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The Rockefeller Reducing Diet
Published in Herald of Health, October 1957.
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Of all the funny fads that people fall for, this is one “for the book.” It is supposed to originate at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, but I cannot imagine any institution or man, that has any scientific knowledge at all, being responsible for such a concoction.
AND THIS IS IT…
“This is the reducing diet. It can be taken one, two or three times a day in lieu of meals. This diet contains 20 ounces of formula and 900 calories.
6 tablespoons dextrose
10 oz. evaporated milk
1 oz. corn oil
8 oz. water
“Combine milk and water. Stir in dextrose until it is dissolved. Add corn oil and beat until oil is thoroughly mixed.”
If you want to copy this in natural, vital foods instead of the “death foods” suggested, here is the way to do it: Use natural, raw honey in place of the synthetic dextrose; certified raw milk in place of the evaporated stuff; and cream in place of refined corn oil.
More Logical
But it would be far more logical to go on a diet of bananas, almonds, and water, coffee or tea than to use only “death foods” when you cut the quantity in reducing.
Why are we so easy to fatten, anyway? The answer is, refined foods, synthetic foods like dextrose, hydrogenated fats, white flour, refined sugar, all capable of doing nothing to us except put on fat. And worse, they cheat us out of the vitamins that maintain our glands, which must be properly functioning to keep us thin. Do you know how a cattleman fattens up his steers? He first removes certain glands that otherwise make the fattening job impossible. We fatten up because we starve those glands into atrophic inactivity, and then wonder why we have to starve our bodies to keep our weight down.
What is the missing food factor needed to keep our glands active? One of the most important is a part of the vitamin E Complex, the whole wheat vitamin, now known as the “sex hormone precursor.” Without this vitamin our sex glands dry up, we fatten like any castrated animal.
To reduce the food intake, to the point where the weight drops to normal, often means real starvation. The rest of the body cannot survive on such a meager level of nutrition, and the situation is aggravated by the lack of vitamins and minerals that are needed by the tissues and organs in far more amount than supplied by the refined food (death food) diet that is being used.
Unrefined Foods
We get this vitamin E Complex in the main from our cereal foods, but only if fresh and unrefined, as the greater part of this vitamin is in the germ of the seed or nut that we must get before the oils of the germ become rancid, for rancidity destroys the vitamin. As all grains become rancid in a week or two after they are ground into meal or flour, you can see just why this vitamin is so scarce in the modern foods of civilization.
The doctor finds all such victims of “civilization” with a lowered metabolic rate, a direct consequence of the sex gland atrophy. He used to try to bring this up with thyroid pills, but soon found that the remedy was worse than the “disease.”
No Remedy
Synthetic sex hormones are no remedy, either, and are known to predispose to cancer and they upset the general balance of health unless specifically needed for some purpose other than reducing.
At this moment, there is no magic way to relieve this end result of “death food,” so it behooves us all to see that we get nutrition, not calories, in our diet.
We must avoid all food components that give us calories alone (without the normally accompanying vitamins supplied by natural foods, unrefined and unprocessed.) These may be listed as dextrose, glucose, refined sugar, hydrogenated fats, and all packaged cereal products–from white flour to cornflakes. Most canned goods are in the main loaded with glucose as filler, even most peanut butter is now “filled” with glucose (“sugar” on some labels). (Glucose is a synthetic sugar, not sweet so its presence is not obvious to the taste.) In most foods it is no more legitimate than added water in milk, and it is so cheap that its weight always adds to the profit.
Once you taste pancakes or muffins made from whole wheat flour–fresh ground within hours–you will appreciate what I mean by a “Health Food” as distinguished from “death foods.” Our Creator gave us a sense of taste to guide us. Why not follow it to health?