Our Dependence Upon Vitamin Rich Products and Their Source

The combined responsibility and opportunity of the persons associated with the dairy industry is probably not excelled by that of any other groups of society, because the key to modern degeneration or race decline will, for a large part of our population, depend chiefly on the quality of our dairy products. This does not mean that the lowering of the quality of dairy products in intrinsic food value is entirely the fault of dairymen and conveyors of milk, cream and butter. In considerable part the deficiency goes back to the soil which produces the plant life to provide fodder for the animals producing the milk. While the problems of race decline due to faulty nutrition can be impeded and to a large extent overcome by improvement in food products, the task is not an easy one, though a profoundly important one.

In order that we may get a bird’s-eye view of the Nature of the forces at work and the indicated means for their improvement, it is important that we make a general survey of Nature’s great biologic experiment and observe what her methods have been in various environments that have been provided by the earth’s surface for supporting humans. This will require that we study primitive racial stocks in a large variety of environments. To do this I have visited fourteen primitive racial stocks in different parts of the world ranging from physical environments from the Arctic to equatorial regions and from isolated islands in vast oceans from sea level to the high Alps and high Andes, including torrid equatorial jungles. It is of interest that while these environments have proved to be vastly different from the physical components, it is of great significance that in each of these Nature has been able to provide a nutrition adequate to build and maintain sturdy races that have persisted through long periods of time. Indeed many of the racial stock that are conceded to have reached the highest degree of adaptation to a difficult environment and to achievement in democratic organization are two of the oldest races living on the earth today; namely, the Australian Aborigines and the Eskimos of Alaska and Greenland. They are not only Stone Age cultures but antedate most of the buried cultures of historic times.

The problem with which we are primarily concerned is our dependence not simply on dairy products but their intrinsic qualities in the matter of providing essentials for life and reproduction. Unless dairy products can be radically improved our modern civilization, particularly in central American districts, must seek and find other sources of these vital products. There are probably only two important sources available for reinforcing the nutrition of the masses in our American and most European communities. While these are much more difficult to obtain, the urgency of the need must overcome all difficulties since the problem is one of the continued existence of our race.

We will go first to the high Alps of Switzerland and observe that a racial stock has been developed and maintained for many centuries of very high quality so long as they restricted their nutrition to the local foods available in that community. By the use of entire grain foods and dairy products, the former from rye and the latter from milk of goats and cows they have maintained their racial stock without impairment so long as the groups have remained isolated in the high valleys where only the locally produced food was available. Fortunately, physical isolation of many of the high valleys made it essential for the foods to be restricted to the local products. There were qualities produced in each the rye and the dairy products which were highly efficient in maintaining human physical standards. The dairy products were produced by pasturage and hay grown in the clear atmosphere of the high ultra-violet watered by melted snows which themselves brought down nitrogen from the atmosphere for fertilizing the fields with the result that the vitamin level of the butter-fat was much higher than that produced at lower levels, particularly on depleted soils.

Fortunately in this experiment but not so for humanity, we have in susceptibility or immunity to dental caries a yardstick for evaluating the merits of a given nutritional program. The people of these districts have been characterized by very high immunity to dental caries so long as they remained on these local foods supplemented, of course, with green foods during the summer and some stored root foods in the winter. They lost their immunity in a relatively short time when they changed from the diet provided by those isolated valleys to the modernized foods of the plains country.

We are primarily concerned in the role played by the dairy products in providing this immunity. Similarly we will note the effect of the nutrition at sea level in the Islands of the Outer Hebrides. This environment cannot maintain dairy animals and cannot mature rye or wheat, although they are able to mature oats in their short summer season. With the various oat products they have used fish and various sea foods very liberally. This combination has again produced exceedingly favorable results as is illustrated by a study of the individuals.

The Eskimos of Alaska have a still different environment. Bleak winteres, short summers, a hazardous life on the sea, and the bitter cold blizzards of winter have not prevented them from building magnificents physiques, again with their high immunity to many modern expressions of degeneration, by the use of very liberal quantities of sea food of which seal oil and seal meat, walrus, fish of various kinds constituted a major part.

