53.
Characteristics Of Primitive And Modernized Dietaries
By Dr. Weston A. Price
If primitive races have been more efficient than modernized groups in the matter of preventing degenerative processes, physical, mental and moral, it is only because they have been more efficient in complying with Nature’s laws.
We have two procedures that we can use for evaluating their programs: first, the interpretation of their data in terms of our modern knowledge; and second, the clinical application of their procedures to our modern social problems.
Specifically, since the greater success of the primitives in meeting Nature’s laws has been based primarily on dietary procedures, it becomes desirable first, to evaluate their dietary programs on the basis of known biologic requirements for comparison with the foods of our modern civilization; and second, to test their primitive nutritional programs by applying their equivalents to our modern families.
The advancements in our knowledge of body-building and body-repairing materials from a biochemical standpoint makes it possible even with our limited knowledge of organic catalysts, to draw comparisons between the primitive and modernized dietaries.
If we use the generally accepted minimal and optimal quantities of the various minerals and vitamins required, as indicated by Sherman, (Chemistry of Foods and Nutrition. New York, Macmillan, 1933) we shall have at once a yardstick for evaluating the primitive dietaries.
Of the eighteen elements of which the human body is composed, all of which are presumably essential, several are needed in very small quantities. A few are required in liberal quantities. The normal adult needs to receive from the foods eaten one-half to one gram of calcium or lime per day. Few people receive more than one-half of the minerals present in the food. The requirements of phosphorus are approximately twice this amount.
Of iron we need from one-seventh to one-third of a gram per day. Smaller amounts than these are required of several other elements. In order to utilize these minerals, and to build and maintain the functions of various organs, definite quantities of various organic catalysts which act as activating substances are needed. These include the known and unknown vitamins.
Unlike some experimental animals human beings don’t have the ability to create some special chemical substances (not elements) such as vitamins within their bodies. Several animals have this capacity. For example, scurvy, which is due to a lack of vitamin C, cannot be produced readily in rats because rats can manufacture vitamin C. Similarly, rickets cannot be produced easily in guinea pigs, because they can synthesize vitamin D. The absence of vitamin D and adequate minerals produces rickets in young human beings. Neither rickets nor scurvy can be produced readily in dogs because of the dogs’ capacity to synthesize both vitamins C and D.
We are not so fortunate. Similarly, the absence of vitamin B (B1) produces in birds and man severe nervous system reactions, such as beri-beri. These symptoms are often less pronounced, or quite different, in other animals.
From our knowledge of the dietaries used by the various primitive racial stocks we can calculate the approximate amounts of the minerals and vitamins provided by those dietaries, for comparison with the amounts provided by modernized foods.
Our problem is simplified by the fact that the food of the white man in various parts of the world being built from a few fundamental food factors, has certain quite constant characteristics. Hence the displacing diets are similar for the several modernized groups herewith considered.
As a further approach to our problem, it is important to keep in mind that, in general, the wild animal life has largely escaped many of the degenerative processes which affect modern white peoples. We ascribe this to animal instinct in the matter of food selection. It is possible that man has lost through disuse some of the normal faculty for consciously recognizing body requirements.
In other words, the only hunger of which we now are conscious is a hunger for energy to keep us warm and to supply power. In general, we stop eating when an adequate amount of energy has been provided, whether or not the body building and repairing materials have been included in the food. The heat and energy factor in our foods is measured in calories. In planning an adequate diet, a proper ratio between body building and energy units must be maintained.
It is important to keep in mind that while the amount of bodybuilding and repairing material required is similar for different individuals of the same age and weight, it is markedly different for two individuals, one of whom is leading a sedentary, and the other, an active life. Similarly, there is a great difference between the amount of body-building and repairing material required by a growing child or an expectant mother and an average adult.
There are certain characteristics of the various dietaries of the primitive races, which are universally present when that dietary program is associated with a high immunity to disease and freedom from deformities. In general, these are the foods that provide adequate sources of body-building and body-repairing material. The use by primitives, of foods relatively low in calories has resulted in forcing them to eat large quantities of these foods, in order to provide the heat and energy requirements of the body.
The primitives have obtained, often with great difficulty, foods that are scarce but rich in certain elements. In these rare foods were elements which the body requires in small quantities, including minerals such as iodine, copper, manganese and special vitamins. In connection with the vitamins it should be kept in mind that our knowledge of these unique organic catalysts is limited.
The medical profession and the public at large think of vitamin D as consisting of just one chemical factor, whereas, investigations are revealing continually new and additional factors. A recent review (C.E. Bills, New Forms and Sources of Vitamin D) describes in considerable detail eight distinct factors in vitamin D and refers to information indicating that there may be at least twelve.
