In 
Diet for a New America, 
John Robbins described
their typical diet:
[S]awdust laced with ammonia and feathers, shredded newspaper (complete
with all the colors of toxic ink from the Sunday comics and advertising
circulars), “plastic hay,” processed sewage, inedible tallow and grease, poultry
litter, cement dust, and cardboard scraps, not to mention the insecticides,
antibiotics and hormones. Artificial flavors and aromas are added to trick the
poor animals into eating this stuff. The animals are not the only ones tricked. The consumer is “tricked” into buyingthese make-believe foods and into thinking that they contain the nutrients required
to support healthy life. Dr. Joseph Beasley in 
The Kellogg Report 
wrote that
shortchanging nutrients over a period of time “is bound to involve human illness,
particularly chronic conditions such as today’s high-technology medicine can’t seem
to get a handle on.” Again and again, well-meaning parents go to the store thinking
they are feeding their families fresh, wholesome foods, only to be fooled by the
multitude of offerings of deficient, make-believe food products. Carl Pfeiffer, Ph.D., M.D., related in 
Mental and Elemental Nutrients 
an
experiment at the University of California, Irvine. Healthy rats were fed foods that
an average American would purchase in a supermarket: white bread, sugar, eggs,
milk, ground beef, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, oranges, apples, bananas and coffee. The rats developed a variety of diseases. Dr. Pfeiffer concluded that if the average
human diet could not support the health of rats, then it probably would not do much
better for humans. In 
Diet for a Poisoned Planet, 
David Steinman describes an experiment in which
four sets of rats were fed different diets. The first set ate natural foods and drank
clean water. Throughout the three-month experiment, these rats remained alert, calm
and social. The second set was fed the same food as the first, with the addition of hot
dogs. These rats became violent and fought each other aggressively. The third set ate
sugar-coated breakfast cereal and drank fruit punch. These rats became nervous,
hyperactive and aimless. The fourth set was fed only sugar donuts and cola. These
rats had trouble sleeping, became extremely fearful and were unable to function as a
social unit. The poor nutrition of these foods (not to mention the toxic food
additives) had a profound effect on the behavior of these animals. Many children
today struggle with hyperactive, antisocial and even violent behaviors. The time has
come to consider how their diet may be causing this behavior. More Unreal Than Ever
As if our foods were not “make-believe” enough, modern technology has taken
another unhealthy leap. We now have totally artificial, synthesized products that are
consumed as “food.” The food industry is creating products such as artificial
sweeteners (saccharine and aspartame) and man-made fats, including margarine,
Olestra and nondairy creamer. As Paul Stitt, author of 
Fighting the Food Giants,
wrote, “An ever increasing proportion of the food we eat is no longer even food but
is now a conglomerate of high-priced chemistry experiments designed to simulate
food.” More and more Americans are eating these fabricated, imitation, processed
foods; if you want to eat a good diet, you cannot subsist on foods that are not real—
foods that are completely foreign to the body. What are the real foods that your body needs in order to become healthy and stayhealthy? Your body needs nutrients: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential oils,
oxygen, water, sunlight and fuel (calories). With the exception of water, air and
sunshine, the nutrients necessary to keep your cells healthy must come primarily
from the healthy plant and animal cells that you eat. If the fruits, vegetables, meats
and other foods that you eat are not healthy, they cannot keep you healthy. If you are
hoping for health, but eating a diet that is made up of unhealthy plants and animals,
or foods so highly processed that they no longer resemble plants or animals, you are
hoping for the impossible. A professor of chemistry wanted to demonstrate the superiority of fresh foods to
his class. He purchased “fresh” oranges at a local supermarket and measured their
vitamin C content. There was none! Unpleasantly surprised, he traced the oranges
back to their source. He found they had been harvested while still green, stored for
two years and then artificially colored prior to being sold as “fresh fruit.” This is
what the consumer is up against and why purchasing fresh, organic produce is so
important. One Size Does Not Fit All
The amount of nutrients required for optimal nutrition differs for every person
and changes as a person’s life progresses. We are not genetic cookie-cutter replicas
of each other. In addition, individual factors can affect our nutritional needs, such as
age, physical activity, climate, illness, injury, pregnancy or menstruation. Your need
for calcium may be far higher than your neighbor’s; your neighbor’s requirements
for vitamin C may differ widely from yours. In his book 
Nutrition Against Disease, 
biochemist Roger Williams, Ph.D.,
reported on laboratory animals that were bred to have similar genes and,
theoretically, have similar nutritional needs. Yet, some animals were found to need
forty times as much vitamin A as others. Similarly, human nutritional requirements
operate across a wide range. Williams described another study performed on healthy
young men which demonstrated that their needs for calcium varied almost sixfold. Does someone in your family catch colds and flus noticeably more often than
everyone else? Have you considered that his or her need for vitamin C (vital for
immune function) might be higher than everyone else’s? Is vitamin C deficiency a
problem for them, not because they get less of it, but because they need more? Researcher and Nobel laureate Linus Pauling was plagued with frequent colds and
flu all of his adult life until he started taking high doses of vitamin C. Likewise,
women have special nutritional needs (especially when pregnant or menstruating), as
do elderly people, athletes and anyone who is fighting off an infection or suffering
from a chronic disease. When it comes to nutritional needs, the “average person”
does not exist.Women are more likely to be nutritionally deficient than men. Why? Because
women typically eat less food but still require roughly the same amount of nutrients. That women are more susceptible to certain diseases—including osteoporosis,
chronic fatigue syndrome and autoimmune diseases—is no coincidence. Because of reduced activity and appetite, older people require fewer calories
(fuel), but they retain the same need for nutrients; in fact, nutritional needs may
actually increase with aging (not to mention that digestion of food and assimilation
of nutrients is often impaired in older people). Unfortunately, elderly people often
are less able to buy and prepare fresh foods, and they often subsist on packaged,
processed or frozen foods, thus consuming fewer nutrients. This diet makes a bad
situation worse, contributing to widespread disease and disability among our older
population. Almost certainly, you have, for at least a few nutrients, unique needs that are
substantially higher than average. More than a quarter century ago, medical pioneers
like Dr. Carl Pfeiffer were able to use this concept to cure many cases of “incurable”
schizophrenia by giving patients extra vitamins and minerals (above and beyond
what was available through a regular diet). With their nutritional needs being met,
Pfeiffer’s schizophrenic patients were able to return to a completely normal life. Such nutrient deficiencies are a major cause of the many mental and behavioral
problems in our society. Arbitrary Standards
Although science has proved that we have individual nutritional needs, at present
we have no way of measuring each person’s needs. The Recommended Daily
Allowances (or RDAs) that are listed on foods and vitamin supplements are
arbitrary. They do not provide accurate information about what you need in order to
stay healthy. These standards are a measurement only of the minimum dosage
necessary to prevent a diagnosable deficiency disease, such as scurvy (a vitamin C
deficiency disease common to sailors who went too long without fresh fruits and
vegetables). You can easily meet RDA standards and still lack the nutrients
necessary to prevent other diseases not specifically known as “deficiency diseases.”
