The science of eating

ALFRED W. McCANN

• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9788892652019
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Food Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

In this revised and enlarged edition, the author has incorporated a schedule of ideal food combinations for children over the age of three years. These suggestions may be used as meals for the entire family with such additions or deductions as season or inclination may decide. He holds that the true conditions now so completely hidden from the public view and so rarely referred to in the public press must be exposed in order that the public, guided by the dictates of common sense and an adequate realization of economic facts concerning the food supply of America, may successfully wage war against abuses which threaten the very foundations of national health and prosperity.

FOUR: EIGHT POISON SQUADS THAT CRY FOR ACTION

- § 52 — THE MADEIRA-MAMORE CASE

Let us see how the facts recorded through these pages are illuminated by certain human experiences of intense dramatic interest. The Madeira-Mamore Railway Company in 1914 went into the hands of a receiver, after constructing a single track two hundred and thirty-two miles long connecting Bolivia with Brazil. The first mile of this railway was laid just ten years ago, its object being to exploit the rubber industry of South America, not to advertise the dietetic virtues of ripe fruits, or fruit juices, or the deficiencies of American diet. In the construction of its two hundred and thirty-two miles of track four thousand men were literally starved to death on a white bread diet. Those who escaped death owed their good fortune to the juice of fruits Most of the victims of acidosis, or as they called the disease In the State of Matto-Grosso, "beri-beri," are buried in Candelaria Graveyard, three kilometres south of Porta- Velho, midway be- tween that town and Santo Antonio — the district explored by Theodore Roosevelt. When the appalling history of this poison squad holocaust was written by engineers connected with the enterprise all reference to the deaths by white bread starvation among the laborers, after a conference of the railroad officials, was deliberately blotted out. The officials thought the public might misinterpret the facts at the expense of the country through which the rail- road had been projected, and it was decided as a good business policy that no mention should be made of the tragedy in the various articles written for electrical, engineering, and scientific publications. When P. H. Ashmead, chief engineer of construction, him- self a victim of white bread acidosis, reported on the number of deaths in camp, exception was taken to his figures and his hst of four thousand victims was cut in two so that in the records of the tragedy only two thousand names appeared. Ashmead, one of the best known consulting engineers of New York, on the day he discovered the first symptoms of his approaching breakdown, determined to take passage for England on the next vessel out. Terrified by what he saw going on about him he had good reason to fear that he, too, was entering the shadows of death. The dietetic treatment he finally underwent and which saved him from interment in Candelaria Graveyard I shall describe. H. F. Dose, one of the Madeira-Mamore engineers who de- voted three years to the completion of the work started by P. H. Ashmead, fortunately made numerous observations and kept in close touch with the twenty physicians of the company. Three of these physicians, among whom was Dr. Lucian Smith, were stricken with the disease but escaped death. All the facts of the expedition, interpreted under the light of the Kronprinz Wilhelm adventure, a poison squad classic that you will soon explore, confirm the instant need of reform. The laborers, of whom there were originally six thousand, consisted of Russians, Greeks, Turks, Italians, Germans, English, Japs, Hindoos, French, Jamaicans, Barbadians and Brazilians. The officers, engineers and physicians were chiefly British and American. The labourers received the equivalent of $2.40 a day in United States currency. They were charged by the Commissary Department an average of one dollar a day for their food. The cost of this food, its inadequacy considered, was so high that it included the lives of the men. A half-pound tin of glucose jam was sold to them for one dollar. A No. 2 tin of canned sauerkraut sold for one dollar. A No. I tin of canned sausages sold for one dollar. The No. I tin contained thirteen ounces. The No. 2 tin contained twenty- seven ounces. White bread constituted the chief foodstuff of the men. It Tvas baked in the camp from patent flour imported from the United States in thousand-barrel lots, and was furnished by wholesale grocers in New York City under the most highly