Historical Archives

Diet Frights—Sign of the Times

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: “How long will it be before we realize the simple truth that the health of every individual depends upon his nutritional status?” So writes Dr. Royal Lee in making the obvious—yet still criminally ignored—correlation between the emergence of heart disease, cancer, and other “modern” diseases and the introduction of industrial food processing and refining, which turned white sugar, white flour, and hydrogenated fats into the foundation of our food supply. “Is any satellite, atomic bomb or guided missile so likely to jeopardize our health as the certainty that insidious food tampering assuredly sucks away, like greedy quicksand, at the very foundation of our health?” Dr. Lee asks ominously. From Let’s Live magazine, 1958.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Diet Prevents Polio

By Benjamin Sandler, MD

Summary: Early nutrition research consistently showed that a properly nourished person is highly resistant to infection, whereas a malnourished one is highly susceptible. In this 1951 book, former U.S. naval surgeon Dr. Benjamin Sandler pokes holes in conventional ideas about polio and argues that the best way to have avoided the infectious disease was to eat a low-carbohydrate diet. He presents the evidence that led him to his conclusion and explains why, of all the countries in the world, the United States got hit hardest by the polio epidemic. He also details one of the most intriguing public health experiments in nutrition history, when in the summer of 1948 he convinced newspapers in the polio-ravaged state of North Carolina to publicize his low-carb diet as a means of prevention. Though the experiment was a success—the rate of polio in North Carolina changed from one of the highest in the country to one of the lowest—health officials categorically ignored Dr. Sandler’s work, and, shockingly, his book was later banned by the government. Like so much information suppressed in the early days of nutrition, Diet Prevents Polio holds great truths that merit a full examination in light of current biochemical knowledge. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1951.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Discovery of the Anticancerous Properties of the “F” Vitamine (Reptiline)

By Professor Humberto Aviles

Summary: A sweeping report on the special properties of vitamin F, a complex of essential fatty acids (linolenic acid, linoleic acid, arachidonic adic) that was first identified in 1929 by Drs. Burr and Burr. Though medical and government authorities never recognized the F complex as a vitamin, the author of this paper, along with many other clinicians and particularly Dr. Royal Lee, conducted significant experiments over many decades to prove its presence and effect in the human body. (Today linolenic and linoleic acids are acknowledged by conventional science as the “essential fatty acids.”) Here Professor Aviles, in discussing his own clinical application of vitamin F in relieving pain in cancer patients, presents an extensive review of peer-reviewed literature on vitamin F from around the world, including research in Germany, England, Russia, and the United States. In addition to numerous references, Aviles includes a fascinating time line of the research on fatty acids and cancer from 1924 to 1953. From the Center of Investigations of Medicinal Plants and Animals (Mexico), 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint 12-53.

View PDF: Discovery of the Anticancerous Properties of the “F” Vitamine (Reptiline)

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Diseases as Deficiencies via the Soil

By Dr. William A. Albrecht

Summary: In this article world-renowned soil scientist William Albrecht, former Chairman of the Department of Soils at the University of Missouri, connects the dots between unhealthy soil created by unsustainable farming practices and deficiency-related disease. “The degenerative diseases of the modern world,” Albrecht says, “need to be traced not only to the supplies in the food and feed market where the family budget may provoke them but a bit farther and closer to their origin, namely the fertility of the soil, the point at which all agricultural production takes off.” From the Iowa State University Veterinarian, 1950. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 37A.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Diseases of Faulty Nutrition

By Sir Robert McCarrison, MD

Summary: Dr. Robert McCarrison is a bona fide giant in the history of nutrition. As a member of Britain’s Indian Medical Service in the early twentieth century, he conducted some of the first feeding studies investigating the effects of vitamin-deficient diets on test animals, and his 1921 book Studies in Deficiency Disease remains a classic on the physiological consequences of malnutrition. In this essay from 1928, Dr. McCarrison focuses on the “minor manifestations” (or, in today’s terms, subclinical symptoms) of vitamin deficiency, which he rightly names as harbingers of serious illness that any good doctor should be familiar with. He also admonishes his medical colleagues for fixating on bacteria as causes of disease, noting that it is malnutrition that sets the stage for infection in the first place. “Obsessed with the idea of the microbe,” he writes, “we often forget the most fundamental of all rules for the physician—that the right kind of food is the most important single factor in the promotion of health, and the wrong kind of food the most important single factor in the promotion of disease.” From Transactions of the Seventh Congress of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine, 1928.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Do You Want to Lose the Hair on Your Chest?

By Dr. Royal Lee and unknown author

Summary: Two articles featuring quotes and commentary by Dr. Royal Lee that 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.” Dr. 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. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 59, 1948. Multiple original sources. 