Of these groups, the Outer Hebrides and those in Alaska, who have displaced their native food with modern foods of commerce, typical expressions of individual and racial degeneration rapidly set in. The Eskimos have put great dependence upon seal oil and sea animal life for essential body builder minerals and vitamins.

While we are all familiar with the necessity for having a rich, electric spark in order to produce power from gasoline in our automobiles, very few people, even among dairymen, appreciate the necessity that dairy products must have a type of spark which we will call an activator, in order that the human body may utilize the minerals provided in that food. This is splendidly illustrated in the case of a boy four-and-a-half years of age with a broken leg and in the late stages of convulsions, such that the preacher who brought him had been called to the home to baptize him for burial, the family thinking he must die. He had been in a cast many weeks with no healing of the broken bone which had been broken by simply falling on the floor at the time of one of his convulsions. I was advised that his fits had been getting progressively worse for 3 months. On inquiry regarding his food, I was advised that he had lived practically entirely for a long period on bread and milk. These, however, proved to be white bread and skimmed milk. It is important that the minerals needed for making the bone were practically all in the skim milk but he could not utilize them without the spark that had been taken out with the cream. His convulsions were due to the low level of calcium in his blood. The treatment that was highly efficient was simply a change from skimmed milk to whole milk, and from white flour broad to freshly cracked whole wheat served as a porridge and the addition of a small quantity of a very high vitamin butter. He was taken home and given his first meal that evening. He slept all night without a convulsion, whereas he had been having usually several an hour. The next day he was fed five times on this menu and did not have a single convulsion, nor did he have any further convulsion.The ununited fracture is shown at the left in Figure 1, and at the right splendidly united in four weeks time, at which time he was removed from the cast. This boy is shown standing on the broken leg at the time he was taken from the cast. His recovery was complete. He went for years without a convulsion. Incidentally his teeth had been very badly attacked by dental caries. This ceased to progress with the improved [nutrition].

We are concerned particularly with the method of operation of these two types of diet; why the one was so inadequate and the other so efficient. As an approach to this let us consider man’s place among plant and animal life of the world. Since animal life is dependent primarily on plant life, directly or indirectly, let us consider one of the minerals with which we are chiefly concerned; namely, phosphorus. On the average approximately one thousand part of the earth’s crust is phosphorus. When plants grow, however, they require to contain approximately thirty parts per thousand dry weight of phosphorus. Animal life that eats the plants, however, require approximately 100 parts per thousand dry weight. But this one part in a thousand of phosphorus in the soil only provides a total of a thousand pounds in the top seven inches of an acre, the depth to which a plow goes. We have then a limiting factor for phosphorus in our tillable land. For a city bushel crop per acre of practically any of the food grains will take from the soil approximately 25 pounds, which will only be enough if it all could be used and available for plant food for 40, sixty bushel crops. We see at once why it is that, so far as phosphorus alone is concerned, entire areas have experienced a reduction in the capacity of the land for supporting animals, amounting to from 25 per cent to fifty per cent in the last fifty years. For large areas of our highly populated states a reduction in the capacity for supporting dairy animals and beef cattle has been fifty per cent. The problem of replacement of this phosphorus involves great difficulty, including an expense which has been estimated at Fifty Dollars an acre. Without the phosphorus, and indeed without the proper combination and quantity of minerals, plants not only cannot grow but cannot produce their vitamins.

It will assist us further in evaluating this phase to see the effect on a monkey of a continued diet of demineralized and devitalized foods as provided by his mistress. This is shown in Figure 2. Note that the bones of the legs have been so completely demineralized that they are not able to support the tension of the muscles and are drawn all out of shape.

Nature provides for taking minerals from the skeleton in order to supply the soft tissues and blood, including the brain, with minerals at the expense of the skeleton. In the foregoing case the skeleton had been practically completely softened.

