The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1927-11-03

All that is known about vitamins
has been discovered within the past
ten or twelve years by experimental
feeding.
No one has ever seen vitamins in a
test tube, or elsewhere, they have
never been isolated, weighed or meas
ured. They are minute and myster-
ious substances concealed in foods and
in some foods they are more abundant
than in others.
Just how they work in the process
of digestion is unknown. They are
known by results. They give to a
man a degree of health and vitality
not obtainable without them.
Their absence in the system soon
results in sickness, disease, and even
in death.
AS health cannot be measured or
valued in dollars and cents the Sci
ence of living becomes more impor-
tant to US than high finance or the
discovery of an element or a star.
So the practical dietitian is the big
gest man in the arena of science to-
day. The normal age of all animals
is reputed to be five times that which
elapses between birth and maturity.
If it requires two years for a puppy
to become full grown dog then his
age limit is ten years.
Man is twenty years in reaching
maturity and many grow for a year
or two longer, thus his normal age
limit would be one hundred years if
he applied the law for right living.
To be sure men have lived in a hap
hazard Indifferent way for many cen
turtles, eating what they liked best,
over eating, hurried eating and in
variably neglecting to properly mas
ticate what they eat.
Many have hung on to life for sew
enty or eighty years and too often
twenty or more of those years have
been years of uselessness, disability
and distress. The average age of man
is much longer now than fifty years
ago but this advance in longevity is
due to other causes and in spite of
wrong feeding, for which the chem
list, surgeon and medical practitioner
deserve credit. AS man has become
educated, cultured, and refined, so
much of his food has been bleached,
polished and refined until the vital
izing elements (vitamins) have been
extracted. Consider the pre-digested
ready-made factory products that
come to US now in cans and cartons
and compare them with the home
grown farm products fresh for the
table that people lived on a hundred
years back.
Bread is called the "staff of life
but the bleached white bread is a
poor staff to lean on, because the vi
tamins have been removed and they
are the things that vitalize our blood,
give US health, vim, virility and pow
er to resist infectious disease germs.
When the deficiency in vitamins is
not too large, we can keep up feeble
fatigued hang-on existence, but to
get the fullness of life as we go and
enjoy its buoyancy and prolong our
years, We must have a selected, mixed
ration that will satisfy natures need
for the VITAMINS.
The civilized mans diet has be-
come badly perverted from health
standards, until the most important
question that confronts him is, how
to live fully and live long.
And it depends on our food. It is
our food and drink that converts into
blood. The air we breathe simply
oXidizes it, exercise aids assimilation
and quickens our circulation. But the
blood makes our bones, body and our
brain. Vitamins are what vitalize
the blood. Health is mans normal,
natural state when he obeys the laws
of health. When our food lacks all
the vitamins we are soon devitalized-
dead.
Animals of the lower organisms
spend nearly all their time searching
for and eating their food and we find
that nature has devoted abdominal
space and the length of the intestinal
tract and the strength of the gastric
juices to meet the food requirements
of the animal. Man belongs to the
frugivorous type and needs different
food from that of the Carnivorous
and omnivorous animals. So when
man is examined anatomically and
physiologically his alimentary canal
is found to be twelve times the length
of his body, while that of the Carni-
vora is but three times the length of
the body.
But as life becomes higher evolved
less space is given to the digestive
organs and more space is given for
brain and instruments that develop
the mind. So as mentality increases
the need for food decreases. But in
man the quality of his food must be
maintained in order to maintain norm
al health. Digestion begins with the
salivary secretions in the mouth and
they are alkaline. All food even milk