HOME HYGIENE LIBRARY CATALOG CHAPTER 16
This is all related to acidity
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DIET AND NUTRITION
Unless the doctors of today become the dieticians of tomorrow,
the dieticians of today will become the doctors of tomorrow.
Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Winner--Man the Unknown (1935)
So versatile is the human digestive system that people can live in apparent good health on many different kinds of diets derived from a wide variety of sources throughout the entire world. The diets may vary from being almost totally carnivorous to being totally vegetarian with or without dairy products.
It is obvious that all these diets must contain the minimum required amounts of the basic components--protein, carbohydrate and fats as well as the necessary vitamins and minerals--but getting these is not our main problem.
Notwithstanding that different diets appear to maintain good health, some do so at considerable strain on vital organs which eventually become diseased, and when vital organs fail as eventually must happen, the person dies, unless sustained by some artificial method.
There are some commonly held and very dangerous misconceptions about what constitutes a "balanced diet" which have set many nutrition-conscious people on the wrong track, causing them a great deal of harm.
We must adopt a diet that does not overstrain the digestive system or produce toxic substances which damage nerves, arteries, joints and vital organs. The excessive intake of grain products as encouraged by the Pritikin diet and the Macrobiotic diet is an example of bad effects accompanying good. Some weight-losing diets, such as the Dr Atkins diet and the Scarsdale diet, while achieving weight loss in fact are damaging in the long term.
It must be made clear at the outset--the dietary problem of the modern world stems very little from deficiencies of nutrients in the food, they are caused by three distinct faults:
1. The cooking of food.
2. Excess of dangerous substances in the food.
3. Excess of total food consumed regardless of its quality.
As described in the chapter on degeneration, Dr de Lacey Evans' observations of 2,000 centenarians showed that for the attainment of long life the amount of food was more critical than the type of food consumed. Be that as it may, I shall repeat a paragraph from Dr Jeremiah Stamler's George Lyman Duff Memorial Lecture 1977:--"An additional comparison has just become available, with data on mortality, for three groups of Californian Seventh Day Adventists (non-vegetarian, lacto-ovo-vegetarian and pure vegetarian) compared with the Californian general population. Seventh Day Adventists have lower mean serum cholesterol levels than Americans generally. For 47,000 Adventist men aged 35 and over, age-sex -standardized, mortality rates were 34% lower for the non-vegetarians, 57% lower for the lacto-ovo-vegetarians, and 77% lower for the pure vegetarians, compared to the general population."
Upon examination it is easy to see why a pure vegetarian diet conveys health and long life.
To remove some common misconceptions, I intend to explain, among other things::
1. The average person consumes protein and fat in harmful quantities.
2. That animal protein (including dairy products), especially when cooked, is not a desirable source of body protein, and is a poor source of energy.
3. That animal fat or concentrated vegetable fat, especially when heated, is not a desirable source of body fat.
4. That refined sugar or sugar extracts are undesirable as a source of blood sugar, whether for quick energy or not.
5. That salt added to food is harmful and totally unnecessary.
6. That cooking is harmful to food, not only depleting its nourishment, but at the same time causing pathological changes.
Let us now look at the different components of food and how they are utilized in the body.
Protein
The body, which is made of many different kinds of protein, manufactures the new protein it requires from a variety of about 20 amino acids in countless complex combinations. There are eight amino acids from which the body can manufacture all the others. These eight are called the essential amino acids and must be present in our food.
Foods such as meat, eggs, milk and cheese are animal protein foods and because they consist largely of protein, are commonly considered to be very important. However, it is now well known that all natural vegetable foods contain protein in small but adequate amounts.
it is a popular misconception that animal protein foods are essential to good health and many dieticians emphasize this continually. This misconception, plus the palatability of these foods when cooked, results in enormous excesses of protein in the diet, with very harmful results. Protein as eaten, first must be broken down chemically into the separate amino acids before being reassembled as new protein. Protein cannot be stored. The body can only use what it needs, and the excess must be converted into carbohydrate and fats for energy requirements or stored as fat. This process results in toxic by-products which must be eliminated from the body. If these levels are high the body cannot cope, and toxins such as uric acid and ammonia remain in the bloodstream causing inflammation in sensitive areas and increasing the risk of arthritis, kidney and liver damage, artery calcification, cancer and other metabolic upsets. Animal protein foods contain high levels of cholesterol and fat as well.
Pure vegetarians who do not use even dairy products get adequate supplies of amino acids from cereals, fruit and vegetables eaten in reasonable proportions. A diet of pure fruit alone provides adequate protein and fat.
"One of the biggest fallacies ever perpetrated," said Dr Alfred Harper, Chairman of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, "is that there is any need for so-called complete protein. Some proteins provide more limited amounts of some amino acids than others. But it has been recognized from the start of this century that if you increase the quantity, you don't have to worry about the quality. We have shown that adults can remain in protein balance on a diet of wheat, even flour".
It has also been a popular misconception for years that athletes and manual laborers need large amounts of protein foods. Tests on laboratory animals and with human athletes show this to be an utter fallacy. A group of athletes were tested for physical endurance after periods on different diets. On the high protein/fat diet their physical work endurance was 60 minutes, on a mixed diet 120 minutes, and on the high complex carbohydrate diet, 180 minutes.
Compared to carbohydrate, the digestion of protein requires seven times the amount of water, for the urination necessary to flush out ammonia produced in the body. Dr Nathan Smith, Professor of Sports Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle, said:
"To be excreted in urine, nitrogen byproducts require water, and this can lead to dehydration. Every year a significant number of deaths occur, especially in high school football practice, where athletes are trying to build themselves up on protein. They lose water, this prevents them from dissipating body heat, and they get heat stroke."
Cow's milk, which contains twice the amount of protein as human milk, can cause hypernatremic dehydration in bottle-fed babies because large amounts of water are needed to flush from the body the waste products which result from protein consumption. This type of dehydration is very dangerous and can lead to brain damage, shut-down of the kidneys and death within hours.
Together with inactivity, high protein intake causes osteoporosis--weak and porous bones. When protein intake exceeds about 95 grams per day, the body goes into negative mineral balance because of high acidity. With an intake of 140 gm, there is a mean loss of 60 mg of calcium per day, regardless of the amount of calcium ingested. In the UK, tests have shown that vegetarians aged 70 have bones equal to or of greater density than the bones of meat-eaters aged 50. Calcium compounds, not excreted from the body, build up in various locations and can cause calcification of the aorta (main artery). Calcium supplements can cause this as well. This form of hardening of the arteries can occur in the absence of cholesterol (ie. on a vegetarian diet too high in protein).
