The following is a transcription of the First Quarter 1977 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
“Obey or Pay”
“We conquer Nature by learning to obey her, not by defying or trying to outwit her.”
–Anonymous
When our founding fathers instituted this nation in 1776, they were in close harmony with nature and thus enjoyed the complete nourishment of naturally balanced food. Although the quantity was seldom in excess, the quality contributed to excellent health for those hardy, intelligent individuals. The colonists enjoyed good health by obeying nature, while we suffer the obesity of malnutrition by defying and trying to outwit her. Presently our bodies may suffer a lack of enzymes and other natural food components, causing poor absorption and poor cellular metabolism. Also contributing are the effects of an unbalanced soil and the aggravation of our chemicalized food and drinks.
College professors tell us to eat a balanced diet of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fruits, and vegetables, but if the individual components of any of these foods are absent, destroyed, or discarded in preparation, causing an unnatural balance, the body cannot assimilate them as nutrients but will in some individuals store them as fat or in other individuals eliminate them as bad baggage. In either case this contributes to individual malnutrition.
More Pay for Less Nutrition
We are genuinely concerned because our Consumer Price Index has risen over 70 percent since 1967. Early statistics reveal that in the 64 months following January 1, 1776, the price of fifteen basic commodities in the Philadelphia area increased an average of 16,500 percent. Beef rose by 33,000 percent, corn by 10,000 percent, wheat by more than 14,000 percent, and flour by almost 15,000 percent. Even though these were complete foodstuffs, in buying supplies for the army, General George Washington worriedly said: “A wagon load of money will scarcely provide a wagon load of provisions.”
In early 1781 the money issued by the Continental Congress was no longer accepted by the people, and the expression “Not worth a Continental” has been handed down to us as an expression meaning worthless. Some of our investigative nutritionists believe this expression accurately describes much of our modern-day processed and chemicalized food—that is, from the viewpoint of supplying our bodies with non-nutritious chemicals in lieu of the original natural nutrients. A few have advocated that the destruction of normally needed nutrients through processing should be considered robbery, a premise originally advocated by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley who founded what is now known as the Food and Drug Administration.
In a recent book entitled Nutritional Science, the author, Professor Curtis Shears, states:
“Further medical awakening has come about through recent medical research which points to the potential dangers to mental and physical health of modern farming practices, factory processed foods, environmental pollution and widespread deficiencies of essential nutrients in popular foods as the major causes of most of the increasing degenerative diseases now reaching epidemic proportions at astronomical costs.”
Dr. Franklin Bicknell has stated:
“Were there more understanding of how chemicalized food is insidiously eroding away health, then more and better legislation would not only be tolerated but demanded.”
Testing, Testing?
Today it is estimated that each of us consumes about five pounds of chemical colorings, flavorings, preservatives, stabilizers, and other food additives annually. Then too, the chemicalized water used in preparation of our food and drinks must also be considered. What are the hazards to our health through interference with normal bodily functions? Or, as Senator Abraham Ribicoff has asked, “What must the Federal Government do to assure that the chemicals we must absorb are safe?”
Years ago, Dr. Wiley suffered ignominy and defeat when he suggested food should not be tampered with. Presently, more than 3,000 chemicals are added deliberately to the foods we eat, and it is said that over 1,000 of them have not been properly tested. Some have been tested for toxicity, but very few have been tested as to their possible latent ability to cause cancer, genetic interference, or birth defects. Of those tested some have been found to be carcinogenic after years of cumulative use. The general public assumes that all human contact drugs and chemicals have been tested for safety and possible effectiveness. This is a false assumption and an error that Senators Ribicoff, Gaylord Nelson, George McGovern, and Congressman Delaney, among others, would like to correct.
A recent news release by the Food and Drug Administration advised that they will begin testing soon. For many this is just a promise as previous estimates of testing those generally regarded as safe (GRAS), for toxicity only, was in the vicinity of 25 years. In the meantime, the possible cumulative side effects would still be in doubt. Relevant is the statement of an English investigator that a child who has daily eaten an orange coated with the fungicide thiourea may in later life die of cancer of the lung. Investigators also find that agricultural and industrial chemical compounds may aid and abet food additives and some drugs in causing metabolic problems.
