Fitness

Next you think of the potentialities of the school cafeteria managers and the foods teachers. If you can get them personally interested, you know the rest will follow. Once enthusiastic, a foods teacher could not look herself in the mirror if she used the disease-producing methods which many such teachers do now. She holds a vision of the future of the students in her classes, so soon to be husbands, wives, and parents. She visualizes healthy mothers, their pregnancies a joy, their deliveries easy, their children beautiful. She knows that these boys and girls, once taught nutrition, will produce tomorrow’s leaders, thinkers, and doers.

Soon you see the potential good an athletic coach can accomplish. He is already interested in health; his athletes are almost crying for knowledge of nutrition. Without any trouble at all you get him to rush in scarcely thinking of the timid wise men. He gets enthusiastic approval because everyone wants the team to win. Several coaches have told me that the boys make a touchdown for tiger’s milk or wheat germ at every football game. I know of one basketball team which won a championship with good nutrition last year; the physician at this school said he could scarcely believe the improvement he found. A university physician gave me an even more glowing report: much less fatigue among the boys; the crew ending the season without enlarged hearts; broken bones healing more quickly than ever before. These coaches and physicians will be writing articles for their journals before long; they, too, become enthusiastic and cannot help themselves.

After you go to bed, you lie awake thinking that adult education classes in nutrition should be taught in every evening school. You look around for someone to teach such a class, perhaps a physician, a nurse, or the hospital dietitian; after you talk to this person, you go to the principal of adult education, then to your neighbors to be sure that they turn out for the class. If you cannot find anyone else, you study like mad and then offer to teach it yourself. Perhaps you even go back to college for a few courses in chemistry or foods.

You realize that nutrition should be taught in every medical school but feel that you can do nothing about it. Who do you suppose has already forced some medical schools to teach this subject? You have. For example, the reason physicians are giving so many shots of vitamin B12 is that patients demand them. If you get enough people interested in nutrition, you will all find yourselves asking your physicians such questions as: “Where am I going to get linoleic acid on a fat-free diet?” “Why aren’t you giving the baby any vitamin E?” “Doctor, will you give Johnny a vitamin-C shot?” “How many milligrams of pantothenic acid do you think I should take?” When physicians hear enough questions they cannot answer concerning nutrition, the subject will be taught in every medical school; thousands of practicing physicians are on the staffs of such schools.

If you have any contact with hospitals, you quickly realize that someone should do something about the food they serve. The dietitian’s hands are usually tied; she does not see the patients, let alone learn to love them or to feel concerned about their needs. She must meet the budget. Surveys have shown that the meals in approximately two-thirds of the hospitals in the United States do not meet the minimum nutritional requirements set up by the National Research Council in any respect, even calories.

There are three small hospitals I personally know of where a patient has a reasonable chance of recovering rapidly; two are run by physicians who know nutrition. At the third, the Sister Kenny Polio Hospital at EI Monte, California, the entire personnel, nurses, physicians, physiotherapists, and kitchen help, were requested to attend a lecture course in nutrition given by Dr. Michael Walsh. Dr. Walsh also helped to supervise the application of nutrition in the meals served the patients and also those for the staff. The health of physicians, who were originally antagonistic to the program, has so improved that they are now enthusiastic.

Often parents have refused to allow their children to stay in a hospital where the food was inadequate. Frequently nutrition-minded people bring good food to a member of their family or a friend in a hospital; the attending physician may be surprised at the speedy recovery, ask questions, and make similar recommendations to other patients. Certain patients in our county hospital are now being given brewers’ yeast; everyone able to swallow on the polio ward has vitamin-C tablets handed him almost every hour; I suspect some mother or friend started both practices.

This report is not imaginary. It is what is actually happening all over America. The snowball is rolling on and on. Wonderful “fools,” more and more of them, keep rushing in. A big job is being done by big people, the big people who are sometimes mistakenly called the “little” people, by uncommon men so wrongly called, individually, the “common man.” I could give you the names and addresses of hundreds of these big people, some of whom have changed the lives of almost everyone in their communities. They are people like Celia Massie in Grants Pass, Oregon, Mildred Hatch at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Amy Tapping at Plainfield, New Jersey, Bernice Hicks at Bellingham, Washington, and the Clive McCays at Ithaca, New York. In California Homer Dahlman at Paradise, Eleanor Kingsley at Pomona, Douglas Campbell and Rhoda Kellogg in San Francisco, Alfreda Rook at Vista, Harold Stone in La Habra and Gladys Lindberg in Los Angeles are all doing magnificent work. Making such a list is like sending out wedding invitations; you do not know where to stop. Without any specialized training, any organization, or any particular leadership, without one cent of tax money and without even any work but just a lot of fun, we can collectively solve this problem of America’s malnutrition.

Although much is being done, there is still much to do. It cannot be done fast enough. Millions of persons of all ages are still going to suffer needlessly. Spastic, feeble-minded, or disease-susceptible babies are still to be born. Children now fairly healthy will hate ugliness still to be produced or will live out years in iron lungs. Arteries now elastic are still to be filled with cholesterol, mouths to be filled with dentures, and hearts to be filled with dread. If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the groaning, sobbing and pleading for help, groaning and sobbing which you can prevent, help which you can give. There is work for everyone; every talent is sought. Equally important is the discipline of the scientist, the humanitarianism of the clinician, and the enthusiasm of the amateur.

Every person who has the ability to see our country’s need can help to fill that need. It is part of my creed-of my region if you like-that when you have the ability to help ,our fellow man, that ability ceases to be merely an ability and becomes a responsibility. It is part of my faith that this responsibility will be shouldered by the big people of America.

Perhaps you put in an herb garden or plant a few vegetables among your flowers. If you have more land, you may go in for compost heaps and real vegetable and fruit gardening. Or, perhaps you move to the suburbs, buy a cow or goat, and value the milk and manure equally. Maybe you already live on a farm; gradually you change to biological methods. In any case you have your garden soil analyzed, add the trace minerals needed,” and return as much humus to the soil as you can. You read books on gardening 4 or farming 5 with biological methods and subscribe to magazines.” You give some of your fruits and vegetables to your friends and neighbors, let them see how delicious such foods can be, and get them interested in putting in a garden of their own. Thousands of gardeners and hundreds of farmers all over America are already using biological methods. Even some of the largest truck farmers are adding trace minerals to their land and as much humus as they can procure; they find that it pays because less produce is destroyed by insects and the food has much better keeping qualities.

You may have considered opening a small business and have wondered what would be best. The people you have given vegetables to like them so much that you may open a roadside stand; or you convert a front room into a small restaurant where you serve wonderful vegetable soup with stock you have to cut with a knife, your fresh vegetables added after the customer is seated; or your specialty may be slow-roasted meats and delicious cooked vegetables or a tossed salad seasoned with your fresh herbs.

