) would be a pure fat.
It has been established that a diet that contains enough nourishment, by all the recognized chemical standards, still fails to support normal growth and physiological normality, if it lacks some unknown substances. Very little of these substances need to be present, but there is an irreducible minimum. This would consist of the many vitamin and mineral elements, enzymes, etc. which are only available in usable form in whole raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
The refining, preserving and cooking processes to which our foods are subjected destroy the delicate constituents in our foods. In fact, the cooking process robs foods of so much of their value that most people feel that they must add salt, spices and various condiments to them to make them palatable.
We need to consume our food in its whole state, for in this form we can readily assimilate all the nutrients which we derive from that food. When foods are fragmented and certain vitamins or minerals are added in an inorganic form, that food loses its value. Any food so deranged is truly a junk food.
The addition of one or more vitamins to such denatured foods would not render them adequate.
Vitamins and minerals never work independently of each other but synergistically for the benefit of the whole organism. When there is either a lack of calcium or an excess of acid in the food, Vitamin A has no effect. It is known that mineral salts are not assimilated in the absence of the vitamins and both are spoiled by cooking. Most junk foods (if not all) which are commonly sold in stores have undergone some cooking.
Minerals which are returned to the junk foods are inorganic and therefore unusable by the body. Sodium chloride, for example, is not assimilable or usable by the body. It is excreted unchanged. It comes out in the same state it entered the body. No metabolizable food does this. Sodium chloride is not a food but an irritant. This is true of all inorganic minerals and salts. They are useless, supply the body with nothing and are toxic.
Dr. Shelton says, “We have not learned to make, nor even to imitate living substances. We know that animals are dependent upon plants for their food and cannot go directly to the soil for it. We can neither synthesize these substances in the laboratory, nor can we tear them down in the kitchen or in the laboratory in “purifying” them (extracting their salts from them) without greatly impairing their food values.”
Nature gave us apples, pears, cabbage, celery, lettuce, oranges, nuts, etc. and not vitamins, minerals as such. All our food needs are found in neat little packages and when consumed in this form, we do not have to concern ourselves with food deficiencies. All of our needs will be met most adequately.
Molasses is a prime example of a junk food. This is a product which has been so degraded that it really should not be called a “food” at all. It has been refined, processed, contaminated with poisons and boiled to such an extent that it could never be of any benefit and, in fact, will contribute to toxicosis if ingested.
So let us take a look at this “super junk food.”
Molasses is a yellowish or dark-brown, thick, sweet, sticky syrup which is most often used for cooking, candy-making or as a livestock feed. Most molasses is obtained as a by-product in the manufacturing of sugar from sugar cane but some is obtained from the sugar beet. Therefore, countries that grow sugar cane produce most of the world’s molasses. In the United States, Louisiana is the center of molasses production.
Molasses contains 36 to 50 percent sugar. Chemists and drug manufacturers use it to make many chemical products, including industrial alcohol. Molasses yields large amounts of citric acid. This citric acid from molasses is used in making soft drinks. Low-grade molasses, called blackstrap, is fed to livestock.
Molasses that is to be eaten contains much sugar, so it tastes sweet. It is often used in making cookies and candy for the unusual flavor which it imparts.
In preparation for harvesting the sugar cane, the fields are set afire to burn off the dried up leaves. Then the sugar cane is cut down and taken to the sugar refinery. It is put through high-pressure rollers to squeeze out the juice. The juice contains many impurities including field soil, cane fiber and wax, organic acids, ash, nitrogen compounds, pectin and gum. On the other side of the vat containing the juice is the resulting fibrous tissue, called bagasse.
The bagasse is further processed to get the ultimate sugar content out of it. It is sprayed with super-heated hot water which quickly saturates the bagasse and picks up, in solution, more sugar. It also picks up some of the pulpy organic matter.
This is then squeezed out of the bagasse by yet another set of high-pressure rollers. It is cooled and combined with the original juice. This diluted juice contains less sugar than the virgin pressing. Also, it contains a lot of organic matter or pulp.
To get crystalline sugar from cane juice, the first step is to stabilize it chemically so that its prized content, sucrose, will not become invert sugar, that is, fructose and/or glucose. Cane juice has a pH of about 5.4, which is on the acid side, and the first boiling would cause the sucrose to break down into its two basic sugars, fructose and glucose. As a stabilizer, about five gallons of liquified quicklime is added to 1,000 gallons of juice. This gives it a pH of about 8.0, thus stabilizing the sucrose. Also added at this stage to clarify the liquid are sulphur dioxide/carbon dioxide and, usually, phosphoric acid.
Then the juice is put through its first boiling to remove most of its water and to obtain the first extraction. What remains from this first extraction is called crude molasses. Then more chemicals are added to the residue and yet another cooking (boiling) is done. Acid sulphite and carbon compounds are added.
After this extraction comes yet another extraction during which bone char (cattle bones that have been heated to the point of charring), sulphur compounds and chlorine are used as clarifiers and purifiers. Chlorine is used for its “bleaching” action.
The final residue is called molasses.
As you have learned from previous lessons, refined sugar of any kind has devastating effects on our health. Such sugars are responsible for many diseases and disorders including tooth decay, obesity, heart disease, hypoglycemia, diabetes, meningitis and many others.
You have also learned that when you eat any refined carbohydrate, the body must take vital nutrients from healthy cells to metabolize incomplete foods. Thus, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium are drawn from various parts of the body to make use of the sugar. Likewise other valuable vitamins, minerals and enzymes are robbed from the body.
Since molasses contains 36-50 percent sugar, the known harmful effects of white sugar would also apply to molasses.
Most of the chemicals which are used in the refining process of cane sugar eventually find their way into the waste residue which is the molasses. Therefore, you not only have the harmful effects of the sugar but also of the toxic chemicals which are used in its manufacture. We will take a look at some of the chemicals.
Sulphur dioxide is a chemical compound of sulphur and oxygen, having antioxidant properties. It is sometimes used in food for control of discoloration.
An antioxidant is a substance that prevents or delays oxidation—a substance capable of chemically protecting other substances from uniting with oxygen. It is one of the most common groups of additives used to prevent change in color or flavor caused by oxygen in the air. For example, some fruits and vegetables containing certain enzymes (such as apples, apricots, bananas, cherries, peaches, pears and potatoes), darken when exposed to air after being cut, bruised, or allowed to overmature.
According to the Merck manual, exposure to sulphur dioxide results in respiratory tract irritation: sneezing, cough, dyspnea, and pulmonary edema when inhaled as in smog. If the body responds so strongly to this agent when it is in the air, it makes sense that it cannot tolerate it when we ingest it with our food. It is, in fact, a deadly poison and is treated as such in the manual.
Everyone knows that we need oxygen to live; in the absence of oxygen we cannot breathe. On a cellular level our cells require oxygen to function. All plants and fruits of plants contain oxygen as an essential component of their structure. Oxygen also plays a role in every action and reaction in our body and is required to produce the ATP (adenosine triphosphate) for energy metabolism.
Oxidation may be interpreted in several ways. The addition of oxygen to a molecule is one form of oxidation. Every oxidation must also be accompanied by the opposite reaction, a reduction, and this is when oxygen is taken away or reduced from a molecule.
Oxidations and reductions are essential in utilization of foods to provide energy. The oxidation of foodstuffs, fats, carbohydrates, and proteins, takes place in a step by step manner through what is called the “Kreb’s cycle.” The end result of the Kreb’s cycle is liberation of energy to be used as needed by the body.
Any interference at any point during the oxidation reduction process can and does effect the entire body. Research is lacking on what effect antioxidants which are added to our food can have on general cellular metabolism but as students of Life Science you know that any fragmentation of our natural foods always results in adverse consequences. Especially serious consequences occur when out and out poisons are added to our food, such as sulphur dioxide.
Does molasses meet any of these requirements?
Molasses is the end product in the manufacture of refined sugar. It contains many toxic substances. Psychologically, this dark gooey product has no appeal at all except that we have become accustomed to it and have learned to accept it as an addition to our diet along with other perversions. Children naturally rebel against the taste of molasses. This does not occur with a nice ripe banana or a piece of watermelon, for example.
Molasses is not delicious to any unperverted palate. Furthermore, molasses has no natural state since Nature never created such a conglomeration of sugar and chemicals. Molasses has no living state in Nature. It is repulsive to our sense of smell, taste and sight. Molasses is not easily digested. As little as one tea-spoonful will result in nausea. This indicates that the body rejects this poison rather than attempting to digest it as it would with a normal food such as an apple.
Molasses is not digested efficiently. It is often passed through the body with little absorption and often results in diarrhea. This is another indication that the body is attempting to dispose of this toxic matter.
Molasses is entirely lacking in protein.
Since molasses goes through such a long boiling process, there are no vitamins left in the end product. The only mineral salts that are detectable in molasses are those inorganic minerals that are residues from the contaminants accumulated during the manufacturing process. These inorganic minerals are not usable and are toxic.
Molasses supplies no fatty acids.
One tablespoon of blackstrap molasses supplies approximately 43 calories. In order to meet our daily caloric needs, we would have to consume an entire meal of molasses. Molasses cannot be relished by itself by anyone. A proper food of humans can be eaten as a meal. For instance, we can make a mono meal of any one of these foods: apples, watermelon, cantaloupes, bananas, grapes, oranges, peaches, apricots, figs, dates, etc. And you can maintain health for several weeks just on these foods alone. However, you could never make one mono meal of molasses. It would be repulsive to even think of doing so and it could certainly not support life.
The fact that molasses cannot meet any of the criteria of a food automatically puts it in the category of junk food and it should be eliminated from our diet forever!
Dr. Rudolph Ballentine says that, “Since it is a concentrated residue, molasses contains significant quantities of minerals such as iron, a fair amount of calcium and generous quantities of trace elements such as zinc, copper, and chromium.”
Just because these minerals can be detected in molasses does not mean that they are in a form that can utilized by the body. In fact, these minerals are mostly resulting from the residues from the lime, cattle bones, soil, and other residues left after being boiled for many hours at high temperatures. Most are inorganic and totally unusable to the human body, Even if there were any organic minerals left, they would be rendered useless after the boiling and chemical treatment.
It is claimed that the chief value of molasses lies in the fact that it is rich in vitamins of the B family. Considering the process which the molasses has gone through, this is quite impossible. First of all, the B vitamins are water soluble. Large quantities of water are added to the molasses during its manufacture. So the B vitamins would be dissolved. Second, B vitamins are destroyed by heat at even a moderate temperature. They are certainly destroyed by the high heat and long boiling time required in the process of rendering molasses.
The fact that the consumption of molasses results in diarrhea or seems to have a laxative effect is proof that the body is attempting to dispose of this unwholesome food as quickly and as best it can. It is completely incompatible with bodily needs or functions.
P.E. Noris writes, “At night take a teaspoonful of molasses in warm water or milk.” He cautions that one should not take more than this as it may nauseate you. His body is trying to tell him something but he is not listening. The body knows what is a poison and what is not. Take a tablespoon of any wholesome food such as sunflower seeds. You will feel fine and most likely will want more. Take a tablespoon of molasses and you will be immediately sick. There will be no craving for more.
Do yourself a favor and do not poison yourself.
You should also be aware of the fact that this poison is not only added to molasses but is often seen in most dried fruits. As you know, dried fruits are valuable additions to our diet when they are of good quality. However, when treated with sulphur dioxide, these fruits become deadly as the poisons with which they are treated and should never be consumed.
How can you recognize sulphur treated fruits? Mostly by the color. If the fruit’s color is bright and unusually clear, it has been treated. If the fruit’s color is dull and a little brownish, then most likely it has not. Also, read the labels when buying these packaged dried fruits. Another excellent idea would be to dry your own. Home food dehydrators are readily available and do an excellent job of drying and preserving fruits. This way you know for sure that the fruit was of excellent quality and no poisons were added to them during the drying process.
Carbon dioxide gas is generally produced in the combustion, decomposition, or fermentation of carbon or its compounds, is found in the air and is exhaled by all animals. It is the final product of combustion of carbon in food, which the body exhales through the lungs or eliminates through the kidneys in urine, or in perspiration through the skin. Although carbon dioxide is present in the air we breathe (up to about 5%), if it is in a greater quantity than this, it produces an uncomfortable degree of hyperpnea with mental confusion and will cause death by suffocation.
Carbon dioxide gas is used in the manufacture of molasses, carbonated drinks and commercially used in dry ice.
So we know that carbon dioxide is a waste product given off by the body. We also know that if inhaled in large amounts it can result in death. We do not as yet know what effects it will have when added to our food in small quantities. Should we take the chance? As Hygienists we cannot condone the use of proven or unproven poisons. We may assume, however, that if it is poisonous in one form (air), it will also be poisonous in another (food).
Phosphoric acid is not only used in the manufacture of molasses but is also added to carbonated soft drinks. It is a solvent which is used to keep all the constituents in a compound in a liquid form. This acid, according to the Merck manual results in corrosive burns from inhalation, skin contact, eye contact, and ingestion. It will also cause local pain. This is another deadly poison.
In order to understand why this substance, which is added to certain foods including molasses, is dangerous, we must understand what it is that we are dealing with. Bone char is the charcoal remains of animal bones. Charcoal is actually the carbon remains after burning or heating these bones. Carbon is a chemical element which is present in all organic substances. These include proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.
When a compound containing carbon combines with oxygen in the body, energy is liberated and carbon dioxide is formed. Carbon has several chemical features that make it unique as a foundation for life. However, if these features are altered drastically as they are upon the addition of heat, disastrous results may occur. It is a known fact that the charcoal formed on charcoal broiled steaks which are so commonly eaten today are carcinogens. It is also possible that the alteration of the carbon element in a cooked foods could have adverse consequences on our health. The addition of bone char to molasses just taking this product one step further down the ladder of the junk food dungeon.
Chlorine is commonly used as a water purifier an bleach. Added to flour at 400 parts per million, it instantly ages the flour and bleaches it white. For many years a flour bleach called Agene was used, until England’s Dr. Mellanby discovered that Agene caused running fits and mental deterioration in dogs. The Food and Drug Administration, under public pressure, finally outlawed the bleach. But the chlorine bleaches used today, although regarded as safe by the FDA, are highly toxic poisons. Nitrosylchloride, for example, is a very corrosive reddish yellow gas which is intensely irritating to eyes, skin and mucosa. Inhalation may cause pulmonary edema and hemorrhage. Yet this is added to foods.
Molasses contains 9% ash and 17.5% waste. That consists of mostly cellulose plus all of the wastes left over after the processing of white sugar including soil, residues and chemical contaminants.
So molasses is worse than refined sugar as it carries with it all the bad qualities of refined sugar plus the added toxins. As Life Scientists, we attempt to build health and not destroy it. When we ingest such a totally unwholesome and anti-life product as molasses, we are truly destroying life. Do your body a favor and do not give poisons but give it fuel for life in the form of whole fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Instead of satisfying our craving for sweets with such poisons as molasses, use fresh or dried fruits and your sweet tooth will surely be satisfied.
As Hygienists we know that there are several criteria that a substance must meet before we will regard it as a food. Molasses does not meet any of these criteria and we shall see why.
First of all, it might be helpful to review the criteria food must meet to be considered natural and therefore acceptable in our daily diet. Our natural food:
I realize that molasses is almost 50% sugar, but wouldn’t it be better to consume this product than pure sugar? After all, 50% is better than 100%!
The fact that molasses contains up to 50% sugar is not its only bad point. The fact that it contains so many other poisonous contaminants, some of which may be carcinogens, is the main reason to stay away from this product. Also, if you are eating a diet of mostly fruits with vegetables, nuts and seeds, additional sweeteners are not necessary or desirable.
I am convinced that the Hygienic diet is best for overall health and I have been on a raw foods program for six months and feel great! But the problem is that my children love junk foods—especially candy, ice cream, cookies and other sweets. How can I get them away from these awful foods?
Congratulations on your wise decision to change to a more healthful diet. Apparently your children crave sweets and this is natural—we all do. The problem is they are satisfying their sweet tooth with the wrong kind of sweets. First of all, try to not have any of the junk food that you mentioned in your home. Second, replace it with more healthful sweets like fresh fruits and some dried fruits. When one of your children asks for candy, give him some Barhi dates instead, or any other kind of dried dates or figs. I am sure that your children will love them and it will certainly satisfy their sweet tooth.
My mother always gave us molasses to eat. She mixed it with some milk and said that is was a good “tonic”. I always hated the stuff! Does molasses possess any health benefits?
No, it is a common misconception that molasses possesses health benefits. No food, even the most healthful, has the quality to act, for it is the body which acts upon the food. There are no benefits in eating molasses and, in fact, only harmful results follow its ingestion. The fact that your sense of taste found this “tonic” repulsive is one clear indication that it should not be eaten.
Animals, human or dumb brutes, die when their food is debased, but the very number of such foods makes it impossible for an individual to go before a grand jury with the charge: “This food killed my little girl.”
For months, perhaps for years, one juggled food brought substances to her diet which her little body could not use. Her vitality in throwing off the excess baggage was slowly sapped.
She was not poisoned by any particular food. A combination of inadequate foods merely robbed her tissues of their tone.
Another food from another source had been processed in a manner that removed some or all of its most indispensable elements. In its refinement it withheld from her little frame the very materials she required for growth, materials that God had elaborated for her, but which unnatural practices had withdrawn from her reach on the vain assumption that it is not necessary to credit the Creator with a profoundly conceived and marvelously executed scheme of biochemic balances and harmonies.
Persistently, month after month, the disordered combination of artificial foods sallied to the dinner table, where all the forces of outraged nature were called into battle with the unseen enemy of health and life.
Commercial expediency looked on as the fight was waged with nature but nature had been equipped with poor fighting materials and the child’s resistance, broken at last by the combined attack of unsuspected enemies, buckled, snapped and was gone.
There is no pathologist, no public prosecutor, no father or mother who can accuse the food industry of her death. Let this be fully understood.
Before we can correct a single refined food abuse, by law, we must produce in court the body of a dead child, and prove that life was destroyed by a particular food.
Scientists will be on hand to testify in behalf of the defendant. Food manufacturers have been paying scientists for twenty-five years to testify in their defense.
I have listened on hundreds of occasions to their testimony in adulterated food cases, and in many instances I have seen their sophistries fail, but the facts have rarely been reported to the public.
The fear of advertising losses, as we have seen, has closed the columns of most newspapers and magazines to the truth.
Foods that kill mice, rabbits and guinea pigs are not “harmful” to the child in the law’s eyes, for the reason that nobody is willing to feed a child on an exclusive diet of such things until it dies, in order thereby to produce as evidence, a dead body in court.
However, when it is argued that chickens or other experimental animals are not human beings, and that therefore any deductions based on barnyard phenomena are unwarranted when applied to humanity, we are not confined entirely to animal experimentation for our facts.
The same facts have been established in most startling and dramatic fashion, hundreds of times, upon human beings.
In Billibid Prison, Phillipine Islands, 1912, twenty-nine criminals under sentence of death were fed exclusively on refined and denatured foods of the kind most common in America for the purpose of determining the effect of such diet.
Their chief food consisted of polished rice. In six weeks the condemned men became anemic. Their first symptom was slight edema (water-logging or swelling) of the feet and ankles which disappeared after lying down. Puffiness beneath the eyes, with general weakness and pains in the legs, soon followed.
Later the edema became massive, involving even the thighs. Then came marked apathy with muscular wasting and extreme pallor. Finally, an enlargement of the heart with feeble heart action.
It is noteworthy that the symptoms of war-edema reported among German, French and British soldiers, 1916-1918, are identical with these.
Commenting on the Billibid experiments, Drs. R.P. Strong and R.C. Crowell stated: “These diseases developed owing to the absence of some substance or substances in the diet necessary for the normal physiological process of the body. Without a supply of such substances in the food sickness results.” This comment in all its vagueness disclosed the poverty of food knowledge possessed by the medical profession six years ago.
The prisoners fed on the denatured diet mingled freely with the other prisoners but there was no tendency of the disease to spread outside the group fed on the polished rice.
When this denatured food was removed from their diet and whole natural brown rice restored to them, they recovered promptly.
In the near future, depending upon the rapidity with which the truth is spread, it will not be so difficult to prove with evidence that cannot be controverted that a murder was committed by depraved food.
Reprinted from This Famishing World
In recent years, there has been an increased consumption of meat, refined foods, highly processed and packaged foods with assorted additives and preservatives. This practice has resulted in a marked increase in many chronic and degenerative diseases. The table below demonstrates the serious impact these harmful foods have on our society as a whole.
Heart and vasculatory | Over 1,000,000 deaths in 1967 |
Respiratory and infectious | 82,000 deaths per year |
Mental health | 2.5 percent of population of 5.2 million people are severely or totally disabled, 25 million people have manifest disability. |
Infant mortality and reproduction | Infant deaths in 1967—79,000 |
Early aging and lifespan | 49.1 percent of population, about 102 million people have one or more chronic impairments |
Arthritis | 16 million people affected |
Dental health | 44 millions with gingivitis; 23 million with advanced periodontal disease; 22 million endentulous persons; 1/2 of all people over 55 have no teeth. |
Diabetes and Carbohydrate disorders. | 3.9 million overt diabetic; 35,000 deaths in 1967; 79 percent of people over 55 with impaired glucose tolerance. |
Obesity | 3 million adolescents; 30 to 40 percent of adults; 60 to 70 percent over 40 years. |
Alcoholism | 5 million alcoholics; |
Eyesight | 48.1 percent or 86 million people over 3 years wear corrective
lenses; 81,000 become blind every year. |
Allergies | 32 million people (9%) have allergies |
Kidney and renal failure | 55,000 deaths from renal failure 200,000 with kidney stones |
Musuclar disorders | 200,000 cases |
Cancer | 600,000 people developed cancer in 1968 and the numbers increased drastically every year since |
It is well known that heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, and cirrhosis of the liver are among the leading causes of disease in the United States today. What we must do is to remove the cause behind the cause. What caused the heart disease, stroke or cancer? As Hygienists we know that the underlying cause of all disease is toxicosis. But now we must ask ourselves another question. What caused the toxicosis to develop? Well, it could be a number of factors. But one of the main culprits is the junk food in our diet.
During a session of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois stated that “experts have found enough incriminating evidence to conclude that our super-rich, fat-loaded, addictive and sugar-filled American diet is sending many of us to early graves unnecessarily.” He says that simple changes in the diet will product positive results in good health and agrees that this would be a far better choice than spending money for medical care.
The immune system, the blood, the fluids which bathe the tissues can be markedly influenced by the nutrients available to the body. In other words, the health of all our cells and tissues depends upon the quality of the nutrients which are available to them. When these nutrients have become altered or destroyed through processing, refining, cooking, etc., the health of the cells within the entire organism will decline as a result.
The body responds to all influences and deals with them . as they arise. When we consume food which is laden with contaminants such as artificial preservatives and other additives, the body treats these as poisons and attempts to eliminate them as rapidly as possible. Those substances which cannot be eliminated through regular channels of elimination are stored in the tissues and accumulate there. This forms the basis of a toxemic state. When toxins accumulate to a certain extent the body makes a concerted effort to rid itself of this unwanted debris. Thus, we witness signs of acute disease. It may be in the form of a cold, bronchitis, flu, skin eruptions, diarrhea, etc. If at that point symptoms are suppressed, we have the basis for chronic degenerative disease.
In order to eliminate disease we must first eliminate the cause of disease. If you are consuming junk food, this practice must be stopped if health is to be regained. By junk food we mean foods that have been so altered and impaired in the process of manufacturing, bleaching, canning, cooking, preserving, pickling, etc., that they are no longer as well fitted to meet the needs of the body as they were in the state Nature prepared them.
We do not need junk foods. We can delight in the exquisitive flavors of all the fresh fruits which are so easily available now. These foods need no altering or refining to make them truly appealing.
A diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds is one which will result in true health and vigor. Eliminate junk foods and your body will respond favorably.
Although Americans are eating more, (in spite of high food prices), they are receiving less nourishment. Real food, for the most part, is virtually unknown. Most Americans don’t care. Their attachment to food is emotional and induced by advertisement. They load their shopping carts with a variety of colorful, unnutritious, plastic foods, saturated with synthetic ingredients. “Oh! But it tastes so good,” they exclaim as they endlessly cram their stomachs, but remain unsatisfied.
More and more people are becoming conscious that both shelved and perishable products in the supermarkets do contain a wide array of poisons. The mass media, even as they glorify such products, announce that they are embalmed with over 3,000 questionable chemicals.
The average consumer as defined by scientific literature and popular publications is a phenomenon of the 20th century, with no antecedent in history. There was a time when no one dined on poisons and called it lunch. Food producers are deliberately supplementing the diet with food additives of a toxic nature at the rate of over three pounds per year for every person in America.
A stranger in our land, reading labels, might wonder whether American food is too “fresh.” Almost every package has something added to preserve “freshness”: BHT, sodium proprionate and a host of other preservatives. After a “fresh” imitation dinner, a dizzy spell, difficulty in breathing, or a peculiar feeling in the stomach is very common. Some even think it is love when the pulse rate increases and they become feverish. Others turn to the “imitation life box” for relief from their distress. Every other commercial, served at the rate of 60 doses per hour, encourages food habits that lead to disease or prescribes a potion to alleviate food-induced illness. They lull us into the belief that it is all right to sin as long as we turn to the right product for forgiveness.
Most shoppers in 1970 anticipated the removal of cyclamates from the market. They may instead discover that the fine print on the label warns that the additive may be dangerous to one’s health. Yet this chemical is capable of inducing cancer, and recent tests show that calcium and sodium cyclamate can induce chromosome breakage in the human leucocyte in vitro and in rat spermatogonial cells in vito. Its effects are very similar to a type of chromosome damage reported for LSD as well as caffeine when used in large doses.
An article headlined: “Are Cancerous Chickens Edible?” Yes! People will eat anything. “If tumors are detected on the wing of a bird, the wing could be cut off and used in products like hot dogs and the rest of the bird sold as cut-up chicken—all supposedly without posing a threat to human health.”
It is well known to chemists that subjecting organic compounds to high temperatures produces complex polycyclic compounds by pyrolysis. Several carcinogens are included in this group of compounds. A benzopyrine (carcinogenic) content, as high as 50 micrograms per kg was found in some instances. It seems to arise from pyrolysis of fat when cooking food. The amount produced increases with increased fat content and longer and closer exposure of the food to the flame. Benzopyrine is found also in all smoked foods. The relatively higher incidence of gastric cancer in Northern Russia and Iceland has been related to the large quantity of smoked fish eaten by the inhabitants of these regions. In a review of cancer-causing properties of benzopyrine, it was found to be quite high in salami, salmon, bacon and provola.
Eating heated fats may be deadly. Animals fed cooked fat die prematurely said Dr. R. Kurkella, University of Helsinki. Research has discovered that the more fat a person eats, the shorter will be the life span.
Meat, the most perishable (and most expensive) of all foods is also one of the most tampered with. To see exactly how meat is produced one should read the Animal Machine by Ruth Harrison. It is the story of animal factories, where animals may live out their lives in darkness, immobile in steaming pens from birth to death, fed by conveyers containing drugs, antibiotics, tranquilizers, pesticides and hormones.
After an animal is slaughtered, or dies from disease, it is shipped off to the processing house. The meat is doctored up, for the benefit of the gullible public, with aesthetic beautifiers, stink reducers, taste accentuators, color additives, drug camouflagers, nutritive “enhancers,” bleaching agents and death certificate. No corpse gets such a face lift by the embalmers and with good reason, for the corpse is soon buried, whereas salami, hotdogs, bologna, and chicken may sit on the shelves for months.
Meat is colored red with sodium nicotinate, otherwise it would turn yellow-gray. Uneven or excessive application can result in severe sickness, even death. However, when such incidents occur, they are seldom diagnosed correctly. At the Congressional Hearing on Meat Inspection it was reported that the sausages, ham, hamburgers, and the hot dogs you eat may be filled with hog blood, cereals, lungs, niacin, water, detergents and/or sodium sulfide.
The FDA refuses to recognize tests conducted by Dr. Patrick Riley at a London Medical School, where it was shown that BHA, a widely used preservative, is carcinogenic.
This preservative appears in luncheon meats, such as salami, bologna, and pressed ham, canned meats, peanut butter, canned chicken and other foods. Senator Alan Cranston commented in 1970 that “perhaps they (FDA) consider food processors’ interests more than people’s interests.”
A typical associated press release occurred around Thanksgiving 1969: “U.S. finds pesticide in 90,000 turkeys in toxic levels.” A few years ago cranberries were found to be unfit companions to the turkey. In Massachusetts alone during a more active month for health inspectors, 250 tons of meat were seized because it was contaminated. Such meat is quite often resold as 4-D meat: dead, dying, disabled or diseased. The winter of 1969, Boston had a month long scandal over the pollution of the slaughter houses of Massachusetts. Someday we are going to be civilized enough to be concerned over the killing and torture that goes on in the same slaughter houses.
ONLY TEN PERCENT of the meat adulterated with pesticides and chemicals, or contaminated with filth and diseased organs is condemned by food inspectors. The other 90 percent gets through to the unsuspecting consumer, so claims Leray Houser of the Health Education and Welfare Department.
“In 1965, a total of 711 firms suspected of producing harmful or contaminated consumer products refused to let the FDA conduct inspection...the FDA does not have subpoena authority either to summon witnesses, or authority to require firms to divulge pertinent records.”
A very striking observation about the quality of animal products comes from the lips of the Health, Education and Welfare Secretary, Robert H. Finch, who FEARED THAT WE WOULD BECOME “A NATION OF VEGETARIANS” if there were strict enforcement of pesticide residues in red meat, dairy produce, eggs, fowl and fish.
Today we are faced with an external environmental crisis. We can control the inner body environment through good diet, pure water and joyful, positive thoughts. To procure good organic food economically, cooperation is a must.
36.6. Claims Of Health Benefits
36.7. Are Onions And Garlic A Food?
Article #1: Are Garlic and Onions Helpful in Preventing Stroke?
Even though garlic or onions are not processed or altered, they are regarded as junk foods because they do not contribute to the welfare of the body when ingested. On the contrary, they contribute to disease by adding toxins to the body. As you will learn from this lesson, there are no health benefits to reap from ingesting either of these foods. They both contain toxic irritants which result in much harm when included in the diet and should, therefore, never be consumed. The importance of this statement will become evident upon completion of this lesson.
Garlic is a hardy perennial bulb, native to the Mediterranean region of Africa and Europe. Its history dates back many centuries, and it was long used for rubbing the newborn infant’s lips, and as a protection against disease by tying it around the throat.
The sun, the Cross, and garlic are the only three things reputed to scare away vampires. Both the ancient Egyptians and Greeks regarded garlic as having supernatural powers.
During the 17th century, garlic was credited with protecting many European households from the ravages of the Great Plague. In New England during Colonial times, garlic cloves were bound to the feet of smallpox victims. Cloves were also placed in the shoes of whooping cough sufferers. For intestinal worms, raw garlic juice or milk which had been boiled with garlic was often drunk. A clove or two of garlic pounded with honey and taken two or three nights successively, is good for rheumatism, herbalist lore tells us.
During World War I, garlic was used as an antiseptic in hospitals. Pads of sphagnum moss were sterilized, saturated with water-diluted garlic juice, wrapped in thin cotton, and applied as bandages to open wounds.
The botanical name for garlic is Allium sativum. This hardy bulbous plant is a member of the lily family, which also includes leeks, chives, onions, and shallots. Like the onion, the edible bulb of the plant grows beneath the ground. This compound bulb is made up of several small sections or bulblets called “cloves” which are encased in thin papery envelopes. The cloves are eaten and also used for planting. Farmers plant the crop in early spring and the bulbs mature early in the fall. The bulbs are “cured” by drying in the field. Workers then braid the tops or remove them, and the garlic is ready for market. The bulbs are either sold whole or ground into powder. The juice of the garlic bulbs may also be extracted and sold.
Garlic is most often used to season foods because of its pungent flavor. A substance in garlic, called allicin, is responsible for its flavor and odor.
Allicin is an antibacterial agent and an extremely irritating liquid. It has a drug-like property which, like any other drug, destroys life. Antibacterial agents kill bacteria. Do we wish to kill bacteria? Certainly not! Bacteria are essential components to life and without them life would not continue.
As students of Life Science, you know that bacteria do not produce disease but perform a very important function. These useful organisms come into action when the cell has finished its life cycle to decompose the dead cell and help to eliminate it from the body. They also act to clean up toxic material which the body eliminates. This is why they are often seen during a disease process.
Bacterial action takes place in all disease phenomena because these are processes requiring the breaking down or disintegration of accumulated refuse and toxic matter within the body, which the system is endeavoring to throw off. But to assume, as many medical scientists do, that merely because the bacteria are present and active in all disease phenomena, that they are therefore the cause of these same diseases, is just as wrong as it would be to assume that because bacteria are present and active in the decomposition process connected with all dead organic matter, they are the cause of the death of the organic matter in question. Bacteria are part of the results of the disease, not its cause.
It does not make sense to ingest a food which would interfere with or destroy this important function within our body.
According to Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, the volatile oil from the bulb or entire plant of garlic is used as an anthelmintic and rubefacient. These are big words, but with big effects. We will take them one at a time.
An anthelmintic is an agent that destroys or expels intestinal worms. Now if one suspects that he or she has intestinal worms, one had better look very closely at his or her diet and lifestyle. And then run (don’t walk) to their nearest Hygienic practitioner and go on a long fast! Taking an anthelmintic drug would not be the answer in any case as we cannot promote health by ingesting deadly poisons.
Any agent which is so poisonous as to cause immediate death to any other living organism should never be consumed. If this volatile oil, which is part of the garlic plant, is so powerful as to result in death of internal parasites and bacteria does it not stand to reason that it would also have a serious detrimental effect on the entire organism?
When any food is ingested, it goes through the same process of digestion and assimulation. Its components are broken down, absorbed through the intestinal lumen and eventually find their way into the bloodstream and lymph. These components are then carried throughout the body and the nutrients are used by the cells as needed. Nonusable components are, of course, rejected and eliminated. If these components are deadly poisons, much harm can be done as they circulate throughout the system and possibly combine with other chemicals within the body or are stored in the tissues.
A rubefacient is an agent which results in reddening of the skin. In other words, as soon as the extracted oil from the garlic is applied to the skin, a redness will result. What does this mean? Redness indicates inflammation and the body’s response to an irritating substance. The body attempts to isolate this invading substance so that it does not enter the bloodstream and create further problems for the body to deal with.
We may assume that if this reaction occurs when this oil is applied topically, extreme irritation must result when it comes in contact with the more delicate lining of the gastrointestinal tract.
We know that the body regards garlic as a poison and attempts to eliminate it as soon as possible. Anyone knows that when they ingest garlic (even a very minute quantity) the odor will remain on the breath and even the skin will smell of garlic. The body is eliminating this poison through the lungs and skin, which seem to be the most rapid and efficient routes.
Many authors claim that garlic is a “miracle food” and recommend it to ‘cure’ all types of ailments. Paavo Airola says, “garlic is, indeed, a tremendously nutritious health food and a miraculous healing plant. It can truthfully be called ‘the king of the vegetable kingdom.’” In the book, Herbal Medicine, Dian Dincin Buchman says, “If garlic weren’t so cheap, we would treasure it as if it were pure gold. Garlic draws out pain, helps in resisting a cold, is an aid in combating hypertension, is a remarkable vermifuge (releases worms from the system), quiets the body, tranquilizes, can be directly applied to warts to whittle them down, can be used (diluted in lots of water) to irrigate the colon to control amoebic dysentery, and can help treat mild cases of mononucleosis.”
In other words, garlic is a powerful drug which results in the suppression of symptoms. But causes have not been removed and no healing has occurred. We have, in fact, halted the healing process when we suppress the symptoms.
Paavo Airola says that, “In my own clinical practice, I have treated many patients with high blood pressure; in most cases the blood pressure was reduced 20-30 mm. in one week by taking large amounts of garlic and garlic preparations.”
This was a very dramatic drop in the blood pressure of this patient. What would cause this pressure to drop so quickly? Was it the ‘miracle’ preparation of garlic? No, garlic has no ability to act just as no drug has the property to act upon the body. But the body does respond to food and toxins which enter. Furthermore, the garlic does not have a mind of its own to treat specific symptoms. It goes through the same digestive process as other foods and enters the circulation. The body detects it as a poison and marshals all of its forces to deal with that poison. Meanwhile, other bodily functions are slowed or depressed while this energy is being directed toward the emergency at hand. If there were healing in the heart, the body would have to stop this process in order to deal with the poison. Continued consumption of large amounts of garlic would have a continued depressing effect on the heart and all the bodily organs and a state of enervation or exhaustion would occur. It may be especially enervating on the heart as opposed to another organ in persons who have high blood pressure because this may be their weakest organ. One should not palliate symptoms but remove the cause of disease.
It is claimed that garlic prevents the formation of plaque in the arteries and thus helps prevent the development of artheriosclerosis and heart disease. Paavo Airola describes one experiment where one-fourth pound of butter at one time was given to five healthy volunteers. Three hours after the volunteers had eaten the butter, their cholesterol levels had risen from an average of 221.4 to 237.4. Later, the same volunteers received the same amount of butter along with the juice of 50 grams of garlic. This time, the cholesterol levels, instead of rising, went down from 228.7 to 212.7 in three hours. Now that really was a “miracle,” or was it?
Now we must recognize that no one consumes one-fourth pound of butter in one sitting. The cholesterol levels in the blood would naturally rise after such a meal. But this is where the cholesterol should be after the meal—in the blood. Excess is then eliminated (as much as possible). That is, under ordinary circumstances, the excess would be eliminated when the body is not so drastically overloaded.
When the volunteers were given garlic with the butter, blood cholesterol levels were reduced. Where did the fat go? Did it disappear? No, it is still in the body, but it is in the tissues and has not remained in the blood. Allicin makes the cells and tissues more permeable and substances enter which would not ordinarily enter.
Garlic also interferes with certain physiological processes. It is known to interfere with the synthesis or breakdown of lipids in the liver. This is why the cholesterol level of those ingesting garlic over a period of time is lower. However, the body synthesizes cholesterol in the liver for a reason and it is needed for certain cellular functions. Any agent which interferes with any normal bodily function is health-destroying and not health-promoting.
The body has its own way of controlling the amount of cholesterol which is in the plasma. Cholesterol synthesis, as well as the hepatic mechanism for removing this steroid from the plasma, are both stimulated by thyroxine. Thyroxine is the hormone which is produced by the thyroid gland. This hormone plays a role in many metabolic activities besides control of cholesterol in the plasma as will be explained later. The output of thyroxine is controlled directly by thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) secreted by the anterior pituitary. These mechanisms are part of the body’s homeostatic mechanisms of checks and balances to keep all bodily actions and reactions in harmony and in balance.
A substance which is present in garlic as well as onions is mustard oil. Mustard oil is metabolically converted to thiocyanate in the body. This substance contributes to the formation of goiter by decreasing thyroxine synthesis in the thyroid gland. Thus, when garlic is eaten, thyroxine is decreased and therefore cholesterol synthesis is reduced.
Garlic then results in the interference of a very important homeostatic mechanism. The impairment of this mechanism does not have just one effect but many. Remember, the body works as a unit and never as separate independent parts.
People think that they have discovered a wonder drug or a miracle food just because one symptom has vanished—in this case, elevated serum cholesterol. In reality, it is a grave deception—an illusion.
Quite often one hears that excessive lipids are the major causes of heart disease. This is not quite the truth. The real cause is the overloading of toxins created through the over-consumption of fats in the diet and in general, an unnatural diet.
It has been claimed that garlic extract has a beneficial effect in the treatment of anemia. This is far from being the truth. In fact, the use of garlic actually results in anemia. The red blood cells are actually destroyed by the allicin in garlic.
It has been claimed that garlic exhibits some anti-inflammatory activity and is therefore effective in the treatment of arthritis.
One cannot get well by suppressing disease. We must remove the cause of disease and provide the conditions for health. Then the body will heal. Garlic undoubtedly does have some anti-inflammatory drug effects. However, this is not a good aspect but an adverse one. Inflammation should never be suppressed as it is a healing response without which even a mild infection could become fatal. To suppress this response by an anti-inflammatory agent is to suppress healing. To more fully understand the consequences of suppressing inflammation, we will take a closer look at this process.
As mentioned, inflammation is a healing response within the body. Whenever there is tissue damage as a result of disease or injury, the damaged tissue cells produce histamines. These histamines cause changes in tiny blood vessels, which in turn release fluids into the injured area. Local blood flow increases, bringing blood cells whose specialty is destroying foreign microbes to the area. Along with these disease-preventing cells comes fibrinogen, which causes clotting. The clotting results in what is called “walling off,” that is, Nature literally builds a partition between the infected area and the rest of your body. The effect is to prevent the infection from spreading. This partition, or wall, stops body fluids from moving outside the infected area, and these fluids build up in the area, causing the characteristic swelling of inflammation.
Before inflammation can arise, there must exist an exciting cause in the form of some obstruction or of some agent inimical to health and life. In this light, we see inflammation as a healing process.
The body does not suppress the growth and multiplication of disease germs until the morbid matter (toxins) on which they subsist has been decomposed and consumed, and until the inflammatory processes have run their course. The use of serums, antitoxins or anti-inflammatory agents given to suppress germ activity and the process of inflammation before it has run its natural course will lay the foundation for chronic destructive disease.
How could any agent which is so poisonous and irritating be a detoxifier? It does, in fact, add toxins to the body. It is claimed that it detoxifies by stimulating the liver, the nervous system and the circulation. This stimulating effect is in reality the body’s response to an unwanted agent and the body’s efforts to eliminate it as quickly as possible. The ingestion of this food as a stimulant will, according to the Law of Duel Effects, eventually depress these organs. Only much harm can come from this practice.
One of the so-called benefits of garlic is claimed to be its anti-coagulant factor. In other words, it inhibits blood clot formation. In truth, this is not a benefit but an undesirable factor. As we all know, if our blood did not clot, we would bleed to death from a slight wound.
In certain disease conditions, a thrombosis (blood clot) occurs in the blood vessels. But if given the proper conditions, the body is equipped to handle this also. Nature has its own anticlotting factors. Heparin occurs naturally in the body tissues. It reduces the ability of blood to clot by blocking the change of prothrombin to thrombin. Thrombin is the enzyme responsible for the formation of fibrin which is the structural ingredient in blood clots.
If a blood clot occurs with a blood vessel, a system within the body called the fibrinolytic system digests the fibrin clots into a number of soluble fragments.
The following are just some of the pesticidal properties of garlic:
Would you put a pesticide on your salad? We had better leave the garlic in the garden!
The onion is one of the oldest vegetables known to man, having been cultivated from the most remote period, as references in Sanskrit and Hebrew literature indicate. It is represented on Egyptian monuments. An inscription on the Great Pyramid states that sixteen hundred talents had been paid for onions for the workmen who built the Pyramids. There were certain religious sects who maintained that onions were impure and forbade their disciples and priests to eat them.
Onions were raised in America as early as 1750. The leading onion-growing states include California, Idaho, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Texas. But onions are grown in many other states and Canadian provinces. Mexico, Italy, and Spain are also noted for their onions.
The onion plant is a biennial (a plant that lives for two years). The upper part of the plant is a set of leaves growing inside each other. The lower part of the leaves become very thick. The flowers are small and white, and grow in round clusters. The bulbs are enclosed in a thin papery covering made up of dried outer leaves. The onion plant has a few shallow roots.
The different kinds of onions have many sizes, colors, and shapes. People who trade in onions classify them as American (strong onions) and foreign (mild onions). The strong type includes the Yellow Globe types and the flatter Ebenezer type.
The onion is not particularly high in vitamins or in energy value.
The substance in onions which gives them their characteristic odor and flavor is mustard oil, a volatile oil which is highly toxic. Its vapors are so irritating that they cause profuse watering of the eyes just by being in contact with the vapors for a few seconds. This oil, if applied directly to the skin, would cause extreme redness and blistering.
Anyone can testify to the fact that after they have eaten onions, even if it was only a small amount, the onion smell stays in their breath for a long time afterwards. The body eliminates much of this toxic oil through the breath as it attempts to get rid of this poison from the system.
As mentioned earlier, the mustard oil is metabolized in the body to thiocyanate. Ordinarily small amounts of thiocyanate are eliminated. But in large amounts this substance is highly toxic and results in disease. Thiocyanates are goitogenic. They contribute to the formation of a goiter by decreasing thyroxine synthesis in the thyroid gland. Thyroxine performs many important functions in the body.
One important function that thyroxine has in the body is to increase the rate at which cells burn their fuel, glucose. It also works in partnership with cortisol (a hormone of the adrenal glands) in defending the body against stress resulting from extreme cold. Thyroxine is also involved in other antistress responses. Emotional stress and severe hunger also provide an elevated thyroxine output. In general, thyroxine comes into play when there is an extra demand for energy. Thyroxine also increases the heart rate. When it is synthesized within the cells of the thyroid, this hormone becomes a part of a protein (thyro-globulin) until needed. When needed, a complex reaction involving the proteolysis (hydrolysis) of thyroglobulin and the synthesis of thyroxine takes place.
This is the point where the thiocyanate interferes with the synthesis of thyroxine. Apparently, the interference occurs with this protein but further research still has to be done in this area. At any rate, much harm can result.
In The Complete Book of Food and Nutrition, J.I. Rodale relates a series of experiments concerning the adverse effects of eating onions. According to Rodale, Dr. M. Kaiser, of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, gorged (experimentally) on enough onions to bring himself down with an all-out case of anemia in a single week.
Experimenting with dogs, the same Illinois scientist first tried them out on the ordinary onion oil extract that is widely used in restaurants and homes for food-flavoring, and discovered that a daily dose of a mere quarter teaspoonful of this substance produced the disease in marked degree. Found to be too potent to try in a proportionate scale on humans, this extract should, they agreed, not even be used in extreme moderation in seasoning.
The next stage in the course of their study consisted simply of enlisting volunteer medical students to overeat the plain food, and in this stage Dr. Kaiser himself participated. Besides their regular diet, the group consumed over two pounds of cooked onions daily for 5 days. At the end of this time all showed typical anemia symptoms, dragging themselves around in an exhausted state and turning pale to their fingertips. On laboratory examination, the red cell count in their blood exhibited a drop of about a million, and the hemoglobin content was also starkly reduced. But this was only a slight anemia when compared with that of the dogs, which for 15 days had been fed comparable amounts of the pungent bulbs. In the animals both red cell count and hemoglobin had sunk to 50 percent below normal.
This destruction of the red blood cells and subsequent liberation and loss of hemoglobin has very grave consequences to the body’s overall integrity. The red blood cells, along with the other constituents of the blood, perform many very important functions. Below is a list of just some of these duties:
It has been claimed that onions ‘cure’ coughs, colds, flu, sinus ailments, bruises, hemorrhoids, and chilblains plus assorted other diseases.
As Hygienists, we know that this could not be true. Only the body can heal. The use of onions may suppress disease symptoms but this is certainly an undesirable effect as this results in suppressing our body’s attempts to heal.
Poisons do not heal—poisons only poison. There are no health benefits in eating onions.
In order for a food to be considered an acceptable part of our diet it must not contain harmful or toxic substances. It must not furnish the body with digestive and eliminative problems. Neither garlic nor onions qualify in this respect.
The food must be delicious. We should be able to eat it with relish. We can’t really say we relish the strong flavors of garlic or onions. Just peeling onions is a job most people dread!
The food must be easy of digestion and assimilation. Does not qualify here!
The food must contain a rather broad range of nutrients and be fairly complete in their complements of nutrients. Both onions and garlic offer little food value.
We should be able to make a mono meal of the food if we desire. No one could make a complete mono meal of either garlic or onions or even consider doing so. Whereas, a mono meal of watermelon, mangoes, grapes, peaches, cherries, or oranges is very appealing.
The conclusion is undeniable that neither garlic nor onions is a true food and they both should be excluded from our diet. I cannot really imagine that anyone would greatly miss these items as they are not really appealing and their after-effects (such as bad breath) are so disturbing. Do yourself a favor and eliminate garlic and onions and you will reap the benefits by increased health and vigor.
Would onions be all right to eat if they were cooked?
Since mustard oil in the onions is a volatile substance, some of it will evaporate during the cooking process. However, enough will remain to make it a toxic substance. Furthermore, I do not recommend cooking as it alters or destroys most food constituents and contributes to toxins in the body. Try staying with an all raw food program and you will find that you will not require onions for seasoning.
I always heard that if you wear a clove of garlic on a string around your neck during the winter, it wards off colds. Any truth to this?
No, it is just an ‘old wives tale’ which has been passed down through the generations.
Are the milder tasting onions less harmful than the stronger ones?
They are somewhat better but still contain enough mustard oil to warrant keeping them off the diet.
Why do I always experience indigestion following a meal that contains either garlic or onions?
All members of the onion family—onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives, etc.—as well as radishes and all other foods containing appreciable amounts of mustard oil—inhibit digestion. This is because they occasion irritation of the stomach and intestines.
A reader of the Health Crusader has submitted an article praising onions and garlic as useful in preventing stroke. He was sure we were right in our stand on garlic and onions but is not so sure now that he read the article that says we need these obnoxious plants to prevent stroke.
The article says “these smelly vegetables are beneficial in treating many ailments.” Now two scientists (unnamed in the article) have isolated the compounds (also unnamed) in garlic and onions which prevent the clumping together (clotting) of blood cells that block circulation and cause strokes.
Of course we know the names of these substances in onions and garlic. They are allicin, a poison on the same order as digitalis (an extract from foxglove) and mustard oil, a highly volatile oil that goes through cell membranes and gets into the cells with great ease. The body cannot digest either of these poisons nor make use of them. They go into the tissues and blood quite readily and cause havoc. The body violently objects to poisons and the eliminative and purifying organs are burdened with a big job. The kidneys, lungs and liver become injured. Their ability to get rid of poisons becomes impaired as they are abused and overworked.
In this article is a basic mistake, namely, the presumption that strokes must be prevented. Nothing is further from the truth. They must be caused! We must not consume disease-causing, sickness-promoting “foods” and drugs. We need to obtain plenty of rest, exercise, and fresh air. Healthy people don’t get blood clots, and taking substances of any kind which contain poisons will not make up for wrong living and eating habits. It will only add to the body toxicity that caused the problems in the first place.
Let’s not eat overly strong foods containing poisonous substances in the mistaken belief that we can prevent stroke or any other health problem. That which is not bound to happen doesn’t have to be prevented or avoided. Vibrant health is normal and will exist unless disease is caused.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. To us, a ripe red apple entices. To a tiger, a gory red carcass is enticing.
So, in seeing an article that sings the praises of garlic in the November, 1978 issue of Reader’s Digest, I wonder what is at the heart of it. Magazines usually don’t devote their space to something without a commercial angle unless there is an overriding reader interest. But let’s presume this article is simply an effort to present a topic of general interest which they sincerely feel will benefit their readers.
When we get into the article we find that garlic is praised for about everything except its food value. In fact the windup is that garlic is a “flavoring agent,” a condiment. But in between we find it is quite toxic (not by the tenor of the article but by some of its uses as an antibiotic and an insecticide). It was noted that its juice can be used as an antibiotic to kill a culture of bacteria in just minutes.
We organic gardeners have long known that we can protect our gardens well by planting garlic amongst some of the rows. Also, it is suggested that the juice of garlic can be used for killing mosquito larvae, aphids, houseflies, caterpillars, etc.
But we of life Science recommend that you not eat garlic because of its poisonous qualities. To be sure, the mustard oil of garlic is the sole ingredient for which it is recommended. And just as surely, it is a poisonous indigestible oil that plays havoc with the human constitution just as does the capsicum of hot peppers, the nicotine of tobacco, the solanine of the nightshade family or any of the myriad of other poisons of popularity referred to as herbs.
There will be a day when garlic and other plants bearing poisons will be recognized for what they are and shunned rather than praised.
37.2. The Myths Of Fermented Foods
37.3. The Harmful Effects of Fermented Foods
RECIPE: “Take one fish and press it under a heavy stone for 24 hours. Remove the fish and pound it until soft and add two cups of salt. Lay the fish in the open sun for another day. Pack fish into straw and put into an open jar. Set jar with fish out in the sun for another month. Smash month-old salted fish into a paste and use it as a soup or spread. Delicious!”
This is a recipe for probably the first fermented food ever eaten by man. Today he eats many more types of foods that have undergone some fermenting processes. Cheese, yogurt, pickles, sauerkraut, soy sauce, vinegar, beer and buttermilk are some of the more common fermented foods eaten today.
None of them are necessary in the diet.
A fermented food is basically a food that has been very carefully spoiled. Fermentation occurs when certain microorganisms (bacteria) break down a food into various waste products. If the “wrong” types of microorganisms decompose the food, then putrefaction, or rotting, occurs.
Fermented foods, then, are the result of active bacteria and contain their waste products (lactic acid and acetic acid are two examples). Putrefied or rotten foods also contain bacteria and certain waste products (usually a nitrogenous substance like ammonia).
Why do people want to eat rotting or decayed foods? Can these foods be beneficial in any way, as some people have claimed? What happens when you eat fermented foods?
Fermented foods like yogurt, pickles, beer and so on were originally used as a substance for fresh foods. Fermentation became a way of preserving foods for the time when there was no supply of fresh food. In effect, man found a way to “spoil” his food by choice so that he could eat it at a later date.
Cheese, for example, was one way that milk could be preserved without refrigeration. Excess cucumbers and cabbage were turned into pickles and sauerkraut for the winter. Fermented foods were actually some of the first preserved foods.
And, like all preserved foods, they cannot supply the ingredients of good nutrition. Still, man has eaten them for hundreds of years, and over that time he has developed some good reasons (or excuses) for eating foods that are full of bacteria, decay and waste products. Let’s look at the reasons given for including fermented foods in the diet.
37.2.1 Fermentation Is NOT A Healthy Way To Keep Foods
37.2.2 Fermented Foods Do NOT Replace Beneficial Bacteria
Fermented foods have been used and have been recommended in the diet for basically four reasons:
Once a food has begun to ferment, it usually continues to do so until it has completely rotted. To halt the fermentation process, either salt, vinegar or extreme cold is used to inhibit the growth of the bacteria living in the food.
Many fermented foods are heavily salted. Salt is a biocide. It kills and inhibits life. The salt in fermented foods prevents the native bacteria from multiplying to the point where putrefaction occurs.
Salt is a useless and harmful inorganic chemical that should never be eaten. Pickles, sauerkraut, cheese and other fermented foods are very heavily salted. Foods preserved with salt should not be included in the diet.
Vinegar is another popular additive to various fermented foods. Vinegar itself is the result of fermentation and is used in concentration to halt the continual decay of fermented foods.
Vinegar, however, disrupts the digestion, kills healthy blood cells, and irritates all the membranes. Pickles and other foods which have been soaked in vinegar are rendered totally indigestible. Many times the digestive juices cannot penetrate and break down the food preserved by vinegar, and so the fermented food passes through the system just as it was swallowed.
A few fermented foods, such as yogurt and beer, are not salted or preserved with vinegar. These types of fermented foods are usually held at low temperatures or bottled to inhibit the continuing growth of the fermenting bacteria ?
One of the reasons most often given for eating fermented food is that they replace beneficial bacteria which naturally live in the intestines. These bacteria aid in the breakdown of food particles and are a part of our native intestinal microflora.
By eating foods rich in bacteria (such as fermented foods), it is believed that our own native bacteria will be enriched and re-established. It sounds reasonable, but this is also a myth.
The effects of fermented foods on the intestinal bacteria are only transitory at best. For example, one of the major so-called beneficial bacteria is called Lactobacillus bulgaricus. It’s found in yogurt and other naturally fermented foods.
This bacteria, however, is not a normal inhabitant of the intestine, and it does not survive long in that environment. In fact, as soon as the foods containing this bacteria are no longer eaten, this “beneficial” bacteria packs its bags and leaves your intestines with the next bowel movement.
Still, there is the persistent insistence that fermented foods can somehow re-establish the needed bacteria in the intestines. People are often advised to drink buttermilk or eat some yogurt or take a swig of acidolphilus after taking antibiotics which have killed the “beneficial” bacteria along with the so-called “harmful” bacteria.
This is quite humorous. First, some bacteria are deemed bad or harmful and a pill is taken to kill them. But the pill works too well, and bacteria we call “good” are also killed. So now we must eat foods full of bacteria to get the “good” bacteria back into our system!
Because of these claims made for fermented foods, much research has been done to see if they can indeed reestablish beneficial bacteria in the intestines. According to a study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the influence of “dietary microflora (bacteria) on the large intestine microflora is unsubstantiated.” The researchers also discovered that even eating two pounds daily of true Bulgarian yogurt “failed to elicit a response in the fecal flora.”
When a rotten or spoiled food is eaten, the body hurries it to the nearest exit in an effort to protect itself. If the food is extremely putrefactive, diarrhea may result. If the food is fermented, an increased motility of the intestines occurs. This increase in intestinal motion is wrongly associated with beneficial digestive or laxative properties of the fermented food. In reality, the body is trying to speedily eliminate a substandard food.
The idea that fermented foods could somehow make digestion easier probably came from the observations of people who could not tolerate whole milk but could eat yogurt or some other fermented milk product.
Over 70% of the world’s adults cannot digest milk. They lack a digestive enzyme called lactase that is needed to digest milk sugar or lactose. Undigested lactose results in diarrhea, cramping and abdominal pains. Fermented milk products are low in lactose, and cause less discomfort than unfermented milk.
Two things should be obvious from this discussion. First, fermented foods (in this case, fermented milk products) are not aiding digestion, but instead are just low in one of the factors that may cause digestive distress (lactose). Digestion is always and entirely under control by the body. Foods cannot “aid” digestion anymore than they can aid breathing or circulation. True, unsuitable foods can disrupt digestion (like milk and its products) but it is fallacious to say that foods which do not disrupt digestion are in fact aiding it. Food is inert. It can do nothing. It is acted on by the body. It cannot perform or abet an active, organic process.
The second thing to be learned is that obviously milk and its products are not good foods for the human body. If a food cannot be enjoyed in its natural and unprocessed state, then it is not a suitable food for the human diet. If milk must first be fermented (or partially decomposed) before it can be tolerated, then why should it ever be used in the first place?
Remember that foods cannot improve digestion, be they papayas or yogurt or sauerkraut. Digestion is improved by allowing the body to rest from this process (fasting) and letting it regenerate its own capacities—not by swallowing a fermented and rotted food.
The most romantic myth about fermented foods is that they can prolong your life. We are given images of 100-year-old Russians dutifully swallowing their yogurt or we’re told about how every long-lived people include at least one fermented food in their diet.
Here is a recent promotion for eating yogurt, perhaps the most popular fermented food: “Yogurt can cure ulcers, relieve sunburn and forestall a hangover. It can be used as a facial or as a remedy for malaria. It confers long life and good looks, prolongs youth and fortifies the soul....”
Stay young, live long and have your soul fortified—quite a claim for a dish full of soured milk. If only it were true.
The idea that fermented foods can prolong life is totally unsubstantiated. This belief got its start around the turn of the twentieth century when an over-enthusiastic researcher named Uya Metchnikoff visited the Bulgarians in Europe. He discovered they had the greatest number of people who had lived past 100, and most of these people also incidentally ate yogurt. He seized upon these two coincidents and tried to present them as “cause” and “effect” without any real research or facts.
Other health writers since that time accepted Metchnikoff’s speculations as truth and let their imaginations run wild. The truth is this: There has never been any validated research which indicates that yogurt or any other food has “life-prolonging” properties. One nutritional researcher, Beatrice Trum Hunter, states that “the yogurt in the long-lived Bulgarians diet was by no means the entire reason. The generous quantities of home-grown vegetables and their stress-free lifestyle played the vital roles in health and longevity of these people.”
It’s always tempting to think you can eat yourself into a long life, and for those people who fall prey to that kind of thinking, the yogurt manufacturers can find a ready market.
A long life, full of happiness and well-being, has as one of its requirements that wholesome, natural foods in an unprocessed state make up the diet. In any case, fermented and rotting foods could not be termed wholesome or natural. In no way, should yogurt or any other fermented food be given “magical” properties by over-enthusiastic promoters and writers.
So far, we have only discussed the myths of the supposedly beneficial effects of fermented foods. Can we say that even though these foods may not be particularly beneficial that they are perhaps harmless? No.
Fermented foods are not only ineffective, but they possess harmful properties as well. We have already mentioned that many fermented foods are heavily salted or preserved with vinegar which makes them harmful. What are some of the other bad properties of these foods?
When foods ferment, or decompose, certain waste products are produced by the bacteria which break down the food. One of these byproducts is alcohol. Many fermented foods, such as soy sauce, contain a significant amount of alcohol. Of course the alcohol in fermented foods is usually a small quantity (unless the fermented food happens to be wine or beer!), but even small amounts of alcohol affect the cells of the body.
Ammonia is another product of fermentation. Fermented soy may be as much as 15% ammonia. Ammonia is dangerous enough as a house-cleaning agent. You certainly shouldn’t be eating it.
Vinegar, in the form of acetic acid, also results from food fermentation. This acid gives fermented foods their sour or sharp taste. That sharp taste is a signal to the body that the food should not be eaten as it is harmful. Vinegar prevents the digestion of foods, so a food filled with vinegar and other similar byproducts would seem to be indigestible.
Another acid that results from fermentation is lactic acid. Lactic acid is a waste product. If you have ever exercised or worked harder than usual, you might notice a stiffness or soreness in your muscles. That stiffness results from a buildup of lactic acid in the muscles. Now eating fermented foods that contain lactic acid may not make you “stiff,” but does it seem intelligent to eat foods that are already high in waste byproducts?
Other acids are also present in fermented foods. Carbonic acid is found in fermented foods and also soft drinks. All of these acids are the wastes produced by the bacteria which are feeding on the decomposing, “fermented” foods.
The foods that are highest in nutrition are those which are eaten in their fresh, natural and unprocessed state. As soon as a food is tampered with in any way, nutrient loss results. The longer a food is held in storage, the lower it becomes in nutrition.
Fermented foods are usually processed or destroyed in some manner. After that, they are often stored and used over a period of weeks or even months. You can eat a pickle that was once a cucumber perhaps one or two years ago, but it is very doubtful if any of the original nutrients remain in that cucumber.
Many times, foods are first heated to a high temperature before fermentation is allowed to occur. Milk is first heated or pasteurized to kill off all bacteria. Then it is inoculated with a specific bacteria strain to ferment it into yogurt. The milk serves merely as a bacteria culture ground.
If heat is not used, then the food is often chopped, sliced, smashed or blended. A whole head of cabbage does not readily “ferment,” but if you bruise and chop it to pieces, then the bacteria will do their natural job of finishing the decomposition process. Whenever foods are cut, chopped or sliced to start the fermentation process, rapid oxidation of the food and a nutrient loss occur.
Another reason given for eating fermented foods is that they are high in B-vitamins, or that they may somehow encourage the body to produce more Vitamin B12 in its intestines. Just the opposite may be true.
According to research, the levels of Vitamin B12 may be reduced by fermented foods. A Bulgarian report indicates that the bacteria within yogurt use the B12 for their own growth. The B12 in kefir (a fermented milk drink) decreases in proportion to its fermentation.
Instead of adding nutritional benefits to the food, fermentation decreases some vitamin and mineral availability.
We’ve explored the myths surrounding fermented foods and described some of the harmful effects that may occur from their use. Now it’s time to name names and discuss each popular fermented food.
37.4.4 Buttermilk, Sour Cream and Kefir
37.4.5 Vegetables You Can’t Digest
Various fermented foods are eaten all over the world. Fermented fish cake is a delicacy in Japan, while the Koreans eat pickled garlic. Our discussion of fermented foods is limited to those foods eaten in the United States.
The most popular types of fermented foods in this country are those made from dairy products. We have already discussed the unsuitability of milk and its products as human foods, so we’ll give you a brief rundown on other aspects of these fermented foods.
Yogurt has been aggressively marketed as a health food. It’s been called the “perfect food” and “insurance for good health.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture in its yearbook for 1965 makes this unqualified statement: “Yogurt has no food or health values other than those present in the kind of milk from which it is made.”
Yogurt has also been advertised as the perfect diet food. Even on this point, yogurt fails. It is high in saturated animal fats, and although plain yogurt has 154 calories per cup, over 80% of all yogurt eaten is the sweetened fruit-flavored variety which has 275 calories a cup.
Research in the last ten years has pointed out another danger of yogurt: cataracts. A cataract is the cloudiness of the lens of the eye. In severe cases, it causes blindness.
In animal experiments, all animals that were fed yogurt exclusively for several months developed cataracts in both eyes. In parts of India where yogurt is a large proportion of the diet, the incidence of cataracts is very high. A coincidence? Doubtful.
Researchers finally decided that some individuals may develop cataracts if they eat foods containing high levels of galactose (a sugar less soluble and sweet than glucose). Yogurt is one of the highest foods in galactose. Most commercial yogurts are 22% to 24% galactose.
People that usually do not eat dairy products sometimes feel obligated to sneak some yogurt into their diet for “health” reasons. There is nothing magical or healthy about yogurt. Like all milk products, it should not be used in the diet.
Cheese is a very popular fermented food. The harmful effects of this food have already been discussed in an earlier lesson. You may want to consider this fact: most commercial cheeses have their fermentation process started by the addition of rennet to the milk. Rennet contains the enzyme rennin which is found naturally in the stomach of a cow.
To get rennet to ferment the cheese, the stomachs of cows are scraped. These stomach extracts are then added to the milk for curdling the cheese. So, can you be a “vegetarian” and still eat cheese which is made with stomach scrapings of cows? Probably not.
Cheese is a food that is always rotting. Leave a piece at room temperature and you’ll have blue, green, white and yellow mold growing all over it. Some people even like to eat this mold, but then some people will eat anything. You don’t need “moldy milk” or cheese in your diet.
There are other fermented dairy foods besides cheese and yogurt. Buttermilk and kefir are two popular fermented milk drinks. Sour cream is exactly that: cream that has soured and gone bad.
Be aware that not only are these foods substandard because they are dairy products, but they are often adulterated before being sold. Buttermilk frequently has salt added to it; kefir is usually sweetened, and sour cream will have preservatives to keep it from becoming totally putrid.
A popular diet a few years ago allowed the dieter to eat all the pickles he or she could hold. If you wanted a snack, eat a pickle. If you had a meal, eat some pickles with it. Why? Because pickles are indigestible. They pass right through just as they were eaten, undigested and unabsorbed. There are better ways to lose weight that this pickle diet, but it does point out one fact: pickled and fermented vegetables are indigestible.
A cucumber is an excellent vegetable. It’s crisp, slightly sweet, full of vital fluids, minerals, vitamins and amino acids. But if you soak that cucumber in vinegar and make a “fermented” food out of it, you’ve destroyed any beneficial properties it had. Digestive juices cannot penetrate pickled foods. They’re like eating rubber. They pass right through you in the same small chunks that you chewed.
They are also heavily salted, spiced and preserved. They should not be eaten.
Although almost any vegetable can be fermented, the next most popular vegetable besides cucumbers for this purpose is cabbage. Sauerkraut is eaten in great quantities by some nationalities. Could it possibly be an acceptable food? Here is what T.C. Fry wrote about this food in 1981: “Sauerkraut is indigestible. The acetic acid (vinegar) that results from its bacterial decomposition is damaging to our digestive tract and inhibits the digestion and utilization of foods eaten with it. It is in the same class as all rotted foods.”
Most of the fermented foods eaten in the world are made from soybeans. Of course, most of these fermented soy foods are chiefly popular in the Orient, but in the last few years they have greatly increased in use in this country as a result of the macrobiotic and other health movements. Is a fermented soybean good for you? You probably know the answer by now, but let’s look at some of them briefly:
Soy Sauce or Tamari: This is the most popular fermented soy product. It is a liquid made from fermenting soybeans and sometimes wheat in large barrels. The end product is a very dark and salty liquid. It contains ammonia, alcohol and various acids. It is also 18% salt.
Miso: Another high-salt fermented food made from soybeans principally. It is used in great quantities by the Japanese, which in turn makes them the highest salt-consuming nation on earth. The Japanese also have the highest rates of stomach cancer on earth—a fact closely related to their high-salt intake of fermented and pickled foods.
Tempeh: This is not a very widely known fermented soy food yet, but it is being very aggressively marketed by private soy industries in this country and also by the Department of Agriculture. Tempeh is a cake of souring soybeans that have a heavy layer of grey-white mold growing all over them. This heavy layer of mold is somehow supposed to make the soybeans more digestible (incidentally, soybeans are probably the hardest to digest of all beans, none of which are easy to digest anyway).Research in the last 15 years has shown that there are dozens of different toxins produced by molds. Different molds produce different toxins. Aflatoxin is the best known toxin and is a potent cancer-causing agent. All molds, however, produce their own unique toxin. Cooking does not destroy the toxins produced by mold. Why anyone would desire to eat moldy foods is a mystery, but it is no secret that they are dangerous.
There are fermented grain products such as sourdough bread. There are fermented drinks such as beer and wine. Some health enthusiasts have devised fermented “nut” cheeses and saltless sauerkraut.
There are two things you need to know about these and all other fermented foods. First, these foods are not needed in the diet. They perform no function, provide no special nutrients, contain no “beneficial” bacteria and have no magical, life-extending properties. Secondly, all fermented foods contain harmful bacterial waste byproducts as well as possible salt, vinegar and other preservatives. In and of themselves, they are harmful to the living organism.
If a person follows the biologically correct diet of fresh, unprocessed fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts, he will have no perverse cravings for such spoiled foods. Eating rotting, putrefying and decomposing foods is an acquired habit, much like meat-eating and eating junk foods. Like these perverse habits, the practice of eating fermented and putrefied foods should be quickly abandoned by the dedicated seeker of health.
I think you’re wrong. Whenever my stomach is upset, I can eat yogurt but any other food bothers me.
Fermented foods may be “tolerated” by people with poor digestion because in actuality these foods do not digest at all! The body has the wisdom to recognize a spoiled and rotted food (which is what a fermented food is). It tries to hurry this food through the digestive tract to the anus where it can be quickly expelled and not disrupt the body. You don’t digest a fermented food—you can only quickly eliminate it.
By the way, no food should be eaten on an upset stomach. People often make the mistake of eating something to “soothe” digestive upset. If you ever experience any digestive discomfort, that is a strong signal for you to skip or postpone your next meal.
Almost every country in the world has some fermented food that they eat. Don’t you think that means something?
Tradition and popularity are the poorest ways to determine a proper diet. The only authority you should rely on when it comes to determining what is best to eat is your own body. In other words, the physiology and anatomy of your body are what make foods “acceptable” or “harmful” in the diet.
Your physiology will not accept fermented or rotting foods as a substitute for wholesome foods. Your body does not digest them. The waste products in such foods disrupt the digestion. The nutrient loss in fermented foods makes them unbalanced.
Learn about the physiology of your body and the mechanics of digestion. These will tell you more about a good diet than the mistakes made by millions of others.
I make my own saltless and raw sauerkraut from fresh cabbage. I also have “yogurt” made from milk of blended raw nuts. I enjoy these foods and they have not been cooked, salted or so on, Why shouldn’t I continue to use them?
Let me ask a question. Do you actually improve the cabbage or nuts or whatever you ferment by this process? No. You have processed them either by blending, chopping, liquifying, grinding or whatever. You have fractured the foods and encouraged oxidation and nutrient loss. You have allowed fresh and wholesome foods to slowly decompose and rot from bacterial action.
What do you gain from all of this? Better health? Mysterious benefits? Nothing at all. If there’s no benefit to fermented foods, why go to all the trouble of adulterating your food? True, you are using the best of ingredients with no harmful additives. But by encouraging these foods to putrify to give them a sour taste, you are wasting them and doing yourself no good at all.
If cooked and processed foods, meat, coffee, tea and other beverages are so poisonous, how come 75% of our population live to be 70 to 80, some even older? If dead food and poisonous foods are so bad, that doesn’t seem right. There is some contradiction in your teachings somewhere along the way. Please explain.
Your question really opens a can of worms! First, there are some unwarranted assumptions, namely that people live to be 70 or 80 on an exclusively dead food diet containing poisonous beverages and processed foods. That is not true. Most people do get raw foods almost on a daily basis. It is because of these foods that we survive as well as we do. The main thing humans require in their food intake is fuel, and cooked foods do furnish this. But they also give an unwanted product—poisonous ashes which result from the breakdown or destruction of food from heat. These poisonous ashes are not as readily observable as ashes in a fireplace or from a cigarette, but they are there nonetheless. Consuming ash-laden food is destructive. It is by a thin margin that we last as long as we do.
The human body is marvelously complex. It has hundred of defensive mechanisms to protect it against the ravages of poisons. The body has a tremendous capacity for throwing off poisons. But this capacity is best not used because each bout with poisons lowers our vitality until finally we become the whimpering suffering bunch that the majority of us really are. Did you know that over 50% of Americans suffer from some serious chronic illness? Did you know Americans suffer over 600 million colds a year? Did you know that 50 percent of American meals end up in indigestion? Did you know that 45 percent of Americans die of heart problems? Another 20 percent from cancer?
Humans are hard to kill—that’s all that your question indicates. If we look into the factors of longevity, we see that disease and suffering are very, very common among Americans. It’s incredible that many live to 70 or 80! But, if we lived healthily we might live to well over 100 on the average—without any suffering! America is so bad off healthwise that I can say there’s a 99% chance that you have bad teeth, a 72 percent probability that you have less than perfect eyesight (perfect is normal), a 50 percent chance that you have some nagging perpetual ailment, and so on.
Yes, it is remarkable that the human body can take so much punishment and yet survive. But that is no reason to continue the abuse of our highly-developed organism. It will be so much more serviceable and perform so much better if it is accorded the care it requires. In this regard it is like an automobile. But, unlike an automobile, we cannot replace it. Attempts are made to replace body parts but this is often unsuccessful or unsatisfactory because the body rejects alien tissues.
Do you know what happens to those who don’t get enough nutrients and who consume junk food and other poisonous substances? Have you ever wondered why cancer is now our number one child killer? The truth is that junk foods, cokes and sodas, meats, eggs, etc. cannot make healthy (normal) cells. Without the minimum nutrients needed the powers of life wane and the poisons wreak their havoc until leukemia or other cancers result.
One of the most prominent features of our way of life is our prevalent disease and suffering. The average Chinaman is a living example of fitness and well-being compared with the average American. Yet this is not to praise the Chinese mode of living. Rather, theirs is simply much less harmful than our own. They do so many more things that are right by their bodies than we do.
Americans play the game of Russian roulette with their bodies. But it’s our life, not a game. Learn how to live healthfully. Then apply what you know. Put what you’re learning into practice now.
38.2. The Economics Of Junk Food
38.4. Breaking The Junk Food Addiction
Article #1: Control Through Clear Thinking by A.D. Andrews, Jr.
Article #2: Is This The Kind Of System You’d Like To Live Under?
Article #3: Blueprint For Survival by Keki R. Sidhwa, N.D., D.O.
Junk foods are more than just something to eat. They also represent money, profits, past emotional associations, childhood indulgences, and high-power advertising.
The junk food problem is not simply one of nutrition, but is related to the economic structure of this country and to the psychological and emotional makeup of millions of Americans.
If you want to wean yourself, your friends, and your clients away from health-destroying junk foods, then you must also understand the true nature of junk food addiction. You must learn how junk food is promoted, and why we allow ourselves to become willing addicts to food that supplies no nutrition or fulfills no need in the human diet. In short, you must learn about the economical and psychological aspects of junk food.
More than half of all foods eaten by the typical American are junk foods. A junk food in this case means a food that is exceptionally high in sugar, fat or salt and supplies little or no nutrition. In short, a junk food consists largely of calories and little else.
Still, it is hard to believe that one out of every two bites eaten is a mouthful of junk food. Yet, it is true. Here’s what the typical American ate last year:
1. Refined white sugar | 100 pounds |
2. Fats and Oils | 55 pounds |
3. Soda and Cola Drinks | 300 cans or bottles |
4. Chewing gum | 200 sticks |
5. Ice Cream | 80 quarts |
6. Candy | 18 pounds |
7. Potato Chips | 5 pounds |
8. Other snack chips | 2 pounds |
9. Doughnuts | 63 dozen |
10. Cookies and cakes | 70 pounds |
On the average, every man, woman and child in this country is eating about 700 pounds of junk food each year. This does not even count other substandard and inappropriate foods, such as meat, alcohol, white bread, jams, jellies, and soon.
These foods have no nutritional value; indeed, they contribute to over 90% of all illnesses in this country. Why do people eat them? Obviously it’s not for any food value.
No, junk foods are eaten for two basic reasons: 1) they are highly visible, heavily advertised and are a cornerstone of this nation’s food dollar; and 2) junk foods exert a subtle but powerful psychological appeal for the user of such foods.
Junk foods exist today for only one reason: they are highly profitable. Because they can be marked up so heavily over the costs of production, junk foods put millions of dollars into the pockets of manufacturers.
It’s a fact that the lowest-profit item in most grocery stores is the produce—the fresh fruits and vegetables—and that the highest mark-up comes from packaged, processed and junk foods.
Natural and traditional foods, like fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, are rarely advertised because they cannot be given a brand name or identity by a manufacturer. After all, a potato is just a potato, and worth only a few cents a pound. But if you slice that potato, boil it in oil, add a large dose of salt and preservatives, and package it a bright bag with a catchy name, then you have potato chips that can be sold for ten to twenty times the cost of the original potato.
Even twenty years ago, it was discovered that for every dollar spent on breakfast cereals (a sugary junk food), only a fraction went for the cost of the raw materials. Consider where the average junk food dollar goes:
For Each Dollar Spent On Junk Food...
In contrast, for every dollar spent on produce and natural foods (like whole grains, nuts, seeds, dried fruits), about 65 cents goes for the actual food cost and the remaining for transportation and retail markup.
Not only does the consumer of junk and processed foods pay in terms of health and well-being, he is also spending 5 to 20 times as much as he should for the actual food.
Here’s another example: a popular “food” developed a few years ago was called “Shake ‘n Bake.” It was a food crust or covering put on chicken, fish and so on. It sold for $2.63 per pound. It was mostly wheat flour, with a few artificial spices and coloring, that could be purchased for 15 cents a pound for its raw ingredients. The consumer was paying the extra $2.48 for television advertising and promotion.
It’s the advertising and packaging that make junk foods so expensive and so profitable. In fact, without mass advertising, there would probably be no junk foods. An understanding of the junk food problem, then, requires an understanding of the advertising and promotion of this food.
Of all the products sold in this country, food is the most ideally suited to manipulation and deception. The consumer has a limited ability to evaluate the effects of food processing on its nutritional value. He has no idea about the long-term effects of food additives on his health. He cannot verify any of the claims made by the advertising.
Food should serve one primary purpose: supplying the materials needed by the body for its health and preservation. Junk foods cannot do this. In fact, they do just the opposite. In that case, it should be easily seen that there are no rational reasons to purchase or consume junk foods. There is no real need for them.
The manufacturers of these foods realize this. They also know that if they can create an imagined need for their products, they can get consumers to buy them. If you take a child that is raised away from the influences of television, peer influence, and deceptive advertising and ask him what he desires when he is hungry, he might respond with something like “an apple” or “a banana.” He most assuredly wouldn’t answer with “a Ding-Dong” or “Captain Chocolate Cereal.”
Unless a junk food is advertised, we know nothing about it. Having no innate need for it, we wouldn’t buy it. But if we are told that it exists and that we should probably try it, then we may fall prey to the advertising gimmicks of junk food salesmen.
Michael S. Lasky, author of The Complete Junk Food Book, has this to say about eating junk food and the power of advertising:
“We are all proselytized at an important age into consuming puppets of the junk food barons. Our parents inadvertently help them by buying their products as a form of ‘reward’ food. We grow up unaware that we have slowly acquired a junk food habit by the subtle forces of advertising. By the time we are capable of making a decision about junk food, we are already hooked from years and years of indulging in what we had been told by TV was good food.”
Actually, very little “good food” is advertised. Eighty percent of all food advertising is for blatant junk foods. Most of the remaining 20% is for convenience foods that are often little better than the candy, cakes, and snack foods which make up the majority of food advertising. In fact, out of the top 100 most heavily advertised food products, over 30 of them have absolutely zero food value, except for empty calories.
The majority of Americans receive almost all of their nutritional information from advertising. In other words, the typical person only knows as much about nutrition and good food as the advertisers want to tell him. When asked how good a job food manufacturers do in telling the public about good nutrition, a leading advertising executive for a convenience food company said: “The job of product advertising is to persuade and sell, not to educate.”
Studies have shown that it does not matter how nutritious a food may be or even how good it tastes. It is advertising alone that sells a food product, and it is primarily the junk foods and the nonfoods that are advertised the heaviest.
The manufacturers and advertisers of junk food are not the only ones to blame for our nation’s ill health. Economics dicates that chain supermarkets and grocery stores must also be aggressive partners with the producers of junk food.
Walk into any grocery store and what do you see? Outside of maybe one aisle for fresh produce and the milk and meat sections, the rest of the store is filled with packaged and convenience junk foods.
Consider these facts: Eighty percent of all food items sold in the supermarket did not exist ten years ago. In the past decade, over 9700 new items were introduced into grocery stores. The majority of these items are packaged junk foods which are characterized by a remarkable lack of nutrients due to overprocessing.
That’s right, your friendly neighborhood grocer is simply another of the links in the junk food chain—foods that the Senate Committee on Human Health and Nutrition say contribute to 6 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in this country.
More than 50% of all purchases made in a supermarket are done on a whim. You don’t go to a grocery store with the conscious thought of buying frozen brownies or butterscotch chip cookies. The designers of supermarkets know this, and consequently they stack all of the high-profit junk foods in front of the consumer so it is impossible to avoid seeing them.
In a book called The Supermarket Trap, author Jennifer Cross says that even a person with a cast-iron will can fall prey to the junk food merchandising used in grocery stores. “The consumer’s senses become so blitzed by the sheer amount of food choices that everything becomes a blur. Logic and common sense fail us, and we choose food items solely because of attractive packaging or name recognition.”
The simple way to avoid such a trap is to buy only specific items from a supermarket. If you go into the store and head straight for the fresh produce department and come straight out, you can miss the cookies, candies and packaged foods that might beckon you. Most grocery shoppers make the mistake of pushing their basket up one aisle and down the other, exposing themselves to thousands of poor food choices and useless products.
Marketing studies have shown that from 70 to 90% of the time, the purchase of junkie favorites like candy, frozen desserts, snacks and chips occur because of an instored decision. People do not consciously go into a store to purchase useless and destructive nonfood items, but once they are inside, they become fair game for the promotion and advertising tricks of the store.
There are two ways to handle this situation. The best way is simply to refuse to ever buy or eat such products. If junk foods are never a part of your diet, you’ll never be tempted to buy them. Even if you eat them only on rare occasions, the potential for buying them will still remain. The second way is to make a list before you go shopping. Then refuse to buy anything not on your list, and always shop alone—without a spouse or begging children.
Not only does the junk food industry aggressively promote health-destroying foods through advertising, but they defend them with a barrage of propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies. Much of this propaganda is aimed at children and concerned parents.
Consider the following statements that are in a booklet distributed to over 60,000 students by the National Confectioner’s Association.
Not to be outdone, the National Soft Drink association passes out literature to children and high school athletes that tell them “soda drinks are a good source of water.” A better source of water is water itself—but then, you can’t sell pure water for a hefty profit under some brand name.
Finally, read what the Hershey Foods Corporation has to say about proper nutrition in their “Nutritional Information” handbook: “Calories are important, and foods which supply only calories can, if used correctly, contribute to good nutrition.” Of course, one of the highest calorie, no-nutrition foods is white sugar—a chief ingredient in this manufacturer’s products.
Besides deceptive advertising and outrageous propaganda, the junk food industry defends its products by emphasizing the added nutrients these products contain. “Fortified” candy bars and cereals are used to lure consumers into thinking that they might be getting a little nutrition among the garbage.
Here’s how it works. Junk food manufacturers know that their products have no nutritional value and that their foods are open to attack by nutritionists. To head off such criticism, they often add vitamins and minerals to their products. Thus we have sugary bits of cereal that claim to supply 100% of all our vitamin and mineral needs. There are candy bars that give us “10% of all 19 nutrients” that we need.
Adding inorganic and useless vitamins and minerals to junk food is a cheap process. You can turn a box of sugared, processed cereal into a daily vitamin pill by adding about two cents worth of additives. In turn, these fortified junk foods are then marked up 15 to 25 times what it costs to add these useless vitamins and minerals.
Fortified junk foods still have the white sugar, the saturated fats, the high salt content, and the empty-calories. The consumer is fooled by two cents of added minerals and vitamins. Even worse, the so-called “extra” vitamins and minerals which were added to the junk food cannot be used anyway. They are inorganic chemicals, just like the other additives and the preservatives already laced through the destructive foods.
Children are the helpless members of out society. And they are the biggest target for the junk food pushers. Children know nothing about nutrition or the necessity of eating wholesome foods. They receive most of their knowledge from television programming and advertising.
Junk foods are advertised on children’s television shows at the rate of 20 times per hour—certainly enough to qualify it as brainwashing. Robert B. Choate, a television critic, told a Senate investigating committee, “When you take a child who sits in front of Saturday TV and hears sugar, sugar, sugar, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, he picks up a habit that is going to last all his life.”
“Get’em while they’re young” is the attitude of the sugar cereal and candy manufacturers. And they’re successful. The Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee found that junk food products advertised on television are more frequently requested by children than any other products, including toys.
“Television advertising,” says Dr. Judith J. Wurtman and author on children’s nutrition, “is probably the most persistent force undermining good- eating habits.” One father who became concerned about his children’s health threw away his television set after he became tired of salesmen in my living room telling lies to my children.” Maybe you don’t want to go that far, but here are some things you can do to counter the effects of junk food advertising on children.
If you’re a parent, you will have a massive job in reeducating and protecting your children from the effects of junk food advertising. It is amazing that we have removed ads for cigarettes and hard liquor from television, but allow ads for “Sugar Puffs-Puffs” and “Chocolate Doo-Dads” to be blast into our children’s brains at the rate of 5,000 per year.
Junk food addiction begins in childhood, and this is where the problem can be most easily handled.
We cannot blame the entire junk food problem on the manufacturers and advertisers of these products. After all, if people did not eat such foods, they would never be kept in the marketplace. But people do eat junk foods. And they eat them almost compulsively, without regard to their health or to the innate harmfulness of these foods.
Why do junk foods exercise such a stranglehold on America’s nutritional well-being? Primarily because such foods are psychologically addictive. A habitual use of junk food occurs not because the food is fulfilling any physiological need, but because they answer some psychological need. People eat non-nutritious, worthless foods purely for emotional and psychological reasons.
Psychological studies have shown that food is the single most powerful emotional stimulus in our lives. We use foods as much to cheer us up, to fight depression, to reward ourselves, to indulge ourselves as we do to satisfy any hunger, real or imagined. And because we often eat for emotional reasons, we often choose foods that are associated with specific emotional experiences. Unfortunately, such foods are often “pleasure” foods or junk foods.
“Most people do not eat foods because they are good for them,” says Dr. Robert S. Harris, a professor of nutritional biochemistry at MIT, “But because the foods appeal to their appetite, to their emotions, to their soul.”
Junk foods have a strong appeal to the primitive and infantile emotions. They are usually very sweet, very rich, and very filling. They remind us of our first rich and sweet food, mother’s milk. They take the place of the natural sweets, like fruits, that our sweet tooth craves.
Junk foods are often the foods that our parents gave us for being “good”—ice cream, candy, cookies. Consequently, when we have been “good,” we still reward ourselves with these foods. It is an early conditioning that persists long into adulthood.
It is interesting to observe that junk food is the single largest class of pollutants that modern man inflicts upon himself. Forget about air pollution, cigarette smoke, contaminated water, radiation, or so on. It is the junk food eaten everyday by almost every person in this country that is the biggest source of internal pollutions. Now psychologically, this is an interesting situation.
Junk foods, besides being a way to reward ourselves, now also become a way to punish ourselves. People who are depressed and who have a low self-esteem often eat health-destroying foods in an effort to punish themselves for being unworthy or for having committed imagined wrongs. Junk food becomes for these people a socially-sanctioned form of suicide.
A successful avoidance and elimination of junk food from the diet requires efforts from two sides. First, a barrage of nutritional information and hard facts about the destructiveness of these foods must be obtained. Second, the person’s psychological state must be evaluated and improved so that this addiction can be exposed and eliminated forever.
Nutritional arguments for the elimination of junk food may not be effective enough to wean people away from a poor diet. Almost everyone, however, understands the benefits of saving money. Eliminating junk food not only results in better health, but it means a real savings in the amount of money spent every day.
Let’s look at the typical costs for a junk food habit for the average person. During a week, every person in this country is calculated to consume, on the average; the following amounts of junk food:
Notice that the above does not take into consideration any fast food eaten out or convenience foods prepared (such as frozen desserts, sugared cereals, etc.) The average spent on such foods per week varies greatly, but a conservative estimate of the costs of such foods per week is around $18.
Not only do these junk foods and fast foods cost money to eat, but the after-effects of consuming such foods often results in additional money being spent. Indigestion, headaches, colds, hemorrhoids, colitis, and many other ailments may be traced to junk food consumption. The average person may spend another $5 per week just on “medicine cabinet” remedies or over-the-counter drugs for these illnesses that result from such foods.
A year of junk food eating also typically results in about six new cavities and a tooth needing capping or pulling, according to figures from Army dentists. This translates into an average $10 per week for dental care.
We still do not know the costs of medical expenses that accumulate because junk food eaters go to their doctors, nor can we accurately figure in how many lost days of work result from such a diet. Even so, the total costs of eating junk food for a year are impressive. Consider these ‘figures:
Junk foods | $832 |
Fast foods | $936 |
Drugs and Medication | $260 |
Dental Bills | $520 |
Medical Bills (estimate) | $250 |
Days lost from work (estimate) | $350 |
Total yearly loss of income from junk foods | $3,148 |
By eliminating junk foods from the diet, a person would realize enough yearly savings to purchase a new car every three years. He or she would have more energy, a higher level of health and well-being, and literally extra years to enjoy such benefits. No one really knows how much junk foods shorten the lifespan, but it would probably not be unrealistic to use the same figures that are often quoted for cigarette smokers. Every cigarette smoked means a 15-minute decrease in your life. Junk foods, with all their poisons and additives, may be more harmful than smoking and it would not be unreasonable to assume for every bag of cookies or quart of ice cream, you’re knocking off hours, days, and weeks of your life.
Understand that these figures are speculative and have no sound basis in hard research simply because no one has had an opportunity to study the long-term effects of eating junk foods. We are the first generation of guinea pigs for the high-sugar, high-salt, high-fat and high-poison junk food diet.
Regardless, it is painfully obvious that people who consume junk foods not only steal money from themselves and their families, but also lay the foundation for expensive and painful suffering in the years to come. Can any type of food or sensual pleasure be worth these costs? Is a chocolate chip cookie or a scoop of ice cream or a diet soda worth $3000 plus a year?
The next time someone says to you, “I’m just dying for a piece of that cake or pie,” you should let them know that that is just precisely what they are doing, and they are also paying dearly for this “privilege.”
As we have seen, the junk food problem is not simply one of nutrition. Good nutrition is easy to teach, but is only partially effective in getting people away from their junk food habits.
People must also be made aware of the economic and psychological aspects of eating junk food. This lesson should help you educate others who are ready to abandon the typical high junk food diet of most Americans.
First, teach the person the economic facts of life about junk foods.
Second, the person must be made aware of the psychological reasons for junk food addiction. He should be told that most eating patterns are based on emotional and not rational decisions. Foods as a reward or punishment should not be used—neither for children nor adults.
Negative eating habits and poor choices sometimes result from a lack of self-esteem or self-worth. A person addicted to junk food may have other serious problems connected with the personality or with social behavior. To eliminate junk foods from such a person’s diet, he or she must also embark upon an overall health program of improvement. They must view themselves in a different light, and consider themselves worthy of good health and sickness-free living.
Third, children are especially vulnerable to junk foods. Outside of rational explanations and setting a good example, you can wean children away from junk foods with healthy substitutes. Sweet dried fruits can replace candies. Fresh juices or blended fruits can take the place of sugary drinks. Realize that most children want the sweetness of junk foods because they have a natural sweet tooth and demand for high-carbohydrate foods that can supply them with energy. In this case, give them plenty of natural carbohydrates with fresh fruits, dried fruits and occassional nuts and seeds.
The way to fight junk food addiction is through education. Tell your friends, your family and your clients about the nutritional inadequacies of these foods. Let them see the economic harm that also comes from consuming such foods. An approach to this problem on several levels—nutritional, economic, and psychological—can help most people end their romance with junk food and give them years of healthy and illness-free living.
There’s one aspect of junk foods that you overlooked. The ecological benefits from avoiding all junk foods.
Thank you. That is also a very important area, and it may help some people end their consumption of these foods. Ecologically, junk foods are a disaster. Right now there are millions of acres of trees and rain forests in South America that are being destroyed forever by a major hamburger chain. They are clear-cutting trees hundreds of years old so that they can raise more cattle at a cheap price for their hamburgers. Not only that, but millions of trees are sacrificed annually so that these hamburgers and french fries can be packaged in paper and wrappings.
Junk food is a rich source of both external and internal pollution. Litter from junk food products is astounding, and it is everywhere. My family and I were once picking peaches in a large orchard that allowed the public to pick and eat all the peaches they wanted., We were happily picking and eating tree-ripened fruit right in the orchard. Suddenly I noticed that all over the grounds of the orchard were candy bar wrappers, chip bags, empty soda cans, and bags from rake-out fast food places.
Here were thousands of luscious fruits all around us—the natural food for man, and the best available, just for the picking. What were people doing? They were bringing in bags of junk food and throwing the remains on the ground. They had become so blinded and desensitized by their addiction to junk foods that they could not even recognize wholesome foods that were literally hanging before their very eyes.
Not only that, but after eating such foods, their consciousness was so deadened that they threw the trash and garbage from these foods all around them. It’s sad, but people that eat junk and trash foods often act trashy. There is no way that you can claim to be concerned about the environment or ecology and still eat junk foods. It’s a contradiction, and junk foods are a significant part of the pollution affecting our planet.
My problem is other people. They all think I never have any fun because I won’t eat their “fun” foods, like potato chips and cookies. They tell me that I’m cheating myself out of some simple enjoyments. What should I say in return?
The main problem with junk food is that so many people see it as a harmless pleasure or as a legitimate form of entertainment. Food should be pleasurable to eat, but too often it is used just as social entertainment. Why people think that you must eat health-destroying foods to be sociable is a mystery. Often you will find people that eat junk foods do indeed know better. They realize that they are making poor and incorrect food choices, and no doubt they unconsciously resent it when you do not “join in” and give your support to their bad habits.
Probably the best thing to say when offered junk foods is a polite and smiling, “No, thank you” without any further explanation. If you’re pressed, simply say that you feel much better when you don’t eat such foods. Make it sound like your rejections of these foods is a personal choice and not an attack on their dietary habits.
People dislike being told that they are doing the wrong thing—especially when they already suspect it. By remaining pleasant and exhibiting a well-balanced attitude toward such foods, you may make a positive impression on the person and thereby encourage them to also give up junk foods. By no means should you lecture to the person or point out how much better you are than them. A well-balanced, healthy person is usually a strong enough argument for the avoidance of junk foods.
My friends always tell me that fast foods are a cheap way to eat dinner, and that they really couldn’t afford to eat just fresh fruit and vegetables. Now you say that these foods are actually costly. What’s the truth?
Fast foods are deceptive. Certainly you can fill your stomach up for every little money, but this “full” feeling is because of the heavy amounts of grease and fat present in these foods as well as the cheap white bread and filler that they use.
Junk foods may seem like a cheap way to fill up, but they are an expensive way to get nutrition. Proper eating is not just having your stomach full. When these same people who get a cheap meal at a fast food place later have to pay hundreds of dollars on dental or medical care, they don’t see the connection. When they later have cancers, heart problems, kidney failure and premature aging, they never suspect that they are results of too many “cheap” meals.
You cannot cheat your body of the nutrients and foods it needs by just “filling it up” with cheap, greasy bulk. The best way to eat inexpensively is to select those foods that promote the highest level of health—regardless of financial costs. You see, even if you spend twice as much for good foods than for junk foods, you’re avoiding the much greater expenses of pain, suffering and ill-health.
Junk foods are nutritionally worthless and health-destroying. Yet they still make up, half of the average person’s diet. Why? Because the economics of junk food production and promotion make them a high-profit and a highly visible item.
People are first manipulated by the manufacturers into buying junk foods, and then they are controlled by their psychological addictions to continue eating the foods.
Eliminating junk foods from a person’s diet depends upon a three-fold approach. First, intensive nutritional education. This is the rational appeal. Next, a concrete illustration of how much money can be saved if junk foods are eliminated (actual costs of the foods, expensive sicknesses caused by such foods, etc.). This is the material appeal. Finally, an explanation of the psychological factors in eating junk foods (how they serve as an emotional substitute, how they are used to “reward” or “punish.”) This is the emotional appeal. An education program of this sort is effective in breaking the junk food addiction.
I have a Master of Science Degree in Health Education. Also I have been certified (for life) by the State of Missouri to teach classes in Health. This presentation of personal achievement is supposed to impress you. It is important that I make a big impression on you at the beginning of this article because I am getting ready to make some highly unusual statements in the very next paragraph and I want you to pay close attention to the statements and to follow the advice which I offer.
If you are going to eat anything besides raw foods, namely fruits, nuts and palatable vegetables, then eat the junkiest foods you can get. Eat canned foods, processed foods. When you cook at home cook out of aluminum utensils. Peel all vegetables and boil them thoroughly. Fry foods in cast iron skillets at high temperatures using saturated fats and oils. Apply salt, pepper and other condiments freely. Pay no attention to combinations. Eat as much as you can stuff down. Have rich desserts and drink liquids with your meals.
Now my earnest advice is for you to eat no cooked foods, only raw foods. However, if and when you “slip” eat all things bad and nothing good. I am completely earnest. Here is why. It will make you quite ill, quite soon and shake you up. It will bring you back to your senses, put you back on the straight and narrow. You may even decide to fast for a day or two to keep your wits about you for an extended period of time. It will precipitate or stimulate symptoms of acute disease. You will have no difficulty relating cause and effect.
It helps clear thinking if we learn to think through analogies. A number of years ago friends of mine were “busy-busy” working for the enactment of a “humane” slaughter law in the state of Missouri. They were disgruntled that I fought against this bill. (It passed, by the way.) Why did I fight against it? People already are too far removed from the act of slaughter and what it entails. The attractively arranged meat platter with garnish and color seldom is connected with the violence it took initially to bring that pleasing plate to the table. Those appealing prepackaged meats on display in the local supermarket are a far cry from the appalling brutality of the slaughter house. So the very thing that is needed is whatever is at hand to make people see flesh eating for what is really is, a barbarous, gruesome, ugly, cruel practice that destroys human morality as surely as it destroys the animals we kill. Flesh eaters need to see their flesh in stark reality as corpse rather than prime rib, as carcass of a dead animal instead of K.C. steak, as cesspools of putrefaction rather than as sources of complete protein. Already people are mired and bogged in the slough of a vile practice. The last thing they need is further lulling with thoughts that it all has been accomplished “Humanely.” And the long-range effects of any practice that benumbs man’s noble instincts of kindness and concern for creatures less able than himself are more dangerous and devastating to his final demise than the damage done by the pathological effect of meat-eating on his body.
People are rather fooled in their minds with the seriousness of an offense (in any area) in relation to the overall harm that is done. They assume, for example, that arsenic is more “dangerous” than, say, fluorides in public drinking water. They assume this because they see an arsenic victim agonize and die on the spot. The fluoridated water drinker seems to go on day after day and live out his “normal” life.
The truth of the matter is that one man takes arsenic and dies. Many people see the result of this, see it quite clearly. They understand what they saw and no one ever considers taking arsenic purposefully or accidentally. He fears and runs from arsenic, arsenic compounds or anything containing or thought to contain arsenic. One dies; many live.
However, the man who “thinks” it’s a good idea to drink only distilled or filtered or mountain stream water, may, at inconvenient times, get caught thirsty in an office building or a friend’s home or he may just react mechanically as he passes a drinking fountain and take a drink of fluoridated water assuming in his mind that “It won’t kill him.” But when the sum total of all the damage to all life done by drinking and using fluoridated water is considered, it will be recognized that far more damage has been done than was done by the one dose of arsenic from which many learned their lessons. Here, no one learns. To the contrary all are lulled into the acceptance and further practice of something which gradually will leech the health potential of the entire nation. And down, down, down we shall go until we know again the company of the dodo bird!
This one practice is only one of many things we do that sap us, drain us. And it is our rationalization of each one’s being only a minor thing. We wrongly see narcotics as being more harmful than candy; alcohol as being more dangerous than white bread. The list could be added to indefinitely. We see the big lie as sinful but the white lie as expedient. We view the robber and the thief with disdain but tell our own children to lie about their ages to enter cinema or ride the bus for less cost. Less cost, my eye! The bombing of a Birmingham church that kills little children is horrible, I agree. But, at least it shakes up and horrifies the total nation and causes it to examine its conscience. And the damage done is nothing when compared to the insiduous moral erosion that takes place day after day, year after year, by individuals collectively and sustainingly thinking, feeling, voicing little hates, biases, prejudices against other human beings for any reason be it race, religion, business or politics.
Why is man forever fooled and deluded by the obvious? Why does he clutch so tenaciously to a dollar bill and look so disdainfully upon a penny? It is recognition of this foible that makes beggars rich! And it doesn’t matter what be the area—food, drink, health, crime, morality, everything. It is not the big, obvious things we have to fear. We know the big things for what they are. We have no trouble relating big things to their results, to the damage they do.
It is a little thing done over and over for a long period of time that does widespread, irreparable harm. It is the variety of little things which when considered in aggregate kill individuals and nations.
Let us work to broaden our picture of the present to include yesterday and tomorrow, yesteryear and the years ahead. Let’s become aware, really aware that an act is the same as the result of an act. Cancer is horrible! It is ugly, painful, frightening, stinking. No one argues this. And if this be so then all things that lead or contribute to cancer are ugly, painful, frightening, stinking! It cannot be otherwise.
So, if you see a single, occasional, sociable cup of coffee, with an old friend as being “nice,” then brother, you are blind! And a blind fool at that...because coffee and stomach cancer are related. They are one and the same. And if you say, “So what, I’ll run the risk for the pleasure of the moment,” then, brother, not only are you a fool, you also are insane!
If a man is sitting in the middle of the floor hitting himself in the head with a hammer you have no trouble adjudging him as nuts. And because he says he enjoys each blow knowing it will finally destroy him makes him no less crazy. There is no difference between him and ourselves except that we have more company.
We will be wise to examine all our practice’s in unemotional, unfettered light without reference to immediacy of pleasure, custom, tradition, conformity, external appearances, likes or dislikes. Examine these practices and determine one by one whether they are good or bad, healthful or harmful, right or wrong. Not just a little bit of one and a little bit of the other. Remember that nothing can be innocuous. Make it clear cut, black or white, no grays. And most important of all! Remember that the less harmful it seems to be the more dangerous it actually is to the greatest number of people over the greatest period of time.
And when you pick out the harmfulness of a practice, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem to be, then relate it to the big damage to which it contributes later on. When you do this you will see the little practice for what it really is. Also, and just as pregnant, you will see the big damage for what it really is. A morally sick society is made up of morally sick, singular persons. A war is but the remote extension of conflict and greed at the level of individuals. Hardened arteries are but the accumulation of many single deviant acts each of which seemed delightful at its moment but none of which can be recalled a day after it has occurred.
It can be no other way. Can it? Do you see the big point I am making? War never caused greed, greed causes war. Hardened arteries never caused a man to eat greasy foods; greasy foods easily can be related to hardening of the arteries. Think about it. Come to understand that any practice, any action or reaction, anything that you do that you can recognize to be against your inner sense of well being, your fitness, your longevity is bad, wicked, sinful, evil and must be seen in that light. To see it in any other light is illusion, delusion, unreal. You don’t have to be a college graduate to understand these things. (In fact, it may hinder your clarity.) All you have to do is to be quiet within yourself and think. Don’t “work” at “think,” just be still within yourself and the message will come through. Try it. You’ll see. Life will be less hectic. “Control” will come easier, because when one really understands, he understands with his whole, entire self—not just with his mind. And when there is understanding, change in behavior comes. You don’t have to “struggle” or “fight.” Just learn to broaden your concept of today to include yesterday and tomorrow, yesteryear and all the years ahead. If you do, there will be more of them. They will be better ones too.
Reprinted from The Health Crusader, September 1979
In this country we have what is called the capitalist system. Its sole motive is to produce for profits. The other day we received a brochure from LITTLE FREE PRESS that points out some of the inhumane drives of our present system. LITTLE FREE PRESS advocates a system that involves a non-money non-credit economy...a very challenging concept. I have embellished their points somewhat but they areas follows:
Thus you can see how inverted and perverted our values are.
I’ll end quoting Ernest Mann, author of the piece:
“If we don’t switch our method of “economic motivation” soon, our striving for profit may ruin our life-support system beyond the point of no return.”
What is your role in this great play? Are you a tiny gear that helps to keep this juggernaut rolling? Could you find a way to survive without working for a company that is destroying our environment? Are you adding to people’s distractions, to keep them from becoming aware of viable alternatives? Or are you helping others to become aware of our problems and turning them onto the solutions?
Reprinted from The Health Crusader, October 1979
The great international debate today is not about the imminence of internecine war or the morality of nuclear weapons. It is about the quality of life that we may expect in the future for ourselves and our children. The important question now is—can the human race survive in terms of our present day relationship with the world outside and nature and, if we do manage to survive, in what state of health or ill health?
Are we heading for doom, come what may, or do we still have a chance? In which direction is the world heading?
There is no easy answer to the question. The web of life that nature has woven on this finite plant is immensely complex, full of subtle balances and involved interplays.
Natural Hygiene has always, from the beginning, demanded that we understand this scheme of natural balance. Now it seems the time is approaching when we either pay heed or pay the consequences. Instead of exploiting the natural resources we must learn to conserve and thus try to achieve once more the balance that nature achieved on earth before the impact of man and his “technological achievements.”
Not only must we understand how man has disturbed the balance, but learn what steps we must take to rectify that mistake. Have we the will to make the changes we must make? Have we the power? I do not know. But, if only because of our growing understanding of our plight, I still hope.
The more of us who try to live a Hygienic Life—the better it is for the world also. Natural Hygiene is not smug isolation from the rest of the world. It is total commitment on behalf of the whole of mankind and the animal kingdom. The fact that you benefit also is incidental—a sort of bonus for the total involvement with the rest of life. By observing the following blueprint for the individual you will help the human race to survive:
In the final analysis we have to realize profoundly as Natural Hygienists that all our studies, deep and superficial, whether through books or by direct and personal experience in any form, cannot be divorced from living.
We can have more life, only if we help to enhance the whole of life.
Reprinted from Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, January 1977
The University of Montana conducted some experiments on the food preferences of five-year old children before and after exposure to TV food commercials. “Natural preference” and preference after exposure to TV food commercials were compared.
The children were free to choose from junk foods such as corn chips, sweet cereals, cookies, soda pop, etc. and from higher-nutrition foods such as cheese, carrots, grapes, apples, milk and orange juice. Their natural preference was measured based on this simultaneous exposure.
Then the children were shown a mere 12 minutes of children’s programming that included a half-dozen commercials for both low nutrition foods and for the higher-nutrition foods. Then back to the food tables and guess what?
The children consumed more junk foods and less higher-nutrition foods than in the previous exposure. Moreover, the children were more excited about the junk and had more recall of the junk food ads than of the other food ads.
It would seem the junkier your food products are, the better chance you have of selling them through TV advertising.
Reprinted from The Health Crusader, December 1979
39.1. Presenting The Universal Problem
Article #1: Disease, Stimulation and Therapeutics—A Question of Consistency
Article #2: The Law of Stimulation
Article #3: Patients Dilemma: Who’s Taking Care of Them? by Mrs. Elizabeth McCarter
39.1.2 World Health Statistics
39.1.3 Philosophy of Modern Medical Practice
Rod sat in a chair across the room rubbing his knees. From time to time his body would jerk and he would squirm in his chair as if ill at ease or uncomfortable for some reason or other. He recounted a sorry tale of how he had sought relief from many physicians and medical specialists for the constant pain which had limited his productiveness both socially and in the economic world from his early childhood and which was now causing him to quit his job as an accountant in a multi-national corporation because he could no longer hold a pen or pencil between his fingers.
The young man, just past thirty, recited an array of drugs and supplements which he had dutifully swallowed per the instructions given him. The drugging had begun at the age of two years when he had “come down” with a muscular rheumatism. It had continued unabated to the present day. Even as he spoke, Rod pulled from his pocket the latest prescription, deadly prednisone, and a bottle of a well known and highly advertised multiple vitamin-mineral supplement. Pitifully, Rod cried, “Can you help me? I have nowhere else to go!”
Unfortunately, Rod’s story is only too common in today’s pseudoworld, a world where humankind has been taught to live in a fantasyland of unreality, to believe that humankind can go on indefinitely defying the laws of living structure, that we can eat what, when and how we please, that we can continue to abuse our bodies, that we can take all manner of vile liquids, pills and potions into our bodies, that we can inhale foul air and make all manner of mistakes and not have to come face to face with the realities of our organic existence if we only have recourse to the supplement products offered, for a price, by the huge industrial giants of the times in which we live.
As a result of this kind of foolishness, an insidious creeping debilitating force is at work among the peoples of the world, and especially in this country, with many being troubled by the sickness they see around them and their own eroding well-being, but not knowing what to do or where to turn for help.
The World Health Chart for 1968 shows the average age of males at death in the United States is 66.6 and females 74.1; 25th place for men and 14th for women, respectively among all the nations in the world. In recent years we have dropped from an earlier and now out-dated rating of 15th in spite of the fact that the supplement- and drug-related businesses have skyrocketed in sales and dollar volume. The people have lost confidence in the medical profession.
The whole history of medicine is one of palliation and stimulation. If you are sick, you take the proffered pill and make the hurt go away. Are you tired, unable to cope? No matter, just take this vitamin, that herb, a little wine or smoke the weed and swallow a packet of man-made inorganic or fancy synthetically chelated minerals and your body’s vitality battery will be recharged, your mood elevated, your cares soothed away and all problems solved; the sun will shine in the sky and the, world will lie at your feet. It is too good to be true!
We are a sick nation and getting sicker with every passing moment. We have not learned that, only nature can heal, that health will have none of forcing, but must be maintained and built through wholesome eating and living.
Dr. Elizabeth well remembers that when she was a child her mother kept a veritable cupboardful of patent medicines: there was cod liver oil in the form of Scott’s Emulsion, Dr. Lydia Pinkam’s Tonic for Women; and others. There was always a tin of aspirin tablets on hand to relieve the headache as well as a special box of baking soda to soothe acid-troubled stomachs.
You see, at that time, vitamins were a totally new and unexplored area, but the family always had recourse to Grandma’s green “tizzy,” a green drink made from selected herbs which grew in the garden, guaranteed, of course, to “cure” any ailment.
Dr. Robert’s childhood and early years were no different, even though his father was a medical doctor, a specialist in anaesthesiology at one of the large hospitals in the East. The “remedies,” of course, had different names, fancy medical names, but the effects were the same: palliation and stimulation.
Now, we live in modern times. During the past fifty or so years, patent medicines have, for the most part, disappeared from the pharmacist’s shelves and the home cupboards have been replaced by a collection of bottles of all kinds containing all manner of supplements: vitamins, enzymes and minerals especially, but also others. The drugs of our father’s time have also largely disappeared only to be replaced by newer and more potent drugs because the others failed to fulfill the promises made for them—as these will also fail.
“Health” food stores are now found in almost every major and minor shopping center from Maine to California and in countries overseas, all offering all manner of magic ways to restore radiant health to a deeply troubled public eager to buy their offerings. We know many elderly people living on Social Security who trudge wearily into health food stores paying out huge sums for pills and potions which they firmly believe will bring them youthful zest and vigor. Yet all the while they continue their life-destroying practices and drag through the days of their lives ever hopeful that the “magic” of pills will give them back the youth of their childhood.
Is it true that because the vast majority of people now live in cities where admittedly the quality of the food is something less than ideal, that we must supplement our diet in order to have any hope of achieving and maintaining a reasonable level of health? Rod, the young man whom we met at the opening of this lesson, was advised by the last specialist he had consulted to drink nothing but pure mineral water so that he would be assured of getting all the minerals his system required and, also, to drink at least one pint of milk every day and to take his prescribed mineral supplements in order to maximize his calcium and other mineral intake.
In this day of known soil mineral deficiencies, should we supplement the mineral content of our foods in order to be sure that we receive a sufficiency of these important nutrients? Do herbs offer a panacea for all of mankind’s ailments as many herbalists contend? After all, it is well known that mankind has historically used herbs since time immemorial and, therefore, ipso facto, they should be an important part of our armentarium so that our systems will be well fortified against possible “attacks” by germ, fungus and/or virus. In other words, through supplementation we can gird our loins, as it were, to do battle against a formidable foe.
Some scientists contend that cooked food is easier to digest than uncooked, that man has cooked his food for so long a time that his digestive organs have become adapted to eating cooked foods, that it is no longer possible for humankind to subsist totally on uncooked food, even though he may once have done so, that his digestive organs have changed over the centuries to accept cooked food and reject raw fruits and vegetable foods as indigestible. We know this is not true.
These “scientists” recommend mega-vitamin and mineral supplementation as a means of ensuring a more youthful resurgence of energy and higher level of health. Do we dare postulate the question, “Is vitamin dosing another gimmick, one perhaps that ensures an acceleration of energy outflow rather than the longed-for extender of youth?”
Are there certain commonly accepted but harmful practices we should all avoid if we would either restore a state of diminished health to a higher level or retain the good health we now have? We believe there are and, hopefully, we will learn some of these in this lesson. Natural hygienists contend that the very structure and function of the body, its physiological and biological methods and practices, its capabilities and limitations, dictate certain unchanging principles which should and, indeed, must dictate how and in what manner the human organism must be nourished to remain in superb health.
Hygienists unequivocably hold that a general law under-girds life, one derived from physiology and biology and that we cannot escape the rule of law either in our eating or in our living, if we would retain our health. If we would escape the degenerative diseases that plague the vast majority of people, we must learn not only what we should do but also what we must not do. When the laws of life are ignored and possibly defied, due accounting will be required of us and, more often than not, such accounting will result in the rapid or more subtle erosion of health according to the inherited constitution and the extensiveness and intensiveness of the infractions of physiological and biological order.
In this lesson we will expand our knowledge in this respect. When we fully understand the truism that we, like all living things, are a part of the universe, one with all life and governed by exact laws, we will cease chasing after “cures,” we will stop popping our pills and having recourse to vile substances; we will forego our stimulating habits and practices and start living hygienically, in accord with body design. As was said long ago by one Thomas Campanella, “The Laws of Nature proclaim themselves and are their own avenger.” And let us proclaim with equal truth that the Laws of Nature, when obeyed, will reward us most magnificently with all the many faces of joy.
39.2.3 A Very Profitable Business
39.2.5 Need for Vitamins Grossly Exaggerated
39.2.6 The Problems Posed by Excess
39.2.7 Discovery and Chemistry of Vitamins
39.2.8 List of Isolated and/or Identified Vitamins
39.2.10 Vitamin-Enzyme-Hormone Synergism
39.2.11 Vitamins Have Other Roles
39.2.12 The Fallacy of Vitamin Supplementation
In this lesson we will not concern ourselves with specific functions of particular vitamins, nor will we identify precise sources for obtaining this or that vitamin, nor with minimum daily requirements per se as set forth by governmental agencies, nor with similar data. There are any number of books and pamphlets setting forth such information and we refer our students to them. Our concern here will rather be centered on vitamins as a class and whether or not supplementation of the diet with man-made manufactured vitamins is advisable for health-seekers. We, of course, accept the fact that real vitamins are a necessary nutrient of life.
Most people who take vitamins religiously have little or no real understanding of what vitamins are and what their function in the body is. Vitamins are not mysterious substances that hold the key to life and health in and of themselves as one might be led to believe by reading the popular literature on the subject.
The selling of vitamins is a very profitable business, profits often being as high as ten times over cost. Increasing numbers of persons searching for better health “repair” are purchasing vitamins. The gross incomes of many proprietors of these outlets are well over the six figure dollar mark annually. Some physicians make a practice of selling vitamins directly to their patients also, making their purchases from large pharmaceutical houses.
Real vitamins are simply one of a group of organic substances which are present in exceedingly small amounts in natural foodstuffs. They are essential to normal metabolism and, if they are in short supply, certain changes adverse to health can result.
These changes are generally cumulative in kind, not spectacular. They do not arise following a single failure to obtain a particular vitamin or group of vitamins but, to the contrary, adverse tissue changes and organ degeneration are, more often than not, the product of many years of poor management of SELF, including among many others, the failure to provide an adequate intake of vitamins from natural sources.
Vitamins are only one of a group of natural accessory food factors very important in the maintenance of health. They are taken into the system as an accessory factor whenever food is eaten, foods such as ripe luscious fruits, leafy green vegetables, and other delectable food packages which come from Nature’s hand.
Our systemic need for vitamins has been grossly exaggerated by certain commercial interests and, as a result, there are numerous uninformed individuals who indiscriminately ply their bodies with as many as a hundred different supplements of one kind or another every single day, some even taking single vitamins in enormous amounts, in what are known as megavitamin doses.
Not too long ago we were counseling a woman who suffered from a rheumatic disorder which greatly curtailed her ability to get around. At our first meeting she spread out on the table an array of supplements, including a variety of vitamins, that was hard to believe. She took vitamins with her meals and in between meals, before going to bed and upon arising in the morning, all in doses many times greater than those recommended by the government. She said she had been taking these massive doses simply on the basis of what she had read in the popular magazines.
“For well over a year now, but I don’t seem to be getting any better. The pain goes on and my muscles keep getting stiffer.” And then came the plaintive cry we hear so often, “What can I do?”
We found it necessary to explain to our client that, as with overnutrition of any kind, when the body’s need for any nutrient is exceeded, the system is called upon to dispose of the excess as best it can and, in the process of doing so, the liver and kidneys are overworked and the adaptive energy and other reserves of the body wasted, never to be retrieved. Once wasted, the life energy is gone, it cannot be recovered to any appreciable extent. This woman has wasted her precious energy in coping with unnecessary and unusable materials she had been constantly putting into her mouth. It was little wonder that her health had kept on its degenerating course.
The term “vitamin” first appeared in the year 1912. So, vitamins are a comparative newcomer on the nutritional scene. They were so named by one Casimir Funk, the scientist who gave this name to the substance which he obtained from rice polishings while attempting to isolate the factor, the absence of which was believed by some investigators to be responsible for the condition known as beri-beri. The substance Funk obtained was a pure crystalline chemical to which he gave the name “Vitamine.” We now call it Vitamin B1 or Thiamine.
The two parts of the word vitamin mean “life” and “amine.” An amine is a substance derived from ammonia, the formula of which is NH3, the N standing for nitrogen and H being the symbol for hydrogen. Ammonia therefore consists of one atom of nitrogen to three atoms of hydrogen, thus the formula NH3. When one atom of hydrogen is replaced by a hydrocarbon or other radical, we have a primary amine, when two are replaced we have a secondary amine, and so on.
A primary amine might be Nh3CH3. As you can see, here one hydrogen atom has been replaced by one CH3 grouping (a radical).
A secondary amine might by NH(CH3)2. Here, two hydrogen atoms have been replaced by two CH3 radicals. And soon.
This is the basic chemical structuring of a vitamin, some being more complex than others.
Since Funk’s initial research, efforts to find and isolate these new and exciting substances have gone on ceaselessly and still continue today.
Vitamins are organic chemical compounds which are normally divided for purposes of convenient identification into two groupings:
Only the more familiar vitamins are so classified. They are grouped in this manner because they cannot be more readily classified because of their chemical similarity as can be done, for example, with the various kinds of carbohydrates which, as the student already knows, can be easily grouped as monosaccharides, disaccharides or polysaccharides according to the complexity of their molecules and the similarity of their chemical construction. This is not true of vitamins since they differ widely in their chemical make-up with no clear pattern emerging.
Some vitamins are proteins with very complex molecules while others seem to be simple amino acids. Many people consider vitamins to be food, but vitamins are really not food in and of themselves, but rather protein compound’s or simple amino acids which assist the body at the cellular level to utilize and assimilate the food which is eaten and, in excess, they stimulate the metabolic process. Their main responsibility is to regulate body activity.
The body also has other helpers which also perform this same regulatory function—namely, the enzymes. No one is exactly sure just how enzymes go about their very important duties but we do know that thousands of chemical actions and interreactions which are all a part of the cellular scene depend upon enzymatic action. Without their presence, these metabolic functions simply could not take place. As we shall see later, without the presence of certain enzymes, many bodily processes in which vitamins play their own peculiar role would require such high temperatures that the body would literally burn up.
Thus, the vitamins assist the enzymes, too, in their catalytic work and, for this reason, are often called “Co-Enzymes.” They assist both hormones and enzymes so their role might be compared with that of the nurse’s aide who assists the registered nurse in caring for all the patients!
The secretions of the ductless glands, hormones, are the prime regulators of metabolic activity in addition to performing the very important task of instigating metabolic action. The hormones are normally referred to as instigators of metabolic action; that is they are primarily responsible for keeping metabolic activity going on. But, additionally, and most importantly, they also serve as regulators of metabolism, seeing to it that things do not get out of control—that we don’t wear out the physiological clock, as it were, making things go too fast.
Thus we can see that vitamins and enzymes dually share in this major responsibility working in tandem, as it were, with the hormones. None can fully fulfill its responsibilities without the presence of the others. This is synergism at its best.
So far as is known, vitamins supply no energy or nutrient to the human body but simply make it possible for the system to appropriate the proteins, carbohydrates, fats and salts. We also know that they are absolutely essential to growth because they are required in cellular replication (division); they play an important part in the regeneration of cellular matter and in the overall maintenance of health. Some of them are probably involved in membrane maintenance, in the stimulation of brain action, cleansing of the peripheral capillary system, in blood clotting, and in a myriad number of other activities. Their total role will probably never be known.
From the foregoing, it would appear logical to assume that the more vitamins we can take, the healthier we should become but, unfortunately, this is simply not true. We have a limited capacity to utilize and/or to store vitamins, as is true of food. When any substance, including vitamins, is introduced into the system in excess of present need, an unnecessary burden is immediately placed upon all the organs and systems. They cannot use the product. It is an obstructive influence in the body and therefore potentially harmful to it. The organic domain is placed in the position of having to cope with it in the least damaging manner.