Studies of primitive Eskimos in the late 1800s and early 1900s revealed no evident cancer or heart disease among them. These robust and happy people, living in their natural state, existed almost entirely on animal protein and fat, and so impressed were some of the observers, they adopted all-meat diets themselves.
What these people overlooked was that the Eskimos' vigorous health was enjoyed only by the young, and that by middle age, when their vital organs began to break down, the Eskimo aged rapidly, and suffered severe osteoporosis. At the same time, the Eskimos had a very low resistance to infectious diseases whenever exposed to them. Dr Samuel Hutton, one of the observers (1902-1913) in his book Health Conditions and Disease Incidence Among the Eskimos of Labrador, confirmed the fact that cancer and other diseases of civilization were not evident among the Eskimos but had this to say about their life expectancy:
"Old age sets in at fifty and its signs are strongly marked at sixty. In the years beyond sixty, the Eskimo is aged and feeble. Comparatively few live beyond sixty and only a very few reach seventy. Those who live to such an age have spent a life of great activity, feeding on Eskimo foods and engaging in characteristically Eskimo pursuits . . . Careful records have been left by the missionaries for more than a hundred years.
"Perhaps the most striking of the peculiarities of the Eskimo constitution is the tendency to hemorrhage.* Young and old alike are subject to nose bleeding and these sometimes continue for as much as three days and reduce the patient to a condition of collapse."
*The reason for this hemorrhaging is the large quantities of EPA in the fats of the Eskimo diet, as described in Chapter 10. EPA, and the improved circulation it affords, accounts also, to a great extent, for the Eskimos' freedom from cancer and heart attack.
Vilhjalmur Stephansson spent many years among the primitive Eskimos around the turn of the century, observing them specifically for signs of cancer. He wrote the book Cancer, a Disease of Civilization and erroneously concluded that an all-animal diet was the key to their health. Later under the auspices of the US meat industry, Stephansson adopted an all-meat diet. His blood cholesterol rose to over 600 mg% and he developed serious cardiovascular disease.*
*The Eskimos consumed most of their food (including large amounts of fat) uncooked, and thereby to a great degree were protected from hypercholesterolemia as explained in the discussion on raw food.
Dr W. H. Hay, Director of the East Aurora Sanitorium, writing on cardiac-vascular-renal disease (degeneration of the heart, arteries and kidneys) said: "In close observation of many hundreds of cases of blood pressure, hardening arteries, degenerating kidneys, dilating hearts, in a private sanitorium practice of the past 30 years, I have not seen one single exception to the rule that an excess of protein is behind every case, the average being well over ten times as much protein as Chittenden says is necessary to repair body waste".
Hypothyroidism, a condition associated with artery degeneration, diabetes, cancer and numerous metabolic upsets, often results from a diet high in protein even in areas where iodine is plentiful in food supplies. In his book Hypothyroidism, The Unsuspected Illness (1976), Dr Broda Barnes cites medical research since 1933 to show that hypothyroidism is the most frequent but at the same time the most overlooked condition in the USA. Whilst the condition can be rectified by thyroid hormone therapy, obviously the correct solution to the problem is to correct the diet. Another related effect of eating excess protein is hyperinsulinemia, the production of excess insulin which in turn can reduce blood sugar levels down to hypoglycemic levels. In animal tests, elevated levels of insulin have stimulated cholesterol synthesis in the arterial wall resulting in atherosclerotic plaques.
Hyperinsulinemia, sometimes called insulinoma, leading to severe hypoglycemia can cause the patient to display neurological and psychiatric disorders such as coma, confusion and other impaired faculties.
A recent report in the Sydney Morning Herald said that in US Government tests, 200 rats were put on high protein diets similar to those blamed for the deaths of 16 women. Within a month, 189 rats died.
Dr Gary Williams, Chief of Experimental Pathology at Westchester's Naylor Dana Institute for Disease Prevention said: "All people on the high meat/fat diets have the same metabolic profiles as those associated with increased cancer risk in experimental animals. And protein has been shown to increase tumors in the high risk animals".
When, in the 60s, I was imbued with the "High Protein" belief, reading Adelle Davis, Gayelord Hauser and Lelord Kordel, I read a book, Health Secrets from Hunza by Renee Taylor. (I referred to Hunza earlier. It is a community in a valley where the Hindu-Kush and the Kara Korum Ranges meet at the western end of the Himalayas, near where the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia and China converge.) I later met Mulford Nobbs of New York, publisher and cosmetics manufacturer, who was a member of the same expedition as Renee Taylor. He scree ned his color slides of Hunza for me with a first-hand description. Another book, The Wheel of Health, by Dr G. T. Wrench of London (1938) also described the Hunza diet. I was confused because it seemed to me at the time that the Hunza hardly ate any protein. How then were they such fine specimens with fantastic vigor and endurance into old age?
A little later again when my first wife spent some weeks at the Hopewood Health Center at Wallacia and was wonderfully improved in health, I realized that the diet there was virtually identical to the Hunza diet. So I abandoned the "High Protein" diet to an almost vegetarian diet which (as most vegetarian diets do) still contained a lot of fat from dairy products, nuts and oil. I felt no different but I figured it was better anyway, and when eventually the Pritikin diet came to light, I could instantly understand and accept it.
Here are some assessments of daily protein requirements for average adults:
US National Academy of Science 34 gm
Dr Rayner Berg, Swedish Nutritionist 30 gm
Dr V. 0. Siven, Finnish Scientist 30 gm
Dr R. Chittenden, USA 30 gm
Dr D. M. Hegsted, Harvard University 27 gm
Dr W. C. Rose 20 gm
US Food & Nutrition Board 34 gm
Canadian Board of Nutrition 34 gm
Food & Agricultural Organization, UN 34 gm
Even on a vegetarian diet without dairy products, it is difficult to reduce protein to this level, and the inclusion of nuts and beans in a vegetarian diet to provide protein is completely unnecessary and in the long run, harmful.
Most vegetarians still include cereals in their diet as a source of protein and energy but even cereals are superfluous because fruit and vegetables alone can provide sufficient protein. The problem with a diet of just fruit and vegetables, if a person leads a very active life, is not protein, but getting sufficient calories, and it becomes necessary to eat frequently throughout the day. Such a diet is low in fat, and people on it are always lean and healthy. The utter fallacy of the Western high protein diet, containing perhaps 20% total calories in protein, is obvious when it is considered that the most natural food possible--mother's milk, on which an infant can double its weight in three to six months--contains only 6% protein, measured as a percentage of total calories, and this amount reduces to about half after six months. The diet of healthy West New Guinea Highlanders examined in 1969 contained only 3% protein.