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Doctor Claims Immunity Diet Prevents Polio

Author unknown

Summary: In 1948 the polio epidemic was nearing its frightening peak in the United States. While medicine attempted to find an answer to the problem with its usual recourse, pharmaceutical drugs, one doctor in North Carolina proposed a safer and easier way to prevent the disease: nutritional therapy. Dr. Benjamin Sandler, a former navy doctor, had discovered that patients who ate a diet low in refined carbohydrates and high in quality protein were resistant to infection by polio and other contagious diseases. Dr. Sandler would prove his point when he convinced the newspapers in the state to run stories, such as the one preserved here, recommending a low-carbohydrate diet as a means of preventing polio. The result was a dramatic drop in polio incidence statewide, transforming North Carolina’s rate of the disease from one of the highest in the country to one of the lowest. For a detailed analysis of the results of Dr. Sandler’s campaign—and for more on his theory of low-carbohydrate diet and disease prevention—see his remarkable 1951 book Diet Prevents Polio. See also “The Low-Carb Diet That Prevented Polio” for more media coverage of Dr. Sandler’s courageous effort to stem the polio epidemic through nutrition. From the Statesville Daily Record, 1948.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Dr. Brady’s Health Talk

By William Brady, MD

Summary: Dr. William Brady was a medical doctor with a popular syndicated newspaper column in the 1940s and ’50s. Here he discusses the link between physical degeneration and nutritional deficiencies resulting from the consumption of refined and processed foods. While we tend to think of the poor as most prone to malnutrition, Brady points out, in his characteristically biting manner, that it is actually the wealthy in America who are most susceptible. “Most Americans, particularly the well-to-do class, suffer from poor nutritional condition and are too dumb to realize what ails them,” he writes. For “anyone who purports to be informed,” Brady recommends as required reading the books Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Dr. Weston Price, Studies in Deficiency Disease, by Sir Robert McCarrison, MD, and The National Malnutrition, by Dr. D.T. Quigley. Sound advice still. From the Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star, 1950. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Dr. Frederick Stare’s Funding Exposed

Author unknown

Summary: Dr. Frederick Stare (1910–2002) was the founder and first head of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. A lifelong fighter against the health food industry and the organic food movement, Dr. Stare often served as a government witness against natural-foods advocates, testifying that such proponents were alarmists and frauds. Over the course of his career, Dr. Stare procured massive amounts of funding for Harvard and his own research from food-manufacturing giants such as Coca-Cola, General Foods, and the National Soft Drinks Association. One such “gift” is documented in the newspaper clip here, which was reprinted and disseminated by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research in 1960. Dr. Stare’s support of industrial food manufacturing, including his unwavering defense of the use of chemical additives and preservatives, earned him a reputation among natural-food advocates as a tool of the commercial adulterators of America’s food supply. From the Milwaukee Journal, 1960. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Dr. Harvey W. Wiley on Chemicals in Food

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD, and Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: An illuminating peek at the early, fateful politics of food adulteration in the United States. From 1906 to 1912, Dr. Harvey Wiley was the head of the Bureau of Chemistry within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Bureau, which would later become the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was assigned the task of enforcing the country’s first federal food purity law, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. However, as Dr. Wiley explains in the following excerpt from his 1930 autobiography, his agency’s authority was quickly and illegally usurped by higher-ranking officials within the USDA under the influence of industrial food manufacturers. In one famous case, the solicitor of the USDA forbade Dr. Wiley and other workers of the Bureau from testifying in a federal case in which their testimony would have supported a ban of the food additive sodium benzoate, a compound Dr. Wiley and his colleagues had determined to be injurious to health. Sadly, this poisonous compound remains one of the most common food preservatives used by industrial food manufacturers. Includes an introduction by Dr. Royal Lee. From Harvey W. Wiley—An Autobiography, 1930. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint No. 1-60.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Dr. Lee Wins Price Ruling

By the Vitamins Product Company

Summary: During World War II, government-enforced price controls dictated what various items and commodities could be sold for. When federal agents prosecuted Dr. Royal Lee for selling the famously nutritious whole-wheat flour from Deaf Smith County, Texas, at a cost beyond the control price for ordinary flour, Dr. Lee fought back in federal court and won, as described in the newspaper account preserved here. Also included is a commentary on the incident by Dr. Lee, attributed to his business The Vitamin Products Company. From The Milwaukee Journal, 1946.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Dr. Royal Lee on the “X Factor” of Dr. Price

By Dr. Royal Lee with commentary by Mark R. Anderson

Summary: In the 1930s Dr. Weston Price traveled the globe to study the diets of traditional societies that had yet to start eating modern, processed foods or were in the beginning stages of incorporating them into their culture. Among the many profound nutritional discoveries he made (which he published in his seminal book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration) was the existence of a critical fat-soluble nutrient that was responsible for, among other things, moving calcium from the blood into the tissues, including the bones and teeth. Although Dr. Price was able to measure the effects of this “vitamin-like activator” (which he called Activator X), he was never able to precisely identify its chemical structure. According to nutrition educator and historian Mark R. Anderson, Dr. Royal Lee had no doubt that Price’s X factor was a component of vitamin F, a complex that includes the essential fatty acids. Dr. Lee considered Price’s X factor so important, Anderson adds, that he included it in three of his famous therapeutic food formulas—Cataplex F tablets, Cataplex F perles, and Super EFF. In these excerpts Dr. Lee discusses the relationship between the vitamin F complex and Price’s discovery. Selene River Press, 2005. 