The presence of any excess or foreign substance is immediately recognized. The danger-ahead alert is sent via the nervous transmitting mechanisms (the nervous system) to the control center in the brain where it is interpreted, evaluated and an appropriate response (instructions) sent out; or perhaps the alert may be relayed to a more locally placed substation (a plexus) for a sympathetic response.
If an obstructive foreign substance (for example, a vitamin overload due to dietary supplementation), cannot be stored or disposed of by temporarily or permanently “dumping” it somewhere in the body where it will not greatly interfere with normal systemic function but can be “tolerated,” then the body will instigate other measures to get it out of the system as fast as possible.
The usual route for such exodus is via the kidneys and when the kidneys are thus called upon for emergency service, they must necessarily work overtime. Vitamins, when taken in excess of actual body need, are handled in exactly the same fashion as any other unncessary impediment. In the case of vitamins, the easiest and quickest way to get rid of existing excess is to incorporate it in the urine and send it out of the body via the bladder, making the urine a very expensive secretion, indeed!
In order to accomplish the “dumping” or the rapid exodus of any foreign or excess material, vitamins or other, the body is stimulated by the nervous response and shifts into “high gear,” stepping up the metabolic activity. The stimulation makes the vitamin-taker feel good, at least while he takes the vitamins, and it is for this reason that the need for this kind of stimulation can become habitual.
Why, you ask. It seems that a very delicate balance obtains among and between the secretions of the ductless glands, the hormones, the vitamins and the enzymes; especially with the millions of enzymes which are directly concerned at the cellular level with the multitudinous activities comprising the life process. You see, once inside your body the vitamins take their proper place in a tremendously complicated scheme of life about which we actually know very little. They do not just work alone but they require other factors for them to be effective at all, factors like fats, minerals, hormones and so on. Only too soon the body becomes accustomed to their stimulating presence and when deprived of it, can sink to an unexpected and quickly felt lower level of well-being as attends all drug withdrawal.
We are only becoming more informed in this area of concern through microbiological studies. We really know very little about life within the cell. But what we do know strongly suggests that the indiscriminate taking of vitamins could and perhaps does disturb delicate internal nutritive balance resulting in metabolic confusion, a confusion which disrupts and diminishes efficiency of performance. Health is reduced commensurate to the imbalance.
Some vitamins, like the enzymes, are found in just about every living cell, plant or animal. Not all Vitamins however, are required by all animals but it does seem to be a requirement of life that the vitamins required by a particular kind of organism must be present at all times, each to play its own specific role as to time and place within that organic community. This is true, also, of man but, as we have noted, the vitamin role is secondary rather than primary, that of assistant, not instigator.
Vast realms of the human life motif are yet to be explored and resolved in finality. Millions of people who are presently taking vitamins are willing guinea pigs in a vast experiment, the results of which are, by the measure of things, completely unknown and unpredictable in the absence of long-term and precise evidence.
Those persons who enthusiastically promote mega-dosing of vitamins do so on the basis of evidence that is often misleading because it is insufficient on many grounds and often misinterpreted. For example, hamsters which developed lung cancer due, in part, to exposure to smog and cigarette smoke were given Vitamin A and, according to the researchers, the development of cancers was halted. These results were interpreted to mean that dosing with Vitamin A helped to prevent the cancers from arising.
Since it takes years of body mismanagement and a multitudinous number of physiological errors to produce, as a final conclusion of the pathological process, the condition of true cancer, this was certainly a simplistic assumption to make, especially in view of the fact that, to the present at least, there are no known methods of accurately determining exactly what else is going on in the recesses of an experimental subject. It may well be that the drugging effect of suppressing symptoms may be operational within cells to be stimulated at a later date to an unhealthy derangement of cellular growth. Vaccinations prevent symptoms from arising through the toxicosis and unhealthful practices continue. Disease continues its evolutionary ways and manifests itself years later, often in more horrendous ways.
It is said that autopsies reveal that vitamin deficiencies are widespread, not only in other parts of the world; but here in America in the face of an abundance of readily available food. This is the rationale which is used to promote vitamin dosing. Little or no attempt is made to inform the public as to the realities of organic existence, to ascertain what errors are being made in eating and living that produce vitamin deficiencies in the first instance. Instead, the populace is lulled into believing that they can continue to eat a la their television instructions, to eat “junk” food, in fact to disobey all natural organic law and, in spite of their indiscretions, maintain a lasting health. Manifestly, this is impossible. They are being stimulated, propped up and goaded into a false sense of security, instead of being encouraged to partake of nature’s grand packages which contain all the vitamins man could ever need or want.
The living plant is the only organism which can synthesize vitamins, though animals create some vitamins too. This fact means, in effect, that all animals are dependent upon the vegetable kingdom for their vitamins. It is true that some animals can take the immediate predecessor, the precursor of the vitamin, the provitamin, and from it complete the synthesis of the vitamin itself as, for example, man can take the carotene provided by the carrot and also in other vegetables and by a series of changes, chemical in nature, convert it into Vitamin A. To a limited extent, man is also capable of storing up vitamins in his liver and elsewhere within his body, these being included among his adaptive reserves, held in readiness for times of unusual need.
Another point of interest in this discussion is the fact that plants which have the highest mineral content also have a high content of vitamins and that the particular part of the plant which is richest in minerals is also richest in vitamins. In other words, it would appear that nature is telling us that the life processes which favor the appropriation of minerals by the plant also favor the synthesis of vitamins and that perhaps because all of nature is so symbiotically intertwined that the carefully proportionated relationships displayed by plants designed for man’s consumption might also be most favorable to body processes in the human who eats of the plant.
The darker the color of the plant, the higher its vitamin and mineral content. When leaves of plants are exposed to many days of suitable sunshine, they are more abundantly endowed both with vitamins and minerals. This fact seems to tell us something: namely, that insofar as both plant and animal existence is concerned, there is a relationship existing between the vitamins and minerals, a precise balance in each plant and, indeed, in each part of the plant. It would appear reasonable to assume that, if we desire a maximum vitamin-mineral intake, we should eat of those foods that are well exposed to the sun; we should choose foods which grow above the ground for a well balanced nutrient pool and, to conserve body energy, we should concentrate on those foods that not only contain valuable nutrients but are also easy to digest and do not possess known irritants. A plant having the highest vitamin value may not necessarily be good for man to eat. A single example should suffice to illustrate this point: hot red chili peppers (raw) per 100 grams contain 21,600 units of Vitamin A as compared to a luscious ripe peach of similar weight which yields only 1,330 units.
Vitamins are found in all vegetables and fruits that serve as food for humankind and in adequate quantities. The amounts are small by our way of thinking. But nature seldom errs, we can reasonably infer from this fact that the human body’s systemic need for vitamins is probably “very small.” This concept, of course, has been borne out by considerable research using radioactive additives in cell studies, these being traced in their progress and utilization by means of high-powered electronic microscopes. Additionally, the theory seems reasonable also by virtue of the fact that the role played by vitamins in the living body, while essential, is still limited to that of being regulators of activity and also because they share this responsibility with the hormones.
We, the authors, have not used manmade vitamins for many years now but our health continues to improve and our energy flow does not seem to be disrupted by our abstention. An overkill of any single nutrient factor can destroy the delicate relationship among and between all nutrients and, it might well be disruptive of endocrine performance.
Let us postulate what overkill may do. We have established the symbiotic companion action of hormones, enzymes and vitamins. Whenever hormones are not present, the production is shut off. This is known as hormonal feedback. The danger of disturbing hormonal feedback is always present when vitamins are introduced in excess of systemic need because of the stimulating effect they are known to have.
There is a precise relationship among and between the various endocrine glands under the planned instigative control of the hypothalamus-pituitary twin glands. An intelligent dictatorship determines the outflow of hormonal secretion and the stoppage of same according to the need to instigate some kind of action within the body (to use a common example, flight in time of danger) or to stop an operation in progress (for example, insulin production). The possibility arises that the presence of an excess of vitamin input which also serves, we must remember, as a regulator could disrupt the precise management of metabolic activity and perhaps even overstimulate, producing undesirable effects, the so-called side-effects of drugs which are, after all, regular effects, always present but not always discernable. At the very least, any excess input can accelerate the biological clock.
As we have said many times, our knowledge of the biochemical goings-on within the human body are still in the pre-kindergarten stage and we place ourselves in jeopardy when we start tinkering with the body’s finely tuned processes, when we pre-judge an unknown systemic need and ingest via the oral cavity or inject into the blood stream extraneous manmade substances of doubtful value, no matter if they are touted as being obtained from a natural source, they are not natural in the real sense.
In the light of our present lack of any accurate knowledge as to the exact dosages required (the government-recommended RDA’s are, at best, an over-liberal (and over-lethal) guesstimate), the problem always remains as to exact need human organism can determine this with any degree of accuracy.
While minimum daily requirements for individual vitamins have been put forth, there has, to date, been no absolute test to evaluate relative vitamin needs; that is, we do not as yet have a reliable understanding of the proper proportionate values of one vitamin to another or of each to all and, again, to the hormones with which they share certain responsibilities. Surely, these values must change from, individual to individual according to metabolic efficiency. It appears all but impossible to predetermine the exact need of any one individual, let alone people in general, this certainly being a variable as metabolic circumstances fluctuate and change. Also, another point deserving our attention is that manufacturers of vitamins necessarily must use chemically pure vitamins for the most part. If they used only naturally derived vitamins, their pills would be too large for us to swallow. Natural foods contain too small amounts of vitamins to formulate heavy drugs. Additionally, they find it necessary to add a “carrier” to make their products more acceptable to the palate and to bring their product up to an exact pre-determined standard. We have no way of knowing the precise effect these chemical carriers may have on the system. It seems more in keeping with nature’s plan for living to take vitamins as contained in nature’s offerings where they are in organic context.
Since we know that the human body is a finely-tuned masterpiece and that simple maladjustments often present serious health hazards, this matter of vitamin proportions and relationships, as well as further consideration of carriers, could well be more important than has yet been realized. People have been dosing themselves and their children now for a considerable time with multitudinous kinds of vitamins and vitamin combinations, often in extremely large doses. If vitamins were the panacea to all health problems as they are so often represented to be, surely during the last half century we should have witnessed a phenomenal improvement in the health of the people but, unfortunately, the contrary appears to be true.
Arnold Fox, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at the University of California at Irvine Medical School and a lecturer at the Charles Drew Medical School, stated in an article published in Let’s Live Magazine (June 1982) that he is now “treating the 20- and 30-year old children of my patients. These children are, on the average, as sick as their 50, 60 and 70-year-old parents...” To be sure, the deterioration in the health status of these children has been brought about by many factors but it is certain that the taking of multiple doses of vitamins, numerous vaccinations and other well publicized “preventive” measures has not prevented systemic deterioration; instead, it may well have accelerated it.
It would appear obvious to any discerning person that the answer to rapidly deteriorating health does not lie in taking pills, potions or injections. Most of the recommendations for supplementary vitamin usage have come about through experimentation on animals in a controlled environment situation. These experiments show results for a particular species of animal under the controlled circumstances, not as they might be in the wild.
Furthermore, the species of animal on which the tests were made may or may not bear great biological relationship to humankind and certainly the controls operational in a laboratory situation can bear little relationship, if any, to the stress-wracked frenzied, emotion-charged life of the average person today whose metabolic activity is being constantly monitored by the endocrine gland and nervous systems.
Additionally, the experiments, by and large, have been of too short a duration to be valid. Being scientific researchers ourselves, we can say that “they” assume too much on too little evidence. It has long been known that it takes four or five generations to evaluate a dietary change. Consequently, the tests, as Herbert M. Shelton so well points out, are applicable only to the animal in question (under precise circumstances and conditions, we might add) and are not “strictly and broadly applicable to man.” They might not even be strictly and broadly applicable to the same animal under other circumstances.
Sylvester Graham in his Lectures pointed out that there is similarity of function and application of principles throughout the animal kingdom, but that there are also fundamental differences from species to species. These fundamental differences make all animal experimentation suspect. The assumption of an accurate response may not always be confirmed in the revealing light of subsequent reality.
Experiments can be designed in such a way that they will produce a desired or hoped-for result. Much of the research presently being conducted is subsidized research, paid for either by government, organized groups, or commercial companies having a vested interest in certain results. Persons receiving subsidized grants, many involving enormous sums, might possibly be inclined to slant the results of their research, even without their being consciously aware of their thrust, in order to please their sponsors and keep the money bank open.
The average man weighing 160 pounds contains within his entire body just about 1/4 ounce of vitamins. Now it takes approximately 28 grams to equal one ounce, so this means that, if we add up all the many different kinds of vitamins in the average man’s entire body, we would have only about 7 grams total, including all the reserve supplies, those that are stored up in the tissues and organs for emergency purposes, particularly in the liver and kidneys.
The R.D.A.’s (The Recommended Daily Allowances) are about double (in some cases even more) the estimated minimum requirements, which many scientists admit are not easily determined. In other words, these figures are no more than guesstimates. In fact, some scientists contend that, while extra vitamins may be needed to correct certain deficiency diseases in extreme circumstances, normal persons do not require supplementation since a good diet provides amply for all such needs.
Certainly their ideas as to what constitutes a “good” diet may differ from our own, but even so, the Food and Nutrition Board, a division of the National Research Council (organized by the National Academy of Sciences) postulates that the average adult eating a well-balanced (comprised of the appropriate amounts from each of the four basic food groups) diet will receive 7,500 International Units of Vitamin A. The R.D.A. for Vitamin A is only 5,000 units.
There is no need whatever for any person on a Hygienic diet to harken to the siren call of the paid hawkers of commercial wares—synthetic vitamins. Nature has provided well for all of us. Many millions of people lived in health for centuries before Dr. King concluded his monumental experiments at the University of Pittsburgh and isolated Vitamin C from lemons. Any real student of health knows that the chemist and/or the manufacturer cannot put life and health into a bottle of pills. Neither can the life force resident within a plant be extracted and compressed into a capsule and still be viable.
If you eat fresh uncooked fruits and a limited amount of fresh leafy vegetables, a few nuts and edible seeds, you will take in many times the recommended amounts, not in synthetic isolated vitamins to stimulate and accelerate organic response beyond its norm, but rather in desirable metabolically correct combinations with other nutrients, nature’s bio-chemical partners.
There are many so-called “cures” attributed to vitamin “therapy,” just as there are many so-called “cures” attributed to this or that drug. To say that vitamins can “cure” an existing malfunctioning within a sick body is to admit ignorance of the nature of disease and is an admission of commonality with the drugging practices of the vast majority of medical practitioners.
The giving of vitamins “therapeutically” or the introduction of drugs orally or by injection in the hope of favorably influencing the progress of a certain disease is a serious error because, in reality, we do not cure but simply suppress the curative actions already in progress within the system, these having been initiated by the organism itself. The suppression of the symptoms is what is normally accepted as a “cure,” but, unfortunately, the cure represents only a temporary surcease until utility is recovered.
Whenever any unwanted or foreign material is thrust into the system, all vital powers of the organism that can possibly be spared from vital processes must be employed in rendering it harmless. This effort, when continued for any length of time, actually results in changing an acute crisis of healing, one that is usually of a comparatively short duration, into a chronic disease which the body will conduct unceasingly. Chronic problems often result in acute crises that can even bring an end to life itself.
Drugs have been used for thousands of years of man’s existence to relieve hurts and to “cure” diseases. Man has a tendency to hold fast to his habits even though they be destructive of his very life and it is this tendency that causes man to seek “cures” rather than to determine the root of his troubles and then change, discard, modify or remove that which tends to destroy him.
We are just now beginning to understand the dangers inherent in all drugging. And, make no mistake, the vitamins of commerce act in exactly the same manner as drugs. They occasion body defensive actions. The toll from iatrogenic diseases (drug-related) has gone beyond the point of toleration by an enlightened public.
The toll exacted from drugs often rears its ugly head in countless unnecessary deaths and in the form of mutations in infants which must be destroyed in utero at birth and relegated to the garbage heap; in cancerous tumors which come in second and third generations; as well as in numerous less distressful symptoms soon forgotten. What the effect of our present vitamin stimulation craze may yet prove to be is a total unknown. We have no way of following successive generations of long-living humans to make a liable assessment.
Vitamins are drugs. Using vitamins is similar to drugging. The body reacts to vitamins just as it does to any harmful substance: it goes into defensive action. The pills can do nothing except perhaps enter into a chemical action of some kind. We should remember that building health is harmonious body effort, not a defensive action. Life is either “cumulative or dissipative, never static.” Simply taking this vitamin or that vitamin pill will never, by any stretch of the imagination, get at the root cause or causes of a deranged body. It will never render the thickened viscous fluids of the hypertensive patient (one who has high blood pressure) pure and free-flowing; it will never heal a damaged heart, gallbladder or spleen.
The system, of course, learns to tolerate the vitamins, and the stimulation they provide often makes the person taking them feel “good;” but the good they give wears a false fact, a facade that cheats, since it is the result of excitation, not health. Unfortunately, an excitation is gained at the expense of loss of vital power, power that, once lost, can never again be wholly retrieved. Only too soon, the false face fades, revealing the cruel reality of premature aging and its companion, ugly disease.
Life Science is a better way. Any person who desires the full joy of abundant health must either grow his own produce or have access to fresh fruit and vegetables, preferably organically grown, either by himself or available to him freshly picked from another source. Synthetic vitamins are divorced from their natural carriers and cannot be depended upon to build health. Life Scientists put their trust in Nature’s ways. Nature gives us a guarantee!
We can save on other things, if need be, but if we desire the best of health, we should have access to and use only the best quality of food. And, even better, we should plant our own garden of vegetables and a variety of fruit and nut trees. We should become activists and encourage the public to plant fruit and nut trees to adorn our highways, parks and roads. As Otto Carque said, “to provide food for generations to come.”
As Life Scientists, we should feast on the fruits of our labor, harvesting beautiful vegetables, fruits and nuts at the peak of perfection, ready not only for our gustatory enjoyment and delight but also to provide amply the wherewithal for living always in a state of superb health, without our ever having to rely on synthetic man-made products, the effect of which we have no fool-proof way of evaluating. We should, above all, emphasize in our diet those most perfect of all foods, the luscious ripe fruits, fruits endowed with all the nutrients we could ever require to sustain us in perfect health throughout a lifetime of sickness-free living, always retaining a keen awareness of the universe around us and keeping in tune with the realities of life until the time comes when the life force gently slips away.
39.3.1 The Primary Role of Minerals
39.3.2 Indoctrination of the Public
39.3.5 Inorganic Salts and Man
39.3.7 Deficiencies and the Fallacy of Therapy by Supplementation
39.3.10 Imbalances Within The Body
In spite of the fact that the role played by minerals in human ecology is a primary one, mineral nutrition is a relatively new field of interest. In 1904, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley wrote to Otto Carque, a celebrated biochemist of that era, as follows: “I regret to say that no one in this country has undertaken a complete analysis of all of the mineral constituents of foods.” A German physician named Dr. H. Lahmann was perhaps the first scientist to direct his attention to the role played by food minerals in human nutrition. Dr. Lahmann wrote extensively on the subject in his book, “Natural Hygiene.” He was rapidly followed in his work by Carque whose outstanding book, “Rational Diet,” was printed in 1923 in this country and is still available in reprints.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton has called minerals the real “building blocks” of the body. They are basic to the construction of bone, tissue, nerves and muscles; indeed, of every part of the body. Additionally, they are required to sustain every function of the organism. Without minerals we couldn’t move or think. They constitute our main adaptive reserves, they provide us with the means to withstand the common stresses of the day and unanticipated trauma that may come. It would be impossible to recite their manifold functions and even so, there are, undoubtedly, functions innumerable which remain hidden in the closed recesses of the human labyrinth.
Even though minerals are manifestly of great importance to life, they are probably the most neglected area of concern in the scientific community, although in recent years more and more attention is being directed to them and to the role they play in the continuing life process. Dr. Roger J. Williams, a biochemist, in his book “Nutrition Against Disease,” points out to his readers that the thesis of the work is “that the nutritional micro-environment of our body cells is crucially important to our health and deficiencies in this environment constitute a major cause of disease.” The opening chapter in this work is well worth the student’s attention. It presents an excellent critique of present medical thinking and training and the extent to which it is circumscribed by the standardization imposed upon physicians by the American Medical Association. At one point Dr. Williams points out that, “When science becomes orthodoxy, it ceases to be science.” In his emphasis on the “Nutritional Chain of Life,” Dr. Williams simply stresses what should be obvious to all: the cellular need for the entire spectrum of nutrients, known and unknown, including the primary actors in the drama of life, organic minerals.
Because of the growing interest in the field of nutrition by a public disillusioned with the drug, cut, sew and stitch mentality of modern medical practice (as much as one-third being so disillusioned), certain commercial interests have issued a siren call extolling the virtues of adding minerals to a multi-vitamin intake. Such advice is forthcoming on the basis largely of animal experimentation which, as we have already observed, is usually conducted under strictly controlled circumstances on biologically unrelated test animals whose life spans are relatively short when compared to that of man. It is on the basis of this kind of encapsulated research that the public is being wooed to supplement its food intake with a varied assortment of bottled vitamins and minerals even though the experiments are obviously of too short a duration to be worthy of serious consideration.
The human body must obtain its minerals in the form of organic salts which are present in all foods. But not all plants are fit for human food. Food is any substance which can be used by the organism, in this case man, to make blood, formulate secretions, construct bones and ligaments and build tissues and nerves without adding anything that might prove overstimulating, exciting, irritating to the cells or destructive thereof, or obstructive to function.
Man eats his food in the form of fruits and certain vegetables which contain the necessary organic salts and then, by the sequential processes of digestion, absorption, transportation and cellular assimilation is able to reorganize them into his own organic substance suitable for growth, repair, healing and for whatever function may be in order to meet the precise needs of the moment. These complex processes are concluded with drainage whereby the metabolic waste byproducts are removed and returned to their point of origin, the soil. All of those complex processes represent the internal cycles of life, which when total and kept in proper balance are capable of maintaining cellular (and thus body) health theoretically for an indefinite period of time.
All life is divided into three biologically distinct groupings: the Animal Kingdom, the Plant Kingdom and that “in-between” grouping known as the Saprophytes which, properly, do not belong in either of the two familiar Kingdoms.
The Saprophytes take the organic refuse of the world, dead plants and animals made up of organic molecules and, by the process of metabolism, disorganize it into simpler inorganic mineral elements which are then yielded up again to the soil, thereby becoming available, in an aqueus solution, to the plant where it is processed, reorganized once again into organic molecules suitable for the maintenance of the health of the plant. Suitable warmth, mineralized water and a friendly environment are essential to the efficient performance of this part of the plant cycle.
The inorganic minerals derived from decaying dead organic life, both plant and animal, thus become once again endowed with the life element, they become once again a part of a living structure, in this case of a plant, and are assigned various positions and duties within the plant organic community. Every plant has its own special design and structure, its own peculiar assortment of organized organic molecules.
Roots have their own exact array within the organized mineral community, leaves another, the fruits still another and so on. Seeds contain the force of life, the ability to reproduce. Together, all the parts of the plant represent the food bank of all the world’s living organisms, from the largest to the smallest, both plant and animal.
In the earth’s carefully programmed ecological sequence, animals are not designed to utilize inorganic minerals. Nor do they have the ability to utilize them in the life processes of building, repairing, healing, replication or in any function of any kind. To the contrary, animals are able to use only organic minerals as food and each species has food which is set apart for its use. Grains keep birds in, perfect health. Each morning here at the ranch we feed the many species of birds that live here: red-breasted finches and the desert owls of little size and haunting cry. They get plump and fat on our seeds and on native plants.
Man, not being a bird and lacking both a beak and a craw, cannot obtain adequate nourishment from grains (seeds). A turkey has a large gizzard and can process and then utilize enormous amounts of seeds, including nuts and the hard shells thereof. Man, on the other hand, is structurally designed to eat abundantly of ripe fruits, plus a few leafy green vegetables and perhaps some few nuts and edible seeds. Such food is suitable for humankind and all these foods are well supplied with all the minerals required to sustain him in superb health.
Inorganic minerals will be rejected by the human body and, if they cannot be, removed from the body in some way, will remain in the fluids or be deposited as a precipitate wherever convenient, thereby proving to be an impediment to efficient function. Common table salt is such an inorganic salt.
Potassium salts are sometimes prescribed for heart patients, to raise the potassium level of the blood. A temporary elevation is often obtained but, upon discontinuance of the potassium pill, the level soon falls again. Last year we had a dramatic example of the folly of taking inorganic potassium. A client came to us with a potassium blood reading of 2.0, dangerously low (5 being optimum). She had taken an inorganic potassium supplement for many months but, whenever the medication was suspended, her potassium level rapidly fell. At the time she first came to us, she was fainting six and seven times a day. She was fed properly, mainly on fruits, leafy green vegetables, plus a few nuts and an occasional baked potato (not necessary but enjoyed by this particular client) and, within a very few weeks, her potassium level rose to 4.5 and has remained there ever since without benefit of any medication of any kind. She no longer faints and has shown a remarkable resurgence of energy.
If a sufficient amount of inorganic material is taken into the system, it may settle out adding to the viscosity, the thickness, of the fluids to such an extent that, in time, the body will simply have to deposit the “sludge” wherever convenient, in arteries, in joints, around nerve synapses, in muscles causing an imbalance in the solid-fluid ratio, with a gradual stiffening and rigidity of muscles and brittleness of the bones taking place.
Table salt is inorganic. If we add table salt to our food as a condiment and then ingest that food, we may find it to be highly toxic and destructive, especially of nerve tissue.
However, as, an organic component of a healthful food such as Romaine lettuce, produced for our sustenance by the combined efforts of bacteria, soil, air, sun and the plant itself, it will be put to good use within our body. For example, organic salt could be united with free-floating acid radicals which, if left alone to do their mischief, could tear the tissues apart but, when united with sodium, contained in the food salt, are simply eliminated from the body or perhaps just rendered harmless. The salt contained in food, being an organic salt, can be used. It can help keep the body fluids clean and pure. It also forms an important component of many body secretions, the tears and gastric juices among others.
Suffice it to say that to live we require a wide variety of minerals for all kinds of purposes. We require them for all the vital processes but we must remember that the body will reject inorganic salts because it has no mechanism to use them. Not that human design is faulty. It is just that a better arrangement has been made.
Nature has developed so that the human body depends upon only naturally chelated minerals, minerals organically organized within living food molecules. It will reject the inorganic molecules because they are unusable. They contain no life. Food molecules, and especially plant food molecules, have incorporated within their complex structures the very essence of life. Man, having his own niche in the bio-ecosystems, is required to eat of the foods specifically adapted to his needs.
Laboratory-synthesized chelated minerals have become a big thing in recent years, their “virtues” being extolled in just about every popular health magazine on the market today. Chelated minerals are minerals that have been bound to or bonded with amino acids or to a more complex protein molecule. The idea seems to encourage people to “live symptom-free, but to keep the disease.” The word is that if an individual will supplement his faulty diet with man-made chelated minerals, he will be free of his annoying symptoms.
Hair analyses are routinely made to detect mineral “deficiencies,” as are blood readings. Unfortunately, perhaps, neither the hair nor blood is static. Their composition is always in a state of flux. But, be that as it may, many such “deficiencies” are attributed to poor digestion which, in turn, is simplistically ascribed to a lack of sufficient hydrochloric acid in the stomach. When this latter is suspected, it is the modern practice to perform the Heidelberg Gastric Analysis, a means of determining how much acid is secreted in the stomach via evaluation of radio signals sent out from a small capsule which has been swallowed, these radio signals being recorded by a special sensing device contained in a belt wrapped around the abdomen. In the event that a deficiency is recorded, the common practice is to provide in a little capsule the missing amount of hydrochloric acid. This “therapy” is intended to improve the digestion of protein and, thus, in due course, the mineral availability to the body. To ensure that the patient secures an adequate mineral intake in the interim, he continues to pop his chelated pills.
The basic fallacy of this type of “therapy” is that a lack of sufficient hydrocholoric acid in the stomach indicates a deterioration in the health of the stomach acid-producing glands, these having been enervated by multiple errors in eating and living. As a result they may be burdened down with catarrh and be incapable of efficient production. Not only are the stomach glands affected by enervation but the entire system suffers. When any part of the body is tired, overburdened with toxic waste, efficiency of function is lowered.
Hydrochloric acid capsules and chelated pills are not usable. They further cripple the body. Swallowing acid and popping pills is anti-health. The better way is to begin to cleanse the body, to get rid of the morbid wastes, to disorganize and remove the fat, to autolyze the cysts and the tumors and then to rebuild a healthier body, a superbly functioning organism, using all the fundamental requisites of organic existence. When this has once been accomplished, the symptoms will long since have departed, the blood and fluids will no longer be deranged or scant in supply, and they will be abundant and free-flowing, pure, and will run in their channels carrying mineral and other nutrients to service the needs of the cells.
The Law of Economy states that where there is no demand for the production of a product (secretion, etc.), the body will not produce said product. If supplements are substituted for a product which is normally the result of a life process within the body, the time will soon come when the supplemented individual will become supplement-dependent, no longer able to manufacture the product so vital to his life. Without the supplement, his health will rapidly deteriorate. No “cure” has been affected, therefore the lack will reassert itself.
When supplements are taken, the body is and will continue to be stimulated while the dosing continues. Supplement-taking cripples the system’s powers of synthesis while the internal deterioration proceeds unabated. The process can be somewhat compared to the addiction that results when so-called “hard” drugs become a way of life. After a time, the individual more often than not finds that he must have recourse to an increased mineral intake in order to obtain the same feeling of well-being. But dosing, of course, has its limits since no healing has taken place.
Another point illustrates how futile it is to dose the body with this, that or the other mineral pill, chelated or not, and that is the fact that the human being must have all the nutrients present as and when required but, more than that, it must have them in their proper synergistic organization, proportions, if you will, one to another and each to all. The body will simply not put up with imbalances of any kind. In fact, when an imbalance exists, the body is in trouble and it will let us know by one method or another, by this symptom or that.
When an excess (or a deficiency) of any one material (or other nutrient) exists, an imbalance is present. Such an imbalance may cause the nutrient in question, mineral or other, to be worthless or, what is even worse, it may prove to be a handicap to the proper utilization of all the other nutrients! This is the Law of the Minimum.
Minerals are required by the living system; vitamins and enzymes are required, all the nutrients are essential to support the life systems but they must be present in a balanced synergized organic context as contained in the various food packages designed for man’s use or they are worthless. Not only worthless, in and of themselves, but the imbalance created because the system cannot fully utilize isolated man-made minerals, chelated or not, reduces the effectiveness of all of the other nutrients, including perhaps even the organic minerals that are present in the dietary intake perhaps by as much as one-half and, if other deleterious factors are also present, possibly even more.
Selenium is a mineral that has come into prominence especially since the publication of Selenium, As Food and Medicine written by Dr. Richard Pass water, Ph.D., and published by Keats Publishing, Inc.
Dr. Passwater relates how important selenium is in maintaining health. The inference is certainly given that adding a little selenium to the diet may just help prevent a person’s coming down with serious diseases. Following the publicity on the attributes of selenium, health food stores were invaded by persons eager to escape all the ills of the world’s sick simply by adding a little pill containing this trace mineral.
Selenium is now included in most multivitamin and multimineral supplements. Oddly enough nothing is said about selenium’s toxicity as added to supplements in an inorganic state. And even more, little is said about how the roots of certain plants, like the many fruit trees and the alfalfa plants, have roots which penetrate down through the surface oil deep into the sub-soil where they seek out and take up dissolved minerals of all kinds, gross and trace, these to be reorganized into plant substance to sustain the plant’s specific needs. When man eats the fruit of such plants or parts thereof which are adapted to his body design, he receives all the minerals he can use, including the trace mineral selenium.
Fruits, the product of trees and vines, are the best of all foods just because their root systems are far-reaching and deep-searching. When fruits are formulated they contain within their rich goodness, all that man requires to live in health. Fed by the soil and air, they are man’s finest food. When vegetables and a limited amount of nuts or edible seeds are also occasionally eaten, fruits will amply fulfill man’s nutrient needs.
As we have previously noted, minerals are one of a group of nutrients. They are a part of every cell, tissue, organ and system of the body. They are especially concentrated in the bones, teeth, hair and nails. Without minerals, the alkalinity of the blood and other fluids of the body would be in extreme jeopardy because a correct mineral presence is required not only to sustain this alkalinity but also the viscosity (the stickiness, fluidity) and the salinity (saltiness) of all systemic fluids.
Minerals serve to detoxify the system whenever solid wastes threaten it. Therefore, whenever the human organism has a full complement of minerals, all readily available at the required time, it is protected against decay and rot. The proper concentration of mineral salts in the interstitial fluids keeps cellular membranes from bursting and spilling forth cellular contents. The proper proportion of mineral to mineral keeps the plasma membranes and cell walls intact with full selective power, the ability to accept or reject nutritive material as it passes by in smorgasbord style, offered up by the fluids as they journey on their course to every cell within the organic domain. These membranes also retain the ability to pass all obstructive debris which by its presence could disrupt cellular activity through and out of the cell.
Let us briefly explore another aspect of mineral balance. We have already pointed out that the blood and other fluids must keep a rather carefully prescribed quota of minerals at all times to maintain rather narrow parameters of pH (alkalinity). If the pH varies even minutely, sickness and even death can follow, and quite rapidly. In order to keep the pH stable, the homeostatic mechanisms of the body will take from those organs which are adequately provided with the minerals the system requires to perform specific duties and to take whatever amount is needed to continue the life process. The body makes the best use of its resources.
The mineral selected most often is calcium, this being in time of grave need, rudely obtained from the teeth (producing caries) bones (leading to sponging, osteoporosis). That mineral deficiencies are widespread is evidenced by the fact that over 99 percent of Americans have one or more dental caries and most persons over the age of 50 give evidence of osteoporosis. Taking calcium supplements which are inorganic cannot solve this problem. Rather, supplements may lead to faulty systemic managements, not only of calcium but also of other minerals according to the Law of the Minimum, demonstrating again how poorly the body can tolerate imbalances of any kind.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our scientists could come up with a substance which could assure digestion of our foods, clean our dirty sores, reduce inflammations, promote healing, liquefy the thick mucous discharges emanating from our many diverse serous and other membranes within the body cavity; in short, work all manner of miracles?” Well, they haven’t, but Nature has! In fact, Nature has produced a whole family of such miracle workers and they are known as enzymes.
The human organism contains countless millions of enzymes. They are contained in the food we eat and in every cell of the body. Enzymes are very specialized organic compounds of polymers of amino acids. A polymer is a larger molecule or compound formed by the union of two or more smaller identical molecules. Enzymes are formulated when two or more identical amino acids are united in a chemical union.
Polymers are never found in the inorganic world. Therefore, enzymes are found only in living plants and animals. They are proteinaceous catalysts of biological activities. Since this statement is quite a mouthful, let us probe a little further to get a greater understanding of the specific role played by enzymes.
The word catalyst is defined in the Thorndyke-Barnhart Advanced Junior Dictionary as “a substance that causes catalysis” with catalysis then being interpreted to mean “the causing or speeding up of a chemical reaction by the presence of a substance that itself remains practically unchanged,” this last in our frame of reference referring, of course, to an enzyme.
The New American Encyclopedia (1939 Revised Edition) defines catalysis as a “chemical process by which the reaction of substances is quickened by an added substance which does not itself undergo a change. The added substance is called a catalytic agent or a catalyst. An example is platinum, the catalyst used in mfg. sulphuric acid.”
Enzymes serve as catalysts to metabolic activity. They act to assist the speed of the many chemical actions and reactions involved in the metabolic process and also help these activities to be brought to a successful conclusion. As catalysts, enzymes are capable of increasing the rate and effectiveness of a reaction without being consumed in the process.
Many of the processes which go on in the human body at normal temperatures would require in a laboratory situation hundreds and even perhaps thousands of degrees of temperature and perhaps even the presence of a strong violent reagent for their accomplishment. These same reactions are accomplished by means of the enzymatic presence almost instantaneously in the calm peaceful environment of a healthy body.
Enzymes come in many sizes and vary as to their specific duties. At present over 700 different enzymes have been identified but so many millions of these miracle workers are known to exist that they have simply been grouped in three general categories, as follows:
These names are applied according to the type of process the enzymes control.
Individual enzymes are named by adding “ase” to the name of the substance on which they work, scientifically referred to as the substrate as, for example, the starch-digesting enzyme ptyalin or amylase. Trypsin is sometimes referred to as Trypsinogenase or proteinase because it assists in the resolution of protein (splitting the complex protein molecule into smaller chemical units or molecules). Lactase assists in the resolution of lactose, or milk sugar. And so on.
Most enzymes actually exist in an inactive form until such time as their catalytic talents are called upon by the organisms. It is interesting in light of the fact that many people are taking enzymes regularly as supplements to realize that, in order to initiate the action by an enzyme, that is, to activate it, some metal ion (an electrically charged particle) or some simpler organic molecule or co-enzyme(s) must also be present.
As we have previously noted, vitamins serve as activators as well as regulators. They can serve as activators of enzymes and, at the same time, as regulators of enzymatic activity; again, a very good example of synergism within the system and, also, a very good reason taking isolated enzyme factors may be disruptive of normal enzymatic activity causing fluctuations of precise temperature ranges necessary to conclude successfully an important metabolic process.
Enzymes act only within very limited temperature ranges, this being true also of catalysts used in certain laboratory situations and industrial processes. At about 94 degrees, food enzymes start to lose their effectiveness, their ability to fulfill their catalytic duties and at about 118 degrees, they are no longer of any use. At the other end of the scale, they start to become inactive at about 32 degrees and seem to be totally destroyed at minus 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Thus it is that baking, boiling, frying, stewing, roasting, heating of any kind, dehydrating and freezing will either reduce or completely destroy the enzymatic presence in food.
When it became known that some enzymes were contained in food and that they probably helped in the digestion thereof, many people began talking about “live” food, but this was a misnomer since enzymes are in no sense “alive,” as we think of the meaning of this word. However, the concept of “life” in food led to many foolish ideas and fads in eating, some persons going so far as to eat nothing except what they were able to pull off a tree or pick from a vine or bush and pop immediately into their mouths, as if to catch the life element before it escaped. By this practice they hoped to live forever.
Certain supplement-happy practitioners go so far as to have blood tests made in order to evaluate the adequacy of pancreatic enzyme production, the same pancreatic enzyme which functions in the disorganization of carbohydrates in the small intestine. Since some of these enzymes are known to be absorbed from the GI tract into the blood stream, it is postulated that we can assess the amount of enzyme production by noting their presence in the blood.
Other methods are also used, such as the indican test which measures the amount of unused breakdown products which result in the absence of sufficient pancreatic enzyme to digest protein, these being directed to and collected in the urine. When such deficiencies are found to exist, supplements of pancreatic enzymes and perhaps even of hydrochloric acid are given to correct the situation instead of either reducing drastically the protein intake of the patient to one more in balance with normal enzyme production or fasting him to remove the toxic wastes that now burden his body preventing efficiency of production at the cellular level, a condition which probably exists throughout the body. In other words, an attempt to restore the enervated system to a condition capable of more efficient production on all levels, including the synthesis and utilization of enzymes, would be a more sensible way to approach the problem.
The enzyme ribonuclease was first discovered in 1938 by the bacteriologist Rene Dubos. (Ribonuclease acts as a catalyst in the hydrolysis of ribonucleic acid.) Eight years later Moses Kunitz, an American chemist, isolated this same enzyme and 23 years after that, in 1969, by two teams of researchers from Merck, Sharp and Dohme, the pharmaceutical company, and from Rockefeller University, this enzyme was finally synthesized. Since that time research has continued in many areas with the hope that enzymes can be manufactured and adminstered in the form of pills or by injection as agents in the prevention of disease or as a curative agent should disease exist.
Researchers are persistent. They have been hard at work learning about the chemistry of enzymes and how they work, trying to solve the mystery of how they can accomplish so much at such low temperatures. There is no doubt that much will be revealed in future years but, to date, we work on the fringes and have failed to solve the mystery.
Enzymes not only help to affect the marvelous processes of life but they also assist in death. Every minute millions of our body cells conclude their duties and die. Whenever cells die within the living body, they must be disposed of very quickly else the metabolic processes might soon be overwhelmed by the dead and dying cells and all life would necessarily come to a halt. This is where enzymes function in another capacity.
The dead cells are immediately set upon by the enzymes assigned to this specific type of cleanup duty. They are lysosomes. They disintegrate the clutter before it can obstruct normal function. Interestingly enough, there are no enzymes other than rigidly controlled lysosomes that can digest a living cell! Since enzymes lack this power, life is protected from destructive catalytic action and living cells just go on about their business.
Enzymes usually work at their point of synthesis within the cell where they are formulated. Their chief duty appears to be the building of proteins which are suitable for the particular host cell where they reside. Man is truly “fearsomely and wondrously made.” And we labor under the delusion that supplementary enzymes can substitute for innate intelligence.
Man has been very ingenious in attempting to find ways to make up for or compensate for his own shortcomings as to diet and lifestyle. We find persons who take yeast regularly. At first, they experience stomach pains which are early warning signs that the body is rejecting this vile substance but, as is usual, as the individual persists in ingesting it, the system soon accommodates to the poison, giving up vital force in doing so.
Anemic people religiously take their iron pills hoping to “cure” their anemia. While they may experience stimulation, they “cure” nothing. Their bodies continue to deteriorate both in structure and function. We know one woman who stoutly maintains that her anemic condition was “cured” by taking iron pills as prescribed by her physician. She has been taking these iron pills for over fifteen years. We look at her and wonder to what purpose as we see the pasty complexion, the curving spine and the appearance of premature wrinkles on her face. We ask, “But where is your health?”
Still others sprinkle bran on their morning cereal (cereals are not fit foods.) They add it to their salads and have cheer in the thought that they will be sure to have their morning BM. And yet, examination of raw bran under a microscope reveals jagged sharp edges which, in due time, will lacerate and tear away at the mucosal linings of the digestive canal and bring future sorrow and pain.
We know that substituting extraneously produced insulin for glandular insulin (produced by the Islets of Langerhans (located in, the pancreas) will, in time, about two years as a matter of fact, lead to the atrophy of that gland; and that using thyroxin as an aid or substitute for thyroid function will eventually deactivate the thyroid. We could recite a whole array of such supplementary “aids” to this, that or the other natural biological process, but one we wish to address at this time is the so-called “Starch Blocker.”
The manager of one of our local supermarkets told us recently that he has never witnessed anything like it. People are buying this new fad supplement so fast that his store has difficulty in keeping up with the demand. Fat, people are lured into believing that they can lose weight rapidly while continuing to eat in a manner contrary to health.
The usual starch blocker is a legume derivative, high in protein. If the student will refer back to Lesson 23 in this course, he will understand why the starch blocker will do what it promises—namely, permit the person to eat extensively of carbohydrate foods and not gain weight, even to lose pounds. What the ads do not tell is that the Starch Blocker will prohibit enzymatic action on the sugar and starch goodies because the high protein presence provokes the normal acidic gastric response which, of course, more or less instantly stops carbohydrate digestion activated by ptyalin and other starch-digesting amylases.
This is anti-health self management of the worst kind, one that will lead inevitably to fermentation and putrefaction throughout the entire alimentary canal of all food eaten, not only of the carbohydrates; certainly an unhappy circumstances at best, one that, if continued, can be highly destructive of health. While the early prognosis may be favorable to immediate weight loss, the long-term prognosis for persons who continue to use a starch blocker instead of common sense, is bleak indeed. Life Scientists know that beauty, health fitness and a sickness-free extended life span can only follow in the wake of a lifetime of correct eating and living, not through the use of supplements or substitutes for reason.
In the field of nonmedical care of the ill, a current topic concerns the use of “natural” treatments.
Treatments, therapies are artificial. “Natural therapy” is a contradiction.
The following is a Hygienist’s view. There are some basic Hygienic principles which are frequently accepted in general discussion by proponents of Osteopathy, Naturopathy and Chiropractic. In practice these principles are often not merely neglected, but flouted. It is not the primary intention here, to present the proof-ramifications of these basics, but to make them clear, relate them to therapeutics and so show the incompatibility of therapeutic philosophies with Natural Hygiene.
Health and disease have a common ground—the living organism. Without life, there is no health; no disease. Disease is the expression of life in response to unfavorable circumstances. Health is the expression of life in response to favorable circumstances.
Toxemia is a poisoned condition of the organism. In toxemia, there is an accumulation of poisons, inhibiting efficient, normal function.
Enervation is a state of lowered nerve action, in which the nerve tissue’s energy reserve is depleted; depleted through excessive nerve activity; activity necessitated by stimulation. Tired, exhausted nerves cannot adequately direct elimination. Reduced elimination increases toxemia. Toxemia stimulates. Toxemia compounds enervation and enervation compounds toxemia.
To break this vicious cycle and so overcome toxemia, the body suspends or reduces certain activities such as digestion and muscular effort. Thus the body conserves energy and nerve function which it redirects to make quantitative changes in its activities—to produce such actions as fever, diarrhea, polyuria, hyperhidrosis, vomiting—to remove irritating agents; that is, to eliminate. Such actions reflect the coordinated irritability of a complex organism. Irritability may be defined as that ability to take self preservative action in the face of adverse influences. Such actions are often labelled “disease.”
Therapeutics is the art of altering the expression of the organism’s irritability. We do not die from disease (our body’s functioning) but from toxemia; from the causes of toxemia. To a large extent the body protects itself—but constant dripping wears away the stone. Any program of care that does not remove the causes of toxemia is not rewarded with health, for the body by virtue of its irritability will not cease to be “sick,” to be “diseased,” to remove, or to accomodate to toxemia until success or death. If the need for disease is not removed, health will not ensue. This is another Hygienic principle. To seek, identify and remove the causes of toxemia is the constant aim of the Hygienist. The causes of toxemia and enervation are largely exogenous (i.e., from outside the body). The toxemia may be due to the accumulation of metabolic wastes or intermediary products of metabolism as a result of enervation, or to the absorption from the external environment of commonly recognized poisons such as drugs, preservatives, metals, poisonous gases, insecticides. In this article we are concerned with endogenous (internally) produced toxemia generated as a result of enervation; enervation due to exogenous influences—stimulants. The athlete who “runs” on a full stomach probably will not perform well—he certainly will not assimilate his food well; he will not do so because the resources of his body are directed to the performance of his athletic “feat.” Digestion and alimentary assimilation are suspended because his body cannot perform all of its activities at a high rate, all at once. So when the body exerts itself in specific directions as it may do in response to the presence of drugs or other stimulants in order to remove them, normal routine elimination (the elimination of endogenous toxins) is reduced. Elimination is normally increased during rest and sleep, partly because of the relative reduction in stimulation at these times. So a stimulant, that is anything—physical, chemical, spiritual, mental—you name it—that necessitates body action which would otherwise be functionally, physiologically unnecessary and unrewarding to the organism results in toxemia and enervation. If we waste our vitality, our energies, our resources—in short, our life—then the level of toxemia remaining after rest and sleep is greater than it otherwise would be. So if there is a progressive waste of function and lack of rest and sleep, there is a progressive increase in the level of toxemia. This toxemia, the endogenous toxemia of stimulation is that which makes drugs (apart from their chemical toxicity) and therapeutic modalities whether “natural” or medical, objectionable to a Hygienist. The “Natural Therapeutists” agents may be different to those of the medics but the effects are similar—stimulation, enervation, toxemia, disease...
By Ian Fowler, A.A.I.M.L.T. reprinted from the June, 1973 Newsletter of the Australian Natural Hygiene Society in the June, 1977 issue of Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review.
The body “sounds an alarm,” in times of danger and immediately accelerates body action. Such is the effect whenever any toxic or irritating substance or influence is introduced into or upon the body. The system, under the controlled guidance of the brain and via the autonomic nervous network, then evaluates the situation and reacts with a suitable increased action, this action being impaired to an extent appropriate to the obstruction which is present. In other words, the amount of the impairment will be in direct proportion to the degree to which the action is accelerated.
All such increased action occasions an extra expenditure of the energy reserves ordinarily maintained by the body to cope with undue stress of any kind; for example, such increased action might be an extraordinarily high pulse rate. The result of this unusual expenditure, of course, is to lessen the availability of reserve power and, hence, of the ability of the individual adequately to meet challenges and stresses as they may arise at some future time.
We call anything which causes this increased action on the part of the body, a “stimulant.” Of course, the immediate effect of the stimulant is that which is most, evident, that the stimulant is working and doing “good”. This feeling of well-being is only temporary, however, since while the stimulant appears to do good, it is actually doing harm, the extent of the harm done being dependent upon, and in a precise ratio to, the amount of power called into play to produce the accelerated response, the feeling of well-being, of euphoria.
This is the Law of Stimulation. It reveals the physiological consequences of false deception. It pertains to all stimulants: drugs (vitamins, etc.), coffee, tea, cocoa, alcohol, nicotine, even to snake venom which is currently being extolled as a “miracle” treatment in the care of victims of muscular dystrophy, the effect of many of these stimulants being extremely exciting; and also to lesser ones such as the various herbs, onions, garlic and the like. All appear to do good, but all perform a disservice to the body in that they do lasting harm, the harm being due to the fact that they reach into the body’s energy reserves to accomplish the good they appear to do and offer nothing in return which is of lasting value. Their efforts are cumulative and remain with the person who employs them. The sense of euphoria occasioned by their use is always followed, in time, by a depression due to the expenditure of power required, as we have seen, to bring about the exhilaration in the first instance.
Certain stimulants are said to “act” on certain parts of the body as, for example, digitalis is said to “act” on the heart. The exact opposite is true. In this case, the heart is already weak and the digitalis only serves to weaken it further. All stimulants are useless to the body. They cannot become a part of the body; they cannot be turned into blood, flesh, or bone. They present an encumbrance to body action and, for this reason, a threat to efficiency and a hindrance to perfection.
The human body is designed for efficiency and for perfect performance. Accordingly, whenever it is threatened even in a miniscule way, it makes operational its defensive measures in an effort to eradicate from the system the threatening substance or influence. Thus, it will expend power beyond the norm to cleanse the body of the offensive substance and to prevent the resulting raid on the banked energy reserves.
Let us emphasize also that stimulants do far more than speed up the vital organs and related parts. They do far more than waste the vital reserves. In addition, and most importantly, stimulants such as tea, coffee, horseradish, alcohol, mustard and the like actually inflict an injury of some magnitude upon the very tissues with which they come in contact. In other words, their use wounds and hardens the cells and it is because of this wounding and the necessity thus imposed upon them by the danger to protect themselves from further injury, that the cells begin their defensive action, whatever it may be.
This defense may take place in degrees, the first amounting to little more than a mild exaltation, or increase, of cellular function. The milder the stimulant, the milder the irritation and the less the speeding up of cellular activity. This kind of stimulation, the kind that threatens cellular integrity, must always be differentiated from the stimulation and revitalization which are observed following proper nutrition which serves to renew body reserves. (Compensatory Stimulation.)
No tonic or drug will have an effect on a single tissue or on a single organ of the body, nor on just a few isolated tissues, organs or cells. The very physiology of the body, the fact that the blood flows freely to every unit of life within the total physical structure underscores the reality that such is impossible. The effects of any drug, of any tonic, of any other irritant are wholly systemic; that is, they are unlimited insofar as their area of involvement is concerned. The extent of systemic undermining, the damage done, is an individual affair, some persons being affected more, others less; but all being reduced to an extent in keeping with their individual strengths and weaknesses, simply because, for an immediate effect, they have sacrificed some unknown amount of the essentials of life: perhaps and surely, some irretrievable loss of energy plus an undeterminable amount of tissue damage which will remain as a handicap throughout life to efficiency of function, even though it be only in the form of weak scar tissue.
There is, of course, always the danger of pushing beyond the powers of life, as many a drug user has found out, too late. It is now simple for us to understand how and why this can occur when we realize that any stimulant which is uncompensated brings about the expenditure for the vital living power of the body, the force that sustains life. Stimulants do not and cannot supply this power. Once the power has been used, the person so depleted has lost it forever, and this is why the feeling of exhilaration induced by drugs is always followed by increased weakness. With the constant use of uncompensated stimulants, the force of life is gradually tapped and drained away. The lesson should be plain. The constant use of coffee, drugs, vitamins, even herbs, will slowly, or rapidly, destroy the essence of life as they are used and according to the inherited constitution of the user.
Let us make a further point. The action by the body is always forthcoming, always there, the extent to which it is exhibited being wholly dependent upon the power which is available. In other words, loss of vital power will be experienced by every person; the stronger the person, the stronger the response; the weaker the individual, the weaker will be the response.
We, of course, cannot see this expenditure of the body’s life immediately. We cannot watch an alcoholic, for example, and say, “Ah! Ha! There it goes!” Certainly not, but we do notice it as we are using it because in the using lies the stimulated euphoria. One moment the alcoholic’s hand may be trembling but give him a drink and he will soon be “on top of the world,” as we say, with all trembling gone. His euphoric state came from increased vital action which yielded up part of his “bank account.”
We only become conscious of our lack of energy after the bank account has been raided too often—when our power supply is too low. We can observe a similar circumstance in our car battery. When it has power in reserve, we are pleased with its performance but the very use of that power depletes its reserves and the time comes when the source of energy fails us to the extent, perhaps, that the lights no longer glow and the car will not start. We are not able to see the energy stored within the battery, we could only observe it at work—when the lights glowed and the motor hummed. The same is true of the human body. In sleep, we display no sign of the power gathering in the slumbering body. The stimulant causes the power to be used and brings no power with it to replace that which is expanded. Sound nutrition, on the other hand, always replaces the reserves which are expended in the performance of all of life’s activities. Sleep restores the energy bank.
Herbert M. Shelton states the Law of Stimulation as follows: “Under all circumstances, vitality or energy of any character whatever is invariably manifested or noticed by us, as energy, in its expenditure, never in its accumulation.” Herein, of course, lies the fallacy of modern medical practice as it pertains to the use of drugs to “cure.” We seem stronger when we use drugs (commercial vitamins and minerals are drugs) only by the expenditure of our vital force, but we grow weaker as we steadily draw upon the reserve energy supply of the body. Unfortunately, in today’s medical practice, the weaker the person is, the more it is thought that he must be propped up or goaded into a false sense of well-being by applying some drug or other means of “support” (as, for example, vitamins, mineral and other supplements).
The exact opposite, of course, should be the practice! The weaker the individual, the more he must be left alone to husband his resources, he must be left alone so that the pendulum of energy can swing once more in the opposite direction. Efforts to stimulate, sustain, and invigorate the tired, sick body by the use of any kind of tonic—the whipping effect—always produces an equal and opposite reaction—depression of both vigor and function. This is the Law of Stimulation and it is always in effect under all circumstances, in sickness and in health. False stimulation can produce no fruit of lasting value.
Reprint from: Lesson Four, “Decision for Health,” SUPERIOR LIFE MANAGEMENT by Drs. Robert and Elizabeth McCarter, 1980. Bionomics Health Research Institute, Tucson, Arizona.
Current articles and editorials on medical malpractice suits and the physicians dilemma are most interesting, but one aspect of the situation has escaped attention—the patient’s dilemma.
Not many doctors are aware that many of their patients, particularly the elderly, live in a state of quiet desperation and fear, afraid of the very persons on whom they must rely for healing.
Older people, for various socio-economic reasons, tend to live in communities with their peers, and they are acutely aware of what occurs daily among their neighbors.
Mrs. X has an eye infection. Her trusted doctor informs her she has a severe condition and that he will use a new drug. Two days later her pain is intense, her face swollen.
Now her doctor informs her she is allergic to this new drug and takes her off all medication. The condition heals itself.
However, damage has been done and she will never see quite so well again. Mrs. X has a dilemma, to be sure. She has impaired vision.
Mrs. Y has been seeing her doctor regularly for 25 years having a thorough examination every six months. She has been a good wife, mother, never smoke or drank or indulged in any degenerative practice. “Suddenly” she has a heart attack.
After several weeks she recovers sufficiently to return home from the hospital. Three weeks later, in self-examination, she discovers a lump in her breast, whereupon a massive mastectomy is performed. Discharged after what is termed “successful” surgery, she has another heart attack, more hospitalization, followed by two years of semi-invalidism with many angina attacks.
Perhaps rightfully, she wonders “why?” Why hasn’t she, in all these years, received some counsel from her physician in preventive methods?
Mr. Z goes to the hospital, a victim of drug overdose. He was taking a prescribed heart medication in the prescribed dosage.
He almost joins the “up to 140,000” who die each year in hospitals as a result of drug overdose under the “care” of licensed nurses and physicians, a fact reported by a spokesman for the American Medical Association (AMA) last year before a Senate committee. The committee also heard testimony that 80 percent of the deaths were preventable.
Even more shocking was the article in the Washington Post on May 24, 1974, which cited evidence indicating that 30 to 40 percent of all hospital patients suffer from adverse drug reactions.
In Los Angeles County a study showed that, of 50,000 prescriptions written, 13 percent were in amounts in excess of the maximum amount needed for ordinary therapy. The computer revealed that one patient had been given 54 prescription drugs in 112 days!
I have before me a copy of the Merck Index of drugs and it is a formidable volume containing more than 10,000 drug formulations to choose from.
The thought occurs to me that no one person could conceivably know all there is to know about these drugs. Furthermore, as a graduate chemist, I wonder how it would be possible even to predict what certain combinations of drugs would do within the the human body.
And yet, I know of a patient who received 26 different drugs in a single day! The potential in this chemical madhouse would confound the most learned biochemist, to say nothing of the human body thus impregnated!
The indiscriminate giving of drugs and combinations of drugs by anyone is tragic in the light of the accepted fact that the biochemical knowledge at our disposal today is rudimentary. The stupidity, thus, of giving numerous drugs in unproven combinations is enormous.
Is it any wonder so many elderly and less elderly patients succumb in a hospital? Such a situation poses an interesting problem for the legal mind. Are such deaths murder or manslaughter?
When and at what point does ignorance cease and responsibility begin? Should the physician be required by law to inform his patients that a particular drug has been known to cause death in other patients under similar circumstances? Should the physician be limited only to those drugs that have been shown in double-blind tests on a sufficient number of patients to be instrumental in cure and not in death?
When one adds to the drugged victims the startling reports published recently in the San Diego Union that as much as 20 percent of the surgery performed in this country is done by incompetent doctors, the tragedy mounts in its implications as does the fear among patients.
Dr. Jean Mayer of Harvard cites figures from the World Health Organization which show that the U.S. has dropped from 11th place—just 25 years ago—to 37th place in health care standards among the civilized nations in the world. Roger Rappaport in his article, “It’s Enough To Make You Sick,” states that our vaunted medical know-how has “failed to keep our male life expectancy rate equal with that of nations that have considerably lower per capita incomes.”
Other evidence shows we have more heart trouble, more cancer, more diabetes and other so-called degenerative diseases than in any other country where statistics are available. Cancer is the number one killer of our children. As a nation we cannot afford this tragedy.
The facts suggest that the medical fraternity may have failed in its sacred trust. It may be that this period in time will become known as the Dark Age of Medicine.
Reprinted from the March 5, 1975, edition of the San Diego Union.
40.8. Why Drugs Should Not Be Used
40.9. What The Body Does When Drugs Are Taken
40.11. What To Do Instead Of Taking Drugs
40.12. What To Do When Acute Symptoms Manifest Themselves
Article #1: The Poisoning Practice by Virginia Vetrano, B.S., D.C.
Since early Egyptian times, it has been recognized that obedience to physiological law is a prerequisite for maintaining health. Hippocrates is supposed to have said that the physician should have two special objectives regarding disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm. According to the Hippocratic concept, the doctor is the servant, the “helper” of pthisis (nature). He said, “It is important to help, or at least not to harm.”
The very early physicians knew of the importance of obeying these natural laws and their practices evolved around this concept. Today there is an increasing body of scientific evidence which supports these concepts and more attention is now being devoted to diet, exercise and the other natural essentials of health.
During the very early years when man was evolving into the being we know today, he knew nothing about science and medicine yet his bones healed, his wounds healed and life went on. Primitives, like animals, instinctively relied upon their own intrinsic powers of healing.
During the 19th century, medical sects arose out of opposition to the so-called “heroic” treatment of their day and they shared some success. When we study each of these sects which arose during that time, we begin to see certain patterns emerging. The highest success rate was among those practitioners who did the least harm and allowed “nature’s healing powers” to work unhampered.
By “nature’s healing power” I do not mean a specific entity for healing but a capacity which resides in all living animals to heal themselves and to maintain a steady state. The goal of life is to maintain life and the body always strives toward a healthy state. Problems arise when too many obstacles are thrown in the path of this effort. The role of the Hygienic practitioner is to remove those obstacles by teaching his students how to correct those errors in living which caused his illness and making sure that all of the conditions for health are supplied in the proper quantity and quality. It is important that all of these conditions are present at the same time as health cannot be achieved if any of them are missing or lacking. These conditions include proper food, pure air, pure water, sunshine, rest and sleep, exercise and emotional poise. The body then becomes the healing force. This is demonstrated in wound healing, healing of broken bones, in self-limited diseases such as colds, flu, etc.
When we consume such unnatural and unwholesome foods as the highly refined products which are so popular today, we build disease. We inflict our illnesses upon ourselves by poor dietary habits, lack of sleep, a sedentary lifestyle and other unhealthy habits. We then develop atherosclerosis, cancer, kidney stones, or ulcers from our own wrong actions. We cannot eliminate these errors in living by taking a drug. We must look amongst our practices for the “cure.”
The cell is a homeostatic mechanism requiring precise entry of nutrients and elimination of wastes. These wastes result from ongoing metabolic activity and the deterioration of structural elements. With proper nutrition and detoxification, the cell is programmed for specific functions. Assuming these functions are healthy cells and tissue that lead to healthy organs that lead to a healthy organism.
Since illness is the result of unhealthful practices, then health should be restored by removing these causes and supplying the conditions for health. This is the philosophy of the drugless practitioners. They do not add further contaminants to an already toxic organism by dispensing drugs but rely on natural means which depend upon the body’s own ability to heal.
The oldest known written record of drug use is a clay tablet from the ancient Sumerian civilization of the Middle East. This tablet, made in the 2000’s B.C., lists about a dozen drug prescriptions. An Egyptian scroll from about 1550 B.C. names more than 800 prescriptions containing about 700 drugs.
Ancient peoples used many drugs. An Egyptian physician, for example, tried to cure blindness by pouring a mixture of honey, pig’s eye, and other ingredients into the patient’s ear. But occasionally people who had taken drugs as remedies would recover naturally. As a result, they credited the drugs for their healing.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the demand for drugs remained high and pharmacies became increasingly common in Europe and the Arab world.
In the early 1500s, the Swiss physician Philippus Paracelsus pioneered the use of minerals as drugs. He introduced many compounds of lead, mercury, and other minerals in the treatment of various diseases.
The drug revolution began about 1800 and has continued up to the present. During this period, scientists have discovered hundreds of drugs. Scientists learned how to isolate drugs from plants in the early 1800s. In 1806, morphine became the first plant drug to be isolated. Within a few years scientists had isolated quinine and several other plant drugs.
The pace of the drug revolution quickened in the 1900s. In fact, most of the major drugs used today have been discovered since 1900, such as hormones, antibiotics, and sulfa drugs.
Since early Neanderthal man, plants have been used as drugs for “healing” purposes. Even as modes of medicine changed throughout the centuries, plants continued to be the mainstay of country medicine as methods and ideas on plant healing were passed down from family to family and within communities. Thus tribes, clans, villages, towns, sometimes entire countries, tended to have similar styles in “healing.” Most of these plant remedies were based on local discoveries and pass-along uses, so many plants are used in exactly the same way.
For several thousands years the Chinese physicians used the Ma Huang plant. Later researchers extracted an alkaloid, ephedrine, from this plant.
Willow bark was used for thousands of years, even by American Indian tribes. Unfortunately, consistent use of the bark affected the digestive system, and it became imperative to find a substitute, or chemical version. This duplication took over fifty years of investigation, and was solved when a German scientist broke the chemical code by using the spirea plant family, instead of willow bark. He called his result aspirin, now one of the most used drugs on earth (resulting in much distress and iatrogenic diseases).
Curare arrow poison, another tropical discovery, is now used to control breathing during some surgery.
Digitalis was extracted from the foxglove plant, an herb, and is still prescribed by physicians for those with heart problems.
In his book, The History of Medicine, the British physician and surgeon, Kenneth Walker says, “Thanks to the extraordinary recuperative powers of the human body and the resilience of the human mind, the patient generally managed throughout the ages to recover health in spite of the vicissitudes of treatment to which he had been subjected.”
During the early days of civilization, there were many types of ‘cures’ that were associated with various cults. If the patient recovered his health, it was attributed to the healing ritual. If recovery did not occur, the disease was blamed. However, in all cases, it becomes evident that it was ‘vis Medicatrix Naturae’ which effected the recovery.
There was always a common denominator involved in all of these ‘cures.’ This is the force active in the organism in which healing takes place in spite of what was done and not because of what was done.
The Indians had their shamen and medicine men. The Hindus worshipped many gods and believed that illness was the work of demons. Therefore, rituals were performed to rid the sick individual of these demons and witches. The African bushman performed a symbolic dance which was supposed to “cure.” The Chinese used acupuncture, herbs and moxibustion. (This is the burning of powered leaves of the moxa plant on the skin of the patient).
All of the therapies differed widely—from magic and witches to acupuncture. The modes of treatment were varied and often bizarre but they all had “success.” Patients overcame their illnesses in most cases. How can a superstitious ceremony overcome a disease? The answer is that it cannot. First of all, most diseases are self-limited and the patient becomes well in spite of the treatment. But there was always this common denominator present in all of the recoveries and that is the vital faculty within each of us which is called upon when needed to re-establish equilibrium within our body and to heal. It is this vital power which we call ‘nature’ that healed the Indian after the witch doctor performed his magical ritual and it was this same force which manifested itself after the Chinese doctor administered herbs. The highest success rate came after those ceremonies or rituals or treatments which did the least harm and interfered least with the body’s innate ability to heal itself.
Pharmacologists consider all chemicals that affect living things to be drugs. Stedman’s Medical Dictionary defines a drug as “A therapeutic agent; any substance, other than food, used in the prevention, diagnosis, alleviation, treatment, or cure of disease in man and animal.”
The truth is that all drugs are poisons and always do much harm, even when taken in small quantities. The body reacts defensively to all foreign substances which are introduced. This response is mistakenly attributed to the action of me drug when in fact the drugs do not act mechanically to produce any response. It is the body which acts upon the drugs in its efforts to dispose of this dangerous substance as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Hygienists know that the living organism is dynamic and full of energy. Its self-reparative and restorative ability remains intact as long as energy is abundant. Over 100 years ago Dr. R.T. Trall demonstrated the difference between lifeless matter and the living organism. He said that the living organism is active and the lifeless matter is passive.
Drugs are passive inert substances which have no magical powers to impart life and health to a living organism. Drugs combine chemically with the chemical constituents of the body where they do much harm by interfering with normal life processes.
People take so-called headache remedies, stimulants, anesthetics, pain killers, sleeping pills and narcotics for the temporary relief they afford. As a direct consequence of drug poisoning, gastric ulcer, anemia, kidney disease or any of many other ailments many develop. The pathologies these poisons occasion are added to the disease for which they are given. This is to say, physician-made diseases are worse than the natural disease.
It has been said that drug-treated patients have to recover twice—first, they have to recover from the original disease and, second, they have to recover from the drug-induced disease. The fact is that every drug is a poison and every drug produces disease. All too often patients are killed by the drug and, in an even greater number of cases, where the drug does not kill, it produces permanent harm. In fact, the most common cause of chronic disease is drug treatment for acute disease.
There are no harmless drugs; there are no safe drugs. All of them, even the least toxic, result in the production of pathologies, if they are repeatedly administered, even in small doses. It is certainly unwise to continue drug practices, especially in the face of the fact that they produce only ills. For example, what good comes from the administration of cortisone for arthritis? The symptoms are temporarily suppressed; the patient may be provided a certain measure of relief from pain, but the sufferer’s condition inevitably becomes worse and recovery is more difficult. The ultimate result is increased suffering for a brief respite from pain. This is true of all suppressive measures. Both physician and patient are deluded into believing that some suffering is being saved, but the later increased suffering outweighs the brief periods of freedom from pain. In fact, the increased suffering is usually of longer duration than the periods of comfort and is far more acute than the periods of “relief.”
There are no drugs now used by the medical profession and there were no drugs used by any of the schools of medicine in the past that did not and do not produce disease.
If a drug, which is a chemical substance, unites with the protein of the cell, it destroys the cell. It is precisely to prevent this union and thus to save the life of the cell that the drug is resisted, rejected and expelled. All the action that is mistaken for drug action is cellular or organic action designed to protect and preserve life.
When a drug is picked up by the blood, either from the digestive tract or from the site of the injection, it is carried by this medium throughout the body, so that it comes in contact with tissues everywhere. The so-called side effects of drugs are the actions of the different tissues with which the drug comes in contact in rejecting, resisting and expelling the drug. So-called drug effects are not drug actions but vital actions.
If a drug may be employed and it suppresses symptoms, it is said to be good. That the drug may produce unwanted effects at the same time it suppresses the symptoms is, of course, unfortunate and the physician hopes that the “side” effects will not be too great or that he can stop the drug if the “side” effects threaten to become formidable.
Hygienists know how to avoid these poisonous effects. They simply avoid all drugs. We cannot be poisoned into health.
The Law of Duel Effect states that all substances which are taken into the body, or which come in contact with it from without, occasion a twofold and contrary action— the secondary action being the opposite of the primary action, and the more lasting.
Therefore, the primary action (reaction) from taking a stimulant would be stimulating but the secondary and longer lasting effect would be depression. Likewise, the primary reaction from taking a pain-suppressant would be relief from pain but the secondary, longer-lasting effect would be increased pain. If the immediate and temporary effect of a dose of digitalis is to stimulate the heart, the secondary and permanent effect is to depress the heart.
Why would this be so? The body marshalls its available forces to handle the situation at hand which at that moment might be an abnormal substance in the form of a pain-suppressant. This toxin which has been so introduced has to be dealt with and eliminated as quickly as possible. During this time, the organism halts reparative and healing processes which are felt as symptoms, thus temporary relief.
However, as soon as the foreign substance is disposed of, the body reinitiates its healing processes with the return of the old symptoms. However, due to the tremendous expenditure of vital energy and the added toxins from the drugs, greater harm has been done. The heart becomes weaker after its stimulation due to exhaustion and added toxins. Likewise affected are all bodily organs.
Obviously, drugs cannot heal disease. There are no healing powers or intelligence outside of the human body. One should dismiss this notion of “cure” forever from their thoughts. It is only the body which possesses this potential to heal itself and will do so when favorable conditions are provided.
People take drugs for relief of their symptoms but often find that the drugs are ineffective even for this. People who take sleeping pills are more tired than ever. Dieters who take diet pills remain overweight.
The individual who has arthritis still has pain after ingesting enormous quantities of aspirin.
Since 2000 B.C. man has sought that magical formula which would “cure” him of all his illnesses. Man sought an easy way out of his problems which he created for himself. “One pill and I will feel great once again!” Unfortunately, there are no magical formulas that will overcome our ills and still allow us to transgress all the laws of physiology.
Drugs are used to suppress symptoms. That is, to relieve pain, relieve insomnia, skin eruptions, constipation, etc. But are symptoms the disease? No, they are just evidences of it. They are a sign from our body telling us that the body has closed shop for cleansing and repairs. If one were to listen to the innate intelligence of his body instead of immediately suppressing these warning signs, many chronic diseases would not occur. Drugs suppress but never solve the problem of ill health (toxicosis). In fact, drugs cause more ill health (toxicosis).
It is commonly thought that every so-called disease is a distinct entity, requiring a specific remedy. Throughout all systems and methods of therapeutics, there runs a basic error that they call the therapeutic actions of their various procedures. The truth is that these so-called “therapeutic actions” or “remedies” are reactions of the body against the “remedies.” The living organism reacts to everything within its environment—to assimilate useful agents and influences; to eject nonusuable and destructive things. The defensive reactions against harmful substances and influences is proportionate to their harmfulness and commensurate with the vital energy possessed by the affected organism. These two factors—the amount and destructive-ness of the agent or influence, and the vital energy of the organism—are the determining factors in every reaction.
In reality the therapeutic effects are among drugs’ evil effects. They are classed as therapeutic effects only because they are the effects the physician wishes to produce when he prescribes the drug. He assumes that something constructive and beneficial is accomplished when a symptom is temporarily suppressed.
When one uses drugs, one endeavors to provide the sick body with means of carrying on its healing efforts. By sending into it or applying to it, exotic and poisonous substances that it cannot use in a state of health, the body is actually further debilitated. In short, the effort to cure disease has been by producing additional disease.
Medical men employ poisons because they believe that poisons are the proper things with which to restore health. They attempt to prevent disease by the employments of poisons because they believe that poisons can prevent disease. It never enters their minds that the elements of health are essentials to both preserving and restoring health.
Poisons are used because there is an effort to kill something—germs, parasites, viruses. This war is nominally on disease, but the warfare actually devolves upon the human constitution.
Should the sick be poisoned? One might also ask, should the well be poisoned? Is there any more reason the sick should be poisoned than there is that the well should be poisoned? If poisons are not the proper things with which to preserve health, why should they be thought of as the proper things with which to restore health? If poisons make the well man sick, what do they do for the sick man?
As you have learned from previous lessons, disease is a body-conducted remedial process. It is an effort on the part of the organism to repair and heal itself. You have also learned that disease is not something lurking in the bushes ready to attack the first person who passes by it. Rather it is occasioned by our own transgressions of life’s laws.
Drugs cause disease and only disease. They do not prevent or eradicate it. Ingestion of drugs adds further toxins to an already toxic organism. Further, it is very enervating for the body to deal with drugs. The less vital energy the body has, the less equipped it will be to initiate healing.
Further, taking drugs does not solve the problem. One cannot attain health by suppressing symptoms. The problems of ill health still remain and the person is usually worse off than before he or she began taking the drugs. We are, in effect, telling our body a lie when we take drugs. We attempt to deceive it into thinking that this or that drug will be the “miracle cure.” But in reality, we are hurting our body more by taking these poisonous substances.
Healing powers are possessed solely by the living organism. It is always in force and is forever functioning in the body in sickness or health. Hygienists cannot “cure”; they have no “cures.” Neither has anyone else.
Outside of the human body, man cannot make blood; he cannot produce a cell; he cannot mend a broken bone; he cannot repair a wound. All that he may do is to remove all interfering factors, whether internal or external, and supply the normal conditions for life. After that, the organs and processes of life do the work of healing.
People do not become well if the causes of their illnesses are not discontinued and their modes of living are not corrected. Enervating habits cripple their functioning powers so that they remain toxic. They can get well as soon as they cease to build disease.
A toxic state of the body develops and slowly devitalizes the tissues for years, resulting in delayed healing and degeneration in injured or devitalized parts. When men live in a manner to maintain a continuous toxin saturation, they are in line for the development of any disease to which diathesis or environment determines them.
It is foolish to suppress symptoms. Let us consider a cough. It is a vigorous, forceful and dramatic expulsion of air from the lungs and is accomplished by sudden contractions of the walls of the chest and of the diaphragm. It is intended to force obstructing and irritating matter (mucus, blood, water, particles of dust, smoke, gas, etc.) from the air passages. In pneumonia, coughing keeps the lungs cleared of exudate so that breathing remains possible. The cough is part of the remedial effort, not an attack upon the body from without. If the cough is checked or suppressed by drug devitalization, passages tend to fill with exudate. Checking the cough definitely, reduces the patient’s chances of recovery.
Analogous to coughing is diarrhea. Like coughing, diarrhea is a dramatic acceleration of a normal physiological action. It is a bowel action and is, designed to free the colon, perhaps even the small intestines, of unwanted material. The unwanted substance may be unsuitable, or decaying food or drugs, or it may be a mineral water. In any case, the diarrhea is a remedial effort. To check the diarrhea while there is a need for it is to lock up, as it were, in the food tube the unsuitable material the diarrhea is intended to remove. The diarrhea automatically ends when its purpose is served and no suppression is necessary.
The first thing the body does when drugs are taken is to make an attempt at their removal through the bowels, the skin, the kidneys, the liver, the lungs, the mucous membranes, by vomiting or by other means.
Noxious materials within are either rejected or, failing that, shunted aside where they offer the least harm. Resistance and expulsion are self-preservative efforts on the part of the living organism. Sometimes due to lowered vitality, it is very difficult to expel certain toxic substances and may even be too difficult. Then the body adopts another technique for self-preservation—it stores them away in the bones’ fatty tissues or even creates sacs called cysts or tumors for this purpose.
The poisonous quality of drugs that occasion vital defensive actions are termed the “medicinal action” of the drug.
Pharmacologists mistakenly believe that drugs have specific relations to various parts, organs, or structures of the organism, although they have never been able to verify it. Hence their belief in selective affinity, i.e. certain drugs act on one part of the body, and others act on other parts. Thus they classify drugs as cathartics, emetics, purgatives, diaphoretics, etc.
It is the body, the living organism, which chooses the way it can best expel drugs. Some drugs will be thrown out of the body via kidney excretion, which the pharmacologist will call diuretics, another by vomiting, and yet another by expectoration. Some drugs, because of their more poisonous nature, will be ejected by the body through as many channels as possible. Hence, its alleged “multiple actions.”
Healing is a normal physiological or biological process. It results from the orderly operations of the ordinary and regular forces and processes of life, working with agents and substances that bear a normal relation to the living organism. Success of the body’s efforts at self-healing depends absolutely upon removal of the cause of its ills. This is to say, the body mends itself when causes are removed. No healing can take place without removal of cause.
The force that is in any “medicinal action” is really vital power, that is, the power of the body itself. Understanding this property of living matter, we can clearly see that medicines do not at all act; do not furnish power for action; and do not in any mysterious way impart power to the body for its own action. The action occurring between the body and drugs is exclusively vital action, power being expended, not generated.
The organized body has remarkable powers of self-regulation, adjustment and distribution. When unhampered, it distributes its available energy to the various organs and tissues in proportion to their importance and needs.
Easily shown is that disease is a process of repair, renovation or healing; and that “cure” in the proper sense is nothing more nor less than the correction of those basic causes which necessitated, in the first place, the institution of disease. All disease phenomena exhibit vital action.
There is this relationship: unhygienic conditions of life give rise to a toxic state of the body. Toxicosis (or toxin saturation) develops beyond a point of vital toleration and evokes special eliminative efforts. These special efforts are the process called disease. Disease tends to free the body of its toxic overload. Disease is, itself, the healing process. Recognizing disease as the “cure,” why employ drugs to stop it? Does that make sense? Is it working against the body’s efforts to heal an exhibition of wisdom or ignorance?
Constructive disease is evidence of vitality. It is obvious, therefore, that therapy is anti-vital—destructive of the vital faculties of the body. Treatment by means of drugs is in reality directed against a beneficial, curative process. The remedy actually subdues vitality and with it physiological activity called “disease.” This is harmful inasmuch as vitality is wasted, the restorative process is arrested, and poisonous substances are introduced into the system to lay the basis for further toxemic crises when vitality shall have been summoned to eject the “medicinal” accumulation. Thus the drug-treated body has a double liability: (1) The poisons introduced and (2) the continued retention of noxious materials because of suppressed remedial efforts.
To the extent that the body diverts energy to drug expulsion, to that extent a reduction in vital activities elsewhere in the body is occasioned. This usually results in the reduction of the remedial- process, or illness, not by removing its needs, but by a reduction of the vital power whereby it is conducted. Such a reduction comprises suppression.
It becomes apparent that you cannot indulge in the causes of disease and expect to be made free of its consequences. Physiology does not work that way. We cannot be made exempt from violations of Nature’s laws.
The medical profession no longer advocates bloodletting, leeching, purging, puking, mercury treatments, tobacco and alcohol treatments, or a long list of other injurious and deadly practices of the past.
The medical profession, however, continues to defend drugging, vaccination, blood transfusion and a whole host of injurious and deadly practices. How long will it take them to admit the fact that these practices also require condemnation?
We know that all drugs are bad without exception. But to cite some specific examples, I will mention a few of the most commonly used drugs.
Acne most often appears on the face and causes much discomfort and embarassment to sufferers because of its unsightly appearance. It is the result of accumulated toxins in the body which are being discharged via the sebaceous glands of the skin. This condition results mainly from wrong diet and if this were to be corrected, the acne would disappear for the body would no longer need this outlet. However, many people attempt to suppress this cleansing effort by using acne preparations.
Acne products most often come in the forms of lotions or creams which are applied topically. The claim is that these lotions help heal and prevent acne pimples and absorb excess oil. As Hygienists, we know that nothing outside of the human body has the ability to heal and that, therefore, these claims are quite false. However, much harm can be done. One common ingredient in most acne preparations is benzoyl peroxide. This chemical is used on colored or dyed fabrics to bleach them white. When applied to the skin the body responds to the poison with reactions of itching, redness, burning, swelling or excessive dryness.
Allergy is also due to toxicosis. Allergy relief preparations are highly poisonous substances. The following warning is contained on Dristan Analgesic Tablets: “Warning: may cause drowsiness. May cause excitability especially in children. Do not take this product if you have asthma, glaucoma, difficulty in urination due to enlargement of prostate gland, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, or thyroid disease.”
Clearly, the body recognizes this as a poison and attempts to rid itself of it as quickly as possible. However, this requires a great deal of energy to deal with the poison and anyone who is so toxic as to display the symptoms of “allergy” would be particularly harmed to have an additional flood of highly poisonous toxins put into their systems.
Clearly, the most common analgesic taken today is aspirin. The first report of the therapeutic properties of the salicylates was by the Rev. Edward Stone in 1763. Today, world production of aspirin has been estimated to be around 100,000 tons per year with an average consumption of about 100 tablets per head per year. A large survey, as reported in the Journal of Allergy in Clinical Immunology, listed aspirin among ten drugs most frequently involved in adverse reactions. The first death attributed to aspirin ingestion per se, as distinguished from aspirin poisoning by overdose, was described in Germany in 1902. In 1933, Dr. B.R. Dysart published an article in the Journal of The American Medical Association describing death following ingestion of five grains of acetylsalicylic acid. Most aspirin tablets contain 400-500 mg. or about 7 grains. Recommended dosage is usually two tablets 4 times a day. This is quite a toxic load to deal with!
By 1970, Dr. R.S. Farr, in his presidential address before the American Academy of Allergy, was citing “the need to reevaluate acetylsalicylic acid” and suggested that, because of the risk to a substantial number of people, aspirin and aspirin-containing compounds should become prescription rather than over-the-counter drugs. Hygienists know that they are poisonous and should never be taken. They have no power to heal and cannot be used by our cells for any constructive purposes whatsoever.
In an article in the Journal of Allergy in Clinical Immunology in December 1976, J.R. Vane demonstrated that nonsteroid, anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin inhibit prostaglandin biosynthesis.
Interference with the biosynthesis of prostaglandins could have very grave effects on our health since this compound, which is present in all body tissues, plays a very important part in many physiologic activities. This includes, but is not limited to:
Also, prostaglandins inhibit secretion of pepsin as well as hydrochloric acid by the gastric mucosa by a direct action on the parietal cells of the gastric glands. (Parietal cells secrete hydrochloric acid.) This is one of the body’s homeostatic devices.
Prostaglandins, then, are a control mechanism for secretion. As ulceration is believed to result from erosion of the mucosa by excessive quantities of gastric juice, the physiologic synthesis of prostaglandins by the stomach may protect the mucosa against ulceration by regulating its secretion.
If aspirin interferes with the biosynthesis of prostaglandins, then ulcers could more readily occur and this accounts for a common side effect of aspirin therapy.
So aspirin not only results in a great energy depletion within our body in its attempt to deal with it, its presence also interferes with many normal physiological functions. People create more harm than they realize when they ingest this commonly prescribed tablet.
An antacid is an agent given to neutralize acidity in the stomach. It interferes with the body’s homeostatic attempts to maintain acid-alkaline balance, adds toxins to the body and never promotes health. The cause of acid indigestion must not be indulged. Here again, faulty diet must be corrected. If a person were to fast and then go on an all-raw food program of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, all bodily functions would return to a healthy state.
Dr. Kiki Sidhwa says, “Milk and antacids, the mainstays of therapy for peptic ulcers, may led to metabolic alterations potentially more serious than the primary disease being treated.” He further says that such treatment might produce many changes in the system, including the development of gout. Explanation of the trouble was that this treatment upset the acid-alkaline balance in the system and led to alkalosis if long continued.
Antacids containing aluminum hydroxide inhibit the absorption of dietary phosphate since it binds this mineral in the lumen of the gut. Along with calcium, phosphorus contributes to mineralization of bones and teeth and is intimately involved in human metabolism. There is an important ratio between calcium and phosphorus which must be maintained. Great harm can result if any interference with this ratio occurs such as the binding of phosphorus when drugs are taken. A certain drug taken for a particular reason always has systemic effect.
Antibiotics mean anti-life and indeed they are against life. They are administered to kill life in the form of microorganisms. Since disease is incorrectly thought of as an attack by bacteria, germs, etc., the antibiotic is given to kill these “invaders.” Instead they poison vital cells, that is, the body itself is killed to some degree. The body’s efforts must then be redirected toward eliminating this new poison.
The cause of disease is not the germ that is present, but the mental and physical habits that have broken down the body. Let the office of the germs be what it may, they cannot cause disease. The theory that germs and parasites have to be destroyed in order to “cure” disease is a delusion.
Respiratory distress has been associated with ampicillin administration. Researchers have also demonstrated that several other widely employed drugs including isoniazid (an antibiotic) have produced clinical patterns of chronic (active hepatitis, resulting in cirrhosis. The scientists have found that drug reactions involving the liver result in liver toxicosis from the drug itself. In patients with drug-induced acute hepatitis, the incidence of bridging necrosis was increased. (Bridging necrosis is death of the threads of protoplasm which pass from one cell to another in the liver.)
The use of antibiotics has also been proven to result in many blood disorders including leukemia.
Diarrhea is not in itself a disease but an action of the body against some form of toxic irritation, mainly from unsuitable or unhygienic foodstuffs. Dr. Sidhwa says that antidiarrhea drugs can result in kidney and liver disorders, skin and sight defects and even death.
Why should we poison ourselves and risk the chance of possible kidney or liver disease when all we have to do is simply provide the conditions for health and allow our body to repair itself? In this way we may be sure that we are not doing harm.
It is foolish to take any medication whatsoever when one manifests symptoms of a cold. From the Hygienic point of view, the cold is the “cure.” The cold is the result of systemic poisoning and it is the body’s effort to rid itself of some of its toxic overload. Any preparation taken to suppress these symptoms will only add to the toxins and will create another obstacle for our body to overcome while it is doing its “housecleaning” of toxic debris.
All drugs, including laxatives, sleep aids, stimulants, depressants, diet pills, etc., are aimed at treating symptoms. Hygienists do not treat symptoms but work at removing the cause of toxicosis which occasioned the disease in the first place.
As a student of Life Science you should always keep in mind that the body does not work in separate independent ways but it is a unified whole. The body performs all of its functions as a whole and even though a certain symptom of disease may manifest itself in a particular part of the body it does not mean that the whole system is not involved.
The Hygienist does not accept “cures.” What are we trying to “cure?” Attempts to “cure” actually suppress or stop the body’s defensive and remedial processes. As the body is attempting to get well, we are trying to prevent it from getting well. This is the essence of cures.
What we’re concerned about then, in health and disease, is removing the causes of disease, supplying the body with its basic needs so it may build health. Health is the organism’s natural tendency toward the ideal and everything in the moral organism works toward health. We don’t have to make the body healthy; we only have to live healthfully.
An obese person does not become healthy by taking diet pills. He must examine his diet and lifestyle and remove the causes of his obesity in order to attain health. We have to stop people from making themselves sick.
We must examine the person’s way of life: what it is they’re doing that they shouldn’t be doing, the things they’re not doing that they should be doing, and attempt to discover the causes of their trouble.
When we investigate these factors and remove the causes of disease, then we outline a program which will provide the conditions and circumstances necessary for health. The organism will restore itself to normal providing, of course, that it hasn’t been irreversibly damaged.
It may be helpful to ask yourself the following questions:
By “proper diet” we mean one which we are biologically meant to eat. That is, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds—all eaten in their raw state. This is very important. Of equal importance is the amount that we are consuming. Not only the quality of our food is important but also the quantity. Ask yourself, am I overeating or eating when I am not really hungry? Eating food in the absence of hunger or consuming more food than our body can handle will lead to toxemia as sure as if we were subsisting on a diet of refined foods. So keep in mind quantity and quality when examining your lifestyle.
By this we mean only pure H2O and this is not available from your kitchen sink. Pure distilled water is the only kind that we should drink and then only when we are thirsty. Some people have the mistaken idea that drinking excessive amounts of water will “flush” the kidneys and “clean out” our systems. This is nonsense! Water is inert and has no such cleansing powers. However, when consumed to excess, there can result a great energy drain on the eliminative organs. So, here again, keep the quantity and quality idea in your mind. Distilled water is best in the amounts compatible with your needs.
This is a tough one. Living and working in our polluted cities makes it next to impossible to breathe really pure air. However, there are some things that we can do. If it is possible to move to the country, do so. If not, at least try to stay away from smoke filled working situations (or look into purchasing an electronic air purifier for your office). It helps to live where the house is set at least a little way back from the road and trees between the house and the road will help block and absorb some of the pollution from the cars and purify the air.
Sleep requirements vary from person to person but generally if you wake up without the aid of an alarm clock and feel rested and energetic, then you have obtained enough sleep. If not, you had better go to bed a little earlier or take a nap during the day.
Daily exercise is a must to maintain health. Set aside a certain lime every day for exercise. About 30 minutes to one hour a day should be sufficient.
Sunlight is beneficial and the main source for Vitamin D, but be careful and don’t overdo it as excessive sunbathing can be harmful. Remember the quantity and quality.
It is not always possible to avoid stressful situations but it is possible to learn how to deal with stress. Stress and emotions are a physiological occurrence and can result in many types of disorders.
Now that you have run through your little questionnaire and have determined the cause of your disease, every effort must be made to remove those causes. When the conditions of health are provided in the proper quantity and quality, the body will immediately begin its remedial processes.
First of all, do not take drugs of any kind and this includes the herbal remedies. The best thing to do when symptoms of a cold or flu, pain, skin eruptions, hay fever, headache, stomach ache, or any disease symptom arises is to rest.
The body needs rest. That is, physiological rest. By this we mean rest of the entire body, of the muscles, organs, glands and digestive organs. How can we provide the body with such a rest? Through a fast. By this we mean no food—only pure water and rest in bed. This will provide the ideal conditions for the body to redirect its energies to the reparative process. It may be advisable to fast at a Hygienic fasting institute where you will be supervised by a competent Hygienic practitioner. After the fast is broken, eat only those foods that we are physiologically suited to eat—raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds in compatible combinations. In addition, follow all the other requirements of health and you will find freedom from disease.
For example, the Hygienic care of the pneumonia sufferer is the acme of simplicity. It is not designed to “cure” anything. It does not reduce fever, check coughing, suppress pain, or force further exudate into the lungs. Hygiene does not seek to suppress or palliate symptoms. The death rate is reduced to almost nil. Rest in bed in a well-vented room, warmth, all the water thirst demands, no food of any kind until all acute symptoms have subsided, constitute the essentials of proper care. Thus cared for, the person with pneumonia will recover mote certainly, more speedily and more satisfactorily. Nobody will prove to be allergic to Hygienic care nor have bad reactions, as many have when penicillin is administered. By the employment of healthful measures.
You have done your body a favor. You have built health with proper rest, food, etc. You have not destroyed health with pills and potions. The aim of life is to maintain life. This is the goal of every cell in your body. When you take drugs you throw road blocks in the path of the cells in their efforts to live and support your existence. Don’t sabotage your body. Instead, assist life by providing the conditions for health.
My doctor says that all cases of arthritis are incurable. He also says that I must take 10 tablets of aspirin every day to alleviate the inflammation and that I may have to eventually increase that dosage. Will this much aspirin be harmful?
Your doctor is correct when he says that he cannot cure arthritis. Hygienists know that only the body has the ability to heal. However, there have been many cases of arthritis which have completely recovered following a fast and a Hygienic lifestyle. Aspirin is a poison and the body will treat it as such. A small amount of aspirin will result in a certain amount of damage to the human organism but such large amounts will do much greater damage. The wisest thing to do would be to consult with a Hygienic practitioner and arrange to go on a fast. After that, adhere strictly to the Hygienic lifestyle and health will be realized.
I have been on the ‘pill’ for a number of years since I do not want to have any more children. Am I doing any harm through this practice?
Your body cannot condone the pill. It contains substances which suppress the normal hormone secretions. To be effective, the product must be taken regularly throughout a woman’s reproductive life, and the method is attended by a multitude of ill effects besides being entirely contrary to the principles of natural, healthful living.
Evidence has built up that the use of the pill carries with it may dangers. There is a liability for strokes or cerebral hemorrhage and other conditions involving blood clotting. Reports of eye troubles following their use were reported in the United States, Canada, Australia and Great Britain. Numerous other “side effects” have been established.
Yes, this is a very harmful practice and should be discontinued immediately. If you are interested in a natural birth control method which is safe, read the book “Creation of Life” by Terrie Guay.
When my doctor prescribes a drug for me, I presume he knows what he is doing and wouldn’t dispense drugs which were not scientifically tested before they were placed on the market. Am I correct in my assumptions?
Because poison effects always follow drugging, physicians must be regarded as a class of voodooists. Dr. Sidhwa states a case where it was found that a woman was given a drug for arthritis which resulted in degeneration of cells in the retina of the eyes. This eventually resulted in loss of 80 percent of her vision. Reporting on this case, the Washington Post said that “drugs potent enough to injure and kill are often prescribed casually and even carelessly because of excessive reliance upon drug salesmen.”
The so-called scientific training concerning the drug apparently came from the salesman’s touting of the drug.
We should simply keep in mind that all drugs are poisons and there are no safe ones.
It seems that every time I take my medication I get drowsy. Why would this occur?
The nervous system of man is highly complex. It is very sensitive and delicate in its structure and function. This highly-specialized system reacts very quickly and shows immediate and marked changes if substances inimical to its well-being are taken. Drugs can and do influence the structure and functions of the whole nervous system. Drugs interfere with the nervous system, hence functions are depressed and drowsiness occurs.
Since digitalis is derived from a plant, wouldn’t it be alright to take?
There are many poisons in the plant kingdom and digitalis is one of them. Furthermore, even though digitalis was originally derived from foxglove, it is now made synthetically. Although digitalis is one of the most commonly-used drugs for treating heart failure, it causes noticeable poisoning in an unbelievably high proportion of patients who take it.
When a drug is given to a man suffering from a weak heart, it weakens the heart still more. The impaired heart must now pump more blood with each beat to help get the drug out of the system. But the heart, in doing so, will exhaust itself more quickly than if intelligently left alone and the patient allowed to rest. The heart needs rest, not stimulation. Exhaustion of all the vital organs is the common result of such stimulation.
This lesson has discussed the harmful practice of drug medication. All such agents are harmful even in small quantities. They are anti-vital and cause disease. They have no power or intelligence to effect healing.
All disease is the result of systemic poisoning and one cannot achieve health by ingesting poisons. The cause of disease must be removed before healing can be realized.
When drugs suppress symptoms they also suppress the body’s healing process.
Only the body can heal and will do so when the proper conditions are provided. These conditions include proper food, fresh air, pure water, sunshine, rest and sleep, exercise and emotional poise.
Beginning about twenty-five hundred years ago and making but little headway in public patronage until the time of the renaissance, the drug system has now completely blanketed the earth. So great has grown popular reliance upon the drug practice and so thoroughly have the people been indoctrinated in the belief in drugs, that the practice has become a greater threat to mankind than the nuclear bomb. The drug system is filling the land with side effects of drugs, filling hospitals with iatrogenic diseases, the jails with drug addicts, the mental institutions with drug-induced psychoses and the graveyards with the premature dead.
In the great main the drug system is a system of spectacular palliation. Physicians are for the most part engaged in providing the sick with temporary and doubtful relief from their discomforts. Instead of seeking for and removing the causes of suffering, physicians seem to be content to provide questionable and evanescent respite from pain and discomfort.
A patient says to a physician, “I have a headache, what should I do?” The physician is likely to reply, “Here, take this aspirin.”
As an outstanding example of this kind of practice and its results, let me briefly go over a case history that I recently received from a guest of the Health School.
A young girl, age 21, arrived at the Health School with the following story: at the age of thirteen she developed severe abdominal pains and was taken to the hospital and operated on for appendicitis. Later it was discovered that this was not her trouble as she still suffered with the same pains after the operation. Her parents reentered her in the hospital for an exploratory operation, during which the physician found lymphatic tumors in the abdominal cavity. Soon after this operation she developed epilepsy, and had to make frequent trips to the hospital for tests. She had all the diagnostic X rays known and many other diagnostic procedures for epilepsy. There were an array of diagnoses, first hypoglycemia, then hyperglycemia, then high blood pressure, then low blood pressure. One diagnosis contradicted another, and there was no end to the diagnoses, but they never could ascertain the reason for her epilepsy. Her brain waves appeared normal on the electroencephalogram .
Every known drug for epilepsy was given her, but she said that they only made her worse. Her physician insisted that she continue taking the drug despite the increased incidence of her convulsions. In desperation he finally decided to use new experimental drugs, but with the same results—no decrease in her epileptic fits. Is it any wonder that she developed kidney trouble, after this treatment? Soon she couldn’t have normal micturition but required a catheter. For five weeks straight, she was forced to have the catheter in place. During this time, she complained that ‘they injected drugs through the catheter into the bladder in an effort to reach an infection. It was during this period in the hospital that she began losing the ability to walk. After this her sight and hearing became impaired. It was then that her physician told her parents that she wouldn’t live and sent her home to die.
She was indeed a victim of the curing practice. There is no wonder that at the hospital she lost her ability to walk, see and hear, as she said she had to take 200 pills a day, every day. Furthermore, she was force fed, and had seven shots a day. Despite her continual complaint of lack of appetite, they made her eat.
Her parents took their dying child home. Here she became more a master of herself. She was disgusted with having to take so many drugs that were apparently making her worse. She said no one but a blind person could fail to see that she was steadily growing worse under this treatment.
When she arrived home, she had to be carried to bed. Sensing that the drugs were making her worse, and with the permission of her father, she quit 90% of them. She was afraid to quit all of them at once. Disgusted with the encumbering and uncomfortable catheter, she took it out. She noticed immediate improvement in her health. Her eyesight improved, her impaired hearing became normal and almost overnight she found that she could walk again. Within five hours her bladder was functioning satisfactorily.
When it was lime to make her regular trip to the epileptic clinic, she walked in unaided. Her M.D. marveled at her improvement and called in other practitioners to show off the miracle. The girl that couldn’t walk, that was dying just a few weeks before, walked in unaided! Her drugs were indeed miracle workers! He immediately prescribed more of the same. He never learned that she had quit taking most of her drugs. It was after this that she presented herself to the Hygienist.
Can she regain the high level health she had at birth? How much recovery can she make after being subjected to such treatment? It is doubtful that she can regain the high level health of which her pristine organism was capable. Drugs and surgery have made of her a cripple. This girl has adamantine determination, however, and I’m sure that she will recover as much health as is possible.
The Hygienist has little to work with when a patient comes to him machine gunned with X rays, vandalized by the surgeon’s knife and enervated by the drugging practice. Can you imagine a family afraid to try natural and harmless methods after subjecting their daughter to all the most pernicious practices of our times? Her family was against her from the start and she had to plead, beg and cajole them into letting her stay long enough to take a lengthy fast. Because of her medical abuse, I was fearful of taking her as anything may happen on a fast after such treatment, and her parents would have been the first to point an accusing finger.
At the end of 18 days of fasting they told her she would have to come home soon. I immediately broke her fast in order that she would be able to travel. She began having mild convulsions soon after taking juices, and developed a slight fever and symptoms of acute distress. There was nothing to do but place her back on the fast and let nature continue the healing process. Somehow she persuaded her parents to let her stay longer. They were very apprehensive and couldn’t believe that she could live through 18 days of fasting. When she continued on through 58 days of fasting, they were sure she could not even walk down to the phone and talk to them. During the second fast she passed kidney stones. During her second fast and subsequently she had no convulsions and has not reported any since leaving here.
How soon she will reach positive and top level health depends upon how well she carries out her Hygienic living. But as mentioned at the beginning of this article, she will have her limitations because of medical bungling.
It is unfortunate but most everyone coming to the Health School has his limitations in recovery because of his prior use of drugs, X rays and surgery. It is not only the elderly, whose health has been wrecked by drugs and surgery, but younger and younger person’s, organisms are impaired because of their physicians’ poisons and their surgeons’ knives.
Daily we receive clippings in the mail from Canada and the United States describing the evils attributed to drugs, but the drugging continues. Neither patients nor physicians lose their faith in magic potions. It seems that very few people ever lose their faith in the physician with his armamentarium of poisons. Despite all the enlightenment of hazardous effects of drugs in the papers today, physicians and their patrons cling to the belief in their efficacy and harmlessness. The drugging continues.
The title of an article received recently, is “No Drugs During Pregnancy,” then in small letters “unless absolutely necessary.” These were the words of Dr. Benirschlese, research pathologist of animal pregnancies. To prevent pregnant mothers from refusing drugs a loop hole is always left for the physician to deem the taking of a drug absolutely necessary. Intelligent mothers, fearing it may hurt their baby, may balk at taking their physicians’ prescriptions and ruffle their physicians’ pride. He can then assure them that he is giving the drug only because it is “absolutely necessary” in each instance.
Dr. Benirshchlese said “even such simple drugs as sleeping pills have unknown effects on unborn children.” He continues, “We don’t really know what effect different drugs have on the human fetus but we do know they bring about changes in animals.”
Are we not of the animal kingdom? Are we intangible angels? We are of the animal kingdom and we have the most complex and differentiated organism of any animal on earth. Because of this complexity, many more things can go wrong with human physiology than with the physiology of a lower animal. We can also enjoy greater functioning capacity than the lower animals because of our increased complexity of structure.
A simple machine has fewer things to go wrong than a more complex one. The slightest change in complex machine will immediately upset its workings, whereas a little flaw in a simple machine may not result in any modification of the machine until the damage becomes immense, then it is easily fixed.
Being the most complex living organism, man is more sensitive to inimical agents and influences than are the lower animals. It has been shown that man is more sensitive to radiation than the mouse, so also is he more sensitive to drug poisons.
A significant remark made by Benirschlese was exactly what Dr. Shelton has been saying for years, that a “nine-month gestation period in humans makes research difficult and long-term effects of drug use should be studied until a child is twenty years old.” Minute impairments of vital organs from drugging may not manifest until a child has reached maturity. The increase in microcephaly, liver damage, heart trouble, kidney trouble, diabetes, and cancer in younger and younger people makes us wonder just how many of these young people would not have suffered if their parents had not taken drugs while these children were in utero.
The vigor that was manifested in our pioneers and in the Amerinds is not seen today in our youth and middle aged. This is certainly due in part to our greater dependence upon the medical profession to care for the slightest bruise, cut or headache, and the prescriptions of drug poisons given for these mild afflictions.
Recently a jury awarded a child $500,000 because her mother was given demerol, a drug used to lessen pain during labor, and the child failed to develop mentally. The child was chronologically seven but had the mind of a three-year old. The drug was not supposed to be given to mothers of premature babies. Despite the prematurity of her baby, this woman’s physician gave her the drug.
Another clipping received by mail stated “digitalis drug poisons many patients.” The article states , “digitalis, one of the most commonly-used drugs for treating heart failure, causes some form of poisoning in an unbelievably unusually high proportion of the patients who take it.” John Ruedy of the McGill University said this is happening because of “improper” use of the drug.
I should like to point out that there is no such thing as the proper use of a drug poison. They are poison no matter how given. They never prolong life but always shorten it, and make more uncomfortable whatever life is left in the patient. Drugs greatly lessen the person’s ability to get well Hygienically. They damage and lessen the vitality of every organ and organ system in the body.
When a drug is given to a man suffering with a weak heart, it weakens the heart still more. It is like whipping a tired horse to make him go. He expands more vital energy to get away from the whip, but he wears out quicker. The impaired heart must now pump more blood with each beat to help get the drug out of the system by increasing circulation. But the heart, in doing this, will wear out quicker than if left alone and patient rests. The heart needs rest not stimulation. Exhaustion of all the vital organs is the common result of such stimulation. Premature death is the result of stimulating people into such good “health.”
With 5,000 new drugs being created each year, we should all remain healthy until the age of 140. We actually see more and more of the crippling disease, that people can’t get well of (even by Hygienic means). All drugging impairs the organism’s ability to function.
Instead of removing the causes of the impairment, people are drugged into insensibility in order that they may continue in their disease-producing ways until there are so many organic or morbid changes in the tissues that full recovery is impossible. The Tribune medical reporter states that this is creating one of the most pressing challenges in medical history; that of how to prevent the new drugs from causing other illnesses or side effects. This has led to the development of a new science, pharmacokinetics.
The very name of their “new” science indicates that they do not yet know the relation between lifeless and living matter—the former being passive and the latter active, always. Kinetics indicates movement and drugs do not move but are moved by the body to various parts of the body.
Pharmacologists freely admit that they don’t know how their drugs act, or how the drugs achieve their therapeutic effect or that they act at all. They don’t even bother to try to prove that drugs act.
If physicians, pharmacokineticists and pharmacologists could begin with a valid premise, their conclusions would be more likely to be correct. They would soon learn that all drugs are as inert in the living organism as in the pill bottle, and that all action attributed to the drug is body action. They would soon realize that these actions, occasioned by the drug, are the actions of the living organism expelling the drug because it is not useful, hence poisonous. As long as they attribute action to inanimate substances, they will continue to confuse themselves about the true nature of the drugging practice, and fail to see the destructiveness of their poisons.
Because of our self-preservative instincts, if a substance is introduced into the organic domain that it can’t use, the cells in immediate contact with the drug, via our magnificent complex nervous system, alert the entire organism to the threat to its integrity. It is not one part of the body that resists a drug but many parts acting as a whole. It is the integral organism which acts to expel the drug before ii damages any one part too greatly.
Digitalis may be given to a man with a feeble heart and there is an immediate pick-up in the pumping ability of the heart, not because the drug acts on the heart but because the heart has to pump blood faster to the emunctory organs in order to save the whole from succumbing to the drug. The digitalis didn’t stay in the heart; it didn’t even have to be near the heart, for it to know that something poisonous was in the system and that it had to .step up its activities in order to do its share in the expulsion and rejection of the nonusable toxic substance.
Because the living organism has done all the acting, its energy is depleted in exact proportion to the amount of work it has had to do to eliminate the poison. His functioning power is permanently lowered, and much rest is needed to recover from the depletion. The already weak heart is more feeble than before the digitalis was taken.
Trall frequently clarified the explanation of the fact that it is the living system that acts and not the drug, by the following example: if you introduce a drug into a dead person, there will be no action whereas there should be more action if the drug acted, because there would be less resistance from a dead person’s tissues than a live one. But the dead body cannot vomit it, it cannot develop diarrhea, nor do its kidneys function to expel it. The drug does nothing to a dead body, except chemically combine with the constituents of its tissues.
This is the difference between drugging a live person and a dead one. The live person resists the chemical union, and as long as it is alive it will continue to do so. For the chemical to combine with the constituents of the cell would mean death of the cell, and the formation of a third substance unlike the two which combined to form it. The living organism fights with herculean force to prevent the chemical union, and in doing so sometimes dies in the struggle. The cells had to die first before the chemical could combine with their constituents.
A debilitated old person cannot resist a drug as well as a healthy young person, for the same reason that a dead person can’t act. The debilitated person has less energy to expend in eliminating the drug. Trail points out that if the drug acted, it should act with more force in a weak person because of less resistance from the weak organs, but we see the opposite.
I cannot repeat too often that anything that the living organism cannot make into living tissue or use in any of its metabolic processes is a poison. Drugs cannot fit this qualification, and hence are all poisons. Some are more virulent than others, depending upon their chemical compositions, but they all cripple the organism to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon how much ability a particular organism has to eliminate them.
Cells, tissues and organs are damaged in resisting and expelling drugs. This results in impaired function. Because much of the damage to the organism from drugs is permanent, complete recovery is impossible in those who have been drugged for years.
The damages of drugs are legion and we could fill many volumes with their evil effects, but I shall end this article by stating that if you desire to recover your health drugging is definitely not the answer. Drugs hinder the healing process and occasion diseases of their own.
The causes of disease must be removed. Then, the primordial requisites of life must be supplied in keeping with the living organism’s ability to use them. Then and then only will the living organism be able to return to health. It will make as full recovery as is possible, depending upon how much previous damage has been done by the drugs. The fewer the drugs taken, the speedier and more complete the recovery.
The Hygienic System, or the treatment of disease by Hygienic agencies, is based on the following propositions:
41.3. The Dangers Are Realized
41.5. Cigarette Smoking And Chronic Disease
41.6. Added Industrial Pollutants
41.8. Effects On Fetus And Children
41.11. Eliminating The Smoking Habit
Article #1: “A Small Fire at One End and a Big Fool at the Other” by Dr. Keki R. Sidhwa, N.D., D.O.
American Indians smoked tobacco in pipes long before Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492. Columbus brought some tobacco seeds back to Europe, where farmers began to grow the plant for use as a medicine that supposedly helped people relax. In 1560, a French diplomat named Jean Nicot—from whom tobacco receives its botanical name, “Nicotiana”—introduced the use of tobacco in France.
Commercial production of tobacco began in North America in 1612, after an English colonist named John Rolfe brought some tobacco seeds from South Carolina to Virginia. The Virginia soil and climate were excellent for tobacco, and it became an important crop there and in other parts of the South.
Most of the tobacco grown in the American Colonies was exported to England until the Revolutionary War began in 1775. Manufacturers in the United States then began to produce smoking tobacco, chewing tobacco, and snuff for domestic use. Cigars were first manufactured in the United States in the early 1800s.
Spaniards and some other Europeans began to smoke hand-rolled cigarettes in the 1600s, but few people in the United States used them until the 1850s. Cigarette smoking became increasingly popular after the first practical cigarette-making machine was invented in the early 1880s.
Hand-rolled cigarettes achieved limited popularity in the United States between 1855 and 1885. They contained either straight Turkish tobacco, straight flue-cured tobacco, or a blend of the two. The first practical cigarette-making machine was invented in the early 1880s. Cigarette companies introduced domestic blends about 30 years later.
Tobacco is a plant whose leaves are used chiefly in making cigarettes and cigars. Other tobacco products include smoking tobacco for pipes, chewing tobacco, and snuff.
Tobacco ranks as a major crop in more than 60 countries. During the late 1970s, the annual worldwide production of tobacco totaled about six-million tons. Farmers in the United States produce about 705 million cigarettes and about 3 1/2 million cigars yearly. About 160 million pounds of tobacco are manufactured annually for smoking tobacco, chewing tobacco, and snuff. The annual value of tobacco products amounts to about $19 billion. Most of this income comes from domestic sales of the products. As you can see, many people are getting rich at the expense of the nation’s health.
The government encourages and supports the growth and manufacture of tobacco and its products since it receives a large income through taxes on tobacco. Tobacco products are also taxed by all the state governments and some local governments. Taxes on tobacco total about three times the amount that the growers receive for their crops. The officials of our government are well aware of the health dangers of tobacco, yet they continue to support this industry.
Once tobacco is harvested, it goes through a curing process. This process produces various chemical changes in the tobacco that supposedly improve its flavor and aroma. There are three methods of curing tobacco: (1) air curing, (2) fire curing, and (3) flue curing. Each type of tobacco responds differently to each of these methods.
Air curing uses natural weather conditions to dry tobacco. Air-curing barns have ventilators that can be opened and closed to control the temperatures and humidity. This process takes from four to eight weeks.
Fire curing dries tobacco with low-burning fires. The smoke gives fire-cured tobacco its distinctive taste and aroma. Farmers regulate the heat, humidity, and ventilation in the curing barns so the leaves will not be scalded. Fire curing takes from three days to six weeks. This smoking process adds more toxins to the already toxic tobacco. It has been proven that anything that has been smoked is carcinogenic when ingested (as in cigarette smoking when smoke enters the lungs).
Flue curing dries tobacco by heat from flues (pipes) connected to furnaces. The temperature is gradually raised from 90°F. to 160°F. until the leaves are completely dry. The flue-curing method takes about a week.
Freshly-cured tobacco has a sharp aroma and bitter taste as would any poison. Therefore, most tobacco is put into storage and allowed to age before being used in manufacturing tobacco products.
Prior to storage, most tobacco goes through a redrying process, during which it is completely dried and cooled. Manufacturers then restore some water throughout the leaves to ensure uniform moisture content. This practice prevents the leaves from breaking.
Next, tobacco is stored for two or three years in barrel-like containers. During storage, it ages and undergoes a chemical change called fermentation (fermentation is decomposition of sugar and starch and their conversion by microorganisms to carbon dioxide, alcohol and acetic acid—poisonous by-products). This fermentation is said to give tobacco a sweeter, milder flavor and aroma and reduce its nicotine content. They are, in effect, exchanging poison for poison. Tobacco also loses moisture and becomes darker during aging.
A somewhat different procedure is used to age cigar leaf tobacco, which does not require redrying. Bales of this tobacco are placed in heated rooms or are simply hung up to ferment before storage.
If you were to take any healthful food (which tobacco is not) like romaine lettuce, and submit it to the same processing as tobacco goes through, you would end up with a toxic poison. With tobacco, you begin with a poisonous plant and render it more poisonous through this manufacturing process.
Most tobacco grows best in a warm climate and in carefully drained and fertilized soil. Growers and consumers would greatly benefit by utilizing these ideal growing conditions for fruit and nut trees. Pecan trees, for example, produce abundantly, require little maintenance, and their produce is easily harvested. Pecans are in high demand for their superior flavor and nutrient value. They also bring a good price on the market. Tobacco is also heavily sprayed with expensive insecticides but this is not necessary (or desirable) with pecan trees. Tobacco has no nutritional or other benefits and its only effects are bad ones. On the other hand, pecans are high in protein of the best biological order and contain oils that are easily digested and utilized, thus making them useful dietary items. In addition, there are no harmful toxins.
The use of tobacco products has been controversial for many years. During the 1500s, European physicians declared that tobacco should be used only for medicinal purposes. The Puritans in America considered it a dangerous narcotic. During the 1960s, scientists established that smoking tobacco products—especially cigarettes—could result in lung cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses.
Some cigarette manufacturers reacted to the medical findings by reducing the tar and nicotine content of cigarettes. However, doctors state that these measures have not eliminated the dangers of smoking.
Various federal laws have been passed in the United States regarding the sale of tobacco products. Since 1966, manufacturers have been required to include a health warning on all packages and cartons of cigarettes. Another law, which went into effect in 1971, banned radio and television commercials advertising cigarettes. In 1972, manufacturers agreed to include a health warning in all cigarette advertising. Some states have laws that prohibit smoking in various public places. Yet the sale of cigarettes continues to increase.
In 1978, about 38 percent of the adult men and 30 percent of the adult women in the United States smoked cigarettes. Cigarette smoking had been increasing rapidly in the United States until 1964, when 52 percent of the men and 32 percent of the women 21 years old and older smoked. That year, the United States surgeon general first officially warned of the health hazards of smoking. In 1979, the surgeon general issued another report strongly linking cigarette smoking to heart disease, lung cancer, and other ailments. In spite of knowledge about the dangers, many young people became smokers. In the late 1970s, about 19 percent of the boys and 26 percent of the girls in the 17- to 18-year-old group smoked regularly.
Three quarters of adults who smoke took up the habit before age 21. One hundred thousand children under the age of 13 are smokers. A government survey for 1979 showed there are 1.7 million teenage girls and 1.6 million boys who are regular smokers. Many more women are smoking today than they did 20 years ago. Correspondingly, the lung cancer rate for women has increased 500 percent during the past 20 years. Women who smoke more than a pack and a half a day run a significantly higher risk of a heart attack than women who do not smoke. And women who smoke and use oral contraceptives containing estrogen have ten times the chance of having a heart attack and of damaging blood vessels, compared with women who do not smoke and do not use oral contraceptives.
Cigarette smoke contains more than 3,000 chemical substances, and several of them have been linked to the development pf diseases. The most dangerous substances are (1) carbon monoxide, (2) nicotine, (3) tars, and (4) smoke particles.
Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas that interferes with the blood’s ability to carry oxygen. It also contributes to heart disease and lung disorders and results in changes in the blood vessels that may lead to hardening of the arteries.
Symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning include headache, vertigo, dyspnea, confusion, dilated pupils, convulsions and coma.
Carbon monoxide has long been recognized as a dangerous gas. It is present in concentrations of 1 to 5 percent of the gaseous phase of cigarette smoke. The amount of carbon monoxide produced increases as the cigarette burns down. Carboxyhemoglobin (union of carbon monoxide with the hemoglobin of the blood) levels in smokers vary from 2 to 15 percent depending on the amount smoked, degree of inhalation, and the time elapsed since smoking the last cigarette.
Carbon monoxide, which has 230 times the affinity of oxygen for hemoglobin, impairs oxygen transportation in at least two ways. First, it competes with oxygen for hemoglobin binding sites. Second, it increases the affinity of the remaining hemoglobin for oxygen, therefore requiring a larger amount of potential oxygen between the blood and tissues to deliver a given amount of oxygen. This situation usually results in a lower amount of oxygen in the tissues. It should be understood that oxygen is essential for most cellular activities and even a slight decrease can impair all bodily functions.
Carbon monoxide also binds to other iron-containing pigments, most notably myoglobin (a protein molecule found in muscle tissue), for which it has even a greater affinity than for hemoglobin under conditions of low oxygen. Researchers have not yet determined the exact significance of this binding but they do know that it is important in tissues such as the heart muscle, that has both high oxygen requirements and requires large amounts of myoglobin.
Carbon monoxide, at levels of exposure commonly reached by cigarette smokers, has been shown to decrease cardiac contractibility in persons with coronary heart disease. It has also been shown to produce changes like those of early atherosclerosis in the aortas of rabbits.
Nicotine results in stimulation of the nervous system and the heart and other internal organs. The effect on the nervous system is one of the reasons why people have such a hard time giving up smoking. Nicotine is poisonous. When any poison enters an organism, the body is stimulated to eliminate that poison. This condition soon leads to exhaustion and depression of all bodily organs. Nicotine may be a factor behind the many heart attacks and other conditions, including stomach and intestinal ulcers, that are related to smoking.
Nicotine is a colorless, oily, transparent vegetable chemical compound of the type called an alkaloid. It has a hot and bitter taste. It is found in small quantities in the leaves, roots, and seeds of the tobacco plant. It can also be made synthetically.
The quantity of nicotine in most tobacco ranges from 2 to 7 percent. It is most abundant in cheaper and domestic varieties. Nicotine, as mentioned, is exceedingly poisonous. In a pure state, even a small quantity will result in vomiting, great weakness, rapid but weak pulse, and possibly collapse or even death.
Nicotine indirectly affects circulation by provoking catecholamine release. Catecholamide refers to active hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine which are derived from the amino acid tryosine.
They have a marked effect on the nervous system, cardiovascular system, metabolic rate, temperature, and smooth muscle. The ingestion of nicotine induces a bodily response to rid itself of this poison. Thus, the body is stimulated and more catecholamines are released than would normally be the case. Heart rate increases and blood flow through the heart is also increased. The blood vessels going to the heart are constricted (due to the catecholamines) and this increases blood pressure. The presence of nicotine in the blood also results in an increase of serum fatty acids and creates the tendency for blood platelets to stick together. Nicotine also inhibits pancreatic bicarbonate secretions, resulting in a more acid condition in the body. This situation produces adverse systemic consequences.
Tars contain small quantities of carcinogenic substances. They are believed to be one of the major factors that lead to lung cancer and other types of cancer among smokers.
The tar from cigarette smoke has been found to result in malignant changes in the skin and respiratory tract of experimental animals, and a number of specific chemical compounds contained in cigarette smoke were established as potent carcinogens or co-carcinogens. Malignant changes including carcinoma are found in the larynx.
Smoke particles are as small as 1/70,000 inch. A smoker exhales most of the particles, but as many as 25 percent of them may be trapped on the lining of the lungs. The particles are later absorbed by cells in the lining. This absorption may cause the cells to function improperly and damage the lining of the lung. The particles can also cause excessive scar tissue within the walls of the lungs. Smoke particles probably help cause progressive destruction of the walls of the air sacs in the lungs of long-term smokers.
These, irritants cause immediate coughing and broncho-constriction after smoke inhalation; inhibit cilial action of the bronchial epithelium; stimulate bronchial mucous secretion; suppress protease inhibition; and impair alveolar macrophage function.
Studies have shown that men who smoke more than one pack per day are about 20 times more at risk Of developing lung cancer than are nonsmokers. Laboratory experiments show that tobacco smoke condensate can produce skin cancer in animals and that animals inhaling cigarette smoke may develop cancer of the larynx or lung.
Based on evaluations of detailed clinical and experimental data accumulated over the last 30 years, cigarette smoking has been clearly identified as a causative factor in lung cancer. The risk of developing lung cancer increases directly with increasing cigarette smoke exposure as measured by the number of cigarettes smoked per day, total lifetime number of cigarettes smoked, number of years of smoking, age at initiation of smoking, and depth of inhalation. Lung cancer death rates for women are lower than for men but have increased dramatically over the last 15 years, coinciding with the increasing number of women smokers. This increase has occurred in spite of the fact that women smokers use fewer cigarettes per day, more frequently choose cigarettes with filter tips and low tar and nicotine delivery, and tend to inhale less than men.
A person who stops smoking has a decreased risk of developing lung cancer compared to the continuing smoker, but the risk remains greater than the nonsmokers for as long as 10 to 15 years after the person stops smoking. The toxic residues from the cigarette smoke remain in the lungs for a long time but the body will eliminate them as quickly as possible. This depends upon the amount of vital energy that a person has. Elimination can be speeded up if the individual adopts a generally more healthful lifestyle in regard to diet, exercise, sleep and rest, etc. Also of great benefit would be a long fast. This speeds up elimination of toxins most of all, because energy is conserved during this physiological rest and redirected from digestion to healing.
Pipe and cigar smokers experience mortality rates from cancer of the oral cavity, larynx, pharynx, and esophagus approximately equal to those of cigarette smokers. The risk of developing cancer of the lung is lower than the risk of cigarette smokers, but it is significantly above that of nonsmokers. This is probably due to the fact that pipe, cigar, and cigarette smokers experience similar smoke exposure of the upper respiratory tract, while cigarette smokers (due to their greater tendency to inhale) have a greater exposure of their lungs to smoke than pipe or cigar smokers.
Chronic bronchitis and emphysema deaths are also about 20 times more frequent in people who smoke heavily. Both diseases can be produced in animals exposed to cigarette smoke. Pulmonary function tests often show airflow obstruction in the small airways even before chronic expectoration develops.