Maybe a specialty food shop interests you even if you have no garden. The first thing you do is to learn to prepare some food better than anyone else in your part of the country; then you convert that front room into a place like the famous New York Central oyster bar, for example. People do not want big meals; they want delicious, filling meals. Think of the business a small specialty restaurant could do on a cold rainy day serving nothing but delicious soup and hot homemade bread; or a restaurant with a sign, “The Best WafHes in the World,” their product coming up to expectations, served with creamed chicken or turkey and a beverage, nothing more. I should like to find a place which serves only a delicious tossed salad with piping-hot cheese blini, made fresh for each customer instead of warmed over as in the restaurants which serve them at all. If 100,000 or more such specialty food counters could be opened across the country, motoring would be a pleasure.

Perhaps you start selling homemade bread, cookies, nut–breads, or cakes made of whole-wheat flour, wheat germ and other health-building ingredients; I know of several women who are, doing that. One of them makes the best orange nut-bread I have ever tasted. One acquaintance is now in the health-candy business, making delicious candies of such ingredients as powdered milk, honey, nuts, and peanut butter. Another man is making pure orange juice lollipops without added sugar; he supplies all the stores and schools in a moderately large city, his business far surpassing his expectations. A number of couples have opened small bakeries, using only health-building ingredients. Still other families have started health-food stores; every county seat needs at least one such store. A boy I know of is putting himself through college by raising goats and selling goats’ milk. Aside from supporting themselves with such businesses, these people are spreading the itch.

You find yourself wanting to learn more. You get such books as The Wheel of Health.’ Tomorrow’s Foods Body, Mind and Sugar/ Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Our National Malnutrition, and Diet Prevents Polio,” You may subscribe to Modern Nutrition:” The Journal of Applied Nutrition and to Carlton Fredericks’ Nutrition Neuis.” All of these you circulate among your friends; they borrow them again to lend to their friends who buy them to lend to their friends. Together you get your local library to order these books and to keep them prominently displayed. Soon you find yourself and your friends giving book reviews. You may long for company and join the American Nutrition Society or the American Academy of Nutrition 13 or even start a chapter of your own. Perhaps you go to a national convention where you meet wonderful physicians, dentists, agriculturists, chemists, laymen of every variety, all of whom think and feel as you do; you leave with your head in the clouds, determined to work harder than ever.

It soon gripes you that your money supports schools run so inefficiently because of poor nutrition. You dream about nutrition being taught in every classroom. That was the dream of the late Dr. Mary Swartz Rose, too. I studied under her and observed classes she herself often taught in a grade school near Columbia University. The fifth grade that year was studying calcium; they learned about milk, bones, and teeth and brought real teeth and bones to class; they soaked bones in acids to observe the bone base. They made milk drinks for parties; they raised white rats, some on milk, some without. They learned more about calcium than most adults know. The sixth grade was studying vitamin A, and they also had rats with and without this vitamin. They had parties with carrot-stick refreshments and ate dried apricots instead of candy. They learned a great deal; they loved it and went home to teach their parents about nutrition.

Suddenly you realize that every teacher in every public school in America could teach nutrition in one way or another; you quickly lend your books and magazines to teachers. Once interested, a teacher cannot help teaching nutrition even if she tries. She lives it and saves herself much fatigue; then she finds herself helping her students to feel better. Her work soon becomes easier because they are more alert. By this personal method many teachers are already doing a corking good job in nutrition education, although they do not consider that they teach nutrition at all. Some day such teachers will publish in the teachers’ magazines their experiences and methods which will serve as a guide and inspiration for other teachers.

If you have a child in school, you start getting the candy bars and soft-drink machines out of the corridors. You nose around the cafeteria, see the huge tubs of potatoes peeled one day and soaking until the next, the mountains of white bread, the oceans of sweet gelatin desserts made sweeter by juices left over from canned fruits used in cobblers; you go before the P.T.A., you give the principal and/or the school board a bad time, or you run for the school board yourself.

After you have applied personal nutrition for awhile, you feel it and look it. You hear yourself exclaiming, “I never felt better in my life!” Your friends who did not want advice now want what you have, the sparkle, the pep, the glow you radiate. They start asking you questions. Soon their reports come back: they are not tired any longer; the leg cramps or headaches have disappeared; their constipation is gone. You glow with pride, and your snowball gains momentum. They ask you to talk to their friends who have problems. The itch spreads; more and more people begin scratching.

Your educational campaign with the children starts paying dividends, just momentary flashes at first, like feminine fireflies calling their lovers. “We have better food than other people, don’t we, Mommie?” My son, sitting at a restaurant counter next to a woman drinking a soft drink, came out with this one, “Don’t you know that will hurt your teeth? I’ll drink it if you like, and you can save your teeth.” Barbara brings her doll’s bottle to me, lfs inch across at the top, “Mommie, put yeast in my baby’s formula.” You will hear similar comments. The older children bring their friends with pimples and menstrual cramps to you. You feel happy inside, knowing some day you will have beautiful grandchildren.

Perhaps you start a nutrition cooking school in your home; several friends of mine have, charging a fee for each person who attends. One girl, infected with a splendid case of divine itch, charges, but her fee is not monetary. She agreed to teach four of her friends how to make whole-wheat bread provided each of them would teach four friends who would agree to teach four of their friends. Soon the lessons included the making of yogurt, high-protein custard, cookies prepared with vegetable oil, and meat loaf fortified with powdered milk and wheat germ. Spirited discussions of nutrition take place at each lesson. The chain of her Magnificent Obsession continues to lengthen.

You may get interested in the 4H Clubs, an organization of farm youngsters thousands strong, to whom practical nutrition could be so easily and wonderfully taught and applied. You read the surveys showing that the health of farm children is inferior to that of city children, an ironical twist of fate which you realize should not be so; you know that a few itchy fools could quickly change that. Perhaps you become a leader of a garden club and teach biological methods and the nutritive value of the foods; or you help the little girls make breads, muffins, and cookies of whole-wheat and soy flour. You teach them to put some meaning into their 4Hs by allowing their hearts to feel the need for alert heads to direct capable hands into helping build national health.

Many people agree with me that something should be done quickly about our national malnutrition. I ask them who should do it. Some say the universities, some the Department of Agriculture, the Public Health Departments, the schools. I cannot believe that any of these organizations will solve the problem.

The persons who in my opinion will save our nation are those marvelous individuals who rush in where wise men fear to tread. These wonderful people often do not know enough to believe it when the wise men tell them that something cannot be done. Sometimes they cannot even understand why it cannot be done.

One such person was an author who bought several worn-out farms in Ohio; the wise men said the land could not pay taxes. This author had no degrees in agriculture and did not consider himself a farmer; he had lived in France and watched the peasants there, and he had ideas and was willing to study and work. He changed that eroded, worn-out land into a paradise where springs, long dried up, bubbled again, with lakes where you could swim on hot days and where delicious fish almost jumped into the breakfast frying pans. He let wild roses and berries grow along fence rows. Small animals hid there to have their babies; hunting was always good. Quail and other birds nested in the bushes, feeding their young on worms and insects which the educated wise men said must be killed with poison sprays. The paradise he created is now a mecca; thousands of farmers become pilgrims to learn wholesome farming methods which the money they have spent on taxes has not given them. This author has done tremendous good for nutrition, which starts with the soil. I hope some day I can know Mr. Bromfield well enough to call him Louie.’

