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Food Facts or Theories – Which to Follow?
Published in Vitamin News, Vol. 7, 1939.
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Most of us possess sufficient common sense to follow the course indicated by established facts rather than to follow a theoretical hypothesis when the two conflict. However, often we are overpowered by the publicity spread by the promoters of theories who profit by such theories, when the facts are of so little profit to anyone that they are not so well publicized.
The facts regarding nutritional matters represent a very outstanding example of such a situation. The exploiters of denatured and synthetic foods that annually destroy more human life than the most bloody war imaginable are not interested in facts. If they can promote a theory that will help sales, such theories are published widely without regard for the real truth. This is not only true about the manufacturers of such denatured foods as white flour and white sugar, but also is true of the manufacturers of synthetic and chemically pure vitamins.
It has been our pleasure to recently read a new book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Weston A. Price, published by Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., New York, 1939. Dr. Price proceeds to delineate some facts, ascertained by himself after traveling to all parts of the globe to get them himself first-hand.
He says that tuberculosis, heart disease, physical deformities, dental disease, and lowered resistance in general were uniform and inevitable consequences in every race or tribe of people where a change from native foods to modern commercial foods took place. To illustrate, in French equatorial Africa the native population in 1911 was twenty million; today two and a half million. Innumerable photographs and detailed examples from all parts of the world are offered as irrefutable evidence for his statements. In high valleys in Switzerland where no commercial foods were brought in, the incidence of tuberculosis was zero, the incidence of dental caries in school children was 0.3 cavities per individual. (Three children had to be examined to find one defective tooth.) This is one twenty-fifth the incidence of caries found elsewhere in Switzerland.
In Australia, after examining skulls of the native race of various periods in museums at Canberra and Sydney, he states that if a scale were extended a mile long and the decades indicated by inches, it is apparent that there has been more degeneration in the last few inches than in the preceding mile. Dr. Price observes, “This gives some idea of the virulence of the blight contributed by our modern civilization.”
Among the natives of the Torres Straits Islands, the same picture was found. The government physician in charge of the group stated that in thirteen years he had seen only one case of suspected malignancy among four thousand Islanders. In the same time he had operated several dozen malignancies in the three hundred of the white population.
The significant statement is made that dental caries is arrested in those native individuals whose diet was changed back to their original form after being on refined foods for a period. The open cavities ceased to be active.
An interesting case at home is described by Dr. Price of a five-year-old boy with rheumatic fever, arthritis and an acute heart involvement who had been hospitalized for two and one-half years. The mother had been told there was no chance of recovery. Severe tooth decay was a part of the picture. (The American Heart Association has reported that 75% of heart disease begins before ten years of age.) Dr. Price changed the white flour part of the diet to whole wheat (fresh), oatmeal, whole milk and high-vitamin butter with extra natural Vitamin D complex (from cod liver). The boy was badly crippled with arthritis, swollen knees, wrists, rigid spine, cried by the hour (bedfast). Rapid improvement occurred under the new diet, and six years later is reported normal except for being taller and heavier than the average.
Dr. Price also relates the failure of the synthetic form of Vitamin D (he refers to the “so-called vitamin D”) known as Viosterol, which produced marked pathological calcification of the kidney in obstetrical cases (tests on a group of 540), which, of course, did not occur in those groups where the natural Vitamin D complex was used (as cod-liver oil).1,2
We think that Dr. Price’s book is a history-making step forward that will stand out among the mass of theory that has flooded the medical world, and which has so misled the public that the word “Viosterol” has almost become synonymous with “Vitamin D.”
The purveyors of such frauds as Viosterol are as criminally negligent as the miller of white flour who bleaches it to remove the last traces of vitamin, so it will not by any possible chance support life, to keep off insects that otherwise would consider it as food. We have nothing but respect for Steenbock, the inventor of the process for making Viosterol, for he was also the original discoverer of the fact that it WAS NOT VITAMIN D, and he published his findings for any interested person to see.3,4 But by that time the commercial interests had taken possession of his process, and he was powerless to retrieve it.
