“Do Worn Out Soils Cause Disease?” “Life from the Soil,” and “A Recent Decision (Vitamin E and the FDA),” plus High Points of Antronex
The following is a transcription of the March 1961 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Do Worn Out Soils Cause Disease?
Worn out soils most certainly do cause disease. Tests at Washington State University by Dr. M.E. Ensminger further verify this fact. He reports that in his tests on animal feeding of crops grown on low and high phosphorus soils that those animals fed the poor feed crops had 9.8 percent lower breaking strength of bone and required 12 percent more matings per conception.
Phosphorus is one of the first elements to become exhausted in farmland as a result of crop growing. Dr. Henry Sherman, the top authority, tells of the general deficiency in land and foodstuffs of phosphorus and calcium in his book Calcium and Phosphorus, Columbia University Press, 1947:
“Leitch (1937), from an investigation of British patients, reported much of the ‘arthritis’ of middle-aged and elderly people to be a result of long continued shortage of food calcium…37 out of 101 women lacked sufficient calcium reserves to maintain normal blood calcium during pregnancy.”1
Dr. Sherman also quotes Dr. Frederick Stare, the celebrated authority of Harvard on nutrition, as follows:
“It was a surprise to see that the majority of X-ray studies on adults past the age of forty-five to fifty years showed considerable demineralization of bone, and one wondered if low dietary intake of calcium or of vitamin D, over many years, might not have been prominent factors in the etiology of this demineralization.”2
In Deaf Smith County, Texas, where the soil is so high in phosphorus that the wheat grown there is several times the otherwise normal phosphorus content, the average age of a victim of a broken hip is twenty years more than the average for the rest of Texas.5
Sherman stresses the situation:
“Several investigators have found, in different parts of the world, considerable areas in which phosphorus-poor soils produce phosphorus-poor forage, which in turn results in phosphorus deficiency among the cattle compelled to subsist upon it…instinct then drives such cattle to the eating of bones (osteophagia), which sometimes results in their acquiring fatal infections from decaying carcasses. It was this fact which first stimulated the investigation that finally revealed the phosphorus deficiency…Evidences of calcium deficiency are not usually clear cut so probably a great deal of it goes undetected…The British authorities on food and nutrition, after long and careful study, speak definitely of the ‘known fact’ that a large proportion of food supplies in England and Scotland have calcium contents too low to be satisfactory.”3
Evidence is cited to show that “the skeletons of adolescent American children are commonly less calcified than they should be for their chronological ages, indicating that customary calcium intakes of children should be increased.”4 We believe this denotes a very common deficiency.
Phosphorus is the most important fertilizing mineral element, and its use has increased 300 percent between 1940 and 1950. There is a need for more phosphorus on almost every farm in the United States.
The propaganda comment often seen that food crops are not harmed by soil deficiency, only the quantity is affected, is a cruel and vicious misrepresentation.
It is false and fraudulent advertising at its worst, the more so in that often the prestige of some official position is used to steer attention away from its obvious falsity.
(We suggest your reading of Dr. H.W. Wiley’s The History of a Crime Against the Food Law if you need proof of the shenanigans in the FDA on keeping the truth from the people on how the law is being flouted.)
Variation in Mineral Content in Vegetables
Firman E. Bear report, Rutgers University
| PERCENTAGE OF DRY WEIGHT | |||||
| Snap Beans | Cabbage | Lettuce | Tomatoes | Spinach | |
| Total ash of mineral matter | |||||
|
highest |
10.45 | 10.38 | 24.48 | 14.20 | 28.56 |
|
lowest |
4.04 | 6.12 | 7.01 | 6.07 | 12.38 |
| Phosphorous | |||||
|
highest |
0.36 | 0.38 | 0.43 | 0.35 | 0.52 |
|
lowest |
0.22 | 0.18 | 0.22 | 0.16 | 0.27 |
|
MILLEQUIVALENTS PER 100 GRAMS DRY WEIGHT |
|||||
| Snap Beans | Cabbage | Lettuce | Tomatoes | Spinach | |
| Calcium | |||||
|
highest |
4.5 | 60.0 | 71.0 | 23.0 | 96.0 |
|
lowest |
15.5 | 17.5 | 16.0 | 4.5 | 47.5 |
| Magnesium | |||||
|
highest |
60.0 | 43.6 | 49.3 | 59.2 | 203.9 |
|
lowest |
14.8 | 15.6 | 13.1 | 4.5 | 46.9 |
| Potassium | |||||
|
highest |
99.7 | 148.3 | 176.5 | 148.3 | 257.0 |
|
lowest |
29.1 | 53.7 | 53.7 | 58.8 | 84.6 |
| Sodium | |||||
|
highest |
8.6 | 20.4 | 12.2 | 6.5 | 69.5 |
|
lowest |
0.0 | 0.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.8 |
|
TRACE ELEMENTS (PARTS PER MILLION DRY MATTER) |
|||||
| Snap Beans | Cabbage | Lettuce | Tomatoes | Spinach | |
| Boron | |||||
| highest | 73 | 42 | 37 | 36 | 88 |
| lowest | 10 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 12 |
| Manganese | |||||
| highest | 60 | 13 | 169 | 68 | 117 |
| lowest | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Iron | |||||
| highest | 227 | 94 | 516 | 1938 | 1584 |
| lowest | 10 | 20 | 9 | 1 | 19 |
| Copper | |||||
| highest | 69 | 48 | 60 | 53 | 32 |
| lowest | 3 | 0.4 | 3 | 0 | 0.5 |
| Cobalt | |||||
| highest | 0.26 | 0.15 | 0.19 | 0.63 | 0.26 |
| lowest | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.20 |
You can see the tremendous variation in food minerals in the vegetable specimens from the varying soil qualities. It is obvious that the consumer of the poor and deficient will inevitably encounter trouble if he fails to become aware of the need for mineral supplementation, like the cows who ate the bones of their dead mates in their effort to survive.
