SRP Historical Archives Search

By Nancy Appleton, PhD

Summary: You've heard that sugar can suppress the body's immune system, but did you know it interferes with the absorption of calcium? How about that it can cause food allergies, depression, and cancer of the breast, ovaries, and prostate? Or that sugar can reduce the good cholesterol in your blood and increase the triglycerides, two of the strongest indicators we have of heart disease risk? Despite the massive commercial campaign to paint refined sugar as harmless—or at worst merely "empty calories"—hoards of scientific evidence indicate that it is far worse than that. In this startling list, Dr. Nancy Appleton documents 124 ways in which sugar has been scientifically implicated as a poison to human health, complete with 124 reputable references to back up her claims. From nancyappleton.com, 2004.

By Jonathan Forman, MD

Summary: Dr. Jonathan Forman was an esteemed medical doctor who pioneered the field of environmental medicine and launched and edited the famous cutting-edge journal Clinical Physiology. From 1968 to the present, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine has presented the prestigious Jonathan Forman Award annually to doctors and researchers who make outstanding contributions to environmental medicine. In this biography of Dr. Royal Lee, Dr. Forman writes, "in the field of 'health through nutrition', [Dr. Lee] stands out as the Empire State Building on the New York skyline." High praise indeed. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1964.

By Joe Nichols, MD

Summary: Pioneering holistic medical doctor Joe Nichols writes about the "six chief causes of disease": (1) emotions (2) malnutrition (3) poisons (4) infections (5) accidents, and (6) inheritance. The worst, he says, are the emotions. "Worry, fear, anxiety, hate, envy, jealousy—these are the great killers," he explains, recommending the three A's (acceptance, approval, and adoration of others) as a remedy. A second great killer, Dr. Nichols says, is malnutrition, which starts with soils that have been exhausted of minerals through irresponsible farming practices utilizing artificial fertilizers. "The end result of chemical farming is always disease, first in the land itself, then in the plant, then in the animal, and finally in us. Everywhere in the world where chemical farming is practiced the people are sick. The use of synthetic chemicals does not make land rich. It makes it poorer than before." Dr. Nichols founded the Natural Foods Associates and edited its magazine, Natural Food and Farming, one of the first natural-food magazines published in the United States. From Natural Food Associates, 1954. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 58. 

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: By the close of the 1940s, Dr. Royal Lee had seen many "peeps behind...the iron curtain that is so carefully maintained by the makers of fraudulent foods to keep the American people in ignorance as to the real cause of their chronic diseases." Thus, in commenting on the opinion of a committee who'd concluded, on very little evidence, that fertilizing soil with trace minerals is unnecessary to produce nutritious plants, Dr. Lee could not help but question the motives of the committee's so-called experts. "Such haste in promoting one side of a vital question that cannot be settled without a great amount of research certainly throws a lot of doubt upon the integrity and honesty of the committee." Lee would spend the next two decades calling out such formulaic chicanery, the kind of which would later lead to some of the great shams of modern nutrition, including cholesterol theory and low-fat diets. 1949. Original source unknown.

By Dr. Royal Lee and William A. Hanson

Summary: This booklet is an authoritative presentation on the metabolism of calcium in the blood. It outlines the specific influence of various vitamins, such as vitamins F and D, on the movement and activity of calcium. There is more calcium in the body than all the other minerals added together; this is an important overview on the biochemical flow of our most abundant mineral. Includes a large chart of the flow of calcium throughout the body. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1942.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this one-of-a-kind discussion of malnutrition and heart health, Dr. Royal Lee describes the characteristic sounds of various heart irregularities as detected by an Acoustic Cardiograph or Endocardiograph. First, he traces the cause of extra heartbeats and fibrillations to a deficiency of factors in the B vitamin complex. He then goes on to describe the connection between a number of other heart abnormalities and deficiencies in nutrients such as vitamins C, F, G, and E2. 1953. Original source unknown. 

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this succinct article from 1940, the great nutrition pioneer Dr. Royal Lee presents some of his foundational views about vitamins—facts that might go a long way toward righting the field of diet and health today were they more widely known. First, he points out, the effects of vitamins vary so immensely between species that it is completely nonsensical to recommend daily allowances for humans based on tests made on rats and guinea pigs (which is precisely how "recommended daily intakes" were developed). Second, he explains, no vitamin consists of a single compound. All vitamins in their original form—that is, as they are found in food—are in fact "complexes," or mixtures of biochemically interrelated compounds that work together to deliver a nutritive effect to the body. Such natural vitamins are a far cry from the single, chemically pure, "most active" compounds that pass as vitamins today. Taking such isolated fractions without their accompanying synergists, Dr. Lee says, explains the disappointing, and sometimes disturbing, results of early research testing the efficacy of synthetic vitamins. Vitamin Products Company, 1940. 

By Francis Pottenger Jr., MD 

Summary: "There is no question that pasteurized milk and milk from poorly fed cattle produces osteoporosis in the experimental animal." This quote by Dr. Francis Pottenger Jr., whose famous cat experiments in the 1930s established that malnutrition is inherited, sums up the great paradox of pasteurized milk: Americans drink it by the gallon believing they are strengthening their bones, but in truth it does the opposite, as shown by animal experiments going back decades. In this telling article, Dr. Pottenger discusses a study organized in 1933 by a farmer whose aim was to produce the finest milk possible from his cows. With the aid of a group of scientists, he discovered some basic principles of milk production that have been long ignored by the American dairy industry and health "experts" alike: not only does pasteurization destroy the nutritional value of milk, but the health of the cow greatly determines whether the milk it produces is beneficial or detrimental. "When the health of the cattle fails," Dr. Pottenger explains, "the nutritional f actors of milk will decline, and partly metabolized food nutrients will produce sensitizations not only in the cow but in those who use the milk." The implications of this statement are almost beyond belief. Included also is a description of the forgotten Wulzen anti-stiffness factor, a vitamin-like component of raw milk shown by early nutrition researchers to help prevent arthritis. From Modern Nutrition, 1962. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 27A.

By Walter C. Russell

Summary: One of the great mysteries of early nutritional research was the identity of a certain fat-soluble substance shown by Dr. Rosalind Wulzen to prevent irregular calcification of the tissues. Dr. Wulzen first observed the effects of a deficiency of this factor in experiments she was conducting on guinea pigs, whose wrists stiffened as a result of a lack of the substance. Upon feeding the animals some fresh raw cream, she found that the animals' wrists returned to normal—the calcification having reversed—and she thus named the substance the "anti-stiffness factor," though in many circles it became known simply as the Wulzen factor. The following excerpt from Stanford University's Annual Review of Biochemistry for 1944 introduces readers to this "new fat-soluble factor," the precise identity of which remains debated to this day. (Dr. Royal Lee proposed that the Wulzen factor was none other than Dr. Weston Price's famous "Activator X.") One fact about the Wulzen factor remains unequivocal, however: while raw cream and milk ridded Dr. Wulzen's guinea pigs of their calcification stiffness, pasteurized cream and milk did not, as the investigator herself reported on several occasions. This fact should give anyone studying nutrition pause about what we think we know about milk, given that virtually all studies of it over the past seventy-five years or so have been on pasteurized versions. (To learn more about the nutritional differences between raw and pasteurized milk, see "Abstracts on the Effect of Pasteurization on the Nutritional Value of Milk.") From the Annual Review of Biochemistry, 1944. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 127.

By Ernest Klein, MD

Summary: In this 1954 article from the legendary health magazine Prevention, Dr. Ernest Klein describes his remarkable discovery of a possible predictor of coronary thrombosis (the cause of most heart attacks) as well as a means of its prevention through a simple dietetic therapy. Unfortunately, Dr. Klein's ideas—based on his observation and treatment of hundreds of patients—were never tested by other researchers because of the refusal of medical officialdom to even entertain them. In fact, upon publication of his findings, Dr. Klein was summarily fired by the hospital he worked at, as was his daughter. It is doubtful, Prevention's editors opine, that Dr. Klein's theory was the final word on heart disease and its prevention, but the fact that his findings were suppressed by the medical establishment and never pursued by other investigators is nothing short of scandalous. Unfortunately, obstructing alternative treatments for preventing disease remains stock and trade for medicine, an industry that profits from managing illness, not deterring it. From Prevention magazine, 1954. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 96.

By Alfred Aslander

Summary: "A tooth is a living tissue; not a dead mineral structure," writes Swedish researcher Alfred Aslander in this compelling 1964 report. "And a tooth is an independent individual that grows out of the mandible in somewhat the same way as a plant grows out of the soil. The plant receives nutrients from the soil solution, the tooth from the blood stream. The growth of [each is] governed by the same laws of nutrition." The author proposes, based on animal studies and his own experimentation, that supplementing the diet with bone meal will supply all the nutrients required by a tooth and even outlines a study that would settle the debate about nutrition and dental disease. Too bad no one took him up on it. Report from the Division of Agriculture, The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Reprint 134B, 1964.

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: Given the physiological overlap of many animal species, it is not surprising that the fields of veterinary science and human nutrition have often illumined each another. One example of such discovery is discussed here by famed chiropractor Dr. George Goodheart, who describes how he came to use the trace mineral manganese as a successful nutritional adjunct in treating disc lesions. While observing a surgery to repair a slipped disc in a patient, he recounts, he noticed that the ligaments around the patient's disc were exceedingly limp. After he then treated a patient for a recurring sprained ankle—caused, he suspected, by a loose tendon—it struck him that the lack of tone in the connective tissue in these cases was reminiscent of perosis, the famous "slipped tendon" disease in chickens. Manganese being a known veterinary cure for perosis, Dr. Goodheart began to administering the mineral to his disc patients with great success, and when he shared his therapy with colleagues, they observed too a marked improvement in the recovery rate of patients with disc lesions. It is the kind of "outside the box" thinking that made Dr. Goodheart, who introduced the method of Applied Kinesiology to the world, such a brilliant health practitioner. From the Journal of the National Chiropractic Association, 1954. Reprinted by  the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By W.M. Ringsdorf, Jr., DMD, and Dr. E. Cheraskin, MD, DMD

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee and other early nutritionists maintained that ascorbic acid is only one of the many components constituting the natural vitamin C complex—and not necessarily the functional one at that. On the other hand, ascorbic acid serves as a useful biomarker for determining the level of vitamin C complex in the body. Acknowledging that subclinical vitamin C deficiency is common, the authors outline a fast and inexpensive method of determining plasma and intradermal levels of vitamin C in an individual. From GP, journal of the American Academy of General Practice, 1962. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 124.

By Joseph P. Ginsburg and John P. Reed

Summary: One of the earliest scientific assessments of DDT and pesticides in American agriculture. Ginsburg and Reed, of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station in New Brunswick, report the results of their study measuring the amounts of DDT accumulated in the topsoil of various food-crop fields within the state. (DDT was introduced to the American market in 1947; this report was published in 1954.) Their findings agree with previous studies conducted in other parts of the country, namely that “DDT does not readily decompose in most of the cultivated soils and may, after repeated annual applications, remain in sufficiently large quantities to interfere with the growth of certain crops.” Ginsburg and Reed also note that while some crops were tolerant of the insecticide, others, such as tomatoes, squash, and snap beans, were significantly damaged by application of the chemical. From the Journal of Economic Entomology. Reprint 73, 1954.

By Dr. Ralph Bircher

Summary: In this 1953 lecture, celebrated nutritional and medical authority Dr. Ralph Bircher of Switzerland touts the virtues of raw foods. He begins by discussing a seldom-mentioned but universal reaction to eating cooked food known as digestive leukocytosis: "Some message sent by the palate to the marrow through the vegetative [autonomic] nerve system releases a deployment of leucocytes which swarm out to the walls of the intestines, especially of the colon, as if to defend a frontline." In other words, eating cooked foods sets off the immune system. Bircher then cites the work of Dr. Paul Kouchakoff who showed that "digestive leukocytosis does not happen whenever a meal consists of, or even begins with raw vegetable food." (See Dr. Kouchakoff's seminal study, "The Influence of Food Cooking on the Blood Formula of Man.") Bircher also addresses the subject of enzymes in raw foods, saying there are "specific enzymes in fresh and living plant cells which are very delicate" and which the “human organism knows how to protect and escort...throughout the digestive tract, so that they can reach the colon without harm." (This is in direct contrast to conventional belief that all enzymes in food are broken down during the course of human digestion.) Once in the colon, Bircher adds, these special raw-food enzymes "perform a basic change in the bacterial flora by attracting and binding what oxygen there is. Thus, they remove the aerobic condition which is responsible for putrefaction, fermentations, dysbacteria and intestinal toxemia." Historical note: Bircher's father, the famous Maximilian Bircher-Benner, developed the raw Swiss breakfast food muesli for patients at his clinic. In Europe it is often still called Birchermuesli. Reprint 80, 1953.

[By the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research]

Summary: The discovery of vitamins in the early twentieth century was profoundly big news in the field of science, with much of the original research reported by top scientific journals and publishing houses of the day. This would change around the middle of the century, when the monopolistic medical industry conspired to keep nutrition studies out of the leading scientific journals, forcing nutrition investigators to report their findings in lesser known publications. Yet before medicine's clampdown, vitamin research commanded the full attention of the scientific world, as reflected by these abstracts from the 1930s addressing nutrition and heart disease. The excerpts, taken from a variety of prestigious science journals of the day, consistently report a connection between a lack of vitamins, particularly vitamin B1, and the development of heart disorders. With the rise of industrial food manufacturing fundamentally altering the country's food supply—including destroying much of its vitamin B1—health authorities at the time would had to have gone out of their way not to see the connection between the processing of America's foods and the degradation of its health. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 6, 1939.

[By the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research]

Summary: At the turn of the twentieth century, sanitary conditions on many American dairy farms were deplorable, and it was not uncommon for humans to become infected by dangerous microbes transmitted in cow's milk. While many officials pressed for sanitary regulations that would force producers to provide safe raw milk to the public, other powers pushed for another, less expensive option: pasteurization. Heating milk to high temperatures allowed germ-infested product to be sold to the public instead of being discarded. But while pasteurization did help neutralize many of the pathogens introduced by unscrupulous dairy farms, it had another, rather significant consequence that has gone long ignored. In short, pasteurizing milk destroys its nutritive value, as this collection of research abstracts from the 1930s shows. Whereas the studies report raw milk to promote growth, immunity, and excellent health in general, pasteurized milk was shown to do almost the complete opposite, inviting vitamin deficiency and disease in people who drink it, particularly infants. Even its calcium supply was shown to be highly unusable, making "scalded milk" one of the great impostors of modern food manufacturing. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 7, 1939.

By Dr. Weston A. Price 

Summary: The notion of "alkalizing" one's diet—or eating foods that supposedly increase the pH within the body and thus optimize health—has been around as long as the science of nutrition itself. In this 1935 article, famed dentist and nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston A. Price debunks the hypothesis that an alkalizing diet helps prevent tooth decay. Citing data from his famous worldwide study of populations free of dental disease and other degenerative illness, Dr. Price states, "In no instance have I found the change from a high immunity to dental caries [cavities] to a high susceptibility…to be associated with a change from a diet with a high potential alkalinity to a high potential acidity." In fact, he adds, his data show, if anything, that good tooth health is the result of an acidifying diet. Dr. Price further discounts the notion that an alkalizing diet promotes health in general and instead stresses the importance of eating whole foods rich in vitamins and minerals, particularly the fat-soluble vitamins so abundant in animal foods. From Dental Cosmos, 1935. Reprinted with permission from the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this primer on the benefits of lactic acid to digestion, Dr. Royal Lee explains the science behind his remarkable bowel-normalizing product Acidophilus Yeast (known today as Lactic Acid Yeast), which has the special distinction of being able to convert any dietary carbohydrate into lactic acid within the colon. Not only does this action acidify the bowel, thus killing potentially dangerous microorganisms and promoting balanced gut flora, but the yeast also releases enzymes that aid digestion, and it provides bulk to stool—all of which help ensure proper bowel function. Dr. Lee backs up his comments by presenting a clinical study showing Acidophilus Yeast's impressive results in combating constipation, the researchers stating unequivocally the chief reason for the yeast's effectiveness: "It has been demonstrated time and time again that the stools of patients who are constipated are, in a very large majority, alkaline…The lactic acid acts as a stabilizer of the hydrogen ion concentration in the colon.” With many alternative health practitioners today promoting indiscriminate alkalization of the body, the words of these investigators are well worth remembering. Published by Vitamin Products Company, circa 1940.

Various authors

Summary: In the late 1940s, the Drosnes-Lazenby Naturopathic Clinic in Pittsburgh began reporting some amazing results regarding cancer treatment. After the founders of the clinic successfully reversed tumors in guinea pigs using the secretion of a specially developed microbial culture, they began administering the treatment to people who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Remarkably, many of the individuals—given no chance to live by conventional medicine—recovered. With the work fully supervised and documented by medical doctors, the clinic approached the American Cancer Society (ACS) to do more extensive testing of its treatment. Astoundingly, the ACS, without investigating the clinic's patient cases or analyzing the microbial secretion, proceeded to publicly denounce the Drosnes-Lazenby treatment as a hoax. The ACS then banded with the American Medical Association to "inform" physicians and their patients that the Drosnes-Lazenby treatment had been "thoroughly investigated" and that the clinic operators were effectively frauds and profiteers (neglecting to mention that the clinic was not even charging for its services). Yet, as this collection of writings published in 1950 by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research attests, the successes of the Drosnes-Lazenby Clinic were well documented, revealing just how far the conventional cancer-treatment industry has gone to protect its "turf" against competition—regardless of the consequences. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprints 18E and 8-50A, 1950. Multiple original sources.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Although the oil in wheat is extremely beneficial, it is also extremely delicate, writes Dr. Royal Lee, making whole wheat flour "as perishable as milk." Truly nutritious bread can only be made with flour that is within hours of being ground. Because of this super quick rancidification of the oil in wheat, virtually all commercial "whole wheat" breads are of dubious nutritional value. The surest way to get the true benefits of wheat, Dr. Lee writes, is to buy a home flour mill and bake your bread with freshly ground flour. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By J.W. Robinson

Summary: A scathing, two-part report detailing some of the tragic consequences of the "profit at any cost" policy of twentieth-century animal husbandry. By 1963 in the United States, strange and novel diseases such as dwarfism, infectious abortion, and various bizarre viral infections had become epidemic among the country's cattle, and the reason, writes author J.W. Robinson, was simple. America's ranchers, by straying from basic natural law in animal breeding, had invited unnatural problems in their livestock. Citing numerous warnings from the Bible against ignoring the natural principles of animal husbandry, Robinson paints a picture of greed and ignorance that portends the factory-farm disasters of today. From The Plain Truth magazine, 1963. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 136. 

By Dr. Donald C. Collins

Summary: A California physician records in a professional medical journal five separate cases in which patients with various forms of cancer recovered after adopting a diet of only organically grown foods. Though some of the patients had multiple malignancies at different times in their life, all of them remained cancer free—living twenty to thirty years beyond their last surgery and showing no signs of ever having a malignancy at all upon autopsy—after switching to organic foods. While such facts may seem unsurprising today, back in 1961, when this article was published, the act of a medical doctor officially suggesting such a powerful effect of food on health was tantamount to heresy within the medical community, explaining perhaps why the author claims to have written his submission "with considerable hesitancy." From the American Journal of Proctology, 1961. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

Author unknown

Summary: The facts behind the Wulzen factor—an important fat-soluble nutrient found in raw milk and sugarcane juice—have been lost to modern science. Also known as the "anti-stiffness factor" because it combats arthritis and relieves pain, swelling, and stiffness, the Wulzen factor was considered an actual vitamin by a number of early nutrition investigators, but it was never accepted as such by medical or government "authorities." To acknowledge it would have required the admission that pasteurization of dairy products is a causative factor in arthritis, and such an admission would never be made by those who so vigorously promoted and enforced pasteurization laws. From Annual Review of Biochemistry, 1951. Part of Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 27A. (To read reprint 27A in its entirely, including an in-depth discussion of the negative effects of milk pasteurization, see "A Fresh Look at Milk" in these archives.)

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this eye-opening 1952 article, Dr. Royal Lee outlines the basic mechanism behind autoimmune disorders—something that alludes medical science to this day. Under normal circumstances, Dr. Lee writes, growth factors specific to each tissue in the body, which he calls "protomorphogens," are released into the bloodstream by the tissues' cells. To keep protomorphogens from causing runaway growth of their corresponding tissue, the body produces antibodies to neutralize them. When a tissue (or organ) becomes overworked, it begins to produce an abnormally high amount of its protomorphogen. This, in turn, causes the body to produce an abnormally high amount of antibodies. If the amount of antibody exceeds the amount of protomorphogen, the excess antibodies begin attacking the actual cells of the tissue—what has come to be known as an "autoimmune reaction." Not only did Dr. Lee identify and explain such reactions over seventy years ago, he also developed food-based supplements that thwart them, as he describes in this article. With medicine still groping to explain why autoimmune reactions occur and at a loss as to how to stop them, Dr. Lee's words are nothing short of astounding. 1952. 

Author unknown

Summary: One of the fundamental discoveries of early nutrition research was the connection between ill health and soil deficiency. Investigations like the one featured in this 1950 article showed that mineral shortages in worn-out land lead to malnutrition and disease not only in plants and animals grown on that land but in humans who eat those plants and animals. In the study described here, diseased dairy cows raised on mineral-deficient pastures are returned to health through dietary supplementation with trace minerals—those elements so often lacking in the overworked soils of conventional, nonorganic farms. The author also discusses the negative nutritional consequences of pasteurizing milk as well as the nutrient-robbing effects of industrial food processing in general. Thanks to a loss of nutrients at just about every step of the modern food manufacturing process, he says, Americans suffer widespread malnutrition despite a preponderance on their plates. From Steel Horizons magazine, 1950. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 41A.

By Neil M. Clark

Summary:  Dr. William Albrecht was the Chairman of the Department of Soils at the University of Missouri and the foremost authority of his time on the subject of soil fertility and its relation to human health. In this 1945 article from the iconic Saturday Evening Post, author Neil Clark recounts Dr. Albrecht’s pioneering experiments demonstrating the critical connection between the trace mineral content of a soil and the health and hardiness of plants grown in that soil—and, consequently, the health and hardiness of animals and humans who eat those plants. Dr. Albrecht warns the magazine’s readers in no uncertain terms that unless America makes a concerted effort to restore the trace minerals to its depleted soils, the country’s population will suffer a slow extinction from the “hidden hunger” of mineral-poor foods, as evidenced by ever increasing rates of degenerative disease. With the “chronic disease problem” worse today than ever, Dr. Albrecht’s prophecy rings ominously true, and his findings demand the adoption of organic farming practices across the board in America's agricultural industry. From The Saturday Evening Post, 1945. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 21.

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: In this 1960 article, the "father of Applied Kinesiology," Dr. George Goodheart, discusses chiropractic manipulations and nutritional support for treating pain in the shoulder area. One of the most common causes of such pain, he explains, is the precipitation of calcium out of the blood and into the tissues in and around the shoulder joint—a condition resulting usually from an overly alkaline state within the body. (For more on pH and health, see Dr. Goodheart's excellent primer, "The Acid-Alkaline Balance and Patient Management.") Other times, Dr. Goodheart says, discomfort in the shoulder is actually referred pain originating from dysfunction in the digestive organs, making nutritional support of the stomach, gallbladder, and liver critical to resolving the issue. Articles like these reveal the holistic understanding of the body's function—and appreciation of the value of nutritional therapy—that have long distinguished chiropractic care within the healing arts. From the journal Michigan State Chiropractic Society, 1960. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: In this 1952 article, medical doctor W.J. McCormick reports on the remarkable success that he and other practitioners were achieving using ascorbic acid—or synthetic vitamin C—to counter bacterial and viral diseases. The key to the acid’s efficacy, Dr. McCormick writes, is its powerful oxidative action when administered in huge doses—especially impressive, he says, given the lack of serious side effects. While it is dismaying that medicine never pursued the use of ascorbic acid as a possibly safe and inexpensive antibiotic, it is also important to distinguish isolated ascorbic acid from natural vitamin C, that is, vitamin C as it is found in food. As the great holistic nutritionist Dr. Royal Lee taught, vitamins in nature are not single chemicals, but rather they are complexes of compounds that cooperate synergistically to deliver a nutritive effect. Vitamin C as it is found in food, for instance, comprises not just ascorbic acid but also the adrenal-stoking enzyme tyrosinase as well as various bioflavonoids essential for maintaining the integrity of the blood vessels. Ironically, the role of ascorbic acid in the natural vitamin C complex may be merely to protect these other fractions, probably through the same oxidative action that Dr. McCormick amplified to great success as a chemotherapeutic agent. Though synthetic vitamins may display such pharmacological effects, Dr. Lee said, it’s critical that we don’t confuse such effects for the nutritional functions that only natural vitamin complexes can perform. From the Archives of Pediatrics, 1952. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Foundation reprint 5C.

By William Brady, MD

Summary: William Brady was a medical doctor who wrote a popular syndicated newspaper column in the 1940s and '50s. In this article from 1947, Dr. Brady discusses the importance of the B-complex vitamins—specifically thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), and niacinamide (B3)—to both heart health and proper carbohydrate metabolism. In multiple studies conducted at the time, he notes, vitamin B supplementation had been shown to reduce or eliminate the need for exogenous insulin in diabetics, while the link between vitamin B deficiency and heart disease had been known since all the way back in the 1920s, thanks to the work of pioneering nutrition researcher Sir Dr. Robert McCarrison. Astoundingly, medicine still fails today to grasp the importance of B vitamins to proper heart function, while both conventional and alternative doctors remain woefully ignorant of Dr. McCarrison's remarkable and still groundbreaking research. From the Waterloo Daily Courier, 1947.

Author unknown

Summary: A biographical sketch of the famous first chief of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (known at the time as the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry). Dr. Wiley, a product of the populist age, was a champion of consumer safety when it came to the American food supply and was often referred to as the "Father of the Pure Food Law" of 1906. Read about Dr. Wiley's ascension to power and his much-publicized fall as he fought in vain to keep synthetic preservatives and additives out of the national diet. If Dr. Wiley had had his way, all of America's food would now be organic. (See also Dr. Wiley's monumental book History of a Crime Against the Food Law in these archives.) Original source and date of publication unknown.

Author unknown

Summary: Before there was Weston A. Price, there was Sir Robert McCarrison. In the first decades of the twentieth century, this British doctor and officer conducted some of the greatest initial investigations into the effect of diet on health. Studying different subpopulations in India, McCarrison showed that most of the diseases incurred by each population were a result of diet, specifically a diet of processed foods—a result that would later be echoed by Dr. Price's famous worldwide investigation into traditional versus processed-food diets. Like Dr. Price, Dr. McCarrison bemoaned the disease-causing effects of foods such as refined sugar and flour, and he emphasized the extreme importance of choosing natural foods, including natural fats, over processed ones. In this short biographical sketch, he is quoted, "I know of nothing so potent in maintaining good health in laboratory animals as perfectly constituted food [and] I know of nothing so potent in producing ill health as improperly constituted food. This too is the experience of stockbreeders. Is man an exception to a rule so universally applied to the higher animals?" You can read McCarrison's landmark 1921 book, Studies in Deficiency Disease—reprinted in its entirety by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research in 1945—in these archives. Multiple original sources.