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Dr. Royal Lee—A Thumbnail Sketch

By L. Jewell

Summary:  In today’s world of super specialization, it is almost impossible to fathom the breadth of Dr. Royal Lee’s accomplishments. While he is widely hailed as one of the most knowledgeable nutritionists of his day, Dr. Lee was also a wildly successful engineer, inventor, and manufacturer. From 1927 to 1962, he earned nearly seventy patents for his inventions, which included everything from electric motors to the low-temperature manufacturing equipment needed to make his revolutionary raw-food supplements. In 1944, as Dr. Lee neared his fiftieth birthday, author Lee Jewell wrote the following biographical overview detailing some of those inventions, including the famous Lee Motor Governor, which allowed silent movies to become “talkies” and was a critical piece of the famous Norden bombsight, credited with tipping the scales in World War II. Dr. Lee’s ability to not just comprehend ideas but transform them into effective application is what made him truly unique in the field of nutrition. While mainstream scientists and medical authorities argued over the value of hypothetical nutritional therapies, Dr. Lee was busy creating products that actually helped people regain their health. Reprinted by the The Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1944.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

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

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD

Summary: In 1912 Dr. Harvey Wiley left his post as head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Chemistry (the forerunner of the federal Food and Drug Administration) because of the collusion he witnessed between food manufacturers and agents within the federal government. Unable to effectively enforce the country’s first food purity law (passed in 1906), he left the government and joined the private Good Housekeeping Institute in Washington, D.C. There Dr. Wiley helped develop the famous Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval while also writing for the institute’s magazine. In “Dr. Wiley’s Question Box,” he would answer specific questions from readers about food safety and nutrition. In the excerpt here, Dr. Wiley explains a fact that metabologists have known for nearly a century but which conventional nutritionists and doctors have failed to comprehend from then until now: the principal source of fat stored in the body is not dietary fat but sugars and starches (i.e., carbohydrates). While nutrition schools today continue to teach the erroneous notion that glucose from carbohydrates is “the preferred fuel of the body,” Dr. Wiley points out what people who study metabolism for a living all know: up to 80 percent of the carbohydrates a person eats are converted to fat by the liver and stored in the body’s fat tissue. Fat tissue, in turn, releases fatty acids, which form the majority of fuel calories used by the body’s cells. Dr. Wiley also addresses other queries from readers, including the age-old question of whether overeating “acid-producing” foods is harmful and whether eating sand is good for the digestive system. From Good Housekeeping, 1926.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Enforcement of the Food Law

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD

Summary: In 1906 the U.S. government passed the Pure Food and Drugs Act, the first federal law aimed specifically at ensuring the purity of America’s food supply. It wasn’t long before the industrial food industry—with the help of its connections in the federal government—found its way around the legislation. In this letter to President Calvin Coolidge, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the chief chemist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) charged with enforcing the act, calls the U.S. government to task for turning a blind eye to various cases that appeared to squarely violate the law. Dr. Wiley’s protestation (an expanded version of which appeared as “Dr. Wiley to the President” in the September 1925 issue of Good Housekeeping) caused such a stir that it prompted a reply to the president by the acting secretary of the USDA. Together, these two letters show precisely how food manufacturers and federal courts colluded to thwart the intent of America’s food purity law, allowing additives of unproven safety to become forever part of the nation’s food supply. 1925. 

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Excerpts from “Nutrition in Everyday Practice”

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. From Nutrition in Everyday Practice, 1939. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 115.

Continue reading →
Historical Archives

Excerpts from “The Science of Eating”

By Alfred McCann, MD

Summary: In these selections from Dr. Alfred McCann’s seminal 1918 book The Science of Eating, the author first outlines an animal-feeding experiment for schoolchildren to conduct in order to observe firsthand the effects of nutrient-deficient foods on the health and resistance to disease of animals (and, by implication, of humans). Then, in the section titled “Famine Due to Artificial Sugar,” McCann, who saw clearly that modern methods of food production were leading to the destruction of the nation’s health, precociously asserts that many of what were formerly thought of as infectious diseases were actually the result of vitamin deficiency. In presenting a nutrition-based hypothesis explaining the cause of infantile paralysis (polio), he also offers some keen insight into the origins of the disease. “These briefly stated scientific facts lead me to believe,” he concludes, “that close scrutiny of the food of the children afflicted may lead to the discovery of a dietetic cause of infantile paralysis.” From The Science of Eating, 1918. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 108A. 

Continue reading →