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The Hygienic System
Part 2 of 2
Vegetable vs Animal Proteins
Animal experimenters are prone to overemphasize the importance of the food
substances that they regularly use with which to supplement inadequate diets
and to ignore, almost wholly, the natural order of feeding.
For example, milk is a very handy item of food and is used very much as a
dietary supplement in these experiments. It usually suffices to render
adequate an otherwise inadequate experimental diet; hence the experimenters
are prone to emphasize the "value" of milk and to completely ignore the
obvious fact that in nature, animals secure an adequate diet without resort to
milk after they are weaned.
Their experimental diets are almost never the diets of the people; nor are they
the diets of animals in nature.
There is a tendency of this class of experiments to mislead both the
experimenter and the people as a whole, inasmuch as they ignore the many
other food supplements that are equally capable of supplementing the
inadequacies of a monodiet or of a deficient but somewhat varied diet.
In experiments on dogs deficient diets were fed to a group of dogs. To this
diet was added, for some of the dogs, a given quantity of milk. The dogs that
got the milk grew and developed normally. The dogs not receiving the milk
were stunted and poorly developed.
It would be folly to reason from this that dogs require milk for normal
development, for we know that dogs can and do develop normally without
getting milk after they are weaned.
All that such an experiment proves is that milk added to an otherwise deficient
diet will render the diet adequate. But there are hundreds of other ways of
rendering the diet adequate, as all animals in the wild state are well aware.
Indeed, it is probable that many of the other ways of rendering the diet
adequate are superior to the milk.
Milk after the normal suckling period has ended is far from being an unmixed
blessing.
Experiments with the different proteins would easily lead the unwary to
believe that the elephant, cow, horse, buffalo, deer, rabbit and other strictly
vegetable eating animals cannot live and grow on their vegetable diets, but,
actually, we know that they do very well on such diets. This is because they
never eat but one kind of protein (never eat individual isolated proteins). Their
diet is varied. One protein corrects the defects of another.
Another fact strikes the serious student of dietetics: namely, the
experimenters never seem to consider nuts, which are certainly important
constituents of man's normal diet, as worthy of their attention; yet most nuts
contain complete and high grade proteins. Green vegetables also contain
high-grade proteins, although in very small amounts.
But when these are added to the diet in large quantities, as in consuming large
daily salads, they are capable of supplementing the deficiencies in an
all-cereal diet and rendering this adequate. The experimenters are fond of
comparing legumes and cereals with flesh foods, and neither of these classes
of foods form parts' of man's normal diet.
The biological value of the different proteins is tested on animals, commonly
on rats. These are rapidly growing animals. A protein may prove to be
incomplete or partially complete when fed to animals of rapid growth and may
prove to be complete when fed to animals of slow growth.
No doubt, too, different species require the different amino acids in varying
amounts, even for maintenance. We know that the protein in human milk is
especially rich in tryptophan, more so than the protein of cow's milk, an amino
acid vitally important in the growth of the infant and young child.
No broad generalizations about the value of the different proteins are,
therefore, possible. When a protein has been shown to be complete, partially
complete or incomplete for a particular species it can be said to be so only for
this species. It may prove to be otherwise when fed to another species with
different requirements. The underworld notwithstanding, man is not yet a rat,
and "rat-pen" results are not fully applicable to his nutrition. The final test
must be upon man.
We are frequently told that meat protein is more easily assimilated than
vegetable proteins. There is no evidence for this statement, but it may be
argued on the other side that the frequency with which allergic manifestations
follow the use of animal foods indicates that these are less easily assimilated
than vegetable proteins.
The assertion is based upon a failure to take into consideration, not the
difficulties, but the differences (largely of timing) in the digestion of the various
foods: not of various proteins, but of various foods.
Muscle meat, the kind most commonly consumed, is a very poor food. Its
inadequacy is made manifest by the failure of captive lions to reproduce
themselves on a diet preponderantly of this food. Berg says that the protein of
potatoes is more efficiently utilized by the body than that of flesh. Hindhede
has also shown the protein of potatoes to be adequate.
On the other hand, we are not concerned so much with the relative values of
specific proteins, or even of the proteins of one protein-carrying food, but with
the total value of all the proteins contained in our customary diet: and not with
the proteins alone, but with the total diet.
The whole question involved is best expressed thus: Is meat, as a whole,
superior to vegetables as food? When we consume flesh or vegetables, we
do not confine ourselves to their protein constituents, but eat the whole of
them and they must be considered in their entirety.
There is nothing in the protein of the flesh that the animal did not derive from
the plant. Not being able to synthesize amino acids, the animal merely
appropriates these, ready-made, from the plant, in the form of plant proteins.
Man can do this as efficiently and as easily as the lower animals. Plants yield
up their amino acids to man as readily as to the cow.
Green vegetables contain proteins of a very high quality, though in small
quantities. Nuts, on the other hand, rank with or even surpass, flesh foods in
the quantity of their proteins, while their proteins are of equal rank with those
of flesh. At the same time, nut proteins are "free from pathogenic bacterial or
parasitical contamination" to use Clendening's words.
It is argued that plant proteins are "poor" because "they contain unnecessarily
large amounts of some amino acids and little or none of others." It should not
be overlooked, however, that we consume several vegetable protein foods
and the deficiencies of one are made up by the richness of another. The
excess of amino acids in vegetable proteins is never great.
That the individual proteins in grains and some other plant foods are
physiologically inadequate is sufficiently demonstrated, but the sum-total of
the various proteins in those foods, or shall we better say, in the diet as a
whole, is usually fully adequate.
A protein is said to have higher physiologic or biologic value the smaller the
amount of it required to supply the needs of the animal. Based upon this
standard, the whole egg is ranked at 94; milk, 85; liver and kidney, 77; heart,
74; muscles meat, 69; whole wheat, 64; potato, 67; rolled oats, 65; whole corn,
60; white flour, 52; navy beans, 38.
By this standard, vegetable proteins in general are said to be nearly always
inferior to those of animal origin. The proteins of peanuts and soybeans are
listed as exceptions, their proteins being complete.
There is no appreciable difference between the muscle meat of cow, hog or
sheep. These relative values were determined by tests made on rats, dogs,
etc., and are not necessarily valid for human nutrition. It will be noted that nuts
are again ignored in this classification of biologic values.
The fact that proteins are completely digested, that is broken up into their
constituent amino acids before absorption proves, we believe, that highly
complex proteins are not really wanted as foods. While it is true that it is part
of the function of the digestive tract to extract impurities and non-congenial
substances from the food and avoid these, it is not well to abuse the digestive
system by foods that are too rich, that is, too complex. This will be made more
clear in the chapter on food allergies.
The plant is the best and original source of building materials that our diet can
supply. The really "vital and abiding union sought after in animal nutrition, is
between the amino acids of the plant and the blood of the animal."
