Cost of Malnutrition
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this forward-thinking comment on preventive healthcare, Dr. Lee delineates the ways in which vitamin complexes ensure the health of workers. Vitamin A complex, for instance, helps maintain the integrity of mucous membranes and thus prevent infection and lost man hours. Vitamin B complex keeps the nerves and heart functioning properly; vitamin C complex promotes stamina by optimizing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood; vitamin D complex prevents cramps, irritability, and bone-calcium loss; and so on. Lee also links low back pain to a shortage of trace minerals. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.
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The Trace Elements (3 Articles)
By Warren L. Anderson
Summary: An early report on the important effects of trace minerals in soil, livestock, and humans. At the time of these articles, in 1949, the macro minerals—calcium, phosphorus, and potassium—were fairly well understood in terms of plant growth. On the other hand, the trace minerals, e.g., iodine, zinc, copper, manganese, iron, etc., were poorly understood until research like this began to appear. The role of trace minerals in the formation of nutrients such as cobalt and vitamin B12 had only just been discovered. This knowledgeable author shows the insidious effects and unsuspected diseases in plants, livestock, and humans caused by trace mineral deficiencies. From Hoard's Dairyman magazine. Reprint 71, 1949.
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Trace Elements and Biodynamic Agriculture
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: By the close of the 1940s, Dr. Lee had seen many "peeps behind...the iron curtain that is so carefully maintained by the makers of fraudulent foods to keep the American people in ignorance as to the real cause of their chronic diseases." Thus, in commenting on the opinion of a committee who'd concluded on very little evidence that fertilizing soil with trace minerals is unnecessary to produce nutritious plants, Dr. Lee could not help but question the motives of the committee's so-called experts. "Such haste in promoting one side of a vital question that cannot be settled without a great amount of research certainly throws a lot of doubt upon the integrity and honesty of the committee." Lee would spend the next two decades calling out such formulaic chicanery, the kind of which would later lead to some of the great shams of modern nutrition, including cholesterol theory and low-fat diets. 1949.
Trace Elements Experiments Here Turning Up Some Amazing Results
By Tom A. Ellis
Summary: A newspaper account of a gathering of nationally known nutritionists and soil experts discussing the effects of trace-element deficiency on the health of soil, plants, livestock, and humans. Among the scientists attending were Dr. William Albrecht, the soil expert from the University of Missouri who's been called the father of organic farming, and Dr. Francis Pottenger, Jr., whose famous cat-feeding experiments showed conclusively that the effects of malnutrition are passed on to subsequent generations. Several studies are discussed, showing the positive clinical effect of supplying trace elements to livestock and humans deficient in them and suggesting that the true cause of these deficiencies is a lack of trace elements in the soil in which the plants eaten by the animals and humans grew. These early experiments show clearly the critical nutritional role of trace minerals in the cycle of life. From the Springfield Daily News and Reader, Missouri. Reprint 92, 1949.
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The Use of Kelp as a Source of Trace Elements in Human Nutrition
By G. L. Seifert and H. C. Wood
Summary: As read at the Second International Seaweed Symposium in 1956. Seifert reports on a study in which "the nutritional value of sea kelp and trace minerals was demonstrated." In the experiment, the diet of 400 pregnant women—the majority suffering anemia—was fortified with tablets of dried giant bladder kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). In the majority of the subjects, the anemia disappeared within six to eight weeks of the onset of supplementation. In addition, there was "a spectacular drop in the incidence of colds" among the subjects. (Anemia and a tendency to develop colds is a common problem faced by pregnant women, the investigators note.) Seifert adds that the success of the study is likely a result of the high trace mineral content of the kelp, concluding that "in certain types of body stress, the difference between health and disease may often be a trace mineral supplement." Reprint 133, 1956.
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What About Trace Minerals?
By Ed Rupp
Summary: This 1949 article from a Missouri farming journal describes some breakthrough research on trace minerals being conducted in the state at the time. Specifically, undulant fever (brucellosis) is shown to be successfully treated with trace-mineral therapy. The article goes on to describe the loss of nutrients through pasteurization of milk and other so-called modern food processing methods. From the Missouri Ruralist. Reprint 41, 1949.
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