Historical Archives

The Amazing Royal Lee

By Jerry S. Stolzoff

Summary: In 1943 The Bostonian magazine ran this tribute to the “fightinist” leader in the field of nutrition, Dr. Royal Lee. While a cabal including industrial food manufacturers, the American Medical Association, and the Food and Drug Administration conspired to suppress the inconvenient findings of nutrition science—namely that processed foods were at the root of heart disease, cancer, and most other modern diseases—Dr. Lee worked tirelessly to inform the American public of the truth. Undeterred by the powerful interests allied against him, Lee traveled the country to speak to healthcare groups, civic organizations, farmers, and “anyone within earshot” about the destruction of America’s health at the hands of “devitalized,” processed foods. While he would inspire the organic farming movement as well as a generation of holistic health practitioners, Dr. Lee’s legacy came at a profound price, as thirty years of continual legal battles and personal attacks by government and medical bureaucrats led him to an early grave. From The Bostonian, 1943. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. To learn more about the amazing Dr. Lee, visit Dr.RoyalLee.com.

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Historical Archives

The American Medical Association and Its Criminal Activities

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this thunderous letter to President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Royal Lee calls the president’s attention to a grand jury investigation of corruption within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The real problem, Dr. Lee explains, is that both the FDA and the U.S. Department of Justice had been infiltrated by the American Medical Association (AMA), an institution that was brutally—and illegally—wielding its influence to wipe out competitors and establish the medical approach as the only “legitimate” healing art in the United States. Dr. Lee reminds the president that the AMA was convicted for such monopolistic behavior twenty years earlier, when it was found guilty of violating the federal antitrust laws, and that it would continue to conduct such behavior if it were not legally thwarted. An amazing piece of history that speaks to what might have been. 1962.

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Historical Archives

The Battlefront for Better Nutrition

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: “Yes, there is a battle going on,” Dr. Royal Lee writes in this 1950 article from the magazine The Interpreter. But the war Dr. Lee was referring to did not involve guns or missiles. It was a contest hidden from public view, waged between the nation’s food manufacturers and its first nutritionists—a war regarding the truth about processed foods. While modern beliefs about diet and health stem largely from the disproven idea that fat and cholesterol cause heart disease, the picture looked quite different to America’s nutrition pioneers. These practitioners and researchers, living at a time when industrially processed foods morphed from novelty to staple of the country’s food supply, witnessed firsthand a phenomenon repeated across the globe throughout the twentieth century: wherever processed foods were introduced, the “modern” diseases—heart attacks, cancer, stroke, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, liver disease, ulcers, tooth decay, and so on—soon followed, where they had been virtually nonexistent before. This phenomenon was so obvious and so predictable that only a massive conspiracy between industrial food manufacturers and the federal government, as Dr. Lee bravely outlines in this explosive essay, could hoodwink the American people into believing that processed and refined foods are capable of nourishing the human body. From The Interpreter, 1950. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 30-E.

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Historical Archives

The Cause of Erosion

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee grew up on a farm in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, giving him firsthand knowledge of what he called the “two most important problems of the land—the problem of erosion and the problem of maintenance of fertility of soil.” In this 1947 commentary, Dr. Lee suggests that the two go hand in hand. He speculates that a depletion in mineral salts—or an unnatural imbalance of them like that created by artificial fertilization—leads to an inability of the soil to absorb water and leach from it the organic matter necessary for its health. In turn, he says, a precise make-up of organic matter is required in the soil to ensure the proper mineral constitution. “It seems,” he says, “that we must have organic matter to hold the mineral elements needed by plant life, and we must have mineral salts…to hold the organic matter.” Dr. Lee follows his discussion with excerpts from the classic 1863 text The Natural Laws of Husbandry by German chemist and agriculturist Justus von Liebig, who decries the simplicity with which most agricultural scientists view soil constitution and warns of the profound danger of partial soil fertilization—a practice that nonetheless has become the calling card of modern agriculture. Finally, in an unrelated piece from the January 21, 1944, issue of Science, Dr. Lee comments on the similarity of nutrient factors within and across species in an article titled “Vitamer or Isotel? Both?” Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 29, circa 1947. Multiple original sources.

