The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-08-09
THE UNCONSIDERED ESSEN.
 TIAIS IN FOOD

 s TIALS IN FOOD
 For years physicians and health authorities have preached the im- portance of vitamins and of miner al components in food. Few lay men have listened, or if they have heard they have not needed. People who suffer health impair ment from deficiencies in their diet-and obesity is one such effect of deficiency-seldom trouble to do anything about it until they are pretty far gone.
 Soon after the medical author ities began their campaign of edu- cation of the public about these essentials, food manipulators began adding a dash of this or that vit- amin to their devitalized products and screaming to the public about it. What little the average layman knows about food accessories he has gleaned from the ballyhoo of food jugglers.
 In referring to obesity as an eff feet of deficiency in food l mean that because the ordinary dietary is poor in vitamins and minerals there is an instinctive desire to take more food than the body can readily handle, and the excess ac- cumulates as fat. 1 do not mean to imply that some particular vita min prevents obesity. If the greater part of our food were na- turai, and not manufactured or modified by processing, a more moderate intake would satisfy hunger, and there would be less surplus to store as fat.
 Vitamins naturally present in foods as they are grown are inn paired or destroyed by numerous processes to which the food is subjected in the refining or by cooking.
 r Minerals are removed by refining and to a certain extent by boiling and throwing away the water in which the food has been boiled.
 From years of habit most of us have acquired a taste for refined white bleached flour, which retains only a trifling proportion of the minerals and none of the vitamins present in wheat. From bad edu- cation we have learned to like re- fined white sugar which retains less than one-hundredth of the mineral matter present in crude brown sug ar. Through bad education we have trained our children to gobble down all sorts of refined break fast cereal products, which sup ply little or nothing of value for building good teeth nd good health and which, according to May Mel lanby. famous English authority actually tend to hinder normal classification os the teeth.
 r The proper notion that candy causes decay of chAdren's teeth is wrong, of course, but 1t is not so far from the truth. Pickanin- nies sucking sugar cane develop fine teeth, altho negro children in the poorer quarters of cities are commonly victims of rickets and the child derives considerable call cium and phosphorus, minerals which are removed in the refining of sugar, and these clements are essential for building good teeth, The sugar cane probably contains some vitamins too.
 The poor white trash in some parts of the south suffer much from pellagra. This develops from vitamin deficiency and from lack of variety in the food. They can exist on a monotonous diet of corn pone, tea, molasses and salt pork, but they have to go to an institution as inmates before they get the vitamins which, prevent and cure pellagra.
 QUESTIONS AND ENSWERS. Be Friendly To Your Friend. Friend of mine has been told he has angina pectoris. It that a very serious. send me information about this condition. (B. M. E.) Answer-Even a doctor is most