Applied Nutrition President’s Address

There is a great paradox in modern social development. As the sum total of information has exploded in all fields of human endeavor, the individual tends to become confined to a smaller and smaller segment of total knowledge. He in turn strives to be a specialist in a given field, and has become jealous of any interloper who has not similarly confined his activities to that same small segment of knowledge.

To make his specialty secure, he coins a new verbiage that only the initiated has the time and opportunity to learn. The medical profession has been accused of becoming so highly specialized that, figuratively, a right eye ophthalmologist cannot invade the field of a left eye ophthalmologist. Some have lost sight of the fact that support for the eyes rests on two feet, with a body of many functions that may be equally important to assure the sight of the eyes. In other words, man is an integrated whole, and must be treated as such.

To further establish the necessity for specialization, societies catering to the specialist are set up in all fields, and rigid standards are adopted so that only those who are properly qualified as specialists, can expect to attain recognition. All those who approach their citadel of information, are held at bay, and are accused of being out of their discipline, or unprofessional, and poachers on the society’s domain.

There are many reasons why specialization has such an appeal. The most important of these is the extensive mass of information that is available on any one subject. Even a fraction of the information on a small subject, which can be scanned and digested by a given individual, is frequently enormous.

With this in mind, the smaller the field of one’s endeavor, the more confidence he can have in himself, and he can speak and write with much greater assurance because he is on a firm foundation. In a similar vein, he can, with a little effort, appear to be knowledgeable, once he has mastered the secrets of his specialty, and has been initiated into the order of his choice. He has a feeling of security, and the assurance that he can confine his learning, in the future, to that segment of human knowledge defined by the intellectuals of similar learning.

Specialties are arbitrary, and although a plant physiologist may have confined his whole life to the acorn of the Quereus Alba, he may be able to talk with a few others who have so limited their activities. He may be able to point with great satisfaction to the characteristics of one acorn, represented by the oak grown on the east side of the mountain, and point to variability, represented by the oak of the western slope; or, that a change of the characteristic of another acorn, represents the seed of the oak from a distant stand 500 miles away. Possibly, this is interesting information, but the important fact is that the acorn produces oak trees, and that the oak is an important cover crop, and acts as food and shelter for various animals.

If an investigator is thorough, it is not long before he finds that his studies have forced him to cross the lines of one discipline after another, before he has reached the conclusion that makes his work stand on a firm footing. A simple example of research took over 2300 years to solve, and many disciplines were involved over these centuries.

Early in the history of medicine, malaria was assumed to be caused by air pollution. The well-to-do citizens of Rome moved to the mountains in the summertime to avoid the scourges. The term itself means BAD AIR. The land at the base of the Capitoline and Palatine hills was covered with swamps, the breeding place of mosquitos. Tarquin was king. A ditch was dug, the swamps were drained and the Forum Romanum came into being. In the next 200 years, the drainage ditch was improved and enclosed to become the Cloaca Maximus, that remained without much change until 40 years ago.

What disciplines of the day were involved? The physician, who observed his patient, and speculated on the bad air, the stench? Possibly someone unheard of may have blamed the mosquito, but we do not know of him. The science of biology was not evolved –it was too early in our development. The architect who designed the ditch; the engineer who built it; the artisans who fashioned it; and the politicians, the city planners, and possibly the real estate agents and the money lenders of the day, all contributed their recommendations to lessening the problem.

Over the next 2300 years, physicians and scientists studied the problem. The pharmacist, by 1630, had found an elective treatment for malaria in chincona bark. However, it was not until 1880 that Laveran,¹ a French physician and protozoologist described the life cycle of the malaria parasite. The next 18 years saw great activity in the study of the disease. But it was the trio of Italian physicians, A. Bignami, B. Grassi, and G. Bastianelli,² in 1898, who first proved that the bite of the infected anopheline mosquito caused the disease.