advertised brands on the market. In addition to the white bread (acid- forming) were enormous quantities of hard white crackers (acid-forming) and tapioca (acid-forming) made from the root of the native cassava plant. Like farina, cream of the wheat, corn flakes, toasties, pearled bar- ley, degerminated corn meal and polished rice, tapioca is a re- fined, denatured, demineralized, high-caloried, acidifying food. Supplementing these one-sided units of nutrition were large quantities of lard (acid-forming), coffee, sugar (acid-forming), macaroni (acid- forming), and xarque (acid-forming). A few bags of rice (acid-forming) were also included. In the nature of luxuries, sold to the men at enormous prices, were such foods as canned pork and beans (well balanced as to acid- forming and base-forming substances), canned spinach (which the men refused to eat because they did not like its quality), canned wieners (acid- forming), canned jam (acid-forming), com flakes (acid- forming), oatmeal and condensed milk (well balanced). The oatmeal and condensed milk were confined to the officers' quarters. For breakfast the labourers ate white crackers and white bread with plenty of black coffee, sweetened with sugar. As they had to pay for their own meals, and pay heavily for them, they economised as much as possible, believing as most others believe, that bread is the staff of life, and in itself sufficient to maintain strength, energy and health. At noon they ate white bread, white crackers and xarque, with more coffee and sugar. Occasionally dried codfish, ham or ba- con was substituted for the xarque. Xarque is dried beef, which looks like leather. It is packed in slabs or layers, weighing fifty pounds each. Each slab is several inches thick, and as dry and hard as wood. Before cooking, the xarque was soaked overnight in water, and then boiled. In the evening the men ate more white bread, crackers and xarque, and occasionally indulged themselves in a can of sauer- kraut, a can of pork and beans, or a can of jam. The French, Jamaicans and Barbadians grouped together, and every day made what the others called "sinkers," a sort of heavy doughnut composed of white flour, sugar and water, fried in lard. All of the foods in the labourers' camp, with the exception of the beans, which they ate sparingly on account of their high cost, were of the acid-forming type. The base-forming sub- stances were not only deficient in quantity, they were not present at all. Acidosis under such conditions was inevitable. The officers, many of whom escaped serious forms of the disease, enjoyed a larger variety of foodstuffs from which to choose, including dried fruits (base-forming), nuts (base-forming), oatmeal (in itself almost a complete food), and potatoes (also base-forming). Chief Engineer Ashmead, who ate largely of white bread, mashed potatoes and fresh meat, obtained by slaughtering in camp an occasional beef-steer imported on the hoof for that purpose, began to manifest the first symptoms of the disease al- most as soon as the laborers themselves. The fresh meat, of which he partook abundantly, and which was reserved for the officers' use, did not act as a prophylaxis against the disease be- cause fresh meat, or any other kind of meat, lacks the base- forming substances so indispensable to the integrity of the internal secretions. The first symptoms observed among the laborers and officers affected were manifested in a tendency to stub their toes while walking along smooth roads. The foot would seem to drag. After that a slight swelling appeared in the ankles, which gradually extended upward to the knees with loss of sensation. When this swelling was at its height a dent in the flesh made by pressure of the finger would remain for a long time. Shortness of breath and palpitation of the heart, with tremor of the nerves were the next symptoms, after which the men began to walk as though they were suffering from locomotor- ataxia, with the halting, hesitating, uncontrolled stride characteristic of that disease. As the cases advanced the swelling subsided, and the leg gradually wasted away, until prior to death nothing remained apparently but the bone and skin. Before death all the men were completely prostrated and help- less. None of the drugs with which the physicians were pro- vided had any effect. Finally the doctors ordered "no more rice." They thought that rice was the bugaboo because they had been reading of the relationship between rice and "beri-beri." They did not know that rice had about as much to do with the fatal outbreak of the disease which they characterised as "beri-beri" as a baby carriage influences the eruption of the molars of its occupant. As the poor devils gazed in the direction of Candelaria Grave- yard where white flour was to disturb them no more, they might well have chanted, "Eventually ! Why not now ?"