Here are two menus for a day--protein in grams:
No. 1 -- High Protein
Breakfast
Orange juice (3), 2 fried eggs (14),
1 slice bacon (15), 2 slices toast (4) 36 gm
Lunch
Baked flounder (100), fried potatoes (5),
beans (2), fruit (3) 110 gm
Dinner
400 gm T-bone Steak (100), potato (5),
vegetables (5), fruit (3) 113 gm
Total--259 gm
No. 2 -- Low Protein
Breakfast
1 glass fresh orange juice (3),
muesli ( 12),fruit (3) 18 gm
Lunch
Fresh salad (5), wholegrain bread (2),
fruit (6) 13 gm
Dinner
Lightly cooked vegetables (5), raw salad
vegetables (5), fruit (6) 16 gm
Total--47 gm
This low-protein menu is a typical strict vegetarian diet. Most dieticians would faint at the low protein level and yet it contains, even without nuts and lentils, almost double the required amount of complete protein. There are many healthy vegetarians around who eat less protein and have done so for years.
Protein is essential for life, but far more people die because of excess of it than because of too little.
Carbohydrates
Most of the calories contained in food, regardless of the kind of diet, go to provide energy. Any excess, after energy and protein requirements are met, are stored as glycogen in limited amounts in the liver and muscle tissues, and the rest as fat, in unlimited amounts all over the body.
To provide the body with energy, the bloodstream requires a constant supply of carbohydrate in the form of glucose (blood sugar), and fat in the form of free fatty acids, so it can deliver them to all body cells. The brain and nervous system use glucose exclusively and the muscles use both fat and carbohydrate in proportions which vary with the intensity and duration of work.
The sort of food which best provides these fuels is a diet of fruit, vegetables and cereals. Fruit and vegetables are best eaten raw and provide a desirable alkaline condition to the blood. Cereals require cooking to facilitate digestion, and because their starch is a more complex type of carbohydrate, the digestion may take longer.* Cereals also contain a good deal of protein, and in one form or another form the basis of sustenance for most of humanity. With the exception of millet and buckwheat, cereals are acid forming and should be eaten sparingly. Rice perhaps is the best because it is digested much easier than the other cereals and is less acid forming.
*This statement may not be true of all cereals. For instance, it has recently been discovered that wholewheat bread, pasta and some cooked vegetables such as carrots and parsnips, release glucose into the bloodstream at an undesirably rapid rate. (See Cereals.) See also statement by Dr. Howell in Chapter 21.
Natural carbohydrate foods as they are digested provide a steady supply of glucose into the bloodstream, and when the carbohydrate is metabolized, the only byproducts formed are carbon dioxide and water, natural substances and completely harmless. The blood sugar level remains constant and the body feels good, the brain alert.
Carbohydrates may be classified as starches (complex), or sugars (simple); some foods contain both. Whereas starch is composed of complex molecules which are more difficult to digest, sugar is a simple molecule carbohydrate and is rapidly digested. Refined or cooked carbohydrates of any kind can cause temporary excesses in blood sugar levels which the body converts to triglycerides (see Chapter 21). This effect, if exaggerated, is undesirable, it increases blood viscosity and may result in low blood sugar (hypoglycemia).
There are different kinds of sugar in all food, and natural sugars in raw fruit and vegetables taken in moderate quantities are ideal nourishment, and do not cause big excursions in blood sugar. Fructose (fruit sugar) and galactose (milk sugar) taken in raw fruit and raw milk are accompanied with complex carbohydrate and natural enzymes and do not overtax the body. Nevertheless, fruit is better eaten at spaced intervals rather than large amounts all at once, and eaten whole rather than juiced. Ripe fruit contains more sugar than green fruit, because the ripening process converts the more complex starches to natural sugar. Dried fruits are nourishing but very concentrated so should be eaten in small quantities. As mentioned earlier, a properly selected mixed fruit diet contains small but sufficient amounts of protein as well as small but sufficient amounts of fat.
Any food refined for commercial purposes is depleted in nourishment and is harmful for a number of reasons. White flour is not only poor in nourishment and capable of upsetting body chemistry to the extent of causing arthritis, but at the same time is devoid of natural fiber and therefore tends also to cause constipation.
Ordinary white sugar or brown sugar is sucrose, a combination of two simpler sugars, glucose and fructose, and is derived from the sap of plants but without the plant's nourishing properties. Because the glucose and fructose are chemically bonded together in sucrose, they are not available for use in the body until digestive enzymes split them apart, whereas in nature both sugars as found in fruit, honey and nectar are already apart and enter the bloodstream without effort or excursion. Honey is a derivative of plant nectar and consists largely of fructose and glucose unbonded, and when found in natural beehives and not heated or processed, contains sufficient mineral salts and other nutrients together with natural enzymes to make it a nourishing food.
All refined carbohydrates, including raw sugar, treacle, molasses and processed honey, whether in drinks, cakes, confectionery or other forms, can cause disruption to normal blood chemistry with adverse physical and mental effects such as hypogtycemia, headaches, depression, hyperactivity, irrational or violent behavior, high blood viscosity, angina etc.
Refined carbohydrate, devoid of vitamins itself, still requires Vitamin B1 to be metabolized in the body. Thus it will utilize body stores of Vitamin B1 and this can lead to chronic deficiency of the vitamin. A Vitamin B1 deficiency causes underactivity of the thyroid gland (which controls cholesterol production in the body) resulting in elevated blood cholesterol, triglycerides and lessened body metabolism and vitality.
No wonder Professor John Yudkin of London called his book Sweet and Deadly. In Britain, he says, sugar intake is 25 times the amount that it was a couple of centuries ago. Natural Health, Sugar and the Criminal Mind by J. I. Rodale describes how criminal and vicious tendencies are induced by high sugar consumption. And yet the sugar industry still tries to "con" the public that their sugar is good for you!