Clearly, it is not possible to undertake to provide an adequate nutrition simply by reinforcing the diet with a few synthetic products which are known to represent certain of these nutritional factors. By the mass of the people at large, as well as by members of the medical profession, activated ergosterol is considered to include all that is necessary to supply the vitamin D group of activators to human nutrition.
I do not use the term vitamins exclusively because as yet little is known about the whole group of organic catalysts, although we have considerable knowledge of the limited number which are designated by the first half dozen letters of the alphabet. Most lay people and members of the medical and dental professions assume that the six or eight vitamins constitute practically all that are needed in an adequate nutrition.
These organic activators can be divided into two main groups, water-soluble and fat-soluble. An essential characteristic of the successful dietary programs of primitive races has been found to relate to a liberal source of the fat-soluble activator group.
When we discuss the successful dietary programs of the various groups from the standpoint of their ability to control tooth decay and prevent deformity we find that for the people in the high and isolated Alpine valleys their nutrition is dependent largely on entire rye bread and dairy products with meat only about once a week and various vegetables, fresh in the summer season and stored for the winter season.
An analysis in my laboratory of the dairy products obtained from the Loetschental Valley in Switzerland through a series of years has shown the vitamin content to be much higher than the average throughout the world for similar foods during the same seasons. The milk in these high valleys is produced from green pasturage and stored green hay of exceptionally high chlorophyll content. The milk and the rye bread provided minerals abundantly.
It is unfortunate that as the white man has come into contact with the primitives in various parts of the world he has failed to appreciate the accumulated wisdom of the primitive racial stocks. Much valuable wisdom has been lost by this means. I have referred to the skill of the Indians in preventing scurvy and to the many drugs that we use which the white man has learned of from the primitives.
In this connection the Indians of British Columbia, who have been so efficient in preventing scurvy, have a plant product for the prevention and cure of diabetes. This has recently become known to the white man through the experience of a patient who was brought into the hospital at Prince Rupert, British Columbia, as reported in the Canadian Medical Journal, July 1938.
Prince Rupert is near the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska on the coast. The patient came to that hospital for an operation and suddenly showed signs of diabetes, which required treatment with large doses of insulin. Dr. Richard Geddes Large asked him regarding the history of his affection and what he had been taking. He was told that for several years he had been using an Indian preparation which was a hot water infusion of a root of devil’s-club which is a spiny, prickly shrub.
This medicine was in common use by the British Columbia Indians. The material was obtained and used in this hospital for the treatment of diabetes and was found to be quite as efficient as insulin and had the great advantage that it would be taken by mouth whereas the insulin which is destroyed in the stomach by the process of digestion must be injected.
They could see very little difference in the efficiency of this preparation whether taken internally or used hypodermically. This promises to be a great boon to a large group of individuals suffering from diabetes. It is also probable that its use will prevent the development of diabetes and since the Indians used it for other affections it may also become a very important adjunct in modern preventive medicine.
It is also of interest that among the group in the Andes, among those in central Africa, and among the Aborigines of Australia, each knapsack contained a ball of clay, a little of which was dissolved in water. Into this they dipped their morsels of food while eating. Their explanation was to prevent “sick stomach.” This is the medicine that is used by the native in these countries for combating dysentery and food infections.
It is the treatment that was given to me when I developed dysentery infection in central Africa while making studies there. The English doctor in Nairobi whom I called in said he would give me the native treatment of a suspension of clay. It proved very effective.
An illustration of the way in which modern science is slowly adopting practices that have been long in use among primitive races, is to be found in the recent extensive use that is made of clay (kaolin) in our modern medicine. This is illustrated in the following (Lawson, A., A Clay Adjunct To Potato Dietary):
In the course of an expedition to Lake Titicaca, South America, financed by the Percy Slade Trustees in which one of us took part, an interesting observation was made in regard to the diet of the Quetchus Indians on the Capachica Peninsula near Puno. These people are almost certainly descendants of the Incas and at the present time live very primitively. They exist largely on a vegetable diet of which potatoes form an important part. Immediately, before being eaten, the potatoes are dipped into an aqueous suspension of clay, a procedure which is said to prevent “souring of the stomach.”
We have examined this clay and found it to consist of kaolin containing a trace of organic material, possibly coumarin, and presumably a decomposition product of the grass from underneath which the clay is dug. The local name for the clay is Chacco, and the Indians distinguish between good and bad qualities. This dietetic procedure is universal among the Indians of the Puno district, and is probably of very ancient origin.
Such a practice by a primitive people would appear rather remarkable in view of the comparatively recent introduction of kaolin into modern medicine as a protective agent for the gastric and intestinal mucosa and as a remedy for bacterial infections of the gut.
It is of interest that both the British and American Pharmacopeias have added kaolin to their list during the last two decades.