- § 53 SPURNING MONKEY FOOD

Chief Engineer Ashmead noticed the development of the dis- ease in his own case under circumstances that impressed all its details upon his mind. The camp had lost a man in the jungle, so dense that once a man got into it he lost all sense of location. When lost it was a serious problem to find the way back to camp. Ashmead participated in an extended search for the missing man, which failed. As night came on he gave orders to blow the camp whistle at short intervals until morning, that the sound might give the lost man some guide through the heavy brush. In directing the search Ashmead had to climb a slight hill. When he reached the top he was "out of breath" to such a degree that he had to stop in his tracks. When he removed his leggings that night he thought he noticed for the first time that he was "taking on flesh." He certainly was growing "stouter." His ankles were "thicker." He soon became sure of this, for in a few days he found it difficult to buckle the straps of his leggings. Then came the consciousness that he was losing his appetite for bread and meat. For the first time in his life he experienced a craving for orange juice. He had never been fond of oranges until that time. On the fifth day following the first appearance of his ankle symptoms he noticed when he pressed the flesh at the ankle his finger mark remained. Laborers were dying around him everywhere. They had "beri-beri," the doctors all agreed. He examined their symptoms and discovered his were like theirs. "I've got it too!" he said, and the doctors ordered him away immediately. He returned to England and on the ship fortunately found plenty of oranges. Throughout the entire journey he ate little else and after landing in England he continued to saturate him- self with orange juice. Within sixty days his heart dilatation had disappeared and, except a depressing sense of lassitude for the following six months, he was apparently none the worse off for his experience. Oranges are base-forming, as are the juices of all other fruits. The value of fruits consists in their alkaline mineral salts and feeble fruit acids. Most fruits are rich in potassium and calcium salts, which are united with the tartaric, citric and malic acids that produce the agreeable flavours of the fruit. These feeble acids are quickly burned up or oxidised in the body into alkaline carbonates. It has been demonstrated on hundreds of occasions that these fruit acids exercise a wonderfully benevolent action upon the blood and kidneys. In such violent diseases as scurvy, beri-beri, anemia, neuritis, acidosis and other morbid conditions in which the tissues are bathed in acid secretions the alkaline minerals of fresh fruits prove invariably of great benefit. The lemon, the orange and the grape are invaluable in such disorders. The peculiarly pleasing fruity odour of ripe fruits is due to the presence of ethereal bodies which completely elude chemical investigation. Nobody knows just what they are. It is doubtful whether anybody ever will know. Artificial fruit flavours, made in the laboratory from coal tar, ethers, esters and aldehydes, grossly resemble the odour and flavour of certain fresh fruits such as the peach, banana, pine- apple, strawberry, and apple. They not only have no nutritive value but in many instances are actually dangerous because they are used to disguise otherwise inadequate foods to make them more pleasing to the palate. Such foods never fool the stomach, yet where there is controversy between eminent scientists in the employ of commercial institutions, and apparent conflict between the methods adopted by the Almighty and the theories advocated by certain professors, the individual possessed of a little reverence for the things God has wrought and a little common sense with respect to his own body will decide against the professor in favour of God. Ashmead, although he did not know it, was making use of the alkaline earthy salts of the orange to his own benefit. There was no calcium in the Madeira-Mamore Railway poison squad diet. One of the suppressed facts in connection with its mortality records was the scourge of tuberculosis that swept over the men who escaped "beri-beri." Both Ashmead and Dose, from whom I have obtained in person the facts recorded here, informed me they lost as many men through tuberculosis as through the disease the doctors called "beri-beri." All other engineering enterprises, all other large contracting efforts, all other army or navy expeditions or exploring adventures in which, through accident or ignorance, the base- forming elements of food are not properly provided, meet with the same fate. How can we forget that in a modified but none the less serious form our American school children, particularly the children of the