HOME HYGIENE LIBRARY CATALOG CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DIET AND NUTRITION
Unless the doctors of today become the dieticians of tomorrow,
the dieticians of today will become the doctors of tomorrow.
Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Winner--Man the Unknown (1935)
So versatile is the human digestive system that people can live in apparent good health on many different kinds of diets derived from a wide variety of sources throughout the entire world. The diets may vary from being almost totally carnivorous to being totally vegetarian with or without dairy products.
It is obvious that all these diets must contain the minimum required amounts of the basic components--protein, carbohydrate and fats as well as the necessary vitamins and minerals--but getting these is not our main problem.
Notwithstanding that different diets appear to maintain good health, some do so at considerable strain on vital organs which eventually become diseased, and when vital organs fail as eventually must happen, the person dies, unless sustained by some artificial method.
There are some commonly held and very dangerous misconceptions about what constitutes a "balanced diet" which have set many nutrition-conscious people on the wrong track, causing them a great deal of harm.
We must adopt a diet that does not overstrain the digestive system or produce toxic substances which damage nerves, arteries, joints and vital organs. The excessive intake of grain products as encouraged by the Pritikin diet and the Macrobiotic diet is an example of bad effects accompanying good. Some weight-losing diets, such as the Dr Atkins diet and the Scarsdale diet, while achieving weight loss in fact are damaging in the long term.
It must be made clear at the outset--the dietary problem of the modern world stems very little from deficiencies of nutrients in the food, they are caused by three distinct faults:
As described in the chapter on degeneration, Dr de Lacey Evans' observations of 2,000 centenarians showed that for the attainment of long life the amount of food was more critical than the type of food consumed. Be that as it may, I shall repeat a paragraph from Dr Jeremiah Stamler's George Lyman Duff Memorial Lecture 1977:--"An additional comparison has just become available, with data on mortality, for three groups of Californian Seventh Day Adventists (non-vegetarian, lacto-ovo-vegetarian and pure vegetarian) compared with the Californian general population. Seventh Day Adventists have lower mean serum cholesterol levels than Americans generally. For 47,000 Adventist men aged 35 and over, age-sex -standardized, mortality rates were 34% lower for the non-vegetarians, 57% lower for the lacto-ovo-vegetarians, and 77% lower for the pure vegetarians, compared to the general population."
Upon examination it is easy to see why a pure vegetarian diet conveys health and long life.
To remove some common misconceptions, I intend to explain, among other things::
Let us now look at the different components of food and how they are utilized in the body.
Protein
The body, which is made of many different kinds of protein, manufactures the new protein it requires from a variety of about 20 amino acids in countless complex combinations. There are eight amino acids from which the body can manufacture all the others. These eight are called the essential amino acids and must be present in our food.
Foods such as meat, eggs, milk and cheese are animal protein foods and because they consist largely of protein, are commonly considered to be very important. However, it is now well known that all natural vegetable foods contain protein in small but adequate amounts.
it is a popular misconception that animal protein foods are essential to good health and many dieticians emphasize this continually. This misconception, plus the palatability of these foods when cooked, results in enormous excesses of protein in the diet, with very harmful results. Protein as eaten, first must be broken down chemically into the separate amino acids before being reassembled as new protein. Protein cannot be stored. The body can only use what it needs, and the excess must be converted into carbohydrate and fats for energy requirements or stored as fat. This process results in toxic by-products which must be eliminated from the body. If these levels are high the body cannot cope, and toxins such as uric acid and ammonia remain in the bloodstream causing inflammation in sensitive areas and increasing the risk of arthritis, kidney and liver damage, artery calcification, cancer and other metabolic upsets. Animal protein foods contain high levels of cholesterol and fat as well.
Pure vegetarians who do not use even dairy products get adequate supplies of amino acids from cereals, fruit and vegetables eaten in reasonable proportions. A diet of pure fruit alone provides adequate protein and fat.
"One of the biggest fallacies ever perpetrated," said Dr Alfred Harper, Chairman of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, "is that there is any need for so-called complete protein. Some proteins provide more limited amounts of some amino acids than others. But it has been recognized from the start of this century that if you increase the quantity, you don't have to worry about the quality. We have shown that adults can remain in protein balance on a diet of wheat, even flour".
It has also been a popular misconception for years that athletes and manual laborers need large amounts of protein foods. Tests on laboratory animals and with human athletes show this to be an utter fallacy. A group of athletes were tested for physical endurance after periods on different diets. On the high protein/fat diet their physical work endurance was 60 minutes, on a mixed diet 120 minutes, and on the high complex carbohydrate diet, 180 minutes.
Compared to carbohydrate, the digestion of protein requires seven times the amount of water, for the urination necessary to flush out ammonia produced in the body. Dr Nathan Smith, Professor of Sports Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle, said:
"To be excreted in urine, nitrogen byproducts require water, and this can lead to dehydration. Every year a significant number of deaths occur, especially in high school football practice, where athletes are trying to build themselves up on protein. They lose water, this prevents them from dissipating body heat, and they get heat stroke."
Cow's milk, which contains twice the amount of protein as human milk, can cause hypernatremic dehydration in bottle-fed babies because large amounts of water are needed to flush from the body the waste products which result from protein consumption. This type of dehydration is very dangerous and can lead to brain damage, shut-down of the kidneys and death within hours.
Together with inactivity, high protein intake causes osteoporosis--weak and porous bones. When protein intake exceeds about 95 grams per day, the body goes into negative mineral balance because of high acidity. With an intake of 140 gm, there is a mean loss of 60 mg of calcium per day, regardless of the amount of calcium ingested. In the UK, tests have shown that vegetarians aged 70 have bones equal to or of greater density than the bones of meat-eaters aged 50. Calcium compounds, not excreted from the body, build up in various locations and can cause calcification of the aorta (main artery). Calcium supplements can cause this as well. This form of hardening of the arteries can occur in the absence of cholesterol (ie. on a vegetarian diet too high in protein).
Studies of primitive Eskimos in the late 1800s and early 1900s revealed no evident cancer or heart disease among them. These robust and happy people, living in their natural state, existed almost entirely on animal protein and fat, and so impressed were some of the observers, they adopted all-meat diets themselves.
What these people overlooked was that the Eskimos' vigorous health was enjoyed only by the young, and that by middle age, when their vital organs began to break down, the Eskimo aged rapidly, and suffered severe osteoporosis. At the same time, the Eskimos had a very low resistance to infectious diseases whenever exposed to them. Dr Samuel Hutton, one of the observers (1902-1913) in his book Health Conditions and Disease Incidence Among the Eskimos of Labrador, confirmed the fact that cancer and other diseases of civilization were not evident among the Eskimos but had this to say about their life expectancy:
"Old age sets in at fifty and its signs are strongly marked at sixty. In the years beyond sixty, the Eskimo is aged and feeble. Comparatively few live beyond sixty and only a very few reach seventy. Those who live to such an age have spent a life of great activity, feeding on Eskimo foods and engaging in characteristically Eskimo pursuits . . . Careful records have been left by the missionaries for more than a hundred years.
"Perhaps the most striking of the peculiarities of the Eskimo constitution is the tendency to hemorrhage.* Young and old alike are subject to nose bleeding and these sometimes continue for as much as three days and reduce the patient to a condition of collapse."
*The reason for this hemorrhaging is the large quantities of EPA in the fats of the Eskimo diet, as described in Chapter 10. EPA, and the improved circulation it affords, accounts also, to a great extent, for the Eskimos' freedom from cancer and heart attack.
Vilhjalmur Stephansson spent many years among the primitive Eskimos around the turn of the century, observing them specifically for signs of cancer. He wrote the book Cancer, a Disease of Civilization and erroneously concluded that an all-animal diet was the key to their health. Later under the auspices of the US meat industry, Stephansson adopted an all-meat diet. His blood cholesterol rose to over 600 mg% and he developed serious cardiovascular disease.*
*The Eskimos consumed most of their food (including large amounts of fat) uncooked, and thereby to a great degree were protected from hypercholesterolemia as explained in the discussion on raw food.
Dr W. H. Hay, Director of the East Aurora Sanitorium, writing on cardiac-vascular-renal disease (degeneration of the heart, arteries and kidneys) said: "In close observation of many hundreds of cases of blood pressure, hardening arteries, degenerating kidneys, dilating hearts, in a private sanitorium practice of the past 30 years, I have not seen one single exception to the rule that an excess of protein is behind every case, the average being well over ten times as much protein as Chittenden says is necessary to repair body waste".
Hypothyroidism, a condition associated with artery degeneration, diabetes, cancer and numerous metabolic upsets, often results from a diet high in protein even in areas where iodine is plentiful in food supplies. In his book Hypothyroidism, The Unsuspected Illness (1976), Dr Broda Barnes cites medical research since 1933 to show that hypothyroidism is the most frequent but at the same time the most overlooked condition in the USA. Whilst the condition can be rectified by thyroid hormone therapy, obviously the correct solution to the problem is to correct the diet. Another related effect of eating excess protein is hyperinsulinemia, the production of excess insulin which in turn can reduce blood sugar levels down to hypoglycemic levels. In animal tests, elevated levels of insulin have stimulated cholesterol synthesis in the arterial wall resulting in atherosclerotic plaques.
Hyperinsulinemia, sometimes called insulinoma, leading to severe hypoglycemia can cause the patient to display neurological and psychiatric disorders such as coma, confusion and other impaired faculties.
A recent report in the Sydney Morning Herald said that in US Government tests, 200 rats were put on high protein diets similar to those blamed for the deaths of 16 women. Within a month, 189 rats died.
Dr Gary Williams, Chief of Experimental Pathology at Westchester's Naylor Dana Institute for Disease Prevention said: "All people on the high meat/fat diets have the same metabolic profiles as those associated with increased cancer risk in experimental animals. And protein has been shown to increase tumors in the high risk animals".
When, in the 60s, I was imbued with the "High Protein" belief, reading Adelle Davis, Gayelord Hauser and Lelord Kordel, I read a book, Health Secrets from Hunza by Renee Taylor. (I referred to Hunza earlier. It is a community in a valley where the Hindu-Kush and the Kara Korum Ranges meet at the western end of the Himalayas, near where the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia and China converge.) I later met Mulford Nobbs of New York, publisher and cosmetics manufacturer, who was a member of the same expedition as Renee Taylor. He scree ned his color slides of Hunza for me with a first-hand description. Another book, The Wheel of Health, by Dr G. T. Wrench of London (1938) also described the Hunza diet. I was confused because it seemed to me at the time that the Hunza hardly ate any protein. How then were they such fine specimens with fantastic vigor and endurance into old age?
A little later again when my first wife spent some weeks at the Hopewood Health Center at Wallacia and was wonderfully improved in health, I realized that the diet there was virtually identical to the Hunza diet. So I abandoned the "High Protein" diet to an almost vegetarian diet which (as most vegetarian diets do) still contained a lot of fat from dairy products, nuts and oil. I felt no different but I figured it was better anyway, and when eventually the Pritikin diet came to light, I could instantly understand and accept it.
Here are some assessments of daily protein requirements for average adults:
US National Academy of Science 34 gm Dr Rayner Berg, Swedish Nutritionist 30 gm Dr V. 0. Siven, Finnish Scientist 30 gm Dr R. Chittenden, USA 30 gm Dr D. M. Hegsted, Harvard University 27 gm Dr W. C. Rose 20 gm US Food & Nutrition Board 34 gm Canadian Board of Nutrition 34 gm Food & Agricultural Organization, UN 34 gm
Even on a vegetarian diet without dairy products, it is difficult to reduce protein to this level, and the inclusion of nuts and beans in a vegetarian diet to provide protein is completely unnecessary and in the long run, harmful.
