The Physiology of Food Assimilation
The following is a transcription of the April 1960 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Also in this issue:
- Points of Interest (Serum Cholesterol)
- Tip of the Month (Pernicious Anemia)
- High Points of Ovex
The Physiology of Food Assimilation
First, let us define assimilation. It is the conversion of food into the structures of the body as well as the release of calories in the way of muscular energy. These calories are stored up by plants as carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, and in the case of animal source foods, they are possibly partly metabolized by the animals themselves.
It must be emphasized that imitations of natural foods of plant source cannot be successfully utilized by human or animal bodies. They are not biochemically suited to the function of nutrition for many reasons. The hydrogenated oils (synthetic fats) now so well known to cause cardiovascular disease and a high blood cholesterol may be cited as an example. Synthetic sugar (dextrose, corn syrup) cannot be successfully utilized either. It causes diabetes and cancer and blocks calcium assimilation in test animals.
This is aside from the “empty calorie” nature of such foods, in that they fail to provide the enzymes, vitamins, and minerals that are always present in the natural organic foods. (Organic, applied to food, means natural, unrefined, and unprocessed or uncontaminated food).
Accompanying this issue of Applied Trophology is a reprint explaining in detail how oleomargarine is made. Note that it is made by synthesizing a fat from a refined oil via hydrogenation; that the oil, before it is used, is a rancid, stale by-product that is totally unfit for food use and may be in any stage of decomposition. It must be cleaned up by deodorizing and bleaching processes; even without the hydrogenation that so refines the oil, it is totally unfit for nutritional use.
Spoiled, rancid oil can never be made wholesome, any more than bad meat or an odoriferous egg can be reclaimed. Much is made of the high degree of sanitation in the oleo plant. I would say it is a little late to apply the practices of sanitary production where the food has spoiled and must be reclaimed by refining, bleaching, and deodorizing.
What is missing in the oleo? First, the antiarthritic vitamin, the Wulzen factor, is missing. (It is even destroyed in pasteurized cream, so we must buy raw, certified milk and cream to get this essential principal.1 The million arthritic victims in this country should take heed.)
Next, the processing removes the vitamin E complex, including the E2 factor that prevents and cures angina pectoris. Good quality butter contains so much vitamin E that in comparison to the price we pay when we buy E in capsules, we are getting the rest of the butter free (according to the American Butter Institute).
Third, the vitamin F complex, which is an important contributor to the nutritive value of butter, is removed or destroyed in the processing of oleo. Doctors who check the heart sounds of their patients often run into victims of F deficiency, who have no second sound in their heart pulsations. This is due to the lack of diffusible calcium—maintained by vitamin F—in the blood. It is remarkable how quickly a vitamin F tablet or two restores this missing heart sound. Usually ten minutes is enough to show the response.
Fortifying oleo with synthetic vitamin A supposedly makes it equal to butter. But again, synthetic vitamins are not capable of taking the place of a natural vitamin complex. Long ago, doctors in Cuba found that vitamin A lowered blood cholesterol and controlled high blood pressure. Tests made here showed that this reaction occurred only when natural vitamin A was used; the synthetic was useless. More tests revealed that it was the vitamin F in the natural A complex that made the difference.
Synthetic vitamins must be put in the category of drugs. They do have effects but not nutritional effects. Patients who need organic food should not be drugged. You cannot restore health to starving victims of empty-calorie foods by giving them drugs or chemicals.
Too many people cannot tell the difference between foods, drugs, and chemicals. A chemical is a pure, identified substance. No food can be considered wholesome if it has been refined to chemical purity. Pure starch, refined sugar, and hydrogenated oil are all examples of foods refined to purity; they’re really chemicalized “foods” or counterfeit imitations of food.
Now, how is a food converted into body tissue? That process begins in the mouth, and unless saliva is mixed into the food, it cannot be utilized by the body. This was demonstrated by Drs. Wolf and Wolf, who reported recently on tests made on a patient who had to live without an esophagus. As a child he had swallowed some lye by accident, and his esophagus became blocked. He lived by putting his food into his stomach with a funnel through an artificially constructed “mouth” leading directly into his stomach at his waistline. The important fact here established was that unless he chewed his food and supplied the salivary enzymes, his food was of no value to him.
We can tell you one good reason why this is true. We know today that the parotid gland (supplying saliva) has large chromosomes. Chromosomes are the source of the protomorphogen cell blueprints that must be available to convert food proteins into tissue.
Let us look back a little, to fifty years ago, when Horace Fletcher was expounding the physiological importance of proper mastication of foods. Fletcher was challenged by Professor Crittenden of Yale as to his claims that better health followed better chewing of food. So a test was arranged, by which the fifty-year-old Fletcher was tested officially at Yale on the Fisher Endurance Testing Machine, at that time used to check endurance of athletes. The previous record of lifting the 300-lb weight was 175 times, one lift every 2 seconds. Only two persons had ever gone over 100 lifts. Fletcher ran up a score of 350, only stopping because he had doubled the record, not because he was tired. He had no after effects, no sore muscles, the day after.
On his fiftieth birthday, Fletcher rode his bicycle 200 miles. The next day he rode 50 miles before breakfast to see whether he had suffered any ill effects from the long trip. (From Fletcher’s book Fletcherism—What It Is, Ewart Seymour & Co., London, 1914.)
Fletcher gives these five principles of eating:
First: Wait for a true, earned appetite.
Second: Select from the food available that which appeals most to the appetite, in the order called for by appetite.
