(measured in mgs)

Daily requirement thought to be 75-100gms.

(Measured in international units)

Daily vitamin D intake requirements: 500 i.u.

(Measured in milligrams)

South African oranges are richer in Vitamin C. Potatoes vary according to how long they remain in storage.

The longer they remain the more vitamin C they lose. As much as 75 per cent of the vitamin C in green vegetables may be lost in cooking.

They should be plunged into boiling water (as little as possible to cover them), cooked rapidly in a covered vessel without salt or soda, and served and eaten as soon as cooked; they will then lose two-thirds of their vitamin C, e.g. sprouts, starting with 100mgs. per 100 grams when raw, will finish with 33 mgs. When cooked, but if kept hot before being eaten they will lose still more.

Seeds, grains, and dried peas and beans contain no vitamin C. When seeds have sprouted, however, vitamin C is produced, also vitamin E. If no other source of vitamin C is available, sprouted wheat grain is a valuable source.

Simply rinse the grain (every day) and keep it moist for two or three days until it sprouts; then eat one teaspoonful of it a day.

(Measured in milligrams)

1 oz. dried brewer’s yeast = 1 tablespoonful

The body requires 1 mg. Vitamin B1 per day.

The body requires 1-2 mg. Vitamin B2 per day.

The body requires 10-15 mg. Vitamin B3 per day.

(Measured in international units)

The body requires about 5,000 i.u. per day of

Vitamin A. 1 halibut liver oil capsule contains

5,000 i.u. of vitamin A, plus 500 i.u. of Vitamin D.

To take vitamin and mineral supplements to make up for the vitamins and minerals that are lost and destroyed in our foods is to use the only means of self-defense we have. As one grows older the body needs even more vitamins and enzymes because more are used up by the slowing-down of body metabolism.

Specially important are vitamins B and C, because they help in the elimination of toxins from the body. For example – vitamin B will neutralize the harmful effects of drugs such as strychnine, streptomycin, and cortisone.

Specially important to older people are raw vegetable juices, vitamins A and C, and the mineral calcium, all of which help to prolong life. ‘Eat a balanced diet and you will get all the vitamins and minerals you need’ is a doctor’s advice. Nowadays this is quite useless, because a balanced diet with a full complement of vitamins and minerals is no longer obtainable – that is to say, the foods are obtainable, but most of them no longer contain the essential and vital ingredients, for the reason already given.

Generally speaking, it is therefore, impossible for the average person, unless he lives in the country and grows his own crops and fruit, and keeps his own hens and a cow, to get enough vitamins and minerals for his body’s requirements. That is why the following natural food-supplements are advised each day:

1 halibut-liver oil capsule (for vitamin A and D)
2 or 3 bonemeal tablets (for calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium)
1 rosehip capsule (for 100mfs of vitamin C)
1 vitamin E capsule or whetgerm capsule
1-4 teaspoons brewer’s yeast (debittered) for vitamin E
1-4 teaspoons vegetable oil (soya bean, sunflower, wheatgerm or corn) for essential fatty acids
1-2 teaspoons crude black molasses (for iron, potassium and other minerals)
1-2 teaspoons honey (for all essential minerals, and some vitamins)
1/4 cup Casilan or dried skim-milk powder (for extra protein)
1/4 cup wheatgerm cereal (for extra protein, vitamins B and E and minerals)
Kelp powder, in place of table-salt (for iodine and other ‘trace’ elements).

N. B. A word of warning. All the above supplements are natural foods, and are therefore safe and proper to take, because they are composed of properly-balanced constituents, in their natural setting. But beware of so-called ‘vitamin’ or ‘multi-vitamin’ pills. I know of no such pills or tablets whose constituents are combined in properly balanced proportions.

For example, if you look at the label on a bottle of vitamin B tablets you will notice that many of the parts that make up the B vitamin-group are missing from the tablets, and that the relative proportions of those that are included are all wrong – that invariably there is too much of one or too little of another.

Therefore, to take such ill-balanced preparations is not only unwise – it might be dangerous. It is even more dangerous to take ‘multi-vitamin’ tablets, i.e., tablets that are supposed to contain all the vitamins, because to take the few vitamins they do contain increases your need for those they do not contain.

This is because all vitamins work in close co-operation with each other in the body, and, if you increase your intake of one or two of them, you should increase your intake of all of them!

It is an indisputable fact that proper nutrition is the basis of good health. It is equally true that every disease known to man, from defective teeth to cancer, is due to improper food, food that causes disease principally because of its lack of essential elements that the body must have, or die. Even proper food (properly grown on fertile soil) is nowadays turned into improper adulterated food, unsafe for human consumption, by the addition to it of hundreds of chemical substances. It is also over-refined, denatured and robbed of its vitamins and minerals by processing and other unnatural treatments and refinements.

