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Nutritionally Speaking: Junk Food Corn Flakes Finances Great Nutrition Study
Typed manuscript, undated.
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Dear Dr. Meinig: It seems incredulous that most well-educated, supposedly smart people fail to recognize the connection between what kind of food they eat and what happens to them health-wise, and that includes doctors. I know from your articles that you are trying to change that but this is such a national and world-wide problem, is anything happening on a broader scale to provide enlightenment? – K. F.
Dear K. F.: Yes, but it will surprise you to learn that the vehicle to carry out such an important task appears to be a monumental book published in 1989. Its original concept and study was directed to the health of pregnant teenagers and the birth weight and subsequent problems of their offspring.
The study covers, with exceptional clarity, the background of the broad aspects of nutrition and its related subjects. More importantly, it tackles the division of thoughts that exist between conventional medicine and nutritional scientists so expertly that it could well be the instrument that stimulates the integration of nutritional subject matter into the curriculum and practice of medicine.
The book is called, The Kellogg Report–The Impact of Nutrition, Environment and Lifestyle on the Health of Americans. The 735 page volume has a $30.00 price tag. It is written in easy to read language, and at the same time is highly professional. The public will love it and doctors will recognize the importance of its scientific bases.
Its authors are Joseph D. Beasley, M.D., and Jerry Swift, M.A.
In 1978 Dr. Beasley began to review the medical literature to see if a broader approach to the practice of medicine would improve its results. His background and credentials are very long and impressive, fully preparing him for the task that enfolded.
In 1980, he became a Bard Fellow in Medicine and Science, and with the help and sponsorship of the Ford and Kellogg Foundations, and grants of $2.5 million, Dr. Beasley was privileged to spend the next seven years studying the first-rate researchers in the various disciplines, all of whom had their work published in the scientific literature.
It is common for physicians to criticize nutrition writers by saying “there is nothing scientific to prove their claims.” Dr. Beasley found, as have those of us involved in nutrition, that the data was there in the literature but it was not being applied to the day-to-day practice of medicine. One of the reasons was that nobody had the job of pulling the findings of the superspecialists together in practical form for physicians to use.
The failure of medical schools to provide the available information has made doctors feel they could not support what they interpret as the exaggerated expectations of the American nutritional establishment. On the other side, many biochemists, physicians and others–including Nobel Laureates like Linus Pauling and Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and researchers like Roger Williams and Jonas Salk–find nutrients so basic to human metabolism that ignoring them over a period of time results in human illness, particularly chronic conditions that high-technology medicine can’t get a handle on.
It is impossible in a short article to cover the extent [of] super excellence this volume encompasses and how it can broaden the approach to health care and prevention.
Perhaps the strange tricks that fate can bring and are involved here will prove some kind of a reverse stimulus to our understanding. It is the high profits of the Kellogg Company’s Cornflakes and other refined cereal products that end up enriching the Kellogg Foundation. Now the grant using their ill-begotten gains ends up in a book that reports such cereals are a causative part of our health problems.
It will be interesting to see if this symbolism aids the professions and the public to at long last see the true scientific basis that is involved in understanding the treatment of disease and its prevention.
Along that line, Dr. Beasley had this to say:
“We intend its publication (The Kellogg Report) to satisfy the need for a broader paradigm of health policy and practice, which will be required if this crisis (health care) is to be met head-on, a paradigm that acknowledges the significance of genetics, nutrition, and lifestyle and incorporates them into the mainstream of health policy and practice.”
To purchase The Kellogg Report–The Impact of Nutrition, Environment and Lifestyle on the Health of Americans, send $30.00 to the Institute of Health Policy and Practice, Bard College, 221 Broadway, Suite 301, Amityville, NY 11701.
Those who strive for optimum health will find the work of Dr. Beasley a most pleasant and beneficial pursuit.