"Our
physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals
we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins, or upon
the precise proportions of starch, protein or carbohydrates we
consume.
"Do you
know that most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous
diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until depleted soils
from which our food comes are brought into proper mineral
balance?
"The
alarming fact is that foods (fruits, vegetables and grains) now
being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain
enough of certain minerals are starving us - no matter how much
of them we eat. No man of today can eat enough fruits and
vegetables to supply his system with the minerals he requires
for perfect health because his stomach isn't big enough to hold
them.
"The truth
is that our foods vary enormously in value, and some of them
aren't worth eating as food...Our physical well-being is more
directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our systems
than upon calories or vitamins or upon the precise proportions
of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume.
"This talk
about minerals is novel and quite startling. In fact, a
realization of the importance of minerals in food is so new that
the text books on nutritional dietetics contain very little
about it. Nevertheless, it is something that concerns all of us,
and the further we delve into it the more startling it becomes.
"You'd
think, wouldn't you, that a carrot is a carrot - that one is
about as good as another as far as nourishment is concerned? But
it isn't; one carrot may look and taste like another and yet be
lacking in the particular mineral element which our system
requires and which carrots are supposed to contain.
"Laboratory
tests prove that the fruits, the vegetables, the grains, the
eggs, and even the milk and the meats of today are not what they
were a few generations ago (which doubtless explains why our
forefathers thrived on a selection of foods that would starve
us!)
"No man
today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his stomach
with the mineral salts he requires for perfect health, because
his stomach isn't big enough to hold them! And we are turning
into big stomachs.
"No longer
does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist merely of so
many calories or certain vitamins or fixed proportion of
starches, proteins and carbohydrates. We know that our diets
must contain in addition something like a score of minerals
salts.
"It is bad
news to learn from our leading authorities that 99% of the
American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a
marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals
actually results in disease. Any upset of the balance, any
considerable lack or one or another element, however microscopic
the body requirement may be, and we sicken, suffer, shorten our
lives.
"We know
that vitamins are complex chemical substances which are
indispensable to nutrition, and that each of them is of
importance for normal function of some special structure in the
body. Disorder and disease result from any vitamin deficiency.
It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the
body's appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals
they have no function to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system
can make some use of minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins
are useless.
"Certainly
our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the
minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins
or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein of
carbohydrates we consume.
"This
discovery is one of the latest and most important contributions
of science to the problem of human health."