And just like Pottenger's cats, we civilized humans in so -called advanced countr ies are losing the ability to breed, our 
willingness (or the energy) to mother our young; we're losing our good humor in the same way Pottenger's degenerated cats 
became bad tempered. As a group we feel so poorly that we desperately need to feel better fas t, and what better way to do that than 
with drugs. Is it any wonder that the United States, the country furthest down the road of industrial food degeneration, spen ds 14 
percent of its gross domestic product on medical services? Any wonder that so many bab ies are born by Cesarean, any wonder that 
so many of our children have crooked teeth needing an orthodontist? The most depressing aspect of this comes into view when 
considering that Pottenger's cats took four generations on perfect food to repair most of the nutritional damage. In the specific case of my daughter, I know some things about the nutritional history of her maternal ancestors. My daughter' s 
grandmother grew up on a Saskatchewan farm. Though they certainly grew their own rich wheat on virgin  semi-arid prairie soil, 
I'm sure the family bought white flour at the store for daily use. Still, there was a garden and a cow producing raw milk and  free-
range fertile eggs and chicken and other animals. There probably were lots of canned vegetables in w inter, canned but still highly 
nutritious because of the fertility of their prairie garden. My mother consequently had perfect teeth until the Great Depress ion 
forced her to live for too many years on lard and white bread. During this time of severe m alnutrition she had her three babies. The first one got the best of her nutritional reserves. The 
second, born after the worst of the malnutrition, was very small and weak and had a hard time growing up. Fortunately for me,  for 
a few years before I (the la st child) was born, the worst of the economic times had past and the family had been living on a farm. There were vegetables and fresh raw milk and fruit. My mother had two good years to rebuild her nutritional reserves. But 
"Grannybell" did not managed to  replace enough. Shortly after I was born my mother lost every one of her teeth all at once. The 
bone just disappeared around them. Thus, I was born deficient. And my childhood and adolescent nutrition was poor too: soda crackers, pasteurized processe d 
artificial cheese, evaporated milk from cans, hotdogs and canned beans, hotdogs and cabbage. It wasn't until I was pregnant w ith 
my first baby that I started to straighten up my diet. I continued eating very well after my first daughter, so my youngest d aughter 
had another three years of good diet to draw on. Thus both my own daughters got a somewhat better start than I had had. My teeth were not as good as my mother's had been before those years of malnutrition took them all. Instead of perfect strai ght 
undecayed teeth like a healthy farm girl should have, mine were somewhat crowded, with numerous cavities. My jaw bone had not  
received enough minerals to develop to its full size. My pelvic girdle also was smaller than my mother's was. I had had a poo r 
start. My daughters did better. The older one (the first child typically gets the best of the nutritional reserves) has such a wide jaw that 
there are small spaces between her teeth. My second daughter has only one crooked tooth, she has wider, more solid hip s, stronger 
bones and a broader face than I do. If my younger daughter will but from this point in her life, eat perfectly and choose her  food 
wisely to responsibly avoid empty calories and maximize her ratio of nutrition to calories, her daughter (if she gives us 
granddaughters as her older sister already has done) may exhibit the perfect physiology that her genes carry. Along the lines of helping you avoid empty calories I will give you some information about various common foods that most 
people don' t know and that most books about food and health don't tell, or misunderstand. Butter, Margarine and Fats in General. Recently, enormous propaganda has been generated against eating butter. Its been smeared in the health magazines as a 
saturated ani mal fat, one containing that evil substance, cholesterol. Many people are now avoiding it and instead, using 
margarine. Composition of Oils  
  Saturated  Monosaturated  Unsaturated  
Butter  66% 30% 4% 
Coconut Oil  87% 6% 2% 
Cottonseed Oil  26% 18% 52% 
Olive Oil  13% 74% 8% 
Palm Oil  49% 37% 9% 
Soybean Oil  14% 24% 58% 
Sunflower Oil  4% 8% 83% 
Safflower Oil  3% 5% 87% 
Sesame Oil  5% 9% 80% 
Peanut Oil  6% 12% 76% 
Corn Oil  3% 7% 84% 
 
This is a major and serious misunderstanding. First of all, margarine is almost indigestible, chemically very much like shortening –
an artificially saturated or hydrogenated vegetable fat. Hydrogenated fats can't be properly broken down by the body's digest ive 
enzymes, adding to the body's toxic load. Margarine, bei ng a chemically -treated vegetable oil with artificial yellow color and 
artificial flavorings to make it seem like butter, also releases free radicals in the body that accelerate ageing. So, to avo id the 
dangers of eating cholesterol -containing butter, peop le eat something far worse for them! There are severe inconsistencies with the entire "cholesterol -is-evil" theory. Ethnic groups like the Danes, who eat enormous 
quantities of cholesterol -containing foods, have little circulatory disease. Actually, the li ver itself produces cholesterol; it's 
presence in the blood is an important part of the body chemistry. Cholesterol only becomes a problem because of deranged body  
chemistry due to the kind of overall malnutrition Americans usually experience on their junk  food diets. Avoiding cholesterol in 
foods does little good, but eating a low -fat, low -sugar, complex -carbohydrate (whole foods) diet high in minerals does lower blood 
cholesterol enormously. Actually, high quality fresh (not rancid) butter in moderate qu antities is about the finest fat a person could eat. But high quality 