Most vegetarians still include cereals in their diet as a source of protein and energy but even cereals are superfluous because fruit and vegetables alone can provide sufficient protein. The problem with a diet of just fruit and vegetables, if a person leads a very active life, is not protein, but getting sufficient calories, and it becomes necessary to eat frequently throughout the day. Such a diet is low in fat, and people on it are always lean and healthy. The utter fallacy of the Western high protein diet, containing perhaps 20% total calories in protein, is obvious when it is considered that the most natural food possible--mother's milk, on which an infant can double its weight in three to six months--contains only 6% protein, measured as a percentage of total calories, and this amount reduces to about half after six months. The diet of healthy West New Guinea Highlanders examined in 1969 contained only 3% protein.
Here are two menus for a day--protein in grams:
No. 1 -- High Protein
Breakfast
Orange juice (3), 2 fried eggs (14),
1 slice bacon (15), 2 slices toast (4) 36 gm
Lunch
Baked flounder (100), fried potatoes (5),
beans (2), fruit (3)		110 gm
Dinner
400 gm T-bone Steak (100), potato (5),
vegetables (5), fruit (3) 113 gm
Total--259 gm
No. 2 -- Low Protein
Breakfast
1 glass fresh orange juice (3),
muesli ( 12),fruit (3) 18 gm
Lunch
Fresh salad (5), wholegrain bread (2),
fruit (6) 13 gm
Dinner
Lightly cooked vegetables (5), raw salad
vegetables (5), fruit (6) 16 gm
Total--47 gm
This low-protein menu is a typical strict vegetarian diet. Most dieticians would faint at the low protein level and yet it contains, even without nuts and lentils, almost double the required amount of complete protein. There are many healthy vegetarians around who eat less protein and have done so for years.
Protein is essential for life, but far more people die because of excess of it than because of too little.
Carbohydrates
Most of the calories contained in food, regardless of the kind of diet, go to provide energy. Any excess, after energy and protein requirements are met, are stored as glycogen in limited amounts in the liver and muscle tissues, and the rest as fat, in unlimited amounts all over the body.
To provide the body with energy, the bloodstream requires a constant supply of carbohydrate in the form of glucose (blood sugar), and fat in the form of free fatty acids, so it can deliver them to all body cells. The brain and nervous system use glucose exclusively and the muscles use both fat and carbohydrate in proportions which vary with the intensity and duration of work.
The sort of food which best provides these fuels is a diet of fruit, vegetables and cereals. Fruit and vegetables are best eaten raw and provide a desirable alkaline condition to the blood. Cereals require cooking to facilitate digestion, and because their starch is a more complex type of carbohydrate, the digestion may take longer.* Cereals also contain a good deal of protein, and in one form or another form the basis of sustenance for most of humanity. With the exception of millet and buckwheat, cereals are acid forming and should be eaten sparingly. Rice perhaps is the best because it is digested much easier than the other cereals and is less acid forming.
*This statement may not be true of all cereals. For instance, it has recently been discovered that wholewheat bread, pasta and some cooked vegetables such as carrots and parsnips, release glucose into the bloodstream at an undesirably rapid rate. (See Cereals.) See also statement by Dr. Howell in Chapter 21.
Natural carbohydrate foods as they are digested provide a steady supply of glucose into the bloodstream, and when the carbohydrate is metabolized, the only byproducts formed are carbon dioxide and water, natural substances and completely harmless. The blood sugar level remains constant and the body feels good, the brain alert.
Carbohydrates may be classified as starches (complex), or sugars (simple); some foods contain both. Whereas starch is composed of complex molecules which are more difficult to digest, sugar is a simple molecule carbohydrate and is rapidly digested. Refined or cooked carbohydrates of any kind can cause temporary excesses in blood sugar levels which the body converts to triglycerides (see Chapter 21). This effect, if exaggerated, is undesirable, it increases blood viscosity and may result in low blood sugar (hypoglycemia).
There are different kinds of sugar in all food, and natural sugars in raw fruit and vegetables taken in moderate quantities are ideal nourishment, and do not cause big excursions in blood sugar. Fructose (fruit sugar) and galactose (milk sugar) taken in raw fruit and raw milk are accompanied with complex carbohydrate and natural enzymes and do not overtax the body. Nevertheless, fruit is better eaten at spaced intervals rather than large amounts all at once, and eaten whole rather than juiced. Ripe fruit contains more sugar than green fruit, because the ripening process converts the more complex starches to natural sugar. Dried fruits are nourishing but very concentrated so should be eaten in small quantities. As mentioned earlier, a properly selected mixed fruit diet contains small but sufficient amounts of protein as well as small but sufficient amounts of fat.
Any food refined for commercial purposes is depleted in nourishment and is harmful for a number of reasons. White flour is not only poor in nourishment and capable of upsetting body chemistry to the extent of causing arthritis, but at the same time is devoid of natural fiber and therefore tends also to cause constipation.
Ordinary white sugar or brown sugar is sucrose, a combination of two simpler sugars, glucose and fructose, and is derived from the sap of plants but without the plant's nourishing properties. Because the glucose and fructose are chemically bonded together in sucrose, they are not available for use in the body until digestive enzymes split them apart, whereas in nature both sugars as found in fruit, honey and nectar are already apart and enter the bloodstream without effort or excursion. Honey is a derivative of plant nectar and consists largely of fructose and glucose unbonded, and when found in natural beehives and not heated or processed, contains sufficient mineral salts and other nutrients together with natural enzymes to make it a nourishing food.
All refined carbohydrates, including raw sugar, treacle, molasses and processed honey, whether in drinks, cakes, confectionery or other forms, can cause disruption to normal blood chemistry with adverse physical and mental effects such as hypogtycemia, headaches, depression, hyperactivity, irrational or violent behavior, high blood viscosity, angina etc.
Refined carbohydrate, devoid of vitamins itself, still requires Vitamin B1 to be metabolized in the body. Thus it will utilize body stores of Vitamin B1 and this can lead to chronic deficiency of the vitamin. A Vitamin B1 deficiency causes underactivity of the thyroid gland (which controls cholesterol production in the body) resulting in elevated blood cholesterol, triglycerides and lessened body metabolism and vitality.
No wonder Professor John Yudkin of London called his book Sweet and Deadly. In Britain, he says, sugar intake is 25 times the amount that it was a couple of centuries ago. Natural Health, Sugar and the Criminal Mind by J. I. Rodale describes how criminal and vicious tendencies are induced by high sugar consumption. And yet the sugar industry still tries to "con" the public that their sugar is good for you!
You cannot eliminate sugar from your diet without making some drastic changes in the type of food you eat. The Consumers Union of the USA has analyzed a number of common food products and found that some of them contained more sugar than candy, ice cream and soft drinks. Heinz Tomato Ketchup, for example, had more sugar in it (23.9%) than Sealtest Chocolate Ice Cream (21.4%). Wishbone Russian Dressing was 30.2% sugar, and Coffee Mate, a substitute for cream, was 65.4% sugar compared to 51.4% for Hershey's milk chocolate. Cherry flavored Jell-O contained 82.6% sugar. Quaker 100% Natural Cereal contained 23.9% sugar and Hamburger Helper 23%.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, 27% of refined sugar consumed in the USA in 1977 was in beverages, mostly soft drinks. The remainder was consumed as follows:
Retail sugar packages 25% Bakery and cereal products 17% Confectionery 10% Conned or frozen fruits and vegetables, jellies and preserves 8% Dairy products 6% Public eating places 3% Institutions 1%
At a NSW Education Department organized seminar on nutrition for school children, it was reported that popular brands of breakfast cereal contain about 50% sugar, even All Bran had 18%. The Vitamin C drink, Tang, had 94%. Ice cream, flavored milk and yoghurt can contain large quantities of sugar. Practically all canned and packaged food contains large quantities of sugar or salt or both, even some brands of bread.
Sugar contents of some breakfast cereals*
% Sugar
Content
Product by weight
Kellogg's Honey Smacks 52.2
Kellogg's Froot Flavored Loops 51.7
Kellogg's Strawberry Pops 46.0
Kellogg's Frosties 44.2
Kellogg's Nutri-Grain 43.7
Kellogg's Coco Pops 40.9
Kellogg's Sultana Bran 33.4
Kellogg's Bran Buds 29.7
Sanitarium Honey Weets 28.0
Sanitarium Weeta Puffs 25.8
White Wings Original Bran Crunch 25.4
Sanitarium Crunchy Granola 24.9
Sanitarium San-Bran 24.1
Kellogg's All-Bran 18.1
Sanitarium Golden O's 16.9
Kellogg's Special K 16.7
Nabisco Extra G 15.9
Kellogg's Bran Flakes 12.0
Sanitarium Popped Rice 11.4
Nabisco Crispies 9.6
Sanitarium Skippy Corn Flakes 9.4
Kellogg's Rice Bubbles 8.8
Sanitarium Mini Weet-Bix 8.3
Kellogg's Corn Flakes 7.4
Sanitarium Weet-Bix 4.0
Nabisco Vita Brits 3.3
Sanitarium Puffed Wheat 3.2
Kellogg's Ready Wheats 2.9
Nabisco Weeties 2.9
Nabisco Shredded Wheat 2.2
*Total sugars after hydrolisis.
Choice, 1979
Health food confectionery substitutes and "energy" bars etc. are practically all sugar of some kind. And if the bulk of your food comes out of a supermarket then you are getting lots of sugar, salt and fat whether you like it or not. Sugar addiction in this country is one of the greatest menaces to the health of our population.
Alcohol is a refined carbohydrate and should be avoided. It is common for doctors to allow heart patients to drink a little whisky, and some even advise it because they believe it dilates the arteries and allows better circulation. In fact, the only vessels which dilate are those in the skin, and because alcohol elevates blood triglycerides and impairs oxygen respiration of the tissues, its use serves no good purpose.
Fats
The main function of fat in our bodies is to provide muscular energy. Where stored in the body it acts as padding and insulation. It is not necessary to eat it, the body can convert protein and carbohydrate into all the fat it needs with the exception of "essential" linoleic acid. The amount of linoleic acid required is so small that any diet of adequate calories must provide ample. Even lettuce has a fat content of about 9% of total calories.
The worst fault with the Western diet is that it contains concentrated fats far in excess of the body's capability to safely handle, and whether saturated, unsaturated or polyunsaturated, is the most singularly dangerous factor involved in every one of the so-called degenerative/metabolic diseases, including cancer. However, the danger of dietary fat is far less if it is consumed raw as in raw milk or raw blubber as eaten by Eskimos. The reason for this is explained in the discussion on raw food.
When a typical meal is digested, the fat content is mainly absorbed into the lymph vessels and only a small part, glycerol and short chain fatty acids, are taken up by the intestinal capillaries. Thus most of the fat at first completely by-passes the liver and enters the bloodstream via the neck veins, Now the liver is the largest gland in the body, capable of over 500 complex functions, and yet it receives these fats not from the intestine with the rest of the nutrients, but via the main bloodstream in a manner and quantity not intended by Nature.
On a high fat diet with insufficient carbohydrate, the body must rely on fat and protein to provide its energy needs. In this process compounds called ketones are produced which in high concentrations can produce kidney damage. The efficiency of fat metabolism depends on the degree of physical fitness and is further discussed in Chapter 17.
