Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and The... (10 page)

Scientific evidence against sugar has been mounting for decades. As early as 1933, research showed that increased consumption of sugar caused an increase in various disease conditions in school children.
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Sugar, especially fructose, has been shown to shorten life in numerous animal experiments.
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Sugar consumption has recently been cited as the root cause of anorexia and eating disorders.
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In the 1950s, British researcher Yudkin published persuasive findings that excessive use of sugar was associated with the following conditions: release of free fatty acids at the aorta, rise in blood cholesterol, rise in triglycerides, increase in adhesiveness of the blood platelets, increase in blood insulin levels, increase in blood corticosteroid levels, increase in gastric acidity, shrinkage of the pancreas and enlargement of the liver and adrenal glands.
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Numerous subsequent studies have positively correlated sugar consumption with heart disease.
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These results are far more unequivocal than the presumed association of heart disease with saturated fats. Researchers Lopez in the 1960s and Ahrens in the 1970s have repeatedly pointed out the role of sugar as a cause of coronary heart disease, but their work has not received recognition by government agencies or by the press. The food processing industry—America's largest industry—has a tremendous interest in confining this research to scientific publications stored in the basements of our medical libraries. If the public were made aware of the dangers of refined carbohydrate consumption and took steps to reduce it, this powerful industry would shrink to a fraction of its size. The food fabricators don't need animal fats to produce junk food for a profit; but they do need vegetable oils, white flour and sugar.

More plagues than heart disease can be laid at sugar's door. A survey of medical journals in the 1970s produced findings implicating sugar as a causative factor in kidney disease, liver disease, shortened life span, increased desire for coffee and tobacco, atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.
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Sugar consumption is associated with hyperactivity, behavior problems, lack of concentration and violent tendencies.
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Sugar consumption encourages the overgrowth of
candida albicans
, a systemic fungus in the digestive tract, causing it to spread to the respiratory system, tissues and internal organs. Sugar consumption is positively associated with cancer in humans and test animals.
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Tumors are known to be enormous sugar absorbers. Research indicates that it is the fructose, not the glucose, moiety of sugar that is the most harmful, especially for growing children.
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Yet the greatest increase in sugar consumption during the last two decades is from high fructose corn syrup used in soft drinks, ketchup and many other fabricated foods aimed at children.

Last but not least, sugar consumption is the cause of bone loss and dental decay. Tooth decay and bone loss occur when the precise ratio of calcium to phosphorus in the blood varies from the normal ratio of four parts phosphorus to ten parts calcium. At this ratio, all blood calcium can be properly utilized. Dr. Melvin Page, a Florida dentist, demonstrated in numerous studies that sugar consumption causes phosphorus levels to drop and calcium to rise.
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Calcium rises because it is pulled from the teeth and the bones. The drop in phosphorus hinders the absorption of this calcium, making it unusable and therefore toxic. Thus, sugar consumption causes tooth decay not because it promotes bacterial growth in the mouth, as most dentists believe, but because it alters the internal body chemistry.

Orthodox nutritionists admit that sugar causes tooth decay—although they may be mistaken about just why this is so—but their warnings to avoid tooth decay by limiting sweets are disingenuous. Most people would be willing to pay the price for bad teeth as long as they did not have to stop eating sugar. After all, teeth can be repaired or replaced. But poor teeth are always the outward sign of other types of degeneration in the body's interior, degeneration that cannot be repaired in the dentist's chair.

Sweetness in fruits, grains and vegetables is an indication that they are ripe and have reached maximum vitamin and mineral content. The naturally sweet foods from which sugar is extracted—sugar beet, sugar cane and corn—are particularly high in nutrients such as B vitamins, magnesium and chromium. All of these seem to play an important role in the blood sugar regulation mechanism. These nutrients are discarded—or made into animal feed—when the raw product is refined into sugar. Refining strips foods of vital nutrients while concentrating sugars, thus allowing us to fulfill our body's energy requirements without obtaining the nutrients needed for bodybuilding, digestion and repair.