butter is almost unobtainable. First of all, it has to be raw, made from unpasteurized cream. Second, butter can contain very  high 
levels of fat -soluble vitamins, but doesn't have to. Vi tamin -rich butter's color is naturally bright yellow, almost orange. This color 
does not come from a test tube. Pale yellow butter as is found in the commercial trade was probably almost white before it wa s 
artificially tinted. Butter from grass -pastured c ows naturally changes from yellow -orange to white and back again through the year 
as the seasons change. Spring grass, growing in the most intense sunlight of the year contains very high levels of chlorophyl l and 
vitamins. Cows eating this grass put high l evels of vitamins A and D into their cream, evidenced by the orange color of vitamin A. By July, natural butter has degraded to medium -yellow in color. By August, it is pale yellow. Industrial dairy cows fed exclusively 
on hay or artificial, processed feed s (lacking in these vitamins), produce butterfat that is almost white. I prefer to obtain my butter from a neighbor who has several dairy cows grazing on fertile bottom land pasture. We always fre eze a 
year's supply in late spring when butter is at its be st. Interestingly, that is also the time of year when my neighbor gets the most 
production from her cows and is most willing to part with 25 pounds of extra butter. In general, fats are poor foods that should be avoided. Their ratio of nutrition to calori es is absolutely the worst of all food types, 
except perhaps for pure white sugar, which is all calories and absolutely no nutrition (this is also true for other forms of sugar. Honey, too, contains almost no nutrition.). Gram for gram, fats contain many m ore calories than do sugars or starches. Yet gram 
for gram, fats contain virtually no nutrition except for small quantities of essential fatty acids. The perverse reason people like to eat fats is that they are very hard to digest and greatly slow the dige stive action of the stomach. Another way of saying that is that they have a very high satiety value. Fats make a person feel full for a long time because their 
presence in the stomach makes it churn and churn and churn. Fats coat proteins and starches and delay their digestion, often 
causing them to begin fermenting (starches) or putrefying (proteins) in the digestive tract. The best fats contain high levels of monosaturated vegetable oils that have never been exposed to heat or chemicals –like virgin 
olive oil. Use small quantities of olive oil for salad dressing. Monosaturated fats also have far less tendency to go rancid than a ny 
other type. Vegetable oils with high proportions of unsaturated fats, the kind that all the authorities push because they con tain no 
cholesterol, go rancid rapidly upon very brief exposure to air. The danger here is that rancidity in vegetable oil is virtual ly 
unnoticeable. Rancid animal fat on the other hand, smells "off." Eating rancid oil is a sure -fire way to accelerate ageing,  invite 
degenerative conditions in general, and enhance the likelihood of cancer. I recommend that you use only high -quality virgin olive 
oil, the only generally -available fat that is largely monosaturated. (Pearson and Shaw, 1983)  
When you buy vegetable o il, even olive oil, get small bottles so you use them up before the oil has much time being exposed to air 
(as you use the oil air fills the bottle) or, if you buy olive oil in a large can to save money, immediately upon opening it,  transfer 
the oil to pin t jars filled to the very brim to exclude virtually all air, and seal the jars securely. In either case, keep now -opened, in -
use small bottles of oil in the refrigerator because rancidity is simply the combination of oil with oxygen from the air and this 
chemical reaction is accelerated at warmer temperatures and slowed greatly at cold ones. Chemical reactions typically double in speed with every 10 degrees C. increase in temperature. So oil goes rancid about six t imes 
faster at normal room temperature than  it does in the fridge. If you'll think about the implications of this data you'll see there are 
two powerful reasons not to fry food. One, the food is coated with oil and gains in satiety value at the expense of becoming 
relatively indigestible and produc tive of toxemia. Secondly, if frying occurs at 150 degrees Centigrade and normal room 
temperature is 20 degrees Centigrade, then oil goes rancid 2 to the 13th power faster in the frying pan, or about 8,200 times  faster. Heating oil for only ten minutes in a hot skillet induces as much rancidity as about 6 weeks of sitting open and exposed to air at 
room temperature. Think about that the next time you're tempted to eat something from a fast food restaurant where the hot fa t in 
the deep fryer has been reactin g with oxygen all day, or even for several days. Back to butter, where we started. If you must have something traditionally northern European on your bread, you are far bette r off 
to use butter, not margarine. However, Mediterranean peoples traditionally d ip their bread in high -quality extra -virgin olive oil that 
smells and tastes like olives. It’s delicious, why not try it. But best yet, put low -sugar fruit preserves on your toast or develop a 
taste for dry toast. Probably the finest use for butter is melt ed over steamed vegetables. This way only small quantities are needed 
and the fat goes on something that is otherwise very easy to digest so its presence will not produce as many toxins in the di gestive 
tract. Milk, Meat, And Other Protein Foods  
Speaking of butter, how about milk? The dairy lobby is very powerful in North America. Its political clout and campaign 
contributions have the governments of both the United States and especially that of Canada eating out of its hand (literally) , 
providing the dair y industry with price supports. Because of these price supports, in Canada cheese costs half again more than it 
does in the United States. The dairy lobby is also very cozy with the medical profession so licensed nutritionists constantly  