In conformity with the principle of reciprocity and reciprocal differentiation
operating in the organic world, we want in our diet proteins quite different from
our own.
There is a tendency in many quarters to exalt meat proteins as superior to all
other forms of protein. The adequacy of flesh proteins as growth factors is
especially stressed. That flesh proteins contain all of the essential amino
acids is frequently asserted.
Meat (flesh) protein is the most valuable of all forms of protein, is a frequent
assertion. Berg points out that:
"This cannot be accepted as a positive fact as regards the protein of individual
muscles, only as regards the aggregate proteins of an animal body used as
food."
Abderhalden also points out this fact. This is especially true if the meat is not
accompanied with a large supply of base-forming foods. Berg points out that
carnivorous animals, living in a state of nature, "ensure a supply of bases by
drinking the blood of their victims and devouring the bones and the cartilages
as well as the flesh."
It is also true that wild carnivores consume considerable quantities of fruits,
berries and buds. Cats are often observed to eat vegetable foods. Wild
carnivora especially eat such foods in the Autumn, although in the Spring they
are likely to subsist exclusively upon the fruits of the kill.
It has long been known that if a dog is fed on flesh from which the juice has
been extracted, he becomes emaciated after a time, toxic symptoms develop,
and death rapidly follows. Skeletal changes characteristic of osteoporosis
and osteomalacia are found upon postmortem examination. The extraction of
the salts of the flesh causes death.
It is well to keep in mind that the different organs of the animal body differ in
their amino acid content. As has been pointed out before, not merely every
species of animal, but also, within each animal, every organ, has its own
peculiar kind of protein.
For this reason the different organs of the animal body are not equally
complete or "valuable" as sources of amino acids. One advocate of flesh
eating deplores the fact that "some patients are unfortunately averse to eating
entrails. Entrails, like liver" he says, "kidneys, heart, spleen, etc., are extremely
rich in certain vitamins and other valuable constituents and their regular use in
this diet is to be greatly encouraged."
To receive all the value of a flesh diet, it is necessary to eat the whole
animal--not, however, as is the case in eating whole oysters, the feces, also.
We want, not merely amino acids, but amino acids in ideal combination with
other indispensable substances--minerals, vitamins, and carbohydrates--such
as only plants can furnish. These other substances are essential to the full
utilization of proteins.
Meat protein, when deprived of its minerals, destroys life. Animal proteins are
not ideally combined with these other substances. The most ideal substances
for animal and human nutrition and the most ideal blends of these substances
are to be found in the spare products of plants.
There is also a tendency of the experimenters to place too much importance
on gains in weight. They find more rapid growth, or a greater gain in weight,
or even greater ultimate growth, on some diets than on others.
Too much reliance should not be placed in reported gains unless the kind of
weight gained is specified. We are not interested in fattening beef cattle nor in
mere bigness. Accelerated growth and precocious development are far from
desirable accomplishments.
Nor are results in one generation nor in a short time sufficient to establish the
ultimate effects of a particular diet.
It is now asserted by all experimenters that the duration of the earlier dietetic
experiments was usually too short. Berg says that his own first experiments
lasted for a week. Later he extended them to two weeks, then to several
months. It is now known that an experiment must often run through several
generations to yield dependable results.
Unfortunately the importance of the time factor is not yet fully appreciated.
Nature has carried on countless dietetic experiments, lasting not just a few
weeks, or a few generations, but for ages. Our experimenters have failed to
notice the results of long-time experiments of this nature. Their belief in
"struggle" and "survival" has prevented them from recognizing the role of
nutrition in integration, disintegration and re-integration--in two words,
evolution and degeneration.
The advocates of flesh eating are particularly prone to close their eyes to the
results of ages of flesh eating. With no valid standard of normal growth, they
fix their attention upon the growth promoting effects of flesh.
They ignore the evils of precocious development and an accelerated growth.
Their standard of mere bigness is the same as that of the stock raisers. One
could easily think that they are growing children for the market; that the
children, after they reach the "fryer" or "broiler" stages are to be sold by the
pound.
The larger they grow, the more money they will bring. Accelerated growth
tends to be unbalanced growth. There is likely to be overgrowths and
undergrowths that render the finished organism inferior. But, I must again
emphasize, one generation or even three generations of such feeding is not
sufficient to unfold its ultimate results.
CARBOHYDRATES
This is the name given to certain organic compounds of carbon that are
produced by plants in the process of growth from carbon, hydrogen and
oxygen, with the oxygen and hydrogen in proportions to form water.
In everyday language we know the most important of these carbohydrates as
starches and sugars. As will be seen later, carbohydrates are complex
substances composed, in most instances, of simpler substances, or building
blocks, called sugars.
Chief among the carbohydrates are:
Fruits--Bananas, all sweet fruits, hubbard squash, etc.
Nuts--A few varieties--acorns, chestnuts and coconuts.
Tubers-potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, artichokes, parsnips, etc.
Legumes--Most beans, except some varieties of soybeans, all peas, peanuts.
Cereals--All grains and practically all cereal products. (Gluten bread is not a
carbohydrate.)
The reader will notice that grains and legumes are classed both as proteins
and carbohydrates. This is due to the fact that they contain enough of each of
these food elements to be placed in both classes.
Nuts, for the same reason, are classed both as proteins and as fats. Milk,
commonly classed as a protein is really low in protein. It may with equal
justification be classed as a sugar or carbohydrate. All foods contain more or
less carbohydrates, as they all contain more or less protein. Most foods
contain some fats, but there is none in most fruits nor in the green leaves of
vegetables.
The body cannot use starch. It must first be converted into sugar before it can
be utilized by the cells. This is done in the process of digestion and begins in
the mouth. Disaccharides and polysaccharides are converted into
monosaccharides in the process of digestion, as carbohydrates can be
absorbed and assimilated only as monosaccharides.
Starch must first be converted into sugar and the complex sugars must be
converted into simple sugars before they are absorbed. The body's need for
sugar may easily be supplied without eating commercial sugars and syrups,
or any form of denatured carbohydrate. Child and adult, alike, should eat only
natural sweets and starches.
Sugar is the most important building material in the plant world. A
characteristic difference between plants and animals is that, whereas, the
animal is built up largely out of proteins, the plant is built up largely out of
carbohydrates.
Plants may be truly said to be made of sugar. They contain various minerals
and some nitrogen, but practically the whole fabric of the plant or tree is
composed of sugar in some form. Sugars are essential constituents of all
plants without which they cannot exist. Indeed, sugars are the most important
and most abundant building materials in plants.
Out of the immature or sap sugars plants build their roots, stems, flowers,
fruits and seeds. The finished plant is almost literally made of sugar.
