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Talking About Food
Published in Journal of The American Academy of Applied Nutrition, Vol. 1, No. 3, Autumn 1947.
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(This after-luncheon talk given before a Florida Kiwanis Club is a superb example of talking about nutrition to a lay group in a way that will make them hungry for more food facts. Submitted by C. H. Blanchard, D.D.S.—Ed).
When “Jock” Marshall came into my office in Orlando a couple of weeks ago and asked me to talk at your luncheon today, I naturally thought he wanted me to talk about vitamins as I have been detailing physicians and dentists on these food factors for the past twelve years. But when I asked “Jock” if this was to be the subject, he said, “Lord no, if you get started on vitamins, the boys will never get back to work.” So we settled on FOOD as the subject.
Knowing most of us read Winchell’s column when it is headed, “Things I Never Knew Until Now”, that the quiz programs on the air and the quizzes printed in our magazines and newspapers generally get our attention, I will make this a sort of “DID YOU KNOW” talk about the things we put into our mouths that keep us walking and talking–FOOD!
DID YOU KNOW–that the human race devoured food for many thousands of years before any of us became endowed with sufficient curiosity to start any chemical investigations of our food? That it was only 24 years ago that the molecular structure of cane sugar was first mapped? That we are still in the dark as to just how sugar is assimilated?
DID YOU KNOW–that the selling of food is the oldest business in the world? That every shrewd trick the sellers of food could think of has been used to increase their profits? That new tricks are being thought up every day for the same purpose? I am one of the few “Florida Crackers” left, and should be able to talk about my state without some other “Cracker” popping off that I am just another “Damned Yankee” knocking Florida–so here is one of the cute “tricks” being used on foods here. Citrus growers make use of a potent poison, arsenic, to increase the sugar content of unripe oranges, and oranges are gassed and artificial color added to make them look like tree-ripened fruit. Never a thought given to the food value of such oranges; people buy in good faith and use for their health’s sake. Get ’em on the market earlier–and get a higher price.
DID YOU KNOW–that it is universally accepted today THAT WE ARE WHAT WE EAT? A sort of “YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU EAT AND I’LL TELL YOU WHAT YOU ARE”.
DID YOU KNOW–that Columbus discovered America on account of food? “Old Colombo” was looking for a shorter route to India to get spices which were used then to preserve food.
DID YOU KNOW–that for thousands of years the Chinese would cut your head off for stealing? There was only one exception and this applied to pregnant women; the only thing they were allowed to steal was lemons? The word lemon comes from the Chinese word LIMUNG which means “Beneficial to pregnant women”. The juice and rind of lemons has been a household remedy in China for centuries.
DID YOU KNOW–that vitamin A deficiency is the cause of night blindness, and that the Egyptians used this vitamin 3,444 years ago to cure this condition? This was discovered by Evers, the famous Egyptologist, when he deciphered what is known as “The Ebers’ Papyrus”. This papyrus was devoted to Egyptian remedies, and it was written a thousand years before Hypocrates was born, and “Old Hyp” was born 500 years before Christ. The simple food remedy used to cure night blindness was ox-liver, and it is now known that any liver is a storehouse for vitamins A and D, with traces of B, G, E, and F. It was the vitamin A factor, however, that cured the Egyptians’ night blindness.
DID YOU KNOW–that Dr. Harvey W. Wiley was the most militant food crusader of all history? That he originated the Pure Food and Drug Act, and he was literally crucified by the Refined Food Interests? That his original act would have made Americans a race of Super-Men long ago? This would have been accomplished by the fact that this act would have done away with all refined foods and many poisonous adulterations that have gone down the gullets of us Americans for too many years now.
DID YOU KNOW–that millions of dollars were sent to Washington and used as a lobby fund to defeat Dr. Wiley’s original bill when it looked like “Teddy” Roosevelt was going to try and put this act into force? (I did say “Teddy”). This huge lobby fund was donated by the makers of refined foods, and they whipped right back with more dough to elect William Howard Taft president, and Taft paid off this obligation by ousting this great humanitarian and ditching his original bill.
DID YOU KNOW–that Dr. Wiley then wrote a wonderful book, The History of a Crime, and he had to finance its publication as not one publishing house would publish it? Then when this book was put on sale, it was bought up surreptitiously by the agents of the food refiners, and there is only one copy that is known to be in circulation today and it is in the Boston, Massachusetts, Public Library? There may be a copy in the Library of Congress where copyrights are supposed to be kept on file, but many dark deeds are pulled off in the pantry when it benefits food refiners, so even this copy may have disappeared. “Quien Sabe”?
DID YOU KNOW–that Dr. Robert McCarrison did some outstanding research work on foods in India when he was sent there by the British Government? This work has often been mentioned by Doctor Victor G. Heiser in articles he writes for Collier’s.
