DIET AND HEALTH - Historical

DIET AND HEALTH [Diet & Health]
HEAL THYSELF (The Homoeopathic World) A Popular Journal of Medical,
Dietetic, Social and Sanitary Science By J Ellis Barker
Volume: 1934 Jul Vol LXIX No 820
Author: Ellis Barker J
Subject: General Topics
BY THE EDITOR.

EVERY stock breeder realizes the superlative importance of diet
to the animals he breeds. He gives his horses, cows, dogs, a fair
amount of exercise and fresh air, but he considers these of relatively
minor importance compared with diet. Farmers have a traditional
knowledge of the diet required for their animals. In their tradition
the experience of thousands of years is embodied. Those who are not
satisfied with the knowledge which has been handed on from father to
son apply to the various organizations for the promotion of
agriculture and stock breeding, to scientific organizations, to the
Board of Agriculture, etc., and professors of animal nutrition devise
scientifically balanced diets for pigs, cattle, etc. Unfortunately
stock breeders and farmers who realize the supreme importance of
correct natural feeding for their stock do not consider that question
of any interest to themselves and to their families. They eat de-
vitaminized, de-mineralized, and de-germinated white bread, de-
mineralized and de-vitaminized white sugar, pastries and cakes,
flavoured and dyed with coal tar products, etc., with disastrous
results to their health.

While official medicine is principally interested in treatment
with potent, risky and often dangerous drugs, injections,
inoculations, and other pseudo-scientific proceedings, which happen to
be the latest fashion or the latest craze, it is drawing upon the
general public, largely owing to the teaching of men like Sir
Arbuthnot Lane and of his associates in the New Health Society, that
natural health cannot be obtained by the most artificial means, but
only by natural food, air, exercise, etc. Unfortunately those who seek
for a correct, healthful diet are utterly confused by the professors
of nutrition, whose books and articles cannot be understood by any
except by other professional dietitians. One might imagine that diet
is one of the most abstruse sciences which only a trained specialist
can master. Yet every savage and every roaming animal unerringly lives
on a correct diet. The scientific dietitian is largely responsible for
the diseases of civilization. He is teaching men and women to think
and speak not in plain natural terms, but in calories, vitamins, amino
acids, enzymes, etc. It is worth mentioning that some of the highest
authorities on scientific nutrition known to me, who presumably feed
scientifically, have no teeth and a wretched digestion. I have lately
received three books on diet. One is entitled Vital Facts About Foods.
A Guide to Health and Longevity, by Otto Carque. It is published at
5s. in paper cover and at 7s. 6d. bound in cloth, by the author at Los
Angeles, California, and Messrs, C. W. Daniel, of 46 Bernard Street,
W. C. I, act as his agents. The volume contains much interesting and
important information. The author is obviously a nature curer who,
rightly and wisely, warns his readers against the de-natured foods on
which the civilized live to their injury. I would quote a passage or
two which will show the character of his work. We read under the
heading "Sulphured and Unsulphured Fruits.".

"While dried fruits are not equal in hygienic value to fresh
fruits, they are the best substitutes for them. They are preferable to
canned fruits, containing syrup made from refined sugar, or candied
fruits. Dried fruits make an ideal breakfast food, especially during
winter and spring. They should be used instead of cereal breakfast
foods.

"Fruits which have been sulphured before drying have a lighter
colour than those which are dried without sulphuring. At the same
time, it is well known that highly sulphured fruits are preserved with
a larger percentage of water than those not sulphured, and for this
reason a greater weight of fruit is produced from a given weight of
the raw material when sulphur is used. This is especially the case
when the dried fruits are reprocessed in the packing houses. Here the
fruits are washed and re-sulphured, increasing the sulphur content of
the finished product often to 3,000 parts per million and more.".

While there is much excellent and valuable information and much
common sense in the book highly sulphured dried fruits are injurious
the volume is disfigured by pseudo-scientific explanations of the
value and functions of the different vitamins and of the various
mineral elements by so-called scientific analyses of the composition
of the various foods and their content of protein, fat, carbo-
hydrates, mineral matter, etc., which are absolutely useless for all
practical purposes. Unfortunately nature curers try to adopt the
peculiar language adopted by professors of nutrition, who are rather
misleaders than leaders and who " darken knowledge" with scientific
gibberish.

As an honest critic I must take strong exception at Mr. Carques
information regarding Aluminium. Referring to the justified objection
that Aluminium cooking utensils are injurious because the metal
dissolves and is absorbed by the food cooked in them he quotes on
pages 60 to 62 an article by a doctor which pooh-poohs in declamatory
style the danger of Aluminium poisoning. The question whether
Aluminium is injurious or innocuous cannot be settled by blatant
assertions or futile experiments on animals, but only by experiments
on human beings. Every experienced homoeopath knows the effect which
Aluminium produces on human beings from the provings in our materia
medica. Every observant homoeopathic doctor has seen numerous cases of
Aluminium poisoning. A typical case is described in a letter published
on another page. The authors treatment of the Aluminium question gives
a bad impression. It causes one to doubt his impartiality and the
soundness of his book.