Third: Get all the good taste out of the food in the mouth, and swallow only when it practically “swallows itself.”
Fourth: Enjoy the good taste for all it is worth, and do not allow any depressing or diverting thought to intrude upon the ceremony.
Fifth: Wait. Take and enjoy as much as possible what appetite approves; nature will do the rest.
“For five months I went on patiently observing,” he writes, “and I found out positively that I had worked out my own salvation. I had lost upward of 60 pounds of fat; I was feeling better in all ways than I had for twenty years. My head was clear, my body felt springy, I enjoyed walking, I had not a single cold for five months, and that ‘tired feeling’ was gone!”
Fletcher goes on to say that tests under Professor Irving Fisher at Yale showed that men on his regime had 100 percent more endurance and ate 40 percent less food in a six-month controlled test (1905).
We begin to realize the importance of getting our food in proper, intimate contact with the chromosome components that are essential to food assimilation. Naturally, efficiency of assimilation can be a result of better chewing if the facts as established by Drs. Wolf are taken into account.
Fletcher is an example of a prophet who had no recognition simply because his philosophy was too simple and was not accompanied by an abstruse theory. Facts do not speak for themselves, especially if they hinder the sale of millions of dollars’ worth of foods we do not need. Most of our advertising agencies live off of food promotion, especially the promotion of counterfeit foods. Therefore the newspapers and magazines will rarely print anything that is disapproved by the man who pays the bills—the advertiser.
Constipation alone is often eliminated by “Fletcherization” of food. If the thyroid is not adequate, constipation still persists. The parotid is a partner of the thyroid, in that thyroxine is returned to the thyroid gland from the parotid after it has served its purpose. This has been demonstrated by the use of radioactive iodine.
A diet of raw nuts, raw fruit, raw vegetables, dried fruits, sprouted grains, cottage cheese, and raw milk, in moderation, is a sure cure, we believe, for most of our degenerative diseases if used as per Fletcher’s precepts. Of course there are some whose allergic reactions must be taken into account. Fletcher was definite in his acceptance of the axiom “What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison.” We must all adopt the diet that we find agrees with us. Counterfeit foods have no place in any diet.
Cottage cheese is important in the diet since it is a “gold mine” of essential nutrients. Test animals getting any milk protein cannot be made to develop deficiency reactions. Even refined casein from milk cannot be depended on to provide protein without vitamins when used in animal tests where it is desired to create a deficiency reaction.
*This article has been transcribed from the original newsletter. Reprint not available.
Bibliography
- Report on Wulzen Factor deficiency: Vitamins and Hormones, Vol. 8.
Points of Interest
“In a group of medical students, a study was made of the serum cholesterol level during examination week, when the students were under stress, as compared with periods free from examinations. They found a significant increase in the level. The average increase was 11 percent. In one extreme case, the level was doubled.”
—Excerpta Medica, Physiology, Biochemistry, and Pharmacology, Vol. No. 11, Nov. 1959, regarding “Relationship of Mental and Emotional Stress to Serum Cholesterol Levels,” Wertlake, P.T., Wilcox, A.A., Haley M.I., and Peterson J.E., Depts. of Biochemistry and Internal Medicine, College of Medical Evangelists, Loma Linda, Los Angeles, CA), Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol., 97(1):163–165, 1958, Table 1.
“Laboratory experiments and clinical studies proved that dried sweet almonds (mashed and chewed) raised the pH of gastric juice, diminished HCl production, and inhibited significantly peptic activity. These facts explain the favorable effect that this vegetable material, with its high caloric value, exerts on patients with peptic ulcer with or without hyperacidity. Tolerance is excellent even in prolonged administration. Dried sweet almonds (mashed or chewed) should be included in the therapeutic program for an uncomplicated attack of peptic ulcer.”
—Biological Abstracts, Vol. 34, No. 5, Dec. 3, 1959, regarding study by Kleeberg, J., “Value of Dried Sweet Almonds in Therapy of Peptic Ulcer,” Gastroenterologia (Basel), 91(5):315–324, 1959.
Tip of the Month (Pernicious Anemia)
Remember that pernicious anemia not only manifests as low red blood cell count but also as neurological symptoms (numbness and tingling of the hands and feet). Whereas folic acid seems to have some merit in raising the red blood count, it apparently does nothing to normalize the neurological symptoms. Important for the nerve symptoms is the B12 complex (J.A.M.A., Vol. 158, No. 12, p. 1003).
The natural B12 in our vitamin B12 is in combination with the intrinsic factor (from stomach parenchyma). This makes it very readily absorbed orally. Folic acid is deliberately left out of this formula, since it has been found to confuse the issue in the pernicious anemia patient.
Ferroplus, or Ferrofood, is synergistic and may be supplied by our affiliated companies.
High Points of Standard Process Nutritional Adjuncts
Ovex: This is an extract of bovine ovarian tissue in tablet form. Each tablet represents the extract from approximately 3 grams of fresh glandular material. The remarkable hemostatic action of Ovex makes it invaluable in the treatment of female patients for prolonged and excessive menstruation as well as ovarian and uterine bleeding. It has also been used for excessive bleeding from wounds, epistaxis, or similar conditions of metabolic unbalance due to malnutrition.
An initial dosage of four tablets may be necessary in cases of severe hemorrhage, followed by one tablet hourly as needed. In many instances the initial dosage is sufficient. The vitamin C complex will aid in preventing infection.