Recently the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated:
“It isn’t the pox that menaces us anymore, or the plague. It’s strange new creatures of our own making, and they are all around us—in the air, our water and food, and in the things we touch.”
Thousands of our citizens now suffer from excessive exposure to such chemicals as asbestos, carbon tetrachloride, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and vinyl chloride. Authorities state such exposure has caused metabolic disorders, birth defects, and even cancer. As one of his last acts President Ford signed into law a bill that requires premarket testing of new chemicals. The Toxic Substances Control Act will be regulated by the EPA. The President called it “one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation to come out of Congress.”
We hope Congress will continue such forward-looking activity, as a large proportion of our population is dependent on commercially processed foodstuffs. In fact, many are practically helpless as to what they may eat and the food adulterants they must accept. The health, strength and future of our nation depends on wholesome food. We are in dire peril should we be forced, by further legislative default, to continue to consume chemicals that provide only commercial advantage rather than nutriments.
Functional Restraint
Investigators have known for some time that some drugs, chemicals, and/or chemical compounds do cause metabolic problems through their interference with or inhibition of enzymes. For instance, acetylcholinesterase is the controlling enzyme, by hydrolysis, of acetylcholine needed by the body tissues as a mediator of nerve impulses. When inhibited this vital enzyme loses control and acetylcholine accumulates above the normal levels of tissue concentration and then acts as a powerful poison.
For years the chlorination of our drinking water has been considered an innocent procedure in the prevention of typhus fever. Recent investigation takes note of side effects similar to those of other ingested chemicals. This should not be too surprising, as we recall that chlorine in its nascent state (or as calcium or sodium hypochlorite), chlorine dioxide, and other chlorine compounds have been found to be powerful oxidizing as well as bleaching substances. Since 1946 chlorine dioxide has been the choice white flour bleach. It was about that time that nutritionist Sir Edward Mallanby determined that the bleach agene, after 50 years’ use, had caused running fits in dogs. The dogs manifested symptoms similar to those of epilepsy in man. The writer recalls a onetime fellow worker who often had a convulsion approximately a half hour after eating a sandwich made from home-baked white bread. One cannot help but wonder if the sandwich contents may at times have prevented the seizure and possibly at other times enervated the bleach content. The man was diagnosed as a chronic epileptic with no possible cure. Recently, Dr. Roger Williams found that a diet of white bread killed experimental rats.
If the chlorination of drinking water is sufficient to cause offensive taste and smell, enough may enter the gastrointestinal tract to have an oxidizing effect on the nutritional contents or even a chlorinating effect upon the favorable intestinal flora, known to provide some needed vitamins.
Historically, patent white flour preceded oleomargarine as the original long shelf-life product. Flour millers accomplished this by eliminating the life-giving properties of the bran and the wheat germ, now known to be valuable sources of the vitamin B complex and vitamin E. The bleach is used to remove the last trace of the yellowing E oil (wheat germ oil), as rancidity was found to be another deterrent in processing for long shelf life. But in accomplishing one goal they have lost some twenty valuable nutrients. The so-called enrichment, or replacing this great loss with a few synthetic vitamins, has proved to be a nutritional error. Dr. Royal Lee, a consumers’ advocate twenty years ahead of his time, compared it to a robber taking your purse containing a twenty-dollar bill and upon your protest magnanimously giving you a quarter back for bus fare. The analogy seems appropriate.
When Agnes Fay Morgan tested the nutritional value of “enriching,” she found that her test animals became “sedate or senile” and that on this diet they dropped dead long before the ones on the “unenriched” control diet became disabled. Apparently, Nature did it right in the first place. Like the colonists, we had better go back to using fresh whole grain flour. Many people nowadays do not realize that hamburger rolls and hot dog buns are the fast eatery version of white bread. No one can deny their fast service and convenient setup. However, the dietary could be more inclusive.