Chapter 14 is headed " Fruit, Mans Best Food." That assertion,
though expressed ever so eloquently, seems to me quite unsound. One
can wax poetical on the fruits of the earth, on the masterpieces of
nature, as Carque does, but modern fruit is not a masterpiece of
nature, but a masterpiece of man. Most of our fruits were unknown to
our ancestors who could not have dreamt of bananas, grape fruits,
loganberries, etc. Like so many nature curers, Carque finds faults
with all the grain foods which from his points of view are too
starchy. Men have lived for thousands of years on grain as a staple
food, while the attempt to live on fruit is comparatively recent and
those who try to live on fruit and nuts usually break down in health
after a time through long- continued under-nutrition. On the other
hand, Hindhede has shown that people can live for years on entire
grains or on an exclusive potato diet. His assertion "Cereals, even in
their natural state, do not contain enough of the alkaline basis to
prevent an increase of acidity in the blood" may sound scientific, but
his advocacy of a fruitarian diet is wrong and impracticable. There is
not enough fruit to go round.

The author obviously starts from the theoretical assumption that
man, resembling the higher apes, ought to live on a "natural" ape diet
of fruit, berries, shoots of plants, nuts, etc., while cereals are
"too starchy" and milk is "essential for the infant only". Those who
wish to live on an ape diet should be logical, discard their clothes
and sleep in trees.

Mr. C. C. Abbott, of 56 Railway Road, Leigh, has sent me a
little volume, A Legacy of Health. As there is no publishers name on
the title page, those who wish to buy the little book should obtain it
either from the author at the above address, or from the Homoeopathic
Publishing Company. It is sold at 2s. 6d. The author is a nature
curer, and a man of great ability. He seems to have an excellent
chemical laboratory and he diagnoses disease largely by means of the
Abrams Box. On January 28th, 1923, he had the misfortune of losing a
boy patient who died of meningitis, an inflammation of the membrane
covering the brain. Orthodox medicine applied lumbar puncture to that
disease which as a rule is considered incurable. The boy had always
been utterly defective. Abbott had treated him for years with the
greatest devotion, and had done him much good, without asking for a
remuneration, but he found himself indicted and charged with mans
laughter, a terrible position. As he had been very successful in his
district, he was a thorn in the side of the medical men around him,
especially as he earned an income of L2,500 a year, of which nine-
tenths were used for research, etc. He was not only acquitted, but was
triumphantly acquitted notwithstanding the imposing array of medical
authorities brought against him. Abbott published a verbatim report of
his trial at 3s., which is obtainable from the author, or from the
Homoeopathic Publishing Company. It should be read by every lay
healer. It will make him realize his position and his rights, risks,
and duties.

In the present volume Mr. Abbott tells us that he has written
this little book on dietetics because he discovered that most diseases
are due to faulty feeding. He discovered the benefit of a more natural
nutrition in his own body, for he was a consumptive, born of
consumptive parents. He started life as a coal miner. He was saved,
when considered incurable by the medical profession, by a layman who
treated him with herbs, and it is not surprising that he became a
herbalist himself. Abbotts book, like that of Carque expresses the
faith of a nature curer. Abbott, like Carque, favours fruit and
vegetables, and he has not a good word to say for milk and eggs. The
argument "milk was made for calves" may be impressive, but in practice
milk is invaluable, especially to the sick. I certainly do not know of
any substitute for it. After all milk is liquid beef. It has been used
for invalids and for healthy grown-up people since time immemorial,
and the most magnificent physique is found among those tribes and
races who live on a lacto-vegetarian diet, such as the hill men in
Northern India, among whom cancer is unknown.

Abbotts volume consists largely of recipes, and those
vegetarians who wish for tasty dishes which require little cooking
will find many appetizing ad attractive recipes in the volume.
However, I would recommend my readers to replace Nutter by butter and
to use whole-meal flour and other natural plain food instead of
artificialities. Those who desire to adopt a fruitarian diet should
remember that fully ripe fruit is almost unobtainable in England. The
fruit offered at the fruiterers is very nice for table decoration, but
the bulk of it is quite unripe and unfit to eat, while the nuts, which
are the staple food of fruitarians, are, as a rule, stale and
worthless. No self-respecting monkey would touch them.

There are people who proclaim themselves vegetarians, but who
eat fish. Olga Hartley has provided for the fish-eating vegetarians a
little book, Meatless Meals, Is. 6d., published by Messrs. Burns.
Oates & Wash-bourne. Ltd., 43-45 Newgate Street, W. C. I, which
contains a good deal of sense. We read:.

"Then English way of cooking green vegetables is to boil them in
plenty of water to make them look as green when they come to the
dinner table as if they were still growing in the garden. The water
containing all the most valuable salts, the vitamins being destroyed
by the soda is then thrown away. The French, among other nations, have
other methods and ideas. They use only a little water so that when the
vegetables are cooked, there is just a spoonful or two of liquid left
in the vessel. The vegetables are served in this juice with a piece of
butter stirred into it at the last moment. Not only are they a much
better flavour cooked in this way, but they are a much better food,
only they are not such a cheerful colour. Of course the pot must be
watched, lest the water should boil away entirely and, if necessary,
more boiling water must be added. Peas cooked like this should have a
spring of fresh mint put in with them, also a lump of sugar well
rubbed with a raw onion. Carrots should also be cooked with a little
sugar and so should tomatoes.".

Those who wish to feed well and wisely should endeavour to get
as much natural food as possible in the most natural condition, in
perfect freshness and thoroughly cooked by the sun. Unfortunately
totally unripe gooseberries, apples, etc., are bought which are not
fit to eat by any animal, not even by pigs, and they are then cooked
with plenty of demineralized and de- vitaminized white sugar, and
offered to us as a health food. The chemists, the dietetic
specialists, and the middle men have much to answer for. I should not
wonder if a special hell awaited those who ruin the constitution of
the people by ruining their food.

© 2002 Hompath, Bombay, India

Homeopathe International
.

Loading