You cannot eliminate sugar from your diet without making some drastic changes in the type of food you eat. The Consumers Union of the USA has analyzed a number of common food products and found that some of them contained more sugar than candy, ice cream and soft drinks. Heinz Tomato Ketchup, for example, had more sugar in it (23.9%) than Sealtest Chocolate Ice Cream (21.4%). Wishbone Russian Dressing was 30.2% sugar, and Coffee Mate, a substitute for cream, was 65.4% sugar compared to 51.4% for Hershey's milk chocolate. Cherry flavored Jell-O contained 82.6% sugar. Quaker 100% Natural Cereal contained 23.9% sugar and Hamburger Helper 23%.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, 27% of refined sugar consumed in the USA in 1977 was in beverages, mostly soft drinks. The remainder was consumed as follows:
Retail sugar packages 25%
Bakery and cereal products 17%
Confectionery 10%
Conned or frozen fruits and
vegetables, jellies and preserves 8%
Dairy products 6%
Public eating places 3%
Institutions 1%
At a NSW Education Department organized seminar on nutrition for school children, it was reported that popular brands of breakfast cereal contain about 50% sugar, even All Bran had 18%. The Vitamin C drink, Tang, had 94%. Ice cream, flavored milk and yoghurt can contain large quantities of sugar. Practically all canned and packaged food contains large quantities of sugar or salt or both, even some brands of bread.
Sugar contents of some breakfast cereals*
% Sugar
Content
Product by weight
Kellogg's Honey Smacks 52.2
Kellogg's Froot Flavored Loops 51.7
Kellogg's Strawberry Pops 46.0
Kellogg's Frosties 44.2
Kellogg's Nutri-Grain 43.7
Kellogg's Coco Pops 40.9
Kellogg's Sultana Bran 33.4
Kellogg's Bran Buds 29.7
Sanitarium Honey Weets 28.0
Sanitarium Weeta Puffs 25.8
White Wings Original Bran Crunch 25.4
Sanitarium Crunchy Granola 24.9
Sanitarium San-Bran 24.1
Kellogg's All-Bran 18.1
Sanitarium Golden O's 16.9
Kellogg's Special K 16.7
Nabisco Extra G 15.9
Kellogg's Bran Flakes 12.0
Sanitarium Popped Rice 11.4
Nabisco Crispies 9.6
Sanitarium Skippy Corn Flakes 9.4
Kellogg's Rice Bubbles 8.8
Sanitarium Mini Weet-Bix 8.3
Kellogg's Corn Flakes 7.4
Sanitarium Weet-Bix 4.0
Nabisco Vita Brits 3.3
Sanitarium Puffed Wheat 3.2
Kellogg's Ready Wheats 2.9
Nabisco Weeties 2.9
Nabisco Shredded Wheat 2.2
*Total sugars after hydrolisis.
Choice, 1979
Health food confectionery substitutes and "energy" bars etc. are practically all sugar of some kind. And if the bulk of your food comes out of a supermarket then you are getting lots of sugar, salt and fat whether you like it or not. Sugar addiction in this country is one of the greatest menaces to the health of our population.
Alcohol is a refined carbohydrate and should be avoided. It is common for doctors to allow heart patients to drink a little whisky, and some even advise it because they believe it dilates the arteries and allows better circulation. In fact, the only vessels which dilate are those in the skin, and because alcohol elevates blood triglycerides and impairs oxygen respiration of the tissues, its use serves no good purpose.
Fats
The main function of fat in our bodies is to provide muscular energy. Where stored in the body it acts as padding and insulation. It is not necessary to eat it, the body can convert protein and carbohydrate into all the fat it needs with the exception of "essential" linoleic acid. The amount of linoleic acid required is so small that any diet of adequate calories must provide ample. Even lettuce has a fat content of about 9% of total calories.
The worst fault with the Western diet is that it contains concentrated fats far in excess of the body's capability to safely handle, and whether saturated, unsaturated or polyunsaturated, is the most singularly dangerous factor involved in every one of the so-called degenerative/metabolic diseases, including cancer. However, the danger of dietary fat is far less if it is consumed raw as in raw milk or raw blubber as eaten by Eskimos. The reason for this is explained in the discussion on raw food.
When a typical meal is digested, the fat content is mainly absorbed into the lymph vessels and only a small part, glycerol and short chain fatty acids, are taken up by the intestinal capillaries. Thus most of the fat at first completely by-passes the liver and enters the bloodstream via the neck veins, Now the liver is the largest gland in the body, capable of over 500 complex functions, and yet it receives these fats not from the intestine with the rest of the nutrients, but via the main bloodstream in a manner and quantity not intended by Nature.
On a high fat diet with insufficient carbohydrate, the body must rely on fat and protein to provide its energy needs. In this process compounds called ketones are produced which in high concentrations can produce kidney damage. The efficiency of fat metabolism depends on the degree of physical fitness and is further discussed in Chapter 17.
Fats are a natural component of vegetable foods, and consumed that way, they are beneficial. All evidence points to animal fats as being dangerous, correlating directly with high cholesterol levels and the incidence of heart disease. Its correlation to cholesterol is unavoidable as animal fat itself as well as animal protein, contains cholesterol. Consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable fats and oils does not correlate with the incidence of heart disease, but it does correlate with the incidence of cancer and can precipitate heart attacks in people with heart disease. It was found, about twenty odd years ago, that when polyunsaturated vegetable fats were substituted in the diet for saturated fats, blood cholesterol decreased and here is where dangerous confusion arises. Because of this confusion, following the advice of the National Heart Foundation, I nearly killed my wife with the best quality cold-pressed safflower oil and polyunsaturated margarine.
The reason the cholesterol level falls is because the saturated fat, which contains cholesterol, has been removed from the diet and because polyunsaturated fat causes cholesterol to be deposited from the blood directly into the body tissues including the walls of the arteries. The cholesterol reduction occurs whether polyunsaturated fat is present or not present. Messrs M. L. Armstrong and M. G. Megan in 1972 demonstrated this with two groups of monkeys, one fed a diet containing 4% of the calories as fat and the other a diet containing 40% polyunsaturated corn oil. Both diets produced the same degree of regression of atherosclerosis with substantially decreased cholesterol in the blood and in the artery walls. A more recent study by Messrs Chakravarti, Kumar and Nair in 1977 using 40% safflower oil showed the same results.
It is a different story if cholesterol is added to such diets. When groups of monkeys were fed diets containing 50% fat with the addition of 2% cholesterol, regardless of the type of fat--peanut oil, corn oil or butter oil--the monkeys all developed cardiovascular disease, the peanut oil being the worst. Because of its apparent effect of lowering blood cholesterol, polyunsaturated fat was assumed to be beneficial to people with cardiovascular disease. When in fact it was the very opposite.
It is most important to understand that the acquisition of coronary heart disease is one thing, and that the factors triggering off angina or a heart attack after having acquired advanced heart disease, is another thing altogether, and polyunsaturated fat such as margarine or oil in the diet can trigger off angina and heart attacks in susceptible people like nobody's business. Not only has concentrated polyunsaturated fat been shown to have no beneficial effect on diseased arteries, it causes cholesterol to concentrate in the liver, causing gallstones. It has also been shown to depress Vitamin B synthesis by the intestinal bacteria, to increase the requirement for Vitamin E, and to depress calcium absorption.