DID YOU KNOW–that Dr. McCarrison also wrote a great book, Studies in Deficiency Diseases, and it went the same way that Doctor Wiley’s book did? Yes, more “dark deeds were pulled off in the pantry”, and this book was put out of circulation. It can be truthfully said that up to the present time nothing has been written that would improve on what McCarrison said about nutrition in his great book. It was published by the Oxford Press in 1921, but an inquiry brought a reply that it was out of print. Further inquiries to find out if the plates and copyright for republication could be bought, brought back a reply that the plates had been destroyed. Thus honest men’s souls are tried when they try to help mankind.
DID YOU KNOW–that Dr. Christiaan Eijkmann, of Holland, was sent by his government to the Island of Java in 1897 to try and find some cure for beri-beri, a disease that was so bad that they named it twice? Eijkmann’s research was done on the prisoners in a penal institution, and medical treatments failed utterly. “Old Eijk” was about to give up, but he noticed that the chickens that were being raised in this bastile often “caught” the beri-beri from the prisoners. Being half-smart, he investigated the kind of food these chickens were being fed, and found that about all they got to eat was the boiled white rice that was left on the prisoners’ plates, rice being a large percentage of the prisoners’ food. Then Eijkmann stopped this and fed the chickens brown rice, rice with the bran left on. …The chickens got well in hours. Back on the white rice they went, back came the beri-beri and fast. Paddy rice was then used, rice with the hulls left on, and the recovery was just as rapid as it was with the brown rice. It is claimed that “Old Eijk” almost wore them out by making them sick and getting them well. He announced his findings to a skeptical world of science, but his findings finally bore fruit and some of the Far Eastern countries passed laws against the sale of white rice, and the incidence of beri-beri was reduced to a minimum.
DID YOU KNOW–that solutions made from rice bran brought us this over-worked word VITAMINS? It happened in the Lister Research Laboratories in London, England, in 1912. A Polish Jew named Casimir Funk was doing some research with solutions of rice bran. Realizing some life force existed in this rice bran, which demonstrated such in the test animals, and wanting to coin a catch-phrase for this factor, he hit upon the word VITAMINE; “vita” for life, and the “mine” from amines, which make up the amino acids in our gastrointestinal tracts of which there are twenty-two and ten of them known as to be essential to life. This was the birth of VITAMINS as the letter “e” was later dropped. Now when some mealy-mouthed announcer starts beating your ears back over the radio all day long, and half into the night, you will know whom to blame. Remember this, though, when this announcer insists that you run out and buy this and that for its high B1 content, that Mr. Rice Bran was its Papa as this bran is very high in this B1 factor, but it is a natural B1 that exists in rice bran, and not some synthetic abortion. That natural synergists in natural foods help natural vitamins produce natural results?
DID YOU KNOW–that the higher the minerals in the soil, the higher the vitamin content of plants grown in this soil? That the best definition you can apply to a vitamin is that it is the hormone of the plant world? That one of their main functions in growing plants is to convert inorganic minerals into organic form? They have a similar job when we eat vitamins, they metabolize food minerals for us.
DID YOU KNOW–that you are knocking on the Jail-House door if you insist that vitamines from a natural food source are better foods than synthetic vitamins? Yep, our government even aids and abets refining of food factors like vitamins, even though they have duties like this to perform, for “without vitamin A we could not see, vitamin B we could not keep warm, vitamin C we could not stop germ invasion, vitamin D we could not develop in the first place, vitamin E we could not move our muscles vitamin F we could not breathe or absorb oxygen, vitamin G we could not think, vitamin K th blood would leak through the blood vessel walls”. Vitamins are food factors, so you can see what a lot of work our foods have to do. These are facts, and as such it is easy to see “WE ARE WHAT WE EAT”.
DID YOU KNOW–that you have never tasted WHOLE WHEAT BREAD unless it was made from freshly ground wheat? That the whole wheat flour the grocer sells and the baker uses has been bleached and treated by gas so insects won’t eat it? That only three months of the year you can ship non-treated whole wheat flour from Minneapolis to Boston without it becoming bug laden? That one of the outstanding business successes of recent years is a baking concern that was started in Connecticut nine years ago? Its bread is made from whole wheat flour fresh from the grinder, it sells for 25 cents a loaf, and it is sold in the New York City area. They sell as much bread as the leading baking company in the same area which distributes white flour bread at half the price? This firm was written up in Reader’s Digest some time ago. This is proof that the taste appeal for freshly ground wheat is just as irresistible to humans that buy it as it is to insects.
