Unpolluted Thoughts
Contents in this issue:
- “Unpolluted Thoughts.”
The following is a transcription of the Fourth Quarter 1975 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Unpolluted Thoughts
“God made man a little lower than the angels and he has been getting a little lower ever since.”
—Will Rogers
The Contamination Problem
Several years ago, we considered only drunks as being polluted. Now pollution has become a broad term suggesting to corrupt by contact that which ought to be clean and natural or conserved and held sacred for following generations. It is also thought of as befouling, defiling, soiling, tainting, or contaminating in any other way through the abuse of nature. Through it we have acquired selfishness and greed, lost the unity of togetherness and love of our neighbor, and jeopardized our national health. As selfish individuals we have degraded our country through cheating, malnutrition, immorality, but especially so through the ever-dangerous pollution of truth. It is regrettable the coming bicentennial celebration anticipated with so much pride by our founding fathers could, in the future, be viewed with disgust by following generations as heralding the starting point of the many ills and troubles to which they may fall heir.
Appropriately, we now quote from The Seven Lamps of Architecture, by John Ruskin:
“God has lent us the earth for our life. It is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us; and we have no right, by anything we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath.”
Apparently, pollution is not just a contamination relative to nature’s law regarding air, food, soil, and water, but the term applies to the respect of human decency and becomes an issue in national policies. Obviously, we are living in a hostile environmental sphere, and it is in our own interest individually and collectively to rapidly find ways of improving the situation if we desire to increase our health status and general welfare. We must cooperate with an enlightened Congress specifically in soil conservation and in its search for a national food and nutritional policy. Many of our legislators have now become interested in nutrition and food availability at home as well as nutrition as it applies to the international state of affairs.
Up to the present time our country has had many advantages as a result of our natural resources and accordingly has been considered the world’s richest economy. However, our economy is suffering from too much politics, and politics and economy are not always synonymous. Politics is often a selfish, dog-eat-dog proposition, as exemplified by the present energy crisis. It is a fact that in many instances politics is the antithesis of economy. Scientists advise that in effect the energy crisis is infinitesimal in comparison to the world food crisis in which we inadvertently must become involved.
The Crisis
We are already involved in the ecological crisis, the decrease of our natural resources, as well as a rapidly worsening social crisis. In less than 200 years, land use has become a problem because of the environmental conflicts presented. Numerous examples could be cited, including the loss of topsoil to river pollution (said to be two million tons a year), urbanization of prime agricultural land, chemical destruction of our soil and forests, strip mining, and the processing of food from the ground to your table by agribusiness.
The lone self-financed researcher, the friendly independent small businessman, and the self-sustaining farm family are facing the beginning of the end. Our ability to depend on them as a source of nature’s own nourishing food is rapidly being dissipated. Even though commercialism with its high-priced advertising methods has taken over, it was the interdependence of our forefathers and their inherent honesty that brought us the designation “land of plenty.” However, in our initial 200 years as a nation, we have been very wasteful and contributed greatly to the general depletion of our natural resources. We must “conserve,” or use our national resources “without using them up.”
Over the years a conflict has developed between the many who believed in interdependence and custodianship and the few who regarded these resources chiefly as a means to wealth and prosperity. Because of the energy crisis the public has become aware of the havoc being wrought in regard to continued survival. No doubt, our founding fathers had visions of our country surviving for a thousand or more years, not for just a few hundred. Therefore, we must stop the continual loss and waste of our natural resources, husband them wisely, and not let them slip away from our control or be a disadvantage in our national responsibilities. As the “breadbasket of the world” we have had a tremendous advantage in economic diplomacy. Secretary of State Kissinger has opined:
“If we act wisely and with vision, I think we can look back to all this turmoil as the birth pangs of a more creative and better system. If we miss the opportunity, I think there is going to be chaos.”
Apparently, we have come to the end of an era.
New or Revived System?