Our forefathers, with no knowledge of vitamins, minerals and the like, were able to maintain a high degree of health on an ordinary simple diet, because their foods were not tampered with, not refined, not processed, and because their cereals, vegetables, fruits, etc., were grown in naturally fertilized soil. (Artificial fertilizers were unknown and not needed, because everything that came out of the earth was put back into it in the form of compost and animal wastes.)

As a consequence, their healthy crops contained all the vital elements their bodies needed for the maintenance of good health. Their meat, milk, and eggs, also contained more of these elements that ours do, because their animals’ foods were more nutritious than present-day animal fodder, and were uncontaminated by modern poison sprays and insecticides. also, our forefathers were ignorant of how to refine their cereals, and they are, therefore, bread made of grains that had not been deprived of its vital parts (its germ and its bran). For sweetening they had only honey from their own bees.

Each family usually grew its own vegetables and fruits, often its own cereals too, and produced its own milk and eggs, if not its own meat – for, in the good old days, most people spent a lot of time out of doors, growing their own food and their animals’ fodder, and the fresh air and the exercise, as essential for health as the right foods, helped to make them into the fine strong men and women.

Thee sturdy forefather had little soap, and no water-heaters, so they were not able to wash off all the natural oils from the surface of their skins, and so prevent the formation of vitamin D when exposed to summer sunlight.

Unlike them, we, today, have lots of soap and hot water, which are, of course, a great comfort and help, but we tend to over-use them, especially soap. They remove the natural oils on the skin, with which ultra-violet rays in sunlight combine to form vitamin D, thus depriving us of this self-made form of the vitamin. This means that we must get our supply of vitamin D from the foods we eat, and this isn’t easy because not many foods contain vitamin D in appreciable amounts, except fish-liver oils (cod-liver oil and halibut-liver oil).

Of course, if such wholesome fare were still available, supplements would rarely be needed (except for vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin) but nowadays it is not everyone who can obtain wholesome foods, yet they can be obtained from health food shops.

Potassium

Another very important trace element is potassium.

It is thought by some eminent authorities that one of the causes of the modern tendency to cancerous growths is a shortage of potassium in the body, due, no doubt, to a shortage of potassium in the soil on which our food is grown. Let us hope that man will some day learn that soil-health, plant-health, animal-health, and human-health are all interdependent – that if the soil is sick (ie, starved of minerals) there is a break in the cycle, and they will all suffer in consequence.

To cure soil sickness, all we need to do is to add organic compounds to the soil – Nature will do the rest.

Inorganic compounds (out of a bag) are no good – the perennial rhythm of Nature is interrupted by adding such minerals to the soil. Only by returning to the soil, in the form of compost, what has been taken out of it will soil starvation and soil sickness be cured, and, until it is cured, plant, animal, and human starvation and sickness will continue.

Sodium chloride (common salt) robs the body of potassium, and, as the body needs twice as much potassium as sodium, especially as one grows older, it is wise to omit salt and salty foods from the diet and to use kelp powder, celery powder, paprika-pepper, and sea-salt (which is a balanced mixture of many minerals) instead. Avoid fluoridated drinking-water; it destroys potassium.

Other foods rich in potassium are:

Apples and apple-juice; cider-vinegar; grapes and grape juice; honey; crude black molasses; fruit and berries; green vegetables (especially nettles); watercress; dandelion leaves, and tomatoes.

A lack of potassium can be a contributory cause of arthritis, constipation, high blood-pressure, muscle-cramps, muscle twitchings, sleeplessness, an inability to relax, pimples, itching of the skin, loss appetite, colds, cold hands and feet, mental and muscle fatigue, mental sluggishness, and cancer.

Magnesium

Magnesium is a component of chlorophyll and, as chlorophyll is found in all green leafy vegetables, it follows, that green leafy vegetables, especially nettles, are the richest source of magnesium, which is an important trace element. People who lack it in their blood are nervy and irritable; indeed, it is thought that a lack of it may cause a tendency to insanity.

Manganese

Manganese is a trace element whose exact function in the body is not fully understood. It seems to be connected with the normal functioning of the reproductive organs. Like the other trace elements, it is needed by the body only in minute amounts but these are absolutely essential.

Potassium, magnesium, and manganese deficiencies in the body can be due to a lack of these elements in the soil on which our foods are grown, or to eating over-refined foods such as white flour, white sugar, etc., or to throwing away instead of drinking the water in which vegetables have been boiled.

