Do You Want to Lose the Hair on Your Chest? Butter vs. Margarine
By Dr. Royal Lee and unknown author
Summary: Two documents contrast the incredible nutritional value of butter with the equally incredible lack of nutritional value of "oleomargarine" (what we call simply margarine today). In particular, the relationship between vitamin E and pubescent development is discussed, with Dr. Lee reminding readers that "sex development demands vitamin E, and butter is our main source in the American diet." Lee presents photos of boys and girls demonstrating the failure of sexual differentiation to occur as a result of nutrient starvation. He also discusses the vital roles of the vitamin F and D complexes—both found naturally and in their entirety in butter but not in margarine—in assimilating and distributing calcium in the body. From Iowa Business and Industry, 1953, and the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1948. Reprint 59.
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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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The Fallacy of High Potency in Vitamin Dosage
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: "The biggest mistake made in the art of therapeutics or nutrition is in assuming that 'if a little is good, more is better,'" writes Dr. Lee in emphasizing the matter of correct dosage in nutritional therapy. Lee goes on to expound the scientific basis of whole food nutrition vs. mega-dosing with "chemical" vitamins, citing several examples in which too high a dosage of an isolated vitamin fraction caused the same symptoms as a deficiency of the vitamin. He also presents several examples illustrating the toxicity of chemical forms of natural vitamins. Contains a large bibliography. Reprint 25B, circa 1950s.
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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He Enriches Soil for Crops That Go Into Vitamin Pills
By John T. Alexander
Summary: A bittersweet newspaper account of a man who remineralizes soil using special organic composts developed with the help of scientists to grow crops for concentration into whole-food supplements. On the one hand, the story is exciting and inspirational, revealing the difference that well-mineralized, well-bacterialized soil makes in the nutritional quality of foods grown in it. On the other hand, this is a sad reminder of the path industrial agriculture in this country did not take, opting instead for producing nutrient-deficient plants from sapped soil propped up with artificial fertilizers. Includes the famous quote by Dr. C.W. Cavanaugh of Cornell University: "The fact is there is only one major disease—and that is malnutrition." From The Kansas City Star, Missouri. Reprint 55, 1952.
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How Synthetic Poisons Are Sold as Imitation Natural Foods
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: The title of this work speaks for itself. Lee includes in this report the story of how synthetic vitamin D caused widespread harm at the time, and he explains how synthetic vitamins are crude and incomplete imitations of natural vitamin complexes formed in the living cells of plants and animals. The science of the optical rotation of polarized light passing through a substance is used to expose and explain some of the essential differences between natural vitamin fractions and synthetic ones. 1948.
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Imbalance of Vitamin B Factors
By Marion B. Richards, DSc
Summary: A report on the dangers of synthetic B vitamins from the British Medical Journal. Isolated B vitamins, the author warns, create fundamental imbalances, causing problems that do not occur when whole-food sources of the entire B complex are used. "The present results," Richards concludes, "emphasize the need for caution in any attempt to improve the diet of...populations by indiscriminate addition of large supplements of single synthetic B vitamins." Reprint 10, 1945.
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Is This Shot Necessary?
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Dr. Lee recounts numerous "miracle drugs" of his day that turned out to harmful or even lethal to many in the population. (With pharmaceutical-related deaths in America numbering in the tens to hundreds of thousands today, this practice has continued unabated.) It is the "cooperation with natural constructive forces" that brings health, Lee writes, not "drug or poison therapy by which the cell activities are subjected to new and unknown reactions with new and unknown end or side results that...undermine the future welfare of the patient." This simple, sensible approach, Lee says, is the basis of his Vitamin Products Company, which provided complete, natural vitamins in the form of whole-food supplements. Lee also specifies some of the constituents of the natural vitamin C complex, which in addition to ascorbic acid includes an antihemorrhagic factor, a thrombin synthesis factor, a blood-oxygen factor, and a connective-tissue-integrity factor. Publication date unknown.
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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.
Nutrition and Vitamins in Relation to the Heart
By Richard L. Chipman, MD
Summary: Dr. Chipman succinctly sums the natural vs. synthetic argument regarding vitamins before describing the effects of natural vitamins on heart health. Regarding natural vs. synthetic, he says, there are two schools of thought—those who believe vitamin factors "can be made and should be dispensed in a chemically pure form" and those who believe that vitamins "exist as very complex groups of associated principles of synergistic nature, and that if the complex is taken apart, it is no longer capable of producing its normal nutritional and metabolic effect." Chipman, a member of the latter camp, examines the role of vitamins A, B (including B4), C, D and E2 in heart health. He also discusses the application of heart tissue extract in the form of protomorphogens in strengthening the heart muscle. From The Journal of Medical-Physical Research: A Journal of Progressive Medicine and Physical Therapies. Special Reprint, 1954.
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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Synthetic vs. Natural Vitamins
By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: Perhaps the most succinct explanation ever of why natural vitamins and synthetic vitamins are entirely different entities. Natural vitamins, i.e. vitamins as they are found in food, are complexes of associated compounds that act together synergistically to deliver a nutritive effect. In turn, they require minerals—in organic form—to activate them. All these things are found in whole foods. Synthetic vitamins, on the other hand, consist of a single compound of a natural vitamin complex that has been arbitrarily deemed the "most active" and either isolated from the food or, worse, synthesized in the lab. Dr. Lee asks, "How can a single factor be isolated from a complex...and be justifiably sold with the claim that it is equal?" It can't. However, he warns, "do not infer from this that synthetic vitamins have no effect. They do have drug effects—pharmacological actions that may or may not have much in common with the normal nutritional action." In a country where over half the population takes synthetic vitamins, the implications of this paper are astounding. Circa 1954.
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Three Opinions of the Death Food Propaganda
By Dr. Royal Lee, Herbert C. White, and Arnold P. Yerkes
Summary: The Lee Foundation reprinted these opinions of three natural health authorities to counter the "America is the best-fed nation on earth" propaganda coming from government agencies and the commercial food industries. From soil destruction and depletion to food processing and synthetic vitamins, the three authors cogently expose the frauds, lies, and myths perpetrated by the "death-food industry," so described by Royal Lee. Special Bulletin 1-52, 1952.
Vitamin E vs. Wheat Germ Oil
By Ezra Levin
Summary: The author of this report founded Viobin Corp, which developed wheat germ oil concentration methods. Fully referenced, the article declares that there is far more to wheat germ oil than alpha-tocopherol and that the effect delivered by natural vitamin E depends on much more than the isolated tocopherol. For instance, Levin writes, "It appears that, for the first time, evidence has been presented of the presence in wheat germ oil of a factor that exerts a beneficial effect in neuromuscular disturbances other than vitamin E [i.e., tocopherol]." Levin's claims support Dr. Royal Lee's contention that vitamins are synergistically combined complexes and not isolated chemicals. "For many years," he adds, "we, in our laboratory, have suggested that research workers in reporting their work make a sharp distinction between vitamin E [tocopherol] and wheat germ oil. [The neuromuscular study] makes such differentiation imperative." From the American Journal of Digestive Diseases. Reprint 9, 1944.
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