bombard us with "d rink milk" and "cheese is good for you" propaganda. And people naturally like dairy foods. They taste good and are fat -rich with a high satiety value. Dairy makes you feel full for a 
long time. Dairy is also high in protein; protein is hard to digest and this too keeps one feeling full for a long time. But many 
people, especially those from cultures who traditionally (genetically) didn't have dairy cows, particularly Africans, Asians and 
Jews, just do not produce the enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. Some individuals belonging to these groups can digest goats 
milk. Some can't digest any kind except human breast milk. And some can digest fermented milk products like yogurt and kiefer . Whenever one eats a protein food that is not fully digestible, it put refies in the digestive tract, with all the bad consequences 
previously described. But no one, absolutely no one can fully digest pasteurized cows milk, which is what most people use because they have been ma de 
to fear cow -transmitted diseases and/or they are forced to use pasteurized dairy products by health authorities. I suspect drinking 
pasteurized milk or eating cheese made from pasteurized milk is one of the reasons so many people develop allergic reactions to 
milk. Yet many states do not allow unpast eurized dairy to be sold, even privately between neighbors. To explain all this, I first 
have to explain a bit more about protein digestion in general and then talk about allergies and how they can be created. Proteins are long, complex molecules, intricat e chains whose individual links are amino acids. Proteins are the very stuff of life. All living protoplasm, animal or plant, is largely composed of proteins. There are virtually an infinite number of different proteins 
but all are composed of the same few  dozen amino acids hooked together in highly variable patterns. Amino acids themselves are 
highly complex organic molecules too. The human body custom -assembles all its proteins from amino acids derived from 
digesting protein foods, and can also manufactur e small quantities of certain of its own amino acids to order, but there are eight 
amino acids it cannot make and these are for that reason called essential amino acids. Essential amino acids must be containe d in 
the food we eat. . Few proteins are water s oluble. When we eat proteins the digestive apparatus must first break them down into their water -soluble 
components, amino acids, so these can pass into the blood and then be reassembled into the various proteins the body uses. Th e 
body has an interesting mechanism to digest proteins; it uses enzymes. An enzyme is like the key for a lock. It is a complex 
molecule that latches to a protein molecule and then breaks it apart into amino acids. Then the enzyme finds yet another prot ein 
molecule to free. Enzymes are efficient, reusable many many times. Enzymes that digest proteins are effective only in the very acid environment of the stomach, are manufactured by the pancreas  and 
are released when protein foods are present. The stomach then releases hydrochloric acid and churns away like a washing machine, 
mixing the enzymes and the acid with the proteins until everything has digested. So far so good. That's how its supposed to be. But. Dr. Henry Bieler, who wrote Food Is Your Best Medicine, came up with the 
finest metaphor I know of to explain how protein digestion goes wrong. He compared all proteins to the white of an egg (which is 
actually a form of protein). When raw and liquid, the long chains of albumen (egg white) proteins are in their natural form. Howeve r, cook the egg and the egg white both solidifies and becomes smaller. What has happened is that the protein chains have 
shriveled and literally tied themselves into knots. Once this happens, pancreatic enzymes no longer fit and cannot separate a ll the 
amino acids. Cooked proteins may churn and churn and churn in the presence of acid and pancreatic enzymes but they will not 
digest completely. Part becomes water -soluble; part does not. But, indigestible protein is still subject to an undesirable form of cons umption in the gut. Various bacteria make their home in our 
airless, warm intestines. Some of these live on protein. In the process of consuming undigested proteins, they release highly  toxic 
substances. They poison us. What is true of the white of an egg  is also true of flesh foods and dairy. Raw meat and raw fish are actually easily digestible foods 
and if not wrongly combined will not produce toxemia in a person that still has a strong pancreas. However, eating raw meat a nd 
fish can be a dicey propositi on, both for reasons of cultural sensibility (people think it is disgusting) and because there may be 
living parasites in uncooked flesh that can attack, sicken and even kill people. It has been argued that a healthy stomach co ntaining 
its proper degree of  acidity provides an impenetrable barrier to parasites. Perhaps. But how many of us are that healthy these days? Cooked flesh and fish seems more delicious to our refined, civilized sensibilities, but are a poor food. In my household we have no moral obje ction to eating meat. We do have an ethical objection in that meat eating does not 
contribute to our health. But still, we do eat it. A few times a year, for traditional celebrations we may invite the childre n over and 
cook a turkey. A few times for Thanks giving when the children were going through their holier -than-thou vegetarian stage, I 
purchased the largest, thickest porterhouse steak I could find at the natural meat store and ate it medium -rare, with relish. It was 
delicious. It made me feel full for hours and hours and hours. I stayed flat on the couch and groggily worked on digesting it all 
evening. After that I'd had enough of meat to last for six months. When milk is pasteurized, the proteins in it are also altered in structure. Not so severely as  egg white is altered by cooking because 
pasteurization happens at a lower temperature. But altered none the less. And made less digestible. Pasteurizing also makes m ilk 