In fact, optimal health usually requires at least several times the RDA values. In reality, however, most people do not meet even these minimum standards. A
study by Professor Suzanne Murphy at the University of California, Berkeley,
published in the November 1992 issue of the 
Journal of the American Dietetic
Association, 
measured the diets of 5,884 people for fifteen essential nutrients. The
average person consistently measured below two-thirds of the RDAs for three to six
essential nutrients. A separate study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, examined ten essential nutrients in the diets of 21,500 people. In thatstudy, not a single person was obtaining 100 percent of the RDAs for all ten
nutrients on a daily basis—not one person out of 21,500! Virtually all Americans are chronically deficient in at least one and usually
several nutrients, even when measured against the artificially low RDA standards. When we consider that good health requires several times the RDA, the true
magnitude of the problem becomes apparent. That problem is compounded by the
fact that nutrients must act as a team in order to keep you healthy. Of the more than fifty known essential nutrients, each must be available to the
body on a daily basis and in the correct amounts and ratios to each other. Rather than
acting by themselves, nutrients act in combination with each other; a shortage of
even one starts a chain of events that can result in extensive nutritional deficiencies
and body system malfunctions. In 
The Kellogg Report, 
Dr. Joseph Beasley examines how one specific nutrient
deficiency (vitamin B
3
) has far-reaching ramifications: A vitamin B
3 
deficiency
impairs absorption of vitamin C, which impairs absorption of iron, which causes
excessive copper absorption, which inhibits nickel metabolism, which in turn
adversely affects iron metabolism, and on and on. If all those can occur from a deficiency of just one nutrient (vitamin B
3 
in this
case), just imagine what happens in the bodies of most Americans, who are
chronically deficient in several nutrients. The most common deficiencies are calcium; zinc; magnesium; chromium;
vitamins A, E, C and B
6
; and folic acid. What you must recognize is that you cannot
miss even one member of the nutrition package and hope to be healthy. The way to
assure you are getting what you need is to eat a wide range of real foods that are rich
in nutrition, keep the Big Four and other “make-believe” foods out of your diet, and
take high-quality nutritional supplements. A Diet That Really Works
As a child growing up in a Boston suburb, I remember food shopping with my
mother at several farms in our town. The farmers maintained the mineral content of
their soils with traditional methods of crop rotation, mulch and manure. All through
the summer and even into the fall, those farms supplied our town with freshly
harvested, organically grown, fully ripened fruits and vegetables. Everybody in town
could share in the nutrition those small local farms provided. By the late 1950s, all
the farms had been sold for housing developments, as happened to many small farms
across the United States. From a real estate standpoint, subdivisions may be the best
use of the land, but from a health standpoint, development is a disaster. Lost with
those local farms was the superior nutrition contained within fresh, organicallyproduced foods. What has replaced them are commercially produced, toxic,
nutritionally deficient supermarket foods. Our biological ancestors ate living food directly as nature provided—often with
no alternative. If you were hungry and found a berry bush, fresh berries were what
you ate. Likewise, a hunter might eat an animal right after the kill, its flesh still
containing living cells filled with vital nutrients. Nature works that way. Within
these hunting and gathering parameters we evolved biologically; even today our
nutritional needs are best served with living foods that are as unchanged as possible
from the way nature provides them. Instead, we often settle for food in very different
forms: cooked, dehydrated, ground, canned, frozen, hydrolyzed, hydrogenated,
irradiated or otherwise modified. By eating a diet that consists primarily of these
“altered” foods, we run the risk of being deficient in fundamental nutrients that are
contained only within the whole, intact, living cells of other organisms. Your body needs to burn calories every day to provide energy. Although
Americans are seldom deficient in calories, almost always they are deficient in
nutrients. We must learn to count nutrients, not calories. Your body builds more
than ten million new cells every second. If the foods you eat do not contain
sufficient nutrients needed to build and maintain those cells, an “eat more” message
is sent to the brain. This happens regardless of how many calories are in your diet. A
body that is starving for nutrients seeks out more food, and weight gain likely
results. Eating just one hundred calories more than you burn, on a daily basis,
translates to roughly twelve pounds of added fat per year. Try that ten years in a
row! Many Americans are both malnourished and overweight. Obesity is a major health
problem in America today, regardless of age or economic status. According to recent
government statistics, 63 percent of American adults are overweight. When you eat
real, nutritious foods (typically lower in calories), your body obtains the nutrients it
needs and you likely do not have intense food cravings. If a large part of your diet is
made up of real foods, becoming overweight is difficult. Unfortunately, overweight people (or those wishing to avoid becoming
overweight) often cut down on their overall food (calories) intake, without making
changes in what types of foods they eat. This results in more malnourishment and
stronger food cravings. Consuming 2,000 calories yet obtaining little or no nutrition
is frightfully easy: a small candy bar (280 calories and almost no nutrition), two soft
drinks (600 calories and no nutrition), and a hamburger/fries/shake meal (1,180
calories and only a little nutrition). This intake totals 2,060 calories yet offers a
serious case of malnutrition. That diet provides some protein, carbohydrate and fat
that the body can use—but is seriously lacking in vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients,
enzymes, fiber, essential fatty acids and other nutrients necessary to construct
healthy cells and maintain good health. Lacking these nutrients, the body mustdeplete its nutrient reserves in order to keep functioning. When the reserves run out,
cells suffer from deficiency, and they cease to self-regulate and self-repair. Disease
follows. Meanwhile, you are still hungry and adding more weight because your body
is short of nutrients. Magic Capsules
How do real foods support the health and function of your cells whereas processed
foods do not? Here’s one example: Whole grains (such as wheat, oats, millet and
quinoa) are seeds that contain all the ingredients necessary to create a new plant—to
create a new life. They are like magic capsules. The nutrients in these capsules that
are necessary to create life are also necessary to sustain your life. However, as soon
as this life-creating capsule has been opened (due to cutting, mashing or grinding),
oxygen reacts with the chemicals inside, causing the nutrients to deteriorate. At this
point, the seed can no longer produce a new life, nor can it sustain yours as well as
before. Our ancestors did not have such nutrient losses in their grains, which were
eaten whole or coarsely ground, rather than processed into nutritionally worthless
white flour. Remember the Hunzas? They coarsely ground grains and immediately
made nutritious flat breads, minimizing nutrient loss. Foods that are nutritious but nontoxic come from the following categories:
• 
Organic foods 
produced naturally without any man-made chemicals, such as
pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, preservatives, antibiotics, hormones,
processed animal feed, etc. These foods are generally higher in nutrients and
lower in toxins than nonorganic (commercially produced) foods of the same
type. • 
Fresh foods 
harvested at their peak of nutrition (ripeness) and consumed
shortly thereafter. Food that is harvested does not gain any more nutrition (even
though it may continue to ripen), and in fact, nutrition begins to decline. Some
