The Right to Food
Contents in this issue:
- The Right to Food
The following is a transcription of the First Quarter 1976 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
The Right to Food
Hunger is the grief of parents, a shrunken infant, a person gone blind for lack of vitamin A, or general poor health due to a shortage of other vitamins, minerals, fats, and proteins. The recent food conference in Rome determined that hunger has become a way of life for many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world. Charity demands our help, and justice, as one of the cardinal virtues, should have priority in this increasingly disastrous situation.
The U.S. Congress has before it a resolution on “the right to food.” It asserts the right of every person to a nutritionally adequate diet and asks—for the first time—that this right become a cornerstone of U.S. policy. (Emphasis ours) It is a right that is grounded in the value God places on human life and in the belief that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” This resolution, inserted in the Congressional Record of September 25, 1975, reads as follows:
Resolution Declaring as National Policy the Right to Food
House: H. Con. Res. 393
Senate: S. Con. Res. 66
Whereas an estimated 460 million persons, almost half of them young children, suffer from acute malnutrition because they lack even the calories to sustain normal life; and
Whereas those who get enough calories but are seriously deficient of proteins or other essential nutrients may include half of the human race; and
Whereas the President, through his Secretary of State, proclaimed at the World Food Conference a bold objective for this nation in collaboration with other nations: “that within a decade no child will go to bed hungry, that no family will fear for its next day’s bread, and that no human being’s future and capacities will be stunted by malnutrition;” and
Whereas all the governments at the World Food Conference adopted this objective; and
Whereas in our interdependent world, hunger everywhere represents a threat to peace everywhere; and
Whereas the coming bicentennial provides a timely occasion to honor this nation’s founding ideals of “liberty and justice for all,” as well as our tradition of assisting those in need, by taking a clear stand on the critical issue of hunger:
Now, therefore, be it Resolved that it is the sense of the (Senate) (House of Representatives) that
(1) Every person in this country and throughout the world has the right to food—the right to a nutritionally adequate diet—and that this right is henceforth to be recognized as a cornerstone of U.S. policy; and
(2) This right become a fundamental point of reference in the formation of legislation and administrative decisions in areas such as trade, assistance, monetary reform, military spending and all other matters that bear on hunger; and
(3) Concerning hunger in the United States we seek to enroll on food assistance programs all who are in need, to improve those programs to ensure that recipients receive an adequate diet, and to attain full employment and a floor of economic decency for everyone; and
(4) Concerning global hunger this country increase its assistance for self-help development among the world’s poorest people, especially in countries most seriously affected by hunger, with particular emphasis on increasing food production among the rural poor; and that development assistance and food assistance, including assistance given through private, voluntary agencies, increase over a period of years until such assistance has reached the target of one percent of our total national production (GNP).
If you so desire you could write your Member of Congress, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., 20515, to back the “right to food” resolution (H. Con. Res. 393) and your Senators, at U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510, in regard to S. Con. Res. 66.
Food is Energy
Apparently, this is a step forward, but in this country the resolution brings up the often-repeated question as to who is to decide what is nutritious. This important issue must be decided. For, as Winston Churchill opined: “Things do not get better by being left alone. Unless they are adjusted, they explode with a shattering detonation.’’
Good nutrition is necessary to keep well people well. It has its origin in fertile soil. So the energy crisis is secondary as the greatest threat to our existence. “Primarily,” according to Joe D. Nichols, MD, author of Please, Doctor, Do Something:
“The greatest threat to America today is the destruction of our topsoil, caused by the teaching of modern scientific agricultural technology. After all, food is absolutely essential for survival. The energy found in fertile soil is essential and this energy is being wasted and exploited. Sunshine, water, air and fertile soil are necessary to produce our food. We must learn how to restore and maintain the true fertility of our soils. Plant destruction by pests and diseases is often due to a failing plant physiology for which the killing of the insect is only an attack on the symptom and not a removal of the cause, usually a devitalized soil.”