Fats are a natural component of vegetable foods, and consumed that way, they are beneficial. All evidence points to animal fats as being dangerous, correlating directly with high cholesterol levels and the incidence of heart disease. Its correlation to cholesterol is unavoidable as animal fat itself as well as animal protein, contains cholesterol. Consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable fats and oils does not correlate with the incidence of heart disease, but it does correlate with the incidence of cancer and can precipitate heart attacks in people with heart disease. It was found, about twenty odd years ago, that when polyunsaturated vegetable fats were substituted in the diet for saturated fats, blood cholesterol decreased and here is where dangerous confusion arises. Because of this confusion, following the advice of the National Heart Foundation, I nearly killed my wife with the best quality cold-pressed safflower oil and polyunsaturated margarine.
The reason the cholesterol level falls is because the saturated fat, which contains cholesterol, has been removed from the diet and because polyunsaturated fat causes cholesterol to be deposited from the blood directly into the body tissues including the walls of the arteries. The cholesterol reduction occurs whether polyunsaturated fat is present or not present. Messrs M. L. Armstrong and M. G. Megan in 1972 demonstrated this with two groups of monkeys, one fed a diet containing 4% of the calories as fat and the other a diet containing 40% polyunsaturated corn oil. Both diets produced the same degree of regression of atherosclerosis with substantially decreased cholesterol in the blood and in the artery walls. A more recent study by Messrs Chakravarti, Kumar and Nair in 1977 using 40% safflower oil showed the same results.
It is a different story if cholesterol is added to such diets. When groups of monkeys were fed diets containing 50% fat with the addition of 2% cholesterol, regardless of the type of fat--peanut oil, corn oil or butter oil--the monkeys all developed cardiovascular disease, the peanut oil being the worst. Because of its apparent effect of lowering blood cholesterol, polyunsaturated fat was assumed to be beneficial to people with cardiovascular disease. When in fact it was the very opposite.
It is most important to understand that the acquisition of coronary heart disease is one thing, and that the factors triggering off angina or a heart attack after having acquired advanced heart disease, is another thing altogether, and polyunsaturated fat such as margarine or oil in the diet can trigger off angina and heart attacks in susceptible people like nobody's business. Not only has concentrated polyunsaturated fat been shown to have no beneficial effect on diseased arteries, it causes cholesterol to concentrate in the liver, causing gallstones. It has also been shown to depress Vitamin B synthesis by the intestinal bacteria, to increase the requirement for Vitamin E, and to depress calcium absorption.
The ingestion of free polyunsaturated fat causes severe red blood cell aggregation, reducing the blood's oxygen capacity and increasing its viscosity to a greater extent even than saturated fat. High intake of polyunsaturated fat is associated with an increased incidence of cancer, partly because of this effect on the blood.
In a test at the V A Hospital in Los Angeles, polyunsaturated fats were largely substituted for saturated fats in the diets of 422 men, and a control group of 424 men remained on the typical American diet. The test group sustained 5% less deaths from heart attacks, but the incidence of gallstones and cancer increased and the total deaths were the same.
Dr Meyer Friedman, co-author of Type 'A Behavior and Your Heart noted that in tests on 44 firemen comparing the effects of butterfat and safflower oil on the bloodstream, the safflower oil caused the same degree of red cell aggregation as did the butterfat cream. But worse, the safflower oil drink elevated triglycerides to a higher level and whereas the butterfat triglyceride level returned to normal after nine hours, the safflower level at nine hours had not even started to fall.
But popular beliefs are hard to shift. J. I. Rodale, a dedicated proponent of natural living and author of several books about it, and who was founder of Prevention magazine available worldwide, died of a heart attack in his early seventies while being interviewed on TV. He advocated in his book Rodale's System for Mental Power and Natural Health, the inclusion in the diet of plenty of meat, fish and eggs, safflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, olive oil and honey. The books of Lelord Kordel, Gayelord Hauser and Adelle Davis are similar in that they advocate diets containing excess protein, cholesterol and fat.
Adelle Davis died of cancer, and more recently Gayelord Hauser died of heart disease.
We must judge by results. Wherever in the world you look, Finland, USA, Africa or New Guinea, people on high fat/cholesterol diets get clogged up arteries and cancer, and people on low fat diets do not.
Salt
It is totally unnecessary to add salt to food. It is a harmful irritant conducive to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, kidney damage, edema, arthritis, migraine and cancer. Perhaps the main danger from salt is its effect of inhibiting enzymes, which is the reason it works as a food preservative. Sea salt and monosodiumglutamate are equally harmful, and various salt substitutes should be avoided. Adequate organic sodium is provided in fruit and vegetables.
Salt is expelled by the body in the urine and perspiration, and thirst is induced to replace the water lost thereby. Unless the water is replaced, dehydration may occur which of course increases the blood viscosity. At the same time salt retained in body tissues extracts water into those tissues where it may be retained to cause swelling known as edema. The swelling not only restricts oxygen transfer to the tissue cells but exerts pressure on the capillary vessels further impeding the circulation.
Even before it is absorbed by digestion, salt is a harmful irritant in the digestive tract. Damage can be caused to the stomach lining by osmotic pressure which is the property of a substance to absorb water to itself. Salt (and to a lesser extent sugar) taken in large amounts on an empty stomach can be observed through a gastroscope to inflame the stomach lining as cells shrivel when the water is robbed from them. Japanese have a high incidence of stomach cancer which is thought to be associated with their high salt intake. It has been observed in Japan that such inflammation may persist for two weeks after the intake of salt has been stopped. The Japanese also have the highest rate of hypertension in the world, which is undoubtedly due to their high salt intake. Also associated with dietary salt is the retention of uric acid in the body.
It is a fallacy that salt should be taken to counter that lost by perspiration. It is expelled by perspiration because the body wants to get rid of it. Once in Singapore I got bushed in jungle behind the Bukit Tima Reservoir. I hiked for five hours, lost a gallon (10 lbs) of water from my body in the midday heat and although desperately thirsty, not once felt tired or cramp.
As more knowledge is acquired throughout the world, many fallacies are being dispelled. One of these fallacies is that endurance athletes require extra salt, particularly in hot weather. It has been shown repeatedly that regardless of temperature, long distance runners perform best on diets free of added salt.
Salt and Premenstrual Tension: "Up to 90% of women suffer needlessly from premenstrual tension during their childbearing years," said Dr Niels Laverson, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cornell University. "By simply giving up or severely restricting the amount of salt in their diet many of them can cut out the aggravating feeling of moodiness, depression and bloatedness." Dr Laverson is the co-author of It's Your Body--A Woman's Guide to Gynecology. He explained: "The week before a woman has her period, there is a build up in her body of two hormones--progesterone and estrogen. Estrogen binds salt to the body and salts bind water. The result is a build-up of water which causes pre-menstrual tension, excess fluid in the brain causes headaches. Fluid in other parts of the body causes fatigue". (See Menstrual problems, Chapter 21.)
Meat
All animal protein foods tend to be harmful in a number of ways. They introduce too much protein into the diet, they contain too much fat and they contain cholesterol. When cooked they produce cancer-inducing chemicals and are devoid of enzymes. They are also devoid of fiber and therefore cause constipation.
When beef is raised in stalls and especially fattened by the use of hormones and overfeeding, the fat content of the meat is increased enormously, but long before this practice was adopted by meat producers, observant medical men always have noted the markedly adverse effects of eating meat.
Dr Arnold Lorand of Austria in his book, Old Age Deferred (1910) devoted an entire chapter to the "Dangers of an Abundant Meat Diet". He had observed, and he quoted a number of other medical researchers who had observed the following facts:
Dr Lorand further observed that white meats and fish (except salmon, carp or red fleshed fish) are more easily tolerated by body.
Having described the special function of the thyroid gland, working together with other glands, in destroying toxins produced in the body from meat, Dr Lorand explained how meat could be rendered much less harmful by boiling it instead of roasting. Boiling removed certain harmful substances which he did not define, but the proof he furnished is as follows:
Dr Leo Breisacher of Detroit demonstrated that when dogs were deprived of their thyroid they could survive for a long time on a diet of milk but on meat they died in a few days. Similarly, dogs without a thyroid could survive a long time if fed boiled meat, but died if fed the bouillon made from meat.*
*Dr de Lacy Evans, quoted earlier, before devoting his career to natural medicine, was a surgeon in a cancer hospital. He said, "When meat is given, it should be boiled, and the liquid broth, soup or beef tea, thrown away. It contains the irritating constituents of flesh which encourage the growth of cancer".
Dr Lorand said: "Every physician can observe daily, as we have, that when patients suffering from disorders of the liver take meat, they gradually get worse, but when they gave up meat they soon got better," and finally:
"When we study the nature of the diet enjoyed by persons who have lived over 100, we find, indeed, exceedingly few who are great meat eaters; very many are persons who eat no meat at all; and in many cases, also, the original meat diet was subsequently abandoned in advanced age. According to the report of the Collective Investigation Committee of the British Medical Association, the 55 centenarians whose cases they examined, were for the most part, small meat eaters."
The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1977 reported that although total fat consumption in Copenhagen is lower than in rural Finland, the meat consumption is higher, and so is the rate of colon cancer, which is four times higher in Copenhagen.
Meat, Of course, not only contributes protein, fat and cholesterol, but as inferred, appears to contain substances which are specifically carcinogenic, at the same time being conducive to the condition of constipation.
Poultry
The meat of fowls contains fat and cholesterol, and therefore the same objections as against meat are held, but to a lesser degree, against it. Apart from these objections it should be remembered that a great variety of chemicals is used in chicken feed to promote the growth of the chickens as well as certain preservatives in the feed itself, the harmful effect of which is passed on to whoever cats the chicken.
Fish
Fish from unpolluted waters is the least toxin-producing of the animal Protein foods. It can be eaten raw. If fish is marinated in lemon juice and then warmed a little before eating, its texture and taste is the same as if it was cooked. Ocean fish provides a better source of minerals.
The advantages of fish as a food, particularly if consumed uncooked, have already been explained and are further discussed under "The Value of Raw Food".
Cereals
Cereals of one kind or another provide the bulk of the energy in the diets of most people world wide, and for many they also provide the bulk of the protein. However, they cannot be said to be a natural food for humans because they do not abundantly occur in nature, having only comparatively recently been developed by man as a crop food.
Despite their nutritional qualities, cereals do not provide balanced nourishment, and in some ways are quite harmful if eaten in large quantities. The fact alone that cereals contain absolutely no Vitamin C is enough to disqualify them as a highly suitable food for humans. (See discussion on Vitamin C.) With the exception of millet and buckwheat, they are acid forming in the body, and even when cooked are comparatively difficult to digest and produce flatulence. In food allergy tests, after eggs (33%), wheat products excite the greatest percentage of reactions (30%) in those tested. Cereals are known to exacerbate arthritis and diabetes in some people, and populations which consume them in great quantities are not long lived.
Studies made by various medical researchers in the 1800s described by Dr Emmet Densmore of England in his book, How Nature Cures, incriminate cereals, wheat in particular, in causing deposits of calcium salts in the tissues, and hardening of the arteries. Similar tissue degeneration was noted in Indian people whose diet consisted mainly of rice.
Furthermore, bread and other cereal-starch foods are the prime cause of the acids formed in the mouth which attack and decay teeth.