poorer classes, are robbed of the elements of a base-forming diet? In their limited selection of foods all the following refined, demineralized or acidosis-producing products are found: beef, pork, lamb, liver, ham, white bread, soda crackers, wafers, biscuits, doughnuts, buns, rolls, pie crust, lard, lard compound, cake, corn flakes, corn meal, farina, tapioca, polished rice, com starch, sugar, glucose, syrups, cheap jams and jellies, penny candies, etc. The chief base-forming foods are oranges, lemons and ripe fruits of all kinds, the outer grains, such as whole wheat, whole corn, natural brown rice, whole rye, greens of all kinds, lettuce, beet tops, celery, spinach, cabbage, onions, cauliflower, asparagus, the roots of tubers, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, beans, peas, lentils, nuts of every kind and unsulphured dried fruits, such as prunes, black raisins, currants, sun-dried apples, apricots and peaches. Egg albumen or egg white, like meat, is acid-forming. Egg yolks are base-forming. Milk is physiologically balanced, as to base-forming and acid- forming substances. In accordance with their custom or ability to obtain eggs, an abundance of milk, fruits and vegetables properly cooked, the children of the poor are saved from the extreme acidosis which kills quickly as it did along the Madeira-Mamore Railway. So many thousands suffer from malnutrition without knowing it, from anemia, from impaired vitality, from lowered resistance to disease, from "laziness," and from other serious departures from normal physical stamina that end in misery, impaired efficiency and untimely death, that it is time indeed the public understood the relationship between base-forming and acid- forming foods. The death of the four thousand railway laborers who built those two hundred and thirty-two miles of railway that run by the Candelaria Graveyard represent not only preventable loss of life, due to ignorance of the laws of nutrition, but they also represent tremendous financial losses sustained by the builders of the railway who, handicapped by sickness and inefficiency, poured more money into the construction of their project — a hundred- fold more — than would have been necessary had the diet of their men been properly safeguarded and less false economy invoked. Men who are not fed properly cannot yield productive energies. Sick men or dead men cannot build or dig. Soldiers improperly fed cannot long endure under the terrific strain to which they are subjected. It is a curious but tragic fact that thousands of healthy monkeys played around the Madeira-Mamore camp where human beings were dying by the score. The monkeys lived, enjoyed life and maintained their energy and activity on a diet of tropical fruits and nuts. Their presence in the vicinity of the sick laborers, who fell as fast as they might fall in battle, seemed to be an effort of Mother Nature to speak to her unfortunate human children, suggesting a remedy for their misery. The food of the monkeys was available. It was base-forming food, but the men, who, even as labourers, had conceived astonishing ideas of class distinction, had already dubbed it "monkey food." In their reluctance to subsist on "monkey food" they rejected what would have saved them, even as the sailors aboard the Kronprinz Wilhelm rejected and sank the whole wheat cargoes of two British merchantmen, notwithstanding their dire need of the thousands of pounds of bran and germ contained in those cargoes. With respect to his food man has ever been a contradiction and a fool. The fixed laws which control the processes of nutrition are so simple, so obvious and so actually luminous that a child of twelve can grasp them. Man alone is the only animal that ignores them. The Great White Plague and many of the other ills directly traceable to in- adequate food, through the use of which the human body is deprived of the elements necessary to maintain its integrity, could be banished from the human race if the human race would only apply to its dietary the fixed laws which control the resistance of the sheep and horse to the same disease, and the disregard of which makes the hog and the cow a constant prey to it. The reluctance of the Madeira-Mamore poison squad to eat "monkey food" and the ignorance of the crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm in rejecting foods that would have saved them, have done more than merely breaking down the Brazilian railroad, more than merely compelling a German raider to make a dash for port with a crew of sick men. They have brought home to America the importance and the significance of understanding its food supply, and of making a belated resistance to the inroads which commercialism, stupidity and false taste-standards are making upon them and their children.