foods deteriorate more quickly than others, but the point is that you want to eat
your food as soon after harvesting as possible. The more the food sits around
(during harvesting, storage, transportation and distribution), the more nutrition
it will lose. • 
Unprocessed foods, 
minimally altered from the way that nature provides. Avoid foods that are cooked, peeled, cut, ground, dehydrated, frozen, canned,
etc. Unprocessed foods are whole, complete foods, rather than just part of a
food (whole grains instead of flour made from grains, for example, or potatoes
with the peel still on). Because we cannot all revert to hunting, gathering, growing our own food and
eating it fresh and raw, we must learn to evaluate the foods that are available to us
and make choices that are both healthy and realistic. We must take the “black andwhite” nutritional knowledge outlined above and apply it to our lives in the best
shade of gray that we can. Poisoned in the Nursery
Much of the nutrition trouble we face begins before food leaves commercial
farms. Modern agricultural practices and chemicals (such as chemical fertilizers,
insecticides, herbicides and fungicides) produce ever-increasing quantities of food,
but the chemicals reduce the nutritional quality of the food and deplete the soil of
nutrients needed to produce future quality crops. Chemical fertilizers, which are supposed to put nutrients into the soil, actually end
up causing nutrients to be removed from the soil. The most common chemical
fertilizers, which support high food production, add three major nutrients to the soil:
nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. But the plants require many other nutrients
absorbed from the soil, such as zinc, calcium, magnesium, selenium, germanium,
chromium, manganese, nickel and molybdenum. Chemical fertilizers do not supply
these nutrients. By not replacing these nutrients and by growing more food on the
same land year after year after year, critical nutrients continually are lost from the
soil, leading to nutrient-deficient soil, nutrient-deficient crops, nutrient-deficient
farm animals and nutrient-deficient human beings. In her 1976 book 
The Living Soil, 
Lady Eve Balfour describes an eighteen-year
experiment on three farms with similar soil profiles. One of the farms was managed
organically, one chemically, and the third, a mixture of the two. During this
eighteen-year study, the soil on the organic farm was found to have the highest
mineral content. Not coincidentally, the dairy herd on that farm was healthier,
produced more milk and had higher reproductive capacity. The use of chemical fertilizers triggers a series of problems as plants struggle to
cope with deficient soils and toxic attacks. Plants grown in nutrient-deficient soils
are less healthy and more vulnerable to insects, molds, fungi, viruses, bacteria and
weeds. The susceptibility leads to the use of other agricultural chemicals, such as
pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, to protect sick plants. These toxic chemicals
create “dead soils,” killing not only the undesirable organisms but also the helpful
organisms (earthworms, insects, bacteria and fungi) that are responsible for taking
minerals out of the soil and converting them into forms that plants can use. When
these bacteria and fungi are killed, the plants no longer receive adequate nutrition. Insecticides, fungicides and herbicides accumulate in the soil to a level where
they inhibit plant growth. These poor growing conditions have spurred the
development of new kinds of plants, such as hybrid and genetically modified crops. In creating genetically modified plants, which humankind has never eaten before,
we may have (unknowingly) altered the nutritional value of the plants, as well asmade them more toxic or allergenic. More and more genetically modified foods are
contaminating the food supply with novel and unnatural varieties of organisms. (See
chapter 9 for more information.) Shelves Stocked with Old Food
I can remember, as a child on my uncle’s farm, picking ripe apples from the trees
and eating them then and there. I can remember harvesting fresh peas, strawberries
and sweet corn from our own garden and eating them raw within minutes of
harvesting. Not only do fresh foods taste better; they are substantially better for
health. Much of the food purchased in a standard supermarket today is old. Presumably fresh produce such as apples, oranges and cucumbers are put in cold
storage and can be anywhere from months to years old. Supermarket eggs are
commonly anywhere from six weeks to six months old, and they still can be labeled
as “fresh.”
Food is reasonably hardy, but nutrients are not. Nutrients are quite fragile and are
destroyed by heat, light, oxygen and overly long storage. The most fragile vitamins
are C, B
1 
and B5. Unless you grow food yourself or obtain it freshly harvested from
a local farmer, it’s likely the food does not have the nutrition you think it has. Irradiated foods may be years old before you eat them and thus completely devoid
of vitamins. Fruits and vegetables undergo substantial destruction of nutrients in
modern cold storage. In 
The Kellogg Report, 
Dr. Joseph Beasley offered examples of
the nutritional loss that occurs after harvesting:
• Spinach and asparagus lose 50 to 70 percent of their folic acid when kept at
room temperature for three days. • Vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli and green beans typically lose 50
percent of their vitamin C before they reach the produce counter. • Potatoes lose as much as 78 percent of their vitamin C during long-term
storage at 36°F. • Blanching of vegetables prior to freezing can destroy up to half of the
vitamins. • Freezing meat can destroy up to 70 percent of its vitamins. Commercial, make-believe foods lack nutrients not only because of losses after
harvest, but also because food is frequently harvested before it is ripe. This practice
may be necessary for our modern distribution system (to bring food to the consumer
before it rots), but early harvesting also reduces nutrition. The ripening process is
critical to develop the full vitamin and mineral content of a food; vitamin and
mineral content rise near the peak of ripeness. Also, flavor improves. The carrots you buy in the supermarket may look ripe, but they frequently turnthat bright orange (ripe) color during transit through the distribution system. If they
are not ripened while still in the soil (and most are not), they will lack essential
nutrients. Vine-ripened, freshly harvested tomatoes are loaded with vitamins,
minerals and phytonutrients (natural chemicals in plants that benefit our health)—
unlike commercial tomatoes that are picked green and artificially ripened with
ethylene gas. Naturally ripened tomatoes were found to contain one-third more
vitamin C than those harvested green and immature. Foods harvested before they are
ripe never develop certain nutrients at all. Certain phytonutrients (substances found
in ripe tomatoes known to help prevent diseases such as cataracts, macular
degeneration and even cancer) are lacking in the typical supermarket tomato because
these substances develop in the last stages of ripening. While having all kinds of food available to us all year round is wonderful, we pay
the price with our health because the food must often be harvested before it is ripe,
transported long distances, stored for long periods and artificially ripened. Even
though such foods may look and taste fine, they are substantially less nutritious. They are “make-believe” foods. Beware of Food Guillotines
Even foods that are truly fresh and ripe can nevertheless be nutritionally destroyed
if you prepare them improperly. Our biological ancestors usually did not cook or
process their foods. Foods were eaten fresh and raw. The healthy Hunzas ate 80
percent of their diet raw. Their foods not only had more nutrition to begin with
(because of traditional farming techniques and rich soils), they also did not typically
diminish that nutrition by cooking. Nobel laureate Linus Pauling believed that the
mostly raw, mostly vegetarian, unprocessed diet of our biological ancestors provided
a level of nutritional quality far superior to the food supply available today. The bulk of the modern American diet comes from processed foods that have been
deliberately altered from the way nature provided. This altering includes trimming,