By E.F. Ladd and R.E. Stallings

Summary: In 1906 the U.S. Congress passed the landmark Pure Food and Drugs Act, the first federal law to directly address the safety of chemical additives in America’s foods. One such additive was the bleach nitrous oxide, a compound used by industrial millers to give wheat flour the ultra white color so prized by consumers at the turn of the twentieth century. In this frank report—published just months after passage of the “national pure food law"—researchers at the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station discuss the negative effects of exposing wheat flour to nitrous oxide, from the destruction of the nutritional value of the flour itself to the occurrence of noxious nitrous by-products in bread made from the flour. The authors also include the results of a survey of the people most intimately familiar with flour bleaching, America's millers, whose responses reveal the true motive for the practice: to make lower grade flour look—and sell—like higher grade. Thanks to the powerful influence of the millers, the use of nitrous oxide to bleach flour continued after passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, and in spite of a Supreme Court ruling in 1914 condemning the practice as a violation of the pure food law, the U.S. Department of Agriculture never once has attempted to enforce the court's decision. This article—one of the oldest in the SRP Historical Archives—is a truly historic document that sets a time and place for the onset of the commercial destruction of America's food supply. From Bulletin No. 72, North Dakota Government Agricultural Experiment Station, 1906. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1951. 

By Helen Bullock

Summary: A newspaper account of a dermatologist’s report that patients with skin disorders showed considerable improvement after eliminating bleached flour products from their diet. Importantly, the dermatologist is referring to the bleach chlorine dioxide, which had replaced the former standard flour bleach of many years, nitrogen trichloride. This article illustrates well the practice of the food processing industry to continue to use a product in spite of concerns about its safety until enough demonstrable cases of harm force its hand. From The Dallas Morning News, 1955. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

By the United States Department of Labor

Summary: “No single factor exercises a more pronounced influence on the development of the baby and on his health during his entire life than nursing at his mother’s breast.” So wrote the U.S. Department of Labor (USDL) in its landmark Folder 8, an annual report issued from the 1920s through the 1940s encouraging mothers to breast feed their infants and advising them on the best nutrition to support their body in the task. Though, sadly, the government would later abandon its official support of breast feeding, the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research continued to reprint snippets from the USDL’s Folder 8, along with the article “Weaning the Breast-Fed Baby” from Today’s Health magazine, as the single publication presented here. With its emphasis on untainted animal foods, fresh produce, and unprocessed foods, the diet outlined in this classic guide is as sound for nursing mothers today as it was in its day. Multiple sources, published from 1926 to 1962. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 122. 

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Could eating butter prevent hot flashes? Such a suggestion would sound outlandish to today’s nutrition “experts." Yet not only did researchers in the mid-twentieth century show butter helps counter disorders associated with menopause, but the now maligned food was once regarded as a powerful healer in general, with physicians prescribing it for everything from psoriasis to tuberculosis. The reason for butter's formerly stellar reputation is simple, explains Dr. Royal Lee in this wide-ranging 1942 publication. Butter is loaded with bioactive fat-soluble vitamins, including vitamins A, D, and E, and as Dr. Weston Price observed in his classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, these nutrients are so critical to good health that human populations have historically placed a special emphasis on foods containing them. Butter produced by cows pasturing in the springtime is particularly nutritious, Dr. Lee adds, its deep yellow color indicating a high content of the famous "Activator X," an elusive fat-soluble nutrient shown by Dr. Price to be essential for moving calcium from the blood into the bones and teeth. Given modern nutrition’s proscription against butter and other animal fats in the diet, it's no wonder that today America is plagued by osteoporosis and other calcium-related disorders—not to mention the myriad other ailments Drs. Price and Lee would have predicted for a nation starving itself of fat-soluble vitamins. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1942.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this 1957 article form Herald of Health magazine, Dr. Royal Lee discusses the addictive qualities of caffeine as well as the health-busting practice of the originators of Coca-Cola to add extra, isolated caffeine to its popular soft drink. "The effects of drinking caffeine on an empty stomach and in a free state are far more dangerous than drinking an equal quantity of caffeine wrapped up with tannic acid in tea and coffee," Dr. Lee writes, quoting the first head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Harvey Wiley. As Drs. Lee and Wiley also point out, the practices of Coca-Cola and many other of the country's food processors were ruled illegal by the Supreme Court early in the twentieth century, but penalties against the companies have never been enforced because of the food manufacturers' influence within the federal government. From Herald of Health magazine, 1957.

By Dr. William A. Albrecht

Summary: A comprehensive discussion of the amazing role of calcium in the soil and its effect on crops and animals, written by one of the greatest soil scientists of all time. Dr. Albrecht, who chaired the soils department at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, is known in the organic farming movement as the "father of soil fertility research." Born in 1888, he published his first article on soil fertility in 1918 and would publish research papers continually until his death in 1974. Albrecht was a friend of Dr. Royal Lee, and the Lee Foundation published several of his papers, which are available in this archive. From The Land magazine, 1943. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 8.

By Edward Podolsky, MD

Summary: Though the "Big Medicine union," the American Medical Association, would spend the better part of the twentieth century framing nutrition science as quackery, there was a time in the early 1900s when practicing physicians were excitedly—and successfully—applying nutritional therapy in their patient treatment. In this fascinating 1939 review of the worldwide medical literature, doctor Edward Podolsky discusses the therapeutic use of calcium by his colleagues across the globe in treating various heart disorders as well as hypertension. Among the most interesting therapies discussed is the combined application of the plant-derived drug digitalis and the macromineral nutrient calcium—a hint at what might have been had medicine's authorities embraced nutrition rather than treat it like an enemy, to be undermined and eradicated. From the Illinois Medical Journal, 1939. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 68.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: One of the truly perplexing assumptions of conventional nutrition is that industrially refining and processing a food has minimal effect on the food’s nutritional value. Look through the history of scientific studies on diet and health, and rarely will you find a distinction made between pasteurized and raw milk, bleached and unbleached flour, refined and unrefined vegetable oil. Yet the chemical and thermal mauling of the food supply is precisely at the root of our ill health, writes Dr. Royal Lee in this 1961 manifesto of holistic nutrition. The reason for mainstream nutrition's blind spot when it comes to food processing, Dr. Lee explains, is its tendency to view foods solely in terms of calories—the measure of how much fuel a food supplies. Because processing and refining do not tend to alter the caloric content of foods, we have allowed uncontrolled damage to be done to the foods' noncaloric elements—the vitamins, minerals, and countless other known and unknown cofactors that spur the thousands of biochemical reactions required to repair and sustain the body. The result of this destruction is a sea of “foodless calorie products” that, while giving the illusion of sustenance, fail on the most basic level to sustain human health. From Natural Food and Farming, 1961. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 30H.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this thought-provoking article from 1950, Dr. Royal Lee quotes physician L. Duncan Bulkley to challenge modern medicine's belief that cancer is a localized disease—the cells of a specific tissue or organ going haywire for no apparent reason—and not, as was widely believed historically, the result of a systemic disorder within the body, such as that caused by a nutritional deficiency. "The present status of the 'cancer problem,'" Dr. Bulkley opines, "is to decide between two quite opposite positions: First, a hypothetical and problematical view of a local, independent, unexplainable, autonomous decision of certain cells to take on and continue a destructive course—for which immense research has failed entirely to find any reason. Second, the simple and rational belief that a perverted nutrition—perhaps of long standing—influences certain cells to depart from their normal mode of action and take on an abnormal activity, pursuing a malignant and destructive course that is naturally kept up by the continued metabolic disturbance." Unsurprisingly, Dr. Lee adds, most of the successful alternative treatments of cancer reported at the time involved a radical shift in diet, from one of deficient, processed, chemical-laden products to a regimen of whole, natural, highly-nutrient-dense foods. Dr. Lee even outlines what such a diet might look like, placing particular emphasis on the consumption of raw foods. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research publication 12-50, 1950.

By Malcolm Lawrence

Summary: This report exposing the corruption and lack of integrity in the cancer-research industry was published under a nom-de-plume (pen name) to protect the author's status as a medical researcher within the cancer-research establishment. (See the editor's note preceding the article regarding this.) It describes how natural therapies were never given a chance to demonstrate efficacy, while expensive and toxic chemotherapeutic agents glided right through the research community. Notably, the story of Dr. Andrew Ivy of the University of Illinois and his Krebiozen treatment is told in this historically important document. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint 5-62, 1962. Original source unknown.

Author unknown

Summary: In this 1998 press release from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, hematologist Dr. Chi Dang discusses his famous study demonstrating that cancerous cells self-destruct when deprived of their main fuel, the sugar glucose. While Dr. Dang’s report was big news to the conventional medical world, it would have come as no surprise to many nutrition researchers of the mid-twentieth century, particularly to cancer expert Dr. Daniel Quigley of the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, who once proclaimed that no cancer patient he had ever treated “showed any material improvement unless the diet was so arranged that sugar [glucose] disappeared from the urine.” Sadly, Dr. Dang, a medical researcher, does not appear to even consider the obvious implication of both his and Dr. Quigley’s work—that cancer might be effectively treated by the simple nutritional therapy of eliminating refined carbohydrates from the diet—but instead proffers the development of a pharmaceutical drug as a solution to "the glucose problem." In speculating about such a drug, Dr. Dang unfortunately repeats a misconception that runs rampant in both conventional and alternative healthcare—that the human brain can use only glucose as fuel. Though science has known this claim to be untrue since the 1960s (fat derivatives can be used just as well if not better), it continues to be purported today by even the most educated practitioners. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 1998.

By the Wellness Directory of Minnesota

Summary: A great primer on how cancer cells feed and what they will do to the body in order to get the glucose they must have to survive. "Knowing that...cancer needs sugar, does it make sense to feed it sugar?" the authors ask. "Does it make sense to eat a high-carbohydrate diet?" This article is a great complement to Patrick Quillin's "Cancer's Sweet Tooth," also available in the these archives. From the Wellness Directory of Minnesota, 1995. 

By the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research

Summary: Some talking points on the role of various nutrients in the prevention and treatment of cancer, including vitamins A and C, iodine, chlorophyll, and specific factors in the vitamin B complex such as choline, inositol, and betaine. Complete with references. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1949.

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: Could a lack of vitamin C be the reason cancer spreads within a body? Nutrition-savvy physician W.J. McCormick thought so, and in this fascinating article from the April 1959 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics, he explains why. McCormick begins by citing the long-known observation that cancer tends to take root mainly in areas of the body that have become depleted in collagen—the elastic connective tissue responsible for “cementing” cells in their place. As collagen diminishes, he says, cancerous cells become free to exercise their natural "amoeboid activity" and move to other parts of the body (i.e., metastasize). Since the body requires vitamin C to produce collagen, Dr. McCormick argues, it stands to reason that a deficiency of the vitamin enables the spread of cancer—a notion supported by the fact that cancer patients tend to be severely depleted in the nutrient. Given the facts, McCormick concludes, the reason for the activity of many carcinogens—including cigarette smoke—may lie in their tendency to destroy the C vitamin. From the Archives of Pediatrics, 1959. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

By J.R. Davidson, MD

Summary: A Canadian physician reports on his fascinating animal and human research that led him to conclude that nutritional deficiency is at the root of cancer development. "For some 45 years I have been interested in the study of cancer. I have come to the conclusion that cancer is due to deficient diet, and that, if steps are taken to see that everyone eats the proper food, the disease can be first controlled and finally eliminated." Discussing his experiments in detail, Dr. Davidson makes a strong case in defense of his hypothesis. Published by the Science Department of the University of Manitoba. Reprint 18, 1943.

 By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this report from the late 1940s, Dr. Lee reviews some successful alternative treatments of cancer and emphasizes the importance of avoiding processed foods in both preventing and reversing the disease. In particular, he cites the works of Drs. Max Gerson of New York and D.T. Quigley of Omaha who famously reported that no case of cancer he had ever treated improved unless "the diet was so arranged that sugar disappeared from the urine.” In addition to refined sugar, Dr. Lee also names bleached flour and nitrite-preserved meats as likely cancer culprits. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, circa 1949.

By Patrick Quillin, PhD

Summary: "It puzzles me why the simple concept 'sugar feeds cancer' can be so dramatically overlooked as part of a comprehensive cancer treatment plan," writes Dr. Patrick Quillin in this stirring article from the April 2000 issue of Nutrition Science News. Quillin, recounting the discovery by Nobel laureate Dr. Otto Warburg that cancer cells feed exclusively on glucose, discusses his own experience in working with over 500 cancer patients as the director of nutrition for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Limiting sugar consumption and keeping one's blood-sugar level within a narrow range, he says, "can be one of the most crucial components of a cancer recovery program." That barely any of the four million cancer patients in America receive this information as part of their treatment is nothing short of scandalous. From Nutrition Science News, 2000.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: "What is refined sugar?" Dr. Royal Lee asks in this provocative excerpt and then answers, "It is pure carbohydrate. [And] is carbohydrate an essential food, a food component without which we could not live? It certainly is not." Today people are picking up on the fact that while there are essential fats and there are essential amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. The content here is excerpted from the 1952 article "This Molasses War—Who Is Prevaricating," in which Dr. Lee expounds on the critical difference between whole-food sweeteners and refined ones. From Let's Live magazine, 1952. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By T.W. Gullikson and C.E. Calverley

Summary: In 1922 researchers at the University of California at Berkeley showed that rats deprived of an unidentified substance found in leafy greens and wheat germ failed to reproduce. The fat-soluble nutrient was named vitamin E, and soon research groups around the world were studying the effects of its deficiency in species ranging from turkeys to the tree-kangaroo. In this 1946 report, researchers at the Minnesota Agricultural Station reveal the surprising results of a ten-year investigation into the effects of vitamin E deficiency on the reproductive health of cows. While the animals were able to reproduce, many of them suffered another, unforeseen calamity: sudden, fatal heart failure. Meanwhile, clinicians were reporting a variety of successful applications of vitamin E therapy in humans, as epitomized by the famous Shute brothers, two Canadian doctors who documented the effective use of vitamin E in nearly ten thousand heart patients—results discredited and ignored by the medical community to this day. From Science, 1946. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Allison G. James, DDS

Summary: The overwhelming case that consumption of refined carbohydrates is the cause of tooth decay is presented by dentist and author Allison James. Even back in 1949, as this article from Journal of the Southern California State Dental Association illustrates, this theory was opposed institutionally by both commercial sugar interests and the profession of dentistry at large. Instead, conventional dentistry continued—and continues today—to blindly follow its eternal mantra: Drill 'em and fill 'em. Never mind why the caries are there in the first place! From Journal of the Southern California State Dental Association, 1949. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 42.

By Fred D. Miller, DDS

Summary: A pioneering holistic dentist uses the case history of two patients to illustrate the clear relationship between nutrition in the body and dental decay in the mouth. Photos included. From the journal TIC, 1948 and 1949. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 49.

By Alwin M. Pappenheimer, MD

Summary: A fascinating snapshot of some of the early animal research testing vitamin E deficiency. In this 1940 lecture, Dr. Alwin Pappenheimer details the grave and varied muscular and neural dystrophies that result in different species fed a diet lacking vitamin E. The young are particularly susceptible, he notes, often showing no symptoms for months after birth before being suddenly struck with neural or muscular dysfunction—the latter a condition he terms “nutritional muscular dystrophy.” In perhaps the most disturbing finding, a partial vitamin E deficiency in the diet of pregnant rats was shown to affect only the offspring—not the mothers, suggesting that what we today attribute to genetic inheritance is actually a problem of inherited malnutrition. In the words of Dr. Pappenheimer: "The fact that a partial deficiency of vitamin E in the mother may manifest itself only in the offspring seems to me to be one of the most significant lessons that one can draw from this work. May not similar things happen in human diseases and help explain the supposed hereditary or familial character of certain nervous and muscular disorders?" From Journal of the Mount Sinai Hospital, 1941. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 57.

By M.M. Hargraves, MD

Summary: In this thoughtful speech before the National Wildlife Federation, a Mayo Clinic physician presents his opinion on the causal effects of farming chemicals on human health. Citing numerous cases studies from twenty-five years of clinical practice, Dr. Hargraves presents a strong correlation of pesticide exposure with specific illnesses. While Hargraves concedes that "no one is capable of speaking with authority about exact causal relationships of pesticides and human health," he maintains that "the vast majority of patients suffering from the blood...and lymphoid diseases have a significant history of exposure to the various hydrocarbons which in turn includes most of the pesticides of today." Original source unknown, 1959. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 105.

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: In this 1951 article, Dr. George Goodheart, founder of applied kinesiology (AK), discusses the Protomorphogen Theory of Dr. Royal Lee in relation to the mechanisms of chiropractic treatment. This is one of Dr. George Goodheart's earliest professionally published articles. From The Journal of the National Chiropractic Association, 1951. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

By Lois Mattox Miller

Summary: Reader's Digest editor and medical writer Lois Mattox Miller details some of the amazing health-promoting properties of chlorophyll. "Distinguished medical specialists report that in 1200 recorded cases they have seen chlorophyll combat deep-lying infections, cleanse open wounds, relieve chronic sinus conditions, and banish common head colds. More remarkable, they say, is the way it accomplishes these things—speedily and effectively, with none of the harsh, irritating effects common to most antiseptics." Miller discusses theories as to why chlorophyll is so effective, focusing on its similarity to hemoglobin in blood (the two molecules are essentially the same except iron is at the center of hemoglobin, whereas magnesium is at the center of chlorophyll) to explain its documented ability to stimulate the formation of red blood cells in animals. From Science News Letter, 1941. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 84. 

Compiled by Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: One of the absurdly ignored facts of nutrition history is that preindustrialized tribal societies—eating their traditional, whole-food diets and no processed foods—experienced practically no cancer whatsoever. Here Dr. Royal Lee presents excerpts of communications by field doctors of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reporting a virtual lack of cancer in various nonindustrialized populations, including the famed Hunza of western Asia, natives of Brazil and Ecuador, and myriad Native American tribes. Also included is a clip reflecting a telling, dirty secret of modern nutrition research: test animals to be induced with cancer are fed processed-food diets because it's so much harder to bring the disease about in animals that are eating whole foods. While there are surely other factors involved in the development of cancer, one of the best defenses against the disease, as this article affirms, is a diet of whole, unprocessed, "uncivilized" foods. From Natural Food and Farming, 1960 and 1962. (Excerpts originally compiled by Dr. Royal Lee, 1959.) Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Clarence Darrow

Summary: Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) was a famous American lawyer known for his wit, his oratory skill, and his defense of liberty and the common man. His most famous trial was the "Monkey Trial" of 1925, in which he defended John T. Scopes and opposed William Jennings Bryan. In this transcript of a radio address, Darrow defends chiropractic and the rights of the public to pursue the healthcare of their choice, rather than be limited to the monopoly of medical practice. "I would have no quarrel with the medical profession if they would leave me alone," he says. "But I do object to being forced to patronize them." He adds, "I stand for the right of everybody to regulate his own life for himself, and if he wants to live and die without the aid of the medical profession, he should have the right to do it, and if one should not have that right, it is pretty hard to tell what right we should have." Timeless words for anyone who prizes liberty and opposes all forms of tyranny. From ABC News, 1928.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this revealing article from 1948, Dr. Royal Lee calls out organized medicine for deceitfully thwarting the field of clinical nutrition. "This pernicious and corrupt misuse of the facilities of medical education has been [totally] effective in creating the idea that nutritional therapy is futile and leans toward quackery." Lee goes on to show how medicine became focused solely on therapies involving pharmaceutical drugs, and that it ruthlessly marginalized drugless healing professions through laws preventing the dissemination of information and knowledge. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1948.

By Lewis B. Barnett, MD

Summary: In this article from the pioneering mid-twentieth-century journal Clinical Physiology, Dr. Lewis Barnett summarizes his laboratory and case-study findings correlating magnesium deficiency and epilepsy. Dr. Lewis spent many years studying this essential mineral and its profound relationship to the utilization of calcium. From Clinical Physiology, 1959. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 114.

By Samuel M. Beale Jr., MD

Summary: Dr. Samuel Beale Jr. was a practicing physician in the town of Sandwich, Massachusetts, for nearly fifty years, from 1914 to 1964. Spurred by a discovery made early in his career, he applied low doses of insulin therapeutically to a breadth of conditions ranging from high blood pressure, head trauma, and liver disease to syphilis and cancer, all with remarkable success. In this 1937 lecture, Dr. Beale shares clinical observations of his insulin therapy, emphasizing the critical role played by nutrition in his treatments. "The use of insulin should be considered only in conjunction with the securing of a diet complete in all the food essentials, including fats, carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and sterols," he declares, adding that "predisposition to disease appear[s] to be secondary to endocrine deficiencies or imbalances, and these seem associated with dietary deficiencies..." Dr. Beale's words echo the notion popular among some of nutrition's greatest pioneers—including Drs. Royal Lee, Weston A. Price, and Sir Robert McCarrison—that endocrine damage resulting from malnutrition is the basic mechanism behind most disease in the modern world. (Dr. Beale attributed much of the nutritional success of his practice to Dr. Lee's famous raw-food concentrates, as he tells Dr. Lee in this poignant 1962 letter.) From Transactions of the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the American Laryngological, Rhinological, and Otological Society, Inc., 1937. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By H.E. Kirschner, MD

Summary: An American medical doctor describes the therapeutic uses and preparations of comfrey (Symphytum officinale), including those based on his own personal experience. From Let's Live magazine, 1958. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint 12-58.

By W.J. McCormick

Summary: A Canadian medical doctor discusses a new concept of the causes and mechanism of coronary thrombosis based on studies of heart disease and nutritional deficiency, particularly of vitamin C. From Clinical Medicine, 1957. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 5F. 

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: A Canadian medical doctor explains why he believes nutritional deficiencies, primarily of vitamins B and C, combined with cigarettes, pesticides, and alcohol, lead to coronary thrombosis. From the Insurance Index, 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 5B.

By John E. Waters, DDS

Summary: An excellent nutritional piece positing dental plaque as a precursor to cancer. "Both the medical and dental professions in general consider pyorrhea alveolaris [gum inflammation and loosening of teeth] as a disease per se and treat it primarily from the local disease angle. That is wrong. Pyorrhea is but a single symptom of a systemic disease caused by glandular abnormalities. Local treatment but reduces the obvious symptoms; it does not affect the basic systemic disease. That which follows is based on observations during over forty years of general dental practice, and on over thirty years of special attention paid to certain aspects rarely if ever commented on in connection with dental calculus [tartar]." Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1964.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this creative and forward-thinking commentary on preventive healthcare, Dr. Royal Lee discusses the ways in which proper nutrition saves businesses money by fostering employee health. Getting enough vitamin A complex, for instance, helps maintain the integrity of mucous membranes and thus prevents infection and lost man hours. Sufficient vitamin B complex keeps the nerves and heart functioning properly, while adequate vitamin C complex promotes stamina by optimizing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. A proper amount of vitamin D complex prevents cramps, irritability, and bone-calcium loss, and so on. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Jonathan Forman, MD

Summary: "What I want to talk about is the relation of nutrition to productive farming," writes Dr. Jonathan Forman, a leading pioneer in environmental medicine during the 1940s. Here, Forman reviews research on nutritional deficiencies and degenerative diseases and traces their origins to poor farming practices throughout the entire food chain. "Poor land makes poor people, poor people make poor land, the people get poorer and the soil gets still poorer." This is nutrition from the soil to the table. From the Ohio State Medical Journal, 1945.  Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 32.

By A.W. Erickson

Summary: With tooth decay ravaging virtually every town and city in mid-twentieth-century America, the inhabitants of one region remained famously free of cavities. The oral health of Deaf Smith County, Texas, was so legendary, in fact, that rumor had it one could grow a new set of teeth just by moving there. Of course this was just fancy, but it bespoke Deaf Smith's reputation as a place "where the best man develops," with residents boasting not just superior dental health but overall health as well. In this captivating booklet, crop reporter A.W. Erickson reveals Deaf Smith's secret to be the food grown on its extraordinarily mineral-rich soil and water. Erickson, detailing how unique climatic and geographical factors result in the continual deposition of myriad minerals across Deaf Smith's farmland, affirms one of the great discoveries in early nutrition research and the reason why organic farming is so important today: human health is only as good as the land we grow our food in. Published by Field Notes Crop Reporting Service, 1945. (For a comprehensive look at the connection between human health and soil health, see Empty Harvest by Bernard Jensen and Mark R. Anderson.)

By Howard H. Hillemann, PhD

Summary: In the introduction to this bibliography of over 200 references, Dr. Howard Hillemann speaks of the evolution of humankind's beliefs about disease and bodily defects, from early notions attributing such abnormalities to "divine visitation" to the idea, as of 1957, that such disorders are the result of a combination of genes and environment. Regarding the latter, Hilleman points out, "Proper nutrition is the most important single factor in the prevention of disease or in the recovery therefrom" and presents a list of references supporting this claim. While much of the content cited is no longer in print, merely perusing the categories and titles of the papers of the bibliography is "impressively educational in itself," Hillemann writes. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, reprint 66C, circa 1957.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: "How long will it be before we realize the simple truth that the health of every individual depends upon his nutritional status?" So writes Dr. Royal Lee in making the obvious—yet still criminally ignored—correlation between the emergence of heart disease, cancer, and other "modern" diseases and the introduction of industrial food processing and refining, which turned white sugar, white flour, and hydrogenated fats into the foundation of our food supply. "Is any satellite, atomic bomb or guided missile so likely to jeopardize our health as the certainty that insidious food tampering assuredly sucks away, like greedy quicksand, at the very foundation of our health?" Dr. Lee asks ominously. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Benjamin Sandler, MD

Summary: Early nutrition research consistently showed that a properly nourished person is highly resistant to infection, whereas a malnourished one is highly susceptible. In this 1951 book, former U.S. naval surgeon Dr. Benjamin Sandler pokes holes in conventional ideas about polio and argues that the best way to have avoided the infectious disease was to eat a low-carbohydrate diet. He presents the evidence that led him to his conclusion and explains why, of all the countries in the world, the United States got hit hardest by the polio epidemic. He also details one of the most intriguing public health experiments in nutrition history, when in the summer of 1948 he convinced newspapers in the polio-ravaged state of North Carolina to publicize his low-carb diet as a means of prevention. Though the experiment was a success—the rate of polio in North Carolina changed from one of the highest in the country to one of the lowest—health officials categorically ignored Dr. Sandler's work, and, shockingly, his book was later banned by the government. Like so much information suppressed in the early days of nutrition, Diet Prevents Polio holds great truths that merit a full examination in light of current biochemical knowledge. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1951.

By Professor Humberto Aviles

Summary: A sweeping report on the special properties of vitamin F, a complex of essential fatty acids (linolenic acid, linoleic acid, arachidonic adic) that was first identified in 1929 by Drs. Burr and Burr. Though medical and government authorities never recognized the F complex as a vitamin, the author of this paper, along with many other clinicians and particularly Dr. Royal Lee, conducted significant experiments over many decades to prove its presence and effect in the human body. (Today linolenic and linoleic acids are acknowledged by conventional science as the "essential fatty acids.") Here Professor Aviles, in discussing his own clinical application of vitamin F in relieving pain in cancer patients, presents an extensive review of peer-reviewed literature on vitamin F from around the world, including research in Germany, England, Russia, and the United States. In addition to numerous references, Aviles includes a fascinating time line of the research on fatty acids and cancer from 1924 to 1953. From the Center of Investigations of Medicinal Plants and Animals (Mexico), 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint 12-53.

