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Why Children Need Vitamins
Published in Vitamin News, Vol. 1, No. 5, October 2, 1933.
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The child’s need for vitamins begins before birth. The morning sickness of pregnancy is nothing more than a warning of vitamin deficiency. After birth, growth and development (physical and mental) is delayed by vitamin deficiency. Susceptibility to the usual children’s diseases, rickets, tooth decay, even a peevish disposition are due to vitamin deficiency and a consequent incomplete assimilation of calcium and phosphates, chiefly the latter, as recently demonstrated.
Mellanby has stated that Vitamin D is more important than minerals in determining tooth development.
“Dr. Agnew…stated that his extensive experiments on laboratory animals and humans indicate that phosphorus and Vitamin D are the important nutrient elements in the prevention of dental caries. With the laboratory animals, phosphorus assumes a major role, but in humans, Vitamin D becomes of great importance” (See Dental Cosmos, September 1, 1933, page 919).
The use of Vitamin D preparations alone has been of rather limited benefit, and Viosterol has been shown to be of definite harm in many cases.
We quote again the Dental Cosmos, August, 1933, page 780, Marshall: “How illogical then, in fact, how unwarranted, are the efforts of those not sufficiently trained in the medical sciences to attempt therapy by dietary prescription.”
Dr. Marshall is absolutely right. To give massive doses of any such potent material as any vitamin alone, without exact knowledge of what is taking place, is nothing less than reckless. Single vitamin therapy can cause any amount of endocrine unbalance, and the results will differ with each individual. To exclusively make use of single vitamin concentrates requires an insight into the particular requirements of each patient that it is practically impossible to attain.
“Catalyn” was developed to make this unnecessary. It is an attempt to supply the entire category of vitamins in the correct proportion, which will successfully treat any deficiency disease if taken in amounts up to four tablets a day. Two per week are considered sufficient to supply the vitamin requirements of the adult or growing child where no accumulated deficiencies exist.
Since vitamins (“C” and “D” in particular) are necessary to the normal assimilation of mineral materials, mineral deficiency in the child is likely to be apparent, where a diet low in vitamins is used. This mineral deficiency in the child is often more apparent than real, because of the limited assimilation of what mineral materials are present, as a consequence of the low vitamin diet.
Candy, all white sugar or its products, and white flour including its products such as macaroni, spaghetti, crackers, etc., should be absolutely barred from the diet of the child. Commercial ice cream is almost as bad. The vitamin and mineral content of these “food” materials is almost nil.
This is not too strong a statement. Dr. Quigley, quoted below, who probably is the best American authority on deficiency diseases, records the same opinion.
All these are energy-producing foods that contain no building materials for the body. The consequences of their toleration are susceptibility to infections, enlarged tonsils, carious teeth, unruly dispositions, stunted growth, rickets, maldevelopment and very often permanent damage to many of the organs of the body (especially the endocrine glands) that depend upon the vitamin supply for their normal function and development.
Honey, unrefined sugar and fruits should be the only source of sweets for the child. As a crude comparison it is just as sensible to put fuel into your automobile and forget the all-important lubricating oil as to permit the diet of the child to consist largely of fuel and no other components. The universal presence of the diseases herein mentioned is ample proof that we have been negligent.
We have been more than negligent. Let us quote Dr. D. T. Quigley, for 17 years instructor in Surgery at Nebraska State Medical School.
“Officials in medical societies, medical writers, and universities are being subsidized in order to put out propaganda in favor of food conditions as they now are. Some of the officials in medical societies have openly stated that they do not believe in upsetting business. Apparently business for them ranks higher than human life.”
The effrontery of the makers of devitalized foods is exemplified by the full page ads in the medical journals attempting to convince the physician of the merits of synthetic glucose (corn syrup) as a food for infants. As examples of artificial, chemically created “foods” totally devoid of vitamins or nutritional mineral materials, such products probably cannot be beat. This looks like pure propaganda, intended to offset the growing suspicion on the part of the consuming public that all is not well with the foods we are being “sold.”
The sugar institute has spent large sums advertising in the dental journals, trying to offset the idea, always prevalent among dentists, that candy and sugar are bad for the teeth. It is true that these foods are not directly injurious to the teeth, but they satisfy the appetite of the child without supplying the vitamins and minerals that should accompany all foods in the correct and sufficient proportion. If they are absent, carious teeth inevitably result. It is nothing short of criminal to satisfy the child’s appetite with foods that are obviously incomplete such as Dr. Quigley says form 60 to 90 per cent of the total food intake of civilized Americans.
Remember, “Catalyn” is a reliable and quick-acting remedy for colds, whooping cough, influenza, or any infective disease. It is doubtful whether pneumonia can develop where the vitamin reserve is maintained. The high concentration of “Catalyn” enables you to correct in a few hours the deficiency accumulated over months and years.