calcium far less assimilable. That's ironic because so many people are drinking milk b ecause they fear they need more calcium to 
avoid osteoporosis and to give their children good teeth. What pasteurized milk actually does to their children is make them 
calcium deficient and makes the children toxic, provoking many colds, ear infections, si nusitis, inflammations of the tonsils and 
lung infections, and, induces an allergy to milk in the children. The Development Of Allergies  
There are three ways a body can become allergic. (1) It can have a genetic predisposition for a specific allergy to s tart with. (2) It 
can be repeatedly exposed to an irritating substance such as pollen when, at the same time, the body's mechanism for dealing with 
irritations is weakened. Generally weak adrenals causes this because the adrenal's job is to produce hormone s that reduce 
inflammation. Once the irritating substance succeeds at producing a significant inflammation, a secondary reaction may be set  up, 
called an allergy. Once established, an allergy is very hard to get rid of. (3) in a way very similar to the sec ond, but instead of being irritated by an external substance, it is irritated by repeatedly failing to 
properly, fully digest something. Pasteurized milk for example, basically impossible to completely digest even in its low -fat form, 
often sets up an alle rgy that applies to other forms of cows milk, even raw, unpasteurized cows milk or yogurt. Eating too much 
white flour can eventually set off a wheat allergy. My husband developed a severe allergy to barley after drinking too much h ome-
brewed beer; he also  became highly intolerant to alcohol. Now he has allergic reactions to both alcohol and barley. And gets far 
sicker from drinking beer (two separate allergies) than from wheat beer, hard liquor or wine (only one allergy). Eating too much of any single foo d, or repeatedly eating too much of an otherwise very good food at one time, can eventually 
overwhelm the body's ability to digest it fully. Then, the finest whole food products may set up an allergic reaction. Worse,  this 
allergic reaction itself subseque ntly prevents proper digestion even when only moderate quantities are eaten. An allergy may not be recognized as an allergy because it may not manifest as the instant skin rash or stuffy nose or swollen  
glands or sticky eyes. that people usually think of when they think "allergic reaction." Food allergies can cause many kinds of 
symptoms, from sinusitis to psychosis, from asthma to arthritis, from hyperactivity to depression, insomnia to narcolepsy –and 
commonly the symptoms don't manifest immediately after  eating. Frequently, allergic reactions are so low grade as to be 
unnoticeable and may not produce an observable condition until many years of their grinding down the vital force has passed. When the condition finally appears it is hard to associate it wit h some food that has been consumed for years, apparently with 
impunity. Thus it is that many North Americans have developed allergies to wheat, dairy, soy products (because many soy foods are very 
hard to digest), corn and eggs. These are such common, wide spread, frequently found allergies that anyone considering a dietary 
cause of their complaints might just cut all these foods out of the diet for a few weeks just to see what happens. And indivi duals 
may be allergic to anything from broccoli to bacon, stra wberries to bean sprouts. Unraveling food allergies sometimes requires the 
deductions of a Sherlock Holmes. However, food allergies are very easy to cure if you can get the suffered to take the medicine. Inevitably, allergic reaction s vanish 
in about five days of abstinence. Anyone with sufficient self -discipline to water fast for five days can cure themselves of all food 
allergies at one step. Then, by a controlled, gradual reintroduction of foods, they can discover which individual items cause  
trouble. Se e Coca's Pulse Test in the Appendix where you'll find step -by-step instructions for allergy testing that are less rigorous, 
not requiring a preliminary fast. Flour, And Other Matters Relating To Seeds  
One of the largest degradations to human health was ca used by the roller mill. This apparently profitable machine permitted the 
miller to efficiently separate wheat flour into three components: bran, germ and endosperm. Since bread made without bran and  
germ is lighter and appears more "upper class" it became  instantly popular. Flour without germ and bran also had an industrial 
application –it could be stored virtually forever without being infested by insects because white flour does not contain enough 
nutrition to support life. Most health conscious people ar e aware that white flour products won't support healthful human life 
either. Essentially, white flour's effect on humans is another demonstration of Health = Nutrition / Calories. When the bran and germ  are 
discarded, remaining are the calories and much o f the protein, lacking are many vitamins and minerals and other vital nutritional 
substances. Whole wheat bread has been called the staff of life. In ages past, healthy cultures have made bread the predominant staple in  their 
diet. Does that mean you can just go to the bakery and buy whole grain bread, or go to the health food store and buy organically 
grown whole wheat flour, bake your own, and be as healthy as the ancients? Sorry, the answer is almost certainly no. There ar e 
pitfalls, many of them, waiti ng for the unwary. White flour has one other advantage over whole wheat flour. It not only remains free of insect infestation, it doesn't become  stale 
(meaning rancid). In the wheat germ (where the embryo resides) there is considerable oil, containing amon g other things, about the 
best natural source of vitamin E. This oil is highly unsaturated and once the seed is ground the oil goes rancid in a matter of days. Whole wheat flour kept on the unrefrigerated shelf of the store is almost certainly rancid. A lo t of its other vitamin content has 