Nature produces sugars out of three gases--carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
Oxygen and hydrogen in proportions to form water are taken from the water in
the soil. Carbon is taken from the carbon dioxide of the air. Out of these
gases, or out of this fluid and gas, the plant synthesizes sugar, a thing the
animal cannot do.
The green coloring of plants is due to the presence of a pigment known as
chlorophyll. This pigment takes part in a chemical process known as
photosynthesis, by which, carbon-dioxide (or, at least the carbon in the
carbon-dioxide), with the aid of sunlight, is united with water to form sugar.
Recent experiments have shown that enzymes contained in the leaves of the
plants are the chief agents in the production of this sugar. Some plants can
produce sugar in the absence of light.
Not only the starches of plants, but also the pentosans, the woody fibers,
cellulose and gums are made of sugar and may be reconverted into sugar.
When carbohydrates are stored for long periods they are stored as starches.
When they are used, they are reconverted into sugars.
Corn, peas, etc., are sweet (full of sugar) before they mature. The sap of the
corn is also sweet. The sap of the cane plant is very sweet. In the matured
state, corn, cane seed and peas are hard starch grains. In the germinating
process the starch is reconverted into sugar. As starches, these seeds will
keep for long periods of time; as sugars they would not keep until the
following spring.
It will be noticed that the enzymes in seed do not require ultra violet rays and
acid to bring about this reconversion, any more than do the enzymes in
digestive juices.
Fruits are ready for immediate use and if not used soon after ripening, tend to
decompose rapidly. Grains are intended for storage. It is significant that fruits
are composed of insoluble starches and are usually rich in acids before they
ripen. In this state they are usually avoided by animals. The starch is
reconverted into sugar in the ripening process.
This arrangement protects the seed of the fruit until it is matured and ready for
dispersal. Then the fruit is ripened and made ready for food.
The animal, like the plant, builds its carbohydrates out of sugar. All starch
foods must be converted into sugar (in the process of digestion) before they
can be taken into the body and used. Animal starch (glycogen) is made from
sugar. It, like the starch of grains, is a storage product. Like the starch of
grains, it must be reconverted into sugar before using. The sugar in milk may
be made from starches.
The matured or fruit sugars of plants, especially those of fruits, are particularly
appropriate for food. They are never concentrated and are always well
balanced with other ingredients. They are built up out of the immature sugar
and impart to both fresh and dried fruits their delicious flavors. Matured
sugars in flowers are collected by bees and made into honey. Fruit sugars
are, in truth, export products produced by plants.
All the sugar the body requires may be obtained from fresh ripe fruits. This is
especially so during the summer months. During the winter months when
fresh fruits are not so abundant, dried (but unsulphured) fruits are excellent
sources of sugar.
These should not be cooked. Owing to the absence of water, dried fruits are
more concentrated foods then fresh fruits and should not be eaten in the
same bulk.
Just as fruits are savored with their matured sugars, so vegetable foods are
savored with the immature juices (saps) of the plants. In the plants, as in the
fruits, the sugars are combined with vitamins, mineral salts, fibre and other
elements of foods.
It is essential to emphasize that sugars constitute but one of the ingredients of
plant life and are never put up in their pure state. In fruits and plants they are
always combined with and balanced by other ingredients, particularly with
salts, vitamins and water. Man, not nature, produces concentrated sugars.
Man, not nature, separates the minerals from sugar. Sugars should be eaten
as nature provides them.
Commercial syrups and molasses are concentrated saps. Besides being
concentrated, usually by the use of heat in evaporating the water, they are
commonly deprived of their minerals and vitamins, often have preservatives,
artificial colors and flavors added and are often bleached with sulphur dioxide,
with which they become saturated.
Commercial sugars--maple, cane, beet, and milk--are crystallized saps. They
too, are unbalanced, commonly bleached, and thoroughly unfitted for use.
So concentrated are these syrups and sugars, so denatured and so prone to
speedy fermentation in the digestive tract, that it is best not to employ them at
all.
If they are used they should be used very sparingly. The same rule should
apply to honey. This food of the bee contains all the other nutritive elements
in very minute quantities, being largely water and sugar with flavors from the
flowers. If it is eaten, it should be taken sparingly.
What a difference between eating sugar cane and eating the extracted,
concentrated and refined sugar of the cane! It is said that it takes a West
Indian native an hour to chew eighteen inches of cane from which he derives
the equivalent of one large lump of sugar--less than the average coffee-drinker
puts into a single cup of his favorite poison. (The boys and girls of Texas and
Louisiana can chew sugar cane faster than the West Indian native, it seems.)
In thus securing his sugar, the cane-eater secures the minerals and vitamins
that are normally associated with sugars--he does not eat a "purified" product.
Sugar is regarded as an energy food, but it is a remarkable fact that the heavy
sugar-eater prefers to watch athletic games to taking part in them. We, of
course, have reference to the heavy-eater of commercial sugars. They seem
to stimulate and then depress the muscular powers.
It has long been the Hygienic theory that the catarrhal diseases are based on
carbohydrate excess--sugar excess, as all starches are converted into sugar
in digestion. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that the British Medical
Journal for June 1933 carried an article discussing "the relation of excessive
carbohydrate ingestion to catarrh and other diseases" in which it was pointed
out that during World War I, the incidence of catarrhal illnesses was reduced
seemingly corresponding with the great reduction of sugar consumption.
The writer of the article concludes that: "restriction in the use of sugar would
result in improvement in the national health as regards catarrhal illness, as well
as in other directions."
HYDROCARBONS
Hydrocarbon foods are those rich in hydrocarbon--fats and oils.
Hydrocarbons are composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. In the animal
body, fats may be manufactured out of sugars and proteins. Fats are
produced in the plant out of sugar. Chief among the hydrocarbon foods are:
Fruits--olives, avocados.
Nuts--almost all varieties.
Legumes--peanuts, soybeans.
Dairy products--cream, butter and some cheese.
Flesh of dead animals, especially pork and mutton and beef that have been
fattened. Fat fish--herring, shad, salmon, trout.
There are many kinds of fats--solid and liquid. Fats and oils are formed in
plants, and fruits when ripening. A decrease in sugars accompanies the
increase in fats. It is but another evidence of the importance of sugar in the life
of the plant and, thereafter, in the life of the animal.
While the animal is capable of synthesizing fats out of starches and sugars, it
is not capable of taking hydrogen, oxygen and carbon and synthesizing fats
out of these.
The fat of the animal differs from the oil of the plant, just as do the proteins of
the animal differ from those of its food supply. Each animal builds its own
characteristic fats out of its foods. Fats and oils are complex substances that
are made up of simpler substances, which we may call the "building stones" of
fat. True fats are composed of fatty acids and glycerol--or glycerides. Fats
differ according to the fatty acids and glycerides, which they contain.
