Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-05-08
BUT RARELY SUSPECTED
TRUTHS ABOUT THINGS YOU EAT
BY ALFRED w. MCANN

The anemia became more pronounced
as the iron-free diet was continued and
on the eighteenth day the dogs died
1t has been clearly established that
the iron demanded by the body pro-
cesses of oxidation, secretion. repro
duction, and growth must be obtained
| from food-iron, not from medicine or
pharmaceutical iron.
Henry C. Sherman, Columbus Univer-
sity, has shown the iron content esti-
whole wheat as so. The same figures
for white, denatured patent -four are
1.5, less of nearly 75 per cent.
Announcing the conclusions of an
experimental dietry study made in New
York city, in which 1t swas found that
free use of fresh vegetables, whole
wheat bread, and the cheaper sorts of
fruit with milk, but without meat.
Sherman reports that such diet re-
suited in gain of 80 per cent. in the
| iron content of the food, while the
protein and food value remained prac-
tically the same as in the ordinary mix
ed diet obtained under the same market
conditions.
Herbivorius animals obtain more
iron in their diet than meat-eating
animals, and not only live longer than
meat-eating animals but, according to
Sherman, are also less liable to ane-
mia.
| The grass and grain-ea animals
consume all the iron natural to their
unrefined diet, whereas the human
animal not only loses the greater part
of the iron which has been milled out
of his refined wheat, rice, barley, corn,
and rye, but by throwing down the
waste pipe the water in which his
vegetables are cooked he loses another
large percentage of it.
1t is because fruits and vegetables
contain a high water contest and low
proportions of protein and fat that
some dietitians mistakingly hold them
in low regard, forgetful of the fact
that they are important sources of food
iron.
Because the small traces of iron in
meat have distinctly lower value
than the iron compounds of egg yolks,
whole grains, vegetables and fruits.
Van Norden points to the folly of
relying upon meat as a source of iron
for young children.
He advocates a judicious use of
meat in the diet of the adult, but no
meat at all for the child. These are
his words:
LAS far as our children are concern
ed we believe we could do better by
following the diet of the most rigid
vegetarian than by feeding the chill
dren as though they were carnivora
according to the bad custom which
now prevails. If we limit the child s
supply of fruit and vegetables to iron
we cause a certain sluggishness of
blood formation and an entire lack of
reserve iron such as is normally found
! in the liver, spleen. and bone marrow
of the healthy, well-nourished indivi-
dual"
Phosphorus is never lost in the re-
ming of food products without a cor
responding loss of iron and maEne-
sium, yet Loew found that magnesium
and phosphorus are intimately asso-
ciated in the body, and that the meta
bolism OF these two elements in plants
! is closely connected, magnesium ap-
| parently serving as a phosphorus car
rler in vegetable metabolism just as
iron serves as an oxygen carrier in ami
NAL metabolism
! We are now fully prepared to un-
derstand the results of the most as
tonishlng and conclusive nutritional ex-
pertinent ever recorded, the significance
of which should invade every home and
occupy the attention of physicians,
nurses. teachers, publishers, and par
ents everywhere. Commercial scien-
| lists will continue to ignore them It
is their fashion to ignore all proven
data.