The Indians of the past buried, with their dead, foods to carry them on their journey. From an examination of these one learns that in many respects the Indians living in the high Sierras are living today very much as their ancestors did during past centuries.
Items of importance now and in the past are parched corn and parched beans which are nibbled as the people walk along carrying their heavy burdens. Today these are the only foods eaten on many long journeys. We found the parched beans pleasant to taste and very satisfying when we were hungry.
Few people will realize how reluctant members of the primitive races are, in general, to disclose secrets of their race. The need for this is comparable to the need for secrecy regarding modern war devices.
The Indians of the Yukon have long known the cure for scurvy and history makes an important contribution to their wisdom in treating this disease. It is of interest that W. N. Kemp (The sources of clinical importance of the vitamins) of Vancouver states:
The earliest recorded successful treatment of scurvy occurred in Canada in 1535 when Jacques Cartier, on the advice of a friendly Indian, gave his scurvyprostrated men a decoction of young green succulent ‘shoots’ from the spruce trees with successful results. These happy effects apparently were not appreciated in Europe, for scurvy continued to be endemic.
Since that time untold thousands of mariners and white land dwellers have died with this dreaded disease.
Shortly before our arrival in Northern Canada a white prospector had died of scurvy. Beside him was his white man’s packet of canned foods. Any Indian man or woman, boy or girl, could have told him how to save his life by eating the buds of trees.
The problem of estimating the mineral and activator contents, in other words the body-building and repairing qualities of the displacing foods used by the various primitive races, is similar in many respects to estimating these qualities in the foods used in our modern white civilizations, except that modern commerce has transported usually only the foods that will keep well. These include chiefly white flour, sugar, polished rice, vegetable fats and canned goods.
Even though calcium is present in spinach children cannot utilize it. Data have been published showing that children absorb very little of the calcium or phosphorus in spinach before six years of age. Adult individuals vary in the efficiency with which they absorb minerals and other chemicals essential for mineral utilization. It is possible to starve for minerals that are abundant in the foods eaten because they cannot be utilized without an adequate quantity of the fat-soluble activators.
A boy four and onehalf years of age suffered from convulsions due to malnutrition. His fracture occurred when he fell in a convulsion. There was no healing in sixty days. After reinforcing his nutrition with butter vitamins the healing at the right occurred in thirty days. Whole milk replaced skim milk and a whole wheat gruel made from freshly ground whole wheat replaced white bread.
Following are the details of this case. A minister in an industrial section of our city, during the period of severe depression, telephoned me stating that he had just been called to baptize a dying child. The child was not dead although almost constantly in convulsions. He thought the condition was probably nutritional and asked if he could bring the boy to the office immediately.
The boy was badly emaciated, had rampant tooth decay, one leg in a cast, a very bad bronchial cough and was in and out of convulsions in rapid succession. His convulsions had been getting worse progressively during the past eight months. His leg had been fractured two or three months previously while walking across the room when he fell in one of his convulsions. No healing had occurred.
His diet consisted of white bread and skimmed milk. For mending the fracture the boy needed minerals, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium. His convulsions were due to a low calcium content of the blood. All of these were in the skimmed milk for the butter-fat removed in the cream contains no calcium nor phosphorus, except traces.
The program provided was a change from the white flour bread to wheat gruel made from freshly ground wheat and the substitution of whole milk for skimmed milk, with the addition of about a teaspoonful of a very high vitamin butter with each feeding. He was given this meal that evening when he returned to his home.
He slept all night without a convulsion. He was fed the same food five times the next day and did not have a convulsion. He proceeded rapidly to regain his health without recurrence of his convulsions. In a month the fracture was united.
Six weeks after this nutritional program was started the preacher called at the home to see how the boy was getting along. His mother stated that the boy was playing about the doorstep, but they could not see him. She called but received no answer.
We have two procedures that we can use for evaluating their programs: first, the interpretation of their data in terms of our modern knowledge; and second, the clinical application of their procedures to our modern social problems.
Specifically, since the greater success of the primitives in meeting Nature’s laws has been based primarily on dietary procedures, it becomes desirable first, to evaluate their dietary programs on the basis of known biologic requirements for comparison with the foods of our modern civilization; and second, to test their primitive nutritional programs by applying their equivalents to our modern families.
The advancements in our knowledge of body-building and body-repairing materials from a biochemical standpoint makes it possible even with our limited knowledge of organic catalysts, to draw comparisons between the primitive and modernized dietaries.
If we use the generally accepted minimal and optimal quantities of the various minerals and vitamins required, as indicated by Sherman, (Chemistry of Foods and Nutrition. New York, Macmillan, 1933) we shall have at once a yardstick for evaluating the primitive dietaries.