View PDF: Discovery of the Anticancerous Properties of the “F” Vitamine (Reptiline)

By Dr. William A. Albrecht

Summary: In this article world-renowned soil scientist William Albrecht, former Chairman of the Department of Soils at the University of Missouri, connects the dots between unhealthy soil created by unsustainable farming practices and deficiency-related disease. "The degenerative diseases of the modern world," Albrecht says, "need to be traced not only to the supplies in the food and feed market where the family budget may provoke them but a bit farther and closer to their origin, namely the fertility of the soil, the point at which all agricultural production takes off." From the Iowa State University Veterinarian, 1950. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 37A.

By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD

Summary: Dr. Robert McCarrison is a bona fide giant in the history of nutrition. As a member of Britain's Indian Medical Service in the early twentieth century, he conducted some of the first feeding studies investigating the effects of vitamin-deficient diets on test animals, and his 1921 book Studies in Deficiency Disease remains a classic on the physiological consequences of malnutrition. In this essay from 1928, Dr. McCarrison focuses on the "minor manifestations" (or, in today's terms, subclinical symptoms) of vitamin deficiency, which he rightly names as harbingers of serious illness that any good doctor should be familiar with. He also admonishes his medical colleagues for fixating on bacteria as causes of disease, noting that it is malnutrition that sets the stage for infection in the first place. "Obsessed with the idea of the microbe," he writes, "we often forget the most fundamental of all rules for the physician—that the right kind of food is the most important single factor in the promotion of health, and the wrong kind of food the most important single factor in the promotion of disease." From Transactions of the Seventh Congress of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine, 1928.

By Dr. Royal Lee and unknown author

Summary: Two articles featuring quotes and commentary by Dr. Royal Lee that contrast the incredible nutritional value of butter with the equally incredible lack of nutritional value of "oleomargarine" (what we call simply margarine today). In particular, the relationship between vitamin E and pubescent development is discussed, with Dr. Lee reminding readers that "sex development demands vitamin E, and butter is our main source in the American diet." Dr. Lee presents photos of boys and girls demonstrating the failure of sexual differentiation to occur as a result of nutrient starvation. He also discusses the vital roles of the vitamin F and D complexes—both found naturally and in their entirety in butter but not in margarine—in assimilating and distributing calcium in the body. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 59, 1948. Multiple original sources. 

Author unknown

Summary: In 1948 the polio epidemic was nearing its frightening peak in the United States. While medicine attempted to find an answer to the problem with its usual recourse, pharmaceutical drugs, one doctor in North Carolina proposed a safer and easier way to prevent the disease: nutritional therapy. Dr. Benjamin Sandler, a former navy doctor, had discovered that patients who ate a diet low in refined carbohydrates and high in quality protein were resistant to infection by polio and other contagious diseases. Dr. Sandler would prove his point when he convinced the newspapers in the state to run stories, such as the one preserved here, recommending a low-carbohydrate diet as a means of preventing polio. The result was a dramatic drop in polio incidence statewide, transforming North Carolina's rate of the disease from one of the highest in the country to one of the lowest. For a detailed analysis of the results of Dr. Sandler's campaign—and for more on his theory of low-carbohydrate diet and disease prevention—see his remarkable 1951 book Diet Prevents Polio. See also "The Low-Carb Diet That Prevented Polio" for more media coverage of Dr. Sandler's courageous effort to stem the polio epidemic through nutrition. From the Statesville Daily Record, 1948.

By William Brady, MD

Summary: Dr. William Brady was a medical doctor with a popular syndicated newspaper column in the 1940s and '50s. Here he discusses the link between physical degeneration and nutritional deficiencies resulting from the consumption of refined and processed foods. While we tend to think of the poor as most prone to malnutrition, Brady points out, in his characteristically biting manner, that it is actually the wealthy in America who are most susceptible. "Most Americans, particularly the well-to-do class, suffer from poor nutritional condition and are too dumb to realize what ails them," he writes. For "anyone who purports to be informed," Brady recommends as required reading the books Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Dr. Weston Price, Studies in Deficiency Disease, by Sir Robert McCarrison, MD, and The National Malnutrition, by Dr. D.T. Quigley. Sound advice still. From the Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star, 1950. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

Author unknown

Summary: Dr. Frederick Stare (1910–2002) was the founder and first head of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University's School of Public Health. A lifelong fighter against the health food industry and the organic food movement, Dr. Stare often served as a government witness against natural-foods advocates, testifying that such proponents were alarmists and frauds. Over the course of his career, Dr. Stare procured massive amounts of funding for Harvard and his own research from food-manufacturing giants such as Coca-Cola, General Foods, and the National Soft Drinks Association. One such "gift" is documented in the newspaper clip here, which was reprinted and disseminated by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research in 1960. Dr. Stare's support of industrial food manufacturing, including his unwavering defense of the use of chemical additives and preservatives, earned him a reputation among natural-food advocates as a tool of the commercial adulterators of America's food supply. From the Milwaukee Journal, 1960. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD, and Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: An illuminating peek at the early, fateful politics of food adulteration in the United States. From 1906 to 1912, Dr. Harvey Wiley was the head of the Bureau of Chemistry within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Bureau, which would later become the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was assigned the task of enforcing the country's first federal food purity law, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. However, as Dr. Wiley explains in the following excerpt from his 1930 autobiography, his agency's authority was quickly and illegally usurped by higher-ranking officials within the USDA under the influence of industrial food manufacturers. In one famous case, the solicitor of the USDA forbade Dr. Wiley and other workers of the Bureau from testifying in a federal case in which their testimony would have supported a ban of the food additive sodium benzoate, a compound Dr. Wiley and his colleagues had determined to be injurious to health. Sadly, this poisonous compound remains one of the most common food preservatives used by industrial food manufacturers. Includes an introduction by Dr. Royal Lee. From Harvey W. Wiley—An Autobiography, 1930. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint No. 1-60.

By the Vitamins Product Company

Summary: During World War II, government-enforced price controls dictated what various items and commodities could be sold for. When federal agents prosecuted Dr. Royal Lee for selling the famously nutritious whole-wheat flour from Deaf Smith County, Texas, at a cost beyond the control price for ordinary flour, Dr. Lee fought back in federal court and won, as described in the newspaper account preserved here. Also included is a commentary on the incident by Dr. Lee, attributed to his business The Vitamin Products Company. From The Milwaukee Journal, 1946.

By Dr. Royal Lee with commentary by Mark R. Anderson

Summary: In the 1930s Dr. Weston Price traveled the globe to study the diets of traditional societies that had yet to start eating modern, processed foods or were in the beginning stages of incorporating them into their culture. Among the many profound nutritional discoveries he made (which he published in his seminal book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration) was the existence of a critical fat-soluble nutrient that was responsible for, among other things, moving calcium from the blood into the tissues, including the bones and teeth. Although Dr. Price was able to measure the effects of this "vitamin-like activator" (which he called Activator X), he was never able to precisely identify its chemical structure. According to nutrition educator and historian Mark R. Anderson, Dr. Royal Lee had no doubt that Price's X factor was a component of vitamin F, a complex that includes the essential fatty acids. Dr. Lee considered Price's X factor so important, Anderson adds, that he included it in three of his famous therapeutic food formulas—Cataplex F tablets, Cataplex F perles, and Super EFF. In these excerpts Dr. Lee discusses the relationship between the vitamin F complex and Price's discovery. Selene River Press, 2005. 

By L. Jewell

Summary:  In today’s world of super specialization, it is almost impossible to fathom the breadth of Dr. Royal Lee’s accomplishments. While he is widely hailed as one of the most knowledgeable nutritionists of his day, Dr. Lee was also a wildly successful engineer, inventor, and manufacturer. From 1927 to 1962, he earned nearly seventy patents for his inventions, which included everything from electric motors to the low-temperature manufacturing equipment needed to make his revolutionary raw-food supplements. In 1944, as Dr. Lee neared his fiftieth birthday, author Lee Jewell wrote the following biographical overview detailing some of those inventions, including the famous Lee Motor Governor, which allowed silent movies to become “talkies” and was a critical piece of the famous Norden bombsight, credited with tipping the scales in World War II. Dr. Lee’s ability to not just comprehend ideas but transform them into effective application is what made him truly unique in the field of nutrition. While mainstream scientists and medical authorities argued over the value of hypothetical nutritional therapies, Dr. Lee was busy creating products that actually helped people regain their health. Reprinted by the The Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1944.

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD

Summary: In 1912 Dr. Harvey Wiley left his post as head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry (the forerunner of the federal Food and Drug Administration) because of the collusion he witnessed between food manufacturers and agents within the federal government. Unable to effectively enforce the country's first food purity law (passed in 1906), he left the government and joined the private Good Housekeeping Institute in Washington, D.C. There Dr. Wiley helped develop the famous Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval while also writing for the institute's magazine. In "Dr. Wiley's Question Box," he would answer specific questions from readers about food safety and nutrition. In the excerpt here, Dr. Wiley explains a fact that metabologists have known for nearly a century but which conventional nutritionists and doctors have failed to comprehend from then until now: the principal source of fat stored in the body is not dietary fat but sugars and starches (i.e., carbohydrates). While nutrition schools today continue to teach the erroneous notion that glucose from carbohydrates is "the preferred fuel of the body," Dr. Wiley points out what people who study metabolism for a living all know: up to 80 percent of the carbohydrates a person eats are converted to fat by the liver and stored in the body's fat tissue. Fat tissue, in turn, releases fatty acids, which form the majority of fuel calories used by the body’s cells. Dr. Wiley also addresses other queries from readers, including the age-old question of whether overeating "acid-producing" foods is harmful and whether eating sand is good for the digestive system. From Good Housekeeping, 1926.

By Illinois Medical Journal

Summary: A prescient editorial from the Illinois Medical Journal over half a century ago regarding the iatrogenic (doctor-induced) diseases caused by pharmaceutical drugs, including the negative consequences of steroid and antibiotic use. An early warning about facts that are now widely acknowledged. From Illinois Medical Journal, 1957. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 97.

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD

Summary: In 1906 the U.S. government passed the Pure Food and Drugs Act, the first federal law aimed specifically at ensuring the purity of America's food supply. It wasn't long before the industrial food industry—with the help of its connections in the federal government—found its way around the legislation. In this letter to President Calvin Coolidge, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the chief chemist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) charged with enforcing the act, calls the U.S. government to task for turning a blind eye to various cases that appeared to squarely violate the law. Dr. Wiley's protestation (an expanded version of which appeared as "Dr. Wiley to the President" in the September 1925 issue of Good Housekeeping) caused such a stir that it prompted a reply to the president by the acting secretary of the USDA. Together, these two letters show precisely how food manufacturers and federal courts colluded to thwart the intent of America's food purity law, allowing additives of unproven safety to become forever part of the nation's food supply. 1925. 

By E.C. Robertson and F.F. Tisdall and by Dr. E.V. McCollum

Summary: Excerpts from two chapters of a 1939 compilation by the Canadian Medical Association, which admits that “the practical application of facts concerning nutrition has not kept pace with our increasing knowledge” and warns Canadian physicians that they “must increase their interest in this problem of normal nutrition, otherwise the public will seek information on this subject elsewhere.” (Advice that was, tragically, almost wholly ignored.) In the chapter “Nutrition and Resistance to Disease,” Roberston and Tisdall explain that while clinical evidence regarding nutrient deficiencies in humans can be difficult to obtain because of experimental limitations, this is not the case for animal studies, which show quite clearly the effects of even “comparatively slight” shortages in vitamins. The authors present studies showing drastic differences in resistance to disease in animals fed a diet sufficient in nutrients and those fed diets deficient in, respectively, vitamins A, B, and D; minerals; and animal protein. “These studies furnish clear-cut evidence that improper nutrition lowers the resistance of the animal to infection,” the authors state, “and also that the nutritional deficiency does not have to be so severe as to produce outstanding evidence of disease.” In the second chapter, “Better Nutrition as a Health Measure,” Dr. McCollum discusses the specific roles of vitamins A, C, and D in the body and in dental health in particular. From Nutrition in Everyday Practice, 1939. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 115.

By Alfred McCann, MD

Summary: In these selections from Dr. Alfred McCann’s seminal 1918 book The Science of Eating, the author first outlines an animal-feeding experiment for schoolchildren to conduct in order to observe firsthand the effects of nutrient-deficient foods on the health and resistance to disease of animals (and, by implication, of humans). Then, in the section titled “Famine Due to Artificial Sugar,” McCann, who saw clearly that modern methods of food production were leading to the destruction of the nation’s health, precociously asserts that many of what were formerly thought of as infectious diseases were actually the result of vitamin deficiency. In presenting a nutrition-based hypothesis explaining the cause of infantile paralysis (polio), he also offers some keen insight into the origins of the disease. “These briefly stated scientific facts lead me to believe,” he concludes, “that close scrutiny of the food of the children afflicted may lead to the discovery of a dietetic cause of infantile paralysis.” From The Science of Eating, 1918. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 108A. 

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this brief but poignant passage, Dr. Royal Lee observes that cancer tends to develop only in people with a weakened or imbalanced endocrine system. Healthy thyroid function in particular, he says, is critical in defending against the disease. This includes optimizing the effect of the gland's hormone thyroxine by ensuring adequate levels of vitamin F, a complex of fatty acids that was recognized in the early days of nutrition as an essential nutrient in food but is inexplicably unacknowledged today. While vitamin F works synergistically with thyroxine to help prevent cancer, Dr. Lee says, one substance that should be avoided is anterior pituitary growth hormone, or "human growth hormone" (HGH). This compound, popular among bodybuilders and athletes today for its performance enhancement, is a "most potent stimulator of cancer," he warns, and any product that might contain it should be categorically avoided in treatment of the illness. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1955.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Once an important "probiotic" condiment, raw sauerkraut—a lacto-fermented food—vanished with the high-heat methods of modern food processing. Unfortunately, cooked cabbage of any kind is of little nutritional value, Dr. Lee says, and it is intolerable to people with senstive gastrointestinal tracts. Lee not only explains the value of this nutritious, raw food but provides a fantastically simple method for preparing it. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 38C, 1955. Original source unknown. 

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: In 1961 the American Heart Association (AHA) officially endorsed the "diet-heart hypothesis,” the idea that overconsumption of dietary fat increases the risk of heart attack. In particular the AHA condemned saturated fat, a type of fat found primarily in animal foods. Holistic health practitioners balked at the idea of this natural substance causing an unnatural condition such as heart disease and sensibly claimed that, if anything, synthetic fats such as hydrogenated fats and heat-processed plant oils—introduced just prior to the rise of the heart disease epidemic—were likely to blame. These natural healers proved to be prescient, as research in recent decades has shown a correlation between the consumption of hydrogenated fats and heart disease while failing to show such a connection for natural saturated fat. (Ironically, many of the early studies “supporting” the diet-heart hypothesis lumped hydrogenated fats and saturated fat into the same category.) In this article from 1965, famed chiropractor Dr. George Goodheart dispels myths about the diet-heart hypothesis—including the idea that cholesterol is a toxin—and explains why natural fats actually aid proper cholesterol metabolism, not hinder it. He goes on to suggest that overconsumption of refined carbohydrates, not natural fat, is likely the biggest dietary cause of heart disease—a hypothesis explored in scientific detail in the seminal 2007 book Good Calories Bad Calories. From the Digest of Chiropractic Economics, 1965. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research form VH-1 75. 

By Wendell H. Griffith, PhD

Summary: A report from 1957 on the health effects of different dietary fats by Dr. Wendell Griffith, the chairman of the Department of Physiological Chemistry at the University of California Medical Center. Griffith describes the differences between natural fats and those created by hydrogenating vegetable and seed oils, explaining disturbingly that because of the many foreign chemicals created during hydrogenation, "it is virtually impossible to describe chemically some of the commercial hydrogenated plant oils." The fact that the trans fats created during hydrogenation have since been strongly linked to heart disease would hardly have surprised Dr. Griffith. From the Journal of the American Medical Association, 1957. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 93.

By A.J. Cahill

Summary: An Australian physician writes to a medical journal warning of the dangers of fluoridating water supplies, giving examples from his own practice and from other doctors' practices of "the evil effects on human health" as a result of sodium fluoride being added to public water. He ends by offering advice about dental health that is just as astute today as it was then. "Sound nutrition is the only sure and safe way to provide our children with sound teeth and sound health for the rest of their lives. All mothers must now learn to feed their families on a well-balanced, vitamin-rich diet in order to achieve the best results. They must stop buying devitalized white bread and over-refined white sugar—those two curses of our modern civilization—and replace them with nourishing whole-meal bread and delicious health-giving honey." From the Medical Journal of Australia, 1962. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee was one of the earliest and most outspoken opponents of water fluoridation, which he described as "wholesale drugging of the population." In this address to a group in Florida, Dr. Lee delves into the dangers of ingesting fluorides and speculates as to the commercial interests behind the adoption of water fluoridation. Also included is testimony by U.S. Representative Arthur L. Miller, Chairman of the Special Committee on Chemicals in Food, who candidly explains that water fluoridation had been adopted as official policy by the U.S. Public Health Service despite the fact that long-term studies of the effects of fluoridation had yet to be completed. Miller calls into question the motive of the Health Service's approval and speculates that the aluminum industry, for which fluoride is a waste product that could now be sold for pure profit, had perhaps influenced the agency's decision. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 53B, 1952.

By J.D. Ratcliff

Summary: In this rare excerpt from the October 1948 issue of Coronet magazine, author J.D. Ratcliff discusses the function of  vitamin E (known originally as "the fertility vitamin" because of its critical role in animal reproduction) in the area of heart health. In particular, Ratcliff discusses the clinical work of the famous Shute brothers of Canada, medical doctors and researchers who gained international notoriety by successfully treating heart disease with vitamin E instead of pharmaceutical drugs. Ratcliff also addresses the wholesale destruction of naturally occurring vitamins in the modern diet. From Coronet, 1948. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 40.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In 1953 author W.R. Cox published a book documenting the mysterious degeneration and demise of his herd of chinchillas. What Cox discovered, after extensive laboratory testing and autopsies, was that his animals had been done in by fluoride hidden in their feed, the substance penetrating the placental barrier of the pregnant members of the herd and poisoning their offspring in the womb. In this foreword to Cox's book, nutritionist Dr. Royal Lee discusses the frightening implications of the author's report at a time when municipal water supplies were being forcibly dosed with the very substance that had destroyed Cox's inadvertent test animals. Though fluoride had shown some effectiveness in preventing cavities in human studies, its side effects had not been sufficiently investigated, Dr. Lee writes, and adding it to pubic drinking water in the face of evidence like Cox's amounted to an "ill-considered freak experiment" by bureaucrats so obsessed with passing reform that they hadn't bothered to study the possible consequences of their proposal. From Hello, Test Animals...Chinchillas or You and Your Children? Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1953.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Ebba Waerland was a natural foods advocate and healer from Sweden who gained international fame during the mid-twentieth century. The Waerland dietary system—named after her husband, physiologist Are Waerland—emphasized whole, natural foods over processed, nutrient-deficient ones, and it was very successful and popular in Europe. For the U.S. edition of her 1961 book, Rebuilding Health, Ms. Waerland asked American nutrition giant Dr. Royal Lee to write the foreword, which is presented here. In it Dr. Lee laments the assumption by modern civilization that industrially processed food is harmless—that "in some miraculous way, [the body] can transmute demineralized, devitaminized foods into healthy tissue." A short biography of Ms. Waerland, from the book's jacket, is included along with Dr. Lee's foreword. From Rebuilding Health: The Waerland Method of Natural Therapy, 1961. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Health. 

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Processed food is not food—no matter how much we tell ourselves it is. If there's one statement that sums the opinion of early nutrition researchers, that's it. When industrial food processing burst onto the scene in the late nineteenth century, it began fundamentally changing the stuff that had always nourished human beings. Harsh mechanical and chemical methods destroyed the power of our food to nourish us; and to make matters worse, artificial substances of untested effect were added to the mix. This destruction of America's food supply is one of the great ignored crimes of history and the subject of C.E. Burtis's 1960 book The Real American Tragedy. In the book's foreword, presented here, leading nutritionist Dr. Royal Lee describes a telltale pattern observed repeatedly by nutrition's first investigators: wherever processed foods were introduced, cancer, heart disease, tooth decay, and other "modern" diseases—virtually unknown previously in the population—soon followed. While this fact is utterly ignored today, it was entirely evident to Dr. Lee and his colleagues that a preponderance of processed and artificial foods in the diet is the main reason for America's poor health. From The Real American Tragedy, 1960. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By N. Philip Norman, MD

Summary: Weston Price. Harold Hawkins. Percy Howe. Melvin Page. Royal Lee. What do these giants of early nutrition science have in common? They were all dentists—firsthand witnesses to the explosion of modernity’s most common disease, tooth decay. In their search for the cause of the epidemic confounding their profession, these practitioners discovered a startling fact: those patients with the worst oral health tended to have the worst overall health as well. Digging deeper, each researcher discovered that the reason for both tooth decay and the other degenerative diseases afflicting their patients was the same—malnutrition, brought on by a diet of industrially processed and adulterated foods. In this rousing 1947 article, New York City Hospital physician and nutritionist N. Philip Norman lauds the maverick dentists for their groundbreaking work while lambasting both mainstream dentistry and medicine for virtually ignoring the connection between diet and disease and allowing deranged foods to destroy the health of America. "The medical and dental professions failed to oppose the wholesale adulteration of our food supply, thereby allowing the insidious extension into our food culture of processed foods whose nutritional value was never questioned until after the damage was done." From the American Journal of Orthodontics and Oral Surgery, 1947. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 33. 

By William Miller

Summary: In this 1955 article from Health Culture magazine, Miller revives the Pasteur–Bechamp debate, or, as he calls it, "one of the greatest though little known controversies in the history of science." In the late 1800s, Louis Pasteur proposed that specific "bad" microbes, or germs, cause infectious disease. His colleague biochemist Pierre Bechamp thought "infection" had more to do with the environment within the host organism than with specific microorganisms. Miller says that Bechamp might have been right after all, citing observations made using Royal Rife's famous Universal Microscope, which appeared to show species of microbes  morphing into other species depending on the chemical nature of their environment. (For more on Rife and his work, see "The Rife Microscope, or 'Facts and Their Fate'.") From Health Culture, 1955. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 77.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee lauds Vermont physician Dr. D.C. Jarvis, author of the classic book on holistic health Folk Medicine. In particular, Lee praises Jarvis's recommendation of apple cider vinegar as a natural remedy for a host of disorders, from guanidine toxicity as a result of the overconsumption of meat to a dysbiotic gut to constipation to low thyroid to overweight. (Two teaspoons of cider vinegar in a glass of water at each meal dependably effected gradual weight loss, Dr. Jarvis observed.) Dr. Lee discussing Dr. Jarvis is a must for any fan of nutrition, history, or both. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Lee addresses some possible nutritional causes of mental distress. People who eat too many acidifying foods, such as whole grains, may become overly acidic, marked by symptoms of irritability, introversion, and the feeling of not getting enough air. People who eat too many alkalizing foods, such as green vegetables, on the other hand, may feel aches in their joints or a nervous stomach. Dr. Lee also quotes Dr. Benjamin Sandler's description of people who suffer from drastic swings in blood sugar: "Dizziness, faintness, nervousness, tremors, sweating, pallor, flushing, palpitation, tachycardia (rapid heart), abdominal pain, and psychoneurotic manifestations may occur," Sandler says. To combat such sugar swings, Lee recommends—in words that speak to any nutrition practitioner today—to "avoid refined sugars as found in doughnuts, pies, cakes, ice cream, candy and other forms of sweets." From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: A Canadian medical doctor recounts the history of scurvy and its prevention, including a fascinating report by British medical officer James Lind, who describes his famous experiment of 1747 in which he cured sailors of the disease by feeding them fresh oranges and lemons. While full-blown scurvy had been virtually eliminated in twentieth-century America thanks to the widespread availability of citrus fruits, Dr. McCormick makes the case that subclinical vitamin C deficiency was a causative factor in many modern disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, heart attack, cancer, pneumonia, and even stretch marks in birthing mothers. Failure to recognize the tissue dysfunction in these disorders to be the result of vitamin C deficiency has led medicine to devise countless unsuccessful approaches to what appear to be largely matters of starvation. From Journal of Applied Nutrition, 1962. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 5H.

By John T. Alexander

Summary: A bittersweet newspaper account of a man who remineralizes soil using special organic composts, developed with the help of nutritional and agricultural scientists, to grow crops for concentration into whole-food supplements. On the one hand, the story is exciting and inspirational, revealing the difference that well-mineralized, well-bacterialized soil makes in the nutritional quality of foods grown in it. On the other hand, this is a sad reminder of the path industrial agriculture in this country did not take, opting instead for producing nutrient-deficient plants from sapped soil propped up with artificial fertilizers. Includes the famous quote by Dr. C.W. Cavanaugh of Cornell University: "The fact is there is only one major disease—and that is malnutrition." From The Kansas City Star, 1952. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 55.

Author unknown

Summary: A snippet of nutrition history that bespeaks the leadership of Dr. Royal Lee in the natural-food movement. In this 1953 newspaper ad, Vic's Health Food & Book Store in Alberta, Canada, advertises in the local paper that it carries "Books, magazines, and pamphlets by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research and other well known authorities on health foods." From the Lethbridge Herald, 1953.

By Congressman David S. King

Summary: In this powerful 1959 speech before the U.S. House of Representatives, Utah Congressman David King warns our government that "the progressive deterioration of the condition of our health has been confirmed," blaming the negative trend on the country's chemically-laden and overly processed food supply. "There are many approaches to the prevention and treatment of...complex diseases," King says, "but there appears to be one common denominator as the basic cause of degenerative diseases. That one factor is malnutrition." Representative King calls for the creation of a congressional commission to officially investigate the adulteration of America's foods as well as the fluoridation of public water supplies. Unfortunately—and predictably—the congressman's calls went ignored. From the Congressional Record of the 86th U.S. Congress, 1959. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 111.

By James Rorty

Summary: This article of "the suppressed facts" regarding flour bleaching details just why commercial bread in America is "worthless and unsafe." In spite of its tabloid-like style, this 1956 magazine article boasts some solid reporting, recounting the early resistance to flour bleaching by America's millers as well as by Dr. Harvey Wiley, the first head of the Food and Drug Administration. In the end Dr. Wiley was shown the door, and the FDA became abettors of the food processors' actions—hampered, as one "honest but resigned" FDA official says in the article—by the onus on the administration to prove a substance is harmful before it can legally bar it from manufacturing. "We've practically got to produce a corpse before we can claim they're poisoning your food," the FDA agent adds. The author also discusses the history of nitrogen trichloride, which was used to bleach bread in America for 40 years until it was finally shown in studies to cause fits in animals. While the use of the old bleach was discontinued, the process of bleaching was not, and the author excoriates the FDA for allowing the use of a new bleach, chlorine dioxide, that it admits is toxic but "probably safe as normally used" (which, of course, is what it had said about nitrogen trichloride.) A great article debunking the myth of America as the "best-fed nation on Earth." From the National Police Gazette, 1954. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 75. 