Another striking illustration of this process is shown in Figure 3, which presents four views of a fowl. The minerals were provided in the food but the fowl was deprived of the activators, including fat-soluble vitamins, such that its skeleton has progressively softened until the bird was completely prostrate and incapable of supporting itself.

In Figure 4 we see the reverse process, the chicken that is down in A is up in B by the simple procedure of adding a small amount of the vitamins that are necessary for utilizing the food. This can be accomplished quite as well by rubbing the high vitamin butter on the back of the chicken’s neck as by putting it into the chicken’s stomach.

This problem of demineralization constitutes one of the major problems in all our modern processes of degeneration. A splendid illustration of its direct effect on cattle is shown in two views of the same steer in Figure 5. At the left it is shown when on a good pasture. You will note the horns are in normal position over his head. He was transferred to a pasture that was inadequate in mineral content with the result that his horns rapidly dropped as shown at the right; indeed, they extended so far beyond his now that it was with great difficulty that he could get his mouth to the grass to feed himself. When an animal has its skeleton badly demineralized, blood and other tissues of the body suffer.

In Figure 6 we see three rats. They all received wheat products as their basic food. The one at the top had all that Nature put in the wheat as it is freshly ground. In the center view is shown a rat from the cage having the white flour product. You can see at once that its hair is coming out in patches. It was poorly developed and incidentally had a very bad disposition and all in this group were unable to reproduce. The rat in the lower picture was from the cage receiving bran and middlings from which the embryo had been removed. It is poorly developed and lacked the normal activity of rats on an adequate diet.

In Figure 7 we see a comparison of the mineral content of the wheat eaten by these rats, and the blood of the rats. At the left will be noticed a comparison of the calcium that was very greatly reduced in the white flour as was also the phosphorus, which incidentally is shown here in one-tenth the total quantity. The copper and the iron all show marked differences in the three wheat product, being particularly low in the white flour. A study of the blood of these rats showed a very marked difference in both the total phosphorus and the iron. Another factor that was lacking in the rats in these three cages was a source of the fat-soluble vitamins.

One of the greatest problems with which our modern civilization has to deal at present has to do with the source of essential fat-soluble vitamins for the utilization of the minerals. Humans being mammals are physically constructed to utilize dairy products efficiently. Large masses of our people are undertaking to supply the essential fat-soluble vitamins from liver oil of fish, particularly cod liver oil. Few people have realized how easy it is to injure human children, even adults, by taking large doses of fish liver oils for an extended period of time.

In Figure 8 we have a picture of each a chicken and a rabbit that have been paralyzed by the use of cod liver oil, in which the doses per body weight were approximately that amount advocated for children.

Another illustration of the comparative value of fat-soluble vitamins where provided from dairy products as compared with fish liver oils is shown in Figure 9, which shows the comparative influence of butter vitamins and cod liver oil vitamins. The rats in these three pages were placed on a deficiency diet and developed marked rickets in the control groups, cage number 1. Cage number 2 had in addition liver cod liver oil as 2½% of the total food. In the third cage they received in addition a high vitamin butter concentrate equal to 2½% of the diet. There was marked healing of the rickets in this group as illustrated in the X-rays of their tails. Even more important, however, was the effect of these different diets on special organs, particularly the kidney.

In Figure 10 we see that whereas there was marked degeneration of the kidney in both cages 1 and 2, there was also a large stone produced in the kidney and a marked degeneration of the uriniferous tubules. In the third group however, receiving in addition the butter vitamins, a minute section of the kidney shows the glomeruli in normal condition and function without calcification.

Much can be learned from the X-ray structure of the skeleton as shown in 11. This shows a paw and tail of each of two rats. The one to the left, number 1, had only the deficiency diet, whereas the one to the right had in addition 2% of butter vitamin concentrate. The chemical analysis of the blood also shows a marked difference in each the calcium and phosphorus, as illustrated by the height of the columns 1 and 2.