Of the eighteen elements of which the human body is composed, all of which are presumably essential, several are needed in very small quantities. A few are required in liberal quantities. The normal adult needs to receive from the foods eaten one-half to one gram of calcium or lime per day. Few people receive more than one-half of the minerals present in the food. The requirements of phosphorus are approximately twice this amount.
Of iron we need from one-seventh to one-third of a gram per day. Smaller amounts than these are required of several other elements. In order to utilize these minerals, and to build and maintain the functions of various organs, definite quantities of various organic catalysts which act as activating substances are needed. These include the known and unknown vitamins.
Unlike some experimental animals human beings don’t have the ability to create some special chemical substances (not elements) such as vitamins within their bodies. Several animals have this capacity. For example, scurvy, which is due to a lack of vitamin C, cannot be produced readily in rats because rats can manufacture vitamin C. Similarly, rickets cannot be produced easily in guinea pigs, because they can synthesize vitamin D. The absence of vitamin D and adequate minerals produces rickets in young human beings. Neither rickets nor scurvy can be produced readily in dogs because of the dogs’ capacity to synthesize both vitamins C and D.
We are not so fortunate. Similarly, the absence of vitamin B (B1) produces in birds and man severe nervous system reactions, such as beri-beri. These symptoms are often less pronounced, or quite different, in other animals.
From our knowledge of the dietaries used by the various primitive racial stocks we can calculate the approximate amounts of the minerals and vitamins provided by those dietaries, for comparison with the amounts provided by modernized foods.
Our problem is simplified by the fact that the food of the white man in various parts of the world being built from a few fundamental food factors, has certain quite constant characteristics. Hence the displacing diets are similar for the several modernized groups herewith considered.
As a further approach to our problem, it is important to keep in mind that, in general, the wild animal life has largely escaped many of the degenerative processes which affect modern white peoples. We ascribe this to animal instinct in the matter of food selection. It is possible that man has lost through disuse some of the normal faculty for consciously recognizing body requirements.
In other words, the only hunger of which we now are conscious is a hunger for energy to keep us warm and to supply power. In general, we stop eating when an adequate amount of energy has been provided, whether or not the body building and repairing materials have been included in the food. The heat and energy factor in our foods is measured in calories. In planning an adequate diet, a proper ratio between body building and energy units must be maintained.
It is important to keep in mind that while the amount of bodybuilding and repairing material required is similar for different individuals of the same age and weight, it is markedly different for two individuals, one of whom is leading a sedentary, and the other, an active life. Similarly, there is a great difference between the amount of body-building and repairing material required by a growing child or an expectant mother and an average adult.
There are certain characteristics of the various dietaries of the primitive races, which are universally present when that dietary program is associated with a high immunity to disease and freedom from deformities. In general, these are the foods that provide adequate sources of body-building and body-repairing material. The use by primitives, of foods relatively low in calories has resulted in forcing them to eat large quantities of these foods, in order to provide the heat and energy requirements of the body.
The primitives have obtained, often with great difficulty, foods that are scarce but rich in certain elements. In these rare foods were elements which the body requires in small quantities, including minerals such as iodine, copper, manganese and special vitamins. In connection with the vitamins it should be kept in mind that our knowledge of these unique organic catalysts is limited.
The medical profession and the public at large think of vitamin D as consisting of just one chemical factor, whereas, investigations are revealing continually new and additional factors. A recent review (C.E. Bills, New Forms and Sources of Vitamin D) describes in considerable detail eight distinct factors in vitamin D and refers to information indicating that there may be at least twelve.
Clearly, it is not possible to undertake to provide an adequate nutrition simply by reinforcing the diet with a few synthetic products which are known to represent certain of these nutritional factors. By the mass of the people at large, as well as by members of the medical profession, activated ergosterol is considered to include all that is necessary to supply the vitamin D group of activators to human nutrition.
I do not use the term vitamins exclusively because as yet little is known about the whole group of organic catalysts, although we have considerable knowledge of the limited number which are designated by the first half dozen letters of the alphabet. Most lay people and members of the medical and dental professions assume that the six or eight vitamins constitute practically all that are needed in an adequate nutrition.
These organic activators can be divided into two main groups, water-soluble and fat-soluble. An essential characteristic of the successful dietary programs of primitive races has been found to relate to a liberal source of the fat-soluble activator group.
When we discuss the successful dietary programs of the various groups from the standpoint of their ability to control tooth decay and prevent deformity we find that for the people in the high and isolated Alpine valleys their nutrition is dependent largely on entire rye bread and dairy products with meat only about once a week and various vegetables, fresh in the summer season and stored for the winter season.
