90 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



mouths of chickens, cattle and hogs. The cereal grains hold valuable pro- 

 teins, vitamins and minerals. Human dietary safety on this front would 

 seem to be: Go back to first principles — putting the whole grain into the 

 flour and the bread. This can be done. We can learn to like it. There 

 is no more "purity" or nutritional virtue in white bread than in white 

 winter butter. I think we could learn to prevent the oxidative rancidity 

 of whole grain flour. And until we have that problem licked, what is the 

 matter with storing the wheat and milling the flour as we need it? I do 

 not see any essential economic principle in storing the flour in place of 

 storing the wheat. In my judgment, the recent addition of a little of the 

 vitamins and minerals now milled out of the grain and singing peans of 

 dietary salvation over this "enriched" flour and bread is not a sound policy 

 either for to-day or to-morrow. Let us get back to first dietary principles 

 on this front also. The whole wheat, rye or rice grain is one of our least 

 expensive protective foods. On the whole we can trust nature as to the 

 genuine nutritive elements in the whole grain — yes, trust nature further 

 than the chemist and his synthetic' vitamins. Recently, Professor Drum- 

 mond (Jo7ir?ial, American Medical Association, March 7, 1942), the 

 scientific adviser to the British Ministry of Food, voiced this reluctance 

 to put the dietary safety of a nation on synthetic vitamins as a long-range 

 policy. He thinks we must and should provide the natural vitamins in the 

 natural foods. I stand on that platform, until we know a great deal more 

 than we know to-day about foods and human nutrition. 



How vital are vitamins? What happens when our breakfast, lunch and 

 supper do not adequately balance with all the known vitamins every day 

 in the year? The vitamins are vital. Even the kangaroo and the crow do 

 not get on without them. They get all the vitamins required in their 

 natural food. So did our ancestors. So could we. On an adequate abundance 

 of natural foods we store vitamins in the body against weeks and months 

 of vitamin scarcity. If we live mainly on such vitamin deficient foods as 

 white bread, polished rice, fat salt port, refined sugars, refined and hy- 

 drogenated vegetable oils, refined lard, etc., serious things happen to our 

 health when our body stores of vitamins are depleted or nearly depleted. 

 It should be obvious to all laymen that every meal every day does not need 

 to be vitamin balanced. Our body stores take care of our urgent needs for 

 weeks or months, unless we have already subsisted on the minimum for 

 some time. It is a fact that an adult man in average good health can go 

 without any food whatever for at least forty days, without showing any 

 recognizable vitamin deficiency. At the end of a forty-days' fast the man 

 is considerably emaciated and more readily fatigued, but his appetite for 

 good food is keener than ever. There is to-day entirely too much blarney 

 and ballyhoo about synthetic vitamin pills. Under any and all circumstances 

 these pills are said to give us the abundant life, including intelligence, men- 