It has since made many millions of dollars for its owners, but at what a price!2,5,6
We have called attention before in these pages to the dangers of Viosterol (Vitamin News, page 51). We have been astonished that a food and drug administration could overlook such a product that is so widely circulated as a nutritional factor for infants and children, that is in reality a death-dealing poison. At the same time we can recall the successful prosecution of a natural food product admittedly harmless where purchasers as well as prescribing physicians testified under oath as to the beneficial and indispensable nature of the article in question. Is it possible that politics enter into the matter of enforcement of the food and drug laws? If that is true, there is no choice left for Patrick Henry’s immortal “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is just “Death”–Death to be dealt out by the highest bidder.
The criminally asinine negligence of the Food and Drug Administration in this case is only equalled by the performance of the War Department in the Civil War and the Indian Wars following. The Winchester repeater was manufactured and available before the Civil War, but the War Department was asleep at the switch. Even as late as Custer’s Last Stand, the soldiers were slaughtered merely because they had to use the pitiful singleshot, antiquated army musket while the Indians were well equipped with Winchester repeaters that all the trading posts had been selling for years in exchange for furs.
It seems to be the history of civilization for the people of a democratic government to be periodically “sold down to the river” by dishonest, ignorant or indifferent public servants. No other argument is needed for a wholesale review of laws intended to protect the people, but which work out to betray them, by taking away their personal liberty to choose what food they must have to live, under the pretence of regulating the sale of drugs.
What is the remedy? PUBLICITY and MORE PUBLICITY. Doctor, if you would like extra copies of this issue to pass out to your patients, drop us a post card stating how many you need. And a letter to your Congressman or Senator would not be out of order, asking him why we have laws that list all foods that cure deficiency diseases as drugs, and which prohibit their sale until the “consensus of opinion” of “experts” has accepted the facts regarding their value. Is this not putting theory ahead of facts? Is not the old principle of law requiring truthful statements as to uses and effects a sufficient protection for the purchaser? And ask him why the laws are not enforced against synthetic poisons masquerading as “foods,” where the facts are so perfectly established? Is it because of the political power and influence of the owners of the Viosterol patents, the Alumni Research Foundation of the University of Wisconsin?
I fear that too many people have been taking for granted the philanthropic motives of that institution. A thousand dollars a day in royalties would put a lot of pressure on anybody’s conscience.
That is why we need a food and drug law. But the really big offenders always get away, and one of their prize tricks is to make it appear by hook or crook that those who see the rotten picture and call public attention to it are themselves law violators. What better way to dynamite criticism? (We have some very interesting facts in our possession for anyone who would like to study this picture further.)
These tactics would be far more difficult of accomplishment if we all insisted on accepting only facts that we could prove ourselves, and no facts are easier to prove than the truth about nutritional products. They either consistently do their work or they do not.
Here is a case where “V-P” concentrates did their work. Can you figure what the mathematical probabilities are of this result being a coincidence? Or would you be inclined to agree with us that it just is a natural result of a more complete nutrition?
This sunny young man of 22 months was prematurely born, an incubator baby, and the attending physician doubted his ability to survive. His father, a chemist, realizing that the only hope for aid was in nutritional support, started the addition of a daily ration of “V-P” vitamins to the milk within a week after birth. At the age of 22 months our young friend won first place in a baby contest over 465 other contenders, with the phenomenal score of 100.
References Cited:
- Price, W. A., Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, page 411, Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., New York, 1939.
- Brehm, “Potential Dangers of Viosterol during Pregnancy with Observations of Calcification of Placentae,” Ohio Surgical and Medical Journal, 33:990, 1937.
- Steenbock, Keltzein and Halpin, “The Reaction of the Chicken to Irradiated Ergosterol and Irradiated Yeast as Contrasted with the Natural Oils,” Journal of Biological Chemistry, 97:249, July 1932.
- Haman and Steenbock, “The Antirachitic Effectiveness of Vitamin D from Various Sources,” Journal of Biological Chemistry, 114,2:505-514, June 1936.
- Bills, Massengale, McDonald and Wirick, “The Action of Activated Ergosterol in the Chicken,” Journal of Biological Chemistry, 106,2:323-330, February 1935.
- Spies, Archives of Internal Medicine, page 433, September 1932.