An analysis in my laboratory of the dairy products obtained from the Loetschental Valley in Switzerland through a series of years has shown the vitamin content to be much higher than the average throughout the world for similar foods during the same seasons. The milk in these high valleys is produced from green pasturage and stored green hay of exceptionally high chlorophyll content. The milk and the rye bread provided minerals abundantly.
It is unfortunate that as the white man has come into contact with the primitives in various parts of the world he has failed to appreciate the accumulated wisdom of the primitive racial stocks. Much valuable wisdom has been lost by this means. I have referred to the skill of the Indians in preventing scurvy and to the many drugs that we use which the white man has learned of from the primitives.
In this connection the Indians of British Columbia, who have been so efficient in preventing scurvy, have a plant product for the prevention and cure of diabetes. This has recently become known to the white man through the experience of a patient who was brought into the hospital at Prince Rupert, British Columbia, as reported in the Canadian Medical Journal, July 1938.
Prince Rupert is near the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska on the coast. The patient came to that hospital for an operation and suddenly showed signs of diabetes, which required treatment with large doses of insulin. Dr. Richard Geddes Large asked him regarding the history of his affection and what he had been taking. He was told that for several years he had been using an Indian preparation which was a hot water infusion of a root of devil’s-club which is a spiny, prickly shrub.
This medicine was in common use by the British Columbia Indians. The material was obtained and used in this hospital for the treatment of diabetes and was found to be quite as efficient as insulin and had the great advantage that it would be taken by mouth whereas the insulin which is destroyed in the stomach by the process of digestion must be injected.
They could see very little difference in the efficiency of this preparation whether taken internally or used hypodermically. This promises to be a great boon to a large group of individuals suffering from diabetes. It is also probable that its use will prevent the development of diabetes and since the Indians used it for other affections it may also become a very important adjunct in modern preventive medicine.
It is also of interest that among the group in the Andes, among those in central Africa, and among the Aborigines of Australia, each knapsack contained a ball of clay, a little of which was dissolved in water. Into this they dipped their morsels of food while eating. Their explanation was to prevent “sick stomach.” This is the medicine that is used by the native in these countries for combating dysentery and food infections.
It is the treatment that was given to me when I developed dysentery infection in central Africa while making studies there. The English doctor in Nairobi whom I called in said he would give me the native treatment of a suspension of clay. It proved very effective.
An illustration of the way in which modern science is slowly adopting practices that have been long in use among primitive races, is to be found in the recent extensive use that is made of clay (kaolin) in our modern medicine. This is illustrated in the following (Lawson, A., A Clay Adjunct To Potato Dietary):
In the course of an expedition to Lake Titicaca, South America, financed by the Percy Slade Trustees in which one of us took part, an interesting observation was made in regard to the diet of the Quetchus Indians on the Capachica Peninsula near Puno. These people are almost certainly descendants of the Incas and at the present time live very primitively. They exist largely on a vegetable diet of which potatoes form an important part. Immediately, before being eaten, the potatoes are dipped into an aqueous suspension of clay, a procedure which is said to prevent “souring of the stomach.”
We have examined this clay and found it to consist of kaolin containing a trace of organic material, possibly coumarin, and presumably a decomposition product of the grass from underneath which the clay is dug. The local name for the clay is Chacco, and the Indians distinguish between good and bad qualities. This dietetic procedure is universal among the Indians of the Puno district, and is probably of very ancient origin.
Such a practice by a primitive people would appear rather remarkable in view of the comparatively recent introduction of kaolin into modern medicine as a protective agent for the gastric and intestinal mucosa and as a remedy for bacterial infections of the gut.
It is of interest that both the British and American Pharmacopeias have added kaolin to their list during the last two decades.
The Indians of the past buried, with their dead, foods to carry them on their journey. From an examination of these one learns that in many respects the Indians living in the high Sierras are living today very much as their ancestors did during past centuries.
Items of importance now and in the past are parched corn and parched beans which are nibbled as the people walk along carrying their heavy burdens. Today these are the only foods eaten on many long journeys. We found the parched beans pleasant to taste and very satisfying when we were hungry.
Few people will realize how reluctant members of the primitive races are, in general, to disclose secrets of their race. The need for this is comparable to the need for secrecy regarding modern war devices.
The Indians of the Yukon have long known the cure for scurvy and history makes an important contribution to their wisdom in treating this disease. It is of interest that W. N. Kemp (The sources of clinical importance of the vitamins) of Vancouver states:
The earliest recorded successful treatment of scurvy occurred in Canada in 1535 when Jacques Cartier, on the advice of a friendly Indian, gave his scurvyprostrated men a decoction of young green succulent ‘shoots’ from the spruce trees with successful results. These happy effects apparently were not appreciated in Europe, for scurvy continued to be endemic.
Since that time untold thousands of mariners and white land dwellers have died with this dreaded disease.