- § 54 — SHERMAN, FORBES, HART, MAXWELL, STEINITZ, ZADIK, LEIPZIGER, ROHMAN, GUMPERT, EHRSTROM, METTLER, SINCLAIR, VOIT

Does the Madeira-Mamore poison squad really bear any relationship to the average American food ? Henry C. Sherman, Columbia University, declares : "Possibly because the crudity of the views formerly held and still some- times met (especially in fraudulent advertisements of proprietary foods) tended to bring the subject of nutrition into ridicule, the study of the phosphates and other phosphorus compounds in food and nutrition was very generally neglected. Recently, how- ever, the significance of phosphorus in the growth, development and functions of the organism is at last being adequately recognized." Phosphorus was only one of the twelve mineral elements re- moved from the foodstuffs of the Madeira-Mamore poison squad. The investigations of Forbes, at the Ohio Experiment Station, indicate that much of the malnutrition is not due to a low protein diet, but to a deficiency of phosphorus and calcium in the food supply. Here are but two of the mineral elements specially studied in the diet of hogs, cows, and American homes. Let us look at them, unmindful of the other ten. Phosphorus is found in the body as phosphorised proteins called nucleo-proteins existing in the cells and tissues. True phospho-proteins exist in casein (milk) and ovovitellin (egg yolk). In brain and nerve substances, and also to some extent in other tissues, the phosphorus appears as phosphorised fats called lecithins. Egg yolk is particularly rich in this form of phosphorus; so is the discarded germ of wheat, corn, rice, and barley. Less highly organised forms of phosphorus are utilised by the body as phytin compounds or phytates. Wheat, corn, rice, barley, oats, and buckwheat, in their natural unrefined state, con- tain phosphorus in this form in abundant quantities. Maxwell, in observing germinating seeds and developing chic embryos, found that in the construction of the tissues of the growing vegetable or animal organism, the phosphorised fats played a most important part. Steinitz, Zadik, and Leipziger discovered that these various phosphorus compounds could not be substituted one for the other. Simple proteins with inorganic phosphates do not make a substitute for phospho-proteins. Rohman has shown that the phosphorised proteins furnish the material for tissue growth. Gumpert and Erdstrom demonstrated that phosphorus equilibrium was maintained in experiments upon men when the phosphorus was consumed in the form of phospho-proteins, whereas when taken as dicalcium phosphate or as the potassium phosphate of meat the same quantity of phosphorus would not serve the needs of the body. Hart, in feeding hogs in experiments conducted in the Wisconsin Experiment Station, found that 1.12 grams of phosphorus per day in its various compounds was just about sufficient for the hogs until they attained a weight of about eighty-five pounds, after which 1.12 grams became clearly insufficient for the needs of the animal. Sherman, commenting upon this fact, states: "1.12 grams of phosphorus would hardly seem a desirable amount for a growing child of the same size, or for a fully grown man or woman." It was said, as we have seen, that the Madeira-Mamore laborers died of "beri-beri," although the phosphorus had been re- moved from their food prior to their deaths. Sherman, Mettler, and Sinclair, through the office of experiment stations, United States Department of Agriculture, re- ported a comparison of the amount of phosphorus contained in the food of typical American families. They did not go to the Madeira-Mamore poison squad for their facts. They went right into the homes of the people and showed that a freely chosen diet of our typical denatured food products does not furnish much more than 1.12 grams of phosphorus, estimated as 2.75 grams phosphorus pentoxide. These investigations were carried out in a lawyer's family in Pittsburgh ; a teacher's family in Indiana ; a school superintendent's family in Chicago; a teacher's family in New York City; a students' club in Tennessee; 115 women students in Ohio; a carpet dyer's family in New York; a sewing woman's family in New York ; a house decorator's family in Pittsburgh ; a glass blower's family in Pittsburgh; two mill workers' families in Pittsburgh ; a mechanic's family in Knoxville, Tenn. ; thirty lumber men in Maine ; a farmer's family in Connecticut ; a farmer's and mechanic's family in Tennessee ; thirteen men students, five women students and one child in Knoxville, Tenn.; two Negro farmers' families in Alabama. The study continued fifty-eight days and took the average from 12,238 meals consumed by men and 798 meals consumed by women. Speaking of these analyses Sherman declares: "The results indicate that present food habits lead to a deficiency of phosphorus compounds and it is not improbable that many cases of malnutrition are really due to an inadequate supply of phosphorus compounds." He was cautious in his conclusions, but explicit. He did not comment on the fact that in removing the phosphorus from natural food all the other mineral salts, colloids, and vitamins with which phosphorus is associated are also automatically removed in the process, because one cannot be removed without carrying the others with it. His experiments have proved, notwithstanding that in the American home many offsetting foods are consumed which were not available in the Madeira-Mamore poison squad, the mineral elements necessary to normal metabolism are nevertheless deficient in the typical American meal.