Whole grains provide vitamin E, B vitamins in abundance, and many important minerals, all of which are essential to life. These are also discarded in the refining process. Fiber—indigestible cellulose that plays an important role in digestion and elimination—is also removed. Refined flour is commonly fortified, but this is of little value. Fortification adds a handful of synthetic vitamins and minerals to white flour and polished rice after a host of essential factors have been removed or destroyed. Some of the vitamins added during the fortification process may even be dangerous. Some researchers believe that excess iron from fortified flour can cause tissue damage, and other studies link excess or toxic iron to heart disease.
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Vitamins B
₁
and B
₂
added to grains without B
₆
lead to imbalances in numerous processes involving B vitamin pathways. The safety of bromating and bleaching agents, almost universally applied to white flour, has never been established.

Moderate use of natural sweeteners is found in many traditional societies. Thus it is perfectly acceptable to satisfy your sweet tooth by eating fully ripened fruit in season and limited amounts of certain natural sweeteners high in vitamins and minerals, such as raw honey, date sugar, dehydrated cane sugar juice (commercially available as Rapadura, made by Rapunzel Corporation) and maple syrup. (See
Guide to Natural Sweeteners
.) Avoid all refined sugars including table sugar, so-called raw sugar or brown sugar (both composed of about 96 percent refined sugar), corn syrup, fructose and large amounts of fruit juice.

We recommend the use of a variety of whole grains but with an important caveat. Phosphorus in the bran of whole grains is tied up in a substance called phytic acid. Phytic acid combines with iron, calcium, magnesium, copper and zinc in the intestinal tract, blocking their absorption.
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Whole grains also contain enzyme inhibitors that can interfere with digestion. Traditional societies usually soak or ferment their grains before eating them, processes that neutralize phytates and enzyme inhibitors and, in effect, predigest grains so that all their nutrients are more available.
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Sprouting, overnight soaking and old-fashioned sour leavening can accomplish this important predigestion process in our own kitchens. Many people who are allergic to grains will tolerate them well when they are prepared according to these procedures. Proper preparation techniques also help break down complex sugars in legumes, making them more digestible.

Whole grains that have been processed by high heat and pressure to produce puffed wheat, oats and rice are actually quite toxic and have caused rapid death in test animals.
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We do not recommend rice cakes, a popular snack food. Breakfast cereals that have been slurried and extruded at high temperatures and pressures to make little flakes and shapes should also be avoided. Most, if not all, nutrients are destroyed during processing, and they are very difficult to digest. Studies show that these extruded whole grain preparations can have even more adverse effects on the blood sugar than refined sugar and white flour!
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The process leaves phytic acid intact but destroys phytase, an enzyme that breaks down some of the phytic acid in the digestive tract.

Most grains and legumes available in supermarkets have been treated numerous times with pesticides and other sprays that inhibit mold and vermin. Genetically modified grains contain foreign proteins that are likely to be highly irritating to the digestive tract. It therefore pays to purchase organically or biodynamically grown cereals and legumes. (See
Sources
.) Grains will be fresher if packaged in cellophane or plastic, rather than taken from open bins.

Most people who have "got religion" about nutrition have learned through experience that sugar and white flour are inimical to good health, and they know how difficult it is to give these things up in a society whose eating habits are based on them. It is relatively easy to replace margarine with butter and refined polyunsaturates with extra virgin olive oil because these fats taste so much better; but sugar and white flour, being mildly to severely addictive, are harder to renounce. Try replacing white flour products with a variety of properly prepared whole grains and limiting sweets to occasional desserts made from natural sweeteners. It may take time, and you will almost certainly have setbacks, but in the end your willpower and persistence will reward you with greatly improved health and stamina.