World Wars I and II in Europe provided valuable information on nutrition, but this has been misinterpreted and wrong conclusions have been formed about cereals. As mentioned earlier, autopsies of concentration camp victims fed on meager scraps showed complete clearance of fat deposits in their arteries. In Austria, where all civilian deaths require a full autopsy, statistics showed that between 1939 and 1945 heart attacks decreased by 75%. Does this mean that the wartime Austrian diet, dependent on potatoes and cereals, likewise cleared their arteries of atherosclerosis? It certainly would appear so, but that is not the case.
In his book Solved: The Riddle of Heart Attacks, (Robinson Press, Fort Collins, Colorado 1976), Dr Broda Barnes MD, PhD, related:
"I have personally reviewed 70,000 autopsy protocols at Graz, Austria, carried out between the years 1930-1970. At Graz, heart attacks dropped 75% between 1939 and 1945, and it is true that people were not eating cholesterol foods during the war. However, the low cholesterol diet did not protect their arteries from hardening. A look at the arteries of the entire series of 2,000 autopsies in 1945 revealed that the number of individuals with damage to their coronary arteries was approximately doubled in 1945 compared to 1939, and the degree of damage to each one affected was about twice as great. In other words, the low cholesterol diet had not only failed to protect the arteries, but the damage was increased four-fold."
Why then did heart attack deaths fall when the heart disease rate increased? Dr Barnes says tuberculosis killed the people before they could have their heart attack, but the disparity in numbers is too great for that to be the major reason. It is far more likely that the heart attack rates fell because of the drastically decreased fat in the diet which would result in lower blood viscosity and better circulation even in worsened arteries.
Dr Edward Howell, formerly of Chicago, (see Chapter 6) in his book The Status of Food Enzymes in Digestion and Metabolism (1946), described extensive clinical research which among many other things revealed that Malays and Filipinos, who subsist mainly on rice, develop marked hypertrophy of the pancreas. The pancreas is the organ which produces essential digestive enzymes in addition to its job of producing insulin. Hypertrophy of an organ indicates it is being overworked. Compared to the average not-overweight American (who, the studies showed, also had an enlarged pancreas), the Malays and Filipinos pancreas' were, in proportion to total body weight, 50% larger. Compared to herviborous animals, the rice-eaters pancreas were 300% larger. (See discussion on raw food.)
Damage to the intestinal lining and subsequent impairment of the digestion is called coeliac disease, characterized by the inability to digest cereals containing gluten (eg. wheat, rye, barley and oats) with relatively poor absorption of other nutrients as well. Coeliac disease is caused by the feeding of cereals to infants before their intestines are developed sufficiently to withstand their damaging effect. Thus the condition is permanent and is exhibited as a lifetime allergy to cereals.
Recent experiments by Dr E. W. Williams, University College of North Wales, UK, showed that wheat protein is antigenic to rats. It causes hyperactivity to rats not used to them, and increased activity in those that are. In addition, Dr Williams found that the intestinal villi of the rats whose diet included wheat protein changed in shape from long and slender to shorter and blunt. Similar villous atrophy has been observed in humans, he said.
Dr Herbert Shelton, one of the best-known and most experienced researchers in nutrition of the 20th Century, said of cereals: "Of all starch foods eaten by man, cereals, along with legumes, are the least fitted to the capacities of his digestive organs and are also least well-fitted to meet the nutritive needs of his body".
As a staple food, rice is far preferable to wheat, or oats. It contains a lower, more desirable level of protein, is less acid forming, more nourishing, and leaves less toxins and residues for the body to dispose of. To offset the undesirable properties of cereals, they should be accompanied by fresh fruit and vegetables.
Notwithstanding their disadvantages, cereals, as the basis of most national diets, and in combination with vegetables and fruit, sustain people in good health for many years. The health-promoting qualities of the Pritikin diet which relies heavily on cereals, are indisputable, and even healthy athletes who change to it from the conventional diet experience improved mental and physical performance.
However, the same or better performance can be gained without cereals. For instance, in 1978 John Marino of Santa Monica, set a new USA cross-country bicycle record of 13 days, 1 hour and 20 minutes. In 1979, on a diet high in rice and wheat, he tried to better that record but could not complete the ride due to dizziness and fatigue, and later found he was allergic to these foods. In 1980, on a diet of fruit, vegetables, beans and fish, he knocked over 21 hours off his 1978 record to create a new one of 12 days, 3 hours and 41 minutes, and said he felt he could have continued riding, perhaps even back to Santa Monica.
My reservations about cereals began not long after I adopted the Pritikin diet in 1976, and started eating lots of oatmeal and wholegrain bread.* I started getting twinges of arthritis in my right elbow and occasional symptoms of hypoglycemia. When I cut right down on bread and ate more fruit these problems vanished. Then I noticed that although some people on the Pritikin diet were rapidly clear of arthritis, others still had it in varying degrees and could only gain relief by eliminating wheat products and oats. Other people complained of dry skin. Another query arose from a 55-year-old acquaintance who benefited greatly in health from the Pritikin diet but after two years was still experiencing prostate trouble and had developed a fibrous cyst which was removed surgically. His prostate problem was eliminated after he cut out eating cereal products and replaced them with raw fruit.
*In Radiant Health Digest, July 1936, Dr Howell reported tests from the University of Tennessee which showed that contrary to long accepted opinion, the carbohydrate from wholewheat bread is digested and absorbed very rapidly into the bloodstream, as is also the starch of cooked potato. These facts have been rediscovered by Dr David Jenkins of the University of Toronto, who measured the 'glycemic ratings' of different foods. His findings, released in 1983, showed that wholewheat bread, pasta, cooked carrots, and other unsuspected complex carbohydrates, instead of releasing glucose slowly into the bloodstream, did so at a rate faster than did table sugar or ice cream. This means that some so-called unrefined carbohydrate foods, once cooked, no longer are protective against excursions of blood sugar and triglycerides, but instead are capable of causing such excursions. (See Hypoglycemia, in Chapter 21.)
My studies of the effects of various diets on achieving remissions of cancer led me further to dispute the value of cereals and cooked food and the specific reasons I have described elsewhere in this book. Additionally, it is significant that the primitive people upon whose diets the Pritikin diet is modelled, although not heirs to the diseases of civilization, at the same time are not renowned for their longevity. I was eventually forced to the conclusion arrived at by Dr de Lacy Evans, Dr Densmore, Dr Howell and others, many years ago, that although cereal-based diets are far preferable to a diet based on animal protein foods, the benefits gained come not from the cereals, but from the exclusion of animal protein, fat and cholesterol, and that greater benefit still can be gained by displacing cereals from the diet with fruit and vegetables. This conclusion was not shaken when in May 1983 Dr Paavo Airola, one of the most widely read nutritionists in the world, whose books promoted cereals above all other foods, died of a stroke at the age of 65.
Sprouted cereals
Seeds which have sprouted form a completely different foodstuff altogether. They are very nutritious in that the enzymes are no longer inhibited, starch is converted to easily digested natural sugars, and various vitamins become available. Eaten in this form cereals are a desirable food substance. Even seed-eating birds are only able to digest seeds after germination has begun; they are equipped with a crop in which the seeds remain after swallowing until ready for digestion.
Nuts
Nuts are similar to cereals inasmuch as they are seeds and as such contain enzyme inhibitors which make them hard to digest. Like cereals, they are more easily digested after roasting because this deactivates the enzyme inhibitors. Despite cooking, they are still difficult to digest, and because they contain high levels of fat and protein, nuts cannot be considered a desirable source of nourishment, regardless of whatever nutritional virtues they do have.
Although it is generally believed that nuts are a natural food for man, Dr Edward Howell's studies show that the wild primates eat them only before they are fully grown, i.e. before the enzyme inhibitors are formed. Squirrels keep nuts in their cheek pouches sometimes, and at other times store nuts in a damp place, presumably in both cases to render them more edible.
In 1927, Dr Howell, as a young man, adopted an all raw food diet composed to a very large extent of raw nuts. He soon became ill with troubled digestion and general malaise and was forced to abandon the diet, which left him with permanently impaired digestion. At that time nothing was known about the enzyme inhibitors in seeds (nuts are seeds), but it can now be seen why raw cereals and nuts present digestive problems and why these foods are more easily digested cooked. Pritikin bans nuts on the score of fat alone.
Milk
Milk, when it is provided from the mother's breast, is a perfect food for a baby, providing of course that the mother herself is healthy and on a nutritious diet.
Because in the past many undernourished children have benefited from cow's milk given them at school, milk has gained a reputation as being essential for growing children.
Milk is not a natural food for any species of animal except for the very young fed by their own mother. Mothers' milk is structured exactly to the requirements of the infant, changing slightly as the child grows. According to Dr Steven Gross of Duke University, even when a child is born prematurely, the milk of the mother at that time has different concentrations of protein, sodium and chloride, suited specifically for the premature infant's needs. It was important, said Dr Gross, that premature babies be fed milk from the natural mother and not other human milk or milk formula because milk other than from the baby's own mother could not be properly tolerated. Even after normal births the mother's milk continued to change in protein content etc. to suit the needs of the baby as it grew. Apart from nutritional aspects, the natural mother's milk contained immunological substances which convey protection against infection until the infant's own immune system developed.
And because in early life babies do not manufacture in their bodies sufficient enzymes for normal body metabolism, they are dependent on the natural enzymes furnished in their mothers' milk. The danger of feeding babies formula or pasteurized milk, devoid of enzymes, can be seen to be a major factor in the cot death problem (see Chapter 21).
Cow's milk is responsible for more allergies than any other substance (see the section on allergies later in this chapter and also Chapter 19). British studies, reported in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, found that up to 40% of children were sensitive to it. Another study, in Denmark, showed there has been a dramatic fall in the incidence of childhood diabetes since breast-feeding has come back into vogue.
Cow's milk contains a fair amount of fat and cholesterol, is practically devoid of Vitamin C, and has three times the amount of sodium compared to human milk. As already mentioned, cows' milk contains over twice the amount of protein as human milk and can cause hypernatremic dehydration in bottle-fed babies because of the large amounts of water required to flush from the body the waste products of protein metabolism. Thus cow's milk causes the problem of bed-wetting, 90-95% of all cases being attributable to it.
Even when it is necessary to wean a baby early, there is no necessity to give the child cow's milk. Tests have shown that whether cow's milk, a mixed diet, or a vegetarian diet is given, the growth rate is the same.
Milk cannot be considered a good food, particularly pasteurized, and together with other dairy products should be avoided, except perhaps for small quantities of raw milk and non-fat milk products. Although raw milk contains valuable nutrients in addition to its harmful ones, much of these are destroyed if the milk is pasteurized.
A medical paper, The Effect of Heat Processed Foods and Metabolized Vitamin D Milk on the Dentofacial Structures of Experimental Animals by Dr Francis Pottenger (1946) described tests on cats where one group was fed raw milk, another group pasteurized milk, and a third group evaporated milk and condensed milk. The experiment was continued for four generations of cats.
All generations on the raw milk group thrived. The other two groups deteriorated from the start. They suffered a lowered condition and the second generation was depleted by stillbirth, miscarriage, spontaneous abortion, or resorption in the uterus. The survivors had many defects which included eczema, calcification of tissues, anatomical defects, neuroses and abnormalities in neuromuscular co-ordination. Anatomical differences between the sexes became less apparent and homosexuality appeared.
The third generation was greatly depleted and there was no fourth generation at all; there was not even an attempt at reproduction by the third generation.