Another remarkable person refused to believe the wise men who said it could not be done; he manufactured electrical equipment in New York City. Somehow he became interested in farming and moved onto worn-out land in Pennsylvania; he believed in soil bacteria, compost heaps, and lowly earthworms. When his health and the health of his family improved as his soil improved, it occurred to him that other people might want to know about his methods. First he published a magazine on gardening by biological methods and then one on farming.” This man had the courage to stick to his convictions, although the agricultural colleges said that what he said was poppycock. Several of these colleges set out to prove him wrong. Can you guess what they are finding out? That he has been right all along. I have never met this man, but I admire his courage; he has done much for nutrition.

Perhaps I love these “fools” who rush in because I have always been one of them. If you have become interested in nutrition, you will be one of us too; you cannot help yourself. Genuine interest in nutrition gives everyone a sort of divine itch, virulently contagious. It is like health, which is a million times more contagious than disease. The first thing you know, you have everyone around you scratching. This is the way it works.

At first there usually comes a trial-and-error period which varies depending on how genuinely you want to help others and/or how much you have been helped by nutrition. The more enthusiastic you are, the more hot water you get yourself into. You may use the Prussian-commander technique:

“You have to eat these hotcakes. They’re blown up vitamin pills, full of wheat germ, soy flour, powdered milk, the works.” The hotcakes may be more delicious than any your family ever tasted, but they go uneaten while you writhe in defeat. Perhaps you try the eager-beaver attack next: “Mary, you’ve got to take brewers’ yeast. Deficiencies stick out all over you. Let me see your tongue. Oh, darling, you are a mess!” Mary is a little cool after that; her deficiencies become more severe. Next you use the blunt approach: “You don’t eat liver every morning for breakfast? Huhl You’re as inefficient as a horse and buggy.” After a period of being an antagonizer par excellence, it dawns on you that no one enjoys criticism or advice; that every person has received an overdose of both as a kid and will take no more. You give up your talk-too-much technique and proceed with a sort of personal underground movement, silently conducted, which is the point where the less eager person starts in the first place.

You quietly improve your own nutrition; not your husband’s or wife’s or children’s, just your own. Gradually y@u make changes. You buy better food every time you go to market. You get nuts for the kiddies instead of candy, make lollipops of pure fruit juices instead of buying ones of colored water and sugar. Perhaps you investigate a source of milk safe to use unpasteurized, or find hens associating with roosters and allowed the freedom of a barnyard. You locate supplies which must be purchased outside your community. You are more careful in selecting foods in restaurants and in planning and preparing delicious meals at home. Possibly you or even your husband starts baking homemade bread of stone-ground fresh wheat. When this art is mastered, you give slices or loaves to neighbors and relatives; they may start making bread or beg you to make enough to sell them. You discover the fun of having the youngsters say, “Gee, Mom, these are the best waffles you have ever made.” Even after your husband finds out that they are full of wheat germ, which he tells you he “hates,” and after he says that you will be putting ground glass into his food next, you give him butterscotch brownies at the following meal; he eats them to the last crumb, never dreaming they are made entirely of wheat germ.

When you have conquered the home front, you volunteer for the refreshment committee and serve some really good cookies at the P.T.A. or the Women’s Club tea; you improve the food at Scout meetings and birthday parties; or you put some Christianity into a few church suppers. If you are a man, you work on the Breakfast Club or Rotary or Kiwanis luncheon menus. In case you are an executive, you realize the stupidity of paying for inefficiency produced under your own nose by mid-meals of coffee, soft drinks, and doughnuts, and you see that nuts, delicious milk drinks, “hopped-up” ice cream, and fresh fruits are made available. Perhaps you give a talk to some organization about highprotein breakfasts, fluoridation of water, the use of iodized salt or nutritious lunches carried from home. The local paper hears about your talk and wants copy, so you find yourself writing a food and nutrition column. Some people may call you a crackpot or food faddist; you expect that and shrug it off.

When a good nutrition program is conscientiously followed, other problems often disappear. They are rather like happiness which comes as a by-product of unselfishness but is elusive if sought directly. No one can say what nutrients or combinations of nutrients have brought about the change. Probably the improved psychological outlook which comes with feeling better helps as much as anything.

It has been known for years, for example, that persons who drink excessively suffer from multiple nutritional deficiencies. Only recently has the work of Dr. Roger J. Williams at the University of Texas and of other scientists shown that the desire to drink, in itself, can be caused by nutritional deficiencies.

Many experiments have been conducted, the general gist of which is as follows: Large numbers of rats are given the choice of four beverages: water; 3 per cent alcohol, representing beer; 10 per cent alcohol, comparable to light wines; and 50 per cent alcohol, suggestive of hard liquors. Each rat is kept in a separate cage, its liquid consumption measured daily. All the animals are given the same “normal” diet. Under such treatment, some rats become teetotalers; others land on skid road. Then the abstainers are put on an inadequate diet, perhaps partially lacking one or more B vitamins. The excessive drinkers are given a superior diet containing far above normal amounts of certain nutrients, especially the B vitamins. Before long, the teetotaler rats start drinking, and many land on skid road. All the skid road rats drink less, and many become teetotalers. When offspring of the teetotaler rats and the skid road rats are offered their choice of drinks as were their parents, like-father-like-son, they become abstainers or drunkards.

A number of conclusions have been drawn from such experiments. First, there is no such thing as a «normal” diet. What is normal for one person may not be normal at all for another. Second, the need for greater than so-called «normal” amounts of certain nutrients is a hereditary need. When these excessively high nutritional requirements are not met, the person with such needs becomes susceptible to certain abnormalities to which Dr. Williams has given the name “genetotrophic diseases,” of which alcoholism is one. If the nutrition is adequate for each individual, however, such diseases need not appear in any generation. Another conclusion is that alcoholism might be partly prevented if our national diet were improved. The third conclusion to be drawn from the experiments is that if persons who have the compulsive urge to drink excessively are given far-above-average amounts of certain nutrients and are treated with understanding, their desire for liquor may decrease; a few may even stop drinking.

Although an undersupply of B vitamins appears to be a -major cause of alcoholism, the blood sugar level is also of extreme importance (ref. 3, P: 14) as is the amount of fat and protein in the diet. A factor N 1 believed to be in yeast, liver, meat, and wheat germ 1 has been emphasized as being another nutrient perhaps necessary in preventing the craving for alcohol. Although Alcoholics Anonymous deserves no word of criticism, its members suffer unnecessarily by being unaware of the value of good nutrition. They wash B vitamins from their bodies by drinking tremendous quantities of coffee. They lower their blood sugar levels by over-stimulating their insulin flow with quantities of sweets. They merely change crutches from alcohol to tremendous quantities of coffee, sugar, and tobacco. Ignoring as they do the simple rudiments of good nutrition, without either dietary or psychological help, it is surprising indeed that as many give up alcohol as do. Certainly nutrition is only one part of this problem. Who knows how important a part?

