Are We Starving to Death?
By Neil M. Clark
Summary: A progressive and compelling article about the work of Dr. William A. Albrecht, arguably the greatest soil scientist of the twentieth century, who contends that unless America makes a concerted effort to restore the health of its soil, it will suffer a slow extinction from the "hidden hunger" of mineral-poor foods. From the Saturday Evening Post. Reprint 21, 1945.
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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 Facts Are Published
By the Therapeutic Foods Company
Summary: In this brilliant missive from Dr. Royal Lee's Therapeutic Foods Company, the "facts" published refer to studies showing that only natural vitamins—vitamins as they are found in food, as complexes of many, cooperating compounds—are capable of curing vitamin-deficiency diseases such as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, and rickets. On the other hand, isolated or synthetic fractions of the vitamin complexes, which we today define as "vitamins," do not cure deficiency diseases. For instance, few people realize that ascorbic acid (what is known today as "vitamin C" in spite of the fact that it is just one of the many compounds in the natural vitamin C complex) has never been shown to cure scurvy. Nor does synthetic thiamine cure beriberi, or synthetic vitamin D cure rickets. In fact, Dr. Lee points out, studies at the time indicated that isolated vitamin fractions might ultimately make these conditions worse. Scientific study supports these facts, he says, so why not be honest about it? 1941.
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A Few Facts About Vitamins
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this brief article, Dr. Lee presents some of his foundational insights about vitamins, including the fact that all vitamins as they are found in food are "complexes," or mixtures of chemically interrelated compounds, and that taking isolated vitamin fractions—unaccompanied by the proper interrelated compounds—is inherently dangerous. He also describes the limited applicability of animal studies with respect to the effective dose of vitamins in humans, citing the great difference in vitamin requirements among different animal species. 1940.
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Maternal Malnutrition and Congenital Deformity
By Howard H. Hillemann, PhD
Summary: Dr. Hillemann breaks down, by cause, the number of birth defects occurring in the United States in 1955, noting in particular the increasing numbers of defects attributable to environmental chemicals, food additives, and prenatal malnutrition. The report includes a comprehensive discussion of the role of vitamins and minerals in prenatal nutrition, addressing each nutrient individually. Reprint 66B, circa 1956.
Maternal Malnutrition and Fetal Prenatal Developmental Malformations
By Howard H. Hillemann, PhD
Summary: A thoroughly researched report on the birth and developmental defects known to result from specific nutrient deficiencies in human and test-animal mothers during pregnancy. Dr. Hillemann covers deficiencies of vitamins A, C, and E, fats, carbohydrates, the B complex vitamers (including folate), protein, calcium, phosphorous, and manganese. Includes 61 references. Reprint 66A, 1956.
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Modern Miracle Men
By Rex Beach
Summary: A fascinating document from the U.S. Senate that originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine. Beach describes the work of Dr. Charles Northern, whom he credits as the first person to show conclusively that mineral-deficient soils produce nutrient-deficient food plants, which in turn lead to nutrient deficiencies in the livestock and humans that eat them. A historically significant record of the decline of America's soils, nutrition, and health. Reprint 109, 1936.
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The National Malnutrition
By D. T. Quigley, MD
Summary: The complete book published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. A well-known cancer specialist from Omaha writes about the disgraceful nutritional status of the American people and makes the case that it is malnutrition more than anything that is responsible for the the amazing rate of cancer in the United States. Decades ahead of his time, Dr. Quigley warns Americans about corn syrup and refined sugar, explaining that cancer cells thrive on such artificial and refined sweeteners. 1943.
