Factor in Whole Grain Prevents Decay; Soft Drinks Causing Cirrhosis of Liver; Comments on Saccharin; Cranberry Juice Aid to Health
Contents in this issue:
- “Factor in Whole Grain Prevents Decay,”
- “Soft Drinks Are Causing Cirrhosis of Liver,”
- “Comments on Saccharin,”
- “Cranberry Juice as Aid to Health.”
The following is a transcription of the June 1964 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Factor in Whole Grain Prevents Decay
Experiments show that elements in the coatings of oats, rice, peanuts, pecans, and cottonseed can reduce the number of dental caries in rats.
In the present concern over methods to check or prevent the high rate of tooth decay, we hear much about medicated toothpaste, fluoridated water, and antibiotics but seldom about the most important causative factor: the widespread use of refined carbohydrate foods.
Today’s diets contain a large percentage of foods found to be harmful to the teeth: white flour, white sugar products that lack the protective elements.
One of these is the natural coating on seeds and whole grains, whose marked beneficial effect on prevention of dental caries is discussed in the following article from Nutrition Reviews of August 1963:
A comparison of the cariogenic influences of whole grains and processed cereals was made by M.A. Constant, P.H. Phillips, and C.A. Elvehjem (Jol. Nutrition 46, 271, 1952) by incorporation of the various foodstuffs into a diet for cotton rats. The whole grain cereals, corn, wheat, and oats were found to be less cariogenic in each case than processed products, corn flakes, wheat flakes, and oatmeal. Later, Constant, H.W. Sievert, Phillips, and Elvehjem (Ibid. 53, 17, 1954) demonstrated that the increased cariogenicity of processed oats occurred at the hulling stage. This observation led to thorough examination of oat hulls.
Oats
F. Taketa and Phillips (Jol. Am. Dietetic Assn., 33, 575, 1957) demonstrated that inclusion of 10 to 25 percent of ground oat hulls in a cariogenic diet led to significant reductions in the incidence of dental caries in cotton rats. Grinding the oat hulls to a fine particle size improved the effectiveness against tooth decay.
This work was extended to white rats by W. Buttner and J.C. Muhler (Jol. Dent. Res., 38, 823, 1959), who tested the effect of 5 and 10 percent supplements of oat hulls to a caries-producing diet. Both supplements produced highly significant reduction in dental caries. Again, these authors found no evidence that was a contributing factor.
Rice
Other seed hulls have been tested by K.O. Madsen and E.J. Edmonds (Jol. Dent. Res., 41, 405, 1962). Hulls of three varieties of rice were fed at a 15 percent level to caries-susceptible cotton rats. All three supplements caused highly significant reductions in dental caries incidence. Two of the samples were appreciably more effective than the third. The same experiment with a more caries-resistant strain of cotton rats led to reductions in tooth decay that were not as striking as those in the caries-susceptible cotton rats. When the two varieties of rice hulls with the greatest activity were used at 5 percent levels in the diet of caries-susceptible cotton rats, significant reductions in dental caries were again observed.
In another trial, 2.5 percent of each of these two varieties of rice hulls was added to the cariogenic diet. A somewhat greater reduction in dental caries was observed than with 5 percent of either rice hull alone. The suggestion was made that the rice hulls might differ qualitatively as well as quantitively in their anticariogenic factors.
In other studies, Madsen and Edmonds demonstrated that 1.5 percent supplements of pecan hulls, peanut hulls, and cottonseed hulls had anticariogenic abilities. The pecan hulls and peanut hulls were approximately equivalent to rice hulls while cottonseed hulls were less effective. The bran layer of rice was also highly effective in reducing the incidence of dental caries in cotton rats. A study of the gross components of the hulls, ash, protein, fat, and fiber indicated that their concentrations were unrelated to the effectiveness of the hulls.
In the above experiments, the hulls or preparations made from them were fed throughout the entire experimental period. Madsen and Edmonds (Jol. Dent. Res., 42, 137, 1963) have tested the influence of feeding the supplements for only ten days of a 98-day assay period. Cotton rats were weaned at eighteen days of age and distributed as littermates into the six groups. The first group received the cariogenic diet for the entire period. The second group was fed the cariogenic diet supplemented with 1.5 percent rice hulls throughout the experiment. The remaining four groups (3 through 6) were fed this supplemented diet for ten days beginning at 18, 28, 38, or 48 days of age. For the remainder of the experimental period the unsupplemented diet was fed.
Time and Duration of Supplementation
When the supplemented diet was fed throughout the entire experiment, a 60 percent reduction in the average extent of carious lesions was observed. When rice hulls were fed for only ten days beginning at weaning, the reduction in caries extent was a surprisingly high 45 percent. When the rice hull supplement was fed beginning at 28, 38, and 48 days of age, much less impressive reductions in the extent of carious lesions were observed; reductions varied from 15 to 24 percent. The effect of rice hull feeding was great in the maxillary molars and relatively small in the mandibular ones.
