Category Archives: Notes from the Archives

The Three Tolerances

This article takes a look at the book From Soil to Supplement, a course in diet, food and nutrition from one of the most prescient nutritionists of the century, Dr. Royal Lee. You can find more important information in our tag, Notes from the Archives. There are three tolerances, Dr. Royal Lee tells us, and they […]

Buckwheat’s Secret Weapon—Rutin

What do fruit, onions, buckwheat, and tea have in common? The answer is rutin, part of the vitamin P group of the vitamin C complex. Rutin is also a compound at the heart of a startling discovery. As outlined in this article in Harvard Magazine, researchers found that rutin contains “potent anticlotting powers that could […]

Dr. Royal Lee, Rock Star

Avoid refined and processed foods. Who would argue with that? Yet one of the first people to propose this was targeted as a criminal by our own government at the time. Did that stop him? No way. Dr. Royal Lee saw it as his duty to alert the American public about food safety, despite the […]

Act Naturally

“To live medically is to live miserably,” wrote Thomas Cleave in 1956. And he knew firsthand. Cleave was not only a medical doctor, he was a surgeon captain in the British Royal Navy, and his position gave him a unique, worldly view of medicine in the mid-twentieth century, one that was blunt in its assessment […]

The Most Intense of Vegetables…and the Most Nutritious

If you love beets, you probably already know that they’re good for you—very good. If you don’t love beets—well, you might want to revisit that because you’re missing out on a lot. Beets are, as Tom Robbins noted, “the most intense of vegetables.” And their intensity in color and flavor perfectly matches the strength of […]

Have You Had Your Dirt Today?

I’m always in a good mood after working in the garden. Maybe it’s the combination of exercise, fresh air, sunshine, and…Mycobacterium vaccae? A common, harmless bacteria found in soil, M. vaccae thrives best in soil with rich organic content. Studies by neuroscientist Christopher Lowry, which were inspired by oncologist Mary O’Brien, have revealed that this bacteria may literally make you […]

What Really Causes Cavities?

When I was a kid, my dentist gave me a lollipop after each appointment as a reward for being a good patient (i.e., not crying or screaming or biting his fingers off). But at the time, I didn’t understand why someone who discouraged the indulgence of sweets presented me with the very thing I was […]

Nutrition Visionary, Dr. Royal Lee

Dubbed the “Fightinist” Leader in Nutritional Science, Dr. Royal Lee led the whole-food nutrition battle against organized medicine, the FDA, and the food manufacturing industry from the 1930s through the early 1960s. He spent a great deal of time in court, standing for the scientific facts that proved whole-food nutrition supported health. Big Medicine and […]

The Sugar-Cancer Connection

Sugar

You may have heard the question posed on 60 Minutes: “Is sugar toxic?” According to the segment’s host, Sanjay Gupta, “the average American consumes 130 pounds of sugar a year.” But, you say, “I don’t eat sweets.” Are you sure about that? Sugar lurks in many foods—whole-grain bread, fat-free yogurt, organic spaghetti sauce…the list goes […]

An Honest Loaf: Fresh, Stone Ground Bread

The healthiest and best-tasting bread is the bread you bake yourself—if you use freshly ground wheat, that is. A 1958 article in Let’s Live Magazine by Dr. Lee offers this advice: “The only wholesome bread is that made from wheat that has been ground into flour by a stone type mill within a few hours of its conversion […]

An Orange a Day…Keeps the Stretch Marks Away?

Oranges

One of the most confounding beliefs of modern medicine is that a person is either completely lacking in a vitamin or not lacking it at all. The idea that there are in-between states of vitamin deficiency and that such “subclinical” deficiencies are the cause of common illnesses is perplexingly dismissed by the medical community. Everyone […]

The Perils of Pasteurization

Dairy cow

The pasteurization of milk might be the most one-sided story ever sold. To hear it from proponents, pasteurization kills lethal pathogens naturally lurking in cow’s milk while delivering a nutritious, wholesome product to consumers. The commercial dairy industry has spun this yarn to great profit for nearly a century, but the truth is the unsanitary […]

Dr. Wiley’s Question Box: Starches and Sugar Are the Principal Sources of Body Fat

Dr. Harvey Wiley, the first head of the FDA, explains a fact that metabologists have known for nearly a century but which low-fat dietitians and doctors still fail to appreciate: Up to 80% of the carbohydrates a person eats are converted to fat by the liver and stored in the body’s fat tissue.