Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-04-14
CHAPTER Is

CHAPTER i5
White Bread, Biscuits. Crackers,
Farina, Refined Breakfast Foods,
Pcarlcd Barley, Corn Flakes, Corn
Starch, Polished Rice, Mashed Pota-
toes, Refined Cereals, and Sugars of
Every Kind are Acid Producers -
Such Acid-FOrming Foods, Unless
Accompanied by the Bases Natural to
Them, Arc Behind Most Preventable
Diseases.
1t has been clearly established that
under certain kinds of diet, contain
ing actually twice the number of cal
| orleS figured by the scientists to be
necessary to the life of the body, the
man or animal fed on such a diet per-
ishes
1t has also begun to dawn upon
the scientific mind that there is bal
ance between the acid and the base
forming elements of food and that the
ash content or mineral content of
food, heretofore ignored as unim-
portant, is, after all, the most inn
portant of food factors.
Sherman and Mettler reported in
May, 1912, as a result of experiments
conducted in the laboratories of
Columbia University, their estimate of
the acid and base-forming elements
in the ash of the mineral content of
forty-seven different kinds of food
Meats, including fish, showed a de-
cided preponderance of acid-forming
elements. The lean flesh of different
species, whether of young or mature
animals of the same species, showed
similar results.
The white of eggs was found to be
an acid-former. Milk, on the con-
trary, showed slight preponderance
of base-forming elements. Vegetables
and fruits showed marked predom-
nance of base-forming elements.
Experiments of several days dura-
ton upon healthy men showed that
where foods with a preponderance of
acid-forming elements were substitu-
ted for foods with base-forming ele-
ments the increase of ammonia excre-
ton in the urine accounted only for
one-fourth to one-third of the acid
involved.
The sulphates and phosphates in the
urine, which were evidences of the
fact that the dangerous sulphuric and
phosphoric acids elaborated in the
body had been neutralized, as they
should have been, were not con-
sidered.
Sherman and MettIer did succeed.
however in stampeding the self-satis-
| fed scientists, who were quite con-
tent to let the world think that they
! knew all that was to be known about
food, and that the proper way to
attack all the diseases in the world
was TO invent the proper serum or use
the light kind of saw and knife.
1t has never occurred to these
| scientists that white bread, biscuits,
crackers, farina, refined breakfast
foods, pearled barley, corn meal, corn
flakes, cornstarch, polished rice,
mashed potatoes, and refined cereals
and sugars of every kind are acid
formers, and that their constant ap-
pearance on the tables of the nation
is rapidly bringing about a national
condition of acidosis.
Pure proteins, pure carbohydrates,
and pure fats, while containing all
the calorie value of the food from
which they are derived, retain only
a minimum of the chemical agents,
reagents, and base forming sub
stances necessary to the healthy ac-
tivity of the organs of digestion, as
simi1ation, and elimination. All meat
consumed must have it's proper vege-
table bases at hand. So must all
other forms of protein. So also with
all forms of carbohydrates, yet these
bases are lost to the American peo-