Mrs. Gladys Lindberg, who in my opinion is making an outstanding contribution to nutrition, has worked for some years with men whom Alcoholics Anonymous has failed to help. As usual, it started with one man, who, down and out, an alcoholic for 32 years, came to see her. Let us call him Mr. X. Mrs. Lindberg asked him if he would help her with an experiment to see if good nutrition could decrease his craving for alcohol. He agreed, and she supplied the nutrients. At the end of the first week he reported incredulously that his craving had decreased and that he felt unbelievably better. Each week improvement was greater. Soon he found employment.

In our city a man and his wife, themselves ex-alcoholics, own a large car-washing establishment. They employ about 20 men, all alcoholics whom they usually find in flophouses; they give these men food and a dormitory to sleep in and guarantee employment as long as they do not drink. Mr. X. became one of their employees. In the evenings, the men came to the dormitory, threw themselves on the beds with exhaustion which went to the marrow of their bones; they were too exhausted to seek entertainment, too afraid they would be tempted to take the drinks which could bring relief. Mr. X. worked as hard as they but felt no exhaustion and craved no drinks. He told them of Mrs. Lindberg, and they went to her and told their friends who then went to her. They found that as long as they followed her nutritional program, their exhaustion and their craving disappeared.

Mrs. Lindberg gives these men an adequate diet supplemented with yeast mix containing liver concentrate massive doses of synthetic B vitamins, large amounts of soybean oil, vitamins A, C, D, and E in capsules or tablets, and enough enzyme tablets and hydrochloric acid tablets to insure efficient digestion. Although her results will never reach the pages of a medical journal, I suspect that she will have a special feather in a wing some day. If you ever want to talk to men who have gone overboard on good nutrition, you should talk to some of her teetotalers.

A problem which is in my opinion easily corrected by sound nutrition is a low basal metabolic rate (BMR), or subnormal energy production. Probably no physician would agree with me. The reason, I believe, is that although any doctor sees hundreds of patients with low BMRs, few if any have seen patients who have improved their nutrition sufficiently to raise their BMRs to normal. “Internal laziness” could describe this condition except that it would ignore the external laziness which is far more of a problem. Physicians usually recommend thyroid tablets for subnormal energy production. Such tablets are perhaps necessary at times and do increase the BMR, often, I am afraid, at the expense of general health. To me taking thyroid is like whipping a tired horse instead of letting it rest awhile, then giving it enough oats so that it no longer wants or needs to rest.

There are two approaches to improving the diet when nutrition has been neglected. The cautious approach is to increase the amounts of supplements and such foods as yeast, yo gmt, or tiger’s milk gradually; thereby you can prevent digestive upsets and give yourself a chance to cultivate a taste for these foods. Improvement may be slow, but this method is safest for persons without supervision. The other approach, which can end in disaster or spectacular improvement, is to take enough supplements to saturate the tissues and large amounts of foods supplying proteins, B vitamins and other nutrients for a few days, then decrease the amount drastically when body needs have been met. I use the latter method but have sometimes regretted it. Persons who consume more nutrients than their bodies need lose a fortune annually through their excreta.

I take vitamin pills and recommend them, but I still disapprove of them. If wholesome foods were available, supplements would rarely be needed except for vitamin D. Few people can obtain wholesome food. By wholesomeness, I mean the kind of food our grandparents and all our ancestors before them ate at every meal. Just plain food. Fruits” vegetables, and grains grown on naturally mineralized, naturally composted soil untouched by smog, chemical fertilizers, and poison sprays. Milk from healthy animals grazed on green pastures (most such milk need not be pasteurized, and its hormones, enzymes, and steroids are not destroyed; if “pasteurization” is necessary, it can be done by the natural methods of souring or changing into yogurt). Eggs laid by hens allowed to run on the ground, gathering worms and scratching in manure piles rich in bacteria-produced vitamin B12, vitamin K, and many other nutrients. Fertile eggs produced by hens kept with roosters (such eggs are rich in steroids which commercial eggs lack). Meats from animals which have not been castrated. Foods which have not been refined or processed.

Although such foods have been eaten by billions of people who have lived and died, this degree of wholesomeness is now too dreamy to be practical. As I see it, thousands of adults and millions of children in our country have never once had one mouthful of wholesome food. Everything we eat is tinkered with in one way or another. With every tinkering come losses, some small and unavoidable, some large and avoidable; the cumulative amount of these losses is staggering and crippling. It is we who are staggering, we who are being crippled. We must do the best we can, but our best can be none too good. Supplements, therefore, appear to be necessary.

One should constantly be aware that a certain balance seems to exist between the various nutrients in the body, as in the case of the B vitamins. Furthermore, the absorption, utilization, and/or retention of one nutrient often depend upon the presence of another. For example, it is silly to take calcium if you fail to obtain enough fat and/or vitamin D to absorb and use that calcium; or it is useless to spend money on vitamin A unless fat and vitamin E are available simultaneously. These problems are largely taken care of automatically when natural foods are eaten. The overall picture, however, should be kept constantly in mind.

It seems to me that the situation is much like boxes inside of boxes. Each box should be seen as a whole and in relation to each other. The smallest box, let us say, represents the whole of nutrition from the proper preparation of the soil, through the harvesting, handling, processing, and marketing of food; the careful selection which makes it possible for each of the 60 or more body requirements to be met; the scientific preparation and gracious serving of that food; the pleasantness and relaxation necessary to assure digestion and absorption; and the factors which must be controlled to prevent destruction of nutrients in the body and losses through the excreta.

The next larger box might symbolize the body as a whole, all its parts and organs functioning co-operatively. Health is not of a part of the body but of all the cells together. Whether recognized or not, disease is not of a part but also of every body cell. The third box could be symbolic of the body needs as a whole, such as love, peace of mind, psychological adjustment, relaxation and personal recognition as well as the needs for exercise, sleep, fresh air, sunshine, and warmth. The next larger box might represent the individual in relation to his environment, family, friends, work, hobbies, and recreation. The largest box could symbolize this individual’s personal philosophy, religion, convictions, ethics, prejudices, and morals, which in turn determine the part he plays in the world about him. Nutrition, seen in such light, becomes a small part; yet it remains a vital part.

A doctor friend of mine calls persons only part-smart who fail to see nutrition as a whole and its relation to the world about us. When an individual takes vitamin Br or a physician ~ves injections of vitamin B12, either is granting that nutrition has a little value; since some 60 nutrients are considered essential, he is approximately one-sixtieth part-smart. Wonderful physicians have made such outstanding contributions by their clinical research with vitamins Br, B2, and niacin that they now have become famous; these brilliant men are still, nutrition-wise, only part-smart. The person who fails to see the value of soil bacteria, the losses caused by refining, the psychological factors involved in food choice and/or absorption or any other fragment of the picture is, in my opinion, only part-smart. The individual who perhaps harms nutrition most is one who exaggerates its importance; he is often neurotically part-smart. The man who has not yet realized that nutrition plays a role in his ability to be a good husband and father, to make a good income or to enjoy recreation or that it can influence his thinking and feeling is, nutrition-wise, not even part-smart.