been oxidized too. If the wheat flour had flowed directly from the grinder into an airtight sack and from there directly to t he 
freezer, if it had been flash frozen and kept extremely cold, it might have a storage life of  some months. Of course that was not the 
case. Maybe you're lucky and your health food store is one of the very few that has its own small -scale flour mill and grinds daily. Probably not. How about your baker's whole wheat bread? Where does the baker get flour? From the wholesaler's or distributor's warehouse! In 
fifty pound kraftpaper sacks! How much time had elapsed from milling to wholesaler to baker to baking? The answer has to be i n 
the order of magnitude of weeks. And it might be months. Was the flou r stored frozen? Or airtight? Of course not. If you want bread made from freshly ground flour you are almost certainly have to grind and bake it yourself. Is it worth the  
trouble? You bet. Once you've tasted real bread you'll instantly see by comparison wh at stale, rancid whole wheat flour tastes like. Freshly ground flour makes bread that can be the staff of life and can enormously upgrade your health –if the wheat you use is any 
good. But before we talk about wheat quality, a more few words of warning. If you think wheat goes rancid rapidly, rye is even worse. Rye flour goes bad so fast that when you buy it in the store it usually is the rye equivalent of white wheat flour. The germ has been 
removed. The bag may not say so. But it probably has. If you are g oing to make rye breads, even more reason to grind your own. Corn meal from the grocery store has usually been degerminated too. If it hasn't been, the oil in the seed's germ has probabl y gone 
rancid. Grinding flour at home is easy these days. There is an  abundance of at -home milling products and no shortage of hype about them. You'll find staunch advocates of stone mills. These produce the finest -textured flour, but are costly. The sales pitch is that stones 
grind at low temperature and do not damage the oils (remember the development of rancidity is a function of temperature) or the 
vitamins, which are also destroyed at high temperature. This assertion is half true. If you are going to store your flour it is far better 
to grind it cool. However, if you ar e, as we do, going to immediately bake your flour, what difference does it make if it gets a little 
warm before baking. That only accelerates the action of the yeast. On the negative side, stone mills grind slowly and are very fussy about which grains the y will grind. If the cereal is a bit moist or if 
the seed being ground is a little bit oily, the mill becomes instantly blocked. Steel burr mills grind fast and coarsely and are inexpensive. Coarse flour makes heavy bread. The metal grinding faces tend t o 
wear out and have to be replaced occasionally –if they can be replaced. Breads on the heavy side are still delicious; for many years 
I made bread with an inexpensive steel burr mill attachment that came with my juicer. Some steel burr mills will also grin d oily seed like sesame and sunflower. However, oily seeds can be ground far more easily half -
a-cup at a time in a little inexpensive electric spice/coffee mill, the sort with a single fast -spinning propeller. I currently think the best compromise are hamm ermills. The grain dribbles into a chamber full of fast -spinning teeth that literally 
pound the grain into powder. Since air flows through with the grain the flour is not heated very much. This type of mill is s mall, 
very fast, intermediate in price betwee n steel mills and stone mill, lasts a long time, but when grinding, sounds like a Boeing 747 
about to take off. It is essential to wear hearing protectors when using it. Awareness of bread quality is growing. One excellent new U.S. business, called Great H arvest Bakery is a fast -growing national 
franchise chain. They bake and sell only whole grain breads; all their wheat flour is freshly ground daily on the premises in  the 
back. Unfortunately, as of the writing of this book, they do not grind their rye flou r but bring it in sacks. I can't recommend their 
rye breads. The founder of Great Harvest is a knowledgeable buyer who fully understands my next topic, which is that wheat is  not 
wheat. There are great differences between hard bread wheats; being organica lly grown is no cure -all for making good or nutritious bread. Great Harvest understands this and uses top quality grain that is also Organic. When I first stated making my own bread from my own at -home -ground flour I was puzzled by variations in the dough . Sometimes the bread rose well and was spongy after baking like I wanted it to be. Sometimes it kneaded stickily and ended up flat 
and crumbly like a cake. Since I had done everything the same way except that I may have bought my wheat berries from differ ent 
health food stores, I began to investigate the subject of wheat quality. The element in the cereal that forms the rubbery sponge in risen bread so it doesn't crumble and rises high without collapsin g, is 
gluten. The word glue derives from gluten. The g luten content of various wheats varies. Bread bakers use "hard wheat" because of 
its high gluten content. Gluten is a protein and gluten comprises most of the protein in bread wheat; the protein content and  the 
gluten content are almost identical. Try thi s. Ask your health food store buyer or owner what the protein content is of the hard red wheat seeds they're selling. You'll 
almost certainly get a puzzled look and your answer will almost certainly be, "We have Organic and conventional." Demand that  
the store buyer ask this question of their distributor/wholesaler and then report back to you. If the distributor deigns to answer , the 
answer will be the same –I sell Organic or conventional hard red wheat. Period. When I got these non -answers I looked further and 
discovered that hard bread wheats run from about 12 percent protein to about 19 percent and this difference has everything to  do 