The comparative value of a high vitamin butter as a source of vitamin activators is shown in Figure 12. This shows the X-rays of the leg and forepaw disclosing the wrist, the femur and the tail from rats of each of 8 cages. All had the same diet except the activators as indicated; number 1, no activators, number 2, 0.5 per cent butter activators; number 3, 1 per cent butter activators; number 4, 2 per cent butter activators; number 5, 4 per cent butter activators; number 6, 8 per cent butter activators; It will be seen at once that there is a marked difference in the calcification and growth of the joints as the dosage increases. Number 7, however, received instead of butter vitamins 2 per cent cod liver oil, and the healing is not nearly so marked as the 2 per cent butter activators. Number 8 received 2 per cent of each cod liver oil and butter activators, and it shows excellent healing. This illustrates an important advantage in the combination of these two sources of vitamins in this particular case.

Figure 13 is particularly instructive. Some young turkeys were brought to me with the report that they were developing rheumatism notwithstanding that they were on a commercial food that was supposed to provide the essential vitamins. The results show the effect of seven days’ treatment. The turkey standing gained four times as much on the butter concentrate with cod liver oil addition to the diet as those on the commercial food, and twice as much as those on the cod liver oil alone. The difference in the calcium and phosphorus levels of the blood in the three groups is strikingly shown in the height of the two columns at the right.

In my studies of primitive races I am continually impressed that they have some physical qualities that we of our modern civilization apparently have lost. One has to do with the ability to select foods of superior nutritive content. We are familiar with the fact that pasturing animals will wander through the field and select clumps of grass apparently by a distinct sense of preference, passing over what might appear to be even more vigorous samples of growth. A chemical analysis of the cutting made from the plants that were selected when compared with plants that were rejected has shown a marked difference in the minerals content of the two types of plants. It is important that many animals demonstrate to use this quality of conscious ability in the matter of food selection. Animals in the wild do not have the restriction of caged members. Chickens, for example, not only produce eggs with a higher degree of hatchability but with better shells and have a higher production of eggs. It is important that with the plant life they also use for food various forms of insect life, which themselves are receptacles of vitamins in concentrated form. When, however, chicks are put in cages and cannot select insect life such as grubs and worms, they rapidly decline when kept entirely on grain food, unless some other source of activation is provided.

The experiment next to be reported I placed groups of chickens in three pens in which the cereal diet was augmented by an opportunity to eat some butter from a small dish that was placed in the cage. In each of the three different cages butters of different vitamin levels were used; namely, high in both A and B activators, high in A and low in D and low in both A and D. When 25% of the chickens are dead in the cage with a butter low in both A and D, 16% were dead in the cage with high vitamin A and low vitamin D, none had died in the cage with butter that was high in both A and D. It is important that these chicks had the opportunity to eat all they wished, but notwithstanding this they did not eat enough more of the low vitamin product to make up for its deficiency in vitamin level. It was observed, however, that just the opposite occurred, namely, that much more butter was eaten in the cage with the high vitamin butter than in the cage with the medium or low vitamin butter. Accordingly, I repeated the test using 40 chickens in one cage and using three different grades of butter in the same page, the material being weighed in each day and the uneaten part being weighed out. The butter dishes were placed in different parts of the cage from day to day so they had to search for the high vitamin product. It was of interest that they ate twice as much of the high vitamin butter of the low vitamin butter, whereas not a member of my staff or myself could tell any difference in the three samples of butter in taste, smell or appearance.

Another illustration of the difference in the numbers of deaths occurring in three pens of chickens on three different grades of butter on the basis of the vitamin content is shown in Figure 14 at the left, in which it will be seen that when 72% were dead in the pen with low vitamin butter, only 24% had died in the cage with high vitamin butter, and at the right when 18% of the high vitamin butter had been eaten in the groups where all types of butters were present, only fifty per cent had been eaten of the low vitamin butter.

These striking illustrations of the difference in the butter of different levels and their effect on animals is similarly strikingly illustrated in the matter of humans by the control of dental caries or tooth decay.