(The above remark applies, of course, not only to these three trace elements but to all minerals and trace elements.)

Sodium and Chlorine

Sodium and Chlorine are trace elements found in so many foods that there is little risk of a deficiency of them in the body under normal conditions. Abnormal conditions, such as very hot weather, or living in very hot climates, or working in very hot places such as boiler-rooms, furnaces, etc., call for extra sodium because so much is lost in perspiration. It is best taken in the form of sea-salt (purified for the table by Tidmans).

Cobalt

Cobalt, a shortage of which can cause pernicious anaemia, is a trace element which forms part of vitamin B12. It is found in liver, dried liver, peanuts, and ‘Velactin’ (a plant-milk made from soya-beans).

Copper

Copper is another important trace element, a shortage of which can cause anaemia. The use of copper cooking vessels or a copper kettle will help to rectify the shortage, but wholewheat bread and Barbados sugar should be eaten because they contain it.

Aluminum

This trace element is found in many foods, if we use aluminum vessels for cooking we are likely get an overdose of it. It is very soluble, especially in acids; therefore, never cook acid fruit in an aluminum saucepan – it is, indeed, safer never to cook anything in aluminum vessels.

By wholesome is meant fruits, vegetables and grains, grown on naturally composted soil, untouched by ‘smog’, chemical fertilizers, and poisoned sprays; milk from healthy animals grazed in green fields; eggs laid by hens allowed to run about in the sun and air, i.e., fertile eggs produced by hens kept with roosters (such eggs are rich in steroids which commercial eggs lack); meats from animals which have not been dosed with antibiotics or hormones; foods that have not been refined and processed.

Nowadays, most foods are tampered with, and each tampering causes a loss of some vital part (or parts) rich in essential vitamins and minerals.

Whole natural foods are obtainable, but they are produced in comparatively small quantities and therefore are not available to the vast majority of people. This is where vitamin and mineral supplements, derived from natural sources, are so valuable. They are valuable also because

a. They take the place of minerals and vitamins that are destroyed during the preparation and the cooking of food. For example, vegetables lose vitamins in storage. They lose still more when peeled, cut up, and left standing in water. They lose all their vitamins when cooked, especially if soda is added, and their precious minerals and trace elements are dissolved in the cooking-water.

b. Supplements take the place of the vitamins and minerals that are destroyed in factory-produced foods. For example, many manufactured foods are chemically bleached or colored, emulsified, pasteurized, flavored with synthetic substances, preserved, canned, and bottled, and all these processes destroy the vital elements in the foods. Water also is chemicalized. It has to be chlorinated to make it safe for drinking, because so much sewage and factory effluents go into our rivers nowadays. But chlorine destroys vitamin E in our foods. In some districts it is also fluoridated with sodium fluoride. this destroys vitamins and enzymes, one of which (phosphatase) is vital importance to many body processes.

c. Many people lead sedentary lives, taking little or no exercise. This reduces the production of beneficial bacteria in the bowels which manufacture vitamin B (and possibly other vitamins) for the body. Vitamin B in foods is also destroyed by chemicals which are used extensively in the food industry. Vitamin E in wheat is destroyed by chlorine-di-oxide used in breadmaking.

d. Drugs such as the barbiturates (used in sleeping pills), sulpha drugs (used in the treatment of pneumonia), penicillin (used  nowadays for so many things with a septic tendency), arsenic and sulpha compounds, also D.D.T., used for spraying fruit and vegetables – all these destroy vitamin B (and enzymes) in the body. Inorganic iron given for anaemia destroys vitamin E in the body. Atmospheric pollution by chimney smoke, exhaust fumes, tobacco smoke, all these destroy vitamin C in the body. Liquid paraffin, a bowel lubricant, is not absorbed by the body, but, in its passage through the body, it carries away the fat soluble vitamins D, D, E and K which are thus lost when the paraffin is excreted.

The nutrients in crops grown for food vary widely in quantity and quality, depending upon:
a.    The amount of sun and rain they received while growing
b.    The degree of ripeness or maturity when harvested
c.    The method of fertilizing the soil in which they are grown
d.    The humus content of the soil (humus or compost feeds the bacteria and fungi, which feed the plant)
e.    The mineral content of the top soil and subsoil. Carrots, for example, have been analyzed which contain no vitamin A (carotene) whatsoever. The protein content of wheat can vary from 5 to 20 per cent, depending upon the humus content of the soil in which it is grown. The nutritive value of milk, eggs, meat, etc., varies according to what the diet and the living conditions of the animals that produced them have been.
Therefore, the following food tables can be used only as a general guide in planning a diet – not an exact one.