with the soil fertility (and to an extent the amount of rainfall during the season), and almost nothing to do with Organic or 
conventional. This difference also has everything to do with how your dough behaves and how your bread comes out. And how well your bread 
nourishes you. Thirteen percent wheat will not make a decent loaf - fourteen percent is generally considered #2 qu ality and 
comprises the bulk of cheap bread grain. When you hear in the financial news that a bushel of wheat is selling for a certain price, 
they mean #2. Bakers compete for higher protein lots and pay far higher prices for more protein. We prefer our br ead about 25% rye, but rye contains no gluten at all. Mix any rye flour into fourteen percent wheat flour and the 
dough becomes very heavy, won't rise, and after baking, crumbles. So I kept looking for better grain and finally discovered a  
knowledgeable la dy that sold flour mills and who also was a serious baker herself. She had located a source of quality wheat with 
an assayed protein content and sold it by the 50 pound sack. When I asked her if her wheat was Organic she said it was either  
sixteen or seven teen percent protein depending on whether you wanted hard red spring wheat or hard white spring wheat. Organic 
or conventional? I persisted. No, she said. High protein! So, I said to myself, since protein content is a function of soil fertility and since my body needs protein, I figured I am better off 
eating the best quality wheat, pesticide/herbicide residues (if there are any) be damned. Think about it! The difference betw een 
seventeen percent and fourteen percent protein is about 25 percent. That perce ntage difference is the key threshold of nutritional 
deficiency that makes teeth fall out. We can't afford to accept 25% degradations in our nutritional quality in something that  we eat 
every day and that forms the very basis of our dietary. Please unders tand here that I am not saying that high protein wheats can't be grown organically. They certainly can. The founder of 
Great Harvest Bakery performs a valuable service locating and securing high -protein lots of organically grown wheats for his 
outlets. But  often as not Organic products are no more nourishing than those grown with chemicals. Until the buyers at Organic 
whole food wholesalers get better educated about grain, obtaining one's personal milling stock from them will be a dicey 
proposition. Sometim es Organic cereal can be far worse than conventional. To make a cereal Organic is a negative definition; if it hasn't had 
chemicals, then its Organic. Grain is one of the few foods that will still produce economic yields of low quality seed on ext remely 
infertile soil or when half -smothered in weeds because herbicides weren't used for reasons of ideological purity. Vegetables will 
hardly produce anything under those conditions; carelessly grown fruits and vegetables are inevitably small, misshapen, 
unmarket able. But seed cleaning equipment can remove the contamination of weed seeds in cereal grains (at a cost.) The price the farmer receives for Organic cereal grain is much higher, so it is possible to accept rather low yields or expen d more 
money for cleanin g out high levels of weed seeds from the field -run harvest, and still make a good profit. A lousy Organic cereal 
crop like this might even make a higher profit because the farmer has been spared the expense of fertilization, of rotation, of weed 
control. I  remember once I bought a sack of Organic whole oats that were the smallest, most shriveled, bitterest oats I've ever tried 
to eat. We ended up throwing out that tiny, light (lacking density) seed in favor of using the "conventional" whole oats that  were 
plump, heavy and sweet. Wheat is not the only cereal that is damaged by industrial milling. So are oats. Most consumers have never seen whole oats; t hey 
look very much like wheat berries. But rolled oats become rancid and stale on the shelf much like wheat  flour on the shelf. Another pitfall about using whole grains is that to be nutritious they must still be fresh enough to sprout vigorously. A see d is a 
package of food surrounding an embryo. The living embryo is waiting for the right conditions (temperatu re and moisture) to begin 
sprouting. Sprouting means the embryo begins eating up stored food and making a plant out of it. All foods are damaged by 
exposure to oxygen, so to protect the embryo's food supply, the seed is surrounded by a virtually airtight s eed coat that permits 
only enough oxygen to enter for the embryo's respiration (yes, seeds breathe slowly). Often the embryo is located at the edge  of the 
seed and has its own air intake port. When the seed coat is removed or damaged, the innards are expos ed to air and begin 
deteriorating rapidly. In the case of oats, especially rapidly, because oats are the only grass -based cereal that contains large 
quantities of oil –five percent oil, more or less. That's why oats "stick to your ribs." Rolled oats become stale and lose their flavor 
(and nutritional content) and perhaps become rancid very rapidly. So we make porridge from whole oat groats that we coarsely 
grind to grits (steel -cut oats) in an electric seed/spice mill just before cooking. It is not easy to cook oat grits. They take a lot longer than rolled oats and if not done exactly to the recipe I'm about to give you, 
will almost inevitably stick to the pot badly and may also froth over and mess the stove. Here's how to cook them. Coarsely g rind 
(like cor n meal) your whole oats until you have one cup of oat grits. Bring exactly four cups of water (no salt) to a very hard boil a t 
your highest heat. You may add a handful of raisins. Light or turn on a second, small -sized burner on the stove and set it as low  as 
possible. Into the fast boiling water, slowly pour the ground oats, stirring continuously. Take about 30 seconds to pour it a ll or 
you'll make clumps. Keep on the high heat until the water again boils vigorously. Suddenly, the mixture will begin rising  in the pot 
and will try to pour all over the stove. This means it is all at boiling temperature again. Quickly move the pot to the low b urner; 