Toxins accumulate up to a saturation or “tolerance” point and then the body initiates a “housecleaning.” At this point expectoration is seen. This is a sign of bodily healing and should not be suppressed. If you discontinue smoking at this point, the body will heal.
The adverse effect of smoking on mucociliary (hairlike processes on the mucous membrane that function to move excess mucus out of the lungs) clearance and on the normal balance between lung proteases (protein-splitting enzymes) and their inhibitors predisposes smokers to bronchopulmonary disorders and emphysema. As you can see, toxins from cigarette smoke interfere with many physiological activities. This situation always leads to acute, and finally chronic, illnesses.
Cigarette smoking accelerates atherosclerosis and may double the risk of myocardial infarction. Smoking may precipitate a heart attack. The risk of developing cerebrovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, or aortic blood clots is also increased in smokers.
Coronary heart disease is the most frequent cause of death in the United States and is the most important single cause of excess mortality among cigarette smokers.
Cigarette smoking and hypertension and elevated serum cholesterol are the major risk factors for myocardial infarction and death from coronary heart disease. The cause behind hypertension and elevated serum cholesterol would include accumulated toxins due to wrong diet and enervating habits along with cigarette smoking. Cigarette smoking acts both independently as a risk factor and synergistically with the other coronary heart disease factors. The magnitude of the risk increases directly with the amount smoked.
The formation of carbon monoxide from cigarette smoke with hemoglobin in the blood to carboxyhemoglobin; release of catecholamines—epinephrine and norepinephrine; creation of an imbalance between myocardial oxygen supply and demand; and increased platelet adhesiveness leading to blood clot formation have all been demonstrated in smokers and are proposed as explanations for the excess coronary heart disease mortality and morbidity among smokers.
Peptic ulceration occurs more frequently and has a higher mortality rate in cigarette smokers than in non-smokers. In addition, the rate of ulcer healing is slowed.
When an organism is enervated due to bombardment of toxins from cigarette smoke, it is less capable of healing. Vital energy is so depleted that normal functions slow or are halted completely. Adverse effects will be seen throughout the entire body as all poisons induce systemic responses.
Number of Deaths | Immediate Cause of Death |
80,000 | Lung Cancer |
22,000 | Other cancers (oral, larynx, esophagus, urinary, bladder, kidney, pancreas) |
225,000 | Cardiovascular disease |
19,000 | Chronic pulmonary disease |
It has been estimated that every year 15.5 million people risk exposure to pollutants at the workplace and 400,000 people develop illnesses induced by the job. Tobacco smoke may transform workplace chemicals into much more harmful agents.
There are 15,000 toxic chemicals in U.S. industry today; each year about 400 new substances are introduced. But safety levels have been established for only a small fraction of the chemicals. The results of the interactions among these substances are incalculable. Some of the many toxic agents identified that can contaminate tobacco products are lead, inorganic mercury, inorganic fluorides, boron trifluorides, formaldehyde and cabaryl.
Some toxic agents in tobacco smoke may also occur in the workplace, thus increasing the smoker’s exposure to that substance. For example, over 20,000 workers in 75 different occupational groups have potential occupational exposure to cyanide, which can form a complex that results in the disruption of the function of the thyroid. Hydrogen cyanide is one of the toxic compounds in tobacco smoke. In a study of workers in electroplating exposed to cyanide, the majority complained of fatigue, headache, tremors of the hands and feet, pain, and nausea.
Studies with other toxic agents, such as carbon monoxide, have shown similar results. Among blast furnace workers, it has been found that the levels of carbon monoxide in the blood of smokers is double that found in smokers not similarly exposed. Levels of carbon monoxide were 7.5 percent; levels in excess of 5 percent can result in cardiovascular alterations.
Among other chemical agents found in tobacco smoke as well as the workplace are acetone, acrolein, aldehydes, arsenic, cadmium, ketones, lead, polycyclic compounds. Workers in such places who smoke are twice exposed to toxic substances: textiles, coal mining, uranium and gold mining, paint spraying, welding, firefighting, cooking kitchens and rubber. Workers exposed to radioactive gas, chlorine and coke ovens face similar dangers.
At the same time HEW had increased its budget to $29.8 million for 1979 efforts to combat smoking, the Department of Agriculture ran a loan program to guarantee the tobacco farmer a fixed and high-support price. If the farmer’s tobacco crop cannot be sold on the market at the fixed price, a federally-supervised stabilization corporation buys the tobacco with funds borrowed from the government. The low-interest rate for the loan is, to an extent, subsidized by the taxpayer.
The corporation holds the tobacco crop and can sell it later when the price is better. In fiscal 1979, the government loaned $227 million for such programs and spent another $9 million on tobacco research, grading, marketing news, and administration. More than half the loan monies were paid back within a few months.
In 1975 and again in 1979, the Surgeon General issued an official government document warning the U.S. citizens about the dangers of smoking. In these books (published by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare), extensive scientific evidence supports the fact that cigarette smoking is a life-threatening habit. Yet, the government continues to support this poison habit.
If a pregnant woman smokes, it has adverse effects upon her unborn baby. There is abundant evidence that maternal smoking directly retards the rate of fetal growth and increases the risk of spontaneous abortion, of fetal death, and of infant death in otherwise normal babies. There is also some evidence that children of some smokers are more likely to have measurable deficiencies in physical growth and development.
When the mother smokes, some of the harmful gases and poisonous substances in the smoke actually pass from her blood through the placenta and into the fetal bloodstream. One of these gases is carbon monoxide, which forces oxygen out of the red blood cells. Another powerful poison, nicotine, adds to the damage by narrowing blood vessels, including those in the placenta itself. This decreases the amount of oxygen and food delivered to the unborn baby.
Although the fetus does not breathe before the moment of birth, it nevertheless practices some motions of breathing by exercising certain chest muscles. These movements slow down after the mother inhales just two cigarettes. Even when women quit smoking before pregnancy, their earlier smoking may still result in damage to the fetus, according to one extensive study.
Several researchers have investigated the effects of parental smoking on the health of children. One group of researchers conducted two telephone surveys of Detroit families to determine the relationship between children’s respiratory illnesses and parental smoking habits. In both surveys, they found statistically significant relationships between the prevalence of children’s respiratory inflammation and parental smoking habits. The body must rid itself of the toxins accumulated from the cigarette smoke. Respiratory inflammation, formation of mucus, etc., is one way of eliminating these toxins. This situation would become chronic if the parents continued to smoke in the child’s presence.
Two researchers studied infant admissions to Hadassah Hospital in West Jerusalem and found a relationship between admissions for bronchitis and pneumonia in the first year of life and maternal smoking habits during pregnancy. A relationship between infant admissions and maternal smoking habits was demonstrable between the sixth and ninth months of infant life and was more pronounced during the winter months (when the effect of cigarette smoke on the indoor environment would be greatest).
The health of the fetus depends upon the health of the mother both during pregnancy and before conception. No one (not child or adult) can maintain health in a polluted environment.
The effects of smoking on the smoker has been extensively studied, but the effects of tobacco smoke on nonsmokers has only recently received much attention. The chemical constituents found in an atmosphere filled with tobacco smoke are derived from two sources—mainstream and sidestream smoke. Mainstream smoke emerges from the tobacco product after being drawn through the tobacco during puffing. Sidestream smoke rises from the burning cone of tobacco. Mainstream and sidestream smoke contribute different concentrations of many substances to the atmosphere for several reasons. Different amounts of tobacco are consumed in the production of mainstream and sidestream smoke; the temperature of combustion differs for tobacco during puffing or while smouldering; and certain substances are partially absorbed from the mainstream smoke by the smoker.
A major concern about atmospheric contamination by cigarette smoke has been due to the production of significant levels of carbon monoxide. Cigarette smoking in poorly-ventilated, enclosed spaces may generate carbon monoxide levels above the acceptable 8-hour industrial exposure limits of 50 parts per million. Exposure to this level of carbon monoxide even for short periods of time has been shown to reduce significantly the exercise tolerance of some persons with symptomatic cardiovascular disease. There is also some evidence that prolonged exposure to this level of carbon monoxide in combination with a high-cholesterol diet can enhance experimental atherosclerosis in animals.
Sitting next to a smoker, a nonsmoker can be exposed to carbon monoxide levels more than twice as high as the maximum set for industry exposure. When nonsmokers leave a smoky environment, it takes hours for the carbon monoxide to leave their bodies. Unlike oxygen, which is breathed in and then out again in minutes, carbon monoxide in the blood lasts for hours. After three or four hours, half of the excess carbon monoxide is still in the bloodstream. Not enough research has been done on other toxic substances inhaled by nonsmokers in the presence of smoke: formaldehyde, oxides of nitrogen, ammonia, cadmium, hydrogen cyanide, pyrene, and hundreds more.
In a room filled with tobacco smoke, people experience eye irritations and distress. Contamination and odors are immediately created by such elements in tobacco smoke as ammonia and pyridine. (Pyridine is a strong irritant produced when nicotine burns).
The contamination in smoky rooms is so intense that when someone lights a cigarette, cigar, or pipe in an air-conditioned place, the air-conditioning demands can jump as much as 600 percent. Another finding from air-conditioning research is that the human body attracts tobacco smoke. Burning tobacco creates a high-electrical potential, whereas the water-filled body has a low one; so smoke in a room gravitates and clings to people.
The effect of involuntary smoking on an individual is determined not only by the quantity and toxicity of the smoke-filled environment, but also largely by the characteristics of the individual. This does not mean that all are not poisoned by this smoke but the more toxic that an individual is, the more pronounced his symptoms will be upon being exposed to this smoke. The severity of possible effects range from minor eye and throat irritations experienced by most people in smoke-filled rooms, to the anginal attacks of some persons with cardiovascular disease.
A substantial proportion of the U.S. population suffers from chronic cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases due to generally unhealthful diet and other poor living habits. It is this segment of the population most seriously jeopardized by conditions found in involuntary smoking situations. It may be “the last straw that broke the camel’s back.” The body could not tolerate the extra toxins that were being imposed upon it.
Persons with chronic bronchitis and emphysema nave considerable excess mortality under conditions of severe air pollution. In smoke-filled environments, levels of carbon monoxide and several other pollutants may be as high or higher than occur during air pollution emergencies. The effects of short-term exposure of persons with chronic obstructive bronchopulmonary disease to these conditions have not been evaluated.
It is best to avoid smoke-filled rooms but it is not always possible. If you do occasionally find yourself in a situation where you must spend some time in smoky rooms, your body will be better able to eliminate the poisons encountered when you have been living healthfully. A vital, healthy body can deal with these situations as they arise as long as they are not on a daily basis. When you do not follow the laws of life and eat wrong food, get insufficient exercise and sleep, etc., the organism will be in a toxic and therefore weakened condition. It will be less able to eliminate added toxins and these new poisons will be added to those already present. Ill health will quickly follow.
A pure and healthy body is also quicker to detect unhealthful environments, and you will be much sooner aware of a dangerous situation. Electronic air purifiers are useful as they help eliminate the pollution from the air and therefore maintain a purer environment.
The safest, quickest, and surest way to eliminate the cigarette habit is through a fast. Many people have had great success through this method. A fast will enable your body to purify itself of much of the accumulated toxins from smoking and your health will greatly improve overall. This will be noticeable physically and mentally.
After the fast, your body will be so pure that the sight, smell, and taste of cigarettes will be repulsive to you. The next step is to begin a more healthful eating program. After you quit smoking, all your food will taste wonderful. When you break your fast on a nice juicy piece of watermelon or a delicious sweet orange, it will be the best food you have ever tasted! Now continue on a diet of mostly fruits with some vegetables and a small amount of nuts or seeds. Ideally, all of these foods should be eaten raw. You will feel so great that you will never want to smoke again!
Does a filter on the tip of a cigarette make them safer?
No, there are no safe cigarettes. One study suggests that a smoker who switches from nonfilter to filter cigarettes may actually face an increased risk of coronary heart disease, primarily because of the higher carbon monoxide levels in smoke inhaled through filters. The paper surrounding the filter is relatively nonporous, and thus more carbon monoxide is passed on to the smoker than if no filter were present.
Have cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine made any impact on the deleterious effects of smoking?
Before the 1960s, many cigarettes contained 42 milligrams (mg.) of tar and 3 mg. of nicotine. By 1977, the average cigarette produced 16.6 mg. of tar and 1.09 mg. of nicotine. In a study of more than a million men and women, total death rates for those smoking cigarettes with reduced levels of tar and nicotine were lower than for those smoking brands with higher levels. However, death rates for those who smoked lower levels were still 30 to 75 percent above the rates for nonsmokers.
Do the harmful effects from cigarette smoking disappear immediately after quitting this habit?
Many toxic substances from smoking accumulate in the blood and tissues. It lakes a long time for the body to eliminate all of these harmful residues and much vital energy is required for this eliminative process. You can greatly assist this process, however, by going on a fast. Energy normally diverted into the digestive process can then be used for healing and repair.
What country produces the most tobacco?
China is the leading tobacco-growing country producing 1,064,000 tons annually. The United States is second with 788,200 tons. It is sad to think that so much good land and energy is going into such a worthless crop. This same land could produce enough fruits and nuts to feed millions of people and the results would be beneficial, not harmful as they are with the tobacco industry.
The title of this article, a quotation by G. B. Shaw, is an apt one for those who are slaves to smoking, for there is not a single thing about smoking in itself that is attractive, and many smokers actually dislike tobacco.
The man or woman who takes it up for one or the other reason, mainly psychological, soon acquires a mental habit which, in time, becomes a purely physical addiction. To say that the body craves the tobacco in any form is a gross insult to the inherent intelligence of the body cells. Tobacco contains 19 poisons, each one of them more damaging than the others, to the living cells. The body repels and abhors tobacco, as it does all poisons. The first puff of a cigarette by a nonsmoker shows how alert the body is in its defensive capacity. An all-out defensive action is started at the first contact of these poisons with the living organism and continues throughout the life of the smoker.
With each succeeding smoke, the defensive action of the living cells gets less and less until all vital activity of the ells concerned is reduced, and the organism is prostrated with exhaustion in deep stupor. The so-called “tolerance” of the smoker to his particular brand, like the pet sedative of the drug addict is but a mask hiding the true state of the living organism—complete enervation and exhaustion.
The natural resistance of the body is lowered and the body compensates by not reacting violently as when it was vital and vigorous. In other words, in precisely the proportion to which one becomes accustomed to the use of any poison, is his system depraved and his defensive powers reduced. The ability to smoke like a “man” without being sick is an evidence of cell weakness and physiological depravity. Hence the reason why a stronger and stronger dose is required before an addict actually gets acutely ill. To deprive him of his smoking means resting his system which as it gets stronger and stronger asserts its power in the form of active symptoms, in resistance against the cumulation of the drug, and this being disturbing and distressing like the usual fever or running nose, the smoker seems to crave his smoke, this hubby-bubby so that he can silence the waking sentinel again. The real effect of the next smoke is to renarcotize his nerves which can only cry out and reveal his true condition when they are no longer under the influence of the drug.
Some of the 19 poisons are the deadliest in their toxic effect, e.g. pyridine, nicotine, prussic acid, and carbon monoxide. Here is a short list of some of the most poisonous matter present in your particular manna from heaven.
Each one vies with another to be the first to show you the portals of the post-mortem existence somewhere beyond the clouds:
One cigarette causes a rise of 10-15 points in your blood pressure, i.e., increasing the work of your heart by 10%. Let alone its connection with lung cancers and hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) smoking destroys inclination for marital embrace and the ability to copulate and to reproduce. Children of habitual smokers die early, are prematurely born, are stillborn, or are miscarriages.
Dr. Lucas, physician at Guy’s Hospital, London, observed that testes dried up, atrophied, and shrunk to the size of a pea and sometimes also the sex organ. Tobacco impotence is steadily rising in the middle ages and 30% of women are frigid due to the tobacco habit. Women working in tobacco factories seldom have children. Yes, don’t believe it now, but every smoke is a tiny drop of old age creeping on you unnoticed.
Fully three quarters of the cigarette smokers begin with the resolution of controlling their indulgence. But how many succeed? The answer is practically none of them, because poison demands more poison. Compromise plans won’t work. All sorts are tried. A friend of mine conceived the idea of smoking so much a day and no more. It didn’t work a week with him. Another wanted to smoke only in the evening after dinner and work. He stuck to it for a month and then gave it up as he was smoking more per evening than in the whole day previous to his embarking on this new compromise.
Yes, dear reader, they all fail, these so-called half measures. A few that succeed in rationing themselves thus, are relatively few and mostly those who “smoke” in order not to offend the boss or the company director—as if he really cared. And even if you are one of them, the difference between you and the smoker who goes the whole hog is only a matter of degree—the effect is still harmful and never beneficial, and it always will be.
Stand firm in an unqualified refusal to indulge in this bad habit! That is the only plan that will succeed. If you smoke to please, what about your nonsmoking friends! Keep your self-respect and your health at the same time.
Even the “tapering-off” plan when a smoker decides to quit, nearly always fails. There are two ways of getting into cold water for a swim—a headlong dive or a gradual wade in. Similarly, there are two ways of quitting tobacco— sudden stoppage and the tapering-off plan. If your heart is sound, the dive is your better course at the pool. The same applies for the tobacco—and especially if your heart is a bit wanky.
The wade-in system is an acceptance of failure, of self-doubt, and this attitude is really what defeats the one who wants to quit tobacco. Decision, not doubt, is what you need most. Why prolong the misery and play with temptation. “DIVE IN.” It is the easier of the two in the long run. Your friends can’t get at you with “have you had your quota today?” “One more today, two less tomorrow,” etc.
Be firm and active—that’s the only plan with smoking. Burn the bridges behind you; solemnly declare to yourself and others that you have quit once and for all and see the strain lift from you. See the relief, both mental and physical, in your eyes. Stick to it and a time will come when you will be proud of such an achievement. If you don’t do it this way and now, you’ll never be really free from it with ( any other plans, because the desire to quit is not strong enough.
An uncompromising decision, as above, will establish self-confidence and self-respect. The inconvenience will be much briefer and maybe a little more keener than on the one-by-one plan.
So there you have it all. Health for all is there for you too. So light your match and burn the cigarette at both ends. Then the fire burns and the fool with it too. The wise one stands back and smiles.
42.1.3 Warning: Herbs May Be Dangerous To Your Health!
42.1.5 The Origins of Herbal Drugging Practices
42.1.8 Are Herbs Good For Food Supplements?
42.1.9 Why Herbs Appear To Work
The woman was proudly showing me the inside of her medicine cabinet:
“See? No pills, bottles of medicine, drugs or anything! I got rid of them all. I don’t trust doctors or prescription medicines. I take only natural things.”
She reached inside the cabinet and started pulling out capsules, tinctures, and powders.
“This is peppermint oil,” she told me. “I use it instead of an antacid for stomach upset. I’ve got these white willow bark pills for headaches so I won’t need aspirin. I used to take tranquilizers, but now I can use these valerian root extracts to make me relaxed. I just use herbs now when I’m sick. I don’t buy anything from a drugstore.”
“That’s too bad,” I said.
She looked shocked. “Why? Because I don’t buy drugs anymore?”
“No,” I replied, “it’s too bad you’re still poisoning yourself with drugs—that’s what all these herbs are. They may grow wild and naturally, but they’re just as deadly as those pills with the unpronounceable names that the pharmacist sells you.”
Many people can be convinced about the danger of prescription and over-the-counter drugs. They, or people they know, have often suffered side effects from drugs sold as cures. Yet these same people are often amazed that herbs too are equally useless and dangerous in restoring health.
Herbs have an undeserved reputation as “natural,” “organic,” “powerful,” and “ancient.” They grow out of the earth—they must be okay, these people reason. Such people may violently distrust bottles of medicines and pills sold by drugstores, but they will dutifully swallow capsule after capsule that contains the powdered remains of some unfamilar plant.
This lesson is to help you explain to your friends and clients why herbs are not harmless; why they are not safe; why they should not be used. So many myths surround herbs, herb taking, and herbalists that the air must be cleared.
Most of us have a pretty good idea what an herb is. We generally think of some wild plant that tastes somewhat bad which is used in small amounts for some ailment or the other.
There may be some confusion, however, between herbs and vegetables, or other edible plants. For example, lettuce and salad vegetables are sometimes called “herbs.” Parsley, which may be eaten occasionally with other vegetables, is classified as an herb. Animals, such as horses and cows, which eat primarily grass and greens are called herbivores or herb eaters.
Even the dictionary is no help in distinguishing herbs from vegetables. One definition of an herb is that it is a “seed plant which dies to the ground at the end of a season.” This would mean that lettuce, cabbage, and indeed, almost all garden vegetables, could be classified as herbs. Another definition of an herb is that it’s a “plant or plant part which is valued for its medicinal or savory properties.”
Now we can see the two sides of an herb. It can either be a food (like a salad vegetable) or it can be a drug or a seasoning. For this lesson, an herb will not be considered as a food or as a salad vegetable. If it is safe to eat, a plant is classified as a food. If it has toxic, or “medicinal” properties, than it is classified as a drug.
This lesson is concerned chiefly with the herb as a drug. Mention will be made of herbs as foods, and whether they are proper nourishment for humans.
Some people may not believe that herbs can have any effect in keeping us well and healthy, but few people actually consider herbs to be harmful. Herbs are plants and grow naturally, and it seems that only people like the FDA and AMA have anything “bad” to say about these substances. But herbs are not only ineffective in producing health, they poison the body and may create serious complications in the user of such plants.
All herbs contain poisonous volatile oils and alkaloids. All herbs are fatal when taken in large enough doses. Even moderate amounts of certain herbs can cause vomiting, diarrhea, fever, headaches, and spontaneous abortions.
Many people do not realize that the herbs they take are in fact poisoning them. The reason? Herbs are taken in small amounts—usually small enough not to occasion a serious and painful reaction, but still enough to cause the body to react radically and expeditiously to eliminate them. These reactions by the body to eliminate the toxic substances found in herbs are taken as “proof” by herbalists that their potions are doing their job. A job is being done, all right, but the results are not always as advertised.
If herbs are not harmful, why must they be taken in such small amounts? Like pepper, spices, and condiments, herbs cannot be ingested in amounts larger than a tablespoon or so. Even more telling is the taste of herbs themselves. Almost without exception, herbs are bitter, strong, and foul tasting. This is a warning to the body not to eat such substances.
Very few people would chew and swallow a mouthful of an herb. They couldn’t choke such a strong and bad tasting substance down. Instead, they usually grind and powder the herb until it can be stuffed into a capsule and slipped past the sense of taste which is the body’s guardian against poisons and drugs.
If a food or substance cannot be enjoyed—if it does not have a pleasant taste—then it should never be eaten or ingested. Even a perverted sense of taste can protect a person from the foul poisons found in herbs. Yet with pills, capsules, and infusions, the herbalists have found ways to sneak a plant into the body that it would never relish or desire normally.
Still, people who are attracted to a natural way of life and diet defend herbs and their use. Maybe we should ask the question:
Of course herbs are natural. They grow in every part of the world without cultivation. Unlike most fruits and vegetables, herbs have not been altered through selective planting or breeding. The herbs growing today are much the same as those that grew five thousand years ago. No one can argue that herbs are not natural plants. But, are they natural for man to eat and use?
The argument for herbs has been that since they grow everywhere, they must be good for something. We should be able to use these wild plants since they must be provided for us by nature or by a divine being.
One of the best known herbalists in America answers the question “why use herbs?” as follows:
“Herbs are nature’s remedies, and they have been put here by an all-wise Creator. There is an herb for every disease that a human body can be afflicted with. Herbs were mentioned in the Bible, and much has been written about them all through history.”
In the words of Dr. Herbert M. Shelton: “Such an argument is specious, false, unscientific, and absurd. It is not sustained by theory nor by results, neither by logic, or analogy, nor by experiment or experience.”
Simply because a plant grows naturally does not mean that it was intended or ordained by a divine being (or nature) for our use. A great many plants grow all around us that are rank poisons. The tobacco plant has large and lovely green leaves. It certainly looks as if it would make a wonderful salad food. If you ate a salad of tobacco leaves, you would not live to regret it.
Animals in the wild refuse to eat many of the plants growing around them. Toxins and poisons are to be found in plants, just as are vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and so on. As Dr. Shelton has observed, “Many of the products of nature are unfit for the entrance into the human body.”
If so many herbs taste so foul and have such detrimental effects on the body, then we might ask how the herbal practice ever got started in the first place.
The herbalists and the medical profession which also derives many of its drugs from herbs have justified the use of such poisons by pointing to the practices of antiquity and primitive tribes.
“For thousands of years,” one herbalist writes in his correspondence course, “herbs have been used in the treatment of disease. From the time of King Solomon, who was reputed to be the wisest man of his time, on down to Hippocrates, Galen, and through the Middle Ages to the present time, there have always been great and famous herbologists or botanical physicians.”
We could also add that there have also always been fools and unwitting dupes who have fallen prey to this mumbo-jumbo about the “glorious” history of herbs.
The romantic picture of remote and ancient men who searched the landscape for herbs to cure mankind is a popular, but false one. Always the herbalist is glorified as a wise magic man that could divine the true nature of the wild plants around him. Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth.
The first herbalists were superstitious witch doctors and shamans who used these plants not for any healing virtues, but for magic rituals and ceremonies for sex and power. The herbs were used right along with snake eyes and frog skins to make magic potions. They were not used as curative agents, but as magical talismans.
Medical historians and students of herbology, however, seek to justify their drugging practices by pointing to the past uses of herbs by primitives as an “instinctive” use of such plants. Neither man nor animals will “instinctively” eat a plant that is full of poisons and toxins. It is very doubtful that any person living in nature would desire to eat a foul, bitter plant that causes the body to react vigorously to eliminate it.
The truth is that herbology, like circumcision, is a dark age ritual that has unjustifiably survived. The primitives had no more success when they used herbs for medical curing than they did when they performed circumcision on their youths to prevent masturbation, or whatever. Both herbs and circumcision are barbaric practices that are still with us in spite of an “enlightened” twentieth century.
The romanticizing of herbs and their effects as being “natural” or “primitive” and therefore established and accepted is a dangerous lie. Herbs are drugs and poisons. They cure nothing.
People who believe in the curative powers of herbs think that any disease or ailment can be relieved by the ingestion of the proper herbs in the correct amounts. Some herbs are to be boiled and steeped.
Others need grinding and powdering. Some herbs are to be taken in combination with other herbs.
Some herbs must be taken alone to “work” properly.
There are dozens and dozens of books that list herbal formulas for every conceivable illness. No matter what bothers us, the herbalists have a list of plants we can take to “cure” ourselves. So simple and so appealing.
Every herb has its own healing properties, its own virtues, its own potencies. Reading a book on herbs is like reading an encyclopedia of diseases and cures. No wonder herbology is so seductive. We need do nothing to change our living habits to regain our health; we only need to take this or that herb in some amount or combination.
There is no curing power in any herb. All healing power resides in the tissues of the individual. An herb can cure nothing. Herbs, like all drugs and poisons, are inert substances. They perform no actions. They stimulate no healing. They remove no cause of illness. They cannot rebuild the body. They are inactive and incapable of initiating any constructive action within the body.
But herbs do “work” in a certain way. When they are introduced into the body, the vital organism attempts to expel these poisons as quickly as possible. The body protects itself from drugging and poisoning, whether these poisons come from a pharmacist’s shelf or from nature.
These protective efforts by the body are misinterpreted as beneficial actions of the herbs. For example, the herb called mandrake has long been used for liver ailments. When ingested, mandrake causes vomiting, purging, and griping. The herbalists view these reactions as beneficial; they say that the mandrake is causing the body to clean itself out.
What is actually occurring is that the body is making a heroic effort to expel the mandrake by any avenue possible. The purging and griping are signs of a vital organism trying to eject a poisonous substance. It is not a “curing crisis” brought on by the herb.
Different herbs may occasion different bodily reactions. Fevers, sweating, diarrhea, increased or decreased circulation are all signs of a body trying to eliminate herbal toxins and are not indications that an herb is working some cure or the other.
The use of herbs is often defended because they are not as strong as chemically-derived medicines. In other words, they seem to do less harm than prescription drugs. But is this really true? Are herbs the lesser of two evils? And is there ever any reason they should be employed?
Even if herbs possessed no toxic or poisonous properties, they would still be dangerous. Why? Because the use of herbs, or any “curing” agent, simply perpetuates the ignorance that enslaves so many people.
Herbology promotes the idea of a “cure.” As such, it does nothing to remove the true causes of disease and illness. Herbs deceive people. Many people think that by swallowing some plant or the other, they can improve their health. Such thinking can be dangerous.
For example, high-blood pressure is a very common ailment among Americans because of the tremendous amounts of salt they eat in their heavy meat and processed food diet. A vegetable alkaloid found in certain herbs called reserpine has been used to reduce blood pressure. Garlic, long touted as a wonder herb, is also a supposedly effective agent in reducing blood pressure.
What sometimes occurs is that people with high-blood pressure ingest garlic and other herbs to correct this condition. At the same time, however, they continue with their old diet and eat large amounts of salt.
When this happens, the symptom of high-blood pressure is hidden by the symptoms of the herbal poisoning. At the same time, the old habits and diet that kept the blood pressure high are not modified. The high-blood pressure is simply a signal by the body that something is wrong—like diet or lifestyle. By taking an herb for this symptom, nothing positive is being done; indeed, a poison has just been added to the body which it now must eliminate.
Herb taking, then, is simply symptom masking. In other words, a symptom of a diseased or disordered body is hidden by the eliminative efforts of the body to rid itself of the herbal toxins. The causes of the initial symptom remain, and indeed, continue the destruction of the body.
Garlic and other herbs may mask one symptom of a high-salt diet, but they can do nothing about the kidney damage and cellular destruction that also accompanies salt eating.
All pill and drug taking is dangerously deceptive, whether the drug comes from a plant or from a factory. The symptom-ridding approach to health is a short-ended one, and the bills for a disease-producing lifestyle always come due. Herbs and the symptom-repressing attitude toward health only deceive and delude the true health seeker.
Not only are herbs promoted as cures and remedies, but they are often given as dietary supplements. Herbs often have a high concentration of minerals (usually iron, calcium, and trace elements.) Some have a high vitamin C content as well.
Because of this concentration of nutrients, herbs are also used as nutritional supplements. For example, there are herbal formulas that are reputed to have the proper mineral combination for building bones or increasing the red corpuscle content of the blood. Many people who dislike supplements made in a laboratory will use these herbal formulas to “improve” their diet.
In this case, the herb is being used as a concentrated food instead of a “medicinal cure.” But can such a practice be justified?
The human body can only utilize a certain amount of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients during a given time period. Any excessive amounts of nutrients are eliminated by the body in the urine and feces. For example, brewer’s yeast is sometimes used in the diet for a high B-vitamin supplement. The body can only use a limited amount of these B-vitamins; the rest comes out in the urine.
The high and concentrated amounts of nutrients in most herbs cannot be totally used by the body. Only so much of a mineral or vitamin can be used, and the excess in the herbs must be eliminated. Taking in nutrients in excess of the body’s needs is not “insurance”; instead, the body is burdened by minerals which are in excess of its needs.
Fortunately, most natural foods suited to man’s physiology (like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds) are well-balanced nutritionally. Herbs, however, do not have a balanced array of nutrients for human needs because they are not properly a food for man to eat.
Our vitamin and mineral requirements can be more than met with a diet of natural and unprocessed fruits and vegetables. Herbs are not needed food supplements, and indeed, they may serve as a dangerous substitute for a proper diet of fresh and wholesome foods.
Then, too, you must remember that along with any minerals or vitamins the herb may possess are also alkaloids and poisons that the body cannot healthily metabolize. Herbs are not a safe supplement. In fact, no supplement is safe because all such unbalanced additions to the diet disrupt the body’s metabolism arid force it to eliminate the unneeded substances and excesses.
Even after people have been told about the harmful effects of herb taking, they often persist in the practice because they insist that the herbs are working and helping them. An elderly man of about ninety has dutifully swallowed a capsule containing an herbal laxative every day for the past several years. “It keeps me regular,” is his only comment and justification for the herb-taking habit.
Herbs do have an effect on the human organism. There can be no question about that. When certain herbs are taken, headaches do disappear and constipation seems to vanish. Are the herbs “working” as the herbalists would have us believe?
In a discussion on herbs and their seeming ability to “cure,” Dr. Shelton has stated:
“Only poisonous herbs are thought td have medicinal qualities. If an herbal substance does not occasion actions of expulsion and resistance when taken into the body or applied to it, it is not vested with any power to cure. If the body ejects the herb by vomiting, diarrhea, diuresis, or diaphoresis, and this is accompanied by some pain and discomfort, then the herb is regarded as beneficial and it is used to “work.” If the patient then recovers in spite of the herb taking, full credit for recovery is given to the poisonous plant, and the self-healing power of the body is completely ignored.
Shelton and other Hygienists have stated that for any substance to have a so-called medicinal effect, like herbs do, it must be a poison. This is because the alleged medicinal effects of a substance are nothing more than the efforts of the body to expel and resist poisons. Herbs and other drugs, instead of being digested and utilized by the body, are expelled.
What does all of this mean? Let’s take a simple case where an herb appears to do some work. Peppermint, a rather mild herb by most standards, is sometimes used to “cure” a headache by herbalists. Your head hurts, so you drink a cup of peppermint tea. Your head stops hurting. Did the peppermint work?
Yes and no. Most headaches are caused by swelling of the intracranial blood vessels around the scalp. These blood vessels swell because of toxic matter in the bloodstream and body, and they then press against sensitive nerves. When peppermint is taken, the body recognizes its oils as harmful. Circulation is rapidly increased by the body and the heart speeds up. At this point, the body is attempting to eliminate the peppermint toxins as quickly as possible by increasing circulation so elimination can proceed.
The increase in circulation, due to the toxic nature of the peppermint oils, has an effect on the swollen blood vessels in the head. The vessels are dilated so that the circulation can proceed rapidly and the peppermint poison can be eliminated. As a side result, the headache disappears temporarily.
So is the headache cured, and did the peppermint work? No, the body did all the work. It worked to eliminate a poison, and these efforts also masked the symptom of a toxic body—in this case, the headache.
The cause of the headache—toxicosis—was not removed by the peppermint. The conditions that brought on the toxicosis—poor diet and lifestyle habits—were not improved by the herb. The headache may have disappeared, but the underlying cause remains. This is the case with all herbs—symptoms are depressed by the eliminative actions of the body which are directed toward the herb.
Almost without exception, herbs have been used to treat the sick. They are rarely used as food, although occasionally herbs have been used as seasonings or condiments. A lifestyle without herbs is both easy and healthy.
First, you should realize that most people resort to herbs in an effort to cure themselves of some illness. As a student of Life Science, you already know that there can be no “cure” for any disease. Poor health can only be improved by healthful living practices—not through drugging, treatments, or cures. The proper response to an illness is a complete physiological rest—fasting, if possible. Following a complete or modified fasting regimen, the individual should adopt a healthy diet of primarily uncooked fruits and vegetables which are eaten in as whole a state as possible.
Herbs, and other drugging agents, are often used by people who desire a quick “fix” of their problems without any change in their lifestyle. Since it is an unhealthy lifestyle which created the disease in the first place, this approach always fails. The use of herbs may produce different symptoms or masked symptoms, but the herbs themselves cannot remove the underlying cause of the symptoms.
Therefore, to live a life without herbs, we must realize that their use in times of sickness is deceptive. We must understand that total health can only be regained by fasting, proper diet, and a healthy lifestyle. Herbs have no power and no capacity to effect these changes in our lives.
Swallowing herbs is like swallowing any other pill or drug. The fact that they grow naturally does not give them any extra or safe curative properties. Indeed, all curative properties reside within the human organism. No outside agent, including herbs, can instigate any healing capabilities of the body.
Besides medicine, then, what else are herbs used for? Some people use them as food supplements. But if you are following the biologically-correct diet of chiefly raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts, then there is never a need for herbal supplements or any type of nutritive additive. Many people are wont to blame their health problems on some deficiency or the other, which they then seek to correct by herbal or chemical supplements.
In reality, most illnesses are not caused by any deficiency, but rather by a sufficiency, or excess, of toxic materials in the body. Taking supplements merely adds to this toxic level, and no causes of the illness are removed.
Finally, herbs are sometimes part of a meal. The culinary herbs, such as garlic, onion, parsley, rosemary, cumin seed, caraway seed, and so on are probably the most common herbs used in most diets. Let’s look at these herbs and seasonings in closer detail to see how we can also live without them.
Herbs that are foul and bitter tasting, as are most of the medicinal herbs, can be easily explained as unsuitable for the human dietary. Who would want to eat them anyway? Other herbs, however, have enjoyed a reputation as seasonings and flavorings in cooking and food preparation. Since this is where herbs are often used in everyday living, we should understand their use better. First, almost every herb used as food in the diet is done so as a seasoning or flavoring for cooked food. Few people desire to eat rosemary or caraway seeds with their raw vegetables. Most such herbs, then, are used to season cooked foods.
Why are seasonings or herbs used in cooked foods? Because the natural flavors and taste have been destroyed in the cooking process. The aromatic herbs are simply used to disguise the insipid taste of the cooked foods.
A predominantly raw food diet does not need aromatic or culinary herbs to “spark” up the flavors. Only in cooking have these herbs gained a foothold. But are they harmless seasonings?
No, because many of the herbs used as seasonings have strong oils and alkaloids that disrupt digestion. Ginger, for example, causes the digestive system to hurry the food through before being completely digested. Thus, these seasoning herbs have gained an undeserved reputation as “digestive aids.” Instead of aiding digestion, their use occasions the body to rapidly expel them along with the food they seasoned.
What about some herbs that are relished in a raw state, such as garlic, onions, parsley, and so on? In general, these types of herbs are not needed and may prove harmful to the organism. Garlic and onions, two of the most popular flavoring herbs, are full of noxious toxins, like mustard oil and allicin. Parsley is also a strong herb whose use can overstimulate the kidneys. It is a very concentrated green herb which should probably not be a part of the regular diet.
The cooking and seasoning herbs are not harmless additions to the diet as is popularly believed. Their use disrupts digestion and places an added load on the eliminative system. They are used chiefly to flavor and spice up foods that are probably best not eaten anyway (that is, overcooked foods, meats, and so forth). A diet of fresh fruits and vegetables require no seasonings, herbal or otherwise.
Aren’t herbs still better than taking prescription drugs? I used to take digitalis for my weak heart, and now I use a plant called foxglove.
Many drugs sold by pharmaceutical companies are often nothing more than a laboratory extract from a plant or herb. The digitalis you used to take came from the foxglove plant you now use. What’s the difference? Both still have the same sort of toxin that occasions an increase in circulation and a rapid heartbeat.
Herbs are drugs. When you take an herb, it’s like swallowing a pill or spoonful of medicine. The only difference is in the package they come in. Herbs come in familar, “organic” looking packages—the plant itself. Medicine comes in plastic bottles. The contents, as far as the toxic effects, are about identical.
This is the most difficult point to get across to people that use herbs. Simply because something deadly comes in a form that looks organic and natural does not make it any less deadly.
Okay, you say herbs don’t work. But when I take some white willow bark capsules for a headache, my head stops hurting and I can go about with my work. Sorry, but pain relief is where it’s at as far as I’m concerned.
All pain, including mild headache, is the body’s signal that unhealthy living practices are being engaged in. For instance, in your case you get a headache at work, so you take some herb and go on with your work. That’s the danger in herbs.
Taking an herb may cause a painful symptom to disappear, but the cause of that symptom (perhaps in your case, your working conditions) will remain.
Agreed, pain relief is “where, it’s at,” but you should ask yourself, why am I feeling pain? Pain is never a natural condition. Using unnatural methods, such as dosing yourself with herbs, is a dangerous response to the pain signal.
I agree with you about most herbs, like goldenseal and so on that just taste terrible. But some herbs taste good, and I don’t see why we can eat them without food.
Anything you take into your body, with the exception of water, is either a food or a poison. Either your body can use it as healthy nourishment, or it must try to eliminate it as a toxin.
Herbs are often borderline cases between a food and a poison. The majority of herbs have so many harmful alkaloids that any nutritional benefit they might contain is negated.
True, some herbs such as basil, comfrey, spearmint, and so on may taste pleasant. But in what amounts? Even the most dedicated basil or parsley or rosemary lover would not want to chew up a whole mouthful of their favorite herb. Why? Because even these “mild” herbs are extremely high in essential oils that can irritate the organism. While such herbs are not as dangerous as the stronger acting “medicinal” herbs, there is no need for them in the proper diet.
The term “herb” has two definitions. The first is simply a “seed-producing annual, biennial, or perennial that does not develop persistent woody tissue but dies down at the end of a growing season.” According to this definition, the various vegetables used in moderation on a healthful diet are herbs—celery, lettuce, bok choy, kale and other greens; broccoli; cauliflower; etc.
While relatively wholesome vegetables are herbs, the term “herb” really refers to a plant and not to a food. Let me clarify: when you eat a “vegetable,” you’re eating the stems, leaves, or flowers of a plant. Those stems, leaves and flowers that contain only very minute amounts of toxins are consumed as vegetables on the healthful (Hygienic) diet. But the poisonous (toxic) parts of plants are not consumed. For example we do not eat tomato plants or cucumber plants. Being of the deadly nightshade family, tomato plants are highly toxic. But we do eat the fruits of some plants, even though the leaves, stems, and flowers of the plant itself may be toxic.
One final comment about the eating of the herbs we call vegetables: These should definitely not comprise a major portion of a healthful diet, partly because of the minute amounts of toxins they do contain, and partly because they do not adequately meet our need for carbohydrates (for energy). Vegetables do contain carbohydrates, but they are mostly in the form of the carbohydrate cellulose, which humans, as frugivores, are unable to digest. Herbivores, with their four stomachs and special enzymes for breaking down grasses and other herbs, are, of course, fully capable of obtaining ample energy (carbohydrates) from herbs. Horses and cows are two notable examples of herbivores.
Frugivores, such as humans, are equipped to obtain energy primarily from the sugars in fruits. Our physiology and anatomy is such that we are capable of picking fruits, as well as masticating, digesting, and appropriating them with ease and efficiency. They contain all the nutrients we need—from vitamins and minerals, to proteins, fats and, of course, carbohydrates.
But, like the other frugivores (monkeys, apes, orangutans, etc.) humans can add relatively small amounts of vegetables to their fruitarian diet with benefit. The indigestible cellulose is simply passed through in the same form as it was ingested, and nutrients are utilized from the fleshy portion that is extracted during the chewing process.
The cellulose from vegetables is not, however, essential for human health. If we eat a hygienic diet we do not need large amounts of fiber (roughage) to keep our colon healthy. The important consideration for colon health is the same as the consideration for the health of every other organ and part of the body—freedom from toxins and toxic buildup. A pure (toxin-free) body is the result of healthful living and eating practices and not from the ingestion of any particular food, herb, or class of foods. Enemas, juices, roughage, and other substances or practices do not result in a pure (unpolluted) healthy body. Health is the normal state unless toxicosis and disease are caused by anti-vital practices and foods.
The second definition of “herb” is: “a plant or plant part valued for its medicinal, savory, or aromatic qualities.” This means that an “herb” is used either as a “medicine” (drug), or as a seasoning, perfume, or insect repellent, etc. Herbs are used, not for their nutritional values (their vitamin, mineral, protein, fat, or carbohydrate content), but for their toxic (“medicinal”) components. For example, onions and garlic are used for their mustard oil and allicin content. Both of these toxic substances are, indigestible and incapable of causing diseases to disappear or health to be restored. The toxic component of aloe vera is the glycoside aloin; in sassafras it’s safrole; and in the Indian snake root, it’s the alkaloid reserpine.
The poisonous substances in herbs are causes of body toxicity and diseases. Toxins or poisons are anti-health, no matter what their source. We cannot be drugged into health, whether the drug (toxin) is from herbs or from a pharmaceutical company—or even from cooked foods, processed foods, incompatible food combinations, or excess food, etc. Drugs, “medicines,” and herbs are alike in that they all cause disease and are incapable of “curing.” You may obtain a temporary feeling of well-being through their use, and disease symptoms may cease for a time. But appearances can be deceiving.
The human body is the only entity capable of healing, and no substance or procedure can speed up or assist healing in any way. There is no such thing as “curing” or “medicines.” “Medical” interference in attempts at “curing” is just that—interference. The body heals itself, purifies itself, and repairs damages from injuries caused by toxins best under the condition of a fast, in which complete rest is obtained.
Rest is needed during healing because the body must recuperate as much nerve energy as possible, thus increasing its vitality, in order to have the energy it needs to conduct the disease process. Disease is a body process of toxin elimination. It is not caused by “germs” or viruses, but is necessitated by the accumulation of toxins within the body.
The body institutes the disease process, and drugs and herbs sabotage the body’s efforts by posing another threat to the body besides the toxins it was eliminating through the disease process. Being capable of handling only a limited amount of toxic matters at a time, the body temporarily halts the disease process and devotes its energies to ejecting the new offending substance.
If the drug or herb is particularly toxic; if it’s given in a large dose relative to the subject’s vitality (supply of nerve energy); or if the subject is particularly low in vitality, the result of its administration may be almost complete cessation of the disease process. The body may be temporarily incapable of ejecting the toxins accumulated in the body or those in the drug or herb.
In this case, the body, though it may be showing no or few symptoms of disease, is more diseased than before the drug or herb was administered. That is, the body is more toxic—more diseased. When vitality is regained, in time, the organism will again institute the disease process in an effort to expel its toxic burden. If herbs or drugs are again administered, the body begins to suffer more and more from the injuries inflicted by the irritating poisonous toxins within. Various diseases, including arthritis, ulcers, cancers, and others, ensue.
No matter how herbs are used or what they’re used as (expectorants, stimulants, astringents, etc.) they always, without exception, add to the body’s toxic load, which is the real disease. The disease process is simply a body activity for expelling toxins so they will not injure the body and thus impede its functions.
In addition, herbs, like other drugs, temporarily, at least, give the illusion of health in some cases. Thus a person is not inclined to institute correct living practices so as to not cause further disease or to remove the practices and habits that cause disease. The result? More disease and continued disease, which is the opposite of the herbologist’s intentions, if he is truly health-minded and not simply money-oriented.
If you are an herb doctor, may I suggest you consider becoming a Natural Hygiene counselor instead. If you use herbs, I suggest you discontinue their use and, instead, institute healthful practices while simultaneously eliminating all unwholesome (drug) practices. My own experiences, as well as the experiences of many Natural Hygienists, verify the efficaciousness of this advice. If you are not yet willing to accept what I have said and what has been written elsewhere in the Life Science publications, study some more Hygienic literature.
And remember: health results only from healthful living. You cannot “make up for” any unhealthful practices by the use of herbs, or by the use of any other substances or practices. There are no magic potions and no shortcuts. And, after all, the path to health is not a hard road to follow anyway!
Article #1: Uncooked, Unmixed, Unseasoned Food by Dr. G.R. Clements
Article #2: Excerpts From Nutritional Methods Of Blood Regeneration, Part II by Dr. R.W. Bernard
Article #3: Excerpts From “Unfired Food And Tropho-Therapy” by Dr. George J. Drews, AI.D.
Article #4: Excerpts From “Nature—The Healer” by John T. Richter, Vera M. Richter
In the foreward to a popular book on cooking we find these words: “Cooking is not a particularly difficult art, and the more you cook and learn about cooking, the more sense it makes.” It is the purpose of this lesson to show you that cooking makes no sense whatsoever in any lifestyle designed either to build health or to maintain it. In fact, to a hygienist, cooking is the way of the devil rather than the way of an intelligent person, one knowledgeable about the capacilities and limitations of the human body and of what is entailed in the proper preparation of food so that it will be capable of maintaining a high level of health throughout an extended life span.
By far the most important cause of ill health in man is his many and habitual dietetic errors of one kind or another, the immediate results of which are not felt and intelligently evaluated. We can abuse our digestive organs for years and feel no pain. We can create problems for our kidneys by overconsumption of protein for years and feel no pain. However, the time comes when these organs rebel and we become intelligently aware of a diseased condition which is manifested either in the damaged organ itself or in some other place remote from it which has been made diseased through malnutrition or by the presence of irritating toxic metabolic wastes accumulated beyond the body’s overworked eliminative powers.
It is the gradual erosion of health by the more or less constant bombardment by erroneous eating practices which, in most cases, is responsible for the destruction of health. At the present time, after hundreds of generations of experiences with a diet of cooked breads, cooked meats and fats, in actual defiance of the body’s inability to process or use them, we see refined white sugars and syrups used to sweeten just about all canned, frozen and cooked vegetables and fruits; in these “modern” times, we have badly prepared meals cooked to perfection but lacking all properties essential to life; we are confronted on all sides with malnutrition and disease as evidenced by the fact that over 99 percent of the populace has dental caries, 70 to 80 percent are overweight; spines curve and vitality weakens; more and more people wear eye glasses due to impaired vision; at least 70 percent of the people are constipated, and we witness a rising and alarming incidence of cancer and other horrendous degenerative diseases. We find ourselves fighting an almost hopeless war on misery and disease which we ourselves have created.
Here in Tucson we have recently been placed on notice that hospital “care” of the sick is expected to rise another twenty percent during the coming year. This is an age of despair and of fear, particularly among the elderly who are faced with a future which they believe they cannot control. We are convinced that this country could witness a metamorphosis in the health of its people if we could all adopt a manner of living and eating which is sane and biologically sound; if we could convince everyone to adopt a non-stimulating uncooked diet, one which contains the necessary life elements in the right quantity and in the correct proportions and in the highest degree of organization, these attributes being found only in nature’s food packages, ready for our appropriation when eaten just as provided for our use, uncooked. Otto Carque tells us that we should always be guided in the selection and preparation of our foods by the fact that we cannot improve on nature, and that all foods which we enjoy in their natural state are the foods which are best adapted for maintaining health. We feel that what is most needed is self-control and knowledge of how to live according to biological need. The purpose of this lesson then is to enlarge our understanding of the benefits to be accrued by the consumption of uncooked food and to understand why health can be, so manifestly improved and in a relatively short time on an all-raw diet.
43.2.1 Historical Insights on Cooking
43.2.5 Cooking and Food Fibers
43.2.6 Cooking and the Minerals
43.2.7 Demineralization Processes
Cookery is defined as the art and science of preparing food for eating by the application of heat. The various preliminary methods by means of which food is prepared for the particular recipe or procedure are also usually included in the term. We refer to such prior practices as cleaning and removing certain inedible portions. Other preparatory processes as cutting, shredding, salting, addition of spices, methods of mixing and shaping, and so on are also included. In this discussion we will concern ourselves mainly with the effects produced by the application of heat to foods with little consideration being given to preparation procedures and methods since most of these are commonly recognized as being destructive of nutrient values to some degree.
In the civilized world, after due consideration of the state of one’s health, food is probably the single most factor of living that outranks all other aspects of living in commanding mankind’s attention. The various methods of preparing and eating food are extolled as arts and can give one a cultural image of the peoples of the world. We can often get a better understanding of people when we understand their cookery. Epidemiological studies reveal that much can also be learned about the status of their health by studying what they eat and how their food is prepared.
As is stated in Cuisines of the Western World authored by Elizabeth Gordon and published by Golden Press (The Heart Corporation, N.Y., 1965), the cuisines of various cultures have been cross-pollinated by explorers, by wars, by colonization, by immigrants, by religious customs and, in more modern times, by tourism. Only a handful of cultures have remained isolated. Gordon reflects how what people eat and how they prepare it is often determined by their climate, their agriculture, their wealth, their social system, who they conquered or whom they were themselves conquered by. The cookery itself reflects both folk wisdom and the culture of the more affluent, past and present.
It is doubtful if we will ever be able to trace the origins of cooking fully and completely. We know that the practice is deeply rooted in ancient times. Probably as populations grew and tribes were compelled to seek nourishment in more remote and less populated areas, people were forced by hunger to eat quail, duck and other small birds, at first in the raw state, then later salted, and still later boiled or roasted over an open fire. Due to the fact that grains were easily grown, kept well and were easily transported, they were called into use early in history as human food. Herodotus records that the early Egyptians were among the first to till the soil and that they ate largely of fruits and vegetables, and these uncooked. It is said that they also were skilled in the baking of a great variety of breads. However, it appears that the early Romans were among the first really to popularize cooking food. They also were skilled bakers of bread. Onions, garlic and leeks were commonly in use in both countries as vegetables but the members of the priesthood were forbidden to use them. Legumes were also on the prohibited list.
The peoples living in those countries bordering on seas and oceans soon learned to fish and many varieties of fish became staple articles of foods among such peoples as the Greeks and Italians. Archestratus, a Greek poet of the 4th century, tells of boiling fish in a mixture of oil and wine and spicing it with fragrant herbs. The Greeks introduced other slaughtered animals to the bill of fare, including the ox, sheep, pigs, lambs and goats. Roast lamb was especially prized in Greece and in other Mediterranean cultures, just as it is now. The Greeks also used a wide variety of vegetables which grew in the friendly warm climate, vegetables such as cabbage, leeks, onions and lettuce. Sesame seeds, figs, olives and nuts grew in abundance and were eaten not only raw but also cooked in a wide variety of cakes and breads.
The early Romans had access to an even larger variety of food. The peasant classes subsisted largely on grains and lentils cooked with a few vegetables and on the wild fruit of the country. Lentil soup and stews are still popular in many parts of Italy today. After the conquest of Greece the wealthier class of Romans came to know and enjoy an elaborate array of foods well-cooked in olive oil and adorned with fancy gourmet sauces which were well-seasoned by spices, especially garlic. Because of the heat, foods, especially meats, were subject to rapid decay. The cooking sauces and the seasonings helped to disguise the foul odors and to make the repugnant taste of decayed meat more palatable, so their use rapidly became not only tolerated but actually prized.
In France and Italy and also in more northern countries, the milk provided by horse mares, goats and cows was allowed to sour and curdle and then often stored in caves during times of plenty and brought out for human consumption months and years later in times of scarcity. Thus, was born the fine art of cheese-making.
In the dawn of civilization the British and their Teutonic invaders apparently paid little attention to cooking but by the time the Middle Ages had arrived, cooking was considered a fine art. The same can also be said of France and Spain who early on adopted Italian methods with suitable variations developing according to climate and availability of materials. The French, of course, later became famous for their tantalizing sauces and their use of wines, and more delicate herbs than are commonly used in either Spain or Italy.
Many of the ancient cooking practices influence the “art” in Italy to this day. Just a few years ago we travelled on an Italian freighter from Long Beach Harbor in California to Trieste, Italy. Thanksgiving Day came while we were yet on the high seas and in honor of the only Americans on board, ourselves, the chef prepared a Thanksgiving turkey. He personally conducted the bird to the dining room. The chef, in typical chef’s attire including his grand hat, laid it before us with a flourish and a magnificent bow. There the turkey lay, reposing on a huge platter, adorned with rosy tinted crabapples and smelling to the high heaven of garlic! In honor of the American holiday, Dr. Robert was asked to carve the bird and to serve the plates for the officers and other passengers on board. We all ate of the bird while the proud chef looked on eagerly noting our responses to his culinary efforts. Never have we eaten of such a bird and never will we again! It was stuffed with olives and spiced breads, it dripped with olive oil and reeked of garlic. The sharp spices burned the delicate linings of our alimentary tracts and we tasted that bird for hours after the feast. But, we never let on and the crew’s joy was complete as they watched us eat of that unique product of the ship’s culinary art.
In the Far East, rice, fish and wild fruits became staple articles of diet. It is said that Confucious (551-479 B.C.) was the first gourmet in China setting forth standards for ingredients and methods to be followed. These were, of course, changed as the population increased and wandered. Millet was the popular grain in northern China, With rice being the staple in most other parts of eastern and southern Asia. Spices were widely used, especially in the more southern regions where heat rapidly caused onset of decay.
Thus we can see that early cookery was more or less forced on the people both by the scarcity of food at certain times of the year and by the lack of refrigeration. As time went on, the palate became more and more accustomed to cooked foods and probably in direct proportion to the quantity of cooked food consumed, the health of the people deteriorated.
In America where the land was largely virgin and offered up a wide variety of foods of all kinds, the early settlers became accustomed to eating enormously of many dishes and courses. Graham relates how the dockworkers of Greece and Spain in the middle of the last century who ate simple fare consisting largely of coarse bread and raw fruits were able to outperform and outlast their American counterparts who ate more liberal fare. Graham also tells about native tribes living on remote Pacific Islands who lived long and healthy lives subsisting largely on coconuts and on wild fruits indigenous to the area. Biblical records also show that peoples in the early days of history often lived for many centuries on their very restricted fare. We know that most of the peoples living in and around the Mediterranean Sea ate largely of fresh fruits and nuts and we find even today that the people living in that area still eat and enjoy much more fruit than the average American does. We well remember another visit to Italy when we travelled on a train going into Rome. It was Christmas time and we were fortunate to share a compartment crowded with six Italian soldiers, just in their teens, who were going home for the holidays. They carried a variety of fruits in their packs and happily shared it with “the old ones,” as they called us. Unhappily, as the years have passed, so have many of the fruit stands that formerly graced the back streets of Europe, these having been replaced in many instances by American-type supermarkets.
We think sadly of the little children growing up today in Europe and elsewhere remembering fondly a time some years ago when we spent a memorable and happy day with some 300 beautiful rosy-cheeked children from the countryside outside of Paris, marveling at their good looks and good manners and most of all their composed behavior. We contrast the memory of that day with what we observe in today’s American children, many of whom are but hyperkinetic-charged caricatures of what truly healthy children can and should be. Today’s sick children are largely the product of culinary “art,” the art of making hot-dogs, potato and corn chips, pretzels and “Big Macs” oozing in mustard and relish, of doughnuts and carbonated chemicalized drinks, of sugar-ladened cereals that pop and make noises but offer little in the way of nourishment to growing bodies.
We look at our athletes today and see how the various sports are dominated by certain ethnic groups who, because they are not far enough removed from their native, more health-promoting, eating habits, retain a far greater measure of strength, endurance and agility than their Caucasian counterparts who are the products of many generations of gormandizing and a century or more of relative affluence. The peoples of the world cook their fancy dishes and civilizations fall apart while the peoples writhe in the agony of the catastrophic diseases that afflict them.
The dedicated Life Scientist knows that all cooking is folly because it has been shown to be destructive of health. He knows that by its very nature cooking is destructive of the forces that sustain life, that it produces certain adverse chemical changes in the food itself which renders it less capable of perfect digestion and assimilation at the cellular level; that instead of leading one into a world of “hidden delights,” the practice of eating a preponderance of food spiced and cooked to “perfection” can, on the contrary, create a subtle erosion of wellness which will be ongoing while life continues and the practice persists; that it can result in tissue and organ degenerative changes upsetting homeostasis; that eating primarily of cooked food can bring upon us the curses of premature aging, disease and death.
Food consists of those substances which are useful in building the body (as in growth), in the healing and reparative processes which sustain life, and finally, as a source of sufficient energy for the performance of metabolic purposes, and for fuel to maintain body temperature. Seven million new blood cells must be produced every second we live. The material from which these must be manufactured is food.
Food comes to humankind from and is supplied by the vegetable kingdom. Plants and animals live their allotted time on earth and are then, in due course, returned once again to the earth from whence they came. Here they are set upon by the Saprophytes, members of the “in-between” group of living things which do not seem to fit well into either category, especially by members of the Monera Family, the bacteria and molds, who by their own simple metabolic processes disorganize the highly complex organic molecules into simpler inorganic wastes which are excreted back into the soil, there to be taken up as food by the plant and reorganized into widely diverse forms of vegetable matter which we recognize as different varieties and parts of vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, these being digestible to some extent by all animals, including man. The original inorganic elements as returned to the soil would poison man but, combined in certain new complex organic formulations and presented to us in food packages especially designed for us, they provide us with rich nutriment for the sustaining of life.
Not all plant products are acceptable but Man is biologically and physiologically structured to accept a wide variety of suitable plant products as his food and, if he sustains himself only with the kinds of food to which he is best adapted, he can maintain his health and experience no disease throughout his entire lifetime provided, of course, that he also provides himself with a suitable amount of all the other known requisites of his organic existence: warmth and sunshine, fresh air, pure water and a congenial (friendly, not hostile) environment, and avoids accidental injury.
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the 19th century gastronomist, said “Tell me what you eat; I will tell you what you are.” Have you eaten too often and too well of sugared goodies? Have you overindulged in animal proteins even though cooked to perfection? If so, there are revealing signs to disclose your secrets. The well-trained and experienced hygienic practitioner doesn’t even have to inquire of you as to your past eating practices and preferred foods. He can make a valid judgment of your past indulgences both as to lifestyle and food practices by a combination of careful visual examination and psychologically directed conversational give and take.
Man cannot eat of the soil and live. He cannot take into his system inorganic elements and build a healthy body. He cannot eat the products of decay and have a long and healthy life. He cannot eat of “foods” to which he is not well adapted, such as animal flesh and products derived from or yielded up by animal bodies, and have a long and healthy life. He must, on the contrary, eat foods designed specifically to answer his structural and functional requirements and to eat them without alteration of any kind. largely and primarily in fact as they are yielded up to him by field and orchard. This is food fit for peasant and for king, for child and for adult. Cooking food alters it, the application of heat makes all foods less acceptable, if not repugnant, to the digestive mechanisms provided. Such food is damaged, changed and man cannot fully adapt to it or profit from its use. When he consumes it in response to perversion of his palate, he is required to yield up some measure of his own well-being in exchange for momentary pleasure.
No sharp distinctions can be given to distinguish among the various cooking processes. They all involve heat, of course, and differ only in the degree of temperature applied and the method of applying the heat. The various methods can be categorized as follows:
Microwave cooking has recently been introduced and has become exceedingly popular among women who work. Its long-term effects have yet to be evaluated. Slow cookers have also become popular in recent years among women who work all day and like to prepare one-dish meals. These devices cook foods at temperatures of about 200 degrees Fahrenheit and maintain them at these temperatures for eight hours or longer.
Food scientists have replaced many long familiar foods such as fresh orange and other fruit juices with chemical substitutes which compare favorably in taste but not in nutritive value with nature’s product. These chemical products have become popular because of their lower price tags and availability requiring little, if any, preparation.
Industry has learned to fabricate many substances now offered to the public as substitutes for the real thing, such products as synthetic chocolate, calorie-controlled foods with low cholesterol and low saturated-fat content for the overweight, substitute eggs and substitute meats, made from textured vegetable proteins, and numerous other pseudo foods. It is projected that in tomorrow’s world, the produce section of the supermarket will be hidden away in a corner, difficult to find, if it exists at all. This is why it is important for Life Scientists who value their own health and wish to keep the race viable, to become aware of today’s real world and of what will be offered tomorrow, to learn what happens to food when subjected to man-instigated changes wrought by the application of heat, and to make their voices heard. We must learn to relate our knowledge of physiological reality both in the world of commerce and in the halls of government.
Some vitamins are more resistant to high temperatures than others. However, the formulation, development, growth and vigor of an individual are dependent upon whether or not all of his basic organic requisites for living are met and the degree of perfection in all areas will be in a precise relationship to the extent to which each is provided.
Vitamins are one of these basic requirements for living. They are provided for him in man’s food and, for man to live in a prime state of health, his needs in this respect must be amply supplied, according to his need. Without a sufficiency of all vitamins, body synergism may be put off balance with the result that growth, development and vigor will be diminished to some extent and, when such sufficiency is long continued, certain deficiency diseases may arise.
The following possible deficiency conditions may be observed:
As Life Scientists we must be aware of the fact that all diseases are the product of toxemia. An insufficiency of vitamins can be a contributing factor, not the sole cause, of a diseased state. The root causes of any diseased state are, multitudinous, not capable of isolation.
When man first began to use fire on his foods, he began to destroy himself. One reason why this is so is because the application of heat is somewhat destructive of vitamins and the higher the temperature, the more destructive heat will be to the vitamin presence. As we indicated previously in our discussion in Lesson 39, vitamins are intimately interwoven with all the other nutritional and chemical elements offered in food and that the effectiveness of all nutrients can be somewhat reduced and even perhaps disintegrated by a deficiency in any one nutrient and this, of course, would include vitamins.
A few specific examples of how heat can reduce vitamins in certain foods will suffice to show how destructive normal cooking can be to one vitamin, Vitamin C. Measurements are given in milligrams and are derived from data supplied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Apricots, fresh halves. 1 cup | 16 |
Apricots, canned, water pack, 1 cup | 10 |
Mung Bean Sprouts, raw. 1 cup | 20 |
Mung Bean Sprouts, cooked. 1 cup | 9 |
Blackberries, fresh. 1 Cup. | 30 |
Blackberries, canned, water pack, 1 cup. | 17 |
Pears, 1 cup fresh, sliced or cubed. | 7 |
Pears, canned, water pack. 1 cup. | 2 |
From these few examples, the student can see that, while the Vitamin C presence is not completely destroyed, it is reduced. Any reduction, of course, will change the proportions planned by nature and will, therefore, be anti-health.
When foods are examined for specific content, we find that all foods contain essentially fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, some flavor enhancers, water and poisons of one kind or another, and in varying amouts, even in man’s most desirable foods, these being easily eliminated by the normal excretory processes. Food, however, is far more than the sum of its divided and carefully separated parts. Why this is so, no man knows but it is a proven and indisputable fact that man will starve and die if fed solely on any or, indeed, on all of these isolated food factors, but will thrive when he cats unfragmented nature’s food packages that contain the very same substances.
Persons who eat preponderantly of cooked food consistently deprive themselves of vitamins which, as we recall from our previous discussion in Lesson 39, are the important metabolic regulatory assistants to hormonal function and the vital enzymatic catalytic action. We view with sadness the meals eaten by man of our elderly citizens who frequent cafeterias and similar moderately priced restaurants.
Invariably their trays reveal depleted, cooked, poorly-combined foods. The usual menu consists of a meat dish, one or two cooked vegetables, usually only one, rolls made of devitalized white bread plus a dessert, frequently a piece of pie or cake. Many can afford but one or two items and, more often than not, choose a meat dish, adding perhaps a roll. Few even do more than glance at the array of salads and fruits. Certainly, the vitamin presence in such meals must be greatly diminished, if not completely so. It is little wonder that their gray complexions and their curved spines reflect the weariness within, of both body, spirit and soul, these being the visible signs of malnutrition and systemic decay.
Most American children today are brought up on cooked, vitamin-deficient foods. It is time that we hygienists take a critical look at America’s children and observe their curved spines that encapsulate and crowd the lungs and place all abdominal organs in a stressed posture. Take a look at all the mouth-breathers among them. Their nasal and respiratory passages are blocked with mucous discharge. We see them in school classrooms where we sometimes lecture, teenagers slouched over their desks, their bodies reflecting systemic fatigue; or, the opposite, bodies with taut nerves, falsely stimulated. Far too many of them are hyperkinetic sugar-starch-fat-rich young adults with still-growing bodies trying to make it on vitamin-deprived cooked foods. Unfortunately, it is our belief that most of these teenagers will live to curse the world of which they are a part.
So long as malnourished persons eat of cooked devitalized foods, they can take all the synthetic vitamins in the world and still not meet the needs of their bodies for these nutrients. The only sane way to satisfy our requirements for vitamins is to eat the foods that supply them: fresh ripe fruits and vegetables. There can be no piece-meal approach to dietary adequacy and superb health. Optimum nutrition is essential and it can be obtained only when the food eaten is optimum in all nutrient values including vitamins.
These required food values will be optimum only in freshly-picked, organically-grown, ripe fruits and vegetables and these eaten uncooked and as soon after picking as possible since some vitamins are reduced in value upon standing, even when refrigerated. Freshly-picked foods such as we have described will be whole foods, rich not with isolated food factors of doubtful value, but rather with all of them, properly proportioned as designed by nature’s wonderful food factories, the living plants.
Fresh uncooked foods will supply the body with a superabundance of all the food factors we require and with all the vitamins, known and unknown. Cooked foods will always offer an inferior depleted product, one destructive of health.
Vitamin A is regarded as being stable to heat at ordinary cooking temperatures but both the vitamin and beta-carotene are oxidized and destroyed by air. Therefore, when food is cut and chopped and then cooked in water and the water discarded after cooking, considerable amounts of this vitamin will be lost when foods are cooked in this manner.
The vitamin D content of most foods is either nonexistent or present only in very small amounts. Therefore, cooking is not an issue in the case of vitamin D. At any rate, our requirements for vitamin D can be fully met when we expose our bodies to sufficient sunlight.
Vitamin E is somewhat affected by cooking. However, it is very sensitive to slight oxidative changes in the fats contained in the foods in which it is found. Therefore, cooking will produce certain destructive chemical modifications in this vitamin by disorganization of the fats.
All members of the vitamin B complex are water-soluble and, consequently, cooking foods rich in members of this group can be highly destructive of the entire complex. High temperatures dry heating is somewhat less destructive but will also destroy to some extent B complex member vitamins.
The extent of vitamin loss by cooking will depend upon the following variables:
Herbert M. Shelton points out that the average loss of vitamin C in foods served to patrons of restaurants is 45 percent; of thiamine, 35 percent. It is wise for persons who must eat in restaurants to eat early, just after the food is placed out in expectation of the early supper crowd, about four o’clock in most areas. The newly-prepared food would be at its best at this time. We also advise patrons to patronize those restaurants where salad bars are featured.
We have no trouble eating while travelling. If we fly, we either do not eat at all or we advise the air carrier the day before take off that we wish to be served a fruit meal. There is no extra charge for this service. If we drive, we carry an assortment of compatible fresh fruits with us. If we stay in a town or city for several days, we occasionally eat at a restaurant like Big Boy which features either a fruit plate that is quite acceptable or a well-equipped salad bar. Many of the better steak houses pride themselves on the variety of salads featured. We avoid most cafeterias because their salads are usually covered with sugar-salt-vinegar dressings or liberally dosed with commercial mayonnaise.
The chemical composition of all fibers found in vegetables is predominantly cellulose, a very complex polysaccharide. So complex is the cellulose molecules that it is largely unaffected by the application of alkaline secretions, a fact which in and of itself means that cellulose fibers cannot be fully digested by the ordinary digestive secretions produced in the human digestive canal.
The student will recall from his previous studies that all carbohydrates are composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in varying arrangements, these being divided into several categories: simple sugars, complex sugars, gums and pectins, dextrins, starches, glycogen and cellulose. The formulas for each category may be written as: Cm(h3O)n.
The number of carbon atoms and the number of possible combinations of h3O very according to the complexity of the various molecules under consideration, the more complex carbohydrates being formulated of many simple sugar molecules (single molecules) all joined together, somewhat like freight cars in a train.
Glucose, a single comparatively simple molecule, is the monomer unit from which two major families of carbohydrates are formed: the starches and celluloses. Both of these two complex formulations are hydrolyzed (that is, disorganized) by a solution of certain acids in water to form smaller chemical units and eventually, when fully resolved, into chemical “fragments” called glucose.
The starches can be hydrolyzed by enzymes found in the human saliva, but the celluloses found in fiber cannot. According to Davenport (Physiology of the Digestive Tract, 3rd Ed. by Horace W. Davenport, Yearbook Medical Publishers, Inc., 35 East Wacker Dr., Chicago, III.), no members of the mammalian family possess an enzyme to catalyze the resolution of cellulose. In man there is a form linkage between an enzyme such as ptyalin and the starch, the two “fining” together, as it were. This fitting together is called “alpha-glycoside linkage.” Such is not the case with the celluloses. The enzymes in saliva and elsewhere in man’s digestive tract do not “fit” into the cellulose molecular arrangement and therefore have no effect upon the celluloses. This nonfitting linkage is known as a “beta” linkage. This is why the fibers in uncooked food can pass on through the digestive tract virtually unchanged chemically. Cellulose is partially digested by bacteria in the colon with the formation of volatile fatty acids which can stimulate peristalsis and act as an aid to defecation. Most of the cellulose contained in foods eaten will be given off in the feces when defecation occurs at least once in 24 hours but in constipated persons such will not be the case. Davenport states that in constipated persons digestion occurs within the central part of the fecal mass, and acid products may be absorbed (p.212).
The three classes of carbohydrates, according to molecular complexity, are:
Cellulose is a polysaccharide and the most complex of all the carbohydrate molecules. The polysaccharides have very large molecules: about 10 molecules being joined together to form glycogen, 25 for the simpler starches and 100 to 200 for the celluloses.
For efficient and thorough digestion the body, requires bulk in its food and nature has skillfully designed food for man which contains appropriate amounts of bulky cellulose fiber, the amount incorporated in man’s food apparently being proportioned exactly according to the design of the human alimentary canal and its ability to make use of it. Thus, it can be seen that persons who eat food not intended as food for man will do the body a disservice as will those persons who may eat suitable food but then alter by application of heat, the fiber content of that food, as in canned cooked food for babies.
We might assume from our discussion thus far that some foods might contain too much fiber, more than the human body might be able to handle efficiently. This is indeed true and such foods should certainly be either completely avoided or, at least, restricted in the human food intake. They place too great a burden on the peristaltic and eliminative capabilities of the intestinal equipment. The cellulose in some foods, especially if consumed uncooked, can be abrasive to the mucosal lining and, long term, could lead to irritation and inflammation of the food canal. We refer to such foods as most roots, dried legumes and grains. In the uncooked state, these foods can be highly irritating as well as obstructive to free passage of the fecal residue, a condition which leads to packing of the canal with accumulating amounts of dried obstructive fiber, making the walls more or less rigid (the “piped” colon) and laying the groundwork for putrefaction and fermentation of contents. Obviously, too, the high cellulose content of the mentioned foods prevents complete digestion and interferes with absorption of nutrients that may be present in the foods.
We note that the fiber content of the foods generally conceded as being most acceptable to man’s digestive capabilities is quite low as, for example, in fruits, the perfect human food. Even so, persons who subsist largely on uncooked fresh ripe fruit do not suffer from constipation but, to the contrary, have regular and sufficient fecal exodus. When the foods that are best adapted to man’s requirements are eaten, the fruits, the leafy green vegetables and perhaps a few nuts and edible seeds, and these are well masticated, we note that the digestive process extracts a maximum quantity of nutrients from the food and leaves most of the cellulose behind intact and this is then readily eliminated.
The ingestion of any unwholesome food, whether it is cooked, processed, or improperly combined will eventually result in systemic toxemia. This unwelcome state of ill health affects the entire organism since the body reacts and functions as a whole.
The body may be thought of as a unified structure working in harmony to maintain health. All bodily functions will be affected by the toxemic state and this includes the large intestine. Thus, constipation is a common result which we bring upon ourselves by eating cooked or otherwise denatured foods.
However, when raw fruits and vegetables are eaten in the presence of true hunger, all bodily functions will proceed unhampered and the digestive process also proceeds perfectly.
Dr. Vetrano cautions us to follow our instincts and eat only when true hunger is present for proper digestion of our food. She says, “When you are truly hungry the exact quality and quanitity of salivary and gastric enzymes are secreted for the amount and kind of food eaten and the body moves the food along the gastrointestinal tract fast enough for proper digestion yet slow enough for maximum absorption.”
We must not think of one particular food to move our bowels or another food to improve our vision, etc. The proper food will provide the correct conditions for the human body to carry on all of its functions and health will be the natural result. When the entire organism is healthy, so will be the bowels and the body will eliminate all of the waste products of metabolism along with the food fiber.
We had a client not too long ago whose lower GI X rays were remarkable. She had a piped ascending colon that was fully three inches across, the transverse colon had fallen and was U-shaped. It, too, looked stuffed with debris while the descending colon was twisted, gross-looking. Her dietetic history revealed that she ate the usual cooked American fare. Undoubtedly, the silent nerve pain channels had been well etched over many years. Just over 40 years of age, she now sees the evidence of 40 years of intestinal mismanagement, of eating so much cooked food and most of it of questionable quality. It will take considerable time to undo the damage, if it is even possible. However, there is some evidence of improvement. She had been unable to have normal bowel movements for over 12 years and is rejoicing in the fact that she is now able to have a normal, unassisted bowel movement once or twice a week. Occasional short fasts to permit rest and healing of her abused body followed by the gradual introduction of more and more uncooked foods, especially watermelon, plus a few leafy vegetables and a very small allottment of nuts three times a week have been instrumental in her progress. Her progress might have been more rapid except for the fact that this client had a tendency (as many do) to regress and, at such times, her commonsense and new knowledge fell victim to habit and she would indulge in the old ways. Fortunately, as time went on, the periods of regression became fewer although even yet they occasionally reassert themselves. We are confident that the day will come when she will have much improved digestive and eliminative powers although it is doubtful that she will experience full recovery since her colon and other organs have been extensively damaged both structurally and functionally, although we must emphasize that we should never shortchange nature. She can often surprise even the most experienced practitioner!
If we are presently not eating an all raw food diet, it would seem, from this discussion, the better procedure to change as quickly as possible to this more healthful way of eating. The body will then respond favorably and total well-being will be the result.
Every food intended for man has its required proportion of largely indigestible cellulose fiber. It is important that we consume our food in its natural state and not cooked, juiced or blended. Dr. Vetrano explains that, “If the food is whole—unjuiced, unblended and uncooked—like wild animals take their food, it will occasion the flow of more digestive juices than if the food has been separated from its fiber content or if the fiber has been excessively macerated. When the natural fiber touches the walls of the stomach, it occasions much more gastric secretion than were it in the form of juice or in the form of a blend.”
Dr. Vetrano further states that such practices as cooking, blending or juicing affects the fiber content which is necessary for the proper movement of food through the digestive canal and for the stimulation of the secretion of normal digestive enzymes.
However, we must keep in mind that it is not the fiber alone which ensures health of the digestive canal. It is a proper diet combined with all of the other aspects of a Hygienic lifestyle which will result in health of the entire body and all of its functions, including digestion. By following all of the principles of Life Science, the body will be free from toxic overloads which result in constipation and other disorders.
There are many factors that alter and destroy the mineral presence in foods. One of the most destructive of the various processes which precede the actual cooking process itself is the paring and cutting of foods. In many foods, especially the fruits, the greatest concentration of minerals is found in the skin or peel and these are often totally discarded when foods are peeled as, for example, apples or the tuber, the potato. Some foods have high concentrations of minerals stored directly under the skin and these, too, are often removed in peeling. There are foods, of course, which must be pealed before eating, such as the banana and many citrus fruits. All nuts require shelling. However, in considering the foods best adapted to man, by far the greatest number can be consumed whole and require no peeling whatsoever.
The cutting, shredding, chopping, etc., of foods prior to cooking exposes a larger surface to mineral loss and, if foods must be cooked for one reason or another (for example, in very debilitated cases), then it would appear best to cook as many foods as possible whole in order to minimize such loss.
Boiling is the poorest method of all. it is highly destructive of minerals. One can illustrate this fact very easily. Place some carrots or other deep yellow or deep green vegetable in a pan. Add water to cover and bring to a boil. Boil for two or three minutes and then decant the liquid. The water will appear colored, either yellow or green, indicating that many nutrients including the minerals have been dissolved in the liquid and are no longer contained in the food being cooked. The mineral loss will, of course, be greater when the foods have been cut prior to placing them in the water for cooking. According to the Journal of Home Economics, Vol. 17, No. 5, the average loss by boiling in foods is:
Iron | 48% |
Calcium | 31.9% |
Phosphorus | 46.4% |
Magnesium | 44.7% |
From the potato, total loss | 50% |
From the cabbage, total loss | 40% |
From the Carrot, total loss | 30% |
From the apple, lost by peeling, boiling and coring | 50% |
Dr. Shelton tells us that mineral loss from foods by cooking is accomplished by the following means:
Mineral elements comprise less than five percent of our body and only about one percent of the weight of cellular protoplasm. However, minerals are essential to all metabolic activities. Their presence is required to sustain the alkalinity of body fluids; they are required for structure, in healing and for repair.
Our body requires a great variety of minerals, some more, some less. Some of the more common elements like carbon and hydrogen are plentifully supplied by fruits and vegetables; others like potassium, sodium, magnesium, and other alkaline mineral elements required to maintain fluid alkalinity and salinity are found liberally in fresh leafy green vegetables. In our view, these latter foods should comprise an important part of the dietary intake. The important micro-elements, the so-called trace minerals, including iodine, chromium, zinc, molybdenum, manganese, copper, vanadium, fluorine, selenium, and so on, are also required but in unknown amounts. These trace elements are required to feed the body’s cellular factory production line and to participate in the thousands of actions and reactions that are going on. We require a full assortment of all required minerals to keep us breathing, growing, regenerating, healing; to keep us alive. The dynamic importance of minerals to health is not always appreciated and probably few among us receive our full quota of minerals nor do we receive the ones we get in their original proportionate distribution simply because most people eat largely of cooked food.
Many sick people improve dramatically when they change from the ordinary mixed diet to the vegetarian fare, even though cooked, but when they change to an all raw food intake, they are often amazed at the dramatic results obtained by them within a very short time. It is not only important to know where the food you eat originates but it is even more important to eat that food unfired, replete with all its minerals in their correct proportionate arrangements and combinations prepared expressly for human physiological machinery in nature’s grand plant factories.
Mineral deficiencies and imbalances produced by poor food selection and by cooking can lead to many disorders: to general malnutrition, increased sterility, development of homosexual tendencies, body encumbrances of many kinds, concretions, skin moles, blemishes, general debility and weakness, as well as to other diseased conditions.
Fragmented foods are foods in which certain nutrients are in short supply. To ensure superb health throughout a lifetime, food must contain all the nutrients required for the living process and these elements must be furnished in organic combinations and in certain prescribed arrangements as they have been formulated in natural foods. Life cannot be maintained for long on fragmented foods. Cooking fragments food because, among other things, it disrupts the mineral presence, throwing it out of balance.
Organized by nature, iron, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and all the other minerals contained within the highly organized molecules of foods can be digested, absorbed, transported and assimilated with highly beneficial results. Cooked, fragmented, demineralized or mineral-poor foods create problems for the digestive process, problems which lead to imperfect processing all along the nutritive chain. A life sustained on cooked mineral-poor food will be plagued from time to time by both minor and chronic diseases; such a life will experience varying amounts of weariness, fatigue, a lack of endurance and strength and will be shortened commensurately with the existing mineral deficit.
A diet rich in its mineral content, unfragmented by cooking, on the other hand, means smaller quantities of food must be eaten, fewer waste products with quicker elimination, improved endurance, greater strength, the maintenance of a proper blood viscosity and alkalinity, clean fluid channels, together with excellent general health, both physical and mental.
As Life Scientists we must understand that no proximate food factor alone is capable of sustaining vital force and further than this, that fragmented foods, even though they may contain many or even most of the required nutrients, are also incapable of sustaining life without creating deficiencies which, in the final analysis, are destructive of some measure of health. When we choose mineral-rich foods and then eat them uncooked, masticating the foods well, we then will provide our body with the best raw materials to produce healthy cells and tissues. We can eat twice the quantity of cooked fragmented food and yet not obtain an equivalent amount of biologically available mineral wealth nor can we be sure to obtain our full requirement thereof.
Perhaps the greatest argument against the practice of cooking lies in the fact that heating any food above approximately 122 degrees Fahrenheit destroys the food enzymes. Water boils at 212° so we can readily see that even the application of comparatively low heat can destroy the enzymes.
Enzymes present in fruits and vegetables play a vital role in the metabolic activity of the plant cells. They are complex proteins formulated in and by the plant cells from primary inorganic elements soluble in water and taken up by the roots of the plants and by the combined action of sun and air they become incorporated into the cellular plant community.
Like all other proteins contained in foods, the chemical structure of the complex enzyme molecules is changed by the application of heat and the catalytic force destroyed. Cooking will kill food enzymes just as effectively as an excessively high body temperature will cause us to burn up. Heating food effectively stops the vegetable metabolic action. In other words, when heat is applied to a plant in excess of 122°, the life force of the plant comes to an abrupt end.
When raw food is eaten, the food enzymes remain intact. Just like the protein in the food, the enzymes are digested in the stomach and become a part of the nutritive package offered up by the particular food, fruit or vegetable, nut or seed. Humans have the ability to manufacture their own cellular enzymes from the nutrients transported to the cells in the fluids of the body. Thus, if we supply ourselves with adequate amounts of suitable kinds of raw foods we will more easily and thoroughly digest our food, we will absorb a goodly quantity of nutrients to supply cellular needs and we can then formulate the required human enzymes, as the need arises.
However, when we eat cooked food we then fail to supply the wherewithal to manufacture our own enzymes and, if we remember that enzymes activate and control all the chemical actions and reactions within the cells and regulate the energy output for all physical and mental activity, we can see just how important the enzyme presence is to the continuance of life.
Adjustment by the body to the eating of cooked enzyme-poor food is always done at the expense of vitality, endurance and strength. However, many persons are afraid they will lose much weight on an all raw diet. This is generally true, but only in the early stages as the impurities in the blood and cells leave. After the housecleaning has been well taken care of, the lost weight is usually regained in short order. John Richter, author of Nature—The Healer, found this to be true. In fact, like most people, he first lost considerable weight and then regained all he had lost plus a few additional pounds. In the process, he regained his health, reporting in at 84 years of age to be totally without aches and pains of any kind.
Earlier in this century a wrestler, by the name of George Hackenschmidt known as the Russian Lion, toured the world competing with all the great iron men of the day. He successfully threw all who dared to test his strength and skill. According to Dr. George R. Clements, his diet consisted of the following:
Breakfast: lettuce and 5 or 6 Brazil nuts.
Second Meal: fresh raw fruits
Third Meal: fresh uncooked vegetables.
Dr. Robert, who eats only very occasionally of any cooked food, went from 212 pounds down to about 108 pounds and then began to add on weight until he reached about 128 pounds, where he has remained now for many years. We might point out that the new flesh gained is good firm, much-healthier flesh, and the weight obtained will be in keeping with body structure. On a hygienic regimen complete in all particulars, including a totally raw food intake, both the obese and the underweight tend to return to a healthy weight, normal for them.
Enzymes are the life principle and when they are lacking, their absence will soon be felt. When our food is vital, our bodies respond and we also become more vital. The destruction of enzymes by the application of heat may result in toxicosis and digestion is thus delayed or incomplete. In any event, we have long known that animals fed solely on a diet consisting of cooked food soon sicken and die while those fed their natural food and uncooked, thrive generation after generation. It may be well that the unique talent of enzymes to catalyze chemical reactions at low temperatures serves to conserve body energy and time not only in the cells but also in the digestive tract itself. Certainly the enzymes servicing the alimentary canal act in this capacity.
Every step taken to prepare foods for cooking and also the actual cooking process itself produces changes in the nutritive value of the food. Protein content and value is no exception for it, too, is affected profoundly by the application of heat.
As the student has already learned, the protein molecules are very complex, so complex that they are known as “macromolecules.” When these macromolecules are subjected to heat, they are chemically changed, becoming less digestible in most instances. Egg white is an exception. The albumin in egg white is indigestible raw and quite indigestible when completely hardened as in hard boiled eggs. However, when slightly curdled as in poached and very softly boiled eggs, the egg white is most digestible.
Meat protein undergoes important changes beginning at about 147 degrees in some instances as with fish, for example. If one is frying fish, one can observe a “leakage” of fluid begin at just about that temperature and, by the time a temperature of 151 degrees Fahrenheit has been reached, the pan will evidence considerable fluid in it and the texture of the fish will have changed having become quite dry and also less digestible, the protein having been coagulated and rendered less soluble, the water having been removed by the increased temperatures.
Beef and lamb are more easily digested raw than when cooked.
With these two meats the protein starts to harden at temperatures above about 150 degrees and at 160 degrees has been hardened. One time we were the only passengers on board a Dutch freighter which we had boarded in the harbor at Marseilles for a trip across the Atlantic where we were to study eating habits among the island people in the Caribbean. We ate with the captain and officers and observed that the meats served were cooked only to a depth of about one-quarter inch with the rest of the meat, usually beef, oozing blood. Many cultures in Europe we found eat lightly of meat, serving it mainly in very small portions and well cooked, as in various stews, but the Dutch, apparently like their meat in large quantities and almost uncooked. The only meats we observed being well cooked on that voyage were bacon and sausage.
If one examines a typical protein molecule as might be found in animal protein, one can observe various NH3 groupings, the N indicating nitrogen, the H, hydrogen. These are known as amines. In cooking and especially in the presence of water, these amines are replaced by an hydroxyl grouping, that is by an OH group, the O being the symbol for oxygen. These OH groupings cannot again be replaced by NH3 by any mechanisms present in the human body. This is why the cooked protein becomes useless. In some methods of cooking, it is believed that certain amine groups are actually split off even though no water is used in the cooking.
Certain proteins contain sulphur in their molecules. In the presence of water, this sulphur can also be split off. Cystine, an important amino acid which contains some 27 percent sulphur, is a typical example. Sulphur is found in all members of the cabbage family and it plays an important role in the human body as a disinfecting agent. The student will observe that in cooking members of the cabbage family, one can often be aware of the smell of sulphur as gases leave the cooking utensil. What is left is an inorganic molecule made up of inorganic atoms, which are useless to the economy. Cystine is an important element in the formation of red blood corpuscles but not a desulphurized changed cystine, but the whole organic molecule.
The vital factors, the complete amino acids, are destroyed and rendered useless as food factors to the precise extent that they are destroyed by the heating process. Methionine, another important sulphur-containing amino acid, is similarly affected by cooking. This amino acid is an important constituent of the body serum, of hemoglobin and of tissues. We can see how cooking such methionine-containing foods as Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, pineapple, apples and Brazil nuts could render their constructive values almost useless.
Similar modifications in structure occur with all the amino acids in cooked proteins, essential and nonessential. When we consider the vast complexity of these molecules, we can appreciate perhaps more fully the value of retaining the original organic structure. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the human body to build its own protein if it must first untangle an inorganic mess even before it starts.
Ragnar Berg, the Swedish scientist, reported long ago on research that showed that boiling meat even for a comparatively short time changed the nature of the phosphate presence in protein. Phosphorus is essential to blood and brain building. And yet, how often are the following valuable foods cooked, valuable because they contain generous amounts of phosphorus in them: kale, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, Savoy cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, cucumbers, lettuce, Brazil nuts, walnuts, huckleberries, blackberries, cherries and black mission figs. Many of these same foods contain iodine which, on heating, is also changed to HI or hydriotic acid causing damage to the thyroxine presence.
It is interesting in this respect to note the recent release by an “expert” panel of the National Academy of Sciences (as reported in the public press on June 17, 1982) in which, for the first time, it is acknowledged that a faulty diet is related to cancer. The panel urged people to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables and especially of members of the cabbage family, such as broccoli, cauliflower, kale and brussels sprouts which “contain natural cancer-inhibiting substances.”
Could these perhaps be the sulphur in the amino acids which are destroyed by the cooking process? Perhaps for the first time this official body has also recognized the importance of an adequate vitamin intake, emphasizing the vitamin C contained in dark-green leafy vegetables and deep yellow fruits and vegetables. As Life Scientists we, of course, know that cancer represents the end-point of a long and involved biological evolution, one made operational by a multitudinous number of physiological insults, a faulty diet being one.
The more the complex molecules of protein are heated, the more changed is the colloid form. The water-containing colloids (called hydrophilic) are converted into water-reduced colloids (hydrophobic). Unfortunately, perhaps, the human liver is designed to accomodate only hydrophilic colloids. After hydrophilic protein colloids are processed by the liver, the waste products can be neurtralized very handily by the sodium stored in the liver for just such a purpose and then can be flushed out as sodium salts, carried out of the body via the bile and feces. The kidneys take on the remaining nitrogen wastes which are flushed out in the urine as soluble urea.
Heating proteins, because it alters the protein molecules, makes them more subject to putrefaction in the intestines, a decaying process which, over the years, can lead to grave disorders of many different kinds according to inherited individual strengths and weaknesses and, of course, to the general overall profile of the individual, both as to his eating habits, past and present, and to his lifestyle, past and present. Past indulgences must have left their imprint.
Dr. Kouchakoff discovered that cooked meat causes a tremendous proliferation of white blood cells in the bloodstream, the increase being two to four times the normal. The body produces these white blood cells for a purpose: they surround toxic particles and then escort them to the nearest exit point, usually the kidneys. We note and it is so recognized that leukemia is always associated with an extremely high uric acid reading in the blood.
In all likelihood, other components than protein are also affected and reduced to a lower inorganic state, less useful to the cellular community. We have already noted a few. The experiments performed on cats by F.M. Pottenger, M.D. and D.G. Simonsen at Yale are well known but deserve repeating here to emphasize the harm cooking can do to proteins so essential to growth, building, healing and repair. In these experiments the cats were divided into two groups. The group that received all uncooked food lead normal lives and remained healthy through several generations, in fact until the termination of the experiment. The other group, fed only on cooked food, rapidly failed in health and members of the second and third generations lost all ability to reproduce. The members of this group suffered from diverse diseases including “softening of the bones, paralysis of the legs, thyroid abscesses, convulsions, cyanosis of the liver and kidneys, an enlarged colon, degeneration of the motor nerve ganglion cells throughout the spinal cord and brain stem, with some cells even affected in the cerebellum and cerebral cortex.” Do we not observe similar conditions among our friends and neighbors who eat consistently of cooked foods? Certainly, we are observing considerable deviation from normal sex habits among both sexes and among women, especially a departure from biologically normal female instincts (some lessening in devotion to the raising and protection of the young they have brought into the world, and increased lack of desire to bear children, promiscuity, and so on). An increased number of males fail to provide for their offspring Many of both sexes have become either homosexuals or sterile. While other influences are no doubt causative here we cannot but help believe that the evidence of the cat experiments points an accusing finger at the tendency to emphasize cooked food almost exclusively in our dietary habits. Because of the high temperatures, cooking by boiling, frying and by pressure cooker are particularly destructive of the important amino acid molecules.
It takes many generations to affect conclusive, results— two to four in the cat experiments. The human race has been eating cooked food now for a long time and in increasing amounts. We are no doubt witnessing the evil effects of this practice and are apparently helpless to stem the tide of disease among our peoples. Someone has well remarked that it is the uncooked molecules in the food we eat that maintains life. The only hopeful thing we see at the present time is the growing interest in sports and the interest many of our young people express in the study of nutrition, especially in natural hygiene.
Cooking fat-containing foods renders the fat and the foods less digestible and, in some cases, even highly toxic. Foods fried or cooked in fat and all foods with a high-fat content are more or less difficult to digest depending on the quantity of fat present and the temperature at which it is cooked. The free use of fat, cooked or uncooked, encourages digestive disorders mainly because its digestion must wait until it passes out of the stomach. The fat, when mixed with other foods, has a tendency to form a coating over the other food particles and the digestive juices and enzymes have difficulty penetrating this coating. This difficulty is augmented when the fat has been heated. Additionally, the fat coats the lining of the digestive tract impeding free secretion of digestive juices. But, that is not the end of our difficulty with fat. The fat will form around the individual complex food molecules preventing resolution into smaller elements; in other words getting in the way of the necessary chemical separations. Putrefaction of protein substances and fermentation of carbohydrate molecules are a natural sequence.
Fats, as found normally in nature’s food packages, need not be avoided but, even here, one can overindulge as many do, eating too many avocadoes and snacking on nuts at all hours. It seems that many hygienists are guilty of the last. They do not seem to understand that every time we put anything into the oral cavity, we put the wheels of digestion, absorption, transportation and assimilation into motion, we activate every organ and system in the body and waste our vital reserves by so doing.
The application of heat to fats breaks them down chemically into fatty acids which are nonassimilable and, consequently, these become free-floating poisons in the body fluids. Experiments on animals have shown heated fats to be carcinogenic to the animals. As Life Scientists we know that cancer is an end-point reached after many indiscretions, and is not caused by a single isolated factor. However, we also know that fats (triglycerides) are responsible for body balance of the metabolic processes working with the nervous system. High triglyceride count slows the utilization of minerals causing excess mineral build-up and depression of the nervous system communication capabilities, a state certainly capable of confusing the entire system’s operational accuracy.
In September 1976, the Washington Post reported on the dangers of increased fat intake and especially of cooked fat, as shown by the research of an Australian scientist, E. Bruce K. Armstrong of Perth Medical Centre. It was reported that women eating diets rich in fat and especially in animal fats apparently showed an increased risk of developing womb cancer, often localized in the lining of the uterus. This was of great interest in the U.S. since the incidence of this kind of cancer among women was shown in 1975 to be the highest among 23 countries. Our daily fat consumption at that time was fourth, and, as students well know, most of this fat was cooked fat.
Armstrong also cited studies that showed a close correlation among endometrial cancer and breast cancer and colon cancer, both of these last cancers being suspected of having a cause-effect relationship with fat consumption. Armstrong cited studies dating back to 1958 linking obesity to endometrial cancer, but emphasized a 1973 report which suggested that dietary fat displays larger role than sugars and starch in causing this disease.
In a 1975 survey of 23 countries, it was shown that the per person daily consumption of fat was listed at about 150 grams in the U.S., compared with about 40 grams in Japan and Nigeria. The rate of endometrial cancer in women was 34 per 100,000 in the U.S. and only about 5 per 100,000 in these two countries. Certainly these studies seem to support the conclusion that excess fat consumption, and especially cooked fat, may well be one of the causative factors which, added to multitudinous other physiolgical insults, can lead to the biological evolution which terminates in cancer.
A number of witnesses before the Senate Select Committee on Human Nutrition and Needs have testified to the epidemiological evidence correlating dietary imbalances to increased cancer incidence and most, if not all, have pointed an accusatory finger at excess fat which is heated fat. We have also observed in this lesson that heating food disturbs and, in some cases, destroys minerals, vitamins and enzymes, creating imbalances not only in the food but in the person who eats that food.
Dr. Gio B. Gori, deputy director of the National Institute of Health’s Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention, told the Committee, “The role of nutrition in human disease is obvious, and no other field of research seems to hold better promise for the prevention and control of cancer and other illness, and for securing and maintaining human health.” As Life Scientists, surely we can say, “It’s about time!”
Certainly we cannot long have a viable nation when its children and adults eat a diet well laced with cooked carcinogenic free-floating fatty acids. Dr. Gori said that there is a need to reduce the intake of foods rich in fats and specifically named meats and milk. Few people eat uncooked meat and most drink liberally of pasteurized milk (heated) which has a relatively high cooked fat content.
A report of the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based research group, states that “those with an affluent diet consume large amounts of animal proteins and fats in the form of meats and dairy products...and increasingly, they choose commercially manufactured foods over fresh, unprocessed products.” It is well known that many of the commercially manufactured products are subjected to high temperatures destroying the normal fat content and rendering it less digestible. It is interesting to know that the fat-heavy American lifestyle is rapidly replacing the former heavy grain-potato-fruit-oriented diets of the countries throughout the world. In our earlier trips to Europe we became familiar with the small family-oriented markets with their beautiful displays of fruits and vegetables brought in early in the morning from the surrounding nearby farms and orchards. On more recent trips both to Europe and “down under” we have noticed fewer and fewer of these markets. They have been supplanted by supermarkets, a la U.S. style. These brightly lighted and beautifully appointed showplaces display a greatly augmented array of meats and the familiar over-processed devitalized foods so common in the American dietary. As our dietary practices expand so do the world’s ills. Life Scientists should remember that fats are the most difficult of foods for the body to digest and they become even more dangerous when heated. Those persons who eat excessively of fats and especially of cooked fats, as in barbecueing and deep frying, place themselves in a hazardous position exposing themselves, as they do, to certain known carcinogens. We should eat as little fat as possible remembering that fat contains twice the food value be weight of all other types of food and, additionally, makes one vulnerable specifically to cancers of the uterus, breasts and prostate gland—in males.
The National Academy of Sciences has also noted that, in those countries where consumption is high of such foods as smoked sausages and fish, ham, bacon, frankfurters and bologna to name a few, that cancers of the digestive tract are also common. All of these products (we cannot call them food) are high in fat content and all are eaten after being subjected to heat. The presence of certain additives in most if not all of these same foods, such as nitrates and nitrites, with the subsequent formation of nitrosamines and ploycyclic hydrocarbons, only adds to the health hazard of the fat.
And finally: we need so little fat! Just enough to pad and protect us. When and if we require additional fat, our amazing bodies can synthesize it from carbohydrates and proteins. Nature puts very little fat in man’s perfect food, fruits, and that should certainly tell us something!
Carbohydrates are no exception. Cooking renders all starches indigestible. It was long believed and still is by most people, that cooking renders starches more digestible. The ability to digest starch thoroughly depends on the general digestive health of the individual. One person will experience no difficulty in digesting starch, cooked or uncooked, while another, with less digestive power, will be able perhaps to digest cooked starch but will suffer from gas if he eats raw starch, due to fermentation of a residue of undigested starch.
Some scientists have maintained that cooking changes starch to dextrin and, since dextrin is easier to digest than the more complex molecules of starch, this was the rationale behind the assumption that cooking would render starch more digestible. True, starch will be converted and if it is maintained for a sufficiently long time. In ordinary cooking, only a very small percentage is so changed. Additionally, when we attempt to dextrinize food starch prior to eating, we interfere with the salivary amylase which normally acts in the resolution of starch. If starch foods are boiled and become saturated with water, the enzyme ptyalin, the active enzyme in saliva, will be powerless to affect any change from the poly to the disaccharide formulation, certainly a circumstance that will almost ensure fermentation along the alimentary canal, with the formation of such products as carbon dioxide gas, various alcohols and acetic acid (vinegar).
Eating cooked food causes persons not to masticate their food thoroughly. It is moist, giving the impression that it should be swallowed. The imperfect and short mastication time interferes with the digestive process along the entire alimentary canal due to the fact that the nerve communication channels are not kept open long enough to permit the inner stage to be pre-set in the three digestive departments in a correct arrangement before the arrival of the food requiring digestion.
On the other hand, the thorough chewing of food, and especially of starch food, gives sufficient time for message transmission and for adequate secretion of both enzymes and juices prior to the time of arrival of the food, resulting therefore in a more thorough resolution of the starch into primary molecules.
As a sidelight of interest here we might note that raw cabbage digests in two hours whereas it requires four hours if cooked. Most persons can eat raw cabbage, but few can eat cooked cabbage without experiencing distressing symptoms. We can note also an unnecessary energy drain on the system due to the extended time required for thorough digestion. If we desire health, we have to avoid such unnecessary energy loss.
Toasting and baking “to a nice brown color” forms charcoal (carbon) as well as other harmful products contained in the baking foods. Such products have been shown to have less food value overall than the soggy inside portions which have not been subjected to the high temperatures required to produce that nice brown color.
Phosphorus acts as a carrier to transport digested carbohydrates to the liver for conversion to glycogen which then can be stored both in the liver and in the muscle tissues for use in emergency situations. Adjustment of a proper intestinal pH to a rather strong alkaline balance is necessary for thorough and a more complete digestion of complex carbohydrates such as starch. The change in composition of the molecules after heating necessitates a different pH in a number of cases, not always possible for the organism to provide. Very high temperatures are required to change most sugars but the sugar in milk is changed in the process of pasteurization and is rendered less valuable, even though the heating temperature is relatively low.
Cooked starches are difficult to digest primarily due to the hydrolysis of the starch in the cooking process. The hydrolyzed starch is subject to easy fermentation giving rise to the formation of acetic acid (vinegar) and the other byproducts already mentioned. One of the harmful effects of acetic acid is that it has a tendency to leach out the body’s phosphorus and to stimulate the thyroid gland. As we have previously observed in Lesson 39, there is an intimate relationship among all the members of the endocrine system so it is not a surprise to learn that, as the phosphorus becomes depleted, the performance of the adrenal glands becomes less perfect since phosphorus is one of the active components of the adrenaline hormonal secretion. Thus, we have dysfunction of both the thyroid and the adrenals and, no doubt, of other hormone-secreting glands.
It is little wonder that those persons who depend for a large measure of their substance on cooked starches so often experience headaches, throat congestion, mucous expectoration, pains in the heart, sour eructations, body odor, frequent chill and rapid pulse. It can most surely be said that such a diet, if long continued, will lead inevitably to hyperthyroidism and hyperadrenalism.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that “a pair of substantial mammary glands has the advantage over the two hemispheres of the most learned professor’s brain, in the art of compounding a nutritious fluid for infants.” Nature has provided an infant with an intestinal tract which will mature as the infant grows. This maturing process is a slow evolutionary process and, during the growing and maturing years, the diet must be fitted to the equipment provided and not the other way around!
At no time in the progress from birth to childhood to puberty to adulthood are the digestive organs designed to handle cooked food. The stools of an infant fed on the milk provided by a healthy mother will be soft, nonirritating, easily defecated and sweet-smelling. The stools of the young child, of the young lad or young woman and of the adult will remain always in the same, much-to-be-desired state indicating healthfulness when the constant fare is uncooked, well chosen, properly combined and eaten according to need. Why? Because we have the equipment within us to properly process food designed for the human body and also the equipment to dispose of normal metabolic wastes. It is only when we depart from the ways of body correctness that we begin to suffer from the effects of our departure and in a precise relationship to such departure. Anything cooked has changed in it’s chemical composition, its nutritive values have been deranged and the products of such change and derangement brought about by heat or by any other abnormal method, practice or substance, are always pathogenic. Cooking of the food supplied to an infant begins the wholesale destruction of health from the very first moment that food is eaten.
A high-protein diet plus overeating plus bad food combinations plus cooked foods plus animal fats, all cooked, of course, will always result in poor digestion, absorption, transportation, and assimilation. Such practices will result in excessive mucus, thickening of blood vessels and of the fluids, derangement of the lymph and blood fluids as, for example, an increase in viscosity (thickening), formation of plaques in the blood and concretions (accumulations of precipitated overload, as of uric acid, for example anywhere they may be dumped to get them out of the way, as in a joint); plus a host of other annoying and dangerous symptoms of systemic poisoning. All such derangements tend to alter homeostasis within the body.
We are not by design fat eaters, as we have said. The human body will meet most of its fat needs by synthesizing its own body fat from the sugars supplied by fruits. Remember that fat is composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Fruits contain exactly these same elements only in a different arrangement. The human body has the ability by means of catalytic enzymatic action to disorganize the sugars of fruits and then rearrange the released elements into the kind of fat which will suit its own specific needs at the moment. Fat taken as either an oil or as a solid fat presents problems at all levels and especially when it has been cooked. This kind of fat really just passes on through the stomach because that organ just can’t process it. Fat is even very difficult for the intestines to manage, it is difficult to absorb and once it arrives at the liver, fat becomes a major concern to that organ, too.
Consider, in contrast, the sugar trip: almost no digestion required in either the mouth or stomach (it is all pre-digested and in a travelling molecular formulation), it is quickly absorbed because the molecular structure just fits into the membranous passage mechanisms and it passes easily through the cells lining the alimentary canal, it is greeted cheerfully by the liver which rejoices in a 90 percent gain of energy after fully discounting the energy loss of digestion, appropriation and assimilation and the transportation, and so proceeds happily to convert the sugars into glycogen for storage or to make the glucose available for the maintenance of body temperature and energy; and, if required, to restructure the primary elements into body fat. Thus, uncooked sugar-rich fruits are welcomed by the body while fats, cooked and uncooked, yield few, if any benefits to the organic domain.
There are two main considerations here, namely: the effect of heat upon the enamel of the teeth and secondly, the effect of poor mastication on the mouth and facial muscles.
The enamel on the teeth is a species or organic crystallization. It is by far the hardest substance in the human body, made by a precise magnesium-calcium arrangement. However, this crystallized material can be rudely cracked with hairline invisible fractures in the process of masticating very hot foods. These hairline fractures in time develop into dental caries. This may well be a significant cause of the high incidence of dental caries in this country, in excess of 98 percent even in children and almost 100 percent among adults, few of whom retain their full quota of teeth after the age of fifty, with many wearing dentures. Diminished health inevitably follows after the loss of teeth.
As to the second effect evidenced by poor mastication: cooking food encourages a person to masticate his food too little, to swallow it too fast, and to eat too much, all effects which have serious implications with regard not only to the health of the digestive apparatus because it is not well exercised and/or properly cleansed, but also to the general health of the entire body due to improper nourishment; but also to the health of the teeth.
When raw foods are eaten and eaten in their natural state (that is, unchopped, unshredded, and so on), the teeth are required to perform their full function and, as they regularly and dutifully perform, they are strengthened, just like any other exercised tissue, organ, or part. If they are not used properly, the teeth will weaken just as any other unexercised tissue, organ or part will weaken. Graham (Sylvester Graham, “Lectures”) makes note, of the fact that if we become accustomed to masticating food only on one side of the mouth and do not make use of the teeth on the other side, within a very few years the unused teeth will begin to decay and the gums will become tender and, in time, a certain number of the unused teeth will be lost, while the teeth on the other side where chewing is performed consistently will remain sound.
Uncooked food, in contrast to cooked food, requires thorough mastication, especially when it is eaten without drinking any liquid during the mastication process (as it should be). Eating raw foods helps to cleanse the teeth and will tend to maintain a high level of dental health; but, not only sound dental health, but also the health of the mouth itself because full mastication of raw foods requires vigorous muscular exercise of all parts of the mouth including the tongue and all lymphatic tissues.
Whatever disturbs the function and causes a general irritability of the nervous system will lessen not only the health of the teeth, but also the health of the entire mouth. Insufficient mastication over the years gradually brings about a diminution of secretive ability. Saliva production falters as does enzyme production with a resulting lessening in the ability to process carbohydrates in the initial first stages so important to their complete digestion. If food is cooked to the soft, pulpy stage and is then consumed hot, tartar begins to build up on the teeth. The gums soon become soft, losing their tonus. The mucous membranes and muscle tissues of the mouth remain poorly exercised because all cooked food is so easily swallowed and people are deceived into thinking it is ready for the stomach, if they think about it at all. This imperfect mastication and insalivation obviously creates chemical and physical problems for the stomach and, indeed for the entire alimentary canal.
Muscles that are not well and consistently exercised become flaccid, limp and, if not exercised at all for a sufficiently long period of time, even atrophied. Many people today have wrinkled faces largely because they eat of so much devitalized cooked foods which they swallow so easily after insufficient mastication. Thus, they rarely, if ever, sufficiently exercise these facial muscles. About the only exercise they get is when the individual speaks and even then, the exercise is very limited and for too short a time to be of much benefit.
But, to the contrary, watch a true Life Scientist at his meals. He chews and chews and chews while all the while the saliva pours out, the teeth are cleansed and the gums, membranes and facial muscles participate fully and, in the doing, retain their elasticity and tonus, remaining forever young and wrinkle-free. Life Scientists do not require creams or lotions for facial plasticity nor face lifts to give the illusion of youth.
Eating cooked emasculated foods leads to overeating simply because a large quantity must be consumed to satisfy the system’s overall nutritive requirements even though this is rarely accomplished in all particulars. Consequently most people who eat of cooked food are actually burdening their stomachs and other organs with three or four times more food than would be required to supply the same amount, if not more, of nutritive factors if uncooked foods were eaten and these in a more appropriable form. It is our belief that this one fact alone serves to drain the vital force reserves as the years go by because the mere quantity of food consumed requires energy and reserves for a time-consuming and more difficult digestion to take place, energy which might better be conserved and held in reserve for an extension of the life span. It is little wonder that drained energy reserves cause man’s vitality to decline noticeably at forty and that only a handful of those persons who began life are still around at 70 when they should be perfectly capable of living heartily and in health probably far in excess of 100 years.
As Life Scientists we need to be aware of the fact that the usual food intake is not an index to the normal needs of the body, but rather to “the morbid cravings of a perverted appetite. The quantity of food consumed...is by no means a safe indication of the physiological requirements of the body...Civilized man lives to eat instead of eating to live...until after years of overindulgence, they find themselves in the grip of chronic disease.
Almost all students of this subject are in agreement that man has always had a tendency to overeat and that this tendency is, beyond all question, decidedly the greatest source of disease and suffering and untimely death to man. Even if we eat wholly of uncooked natural food, we must guard continually against this tendency. Countless numbers of experiments have proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that eating a minimum of food to satisfy systemic needs is a life-extender while eating in excess is a life and health destroyer.
Even if we eat wholly of uncooked natural food, we must guard continually against this common tendency, but obviously the danger is vastly augmented when an individual overeats on damaged food, food that has been cooked, its vital elements altered. Then, we break down, wear out and prematurely age all our organs and systems; our muscles stiffen, our bones become brittle and we begin to look curved, bent, wrinkled and old.
Well, we tell our clients, “It’s your choice!” We know that a high degree of heat applied to food for any length of time will greatly reduce its nutritive value. There is no argument here. We must decide if we will settle for less when optimum is best.
Not all of the value of food will be destroyed especially at lower temperatures. If cooking is done in a restrained fashion at lower temperatures and for only a brief period of time, so that the organic salts and other nutrients are not totally destroyed, there will then be no great harm in eating some cooked foods occasionally, but let us be fully aware of the fact that when we do eat cooked food we will not be eating ideally nor will be providing optimum nutrient values to ourselves. We must remember that the quality of our body depends on the quality of the food we eat and upon how we eat it and, very importantly, on our restraint in eating.
Almost all artificial food preparation methods create a situation wherein we have a superabundance of one constituent or another, or else some are absent altogether or are present in too insufficient a quantity. The living organism always abhors an imbalance and reacts adversely to it, most often in the form of some diseased state in an effort to protect the integrity (the life) of the individual. Only uncooked plants, perfectly fresh and unspoiled, can provide the correct balance of known and unknown food factors to maintain perfect health. All wisdom dictates that eating any amount of cooked food represents a fool’s paradise.
I would like to have you explain why it is that so many persons can appear to be so healthy in spite of the fact that they eat cooked food which, according to you, cannot long sustain life?
That is a good question. You see, we all come into the world with an inheritance. It is our legacy from the past. Some of us have huge vitality reserves in our health bank account, others, less fortunate, have a lesser amount; still others possess a bare minimum to sustain life for only a short time. The greater vitality we have, the more value we will receive from the food we eat because our nerve energy allows for greater digestive efficiency. If our vitality has been reduced for one reason or another, we will not be able to digest, absorb, transport or assimilate nutrients with the same degree of efficiency. In time, our vital force will dwindle away and we will become more and more vulnerable; that is, subject to disease because we will become malnourished and enervated. Toxicosis becomes our companion, instead of radiant health.
If we have always eaten mostly of cooked foods, can we change immediately over to eating raw foods entirely?
I must give a qualified answer here simply because there are many variables to consider. Let me state firmly and without equivocation, however, that nothing but good can come by making a radical and complete changeover from eating all cooked food to eating all uncooked food provided it is food to which your body is adapted by structure and by function, namely, fruits, vegetables, a few nuts and edible seeds. However, not all persons can do so without being subject to certain psychological hang-ups and, if their bodies are quite toxic, to “withdrawal” symptoms of one kind or another. Age is certainly a determining factor. In our practice we find very few elderly people who can make abrupt changes without worrying unduly, even to the extent that their health is adversely affected by their emotional state. In such cases, it is our belief that until the mind has been reeducated, it is better to make changes more slowly. When persons are willing to fast, having come to an understanding of the benefits to be accrued thereby, then, of course, they should fast and following the cleansing of their body, they should immediately become “raw-fooders.” But, let us emphasize that, all other things being precisely equal, nothing but good can come from introducing more uncooked food into the dietary regimen, even though the initial steps be small and hesitant. Keep at it. Your entire body will say, “Thank you!”
Dr. McCarter, what is life?
I wish I knew. I’d probably win the Nobel Prize! But, seriously, no one knows this secret. It is locked up within all living creatures. We know certain things that happen within a living cell but we are just beginning to take our first hesitant steps across the membranous barriers via electron microscopes and radioactive isotopes but even our most liberal scientists admit that the inner world of life is still a vast unknown of maybe’s and perhapses. Everything that is alive has the power to receive impressions and to react there—from or thereto; it also has the power to reproduce itself and, in the doing, to make certain that LIFE continues. Certainly we know when something is dead, without life; but, to spell out exactly what this phenomenon of life is and what makes it so, is beyond man’s knowledge and probably will always remain the Creator’s secret.
I always thought the acids in the stomach would destroy all life. Do not these acids destroy the “life” in food?
Let me ask another question in answer to yours. The cells in the stomach, are they not alive? Of course, the answer is “Yes!” But, they are not destroyed by the gastric secretions. Food is not alive in this same sense. Uncooked food, however, should be capable of producing life if it is returned to the soil. For example, we can take a portion of carrot, place it in the soil, water it and see to it that it receives all the requisites of its organic existence and it will send forth leaves and grow. Raw food contains the food for life: enzymes, minerals, vitamins. In other words, uncooked foods contain the essence of life and it is this that is imparted to us when we eat of them and it is this essence that will sustain our own life in health.
If we eat always of raw foods from the day of our birth, will we live forever?
Probably not. Lewis Carrell, a Nobel prize winner, a renowned physician and surgeon, proved that when cells are correctly fed and kept in a friendly environment with proper drainage of wastes, they could continue living and reproducing themselves indefinitely. Perhaps if man lived ideally and always under ideal conditions, he might also live indefinitely in health but it is doubtful that we will ever be able to live under such ideal circumstances. There are too many variables to guarantee life. We are all subject to physiological assaults of one kind or another and each one leaves an imprint, each one subtracts some measured amount from our vital force bank account.
You talk about our vital force bank account? Can’t we use some of that vital force and then put it back by proper eating and living?
Probably not. Once used, it cannot be replenished by changing our ways and assuming a more correct lifestyle. However, this does not mean that all is lost. By no means. We will no doubt have a diminished supply of vital force, but we can, by constructive application of principle and devotion to the sacredness of life, learn to use our vital force more efficiently. Most people dissipate fully two-thirds of their quota of vital force by the time they reach the age of thirty but if they learn how to live correctly and to eat foods adapted to the human structure and how to eat that food and to see to it that they eat a minimum (adequate) amount of food, then they will extend their life span far beyond those who continue the common pattern of living and eating.
You talk about using our vitality more efficiently. What do you mean by this and how can we do it?
Let me give you an example. Foods have differing orders of digestibility and it is interesting to know that those foods that are most easily and thoroughly digested are the foods that are best for our health. When we eat a meal which contains meat, potatoes, bread, butter, a vegetable or two and then top it off with a rich dessert, such a meal and its remains after the digestive process has been concluded may remain in the alimentary canal for several days, especially if more food is eaten during the day. This is the common practice and it is exceedingly wasteful of energy because the digestive organs and glands are required to work at full capacity for hours on end trying to cope with such a heterogeneous mixture of food. But, to the contrary, when we eat mono meals, say of fruit, the food will be in and out of the stomach in less than an hour in most cases, and the entire trip from mouth to anus will be travelled and the residual wastes disposed of in less than 24 hours, often in half that time. Can you imagine the savings of energy to say nothing of the increased efficiency of digestion obtained by eating only those foods which are best adapted to our digestive equipment? We conserve our energy in order to live long and in health.
I had always been told that raw foods contained molds and germs and that this is why it is better to eat of cooked food. Can you address this issue?
Gladly. Germs and molds are made up of protein. They will be digested in the stomach just like any other protein. The only time they will be able to gain a foothold in the digestive canal is when it becomes highly toxic. Then, they find a smorgasborg of food laid out before them and ideal conditions under-which to live. They will, of course, become fat and healthy, reproduce rapidly adding their own toxins to those already present, placing their host’s well-being in jeopardy. But, in the normal (and we mean really normal as in “healthy” person, they will simply be digested. Incidentally, the only way to rid the intestinal tract of unwelcome pests is to remove their food supply since all living things require food. The best way to do this is to fast using only distilled water to satisfy thirst.
Should a person never eat any cooked food?
If a person’s stomach is highly inflamed due to past indiscretions and perhaps filled with mucus and catarrh, then he may have to continue eating cooked food but his meals should be simple ones, if he eats at all. It would be far better to have such a person, fast until his alimentary tract has been both cleansed and health and then introduce raw foods one at a time, reeducating his digestive tract and his mind to accept this new way of eating. With older persons who are afraid to fast, we lay out menus to follow which are, at first, made up of all cooked food properly combined and then proceed to introduce more and more uncooked food. We have great success using this approach. They especially seem to adapt well to lightly stewed or baked fruit for their first meal as, for example, a baked apple. After a week or two, we then show them how to make a date sauce made in a blender using raw dates and distilled water which they then pour over their baked apple. They usually accept this combination well, both mentally and physiologically and by their acceptance and enjoyment of this one dish become more receptive to our next suggestion! As they watch their health improve, they often become completely converted and eat nothing but uncooked food.
Multitudes are discovering that their diet is wrong, and many of them are turning to the medical doctor for dietetic advice. Dr. Willian says that this course is absurd. He observes:
“The laity took to the doctor, and the doctor is usually a dietary dunce. He knows not how to feed himself, or else he does not practice what he knows. He eats of all the far-fetched, overseasoned and otherwise dietetically abominable dishes, sheds his teeth, hair, and healthy color quite as young as any of his patients, and is a confirmed and incurable dyspeptic at 35. His medical societies and his clubs all spread a “collation” after each meeting—salads, cake, cheese that would make a tanyard smell like a rose garden, sandwiches with sliced sow in the middle, to be topped off with claret punch, capsicum-flavored gingerale and Cuban-Connecticut cigars.”
Since it has required time for the body to adjust itself to the use of cooked, mixed and seasoned foods, it will require time for it to recover from this habit, and readjust itself to the use of uncooked, unmixed, unseasoned foods. In fact, it is practically as difficult for the body to repudiate a destructive habit, as for it to resign itself to such habit, as wide experience shows. But there is this difference: since the body suffers a gradual decrease of vitality as it adjusts itself to a destructive habit, so it experiences a gradual gain in vitality as it discontinues a destructive habit.
Evidence to prove the truth of this last statement may be had by him who will diligently test the proposition. I daily receive letters from patients, who under my advice are adopting the uncooked, unmixed, unseasoned diet, in which letters the patients happily declare that they are having a delightful improvement in their health, since adopting this mode of eating.
Bread, butter, milk, meat, eggs, potatoes, coffee, tea are the staple articles of diet of this country. Medical schools raise no voice in protest against this menu. It is the diet of medical doctors and medical hospitals, and the medical profession teaches that this is the standard diet, and must be eaten in ample quantities by all who crave vim, vigor and vitality.
Medical institutions forget that the camel, elephant, rhinoceros and hippopotamus never eat these things. They forget that the dinosaur, megalosaur, magatherium, and mammoth, the mightiest beasts that ever roamed the earth, were herbivorous and frugivorous animals. They forget that great athletes of ancient Greece and Rome were trained on a diet of vegetable and fruit; that Milo the Greek, perhaps the strongest man of history, was a disciple of Pythagoras, and a strict vegetarian. They forget that the giant gorilla feeds on fruits, berries, and herbs, and yet is so powerful that no animal of the wild dares attack him.
Clements Willian further observes:
“Where do we find such muscles of steel and rubber as are those of the agile antelope and the equally agile deer, that run with the wind for a day and a night without tiring? Or where the equally keen sense of sight, hearing, and smell; where such sleepless sharpness of instinct, such tenacity of life, such graceful and perfect physical development? The huge elephant, with the strength of a steam engine, and an intellect that lacks only the faculty of speech to make him a talking philosopher, lives half a dozen centuries, practically on grass. This is not at all strange, when we stop to consider that, botanically, all grains are grasses.”