peeling, chopping, blending, mashing, commercial refining and cooking. While
some degree of processing may be necessary, there are many degrees of processing,
from the simple slicing of a carrot for your salad all the way to the grinding and
bleaching of wheat in order to make white flour. The most significant causes of
malnutrition, other than commercial farming and distribution techniques, are
cooking and processing. In general, proteins in food are the most stable (less damaged by processing),
while vitamins are the most easily damaged. A cucumber loses a quarter of its
vitamin C just by slicing it to make a salad. If the salad stands around for an hour,
the loss goes up to a third, and if it stands for three hours, half its vitamin C will be
gone. Fresh orange juice loses almost a fifth of its vitamin B
1 
within twenty-fourhours, even when refrigerated. Cooking and mashing a potato will diminish vitamin
C by 80 percent. The heat used in cooking foods damages nutrients and typically makes them more
difficult to digest. Cooking even damages protein (the most hardy of nutrients). Consider oatmeal: In the 
Food and Nutrition Encyclopedia, 
Aubrey Ensminger
reported that dry oatmeal contains 14 percent protein, but that figure drops to only 2
percent after it is cooked—a loss of 85 percent. Cooking common vegetables, such
as carrots, can cause losses of 75 percent of the vitamin C, 70 percent of the vitamin
B
1
, 50 percent of the vitamin B
2 
and 60 percent of vitamin B
3
. The higher the heat
and the longer the cooking time, the more nutrients your food loses. Heating food deactivates its enzymes (the cellular machinery that manufactures
all the products our cells make). Although the human body is capable of making its
own enzymes, we also receive enzymes directly from our food. Cooking destroys
these enzymes. Eating cooked foods stresses the body, which must manufacture
extra enzymes in order to digest food and compensate for enzymes lost in cooked
food. By eating cooked foods, you can actually lose more nutrients than you gain. Consuming sufficient enzymes is one reason that eating raw foods is so important. Cooked foods contribute to our epidemic of chronic disease. Although the health benefits of raw foods need emphasis, a few words of caution
are important about raw animal products (such as eggs, meat, fish and poultry). Even
though nature intended us to eat raw foods—animal products included— today’s
hazards of bacterial, viral and parasitic infections make raw animal foods dangerous. Also, raw animal foods must not touch other foods intended to be eaten raw. Even just a few generations ago, people typically ate more raw food than they do
now, and the trend toward cooked and processed foods appears to be worsening. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, over the last century average
consumption of fresh apples declined by more than three-fourths, fresh cabbage by
more than two-thirds and fresh fruit by more than one-third. During that same
period, consumption of processed vegetables went up hundreds of percent and
consumption of processed fruits went up by about 1,000 percent. Eating processed
fruits and vegetables (canned, dried, frozen, etc.) is fundamentally inferior to eating
fresh fruits and vegetables. Eat for Your Future, Too
The nutritionally deprived, cooked and processed foods you eat today will damage
your health tomorrow, as well as the health of your unborn children and
grandchildren in the years to come. This profound concept was demonstrated in the 1940s by Francis Pottenger Jr.,
M.D., and published in his book 
Pottenger’s Cats. More than nine hundred cats,some fed a diet of raw food and some a cooked-food diet, showed striking
differences in their own health as well as the health of their offspring. Within six
months, the cats eating the cooked food developed numerous health problems. Subsequent generations suffered infections, dental problems, vision problems, skin
problems, allergies, arthritis, miscarriages and behavioral changes—including
nervousness, viciousness and violent behavior. Each new generation was sicker than
the last. By the third generation, almost all the cats suffered from allergies and had
trouble reproducing because of miscarriages and stillbirths. Meanwhile, the cats on
the raw-food diet remained healthy and well-behaved, generation after generation. We have much to learn from Pottenger’s work; the most significant (and ominous)
implication is the impact of poor nutrition, supplied by cooked food, on the health of
future generations. Another case dramatically proves the need for raw, fresh foods. During World
War I, sailors aboard a German cruiser, 
Kronprinz Wilhelm, 
ate beef, ham, bacon,
cheese, potatoes, canned vegetables, dried peas/beans, white bread, margarine, tea,
coffee, sugar, condensed milk, cake, champagne and beer. Their entire diet consisted
of cooked and processed foods. After six months on this diet, the crew was
experiencing shortness of breath, paralysis, atrophied muscles, enlarged hearts,
constipation, anemia, and muscle and joint pain. Fifty men could no longer stand. After eight months, 500 were sick, 110 were bedridden, and they were falling at a
rate of four per day. New symptoms included pleurisy, rheumatism, pneumonia and
other infections, and fractures and wounds that would not heal. An emergency stop in Virginia brought a new diet containing some raw fruits and
vegetables. After ten days, the men stopped falling sick; forty-seven had been
discharged. Conditions gradually improved thereafter. Access to fresh, raw food was
all it took. Notably, the only people on the ship who did not get sick were the
officers who had ongoing (if limited) access to raw fruits and vegetables, apparently
providing just enough nutrition to make the difference between health and disease. Think of all the people that you know who suffer from allergies, gum disease,
heart problems, vision problems, arthritis, antisocial behavior, miscarriages and
other health problems. Could malnutrition, perhaps even the malnutrition of their
parents or grandparents before them, be contributing to their problems? Talk to
those people you know who have lived in good health into their eighties, nineties or
even older. Chances are they grew up on farms and ate plenty of raw, real food
during their developmental years. By contrast, consider the deteriorating health of
many people in the baby boomer generation—the first humans to develop eating
processed, “TV dinner” diets starting in the 1950s. Families today often have grandparents that lived (or are still living) into their
nineties, while the next generation is getting sick and dying in their seventies or
sixties. Today’s young people are plagued with problems such as cancer, asthma,diabetes, allergies, obesity, poor eyesight, dyslexia, birth defects and other
problems, and are likely to die at even younger ages. An epidemic of allergic disease
is occurring in industrialized countries, especially in people born after 1960. The
prevalence of asthma has quadrupled over the last two decades. Could something as
simple as nutritional deficiency be a major contributor to violent behavior and
vicious crimes? Many reasons exist to believe so. Many of our young people can no
longer reproduce; some estimates are as high as one in five. These problems were
rare just a few generations ago when our grandparents and great-grandparents were
eating more organic, fresh, and unprocessed raw foods. These problems did not exist
among well-nourished populations such as the Hunzas. How You Eat Matters
Millions of Americans are plagued with heartburn, abdominal pain, bloating, gas,
nausea, bowel difficulties and other digestive problems. Much more than
inconvenient, these are telltale signs of poor digestion—resulting in deficiency and
toxicity, i.e., disease. To eliminate these problems, follow a few simple guidelines,
which will support healthy digestion. You can choose digestion habits that will bring
nutrients into your cells and let wastes out of your body efficiently. The basic steps of good digestion are as follows: First, eat the right combinations
of foods, because certain foods digest better together than others. Next, chew your
food well, to assist in the digestive process. Nutrients must be absorbed properly
through your intestinal walls and transported throughout your body to all the cells