So, 2300 years later, malaria was proven not to be transmitted by bad air arising from decomposing material in the swamps of Rome, but from the inhabitants of those areas, the mosquitos. The next 70 years saw the control of the Pontine marshes to the south of Rome, that has now largely eliminated the ancient scourge.

With specialization and fragmentation in our various disciplines in mind, let us consider some disadvantages to society that arise from our limitations.

May I first speak of the pesticides? Their usage cuts across many disciplines. First, the chemist, Zeidler,³ in 1874, developed a new compound –DDT. For 65 years it lay in the files, considered too dangerous to be used. Nobel laureate Paul Muller uncovered it in 1939, and tried it out on a few flies, roaches and other insects. Lo and behold it killed them. The Western world was at war. Insects had killed millions more than all the bullets in past wars. Now the savior has arrived to kill insects –man’s worst enemy– by the billions. The military sanitarians could hardly wait to dust soldiers’ and sailors’ barracks, and swamps, and beaches with the new magic.

The farmer, too, wanted it, but he had to wait. The entomologist was pressured to find out what its lethal properties were, what insects it would kill, and in what amount it must be applied. When the war was over, the farmer was satisfied to acquire DDT. The sanitarians, the forestry control, the veterinarians, the physicians, the housewives, and many other consumers now had a plentiful supply of deadly pesticides.

“Mankind is to be saved!” The backwash and the eddies of restraint are slow to evolve. The loss of fish, of wildfowl, and wild and domestic animals, is accidental, and assumed to be due to improper usage of pesticides. “No, the product is as safe as children’s candy, or why would the Government allow it to be on the supermarket shelf where anyone can get it?” Such is the inference. But, at last, a fearless scientist, Rachel Carson,⁴ threw a roadblock before the juggernaut. The wheels were momentarily slowed. A strong counterwave resulted against Miss Carson. A question has been raised now in many thinking minds.

At last, some clinicians are becoming aware of pesticide effects on some of their patients. It is becoming apparent that some of the earlier observations of practitioners were fundamentally correct that man, too, may not be immune to the direct action of these chemical poisons. But what of the disturbed plant and animal life about him? Does that have an effect on the total ecology that may materially alter man’s future? There is evidence to support this thesis. The evidence is not all favorable; for instance, it has been found that some insects, which are less harmful but have kept the more resistant and destructive species under control, have been more susceptible to the pesticides. This was early pointed out in the mid-West. Following the early application of DDT, the army worm that had been under relative control by less destructive insects, now took over the fields, and the search for even stronger chemicals was necessary. In one instance, the entire output of an evaporated milk plant had to be condemned because of pesticide contamination. On the farms supplying the milk, the rats and cats died in the barns, and even though this was recognized as being due to the application of pesticides on the farms, the nature of the strange illnesses that were prevalent in the farmers’ families went unnoticed by the family physicians and consultants.

Yes, we can produce marketable hogs in half the time it formerly took, and with 40% of the total food, but what effect do these meats, stimulated by the antibiotics, the tranquillizers, the thyroid-suppressing agents, the artificial hormones, and other additives, have on animals or man –the consumer? A. M. Pearson,⁵ writing in Food and Nutrition News, an organ of the meat packing industry, recognizes that flavor of meat which is lacking in quality, is altered. Does it affect us? It is in such things as this that we of the International College of Applied Nutrition must interest ourselves. Our very name implies the application of nutrition, not only to ourselves, but to the entire biological spectrum that makes for the welfare of man.

“Nutrition is the sum total of metabolic factors that maintains an individual (or species) in a state of health or disease.”