So-called orthodox scientists, as they now look more closely, are discovering that nature does not fit into the materialistic framework they have adopted. They have in fact been jousting with themselves. Or, as British economist Dr. E.F. Schumacher put it:
“Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature, but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.”
In The Secret Life of Plants, coauthors Peter Thompkins and Christopher Bird report innumerable experiments that orthodox science is unable to explain. Incidentally, they also report stories of persecution suffered by men of genius whose scientific findings were considered too unorthodox to be acceptable. The authors regret that the most support for such intolerable action came from agriculture and medicine. Interestingly, they found these experiments attained substantial results nonviolently or with only the smallest inputs of energy or substances, in contrast to the technologies derived from orthodox science, which tend to be extraordinarily violent and require high inputs, particularly of energy. They also note that other literature has established that the scientific establishment practices the art of “refusal of consciousness” with perfection. In this regard Congressman Robert Bauman of Maryland says:
“The present system allows cronies to get together and finance their pet projects…not devoting themselves to basic research needs, but to feathering their own nests. I suggest that there’s a real need for revision of the system by which these basic research grants are made.”
Revision Necessary
We constantly hear or read that Government has gotten too big to relate to the individual or his needs. We all know that “big” doesn’t necessarily mean efficient, so perhaps decentralization must be considered. For as Thomas Jefferson said 200 years ago, “That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.”
Revision is also stressed by nutritional scientist Constance Holden. In the May 3, 1974, issue of Science she poses the question: “What, in the broadest sense, would a ‘national nutrition policy’ involve?” She states it would involve, at least, dramatic changes in the following: the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); Congressional agriculture committees; agribusiness; regulatory agencies; the food manufacturing industry; medical education (“doctors usually do not concern themselves with patients’ eating habits until after the heart attack,” she states) and nutrition research. She further comments:
“People have less and less idea of what in fact they are eating as supermarket shelves are inundated each year with literally thousands of new, high processed products of questionable nutritive value…It may be that high prices, spot shortages, and the awareness that abundance even in the United States is not infinite will prove a better impetus for action than any amount of education.”
She quotes Dr. D. Mark Hegsted, the conservative Harvard professor of nutrition who innovated the expression “junk foods” to describe refined empty calorie foods, as saying: “This is the first generation in history to be suckled on a diet so rich in fat, salt and refined carbohydrates, and its long-term effects are not known.”
And, quoting a pertinent paragraph from a previous issue of Applied Trophology:
“We are living today in a self-imposed nutritional experiment in which the general diet is being changed in a manner that has no precedent in history. The results of these changes may not become generally evident for more decades to come. But we do know that nutritional currents run deeper than generally presumed, so our present observations of dietary deficiency in heart and vascular disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and numerous child maladies may just be the warning ripples on the surface water. Perhaps our controlled researchers (who favor agribusiness and the conglomerates) must delve deeper to get the facts from the ground up.”
From School of the Soil, by Dr. William Albrecht, we quote:
“We forget that it is by means of the soil fertility that nature must construct the vitamins and other catalytic agencies that facilitate body growth processes from the food substances we consume. Human health, too, depends on the soil which, common as it can be everywhere, is seemingly still too far removed from us to be so connected with our thinking.”
Sweet and Low
In some instances, nutritional research favorable to the consumer has either been hidden, degraded, or possibly used by the processor in an ambiguous manner to promote sales. One result, not generally known, is an early scientific analysis by the Sugar Research Foundation, which may have inadvertently been published in Modern Nutrition, Feb. 1957, and Land Bulletin No. 125. Apparently, this was not the type of information the processors wanted as the Foundation, after promoting the research to the tune of $57,000, ceased further support. In this analysis sixty-four food ingredients were isolated from raw sugar cane juice. The essential minerals included calcium, magnesium, manganese, iron, phosphates, and sulphates. Vitamins included five known to be important in the vitamin B complex and also vitamins A and D. In addition, all the essential amino acids (so necessary in building protein) were found together with the four most important unsaturated fatty acids and four enzymes needed in sugar assimilation.
