Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-04-17
FOODS
THEY BUILD OR DESTROY
Amazing but Rarely Suspected Truths About the
Things You Eat.
Copyright 1915 by Alfred w. Mccann)

blindness fails to ask this question:
"Of what avail is the calorie value of
foodstuffs which have been so refined
that they no longer contain the base
forming elements necessary to prevent
sue-destruction and the accom-
panying acidosis which inevita bly, fol-
lows disturbed equilibrium between
the base-forming and acidforming
elements of food?"
With a hundred other investigators
Gautier has demonstrated that so
dunn, phosphorus, potassium. lime,
magnesium, iron, silicon, fluorine,
chlorine, iodine, etc, are found in
constant manner in the residue left
by the combustion of the animal or
gans, glands and internal secretions.
''These elements" he declares, "are
absolutely indispensable to the life of
the tissues. The system is onstantly
eXcreting them and, therefore, improv-
erishing itself by its eXcretions. 1t
is, therefore, imperative that they
should be found in sufficient quantity
and in assimilable forms in the diff
ferent foods of man."
The French people, who are also
suffering from the effects of food re-
finement, have not lacked warning to
make them heed the folly of removing
from their diet such physiologically
active elements, the reactions and in
teractions of which control the bio
chemical processes of life.
The subject of mineral starvation
due to food refinement, is no new
theme. Foster, in his experiments,
established the fact that mice,
pigeons, and dogs fed with meat
which had been drained of it's bases
by the action of hot water, even if
there is added to such meat, together
NV fo1t e,t-t t.x,l, F.4
do not live beyond twenty to thirty
days. Give them all the calories they
require, but deprive them of the min
eral matters natural to food, and these
animals behave as though absolutely
starved.
1t should not be necessary to
emphasize again the fact that the
salts of sodium, phosphorus sulphur,
calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron,
etc, are necessary to the carrying on
of ltfe's processes, and that in such
processes they are being constantly
removed from the body.
Gourand has proved that these
salts are eXcreted daily in health to
the following extent:
Sodium chloride, II to IL grams;
phosphates, to grams; sulphates.
2 to grams; calcium carbonates, %
gram; magnesium, q centigram; po-
tassium, A centigram; iron, .02 cent?
gram.
Through the normal excretion OF
these mineral elements in health it
becomes evident that constant sup
ply of them is necessary.
1t is not wonderful, therefore, that
animals fed on food from which these
elements have been removed should
perish.
Starting, corroborating the work of
Foster, declares: animals fed upon
demineralized or reiiiAl food rapidly
show distaste for such food, become
i'll and die sooner than if they receive
no food at all.
ut is therefore evident" he con-
tinues, that the mineral constituents
of food, although yielding no energy
i'm themselves, are as necessary to the
maintenance of life as the energy
yielding or calorie- yielding .foodstuffs. -
Foster, commenting upon these OBJ
vious conlusions, adds the following
significant report: "The constant loss
of other substances, present perhaps
in negligible quantity, yet nothwith-
standing of appreciable physiological
Importance, must also be reckoned
with"
We have almost arrived at that
point where it is no longer difficult
to perceive the disastrous conse-
quences which, in certain cases, such
as in approaching motherhood and
the nursing of infants, as well as in
the growth and the development of
the young, follow the removal of the
mineral salts from refined foodstuffs.
Let us look at those consequences
and draw from them a lesson.