The ingestion of free polyunsaturated fat causes severe red blood cell aggregation, reducing the blood's oxygen capacity and increasing its viscosity to a greater extent even than saturated fat. High intake of polyunsaturated fat is associated with an increased incidence of cancer, partly because of this effect on the blood.
In a test at the V A Hospital in Los Angeles, polyunsaturated fats were largely substituted for saturated fats in the diets of 422 men, and a control group of 424 men remained on the typical American diet. The test group sustained 5% less deaths from heart attacks, but the incidence of gallstones and cancer increased and the total deaths were the same.
Dr Meyer Friedman, co-author of Type 'A Behavior and Your Heart noted that in tests on 44 firemen comparing the effects of butterfat and safflower oil on the bloodstream, the safflower oil caused the same degree of red cell aggregation as did the butterfat cream. But worse, the safflower oil drink elevated triglycerides to a higher level and whereas the butterfat triglyceride level returned to normal after nine hours, the safflower level at nine hours had not even started to fall.
But popular beliefs are hard to shift. J. I. Rodale, a dedicated proponent of natural living and author of several books about it, and who was founder of Prevention magazine available worldwide, died of a heart attack in his early seventies while being interviewed on TV. He advocated in his book Rodale's System for Mental Power and Natural Health, the inclusion in the diet of plenty of meat, fish and eggs, safflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, olive oil and honey. The books of Lelord Kordel, Gayelord Hauser and Adelle Davis are similar in that they advocate diets containing excess protein, cholesterol and fat.
Adelle Davis died of cancer, and more recently Gayelord Hauser died of heart disease.
We must judge by results. Wherever in the world you look, Finland, USA, Africa or New Guinea, people on high fat/cholesterol diets get clogged up arteries and cancer, and people on low fat diets do not.
Salt
It is totally unnecessary to add salt to food. It is a harmful irritant conducive to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, kidney damage, edema, arthritis, migraine and cancer. Perhaps the main danger from salt is its effect of inhibiting enzymes, which is the reason it works as a food preservative. Sea salt and monosodiumglutamate are equally harmful, and various salt substitutes should be avoided. Adequate organic sodium is provided in fruit and vegetables.
Salt is expelled by the body in the urine and perspiration, and thirst is induced to replace the water lost thereby. Unless the water is replaced, dehydration may occur which of course increases the blood viscosity. At the same time salt retained in body tissues extracts water into those tissues where it may be retained to cause swelling known as edema. The swelling not only restricts oxygen transfer to the tissue cells but exerts pressure on the capillary vessels further impeding the circulation.
Even before it is absorbed by digestion, salt is a harmful irritant in the digestive tract. Damage can be caused to the stomach lining by osmotic pressure which is the property of a substance to absorb water to itself. Salt (and to a lesser extent sugar) taken in large amounts on an empty stomach can be observed through a gastroscope to inflame the stomach lining as cells shrivel when the water is robbed from them. Japanese have a high incidence of stomach cancer which is thought to be associated with their high salt intake. It has been observed in Japan that such inflammation may persist for two weeks after the intake of salt has been stopped. The Japanese also have the highest rate of hypertension in the world, which is undoubtedly due to their high salt intake. Also associated with dietary salt is the retention of uric acid in the body.
It is a fallacy that salt should be taken to counter that lost by perspiration. It is expelled by perspiration because the body wants to get rid of it. Once in Singapore I got bushed in jungle behind the Bukit Tima Reservoir. I hiked for five hours, lost a gallon (10 lbs) of water from my body in the midday heat and although desperately thirsty, not once felt tired or cramp.
As more knowledge is acquired throughout the world, many fallacies are being dispelled. One of these fallacies is that endurance athletes require extra salt, particularly in hot weather. It has been shown repeatedly that regardless of temperature, long distance runners perform best on diets free of added salt.
Salt and Premenstrual Tension: "Up to 90% of women suffer needlessly from premenstrual tension during their childbearing years," said Dr Niels Laverson, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cornell University. "By simply giving up or severely restricting the amount of salt in their diet many of them can cut out the aggravating feeling of moodiness, depression and bloatedness." Dr Laverson is the co-author of It's Your Body--A Woman's Guide to Gynecology. He explained: "The week before a woman has her period, there is a build up in her body of two hormones--progesterone and estrogen. Estrogen binds salt to the body and salts bind water. The result is a build-up of water which causes pre-menstrual tension, excess fluid in the brain causes headaches. Fluid in other parts of the body causes fatigue". (See Menstrual problems, Chapter 21.)
Meat
All animal protein foods tend to be harmful in a number of ways. They introduce too much protein into the diet, they contain too much fat and they contain cholesterol. When cooked they produce cancer-inducing chemicals and are devoid of enzymes. They are also devoid of fiber and therefore cause constipation.
When beef is raised in stalls and especially fattened by the use of hormones and overfeeding, the fat content of the meat is increased enormously, but long before this practice was adopted by meat producers, observant medical men always have noted the markedly adverse effects of eating meat.
Dr Arnold Lorand of Austria in his book, Old Age Deferred (1910) devoted an entire chapter to the "Dangers of an Abundant Meat Diet". He had observed, and he quoted a number of other medical researchers who had observed the following facts:
1. After eating much meat, nervous disorders are far more frequent.
2. There are many more instances of neurasthenia and hysteria among meat eaters than vegetarians.
3. In the treatment of many nervous disorders, far better results are obtained after excluding meat from the diet.
4. The symptoms of Graves disease and myxoedema are aggravated after partaking of meat.
5. Meat produces high levels of toxins in the system which impose a strain on the vital organs.
6. The thyroid gland, liver, kidneys, pancreas and other ductless glands become altered and finally damaged on a high meat diet.
7. The thyroid enhances the catabolism of fat, and if the thyroid function is impaired, atheroma of the aorta may follow.
8. A diet high in meat causes gout and arteriosclerosis.
9. A diet high in meat often results in cancer.
10. Diabetes sometimes results from a diet high in meat and if already present will be exacerbated.
11. The viscosity of the blood is increased and circulation reduced.
12. Meat produces acids in the system which can, to a great extent, be counteracted by eating lots of fruit and vegetables.
13. Meat does not stimulate peristaltic movements of the intestine and the intestinal transit is slow with resulting putrefaction and constipation.
14. Resorption of toxins from the constipated bowel inflicts further strain on the kidneys.
Dr Lorand further observed that white meats and fish (except salmon, carp or red fleshed fish) are more easily tolerated by body.