True science respects body and agricultural chemistry. For, as agriculturist scientist Dr. William Albrecht so effectively stated:
“Food is fabricated fertility, carbohydrates are built of air, water and energy from the sun operating through the chlorophyll within the leaf. This fabrication is the great agricultural chemical industry that is agriculture itself.”
Buyer Beware
Present technological disregard of this fact apparently has caused us to be a sick nation. As the so-called best-fed nation on earth we are overstuffed with junk foods and nutritionally underfed. Agribusiness and food processors have little regard for the lack of nutritional benefit in their products, their only apparent concern being a greater quantity and hence larger profits. Nutrition-minded soil ecologists deplore the present method of soil mining and the excessive processing of natural foods, which they believe has led to our increasing degenerative conditions. Nutrition is, and must always be, the first consideration in buying and preparing food. In this regard fancy packaging is superfluous. As to the packaging material, it has been stated: “Relatively, it may contain more nutritives than its overprocessed contents.” Advertisers claim it “tastes pure,” it “tastes fresh,” or some other ambiguous term is used which usually has little if any bearing on nutritional quality.
From Eat Your Heart Out; Food Profiteering in America, by Jim Hightower, we learn:
“Food firms get what they want from government because they are there to get it. The dominant processors, distributors and retailers of food maintain a constant and powerful presence in Washington and there is no food related legislation, federal regulation or bureaucratic action that escapes their imprint.”
As a probable result, nutritionists suspect that our food now contains about ten thousand chemical additives. In fact, Senator Gaylord Nelson estimates that the use of additives in our food has increased from three pounds per capita in 1966 to about seven pounds per capita at the present time. This industry-initiated increase of chemicals untested as having carcinogenic or teratogenic action, especially in possible physiologically deleterious combinations, surely must be a health hazard. It is an increase of about four pounds in less than ten years and more than twice as much as in all the years previous to 1966. A pertinent example is ice cream. Some types may contain little if any cream but may utilize about forty chemicals. For instance, banana-flavored ice cream may contain eighteen chemicals instead of real bananas. One of the colors used extensively is FD&C Red #2 (amaranth). Through the years it has had increased use in processed foods to furnish a reddish or brownish color. It has been used extensively in jam, jelly, jello, maraschino cherries, puddings, and pink pills. Its use extends to cosmetics and to coloring dog food for color-blind dogs. Such users have fought its discontinuance for the past ten years. Only recently it was declared unsafe by the FDA. Yet Mrs. Elizabeth Whelan, public health expert of New York City, reportedly says: “People should trust the food that is in the traditional stores.” But then, as we have learned lately, “Business is business and much of business…is corrupt.”
Just recently, the House Government Operations Committee reported that some of the outside advisory committees, used by government agencies to back up some of their questionable actions, used inaccurate industry data. It noted that some governmental agency lawyers manipulated this information to resolve issues in favor of industry instead of giving the consuming public an equal break. Perhaps the enlightenment of Congress may become a factor in their tax-paying constituents’ better health. Apparently the old Chinese proverb should apply: ‘‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.’’
More Fooling Around with Health
The additive picture becomes more revealing in its effect on nutritive health when we consider an article in the Medical World News, August 15, 1965, which stated: “Artificial coloring, dyes, preservatives, antioxidants, emulsifiers and stabilizers all alter the absorption of nutrients, permitting cancer-causing substances normally not absorbed, to be absorbed.” (Emphasis ours.)
This angle has apparently been bypassed by investigative scientists for the food-processing industry, who through the years have provided less nutrition, for more money, at the expense of normal health. Investigative scientists are unprepared and unequipped to determine the probable effects of the combination of the hundreds of chemicals our bodies are forced to absorb every day. In Chemicals in Our Food and in Farm Produce—Their Harmful Effects (Faber & Faber) Dr. Franklin Bicknell states in effect that we can now eat a synthetic meal that is quite palatable, with little or no nutritional value, which actually may be detrimental. It was this type of “ersatz” food that weakened and helped the defeat of the German army in World War II. Now, to add insult to injury, the so-called food industry is preparing this type of food for serving in restaurants. Manmade contaminants are constantly being added to our environment with too little knowledge of how they will react in the atmosphere, in the soil, and on our desperately needed natural food growth.
