“More on Natural vs. Synthetic” and “Questionable Merit,” plus High Points of Congaplex
The following is a transcription of the April 1961 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
More on Natural vs. Synthetic
The constant propaganda to promote synthetic foods by the interests who seem to own our Federal Trade Commission and the FDA lock, stock, and barrel is a very interesting example of how corruption of government officials takes place. The recent Welch case in the FDA is the story of a public official hired to protect the public but who does the opposite and for a fat price protects outside interests. When caught red-handed, Welch obtained a doctor’s certificate stating his health would not permit questioning. (Further details in the 1960 Saturday Review files.)
Counterfeit money, counterfeit food, and counterfeit vitamins all offer fat profits for the racketeer. When these racketeers are so powerful that they can use the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration to protect their death-dealing rackets,
it is time for a congressional investigation—and time for a few heads to roll.
As heretofore stated in these pages, food factors must be made by the anabolic reactions of living plants, accompanied by the absorption of energy—heat and light—from the sun. Animal life, including human life, exists by eating these plant products, catabolically breaking them down, and releasing the heat and energy as muscular work. Man has never been able to duplicate these reactions of anabolic food creation of the plant.
He has, however, taken starch and cellulose from plant sources, boiled this carbohydrate with strong acids, and caused the formation of a black mess of dextrose, which, when purified, bleached, and deodorized, is sold as “corn” sugar or syrup.
The word corn is used to fool the unwary into thinking the stuff is really a plant product, natural in character. It is mislabeling of the most vicious type, permitted by dishonest Food and Drug functionaries who no doubt would be fired if they tried to carry out the intent of the pure food law. (See Dr. H.W. Wiley’s remarks on this subject in his book The History of a Crime Against the Food Law.) Almost forty years after Dr. Wiley stated that this product would probably cause diabetes, Dr. F.D.W. Lukens and Dr. F. Curtis Dohan (in 1949 at the University of Pennsylvania) proved that it does cause diabetes.
No natural sugar has ever been shown to be a cause of diabetes. Has this piece of headline news ever been given the publicity it deserves, or has it been properly reported in the textbooks used by medical students? No doubt you can guess why it has not been reported.
Time magazine, November 11, 1957, reported another headline news item. Drs. Yang and Lee, two Chinese scientists at Princeton University, received the Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry ($40,000 each) for their discovery that “right-handed” molecular forms react differently than their “left-handed” counterparts.
Up to this time, scientists had contended that there was no difference in the right- and left-hand molecules. They also contended that there was no difference in their performance in any chemical reaction or in their biological (nutritional) values. This discovery completely dynamited the old theory of identicalness. What is the practical implication of this momentous discovery? Simply that synthetic food and drug products that were supposed to imitate natural ones are now shown to be quite different, with no explanation as yet for the difference.
The Lee Foundation published a report (Report No. 6) in 1948, “How and Why Synthetic Poisons Are Being Sold as Imitations of Natural Foods and Drugs.” This report tells the story of the right- and left-hand molecules, that only one form is natural in effect and in nutritional value, and the other, unnatural form may actually be poison. That the synthetic product usually is half and half of the two forms, but in some cases during storage, the Walden effect takes place, and the natural may spontaneously become converted to the unnatural.
Yang and Lee showed that the energy content of the two forms may be different, like a wound-up clock that may run down. Walden showed that a running down actually does take place, and so the end product may be a poison that has its beginning in a food product.
Many references are now available, all pointing in the same direction.
From Endocrinology, 38:200–206, 1945:
“L-thyroxine produced twice the effect of DL-thyroxine in every species tested. It may be concluded that all of the activity of the DL-thyroxine can be accounted for by its L-component, and that the D-compound must have little or no activity.”
(Natural thyroxine is all L-thyroxine.)
From Ann. Rev. Biochem., 5:256:
“Dextro glutamic acid has the opposite action of levo: it not only cannot take part in a buffer system, but it inhibits any levo acid that may be present from acting.”
From Jol. Biol. Chem., 166:513–519, 1946:
“It has been found that within seven hours after oral administration of DL-tyrosine to adult humans, an excess of urinary tyrosine…is excreted, which would seem to account for all the dextro compound fed. These findings are interpreted to indicate that D-tyrosine, unlike L-tyrosine…is unavailable for normal physiological functions.”
From Science, 96:542, 1942:
“The ingestion of synthetic (hydrogenated) fat causes vitamin K deficiency.”
(Dr. Doles of Norfolk, Virginia, has shown that the introduction of deep-freeze units in some areas has caused vitamin K deficiency through oxidation exposure of vegetables to air and has increased sudden deaths from coronary disease thirtyfold.)
From U.S. Tech. Bulletin, Department of Agriculture, Hoagland and Snyder, 1942:
“Synthetic fats (hydrogenated fats) are less digestible than natural.”
From Jol. Biol. Chem., 160:441, 1945:
“D-histidine is useless for humans, though assimilated by rats.”