Stearic, palmitic butyric and oleac acids are the most common glycerides
found in edible fats. The stearates are combinations of stearic acid with
glycerol--stearin. Several fatty acids are present in all fats. In butter there are
palmitic, oleic, myristic and butyric acids. Stearic acid is present in suet (hog
fat), palmitic acid is abundant in vegetable and animal fats. Oleic acid is found
in most fats and oils. Such vegetable oils as olive, cottonseed, peanut,
almond and cocoanut oils contain large amounts of olein.
Fats are split up during the process of digestion into fatty acids and glycerol.
Fats and oils, like proteins and carbohydrates, are not usable as such, but
must be broken down into their constituent "building stones" and these
"building stones"--fatty acids and glycerol--are used with which to build
human fats.
Mendel asks "are there essential fatty acids that must be supplied in the diet
because they cannot be produced de novo by the animal organism?"
Although both he and Hindhede have shown that green stuff can take the
place of fat in the diet, there are facts that lead us to believe that it is, at least, a
great saving to the body if some fat is supplied.
Although the body can synthesize fats out of carbohydrates and proteins,
there are certain fatty acids that it is incapable of synthesizing and these are
essential to animal life. Three unsaturated fatty acids--linoleic, linolenic and
arachaidonic--cannot be synthesized by the animal organism.
Only one of these is considered essential, for, as in the case of certain amino
acids, they can replace one another in animal nutrition. Rats fed on diets
lacking in the essential fatty acids cease to grow, develop scaliness of the
skin, caudal necrosis, emaciation, kidney lesions and early death. Certain
blood deficiencies are also seen when these fatty acids are lacking in the diet
of animals.
Besides the fatty acids supplied by the fats in our diet, fats also contain
fat-soluble vitamins and minerals. Large quantities of fat are not required, but
a small quantity daily is essential to normal development and maintenance
and to good health.
Fat serves as a protection and as a packing and support for organs, forms
emulsions and lubricants, serves as storage for reserve "fuel" enters into the
constituents of the walls of the body's cells, and is an essential element of the
nervous system.
Lecithin, a widely distributed fat is very important in human nutrition, being an
essential ingredient of the brain and nerves and also of the semen. Lecithin
contains, besides the fatty acids, phosphorus. Insufficient fat tends to lessen
nervous efficiency.
On the whole, vegetable oils are superior to animal fats as human foods.
Cream and butter (unpasteurized) are the best of the animal fats employed as
foods. Fats, like sugars, are best taken as nature prepares them; that is in the
foods in which they exist.
Most nuts are rich in oil and form the best sources of fat for human
consumption. Fats, when extracted from their sources, concentrated, purified,
and preserved, form poor foods. Many of them have all their vitamins
destroyed and are devoid of all minerals.
For example, in the process of rendering hog fat into lard, the fat is boiled for a
long period and everything skimmed from the top until nothing remains but
"pure" fat. All the minerals and vitamins are destroyed and removed.
Long cooked in this way, the lard is practically indigestible. Olive oil, peanut
oil, soybean oil and other vegetable oils are best eaten in the fruits, legumes
and other plant substances in which nature prepares them.
Fats must be digested before they can be used. The cells of the body cannot
use complex fats. The fats must first be reduced to a few simple acceptable
substances in the process of digestion. The skin is not a digestive organ. It is
not able to take complex fats and break them down into their simpler
constituents and then make use of the fatty acids and glycerol thus formed.
For these reasons "skin foods" composed of some cream or oil, to be rubbed
on or into the skin, cannot nourish the skin. They only grease it--that is, make
it dirty. The skin must be fed from within. It contains very little fat and this
must come from the blood. Blood is the only food of the tissues of the body.
It is folly to try to feed our tissues with any other substances.
ORGANIC SALTS AND VITAMINS
As separate chapters will be devoted to these two classes of substances, little
more will be done here than to classify the chief sources of them. The mineral
salts enter into the composition of every fluid and structure of the body.
Inorganic salts cannot be substituted for them as will be shown in a
subsequent chapter. The animal lacks the ability to take the crude elements of
the earth and synthesize these into acceptable organic compounds.
Vitamins of which there are a number, are also produced only by the plant.
The animal body is capable of taking certain provitamins and completing their
synthesis. But it is not capable of producing vitamins de novo. They serve as
enzymes.
Vitamins and organic salts are distributed throughout nature and are present
in varying quantities in all food substances. Fruits and fresh vegetables are
especially high in them. Fruits and vegetables will be treated in separate
chapters. Here we are interested in them, largely as sources of these food
substances. Chief among these rich sources of vitamins and salts are:
(1) Succulent (watery, juicy) Vegetables:
Leafy Vegetables--celery, lettuce, kohlrabi, cabbage, spinach, dandelion,
endive, turnip tops, mustard, parsley, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale,
chard, lotus, cress, field lettuce, romaine, chicory, rhubarb, beet tops, radish
tops, etc.
Fruiting Plants--okra (gumbo), cucumbers, squash summer squash, pumpkin,
string beans, green peas, corn "in milk" (fresh), etc.
Tubers--Asparagus, beet, carrot, turnip, radish, onion, cone artichoke,
rutabaga, garlic, oyster plant (salsify).
(2) Juicy Fruits:
Acid: Orange (sour), lemon, lime, sour apple, grapefruit, pineapple, peach,
sour plum, apricot, cranberry, loganberry, pomegranate, strawberry, tomato.
Sub-Acid: Melons--watermelons, musk-melon, cantaloupe, casaba, honey
dew, etc.,--sweet grapes, huckleberry, fresh figs, pears, etc.
Many other foods are used, both in America and other parts of the world, but
all may be placed in one or the other of the above classes. Some foods such
as nuts, grains and legumes, may be placed in two classes.
The bountiful hand of Mother Nature has supplied us with an abundant and
pleasing variety of foods. This wonderful variety of foods which are designed
to please the senses of sight, taste and smell, as well as supply the needs of
the body, are all made of but a few simple elements of the soil--"the dust of the
earth."
Together with water, oxygen and vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, fats and
minerals form the constituents of the body. These must be taken into the
digestive tract and there prepared for the use of the body, before they are
allowed to enter the body and before they become part of the body.
The material composing a leaf of lettuce cannot be anything but a leaf of
lettuce, until it has died from that state and then, after it has been
disintegrated, its elements may be built up into the tissues of man. Digestion
is the disintegrating process.
Our present knowledge of the role of digestion in nutrition shows positively
that the parental administration of food is without value. The process of
digestion disintegrates food into fragments, which represent the true
nutrients--proteins are reduced to amino acids, carbohydrates to simple
sugars, fats to fatty acids and glycerol and it is claimed that ions may be
liberated from the organic salts during the process of digestion. These things
serve as the structural or metabolic units and nothing else will or can.