Having described the special function of the thyroid gland, working together with other glands, in destroying toxins produced in the body from meat, Dr Lorand explained how meat could be rendered much less harmful by boiling it instead of roasting. Boiling removed certain harmful substances which he did not define, but the proof he furnished is as follows:
Dr Leo Breisacher of Detroit demonstrated that when dogs were deprived of their thyroid they could survive for a long time on a diet of milk but on meat they died in a few days. Similarly, dogs without a thyroid could survive a long time if fed boiled meat, but died if fed the bouillon made from meat.*
*Dr de Lacy Evans, quoted earlier, before devoting his career to natural medicine, was a surgeon in a cancer hospital. He said, "When meat is given, it should be boiled, and the liquid broth, soup or beef tea, thrown away. It contains the irritating constituents of flesh which encourage the growth of cancer".
Dr Lorand said: "Every physician can observe daily, as we have, that when patients suffering from disorders of the liver take meat, they gradually get worse, but when they gave up meat they soon got better," and finally:
"When we study the nature of the diet enjoyed by persons who have lived over 100, we find, indeed, exceedingly few who are great meat eaters; very many are persons who eat no meat at all; and in many cases, also, the original meat diet was subsequently abandoned in advanced age. According to the report of the Collective Investigation Committee of the British Medical Association, the 55 centenarians whose cases they examined, were for the most part, small meat eaters."
The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1977 reported that although total fat consumption in Copenhagen is lower than in rural Finland, the meat consumption is higher, and so is the rate of colon cancer, which is four times higher in Copenhagen.
Meat, Of course, not only contributes protein, fat and cholesterol, but as inferred, appears to contain substances which are specifically carcinogenic, at the same time being conducive to the condition of constipation.
Poultry
The meat of fowls contains fat and cholesterol, and therefore the same objections as against meat are held, but to a lesser degree, against it. Apart from these objections it should be remembered that a great variety of chemicals is used in chicken feed to promote the growth of the chickens as well as certain preservatives in the feed itself, the harmful effect of which is passed on to whoever cats the chicken.
Fish
Fish from unpolluted waters is the least toxin-producing of the animal Protein foods. It can be eaten raw. If fish is marinated in lemon juice and then warmed a little before eating, its texture and taste is the same as if it was cooked. Ocean fish provides a better source of minerals.
The advantages of fish as a food, particularly if consumed uncooked, have already been explained and are further discussed under "The Value of Raw Food".
Cereals
Cereals of one kind or another provide the bulk of the energy in the diets of most people world wide, and for many they also provide the bulk of the protein. However, they cannot be said to be a natural food for humans because they do not abundantly occur in nature, having only comparatively recently been developed by man as a crop food.
Despite their nutritional qualities, cereals do not provide balanced nourishment, and in some ways are quite harmful if eaten in large quantities. The fact alone that cereals contain absolutely no Vitamin C is enough to disqualify them as a highly suitable food for humans. (See discussion on Vitamin C.) With the exception of millet and buckwheat, they are acid forming in the body, and even when cooked are comparatively difficult to digest and produce flatulence. In food allergy tests, after eggs (33%), wheat products excite the greatest percentage of reactions (30%) in those tested. Cereals are known to exacerbate arthritis and diabetes in some people, and populations which consume them in great quantities are not long lived.
Studies made by various medical researchers in the 1800s described by Dr Emmet Densmore of England in his book, How Nature Cures, incriminate cereals, wheat in particular, in causing deposits of calcium salts in the tissues, and hardening of the arteries. Similar tissue degeneration was noted in Indian people whose diet consisted mainly of rice.
Furthermore, bread and other cereal-starch foods are the prime cause of the acids formed in the mouth which attack and decay teeth.
World Wars I and II in Europe provided valuable information on nutrition, but this has been misinterpreted and wrong conclusions have been formed about cereals. As mentioned earlier, autopsies of concentration camp victims fed on meager scraps showed complete clearance of fat deposits in their arteries. In Austria, where all civilian deaths require a full autopsy, statistics showed that between 1939 and 1945 heart attacks decreased by 75%. Does this mean that the wartime Austrian diet, dependent on potatoes and cereals, likewise cleared their arteries of atherosclerosis? It certainly would appear so, but that is not the case.
In his book Solved: The Riddle of Heart Attacks, (Robinson Press, Fort Collins, Colorado 1976), Dr Broda Barnes MD, PhD, related:
"I have personally reviewed 70,000 autopsy protocols at Graz, Austria, carried out between the years 1930-1970. At Graz, heart attacks dropped 75% between 1939 and 1945, and it is true that people were not eating cholesterol foods during the war. However, the low cholesterol diet did not protect their arteries from hardening. A look at the arteries of the entire series of 2,000 autopsies in 1945 revealed that the number of individuals with damage to their coronary arteries was approximately doubled in 1945 compared to 1939, and the degree of damage to each one affected was about twice as great. In other words, the low cholesterol diet had not only failed to protect the arteries, but the damage was increased four-fold."
Why then did heart attack deaths fall when the heart disease rate increased? Dr Barnes says tuberculosis killed the people before they could have their heart attack, but the disparity in numbers is too great for that to be the major reason. It is far more likely that the heart attack rates fell because of the drastically decreased fat in the diet which would result in lower blood viscosity and better circulation even in worsened arteries.
Dr Edward Howell, formerly of Chicago, (see Chapter 6) in his book The Status of Food Enzymes in Digestion and Metabolism (1946), described extensive clinical research which among many other things revealed that Malays and Filipinos, who subsist mainly on rice, develop marked hypertrophy of the pancreas. The pancreas is the organ which produces essential digestive enzymes in addition to its job of producing insulin. Hypertrophy of an organ indicates it is being overworked. Compared to the average not-overweight American (who, the studies showed, also had an enlarged pancreas), the Malays and Filipinos pancreas' were, in proportion to total body weight, 50% larger. Compared to herviborous animals, the rice-eaters pancreas were 300% larger. (See discussion on raw food.)
Damage to the intestinal lining and subsequent impairment of the digestion is called coeliac disease, characterized by the inability to digest cereals containing gluten (eg. wheat, rye, barley and oats) with relatively poor absorption of other nutrients as well. Coeliac disease is caused by the feeding of cereals to infants before their intestines are developed sufficiently to withstand their damaging effect. Thus the condition is permanent and is exhibited as a lifetime allergy to cereals.