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: While cholesterol has been demonized by modern medicine, wise health practitioners know that it is, in fact, an essential component for the proper functioning of the human body. In this 1956 article, Dr. Royal Lee describes cholesterol's vital role as a "sealing compound" in controlling the diffusion of substances across cell and blood vessel walls. Dr. Lee condemns hydrogenated fats and refined vegetable oils in particular for disturbing the normal cholesterol balance in the body, one probable cause of their effect being the massive loss of nutrients—including the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K and the essential-fatty-acid complex vitamin F—incurred during refining. From Natural Food and Farming, 1956.

By William Miller

Summary: An excellent overview of the value of raw honey. Author William Miller compares the nutritional qualities of this extraordinary food, manufactured by bees for millions of years, to those of refined sugar. His conclusion? They're complete opposites nutritionally, with honey providing vitamins, minerals, and other factors critical for life and white sugar providing nothing more than empty calories. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 119, 1955. Original source unknown.

By U.S. Senator Charles W. Tobey

Summary: This excerpt from the 1952 Congressional Record shows just how far back alternative approaches to cancer have met opposition from the medical establishment, even when the evidence for the effectiveness of such approaches came from medical doctors themselves and was brought to public light by a U.S. senator. Senator Tobey's remarks are a scathing indictment of the monopolistic, profit-driven motive of organized medicine. From the Congressional Record of the 82nd U.S. Congress, 1952. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 18-A.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this riveting personal account, Dr. Lee describes the legal battle that led him to discover that organized medicine was actively working to discredit and suppress nutritional approaches to health. He also documents evidence of how the medical-pharmaceutical industry had formed what was in essence a cartel aimed at controlling the healing arts and destroying any threat to its control over the nation's healthcare. 1943.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: It is obvious why companies would opt for selling synthetic vitamins (made in a laboratory) over natural ones (found only in food): the former have a considerably higher profit margin. But just how synthetic vitamins became equated with natural ones is downright perplexing, given that there are such obvious and important differences between the two. In this profound report, Dr. Royal Lee presents some long-ignored distinctions between vitamins as made by nature and vitamins as made by human beings. For one, he points out, a natural vitamin is never a single compound, but rather it is a conglomerate of substances—or a "complex"—that work together to deliver a nutritive effect to the body. A synthetic vitamin, on the other hand, is merely one compound in such a conglomerate that has been deemed, somewhat arbitrarily, the "active" ingredient of the complex. Moreover, such an active ingredient, when produced in the lab, is never an exact replica of its natural counterpart but instead is often a mirror opposite of it, with very different and possibly toxic biochemical functioning. That these facts continue to be ignored—that synthetic vitamins are not recognized as crude and incomplete imitations of natural ones—is truly one of the great scandals of modern nutrition. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1948.

By Dr. Robert Dourmashkin

Summary: In the 1940s Dr. Royal Lee developed the Protomorphogen Theory through his pioneering recognition of the autoimmune disease process. This article, from a 1964 issue of New Scientist magazine, is among this first to photographically document the cellular destruction caused by a host's own auto-antibodies. From New Scientist, 1964. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 141.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this classic lecture to the National Health Federation Convention in Columbus, Ohio, Dr. Royal Lee reveals how organized medicine succeeded in legally hampering drugless therapies through the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which redefined a drug as "anything used to treat, prevent, diagnose, mitigate, or cure a disease." Given this new definition, Dr. Lee says, "once the drugless practitioner has discovered how to druglessly treat his patient, lo and behold, that remedy now automatically becomes a drug, and he is stopped from its use." This trick was particularly effective in thwarting the use of whole-food supplements in nutritional therapy, since it made all such supplements potential "drugs" under the law. 1962. Original source unknown.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this revealing booklet, Dr. Royal Lee describes how institutional policies in the USA were designed to protect the processing and refining—and thus the devitalization—of our food supply. He shows how the producers of processed dairy, grain, fruit, and meat induced the Food and Drug Administration as well as the American Medical Association (AMA) to overlook and even endorse their deadly products. In one astonishing case, Dr. Lee presents an ad paid for by the American Institute of Baking and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (under the direction of the journal's editor, Morris Fishbein) in which the AMA's Council on Foods assures readers that "White Bread Is Wholesome"—this at a time when many of those readers, doctor members of the AMA, were privately reporting harmful effects of white bread in their patients. "Few people in the United States are aware," Dr. Lee writes, "of the 'iron curtain' maintained in this country to prevent the food consumer from knowing that he is being sold fraudulent foods, foods that have had the better part of their nutritional value removed or destroyed to facilitate the commercial handling of the foods and to enable big food enterprises to unfairly overpower, by price competition, the smaller ones." For anyone wondering why modern human beings suffer so much chronic disease and ill health in general, this work leaves little doubt where the blame lies. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1949. Multiple original sources.

By Alfred Aslander

Summary: In this circular from the Division of Agriculture, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, the author surveys research conducted in Sweden and Switzerland on supplementing the diet with bone meal to prevent dental caries (cavities). He exposes significant design flaws in a study cited by the dental establishment to discredit bone-meal supplementation, and he describes a number of other studies that showed bone meal to be highly effective in preventing tooth decay. He also recounts his thwarted effort to have his own research published by journals beholden to the dental establishment. "At least once upon a time it was considered as an axiom that scientific investigations should aim solely at the pursuit of the truth, and consequently scientific journals should aim at publishing the truth. In this case it seems...[their] aim has been something else." Note: a year before this article appeared, Dr. Royal Lee introduced a completely raw, cold-processed veal bone meal powder (flour) for use by dentists. Reprint 134A, 1964.

By Benjamin P. Sandler, MD

Summary: An absolutely gripping book, published in its entirety by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. Dr. Sandler, a retired naval surgeon and researcher, challenges conventional science's most basic beliefs about cardiovascular disease. If hardening and blockage of the arteries (i.e., arteriosclerosis) is the reason for heart attacks, he asks, why do many heart attack victims show no evidence of arteriosclerosis upon autopsy? And why do the vast majority of people with significant arteriosclerosis die of non-heart-related reasons? The truth is arteriosclerosis is a "secondary phenomenon, purely incidental, and is not the prime factor initiating [a heart] attack," Sandler says, who points to dysfunctional blood-sugar regulation as the true cause of heart failure. Based on years of documented clinical work, Sandler reports consistent findings that a high-carbohydrate, vitamin-poor diet—the kind of diet Americans have been eating ever since the wide-scale adoption processed foods at the turn of the twentieth century—significantly weakens the heart and leads to heart attack. He especially warns against the budding advice of the time to reduce animal fat consumption. "To implicate animal foods as the ultimate cause of heart attacks because of their fat content is highly dubious and dangerous and unless absolutely confirmed as the cause...they should not be eliminated from the diet nor even slightly reduced." Fifty years later, with animal fat still not shown to be linked with heart disease and heart attack rates showing no decline in spite of Americans having reduced their consumption of animal fats significantly, Dr. Sandler's words ring as true as ever. Note: Be sure to check out the index at the end of the transcription. You'll be amazed by the breadth of subjects Dr. Sandler covered. 1958.

By the National Health Federation

Summary: He was called "the Einstein of nutrition," "father of holistic health," and, simply, "genius." He was Dr. Royal Lee, lauded in the 1972 book A New Breed of Doctor as "the best informed person on nutrition in America and perhaps even the world.” Yet Dr. Lee was much more than a nutritionist. He was also a highly successful engineer, businessman, farmer, educator, author, and researcher. But perhaps most of all, he was a humanitarian. Dr. Lee genuinely cared about the health and welfare of humanity, earning him legions of devoted admirers. In 1962 the National Health Federation [NHF] awarded Dr. Lee its highest honor, the Humanitarian Award, in "appreciation of his outstanding contribution to the health of America by fearlessly proclaiming and publishing nutritional truth." The federations' words were not chosen lightly. The truth that Dr. Lee spoke—about the corruption of the food supply in America at the hands of industrial food manufacturers and their lackeys in both the federal government and the medical profession—put him in the crosshairs of some of the most powerful institutions in the country. Yet Dr. Lee never wavered from his mission to inform the public of what was happening behind the "iron curtain" of America's food and health, for which he was "loved and respected by thousands of seekers for the truth," as the NHF declares in this 1962 excerpt from its national newsletter. From The National Health Federation Bulletin, 1962. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Many people know white sugar and white flour are refined products, but what about distilled or otherwise "purified" water? Although deionization or reverse osmosis can remove potential pathogens, it also takes away the minerals found in "unrefined" sources of water that are so critical to human health. Possibly the most important of these minerals, Dr. Lee says, is calcium bicarbonate, a form of calcium that has the rare distinction of being easily absorbed by the human body. Other benefits such as natural bacterial antigens, which help build our immune system, and the absence of fluoride make natural, unrefined spring or well water the ideal drink for the human body. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Marion B. Richards, DSc

Summary: While today synthetic supplements are generally considered beneficial or at worst harmless, early investigations into their therapeutic application painted a far different and disturbing picture. In this 1945 report from the British Medical Journal, pioneering biochemist Dr. Marion Richards reports on her investigations into the effects of synthetic vitamin B1 (known as aneurine in England at the time and as thiamine today). Dr. Richards found that female rats fed a supplement of synthetic B1 developed a subsequent deficiency of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) so grave that the animals’ offspring died from lack of it during weaning. These results echoed other studies of synthetic B vitamin therapy, she notes, in which “excessive dosing with one particular factor of the B complex” appeared to lead to “secondary deficiencies” of other vitamins in the complex. In one of the most alarming of these experiments, dogs fed a diet enriched with synthetic B vitamins died faster than dogs fed an unenriched diet. Also worth noting in the study discussed here is that supplementation with additional calcium in the form of chalk only worsened the animals’ resulting vitamin B6 deficiency. Such unintended consequences speak to why “naturalist” researchers of the time warned of the dangers of widespread supplementation with synthetic micronutrients, pointing out that only whole foods of time-tested nutritional value can be relied on to provide vitamins and minerals in the forms and ratios required for human health. From British Medical Journal, 1945. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 10.

By Samuel M. Beale, Jr., MD

Summary: In 1947 the British Associated Press asked pioneering American physician Dr. Samuel Beale Jr. to write a report discussing his "low-dose" insulin therapy for cancer. The result is the following article, published originally in London's News Review and later reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. In it Dr. Beale details the shockingly quick reversal of cancerous lesions in a number of his patients through the combined application of insulin and a nutrient-dense diet. (As this letter attests, Dr. Beale was one of thousands of physicians who relied on Dr. Royal Lee's famous raw food concentrates to insure the nutrition of his patients.) While Dr. Beale concedes he does not know the precise mechanism of insulin's efficacy, he speculates that it is the  hormone's ability to balance the body's entire endocrine system that is the key factor. In addition he names three "indications of cancer susceptibility" that modern medicine would be wise to revisit: 1) poor sugar handling 2) overalkaline blood, and 3) a disturbed calcium-phosphorus balance in the blood. Dr. Beale practiced medicine for over fifty years and used insulin to successfully treat an array of other diseases in addition to cancer. From News Review, 1947. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Steven Ayre, MD

Summary: A compelling overview of an alternative therapy for cancer based on the fact that cancer cells feed exclusively on glucose. To capture as much glucose as possible, cancer cells have many insulin receptors—ten times more than any normal cell in the human body. In standard chemotherapy, the chemotherapeutic drugs cannot tell the difference between cancerous cells and normal cells, so they kill them both indiscriminately. But when such drugs are delivered along with insulin, the insulin shuttles them preferentially into the cancer cells. The result of such targeting is the sparing of normal cells and the necessity of a smaller dose of drug to get the job done. "Insulin Potentiation Therapy appears to be a wonderful new way of treating cancer," Dr. Ayre concludes. From The Cancer Cure Foundation, circa 2005.

By Dr. E.C. Auchter

Summary: In this 1939 article from Science magazine, a USDA scientist discusses the budding awareness of the nutritional dependency of the plant on the soil and, in turn, of the animal and human being on the plant, making the health of the soil critical for human wellness. "These developments in the science of nutrition," Auchter writes, "suggest that we ought to give more attention to producing crops of the highest nutritional quality for man and animals." Too bad the USDA never took his advice. Reprint 79, 1939.

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: In this remarkable 1954 article, Canadian physician W.J. McCormick presents physiological and biochemical principles that go to the core of orthopedic medicine, chiropractic spinal care, and osteopathy. While many health experts fail to understand the ultimate cause of connective-tissue decay, McCormick is clear: "The most definitely established physiological function of vitamin C is that of assisting in the formation of collagen for the maintenance of stability and elasticity of connective tissues generally, and this would include the bones, cartilages, muscles, and vascular tissues...In deficiency of the vitamin, instability and fragility of all such tissues is believed to be caused by the breakdown of 'the intercellular cement substance' (collagen), resulting in easy rupture of any and all of these connective tissues, which would include the intervertebral discs." As Dr. McCormick emphasized throughout his life, the effects of subclinical scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) cannot be understated, though they are often overlooked. From the Archives of Pediatrics, 1954. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 5D.

By Mark R. Anderson

Summary: The mid-twentieth century was a time of unprecedented discovery in the science of nutrition. At the head of the field was Dr. Royal Lee (1895–1967), a Milwaukee dentist who combined an uncanny grasp of the physical sciences, agriculture, physiology, biochemical manufacturing, and clinical application of nutrition to lead a revolution in our basic understanding of food and health. Dr. Lee spent much of his time—and money—disseminating the truths he unearthed to the public, his audience ranging from homemakers to healthcare practitioners of every stripe. In the book Lectures of Dr. Royal Lee, Volume I, Selene River Press presents thirty-seven of Dr. Lee's most notable talks, the titles of which are shown here along with the prefatory pages of the the book, including Mark R. Anderson's stirring introduction on "The Lee Philosophy"—one of the most insightful commentaries ever written on the life and work of the twentieth century's foremost nutritionist. From Lectures of Dr. Royal Lee, Volume I (Selene River Press, 1998).

By J.F. Edward, MD

Summary: Writing in a Canadian medical journal, this physician gives voice to his observations on the role of iodine in the prevention of viral disease and "central nervous system fevers" such as polio. From Manitoba Medical Review, 1954. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 76.

By J. Evers, MD

Summary: In this preliminary report, translated from its original in German, a physician describes his success in treating multiple sclerosis using a diet of mostly raw whole foods. "Controlled examinations of my patients by experienced specialists (neurologists, internists, and ophthalmologists) acknowledge...remarkable improvements," Dr. J. Evers writes. "Patients who had been treated by every other possible means and saw their condition get worse—and in some cases appeared entirely without hope—have been improved by my dietary treatment." Dr. Evers treated nearly 600 patients in all, yet conventional medicine completely ignored his findings. From German Medical Weekly, 1947. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 90.

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee recalls numerous "miracle drugs" of his day that turned out to harmful or even lethal to many in the population. (With pharmaceutical-related deaths in America numbering in the tens to hundreds of thousands today, this practice has continued unabated.) It is the "cooperation with natural constructive forces" that brings health, Dr. Lee writes, not "drug or poison therapy by which the cell activities are subjected to new and unknown reactions with new and unknown end or side results that...undermine the future welfare of the patient." This simple, sensible approach, Lee says, is the basis of his Vitamin Products Company, which provided complete, natural vitamins in the form of whole-food supplements. Lee also specifies some of the constituents of the natural vitamin C complex, which in addition to ascorbic acid includes an antihemorrhagic factor, a thrombin synthesis factor, a blood-oxygen factor, and a connective-tissue-integrity factor. From the Vitamin Products Company, circa 1940.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this reprint from the magazine Nature's Path, Dr. Royal Lee rips food processors for adding poisonous additives and preservatives to their products and selling them as harmless to an unsuspecting public. Nitrates in meat, bleach in flour, and aluminum exposure are highlighted. "Are we...witnessing the crumbling of our civilization by reason of the compromise with principle that is being made by the guilty parties who have so thoroughly sold the public health down the river?" Lee asks. "'Just a little poison in the flour'....'Nitrates in meat never hurt anybody'....'Aluminum toxic? Are you crazy?'" Just a few examples, Lee says, of how large-scale poisoning of the population has been glossed over in America. From Nature's Path magazine. Reprint 30F, 1951.

Author unknown

Summary: "Scientists have observed for more than 70 years that most types of cancer cells are sugar junkies," begins this synopsis of the famous 1998 study by Dr. Chi Dang of Johns Hopkins University showing that depriving cancer cells of sugar can cause them to self destruct. "When we remove glucose from...cancer cells," Dr. Dang says, "they commit suicide, basically, as compared with normal cells." This finding echoes the earlier work of Dr. Daniel T. Quigley, a cancer-expert in Omaha, Nebraska, who years earlier warned of the dangers of a diet high in refined sugar. (See what Dr. Royal Lee had to say about Dr. Quigley and starving glucose out of the body here and here.) For the official Johns Hopkins press release of Dr. Dang's study, see "Cancer Cells Self-Destruct When 'Sweet Tooth' is Thwarted" in these archives. From Johns Hopkins University, 1998.

By Bill Misner, PhD

Summary: A short and not so sweet synopsis of the dangers of sugar. Misner points out a fact that most health "experts" fail to appreciate: most of the sugar a person eats is converted to fat in the body. And once it's converted and stored, it stays there as fat as long as the person continues to eat large amounts of additional sugar. Misner also discusses the origin and manufacture of the famous "tol" sweeteners—xylitol, mannitol, and sorbitol—as well as the malt syrups, two classes of sweeteners that generally get overlooked. While some of Misner's conclusions are questionable, this is an excellent adjunct to any study of the negative effects of overconsuming simple saccharides (i.e, sugar). Dr. Joseph Mercola Publications, 2000.

By Doris Grant

Summary: Doris Grant was one of England's greatest proponents of the natural-foods movement. An avid supporter of the Lee Foundation, she wrote many books and lectured widely to teach the British people how to live healthier lives, particularly through their food choices. Strong and active until the end of her life, Grant died in 2003 at the age of 98. This document includes a brief account of her life. From the Cambridge University Medical School Society Magazine. Reprint 123, 1958.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee was one of the original fighters against the bleaching and refining of flour products. He considered it a national crime, and spoke out about it tirelessly from the early 1920s through the end of his life. In this article, aimed at homemakers, Dr. Lee gives a brief history of the practice of flour bleaching as well as the noble efforts to stop it. He also highlights the discovery by scientists that the chemicals involved in flour bleaching were deadly. "It seems that English investigators have found that the bleaching chemical universally used in this country for many years has been found poisonous enough to kill dogs in a few weeks if they receive the bleached flour, or bread made from it." 1947.

By William Banting

Summary: William Banting was an overweight British undertaker who by the mid-1800s had tried all the popular prescriptions for weight loss of his day, without success. Then his physician recommended he try abstaining from starches and sweets (i.e., processed carbohydrates). When Banting promptly dropped thirty-five pounds in a few months, he was inspired to inform the public of his success in the form of this pamphlet. Banting’s publication sparked a rage of successful low-carb dieting across Europe and America that would span the next century. Unbeknownst to most modern nutritionists and weight loss "experts," low-carb dieting in the Banting mode was commonly recommended in early-twentieth-century textbooks on medicine, obesity, and endocrinology. It wasn’t until the 1960s, with the emergence of the notion that eating saturated fat leads to heart disease—a hypothesis that remains unproven to this day—that low-carb diets fell out of favor. Here the author presents and comments on the fourth edition of his famous letter, by which time he had heard from countless readers confirming the effectiveness of his diet. Harrison Publishing, London, 1869.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this scathing correspondence to the editors of Collier's Weekly magazine, Dr. Lee takes the periodical to task for a recent article on "cancer quacks" that appears to have been influenced by forces within organized medicine. Included among Lee's pointed criticisms is the magazine's failure to mention that one of the "quacks" it spotlighted had been acquitted and cleared of any wrongdoing by the Federal Trade Commission. 1951.

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.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In a time before fluoridation of water was commonplace, Dr. Royal Lee was a leading opponent of such dangerous "mass medication," as he put it. In this open letter to the citizens of San Diego, Dr. Lee calls on residents to stop this "treatment by force" with a poison they would otherwise never tolerate in their food supply. Dr. Lee identifies processed foods, deficient in vitamins and minerals, as the real culprit behind tooth decay and points out that ironically the very food processors who created the cavity problem in America are the ones pushing water fluoridation on municipalities throughout the country. Circa 1952.

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: Writing at 81 years of age, the famous Canadian physician W.J. McCormick discusses the relationship between smoking mothers, vitamin C deficiency, and the rising incidence of leukemia in the very young. "This close link [between leukemia and] scurvy seems to have been completely overlooked by modern writers on leukemia," McCormick says, "the major stress being given to genetic changes in chromosomes, irrespective of possible adverse contributing maternal factors." Once again, medicine's myopic view of disease as the result of "bad genes or germs" prevented consideration of malnutrition as a possible cause of an illness barely known to our whole-food-eating ancestors. From the Journal of Applied Nutrition. Reprint 5G, 1961.

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: In this 1946 article, medical doctor W.J. McCormick looks at the relationship between vitamin C status in the body and lithogenesis—the formation of calculi, or stones, in an internal organ. "Clinical observations and laboratory experimentation by the author on the effect of administration of vitamin C in altering the physiochemical properties of the urine and other body fluids, principally in eliminating deposition of phosphates, has led to the hypothesis of C hypovitaminosis as the basic etiological factor in lithogenesis in general." Note: Dr. McCormick equates vitamin C with ascorbic acid, though, as Dr. Royal Lee often pointed out, the latter is just one of the many factors that form the true vitamin C complex. From the journal Medical Record, 1946. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: Dr. George Goodheart, the founder of Applied Kinesiology, describes the biochemical, musculoskeletal, and hormonal response of patients suffering from hyperinsulinism and offers a very simple but still overlooked step to help remedy the problem: "What does not seem to be understood or practiced is that sugar and all carbohydrates cause this dysfunction and that sugar and high carbohydrates must be restricted." This is one of the earliest chiropractic papers on what was soon to become a huge area of holistic healing. From the Digest of Chiropractic Economics, circa 1965. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Benjamin P. Sandler, MD

Summary: In this excerpt from his book Diet Prevents Polio, physician, nutritionist, and polio expert Dr. Benjamin Sandler explains how he came to believe, based on years of clinical observation, that susceptibility to infection by the polio virus (and other disease) is determined by quality of diet. "Specifically," he writes, "I suspected that children and adults contracted polio because of low blood sugar brought on by a diet containing sugar and starch." To read about the science behind Dr. Sandler's theory—and how high-carbohydrate diets set humans up for infection and disease in general—see Diet Prevents Polio in its entirety within these archives. From Diet Prevents Polio, published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1951. 

By Cyrill William Carter

Summary: An important article about one of the critical B complex vitamins that got lost in the rush to synthesize nutrients. Vitamin B4 is a vitamer of the B complex that promotes proper nerve impulse transmission, yet it is not recognized as an essential nutrient by modern science. In the report Oxford researcher Cyrill William Carter notes that in pigeons suffering heart block who had been fed a diet devoid of natural vitamin B complex, supplementation with vitamins B1 and B2 failed to resolve the problem. When supplementation was switched to a yeast extract, which naturally contained the then-unknown B4 vitamer in addition to vitamers B1 and B2, the heart block was resolved. Oxford University scientists worked for over a decade to resolve the relationship between vitamin B4 and vitamin B1. From the Biochemical Journal, 1934. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 3.

By Kenneth de Courcy

Summary: This reprint of a 1957 article on margarine production epitomizes two fundamentally opposed philosophies of food production that emerged from the Industrial Revolution. On the one hand, large scale manufacturers strove to deliver food to consumers at the lowest cost possible, using novel chemical and thermal methods to preserve and manipulate foodstuffs regardless of the effect on the foods’ nutritional quality. (Indeed, industrial food processing was the reason the vitamins were discovered in the first place, the inadvertent removal of the then-unknown nutrients leading to mysterious epidemics across the globe.) Nutritionists, on the other hand, decried industrial adulteration of the food supply, citing copious evidence that eating foods in as natural a state as possible is critical for the growth, upkeep, and immunity of the human body. In this article the author, an advocate of commercial food manufacturing, sells margarine as a sort of modern super food, with a nutritional value “as high as that of butter” simply because the two contain the same amount of fat and calories per ounce. Such sophistry is what allowed food manufacturers to run roughshod over America’s food supply, as noted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, which reprinted the article so its audience could see margarine precisely for what it is—a “counterfeit food” made from “refined, rancid, and otherwise unfit food sources.” From World Science Review, 1957. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 106.

By Howard H. Hillemann, PhD

Summary: In this lecture from 1958, Oregon State professor Dr. Howard Hillemann breaks down the number of birth defects occurring in the United States by cause, noting in particular the increasing numbers of defects attributable to environmental chemicals, food additives, and prenatal malnutrition. The report includes a comprehensive discussion of the role of vitamins and minerals in prenatal nutrition, addressing each nutrient individually. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, reprint 66B, 1958.

By Howard H. Hillemann, PhD

Summary: A thoroughly researched report on the birth and developmental defects known to result from specific nutrient deficiencies in human and test-animal mothers during pregnancy. Professor Dr. Howard Hillemann of Oregon State College covers deficiencies of vitamins A, C, and E, fats, carbohydrates, the B complex vitamers (including folate), protein, calcium, phosphorous, and manganese. Includes 61 references. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, reprint 66A, 1956.

By Elizabeth Crown

Summary: In 2000 a team of researchers at Northwestern University Medical School published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that showed a clear correlation between elevated levels of blood sugar and the risk of dying of pancreatic cancer. Since pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose and thus usually fatal when detected, too late, this article suggests a hopeful measure of prevention—controlling one's blood sugar level by limiting consumption of sugar and other high-glycemic foods. From the Northwestern University Observer, 2000.

By the Local Medical and Panel Committee of Cheshire, England

Summary: This 1939 declaration by the physicians of Cheshire, England, is one of the great documents of nutrition history and a clarion call for preventive medicine in the twenty-first century and beyond. In it the 600 family doctors of Cheshire county lament the failure of their profession to reverse the soaring rates of chronic disease in Britain, naming the reason for the new epidemics in no uncertain terms: “a lifetime of wrong nutrition" in their patients. While medicine’s political institutions were spinning the notion that only total vitamin deficiencies bring illness, such as the lethal scurvy or rickets, many practicing physicians were confirming what decades of experimental research had shown—that the human body is incredibly susceptible to partial deficiencies of vitamins and minerals as well, these lacks manifesting as practically every modern health complaint, from tooth decay to gastrointestinal disorders to chronic fatigue to mental illness. Unless Britain moved from its “white bread and margarine” diet of industrially processed foods to one with food that is “little altered by preparation," with "no chemical or substitution stage,” and grown in soil in which "the natural cycle is complete," the doctors warn, chronic disease would only continue to increase in Britain. In 1957 England's prestigious Soil Association would resurrect Cheshire’s Medical Testament in a declaration of its own, published in the medical journal The Lancet, noting that time had done nothing but affirm the document's dour predictions while repeating its assertion that whole, organically grown food is not a luxury but a necessity for human health. Over half a century later, with rates of chronic disease ever increasing across the globe, the institution of medicine continues to ignore the prophetic practitioners of Cheshire—at the risk of humanity’s very existence. From the British Medical Journal, 1939. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD, and Sir Albert Howard

Summary: In 1911 Britain passed its National Insurance Act, a law intended to “provide for the prevention and cure of sickness” of its citizens. Yet despite the bill’s aim, rates of chronic disease proceeded to explode in the country over the ensuing decades. While medical officialdom was at a loss to explain or prevent the events, in 1939 the 600 family doctors of Cheshire county gathered to issue a public “testament” naming both the cause of the new epidemics and the means of their reversal. The physicians, reflecting on nearly three decades of clinical experience, named malnutrition at the hands of industrially processed foods as the common cause of chronic disease while marveling at the “amazing benefits” of switching patients to a diet of nutrient-dense, organic foods. Two researchers instrumental in guiding the doctors to their findings were Sir Robert McCarrison and Sir Albert Howard, both of whom were invited to speak at the famous Cheshire meeting, as recorded here. In their speeches McCarrison and Howard articulate the basic principles of what might be called “ecological nutrition,” that the health of humans depends on the health of the foods they eat, which in turn depends on the health of the soil those foods are grown in and on. With the medical industry still baffled by the cause and prevention of chronic disease, the words of these farsighted researchers offer a blueprint for building true health and wellness in humankind, literally from the ground up. Originally published in New English Weekly, 1939.