The part that deficiency of the elements that go to make up the diet of animals plays, has been largely denied by many who assume that it is only the presence of fats, proteins and carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, that determine the quality of a food. There is evidence to prove the contrary, but the academic nutritionist discounts the effect, stating that the poor quality food, if present, is there in very small amounts, and the variety of our diet will make up for any loss. Wulzen⁶ demonstrated that planaria could not live and reproduce when fed on a ration of guinea pig meat from animals deficient in the anti stiffness factor. Albrecht⁷ was able to show that the skeletal pattern of rabbits grown on various soils of the State of Missouri were entirely different, not only in size, but in physical characteristics. He also correlated these findings with draft rejections from deficient soil areas.

Pottenger⁸ showed that the kittens of cats on cooked diets developed crooked teeth, while kittens on unprocessed diets had regular teeth. He also found that second generation cats on cooked meat diets showed a tendency to reversal in physical characteristics, the male becoming more effeminate in his bodily configuration, and the female more masculine. This is particularly apparent in the configuration of the skull, although it is also noted in the bodily shape. Similar trends in boys and girls have been noted in clinical practice, and demonstrated in an exhibit at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, New York City, in June 1940.

Pottenger reported⁹ the effects of the manure of both healthy cats and sick cats on the growth of beans and weeds in the soil of the pens that housed the animals. Pointing to the superior development of plants fertilized by the healthy animals. There was a marked difference in the crude fiber and fat content of beans and stocks grown on the soils fertilized by healthy and sick animals.

If the above observations are true, what does the watery, tasteless steak mean to the consuming public? Can it be in any way responsible for pulled muscle and fractured bone in athletes? Does the altered nutrition of the cow stop there, or does it affect man? These are questions that must be known

The knowledge of total ecology as it applies to nutrition is what we profess as a Society. We have attempted to establish a non-specialty society, and a journal which must continue to be thought-provoking, posing questions and seeking answers as to how to maintain biological fitness. What is optimum human physique? What do altered nutritional factors do to man? Price¹⁰ showed how primitive men and women, on optimum diets, obtained adequate bodies. How have other primitive men and modern men failed to reach perfection? How do soils, plants, the micro and macro flora and fauna of the soil affect the micro and macro flora and fauna of the surface of the earth? What do the changes in environmental conditions of soil do to crops and animals, including man? And, what does man, through his contamination of soil, water, and air, do to the flora and fauna of earth, and, in turn, to man himself?

The International College of Applied Nutrition proposes the basic question—­

“CAN MAN SACRIFICE ANY PART OF THE NORMAL ECOLOGY CYCLE WITHOUT EVENTUAL REPERCUSSIONS TO HIS OWN WELL BEING?”

 

Editor’s note: Since the era in which this article was written, society’s understanding of respectful terminology when referring to ethnic and cultural groups has evolved, and some readers may be offended by references to “primitive” people and other out-of-date terminology. However, this article has been archived as a historical document, and so we have chosen to use Pottenger’s exact words in the interest of authenticity.  No disrespect to any cultural or ethnic group is intended.

 

References Cited:

1. Laveran, Bull. of –, Soc. Med.dhop. de Par., 1880, m.
2. Bastianelli, Bignami and Grossi, Rendic.r.Accad. Lincei 1898, 7 :11.
3. Zeidler, O., Ber. deut, chem. Gos., 7, 1180, 1874.
4. Carson, Rachel: “Silent Spring”, Houghton Mifflin 1962.
5. A. M. Pearson, Ph.D., Food and Nutrition News, Vol. 36:5:Feb. ’65.
6. Van Wagtondonk, William J., and Wulzen, Rosalind, Vitamins and Hormones, Vol. 8, Academic Press Inc., N.Y. 1951.
7. McLean, E. O.; Smill, G. E; and Albrecht, W. A., Soil Scientific Society of American, Vol. 8, 1944.
8. Pottenger, F. M., Jr., Angle Orthodontist, Vol. 8, No. 4, Oct. 1942.
9. Pottenger, F. M., Jr., Missouri Ag. Expt. Stat. Res. Bull. 765, 1960.
10. Price, W. A., Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, N.Y., 1939, Paul B. Ho–, Inc..