George Hackenschmidt, the greatest wrestler known as the Russian lion, weighing 220 pounds of bone and muscle, toured the world, throwing the huge Greek and Turk wrestlers without difficulty. Of his diet Dr. Bernard remarks:
“His breakfast consists of fresh lettuce and five or six Brazil nuts. The Brazil nuts and some sweet fruits are the only really heavy foods that he eats. All his other meals are composed of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, eaten raw.”
Even here the law of diet is violated, for we find man mixing lettuce with nuts. If we desire perfection in diet, we must strictly adhere to the one-thing-at-a-time, rule.
We hear our students asking: Since you condemn all the menus published by the various authorities, what sort of a diet would you prescribe?
That question forces us to declare ourselves. But our prescription is so simple that a child cannot go astray in following our directions. It also offers a complete solution of the food problem, and still is so elementary that few will consider it worthy of attention.
Go and wash in Jordan and be clean, has never appealed to humanity. It is too simple. Men are looking for signs and magic. The plain and simple are of no value, for these one can understand without education. They forget that the object of education is to lead men away from the truth into error, confusion and complexity, and there leave them lost and bewildered.
Our diet prescription is this; Eat whatever you want to eat, whenever you want to eat, but observing these three fundamental rules:
Think of the time, toil, worry, and wealth that would be saved, if people would be persuaded to return to his ideal eating method of primitive man, whose height was like the height of the cedars, who was as strong as the oaks...and who lived to see the sun rise and set” for nearly a thousand years, ere his sturdy frame sank back again into the dust whence it came.
With one sweep of the pen we solve the perplexing diet problem, and if our advice were heeded, human health would improve so amazingly in a generation as to be one of the wonders of the world.
From Lesson 21 by Dr. G. R. Clements in Orthopathy The New Science of Health and Natural Healing.
Sherman emphasizes the “protein-sparing” action of carbohydrates, and also refers to the synthetic formation of protein within the body by the formation of simpler amino acids, as analine, by union of glucose with ammonia, a protein metabolic end-product. From the simpler amino acids, he claims that more complex amino acids can be synthesized. An abundance of glucose will therefore aid such protein synthesis within the body, whereas, on the other hand, when there is a lack of carbohydrates and fats, protein molecules will be broken down to yield carbon compounds.
Kayser compared the efficiency of carbohydrates and fats as sparers of protein by observing the effect upon the nitrogen balance of replacing the carbohydrates of the food by such an amount of fat as would furnish the same number of calories. On substituting fat for carbohydrate there was a marked increase of protein catabolism, with corresponding loss of nitrogen from the body; this loss of nitrogen, accompanied by a negative nitrogen equilibrium, increased each day that the fat diet was continued, but stopped as soon as carbohydrates were added to the diet, when the body almost at once began replacing the protein it had lost, although the nitrogen and calories of the food were practically unchanged.
Taliquint, working in Rubner’s laboratory, also found that if one-third of the total value of carbohydrate in the diet was replaced by fat, there was an unfavorable influence on the nitrogen balance, causing a small fall of body protein. Sherman, in his “Chemistry of Food and Nutrition,” says: “It appears that the carbohydrate of the food cannot be entirely replaced by an equal number of calories in the form of fat without an unfavorable effect upon the nitrogen balance.”
The Unfired Diet is truly attractive,
Is moral, aesthetic, delicious and good,
And further than this, it is more than preventive -
It cures the disease that come from cooked food.
Cheer up sisters and brothers and rejoice with me for I have found the key that unlocks the door to physical, mental, moral and spiritual salvation and I will tell you how to use that key if you will but listen.
Those who are seeking for absolute health, longevity and refinement should understand that THE BODY, MIND, SPIRIT AND SOUL ARE ABSOLUTELY INTERDEPENDENT.
Hence there is no sane mind, no spiritual perfection and no salvation of the soul without a healthy body. A healthy body can only be built and maintained with Nature’s perfect (unperverted and unfired) food, pure water, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, restful sleep and a serene mental attitude savored with lofty aspirations.
It has been the earnest aim of the author to reintroduce a natural health-sustaining, disease-resisting, disease-eliminating, brawn- and brain-building diet consistent with the present state of human evolution, civilization and refinement. A diet which shall promote further evolutionary progress on all the planes of the body, mind, spirit and soul. A diet physiologically and financially economical, artistic, inviting and delicious. All logical minds will agree with me that this can only be accomplished by feeding on natural food which contains all the elements for building a healthy body and which promotes all the natural functions of life.
Here it must be understood that cooked food is not natural because its chemical constitution is changed (perverted) by the destructive power of the applied high temperature. The sun energy (galama) is dissipated. The volatile essences are exploded. The tonic elements (organic salts) have been freed, mineralized and neutralized. The proteins are coagulated. The starches are rendered so soluble that they enter the circulation undigested. The atomic arrangement of sugar is rendered incongenial. And the oils are fused. Therefore cooked food readily ferments and decays in the alimentary canal; besides, its consistency does not give the proper exercise to the organs of cominution, digestion and absorption; and it has a tendency to puzzle, confuse and pervert the alimentary functions, thus laying the foundation for disease.
Natural unfired food promotes all natural functions of the body. With natural foods, only, can be laid the foundation for the maintenance of a truly healthful and beautiful body, spirit and soul. By means of unfired food can Nature keep the body clean, heal all diseases of body and mind and eradicate immoral tendencies. It is unnatural food which interferes with the natural metabolism of the system, which hinders and perverts natural growth, which retards recuperation and reconstruction, which results in amemia and atonicity, which promotes disorderly proliferation, which causes abnormal craving and inebrety and which results in nearly all the physical, mental and moral diseases and pains which ignorant, misinformed, deluded, ensnared and perverted humanity is heir to. Every attempt to improve on natural food by artificial means results in an absolute failure—it cannot be done.
Every unnatural thing or action in the realm of nature has inherent the cause of its own destruction. Hence for every infection and malfaction nature has an acute reaction (crisis) which results in salvation for those who obey her laws; but interfere with that acute reaction by means of medicine or surgery, and it may disappear only to reappear in a later chronic or fatal reaction. “Interference perpetuates both good and evil” hence—“Resist not evil.”
There is a “Beneficent Design” in unperverted Nature, but also a malefic design in perverted and artificial Nature....Natural food, fresh water and live air in connection with plenty of sunshine, exercise and rest, is the only reliable “Materia Panacea.”
Excerpts from the “Biography” given to introduce the subject of the influence of eating raw foods on health in NATURE—THE HEALER written by John T. Richter and Vera M. Richter. The writer in this excerpt is Mr. Richter. Date, October, 1936.
After having lived for fifteen years largely on a cooked food diet (no meat, of course), I noticed that there was something physically wrong with me. My kidneys were not functioning properly. I seemed to lack recuperative energy. Although I did not feel ill enough to be in bed, I was constantly harassed by a “gone” feeling, lack of power to rebuild myself—in short, general lack of energy. Especially was this forced upon my attention once when I was called out into the country on a consultation. I was practicing independently at that time in Minneapolis. It was a long, hard trip—thirty miles over the prairies, and back to the city only at four in the morning. It was too late to have any real rest in bed, as I thought; therefore I simply waited around until it was time to have breakfast. Then I went to the office to get ready for business. The patients were already coming in, but I was so tired that every now and then I would find myself dozing over my work. I would shake myself, take a swallow of cold water, and rub cold water over my face. Yet in a moment or two I would again be nodding. I was nonplussed, not to say alarmed, at this lack of reserve energy. I became dizzy, too, at intervals. What was there in my system of living that was wrong? Had I not at least been eating correctly? That set me thinking.
It was not, however, until later that I became convinced it was really the food I had been eating which was at fault. This is how it came about: in a naturopathic magazine which had come to my hands, there was an article describing how a certain Dr. Lust had been invited by Dr. George Drews of Chicago to partake of an uncooked food dinner. It told of the many different varieties of food that, were served, of how delicious they were. It said something, too, about raw pie. I thought, “How curious, unbaked pie!” I remembered how mother used to make hers. But this was raw pie. The whole idea took me by surprise. How can people live on uncooked food, I wondered, just as people today ask me the very same question.
I kept thinking about it, however, and finally decided to give this new diet a trial, to see if it would bring me that unlimited reserve of energy which I so ardently desired, as well as freedom from the more obvious diseases. Dr. Drew came to Minneapolis to teach me, as well as the class I had organized for him. Gradually, my health began improving, as the result of faithful adherence, one hundred percent, to the prescribed diet. In six months such a change had been wrought in my body that it seemed logical to use the new system in my practice in order to observe how it would affect others. After a period of nine months, I realized that the nature of my bloodstream had been completely transformed. My blood, under tests, had previously shown too much acid present. Now it had become slightly alkaline, which is the normal state for one who is in first-rate health. We now know that cooked-food vegetarians, as well as meat eaters, alike suffer from too much acid in the bloodstream as a rule. Nine months had been required in my case, but many others require only from three to six months. You can well suppose that I was very happy when I found my blood was sufficiently alkaline. What a mental relief and assurance to know that I was getting better at last! As to weight, when I first began, my 145 pounds dwindled away to 123. Many of my friends told me, as yours will undoubtedly tell you, that I had better quit before starving to death. Yet, realizing that my old, worn-out body cells had to be utterly eliminated before new cellular tissue could take their place, I remained faithful to my task. All the while, of course, even though seeming to be thin, I felt much better than I ever had before, and really did not care whether the scale index went up or down. Soon I redeemed that loss—redeemed every pound and a little additional.
For many years now I have lived according to this system. I was in the late forties when I started. Today, at 84 (I was born in 1864), I am active and without disabilities of any kind. No aches or pains have plagued me for many years.
44.3. “Appetite” Is Not Hunger
44.4. Development Of The Habit Of Overeating
44.5. Overeating Undermines Health
44.7. How Overeating Vitiates The Body
44.8. If You Want To Eat More, Eat Less
44.9. Light Eaters Vs. Heavy Eaters
44.11. Building Health And Strength
44.12. Willpower Is Supported By Knowledge
44.15. Fasting Fanaticism Vs. Rational Fasting
44.19. A Rational System Of Weight Control
44.20. Heroic Methods For Compulsive Eaters
Article #1: It’s All In the State of Mind By Walter D. Wintle
Article #2: How To Make Yourself Over by Self-Programming
Article #3: Say Goodbye To Compulsive Eating by Mehl McDowell, M.D.
Eating seems to be the favorite indulgence of humans—it has no rivals. It is part of, or associated with, or on the periphery of, almost everything he or she does. It is the accompaniment, passtime, recreation, entertainment, hospitality, ice-breaker, social function, reward, goal, comfort, business tool, monotony-relief, grief-assuager, pain-reliever. Humans eat when they work, they eat when they relax, they eat when they rest, they eat when they watch, they eat when they listen, they eat when they ride.
They eat, not necessarily because they are hungry, but—because it is meal-time, break-time or snack time because they are bored, restless or unhappy; because they need something to do while waiting, while watching television or movies, or while playing cards; because they can’t offend the hostess; or for no reason at all.
Intervals between eating become shorter, the habit of chain-eating abounds and we may find them tasting, chewing, snacking, eating, any time at all, from the first thing each morning till the last thing at night.
They know that their digestive equipment must serve them for their lifetimes, but they make little or no effort to economize on its use, or prolong its ability to function. They rarely give it a vacation; they even force it to work while they sleep. When it complains, they stifle it with drugs. When it breaks down, the surgeon may cut out the offending tissue—perhaps fifty or sixty percent of the stomach, ten or fifteen feet of the intestine, or maybe part or all of the colon.
The most significant cause for these conditions is the combination of sedentary habits and dietary errors (especially overeating).
Overeaters of the world (you comprise the majority)—I hope I can help you before you reach the point of no return.
“The smallest amount of food able to keep the
body in a state of high efficiency is
physiologically the most economical, and thus
best adapted for the body’s needs.”
This is the Chittenden concept, stated years ago by Russell Henry Chittenden.
“Appetite” is a habit and as such can be trained to be satisfied with small amounts of food, or to demand enormous amounts of it. The English poet, John Dryden, said, “we first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”
Many people have never emptied the stomach completely. Most people have never experienced true hunger, which is a mouth and throat sensation, and not a feeling of emptiness and weakness.
People eat—either from habit or because they feel better, or stronger, and—frequently—because the food relieves distress or pain. The food has a stimulating effect, and forces the body to get busy dealing with the newly-swallowed food supplies. It must, perforce, temporarily discontinue its efforts to clean out the debris left by previous meals—which efforts have been the source of the discomfort.
Waste material from the new food adds to the organism’s need to clean out the debris (which can be accomplished only by not eating—by fasting).
Dr. Claunch says (The Hygienic System, Volume II, p. 291), “The difference between true hunger and false craving may be determined as follows: when hungry and, comfortable, it is true hunger. When hungry and uncomfortable, it is false craving. When a sick person misses a customary meal, he gets weak before he gets hungry. When a healthy person misses a customary meal, he gets hungry before he gets weak.”
The development of the habit of overeating starts all too early. The sad truth is that children are trained to overeat. From early infancy, babies are coaxed to take frequent feedings they do not need. Older children are bribed to “clean their plates” with the promise of a sweet dessert, which further complicates the digestion of the unnecessary meal. Worst of all, they are not even allowed to refuse a meal when they are not hungry.
Even the sick are urged to eat “to keep up their strength”—in spite of the protests from the ailing organism. Young girls are taught that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. The way to a man’s health is also through his stomach.
Overeating is probably the greatest culprit in the undermining of our health. It is the primary cause of most digestive problems, and impairment of the digestion leads inevitably to the breakdown of the organism.
R.T. Trall, M.D. (Digestion and Dyspepsia, pp. 82-83) said, “It is a great mistake to regard dyspepsia as peculiarly or especially a disease of the stomach.” He said that a multitude of organs and structures are essentially cooperative in the digestive processes, and they are just as co-implicated in the derangement of these processes.
“The debility of the stomach or other digestive organs, in any case of dyspepsia, is no greater and no worse than that of all other parts of the body. Indeed, the difference is just the other way, for nutrition, being the first and last process of organic life, all other parts of the system are disproportionately debilitated when the digestion function is impaired. Dyspepsia is, therefore, but a name for universal physical deterioration....The error of regarding dyspepsia as a local disease instead of a constitutional infirmity, leads to the mischievous practice of local medication.” (Stimulants, tonics, nervines, opiates, purgatives, etc.) “These are excellent methods for curing dyspepsia by killing the patient, or to mitigate symptoms by destroying vitality.
Laboratory experiments have demonstrated repeatedly that overeating is a major cause of cancer. The following experiment has been repeated hundreds of times at various research laboratories; many times at the finest cancer research institute in the world. One hundred rats are bred to develop breast cancer by the age of one year, then separated into two groups. One group is given free access to food, the other group is given the same food in limited amounts. All rats in the first group develop cancer, but only 20% of the rats in the restricted food group develop cancer.
Conventional diets and overeating (or even overeating of the best foods) result inevitably in damage to the organism. The body is forced to make adaptations, and to gradually increase its tolerance of toxins, bringing it closer to common digestive maladies, followed by impairments of the entire organism.
The victims of the uncomfortable symptoms thus produced develop a “remedy mentality,” and are always seeking new preparations, medicines and cures (as an easy way out).
Food is used for the relief of symptoms. Ulcer patients are fed frequently during the day and sometimes at night; nervous people are fed to quiet them. “Foodaholics” (compulsive eaters) suffer from nausea when their stomachs are empty and must have more food.
Sylvester Graham used to say, “A drunkard may reach old age, a glutton never.” And Hippocrates also said, more than two thousand years ago, “Excess in drinking is almost as bad as excess in eating.”
Remember that we require less food—and can utilize less food—as we grow older; and that overweight becomes a greater threat with the passing years. Excess poundage not only increases the threat of coronary problems, diabetes, and a host of other degenerative diseases—obesity will undoubtedly shorten one’s life.
Dr. Shelton says that overeating overworks and poisons the body. Overindulgence in food works all the organs of the body to death and wrecks the whole system long before the digestive organs begin to show signs of weakening. Don’t labor under the delusion that unless food causes distress in the stomach, it produces no harm.
In the overeater, all the functions of the body are conducted more rapidly than they should be until the overwork forces them to stop. Light eaters who use no stimulants should have a heartbeat (pulse) of about sixty a minute. The average of seventy-two that is considered normal is too high, and is the average standard for over-stimulated, overfed individuals.
Cornaro’s food selection is not one that we would recommend, but the point here is not the particular food items but the quantity of food ingested that resulted in his longevity, ed.
It is obvious that reduction of total food intake will prolong the life of all the vital organs by reducing their work loads. Dr. Graham said, “It is a general rule strictly true that a correct quantity of a less wholesome ailment is better for man than an excessively small or an excessively large quantity of a more wholesome ailment. It is solely from the want of a proper regard for this important truth, that many have been unsuccessful in their attempts to live exclusively on a vegetarian diet.”
A well-known illustration of this precept is the example of Luigi Cornaro, who lived to about 100. As a young man (around forty), he became very ill, and an early death was predicted. He discontinued his gluttonous habits and experimented with various foods to find which foods caused no overt symptoms. He restricted himself to fourteen ounces of food daily. He ate bread, meat, the yolk of egg, and soup (a selection of foods which caused no symptoms). The quantity was minimal, you will agree, and so his body was able to handle it efficiently and sustain itself so well that he outlived his prognosticators.
Cornaro said that what we leave of a hearty meal does us more good than what we have eaten. He is credited with having said (loose translation), “if you want to eat more, eat less, because if you eat less, you will live longer, and if you live longer, you will eventually eat more.”
Hereward Carrington (The Natural Food of Man, p. 269) quotes Dr. Nichols: “It is my experience—and I believe of many others who work as I do—that the less I eat, the better I feel. I do not vary much in weight through months and years from 160 pounds. In solid, dry weight, my food, day by day, would not exceed ten or twelve ounces.”
The light eater has muscles of better quality, and his strength and endurance have been repeatedly shown to be greater. He thinks more quickly, more accurately and clearly, has more reserve power, and lives longer. He also escapes the aches and pains that (sooner or later) fill the lives of heavy eaters. (Dr. Shelton, Human Life, Its Philosophy and Laws, pp. 240-241.)
Temperate eaters have good digestions, and never think about their stomachs. Heavy eaters are troubled with thirst, bloat, acidity (and all kinds of disorders), and are constantly “popping pills” to obtain relief (spelled R-O-L-A-I-D-S).
Sometimes, overeating may produce an appearance of health, with no overt symptoms (as yet!), and a well-rounded appearance, but it cannot compare with the strong, enduring, true health of the properly nourished body.
Carrington maintains that overeating is the chief cause of all disease and thus shortens and destroys life. He says that the general rule to follow is: “Every individual should restrict himself to the smallest quantity that he finds, from careful investigation and experiment, will meet the wants of his system—knowing that whatever is more than this is harmful.
A high caloric intake produces a toxic body, which is unable to use energy efficiently. Waste clogs the body, impairs normal function, and demands high blood pressure for circulation. The more food that is ingested, that much more must be eliminated. If more is ingested than the body is able to utilize efficiently, a great deal of the body’s energy is wasted in converting and expelling the surplus.
Many physical workers and athletes think they must eat excessively to maintain strength and endurance—but the result is premature aging.
Professor Gilman Low demonstrated the ability of the body to build and maintain Herculean strength and great endurance on little food. He trained for two months. For the first five weeks he ate one meal a day, almost all uncooked foods. During the last three weeks he ate only four meals a week. In fifty-six days of training, he ate forty-seven meals. After the first five weeks of almost all uncooked foods, he ate eggs, whole wheat bread, cereals, fruit, nuts, milk and distilled water.
Eleven hours after the last meal, he lifted 1,000 pounds 1,006 times in 34 minutes and four seconds. Fifteen minutes later, he lifted one ton 44 times in four minutes.
The preceding details about Professor Low’s spectacular feat is given in Dr. Shelton’s Volume II, pp. 285-286, but no information is included on the date this occurred, the height and weight of Professor Low, and whether or not he was a professional weight lifter.
This was an impressive demonstration of the fact that health and strength can be maintained on minimum amounts of food, but, in general, Dr. Shelton says, “It is quite true that a man needs more protein while he is building large muscular bulk, and he perhaps needs a little more protein than the average man to maintain so much muscular structure, but it is a fallacy to think that he needs and can use as much protein as is consumed today by men who train with weights.” (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, March 1974, p. 161.)
On the other hand, it is true that there is an important relationship between activity and the amounts of food that can be efficiently processed by the organism. The combination of sedentary habits and dietary errors, especially overeating, will inevitably lead to disease. Active people, who make vigorous activity and regular exercise an integral part of their lives, are better able to process the food that they eat—to reap the benefits—and even to discard undesirable substances and excesses.
Dr. Shelton says (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, March 1974, p. 150), “Excess of food is often but another term for a lack of fresh air and exercise.”
Willpower is not the only weapon in the fight to break the habit of overeating. Knowledge is a much more potent tool.
The individual must realize and acknowledge that overeating is a habit that has him or her in its grip. If one is eating denatured foods, which do not completely nourish the body, such foods may not satisfy hunger unless eaten in large quantities. Spices, condiments and cooked foods also result in stimulation of appetite and overeating.
If the change to a good selection of foods has been made, but a great variety of foods are being used at a meal, this also leads to overstimulation of taste and appetite—and overeating.
People become overweight because they overeat. They may overeat because they are overtired, unhappy or bored. Some individuals overeat because of psychological and emotional factors—such as compulsive eating as a compensation for frustration, defeat or loss. Anxiety and a poor self-image are so uncomfortable that relief is urgent.
Food reduces the energy level in brain and thus relieves anxiety and depression.
People overeat to satisfy these emotional needs which translate into vague cravings which seem to be never satisfied.
Or they may be overeating because of poor mastication, stomach enlargement due to a history of overeating, or because their inadequate diets leave them physiologically unsatisfied. The result is food addiction.
Any type of addiction—be it addiction to sugar, salt, condiments, coffee, tea, chocolate, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, vitamin pills—or even food in general—inhibits pancreatic efficiency, and pancreatic efficiency has a relationship to both low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and high blood sugar (diabetes). William Phillpott, M.D., specialist in cerebral allergies and psychiatry, says, “Addiction is dangerous, because it suppresses pancreatic function.”
Mehl McDowell, M.D., says that irresistible cravings for food can be understood as the typical cravings of addicts, stemming from cyclic biochemical processes. The addiction can be made to temporarily disappear in several days after totally avoiding the foods to which the individual is addicted. The addictive food will frequently be one or more in the sugar/white flour group, but it can be any foods, which, when discovered, are “enemy foods” for that person.
Dr. McDowell says that total abstinence from the “enemy foods” is only the first phase, which must be followed by a “conditioned reflex response”—the “instant yuk technique.” The person trains himself to react with disgust to thoughts about the “enemy foods.” (See article “Say Goodbye to Compulsive Eating,” in this lesson.)
Once the addiction is under control, even overeating syndromes with psychological bases can be more easily restrained.
Binge eating is the way that bingers cope with life’s problems, and this may contribute more to overweight than any other factor. Binge eaters may compulsively pile in hundreds, or thousands, of calories, almost without any true realization, satisfaction or enjoyment. They are trying, unsuccessfully (perhaps unconsciously) to escape from reality. Some people drink, some use drugs, some go on shopping sprees—and some eat. They usually eat rapidly, as though fearful they will be deprived of the mountain of food.
An article in “Food for Thought”—a brochure found in health food restaurants—suggests, “With or without outside help,” (the best is Overeaters Anonymous), “the binge eater can learn to apply some principles of behavior modification. First, binge eaters must learn to pay attention to what’s happening at the start of the binge—the time of day, where they were, what they were doing, what they were thinking, what they were feeling. It helps to keep a daily log or diary. Second, they must analyze what they discover. Divorced individuals might find, for example, that the binge usually occurs in late afternoon when they become acutely aware that the former mate won’t be coming home to share the evening meal with them.
“And third, they can learn to break the chain. In the example we just used, the individual could make a point of being somewhere else in the late afternoon—the library, an early movie, a gym or an adult education class, for example. Learning to control binge eating is difficult, but not impossible, and it’s worth the effort.”
The individual must work to initiate whatever changes are necessary for release from slavery to the appetite; that will help to break the habits of unwholesome redundancy which are threatening physiological, efficiency. When major sources of former eating pleasure are eliminated, they must be replaced by a new eating style that can gradually grow to be even more pleasurable, and by a new life that can be psychologically, emotionally, mentally and physically rewarding. The individual must be encouraged to not concentrate on what is being given up, but rather on what will be gained.
The body chemistry is influenced by the food that is eaten. When the diet is altered and the new diet maintained for a given length of time, the enzymes, body fluids, and glandular secretions become increasingly adapted to the influences and requirements of the new food program, just as the organism necessarily struggles to adapt, when it is bombarded with junk food, or too much of any kind of food. The important difference is that the prior adaptation to the misguided food program involved health deterioration, while the readjustment in the direction of an ideal food program is towards improved health.
We are not referring to calorie restriction in the usual sense. Reducing diets are always frustrating and frequently unsuccessful, since they involve countless decisions and the exercise of power at every meal. It never becomes any easier to eat half portions and to refuse the dessert, because the reducing diet continues and accentuates the perverted tastes and cravings of the malnourished (even though adipose) body.
Rather, we are referring to a planned program of meeting all of the body’s nutritional requirements in a pleasant, satisfying, rational manner, with no redundancy or surfeit, which will tend to gradually reeducate perverted appetites—and produce such a sense of well-being that cravings will become easier to handle, and gradually all but disappear.
Ideally, such a program should be preceded by a thorough indoctrination into the precepts of the Hygienic system. The initial period will require mind control and firmness of purpose—but the potential rewards for those who have the determination to succeed are almost incalculable.
The first thing to do is to determine one’s goal, make plans, and don’t stop until success is attained. Those who stumble along the way should pick themselves up, forget about the fall, and keep right on going. The only failure is giving up.
Learning to do something—to drive, to play a musical instrument—takes many hours of practice, and so many mistakes!
It is not easy to break a habit. At first, you may dislike or even hate what you are trying to do. Tough it through! Soon it won’t seem so difficult and the worst part is over. But the best is yet to come, and you will eventually experience the delights of good food and good health.
A simple approach to the whole problem of overeating is the elimination of cooked food to the greatest extent possible. It is difficult to habitually overeat at meals when no cooked or processed foods are served. (However, snackers can overeat, even of uncooked food.)
John M. Douglass, M.D., internal medicine specialist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group (in his reports in the Medical World News and the Annals of Internal Medicine) says that raw food diets reduce or eliminate the need for insulin in many diabetics, reduce blood pressure, and develop an inner feeling of cleanness that causes people to want to reject such habits as smoking, drinking and overeating (from Organic Gardening Magazine, July 1978).
A very practical program to eliminate the over-consumption of food is to begin with a short fast (about three days), followed by a program of twelve meals weekly —a thirty-six hour fast one day out of seven, and two meals a day on the other six days—with probably one meal around noon and the other in the early evening—no snacking.
Most people do well on such a program. Occasionally, we find a person who tends at each meal when he is limited to twelve meals weekly, or who keeps to this program, eating moderately, but who never feels satisfied. Such a person might do better on a semi-monthly fast of thirty-six hours, and alternating between two and three meals daily. Experimentation may be necessary to help the individual to determine his or her own requirements and capacities, which may be influenced by the rate and efficiency of the metabolism and assimilation.
Dr. Shelton (Volume II, pp. 274-276) quotes numerous students of history as saying that the Greeks and the Romans, for more than a thousand years, ate one meal a day—and their armies marched for days “under loads of iron, clothes, and provisions that would stagger a modern porter.”
During the zenith period of Grecian and Roman civilization, the firmly established rule was that a health-loving man should content himself with one meal a day, and never eat until he had leisure to digest, i.e., not till the day’s work was wholly done.
Dr. Felix Oswald says, “The evening repast was a kind of domestic festival, the reward of the day’s toil, an enjoyment which rich and poor refrained from marring by premature gratifications of their appetites.”
After the Greeks and Romans acquired power and riches, their sensuous indulgence in food was followed by their physical, mental, and moral decline.
The Persians ate one meal daily. The Jews from Moses to Jesus ate but one meal a day. They sometimes added a lunch of fruit. For more than a thousand years, the one-meal-a-day plan was the established rule among the civilized nations inhabiting the coast lands of the Mediterranean.
Even today, primitive tribes eat their daily meal after the hunters return—if the hunt fails, they have no meal.
The two-meal-a-day plan survived in England at least until 1858. With its increasing prosperity, England adopted the three-meal-a-day program.
When Sylvester Graham (early Hygienic pioneer) began his career as a temperance lecturer in the United States, gormandizing was one of the favorite indoor sports. It was not unusual to serve as many as thirty or more kinds of meat and fish at a ceremonial banquet. Gentlemen sometimes sat at the table for as long as seven hours for one meal—followed by gout and other penalties of overrating.
Most people are fearful of fasting, calling it a “starvation” diet, and are convinced they could never fast. At the opposite pole are those who become fanatically addicted to fasting, either because they believe it will control their weight, or that it will improve their health.
These people don’t really understand fasting at all. Fasting may, in general, be divided into three categories:
Dr. Vetrano (Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, November 1979, p. 79) says, “For maximum health, one does not have to fast unless injured or unless there is an acute crisis of some sort. If you live genuinely Hygienically, all you need, because of a polluted environment, is a once-a-year rest and tune-up fast of about eight to fourteen days. It you live in the country, away from all types of pollution, you may not require a fast of that length.
“Fasting one day a week may be too much for some people. They may not be able to gain weight, or muscle, by fasting this often. Fasting three days a month, for no reason at all, is not necessary. When your hunger is absent, fast. As long as hunger is present, and there is no physical or mental problem, then there is no reason to fast. Just live Hygienically.”
Fasting fanatics sometimes fast every other day, or take a two- or three-day fast every week. They sometimes fast for longer periods—thirty or sixty days or more—when there is no therapeutic reason for doing so. They may fast a week or more at frequent intervals—every month or so (or oftener).
Some of these people embark on this type of fasting “program” in the hope that frequent fasting periods will gradually result in rejuvenation and optimal health (or in an effort to normalize their weight). They do this in the mistaken belief that such erratic fasting can achieve the same dramatic results as a prolonged fast.
Such capricious use of fasting may prove to be dangerous. Short fasts, taken at too frequent intervals, produce enervation and exhaustion, and create nutritional deficiencies. Serious problems cannot be corrected in this manner.
To a certain limited extent, well-planned, well-spaced short fasting periods do have a health-improvement potential, but, even in those cases where successful remission of a serious problem is achieved in this manner, it is infinitely slower than a supervised, prolonged fast, and not nearly as certain.
Much of the rejuvenating and therapeutic value of a prolonged fast (fourteen to thirty days, or longer) on distilled water only, may be attributed to the uninterrupted, orderly succession of phenomena initiated by the organism when continuously deprived of external food sources.
As the fast progresses, elimination of toxins is accelerated, and the body continues to explore its reserves for life-sustaining materials. Nutritional elements which have been stored in the body are released into the bloodstream, to be salvaged and absorbed by the cells. As the fast progresses, the utilization of available supplies is accomplished with increasing economy and efficiency.
Ideal conditions for maximum debris autolysis and healing are produced by prolonged abstinence from food, and there is a steady weight loss.
By contrast, erratic, frequent, short fasting periods are a drain on the organism, without a corresponding recompense. For each fasting period, the body must undergo the stresses of adapting to the fasting situation and readapting to the eating situation, with very little time in between to experience any benefits.
If you are trying to lose weight, this is a poor method, and apt to not only be unsuccessful, but also to be a threat to your health. You may lose a few pounds when you fast and gain it back between fasts—which is worse than not losing the weight at all. Such a practice will not only be self-defeating, but will result in weakness and malnutrition—even if you are overweight.
Utilizing planned, well-spaced fasting periods of from ten to thirty days is the easiest, quickest and most effective way to lose weight—for many people. Pounds quickly melt away, with a bonus of health improvement. In this type of fasting, the readjustment to eating is quite different than the constant seesawing between eating and fasting, which usually leads to gorging on the days you are eating.
After the weekly thirty-six hour fast, one has a keen appetite, but, as a rule, there is no tendency to overeat in order to compensate for the lost meals.
Even a monthly (or bimonthly) three-day fast is not usually followed by an uncontrollable desire to “eat everything in sight.”
Fasting ten to fourteen days twice a year, or thirty days once a year (if there is a therapeutic necessity for a thirty-day fast) is followed by a readjustment period, but, ordinarily, this infrequent situation does not lead to habitual overeating. In fact, in many instances, such prolonged fasting periods (under professional supervision, of course) seem to reduce eating capacity and cravings for frequent large meals and unwholesome foods.
Even those people whose prolonged fast results in an increased appetite will find the annual or semiannual readjustment to a moderate eating program manageable, even though some thought control will be necessary to “get over the hump.”
But people who are always “recovering from” the previous fast at the same time that they are within a few days of entering another fast are almost helpless to control the overeating and even bringing urges, since such compulsions are created by the body’s demands for more and more food to counteract the nutritional deficiencies produced by the unwise use of fasting as a modality to replace moderate and healthful eating and living habits on a daily basis.
Each time one fasts, vitamins and minerals are lost, and an expenditure of energy and a loss of reserves are experienced. These might be weighed against the anticipated beneficial effects of the fasting period.
Some people cannot use fasting at all (of any type, frequently, or lengthy) as a tool for weight control, because all it does is to cause them to seesaw between “starving” and “gorging.” This is, sadly, especially true of many grossly obese people. This may be because their metabolism is abnormal, because the problem is glandular or congenital in origin, or because of any of several other possible and complicated factors.
Many authorities believe that an important cause for lack of obesity control is too many fat cells. People who have been grossly obese, especially if they were fat children or teenagers, have a special problem. When there is weight gain, there is a multiplication in the number of fat cells, but when weight is lost, the number of fat cells does not decrease, the cells simply grow smaller.
The Hartbargers (Eating for the Eighties, pp. 155-156) say, “From the moment of conception through the first year, virtually all the organs and tissues undergo intensive growth, including cell division. During these early stages, the most elementary functions of each organ are determined. Malnutrition can have its most lasting effect on physical and mental development at this time. By the age often months, for example, the number of brain cells has been determined for life. There will not be another period of such rapid general growth until adolescence.
“Overnutrition, incidentally, can have effects similar, though opposite, to undernutrition. A good example is the fat cells. Too many fat cells are thought to be a major problem in obesity control (or the lack of it). The two critical periods for fat cell growth are, predictably, early childhood and adolescence.
“Once cell division has ceased (the third stage), the effects of deficiencies and overfeeding are usually more temporary. A particular organ may be smaller or larger for a time, but an appropriate adjustment in food intake will normalize things again.”
Dr. Richard Lopez of Florida International University (St. Petersburg Independent, September 14, 1979, Bob Rabin, Knight-Ridder Newspapers) says that those who have been overweight since childhood have a far more serious problem, because the body’s fat cell production is greatest in the early years. He says, “Fat cells are very closely related to appetite. When you lose weight, you don’t lose fat cells, you lose fat stored in them.”
Many people with large numbers of fat cells are almost like alcoholics. They are foodaholics. Even faithful Hygienists with large numbers of fat cells may fight a continual losing battle. I know one such Hygienist who once fasted down to considerably below one-hundred pounds, but the obesity returned, inexorably, in spite of dedication and moderate eating. She continues to take twice yearly fasts, and to eat moderately, with only minimal progress. It may well be that no more can be done in such a situation, but no one should accept an impasse unless every avenue has been explored. Most situations can be improved—sometimes, all it takes is the determination to succeed, even when the odds are against you.
People who seem to be able to eat a great deal and never gain weight have faster rates of metabolism, which is probably determined by their genes. All raw food diets usually make weight control easier for most people. Addictive eaters may still gorge on all raw foods, but it is simply not possible to eat as much food when it is in its natural form—the very bulk of it is so filling. All-day-long snackers can still become obese on raw food—one should eat no more than two or three times daily.
Actually, the only way to improve one’s health, or eventually achieve normal weight, is by healthful living. The fast only expedites the process, especially in its initial phases.
In those cases of obesity where fasting seems only to complicate the problem, the solution lies in motivation, mind control, and strict, uncompromising planning of an eating program that will produce a slight, gradual, but steady weight loss.
This usually requires a powerful incentive and complete commitment. It also requires a vocation, avocation, or pursuit that will effectively fill the days with the most interesting and enjoyable means of satisfying one’s need for feeling productive and useful, and thus improving one’s self-image.
It is a great idea to become involved in some cause, to commit one’s self to a few deadlines which must be met, and thus end the preoccupation with food as life’s best reward.
Regular, adequate and vigorous exercise is of the utmost importance, whether one is seeking improved health or a new figure. And all the other principles of Hygienic living, which we have repeatedly enumerated and emphasized, must be part of the daily program of living.
Fasting fanaticism is never successful in the long run. It may even produce pathological anorexia—loss of appetite, or inability to eat.
44.18.1 The Only Safe and Correct Diets
44.18.2 Seventy Million Overweight Americans
44.18.4 What A High-Protein Diet Can Do
44.18.5 Low-Carbohydrate Diets
44.18.6 The Atkins and Stillman Diets
44.18.8 The Beverly Hills Diet
44.18.18 Appetite Suppressants
Diet fanaticism may also produce anorexia, or the same weight seesawing which is sometimes the result of fasting fanaticism. This has been called the “yo-yo” syndrome—lose some weight, gain it back—down-up—up-down. The combination of pathological and psychological problems that are thus created can be very destructive.
Hundreds of reducing diets have been offered to the public over the years. Diet fanatics have tried them all. When reducing diets are tried and ultimately abandoned, it is frequently because they proved to be too difficult, too frustrating—or because they just didn’t work. And the dieter wails, “I just don’t have enough willpower!” Some of the dieters actually do slim down, some (rarely) permanently; and some temporarily, often seesawing between dieting and gorging.
But the dieters seldom give any thought to whether these diets may be inconsistent with their dietary needs, perhaps even dangerous. The repeated experimentation with diets that emphasize certain foods, and prohibit other foods which are necessary to health and well-being, do much damage. The foods prescribed are chosen for their weight-loss potential, with little regard for their other effects on the body. People may wind up with bodies that are unable to respond normally to the food that is taken, and unable to utilize necessary food elements.
The only correct diet for regular use is one that meets all the nutritional needs of the body in a rational manner, without threat or stress. The Hygienic food program does just that.
The only safe temporary therapeutic (or weight-loss) diets—other than correctly utilized total fasting periods—are the Hygienic elimination diets. Elimination diets are diets low in proteins and other concentrated foods, which cause the organism to accelerate the autolysis of toxins and fats (but never as efficiently as fasting on distilled water only).
Frost and Sullivan, Inc., a national market research company, noted that seventy million overweight Americans are willing to do almost anything to shed some weight; they use appetite suppressants, obesity prescriptions, reducing pills, diet books, mechanical devices, health spas and even surgery such as intestinal bypass operations, cutting of the vagus nerve, and gastric stapling.
Many popular diets emphasize high protein. The high-protein diet may have a disastrous potential when utilized for long periods of time, whether used after a diagnosis of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), or whether it is used in the mistaken belief that it is the best road to weight reduction or improved health.
The rationale of high-protein diets for weight loss is based on the fact that protein requires much more body energy for digestion and metabolism than it supplies. The danger lies in the fact that the end products of large amounts of protein, particularly flesh proteins, will result in degeneration of body tissues, producing liver, kidney and digestive disorders, as well as gout, arthritis, and other degenerative diseases.
Dr. Ralph Bircher-Benner, in an article in the September 1975 Hygienic Review, confirms these and other inevitable consequences of the overconsumption of protein, including hyperacidity, osteoporosis, dangerously high phenylalanine and tyrosine content in the blood, poor protein metabolism and irritation caused by uric acid. (Phenylalanine and tyrosine are amino acids, two of the building blocks of protein, excessive amounts of which are formed when protein is decomposed, as by putrefaction.)
Dr. Alec Burton, the brilliant Australian Hygienic doctor, says that the high-protein diet of seventy-five to one-hundred grams daily (or more) is beyond anyone’s needs— or capacity to process without toxicity.
When protein is consumed in greater amounts than can be processed efficiently, the number of highly-toxic nitrogenous compounds are released. One such compound is ammonia; another is kinotoxin, which, accumulating in the muscles, impairs working capacity and causes fatigue. In addition, high protein consumption results in excessive carbon and sulfur in the blood, which also causes complicated problems. Acid end products of protein, such as urea, uric acid, adenine, etc., beyond a certain normal range, cause tissue damage, degeneration and destruction.
Dr. Gerald Benesh says, “A study of physiology shows that all excessive and unnecessary protein is processed by the liver. It subsequently goes through numerous biochemical changes until it is finally excreted as ammonia and other end products of protein metabolism via the kidneys. This excessive load and additional biological function leads to enervation and eventually the breakdown of these vital organs.
“The liver has to cope with the heavy load of uric acid and urea which has to be buffered (neutralized) at the expense of the alkaline salts, leading to an unbalanced body chemistry and disordered cell and body function. This continued abuse, in time, leads to serious pathological conditions. Nephritis (inflammation of the kidneys) has been reported to result from a very high intake of animal protein.” (“The Protein Question”)
Research by Professor Uri Nikolayev of the prestigious Psychiatric Institute in Moscow has confirmed links between mental disturbances and protein derivatives, and studies at the Institute for Cancer Research demonstrate links between high-protein intake and cancer.
Dr. David J. Scott, of Cleveland, and Dr. Robert R. Gross, of Hyde Park, New York, who, among others, have researched this subject extensively, are convinced that the individual who resorts to high-protein diets for weight loss may wreck his health in the process.
I know a lady, a registered nurse, who was on a high-protein diet for twenty-two months (including massive amounts of food supplements), after a diagnosis of hypoglycemia. She steadily grew worse on the high-protein diet, and developed more and more symptoms. She visited hospital emergency rooms, in severe pain, three times. Her intestinal tract was packed with feces and she was given repeated agonizing enemas. Her body and breath odor were unbearable.
From 1974 to 1976, her weight increased from 125 to 162 pounds. Her personality and mentality had deteriorated so much she was unable to think or make decisions or drive a car. She had been treated by many doctors, including those in the hospitals where she worked, and the emergency room doctors, but only one of them suggested she was taking too much protein.
One, of the doctors, a D.O. who was a specialist in nutrition and hypoglycemia, prescribed the following diet and supplements (high protein, no fruit):
7 a.m. 8 oz. milk with protein powder and brewer’s yeast
8 a.m. 2 eggs, 1 slice toast, glass chocolate milk
10 a.m. glass milk with protein powder
Noon meat or fish with salad and vegetable
2 p.m. Milk with protein powder
5 p.m. meat or fish, salad, vegetable
8 p.m. milk with protein powder
10 p.m. milk with protein powder
plus B complex, 75 mg. 3 times daily
Vit. C., 1000mg 3 times daily
Vit. E, 400 units once daily
Dolomite, 2 tablets daily
All these were taken with more milk—she drank a gallon of milk daily.
By the end of March 1976, she realized that she had reached an impasse—a dead end. She remembered she had read some books about Natural Hygiene in June 1973, but didn’t believe what she read. But now, in desperation, she got them out and re-read them. They were Fasting Can Save Your Life and Superior Nutrition by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton and The Mucusless Diet Healing System by Arnold Ehret.
On April 1, 1976, she dumped all of the supplements and changed her regimen to a breakfast of fruit, a lunch of vegetables and a starch, and a supper of vegetables and a protein.
She went through six weeks of elimination and agony, but she did not give up. Then her energy started slowly to return. Her weight was down to 136 pounds. She was close to death at some points, but she made it back.
In the years since then, she has been able to function quite normally, though it is obvious that some irreversible damage was done by the twenty-two months of stuffing with protein and supplements.
She has been a dedicated Natural Hygienist since then, and has been reluctant to function in her profession as a registered nurse, since she no longer believes in the type of treatment she would be required to assist in implementing.
The “low-carbohydrate diet” is another name for a high-protein diet. Dr. Jean Mayer’s (and Jeanne Goldberg’s, R.D.) column, “Food for Thought,” (St. Petersburg Times, June 24, 1982) says this diet is described as “historial,” having been created more than 100 years ago by Dr. William Harvey, a British ear surgeon. The diet was immortalized by his patient, William Banting, who was delighted with his weight loss and wrote a best-seller, Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public, in 1864.
Dr. Mayer (et al.) says, “Eventually it faded into obscurity, but the diet resurfaced around the turn of the century when the Earl of Salisbury’s doctor used it to treat the Earl’s weight problem. The basis of that diet was a big patty of chopped beef. It is, in fact, from this that Salisbury steak got its name.
“The low-carbohydrate diet resurfaced a third time in 1953, as the Dupont Diet, and has been with us continuously in literally countless variations since then. While it appears to be true that some people temporarily control their appetite—and thus lose weight—such diets are undesirable in the long run because they are generally higher in fat and may create a predisposition to high blood cholesterol and diseases of the heart and blood vessels.”
The Stillman Diet (Dr. Stillman’s 14-Day Shape-Up Program) and the Atkins Diet (Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution) are variations of the high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets. Dr. Atkins advises using fats like heavy cream, butter, oils, etc. He calls his diet the “High-Fat, No-Carbohydrate Diet,” though a very small amount of carbohydrates are permitted. Dr. Stillman, on the other hand, says the “high-fat” idea is all wrong, and calls his diet “High-Protein, Low-Fat, Low-Carbohydrate Combination.”
Dr. Atkins recommends that “everyone should take vitamin and mineral supplements,” and Dr. Stillman advocates the use of vitamin and mineral supplements “in optimum dosages.”
Dr. Atkins’ book has two paragraphs on exercise, one for hypoglycemics and one for “dieters who go astray.” Dr. Stillman has a chapter on the benefits of exercise.
Both diets include all kinds of flesh foods and animal products, and permit condiments, coffee, tea, diet soda. Fruits are absent, and the use of vegetables is very small. Dr. Atkins says “no bread,” Dr. Stillman permits “protein bread,” toasted. Dr. Stillman permits alcoholic beverages, even wines in cooking.
The Scarsdale Medical 14-Day Diet includes flesh foods, low-fat cheese, small amounts of fruit and green vegetables, no fat, “protein bread,” toasted, coffee, tea, diet soda, but no alcoholic beverages. Carrots and celery between meals, seasonings, and spices are permitted.
Dr. Scarsdale says that all the vitamins and minerals needed daily are found in the foods in the Scarsdale Medical Diet; and gives a list of the vitamins and minerals and the foods in which they are found.
Dr. Scarsdale recommends brisk walking at least two miles daily, as well as swimming, tennis or other sports.
The Scarsdale Diet is essentially a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet.
The Beverly Hills Medical Diet (Lose Ten Pounds in Fourteen Days) uses flesh foods, but it is recommended that not more than four ounces of meat daily be used; also the use of less red meat and more poultry and fish is advocated, as well as the use of one ounce daily of fresh raw nuts and seeds. Nonfat dairy products and egg white are recommended. Wholegrains and legumes are also used.
The diet also includes generous amounts of fresh vegetables and moderate amounts of fresh fruits. The use of “complex carbohydrates” is recommended (unrefined carbohydrate foods). It is “thumbs down on all unnecessary fats (any kind)” and salt, sugar, and processed foods are to be omitted, as well. Spices are permitted, but not coffee, alcohol or tobacco.
The diet calls for high-vegetable, low-fat meals. Lemon juice or vinegar are to be used as salad dressing, and as many foods as possible are to be eaten raw. This diet permits “eating-all-the-time on permissible foods. Eat all day long and eat in between meals and when hungry from the special list of the raw complex carbohydrates. Carry them with you all day (raw vegetables).”
Dr. Stillman criticizes Dr. Atkins’ high-fat diet, and Dr. Arnold Fox (Beverly Hills Diet) criticizes the Atkins and Scarsdale diets. Each believes his is the miracle diet.
Dr. Fox says that the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet causes bodily harm, such as calcium depletion, dehydration, sleeplessness, nausea, fatigue, atherosclerosis, gout, hypoglycemia, vascular, thrombosis, liver and gall bladder diseases, hypertension, cancer of the colon and breast, cardiac arrhythmia, postural hypotension and coronary heart disease, and says he does “mean to scare you.”
The Beverly Hills diet is better than the high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets criticized by Dr. Fox, principally because it advocates the use of large amounts of raw fresh vegetables, and allows moderate amounts of raw fresh fruit. But the all-day-long eating plan (no rest for the digestive system) can result in a lot of damage if continued for long periods. And the generous use of dairy products and egg white, the use of vinegar and spices, and the daily use of flesh foods, will also eventually cause problems.
Dr. Fox recommends “wogging” for exercises—walk a bit, jog a bit, a minimum of thirty minutes, four days a week, and advocates the use of vitamin and mineral supplements.
This diet includes two kinds of whole grain foods daily, bran, beans, peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and a variety of vegetables and fruits. For vitamin B-12 it calls for six ounces of low-fat animal protein per week (or unwashed, unpolluted produce) or vitamin B-12 supplements. In addition to three full meals daily, the diet provides for snacking between meals: “Don’t go hungry between meals.” Spices are permitted, but not coffee, alcohol, or tobacco.
This is a vegetarian (or almost vegetarian) diet, but the good “track record” of the Pritikin Program is due more to the excellent exercise program than to the diet. Hygienists, of course, find the preoccupation with vitamin B-12 unnecessary, and find the frequent snacking inadvisable, giving the digestive system inadequate time to process the previous meal before ingesting more food.
The popular Weight-Watchers Diet is essentially a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet, which has been more or less successful, due to a great extent to its methodology—group supportiveness, public approval for accomplishment, and public disapproval for backsliders. Techniques for changing habits and self-control are also provided.
Liver, steak, veal, pork, turkey, chicken, frankfurters, fish, shrimp, salmon, tuna, sardines, eggs, and cheese are used for protein. They say “buy meat as lean as possible” and allow ten to twelve ounces of meat, fish, cheese, and eggs daily (a little more for men).
Three full meals and two snacks are permitted. A choice of cereal, bread, or potatoes is offered at meals. Two pieces of fruit daily are allowed, as well as generous amounts of nonstarchy vegetables.
They recommend using as little coffee and tea as possible, especially if it disturbs sleep, and consider the use of alcohol inadvisable. Nothing is said about seasonings, except for the role of salt in the retention of fluids in the body.
“Increased activity” is advocated, and emphasis is accorded the fact that the value of exercise “goes far beyond its impact on weight—improving the health of the heart and circulatory system, the general health, and the state of mind.”
I am not sure whether the Last Chance Diet should be considered as “Fasting Fanaticism” or “Diet Fanaticism.” Though it was not a true fast, the participants really received no food.
The only “food” ingested was a so-called “predigested liquid-protein formula” (a dark, syrupy liquid made from uncured cowhide, beef tendon, and artificial flavoring) which was said to contain all the amino acids (the building blocks of protein), no carbohydrates or fats, and very few calories. Vitamin pills, coffee, tea, and diet soda were also used, as well as drugs, depending upon the doctor’s discretion.
In 1977, this “diet” was highly touted in the press and on television as a revolutionary, effective, safe way to deal with obesity. Individuals on this diet received no solid food for the duration (up to nine months), usually under the supervision of a medical doctor (although the liquid was also available in health food stores).
In November of 1977, twenty-six deaths of these dieters were reported, including the death of the wife of a specialist in internal medicine, commandant of the Air Force Base Hospital near Tampa, Florida.
The author of The Last Chance Diet, Dr. Robert Linn, a forty-three-year-old osteopath (whose diet book sold two million copies), convinced many people that this method of weight reduction was superior to another method which had been gaining recognition—a total fast, under qualified supervision, of usually a much shorter length of time, during which nothing but water is ingested—a Hygienic fast.
A Hygienic fast relies on the body’s own indications that reserves are becoming depleted, so that the fast is terminated long before approaching any danger point.
Long before we began to get reports of deaths of people on “The Last Chance Diet,” I alerted people to its dangers. Since, under the Last Chance Diet, the body is always receiving liquid protein, stimulants and medication, how can it ever be able to alert one with reliable signals that it has reached the time to call a halt?
Advocates of the Last Chance Diet still deny there is any proof that their product, “predigested liquid protein,” caused the deaths. Dr. William H. Foege, director of the Center for Disease Control at Atlanta, Georgia, made a concentrated investigation of the cases of fifteen women on this diet who died suddenly of heart-related causes.
Each of the deaths was sudden and involved a person using a liquid-protein diet exclusively for a long period of time.
The deaths were attributed to ventricular fibrillation, in which the heart beats wildly and does not pump blood, but the cause of the irregular heartbeat is unknown. Dr. Foege said the fifteen women had dieted for an average of five months and had lost an average of eighty-three pounds. Twelve of the fifteen were under medical supervision. Foege concluded “there is a definite risk in using the product.” (From a United Press International dispatch, St. Petersburg Times, January 5, 1978.)
Actually, it is not necessarily only the product, per se, that should be suspect, but the methodology as well.
What about the “new and revolutionary” starch blocker tablets that “have swept the country in recent months,” according to a news article? (St. Petersburg Times, Jane Brody, p. 1A, July 2, 1982.)
The ballyhoo claimed that doctors had confirmed that they are perfectly safe. One can eat high-caloried starch foods without paying the price in weight gain, because the starch blockers act to prevent digestion and assimilation of the starch, which passes through the digestive tract relatively unchanged, much as does fiber or roughage.
It sounded plausible, but even though I had no means of disproving these claims, I would not dream of recommending such a product. I knew that, ultimately, it would be discovered that such unnatural interference with digestive processes would exact a price. It seemed to me that—since large amounts of roughage, such as are found in bran, inhibit absorption of minerals—this would very likely be true of starch which is eaten and not absorbed, but disposed of as unusable. And, I thought, “who knows what additional side-effects or problems would eventually be discovered?” A few days after I wrote the above comments about the starch stopper tablets, I heard on a newsbreak (at 9 pm on WEDU, Channel 3, Tampa, Florida, July 1, 1982) that the F.D.A. had announced that the starch blockers are untested and probably unsafe, and ordered them off the market. Some complaints of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pains after their use had surfaced. The F.D.A. was also investigating five emergency room hospitalizations that had been linked to the use of starch blockers.
As of two days later (July 3, 1982) the starch blockers were still being offered on TV, and the TV evening news said “they’re selling like hot cakes.” In the St. Petersburg Times, July 5, 1982, the American Medical Clinics, Inc., with branches in St. Petersburg, Seminole, Holiday, and Hudson (Florida), advertised, “Join now and receive one week free plus twenty-five free starch blockers—lose up to a pound a day. We’re the proven, professional weight-loss method.”
Jane Brody says, “The starch blockers are extracts of raw beans, usually kidney beans. They are said to contain a substance that inhibits the enzyme amylase which digests starch in the body. Consumers are told to take a certain number of tablets before eating starch-laden foods, such as bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, and beans. The pills are marketed under many different brand names and prices range from five dollars to twenty dollars for fifty tablets. By one estimate, in the course of a week, Americans are now swallowing more than ten million such tablets. Nutrition experts have reported that if the tablets work as described, they would result in large amounts of undigested starch reaching the large intestine. Intestinal bacteria could then digest the starch and produce flatulence, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea.
Manufacturers have been marketing starch blockers without federal approval under the presumption that, as an extract of beans, they were a food, not a drug. However, the drug agency said that, regardless of their source, starch blockers ‘may affect the body’s normal metabolic functions’ and thus have drug-like effects.”
A substance is classified as a drug if it is used for a nonfood purpose, and if it alters a body function. The manufacturers have refused specific information about the exact composition of the product, and no adequate effectiveness or safely data have been supplied.
July 15, 1982—The evening news reported another “breakthrough” (WFLA-TV, Tampa, 6:30 and WTVT-TV, Tampa, 7:00). “Sucrose polyester” is a fake fat that looks, tastes, and smells like vegetable fat. It can be used as a spread for bread, or for cooking, or for any purpose for which butter or vegetable fat might be used. It was said that one could save 500-600 calories daily by using it. No one said exactly what is in sucrose polyester, but it was described as a synthetic substance.
It is to be treated as a prescription drug, subject to approval by the F.D.A. Procter and Gamble holds the patent on the fake fat, and they expect to market the substance as soon as it is approved by the F.D.A.
Another miracle! (But don’t count on it!)
The Golden Door, a fabulously expensive health spa in California, uses a 579-calorie, one-day liquid diet, which they say can help take off some extra weight while refreshing the body and mind. It is used principally to start off a diet week. They warn: this liquid diet should not be followed for more than one day, and it is advisable to see your doctor before following this one-day diet or any other liquid “fast” or reducing program.
The ingredients of the liquid sound fine: fruits, vegetables, and nuts. But they are poorly combined; e.g. nuts are liquified with banana, vanilla, and nutmeg; pineapple is combined with cucumber and parsley; and raw onion is used in a vegetable combination drink. Four of the drinks are supplemented with one-third ounce of sunflower seeds and three or four pine nuts.
I seriously doubt whether this one-day liquid diet would produce any significant weight loss or other beneficial result. In any event, a better choice for a one-day preparation for a diet would be a thirty-six hour fast, or a day on whole fruit only, or a day on one kind of freshly-squeezed fruit juice.
A recent issue of Healthful Living (June 1982) described a new diet drink which performs its miracles by plastic coating the digestive tract to block absorption of food, believe it or not! It contains flavored fluorocarbons, which are the synthetic substances that give paints and plastics their coating power. The inventor believes the F.D.A. will give its approval.
A question to Ann Landers (St. Petersburg Times, June 26, 1982) about the Cambridge Liquid Diet, on which an overweight girl was losing a pound a day, elicited the following response: “I do not know what the Cambridge Liquid Diet is....I know of several liquid diets that have caused a great many problems—such as serious skin rashes, fainting spells, respiratory trouble and the loss of hair and fingernails.”
By contrast, supervised fasting, even for long periods, results in strengthening and hardening of the fingernails. This is due to the wisdom of the body when external supplies are temporarily unavailable, producing increased efficiency in the distribution of available nutrients. More details of this interesting phenomenon, and many others, will be provided in the lessons about fasting.
Another relatively new weight-loss system is the staple in the ear, which some claim is successful and others have found useless. What are the side-effects and negative results likely to be—as a result of blocking natural stimuli?
All kinds of appetite suppressants are offered: Ayds candy, Dexatrim pills, Figurines bars, prescription drugs, etc. Needless to say, they are all harmful drugs.
I have not discussed some of the more ridiculous diets, like the egg diet (eating nothing but eggs for a week or so): skim milk and bananas; steak and eggs and tomatoes; cabbage soup and rice; the grapefruit diet; eating a half grapefruit before every meal “because it will reduce the weight-gain potential of other foods;” the high-calorie, weight-loss diet; the protein-sparing modified fast: eat nothing but about nine to ten ounces of meat or fish per day, plus supplements, coffee, tea, and diet soda; eat all you want of one or two foods.
Most of these have one thing in common, they reduce calories in a gimmicky way, and one learns it is possible to lose ten pounds in two weeks eating almost any crazy combination of foods, as long as calories are drastically reduced. But what happens afterwards? Back to the old yoyo syndrome!
It would be a losing battle to try to research and describe all of the diets and weight-loss modalities which crowd the marketplace and compete for the dollars of the gullible. Although I have merely “scratched the surface,” I believe I have made my point.
Magic formulae all eventually turn out to be wolves in sheep’s clothing, but rational living and intelligent diet planning, working with nature, instead of trying to outwit her, never become obsolete.
One pernicious result of diet fanaticism is a binge-and-purge eating disorder, called bulimia or bulimorexia (obsession with eating, but with a compulsion to be thin). It may start after a period of stringent dieting, subsequently degenerating into alternate dieting and binging. The person may eat up to 40,000 calories (or even more) in a couple of hours.
One lady described a typical binge: a couple of Burger Queen, burgers with French fries; then a repeat at McDonald’s; followed by a dozen doughnuts at the doughnut shop; a couple of sundaes at Dairy Queen; then home to raid the refrigerator; after which she throws up all of it.
In the earlier stages, the vomiting is self-induced, but it later becomes involuntary. Bulimics may eat and throw up ten times in one day. Some bulimics take large amounts of laxatives and/or diuretics every day to prevent weight gain, or simply to relieve pain after the binge. They may starve themselves for a couple days afterward.
Eventually, the bulimia is so uncontrollable that every time they start to eat, it turns into a binge. It controls them completely. They are no longer doing it for the enjoyment of eating, or thinking about weight control, but because they can’t help themselves. It develops to a point where it is a physical addiction in addition to a psychological disorder.
It becomes very, very dangerous, and can result in metabolic alkalosis, a destruction of the body’s ability to maintain its acid-alkaline balance. It can damage the liver and kidneys, and can be life-threatening. The constant eating (food in their mouths for hours at a time) also results in tooth decay.
This disorder was discussed on the Phil Donahue Show, WTSP, Channel 10, Tampa, on June 28, 1982.
Most bulimics are women, only 5% are men. Most bulimics look normal and are not significantly overweight or underweight, but food has become their total preoccupation, and they spend six to eight hours a day in its involvement. A bulimic usually binges and purges in secret, and they have been said to spend as much as several hundred dollars on food in one weekend.
This behavior is epidemic in colleges; up to 30% of college students practice some form of bulimia, according lo the 20/20 TV program on July 1, 1982.
It is also common among dancers and actresses (very few men are bulimics). Actress Jane Fonda admitted to having been a bulimic for years. She said the more you do it, the more you need to do it. She said as she grew older and realized what she was doing to herself, she was determined to stop. It took her sixteen years to break the pattern. She accomplished it by the use of willpower and exercise.
Both anorexia and bulimia are severe and dangerous eating disorders.
Most of the people who are concerned about their weight need not necessarily fast, nor should they use any of the legion of “reducing diets” or “systems” that are offered from all sides.
For most people, the Hygienic diet itself is a rational system of weight control. It provides complete and optimal nutrition, with the least expenditure or waste of bodily energy—and without the surfeit or redundancy that gluts the organism and produces obesity and disease.
When a nutritionally-superior diet is maintained, the weight of the body tends to normalize. There is built-in weight control in a food program which includes a large percentage of fresh, whole, uncooked vegetables and fruits; Such a vitamin- and mineral-rich, high-residue, fibrous diet is not nearly as conducive to overeating as the conventional diets.
It may be worthy of note that, of the various programs which have been offered to the public, those which have been either harmless or least harmful, and have “enjoyed” even a modicum of success are those which include fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, and exercise in the regimen, and thus begin to approach the Hygienic system.
In view of the pitfalls encountered by compulsive eaters who manage to overeat and gain weight even on such a superior food program, heroic methods must be devised to help them. It is hoped that the suggestions outlined in this lesson will prove successful.
This lesson contains an excellent article by Dr. Bass, giving specific ideas for developing willpower, mind control, and new habits.
Overeaters can be saved from suffering and disease. The misguided individuals who resort to cutting the vagus nerve, intestinal bypass surgery, or gastric stapling because they believe the Hygienic system and self-discipline are too difficult, will have a rude awakening. Their “easy way out” will prove to be their complete undoing.
In addition to the obvious insult to the organism by the surgery (and these are major abdominal surgical procedures), the side effects and problems that usually follow are even worse. And to add further “insult to injury”—these procedures are often no more “successful” than other “panaceas” for weight control.
“Many experts now feel that operations for obesity (such as intestinal bypass surgery) are not worth doing, because of the side effects and problems that usually ensue. A recent review by the Ottawa (Canada) School of Medicine suggests that the failure rate for gastric stapling may approach 50%. Furthermore, early results can sometimes be misleading. While there may be a sudden and dramatic initial weight loss, many patients find ways of regaining the lost weight, even though the stomach capacity has been reduced. In short, gastric stapling is still regarded by many as ‘experimental’—at least until we obtain more long-term follow-up data on its effectiveness and possible side effects.” (G. Timothy Johnson, M.D., “House Call,” Suncoast News, 1/6/82.)
So we are back to controlling the body by learning control of the mind. The easy ways out are dangerous myths. Those who are determined to succeed will succeed. They must succeed. The alternatives are too grim to contemplate.
“Overeaters Anonymous” has helped many people. Those who can’t make it on their own should enlist their help. Be sure to read the inspirational article in this lesson entitled “Help—I Can’t Stop Eating.” The author is now a “truly high-quality vegetarian”—a vegan—and says in part: “Because we have come to believe that most of the fat is between our ears, the (Overeaters Anonymous) program works to help change our thinking, so that we no longer want to overeat. That’s the beauty of it; it’s the miracle every compulsive eater has long dreamed of, to eat all he/she wants and maintain a normal weight. It is only possible when all you truly desire is a normal amount of food.”
The article tells how to reach a group nearby, or, for those in isolated areas, the same things can be accomplished by “loner kits” and mail sponsors.
Overeating, fasting fanaticism, and diet fanaticism have physical and physiological overtones, but they can be controlled in the mind. The first and best tool is knowledge.
Dr. Keki Sidhwa says, “The study of Natural Hygiene may be viewed as a journey—a journey from knowledge to wisdom.” He says that when you apply Natural Hygiene to your life, health and wholesomeness emerge, though it may take time. Ultimately, the supreme experience of wisdom comes to possess us, transforming us, so we may, in our turn, transform the world.
It is generally believed that, as long as an individual is in health, or apparently so, he is not injured by habitually eating more than is really necessary for the healthy nourishment of his body, but this opinion is utterly and dangerously false. It is, indeed, one of the most mischievous errors entertained by the human mind. For there is nothing in nature more true, more certain, than these propositions: that all vital action is necessarily attended with some expenditure of vital power, and draws something from the ultimate fund of life; and therefore all excessive vital action, all intensity of vital action, increases the expenditure of vital power, and necessarily abbreviates the duration of human life; and consequently, however long the vital economy of any human body may be able to preserve the general balance of action, between the composing and decomposing elements, and maintain a general health of the system under excessive alimentation, yet nothing is more certain than that, just in proportion as the alimentation has exceeded the real healthy wants of the vital economy, and thus caused an unnecessary Expenditure of vital power, life has been abbreviated—even though the individual dies from what is called old age, without a single violent symptom of disease. The error of opinion on this subject is common and mischievous; and the truth should be presented in its strongest light.
But we have as yet only presented the subject and contemplated it in its most favourable aspect. The case I have presented is a very extraordinary one. As a matter of fact, very few indeed who have constantly overnourished their bodies do die from old age, but as a rule they die from painful and exhausting diseases long before that period is reached. Millions of human beings perish by disease, in all periods of life, from excessive alimentation or overeating. Generally, they are cut off by disease long before they have lived out their lives, and often prematurely. And the chief cause of all such death is, I must insist, overeating.
This can readily be proved....Overeating is the chief cause of all diseases; and disease shortens and destroys life. Of that there can be no question. But even if no adventitious cause comes in to induce sudden and violent death, either local or general, the continued overworking of the system will almost inevitably exhaust, debilitate, and relax some particular organ, and so destroy the balance of action in the vital economy, and thus gradually lead to chronic disease. Adipose tissue is deposited in various parts of the body—causing ruptures of the heart and the blood vessels, and hence premature death.
It is therefore true, beyond all question, that in all countries where human aliment is abundant and easily procured, gluttony or excessive alimentation is decidedly the greatest source of disease and suffering and premature death known to man.
—Hereward Carrington, The Natural Food of Man, pp. 266-268
If we are to eat only when truly hungry, and should not eat late in the evening, how do we resolve a conflict between these two principles?
The principle preoccupation should be the correction of the habit of overeating (or of eating undesirable foods). If the day’s program prevents taking meals at customary times, or if you are simply not hungry when the meals are served, and then find yourself with a compelling desire for food during the evening, it would seem best to satisfy your appetite with a fruit meal, which may leave the stomach in a half hour or an hour, depending on the varieties eaten. I sometimes do this when I am away from home during the day, do not wish to eat the food that is available, and prefer to wait to eat my good fruit meal at home.
Winston Churchill was a famous gourmand and cigar smoker, yet he lived past the age of 90. How do you explain this?
The first and more important fact that determines our longevity is our heredity—our genes. Winston Churchill’s long life was not due to his gormandizing and cigar smoking—it was in spite of it. If a man with such genes were to live correctly, who knows how long he could have lived?
I would like more details about “homeostasis,” so I may better understand its meaning.
Dr. Walter B. Cannon, renowned professor of physiology at Harvard University, wrote a book (The Wisdom of the Body) in 1932, summarizing and demonstrating the fixity of the internal environment. In this book, he coined the word now generally used to describe the state produced by the constant adjustments made by the healthy body: homeostasis, derived from the Greek words that mean staying the same. The dictionary definition of homeostasis is “a state of physiological equilibrium produced by a balance of functions and of chemical composition within an organism.” Dr. Cannon described the intricate sequences by which the healthy body regulates and integrates its functions to maintain the stability of the internal environment within narrow limits of variation. Such vital matters as oxygen, blood pressure, mineral salts, body temperature, composition of body fluids and the blood sugar level all remain relatively constant. When all the homeostatic mechanisms are functioning efficiently, every challenge to the body is handled in such a fashion as to prevent disease and permit continuous functioning.
I have a good appetite, and I know I overeat. In fact, I usually have an uncomfortable feeling of being too full after a meal. Yet I don’t gain an ounce. I would like to gain about ten pounds, as I am too thin.
Some people can eat a lot of food and not gain weight. It is a question of the rate of metabolism. However, in your case, the very fact that you are overeating may be what is preventing weight gain. The body is unable to cope with the large quantities of food, and, as a result, much of it is not converted by the digestive system into assimilable substances. If eating more rationally (stopping before you feel so full) does not result in the desired weight gain, you might try a short fast of three days or so, or even a seven- to ten-day supervised fast (if a professional Hygienist determines this is advisable). Oftentimes the fast improves the assimilation capabilities of the body, and the individual gains weight. Also, are you exercising? An adequate, vigorous exercise program is important in improving the efficiency of the metabolism of food.
Finally, perhaps you are trying to stuff yourself in an effort to gain weight. It may be that being ten pounds below what you consider your ideal weight is what your body has determined is the best weight for you at the present time. The important question is, how do you feel? Stop stuffing yourself, and then see what happens. If you do not lose weight, and feel well, stop worrying about it. Weight is an individual matter. If you stay on a Hygienic diet, and eat rationally, sometimes the problem adjusts itself.
After my 29-day fast, it took a year for me to get up to about 95 pounds (from my fasting low weight of 68 pounds), and then I stopped gaining. I stayed on a Hygienic Program, and tried to forget about my thin appearance. I really needed ten additional pounds to look my best. About two years later, my weight increased to around 100 pounds, for no apparent reason. Obviously, my assimilation has improved. About five years later, I experiehced another five-pound weight gain to around 105 pounds, my present weight, which I have maintained for years. If I fast, I lose some weight, but it comes back to around 105 when I get back to eating regularly. Sometimes, in periods of high stress, like meeting unrealistic deadlines, or American Natural Hygiene Society Conventions, my weight drops several pounds, but gets back to about 105 when things return to normal.
I have read that most adults need 1800 to 2500 calories (or some even more) per day to maintain their weight, and that it lakes 3500 accumulated calories to gain or lose a pound. How many calories per day do you recommend?
The effort to standardize calorie consumption is a fallacious notion. I can only say that these amounts are often much more than is needed; and the measurement of weight loss or gain in terms of 3500 calories per pound often proves to be inconsistent when put to the test. Even though many of the charts provide for differences in sex, height, size of frame, and rate of activity, there are other differences that influence food requirements. Since every person has his own rate of metabolism, efforts to standardize in terms of calories are frequently inaccurate. If one is trying to lose weight, it is useful to determine high-caloried foods, so that excessive quantities of those foods are not used. If we are discussing Hygienic eating programs only, there is usually no need to be concerned about calories. A diet of all raw or mostly raw foods would ordinarily not contain the number of calories listed in the charts as the daily requirements, unless inordinate amounts of food were taken at meals or unless the person were a habitual snacker. Hygienic eating and living produce gradual improvement in metabolism and assimilation. The initial result of changing to a Hygienic program is usually a weight loss, followed by a leveling off, which continues for varying periods of time, after which, due to improvement in assimilation, weight can be maintained on lesser quantities of food.
If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think that you dare not, you don’t,
If you’d like to win, but you think you can’t,
It’s almost certain you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,
For out in the world you’ll find
Success begins with a fellow’s will—
It’s all in the state of mind.
Full many a race is lost
ere even a step is run,
And many a coward falls
ere even his work’s begun,
Think big, and your deeds will grow;
Think small, and you’ll fall behind;
Think that you can, and you will—
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are out-classed, you are;
You’ve got to think high to rise;
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You ever can win a prize,
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.
The moments just before falling asleep are important to every person. They contain latent power to transform one’s mental, moral and physical existence in an effective manner which, if properly utilized, may gradually alter one’s external environment and one’s internal character for the better. Even more important, one may use the potential power of these moments to alter his consciousness.
This exercise is done at night while lying in bed and before going to sleep. After making oneself comfortable and while lying on the back, one begins to construct scenes in which you permit yourself to become emotionally involved with your behavior on the projected screen.
To break an undesirable habit which is upsetting your life, taking compulsive overeating as an example, you begin in a manner similar to the following.
You see yourself sitting down at a table to eat a meal containing the foods you normally eat. If the table has dishes which you have found irresistible up to now, you see yourself eating the desired amount of each and then putting each dish away to go on to the next. If you want to give up the article of diet entirely, and if the food is cake or ice cream, you see yourself being offered the dish which you immediately refuse without hesitation and with strong determination. You should tell yourself that you are through with this food forever and that you even dislike it and will never desire it anymore. Feel the strong dislike and intensity of your determination as you reject these undesired articles of diet. See yourself taking another food instead which is desirable in helping you reach your goal. If you want to learn to eat a food which is good for you, but which you don’t like, then feel and see yourself eating and liking it. Instead of the cake you take an apple, for example, or if you prefer, you get up from the table, tell yourself you are satisfied to end the meal here and see yourself sitting down in a comfortable chair away from the table. If you wish, visualize yourself taking a walk, or doing anything that will distract your mind from food. Try to make these scenes as vivid and realistic as though they were actually happening. The key here is to feel that you strongly desire the good act and that you strongly dislike the one you wish to give up.
The sharply-focused clearness and constant intensity of the images you produce will imprint themselves or your consciousness as you remain in this relaxed state. Choose images which are vivid and don’t allow them to become vague and dreamy. For best results, the imagination should be powerful, for here you are using imagination to make yourself over completely. This should be supported by a firm faith, secure feeling and confidence that success will follow your efforts. These suggestions should be repeated over and over with the clear visualization of success being achieved. These repetitions are to be perservered in until you reach your final goal—that of eliminating a bad habit and replacing it with a good one.
The therapeutic breakthrough came when I was searching for a clear-cut, easily definable dietary rule that would simplify weight control. I needed a rule which would be healthy, easy to live by and readily taught by behavior therapy techniques.
The rule I selected to try was the complete avoidance of all foods containing refined sugar or white flour. Using the habit-retraining techniques with which I was familiar, I programmed my willing weight control patients to dislike the sugar-flour foods and completely eliminate them from their eating style.
Now the great surprise—the breakthrough—surfaced when patient after patient came to me following several days of eating a diet free of all sugar and white flour and joyfully reported that the irresistible cravings had disappeared.
Their irresistible cravings could now be understood as the typical cravings of addicts. The mysterious urges stemmed from the cyclic, biochemical processes of addiction.
Occasionally, a patient will report irresistible cravings for some other food not in the sugar-white flour group.
But the establishment of total abstinence from the foods identified as the culprits is only the first phase in eliminating the addictive-like, irresistible cravings for those foods. The second phase is extinguishing the conditioned response cravings for those foods.
How do I eliminate these conditioned response cravings in the case of sugar-white flour addicts? I use the term “glue” and “glue” foods” to mean all foods containing any highly refined sugar or flour.
If a patient has a desire for a dish of chocolate ice cream, for instance, I instruct him to immediately picture that ice cream “glued” into disgusting fat deposits on his abdomen. This picturing takes place while the patient is in an altered state of consciousness, such as that of deep relaxation, meditation or hypnosis. With sufficient repetition of such imaginary scenes, this “disgust” feeling becomes associated with that type of food in real life encounters.
The patient is further instructed to deliberately and instantly, throughout his waking life, react to every real life reminder of his enemy foods with this strong vivid disgust response. He then immediately rewards himself with a sense of being in control, “captain of my ship” and anticipating his trim self-image.
This use of an interference response coupled with disgust, and then immediately followed by a reward for deliberately feeling negative toward the enemy foods, has proven of great value in preventing relapse. We call that our “instant yuk” technique. It only takes a couple of seconds and it can be repeated for years.
Once the addiction is under control, it becomes much easier to retrain such fattening habits as eating too fast, eating until too full, and frequent snacking. it appears that these habits are fueled by the presence of addictive cravings. They fall away readily after the fire of cravings is extinguished.
Also, many patients find that they no longer have the habit of eating when under psychological and emotional stress. The cravings of an addicted person, regardless of the substance of his addiction, are regularly mobilized when the individual is in an excited state—when he is “turned on” by any challenging stress, joy, anger, anxiety, tense depression, tense boredom, etc.
Most patients who have successfully extinguished their addictive state, including their conditioned cravings, do not have a flare-up of their cravings under such psychological and emotional stress conditions.
These successful ex-addicts are frequently surprised and pleased to find that they are not as weak, insecure and neurotically self-destructive as they believed they were during their addictive period.
Since this therapeutic approach eliminates major sources of former eating pleasure, the treatment must stress that a successful outcome is a gain and not a deprivation.
How often should one fast to counteract bad foods that were eaten? Is it better to fast one day per week, or three days per month, or what way is the most beneficial for maximum health?
First of all, one should not eat foods that are refined or that are not wholesome. If you happen to be in a situation that causes you to eat unwholesome substances then, of course, one has to do something to counter the detrimental effects of his or her misbehavior. There are several ways one may counter misbehavior. You may use one method, or either of them, according to the situation. After you have had a binge, you will be in high gear (stimulated for about a day), until the body has eliminated the poisons. You may not feel bad until the second day after the binge. In this case it is wise, especially if you have eaten refined products, to eat a salad at each meal, containing a great deal of lettuce, the day after the binge. Then the second day after the binge you may fast, for that is the day you are going to be in low gear. That is, you will feel miserable and tired from having been stimulated by the unwholesome substances. It will help to be able to stay at home and rest completely while fasting, the second day after the binge.
Some people have their low the very next day after a binge. It is very similar to a hangover. They feel tired, out of sorts, depressed and their aches and pains, if they were suffering with any disease, will be worse. If your low comes the very next day, it is best to fast at this time and rest, for if you don’t, having had junk food and not being very hungry and tired to boot, you will tend to go to junk food again to stimulate yourself to get through a completely terrible day. If you have a tendency to repeat the act, then it is best to cease eating altogether and rest and fast the very next day after the wrongful thing you have done to your beautiful organism.
If you are eating bad foods all the time, you must not fast every other day, or even two or three times a week. You must not fast to counter this situation. You will keep yourself in a hungry state all the time and because you refuse to let yourself eat good food but continue trying to force yourself to fast, each time you misbehave, you will set up a cycle of being hungry because you won’t let yourself eat good food and you will always go out and binge. This is a similar situation to people who have a hard time losing weight. They can’t lose weight while eating Hygienically when eating fruits so they deny themselves nice juicy sweet fruits only to get a carbohydrate hunger; so they go out and eat candy and other refined carbohydrates. Whereas, if they had permitted themselves a little bit of fruit, and fasted one day a week, they would lose weight, and would be preventing themselves from the cycle of binging on sweets.
If you get into the habit of eating poisoned and refined foods often and think you can undo the evils of this way of life by fasting, you are mistaken. Even though you may fast to help eliminate the poison, your body has done double work. It has to expend energy trying to digest the poisonous substances. Then it has to expend energy to eliminate the poisons. It has lost minerals and vitamins in both processes. The fast itself causes an extra expenditure of energy because of the extra work it has to do to compensate for the binge. The grand total is negative and equals enervation and a loss of reserves.
It is really a bad policy to think you can overcome the effects of wrong living by fasting. Even though the body can overcome many of the detrimental effects, normal cells are destroyed in the process and the end result is still negative. You cannot build positive vibrant health in this manner.
For maximum health one does not have to fast unless injured or unless there is an acute crisis of some sort. If you live genuinely Hygienically, all you need, because of a polluted environment, is a once a year rest and “tune-up” fast of about eight to fourteen days. If you live in the country, away from all types of pollution, you may not require a fast of that length.
Fasting one day a week may be too much for some people. They may not be able to gain weight, or muscle by fasting this often. Fasting three days a month, for no reason at all, is not necessary. Fasting should be used instinctively. When your hunger is absent, fast. As long as hunger is present and there is no biogony or physical or mental problem then there is no reason to fast. Just live Hygienically.
What about the most efficient cleanser to use daily—intestinal cleanser, yeast cakes, or granulated yeast, juice, lemon juice with salt water, vinegar and maple syrup and cayenne mixture?
You don’t need an intestinal cleanser or otherwise. The lining of the entire gastrointestinal tract is self-cleansing. The mucous membrane, from the mouth to the anus, contains what are known as goblet cells. When filled with mucus these cells look like goblets. Their purpose is to secrete the mucus to keep the lining of our food tube moist and clean. Debris does not collect inside the intestinal tract because the mucus keeps the surface slippery, and peristalsis keeps the food waste moving along toward the anus, where it is voided.
Pay no attention to the sales pitch for colonics and intestinal cleanser, for our intestines are self-cleaning and crusts can’t accumulate in the intestines. All of the substances that are considered cleaners are in reality dirtiers. They are not foods and do not belong in the intestinal tract where they may be absorbed and dirty the system. Salt is a poison; yeast cakes and granulated yeast are not digestible and are harmful; vinegar has acetic acid and alcohol in it which are poisons; maple syrup is a cooked product and not good for you; and cayenne pepper is a poison that damages the liver and kidneys and irritates all the tissues with which it comes in contact. The only substance that is not poisonous is lemon juice, but since foods don’t cleanse the living organism, that is, the living organism alone cleanses itself, why fool yourself?
Don’t eat bulkless substances. Just eat natural fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts and your intestinal tract will always be clean.
I have a tendency to overeat because I, like so many others, greatly enjoy eating. I find it difficult to consistently control myself when it comes to how much I eat and how often. It takes determination. It also takes pursuit of other activities, such as studying, hiking and conversing, that give me my “kicks” in more wholesome ways than “recreational eating.”
I was about ten pounds overweight a couple of years ago, and, on my small frame, it looked like a lot because the fat concentrated around my middle. I fasted every week for one to three days and lost my extra weight—but I gained it back when I stopped my weekly fasts because I was accustomed to eating too much on the days when I wasn’t fasting.
Next I tried a single long fast for a couple of weeks. Again I lost my extra weight. But, again I gained it back, this time because I had such a raving appetite and experienced such a keen enjoyment of my food. (Food tastes better after a fast because of the enhancement of our sensory perceptions when we are less toxic.)
I spoke with Dr. Vivian V. Vetrano, a professional Hygienic practitioner, about my problem of keeping excess pounds off. She recommended that I stop fasting to lose weight. Instead, she said, I should develop good daily habits. She advised me to eat slightly less than I would for weight maintenance, to refrain from snacking, to engage in daily vigorous exercise, and to get plenty of rest and sleep. She said I would lose about two to three pounds a week and keep it off.
I didn’t lose two to three pounds a week. In fact, I lost only about a pound a week because I didn’t cut down on how much I ate as much as I should have. But I did lose weight—and I did keep it off!
In the last month or so I gained a couple of extra pounds. I fasted for 36 hours last week and lost them. But, after the fast my appetite was enormous. It took larger portions of food to fill me up, and I got hungry more often. This lasted for a couple days after my fast. My appetite was great and my eating capacity was temporarily increased.
Eating more heavily and more often than normal immediately after my fast got me started on a bad habit of overeating. Not only did I regain the weight lost, but I also gained an extra pound or two! So now it’s time for me to forget about fasting and get back in the habit of moderate eating every day.
Note: Many people find fasting to be the easiest, quickest, and most effective way to lose weight. Others, like myself, find it better not to fast to lose weight. But all people keep their weight off by healthful living and eating habits.
45.4. The Body’s Innate Wisdom Guides Us During A Fast
45.5. What The Body Does When You Fast
45.6. Juice Dieting Vs. Fasting
There are many definitions of fasting and there are many misunderstandings about fasting.
The word “fasting” is derived from the Anglo Saxon language and means “firm” or “fixed,” the word being “faest,” and during these early periods the practice of abstaining from food during certain periods was referred to as fasting. Therefore, it was related to a person firmly withholding food.
From our standpoint, fasting refers to abstinence from food in the total sense. Commonly, and in many religious organizations, fasting refers to abstinence from certain prescribed foods.
In certain quarters, the common language usage is to refer to certain specific foods, and a person may be said to be on a “juice fast” when they are subsisting on juices. In actual fact, these are juice diets.
Fasting in the broad sense may be regarded as negative nutrition compelling the organism to subsist on nourishment that it has stored within itself.
For the purposes of this course, fasting means the voluntary and complete abstinence from all food except water while nutritional reserves remain adequate to sustain life and normal function.
It is important also to make a clear distinction between fasting and starving.
The word “starve” is also derived from the old English word “steorfan” which means “pestilence,” “mortality.” Therefore, to starve is to die, and this is what will quickly happen if nutritional reserves are exhausted.
Therefore, we must fully understand that fasting represents a process of utilizing nutritional reserves while abstaining from eating. Conversely, starvation represents a state where the nutritional reserves have been exhausted and the organism’s vital tissues are rapidly being broken down.
Fasting has a long history, but much of it is associated with religion. There are over 30 references to fasting in the Bible. There are numerous references to fasting among non-Christian religious groups. As a religious observance fasting has been practiced for centuries, and it undoubtedly, as a practice, preceded recorded history.
It is evident from records that exist that abstinence, either partial or complete, from all food or from certain foods, existed in Assyria, Babylon, China, Greece, India, Palestine, Persia and Rome, and the records from the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt indicate that fasting of some type was an important part of religious practice. However, I would refer the reader to other literature to investigate this aspect of fasting because here we are more properly concerned with the utilization of fasting as a means of recovering and preserving health.
We are interested in therapeutic fasting and I use the word “therapeutic” in the original sense and this is important.
“Therapeutic” is derived from the Greek language and means “to attend,” “to minister,” “to tend the sick.” It does not necessarily mean to employ a range of treatments called therapies.
So our preoccupation with fasting relates to the application of fasting as a health measure.
Aside from religious fasting it has also been associated with magic, with specific disciplinary practices, with exhibitions for the sake of notoriety, and also in the twentieth century especially with hunger strikes. The recent incident involving Bobby Sands and his comrades in Northern Ireland has given a lot of publicity to the subject. However, these and other uses of fasting have little to do with our consideration of fasting as a scientific procedure involved in the care of the well and the sick.
During the last hundred years or so, the subject of fasting has undergone close experimental and scientific scrutiny which was probably initiated by the famous physiologist, Dr. Francis Gano Benedict of the Carnegie Institute in Massachusetts. His book, The Study of Prolonged Fasting, is well worth close perusal today.
In more recent times, Dr. G.F. Cahill has made enormous strides in our understanding of the physiological and biochemical mechanisms of fasting. It has been only over the last 150 years or so since the development of the hygienic system that fasting has been employed as a serious and satisfactory health procedure, and the work of these remarkable pioneers has added greatly to our understanding of the clinical aspects of fasting and the remarkable benefits that are available to the sick through its employment.
A brief review of some of the giants of hygienic history may be relevant here, for it was through these people that the employment of fasting became a fundamental practice in the hygienic care of the well and the sick.
Dr. Isaac Jennings was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1788, and after many years of conventional medical practice, he made an enlightened discovery. That was in the year 1822 when his ideas as a result of his experiences and observations radically changed and he came to the sudden conviction that “medicine is a gross delusion from beginning to end.” He developed and taught a philosophy which he called “Orthopathy,” which he claimed expressed his conception of the essential nature of disease. Dr. Jennings lies at the beginning of a new movement, a health reform movement, which took place not only in the United States but also in Western Europe. It was subsequently absorbed into the hygienic system. One of Dr. Jennings converts was Dr. William Alcott from Boston, a second cousin of Louisa May Alcott who wrote the classic novel Little Women.
Dr. Alcott was a prolific writer and expounded the principles of diet reform, vegetarianism, and other major ingredients of the health revolution.
Dr. Thomas Low Nichols and his wife, Mary Gove, were influenced by the reformatory and inspiring lectures and teachings of Sylvester Graham, a preacher of the early nineteenth century who based his health reform principles on basic physiology.
Dr. Nichols and his wife became avid supporters of the hygienic movement and its practices.
In the mid-nineteenth century a magazine entitled The Laws of Life was edited by Dr. Harriet Austin who was among the first four women to graduate in medicine in the United States. She was associated with another famous hygienist, Dr. James C. Jackson. Both of these fine practitioners were enthusiasts of hygiene and especially fasting, and Dr. Austin herself was vigorously active in women’s reform movements.
Another contemporary was Dr. Susanna Way Dodds, and these two women brought about a great deal of health reform in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Dr. Dodds actually established a major college in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1887, and she wrote extensively on the subject of hygiene.
Among all of these eminent figures arose one man who displayed a remarkable ability for referring arguments back to first principles.
Here, I allude to Dr. Russell Trall, a most prolific writer, who expounded his revolutionary ideas with vigor and clarity. His many books, some of which have been reprinted recently, make vitally important reading for the student of hygiene and fasting.
Among the many hygienists was Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey who was born in Pennsylvania in 1849 and developed a strong advocacy of fasting. He wrote a number of books, one being The No Breakfast Plan which introduced the subject of fasting. Even at this time the development of the science of physiology was supporting the employment of fasting.
In this connection, the famous Dr. Beaumont did a lot of useful experimental work on a North American called Alexis St. Martin. This gentleman has sustained a gunshot wound in the abdomen and the lesion was open into the gastric cavity. As a result of this, Beaumont was able to observe the digestion of various foods and the change in the gastric juice constitution under different conditions, and I quote Beaumont.
“In febrile diatheses very little or no gastric juices are secreted, hence the importance of withholding food from the stomach in febrile complaints. It can afford no nourishment, it is actually a source of irritation to that organ, and consequently to the whole system. No solvent can be secreted under the circumstances and food is insoluble in the stomach as lead would be under ordinary circumstances.”
Beaumont reports that food had lain in the stomach of Alexis St. Martin from six to fourteen hours unchanged except by decomposition, that is, by fermentation and putrefaction.
Beaumont also made reference to the old adage “feed a cold and starve a fever.” Unfortunately, this particular saying has undergone considerable change over the centuries. When it was first uttered, it stated “feed a cold and you will have to starve a fever.” This was subsequently shortened which has entirely altered its meaning and implication.
Another illustrious hygienic teacher was Dr. Robert Walter, born in 1841. Like Graham, Trall, and many others, he had the exceptional ability to understanding the law of causality. He practiced in Pennsylvania, possessed a brilliant mind, was a keen thinker, and a careful logician. He made a great contribution to our understanding of health and disease.
Dr. Charles E. Page was born in 1840. He studied medicine during the Civil War and wrote extensively on the subject of hygiene and fasting. He also made valuable literary contributions to numerous magazines as well as extolling the virtues of fasting in the care of children.
In the late days of the nineteenth century a man arrived from Belgium, born in 1845. His name was Dr. Felix Oswald, and among his numerous writings was one book entitled Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise which should be of more than passing interest to any student of the subject.
Dr. John H. Tilden was born in Illinois in 1851. He graduated in medicine in 1872 and wrote extensively on health, disease, diet reform, and numerous procedures and techniques employed in the care of the sick. Among these techniques was fasting. Most of Dr. Tilden’s major work and writing took place during the twentieth century, and his magazines and books are full of epigrams and philosophies which depict his clear and penetrating mind. At his clinic in Denver, he regularly employed fasting as a means of care.
An Englishman, Dr. Henry S. Tanner, made fasting somewhat popular. He underwent a number of fasts, the first undertaken in 1877 which I believe lasted for fourteen days. Later Dr. Tanner experimented with a fast of forty days. His experience gave a clear understanding of the need and importance of water during fasting. From the information I have, his initial fast was without water, with rather serious consequences.
Discussing the work of many able men in the twentieth century, we should seriously investigate the work of Lief, Thomson and Shelton. Dr. Stanley Lief traveled from England and was educated in the United States. He returned to Britain around 1912, and throughout his life had extensive experience with fasting, conducting numerous clinics where the procedure was employed. He encouraged and recommended long fasts, but not without competent supervision and had remarkable successes despite strong medical opposition.
Dr. James C. Thomson, a Scotsman, also went to the United States for his education. He returned to Scotland around the same time that Dr. Lief settled in London. He practiced in Edinburgh for many years and later established the famous Kingston Clinic. While an advocate of fasting in the short term and especially in febrile conditions, he was not enthusiastic about long fasts.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, the leading American hygienist, has properly had more experience with fasting than any other living authority. He has written a number of books on the subject which are highly recommended, and for many years conducted Dr. Shelton’s Health School in San Antonio, Texas, where fasting was the fundamental procedure employed in the hygienic care.
Another prodigious worker for the twentieth century with a wide experience of fasting was Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. Her book, The Fasting Cure, is valuable and expresses a wide experience of the subject. Not only was her experience of fasting extensive, but she was thoroughly familiar with the long fast, which demands much more understanding and supervision than those of short duration.
In our consideration of the hygienic movement with special reference to fasting, it would be incomplete and inexcusable not to mention the current hygienists whose knowledge and experience is both wide and detailed.
Dr. William Esser had been in practice for almost fifty years and conducted an institution in Lake Worth, Florida.
Dr. Robert Gross has been active in the movement for several decades and conducts an institutional practice at Hyde Park, New York.
Dr. Gerald Benesh, who has now retired, was for many years vigorously active in both Cleveland, Ohio, and later in Southern California. Today, in the Cleveland area, Dr. David Scott operates an extensive practice employing fasting as a basis for hygienic care.
As a result of the urgent need to exploit the experience and knowledge of a number of unique individual professionals, in 1978 an organization was established—The International Association of Professional Natural Hygienists. This comprises professionals who have specialized knowledge of the value and employment of fasting. They are familiar with its processes and they are competent to conduct fasts in all states of health and disease where indicated. A list of members of this singularly important organization is available upon request.
Fasting represents a physiological rest and to make this point more lucid, we may look at the process of bio-energetics. When we consume food, the initial process is of ingestion, the placing of food into the mouth. This is followed by the process of mastication and swallowing as the food initially prepared within the oral cavity departs for the stomach where it is once again acted upon by the mechanical pressures of the muscular contractions of the stomach wall combined with the chemical effect of the secreted products referred to as gastric juice.
After a period of time ranging from one to several hours, the food is then actively transported into the duodenum where it undergoes further mechanical and chemical processing before it traverses the canal to a point where it may be absorbed—a process referred to as “active transport.”
Whatever remains behind travels through the tract to the bowel and is expelled. The nutrients which have been absorbed are circulated and processed by the liver and other organs. Some may be stored and others directed to the cells for utilization.
If we look closely at this whole process, we will observe that ingestion, mastication, transport, gastric secretion, and mobility, intestinal secretion and activity, bowel action, absorption, circulation, storage, distribution, and final assimilation within the cell are energy expensive processes. Right to the point where the molecules of the nutrients are enzymatically broken down and energy is liberated, right to this point energy has been expended.
We can now see that in fasting-much of this energy does not have to be expended. In fact it is conserved. First, the nutrients are already in the body. Although they may be stored and subject to reconversion, they are nevertheless beyond the point of absorption, and are therefore more easily available to the body with a minimum energy expenditure. At the same time another grand process of the body is elimination. That is, the particular process by which metabolic toxins (by-products of normal bodily processes) are eliminated from the body.
As you have learned, the living organism is constantly producing toxins. These are substances which are the end result of the body’s chemical processes, and it is essential that may be removed from the tissues and the blood as rapidly as they are produced. This is the process of elimination which is accomplished largely by the kidneys in producing urine, by the liver in producing bile, by the lungs in exchanging gaseous wastes.
In this total process then, we can argue that fasting represents a physiological rest, in that less energy is required for the utilization of nutrients when fasting than under normal conditions of feeding, and that as a consequence, more energy is available for the restorative and recuperative effort that the body is to make which involves increased elimination among the many processes.
We must bear in mind that the average person in this country eats far more food than necessary, exercises far less than needed, and rests far too little. All of these changes result in a build-up of unwanted waste material in the body. For instance, consider fat. When a person eats too much fat, the level of fat in the bloodstream becomes elevated. When there is too much fat in the bloodstream, some of it diffuses into the space between the blood vessels and the cells. When there is too much fat in this space, called the intercellular space, some of the fat diffuses across the cell membrane into the cells.
The result of having too much fat in the bloodstream, too much fat lining the blood vessels, in the intercellular spaces, and inside the cells, is to interfere with normal functioning of the cells. This excess material partially blocks the exit of carbon dioxide and other waste materials from the cells. Poor functioning, called disease, is the inevitable result of this situation. The type of disease depends on the location in the body in which the greatest amount of fat has accumulated.
There are many waste materials, excesses, and other toxins that accumulate in and around cells and blood vessels and cause harm. Consider some of the chemicals that are commonly present in the bloodstream, but cause harm when present in excess quantities.
Cholesterol is one problematic substance. A certain amount is needed for normal functioning. Excesses, however, set the stage for heart disease.
Triglycerides are the fats in our diet and bloodstream. When present in normal amounts, there are no problems. However, excesses also contribute to the cause of heart disease.
Uric acid causes harm when its concentration in the bloodstream rises too high. Gout may result when this occurs.
Glucose (blood sugar) is needed for normal functioning. But, when a person is diabetic and the blood glucose level remains abnormally low, much harm will result.
The fact is that any chemical substance, if present in too great an amount in the body, will cause problems, such as cholesterol, but also chemicals which are not normally present, such as cadmium (strictly speaking, this is a metal, not a chemical).
If any food, even protein (it might be more accurate to say especially protein), is eaten in amounts exceeding the body’s ability to burn up or eliminate, it will accumulate and cause problems. When a person exercises too little, less food is burned and health problems can thus more easily develop.
Finally, when a person is under too much stress or gets too little rest, the body has little energy to devote to the process of elimination.
Consideration of the subject of fasting brings attention to a major, but usually neglected, area of nutrition and biochemistry—that of elimination. Most nutritionists are only concerned with supplying the body with enough food; they give little attention to the damage brought on by too much food and too little elimination of waste.
Imagine the body’s metabolic systems as a funnel. Only a certain amount of food can pass through the small end of the funnel. In the body, this means that only a certain amount of food can be burned by the body to form energy, carbon dioxide, and water; also, the body’s eliminative systems (intestines, liver, kidneys, lungs, skin) can only eliminate a limited amount of excess food. Therefore, when too much food is poured into the funnel, there is a backup. First the bloodstream, then the intercellular spaces, then the cells become loaded with excesses. This condition is called tissue constipation and toxemia.
In society, there is a tremendous concern for intestinal constipation. Yet, the scientific research shows that the main cause of discomfort from the intestinal constipation is from the pressure it causes, not from chemical poisoning from the colon. Compare this to the condition of tissue constipation: here we have a build-up of many harmful chemicals to which all our cells and tissues are exposed. Tissue constipation is hundreds of times more damaging than colon constipation.
And this is where fasting enters the picture. While fasting, the body can remove the chemicals responsible for tissue constipation and toxemia, the very chemicals responsible for a wide variety of diseases.
When a person is fasting, his heart and lungs and kidneys and other essential organs continue functioning. They must be functioning or death would rapidly ensue. To function, these organs need fuel. While eating, this fuel comes from ingested food, yet this source is obviously not available during a fast. While fasting, all nourishment is supplied from within the body.
Hygienists have long recognized the wisdom behind the functioning of the body. To maintain the blood acid/alkaline balance, or the blood sugar levels, or the body temperature, or the blood pressure level, requires tremendously complicated physiological systems. That the body is able to maintain itself in a steady state, called homeostasis, even when there are great pressures to deviate from this state requires properly functioning mechanisms which are far more complicated than the finest engineer or computer scientist could design.
Yet, there are some scientists who believe that when a person is fasting his body lacks the intelligence and self-protective mechanisms to break down nonessential material within the body first, and thereby spare the essential tissues.
Scientific studies, however, along with the accumulated experiences of 150 years of Hygienic doctors, testifies to the contrary. The body’s innate wisdom continues functioning during a fast. The body is well aware of the fact that tissue constipation and toxemia are interfering with its normal functioning.
In fact, even while eating the body is attempting to break down and remove the waste material in and around cells and blood vessels. During a fast, however, this process is greatly accelerated. The body at this time needs to devote no energy to digestion and absorption of food. This energy, therefore, is devoted to elimination of waste.
Fundamentally, fasting is as simple as this. While fasting, the body breaks down and burns for energy the least essential substances within it first. After a period of weeks (2-6 weeks in the nonobese person), this process is completed. When all waste material and nonessential substances (fat reserves) have been eliminated, the fast is finished. If a person continues not to eat, he will be starving. During this period of time, the body will break down and burn for energy its essential tissues. A doctor can easily tell when a fast ends. The way in which this is done will be discussed in future lessons.
Scientific research has totally confirmed this metabolic scenario. When the average person begins to fast, the body initially will burn for energy the glycogen which has built up in the liver and muscles.
This glycogen, formed from blood sugar (glucose), is present in only small quantities. Once the glycogen stores are exhausted, which occurs in just a few days, the body will burn mainly fat, a non-essential reserve material which has accumulated not only in the thighs and buttocks but in and around every cell and blood vessel in the body. After the fat is gone, the body will begin to burn the protein which is in excess.
For many years, scientists believed that the brain could only live on blood sugar. This is important in the discussion of fasting for the following reasons. First, the brain usually burns 20% of the body’s blood sugar; it is, therefore, a major consumer of energy materials. Second, if it can only live on blood sugar, this must be supplied to it while fasting. Third, while fasting, after the glycogen stores are used up, the only source of sugar is from breakdown of protein. Fourth, if protein is used to supply the brain with sugar from the beginning of a fast, there must be a tremendous breakdown of liver muscle to feed the brain. And fifth, if this occurs, fasting for over a few days will be exceedingly dangerous.
It is for this reason that scientists criticized fasting prior to 15 years ago. But about 15 years ago, scientists found that during a fast the brain will undergo metabolic conversions so that it can burn fat. This spares blood sugar, which in turn spares body protein (mainly muscle and liver), which in turn vastly prolongs the amount of time during which a person can safely fast.
For 135 years, Hygienic doctors had claimed that the average person can safely fast for about 2-6 weeks with little or no loss of essential tissue. In the last 15 years, conventional nutritional scientists have finally come to adopt this view. But beware of those doctors and researchers who have not read a textbook or scientific journal published in the last 15 years; they will still say that the brain can only live on sugar and that fasting is therefore dangerous! You would be surprised to know how many doctors are not aware of the research which as been published in the last 15 years.
So, what does the body do when you fast? Dr. Shelton lists four main activities.
When digestion is suspended for a period of time by fasting, far less blood flows to the digestive organs. This blood is then free to flow to other tissues in the body, bringing with it essential oxygen and other nutrients which are needed for healing. This extra blood also serves as the vehicle in which wastes can be carried away.
In regard to elimination of wastes, consider the situation with cholesterol. Most of the cholesterol stored within the body is lining the blood vessels, setting the stage for a heart attack or stroke. While fasting, a person is obviously ingesting no cholesterol in food. Therefore, there is no added dietary cholesterol entering the bloodstream. Yet, blood tests show that the level of cholesterol commonly goes up during the first 7-10 days of a fast, then decreases afterwards. Where is this cholesterol coming from? Scientists believe the source is deposits of cholesterol in the blood vessels. The body, in an effort to cleanse its blood vessels, breaks down the deposits of cholesterol in the blood vessels and liberates it. This cholesterol is either used (to build new cell membranes, to form adrenal hormones, or other such functions) or eliminated by the liver in the bile. This is an excellent example of the body’s accelerated elimination during a fast.
Another body function that increases during a fast is fibrinolysis. Clots in the bloodstream are usually covered by a meshwork much like a spider’s web called fibrin. These clots are extremely dangerous: if one lodges in a small blood vessel in the lungs, the blood supply to that part of the lung will be obstructed and part of the lung may die. The clot is called a pulmonary (for lung) embolism (traveling clot). The process is called pulmonary infarction (death of part of the lung).
While fasting, the body’s ability to dissolve clots is greatly increased. This process, called fibrinolysis, does not permit such problems as pulmonary embolism and is part of the body’s effort at healing such problems as thrombophlebitis (inflamed veins, usually in the legs, where clots often form and break loose to travel to the lungs).
Also during fasting, the process of autolysis is accelerated. Each cell in the body contains the seeds of its own destruction. When the need presents, itself, the cell will release its own self-destructive enzymes and self-destruct. This is autolysis. As stated earlier, the body will break down and burn nonessential substances first for energy while fasting. One source of nonessential material is diseased tissue such as benign tumors (fibroid tumors of the uterus are a good example). During the fast, the process of autolysis leads to the breakdown of this type of tissue which has hampered normal functioning.
An important body activity during a fast is greatly increased diuresis. Diuresis is the excretion by the kidneys of salt and water. Medical doctors give diuretic drugs to high blood pressure patients in order to decrease the amount of salt and water in the body, which will then result in lower blood pressure. Diuretic drugs, however, damage body tissues. While fasting, the body spontaneously and automatically eliminates salt and water without damaging body tissues. This diuresis is of tremendous health benefit.
The list could go on forever. While fasting, the ability of the body’s defensive army of white blood cells to destroy virulent bacteria and digest waste material is accelerated. An experiment compared the ability of these cells to destroy virulent bacteria when taken from the bloodstream of someone who had been eating, versus cells from someone who had been eating, versus cells from someone who had fasted for a few days. The white blood cells from the fasting person were significantly more effective at killing virulent bacteria.
There are some people who advocate juice dieting over true fasting, saying that it is safer and healthier. We can dismiss the safety claim, since true fasting is safe if done the proper way under experienced supervision. We can also dismiss the claims regarding health. (While it is true that much less energy is expended when a person is on a juice diet than when they are eating solid food, however, when no food is taken at all (solid or liquid), the conservation of energy is greatest and the healing potential is therefore also greatest.—ed.). Therefore, we have objective evidence that there are more health benefits from water fasting than from juice dieting.
The general conclusion is that while fasting, the body’s healing and repairing and rejuvenating and eliminating powers have more energy and resources to do their work effectively, efficiently, and rapidly.
But can a fast do everything? Can a fast heal any health problems? First of all, let’s consider the implications of this mistaken terminology which is in widespread use.
A fast does nothing! A fast only provides a condition during which the body can effectively build its health. Don’t think of the fast as an independent actor with a life of its own. This is a carry-over from mistaken medical thinking which claims that drugs act on the body. Drugs do not act in the body. They are inert and lifeless! In fact, the body acts on the drugs. The one and only actor at all times, in health and disease, regardless of diet or drug, is the body. This is totally the case while fasting. The body acts, not the fast. The fast only provides the proper condition.
So, instead of asking “what can a fast not do,” we must ask what can the body not do while fasting. The body does not have unlimited powers of healing. As the lifespan progresses, the powers of healing diminish. An adult, for instance, can only rarely display the physiological vigor seen in an infant in regard to fever. A fever is a defensive measure intelligently initiated by the body. When the body raises its temperatures to higher levels, greater amounts of waste are burned up. An infant’s healing power is so vigorous that it can raise the temperature to high levels in a short time. Yet an adult, whose healing powers are relatively weaker, cannot mount such an intense defensive action. An adult’s fever rarely reaches the height seen in an infant.
The limited ability of the body to heal itself determines the extent of healing during a fast. This power of healing is far greater than most people realize, so it could be a grave error to decide, without consulting a Hygienic doctor, that there is no hope in any individual case. Yet it is equally erroneous to indulge in inane optimism and claim that the body is capable of healing and resolving any problem during a fast. Totally destroyed tissue in a joint, as seen in very advanced cases of arthritis, can usually not be reconstituted even under the best conditions as provided by a fast. Hygienists have found that the body is not usually able to destroy malignant tumors while fasting, nor can it rebuild the “insulation” around nerves that has been destroyed in multiple sclerosis.
But the happy truth is that the vast majority of human illnesses can be helped by fasting. Fasting, in fact, provides the best opportunity for the body to heal itself. Yet the body does not have unlimited powers of self-repair. An experienced professional Hygienic doctor is able to judge in any individual case what the prospects are for recovery.
In future lessons, we will discuss the specifics of which conditions are helped by fasting; all the aspects of managing a fast; how to break a fast; and how to live after a fast.
What is the difference between fasting and starving?
People who are ignorant of the subject say there is no difference. In fact, there is a large difference. Fasting is the period of time during which a person is ingesting no food, but is living off of nonessential reserve material inside his body. Starvation begins when all non-essential reserve material has been used up, and the body must therefore begin to break down and burn for energy essential tissues.
What does a fast do?
A fast does nothing. A fast only provides a condition in which the body can more rapidly and effectively heal and normalize itself.
Is there very much scientific research on fasting?
Yes. From the early 20th century up to the present time, a tremendous amount of research has been done on fasting. Many papers have been published in the finest scientific journals. Scientists have a profound understanding of the biochemistry, physiology, and metabolism of fasting.
Why do many people say that fasting is not safe?
Mainly because it is emotionally objectionable to go without food, since food means love and comfort and security to most people. Also because it was not proven until recently that the body will spare its protein reserves and burn mainly fat during a fast; this makes fasting essentially safe for most people.
Why consider fasting?
Because most people overeat, get too little exercise and rest, and are generally not mentally at peace, we get a build-up of toxins and waste material in the body. When a person fasts, the body will break down this material and either burn it for energy, or eliminate it. Also, during a fast, the body increases the level of repair activity, secures a complete rest, and rapidly loses weight.
Isn’t it better to go on a juice diet than fast totally?
No, water fasting (going on water alone) is far superior to juice dieting. For one thing, the elimination of salt from the body which occurs so rapidly while fasting and results in health improvement will not occur at all while on juices. Don’t think of juice dieting as fasting. While on juices, a person ingests large amounts of calories, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.
Can every disease be “cured” by fasting?
No. Remember, fasting is not a “cure.” Fasting only provides the optimal condition for self-repair. This process of self-repair has its limitations also, depending on the case.
In March, 1963, newspapers around the world described the almost incredible story of the seven weeks deprivation of food and the survival of Ralph Flores, a forty-two-year-old pilot of San Bruno, California, and twenty-one-year-old Helen Klaben, a co-ed of Brooklyn, New York, following a plane crash on a mountain side in Northern British Columbia. The couple was rescued March 25, 1963, after forty-nine days in the wilderness in the dead of winter, over thirty days of this time without any food at all.
By means of a fire, a lean-to and heavy clothes in which they wrapped themselves, they managed to withstand the bitter cold. During the first four days after the crash, Helen Klaben ate four tins of sardines, two tins of fruit, and some crackers. Twenty days after the crash, the pair took their last “food”—two tubes of toothpaste. Melted snow became their diet, for breakfast, lunch, and the evening meal. “For the last six weeks,” she explained, “we lived on water. We drank it three ways: hot, cold and boiled.” Varying it in this way helped reduce the monotony of their single item menu of snow.
Miss Klaben who was “pleasing plump” at the time of the plane crash, was happily surprised, at the ordeal’s end, to learn that her weight loss totalled thirty pounds.
Flores, who was more active during their enforced fast, had lost forty pounds. Physicians who examined them after the rescue, found them to be in “remarkably good” condition.
Many thousands of men and women have gone without food for much longer periods, not only without harm, but with positive benefits. Periods of abstinence under such taxing conditions as the ones these two people endured and survived are extremely rare.
One of Sweden’s distinguished biochemists, Dr. Ragnar Berg, a Nobel Prize winner and an authority on nutrition, says, “One can fast a long time, we know of fasts of over a hundred days duration, so we have no need of fearing that we will die of hunger.”
The actual time period of abstinence forced upon Mr. Flores and Miss Klaben was of relatively moderate duration. The question is not how long man can fast, but what are the provisions of nature that enable him to do so.
Wear and waste, repair and replenishment, are continuous and almost simultaneous processes in all living structures, and none of these processes halt during a fast. The hibernating animal in the far north must produce sufficient heat to maintain body warmth. Both man and animal, while fasting, must breathe and the heart must continue to pulsate. The blood must continue to flow and the organs of elimination must continue their work of freeing the tissues of waste. The vital functions of life must be carried on, even if at a slightly reduced rate. Cells must be replenished, wounds must be healed. All of this, as I know from years of observations, goes on during a fast.
All manifestations of life—movement, secretion, digestion, and similar processes—depend upon the use of the materials of the body. If an organ is to work, it must be supplied with the materials with which to work. In the absence of fresh supplies with which to replace those that have been used up, the organ wastes and weakens. If life is to continue, a basic irreducible level of activity is imperative. Even the hibernating animal, with activities reduced to a bare minimum consistent with continued life, must breathe and the heart must pulsate.
An understanding of the process by which the body nourishes its vital tissues and sustains its essential functions during prolonged abstinence, and the sources upon which it draws, will help us understand how the body can survive periods when outside food is not available or cannot be digested.
The normal body provides itself with a store of nutritive materials that are put away in the form of fat, bone marrow, glycogen, muscle juices, lacteal fluids, minerals and vitamins. Always the healthy body maintains in store adequate nutritive reserves to tide it over several days, weeks, or even over two or three months of lack of food. This remains true whether fasting is enforced, as in the case of a plane crash or of entombed miners, or is brought on by illness where one cannot swallow or digest food, or by free choice as in voluntary fasting to lose weight. When food is not taken, the body draws upon its reserves with which to nourish its functioning tissues. As this reserve is used up, weight is lost.
Basic in the fasting process is the fact that our “built-in pantries” contain sufficient nutriment to hold out, in most instances, for prolonged periods, especially if they are conserved and not wasted. In the blood and lymph, in the bones and especially in the marrow of the bones, in the fat of the body, in the liver and other glands and even in the individual cells that make up the body, are stores of protein, fat, sugar, minerals, and vitamins which may be drawn upon during periods of scarcity or when food is not usable.
Neither animal nor man can survive prolonged abstinence from food unless he carries within himself a store of reserve food on which the body can call in emergencies. The fasting organism will not be harmed by abstinence so long as the stored reserves are adequate to meet the nutritive requirements of its functioning tissues. Even thin individuals carry a reserve of food in their tissues, to tide them over periods of abstinence. These people too, may safely fast for varying periods.
By a process known technically as autolysis, achieved by enzymes in the tissues, these stored reserves are made available for use by the vital tissues to which they are carried by the blood and lymph as required. Glycogen or animal starch stored in the liver is converted to sugar and distributed, as needed, to the tissues. It is significant that, even in prolonged fasts, no beriberi, pellagra, rickets, scurvy or other “deficiency disease” ever develops, thus showing that the reserves of the body are generally well balanced.
Fasting has been shown to improve rickets and calcium metabolism. In anemia, the number of red blood cells are increased during a fast. I have observed benefits in pellagra during a fast. The biochemical balance may be maintained and even restored while fasting. It is important to know this, for if it were not so, the fast would prove to be deleterious.
Numerous animal experiments have shown that underfeeding, as contrasted with overfeeding, tends to prolong life and to provide for better health. Other experiments involving fasting rather than underfeeding, have shown that fasting not only prolongs life, but results in a marked degree of regeneration and rejuvenation.
Thousands of observations of both man and animals have established the fact that when the physical organism goes without food, the tissues are called upon in the inverse order of their importance to the organism. Thus fat is the first tissue to go. The stored reserves are used up before any of the functioning tissues of the body are called upon to supply nutrients for the more vital tissues such as the brain and nerves or the heart and lungs. As it feels among its supplies for proteins, sugars, fats, minerals, and vitamins, and redistributes, utilizes, and conserves these stores, the fasting organism exercises an ingenuity that seems almost superhuman.
The aggregate of tissues of the organism may be regarded as a reservoir of nutriment which it may call in any direction or to any part as needed. But these tissues are not sacrificed indiscriminately. On the contrary, wastage of those organs that are primarily essential to life is repaired by withdrawal from less essential organs of materials required by the more important ones. Many of the necessary nutritive constituents, and this is especially true of certain minerals, are vigorously retained.
Studies made on men and animals to determine losses of various tissues and organs in prolonged abstinence from food have almost all been made on organisms that have died of starvation. Starvation and fasting are two totally different stages of abstinence. It should be quite obvious that the extreme losses seen at the starvation stage of abstinence are far greater than they are in a fast of reasonable length. Extreme weight losses are not experienced in any normal fast. Where they occur, the fast should be broken.
One must differentiate between fasting and starving. To fast is to abstain from food while one possesses adequate reserves to nourish his vital tissues; to starve is to abstain from food after his reserves have been exhausted so that vital tissues are sacrificed. We are not left unwarned as to when the reserves are nearing exhaustion. Hunger returns with an intensity that drives one to seek food, although during the fast proper, there is no desire for food. This differentation between fasting and starving should help to dispel any notion that starvation sets in with the omission of the first meal.
Contrary to popular and even professional opinion, the vital tissues of a fasting organism, those tissues doing the actual work of life, do not begin to break down the instant a fast is instituted. The fasting body does lose weight, but this loss, for an extended period, is one of reserves and not of organized tissues.
The efficiency of the living organism in regulating the expenditure of its resources during a fast is one of the marvels of life.
In periods of abstinence, the less important organs of the human being, although they waste consequent upon the withdrawal of substance from them with which to nourish the more vital tissues, do not undergo degeneration until the starvation phase of the period of abstinence is reached. The atrophy of muscles may be no greater than that seen to occur from a lengthy period of physical inactivity, while there is no loss of muscle cells. The cells grow smaller and the fat is removed from the muscles, but the muscle retains its integrity and a surprising amount of strength.
Loss of weight varies according to the character and quality of the tissues of the individual, the amount of physical and emotional activity engaged in, and the temperature surrounding the faster. Physical activity, emotional stress, and cold and poor tissues all provide for more rapid loss. Fat is lost faster than any of the other tissues of the body.
Bodily condition is, perhaps, the chief determiner of how long one may safely fast. In the case of the two who survived the plane crash, and went four weeks without food, for example, they had snow which is water and this kept them from the danger of dehydration. They could live without food; the lack of water would have been fatal. Voluntary or involuntary, the faster must have water.
It is clear then that fasting must be carried out intelligently, with proper precaution, and with common sense.
Precisely as a novice swimmer would seek expert guidance and advice before starting on a long swim, so the inexperienced faster must obtain reliable guidance as a precautionary measure before launching upon a fast of any extended duration.
Reprinted from Fasting Can Save Your Life
When we closely examine the animal world we discover that fasting is almost as common as feeding. But aside from fasting per se there are two similar conditions which are related to our subject. They are hibernation and aestivation.
It is a universal verity that animals have some means of adaptation to food scarcity. Obvious examples of this are squirrels storing nuts, bees, storing honey, chipmunks storing roots and nuts, beavers storing twigs, and finally other animals capable of storing significant food reserves within themselves. These are the animals which hibernate. They undergo a period of winter sleep. Their metabolism is slowed down and they take no food for long periods of time. Bats, mice, hedgehogs, woodchucks, toads, lizards, snakes, flies, wasps, bees, bears, crocodiles, and alligators are among those that undergo some degree of hibernation. True hibernation is a dormant state of existence accompanied by great diminution of respiration, circulation, and metabolism. At this time, the animals’ functions are almost suspended. Body heat is little. Action of the heart is almost imperceptible, and as much as 40% of the animal’s total weight may be exhausted by the time it recommences feeding.
True hibernation is restricted to only a few animals: hedgehog, doormouse, marmot, and bat. This is a state where most of the essential vital functions continue at a very low level or degree. They are referred to by biologists as “imperfectly warm blooded types,” which are unable to produce enough heat to make good their losses in cold weather. It is probable that the biologists’ conception is inaccurate because in a number of species it is only the female that hibernates, which would suggest that it is food scarcity rather than temperature that precipitates hibernation.
Conversely, aestivation is a similar process which occurs in the summer time, and quite obviously these are not cold blooded animals. An example is the tenree of Madagascar. This climatic dormancy requires that the organism makes a variety of gradual physiological and biochemical adjustments that apparently correlate with temperature, light, and food scarcity.
Different hibernators adapt to different sets of conditions. Some store food, others do not. Some accumulate a great deal of fat and food reserves, others do not. However, there is a general preparation for the period of hibernation. An increase in fat deposition and adjustments of body temperature or what appears to be a “resetting” of the body thermostat are common. Metabolism adjusts, the heart and cardiovascular system show generally lower levels of activity.
A number of biochemical changes associated with the nutritional adaptation are evident. There is an increase of the element magnesium in the blood and the endocrine glands reduce their activity. This is especially so of the gonads. It is generally agreed among experts and observers that hibernation follows normal sleep. In other words the state is entered via sleep.
If, however, hibernation is to be looked upon as a type of sleep, it is an extremely complex one. But one factor which is dominant is energy conservation. All the adapted devices conserve the energy of the organism concerned.
One extremely interesting feature of hibernation which is of particular interest to us in our studies of fasting is the apparent improvement of health experienced by hibernating animals. According to observers, they do not develop “infectious” diseases. They are said “to have a greater resistance to disease,” or at least some of its causes. It is claimed that the host’s defensive mechanisms against parasites and their proliferation is substantially increased, it has also been demonstrated that the hibernating organism is more resistant to radiation and especially are the tissues rejuvenated and more capable of healing following the period of hibernation. Hibernation is in many ways an important survival mechanism.
As I mentioned earlier, hibernation and aestivation are interesting examples in our quest for understanding the biology of fasting; but as it is not possible for man to significantly reduce his physiological and metabolic processes, we cannot extrapolate from the lower mammals to man knowledge which is gained in this way.
It need hardly be said that the living organism requires materials with which to work. It requires nutrients to fuel its biological processes. It requires nutrients as a source of energy and to provide the needed materials for the repair of wear and tear, for healing or regeneration, and for reproduction. It also requires a variety of other essential substances, minerals and vitamins, which are necessary for the regulation of the body’s processes. Simply stated, it is not possible for an organism to survive without nutrients.
Professor Morgulis states that during a fast, an organism is living off the fat of the land. The Gila monster, a large lizard of the southwestern desert in Mexico, in fact a poisonous reptile, has a conspicuously large heavy tail. This is a source of nutrients in times of food scarcity and it is well known that the lizard is capable of going for extended periods of time without food. In one observation, one fasted in excess of two months.
