HOW DO WE LIVE AND GROW? 19 



Conversely, slice for slice of bread, the carbohydrate goes up some 



The advertisers are quite right in calling bread an ' ' energy food, ' ' 

 but as handed to us by nature it is the "staff of life," not just a 

 charge of fuel. To overcome this ingenious devitalization, the millers 

 have, at the urging of the medical profession, or because of laws in 

 some 20 states, begun to "enrich" white flour by adding a couple of 

 vitamins and one or two minerals, these to replace some 17, more or 

 less, which were partly or largely removed. Thus we have the vicious 

 circle of one group of industrialists removing many vitamins, a few of 

 which another group then sells to us for replacement. This would 

 not be too bad if we could eventually get all the nutrients we need by 

 this system but we usually do not. 



To Sum Up. Thus far we have perhaps said little that the well- 

 informed citizen does not already know. Plants live and grow by a 

 complex process which is easily and commonly interfered with by 

 man. The fundamental idea to be once and for all time fixed in the 

 mind in this: With the exception of certain minute plants, chloro- 

 phyll is the bottleneck through which all life must pass; there can 

 be little growth or biological activity of any kind without it, no 

 plants, no animals, no human race. Managing the environment to 

 provide the greatest possible amount of active chlorophyll on every 

 acre of the earth should be the basic activity of civilized man. 



(See Appendix B for classroom suggestions.) 



5 Foods Enriched, Restored, Fortified, Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home 

 Economics, II. S. Dept. of Agriculture, (Publication ASI-39), December, 1945, 

 pp. 3-7. 