PROTEINS

Proteins are the building blocks of the animal kingdom. The human body assembles and utilizes about 50,000 different proteins to form organs, nerves, muscles and flesh. Enzymes—the managers and catalysts of all our biochemical processes—are specialized proteins. So are antibodies.

All proteins are combinations of just 22 amino acids, eight of which are "essential" nutrients for humans, meaning that the human body cannot make them. When the essential amino acids are present in the diet, the body can usually build the other "nonessential" amino acids; but if just one essential amino acid is low or missing, the body is unable to synthesize the other proteins it needs, even when overall protein intake is high. Of particular importance to the health of the brain and nervous system are the sulphur-containing amino acids—methionine, cysteine and cystine—found most plentifully in eggs and meat. Some individuals cannot manufacture amino acids considered "nonessential," such as taurine and carnitine, but must obtain them from dietary sources, namely red meat.

Protein is essential for normal growth, for the formation of hormones, for the process of blood clotting and for the formation of milk during lactation. Protein helps regulate the acid-alkaline balance of tissues and blood. When protein is lacking in the diet, there is a tendency for the blood and tissues to become either too acid or too alkaline, depending on the acidity or the alkalinity of the foods we eat. Improper acid-alkaline balance is often a problem among vegetarians.

Just as animal fats are our only sources of vitamins A and D and other bodybuilding factors, so also animal protein is our only source of complete protein. All of the essential amino acids, and many considered "nonessential," are present in animal products. Sources of protein from the vegetable kingdom contain only incomplete protein; that is, they are low in one or more essential amino acids, even when overall protein content is high. The body must ingest all the essential amino acids in order to use any of them. The two best sources of protein in the vegetable kingdom are legumes and cereal grains, but all plant foods are low in tryptophan, cystine and threonine. Legumes, such as beans, peanuts and cashews are high in the amino acid lysine but low in methionine. Cereal grains have the opposite profile. In order to obtain the best possible protein combination from vegetable sources, pulses and grains should be eaten together and combined with at least a small amount of animal protein. Most grain-based cuisines instinctively incorporate this principle. For example, animal products plus corn and beans are staple fare in Mexican cuisine, as are chick peas and whole wheat in the Middle East and rice and soybean products in Asia.

Vegetarianism has recently achieved political correctness, and nutritionists advocating a restriction or complete elimination of animal products garner good reviews in the popular press. Their influence is reflected in the new Food Pyramid with its emphasis on grains; but the scientific evidence, honestly evaluated, argues against relying too heavily on grains and legumes as sources of protein or for severely reducing animal products in the diet.

Our primitive ancestors subsisted on a diet composed largely of meat and fat, augmented with vegetables, fruit, seeds and nuts. Studies of their remains reveal that they had excellent bone structure, heavy musculature and flawless teeth. Agricultural man added milk, grains and legumes to this diet. These foods allowed him to pursue a more comfortable life style than the hunter-gatherer, but at a price. In his studies of isolated "primitive" peoples, Dr. Weston Price found that those whose diets consisted largely of grains and legumes, while far healthier than civilized moderns, had, nevertheless, more caries than those living primarily on meat and fish. Skulls of prehistoric peoples subsisting almost entirely on vegetable foods have teeth containing caries and abscesses and show evidence of bone problems and tuberculosis as well.
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A more recent study by Dr. Emmanuel Cheraskin corroborates Dr. Price's observations. He surveyed 1040 dentists and their wives. Those who had the fewest problems and diseases as measured by the Cornell Medical Index had the most protein in their diets.
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The claim that high-protein diets cause bone loss is supported neither by scientific research nor by anthropological surveys.
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Inadequate protein intake leads to loss of myocardial muscle and may therefore contribute to coronary heart disease.
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However, protein cannot be adequately utilized without dietary fats. That is why protein and fats occur together in eggs, milk, fish and meats. A high-protein, lowfat diet can cause many problems including too rapid growth and depletion of vitamin A and vitamin D reserves.
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