By: Herbert M. Shelton
This concludes Part 2 of 2
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Part 2 of 2
Vegetable vs Animal Proteins
Animal experimenters are prone to overemphasize the importance of the food
substances that they regularly use with which to supplement inadequate diets
and to ignore, almost wholly, the natural order of feeding.
For example, milk is a very handy item of food and is used very much as a
dietary supplement in these experiments. It usually suffices to render
adequate an otherwise inadequate experimental diet; hence the experimenters
are prone to emphasize the "value" of milk and to completely ignore the
obvious fact that in nature, animals secure an adequate diet without resort to
milk after they are weaned.
Their experimental diets are almost never the diets of the people; nor are they
the diets of animals in nature.
There is a tendency of this class of experiments to mislead both the
experimenter and the people as a whole, inasmuch as they ignore the many
other food supplements that are equally capable of supplementing the
inadequacies of a monodiet or of a deficient but somewhat varied diet.
In experiments on dogs deficient diets were fed to a group of dogs. To this
diet was added, for some of the dogs, a given quantity of milk. The dogs that
got the milk grew and developed normally. The dogs not receiving the milk
were stunted and poorly developed.
It would be folly to reason from this that dogs require milk for normal
development, for we know that dogs can and do develop normally without
getting milk after they are weaned.
All that such an experiment proves is that milk added to an otherwise deficient
diet will render the diet adequate. But there are hundreds of other ways of
rendering the diet adequate, as all animals in the wild state are well aware.
Indeed, it is probable that many of the other ways of rendering the diet
adequate are superior to the milk.
Milk after the normal suckling period has ended is far from being an unmixed
blessing.
Experiments with the different proteins would easily lead the unwary to
believe that the elephant, cow, horse, buffalo, deer, rabbit and other strictly
vegetable eating animals cannot live and grow on their vegetable diets, but,
actually, we know that they do very well on such diets. This is because they
never eat but one kind of protein (never eat individual isolated proteins). Their
diet is varied. One protein corrects the defects of another.
Another fact strikes the serious student of dietetics: namely, the
experimenters never seem to consider nuts, which are certainly important
constituents of man's normal diet, as worthy of their attention; yet most nuts
contain complete and high grade proteins. Green vegetables also contain
high-grade proteins, although in very small amounts.
But when these are added to the diet in large quantities, as in consuming large
daily salads, they are capable of supplementing the deficiencies in an
all-cereal diet and rendering this adequate. The experimenters are fond of
comparing legumes and cereals with flesh foods, and neither of these classes
of foods form parts' of man's normal diet.
The biological value of the different proteins is tested on animals, commonly
on rats. These are rapidly growing animals. A protein may prove to be
incomplete or partially complete when fed to animals of rapid growth and may
prove to be complete when fed to animals of slow growth.
No doubt, too, different species require the different amino acids in varying
amounts, even for maintenance. We know that the protein in human milk is
especially rich in tryptophan, more so than the protein of cow's milk, an amino
acid vitally important in the growth of the infant and young child.
No broad generalizations about the value of the different proteins are,
therefore, possible. When a protein has been shown to be complete, partially
complete or incomplete for a particular species it can be said to be so only for
this species. It may prove to be otherwise when fed to another species with
different requirements. The underworld notwithstanding, man is not yet a rat,
and "rat-pen" results are not fully applicable to his nutrition. The final test
must be upon man.
We are frequently told that meat protein is more easily assimilated than
vegetable proteins. There is no evidence for this statement, but it may be
argued on the other side that the frequency with which allergic manifestations
follow the use of animal foods indicates that these are less easily assimilated
than vegetable proteins.
The assertion is based upon a failure to take into consideration, not the
difficulties, but the differences (largely of timing) in the digestion of the various
foods: not of various proteins, but of various foods.
Muscle meat, the kind most commonly consumed, is a very poor food. Its
inadequacy is made manifest by the failure of captive lions to reproduce
themselves on a diet preponderantly of this food. Berg says that the protein of
potatoes is more efficiently utilized by the body than that of flesh. Hindhede
has also shown the protein of potatoes to be adequate.
On the other hand, we are not concerned so much with the relative values of
specific proteins, or even of the proteins of one protein-carrying food, but with
the total value of all the proteins contained in our customary diet: and not with
the proteins alone, but with the total diet.
The whole question involved is best expressed thus: Is meat, as a whole,
superior to vegetables as food? When we consume flesh or vegetables, we
do not confine ourselves to their protein constituents, but eat the whole of
them and they must be considered in their entirety.
There is nothing in the protein of the flesh that the animal did not derive from
the plant. Not being able to synthesize amino acids, the animal merely
appropriates these, ready-made, from the plant, in the form of plant proteins.
Man can do this as efficiently and as easily as the lower animals. Plants yield
up their amino acids to man as readily as to the cow.
Green vegetables contain proteins of a very high quality, though in small
quantities. Nuts, on the other hand, rank with or even surpass, flesh foods in
the quantity of their proteins, while their proteins are of equal rank with those
of flesh. At the same time, nut proteins are "free from pathogenic bacterial or
parasitical contamination" to use Clendening's words.
It is argued that plant proteins are "poor" because "they contain unnecessarily
large amounts of some amino acids and little or none of others." It should not
be overlooked, however, that we consume several vegetable protein foods
and the deficiencies of one are made up by the richness of another. The
excess of amino acids in vegetable proteins is never great.
That the individual proteins in grains and some other plant foods are
physiologically inadequate is sufficiently demonstrated, but the sum-total of
the various proteins in those foods, or shall we better say, in the diet as a
whole, is usually fully adequate.
A protein is said to have higher physiologic or biologic value the smaller the
amount of it required to supply the needs of the animal. Based upon this
standard, the whole egg is ranked at 94; milk, 85; liver and kidney, 77; heart,
74; muscles meat, 69; whole wheat, 64; potato, 67; rolled oats, 65; whole corn,
60; white flour, 52; navy beans, 38.
By this standard, vegetable proteins in general are said to be nearly always
inferior to those of animal origin. The proteins of peanuts and soybeans are
listed as exceptions, their proteins being complete.
There is no appreciable difference between the muscle meat of cow, hog or
sheep. These relative values were determined by tests made on rats, dogs,
etc., and are not necessarily valid for human nutrition. It will be noted that nuts
are again ignored in this classification of biologic values.
The fact that proteins are completely digested, that is broken up into their
constituent amino acids before absorption proves, we believe, that highly
complex proteins are not really wanted as foods. While it is true that it is part
of the function of the digestive tract to extract impurities and non-congenial
substances from the food and avoid these, it is not well to abuse the digestive
system by foods that are too rich, that is, too complex. This will be made more
clear in the chapter on food allergies.
The plant is the best and original source of building materials that our diet can
supply. The really "vital and abiding union sought after in animal nutrition, is
between the amino acids of the plant and the blood of the animal."
