CHAPTER 1 NUTRITION CAN BE A FASCINATING SUBJECT

NUTRITION is a personal matter, as personal as your 1 diary or income-tax report. Your nutrition can determine how you look, act, and feel; whether you are grouchy
or cheerful, homely or beautiful, physiologically and even
psychologically young or old; whether you think clearly or
are confused, enjoy your work or make it a drudgery, increase
your earning power or stay in an economic rut. The foods
you eat can make the difference between your day ending
with freshness which lets you enjoy a delightful evening or
with exhaustion which forces you to bed with the chickens.
To a considerable degree, your nutrition can give you a
coddled-egg personality or make you a human dynamo. In
short, it can determine your zest for life, the good you put
into it, and the fulfillment you get from it.'\
Nutrition is the study of how foods, after they are swallowed, make you tick. It is often confused with dietetics, the
study of foods which should be swallowed. Nutrition can be
fascinating because it is about you. If this knowledge is both
personal and faScinating, why does not' everyone apply it?
There are many reasons. Nutrition is a young subject; it has
been kicked around like a puppy that cannot take care of
itself ..
Food faddists and crackpots have kicked it pretty cruelly.
They usually have no scientific training, peddle tremendous
amounts of misinformation, make, unjustifiable claims, and
are often out for commercial gain. They not only put people
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4 LET'S EAT RIGHT TO KEEP FIT
off by their ridiculous recommendations, they make every
thinking person necessarily skeptical of the whole subject.
The followers of the food fad,dists are usually overzealous
people. A friend of mine claims I they either get "religion" or
nutrition. They can dream up the most amazing concoctions
to eat. I know; they have fed such foods to me with what I
think is sadistic delight. I have eaten liquefied grass which
tastes the way a newly filled haymow smells. The smell used
to be good; the taste never is. They seem to believe that unless food tastes like Socratic hemlock, it cannot build health.
Frankly, I often wonder what such persons plan to do with
good health in case they acquire it. The longer I work in
nutrition, the more convinced I become that for the healthy
person all foods should be delicious.
There is no sense in your eating any food you do not like.
It is good sense, however, to realize that you consider many
health-building foods delicious, and still better sense to learn
to enjoy foods parti<;ularly rich in nutrients your body must
have to function normally. It can be done by the nibble
method. Probably every person who enjoys coffee or bourbon
hated the first sip.
Let us suppose you have certain nutritional qeficiencies
and think perhaps better food might help. You are offered
some nauseating glop; it is so revolting that you -immediately
lose interest and eat as you are accustomed. Eventually your
malnutrition makes you so ill that you are not expected to
live. Who almost killed Y9"!l? It seems to me the near-murderer was the person who gave you the unpalatable food.
Had he given you delicious food instead, you would have
impro~ed your diet and perhaps felt_",onderful.(To my way
of thinking, there should be two standaras-for selectfng any
food: it should taste delicious; it should help build health.
Another reason why nu!ritiona1 knowledge is not applied
is that much of our information ('f)ncerning food comes from
advertising. Commercial interests wish us to buy and eat cer-
NUTIUTION CAN BE A FASCINATING SUBJECT 5
tain foods. Highly refined foods keep better than do natural
foods; they are easier to store and ship. They cannot spoil
because they cannot support the health of bacteria, fungi,
molds, or weevils; certainly they cannot build human health
either. Although the few nutrients remaining in such foods
are ballyhooed, the removal of many others during refining
is kept strictly quiet: the implication is that such foods have
great nutritive value. Why bother to improve a dietary
which is already excellent?
An additional reason why people understandably shy away'
from nutrition is that there is a widespread "should-not"
philosophy. For example, I once spoke to a certain "health"
organization. Before I was introduced, the chairman ranted
with astounding fury about "poison white sugar" killing people. Probably each person in the audience had eaten "poison
white sugar"; yet most of them appeared to be alive. Had
that been my introduction to nutrition, I would probably
have felt a surge of nausea thereafter when the subject was
mentioned. It would be more constructive to state that some
foods have more to offer than others.
A further reason why nutrition is not valued is that people
are so gullible. We live in a culture where a headache is
"cured" by an aspirin; therefore an ulcer or other abnormality should be "cured" by a vitamin pill. Millions of people
take capsules which "contain everything," belieVing that
these preparations can maintain health. Such a capsule
could be made, but it would be the size of a baseball. Why
not try it? A python can swallow a pig.
Still another reason why nutrition is not applied is that so
much information is inaccurate. For example, people frequently tell me, ''I'm eating a high-protein diet." When I
check the diets of such persons, I usually find their protein
intake to be perhaps one-third of that recommended by the
National Research Council. As a result of their thinking that
they have knowledge when they do not, they fail to improve
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6 LET'S EAT RIGHT TO KEEP FIT
their nutrition. In the same catrgory are pseudo-information
and misinformation, the amount of which seems endless.