It is commonly thought by people that the camel, having a large hump, is capable of travelling long distances without water. It is more true that the camel is capable because of its hump of going for long periods of time without food. The fat-tail sheep of Iran has an enormous reserve of nutrients available to it during times of scarcity. During periods of abundance, it stores food in the tail which is utilized when scarcity prevails.
As we would expect, there are many and diverse differences among the different species of animals so far as fasting and stored food reserves are concerned.
As we have seen, some animals hibernate—they are inactive for long periods, perhaps six or seven months. Conversely, there are animals that engage in vigorous physical activity while fasting. The Alaskan fur seal bull and the salmon are common examples. The fur seal engages in tremendous and relentless sexual activity over a period of twenty to thirty days during which it takes no food. During their long upstream swim salmon do not take food. It is also claimed that whales are capable of abstaining from food for long periods of time.
Professor Morgulis states in his book, Fasting and Under Nutrition that “active growth and regeneration are not incompatible with inanition and the wear and tear at least in some organisms is so completely repaired as to evade for a long time the effect of nutritional stringency. Inanition does not preclude the ability for extreme and sustained exertion.”
It should be stressed that so far as our own discussion is concerned, we are advocating fasting as a means of physiological rest and this should be associated with physical, mental, emotional, and sensory rest so far as practicable.
One of the most unusual and fascinating examples of fasting is that it takes place during metamorphosis which represents a complete change of form during the life of an insect or other living creature. A good example of this is the tadpole during its period of transformation to a frog. It does not shed its tail, the tail contains nutrients; proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and vitamins. It is a source of nourishment for the changing organism.
We observe the process of “autolysis” which is the breakdown of stored nutritional reserves by the inter and intracellular enzymes. The nutrients are not usuable as glycogen, fat, protein, etc. They must first be digested inside and thus supply the changing organism with basic materials to develop its new form. We will observe in this that the process of “autolysis” is a rigidly controlled series of events. The developing frog does not suddenly lose one of its newly formed legs or part of an eye. It only breaks down the needless tail.
Another example of this important biological process, which in life is going on all the lime, is the common aspect of healing with the absorption of a ring of calus, which temporarily supports a fracture, when a bone has sustained an injury. By this remarkable process, this supporting ring is slowly removed. We see evidence of the same thing where congestive deposits surround a lesion, cut, or surface on the body—how these are rapidly broken down and removed. There are literally thousands of examples of fasting in nature, and it is indeed almost as common as feeding.
46.2. Determining Who Should Fast
Article #1: When To Fast by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #2: Physical Rest by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #3: Pounds That Slip Away by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #4: Does Fasting Cure Disease? by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Regarding the proper time to fast, Dr. Shelton maintained that the time to fast is “when it is needed.” He states, “I am of the decided opinion that delay pays no dividends; that, due to the fact that the progressive development of pathological changes in the structures of the body with the consequent impairment of its functions does not cease until its cause has been completely and thoroughly removed. Putting off the time for a fast only invites added troubles and makes a longer fast necessary, if indeed, it does not make the fast futile. I do not believe that any condition of impaired health should be tolerated and permitted to become greater. Now is the time to begin the work of restoring good health; not next week, next summer, or next year.”
So it is agreed that, when needed, fasting should begin as soon as possible. But how do you determine when fasting is needed? There will be definite indications that will manifest themselves, and at this point, there will be no question that a fast is required.
We can assume that when there is no hunger, there is also no physiological need for food. Hunger will be absent when: (1) there is no need for food, such as soon after a meal, and (2) when there is an inability to digest and assimilate food, such as occurs during acute diseases (e.g., colds, flu, etc.). When hunger is absent, therefore, no food should betaken.
If food is taken when the body lacks the ability to digest, putrefaction or fermentation takes place. This will result in the liberation of toxic by-products from the decomposition within the stomach. Toxins thus liberated enter the blood and tissues and contribute to toxicosis.
Pain, fever, inflammation, and abdominal distress cause one to lose his normal desire for food. Under such conditions you should refrain from eating until hunger returns. In acute disease, hunger is not present because the vital energy of the body is diverted into other channels. Since all energies are directed toward healing and repair, there is none to spare to carry on digestive work. Blood is also diverted toward the parts requiring healing. Under these circumstances, digestion is completely suspended. Yet, food is often taken under medical advice. It is said that we “must eat in order to keep up our strength.” In such cases, the food is often vomited or expelled through the digestive tract by means of diarrhea. If not, the food becomes a burden adding to the poisoning of the body.
Even when these unwanted food materials are expelled from the body, precious vital energy is used up during the process. Forces are diverted from the work of repair and wastefully expended in an effort that could have easily been avoided by fasting. Recuperation is thus slowed.
In many cases, during acute and chronic diseases, a person may feel hungry. In reality, it is not hunger that he feels but a morbid craving for food. Hunger is often misinterpreted by a headache, irritability, restlessness, lassitude, drowsiness, faintness, a feeling of emptiness, gnawing pains in the stomach, etc. In fact, none of these symptoms indicate true hunger. Hunger is a normal, pleasant physiological demand for food that is felt in the mouth and throat as is thirst. Since it is a normal occurrence, it is not accompanied by pain or discomfort.
One simple method of determining true hunger is to think of how much time has elapsed since the last meal. If you desire to eat while the last meal is still digesting you are not hungry. If your last meal was a heavy one that included nuts or avocado, your next meal should not be for at least four to five hours.
Remember that genuine hunger is not associated with pain or discomfort. A healthy individual can easily miss a meal or two without feeling weak or experiencing pain. If he does, it is a sure sign that a fast is indicated, followed by a change in eating habits.
People who feel faint or experience headaches upon missing a meal are going through “withdrawal symptoms” from the addictive substances that they ingest with their foods. The more one is addicted to salt, condiments, coffee, tea, etc., the more severe the symptoms. The quickest, surest, and safest method of ridding yourself of these addictions is through a fast. Dr. Susanna W. Dodds stated that “the sense of all-goneness in these cases is not from a lack of nutrient material, but owing to the absence of the habitual stimulus.”
The hunger of the poorly-nourished individual (one who consumes processed foods such as refined sugar and flour; cooked foods; meat; etc.) is of the same nature as the drug addict who is deprived of his drug. They experience such symptoms as gastric distress, pains in the stomach region, a gnawing in the stomach, weakness, headache, etc.
On the contrary, normal muscular contractions are not painful, they tend to be pleasurable. Hunger is not a pathological state and is not manifested by symptoms of disease.
Dr. Shelton says, “The truly hungry person has no consciousness of his stomach and does not suffer any morbid symptoms. Indeed, genuine hunger is such a delightful sensation that it is worth going on a fast merely for the pleasure of experiencing it.”
The rule of nature in acute disease is go to bed, keep warm, and abstain from all food until hunger returns. Fasting in fevers was commonly employed by Neapolitan physicians over one-hundred-and-fifty years ago. They frequently permitted their fever patients to go for as long as forty days without food. Dr. Shelton states, “When in pneumonia and pleurisy, the patient is fed, not only is the toxic saturation kept up, but feeding retards resolution; that is, it prevents the inflamed lungs and pleura from returning to normal.”
When animals become sick, they instinctively refrain from eating. They remain quiet and rest until their appetite returns and at that time, it is a sure sign that they are recovered. The same requirements apply to man. That is, quiet, rest, and fasting, with a little water as demanded by thirst. But often, man refuses to allow himself to be guided by instinct as the animal does, and eats in spite of lack of hunger. By so doing, he weakens his body even more.
In all types of acute diseases, the whole organism is occupied in the task of eliminating toxins. It is perfectly natural that the body should rebel against food during this time. Such symptoms as anorexia, bad breath, coated tongue, nausea, vomiting, excretion of mucus, diarrhea, etc., indicates that the body is occupied in the work of elimination and is not able to digest food.
During acute illnesses, it is often advised that meat broths be served. These broths not only do not contribute to health but produce the “soil” for disease. During my bacteriology classes at school, we often used meat medias to culture our bacteria. This media proved excellent for producing large colonies of various types of bacteria since the “soil” or “food” for these bacteria was close to ideal. While we know that bacteria do not cause disease, they are present in many disease conditions. When the “soil” is ideal for bacteria to proliferate, they will do so. This is an excellent indication of toxicosis due to the decomposition of food and bacteria in the stomach and digestive tract.
Since acute disease is an effort on the part of the body to rid itself of excess toxins, you should not interfere with or abort that effort by adding more toxins to the body by ingesting the exact food that resulted in excess toxins to accumulate in the first place. Actually, even the best foods are potential toxins during acute illnesses.
Dr. Shelton says that one of the rules for the sick is to stop the absorption of all toxins from the outside. He states, “Feeding during acute ‘disease’ does just the opposite. It keeps the digestive tract full of decaying animal and vegetable matter, which the body must void or absorb. Putrescence arising from gastro-intestinal decomposition, grafted onto the pre-existing enervation, toxemia and dyscrasis, form the cause of practically all the so-called ‘diseases’ from which man suffers.”
During acute gastritis, the mucous membrane of the stomach is red and swollen. There is little gastric juice and very little acid excreted, with considerable amounts of mucus present. With the stomach in this condition, and with appetite lacking, it would be senseless to eat. Fasting in such a case is the only rational procedure. Without the irritating presence of food and its products of decomposition, the body will proceed to heal and health will be restored.
An example of feeding during disease is demonstrated in the peptic ulcer patient. Peptic ulcer is the general term given to an eroded mucosal lesion in the stomach or the duodenum. It is claimed that excessive excretion of hydrochloric acid is the cause of this condition. While this may be the irritating or immediate cause, the underlying reason the hydrochloric acid is secreted above normal is due to general enervation and toxicosis. The generally accepted dietary “therapy” involves a “bland” diet. This diet consists of exactly those foods that contributed to the general enervation and toxicosis in the first place. Foods often recommended include milk, eggs, cooked refined cereals, custard, Jell-O, ice cream, white bread, cheese, and creamed soups. These foodless “foods” do not contribute to health.
Complete abstinence from food is indicated in such cases to allow the body to heal without the irritation of food. This, is the quickest and surest manner to recover health. The strong “hunger pains” that are said to be felt by such patients are not true hunger.
Another example of feeding in disease is dietary therapy for such intestinal disease as diverticulosis and diverticulitis. Instead of searching for the underlying cause of this condition, physicians palliate symptoms and make matters worse. Dietary therapy in such cases would make any well man sick. It includes milk, coffee, tea, carbonated beverages, eggs, cheese, meat, soups, cooked strained vegetables, cooked strained fruits, white refined bread, refined cereals, white rice, macaroni, noodles, spaghetti, and other refined products. Man could live many times longer on water alone than he could on the diet described for diverticulosis. Any value found in the fruits and vegetables are cooked away, and straining and pureeing makes them worse. Again, a fast is indicated followed by correct eating habits and the body will once again be restored to normal.
Any pain that a person may experience is known to lessen while fasting. Dr. Shelton has witnessed many patients with pains of acute articular rheumatism subside and the patient became comfortable after three or four days of fasting.
The time to fast is before a disease becomes chronic. If a fast is undertaken when the symptoms of acute disease first manifest themselves and a more healthy lifestyle is adhered to, chronic diseases will not occur. What often happens, however, is that when symptoms of acute illnesses arise, they are suppressed by various drugs, etc. The body is never allowed to eliminate its toxic overloads that have accumulated over a period of time due to unhealthful living habits. Due to this constant suppression and continued bad habits, chronic diseases develop. At this point, many people turn to fasting as “a last resort.”
In spite of all the abuses that the body has been put through previously, beneficial results occur through a fast at this time. One important feature about fasting in chronic diseases is the marked acceleration of eliminations that occurs. The body is thus speedily freed of its accumulated toxic load. Symptoms disappear that were sometimes of years standing. In this regard, Dr. Shelton says, “A properly conducted fast will enable the chronically ill body to excrete the toxic load that is responsible for the trouble, after which a corrected mode of living enables the individual to evolve into a vigorous state of health.”
Fasting has been instrumental in bringing about the recovery of persons suffering from asthma, arthritis, diabetes, various tumors, heart disorders, and numerous other diseases. Why was fasting so effective in all of these diverse diseases? The reason is that the diseases may differ as to the symptoms that they manifest but the underlying causes remain the same. Two people practice bad habits for years, one of them being about as indulgent as the other, and one of them develops asthma, the other develops arthritis. Health may be restored in each case by the same means—fasting.
Dr. Shelton cites a case of a young singer who had developed a serious asthmatic condition and could no longer sing. The doctor gave her no hope and told her that there was no “cure” for asthma. She finally had to give up singing, and she retired to her farm. Then she heard about Natural Hygiene and the concept of the importance of the body’s own healing capacity. She decided to give this system a chance. Upon consulting with Dr. Shelton, she decided to fast. In a matter of weeks, the asthma cleared; and within a few months, she was back singing. Her career had been saved and so was her health. Keep in mind, however, that fasting did not do anything, but provided the ideal conditions for the body to heal.
Another example of fasting in chronic disease is cited by Dr. Shelton. This case involved a man who had arthritis for twenty-eight years. Dr. Shelton describes the case:
“With the passage of the years, joint after joint became involved until the patient was a twisted and distorted man walking with the aid of crutch and cane, in a much stooped position. He was unable to turn his head from side to side, and he was in constant pain.
“He was told that there was a possibility that some of his joints would remain ankylosed. There is no way to unfuse ankylosed joints. They remain fixed, immovable. The good news was, in this case, however, that he could be freed of pain. He could be restored to usefulness and he could enjoy life.
“This man underwent a lengthy fast—one of thirty-six days. There was great improvement. He was freed of pain, witnessed the disappearance of swelling from some of his joints, its reduction in others, and the slow return of movements to joints that had long been stiff.
“It took four years to complete all the improvements possible in this man. During this time, he had a second long fast and several fasts of a few days each. His eating between fasts was carefully supervised. He was given daily sun baths; and after a certain amount of initial improvement had been made, he was given daily exercise.
“Result: his spine is almost straight, the use of his arms and legs is normal, he can turn his head, he walks in a nearly upright position, he does not use cane or crutch, he has no pain, he looks the ‘picture of health,’ and he works like a slave.”
This case was an extreme one requiring a lengthy period for recovery but it serves to illustrate what the body can accomplish when given the proper conditions.
Dr. Dewey said, “There are no overweights who would not receive the greatest benefit by a fast that would diminish the pounds to that of the ripest maturity of life, a fast that would be determined by the time required to reach the desired number of pounds.”
Fasting is not only a quick, safe, and effective way to lose weight but the added benefit of ridding the body of toxic debris is a bonus. Fasting will help the obese individual overcome his food addictions to sugar, caffeine, and junk food, and make a smooth transition to a more healthful way of eating.
When the overweight individual undergoes a marked reduction of weight during a fast, general improved health is indicated by freer breathing, greater ease of movement, increase of energy, cessation of symptoms of indigestion and other discomforts, lowered blood pressure, and lessening of the load the heart has to carry.
On the average, the individual loses about two-and-one half pounds a day on a fast. Since hunger is almost always absent during this fast, it is a much more pleasant way to lose weight than the popular reducing diets. These diets often include unwholesome foods, and weight loss is often minimal. The dieter soon becomes discouraged and once again indulges in his former manner of eating. If weight loss is obtained through such a diet, it often results in flabbiness or sagging of the skin and tissues. This does not usually occur during the fast. So fasting is rapid and fast, more pleasant than reducing diets, and no flabbiness or sagging of the skin results.
People often ask how much weight loss per day is safe in fasting? Dr. Shelton says that the body itself decides what rate of loss is proper. When fat tissue is soft and flabby, weight is usually lost rapidly in the early days of the fast. In other individuals, the rate of loss may be considerably slower, but the end result will be the same. That is, total weight reduction and improved overall health.
Any form of drug addiction is a foolish attempt to obtain relief from headaches, nervousness, irritability, and other symptoms through suppression. The craving for these drugs inevitably leads to enervation of the nervous system. Addicts will take their coffee, alcohol, tobacco, etc., to “calm their nerves” and they feel faint and weak without them. This is an illusion. The drug effect makes them unaware of their true condition. These poisons do not make them stronger but result in more weakness and enervation. It is not the drug that forms the habit but it is man. And it is he who must suffer the consequences from his unwise habits.
Nothing enables the drug addict to overcome his false “need” for his poisons better than does the fast. Few drug addicts have sufficient willpower or physical strength to overcome their addictions without help, and the fast will provide such assistance. These people will be able to abandon their former habits and their overall health will be markedly improved.
The alcohol habit progresses slowly until it reaches a chronic stage. During this progression, all bodily systems have become enervated and damaged to a certain extent. The alcoholic is a chronically-sick individual. With this in mind we can readily see why fasting is of great benefit in this case. During this period of rest, the abused organism undergoes healing and repair and eventually regains its wasted vital energies. By the end of the fast, the body will have eliminated its accumulated toxins and the nervous system will be restored to health (as far as there was no permanent damage).
Alcoholism is an illness involving structural abnormalities. It has been found that alcohol causes damage to all tissues where it comes into contact. As a person drinks a glass of alcohol, it causes damage to the esophagus by direct chemical irritation to its mucosa, by inducing severe vomiting that tears the mucosa, or by interfering with normal motor functions thereby causing an upward movement of the stomach acid into the esophagus where it can erode the tissues.
As the alcohol passes into the stomach, it includes inflammation and bleeding lesions of the stomach. The degree of the damage it causes to the stomach lining appears to be related to alcohol concentration, with damage to the cells occurring rapidly after alcohol ingestion. In the small intestine, the impeding peristaltic waves are decreased by alcohol and propulsive waves are unchanged, resulting in an increased rate of propulsion through the small intestine. This effect is seen as a possible contributing factor to the diarrhea frequently experienced by binge-drinking alcoholics. Intestinal malabsorption may also result from alcohol ingestion.
As alcohol passes through the liver, it inhibits the conversion of amino acids to glucose. Alcohol can also stimulate hepatic synthesis of certain other proteins, including lipoproteins that transport fats in the blood. This effect may explain the elevated blood triglyceride (fat) levels frequently seen after alcohol ingestion. The alteration in fat metabolism may result in a gradual accumulation of fat in the liver and a “fatty liver.” This condition can result in the liver failure and death. Alcoholic hepatitis is a major effect of heavy chronic alcohol consumption and may be a precursor stage of cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the liver where functioning liver cells are replaced by scar tissue.
Alcohol has adverse effects on the nervous system. Brain nerve cells generate and conduct electricity, transmitting information to an adjacent nerve cell by the release of specific chemicals called neurotransmitters. The receiving cell provides feedback to the transmitting cell regarding the message sent. Each cell can receive and integrate information from many others, a function that alcohol can alter.
Electrical currents in nerves are transmitted from the membrane of the nerve cells to the inner cell. This mechanism is closed when the resistance of the cell membrane is reduced at any point, resulting in electrical changes carried by sodium and potassium ions flowing across the membrane in a movement called the action potential. Alcohol impairs the opening of the mechanism, so the nerve has difficulty refiring. Neurophysiologic studies have shown that ethanol inhibits the sodium current in the action potential.
Alcohol consumption results in heart enlargement, abnormal heart signs, edema, enlargement of the spleen or liver, noisy breathing, electrocardiographic abnormalities, and disturbances of cardiac rhythm and conduction.
Dr. Dewey maintained that the alcoholic can only recover his health through a fast. He says, “Only through a fast that shall let that distressed stomach become new from regeneration, that will let the brain accumulate rest in reserve.”
When the alcoholic fasts, the tissues of the stomach, intestines, liver, heart, nerves, etc., begin to repair themselves and healing takes place. Glands and nerves that have been so enervated by overstimulation are allowed to rest. Nerve energy is restored; and by the end of the fast, the former alcoholic feels stronger and more vital than ever before. He will no longer desire alcohol as Dr. Shelton explains:
“When the alcoholic has fully recovered from his illness and hunger has returned, no form of alcoholic drink will tempt him and should he attempt to drink some form, he will discover that he no longer ‘likes’ it. It will bite and sling as it did when he first took it as a youth. He will be a free man again—no longer a slave to King Alcohol.”
The use of tobacco results in symptoms of irritability, grouchiness, nervousness, and uneasiness. The user of tobacco may repeatedly try to discontinue this habit but fails and returns to his poison to supposedly sooth those same symptoms that were first induced by the tobacco. He lacks the willpower and determination to stick it out until the nerves have repaired themselves.
Fasting is extremely useful in these cases. It makes the discontinuing of the tobacco habit very easy, and in a few days, the very taste of this substance becomes repulsive. Dr. Shelton says, “I have seen heavy smokers who smoked half a lifetime, after a fast, become so ‘sensitive’ to the obnoxious fumes of tobacco that the odor of a cigar wafted to their nostrils from a block away was objectionable to them.”
In all other drug addictions (such as marijhuana, cocaine, heroin, etc.) rest—physical, mental, and physiological—is the greatest need. After a short time, the craving for these poisons will diminish and soon disappear. The gradual tapering-off process that is often resorted to for drug addicts is not a wise procedure as this process continues to injure, and no real benefits are gained.
At the very onset of the fast, often violent withdrawal reactions take place. It is recommended that these fasts take place under the direct supervision of one who is experienced in fasting. These withdrawal reactions soon cease as the patient continues the fast. The body will then proceed to repair the damage that was done by the drugs, and toxins will be eliminated. Of the many cases that Dr. Shelton has observed at his Health School, he states that none have ever returned to their former drug use.
Dr. Shelton says, “There, is hardly a time of life or a condition of body in which a fast cannot be helpful.” There are some individuals who should only fast under supervision, but, in general, everyone can be benefitted by an occasional fast. You do not have to be acutely sick or suffering from some chronic ailment to profit from a fast. This physiological rest provides an opportunity for the body to restore vital energy that cannot be accomplished as well by rest alone. When the body is greatly fatigued, there is reduced ability to digest food. It would be unwise to eat under such circumstances. Rest is needed. When the body has regained vitality and hunger returns, the fast should be broken.
To eat a certain number of calories or a certain amount of high-grade protein will not insure health if the body is unable to properly digest and assimilate it. You may eat the best of organically-grown food but if the body is exhausted or under emotional stress, the food will ferment, and instead of contributing to health, there will be an opposite effect. Toxicosis will result from the decomposition of these foods. The proper response, under these circumstances, would be to fast until such foods can be digested.
Dr. Shelton states, “Our golden rule in eating has long been: if not comfortable in mind and body from one meal to the next, miss the meal. If the healthy individual overeats, eats under states of fatigue or excitement so that discomfort follows the meal, it is well to miss the next meal. If there is worry, fear, anxiety, grief, inner conflict, or other emotional stress, miss one or more meals.”
Children often instinctively know when to fast and for how long. When the child refuses food, it is best to leave him alone until natural hunger presents itself, and he will demand food at that time. Children will lack all desire for food when they are ill. When they are enervated and toxicosis presents itself in the symptoms of gastritis, enlarged tonsils, constipation, diarrhea, gastritis, feverishness, etc., there will be no demand for food. Under such circumstances, the child should be allowed to fast until all symptoms disappear and hunger returns. These children should never be forced to eat as food will decompose in the stomach and its toxins will just make matters worse.
In dealing with the child, competent Hygienic guidance should be sought and followed. Sometimes a child may request food even though he is suffering from a cold or flu, but food should not be given until all symptoms have subsided.
Dr. Emmet Densmore says, “It is frequently, perhaps usually, said of this or that or the other baby that it is fretful or peevish. It is fretful because it is ill, and it is ill usually because of improper feeding. The same error that adult human beings make in regard to themselves is made in regard to the feeding of children—they are fed too often and too much.”
Infants may suffer from indigestion due to excessive handling, overfeeding, or eating candy and other unwholesome foods. One of the first signs of such indigestion is noticed by white specks in the bowel movements. This indicates that the milk is not being digested. It is often wise to skip a feeding or two at this point. If the condition is corrected at this point, no other adverse consequences will develop and health will be restored promptly. If not corrected, inflammation of the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine may develop.
It is also important that the infants and children be properly fed after the fast. A diet of fresh raw fruits, vegetables, and nuts is proper for the child. Mother’s milk is ideal for the young infant followed later by freshly-made fruit juices or fruit purees made from fresh raw fruits.
Regarding the proper food for infants and children. Dr. Densmore says, “Cereal or grain and all starch foods are unwholesome for all human beings; but this diet is especially unfavorable for children, and more especially for babies. The intestinal ferments which are required for the digestion of starch foods are not secreted until the infant is about a year old; and these ferments are not as vigorous as in adults for some years. All starch foods depend upon these intestinal ferments (enzymes) for digestion, whereas dates, figs, etc., are more nourishing than bread and cereals, and are easily digested—the larger proportion of the nourishment from such fruits being ready for absorption and assimilation as soon as eaten.”
Concerning fasting in children Dr. Shelton states, “....while always acting under proper Hygienic direction with your child, do all that you can to let the natural tools of rest, and peace and quiet restore the child if there is upset or illness—or even if it is only a question of how much he wants to eat.
“For there are ways in which the instinctive wisdom of the infant or child in such matters may be far greater than we could possibly guess.”
Pregnancy is a normal biological process that should not be accompanied by pain, discomfort, or any abnormal condition. In their natural state, animals do not suffer with nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Primitive women are said to experience no sickness during pregnancy. This indicates that “morning sickness” and vomiting are not normal developments during pregnancy. If a woman suffers nausea and vomiting, it is not due to the pregnancy but to the toxicosis that was developed over a period of time before her pregnancy.
The body attempts to provide the ideal conditions for the developing fetus. It therefore goes about a “house-cleaning” to eliminate toxins that would make these conditions less than perfect. Many changes take place in a woman’s body during pregnancy. Glands long dormant awaken to activity. Her whole body undergoes a strengthening, renovating process. If a woman has been living healthfully, there will be no trace of unpleasant symptoms. If renovating work is needed, then a fast is called for.
A few days’ fast (longer fasts should not be undertaken during pregnancy) will enable the body to rid itself of toxins and thereby provide suitable surroundings for the fetus. After the fast, if a healthful lifestyle is led, health will be kept throughout pregnancy.
As Dr. Shelton points out, the dangers of fasting are so slight they are almost negligible or insignificant. He lists several contraindications to fasting that are often made.
Weakness itself is not a contraindication for fasting but is a sign that the body is in a state of toxicosis and is ready for an eliminative crisis. In this case, supervised fasting is very beneficial. Persons with heart disease have been known to make full recoveries following a fast but close supervision is again required.
Most so-called deficiency diseases are not due so much to lack of essential nutrients as they are due to inability to absorb and utilize those nutrients. Fasting will enable the body to eliminate toxins, restore vital energy, and readjust and realign itself so that all available nutrients can be efficiently utilized. If a healthful diet is eaten after the fast, no deficiencies will arise.
In fact, certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies have been known to correct themselves during the fast while no food is being taken. The body will normalize itself during the fast and utilize stored nutrients.
There is a difference between fasting and starvation. Starvation results from food being denied to a person whose reserves have been exhausted, and, in its extreme stages, leads to death. Fasting, on the other hand, is a period of rest and renewal with a potential for remarkable benefits with the body using its stored reserves as food.
We are not so much concerned with how long it will require a man to die from want of food, but how long he can safely and beneficially abstain from food. A little over three months are the longest fasts that have been recorded in man and these have been in overweight individuals. The man of moderate weight would not fast so long; and he would not need such an extended period of fasting. It has been said that a well-nourished adult can remain alive from fifty to sixty days without food, provided, of course, that he has water. Hundreds of longer fasts have been recorded and most of these have resulted in great benefit to the fasters.
The organism requires time to do its “housecleaning.” If we were to arbitrarily set a time limit for this important work, we would stand in the way of recovery. The best way to determine the length of the fast is to be guided by the developments. It is not possible to know how long it will take a stomach ulcer to heal, or for an asthmatic to attain full recovery. Since it is not advisable to break the fast in advance of complete healing, you must be guided by certain signs.
When symptoms disappear, it is a favorable sign, but it still does not indicate that the fast is to be broken. One of the surest indications is a clear tongue, sweet breath, and return of hunger. This may occur after two days or two months or longer depending on the individual.
Occasionally, it is necessary to break the fast before these signs manifest themselves. A sudden fall in blood pressure; a rapid, feeble and irregular pulse; a disturbing dyspnea (difficult breathing) may indicate that the fast should be broken. The attitude of the patient and his emotional stability are factors that cannot be ignored. If the patient is unwilling to continue the fast or becomes excessively worried and anxious, the fast may have to be terminated.
Although it is always best to continue a fast until its natural termination, breaking the fast under such conditions will do no harm as long as proper feeding is carried out after the fast. After a while, a second fast may be undertaken with benefit.
Soon after entering upon a fast, the tongue coats heavily, and this coat may continue to increase as the fast progresses. This coating will persist during the fast up to a certain point when it begins to spontaneously clean itself up. As long as the body is actively eliminating toxins, the tongue will remain coated, but when this elimination begins to decrease, the tongue will clear up and remain clear. Dr. Hereward Carrington says, “A short while before the return of hunger, this cleansing process of the tongue commences and continues until the tongue is perfectly clean, assuming a beautiful pink-red shade—rarely or never seen in the average man or woman; and the terminus of this cleansing process of the tongue is absolutely coincidental with the return of hunger and of health.”
Carrington stated that this coated condition of the tongue indicates the condition of the mucous membrane throughout the alimentary canal since this membrane is so closely interrelated and connected. I would add that this foul condition of the tongue not only is an indication of the mucous membranes of the intestines but also of the health of the mucous membranes throughout the entire body.
If the fast is broken before the tongue clears, the tongue will become clean after eating has resumed. This indicates that elimination has been halted, but it does not necessarily mean that elimination has been completed. It is always best to fast until completion whenever possible.
The breath is also an indication of elimination of toxic debris. Although the breath may be somewhat foul before the fast, during the fast it becomes more so. This peculiar odor of the breath continues during the fast and only becomes sweet when the fast is ready to be broken after elimination has ceased. Dr. Carrington associates bad breath with elimination via the lungs. He says, “Precisely coincidental with the heavy coating of the tongue—following immediately upon the commencement of the fast—is the greatly increased foulness of the breath, showing unmistakably that the lungs are assisting in the speedy elimination of all corrupt matter from the system with the greatest possible speed.”
The above two conditions serve as a unique and constant guide as to the condition of the tasting patient.
As regards to how often to fast, we again must say, rely on instinct. When hunger disappears or acute symptoms appear, a fast is needed. It is important to understand that fasting is a tool that enables the body to redirect its healing powers where needed. It is not a “cure.” You should not use fasting as a crutch to lean upon every time you choose to live unhealthfully between fasts. Fasting is but one part of an entire way of living that will maintain health. In between fasts, the other conditions for health should be adhered to. This includes proper food and water, exercise, sunshine and fresh air, rest and sleep, and emotional poise.
Does everyone undergo violent crises during the fast?
Disagreeable crises only occur in a small percentage of cases. Everyone can fast for a few days without inconvenience. According to Dr. Shelton, most fasters go through even a long fast with nothing more dramatic developing than they experienced during the regular activities of life. Most of the work of excretion is carried on silently and without the production of troublesome crises. In the human body, it is the task of the excretory organs to expel all waste and all foreign material that may find their way into it. They continue to do this, usually with greater efficiency, during the fast.
Can older people fast?
The older person can fast with beneficial results if done under supervision. Dr. Shelton has conducted numerous fasts in both men and women whose ages ranged from sixty-five to eighty-five. Many of these patients had long fasts from thirty to over forty days.
Could you review the basic rationale of fasting?
Dr. Shelton outlined four important facts about fasting; he says:
I have heard that fasting has a rejuvenating effect. Is this true?
Yes, this is true. The body is constantly going through a process of regeneration. This daily renewal of cells and tissues delays old age and early death despite the abuses that are imposed upon the bodies of most people. Fasting enables the processes of renewal to out-distance the processes of degeneration and the result is a higher standard of health. Regeneration of the muscles, tissues, and bones is possible through this method. During the fast, we may actually tear down much of the body and then rebuild it and have a renewed one.
The rejuvenating effect upon the skin is visible to all. Lines, wrinkles, blotches, pimples, and discolorations disappear. The skin becomes more youthful, acquires a better color and a better texture. The eyes clear up and become brighter. One looks younger. The rejuvenation is also present throughout the entire body.
Called the “hunger cure” by European nature curists and many early Hygienists, fasting has shown by “large experience,” as Robert Walter, M.D., expresses it, “... that a moderate hunger-cure is exceedingly beneficial in the great majority of diseases. Indeed, in many of them the capacity to appropriate food is entirely destroyed, the very thought of it becoming repugnant to the individual.”
“Rest and the hunger-cure,” Walter regarded as the “proper treatment” of those who were suffering from overwork and overeating. He pointed out that when there was functional impairment, coated tongue, and bad breath, no food should be taken. When uncomfortable in any way, stop eating until feeling well, he advised.
Kittridge says, “If a person has a coated tongue, fetid breath, and bad taste in the mouth, you may be pretty sure it will do him good to fast—appetite or no appetite.” Judgement is required, wrote Kittridge, to determine when to put a person who still has an “appetite” on a fast. “When they don’t have a desire for food,” he continues, “no sensible man will think of eating or giving others to eat.”
It is a mistake to think that food is a daily need under all circumstances. To constantly feed an irritated stomach is like kicking a man when he is down. Constant tampering with the stomach when it is as much in need of rest as the remainder of the body is to invite disaster. It is no uncommon thing to find sufferers whose disease is largely due to overfeeding by their physicians in an effort to affect a cure. We see people gradually dying of malnutrition—malassimilation, starvation—in spite of the fact that they are eating regularly. We see physicians urging invalids to eat, urging the eating of foods that should be excellent for a well person; yet the patient, doing all he can to comply with the physician’s instructions continues to waste. He lacks power to digest the food. The physician needs to know that continued eating under such conditions can kill. If eating does not prevent sickness, how will more feeding restore health? How will overfeeding be helpful?
Fasting is useful only because of wrong life. It is better to live right than to turn into excesses, and then fast. It is also better to take a short fast early than to permit yourself to get into a condition in which a long fast is required. If a fast is taken at the first signs of disease, perhaps ten days will be adequate. If, after years of suffering and considerable loss of weight, a man may still safely fast for more than forty days, surely a shorter fast would have been well borne at the beginning.
Writing in The Hygienist, June 1912, Dr. R. R. Daniels of Denver, Colorado, gave an expression to a view that has been widely held and that is still held in certain circles. He said: “... the sick should fast only when the system is unable to care for food. ... Always in acute disease when fever is present, or when in the absence of fever the patient is suffering from shock. ... In illness without fever but in which the appetite is entirely lost or the organs of digestion are entirely disabled ... frequent disturbances of digestion or elimination due to overfeeding in which the appetite is entirely lost or the organs of digestion are entirely disabled ... frequent disturbances of digestion or elimination due to overfeeding in which the appetite is temporarily lost. ... Except for the occasional ‘storms’ attended by intense pain or other distress which inhibits digestion to the extent that it is impossible to take care of food, fasting is not the best treatment for chronic disease. While in chronic disease, the power to take care of food is always impaired, often badly impaired, nevertheless there are usually some foods which can be digested and utilized, and these should be given ... fasting should be used only when disease is present to the extent that digestion is suspended ...”
This view was shared by Dr. Henry Lindlahr (Chicago) of Nature Cure fame, who held that fasting should be employed only in acute disease and during the crises that arise in chronic disease. Many others have accepted this view of fasting, despite the fact that, even in those many thousands of cases of chronic disease that complain of a lack of desire for food, and that everything they eat causes suffering, there is present the power to digest some food. Dr. Daniels gave it as his opinion that in chronic disease “if the feeding is limited only to the foods which can be utilized, chronic disease can be eliminated more rapidly and the nutrition built up faster than by fasting.”
Although frequently employing and advising the fast in conditions in which there is considerable digestive power, Tilden often expressed views that harmonized with the view of Daniels and Lindlahr. For example, he once wrote that, except under certain circumstances (circumstances that are relatively rare) he did not believe in long fasts. Then he added: “It is better to adopt a rational and suitable diet and take from one to two and three years to assume the normal.” His very language implies that a normal state may be attained earlier by the use of the fast, although he thinks that the slower method is preferable.
With this view I find myself in strong opposition. I am fully aware that a much longer time is required for the evolution of good health if the fast is not employed in preparation for and in initiating a new way of life, but I know of no valid reason why one should be content to take so long when, with the fast, he can safely and advantageously shorten the time required. Must we always await the development of a severe crisis before we avail ourselves of the advantages of a period of abstinence? Must we deny ourselves the benefits that accrue from a period of physiological rest merely because we have no fever and no severe pain? Or can we fast at intervals and prevent the evolution of a body-state that necessitates a crisis? This, to me at least, would seem to be the wiser plan.
To this end the practice, a very ancient one but followed by many people today, of fasting one day out of each week, is rarely adequate. The ancient Aryans abstained from all food and drink one day out of every seven; the Mongolians fasted every tenth day; the Zends rejected all food every fifth day; the Bible mentions the practice among certain of the ancient Jews of fasting one day a week. All of this is certainly beneficial, but our present view is that one day a week of fasting lacks sufficient cumulative value to be adequate to meet the requirements of the chronically ill.
Daniels says, “Missing a meal or two when ‘out of sorts’ or feeling badly ... is the most common use for fasting. A coated tongue, no appetite and general lack of vigor and energy mean that you should miss a meal or two and give the body an opportunity to right conditions. This simple treatment will frequently avoid attacks of serious illness.” Thus, while he agrees that the fast may be employed as a means of preventing the evolution of crises, he too severely limits its use.
I am of the opinion that the rule he gives for determining the length of the fast should apply to the chronic sufferer as well as to the sufferer with acute disease. In discussing how long the fast should be continued, he says: “This is a difficult question to answer in a general way since each case is a law unto itself. One thing is certain, however; to get the best results, no food should be taken until the power of digestion and nutrition has returned. In those having fever, food should not be taken until the fever has permanently subsided. At this time, the appetite will return and the tongue will become clean and moist, indicating that the digestive fluids are present in the stomach and intestines. In general, a fast should be continued in the cases suitable for fasting until the above conditions of the tongue and appetite prevail, until the patient is free from distress, and until he can take, without disturbance, the foods mentioned in the following paragraph.”
If the chronic sufferer has a poor appetite or no appetite, if his tongue is coated, his taste foul, if there is afoul odor to his breath and in general he does not feel good, if there is pain and distress, or as they often express it: “Nothing I eat seems to do me any good,” why shall he not fast at once and not wait for the evolution of a crisis? If the body gives every indication that it has accepted the proffered opportunity to rest and clean house, what is the need for arbitrarily limiting the duration of the fast?
Commonly we say that the activities of an organism should be proportioned to its nutritive intake and, keeping this in mind, we should have no difficulty in understanding that with the shutting off of income of food, there should be some reduction of physical activity—although how much this reduction should be is not immediately determined.
On the whole, we adopt the position that the faster should rest—physically, sensorially, and mentally. Here we are thinking more of the needs of the sick than of the requirements of the fasting organism. It is the profoundly enervated individual who is in need of rest. The more he can relax and rest, the more rapid will be his recuperation and the more efficient will be the processes of repair that go on in his body. The relatively healthy individual, who is much overweight and who is fasting to reduce weight is certainly not to be placed in the same class with the sick and weak man or woman, who is fasting for physiological rejuvenation.
This, I think, well illustrates a principle that I want to stress at this point: namely that any rule that we can lay down for the conduct of a fast is in the nature of a generality and must be adapted to the individual faster. To insist that all fasters adhere to the same rules to the same extent is to ignore all the various individual factors that render possible or necessary certain modifications of the fasting program that fit it to individual needs and conditions. We cannot deal with people as though they are exact replicas of each other and as though the condition of one is identical with the condition of another.
The primary purpose of rest is the conservation and recuperation of energy. I make no pretense of knowing what “life-energy” is nor its source. I think that a knowledge of this is not essential to the understanding of our subject. We are all well aware that sleep, which is the most complete form of rest (there being the fullest rest of mind and senses, as well as complete physical relaxation in sleep), is a period of recuperation and replenishment. Rest and relaxation in a quiet place, with no worries or anxieties on the mind, but in the wakeful state, is almost equally a period of recuperation and replenishment. Rest and sleep are nature’s grand representative, recuperative and restorative processes; activity and excitement are grand representative processes of expenditure.
Rest does not mean a complete suspension of all of life’s activities, as in periods of suspended animation. Indeed, during sleep, certain of the body’s most essential activities are most actively carried on. When, in Life’s Great Law, Dr. Walter stated that the success of the work of the living organism is inversely proportioned to the degree of its activity, he had in mind only certain more obvious forms of activity. The fact is that, the success of the work of the organism is directly proportioned to the degree of its activity in certain basic functions. Witness the processes of growth and repair that are carried on very actively during sleep. Whatever replenishment may mean, in the final analysis, it is a process that is carried on most rapidly during sleep. It may be correct to say that the anabolic activities (that is, the building up processes) of life are most efficient during this period.
I fully agree with Dr. Daniels when he says that “rest from physical exertion is necessary when fasting for any length of time,” but only if we limit this to the fasting sick individual. He says that “unless he is really ill the man of average vigor can go without food for twenty-four hours and continue his usual work, but if his condition is such that he should go without food for a longer time, he should rest absolutely.” Thus he also makes a distinction between the healthy and the sick individual. I again agree that “if he (the faster) has fever he should go to bed and remain (there) until the temperature is normal and digestion has returned.”
When he again stresses the need for rest, saying, “the man who is not possessed of the average physical vigor should not miss more than one meal without discontinuing his usual work and resting,” he may overstate the case for rest while fasting. Missing two or three meals without going to bed and resting is not catastrophic in its effects upon the average chronic sufferer. True, it does not provide the benefits that the fast coupled with rest provides.
I do agree that “the idea that man should go without food for long periods of time and keep up his usual work, or indulge in walks across the country, and other athletic stunts, is all wrong.” In the early part of this century, when Dr. Daniels was writing, many fasting enthusiasts accomplished stunts requiring extraordinary exertions while fasting. A little later, the marathon runner and man of vigor and endurance, George Hasler Johnson, attempted to walk from Chicago to New York while fasting. These feats of physical strength and endurance are of tremendous value as showing the resources and possibilities of the human organism and they provide us with a basis for confidence when we undergo a fast, but they have no place in any rational plan of caring for the sick man or woman.
Rest while fasting not only provides for comfort but it hastens the processes of recovery. It is important that we keep in mind that the sick man is enervated and that rest is the means of recuperation.
The big business of losing weight, figure control, diet-in-comfort plans and similar programs have developed into one of the great industries of our age. Everyone considers himself an expert. Fad diets rage for a few months and give away to the next crash wonder. This week it is an ice cream diet. The next it is bananas. The week after that a protein diet, nothing but juicy steaks. Eat yourself thin!
Overweight is becoming an increasingly perplexing problem, not only for adult men and women, but for children also. Several facts are responsible for this, but, in general, we may say that the increased abundance of food, together with the increased income of the American people, on the one hand, and the changes in work resulting from the shortening work day, shortened work week, modern transportation, and the many labor-saving devices that take much of the burden off the shoulders of men and women, have resulted in the increase of weight. Just at a time when our reduced labors have reduced our need for food, increased production, artificially increased palatability, and increased income have served to increase our food consumption.
Hygienists are realists. Nothing can circumvent the fact that the quickest, surest, safest way to lose weight is by fasting, and the surest way of maintaining the proper weight level is by refusing to return to the wrong eating habits.
The disappointingly slow method of losing weight by “going on a diet” is rarely very successful for the reason that it is a long drawn-out process requiring more self-control and a much longer period of control than the average person is capable of. A not uncommon outcome of such programs is that, after a brief period, during which time a few pounds are lost, the obese individual returns to his prior overeating and puts back all the weight lost, and often additional pounds. Only rarely does one see an obese individual stick to a reducing diet for a prolonged period.
To begin with, as I have stated in many lectures, and will continue to remind the reader, do not enter upon a fast on your own without the guidance of an expert in the field of conducting fasts. While fasting is perfectly safe as a health and weight-reducing measure, it does involve the complex human organism, and it should be watched over and directed at all times by a qualified person who knows what he may expect, or what trouble signs to watch for during the fast.
How much can one expect to lose? The loss rate of course varies with the individual, but the average for a protracted fast runs around two-and-one-half pounds a day. Is this heavy weight loss safe? It is a long as it is conducted under proper controls and with proper and continuing rest. Let me cite here briefly the most striking advantages of fasting for weight reduction:
When the overweight individual undergoes a marked reduction of weight, several indications of improved health follow immediately:
All of these evidences of benefit are noticeable, but the improvements are commonly out of all proportion to the weight loss, thus indicating that reduction of the amount of food eaten itself resulted in improved health. There is every reason for thinking that the greatly-reduced intake of sugar, starches, and fats and the overall reduction of the amount of food eaten is beneficial.
In 1962, a woman began to fast to reduce weight under my guidance. At the conclusion she told me: “It has been an amazing experience—the pleasure of seeing those pounds melt away. I never saw fat go so fast.” Another woman remarked after a fast of fifteen days undertaken for reducing: “I was at a well-advertised health spa. They kept me on a diet of seven hundred calories a day. I was hungry all the time. This fast has been a pleasure.”
A third woman said after a week of fasting to lose pounds: “This has been the most remarkable experience of my life. I have enjoyed this fast and rest. I never knew before that people fast, but I have enjoyed it.”
Are these expressions typical? Hardly. Fasting is not always the pleasant experience these women found it to be, but it is rarely disagreeable enough to justify discontinuing it until one’s goal has been attained. And it is frequently a far more pleasurable experience than many people have in their daily eating habits. In many conditions of life, every meal is followed by discomforts and even actual pain. In these states, the fast is often such a relief that it becomes a joy.
There is always great satisfaction in watching the fat melt away at the rate of two to four pounds a day. To lose nineteen pounds in a week is a highly pleasing experience (there are exceptions in which the weight loss is not so great) for the first several days of the fast. The rate of loss is not uniform and there are periods when the scales register no loss for a day or two at a time. The rapid loss registered at the beginning of the fast does not continue through the whole of a long fast.
Not only is there safety in fasting for weight reduction, there is also greater ease than there is in dieting. One reason for this is that unlike, almost all dieters, the faster is not hungry all the time. His taste buds are not constantly tempting him. The flood of gastric juices is not being constantly activated.
The faster may experience some desire for food during the first or second day of the fast or may not desire food at all. Hunger subsides usually by the end of the third day. And unless the fast is broken for some reason, the faster can continue without experiencing either weakness or hunger.
I state these facts out of my own personal experience but they are also verified by investigations. Two series of experiments carried out by regular medical men in accredited hospitals, have developed empirical evidence sufficient to satisfy the experimenter scientifically that fasting is not only a safe and speedy way of reducing weight, but is also the most comfortable way of reducing.
One of these experiments was carried out by Lyon Bloom, M.D., in the Piedmont .Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, where he conducted a lengthy series of experiments on fasting in reducing weight. This was followed up by Garfield Duncan, M.D. of the University of Pennsylvania who is regarded as an authority on weight reduction and whose independent tests include Bloom’s findings and conclusions.
These two medical investigators found that fasting men lose an average of 2.6 pounds a day, while women tasters lose an average of 2.7 pounds a day. Both Bloom and Duncan confirm that the fasters were not hungry. Instead, they reported an amazing absence of hunger with no apparent mental or physical strain. One of the fasters was quoted as saying: “I feel better than ever before in my life.” A woman faster, after forty-eight hours without food, volunteered the information that she was not half so hungry as she used to be after missing a single meal.
Bloom is quoted, from the summary of the experiments: “The present preoccupation with eating at regular intervals leads to the misconception that fasting is unpleasant.” He stated further, that, in his opinion, as the result of the findings of these tests, fasting is well tolerated by the human system provided there is free access to water. In a later series of experiments, Bloom permitted a faster to go four consecutive weeks without food, with no ill effects. In reading his report of experiments to the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, Duncan declared: “although short periods of total fasting may seem barbaric, this method of reduction is marvelously well tolerated.” He added that we have evidence that these obese persons fully enjoyed the total fasting periods, due probably in part to their elation that hunger is not a problem while major reductions in weight are being accomplished.
Both men reported that in longer fasts the weight loss levels off to about a pound a day. Bloom stated fasting has also proved to be an extremely effective method of weight control.
In the healthy individual who is fasting only to lose weight, I do not insist on rest in bed but permit considerable exercise—even at times giving a prescribed course of physical workouts. This does not increase the rate of loss as much as one might expect, but it does assist in retaining the tone of the tissues.
The amount of exercise required to reduce weight by exercise alone is far more than the average person is willing to undertake and more than many of them should undergo. To lose one pound of fat requires playing twenty-three holes of golf, sawing wood for ten-and-one-half hours, riding a horse for approximately forty-three miles.
Exercise always has the added hazard of increasing the appetite. During the fast it should be controlled and used only to the extent that the adviser feels desirable for the individual undergoing the fasting process.
While there are varying rates of metabolism, my experience indicates that most obesity is due, not to glandular disorders, but to habitual overeating. There is little truth in the idea that with some people everything they eat turns to fat. The real truth is that they are eating not only more than they should, but more than they really want.
How much weight loss per day is safe in fasting? The answer here is that since fasting is total abstention, the body itself decides what rate loss is proper. When fat tissue is soft and flabby, weight is usually lost rapidly in the early days of the fast. I have seen losses ranging from four to six pounds a day in fasting. The loss of twenty pounds in a week is not at all difficult in a great many cases.
With those who have a very low rate of metabolism, the rate of loss from the outset of the fast is slow—at times even disappointingly so. Let me reiterate once more, any fasting of more than a few days should be done only under experienced supervision. In all cases where there is any organic defect or chronic ailment, such as heart disease or blood deficiency, even the shortest fast should be supervised. Again let me say there is no essential danger in fasting but one must be properly safeguarded against any danger from hidden conditions that might reveal themselves when no food is taken.
I cite the possibility in order to give the rounded picture of fasting. Let me reassure the reader, however, that such dangers are rare. If the reader is in good health, and follows the proper procedures under proper experienced guidance, the fast should be not only a way of losing poundage, but an exhilarating and exciting adventure, the beginning of a new way of thinking about oneself.
We do not claim that fasting cures disease, but simply that it enables the organism to heal itself. What, then, does fasting do?
When we say that fasting is neither a cure-all nor a cure at all, we do not thereby intend to limit its scope or its field of usefulness. Indeed, the more we learn about this element of nature’s hygiene, the more useful we find it to be. As it is used as a rest and is employed where there is great need of a physiological housecleaning, it is effective in all states of disease, even in deficiency diseases, where it is commonly thought that more of certain food factors are essential, the fast has proved to be very helpful. Thus, what may appear on the surface to be an indiscriminate resort to the fast, turns out, upon analysis, to be no more indiscriminate than the employment of water or food or exercise in the same great variety of conditions. When we once grasp the fact that fasting is not employed as a cure and that it is not something that is good in certain so-called specific diseases, but may not be good in other so-called specific diseases, we understand that its use in all the conditions of impaired health is not an indiscriminate use.
47.1. Establishing Your Credentials As An Authority
47.2. The Actual Conduct Of The Fast
47.1.1 Developing “En Rapport” With Your Guests
47.1.2 Your Conduct As An Operator of a Composite Personality
In the light of the great providence of the wisdom of the body as was so beautifully expressed in Lesson Six of this wonderful course of instruction, it is with great humility and concern that I even accepted the challenge of preparing this lesson. I am proud and delighted that the procedures that we have employed in working with people who have been fasting (at the Life Science Health School, Yorktown, Texas) have been sufficiently correct and constructive as to merit the consideration of the school faculty and staff to offer service in whatever way that is necessary.
We have found that the intelligence and wisdom which is an integral component of the body that is undergoing a fast is, indeed, quite able to handle the situation in a most efficient and awesome manner when we refrain from interfering in any way. We can recall one fast, in particular, in which a guest appeared in our presence more dead than alive. Her breath was coming in “thimbles-full” and the exertion of just trying to breathe seemed almost overwhelming. She had to remain in an upright position to be able to breathe at all when it was obvious that she was completely exhausted and should have been reclining in a restful position. We covered her with a blanket and propped her upright in a recliner with pillows.
Through the grace of God or the creative force or power or by whatever name you may call it and the exercise of what proved to be good judgment, the guest improved. Her improvement was slow and frustrating to those of us on the outside of her body that felt something should be done, and we were guided to do just that—we did nothing. We let the innate providence and wisdom of that frail and debilitated body do “its thing” as we sat by and observed, helping as we could from time to time.
In a matter of five days, the first two of which seemed twice their usual length, the “innate intelligence” within that woman’s body completely healed her to the point that she was lying down completely flat upon her bed breathing just as deeply as she had ever been able to do in her life without so much as the slightest indication of apnea or difficult breathing.
To preside over a fast requires many things, all of which are designed to instill faith and confidence within your “guests” that all is going to be uplifting and supportive of life. These guests come into your presence in a fearful state of being, because if they were not fearful for their life, they would not have come to you or the many other practictioners of so-called health before you in the first place.
‘One of the greatest things you can do for your guests is to instill a feeling of hope and build a pathway to a faith in themselves to realize that they do, in fact, have within themselves everything that is necessary to bring them safely back to a state of near perfect health and well-being.
Many of your guests will have been in “fasting centers” or “health institutions” of one sort or another before coming to you. You will be “under the gun,” so the speak, and your reactions and forthrightness in your responses to their questions, both voiced and implied, will determine how well they respond to your suggestions.
When you have established a condition of “En Rapport” with your guests, you will have formed a composite personality between yourself and your guests. If you have been attentive to their needs and have been responsive to them you will have gained the respect and cooperation of your guests and they will follow your instructions to the very letter. Your guests will thereby gain the greatest amount of good wholesome benefit from their time of fasting under your supervision.
To form this composite personality you will have to get to know your guests in a very personal manner without becoming overly intimate or concerned about their personal affairs, beliefs, and customs. They will share those things with you that they want to share and, as you begin to establish your trustworthiness as a pillar of strength and determination, your guests will begin sharing more and more of themselves with you. This can lead to some rather touchy situations wherein you will be hard pressed to maintain the supervisor-guest relationship to the nth degree, but you must prevail. You are the one who has set yourself up as being the so-called “well” person and the guest is the one who is “sick” or “not with it.” You must be part of the solution to their problems as opposed to becoming a part of their problems.
We have found from experience that it is far better to give honest and straightforward answers to the questions you will be asked. If you do not know the answer to your satisfaction, it is far better to simply say you don’t know the answer. Tell them you will try to find the answer for them and then make an honest effort to obtain it—one that is satisfactory to both yourself and your guest. None of us knows everything—as Will Rogers is quoted as saying, “We are all ignorant in different things.” With the vast amount of knowledge available to the human brain in this day and age, it is no disgrace not to know everything. But you should make a real effort to try to know as much as you can in all subjects relating to Hygiene and Nutrition in their broad sense and application. Bluffing and insincerity are not the hallmark of a dedicated teacher of Hygiene.
Case histories should be as complete and as detailed as necessary to get a good perspective concerning your guests. You need to pry into their affairs as well as you can to determine whether your guest is someone who can benefit from your services. Without their complete cooperation and willingness to turn themselves over to you to get the benefits of your expertise, you are going to be wasting your time as well as that of the guest. When you can find this out early in your program, you will be saving yourself a great deal of trouble and problems. The guest needs to know that fasting is not an easy thing to do, especially one of long duration. He or she should be given some idea of the new and different things that can be experienced, and at the same time, to not be unduly alarmed or frightened at the prospects.
In those cases where there is apprehension or concern, it could be in the best interests of all concerned to feed the guest for a few days while they visit with the other guests who have been fasting to let them learn a little about the effects of the fast. The main point is that you clear the air as much as possible so that the numbers of surprises that the guest experiences through the fast will be minimized.
Upon your acceptance of the guest, you have entered into a contractual agreement more often implied than written but nonetheless a binding contract defensible in a court of law where both parties have their clearly-defined responsibilities.
If for any reason, you feel that your guest doesn’t trust you or is uncooperative with you, you will be well advised to consider not accepting him or her or accepting him or her under certain conditions which should then be clearly spelled out and agreed upon in the form of a written contract. A standard contract format can be made out selling forth the conditions under which you have agreed to work with the guest. This prevents the situation at some later date of “I thought you said I’m a no good so and so.” All you have to do then is refer to the contract.
These types of things (contracts, case histories, etc.) can be prepared in advance and kept on file. After you have accepted the guest following your consultation, you can hand him/her copies of the little packet of “dos and don’ts” so that he/she can immediately begin adjusting thinking to the kind of things you want him/her to consider as long as with you and under your supervision and guidance. These contracts need not be lengthy, cumbersome, or difficult of implementation. You should always operate on the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle, and then you are not later embarrassed by saying something that is obviously uninforcable or redundant.
Many times you will find that the guests have had a long history of constipation or perhaps other troubles with the bowels that make regular bowel movements unpleasant and as a result are not indulged until absolutely necessary. When you encounter this sort of a situation, you should consider placing that guest on a pre-fasting dietary of nothing but fresh fruits high in water content for a period of two, three, four, or maybe five days before commencing the fast. Usually this guest will have had at least one and perhaps more bowel movements over this period of time. When some sort of a near normal bowel pattern has been established, then the actual fast can be initiated.
When you are mailing out your follow-up letters after receiving some notice of a guest’s intentions of coming to you for a fasting situation, suggest that if he or she is or has been having troubles with his/her bowels or elimination, he or she should eat nothing but fresh ripe raw fruits with a high water content for at least a week before arrival in your center or fasting establishment.
The intent of the pre-fast dietary is to nave established a near normal bowel function to minimize the blockage of the bowels when alimentation is resumed at the end of the fast.
By now you will have established a working relationship with your guest (or have dismissed him or her as someone whom you would rather not work with) and are ready to consider the starting of the fast itself. During the first few days of the fast, you are going to have many opportunities to get to know your guest even better as you continue to work together. You should immediately begin to emphasize the various things that the guest will begin experiencing in the beginning of the fast. Headaches (or other types of withdrawal symptoms) will be quite common with most of your guests, and they should be allayed as soon as possible.
As the guest moves into the fast with each passing day they need to be encouraged to do nothing but rest without any form of exercise or attempt of any kind to get up a bit and walk around “to keep the strength up,” etc. You want him or her to want only to rest. It is when he or she has arrived at this state that the body is able to really begin its’ housecleaning operation without hinderence or interference. The real true measure of housecleaning at its very best! When the guest holds on to that idea of reserving energy every day to get up and move around to keep the strength up, that energy is being withheld from the housecleaning procedure. The brain or computer is then in the position of being able to divert all of the efforts to the one job of cleaning out the debris that has been accumulating over the years.
When the housecleaning is finished, the body will again direct the energy back in the muscles and other functions as discussed later in this lesson. It is very important that you have responsible answers ready for your guest’s many questions that will be forthcoming at those times when they are experiencing strange and bizarre feelings and symptoms. Your guest can easily become very apprehensive and concerned unless you have good answers and reactions to questions. The actions you take and the reactions you make to the guest’s many ploys, whether fancied or real, will have a direct bearing upon his or her cooperation and willingness to follow your directions.
You have to remember that you are the “operator,” the “thinker,” the “originator” of the thoughts and actions that are being carried out in the “subject,” the “doer,” the “guest.” The guests are very dependent upon you for their guidance and directions so long as the composite personality is maintained. When you lose that relationship, if it is destroyed in any manner, you the “operator” have lost the confidence of your “subject.” This can be a devastating experience for the guest, because you have left him or her without guidance at a time when not thinking clearly. This is where self-mastery, control, and poise are necessary. These stem from knowledge, understanding, and a feeling of empathy for your guest and his/her problems. If your dedication to the cause of Hygiene and its wonderful results is not there, you can expect some rough sailing on the seas of public relations with storms aplenty in the forms of unhappy and troublesome encounters with lawyers, courts, and just plain irate former guests. If, on the other hand, you have demonstrated your forthrightness in dealing with the overall situation, you can expect rather smooth sailing with only an occasional storm of any consequence.
As your guest progresses in the fast, certain things must be given due thought and consideration. You very closely observe the guest’s progress. If he or she is detoxifying in the usual manner after several days of fasting and resting, all is going well. The actual number of days required to last before the housecleaning is finished will depend pretty much upon the amount of adipose tissue that is available to be used as fuel during the fast. If the guest is well endowed with fuel reserves (obese), many more days will be required to attain the level of a guest less well endowed. In either case, the guest will remain in a state of relative weakness so long as the housecleaning is going on. If the fast must be broken ahead of time, that is before the housecleaning is finished, time must be allowed for the guest to gradually begin eating and making the necessary adjustments to post-fast eating allowing sufficient time for the body lo make its necessary adaptations.
Ideally, the guests should be able to arrange their schedules so that they can “fast to completion” or until the housecleaning is finished. On the other hand, there are many things that come into the picture that may mitigate against such an arrangement, in which case, adaptations will have to be resorted to that are in the best interests of the guest.
When the guest is able to “fast to completion,” the energies that have been used in the actual processes of housecleaning will no longer be needed for those purposes and will be released. The brain, sensing all of the things that are taking place in the guest’s body, will then start shifting energies back into the muscles and the skeletal system of the body. The guest will then begin to feel a new sense of strength and energy returning. The guest will then experience a desire to evacuate the bowels, and the arms and legs will become stronger. At this point in time, it is well to understand and to caution the guest that while he/she may actually feel a surge of strength returning to various parts of the body, it is of very short endurance or for very short lengths of time because there is no reserve to replenish it as it is used up. Many times this strength will be completely used up in a simple little trip to the bathroom or during any type of light exertion. A faster needs to realize his/her actual condition and not overtax him or herself at that particularly critical time in the fast.
As time progresses, the tongue will begin to clear, the breath and mouth will sweeten, and that nasty taste in the mouth will have changed into one of salivation and the dissolution of the phlegm and mucus of the mouth and respiratory passages. The guest is then ready to be considered for breakfast (breaking of the fast). It need not be broken on that particular day but should be done within the next two to three days when everything has pretty well settled down and the body is really ready for food.
When actually ready for food, the throat and sublingual glands will signal the desire for food, and then it is time to break the last—at the discretion of the supervisor in consultation with the guest.
All during the fast, it is a good idea to keep daily checks on the progress of the fast and its effect upon the guest. Each of you will be interested in various aspects of this procedure, but there are certain things that should be considered by all supervisors in the conduct of the fast. Among those things are notations of the guest’s weight, blood pressure, pulse, temperature, urine color, bowel activity, if any, and how the guest is feeling along with your comments and observations of what you are seeing objectively along with the guest’s subjective responses to your questions.
As you gain experience in these areas, you will soon find that what are considered to be standards among the usual and accepted standards of the medical establishment are above the standards of healthy people. Blood pressures of 100-110 over 60-55 are not at all uncommon in healthy people. Pulse rates of 50 to 60 are quite normal for guests in mid-life.
Another important item is the be ever alert to the possibility of your guest not taking enough water which can lead to a state of dehydration. He or she needs to be encouraged to drink water every time the urge is there. If that means providing fasters with warmed distilled water to increase its potability, by all means give it to them that way and encourage them to drink water every time they feel thirsty and to not put it off for any reason.
Some signs that your guest is not drinking sufficient water could include: scanty urine or a highly-concentrated nature; a sallow, light, loose skin that does not have the usual elasticity when lightly pinched and released (sort of sticks together); increasing pulse rate; lowering of blood pressure; lethargic or listless countenance and attitude—a detached or “not with it” response; and possible other signs.
If you note any of these things, start questioning your guest and observe closely the amount of water taken from his/her water dispenser. Don’t wait for most of the signs to appear to start making your inquiries, perhaps the water is becoming intolerable to your guest and you may need to add a few drops of fresh lemon juice to enhance its taste.
In the course of monitoring your guests, you may have occasion to have questions concerning some of the readings or indications. It may help to get on the telephone and talk with a friend—anyone that you know who has some experience in these matters. Your peace of mind will be greatly enhanced. Reference to the section following “Generalities” regarding the slowing down of a fast can also have meaning for you.
In breaking a fast of longer duration than three days, consideration should be given to the best methods for breaking the fast (see Lesson Forty-eight following) in the best interests of that particular guest. Many things need be considered in making these determinations. Some of these will include the age of the guest, the goals of the guest, the length of time he or she has fasted, the amount of toxic materials that have been eliminated, the stability of the guest from a physical as well as psychological point of view, and the state of rapport that currently exists between you and your guest (sometimes it is best to comply with your guest to salvage as much of a deteriorating relationship as is possible).
Following a fast of 15 days or longer, the post-fast dietary becomes more important with the passage of time in the fast. When a person has fasted that long or “to completion,” his or her intestinal flora will have been largely depleted and require a little time to be regained after the realimentation period. An ounce or 28 grams of food may not appeal to the appetite of that particular person who is breaking the fast. This person needs to be encouraged to eat it as gently and easily as possible to reactivate his or her digestive system. Usually by the time he or she has had the second or third ounce (28 grams) of food he or she will begin to have an appetite. By that time, the intestinal bacteria have proliferated and have become active in their own right. The appetite of the guest then picks up gradually, and you can begin giving them slightly larger amounts of food so that by the second day he or she should be able to handle an orange every two hours or perhaps 100 grams (slightly less than four ounces) of grapes or of watermelon. When watermelon is in season and available, I personally think it is one of the finest foods available on which to break a fast.
It seems that from a consensus of opinion that a fast should be broken in the morning so that six meals can be taken—one every two hours between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. to get the alimentary system working at its optimum capacity. There may be times and circumstances when it will be necessary to break a fast on something other than fresh ripe raw fruits but those occasions should be rare and only where absolutely necessary for some valid reason.
47.3.1 Be Alert to Guests’ Needs—Physical and Mental
47.3.2 Educational Talks Given to Guests
47.3.3 Give Guidance and Direction to Your Guests
47.3.4 Breaking Your Guests’ Fasts
47.3.5 How Long Should Your Guests Stay
The conditions alluded to in the preceding materials are idealistic and seldom actually happen in such simplistic forms. Sometimes conditions develop during a fast where the guest will be experiencing unusual amounts of toxic release which may have to be slowed down to some extent. If the fast is causing so much toxic material to be eliminated that the body is unable to eliminate it as fast as it is being released through the usual channels of elimination (i.e., kidneys, respiration, perspiration, and the bowels) and does not resort to any of the vicarious avenues of elimination, the blood will become so toxic that the guest may lose contact with reality (become slightly disturbed or insane). That is because of excessive amounts of toxic materials in the blood that are flowing throughout the body and through the brain in the bloodstream creating an uncontrolled physical situation that is both undesirable and unnecessary. When that condition begins to manifest, it has been found to be a wise precaution to break the fast for a day or two on a fruit that is high in water content such as watermelon, grapes, or oranges and then resume the fast when the situation is back under control. This is one of the main reasons why it is so important that the guest have some appreciation of a few of the things that can happen to them while undergoing a fast.
Actually the above-mentioned toxic condition is that which most people in mental institutions suffer from. None of the people who are responsible for their care and treatment are aware of the cause of their problems, and as a result, nothing constructive is being done for them.
Another consideration of concern when all of the vital signs are within the normal range of variation, is to guard against apprehensions and fears that may be instilled in the minds of your guests by any of your other guests who speak of experiences they’ve had in various so-called fasting institutions. Many times they will relate their experiences in such a way as to create an illusion of pain, discomfort, or some other danger to the unsuspecting guest. This is another reason why you should pay close attention to your guests’ questions and attitudes so that you can head off those things before they actually become problems (during your informative talks for example).
Also, you will occasionally encounter a guest that seems to have a lot of savvy, has read all of Dr. Shelton’s books, and thinks he or she knows exactly what to do and when to break the fast. Usually it is a case where there is little knowledge, and it becomes a dangerous thing. This is especially so in the hands of an inexperienced individual. This is when your orientation talks (information talks) given every day (to those of your guests that feel up to attending them) can be a wonderful tool for de-fuzzing these potentially dangerous situations.
Some general observations and suggestions include informative talks on a regular basis so that they become habitual. These talks should be very simple and direct on such subjects as disease; fasting; the 19 components of nutrition; the basic food categories; some discussion of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes; and an exposure to the providence and wisdom of the body. When that has been done, then the cycle should be repeated. Many of the long-term fasters will have an opportunity to hear the talks two or three times. They will not hear them too often, however, because during their fast they are very weak and many of them will not attend the talks until they feel stronger.
Repetition is good, and it takes a lot of it to get even the simplist ideas across. Look at how many times you had to repeat the multiplication tables to get them into your consciousness. The same holds true here. Your talks should be given from a minimum of notes or props so they contain as much spontaneity as possible, and try to avoid the planned or canned type of classroom presentation. Talks should be informal, informative, and as humorous as possible. They should never be longer than 60 minutes and preferably not over 50 minutes because your guests will be in various stages of fasting and eating. They may be readjusting to an eating schedule and will be unable to maintain a very long span of attention to the materials being presented. The fasters who are in attendance have, or at least may have, an even shorter attention span. The talks should be in the simplest language you are able to command, reserving your intellectual prowess for the more argumentative and dissident members of society who seem to look with great respect and awe at the speaker who can keep them spellbound with meaningless, but high-sounding phrases and innuendos.
Your guests will be people from all walks of life with educational backgrounds that vary just as much as they themselves vary as they are progressing through the various stages or phases of the fast and the recovery or rehabilitation program following the fast. Your talks must be geared to that type (variety) of an audience. You will have ample opportunity to express yourself more fluently as you are called upon to give talks before various church groups, fraternal, and social organizations along with various service clubs and others who are looking for an informative speaker—an innovative speaker who has a different story to tell than the one they heard at another meeting they have attended. That is YOU.
We have found that when we teach our guests new information and then tell and retell them this information time and time again, they begin to get the point. You will not, and cannot, make Hygienists of them during your attempts to educate them. The only thing you can ever hope to do is to instill the desire to learn more about the program after they get into it and begin to feel better. The guests will gradually start thinking as their health improves, and they are going to become more interested in the program if you have done a good job of selling them on its basics. It is just like any other program of learning in this sense.
This same rationale and reasoning applies in the case of your guests and the knowledge you may be privileged to impart to them. Most of them are ready to absorb the simpler forms of knowledge you will be able to provide them but will not be ready for the higher aspects of the program until they’ve had a chance to chew on and digest the basics first. And, for that matter, there is little or no need for them to know more than that unless they are motivated to learn and teach the program to others.
Some other considerations to think about as you are working with your guests include the knowledge that no two fasts are the same. Explain to them that no two guests will have the same reactions and results from a similar fasting situation nor will a guest will have the same reactions and results from a similar fasting situation nor will a guest experience the same kind of a fast the next time he or she fasts. The reasons for this should be obvious, but to review our thinking a little we can suggest that no two objects occupy a single point in time and space so they are starting from different points. Some higher, some lower, some further to the right and some further to the left, etc. And the one individual that has previously fasted is not starting his or her second fast from the same particular point in time or space as the first fast, not even when he or she deliberately tries to do so. Your guests should be advised along these lines of thinking so they can understand what is happening to them when different experiences begin manifesting in this, their most recent fast.
Many of your guests will come to you with a mania or fetish concerning bowel action or the lack thereof. They may be wanting to use laxatives and a series of colonics and all of that kind of garbage. You have to be alert to these things. These guests may even have enema bags in their suitcases to use just in case you will not provide these things for them, and they will use them too until they learn better.
Your guests are looking to you for guidance and direction all during the fast and as long as you are providing that direction and guidance for them, they will follow your suggestions to the best of their ability. You must at every opportunity give them reassurances that there are no dangers involved in the usual fasting situation.
Many of your guests will have lost many pounds of weight and will begin to start worrying about this weight loss. It’s necessary to reassure them that they do not need to worry themselves about their weight loss which will normalize shortly after they have returned to eating their regular meals—if they are living Hygienically. Sometimes this takes a bit of doing, especially with any of your guests who lean toward vanity as opposed to the healthy aspects of life. A little reassurance is usually all that is needed. On the other hand, it is important to explain to them that their weight is not going to come back immediately after breaking a long fast. As a matter of fact, it will come back rather slowly at first because their bodies are using just about all of the nutrients that are being provided for energy alone, and it is only when the input of energy in the form of raw materials exceeds the utilization that any weight comes back. So in those who have fasted to completion many times, it takes three to six months to gain their weight back. It is a matter of balance between energy utilization and energy supplied. We have to increase the energy input and increase the exercises just enough to strengthen the body, but not so much to use up all of the reserves that are being introduced into the dietary. If the guest doesn’t exercise good judgment in the balance between weight gain and exercise, he will be in for a long siege of thinness.
The breaking of a fast can be as important as the actual fast itself and must be observed rather critically. In many of your older guests who have had a history of constipation or other bowel irregularities such as hemorrhoids, polyps, or fissures, there will be a tendency for the bowels to be sluggish. If the bowels are not evacuated naturally by the end of the fifth day after the guest has broken the fast, you will need to observe him or her closely. If he or she suggests to you that he/she feels like having a bowel movement but finds it difficult or is having no results, then you should offer reassurance. Explain to them that their systems will normalize if they remain on the Hygienic program and exercise regularly. (I will not attempt to go into detail on the breaking of the fast as the next lesson will cover it precisely.)
Ideally, your guest should plan to stay with you and learn how to eat properly as you continue to look after his or her well-being, as you teach the various ways of combining foods Hygienically. The guest should plan to stay with you and accept your guidance for at least 2/3 of the time of the fast beyond the fast and the equal of that time would be even better. If the guest fasts for 14 days, they should stay with you at least 10 days and ideally 14 days after breaking the fast.
Another thing that is particularly helpful to those of your guests that can handle the situation is for them to observe various combinations of foods being served to those of the guests who have resumed eating while they themselves are still fasting. For some, this becomes overwhelming and they are not able to do it without great distress whereas with others it presents no problem at all.
Your primary concern and intent should be in trying to make your guests comfortable and carefree during the course of their stay with you. There are a lot of little things that come to mind that can be of considerable comfort and solace to many of your guests, especially during some of their more tedious moments during the fast. These can include, but are not limited to the following items. You will think of others from time to time that you will want to share with your guests and other practitioners. There are times when a hot water bottle filled with hot water can be very comforting to the cold feet or the cold back. They can also do wonders in helping to relax the tense solar plexus (see definition). This application of heat to the area relaxes the musculature and allows the nerves to become much less constricted and bound up so that nerve energy is exchanged more freely.
The warming and serving of distilled water in thermos types of dispensers is many limes very comforting to the guest. Especially the first drink of water in the morning, and most particularly to that guest who has a habit of drinking something warm upon awakening in the morning. It doesn’t have to be hot, simply warmed to about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, slightly warmer than the body.
In the prolonged fast, distilled water seems to lose its appeal to some of the guests and it can be enhanced greatly by the addition of a few drops of lemon juice as it is warmed as above.
Night lights strategically located around the structure aide considerably in helping the somewhat disoriented guest find their way around at night.
Emergency procedures for obtaining help, especially during the night need to be worked out so as to provide a practical means of making guests wishes known to the staff.
Quiet hours during the day and after a reasonable hour at night can do a lot to add to the comfort of the guests and especially to those who are still fasting.
In your contacts with your guests prior to their arrival after you have made your initial contact with them you should provide them with as much information as you can concerning the types of things to bring along for wearing, recording talks, and listening to music and others that come to mind.
Television and radio should be limited as necessary to prevent their enervating effects upon guests, both themselves and others.
The golden rule applies both to the guests and their interactions between themselves and between the guests and your staff.
Your actual responsibility for your guests will end when they depart from your direct sphere of influence or control but you will want to encourage them to keep in touch with you and keep the communication lines open both ways. You will want to hear about their successes as well as the questions after they begin to live hygienically in their home surroundings. And most importantly you will want to hear about all of their friends and relatives that have been influenced by them after they returned home from their successful fasting experience with you and your effective and efficient staff. Because of this, prior guests may also want to come and spend some time with you to enhance their lifestyles and incidentally improve their health.
What signs and symptoms do you watch for that would indicate that you should breakfast?
Any of the usual signs of dehydration such as the drying of the skin, profuse sweating, lowering of blood pressure, lethargy, water not being consumed, increase in pulse rate, sudden extreme weakness and/or arrythmias, confusion, disorientation and/or anxiety neurosis.
How do you handle the family of a guest, all of whom are opposed to the methods and procedures used in conducting a supervised fast?
It is a matter of education—if you have the time necessary to educate them, they will usually cooperate. If not, you have to place the monkey on their backs and let them know that they will have been responsible for the life and welfare of the person whom they have dissuaded from fasting. After all, fasting is the best way of detoxifying the body that is available to humankind. They will have deprived the person of a chance to do the thing that is needed, often desperately. More often than not the guest has already been exposed to the medical shenanigans which were of no avail and can be pointed out to the family members. Also, you can reassure them that, if for some reason the guest does not respond to the fast, they can always resort to the other methods that they have so much faith in. If the guest is to fast, it is important that he or she be isolated and insulated from the haranguing and enervating pleas of concerned family members.
How would you handle a situation where the guest suffers from angina pectoris and is on nitroglycerine?
Angina pains are usually the result of exertion in some form or another and rest usually helps to correct the painful situation, without the use of modalities. If the guest can be reassured that all will be well and not become concerned with the various crises of elimination as being detrimental phenomena, all will go well with the guest. Every such situation will have its own particular set of circumstances that will have to be taken into consideration.
How do you determine if the particular disease of a guest is irreversible and how do you explain it to the concerned guest?
When the situation seems to be quite irreversible, it is best to let the guest know that while it is quite probable that health in general will be enhanced as the result of tasting, there will in all likelihood be no more than slight improvement in the areas of damage or pathology that have been experienced. Any improvement in the body as a whole is going to take the load off of the deranged and impaired part or function and the overall effect is going to be one of improvement.
What about the desirability of having a person on hand who is trained in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and CPR (Cardio-pulmonary-resuscitation)?
There are always needs for people with emergency procedures expertise in any situation whether it be at a fasting institution or anywhere else. It is something that all of the staff of a fasting institution should have some expertise in but is not essential to have one on the staff. The probabilities of requiring those kinds of services in a fasting center are no greater than in any other location and are probably even less under most circumstances. A person who is resting as they should while undergoing a fast is seldom exposed to situation that would cause them to need the services of anyone skilled in those procedures.
A man writes me about coming to the Health School. He says he wants to bring his wife with him. Then he adds, “‘I am not certain whether she would care to be treated as her health is reasonably good, although there are conditions that should be taken care of. However, she was most unfavorably impressed with the methods employed in fasting at Blank’s Institute at Utopia when I was there six years ago, and I might add that I was well. I cannot recall a single case that seemed to improve by means of fasting and there were patients there at the same time who had been at it for three months and over. Maybe your system is different than Blank’s was, and I wish you would explain just what you mean by rational fasting.”
What is a fast? It is entire abstinence from all food with the taking of one’s water and air. It is not a juice diet nor any other restricted diet. Little driblet meals, as Dr. Page so appropriately pointed out, is not fasting. A fast, then, is a fast, no matter where it is undertaken; no matter who conducts it.
But there are innumberable conditions under which a fast may be taken and these determine results. A fast is physiological rest. But physiological rest is not possible under conditions of stimulation, even though one is fasting. In most institutions where fasting is employed, the fast is accompanied by so many enervating treatments that the effects of the fast are nullified.
To require of a fasting patient that he arise in the morning and go to the treatment room for a round of stimulating monkeywork is to enervate the patient and prevent the fast from resulting in an increased elimination of toxins. Massage, adjustments, manipulations of various kinds, electrical treatments, sweat baths, cold baths, sprays, the Blitz Gus, sitz baths, electrical blankets, laxatives, frequent enemas, and a host of other enervating practices prevent the faster from realizing the full benefit of his physiological rest. Only those practitioners who fully understand the role of these methods of treatment are in a position to take rational care of the faster.
The faster should have quiet, rest, and relaxation. Stimulation, excitement, and a lot of activity all produce further enervation and place an added check upon elimination. The faster should be kept warm in order to conserve his energies. Cold baths, cold douches, cold applications, etc., dissipate his energies. The faster who rests also loses less weight in a fast of the same length than the one who is active. This means that the resting faster is in a better physical state at the end of the fast. Also, conserving his food reserves enables him to fast longer if there is need for a longer fast.
The purpose of the fast is not to see how long a man can go without food, nor how thin he can be made, nor how weak he can become without danger to life, but to promote elimination and tissue repair. Every new source of enervation to which he is subjected during the fast helps to retard the attainment of these ends. We should dispense with, either the fast or the treatments, when caring for the sick, as these procedures are incompatible.
Along with the fast, which, as stated, is physiological rest, should go physical, mental and sensory rest. Rest is the opposite of stimulation. All stimulating measures prevent rest. Let no one suppose from this that sedative measures are restful. These are as expensive of nervous energy as the stimulating measures. Treatments of no kind are valuable while fasting, even should we grant their value under other conditions and circumstances.
In the early days of my professional career, I worked a few months in a sanitarium near Chicago that employed fasting in the care of practically every patient that came to the institution. These patients were roused out of bed early in the morning and put through their “course of sprouts.” Three mornings a week, I gave each man a massage, followed by a sweat bath and then a cold splash over the whole body, but especially along the spinal column. Three mornings a week, they received electrical treatments followed by alternate hot and cold sitz baths. About eleven o’clock the whole crew of them were lined up on the lawn and put through a series of strenuous exercises. Three afternoons a week I gave them electrical treatments of a different character to those given in the mornings. In addition to this, some of them were given chiropractic adjustments and others were given a thorough streching on a traction table. All of them were given daily enemas. The rest of the day they spent walking around or sitting and lying around on the sanitarium grounds. They received a daily sunbath.
Many of these patients made remarkable improvement in their conditions despite the great amount of enervating monkey work to which they were subjected, but many of them made no progress at all. With some of those who progressed, their progress was short lived and then they began to slip back.
A few months later I accepted a position with a sanitarium in up-state New York. Here little fasting was employed, but treatment was given in greater abundance. We had a large hydrotherapy department in this place and much more electrotherapeutic machinery than at the first place. We really “gave them the works” in a very scientific manner at this place. The head of this institution was a very up-to-the-minute physician who had practiced medicine for 25 years and who knew about all there was to be known. In fact, he had quite a reputation among the medical men of the state as a specialist in nervous diseases. I never knew just what he was supposed to specialize in, but I became convinced that he specialized in producing nervous diseases.
I had ample opportunity to watch the enervating effects of these forms of treatment when applied to patients who were not fasting. I saw them, alter a few days treatment, become so weak they were forced to stay in bed. After a few days of rest they were able to get up and get around again. Then a few more days of treatment and they were back in bed. Not all of them went through such cycles of in-the-bed, out-of-the-bed performances, but those who were not forced to go to bed, showed their enervation nonetheless.
Later I took a position with a sanitarium further up state in New York. Here we had under care an ex-baseball manager. He was partially paralyzed in his left lower limb, so that he could only drag it along in walking and had to walk with a cane. I noticed that as his treatment proceeded his walking became worse. When he would come in for treatment (he was not in the institution, but lived in the city and came in three times a week for treatment), he walked very badly. He would be given electrical treatment and would walk out much better. In spite of this apparent benefit or more correctly, because of this apparent but not real benefit, he gradually grew worse. Then business carried him away for three weeks, during which time he received no treatment. Upon his return, he was walking much better. He resumed treatment and began to grow worse immediately.
I could greatly multiply these kinds of experiences. I could tell you of many such observations. They are the regular feature of the work in all institutions devoted to treating the sick. Every doctor of whatever school sees them daily. He simply closes his eyes to them or interprets them in some manner satisfactory to his mind and continues his enervating treatment of his patients.
Early in my career I learned of the evils of the many and varied forms of treatment that are employed and as I became convinced that a given method of treatment was enervating, I discontinued it. Result: I have eliminated all enervating palliatives from my work. I see not logic or reason in enervating a man because he is sick. He must first be enervated before he can become sick. How is he to get well if he is further enervated?
I know men who condemn fasting because of certain undesirable results which they say it produces. But I do not see these results coming from fasting. I do see these results coming from the treatment commonly employed while the fast is in progress. I see them also in patients who are fed and not fasted while they are being treated. I am certain that these results come from the enervating effects of the treatment and not from fasting. Fasting, rationally conducted, does not give rise to such results. Anyone may test this for himself by fasting under proper conditions sans the treatment.
48.2. Easing Into A Varied Diet
48.4. Transition To Rational Living
48.7. Fasting Does Not Make The Body Disease-Proof
48.8. Compounding The Benefits Of The Fast
48.9. New Habits Must Be Formed
Article #1: Breaking the Fast By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #2: Fasting Not a Cure By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
48.1.3 The Return of Natural Hunger
48.1.5 Length of Fast Not Determined in Advance
48.1.6 Don’t Terminate a Fast During a Crisis
48.1.7 Why Caution Is Necessary in Terminating Prolonged Fasts
I learned that a man emerging from a long fast should not be in a hurry to regain lost strength and should also put a curb on his appetite. More caution and perhaps more restraint are necessary in breaking a fast than in keeping it.
—Mahatma Gandhi
When the Great Day arrives, there may be a tendency to feel that the battle has been won, the struggle is over, the problem has been solved. From now on it’s “enjoy, enjoy!” Both the fasting supervisor and the faster, with a great sense of relief that the waiting and the denial is at an end, want to get the faster back to the routine and joy of living as soon as possible. And what’s the best way to do that? Why we must put some flesh on that scrawny body—we must feed and nourish him back to his normal size and strength. He’s been denied long enough. Now we can make it all up to him!
Whoa! The end of the fast is only the beginning of the transition to normal living.
Adequate, knowledgeable supervision in breaking a fast may be even more critical than the supervision in conducting a fast.
People who have been fasted for serious pathologies have an even more important period to undergo. What has happened during the fasting period is not nearly as important as what will happen when food is restored. And, if serious mistakes are made during this period, the consequences may be unpredictable, up to and including negation of the potential benefits of the fast, or—though extremely rare—losing the life of the patient.
The decision as to when to break the fast is, of course, of major importance. The condition of the faster must be assessed from day to day, and a decision made as to the continuation or termination of the fast. This decision should be a mutual one between the faster and the fasting-supervisor.
If the fast is continued to the return of natural hunger, certain signs will be manifested. The coated tongue usually clears, the mouth tastes fresh and clean, the foul breath disappears. A sense of rejuvenation and well-being are experienced. The desire (or actual craving) for food becomes compelling—and there is a real sense of hunger, which is a mouth-and-throat sensation.
True hunger is not an uncomfortable feeling, but one is conscious of an urgent, but pleasant longing for food. The abdominal sensations, or all-gone feeling, that we usually attribute to hunger, are caused by irritation. Most people have never experienced true hunger. It is possible that one may not experience true hunger at any time during the fast.
Sometimes the tongue does not clear completely, but the indications of the return of natural hunger are visible to the fasting supervisor and the fast must be broken—or starvation will begin.
It is said that the best time to break a fast is when nature gives these signals of the return of true hunger. It is impossible to know in advance just when this will occur. The fast must never be prolonged beyond this point.
Premature breaking of the fast is also undesirable—breaking it at any time before the return of true hunger is considered premature. Premature termination of a fast may sometimes result in unpleasant consequences. The patient may experience unfavorable reactions when food is offered, and be actually unable to tolerate the food. Or, a succession of unpleasant symptoms may be experienced for a few days. The fast may actually have to be resumed and terminated at a later date.
Most fasts are broken prematurely. Although the return of true hunger is considered to be the ideal time to break a fast, and Hereward Carrington maintains that it is actually dangerous to break the fast prematurely, it must be recorded that most fasts are broken prematurely (before the signs of true hunger). I (and others) have observed that usually, if care is exercised in the gradual return to eating, no great harm or serious problems are experienced. Actually, the phenomenon of the return of true hunger is seldom seen.
The majority of fasts are broken “prematurely” for various reasons. Fasts are terminated because of time limitations (the faster must return to work, or to other duties; or he cannot “afford” to stay at the fasting retreat for an indefinite period). Or the body may signal that its vital energy and resources have been depleted to an extent dictating the cessation of the fast (the fasting supervisor must be qualified to recognize these signals). Or the faster may have come to an end of his or her forbearance—mentally or emotionally. These considerations emphasize the importance of professional supervision of the fast.
When a fast is undertaken, it is best not to try to determine its length in advance. One should go along from day to day, without setting a definite time limit. It is best to determine to fast as long as necessary, so that the goal may be achieved.
Dr. Alec Burton says, “Some believe that a particular disease, e.g., gastric ulcer, requires a two-week fast, and that the length of the fast is in some way determined by the disease, whether arthritis, asthma or colitis, etc. This is not a consideration. We are concerned only with the requirements and capacities of the individual and not the ‘disease’ and its treatment. It should be apparent that the only person in a position to make a sound judgement about the length of the fast is the doctor in charge of the case.”
Yet it must be acknowledged that there is a certain amount of validity to setting goals when fasting for the remission of certain pathologies, since experience has indicated that such remission usually requires a certain minimum number of fasting days. The professional Hygienist, while not infallible, is qualified to make such predictions, such “educated guesses,” so that the faster usually has some idea as lo whether a short- or long-term fast may be necessary.
Although there is virtual consensus that fasting to completion has the best potential for producing optimal results, and that premature termination of a fast may make subsequent fasting necessary, some qualifications must be considered. As previously indicated, there are other unmistakable signs that it is time to terminate a fast, for physical, physiological, mental or emotional reasons—and these signs must be heeded.
Dr. Burton says, “Hunger usually only occurs in the very long fast and then only with the almost complete exhaustion of the nutritive reserves. However, it is something that the practitioner should not rely on too much, as it is entirely subjective and there are many questions unanswered about it. Furthermore, because people have never experienced ‘true’ hunger (i.e., the sensation that is said to accompany the exhaustion of the reserves), they really do not know what they are looking for. Many people say that they do not know whether they are hungry or not. Because hunger is subjective, it should be evaluated in conjunction with the more objective phenomena. For instance, hunger is invariably accompanied by a flow of saliva, whereas a dry mouth is inconsistent with hunger.”
It is not advisable to break a fast while the patient is experiencing a crisis (a period of acute discomfort). It is important to let the crisis run its course before deciding whether it is time to terminate the fast.
A fasting crisis is the manifestation of a symptom, or group of symptoms, during the course of the fast. Such crises may be the manifestation of the release into the bloodstream of the (often morbid) stored by-products of metabolism, producing temporary irritation in various parts of the body. Fasting crises may sometimes be indication of remedial processes and the body’s manner of initiating a correction.
Most fasters experience no crises during the fast. Some may experience one or two mild and fleeting incidents, which may run their course in an hour or two. The cleansing processes initiated by the fast are not usually of a violent or disagreeable nature. Most of the excretion of toxic materials is carried on without any discomfort or inconvenience. Extremely toxic individuals may expect to experience some discomfort—which is an indication that they were greatly in need of a fast.
Various crises have been noted in observing thousands of fasts—headaches, nausea, vomiting, skin eruptions, and others.
Headaches may appear early in the fast, and, except in some unusual cases, disappear in a day or two. Nausea and vomiting (or, sometimes, nausea without vomiting) occur in about 10% of patients, sometimes in the early stages only,, sometimes continuing for longer periods. If vomiting persists, dehydration may be a threat (especially if the faster cannot retain water), and it may be necessary to terminate the fast. In some cases (extremely rare), diarrhea accompanies vomiting, resulting in great fluid loss, and the fast must be terminated.
If pain is being experienced, the fast should not be broken until the pain subsides (as it usually does, in short order). It is best not to break the fast until the day after such pain is experienced. As a general rule, wait until well-being and comfort return before breaking the fast.
Sometimes (though this is infrequent), a mild malaise (a borderline nausea) will continue throughout the fast, and will not disappear until the person resumes eating. Obviously, this type of continuous mild malaise would not be a contraindication to terminating the fast, if such termination appears to be advisable.
Some people need very little sleep during the fast, but a return to eating soon results in a need for more sleep. Some people do sleep a great deal, especially during the first week or so of a prolonged fast. The body does not deprive itself of needed sleep.
Some toxic individuals experience a rise in temperature during the fast. Usually the temperature, pulse rate, and blood pressure are lower soon after beginning the fast. The heart rests, and there is a slowing of circulation. After the first week or so, weakness and dizziness are often experienced, concurrent with the inevitable loss of weight.
Dr. Burton says that the weakness experienced by the faster is “essentially a locomoter weakness—a weakness in the muscular system and the organs of locomotion. It is not a weakness in the vital organs.” The energy of the organism is being diverted and utilized for detoxification and healing. Under these conditions, the muscles don’t need the energy—they can wait for the time being.
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton says, “It seems that often (during the fast) there is a pooling of blood in the abdomen. There is less blood in the brain, although thinking is clear. Under these circumstances, to arise quickly from the horizontal position to the vertical, may result in dizziness and even fainting because the adjustment of the circulation in the head is not as rapid as the speed with which the change of position is made. To avoid possible fainting, which may occur in occasional cases (although it is of no consequence), one should arise slowly. Instead of forcing your organism, come slowly to a sitting position, sit on the side of the bed for a brief time, and then slowly rise to a standing position.”
After eating is resumed, the weakness and dizziness gradually disappear—say, in about a week or so, concurrent with weight gain. The precautions about gradual change of position, and continuation of bed rest, should continue until these conditions improve.
There is a broad range of opinion as to the best method of breaking a prolonged fast—but all the experts agree that the reintroduction of food to the fasting organism must be gradual.
It must be understood that the fasting period, and the subsequent return to eating, has necessarily subjected the organism to two extremely stressful situations, within a relatively brief period of time.
When food supplies are stopped, the body does its best to adjust to the new conditions. The digestive organs are no longer required to perform their usual functions, and virtually cease to exercise them. No signals are forthcoming for the secretion of gastric enzymes and juices, or for the normal secretions in the intestines.
Without food to keep it expanded, the stomach contracts; the intestines and colon do the same. Bowel movements usually cease altogether after the first few days of the fast; although, sometimes, when debris is trapped in diverticula in the colon, it is gradually expelled, as it is “squeezed out” as the walls of the colon contract; in this case, small bowel movements may continue for a week or longer. In some colitis patients, who have been experiencing acute diarrhea, the diarrhea (at a reduced rate) may continue for a time during the fast.
In any event, the organs of digestion are almost completely at rest, while other organs and processes take over and work overtime. The organs of elimination initiate a heroic cleansing operation, through the urine, the lungs, (he mucous membranes and the skin (and sometimes, as has been indicated, through continuing bowel movements).
The organism mobilizes its reserves, so that the functioning organs and tissues continue to receive nutriments. Surpluses of stored materials in the body are utilized for this purpose. The vital tissues are nourished first from the food reserves in the digestive tract (where there is usually a three-day supply), and then the fat, deposits, and abnormal growths are broken down, so that the nutrients may be salvaged and absorbed, and wastes eliminated—by the process of autoloysis—the disintegration of tissues by the body’s own enzymes. This is a normal part of physiology, but is speeded up and enhanced by fasting. The wisdom of the body is its own safeguard, and it uses first and least important stored materials; the essential organs and tissues of the body, such as the heart, nervous system, lungs, and other vital parts remain intact, and no cells are lost.
All of the resources of the organism are mobilized for this metamorphosis, and the body strives to utilize and maintain its available energy to perform the cleansing, nourishing, and healing functions initiated by the withholding of new food supplies. The organism proceeds in an orderly manner, always in the same direction, every part of the body cooperating for the preservation of life and for cleansing, nourishing, and healing.
When the last is broken—particularly when it is broken before the return of true hunger—the body is subjected to an even more stressful situation than that which occurred when the organism was forced to adapt to the cessation of feeding.
The body has temporarily lost its ability to digest food in the usual manner. When foods are again offered to the organism, it must be given an opportunity to gradually regain, its power of normal function. The longer the fast, the more care that is required in the method of its termination.
Methods of breaking the fast are designed to restore, intestinal function and reactivate digestive faculties which have been resting. The body must make changes and adjustments in physiology, to accommodate to the new situation.
If the first food is of such a nature that the organs are not able to handle it, the patient may become nauseated and vomit the food. This violent reaction can cause mental and physical harm; and the fast must be resumed, at least for a day or so longer, perhaps even more.
As a rule, however, the first food is welcomed and tastes delicious. If it is freshly-squeezed orange juice, or fresh fruit, it usually tastes like nectar or ambrosia, and the faster looks forward to the next meal with anticipation and delight.
If the wrong kinds of food are offered, perhaps the patient may enjoy the food, but there may be little or no digestive response, and the food may decay or ferment. If peristaltic action to move the food along the digestive tract is absent, impaction may occur, with the possibility of uncomfortable constipation.
As previously indicated, opinions differ as to the one best method to break a fast, and it is probable that there is no one best method. After a prolonged fast, only an experienced fasting supervisor is qualified to offer the first foods and to observe the reactions of the patient, and to modify the method, whenever indicated. This must be emphasized: the care that is necessary in breaking a fast is in proportion to the length of the fast and the condition of the faster.
Dr. Shelton says, “Almost every advocate of fasting has evolved his own techniques for breaking a fast. There seems to be a tendency for each man to assume that his own techniques are best. There may be several techniques, each one of which is as good as the other. The chief requirement in breaking a fast is to use simple, wholesome food and feed this in keeping with the limited digestive capacity of the faster. Time is required for the digestive secretions to begin to be produced in normal amounts and, until they are secreted in normal quantities, the ability to digest food is limited.”
Some of the foods and methods that have been used in breaking prolonged fasts include:
Dr. Allan Cott, in Fasting As a Way of Life, page 27, advocates mixing a pint of boiling water with a pint of grape, orange, or apricot juice, and having the patient sip two or three teaspoons of this mixture every ten to fifteen minutes throughout the day, finishing the full quart by bedtime. The second day he gives up to a quart of undiluted juice, four ounces every two hours. The third day he gives whole fruit; the fourth day salad and some cooked food.
Dr. Otto H. F. Buchinger breaks the fast with apples, later (the next day) followed by salads and cooked food.
Paul Bragg breaks the fast with cooked tomatoes, later (the next day) followed by salad and cooked food.
Some fasting supervisors advocate breaking fasts with vegetable broths, especially for people who have been fasting for severe digestive problems (such as ulcerative colitis), followed in due course by small amounts (if tolerated) of salads and fruits.
Other foods are also advocated and used for breaking fasts, but they are so far removed from Hygienic concepts that I will only refer to them very briefly (flesh foods, milk).
Years ago, I heard a lecture by Dr. Theron Randolph, a renowned Chicago allergist, who fasted his patients for five days, and then experimented with offering various foods to determine the offending foods causing the “allergic” problems. He said that he usually broke these fasts with lobster! His rationale was that people usually become allergic to foods which they eat habitually, and this is not apt to be the case with lobster. He used lobster to break fasts in order to guard against allergic reactions from the first food offered. This is, of course, a far cry from Hygienic methods and principles.
Breaking fasts with sandwiches, popcorn, lobster, and a variety of difficult-to-digest foods may or may not cause overt negative reactions, but they will certainly add to the stress of an organism which can ill afford it. None of the above methods are utilized by Hygienic fasting supervisors, with the exception of the vegetable broth method, which is sometimes utilized by Hygienic professionals in certain unusual cases.
For many years, Hygienic fasting supervisors have been breaking fasts with fresh, uncooked fruit juices or vegetable juices. Fruit juices have been most commonly used. Orange juice is generally preferred.
Some use four ounces of unstrained, undiluted juice for the first feeding—some strain and dilute (with distilled water) the first juice, strain (but not dilute) the second feeding, and give the unstrained, undiluted whole juice for the third feeding. Some give four ounces every hour, or eight ounces every two hours for the balance of the first day (the first two feedings having been four ounces each, one hour apart). If, as sometimes happens, the person becomes satiated after five servings, the frequency is curtailed. Some give eight ounces every three hours after the first two feedings, and a whole orange for feedings every three hours for the next day or two.
Dr. Vetrano has changed from juices to whole fruit for breaking most prolonged fasts. She serves one-half orange every two hours the first day; the second day a whole orange every two hours. Or she varies the second day by serving one piece of a different fruit every two hours—six servings. She sometimes breaks fasts with tomatoes for those who desire not to gain weight. For people with a history of digestive problems, she may still break the fast with juices.
Dr. Vetrano believes that good bowel action is established sooner when breaking fasts with solids rather than juices, and that most people prefer the opportunity for chewing.
Whether the first food is liquid or solid, it should be “chewed” or well insalivated. During the post-fasting period, proper mastication is extremely important to avoid overtaxing the digestive system at a time when it is under stress to regain its full-functioning capacity.
Dr. Shelton says he sometimes uses a warm vegetable broth to break a fast, in those rare instances when the faster has difficulty with raw juices.
Whenever the individual feels unable to take the amount offered, amounts may be reduced, or the feeding skipped.
Dr. Shelton says that on the third day the faster may be given an orange for breakfast, two oranges at noon, and three oranges for the evening meal. The fourth day a variety of foods may be given, such as melon or grapes or other fruit for breakfast, other fruit for the noon meal, and a vegetable salad for the evening meal, with a cooked nonstarchy vegetable, if desired. Dr. Shelton says that, beginning with the fifth day, a protein should be taken daily with the vegetable meal. He says that, after a few days, a cooked starch may be taken with the vegetable meal on some days, instead of the protein, if desired. (See subsequent discussion in this lesson relative to the inadvisability of offering cooked food so soon, unless absolutely necessary.)
My own experience and preference is for four ounces of strained, diluted orange juice for the first food. If well tolerated, four ounces of strained, undiluted juice is given an hour later; and eight ounces of whole (unstrained, undiluted) orange juice two hours later. Two or three hours later, one or two whole oranges are served, and again in three hours.
The second day—whole fruit at three-hour intervals; the third day—two or three small fruit meals, and a small salad in the evening, if desired by the faster—otherwise, continue the fruit. I do well on this regimen, so does my husband.
I like to start with diluted and strained juice to reduce the possible hazard of the insufficient mastication of the tough connecting citrus membranes; also, to reduce the acidity of the first juice.
I like to break a fast in the morning, but there is no compelling reason why a fast may not be broken at another time during the day, especially upon the return of true hunger. I like the morning best because of the opportunity to offer several “meals” before bedtime.
Some fasting supervisors recommend more stringent regimens, and some more generous ones. Arnold De Vries recommends five days of juice after a thirty-day fast, but qualifies this as a general guide.
48.2.1 Overeating After the Fast
48.2.2 Permanent Control of the Eating Program
48.2.3 Eat All-Raw Food As Long As Possible
48.2.4 Protein Needs After the Fast
Some people can be eased into a varied diet sooner than others—the fasting supervisor makes this decision, based on how the individual reacts. Most people are able to take only very small quantities of food for several days, and they should be given no more than they can comfortably handle. They are usually satisfied with small quantities of food at the outset, and, in truth, only small quantities are required.
The reason the faster is unable to take larger amounts is because the stomach has contracted during the fast. Some fasting supervisors serve four small meals daily for a week or more, to enable the individual to regain weight and strength somewhat faster: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a small evening fruit snack.
Dr. Shelton says that by the end of the first week, the faster should be able to take normal amounts of food.
Some people soon demand large quantities of food to compensate for previous restrictions. Those who have a tendency to overeat after the first few days of eating should, of course, be restrained. Constant overeating will again distend the stomach, after which the person does not feel satisfied unless he eats to fill the distended stomach. Those who are allowed to eat too much may find that the overeating may delay the restoration of the body’s normal ability to digest the food comfortably.
Most people have no digestive problems after a fast (if the fast is broken prudently)—some do have them, even if they have not been conscious of digestive problems in the past. Dr. Vetrano says that most people come for a fast with a slight inflammation of the digestive tract, whether or not they know it. Such people are well on the road to making themselves sick all over again, if they are allowed to overeat in the initial period following the termination of the fast.
Charles W. Johnson, Jr. (Fasting, Longevity and Immortality) says that if a “monster of appetite” is turned loose after the fast, it becomes very difficult to control, resulting in a loss of much of the fasting benefit, as well as the probability of significant harm. Listening to the appestat at this time may misguide you.
Those who are very thin and slow to gain weight should ignore their weight. Gaining strength and restoring efficiency of body function is much more important. They should not overeat and try to eat fattening foods. They should be satisfied and accept the gradual weight gain that will surely come at the proper time. Even if one is gaining only a pound a week, that is twenty-six pounds in six months. In any event, the weight will stabilize in time.
Dr. Shelton says, “After a fast of considerable length, there is a period of several days, lasting up to two weeks, during which the individual feels hungry most of the time. If not carefully guided, he is almost sure to overeat. If he will control his eating until this initial period of hunger has passed, he will settle down to a more normal appetite and the danger of overeating will pass.
“Uncontrolled, he may eat so much during this period that he loses much that he gained in the fast. One important advantage of fasting in an institution is that control continues until the normal eating level is stabilized. In such an institution the patient’s diet is carefully supervised; he is not permitted to overeat. At home, he must be a more self-disciplined man than the average if he is to avoid overeating.”
Dr. Shelton also says, “The animal breaks his fast on whatever food is available at the time he resumes eating. On the whole, animals seem to be better controlled than man. They are not inclined to glut themselves when they break a fast, but may take but a small portion of food in doing so. A dog that has fasted for nearly a month, for example, may take but a few sips of milk at a time and may refuse all flesh for the first four to six days, after he resumes eating. If man’s intuition was still as reliable a guide to eating as is that of the animal, I doubt that we would need to supervise the breaking of a fast.” If possible, one should try to stay at the fasting retreat long enough to gain enough weight to look “presentable”, to family and friends, if one is very thin. If not possible, it is best not to worry about it. The family and friends will gradually observe the new bloom of health as the months go by.
Many people who had been chronically underweight before, the fast experience such an improvement in assimilation after the fast that they achieve a more normal weight by the lime the weight stabilizes. This is due to the increased ability of the cells to take up and appropriate nutrients, which always results from fasting. Weight gain is often less effective after sickness, because of damages from toxins and drugs.
Upton Sinclair, in The Fasting Cure, maintains that after a fast we “bounce” back to our “ideal” weight, sometimes less and sometimes more than the prefasting weight. Upton Sinclair changed himself, after several fasts, from a very thin “ectomorph” to an athletic “mesomorph.”
On the other hand, people whose target is weight loss may be significantly benefited by fasting. Dr. Edgar S. Gordon of the University of Wisconsin Medical School, says that people who gain weight easily probably have a low metabolic rate. They convert glucose to fat much too rapidly and don’t produce enough available energy. Dr. Gordon’s experiments with animals suggest that a fast may “break the metabolic block,” producing subtle endocrine changes that make food assimilation more efficient. A report in Lancet, a British medical journal, supports the view that hormonal changes brought about by fasting may continue to promote weight loss even after eating is resumed.
This does not consistently happen in all cases of obesity, but it is an important potential benefit of fasting for weight loss. Of course, nothing in the world will keep weight off if the individual resumes gluttonous eating habits.
Fasting does lead to a new awareness of the difference between hunger and appetite, and reeducates the taste buds. If the faster can be helped over the initial critical period, he can achieve an alteration in his eating habits. Many people come off the fast with a passion for fresh fruits and vegetables. A 1976 British Medical Journal report says almost all fasting patients “admit to a radical change in previous eating habits.”
Although a fast does, for the most part, put appetite into alignment with the body’s real needs, Dr. Allan Cott says (Fasting As a Way of Life, p. 25), “The wise person eases into a sensible refeeding program. Easy does it if you want to continue feeling wonderful. ... In effect, the body is reeducated by a fast. It ‘unlearns’ habits of overeating and ‘polluting.’ It is ‘born again.’ It inclines toward a natural state. It wants only as much food as is required for maintenance. It prefers the kinds of food that are natural to the taste and harmonious to the digestive system.” He cautions that you should adhere to a careful refeeding schedule for the same number of days you fasted. If you do this, “the likelihood is that, when you return to a regular eating pattern, you will be eating more selectively and austerely, which is all to the good.”
Alter about two weeks, or perhaps a little longer, the feeling of being hungry all the time tends to disappear, if the “monster of appetite” has been kept under control.
Dr. Cott says that after fasting, there is a much better chance for permanent control of the eating program than after any diet. He says, “The system now wants to reject food in excess of the needs of the body. You should now be able to gain a new perspective on food and a new relationship to food that can keep you from overeating or from eating undesirable foods. Fasting and a sensible refeeding program have led to this desideratum.”
Dr. Cott also says, “After a long fast the palate is restored to pristine purity. It prefers the taste of foods that are simple and whole and natural. It tends to reject processed and fragmented foods, as well as alcohol and tobacco.”
Dr. Shelton says that if fasting is being used for the alleviation of a chronic disease—even if the patient has undergone only a short fast (less than fourteen days)—it is usually desirable to utilize an eliminating diet for a period of time after the termination of the fast, perhaps for as long as a few weeks. An eliminating diet is a diet low in proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, which causes the cells to use stored reserves to meet their requirements. During such a diet, the body can eliminate toxic matters and accumulated wastes, but never as well as during a fast. Obviously, an eliminating diet would not be recommended if the person had previously fasted to completion.
When the individual progresses to a varied diet, a variety of uncooked foods may be eaten. Even if the person intends to return to the use of some cooked food, this should be postponed as long as possible.
Careful management of the food program should continue for at least two to three weeks after breaking the fast. The fragile situation in the body is only gradually eliminated, as the digestive system slowly returns to its normal efficiency.
Some extremely debilitated or anxious individuals are impatient with their slow and gradual regaining of strength and weight, and find it extremely difficult to stay on all-raw food. In such cases, it might be advisable to allow small amounts of cooked food, at the evening meal only.
But it is really much better to eat moderately of good, whole, raw food, and efforts should be made to allay the misgivings of the post-fasting individual. Adaptations are being made, and will be accelerated by the higher quality of the whole raw food.
During this period, it is extremely beneficial to stay on the all-raw-food diet, if at all possible. The longer the all-raw-food diet is maintained, the better start the person will have. One should refrain from polluting the relatively clean bloodstream with the pathogenic debris of cooked food indefinitely, if possible.
After the fast, the body needs whole, raw food, and will not welcome cooked food, in which all of the enzymes have been destroyed, along with many of the vitamins and minerals. In addition, the amino acids and fats have been changed and made less digestible and sometimes toxic, and the balance of nature has been altered.
An optimal diet of whole, unprocessed foods is especially important for the first, few weeks (or even months) after the fast, when the body is regaining normal weight, and new protoplasm is being built.
The body chemistry is basically determined by the foods that are eaten, though other factors, (exercise, sunshine, fresh air, etc.) have some influence. While the causes of disease include chemical, bacterial, mechanical, and mental factors, chemistry dominates the efficiency of the physiological functions of the organism, other factors being secondary to the chemical condition of the body.
The complex chemical balance of all food nutrients is altered by heating, and it has consistently been demonstrated that superior tissue, and superior health, result from a diet of uncooked food.
Remember that the nutrients available in raw food exceed those in cooked food by several hundred percent, and after a prolonged fast, this is a critical time to decide— with what quality of tissue will you replace the tissue you have discarded?
The faster and the fasting supervisor should make this decision cooperatively, always with the thought in mind that the faster has already made a tremendous investment, which can be either safeguarded or threatened by the post-fasting food program.
After a prolonged fast, a slightly greater amount of protein than usual may be necessary, if not in excess of the digestive capabilities of the body. Immediately after a prolonged fast, the body cannot handle a large quantity of protein foods.
Concentrated proteins are more difficult to digest than other foods, because they are the most complex of all the food elements, and their breakdown and utilization are most complicated. The body can utilize only a limited amount of protein in the immediate post-fasting period.
Dr. Shelton says, “Nothing is to be gained by overfeeding following a fast. The hurry to gain weight and strength causes many to demand excess quantities of protein, thinking that protein is utilized in direct proportion to the amount eaten. In The Nutrition of Man (1907) Professor Russell H. Chittenden of Yale University, detailing his experiments covering the establishment and maintenance of nitrogen balance at many levels of nitrogen intake tells us: ‘The fasting man having lost largely of his store of protein can replace the latter only slowly, even though he eats abundantly of protein food. ... The human body does not readily store up protein and this is true no matter how greatly the tissues are in need of replenishment. Overfeeding with protein does not lead to corresponding results, owing primarily to the peculiar physiological properties of protein; its general stimulating effect on metabolism, the tendency of the body to establish nitrogenous equilibrium at different levels, and the fact emphasized by van Noorden that flesh deposition is primarily a function of the specific energy of developing cells. ... It is generally considered as a settled fact, that in man it is impossible to accomplish any large permanent storing or deposition of flesh by overfeeding. Similarly, it is understood that the muscular strength of man cannot be greatly increased by an excessive intake of food. ... We may call attention to the well-known fact that in feeding animals for food, while fat may be laid on in large amounts, flesh cannot be so increased by overfeeding.”
Shelton continues, “It is obvious that there is nothing to be gained by the excessive intake of protein, following a fast. The body can make use of only so much protein in the post-fasting period, and must excrete all unused protein. ... Nitrogen retention is increased both by mineral and by carbohydrate intake and it is more important that the diet contain adequate quantities of these than that it contain an excess of protein.”
An interesting and probably significant observation made by Charles W. Johnson, Jr. in Fasting, Longevity and Immortality, page 26, pertains to a fact (which I have often observed) that, subsequent to a fast, more weight may be gained than can be accounted for or justified by the amount of food that had been eaten. It is usually maintained that it takes three thousand accumulated calories to gain or lose a pound, and I have observed that this is far from a consistent result, either when fasting or eating.
Johnson says, “My notes show that I broke my forty-day fast on March 28, 1964, but four days before, on the thirty-sixth day of fasting, I put in a hard day’s work getting the garden ready for planting. From March 22 to 28 my weight stayed at 135-136 pounds. This brings up what may be the most important mystery of fasting.
“We can calculate the energy that is needed to keep our heart, breathing mechanism, and brain functioning. Adding in a little for minimal physical activity, we can conclude that a moderately inactive faster should lose almost a pound of weight per day. That is, in the absence of food to burn for energy, the body must burn, or catabolize, almost a pound per day of its own weight to ‘keep going.’ During most of a fast this is a typical weight loss figure.
“Nevertheless, here I was, near the end of a forty-day fast, feeling more energetic than earlier in the fast, doing more physical work, and losing no weight! Impossible, of course, and I foolishly ignored the fact—the absence of weight loss—assuming it to be the result of faulty measurement or observation. (How often we scientists miss something important of this sort simply because we know it is impossible and therefore refuse to notice it.) Subsequently, however, I read that others had noted the same phenomenon, and in some cases with great concentration.
“There appears to be a clear-cut violation of a sacred law of physics here—the law of mass-energy conservation. Some mysterious source of energy is supplying its energy for our body’s use.”
Johnson says that after his forty-day fast, he realized that he was not eating and drinking enough to justify his weight gain. “The violation of mass-energy conservation, manifest in the last days of the fast by lack of weight loss, was continuing now that I was eating. It was now taking the form of greater weight gain than my food and water intake could justify ... surely important research remains to be done here.”
Dr. Cott says, “Once you resume eating, some weight gain naturally occurs. The body retains fluid, which translates into weight because of the sodium content in food. For a time after any fast, this will be more weight than is metabolically balanced for the amount of calories being consumed.”
This may be a partial explanation for the phenomenon observed by Johnson (and others), but does not by any means completely account for the inconsistencies in weight loss and weight gain and their relationship, to the calories consumed.
For those who do eventually return to a varied diet which includes cooked food—be on your guard! Compromise may follow compromise and you may find yourself back on the same destructive path that led to your problem which necessitated the prolonged fast.
A return to your old habits may negate all you have done and start you back on the downward path. This is the time to reinforce your decision to persevere in Hygienic living, and experience even greater health improvement in the years to come.
It may be as much as a year before you consolidate your gains and evolve into the health and strength you envisioned when you undertook your fast. But it will surely come to pass if you continue to study Natural Hygiene and live in accord with your natural requirements.
Those who do use some cooked food must be ever wary of going too far. Once you cross over from nature’s most perfect foods (raw and unchanged), it is all too easy to make this exception and that—desserts, processed foods, etc.
If you will be eating some cooked foods, wait as long as possible after the fast to start, and then:
Sometimes fleeting symptoms will occur or recur for a short period after breaking a prolonged fast. Some people experience mild sore throats, canker sores in the mouth, edema (usually slightly swollen ankles). Sometimes there is a mild recurrence of the original problem—or a very temporary painful episode.
These usually are manifestations of the organism’s efforts to affect necessary adjustments during the period of transition from the fasting state to the necessity for processing renewed food supplies.
No palliation of such symptoms should be attempted, and it is not necessary (nor advisable) to start fasting again at this time. Get a lot of rest, and continue eating carefully, preferably all-raw food, and these symptoms will gradually recede.
Usually the transitional period is not really difficult—most of the time there are no real problems.
The first bowel movements may be normal and easy—they are usually very dark and malodorous, gradually changing to a normal color and losing the foul odor. If you experience some difficulty, don’t strain or worry—tell your fasting supervisor, who will help you.
After you resume eating, your bowel movements will probably be quite soft, but will gradually progress to the normal consistency.
After a few meals, the faster begins to feel better, and may experience a sense of euphoria. S/he is so happy to have successfully culminated the fast—so happy to be enjoying the pleasures of food again. There may be delusions of returned strength and well-being, and the desire to do something foolish, like indulging in strenuous activity. But, actually, the dizziness and weakness retreat only gradually. One must come back slowly. The body will appreciate being allowed time to gradually adapt to the new situation.
Johnson says that the miraculous power of the fast produces “unquenchable exuberance” and enthusiasm for life, especially for a period immediately after breaking the fast. He says, “The gourmet does not know the true feeling of tantalized taste buds until he has broken a fast of at least several days on any simple food.” All fasters and all fasting supervisors will agree with Johnson’s eloquent expressions of the euphoria experienced after the fast.
If one has not fasted to completion, the tongue will gradually clear—it usually takes several days (sometimes longer) to eliminate the coated tongue and bad taste.
Dr. Shelton says, “Bed rest should be continued through the first week of eating and activity begun very gradually. It is common for the faster to want to become active as soon as he resumes eating. This is unwise. He is not so strong and he does not have the endurance he thinks he has. Some fasters want to take long walks as soon as eating is resumed. Such activity is often indulged in to the extent that it retards recuperation and causes the individual’s weight to stand still. One must take it easy for a few days before becoming normally active.”
As vigor gradually returns, one should begin—cautiously at first—taking short walks, and some easy exercises. It is very important to gradually build up the capabilities for vigorous exercise, in accordance with the condition of the body, as this will assist restoration of the normal digestive ability.
The ability to process and assimilate food will be greatly enhanced following a fast and its proper termination, and after an initial period of adjustment. Resting after each meal will also greatly enhance digestion, weight gain, and renewed vigor.
Very important! It must be remembered that drugs and other poisons are a greater threat after the body has been cleansed by a fast, because the “calluses” are gone. The tolerance level has been lowered—the body no longer tolerates toxins and will react strongly for their elimination.
When the individual was tolerating toxins, he (or she) was developing disease and gradually killing himself. A lower tolerance level is a tremendous step forward, but it leaves one more vulnerable. So it is important to stay out of hospitals and stay away from drugs and all other toxic materials. Avoid smokers, carbon monoxide fumes, and polluted air to the greatest extent possible.
It is, of course, not necessary or advisable to use food supplements after the fast, nor at any time. After the fast, it is even more important not to burden the cleansed body with such questionable substances. The body is apt to react violently to their use and, even if it does not, the organism is subjected to the necessity for breaking down these substances, attempting to utilize whatever nutrients are present, and eliminating the excesses and waste products. The resultant stress and expenditure of energy is often more than can possibly be obtained from the pills.
It is true that, following a fast, there is an urgent, an imperative, need for proteins, minerals, and vitamins—not from pills or powders, but from whole natural fruits and vegetables and from raw, unsalted nuts and seeds. These contain all of the nutrients, in the best and most available form.
After the fast, one should learn to live in such a manner that the low tolerance level will be retained. Toleration of toxins interferes with the normal functioning of the body, inevitably leading to the first stage of toxemia (enervation, lack of sufficient nerve energy) which is followed later by disease and death of tissues.
After returning home, one should not be in too much of a hurry to return to the full schedule of responsibilities and obligations. One should resume activities gradually; get plenty of rest and eat carefully, so as not to dissipate the benefits that have been achieved. The investment in health will not pay off if one does not “follow through.”
The fast is but the first step in combating disease and must be followed by correct living. People who have suffered from chronic degenerative ailments should never make the mistake of trying to keep one foot on each side of the fence that divides the conventional and Hygienic rationale. After the prolonged fast, they should never regress to conventional eating patterns or return to the “prevention syndrome” of health management, lest their problems return.
It is difficult to imagine that anyone who has experienced the wonders of a prolonged fast could ever be persuaded to turn away from Natural Hygiene, for such a mistake could be serious, perhaps disastrous.
The principles of Natural Hygiene and the use of fasting are grounded in the study of cause and effect. Remove the causes of ill health by Hygienic living and the effect will be improved health. Remove the accumulated effects of previous irrational living (by fasting), and the body will tend toward healing and rejuvenation.
Fasting does not insure the body against disease. It is true that some symptoms and manifestations of disease disappear during the fast and do not return. But there are some diseases that have a tendency to return swiftly after the fast if the faster returns to the old habits which caused the disease. Much depends on the type, extent, and gravity of the degeneration, and on the strength and vitality of the individual.
During the first weeks or months—perhaps even during the first year or two after a prolonged fast, the mode of living and eating may be critical in the preservation of the health improvement which has been achieved.
If Hygienic living is maintained after the fast, the benefits of the fasting period will continue to be noted for weeks, months, and even years after the termination of the fast.
The relationship between fasting and nutrition must be recognized. Recovery from a pathology can often be accomplished through fasting, but permanence of the recovery is dependent on the subsequent mode of living, particularly the food program.
Some people accept the fast as a more or less dramatic and drastic necessity—but think of it as a cure-all, after which all their problems will disappear.
Subsequent to my 29-day fast in 1967, my unrealistic expectations gave rise to a feeling of disappointment. I expected to experience perfect health immediately. Actually, it was not until a year had elapsed that I realized the full consequences of my fast, and knew the fullness of the miracle that had occurred in my body.
Years later—in 1979—I had a similar experience. I had been bothered with a slight but persistent pain in my side for almost two years. Although I had been fasting thirty-six hours twice monthly, and had taken several three- and four-day fasts, the slight pain persisted.
Then I decided on a longer fast but, because of time limitations and prior commitments, I broke the fast after nine days. (You see, I am subject to the same pressures and human failings that I may deplore in others. Ideally, I should have fasted longer, possibly even to completion.)
In any event, the small pain persisted during the fast, and subsequent to the fast. I was busy, and decided to ignore it for the time being, and really forgot about it most of the time.
About six months later, I suddenly turned to Lou (my dear husband) and exclaimed, “It just dawned on me—I don’t have that pain in my side any more—and I don’t know when it stopped!” It has never returned.
Fasting is a means of promoting health by eliminating the disease-causing conditions—by cleansing the body of accumulated toxins and allowing it to heal itself.