Recent experiments by Dr E. W. Williams, University College of North Wales, UK, showed that wheat protein is antigenic to rats. It causes hyperactivity to rats not used to them, and increased activity in those that are. In addition, Dr Williams found that the intestinal villi of the rats whose diet included wheat protein changed in shape from long and slender to shorter and blunt. Similar villous atrophy has been observed in humans, he said.
Dr Herbert Shelton, one of the best-known and most experienced researchers in nutrition of the 20th Century, said of cereals: "Of all starch foods eaten by man, cereals, along with legumes, are the least fitted to the capacities of his digestive organs and are also least well-fitted to meet the nutritive needs of his body".
As a staple food, rice is far preferable to wheat, or oats. It contains a lower, more desirable level of protein, is less acid forming, more nourishing, and leaves less toxins and residues for the body to dispose of. To offset the undesirable properties of cereals, they should be accompanied by fresh fruit and vegetables.
Notwithstanding their disadvantages, cereals, as the basis of most national diets, and in combination with vegetables and fruit, sustain people in good health for many years. The health-promoting qualities of the Pritikin diet which relies heavily on cereals, are indisputable, and even healthy athletes who change to it from the conventional diet experience improved mental and physical performance.
However, the same or better performance can be gained without cereals. For instance, in 1978 John Marino of Santa Monica, set a new USA cross-country bicycle record of 13 days, 1 hour and 20 minutes. In 1979, on a diet high in rice and wheat, he tried to better that record but could not complete the ride due to dizziness and fatigue, and later found he was allergic to these foods. In 1980, on a diet of fruit, vegetables, beans and fish, he knocked over 21 hours off his 1978 record to create a new one of 12 days, 3 hours and 41 minutes, and said he felt he could have continued riding, perhaps even back to Santa Monica.
My reservations about cereals began not long after I adopted the Pritikin diet in 1976, and started eating lots of oatmeal and wholegrain bread.* I started getting twinges of arthritis in my right elbow and occasional symptoms of hypoglycemia. When I cut right down on bread and ate more fruit these problems vanished. Then I noticed that although some people on the Pritikin diet were rapidly clear of arthritis, others still had it in varying degrees and could only gain relief by eliminating wheat products and oats. Other people complained of dry skin. Another query arose from a 55-year-old acquaintance who benefited greatly in health from the Pritikin diet but after two years was still experiencing prostate trouble and had developed a fibrous cyst which was removed surgically. His prostate problem was eliminated after he cut out eating cereal products and replaced them with raw fruit.
*In Radiant Health Digest, July 1936, Dr Howell reported tests from the University of Tennessee which showed that contrary to long accepted opinion, the carbohydrate from wholewheat bread is digested and absorbed very rapidly into the bloodstream, as is also the starch of cooked potato. These facts have been rediscovered by Dr David Jenkins of the University of Toronto, who measured the 'glycemic ratings' of different foods. His findings, released in 1983, showed that wholewheat bread, pasta, cooked carrots, and other unsuspected complex carbohydrates, instead of releasing glucose slowly into the bloodstream, did so at a rate faster than did table sugar or ice cream. This means that some so-called unrefined carbohydrate foods, once cooked, no longer are protective against excursions of blood sugar and triglycerides, but instead are capable of causing such excursions. (See Hypoglycemia, in Chapter 21.)
My studies of the effects of various diets on achieving remissions of cancer led me further to dispute the value of cereals and cooked food and the specific reasons I have described elsewhere in this book. Additionally, it is significant that the primitive people upon whose diets the Pritikin diet is modelled, although not heirs to the diseases of civilization, at the same time are not renowned for their longevity. I was eventually forced to the conclusion arrived at by Dr de Lacy Evans, Dr Densmore, Dr Howell and others, many years ago, that although cereal-based diets are far preferable to a diet based on animal protein foods, the benefits gained come not from the cereals, but from the exclusion of animal protein, fat and cholesterol, and that greater benefit still can be gained by displacing cereals from the diet with fruit and vegetables. This conclusion was not shaken when in May 1983 Dr Paavo Airola, one of the most widely read nutritionists in the world, whose books promoted cereals above all other foods, died of a stroke at the age of 65.
Sprouted cereals
Seeds which have sprouted form a completely different foodstuff altogether. They are very nutritious in that the enzymes are no longer inhibited, starch is converted to easily digested natural sugars, and various vitamins become available. Eaten in this form cereals are a desirable food substance. Even seed-eating birds are only able to digest seeds after germination has begun; they are equipped with a crop in which the seeds remain after swallowing until ready for digestion.
Nuts
Nuts are similar to cereals inasmuch as they are seeds and as such contain enzyme inhibitors which make them hard to digest. Like cereals, they are more easily digested after roasting because this deactivates the enzyme inhibitors. Despite cooking, they are still difficult to digest, and because they contain high levels of fat and protein, nuts cannot be considered a desirable source of nourishment, regardless of whatever nutritional virtues they do have.
Although it is generally believed that nuts are a natural food for man, Dr Edward Howell's studies show that the wild primates eat them only before they are fully grown, i.e. before the enzyme inhibitors are formed. Squirrels keep nuts in their cheek pouches sometimes, and at other times store nuts in a damp place, presumably in both cases to render them more edible.
In 1927, Dr Howell, as a young man, adopted an all raw food diet composed to a very large extent of raw nuts. He soon became ill with troubled digestion and general malaise and was forced to abandon the diet, which left him with permanently impaired digestion. At that time nothing was known about the enzyme inhibitors in seeds (nuts are seeds), but it can now be seen why raw cereals and nuts present digestive problems and why these foods are more easily digested cooked. Pritikin bans nuts on the score of fat alone.
Milk
Milk, when it is provided from the mother's breast, is a perfect food for a baby, providing of course that the mother herself is healthy and on a nutritious diet.
Because in the past many undernourished children have benefited from cow's milk given them at school, milk has gained a reputation as being essential for growing children.
Milk is not a natural food for any species of animal except for the very young fed by their own mother. Mothers' milk is structured exactly to the requirements of the infant, changing slightly as the child grows. According to Dr Steven Gross of Duke University, even when a child is born prematurely, the milk of the mother at that time has different concentrations of protein, sodium and chloride, suited specifically for the premature infant's needs. It was important, said Dr Gross, that premature babies be fed milk from the natural mother and not other human milk or milk formula because milk other than from the baby's own mother could not be properly tolerated. Even after normal births the mother's milk continued to change in protein content etc. to suit the needs of the baby as it grew. Apart from nutritional aspects, the natural mother's milk contained immunological substances which convey protection against infection until the infant's own immune system developed.