Personally applied nutrition is a means to an end, a means which need be remembered only a few minutes daily during the remainder of your life. The end goal is health in all its aspects, a type of physical health which can help to form a basis for mental, emotional, moral and spiritual health. Such a goal is valueless unless you do something worthwhile with the health you attain. If a high degree of health, however, increases your mental alertness and emotional stability and can thus give you the moral courage to live up to your spiritual convictions, then you will find your work fulfilling, your fun rewarding, your goals tantalizing and the world about you both a good place to live and a better place because of your presence. Then only will nutrition have reached its personal goal.

Dr. Rountree has pointed out that the goal of nutrition is growth of body, mind and conscience. She states that the possibilities of improvement of family, community, and world conditions through better food and the use of nutritional knowledge for man’s welfare make up a vision all must catch; that nutritional knowledge alone is of little value but that what you do with this knowledge is all-important. She reminds us that undernourished bodies are tied up with self-centered, pessimistic minds and that malnourished people are not interested in abstract ideas like democracy. She writes: S “Nutritional knowledge can give us a sense of mastery over life, help balance the budget, reduce medical costs, maintain the right architectural propositions for social success and long life, improve the sense of humor, promote efficiency in home, school and business and make us better able to take it. Nutrition well taught will make people glory in the American way of life.”

It seems to me that the person who can be ever mindful of such a concept of health is, nutrition-wise, no longer only part-smart.

I usually have fruit or fruit juice, meat, tiger’s milk, and coffee or Sanka for breakfast. The youngsters’ favorite breakfast is fruit or juice and buttered muffins containing soy Hour, wheat germ, fresh and powdered milk, eggs, raisins, and soybean oil; they eat quantities of the muffins with milk or tiger’s milk. Unless I am invited out, I have only salad and tiger’s milk or yogurt for lunch; if there is no time to eat, I have nothing except a glass of yogurt or tiger’s milk. Afternoon snacks I particularly enjoy; I usually have fruit or a glass of yogurt or milk, then Sanka. Our suppers are skimpy, perhaps only scrambled eggs or cottage cheese with salad, milk, and fruit; or yogurt with fruit and homemade bread. Even when I entertain, I serve only meat or meat substitute, tossed salad, dark bread if anyone wants it, milk, and fruit. Sometimes I cook a vegetable and occasionally make custard, cheese cake, or some other dessert. The woman who helps me feels so sorry for my guests because they get no potatoes or gravy except on Thanksgivings. My friends are at “that age”; they seem to run to chubbiness.

The objection is sometimes made that such a dietary is expensive. I consider it the reverse. No money is wasted on junk; little or none is needed for medical or dental bills. Thousands of people who could afford adequate diets live on markedly inadequate ones. Persons who have little money also spend tragic amounts on “foods” which can never produce health. Perhaps two-thirds of the items in our food markets are not worth carrying home, let alone paying for, unless the goal be to produce disease.

The trouble with any general instructions is that they cannot meet individual requirements. For example, my first book contained a reducing diet; I recall how proud I was when a woman told me she had followed this diet and had lost 20 pounds. My glow quickly disappeared when I discovered she had also lost 12 teeth partly because the diet had not met her needs. The pounds quickly returned; her teeth did not. Every person’s nutritional requirements vary from those of other individuals and from day to day. No one can possibly know those variations as well as you yourself; for this reason everyone desiring health should have a thorough knowledge of nutrition.

People frequently ask me what vitamin supplements I take. My requirements may vary widely from yours. I use fresh orange juice and yeast and/or liver daily as my sources of vitamins C and the B vitamins and eat yogurt almost daily to supply bacteria which I hope are producing vitamin K and still more B vitamins. For years I have taken after breakfast 25,000 units of vitamin A, 100 units of vitamin E in the form of natural mixed tocopherols, and 100 to 250 milligrams of vitamin C, the amount varying with the number of people who are currently sneezing in my direction. I used to take 25,000 units of vitamin D every Saturday because I was afraid I would forget it on Sunday; now I take it on Saturday because a woman told me she understood that vitamin-D-on-Sunday held a religious significance for me. For one week of every month I take daily three to six tablets of calcium combined with trace minerals; I have hoped that enough trace minerals would be stored for the three following weeks. Occasionally, when working under unusual pressure, I take additional B vitamins in capsule form. If something causes me to blow my top, I run for calcium and vitamin B6 tablets, or if I miss so much sleep that a cold threatens, I take more vitamin C.

While I was visiting a friend recently I was startled to overhear her teen-age daughter remark, “I’m going to bed and leave the menopause gals to themselves.” This jolted me into increasing my vitamin E to 200 units daily, the mixed minerals to an after-breakfast routine, and the vitamin D to 25,000 units every Wednesday and Saturday, still without religious significance.

If you can find an everything-in-one capsule which meets your needs, that is excellent but I have never been able to. Such capsules are usually expensive; many B vitamins are omitted, some are supplied only in microscopic amounts, and the cheap ones are too plentiful. In most cases, to obtain enough vitamin D or E, you need to take several which, besides increasing the expense, may supply far more of other nutrients than you need. The supplements I take meet my needs at about nine cents per day; to obtain my requirements from all-in-one capsules would usually be many times that.

In my opinion, the vitamin business has become a racket.

I am continuously shocked at the amount of money people spend on vitamin supplements. Before buying any supplement, read labels and compare potencies and prices of various brands. Products shipped across a state line are inspected by the Food and Drug Administration. No company wishes its reputation marred by government citations; therefore the potencies stated on the labels of products marketed for some time are usually reliable. The prices vary widely, however, even for products often prepared by the same manufacturers. The cheaper product is often excellent.

There is little value in improving your nutrition if your digestive system is so below par that the food is not efficiently digested or absorbed. If your tongue shows the symptoms discussed on page 63 or if you get gas from taking yeast, milk, or other nutritious food, you can be sure, unless you are eating too fast and swallowing air, that your digestion is on the rocks. In such case lemon juice or dilute hydrochloric acid (10 per cent solution purchased from a drugstore) should be added to yeast, milk and/or tiger’s milk if used. To aid in digesting other foods, hydrochloric acid tablets, usually labeled as “glutamic acid hydrochloride,” are excellent. Tablets of digestive enzymes with bile are often advisable.” One physician I know tells his patients to take five of each kind of these tablets after each meal; if IlO gas occurs, to decrease to four, three, two, and finally one of each, increasing the amounts again if gas recurs. Such a procedure is excellent, but I have never had nerve enough to recommend it; I usually advise one tablet of each after each meal, to be increased later if trouble with gas persists. Both should be stopped as soon as digestion appears normal, or in about a month after a good nutrition program is initiated.