And we quote Country Gentleman, June 1948, for this abstract from the article “Is Your Soil Building Human Health?”
There is no longer much doubt that when it comes to health “we are what we eat.”
The essential minerals for growth and health come to us from the soil. They reach us through the foods we eat. But all soils do not contain them in the same proportion.
Beginning with calcium and phosphorus, men and animals require a long list of such minerals. Not all of them are needed by plants. Consequently, in some soils deficient in certain of the minerals, plant life flourishes.
But the food and forage grown in such soils may fail to pass on either to men or animals all the elements needed for their health. In areas scattered throughout the world, certain endemic diseases of livestock have been traced to the lack of specific minerals in those soils. Often these diseases had been thought to be due to other causes. The story of a nationally famous racing table furnishes a vivid example.
Located in bluegrass country near Leesburg, Virginia, the farm had produced many generations of famous champions. But in spite of a careful breeding program, it was fast losing ground. Not only did it fail to produce fast horses with the heart for a close race. Mares began to throw deformed or stillborn foals. Experts told the owners their “bloodlines were running out”!
The farm’s manager had been reading of some of the new advances in animal nutrition. He suggested that the cause might be mineral exhaustion of the soil. Laboratory analysis showed the bluegrass to be high in calcium, copper, cobalt, and other beneficial minerals. But it was distinctly poor in phosphorus. Superphosphates were applied to the pastures. Results began to be evident the first season. They mysterious symptoms vanished. Now the stable is back in the running again.
Dr, Sherman’s report of Leitch’s opinion that arthritis could be a result of calcium deficiency is not supported by evidence now available on conditions in India. “No arthritis was found in the examination of 240 people in India,” said Dr. C.L. Pathak.6 That supports our contention that arthritis is basically due to cooking, causing a loss of essential amino acids required by bone and teeth. Pasteurization of milk alone is known to cause arthritis and loss of teeth.
It seems from the report from India that overfeeding of bad foods, as we have in this country, is far worse than underfeeding of better foods, as is the case in India. There, heart disease, dental diseased, and arthritis are relatively unimportant. Here, these diseases affect almost all of us in some degree.
Meanwhile, we are told by phony authorities that only food faddists fear worn-out soils or cooked and refined foods, to say nothing of the synthetic imitations of honest food. (For a discussion of synthetic food and vitamins, we offer Lee Foundation Report No. 6.)
References
- Calcium and Phosphorus, p. 10. Columbia University Press, 1947.
- Ibid, p. 85.
- Ibid, p. 13.
- Ibid, p. 34.
- Barnett, L.B. Am. Acad. Appl. Nut., 7:318, 1954.
- Jol. Clin. Nut., V. 6, No. 2, pp. 151–158, 1958.
- Oral Surg., V. 32, No. 8, p. 467–485, 1946
Life from the Soil
To the doctor, health is a negative state meaning the absence of disease. The medical man cannot be held responsible for ensuring the health of the populace. He has a full-time occupation in repair and maintenance of human beings and is not responsible for their foodstuffs. Not even the farmer can be held responsible. He grows foodstuffs for a price in order to live…
What of the agricultural authorities in foremost universities in research institutions? Their efforts are directed to improving the output either by controlling pests, or influencing by climate, or by increasing greater yield per unit acre through the genetic or fertilizer approach. Science is applied to meet the expedient demands of economy, not the long-range needs of the people whose life itself springs from the soil through the foodstuffs which it gives.
—Clinical Physiology, Winter 1959
A Recent Decision (Vitamin E and the FDA)
“I think it is interesting to note…that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration only within the last two months has classified vitamin E as a vitamin necessary to the human body. The health food faddists have long promoted that idea from (the same) medical research that the A.M.A. has long opposed as being without merit.”
The FDA announcement (which removed vitamin E from the “not yet proved” classification) went on to say:
“Since the daily diet provides more than adequate amounts of vitamin E…supplementing it with the vitamin is not necessary.
“In many areas of the U.S., families do not consume balanced meals in a good portion of the cases…Don’t you believe that…vitamins…can help alleviate those shortages indicated?
“Many American children are not getting enough nutrients. The National Research Council says, ‘Among nine-, ten-, and eleven-year olds…high percentages were below optimum levels of nutrient intake.”
—Consumer Reports, January 1961, p. 46.
High Points of Standard Process Nutritional Adjuncts
Anti-Pyrexin [Antronex]: A liver extract (Yakriton) that is opposite in its biological significance to thyroxin, thereby preventing toxic reactions from thyroxin, not as an antidote but as a physiological synergist normally supplied by the liver.
Anti-Pyrexin is a food product having natural physiological antihistaminic properties. For this reason it is often found beneficial in conditions such as allergies, hay fever, colds, hyperthyroidism, and some types of hypertension. It has been observed in allergies and hay fever particularly that these conditions are usually accompanied by systemic alkalinity. When alkalinity is present, Anti-Pyrexin is more effective if the salivary pH has been normalized to (to pH 7) by the use of Cal-Amo tablets (or Betaine Hydrochloride) as shown by Hydrion test papers.
Anti-Pyrexin is contraindicated in persons with low blood pressure or hypothyroid states, unless frequently examined by a physician.
