Foundations of Trophotherapy II

Would you believe that the nutritional debacle of the modern American diet was foreshadowed, with frightening accuracy, more than half a century ago? If not, the second volume in the Selene River Press Foundations of Trophotherapy series will convince you otherwise.

As the title implies, these are foundational materials. Mark Anderson hand-picked the five articles in Book Two, which bring together some of the most groundbreaking nutrition research of Dr. Royal Lee and his contemporaries. Rooted in the art and science of applied nutrition—a concept known as trophotherapy—their work was largely ignored at the time. Yet we do so now at our own peril. With a confused public continually falling for dangerous health trends, a deeper and more broadly disseminated understanding of this research is essential for nutritionists, practitioners, doctors…for all of us.

That’s where the Foundations series comes in. For your convenience, Book One and Book Two are available in EPUB, PDF, Kindle, and print editions. These thin volumes, grouped by common themes and topics, are important chapters in the origin story of trophotherapy. The full story, however, can only be found in the SRP Historical Archives, from which all of these articles hail. A remarkable collection of nutrition research and commentary, the Archives contain a wealth of knowledge with the power to transform the way we think about our health and the health of the world around us. This depository of original research is untainted by commercial interests and freely available to all. Rarities in today’s world.

Much of the work in the SRP Historical Archives can originally be traced back to the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. The vision and lifelong effort of Dr. Royal Lee, the Foundation’s raison d’être in the 1940s and ’50s was the dissemination of knowledge on every imaginable subject related to nutrition.

The Foundations of Trophotherapy series features selections from this decades-spanning body of research, all unified by the concept of trophotherapy—and all far ahead of their time.

Take, for example, the 1942 article by Dr. Royal Lee and Jerome S. Stolzhoff that kicks off Book Two. In it, the authors predict only too well how processed foods would destroy America’s health. They note that whole foods contain functional vitamin complexes that have nourished and sustained humans for centuries. Processed foods, on the other hand, have not. They cannot.

Marvel along with Lee and Stolzhoff as they explain how, despite this notable fact, processed foods were never tested for their nutritional value before they inundated the American diet. After a rapid increase in the number of vitamin-deficiency diseases such as cancer and heart disease, a few brave researchers saw the frightening truth. Faced with reality, have Americans returned to a traditional diet of whole foods? Let’s look at the numbers: data collected in 2013 by the USDA and FDA and released in 2015 show that an astonishing 70 percent of the American diet consists of processed food.

As Dr. Lee said back in the 1940s, unless we return to a diet of time-tested, whole, natural foods, the human race will continue “to dig their graves with their forks and knives.”

His statement may sound like prophecy to some of us now—but of course it’s just plain common sense.

Foundations of Trophotherapy II offers five more fascinating, prescient articles written in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s that will help modern readers ask the right questions: Is pasteurization a lie? What’s so great about honey? Can butter and other animal fats actually be a critical ingredient for good health? Why has salt become one of the most unfairly maligned ingredients in the modern American diet?

In certain quarters, just asking some of these questions is seen as an attack on the status quo. But what has the status quo brought us? Nutritional deprivation and disease. Foundations of Trophotherapy II is a balm against decades of misinformation and ill health. It’s required reading for all who demand a new status quo.