Removing numerous bottle tops daily would make a hypochondriac out of anyone. If you become a tablet taker, buy an attractive box designed for keeping several packages of cigarettes, dump your tablets into it, and keep it on the breakfast table. Avoid, if possible, the display of taking tablets in public.

Lunch

• Eggs, cheese, meat, fish, fowl, or cream soup; or peanut butter or other protein sandwich, if desired
• Green salad with oil dressing or vegetables in soup to which is added one tablespoon of vegetable oil
• Milk, skim or whole, yogurt, buttermilk, or tiger’s milk
• Whole-grain bread and butter or margarine, if desired
• Fruit, if desired
• Capsules or tablets if used

4 P.M.

• Fruit or fruit juice, milk, tiger’s milk, yogurt, or buttermilk

Dinner or Supper

• Soup or fruit or fish cocktail if desired
• Meat, fish, fowl, or meat substitute such as eggs, cheese, or waffles with creamed ham or tuna
• Tossed green vegetable salad with one tablespoon oil for each person being served
• One cooked vegetable if desired, preferably non-starchy
• Whole-grain bread and butter or margarine if calorie requirements are high
• Milk, buttermilk, yogurt, or tiger’s milk
• Fruit, cheese, and nuts if desired capsules or tablets if used

Bedtime

• For hungry persons or those whose health is below par: milk or milk drink

Since breakfast determines the amount of energy you have for the day and establishes your metabolic rate, it should be high in protein and supply some fat and carbohydrates, although it need not be a large meal. Lunches should likewise be high in protein and moderate in carbohydrate and should contain some fat. Dinners or suppers can be perhaps more graciously served but, calorically speaking, they should be no larger than breakfast or lunch. All meals should be delicious. The daily menus may be somewhat as follows:

Breakfast

• Orange or grapefruit juice or a vitamin-C tablet with other juice or fruit
  ¼ to ½ pound liver, chops, steak, hamburger, brains, kidneys, mixed grill, fish, or other meat; or eggs with another protein as ham or sausage, or cheese omelet, or eggs scrambled with powdered skim milk and/or cheese or brains, or an egg served with melted cheese on toast (bacon I consider an appetizer rather than food); or wheat germ and middlings or any whole-grain cereal cooked in milk and/or with powdered milk added; or waffles, hotcakes, or muffins made of high-protein ingredients
• whole-grain toast or bread if desired; cheese or peanut butter used instead of butter or margarine if enjoyed
• milk or milk drink, preferably tiger’s milk
• coffee if you must; preferably Sanka, postum, or other coffee substitute, perhaps made by adding milk instead of water to instant varieties
• daily, immediately after eating, if used: capsules or tablets of vitamins A, C, E, calcium and/or trace minerals, enzymes and/or hydrochloric acid; vitamin-D capsule every Sunday if desired

Unpleasantness at meals often makes us dislike the food served at .those times; many of these unpleasantnesses come early in life and are forgotten, but the food dislikes remain. I shudder to think of the future eating habits of a nation of individuals who, as babies, grope eagerly for warm nipples and instead have cold, hard spoons forced into their tiny mouths; of babies who long for the security of their mothers’ arms but endure the vacuums imposed by bottle holders. These babies are served unappetizing meals of canned foods which their own mothers could not stand to eat. Later, flavors may improve, but beside the children sit giantesses, urging, and scolding, prodding, and nagging. The children are too young to understand that the well-meaning mothers are concerned only about their health. They become too tense to eat at meals and satisfy their hunger by eating between meals, when only junk is available, their low blood sugar urging them to eat the sweets they have already been trained to love so much. These are only a few of the psychological reasons why good nutrition may never be applied.

Let us now suppose that sound dietetics is put into practice. The best food available is obtained and prepared by the best methods known. If this food happens to be disliked, if fatigue is too great, if unpleasantness occurs during the meal, if worries are carried to the table, if the food is said to be health-building and you better eat it or else, or if fears of indigestion are harbored, the flow of digestive juices is decreased or inhibited. Few enzymes are produced. This excellent food, deliciously prepared, stays partly or wholly undigested; most of the nutrients supplied never reach the blood. For example, fecal analysis of a group of successful businessmen revealed quantities of undigested meat fibers.

Such factors as worry, fatigue, and perhaps the stress of competition combined to prevent their five-dollar steaks from digesting. Relaxation and graciousness should reach their height before any meal. The mother who arranges her table as best she can, whether with pottery on clean enamel or with lovely linen, silver, crystal, flowers, and candles, is building health as surely as the one who selects and prepares food carefully. Any person who wishes to apply nutrition must keep these many psychological and physiological factors in mind before becoming too optimistic about the results expected.

There are two major rules to follow in planning a nutrition program for any person, young or old, well or ill. First, every known requirement must be adequately supplied. Second, except for correct cooking, foods should be eaten in their natural state as nearly as possible; thus nutrients still unknown can probably be furnished. Certain foods are the best sources of each body requirement. A summary of such foods, supplying nutrients in most concentrated forms, can give a basis for a day’s dietary:

1. A quart of milk which can be in the form of whole milk, preferably certified and not homogenized, buttermilk, yogurt, tiger’s milk, or skim milk drunk at the same meal when fat is obtained; or any combination of these milks, making a total of one quart. If health is seriously desired, eight ounces of yogurt should be eaten daily.
2. Whole-grain breads and cereals used as weight and aetivity permJt; wheat germ used in cooking or added to cereals. Yeast and/or liver daily if requirements for the B vitamins are high.
3. Some dependable source or sources of vitamin A: green and yellow fruits and vegetables, liver, cream, butter, or margarine; capsules of vitamin A if requirements are high and/or cannot be met by food.
4. Eight ounces of fresh orange or grapefruit juice or the equivalent in whole fruit or 12 ounces of canned or frozen; if frozen, select brands without added sugar.
5. A dependable source of vitamin D, as fish-liver oil or capsule of viosterol.
6. Iodized salt used to the exclusion of any other.
7. One or two tablespoons of vegetable oil as salad dressing, made preferably of soybean or corn oil untreated by heat, or two to four tablespoons of nuts (50 per cent oil) or 1it to l/2 avocado (33 per cent oil).
8. Enough green leafy vegetables to carry a tablespoon of salad oil at lunch and/or dinner. Cooked vegetables, preferably green or yellow, as desired. Starchy vegetables only when calorie requirements are high.
9. Fruits in addition to juice if desired. Colored fruits are preferable to colorless ones, raw to home-cooked, home-cooked to frozen, frozen to canned, and unsweetened to sweetened.
10. Two servings or more of meat, fowl, fish, eggs, cheese, or a high-protein meat substitute. Glandular meats, such as liver, brains, heart, and kidneys, served twice each week or more often. Some type of seafood once a week or daily if desired.

