# Dietary deficiency

Dietary deficiency is not enough of one or more of the micronutrients required for optimal plant or animal health. In humans and other animals they include both vitamin deficiencies and mineral deficiencies, whereas in plants the term refers to deficiencies of essential trace minerals.

## Quotes

* In place of such articles as have been condemned, eat fruits, grains, and vegetables. There isa ric variety of these kinds of food, and they are wholesome and unstimulating. Graham flour, oatmeal, and ripe fruit are the indisensables of a dietary for those who are suffering from sexual excesses.
** John Harvey Kellogg ‘’Plain Facts For Old and Young Burlington, IA: Segner & Condit pp.391-393 (1881)
* Message for My Meat-Eating Friends,
    For those who are still merely vegetarian and not yet vegan, I ask, what in heaven's name are you waiting for? If you are trying to avoid the health pitfalls of eating carcasses—high fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol content; lack of fiber; deficiency of vitamins and enzymes; abundance of stored toxins—well, then take a good look at the dairy you're eating. Dairy is basically liquid meat without the iron. … Milk should be viewed as no more or less than what it is: a delivery system for fat, cholesterol, blood, pus, antibiotics, and carcinogenic growth hormones. … If your reason for abstaining from meat has more to do with an emotional attachment to animals than a concern for your health, then understand that dairy cows are truly sick, miserable, abused creatures … Someone who has become vegetarian for emotional reasons ought to switch to the vegan diet as swiftly and surely as someone brought to vegetarianism for reasons of health.
   * Howard Lyman ‘No More Bull!: The Mad Cowboy Targets America's Worst Enemy: Our Diet Ch. 5 p. 78 co-authored with Glen Merzer and Joanna Samorow-Merzer, New York: Scribner ISBN 0-7432-9003-8 (2005)
* At last a growing number of physicians, private citizens and even the Federal Trade Commission are beginning to re-examine these long standing and deeply ingrained beliefs in the virtue of cow milk. And even Richard Nixon and John Connally came to realize that cow milk may not be good for you. The fact is: the drinking of cow milk has been linked to iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children; it has been named as the cause of cramps and diarrhea in much of the world's population, and the cause of multiple forms of allergy as well; and the possibility has been raised that it may play a central role in the origins of atherosclerosis and heart attacks.
** Frank Oski Don't Drink Your Milk! (1983)Brushton (New York): TEACH Services, 1996, ISBN 0-945383-34-7. p. 3 Full text online
* Those who have studied the nutritional conditions of “primitive” Africans in tropical Africa are unanimous in stating that they show no clinical signs of dietary deficiency. One of the most striking indications of the superiority of indigenous African diet is the magnificent condition of the teeth. One researcher among six ethnic groups in Kenya could not find a single case of tooth decay, not a single deformation of dental arch. But when those same people were transplanted and put on the “civilized” diet available under colonialism, their teeth began to decay at once.
** Walter Rodney ‘’'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa p. 373 (1972)

## See also

Category: Minerals