that instantly stops the frothing. Then cover. Let the porridge cook for 30 minutes, stirring once or twice to p revent sticking. Then, 
keeping it covered, turn off the heat. They can be eaten at this point but I think it is better to let the oats finish soakin g on the stove 
for at least two to four hours. Then reheat in a double boiler. We usually start a pot of oa ts at bedtime for the next morning. See why people prefer the convenience of using rolled oats? But 
once you've eaten oats made right, you'll never prefer the flavor of rolled oats again. And if the human body has any natural  
method of assaying nutritional  content, it is flavor. Nutritionally, millet is almost the same story as oats. Millet seed is protected by a very hard hull. Cooking unhulled millet  is 
almost impossible. After hours of boiling the small round seeds will still be hard and the hulls remai n entirely indigestible. Worse, 
the half -round hulls (they split eventually) stick in your teeth. But prehulled millet, sitting in the sack for weeks and months, lose s 
a lot of nutrition and tastes very second -rate compared to freshly -hulled millet. It is possible to buy unhulled millet, usually by 
special order from the health food distributor –if you'll take a whole sack. Millet can be hulled at home in small batches. Here's 
how we figured out how to do it. There probably are better ways. Using a cheap ste el-burr flour mill, set the burrs just far enough apart that the seed is ground to grits, but not flour. This pops the 
hulls loose. An old mill with worn -out burrs works great for this job. Then you have to get some hand seed cleaning screens just 
large en ough to pass the grits but not pass the hulls (most of them). Window screen or other hardware cloths won't work. Seed 
cleaning screens come in increments of 1/128 inch; we use a 6/64" round screen. Other batches of millet might work better wit h a 
screen on e step larger or smaller. It will take you a little ingenuity to find hand -held screens. They're used by seed companies and 
farmers to clean small batches of seed for inspection and are usually about one square foot in size with a quality wooden fra me. Larger frames made of the same screening material are used in big seed cleaning machines. (The hulls could also be winnowed out 
by repeatedly pouring the grit/hulls mixture back and forth between two buckets in a gentle breeze.) After you've screened out most  of the hulls, the rest will rinse out, floating off as you wash the grain prior to cooking. We never 
hull more than enough millet for two or three meals and keep the uncooked (unwashed) millet in the freezer in an airtight jar . It is 
interesting how peopl e will accept poor nutrition and its consequent sickness as the price of convenience. If you eat much buckwheat you should also figure out how to hull (sometimes called groating) it yourself. Someone should writ e a 
thorough book on the home milling of cer eals. And perhaps sell the equipment by mail. Probably would be a good little homestead 
business. Something else you need to keep in mind about seed. Even though the embryo's food supply is protected by the seed coat, it st ill 
slowly deteriorates, steadily  oxidizing and losing nutritional value. Eventually old seed looses the ability to sprout. The decline in 
germination ability matches a decline in nutritional quality. Any seed you are going to use for eating should possess the abi lity to 
sprout, strongly and rapidly. (After you've comparatively sprouted a few grain samples, you'll know what I mean by this.) Fortunately, cereal grains usually sprout well for quite a few years after harvest if they have been stored cool and dry. Eat ing dead 
or near -dead seed s will help move you closer to the same condition yourself. Finally, one more warning about buying store bread. Salt -free bread tastes "funny" to most people. It bakes fine, salt is not 
necessary to the leavening process, but no bakery could stay in busine ss without salting their bread. The standard level of salt is 
two percent by weight. That is quite a lot! Two percent equals one teaspoonful per pound. I'll have more to say about the evi ls of 
salt later on. I imagine some of my readers are feeling a littl e overwhelmed by all these warnings and "beware ofs," and intricacies. They are 
used to taking no responsibility for securing their own food supply quality and have come to expect the "system" to protect t hem. I 
believe it is not because of lack of governm ent intervention, but because of government intervention itself, our food system is very 
perverse. Until our mass consciousness changes, if you wish to make yourself and your family truly healthy, you are going to have 
to take charge and become quite a dis criminating shopper. Unconscious consumers are on a rapid road to the total unconsciousness 
of death. And again, let me remind you here that this one small book cannot contain everything you should know. The bibliography at the  
end of should become your gu ide to earning your post -graduate education in nutritional health. Freshness Of Fruits And Vegetables   
Most people do not realize the crucial importance of freshness when it comes to produce. In the same way that seeds gradually  die, 
fruits and vegetables  go through a similar process as their nutritional content gradually oxidizes or is broken down by the 
vegetables own enzymes, but vegetables lose nutrition hundreds of times more rapidly than cereals. Produce was recently part of a 
living plant. It was co nnected to the vascular system of a plant and with few exceptions, is not intended by nature to remain intact 
after being cut. A lettuce or a zucchini was entirely alive at the moment of harvest, but from that point, its cells begin to  die. Even 
if it is n ot yet attacked by bacteria, molds and fungi, its own internal enzymes have begun breaking down its own substances. Vegetables, especially leafy vegetables, are far more critical in this respect than most ripe fruits. All, however, deteriora te much 