In conformity with the principle of reciprocity and reciprocal differentiation
operating in the organic world, we want in our diet proteins quite different from
our own.
There is a tendency in many quarters to exalt meat proteins as superior to all
other forms of protein. The adequacy of flesh proteins as growth factors is
especially stressed. That flesh proteins contain all of the essential amino
acids is frequently asserted.
Meat (flesh) protein is the most valuable of all forms of protein, is a frequent
assertion. Berg points out that:
"This cannot be accepted as a positive fact as regards the protein of individual
muscles, only as regards the aggregate proteins of an animal body used as
food."
Abderhalden also points out this fact. This is especially true if the meat is not
accompanied with a large supply of base-forming foods. Berg points out that
carnivorous animals, living in a state of nature, "ensure a supply of bases by
drinking the blood of their victims and devouring the bones and the cartilages
as well as the flesh."
It is also true that wild carnivores consume considerable quantities of fruits,
berries and buds. Cats are often observed to eat vegetable foods. Wild
carnivora especially eat such foods in the Autumn, although in the Spring they
are likely to subsist exclusively upon the fruits of the kill.
It has long been known that if a dog is fed on flesh from which the juice has
been extracted, he becomes emaciated after a time, toxic symptoms develop,
and death rapidly follows. Skeletal changes characteristic of osteoporosis
and osteomalacia are found upon postmortem examination. The extraction of
the salts of the flesh causes death.
It is well to keep in mind that the different organs of the animal body differ in
their amino acid content. As has been pointed out before, not merely every
species of animal, but also, within each animal, every organ, has its own
peculiar kind of protein.
For this reason the different organs of the animal body are not equally
complete or "valuable" as sources of amino acids. One advocate of flesh
eating deplores the fact that "some patients are unfortunately averse to eating
entrails. Entrails, like liver" he says, "kidneys, heart, spleen, etc., are extremely
rich in certain vitamins and other valuable constituents and their regular use in
this diet is to be greatly encouraged."
To receive all the value of a flesh diet, it is necessary to eat the whole
animal--not, however, as is the case in eating whole oysters, the feces, also.
We want, not merely amino acids, but amino acids in ideal combination with
other indispensable substances--minerals, vitamins, and carbohydrates--such
as only plants can furnish. These other substances are essential to the full
utilization of proteins.
Meat protein, when deprived of its minerals, destroys life. Animal proteins are
not ideally combined with these other substances. The most ideal substances
for animal and human nutrition and the most ideal blends of these substances
are to be found in the spare products of plants.
There is also a tendency of the experimenters to place too much importance
on gains in weight. They find more rapid growth, or a greater gain in weight,
or even greater ultimate growth, on some diets than on others.
Too much reliance should not be placed in reported gains unless the kind of
weight gained is specified. We are not interested in fattening beef cattle nor in
mere bigness. Accelerated growth and precocious development are far from
desirable accomplishments.
Nor are results in one generation nor in a short time sufficient to establish the
ultimate effects of a particular diet.
It is now asserted by all experimenters that the duration of the earlier dietetic
experiments was usually too short. Berg says that his own first experiments
lasted for a week. Later he extended them to two weeks, then to several
months. It is now known that an experiment must often run through several
generations to yield dependable results.
Unfortunately the importance of the time factor is not yet fully appreciated.
Nature has carried on countless dietetic experiments, lasting not just a few
weeks, or a few generations, but for ages. Our experimenters have failed to
notice the results of long-time experiments of this nature. Their belief in
"struggle" and "survival" has prevented them from recognizing the role of
nutrition in integration, disintegration and re-integration--in two words,
evolution and degeneration.
The advocates of flesh eating are particularly prone to close their eyes to the
results of ages of flesh eating. With no valid standard of normal growth, they
fix their attention upon the growth promoting effects of flesh.
They ignore the evils of precocious development and an accelerated growth.
Their standard of mere bigness is the same as that of the stock raisers. One
could easily think that they are growing children for the market; that the
children, after they reach the "fryer" or "broiler" stages are to be sold by the
pound.
The larger they grow, the more money they will bring. Accelerated growth
tends to be unbalanced growth. There is likely to be overgrowths and
undergrowths that render the finished organism inferior. But, I must again
emphasize, one generation or even three generations of such feeding is not
sufficient to unfold its ultimate results.
CARBOHYDRATES
This is the name given to certain organic compounds of carbon that are
produced by plants in the process of growth from carbon, hydrogen and
oxygen, with the oxygen and hydrogen in proportions to form water.
In everyday language we know the most important of these carbohydrates as
starches and sugars. As will be seen later, carbohydrates are complex
substances composed, in most instances, of simpler substances, or building
blocks, called sugars.
Chief among the carbohydrates are:
Fruits--Bananas, all sweet fruits, hubbard squash, etc.
Nuts--A few varieties--acorns, chestnuts and coconuts.
Tubers-potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, artichokes, parsnips, etc.
Legumes--Most beans, except some varieties of soybeans, all peas, peanuts.
Cereals--All grains and practically all cereal products. (Gluten bread is not a
carbohydrate.)
The reader will notice that grains and legumes are classed both as proteins
and carbohydrates. This is due to the fact that they contain enough of each of
these food elements to be placed in both classes.
Nuts, for the same reason, are classed both as proteins and as fats. Milk,
commonly classed as a protein is really low in protein. It may with equal
justification be classed as a sugar or carbohydrate. All foods contain more or
less carbohydrates, as they all contain more or less protein. Most foods
contain some fats, but there is none in most fruits nor in the green leaves of
vegetables.
The body cannot use starch. It must first be converted into sugar before it can
be utilized by the cells. This is done in the process of digestion and begins in
the mouth. Disaccharides and polysaccharides are converted into
monosaccharides in the process of digestion, as carbohydrates can be
absorbed and assimilated only as monosaccharides.
Starch must first be converted into sugar and the complex sugars must be
converted into simple sugars before they are absorbed. The body's need for
sugar may easily be supplied without eating commercial sugars and syrups,
or any form of denatured carbohydrate. Child and adult, alike, should eat only
natural sweets and starches.
Sugar is the most important building material in the plant world. A
characteristic difference between plants and animals is that, whereas, the
animal is built up largely out of proteins, the plant is built up largely out of
carbohydrates.
Plants may be truly said to be made of sugar. They contain various minerals
and some nitrogen, but practically the whole fabric of the plant or tree is
composed of sugar in some form. Sugars are essential constituents of all
plants without which they cannot exist. Indeed, sugars are the most important
and most abundant building materials in plants.
Out of the immature or sap sugars plants build their roots, stems, flowers,
fruits and seeds. The finished plant is almost literally made of sugar.