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Historical Archives

The Cereal Grains: Some of Their Special Characteristics

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: With grains getting a bad rap in some nutrition circles these days, we tend to forget that historically many cultures thrived on diets rich in cereals. The rye eaters of the Swiss Alps, the oat lovers of the Scottish isles, the wheat-heavy Hunza of northern India—all were studied and touted by investigators of the early 1900s for their extraordinary hardiness and freedom from disease. (Of course, their grains were whole, genetically unaltered, grown in healthy soil, and freshly milled before cooking, but that’s another story.) In this 1953 missive, Dr. Royal Lee discusses the nutritional virtues of some of our common grains, commending wheat for its high phosphorus content, rice for the superior biological value of its protein, and oats and rye for their muscle-building effect. He even explains why barley tea—once a household remedy for everything from teething to insomnia—might help keep you free from infectious disease. For anyone questioning the nutritional value of whole grains, Dr. Lee’s words will come as a thought-provoking surprise. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1953.

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Historical Archives

The Changing Incidence and Mortality of Infectious Disease in Relation to Changed Trends in Nutrition

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: In the nineteenth century, deadly infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid, and scarlet fever ran rampant in America and Europe. Then modern medicine came along in the 1900s and put an end to these epidemics through measures such as drug therapy, sanitation, and immunization. At least that’s how the conventional story goes. But does medicine really deserve credit for eradicating these infectious illnesses? In this fascinating article from 1947, Dr. W.J. McCormick points out a startling fact: the rate of each disease mentioned began steadily decreasing around the late 1800s—well before the advent of modern medicine. Moreover, the decline did not speed up as medical practices became standard in the early twentieth century, as one would expect if the “triumph of medicine” story were true. Given the facts, Dr. McCormick says, it appears some factor other than medicine was primarily responsible for bringing the great infectious diseases of the nineteenth century under control. That factor, he says, was the “anti-infection” nutrient, vitamin C. Thanks to revolutionary advances in food production, citrus fruits and other vitamin-C–packed foods became widely available for the first time in the late 1800s, steeling individuals against infection and spurring one of the great public health successes in history—a success wrongly credited to the medical and pharmaceutical fields, the author concludes. From The Medical Record, 1947. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 5A.

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Historical Archives

The Chemical Background of the Relation Between Malnutrition and Heredity

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: It’s been said that Dr. Royal Lee’s theories were typically fifty years ahead of their time. In this astounding lecture from 1956, the great pioneer of nutrition science presents two “radical” ideas now considered revolutions in scientific thought. First, Dr. Lee challenges the principle of classic genetics theory that, barring a mutation in a person’s DNA, that individual will pass on a clean genetic slate to his or her children. Instead, Dr. Lee states, any defect caused to a person during his or her lifetime by malnutrition is likely to be inherited by the individual’s future children—a fact thoroughly substantiated by the new science of epigenetics. Dr. Lee then discusses the science behind his remarkable Theory of Protomorphology, the first known account of autoimmune disorders. According to Dr. Lee’s theory, the growth and repair of body tissues is controlled by a careful balance between, on one hand, growth-promoting antigens produced by (and unique to) each type of tissue and, on the other hand, antibodies produced by the body’s autoimmune system. If the amount of antibodies exceeds the normal balance, then those antibodies attack the tissue—or an “autoimmune reaction” occurs. Though it would take decades for conventional science to catch up with Dr. Lee, today autoimmune reactions are considered a leading cause of disease and death in America. From Natural Food and Farming, 1956. 

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Historical Archives

The Commoner Forms of Pruritus Ani Considered Eutrophically

By N. Philip Norman, MD

Summary: Pruritus ani is a condition marked by intense and chronic itching in the anal area. Here, Dr. Philip Norman, celebrated New York City physician and author of Chronic Idiopathic Ulcerative Colitis, explores the various nutritional causes and treatments of this difficult condition. This is a splendid example of how far back some medical doctors embraced a holistic approach to difficult health problems and applied nutritional solutions to great success. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1965.

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Historical Archives

The Composition and Nutritive Value of Flour

By H.M. Sinclair

Summary: With the invention of the steel roller mill in the late nineteenth century came the widespread availability of “70-percent extracted” flour—or refined flour, as we know it today. The 30 percent of the wheat grain left behind in refined flour’s production comprises mostly the bran and germ, which happen to contain almost all the food’s vitamins and minerals. In countries that historically relied on bread for their health, such as Great Britain, this was a major problem, and for years a debate raged over what to do about it. On one side there were the “chemical” nutritionists, who proposed doctoring 70-percent flour with synthetic versions of the “token nutrients”—that is, the handful of vitamins and minerals deemed most depleted during refining. Opposing them, as reflected in this 1957 lecture to the Royal Society of Health by Dr. Hugh Sinclair, were the more “naturalist” nutritionists. Since not all the nutrients provided by wheat were known nor the way they function truly understood, Dr. Sinclair says, a wiser course would be to mandate a minimum, higher extraction rate of wheat—as the British government had done during World War II—so that the nutrient-dense germ at least was included. “There have been very many tests on the lower animals of the two types of flour,” he adds, “and it is acknowledged that rats grow better on flour of high extraction than on [chemically] ‘fortified’ white flour.” Unfortunately, facts such as these—like the old-school-nutrition researchers who presented them—were simply ignored as the age of chemical nutrition prevailed. From The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 1957. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 38.