The Ancient NPK Theory
As our food and water, truth too has become contaminated through the influence of backward scientific commercial propaganda. Some soil and medical scientists have promoted the idea that if calcium, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash were added to the soil we could continue to obtain high-yielding crops. They have taken for granted that good yields and high quality were synonymous. Just recently they have learned that quantity and quality are two different things. Their error has been based on the hundred-year-old theory of a famous chemist who analyzed a human body to the best of his ability. By his crude methods he determined that the same elements, namely, calcium, nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, and water, were all found in plants and animals. His conclusion was that if these elements were returned to the soil, in generous amounts, neither plants nor animals would suffer from malnutrition.
A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous
As is so often the case, the opinion of a noted scientist has been accepted as gospel truth by both scientists and laymen. In fact, his teachings are dominant in practically every classroom where soil chemistry is taught. For practically a century his assumption had not been questioned, even though other soil and body tests made with modern sophisticated equipment proved the necessity for such additional elements as iron, copper, magnesium, manganese, cobalt, chromium, silicon, molybdenum, selenium, zinc, and others. Plants obtain nitrogen and carbon dioxide from the air, but the minerals come almost exclusively from the soil. Trace minerals were ignored by university staffs generally until recently. Not too long ago, Dr. John Porter commented: “Ah! but the plants recognize trace elements, and they didn’t go to college.” Nevertheless, plants do have the original alma mater, “nourishing mother” (earth).
Most medical men are just not aware of the depleted mineral content of our soils and the multifaceted effects of malnutrition. Even if “benign,” this disinterest and lack of knowledge has apparently placed our national health in jeopardy. It is regrettable that orthodox medicine and some government agencies have gone along with such an outmoded theory for so long.
As Claude Bernard observed:
“When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.”
Abraham Lincoln expressed it this way:
“I am not bound to win but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live up to what light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right and part with him when he goes wrong.”
These quotations certainly should receive more consideration now that substantial new evidence is presently being accumulated in regard to fluorine causing cancer. Especially is this so in regard to the refutation of the fluoridation theory. Some twenty years ago we were told that like chlorine the addition of fluoride compounds in the drinking water, to save youngsters’ teeth, would have no bad effects and that it was only a “do-gooder.” Not too long afterward investigators determined that sodium fluoride interfered with the stability of nutrients in the human body, specifically by inhibiting the alkaline phosphatase enzyme system, upon which so many vital metabolic processes depend.
Prior to 1970 investigators in other countries disclosed that many other enzyme systems were also affected. As a result, fluoride has, for several years, been banned in Austria, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Yugoslavia, Spain and, except for a few experimental cities, in Belgium, Finland, Portugal, Holland, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. Could it be that the adverse statistics recorded against fluoridation in these countries were withheld from our citizens in order to save face and preserve the status quo? If so, apparently the day of reckoning is close at hand. According to the World Health Organization Chart of 1969 the majority of these countries have a higher life expectancy for both females and males than we do.
Within recent months a Belgian research duo reported that cancer rates differ according to lifestyle, general custom, traditions, and diet. They cited the Himalaya Hunza people as, up to now, free of cancer because of their lifestyle, uncrowded living, lots of exercise, and the benefit of pure mountain water. “They drink little alcohol,” we are told, “and their diet is healthy and rich in vitamins. They eat only fresh food they grow themselves. They are extremely hygienic, and the air they breathe is pure.” They cited other cancer death rates as lowest in Switzerland, where it is 52.8 per 100,000, France 86.5, Japan 126.3, United States 136.8, West Germany 160.1 and Britain 160.4. They recorded the highest growth in cancer rates in the most densely populated areas of the world.
Cancer Mortality Increases
In a recent investigation of the high cancer death rate in the United States, a comparison study was made of the cancer mortality rate between some imposed fluoridation cities and some nonfluoridated cities. The fluoridated areas revealed an excess rate of 15 percent cancers of the mouth, esophagus, stomach, large intestine, rectum, kidney, bladder, and urinary organs in white males and of the breast, ovary, and fallopian tube in white females. This research has been checked and verified by Dr. Dean Burk, a retired National Cancer Institute researcher.
