Uncritically referring all the evils that flow from a preponderantly denatured diet to a lack of vitamins is rank folly. Many food factors besides vitamins are lacking in these diets. Various minerals are lacking. Often essential amino acids are not present. The fats are commonly cooked and renderd useless. In the same way, referring all the improvement that follows the addition of fruit or vegetable juices to the inadequate diets to vitamins is folly. These juices contain much other food material besides their vitamins--materials that are often greatly lacking in the various denatured diets consumed by people everywhere.
Nerves and brain are rich in phosphorus. Polished rice, the classic "cause" of beri-beri is practically free of soluble phosphorus. Indeed, Berg says: "Chamberlain, Bloombergh and Kilbourne pointed out that all the nutriments known to cause beri-beri are poor in phosphorus and potassium." Schaumann has shown that directly upon the beginning of an experimental diet, the balance of nitrogen ash, and above all phosphorus and calcium, becomes markedly negative, and grows continually more unfavorable as the "disease" progresses.
"Scala," says Berg, "reproaches physiologists who are experimenting as to the causation of deficiency diseases with uncritically referring all the manifestations to the account of the complettins (vitamins) and with forgetting that the organic extracts they use in their experiments contain in addition comparatively large quantities of inorganic substances (mineral salts) which likewise exercise a powerful influence." Orange juice is given to complement pasteurized milk. It is supposed to supply vitamin C, destroyed in the milk by pasteurization. But orange juice contains several salts and organic acids, and pasteurized milk has some of its salts spoiled for use. Does the orange juice supply salts or vitamins?
Merely by adding an excess of starch or starch and fats to otherwise natural food, rich in so-called vitamins, McCarrison was able to produce in monkeys, to which he fed this food, diarrhea, dysentery, dyspepsia and gastric dilatation, gastric and duodenal ulcer, intussuception, colitis, and failure of colonic function. Starch poisoning thus caused conditions commonly attributed to avitaminosis, despite the presence of what is supposed to be an abundant supply of vitamins. If the mere addition of small amounts of vitamins to a deficient diet is enough to do all the experimenters claim it will do, these results should not have followed such feeding.
McCarrison also showed that "one cannot in practice dissociate the effects of deficient and ill-balanced foods from those of bacterial or protozoal agencies whose ravages have been made possible by faulty food." This is equivalent to saying that the deficiencies and the toxemies are so inextricably bound up that they cannot be separated.
Berg says: "Above all we have to remember that when an extract is made from uncoagulated material (uncooked foods), chiefly the bases (alkaline salts) pass into solution; whereas when the extract is made from material in which the protein has been coagulated by heat (cooked), acids predominate in the solution, This fact may in part explain the reported behaviour of the ther-moliable complettins." In other words, when we are told that heat destroys vitamins, we are to understand that solutions extracted from cooked foods are rich in acids.
Many of the evidences of deficiency could easily result from a leaching of the body of its alkalies by an excess of acids, such as the loss of calcium by the bones and the failure of calcification in the growing bones.
Aulde observed that when there is either a lack of calcium or an excess of acid in the food, vitamin A has no effect. McCollum, Ewald Abderhalden, Miller and Hart have all shown that avitominosis (failure to utilize vitamins) is produced by an excess of acid in the food. Peckham found that minerals and vitamins are valuable only in the presence of each other. Aulde claims that calcium is usable only in the presence of vitamin A. Similar facts are observed by numerous investigators with regard to vitamin B and other vitamins. (Many investigators consider B and D to be identical). Some of the pathological features of scurvy especially the bone disorders, edema, tissue fragility and the liability to hemorrhage, indicate the presence of a strong acidosis. The scurvy producing diet is unquestionably deficient in bases while the antiscorbutic diet is rich in bases. It is also claimed that the salts are not assimilated in the absence of the vitamins; but this amounts merely to the fact that inorganic salts spoiled by cooking are not assimilated.
Experiments recounted by Sylvester Graham showed that the addition of wood shavings, blotting paper and other forms of foodless roughage to the diet of an animal fed certain defective diets was enough to overcome pathological conditions and restore health. Graham attributed the evils of such a diet to poisoning from gastrointestinal decomposition. This is certainly present in most, if not all cases of avitaminosis.
The multiplicity of factors in nutrition render it difficult for the laboratory research worker to assess the practical value of his findings, while his limited view is likely to cause him to over-estimate the importance of the aspect of nutrition upon which he is working. "Vitamin deficiency" may be almost anything.
Animals confined to mineral-free diets become weak, dull, listless, have fits and die. They reach a point where they refuse to eat. If they are now force-fed on the same diet, they die quicker than animals not fed at all. In these experiments the nervous system suffers most. A dog so fed showed sudden fits of madness, became weak and uncertain in his movements, trembled and showed signs of nervousness, and grew weaker and weaker until he could scarcely crawl.
A man will starve to death with just as much certainty and just as speedily, and in most cases more speedily, if he attempts to live upon foods containing only one or two elements of nutrition, as if he were totally abstaining from food. A diet of white flour and water, or white sugar and water will result in death much sooner than a diet of water only. This is due to the fact that if no food is eaten the body feeds upon its own balanced foods reserves; whereas, it has no adequate provision for meeting the exigencies created by prolonged subsistence on one-sided diets.
Milk of cows or mothers may actually be dangerous to calves or children. Cows fed on commercial feeds produce milk which causes calves to become blind, have fits and die. Hens fed in the same manner produce eggs with pale or colorless yolks, lacking in iron and other minerals, which either will not hatch at all, or will produce a chicken which will not be able to live. Cubs born of the circus lioness, fed on meat alone, are born with cleft palates, due to lack of lime.
(From the book "The Hygienic System: Orthotrophy", by Herbert M. Shelton.)
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