DID YOU KNOW–that the Canadian Government put a stop to the fraud of putting synthetic vitamins and minerals into white flour? That several years ago Canada passed a law prohibiting this so-called “enrichment” of white flour? It’s the Hoose-Gow for you if you sell enriched flour or bread in Canada. You can sell plain white flour or “Canada Approved” whole wheat flour with all of the natural vitamins retained. No, they won’t let you “paint the lily” in Canada as they made tests on this “enriched” stuff and found it was the bunk, so the thumbs went down in Canada. Insects won’t touch “enriched flour” any more than they will white flour, so it should behoove us to be behooved and have as much sense as bugdom.
DID YOU KNOW–that the only food that is fit to eat is perishable food? That even this food is no better than the soil in which it grew? This applies to milk from cows, eggs from hens, and meat from animals that live on this soil. The way food is handled, the way it is kept, the way it is cooked, all have a bearing on its food values in our bodies. Once more we repeat, “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT”.
DID YOU KNOW–that Food and Life, the Yearbook of Agriculture for 1939, was the first time our government ever published anything worthwhile about FOOD? It is worth writing your Congressman or Senator for a copy. Many Senators’ and Congressmen’s mail has been increased by the boosting I have given this wonderful book.
DID YOU KNOW–that animals know good from bad food? At the University of Missouri, Department of Soils, tests were made on hogs with corn grown on highly and poorly mineralized soils. Regardless of the different hybrids of corn, the hogs ate only corn that grew in the highly mineralized soils. Further checking showed that the rats in the warehouse cut only the bags of corn that were chosen by the hogs. Poor dumb animals, yeah? Personally, I believe that man possessed these natural instincts before countless years of so-called “civilization” had so dulled them by so many artificialities, which in turn gave mankind a rather depraved palate for foods.
DID YOU KNOW–that buffaloes had sense enough to stay in western Kansas where the short buffalo grass grew on soils that were rich in calcium, magnesium, and phosphates, as well as many other minerals, and that no barriers existed to keep them from roaming over to eastern Kansas and feeding on the high, lush, blue-stem grass that covered that section? No thanks–Mr. Buffalo knew his groceries, and he knew that this short buffalo grass had the stuff in it that kept his body strong and his reproduction high. He should adorn our silver dollar and not the twentieth part of it…
DID YOU KNOW–that the very “Flower of Our Young Manhood” that were called into service for the present war, was ONLY 22% lower in physical ability to pack a gun than they were in World War No. 1? That in the same section where the buffalo got his food, 85% to 95% passed perfect physical tests. While in one southern state, 7 out of 10 were turned down as physically unfit? The “po” unfit boys could hardly defend a hen roost, let alone their native land…
DID YOU KNOW–that these facts make for a hellish indictment of our present day food? Why not call them “POOR F’s” instead of 4F’s, and make the “F” stand for FOOD? Yes, we have Health Departments in every city, town, state, and nation, and they are worked to death trying to get sick people well. Large endowments are made to find what BUG makes us sick, but little is spent to improve the nation’s FOOD. The layman is finding out, “YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU EAT AND I’LL TELL YOU WHAT YOU ARE”, faster than the “Microbe Hunters”. We run like hell to every new thing to CURE disease, but walk oh, so slowly, to find out what depletes us so we are set up to catch disease. What a run we made for the Sulfa Drug Cure-all! Now we are hell-bent to overtake Professor Penicillin, yet I believe that the Professor may work out okeh, at least he comes from FOODS, as molds from cheese, bread, lemons, melons, etc., were his forebears. Old medical lore books made claims for Roquefort cheese that sounded almost like the hurrah for Penicillin, and Roquefort is good food, mold and all, if you can get it past your Durante.
DID YOU KNOW–that it took Old Dock Heard, the dentist from Hereford, Texas, over 23 years to get the Texas dentists to believe him when he told them that “down around Hereford, the natives did not have tooth decay”? These smart dentists walked away from him just that many years and thought he had gone slap-dab NUTZ. Finally, Dr. Taylor, State Dental Inspector, believed the old boy, investigated, found out it was true, and Hereford became “The Town Without A Toothache”. If you read about this in Collier’s, you will remember it was the good grub grown there that prevented tooth decay. This soil, too, is loaded with calcium, magnesium, and phosphates, as running down from up in Canada to the Rio Grande is a fairly wide area of land that is high in these minerals, and it was in this belt that 85% to 95% of the draftees were physically fit for fun and fighting. It was where the buffaloes “roamed” and the antelopes did a lot of playing ‘fore we sang about it.
DID YOU KNOW–that these facts should make you do some thinking when you run down to the store for devitalized food? IF it makes you think, you may arise above most people that run to get a “Coke” to last from breakfast to lunch, from lunch to dinner, and dinner to bedtime. Yes, it IS a great life if you don’t weaken, but that 22% increase of physical wrecks the recent war has shown up, makes it look like we ARE weakening, and weakening mighty fast in the past quarter of a century.
DID YOU KNOW–that this is the end of my talk?