Figure 15 shows a typical bad case of dental caries. Note that the tooth structure is shown in light areas and the demineralized and destroyed structures in dark areas, where the minerals have been destroyed. Clinically I find it possible to control dental caries close to one hundred per cent depending apparently chiefly on the cooperation of the individual by making available diets that contain adequate quantity of minerals in suitable form and essential vitamins for utilization of the minerals in the form of a high vitamin butter. While splendid results are provided with a very high vitamin butter, the effect on humans is apparently no better with low vitamin butter than demonstrated with the chickens. When the vitamin and mineral content are adequate tooth, decay cannot only be checked but Nature is induced to make an important protective reaction in the teeth; while the cavity produced by the falling out of the demineralized tooth structure does not itself fill in, the soft leathery decay under an adequate reinforcement of the nutrition becomes hard and glassy by a process like petrifying wood, through minerals being deposited in the leathery dentin from the saliva, and more important, the dental pulps on the interior of the tooth is induced in cases that are still not beyond repair to lay down a new layer of dentine inside the pulp chamber beneath the approaching dental caries, thus putting a barrier or roof over the vital pulp and the point of irritation. This is illustrated in Figure 15, which shows progressively at the head of the arrow reading from left to right the mineralization within the pulp chamber.

While the phenomena of tooth decay is not completely understood or a general agreement provided as to the contributing factors, certain fundamental conditions seem to be established. First, the actual process of attack and breaking down of the enamel surface of the tooth is largely the result of acid produced locally by bacterial growth. The conditions which control this process have to do with both providing a pabulum or culture material for acid-producing organisms. In other words,a condition which relates entirely to the effect of foods while in the oral cavity. Another has to do with the effect of food on the blood and saliva and tooth structure. The fact that primitive racial stocks that I have studied in various parts of the world do not have tooth decay in spite of the fact that no effort has been made by practically any of them in the matter of oral prophylaxis and mouth cleanliness; whereas these same individuals, when they change their food from those provided by that community as selected by the accumulated wisdom of the group and adequate to produce high immunity to dental caries to the less efficient foods of commerce, chiefly white flour products, canned goods, sugar and sweets–in other words, largely demineralized and devitalized foods–they lose their high immunity to dental caries in practically all groups. Even the simple process of reducing sugar and starches and white flour products and replacing them with natural foods has been demonstrated to make a great improvement ranging from 50% control of dental caries to 83% according to the age group. This process alone does not produce nearly as complete control of dental caries as the reinforcement of the nutrition with special fat-soluble activators, particularly high vitamin butter.

As an illustration of the high efficiency of a well-controlled diet in reducing dental caries, we see in Figure 16 the effect on 48 patients of all ages in which the average number of new cavities in the period was 0.73, whereas in the group which received additional activators had only 0.05 cavities per individual. In the adult age groups, 1.55 cavities per individual developed, whereas no cavities developed in the nine with additional vitamins. In 18 individuals in the teen age group without special activators, there were 2.0 new cavities per individual, whereas there were only 0.11 cavities per individual in the 9 receiving special vitamins. It will be seen that the control has been very close to a hundred per cent.

Figure 17 also illustrates the effect of special vitamins. The dotted line shows the caries level in the different age groups that received no additional vitamins; whereas the lower solid line shows the effect on those with the special vitamins. This group of individuals is divided into ten year age groups.

One of the very important misapprehensions has to do with human efficiency in utilizing minerals that are present in the foods. Dr. Julia Outhouse and her coworkers in the University of Illinois have shown that preschool children utilize about 20% of the calcium of milk; whereas in an adult subject the percentage retention of dietary calcium is about 20%. (Ref. “The Utilization of the Calcium of Milk by Pre-School Children” by Glady Kinsman, Dorothy Sheldon, Elizabeth Jensen, Marie Bugad Bernds and Julia Outhouse, J. Nutrition 17:429 May, 1939.)

The studies of that group give further very important data. In a study of seven adults to ascertain the amount of calcium they could take from two foods, namely milk and carrots, it was found that the average for the seven was only 24.1% of the calcium from milk and 13.4% of the calcium from carrots. One individual was able to utilize 30% of the calcium from milk and 34% of the calcium from carrots. None of the individuals were able to use all of the minerals provided in these two foods.