From J.A.M.A., 151:590, 1953:
“The practical value of various types of commercial vitamin K has been questioned recently. Water-soluble (synthetic) vitamin K seems to exert little or no influence on hypoprothrombinemia induced by bishydroxycoumarin. The natural, oil-soluble vitamin K…on the contrary, is capable of acting as an antidote against bishydroxycoumarin…The difference in the mode of action of these two types of vitamin K has not been completely explained as yet. The author feels that as long as the natural, oil-soluble vitamin K is not commercially obtainable, hemorrhage due to bishydroxycoumarin will be dangerous and may even cause fatal complications, particularly if the patient is not hospitalized.”
Note: Oil-soluble vitamin K is naturally present in our Chlorophyll Perles.
From Nutrition Reviews, p. 252, Aug., 1947:
“Pure natural vitamin E was found to be three times as potent as pure synthetic vitamin E.”
From Jol. Nutrition, 63(3):399–408:
1. “Death due to liver necrosis occurred rapidly and in 100-percent incidence in vitamin E depleted rats fed torula yeast grown on papermill waste as the sole source of protein. Comparable diets containing brewer’s by-product yeast did not produce liver necrosis.
2. “Torulopsis utilis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown on synthetic media were both found to be necrogenic, while these same yeasts grown on commercial beer wort were both found to be non-necrogenic.”
From Am. Jol. Physiology, 16:145, 1945:
“Synthetic vitamin B fails to protect against thyrotoxicosis, while yeast does.”
From Jol. Nutrition, 60(3):361–363:
“These studies have shown that the kind of carbohydrate used in a purified diet has an important effect on the rate of developing rancidity. Diets made with glucose (synthetic sugar) were much more susceptible to auto-oxidation than those made with sucrose (natural sugar). The mechanism of the effect is unknown.”
We wonder about this one? Bread that builds the body in twelve different ways with substitute synthetic products.
How is it that men like Dr. McCollum of Johns Hopkins and Frederick Stare of Harvard insist that synthetic counterfeits are equal to natural and that worn-out soils and refined foods cannot cause disease?
The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
615 North Wolfe Street
Department of Biochemistry
Mrs. Esther L. Oakes
255 Meigs Street
Rochester 7, NY
January 10, 1944
Dear Mrs. Oakes:
Replying to your letter of January 6, in which you ask about the relative merits of synthetic and of natural vitamins in the correction of vitamin deficiencies of man, each and every one of these synthetic vitamins is identical with the natural product. Things which are identical are equal to each other in every respect. There is therefore no more toxicity about the synthetic than about the natural one.
There is, of course, some toxic effect of too large doses of certain of the vitamins.
Sincerely,
E.V. McCollum
We can find no authentic test in which a synthetic food has been found capable of substituting for a natural food.
Questionable Merit
If we interpret the signs correctly, then it is evident that the self-medication field will be subjected to violent attacks by those critics of the drug industry who have found a veritable “headline-making goldmine” in their earlier explorations of marketing patterns within the ethical pharmaceutical field.
For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association, in a freewheeling criticism of cold remedies, contended that cold remedies relieve Americans of millions of dollars a year but do not cure or prevent colds.
“No cold remedy can do anything more than provide temporary relief of certain cold symptoms effectively. Hence, they do little more than subtract from your pocketbook,” the article said.
Now, in our personal experience, we have known many physicians to recommend these cold remedies because they believe symptomatic relief is highly desirable.
Statements such as the aforementioned, emanating from official AMA circles and given widespread coverage in the public press, have questionable merit in our opinion.
—Reprinted from Drug Trade News, January 9, 1961.
High Points of Standard Process Nutritional Adjuncts
Anti-Coryza Capsules [Congaplex]: Anti-Coryza is a concentrate of nutritional mineral factors (alkaline) from alfalfa leaf and sea lettuce (dulse). These mineral factors tend to correct physiological unbalances resulting from a lack of leafy vegetable components in the diet.
At present the etiological background of the common cold has not been definitely established. Of the various possibilities investigated, acidosis, allergy, and viral infection are the most plausible causative factors. The reaction of a cold is no doubt a combination of any or all of these factors.
Alfalfa leaf and sea lettuce are rich sources of natural potassium, which we believe furnishes specific intercellular factors so necessary in protein metabolism. In both the virus and allergic reaction range, we are dealing with these intercellular components.
However, in the acidosis reaction we are concerned with increased pulse rate, histamine toxemia, hyperirritability, and fever. Ionizable calcium (Calcium Lactate tablets) would be indicated here to decrease irritability and to reduce fever. Other synergists would be Thymex to activate the body’s defense mechanism, Anti-Pyrexin [Antronex] as a natural physiological antihistamine, Ribonucleic Acid to increase leukocytic activity, and the natural vitamin C complex—which has a great reputation as a cold remedy—to increase resistance to infection and to increase the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood and thereby hasten recovery.