By F.A. Behymer

Summary: A newspaper report of soil expert Albert Carter Savage, who in the 1940s warned of the depletion of soil and its effect on the quality of the food supply. Ostensibly about Savage's prodigious garden, the article presents his ideas for restoring fertility and immunity to agricultural lands. "A program of countrywide mineralization could and would create, within a generation, a new type of human being," Savage says. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1945. Lee Foundation for Nutrition and Research reprint 14.

By Rex Beach

Summary: A fascinating document from the U.S. Senate that originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine. Beach describes the work of Dr. Charles Northen, whom he credits as the first person to show conclusively that mineral-deficient soils produce nutrient-deficient food plants, which in turn lead to nutrient deficiencies in the livestock and humans that eat them. A historically significant record of the decline of America's soils, nutrition, and health. Reprint 109, 1936.

By Charles J. MacAlister, MD

Summary: Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) is one of the most highly regarded herbs in the world, and this 1936 book—republished in its entirety in 1955 by the Lee Foundation—is a treasure trove of knowledge about its use. Author Dr. C.J. MacAlister discusses his study and application of the herb; its unique phytochemical, allantoin; and its effect on cancer. Along the way, he draws on historical uses, contemporary studies, and personal observations with respect to therapies using this ancient plant. Includes an appendix by Dr. A.W. Titherley on the chemical structure of comfrey. Originally published by John Bale, Sons & Danielson, Ltd, 1936. Republished by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1955.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this paper on the relationship between cooking fats and blood cholesterol, pioneering nutritional therapist Dr. Royal Lee emphasizes the importance of phospholipids in the former for metabolizing the latter. While natural, unrefined oils such as crude peanut oil contain such phospholipids, he says, synthetic hydrogenated fats do not (because they are destroyed in the manufacturing process). Dr. Lee cites studies in which a diet of high-fat, high-cholesterol foods cooked in unrefined natural oil led to a decrease in blood cholesterol, whereas a diet of foods cooked in hydrogenated fats raised it. From Vitamin Products Company, circa 1956.

By Sir Albert Howard

Summary: In this 1945 article from Organic Gardening magazine, Sir Albert Howard, father of the British organic farming movement, writes about the inherent inferiority of artificial soil fertilizers, specifically synthetic nitrates. He quotes the magazine New English Weekly: "It is always good to see the difference between natural and laboratory products emphasized, in recognition of the imponderable elements with which Nature endows substances, which can by no scientific skill be added to the synthetic product." He also cites a study from an American university showing that "natural nitrates have something that the artificial lacks, and there is no completely adequate substitute for it in the field of [artificial] agricultural fertilizers." Substituting crude imitations for Nature's complex, synergistic compounds is a great way to destroy the health of soil and crops, he adds. Howard, the author of the classic book on organic farming An Agricultural Testament, was also the mentor of J.I. Rodale, the founder of Prevention magazine. From Organic Gardening, 1945. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 13.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this brief article, Dr. Royal Lee presents his classic metaphor of holistic nutrition likening a true vitamin to a watch. Just as a watch consists of numerous pieces that all work together to perform a function (telling time), a true vitamin is a complex of countless synergistic factors that work together to perform the function of delivering a nutritive effect to the body. And just as separating a few pieces from a watch and expecting them to tell time is absurd, isolating (or synthesizing) a single component of a natural vitamin and expecting it to nourish the body is folly. Vitamin Products Company, 1952.

By Judith A. DeCava

Authors unknown

Summary: A riveting article documenting the success of vitamin E therapy in the treatment of heart disease, published by the British journal Popular Science Digest. The key to this success, the authors emphasize, is the use of natural vitamin E over synthetic, the former having been shown to be "highly effective in the treatment of coronary disease, the incidence of which appears to be linked with a deficiency of vitamin E in the diet dating from the beginning of the century, when millers discarded vitamin E in the processing of grain." While the authors mistakenly confuse isolated natural alpha-tocopherol with the natural vitamin E complex (which includes alpha-tocopherol but other factors in addition), they sum the case for natural vitamin therapy over pharmaceutical drugs brilliantly: "Alpha tocopherol (vitamin E) therapy has the distinctive feature of improving the function of damaged hearts by attacking the underlying pathological changes. Heretofore, the drugs at the disposal of the cardiologist such as digitalis, quinidine, the mercurial diuretics, and nitro-glycerine have helped to re-establish more normal function, but have left the basic pathology unaltered." In other words, vitamins treat the cause, not the symptoms, as drugs do. The overwhelming clinical success reported in treating heart disease with vitamin E, the article concludes, "is a case for the closest and completely unbiased examination, by those competent to do so, of the claims of those who have developed and sponsored vitamin E therapy." Words that still ring true today. From Popular Science Digest, 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 40A.

By George McGrath

Summary: In the 1950s, with mainstream media parroting the government's pronouncements that Americans were the best fed people on Earth, it was left to fringe publications like the National Police Gazette to report on one of the biggest scandals of the twentieth century: the chemical poisoning of America's foods. Though the Gazette was largely viewed as a tabloid, on occasion—between stories of murder and outlaws—the paper gave space to serious journalism. The following two articles, published in 1958, report the experiences of Dr. W.C. Hueper, a chief at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, who was silenced when he tried to warn the public of the myriad cancer-causing agents flooding the country's food supply. According to Dr. Hueper, the long list of cancerous agents being used by American food manufacturers included artificial colors, dyes, surfactants, antifoaming agents, humectants, emulsifiers, preservatives, paraffins, and petrolatum-like substances. Dr. Hueper was particularly alarmed over the unregulated use of carcinogenic estrogen hormones by farmers to fatten their animals. "It is rather remarkable," he said, "that biologically potent chemicals that are obtainable for medicinal reasons only by a licensed physician can be used freely in large quantities by individuals without any proper training of the potential health hazards." For many Americans reports like this were the first news that dangerous chemicals were being added to their food, yet, as the articles' author comments, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) not only had decades of scientific warning about such substances, it actively thwarted investigators—like Dr. Hueper—who attempted to inform the public of the situation. From the National Police Gazette, 1958. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 18C..

By Herbert M. Evans

Summary: In 1922 biologists Herbert Evans and Katharine Bishop discovered that rats deprived of a certain fat-soluble substance in their diet failed to reproduce. Thanks to this research, the substance—later named vitamin E—was known initially as "the antisterility vitamin." In subsequent years, however, researchers would discover that vitamin E is responsible for much more than fertility, its deficiency leading to muscular and neural dystrophies in various species of animals, particularly in the young. In this lecture from 1939, Dr. Evans discusses both his own research and that of others into vitamin E’s critical role in the health of muscle and nerves, adding that while a certain minimal amount of the vitamin may ward of full-blown degeneration, there are likely effects of partial inadequacy as well, such as slowed growth. While today medicine has nebulously reduced the function of vitamin E to that of an antioxidant, Dr. Evans’s discussion speaks to a role much more immediately involved in the physiology of the body. Indeed, he notes, when scientists fed rabbits a diet deficient in vitamin E but supplemented with a known antioxidant, the animals "developed the [same] dystrophy and succumbed in the usual way.” From Journal of the Mount Sinai Hospital, 1939. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 56.

Author unknown

Summary: A grave error of conventional nutrition is the failure to distinguish sources of a nutrient. By this way of thinking, all "sugar" becomes the same thing, whether the term refers to isolated molecules derived from the chemical breakdown of cornstarch or to molecules of the same constitution but surrounded by a group of vitamins and minerals that happen to perfectly assist their metabolism in the body. And so modern nutrition sees no difference between the raw juice of sugarcane and the white purified crystals it becomes after industrial processing. Yet there is a difference, a profound one, as renowned nutritionist and inventor Dr. Royal Lee points out in this 1943 article. Raw sugarcane juice is actually a great source of many vitamins, Dr. Lee explains, and while these micronutrients are lost in the process of refining, the body still needs them to properly metabolize sugar molecules. Thus overconsumption of refined sugar must necessarily dysregulate our metabolism, manifesting as conditions such as diabetes and obesity. In the early 1940s, in an effort to help bring "healthy sugar" to the public, Dr. Lee invented a cold-evaporation technique that retained and preserved all the micronutrients naturally found in sugarcane. That process, described here, might have helped prevent the decay of our national health, had our officials had the sense to realize that not all sources of a nutrient are equal. From the Portsmouth Herald, 1943.

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD

Summary: In 1906 the United States Congress passed the country's first federal "truth in labeling" law, the Pure Food and Drug Act. Among the provisions of the landmark legislation was the prohibition of any food preservative or other additive that could be injurious to consumers. Charged with determining the safety of those food additives was the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry, a division within the Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would later become the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The head of the bureau, Dr. Harvey Wiley, adopted a "better safe than sorry" policy, banning any additive that showed a possibility of causing harm. Dr. Wiley's approach immediately earned him enemies within the food manufacturing industry, which used its influence in the government to circumvent the bureau's rulings and eventually oust its chief. In 1925 Dr. Wiley struck back, publishing a letter to President Calvin Coolidge in which he admonished the government for its complicity in bypassing the food law and allowing potentially dangerous additives into America's food supply. After the president demanded an explanation from the USDA, Dr. Wiley wrote the following letter expressing his profound disappointment in the department's position, which opened the floodgates to a stream of questionable substances in America's foods that continues to flow to this day. Following Dr. Wiley's letter are several advertisements for popular foods of the time, showing just how early industrial food processors had infiltrated the nation's food supply. From Good Housekeeping, 1926.

By Granville F. Knight, MD

Summary: A discussion of food allergies well ahead of its time. Dr. Knight distinguishes "nonreaginic" allergies (i.e., no antibodies) from the classic antibody-antigen type, placing the percentage of population suffering the former at ninety percent—a remarkable observation given that this paper was published in 1954. The focus of the article is the Coca Pulse Test, a method of determining nonreaginic allergies to foods and environmental compounds by taking measurements of one's pulse before and after ingesting or inhaling a suspected allergen. From the Journal of Applied Nutrition. Reprint 100, 1954.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee at his prescient best. Anticipating ideas such as the glycemic index and insulin resistance by about four decades, Dr. Lee laments the negative effects of high-glycemic foods such as refined sugar, which "disturb the body mechanisms," he says. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this monumental 1952 pamphlet, Dr. Royal Lee argues that arthritis is the direct result of nutrient deficiencies brought about by the overconsumption of cooked and processed foods. Insufficient intake of vitamins A, C, and G; various minerals; and the woefully forgotten Wulzen factor—an "anti-stiffness" agent for joints found in raw sugarcane juice and raw cream—all help contribute to the disease, Dr. Lee writes. (Interestingly, while raw cream was shown to prevent joint stiffness in test animals, pasteurized cream provided no such protection, which may explain why arthritis became epidemic in the USA after food processors began pasteurizing the nation's milk supply.) Dr. Lee not only shows how these deficiencies lead to the arthritis-inducing conditions of acidosis and toxic bowel, he also delineates precise supplement protocols to reverse the arthritic condition, featuring his famous raw food concentrate formulas Betalco and Minaplex (known today as Betacol and Organically Bound Minerals). Dr. Lee also backs up his ideas with several carefully documented case studies showing how patients reversed crippling cases of arthritis using his protocol. This compilation is a tour de force of nutritional therapy—indispensable for all health practitioners and anyone else interested in restoring wellness through diet. From the Vitamin Products Company, 1952.

By Allison G. James, DDS

Summary: A dentist warns that refined grain and sugar products are "the chief causative factor in dental caries [cavities] and paradentosis [gum disease]." The author also discusses the body's important calcium-phosphorus ratio and warns against eating too much "heat-sterilized food." The esteemed Dr. Francis M. Pottenger Jr., MD—author of the famous Pottenger's Cats—comments at the end of the article. From Annals of Western Medicine and Surgery, Reprint 34, 1947.

By F.E. Chidester, PhD

Summary: The interaction between the nutrients and the endocrine glands comes into sharp focus in this exceptional book, published in its entirety by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. Dr. Chidester wonderfully compiles and synergizes a wide scope of knowledge concerning cancer research and its relationship to nutrition, in particular with respect to the endocrine glands, discussing specific lesions caused by deficiencies of various vitamins, minerals, and trace minerals. His presentation on iodine alone is worth its weight in gold. While iodine and cancer research is coming into focus only now in the twenty-first century, Dr. Chidester enlightened his readers over six decades earlier. 1944.

View PDF: Nutrition and Glands in Relation to Cancer

By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD

Summary: Dr. Robert McCarrison, the famed British nutrition researcher knighted for his work in India (which culminated in the classic reference Studies in Deficiency Disease), gives a lecture to London schoolchildren about diet and nutrition. He recounts his famous rat-feeding studies mimicking the diets of differing populations in India and, based on the results of his studies, gives his prescription for a basic healthful diet: freshly milled grains, raw milk and milk products, legumes, fresh vegetables, fruit, eggs, and meat. Reprint 43, 1937.

By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD

Summary: In this in-depth lecture before the Royal Society of Arts, Dr. Robert McCarrison discusses conclusions and observations of his pioneering research as Britain's former Director of Research on Nutrition in India and its implications for the health of Britain's population. "The greatest single factor in the acquisition and maintenance of good health," he says, "is perfectly constituted [i.e., whole, natural] food." 1936.

By Richard L. Chipman, MD

Summary: In this profound lecture from 1953, Dr. Richard Chipman elucidates the differences between natural and synthetic vitamins in terms of their effects on the human heart. Whereas lab-made vitamins comprise single chemical compounds, he explains, natural vitamins—or vitamins as they are found in food—are infinitely more complex, comprising “groups of associated principles of synergistic nature” that, if taken apart, “are no longer capable of producing [their] normal nutritional and metabolic effect.” Thus it is no surprise, he adds, that in studies synthetic vitamins failed to show positive effects on heart health, and in some cases even made matters worse, while natural vitamin complexes proved literally to be lifesavers. Dr. Chipman's words will make you reconsider not just what vitamins truly are but what they are truly capable of in restoring human health. From The Journal of Medical-Physical Research, 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint 5-54.

By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD

Summary: In this 1936 article from the British Medical Journal, nutrition pioneer Sir Dr. Robert McCarrison lays out some of the basic principles of nutrition—principles that have long been lost by a modern world that has convinced itself that processed foods are sufficient substitutes for whole natural foods. In addition to the fundamental truth that only whole foods can properly nourish the body, McCarrison discusses specific dysfunctions that occur in the two body systems affected most immediately by a poor diet—the gastrointestinal tract and the endocrine system. From the British Medical Journal, 1936.

By John H. Gunter, DDS, MD

Summary: In this thought-provoking chapter from 1943's A Guide to Practical Nutrition, physician and dentist John Gunter connects the dots between malnutrition and tooth decay. “It is generally known that inadequate nutrition predisposes to lowered resistance to bacterial invasion,” he writes, and such invasion includes the attack of oral bacteria on teeth. Indeed, he notes, tooth decay and periodontal disease tend to flourish only in populations subsisting on foods of “deteriorated biological value"—that is, foods deficient in vitamin and mineral complexes—such as white flour, white sugar, and the other industrially manufactured foods of modern civilization. Dr. Gunter proceeds to detail the roles played by various nutrients in preventing not just tooth decay but oral disease in general, a list headlined by the vitamins A, B1, C, and D as well as the minerals calcium and phosphorus. While dentistry today sells tooth decay as a story of defenseless teeth being attacked by sugar-loving bacteria, Dr. Gunter’s article affirms what he and many other nutrition-minded dentists of the early twentieth century knew firsthand: a well fed tooth is well protected. From A Guide to Practical Nutrition, 1943. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 115A.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: "Most overweight people have an obviously disordered endocrine balance," writes Dr. Lee in this speculative paper on the nature of weight gain and loss. While historically the thyroid has always been considered the main dysfunctional endocrine gland when it comes to obesity, Dr. Lee points to another player, one "higher up the chain" of the endocrine system—the pituitary gland. With some modern researchers claiming the cause of obesity to be resistance of the pituitary to the hormone leptin, Dr. Lee appears to have been on the right track—once again years ahead of his time. 1954.

Various authors

Summary: In March 1957 Modern Nutrition printed the following excerpts from a stunning series of open letters by John Pearmain of the Boston Nutrition Society to Dr. Nathan Pusey, President of Harvard University, regarding "the matter of standards of research under Dr. Frederick Stare," head of the university's department of nutrition. Dr. Stare (1911–2002), probably more than any other public figure in U.S. history, was responsible for convincing Americans that sugar and other refined foods are harmless and that whole foods are no more valuable nutritionally than processed ones. "Actually," he once wrote, “we get as much food value from refined foods that have been enriched as from natural foods, and sometimes more.” Dr. Stare also advised Americans to “eat your [food] additives—they’re good for you” and recommended Coca-Cola as “a healthy between-meals snack.” In the following excerpts, Mr. Pearmain questions the reasons for Dr. Stare’s pronouncements, suggesting it was not the weight of scientific evidence that underlay them but rather the financial might of his department’s funders, which comprised some of the country’s largest food processing companies (including, yes, Coca-Cola) as well as major chemical and drug interests. While these links were carefully kept from the public during Dr. Stare’s lifetime, recently they have begun to come to light, most notably in the 2016 exposé “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease” in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine. The investigation pieces a paper trail from the Sugar Research Foundation—an industrial benefactor of Harvard’s nutrition department whose advisory board Dr. Stare served on—to research published by Harvard investigators intentionally obscuring evidence against sugar in the causation of heart disease. While the news of influence peddling at America’s most prestigious university came as a shock to many readers, Harvard's "sugar scandal" is merely the tip of an iceberg of dubious activity by Dr. Stare and his department, as the following letters show. Included after the excerpts is some fascinating commentary by Dr. Royal Lee, a leading proponent of natural food nutrition during the 1950s and strong critic of Dr. Stare. From Modern Nutrition, 1957. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Julian Pleasants

Summary: If you want bread done right, make it yourself, commands author Julian Pleasants in this stirring 1949 declaration of nutritional self-reliance. Pleasants wrote this article not long after the federal government had launched  its "enrichment" program, mandating the addition of synthetic B vitamins to all white flour in the country despite "little direct experimental evidence to demonstrate the value of such a proposal," as the editors of the science journal Nutrition Reviews put it. The author recounts the evolution of commercial bread making, detailing how each “advancement” in flour milling meant a further decline in the nutritive value of the end product, culminating finally in the Frankenstein's monster that is enriched white bread. "The completely ridiculous idea of taking out the best parts of the wheat berry and then adding a few of them back, in synthetic form," he writes, "was only a stall of the milling industry to keep from being forced into the production of a decent whole wheat flour." Such a depressing result is inevitable, he adds, when the standards of food production are “set by the end of trade rather than by the end of use.” Only concern for your own health and that of your loved ones combined with personal know-how and effort can produce a true staff of life, Pleasants opines—a sentiment applicable not just to the making of bread but to the task of nourishment in general. From Integrity magazine, 1949. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 44.

By William A. Albrecht, PhD

Summary: Today, the standard explanation for tooth decay goes something like this: a carbohydrate-rich film develops on the teeth; bacteria in the mouth feed on that carbohydrate; acid produced by the bacteria attack and degrade the teeth. Yet this explanation fails to account for numerous observations regarding cavity development, which, as many nutritionists of the early twentieth century showed, appears to have more to do with systemic nutritional deficiency in the body than a localized pathogenic assault. In this fascinating 1947 article, renowned agronomist Dr. William Albrecht adds weight to the malnutrition theory of tooth decay, correlating regional differences between soil fertility, plant constitution, and dental health in America. In short, he concludes, the more fertile a soil, the fewer cavities in people who eat food grown in that soil. With tooth decay the most common and widespread degenerative disease in the United States—just as it was in Dr. Albrecht's day—it seems obvious that brushing carbohydrates off of our teeth is not enough to prevent cavities. We need nutrient rich foods, produced by fertile soils, to thwart oral bacteria from proliferating in the first place. From the Annals of Dentistry, 1947. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 37.

By Arthur F. Coca, MD

Summary: The Journal of Immunology was launched in 1916 and has been a leading publication in its field ever since. If you look up information about the journal's founder, Dr. Arthur Coca, you will discover some impressive things. After receiving his MD at the University of Pennsylvania and working at the Cancer Institute of Heidelberg, Germany, Dr. Coca joined Cornell University Medical College as an instructor in pathology and bacteriology before becoming a professor of medicine at Columbia's medical school and, finally, serving as honorary president of the American Association of Immunologists until his death in 1959. What you won't find in a typical biography of Dr. Coca is mention of the Coca Pulse Test, a simple self-health tool the physician developed to detect "nonreaginic" food allergies, that is, food allergies that are not rooted in an antigen-antibody reaction. Because modern medicine refuses to acknowledge the existence of nonreaginic food allergies, it must ignore the greatest finding of one of its most renowned immunologists. Fortunately, in the following article, you can hear all about such food allergies—as well as how to use the pulse test to determine them—straight from Dr. Coca's mouth. Moreover, you will discover the same surprise he did in treating his patients: If pulse-accelerating foods are removed from the diet, the body often moves naturally to its normal weight, requiring no caloric or other restriction other than avoiding the allergenic foods. Careful study of the information presented here may well save you, a loved one, or a client, if you are a health practitioner, from years of misdiagnosis and misery. From the Journal of Applied Nutrition, 1954. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 100.

By James C. Thomson

Summary: This article from the Scottish periodical The Kingston Chronicle offers one of the most insightful quotes ever regarding the reality of nutrition, commerce, and science: "When dealing with highly lucrative commercial enterprises based upon dietetic and therapeutic procedures, doctors and analytical chemists are given a clear lead. They know what is expected of them...there is a market for signatures. They have only to indicate a bias in the right direction and everything is made easy. Their investigations are tailor-made and tidy beyond description. Slides and specimens from the laboratories of the cartels are provided for them; meticulously labeled and annotated Petri dishes come to them teeming with unequivocal cultures of all the best microbes. In many cases even their opinions and observations are supplied—typed out all ready for signature." The author goes on to show how commercial dairy interests used just such tactics to shamelessly demonize raw milk and write pasteurization into the law books of the country for the purpose of profit. From The Kingston Chronicle, 1943. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 28C.

By U.S. Congressman James J. Delaney

Summary: In 1906 the U.S. Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act. Though the bill was expressly intended to keep harmful chemicals out of American mouths, it quickly became a loophole through which the drug and food manufacturing industries could introduce untested substances into homes across the country. In 1937 this laxity culminated in the Massengill Elixir Tragedy, in which 105 people died from drinking a "health tonic" containing diethylene glycol, a lethal industrial solvent commonly used in brake fluid today—this despite Massengill's internal lab having "tested" the tonic for safety. The disaster forced Congress to revisit chemical additive regulations in 1938 in the form of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which tightened rules for drug testing but still left a wide berth for food additives, the number of which exploded in the 1940s. Finally, in 1950, amid growing public concern, Congress created the House Select Committee to Investigate the Use of Chemicals in Food Products. The chair of that committee was New York congressman James Delaney, who wrote the following disturbing article after heading a year of investigation into the matter. Basically, he tells readers, when it came to testing the long term effects of the thousands of chemicals being added to the nation's food, there was "no law to compel" manufacturers to make such investigations. Moreover, he says, many chemicals known to be dangerous were ending up on the market nonetheless through continued loose regulation. Referring to the Massengill tragedy, he warns, "There is no legal way at this moment to prevent something like this happening again [but] in food!" To this day food additives in America are tested for safety not by the U.S. government but by the companies that manufacture them. And as the Messengill incident reminds us, safety is found all too easily by those who profit from its discovery. From American Magazine, 1951. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 67.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Mushrooms and yeasts take center stage in this article. The high protein content of mushrooms (button mushrooms contain over ten amino acids) as well as their wealth of enzymes and fat-metabolizing compounds (betaine, choline, lecithin) make them an historically prized edible. Yeasts, of course, are responsible for the fermentation processes used to make bread, cheese, and the like, but they are also "superior food sources of valuable nutrients," says Dr. Lee. "The Oriental food pattern differs from ours because...most of the protein they eat is from plants. They accomplish this largely by the use of molds and yeasts, which produce foods high in quality vegetable proteins."  From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this 1963 article, the great holistic nutritionist Dr. Royal Lee touches on two main tenets of his philosophy. First he discusses the supreme importance of soil health, noting that soils across America had become so mineral poor through inferior farming practices that in many places animals could no longer survive on the land. The weakening of livestock as a result of soil degradation is a phenomenon observed throughout history, and many experiments in the early and mid twentieth century showed that animal health—as well as that of plants—could be restored through careful, balanced remineralization of the soils, including in particular application of the trace elements. Ignoring such research, America's agricultural industry opted for a less natural approach to the soil problem, bulking crop yields by overloading the land with artificial ammonia-based fertilizers and then using chemical pesticides and antibiotics to prop up the sickly plants and animals reared on the imbalanced earth. Dr. Lee then discusses the "great lie" of modern food manufacturing and conventional nutrition: that a synthetically manufactured product, whether food or vitamin, can reproduce the same nutritional effect as something made by nature. This assumption was repeatedly shown by early nutrition researchers to be dangerously untrue, and it lies at the heart of our health issues today. Simply put, humankind does not have the capability of creating what our body requires for real health, be it food or supplement. Synthetics may prop us up in a state of sickly survival, like the poor plants and livestock of industrial agriculture, but they cannot give us true vigor and vitality. From Herald of Health, 1963.

By the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research

Summary: The Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, founded by Dr. Royal Lee, offered the public hundreds of reprints of articles, books, and lectures from nutrition researchers worldwide as well as original articles by Dr. Lee himself. These works, available for less than the cost of their printing, were bound into three separate portfolios intended for 1) the doctor 2) the homemaker and 3) the farmer and agriculturist. The list here shows the documents in the doctor portfolio, with original prices for the portfolio and individual articles shown for posterity. 1965.

By N. Philip Norman, MD

Summary: A classic, definitive work on ulcerative colitis. Dr. Royal Lee described this remarkable book, which his foundation published in its entirety in 1950, as "worth its weight in gold." Groundbreaking in its understanding of the lesions of malnutrition, the book makes a cogent case that ulcerative colitis is closely related to scurvy, the result of a deficiency of the vitamin C complex, along with additional nutrient deficiencies and other ill effects of a processed-food diet. 1950.