Perverted appetites can be normalized by fasting, but new habits must be formed to supersede and overcome any pressures to return to the appetites that produced the disease.
The period immediately following the fast is the best time to form and maintain the habits that will give one the feeling of having been born again.
Dr. Shelton says, “The true remedy for all impairments of health is a complete correction of the way of life. When enervating habits are discontinued, the sick will begin to get well, and, once having recovered, to stay well unless the enervating habits are returned to.”
The prolonged fast for the elimination of toxemia is but the initial preparation for a program for the restoration of good health. Health evolves out of correct living. The fast begins the reversal of the processes of disease, so that the self-healing powers of the organism may initiate the health-restoration processes.
But the most important factor in the progress toward optimal health is making the necessary changes in the habits of living. Unless the change to correct living is made after the fast, there can be no permanent good health.
Never forget—Natural Hygiene is a way of life. Fasting is not a modality to be employed to correct uncomfortable symptoms, after which one may return to the mode of life that produced the disease.
Hygienic living, especially if complemented by the use of regular, short fasting periods, as an instrument of health maintenance is the best assurance and insurance for good health and longer life.
How soon after a prolonged fast could one plan to return to working full time?
There is no way to give an accurate estimate of the lime required. The factors involved are the gravity of the pathology, the length of the fast, the physical condition of the individual, the rate of return to normal strength and weight, and the type of work. If the faster was obese, and fasting for weight loss primarily, that person would very likely recuperate very quickly. If the weight of the faster is quite low when the fast is terminated, it will obviously be necessary to allow considerably more time for recuperation. I would say that, after a 21- to 30-day fast, one should usually expect to need at least a month, and possibly two months or more, to be able to return to a full and demanding program. I have, however, known people who recovered full strength and vitality in less time. Essentially, it depends on the individual and other circumstances of the fasting situation, and is really more or less unpredictable.
How long after breaking a fast should one stay at the fasting retreat?
Again, as for the answer to the previous question, there is not one general answer applicable to all cases. However, it is best to arrange to stay long enough to become established in the new eating program, and beyond the stage where one “feels hungry all the time.” After a 21-to 30-day fast, two weeks of eating should be considered the minimum before leaving the retreat; if there are any unresolved problems, it would be best to stay longer.
Exactly what do you mean by fasting to completion, or the return of true hunger, and how many days of fasting do you estimate that would require?
Fasting to completion, or the return of true or natural hunger, is considered to be a point at which the body has relieved itself of most of its toxic load, and has almost exhausted those reserves which can be utilized for salvaging nutritive materials. It is considered to be close to the point at which fasting ceases and starvation begins. The signs that this point has been reached are obvious to the fasting supervisor, and most of these signs are mentioned in the lesson. It is impossible to estimate how long this will take. I have known people who fasted 30, 40, and 45 days, with no signs of the return of true hunger. I even knew one very obese lady who fasted 92 days (after which she was still obese—she had lost 87 pounds) and there were still no signs of natural hunger at the termination of her fast. On the other hand, some of these signs have been reported at the end of 20 to 30 days of fasting, and even more at the end of 40 to 45 days. The length of time it would take is essentially unpredictable, but it usually only occurs in the very long fast.
What is meant by nitrogenous equilibrium?
Nitrogen is the chief ingredient of protein, and every 6.25 grams of protein contains one gram of nitrogen. A protein deficiency, or negative nitrogen balance (where protein is being broken down more rapidly than it is being built) exists:
- When the diet is not supplying adequate protein for maintenance and repair.
- When the diet is deficient in some essential amino acid.
- When the body is receiving an insufficient supply of carbohydrates and fats, and must deaminate necessary protein to supply energy needs.
- When the body has lost its ability to properly digest, assimilate, or synthesize proteins.
Nitrogenous equilibrium (nitrogen balance) is normally maintained by a healthy organism which is receiving 25 to 50 grams of protein daily. A Hygienic diet, consisting mostly of raw fruits and vegetables, plus two to four ounces (maximum) of raw nuts and seeds taken 2-3 times a week, will adequately meet the protein needs of the body, and will result in nitrogenous equilibrium, unless a related serious pathology exists. In this case, a last may be necessary to reestablish the ability of the body to properly digest, assimilate, and synthesize proteins. If alternate sources of concentrated protein are used in addition to nuts and seeds (sprouts, cheese, legumes, grains), the amounts of nuts and seeds used should be reduced. People on all-raw-food diets usually require fewer concentrated proteins.
Obviously during a fast, protein is not being supplied by the diet, and minimum protein needs are met through the process of autolysis, as the body disintegrates the least important tissues, and salvages nutrients to meet its needs. So long as the fast is not continued after reserves are depleted, nitrogen balance will not be affected. It is true that, subsequent to the fast, the body will have lost much of its store of protein, which must be gradually replaced in the weeks and months following the fast. As quoted in the lesson, Chittenden says that, although, after the fast, the body is greatly in need of replenishment of its protein stores, it can replace them only slowly, even though the person eats abundantly of protein food.
What do you mean when you refer to the pathogenic debris of cooked food?
A study by Swiss scientist, Paul Kouchakoff, M.D. (in the 1940s), revealed that leukocytosis is caused by a preponderance of cooked food in the diet. Leukocytosis—the augmentation of the number of white corpuscles, and the alteration of the correlation of the percentage between them—was formerly considered to be a normal physiological phenomenon, since it seemed to occur after every consumption of food.
An excessive number of white corpuscles in the blood (leukocytosis) also occurs in response to inflammation, the presence of excessive numbers of bacteria, and is, in reality, a pathological phenomenon.
The white corpuscles are the defense organisms of the blood that prevent intoxification of the blood by bacteria, cooked food, or other toxic materials.
Kouchakoff found that pressure cooked foods produced greater leukocytosis than other types of cooking; and that wine, vinegar, and white sugar produced even more. Prepared or processed meats (cooked, smoked, salted) brought on the most violent reaction, equivalent to the leukocytosis count in poisoning.
“After the consumption of fresh raw foodstuff, produced by nature, our blood formula does not change in any lapse of time, nor in consequence of any combination.” (Viktoras Kulvinskas, Survival Into the 21st Century, p. 316.)
When the diet is comprised of more than 20% of food that has been altered by high temperatures or other complicated treatments, leukocytosis is the result. Most people can tolerate a diet of 80% raw food, with 20% of conservatively cooked food. The largely raw food diet will offset the adverse effect of a small amount of cooked food, so as not to cause leukocytosis.
Kouchakoff’s conclusions were reached after more than three hundred experiments on ten individuals of different ages and sex.
An important fact that needs emphasis is that fasting is a very much more complicated process than is commonly supposed, even by its advocates. There is much more involved in the process than merely going without food. There is an art of fasting, but, if this art is to be properly executed, it must be based on the science of fasting. Its uses seem, at times, to be almost unlimited, its inconveniences are not great, its dangers are few and rarely seen, but for the most satisfactory results, it must be conducted by one skilled in its application. It is too vital and too important to be carried out indifferently. It is not a process that should be left to the guidance of those who have but limited knowledge of its proper conduct and who have had no experience in conducting fasts. Breaking the fast is one of the most important elements of the fast.
It is possible to break a fast on any food that is available—bread, flesh, eggs, nuts, etc.—providing a few simple precautions are observed. Animals follow none of our routines in breaking their fasts. They eat whatever is at hand and do not regularly stint themselves at their first meal. From this, it may be thought that we are unduly cautious, but I do not think so. Not only are there differences between what the animal does and what the average patient tends to do, if turned loose, but there seems to be great differences in digestive power, in favor of the animal. There is also the possibility that the animal would preserve more of the benefits of the fast if it broke the fast more carefully.
We do not employ the foods previously mentioned in breaking a fast for the reason that better means of breaking the fast are available to us. At the end of a long fast, digestive secretions are not abundant and small meals or small amounts of food are advisable. The amount of food fed to the patient is increased as secretion becomes more abundant. When this rule is observed, there is little difficulty in breaking a fast and no danger in doing so.
The proper conduct of the fast is vitally important. There are really very few practitioners of any school who know how to conduct a fast or how to properly break one. A naturopath in New York City broke the fasts of a mother and a daughter, who had been fasting sixteen and thirteen days respectively, on chocolate candy. The gastric and intestinal acidity resulting from this caused great distress thoughout their bodies. I was called in one these cases, and it required four to five days of fasting to get them back into a comfortable condition. This method of breaking a fast is nothing short of criminal.
A friend of my wife describes to me how she fasted seventeen days under the direction of a chiropractor in California and worked hard during the fast. She worked for the chiropractor and he would not permit her to leave from work while fasting. He broke her fast with toast and acid fruit. This woman immediately developed a case of malnutritional edema. This is one of the few cases of this kind I have ever known to follow a fast.
This case should thoroughly emphasize the necessity of placing one’s self under the care of a competent and experienced person, if one is to take a long fast. A chiropractor who knows nothing of either fasting or dietetics, and few of them know anything of either of these, and who experiments with patients in this manner, cannot be too strongly condemned. If chiropractors want to practice Hygienic methods, let them qualify themselves for this by proper training. This goes also for osteopaths and medical men. I would not attempt a surgical operation without first qualifying myself for the work, and I am certain that no chiropractor, osteopath, or medical man should attempt a long fast, or attempt to employ any other Hygienic method without first equipping himself for the work. Chiropractors who go to school and learn to punch spines and then, finding spine punching to be inefficacious, attempt to prescribe diet, etc., after reading a book or two on these methods, are in the same position as would be the medical man who attempted to “adjust” spines after reading a book on chiropractic. He is really dishonest and untrustworthy.
Dr. Wm. F. Harvard records the following cases: “A young man of twenty-four years of age who had suffered from chronic constipation and indigestion, fasted 27 days after reading an article in a popular health publication. On the 28th day he ate a meal of beefsteak, potatoes, bread, and butter and coffee. He was seized with violent vomiting spells and could not tolerate even a teaspoonful of water on the stomach. When called on the case, I discovered an intense soreness of the entire abdomen and every indication of acute gastritis.” “A young man about 30 who had fasted on his own initiative for 42 days attempted to break the fast on coarse bread with the result that vomiting occurred and the stomach became so irritable that nothing could be retained. There was marked emaciation and extreme weakness and every indication for immediate nourishment.”
An Associated Press dispatch dated August 28, 1929, recounts the death of Chris Solbert, 40-year-old art model, following a 31-day fast, which he broke by “consuming several sandwiches.” The sandwiches, a later report said, contained beef. Ignorance and lack of self-control killed this man. The dispatch tells us that “his fast (of 31 days) had reduced him from 160 to 85 pounds,” or an average loss of more than two pounds a day. This loss I believe to be impossible. The average losses for a fast of such length vary between 25 and 36 pounds.
“Professor” Arnold Ehret tells of seeing two cases killed by injudicious breaking of the fast. He says: “A onesided meat-eater suffering from diabetes broke his fast which lasted about a week by eating dates and died from the effects. A man of over 60 years of age fasted 28 days (too long); his first meal of vegetarian foods consisting mainly of boiled potatoes.”
Ignoring the absurd explanation for these deaths, given by the “professor,” we would say that the diabetic patient threw too much sugar (from the dates) into his body and died as a result of hyperglycemia. He probably passed out in a diabetic coma. He explains that the second patient fasted too long for a man of his age, and that an “operation showed that the potatoes were kept in contracted intestines by thick, sticky mucus so strong that a piece had to be cut off and the patient died shortly after the operation.” “Professor” Ehret was so fond of mucus he could never see anything else. This fast was badly broken but the patient, in all likelihood, would have lived had he not been operated on. The fast was not too long for a man of that age. “Professor” Ehret really knew but little of either fasting or dietetics.
These cases help to influence many against fasting and yet they are the results of the worst type of ignorance and inexperience. Who but an ignoramus would feed a diabetic case a meal of dates after a week of fasting? Surely fasting cannot be blamed for this result. Before we talk of the “evils” and “dangers” of fasting, let us be sure that these really belong to fasting and not to something else.
Sinclair says: “I know another man who broke his fast on a hamburger steak, and this is also not to be recommended.” I had one patient break a fast of over 20 days by eating a pound-and-a-half of nuts the first day. Although no harm, not even slight discomfort, came from it in this particular case, this method of breaking a fast is certainly not to be recommended generally.
In some cases of fasting where efforts are made to feed the patient towards the latter end of a prolonged fast, but before hunger has returned, there has been noted a failure of the stomach to function. Dr. Dewey mentions such cases, who were induced by friends or physicians to eat, and who were absolutely unable to digest food but vomited everything eaten. Fasting was resumed and continued until the return of natural hunger, with the result that digestion proceeded nicely.
Reprinted from The Hygienic System—Volume 3
In 1959, a veterinarian who was employing fasting in the care of his animal patients and had done experimental work with fasting, wrote me: “In running down Dr. Pochedly’s bibliography on fasting, I find that an extensive amount of fasting was done by medical men and osteopaths as recent as 1930, with excellent results being obtained in many symptom-complexes—the greatest factor in the subsequent failure of the laudation of fasting seems to lie in the fact that no one knew how to direct the patient to live so that he would not sink back into his symptom-complexes. Nothing is said about removal of causes.”
The doctor here puts his finger on a vital point. The after-care of the faster is every bit as important as the proper conduct of the fast itself. All of the benefit derived from a lengthy fast may be wiped out in a few weeks or in a few months by improper living following the fast. The assumption, so commonly made, that fasting is a cure and that all one has to do is to fast and he will be well, has resulted in many failures. It is important to understand that health is rebuilt by a total way of life of which fasting is but a part.
It is also important to know that fasting does not make one proof against the effects of wrong ways of life. If one is addicted to smoking or drinking alcoholic liquors, the fast will not enable him to continue these practices with impunity. Only “cures” hold out to man the hope of recovery from the effects of causes while these causes are still in operation. Only “immunizers” hold out to man the hope of being made cause-proof. “Cures” and “immunizers” are thaumaturgic processes—they belong to voodooism, not to science.
The doctor’s statement underscores the importance of proper supervision of the fast and the subsequent program of living which is vitally essential to full results. It also, by inference, stresses the importance of education in correct ways of living. Not merely should one eat correctly following a fast, but one’s whole pattern of life should be brought into harmony with natural law. If this is not done, the results of the fast will not be lasting.
It is important, in this connection, to emphasize the fact that, if one is to maintain the gain made during a fast, one must rigidly adhere to a Hygienic plan of living, at least, sufficiently long to consolidate the gains made. Were it possible to wipe out the effects of a lifetime of wrong living by a few days to a few weeks of fasting and completely restore health by this means alone, it would mean that the wrong living was not so bad after all. It would mean that one may drink, smoke, overeat, overindulge, and neglect himself to his heart’s content, and then take a fast and wipe the slate clean. Only cure-mongers would hold out such a promise and false hope to the suffering.
Altogether too many members of the cure-oriented schools of so-called healing have dabbled in fasting. It is a matter in which they are untrained and for which they are unqualified. No amount of training in drug therapeutics, in manipulations, in spinal adjusting, in electro-therapy or in surgery can possibly qualify a man to conduct fasts. Fasting is a subject that must be studied and in which one should have guided experience, before attempting to conduct a fast.
In his personal account of his fast of thirty-one days which he underwent in the Carnegie Institute in 1913, Prof. Levanzin says: “I have put under experiment nearly all the systems for breaking a fast. The how is as dangerous as the when. To mine I have added the experience of my wife, my daughters and of many of my friends. After a mature and long meditated study of physiological principles tested by practical methods, I think that I have arrived at the right solution. I had the intention of giving my system a thorough test during the breaking of this last fast, but I could not do it as I had to follow unwillingly somebody else’s inflexible will.”
The professor states his case when he states that the how of breaking a fast is as dangerous as the when. Breaking a last is very easily and simply done and there need be no danger associated with the process. A few simple rules need to be observed in all cases and the need for these is in proportion to the length of the fast and the general state of the faster. Many fasters have harmed themselves, and in a few cases have ended their lives by eating too much or by eating unsuitable foods and food mixtures.
Prof. Levanzin says, “Dr. Goodall, who was in charge of me during the fast from the medical point of view, insisted on having my fast broken on ‘clam broth’ and ‘beef tea!!!’ And because I told him that these would kill me he and Dr. Benedict gave up and put all the responsibility on my shoulders. I took it and broke the fast successfully without any inconvenience although it was afterward spoiled at the hospital.”
It is not likely that clam broth and beef tea would have killed the professor, although, from where I sit, neither of these two slops is suitable human food under any circumstance of life. For death to have resulted from breaking his fast on clam broth and beef tea, he would have had to consume them in inordinately large quantities. Without proper supervision in breaking a fast, the individual may eat too much or too often or he may eat unsuitable food and bring harm upon himself.
In considering the inappropriateness of some foods and food mixtures for breaking a fast Upton Sinclair wrote, “Since leaving the Macfadden Healthatorium, I have at various times had occasion to fast, and have tried other articles of food upon which to break the fast. While I was down in Alabama, I took a twelve-day fast, and at the end I was tempted by a delicious large Japanese persimmon, which had been eyeing me from the pantry shelf during the whole twelve days. I ate that persimmon—and I mention that it was thoroughly ripe; in spite of which fact it doubled me up with the most alarming cramp—and in consequence I do not recommend persimmons for fasters. I know a friend who had a similar experience from the juice of an orange; but he was a man with whom acid fruit has always disagreed. I know another man who broke his fast on Hamburg steak; and this also is not recommended. I have another friend who fasted a week and broke the fast with rice and soft boiled eggs, and this friend also got no benefit to speak of from the experience, although the foods agreed with her perfectly and she had no temptation to overeat. This is about what I should have expected, as my own experience has led me to believe that the worst food that people eat are those highly concentrated pasty things which are deficient in natural salts and contain no waste to keep the intestines active. A person can eat food like eggs and rice for weeks and never have a movement of the bowels. I know it, because I have done it; and I can give myself as durable a headache by that means as other men can get with a hamper of champagne.”
Macfadden broke fasts with fruit juices and followed this with the milk diet. This diet was very popular as the milk was taken every half hour during the day and fully satisfied the keen sense of hunger that follows a fast and provided for a rapid gain in weight. Macfadden says he has seen gains of three pounds a day and records he has seen instances of gain of twenty-five pounds in a week following a fast by means of the milk diet. My own observations of and experiences with the milk diet coincide with his. I have seen gains of three pounds a day and ten pounds a week. I saw one man gain twenty pounds in one week. The milk diet was not discontinued because of a loss of popularity, but because the dairy industry made it increasingly difficult to obtain raw milk, and because it was found impossible to obtain the same desirable results with pasteurized milk.
The weight gained on the milk diet was in large measure due to overloading the body with fluid, as shown by the puffiness of the face, feet, and ankles and the speed with which it was lost when the milk diet was discontinued. The milk diet overworked the heart, the digestive system, and the kidneys, and increased blood pressure. It was not an ideal diet with which to follow a fast.
In my recent book, Fasting for Renewal of Life, I have emphasized the fact that fasting animals in wild nature break their fast upon whatever food the season and locality afford. They do not have the advantage of electric machines to express the juice from foods, but eat their food whole. Man may do the same. A fast may be broken on any wholesome food that is available. Greater caution is required with some foods than with others. The chief requirement is simplicity and a small quantity at a time. If fed in great quantity or too often, the most suitable food may give trouble. Individual articles of food that may give no trouble in the great majority of cases, may give trouble in an occasional case. I have never broken a fast with persimmons but I doubt that most people would suffer cramps, as described by Sinclair, were we to break their fast with persimmons. The case is different with pineapple. This fruit frequently takes the skin off the lips and tongue of the eater. While I have never broken a fast with pineapple, I have fed pineapple two and three days after breaking a fast, and find it frequently causes distress in the stomach in addition to peeling the lips and tongue. Such experiences bring up the question: Is pineapple a suitable food for man?
Prof. Levanzin says: “I break my fast on acids and carbohydrates followed immediately by protein food. The ease and rapidity with which tissues are rebuilt, without any untoward accidents, is really astounding.”
He gives no details about his technique of breaking a fast and we cannot do more than suggest that perhaps his plan of breaking fasts was not ideal. If he mixed the acids and carbohydrates together or if he mixed the carbohydrates and protein, his post-fasting feeding program could have been greatly improved.
It has been contended by many, the fast should be broken upon the food craved by the faster. The faster is likely to crave the foods he was in the habit of eating before he underwent the fast or he may crave some item of food that he sees or sees a picture of while the fast is in progression. The craving may be psychologically rather than physiologically conditioned. It will be better to break the fast upon some simple food the wholesomeness of which is undoubted, such as an orange, or a tomato, or a peach, or a plum, or a small piece of watermelon.
Early Hygienists said: when your tongue is clean, your rest peaceful, your skin clear, your eyes bright, there is no more pain, and you are very sharply hungry, you may select from the store of wholesome articles of food described in works of Hygiene, that which pleases you and eat with moderation. That is sound advice, but hardly detailed enough. The usual indications for breaking the fast (these help to determine the dividing line between fasting and starving) areas follows:
Besides the usual signs that it is time to break the fast, Prof. Levanzin lists a feeling of cheer and elation as a manifestation that the time has arrived for the termination of the fast. I cannot do better than quote Carrington’s description of the feelings of the patient at this state. He says (Vitality, Fasting and Nutrition, p. 544), “A sudden and complete rejuvenation; a feeling of lightness, and good health steals over the patient in an irresistable wave, bringing contentment and a general feeling of well-being, and of the possession of a superabundance of animal spirits.” Circulation improves, as is seen by the resumption of the normal pinkness under the fingernails. The increased rapidity with which the blood flows back into the skin when this has been forced out by pressure, is another indication of the rejuvenating effect of the finished fast.”
The primary indication that the fast is to be broken is the return of hunger; all the other indications which I have enumerated are secondary. Often one or more of these secondary signs are absent when hunger returns, but one should not refrain from breaking the fast when there is an unmistakable demand for food, merely because the tongue, for example, is not clean. Inasmuch as all the signs do not invariably appear in each case, do not hesitate to break the fast when hunger returns.
49.1. Organic Gardening Is The Counter-Part Of Natural Hygiene
49.2. What Exactly Is Organically-Grown Food?
49.4. Basic Steps To Establish A Successful Garden
49.5. Gardening The Magic Way—With Mulch, Compost, Sea Weed Spray
49.6. Soil Requirements For A Successful Organic Garden
49.7. Approximate Amounts Of Compost, Mulch And Water
49.9. Insects: Friends And Foes
49.10. The Case Against Commercially-Grown Foods
49.13. Harvest Of Pleasure And Health
Article #1: Vegetable Preferences
Article #3: Nitrogen Fixation by John Tobe
Article #4: pH Preferences Of Some Plants
Article #5: Dirt Cheap? Nonsense! It’s Vital to Garden
Article #6: Soil Test Secret To Success by Gene Austin
Article #7: Pesticides—They’re Killing Bugs—and the Land by Ronald Kotulak
Organic gardening, or planned growing without poisons, is the best way to produce flavorful food that will build healthy bodies. The procedures in organic gardening utilize the concept of the cycle of plant life in a virgin forest—birth, life, death, and return to the earth for decomposition and enrichment of the soil for the ensuing cycles. The preservation of the ecological system in your garden can be a big factor in preserving the eco system in your own body.
Organic gardening is the counterpart of Natural Hygiene—it is a system of growing healthy plants in cooperation with nature by utilizing only naturally occurring materials for improving the soil and fertilizing, and for combating insect or disease problems.
They both, organic gardening and Natural Hygiene, work the same way—if you provide the body with the best possible conditions for optimal health, you can avoid disease; if you provide your garden with the best possible conditions for growing healthy plants, if you work with nature instead of against it, if you maintain the balance of nature instead of destroying it, you can anticipate success. You will harvest a bountiful crop of food of excellent flavor, high nutritional value, and free of residues of chemical fertilizers and poison sprays.
In the 1980s there is increasing interest in organic gardening because of its impact in the solution of environmental problems, and the growing awareness of the important role of organic food in the improvement of health.
Organic gardening has been traditional in European countries for many years, but, by the 1940s, farmers and gardeners in the United States had gotten farther and farther away from earlier growing methods, and chemicalization had begun to prevail. About that time, a significant organic-gardening movement was pioneered by J. I. Rodale, of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, founder of Organic Gardening and Farming magazine. Since then, many of his followers have produced fruits and vegetables of extraordinary quality.
J.I. Rodale worked on many public projects in opposition to pesticides and drug cartels, made a significant contribution to agricultural sciences, and helped establish “organic” as a household word.
The Rodale organization formulated a scientifically-sound definition of organically-grown food which is today accepted as bona fide by most leaders of the natural, organic movement, and by officials of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The following is the official definition: Organically-grown food is food grown without pesticides; grown without artificial fertilizers; grown in soil whose humus content is increased with applications of natural mineral fertilizers; and has not been treated with preservatives, hormones, antibiotics, etc.
Many advocates of organic gardening will tell you that the first step is to have your soil analyzed to determine what elements are missing, and to determine its pH—that is, the degree of its acidity (sourness) or alkalinity (sweetness), because the pH has a relationship to the ability of the soil to support the growth of various plants. (pH is a chemical symbol denoting the concentration of hydrogen ions per liter.) You might decide to bypass this step.
On a scale of 0 to 14, pH values from 0 to 7 indicate acidity; values from 7 to 14 indicate alkalinity; pH 7, the value of pure water, is regarded as neutral. Soil in most low rainfall areas tend to be alkaline; soil in high rainfall areas are usually somewhat acid.
The continual addition of organic material to the soil generally provides the necessary elements for plant nutrition, and tends to stabilize the pH, with the result that vegetables with a variety of pH preferences can be grown together successfully. Most vegetables prefer soils that are neutral or slightly acid (pH 6.5). See chart of pH preferences in supplementary section of this lesson.
A slightly-acid soil is best for availability of nutrients. I) the soil is too acid, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus levels decrease, and manganese and aluminum may be too available, even toxic. The pH of a very acid soil can be raised by adding dolomite lime. In alkaline soils over pH 7.5, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, and phosphates may become less available. Organic matter is the best remedy for such very alkaline soils. Humus or organic matter tends to neutralize either overly-acid or overly-alkaline soils.
For simple pH readings, you can test your soil with a kit. If serious problems persist, professional soil analysis can point out sources of trouble. Most gardeners discover what will grow well in their soil by observation and trial-and-error.
There are many ways to go about producing a living soil, containing all the known and unknown minerals, and billions of microorganisms. If the soil in your garden has been misused by pollution with chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, or by depletion of its organic matter without recycling anything back into the soil, it will take more heroic measures, and a longer period of time, to bring the system back into balance.
A virgin soil may have also been damaged. It may have been “robbed” of its topsoil by builders and graders, or decreased in value by mixture with the subsoil. The surface soil, or topsoil, usually is the top eight to fourteen inches of the soil, and is darker and more fertile than the subsoil. In any event, a new garden hasn’t had time to build up a deep friable (readily crumbled) soil full of nutrients and microorganisms. But you can still have a successful first year crop, if you follow a few simple steps. There are three basic steps for growing plants successfully:
There are three basic soil types: clay, sand, and loam. Clay takes in water slowly, drainage is very low, and aeration is limited. Plant roots have a difficult time penetrating clay soil. Gypsum and lime can improve aeration and drainage of clay soils. Organic matter will improve air circulation (compost, ground bark, sawdust, leaf mold, peat moss).
Sandy soils have the opposite problem—it lets in plenty of oxygen, and roots pass through easily. It has good drainage—too good!—the water and water soluble nutrients pass through too quickly. Add a finely-textured, spongy, organic material that will hold water and nutrients. Peat moss is such a material, and it has the advantage of slow decomposition, but it contains practically no nutrients. (Also, large amounts of peat moss may increase the acidity of the soil.) Compost breaks down faster, but supplies nutrients to the soil. Wood products and hulls are not much benefit to sandy soils. If you obtain clay to add to your sandy soil, this will help to create a balance.
The addition of these and other organic materials will eventually change the sandy soil into good garden loam, containing a balance of different sizes of particles, and a good supply of humus (a dark sticky substance created by decomposition of organic materials). This loam will be loaded with valuable nutrients and capable of producing healthy vigorous food plants.
Loam is the ideal soil. Few gardeners are blessed with a naturally-loamy soil, but it can be gradually built almost anywhere.
Clean out the grass and weeds in your garden area and do some digging to loosen the earth. Dig down about a foot or so, but avoid turning under the topsoil. You will probably have to do little or no digging in subsequent years, if you grow organically, with a permanent mulch, because the soil will be easy to work.
Sprinkle some organic compost thinly over the soil (or dig it in, if you wish), and cover with six inches of mulch. This should be done at least three or four weeks before the first planting. Tuck all your table scraps (preferably raw) in between the layers of mulch; this is called sheet composting. Start to do this immediately, and then continue this sheet composting after the garden is planted and growing. (Banana refuse is a particularly rich source of nutrients, and loved by earthworms.) These table scraps never become garbage. There is no odor or animal nuisance, if the scraps are hidden in the mulch—not too deep, say, an inch or two. As time passes, the organic matter in the soil will convert to humus, and biological activity of bacteria and earthworms will develop under the mulch.
You can mulch with anything that will decay, if it doesn’t contain toxic or poisonous substances. Some materials are better than others. A very good mulch material, easy to obtain (at no cost) is grass clippings, your own or your neighbors’. If possible, spread them out to dry, before using them to mulch your garden. If you do use green clippings, don’t apply them directly to the soil, as this can rob the soil of nitrogen. Spread green clippings in a thin layer on top of previously-applied “cured” mulch; this will allow them to dry. If applied in a thick layer, they may mat down, become slimy, build up heat, and develop odors.
Piled up or bagged green grass clippings will get hot, but, when spread on the ground, they don’t even get hot enough to hurt earthworms. But don’t put fresh or green mulch up against tender young plants, as enough heat may build up to scald the plant. Of course, trees should never be mulched right up to the trunks, even if the mulch is “cured”—at least ten inches from the trunk for citrus trees and several inches for other fruit trees.
You should also use all the leaves you can get. There are many other mulch materials: hay, straw, wood chips, sawdust, cottonseed hulls, peanut shells, corn cobs, seaweed and sea grasses, ashes, and some others—almost anything that will decompose without being too messy.
Dried grass clippings mixed with leaves are often the most practical. This is clean and easy to handle, and enhances the appearance of your garden and trees. If you have oak leaves in your mulch, it will repel slugs, snails, cutworms, and June bug grubs. Alfalfa grass is an excellent mulch—it contains a valuable amount of nitrogen.
Maintaining a six-inch organic mulch at all times conserves moisture, and helps to produce the conditions for building a living soil and a top-quality garden. The mulch also creates conditions which discourage nematodes (microscopic worms which produce root knot, causing deterioration or death of plants). A permanent mulch also controls erosion, regulates soil temperature, and eliminates the necessity for spading, raking, cultivation, and weeding.
Cover crops will be unnecessary, you will need less compost, and fewer insect controls. The mulch encourages earthworms, which help to aerate the soil and enrich it with their castings. The soil will never get hard or muddy, the vegetables will be clean and pleasant to harvest.
Mulch makes “sheet composting” easy and practical—because you can tuck your table scraps in between the layers of mulch and there will be no eyesores, odors or other nuisance. It is not necessary to remove the mulch in the spring “so the ground will warm up” or in the winter when frost threatens. Because some weeds grow in cool weather, keep the ground well mulched all winter.
Mulch is indeed the gardener’s “magic carpet,” relieving him of many tedious tasks, and aborting a large percentage of incipient problems. If you make no other changes in your gardening methods, at least don’t fail to take advantage of this easy “green thumb” idea.
Organic compost is a fertilizing mixture of various organic substances, which have been mingled and decomposed. Many people build their own compost in piles, pits or bins, and there are various methods of doing this, but it does take some space, lime and work, and you and your neighbors might also have to put up with some odors and flies, although there are ways to avoid both by careful planning and attention. If there are many citrus peels in the compost, there will be noticeably pleasant odor. Don’t ever put in wet garbage without a covering layer.
One of the simplest method of building a compost pile is described in Down to Earth Vegetable Gardening Down South by Bullard and Cheek. Start with an eight-inch layer of grass, leaves and kitchen wastes (mingled or in any order); next a two inch layer of manure or other nitrogen source. Cover with a one-inch layer of earth, and sprinkle generously with water. Continue this three-layer series, building to a maximum height of five feet. If shredded materials are used, the compost will be ready in a few weeks, and no turning of the pile will be necessary. Occasional light sprinklings of dolomite lime will add nutrients (magnesium and calcium) and create a better balance, Greensand is another excellent soil conditioner. It comes from deposits laid down in what was once the ocean, and contains potash, magnesium, iron, silica and other trace minerals. Some other organic-fertilizing materials are rock potash, straw, alfalfa, hay, tobacco stems, peanut shells, and soybean meal. It is much better to include these fertilizing materials in a balanced organic compost than to try to use them individually.
Seaweed is a rich source of nutrients. If you can get seaweed or sea grass, use them. Some people prefer to wash the seaweed before using, or weather for three months, to reduce or eliminate the salt transfer, but these processes may also leach out other valuable nutrients.
If seaweed is not available, you can obtain a nutritional seaweed spray. One of these products is called “Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed (Kelp Extract).” It is a soil activator and conditioner, and its use results in a crop of higher yield and better quality. It helps to produce stronger, healthier plants with greater resistance to insects, disease, and adverse climatic conditions. The effect is cumulative and the soil improves with each application.
A balanced organic compost should contain nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash (potassium). As a rule, calcium, sulfur and magnesium, as well as trace elements like zinc, boron, manganese, molybdenum, copper, and chlorine (and many other trace minerals, known and unknown) will be available in your soil for plant nutrition, if you are constantly adding a variety of organic materials to your soil.
Nitrogen is important in the production of protein; leafy, green vegetables, especially, need adequate supplies of nitrogen. Too little nitrogen will be evidenced by pale green leaves, progressing to yellowing and dropping of older leaves, and stunting of growth. Too much nitrogen will produce an excess of greenery and little or no fruiting, and the plants may be spindly and weak, and susceptible to disease.
Nitrogen is supplied by blood meal, castor pomace, soybean meal, cottonseed meal, fish meal, or feathers, or bone meal, or straw, alfalfa hay, or manure. If you use bloodmeal or manure, use it very sparingly.
Nitrogen is also supplied to the soil by growing legumes, which capture nitrogen from the air, enriching the soil in which they grown, as well as adjoining areas. (The air is almost 80% nitrogen.) Earthworms will also help supply nitrogen to the soil. See the article “Nitrogen Fixation” in this lesson.
Planet Natural carries “Alaska Fish Emulsion,” an excellent source of nitrogen. Do not add concentrated nitrogen to plants when fruits are ripening. To encourage ripening, add either a balanced compost, or phosphorus or potash.
In 1975, Dr. Stanley K. Ries, a horticulturist at Michigan State University, found that alfalfa treated plots produced increases far above what the nitrogen in the alfalfa could account for.
In the laboratory, they isolated the active agent—triacontanol, a fatty acid alcohol which occurs naturally in the plant’s leaves. Triacontanol is not a fertilizer, but a growth stimulating substance.
The Rodale Organic Gardening Research Center tested the use of “greenchop” alfalfa in extremely small counts. Both Ries and the Rodale Center reported (The Best Gardening Ideas for the ‘80s) that the less alfalfa they applied, the better the yield—but, with no alfalfa, they got the lowest yield. The amount used which provided the best yield works out to about one cup of fresh chopped alfalfa for 100 square feet of garden. Simply spread it over the plot, work it in, and plant your vegetable seeds. Use mulch as usual.
The Rodale book says that the methods and rates of application are still in the experimental stage.
The main advantage of alfalfa is as a nitrogen-fixing legume. Fresh-cut alfalfa contains more nitrogen than any manure. Use alfalfa in the garden as a soil-enricher to be rotated through the garden, or as a patch to produce a high-nitrogen material for mulch.
Phosphorus is necessary to the production of plant sugars. The symptoms of phosphorus deficiency are similar to those of nitrogen deficiency, but the leaves may be dull green with purple tints. Some phosphorus sources are rock phosphate, bone meal, granite dust, natural limestone, gypsum, and fish scraps.
Potassium (potash) is essential to the life processes of plants. It is helpful in hastening development and maturity. Symptoms of potassium deficiency are slow growth and leaves with mottled yellow tips and edges, and scorched-appearing edges on older leaves. Seaweed or seaweed spray provides generous amounts of potassium. Some other potash sources are wood ashes, granite dust, potash rock, citrus rinds, kelp, greensand, and bone meal.
Enough calcium will usually be present in the soil, but bone meal will supply some additional calcium especially needed for grapes, celery, and sometimes tomatoes.
Like nitrogen, sulfur is a protein provider, and will usually be present in adequate amounts in the organic garden.
Magnesium is a vital nutrient, important in the leaves of living plants. It is necessary for the process of photo-synthesis—through which plants manufacture their own food and fuel—utilizing energy from the sun, carbon dioxide from the air, and water and nutrients from the soil. Usually there is enough magnesium present in the soil of an organic garden. However, occasionally, an acid-loving plant will indicate a deficiency, evidenced by yellowing leaves, which may be corrected by using dolomitic limestone or raw phosphate rock.
See the list of compost materials, with percentages of nutrients, in the supplementary section of this lesson.
Organic compost—and the various nutrients of organic origin which may be added to the soil—do not overwhelm plants with a tremendous amount of one particular element, as can happen with chemicals. The chemicals attempt to feed the plant, whereas the organic fertilizers feed the soil which nourishes the plants.
This more natural way produces the best food, and makes it unnecessary to be preoccupied with exact ratios of various elements, such as the 6-6-6 chemical fertilizers (6% nitrogen, 6% phosphorus, 6% potash). Generally speaking, these nutrients from organic sources should be added in approximately equal amounts, but be particularly careful not to use too much nitrogen from animal sources (such as manure, blood meal, or dried blood). Your soil will make the best use of the organic fertilizers for the nutrition of your plants.
Sand Mueller, instructor in horticulture at Triton College in suburban Chicago, says that seven years ago he was operating a conventional greenhouse in New Mexico. He visited greenhouses all over the Southwest, all of which used agricultural chemicals. All of them had insect problems, and all of them used powerful poisons.
Mueller had read claims by organic gardeners to the effect that their healthy plants had little or no insect problems. He says, “I believed these assertions were preposterous, as did every horticulturist I knew.”
But he eventually decided to try the compost idea, and his insect and disease problems rapidly began to disappear. After he started to compost, he learned the law of survival of the fittest in the plant kingdom.
Mueller tells how, in 1936, a British agricultural scientist, Sir Albert Howard, grew half a field of alfalfa with artificial fertilizer and half with compost. His oxen devoured the compost-grown alfalfa first. Given a choice, animals will always select the organic food.
After building up the health of the oxen with the organic feeding, Howard deliberately exposed them to the hoof and mouth disease, but none of the oxen became ill. Dr. William Albrecht, professor of soil science at the University of Missouri, corroborated Howard’s findings.
In 1976, Mueller offered his flock of chickens the choice of commercial feed or grains he had grown in composted soil. He says, “With a cacophony of cackling and scratching, my hens asserted the truth of Howard’s claim.”
Mueller says, “The horticulture establishment has only one response to compost and that is ridicule. It is the response of ignorance. I do not believe that there exists anyone in the field of agriculture who has tried organic agriculture who now advocates chemical agriculture.”
Before planting vegetable seeds, put in fifteen pounds of compost per one-hundred feet of row. Even if the compost is put in immediately before planting, the compost will not burn the seeds as does chemical fertilizer. If possible, however, put the compost in at least a week or two beforehand.
After the seeds are planted, soak the ground every day until the seeds sprout, then every other day. Put in one inch of mulch when the seeds begin to sprout. Add more mulch as they grown taller. Put more compost between and around the plants when they begin to bloom, and again when fruiting.
When setting seedlings or plants, put in the compost, then cover the ground with one inch of mulch, and then set in the plants. Soak the ground every day for two or three days, preferably in the late afternoon, then every other day.
Select the sunniest spot for your garden, but near a source of adequate water. Morning exposure to full sunlight is the most beneficial. If part of your garden is shaded, that is the place to put leaf crops. Avoid low wet areas.
A good size for a family garden is 200 to 600 square feet in area, but smaller ones will also produce a lot of vegetables if planted with small seeds such as lettuce and carrots. Plant seeds in rows that are six inches wide, with six inches between the rows. This pattern will result in a harvest of approximately four times as much as you would get from single rows. Leave a walk space of about 16 inches between each 18-inch unit.
Map the layout of your garden. To minimize shading, arrange low-growing vegetables along one side of the garden, medium-tall plants in the middle, and tall ones on the other side. Design your garden with companion planting and crop rotation in mind. (Details later.)
Plan to grow the vegetables you like to eat, and be sure to get seeds that are suitable for planting in your area. Don’t use seeds that have been treated or dipped in chemical solution. Look for the varieties that have been developed for resistance to disease.
Don’t use last year’s seeds—they seldom come up as well as fresh seeds. In most cases, it is not a good idea to save your own seeds. They often do not grow true to type, and the amount of labor spent collecting, drying, and storing these seeds will probably make them twice as expensive as buying new seeds.
If you soak your seeds for a few hours, or overnight, or even twenty-four hours, before planting, germination will be easier and more certain. Soak in plain lukewarm water, or, better yet, in a 1% solution of seaweed spray. If you sometimes don’t take the time to soak your seeds, try using the 1% seaweed solution as a seed dip.
Don’t sow the seeds too thickly, and be sure to cover them with soil to a depth of about four times their diameter. Firm the soil by patting or walking on it. Then stay off the planting area. The seeds must be kept moist until the seedlings appear.
For a steady supply of vegetables, make successive plantings, or plant several varieties of the same vegetables but with different maturity dates.
You might decide to use some started plants, especially if you are a little late in starting your garden. When thinning and transplanting plants, handle them carefully, allow as much earth as possible to cling to their roots, and give them a good watering after transplanting. Do your transplanting after the sun has gone down.
Be sure to plan for as many fruit trees as possible, limited only by the available space and your ability to care for them. If you harvest more fruit than you can use, you will have a good marketable crop, especially when organically grown. Offer your surplus fruit (at a fair price) to your friends, neighbors, health food stores, and supermarkets. If you have a large crop, it could even be advertised with good results.
Give your fruit trees what they need, but don’t feel you must be doing something for them constantly. Mostly, you should leave them “intelligently alone”—the same advice as Hygienists give for the care of the human body. The trees can work out most of their problems by themselves, if you do not complicate the situation by the use of poisons.
Don’t overlook grapes and berries! Be sure to select the proper varieties for your area. And don’t forget to include some nut trees.
More details about fruit and nut trees will be given in the next lesson: “The Pluses in Orcharding: How to Get Started.”
An organic gardener does not try to destroy the entire insect population in his garden. Not only is this the epitome of futility, but it is neither necessary nor advisable. There will be some insect damage, no matter what is done. Ignore the early signs, and don’t feel you must do something about it, unless your crop is threatened. Eventually, you will learn to recognize your friends in the insect population: the ladybug, the praying mantis, beneficial beetles, flies, wasps, lacewing flies, fireflies, dragonflies, and spiders. They are predator insects whose food is the scavenger insects, preventing them from increasing to dangerous levels.
The first step to insect control is, of course, the building of a living soil, containing all the substances necessary to produce healthy, disease-resistant and insect-resistant plants. Next, be sure to provide adequate moisture for your garden. Your permanent mulch will help to conserve the moisture, and will create conditions which discourage many insect pests.
An important step in insect control is companion pluming. Wild plants almost always grow in mixed communities, where each type of plant contributes to the support of others growing nearby.
Even when plant species are mixed with no planned basis, insect problems are reduced. The more of the same plant you have growing together, the more insects are attracted, as they get the clear signals from the larger planting. Interplanting and aromatic herbs confuse their sensory apparatus.
Companion plants influence, complement or supplement each other, and grow in harmony together. Mixed plantings tend to create and maintain a natural balance between beneficial and destructive organisms.
Members of the same plant families, which are subject to the same pests and diseases, should be separated—like tomatoes and potatoes; cucumbers, melons, and squash; and cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.
Legumes capture nitrogen from the air, feed it to adjoining plants, and enrich the soil in which they grow. Beans, corn, and cucumbers like to grow together. Or plant beans with eggplant and rosemary. Soybeans, especially, deter chinch bugs and Japanese beetles. Plant peas, leaf lettuce, strawberries and cucumbers with carrots, radishes and chives; turnips with peas; onions and garlic with most vegetables except legumes. Beets and onions are compatible; so are leeks and celery. Plant cabbage, broccoli or Brussels sprouts with beets, kohlrabi, and cucumbers.
Tomatoes are good with onions, parsley, carrots, and marigolds, but do not like kohlrabi. Bush beans like beets and potatoes. The strong scent of marigold seems to act as a deterrent to insects throughout the garden, and their roots secrete a substance that kills nematodes. Be sure to plant some around tomatoes and beans.
Some plants need a lot of light and are excellent companions to those that need partial shade. Lettuce likes cabbage and beets, but can also be put under tall plants that provide some shade. Deep rooting plants bring up the minerals from the subsoil, enriching the top layer, and they aerate the soil for plants with a shallow root system.
Plant nasturtiums in your vegetable garden near broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and cucumbers, and between fruit trees, to repel aphids. Chives and onions will also repel aphids. Garlic will prevent bacteria damage and damage from peach borers. Garlic and onions will deter most pests, but don’t plant any near beans or peas. Most strong smelling plants are useful in repelling pests.
There is a long list of companion plants, vegetable preferences and insect repellent plants and herbs. You will find such a list in the article section.
Companion planting, and the use of insect repellent plants, will not prevent insect damage, but will reduce it considerably; it will be a profitable investment.
Crop rotation can help to prevent and control perpetuation of many problems, such as depletion of particular trace elements in specific areas of your garden, and perpetuating insect problems or diseases that can survive in the soil from one year to the next. Implementation of the available information about crop rotation can contribute to a successful garden.
If you are maintaining a permanent mulch, crop rotation may not be absolutely necessary, but it is still an excellent idea, and it does not entail a great deal of extra trouble to relocate plantings each year. If you would rather not bother rotating, but will maintain a permanent mulch and keep building the soil, try doing without the crop rotation; you may find it will not be necessary in your garden. However, I believe rotation to be a good precautionary measure at least in the second and third years of your garden, even if you decide to abandon this procedure after your soil has been built up.
For those who do want to take advantage of crop rotation, here are some suggestions:
Avoid growing the same vegetables (or crops of the same family) in the same location more than once every three years. Plants subject to the same problems should not follow each other in the same bed. Don’t use successive plantings of lettuce, cabbage, or celery in the same soil. They are subject to the same fungus attacks.
Cucurbits (cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, gourds, melons) should not be grown near any other member of the gourd family, and there should be a lapse of at least three years between plantings of any of these in a specific area in order to reduce the risk of the fungus disease anthracnose.
Heavy feeders should be followed by light feeders. Leaf crops consume large amounts of nitrogen from the soil, root crops use up the potash, so don’t plant turnips after carrots, nor lettuce in the same bed, year after year.
Legumes (peas, beans) are excellent to precede or follow potatoes, but not to precede sweet potatoes. Members of the cabbage family, or lettuce, are excellent choices to follow legumes.
A rotation chart for vegetables to follow legumes (Organic Gardening, March 1974) suggested cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, mustard greens, lettuce, and parsley, as first choices; corn, leeks, shallots, radishes, turnips, onions, and Irish potatoes as second choices; tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and okra as third choices; and suggested that the following vegetables not be used behind legumes: carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, cantaloupes, pumpkins, cucumbers, squash. The varieties of legumes upon which the experiments were based were: Crowder, Purple Hull, Silver Skin, and English Peas; and Bush Lima, Pole Lima, Bunch Snap, and Pole Snap Beans.
Leaf vegetables or cucumbers that have had lots of compost may precede or follow potatoes. Potatoes should never follow tomatoes or vice versa.
Don’t plant peppers where cucumbers have grown within the last year.
Be sure to grow a variety of vegetables and don’t be afraid to experiment. Failures with some will be offset by successes with others, just as in any other method of gardening.
Crop rotation is so little trouble that it seems a shame to overlook this method of increasing the potential of your garden.
Start out with the idea that some insect controls will be necessary, especially in the initial period before your soil has been built up. You may want to try biological controls like praying mantis egg cases, Trichodrama wasp eggs, or imported lady bugs—success with these varies. The problem with these imported insects is that they may soon migrate to another location that suits them better.
Another very successful biological insect control is the presence of birds, toads, lizards, etc. Provide trees, bird-houses, bird baths and bird feeders, and shallow pans of water on the ground for the toads and lizards, who will also appreciate shrubbery and mulch.
Sanitation and good housekeeping in your garden will prevent a lot of problems. Carefully remove and destroy all diseased plants and wash your hands thoroughly before handling other plants. Remove all dropped fruit and garden trash. Watchfulness and handpicking is an old-fashioned, but effective, method of controlling some insects.
Cardboard collars around the stems of your plants help to ward off cutworms. Aluminum foil collars around young seedlings keep off fleas, reflect the rays of the sun and give the plant more warmth.
Other effective insect controls are wood ashes, black pepper, lime, or rock phosphate dust mixed with water, and a homemade spray or drench of garlic, onions, hot red peppers (and a little soap to make it stick). A good recipe is one cup hot peppers, three whole garlic bulbs, three medium onions. Blend with one pint water (or a little more). Strain, add enough water to make one gallon, and apply to both under and on top of leaves. It is easier to use this in a sprinkling can, as it may clog the sprayer, but you may have to use a spray for the undersides of the leaves.
Beer (or a solution of baking yeast, or any other ferment) in a shallow dish attracts slugs—and drowns them. Wet areas are their hiding places.
Rye flour or clay, dusted on plants when the morning dew is fresh, will trap soft-bodied insects and the sunshine will bake them.
Decayed insect sprays or drenches are useful. Insects are repelled by the scent of dead bodies of their own species.
A spray or drench of soapsuds is effective against aphids, mites, and plant lice. Rinse with clear water within a few minutes.
Some experiments made in 1979 at the University of California, showed that soap solutions can be used effectively to combat a number of plant-feeding insects. Among the soaps which were included in the experiments were “Shaklee’s Basic H” and “Fels Naphtha Laundry Bar” soap. The least damage to plants was achieved when the liquid formulations were used at 1% to 2% (7 teaspoons to 5 tablespoons to the gallon); and bar soaps or powders at 1.5 to 2 ounces per gallon of water. More concentrated solutions provided more effective control, but also increased the potential for plant damage. Of course, soap solutions do not have any residual activity, and repeated applications are necessary. However, even when applied only once or twice a year, beneficial results are achieved. It is best to use soap, not detergent. Three tablespoons of “Ivory Flakes” to a gallon of tepid water is safe and effective.
If you must resort to insecticides for your garden and trees, some which will not poison your food are available. A dormant oil spray, obtainable at nurseries, in a 3% miscible solution, may be used during the dormant period on certain fruit trees, and also, in a weaker dilution, as a spring and summer spray, to control certain insects. This is an effective control for many sucking and chewing insects, including aphids, thrips, scale insects, mites, red spiders, white flies, and mealy bugs. The eggs of codling moths, oriental fruit moths, leaf rollers, and cankerworms are also destroyed.
A one-time application of “Milky Disease Spore Powder” (called “milky” because it causes an abnormal white coloring in the insect) will prevent damage by Japanese beetles on your property and your neighbor’s, since it spreads underground. It is supposed to be harmless to everything except the Japanese beetle grub.
An excellent multipurpose control of caterpillars and chewing insects is the product “Thuricide” (another spore-type pest disease, called Bacillus Thuringiensis) which is extremely efficient for use in the vegetable garden on vines and fruit trees, and kills more than 100 species of harmful insects. The instructions say this product may be used up to the day of harvest. To be effective, the leaves of the plants must be ingested by the insects, as “Thuricide” is a stomach poison for them. “Dipel” is another manufacturer’s name for the same formulation.
Most diseases exhibit specific symptoms, so it is not too difficult to differentiate from insect damage. It is not difficult to identify insect damage caused by sucking insects like aphids or thrips, and chewing insects like caterpillars.
Sucking insects cause leaves to curl and become spotted, or they may turn yellowish, stippled white, or gray. These insects and their brownish eggs or excrement can often be seen on the underside of the leaves.
Aphids cause curling or cupped leaves, or round or conical protrusions. Thrips leave a black deposit of tiny specks, or whitish streaks.
Caterpillars, grasshoppers, weevils, and flea beetles are some of the chewing insects which eat the leaves. Flea beetles make tiny round perforations; weevils produce angular holes, beetle larvae (grubs) skeletonize leaves, eating everything but the veins.
Red spider mites, which are so tiny they are practically invisible, deposit tiny tents of fine cobwebs on terminal leaves, and can be found (with a magnifying glass) on the underside of the leaves—under a strong magnifying glass in a good light, you may see tiny specks about the size of fine meal.
Cyclamen mites cause deformed leaves; leaf miners produce blotches or tunnels. Round or coned protrusions can be caused by either midges or gall wasps.
Both nematodes and gall wasps can cause the partial or total collapse of a plant.
A useful product suitable for organic gardeners is “Neutral Copper” by Southern AG, a fungicide which, when used according to directions, will control many plant diseases, without poisoning your food. I have not found it necessary to use the neutral copper spray on any of our vegetables, but have used it on avocado trees, citrus trees, and some grape vines. It should be used, sparingly, at the first signs of disease. It may also be used as a precautionary measure on avocados, mangos, citrus, and some varieties of grape vines (not necessary for muscadine grapes) to avoid infection from scab and antracnose and some other diseases. These plants are subject to such diseases (which may be averted through the occasional use of a fungicide).
The best time to apply neutral copper as a preventive of disease is just before new growth starts in the spring, and when two-thirds of the petals have fallen. It is not advisable to use a neutral copper spray in the fall on your citrus or other fruit, as its use at that time of the year may prevent the fruit from sweetening. If disease problems occur at this time of the year, just prune out the infected leaves and dead wood.
Some of the specific symptoms of plant diseases are:
One should use a little soap (not detergent) as a spreader-sticker for all sprays, so they will adhere to the plants, instead of running off. The products referred to above usually need to be used only rarely and sparingly. It doesn’t take long to learn to recognize insect damage or disease and to evaluate the necessity for controls. Most healthy plants, however, rarely need controls.
Tobacco stem mulch will repel aphids, flea beetles, and thrips, but should be used cautiously, if at all. Some plants, like tomatoes, don’t like tobacco; and the nicotine content of such a mulch may kill beneficial earthworms, insects, and organisms. Tobacco could also carry disease to some of your plants, especially potatoes, eggplants, tomatoes, or peppers. I don’t use tobacco stem mulch.
Black leaf— a nicotine spray—may be used as an emergency treatment for aphids, thrips, or other small insects, but use it only if you must. It is subject to many of the objections listed above for tobacco mulch. I don’t use “Black Leaf.”
In extreme cases for emergency use only for a severe infestation, it might be necessary to use one of the insecticides made from rotenone, pyrethrum, ryania, or quassia, which are plant extractives. “Sevin” (available at nurseries and garden supply stores) is such an insecticide, and will control the bean leaf roller and the bean skeletonizer, and various other insects, but you ought to first try “Thuricide” for these problems.
The plant extractive insecticides, such as “Sevin,” should be discontinued completely as soon as moderate control has been attained. They are not completely hamless, but there will be no residue if you wait fourteen days before harvesting. I have never resorted to these insectides, and, of course, would never even consider the use of a more dangerous insecticides like “Malathion.”
If you would like acceleration in your recognition of insect damage, diseases, deficiencies, and problems in your garden, and want to study the subject, see pages 590-91 (deficiencies) and pages 340-51 (diseases) in Rodale’s How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method and The Bug Book by John and Helen Philbrick.
Gil Whitton, Pinellas County (Florida) Agriculture, recommends Cynthia Westcott’s Plant Disease Handbook, which is available in libraries as a reference book. As Mr. Whitton says (St. Petersburg, Florida Independent, 3/6/75), “No one book or person can have all the answers.”
If you have problems with “raiders” (rabbits or other small animals), this can be very frustrating. The best solution is a fence to keep them out. See the article in this lesson, “Containing Inhibits Raiders.”
49.10.1 Hazards of Chemical Fertilizers, Pesticides, Fungicides, Herbicides, Fumigants, etc.
The snowballing evidence against chemical pesticides culminated in Rachel Carson’s landmark book, Silent Spring, led to the ban in the United States of D.D.T., and restrictions on the use of other poisons on food crops.
On December 25, 1975, an article appeared in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Independent, entitled “Pesticides Can Kill People, Too.” Georgia Tasker, of the Knight Newspapers, wrote about the experience of Joan Cole with the insecticide “Sevin” (which is not supposed to be as bad as such insecticides as “Malathion”). She dusted a big tomato ring with “Sevin” on a dry day. A couple of days later, she decided to discard the plants altogether, and jerked them out on a windy day. The next day she felt as though she were having a nervous breakdown. She couldn’t get up, she couldn’t think straight. Ms. Cole said, “I had really panicky feelings. My whole body sort of went into limbo or something.” The next day, when she felt a little better, she racked her brain, and then in dawned on her that she must have inhaled “all that damned stuff.”
The article continues, “Dr. John Davies, a pesticide expert at the University of Miami Medical School, has been analyzing the tissue of a Fort Walton Beach (Florida) woman who recently died. Initial autopsy tests indicate Mrs. R.J. Clark may have become fatally ill after inhaling too much nemagon, a pesticide used to control nematodes. “Helen Lund, another Miami gardener, has given up using pesticides altogether. She was caring for the plants of vacationing friends and mixed some Malathion, used it, and decided to take the leftover mixture home. She drove home with it in the back seat of her car. By the time she reached her house, she was dizzy and sick to her stomach. She said, ‘I got to thinking this is going to kill the birds—and me.’
“So while the Environmental Protection Agency continues to crack down on dangerous pesticides, banning in July of this year chlordane and heptachlor except for very limited use, the possibilities of severe sickness and death are always present when using any pesticide.”
The World Health Organization has released figures disclosing almost 500,000 reported cases of pesticide poisoning in 1981. For every reported case, how many others do not report or even recognize the relationship of their ailments to pesticide exposure or ingestion?
As Hygienists, we are concerned about the hazards of ingesting chemical residues in our drinking water or in our food. How many thousands of workers are also exposed to the dangers involved in handling pesticides, or in growing or handling the crops?
The chemical cartels maintain that the risk is small compared to the benefits achieved. What benefits?
Modern insecticides are nonselective, killing or injuring beneficial insects and animals, and persisting in the environment, upsetting the ecological balance. All chemical pesticides upset the eco balance so significantly that crop yields eventually diminish.
The National Audubon Society says, “Between 80 and 90 percent of pesticides used in homes and gardens do no good at all. More often, they do harm. These chemicals are a hazard to wildlife, pets, and humans. None of them are totally safe. And they often cause more problems than they solve.”
Chemical fertilizers may initially increase the abundance of crops, but the eventual result of failing to replace the exhausted elements of the soil is depletion.
Tests made in the early 1960s on the Rodale crops in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, indicated a decided superiority in nutritional value of organically-grown food over the commercial varieties. Crops were grown side by side, half organically and half commercially (using chemical fertilizers and insecticides). Otherwise, the conditions were identical.
The crops were then tested to see how they compared in nutritional value. Six nutrients were measured, and the reports indicate the superiority in nutritional value of organically-grown food. The following comparisons between the organically-grown and the commercially-cultivated wheat and oats gives the higher percentages of these six nutrients in the organically-grown crops:
Nutrients | Organically-Grown Oats | Organically-Grown Wheat |
Protein | 28% higher | 16% higher |
Vitamin B1 | 92% higher | 108% higher |
Vitamin B2 | 171% higher | 131% higher |
Niacin | 100% higher | 63% higher |
Calcium | 25% higher | 29% higher |
Phosphorus | 3% higher | 1% higher |
But the best proof is when we taste and enjoy the better flavor of the food.
An article in the Palm Beach (Florida) Post, July 29, 1974, by Bryce Nelson, Chief of the Middle Western Bureau of the Los Angeles Times in Chicago, tells about organic farmers who increased their yields, increased the quality of their produce, and improved their own health and the health of their stock. Most of them sold their products at regular prices on the open market. The organic farmers said their fertilizer cost was lower, they had to do less work to get as high or higher yields than chemical farmers, and they were happier.
In a 1976 study for the National Science Foundation, Dr. Barry Commoner determined that organic farming methods produce foods more economically, and of higher quality. The study, made with organic farmers in five states, showed that foods cost $16 an acre less to produce. (The claim is usually made that organic farming is more trouble and more expensive than chemical farming.)
More recently, Purdue University Agronomist Jerry Mannering reported evidence of the importance of organic matter to plants. The correct chemical and physical composition, of the soil, and the soil energy, can be maintained only by conservation and replacement of organic matter. Only organic matter can create and maintain in the water-holding and nutrient-holding capacity of soils.
Numerous representatives of vested interests maintain that there is no difference in the .nutrient quality of safety between chemical food production and food produced organically.
Other vested interests maintain (and even exaggerate) the food deficiencies created by chemical food production, and offer a solution—vitamin and mineral supplements.
Hygienists must face these issues squarely, and determine how to resolve the contentions resulting from these claims.
Synthetic fertilizers may initially help produce larger fruits and vegetables, but they are often lacking in taste and lower in nutritional value. Vitamins and minerals, proteins and enzymes in foods that are produced organically have repeatedly been shown to be superior, qualitatively and quantitatively. And, inexorably, when the soil is depleted, exhausted by the use of chemical agriculture, what then?
In 1900, wheat in Kansas contained about 18% protein. Today Montana wheat (grown in virgin soil) also contains 18% protein. But Kansas wheat today contains only 11% protein, because the virgin soil is depleted and the farmers are using chemical fertilizers.
The late John Tobe, in The Provoker, November-December 1976, said, “The food processors and chemical corporations have arranged for various professors of great universities to go on the stump and make statements that there is no special value in organically-grown foods. Here I would like to tell you about some research that was conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Many foods grown in the United States were compared with their counterparts grown in Mexico, Central America and Latin America. It was found that many of the foods grown in the U.S. are lower in nutritional value than the same foods grown in Mexico, Central America, and Latin America, where chemical farming has not been established.” The caption of the article is “Sometimes It Pays To Be Blind.”
Many people acknowledge that commercially-grown food is deficient in nutritional value, and it is well known that organically-grown food is more abundant in trace elements, which are necessary to life. One example is the deficiency of copper, a necessary trace element, which is destroyed by chemicalization. Too many people try to restore these deficiencies by augmenting their diets with food supplements (pills, powders, liquids) in the vain hope of supplying missing nutrients. It can’t be done! In the lesson about food supplements, you learned that these products are useless, and even damaging.
There are four methods of gardening:
An amusing illustration of the difference between natural and organic methods is a story told by Dr. Alec Burton at American Natural Hygiene Society Conventions about a gentleman who came to Yorkshire, England, and took over an extremely dilapidated property. He did a great deal of work on this property, renovating it and getting it into a beautiful condition, and, eventually, people came from miles around to admire and appreciate his garden. One day the local priest came to see it, and said, “What a beautiful garden you have!” The man said, “Yes, it’s been hard work, and I’ve done it all by myself.” “No,” said the priest, “with the help of the Lord.” The man said, “All right—with the help of the Lord, but you should have seen it when he was doing it by himself.”
There is quite a bit of information available for the organic gardener who warns to learn how to get maximum results. How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method by J. I. Rodale and staff (mentioned previously) is an excellent comprehensive reference book, listing practically all varieties of food plants, with detailed planting instructions for each.
For those who want a few simple rules for growing food with a minimum of time and energy, moderate success can be anticipated by simply using organic methods, instead of chemicals; and mulching instead of cultivating and weeding.
If you live in an apartment or condominium and don’t have space for a regular garden, you can still grow some of your own food on your porch or patio. You can use boxes, barrels, or make a wall garden. Small plants like lettuce, squash, cucumbers, or strawberries need boxes only four to six inches high. Tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, and cabbage need more space for their roots, and these boxes should be at least ten or twelve inches high.
Vine branching plants (cucumbers, squash, melons) can be trained to spread over the patio floor (concrete or whatever). They require little box space. Grapevines can be planted along a building wall or fence.
You can build a wall garden anywhere you have a little space. Annie Silvan describes a wall garden and how to build it. She says that it is like a large block or wall of soil with plants growing out of all sides. “You will need four one-by-six boards two feet long, four one-by-six boards five feet long and at least 14 two-by-two poles four feet long.” Make two bottomless boxes out of the one-by-sixes —a frame for the top and one for the bottom. Nail the two-by-twos to these frames, one foot apart. It will look something like a cage with vertical bars. Leave the bottom and the top open, but line all sides (inside) with open mesh wire and then black plastic. Secure the mesh with wire. Place the wall in its permanent position, fill with soil, and water from the top so the soil will settle. Use tomatoes and root vegetables at the top; lettuce, strawberries, cabbage, cauliflower, or any leafy greens on the sides. Make little holes in the plastic to insert the plants. Water all around and on top.
Patio tomatoes (in pots) are easy to grow. Leaf structure is easy to grow. I once grew some in several large flower pots. You can grow sunflower seeds to the green leaf stage in flats by pressing unhulled seeds into the soil and keeping them moist. They are ready for harvesting in a week. Buckwheat, adzuki beans, lentils, mung beans, or any other seeds or beans can be grown the same way, and will produce a product which is superior nutritionally to seeds sprouted with only water, since they will have the benefit of the earth, sun and outside air.
When no other way is possible, sprout your seeds on your kitchen counter in jars or other containers. We use alfalfa sprouts almost daily. Alfalfa is known to contain trace minerals which may be lacking in other plants. The root system of field-grown alfalfa reaches down as deeply as fifteen feet into the subsoil, picking up minerals not present higher up, and these minerals are, of course, present in the seeds in the sprouts.
Grow as much organic food as you possibly can. Seek out and share with other organic growers. Import organically-grown nuts, seeds, and dried fruits from other areas. Keep trying to produce or obtain fresh organically-grown produce.
For the rest (if any) some compromises may be necessary. Get the best-quality food obtainable, wash in plain water, peel waxed fruits and vegetables, and do the best you can. Try to obtain foods grown on different soils, in different parts of the country, to insure obtaining a variety of trace minerals which may have been damaged or destroyed in certain areas: If you eat most of your food uncooked, you will still attain a higher degree of health than conventional eaters.
I believe there will be a few who will dispute the environmental improvements that will accrue because of the deemphasis on chemicals and poisons, advocated by the organic gardener. If you learn about, and implement, organic gardening methods, you will also find them practical, convenient, agreeable, and economical.
And there is so much personal satisfaction in the creation of living plants in cooperation with the forces of nature—you come to regard your plants and trees as children whom you love and foster, and who respond by giving you their fruits.
What is more rewarding and thrilling than seeing the first seedlings, or the blossoms, or the fruits ready to harvest? But, best of all, the food you harvest will be flavorful and delicious, bursting with the nutrients you have helped to supply; and clean and free of residues of chemical fertilizers and poison sprays.
The, only way to obtain a full complement of all the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, hormones, chlorophyll, carbohydrates, and other substances (known and unknown) in ideal combinations, is by eating the living food. Your harvest of organically-grown food will supply the needs of your body for optimal health.
Is it safe to mulch with grass clippings that have been treated with herbicides?
It would be best to find out from your neighbors whether they are using herbicides before using their grass clippings. If you see dandelions in the grass, that is a good sign. However, the most commonly-used herbicide, “2, 4D,” is not absorbed by grasses in amounts great enough to affect vegetables. Don’t use suspect clippings in the green state. Either compost them or put them aside for a couple of weeks. Soil microbes usually break down the chemical weed killer in a week or two. If you know when the spraying has occurred, and several rains and a couple of mowings have occurred since the spraying, the residue should be gone. Of course, grass clippings that have had no spray are the best.
Since sprouting in soil produces sprouts of higher nutritional value than sprouting with water only, what is the best kind of soil to use?
Seeds can be sprouted in soil, indoors or out. The sprouts will indeed be of higher nutritional value than the sprouts that are produced with the use of water only, especially if the soil is properly prepared. The soil should consist of one part fine compost, one part fine topsoil, and one part sand.
Is it best to wash the salt off of seaweed?
Organic Gardening magazine, March 1980, page 20, says that it really isn’t necessary to wash the salt off of seaweed, as the amount of salt that might cling to the seaweed is minimal. Dig the fresh seaweed into the soil to avoid leaching out of nutrients that will occur if you allow it to heap up and decay. Organic Gardening says that seaweed is nutritionally similar to barnyard manure, except that it contains twice as much potassium. It is also high in iron and zinc, and contains some iodine.
What is “Diatomaceous Earth?”
It is composed of the fossilized shells of microscopic one-celled algae. It is a natural product, and kills insects mechanically. The shells break down into tiny, razor-sharp needles of silica, and the silica particles attack the wax coating that covers the insect. The insect gradually loses fluid and dies in about twelve hours. Diatamaceous earth is fine, dry dust, and is best applied when plants are wet, or it may be dissolved in water. In a five-gallon sprayer, place a teaspoon of liquid soap compound in a quart of warm water. Add one-fourth pound of diatomaceous earth, and top off with water. Keep solution agitated as you use it. Diatomaceous earth works against insects only when they are in their pupal, maggot, or grub stage. This substance can irritate your lungs, so wear a protective mask when using it. Don’t use formulations which are mixed with pyrethrum and chemicals. If you can’t find it locally, it can be ordered from Golden Harvest Organics.
What causes carrots to be bitter?
An insufficient or uneven supply of moisture or of nutrients will produce bitter carrots. Insects or disease can also cause bitterness. If you follow the instructions in this lesson, as to composting, mulching and watering, your carrots should be healthy and sweet.
Is it advisable to grow vegetables or trees over or near a septic tank?
Root vegetables and leafy crops can become contaminated if grown near a septic tank. The roots of trees can damage the drainage pipes. Shallow-rooted plants would be less of a problem, but there would still be some risk of infection from any food plants planted over or near a septic tank. It would be best to plant somewhere else.
Is soil-testing a foolproof method to determine the actual needs of the soil, or is one better off just feeding the soil with organic matter and thus building its fertility?
I grew many successful vegetable gardens without any soil testing. An article in the August 1982, Organic Gardening magazine (“Organic Discoveries,” Jeff Cox, pp. 104-105) offers documentation of the fact that frequently these tests are relatively meaningless. Dr. William Liebhardt, Assistant Research Director at the Rodale Research Center, says that a reliable nitrogen soil test is just not available. Dr. Liebhardt sent the same soil to 69 major laboratories, and received analyses and fertilization recommendations that varied wildly. Measurements of organic matter varied almost as much as the nitrogen recommendations. The 69 laboratories’ measurements of phosphorus, potassium and soil pH also fluctuated widely. Cox’s opinion is the same as mine. Feed the soil, and let the soil feed the plants. He spoke with Dr. Roger Pennock, soil scientist at Penn State University, about the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. Dr. Pennock said, “The end product of organic matter decay—soil humus— tends toward a perfect carbon-nitrogen ratio of ten to one. At this level, and up to about fifteen to one, nitrogen will be released to the plants as they need it.” Finished compost has the 10 to one ratio, and is the perfect balanced fertilizer.
Compatible Neighbors | Incompatible Neighbors | |
Beans, bush | Potatoes, cucumbers, celery, corn, savory, strawberries | Garlic, onion family |
Beans, pole | Corn, savory | Garlic, onion family, beet, cabbage family, kohlrabi, sunflowers |
Beans, misc. | Potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage family, corn, eggplant, squash, rosemary, nasturtiums, petunias, savory | Garlic, onion family |
Beets | Onions, kohlrabi | Pole beans |
Cabbage family | Potatoes, celery, beets, nasturtiums, mint, dill, sage, tansy, thyme, rosemary, garlic, onion family, radishes | Pole beans, strawberries, tomatoes |
Carrots | Peas, lettuce, onions, leeks, chives, tomatoes, rosemary, sage | Dill |
Celery | Tomatoes, bush beans, cabbage family, leek | |
Cucumbers | Beans, corn, peas, radishes. nasturtiums, sunflowers | Potatoes, aromatic herbs |
Eggplant | Beans, potatoes | |
Lettuce | Carrots, radishes, cucumbers, strawberries | |
Melons | Radishes | |
Peas | Carrots, turnips, radishes, cucumbers, corn, beans | Garlic, onion family, potatoes, gladiolus |
Potatoes | Beans, corn, cabbage family, horseradish (at corners of patch), flax, eggplant, marigold, green beans | Squash, cucumbers, pumpkin, tomatoes, sunflowers, raspberries |
Soybeans | Helps everything—plant near corn | No enemies |
Squash | Corn, radishes, nasturtiums | |
Strawberries | Bush beans, lettuce, spinach, borage | Cabbage family |
Sunflowers | Cucumbers | Potatoes |
Tomatoes | Carrots, sweet basil, mint, chives, onions, parsley, dill, marigolds, nasturtiums | Kohlrabi, potatoes, cabbage family, fennel, nut trees |
Turnips | Peas, shallots, leeks |
Plant | Companions and Effects |
Asparagus | Tomatoes, parsley, basil |
Basil | Tomatoes (improves growth and flavor); repels flies and mosquitoes. |
Beans | Potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, cauliflower, cabbage, summer savory, most other vegetables and herbs. Adds nitrogen to soil. |
Beans(bush) | Sunflowers (beans like partial shade, sunflowers attract birds and bees), cucumbers (combination of heavy and light feeders), potatoes, corn, celery, summer savory. |
Beets | Onions, kohlrabi. |
Borage | Tomatoes (attracts bees, deters tomato worm, improves growth and flavor), squash, strawberries. |
Cabbage family | Potatoes, celery, dill, chamomile, sage, thyme, mint, pennyroyal, rosemary, lavender, beets, onions. Aromatic plants deter cabbage worms. |
Carrots | Peas, lettuce, chives, onions, leeks, rosemary, sage, tomatoes. |
Catnip | Plant in borders; protects against flea beetles. |
Celery | Leeks, tomatoes, bush beans, cauliflower, cabbage. |
Chamomile | Cabbage, onions. |
Chervil | Radishes (improves growth and flavor). |
Chives | Carrots; plant around base of fruit trees to discourage insects from climbing trunk. |
Corn | Potatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, pumpkin, squash. |
Cucumbers | Beans, corn, peas, radishes, sunflowers. |
Dill | Cabbage (improves growth and health), carrots. |
Eggplant | Beans |
Fennel | Most plants dislike it. |
Flax | Carrots, potatoes. |
Garlic | Roses and raspberries (deters Japanese beetle); with herbs to enhance their production of essential oils; plant liberally throughout garden to deter pests (ex: near legumes). |
Horseradish | Potatoes (deters potato beetle); around plum trees to discourage curculios. |
Lamb’s quarters | Nutritious edible weed; allow to grow in modest amounts in the corn. |
Leek | Onions, celery, carrots. |
Lettuce | Carrots and radishes (lettuce, carrots, and radishes make a strong companion team), strawberries, cucumbers. |
Marigolds | The workhorse of pest deterrents. Keep soil free of nematodes; discourages many insects. Plant freely throughout garden. |
Marjoram | Here and there in garden. |
Mint | Cabbage family; tomatoes; deters cabbage moth. House fly repellent. |
Mole plant | Deters moles and mice if planted here and there throughout the garden. |
Nasturtium | Tomatoes, radishes, cabbage,, cucumbers, plant under fruit trees. Deters aphids and pest of cucurbits. |
Onion | Beets, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce (protects against slugs). |
Parsley | Tomato, asparagus. |
Peas | Squash (when squash follows peas up trellis). plus grows well with almost any vegetable; adds nitrogen to the soil. |
Petunia | Protects beans; beneficial throughout garden. |
Pigweed | Brings nutrients to topsoil; beneficial growing with potatoes, onions, and corn; keep well thinned. |
Potato | Horseradish, beans, corn, cabbage, marigold, limas, eggplant (as trap crop for potato beetle). |
Pot marigold | Helps tomato, but plant throughout garden as deterrent to asparagus beetle, tomato worm, and many other garden pests. |
Pumpkin | Corn |
Radish | Peas, nasturtium, lettuce, cucumbers; a general aid in repelling insects. |
Rosemary | Carrots, beans, cabbage, sage; deters cabbage moth, bean beetles, and carrot fly. |
Rue | Roses and raspberries; deters Japanese beetle. Keep it away from basil. |
Sage | Rosemary, carrots, cabbage, peas, beans; deters some insects. Not with cucumbers. |
Soybeans | Grows with anything; helps everything. |
Spinach | Strawberries |
Squash | Nasturtium, corn. |
Strawberries | Bush beans, spinach, borage, lettuce-as a border. |
Summer Savory | Beans, onions, Deters bean beetles. |
Sunflower | Cucumbers |
Tansy | Plant under fruit trees; deters pests of roses and raspberries; deters flying insects; also Japanese beetles, striped cucumber beetles, squash bugs; deters ants. |
Tarragon | Good throughout garden. |
Thyme | Here and there in garden; deters cabbage worm. |
Tomato | Chives, onion, parsley, asparagus, marigold, nasturtium, carrot, limas. |
Turnip | Peas |
Valerian | Good anywhere in garden. |
Wormwood | As a border, keeps animals from the garden. |
Yarrow | Plant along borders, near paths, near aromatic herbs; enhances essential oil production of herbs. |
Here is how nature provides nitrogen for plants in the soil.
Leguminous crops such as alfalfa, clover, etc., are probably, next to lightning, the most important sources of organic nitrogen.
While some of you may believe that the gods and nature have neglected the good earth and mankind, I want to assure you that this is not true.
It is fixed by natural phenomena and occurrence that all of the nitrogen required by the good earth is put into it by a simple, natural, trouble free way. It is only up to man to use it wisely.
It is my humble belief that the Lord did not ever intend mankind to do His work for Him. In truth, man is lucky if he can do his own work properly—never mind doing anything for the Lord.
Leguminous crops are properly established and divided through the entire earth’s surface, including the deserts. This family not only contributes a wide range of forage plants but also plants used extensively for food, and, last but not least, as beautiful ornamentals. It consists of more than 430 genera and 10,000 species.
This family is probably one of the easiest of all to recognize because of the shape of the fruit which is invariably a legume or true pod, opening along tube sutures.
Many noted and respected authorities consider this family the most important family of plants in the horticultural world or any other world, says I!
When I talk to you about technical things, I can just feel I you drawing into that thick shell of yours so that you’ll be impervious to my railing. But, says I, “How are you going to know and learn about nature’s way if you don’t listen?”
It is written that occasionally the road to knowledge gets a bit technical ... but bear up to it—there is much virtue and value therein.
The most important characteristic of this family is the fact all of them have roots or tubercles or nodules which certain soil microorganisms invade.
Here the bacteria obtains carbonaceous food from the plant and carries on the nitrogen fixation process, storing up the resulting nitrogeneous food material. This, if not used by the plant itself, is added to the soil when a plant dies and its roots decay ... thereby becoming available to other plants.
Invariably leguminous crops leave the soil in much better shape when they die than it was when they first started to grow. That is why clovers, soya beans, vetches and alfalfa are treated as cover crops or green manures because they positively and definitely, without additional cost, increase the nitrogen content of the soil—apart from adding humus.
I’ll just name a few members of this family at random: the mimosa, acacia, genists cytisus, laburnum, wisteria, robina, lupinus, clover, alfalfa, beans, peas, vetch.
The way scientists would describe nitrogen fixation is as follows:
“Gaseous nitrogen diffusing into the soil from the air is converted into useable nitrogen by the mechanism of the leguminous plants, combined with the bacterial action of the microorganisms living in its roots. This act of conversion is what is known as nitrogen fixation and by this means nature provides simple nitrogen to the earth for its crops.”
Therefore, not only is this plant able to secure the nitrogen it needs even when there is insufficient nitrogen in the soil ... but these legumes actually add to that supply and as far as nitrogen is concerned, leaves the land more fertile than before they grew.
Animal manures are invariably rich in nitrogen and the reason is very simple and obvious ... because animal fare and forage is often heavy in leguminous crops and they contain large quantities of nitrogen.
There is one important factor that should ‘interest horticulturists about this family and that is that the flowers are invariably very showy and some of our most important trees, shrubs and vines belong to this group.
Commit this to memory...this family of plants has the rare ability to absorb free nitrogen from the air.
While back more than 2,000 years ago they did not perhaps know what we know, and this is that these plants provided the much needed nitrogen to the soil, the Romans used them extensively for soil improvement.
John Tobe is deceased, and “The Provoker,” his publication in which this article appeared, is defunct.
The chemical symbol “pH” is used to indicate acidity or alkalinity. On a scale of 0 to 14, pH values from 0 to 7 indicate acidity; values from 7 to 14 indicate alkalinity; pH 7, the value for pure water, is regarded as neutral.
Azalea | Holly |
Gardenia | Ixora |
Fern | Pine |
Orchid | Potato |
Parsnip | Pumpkin |
Persimmon, Japanese | Watermelon |
Beet |
Kale |
Broccoli | Leek |
Cantaloupe | Lima Bean |
Chives | Marigold |
Corn | Onion |
Cucumber | Pea |
Eggplant | Peach |
Endive | Radish |
Allamanda | Oyster Plant |
Avocado | Palm |
Banana | Papaya |
Bean Bottlebrush | Pecan |
Citrus | Pepper |
Copper | Philodendron |
Croton | Pineapple |
Dracena | Pittosporum |
Fig | Poinsettia |
Grape | Powderpuff |
Gloxinia | Schefflera |
Hibiscus | Shrimp-plant |
Jasmine | Squash |
Live Oak | Strawberry |
Loquat | Tomato |
Mango | Turnip |
Rutabaga |
Alfalfa | Geranium |
Cabbage | Lettuce |
Carrot | Nasturium |
Cauliflower | Petunia |
Celery | Sweet Pea |
The following is a partial list of available materials for “sheet composting” or compost piles, with some of their percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash:
% of Nitrogen | % of Phosphorus | % of Potash | |
Activated Sewage Sludge | 4.00-6.00 | ||
Banana Skins | 3.25 | 41.76 | |
Blood Meal | 7.00-15.00 | ||
Bone Meal (Also contains potash and calcium) | 5.00 | 22.00-35.00 | |
Cantaloupe Rind | 9.77 | 12.21 | |
Coffee Grounds | 2.08 | .32 | .28 |
Corncobs | 50.00 | ||
Corn Stalks and Leaves | .30 | .13 | .33 |
Cottonseed Meal (May increase acidity of soil) | 6.00-9.00 | ||
Crabgrass, green | .66 | .19 | .71 |
Fish Scraps, Fish Meal, Fish Emulsion (May have pleasant odor) | 2.00-10.00 | 1.50-8.00 | |
Granite Dust | 8.00 | ||
Grapefruit Skins | 3.58 | 30.60 | |
Human Hair Clippings (Get from Barber Shop) | 16.00-18.00 | ||
Manure | 3.00-4.00 | ||
Oak Leaves | .80 | .35 | .15 |
Orange Culls | .20 | .13 | .21 |
Phosphate Rock | 30.00 | ||
Pine Needles | .46 | .12 | .03 |
Tea Grounds | 4.15 | .62 | .40 |
Wood Ashes | 1.00 | 4.00-10.00 |
“As common as dirt!” “Dirt Cheap!” How many times have you heard those phrases? How many times have you watched an angry baseball manager bestow the ultimate humiliation upon a resolute umpire by kicking dust on his shoes?
In plain fact, the popular public image of dirt-dust-earth-mud-soil remains largely negative. In sharp contrast, all who have had more than a passing interest in planting and nurturing trees, shrubs, and food plants—centuries of professional farmers tilling millions of rolling rural acres and urban pot-bound house plant enthusiasts alike—have learned to place a high value on that vital, life-supporting medium, soil.
“Common?” Far from it! It can be as variable and complex as life itself. “Cheap?” Hardly! Placed in the proper perspective of materials most necessary to survival on this planet, soil becomes precious. Precious, yet misunderstood.
Soil is living and constantly changing material. It acts as a medium to hold the raw materials which trees and plants take up into their leaves and convert into food for their use through a process called photosynthesis. To function best, a soil should be made up of 45 percent mineral particles from disintegrated rock such as basalt, granite, sandstone or limestone; 5 percent humus from decaying organic matter; 25 percent water; 25 percent air; and a sprinkling of microscopic plant and animal life.
In general, basalt and granite-derived soils are shallow and tend not to be as rich as soils from sandstone and limestone parentage.
Sandstone-based soils are light, porous, have good aeration and are of medium fertility. Soils from limestone are high in clay, therefore heavy, usually poor in water and air content but can be fertile enough for trees. Most essential elements are present in large amounts in all soil, but the lack of one or more can result in poor tree and plant growth.
The ideal combination of ingredients in the right percentages occurs naturally in only a few fortunate places in the world.
Most people must start with the type and quality of soil that exists where they live. If it needs improvement they must gradually work with it, helping to move it closer to the ideal through the addition of sand, clay, or humus as individual conditions require.
A fairly deep hole dug in the yard, perhaps in preparation for planting a tree or shrub, will reveal soil layers of varying thicknesses. These may be noted as a visible change in color, structure or texture. The uppermost layer, the topsoil, should break up easily in the hand, yet feel slightly moist.
Topsoil does not have to be black in color to be a fertile medium for plants. The color as well as the fertility of a soil derives in part from the parent rock material that formed the soil and in part from the climate and other conditions under which it has been existing for milleniums.
Below the topsoil lies the first layer of subsoil. Often this is a hard ledge of material difficult to spade through. This accumulation of very fine iron particles or clay leached through from the topsoil above is called “hardpan” or “claypan.” The National Arborist Association advises that this concrete-like layer can become impervious to the penetration of air, water, or even tree roots to the next layer of subsoil below, severely hampering normal, healthy tree development.
Heavily traveled areas of yard or garden otherwise having good soil texture may become sufficiently trampled so that the soil’s structure is lost and air and water spaces are not large enough for root penetration. This condition is called “compaction.” Simple cultivation will resolve the problem.
In these days of fast-rising developments and a new home construction a purchaser may be lucky or unlucky in what the developer leaves him for topsoil. It can range from rich to poor to none! In rare cases the topsoil may be completely,skimmed off the property, leaving the unsuspecting but hopeful gardener with a severe problem. Occasionally, the topsil may have been trucked in from a distance and be far richer than the topsoil natural to the immediate area.
All trees and shrubs, however, do not find all types of soil to their liking, though one might assume they would if quoting the, line from Joyce Kilmer’s classic poem “Trees.” “A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed against the earth’s sweet flowing breast...”
But plants definitely do have preferences.
To avoid an unhappy union consult an expert, perhaps a local arborist, whose knowledge of both soil characteristics and individual tree needs will permit him to recommend a variety of trees that will find your particular soil “sweet flowing.”
Reprinted from St. Petersburg Independent, September 17, 1976
The home gardener or landscaper is at a disadvantage unless he or she has, literally, done the groundwork.
That means fortifying and building up the planting soil with humus such as compost and peat moss and with the essential elements nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, found in commercial fertilizers.
But the landscaper who wants to get the most out of those expensive trees and shrubs also will investigate whether the soil needs treatment for alkalinity or excess acidity—or whether, in some cases, he needs new soil.
Those $2 words, alkalinity and acidity, and the related symbol, pH (hydrogen ion activity), place this story in peril of sounding like a high-school chemistry course, so “sweet” is hereby substituted for alkalinity, “sour” for acidity and pH is discarded, except to note that soil is measured on a pH scale and if your soil scores 7 on that scale, it’s neutral.
Many well-meaning gardeners apply regular doses of ground limestone—a sweetener—to their lawns and gardens, in the belief that it will improve the soil. Unless the soil is fairly sour, it actually may be detrimental, since most plants grow best in a slightly sour or neutral soil.
A soil test is the way out of this dilemma, and is particularly important where major landscaping projects— such as a new lawn or a large vegetable or flower garden—are contemplated. In the case of these big projects, bringing in new topsoil may be a lot cheaper and easier than attempting to improve poor soil with additives.
Complete soil testing can be a do-it-yourself job. Kits are available for a few dollars but good ones are in the $20 to $50 range. The easiest way is to use the expert and inexpensive services of the Agricultural Extension Service in your county.
To get the most out of soil testing, and remove much of the element of chance from landscaping and gardening, several samples should be taken—one in the vegetable garden, a sample from a couple of points in the lawn, one from the area where fruit trees are grown, etc. Since testing is usually necessary only every four or five years, the cost is a real bargain.
Ground limestone—never slaked lime or quicklime—is used to correct sourness in soil and aluminum sulphate or sulphur to reduce sweetness. Soil testing, however, also will determine the correct fertilizing needs in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The payoff here may be in hard cash as well as better plants, since either too much or the wrong kind of expensive fertilizer may be being used by haphazard gardeners.
While 5-10-5 (the numbers indicate the percentage of nitrogen, phosphorus and potash) is a good general fertilizer for many plants, lawns may require something much higher in nitrogen, such as a 24-4-4 formula. But only a complete soil test can determine the correct formula for a particular area.
If most of your plants are doing well and the complete test sounds like too much trouble, you can conduct a simple checkup for a few cents by buying a piece of neutral litmus paper at a drugstore. Press a bit of the paper against some moist soil after a rain—if the paper doesn’t change color, the soil is neutral; if the paper turns blue, the soil is sweet; if it turns pink, sour.
Knight News
DENVER, Colo. — Millions of tons of chemicals dumped on plants to kill pests and germs contain heavy metals that are permanently destroying the productivity of the land, a federal agricultural scientist warned Monday.
The threat from the heavy metals has not been recognized before because little has been known about plant mineral nutrition, said Dr. John C. Brown, a soil scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture’s plant stress laboratory in Beltsville, Md.
New research has disclosed that heavy metals such as copper, zinc, molybdenum and boron block a plant’s ability to absorb iron from the soil, he reported at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Iron is the single most important nutrient for plants. It is essential for the formation of chlorophyll.
“Based on our knowledge, we view this as a serious threat. The whole of agriculture is threatened,” Brown said.
“If we don’t stop the use of heavy metals, in 30 to 40 years from now we will destroy some of our most productive farmland,” he added.
The danger from heavy metals already is showing up, he said. Citrus trees in Florida are suffering growth problems because the soil in many areas has been saturated with a fungicide containing copper sulfate.
In many areas of South Carolina, farmers are having difficulty growing cotton because of the widespread use of a bacteriacide containing zinc, he said.
Michigan farmers are having trouble with soybean because of high phosphate levels in the soil and in the Pacific Northwest chemicals containing arsenic added to the soil to kill pests are hampering plant growth, Brown said.
Once in the soil the heavy metals last indefinitely, permanently destroying the productivity of the land. Without adequate amounts of iron, the fruits of the plants are nutritionally deficient and the plants eventually die.
“The thing that bothers me is that we are still adding things to the soil that contain the heavy metals,” he said. “If we don’t stop it, we will have nothing left.”
Most of the compounds are added to the soils without any basic understanding of how they affect the mineral nutrition of plants, which scientists only now are beginning to understand, Brown said.
We are not set up in agriculture to know what we are doing. We need to know what we are adding to the soil and how the soil is affected,” he said.
Millions of dollars are being spent to develop methods of placing treated sewage on farmlands to increase their yield, said Brown. But the sewage contains high levels of heavy metals which eventually would make that farmland unproductive, he explained.
The Department of Agriculture needs more money so that it can establish regional laboratories that can analyze soils, plants and compounds intended to be added to the soil to avoid the danger of making the soils poisonous from heavy metals, he said.
Chicago Tribune
If there is a secret to garden defense, it is common sense. There are no easy answers about what is right—or best—to use in that defense.
While the pesticide-environment battle goes on, the backyard gardener fights his own private war, sometimes in unorthodox ways, to save his crops from insects and diseases.
Is there a happy medium between the shotgun gardener who tries to do too much and bombards his plants with dusts, sprays and oils at the first sign of invasion, and the purist who establishes his garden and then refuses to use any chemical means to protect it?
There are good pesticides—and bad ones. And there are alternatives that work—and ones that fail. A smart gardener weighs them all, experiments with some, and uses what works best.
The beneficial ladybug is probably the best known insect in the garden. This little beetle has done wonders for making poison-free gardening possible.
How do you keep your ladybugs from doing the “flyaway-home” routine? They will only stick around if there is enough to eat. You probably won’t need ladybugs until summer, when the pest problem is at its worse.
Water your garden then in the early evening, carefully place a container of ladybugs about 15 to 20 paces apart at the base of the plant. In the morning, they will begin climbing the plants and sampling the insects (aphids are a favorite—one ladybug will eat 50 aphids for breakfast).
For the average backyard garden, one container of ladybugs should be enough. Where to find them? In the summer, they are sold commercially through garden supply stores.
Invite a creature into your garden. A toad or a frog, for instance, is a good friend to the gardener. Ninety percent of a toad’s food consists of insects, most of which are harmful to the garden.
To encourage a toad to stick around, provide a modest shelter so it can rest out of the sun. Cut a small entrance in a box or chip in an opening in the side of a flower pot, and bury it a few inches into the ground, preferably in the shade. You might even provide a shallow watering hole-pond; if not keep the shrubbery around your Toad Hotel damp.
Some people may feel squeamish about it, but picking off bugs by hand is a perfectly logical solution. If you squash or rub off pests as soon as you notice them, you may not need a pesticide later on.
Remember, many insects come and go with the season, and will come and go with little damage to your garden if you just let them alone.
If aphids are bugging you, give them a bath. A strong squirt of water will wash them off leaves; or you can rub them off by hand. Still got aphids? Then try a soap bath. Make a strong solution of soap—not detergent—(Ivory Flakes, for example) and water using three tablespoons of soap flakes to a gallon of tepid water.
Use your hose and sprayer to cover the infected plant with suds, wait a few hours, and then wash the plant off with plain water.
Lo, the beautiful marigold. It should be freely inter-planted with vegetables because of its pest-repellent properties. The gardeners say the French marigold and the tall odored American marigold seem to discourage many garden pests, especially nematodes and rabbits.
The marigolds exude substances from the roots which will rid the garden of nematodes if planted each year. The ones with the strongest odor are the most effective and have been reported to repel pests ranging from bean beetles to rabbits.
You could write a book about ways to get rid of snails—and you’d still have snails.
One way is to “go looking” for them late at night—about 10 p.m.—with a flashlight. Hand pick them and dispose of them.
Snails also are supposed to be beer lovers. All’you need is a pie pan and some old beer. Make a depression in the ground and set the pan in it, so that the rim of the pan is even with the soil. Fill the pan with stale beer (that’s the secret—the stale beer). The snails will crawl in and drown in the brew. Change the beer every few days.
Why is it that some gardens are plagued by a hungry horde of insects and others remain clean and bug-free? In gardening, an ounce of prevention is worth the time. The rules are simple:
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Home vegetable gardens are the targets of all sorts of four-footed and winged raiders, and everything from beagles to buckshot has been tried at one time or another in the effort to foil them.
One reader, F. Thalken of Vineland, N.J., writes that last year rabbits ate everything in the family garden but the tomatoes, and equally plaintive tales are heard from others.
Except for a few animals that seem to defy all reasonable restraints—notably groundhogs, skunks and raccoons—fencing the garden or the parts of it containing the most vulnerable plants remains the surest solution.
Before discussing quick and inexpensive ways to fence, however, note should be taken of the various chemical and natural nostrums concocted in the battles against marauding animals and birds.
Mellinger’s, a firm that advertises “1,000 horticultural items” and is located at 2310 W. South Range, North Lima, Ohio 44452, in case anyone wants to write for a catalog, devotes an entire page in its current sales book to such items as Squirrel Skram, K-Pels to protect shrubs from dogs, dog and cat repellant spray bombs, Roost No More to keep pigeons and starling away, rabbit and deer repellent, mole killer and snail and slug pellets. Try them at your own risk.
One gardener swears by a substance more readily available: cayenne pepper. Sprinkled lightly on rows while plants are small, it is supposed to solve the rabbit problem. Once plants have passed the tender stage they are not as attractive to rabbits.
A spray made of nicotine sulphate (2 teaspoons of 40 percent nicotine sulphate per gallon of water) is supposed to repel rabbits, if a garden supply dealer who stocks the chemical can be found.
Various plants also have been arrayed in the battle. Soybeans, planted all around the edge of a garden, are said to be so attractive to rabbits that the bunnies will touch nothing else. Wormwood, a smelly plant that some gardeners place throughout their plots, is supposed to deter raids by rabbits, groundhogs, raccoons and other freeloaders.
My own garden is located less than 200 feet from a wooded area with a full quota of wildlife, but I’ve been able to protect the vegetables adequately with temporary fences and other wire restraints. I also subscribe to the theory that fencing an entire garden is needless and expensive since many plants don’t need protection.
Experience will have to be the guide in your area, but my own observation is that the plants most likely to be raided are young peas or seedlings of squash, melons, cucumbers, sunflowers and similar plants with large, edible seeds; corn when it becomes ripe; and ripe melons.
Corn and some large seeds often are victimized by crows and other birds, who will fish out seeds or pull up plants when they are only a few inches tall.
Plastic-coated fencing in the 48-inch size, or 24-inch if you can find it, makes fine protection for young plants and seedlings, including peas and beans, and just-planted corn and other vulnerable seeds.
The 48-inch fencing is cut into 24-inch wide strips about 6 feet long and bent down the middle to form a wire tent that will allow the plants to reach a safe size. The strips are easily stored in a small space by stacking them one on top of the other.
Temporary fences made of 24-inch chicken wire will protect larger bush beans and peas and also will help support the plants if you have only a couple of rows. Stakes cut for 2 or 3s and sharpened with a saw or hatchet will hold the fence, which can be put up in minutes with a stapling gun and disassembled just as quickly and rolled for storage.
Fences admittedly make cultivation of plants difficult, but if dried lawn grass is used for mulch between rows and around the plants, no cultivation will be needed.
Cages can be formed of pieces of chicken wire to protect melons when they near the ripe stage but ripe corn presents special problems. I have found stalks, chopped off near the ground and toppled and nothing but cobs left where the ears had been.
I’ve heard of one gardener who ties the tops of his cornstalks together with nylon fishline; when the maurader chews through the base of the stalk it doesn’t fall and the animal departs, too discouraged to return (or so I’m told). I prefer to pick the corn as soon as it ripens and to write off any losses as philosophically as possible.
Fending off stray dogs and other pets may be the biggest problem with roses and shrubs. To protect them, make circles of 12-inch or 18-inch plastic-coated wire fencing. The circles should be approximately the same diameter as the shrub.
A simple way to get the right size circle is to measure or estimate the width of the shrub, then cut a piece of fencing 3 1/2 times that long. Hook the ends together by bending the wire ends together with pliers—the circle should slip down over the shrub and is easily removed for weeding or other work. Even cats don’t seem interested in getting inside these circles.
If traps are resorted to, I recommend the box variety that doesn’t injure the animal, which should subsequently be released in a woodland, not a residential area.
Knight Newspapers
50.1. The Benefits Of Biological Orcharding
50.9. Pest And Disease Control
50.12. A Grove Of Trees To Live In
Article #1: China Orders Citizens to Plant Trees, Or Else
Article #2: Tree Culture—The Ecological Way to Restore the Earth
Article #3: Your Garden Needs Insects by Carl C. Webb
Article #4: Texas Could Feed Nearly Half the World by T.C. Fry
Article #5: Fertilization of the Soil by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Article #6: The Green Revolution
Article #7: A Case for Tree Crop Agriculture by Mark Chass and Don Weaver
It is often difficult and sometimes impossible to find natural, organically-grown produce in many locations. And what is available is usually higher priced than chemically-grown foods. Organic fruit growing, or biological orcharding as it is sometimes called, is the best way to obtain optimum quality fruits and nuts at an affordable price. By taking control of the production of our food we can be certain of obtaining high-quality, uncontaminated produce that will best satisfy man’s nutritional needs.
Besides the obvious benefits of having a supply of fresh produce uncontaminated by chemical fertilizers and pesticides, you have the added health benefits of good exercise out in the fresh air while establishing and maintaining an orchard. You have the economic benefits that result from having your own food-producing trees and you have the psychological benefits of feeling “rooted” to a piece of land—a sense of responsibility for your own space in the ecosystem.
Biological orcharding benefits the ecosystem by producing a protective blanket of green over an earth that is rapidly being deforested. Solomon, supposedly a wise man, employed 70,000 men to cut down the cedars of Lebanon, an act that geologists say destroyed the food production resources of that region forever. Similar destruction is now happening in the tropical forests of South America, even though science has proven the loss as irreplaceable.
A permanent grove of trees is not like a cultivated field crop, and the differences become more pronounced and profound with the passage of time. A grove of trees managed biologically will in a thousand years contain richer soil than it does today. A field cultivated conventionally in a thousand years will have no topsoil left at all and will have been maintained by tremendous outlays of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
On the other hand, the grove is essentially self-fertilizing. The leaves fall to build rich topsoil through the interplay of soil microorganisms and humus. The tree roots feed on the nutrients released in the topsoil and also dig deep into the earth for minerals and water. The minerals find their way, via the leaves, back to the topsoil! Woodland can raise the water level and it acts as a reservoir of moisture as rain soaks and holds in the deep, permeable soil beneath the trees. While the trees produce their food and nourish a whole chain of plants and animals under and around them, there is a net gain in fertility. In cultivated fields, there is almost always a net loss. In nearly every instance, trees can produce more food than grain.
Every individual, whether he lives on a small city lot or a large country estate or farm, can provide some or all of his fruit and nut needs with an orchard. Even back-yard gardeners can enjoy many varieties of fruit on dwarf-size trees and miniatures. The range of tree crops you can grow in your area depends very largely on climate. Climate is more important than soil. You can always improve the soil by adding proper nutrients, but you can’t do much about the climate.
Temperature and moisture are two factors which limit your orchard selections. Regarding temperature, your main problem in the North is too much cold weather and in the South your problem may be not enough cold weather to break the dormancy of certain trees. As for moisture, too much produces poor drainage in the soil and a high humidity contributes to fungal diseases. Of course, too little moisture means nothing will grow. The best climate for temperate-zone fruit culture is dry with adequate irrigation and with mild but not too mild winters. However, you don’t have to live in an ideal climate to grow fruit and nuts. There are varieties established for every area. For assistance in choosing the proper varieties for your area, you should consult a local nurseryman or your county extension agent.
It is possible to experiment with varieties not usually grown in your area if you follow a few guidelines. Learn as much as you can about the requirements of the variety you desire and try to duplicate them as much as possible at your location. Mini-climates can be created around pools of water, next to walls, with the aid of greenhouses, etc.
For best success, plant varieties that are no more than one zone difference from yours (using cold hardiness zone maps from nursery catalogs or gardening books as a guideline).
Diversity is the key for successful biological food production. Solid blocks of one variety of trees are open invitations to population explosions of pest bugs. A few trees of each of the varieties that you like are easier to care for and more likely to produce a crop of fruit every year.
Buying trees from nurseries is, in the beginning, the best way to get started, provided you get good healthy trees in varieties best suited for homestead production. A general principle is to buy from growers and suppliers who have a reputation to maintain. Healthy, well-grown trees may cost you more initially but will save you time and effort and will produce better in the long run. Choose trees with a well-shaped crown, a strong leading shoot, no damaged branches and a good, fibrous root system. The eventual size and vigor of fruit trees is an important consideration. This depends on the rootstock onto which they are grafted and a good nurseryman will be able to advise on the best rootstock for each purpose.
Nursery trees are sold in three categories. Bare root, container-grown, and balled-in-burlap. Bare root trees are only available during the dormant season, usually early spring in the northern areas and mid-winder in the South. Container-grown and balled-in-burlap trees can be set out anytime of the year though spring or fall are best. Trees planted in the fall have all winter to establish root systems before leaves start to develop and therefore will need less care and attention during the dry summer months.
A good nurseryman will be able to suggest suitable cultivars to ensure pollination. Then you can be sure that your choices will have the best possible chance of giving you good yields.
Some simple rules for fruit pollination are as follows:
The main considerations in preparing a site for your orchard are soil condition and drainage. The first thing you must put right in any area where it is a problem is drainage. Where the problem is not too severe, double-digging which breaks up any hardpan (compacted soil unimpenetrable by roots) and aerates and introduces organic matter into the soil may be sufficient. On very heavy clay, you may need to aid drainage by digging a deep, stone-filled sump (a pit or reservoir serving as a drain for water) at the lowest end of the orchard with one or more lines of drainage tiles covered with six inches of gravel buried two feet deep leading to it. Other treatments for heavy clay are to dig coarse boiler ash, mortar rubble, coarse sand, etc., into the top-soil. And work in plenty of bulky organic matter, well-rotted compost, or coarse peat to increase the humus content and open up the soil structure.
The ideal soil for growing the widest range of fruit and nut trees is a medium loam combining the advantages of sandy and clayey soils and containing plenty of organic matter and minerals. Few gardeners are lucky enough to have such soil. However, any type soil can be improved through a program of organic soil conditioning methods.
To maximize soil fertility, large quantities of well-rotted manure, compost, and minerals are required. Sandy soils will benefit from the addition of coarse peat, clay, or even subsoil from excavations. Clayey soils must be thoroughly cultivated, and lime makes clay more workable by encouraging the formation of soil crumbs.
Nearly all soils are deficient in one or more minerals. These can be added in the form of rock phosphate, colloidal phosphate, granite dust, feldspars, ground glacial rock, and greensand. Natural rock fertilizers are slow working and long lasting. They do particularly well on acid soils and are more effective when combined with raw animal and/or green vegetable manures.
A healthy soil depends on adequate quantities of organic matter. While barnyard manure has long been used for this purpose, well-made garden compost is an excellent alternative. Apart from diseased material, all plant residues and kitchen wastes should be composted and returned to the soil. Various methods can be used to make compost, but all require good aeration, free drainage, adequate moisture, and a balance between dry coarse material and soft green plant tissues or animal manure. Dry material should be layered with soft plant material or animal manure and then watered. Bone meal or other natural fertilizers can be added to the heap to supply additional nutrients.
Another good way to increase the organic material in the soil is by green manuring. A quick-growing crop such as mustard, vetch, clover, or lupines is sown early and dug into the ground a few weeks before the orchard is to be planted.
The soil should never be left uncovered, especially on sloping sites, otherwise erosion will occur. You can use ground cover plants or a mulch of organic material such as ground bark, old straw, grass clippings, and/or leaves.
Trees that come bare root will benefit from being placed in a bucket of water for a couple of hours before planting. For optimum growth, trees should be planted in a large hole filled in with the best soil and rotted compost. Do not put a lot of fertilizer in the planting hole. Spread the roots of the tree out in the bottom of the planting hole in a circle over a mound of earth. Compact the soil firmly but gently around the tree roots taking care that the trunk is not left leaning to one side or the other. The tree should be set at the depth it was growing before, which should be obvious by a dark ring around the trunk above the roots.
In areas with high winds, it is a good idea to stake newly planted trees. This can be very simply done by placing a slated stake against the tree facing the prevailing wind. You can also stake the tree by using a wire line covered with a rubber tube looped around the tree and attached to an upright post. Mulching with heavy rocks is also an effective method to help hold trees in place during high winds.
Fruit and nut trees need a lot of sunlight. They should be planted in an open area cleared of native trees, and they should be spaced far enough apart so they don’t shade each other. Also, tall varieties should be planted on the north side of the orchard.
No matter how you plant your trees, growing them successfully depends on mulch. Six inches of mulch will cover a multitude of planting sins. Even watering every day is not as effective as mulch. Mulching subdues weeds and grass under the tree that would compete for available water and nutrients. It helps the soil to conserve moisture during periods of drought and moderates the temperature of the soil around the tree roots. The mulch also begins immediately and continually to release nutrients to the tree. Mulching can supply most of the nutrition needed by a fruit or nut tree.
The type of mulch you use is mostly a matter of preference and availability. Any organic matter will do. Leaves are usually easy to obtain. Good results have been demonstrated from using old hay and on poor ground, straw mixed with manure is beneficial. Grass clippings are also a favorite of many growers.
Mulch should not be piled up too closely to the tree trunk. It is best to leave a few inches of air space between the mulch and the tree.
Nitrogen (N) and Potash (K) are what fruit and nut trees need the most of. Phosphorus (P) needs are smaller but just as necessary. Other important nutrients include calcium and magnesium in addition to manganese, zinc, boron, copper, iron, and others.
Where land has been abused, or is naturally deficient in some trace element, nutritional deficiencies in your trees may occur. These deficiencies often show in the form of fungal diseases, though they can also manifest insect damage, hail damage, etc.
If mulch is not giving your trees enough of the important nutrients, other natural, slow-release fertilizers can provide them. Rock phosphate and bone meal will supply additional phosphorus, if needed. Wood ashes are an excellent source of potash, and they also contain high amounts of calcium. Manure is good for both nitrogen and potash. Bloodmeal, cottonseed meal, and soybean meal are slow releasers of nitrogen. In situations where you need both calcium and magnesium, dolomitic limestone or oyster shells can provide them. Granite dust and greensand are very slow-release forms of potash and are more effective when used with a high content of organic matter. Compost is one of the most desirable organic fertilizers of all. It contains all the important nutrients and trace elements.
The importance of a balanced nutrient supply cannot be overemphasised. The controversial argument of organic growers, that proper organic fertilization gives plants resistance to disease and pests has been given more attention by conventional science in the last few years. There has been a steady increase in announcements by conventional science that a balanced, organic fertility program may indeed keep plants healthier and more resistant to bugs as well as promote more vigorous growth. The conclusions support the observations of organic gardeners for tens of years—organically-grown plants DO resist diseases and insect attacks better.
The English authority, E. R. Janes, in his book, The Vegetable Garden, wrote, “All gardeners should become health-minded and not worry too much about disease and pests. If it comes, act promptly and destroy the first specimen. Feed the soil so that plants are in sturdy health, because all the remedies in the world are useless if the underlying cause is repeatedly neglected.”
In a biologically-managed orchard, pest control should be limited to the use of integrated pest management techniques which include biological controls such as parasites, predators, and diseases. When insect damage is severe, organic growers can make use of certain nontoxic sprays such as dormant oil, retenone, pyrythrum, ryania, pepper juice, and others (see previous lesson on organic gardening for more details). All insecticides should be used only in emergencies, and with caution, because of the possibility of upsetting the natural balance.
The main point in biological pest control is the greater the area under biological and integrated pest control, the greater that control can be. When one orchard under biological control methods is surrounded by nearby, sprayed orchards, it has less of a chance of attaining optimum good effects from biological management. The more growers who can be convinced to retreat from total reliance on toxic chemicals, the more effective the overall program will become.
However, at times you may need to intervene when pest damage is overwhelming. Some insects and types of controls are as follows: The Caribbean fruit fly may cause a problem with citrus. A small brown spot will appear on the rind, and you may find small worms inside the fruit. The papaya fruit fly does similar damage. The only control suggested is bagging the fruit. If you want to do this, use brown paper sacks, or cloth—not plastic which will cut off respiration. The fruit will still be able to ripen, since the ripening process proceeds through the leaves, not the fruit.
A program to exterminate Caribbean fruit flies in Florida has reduced damage from this pest. Millions of the flies have been captured and sterilized by irradiation. The sterilized flies are released to mate with wild flies, resulting in sterile eggs.
As mentioned in the previous lesson on organic gardening, “Neutral Copper” may be used in controlling certain plant diseases. If used properly, it will control diseases without poisoning the fruit.
Use neutral copper on fig trees only if rust (a fungus disease) becomes a problem (the leaves look like they are covered with a rusty powder). If there is just a little, simply ignore it.
Neutral copper may also give some control to fire blight on loquat trees if sprayed prior to blossoming, and again when the fruit is about the size of a pea. The symptoms of fire blight are drying up of blossoms, blossom stems, or fruit, when the size of small marbles. Remove and destroy diseased parts, then spray with neutral copper three times at two-week intervals.
If you find splitting bark, or gum running from the trunks of your trees, remove the loose bark, spray with neutral copper twice, seven days apart, then apply pruning paint. When the pruning paint wears off, repeat the process.
Ground-up sulfur rock is an organic fungicide. Organic Gardening magazine, August 1980, says it is the best organic fungicide available.
Pruning is more of an art than a science. It is an act of cooperation or compromise between what you want the tree to do and what it wants to do. There is no “rule” of pruning other than the overall rule: approach each tree individually, and prune it in a way that enhances the natural form it wants to take. The most artful form of pruning may be none at all. Masanobu Fukuoka, the Japanese farmer who describes in his book, The One-Straw Revolution, his own orchard management techniques eschew all pruning in his citrus orchard which grows helter-skelter among other food and forest trees. According to Fukuoka, pruning is only necessary when man starts tampering with the tree.
Trees that are grafted onto other, different rootstocks, especially dwarfing rootstocks, will invariably need pruning. Most growers prune in late winter or early spring before buds begin to swell. Some additional light pruning may be done in summer. Normally, you want to prune when the tree is dormant, toward the end of winter in the North, earlier in the South.
Cut as close as you can so as not to leave a stub, which can die and rot back into the trunk, providing a handy entrance for disease. On larger limbs, use a pruning saw to make flush cuts.
If you cut a branch partway back (called heading back), the buds behind the cut will grow more than they would have otherwise, develop more branchlets and spurs, and therefore thicken the growth. This will also stiffen the branch. Heading back can easily be overdone. If in doubt, don’t!
Where two branches of about equal length form a Y, the branch cut back the least will grow the most, thus avoiding a weak Y-crotch.
In heading back a branch, always make a cut just above an outward-pointing bud, preferably on the lower side of the branch. This encourages low-spreading growth.
When heading back a central leader, cut back to bud so that there is no dead stub left when the bud grows out as a new leader.
Don’t be in a hurry to cut lower branches from a tree unless you live in an area where snow drifts get heavy enough to weight and break them down. Cutting vigorous lower branches off too soon slows the growth of the tree.
Pruning tends to delay fruiting with the exception of skillful heading back of dwarf trees to induce fruit budding on spurs close to the trunk.
You only begin to understand pruning after you have lived with a few trees from planting to their heavy-fruiting years. In the meantime, the old-timers maxim, “Keep a tree just open enough so a robin can fly through without touching its wings,” is about as good advice as any.
Hand thinning is done primarily to develop extra large fruits. Apples and peaches will thin themselves to some extent (called Junedrop) and that usually suffices for busy people. If only a few trees are being maintained, supporting overladen limbs with wooden props is an alternative to hand thinning the fruit. The home-grove grower should thin only to assure that his fruit is of good size and quality.
It is more important now than ever that man begin looking to tree-crop agriculture as a way to sustain both himself and the earth. As more and more people go hungry every year and more and more land is ruined due to poor farming methods and greed, it becomes eminent that changes must be started. Biological orcharding is a step in the right direction towards reforestation of our planet. Instead of a few people establishing groves of trees isolated from the concentrations of chemicals and toxins in our environment, perhaps the future could bring the whole landscape for human habitation into a pleasant grove of trees to live in and from.
Are dwarf trees really worthwhile?
Standard trees have some advantages over trees with dwarfing rootstock. In fact, only in apples are the dwarf trees really satisfactory. In peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, etc., many horticulturists believe standard trees are better for home orchards. Rootstocks on standard trees are almost always stronger, more adaptable to a wider range of soils, hardier, and more drought resistant. However, dwarf trees usually bear earlier and require less pruning. Dwarfs are easier to pick and spray, unless the standard tree is kept small in which case the difference is minimal. You can keep a standard tree fairly small with intelligent pruning.
Should the orchard site be tilled before planting?
Not necessarily. Some orchardists recommend deep tilling, lime, fertilizer, etc., a year ahead of time before planting an orchard and admittedly this is a good practice on certain types of soils. It cannot be practiced on a hillside or where erosion is a problem. Planting in sod can be successful and eminently more natural to the ecosystem. Trees should be mulched to the dripline and they can be fertilized with a light application of manure and minerals.
I am 70 years old. Is it foolish for me to consider starting an orchard at my age?
No! Some of the best orchardists are elderly folks. They are usually livelier than many young people and have a more positive outlook on life. Not only will you be contributing to your own health and welfare but you will be making a serious contribution to society as well.
Do trees need to be arranged in any particular way in order to be pollinated properly?
No, you do not need to strive for perfect pollination. In an organically-managed orchard, an abundance of bees and other pollinating insects will do a fine job for you as long as the trees are reasonably close to each other.
PEKING—The Chinese government Thursday ordered a gigantic tree-planting program in a major effort to stave off ecological disaster.
Every Chinese citizen is being told he must plant three to five trees annually, or face unspecified punishment. Planters must also tend the saplings to ensure the trees survival.
China’s insatiable appetite for wood products contributes to the decline of its forests. But so have misguided farm policies.
Knight Ridder News Service
America is, quite literally, floating out to sea! In many states, two-thirds of the topsoil has been destroyed through overcropping and erosion. Iowa, the foremost corn-growing state, exemplifies this national disaster. Areas of Oklahoma, Arkansas; Missouri, and other states are entirely bereft of topsoil—it’s all gone! Only red clay remains. It is estimated that over 50,000 acres daily of American land is taken out of food production due to housing, mining, and soil exhaustion.
American farmers are exhausting our lands by plowing and subsequent loss of tons of topsoil from every cultivated acre each year. Much land is being exploited by crops (such as wheat, corn, and hay, which are exported or go to animals that are exported from the growing area) that remove much-needed minerals. This practice is fast depleting our greatest wealth—our topsoil. California lands are being lost so fast that many predict it will be a food importing rather than exporting state by 1990 to 2000. Its loss of land is frightful.
Tree culture, on the other hand, restores and builds up the soil. Most of the world’s soil wealth was built on forest floors. About one inch of topsoil is added to a forest floor every 400 years. What nature built in 400 years, America’s exploitative agriculture destroys in a single year!
Rebuilding America’s soils is a number one priority. It is a herculean task, but it can be done. Restoration and maintenance can be accomplished scientifically by adding minerals as needed to give soil balance and then tree culture to maintain and enhance fertility.
Trees can build soil fertility while at the same time yielding tremendous quantities of fruit! A meat and grain agriculture destroys our topsoil wholesale. Its product is food that is pathogenic in the human dietary, while our frugivorous physiological disposition is excellently served by fruit. The former generates human fodder for our $300 billion annual disease industry, while the latter—fruits —form the dietary basis for healthful, sickness-free living! When fruits are removed from the growing area, about 1% of the fruit represents minerals that must be replaced. Hence the export from an acre of soil of 10 tons of persimmons annually means about 200 pounds of minerals across the spectrum must be replaced. Ten tons of fruit will command a gross of about $8-10,000, and the cost of organically replacing 200 pounds of minerals, including trace elements is a mere $25-40.
The product yielded by fruit is astronomical compared with the grain and meat economy. It takes about four acres to produce a single beef animal over a period of two years. The “food” resulting therefrom on an annual basis per acre is about 75-100 pounds. This compares with 20,000 pounds or more of fruit. One destroys the soil, while the other builds it. One furnishes pathogenic fare, while the other is most healthful. One represents a suicidal course, while the other is the basis for the good life.
You can be instrumental in helping put America on the right ecological/humane track. The investment is small. You realize colossal increments, and the result is bountiful for America’s health, too!
The only controlled insect pollinator is the honey bee which is considered to be worth nine times as much for its crop pollination as for the honey and wax it produces.
This is no mean figure when it is not uncommon for a single hive of bees to produce 40 or more pounds of honey in one season.
Many other garden insects are of great benefit because both the quality and yield of many garden and field plants are influenced or dependent on insects for pollination.
My garden produce is grown without the use of any insecticides because I understand that 90% of insects are beneficial while only 10% can cause crop damage. If I spray to kill harmful insects, I am certain to kill the good ones along with them and soon I would have completely upset nature’s delicate balance.
The lady beetle is well-known among gardeners and is a useful insect because of its intense hunger for other insect eggs and their young.
This insect is grown commercially in California and perhaps in other states, and is used on a wide scale by the grapefruit growers of Texas to control aphids on the trees.
Lady beetles vary in size and color.
Another effective predator upon other insects is the lace-wing, whose appetite for eggs and young of other insects makes it very beneficial. It is an attractive insect, light green in color, with a delicate lace design of the wing, which is the basis for its name. Protect these insects.
The young of the lacewing are so eager to feed on insects and eggs that the mother lays her eggs on a hairlike structure to elevate them so the first ones to hatch will not devour their unhatched brothers and sisters.
The praying mantis and the walking stick are two other helpful insects that deserve protection.
A number of tiny wasps are parasitic on harmful insects. In the North they work on infestations of alfalfa weevil, cereal leaf beetle, and the army worm. One of this type of parasitic insects works on the tomato hookworm. If a large tomato hookworm larva is seen to have a number of white egglike cocoons, do not molest it. Just let it remain so the new parasites can emerge and do good.
Do you see why it is important to be an informed organic gardener?
Recently we published the statement that Texas could feed the United States with its vast agricultural capacity and that the United States could feed the whole world. This presumed, of course, that the world would be eating its natural biological diet.
That statement drew some exceptions from people who told us we were out of our minds and were publishing outright lies, exaggerations, and distortions.
Today I received the first issue of a new magazine, Science 80. And what did I find? More than two pages devoted to a new gardening/farming technology that promises better than the statement we previously published.
In Palo Alto, California, Mr. John Jeavons has been experimenting with organic intensive farming. He has found that only 2,800 square feet of land will produce in one four-month growing season enough food to sustain the average person for a full year. But if the growing season is twice that as it is in Texas, half that amount of space will do. (The Texas growing season varies from six months in the panhandle to all year in the Rio Grande Valley. Most of Texas has eight to nine months.)
Our world’s population is about four billion. At 1,400 square feet of land per person, 30 persons could be fed per acre. Texas’ 60 million arable acres, then, if devoted to organic intensive food growing through tree and plant cultivation could feed nearly half the world! No wonder one billion Chinese are so well fed!
This article is not written to praise the merits of Texas but to point out that the world could be well-fed with its present resources and to highlight a new method of agriculture that is staggering to the imagination.
Mr. Jeavons started building up some unpromisingly barren California soil by employing the biodynamic French intensive method, a method that has long been practiced in France and much of Asia, including China. This method requires few tools and little labor relative to the yield. “The most complicated machine required is a wheelbarrow.”
One of the key features of the biodynamic/French intensive method is the elimination of row culture, as rows waste much growing space. Space devoted to actual growing can be doubled, tripled and even quadrupled. Further, by composting with organic materials, remineralizing with ground rocks and restoring the ecobalance by using insects, worms, and microorganisms instead of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, Mr. Jeavons again doubled, tripled and quadrupled the yields. For instance, his plot yields 16 times more zucchini squash than conventional methods! This greatly multiplied yield offsets conventional labor savings. Mr. Jeavons estimates that people who want to grow produce for a livelihood can work 40 hours per week for about eight months of the year and earn about $10,000 to $20,000! And, get this—on an acre or less of ground! But the biggest plus is ecological! Instead of, producing poisoned produce and land, we can grow more wholesome food on rich and highly-productive soil.