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Historical Archives

The Despotic Misuse of Our Federal Pure Food Law

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Publishing this piece was a tremendous act of courage by Dr. Royal Lee. In it, he exposes the methods used by government agencies to suppress the natural-nutrition movement and subordinate nutritional science to medical consensus in spite of the fact that medical authorities have never trained in nor respected the field of nutrition. In fact, these authorities have historically acted as apologists for food adulterators and persecutors of whole-food advocates. Lee also debunks FDA attack statements on “food faddists” and organic-farming advocates. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1957.

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Historical Archives

The Dietary Regimen in the Treatment of Renal Calculi

By Charles C. Higgins, MD

Summary: Excerpts from a review of studies investigating the connection between vitamin A deficiency and renal calculi, or kidney stones. This is one of the earliest tracts showing the critical role of vitamin A in the health of the kidneys. Although pH is discussed, the main thrust of the report concerns studies—conducted in the U.S., Africa, China, and other parts of Asia—all reaching the conclusion that vitamin A deficiency leads to renal calculi and lesions. From The Journal-Lancet, 1938. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 5. 

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Historical Archives

The Direct Effect of Malnutrition on Tissue Degeneration

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this 1949 address to the Seattle chapter of the American Academy of Applied Nutrition, Dr. Royal Lee touches on some of the major findings of early nutrition history that are still, incredibly, ignored to this day. Topics include the importance of calcium, phosphorus, and raw protein to tooth health; the total destruction of nutrients in bread caused by bleaching; the connection between vitamin E deficiency and heart disease; the dependency of connective-tissue integrity on adequate vitamin C levels; and the various lesions of B vitamin deficiencies. Dr. Lee explains that most of the health problems caused by nutrient deficiency are the result of the consumption of overcooked and processed foods and concludes with perhaps the most important edict for good health: “We must take the trouble in our homes to prepare our foods from the basic materials as far as possible, even to the extent of growing our vegetables and fruits on properly composted soil if we can. The dividends will be quite possibly twenty years added to our life span, to say nothing of the life added to our years.” 1949. Reprinted by Selene River Press in Lectures of Dr. Royal Lee, Volume I. 

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Historical Archives

The Drama of Fluorine: Archenemy of Mankind

By Leo Spria, MD

Summary: The complete book, published in its entirety by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. The title says it all. The fluoridation of public water supplies was a heated debate in the early 1950s in America, and Dr. Spria weighed in with this extremely well researched book, which, he explains in the preface, is mainly “a condensed summary of 34 papers which I published in various medical journals in this country, in Great Britain, and on the continent of Europe.” Today’s reader will learn much about the lies, scientific fraud, and official cover-ups in the long and sordid history of the fluoridation of public water supplies. An excellent bibliography adds to value of this historically important book. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1953.

View PDF: The Drama of Fluorine: Archenemy of Mankind

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Historical Archives

The Effect of Aluminum Compounds in Foods

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Aluminum poisoning was an unsuspected cause of degenerative health conditions until Dr. Royal Lee and others of his time exposed the truth. As aluminum cookware and food products containing aluminum, such as baking powder, became more widely used, Dr. Lee and others soon realized the dangers of human exposure to this nonnutritional element. In this classic report, Dr. Lee proposes a mechanism by which aluminum—through upset of the body’s phosphorous-calcium balance—can cause disease via overactivity of one of the two branches of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. Dr. Lee also provides an extensive table listing the symptoms of overactivity of each of these systems—an absolutely essential reference for any health practitioner or student of nutrition. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1946.