View PDF: Postulating a New Concept of the Etiology, Pathology, and Treatment of Chronic Idiopathic Ulcerative Colitis

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: In 1920 Los Angeles medical doctor D.C. Ragland published a remarkably simple test he used to assess his patients' adrenal health. All that was required to perform the test was a means for measuring the patient's blood pressure and a place where he or she could lie down and then stand up. The procedure took all of a few minutes and quickly revealed whether the patient might be suffering from adrenal fatigue. The medical community, dismissive of the entire notion of subclinical adrenal deficiency, ignored Dr. Ragland's new assessment tool. The test was readily adopted by a number of chiropractors, however, who recognized the phenomenon of "adrenal burnout" as real and were glad to have an easy method of determining its likelihood. In this 1965 article, famed chiropractor Dr. George Goodheart, the "father of Applied Kinesiology," discusses Ragland's assessment in detail, explaining its procedure, the physiology and anatomy behind the test, and various treatments for the condition of "functional hypoadrenia" that it all too often reveals. While the paper is written for a chiropractic audience, the information presented is invaluable to anyone interested in the subject of adrenal health. From the Digest of Chiropractic Economics, 1965. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: The perfect primer on the roles of potassium and sodium in the body. The trick to understanding these major minerals, Dr. Royal Lee says, is to consider where they should be. Potassium belongs in cells, not the blood, while sodium belongs in the blood, not the cells. "When these minerals lose their home," he warns, "they may be the cause of trouble." Dr. Lee discusses the keys to maintaining the proper distribution of these minerals, focusing particularly on the role of the adrenal glands and the need to take in more potassium, which has been largely displaced by sodium in the modern food supply, through the consumption of fresh, raw vegetables. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Henry R. Harrower, MD

Summary: The complete book, originally published in 1932 and reprinted by the Lee Foundation in 1957. In 1916, Dr. Harrower founded the Association for the Study of the Internal Secretions, the first society in the United States dedicated to the study of the endocrines, while also inaugurating Endocrinology, the first periodical of its type. Harrower was a major force in the development of endocrine therapy using glandular extracts and a leading light in the practice of organotherapy. To further this therapy, he founded the Harrower Laboratories Company in Glendale, California. Dr. Royal Lee would later build on Harrower's work in developing the Protomorphogen. In the preface to the 1957 reprint by the Foundation, Lee writes, "No student of the healing arts can fail to consider this book of Harrower's an indispensable reference work, and of absorbing interest in getting the proper diagnosis of the multiple illnesses of a people who are trying out the mass experiment of starving their endocrine glands by the use of foods depleted of essential minerals and vitamins through processing, refining and the progressive depletion of soils." Note: This is a large file. Give it a minute or more to load. Original publication date 1932; republished by the Lee Foundation in 1957.

View PDF: Practical Endocrinology (48MB)

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee cooks! In this article the great nutritionist describes nutrient-conserving methods of preparing meats, vegetables, grains, and fruits. He strongly urges using only organically grown foods and reminds readers to eat acidifying and alkalizing foods in relatively equal amounts. "Cereals and grains are all acid. Root and leaf vegetables are all alkalline. Meat and fish are acid. Fruits may be either—apple and grape are most neutral." Publication source and date unknown.

By Mark R. Anderson

Summary: "The first words spoken by a woman upon learning she is pregnant should be, 'Am I well nourished?'" writes nutrition researcher and educator Mark Anderson. In this sweeping article, Anderson recounts the findings of some of the giants of early nutrition research—Sir Robert McCarrison, Dr. Weston Price, Dr. Royal Lee—to show that the key to being well nourished is a diet of whole, unprocessed foods prepared "in obedience to time-honored dietary traditions." Indeed, regardless of which of the many tribal societies these intrepid pioneers observed, it appeared that "isolation from Western civilization and its foods of commerce...afforded a diet that protected health." Unsurprisingly, birth defects among these societies were virtually nonexistent. And how did these traditional diets compare with the current recommendations of our public health officials? "[They] looked nothing like our modern USDA Food Pyramid," Anderson writes, "unless, perhaps, if it is turned upside down and all the foodstuffs are consumed in their unrefined state." This is an incredibly important document about not just prenatal nutrition but the core of nutrition in general: what to eat. From Whole Food Nutrition Journal, circa 2000.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: The word hydrophilic means water loving, and in this 1958 article, Dr. Royal Lee discusses the digestive benefits of substances known as hydrophilic colloids, which are found in foods such as apples and okra but also in nonnutritive materials such as clay. In the gastrointestinal tract, these compounds draw up liquid, creating bulk that initiates peristalsis and fosters bowel regularity. At the same time, they also soak up irritants, making hydrophilic colloids uniquely effective against both diarrhea and constipation. The modern use of nonnutritive hydrophilic colloids such as kaolin and bentonite to ameliorate digestive woes affirms the wisdom of ancestral cultures that used similar clays to combat dysentery and food infections, says Dr. Lee, a claim he supports with the following remarkable quote by Dr. Weston A. Price, from Price's his classic 1939 text on traditional human diets and health, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: “Among the groups (natives) in the Andes, Central Africa, and Australia…each knapsack contained a ball of clay, a little of which was dissolved in water. Into this they dipped their morsel of food while eating. Their explanation was to prevent ‘sick stomach’.” While modern science has elucidated much when it comes to food and health, it is important to remember that eons of human trial and error have much to teach us about nutrition as well. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Karl B. Lutz, Attorney

Summary: A landmark letter of protest to the U.S. Congress against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's blatant persecution of natural health practices in the United States. First, attorney Karl Lutz outlines some basic tenets of whole food nutrition—principles championed, ironically, by the first head of the FDA, Dr. Harvey Wiley, back in the early 1900s—such as the need to grow foods in mineral-rich soil, to process such foods as minimally as possible, and to keep them free of potentially harmful foreign substances. By 1963, when this letter was written, these principles had been thoroughly abandoned by the FDA, Lutz declares. In fact, he says, the agency had become the very opposite of what Dr. Wiley had envisioned for it. Instead of protecting natural foods and natural food therapies, the FDA had colluded with industrial food processors and institutional medicine to work against whole food nutrition by actively persecuting, prosecuting, and intimidating professionals promoting natural nutritional approaches to health. Lutz singles out the 1939 case of the FDA against Dr. Royal Lee as particularly egregious. "I have examined the records of that suit, and in my opinion as a lawyer with some knowledge of biochemistry, it was one of the greatest miscarriages of justice I have ever seen." This document is a forerunner, by over a decade, of massive petitioning of Congress for relief from the pharma-medical cartel monopoly, whose agenda in healthcare was—and still is—preferentially enforced by the agencies of the U.S. government. National Health Federation, 1963. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 8-63.

By Royal Lee and William A. Hanson

Summary: The complete book on the subject of the Protomorphogen. In this seminal work, Dr. Royal Lee connects the dots between the endocrine, nutritional, and cellular control mechanisms of the living human cell as well as how growth and repair in the body are regulated. This is the basis for Dr. Lee's theories of autoimmune disorders, in which he detailed the immune system's ability and tendency, under conditions such as nutrient deficiency, to target the body's own tissue. Lee's visionary tome was released decades before any understanding of autoimmune disorder was acknowledged or accepted by medicine or any other field of healing. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1947.

View PDF: Protomorphology: The Principles of Cell Auto-Regulation

By Morton S. Biskind, MD

Summary: An early warning from a medical doctor about the effects of agrichemicals on the health of livestock and humans. Dr. Biskind cites multiple studies showing that insecticide use and "nutritional defects" combine to significantly increase the incidence of various types of chronic degenerative disease. In a telling disclosure, he also points out that the infamous pesticide DDT was released onto the market "against the advice of investigators who had studied the pharmacology of the compound and found it dangerous for all forms of life." From the American Journal of Digestive Diseases. Reprint 69, 1953.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this 1957 article, Dr. Royal Lee reflects on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Food and Drug Administration—originally called the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry—by detailing the corruption that transformed the agency from watchdog of America's food supply to lapdog of the country's food manufacturing, medical, and pharmaceutical industries. Dr. Lee recalls the noble vision of the FDA's founder, Dr. Harvey Wiley, who fought for years to establish federal oversight of food safety and purity in America, only to see the agency he helped create become corrupted, quickly and secretly, by a confluence of commercial and political interests. Dr. Lee writes: "In the midst of public praise for Wiley's pioneering and public thanksgiving over the (supposed) fact that foods, drugs, and cosmetics are pure and truly labeled, we are likely to overlook the way in which Wiley's work has been perverted. We may remain ignorant of the way in which the FDA protects the food, drug, and cosmetic industries and the medical monopoly at the expense of the public it is supposed to serve. We may forget that Wiley himself was ousted for trying to stand up against these powerful interests." This is a rich historical document alerting the American people to a matter on which they had been—and continue to be—intentionally and systematically deceived. From Liberation magazine, 1957. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 94.

By Elizabeth Terry

Summary: In this poignant 1957 article, author Elizabeth Terry recounts stories of the many inventors and investigators throughout history who were initially branded frauds before the merit of their contribution was understood and accepted. Terry cites the Wright brothers, whose first “flying machine” was disbelieved by the popular press in spite of eyewitness accounts filed by their very own reporters, as well as one Joshua Coppersmith, who was arrested in 1865 for demonstrating a device he claimed would “convey the human voice over metallic wires so that it will be heard by the listener on the other end.” Of course, today the telephone and airplane are so common that we tend to forget there was a time when they would have been impossible to imagine. More importantly, we forget that innovators in any field tend to be discredited before they are ballyhooed, and sometimes, as in the case of Dr. Royal Lee and the other pioneers of nutrition, it is many years before the wisdom they offered passes from quackery to common sense. From the National Health Federation Bulletin, 1957.

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: Dr. George Goodheart, the founder of Applied Kinesiology, reports on interpreting urine analysis in relation to nutritional biochemistry. As a bonus Dr. Goodheart provides a brilliant list of eleven factors that influence the amount and distribution of calcium in the body—required reading for any nutrition practitioner. This was the first of more than fifty articles Dr. Goodheart published in the seminal journal the Digest of Chiropractic Economics, 1964. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By the United States Department of Agriculture

Summary: Excerpts from one of the most quotable government documents ever published. In the 1930s, even as the FDA was harassing doctors and companies promoting nutritional therapy, the USDA published independent studies demonstrating the widespread effects of vitamin malnutrition in the American public (proving that not everyone in the department was asleep at the switch as America's food supply became adulterated, refined, and chemicalized). The USDA Yearbook for 1939 was such a surprisingly candid assessment of nutritional deficiencies in the country that the Lee Foundation published and distributed highlights from it in the form of the booklet shown here. If the statements in the USDA's yearbook had been published by supplement companies, the FDA would have brought legal actions. Unsurprisingly, reports like this stopped coming out of the USDA in subsequent years. From The United States Department of Agriculture Yearbook for 1939.

By Don C. Matchan and Dr. Royal Lee 

Summary: This report on a 1962 lecture by Dr. Royal Lee—essentially about the connection between illness and refined cooking oils—is a rally call for the American people to eschew the processed foods that were destroying their health and return to a diet of nutritious, whole foods. Dr. Lee excoriates the leaders of conventional nutrition at the time for actively promoting the consumption of processed foods, specifically calling out the head of Harvard's Department of Nutrition, Dr. Frederick Stare, for accepting a million-dollar grant from food-processing giant General Foods. Dr. Stare, who also received funding from Coca-Cola and the National Soft Drinks Association, was largely responsible for the deception that refined sugar is harmless, saying it was "not even remotely true that modern sugar consumption contributes to poor health." Later, Stare and his department would also lead the charge in discrediting Dr. Robert Atkins and other proponents of low-carbohydrate diets. From Herald of Health, 1962.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this article from Health Culture magazine, Dr. Royal Lee describes in detail the negative effects of cooking and pasteurizing foods, specifically with regard to the destruction of vitamins, amino acids such as lysine and glutamine, and enzymes such as the phosphatase group, which help free up calcium in raw milk for absorption and aid its digestion (phosphatase is destroyed in pasteurized milk). Phosphatase also neutralizes the infamous compound phytic acid, so abundant in whole grains, that binds minerals and prevents them from being taken up by the body. Lee also discusses the vital role of vitamin E in nutrition. Reprint 30C, 1956.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this stunning assessment of the widespread yet unacknowledged malnourishment of America, Dr. Royal Lee describes in detail the health effects of eating processed foods as well as the difference between natural and synthetic vitamins. "We have drifted into this deplorable position of national malnutrition quite inadvertently," he adds. "It is the result of scientific research with the objective of finding the best ways to create foods that are non-perishable that can be made by mass production methods...and distributed so cheaply that they can sweep all local competition from the market. Then, after there develops a suspicion that these 'foods' are inadequate to support life, modern advertising science steps in to propagandize the people into believing that there is nothing wrong with them, that they are products of scientific research intended to afford a food that is the last word in nutritive value." Also included is the infamous advertisement in the Journal of the American Medical Association promoting white bread, the result of a financial arrangement between the American Medical Association and the American Institute of Baking. From a lecture delivered to the American Naprapathic Association Convention. Reprint 30, 1943.

By Harold Lee Snow, MD

Summary: "Excessive use of of refined sugar in the United States has become a serious nutritional problem." You might think these words were uttered by some holistic nutritionist of today, but they are actually the first sentence of this remarkable article from 1948 by physician Harold Snow. Backed by 56 peer-reviewed references, Dr. Snow discusses in detail many of the seen and unseen dangers of refined sugar that have been criminally ignored for decades. Rashes, infections and allergies in children; arthritis, neuritis, and rheumatism; digestive dysfunction; hyperinsulinism; acidosis; and acne are just a few of the dangers of sugar identified by science, Snow says. "If one can avoid eating refined sugar," he concludes, "one can expect more vibrant health, and a longer life with greater freedom from some of the acute and chronic diseases and complaints which many modern doctors are unable to diagnose or to treat successfully." From The Improvement Era magazine. Reprint 126, 1948.

Author unknown

Summary: A 1948 newspaper report of Dr. Royal Lee's presentation to the American Academy of Nutrition in San Francisco. Dr. Lee warns of the health dangers associated with artificial colors added to foods, citing research proving "butter yellow," a coloring added to margarine, to be carcinogenic. Lee also condemns the pasteurization of milk, citing studies of the damage it caused in animal feeding studies. From NewspaperARCHIVE, 1948.

By Don C. Matchan

Summary: The Herald of Health was a popular natural foods and lifestyle magazine in the 1950s and 1960s. This biographical sketch, published by the magazine in 1959, recounts events of Dr. Lee's life from the earliest days of his childhood through the time the story was published, about a decade before his death. 1959.

By Dr. David Morris

Summary: "One of the intellectual giants who contributed to our contemporary high standard of living and knowledge of human nutrition was Dr. Royal Lee," writes Dr. David Morris in this excellent biography of the twenty century's foremost natural nutritionist. "Even though his name is known to only a small number of Americans," Morris adds, "Dr. Lee was a researcher, inventor, scientist, scholar, statesman, businessman and philanthropist of the first order." Indeed. From the Weston A. Price Foundation, 2000.

By E.R. Yarham

Summary: To modern medical thinking, salt is a health menace. As in most things nutritional, medicine doesn't have a clue. In this article from World Science Review, E.R. Yarham discusses the absolute necessity of (whole) salt for people who eat an agriculturally based diet heavy in cooked foods. "Only where men live mainly on milk and flesh—the latter consumed raw or roasted—is it possible to go without ordinary salt," he writes. Yarham recounts the experiment of a doctor and three students who deprived themselves entirely of dietary salt. Within a week "cramp developed in the muscles, and the experimenters suffered from excessive fatigue and a general sense of exhaustion." Yarham presents numerous historical examples of the value of salt both nutritionally and monetarily, including the famous custom of Roman soldiers being paid in salt, a practice from which the word salary evolved. Reprint 99, 1958.

By Fred Miller, DDS

Summary: Another article from pioneering dentist Fred Miller. The title is a metaphor for keeping your teeth healthy throughout life through proper nutrition. "I make it a flat statement of fact," he writes, "that, with the few exceptions that must always be allowed for, there is no good reason why a man should not take to his grave with him the vital teeth he now has in his mouth." Originally published by Esquire in 1941, this is a republished version from 1955 that appeared in the newsletter Natural Food and Farming, the official publication of the Natural Food Associates.

By Dr. Daniel Sheehan and Dr. Daniel Doerge

Summary: In this shocking letter, two FDA toxicology experts officially protest their agency’s decision to grant soy a health claim in 1999. “We oppose this health claim,” the researchers write, “because there is abundant evidence that some of the isoflavones found in soy…demonstrate toxicity in estrogen-sensitive tissues and in the thyroid.” Effects of such toxicity in animal testing, they add, include breast cancer, thyroiditis, abnormal brain and reproductive development (especially in infants fed soy), goiter, bodily deformities and vascular dementia—just to name a few. Granted, the researchers say, these effects are based on animal testing, but short of testing potential poisons directly on humans, animal tests “are the front line in evaluating toxicity, since they predict, with good accuracy, adverse effects in humans.” Something to think about that next time you opt for that soy-milk latte. From abcnews.com, 1999.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this 1955 article from Natural Food and Farming, Dr. Royal Lee extols the nutritional virtues of the humble sesame seed. With a composition similar to almonds but at a fraction of the cost, sesame seeds are "mainly protein and oil, with very little carbohydrate," Dr. Lee writes, noting that "most of us tend to overdo on carbohydrates." The protein in sesame is particularly rich in the hard-to-come-by amino acid methionine, he says, and the seed's oil is high in fat-soluble vitamins and phospholipids. Dr. Lee suggests a number of ways to include pureed sesame (that is, sesame butter, or tahini) in our diet, including using it as the base of a salad dressing or ice cream or as a shortening in baked goods. He also commends the Middle Eastern candy halvah—a honey-sweetened confection made primarily of sesame paste—as the rarest of rare comestibles: a dessert that is a bona fide health food. From Natural Food and Farming, 1955.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Before there was high-fructose corn syrup, there was just plain corn syrup—the original synthetic sweetener, created by chemically decomposing cornstarch into glucose molecules. Dr. Harvey Wiley, the first head of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), rightfully claimed that use of the word "corn" in describing this imitation food was fraudulent, since it implies naturalness in what is clearly a product of human engineering. In this 1958 article from Let's Live magazine, Dr. Royal Lee cites a seminal experiment by Drs. Lukens and Dohan at the University of Pennsylvania in which corn syrup (i.e., glucose) was shown to cause diabetes in test animals, whereas refined cane sugar was not. Dr. Lee adds that animal-feeding studies and clinical trials had shown that corn syrup "contributes to cancer, diabetes, hypertension, lassitude, brain fatigue, overweight, irritability, and mental depression; it impairs the assimilation of calcium; and it destroys vital amino acids if they are cooked in its presence." Finally, Dr. Lee excoriates the FDA for failing to force manufacturers to distinguish between synthetic corn syrup and natural sweeteners on food labels, a deceit that bespeaks the agency's transformation from consumer watchdog, under Dr. Wiley's leadership, to the guardian of food manufacturing interests that it is today. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Melvin H. Knisely et al.

Summary: A comprehensive description of the anatomy and physiology of blood and blood vessels based on 16 years of experimentation and observation by the authors. "Our purpose is to present and define certain properties of normal blood, blood flow, and vessel walls; to offer evidence that these properties are necessary to the normal functioning of the circulatory system; to describe certain visible responses of the vascular system and/or blood to specific stimuli; to describe certain visible pathologic structures and processes; and to define goals now necessary for therapeutics." From Science. Reprint 35, 1947.

By Arnold P. Yerkes

Summary: Soil is the weakest link in the knowledge-chain of nutritional understanding. This excellent article explains what happened to the greatest soils on Earth and how we have abused them to our own loss. Yerkes, the supervisor of Farm Practice Research for the International Harvester Company, underscores what Dr. Royal Lee and the other great nutritionists of the mid-twentieth century knew to be true: nutrition begins in the soil. Reprint 23, 1946.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Lee, citing the great British doctor and nutrition pioneer Sir Robert McCarrison, explains the critical connection between nutrition and the endocrine system. "McCarrison back in 1921 told us how the endocrine glands were the first structures to atrophy or degenerate following vitamin and mineral deficiencies. [For instance,] the adrenal glands...stopped functioning and soon became atrophied." McCarrison noted that while the adrenals were usually the first endocrine gland to falter as a result of nutrient deficiency, in time others followed, including the thyroid and the pituitary. As Lee often pointed out, none of this would have been discovered had diets high in nutrient-deficient processed foods not initiated such problems in the human race. 1950.

By Louis Bromfield

Summary: In 1939 Pulitzer Prize winner and farsighted agriculturist Louis Bromfield established Malabar Farm, a thousand acre spread in the heart of Ohio that would become a hotbed for sustainable agriculture research as well as a popular getaway for Hollywood celebrities (Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall wed there in 1945, with Bromfield serving as best man). Bromfield would dedicate Malabar to what he considered the biggest challenge facing the country—conservation of the soil and water—pouring the profits of his writing into developing practices considered highly radical at the time, such as controlled grazing, crop rotation, contour plowing, and the use of natural instead of artificial fertilizers. In this 1950 article, Bromfield gives a glimpse of the philosophy behind his “conservation farming,” reflecting an understanding of the connection between soil health, microbial life, and animal and human nutrition that is truly years ahead of its time. “It is the duty of every citizen,” Bromfield urged, “to support and fight for—and possibly initiate—measures having to do with conservation of soil, water, and forests.” From The Role of Research in the Conservation of Our Nutritional Resources, 1950. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 85.

By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD

Summary: The complete classic of 1921, as republished by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research in 1945. Dr. Robert McCarrison was knighted in England for his groundbreaking research while serving as a British army surgeon in India during the first two decades of the twentieth century. His landmark investigations into the connection between the diets of various populations in India and their patterns of disease and health gave new insight into the cause and effect of nutrition on health and introduced the world to the amazingly healthy and long-lived Hunza people of the Himalayas. McCarrison set up laboratories in which he studied the effect of various local diets on animals, reproducing nearly the same health and disease patterns in the animals as displayed in the particular populations. Diet, he concluded, was the determining factor in the specific health patterns of each population. McCarrison was also the first researcher to inform the medical world that the endocrine system is the first system in the body to succumb to the effects of malnutrition, carefully demonstrating the lesions in the endocrine glands caused by specific adulterated foods. His work inspired the likes of Royal Lee, Weston A. Price, Francis Pottenger, Jr., and J. I. Rodale. Still remarkably relevant today, this book should be part of the corpus of all colleges of the healing arts. Originally published by Oxford Medical Publications, 1921.

View PDF: Studies in Deficiency Disease

By Chester H. Lyon and James P. Hart

Summary: Perhaps the first published study of a probiotic supplement for the treatment of constipation and related bowel disorders. The researchers fed their subjects a special mycelium-type of yeast—developed by Dr. Royal Lee and known today as Lactic Acid Yeast—that converts carbohydrate foods into lactic acid in the colon. (The normal pH of the colon is acidic; this promotes the growth of beneficial bacteria and inhibits the growth of harmful bacteria.) Unlike lactobacillus-type bacteria, which can convert only lactose into lactic acid, Lactic Acid Yeast is able to convert any carbohydrate source into lactic acid. This efficient conversion restored the lower bowel to its normal pH and function and provided improvement in every parameter that was studied. Clinical Osteopathy, 1940. Reprint by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

By M.K. Horwitt, et al.

Summary: Report of a controlled study conducted in a state hospital testing the effects of diets deficient in thiamine and riboflavin. Of course this kind of test could never be conducted under today's ethical standards. Nevertheless, as expected, those who were starved of various vitamins suffered noticeable effects and recovered when they were restored to a proper diet. From Science. Reprint 26, 1946.

By Professor Akiro Sato

Summary: This article, translated from Japanese, is a rare and important report on studies conducted in Japan in the 1920s on a detoxifying hormone made by the liver called yakriton, a fatty substance that controls the histamine level in the blood. Dr. Royal Lee subsequently made this natural antihistamine and liver decongestant available in the United States under the name Antronex. From the Pediatric Department, Faculty of Medicine, Tohoku Imperial University, Sendai. 1929.

Author unknown

Summary: In this 1949 newspaper report, Dr. Royal Lee explains that the reason so many Americans die of heart disease is basic malnutrition. Pointing his finger directly at refined-carbohydrate foods, he says, "Most fuel-supplying foods like cereal and flour and sugar products on the market today have been depleted of vitamin B, vitamin C, and minerals vital to the rebuilding of the body tissue and muscle." He adds that overcooking foods is also critical in destroying the vitamin power of foods. From the Evening Sentinel, Michigan. 1949.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Lee lays out the case against sugar in this article from the Journal of the American Academy of Applied Nutrition. In particular, he lambastes corn syrup, or pure glucose chemically derived from cornstarch, for being too quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, thus overstressing the pancreas and wreaking havoc on the body's insulin-response system. Astute readers will realize Lee is essentially anticipating the creation of the glycemic index, which measures how fast and how hard the carbohydrates we eat hit the bloodstream in the form of blood sugar. "There is a very good reason why starches are better than sugars as energy foods," he says. "It is because they are assimilated slower than the sugars, and thereby fail to overload our pancreatic function of supplying insulin." Reprint 30D, 1950.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: "The civilized fraction of the human race is committing suicide by its acceptance of synthetic food products." Perhaps no sentence better sums up the work and life of Dr. Royal Lee, who fought tirelessly to alert the American people that processed, imitation foods such as corn syrup, hydrogenated fats, and bleached flour truly were killing them (and still are), in spite of assurances to the contrary by the country's food manufacturers and their partners in crime, the FDA. A must read for anyone who wants to see where and how our country's health went off the rails. Original source and publication date unknown.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Here Dr. Royal Lee delivers perhaps the most succinct explanation of why natural vitamins and synthetic vitamins are entirely different entities. Natural vitamins—that is, vitamins as they are found in food—are complexes of associated compounds, he explains, which act together synergistically to deliver a nutritive effect to the body. In turn these complexes require minerals, in organic form, to activate them. All these things are found, together, in whole foods. Synthetic vitamins, on the other hand, consist of a single compound that has been deemed the "most active" of a natural vitamin complex and either isolated from the food or, worse, synthesized in a lab. Dr. Lee asks, "How can a single factor be isolated from a complex...and be justifiably sold with the claim that it is equal?" It can't. However, "do not infer from this that synthetic vitamins have no effect," he warns. "They do have drug effects—pharmacological actions that may or may not have much in common with the normal nutritional action." In a country where over half the population takes synthetic vitamins, the implications of this paper are staggering. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, circa 1954.

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: If you've read anything at all about nutrition, you've likely heard of the importance of proper pH balance in the body. But what is meant by proper, and where in the body should one assess acid-alkaline balance? Blood, urine, saliva, gastric juices, intestinal fluids—each of these has its own ideal pH range varying from highly acidic to highly alkaline. Just how does a nutritionist make sense of pH and apply it practically? That's the subject of this outstanding primer from 1965 by renowned chiropractor Dr. George Goodheart, who presents some of his clinical observations in balancing pH in patients. While "pH" does ultimately refer to the acid-alkaline balance of an individual's blood, he says, one can assess that value simply be measuring the pH of the saliva, which mirrors blood pH. (Urine pH, on the other hand, does not reflect the pH of the blood.) And contrary to popular belief, he adds, diet alone is seldom sufficient to alter a person's pH, which is far more dependent on the functioning of the endocrine system and the ability of the body to digest fats than it is on the foods the individual is eating. Dr. Goodheart discusses both chiropractic and nutritional means of addressing these issues while presenting some of the classic symptoms of hyperalkalinity—such as allergies, insomnia, and arthritic pain—as well as those of hyperacidity, including breathlessness, dry skin, and hard stool. By addressing endocrine imbalances and poor fat digestion in the patient, he says, these often mystifying symptoms can be readily resolved. From the Digest of Chiropractic Economics, 1965. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

By Hunter McGuire Doles

Summary: A medical journal report on the newly discovered role of vitamin K in the etiology of coronary thrombosis. Important vitamin research that still has not penetrated medical thinking. From the Tri-State Medical Journal, 1959. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 129.