- § 55 — ELIZABETH COUNTY JAIL

Next to tuberculosis the most commonly talked of infirmity of human flesh is the disorder popularly described as "heart disease." Heart disease, as we know from the insurance companies, is constantly increasing in the United States. In all cases of mineral starvation brought about by a prolonged diet of refined food, examination of the heart shows dilatation. The heart is always enlarged following a diet of the kind so few of us have fed to chickens. Malnutrition and "enlargement of the heart" can almost be said to be synonymous. In the food deficiency disease described as "beri-beri" the heart is always involved, just as it was involved aboard the Kronprinz Wilhelm and in the Madeira-Mamore Poison Squad. In the disease which confused commentators sometimes call "acidosis," sometimes "pellagra," sometimes "edema," sometimes "neuritis," sometimes "general breakdown," the heart is always involved. It is peculiarly noteworthy that the recorded increase in "heart disease" runs parallel with the symptom of milling introduced in the United States about 1879. Remember the heart of the dead frog. You will hear of it again. Numerous instances are on record indicating that a deficiency of iron, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and the other mineral salts, colloids and vitamins always found with these salts in unmanipulated milk, butter fat, whole cereals, fresh vegetables, greens, and fruits leads to numerous forms of physical disorder in which "heart trouble" is one of the constant factors. Many cases are on record proving that where offsetting foods are entirely missing from a refined food diet, the heart becomes involved in from forty to sixty days. Many other instances are on record showing that where "offsetting" foods are consumed to an extent sufficient to retard the progress of mineral starvation, the development of the disease is delayed accordingly. It is now known that where refined or demineralized foods make up a considerable portion of the diet the disease may be postponed for years, and then may be described as merely a mild or unrecognisable disorder, accompanied by a few not necessarily alarming but nevertheless unpleasant symptoms which do not, as a rule, cause their victim to become unduly anxious about his health. Where the diet is abundant and includes a wide variety of foods, as in the case of the average business man who partakes of a more or less pretentious noon-day meal, while his growing family is lunching on left-overs at home, the body seems capable of adjusting itself to a considerable abuse of acid-forming foods over a long period. The chapters on fatigue poisons will throw, in their proper place, a bright light on this dark subject. It is now well established, however, that after the fortieth year the effects of mineral deficiencies begin to manifest themselves in "heart disease," the gr...

Table of contents

• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• ONE: THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP IS PILING HIGHER
• TWO: TWO KINDS OF FOOD— THE CONSTRUCTIVE— THE DESTRUCTIVE
• THREE: WHY MODERN REFINING PROCESSES ARE MORE DEADLY THAN WAR
• FOUR: EIGHT POISON SQUADS THAT CRY FOR ACTION
• FIVE: AMAZING CONFUSION OF CXINIC AND CLASS ROOM
• SIX: HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH
• SEVEN: WHY FAMINE FOLLOWS THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL SUGAR
• EIGHT: PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES OF MILK AND MEAT
• NINE: WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW OF THE MYSTERIES OF FOOD
• TEN; IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS