Studies in Nutrition and Food

"In order to be fitted for translation, the people of God must know themselves. They must understand in regard to their own physical frames, that they may be able with the psalmist to exclaim, 'I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.' They should ever have the appetite in subjec­tion to the moral and intellectual organs. The body should be servant to the mind, and not the mind to the body."—Ibid.

This statement speaks for a knowledge of the normal operations of bodily functions and of disease prevention—more than just freedom from gross physical and moral sins. This is now just the field upon which "the light shines clearly and none need be ignorant." And fur­ther, "they need to be taught that every prac­tice which destroys the physical, mental, or spiritual energies is sin, and that health is to be secured through obedience to the laws that God has established for the good of all mankind."—Ministry of Healing, p.

There are very common—almost universal—eating habits among Seventh-day Adventists that lessen or destroy both physical and mental energies, and cripple, or at least seriously hin­der, the free exercise of the spiritual energies of the soul. These eating habits are worse than the use of meat in these respects, even as di­rectly stated in the Testimonies. But before we enter upon any comparisons of the relative harmfulness of foods, let us give attention to the direct effects of diet upon disposition, behavior, and character, as shown by feeding experi­ments, in men and animals. If what we eat di­rectly hinders the mental and spiritual faculties in our relationship to others, then we can better understand just what is meant by the statement that we are not now ready for the highest en­deavors of the spiritual faculties in the time of the latter rain and the loud cry of the third angel's message.

Since the discovery in 1937 and 1938 of the startling effects of one of the vitamins of the B complex in relieving the insanity of pella­grins, it has become apparent that food has something to do with brain activity as well as with the functions of other organs and tissues. E. L. Thorndike (1937) says that "thinking is as biological as digestion." The brain-clogging effects of vitamin B, deficiency due to the ac­cumulation of pyruvic acid in the brain is an­other example of the effects of diet upon mental activity. Both these vitamin deficiencies will therefore be associated, not only with physical disease, but more or less with mental aberra­tion, if at all severe, and at least with irritability and difficulty in maintaining patience and com­posure under provocation.

Burt, in an extensive study of the backward and delinquent child of London, states, "The vast majority of backward children-80 percent in an area like London—prove to be suffer­ing from minor bodily ailments or from con­tinued ill-health." He emphasizes a relationship between delinquency and physical deficiency : "Most repeated offenders are far from robust : they are frail, sickly, and infirm. Indeed so reg­ularly is chronic moral disorder associated with chronic physical disorder that many have con­tended that crime is a disease, or at least a symptom of disease, needing the doctor more than the magistrate, physic rather than the whip."

Harmfulness of Refined Foods

The malnourished brain functions abnormally just as other malnourished organs show dys­function; and defective and harmful physical foods play a part in wrong behavior as well as wrong mental food plays a known part in wrong behavior. We shall have more to say along this line as we get into the study of the harm­fulness of modern refined foods upon aboriginal peoples as contrasted with the effects of natural whole foods upon the same peoples, and note that definite physical, mental, and behavior re­sults ensue.

Beginning first with animal experiments in which modern civilized man's diet is given to one group, and the whole natural .foods of abo­riginal peoples are given to a control group, there is found a sharp contrast even in animal behavior, in which, of course, there are no true mental or moral causes to reckon with.

G. W. Wrench, in The Wheel of Life (1938), summarizes certain experiments done by Robert McCarrison (page 38), and in connection with the great variety of diseases due to modern civilized man's food he says:

"Considering again the .simplicity of the rat and its limitation in things human, the list is, compara­tively speaking, almost as complete as the list of con­tents of a stately textbook of medicine. The diseases of the mind and other very special diseases are omit­ted. One cannot exactly diagnose neurasthenia, hys­teria, and schizophrenia, in the rat.

"Yet even in rats conditions like to these arise from faulty diet. For example, in a later experiment McCarrison gave a set of rats the diet of the poorer classes of England: white bread, margarine, sweet­ened tea, boiled vegetables, tinned meats, and jams of the cheaper sort. On this diet, not only did the rats grow badly, but they developed what one might call rat-neurasthenia, and more than neurasthenia. 'They were nervous and apt to bite their attendants: they lived unhappily together, and by the sixteenth day of the experiment they began to kill and eat the weaker ones amongst them.' We can add neuras­thenia and ferocity to weaker brethren to the list.

'We are left then at the end of these experiments with two vividly contrasted sets of little animals in this small 'universe' of Coonoor—those on good and those on faulty diet ; the healthy and the sickly ; and certain mental characters in contrast, the good-tem­pered and live-and-let-live on the one hand, the bad-tempered and cannibalistic on the other."

In these animals are seen the behavior effects of a diet of meat, tea, refined foods, and sweets, as contrasted with the peaceableness of animals on whole natural foods. Of the effects of meat on behavior we have the notable agreement with these experiments of two statements from the Testimonies :

"As a general thing, the Lord did not provide His people with flesh meat in the desert, because He knew that the use of this diet would create disease and in­subordination."--Counsels on Diet and Foods, p. 375. (1898.)

"I was instructed that the use of flesh meat has a tendency to animalize the nature, and to rob men and women of the love and sympathy which they should feel for everyone."--/d., P. 390 (1904.)

Undoubtedly the deficiency foods greatly ex­aggerate this effect of meat and tea. Price tells of an experiment on rats in which three groups were fed different variations in the vitamin and mineral content of the cereal part of the diet. Three groups of rats (Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, pp. 277, 278) received the same diet, except for the type of bread. Group one received whole-wheat products freshly ground. Group two received a white-flour product, and the third group a bran-and­middlings product. The feeding was started after weaning at about twenty-three days of age.

Rats of group one were fully developed and reproduced normally at three months of age. They had very mild dispositions and could be picked up by the ear or tail without danger of their biting. The rats of group two, on white flour, were markedly undersized. Their hair came out in large patches and they had very ugly dispositions—so ugly that they threatened to spring through the cage wall at those who came to look at them. These rats had tooth de­cay and they were not able to reproduce. The rats of group three on bran and middlings did not show tooth decay, but were considerably undersized, and lacked energy. Here are very definite and different behavior effects of diet—peaceableness, ugly disposition, and lack of energy.

Weston A. Price gave three children with deep cavities near to, or exposing, the pulp a special meal of high mineral and vitamin con­tent for five months in addition to their home meals each day. Besides producing complete control of the dental caries, he says, "Two dif­ferent teachers came to me to inquire what had been done to make a particular child change from one of the poorest in the class in capacity to learn, to one of the best." This observation reveals clearly that mental energy is definitely influenced by diet.

The entire ensemble of the diet of the poorer classes of England as used in McCarrison's ex­periment is spohen of in the Testimonies as food that is known "to be unhealthful." This state­ment reads:

Those who have received instruction regarding the evils of the use of flesh foods, tea and coffee, and rich and unhealthful food preparations, and who are determined to make a covenant with God by sacri­fice, will not continue to indulge their appetite for food that they know to be unhealthful. God demands that the appetites be cleansed, and that self-denial be practiced in regard to those things which are not good. This is a work that will have to be done be­fore His people can stand before Him a perfected people."—Testimonies, Vol. IX, pp. 153, 154.

Such rich and unhealthful food preparations are not so vastly different from diets commonly used in America and many other countries, and regularly used in many Seventh-day Adventist homes. "Our tables are frequently spread with luxuries not healthful nor necessary, because we love these things more than we love freedom from disease and a sound mind."—Sufferings of Christ, p. 14. Meats and sweetmeats are both unhealthful, but of the two, sweetmeats are dis­tinctly more harmful than meat, for cakes, pud­dings, candies, and all-white flour products are largely deficiency foods, while meat is not.

I the section on desserts and sugar, and es­pecially a milk-and-sugar combination, these are spoken of as clogging the system, hindering the working of the living machine, and affecting the brain. Now all refined cereals, as well as refined sugar, have nearly the same effects, for both starch and sugar are changed to glucose in the processes of digestion, though these are somewhat different processes for cane sugar and starches. However, it is not carbohydrates in their natural state, with their full content of vitamins and minerals as found in fruits, vege­tables, and whole grains, that clog the system, but the unburned or partially burned concentrated carbohydrate fuel that clogs the human machine, just as filling a furnace with fuel that cannot be burned up clogs the furnace. Carbo­hydrates are all changed to glucose in the proc­ess of digestion; so it is not the sugar of itself that clogs the living machine, but the fact that it cannot be oxidized when vitamins are absent, for they govern the utilization of the body's fuel, and especially is this true of vitamin B1.

When taken out of the food, glucose, instead of being oxidized to lactic acid and then reduced again to glucose with a slight loss of fuel (one fifth or one sixth) each time, fails in this cycle of changes, and pyruvic acid accumulates in the tissues. This has been found especially in the brain. It is a toxic substance, and so affects thinking, or intellectual activities, which are the output of brain functioning just as hydrochloric acid, pepsin, and rennin are the output of the functioning of the various gastric glands. The brain is clogged with pyruvic acid just as a furnace is clogged with unburned or half-burned fuel. There are also other damaging effects of cencentrated sugar in the digestive organs themselves, and of milk and sugar taken freely together.

"I frequently sit down to the tables of the brethren and sisters, and see that they use a great amount of milk and sugar. These clog the system, irritate the digestive organs, and affect the brain. Anything that hinders the active motion of the living machinery, affects the brain very directly. And from the light given me, sugar, when largely used, is more injurious than meat. . . .

It is better to let sweet things alone. Let alone those sweet dessert dishes that are placed on the table. You do not need them. You want a clear mind to think after God's order. . . .

"Could we know that animals were in perfect health, I would recommend that people eat flesh meats sooner than large quantities of milk and sugar. It would not do the injury that milk and sugar do. Sugar clogs the system: it hinders the working of the living machine. . . . I would prefer a meat diet to the sweet cakes and pastries so generally used....

"Let health reformers remember that they may do harm by publishing recipes which do not recommend health reform. Great care is to be shown in fur­nishing recipes for custards and pastry. If for des­sert sweet cake is eaten with milk or cream, fermenta­tion will be created in the stomach, and then the weak points of the human organism will tell the story."

"Far too much sugar is ordinarily used in food. Cakes, sweet puddings, pastries, jellies, jams, are active causes of indigestion. Especially harmful are the custards and puddings in which milk, eggs, and sugar are the chief ingredients."—Connsels on Diet and Foods, pp. 328-335.

Not so fully known is the biochemistry of nic­otinic acid (niacin) in preventing pellagra, but it is known that porphyrin occurs in the urine of pellagrins, and that this disappears as pellatins recover their mental faculties under ade­quate doses of nicotinic acid or its amide. This vitamin is a part of the B complex.

Testimonies Scientifically Correct

So these statements in the Testimonies are scientifically correct and true to the facts of biologic chemistry. Other abnormalities of the chemistry and functions of the body and brain occur with other deficiencies of the diet, so that dulled mentality, aberrant and unnatural be­havior and disposition result. Nervousness, ir­ritability, divided personality (schizophrenia) of the Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde type are entirely possible results. Mental depression, melancholia. and a morbid, pessimistic outlook on life or disappointment comes, suicidal tendencies are likely to follow.