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Natural Versus Synthetic Supplements
By Judith A. DeCava
Summary: This manifesto of whole-food nutrition should be standard reading for anyone even thinking about taking or prescribing vitamin supplements. DeCava, a clinical nutritionist and meticulous researcher, spells out the precise differences between natural and synthetic supplements in light of modern nutritional discoveries. While studies have famously shown the health benefits of recently discovered phytochemicals such as lycopene or anthocyanins, DeCava points out these benefits occur only when the phytochemicals are eaten as part of the food they come naturally packaged in. When isolated from the rest of the food, "they never seem to work as well in people," DeCava writes. This is similar to the message of Dr. Royal Lee, who insisted 80 years ago that vitamins are not isolated chemicals, as chemists and pharmacists have defined them, but they are a cooperation of compounds that work synergistically to produce a nutritive effect. Once isolated, food fractions of any type may have a pharmacological (drug-like) effect, but they are not nutritive and no longer fall under the category of nutrient. From Whole Food Nutrition Journal, 2003.
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Natural vs. Synthetic or Crystalline Vitamins
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this brief article, Dr. Lee presents his classic metaphor likening a true vitamin to a watch. Just as a watch consists of numerous pieces that all work together to perform a function (telling time), a true vitamin is a complex of countless synergistic factors that work together to perform the function of delivering a nutritive effect to the body. And just as separating a few pieces from a watch and expecting them to tell time is absurd, isolating (or synthesizing) a single component of a natural vitamin and expecting it to nourish the body is folly. 1952.
The Need for Vitamins
By L. Stambovsky
Summary: In this article, written amidst the Great Depression and the outset of World War II, the author describes the vitamin-poor state of the typical American citizen in terms that still apply today. "Quantitatively, most Americans get enough calories in the form of [refined] carbohydrates....But refined sugar and starch, while they are energy sources, provide little or no accessory or vital food factors [i.e., vitamins and minerals]." This basic message sums up the work of many of the early nutritionists, who tried in vain to communicate the fact that nutrient deficiencies are at the root of most modern degenerative illness. Includes a good chart listing various vitamin deficiencies and their associated diseases. From Drug and Cosmetic Industry magazine. Reprint 31, 1942.
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Nutrition in Everyday Practice (excerpts)
By E. C. Robertson and F. F. Tisdall and by Dr. E. V. McCollum
Summary: Excerpts from two chapters of a 1939 compilation by the Canadian Medical Association, which admits that "the practical application of facts concerning nutrition has not kept pace with our increasing knowledge" and warns Canadian physicians that they "must increase their interest in this problem of normal nutrition, otherwise the public will seek information on this subject elsewhere." (Advice that was, tragically, almost wholly ignored.) In the chapter "Nutrition and Resistance to Disease,” Roberston and Tisdall explain that while clinical evidence regarding nutrient deficiencies in humans can be difficult to obtain because of experimental limitations, this is not the case for animal studies, which show quite clearly the effects of even "comparatively slight" shortages in vitamins. The authors present studies showing drastic differences in resistance to disease in animals fed a diet sufficient in nutrients and those fed diets deficient in, respectively, vitamins A, B, and D; minerals; and animal protein. “These studies furnish clear-cut evidence that improper nutrition lowers the resistance of the animal to infection," the authors state, "and also that the nutritional deficiency does not have to be so severe as to produce outstanding evidence of disease." In the second chapter, “Better Nutrition as a Health Measure," Dr. McCollum discusses the specific roles of vitamins A, C, and D in the body and in dental health in particular. Reprint 115, 1939.
The Primary Cause of Disease
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee lays out a basic principle of his nutritional philosophy—the idea that bacterial infection is usually a secondary result of malnutrition. Properly nourished bodies, naturally stronger and well defended, are much better equipped to resist invasion of pathogens, which are always around us, Lee explains. A weaker, malnourished body, on the other hand, is much more susceptible to a successful attack by foreign invaders. From Let's Live magazine, 1958.
