Nutrition, Health, Myths and All That. Frank Tennant

natural metabolic responses to diet. Regular poor eating habits amplify the effect, with genetic damage lasting months or years and potentially passing through bloodlines.

      It’s in our early years that we develop our eating habits and tastes. A friend’s grand-daughter had very little sugar in the first four years of her life. Now, at the age of nine she prefers a savoury or a piece of fruit in preference to cake. When visiting friends she often comments that the food was ‘too sweet’.

      Research in Sweden indicates that once a youth is obese the fat cells are conditioned and the situation is very likely irreversible.

      However, being at an optimal weight, does not necessarily mean one is healthy.

      Seneca, the ‘wise Greek’, is reputed to have been the first man to use the phrase 'everything in moderation'. As far as refined sugar is concerned we have ignored his wisdom. He would have eaten whole foods.

      Whole Foods

      We evolved eating whole foods and combinations of whole foods.

      As in so much of nature many of these have a synergistic effect - the many nutrients in a food compliment each other so making the whole much more beneficial. Amongst other things food manufacturing has destroyed this synergy.

      Let’s take flour as an example.

      By converting wholemeal flour into white flour we lose 80% of the nutrition. We are left with an anti-nutrient. It takes more energy for us to digest the white bread than the energy it supplies. Don’t be fooled by the fact that some labels tell you they have added back a few of the nutrients - why did they remove them in the first place and why don’t they put them all back?

      The whiter your bread

      The sooner you’re dead

      Old Scottish Saying

      Another example is milk.

      Cow’s milk is one of the most nourishing of foods when it is raw.

      There are some parts of the world where the inhabitants are known for their longevity and a major part of their diets are raw cow’s milk and products produced from that milk. But pasteurised milk does not appear to have the same nutritional value as raw milk.

      Why is milk pasteurised?

      It was introduced to prevent the spread of diseases in particular TB. But with modern methods of hygiene and TB testing this problem has been solved. Raw milk is better for your health than pasteurised. It is certainly more nourishing.

      Researchers analysing the diet and health of 4700 primary school children in England, found that those who lived on farms had significantly fewer symptoms of asthma, hay fever and eczema. They looked at many factors that could have had an influence on this and found that the greatest benefits came from drinking raw milk. They concluded that even relatively infrequent exposure to unpasteurized milk was sufficient to have a protective effect. Just a couple of glasses a week reduced a child’s chances of developing eczema by almost 40% and hay fever by 10%.

      Dr. Evelyn Sprawson, of London Hospital, stated that children in the institution in which he worked who were fed on raw milk had perfect teeth, whereas others in circumstances identical in all respects except that their milk was pasteurised, had defective teeth. The Medical Testament 1939.

      Pasteurised milk has been linked to a wide range of health problems. (Appendix A).

      However, over some thousands of years our ancestors worked out how to make grains and milk more digestible.

      Fermentation

      The only milk available in the Stone Age came from lactating human females, and none was available after the first 2 to 4 years of life. It is only recently that ‘foreign’ foods like cows milk and grains have become part of our diets.

      A significant number of people do not tolerate dairy products. In most people the digestive enzyme, lactase, declines with age and, in some population groups it is absent in about 80% of them after the age of six. However, our forbearers worked out that if these foods were fermented they would be more digestible.

      Grains contain phytic acid which inhibit enzymes that we need for digestion and also reduce the absorption of certain minerals and affect vitamin D metabolism. This problem can be reduced by soaking the grains or eating sourdough bread which contains lactic acid that breaks down the phytates.

      Raw milk is more digestible than the pasteurised variety because it contains more enzymes that help to break it down. Many people who are lactose intolerant can drink sour milk or eat yoghurt because these fermented products have been pre-digested by microbes and the lactase has been converted to lactic acid.

      Let’s examine another example of what happens when food is "manufactured” or “processed”.

      Processed Foods

      Sir Robert McCarrison, C.I.E., M.D., F.R.C.P. carried out an experiment on young rats. One group were fed on a diet similar to that of the healthy peoples of Northern India and the other on a diet in common use by many people in England.

      The rats on the Northern Indian diet grew well, there was little disease amongst them and they lived happily together.

      Those fed on the ‘English diet’ did not grow well, many became ill and the stronger ones began to kill and eat the weaker. They suffered from diseases of the lungs, stomach and intestines, and nerves. These were diseases from which one in every three people in England suffered.

      Dr Francis Pottenger published research in a book called "Pottenger’s Cats". He monitored the progress of 900 cats over three generations to help determine the effect of diet upon their health. One group of animals was fed raw meat and milk while a second group received just processed food, including pasteurised milk and processed meat and fish. The group fed with nothing but processed food declined at an alarming rate and the problems were magnified in each generation, to the point that the third generation was horrifically handicapped. Many of the kittens were born dead and those that survived could barely walk and died within weeks.

      Could this be an indication of where we are heading?

      What about the effect of modern agricultural practices on our nutrition and health?