As determined previously by research studies on children working in the cane fields, sucking and chewing on the sugar cane stalks can be a health benefit, especially in regard to teeth and bone. On the other hand, as Spencer Chester pointed out in Land Bulletin No. 125, refined white sugar as an unbalanced carbohydrate has the opposite effect. The amino acids, enzymes, fatty acids, minerals, and vitamins have been lost in processing, probably by cooking, leaving only the carbohydrate, which by itself cannot contribute anything to healthy teeth, bone, or general physical health. Dr. Royal Lee contended that it was the loss of these raw food factors that contributed to dental caries and was primarily the cause of arthritis. He maintained that periodontal disease is an arthritis of the tooth socket. He further held that any patient having a periodontal condition in the mouth would invariably have arthritis elsewhere in the body.
The seriousness of dietary processed food is further affirmed by Dr. J.A.S. Jackson, who stated in the Lancet: “The refining of sugar may yet prove to have been a greater tragedy for civilized man than the discovery of tobacco.” However, we doubt very much if any government, in the near future, will label sugar as “harmful to health.”
Sweets Pollution
“It is in infancy that the groundwork is laid for future dental health problems.” This statement was recently made at an annual American Dental Association meeting by Dr. Julius Ozick, a dental investigator and faculty member at New York University. He advised that bottle-fed babies develop a taste for sweets because milk sugar or corn sugar is added to the formula. He also felt that canned baby foods contribute further because even foods that are naturally sweet have added sugar. Speaking of the child thus fed, he said:
“By age 3 or 4, a sugar consuming preference has been strongly ingrained in his eating habits…Unless steps to reverse this pattern are taken early and vigorously, it will remain a lifelong pattern tending toward dental disease, obesity and possibly coronary disease later in life.”
He suggested that breastfeeding babies could help prevent such tendencies. Then too, these sweetened foods could aid in excess adipose cell formation resulting in obesity, a form of malnutrition now affecting an increasing number of youngsters in this country. As is true of all malnutrition, it evidently is due to some biochemical deficiency.
In a recent study of malnutrition, scientists at the University of California determined that malnourished infants and young children had head circumference much below the normal range for their ages, which apparently denotes a hampered brain development. They were shocked at this evidence and made the following comment:
“It implies that a corresponding proportion of the difficulties children experience in school and later in their career development may be due to undernutrition, affecting their brain growth in utero and during early life, thus interfering in the most serious way with the quality of their lives, and placing an unmeasured, but probably significant burden on the rest of U.S. society.”
Apparently, much of the fault for this sweet tooth can be blamed on the ambiguous advertising of the food processors who contribute not only to the widespread nutritional ignorance of lay people but also to that of the health professions. It is well known that some people cannot distinguish fact from fiction and fall for clever advertising bordering on the incredible. No doubt this has been a contributing factor in the increase of malnutrition, especially since the more intense appeal to the constantly increasing television audience, at the rate of upward of $8,000 per commercial minute.
This “sweet appeal” to the children’s dietary has become a menace to their health and a constant annoyance and worry to nutritionally minded parents. And despite contrary industry assertions, Stephen L. Disson of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance, after a survey of 186 public schoolchildren in Philadelphia, found that none of the TV commercials made them want to buy cereals because of their nutritional value. Instead, it was the taste and sweetness of the products that attracted their attention and stimulated their interest. He noted that many of the children had never been taught by their parents that sweets and sugar products could harm their health.
From Harry Benjamin, author of Your Diet in Health and Disease, we learn:
“There is no doubt that the people of today are suffering just as much, if not more, from the effects of too much starch as from too much protein, and it is perfectly true to say that practically every individual one meets nowadays is more or less starch poisoned.”
It would seem that this adds to the sugar problem since starch is slowly assimilated as glucose. He infers that bread, rolls, dry breakfast cereals, pastries, puddings and pies contribute to the problem.