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Quotations on Vitamins from the 1939 USDA Yearbook
By the United States Department of Agriculture
Summary: Excerpts from one of the most quotable government documents ever published. In the 1930s, even as the FDA was harassing doctors and companies promoting nutritional therapy, the USDA published independent studies demonstrating the widespread effects of vitamin malnutrition in the American public (proving that not everyone in the department was asleep at the switch as America's food supply became adulterated, refined, and chemicalized). The USDA Yearbook for 1939 was such a surprisingly candid assessment of nutritional deficiencies in the country that the Lee Foundation published and distributed highlights from it in the form of the booklet shown here. If the statements in the USDA's yearbook had been published by supplement companies, the FDA would have brought legal actions. Unsurprisingly, reports like this stopped coming out of the USDA in subsequent years. From The United States Department of Agriculture Yearbook for 1939.
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The Scope of Vitamin E
By the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research
Summary: A 19-page booklet produced by the Lee Foundation reporting on the history and clinical applications of natural vitamin E. This is one of the most complete and concise reports on perhaps the most misunderstood vitamin complex: "Four vitamin factors have been isolated in the course of time from the E complex—alpha, beta, gamma and delta tocopherol. Of these, the alpha form has been found the most powerful and is often erroneously considered as the whole vitamin E. Actually the term 'vitamin E' should only be used in reference to the element which occurs in foods [since] in its entirety it includes factors not present in alpha tocopherol alone." In fact, the report concludes, the natural vitamin E complex is "highly intricate, perhaps the most intricate of all [the] complexes" and the four tocopherols should be regarded merely "as factors and not as the entire E complex." Much of the information in this critical document is completely lost to modern nutrition. 1955.
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Some Interrelations Between Vitamins and Hormones
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee, citing the great British doctor and nutrition pioneer Sir Robert McCarrison, explains the critical connection between nutrition and the endocrine system. "McCarrison back in 1921 told us how the endocrine glands were the first structures to atrophy or degenerate following vitamin and mineral deficiencies. [For instance,] the adrenal glands...stopped functioning and soon became atrophied." McCarrison noted that while the adrenals were usually the first endocrine gland to falter as a result of nutrient deficiency, in time others followed, including the thyroid and the pituitary. As Lee often pointed out, none of this would have been discovered had diets high in nutrient-deficient processed foods not initiated such problems in the human race. 1950.
The Special Nutritional Qualities of Natural Foods
By Dr. Royal Lee and Jerome S. Stolzoff
Summary: In this famous report, Lee and Stolzoff contrast the characteristics of real food with those of their crude artificial imitations. “Because of the denaturation of foods by refining and processing, we are overeating the fattening and energy-producing components in foods and literally starving for the vital vitamin and mineral factors, which have become far scarcer and more difficult to obtain than at any time in the history of the human race.” Still ahead of the times, this report is as important now as it was in its day. Includes a referenced chart of 147 diseases associated with various vitamin defeciences. 1942.
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Studies in Deficiency Disease
By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD
Summary: The complete classic of 1921, as republished by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research in 1945. Dr. McCarrison was knighted in England for his groundbreaking research while serving as a British army surgeon in India during the first two decades of the twentieth century. His landmark investigations into the connection between the diets of various populations in India and their patterns of disease and health gave new insight into the cause and effect of nutrition on health and introduced the world to the amazingly healthy and long-lived Hunza people of the Himalayas. McCarrison set up laboratories in which he studied the effect of various local diets on animals, reproducing nearly the same health and disease patterns in the animals as displayed in the particular populations. Diet, he concluded, was the determining factor in the specific health patterns of each population. McCarrison was also the first researcher to inform the medical world that the endocrine system is the first system in the body to succumb to the effects of malnutrition, carefully demonstrating the lesions in the endocrine glands caused by specific adulterated foods. His work inspired the likes of Royal Lee, Weston A. Price, Francis Pottenger, Jr., and J. I. Rodale. Still remarkably relevant today, this book should be part of the corpus of all colleges of the healing arts. Originally published by Oxford Medical Publications, 1921.
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Studies of Vitamin Deficiency
By M. K. Horwitt et al.
