By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Royal Lee, writing on behalf of the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, urges the directors of the American Academy of Nutrition to adopt an official code of principles. Among the principles he suggests are addressing head on controversial subjects such as the pasteurization of milk and fluoridation of water as well as actively countering the trend toward “counterfeit foods” such as corn syrup (glucose), hydrogenated foods, and artificial colors. This is Dr. Lee’s public policy in a nutshell. The Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1957.
Letter to the Directors of the American Academy of Nutrition[spacer height=”20px”]
Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research
Laboratories and Research Division
Brookfield, Wisconsin
Reply to Executive Office:
2023 West Wisconsin Ave.
Milwaukee 3, Wisconsin
January 7, 1957
To the Directors of the American Academy of Nutrition.
Gentlemen:
I would like to offer a few words of constructive comment on the responsibilities of the academy.
1. Some code of principles should be adopted. Unless the academy sets forth its objectives and adopts a platform of principles, prospective members are unable to decide whether or not the academy deserves their support.
These principles, in the main, are matters of moral determination, not matters subject to compromise or political disposition.
2. Controversial subjects. The basic objectives of the academy are the promotion of facts relative to nutrition, I take it, and there are always opponents of facts when facts hurt somebody’s business. So the academy cannot run away from controversial matters if it is not to avoid performing its intended function.
A good example of the distortion of facts by business interests is the milk pasteurization situation. The academy was founded by men who recognized the health-destroying nature of pasteurized milk even though all the medical organizations in the country endorse pasteurization.
Water fluoridation is a similar situation. As long as the Federal Food and Drug Administration considers inorganic fluorides nonnutritional in nature, water fluoridation remains mass medication—morally indefensible, a crime against free people, and medical despotism at its worst. But you find the practice, like pasteurization, being defended by all politically controlled professional and lay organizations.
For the academy to permit its pages to be used by proponents of fluoridation is as weak minded as to have articles on atheism put into religious journals or articles on perpetual motion put into engineering journals. It is a reflection on the intelligence, if not the integrity, of the editors.
3. The trend to counterfeit foods. These include: synthetic glucose—the “ideal food adulterant,” as described long ago by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, who was justified in his fear that it would cause diabetes (the only sugar that does, in animal tests); hydrogenated fats, now proven to cause high blood cholesterol; synthetic vitamins, which cannot possibly perform the function of natural ones by reason of the complexity of the natural; and imitation colors and flavors, which are inherently fraudulent, to list a few of the outstanding examples of the billion-dollar industry that would control the academy lock, stock, and barrel if the directors are not eternally vigilant.
It is the practice of these industries based on fraud to smear by some means or other all who oppose their criminal activities, to discredit them wherever possible, and to frame phony charges against them under the federal pure food laws if they are engaged in any activity permitting such action. Then the crooks can masquerade as honest citizens, and their enemies can be advertised as crooks. That seems to be the reason why our last executive head of the Federal Food and Drug Administration was the vice president and general counsel of one of our largest flour-milling companies.
Few people know of the existence of a federal law that provides for a $5,000 fine and a jail sentence for anyone who reduces the nutritional value of a food by processing or adulteration. Under this law every ounce of flour, every ounce of hydrogenated fat, is sold in defiance of the law. Certainly the violators need their own man in charge of law enforcement to avoid persecution.
If the academy is to command the respect of those who are fighting this type of malnutrition, founded on criminal control of our governmental functions, then it must take a definite stand; it must set up a code of ethics, a platform of principles, and put its house in order with an uncompromising attitude towards infiltrating propaganda (the little “butter or oleo” stuff in recipes, etc.).
Otherwise, we will be taken over by “Trojan horse” methods, and the efforts of the founders will have been nothing more than a memory of good intentions, defeated by the impotence and timidity of their successors.
I hope the directors will give this matter their most serious consideration.
Very truly yours,
Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research
Royal Lee
[Signature]
RL: em
enc.copy FTOA-Sec.14
(Par.6134)
[Postscript]
We need no new laws to stop food adulteration.Every ounce of bleached flour; every ounce of corn syrup, every ounce of hydrogenated fat is sold in violation of the law you see on the other side of this page. [Copy of law not included.] But with the [former] vice president of Pillsbury Mills as executive director of the FDA, naturally no action will be taken.
By Dr. Royal Lee. The Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1957.