And because in early life babies do not manufacture in their bodies sufficient enzymes for normal body metabolism, they are dependent on the natural enzymes furnished in their mothers' milk. The danger of feeding babies formula or pasteurized milk, devoid of enzymes, can be seen to be a major factor in the cot death problem (see Chapter 21).
Cow's milk is responsible for more allergies than any other substance (see the section on allergies later in this chapter and also Chapter 19). British studies, reported in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, found that up to 40% of children were sensitive to it. Another study, in Denmark, showed there has been a dramatic fall in the incidence of childhood diabetes since breast-feeding has come back into vogue.
Cow's milk contains a fair amount of fat and cholesterol, is practically devoid of Vitamin C, and has three times the amount of sodium compared to human milk. As already mentioned, cows' milk contains over twice the amount of protein as human milk and can cause hypernatremic dehydration in bottle-fed babies because of the large amounts of water required to flush from the body the waste products of protein metabolism. Thus cow's milk causes the problem of bed-wetting, 90-95% of all cases being attributable to it.
Even when it is necessary to wean a baby early, there is no necessity to give the child cow's milk. Tests have shown that whether cow's milk, a mixed diet, or a vegetarian diet is given, the growth rate is the same.
Milk cannot be considered a good food, particularly pasteurized, and together with other dairy products should be avoided, except perhaps for small quantities of raw milk and non-fat milk products. Although raw milk contains valuable nutrients in addition to its harmful ones, much of these are destroyed if the milk is pasteurized.
A medical paper, The Effect of Heat Processed Foods and Metabolized Vitamin D Milk on the Dentofacial Structures of Experimental Animals by Dr Francis Pottenger (1946) described tests on cats where one group was fed raw milk, another group pasteurized milk, and a third group evaporated milk and condensed milk. The experiment was continued for four generations of cats.
All generations on the raw milk group thrived. The other two groups deteriorated from the start. They suffered a lowered condition and the second generation was depleted by stillbirth, miscarriage, spontaneous abortion, or resorption in the uterus. The survivors had many defects which included eczema, calcification of tissues, anatomical defects, neuroses and abnormalities in neuromuscular co-ordination. Anatomical differences between the sexes became less apparent and homosexuality appeared.
The third generation was greatly depleted and there was no fourth generation at all; there was not even an attempt at reproduction by the third generation.
In another paper by Dr Maurice Bowerman of Beaverton, Oregon, titled "Milk and Thought Disorder" (Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry , Vol 9, No 4, 1980), Dr Bowerman described the damaging effect of milk on five of his psychiatric patients who had suffered for years from confusion, detachment, poor memory, poor mental efficiency, and paranoid thinking, all accompanied by fatigue. Two had been hospitalized. When milk was removed from their diets four patients became symptom-free and the fifth improved.
Dr Howell points out that once upon a time people maintained vigorous health and achieved long life on diets containing large amounts of dairy foods. But this was before the era of pasteurization.
One reason for the harmful effect of pasteurized milk, according to Dr Howell, is the destruction of the natural enzymes present in raw milk which are at least 35 in number, without which enzymes milk cannot be properly digested. No wonder infants develop allergies to milk and dairy products. One of the most important enzymes in raw milk is lipase, the enzyme which breaks down fat, says Dr Howell. Thus raw dairy products do not result in high cholesterol levels and the rapid onset of atherosclerosis.
Yoghurt
Yoghurt has for a long while been accepted as a health promoting food, and the evidence usually quoted to support this belief is the supposed longevity of people in Bulgaria who regularly consume yoghurt.
Investigating this belief, experiments by American and French doctors in the 1890s and early 1900s on both animals and humans, showed that lactic bacillus cultures from yoghurt included in the diet brought about a diminution of intestinal putrefaction caused by harmful anaerobic bacteria which accompanies meat in the diet. Thus yoghurt taken with the Western high fat/meat diet must convey some benefit at least if the yoghurt is unpasteurized. Although yoghurt is considered to be a dairy product, the fact that it has been "reprocessed" by the yoghurt bacteria into a more digestible form than milk makes it a far more preferable form of food.
Dietary fiber
It has always been considered beneficial to eat foods containing "bulk". It was not thought essential, but desirable, as it helped elimination and prevented constipation.
Dietary fiber does not contribute directly to nourishment. Its function is to add volume and water to the fecal matter which not only ensures easy elimination, but reduces the entire transit time between eating and elimination to about one day instead of up to three which a traditional diet takes.
It was observed by Dr Denis Burkitt and by Dr Hugh Trowell who both spent 25 years working in Africa, that among natives living on the "rural African diet", almost entirely vegetarian and high in fiber, the following diseases were unknown: cancer of the bowel and rectum; diverticulosis, diverticulitis, constipation, hemorrhoids (piles); varicose veins; phlebitis (thrombophlebitis); appendicitis; hernia; hiatus hernia.
In the intestine, fiber absorbs about eight times its own volume of water and causes nearly 30% more bile (which is two-thirds cholesterol) to be excreted. Some researchers claim that a high fiber diet can reduce blood cholesterol by 22%. Other tests showed that fiber by itself has no effect. (Dr Thomas Raymond, University of Oregon, 1976). As a natural high fiber diet is low in fat, cholesterol, protein and refined carbohydrate, on such a diet a reduction in body cholesterol is inevitable anyhow. A low fat, low cholesterol, high fiber diet helps the liver maintain the correct level of the hormone estrogen which can be undesirably high on the Western diet. High levels of estrogen are associated with premature sexual development in girls, and breast cancer.
Fiber is found only in plant foods. It is a type of complex carbohydrate and contains cellulose, hemi-cellulose, lignin and pectin, which pass through the intestines without being broken down by the digestive enzymes. Fruit and vegetable fibers are not as coarse as cereal fiber, particularly if cooked, but are adequate for good elimination. Processed foods, which contain nourishment inversely proportional to the price, such as polished rice, most packaged cereals and instant potatoes, have most of the fiber removed. Stone-ground flour contains more fiber and Vitamin E than ordinary flour which is steel-roller ground. Even stoneground wholemeal bread is not high in fiber as the outer coating of the kernel of the grain is most lost in the milling.
Fruit (whole) vs fruit juice
(See Fruit, the natural food of primates)
It is far better to eat fruit whole for two reasons. Firstly, advantage is derived from the fiber and secondly, the nourishment is absorbed naturally instead of in concentrated form. The composition of commercially produced fruit juice is always suspect anyway, and in the true sense cannot be regarded as fresh.
Onions and garlic
Onions, tabasco and garlic contain some factor which tends to reduce the tendency of blood to clot. Dr Menon demo