All animate nature, plant and animal, is composed of the elements found in the earth and in the air. The surface and deeper layers of the earth contain all of these elements, and from them all things on this planet take on living form. The trees and other plants growing from the soil have the power of building up (synthesizing)from the simple elementscomplex organic entities such as the fruits and the berries, root vegetables and green vegetables, in fact, everything for the growth, maintenance and life of man and animal.
On chemical analysis, the human body is found to be composed of the identical elements of which plants are composed. Biochemists have found sixteen to twenty-two (or more) elements in the composition of the body. The role each element plays in relation to life is understood by science. Farm products, fruits, vegetables, small and large animals, all are produced according to the plan of nature. The identical principles also apply to the human race. Correct feeding and nutrition will make healthier humans.
We need a better application of those natural principles for nourishing the human race to the acme of physical health. Modern science is today not applied to the fullest extent possible for maintaining the human race in flourishing health.
Humans, as well as animals, can be nourished from plant products for best results. The race subsists today too largely on dead animal substance. This handicaps young and old by a multitude of diseases.
Following is a table that gives the composition of the human body. This table is convincing proof that the earth can nourish man-kind, through the intermediate products of the plant foods, vegetables and fruits, just as it does animals of herbivorous habits.
THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS FOUND IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE BODY
(From “Applied Biochemistry,” by Morse, pages 189-140)
Atomic Element Where Found in the Body Wt.
1. Hydrogen Throughout, in fluids and tissues 1.008
2. Element Where Found in the Body Atomic Lithium Lungs, etc 7.010
3. Carbon Throughout 12.005
4. Nitrogen Throughout, in fluids and tissues 14.008
5. Oxygen Throughout, in fluids and tissues 16.000
6. Fluorine 0.2 per cent bone-ash and in teeth 19.000
7. Sodium Throughout, as salts, in fluids and tissues 23.000
8. Magnesium Throughout less than Ca in lungs, kidney, liver, and glands; greater than Ca in brain, muscle, and heart 24.320
9. Silicon Lens 0.05 per cent; muscle 0.002 per cent; skin 0.004 per cent 28.000
10.Phosphorus In urine, acidity 31.04
The following table gives the chemical composition of a normal man weighing 150 pounds (from Kellogg’s New Dietetics):
1. Oxygen-about 65% or 90 pounds.
2. Carbon-about 18% or 36 pounds.
3. Hydrogen-about 10% or 14 pounds.
4. Nitrogen-about 3% or 31/2 pounds.
5. Calcium-about 1.5% or 33/4 pounds.
6. Phosphorus-about 1% or 1.14 ounces.
7. Potassium-about 0.35% or 3 ounces.
8. Sulphur-about 0.25% or 3/ ounces.
9. Sodium-about 0.15% or 21/2 ounces.
10. Chlorine-about 0.15% or 4 ounces.
11. Magnesium-about 0.05% or 1 1/2 ounces.
12. Iron-about 0.004% or 1/6 ounce.
13. Silicon-very minute amount, to ounce.
14. Fluorine-about 0.004%.
15. Iodine-very minute amount.
16. Manganese-accompanies iron in many tissues.
We have detailed the chemical composition of the body in order to point out the relationship that exists between plant food products and their composition, as sources of ideal nourishment for man. A study of the composition of plants used as food will show that some plants are richer in one set of elements than in another. It is never necessary to use fish, meat or fowl as foods. The belief that nutrition requires cadaverous animal substance as food is erroneousscientifically incorrect.
Much sustenance is easy to procure and even free for the asking The air we breathe is relatively free. The water we drink is relatively free. Leafy vegetables and others that ripen above the ground are not expensive as a rule and they contain many of the essential elements needed for energy, for repair and for growth of new cells and tissues. Fruitsthe fresh raw fruits, especially the juicy fruits such as oranges, grapefruits, pineapplescontain over 90 per cent of the purest kind of distilled water, delicately flavored and seasoned with minerals and vitamins.
Whenever possible, the juicy fruits should be used in their fresh raw forms instead of canned, frozen or dehydrated. Many of the vegetables that help to make the body healthy and handsome must be used in their raw forms. Nowadays we have machines for extracting the minerals and vitamins in the form of delicious “cocktails” by combining any number of greens and roots. A mixture of green pepper, celery, lettuce leaf, carrot root, beet topall extracted in a raw vegetable-juice machineproduces a delightful beverage. Such a beverage furnishes the minerals that the body always needs to replenish the blood and tissues.
In the course of the body’s processes, it consumes some of its mineral elements and also some of its vitamins, in order to neutralize cellular and tissue wastes for excretion by the skin, lungs, kidneys and bowels. Young and growing children, as well as adults of all age groups, require the nutriments that can best be obtained from either fresh raw fruits and raw salads or their juices. According to Professor H. C. Sherman, the body can always assimilate extra supplies of vitamin-rich and mineral-rich foods. The raw vegetable-juice machines are excellent kitchen aids that every home should possess and use. Good health, even ideal health, may be had by mankind through application of the scientific knowledge that we have of the chemistry of food and the chemistry of the human body.
Some of the elements present in the human body are found only in minute percentages. Others are found in larger percentages. The muscles, the bones, the blood, and some other tissues and fluids contain higher percentages of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen.
The element carbon is found everywhere, in every food. The starches, the sugars, the fats and the proteins are all rich in carbon.
Our bodies do not require as high a carbon-containing food ration as most people actually consume. A correct knowledge of nutrition is being applied only slightly in the dietaries for infants, children, and adults. Much disease is caused by an excessive consumption of carbon-containing foods. Too much sugar in the diet is one of the causes of depleted bodily health, predisposing the organism to many of the diseases for which germs are blamed as primary causative factors. Let our small children, and older people too, be fed fresh raw fruit juices and vegetable juices, instead of soft drinks and sugar-sweetened desserts, and the prevalence of the inflammatory diseases would be lower than it is today. Even the dread disease poliomyelitis is caused to a large extent by the depletion of the nervous system and the body as a whole by the excessive uses of acid-ash mixtures as food. A rational plan would exclude white and even brown sugar, and also white-flour products, from our dietaries. It is a tragic fact that physicians and professors of medical schools, as well as public health authorities, ignore the facts which have been made available by the New Knowledge of Nutrition about human dietaries for both the sick and the well.
About thirty or forty years ago, Alfred W. McCann, Sr., the father of the Mr. McCann who gives radio talks today, published a book titled Starving America. In that great book, Mr. McCann pointed out that much food-processing, by refining, coloring and flavoring many packaged products, is unwholesome in its effect on human nutrition. It would be well if Starving America were republished and used as required reading for high school students. This would help to bring about important changes in food-packaging. Many of the foodstuffs sold today by the grocer would be eliminated from his shelves. If the modern housewife knew that fresh raw fruits were better desserts than artificially flavored and sugar-sweetened mixtures, she would use them. The latter products would soon be discontinued. Meats and other butchers’ products would soon disappear from the store counters, because enlightened people would not buy them. Education of the consumers would revolutionize the food industry. Education of the public might also revolutionize the drug industry. Well-chosen foods would prevent many of the diseases that are prevalent today. Well-chosen foods have been proved to be potent medicines for the cure of serious diseases.
The acute and the chronic diseases that are characterized by inflammation respond to proper food as medicine. What is proper food for the sick? Freshly made fruit juices and raw freshly made vegetable juices. No drugs, injectible or oral, are needed to kill or weaken germs that invade the body. The freshly made fruit juices are far superior to the new or old drugs used as germ weakeners or germ killers.
Correct feeding and nutrition will eliminate most diseases!