Shortly before our arrival in Northern Canada a white prospector had died of scurvy. Beside him was his white man’s packet of canned foods. Any Indian man or woman, boy or girl, could have told him how to save his life by eating the buds of trees.
The problem of estimating the mineral and activator contents, in other words the body-building and repairing qualities of the displacing foods used by the various primitive races, is similar in many respects to estimating these qualities in the foods used in our modern white civilizations, except that modern commerce has transported usually only the foods that will keep well. These include chiefly white flour, sugar, polished rice, vegetable fats and canned goods.
Even though calcium is present in spinach children cannot utilize it. Data have been published showing that children absorb very little of the calcium or phosphorus in spinach before six years of age. Adult individuals vary in the efficiency with which they absorb minerals and other chemicals essential for mineral utilization. It is possible to starve for minerals that are abundant in the foods eaten because they cannot be utilized without an adequate quantity of the fat-soluble activators.
A boy four and onehalf years of age suffered from convulsions due to malnutrition. His fracture occurred when he fell in a convulsion. There was no healing in sixty days. After reinforcing his nutrition with butter vitamins the healing at the right occurred in thirty days. Whole milk replaced skim milk and a whole wheat gruel made from freshly ground whole wheat replaced white bread.
Following are the details of this case. A minister in an industrial section of our city, during the period of severe depression, telephoned me stating that he had just been called to baptize a dying child. The child was not dead although almost constantly in convulsions. He thought the condition was probably nutritional and asked if he could bring the boy to the office immediately.
The boy was badly emaciated, had rampant tooth decay, one leg in a cast, a very bad bronchial cough and was in and out of convulsions in rapid succession. His convulsions had been getting worse progressively during the past eight months. His leg had been fractured two or three months previously while walking across the room when he fell in one of his convulsions. No healing had occurred.
His diet consisted of white bread and skimmed milk. For mending the fracture the boy needed minerals, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium. His convulsions were due to a low calcium content of the blood. All of these were in the skimmed milk for the butter-fat removed in the cream contains no calcium nor phosphorus, except traces.
The program provided was a change from the white flour bread to wheat gruel made from freshly ground wheat and the substitution of whole milk for skimmed milk, with the addition of about a teaspoonful of a very high vitamin butter with each feeding. He was given this meal that evening when he returned to his home.
He slept all night without a convulsion. He was fed the same food five times the next day and did not have a convulsion. He proceeded rapidly to regain his health without recurrence of his convulsions. In a month the fracture was united.
Six weeks after this nutritional program was started the preacher called at the home to see how the boy was getting along. His mother stated that the boy was playing about the doorstep, but they could not see him. She called but received no answer.
Presently they spied him where he had climbed up the downspout of the house to the second story. On being scolded by his mother, he ran and jumped over the garden fence, thus demonstrating that he was pretty much of a normal boy. This boy’s imperative need, that was not provided in white bread and skimmed milk, was the presence of the vitamins and other activators that are in whole milk but not in skimmed milk, and in whole wheat, freshly ground, but not in white flour. He was restored to health by the simple process of having Nature’s natural foods restored to him.
This problem of borrowing from the skeleton in times of stress may soften the bones so that they will be badly distorted. This is frequently seen as bow legs. An illustration of an extreme condition of bone softening by this process was seen in the skeleton of a monkey that was a house pet.
It became very fond of sweets and was fed on white bread, sweetened jams, etc., as it ate at the same table with its mistress. Note that the bones became so soft that the pull of the muscles distorted them into all sorts of curves. Naturally its body and legs were seriously distorted.
In this condition my patient, whom I was serving professionally, asked me for advice regarding her monkey’s deformed legs and distorted body. I suggested an improved nutrition and provided fat-soluble vitamins consisting of a mixture of a high vitamin butter oil and high vitamin cod liver oil with the result that minerals were deposited on the borders of the vertebrae and joints and on the surfaces of the bones.
The necessity that the foods selected and used shall provide an adequate quantity of fat-soluble activators (including the known fatsoluble vitamins) is so imperative and is so important in preventing a part of our modern degeneration that I shall illustrate its need with another practical case.
A mother asked my assistance in planning the nutritional program for her boy. She reported that he was five years of age and that he had been in bed in hospitals with rheumatic fever, arthritis and an acute heart involvement most of the time for the past two and a half years. She had been told that her boy would not recover, so severe were the complications. As is so generally the case with rheumatic fever and endocarditis, this boy was suffering from severe tooth decay.
This problem of borrowing from the skeleton in times of stress may soften the bones so that they will be badly distorted. This is frequently seen as bow legs. An illustration of an extreme condition of bone softening by this process was seen in the skeleton of a monkey that was a house pet.
