The Direct Effect of Malnutrition on Tissue Degeneration
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this succinct address to the Seattle Chapter of the American Academy of Applied Nutrition, Dr. Lee touches on some of the major findings of early nutrition science that are still, incredibly, ignored to this day. Topics include the importance of calcium, phosphorus, and raw protein to tooth health; the total destruction of nutrients in bread caused by bleaching; the connection between vitamin E deficiency and heart disease; the dependency of connective-tissue integrity on adequate vitamin C levels; and the various lesions of B vitamin deficiencies. “What lesson can we learn from these few scattered facts…?” Dr. Lee asks in conclusion. “Simply that we must take the trouble in our homes to prepare our foods from the basic materials as far as possible, even to the extent of growing our vegetables and fruits on properly composted soil, if we can. The dividends will be quite possibly 20 years added to our life span, to say nothing of the life added to our years.”
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Honey in Nutrition
By William Miller
Summary: An excellent overview of the value of raw honey. Miller compares the nutritional qualities of this extraordinary food, manufactured by bees for millions of years, to those of refined sugar. His conclusion? They're complete opposites nutritionally, with honey providing vitamins, minerals, and other factors critical for life and white sugar providing nothing more than empty calories. Reprint 119, 1955.
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The Influence of Food Cooking on the Blood Formula of Man
By Paul Kouchakoff, MD
Summary: A classic and profound study on the direct effect of cooking food on the human immune system. Presented by Dr. Kouchakoff at the First International Congress of Microbiology in 1930 and later translated and published by the Lee Foundation, the research focuses on the phenomenon of "digestive leukocytosis," or the increase and mobilization of white blood cells in response to eating food. Kouchakoff observed that this immune response occurs only when the food eaten is cooked and, moreover, that processed foods (which are often exposed to high heats in their preparation) incite an even graver response than cooked whole foods. Raw foods, on the other hand, not only fail to cause digestive leukocytosis but can prevent cooked foods from causing it if eaten at the same meal. Dr. Kouchakoff spent many years studying the effects of cooked food versus raw food on the human immune system, and it remains a great mystery and tragedy that no one has followed up on his startling findings. Original publication date 1930; republication date by Lee Foundation unknown.
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Is It Possible to Influence Multiple Sclerosis by a Certain Diet Regime?
By J. Evers, MD
Summary: In this brief report, roughly translated from its original in German, a physician describes his success in treating multiple sclerosis using a diet of mostly raw whole foods. "Control examinations of my patients by experienced specialists (neurologists, internists and ophtamologs [sic]) acknowledge...remarkable improvements," Dr. Evers writes. "Patients who had been treated by every possible means and [still saw] their condition [get] worse and, in some cases, appeared entirely without hope, have...been improved by my diet treatment." Evers treated nearly 600 patients in all. From Public Deutsche Med. W. Reprint 90, 1947.
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Raw Food Vitamins
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this article from Health Culture magazine, Dr. Lee describes in detail the negative effects of cooking and pasteurizing foods, specifically with regard to the destruction of vitamins, amino acids such as lysine and glutamine, and enzymes such as the phosphatase group, which help free up calcium in raw milk for absorption and aid its digestion (phosphatase is destroyed in pasteurized milk). Phosphatase also neutralizes the infamous compound phytic acid, so abundant in whole grains, that binds minerals and prevents them from being taken up by the body. Lee also discusses the vital role of vitamin E in nutrition. Reprint 30C, 1956.
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A Turning Point in Nutritional Science
By Dr. Ralph Bircher
Summary: In this 1953 lecture, celebrated nutritional and medical authority Dr. Ralph Bircher of Switzerland touts the virtues of raw foods. He begins by discussing a seldom-mentioned but universal reaction to eating cooked food known as digestive leukocytosis: "Some message sent by the palate to the marrow through the vegetative [autonomic] nerve system releases a deployment of leucocytes which swarm out to the walls of the intestines, especially of the colon, as if to defend a frontline." In other words, eating cooked foods sets off the immune system. Bircher then cites the work of Dr. Paul Kouchakoff who showed that "digestive leukocytosis does not happen whenever a meal consists of, or even begins with raw vegetable food." (Dr. Kouchakoff's study is available in these archives under the title "The Influence of Food Cooking on the Blood Formula of Man.")
Bircher also addresses the subject of enzymes in raw foods, saying there are "specific enzymes in fresh and living plant cells which are very delicate" and which the “human organism knows how to protect and escort...throughout the digestive tract, so that they can reach the colon without harm." (This is in direct contrast to conventional belief that all enzymes in food are broken down during the course of human digestion.) Once in the colon, Bircher adds, these special raw-food enzymes "perform a basic change in the bacterial flora by attracting and binding what oxygen there is. Thus, they remove the aerobic condition which is responsible for putrefaction, fermentations, dysbacteria and intestinal toxemia." Historical note: Bircher's father, the famous Maximilian Bircher-Benner, developed the raw Swiss breakfast food muesli for patients at his clinic. In Europe it is often still called Birchermuesli. Reprint 80, 1953.
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