In another paper by Dr Maurice Bowerman of Beaverton, Oregon, titled "Milk and Thought Disorder" (Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry , Vol 9, No 4, 1980), Dr Bowerman described the damaging effect of milk on five of his psychiatric patients who had suffered for years from confusion, detachment, poor memory, poor mental efficiency, and paranoid thinking, all accompanied by fatigue. Two had been hospitalized. When milk was removed from their diets four patients became symptom-free and the fifth improved.
Dr Howell points out that once upon a time people maintained vigorous health and achieved long life on diets containing large amounts of dairy foods. But this was before the era of pasteurization.
One reason for the harmful effect of pasteurized milk, according to Dr Howell, is the destruction of the natural enzymes present in raw milk which are at least 35 in number, without which enzymes milk cannot be properly digested. No wonder infants develop allergies to milk and dairy products. One of the most important enzymes in raw milk is lipase, the enzyme which breaks down fat, says Dr Howell. Thus raw dairy products do not result in high cholesterol levels and the rapid onset of atherosclerosis.
Yoghurt
Yoghurt has for a long while been accepted as a health promoting food, and the evidence usually quoted to support this belief is the supposed longevity of people in Bulgaria who regularly consume yoghurt.
Investigating this belief, experiments by American and French doctors in the 1890s and early 1900s on both animals and humans, showed that lactic bacillus cultures from yoghurt included in the diet brought about a diminution of intestinal putrefaction caused by harmful anaerobic bacteria which accompanies meat in the diet. Thus yoghurt taken with the Western high fat/meat diet must convey some benefit at least if the yoghurt is unpasteurized. Although yoghurt is considered to be a dairy product, the fact that it has been "reprocessed" by the yoghurt bacteria into a more digestible form than milk makes it a far more preferable form of food.
Dietary fiber
It has always been considered beneficial to eat foods containing "bulk". It was not thought essential, but desirable, as it helped elimination and prevented constipation.
Dietary fiber does not contribute directly to nourishment. Its function is to add volume and water to the fecal matter which not only ensures easy elimination, but reduces the entire transit time between eating and elimination to about one day instead of up to three which a traditional diet takes.
It was observed by Dr Denis Burkitt and by Dr Hugh Trowell who both spent 25 years working in Africa, that among natives living on the "rural African diet", almost entirely vegetarian and high in fiber, the following diseases were unknown: cancer of the bowel and rectum; diverticulosis, diverticulitis, constipation, hemorrhoids (piles); varicose veins; phlebitis (thrombophlebitis); appendicitis; hernia; hiatus hernia.
In the intestine, fiber absorbs about eight times its own volume of water and causes nearly 30% more bile (which is two-thirds cholesterol) to be excreted. Some researchers claim that a high fiber diet can reduce blood cholesterol by 22%. Other tests showed that fiber by itself has no effect. (Dr Thomas Raymond, University of Oregon, 1976). As a natural high fiber diet is low in fat, cholesterol, protein and refined carbohydrate, on such a diet a reduction in body cholesterol is inevitable anyhow. A low fat, low cholesterol, high fiber diet helps the liver maintain the correct level of the hormone estrogen which can be undesirably high on the Western diet. High levels of estrogen are associated with premature sexual development in girls, and breast cancer.
Fiber is found only in plant foods. It is a type of complex carbohydrate and contains cellulose, hemi-cellulose, lignin and pectin, which pass through the intestines without being broken down by the digestive enzymes. Fruit and vegetable fibers are not as coarse as cereal fiber, particularly if cooked, but are adequate for good elimination. Processed foods, which contain nourishment inversely proportional to the price, such as polished rice, most packaged cereals and instant potatoes, have most of the fiber removed. Stone-ground flour contains more fiber and Vitamin E than ordinary flour which is steel-roller ground. Even stoneground wholemeal bread is not high in fiber as the outer coating of the kernel of the grain is most lost in the milling.
Fruit (whole) vs fruit juice
(See Fruit, the natural food of primates)
It is far better to eat fruit whole for two reasons. Firstly, advantage is derived from the fiber and secondly, the nourishment is absorbed naturally instead of in concentrated form. The composition of commercially produced fruit juice is always suspect anyway, and in the true sense cannot be regarded as fresh.
Onions and garlic
Onions, tabasco and garlic contain some factor which tends to reduce the tendency of blood to clot. Dr Menon demonstrated this effect with onions, served cooked or raw, at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, England.
I have read where European farmers who keep their cows indoors during winter feed them onions. The cows' circulation, impaired by inactivity, is protected thereby from blood clotting. One entire book titled Garlic described the medicinal benefits of garlic as recorded by every civilization that ever left records.
Garlic juice has been demonstrated to be a potent antiseptic, and two studies published in the British Medical Journal, Lancet in 1973, showed that garlic could reduce blood sugar in diabetes patients and reduce cholesterol. Its action therefore must be to reduce fat levels in the blood somehow, because diabetes is caused by high blood fat levels. (See Platelet Adhesiveness Index, Chapter 10.)
Taken in large quantities, garlic can cause irritation to the digestive tract. Garlic contains allicin, which according to Japanese research findings, can destroy the membranes of red blood cells and inflame the gastrointestinal tract.
Health food restaurants
These are usually run by well-meaning people intent on supplying their patrons with health-giving food. Unfortunately, most of their dishes are cooked and contain a high proportion of fat in the form of vegetable oils, nuts and cheese.
Health food stores
Health food stores sell some of the food you need unprocessed and in bulk. On the other hand, they sell a lot of stuff loaded with fat and sugar such as "health" cookies and sweets, chocolate substitutes, processed dried fruits high in sugar, vegetable oils, whether cold-pressed or not, and a great assortment of nuts.
Some health enthusiasts spend a lot of money not only on vitamins but on food supplements such as lecithin, protein meal, protein powder, yeast, carob, ginseng, distilled water, and so on. There are salt substitutes which are sea salt mixed with vegetable powder.
Now while some foods are more nutritious than others, there is no such thing as "magic" food which can promote radiant health. Most ailing people are not under-nourished, and radiant health is possible for them by merely eliminating from their diet the type of foods that, throughout their life, have been polluting their blood.
Tea and coffee
Tea and coffee contain caffeine as do cocoa, cola drinks and chocolate. These beverages cause stress to the nervous system, increase uric acid production and can lead to kidney damage. Researchers at Boston University Medical Center consider coffee intake to be associated with heart attack and cancer, as it increases blood clotting factors. Used with sugar these beverages are even more harmful.
Tea contains less caffeine than coffee but also contains tannin. The caffeine in tea dissolves quickly in boiling water but tannin takes longer. Tea is therefore less harmful if taken weak and poured soon after making and preferably with the addition of milk which renders the tannin innocuous.
The addiction to these drinks stems from the caffeine which is a stimulating drug. It should be pointed out that hot or cold drinks can damage the delicate membranes of the digestive tract. Very hot food or drink can eventually permanently destroy many of the tiny villi of the intestine walls and so reduce digestive capability.
Beer
Beer and other forms of alcohol are refined carbohydrates and therefore to a degree poisonous in the body. It has recently been shown after tests at Birmingham Hospital, England, that as little as three pints of mild ale per day was enough to maintain a level of blood fats and increased blood viscosity sufficient to greatly increase blood pressure, particularly in coronary prone patients. This increased blood viscosity was sufficient to significantly increase the risk of heart attack. The link between beer consumption and cancer already suggested by the report from a British
Regional Heart Study recently, in which it was found heavy beer drinkers had 30% more lead in their systems than teetotallers, is not surprising, particularly in view of the increased blood-fat effect.
Spices
Many spices are irritants to the digestive tract and adversely affect the kidneys and liver if regularly consumed. Some are considered to be carcinogenic (cancer producing).
Dr J. R. Johnson, Nephrologist at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Dr 0. Holmes, a surgeon at Lautoka Hospital, Fiji, reported their study on Fijian Indians in the Australian Medical Journal. They postulated that "Curry Kidney" is akin to "Worcestershire Sauce Kidney" as described by researchers in England and Australia, and which promotes susceptibility to kidney stones.
Scientists at the University of Texas report that common seasonings such as cayenne pepper, paprika and particularly turmeric (the main ingredient in curry powder) can alter body cells permanently by disorganizing chromosomes.
Distilled water and mineral water
Notwithstanding commercial sales talk, there is no evidence that mineral water or spring water is in any degree superior to the plain tap water available in most areas, except perhaps that it contains no fluoride or chlorine. On the other hand, there is strong evidence to the contrary in that some mineral waters contain undesirably high levels of sodium and other salts capable of causing eventual harm.
Distilled water, pure rainwater or the water in fruit and vegetables is desirable for normal body functions, and in addition, because it is capable of taking minerals into solution instead of depositing them, it is beneficial as a body cleanser. On a low protein, vegetarian diet, drinking water to allay thirst is hardly ever required.
Vitamins, enzymes and minerals
Vitamins and enzymes are catalysts which enable body chemistry to function rapidly. (See Enzymes, Chapter 6.)
Vitamins derive their name because they are essential to life, but unlike enzymes, also essential, they cannot be manufactured from other chemicals within the body, they must be present in food. To make enzymes the body must be provided of course with the proper vitamins, minerals and amino acids.
Minerals are inert, and the body requires a wide range of them in its make-up. Apart from places here and there with soil deficiencies, adequate vitamins and minerals are to be found in natural food. Properly grown, organically grown foods could well be of higher quality than those grown with chemical fertilizers but the latter sustain people satisfactorily.
Food suffers depletion in nutrient value when cooked, processed or refined. When a processed food is described as "enriched" it merely means that having been almost destroyed in food value, some synthetic vitamins or minerals have been added to the remnants. Nutritional value lessens as food goes stale; best nutrition is gained by consuming food fresh and uncooked. Speaking on the subject of cancer, and referring specifically to the efficiency of the immune system, Dr Herbert Boynton of San Diego said in 1979 that by merely substituting proper food in place of fat, refined carbohydrate and excess protein, micro-nutrient intake can be increased 300-400%. As such fabulous results using no supplementary vitamins or minerals at all can be achieved merely by the elimination of the most dangerous food substances, and as in various dirty and poverty-stricken areas in the world the children run and play, bright-eyed and with flashing white teeth, it is apparent that the main threat of malnutrition to the world stems from the increasing adoption of Western dietary habits. And as we do not intend in future to subsist on cornflakes, coco-pops, meat pies, hamburgers and so on, I shall not carry on at length about vitamins except to mention a few that are harder to get or more easily destroyed.
Vitamin E
Blood fats, particularly polyunsaturated fats, become oxidized in the bloodstream and deplete blood oxygen. Vitamin E tends to prevent this process and many medical research doctors recommend large intakes of the vitamin because of the beneficial results they have observed.
Dr Wilfred Shute of Canada has propounded the therapeutic value of Vitamin E for over 30 years and has written several convincing books about it.
Drs Manfred Steiner and John Anatase in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, March 1976, describe how doses of Vitamin E up to a maximum of 1800 iu per day reduced blood platelet aggregation by 40-50%. This subject was discussed in Chapter 10.
Dr Alton Ochsner, a leading US surgeon, recommends the use of Vitamin E and no longer uses anti-coagulants. Professor Cureton of the University of Illinois long ago demonstrated improved oxygen utilization by using wheatgerm oil.
Dr Lotz in the Medical Journal of Australia, 11 June 1977, described the alleviation of leg cramps by using Vitamin E.
These doctors describe results successful to different degrees, having used dosages sometimes varying enormously. However, all that their patients needed was to have the condition of their blood corrected by proper diet. Once this was done, the modest levels of Vitamin E (and other vitamins) available in natural food becomes entirely adequate.