It is probable that there is general misapprehension not only on the part of the laity and professional groups but even the committee appointed by the government to outline adequate menus for maintenance of health.

In my laboratory and clinical studies with animals and humans, I am frequently called upon to assist in cases of ununited fracture. While in Africa I was told that the soldiers that developed broken bones were nearly all sent to Europe to repair and heal. This notwithstanding the fact that primitive races there seem to have no trouble in health fractures. I found on careful study that they had special food programs for the individuals with broken bones. Figure 18 shows the result of an ununited fracture in 35 days that had been ununited for many months. This also shows marked improvement in several of the blood factors, particularly the calcium and inorganic phosphorus, the product of these two increasing from about 24 to 60% during the period of this healing.

Another striking illustration is shown in Figure 19 which had been 227 days without union before the special reinforcement of the nutrition. Splendid union was produced in 115 days after reinforcement of the nutrition. Again, the marked improvement in blood chemical factors is shown.

One of the striking illustrations of the dependence of animal life on the quality of the soil producing the plant life is provided by the comparison of the effect of transfer of large Percheron horses from England to the Falkland Islands, in which they declined from the large stock as expressed in Percheron draft horses to the size of ponies in a few generations. A comparison of the mineral content of the grasses in the two pastures is shown in Figure 20, in which it will be seen that practically all the minerals except chlorin are much lower in the Falkland Island pasture than in Lord Ashton’s horse paddocks in England, the fiber content is much higher in the Falkland Island grasses than in Lord Ashton’s pasture. Note particularly the difference in the level of the calcium from 0.2% to 26% and phosphorus from [ ] % to [ ] %.

It is important in this connection that a broad program of education of the masses be instituted. Most people think of breads as relatively comparable particularly if provided from the same variety of wheat. The Canadian government has carried out comparative tests with wheat samples grown in different parts of Canada using the same seed grain in all experimental plants. They have kindly sent me samples of these wheats for chemical analysis. In Figure 21 will be seen a comparison of the quantity of the various minerals when these seed wheats were grown in seventeen different parts of Canada. Note, for example, that in the case of iron, whereas when the wheat was sown in one particular district the iron content was sixteen times as high as when the same seed was grown in another district. This means that one would have to eat about two loaves of bread to get enough iron per day if grown in the latter place, whereas one or two slices would be adequate if grown in the other place in order to provide a day’s requirement of iron.

In further consideration of this problem, particularly as it relates to pasturage plants or dairy animals, I have analyzed the minerals content of any pasturage plants, 8 of which are shown in Figure 21. Note the marked difference in the level of each calcium, potassium, phosphorus and magnesium, ranging up to five and 100 fold difference in some cases. Yet looking at these plants they would appear to most people to be comparable. This becomes a very important matter when selecting fodder, particularly pasturage areas for cattle and other dairy animals. It is important to keep in mind that the soil determines the level of the minerals for each the grass, the animals blood, animal’s milk, eggs of chickens as shown by the height of the columns for the several minerals presented in Figure 22.

When these data are applied to the demands of the dairy cows’ body, both for maintenance and milk production, it is readily shown that she cannot produce efficient dairy products and maintain her own body on fodders of inadequate mineral content. In the first group in Figure 23 the requirements for phosphorus, calcium and potassium: are shown for the maintenance of the cow’s body; in the second group is shown the amount of these needed for five gallon milk production per day; and in the third group the amount of these that must be provided in the fodder. The amount of minerals that were available in this particular pasture that was causing the breakdown of cattle in Texas is next shown, and in the fifth column of figures we see that only calcium is provided in sufficient quantity in the grass grown on that soil to maintain her body, whereas both phosphorus and potassium were inadequate.

In Figure 24 we see cattle from Texas and New Mexico areas. The one at the right from Texas has loin disease and the two at the left were markedly deficient. The graph shows the comparison of the mineral content of their bloods with that of normal blood of cows on adequate nutrition. One of the cows to the left had a broken leg produced by spontaneous fracture.

