Those who declare that denatured, refined and "ashless" foods are all right because the growing child, the young mother, the athletic youth and working adult obtain a great variety of "offsetting" foods which balance-up these denatured foods, are greatly in error.
The great bulk of their diet is made up of white sugar, white bread, white rice, denatured breakfast foods (cereals), glucose table syrups, glucose candies, ginger-snaps, and other cakes and pies, doughnuts, soda crackers, corn meal mush, tapioca, pearled barley, ice cream, pasteurized or boiled milk, meats, oleomargarine, lard and cooking compounds. Canned fruits and vegetables, cooked foods, etc., are not offsetting foods. These foods all need to be offset and no man, woman or child can eat sufficient fruits and vegetables to offset the deficiencies of such a diet. None of these foods will nourish the body. None of them build bones and nerves. None of them build normal blood. On any or all of them animals die.
Dr. Seale Harris, of Birmingham, Alabama, in an address before the American Medical Association, said: "The sugar-fed child is one of the saddest sights in the world. Many sugar-saturated vitamin-starved Americans, that is, those who live largely on white flour bread, white potatoes, white rice, lean meats, sugar-saturated coffee, and sugar-laden desserts, with candy and soft drinks between meals, would seem to be susceptible to ulcer and other abdominal diseases in which infection plays a part."
We may concede that such a diet is lacking in vitamins--we know that it is lacking in calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, sulphur, phosphorus, iodine, sodium, silicon and other minerals. Children and adults fed on such a diet are certainly mineral-starved. Sugar is not merely vitamin-free, it is also mineral free. Children fed as above are suffering from a dyscrasia, which has its origin in a lack of the above named elements.
How absurd the prevailing notion that a diet such as that described by Dr. Harris, may be rendered adequate by the addition of nauseous cod-liver oil, or by adding a few cakes of yeast to the diet.
McCann says: "When the phosphorus goes the iron goes. When the iron goes, the calcium goes. When the calcium goes, the potassium goes. When these substances go the vitamins go with them, leaving the starches and the gluten behind. Starches and gluten do not themselves sustain life, do not protect health.
"The food factory cannot remove any element from whole wheat or from any other cereal without also removing all the other elements. These elements are so intimately bound up with each other that when one departs all follow."
The practice of peeling certain foods and throwing away the parings is wasteful and harmful. In the indigestible woody fiber and branny cellulose of beans, peas, cereals, fresh corn and nuts, and in the skins of the cucumber, squash, tomato and similar foods, and the seeds of berries, are many solubles (mineral salts) which are yielded up to the body during their passage through the digestive tract. The salts are needed by the body and to throw them away is folly.
In the animal body the various chemical elements are distributed in varying proportions in the different tissues--the muscles are rich in proteins, the bones are rich in calcium and phosphorus, the nerves are rich in phosphorus, the blood is rich in iron and sodium. So, also, in plants, the chemical elements are variously distributed in their different structures.
In a general way potassium, sodium, calcium, iron and sulphur pass into the stems, leaves, and fruits of the plants, while potassium, phosphorus and magnesium predominate in the seeds and roots. Green leafy tops are rich in lime and other needed minerals.
In the lower portions of all vegetables is located the greatest amount of starch and the least amount of minerals and vitamins. The upper green tips of the cabbage are the seats of the greater quantity of minerals and these diminish as we move down to the thick stems. In a general way it is estimated that there are five times as much minerals and vitamins in the green, leafy tops of radishes, onions, beets, turnips, carrots, spinach, lettuce, celery, etc., as in the lower or root portions.
In seeds there is an accumulation of calcium, sodium magnesium, sulphur, fluorine and silica in the outer layers, while potassium and sulphur predominate in the inner parts. The vitamins in potatoes are in their eyes and the minerals are under the skin. In grains the vitamins are chiefly in the germ and the minerals are in the outer layers.
All the elements are necessary to sustain life and no portion of the plant should be thrown away. If the grains are ground up and their midlings, bran and germ are thrown away all the vitamins and nearly all the minerals are discarded. If we dig out the eyes of the potato and peel the potato we lose practically all the minerals and vitamins.
There are very few conditions in which we must omit the coarser of these substances and for most patients and all normal individuals they should be a part of the diet. The human digestive tract is as well adapted to handling these things and can take care of them as well as can the digestive tract of the ape or the deer. Nature has not designed man for a diet of mush and does not confine him to such a diet. Indeed a mush diet proves his undoing.
Freezing breaks down food both chemically and physically and impairs its food value. Rabbits and chickens will not eat frozen lettuce or cabbage. Freezing breaks down these foods to so great an extent that it is plainly visible to the eye. Ice cream, ices, sherberts, frozen fruits, etc., cannot be recommended. Iced drinks are also bad for the reason that they impair digestion.
The natural affinity existing between the needs of the cells of man's body and the nutritional elements of fruits, nuts and vegetables, is sure guarantee that the eating of natural, that is, unprocessed foods, is thoroughly safe and constructive and that it is in closest harmony with the physiological or biological requirements of the body. Vitamins, calories and other necessary food elements will be supplied as needed by such a plan, and any method of processing our foods and all attempts to reinforce their unfoldment and effects within the body must result in a disturbance of the functions and processes of life.
Dr. Gibson lists, as Life threatening foods, "Ice cream, malted milk, preparations of cocoa and chocolates, alcoholic preparations, any preparation of bran, if separated from the grain itself, any form of bottled beverages, any form of pastry containing sugar, melted butter or lard, patent-sifted flour, cream, or fruit extracts, all kinds of factory preserves, every food stuff that kitchen chemistry has changed from a healthy natural product of vegetative evolution, into a haphazard output of unscientific digestion-and-nutrition-defying food camouflage."
All processed foods should be eschewed. Any treatment of foods which alters their chemistry, or that extracts some of their essential elements, offers nothing but devitalized husks to the consumer.
Sterilizing, predigesting, malting, dextrinizing, glutenizing, pasteurizing, refining, pickling, preserving, denaturing, extracting, concentrating, diluting, emulsifying, concocting, separating, isolating, demineralizing, frying, boiling, baking, hashing, "fruiting" and "crinking" processes are injurious, both to the nutritive value of foods and to the vitality of the consumer. The doctor, the cook, the chemist and the food manufacturer should be required to keep their hands off the food outputs of nature.
The factories, refineries, mills, canneries, bake shops, cooks, etc., have seen to it that we get but little natural foods. Not only have they been very busy subtracting, from them their valuable mineral elements, but they have also learned to add to them many irritating, injurious and poisonous chemicals, dye stuffs, preservatives, etc., until thousands are yearly killed and many are weakened in body and mind. We are fast becoming a race of glass yes, bald heads, false teeth and wooden legs as a result. As one well known Hygienist has so truthfully remarked: "We wake ourselves with caffeine, move our bowels with cathartics, coax an appetite with condiments, seek rest in nicotine, go to sleep with an opiate, and die just when we should begin to live."
(From the book "The Hygienic System: Orthotrophy", by Herbert M. Shelton.)
If you are not getting optimum nutrition then you should begin getting the right products to help you. I have seen some remarkable results take place in people who have decided they no longer want to suffer from their ill health.
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