Then too, the 1965 dietary survey by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) revealed the progressive worsening of the nutrient intake in this country because of an increased consumption of such refined carbohydrate foods as precooked bakery products, ready-to-eat cereals, soft drinks, punches, lemonades, beverage powders, and alcoholic beverages, all of which generally contribute heavily to the decline in intake of nutrient value. Less nutrients are also available in snack foods, especially the 4 Cs, namely, chips, crackers, cookies, candy and other sweetened foods. In fact, they supply little more than energy and deprive the average individual diet of essential nutrients. These soluble foods, in particular sugar, bring about a rapid overloading of the blood transport system, which effects a temporary rise in blood sugar followed by a quick plunge due to the pancreas oversecreting insulin in its effort to metabolize the extra sugar. According to USDA statistics released in 1970, the average American consumed 264 pounds of empty calories at the expense of milk, milk products, eggs, fruit, potatoes, other vegetables, and whole grain products. Of the 223 pounds of vegetables eaten, per capita, about 50 percent were raw and 50 percent canned or bottled. Poor food can only be detrimental to good health and interfere with metabolism.
Metabolism Pollution
Nature intended that needed sugars should be produced by digestion from proteins, fats, and complex starches. The slowness of the process is to avoid or prevent overloading the blood and tissue cells with an overabundant supply of energy food at any one time. The soluble foods, and particularly sugars, bypass the physiological digestive mechanisms that have functioned through thousands of years, thereby tending to their degeneration through diminished function and lowering the individual’s favorable disposition for good health. It has been determined that if and when the individual living cell is supplied with more nutrient than it requires at any one time for immediate oxidation to yield energy for its life processes, then the excess is stored as fat in the adipose tissue, whether from carbohydrate, fat, or protein. Without a doubt, the resulting obesity must be considered as the most all-too-often neglected problem we face today. Generally speaking, overweight people are more susceptible to cancer, diabetes, coronary and vascular conditions, endocrine problems, and possibly other unsuspected maladies.
An interesting phenomenon has been demonstrated in the animal model, in which a restriction of carbohydrates in the diet causes a reduction in the development of all types of tumors. A similar correlation has occurred in test animals wherein a reduction to two-thirds of the control animal’s calorie intake also caused a depression in the growth of inoculated tumors.
The reason we generally overeat calorie foods is that they are provided in processed foods in a concentrated form that lacks the enzymes and other synergists so necessary for their assimilation. Food and drink manufacturers and/or processors use glucose, with its empty calories, in much of what we eat and drink. And, as previously stated, synthetic glucose and/or refined sugar is absorbed rapidly from the intestine to produce a significantly quick rise in blood sugar.
Dr. Emanuel Cheraskin, professor of oral medicine at the University of Alabama, advises that anyone may be hooked on sugar in coffee and need a coffee break as a “fix” to correct low blood sugar. “The fix is good for an hour, then the blood sugar level drops again and they’re hooked.” It has become a form of addiction.
A well-known English drink advertises: “Glucose is a source of quickly available energy, the prime need of a person, whether sick or merely under some kind of stress, who is unable to take normal nourishment.”
Consumer-oriented scientists are continually finding new evidence that refined sugar upsets the normal microbiotic content of the intestine, thereby contributing to the loss of the B vitamins, particularly vitamins B1 and B12, already low in our modern diet. We presume that the loss of B complex vitamins in addition to the loss of fiber material in our diet must contribute to the constellation of gastrointestinal syndromes now believed by many nutritionists to be a primary cause of ill health. The B complex vitamins are necessary to the biochemical processes that stimulate the intestinal involuntary muscle into peristaltic action. Then too, the loss of vitamin B12 is usually associated with anemia, as deficiency of this vitamin inhibits the rate of red blood cell production and causes maturation failure in the process of erythropoiesis.
We doubt if anything could be more surprising to the average American consumer than to find he is the victim of the very food processing techniques which he was led to believe made him one of the best fed people in the world. His believability is amazing, but then as Mark Twain said, tongue in cheek, “Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.”
