NUTRITION 107 



permits such claims only when the advertising is limited to medical 

 journals. The layman is cautioned to beware of so-called "health foods" 

 for which the makers claim curative or health-giving properties. The 

 Council has been explicit in defining the proper use of such terms as health, 

 healthful and ^wholesome. It permits statements of well-established nutri- 

 tional or physiologic values of foods, but consider the term health food, 

 and claims or statements to the effect that a food gives or assures health, 

 to be misinformative: "An adequate or complete diet and the recognized 

 nutritional essentials established by the science of nutrition are necessary 

 for health, but health depends on many other factors. . . . No one food 

 is essential . . . and there are no health foods. The term healthful . . . 

 as used, commonly means that the food described corrects a possible nutri- 

 tive deficiency or some abnormal condition in such a manner as actively 

 to promote health. It incorrectly implies that the food possesses unique 

 (or unusual) health-giving properties . . . which makes its use in ad- 

 vertising . . . misleading." 



Advertising through the mails, although regulated by the rules of the 

 Post Office, is very difficult to control. "Sucker lists" are compiled by 

 professional snoopers who sell them to the purveyors of nostrums for the 

 exploitation of the sick. For instance, persons who have diabetes, as I 

 know from a large experience, soon are found out by these vampires, and 

 from then on are deluged with intimate, solicitous letters advising a trial 

 of this or that "cure," or the use of some so-called "diabetic food." A gen- 

 eral decision of the Council on so-called "diabetic foods" reads as follows: 



There is authoritative evidence that commercially prepared special diabetic 

 foods are of limited usefulness to the diabetic patient and that the availability of 

 insulin makes them no longer necessary. Artificial substitutes for ordinary foods 

 are not to be favored; it is much better for the diabetic patient to learn how to 

 plan his diet with foods in common use and readily available. The diet should be 

 exactly prescribed in carbohydrate, protein and fat and total calories. 



The designation of a food as a diabetic food merely because it is low in carbo- 

 hydrate is now unwarranted and misleading and gives the erroneous impression 

 either that the food, taken in unrestricted quantities in diabetes, is harmless or 

 that it has remedial action. Except for the necessity of restricting foods to avoid 

 overstepping the food tolerance, there are no special diabetic nutritional require- 

 ments. The exploitation of starch-free or low carbohydrate foods containing an 

 excess of protein for use by diabetic patients is unwarranted. Protein may be 

 tolerated almost as poorly, if not quite as poorly, as starch in diabetes. 



The Council does not limit its activities to criticism. Where popular 

 prejudice is found to be injurious to the food industry an attempt is made 

 to combat it. Such prejudice also is socially disadvantageous. In some 

 cases it represents the survival of antiquated scientific opinion, but usually 

 it has been built up by the preachments of faddists or by the advertising 

 of competing foods. Specific instances of wholesome foods that have been 

 hurt by such prejudice are oleomargarine and white bread. The Council 