It became very fond of sweets and was fed on white bread, sweetened jams, etc., as it ate at the same table with its mistress. Note that the bones became so soft that the pull of the muscles distorted them into all sorts of curves. Naturally its body and legs were seriously distorted.
In this condition my patient, whom I was serving professionally, asked me for advice regarding her monkey’s deformed legs and distorted body. I suggested an improved nutrition and provided fat-soluble vitamins consisting of a mixture of a high vitamin butter oil and high vitamin cod liver oil with the result that minerals were deposited on the borders of the vertebrae and joints and on the surfaces of the bones.
The necessity that the foods selected and used shall provide an adequate quantity of fat-soluble activators (including the known fatsoluble vitamins) is so imperative and is so important in preventing a part of our modern degeneration that I shall illustrate its need with another practical case.
A mother asked my assistance in planning the nutritional program for her boy. She reported that he was five years of age and that he had been in bed in hospitals with rheumatic fever, arthritis and an acute heart involvement most of the time for the past two and a half years. She had been told that her boy would not recover, so severe were the complications. As is so generally the case with rheumatic fever and endocarditis, this boy was suffering from severe tooth decay.
Agriculture is the noblest profession. Give him some land, he cuts the wood, makes cottages. The land is clear, now till it, keep cows and grow food grains.
Pusta Krishna: Doesn't put any local men out of work.
Prabhupada: Simple thing. And then live comfortably, eat comfortably, chant Hare Krishna. Comfortably means we require primary necessities, to eat something, to sleep somewhere and to defend, that's all. These are the primary necessities. That can be arranged anywhere. God has given all facilities. Grow your own food, eat, and live anywhere. Just this place was rough like that, now it is handled nicely, it is very attractive.
Any damn place, you cleanse it, it becomes home. And any nasty man, you decorate him, he becomes a bridegroom. (laughs)
~ Srila Prabhupada (New Vrindaban, June 24, 1976: Room Conversation)
In this connection the American Heart Association has reported that 75 per cent of heart involvements begin before ten years of age. My studies have shown that in about 95 per cent of these cases there is active tooth decay. The important change that I made in this boy’s dietary program was the removal of the white flour products and in their stead the use of freshly cracked or ground wheat and oats used with whole milk to which was added a small amount of specially high vitamin butter produced by cows pasturing on green wheat.
At this time the boy was so badly crippled with arthritis, in his swollen knees, wrists, and rigid spine, that he was bedfast and cried by the hour. His spine so rigid that he could not rotate his head.
With the improvement in his nutrition which was the only change made in his care, his acute pain rapidly subsided, his appetite greatly improved, he slept soundly and gained rapidly in weight.
At this time the boy was so badly crippled with arthritis, in his swollen knees, wrists, and rigid spine, that he was bedfast and cried by the hour. His spine so rigid that he could not rotate his head.
With the improvement in his nutrition which was the only change made in his care, his acute pain rapidly subsided, his appetite greatly improved, he slept soundly and gained rapidly in weight.
On the same day, in the presence of his scientist-disciples, Srila Prabhupada met with an Indian scientist who was a specialist in nutrition. The man explained that his work benefited mankind by finding the cause of and treating protein deficiencies. Srila Prabhupada replied, "Suppose the birds and beasts have no research institute. Yet there is sufficient protein supplied by nature. An elephant has got a big body and so much strength, but they have not found that by your scientific research. The nature is supplying. Prakrteh kriyamanani gunaih karmani sarvasah. It is being done. Why you are wasting time in this way? You study what is nature and what is behind nature. That is real study. The protein supply is already being done. Just like a cow is eating grass. And she is supplying milk, full of protein. So do you think that the protein is coming from the grass? Can you eat grass?"
Scientist: "Something must be -- "
Prabhupada: "That is something, that is not perfect knowledge. Everyone knows the cow does not take any protein food. She takes on the grass."
Scientist: "Grass is quite rich in protein."
Prabhupada: "Then you take. Why are you searching after protein?"
This occurred six years ago. As I write this a letter has been received from the boy’s mother. She reports that he is taller and heavier than the average, has a good appetite and sleeps well.
In the newer light regarding the cause of rheumatic fever, or inflammatory rheumatism, there appear to be three underlying causes: a general lowered defense against infection in which the fat-soluble vitamins play a very important part; minute hemorrhages in joint tissues as part of the expression of deficiency of vitamin C, a scurvy symptom, and a source of infecting bacteria such as streptococcus. This could be provided by his infected teeth.
These typical expressions of modern degeneration could not occur in most of the primitive races studied because of the high factor of safety in the minerals and vitamins of their nutrition. It is important to emphasize the changes that were made in our modern dietary program to make this boy’s nutrition adequate for recovery.