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.

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.

By Eric Hutton

Summary: The story of the famous Shute brothers, Canadian medical doctors who gained international renown for treating heart disease with vitamin E. In spite of countless patients testifying to the success of the therapy, the medical professions in the United States and Canada tried every measure to silence and discredit the Shutes, much of it playing out in the popular press. The author of the article explains how the Shutes believed vitamin E helps alleve heart disorders: "The Shutes' theory about vitamin E is this: It is not specifically a heart medication; that is, vitamin E has no affinity for the heart as insulin has for the pancreas or iodine for the thyroid gland. The chief effect of vitamin E is to reduce the amount of oxygen which the cells and tissues of the body and its organs require for efficient, healthy functioning. Heart diseases happens to be the most dramatic example of the result of oxygen deprivation, and vitamin E's effect, simply stated, is to condition the tissues involved so that they are able to function normally, or at any rate to survive, on the greatly reduced amount of oxygen available to them when a coronary clot cuts down the oxygen-bearing blood supply reaching them." Includes a commentary on the Shutes' theory by the Canadian Medical Association. From Maclean's Magazine, 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint 4-54.

By Dr. Louis L. Rubel

Summary: What might have been history’s great link between nutrition and medicine. This 200-page book by medical doctor Louis Rubel, published originally in 1959 and reproduced in its entirety here, details the clinical symptomatology of various dysfunctions of the endocrine glands and links these dysfunctions to inadequate nutrition. “Many patients would not be suffering from ill health [as a result of glandular dysfunction] had their nutritional intake throughout their formative and adult years been adequate in each of its constituents,” Dr. Rubel writes. Rubel stresses in particular that many conditions encountered daily by the general medical practitioner and considered “mental or emotional aberration” are really the result of endocrine disruption. The causal connection between malnutrition and endocrine dysfunction had first been revealed decades earlier by the great nutrition pioneer Sir Dr. Robert McCarrison, who showed that the endocrine system is actually the first bodily system to feel the effects of malnutrition. While this truth has been observed by nutrition-minded practitioners for almost a century, the medical establishment still tragically fails to recognize it or consider its profound implications. Louis L. Rubel, 1959.

View PDF: The GP and the Endocrine Glands

By J. Higginson, A.D. Gillanders, and J.F. Murray

Summary: A comprehensive review, reprinted from the April 1952 issue of the British Heart Journal, documenting heart lesions caused by malnutrition among Bantu adults in South Africa. In all twelve fatal cases studied, "the hearts were dilated and hypertrophied," the authors note—a "distinctive pathological pattern" they attributed squarely to malnutrition. Specifically, the high-carbohydrate Bantu diet, along with B vitamin deficiencies, are implicated. From the British Heart Journal, 1952. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 74.

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD

Summary: Dr. Harvey Wiley was the "father" of the famous Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906—the first law passed by the U.S. government to ensure the safety of the nation's food supply—and he was also the first head of the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry, the federal agency charged with enforcing the law (an agency that would later become the U.S. Food and Drug Administration). In this book, which Dr. Wiley courageously published himself in 1929 and was later republished by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Dr. Wiley sets the historical record straight as to how the industrial food industry corrupted the nation's laws and politicians in order to sell cheap, refined, adulterated, devitalized "foods." The industry's usurpation of federal laws and regulations regarding whole foods is an example of American politics at its worst. Originally published by H.W. Wiley, 1929; republished by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1955.

View PDF: The History of a Crime Against the Food Law

By Paul Kouchakoff, MD

Summary: A classic and profound study on the direct effect of cooking food on the human immune system. Presented by Dr. Paul Kouchakoff at the First International Congress of Microbiology in 1930 and later translated and published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, the research focuses on the phenomenon of "digestive leukocytosis," or the increase and mobilization of white blood cells in response to eating food. Dr. Kouchakoff observed that this immune response occurs only when the food eaten is cooked and, moreover, that processed foods (which are often exposed to high temperatures in their preparation) incite an even graver response than cooked whole foods. Raw foods, on the other hand, not only fail to cause digestive leukocytosis but can prevent cooked foods from causing it if eaten at the same meal. Dr. Kouchakoff spent many years studying the effects of cooked food versus raw food on the human immune system, and it remains a great mystery and tragedy that no one has followed up on his startling findings. From Proceedings: First International Congress of Microbiology, 1930. Translated and reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By Morris Bealle

Summary: Morris Bealle's newsletter American Capsule News reports on the conviction, fine, and jailing of the great American naturalist Victor Earl Irons for the crime of informing the American people of what was happening to their food supply. "It is obvious that Mr. Irons has committed two 'unpardonable sins'," writes Bealle. "The first is distributing vitamins that keep people well and away from drug stores. The second is exposing some of the crimes of the Food and Drug Administration who, as Dr. [Harvey] Wiley said, are lynching, raping and murdering the laws passed by Congress to protect the public from poisoned and adulterated foods." Irons, like his friend Dr. Royal Lee, warned the public of the depletion of America's soil, the refining and processing of the basic food supply, and the cause-and effect-relationship of these practices to health. In the case, the FDA marched out five "health authorities" from Harvard, including the infamous Dr. Frederick Stare, to testify to the "fraudulent" nature of Irons's statements. Irons was convicted on federal charges and served a year in jail. As this report reveals, those pioneers at the vanguard of nutritional knowledge paid dearly for the right to speak out about what was happening to America's food supply, health, and freedom. From American Capsule News, 1956. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

Summary: In the summer of 1948, the polio epidemic was raging across the United States, and it was hitting the city of Asheville, North Carolina, particularly hard. Parents had been ordered to keep their children quarantined in their homes, and residents were even advised to leave the state if possible. Among the town’s citizens was Dr. Benjamin Sandler, one of the few medical doctors of the time who recognized the profound connection between malnutrition and disease. Dr. Sandler’s research had convinced him that a diet high in refined sugar and starch was setting the stage for the polio infections (as well as many other illnesses). With his belief far too “radical” for public-health officials to even consider, Dr. Sandler took his case to the local newspapers and radio stations, who were convinced enough to report his theory and his proposed polio-prevention diet to the public. The story quickly went national, and rates of the disease proceeded to drop as people across the country started following the diet. (See chapter 7 of Diet Prevents Polio for a detailed discussion of the results.) Sadly and predictably, the medical field refused to acknowledge the efficacy of Dr. Sandler’s diet, leaving the sampling of newspaper clips here to document the “diet that prevented polio.” Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. Multiple original sources. 

By D.T. Quigley, MD

Summary: Daniel Quigley was a physician at the Nebraska College of Medicine who rose to prominence with the 1929 publication of his book The Conquest of Cancer. Like many doctors of the time, his clinical experience led him to believe that malnutrition—due to the replacement of natural foods with industrial ones—was not only more widespread in America than the medical establishment believed, but that vitamin and mineral deficiencies, more than anything else, were responsible for the exploding rates of degenerative illness throughout the country and world. In 1943, after years of observing the successful application of whole food nutritional therapy in his practice, Dr. Quigley published the following textbook through the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. In it he warns Americans to avoid completely white flour, white sugar, and corn syrup, each of the refined products fostering disease by delivering calories but precious few of the micronutrients needed by the body for proper function and fighting infection. For optimal nutrition Dr. Quigley recommends a diet of raw milk, eggs, whole grains, seafood, organ meats, fresh vegetables, yeast, and butter—a prescription of highly nutrient dense foods that makes just as much sense today as it did then, when these substances were known to nutritionists simply as "the protective foods." Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1943.

By L. Stambovsky

Summary: In this article, written amidst the Great Depression and the outset of World War II, the author describes the vitamin-poor state of the typical American citizen in terms that still apply today. "Quantitatively, most Americans get enough calories in the form of [refined] carbohydrates...But refined sugar and starch, while they are energy sources, provide little or no accessory or vital food factors [i.e., vitamins and minerals]." This basic message sums up the work of many of the early nutritionists, who tried in vain to communicate the fact that nutrient deficiencies are at the root of most modern degenerative illness. Includes an illuminating chart listing various vitamin deficiencies and their associated diseases. From Drug and Cosmetic Industry magazine, 1942. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 31.

By Surgeon Captain T.L. Cleave, MD

Summary: In 1974 Dr. Thomas L. Cleave, Surgeon Captain of the British Royal Navy, wrote the brilliant but virtually ignored text The Sacharrine Disease: Conditions Caused by the Taking of Refined Carbohydrates Such as Sugar and White Flour. Decades before that, Dr. Cleave wrote this thirty-page article urging the medical profession to reconnect with the natural laws of health from which humankind evolved, specifically by promoting the consumption of whole, natural foods over the processed and overcooked products of commercial food manufacturing. Citing the work of Weston A. Price as an example of understanding natural law, Dr. Cleave argues that industrialized food production caused cheap, processed, carbohydrate-based foods to predominate in the modern diet, resulting in consequences for human health that have been nothing less than disastrous. From the Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, 1956. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

By J.F. Wischhusen and N.O. Gunderson, MD

Summary: "Scientists have been almost entirely preoccupied by the concept that bacteria cause disease, rather than by a much more important concept—that adequate nutrition causes good health and relative freedom from disease." This basic principle, stated so eloquently by the authors of this essay from the journal Science Counselor, aptly defines the divide between the fields of nutrition and medicine. Were we to stop consuming substandard foods such as pasteurized milk and foods grown on soils deficient in trace minerals, the authors explain, then we would not need medical treatments for degenerative diseases such as rheumatism, arthritis, gastrointestinal disorders, nervous and mental diseases, and cancer, because they would be largely nonexistent (as they are in preindustrial societies that stick to their traditional diets). "Remove the true underlying cause of disease—malnutrition," the authors add, "and it will usually be found that the disease germs cannot exist or propagate in an animal body that is healthy." From Science Counselor, 1950. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 48.

By Gustav Wm. Rapp, PhD

Summary: A fourteen-page paper on fluorine and its effects in the human body. "All cells are affected by fluoride to a greater or lesser degree," writes Dr. Rapp. "While most of the interest in fluoride as a drug has centered upon its activity on oral structures, there are many other parts of the human body that feel [its] effects [including] the bones...skin, hair, viscera, circulatory system, and genito-urinary system." Scientifically sound, the author's discussion raises many troubling questions. From The Bur magazine. Reprint 53, 1950.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this article from the Central Florida Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. Royal Lee gives the background and clinical applications of natural vitamins A and E. Far from the simplistic and deficient modern description of these vitamins as antioxidants, Dr. Lee describes the active and vital role each of these fat-soluble vitamin plays in maintaining and healing tissue. From the Central Florida Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, 1946. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 16.

By H.P. Pickerill, MD

Summary: Today we take cavities to be a given, as if the decay of human teeth were part of the natural order. Yet the rate of cavities in prehistoric human beings was extremely low, as is that of animals in the wild. Thus, tooth decay is not Nature’s work, but humankind’s. In fact, it is the most prevalent of the modern “diseases of civilization” (heart disease, diabetes, obesity, mental illness, etc.), and it has been since its rate exploded in industrial countries in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1912 Dr. Henry Pickerill, Director of the Dental School at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and leader in the investigation of dental health, released a book comprising a series of lectures he'd given over the period of 1906 to 1910. In the following excerpts from that book, Dr. Pickerill contrasts the diets of cavity-ridden, industrialized countries with those of various unindustrialized populations virtually immune to tooth decay. Though the latter groups differed wildly in their eating habits, from the practically carnivorous Eskimos to the fruit-and-root eaters of the Pacific islands, their diets all shared one thing in common: a complete lack of processed and refined foods. Unfortunately, Dr. Pickerill’s investigations occurred before the discovery of the vitamins. It wasn’t until 1923 that a young dental student, Dr. Royal Lee, would connect the dots between the professor’s works and studies of the recently discovered “vitamines” to conclude that tooth decay—and, in fact, all the diseases of civilization—were the result of systemic nutrient deficiency, caused by the mass consumption of industrialized foods. Today, despite a century of brushing and flossing, tooth decay remains as prevalent as it was in Dr. Pickerill's time, and unless we return to a diet of only unadulterated organic foods, cavities will remain unnaturally common. Published by Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, London, 1912. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 132.

By D.T. Quigley, MD

Summary: Daniel Thomas Quigley was a prominent physician at the Nebraska College of Medicine who gained national recognition with his 1929 book, The Conquest of Cancer. As his career progressed, Dr. Quigley became convinced that nutritional deficiencies play a fundamental role not just in cancer but in most of the degenerative diseases that curse modernity, as he details in his 1943 tour de force, The National Malnutrition. In the following lecture, delivered a year after publication of that book, Dr. Quigley discusses the treatment of peptic ulcer, a disease caused by the long-term consumption of refined foods, he says, such a diet inducing shortages of not just a single vitamin or mineral but of multiple nutrients. In fact, he says, degenerative illnesses are almost never due to the lack of a lone nutrient but are "in varying degrees deficiencies of all of the necessary vitamins and minerals." This is an important point that has been virtually ignored by conventional nutrition science since its inception. In an attempt to perform experiments isolating a single variable, researchers have created a model of debatable worth in illuminating practical truths about the relationship between diet and health. As Dr. Quigley sums sardonically, "None but the laboratory animal...has a deficiency of iron alone." Thus his therapy for ulcer, like the answer for most degenerative illnesses, is to "use natural, high-vitamin, high-mineral foods" such as milk, eggs, seafood, and raw fruits and vegetables, and to "reject non-vitamin, non-mineral foods" such as white sugar and white flour. And how long should the patient keep this up? "For life," he says, not kidding. From The Nebraska State Medical Journal, 1945. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 17.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee (1895–1967) was all of these and more. But perhaps above all, he was a humanitarian. In the following essay, written near the end of World War II, Dr. Lee calls for the United States to end its practice of placing protective tariffs on imported goods, a policy that is not only inherently unfair, he says, but necessarily makes enemies of the citizens of those countries taxed. With peace talks on the horizon, Dr. Lee implores America's politicians to drop the tariff and adopt a national policy of free trade. Such a "price of peace" may be a bitter pill, he says, but only "for those who have been enjoying a special privilege that has no place in a democracy." 1944.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Lee lays out a basic principle of his nutritional philosophy—the idea that bacterial infection is usually a secondary result of malnutrition. Properly nourished bodies, naturally stronger and well defended, are much better equipped to resist invasion of pathogens, which are always around us, Lee explains. A weaker, malnourished body, on the other hand, is much more susceptible to a successful attack by foreign invaders. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: "We shall here confine our discussion to the loss of liberty in connection with the choice of our doctor, and his loss of liberty in the choice of a method of treatment of our ills." Dr. Royal Lee defends alternatives to medicine and reveals the sinister methods used by organized medicine to entreat the government to squash any competing approaches to health. Dr. Lee wrote this courageous piece after more than 30 years of fighting the corrupt system of the medical/pharmaceutical monopoly, condoned and enforced by governmental agencies. With medicine still enjoying a near monopoly in the minds of the public as the only "legitimate" healing art, this article shows for the historical record how the medical industry unscrupulously secured its place in our society and then entrenched its own definition and self-serving standards of what is science and what is quackery. 1962.

By E.L. David

Summary: A report on the nutritional and therapeutic value of beetroot and beetroot juice. The extraordinary array of nutrients in the beet makes it the most nutritious root vegetable, David says, and its value may increase even more when juiced and lacto-fermented. From Let's Live magazine, 1962.

By James A. Shield, MD

Summary: An assistant professor of neuropsychiatry at the Medical College of Virginia conveys a well-researched link between the health of the soil in which food is grown and psychic reactions. A powerful and well-referenced report that cites and amplifies similar conclusions by Sir Albert Howard. From Virginia Medical Monthly. Reprint 70B, 1945.

By Dr. Royal Lee and by R.E. Seidel, MD, and M. Elizabeth Winter

Summary: The Rife Microscope is one of the most fascinating and tragic stories in the history of science. Royal Raymond Rife was a genius of optics who in the 1930s invented a revolutionary microscope that identified microorganisms based on a characteristic wavelength of light emitted by each. (Rife discovered these "signature emissions" through use of his scope.) Even more incredibly, Rife observed something that challenges the very basis of medicine's "germ theory": Microbes such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi are able to morph into each other depending on the conditions of their environment (which, in turn, are determined in humans largely by nutritional status.) So, instead of the tens of thousands of species of microorganisms considered distinct by conventional science, Rife said, there are really only about ten fundamental forms of microbes, each able to morph into countless numbers of others. Rife not only collaborated with noted bacteriologist Dr. Arthur Kendall of Northwestern University Medical School to demonstrate such transformations, but the two investigators showed they were able to destroy pathogenic forms by radiating them with wavelengths of light in resonance with their signature emission.

When Rife began to publish his findings, he was predictably branded a quack by the medical establishment, which brought its full efforts to discredit and destroy his work. All references and studies involving his microscope were actively barred from medical journals, and any doctor using his microscope was ostracized from the medical community. Yet one article, published in 1944 in the non-medically-controlled journal of the Franklin Institute—one of America's oldest and most prestigious centers of science—survived. In 1950, the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research re-published the lengthy article, which details the technology behind both the electron microscope and Rife's Universal Microscope (skip to pages 124–127 for information specifically on Rife's research), along with several concluding pages of Lee's own commentary poignantly summarizing Rife's discoveries. If nothing else, read these final two pages of the document. The implications of Lee's words, as well as the potential applications Rife's long lost microscope, are beyond profound. Reprint 47, 1944.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: One of the most ridiculous documents in the history of nutrition. It was reproduced by the Lee Foundation just to serve as a bad example of conventional nutrition. Dr. Lee has some rich commentary on this diet. Publication date unknown.

By John A. Myers

Summary: A remarkable overview of some of the great, ignored research in nutrition history. First, author John Myers details the pioneering works of Dr. Weston A. Price and Dr. Francis Pottenger Jr., who in the 1930s showed clearly that tooth decay is but one symptom in an overall debilitation of human health brought on by the consumption of processed foods—a degeneration that includes diminished resistance to bacterial infection, onset of any number of degenerative diseases, and the alarming introduction of birth defects and mental illness in offspring of people who eat "modern" foods. Myers then touches on the famous studies of residents of Deaf Smith, Texas, the "county without a dentist," and shows how these studies were used to justify the mass fluoridation of water in America despite their evidence suggesting something quite to the contrary. Finally, Myers draws form his own twenty-five years of clinical experience to illustrate the obvious practical effectiveness in preventing and reversing tooth decay and other dental disease by supplementing the diet with essential nutrients such as vitamins A, B6, D, and E, the minerals zinc, iodine, and magnesium, and the essential fatty acids. A true classic on alternative health. From Annals of Dentistry. Reprint 107, 1958.

By Dr. George Goodheart

Summary: In spite of nearly a century of medical investigation, schizophrenia remains a baffling disease in both its cause and treatment. While pharmaceutical drugs have long been the backbone of conventional therapy, such drugs tend to simply mitigate symptoms of the illness while often inducing severe side effects. In this fascinating article from 1970, acclaimed chiropractor and nutritionist Dr. George Goodheart—the father of Applied Kinesiology—presents an alternative therapy for the disease that combines upper spinal adjustments with dietary supplementation with niacin and/or niacinamide (aka “vitamin B₃”). In a wide-ranging discussion, Dr. Goodheart details the characteristic responses of schizophrenics to muscle testing along with the origins of the “adrenochrome hypothesis” of schizophrenia, which proposes that the disease is caused by psychopathological metabolites of adrenaline that are degraded in normal individuals but remain unmetabolized in schizophrenics (and can be broken down by niacin). While medicine currently discredits the adrenochome hypothesis, over the years many healthcare professionals—both alternative and conventional—have reported positive results in treating schizophrenia with niacin, suggesting that while the mechanism originally proposed by adrenochrome hypothesis may not be entirely accurate, the therapy suggested by the theory is effective nevertheless. From The Digest of Chiropractic Economics, 1970.

By the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research

Summary: A 19-page booklet produced by the Lee Foundation reporting on the history and clinical applications of natural vitamin E. This is one of the most complete and concise reports on perhaps the most misunderstood vitamin complex: “Four vitamin factors have been isolated in the course of time from the E complex—alpha, beta, gamma and delta tocopherol. Of these, the alpha form has been found the most powerful and is often erroneously considered as the whole vitamin E. Actually the term ‘vitamin E’ should only be used in reference to the element which occurs in foods [since] in its entirety it includes factors not present in alpha tocopherol alone.” In fact, the report concludes, the natural vitamin E complex is “highly intricate, perhaps the most intricate of all [the] complexes” and the four tocopherols should be regarded merely “as factors and not as the entire E complex.” Much of the information in this critical document is completely lost to modern nutrition. 1955.

By Karl Kottschau, MD

Summary: Translated by the Lee Foundation from the German original. In this powerful essay, Dr. Kottschau spells out the principles of whole-food nutrition and calls on German authorities to put the country's public health before its commercial interests when it comes to the food supply. "From a standpoint of preventive medicine," he writes, "it must be demanded without the shadow of doubt that the matter of nutrition is discussed in full view of the public and uninfluenced by commercial considerations." Kottschau then proposes criteria and priorities necessary for the production of truly nutritious food capable of sustaining human health, as opposed to the deficient processed foods responsible for so much of modern illness. "Everybody knows that among civilized peoples nutrition is not what it should be [and] nutrition plays a decisive part in people becoming ill," he says. Yet "although we know this, and thus it would be our duty to pay maximum attention to this fact, nothing of importance is being done in order to enlighten the masses about the dangers of present-day-civilization diets and to reduce such dangers." Sadly, Dr. Kottschau's lament still rings true today. From Research and Science. Reprint 83, 1953.

By Paul de Kruif

Summary: Paul de Kruif was an American bacteriologist turned writer who penned one of the most famous popular-science books of all time, The Microbe Hunters. In this gripping excerpt from his later work Hunger Fighters, de Kruif tells the incredible story of Dr. Joseph Goldberger, the physician and epidemiologist of the U.S. Public Health Service charged with resolving the mysterious pellagra epidemic that was devastating the southern United States in the early 1900s. Through keen observation and genuine open-mindedness, Dr. Goldberger discovered and proved that the cause of pellagra is not a microbe—as was fiercely believed by most doctors and scientists of the time—but rather a nutritional deficiency. Dr. Goldberger's struggle to convince his colleagues of his findings reflects the tremendous sway that "germ theory" held in medicine at the time and which stubbornly continues to dominate the field's view of health and disease today. De Kruif's account illustrates well the lengths medicine has always gone to deny and downplay the role of malnutrition in human illness. (On a related note, while medicine today attributes pellagra to a deficiency of the single B-complex vitamer niacin, nutrition investigators of the mid-twentieth century asserted that the cause of the disease is the lack of a complex of compounds that includes not just niacin but numerous cofactors as well. They named this complex vitamin G—the G standing for Goldberger.) From Hunger Fighters, 1928.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Amazingly, Dr. Royal Lee presented this paper in 1923, to his senior class at Marquette University Dental School. In it he brilliantly ties together different lines of research showing a correlation between tooth decay and both systemic vitamin deficiency and susceptibility to infectious disease. The key connection, he says, is the malfunctioning of the endocrine system, brought about by the consumption of a diet high in cooked and processed foods. Such a vitamin-deficient diet, he explains, sets up a vicious cycle: Vitamin deficiency weakens the endocrines; weakened endocrines diminish the body’s ability to resist infection and tooth decay; fighting infection creates a greater need for vitamins; increased lack of vitamins further weakens the endocrines; etc. To avoid this downard spiral and combat cavities in the process, Lee recommends a diet with "as much uncooked food as possible," including raw milk. This paper, remarkable for its time and just as remarkable today, put Dr. Lee on the map as one of the true giants in nutrition history. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 30A. 

By E.E. Rogers, MD

Summary: This is an excerpt from the book The Philosophy and Science of Health published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. Dr. Rogers, in relating to the book's overall discussion of the decline of health in America, discusses how ill health begins on the farm, with deficient soils. He then proposes some methods for revitalizing the soil, thus invigorating the entire food chain. 1949.

By Warren L. Anderson

Summary: A three-part report on the important effects of trace minerals in soil, livestock, and humans. At the time of these articles, in 1949, the macro minerals—calcium, phosphorus, and potassium—were fairly well understood in terms of plant growth. On the other hand, the trace minerals, e.g., iodine, zinc, copper, manganese, iron, etc., were poorly understood until research like this began to appear. The role of trace minerals in the formation of nutrients such as cobalt and vitamin B12 had only just been discovered. This knowledgeable author shows the insidious effects and unsuspected diseases in plants, livestock, and humans caused by trace mineral deficiencies. From Hoard's Dairyman magazine. Reprint 71, 1949.

View PDF: The Trace Elements

By G.L. Seifert and H.C. Wood

Summary: As read at the Second International Seaweed Symposium in 1956. Dr. Seifert reports on a study in which "the nutritional value of sea kelp and trace minerals was demonstrated." In the experiment, the diet of 400 pregnant women—the majority suffering anemia—was fortified with tablets of dried giant bladder kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). In the majority of the subjects, the anemia disappeared within six to eight weeks of the onset of supplementation. In addition, there was "a spectacular drop in the incidence of colds" among the subjects. (Anemia and a tendency to develop colds is a common problem faced by pregnant women, the investigators note.) Seifert adds that the success of the study is likely a result of the high trace mineral content of the kelp, and that one of the key effects of trace minerals may be their promotion of the actions of vitamins. Reprint 133, 1956.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Lee discusses the nutritional value of potatoes, explaining that much of that value is lost when they are cooked. "We may estimate that 25 percent of the vitamins are lost in cooking either by heat or leaching. The loss of vitamin C is particularly fast...." In addition, he says, "the cooked potato contains no enzymes, as all enzymes are destroyed by heat." One such enzyme, studies showed, helps relieve constipation, while others are even more precious. "One of the enzymes found in raw potatoes is phosphatase, which promotes assimilation of calcium and iron in particular; another is tyrosinase, an essential component of the vitamin C complex and associated directly with the function of the adrenal glands." (Dr. Lee often referred to raw potatoes and raw mushrooms as the best food sources of tyrosinase available.) Lee gives tips on conserving potatoes' nutrients when cooking them and instructs readers to be sure to add lemon juice to freshly extracted potato juice, which keeps the juice from oxidizing and turning black. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: In this extensively referenced article, Dr. Royal Lee shows that the natural vitamin C complex is more than just ascorbic acid, in this case discussing the important part of the complex known as the vitamin P group (which includes rutin and other bioflavonoids). For decades, Lee and others knew that focusing on just ascorbic acid led to an incomplete understanding of the function of vitamin C, just as using only ascorbic acid in clinical studies had failed to bring complete systemic relief to scurvy. This scientific explanation of the complete vitamin C complex should serve as a cornerstone for approaching the subject of vitamins in general and vitamin C in particular. From Vitamin News, 1948.