It is now doubtful if any area of our country is free of exposure to fluorine—in the air, in the processed foods coming out of cities using fluoridated water, or to foods grown on land fertilized with commercial fertilizer and its usual content of fluoride. Perhaps otherwise the percentage of mortality rates in the fluoridated cities would be even higher. Congressman James J. Delaney recently declared:
“The American public must be protected…here we are dealing with millions of Americans—some 90 million of them—being fluoridated with dosages otherwise regarded as optimal as far as teeth are concerned, but without any regard heretofore to cancer mortality potentials…the questions raised by this epidemiological study are of vital importance to our 90 million citizens who drink artificially fluoridated water…are the American people guinea pigs?”
We must answer his question in the affirmative.
We dare not delude ourselves with the theory of industrial chemists that you can indefinitely bombard the body with many chemical insults or forget body cell maintenance and yet have the stamina or defense mechanisms to ward off cancer or any other disease.
Research Handicapped
Modern medicine has failed to cope with the increase in arthritis, heart and vascular disease, cancer, mental illness, and alcoholism, among others. In one instance the easiest way out has been for medical scientists to accept the idea or theory that cancer is a foreign element in Nature’s scheme of life. However, living creatures for thousands of years, such as early man and the wild animals, past and present, did and do ingest the enzymes of raw food and have not been subject to cancer. But domestic animals fed heat-treated food are subject to cancer. Industrial food technologists have revealed that all raw foods are loaded with enzymes, which must be destroyed to promote shelf life. The blanching of vegetables in canning is a pertinent example of one method. Enzymes are found in the cells of all animals, fruits, and vegetables. They are found in every cell of our body and must be replenished daily for body maintenance. They are sensitive to heat and many are completely, not partially, destroyed in the heat preparation of food. It is more than a coincidence that in the scientific study of the bony parts of cave dwellers that arthritis became prevalent when primitive man invented fire and cookery.
Dr. Royal Lee repeatedly stated: “Arthritis is a cooked food disease.” He maintained that periodontal and alveolar pyorrhea were types of arthritis of the tooth socket.
In the prevention of any disease, we must remember that each and every one of the billions of cells of all the organs of our body makes some enzymes. But these body cells can make them only if the food supply contains a balanced sufficiency of required nutrients to aid in digestion and metabolism. The question has been asked: “Of the many thousands of species of creatures inhabiting this earth, why should man be the only one denied an intake of food enzymes?” Such widespread deficiency is having a very treacherous influence on national health. Orthodox medicine’s ignorance and a lack of incentive in governmental agencies have been drawbacks. Both time and good health have been sacrificed in the refusal of medical scientists to determine the connection between the deficiency and destruction of enzymes and the present epidemic of deficiency diseases.
As we have stated previously, the further we depart from Nature’s ways the more we need to know about them in order to meet the demands set by an unnatural environment.
The following note to patrons appeared in the first quarter 1977 issue of Applied Trophology. We have included it here for historical purposes only.
A Note to All Our Patrons
Available bound back numbers of Applied Trophology.
In December 1957, the first year of circulation of our new house organ, Applied Trophology, doctors who had been receiving our loose-leaf copies, as issued, requested that these copies be bound at the end of each year so they could have a permanent record for their nutritional library. Consequently, we have at the end of each year put together all issues for that year in a semi-hard cover for their convenience.
As we have previously advised, all copies from 1957 through 1962 are out of print, and because of other circumstances beyond our control copies are not available for the years 1968, 1969 and the first half of 1970.
However, bound yearly copies are presently available as issued, for the years 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1976.
In the past many doctors have expressed appreciation for the fact that we are supplying them with a permanent record of research on pertinent nutritional subjects in relation to better health, through prevention, at a very minimal cost. We in turn appreciate the fact that doctor groups often use these bound copies as a catalog listing for request of loose-leaf copies as a part of their subject matter for seminars. Therefore, we regret to announce that progressively higher costs over the past twenty years have forced us to increase our handling fee to $2.00 per yearly bound copy. As a result, all yearly bound copy prices will be based on the $2.00 handling fee per copy plus book rate postage, at the prevailing rate and any state tax where applicable.
However, if and when available, loose-leaf copies will continue to be furnished to doctors as requested, no charge, just as in all these past years.