Summary: Report of a controlled study conducted in a state hospital testing the effects of diets deficient in thiamine and riboflavin. Of course this kind of test could never be conducted under today's ethical standards; nevertheless, as expected, those who were starved of various vitamins suffered noticeable effects and recovered when they were restored to a proper diet. From Science. Reprint 26, 1946.
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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 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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Vitamin U Therapy of Peptic Ulcer
By Garnett Cheney, MD
Summary: While it was never accepted as a vitamin by the FDA, "vitamin U" from raw cabbage juice was successfully used by pioneering holistic physicians in the treatment of stomach ulcers. Here Dr. Cheney gives some background and clinical applications of this officially unaccepted vitamin in a presentation before the 80th Annual Session of the California Medical Association in 1951. This file includes a supplementary document from a 1957 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association on the subject of cabbage juice for digestive problems. From California Medicine. Reprint 91, 1952.
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Vitamins and Their Clinical Applications
By Dr. W. Stepp, Dr. Kuhnau, and Dr. H. Schroeder
Summary: An extremely rare, comprehensive book on vitamin therapy that Dr. Royal Lee had translated from German and published in the United States. The authors, German research physicians, recognized the therapeutic aspects of vitamins beyond treating the frank deficiency diseases (e.g., scurvy, rickets, etc.) associated with them. "In view of the newly acquired knowledge of the frequency of hypovitaminoses [vitamin deficiencies] and of the susceptibility of patients with avitaminoses to all sorts of diseases [beyond frank deficiencies], the importance of a sufficient vitamin supply must not be underestimated in our patients." This book is an indispensable collection of gems containing some of the lost knowledge of vitamin therapy learned in the years of the twentieth century before World War II, when vitamin research was independent, vigorous, and fresh with the insights of recent discovery. Includes numerous charts, graphs, references, and appendices. 1938.
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Vitamins and Their Relation to Deficiency Disease of the GI Tract
By Edward A. Johnston, MD
Summary: This excellent report, a reprint from The Journal of the American College of Proctology, starts with a clear description of the all-important connection between vitamin complexes (as they are found in whole foods) and the endocrine system. "When we consider that vitamins in the food are the substances with which the endocrines are able to secrete their active principles, it is apparent that a glandular insufficiency may take place in the absence of vitamins....All of the ductless glands, the thyroid, para-thyroid, thymus, pineal body, pituitary, adrenals, gonads, pancreas, islets of Langerhans, and spleen must have one or more of the vitamins in order to secrete their vital fluids, and, if deprived of the vitamins, will atrophy and cease to function." Such events, Dr. Johnston says, are obviously bound to weaken the body and make it more susceptible to disease. "Stomach ulcers are probably the best instance of bacterial invasion primarily due to a lowered resistance resulting from a vitamin deficiency. Other instances of vitamin A deficiency, and often found in conjunction with infections of the intestinal tract, are infections of the eyes, tonsils, sinuses, lungs, buccal and lingual mucosa, and the skin." This is the Royal Lee Philosophy writ large. Reprint 2, circa 1940.
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Vitamins In Our Food
By Prof. A. E. Murneek
Summary: In this article from Science magazine, Professor Murneek laments the various factors that have resulted in the "devitaminization" of the modern food supply. "Improper selection of food-producing plants, modern methods of handling the crop, and faulty preparation by cooking and other means has resulted in a diet of subnormal vitamin content for many people," he writes, adding that refining and processing of foods have "devitaminized our foods still further." If consumers truly want good health, Murneek says, they must learn to choose quality over looks or convenience when it comes to food. "By catering to the 'eye-appeal' we have, in our choice, often lost 'food value,' including undoubtedly a large amount of vitamins, both known and unknown." He reminds readers that the food manufacturers do not have their health in mind. "Profit has been often the motivating force in present food technology, the dollar sign the guiding star, setting styles, fostering sales and creating eating 'habits' for the use, in volume, of certain products....Thus economics and style, not nutrition and health...have guided most parties concerned in food production and distribution." Reprint 36, 1944.
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