By Dr. W. Stepp, Dr. Kuhnau, and Dr. H. Schroeder

Summary: An extremely rare, comprehensive book on vitamin therapy that Dr. Royal Lee had translated from German and published in the United States. The authors, German research physicians, recognized the therapeutic aspects of vitamins beyond treating the frank deficiency diseases (e.g., scurvy, rickets, etc.) associated with them. "In view of the newly acquired knowledge of the frequency of hypovitaminoses [vitamin deficiencies] and of the susceptibility of patients with avitaminoses to all sorts of diseases [beyond frank deficiencies], the importance of a sufficient vitamin supply must not be underestimated in our patients." This book is an indispensable collection of gems containing some of the lost knowledge of vitamin therapy learned in the years of the twentieth century before World War II, when vitamin research was independent, vigorous, and fresh with the insights of recent discovery. Includes numerous charts, graphs, references, and appendices. 1938.

View PDF: The Vitamins and Their Clinical Applications

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: If there are "health food stores" today, what motivated their creation? In this article from the 1956 issue of the National Health Federation Bulletin, Dr. Royal Lee recounts some of the events and decisions that paved the way for the appalling condition of the American diet, showing how the processed-food industry and self-proclaimed public and private health authorities sold the health of the American public down the river and branded all opposition to refined foods as faddists, quacks, and racketeers. No one recites this tale better and with more provable facts than Royal Lee. He was there. Reprint 301, 1956.

By Fred Miller, DDS

Summary: "America is a nation of 'candyholics' and soft drink addicts, of food adulterators, processors and refiners," writes Dr. Fred Miller in words that ring as true today as in 1946, when he wrote them. "Having practiced dentistry for more than thirty years I am thoroughly convinced—speaking from the biological point of view, not the moral aspect—that refined white flour and its products—bread, crackers, cookies, pastries —and refined sugar and its products—candies, hard candies and soft drinks—are doing more harm in this country than hard liquor." A great historical overview of the state of malnutrition in America from a frontline dentist. From The Land magazine. Reprint 49A, 1946.

By G.T. Wrench, MD

Summary: The complete book, originally published in England in 1938 and republished by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research in 1945. The Wheel of Health is a master treatise on proper diet—as well as a cogent plea for the full recognition of vitamin values—based on study of the famously healthy Hunza people of what was at the time northern India (now Pakistan). Dr. Wrench credits his interest in the Hunza to the great nutrition pioneer Sir Robert McCarrison (author of Studies in Deficiency Disease, available in these Archives), who studied them extensively. The Hunza "are unsurpassed by any Indian race in perfection of physique," McCarrison said. "They are long lived, vigorous in youth and age, capable of great endurance and enjoy a remarkable freedom from disease in general.'" In addition to the work of Dr. McCarrison, Wrench highlights as well the studies of the great agriculturalist Sir Albert Howard (author of An Agricultural Testament; see also "Natural vs. Artificial Nitrates" in these Archives.) "This small book," one British reviewer wrote, "should rest at the very foundations of one's personal explorations of health and its roots." 1945.

View PDF: The Wheel of Health

By Hugo Krueger, PhD

Summary: An authoritative, fully-referenced report on the mysterious and famous Wulzen factor, an anti-stiffness nutrient found in the cream of raw milk and in fresh molasses. The author writes, "In 1941 Wulzen and Bahrs reported that guinea-pigs fed raw whole milk grew excellently and at autopsy showed no abnormality of any kind. Guinea-pigs on pasteurized milk rations did not grow as well and developed a definite syndrome, the first sign of which was wrist stiffness. On pasteurized skim milk the syndrome increased in severity until the animals finally died. There was great emaciation and weakness before death." Doctors such as Royal Lee and Francis Pottenger, Jr., had long studied this anti-arthritic factor, which was never accepted by orthodox medicine and regretfully remains ignored to this day. From American Journal of Physical Medicine. Reprint 81, 1955.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Two articles that appeared in Let's Live magazine in 1952 and 1953. In "This Molasses War—Who is Prevaricating?," Dr. Lee compares natural and refined sugars. He posits that carbohydrates are not essential in the human diet and offers proof by way of certain traditional peoples who eat no carbs and yet experience perfect health. He also discusses the virtues of molasses, which is rich in minerals and is protective against tooth decay, whereas white sugar promotes cavities. Lee also describes the famous experiments of Dr. Rosalind Wulzen of Oregon State College that led to the discovery of the "anti-arthritic factor" in molasses and raw cream that was later named after her. In "Bone Meal—Nutritional Source of Calcium," Dr. Lee describes the virtues of finely powdered bone flour as a source of protein and minerals, particularly calcium. He states that for the teeth, cold-processed bone meal is unexcelled. He also discusses the role of trace minerals also found in bone meal. 1953.

By Benjamin P. Sandler, MD

Summary: In this provocative letter to the editor of the medical journal Chest, Dr. Benjamin Sandler speculates whether the death of famous American author Henry David Thoreau, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 45, might have been the result of malnutrition he suffered during his years living on Walden Pond. Specifically, Dr. Sandler points to the lack of quality protein and excess of carbohydrate foods in Thoreau's diet as probable causes behind his infection. 1973.

By Jack Denton Scott

Summary: In this 1956 article from the popular magazine American Mercury, author Jack Scott warns the public of the toxic stew that accompanies each bite of the modern diet. DDT and DES lead the list of hundreds of chemicals contaminating America's food supply, either coming from the farm or added by food processors. With regulation of these chemicals admittedly lax (see "The Peril on Your Food Shelf" by congressman James Delaney, chairman of the House Committee to Investigate the Use of Chemicals in Food Products during the 1950s), the American public had become one giant guinea pig colony for the alliance between the chemical and food industries. Articles like these led to the popular revolt in the 1960s and '70s against commercially grown foods and the phony health experts paid by the food industry to assure America that it was the best-fed nation in the world with the safest food supply. From American Mercury, 1956. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 89.

By Dr. Royal Lee, Herbert C. White, and Arnold P. Yerkes

Summary: The Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprinted these three articles by leading natural-health authorities of the time to counter the "America is the best fed nation on earth" propaganda coming from government agencies and the commercial food industries. From soil destruction and depletion to food processing and synthetic vitamins, the three authors cogently expose the frauds, lies, and myths perpetrated by the "death-food industry," so described by Royal Lee. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special bulletin 1-52, 1952. Multiple original sources.

By Tom A. Ellis

Summary: A newspaper account of a gathering of nationally known nutritionists and soil experts discussing the effects of trace-element deficiency on the health of soil, plants, livestock, and humans. Among the scientists attending were Dr. William Albrecht, the soil expert from the University of Missouri who's been called the father of organic farming, and Dr. Francis Pottenger, Jr., whose famous cat-feeding experiments showed conclusively that the effects of malnutrition are passed on to subsequent generations. Several studies are discussed, showing the positive clinical effect of supplying trace elements to livestock and humans deficient in them and suggesting that the true cause of these deficiencies is a lack of trace elements in the soil in which the plants eaten by the animals and humans grew. These early experiments show clearly the critical nutritional role of trace minerals in the cycle of life. From the Springfield Daily News and Reader, Missouri. Reprint 92, 1949.

By Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD

Summary: Reflections on the Third International Soy Symposium by two of the most outspoken critics of processed soy products. "Far from being the perfect food," Fallon and Enig write, "modern soy products contain antinutrients and toxins, and they interfere with the absorption of vitamins and minerals." The authors also cite the infamous letter of Drs. Dan Sheehan and Daniel Doerge, two members of the FDA's toxicology department who tried in vain to stop their agency from awarding soy an official health claim. From Nexus Magazine, 2000.

By Dr. Benjamin P. Sandler and Dr. R. Berke

Summary: Dr. Benjamin Sandler, a former United States naval surgeon, studied for decades two of his era's most devastating infectious diseases: polio (a viral infection) and tuberculosis (a bacterial one). In both cases he found that a low-carbohydrate diet was the best treatment and prevention for the disease. In this brief, Sandler reports that in ten tuberculosis patients treated with a low-carb diet, "digestive, cardiac, respiratory, nervous and mental symptoms were rapidly relieved and relief was sustained" in each subject. Sandler's findings have been echoed in recent years in diet trials testing low-carbohydrate diets, in which subjects invariably exhibit improvement in biomarkers such as triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, and blood pressure. From American Revue of Tuberculosis, 1942.

By Grant H. Laing, MD

Summary: An excellent ten-page review of the signs of malnutrition that dentists routinely and literally overlook. The early nutrition pioneers, many of them dentists, knew full well that malnutrition creates specific lesions in the oral cavity. This article from the Fortnightly Review of the Chicago Dental Society is one of the earliest papers presented on the subject. The editor's note, written by an MD, still applies today: "At first glance this article...appears to be completely foreign to dentistry. However, we assure our readers that if they will but read it, they will be fascinated by it." Note: Trophopathic means "due to derangement of nutrition," a term we should hear more often given that malnutrition is the primary cause of most degenerative disease. Reprint 51, 1949.

By Flora L. Carl and Letha K. Jopling

Summary: During World War II, it was most important that people knew how to get more nutrition and value out of livestock. This informative, instructional document discusses the preparation and nutritional value of organs such as brains, sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas), liver, kidney, heart, pigs' feet, tongue, and spleen. (Such organs, it's worth noting, are richer in vitamins and minerals than muscle meat, which is why many tribal societies prized them above all). Recipes include Liver With Bacon, Kidney Stew, Bone Marrow on Toast, and Oxtail Soup. From the Agricultural Extension Service of the College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri. Reprint 38A, 1943.

By R.W. Dunlap, Assistant Secretary of the USDA

Summary: If you're looking for a smoking gun regarding the chemical adulteration of food in America, this is it. In this 1925 letter to President Calvin Coolidge, the acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Agrculture (USDA) admits that the department cannot legally prevent the addition of chemical additives of unknown safety to America's food supply. The reason, he says, is that certain federal courts pronounced such chemicals acceptable if no evidence of harm is shown in people who consume foods containing small amounts of them. Not only did the courts' decisions put the onus of proving long-term ill effects of suspected poisons squarely on the government, but with such evidence nearly impossible to show conclusively and requiring years of study (the technology for which not even existing at the time), the basic policy of food adulteration in America was set: to err on the side of commerce, not public health. As the secretary points out, the opposing, "better safe than sorry" policy of Dr. Harvey Wiley—the former head of the USDA's Bureau of Chemistry (forerunner of the FDA) who publicly criticized the federal rulings as violating the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act passed by Congress—would simply not stand up in court, where the decision to allow deleterious additives into the food supply had been finagled into law. 

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Lee comments on a report in the Drug Trade News on the upholding of a conviction of naturalist V.E. Irons. (For details on Irons's original trial and conviction, see "The Irons Frame-up (Its Whys and Wherefores)" by Morris Bealle.) According to Lee, Irons was convicted essentially for publicizing this statement: "Nearly everyone in this country is suffering from malnutrition or [is] in danger of such suffering because of demineralization and depletion of soils and the refining and processing of food." While this statement was supported time and time again by early nutrition studies, Irons nonetheless served a year in jail for his proclamation, which, Lee points out, was made in the same spirit of Dr. Harvey Wiley, the original head of the FDA who was ousted by representatives within the government influenced by the food-manufacturing and medical industries. 1957.

By T.W. Gullickson, F.C. Fountaine, and J.B. Fitch

Summary: Cream, which is used to make butter, is a much more valuable product than a refined vegetable oil. As a result, farmers of the mid-twentieth century got in the bad habit of skimming the cream off their milk to make butter for consumers and then combining the skimmed milk with a vegetable oil to feed to their calves. Gullickson and his colleagues report on an experiment in which they fed calves skim milk homogenized with butter, lard, corn oil, cottonseed oil, and soybean oil. Their findings were what one would expect in replacing a natural, whole food with a refined, processed one: "The results as measured in terms of rate of gain in weight, physical appearance and general well-being of calves indicated clearly the superior nutritive value of butterfat over all the other fats and oils tested." Practices like the one described here, so longstanding in American food manufacturing that they're taken as "normal," go a long way to explain the rampant rates of degenerative disease in the United States. From the Journal of Dairy Science. Reprint 138, 1942.

By Franklin Bicknell, MD, and Frederick Prescott, PhD

Summary: A few pages about vitamin E from the classic text The Vitamins in Medicine. This authoritative book, which featured over 4500 references, was originally published in 1942, and in 1953 the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research published its third edition. In this excerpt, Bicknell and Prescott give some critical information not generally known about vitamin E. For instance, while chemists long ago declared vitamin E to be the single compound alpha-tocopherol, the authors, like Dr. Lee and many of the other early nutritionists, thought differently: "While alpha-tocopherol means one distinct substance," they write, "vitamin E may mean either alpha-tocopherol or a mixture of this and other similar substances." Other gems about vitamin E are packed into these few pages, which go a long way to combat the poor level of understanding of nutrition's "most misunderstood vitamin." From The Vitamins in Medicine, 1953.

By Ezra Levin

Summary: The author of this report founded Viobin Corp, which developed wheat germ oil concentration methods. Fully referenced, the article declares that there is far more to wheat germ oil than alpha-tocopherol and that the effect delivered by natural vitamin E depends on much more than the isolated tocopherol. For instance, Levin writes, "It appears that, for the first time, evidence has been presented of the presence in wheat germ oil of a factor that exerts a beneficial effect in neuromuscular disturbances other than vitamin E [i.e., tocopherol]." Levin's claims support Dr. Royal Lee's contention that vitamins are synergistically combined complexes and not isolated chemicals. "For many years," he adds, "we in our laboratory have suggested that research workers, in reporting their work. make a sharp distinction between vitamin E [tocopherol] and wheat germ oil. [The neuromuscular study] makes such differentiation imperative." From the American Journal of Digestive Diseases, 1945. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 9.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: An important article about two of the most overlooked nutritionally and biochemically essential substances in the human body. The roles of carbamide (a.k.a. urea) in denaturing proteins—and thus reducing their antigenicity—and of vitamin F (fatty acid complex) in defusing calcium bicarbonate (ionized calcium) into the cell fluids are virtually lost on orthodox medicine. Yet holistic doctors have repeatedly discovered this article since its publication in 1946 and been amazed at the clinical efficacy of the applied knowledge it presents. From Journal of the National Medical Society. Reprint 20, 1946.

By James Pirie Hart and William LeGrande Cooper, MD

Summary: One of the most sought after documents ever produced by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. This is a clinical study on the effect of vitamin F in reversing prostate enlargment, complete with blood work, charts of outcomes, and excellent references. "For a considerable time we have been using an oral vitamin F complex preparation for the control of the common cold," the authors explain. "This treatment has been used quite successfully in Europe for several years. During the courses of treatment with this preparation it was noticed that in certain male patients who were being treated concurrently for prostatic hypertrophy, there was a sudden notable decrease in the palpable size and consistency of the prostate gland." Along with this reduction in size and symptoms of prostatic hypertrophy, subjects experienced an average increase in blood iodine levels of 307% and an average increase of blood phosphorous of 8.3%. Tissue calcium also increased as blood calcium decreased by 11% on average. The authors conclude, "The principles of vitamin F therapy in prostatic hypertrophy were demonstrated subjectively and objectively through diminished residual urine, reduction of size of prostate, disappearance of pain and discomfort, reduction of nocturia, and marked increase in sexual libido." 1941.

By Garnett Cheney, MD

Summary: While it was never accepted as a vitamin by the FDA, "vitamin U" from raw cabbage juice was successfully used by pioneering holistic physicians in the treatment of stomach ulcers. Here Dr. Cheney gives some background and clinical applications of this officially unaccepted vitamin in a presentation before the 80th Annual Session of the California Medical Association in 1951. This file includes a supplementary document from a 1957 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association on the subject of cabbage juice for digestive problems. From California Medicine. Reprint 91, 1952.

By Edward A. Johnston, MD

Summary: This excellent report, a reprint from the Journal of the American College of Proctology, starts with a clear description of the all-important connection between vitamin complexes (as they are found in whole foods) and the endocrine system. "When we consider that vitamins in the food are the substances with which the endocrines are able to secrete their active principles, it is apparent that a glandular insufficiency may take place in the absence of vitamins....All of the ductless glands, the thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, pineal body, pituitary, adrenals, gonads, pancreas, islets of Langerhans, and spleen must have one or more of the vitamins in order to secrete their vital fluids, and if deprived of the vitamins, will atrophy and cease to function." Such events, Dr. Johnston says, are obviously bound to weaken the body and make it more susceptible to disease. "Stomach ulcers are probably the best instance of bacterial invasion primarily due to a lowered resistance resulting from a vitamin deficiency. Other instances of vitamin A deficiency, and often found in conjunction with infections of the intestinal tract, are infections of the eyes, tonsils, sinuses, lungs, buccal and lingual mucosa, and the skin." This is the Royal Lee philosophy writ large. From Journal of the American College of Proctology, circa 1940. Lee Foundation of Nutritional Research reprint 2.

By Dr. Simon Benson

Summary: Dr. Benson of the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research responds to an article titled "Are Vitamins Drugs?" in the trade journal The Apothecary. Benson clearly lays out the differences between the therapeutic application of food and food-based vitamins and the use of pharmaceutical medicines. He refutes medical dogma that insists that anything used therapeutically is automatically classified as a drug. (This definition, of course, conveniently puts any substance being used therapeutically under regulatory control of the FDA, even if it's food.) This is an early and strong defense of natural approaches to healthcare and the freedom of physicians to treat their patients as they see fit, without government interference on behalf of trade groups such as the pharma/medical cartel. From The Apothecary, 1946. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 25.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Originally published in Health Culture, this 1955 article outlines the critical roles of natural vitamin complexes, such as vitamins A, B, C, D and F, in maintaining and restoring dental health. Dr. Lee specifically credits the research of the celebrated Dr. Weston Price: "Dr. Weston A. Price was the first dentist to publish an article asserting that dental caries was primarily a result of vitamin deficiency. This was in 1927. In 1923, I had prepared a paper on the subject of 'The Systemic Cause of Dental Caries,' and read it to the senior class of Marquette Dental College, subscribing to the same hypothesis." Amazingly, conventional dentistry still fails to comprehend the basic truth that a properly nourished body is resistant to tooth decay. Reprint 30G, 1955.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: A classic Royal Lee document, read before a New York dental group in 1940. In it Dr. Lee outlines how far the understanding of nutrition and dental health had come and how poorly the dental profession had stayed current with this advance of knowledge. He cites many examples—fully referenced—of the direct effect of nutrients on dental health. A great paper if anyone bothered to read and understand it. "Drill 'em and fill 'em" was the dental mantra then, as it is today. Reprint 30B, 1940.

By Prof. A.E. Murneek

Summary: In this article from Science magazine, Professor Murneek laments the various factors that have resulted in the "devitaminization" of the modern food supply. "Improper selection of food-producing plants, modern methods of handling the crop, and faulty preparation by cooking and other means has resulted in a diet of subnormal vitamin content for many people," he writes, adding that refining and processing of foods have "devitaminized our foods still further." If consumers truly want good health, Murneek says, they must learn to choose quality over looks or convenience when it comes to food. "By catering to the 'eye-appeal' we have, in our choice, often lost 'food value,' including undoubtedly a large amount of vitamins, both known and unknown." He reminds readers that the food manufacturers do not have their health in mind. "Profit has been often the motivating force in present food technology, the dollar sign the guiding star, setting styles, fostering sales and creating eating 'habits' for the use, in volume, of certain products....Thus economics and style, not nutrition and health...have guided most parties concerned in food production and distribution." Reprint 36, 1944.

By the Council on Dental Health of the Southern California State Dental Association

Summary: A cartoon poster aimed at children, warning them of the dangers of white sugar and refined carbohydrates. Designed by the  Council on Dental Health of the Southern California State Dental Association and published originally in Modern Nutrition. Publication date unknown.

By Ed Rupp

Summary: This 1949 article from a Missouri farming journal describes some breakthrough research on trace minerals being conducted in the state at the time. Specifically, undulant fever (brucellosis) is shown to be successfully treated with trace-mineral therapy. The article goes on to describe the loss of nutrients through pasteurization of milk and other so-called modern food processing methods. From the Missouri Ruralist. Reprint 41, 1949.

By Granville F. Knight, MD

Summary: From a California physician comes this remarkably lucid discussion about pesticides and their use in America. "Under the present laws," Dr. Knight writes, "any company wishing to use a new chemical in or on food is not required to first consult with the Food and Drug Administration relative to merits or potential harmfulness." Indeed, he adds, any "partially tested pesticide may be manufactured, advertised, sold, and widely used!" (Sadly, this policy remains true today.) And what about concerned citizens and scientists who had the courage to speak out against America's mammoth agribusiness and their untested pesticides? "'Hysterical alarmists' is the quaint description applied to...those who even suggest that the public is being harmed," Knight says. Articles like this served as an early warning to America's homemakers about the chemicalization of the food supply and sowed the seeds of today's organic-foods movement. From Modern Nutrition magazine. Reprint 86, 1952.

By Philip Harris and Paul Dunbar

Summary: A portfolio of four articles—two scientific studies and two commentaries—on the effects of deficiency diseases caused by white bread and other foods that have had the vitamin E complex refined out of their structure. A poignant example of how industrial-scale food refinement led to an industrial-scale deficiency in the diet of modern humankind. Articles published between 1949 to 1961 from various sources. Reprint 137A.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee illustrates the nutritional dangers of a diet of processed foods through the famous example of New York Senator W.P. Richardson's hog farm. Richardson, after shifting the diet of his pigs from whole corn and whole wheat to stale white bread and rolls, found the health of the hogs' offspring to suffer tremendously. "The young pigs developed at only half the usual rate of growth and were subject to many diseases normally foreign to the pig species, particularly pneumonia," Dr. Lee writes. In addition, the sows "had small liters or aborted." Dr. Lee notes the similarity between the symptoms of these malnourished pigs and those of the disease-ridden crew of a German warship who'd been reduced to a diet of primarily white flour and sugar. "You do not need to be a professor of biochemistry and medicine," Dr. Lee opines, to figure out that "lowered resistance caused by a deficient diet is apparently the real cause of most disease." From Let's Live Magazine, 1958.

By the Whole Food Society of England

Summary: A British perspective on the bleaching of flour in the year 1955. At that time, a new flour bleach, chlorine dioxide, was being introduced because the old bleach, nitrogen trichloride, or agene, had been shown to clearly be a nerve toxin in dogs. The authors point out that the official ban of agene came ten years after the results of the dog experiment were made known and five years after an announcement by the country's Ministries of Food and Health officially condemning the substance. Why the long delay between identifying agene as a poison and barring it from the market? Simple, the article says: the millers needed time to come up with a new bleach. Rather than putting public health at the forefront and discontinuing the practice of flour bleaching altogether, the government and milling industry decided to continue the process because bleaching makes flour look appealing. Thus, after feeding the public for decades an additive whose safety had always been questionable, a new questionable additive was selected, and the bleached-flour industry kept rolling right along. From The Farmer. Reprint 78, 1955.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: An inspired article by Dr. Lee about the irony of praying to God to overcome disease while ignoring the simple laws of health here on Earth. "Man needs no miraculous intervention to have perfect health and happiness," he writes, "unless he first commits criminal acts of food adulteration and contamination." Lee explains that there is "a frightful conspiracy to keep the public in the dark about the devastating, death-dealing effects of modern food counterfeits—the synthetic glucose, the synthetic hydrogenated fats, the refined cereals, the refined breakfast foods, the coal tar dyes and coal tar flavors that ensure acceptance of otherwise tasteless and colorless food frauds which destroy human life to the tune of over a million victims a year." He adds that heart disease—the leading cause of death then as it is today—is so effectively countered by food therapy that "nine out of ten sufferers can be shown by cardiographic sound recordings to respond favorably within ten minutes to natural food products." Originally published in Natural Food and Farming, 1955.

By John Courtney

Summary: For thirty years John Courtney was the head of Research & Development for Standard Process, Inc., the raw-food supplement company founded by Dr. Royal Lee in 1929. In this article, Courtney explains how early nutrition researchers such as Dr. Weston Price showed beyond doubt that tooth decay is the result of a diet deficient in vitamins and minerals. Yes, Courtney says, bacteria attack teeth to cause cavities, but those bacteria wouldn't get anywhere if the teeth weren't weakened in the first place by poor nutrition. Moreover, malnutrition also diminishes the bacteria-killing action of the saliva bathing the teeth. Thus, he summarizes, cavities are "due to a deficient diet and a vitamin and mineral imbalance, which in turn, by starving the endocrines, renders them unable to secrete sufficient amounts of the germicidal ferments to prevent dental caries [cavities] and other infectious diseases." From The Clinical Nutritionist. Publication date unknown. 

By Jean Bullitt Darlington

Summary: The first of a two-part report examining the bias in the popular press of the 1940s regarding the pros and cons of milk pasteurization. Darlington debunks several famous "scare" myths ballyhooed by the press, presenting each story as it was first reported and then as it appeared after some fact finding. This article, along with its sequel, is full of facts and examples of how health authorities grossly manipulated science and the public fear of food-borne epidemics to silence any support of certified raw milk. Includes eye-opening statistics from the U.S. Public Health Service regarding the number of outbreaks traced to both raw and pasteurized milk from 1922 to 1944. From The Rural New Yorker: The Business Farmer's Paper. Reprint 28, 1947.

By Jean Bullitt Darlington

Summary: Part II of a two-part series examining the myths and politics of milk pasteurization. In this article, Darlington reviews the efforts of the U.S. Public Health Service to strong arm communities throughout the country to adopt pasteurization, and he also examines closely the nature of milk production, pointing out that with the technology and equipment available at the time, safe raw-milk production was not just feasible but preferable. "Pasteurization is destructive of many of the essential nutritional values in milk. The only possible defense that could ever have been offered for [it]," the author concludes, "is that it did act as a temporary expedient pending the acquisition of more knowledge of methods ensuring a safe and clean supply." With even better methods available today, the prohibition in many states of the sale of raw milk speaks less to public safety and more to the commercial dominance of the pasteurized milk industry. From The Rural New Yorker. Reprint 28-B, 1947.

By E.K. Roosevelt

Summary: From the 1950s through the early 1980s, Edith Kermit Roosevelt wrote about issues of health and fitness in her popular syndicated column "Between the Lines." In this article—the title of which pretty much sets the tone—she exposes the dangerous adulteration of America's food with agrichemicals through facts, figures, and the outrage of someone aware of what was actually going on. Long before Rachel Carlon's Silent Spring hit the stands, the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research was publishing fact-filled pieces like these warning the medical profession and the public of the wholesale poisoning of the country's food supply. Original source unknown. Reprint 102, circa 1957.

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Every misdeed has a history, and the history of the destruction of the American food supply is a story that few know from its beginnings. Yet it's a story worth knowing because its consequences have been and continue to be indeterminably enormous. In this booklet, Dr. Lee tells the story up through 1940, by which time it was many decades in the making. Lee calls out the entire industrial food and drug business as a racket in which profit, not the health of Americans, dictates public and private policy, and deception about the nutritional value of industrially processed foods is actively practiced. Richly documented with supporting evidence, this booklet is a valuable reference for anyone interested in the true cause of most disease in America—malnutrition as a result of processed and refined foods. 1940.