The Effect Of Food On Health

Advocates of various dietary regimens range from the well-intentioned to the well-heeled. Out of this hodgepodge of slanted information comes a welter of suggestions which, in fact, have very little or no medical basis.

Pity the poor individual who eats only "because it is good for him." A large number of well-educated, thoughtful people consume a wide range of dull, unimaginative diets because they have succumbed to the hocus-pocus of most of the nutritional propaganda showered upon them. Seldom a day goes by but what a deluge of "important new food discoveries" is not forced upon our attention. Everyone has been told, "You never outgrow your need for milk." There is a remedy for "tired blood"— and you end up with a tired wallet. For too many colds last winter, a certain vitamin mixture is supposed to build up resistance. If you feel run down, have low backache, and are logy, another concoction attributes this to retaining food too long in your intestines and guarantees to whistle things through on schedule.

Premature graying of the hair and brittle fingernails can promptly disappear upon ingestion of a particular gelatin product. Liver pills, tonics, queen bee mixtures, wheat germ extracts, and combinations of minerals are indiscriminately pawned off on hard-working, exhausted Americans who naturally enough seek a pill or a potion to give them their lost vim and vigor.

We all want a pill to guarantee weight reduction, a pill to guarantee fitness, and a pill to guarantee good health. None are available. Pills can combat illness, but they cannot promise better fitness.

The Importance Of Vitamins

Vitamin supplementation deserves special comment. The theory, simply stated, is: if a little bit is a little good, then a lot more is a lot better. This argument is not readily disposable.

Luckily, vitamins are rarely harmful. Too much A and D can cause calcification and renal calculi. But this is distinctly unusual. Vitamin preparations in many people cause an increase in the number of daily bowel movements, although they are not really laxative in the sense of causing loose bowels. It is obvious that any substance which increases the amount and bulk of nutritional elements to be wasted in the stools produces a needless loss of wholesome ingredients.

For these individuals, the administration of vitamins thereby creates a need for vitamins. In basic chemistry vitamins play an important role. In the over-all scheme, food could be placed in a test tube of liquid with, in time, the gradual conversion of food to heat (energy) and waste products. However, this reaction would be interminable. See the equation:

If the proper enzymes or catalysts are added, and these abound in the intestines, blood stream, and liver, this process can be accelerated manifold. The end result is the same, but valuable time has been saved. In chemical reactions which have thus been catalyzed, the enzyme or catalyst contributes to speeding up the conversion of food to energy, using up the food and producing energy. This appears as:

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