Perhaps you read of the Minnesotan who farmed over 1,300 acres of land conventionally and ended up with earnings of almost $50,000 in a good year. He sold all but 50 acres of his land. This 50 acres he turned into an organic farming operation on which he consistently earned more money by organic methods than he had at anytime earned on his tremendous 1,300-acre farm. Further, he worked less for his increased earnings.
If the farmers of this country get off the chemical bandwagon and start working for themselves and their consumer clients instead of for the giant chemical companies that have made them their serfs, the health revolution will begin. (Mishandled soil is the first link in the long chain of practices that lead to disease, including degenerative disease.)
The biodynamic/French intensive method requires so much less water that land not presently arable may become usable. Mr. Jeavons uses one-eighth the water conventional farmers use even though he waters his plants lightly every day. Even though they employ sprays, conventional farmers lose 25 to 30% of their product. Mr. Jeavons loses only about 10% of his produce to pests because he has established ecological balance—pests have natural enemies. Where he does not have natural balance such as with snails and gophers, he employs manual gathering of the slugs and traps for the gophers.
Mr. Jeavons has contrasted the amount of land required for various types of agriculture based on different consumer diets. The biggest contrast is that one meat eater requires about 22,000 square feet of land for his diet intake whereas a fruitarian/vegetarian requires only 1,400 square feet, only one fifteenth as much land.
The average person can, by the methods Mr. Jeavons employs grow his total food needs (a 2,400-calorie diet) on just 28 minutes of labor a day.
To say that this Science 80 article is a revelation is to put it mildly. Its portents are, I repeat, revolutionary for the health and well-being of everyone in the world!
If you’d like to learn more about biodynamic/French intensive organic farming, buy John Jeavons’ book, How to Grow More Vegetables. You can also find helpful guidance if you subscribe to Organic Gardening, a wonderful monthly magazine published by Rodale Press.
In 1950, I visited the Savage experimental Gardens in Nicholasville, Kentucky. It was late in the fall and the region had seen two heavy frosts. All the gardens in the area were destroyed—all, that is, except the Savage gardens. From these gardens an abundance of fine, tasty vegetables was still being taken and served. The Roy Health Home was serving these vegetables to its patients, and I enjoyed a few meals of fine vegetables fresh from the garden while there.
Why had the frost not damaged the gardens of Arthur Carter Savage, when it had destroyed all the other gardens for miles around? Mr. Savage explained that when he gets an abundance of minerals into the sap of vegetables and trees, they have high resistance to cold. He gave it as his opinion that, if he had the funds with which to carry on the experiment, he could grow oranges as far north as Michigan. Assuming that he could grow the trees that far north, it is not probable that they would ever produce a crop of oranges as the season is too short. But the mere fact that the remineralization of the soil produces such remarkable resistance to cold as to lead one to think that orange trees could be grown that far north is a thing worthy of our closest attention and study.
Minerals constitute plant food. To state this differently, plants live on minerals. True they need carbon, which they extract from the air, converting this, by means of photosynthesis (with the aid of sunlight), into carbohydrates—sugars, starches, cellulose and pentosans. It is interesting to know that cotton fibers (cellulose) is made from sugar which, in turn, is made from a gas that floats in the air. The sugar of the sap of the maple tree or of sugar cane, and that from the date and banana, is made from the same carbon taken from the air by the green leaves of the plant, as is the fiber of the cotton plant. The plant is nature’s great food factory.
Plants also require nitrogen and this is taken both from the air, where there is an abundance of it, and from the soil, where there exists another great storehouse. In the process of extracting nitrogen from the soil, the plant has the assistance of certain soil bacteria, with which it exists in a relation of perfect symbiosis, the plant supplying the bacteria with food substances in return for their assistance. Nitrogen in the soil is, in large measure, derived from the decomposition of organic materials. This decay is a bacterial process.
When plants decay, they return not only nitrogen to the soil, but minerals as well. It is thus, that when a forest has stood for ages on a tract of land, and returned to the soil the materials in its leaves and cast-off limbs, and the logs of dead trees, the fertility of the soil is built up, for trees strike their roots deep into the earth and bring up minerals from great depths. Such soil, when the forest is removed, is called virgin soil and is rich in minerals. Crops grown on this soil yield abundantly for the first two to four seasons, then the yield begins to fall off, due to depletion of the soil of minerals, and perhaps, also to some extent of nitrogen.
Ages ago man learned that by fertilizing his soil with animal manures and decaying vegetables (compost) he could restore a measure of fertility to his soils and thus maintain their fertility for a considerable also discovered that he could not maintain a high degree of fertility in this manner indefinitely, for, in spite of the return of organic material to the soil, these did not return to the soil all that had been taken out, so that there was a gradual deterioration of the soil. He referred to the soil as “worn out”. Compost fertilization has been dignified in recent years by being called “organic fertilization.” It should be known, however, that among plants, only parasitic and saprophytic plants live upon organic matter. Other plants require that their food be reduced to soil before they do well upon it.
That compost makes poor plant food is demonstrated by the rank growth of plants on old, rotted-down haystacks and on cow lots, the vegetation of which animals refuse to eat. Fruiting plants grown on such compost heaps either do not produce fruit or the fruit fails to ripen. Oversized plants (plants afflicted with gigantism) are of poor structure and are deficient in food value. Trees, sugar beets, and other plants grown in overnitrogenized soils, that is, soil overdosed with manures and sewage, develop cancer. Tomatoes rot on the vine. Wheat turns yellow and dies after reaching four to six inches in height. Overcomposting with leaf mold and wood mold in the flower garden destroys the plants and flowers. All of these facts indicate that mineral rather than organic materials are the best foods for all normal plants.
The experiments of Hensel in Germany, Samson Morgan in England, and Lindlahr, Carque, and Savage in this country all indicate that remineralization of the soil is a superior means of soil fertilization. Does this mean, then, that the use of compost should be abandoned? It does not. It does mean, however, that we should conform more closely to the natural method in returning compost to the soil. Old Mother Nature deposits her compost on the soil in thin sheets and permits it to decompose upon, not within, the soil. The elements of the compost filter down into the soil with the water, when it rains, after they have been fully decomposed. This means simply that composting in nature is a slow and gradual process and that the minerals of the compost are returned to the soil in a completely decomposed form. Composting that consists in adding partially decomposed compost to the soil and then turning it under, permitting the decomposition to take place in the soil, produces rank growth, poor food, sour soils, and the foods thus produced smell of decay. When the Grahamites founded the world’s first health store in Boston in 1836, they sold fresh fruits and vegetables to those who desired to eat healthfully. They followed the rule laid down by both Graham and Alcott, that all such foods, to be acceptable by the store for sale to their patrons, must either be grown on virgin soil, of which there still remained an abundance at that time, or the compost must have been thoroughly decomposed before adding it to the soil.
In writing on the subject of “organic fertilization” during recent years, I have pointed out that our organic materials partake of the deficiencies of the soils upon which they are grown; hence, returning these to the soil does not adequately fertilize our already markedly depleted soils. If we take materials from one tract of land and add them to another tract, we merely rob one tract of land of valuable substance in order to build up another. This process of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” cannot be kept up indefinitely without depleting both tracts. Also, as we never return to the soil all that we take from it, organic fertilization alone can never do more than slow down the rate of soil depletion. It can make our soils last longer, but it can never build them back to their pristine fertility. This statement is intended to mean that they cannot do this universally. It is obvious that if we draw organic materials from a wide area and add them to the soil of a small tract, they can rebuild the soil of this small tract to a high fertility, but we lack sufficient surplus soils from which to continue to draw in order to maintain the fertility of the smaller tract.
Remineralization comes to our rescue at this point. Soil is disintegrated rock. In the rocks of earth, and we have a superabundance of these in our hills and mountains, exist sufficient rock, if pulverized and added to the soil, to maintain the fertility of our soil for untold ages. This was the program employed by Hensel, Morgan, Lindlahr, and Carque. This is the program now employed by Savage. These rocks are often abundantly supplied with the trace elements that are so often lacking in our soils, hence lacking in the compost derived from these soils.
When I asked Savage if he used organic fertilizers on his garden soils he replied that he used a very small amount. Then I asked him what he did about earthworms. I have never seen any real reason why we had to go into the business of raising earthworms and shipping them over the country to be added to soils. The soils that I knew were always, except in droughts, abundantly supplied with earthworms. Savage replied that he found no need to import earthworms; that when he got enough minerals into the soil, he always had an abundance of earthworms.
It is minerals and not earthworms that we remove from the soils in harvesting our crops. The few earthworms that are taken from the soil to serve as fish bait make little detectable difference in the earthworm population of an area. A fertile soil supplies an ideal condition in which these worms live and multiply. Doubtless, the added minerals in the organic material that they help to work over and return to soil enable the worms to thrive and grow as they do the higher forms of life.
Hardier, healthier plants, more abundant yields, stronger bones and harder, stronger teeth of the animals grown on remineralized soils all indicate the superiority of this form of fertilization. Powdered rock, however, is not good plant food. It must be prepared for the use of the higher plants by bacteria and pioneer plants, and this takes two to three years. The presence of organic material seems to facilitate this work of preparation; hence the need for a small amount of organic fertilizer in addition to minerals. This avoids the common overcomposting that is practiced. We are so bent on production, production, and more production (for it is out of production that we derive our profits) that we overcompost to force production, just as we overfeed our hens on rich fare to force egg production, without any thought of the deterioration of the food value of our product as a result. We are as reckless in our handling of plant nutrition as we are in handling our own nutrition.
I do not say that organic fertilization should be abandoned, or that it is always an evil; I say that, alone, it is inadequate; that it is being overdone and that compost is being added to soil prematurely. I have repeatedly urged that we make a more thorough study of plant nutrition and the valid needs of plants, to the end that we may raise better food crops. This does not seem to me to be an unreasonable demand.
The time is rapidly approaching when, if one does not have a plot of ground on which to raise one’s own food, one will be unable to get anything that is suitable for eating. That time has just about arrived. Foods are grown on soils that are improperly fertilized; they are sprayed with poisonous insecticides; they are pulled too green and shipped long distances to market; they are held for some time before they are eaten. They are processed, conditioned, colored, flavored, preserved, cooked, canned, and in many ways rendered less and less suitable for human consumption. Fruits are becoming so poor that one hardly knows the taste of good fruit any more.
We have had a revolution. Farms have been industrialized. They have grown so large and are attended by machinery of such cost that the small farmer is out in the cold. In simple English, the industrial revolution has struck the farm with a vengeance. Conditions are growing worse and bid fair to get much worse before any serious attention to the problems this presents will be given to the matter of correction by the powers that be. Something is needed by the health seeker in the meantime to make it possible to live a healthful life.
A partial answer is the proposed “green revolution” suggested and pushed by the forces of decentralization headed by Ralph Borsodi and Mildred Loomis. The green revolution is being pushed through a recently founded publication entitled The Green Revolution. It is a move to lure the suckers of suburbia away from their rat holes in the cities and back to old mother earth, to the end that they may have a hand in the production of their own food.
The Green Revolution calls to people to get away from the murky atmosphere of the fume-laden cities and out into the wide open spaces and to get their hands dirty in the rich, humus-fertilized soil of their own garden and orchard. Out where the air is pure, the sun shines and the countryside is green. It may be a resurgence of the “back to the land” movement that was started in the early days of this century. As such, it is for the intelligent few and not for the herd thinkers, who are content to rot in suburbia. Give them a television set, a cigarette, a glass of beer, and a hot dog and they are happy and maudlin, while looking forward to that bright day, when, at the age of sixty-five (which few of them will ever reach), the state will take over and grudgingly dole out, from the social security funds that are wasted in a thousand other ways, to them a bare subsistence so that they can retire.
For the intelligent, for the aspiring, for the man and woman of grander view, the green revolution offers a way of escape from the hum-drum existence of city life; it offers a healthier way of living and a higher enjoyment of life. How should a human being live? Certainly not the cramped and confined life of boredom, stimulation, and tranquilization of the cities, where his greatest thrills come from turning on the television set and watching two slaves pound each other’s feeble brains out in the prize ring. Out under the stars, out. where the sun shines, out where the flowers bloom, the trees grow and the grass is green is the place for man.
The Green Revolution is not vegetarian, but it will provide the vegetarian and the fruitarian with an opportunity to live his life in a better way than he now lives it. It does not condemn cruelty to animals, and one of its pioneers has opened a rodeo pen at the gate of his ranch. Rodeos are hotbeds of cruelty. They belong to a bygone period of our country and represent an anachronism, but suburbia’s mobs are thrilled by their sights.
Today’s farm machinery and big farms are driving people from the land and into the cities where they work in the factories. Automation is rapidly robbing them of jobs in the factories. A new feudalism is in the making. Can we reverse this trend by getting back to the land and staging a green revolution? Perhaps not. Man rarely turns back until he has followed each trend to its bitterest end. But for the intelligent members of our population a little land with garden, orchard, and flowers will enable them to live in spite of the mounting evils that we call civilization.
Nostalgia? Perhaps. But not one that it is impossible to do something about. A big tract of land and a warehouse full of machinery are not essential to the life of the green revolution. A few fertile acres, a few simple and inexpensive tools, a little time each day devoted to the tasks of gardening and orcharding and life takes on new meaning while the body is better nourished. What a difference there is between the screech of brakes, the honking of horns, and the sound of sirens in the city and the song of birds in the country! What a difference there is between the life of the cave dwellers of the big cities and the dwellers in a homestead in the great outdoors! It is the difference between being in paradise and in the abodes of the damned.
The Hygienist can take an active part in the green revolution and do so in strictest harmony with the eternal principles of Hygiene. The green revolution should cover the earth as waters cover the seas, but I suggest for the Hygienist a warm climate where fresh food can be had through the whole year. South Texas, Florida, southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, along the southern regions of the Gulf states—these regions offer nearly ideal locations for the Hygienist. It was in the South that Dr. Trall expected Hygiene to flourish in its greatest perfection. He even toured the South in search of a location to establish a Hygienic colony. The Civil (?) War brought that green dream to an unsuccessful end.
We are trying to alert people to act on nature’s imperative while there is still time and resources. The earth’s soils must be completely remineralized and our mode of producing food entirely revamped. Otherwise we’ll destroy our beautiful earth and what terrestrial life remains, including ourselves.
Humans must either work towards purifying and replenishing our earth and themselves or expect a tremendous crisis in our ecosystem due to interolerable toxemia and malnutrition. Whether glaciation, ozone depletion, oceanic death that leads to oxygen depletion, massive earth upheavals and quakes, magnetic field reversals, excessive carbon dioxide or other calamitous events occur; whether any or all of these come to pass, our path is presently fraught with doom and will steadily worsen so long as we continue to be led by and grovel at the feet of exploitative minds.
This being the core of our convictions, we hope you can see the importance of reaching and bringing together people who are interested in rebuilding our ecosystem, and in conserving rather than exploiting our resources. The quality of human life is foremost in our minds and we don’t wish to see our brethren in life’s journey plunged deeper into the disastrous course that prevails. We abhor the unchecked tide of earth destruction that is leading to catastrophic world upheavals: unbearable weather, glaciation, mass starvation, and other evils with which we are running a collision course.
The unimaginably great capacity of this earth for being a paradise beyond our wildest dreams and our inherent potential for beauty, goodness, and exalting joys makes our quest all the more urgent.
This is why we seek your cooperation, why we ask your attention and care to this message, and why we ask you to extend your area of awareness and coverage to all facets of human existence. Our total well-being depends on the well-being of our entire ecosystem on which we depend.
The one most powerful, widespread and growing destroyer of our environment is agriculture. In all its ramifications, today and throughout history, it has changed untold millions of square miles of virgin land into neat square fields of overcultured and overdomesticated plants and animals. Its requirement of raw materials is so huge that when all is added up, we humans are net losers. Not only do we suffer nutritionally, but the earth suffers even greater and the situation is like a time bomb set to destroy us.
Until we realize that our thinking is creating and perpetuating this artificial environment and consequent destruction, we will severely limit our potential and destroy much of the planet we live on. We are doing nothing significantly different or better than our ancestors and, in many ways, we are doing much worse. A vision entirely new and fresh must be brought into our daily lives.
This article will bring to light and confront directly the root causes of humanity’s critical and unprecedentedly urgent global crisis in virtually all realms of existence. Most specifically it will question our approach to the problem of securing nourishment from the soil by agriculture. The authors have learned that it is too late for any more fragmented or half-hearted solutions to the rapidly accelerating environmental crisis. This article will outline a sane and beneficial course for meeting our most pressing problems of living here and now and in the unlimited future. Fundamentally, this is a call for a worldwide movement towards a biologically-oriented culture and a nonirrigated and noncultivated tree crop agriculture. This is the only long-term approach nature can afford and accept of humanity. The survival of all life as we know it is at stake. One can sense that the land has changed from its original design and unhampered course. Where are the great valley oaks of magnificence that once provided shade and food for humans and animals? Where are the riparian zones that used to extend for great distances from free-flowing rivers, even in rather arid central valleys? Why is the water table dropping, forcing ever deeper wells and more dams? Why are fruits and vegetables becoming more and more unnutritious and tasteless at the same time disease is becoming more rampant? Why is the weather so unusual and causing unseasonal floods, frosts, and decreased yields even though the USDA still claims that harvests have never been better? Possibly the most obvious change is the declining quality of our air and water, even in remote areas. Even the rain is becoming toxic as it washes poisons from the skies.
To understand this situation a little more clearly, the authors did extensive research and found quite a bit of evidence that documents the change in our earth’s fragile skin over the last 6,000 years of recorded history, a very short time in the course of our existence. In his classic book “Man and Nature” written over a hundred years ago, George Perkins Marsh states, “There is good reason to believe that the surface of the inhabitable earth, in all climates and regions which have been the abodes of dense and civilized populations, was, with few exceptions, already covered with lush forest growth when it first became the home of man.” In fact, one can go to areas of past civilizations and realize that, because of misuse and incorrect vision of nature, the forests were destroyed. Marsh adds: “Ancient historical records . . . prove that large provinces, where the earth has long been wholly bare of trees, were once clothed with vast and almost unbroken woods when first made known to Greek and Roman civilizations.” In Losing Ground by Erik Eckholm and the Worldwatch Institute, the author states, “The bare hills that characterize the Mediterranean today provide little hint of the extensive woodlands that once existed. By the end of the Classical Age, deforestation in the lowlands around the Mediterranean was acute. The clearance of farmlands, grazing herds, and wood gathering for fuel and construction all contributed to this condition. The region’s dry climate and nimble goats discouraged natural forest regeneration, even in centuries when the pressures of civilization slackened.” It was common for builders of that area to cut down as many as 2,000 mature oak trees to build a single sailing ship.
Eckholm also presents us with a most interesting picture of the extent of natural forestation in recent history. For example, the area now known as the United States was, at the time of European colonization, approximately one-third forest. Mexico, now largely arid and desert-like, had an extensive tree mantle on over half of its surface prior to European influence.
Another method of land alteration is fire. Fire became an important tool for the developing agriculture and domestication of grazing animals. Brush, young trees, and mulch material are all destroyed by fire. Overgrazing prevents their return and accommodates erosion. Complete generations of successional plants are eliminated. When the older trees eventually die there are no replacements and an evergrowing wasteland takes over. This can be seen in many areas of California where the land is used for grazing. Further complications arise when the unprotected soil begins to be washed away adding to the silt burden of our streams and rivers which disrupts and destroys river and ocean environments. The Eel River in Northern California carries more silt from eroded hillsides than the Mississippi River which drains a manifold larger area.
The advent of agriculture and the domestication of grazing animals, most notably goats, Sheep, and cattle, was, and still is, a major cause of deforestation. One can see that if land once under cultivation and grazing is left alone, a spontaneous nature will soon cover it with herbacious plants and eventually a dense forest. Marsh even believed that forests would soon cover many arid areas of Arabia and Africa “if man and domesticated animals, especially goats and camels, were banished from them. Young trees sprout plentifully around springs and along the winter water courses of the desert. A few years of undisturbed vegetation would soon suffice to cover such points with groves, and these would gradually extend themselves over soils where now scarcely any green thing is seen.”
For centuries man has based his agriculture on clearing, plowing, cultivation and irrigation of annual crops. Only in a few rare instances are there people who have, because of necessity or enlightened vision, based their sustenance on perennial tree crops. J. Russel Smith in his book “Tree Crops” describes cultures who eat most of their food from tree produce and who allow their animals to self-feed themselves on the fruit and nut drop of the trees. Plowing and cultivation have taken their toll on Earth’s fertility. The soil is bared of its covering of leaves, broken and loosened by the mechanical action of implements, deprived of its Fibrous root hairs which hold it together, dried and pulverized by sun and wind and at last exhausted of its vitality. The face of Earth is no longer a sponge but more often a growing dust bowl.
The practice of irrigation has also become a major factor in today’s crisis. Pumping deep wells lowers the water table for indigenous species of plants. The volume of water is tremendous. In California and Arizona 85% of all diverted water can be attributed to irrigation and this irrigation is both wasteful and even unnecessary. Rivers are diverted, dams are built, and the fresh water cycle drastically altered. The great rivers of the world have been reduced to a predictable flow, at least temporarily. Since the irrigated fields are so saturated with water-soluble chemicals from fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, the water runoff has become laden with toxic compounds deadly to all life. This water must be treated before it can become of acceptable quality for further irrigation or usage. This is now occurring to the Colorado River where it enters Mexico loaded with chemicals from U. S. farms. In Nebraska ground water is so loaded with chemical nitrates from nitrogen fertilizers that it is infesting potable water supplies of the area. Physicians are now diagnosing nitrate poisoning in children of the area.
Historically nothing was much different. The Sumerians in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates valley in 4,000 B.C. had a complex irrigation system. However, the water left so much dissolved salt in the soil that it ruined the soil permanently. We witness an ominous recurrence in the California desert. Areas all through the U.S.A. are losing valuable cropland due to irrigation. Irrigation experts say all that is needed is a very costly underground drainage system which would drain the salts from the uppermost levels of the soil; but this is not the answer, obviously. All irrigation water contributes to an unbalance of the soil that might well be called “mineral-poisoning.” Salt may be characterized as a “junk mineral” that destroys. This has its consequences too. We really do not realize how we are disrupting the natural order just from the way we grow our food which, in itself, is an apparent innocent and innocuous endeavor.
In some cases stream flow becomes so low from diversion that water temperature rises past the point at which fish can spawn. Many of the dams built in recent years to supposedly help conditions are silting up quicker than expected from up river erosion. This not only shortens their effective time of usage, but also has disastrous effects on fish and other life in the water as well as irrigated land downstream.
Farmlands are covered by the rising waters behind the dam. Farmlands below the dam are deprived of the supplies of fertilizing silt which would normally be deposited by the river but still receive certain of the deadly soluble salts. An example of this is the Aswan dam which backs up the waters of the Nile River. The Nile’s silt had kept the soil along its’s banks fertile for ages.
When water is backed up behind dams everything changes. The water’s chemistry, kinds and numbers of indigenous flora and fauna, the salinity, the water’s pressure on surrounding hills and on earth faults are all altered. Incredibly, a world-wide recognition of the immense problems entailed has not yet occurred. More and more dams are being built to supply the world’s suffering agricultural systems with water.
All of these situations culminate in the fact that the amount of oxygen producing biomass on the earth and in the oceans is decreasing. In many areas the vegetation remaining is so mineral deficient, with a resultant decrease in water storage capacity in the plant’s tissues, “that it is on the verge of bursting into flames.” The minerals tied up in our forest trees and grounds have been exported from the forest for so long by logging practices that widespread forest destruction by fire becomes ever more ominous.
Mineral depletion is also causing our agricultural soils to dry out, ready to be blown away in another dust bowl. When crops are harvested and shipped off to supermarkets, the soil loses its ability to replenish itself. The plants would usually return to the soil, decompose and nourish the next cycle of growth. Since none of our excrement returns to the soil either, the soil loses again. The only thing receiving minerals is the ocean where everything seems to be ending up, not only to the detriment of the land but the ocean itself.
The latest insanity of soil depletion concerns the burning of biomass to generate electricity. This practice not only pollutes our atmosphere but it burns vegetation, crop residues and forest slash. It thereby removes vital carbon and minerals necessary to the soil life cycle. Without these vital humus-to-be components, soil microorganisms cannot exist. Without these necessary organisms upon which new plant life becomes stunted due to malnourishment. It becomes susceptible to insects and diseases. Animals and people cannot thrive on these plants—they likewise become stunted, malnourished and diseased. Modern farmers respond to this situation with massive chemicalization to stimulate plant growth and insecticides to destroy the pests that thrive on such plant life.
Furthermore, since photosynthesizing plants are our source of oxygen, we are really disturbing the whole oxygen-carbon dioxide balance of our biosphere with our unwise activity. Along with the increased burning of fossil and organic fuels, carbon dioxide levels are expected to double in the next forty years—nothing less than a disastrous situation! To relate this to agriculture, overoxidation of humus by tillage exposure also increases carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Tillage exposure permits the oxidation that releases carbon to the air and, simultaneously, decreases the carbon storage the humus provides in the soil mantle. The harvests of the forests, which conduct more photosynthesis worldwide than any other form of vegetation, the extension of agriculture onto soils high in organic matter and the destruction of wetlands all speed the decay of our precious humus heritage. The worst aspect of this trend is the destruction of the tropical rainforests. Most of these will be gone in 20 years if the present trend continues. In Brazil alone in 1975, 62,000 square miles of forest were cleared. For what? Primarily for cattle grazing for beef production. Satellite mapping indicates this is happening throughout the world’s tropical zones. All over the world, in fact, forests have been removed and replaced with grasslands for domesticated animals and animal food crops. As amply attested to, these lands are due to become deserts without their protective forest covers.
Forests account for 90% of the carbon held in vegetation and contribute more than 60% of the net primary production of biomass. In contrast, all cultivated land on Earth accounts for only 8% of net primary production and stores only 1% of the carbon. This represents a tremendous loss from forest to cultivation and is adding to our atmosphere’s carbon dioxide imbalance at breakneck speed. These observations have come as quite a surprise to many agriculturists and foresters since they assumed that modern agricultural and forestry practices were establishing a good carbon balance. Secondary and managed forests compared to untouched climax forests still represent a loss in carbon balance such that increased carbon dioxide is still being released to our atmosphere. German foresters have shown that yields decrease with succeeding timber harvests because more and more minerals and carbon are removed with each cycle without replenishment.
So now we have an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, a decrease in terrestrial and oceanic biomass, and an acute mineral shortage in plants and people. All of these play an important role in Earth’s weather machine and the changes, often disastrous, that we now witness. Excess carbon in the air as a result of mineral depletion causes a cooling in Earth’s mean temperature. Earth has slowly been cooling since 1950. Observation of glaciers reveals that they are now extending their mass after thousands of years of retreat due to a warm and stable climate. Glaciation is Nature’s response to conditions such as are being created by our unwise exploitation of the earth’s resources. Increase in the ice pack forces the earth’s tectonic system to release the pressure from added land mass through earthquakes and volcanic activity, both of which are noticeably increasing of late. The glaciers give soils mineral replenishment and help restore long-term balance by grinding the rocks they dislodge and push along. The new minerals begin to accumulate, plant growth and vitality return, remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thus bring warmer, more stage temperatures. With this the glaciers retreat and volcanic activity subsides. South Pole drilling exploration confirms this since dust layers were found intimately associated with past glacial periods. During the onset of glaciation, however, (and we are now in the beginning stages of a new ice age), the weather will, become more turbulent and erratic with an increasing subsequent loss in food production and starvation for many people. The wearing out of the soil initiated this process. We are now losing three billion tons of soil per year from U.S. croplands alone! Only 8% of the world’s soil can still be cropped by current methods. This situation worsens with each passing year. An accelerating downward spiral has been initiated. The practice of exporting huge quantities of food amounts to a soil loss just as much as if it were washed out to sea.
Obviously, we must stop the burning of fossil fuels and crop residues. We must also reduce our consumption of wood which includes paper products, lumber and firewood. Many Third World countries have an acute firewood shortage and are resorting to burning dung for fuel. Their soil will become even less productive without dung as fertilizer. Most importantly, we must change over to an agriculture based on nonirrigated and noncultivated tree crops. We must again subsist on our natural diet of unfired foods. This system utilizes the same approach nature observes in the growth and maintenance of all living creatures. Under the natural order, forests grow to tremendous proportions and vitality. In contrast to the natural order, humans are the only ones that use fire to alter foods before ingestion. Nature had going a beautiful system of recycling and conserving carbon and minerals as a basic and for the welfare of her creatures as an adjunct.
Plentiful microorganisms in the soil can supply up to 97% of the tree’s needs through symbiotic atmospheric assimilation. The remaining 3% of the trees’ needs are met by the minerals in the soil. Trees produce abundant crops. Each year millions of bushels of fruit and nuts drop to the ground. With more nursery and selection work many of our native trees could be supplying us with luscious fruit and nuts of extraordinary high quality. This would also help save trees from needless destruction by farmers who, because of a meat-demanding populace, cater to it by growing grain and animals. Midwest farmers are now cutting down tree windbreaks to make room for new irrigation systems and massive machinery that require big stretches of even and unbroken ground.
So our first task on our depleted lands is to remineralize their soils as quickly as possible. Deep rooted weeds do part of the job, but time is critical now. Glacial gravel, granite, prophyry and gneiss, all rich storehouses of minerals, should all be ground into fine particles and added to the soil in amounts of up to ten tons per acre. Especially should applications be heavy on land where overgrazing and logging have taken place in order to provide the basis for rapid development of microorganisms. Soil carbon must also be preserved. Dr. Julius Hensel did extensive research in Germany in the late 1800s on stone dust fertilizers and found the plants to be remarkably free of disease and the produce of very high quality. We must, therefore, resupply our soils with the complete spectrum of elements in their balance as found in the mixed rocks of Earth. Hensel used no animal manures in his experiments, thus fixing minerals as the primary deficiency of our soils.
Tree crops supply us with highly-nutritious, complete, and balanced foods. Under nonirrigated and noncultivated practices, nutrients are either available or unavailable and in high concentrations or scarce in respect to the heat and rainfall, of a, given area. These concentrations fulfill the biological requirements for the animals and people living in that area.
Calcium, for example, is more prevalent in tropical fruit than in temperate fruit. Calcium helps the body to stay calm and cool, a much needed factor in warm climates. Phosphate is more prevalent as the weather cools and helps the body to stay warm. These and other elemental concentrations help the body to thrive in the same environment that grew the plants. This seems to imply that food from a particular climate and soil is not suited for people of other climates and soils. While not necessarily so, importation and exportation of foodstuffs and fertilizers would largely cease with optimal recycling programs on a local level. Each geographical area would supply most of its own food, shelter and other needs that draws upon soil resources. Our needs can be met like the needs of the other animals without excessive technology and as nature provides it. All our needs are provided for in nature.
Ripe fruits and nuts as they come from the tree and vine are still the most delicious and palatable foods for the small and the large, for the strong and the weak, for the healthy and the sickly. Fruits and nuts offer us sound health and great vitality. It has been scientifically shown that fruits and nuts furnish the basis of superb health. They do not cause anything but the most wholesome intestinal processes while in the intestinal tract. They do not cause health-robbing putrefaction or fermentation in normal amounts eaten under normal conditions. These facts solve the problem of human excrement. It may be added to the soil without vitiating it in any way. Besides the feline family, humans are the only animals that bury their feces. A person on a fruitarian diet can sustain himself or herself on a fraction of an acre. Little labor and very low input of materials are required. This makes possible true self-sufficiency. A fruitarian learns about the true nature of bodily processes, the true causes of disease and assumes full control and responsibility of and for his or her health. Coldness and heat become more tolerable as the body becomes pure and its system achieves physiological balance. Hunger and appetite take on new meanings as the body’s innate intelligence emerges to again dictate our eating habits.
Upon the fruitarian diet, a clarity of perception and a joy in understanding add to individual strength and integrity. A fruitarian finds that the body, if intake is not cooked, assimilates a larger proportion of nutrients than on a conventional diet. Less food is required. This not only helps to relieve some of the pressure on the world’s food production, requiring as little as 5% of the land meat eaters require, but it also gives fruitarians immensely greater survival ability should environmental conditions become harsh—something we’re bound to see more and more of.
The state of most tree nursery practices is in equally as poor a situation as our agriculture. Commercial fruit and nut trees are grown on soils that have been heavily fumigated, chemically fertilized, sprayed with insecticides and overwatered. These trees lose a great deal of their feeder roots when they are dug up by machine from nursery stock. Covered with plastic film or other material to reduce water loss during storage and shipment, these trees undergo considerable transplant shock and have difficulty in adjusting to unnatural farming practices.
Natural tree culture requires more work and attention to grow healthier and more productive trees. Wild and original rootstock, seeds, or seedlings must be used to assure hardiness.
There are countless varieties of fruits, some of which would help to extend the fresh fruit season to year round in most of the world. Slightly more than 100 years ago there were over 1,000 varieties of apples grown in this country. Some of them would remain on the tree ripening until early spring, unaffected by intense freezes. More intensive planting can also be done. Two or three tier agriculture is common in some countries. Trees occupy the highest level with vines growing among the lower branches. Around the trees and vines, melons, berries, or other food crops ideal to the human dietary can be grown. In the partly shaded areas that are cooler, shade-tolerant plants can grow.
The widespread adoption of tree crop agriculture and nutrition is urgently needed. Slight modification in present practices is not sufficient. A thoroughgoing revolution is the only answer. More dams, more implements, more chemicals, more cookbooks, and more of the same solve no problems. Rather they lead us deeper into the crisis. Humanity cannot continue on this self-destructive course. The holistic health movement must recognize its total dependence on our soils. All the yogas, nerve treatments, manipulations, drugs, or whatever can’t substitute for nutrients, clean air, and other factors for which the body is starved.
We all realize that it is our own false sense of need that compels us to overconsume food, water, and other materials. This dictates a system of agriculture to supply these false or fancied needs. Surely this is bringing us to destruction.
So look around. Find out where your food and needs are coming from. What had to happen that your meals could show up on your table? Be concerned for the quality of your air and water, of the foods and clothing you use. This is very vital to your health and, if posterity is to be, then it is especially important to our children’s welfare.
There are some pilot programs being started by our group which we will be demonstrating in a village atmosphere. These will stress tree crop agriculture and the fruitarian diet. We have already been on this diet for 19 years between us. We feel alive, alert, and well-nourished. We will be happy to communicate with anyone of similar motivation and commitment who has concern for human well-being.
The time for right action is now. Catastrophies are in the making. Just a few more degrees drop in Earth’s mean temperature will trigger glaciation that will force all remaining life back to the equator where it all began eons ago. Every day of procrastination and lack of interest brings us closer to this and other irreversible processes of human and Earth destruction.
Can we make the required change in our thinking and practices to reestablish biological health and stability? We must do so if we want humanity, as well as all other life, to survive on this planet.
51.2. The Chemicals In Your Home
51.3. The Benefits of Natural Living in the Home
Article #1: Radiation in Your Kitchen by Mike Benton
Article #2: World’s Most Polluted Place: The American Home!
Article #4: Typical Potential Household Hazards In A Retail Merchandise Catalog
Article #4: Chemicals In The Household Environment: In-Depth Home Survey
Over half of your life is spent inside your home. Yet it may be the unhealthiest place you can be. Chemicals, pollutants, and toxic substances can surround you in your house and can create a number of health problems. You may never realize how dangerous household chemicals can be until it is too late. This lesson tells you about the most common household pollution hazards and how you can avoid them for better health.
You may think that you are safe in your own home. After all, the air pollution is on the freeways, and the poisoned waters are in the industrial rivers. But the foul air and water are also in your home, and much of it is brought in by your family. Here is one area where a natural and hygenic lifestyle can provide immediate benefits to all family members.
Just for a start, look around you and count the various chemicals found in your house. Over the course of a year, the average home will contain forty-five aerosol sprays, another two dozen nonspray chemical cleansers, several insect killers and repellents, paints and paint thinners, spot removers, room fresheners, natural gas leakages, and so on.
Inside your house alone are more chemicals (in floor polishes, oven cleansers, detergents, etc.) than were found in any major chemistry lab of a century ago! Worse yet, we do not understand anything about these chemicals, how they should be used, and the toxic effects that accompany their use.
Labels list dozens of unpronounceable and unrecognized chemicals in all sorts of household products. It is foolish to believe that all are harmless and that they can be safely used.
An experienced homemaker cannot handle most chemicals properly. For example, one woman dragged her small oven outside to clean it. She did not, quite rightly, want the fumes from oven cleaners in her house. Unfortunately, while spraying the oven outside in the wind, the spray blew back into her eyes and permanently blinded her.
Housewives and children are allowed to handle dangerous chemical compounds that experienced chemists would not touch unless they had on protective gloves. Not only that, but the toxins and pollution from these common household products can eventually poison all the members of a family without their knowledge.
A family in a rural area had a problem with flies in their house while they were eating. To combat the problem, they hung a “No-Pest” insecticide strip over their table to keep the insects away. After a few weeks, three of the four family members were hospitalized for acute pesticide poisoning. The anti-pest strip they had thought was safe had nearly killed them with its “fallout” over their food.
Besides the sheer quantity of new chemicals in the home environment, another problem arises from the multiple use of these products. For example, cleansers may be mixed or other chemicals may be used together. When combined, these household chemicals can produce deadly byproducts. This combination of one or more household chemicals produces what is called a synergistic effect which means that the total effect of the mixed chemicals is greater than the individual chemicals used separately.
Homemakers do not actually have to even mix various cleansing agents, etc., together to create this dangerous synergistic effect. Simply having the vapors from one cleaning lingering in the air which may then combine with other chemical vapors can have a toxic effect on the individuals. In fact, within the average American home, at least once a day two aerosol sprays are used within a half hour of each other. These sprays can combine in your house to form toxic fumes.
We often improve our diet and our health, but we may neglect the source of potential health problems: the chemicals in our own home. This lesson identifies the more common household chemicals in use, and how you can avoid them by adapting a new lifestyle along the teachings of Life Science.
51.2.2 Hair Today—Gone Tomorrow
51.2.3 Does Your Nose Smell—Or Do You?
51.2.5 How Clean Is Your Kitchen?
51.2.7 Other Household Cleaners
Dangerous household chemicals are usually disguised in common products. Everything from underarm deodorants to frying pan spray contains toxic ingredients. Almost all of these chemical products can either be completely eliminated by following a healthy, hygienic lifestyle or by using a more natural substitute. This portion of the lesson lists most common household chemicals and how you can avoid them.
The first living creature to die from an aerosol spray was a mosquito in 1942. Since then, much more than just insecticides have appeared in spray cans. Antiperspirants, feminine hygiene sprays, underarm deodorants, oven cleaners, spot removers, floor wax, varnish, and anti-fogging agents have appeared in thousands of aerosol and spray products.
Aerosol sprays are a major source of air pollution within the home. The sprays spread out into the surrounding air and make it unfit to breathe. This is especially true in closed spaces (like the bathroom) where the sprays are used most often.
A study by Du Pont Laboratories revealed that the amount of freon propellant in front of the faces of users of hair spray and deodorant to be dangerously high even when these rooms were heavily ventilated by an exhaust fan. You can imagine the serious injury that results from years of breathing these fumes in an enclosed house.
The particles and chemicals in aerosol sprays are often so small that they can penetrate the lung tissue and be directly absorbed into the bloodstream. Thus, a chemical which might be relatively harmless if used externally quickly becomes an internal poison when sprayed in easily inhaled particles.
Just how harmful are these fumes from the aerosol sprays? Dr. William Good of Montrose, Colorado, made a study of 200 people. The only thing these people had in common was that they were all heavy users of sprays in their homes. Without exception, every person in the group had precancerous lung cell changes.
Perhaps the most dangerous of all these sprays is the hair spray. These sprays are always used in closed quarters (like the bathroom or beauty parlor). They are emitted near the face, and the air breathed is heavily contaminated.
The hair spray itself contains shellac, starch, and plasticizers which may be toxic enough to form enlarged lymph nodes. The FDA reported on twenty-three women who were daily users of hair spray. All of their X rays showed precancerous lung changes. After six months of stopping the use of hair sprays, fifteen of the women completely recovered.
Hair sprays also contain silicone which is damaging to the eyes and cannot be washed away by the natural eye fluids. An irritation of the cornea often develops in users of hair sprays.
Of course there is no valid reason to use hair sprays except for reasons of “beauty” or appearance. Freshly-washed and combed hair should be enough to make a healthy person truly beautiful, but if you are attached to having “set” hair, then you should use a setting gel or lotion instead of a spray.
These gels and lotions also contain noxious fumes and chemicals, but the danger is less than when using hair sprays. The sincere health seeker, however, will abandon all such artificial hair care products. Clean air is healthy and attractive. A more natural manner of wearing the hair will end the need for all such artificial products.
Americans stink. At least that’s what the advertisers would have us think. Underarm deodorants, antiperspirant sprays, feminine hygiene deodorants, air fresheners, and room sprays are aggressively promoted and advertised. But how necessary are such odor disguisers, and more importantly, how safe are they?
Most anti-odor sprays and chemicals are totally unnecessary concoctions that serve no purpose. The most blatant example of this is the feminine hygiene deodorant sprays. In a trade magazine for such spray manufacturers, an article states: “Such is the American way of advertising and persuasion that even the best smelling ladies began to feel insecure and wonder if they were offending—and so another new market was born.”
While these feminine sprays may make the manufacturers rich, they also contribute to health problems. The sprays are irritants and often contain talc that is contaminated by asbestos, a known cancer-causing agent. Many gynecologists have reported cases of vulvar irritation by their patients who used such sprays.
Sprays are also used to fight bad breath and other body odors. All of these contain chemicals which are both breathed and deposited directly on the skin. Underarm sprays, for example, work by actually clogging the sweat pores with an aluminum chloride compound. Mouth sprays kill all bacteria in the mouth, including the so-called beneficial variety.
Besides these sprays, there are also foot deodorizers and hair fresheners. Evidently most people stink greatly or think they do because the amounts of spray and roll-on deodorants sold is enormous.
Why do people smell bad and feel that they must use some chemical to deodorize their bodies?
Basically, an improper diet is the cause of all body odors in almost every case. Foods of animal origin (meat, eggs, milk, etc.) are poorly assimilated and full of foul-smelling toxins. When these foods are eaten, the waste products are eliminated from the skin and an unpleasant odor results. When all animal foods, junk foods, and sugar are eliminated from the diet, all body odors eventually disappear.
A Natural Hygienist or a person who follows the suggested Life Science diet will never experience bad body odors. Unpleasant odors from the body indicate that something is wrong in the diet or lifestyle. Covering or hiding these odors with sprays and chemicals does not correct the underlying problem which causes these smells.
If body odor is a problem, then frequent washing is the best short-term solution and an improvement in the diet is the only long lasting answer. Spraying and applying chemicals to every body orifice can cause irritation and damage. The person concerned about his health and well-being will quickly abandon all such products.
Next to American bodies, the smelliest place may be the home. Cooking odors, cigarette smoke, furnace emissions, and bathroom odors seem to permeate our households. Many people try to remove these odors with air fresheners, such as sprays, wicks, candles, cakes, etc.
All of these air fresheners work in one of four ways: 1) They use one odor to cover another; 2) They coat the nasal passages with an oil film; 3) They deaden the sense of smell with a nerve chemical; or 4) They deactivate the unwanted odor (such as through charcoal absorption).
Actually, very few deodorizers work by actually removing the odor. Most simply contaminate the air with another foreign substance, and certainly do not “freshen” the air. Many times an artificial fragrance is released that simply smells stronger than the offending odor. These fragrances often irritate the eyes and air passages.
More remarkable are the air fresheners that do their work by temporarily “killing” or deadening the sense of smell. This is sort of like blinding yourself to avoid seeing an unpleasant sight. One such air freshener, advertised for use in the “nursery,” contains carbolic acid which causes serious burns and tissue destruction when applied to the skin.
There is one safe and recommended air freshener: an open window. A healthy lifestyle will also mean that most household odors will never even occur. For example, cooking and grease odors are common in meat-eating households. Cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke are also common contributors to the foul air problem. A nonsmoking household that follows a predominantly raw food diet will never experience most of the household odors that plague many Americans. A well-ventilated house will also mean an end to odors. Even in the winter, the house should be opened briefly to allow a healthy exchange of air between the inside and the outside.
The most dangerous and physically harmful of all household chemicals are the cleansers—oven cleaners, detergents, scouring powders, toilet bowl cleaners, bleaches, drain cleaners, and so on. Most of these chemical cleaners are not needed; indeed, many safe substitutes exist. Many people continue using these harmful household chemicals simply because they are not aware of their dangers.
“Danger: May cause burns to skin and eyes. Irritant to mucous membranes. Danger—contains lye. Keep out of reach of children. Do not get on exterior surfaces. Keep away from electrical connections. If taken internally or sprayed into eyes, call physician.”—from the label of “Easy-Off Oven Cleaner.”
Oven cleaners harmed over 3,000 people in one year alone. Their sprays contain powerful chemicals that drift around the kitchen and penetrate the skin, eyes and lungs. Worse yet, these dangerous, unpleasant chemicals are hidden by added fragrances so they are more likely to be breathed in.
And such cleaners are totally unnecessary. True, ovens can become the filthiest area of any kitchen. But if the diet is changed so that meat is eliminated and all cooking is curtailed, then the oven will not become dirty or require an extensive cleaning. If cooking does occur, any splattering should be cleaned up as soon as the oven cools. Only when stains and drippings are continually reheated and baked does a strong cleaning agent become necessary.
Better yet, eliminate the messy oven. The hygienic or Life Science diet advocates a 100% raw food diet. Some people even sell their stove or use it as a counter area when they adopt the all raw diet. Even if cooking is still used at times, it should be in the form of steaming or occasional baking. Such conservative food preparation practices eliminate the dirty oven, the harmful cleaners, and the hours of work spent in cooking and cleaning.
Drain cleaners are similar to oven cleaners. They too have a high percentage of lye and they attack waste and grease buildup from food disposal. Drain and toilet cleaners account for about 10,000 injuries every year. Worse yet, if the drain remains clogged after the cleanser is poured in, then a dangerous caustic solution develops which gives off toxic fumes.
Bleaches are often used in the house, and great care must be taken not to mix bleaches with other cleansers. In November 1975, a 68-year-old Maine woman mixed bleach with ammonia to remove egg stains from a window. When she brought the pail of mixed bleach and ammonia into the house, the fumes killed her. The woman’s niece discovered her and tried to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She was also killed by the fumes in the house.
Toilet bowl cleaners are either the in-bowl or in-tank variety. The in-bowl cleaners contain extremely strong acids and release fumes. The in-tank cleaners are almost ineffective, according to Consumer Reports, in either removing stains or odors.
Scouring powders contain a bleaching agent and a coarse polishing agent. Over 22,000 people in 1973 received hospital treatment for injuries associated with scouring powders and other caustic cleaning agents.
What’s left to help you clean your house? Well, first remember that most cleaning should be mechanical and not chemical. Dirt, dust, and stains can usually be removed with a simple and harmless detergent and some work. All in all, almost every chemical household cleaner can be replaced by a combination of one or more of these simple and inexpensive products: soap, baking soda, vinegar, borax, and ammonia. With the exception of ammonia (which has noxious fumes), all of these are totally harmless when used by themselves to aid cleaning.
Here are some ideas on how to use these substances as a substitute for the expensive and toxic household cleaners:
General surface cleaning: Several tablespoons of vinegar dissolved in a bucket of water. Baking soda may be used to scour surfaces.
Bleaching: Use borax instead of chemical bleaches. It whitens without harming the fabric, regardless of color or weave.
Utensil cleaning: A diluted solution of ammonia (caution) can be used for really greasy pots and pans. Of course if you are following a correct diet, you will not have “greasy” utensils at all.
Oven cleaning: Again, this should not be needed on a proper diet. If it does require cleaning, use baking sodas a scouring powder and ammonia to cut through the grease. Always be careful to avoid breathing ammonia fumes.
Drain Cleaning: Slow drains can be opened by pouring hot water down them, and then adding about a half cup of washing soda. Wait a minute, and then flush again with hot water. A small plunger can be used to unclog and loosen the drain.
Detergents and soaps are the most bought-and-used item of any product in the grocery store—including milk, bread, or any other food. They also cause more poisonings than any other household product. During 1975, for instance, over 1,300 laundry soap detergent and dishwasher product poisonings occurred.
Part of the problem is that many consumers do not understand the difference between ordinary soap and synthetic chemical detergents. Ordinary soap is relatively harmless, and has been used for thousands of years. The new detergents, however, are all chemical products from the last thirty years.
While soap is just soap, detergents are often soap along with foam boosters, perfumes, enzymes, cleaning agents, fillers, and optical brighteners.
A person who rubs just a few grains of synthetic detergent into the eye can receive corneal burns and severe eye damage. Ingestion of these products cause serious harm to the upper digestive tract. Clothes washed in some detergents become permeated with artificial perfumes and other irritating fumes.
Enzyme detergents are thought to cause dermatitis (a skin condition) and flulike and asthmatic conditions from breathing the air with detergent dust.
These steps can be taken to reduce harm from such cleaners: First, try to use ordinary soap or an organic cleaner instead of the chemical detergents. Don’t overuse detergent—most people, according to a Consumer’s Union survey, use at least twice as much detergent as is required. Don’t mistake detergent for soap—never wash the skin with detergents and keep away from the mouth. To help with soiled clothes, prewash them with washing soda and then use common soap.
It may seem that chemicals are all through the average household. In almost every room, some synthetic chemical compound can be found: mouthwash in the bathroom, dishwashing liquid in the kitchen, air freshener in the bedroom, a small gas leak in the living room, furniture polish in the dining room, paint thinner in the garage, and so on.
You may find it difficult to eliminate every chemical compound in your home, but you should start asking yourself if it is really needed or if a safer substitute can be found. This is a quick overview of other dangerous household chemicals:
Tobacco Smoke: Smoke from cigarettes contains over 3,000 chemical compounds. Although the dangers of smoking are covered in another lesson, it should be pointed out here that tobacco smoke can quickly and completely pollute the entire house even if only a single cigarette is smoked in one room. Smoking is bad enough outside, but inside a home it can be deadly to smoker and nonsmoker alike. If you live with smokers, you have three choices: 1) Stop living with them; 2) Complain long and loud until they stop; 3) Continue as before, but isolate the smoking to one room only and keep this room ventilated, even in the winter.
Insecticides and Pesticides: Many people routinely spray their house for roaches and other insect pests. The fumes from these sprays can linger for months, and be breathed continually by the inhabitants of the house.
The solution to the insect and pest problem in the home is to first make the house an unattractive spot for such creatures. Keep all areas clean, and learn that there may be a needed compromise in insect control and total eradication.
There are many ways of controlling insect pests naturally in the home. (Insecticides and pesticides for the garden are discussed in a separate lesson.) Remove all gathering places for roaches, etc., from around the house and yard. Eliminate mosquito breeding grounds, or stock nearby ponds and lakes with larvae-eating fish. If pesticides must be used to control insects in the house, obtain the dry powder type that releases no fumes.
There are many natural ways to keep the insect population under control in your home. Another bonus of following the chiefly raw food Life Science diet is that insect populations tend to decrease when there is no cooked food leftovers or spills around the kitchen.
Heating Emissions: Although not a chemical pollutant, another source of household pollution is the heating system. This is especially true of people who use gas, coal or wood heat. The fumes from these types of heaters continually fill the room. Often the unlit gas heaters and ovens emit unburned gas into the room. No house should remain “air tight” during the winter. If the house is very well insulated, then a window should always be cracked to allow an exchange of air.
Other Pollutants: There are many other sources of pollution in the home. Noise pollution is often ignored, but excessive levels of noise around and in the house has detrimental health effects.
Low-level radiation from microwave ovens is also a source of “pollution” in the house, and such devices are best abandoned. If cooking is to be used, then gas or electric is safer than the microwave oven.
Dry-cleaning fluids, spot removers, lead paint, paint thinners, solvents, glues, and many other chemical compounds in the home can be dangerous if used improperly.
By simplifying your life, you will eliminate the need for all such chemical products. Here’s how you can benefit by adopting a Life Science way of living in your home.
Most people see the immediate benefits that a natural diet and lifestyle can bring them. It is usually only later that this new way of life is completely introduced into the home. Here’s a category description of how a Life Science regimen can improve your home living:
Personal Hygiene: The first thing you will notice after changing your diet and lifestyle is that you will no longer need 99% of all the personal hygiene care products sold. You can eliminate all underarm deodorants, all mouth-washes, all feminine sprays, all antiperspirants, and so on. Why? Because your body will always smell clean and fresh when you eat a simple diet of chiefly fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts.
Kitchen Cleaning: When you change your diet to a predominantly raw one, your kitchen cleaning days will be over. No more greasy pots, pans, or ovens. You’ll never need those harsh kitchen cleansers again.
Air Fresheners: When you eliminate cooking and smoking, your air will always smell clean in your home. Open windows and doors will ensure that you have a pleasant and healthy environment, free from obnoxious odors.
Other Ways: As you simplify and improve your life and diet, you will also want to make these changes in other areas. You will find that you need or want very few household chemicals or cleaners in your home. You’ll search for safer and more natural ways to clean and upkeep your house. You’ll discover the value of a natural way of living that will eliminate all dangers of household pollution and poisoning.
As a student of Life Science, you already know the vita! importance of having a clean body, mind, and diet. Now you should become aware that a clean and natural home is simply another way of expressing these new found values. Leave the chemicals behind in your “new” home, and keep your living environment healthy and pollution free.
After reading this lesson, I’m too scared to use any type of cleaner! Aren’t you exaggerating about the dangers of these chemicals? We never hear anything bad about them on television.
Certainly the risks of household cleansers and other chemicals in the home are much less than many other unhealthy practices. Yet prolonged use of these common chemicals do indeed lead to serious health problems, especially in the respiratory tract. Unintentional poisonings from such chemicals are very high, particularly among young children. You should not be afraid to clean, but you should rely more and more on simple mechanical cleaning—that is, use some armwork and physically remove the dirt. Don’t depend upon chemical compounds to do your cleaning for you. Many years ago, about the only household cleanser available was soap and water. Homes have stayed remarkably clean by just using such simple and relatively natural ingredients. The simple truth is that most household chemicals are “convenience” items, just like there is now “convenience” (or “fast”) food. What you gain in convenience is more than offset by dangers to your health in these products. By all means, clean your home, but don’t chemicalize it!
Here’s another source of chemicals in the home you didn’t cover: cosmetics and toiletries.
While attention was given to hair sprays and deodorants, perhaps not enough mention was made about these other chemicals that so many people put on their faces and bodies. Almost all cosmetics are either made from animal products or they are tested on animals in cruel ways (such as blinding rabbits to test eye shadow, etc.). Not only that, but almost all cosmetics contain chemicals which can harm the skin after years of use. Men, too, are guilty of using such things as aftershave lotion, cologne, and so forth. All of these substances contain irritating ingredients that are harmful when breathed or applied to the skin. The best makeup is a clear, smiling face. Reduce or eliminate these “personal” chemicals that so many people put on their bodies.
So many new houses are unsafe to live in because of their internal pollution. Could you comment on that?
The new home owner must be very careful nowadays about the building and insulation materials used in a home. Much insulation has asbestos fibers and other particulants which can cause lung cancer in those that breathe it day in and day out. Many plywood sidings are impregnated with formaldehyde, and these fumes are slowly released into the new house over a period of months. Recently, thousands of people have been forced out of their new homes because of toxic fumes that emit from the building materials used in construction of the house. These problems can be avoided by always having an open source of ventilation (a heat pump works well in the winter for this purpose) and carefully investigating the types of material used in the insulation and siding.
Do you want to live next door to a nuclear power plant? A stupid question, right? But think about this:
Over five million homes have their own little boxes of radiation sitting right in the kitchen. They’re called microwave ovens.
Now comparing a microwave oven to a nuclear plant may seem silly. After all, a microwave oven doesn’t even give off the same type of radiation as an atomic energy source or an x-ray machine. The radiation from a microwave oven is about like what you get from radar or what is called low-energy nonionizing radiation.
But that microwave oven sits in many a house. It’s used day in and day out. It’s a constant source of low-level radiation that penetrates through the house. Is the microwave oven dangerous? Yes!
A microwave oven is like a fallout shelter in reverse: It’s a tight little box that is designed to keep the radiation in. If you have a perfect, tight box, then the radiation won’t get out. But a microwave oven is not a perfect, tight box. Radiation does leak out, especially around the door and the seals of the oven.
There are government standards for “acceptable” leakage rates for microwave ovens. In other words, microwave ovens can leak a certain amount of radiation and still be considered safe.
There is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation. Dr. Karl Morgan, a researcher on the effects of radiation on human health, stated: “From 1960 to the present, an overwhelming amount of data have been accumulated that show there is no safe level of exposure and there is no dose of radiation so low that the risk of malignancy is zero.”
Microwave ovens do not make the food cooked in them radioactive. Food cooked in a microwave oven is no more nor less harmful than any cooked food. Any time heat is applied to food, destruction of nutrients and alteration of food chemistry occurs. Consequently, microwaved food is not better for you just because it is cooked for a shorter time. Microwaves destroy food faster than conventional cooking methods, but they do not destroy food less.
The main reasons for recent concern about microwave ovens are:
There are safety standards for microwave ovens, and consumers feel safe that they are buying, government-regulated equipment. What is not generally known is that the Soviet Union, which has done more research on microwave radiation than any other country, has an acceptable radiation level for the public that is one thousand times stricter than U.S. levels.
Not only that, but the biophysicist, Dr. A.H. Frey, has discovered that the human nervous system reacts to microwave exposure that is 300 times below the government standards for microwave ovens.
Older microwave ovens frequently leak more than new ones. Improper servicing, cleaning, and general wear cause radiation leakages to increase. If someone you know has a microwave oven, there are several steps you can take to minimize irradiation leakage:
Microwave ovens are unnecessary convieniences. They were developed so foods could be cooked in a hurry. Just like TV dinners, precooked convenience foods, and fast foods, microwave ovens exist because people are too lazy or too unaware to provide good nutrition for themselves and their families.
So what if you can cook a frozen chicken in four minutes? Do you need to eat a chicken, frozen or otherwise? The truth is that the best foods to eat require no cooking and little preparation.
Fresh fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and sprouts do not need to be microwaved, boiled, baked, or fried. They’re delicious as they are, ready to eat. If any cooking is to be done to food, it should be light steaming which destroys as few nutrients as possible. You can’t even steam for food in a microwave.
Like fast foods, microwave ovens are “fast cooking” and they are associated with the same sort of convenience orientation. For superior health, you should eat as few cooked foods as possible. And you certainly should not have a leaky box of radiation sitting in your kitchen!
Most of us are keenly aware that America’s air, especially in and around large cities and industrial complexes, is seriously and dangerously polluted. Most of us are aware that even the upper atmosphere is becoming so dangerously polluted as to pose a threat to plant and animal life.
Many of us are aware that the average American home is a hotbed of pollution and stands first as a source of aerial pollution. Further, it is only beginning to dawn on researchers that pollution in the home is a source of much disease and misery for our populace.
The relation of polluted air to such respiratory diseases as pneumonia, colds, bronchitis, asthma, sinusitus, and a long list of other diseases, many nonrespiratory in nature, has been only casually noted.
However, researchers are already indicting such pollution as a contributing cause to many human ailments if, indeed, not the primary or only cause.
Certainly little aggravates an ailing person more than aerial pollutants, for they not only make suffering more severe but so hamper the body’s healing efforts as to prolong recovery.
If there is any right we must value and treasure above all others, it is the right to breathe pure air. We must not inadvertently deny ourselves the benefits of pure air by our own acts.
If you doubt that the air in your home is polluted, note the difference between it and outside air! You can tell it instantly upon passing from one to the other—even if the outside air is polluted. The air in homes has the pollution of the outside air plus that added in the home.
The primary source of polluted air in American homes is smoke, mostly from tobacco, but from sundry other sources too. Smoke has its tars, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and many other poisons.
If this is not the case in nonsmoking homes, then human aerial excreta is usually the primary source of pollution! Trapped in closed houses are the wastes of our breathing. These contain carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, and yet other waste products. They are deadly to man and beast alike in concentrations such as they become in closed homes.
There is a whole catalog of pollution sources in homes. Not only is pollution BAD in itself but it is usually found in a situation that would be bad WITHOUT the pollutants! For the air in which pollutants are found is usually “stale” air, a term for air that has been seriously deoxygenized. Air that has been breathed in, in which combustion has occurred, has been heated from whatever means, or in which cooking has been conducted, is not only possessed of considerably less oxygen but also is possessed of considerable pollutants as a result.
Consider these sources of pollutants in the home:
Perhaps the most deliberate and criminal of pollution practices is smoking. Many babies are born nicotine addicts and, if reared in an atmosphere filled with smoke of their parents, may become addicted to nicotine without ever having smoked a cigarette.
If “fouling our nests” aerially is not bad enough there are other deleterious forms of pollution in the home, notably noise pollution from inside and outside (it’s so bad as to be inescapable in most cities) and x-ray emissions from fluorescent lighting and from television.
Perhaps it is stale polluted air in homes that is largely the cause of more respiratory ailments in winter than in the summer.
In any event, we should be on guard against pollution as much as is commensurate with out circumstances. We should breathe air as fresh as possible as much as possible.
a. aerosol spray can primer
b. cream hardener
c. epoxy repair kit
a. polyester materials
b. epoxy materials
c. epoxy marine enamel
d. semi soft point (cuprous oxide)
e. water repellents
Answer each of the following questions with “YES,” “NO”, or “UNCERTAIN”. Some of the questions do not pertain exactly to chemicals in the house, but to all sources of unhealthy pollution (such as noise pollution, motor vehicle products, etc.) At the end of the survey, you will be able to rate your home for its safety.
Are the following aerosol sprays found in the home:
Are the following used at home:
Are the following in the reach of children:
Are the following stored in the house:
Is Smoking allowed in the following:
Are the following around the house:
Your Score: Count up the total number of “YES” answers. Some of these questions might not apply to you at all, but of all the questions answered, use this scoring:
The monument had stood in the Egyptian sands for over 35 centuries. “Cleopatra’s Needle” it was called, and it had thousands of beautiful carvings and drawings all upon it. Somehow the ancient monument had survived the raging desert sands and hot Egyptian sun for over three thousand years.
In 1880 the monument was transferred to downtown New York. A hundred years later, the monument had eroded away so that all the drawings upon it had completely disappeared. What the sandstorms of Egypt for 3500 years could not do had been accomplished by the polluted air of New York City. The ancient drawings had been eaten away by the sulfur oxides in the dirty city air.
The chemicals in the air today are equally destructive of human health and life, and with every breath you take, you are taking in chemical compounds that never even existed a few years ago.
Air pollution and the chemicals we are forced to breathe should be an area of great concern to the health seeker. Much more important than the food we eat is the air we breathe. After all, you only eat about three times a day. You breathe about fifteen times every minute. Clean, pure air is one of the primary requisites for superior health. This lesson discusses the chemicals that are now in our air supply, and what we can do about them.
A philosopher once said, “The fish shall be the last to discover water.” He meant that it is often hard to see clearly what is often taken for granted. Humans take the air they breathe for granted, and we always assume that each morning we can wake up and take a nice, deep breath of life-giving air. Some day that might not be the case.
Almost all life on earth is supported by a layer of air less than two miles thick. Without this protective layer of air, the earth would reach a daily high temperature of 230 degrees, and drop to an overnight low of 300 degrees below zero.
Right now, we have about six thousand billion tons of air on this planet. We won’t run out of air, but we may run out of breathable air in the near future. Almost all of our air is either nitrogen (78%) or oxygen (21%). A gas called argon makes up 95% of the remaining atmosphere, and carbon dioxide takes up another 3% of the remaining air. Less than two-hundreths of a percent of our atmosphere contains other gases, such as helium, neon, methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon monoxide.
Yet in that small percentage of other gases lies the pollution problem. Only a very small amount of dangerous gases and chemicals need to be present in the atmosphere to affect all of us greatly.
Naturally occurring air is never completely clean. There has always been foreign matter in the atmosphere in the form of volcanic ash, pollen, spores, salt particles from the ocean, and even cosmic dust from the upper atmosphere. These particles actually serve a useful function in the play of nature by acting as a stimulus for rain and precipitation.
The foreign particles fall to earth with the rain and the air is cleaned. Meanwhile, plants are busy recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the giant oceans are recirculating and cleaning the air all over the planet.
But then the balance was upset. With the coal-burning industries of the nineteenth century, abnormally large amounts of foreign particles and gases escaped into the air. The rain could no longer clear the air completely, and the oceans became polluted. The oxygen-producing forests and fields were leveled and made into concrete sites for buildings.
More garbage was being dumped into the air than nature could handle. Finally, the whole atmosphere all over the globe became contaminated, dirty, and unhealthy.
Air pollution is defined as substances or radiations in the atmosphere which harm living organisms or their environment. Normally, as we have seen, the atmosphere is self-purifying. However, when a high concentration of unnatural wastes is discharged into the air, then the atmosphere becomes overburdened and polluted.
Eventually the pollutants in the air may be precipitated from the atmosphere when it rains. When this occurs, the pollution falls onto the land or water, and contaminates this part of our environment.
Air pollution is caused in one of three ways: surface friction, vaporization, and combustion.
Friction is a minor cause of air pollutants. Such things as sawing, drilling, and grinding various materials release airborne particles which may find their way into your lungs eventually. For most people, friction is not a major source of pollution unless they are workers in a mine, mill, or other industry that releases small particles into the air.
Vaporization occurs when a liquid becomes a gas. A good example is paint thinner. When the can is opened, certain fumes escape as vapor into the atmosphere. Gasoline also undergoes vaporization, as do paints, glues, and other chemical compounds. This is only a major source of pollution when a nearby industry is engaged in making these products, or is working with rubber or plastic which can also vaporize.
Combustion is the real villain as the cause of air pollutants. Combustion is simply the burning of a solid or liquid into a gas. For instance, your car works on combustion by turning gasoline into various hot gases.
When combustion occurs, heat and light are usually released. Unfortunately, other chemicals and gases are also released into the atmosphere. Some of these chemicals are harmful, and are the major factors in polluting our air.
In fact, a quick study of the air pollution problem is really just a description of these chemicals and how they get into our atmosphere.
52.2.1 Sulfur Dioxide: The Gas From Hell
52.2.2 Carbon Monoxide: A Totally Manmade Gas
52.2.3 Nitrogen Oxides: The Smog Triggers
52.2.4 Hydrocarbons: The Urban Air Pollution
52.2.5 Ozone: From Out of the Blue
52.2.6 Better No Lead Than Dead
Many of the pollutants in our atmosphere have unfamiliar and scientific names, yet they are not difficult to understand. Each major chemical pollutant is discussed below as to the possible harm it can do us, where it comes from and how we can prevent it from becoming more widespread.
Here’s a list of the more common chemicals that pollute your air: sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, ozone, lead, and asbestos.
“If smells like hell around here,” a worker complained to his boss. What he was talking about was the choking, sulfur fumes that came from the worker’s plant. Sulfur dioxide does indeed remind you of the “fire and brimstone” odor. If you breathed a deep lungful of the gas, it would feel like thousands of razor blades in your lungs.
Sulfur dioxide is one of the deadliest air pollutants, and it accounts for about 18% of all air pollution. Sulfur dioxide I has been implicated in cases of asthmatic attacks, eczema (a skin disease), breathing difficulties, and paralysis and corrosion of the respiratory organs.
As soon as sulfur dioxide rises to a concentration of only one-five millionth of the atmosphere, deaths increase rapidly.
Coal-burning plants and industries account for almost 85% of all sulfur dioxide pollution. Residential use of coal and fuel oil makes up another 10% of the sulfur dioxide release. The problem of sulfur dioxide pollution is the most serious in areas of the northeast where coal burning is the most widespread.
No one, however, can escape the harmful effects of sulfur dioxide because it is spread all over the earth in “acid rain.” Acid rain occurs when the particles of sulfur dioxide are carried through the air and combine with water particles and fall to earth. Along with the water in the rain, you also get the acid waste products of sulfur dioxide.
Crops that are especially susceptible to sulfur dioxide and acid rain are wheat, barley, oats, cotton, alfalfa, buckwheat, and white pine. In fact, within a twenty-mile radius of a plant that emits sulfur dioxide in Tennessee, over 90% of all the white pine trees have been killed.
These sulfur compounds also enter the streams, rivers, and lakes after they fall from the air. As a result, many fish and aquatic plants quickly die.
As an individual, you can help control this type of air pollution by using another form of heating besides coal and fuel oil. If you must use these fuels to heat your home, insist that you receive a low-sulfur content coal or fuel. By simply converting to a lower sulfur content of coal, the problem could be greatly eased. At the same time, you should push for stronger regulations about the amount of sulfur dioxide industries can release into our air.
A jellyfish can belch carbon monoxide. Other than that, man is the only creature that can create this deadly gas. Carbon monoxide is the killer behind automobile gas poisonings that occur in closed garages. This gas in the exhaust fumes of cars is often fatal to unsuspecting drivers.
Over one-half of the total air pollution in this country comes from carbon monoxide. And you are responsible, because 80% of all carbon monoxide comes from the exhaust pipe of the automobile.
Carbon monoxide is extremely dangerous. It is almost certain that you have been poisoned by this gas at least once in the past week if you drive in heavy traffic. Tests have shown that traffic jams can produce enough carbon monoxide from the idling cars to cause headaches, irritability, dizziness, and nausea.
People who must work near heavy traffic areas often breathe in enough carbon monoxide so that their mental processes are slowed down to about one-half what they should be in clean air. Many driving accidents are now thought to be caused by carbon monoxide leaking from the car and poisoning the driver in the car.
For some people, driving a car isn’t enough pollution. They must also smoke cigarettes, which also give off carbon monoxide. Heavy smokers may have as much as 5°?o of their blood hemoglobin permanently combined with carbon monoxide. When this occurs, the tissues suffer a low level of oxygen starvation and destruction. Even the carbon monoxide from a single cigarette in a closed car can create headaches in all the passengers.
Every gallon of gasoline that you burn in your car releases three pounds of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. The solution to this sort of pollution is simple: restrict and limit all driving and strive for a more fuel-efficient car.
During the days of the Vietnam war protests when hundreds burned their draft cards, science-fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, said: “The students who are burning their draft cards are fighting the wrong enemy. This war will eventually end, but the more serious and deadly war, the one against air pollution, will never be won until we end our dependence on the polluting automobile. If these protestors want to perform a really radical and earth-saving act, they should be burning their drivers’ licenses instead of their draft cards.”
The sun in the midday sky was only a watery disk. Cars drove slowly with their lights on. It was noon in Los Angeles, but the smog made the city look like a smoky, evening battleground. Nitrogen oxides had combined with other gases from the heavy traffic to form a dense layer of smog that blocked the sunlight.
Nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide are the two most damaging of the nitrogen pollutants. Nitric oxide is very similar to carbon monoxide, and reduces the oxygen carrying capability of the blood. Nitrogen dioxide irritates the eyes, nose, bronchial tubes, and lungs. High concentrations of this toxic gas prove fatal.
Gasoline motor vehicles are the major source of nitrogen oxide pollutants. Coal and natural gas burning account for the second largest class of nitrogen oxide polluters.
Again, the most effective way to control this form of air pollution is by reducing dependency on the gasoline engine, and finding safer energy alternatives than coal burning.
Hydrocarbons are often emitted in the exhaust from automobiles and from industrial smoke stacks. The major cause of hydrocarbon pollution is the processing and use of petroleum products. Consequently, hydrocarbon pollution is highest in urban areas.
About 13% of the entire annual output of air pollutants is in the form of hydrocarbons. Most of the hydrocarbon compounds are carcinogenic—that is“, they “contribute to the causes of cancer.
One of the major hydrocarbon pollutants is benzopyrene. This toxic gas is also found in cigarette smoke, and is suspected as a cancer catalyst. Worldwide studies have proven that benzopyrene specifically produces lung cancer. Many city residents breathe in about as much of this gas daily as is contained in seven cigarettes.
Some cities are much worse. For example, the benzopyrene level in New York City and Birmingham, Alabama, is such that the average resident takes in as much of this poisonous gas as is contained in the equivalent of about fifty cigarettes daily! Studies have also shown that the person who both smokes cigarettes and lives in polluted urban air is the most likely to have cancer.
Ozone is a clear, blue gas that exists naturally in the far upper regions of our atmosphere. Man, however, has increased the ozone content at the lower levels by emitting large amounts of nitrogen dioxide pollutants which in turn cause the creation of additional ozone.
At low levels, ozone poisoning results in chest pain, coughing, and eye irritation. Continuous exposure to small amounts of ozone has shortened the lives of laboratory animals. Ozone destroys such crops as grapes, spinach, lettuce, and alfalfa. It even attacks textile and rubber, causing them to deteriorate.
Ozone poisoning may also be a problem with those that work around electrical equipment and apparatus. Ozone has a sharp, almost “clean” type of smell. It may also be found in various air fresheners and sprays.
Chances are good that you are suffering from a low level of lead poisoning, particularly if you live near areas where automobile exhaust is a problem.
Lead affects the central nervous system. Headaches, dizziness, insomnia, weakness, anemia, and loss of appetite are some of the symptoms of chronic lead poisoning. The greatest danger of lead pollution is that it changes the shape of healthy red blood cells and makes them brittle. Residential areas where lead fallout is high also have a correspondingly high incidence of heart failure and disease.
Lead is a cumulative poison. That means it can build up in your system over a number of years. Lead is in both the air and water supply. Over urban areas, there is twice as much lead in the rainfall as is set by the government for drinking water standards.
Most of the lead, however, is not in the water but in the air. Airborne lead is caused chiefly by burning gasoline that contains lead. About two-thirds of all lead in gasoline is exhausted into the atmosphere.
In fact, since the introduction of lead-containing gasoline in 1924, the average person now carries around in his body 100 times as much lead as did people who lived before 1924.
Our cars that use lead gasoline have made the atmosphere over 1,000 times higher in lead content than it would have naturally. The annual lead fallout over this country is over 500,000 tons a year. Eventually, these large amounts will upset the mineral balance of the oceans and produce massive lead poisonings.
The solution? Immediate suspension of sales of all leaded gasoline. The lead in the gasoline our automobiles burn is the major cause of the lead problem. If you want to help, always use unleaded gasoline in your car. It’s worth the extra effort for the sake of the environment and your health.
Asbestos is found in pipe and electric insulations, brake linings, and, unfortunately, the human lungs.
Asbestos fibers pollute our air and often find their way into sensitive lung tissue where they become embedded. The mechanical irritation of these fibers harms the lungs and are believed to contribute to tumors in the lungs.
Asbestos is also often found in many building materials, all the way from the roofing of a house down to the floor tiles, and in the insulation in between.
Construction workers, electricians, plumbers, and many industrial workers need to be concerned about the asbestos pollution in their working environment.
Homemakers are not immune to the asbestos problem either. Even such a harmless-looking product as talcum powder has now been discovered to contain asbestos fibers. When this powder is used, asbestos particles enter the air and lungs, as well as being deposited on the skin.
Although not purely chemicals, another form of air pollution is solid particles. You’ve seen this type of air pollution yourself. In a ray of sunlight, you’ve probably seen tiny moving particles of “dust.” Such dust contains spores, pollen, molds, ash, soil, soot, and dozens of other solid compounds.
In a large city, every breath you take has about 70,000 solid particles in it. Even “clean” country air has about 40,000 solid particles in each breath of air.
Generally, these airborne particles of pollution remain in the air for only a few days. Occasionally, however, the lighter particles may drift for weeks and hundreds of miles from where they were released.
These particles come from everywhere: from fires, from industries, from farming, and from cars. In Los Angeles alone, one survey estimated that 50 tons of rubber particles from spinning tires are released into the air every day!
These airborne particles can make the sky hazy and shut out needed sunlight. For example, after volcanic eruptions which release a large amount of solid particles, the temperature often drops for a period of weeks. Solid particles in our air also cause irritation to the lungs and eyes, and produce what are often mistakenly labeled as “allergies.”
If temperature inversions occur or the wind blows the wrong way, these particles can gather in one part of an area and actually darken the daytime sky. When such conditions occur, deaths due to pollution rise by as much as 50%.
One of the primary requisites for a healthy and long life is clean and pure air. Unfortunately, this is one area that we sometimes have little control over. We can always choose the food we want to eat and decide when to exercise or fast, but the air we have to breathe is what is given us.
This does not mean, however, that we are helpless in obtaining pure air. Here are some practical suggestions that will help you live in a cleaner environment:
Fighting air pollution is not hopeless. Already the quality of the air has somewhat improved since the early 1970s. However, our air has not become so much better than we can grow lax. Industries are continually petitioning for relaxed air standards, and it is up to the public to see that the antipollution laws are instead strengthened and enforced.
Every day of your life, you draw in 20,000 breaths. You have the right to expect that not a single one of these breaths should endanger your health. The air and atmosphere are our common heritage and resource, and we must insure that they stay clean for us and our children.
I’d like to know more about air filters and cleaners that I can use in my home. Specifically, what about negative ion generators? Are they good in cleaning up the air, and are there any worthwhile machines to filter out cigarette smoke?
Air cleaning machines and ion generators do not solve the air pollution problem. The chemicals are still in the air that we breathe even after being filtered through these machines. Air-cleaning devices, however, have been effective in eliminating particles of dust, pollen, and smoke from the home and business.
Before buying or using one of these air-cleaning machines, you should first investigate very carefully how they work. Some of these devices may have harmful chemicals in the filtering mechanism they use, so make sure that you are not creating another problem when you use such machines.
Negative ion generators are very popular and are widely advertised. The verdict is still out on these machines, but caution is urged. All negative ion generators emit ozone as well as negative ions. Make sure that any ion generator you might buy has a very low level of ozone emission. Many people also report a difficulty in sleeping when one of these generators is in the bedroom. Evidently the negative ions have a stimulating effect on the organism, and this may prevent a deep sleep or rest.
If you must work in a smokey or dust-filled environment, however, an air-filtering device or ion generator might be more beneficial than harmful and should be carefully investigated.
I want to move where there isn’t any air pollution. Where should I go?
I would suggest the moon. There is no air there, nor any pollution at this point. Seriously, there is now no place on earth that does not have an air-pollution problem. Air pollutants have been found in the Antarctic air where there are no cars nor industries.
There are definitely worse places to live than others, however. If you live in the nation’s top twenty urban areas, you’ll be worse off than many of your country cousins. It’s not just urban density, however, that determines the quality of your air. You also have to consider the terrain and weather conditions. Some cities produce an awful lot of pollution, but the prevailing winds simply blow the poisons downwind to another town or state.
Generally, however, you would do well to avoid cities that have heavy industries, like petroleum, plastic, or chemical plants. Coal-burning areas are always worse than locales that do not use coal as a major fuel source.
You cannot, however, run away from air pollution. It will follow you no matter where you live. The ultimate solution to air pollution is not to remove yourself from it, but to remove the pollution from the air. It is an uphill fight, but it can be won if you make your voice heard.
Man is a child of nature. He is an outdoor animal. Normally he lives amid the beauties of nature, his skin bathed in the morning dew, kissed by the sun, soothed by the gentle zephyrs of Spring and his body fed by the luscious fruits and vegetables all around him, while his spirit is cheered by the songs of birds and the beauty and fragrance of myriads of gorgeously colored flowers. The open air is his home and he who lives in it is fortunate indeed.
Like fish on the floor of the ocean, we live in a sea of air that is much deeper than the hydrosphere in which aquatic animals live. There is always an abundance of much needed oxygen, if we but permit it access to our lungs. The air is self-purifying, so that, while impurities are ceaselessly being discharged into it, these soon find their way to other levels and leave the air fit to breathe. Pent-up air, that is, air that is confined in closed rooms, and air that is held in congested and gas-laden cities quickly becomes unfit for breathing. Such air, if breathed habitually, helps to produce disease; whereas, pure is one of the basic essentials of good health. This is often denied, but we shall continue to insist that pure air is absolutely essential to excellence of health and to the highest beauty and that, on the contrary, impure air tends to the production of poor health and the deterioration of beauty.
Modern city life, with more than sixty-five percent of our population residing in the cities, denies fresh air to the people as certainly as did the closed windows and doors of the houses of our grandparents. It is not that there is no air in the cities, but that it is so badly polluted with smoke, fumes, dust, etc., that it is actually unfit to breathe. The carbon monoxide from the exhaust of automobiles is but one of the air-polluters of modern life. Nitric and sulphuric acids, lead oxides and lead carbonates are among the contaminating elements found in the air of cities. The soot of soft coal is often one-half coal tar and this must help to produce lung cancer as surely as do the tars of tobacco smoke. The particles of carbon (soot) in smoke-filled air accumulate in the lungs and become imbedded in the air cells, gradually changing the lungs from their normal pink to one of sooty blackness. Indeed, this coating of carbon becomes so thick that one wonders how the individual breathes at all. As we become more and more a manufacturing nation and chemistry continues to pollute the air of the cities, they will grow progressively more and more unfit for human beings to inhabit. There are urgent reasons, other than atom and hydrogen bombs, why we should inaugurate an immediate program of decentralization designed to ultimately do away with all cities.
The body’s need for oxygen is constant, hence it is not possible to stop breathing for more than a very brief time. It is impossible to hold the breath for more than a minute or so. If the breath is forcibly cut off for a longer period than this death, death from lack of oxygen quickly occurs. It is estimated that approximately eighty-five percent of the oxygen we need is derived from the air we breathe, ten percent from water and five percent is taken in from the air through the skin. Dr. Tilden held that we get some oxygen from the foods we eat, perhaps from the water in these. There are reasons to doubt that we breathe with the skin. I question that we extract oxygen from water.
Other than an adequate supply of fresh air, the essential of good breathing is an adequate respiratory mechanism; sound lungs, a chest of sufficient size to house lungs large enough to deliver sufficient oxygen to the blood, normal chest movements in breathing and normal passages from the nose to the lungs. If the chest is too small it is not only out of harmony with the rest of the body, hence ugly, but it fails to meet the functional needs of the organism. If we begin early enough and persist in our efforts the chest may be developed in almost everybody to the required size.
The motility of the chest is often only slight, due in most instances, to a lack of use. The motility of the chest may be determined by measuring its expansion. In measuring chest expansion it is common to place the tape just beneath the arms. A truer measure of chest expansion may be obtained by applying the tape over the lower ribs, just beneath the breasts. The chest should be fully contracted and then expanded to its limit. The difference between the two measurements thus obtained gives us the chest expansion. This does not always measure chest capacity, as much of this depends upon the action of the diaphragm.
Air does not require to be forced into the lungs; it has to be forced out. When the chest expands, a vacuum is created and the air automatically flows into this. Normally the activities of the chest in breathing—inspiration and expiration—are automatically adjusted to the needs of the body; these activities increasing when more oxygen is needed or there is more carbon dioxide to expel, and decreasing when there is decreased need for oxygen or decreased production of carbon dioxide. Many things do, however, lower the functioning power of the respiratory system and cause use to function on a lower physiological level.
Impaired respiratory function reduces the amount of oxygen that is taken into the blood and that is carried to the tissues (anoxia) and the amount of oxygen in the blood (anoxemia). Some of the inhibiting factors are external and are supplied by the individual himself; others are internal and are commonly of the individual’s own making. Let us briefly consider these in order.
Cramped positions of sitting and standing that prevent the normal excursions of the chest and diaphragm, tight belts, corsets, foundation garments and other articles of apparel, that constrict of the chest and abdomen and prevent normal chest and diaphragmatic movements, hamper the intake of sufficient oxygen to meet the needs of the organism. Under such conditions, the body is forced to reduce its other functions to a level commensurate with the support provided by the respiratory system. Instead of vigorous function, feeble function is our lot.
Nasal obstructions (adenoids, nasal polyps, thickened nasal membranes, catarrh, bent or broken septum, traumatic and congenital distortion of the nose, small nasal passages, etc.), spasm of the bronchi (as in asthma) tumors that block the respiratory passages, pleurisy, adhesions, tuberculosis of the lungs, water in the lungs, as in advanced heart disease, pneumonia, a cold, smallness and deformities of the chest limit the amount of air that may be taken in at each respiration and the amount of carbon dioxide that can be expelled at each expiration.
Free nasal passages are not only essential to the ingress of adequate oxygen, but also to the normal conditioning of the inspired air for its entrance into the lungs. The air must be warmed or cooled, moistened or dried, as the case may be, in its passage from the outside to the lungs. If the nasal membrane is swollen and congested, for example, it will not only hinder the intake of air, but it will fail to properly condition the air. Dust and dirt must be filtered from the air, as it passes into the air passages and down to the lungs. This fails if the nose is not normal. Thus it becomes apparent that a well-formed, efficiently functioning and fully healthy nose is as necessary to good breathing as a well-developed chest and sound lungs. If the respiratory mechanism is normal, if the air is pure, if there are no external and positional interferences with the mechanism of breathing, this function will be automatically and subconsciously adjusted to the varying needs of the body for oxygen, so that conscious attention to the process is unnecessary.
53.7. The Future And Politics Of Solar Energy
53.8. Other Renewable Energy Sources
Article #1: Truths About X Rays by Virginia Vetrano
Article #2: No Permissible Radiation Level by Virginia Vetrano
Article #3: To Mutate or Not to Mutate by Virginia Vetrano
The sun is expected to emit radiant energy for another four billion years, the only perpetually renewable energy source for our planet. Obviously, it is time to learn how to use the massive amounts of energy the sun gives us each day. Three processes by which the sun’s radiation can be used are heliochemical (photosynthesis, photography), helioelectrical (manmade devices that convert solar radiation into electricity), and heliothermal (devices that absorb solar radiation on blackened surfaces and convert it to heat).
All energy on earth originally came from the sun. All of our hydrocarbon fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas were originally produced by the action of sunlight on vegetation.
Light is a form of electromagnetic energy. Energy is the capacity to do work, and power is the rate at which energy is generated or used (measured in watts or kilowatts). The amount of power we can get from any solar device depends on the amount of sunlight it intercepts and on the efficiency of the energy conversion device. Solar energy intercepted by an area the size of a small tennis court would supply the energy needs of an average household. The radiant energy in sunlight must be converted into some form of energy that is easier to use, such as electricity—the solar cell is just such a device.
The photovoltaic effect, where electricity is produced when certain materials are illuminated, was first noted in 1839, and the photovoltaic effect, where electricity is produced when certain materials are illuminated, was first noted in 1839, and the photovoltaic cell is probably the first solid-state electronic device ever invented. Its use has been slow because of the abundance of hydrocarbon fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. Photovoltaics were first used in selenium cells to measure light levels (as with the light meter used in photography). The space program uses photovoltaic cells because conventional batteries will run down, but solar cells will continue to deliver electric power as long as sunlight is available.
The basic reason for using solar energy is that it is a renewable, limitless energy source that promises freedom from dependency on nonrenewable energy sources, thus freeing humankind from the threat of war over dwindling natural resources.
Solar power is clean, nonpolluting, and safe. Once the basic systems are installed, the sun is free; and since power is produced locally, on the spot where it is to be used, transportation of fuels and distribution of power aren’t necessary. Solar electricity can be brought to remote locations that are too far away for bringing power lines, for example. Solar research can be carried out in small laboratories with inexpensive equipment.
Solar energy usage will create jobs—about four times as many as nuclear power. It is labor-intensive, that is, about half the money that goes to building a solar space or water-heating system goes to paying the wages of the people building or installing it. A solar-based economy would put more people to work than a fossil/nuclear one. (It also employ’s people from a wider range of abilities, whereas nuclear power plants, aside from preliminary construction workers, use mostly professionals. Most jobs at nuclear plants will be for security personnel.) Solar power is community-based, but nuclear power is centralized and monopolized by certain monied interests. Tax credits can be received for certain home-improvement and energy conservation installations.
The concepts behind solar energy use are not new, by any means. Legend has it that in 212 B.C. Archimedes set fire to an attacking Roman fleet by turning a “burning glass” composed of small, hinged square mirrors so as to reflect concentrated sunlight onto the ships. For years scientists argued about whether this was myth or fact, but in 1747 a Frenchman proved that it could have been done by burning wood from a distance of 200 feet with an array of 168 small flat mirrors, and then melted lead at 130 feet and silver at 60 feet. In the same century, an optician in France built polished iron solar furnaces that could smelt iron, copper, and other metals. Another investor used two lens to achieve a temperature close to 1750° Fahrenheit—far beyond any temperature attained by man up to this time.
In the 1800s came many models of solar-powered engines and solar steam engines. In 1871, a solar still in Chile provided 6,000 gallons of pure water a day for forty years. In 1880, a solar engine was built in France that ran a printing press.
Of course, foods have been sun-dried for ages, using solar power without the need for technology. In the early 1900s, solar ovens appeared.
Solar water heaters were known in southern California and other states in the 1920s and 30s. After World War II, solar sciences flourished in Europe and a boom in solar water heaters began in Japan and Israel. Heaters were installed by the 100,000’s in Japan.
Here in America, the military picked up interest in solar power. The navy wanted solar battery power supplies for buoys and other installations. The Air Force had small solar-powered radio transceivers for aviators’ survival kits. The Army used solar panels to transmit radio signals and put smaller units in helmet radios for soldiers.
These are but a few of the many experiments in solar power undertaken through the centuries, and one would need to read a whole book to go into greater depth. The point is, that many inventors have long trusted in the power of the sun, and their greatest obstacle has probably always been the apathetic lack of interest by their fellow men in using the sun’s power. In fact, there is an interesting analogy that serves as a parallel to the solar/nuclear industry. When Thomas Edison was first working on his experimental light bulb, the gas company did all it could to discredit this inventor calling his work foolishness. They wanted, of course, to preserve their energy monopoly as gas suppliers to all those gas lamps! When Edison finally perfected his light bulb, not only did he change the future of the human race, but he also showed the gas company who was foolish. It is certain that the nuclear power industry would rather have people remain ignorant of solar power and its grand potential for as long as possible. They would rather have people perceive it as “futuristic,” when the truth is that much can be done now in solar energy, and its use and history are as old as the sun itself.
For centuries before the Industrial Revolution, people relied on the chemical energy of plants and animals and the natural forces of wind and water to provide the necessities of life. As more efficient ways were discovered to use these energy sources, changes took place in the way people lived. After the 18th century when power devices were found that could convert steam and, later, fossil fuel into work, energy consumption grew and people underwent rapid social changes. There were switches from wood to coal and from whale oil to petroleum. Then came the internal combustion engine; electricity; steam, gas, and water turbines for generating power; and then the nuclear age.
The trend has been away from dispersed natural forces available for large numbers of people to limited reservoirs of intensive chemical energy (fossil fuels) controlled by a few corporations. People have become more dependent, in that they’ve lost more control over their energy resources.
On a global scale, there are two main patterns of energy consumption:
Energy consumption is encouraged because it is said to reflect growth, though unemployment often increases despite or because of increased usage. Much money is spent to increase energy production, but there should be more interest in energy conservation and use of renewable resources. Nonrenewable resources like fossil fuels are limited and destined to be exhausted. If people make themselves totally dependent on dwindling supplies, the threat of war over what’s left becomes a horrible specter.
Today many of us in the United States draw on what would be the equivalent of 70 mechanical slaves to “enjoy the good life.” The first waterwheels produced about 1/2 horsepower, with later versions producing 70 horsepower. Cars can have several hundred, aircraft engines thousands, and a rocket engine for spacecraft may produce more than 20 million horsepower. Electric power plants generate millions. Much of the world suffers from hunger and malnutrition (70,000,000 people face starvation yearly), so if we and our fellow human beings are to have any quality of life, we should cut down on our energy consumption and look to new sources of renewable energy for power.
Aside from the fact that nonrenewable energy sources are in limited supply, the main reason for not using them is the pollution, health, and safety risks involved. Some say there are “three environmental time bombs”; toxic chemical pollution, carbon dioxide (CO2) buildup, and acid rain.
The buildup of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere is often referred to as “the greenhouse effect.” By burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, people have caused an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which can cause temperatures to rise on a world level. A few degrees difference may not seem important, but on a world scale it can have a dramatic effect. (Some say there would be increased melting of polar ice caps, for one thing.)
As coal, oil, and natural gas are burned worldwide, smokestacks of electricity—generating plants, industrial boilers and smelters release sulfur dioxide (SO2) arid nitrogen oxides. Nitrogen oxides also come out of auto exhaust pipes and slowly escape from chemical fertilizers. These emissions have resulted in “acid rain” which damages vegetation and wildlife and can corrode metals. Fish are being destroyed in sensitive areas, and acidifying soils can result in increased leaching of some trace elements, a slowdown of the organisms that break down the contents on the forest floor, and reduced organic nitrogen. For decades, acid rain has eaten into structures like steel bridges and statues. Not only is acid rain destructive, but winds carry the emissions from factories and exhausts into other countries as well. There are no boundaries for air pollution. Some beautiful areas in Scandinavia are getting acid rain from Europe’s industrial belt and in some lakes, fish have been virtually eliminated. Canada gets its share of America’s acid rain. In an unprecedented lawsuit in 1981, Maine Attorney General, James Tierney, said he was considering suing the federal government and other states because of drifting air pollution that caused acid rain. He wanted laws concerning sulfur dioxide emissions strengthened, and states with weak laws held liable.
No one yet knows for sure what acid rain might do to humans. Dry, airborne pollutants are largely associated with respiratory diseases. One estimate in 1975 suggested that “acid sulphates from fossil fuel emissions are responsible for 7,500 to 12,000 deaths a year.” This can’t be proved, of course, since so many factors influence peoples’ health that one particular cause of death is always difficult to pinpoint, (as in cases of radiation exposure).
Forty-three percent of America’s community drinking water systems are reporting violations of federal health standards. In addition, 13,600 of the nation’s 65,000 systems have inadequate treatment facilities. People often aren’t aware of any dangers in their water. In 1980, of 146,000 violations recorded, public notice was made in 16,000 cases. In 1981, New Hampshire officials warned 14 communities that traces of arsenic had been detected in their public water supplies. Virtually every stream, river, and lake in the country is polluted. There is runoff from fertilizers and insecticides, industrial waste, and thermal pollution in overheated waters. (Nuclear power plants produce more thermal pollution than conventional steam electric plants.) In New Orleans, 112 different chemicals were found in a sample of drinking water, and the rate of cancer is going up. At least 40% of the population is using water that has been used at least once before for domestic or industrial purposes, sometimes as many as five times by other people.
Some chemical substances interact with one another in water to form entirely new, often dangerous, chemicals. Chlorine can react with decomposing leaves and become chloroform. Chlorine has been accused of causing cancer, yet most of the “drinking” water in America is now chlorinated, fluoridated, and so on.
In 1970, a study showed that 200,000 children in the U.S. had overly toxic levels of lead in their bloodstream. A more recent article stated that this number is more like 600,000. These figures don’t include adults, and most people aren’t even tested for lead in their bloodstream anyway. Auto exhausts and industry are putting this lead into the environment.
According to a study by the National Wildlife Federation (the country’s largest nongovernmental conservation group), most of the environmental indicators of the “quality of life” show deterioration. Supposedly, 90% of all major U.S. factories now comply with pollution laws, but the report said most Americans live in areas where it is still unsafe to breathe. Land is unwisely used, soil erodes and gets poisoned, water is wasted and polluted (with over 70,000 chemicals in current commercial use, runoff can bring many to waterways), and the endangered species list has more than doubled. All these gloomy changes reflect our choice of energy consumption, and much waste and greed.
With today’s increased interest in good insulation, one must be extremely cautious in providing adequate ventilation since fumes, gases, and other toxic vapors are the byproduct of nonrenewable energy use. (This is the advantage solar power has over fossil fuels—it is clean and safe.) If you’re using “traditional” energy sources, you must be aware that in insulating to retain heat, you may also be retaining such things as radioactive radon and its decay products or formaldehyde escaping from some types of insulation (a popular new insulation is urea formaldehyde— beware). For insulation one can use vermiculite, perlite, and expanded silicate—inert minerals that don’t release fumes. You may be retaining formaldehyde fumes from particle board, hydrocarbons from gas stoves, and petrochemicals from paints to cleaning fluids. Soft coal fires put benzopyrene (another carcinogen) into the air. At only one part per two million, formaldehyde can cause swelling of mucous membranes. Higher levels can result in coughing, chest pains, headaches, cold- and flu-like symptoms, eye and nose irritations, bloody noses, scratchy throat, nausea, and possibly cancer. Recently, some investigations were made into complaints from people in new, well-insulated mobile homes where formaldehyde gas was detected.
Many people didn’t link symptoms, which are so often associated with other “common illnesses, to anything serious so it took awhile for any connection to be made to formaldehyde. Often the most common building materials— concrete, brick, stone, and adobe—contain trace amounts of radium and uranium. These levels, are measurable with equipment similar to a geiger counter. As insulation to a home increases and drafts and ventilation decrease, more radon is retained at higher levels. Normally, when fresh air seeps into a house, the air is completely exchanged in one hour, but heavy insulation can reduce this air exchange to once every five hours. Some heavily-insulated homes have been measured with an annual dose exceeding permissible levels for uranium mines. The Environmental Protection Agency examined the radon issue and concluded that 10,000 lung cancers diagnosed yearly could be caused by this radioactive gas, and warned that deaths could double or triple with increased heavy insulation. Ventilation with fresh air is necessary.
Gas appliances, stoves, and heaters are another source of indoor air pollution. Natural gas is one of many petrochemical agents capable of creating symptoms like arthritis, depression, water retention, and abdominal distention in even the best-ventilated homes. (Here, one must realize that one should not inhale a toxic fume—indoors or outdoors—because toxic is toxic, so ventilation isn’t really relevant here. If one does use gas though, one should of course still ventilate as much as possible.) With gas stoves, emissions from combustion are exhausted directly into the air. Such an oversight would never be allowed with any other burning material, because we know that the products of combustion are hazardous to inhale. The two major pollutants produced by combustion are carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. Carbon monoxide displaces oxygen in our blood’s hemoglobin, and can cause headaches, exhaustion and asphyxiation. Nitrogen dioxide is a byproduct of high-temperature combustion, and studies have shown that levels may be five times greater indoors than outdoors, especially in major cities. One investigation found that operating a gas oven at 350 degrees for one hour, with little ventilation, resulted in excessive levels of carbon monoxide in the house. Excessive amounts were also found with moderate ventilation, but levels did decrease when speed of ventilating fans was increased. The health hazards of cooking with natural gas are mostly respiratory in nature, and some studies showed a statistically significant difference in lung capacity between children living in homes with gas stoves and those with electric ranges. Another study showed that twice as many residents with gas reported chronic coughing, and three times as many had impaired lung function. (Fortunately, those of us on raw food diets need not be burdened with these worries but not everyone is so fortunate.)
Kerosene heaters, sold by the millions the last five years, give off substantial amounts of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. These emissions are said to be especially dangerous to pregnant women and their fetuses, babies, and persons with respiratory problems, anemia, angina pectoris, or a heart condition. Any unvented heaters are obviously sending combustion byproducts right into the room just like a gas stove. (Some heaters also present fire hazards if improperly used.)
Lignite is a low-grade coal that poses several health problems. Uranium in the material above lignite deposits could cause both pollution and health danger when disturbed. Those operating a lignite plant are working close to known carcinogens, and emissions from the plant include sulfur oxides, which combine with moisture in the air and produce sulfurous acid, sulfuric acid, and ammonium sulfate which can corrode buildings, damage vegetation, and cause respiratory ailments. Much carbon dioxide is formed and released, and it combines with water to form acid rain. Lignite has been presented in some areas as an alternative to nuclear power, but people living near lignite plants would absorb about five to six times as many milli-rems of radiation as the “accepted maximum dosage allowed” for areas around nuclear power plants. When lignite burns, radioactive isotopes are released. Nearby water risks contamination and depletion because vast amounts of water are used at all stages from mining to burning and sludge disposal.
We can see why it will be a welcome relief to make the switch to a cleaner, safer energy source that doesn’t result in so many complications and compromises! Yet the negative side-effects of all these nonrenewable energy sources pale in comparison with the problems encountered with nuclear power.
53.3.2 The Dangers of Nuclear Power Problems BEFORE We Get to the Plant
In 1981, there were 78 nuclear power plants operating or under construction, with 16 more on order. Outside the U.S., there were 182 operating reactor units with another 138 under construction.
One of the first things to remember in dealing with the politics of nuclear power is that using nuclear power to solve the energy crisis seems perfectly normal to the select few who will profit from it and perhaps not be affected by its dangers. This “privileged elite” must convince the workers who labor that a common good will come of it all, although the elite will keep control over the largest portion of the resulting wealth. It has been this way since the beginning of time. Near the top we find people at the next layer of power—the professionals. These are our educated. Intellectuals are usually glad to compromise ethics for the generous compensation given out by those at the top. (We might note that doctors fit into this category, as do many scientists, engineers, corporate executives, and so on.) There is always a “professional” ready to tell you why nuclear power is safe and desirable, just as the surgeon will insist that his surgery is safe and necessary. When “studies” show that “all is well,” one might do well to note that many a drug has “passed inspection” and many pesticides have “been approved” all because of “studies.” It is suspiciously easy to find scientists who will come up with just about any result desired by commercial interests.
There were biologists in laboratories funded for 20 years at $50 to $90 million per year to study the biological hazards of ionizing radiation, but little has been said on the possibility of death (which is certainly a “biological hazard”). But because cancer can begin for a variety of reasons, it is conveniently impossible to prove that a particular cancer or death was caused by radiation. This protects private and governmental polluters, because who can prove they have caused even one cancer?
It is certain that ionizing radiation can induce cancer in humans, and it can also be mutagenic—mutation-causing. It’s hard to know what damage has already been done to future generations by the continued casual dumping of pollutants into the biosphere by “advanced” nations. Would we be as willing to accept nuclear power if we had to name 100 or 1,000 or 100,000 people each year to be executed by a firing squad in exchange for electricity? How different is it to give the go-ahead for nuclear power, when the same odds are at stake, and victims are like guinea pigs in an experiment?
Nuclear power appeals to the privileged elites that control all societies, because it is a centralized system, not a do-it-yourself technology like solar power—it allows them better financial control. Power is being centralized in other areas such as the auto industry, food growing/distributing functions, and so on. The energy source that best meets the need of the elite is that which guarantees dependence on a central source. (You’d probably see that centralized solar electric systems would be the first strongly promoted types of solar energy if the energy companies become involved.)
Although nuclear power is being pushed with a fervor, it is becoming outrageously expensive and many power plants are plagued with cost overruns, because the costs of the nuclear industry are rapidly escalating.
There is another, more subtle side to the financial coin with regards to the politics of energy known as “economic blackmail.” People are taking whatever jobs are available because of their basic survival instinct. So, if a scientist does speak out, he may say something like “a solution for managing radioactive poisons will be found” instead of “radioactive poisons are hazardous to your health” (or “run for the hills!”). In fact, some have even gone so far as to say “don’t worry if you get cancer—they’re working on finding a ‘cure’ now!” Not very reassuring.
Use of nuclear power violates our most basic law, not to kill, because it implies premeditated random murder, committed by all the nuclear power plants. (In 1978, Honicker vs. Hendrie, a lawsuit challenging the “right” of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to commit premeditated random murder by licensing nuclear power plants, was filed.) We will discuss how nuclear power plants cause deaths and genetic damage in the population later.
Long ago the government teamed up with industry to perpetuate a fraud about the safety of nuclear power— one source likened this fraud to “making Watergate seem like a kindergarten picnic.”
Whatever happened to our inalienable constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Nuclear power will commit crimes against innocent victims, now and in the future. We seem to have forgotten that these future people will be more highly-evolved human beings. It is quite unlikely that they would choose to be poisoned if they had the chance to decide for themselves!
We are becoming involuntary human subjects, being experimented on daily by chemical compounds in the atmosphere. Remember that in the mid-50s, the toxicity of low-dose radiation was “uncertain,” so bombs were tested in our own country. Now people with cancer that lived near test sites and were told they were “safe” are suing the government. We are becoming more and more aware of the dangers of radiation. The crime goes from “experiment” to murder, and if this permission for random murder is granted, people risk loss of freedom, justice, and their lives.
It is ironic that when antinuclear activists are arrested at demonstrations, some people just see them as “protesters,” when here they are trying to wake up a slumbering public, and save the lives of this generation and of generations not yet born—definitely humanitarian motives.
Up to 1969, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and nuclear industries promoted the idea that radiation would do no harm to humans below a certain level. Since it is now known that there is no safe dose, the so-called “safe” standards for public exposure could have caused 32,000 extra cancer deaths per year (and that’s assuming the public wasn’t exposed to more than the “safe” limit). Chances are the exposure was, and is, higher. The genetic consequences after several generations could be between 100,000 and 1,000,000 extra deaths a year. The AEC and nuclear industry tried to ridicule and deny these statistics, but after a two-year study, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences agreed that there was no safe dose of radiation, though their estimate of the number of deaths was lower. Nevertheless, their estimates did admit to many thousands of deaths. (The official recognized statistic of the nuclear power industry is 0-3 possible cancers a year.)
When pressured further, the AEC and nuclear industry, instead of lowering the allowed radiation dose, then said that they “don’t intend to give anyone the dose permitted by regulations anyway. “That’s not very helpful when we can see from the history of pollution of any sort that polluters always pollute as much, or more, than is legal. When an industry doesn’t want to lower a poison’s legal limit, it is because it plans to give at least the presently permitted dose. Doses that exceed the “permitted” level because of some unforeseeable accident will not count because they fall into the category of “unplanned” or “abnormal” circumstances. So, whatever dose we get will be “O.K.” as long as it’s unplanned!
Often the nuclear power promoters will remind us that we’re exposed to “natural” radiation from the earth. Perhaps so, but we can’t very well move from the plant. That source of radiation is bad enough without that imposed by the nuclear power industry. They also say that there won’t be more radiation than say, our X rays might give us; here, beware, for X rays are harmful since there’s no safe dose of radiation.
We can already see how complex nuclear power is, but this is just scraping the surface. Let’s see what else happens before, during and after nuclear power production.
When uranium is mined, two highly carcinogenic and radioactive substances are released: radium and radon. Radium, an alpha-emitter with a half life of 1,600 years, is a decay product of uranium which is found in uranium ore. Its particles of dust from uranium mines are swallowed, the radium is absorbed by the intestine and can cause cancer. Radon, a gas, can cause lung cancer if inhaled. Before the dangers of radon were known, 20% of all uranium miners in the United States died of lung cancer and a similar percentage was found among German and Canadian uranium miners.
After the ore is mined, it’s ground, crushed, and chemically treated to extract the purified element. The waste ore, called tailings, is discarded outside the mill and left lying on the ground in huge mounds. To fuel a single power plant for a year can create a half a billion pounds of tailings. These tailings contain thorium (halflife of 76,000 years) and radium. If the radium is exposed to the air, it will give off radon gas for as long as 800,000 years. This radon gas is killing people now and can do so for at least the next billion years.
Until recently, hundreds of acres of tailings lay on the ground in Grand Junction, Colorado. In the mid-60s, tailings were used around town for cheap landfill and concrete mix, and this went into schools, hospitals, private homes, roads, an airport, and a shopping mall. In 1970, a local doctor noticed an increase of cleft palate, cleft lip, and other congenital defects among newborn babies in the area. Further investigation showed that parents of these children lived in houses built with tailings, and when tested, many of these buildings showed very high radiation levels. Soon after this, some people at the University of Colorado got funds from the former Environmental Protection Agency to study the correlation between low-level radiation and a rise in birth defects—a year later funds were cut off and they were told the government had to cut back on many programs for “budgetary reasons.”
Next, uranium ore must be “enriched” so that its Uranium-235 content makes up 3% of its bulk, since only 0.7% of the uranium found in its natural state is of the U-235 variety. This process is extremely expensive and uses vast amounts of energy. It leaves radioactive tailings similar to those produced in milling the ore. In the United States, the federal government has to subsidize the enrichment process because it costs so much.
After enrichment, uranium ore is processed into small pellets. A typical 1,000-megawatt reactor has bundles of fuel rods that use 100 tons of uranium. (Workers exposed in making these pellets are susceptible to dangers of gamma radiation emitted from the enriched fuel.) The enriched uranium is now ready to undergo fission, during which hundreds of radioactive isotopes (all carcinogenic and mutagenic) with half-lives ranging from several seconds to 24,400 years are released. Even though symptoms haven’t appeared, the doses already received by workers will result in thousands of cancer victims, and this random murder of workers is politely referred to as “health effects” by government regulatory agencies. Fifteen years of records from one of the two hospitals in Durango, Colorado, site of one of the nation’s huge exposed radioactive mill tailings piles (a 1.5 million ton pile), show a rate of lung cancer four times the national average. Earlier in 1979, more than 30 radioactive sites were discovered in Denver and elsewhere in Colorado-remnants of the radium industry that flourished at the turn of the century. There are over 4,000 such radioactive sites in this country.
Workers at mines are exposed to higher levels of radioactivity, radon, and toxic materials than the public, and there are even infractions of the official “safe” dosages. Many workers are poorly informed on the dangers of the materials they are working with. Worker turnover is high and no follow-up is done on workers. Some long-range effects of exposure may not show up until years later.
After the uranium is mined, it must be transported to its final destinations. Our nation’s highways and railroads are being crossed daily with radioactive materials and workers who handle these shipments are often exposed to radiation. Between 1974 and 1978, there were 328 transport accidents involving radioactive cargo—118 serious enough to release radiation into the environment. (This amounts to about three accidents every two weeks involving shipment of radioactive materials.) Nine out of ten occurred on public highways. (Even planes carrying nuclear weapons have crashed—there are over 30 such accidents on official record, but one source says this may be a fourth of the real number.) Civil defense and fire personnel are ill-equipped to handle nuclear emergencies.
Another problem with nuclear power is the choice of some of the power plant locations. There are quite a few nuclear reactors in geologically unsound areas. The South Texas nuclear plant is being built over the convergence of three earthquake fault lines and is built to withstand 90-mph winds in an area where hurricane winds have been known to greatly exceed that. The Diablo Canyon (California) power plant is three miles from an offshore earthquake fault, and other California plants have been built that are dangerously close to fault systems. Within a 200-mile radius of New Madrid, Missouri (the region hit by powerful quakes in 1811), nine nuclear power plants are situated. In New York state, the Indian Point power station is located within a mile of the Ramapo fault system, and this plant is only about 25 miles north of New York! The industry will say that power plants are designed to withstand earthquakes but in 1979 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission closed five eastern power plants because an error in the computer model used by the engineering company understated the stresses that the piping in the coolant systems of the reactors might have to withstand in the event of an earthquake. (We will discuss meltdowns, which can result with failure of the cooling systems, later.) About a month later, an earthquake struck Bath, Maine, with tremors being felt in a 200-mile radius, which includes three nuclear power plants.
Another problem with nuclear power is that the fuels used can be used to make bombs and are therefore vulnerable to theft, smuggling, and terrorist activity. Approximately two tons of weapons-grade enriched uranium and plutonium have already been stolen from nuclear facilities in the United States. These thefts, whether by nations, terrorist groups, or criminal elements will become a standard feature of a nuclear world.
Once inside the plant, we can become concerned with the possibility of sabotage of the power plant, i.e., terrorist threats, or blackmail. Then come engineering defects and errors, which have been discovered; the problem of “human error” in the nuclear industry is a big one because the stakes are so high. Next, we have “routine emissions” and leaks such as: a mechanical failure that caused a plant to “burp” radioactive xenon gas into the atmosphere, or radioactive steam that spewed into the air for 27 minutes at another power plant. Hundreds of these “nonserious” accidents are on record over the years, and the space of this lesson does not permit coverage of all the mistakes. Suffice it to say there is a wealth of documented scare stories available.
Perhaps the best known failure was at Three Mile Island, when a series of accidents led to a buildup of pressure in the reactor and the release of radioactive steam into the atmosphere. The atomic core was difficult to cool, radiation leaked, and a hydrogen gas bubble inside the reactor could have become explosive.
Estimates were made that childhood cancers could increase up to 60% in the five years following this accident within a 200-rriile radius of the plant. If the worst had happened at Three Mile Island, at least 200 and perhaps up to 23,000 outside a 50-mile radius would have died of cancer.
The biggest danger in nuclear power is the possibility of a meltdown. Whether caused by a defect in design or construction, human error, or sabotage, it could release a reactor’s deadly radioactive contents into the atmosphere, killing thousands of people and contaminating an area the size of Pennsylvania. Over the course of the next generation, genetic abnormalities and thyroid cancer would strike untold numbers of additional people.
A meltdown can occur if the coolant water at a reactor’s core drops below the level of the fuel rods, which would become so hot that they would melt and then the whole mass of molten uranium would burn through the “container” (the concrete base of the plant) and 1/4 mile into the earth, triggering a tremendous explosion that would blow the containment vessel apart, releasing the radioactive elements into the atmosphere. After the blast thousands die immediately. More would did within two to three weeks of acute radiation illness. Food, water, and air would be so grossly contaminated that in five years there would be widespread leukemia, followed 15-40 years later by an upsurge in cancers. The genetic deformities that might appear in future generations are inconceivable.
The potential enormity of such a meltdown cannot be exaggerated. The Union of Concerned Scientists conducted a two-year study that projected 15,000 people could die of radiation-induced cancer from minor reactor accidents by the year 2000. In the same period, there’s a 1% chance that a major nuclear accident will occur, killing nearly 100,000 people. There have already been some close calls.
We still haven’t mentioned the “routine” exposure to radiation of nuclear power plant workers themselves. As with uranium miners, they are often not informed specifically of the dangers of radiation, only told in general terms that it can be dangerous. Workers wear badges that monitor the level of exposure to radiation, but this device registers only gamma radiation and disregards alpha and beta emissions, which can be swallowed or inhaled. Workers are permitted to receive 30 times as much radiation as the limit set for the general public. The nuclear industry keeps records of no more than five years after an employee leaves the job. This is obviously ineffective in pinpointing slower developing cancers or in spotting cancer in the offspring of victims. Unskilled or migrant laborers are often hired for high wages in areas of intense radiation. After they receive their six-month allowable dose at one facility (sometimes in only one day) they may be hired on at another power plant without ever being questioned about their previous radiation exposure. (When a pipe broke at the Indian Point plant and it was rendered inoperable for six months, 1,300 certified welders—almost every certified welder in the New York area—were needed to repair the damage. This is because within a few minutes, each worker would receive the dose of radiation “allowable” in a six-month period.)
Last year, statistics on 68 operating plants showed that their work forces were exposed to 35% more radiation in 1980 than in 1979 even though there was only one new plant. The doses these workers get can provoke genetic injury; with intermarriage with nonworkers, some genetic degradation of the population-at-large can result.
Studies have also shown increased cancer in areas around nuclear power plants. A nuclear power plant must release radiation into the environment in order to do its job. Low-level radiation, the alpha particles get carried away on dust or pollen by wind or water.
Every independent study in this country in the last 20 years (i.e., studies not conducted by the nuclear power industry) has shown that current standards of radiation are too high. Workers and the public have been deceived concerning “permissible” or “tolerable” doses of radiation. There will be injuries in proportion to the accumulated dose of radiation, down to the lowest doses, although radiation effects may not show up for as long as 30 years. (Remember, however, if genetic damage occurs, it is immediate.) Still, the nuclear power industry continues to claim that “no one’s been harmed by radiation.”
Radiation is insidious because it cannot be detected by the senses. We are not biologically equipped to feel its powers, or see, hear, touch, or smell it. Radiation harms us by ionizing—that is, altering the electrical charge of the atoms and molecules comprising our body cells. Of all creatures on earth, human beings are one of the most susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of radiation. There is also one flower that is very sensitive to small amounts of radiation, called the Tradescantia or spiderwort. Down to 250 to 300 millirems of radiation can change the genetic character of this plant so that it changes color—the stamen changes color—so they have planted them around nuclear power plants in Japan.
Within every cell there is thought to be a regulatory gene that controls the cell’s rate of division. If our bodies are irradiated or we inhale a particle of radioactive matter into our lungs, this radiation can chemically damage a regulatory cell. It may continue to function normally, but one day, five to forty years later, instead of dividing to produce two new cells, it goes berserk and manufactures billions of identically-damaged cells. This type of growth is called cancer. Cancer cells can break from the main mass of the growth, or tumor, and enter the blood or lymph vessels, travel to other organs, and divide again uncontrollably to form new tumors. These cells are more aggressive than normal body cells. This is why there is no safe dosage of radiation—it takes only one radioactive atom, one cell, and one gene to initiate a cancer or mutation cycle.
In considering all these facts on radiation, we should remember one important fact, that all the nuclear industries are relatively young. Nuclear power has only been in commercial production in the United States for 25 years, and arms production for 35. Since the latency period of cancer is five to forty years and genetic mutations may not manifest themselves for generations, we can see that we have barely begun to experience the effects radiation can have upon us. (Madame Curie, who is known for her work with uranium, died later, not having known in time the dangers of the substance she worked with.)
The moment a plant begins operation, injury to humans, is guaranteed. Nuclides are released during so-called “normal” operations. Because the “regulatory” processes do not want to protect the public and licenses continue to be granted, it is clear that we cannot count on protection against victimization through the regulatory process. Even the Environmental Protection Agency said in 1975 that nuclear power will kill hundreds of people yearly even if everything goes perfectly. (This, again, is an underestimation of victims.) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did admit in 1978 what others had already said, that there was no safe dose of ionizing radiation, and no “threshold.”
In the meantime, we are injured in the form of mental anguish. People have already undergone a certain amount of “psychic numbing” by the shadow of potential nuclear war hanging over their heads, in which continual stress has caused them to try to “blank out” the fears. Most humans don’t want electricity at the cost of death or injury to themselves or their fellow people.
Because uranium resources could be depleted at the turn of the century, the nuclear industry wants breeder reactors to ensure a future for nuclear power. These reactors are expensive, dangerous, and would require production and shipping of plutonium—a poisonous, carcinogenic material used in hydrogen bombs. The breeders would use up the wastes of the first generation of nuclear reactors and “breed” their own future fuel supplies by creating even more plutonium over time. Whether fueled by plutonium or thorium U-233, these substances will be produced and handled by the thousands of tons. These two substances are in the class of alpha-emitters, providing the same radiation as has claimed the lives of uranium miners by lung cancer. Plutonium is so toxic that current occupational limits allow a worker to inhale no more than 0.2 of a millionth of a gram over his lifetime (one must, of course, be suspicious of any “safe” dose).
Plutonium and uranium are the stuff from which atomic bombs are fabricated, and as we mentioned before, several tons can’t be accounted for by the processors already.
Errors plague the production of breeders just as with the regular light water reactors—in the extreme, a breeder reactor can suffer a runaway nuclear reaction and conceivably blow itself apart. (“It could make Three Mile Island look like a tea party,” said Thomas Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council.)
One-half pound of plutonium trapped in human lungs could cause billions of lung cancers. Yet there are waste sites of plutonium with leaking rusty barrels, and there have been plutonium spills, and it has been tracked around by workers, accidentally found on the ground and elsewhere in plants handling plutonium, and so forth. At one point, planes were carrying plutonium oxide into Kennedy airport until these flights were stopped, after some calculations figured that a crash causing plutonium dispersal could have killed the 8,000,000 residents of New York City at the time! Plutonium in the earth, under its mantle, doesn’t pose a threat—it’s the airborne plutonium that creates the inhalation hazard.
Let’s stop a moment and see what responsibility the nuclear industry has taken to ensure our safety. The Price-Anderson Act was passed in the 1950s to absolve America’s power companies of major responsibility in the event of a nuclear disaster. Without such a bill, the nuclear industry would have never gotten off the ground. (If insurance companies were willing to cover the risk, the premium required to ensure a nuclear power plant yearly could be roughly equivalent to the entire yearly costs of plant operation and maintenance.)
In cases of extreme nuclear accidents, we might also do well to question how quickly and effectively evacuations would take place. How would a city like New York be evacuated within hours?
If we have managed to make it through the production and power plant operation phases, we come to the final problem posed by the use of nuclear power: nuclear waste.
It may be noted that much ado is made about waste disposal, sometimes to divert peoples’ attention from the fact that even without the waste, the reactors are killing people now. It’s easier to promise people safety and “99.9% containment,” and then catch them up in the emotions of the waste dumping issue than to admit this fact. This is not to say, of course, that waste disposal isn’t also crucial. The entire cycle of nuclear power is serious.
What exactly is the cause for concern with nuclear waste? The General Accounting Office of Congress has said that by the end of the century there could be one-billion cubic feet of nuclear waste in the United States—enough to cover a four-lane highway coast to coast a foot deep.
The operation of nuclear reactors generates astronomical quantities of radioactive garbage of several types, the amount of radioactivity generated being in direct proportion to the amount of electricity produced. In one year a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant generates fission products (like Strontium-90 and Cesium-137) in a quantity equal to what is produced by the explosion of 23 megatons of nuclear fission bombs—or more than 1,000 bombs of the Hiroshima size! (Remember, the industry wants 300 or 400 such plants in the U.S.A. alone by the year 2000.) This means that every year we would generate the Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 garbage equivalent to a full-scale nuclear war, year after year until fuel runs out. If breeders are developed, we could have 1,000 to 2,000 plants, because they solve their own fuel shortage problem.
This is one of the few facts not disputed by the experts, how much waste would be produced—because waste is waste and its amount is determined by the law of physics. However, it cannot be destroyed—it must be stored. It carries the risk of cancer and genetic damage and must therefore be isolated. If released into the environment, it will contaminate land and water. Do we have a moral right to unload these poisons on future generations when it is obvious we ourselves do not know what to do with them?
Even after 1,000 years the waste will still remain dangerous isotopes. Plutonium takes about a quarter-of-a-million years, or more, to decay to relatively “safe” levels (and of course this “safe” is doubtful when agreement can’t even be reached on what is “safe”).
Remember that the Bering Strait was dry land 12,000 years ago. So if we’re talking about plutonium and 250,000 years, we’re dealing with a time period during which volcanos, earthquakes, changes in the continental plates a themselves, meteors, or who knows what else can shape or reshape our physical world. We’re talking about hundreds of generations of humans into the future. We cannot even conceive of all the possible changes in their environment or evolution, and this is our legacy to them?
No one can honestly say that all that waste can be safely contained for such lengths of time. Who will be keeping watch all those years? Even languages change over time. What manmade storage containers can last all that time? There have already been numerous leaks at waste storage facilities and toxic waste dumps.
No matter how much waste is produced, it is the incredible toxicity of the waste that concerns us. Strontium-90 takes 300-600 years to decay to a relatively “safe” level. If ingested, it can lodge permanently in the bones, replacing calcium. Cesium-137 lasts about the same time, and seeks out the reproductive system. (Remember, the half-life is not the length of time which a radioactive material is dangerous—it may be dangerous for five to twenty half-lives.) Iodine-129 has a half-life of 17 million years. This concentrates easily in the food chain and in the thyroid gland. Some fission products are gases, generally even harder to contain than other forms of radioactive materials. Remember that the reactor vessel construction materials are also irradiated for the operating life of the reactor. As a result, a reactor can’t be approached without special shielding for 1 1/2 million years, much longer than the lifetime of any manmade structure!