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Historical Archives

The Effect of Imbalance in the “Filtrate Fraction” of the Vitamin B Complex in Dogs

By Dr. Agnes Fay Morgan

Summary: “The problem with synthetic vitamins is they’re pure,” said the great holistic nutritionist Dr. Royal Lee. What he meant is that, whereas vitamins in food are naturally accompanied by countless cofactors critical for the proper function of the nutrient, synthetic vitamins are lone chemicals, devoid of their required, synergistic helpers. The difference between the two, Dr. Lee said, is the difference between a nutritive and a pharmacological effect. And many early nutrition studies support this idea. In the experiment presented here, eminent nutrition scientist Dr. Agnes Fay Morgan discusses the surprising effects of “enriching” the feed of dogs on a low-vitamin-B diet with synthetic supplements. Whereas dogs with no supplementation developed the symptoms expected of a partial lack of vitamin B—fatigue, poor digestion, slowed growth—the dogs given synthetic B vitamins developed different and far more grave conditions, including progressive neuromuscular degeneration followed by paralysis and, finally, death. These “unexpected failures of nutrition” were exactly the type of pharmacological effects Dr. Lee decried regarding synthetic vitamins, and they compelled Dr. Morgan to warn of the “possible danger of the administration of large amounts” of artificial B vitamins, adding that “fortification of foods with those vitamins” could precipitate conditions worse than those created by a deficiency. This did not deter the Food and Drug Administration, however, which less than two years after this study launched its flour “enrichment” program, requiring the addition of various synthetic B vitamins to all white bread in America—some of those chemicals the very compounds that hurried Dr. Morgan’s dogs to an unnatural death. From Science, 1941.

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Historical Archives

The Effects of Vitamin Deficient Diets on Rats, with Special Reference to the Motor Functions of the Intestinal Tract In Vivo and In Vitro

By Louis Gross

Summary: Historically significant British study from 1924 on the pathological lesions appearing in the nervous system and digestive tract of rats fed vitamin deficient diets. This article demonstrates the seriousness and excellence of early vitamin research. From The Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 1924. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 24.

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Historical Archives

The Embalmer’s Dilemma

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Who knows better the ultimate side effects of pharmaceutical drugs than an embalmer? In this thought-provoking article from 1962, Dr. Royal Lee presents and discusses remarks by professor Ray E. Slocum of the Dodge Chemical Company, who details the decrepit physical condition of bodies belonging to people who had taken drugs such as thyroid medications, diabetic aids, tranquilizers, and steroids while alive. Among the hazardous effects of longtime use of such prescriptions, Slocum says, are ulcers, cirrhosis, nerve damage, kidney failure, fatty liver, and intestinal walls “so thin…they cannot withstand the injection of embalming fluids.” Worse, pharmaceuticals often do nothing more than ameliorate the symptoms of a condition, meaning if the deathly side effects of a drug don’t fell a patient, the illness the drug is masking eventually will. From Let’s Live magazine, 1962.

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Historical Archives

The Facts Are Published—Why Not Be Honest About It?

By the Therapeutic Foods Company

Summary: In this brilliant missive from Dr. Royal Lee’s Therapeutic Foods Company, the “facts” published refer to studies showing that only natural vitamins—that is, vitamins as they are found in food, as complexes of many cooperating compounds—are capable of curing vitamin-deficiency diseases such as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, and rickets. On the other hand, isolated or synthetic fractions of the vitamin complexes, which today we define as “vitamins,” do not cure deficiency diseases. For instance, few people realize that ascorbic acid (what is known today as “vitamin C” despite the fact that it is just one of numerous compounds in the natural vitamin C complex) has never been shown to cure scurvy. Nor does synthetic thiamine cure beriberi or synthetic vitamin D cure rickets. In fact, Dr. Lee points out, studies at the time indicated that isolated vitamin fractions might ultimately make these conditions worse. Scientific study supports these facts, he says, so why not be honest about it? Therapeutic Foods Company, 1941.

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Historical Archives

The Fallacy of “High Potency” in Vitamin Dosage

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: There’s no harm in taking high doses of synthetic vitamins, right? That’s what most people believe anyway. Even many health practitioners think so. Yet early nutrition research showed clearly that ingesting large doses of synthetic, non-food-based supplements (what pass as “vitamins” in today’s world) can have serious consequences on your health. For instance, as Dr. Royal Lee points out in this 1950 article, even a moderate excess of synthetic thiamine (vitamin B1) induced disorders such as herpes zoster, hyperthyroidism, gallstones, and sterility in test subjects, and high doses of synthetic vitamin E caused calcium loss in the bones of test animals—the very opposite of the intended effect. The latter case, Dr. Lee says, illustrates the “little known and highly important” fact that high doses of a synthetic vitamin can cause the very same symptoms as a deficiency of that vitamin. Thus long-term use of most any supplement sold today may only make worse the condition it’s being taken for—something to think about your next trip down the vitamin aisle. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, circa 1950.

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