that need them. Finally, wastes must excrete from the body. Any interference with
any of these steps of the digestive process can cause both deficiency and toxicity. Deficiency may occur if food is not properly digested and absorbed. Toxicity occurs
when undigested food “sits” too long, either in the stomach or in the intestines,
where it rots, ferments and putrefies, creating toxins. Although eating a variety of foods is a great idea, we are not designed to digest
them all at the same time. Learning which foods go well with each other is what
“food combining” is all about. Our digestive systems have adapted and evolved over
many thousands of years; until recently humankind did not eat the combinations of
foods that are now “normal” to us. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors often ate foods
directly from their source, usually one at a time because there was no way to
preserve or store them. Our ancestors certainly did not cook up three- or four-course
meals that combine all sorts of different proteins, starches, sugars, fruits and
vegetables. When we are young, our digestive systems are working at peak performance and
indulging in digestive indiscretions may be possible. As we age, digestive capacity
diminishes. Forcing the body to digest incompatible foods results in improperlydigested food that produces dangerous toxins. Also, undigested food deprives us of
essential nutrients. Food combining principles are important because each food category has different
digestive requirements. The requirements for proteins and starches are radically
different; if you eat them both at the same time you cannot digest either one well. Proteins digest in an acid environment, whereas starches digest in an alkaline
environment. Your digestive system has the ability to create either environment, but
cannot create both at the same time. Instead, combine proteins or starches with
vegetables, which are highly nutritious and combine well with either one. Fruit has special digestive requirements and should be eaten alone. Fruit is easy to
digest and is meant to pass through the digestive system quickly. If not, such as
when combined with protein or starch, the fruit sugar ferments in the stomach, often
manifested by bloating and gas. If sweet and acid fruits are to be eaten together, eat
the acid fruits first. Melons should be eaten alone or combined with other melons
because they take even less time to digest than other fruits and should pass quickly
through your digestive system in order to prevent sugar fermentation. To learn about food combinations that work well together and those that do not,
consider a few simple food categories: proteins, starches, vegetables, and three kinds
of fruits (sweet, acid and melons). Remember these simple rules:
 Vegetables with proteins, okay. Vegetables with starches, okay. No protein with starch (avoid meat and potatoes, spaghetti and meatballs,
fish and rice, etc.). Eat fruit alone. (Acid fruits with nuts and seeds, okay. Acid fruits with sweet
fruits, okay, although acid fruits should be consumed first. Eat melons alone,
except with other melons.) Not certain which of your favorite foods fall into which categories? Here are
examples:
Protein
Eggs, meat, fish, fowl, nuts, seeds, avocado, 
coconut, sprouts, milk products. Starch
Corn, wheat, barley, rice, buckwheat, millet, 
oats, dried peas and beans, potatoes, yams, 
squash, flour (pasta/bread/pastries), sugar 
(candy/soft drinks/etc.). Vegetables
Asparagus, tomatoes, okra, green beans, green 
peas, broccoli, bell peppers, brussels sprouts, 
cabbage, lettuce, celery, cucumber, beets, egg-plant, 
artichoke, beets, carrots, cauliflower, chives, 
ginger, garlic, leeks, onion, shallots, scallions. Sweet Fruits
Bananas, currants, figs, dates, raisins, prunes, 
dried fruits, grapes. Lemons, oranges, grapefruits, other citrus Acid Fruits
fruits, kiwi, plum, pineapple, mango, papaya, 
all berries, nectarines, apples, cherries, pears, 
apricots, peaches. Melons
Cantaloupe, casaba, crenshaw, honeydew, 
banana melon, watermelon. Many of our traditional meals are comprised of wrong combinations. What we
think of as a “good meal” is typically a harmful combination of starch and protein—
meat and potatoes, a burger and fries or a cheese pizza. We make the problem worse
by accompanying meals with sugary drinks and desserts; these combinations cause
the food to ferment and putrefy in the digestive system (and the protein/sugar
combination also results in the formation of harmful AGEs—as described in the
sugar section of the Big Four). Learning how to apply proper food combinations to your diet can help your health,
as it did for Andrea. Her high-profile career was interrupted when chronic fatigue
and an autoimmune syndrome called lupus overwhelmed her. Before she came to see
me, Andrea had been sick for five years and had exhausted all the remedies that
modern medicine had to offer—with no help. I encouraged Andrea to keep a food diary so that we could track what she was
eating. The diary revealed that Andrea’s diet consisted of a lot of processed junk
(“make-believe” food). I taught her how to shop for “real” food and suggested
special vitamin supplements. Within one week this woman— who had been
chronically ill for five years—was starting to feel much better. She gained more
energy and more mental clarity, and she began to have hope. Then she reached a
plateau and seemed unable to make further improvement. I suggested that Andrea prepare another food diary, this time looking at the
combinations of foods she was eating. We found out why her recovery process
stalled. Andrea’s meal choices were causing maldigestion and creating toxins that
were inhibiting her recovery. For example, she had gone out to a Sunday brunch and
ate a breakfast consisting of a vegetable omelet (protein and vegetables, okay), hash-
brown potatoes (starch with protein, not okay), toast with jelly (starch and sugar
with protein, not okay), and a fruit cup (fruit with other foods, not okay). Combining
egg protein with the starch of bread and potatoes was bad enough; the fermentation
caused by combining that with sugar from fresh fruit and jelly made things worse. By maldigesting her food, this meal was not supplying Andrea with the nutrition
she thought she was consuming. At the same time her choices were creating toxins
that were poisoning every cell in her body—certainly not what she had in mind when
she ordered brunch. At another meal, Andrea had a sandwich made of organic,
whole-wheat bread, organic turkey and organic lettuce. While definitely better than
the breakfast, combining starch (bread) with protein (turkey) just does not work. I
knew how important it would be for her health if she had a good understanding of
basic food-combining rules. I taught her the simple rules of food combining:vegetables with protein, okay; vegetables with starch, okay; no protein with starch;
eat fruit alone. Andrea put these simple rules to work. Her health continued to improve, and she
went into complete remission of all her chronic health problems—something she
had been unable to do even with good food and supplements alone. Proper food
combining was critical to this woman’s wellness process, which is no surprise,
because improper food combining causes disease. It’s All in the Technique
When you eat cooked foods, eating something raw first is best. Cooked food
appears to be so alien to the human system that it can provoke an immune response,
as if you are being exposed to a virus. Scientist Udo Erasmus, author of 
Fats and
Oils, 
wrote:
[W]hen cooked (or dead) food is eaten, a defense reaction occurs in the tissues
of the stomach and digestive tract. This reaction is similar to the reaction we
find in infections and around tumors and involves the accumulation of white
blood cells, swelling, and a fever-like increase in temperature of the stomach
and intestinal tissues. [As a result, we] experience tiredness after the meal. The
same reaction takes place when half the food is eaten raw, but the cooked part is
eaten first. When the raw part of the food is eaten first, however, this reaction
does not take place. Chewing your food also is important. The style that many people use is “chomp,
chomp, gulp—down the hatch!” Lack of proper chewing can cause maldigestion and
contribute to disease. Many of our modern foods are easy to gulp down, requiring
