Another phase of this matter that promises to develop in the near future
as a result of the vitamine hypothesis is a reform in food manufacture.
There has been a strong tendency during the past two decades to "purify"
food products. The genesis of this tendency is to be found in a highly
laudable ambition to force the manufacturer to eliminate impurities and
adulterations and provide clean, wholesome, sanitary food. Unfortunately
in attempting to meet this demand on the part of the public, the food
manufacturer has sometimes neglected to seek advice from the nutrition
expert and the latter has failed to appreciate the need of advice. The net
result has been to discover that Nature is often a better chemist than man
and has a much better knowledge of what man needs in his diet than the
chemist. The chemist employed by the manufacturer has, as a result, gone
to such a limit in his development of purification methods as to often
eliminate the essential nutrients and the result has been foods that will
stand analysis for pure nutrients, but which will not stand Nature's
analysis for dietary efficiency. As a secondary result of this tendency we
have acquired habits that in many cases must either be broken or must have
grafted on to them other habits which shall remedy the defective ones.
Take the milling of wheat as an example. Nature put into the wheat grain
most of the elements needed by man and in the early days he was content to
grind up the whole grain and find it palatable. The craze for purity as
expressed by color has gradually replaced this whole meal wheat with a
beautiful white product that is largely pure starch with a few of the
proteins retained. And the principal protein retained lacks one of the
greatest essentials for growth while the vitamines have all been
practically eliminated with the grain germ. Intelligence tells us then
that if, having formed the habit, we will persist in our appetite for
white flour we must see to it that the protein deficiency of the latter
and its lack of vitamines is compensated for by supplementing the diet
with the food-stuffs in which these are rich. We may in other words retain
our bad habits in taste if we will graft on to them the attention to the
eliminated factors and their substitution in other form.
In general then, the adult needs to review his feeding habits and analyze
them in the light of our new knowledge. For this purpose the tables of
Chapter IV supply data useful so far as vitamines are concerned, but it
will be perhaps worth while to repeat here some of this data in more
generalized form.
_a. Sources of the "A" vitamine_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account