A serious reason why nutritiotl is not applied-quite alarming to me-is t11at wives often become interested in the subject before their husbands do. When a husband suffers from·
nutritional deficiencies, a wife who genuinely loves him tries
to move 'heaven and earth to get him to change his eating
habits. Any husband not a hopeless Milquetoast resents such
maneuvering. Sometimes the reverse is true. A husband, sincerely trying to prevent medical and dental bills and such
problems as fatigue and irritable dispOSitions, appears to be
merely criticizing his wife's selection and preparation of food;
this apparent criticism understandably antagonizes her. In
either case the. two reach a deadlock.
If a good fairy were to grant me a wish concerning this
book, my wish would be that families might read it aloud
together, stopping frequently to discuss their problems. In
case you are the only member of your family to read it, my
advice is to apply riutrition as best you can but to do it as
quietly as possible. When positive improvement follows, Y0ul
partner cannot help observing it, and he will want what you
have achieved.
Perhaps the most important reason why nutrition is not
applied is that eating has emotional connotations: to many
people it symbolizes pleasure, pain, reward, punishment, and
so forth. The person who suffer.ed from poverty during childhood perhaps had nutritibus food, but he may associate it
with deprivation; less nutritious food, eaten by wealthy persons, becomes a mark of, social standing. White bread and
sugar often represent purity and ~nliness just ~s a white
operating room once did. To mani persons orange juice
means castor oil. A psychiatrist tells me· that some persons
who think they hate milk actually hate their mothers who
tried to make them drink' milk; guilt feelings .prevent. them
from hating her outright. We all have emqtional reasons for I
NUTRITION CAN BE A FASCINATING SUBJECT
hating certain foods and liking others. For example, my father
held stern clean-up-your-plate convictions: once he made me
eat meat fat which was nauseating; I still hate fat meat. I
used to hate brains because we threw them away when we
fbutchered just as we did entrails; I identified brains with
entrails. Theoretically, I hold that we should learn to enjoy
all nutritious foods. To put the theory into practice, I once
ate a platter of snails in a French restaurant and was violently
ill for hours afterward; the snails did not make me ill, but my
repugnance to them still makes me squirm. All of us have
pleasant or unpleasant associations with food which we do
not want to change; even if we tried, it might be impossihle.
People often think nutrition means giving up those foods we
favor emotionally and eating those we hate.
Another factor which prevents nutrition from being applied is that we look to our physicians to guide our health;
if the doctor has not revised one's diet, it seems logical to
assume that nutrition is unimportant. We often forget that
the 'study of medicine is a study of medicine. From the first
day of medical school throughout the years of a physician's
practice, this study is priP1arily one of disease rather than
health. Many physicians are doing outstanding work in nutrition; their numbers increase yearly. Nevertheless the purpose,
of medicine is to help the sick person get well or, in the case
of serious illness, to keep him alivQhe turpose of nutrition
it.!2_!!1aintain_h~lth aud_to_pl:e£.entil.I1ess. Few _medEi[
schools teach nutrition even now._illthql!gh_they_ha~e _t~ught_
/dietetics for years. If nutrition is taught, it is usually limitecr
to"'t.he recognitionand treatment of severe deficiencies rather
than subtle ones . .,/"
Physicians are often overworked to the point of exhaustion;
yet they must constantly keep up with recent developments
in antibiotics, hormones, new surgical techniques, treatments
for new diseases and new treatments for old diseases. I have
worked with physicians for a quarter of a century. They are
8 LET'S EAT RIGHT TO KEEP FIT
wonderful people; I have yet to meet finer. The criticism implied by the remark, "Why didn't my doctor tell me diet was
important?» seems to me to be iunfair; it is like expecting me
to perform delicate brain surge,ry. You may find the time to
study nutrition; prob~bly he cru;mot.
Lastly, nutrition often is not applied because of the vast
gap, perhaps of 2~_ or 30 years, betw£.~n ~cientific and clinical
research. In hundreds of laboratories all over the world, sCien-
-tistsreeCr experimellta~ ani~als di~t~· deficient .. in one niItrient
oranother and study the effe_cts UpOI\ their: ,health, These
scientists, however, do not study human beings to find the
cQunte~art of the abnormalities they, produce in @im.iili..
Their research-fsliierely reported each month in hundreds
of expensive scientific publications which the busy physician
rarely sees, although if he did he might immediately recognize the symptoms described in his patients. ~
Nevertheless, this knowledge of the means of prodUcing
health, gained largely from research with animals, is gradually being found to apply to human·s. Regardless of how radiant your health, a thorough knowledge of nutrition and its
application can usually bring vast improvement. Such application is your insurance of feeling your best, looking your
best, and giving your best. As. ne'arly as possible, it is your
hope of making a long, active, and rewarding life a reality. v'
Let us find out how to keep fit.