Who wants to store nuclear waste in their back yard? There are constant battles by citizens for their rights. There have already been numerous scandals, such as a company in Florida illegally dumping hazardous radioactive waste into an open dumpster, and, in another state, putting it illegally into a public dump. Soil and ditches have been found to be contaminated, and the U.S. has been dumping wastes off-shore around the country.
Leaking barrels in the Pacific Ocean have been photographed with giant mutant sponges clinging to their exteriors. A Texas waste facility located outside of Galveston was found to have barrels leaking deadly plutonium, and they had thousands of barrels over the legal 2,000-barrel limit.
We still can’t even be sure the waste is being 100% contained on the way to these storage sites, and must hope that no transportation accidents occur. Assuming it arrives at the dump, we can ask ourselves how radioactive garbage buried in plastic sacks or rustable barrels in shallow trenches is contained or permanently isolated from the environment and people. Much waste is now buried that way, although as time goes on, awareness has increased on the importance of good containers (although we don’t know if anything for sure resists all the ravages of time). In 1978, the Department of Energy asked the public for help in finding its buried radioactive wastes—since many records were misplaced or destroyed over the years, the DOE asked that anyone who knew where such work was once done contact them! (The sites were used for nuclear work from the 1940s through the 1960s.)
Some proposals for disposal of nuclear waste have included lowering it into deep geologic repositories or salt domes, into ice, under the sea, and so on—all of these are subject to possible geologic disturbances. Some scientists have suggested sending it to space (with the hopes that a departing rocket filled with waste does not return to earth by mistake). There have even been some people, devoid of any conscience whatsoever, who have advocated shipping our toxic wastes “abroad,” where laws aren’t yet as strict, and people might not be as aware of the dangers. (Definitely shaky foreign policy!) The nuclear power industry is plagued with moral problems from beginning to end. (It is interesting to note, by the way, that the American Medical Association, of all people, stoutly defends nuclear power. Perhaps they’re anxiously awaiting all those radiated customers, who will be begging them for “cures.”)
In the face of all this insanity, what does the nuclear power industry do when confronted with delicate issues? Like a good magician, it first attempts to divert attention from what’s really happening. If its propaganda and tricks fail to work, however, it simply lies. The history of fraud and deceit in the nuclear power industry is long and full of “silenced concerns” and rigged or suppressed studies.
Usually whenever leaks are independently measured, for example, higher contamination is found than in the “official” measurements. It seems the fox is “guarding the chicken coop.”
There have been cases where conscientious workers trying to bring violations to attention or inspectors at power plants have been harassed. (Inspectors in Texas reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they had been threatened by construction workers.)
So, we must involve ourselves now in ridding the world of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. It is a matter of survival of the planet. A thirty-minute nuclear exchange could erase all life on earth forever. Helen Caldicott has said “we are talking about the most important issue facing the human race.”
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the world spent $1 million a minute in 1980 on armaments and other military spending. If this money were spent on solving our energy problems, the world would be saved.
A Hygienic way of life and peace go hand-in-hand. Now let’s return to positive energy, back to solar power, a ray of hope for mankind.
An active solar system uses collectors to absorb the sun’s heat and needs mechanical components to transfer the heat to a storage system and to circulate it to supply buildings with hot water and space heating. The mechanical parts can be pumps, fans, or other controls.
A passive solar system for heating or cooling doesn’t require mechanical devices because the structure itself serves as a collector and storage medium. It relies on design features such as proper building and room orientation towards the sun, large south-facing windows, and insulating shutters and overhangs for summer shading to maximize solar gain in winter and minimize it in summer. Passive solar is best suited for new construction and space heating and cooling.
A solar greenhouse is one of the best passive heating systems for a house. Having numerous south-facing windows helps to heat a house too. Using passive solar heating combined with a solar electric system, and backed up by an active system, is a healthful alternative to using nonrenewable energy sources that create pollution.
A passive solar water heater in one of its simplest forms consists of a tank painted black, mounted on a reflective surface and sealed into an airtight box that has a glazed front that lets the sun’s rays in to be absorbed into the black tank (black is the most heat-absorbent of all colors).
A recycled hot water tank can be painted black and used as a collector, resulting in an extremely lowcost solar water heater. The tank is tripped of its outer covering and surrounded by flexible plastic sheeting. The tank is then mounted on 3/4” plywood covered with shiny metal sheets that reflect as much sun onto the tank as possible.
A typical flat-plate solar collector for heating water is made up of the following parts: the glazing is usually something like double strength window glass. The water tubes used to be made of copper; now usually aluminium or steel are used for economic reasons. The flat plate may be any metal (copper, aluminium, steel) that has good thermal conductivity and is reasonable in cost. The metal plate must be coated with a solar radiation-absorbing paint or plating. Flat black paint, properly applied to prevent peeling and cracking, will do a good job for ordinary domestic solar water heaters. The insulation may be any low-conductivity material available (usually something like glass wool) that can withstand temperatures up to 200°F. The casing holds the solar collector together and, together with the glazing, makes it water- and dust-proof. A simple wooden box, adequately painted and fitted with a hard-board base, will do. When water flows through the collector, it is heated, starting the solar cycle to work in your house.
One of the most widely-used passive designs for water heating is the thermosyphon hot water heater, which combines a flat-plate solar collector end an insulated water storage tank mounted high enough above the collector so that the cold water will go downward (heat rises, cold settles), where it will be heated by the collector and rise into the storage tank. This slow but continuous circulation continues as long as sun shines on the collector. In a good sunny location with no shadows, a 4’ x 8’ collector will give 40 to 50 gallons of hot water a day.
A simple and inexpensive air heater can be made with a cover glass (plastic film may also be used), a corrugated plate of sheet steel or aluminium painted black, a space through which the air can flow, a layer of insulation and a Masonite or plywood backing to keep the assembly waterproof. The air can be made to flow by a fan or blower, or, if the system is properly designed, it will rise due to convection (the “chimney effect”) because the heated air is lighter than the cold air outside.
Air heaters are less expensive than water heaters used to heat air (not the same as the solar hot water heaters just discussed), because there is no need to worry about freezing, and any leakage which occurs will not cause the kind of damage water can create. The pumps used may be larger, more expensive and more power-consuming than those used with some solar water heating systems, though. Also, the ducts used to carry the air are larger and more costly than the pipes used with water systems. Each type has its advantages and disadvantages.
The simplest of all solar air heaters uses a heavy south-facing concrete wall painted a dark color and covered with a sheet of glass. An air space runs between the concrete and glass, and the chimney effect causes the heated air to rise. Openings at the top and bottom of the wall let cold air enter the air space and warm air to reenter the room. The air then circulates around the room. Small electric baseboard heaters can be used for heat during long periods of bad weather.
Solar space heating may be accomplished in many ways, but one must first estimate how much heat the structure will need during adverse winter conditions and at night. The solar heater must be able to provide not only heat during the sunny days but also have additional capacity for heat storage.
The best, method presently available for storing heat ,or cold in large amounts is large water tanks filled, or almost filled, with water. We can store about three times as much warmth as cold, since we cannot use such a large temperature range with cold without running into the complication of freezing the water. The mechanics of storing heat in water are simple and water is available almost everywhere.
Heat can also be stored by means of rock beds. These can’t freeze or leak, but their capacity is limited. However, they can be safely used under a building since not much can happen to them once they’re put in place.
In considering all these options for solar systems, we must remember that the space of a lesson does not permit in-depth construction details—there are hundreds of books on solar technology of all sorts, and one must refer to other sources in order to learn the specifics. There have been many, many experiments made with various building materials, designs, and theories, and there are always several methods available for arriving at the same effect, whether this be heating, cooling, or whatever. An individual must determine what best meets his needs as to what’s best for his climate, living structure and finances.
There is no way to use the heat of the sun directly to produce cooling, however, we can use the heat to produce hot water or steam, and with that we can refrigerate, using the process known as absorption refrigeration. This was first discovered in 1824, then, about 100 years later, this principle was used for household refrigerators.
Cooling can be achieved with the aid of a humidifier and by controlling the heat radiation of the thermal mass. The thermal mass itself can be used for cooling during the summer by opening the windows and exposing it to the cool evening void. The stored heat is then radiated back to the depths of space. One way to cool a building which is tight and well-insulated is to close it up during the day. This is done with massive adobe houses. Insulated shutters, thermal curtains, or window quilts can help to keep the heat out and the coolness in.
An example of solar cooling is the “Sytherm Systems” developed by Harold Hay. These systems have large water containers on the roof that are cooled at night and keep the building cool during the day. During the winter days, they collect warmth and radiate it into the dwellings at night.
Shade roofs are roofs with extremely large overhangs and will cool a building; they are especially good in the tropics. Placement of windows to allow breezes through a structure is also helpful in cooling a building. Perhaps the very best way to keep a building cool is to build it underground in the layer of the earth that is always naturally cool in the summer.
About a century ago, a Frenchman, Becquerel, found that sunlight could produce minute amounts of electricity when it entered a very special kind of “wet cell” battery. Later, other workers found that sunlight could change the resistance of certain metals and that very small amounts of electricity would be generated when sunlight illuminated discs of selenium or certain types of copper oxide. These devices were useful as light meters but didn’t produce enough power to do anything more than move a pointer on a meter or activate a very sensitive relay. In 1954, a new treatment for ultra-pure silicon was discovered which gave it the property of generating electricity from sunlight with a conversion efficiency of 6%. This was 10 times better than any previous efficiency for the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity, and the invention was immediately applied to a small transistorized radio transmitter and receiver.
In 1957, the space program found a unique application for the silicon solar battery. NASA put silicon cells on its first permanent satellite, and they worked so well that all but one of the satellites orbited since that time have been powered by increasingly complex arrays of silicon solar cells. Communication satellites use tens of thousands of these cells. Each cell alone contributes a small amount of power, but silicon cell technology has advanced so rapidly that tens of thousands of individual cells can be connected together, rapidly and reliably. Today the communications satellite has become the standard means of intercontinental communication for voice, television, and even computer language.
The cost is still a bit high for installation of great panels of solar cells on every rooftop, but great strides are being made, and the cost has already been reduced from $1,000 per watt to $20 per watt with more reductions on the way. Ways of producing less expensive silicon cells are being intensely studied. Some specialists say the cost will come down to $2 per watt within another decade.
Solar cells come in a wide variety of sizes. There are larger units for supplying large amounts of power, and small photovoltaic devices to supply operating power for devices such as electronic watches, calculators, and flashlights. These small solar devices are called microgenerators, and are actually made up of several extremely small solar cells connected in series.
A solar electric system has no moving parts and usually requires little, if any, maintenance. The two main considerations in the design of any solar electric power system are, first how much sunlight is available at the proposed site and how it varies with the seasons of the year (this tells us the size of the solar electric generator needed to supply any given amount of power), and the second consideration is the characteristics of the load including the average current requirement and the duty cycle (this tells us how much storage battery capacity we will need to keep the system operating when sunlight isn’t available).
Solar cells can be used in radio and television, in agriculture (for irrigation, pumping water, charging storage batteries at remote locations, etc.), at construction sites where electricity isn’t yet available, in remote areas, for work or recreation, and so on.
Solar arrays should face due south, but “trackers” have been developed, whereby the solar panels are mounted so that they can move, so as to remain pointed in the correct direction at all times for maximum sunlight. A small sensor on the array provides electrical signals that tell the control system which way to turn the array to get the most sun.
A solar water distiller consists of a water-tight compartment painted black to absorb the solar radiation which enters through the glass roof of the still. Water which is brackish or impure flows through the box in a four- to six-inch deep channel, where the intense solar heat in the box forces the water to evaporate and to condense on the inner side of the roof where it is drained off to a holding tank. The end result is pure drinking water.
The ocean rescue still, developed in 1940 by Dr. Maria Telkes, can be used to make drinking water from ocean water.
Dr. M. Kobayashi of Tokyo developed a solar still that could extract water from virtually any kind of soil, and tested it at the top of Mt. Fuji where the soil is volcanic ash and in the arid deserts of Pakistan, and he has never failed to produce water that is pure and potable.
Solar energy has always been used to dry crops of fruits and vegetables. Essentially this was done by exposing the food to the sun’s rays and hoping it wouldn’t rain. A more “sophisticated” technology has evolved to use the sun’s thermal power and minimize contamination from dust and airborne debris, insects and their larvae, and animal or human interference. The drying area must be covered with a transparent material. A drying “hot box” is constructed and insulated (glass wool is preferred since it can survive any temperature and does not support insect, life). Ventilation holes at the top and bottom allow air to enter and carry away the moisture. An access door makes loading and unloading easier. The interior of the cabinet should be painted black and the exteriors of the side and rear panels painted with aluminium paint. Drying trays can be made with galvanized wire mesh. Where electricity is available, a small fan may be used to draw air through the dryer, but it is not necessary.
The dryer should be glazed, preferably with two layers of glass, fitted in with adequate room for thermal expansion. Ventilation is essential so that moisture can escape and can be provided by screened air holes in the bottom, sides, and back of the cabinet. Such a dryer can keep produce dry during rain storms, so the glazed top should be watertight. The ventilation is also needed to prevent overheating, since a hot box of this type can readily attain temperatures above 200° F.
The first solar cooker was probably the one built in Bombay in 1880, and several other ingenious ovens have originated in India, as well as in other areas of the world. We won’t go into detail since the Hygienic way of life doesn’t advocate cooking food, but the student must at least be aware that the technology is available—even if we don’t cook, we all know people who do. Solar cooking is cleaner than gas cooking, which sends its toxic combustion products into the room.
The first step in solarizing your present home is to do an energy “audit”—to determine where the major heat losses occur and where the greatest energy efficiency gains can be made.
Every situation will vary, but one generally good strategy is to add a sunroom or a greenhouse onto the south side of the house. If this isn’t possible, at least more windows can be added on the south side. If you do have a porch on the south side, or one that at least has a south wall, consider converting it into a greenhouse or sunroom. A south-facing window can be converted into a solar window box greenhouse. We must always make the most out of what sun we get.
There are a number of other basic steps that can be taken to conserve energy, thus working with passive solar principles to improve what you already have. Some of these are:
Emphasis should be made again about the importance of providing adequate ventilation. We have already discussed the harmful fumes and byproducts of combustion that are present in rooms heated by most conventional methods and fumes that result from unhealthful building materials. Insulation must not become a threat to health. Ideally we could all use clean solar heat, but even then, we would want to remember that fresh air is essential to quality of life. In any case, it’s better to add a blanket and sleep with windows cracked—I remember visiting in Switzerland in the mountains a few years ago, and at night we just climbed under the thick down covers—the bedrooms upstairs weren’t even heated at all.
We should be conscious of the air quality in our living spaces at all times, waking and sleeping.
The art of solar building design perhaps began when the cave men carved their dwellings into the south face of a hill in order to benefit most from the warm rays of the sun.
The use of south-facing windows to increase heat gain into a building became popular in the 30s and 40s in this country. In the summer, when the sun is higher in the sky than in winter, carefully designed overhangs shade the south windows and keep the building from overheating. Double-glazed windows or those insulated at night reduce the heat loss more.
The use of a greenhouse as a heat trap is an extension of the solar window design. On dark, cloudy days and at night, the greenhouse can be sealed off from the rest of the house to prevent heat loss. The greenhouse serves as a thermal mass to reradiate stored solar heat at night.
Water provides an excellent thermal mass, and has the highest heat capacity per pound of ordinary material. The storage tank is usually insulated to reduce conductive heat losses.
The seasonal angle of the sun changes in a regular, predictable cycle. When designing overhangs and collector angles, you need to know your latitude and the maximum high and low angles of the sun. The sun changes about 46 degrees from the summer to the winter solstice, higher in summer and lower in the sky in winter.
The insolation (or incident solar radiation) is the amount of energy that reaches the surface at a given location. Insolation tables are available for various latitudes.
Another factor to be considered in choosing a solar site is the amount of shading available. This can be in the form of overhangs or natural vegetation. A combination of shading, cooling, and ventilation elements must be considered as well as the solar factors. Evergreen trees planted to the north of a building help block the cold winter north winds, rain, and snow. Deciduous trees (those that lose their leaves in winter), such as fruit trees, are suitable for planting on the south, east, and west sides. In the fall and winter when the trees are bare, the sun’s rays penetrate to the building and in the spring and summer, the hot sun is blocked because the trees are full of leaves, flowers, and fruit. A simple idea thus becomes delicious and rewarding. Vines and climbers can also be planted to shade east, west, and south facades, as well as lattices or trellises covered with growth.
Walls should be as well insulated as possible on the outside and include thermal mass on the inside for heat retention. Thermal mass can consist of 55-gallon drums (water-filled) painted black for maximum absorption, or large rocks. Rocks can be used in the foundation and walls. (If using painted barrels, the nonsolar-collecting sides can be painted any colors.)
Inside walls that receive sunlight can be faced with brick or stone. There should be an insulator like gravel under the floor. Clay tile floors store heat well. They come in a rainbow of colors and designs, making some beautiful mosaics possible, that are both functional and aesthetic.
We receive our life nourishment from the sun, so it is only natural that we harness its energy and put it to good use.
The primary reason for building a greenhouse is, of course, food production. Growing your own food saves money, and it is always ready to be picked—fresh, ripe, and organic, grown without the need for any farm machinery.
As mentioned, the greenhouse may be built on the south side of the building where it will receive full sun. It can be constructed quite simply with concrete blocks for the foundation, and other massive building materials such as ceramic brick, stone, adobe, poured concrete, or cinder blocks can be used for thermal mass. These massive walls are insulated on the outside surface.
For the glazing or clear film that is attached to the frame there arc many choices of material: glass, roll plastic, sheet plastic, corrugated clear plastic, etc. Doors and vents must be tight-fitting and weatherstripped, and all surfaces should fit tightly together.
At night, the windows should be blocked with movable insulating forms or covered with shutters or curtains. This will keep the heat level constant at night.
Heated air in the greenhouse rises and flows into a high opening to the home, and a low opening in the shared wall lets cool air from the house enter the greenhouse for heating. The plants in the greenhouse convert carbon dioxide into oxygen-rich air for the house occupants.
When you build a greenhouse, you will be creating a special space, a microcosm, a living place that will grow and truly add life to your home.
Now that you know why it is so important to make the change to renewable energy sources, hopefully you’ll try to incorporate some of these changes into your lives. Anything you can do to get other persons in your community involved in promoting the use of solar power and other renewable energy sources will be a step toward saving our planet.
There are solar industries springing up all over the place that you and other interested persons can contact for advice and support.
If there is one organized body capable of the political leverage needed to give solar energy a boost, it is the American union movement. They will be able to see the job potential of solar energy. However, the job-creating powers of solar energy could hold it back in corporate circles because industrialists want to keep a certain measure of control over people when there is adequate unemployment to hold down wages. That is, the more people out of work, the more competition there is for what jobs are available, and the easier to keep wages down and hold back unions (of course, no one will admit to this outright). Remember, the nuclear power industry has $100 billion dollars on the line.
In this country the top 19% of families owns about 76% of all the privately-held wealth, with the bottom 25% having no assets at all (Dr. L. C. Thurow, M.I.T. Department of Economics, 1979). The concentration of power and wealth is such that the top 5% of the American population owns more assets than the bottom 81% combined. Goods produced, no matter what their function, are looked at in terms of selling them at a profit. Purchasers are locked into a system of dependence with built-in obsolescence. Products that become a necessity in life and that can’t be made by the purchasers themselves are considered best. Centralized energy fits into this category, and decentralized solar energy gets only lip service from our rulers. The people themselves are surely intelligent enough to see that solar energy works in their best interest.
A newsclip from June 1981, stated that “in a sharp reduction of the federal government’s role in solar energy, the Reagan administration has ordered the dismissal of 370 of the 959 employees at the four-year-old Solar Energy Research Institute at Golden, Colorado, and has fired its director.” In addition, the institute’s budget was to be cut to $50 million for the next year, which was a 50% reduction. This would reduce spending for outside research. The Reagan administration’s “logic” was that most development work should be carried out by private industry—it increased the budget for nuclear power, however. An internal Department of Energy report concluded that American taxpayers have quietly subsidized the private U.S. nuclear industry with almost $40 billion over the past 30 years. In reality, nuclear-generated electricity is actually costing Americans two times what the atomic industry claims. So, is it alright for us to subsidize nuclear power, but different when solar power is concerned? The report says that between 1950 and 1979, billions of dollars in federal subsidies went for such things as designing early reactors, getting low-cost fuel to reactors and guaranteeing loans to power plants.
The Energy Research and Development Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) says “solar energy falling on about 3% of land, if utilized at about 10% efficiency, could meet the total projected U.S. energy requirements for the year 2000.”
The big hurdle in promoting solar energy is getting the public enlightened. Changes must really be made on a worldwide basis in order to be effective, because the biosphere is like one big aquarium—we have seen how pollution affects everyone. We who are already enlightened about pure diets based on living food, and using alternative, renewable energy sources, should reach out to others and share the knowledge.
We’ve all seen destruction caused by floods, erosion, and the energy of water in the sea waves, and swift rivers and streams. Water power also has a great capacity for useful work. Water power is essentially a form of solar energy, because the sun begins the hydrologic cycle by evaporating water from lakes and oceans and then heating the air. The hot air then rises over the water, carrying moisture with it to the land. The cycle continues when the water falls as precipitation onto the land, then it starts over again.
Water is relatively easy to control and produces a high efficiency, because from 80% to 90% of water energy can usually be converted to work, compared with 25-45% efficiency for solar, chemical, and thermal energy systems. For this reason many rivers have been dammed so that waterwheels and water turbines could capture the energy of water.
Individuals and communities can harness this energy to produce power in small hydroplants. The dam increases the reliability and power available from the stream, and is a means for regulating the water flow and depth. People should be aware that a dam changes the local ecosystem, though, and should only do so conscientiously.
Water turbines can produce either direct current (D.C.) or alternating current (A.C.) electricity. The power available will not always supply the total amount desired, so it is useful to think of an integrated power systems approach from the beginning, and combine this with another renewable power source.
Wind is another form of energy created by, the sun—the heating of our atmosphere during the day and its absence cooling the night sky—like the earth is breathing. Wind is the reaction of our atmosphere to the incoming energy from the sun—heat causes low-pressure areas and the lack of heat results in high-pressure areas, causing the wind.
The wind is probably the oldest and most constant energy source, probably one of the first sources harnessed by man, and now it’s being rediscovered as “new.”
Wind energy is not as constant and predictable as the sun and water, but there are also solutions to this problem. Usually a storage system is installed that is designed to have the energy available when it is needed. The selection of the site for wind power is very important—for example, it shouldn’t be placed near trees that are growing taller, etc. Other factors should be considered on a basis of frequency and intensity: rain, freezing temperatures, icing, sleet, hail, sandstorms, or lightning.
Windmills have been known for centuries. Even Persia had a primitive horizontal windmill in the tenth century that was used to grind corn. Mills were commonly used in China for irrigation. Modern wind generators not only use the wind for mechanical energy, but also convert the energy into electricity. Wind water pumpers are also available. Most generators consist of the tower, devices to regulate the generator or voltage, the propeller and hub system, the tail vane, a storage system to store power during windless days, and an inverter that converts the stored D.C. into regulated A.C. if it is required. There is often an optional backup system (such as a gas or diesel generator) to provide power through extremely long calm periods. Even better, of course, would be a solar backup system.
Biofuels are renewable energy sources from living things. Fossil fuels are also of biological origin, but they are nonrenewable. All biofuels are derived from plants, which capture the sun’s energy, convert it to chemical energy by photosynthesis, and in the process of-being eaten or decayed, they pass this energy onto the rest of the living world. In this sense, all forms of life, and their byproducts and wastes are storehouses of solar energy.
Every day, over 200 times more energy from the sun falls on our planet than is used by the U.S. in a year. About half this energy is reflected back into space, and what does penetrate the atmosphere charges all our energy systems.
All plant matter is called biomass. Microbes, plants, trees, animals, vegetable oils, animal fats, manure garbage, and fossil fuels are all forms of biomass energy that can be produced, cultivated, or converted in different ways for our needs. All we need to do is use it. Each year the U.S. produces over 870 million dry tons, of discarded organic matter.
Agriculture is the means by which solar energy becomes our food energy, and organic farming techniques and a realization that planting fruit trees is a priority in attaining higher quality of life for humans are the goals we should be pursuing. Please refer to the lessons on organic gardening and tree crop agriculture for more information.
When organic material decays it yields useful byproducts, depending on the conditions under which decay takes place—it can be aerobic (with oxygen) or anaerobic (without oxygen). Any kind of organic matter can be broken down either way, the end products of each will be different. If we imitate the natural anaerobic process and put manure and vegetable matter into insulated, air-tight containers called digesters, biogas or methane can be produced.
Another source of energy is alcohol in its pure form, which can be used for heating, cooking, lighting, and motor fuel. It is high energy and clean burning. There are two types of alcohol: ethyl alcohol (ethanol or grain alcohol) and methyl alcohol (methanol or wood alcohol). Ethanol can be produced from carbohydrates (starches, sugars, cellulose) found in various farm products such as sugar beets, sugar cane, molasses, fruits, starch crops, grains, etc. Methanol can be produced from wood, sawdust, farm wastes, and urban refuse.
Wood is a renewable energy source that should be used with a conscientious replanting plan, and can be used to supplement other renewable energy systems. (A word of caution: even though wood fires are considered “natural” or “romantic,” they put carcinogenic agents into the air. In fact, efficient, slow-burning stoves pose a bigger hazard than roaring flames, since they produce more polycyclic organic compounds (POMs, linked to lung cancer).
We need to learn how to integrate the heat from solar energy, the mechanical power from wind and water energy, and the chemical energy from biofuels, in order to get as much continuous energy as possible from the diverse energy sources.
A lot of people are talking about underground homes nowadays. What’s the story on this?
An “underground house” above ground can be had with a sod roof—the earth covering acts as a moisture barrier and insulates the roof. Actually, nowadays people are discovering that underground houses are very comfortable. In hot and cold climates, weather isn’t as extreme underground, and the homes aren’t dark, damp, or dismal either, which might be our first impression when thinking about living below the ground. Many homes are built with a regular south wall with windows, and the rest under the ground. In either case, skylights can provide lighting. Less heating or cooling needs to be done in an underground home, so energy is conserved, and underground buildings are quiet and blend nicely with their environment, leaving nature virtually untouched.
There is a subdesertic region of Turkey, Cappadocia, where people have been living in underground towns and cities since the years B.C. in settlements, some of which extend eight or ten stories below ground. They are hewn out of the soft stone common to the area. The climate there is comfortable despite harsh variations of heat and cold on the surface.
There are even some “luxury” caves in France’s Loire Valley where some caverns were furnished and carpeted and sold to wealthy city dwellers who appreciate the coolness in summer and natural winter warmth.
Underground homes don’t need to be painted, roofs don’t need to be replaced, pipes don’t freeze, and they have a low-cost construction.
What is the effect of radiation in the gene pool?
For people still in their reproductive years, whether male or female, injury can occur either to the sperm-generating cells in the testes or the ovum-generating cells in the ovary, and injury to the genes there can cause hereditary changes or disease or death in generations for many generations beyond the irradiated individuals.
What about the effect of radiation on a developing fetus?
Radiation injures the genetic material that is guiding the cells in a developing fetus to form the various organs and tissues. Evidence indicates that the developing fetus is more sensitive to ionizing radiation in terms of the effects caused than children are, and children in turn are more sensitive than adults. (In fact, the fetus is even more sensitive to radiation in the first trimester of pregnancy than in the third.)
Television radiation is an addition to background radiation, fallout, luminous dial watches, radiation from medical and dental X rays, fluoroscopy, and radiation from fluorescent lights, under which most workers have to work. These sources must be added, not compared, because it is the way it works in the living organism. All radiation is cumulative, that is, it is additive, one dose is added to another, and so even if one would appear unharmed by X rays, the cell never seems to recover completely. The least amount of radiation absorbed in living tissue produces damage.
It has been known for a number of years that X rays produce cataracts. The lens of the eye is extremely sensitive to radiation and is irreversibly damaged by ionizing rays.
The cell is capable of preventing most drugs from entering and combining with it, thereby killing it. But the cell has no defense against the onslaught of X rays. At high speed they penetrate the cell like bullets and damage enzymes and enzyme systems, disrupt proteins, genes, fats, and other large molecules, impair some metabolic processes and completely block others. Irreparable damage is done so quickly that defense is impossible. There remains only cellular confusion with feeble attempts at repair.
At the Atom Bomb Hospital in Hiroshima, survivors of the August 6, 1945, holocaust are still dying at the rate of four to six a month. Even this figure does not represent the total death rate, for there are other hospitals, and not everyone patronizes hospitals in the first place. The paper from which I received the above figures says: “After years of study, world scientists are still unable to agree just how lethal the latent after-effects of exposure to an atomic bomb can be.” The scientists don’t wish to admit that every one of the victims will die ultimately, from the latent effects of exposure to radiation. Instead of an instant death these survivors will suffer long years of miserable sickness until finally, after a continuous struggle to repair damaged tissue, the organism will succumb to the deteriorating forces.
It is well-known that all radiation, however small it may be, shortens one’s life. Hence, all radiation is lethal. Watch for equivocal and ambiguous scientific cant and you will be amazed at their unequivocal dishonesty.
All talk of protection against atomic radiation, of bomb-proof shelters, etc., is based on wishful thinking. Eventually one will have to come out of the shelter to eat, drink and breathe, and consequently be exposed to the excessive radiation still in the air, food, and water. Hence, one is thus subjected to the process of a slow and painful death. There is but one possible protection and this is the immediate cessation of all nuclear explosions. Dr. Shelton says of this, “As our world is a lunatic asylum controlled by the worst elements of our population, it is doubtful that this will be done.” However, we must still try.
But we have to be educated into understanding the double talk of the hired scientists before we can realize that damage is being done from all these nuclear bomb tests, which eventually, may lead to another nuclear holocaust. The tests themselves are contaminating the earth and causing many lethal illnesses. The hired scientists cover up the facts by saying that there will not be any “statistically significant” deaths from these tests. To these scientists we are looked upon as so many guinea pigs, so if 1,000,000 guinea pigs should die in a population of say, 180,000,000, that is statistically insignificant. Do you feel statistically insignificant?
To continue bomb testing, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had to rationalize their actions. It is their attitude that, so long as we can’t observe the persons being harmed with our own eyes, then they can continue testing and permit the fallout level to rise just that much and the masses won’t rebel.
The “permissible” level of radioactivity to be absorbed by the population as a whole is based on the ideas discussed above. Many well-informed persons have stated that the true facts are not disclosed to the general public.
Reassuring statements regarding fallout hazards are always preferred by the majority, hence they close their ears to anyone telling the truth about these matters and label them “alarmists.” To the statement that fallout is definitely doing damage to the genetic pool as well as to somatic tissue, they retort exactly what has been brainwashed into them: “That the radiation from fallout is not more than what we have, all through the years, been accustomed to from natural background radiation.” These people are fooled by such statements. They are not thinking for themselves, or they would realize that fallout is, in addition to background radiation, augmenting the dosage which we habitually receive as the radioactive fallout increases. A book which contains many selected reviews by AEC scientists reads: “As more and more experience with X rays and gamma rays has accumulated, however, the concept of ‘tolerance dose’ has changed somewhat to the thought that there is no such thing as a literally harmless dose of radiation—that any amount, however small, does some damage.”
Moreover, many experiments involving radiation have been made on rats, and it has been proved that man is more susceptible to radiation than the rat.
Scientists know now that the least possible amount of radiation does cause various diseases, but this does not make them stop the arm’s race. Why? Obviously, since the United States is vulnerable to an economic collapse as a result of a sharp decline in arms production, so tests and weapons production will continue as a means of saving our tottering capitalism.
An important thing which we must not overlook when evaluating the “permissible” dose of radiation is that it disregards completely the hereditary damage done to our genetic pool.
The result of the Manhattan Project, an experiment to determine the effects of radiation, are very terrifying. The Manhattan Project was top secret but some scientists were permitted to view the experimental animals at various stages because it was the project that developed the first atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Groups of mice were exposed to gamma rays from the experimental piles, each succeeding group receiving double the dose of radiation of its predecessor, until a point was reached where the mice were being obviously burned. The mice were kept and the developments recorded over the next several months. All except the first three groups were dead or showed signs of lethal damage at the end of a few weeks, leaving no progeny. After being watched for a month or two the “undamaged” mice were set aside for other experiments—that is, they were treated as new stock and all seemed to go well until the next generation.
Then a startling discovery was made. Many abnormalities and “mutation” showed up. A higher and higher percentage of the mice exhibited degenerative changes and deformity each generation. Although, in almost all cases, the deviation from normal was accompanied by sterility, this was not always so. Then some of the slightly deformed mice produced larger and better looking mice than usual.
All of these mice, large and small, degenerate and deformed, were allowed to breed and in the fifteenth generation, all had warped and distorted limbs and bodies, and what was even more noticeable, queer behavior and unreliable temperaments. Stillbirths were increasing and greater numbers of the survivors were sterile and suffered from nonhealing sores or cancers. From the twenty-first to the twenty-fifth generations all had become cancerous imbeciles, unable to feed themselves. Handfed, a few survived to produce a twenty-ninth generation, but these mice were paralyzed and brain cells were growing on the outside of the skulls.
All of this happened to mice that were by all appearance and by all tests completely undamaged by the radiation. Is this evidence that mutations, like somatic damages, can develop latently as I suggested in the first part of the article? But this was not all, many of the offspring of these mice were born albinos and many were born blind, than after the seventh generation not only were they born blind, but many were born without eyes at all and many did not grow any bones, apparently because the bonegrowing genes had been omitted, and their skulls and teeth did not grow. Beginning with the twentieth generation the brain protruded unprotected and exposed to the open air. There were many monstrous developments, such as young born growing together, twins were born with only parts of their bodies separated. Many of that generation were born with what the investigators call the “death gene,” which means that their progeny were completely sterile, which is, perhaps, the best solution to a condition so abnormal.
According to the Public Health Service Report, man is more susceptible than the mouse and logically an experiment made on mice would be magnified in man.
If human “mutations” develop at the same rate as those observed in the mice, we must wait up to 250 years, to know that we have come through the present spread of radiation over the earth, while, to develop the worst effects from present day exposure we must wait 400 to 600 years.
The gonads are integral parts of the body and are fed by the same bloodstream that feeds all other parts of the body. Experiments with radioactive isotopes prove conclusively that radioactive substances are carried by the bloodstream to all parts of the body. It is certain that radioactive materials, such as strontium 90, are carried to the gonads where they reach the hereditary units carried in these glands. What effect does this have on the chromosomes and genes? Is it as destructive to the germinal material as to the bones and other tissues? Will its presence, even in minute amounts, result in the production of mutations? If so, what kind of mutations may we expect?
Radiation escaping from industrial plants so constitutes a menace, not only to workers in these plants, but to the populations living within the contaminated areas. George Truman, vice-chairman of the Chemical Worker’s Union, said in a speech before the conference on Industrial Health, in Manchester, England, in 1955, that men at the atomic works were sterilized by the radiation to which they were subjected. The same thing has been found to result to the men working at Oak Ridge in this country. It is obvious that scientists, militarists and manufacturers, who plan to make use of atomic power in industry, are playing with a dangerous fire that may ultimately extinguish the whole human race, even without the occurrence of an atomic war. The plain fact is that nobody knows how to bypass the unspeakable biological debasement which always follows any widespread increase in nuclear radiation.
Due to the fact that certain tissues tend to concentrate particular chemical elements, sometimes to tens of thousands of times that present in the surroundings, even though only traces of radioactive substance may be present in the water from an atomic power station, plants growing in the water or air may absorb and store the substance until a really high concentration is built up. Animals eating these plants will receive and suffer from radiation. The Japanese found, to their horror, that it takes a surprisingly short time for fish to eat slightly contaminated smaller forms to become themselves highly radioactive.
Most all the inhabitants of the earth are receiving minute, but cumulative doses of radioactivity and all future testing of atomic hydrogen and cobalt bombs will increase the danger to human, animal, and plant existence.
When in April of 1958 Dr. Linus Pauling called attention to the radioactive menace of carbon 14, which results from nuclear explosions, his statements were hooted at the subsidized scientists of the Atomic Energy Commission, who said that his statements were exaggerated and they accused him of irresponsibility. He had said, among other things, that the radiocarbon from thirty megatons of fission “will ultimately be responsible for the birth of 230,000 defective children and also 430,000 embryonic and neonatal deaths.”
The scientists of the AEC have since eaten their words. A document titled, “The Biological Hazard to Man of Carbon 14 From Nuclear Weapons,” has sustained Pauling’s estimates. Dr. Ralph E. Lapp, of the commission, says that Dr. I. Leipunsky, also of the AEC, concludes that “bomb carbon 14 as of 1960 may ultimately involve 100,000 cases of gross physical and mental defects, 380,000 cases of stillbirths and childhood deaths and 900,000 cases of embryonic and neonatal deaths. Dr. Pauling’s previous estimate was based on thirty megatons, which were about half the megatons exploded up the summer of 1958. His estimates are quite close to those of the AEC. Lapp adds: “Absolute numbers, such as those cited for carbon 14 genetic damage are impressive, especially when they apply to the 266 future generations covered by the persistence of carbon 14s long life (average life of 8,000 years“).
I would substitute the word frightening for the word impressive in this last statement. The fact is that today, nobody—physician, physicist, biologist, or geneticist, knows the long-term, ultimate effects of radiation. The study of these effects is only in its infancy and there remains much yet to be learned. Indeed, there is reason to think that there is much already known that has not been made public.
It is noteworthy that from the outset of the study of radioactive damages, there has been a repeated downward revision of the maximum permissible dose. Looking back, it is obvious that our scientists have constantly underestimated the hazard. The permissible dose of 1931 was reduced by half in 1936 and then to less than half again in 1950. By 1957 the figure had been reduced to less than a third of the 1950 dosage. This is a total reduction to one-fifteenth of the 1930 dosage. It is now generally thought that that there is no threshold dosage, as I have mentioned before. Commenting upon this steady-lowering of the permitted maximum dose, Dr. L. S. Taylor, of the U.S. Bureau of Standards, said: “It will be extremely difficult to lower the standards further and still permit the effective use of radiation in medicine, industry and research.”
A luminous dial wrist watch worn twenty-four hours a day would give the central body including the sex organs a dose of about 40 mr/year. Airplane pilots also receive a considerable dosage per year from luminous instrument panels. It seems that every modern invention is fraught with danger, and the only intelligent thing to do is to scrap the so-called “modern conveniences” (the harmful ones) if we wish to preserve the human race in some intelligible form.
The only way to stop the threat of an atomic war is to ban the use of all nuclear weapons and cease manufacturing fission products by the use of atomic power plants. Power plants are contributing heavily to the pollution of our streams, rivers, seas, and our atmosphere. If this rate of pollution continues, soon there will be no food, no water, or air which is safe to eat, drink, and breathe respectively. We are destroying our planet and working for the extinction of mankind. We must stop all nuclear explosions and all atomic power plants. There is no need to be cowards and let ourselves be pushed around from now to eternity, which won’t be far off if this testing of nuclear weapons is not stopped and atomic power plants abolished.
With increased bomb testing, we have nothing to look forward to but showers of invisible radioactive dust pouring down upon us and penetrating out bodies by means of our air, food, and water for the next five to seven years or more. The most ominous threat, however, is to our children. They are the ones who will reap most of the harvest of this madness called “preparedness for peace,” and the younger the child the more sensitive and more easily damaged are his cells from radiation.
Dr. Linus Pauling most forcibly says, “The only safe amount of strontium 90 in the bones of children is zero.” Unfortunately atom and hydrogen bombs never yield this safe amount. He further emphasizes that if testing of atomic bombs continues, about 100,000 children of the next generation in the United States will die. He also stated, and this was before the French tests in the Sahara, that “these bomb tests will also cause the birth of 200,000 seriously defective children in the next generation of human beings, children with serious mental deficiency or serious physical defects.”
Can we afford to “relax and enjoy life” when the very essence of life is being destroyed? The pool of human germ plasm is being greatly damaged, our mental capacities are diminishing, our physical capacities deteriorating and yet we do nothing. A national revolt is no longer adequate; what we need is a world revolt. Billions of yet unborn children will come into this world with diminished mental capacities and serious physical defects because we, the thinking portion of the population, have not made ourselves heard. It is we who are to blame for this gross crime committed against the future human race. In the history of the United States, no unwanted thing continued to exist when the whole population stood together and rebelled. Unfortunately, rebellion and singularity seems to have been knocked out of all Americans.
We must unite to fight every profession using X rays for diagnosis and therapy, we must fight the Atomic Energy Commission and every other nation which desires to enter in the atomic race. Every source of damage to our children and future children must be abolished less we perish from this earth. We must expect much strong opposition from all these sources because not only are their bread and butter in jeopardy but also their diamonds, fur coats, and Cadillacs.
Furthermore, this class of people won’t stop their damaging practices unless they are forced to do so, as is evidenced by the cumulated facts before us. Despite the fact that scientists have predicted the strontium 90 content in Japan would be beyond the AEC safety limit by 1962, and that in 1959 stillborn babies of Southern Japan were being found with the Sr 90 content already exceeding the so-called “safe limit,” nations continue to clamor for more testing of atomic and hydrogen bombs. Other evidence that force is necessary to stop these damaging influences is the fact that the x-raying of pregnant women has been continued well into the present time, although for years it has been known that exposing a fetus or an embryo, even momentarily, to X rays could cause cancer in early childhood.
Even authorities, such as Schubert and Lapp are disturbed over what they call “our irradiated children.” They say “thousands of infants and children in the United States are needlessly exposed to more radiation in one year than would be allowed atomic energy workers in a lifetime.” They were speaking of medical and dental sources of X rays, which is another thing the AEC overlooks when planning on contaminating the air with more fallout; the fact that our population as a whole is already over irradiated from medical and dental uses of X rays only more aggravates the hurt. Our responsibility is to protect our children from these unnecessary and inimical sources of radiation. Fortunately, it is still within our power to refuse medical and dental X rays, although we are still helpless under the blanket of fallout blasted into the air by our “mad scientists.”
Rapidly dividing cells, as seen in embryos, infants, and young children, are more sensitive to all kinds of radiation, i.e., they are more easily damaged. The younger the child, the more likely will he suffer from delayed effects such as cancer and leukemia. A person of advanced age, receiving a dose of radiation, will probably die before cancer has a chance to develop, but if an American boy, with an average life span of 66 years, or a girl with an average life span of 72 years, has been irradiated in the embryonic state or in early infancy, there is more than ample time for him or her to develop cancer or leukemia in early life.
The fact that the young are more sensitive to radiation and that they have many more years to live is reason enough to exclude all sources of radiation from them, but there is another very important reason which we should not overlook. These children will grow up to reproduce their kind and if no more effort on the part of hospitals, physicians, and radiologists is made to shield the germinal elements of these children than has been made in the past, the human race will be mutated out of existence. Through surveys made by prominent men, it has been shown over and over again that physicians fail to protect the gonads while x-raying and that even in the best and well-equipped hospitals no effort is made to protect the gonads of children while treating them. The many thousands of articles written to warn physicians of the dangers engendered by failing to protect the gonads of the young are written to no avail as the advice seems not to be heeded. It is still up to the people themselves to stop the practice of irradiating the young altogether.
During the early embyronic stages, from the moment of fertilization to approximately the end of the third month, human cells are most sensitive to radiation. Investigations have shown that even small doses of radiation during this period may lead to malformations and sterility. Just as there are certain stages in cell division (mitosis), in which the cell is more sensitive to radiation, there are also certain stages in embryonic development when organs and organ-systems have an augmented sensitivity to radiation.
Reprinted from Dr. Shelton ‘s Hygienic Review, July, 1960
How would you like to see your total direct energy bill drop from say $1,500 per year to a mere $50 to $75? And your indirect energy bill, as represented in the products you buy, drop yet another $ 1,000 or so?
Fantasy?
Absolutely not! The technology is here now, today!
There is a gremlin in the works, however. But we’re betting this dark shadow will not be around long. There’s too much in favor of this getting into foreign hands, etc.
An inventor and electronics specialist, Stanford R. Ovshinsky of Troy, Michigan, has made the most startling energy breakthrough in all history! In fact it is so revolutionary that all other forms of energy utilization are immediately obsolete! And therein is the rub.
Mr. Ovshinsky developed what he called “ovonic materials” for applications in the computer industry. Imagine how stunned the scientific world was to learn that not only were the materials “dirt cheap” but that they transformed solar energy directly into electricity at a cost of about 1/25 of the cost of such conventional sources as coal, water power, etc., presently our cheapest sources for power.
Can you imagine paying a service station say $5 for a battery power back chance for your car and driving from 500 to 700 miles before having to change packs or, if you have the time, of recharging the battery pack from your own home-owned generator made of ovonic materials? Or of having your own power generator made of ovonic materials right on the roof of the your car?
Can you imagine meeting all your home power needs with a few solar panels located on your roof or wherever you place them such that they capture the sun?
Can you imagine the great grid power system that mars our land with endless lines disappearing?
Can you imagine yourself being free of outside energy needs altogether? Of being an island unto yourself in meeting your energy needs just as you presently meet your needs for air?
The revolution will be so sweeping anything you visualize will probably be far short of the mark.
But the rub? What is that little gremlin we spoke of?
Mr. Ovshinsky went heavily into debt. Help came in the form of monies from two industrial giants who, to all appearances, want to keep ovonic materials AWAY from consumers.
The easy path Mr. Ovshinsky took to free himself of burdens was to sell part interest in his solar devices to, and get this, United Nuclear Corporation and Exxon Corporation.
United may well find rescue in the new technology. But Exxon? Do you for a moment think they have anything to gain? Do you think they will let their multibillion dollar investment in oil and coal go down the drain? Do you think they will permit their annual multibillion dollar income to plummet to near nothing by marketing a solar device that practically kicks them out of the energy marketplace?
Much remains to be seen in this case. We’re confident that overriding factors even larger than United and Exxon will bring ovonic materials or even better materials to the consumer and relatively soon.
Mr. Ovshinsky must be hailed as having made the most humanitarian invention of this century. And we must push with all our mights as interested parties to see that this invention sees widespread application as soon as technically possible.
54.1.1 Twentieth-Century Technology—A Two-Edged Sword
54.1.2 Our Fabulous Body Intelligence
54.1.3 Natural Weather and Manmade Weather Affect Health and Nutrition
At first glance, a discussion of that universal subject—the weather—might seem out of place in a Life Science/Hygiene course in human nutrition. But, since nutrition is a unified or total body process, any influence that can disrupt this complicated and marvelous process anywhere along the great chain of nutritive systems would seem to justify its study in relation to human health and nutrition. And, while many sincere investigators (past and present) have delved deeply into nature’s secrets of human nutrition, as yet we cannot see but can only infer by deductive reasoning the mysteries of the inner metabolic processes going on in the living cells of the body. We can deduce that certain things are going on, but we cannot be sure all these deductions are infallibly correct.
Meanwhile, the mounting evidence seems worthy of note and concern that the human race—the 20th-century human race—has caused “unnatural” weather conditions (such as worldwide air pollution, nuclear blasts, burning of fossil fuels, etc.), which can then become a cause of “unnatural” stimulation or shock to living bodies, on the same order that drug poisons create an unnatural stimulation (shock reaction, etc.) to living bodies. Of course, the effect of the weather will be different on different people, depending on the condition of their bodies. The heat of a noon-day sun (shining through visible and invisible layers of air pollution) will have a different effect on a sober person from the effect it will have on a drunkard (including a food drunkard).
One of Life Science/Hygiene’s most vital concerns is the mounting evidence that the two-edged sword of modern technology may be creating a technological world which, instead of enhancing life on this planet, could be making it unbearable (and unlivable!).
One area, however, that 20th-century technology would seem to deserve credit for opening some dramatically revealing new studies is in the area of this planet’s weather, and how recent findings would seem to lead to the conclusion that air, electricity, ions, weird winds, sunspots, etc., have a greater effect on human health, nutrition, moods, etc., than was thought in the past. Those Life Scientists seeking new challenges should find this area of study fascinating.
This new field of scientific investigation of how weather affects living things has been given the name of “biometeorology.” The findings so far show that when the weather changes, the body wisdom quickly makes changes in the body—adjusts our marvelous internal body systems to keep the vital functions at the constant level necessary for life. All the body’s functions give evidence of marvelous intelligence, prevision, and provision, and nowhere is this better exemplified than in the living body’s master thermostat called the “hypothalamus.” Working faster than the most advanced modern computer, this temperature control system of the brain adjusts the body to external changes of cold or heat with lightning speed. It, and other body control systems, make possible the seasonal acclimation process of living bodies. This entire process of adjusting and switching the entire metabolism if living bodies from one season to another, or to sudden hocking changes in the weather during a mid-season, should show even the most hardened skeptic that the wisdom that created the living body and maintains it is (and always will be) greater than the conscious mind of man can conceive. Our duty, according to Hygiene/Life Science philosophy, is to learn all we can about it and how it works, but to never lose our awe and respect for it.
But these natural responses of the inner body wisdom to sustained or changing weather conditions can be hammered, and interfered with by a myriad of external and internal factors and conditions. One analogy of the living body would be to liken it to a fine electric motor that someone drops a wrench in. The wrench stops the motor though the electric power that ran the motor is still here ready to do its job of starting the motor when the wrench is removed. We can, for purposes of analogy only liken the marvelous, intelligent life force that “builds” and runs the human body to the electric force of the motor. And, we can liken such things as the weather, wrong diet, drugs, etc., as the wrenches that thwart the body wisdom in its work. Life Scientists should include the weather, and its influence on living bodies, in their studies on nutrition.
We constantly hear people say that they “can’t take the weather as well as they used to when they were younger.” But, the cause is not their age in years, per se, but the accumulated wrongs done to their bodies over a period of years. Many of these wrongs are self-inflicted, but not all. There is very little we can do to change the weather, and evidence is mounting that certain weather conditions can have deleterious effects on the living body, causing such maladies as migraine headaches, depression, heart irregularities, metabolic disruptions, and a host of other ills. The body, and its governing wisdom, though astounding in its capabilities and sensitive adjustments, cannot dominate he external environment (like it reigns over the internal environment), except to a very limited extent. Even the culmination of some of this century’s most vaunted technology, such as NASA’s space shuttle, must pay obeisance to the weather, as happened recently with the voyage of Space Shuttle Columbia, when it was forced to stay in earth orbit an extra day due to very strong cross-winds at the prime landing site.
Theoretically it seems possible (even probable) that the present “arms race,” with its continued nuclear explosions (one by Russia in the sixty-megaton range!), may have already upset nature’s delicate balance at the electronic level. And, some of these weird winds, and strange weather patterns all over the planet, in these hectic, closing years of the twentieth century, may be nature’s way of trying to restore the atomic and electronic balance! If either of the so-called “super-powers” have done any investigation into whether or not their continued insane atomic blasts have disrupted nature at the atomic and electronic level, they are keeping their findings well hidden. And, of course, in addition to this new manmade atmospheric pollution and disruption, nature has to contend with natural pollution—such as the recent catastrophic volcano eruption in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Incalculable tons of molten ash and other volcanic debris were exploded into the upper atmosphere changing the immediate weather picture around the world, according to meteorologists!
And, as far as humans on this planet are concerned, our natural atmosphere is our most vital natural resource, for we must breathe it all the days and nights of our lives. And, the electromagnetic condition of the atmosphere has been shown (by recent biometeorology research) to exert probable and significant effects on life on this planet! As this century draws to a close, evidence is mounting that man has (over the years) with sometimes good intentions, but with seldom any thought of future consequences, probably interfered in the natural environment so much that the natural electronic balance may have been vastly disrupted to the detriment of life on this planet. Nuclear explosions are the latest and greatest madness in tampering with the natural balance of our environment. Technologically-advanced “civilization” does not necessarily mean a culturally-advanced one!
We can, to a limited extent, help the body’s adjustment to external environmental conditions (sudden weather changes, etc.), with artificial “microclimates” of our 20th-century technology. But, as in the use of anything artificial, this again proves to be a two-edged sword. The best and most astounding piece of “machinery” human beings can have is their own bodies. And these marvelous systems of living equipment have their natural rhythms, their natural systems of adjustment, etc.,” to maintain certain standard levels of function within the body. These can be interfered with by artificial climates, etc. However, in some conditions of impaired health and disrupted nutritional (metabolic) functions, the temporary use of artificial climates has proven to have a temporary helpful influence. But, our bodies were designed by an incredible, invisible power and wisdom to respond naturally to weather conditions. These natural responses can be thwarted and weakened by artificial (technological) conditions.
Clearly, in the living body, the body “chemistry” changes when there are changes in the weather. Technology can thwart the body’s efforts at correct changes. But, modern technology is not the only thing that interferes with the body’s natural functioning and responses to changed conditions in order to maintain internal temperature and other vital functions at a constant level. As Hygienists know, “toxemia” can play havoc with the body’s internal economy; prolonged mental or physical stress can disrupt the body’s internal adjustive mechanisms, and present a constant interference with the body’s natural functions; and, of course, one of the worst causes of complete and deadly disruption of natural body functions is drugs.
Both the so-called “primary” and “side effects” of many drugs can critically interfere with the body’s natural functions. For instance, tranquilizers, prescribed to “relieve” stress during prolonged heat waves, have actually killed people due to their “side effects” of blocking the body’s natural system of cooling itself by sweating! And, it has long been known that the drug, nicotine, can constrict circulation in the extremities. The western world’s love affair with coffee makes millions of addicts to caffeine, another drug that can cause the constriction of blood vessels, causing a rise in blood pressure and giving a deceptive feeling that the body is naturally warmer. Other drugs, such as amphetamines, marijuana, and King Alcohol, can play havoc with the body’s natural temperature-regulating systems.
The body’s incredible sensitivity to changes in atmospheric pressure, and its remarkable internal adjustments to stabilize its functions in relation to external changes, can be fatally interfered with by drugs. According to scientific studies, the side effects of certain drugs prescribed for heart patients, for instance, can prove fatal to some patients taken under conditions such as the sudden dropping of atmospheric pressure preceding a storm, or in the lowered air pressure of the mountains.
And, who knows how many highway accidents, job-related accidents, marital break-ups, etc., are caused by the changing weather’s effect on “weather-sensitive” people, who develop circulatory problems, fatigue, inability to concentrate, moodiness, depression, instant anger, migraine headaches, etc. The nervous system of the marvelous living body is so sensitive to external influences (such as infrasound influences) that it can “feel” certain sounds that winds make which are of too low a vibration to affect the human ear.
Every year, in certain parts of this planet, weird winds spring up that in folklore have been called “witch’s winds,” because in their wake there seems to be a rise in accidents, illnesses, crimes, etc. Both weather-sensitive humans and animals seem to “sense” the coming of these winds. Now a scientific explanation has been given this folk wisdom of the ages. Scientists researching this phenomena now call this the “ion influence.” They claim that in weather changes, it is these ions or electrically-charged molecules of air, to which people are really sensitive. They theorize that a natural balance of positive to negative ions of five to four increases strikingly as these “witch’s storms” approach. The conclusions of these bio-meteorology researchers is that this upsetting of the ion balance causes immediate and drastic changes in the body-regulating systems of weather-sensitive people who are truly living barometers. One widely-noted effect is the overproduction of adrenalin, which as a secondary effect causes adrenal exhaustion symptoms such as extreme fatigue, nervous tension, moodiness, depression, etc.
Ion research at the University of California, Berkeley, has discovered that negative ions reduce normal blood levels of serotonin, a hormone that “carries messages” (according to brain specialists) within the brain processes. These findings concluded that positive ions, on the other hand, increase serotonin levels. This increase in serotonin caused by an increase of positive ions is declared to be the cause of illnesses related to “witch’s winds,” according to ion researchers. The theory is that wind friction caused by moving air masses, layers of wind, etc., creating friction with existing, relatively motionless surrounding air, tends to cause massive electrical disturbances by “knocking off” negative ions and increasing the overdose of the number of positive ions. Ion researchers now conclude that an overdose of positive ions affects the body processes, metabolism, temperature regulating, etc., of all living creatures on this planet.
If these current findings about weather-related illnesses caused by an upsetting of the body’s internal systems hold true after much future investigation, then an equal, if not more important, area of investigation would be to see if we can discover how the body itself best copes with these outward, adverse changes and influences. Life Science already has a key understanding in that the healthy, normally-functioning body can more quickly adjust to and overcome enormous external adverse influences. But, the body’s energies and intelligence not only have to be expended in adjusting to massive external influences, like the weather, but it also has to use its precious life energies neutralizing and expelling drugs that are deadly to the body’s internal processes; plus the processing and expelling of wrong foods, bad combinations, etc. But, the primary law of physiology of the body is “self-preservation” by the great wisdom within. Life Science/Hygiene teach that a living body not burdened with toxemia, and correctly nourished, can withstand external environmental changes, like the weather, with a remarkable resilience, and that weather influences on such a healthy body are more temporary with less lasting disruption of body economy.
We’ve all heard the saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it?” But we all can do something about it by correct living in such a way that we help the body to help itself, in its readjustments and responses to the disruption of its internal equilibrium by such conditions as sudden weather changes, etc., and not in such a way that we are constantly throwing deadly “wrenches” in the body’s incredibly complex works. Or, to put it another way, study and listen to your own body, for its wisdom and marvelous workings are the best indicator, maintainer, and adjuster of total body health (physical and mental) whether in weather changes or whatever, and not some external authority, drug prescription, injection, etc.
Thus, the constantly increasing discoveries of how the weather can be a disrupting factor in health, nutrition, etc., show dramatically, again, the great value of the Hygiene/Life Science way of life, as the best way of helping the body cope with these disruptions. One of the basic pillars of the Hygiene/Life Science way of life is correct nutrition. We have already mentioned the deadly effects of many prescription drugs on the body’s ability to adjust to weather changes. But few of the contemporary works on nutrition equate all the harmful additives in food as being drugs also, and just as poisonous as prescription drugs to the living economy.
Many things popularly thought to be foods are really poisons. For instance, sugar and salt are not foods, but poisons. The enormous amounts of salt and sugar consumed by Westerners produce untold ill health, misery, and death. Salt buildup in the body causes increased loss of potassium, and this depletion of potassium can lead to heat prostration, headache, lassitude, sleeplessness, localized pain, inability to concentrate, etc. Much evidence is available to show that its cumulative effect over a period of years is one of the culprits in kidney disease, high blood pressure, heart enlargement, etc. Refined sugar is consumed in towering amounts by our Western society and culture, and is suspected of being a major factor in heart disease, arterial diseases, teeth and bone deterioration, etc.
It is not hard to see how the complex body system, disrupted constantly by the ingestion or injection of dangerous drugs, chemical additives/etc., could be unable to cope with sudden and vast changes in the weather. On the other hand, a smooth functioning body whose cells and tissues are kept well cleansed and well nourished with the biologically-suitable diet of mankind—fruits, uncooked vegetables (especially green, leafy salads), and nuts, can withstand and adjust to weather changes to a remarkable degree.
Space is limited, so this must necessarily be a rather general survey and summary of some of the recent investigations and discoveries in this fruitful and fascinating field of biometeorology—the study of weather, climate, etc.—and its mysterious influence (in several aspects) on human health. Here is surely a fertile field for present and future investigation, for those Life Scientists/Hygienists who desire to strike out into newer fields of creative thinking, investigation, and discovery for the benefit and betterment of humankind.
Those who probe, poke, and pry into the living body trying to force it to reveal its innermost secrets of nutrition and life, finally come to an invisible, impenetrable wall, and the message of nature seems to clearly proclaim: “Thus far shalt thou go, and no further!” All investigation seems to run out into unfathomable mystery. The living body’s ultimate processes of nutrition are a nature-kept, or life-kept, secret. Nor, is it necessary that we know these ultimate nutritive processes, for nature (or the invisible life force of nature) would still have to do the ultimate processing by the same natural laws as it has done since life first began on this planet.
The one vital area where nature requires our conscious participation is that first important step along the long and winding nutritive road, of providing the body with the biologically-correct food, and of course, proper mastication of that food.
Even our 20th-century technology, remarkable as it is in some areas, cannot take a television camera into the inner recesses of the living cell and show us its ultimate nutritive processes. Thus, it has always been, and shall always probably be. We can only speculate, theorize about ultimate processes, and up until recently that seemed counterproductive since nature goes right on with her great secret work regardless of our questions about it. But, in the light of recent investigations and findings (as summarized in the first segment of this lesson, on the weather), showing that weather, climate, drugs, etc., can seemingly have an often devastating effect on living bodies by disrupting electrical balances, etc., perhaps a renewed, more intense speculative look, or theorizing, about what may go on behind the great barrier of effects in living nutritive processes may now be more fruitful.
And, it must be admitted at the outset that this will be mostly theoretical and speculative, as, in this writer’s opinion, investigations of invisible ultimate nutritive matters (no matter how sincere and dedicated) cannot at present (if ever) be considered as having absolutely-established conclusions that present final “scientific proof.” But, Hygiene/Life Science ever seeks to increase the light of human understanding and betterment, and if questioning and theorizing into new fields of thinking lead to that worthy goal, then more power to it—as long, of course, as this thinking does not subvert or take us astray from the time-honored and proven basic principles of Hygiene/Life Science.
Since all material things seem to run out into invisible electronic mysteries, for purposes of this lesson let us approach the living body from that standpoint. The pioneer in “bioelectronics” was George W. Crile, who as early as 1889 began his researches into the electronic nature of the living cell, and reached the conclusion that every cell of the human body is really a tiny bipolar battery carrying two electronic charges—a negative charge on the outside, and a positive charge at the center. But Crile, and the bio-electronic researchers after him, started their investigations with a “full-blown” cell which has turned out to be a very complex thing indeed!
Crile’s researches and findings were later duplicated and verified by Lakhovsky and others. They concluded that a predominance of a positive electronic charge brings total health, abundant energy, extended youthfulness, etc., while a predominance of negative charge or potential in the cells caused cellular fatigue, structural deterioration, exhaustion, and eventual death of the cells.
This might lead some to conclude that electricity, or electronic energy is life, or the life force. We are no more able to resolve the problem of the ultimate nature, essence, mystery, and miracle of life than any other Hygienist/Life Scientist, and claim no special mandate to give such final dispensation. We can only offer our own ideas held at the present (which could change in the future, in the light of newer thinking and investigation) with no implication that we think these are final and unshakeable conclusions. And, with the hope that present and future Life Scientists/Hygienists can delve further into this great mystery. There are those who will dogmatically state that the life force is you, or your subconscious mind, etc. But such statements lack absolute, demonstrable proof, and therefore are assumptions, not conclusions. Others will claim, just as dogmatically, that the life force is electricity.
It is this writer’s considered opinion, however, that life, or the life power, is probably not the same as electricity, but that the life power “uses” electronic energy to “build” or form the body and put it into a certain condition so that life can manifest more fully. There are just too many unresolved (and probably unresolvable) differences between the life force and electricity. Perhaps there are even “life fields” and “body fields” that intermingle and interpenetrate. The pioneering work of Harold Saxon Burr is highly interesting along these lines of investigation of the ultimate cause of the great barrier of effects in living processes.
And, to try to reduce the life force to the same size as the “electronic building blocks” it uses, as the reductionists try to do, is as futile as trying to describe and reduce the brick mason to the same size as the bricks he uses! Those, who in their philosophical considerations, try to reduce the life force to its tiniest “building blocks,” are following a wrong theory, in this writer’s opinion.
But, who can say they know, and can prove for absolute certainty, what life really is? Perhaps we will never know what the life force is, in its ultimate essence. It is a nature-kept, or life-kept secret, and one that Mother Nature seems not to want to share with us! Perhaps, for us humans, it is just as important to know that life is not as to know what it is!
Many Hygienists/Life Scientists of old wrote as though they considered the life force and nerve force as the same thing. I have expressed my own opinion (above) that I do not think the life force and electricity are the same. Yet, nerve force does appear to be some form of electricity or electronic energy. How do we resolve this? Theorizing from bioelectronic research findings, and from Hygiene/Life Science philosophy, the conclusion seems inescapable that here, perhaps, we can deduce a reasonable hypothetical explanation to account for the perplexing paradoxes and contradictory aspects of nerve force and life force. They are apparently two different things! At least that is the conclusion we are drawn to, at this time, by our evaluation of current bioelectronic research. It should remain an “open-ended” subject, however, and it should be understood that we are not here claiming to present absolutely final conclusions about it! To return from this needed digression to the comparison of the life force and nerve force—nerve force is a variable factor—life force is a constant. Nerve force would appear to be the “positive aspects” of the bioelectronic energy of the nervous system, and rises and falls with certain conditions. Life force, on the other hand, is a constant and not a variable factor. It is not “used” by the body, but uses the body and nerve force as its manifesting instruments. Life force initiates intelligent action in the body, while nerve force, being apparently a form of electricity or bioelectronic energy, has no power of intelligent initiation. And the Hygiene/Life Science philosophy shows that even life, itself, must work within the confines of biological laws.
At the present state of bioelectronic research, nerve force would appear to be generated within the body, although there are those who think it also can, to some extent, be generated from without. Here, as elsewhere, the infinite power and wisdom of the life force may have designed more than one way of doing things as an emergency, self-preservative influx. Who knows? But, if our bioelectronic theorizing is to be consistently developed as a theoretical explanation of the differences between the life force and nerve force, we must postulate that for the maximum healthful functioning of the body, and full manifestation of life’s powers, the life force apparently must maintain a nerve force balance of positive and negative electronic energy charges, with slightly more of the positive charge predominating.
Since all matter in the universe is built, and has an electronic basis, food must also have its electronic basis with its positive and negative electronic charges. And, it would seem logical, and consistent with our bioelectronic theorizing, to conclude that all foods either have a predominantly positive potential or a predominantly negative potential, or else a near balance of positive and negative potentials.
We do not get life from food, for food cannot give what it does not possess in the first place. Food, in the state it is taken into the body for nourishment, is dead, inert material that is acted on by the life force, Let those who claim that electricity is life explain this—food matter contains electricity (electronic factors) in its very basic makeup, but it does not contain life. A predominance of negative electronic potential in inert matter, as in dead bodies and dead foods, is still electricity or basic electronic factors. Is not a dead body still composed of electricity in the material of which it is still composed? And, yet it does not contain or manifest life. We do not get life from dead, inert material like food. What we do apparently get from food (at its ultimate breakdown by digestive processes) is electronic energy, if our electronic theorizing is to be consistent. Reducing food to its cells, the food cells themselves are further reducible to molecular and then to atomic and subatomic or electronic levels. Upon correct and complete digestion and assimilation, the electronic energy is freed from the foods. Thus, under the bioelectronic view, we see that the so-called “biochemistry” system of food science would not be correct food science, and would be of relatively minus value to the Life Scientist/Hygienist, as its conclusions are reached from the data and studies of contrived experiments, research on rats, manufactured deficiencies, and research on dead bodies, dead foods, and the dead chemical elements of these.
But, under the bioelectronic view, it is seemingly the electronic energy in the foods (according to bioelectronic research), and not the chemical elements that should form the real basis for a genuine science of living nutrition. Reasoning from the findings of the bioelectronic researchers leads to the conclusion that the chemical elements in foods are apparently the transport-carriers of the electronic energy that is seemingly the real goal of the long chain of nutritive processes in the body. When this electronic energy has been released from food cells, the chemical transporters that are left, and that are not utilizable by the body, are poison to the living body and must be speedily eliminated by the self-preservative instincts of the body wisdom. Pursuing this reasoning further, another apparent conclusion to be drawn is that fractured and fragmented food supplements are unusable by the body, and therefore foreign to it (poison), and also must be quickly eliminated as life-threatening materials.
A bioelectronic food science based on the electronic energy would show whether a food had a predominance of positive or negative electronic potentials, or is almost neutrally balanced. But, this does not mean that we need to always follow some complicated chart showing the positive and negative, or neutral potentials of every food in existence. Nor does it mean we have to be always keeping the positive and negative electronic condition of the body in mind, so that we will be sure to eat foods and maintain a proper balance to keep us healthy and fully alive. As in so many other things, wise old Mother Nature has preceded us and provided the perfect balanced food to maintain maximum health. Since this is the natural, biological food for humans, and since health results from its use (other things being equal, of course), it seems a fact of observation that this food, designed by wise nature for human use, has a perfect balance of electronic potentials to maintain the living human body at its highest level. That perfect natural food of mankind is, of course, the many wonderful varieties of edible fruit, along with uncooked vegetables (especially green, leafy ones), and nuts. In the master drama of human nutrition, our prime role or duty is to see that we eat the natural diet that contains the essential nutritive factors. And, we can then put our trust in the great wisdom within to do its marvelous work of building our bodies as healthily as possible—as it has done for untold ages past, since life first manifested on this planet Earth.
In the first segment of this lesson, I indicated that scientific findings show that disruption of body processes by weather is done at the electronic level. But, how much greater is this electronic disruption from wrong food, and wrong food combinations? And yet, nature has seemingly made our correct biological diet such a relatively simple objective for us, and we humans seem to want to make it so complicated. Our theoretical reasoning leads us to believe that the wisdom in nature has made the natural food of mankind so perfect as to its ultimate electronic potentials needed for the body processes that no human genius in electronics, or the most sophisticated modern computer, could even begin to compare with it.
Thus, theorizing (or deducing) from the bioelectronic viewpoint, nutrition at its ultimate invisible goal after releasing or unlocking of the electronic energy, possibly consists of some magical (and there’s no better word to describe it) transformation of ultimate electronic factors of foods into some higher state or condition that is closest to the essence of the life force, itself, and can best be utilized by it in that “higher” condition. Perhaps, again, this ultimate energy unlocked from food consists of some peculiar and higher form of vibration of the released electronic factors. Thus, certain radiations, at certain wavelengths, might be the invisible “building blocks” that the life force uses in building and maintaining animate bodies.
Of course, the mysterious energies locked up in the ideal foods—fruit, uncooked vegetables, and nuts, in correct combinations, cannot be available to the life force unless they are unlocked and set free by correct functioning digestive processes all the way down the Ion road of nutritive processes. And these digestive processes can be interfered with and disrupted and perverted in a myriad of ways and conditions, such as sudden weather changes, wrong food combinations, enervation and toxemia, wrong emotions, overwork, etc.
And, while fruits, uncooked vegetables, and nuts, in correct combinations, are nature’s ordained diet for mankind! it may be that with more knowledge in the future we will discover that during certain times, and under certain conditions, we should favor the combining and eating of certain fruits, vegetables, and nuts over others, for their slightly different predominance of electronic potentials. For example, future findings might show that specific fruits, vegetables, and nuts, properly combined, may be better for weather-sensitive people whose ion balance has been upset by adverse weather conditions, etc. This is, of course, speculative, and awaits more research for possible verification in the future; but, as stated at the beginning of this part of the lesson, this brief speculative analysis of bio-meteorology and bioelectronics hopefully may arouse further thinking and investigation by Hygienists/Life Scientists into these relatively little investigated areas of nutrition and related subjects. For we can never reach the omnipotence and omniscience of nature, or the life force and wisdom that ever remains hidden within manifested nature; but in the constant journey, struggle and out-reaching to learn more of nature’s secrets, in order that we may learn to live in compatibility with her ordained ways, we grow and expand our lives and our consciousness. And, creative outreaching is initially speculative, until more definite evidence catches up to it.
You say if one eats Hygienically and is in good health that he or she will not be adversely affected by the weather. But I’m in very good health, eat no wrong foods, and yet as soon as winter comes (I live in Michigan), I get sick for long periods of time. Could it be that my attitude toward the weather (I hate winter and being indoors) has physiological effects on me?
Most certainly, yes. Attitude is a very important factor in human health—almost as important as diet. Observe those around you who are always negative in their thought processes—check how often they become ill despite their diets and lifestyles. This does not mean, however, that you should neglect your diet. Maintain a good, healthy diet and a good, healthy attitude.
Every time it rains my joints ache. I’ve been to the doctor for this problem on several occasions and he says I don’t have arthritis or anything like that. What could cause this?
Apparently your diet and your lifestyle are not as pure as they need to be to maintain optimum health. Try adding more fresh, raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds and eliminate harmful items in your diet such as refined products, salt, condiments, alcohol, drugs, meats, etc. You’ll be amazed at the difference the next time it rains.
Whenever it is just slightly cold out and everyone around me says it’s just right—such as when the temperature is about 65 or 70 degrees—I still feel cold. The same is true when it’s in the upper 70s and 80s—everyone around me says it feels good and I’m too hot. Why is this so?
Perhaps your body’s temperature controlling device, the hypothalamus, is not functioning properly. This is caused by improper diet, poor environment (too much artificial cooling and heating), not enough exercise, fresh air, or sunshine. Try improving your diet and getting out in the open air and sunshine for exercise regularly.
In this lesson I have shown that the weather can and does affect one’s health. I have also shown that it will have less effect on you if you abide by nature’s laws—that is eat only of natural fare (raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds), drink only pure water, take exercise, fresh air, and sunshine, and apply the other essentials of life as taught previous to this lesson.
This lesson pointed out that every cell of our bodies has an electronic nature—that is, a positive and negative charge. The food we eat also has electronic energy which when released from the food’s cells, nourishes our bodies. More studies need to be conducted regarding the electronic nature of foods and how they affect our well-being.
Weather and the Changes In Your Body
A Case History In Weather Changes: Rheumatoid Arthritis
The Weather Thermostats In Your Body
It was many years ago. I was a small boy visiting my great-uncle on his farm in the back country.
On a warm and sunny day in early November, he told me, “Better pick all those fall tomatoes. Probably be snow on them by tomorrow.”
I thought he was joking, but I harvested all the tomatoes just the same, sweating in the garden in a pair of shorts.
The next morning I woke up and saw snow all over the fall garden. My uncle met me at breakfast. “It’s my wrist,” he told me. “Better than any weather vane. Always acts up before a snow or a rain.”
How many times have you heard people say that they knew a storm was coming by the “way their bones felt?” How about hearing people complain that they feel “under the weather?” How about yourself? Do you drag around when it’s cloudy and feel great only when the sun shines?
No doubt about it. Weather affects all of us in some way or another. Many people seem more strongly bothered by the weather than other people. Some blame the weather for that ache or pain, or their own poor health in general. But what roles does weather play in how good or healthy we feel? Is the weather responsible for the many symptoms that people feel, or is it something else?
How weather influences living things is what the science of biometeorology is all about. The biometeorologist studies how the daily and seasonal changes in the weather influence animals and humans.
These “weathermen-biologists” say that while changes in the weather affect everybody, about one in three people is extremely sensitive to these changes (like my great-uncle) and that they may express one or more of over forty different symptoms associated with changing weather.
For instance, pains in the joints or other parts of the body that precede a change in weather have been known since the times of ancient Greece. Rheumatism sufferers are the most affected—sometimes up to two days ahead of the changes in the weather. Many people with fractures, dislocations, burns, and even chafed areas or corns have a sort of weather barometer “in their bones.”
Other symptoms that accompany weather changes in sensitive people are migraine headaches, back pain, upset stomach, irritability, loss of appetite, severe depression, feelings of uneasiness, and so on. Some people blame all their ills on the weather.
However, it is important to remember that the weather itself does not produce weather-sensitive people. The sensitivity people experience with changes in the weather is a function of their own physiological makeup.
“A healthy, robust, and well-balanced person is rarely sensitive to changes in the weather,” says Michel Ganquelin, a weather researcher. Generally speaking, people who are overly sensitive to the weather tend to suffer from chronic diseases, and they react with pain to barometric changes.
A strong and healthy person can endure stress on several levels and not exhibit any signs of illness or discomfort. Weather is probably the most basic stress that all humans experience. It changes almost every day, and with these changes come new situations and stresses that we must adjust to.
Perhaps the most stressful weather condition is the passing of cold and warm fronts. William Thomson, author of Climate and Health, believes that people respond more to weather fronts than to any other single weather factor.
A cold front coming through means more than just a drop in temperature. It also means complex changes in the barometric pressure, wind direction, humidity, and even pollutants and radioactive fallout may be carried in. All of these changes affect our bodies, our endocrine systems, our nervous systems, and our cardiovascular systems.
The biometeorologist, Dr. De Rudder of Paris, says that the “death rate often increases while fronts are passing.” For people in good health, fronts may only cause temporary feelings of discomfort. But for the person whose system is weakened, or who has undergone surgery or has high blood pressure, this feeling of discomfort can become something much more critical. Heart attacks often accompany weather front passages, and in general any disease which is aggravated by stress increases in intensity when a front goes by.
While a healthy person does not react as severely to the passing of a front as does a “weather-sensitive” person, all people experience many physiological changes that are being constantly modified by the climate and weather.
Here are some of the findings of weather researchers and biologists about how just one weather phenomenon—weather fronts—affect everybody.
In healthy people, the changes that accompany passing weather fronts are minor, almost unnoticed. In an individual with rheumatoid arthritis, however, the changes can be quite serious.
A seven-year-old girl who already had arthritis was asked when her pain was the worst. “Whenever we have a storm, my joints feel stiff and I’m sore all over. Sometimes I get stiff before the storm starts, and sometimes I feel better before it stops raining.”
Weather researchers have found that in 93% of all arthritic pain, there was a major change in barometric pressure. One suggestion for this affect is that people with rheumatoid arthritis have peripheral blood vessels that are easily constricted. The passage of. fronts often causes changes in these blood vessels, causing them to constrict farther, which decreases circulation and increases pain for those with arthritis.
A fall in barometric pressure also leads to a retention of water in the body. The cells of rheumatic tissue are not as permeable as healthy cells, so they retain this fluid more. This retention of fluid leads to the pain and swelling of the afflicted body part.
The weather did not “cause” the condition; the condition already existed, and the weather simply aggravated it. Besides arthritis, there are many other illnesses of the body that can be made more intense by weather changes.
Obviously weather does affect all of us greatly. Depending upon how healthy we are, we can either shake off these effects or succumb to them. To understand a little more how weather affects your body and, consequently, your health, let’s look at some of the inner workings of the body as they relate to weather.
There’s a portion of your brain called the hypothalamus. It controls digestion, water retention in the body, how we sleep, and our body temperature. The front part of the hypothalamus tells us when to lose heat by making us sweat and opening up our blood capillaries to cool us off. The back part of the hypothalamus can make the capillaries contract which helps keep our body heat in.
In older and sick people, the hypothalamus does not always function properly. This is why these people seem to chill so easily in the winter or become overheated in the summer. Toxins in the bloodstream, brought about by improper diet and poor elimination, poison the hypothalamus. Dr. N. W. Walker has said that the best way to keep the hypothalamus healthy is by eating mostly raw foods. Noxious substances from improper foods can slowly destroy the hypothalamus, which is actually the body’s thermostat.
Notice, too, that the hypothalamus also controls such functions as appetite and sleeping. This might help to explain why weather, which affects the hypothalamus, can also make a person lose his appetite or have trouble getting to sleep.
The pituitary gland at the base of the skull controls the body’s metabolism in cold and hot weather. It, too, regulates the water level in our body for heating and cooling. The posterior part of the pituitary also regulates the temperature of the body as the temperature changes. It’s responsible for blood temperature, the perspiration process, and opening and closing the pores of the skin during hot and cold weather. A healthy pituitary gland can help us adapt to weather changes more easily. Again the best foods for optimum functioning of the pituitary are fresh fruits and vegetables, according to Dr. Walker who has made a close study on glandular health and diet.
If we keep the pituitary and hypothalamus healthy by proper diet, we can stay atop the weather more easily. A pure bloodstream from a proper diet, along with regular exercise, can insure the well-being for these two body parts as well as the entire organism.
Your diet can help you adjust to the changes in the weather if you’ll remember two things: 1) When it’s hot, you need more fluids for the body; 2) When it’s cold, you need more fuel.
People used to automatically change their diets to meet the seasons because they ate what foods were naturally available, such as fresh fruits and vegetables in the summer and the dried fruits, nuts and greens in the fall and winter. Nowadays, with supermarket and technological junk foods, people can eat the same poor diet all year round.
During the hot months of the summer, my own diet is chiefly melons, tomatoes, and peaches. These are high-fluid foods, and they help to keep the body water-cooled. The summer fruits are also high in potassium and sodium, which are important minerals in maintaining the bock’s water balance.
You do not need extra salt or any salt in the summer. . People that eat salt sweat it out during tie summer because the body is trying to eliminate it. The mistake is made that since salt is leaving the body, it must be replaced, so they eat more salt and the body must work all the harder to get rid of it again. Salt serves no purpose in the human diet, and its use in the summer (or anytime) is not recommended.
When the weather is cold, you’ll need more carbohydrates in your diet for winter fuel—not fats or proteins. A public health nutritionist in New York, Beverly Daniel, puts it this way: “In very cold weather, people need to eat a diet heavy in carbohydrates—like fruits and vegetables. Eating fat is a good way to get fat. Fats are hard to digest in summer or winter. About seven years ago, the army tested soldiers stationed in cold mountain areas. They always picked carbohydrate foods over fats and proteins for their body’s fuel needs.”
Dried fruits and the more-concentrated fresh fruits (like bananas and persimmons) are the best high-carbohydrate sources for winter needs.
Incidentally, a layer of fat is not a good idea in winter or summer. In a 1958 government test, overweight men did feel the cold less than thin people, but when the exposure to the cold was prolonged, the underweight individuals suffered less cumulative effects of cold stress than those with heavy fat layers. Without exception, the thin people also readjusted to the heat much better than those that were overweight.
So don’t use winter as an excuse to pile on layers of fat— unless, like the bear, you plan to sleep and fast until spring!
Another way you can better adapt to weather changes is by avoiding as much “manmade weather” as possible, such as unnecessary heating and cooling.
Humans have a definite metabolic need for fresh air to pass over their exposed skins. Especially while sleeping do we need an open circulation of fresh air.
By living in tightly-sealed, climatically controlled buildings all year-round, we lose our ability to readily adjust to weather changes. In the perfect environment for man, temperature extremes would not require artificial heating or cooling. Actually, air conditioning in the summer is a real newcomer, and with appropriate building design and dress, it could be eliminated.
Don’t make yourself uncomfortable, but do take every opportunity to keep your living and work areas open to the current weather. Don’t let “manmade weather” be your constant year-round environment.
To become less sensitive to weather changes, improve your physical health and review your emotional attitudes. Weather sensitivity can be decreased by changing your lifestyle and the way you view the world. Weather sensitivity does change throughout your life, perhaps reflecting your strength and state of health. Infants and elderly people are the most sensitive to weather changes, followed by adolescents and adults. Young children are the least sensitive of all.
Ever notice how preschool children can play outside in the hottest sun or run around without their jackets in the snow? Their young bodies still possess boundless health and vitality that allows them to rise above the weather conditions.
We can achieve that state again, too, if we follow a few simple rules:
Adapting to weather changes may just reflect a difficulty in adapting to all changes in life. People who complain about the weather all the time may be “set in their ways” and be afraid or resist any kind of change—even a passing cool front!
Weather-sensitive people, according to the biometeorologist, Dr. De Rudder, are often very emotional, perspire profusely when nervous, color rapidly when annoyed, and rarely say that they feel well. Some of these people use the weather as a convenient way to blame their own negative feelings and emotions.
Then, too, weather sensitivity may also be a reflection of our general sensitivity to life itself. Highly aware people are tuned into all aspects of their environment, including the weather. Many famous artists, musicians, and writers have often discussed their oversensitivity to changes in the weather. Being aware of weather changes is one thing; having them dominate your life is another.
The weather is the great equalizer of mankind. Rich and poor, old and young—we all share the weather again.
Like any other aspect of our environment, the weather is going to affect each of us in different ways. The way your body responds to the weather is dependent on your level of health, both physical and emotional.
You’ve heard it said that you can’t do anything about the weather but talk about it. Well, that’s not true when it comes to your own health. A healthier person does adapt to weather changes better than his sickly neighbor.
So don’t just talk about your health, do something about it, and you’ll never feel under the weather again!
55.2. Preparation For Pregnancy—Preconceptional Care
Article #1: Joyous Childbirth, Hygienically by Ralph C. Cinque, D.C.
Approaches to pregnancy and childbirth have changed gradually through the ages. Primitive women went through their entire pregnancies with no problems. When the time to give birth arose, she merely went about it quietly and with little or no pain. There was no interference from anyone. The whole birth process took her away from regular life activities for perhaps a couple of hours.
As people became more “civilized” (in their diets and lifestyles), they began creating means of intervention—attending the processes of pregnancy, labor, and delivery “better than nature” could. One tribe of people is reported to have hung pregnant women upside down from a tree to scare the baby out. Another tribe had someone sit on a pregnant woman’s belly to force out the child. These people had no understanding of the mechanics of labor and childbirth.
Man had a wonder and fear of childbirth as he had never observed it. He believed women possessed some sort of “power.” Because of this, he eventually took charge of the entire birth process (from conception to birth) by interfering in its natural progression: Practices such as drugging during labor, Caesarean sections, forceps deliveries, drugs for various “complications” of pregnancy, etc., were ushered in.
Now there are even more devices to “aid” women through labor and delivery. Devices such as sonar sound, fetal heart monitors, etc., are very commonplace in hospital deliveries. You can even find out the sex of your baby ahead of time now.
Humans seem to have lost faith in nature and most do not believe that a birth can be natural. Most of us have little or no knowledge of the factors that create a normal pregnancy and childbirth. Pregnancy is regarded as disease to be treated. Women usually give birth in hospitals for the convenience of physicians. Physicians have long since discovered that interference in childbirth is an economic plus for them.
Despite all of this, there is a growing number of women (usually educated) that no longer patronize physician/hospital births. They are choosing homebirths attended by midwives or by their husbands alone. These women have a thorough knowledge of the mechanics of their bodies throughout the birthing process and also know that diet, exercise, etc., during preconception and pregnancy have much to do with how well the birth process will go and how healthy the child will be.
55.2.1 Fasting To Improve Baby’s Future Environment
55.2.4 Effects of Birth Control Pills, IUDs, and Abortions Prior to Conception
The quality of a child’s life is determined before birth—it even begins before conception. A woman’s body must be healthy prior to conception to insure proper development of the new being.
The prospective mother needs to exercise regularly, think positively, breathe fresh air, take sunshine, keep clean, get adequate sleep, and, above all, improve her diet at least six months prior to conception (if it is not already good). (However, any improvement in the diet at any time during pregnancy is better than no improvement at all.) The fetus will then develop in an already clean, healthful environment.
The best way to create an ideal fetal environment is to fast. It’s sort of like cleaning your house before the arrival of a guest. A fast will enable the body to eject uneliminated toxins from tissues. Toxins may have been building up for years. Ridding the body of toxins causes better assimilation of foods and thus better nutrition. One long fast or a series of short fasts followed by a diet mostly of raw fruits with some vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts will prove very helpful before and during pregnancy and lactation.
The best time to improve the diet is before conception. An all-raw diet following a fast will be less difficult to achieve than switching directly from a conventional diet to the Hygienic diet. But for some it is easiest to gradually eliminate meats, grains, processed and cooked foods, etc., and to eat more and more fresh fruits and vegetables as time goes on. Which way is chosen to improve the diet is less important than the fact that the diet is improved at this crucial tie.
“The stronger the body, the more it obeys; the weaker the body, the more it commands.”
—Rousseau
A woman’s muscles need to be firm and well toned to allow for ease of delivery and less pain during the processes of pregnancy and childbirth. Starting an exercise program before conception, if not already on one, is essential. To start an exercise program during pregnancy when the body has been inactive prior to that time and the muscles are flaccid, could be dangerous.
Many women are accustomed to wearing tight-fitting clothing. Therefore their muscles haven’t been used to support their internal organs as they should. Muscles, especially those of the abdomen, become flabby and weak when not used. These are the muscles to which most attention should be focused in preparing the body for pregnancy and childbirth.
Exercises such as sit ups, push ups, deep-knee bends, leg lifts, and yoga postures strengthen the abdominal, back, and leg muscles. These exercises should be as vigorous as the woman’s physical condition permits. Start out slowly and gradually work out more and more and establish an exercising routine that works for you.
Many women suffer from lower back pain during pregnancy and labor. Had these women strengthened their spine and its supporting muscles prior to this time, this pain would not have occurred. These muscles will have the strength to support extra weight while pregnant if used regularly as they should be. (Note: the lower back is also a dumping site for toxins if the body is in a toxic state—exercise alone cannot alleviate back pain—a pure body is also necessary.)
Women should not conceive immediately after stopping use of birth control pills or after the removal of an IUD because this can pose danger to the fetus. Prior abortions, which stress the woman’s reproductive organs, also pose danger to future fetuses. They can cause babies to be born prematurely.
The body needs a housecleaning to prepare for the fetus. Fasting, followed by a proper diet and other life essentials will prepare the body for the incredible feat of pregnancy and birth.
55.3.2 Items To Avoid While Pregnant
55.3.3 Drugs, Alcohol, and Cigarettes
55.3.4 Coffee and Other Caffeinated Beverages
55.3.7 Overeating and Weight Gain
55.3.8 Exercise and Work, Stress
55.3.9 Rest and Relaxation, Sleep
55.3.10 Supplements and Deficiency Diseases
55.3.12 Sexual Relations While Pregnant
55.3.13 Preparing for Childbirth—Classes
Women are convinced by the media, their physicians, relatives, etc., that prenatal care means going to the doctor for regular checkups. Frequent examinations are required by physicians to check for sugar in the urine, blood count, edema, etc. These “complications” are considered by conventional standards to be normal and therefore need to be checked for. Instead of avoiding these complications by right living, these abnormalities are tested for throughout pregnancy. What women are not told is that all these tests (especially vaginal exams) are very enervating and should be avoided and, in fact, visits to physicians are not only needless but fraught with many dangers for both mother and progeny.
We are told that only an uneducated, ignorant woman would neglect visiting an obstetrician regularly during pregnancy to make sure everything is going okay. But why wouldn’t everything be okay? These obstetricians are trained to treat pregnancy as a disease rather than the normal and natural condition that it is.
The medical establishment conducts many tests on pregnant women to discover trouble only after it is developed. They have no ways of guiding women to health—they deal with pathological effects, not causes. Normally, physicians utilize drugging, which adds to the harm, to “remedy” the “problems” they purport to discover with their tests.
Prenatal care, however, does not mean visiting your obstetrician at all. It means providing the healthful conditions so as to produce and maintain better health and development in the unborn child. In other words, the child is very much so “at the mercy of the mother” for all the requisites of development and growth and freedom from harmful toxins. As Dr. Shelton says, “the child’s needs are best served when those of the mother are perfectly supplied.”
Prenatal care includes wholesome outdoor exercise, pure air, rest and sleep, sunshine, freedom from worry or anxiety, absence of overwork, and most importantly, proper food. The unborn child is totally dependent upon the mother to provide these things prudently.
Pregnant women need not eat more food than they did prior to pregnancy as is commonly asserted. They need only eat the best of foods—raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. These foods will provide an abundance of minerals, vitamins, and high-grade proteins for both mother and baby. Good foods are the raw materials for better eyes, better bones, better teeth, a better nervous system, a better brain, and better development all around the baby. Proper foods also improve the health and comfort of the mother and allow, for greater ease in delivery and healthier nursing.
Good food is not enough, however. A pregnant woman must secure the best conditions for efficient utilization (assimilation) of her food. She must observe food combining rules, eat only when hungry, never overeat or eat when emotionally upset or physically tired, never drink with her meals, etc.
“Well-nourished mothers (this does not mean overfed) give birth to well-nourished and, therefore, well-developed and vital children. Not merely the bones and teeth and respiratory organs are involved in the results of adequate or inadequate diets, but every tissue in the body is weakened or strengthened, as the case may be, by the mother’s food. Mother’s nutrition is the real prenatal influence.”
— Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, Hygienic Care of Children
The best diet for a pregnant woman (and, indeed, for everyone) is that which has a proper balance of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. This can be obtained by eating a variety of mostly raw fruits with some vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts. In eating this diet, the pregnant woman provides her baby with all the mineral salts, vitamins, and other food elements necessary for its proper growth and development.
The mother to be must also make sure she combines the foods according to food combining rules (no fruits with vegetables, no proteins with fruits, no starches with proteins, etc.) so she will assimilate the nutrients in these foods most efficiently and place the least burden upon her digestive facilities. Also, eating in an atmosphere of peacefulness as opposed to upset, in a well-ventilated environment, and in moderation are very important factors in proper nourishment.
Although most people will strongly advise against fasting while pregnant, it can be advantageous to both mother and baby to undertake a short fast (one to three days) during the early months of pregnancy. Many women, at this time, experience some form of nausea and discomfort and loss of appetite. This is not due to her pregnancy, but to her toxemic state. Needless to say, when there is no appetite, no food should be taken. Nature knows best and attempts to put the physiological house in order causing the pregnant woman discomfort and lack of appetite. A few days of fasting should restore comfort to the mother and enable her to eat without distress. Many people will tell the mother that harm will come to her baby and to her if she does not eat plenty of “good nourishing food” at this time, but what will she gain if she eats when she is nauseous and then ejects the food as soon as it is eaten? (See section on complications in pregnancy.)
A long fast during pregnancy, however, is not recommended. The fetus is growing and obtaining nourishment from the mother and can only go so long before deficiency will result.
Short fasts give the body a chance to adjust to the pregnant state. They allow the organs to rest and cleanse themselves to prevent abnormality of the fetus. Short fasts improve assimilation and utilization of nutrients from the food taken following the fast. Fasting also improves metabolism which makes nutrition more complete, not only in the intestinal phase, but also when it reaches the cell of the fetus.
While it is true that eating fresh, raw fruits and vegetables will have a positive influence on the health of the offspring; it is also true that consuming unnatural and toxic substances such as drugs, coffee, alcohol, fluoride, salt, vinegar, condiments, preservatives, processed foods, etc., will have a detrimental effect. These items, and more, must be avoided if optimum health is desired, for one’s child.
More and more young women drink alcohol and coffee, smoke cigarettes, and eat junkier foods than in the past. Along with this fact the number of unhealthy and defective babies born each year increases.
Many studies have been conducted in recent years that indicate the harmfulness of alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes on the unborn baby. It is known that even moderate consumption of alcohol—in fact, even one drink—can have an effect on the fetus. Severe birth defects have been caused by alcohol consumption in pregnant women. Some babies are born with “fetal alcohol syndrome”—that is, they have shortened features, a pugnacious cast to their faces, and their eyes are very close together. Spontaneous abortion, smaller than normal babies, very small head size, mental retardation, complications of pregnancy (see section on this), and a broad range of other adverse effects are caused by alcohol consumption.
The placenta, which supposedly filters out harmful substances ingested by the mother, does not filter out drugs, alcohol, tobacco poisons, caffeine, spices, etc. This is why it is imperative that these substances be avoided by pregnant women (and everyone).
Smoking while pregnant causes a baby to be smaller and weaker. The smoke in the mother’s bloodstream prevents oxygen from getting through to the fetus. Thirty-five percent of premature births (terms of eight months or less) are from smokers. Also, babies born with weights of less than 4.3 pounds are almost always from smoking women. Physicians, in many cases, merely warn their pregnant “patients” to cut down on cigarettes rather than to cease them completely. The same is true for alcohol.
An example of how deadly drugs can be is as follows: in the 1950s and 60s, a drug called thalidomide was marketed. It was frequently prescribed to pregnant women to help them to sleep. Not only did it not help them to sleep; it also caused them to prickle, perspire, tremble, vomit, become giddy, lose feeling in their extremities, and worst of all caused their babies to be born with severe deformities. Thalidomide babies were often born with seal-like flippers for arms and legs among other deformities. Seven thousand of these defective babies were born before the drug was removed from the market.
This is just one drug, however, amongst the myriad of drugs that has been, and still is being, prescribed to pregnant women to remedy a variety of symptoms ranging from morning sickness, eclampsia, etc., to sleeplessness, nervousness, etc. All drugs are harmful to everyone who takes them but even moreso to an unborn child.
Various parts of the fetus’ body are formed at different times during pregnancy. For example, the nervous system forms 15-25 days after conception; the limbs 24-36 days after conception; the heart 28-45 days after conception; the fingers and toes 36-42 days after conception; and the ears and nose at 29-45 days. A drug taken at any one of these stages of development can cause defects of varying degrees to the body part that is developing. “Medicines,” tranquilizers, X rays, insecticide sprays, exposure to smog, etc., are all very harmful to the fetus and should be avoided as much as possible.
A recent test conducted on 3,528 drugged (anesthetics, pain relievers, tranquilizers, muscle relaxants, etc.) pregnant women proved that children born of these women were slightly to severely mentally retarded. They lagged in language and learning skills. Their perception and memory were below normal and their judgments were faulty.
Physicians, in spite of the results of this test, say that the FDA is stringent in its protection of pregnant women. They claim there is not one nonprescription drug that has adverse effects on the fetus. (What about aspirin?) It is also claimed that obstetricians will not prescribe drugs that are harmful to baby. Yet they prescribe all of the drugs that have proven harmful in the above-mentioned test, oftentimes just to “keep a woman happy” without warning them of the possible “side effects” of the drugs. Remember: all drugs are very harmful to the unborn child. Drugs never produce health—only untoward effects.
A study conducted by the FDA has found that caffeine causes birth defects. This drug is found in coffee, teas, soft drinks (mostly colas), chocolates, and in numerous over-the-counter drugs. Most of these items are routinely consumed during pregnancy.
Physicians tell many pregnant women that the fluoride put into our drinking water will prevent future dental caries in their offspring. They’re told to drink much of it while they’re pregnant for this reason. However, these same physicians admit that if these women drink too much of it, it will cause mottling of the child’s teeth. But how much is too much? I’ll tell you—any amount. Pregnant women should drink only distilled water and that only if they are thirsty. Fluoride is poisonous and cannot be helpful to anyone. We cannot be poisoned into health.
Salt is poisonous, but especially for pregnant women and their fetuses. Edema is attributed to a high salt intake. This problem is very common in pregnant women in this country as the salt intake is incredible—salt is in almost every processed or prepared “food.” But if only fresh, raw fruits and vegetables are eaten, there will be no problem with ingesting salt that is harmful to both mother and child.
Pregnant women are advised to drink pasteurized milk to insure they get enough calcium for their babies bones and teeth formation. Pasteurization (boiling) is, however, just another form of processing that destroys food elements. Therefore, a woman drinking pasteurized milk thinking she is getting adequate calcium and vitamin D from it is being deceived and is depriving her child of much needed nutrients. Adults do not have the digestive faculties to get calcium from milk for it is bound in the indigestible protein complement, casein. If the milk is pasteurized, it becomes unusable due to heat derangement.
Many pregnant women are also told by their obstetricians that they should give in to their cravings—pamper themselves. They eat such abominations as cakes, pies, ice cream, pickles, candy, canned fruits and vegetables, etc., all jumbled together in a haphazard way which causes both mother and baby to be undernourished. Being filled up on these harmful foods which contain preservatives, additives, food colorings, salt, sugar, white flour, etc., a woman is no longer hungry for those foods she should be eating for adequate nourishment. Processed sugars and refined white flour and rice rob the body of calcium and other nutrients that are so greatly needed during this crucial time. The body must surrender its previous supplies of minerals and nutrients to metabolize these denuded products.
In tampering with the foods nature intended for us, man has succeeded in destroying the natural balance of his diet. But these food indiscretions are not the only causal factors in the lack of health that is so prevalent in our modern times. Such factors as foul air, polluted waters, lack of exposure to the sun, lack of exercise, lack of sleep and rest, living a fast-paced life, taking drugs and stimulants, overworking, domestic inharmonies, economic strife, etc., arc also contributors to much disease common today-including the birth of many unhealthy and inferior children.
Despite the fact that most women have increased appetites during pregnancy, food intake should not be increased. The greatest weight gain during gestation should be about 20 pounds. The pregnancy itself (fetus, placenta, amniotic fluid, enlargement of the uterus and breasts) weighs only about 15 pounds. Anything in excess of this is merely fat which will be difficult to remove later. This extra weight can harm both mother and the baby. It causes an increased risk and a more difficult delivery. In fact, a group of midwives in Austin, Texas, will not take on clients that are overweight for this reason. They’re left for the obstetricians to handle in a hospital setting and labelled as high risk.
During gestation, a woman must exercise willpower and common sense when eating. Keep meals simple and never eat between meals. Keeping meals simple means to have not more than a few items of food at once, eating them plain—no additions such as salt, condiments, oils, margarine, butter, etc., and mostly raw.
When pregnant, all of the internal organs are “squeezed” by the growing fetus inside. For this reason, it is even more imperative not to overeat or eat foods difficult to digest or eat too often as this can cause constipation. Constipation plagues many pregnant women who, instead of complying with the aforementioned, rules, take laxatives (X-lax, herbal teas, etc.), eat bran, or give themselves enemas. These are all taxing to the system and should be shunned.
Part of the reason that a woman on a conventional diet eats so much more when she is pregnant is because this diet is deficient in most elements essential to the normal growth of the fetus. She eats more in an effort to meet the body’s demands. This is unwise. It is best to eat of Hygienic fare in moderate amounts for a healthy fetus (and mother).
Other troubles overeating and wrong eating cause are morning sickness, indigestion, hemorrhoids, swollen ankles, varicose veins, overdistension of the abdomen, a fat baby, and a difficult delivery. Restricting the diet, rather than overfeeding prevents postnatal hemorrhage so common in overweight women, who have a very toxic condition.
It is very important for a pregnant woman to get regular and systematic exercise. This is to insure muscle tone, elasticity, and stamina for the marvelous upcoming event (childbirth). However, it is unwise to undertake a strenuous exercise program such as horse-back riding, tennis, motorcycling, etc., while pregnant unless it was indulged before pregnancy. If a woman was, however, not much of an exerciser prior to pregnancy and wants to obtain optimum health for herself and her unborn baby, it is still possible for her to incorporate exercise into her daily life. These exercises should be taken up gradually. Exercises that are not very strenuous such as walking in the open air and sunshine or swimming are recommended.
There are a wide variety of books on the market that are very good for pointing out specific exercises for pregnant women. These may include prenatal yoga or other stretching formats that strengthen the area of the body that will be put to use during labor—the abdomen and back. Exercises that helped me when I was pregnant are leg lifts (tightened abdomen and back muscles), deep-knee bends, and kagels.
Whatever exercises a woman in gestation chooses to undertake are okay so long as she remembers to do them regularly rather than sporadically. If she exercises only occasionally, she will more likely end up with sore muscles rather than benefits. Some women claim that their ritualistic schedule of exercise achieved painless childbirth for them.
Without exercise, abdominal muscles (and all muscles) will be lax (atrophied) and will be unable to support the womb and its appendages. A very common cause of aborted pregnancies is the debility of the mother. It takes strength to carry a child and to bring it into this world and proper nourishment alone will not provide it.
Exercise improves circulation and thus there will be a greater supply of nourishment to the fetus. This, in turn, will produce a more well-developed child. It will also provide the mother with stamina during labor.
If a woman is working during pregnancy (employed), it’s fine to work right up until the last day before birth if in reasonably good health and if she wants to. However, sit-down jobs can contribute to backaches (toxins settle in the lower back when sitting a lot). Sit-down jobs also prevent a woman from getting the proper exercise, fresh air and sunshine she needs to be healthy. If a woman has a sit-down job however, she should try to get up and move about regularly and to get outside whenever possible and walk in the open air.
Avoid jobs that require overwork (overtime, few breaks, etc.) as a pregnant woman needs much rest and relaxation also. A job that is very stressful should also be avoided. Stress affects your mental state which can injure the child to the extent that it impairs nutrition and thus causes a supply of faulty nutriment to reach the fetus.
Rushing about doing this and that is not necessary and can be harmful, especially while pregnant. Taking the time to rest when fatigued or to relax regularly instead of pushing oneself is very necessary. The human body assimilates nutriment better when in a rested and relaxed state as opposed to a nervous, rushing state which produces indigestion and other problems.
In our modern world, many people truly do not know how to relax. We need to learn how. During pregnancy is a good time to learn as during labor is too late. Regular practicing of relaxation techniques while pregnant will prevent tenseness during labor which is a major cause of pain and tearing of the perineum.
A definite figure as to how much sleep a pregnant woman needs is as fallacious as is a set amount of vitamins and minerals that are necessary. Each individual’s needs are different. If a pregnant woman eats well, rests and relaxes regularly, exercises, and has little or no stress in her life, she will need less sleep than one who eats wrong foods, overeats, has a stressful job, is nervous, etc. The amount of sleep a woman needs while pregnant is generally no more than she needed prior to pregnancy. However, she may tire more easily in the last months of pregnancy as there is a greater strain on her body. A mid-afternoon nap is very helpful.
Most obstetricians recommend that pregnant women should take calcium and iron tablets and other supplements to assure proper growth and formation of bones and teeth and to prevent anemia in the mother. They also say that women have an increased vitamin need now that there are two instead of one and therefore should supplement the diet. This is a fallacy. First of all, if the woman is eating adequately of proper foods she will not need any “extra.” Secondly, humans are not able to utilize inorganic minerals. Taking unnatural supplements can only cause extra strain on the mother for she will have to eliminate these toxic substances.
Milk is often used as a supplement during pregnancy. Women are told to drink preposterous amounts of milk to get their calcium. They are scared into drinking it by doctors who tell them quite correctly that calcium will be taken from their bones and teeth if not in adequate amounts in their diets. This is true, but she will not obtain proper calcium from milk. As mentioned earlier, most milk is pasteurized and therefore deranged.
Also, humans lack the enzymes, lactase and rennin, to properly digest and utilize milk even if it is raw milk, and the calcium in cow’s milk has been known to absorb the finer calcium in human cells thus making it harmful rather than helpful. (See Lesson 33 for details on the harmfulness of milk consumption.)
Calcium tablets are also taken in abundance by pregnant women. These are harmful rather than helpful. They produce acidity and actually rob the body of calcium. They thus help to produce osteoporosis and osteomalacia.
A deficiency of calcium in the pregnant woman’s body causes her child’s bones and teeth to be malformed and weak. The child may later have dental caries, crooked teeth, etc., throughout life as a result. However, a deficiency of calcium is not due only to a lack of calcium in the diet but to poor assimilation and utilization. This may be caused by overeating, eating of wrong combinations of foods, etc., that impairs digestion and absorption from the intestinal tract. It may also be due to the faulty action of the body in general (general poor health) and the various organs in particular that handle this particular element. Also, adequate sunshine is necessary to assist in calcium metabolism. It is not how much calcium that is contained in the foods one eats, but how much is absorbed and retained that counts.
For those who do want to make sure the foods they eat contain calcium, here are some foods that have large amounts of it: fruits, cabbage, lettuce, green leaves, nuts (almonds), figs, asparagus, kohlrabi, etc. Also, Dr. Shelton in his book, Hygienic Care of Children, says that orange juice (fresh-squeezed) helps the body to retain calcium and phosphorus and to assimilate nitrogen (protein).
The fetus stores a calcium supply in its tissues. It can draw upon this supply at a later time. During the first months of pregnancy is when it is most crucial for a pregnant woman to obtain and retain adequate calcium for her and her baby’s health.
Another mineral that most people tend to be fanatic about while pregnant is iron. A lack of iron causes anemia. Anemia is a deficiency disease with symptoms of lack of red blood cells, a pale complexion, nervousness, night sweats, and susceptibility to disease. It is not infrequent that pregnant women become anemic. This is because of improper nourishment and the inability of their bodies to use nutriment.
A lack of proper food or the inability to assimilate food leads to a gradual decline of the body’s power to produce red blood cells. This is caused by imperfect nutrition—a lack of food iron or impairment of the digestive processes.
A short fast (one to three days) helps to rejuvenate the blood and the body’s ability to assimilate moreso than to merely eat more iron-rich foods. Daily sun baths, exercise, and fresh air also help. Doctors recommend iron pills and eating lots of liver. Needless to say, these will not help but can only harm for they are inorganic and poisonous.
During a fast, red cells continue to drop and then new red cells with regular edges form (in the case of anemia). If wary of undertaking a fast at such a time, a pregnant woman should consult a professional Hygienist or someone else familiar with fasting.
Red cell count is tested by medics with a test called the hematocrit. When I was pregnant with my second son, I submitted to this test out of curiosity. My hematocrit was much higher than the other women that were tested at this clinic. My diet was mostly raw fruits with some vegetables and grains.
When I told the doctor this, he recommended I start taking iron tablets. He completely ignored the test results. These other women were doing everything he recommended (eating lots of iron-rich foods—organ meats, legumes, beets, etc., and taking iron tablets), and they were diagnosed as slightly anemic.You think that would’ve told him something!
If you eat a proper diet, you will have no problem meeting iron needs. There is no need to dwell on iron needs, or on any one nutrient. All of our needs are met by an adequate diet as mentioned earlier and all other essentials of life.
Mother’s placenta does not magically extract only those good and necessary nutrients that mother gives. It also absorbs harmful substances. Most things mother takes in through the lungs, digestive tract, and skin show up in cells and tissues of the growing baby. These toxins irritate the newly-forming cells.
These toxins may just pass through the baby, or they may cause injury such as a birth mark or a major organ failure or some other injury. Drugs, environmental hazards, food additives, etc., interfere with organ development and can cause so-called congenital anomalies or birth defects.
In 27% or more births, defects occur and are continuously increasing as more and more chemicals enter our environment. Everything from drugs to additives in foods, sweeteners, aerosol sprays, car exhaust, pesticides, household cleaners, etc., are as harmful to the unborn child as they are to everyone.
Don’t take risks even though so and so didn’t take care of herself and still had a normal baby. However, it doesn’t help to be afraid of or fanatical about the possible hazards in our environment as the baby can pick up on your fears. It is best to avoid as many hazards as you possibly can and don’t worry as you can’t control all of them. For example, don’t use harmful pesticides or cleaning fluids in your home. Get plenty of fresh air in your home—open the windows. (It’s best to live out in the country away from the pollution.) Try to avoid driving in heavy traffic. Eat organic fruits and vegetables when available. Don’t eat any processed foods. These are just a few of the things a pregnant woman can do to avoid harmful substances from passing through her to the placenta and getting to her unborn child.
“A farmer who would not permit a stallion to worry his pregnant mares, will not hesitate to make regular sexual demands upon his pregnant wife. In this he is encouraged by his medical adviser, although it is the universal rule throughout nature that pregnant females will not receive the male. There are reasons to believe that coition during pregnancy is responsible for the coating of vernix caseosa (white, greasy substance on baby’s skin) found on so many infants at birth and that frequent coition during pregnancy also adds to the pains of childbirth.”
— Dr. Shelton, Hygienic Care of Children
In modern times, most people do indeed indulge in sex while the wife is pregnant. Most people feel there is no harm in this except during the last month when the baby is almost ready to enter our world. According to Dr. William Esser, a normal woman will discourage sexual union when pregnant because her instinct is against it. He also says that the entire animal kingdom frowns upon sex during gestation, and the pregnant female will defend herself against such a travesty.
Sex during pregnancy can cause the woman’s procreation organs to become congested with blood. This is dangerous to the fetus as it can cause abortion. Oftentimes the initial signs of abortion are present after sex, but because the mother is of strong constitution, she will continue to carry the baby. Other problems caused by the uterus being congested with blood are that of an apathetic child or a congenital idiot being born.
Nowadays childbirth preparation classes are very common. They may be conducted by a group of midwives or by hospitals or clinics. These classes may teach natural and/or unnatural methods of childbirth.
One thing most of these classes have in common though is that they give parents-to-be some knowledge of the physiology of pregnancy and childbirth. Stages of fetal growth are displayed. Parents are given an understanding of what is and will be occurring within a woman’s body and how to deal with these changes.
Many classes (those given by hospitals and clinics that are medically oriented) teach parents which drugs will be available to them when the woman is in labor. They teach students what to expect when entering the hospital.
Taking childbirth preparation classes can be very advantageous choice for many parents to be. However, they are unnecessary. Reading the many excellent books and magazines (especially those with illustrations) that are available in libraries and bookstores as well as talking to other parents you know who have undergone homebirths is adequate for many. Knowledge of the mechanices of pregnancy and childbirth is definitely a necessity for those (and everyone) who plans a homebirth.
I’ve found classes conducted by unorthodox (not medically oriented) midwives to be very helpful. I met other couples who planned to have midwife-assisted homebirths and we provided moral support for each other.
This section should really be called “Abnormalities of Pregnancy” as there are no complications if care is taken to produce health. However, I will call them complications as a large percentage of women do experience some of them.
“The unborn child is a parasite feeding upon the substance of the mother. If the mother’s substance is physiologically, chemically, and magnetically correct according to nature’s plan, the process of gestation is a comfortable and physiologically ideal experience. If there is in the pregnant woman a chemical imbalance—in other words, if the woman is toxemic—there comes sooner or later a physiological protest accompanied by an attempt toward correction of this abnormal state. Hence the reaction, the nausea and vomiting.”
— George S. Weger, M.D., “The Nausea and Vomiting of Pregnancy,” Dr. Shelton ‘s Hygienic Review
There are many things that can go wrong during gestation if a woman is not in optimum health. Morning sickness, heartburn, constipation, vomiting, digestive difficulties, edema, eclampsia, varicose veins, breast pain, back pain, toxemia, etc., are some of the common complications. But pregnancy, being a normal physiological process, should not be accompanied by any discomfort or abnormal state.
It seems that most women when pregnant suffer from morning sickness of varying degrees (because of the many transgressions from the ideal lifestyle). For some, it is intense and lasts all day. They may vomit to the point of not keeping any food down. This is caused by a reaction to toxic saturation from eating wrong foods. It can be corrected by a short fast. Most physicians, however, prescribe drugs and other manipulations which are harmful to both mother and baby. They specialize in relieving symptoms and treating effects.
Some women who have milder cases of morning sickness (gastric uneasiness) experience slight nausea and lack appetite. These may feel relieved after eating a heavy, cooked meal while feeling nausea after eating fruit or nothing at all. These women then blame the fruit for their nausea. This is obviously not so. The heavy, cooked foods deaden or stop eliminations and fruits or fasting allow the body to start housecleaning, which frequently has unpleasant symptoms.
The reason a pregnant woman feels nauseous in the morning is because she’s been fasting since the night before. This fast has allowed her body to recuperate vitality and to eliminate toxins.
“There is a rebellion in the stomach; it rejects food. The liver speeds up its excretory function. Much bile is regurgitated into the stomach and is vomited. There may even develop a psychic revulsion to food, so determined is the organism to have its way and to clean house. If we can once understand that nature is trying to provide a clean house in which to evolve the new life, we can understand the need to cooperate in the work and not to throw monkey wrenches into the vital machinery.”
— Dr. Shelton, Fasting Can Save Your Life
Another common “complication” of pregnancy is toxemia. Toxemia is marked by a rise in blood pressure, undue weight gain with puffiness, headaches, and visual disturbances. Albumin (a water-soluble protein) is present in the urine. Toxemia in pregnant women results in malnutrition and poisoning of the fetus leading to difficulties later in the child’s life if allowed to go on. Again, a fast will remove toxemia.
Many pregnant women experience eclampsia which is a form of toxemia. It usually occurs in women who gain over thirty pounds in weight during gestation. It has been observed in a study by Dr. Dieckman in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that eclampsia is much more prevalent among people who eat high-protein, high-fat diets. Dr. Dieckman noted that during the second world war in Germany there was a decreased occurrence of eclampsia because of a reduction of consumption of meat and other such “luxury” foods as butter, refined products etc. He also found that eclampsia is very uncommon in the tropics where a low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet is eaten.
Other studies have indicated that women who are overweight before becoming pregnant will most likely have a prolonged labor, possible caesarean sections, other maternal complications, premature birth of their child, and toxemia. A Hygienic diet does not cause this.
Still another study found that women who abstain from refined flours, beans, peas, grains, milk, butter, and cheese and eat only fruits and vegetables will have babies born softer and smaller than other women. This is good because labor will be less complicated—it is normal for babies’ bones to consolidate after birth rather than before to ease labor and delivery. The small and soft baby will soon grow in strength after birth.
Another factor that most women consider to be a “complication” in pregnancy is if they are over the age of 30. This just is not so. If the woman has been taking care of herself prior to pregnancy, during pregnancy, and continues to do so, there will be no problems.
Another abnormality common in pregnancy is edema— retention of fluids in the tissues, in the case of pregnant women usually around the ankles. This fluid is used to hold the toxins present in the woman’s bloodstream in suspension so they will do the least harm. This edema is a part of the protective functions of the organism of the pregnant women to keep the embryo from suffering with fluid retention and metabolic disturbances.
There is only one reason for any types of complications when pregnant, and that is that the “ills of pregnancy, as well as those of the nonpregnant state are each and every one, of toxic origin: and the reaction, the crisis, is nature’s way of calling our mention to the matter so that we may help her and thus help ourselves.” (Dr. George S. Weger, “Nausea and Vomiting of Pregnancy,” Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review.)
One factor a pregnant woman should keep in mind is to dress comfortably and attractively in cotton clothes that are loose—not tight. Don’t wear tight clothes such as garters, girdles, tight stockings, pants, etc. Wear flat shoes as high heeled shoes will put a strain on your back. They are also dangerous as you can fall easily or get them caught on things, etc.
Women, when pregnant, should take time to take walks out in the open air and sunshine so as to provide two of the essentials for themselves and their unborn babies. This also provides a time when the mother-to-be can find solitude and think about the new being inside of her and what he or she will be like.
It is wise to avoid any lengthy traveling while pregnant. This is generally when a woman feels like “bedding down” and being stable anyway—a time to feel a sense of security in her life. Traveling by car for long distances does not allow her to stretch and use her body as it should be. Also, bumpy roads cause a great deal of discomfort to her at this time. Traveling by airplane is to be advised against especially in the later months of pregnancy. The extreme pressure and speed while flying can cause, among other things, labor to be brought on prematurely.
There is much more that could be said about prenatal care, labor, and childbirth. I could go on for many more pages about all the complications of labor and delivery that are possible if a woman does not take care of herself during pregnancy.
Even if a woman has taken proper care of herself during pregnancy, it is still not over. She has to be very cautious who she selects to help at the birth. She needs to decide whether to have a homebirth or a hospital birth. She needs to have confidence in herself, faith that all will go well, and courage to accomplish the feat of birth instead of fear.
For example, if a woman gives birth in a hospital she is at the hands of the medical personnel there—she has, in a sense, given the responsibility of her child’s birth to them. Much unnecessary medical intervention such as shaving of pubic hair, giving enemas prior to delivery, giving episiotomies, strapping the woman down during labor, drugging, forceps deliveries, Caesarean sections, etc., may occur in hospitals—and those oftentimes for the convenience of the hospital staffs. All of these actions are enervating and harmful at a time when a woman needs to be at her best.
Providing the mother is in good health (normal), she will enjoy the actual childbirth experience and always remember it as a positive, enlightening experience. Giving birth in one’s own home encourages this as the mother is surrounded by loving friends rather than by strangers. The baby will therefore enter a warm, loving world instead of the cold, antiseptic world of a hospital. No bright lights, masked strangers, spanks on the buttocks, chemicals in the eyes, premature cutting of he umbilical cords, etc., will occur in the home. The father can share the first days of the baby’s life with him/her and the mother. The mother will be with the child and be able to nurse the baby when he/she is hungry rather than by the clock. The mother will have more opportunity to sleep and relax after the birth as there are no rigid schedules as in the hospital. Also, there will be no displaced siblings as they will share the baby’s first days also.
So you see, not only does the mother need to take care of her health, she needs to make the correct decisions regarding the coming event. She needs to be aware of the importance of proper preparation to prevent undue stress at the last minutes.
I am 30 pounds overweight, and I’ve recently started on the Hygienic diet. Although I’m gradually losing weight, it is a very slow process and I’m eager to become pregnant?
Excess in weight is usually toxin-laden fat that causes undue risks to both mother and unborn child. If you do get pregnant while overweight, try short fasts occasionally during the early months of pregnancy. Stick to Hygienic fare with lots of fresh fruit, and some green vegetables with very few nuts, seeds or avocados.
Of course, it is best to undertake a long fast (two weeks or more) before becoming pregnant and to realiment on juicy fruits and vegetables with very few that are high in fat and sugar content. If that is not possible for whatever reason, the next best thing is to eat moderately of only fruits and vegetables of low-fat, low-sugar content excluding nuts, seeds, avocados, and dried fruits, etc., until down to the desired weight. Your body will then be ready for the fetus.
I’m two months pregnant, and I’ve just found out about the Hygienic diet and am trying to stick to it. I’ve been a vegetarian for many years but am experiencing a mild case of morning sickness. What can I do to rid myself of this nausea?
Take a fast of three to five days—take nothing but distilled water and rest in bed as much as possible. Short fasts will do no harm to the fetus, they will merely help to eliminate toxins more quickly. You will no longer suffer morning sickness. After the fast, take raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts, all properly combined to assure the best nourishment for you and your baby.
I’m pregnant and I live in an apartment in the city on a street with very much traffic. I don’t open the windows often as I get strong odors of auto exhaust fumes from the street below. Is there anything I can do to improve my situation without moving which is not possible at this time?
Naturally, it would be best to live in a purer environment, but since that is not possible try purchasing house plants which will provide a rich source of oxygen in your home. Grow an indoor garden. Get a negative ion generator to help purify the air. Also, try to get out and exercise in the open air in the country or in nearby parks often.
I’m six months pregnant and just found out about the Hygienic diet. Is it okay for me to start on this diet from a conventional diet at this crucial lime?
It would not be good to all of a sudden just change your diet so drastically. You’d be sending so many toxins through your bloodstream at once that some of them could pass through the placenta and harm the baby. It is good to gradually eliminate harmful items in the diet, from the most harmful to the last harmful. Start with prescription and nonprescription drugs. Then stop eating red meats, then white meats, then fish, then dairy products, etc. Try to stay with each regimen for at least a week before eliminating another few items. This way you will be improving your baby’s chances to be healthy even though you got a late start.
The process of giving birth is a normal, natural and largely spontaneous activity that shares many similarities with the process of defecating. I make this rather crude comparison not to be needlessly distasteful, but rather to emphasize the point that giving birth is as physiologically ordinary as having a bowel movement. Granted, it is inherently more demanding, more prolonged and more intense, but under normal conditions it is just as certain in its outcome. It calls upon many of the same muscles that are required to defecate. It occasions sensations that are very much like the urge to defecate.
If this is true, why has childbirth become such a traumatic, painful and debilitating event that commonly incurs injury to both mother and infant? Why is it that modern childbirth usually requires some kind of surgical intervention? By this I refer not only to outright surgeries, but also to the various manipulations and forcing measures that are so often employed in so-called “natural childbirths.” It is vitally important to realize that under normal conditions, childbirth requires absolutely no intervention whatsoever. “Catching the baby” should be all the attendant has to do. Performing manual rotations, either internally or externally, manipulating the shoulders, guiding the head, stretching the perineum and other related procedures are in no way a normal part of the birth process. If we consid