Nature produces sugars out of three gases--carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
Oxygen and hydrogen in proportions to form water are taken from the water in
the soil. Carbon is taken from the carbon dioxide of the air. Out of these
gases, or out of this fluid and gas, the plant synthesizes sugar, a thing the
animal cannot do.
The green coloring of plants is due to the presence of a pigment known as
chlorophyll. This pigment takes part in a chemical process known as
photosynthesis, by which, carbon-dioxide (or, at least the carbon in the
carbon-dioxide), with the aid of sunlight, is united with water to form sugar.
Recent experiments have shown that enzymes contained in the leaves of the
plants are the chief agents in the production of this sugar. Some plants can
produce sugar in the absence of light.
Not only the starches of plants, but also the pentosans, the woody fibers,
cellulose and gums are made of sugar and may be reconverted into sugar.
When carbohydrates are stored for long periods they are stored as starches.
When they are used, they are reconverted into sugars.
Corn, peas, etc., are sweet (full of sugar) before they mature. The sap of the
corn is also sweet. The sap of the cane plant is very sweet. In the matured
state, corn, cane seed and peas are hard starch grains. In the germinating
process the starch is reconverted into sugar. As starches, these seeds will
keep for long periods of time; as sugars they would not keep until the
following spring.
It will be noticed that the enzymes in seed do not require ultra violet rays and
acid to bring about this reconversion, any more than do the enzymes in
digestive juices.
Fruits are ready for immediate use and if not used soon after ripening, tend to
decompose rapidly. Grains are intended for storage. It is significant that fruits
are composed of insoluble starches and are usually rich in acids before they
ripen. In this state they are usually avoided by animals. The starch is
reconverted into sugar in the ripening process.
This arrangement protects the seed of the fruit until it is matured and ready for
dispersal. Then the fruit is ripened and made ready for food.
The animal, like the plant, builds its carbohydrates out of sugar. All starch
foods must be converted into sugar (in the process of digestion) before they
can be taken into the body and used. Animal starch (glycogen) is made from
sugar. It, like the starch of grains, is a storage product. Like the starch of
grains, it must be reconverted into sugar before using. The sugar in milk may
be made from starches.
The matured or fruit sugars of plants, especially those of fruits, are particularly
appropriate for food. They are never concentrated and are always well
balanced with other ingredients. They are built up out of the immature sugar
and impart to both fresh and dried fruits their delicious flavors. Matured
sugars in flowers are collected by bees and made into honey. Fruit sugars
are, in truth, export products produced by plants.
All the sugar the body requires may be obtained from fresh ripe fruits. This is
especially so during the summer months. During the winter months when
fresh fruits are not so abundant, dried (but unsulphured) fruits are excellent
sources of sugar.
These should not be cooked. Owing to the absence of water, dried fruits are
more concentrated foods then fresh fruits and should not be eaten in the
same bulk.
Just as fruits are savored with their matured sugars, so vegetable foods are
savored with the immature juices (saps) of the plants. In the plants, as in the
fruits, the sugars are combined with vitamins, mineral salts, fibre and other
elements of foods.
It is essential to emphasize that sugars constitute but one of the ingredients of
plant life and are never put up in their pure state. In fruits and plants they are
always combined with and balanced by other ingredients, particularly with
salts, vitamins and water. Man, not nature, produces concentrated sugars.
Man, not nature, separates the minerals from sugar. Sugars should be eaten
as nature provides them.
Commercial syrups and molasses are concentrated saps. Besides being
concentrated, usually by the use of heat in evaporating the water, they are
commonly deprived of their minerals and vitamins, often have preservatives,
artificial colors and flavors added and are often bleached with sulphur dioxide,
with which they become saturated.
Commercial sugars--maple, cane, beet, and milk--are crystallized saps. They
too, are unbalanced, commonly bleached, and thoroughly unfitted for use.
So concentrated are these syrups and sugars, so denatured and so prone to
speedy fermentation in the digestive tract, that it is best not to employ them at
all.
If they are used they should be used very sparingly. The same rule should
apply to honey. This food of the bee contains all the other nutritive elements
in very minute quantities, being largely water and sugar with flavors from the
flowers. If it is eaten, it should be taken sparingly.
What a difference between eating sugar cane and eating the extracted,
concentrated and refined sugar of the cane! It is said that it takes a West
Indian native an hour to chew eighteen inches of cane from which he derives
the equivalent of one large lump of sugar--less than the average coffee-drinker
puts into a single cup of his favorite poison. (The boys and girls of Texas and
Louisiana can chew sugar cane faster than the West Indian native, it seems.)
In thus securing his sugar, the cane-eater secures the minerals and vitamins
that are normally associated with sugars--he does not eat a "purified" product.
Sugar is regarded as an energy food, but it is a remarkable fact that the heavy
sugar-eater prefers to watch athletic games to taking part in them. We, of
course, have reference to the heavy-eater of commercial sugars. They seem
to stimulate and then depress the muscular powers.
It has long been the Hygienic theory that the catarrhal diseases are based on
carbohydrate excess--sugar excess, as all starches are converted into sugar
in digestion. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that the British Medical
Journal for June 1933 carried an article discussing "the relation of excessive
carbohydrate ingestion to catarrh and other diseases" in which it was pointed
out that during World War I, the incidence of catarrhal illnesses was reduced
seemingly corresponding with the great reduction of sugar consumption.
The writer of the article concludes that: "restriction in the use of sugar would
result in improvement in the national health as regards catarrhal illness, as well
as in other directions."
HYDROCARBONS
Hydrocarbon foods are those rich in hydrocarbon--fats and oils.
Hydrocarbons are composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. In the animal
body, fats may be manufactured out of sugars and proteins. Fats are
produced in the plant out of sugar. Chief among the hydrocarbon foods are:
Fruits--olives, avocados.
Nuts--almost all varieties.
Legumes--peanuts, soybeans.
Dairy products--cream, butter and some cheese.
Flesh of dead animals, especially pork and mutton and beef that have been
fattened. Fat fish--herring, shad, salmon, trout.
There are many kinds of fats--solid and liquid. Fats and oils are formed in
plants, and fruits when ripening. A decrease in sugars accompanies the
increase in fats. It is but another evidence of the importance of sugar in the life
of the plant and, thereafter, in the life of the animal.
While the animal is capable of synthesizing fats out of starches and sugars, it
is not capable of taking hydrogen, oxygen and carbon and synthesizing fats
out of these.
The fat of the animal differs from the oil of the plant, just as do the proteins of
the animal differ from those of its food supply. Each animal builds its own
characteristic fats out of its foods. Fats and oils are complex substances that
are made up of simpler substances, which we may call the "building stones" of
fat. True fats are composed of fatty acids and glycerol--or glycerides. Fats
differ according to the fatty acids and glycerides, which they contain.