little help from the teeth (because of excessive cooking, processing and fat content). By contrast, real foods (whole foods and especially raw foods) tend to have more
texture and fiber, and require more chewing. If you want good nutrition to support
good health, you need to eat real food and you need to chew it well. First, your teeth physically mash food into small particles. Then, your saliva
combines enzymes with food as it is being chewed and helps to break down and
digest it. The purpose of chewing is not simply to break the food into small enough
chunks to swallow, although many people eat this way. The purpose of chewing is to
assist the digestive process by grinding your food into small particles and coating
them thoroughly with the digestive enzymes in your saliva. There is an old saying: “Drink what you eat and eat what you drink.” Solid food
should be chewed thoroughly enough that it becomes liquid before you swallow it;
liquid foods (such as juices and soups) should be “chewed” so that the enzymes in
your saliva have time to work on them. Nutrition starts in your mind and in yourmouth. Eat your food with the intent to nourish your body, rather than merely to fill
the void in your stomach. Rethink “Acid Indigestion”
After leaving the mouth, the chewed, enzyme-coated food moves to the stomach
and triggers the release of hydrochloric acid and other digestive chemicals that
further break down the food before it moves into the small intestine. In fact, until
sufficient hydrochloric acid is present and food breakdown takes place, food does
not leave the stomach. If undigested food sits in the stomach too long, it forms
toxins and poisons you. Adequate hydrochloric acid is critical in the digestive
process. People often think that indigestion is caused by “too much acid”—commonly
called “acid indigestion.” While in some rare cases this diagnosis is valid, the
overwhelming majority of acid symptoms originate from the opposite problem—too
little hydrochloric acid. As a result, the food does not digest properly and remains in
the stomach too long, whereupon the food rots and becomes acidic. Rotting food, not
excessive digestive acids, causes an acid burn feeling. Deliberately taking antacid
tablets before you eat, to prevent acid indigestion, is not a good idea. It only makes
a bad situation worse. The best remedies for acid indigestion are to pay attention to
basic food combining principles and to chew your food well. Supplementing with
digestive enzymes also can be helpful. (Note: Supplementing with hydrochloric acid
tablets is also possible, but this much more aggressive measure requires education
and careful monitoring.) Most absorption of nutrients takes place in the small intestine. By the time it
reaches the small intestine, food must have undergone proper digestion. The small
intestine extracts nutrients from the food and they enter the bloodstream. Waste
products move along to the large intestine where they are excreted from the body. Food not properly processed by the time it reaches the small intestine creates a
host of problems. Poorly digested, putrefying, fermenting and rotting food particles
in the intestines create vast amounts of toxins. Undigested food molecules can pass
through the intestinal walls and move directly into the bloodstream. In the
bloodstream the body recognizes these food molecules as foreign. The immune
system may attack them. This response resembles a classic food allergy; poor
digestion of a food can cause you to become allergic to it. Worse, each allergic
reaction damages the intestinal tissue and makes it more permeable, perpetuating the
problem. An increasing number of food allergies and numerous other health
problems may result. These ongoing allergic reactions can overtax and exhaust the
immune system, making you vulnerable to low-grade, chronic infections, such as
chronic sinus infections.Provided the digestive process goes well in the intestines, allowing the proper
nutrients to enter the bloodstream, those nutrients must still go to the proper cells
and then inside those cells. This activity often requires separate “transporter
nutrients” (certain amino acids, for example) that also come from your diet. In other
words, nutrients are used for many purposes, including delivery of other nutrients. This is one example of how nutrients work together in tandem, and why you cannot
afford to miss a single one. Once the necessary nutrients have arrived at the target
cells, they still need to pass through the cell membranes. If the membrane is not
constructed properly (as described in the fats and oils section of the Big Four), new
problems arise. Nutrients can have a difficult time being transported through cell
membranes constructed from “bad” fats and oils (hydrogenated oils, refined
supermarket oils, deep-fried foods and excessive saturated fats). The final step in proper digestion is the elimination of waste products, which must
be eliminated as quickly and efficiently as possible. Otherwise, toxins may reabsorb
back into the body. The best ways to improve bowel function are to eat sufficient
fiber, follow proper food combining and chew food well. If you select a food with
good fiber content and then cook it, however, you may be short-changing yourself. Some of the fibrous structure of food can be lost in the cooking process, so be sure
not to overcook. Many people find it uncomfortable, even embarrassing, to talk about their body’s
waste products. Being comfortable with these natural processes is important because
one of the simplest ways to measure the health of your digestive system is to be
aware of your bowel movements and to note the quality of your stools, in terms of
frequency, texture and odor. Most Americans are constipated; many have a bowel movement only every other
day or think that one movement per day is ideal. Not true. If you do not have
frequent, efficient elimination, then food wastes remain in your intestines, where
they putrefy and poison you. Optimal is two or three bowel movements a day—one,
at the very least. Loose stools or exceptionally dense stools are reflections of serious
problems, especially if they persist. Well-formed and floating is a good rule of
thumb. Excessive gases (stomach or intestinal) or stool odor also may indicate
digestive trouble. Be aware of your elimination process, and if you have a problem,
take steps to remedy it by following the guidelines in this chapter. Choosing the Right 
Dietary Supplements
Eating good foods and digesting them well may not be sufficient to make sure
your cells receive all the nutrients they need every day. Supplementing your dietwith high-quality vitamin, mineral and essential fatty acid supplements is also
important. Supplements have become a necessity in our society for two reasons: First, the
supply of nutrients is down. Intensive commercial farming, depleted soils and food
processing have reduced the nutritional content of our food so dramatically that our
diets no longer contain the nutrients required by our cells to maintain good health. Second, our need for certain nutrients is up because of the effects of environmental
pollution, which puts extra stress on the body. Responding to this stress uses up
essential nutrients, in particular antioxidants, such as vitamins A, C and E. With the
supply of nutrients down and the need for nutrients up, is it any wonder that three
out of four Americans have a diagnosable chronic disease? Supplementation is
necessary to bridge the gap between what we need and what comes from our diet. Most physicians (who, on average, receive only two and a half hours of nutritional
training during four years of medical school) often tell you that supplements are not
necessary— that they make little more than expensive urine. The position often
taken by physicians is that you can get all the nutrition you need to maintain health
by eating a balanced diet of commercially produced foods. You know by now that
this claim is absolutely false. Numerous studies have shown that virtually all Americans are not receiving the
recommended amounts of nutrients on a daily basis. Many nutritional researchers
(myself included) believe that, in our modern world, obtaining the nutrients we need
from diet alone, even if we eat good foods, is impossible. Over the last quarter
century, research has established that a huge gap exists between the small amounts
of nutrients required for preventing overt nutritional-deficiency diseases and the