Now let us turn the tables and see that we have a dependable source of every body requirement:

1. Vitamin A: colored fruits and vegetables, cream, butter or margarine, eggs and liver; vitamin-A capsule if used.
2. The B vitamins: yeast, liver or wheat germ, wholegrain breads and cereals, separate B vitamins obtained from milk (B2), green leaves (B2 and foelic acid), meats (niacin), blackstrap molasses (inositol), brains (cholin).
3. Vitamin C: orange or grapefruit juice; smaller amounts from any fresh. raw fruit or vegetable; supplemented by ascorbic acid tablets if needed.
4. Vitamin D: fish-liver oil or vitamin-D capsule; vitamin- D milk if used.
5. Vitamin E: wheat germ, soybean oil, other vegetable oils; natural mixed tocopherols in capsule form if requirements are high.
6. Vitamin K: produced by intestinal bacteria; need be no concern to a healthy person if diet is adequate in milk and unsaturated fatty acids and low in refined carbohydrates; intestinal bacteria are increased by eating yogurt.
7. Vitamin P (rutin): citrus fruits, especially lemon rind; helps to prevent destruction of vitamin C in the body; helpful but not essential when massive doses of vitamin Care used.
8. Unsaturated fatty acids: vegetable oils, such as corn, soybean, peanut and cottonseed, and lard; avocados, nuts and unhydrogenated nut butters.
9. Calcium: milk, whole or skim, buttermilk, yogurt and/or tiger’s milk; bone powder and/or calcium tablets if used.
10. Phosphorus: milk, eggs, cheese, meats; all unrefined and unprocessed foods.
11. Iron: liver, yeast, wheat germ, meats, whole-grain breads and cereals.
12. Iodine: iodized salt.
13. Trace minerals: seafoods; liver, blacks trap molasses, and egg yolk usually dependable sources; unrefined foods grown under biological soil conditions; tablets of trace minerals or preparations of sea kelp if used.’
14. Proteins: tiger’s milk, yeast, fresh, canned and powdered milks, yogurt, buttermilk, cheese, meats, game, fowl, fish, eggs, soybeans and soybean flour.
15. Bulk: fruits, vegetables, whole-grain breads and cereals.
16. Liquids: milk, fruit juices, soups, all beverages; any amount of water you may wish to drink.

Such a simplified method of checking is only superficial.

Each requirement must be adjusted to the needs of the individual, the amounts of nutrients depending upon such factors as weight, activity, and degree of health.

One frequently hears the statement that all nutrients should come from good wholesome food. Of course they should. It is extremely difficult, however, to get good wholesome food. Certainly our over-processed, over refined American diet diluted with soft drinks, candy bars, and “quick-energy” cereals has little or no relationship to wholesomeness.

Selecting the best food available and preparing it by the best methods known are both extremely important. Selection and preparation determine the degree of health you enjoy. Food supplements may help, but food itself is far more important. Let us suppose you do obtain wholesome food and bring it into your kitchen. Losses of 60 to 100 per cent of certain vitamins and many minerals can occur during food preparation. One can predict with fair accuracy both the sickness expectancy and the life expectancy of a family by observing the wife’s cooking methods. Any man can be sure of decreasing his life span by marrying a fluffy-cake-and biscuit artist or one who does good-ole-Southe’n cookin’. The green vegetables prepared by some of these women look like the business end of a mop and taste, to me, like something a mop has picked up.

I personally know one such woman, a veritable feminine Bluebeard, who has buried three husbands from heart disease. I call it murder by the lemon-meringue-pie method. H you do wish to murder your husband, this method is excellent; no messy investigations by the police, no prisons, no loss of social prestige except among your acquaintances who are interested in nutrition. In fairness to women, however, it must be stated that many husbands commit suicide; men will continue to do so as long as the way to their hearts - often meaning their billfolds - remains the French-fries-apple-pie path.

Neither careful food selection nor preparation should he minimized. In my opinion, however, the best of both can still not assure health although the absence of either can and usually does assure illness. As I see it, we are caught in a double-squeeze play. We must have nutrients to maintain health. Most of us, however, live sedentary lives; we can use few calories. The desired nutrients come in packages with undesired calories. We cannot obtain the nutrients because we cannot use the calories; this is the first squeeze play. Because of the stresses of modern-day living, our nutritional requirements are extremely high, higher for our entire population than ever before in our history. Because our foods are over-processed and over-refined, our chances of obtaining these nutrients from foods are extremely low, lower for our entire population than ever before in our history; this is the second squeeze play. We are caught like trapped animals, and like trapped animals, we are suffering.

People are different from the experimental animals in a nutrition laboratory. Such animals are put on diets adequate in every respect except for one requirement, which may be only partially under-supplied. All other nutrients are generously supplied, their sources checked and double-checked. Even then the animals’ health gradually changes to disease, and their life span is shortened. People’s diets are often partly inadequate in from 20 to 60 nutrients simultaneously. A few nutrients may be severely lacking; others only slightly so. Just as the scientist produces ill health in experimental animals, so do people produce ill health in themselves. The principal difference is that, with these animals, illness is planned and expected; with people, illness is dreaded but expected.

Instead of the clean-cut, single-deficiency symptoms discussed in the previous chapters, persons usually suffer from multiple deficiencies, the symptoms superimposed upon each other. For example, an individual uninterested in nutrition may suffer from symptoms of a severe lack of 20 amino acids and 12 B vitamins intermingled with the symptoms of milder deficiencies of vitamins C, D, and E and of calcium, iron, iodine, and the trace minerals; during certain hours of the day the symptoms of low blood sugar may become more severe than any others. Such deficiencies, however, are not too difficult to correct.

As I see it, every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease in yourself. There is, of course, a sliding scale ranging from the most perfect health which you as an individual can attain, through all degrees of semi-health and semi-illness to serious disease. Your choice of foods can largely determine where on this scale you will fall. Neither sickness nor health is a matter of chance.

The problem, however, is less simple than merely selecting and preparing food. The reason nutrition is not applied and may never be applied is largely psychological. We enjoy foods; our pleasures are few enough; if the only foods we feel we can enjoy are the refined and/or processed ones, we will fight to keep them, thus fighting to hold our few pleasures. We as a nation have become so malnourished that we crave sweets as an alcoholic craves drink. This craving is being bred into our children from the very day of birth when, instead of being given life-saving colostrum, the child is offered sugar water in a hospital nursery, which is soon changed to a formula often prepared from solids containing 50 per cent or more refined sugar. Later, limited budgets, radio-and-television blarings, tired mothers, kids’ parties, Girl-Scout-cookie sales, and a hundred other forces combine to perpetuate this craving for sweets. People will fight to satisfy these cravings. The cravings themselves must be prevented if health is to be built.