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
Vitamin C is probably the most talked about of all the vitamins, and probably the most critical in the lives of civilized people. Like Vitamin E, it is important to the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood, acts as a detoxifier of poisonous substances, and is essential to the integrity of the Protein substance, Collagen, which supports and holds together the cells of the various tissues. Vitamin C is essential to the function of the brain and nervous system and is needed in greatly increased amounts in conditions of any kind of stress, including illness.
It has been shown that a deficiency of Vitamin C renders the body more prone to atherosclerosis, cancer and all other metabolic diseases. Two of the obvious factors relating Vitamin C deficiency to atherosclerosis and cancer are the diminished integrity of the tissues of artery walls and other organs, in addition to diminished oxygen utilization in the body. Vitamin C neutralizes sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite contained in some kinds of processed meats, which chemicals have been shown to be potent carcinogens (cancer-causing agents). Vitamin C also facilitates the absorption of various essential minerals.
It is interesting that ascorbic acid is not a vitamin for most animals, because their bodies have the capacity to constantly manufacture it in varying amounts according to their current needs. Humans and the other primates, guinea pigs and certain fruit-eating bats, lack this capability and must rely on their diet for Vitamin C. Thus, in our "civilized" environment, and deprived of the Vitamin C-rich tropical fruits available to the more primitive primates (living instead on supermarket foods and cold-storage fruit and vegetables), it becomes apparent most people must be deficient in Vitamin C all the time, and it is doubtful whether and to what extent this deficiency can be made up by taking artificial supplements.
Vitamin C in food is perishable and becomes destroyed in long cold storage or when food is cooked, and to make things harder, it cannot be stored in the body, so must be always available in the diet.
There has been a great deal of confusion about the requirements for Vitamin C, much of it stemming from experiments aimed at the elimination of scurvy, whereby it was demonstrated that very small amounts only were needed to reverse or prevent the disease. Upon these findings it was concluded that only small amounts are needed for good health, and the authorities laid down the minimum daily requirement at only 60 mg.
In the light of what is now known of other body functions, it is clear that far greater amounts are required and that most people are suffering (albeit in apparent good health) a sub-clinical deficiency leading eventually to premature degeneration.
Comparing the amounts of Vitamin C found in the body tissues and blood of various animals, many researchers have concluded that adult humans require ideally up to 10,000 mg per day and when under stress perhaps even more. Their arguments are supported by quoting cases of dramatic improvements in very sick people who have been administered, sometimes by injection, large amounts of synthetic Vitamin C.
The writer once attempted to figure out the proper intake of Vitamin C for an adult on the basis of that contained in human milk, assuming that the milk of a well-nourished mother would contain optimal amounts. The information available varied widely. The British publication The Composition of Foods (H.M. Stationery Office) gives the Vitamin C content of human milk as only 3.7 mg per 100 gms, but this would appear a minimal amount. According to Dr Archie Kalokerinos, a world authority, much higher levels are desirable. He says: "If a nursing mother is deficient in Vitamin C her breast milk will be deficient. If the mother has plenty of Vitamin C then her breast milk will contain plenty. However, after a certain level (about 20 mg per 100 gs of milk) is reached, further increases in intake by the mother does not result in a proportional increase in the breast milk".
If it can be assumed that this latter figure is ideal, and if a baby's requirements are any indication of an adult's requirements, then it can be calculated that an adult diet of 2,070 calories should contain 600 mg of Vitamin C. However, this argument does not hold in the light of the fact I discovered, that a baby's requirements for Vitamin C are minimal because the physical activity of a young baby and the stress levels to which it may be subjected are minimal anyway and therefore not a good indication at all.
Whilst the official requirement for adults has been laid down by the US Food and Nutrition Board at 60 mg per day, it is interesting that the "Nutritional Requirements of Laboratory Animals" (National Academy of Science Committee on Animal Nutrition) recommends for monkeys 55 mg of ascorbic acid per kilogram of body weight per day, which equates to 3830 mg for the average adult human. The publication gives two diets for guinea pigs, one which allows a guinea pig 12.5 mg per day and another which gives 50 mg per day. Using a weight of 300 gs for a guinea pig and 70 kg for a human adult, these amounts equate to 2,900 mg and 11,700 mg for adult humans.
Dr Geoffrey Bourne, of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, stated that an adult gorilla in the wild consumes about 4,500 mg of ascorbic acid a day, and Dr Linus Pauling, probably the most informed person on the subject in the world, having taken all these arguments into consideration, concluded the optimal daily intake for human adults to be in the range between 2,300 mg and 9,000 mg, depending on levels of activity and stress.
Dr Pauling tested the amount of Vitamin C contained in over one hundred natural plant foods and deduced that a 2,500 calorie diet of an average cross-section of these foods would provide 2,300 mg of Vitamin C. If the foods richest in Vitamin C were chosen, then 9,400 mg would be provided.
Thus it can be seen that whereas the other vitamins don't present much of a problem, how do you know whether your diet is adequate in Vitamin C' How do you know if an orange was properly grown or how old it is? In fact comparison tables show that even good oranges don't contain great amounts of Vitamin C. Certain tropical fruits such as Acerola cherries, Peruvian camu camu and guavas, may contain up to 30 times more Vitamin C than good oranges, whereas pineapples, mangoes and bananas contain relatively little. From the foods available in temperate climates the best sources of Vitamin C are leafy green vegetables, tomatoes, berries, peppers, strawberries, cauliflower and citrus fruits, preferably, of course, eaten raw.
It is significant that the tropical fruits as a rule contain the highest levels of Vitamin C and that in temperate climates the summer fruits such as blackcurrants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries and tomatoes are the best available sources. Potatoes contain a little, but if sufficient of them are consumed, reasonable amounts of the vitamin are available. Cherries, plums, grapes, pears, apples, carrots, lettuce and celery contain very little Vitamin C.
Supplementary Vitamin C. It would seem advisable, unless extreme care is taken in selecting food, that benefit would be gained by people in temperate to cold climates in taking supplementary ascorbic acid. Always remember however, that in Nature all nutrients are accompanied by many others, such as the bioflavinoids, and that any artificial food substance can be regarded, at best, as second-rate.
Incidentally, Irwin Stone, who felt that synthetic Vitamin C was superior (there is no doubt he observed it achieve much good), and who took large amounts of it for many years, died recently, aged 75, of a heart attack. He had always indulged in the Western diet, claiming that Vitamin C fully protected him. Like Dr Wilfred Shute, who placed similar reliance on the protective powers of Vitamin E, he paid the standard price for his ignorance of Nature's eternal laws.
Vitamin B12
Herbivorous animals produce Vitamin B12 in their bodies and it is commonly thought that the human diet should include at least a little animal protein to supply this vitamin. Only minute amounts (one millionth of one gram per day) are required, and normal body stores are adequate for at least five years. It appears that Vitamin B12 can be synthesized in the human digestive tract as in other animals, but one way or another there is ample evidence that pure vegetarians maintain normal levels and good health indefinitely on a diet apparently devoid of Vitamin B12.
Dr Richard Bargen (USA) in his book The Vegetarian's Self-Defense Manual (1979) says: "After careful review of all the literature often quoted as demonstrating 'pure' vegetarians often suffer Vitamin B12 deficiency because of inadequate dietary intake, not one solitary case was found wherein a vegan consuming an adequate, purely plant food diet suffered any ill health due to Vitamin B12 deficiency or any other deficiency. This finding contradicts the statements made in virtually every textbook of medicine and nutrition I've ever come across".
Pernicious anemia can afflict meat-eaters as well as vegetarians and the disease may be corrected by Vitamin B12 injections. Thus it is shown that the anemia is caused not by lack of B12 in the diet, but by the body's inability to utilize it, the problem sometimes arising from deficiencies of other nutrients such as folacin, iron and Vitamin B6.
Vitamin supplements and megavitamin therapy
Similar observations can be made of other vitamins and minerals. Obviously if a person's diet is deficient in them, he will benefit by proper amounts taken supplementarily. A friend of mine swears by the efficacy of large doses of B complex vitamins taken before, during and after a big night out to replace those destroyed by alcohol. All refined carbohydrates use body stores of Vitamin B1 (thiamine) and many people are doubtless deficient in it a lot of the time with consequent thyroid malfunction.
It is recognized that there probably are many vital foods factors still to be identified, and that in order to ensure we are not deprived of them, it is advisable to consume natural foods preferably uncooked and unprocessed.
Administering large does of vitamins in excess of normal requirements in an effort to improve a sick person's condition is called "megavitamin therapy".
The book Supernutrition by Richard Passwater insists that large doses of certain vitamins and minerals will lead to optimum levels of body chemistry. I don't doubt that they sometimes help, but there is evidence that in some cases some supplements cause actual harm in the body.
Selling synthetic vitamins is profitable and is big business, and it is very dubious whether the consumer in most cases achieves anything other than processing very expensive urine. Choice magazine in Australia reported in May 1984 that most vitamin preparations available were extremely overpriced and many consisted of between 50% and 71 % sugar. They were colored with artificial chemicals and some contained undesirable levels of sodium.
Optimum levels of body chemistry can be achieved only by first eliminating poisoning factors from the diet. Vitamins by the cartload cannot rectify the condition of "lipotoxemia". So in all cases the remedy is to clear the toxic condition of the blood and permit the body chemistry to return to normal of its own accord, nourished by a wholesome natural diet.
Supplementary enzymes
All natural foods contain enzymes in quantities proportional to the calorific content of the food. Although the enzymes exist for other natural purposes, when an organic substance is consumed as food, its enzymes become available to assist in its digestion. However, as most of the food eaten by humans has been cooked, the digestive process must rely almost entirely on enzymes produced by the body.
People with defective digestion due to pancreatic deficiency can achieve normal digestion by taking suitable supplementary enzymes in tablet form. In fact it is highly probable that people who eat most of their food cooked would also benefit greatly by taking supplementary enzymes with their meals.
Herbs and herbal extracts
There are literally hundreds of herbs which are claimed to be health-giving when used in addition to ordinary foods. Many books have been written on this subject, indeed entire books have been devoted to acclaiming the properties of just one single herb. A sort of cult of "herb worshippers" exists similar to the cult of vitamin worshippers.
I am not opposed to people using supplementary vitamins and herbal extracts, because these products seem to do no harm, and in many cases appear to do good. Sometimes as with medicine, the good influence may be achieved by the placebo effect, i.e. via mental pathways.
There is no doubt however, that herbs such as aloe vera, ginseng and so on, can help to purify or "de-fat" the bloodstream and improve circulation and general metabolism, thereby achieving in some cases a diminution of some disease symptoms. A study by J. B. Michaelson PhD, of the Applied Biological Sciences Laboratory, using rabbits fed on very high fat diets showed that when 2% Tienchi Ginseng was added to the diet of one group, the rabbits remained slender with clear arteries, Whereas the other group became obese, with arteries clogged with fat deposits.
It is obviously a far better idea, however, to shun a diet high in fat and cholesterol in the first place.
Fad diets
There are grape diets, macrobiotic diets based on brown rice, raw vegetable diets, fruit diets, juice diets, high fiber diets etc., each proclaimed to rapidly restore vital health. And they do, inasmuch as they all eliminate most of the substances which have been causing the harm. This allows the bloodstream to clear and carry oxygen better. They also allow the body to free itself of poisons.