The rate at which plants grow has a very marked controlling effect on the vitamin content. In general the long days of northern summers produce a much higher vitamin level in the foods than the shorter days growth of more southern latitudes. The reindeer of the far north live largely on lichens, which have a period of rapid growth during the summer and then are frozen down and remain in cold storage for winter use. It is eaten by the reindeer who paw through the snow to obtain it. This produces animals of very superior physical qualities.

While in central Africa among the cattle tribes, I was advised that their method of selecting good cows to keep in the herd was to observe how quickly their calves could stand and run to escape from predatory animals after they are born. Unless they were very vigorous at birth they had very little chance of surviving. This is also the reason why in most districts they used long-horned cattle, which had high capacity for self protection.

While in Alaska I was advised by the reindeer herders that young reindeer could be dropped in a foot of snow and could almost instantly run–if need be at 40 miles an hour–to keep away from the wolves who would be waiting for them. In Figure 25 we see a reindeer doe and fawn; the latter had been born in the snow and typical of this high vitality of these reindeer. I was told by Mr. Lomen that he had frequently seen young reindeer calves less than a day old go on a wild dash with a herd that had gone on a rampage, and that he had never seen a calf knocked down, and that it would even run underneath the large animals even though they were so young. I was also advised that these young female calves could become pregnant in some cases in six weeks after birth, and give birth in turn to a fawn the following season. In Figure 26 we see a typical reindeer herd of the far north.

Since the level of vitamins in the food control so directly the health of individuals and their susceptibility to disease, it is not surprising then that the vitamin curves for our foods when arranged in order of the months in the year is in opposite phase to the curves for sickness and death, as shown in Figure 27. It accordingly becomes imperative that the vitamin content of our foods shall be reinforced in the winter and spring months. In my studies of the practical application of these principles, I have found that the use of dairy products, particularly butter fat that is produced in districts capable of providing high vitamin content butter at definite times of the year, will go far toward providing a simple means of reinforcement of the nutrition or the control of dental caries and many other expressions of degeneration. Of all the various food products that contribute directly to fodder for dairy animals, the best that I have found is rapidly growing young green wheat, rapidly growing rye, oats and barley. As a means of selection I have been procuring samples of dairy products from many places throughout the world through a series of years. In the last fifteen years there has been received and analyzed in my laboratory over 30,000 samples of dairy products. From these data it is very clear that there is a marked seasonal variation in the vitamin level for given places, and indeed changes that are directly related to changes in climate, which control the plant growth. 

One of the districts that I have made extensive studies in has been western Texas and eastern New Mexico. In Figure 29 I have shown fluctuations of the activator content of butter produced from wheat pasturage in conjunction with native grasses in a herd of cattle at Texaco, New Mexico, through a period of nearly two years’ continuous observation. At the time the wheat pasturage was lush, the vitamins have also been relatively high, but even rapid temperature and humidity changes produced a rapid decline in the vitamin content. For example, the level was high in November, 1939, it dropped as a result of a frost and blizzard to a very low level in a week’s time. Similarly there was a marked fall in two periods of growth in 1931. The dairy products obtained at the time of the peak have proved to be very efficient in the control of dental caries and healing of united fracture and in general health problems.

We have at once by this simple procedure an indication of one of the means whereby dairy products can be greatly enhanced. For the people in the high valleys of Switzerland, the cows sought the pasturage near the glacier to get the rapidly growing grass at that point that had been recently watered by the melting snows and glacier. This irrigation water proved by experiment to be very much more efficient in plant growth than the use of distilled water because of its higher content of nitrogen. The natives of these high valleys were careful to cut the grass at the time it was in its lush growth and store it in proper barns for winter use. This gave them their high vitamin content dairy products the year around. We can similarly, by the storage of suitable grasses at the time of their lush growth and feeding in the dry form in the winter time, provide fodder for cows that will be adequate for maintaining a high level of vitamins in the dairy products throughout the winter.

 

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 Price’s exact words in the interest of authenticity.  No disrespect to any cultural or ethnic group is intended.