Here is chlorine which originally came from table salt; like the shuttle from Times Square to Grand Central, it shifts continuously in and out of the cell, thereby aiding the body in removing carbon dioxide. Here are all the trace minerals, the catalysts, or speeder-uppers; they are the traffic cops which keep all traffic moving at a fantastic speed. Movement ‘can take place without them, but it is slow and the traffic jams. Here is cobalt in the vitamin B12 portion of certain enzymes; iodine is part of thyroxin; zinc is helping the messenger, insulin; here are magnesium, fluorine, and all the other minerals, each helping the cell to function.

Just outside the cell wall is sodium, which may have originally come from meat or table salt. In some way not understood, sodium carries on a lifelong duel with potassium, largely inside the cell. This mysterious duel is apparently fought over the water supply. When the sodium appears to be winning, the cell contains more water, but potassium is withdrawn and excreted in the urine; when potassium wins, much sodium and water are lost. The referee for this duel appears to be a messenger from the outside of the adrenal glands.

Perhaps with the help of these duelers and of calcium and vitamin C, this cell has an amazing power of selectivity. If poisons, harmful chemicals, allergins, and/or bacterial toxins are carried in the tissue fluid, this healthy cell refuses to let them enter. On the other hand, if the nutrition is good, the tissue fluid carries every nutrient to this cell; the cell invites whatever nutrients it needs to enter, withdraws what it wants, and leaves the remainder to be carried on to other cells. When too little of a nutrient is supplied, the cell adjusts itself as best it can; when too much is given, the cell fights back but is sometimes defeated.

Every nutrient has its own duties; yet each works cooperatively with the others. Vitamin E helps linoleic acid, linoleic acid helps vitamin D, vitamin D helps phosphorus, phosphorus helps calcium, calcium helps vitamin C, ad infinitum. No nutrient plays a hermit role.

Many activities which take place in this cell are brought about by other substances; although neither the activities nor the substances are described, both are known and understood by scientists. There are still, however, myriads of unknown activities and unknown substances which scientists have yet to understand.

This cell with all its processes and activities, multiplied by billions and billions, is you. The degree to which this cell can maintain its ideal structure and can carryon its normal functions is the degree of your health. A seemingly minor lack of a single nutrient or of many nutrients can damage the structure and/or interfere with its functions; a severe deficiency of one or more nutrients can bring about disaster. It is the amount of nutrients supplied to the cell itself which determines the state of your health. Malnutrition does not necessarily mean a faulty diet or even faulty absorption; it means only that less than enough of one or more nutrients reaches the cell.

The sum total of all the never-ceasing activities of all the cells is spoken of as metabolism. When these hundreds of activities, although still carried on at fantastic speed, are at their slowest, as when you lie motionless not even digesting food, the total is called basal metabolism. A lack of any nutrient or nutrients can slow down the activities of the cells; less food is needed, and unwanted weight may be gained. Only when all nutrients are generously suppli€d elm the activities of the body be maintained at ideal speed, and the metabolism remain normal.

Let us now see how all nutrients help the body by imagining that we can watch one of your cells. Let us say that you are in perfect health; therefore all the processes of this cell are perfect.

The cell is the shape of an egg. Foods can pass through its walls just as spilled juice might pass through a tablecloth. Every moment from birth until death there is poured in and sucked out a continuous surf of blood plasma, or tissue fluid. The incoming surf is pushed in by the force of the blood pressure from capillaries branching from arteries; the outgoing surf is withdrawn by the attraction of the tiny particles of a protein, albumin, in the capillaries joining the veins. The incoming wave carries fresh supplies; the outgoing wave removes wastes.

We can see through this ever-moving fluid as a diver can observe sea life about him when he walks the floor of the ocean. As we gaze into the cell itself, we see endless particles in fantastic and ceaseless motion. First we notice the business center of the cell, the nucleus. It is made of amino acids from the proteins you have eaten and of nucleic acid, obtained perhaps from yeast or liver; with the help of at least three B vitamins (biotin, pantothenic acid, and vitamin B6) these substances are formed into what are known as nucleotides; they in turn are combined into genes and chromosomes carrying your hereditary pattern, the life program of this cell. Surrounding the nucleus are ever-changing clusters of protein particles, or molecules, formed into what are known as colloids; these protein clusters make up the tissue of the cell, the cytoplasm. The whole, or the nucleus and cytoplasm together, is called protoplasm.

There is so much to observe that we scarcely know what to look at first. Before us are molecules of fat and glucose, both combined with phosphorus; bits of the body starch, called glycogen, made up of dozens of glucose molecules; tiny globules of the fat-like materials, cholesterol and lecithin. We see every known vitamin and mineral.

Our eyes fall on the worker ants in this amazing anthill, the carpenters who build, the demolition crews who tear down; these workers are the enzymes. Your genes carry the blueprint of the enzymes in your body; it is by enzymes that heredity is made possible. If you have blue eyes and brown hair, some of your enzymes are different from those of the person having hazel eyes and black hair. All enzymes are made of protein, but many also contain a vitamin and/or a mineral, such as magnesium or cobalt. They have been named according to the work they do, just as a family might originally have been named Smith because the father worked as a blacksmith.

We watch an enzyme family called phosphatase breaking phosphorus free from molecules of glucose and fat, thus beginning to change them into energy. By the help of other enzymes containing vitamin B1 or pantothenic acid, the particles of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen which form the sugar and fat are tom apart. Hod-carrier enzymes containing vitamin B2 take oxygen from the blood cells and carry it to the fat or sugar. Still other enzymes, this time containing vitamin C, pick up the hydrogen freed as the food is broken into its component parts. With the help of these and other enzyme families, oxygen from the air is combined with the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen which once formed sugar and fat and which are changed into carbon dioxide and water. By this process energy is liberated; all energy, in turn, is changed into heat.

We observe many other enzyme families; ones which tear down the genes of old cells and rebuild genes for new cells, the nucleotidases. The enzymes containing vitamin Be are demolishing and rebuilding bits of the protein cytoplasm. Still others containing pantothenic acid are building or demolishing the unsaturated fatty acids combined with pro.., teins, which together form the lumber for this amazing house. Other enzymes are breaking worn-out protein into sugar, fat, and nitrogen-containing substances. There is the enzyme family of glycogenases, quickly changing glycogen into sugar to replenish that used in energy production, and there are other enzyme families, hundreds of them.

We next notice little telegraph messengers, the hormones, racing in and out of the cell. A messenger from the thyroid glands, thyroxin, helps to determine how much energy is needed and to keep the temperature at the point at which the cell can function best and the worker enzymes can be most efficient. We see another messenger from the pancreas, insulin, aiding the cell to change the sugar not needed for ‘immediate energy into glycogen or fat. Still another messenger from the adrenal glands, cortisone, stands by to break body protein into sugar and fat if sufficient glucose is not supplied. A messenger called adrenaline (epinephrine) is here from the adrenals to speed up the change of glycogen into sugar in case large amounts are needed quickly, as during anger or fear, to produce energy required for fight or flight. Even messengers have come from the sex glands to affect the life of this cell and all cells of the body.

Our eve now catches our old friends, the minerals. Here is phosphorus, both free and combined with protein and fat as part o