There is no "magical" nutrient in grapes or in brown rice of anything else. Some extreme diets could, if maintained, lead to deficiencies--they are in fact what could be called partial fasting.
Fasting
Fasting has been known for hundreds of years to enable an ailing body to rapidly return itself to health. It is perfectly safe except for people suffering from nutritional deficiencies.
A fast can be one day long or vary, according to the requirement, to over one hundred days. A long fast must be carefully conducted by an experienced naturopath as complex changes in body chemistry must be monitored. The principle of fasting is that the body is relieved of the effort of digesting foods, harmful substances are excluded from the body, and the body detoxifies itself by consuming, for fuel, fat and various noxious substances stored in the tissues. At the same time toxins are eliminated through the urine, breath and perspiration, the evidence of which becomes apparent in the form of severe body odor. Weight loss is obviously achieved by fasting and if the fast is extended, some lean body tissue (protein) will be lost as well as fat, because when carbohydrate stores are gone, protein is used by the body to make glucose. However, the loss of protein is not severe because after a few days the brain and nervous system adapt to using ketone substances, derived from fat, for the major proportion of their energy needs. Only when the body's fat reserves are gone does emaciation of lean tissue occur.
Special diets
Special diets can generally be considered to be in two classes, those to eliminate illness and promote health, and those designed for the purpose of slimming. A properly designed diet will cover both requirements automatically. The reason "traditional" health diets, evolved from traditional concepts such as taught by Adelle Davis, Lelord Kordel, Gayelord Hauser and others, fail in both requirements, is that they are wrongly composed, containing too much protein and fat, and do not satisfy the appetite in time to prevent the tendency to overeat. The weight-reducing diets based on high protein, high cholesterol food, such as the Atkins diet, Scarsdale diet and Stillman diet, may cause outright harm; they achieve weight loss but they cause dehydration and loss of muscle tissue as well as stress on all vital organs.
People can be indefinitely sustained even on synthetic chemical diets. Intravenous glucose is commonly used in hospitals but can provide only 600 calories per day. People with seriously impaired digestive organs can be maintained in good health on a synthetic liquid mixture of nutrients constantly fed into their veins by a small portable pump. The long-term effects of such a diet are not known.
The value of any dietary regime can only be assessed over a tong period, perhaps even a lifetime, because a special diet which may effect great initial benefit may end up causing long-term degeneration. Any diet at all which drastically reduces fat intake will produce impressive improvements initially just by unsticking the blood, as of course, does fasting. Over a hundred years ago, Dr J.H. Salisbury of New York achieved fame in the USA and Europe because of his success in achieving cures for all kinds of illnesses by dietary means. The Salisbury regimen consisted simply of four pints of hot water taken daily and a diet of plain ground beef. The minced meat was taken in three meals spaced five hours apart, each one preceded one hour beforehand by a pint of hot water with the last pint before retiring at night. The meat was dry broiled or boiled in water to remove the fat. The patients all suffered a constant craving for something sweet but rapidly improved in health. The immediate benefit of this diet obviously came about by the reduction of fat in the blood and the curtailment of total food intake. However, after a time these benefits would be offset by malnutrition in other areas.
The popular Weight Watchers diet is an improvement on the conventional Western diet but is not recommended because it still permits too much protein, as well as fats, oil, mayonnaise, cheese, eggs, salt and pepper.
Of the various popular diets, the three best known for their health promoting effects are the macrobiotic diet, the Pritikin diet and the Gerson diet. These diets have good track records, their claims having been substantiated by many medical case histories and testimonials. The macrobiotic diet, based on brown rice, contains too much cooked food and salt and insufficient fruit to achieve the best long-term results. The Pritikin diet is better, but because the Pritikin guidelines are fairly flexible, it is possible for two people, both keeping within the guidelines to experience different results. This can happen because individual food preferences may lead one to consume a preponderance of cereal food and cooked vegetables whereas the other may favor raw salads and fruit, the latter course being much more preferable. For instance within the Pritikin guidelines better circulation is achieved simply by the drastic reduction of fat, but an excessive intake of grain products may at the same time exacerbate arthritis and eventually result in cancer. If the diet is based on raw fruit and vegetables this danger is not presented.
The Gerson diet (see Chapter 20) is more to be recommended: it is a very strict regimen having been designed for cancer patients in view of their precarious state of body chemistry.
To repeat, the main objections to the Pritikin diet and the macrobiotic diet is their preponderance of grain products, the effect of which is to unbalance body chemistry, and introduce new problems and exacerbate others.
Remember, the object of all this enquiry is not just to took good on the beach while we are young, not just to avoid a heart attack or cancer in middle age, but to extend a happy and vigorous life far into the future.
The value of raw food
There is no doubt that the cooking of food is an unnatural process invented by man comparatively recently in his evolutionary development. Although cooking may render certain foods, such as cereals, more readily assimilable to human digestion, and render some foods more palatable, generally it is a destructive process which seriously depletes the nutritive value of food.
Dr Herbert Shelton, referred to earlier, in his book Superior Nutrition, said: "Cooking destroys in part, if not wholly, the oxidizable factors of foods. This simply means that cooking 'bums' those portions of foods that the body ordinarily oxidizes. Once these substances have been oxidized, they cannot again be oxidized in the body, hence they are useless as food. Heat, by speeding up oxidization, turns food into ashes before it is eaten. For example, certain of the amino acids, lysine and glutamine are destroyed by the cooking process. The losses that are produced by cooking may not result in serious trouble until later in life and all of their effects do not show up for two or three generations".
Consider the following points:
Although the reasons were not understood, the harmful effects of cooked food have long been known. In 1829, Vincent Priessnitz of Silesia described the "inflamed and brittle" flesh of a pig which had been fed on cooked food all its life and compared it with the "firm and healthy" flesh of pigs fed on raw food. A diet of raw fruit and vegetables formed the basis of treatment at Louis Kuhne's celebrated clinic in Leipzig, Germany, 100 years ago, and has ever since been the basis of treatment in the many other famed sanatoriums of the world.
The importance of enzymes in food is not only that a load is taken off the pancreas, but possibly more important, the food is more completely broken down before assimilation from the intestine, so improving the entire metabolic processes within the body. The observations of researchers, J. M. Rabinowitch, J. A. Urquhart and others, described in the paper, Lipase versus Cholesterol (1983) by Dr Howell, demonstrate this fact.
The value of enzymes in raw fruit and vegetables is well known, but just as important are the enzymes in foods of animal origin. Animal protein, raw, contains the proteolytic enzyme cathepsin, and animal fat, raw, contains adipose lipase. All these food enzymes work to pre-digest their particular food component in the upper (cardiac) section of the stomach before being inactivated by the acid in the lower stomach. The research shows that the resultant more thorough breakdown of these foods in the intestine enables the body to more efficiently metabolize the protein, fat and cholesterol, thereby reducing the tendency to atherosclerosis.
It is preferable that food should be eaten at about body temperature; if food is eaten cold, digestive action cannot proceed until the food has been warmed in the stomach. Hot food can damage cells lining the digestive tract.
If raw food is allowed to "ripen" before eating, such as when meat is hung for several days, it becomes actually partially pre-digested by its own enzymes. In 1935, Dr Urquhart, in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, described how Eskimos did not cut up caribou meat until the animal had been dead for a few days. Similarly, freshly caught fish were buried to be later eaten uncooked in a partly decomposed state. The Eskimos gained a health benefit from this practice, said Dr Urquhart who described from his own experience how hard-working sled dogs could maintain top condition on such food whereas on a diet of fresh fish they weakened and lost weight after two weeks.
Further evidence that natural enzymes in uncooked food play a significant part in the digestive process is the fact that herbivorous animals although requiring large quantities of digestive enzymes, have very little in their saliva and have a pancreas of less than half the size compared with their body weight, than humans, who eat mainly cooked food. This shows that the digestive enzymes required by the animals must be furnished mainly by their food.
Allowing for differences in anatomy and so on, that this comparison is still valid is indicated by the fact that hypertrophy of the pancreas of animals occurs when the diet is changed to heat-denatured, enzyme-deficient food. Experiments by Dr Jackson, Department of Anatomy, University of Minnesota, showed that on such a diet, otherwise properly balanced, in a period of 155 days the pancreas and submaxillary glands of rats increased in weight by 20-30%, while the pituitary and suprarenals decreased in weight.
Accompanying the enlargement of the pancreas brought about in the digestion of cooked food are changes in the gonads, adrenals, pituitary and other ductless glands. A study of people killed accidentally showed that all those over fifty had a defective pituitary gland, the master gland of the body.
As already mentioned, the destruction of enzymes is not the only harm caused by heating food. Japanese experiments with baby mice showed that when fed milk which had previously been heated, the mice did not survive. Using milk previously heated to 80°C (176°F) for half an hour, mice survived only three weeks. The higher the temperature to which the milk was heated the shorter was the survival time--120°C (248°F) caused death in one week, and 140°C (284°F) caused death in three to five days. The famous Pottenger experiment (see Milk, this chapter) throws further light on this subject in view of the fact that raw meat was included in the cats' diet. The most significant fact revealed by this experiment, apart from the lethal effects on the experimental cats, was that the the excrement of these cats was poisonous to the ground, rendering it sterile and unsupportive of plant life, whereas in the pens of the healthy cats the ground was fertilized and supported flourishing vegetation.
Possibly the best examples of the harmful effects of cooked food are the studies of animals in the Philadelphia Zoo by Dr H. Fox, described in his book Disease in Captive Wild Animals and Birds (1923). For many years the mortality of animals kept in captivity was very high and attempts to breed them were not very successful. When it was realized that it was false economy to feed animals cheap food such as restaurant scraps etc, and their diets were changed to natural raw foods, straight away the animals' health improved and the mortality rate dropped to very low levels, while at the same time the animals began to breed normally.
It was mentioned earlier that Vilhjalmur Stephansson adopted an all-meat diet with disastrous results, all the worse because of consuming the meat cooked. A more recent study of Angmagsalik Eskimos, a community of about 1,000 on the east coast of Greenland, showed an average life span of only 27.5 years, mainly due to premature degeneration of adults. Their diet consisted of 95% flesh food. The study was by Hoygaard and Pedersen, Copenhagen 1941. This short life span appears to be worse than in the earlier reports on Eskimos elsewhere, and the writer speculates whether the Angmagsalik Eskimos had adopted the practice of cooking their food.
There is an association between the cooking and processing of food and the incidence of cancer, and conversely, it is a fact that cancer patients make the best recoveries on completely raw vegetarian food. In some cases, the reversion to even a partly cooked diet allowed the cancer to reappear.
This shows that when vital organs are at their lowest state of function, only raw foods make it possible for them to provide the proper body chemistry to maintain health. It follows then, that if raw food permits an otherwise ruined body to restore itself to health, so must raw food provide the maximum benefit to anybody--sick or well.
Dr Max Garten in his book The Health Secrets of a Naturopathic Doctor (1967) described how his health had not much improved by becoming a vegetarian, and how this led him to try a completely raw food regimen. He said: "The results were electrifying; within a few days I felt much stronger with a return of my former enthusiasm. Many of my patients whom I had been able to convert to this new diet also reported similar results". Dr Garten observed that putrefactive bacteria in the colon increased not only with the eating of meat but also with the degree of heat used in cooking all food, and with this increase so also did the odiferousness of the stool increase along with the appearance of aches and pains. He said: "It could only he deduced that certain agents in the diet were either missing or had been altered by the heat.
