Catharyn Elwood: Nutritionist
(Page 3 of 11)
March/April 1972
By Hal Smith
I also know people who've overcome the most incurable conditions with fasting. Many things seem far out and absurd, almost ridiculous, yet the body manages. Who am I to say something doesn't work? We have a lot to learn yet about nutrition. I preach my own little method, which I know is easy to follow. It's pleasant eating . . . some of it's new enough to be fun and the rest requires very little change from the kinds of food most people in our culture are used to eating. It gets results . . . but that doesn't mean that other nutritional programs won't get results too.
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PLOWBOY: One of the experts I'm thinking of is the late J. I. Rodale, who warned against eating bread . . . even bread made of whole grains.
ELWOOD: I know. He warned against both bread and milk, the two staples of diets in many areas where civilization — while perhaps not so sophisticated as ours — has nevertheless thrived for centuries and continues to thrive. How can we explain it?
I think the point is that the body itself has lost much of its ability to digest and utilize food. And the foods we get today have been so tampered with, so changed by modern techniques of preservation, that we're not getting the same wholesome products we got before.
Take protein, for instance. Everybody's crying for more protein they can't get enough. And it's true. Corn used to be 10 % protein and now it's only 5%. We used to get wheat that was 18% protein, but now it's down to between 8 and 12%. Yet these decreases didn't have to happen. Dr. William Albrecht, the wonderful soil scientist from the University of Missouri — he's retired now but what a champion for husbanding the soil! — has produced wheat that is 32% protein.
Now, granted that content is only the the beginning — if any of the eight essential amino acids are missing, you'll be in trouble no matter how much protein you eat — but starting off with only half the protein you could be getting might well double that trouble. And it's all so unnecessary. This problem has come about because we've allowed the soil to be depleted of the minerals that the plants need for the development of protein.
PLOWBOY: How much protein should we get, by the way? Estimates generally range from 100 to 150 grams per day, but some experts say that much less is acceptable.
ELWOOD: That depends on how large you are and what you do. At the turn of the century, Drs. Fletcher and Chittenden put 26 men — who worked hard both physically and mentally — on a diet of a mere 50 grams of protein a day. The men stayed in fine health because they were in "nitrogen balance" . . . the protein they ate equalled the protein they eliminated. Undoubtedly, though, the proteins used in this experiment were far different from the proteins we're getting today. They weren't eating 5% corn.
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