large amounts of nutrients required to maintain optimal health and fortify our bodies
against disease in general. Dietary supplements help fill the gaps in your nutrition,
especially in those nutrients for which you, as an individual, may have a particularly
high need. One final note: Supplements are not an invitation to eat a poor diet; they
are to be used in addition to healthy foods. Countless people have been cured of chronic health problems by the addition of
dietary supplements. Consider Albert, a man who sought my advice several years
ago. Albert had been suffering from serious, “untreatable” depression for almost a
decade. He had exhausted his resources going to hospitals, clinics and physicians,
but nothing had helped. His life was a living hell, and he was suicidal. At our first meeting I learned that he subsisted on a meager diet consisting mostly
of processed foods and that he was addicted to sugar. I suggested that he eliminate
sugar and incorporate fresh, raw fruits and vegetables into his diet. I recommended a
supplement program of specific vitamins and essential fatty acids. Albert was
skeptical that these seemingly simple suggestions would make any real difference,
considering how many “expert doctors” he had already seen. In less than a weekafter starting the diet and supplement program, Albert called to say that he felt as if
a great burden had been lifted from him. He was no longer feeling suicidal. In all of
his years of treatment for clinical depression, I was the first person who had
suggested that poor nutrition could be the cause. In fact, poor nutrition is the leading
cause of depression (and almost every other disease). Although Albert had been taking nutritional supplements before he saw me, he
had been taking the wrong kinds of supplements (those with low bioactivity, which
means they were in a form that the body could not easily absorb or use). Ultimately,
bioactivity is critical to whether supplements will be effective or not. When
institutions like the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention and the National
Academy of Sciences have performed large-scale population studies to measure the
benefits of taking supplements, they have failed to find any benefits because most
people are taking poor-quality supplements. Quality is everything—in supplements, as well as food. For Albert, quality
supplements (with high bioactivity at the cellular level) made all the difference. Having been a technical consultant to vitamin companies, I can tell you that of all
the vitamin products on the market today, few actually do much good. An investigative report aired on NBC’s 
Today 
show in 1990 determined that 36
percent of the multivitamin brands tested did not dissolve soon enough to be
absorbed and be of use to the body. In fact, some never dissolved at all! These
failures included only the most popular brands. The numbers of failing brands would
have been far higher had all the minor brands been measured. NBC’s testing also
allowed a generous one-hour for the pills to dissolve. Using a more conservative
(and appropriate) time of forty-five minutes would have made almost half the tested
brands fail. Almost half of all vitamin brands are not going to do your body any
good, yet these are what most people use. One reason that these brands fail is
because they are filled with additives, which can constitute up to half of the volume
of the pill. These additives are used as fillers, binders, lubricants, colors and
preservatives, but they can cause real problems—not only interfering with the pills’
ability to dissolve and with nutrient absorption, but also introducing many harmful
contaminants and allergens into your body. Most vitamins marketed today are synthetics and often contain petroleum residues
from their manufacture. Some of these synthetic molecules are fundamentally
different from natural vitamins, which affects the ability of your body to utilize
them. For example, synthetic vitamin E is far less biologically active than vitamin E
derived from natural sources. Synthetic beta-carotene actually can cause a
deficiency of other carotenes. Nutritional supplements are available at different levels of quality and price
because of the variety of manufacturing processes used to create them. Each brand
exhibits different properties and bioactivities. Trying to select a vitamin brand canbe a bewildering experience. I found that comparing two different brands with
exactly the same list of ingredients was not even possible, because how these
ingredients are made is just as important as what is printed on the label. Unless you
are a chemist or you know exactly how the supplement was made (and how the body
metabolizes nutrients), distinguishing the difference between two seemingly
identical products is almost impossible. The initial quality, chemical form, age of
the ingredients, how they were handled (whether or not they were exposed to
moisture, heat, light and oxygen during their storage or manufacture), and what
other chemicals they are combined with in the formula has everything to do with the
bioactivity of the final supplement. When I was recovering from my chemical hypersensitivity, I was unable to take
most vitamins because of their chemical contaminants. Vitamin supplements were
critically important in my recovery process, but first I had to find pills that were
pure, biologically active and uncontaminated. The contaminants in most pills (that
were making me sick) also tax the health of people who are healthy, even if they are
not aware of it. Seeking manufacturers who use quality ingredients along with good
manufacturing practices is vitally important. Most of the supplements on the market
today are not worthwhile, as many do not contain what is professed on the labels,
and many are even toxic—contaminated by substances such as heavy metals, solvent
residues, pesticides, artificial colors and allergens. The supplement market is
unregulated; you simply cannot trust vitamin pills unless you know how they are
made. Even the best-selling brands of vitamins are not something I would take
myself or recommend to others. Although you cannot always trust labels, I have developed some convenient rules
of thumb that help me to quickly evaluate the quality of vitamin supplements. First,
check to see if cheap ingredients can be recognized on the label. Cheap ingredients
usually suggest that the remainder of the product is not of high quality. Does cost
matter? Yes, because it costs more to purchase pure ingredients that are in the more
bioactive forms. For example, calcium carbonate is an ingredient used in many
mineral formulas, supposedly to supply calcium, and it does to a certain degree, but
very inefficiently. Compounds such as calcium citrate, calcium fumarate, or calcium
malate are far more biologically active and are much better choices. However, they
are much more expensive. The uneducated consumer seeking a calcium supplement
will usually choose a formula based on price or appearance or how much calcium it
contains rather than chemical composition and bioactivity. Paying attention to the chemical composition of the nutrients is more important. Some chemical forms are better than others because of their superior bioavailability. The poor ones should be avoided. Below are some guidelines for choosing the
quality of mineral supplements:Poor
Acceptable
Optimal
Bioactivity
Bioactivity
Bioactivity
Carbonate
Aminoate
Ascorbate
(e.g., calcium carbonate)
Chelate
Citrate
Oxide
Gluconate
Fumarate
(e.g., magnesium oxide)
 
Malate
Sulfate
 
Picolinate
Phosphate
 
Succinate
 
 
Tartrate
Now look at the vitamins. The easiest way is to check the B vitamins, specifically
vitamins B
2 
and B
6
. In a high-quality formula, vitamin B
2 
(riboflavin) will also be
accompanied by its more expensive and bioactive form: riboflavin 5-phosphate. Similarly, with vitamin B
6 
(pyridoxine hydrochloride) a high-quality formula will
also contain the more expensive and bioactive form: pyridoxol 5-phosphate. No foolproof way exists to check out a vitamin product without knowing exactly
what is going into the product: how old the ingredients are; how they have been
shipped, handled and stored; and how pure they are. But taking those steps that you
can do on your own will bring you closer to buying an effective product. (Vitamin
products I have selected for my own use can be found in appendix C.)