As announced last year, the Environmental Protective Agency (EPA) found that chlorine used in our drinking water for years to prevent typhoid fever can alter the organic pollutants in the water by changing them to carcinogenic substances. And, more recently, Dr. Dean Burk, former chief chemist of the National Cancer Institute, has verified the research efforts of Dr. John Yiamouyiannis, suggesting that there is a positive relationship between treating drinking water with soluble sodium fluoride and the increased cancer death rate. Investigators have determined that the artificially fluoridated water and the fluoridated water as found in nature are somewhat different, in that the natural fluoride is buffered by minerals such as calcium, phosphorus, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, zinc, and others that tend to make it less soluble, although it has over a period of years in individuals residing in the same locality, caused “poker back” (stiff as a poker), a stiffness of the spine usually due to joint immobility.
Excess Calcium?
In recent years many people seem to be afflicted with a condition commonly called bone spurs. These spurs, consisting of unassimilated calcium salts, are deposited in various bony sites and cause much misery and pain as a result of the spur gouging into the soft surrounding tissue. It is becoming a common affliction, although it seems to affect athletes more. (Aside from trauma, could it be because they drink more fluoridated water as a result of their intense exertion?) In researching the question as to why the calcium may be unassimilated, we apparently found an additional answer in the 1950–51 Yearbook of Agriculture entitled “Crops in Peace and War.”
An article, “Hazards and Potential Drugs,” pp. 721–726, by staff pharmacologists Dr. Floyd DeEds, Dr. Robert Wilson, and Dr. Anthony M. Ambrose, deals mostly with their investigation of fluorine compounds and their toxicity. However, the investigation did demonstrate that despite their widely different solubilities all were sufficiently soluble and absorbable to provide enough fluorine to mottle the incisor teeth in albino rats. With that as a standard for judging fluorine toxicity, they also learned that the susceptibility to fluorine toxicity was increased by raising the metabolic rate. We now quote from their report:
“The practical significance of the discovery is in its bearing on the public health hazard of fluorine, whether it be in spray residues or in drinking water. Tolerance limits for the allowable amount of fluorine likely to be ingested by the public should be low enough to protect the hyperthyroid individual and the normal one. The claim that small amounts of fluorine in drinking water or the application of a fluoride, such as sodium fluoride, to the teeth will reduce the incidence of dental caries is undoubtedly correct. Checking dental caries and, in slightly larger amounts, causing mottled teeth, however, are not the only effects of fluorides. These compounds are enzymatic poisons. For example, the work of the Pharmacology Laboratory demonstrated that the fluoride ion inhibits the enzyme bone phosphatase in young rats and thereby retards calcification of the leg bones.”
When the calcium-phosphorus ratio of 2½ parts of calcium to 1 part of phosphorus is disrupted, an accumulation of unassimilated calcium may be deposited on the teeth as tartar or on the vertebras of the spinal column, causing stiffness and painful bone spurs. One of the factors in these conditions may be poor metabolism due to the loss of the enzyme bone phosphatase. We must remember that metabolism is the proper timing of assimilation. Without the necessary working parts, the timing is off and the metabolism cannot be accomplished. The phosphatase enzymes are also important in the assimilation of magnesium, copper, iron, zinc, and other minerals. As we have mentioned previously, raw bran, the covering of all seed grains, is one of the richest sources of phosphatase. However. much of this source is lost through the roller milling of white flour, the preparation of dry sugar-added cereals, and overcooking of cereals.