Effectiveness
The effectiveness of the feeding of hulls during the 18- to 28-day period was demonstrable in each of the three molars despite their different stages of development at the time of hull administration. The first molars had been in the oral cavity for several days, the second molars were just erupting into the oral cavity at the time of the supplemented feeding, while the third molars were still in the process of calcification in their crypts in the jaws and did not erupt until after the supplemented feeding had terminated. Thus, the rice hulls appeared to exert a post-developmental influence upon the first and second molars and a systemic influence during the development of the third molars.
J.J. Vogel and Phillips (Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med., 108, 829, 1961) have demonstrated that the influence of oat hulls could be shown as well in assay periods of 30 days or 84 days. At the end of 30 days on experiment, carious lesions were sufficiently large to permit systematic evaluation. The protective effect of oat hull was proportionately as great at 30 days as at 84 days. They also observed that the initial age of transfer of weanlings to the experimental diet was crucial. Rats weaned and transferred to the cariogenic diet at 16 to 17 days of age developed about a 50 percent higher average extent of carious lesions than those weaned at 18 to 19 days of age. They postulated that age, growth rate, and tooth maturation accounted for much of the biological variation in experimental caries assays.
Madsen and Edmonds (Proceedings of 41st General Meeting, Internatl. Assn. for Dent. Res., Pittsburgh, Abstract 282, 1963) also have reported on the value of a short assay period in the cotton rat. In this study cotton rats were weaned at 12 days of age and transferred immediately to the caries-producing diet. Caries production was rapid and essentially complete in all molars within 20 days after eruption. The 28-day assay period using 12-day weanlings gave the same evaluation of the anticariogenic properties of three varieties of rice hulls as 98-day assay begun at 18 days of age.
Natural Products’ Effectiveness
This series of studies with the cotton rat, a species that has not been used as extensively as the common white rat for caries assay, has provided interesting information about caries-inhibiting factors in seed hulls and about the use of short caries assay periods. On the basis of one published comparison, the results with the cotton rat appear to be comparable to those with the white rat. These two groups of investigators are to be commended for their persistent use of the cotton rat despite some of the drawbacks of difficult handling and small litter size that have discouraged other investigators. The use of more than one experimental species is always to be encouraged in order to keep as many pathways of research available as possible. In addition, these investigators are contributing valuable information on caries-inhibiting factors in natural products that may well become of importance in the control of the human disease.
—Reprinted from Modern Nutrition, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 18–20, March 1964.
Soft Drinks Are Causing Cirrhosis of Liver
Teenagers who drink a lot of soda pop and other soft drinks are developing cirrhosis of the liver according to Dr. S.H. Hutner of New York. Formerly this disease affected mainly those who indulged in too much alcoholic liquor.
Agreeing with these findings was Dr. Herman Baker of Seton Hall College of Medicine, who also found that teenagers who drank generous amounts of sweetened soft drinks were suffering from liver damage.
It is believed that the imbalanced diet, low in protective foods, of these teenagers created a protein deficiency, thus causing cirrhosis of the liver.
—Modern Nutrition, Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1964.
Comments on Saccharin
Saccharin in toxic dosage caused violent gastrointestinal irritation in test animals.
In foods “no serious damage need be apprehended from the quantities of saccharin which would ordinarily be used. The peculiar taste may become repulsive and diminish appetite. For this reason and because saccharin has no food value, its indiscriminate use as sweetening agent should be condemned, except in cases in which sugar is inadmissible” (Sollman, Manual of Pharmacy, Seventh Ed., p. 22).
We have seen cases where saccharin used in food caused a severe dermatitis, recurring whenever saccharin was used. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the first head of the FDA, tried to stop its use in foods, but was overruled by political appointees, as related in his books (Autobiography and History of a Crime Against the Food Law). Wiley resigned in 1912 because of such countermanding of his efforts to protect the public health from counterfeit foods.
Saccharin: A coal-tar crystalline product, C7H5NO3S, several hundred times sweeter than cane sugar, used as a sugar substitute (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1961 Ed.)
The use of saccharin is presently being advocated nationally by soft drink manufacturers who use it in the new 1-calorie diet cola and other drinks as a low-calorie sweetener.
Cranberry Juice as Aid to Health
Long used in the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts for treating urinary infections, cranberry juice actually appears to be highly effective, a Wisconsin physician reports. The juice contains an acid (quinic acid) with strong antibacterial action. Many women with painful, frequent, and urgent urination—a common problem that sometimes fails to respond satisfactorily to antibiotics, sulfa drugs, and other standard treatment— have been relieved of all symptoms while taking two six-ounce glasses of cranberry juice daily. The juice also seems to be effective, the same physician reports, in treating chronic pyelonephritis, a kidney condition. And there is some indication that the juice may help to reduce the tendency toward formation of recurrent kidney stones.
—Reprinted from “Here’s News in Medicine” by Lawrence Galton, Wisconsin Medical Journal, Vol. 61, p. 282.