Tasty Choices
The choices you face as you select a diet each day rests on a combination of the
nutritional content of the foods balanced against your own personal tastes. Taste is
acquired and is based largely on what we are familiar with. A new taste can be
acquired simply by eating something new for a few weeks. I found that I lost my
taste for a lot of the less desirable foods I used to enjoy. While taste and pleasure in
eating are important (and even psychologically beneficial), plenty of healthy foods
are pleasurable to eat. Our productive, fast-paced, modern lifestyles, combined with misinformation
about nutrition, can make the right choices difficult to identify. These lifestyles
create a demand for processed, prepared, speedy “convenience foods,” regardless of
economic status or educational level. More parents than ever are working to support
their families, while fewer and fewer are staying at home to tend gardens or prepare
wholesome meals. Many of us no longer even eat at home. We eat in cafeterias,
restaurants and fast-food chains where processed foods are the norm. The food we ate yesterday is still affecting us today, and the food we eat at our
next meal will affect our awareness, energy level, ability to think, learn and
remember as well as our mood and behavior. What we eat in a week or a month or a
year determines our biological makeup and our health, as well as the health of ourchildren and grandchildren. You must always remember that the biological reason for eating is to supply your
cells with the nutrients they need on a daily basis. Becoming healthy and staying
well with a diet of processed foods laced with sugar and processed oils is
impossible. You are what you eat; your life and health depend on the foods you
choose. You face these choices at every meal you eat for the rest of your life, so
embrace it! You now know how to choose the good from the bad. Avoid the Big
Four, eat “real” living food as nature provides and take high-quality supplements. To
move yourself in the right direction on the nutritional pathway, start now to give
your cells all the nutrients they need, every day, and they will thank you with the gift
of good health.6
T
HE 
T
OXIN 
P
ATHWAY
“[O]ur health is threatened not only by individual chemicals
—deadly or toxic—but even more by the overall chemical load
that the human organism now has to sustain.”
Joseph D. Beasley, M.D., Ph.D. The Kellogg Report
O
ur bodies are under attack every day—from without and from within. We face
more toxic chemicals and man-made poisons in our lives than ever before. We are
weakened by chronic stress, lack of exercise, allergies and eating the wrong foods in
the wrong ways. In these ways, we often sabotage our own defense systems and
invite the toxic enemy inside. If the enemy overpowers us, we fall—often without
recognizing our attackers. Toxicity—from toxins taken into our bodies from the outside or those created
inside our bodies—is one of two reasons that cells malfunction; remember, toxicity
is one of the two causes of disease. To prevent or to reverse disease, we must limit
our exposure to toxins and we must give our bodies what they need to detoxify
themselves. Fortunately, most of this process is within our control. Unfortunately,
the invaders are everywhere—especially in our own homes—and often they are hard
to find. A Living Hell
By the time I received the telephone call from a man who identified himself as
David, his body was losing its battle against an enemy he could not identify. “I have
no idea who you are or why I am calling you,” David said, “but I am going to kill
myself.”
My mind racing and my fear intensifying, I began the longest telephone
conversation of my life—four and a half hours of David’s life story, now a
nightmare. Before the onset of his problems, David had been a partner in a top New
York City advertising firm. He earned a seven-figure income and lived in a posh
community; his wife was a socialite, and his children attended private schools. Life
was good—until he began to experience weakness and fatigue. David went to see his
physician, who did many thousands of dollars worth of testing, only to pronounce
David to be in perfect health. The doctor’s only suggestion was that David was
working too hard and that he should take a vacation. So, David and his wife rented a
house in Hawaii and stayed there for two months. The vacation did not help, and David gradually felt worse. He developed serious
allergies as well as neurological and psychological problems, so he consulted more
doctors. A wealthy man, David went to the best doctors money could buy; they, too,could find nothing wrong, so they referred him to a psychiatrist. Physicians often
assume that if they do not understand what is wrong, their ignorance is not at fault,
but rather the patient is imagining the problem. David’s psychiatrist was equally
baffled, and he referred David back to his physicians. All the while, David’s fatigue and allergic symptoms worsened; he became unable
to continue working and had to resign from his firm. Finally, David was referred to a
clinical ecologist, a physician who specializes in environmentally caused diseases. This doctor diagnosed David as suffering from multiple allergies, chronic fatigue
syndrome and chemical hypersensitivity syndrome. He said David was too
chemically sensitive to continue living in the highly polluted New York area and
suggested he move where air quality was better. David uprooted his family and
moved to an isolated ranch outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. David’s problems continued to worsen; he became dangerously depressed and
irritable, and he had frequent outbursts of anger. David had descended into an
unending nightmare, and he had taken his family with him. The combined impact of
the move and the isolation, coupled with David’s frequent outbursts of anger and his
worsening depression, was too much for David’s wife. She left him and she took the
children with her. Everything that David had ever cared about was gone. He was depressed, isolated
and alone. He became suicidal. At that point, at the advice of a friend, he called me. From the moment David called, I knew (in a general way) what his problem was.
Never_Be_Sick_Again_by_Raymond_Francis.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        In 
Diet for a New America, 
John Robbins described
their typical diet:
[S]awdust laced with ammonia and feathers, shredded newspaper (complete
with all the colors of toxic ink from the Sunday comics and advertising
circulars), “plastic hay,” processed sewage, inedible tallow and grease, poultry
litter, cement dust, and cardboard scraps, not to mention the insecticides,
antibiotics and hormones. Artificial flavors and aromas are added to trick the
poor animals into eating this stuff. The animals are not the only ones tricked. The consumer is “tricked” into buyingthese make-believe foods and into thinking that they contain the nutrients required
to support healthy life. Dr. Joseph Beasley in 
The Kellogg Report 
wrote that
shortchanging nutrients over a period of time “is bound to involve human illness,
particularly chronic conditions such as today’s high-technology medicine can’t seem
to get a handle on. ” Again and again, well-meaning parents go to the store thinking
they are feeding their families fresh, wholesome foods, only to be fooled by the
multitude of offerings of deficient, make-believe food products. Carl Pfeiffer, Ph. D. , M.
The text does not explicitly state the specific deficiencies, but it does mention that the average American diet is deficient in several nutrients, including calcium, zinc, magnesium, vitamins A, E, C, and B6.
According to the text, what are some of the common deficiencies in the average American diet?
The text does not directly state the primary reason, but it implies that it is due to the consumption of processed and cooked foods, as well as the lack of awareness about the importance of eating fresh, organic, and unprocessed foods.
What is the primary reason for the poor nutrition in the American diet, according to the author?
The author is critical of artificial sweeteners and other synthetic additives, as they are not natural and can have negative effects on the body.
What is the author's stance on the use of artificial sweeteners and other synthetic additives in food?
The text states that the RDA standards are arbitrary and do not account for individual differences in nutritional needs, and that many people may be deficient in certain nutrients even if they meet the RDA standards.
What is the main issue with the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) standards?
The author advises that one should look for high-quality supplements that have high bioactivity, and also pay attention to the chemical composition of the ingredients.
What is the author's advice for choosing the right dietary supplements?