"The respective protein content of the vegetarian diet had also been found to be indicative of changes in the intestinal flora, legumes such as beans, lentils, peas etc. equally contributing to the display of putrefactive changes."
Thus, although vegetarians usually are healthier and outlive meat-eaters, they may not maintain very good health or live to a very advanced age if they continually cook their food.
Raw fruit, the natural food of primates
People become vegetarians to improve their health and extend their lives. Some vegetarians go a step further and consume their food mainly uncooked, while others go even further and limit their diet to fruit, which they claim to be the natural food of man.
Their argument is sound for a number of reasons, but one way or the other, it is a fact that, in reasonable variation, fruit can provide the full complement of all required nutrients in adequate quantities, remembering that the requirements for protein and fat are much lower than generally believed, Therefore, instead of being considered merely an accessory to conventional meals, fruit should be considered in its own right as a staple food. The advantages of a fruitarian diet are:
That it is the only single food substance which alone can sustain human life, even without drinking water, indicates that fruit is indeed man's natural food. Further substantiation of this view is that there are about forty distinct anatomical, physiological and biological features of humans which show unquestionably that the human body is designed mainly for a fruit diet, notwithstanding the fact that, like all animals, they can survive less successfully on a wide variety of foods. These features range from natural fondness for sweet foods, jaw and teeth structure, salivary secretion, length of digestive tract, size of pancreas, stereo color vision and so on. In fact in all these respects, humans are practically identical today with the more primitive primates in the wild which, whenever possible, live on fruit.
Evidence of the suitability of fruit as a staple food and not just as an accessory to the conventional diet is to be seen by observing fruitarians who live entirely on a wide variety of fresh fruit, and who display lean, youthful bodies, low blood pressure, clear vision and unimpaired faculties, even with advancing years.
A well-known human peculiarity never before connected with this argument but which provides almost conclusive evidence, is that humans, like all primates, are incapable of making Vitamin C in their bodies whereas other animals can (excepting guinea pigs and fruit-eating bats). Basing their argument on this fact, it is strongly advocated by many authorities that people should take large amounts of supplementary Vitamin C to compensate for this "error of Nature" which they put down to an unfavorable mutation in our evolutionary past some millions of years ago. To prove this argument completely wrong, and at the same time prove that man is a natural fruit-eater, consider:
Therefore it is clear that the human diet ideally, should be based mainly on fresh fruit, and that past errors which have led to widespread Vitamin C deficiencies are dietary--not genetic--errors.
Obviously some fruits are more nutritious than others, and quality will vary according to the quality of the soil in which they are grown. Commercially grown fruit may contain various levels of insecticide poisons, in which case the fruit should be carefully washed or peeled. At the time of this fifth edition, the author has subsisted almost entirely on commercially grown fruit for 15 years, all the while working long hours seven days a week, and has maintained excellent health. I have chosen the fruit at random with a preference for tropical fruits, and included dried fruits from time to time without any attempt at being scientific about it. It is claimed by some people that such a diet will eventuate in high blood triglycerides and this is why Nathan Pritikin limited fruit. The increase in triglycerides is supposed to follow elevated levels of blood sugar after eating fruit, but this does not occur with eating raw fruit, particularly eaten at whim throughout the day rather than in three large meals. An objection to acid fruits such as citrus and pineapples, particularly if unripe, is that eaten in excess, the acid may cause erosion in the enamel of the teeth. It is interesting to note here that with good body chemistry and a clean mouth, teeth, like bones, are self repairable. With half my teeth jammed with fillings, maybe they are beyond self repair, but at my regular pilot medical check-ups, I enjoy being told by my doctor I have the arteries and blood pressure of a schoolboy. That makes fruit taste better still, even on a winter's day.
A convert to fruitarianism was the Indian philosopher and statesman Mahatma Gandhi, who after experiencing poor health throughout his youth became a student of nature cure at the age of 32. First he became a vegetarian and then a fruitarian. After six months as a fruitarian, he said (quoted from his book The Health Guide):
"A period of six months is all too short to arrive at any definite conclusions on such a vital matter as a complete change of diet. This, however, I can say, that, during this period, I have been able to keep well where others have been attacked by disease, and my physical as well as mental powers are now greater than before. I may not be able to lift heavy loads, but I can do hard labor for a much longer time without fatigue. I can also do more mental work, and with better persistence and resoluteness. I have tried a fruit diet on many sickly people, invariably with great advantage. My own experience, as well as my study of the subject, has confirmed me in the conviction that a fruit diet is the best one for us."
An interesting personality is champion weightlifter, Wiley Brooks, of Venice, California. Most unconventional, Wiley, 6 feet tall and weighing 135 lbs, at age 45 could, from a squat rack, lift 935 lbs. He eats only raw fruit and fruit juice.
Dr de Lacy Evans, who devoted most of his professional life to the study of patients, populations, and the factors involved in the aging process, said of fruit:
"There is, therefore, a simplicity, a reason, a wonderful philosophy in the first command given to man--Man may live entirely upon fruits in better health than the majority of mankind now enjoy. Good, sound, ripe fruits are never the cause of disease, but the vegetable acids, as we have before stated, lower the temperature of the body., decrease the process of combustion or oxidation--therefore the waste of the system--less sleep is requited, activity is increased, fatigue or thirst is hardly experienced: still the body is well nourished, and as a comparatively small quantity of earthy salts are taken into the system, the cause of old age is in some degree removed, the effect is delayed, and life is prolonged to a period far beyond our 'threescore and ten'."
Frequency of meals
Apart from the sort of food that you eat, the way in which it is eaten is a health factor in itself.
When food is consumed more frequently but in smaller amounts ie. frequent snacks instead of three full meals, the level of blood sugar (glucose) remains steady. If the same amount of food is eaten in large amounts widely spaced, the blood sugar may rise too much after eating each meal resulting in an increase in triglycerides and possibly a degree of hypoglycemia as the sugar level subsequently slumps.
At the Longevity Center, small main meals are served interspersed with four snacks throughout the day. The snacks are perhaps soup, fruit, salad or a baked potato.
Experiments by Dr Grant Gwinup, University of California, Irvine, and by Dr Pavel Fabry of Prague, Czechoslovakia, with human subjects, and by Dr Clarence Cohn at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago with animals, demonstrated that spreading food intake by frequent snacks throughout the day caused lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels than when the same food was taken in three meals. When taken in one large meal a day, cholesterol and triglyceride levels increased. Dr Fabry, whose study covered 1,133 men aged 60-64, provided data showing that those men eating three meals or less per day had a significantly higher incidence of CVD symptoms than those eating the same rations in five or more meals.
Pregnant women and growing children
Everybody agrees that pregnant women and growing children should be properly nourished even if no one else is. Advice abounds on how this should be accomplished, and for some reason or other the various "authorities" say that extra protein is needed, milk should be guzzled to get calcium, and so on. "If such special measures are not necessary," the question is asked by concerned mothers, "will a simple natural vegetarian diet provide adequate nutrition?" And the answer is: of course it will. A diet which enables a feeble invalid to heal ulcers, strengthen porous bones, build new muscle, repair lung tissue and then go running for miles outdoors is certainly adequate for pregnant or nursing mothers, and has been demonstrated to produce optimum health and growth in children once they are weaned, which should never be in less than a year.
Food allergies
As the importance of nutritional factors in health and disease becomes more and more apparent, there is a tendency to disregard the basic fundamentals of balanced nutrition and to go searching for "super nutritional" substances or "missing" vitamins and minerals to overcome the inadequacy of the conventional diet. A new branch of medicine known as orthomolecular medicine concentrates on this aspect but at the same time tries to ascertain if a specific substance or substances in the patient's diet may he causing illness. If a person constantly reacts unfavorably to a dietary substance they are said to be allergic to it. Proper correction of the diet automatically eliminates many allergies because the most common allergies are foods which should be avoided by everybody anyway.
The symptoms of food allergy are caused by certain incompletely digested food substances entering the bloodstream or lymph from the intestine and causing chemical reactions in the body. Such entry of undigested food particles into the circulation is possible in normal people without causing an allergic reaction because enzymes in the blood serum complete the breakdown of the food, or it will be digested by the body's white cells.
The most common allergies occur because of a confused response by the white cells due to a built-in immune system defect originating from wrong feeding as an infant. Nature intended infants to be breast-fed. A baby's digestive system cannot properly cope with any other kinds of food; not only does mother's milk provide perfect nutrition for the child, it provides immunological substances to protect against infection until the child's own immune system is completely developed. Foods other than mother's milk fed to the child in infancy not only cause digestive upsets, but the entry of undigested food into the bloodstream confuses the complicated programming of the still developing immune system. Allergies have been traced back even to substances eaten by the mother in pregnancy. Such an allergy may appear at first sight to be inherited, but is not. Food allergies are most common in young children who in many cases outgrow them after the age of five years.
Allergic reactions occur more readily when the health is indifferent or in chronic illness when enzyme levels and general metabolism are low. Quoting from the book The Status of Food Enzymes in Digestion and Metabolism by Dr Edward Howell: "Oelgoetz believes that the presence of a proper level of serum enzymes is an effective protection against food allergy occasioned by absorption of whole proteins, and that a low serum enzymes level induces allergy. According to the experience of Oelgoetz and associates, when doses of pancreatic enzymes larger than the official doses are administered to patients having symptoms of allergy accompanied by a low serum enzymes level, the serum enzymes level returns to normal and the symptoms of allergy subside".
Dr Rob Krakovitz, MD, of Marina del Rey, California, says that to treat allergies naturally it is necessary to improve digestion, and advises patients:
This advice of course revolves around obtaining the most favorable enzyme activity in the digestive tract.
It is significant that the foods found to be most commonly causative of allergies are cow's milk, wheat, corn and eggs, which foods in one form or another are often fed to babies upon weaning. Whether your digestive system can handle them or not, these substances are not desirable in the diet anyway.
It should be noted too that the Cytotoxic Food Test now in common use for testing food allergies has been found to give inconsistent results and a large number of false-positive reactions (Leiberman et at, JAMA February 17, 1975).
Food for thought
Sponsored by the National Geographic, Dr Alexander Leaf visited the three localities in the world renowned for the health, vigor and longevity of the people--Vilcabamba, Hunza and the Caucasus. The trip was written up in the January 1973 edition. Later Dr Leaf wrote the book Youth in Old Age and in the book quoted these figures:
Average daily intake Calories Fats Proteins Carbohydrates
(g) (g) (g)
Americans--all ages 3,300 157 100 380 (mostly refined)
Hunza--adult males 1,923 36 50 354 (complex)
Vilcabamba--elderly 1,200 16 38 230 (complex)
Caucasus--over 80 1,800 50 80 N/A
These different diets are shown in the next table with the constituents as percentages of the total calories. Other diets are shown as well. The Australian diet is similar to the American.
Average daily intake Fat Proteins Carbohydrate
American--all ages 40-45% 15-20% 40-45% (mostly refined)
Hunza--adult males 17% 10% 73% (unrefined)
Vilcabamba--elderly 12% 12% 76% (unrefined)
Caucasus--over 80 25% 18% 57% (unrefined)
PNG West Highlands 3% 3% 94% (unrefined)
Pritikin Longevity Center 5-10% 10-15% 60% (unrefined)
World Health Organization
recommendation 20% 20-30% 50-60% (not defined)
US Senate Select Committee
recommendation 30% 10-15% 55-60% (15% refined)
American Heart Association 30% 15% 55%
American Diabetic Association 30% 15% 55%
National Cancer Institute
Recommendation 30% 15% 55%
The excess to