Sugars and sweets and white flour products were eliminated as far as possible. Freshly ground cereals were used for breads and gruels. A liberal supply of whole milk, green vegetables and fruits were provided. In addition, he was provided with a butter that was very high in vitamins having been produced by cows fed on a rapidly growing green grass. The best source for this is a pasturage of wheat and rye grass. All green grass in a state of rapid growth is good, although wheat and rye grass are the best found. Unless hay is carefully dried so as to retain its chlorophyll, which is a precursor of vitamin A, the cow cannot synthesize the fat-soluble vitamins.
These two practical cases illustrate the fundamental necessity that there shall not only be an adequate quantity of body-building minerals present, but also that there shall be an adequate quantity of fat-soluble vitamins. Of course, water-soluble vitamins are also essential.
In the newer light regarding the cause of rheumatic fever, or inflammatory rheumatism, there appear to be three underlying causes: a general lowered defense against infection in which the fat-soluble vitamins play a very important part; minute hemorrhages in joint tissues as part of the expression of deficiency of vitamin C, a scurvy symptom, and a source of infecting bacteria such as streptococcus. This could be provided by his infected teeth.
These typical expressions of modern degeneration could not occur in most of the primitive races studied because of the high factor of safety in the minerals and vitamins of their nutrition. It is important to emphasize the changes that were made in our modern dietary program to make this boy’s nutrition adequate for recovery.
Sugars and sweets and white flour products were eliminated as far as possible. Freshly ground cereals were used for breads and gruels. A liberal supply of whole milk, green vegetables and fruits were provided. In addition, he was provided with a butter that was very high in vitamins having been produced by cows fed on a rapidly growing green grass. The best source for this is a pasturage of wheat and rye grass. All green grass in a state of rapid growth is good, although wheat and rye grass are the best found. Unless hay is carefully dried so as to retain its chlorophyll, which is a precursor of vitamin A, the cow cannot synthesize the fat-soluble vitamins.
These two practical cases illustrate the fundamental necessity that there shall not only be an adequate quantity of body-building minerals present, but also that there shall be an adequate quantity of fat-soluble vitamins. Of course, water-soluble vitamins are also essential.
aho prajapati-patir
bhagavan harir avyayah
vanaspatin osadhis ca
sasarjorjam isam vibhuh
The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Hari, is the master of all living entities, including all the prajapatis, such as Lord Brahma. Because He is the all-pervading and indestructible master, He has created all these trees and vegetables as eatables for other living entities.
(Srimad Bhagavatam 6.4.8)
It is of interest that the diets of the primitive groups which have shown a very high immunity to dental caries and freedom from other degenerative processes have all provided a nutrition containing at least four times these minimum requirements; whereas the displacing nutrition of commerce, consisting largely of white-flour products, sugar, polished rice, jams, canned goods, and vegetable fats have invariably failed to provide even the minimum requirements.
The ratio in the Swiss native diets (rye bread, milk, cheese and butter) to that in the displacing diet was for calcium, 3.7 fold; for phosphorus, 2.2 fold; for magnesium, 2.5 fold; for iron, 3.1 fold; and for the fat-soluble activators, at least ten fold.
It is a pity that so much of their wisdom has been lost through lack of appreciation by the whites who made contact with them.
The ratio in the Swiss native diets (rye bread, milk, cheese and butter) to that in the displacing diet was for calcium, 3.7 fold; for phosphorus, 2.2 fold; for magnesium, 2.5 fold; for iron, 3.1 fold; and for the fat-soluble activators, at least ten fold.
It is a pity that so much of their wisdom has been lost through lack of appreciation by the whites who made contact with them.
There are eight million four hundred thousand forms of living entities. Jalaja nava-laksani. In the water there are nine hundred thousand forms of living entity. Then, jalaja nava-laksani sthavara laksa-vimsati. Sthavarah means the living entities who cannot move, just like the trees, plants, grass, vegetables. They are standing in one place. They are also called "having no leg." Ahastani sahastanam apadani catus-padam. This is nature's law, that the living entities which have no hands, they are eatable for the living entities who have hands. Ahastani sahastanam apadani catus-padam. And the living entities which cannot move, they are the food for the living entities which has got four legs. Phalguni mahatam tatra jivo jivasya jivanam.
In this way the weak is the food for the strong. This is the law of nature, that one living entity is the food for another living entity. So when a person eats another living entity, it is not unnatural. This is nature's law. But when you come to the human form of living entity, you must use your discrimination. Just like one living entity is food for the another living entity. It does not mean... In the lower animals sometimes the father-mother eat the offspring, but in the history of human society it has not come into notice that the father and mother eating the offspring. But time has come when the mother is killing offspring. That has come already. This is due to Kali-yuga.
~Srila Prabhupada (Lecture, Bhagavad-gita 13.1-3, Durban, October 13, 1975)