Stearic, palmitic butyric and oleac acids are the most common glycerides
found in edible fats. The stearates are combinations of stearic acid with
glycerol--stearin. Several fatty acids are present in all fats. In butter there are
palmitic, oleic, myristic and butyric acids. Stearic acid is present in suet (hog
fat), palmitic acid is abundant in vegetable and animal fats. Oleic acid is found
in most fats and oils. Such vegetable oils as olive, cottonseed, peanut,
almond and cocoanut oils contain large amounts of olein.
Fats are split up during the process of digestion into fatty acids and glycerol.
Fats and oils, like proteins and carbohydrates, are not usable as such, but
must be broken down into their constituent "building stones" and these
"building stones"--fatty acids and glycerol--are used with which to build
human fats.
Mendel asks "are there essential fatty acids that must be supplied in the diet
because they cannot be produced de novo by the animal organism?"
Although both he and Hindhede have shown that green stuff can take the
place of fat in the diet, there are facts that lead us to believe that it is, at least, a
great saving to the body if some fat is supplied.
Although the body can synthesize fats out of carbohydrates and proteins,
there are certain fatty acids that it is incapable of synthesizing and these are
essential to animal life. Three unsaturated fatty acids--linoleic, linolenic and
arachaidonic--cannot be synthesized by the animal organism.
Only one of these is considered essential, for, as in the case of certain amino
acids, they can replace one another in animal nutrition. Rats fed on diets
lacking in the essential fatty acids cease to grow, develop scaliness of the
skin, caudal necrosis, emaciation, kidney lesions and early death. Certain
blood deficiencies are also seen when these fatty acids are lacking in the diet
of animals.
Besides the fatty acids supplied by the fats in our diet, fats also contain
fat-soluble vitamins and minerals. Large quantities of fat are not required, but
a small quantity daily is essential to normal development and maintenance
and to good health.
Fat serves as a protection and as a packing and support for organs, forms
emulsions and lubricants, serves as storage for reserve "fuel" enters into the
constituents of the walls of the body's cells, and is an essential element of the
nervous system.
Lecithin, a widely distributed fat is very important in human nutrition, being an
essential ingredient of the brain and nerves and also of the semen. Lecithin
contains, besides the fatty acids, phosphorus. Insufficient fat tends to lessen
nervous efficiency.
On the whole, vegetable oils are superior to animal fats as human foods.
Cream and butter (unpasteurized) are the best of the animal fats employed as
foods. Fats, like sugars, are best taken as nature prepares them; that is in the
foods in which they exist.
Most nuts are rich in oil and form the best sources of fat for human
consumption. Fats, when extracted from their sources, concentrated, purified,
and preserved, form poor foods. Many of them have all their vitamins
destroyed and are devoid of all minerals.
For example, in the process of rendering hog fat into lard, the fat is boiled for a
long period and everything skimmed from the top until nothing remains but
"pure" fat. All the minerals and vitamins are destroyed and removed.
Long cooked in this way, the lard is practically indigestible. Olive oil, peanut
oil, soybean oil and other vegetable oils are best eaten in the fruits, legumes
and other plant substances in which nature prepares them.
Fats must be digested before they can be used. The cells of the body cannot
use complex fats. The fats must first be reduced to a few simple acceptable
substances in the process of digestion. The skin is not a digestive organ. It is
not able to take complex fats and break them down into their simpler
constituents and then make use of the fatty acids and glycerol thus formed.
For these reasons "skin foods" composed of some cream or oil, to be rubbed
on or into the skin, cannot nourish the skin. They only grease it--that is, make
it dirty. The skin must be fed from within. It contains very little fat and this
must come from the blood. Blood is the only food of the tissues of the body.
It is folly to try to feed our tissues with any other substances.
ORGANIC SALTS AND VITAMINS
As separate chapters will be devoted to these two classes of substances, little
more will be done here than to classify the chief sources of them. The mineral
salts enter into the composition of every fluid and structure of the body.
Inorganic salts cannot be substituted for them as will be shown in a
subsequent chapter. The animal lacks the ability to take the crude elements of
the earth and synthesize these into acceptable organic compounds.
Vitamins of which there are a number, are also produced only by the plant.
The animal body is capable of taking certain provitamins and completing their
synthesis. But it is not capable of producing vitamins de novo. They serve as
enzymes.
Vitamins and organic salts are distributed throughout nature and are present
in varying quantities in all food substances. Fruits and fresh vegetables are
especially high in them. Fruits and vegetables will be treated in separate
chapters. Here we are interested in them, largely as sources of these food
substances. Chief among these rich sources of vitamins and salts are:
(1) Succulent (watery, juicy) Vegetables:
Leafy Vegetables--celery, lettuce, kohlrabi, cabbage, spinach, dandelion,
endive, turnip tops, mustard, parsley, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale,
chard, lotus, cress, field lettuce, romaine, chicory, rhubarb, beet tops, radish
tops, etc.
Fruiting Plants--okra (gumbo), cucumbers, squash summer squash, pumpkin,
string beans, green peas, corn "in milk" (fresh), etc.
Tubers--Asparagus, beet, carrot, turnip, radish, onion, cone artichoke,
rutabaga, garlic, oyster plant (salsify).
(2) Juicy Fruits:
Acid: Orange (sour), lemon, lime, sour apple, grapefruit, pineapple, peach,
sour plum, apricot, cranberry, loganberry, pomegranate, strawberry, tomato.
Sub-Acid: Melons--watermelons, musk-melon, cantaloupe, casaba, honey
dew, etc.,--sweet grapes, huckleberry, fresh figs, pears, etc.
Many other foods are used, both in America and other parts of the world, but
all may be placed in one or the other of the above classes. Some foods such
as nuts, grains and legumes, may be placed in two classes.
The bountiful hand of Mother Nature has supplied us with an abundant and
pleasing variety of foods. This wonderful variety of foods which are designed
to please the senses of sight, taste and smell, as well as supply the needs of
the body, are all made of but a few simple elements of the soil--"the dust of the
earth."
Together with water, oxygen and vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, fats and
minerals form the constituents of the body. These must be taken into the
digestive tract and there prepared for the use of the body, before they are
allowed to enter the body and before they become part of the body.
The material composing a leaf of lettuce cannot be anything but a leaf of
lettuce, until it has died from that state and then, after it has been
disintegrated, its elements may be built up into the tissues of man. Digestion
is the disintegrating process.
Our present knowledge of the role of digestion in nutrition shows positively
that the parental administration of food is without value. The process of
digestion disintegrates food into fragments, which represent the true
nutrients--proteins are reduced to amino acids, carbohydrates to simple
sugars, fats to fatty acids and glycerol and it is claimed that ions may be
liberated from the organic salts during the process of digestion. These things
serve as the structural or metabolic units and nothing else will or can.
By: Herbert M. Shelton
This concludes Part 2 of 2
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