As heat seems to account for much of this loss, the processing of other foods and the pasteurization of milk and beer, in cans and bottles, must also be considered. As a matter of information tap beer usually is not pasteurized. However, with the exception of a very few breweries using their own deep wells, beer must be considered to be a fluoridated water product. The words beer and kidneys, at least through association, are frequently linked. This calls to mind the fact that at least one type of renal calculus is often considered the result of phosphorus depletion.
No doubt, an associated factor in the calcium-phosphorus imbalance is sugar, which generally depresses the phosphorus level to the extent of causing dental caries and through tartar formation contributes to periodontal disease (pyorrhea), both of which may cause the loss of many teeth. From some recent statistics we learn that 30 million Americans have no remaining teeth, another 60 million have lost at least one tooth, and there are approximately one billion untreated cavities at any time. Apparently there is truth to the old adage, “You must be true to your teeth or they will be false to you.”
Being true, however, means whole nutrition, as increasing numbers of investigators conclude that contaminants in overprocessed foods cause mineral imbalances, interfere with enzyme formation, and contribute to poor nutritive metabolism, resulting in a systemic rather than a local condition. Also, chemotherapy, especially in the aged, has been found to interfere with proper liver and pancreas action and tends to cause starvation in some individuals. Apparently our body can tolerate only so many chemicals in lieu of nutrients, previous to some glandular failure. When deprived of the proper nutrients the glands may atrophy and finally cease to function. Disturbance of organic function affects mental activity, causes lessened resistance to infections conditions, even dental caries, and contributes to metabolic failures such as in diabetes, osteoporosis, rickets, and others.
The Right to Life Foods
Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, said many years ago: “Leave your drugs in the chemist’s pot if you cannot heal the patient with food!” As a result of ignoring his advice, modern medicine, like a wayward child, must contend with the bad effects, namely, malnutrition, malpractice, and maladjusted insurance rates. Out of respect for the soundness of his advice, natural foods, specific ratios, and bodily checks and balances, an internationally respected pioneer nutritionist and our founder, Royal Lee, DDS, stated, “Malnutrition is to disease what correct nutrition is to health.”
In correct nutrition, healthy soil is necessary to provide for us the latent nutrients that only a living soil environment can produce. Our life depends on it. These vital elements are often destroyed by chemicals, solvents, and heat processing. Food cannot be industrialized in this manner without losing vital enzymes and/or vitamins. However, grain is killed by removal of the living germ for the convenience of the milling industry. Quality is sacrificed for quantity and profit.
“Mankind does not understand the evils he himself creates.”
—Anon
A Source of World Protein
In regard to malnutrition and the world health situation, the Henry Doubleday Research Association, Braintree, Essex, England, have over the past twenty years researched comfrey and believe it may be one of the answers to the world protein shortage. They claim it has a higher protein value than either alfalfa or soybeans and a mineral value higher than alfalfa. The plant is similar to a tobacco plant but with more hairy leaves. They found it will grow anywhere from Kodiak, Alaska, to South Africa and various climatic testing places in between. Unlike tobacco and other annual plants, it does not have to be planted yearly, but once planted it will last as long as an orchard. The roots may descend ten to twelve feet and are a source of minerals and allantoin, a crystalline white substance often used in wound healing as a cell proliferant. It is claimed that the leaves have been used in making an herbal tea since the days of Discorides, a Greek physician.
For animal food the dried leaves serve as hay and the green chopped leaves as silage. Both are considered as a preventive of scours in calves. Besides being used for tea the green roots and green leaves are used in salads. The dried root is also used in making tea and has also served as a demulcent in cough syrups as it is especially soothing to mucous membranes. The investigators are presently experimenting with more food recipes and a method of liquifying the stems and foliage to serve as a constituent in a veganic type spread. The thought behind all of this is to help the hungry help themselves. For, as Pearly Buck stated: “The test of a civilization is the way it cares for its helpless members.” It was recently estimated that malnourishment caused by too little protein and other nutrients afflicts 400 million to 1.5 billion of the world’s poor.