like ra dioactive material; they have a sort of half -life. The mineral content is stable, but in respect to the vitamins and enzymes and 
other complex organic components, each time period or "half life" results in the loss of half the nutrition. Suppose a lettuc e has a 
half life of 48 hours, two days after harvest only 50 percent of the original nutrition remains. After two more days, half th e 
remaining half is gone and only 25 percent is left. After two more days half of that 25 percent is lost. Thus six days afte r harvest 
and a lettuce contains only bout 12 percent of its original nutrition. A two day half -life is only hypothetical. Those types of 
produce I classify as very perishable probably do have a half -life of from 36 to 48 hours. Moderately perishable produ ce has a half 
life of about 72 hours; durable types of produce have half lives of 96 hours or longer. Vegetable Storage Potential  
 Very Perishable  Moderately Perishable  Durable  
lettuce  zucchini  apple  
spinach  eggplant  squash  
Chinese cabbage  sweet peppers  oranges  
kale broccoli  cabbage  
endive  cauliflower  carrot  
peaches  apricots  lemons  
parsley   beets  
 
 
    The half life of produce can be lengthened by lowering its temperature. For that reason, sophisticated produce growers usuall y 
use hydrocooling. This process dumps a just -cut vegetable into icy water within minutes of being harvested, lowering core 
temperature to a few degrees above freezing almost immediately. When cut vegetables are crated up at field temperatures, and 
stacks of those crates are put in a cooler, it can take the inside of the stack 24 hours, or longer, to become chilled. Home gardeners  
should also practice hydrocooling. Fill your sink with cold water and wash/soak your harvest until it is thoroughly chilled b efore 
draining and refrigerating it. Or, harvest your garden early in the morning when temperatures are lowest. Still, when yo u buy produce in the store it may have been sitting at room temperature for hours or possibly days. The bottom line here: fresh is equally as important as unsprayed or organically grown! The Real Truth About Salt And Sugar  
    First, let me remind c ertain food religionists: salt is salt is salt is salt and sugar is sugar is sugar. There are no good forms of salt 
and no good forms of sugar. Salt from a mine and salt from the sea both have the same harmful effect; white sugar, natural br own 
sugar, hone y, molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, whatever sweet have you. All are sugars and all have the similar harmful effects. I know of no harmless salt substitute that really tastes salty. Nutrisweet is basically harmless to most people and can be us ed as a 
very satisfactory replacement for sugars. (A few people are unable to tolerate nutrisweet, causing the anti -chemicalists to circulate 
much anti -nutrisweet propaganda, but you should carefully consider this thought before dismissing nutrisweet –there is almost no 
food substance that some people are not allergic to or unable to digest. The fact that nutrisweet is made in a chemical vat a nd the 
fact that some cannot handle nutrisweet does not make it "of the devil." And its not all black and white with the oth er items either. Sea salt does have certain redeeming qualities not found in mined salt 
and under certain very special conditions, eating small quantities of salt may be acceptable. Similarly, some forms of sugar are not 
quite as harmful as other forms, th ough all are harmful. The primary health problem caused by table salt is not that it contributes to high blood pressure in people with poor kidneys , 
though it does that. It is not that eating salt ruins the kidneys; salt probably does not do that. The  real problem with salt is that 
sodium chloride is an adrenal stimulant, triggering the release of adrenal hormones, especially natural steroids that resist 
inflammation. When these hormones are at high levels in the blood, the person often feels very good , has a sense of well -being. Thus salt is a drug! And like many drugs of its type, salt is a habituating drug. However, we are so used to whipping our adr enals 
with salt that we don't notice it. What we do notice is that we think we like the taste of salte d food and consider that food tastes flat 
without it. But take away a person's salt shaker and they become very uncomfortable. That's because the addict isn't getting their 
regular dose. What's wrong with repetitive adrenal whipping is that adrenal fo rtitude is variable; many people's adrenals eventually fail to 
respond to the prod of salt and the body begins to suffer from a lack of adrenal hormones. Often those inheriting weak adrena ls 
manifest semi -failure in childhood. The consequence is that ordin ary, irritating substances begin causing severe irritation. The 
person becomes allergic to pollen, dust, foods, animal danders, etc. We see asthma, hay fever, sinusitis, etc. Though one can  then 
discover specific allergens and try to remove them from the e nvironment or diet, often this case can be solved far more easily by 
complete withdrawal from all salt. This rests the adrenals and they may recover their full function; almost certainly their f unction 
will improve. The asthma, allergies and etc., graduall y vanish. Most of us don't need to eat salt as a nutrient. There's enough sodium in one dill pickle to run a human body for a year. The re's 
enough natural sodium in many types of vegetables to supply normal needs without using table salt. Perhaps athle tes or other hard 
working people in the tropics eating deficient food grown on leached -out depleted soils, people that sweat buckets day after day 
may need a little extra sodium. Perhaps. Not having practiced in the humid tropics myself, I have no definiti ve answer about this. Unfortunately, the average American is entirely addicted to salt and thinks food tastes lousy without it. To please the avera ge 
consumer, almost all prepared foods contain far too much salt for someone suffering from exhausted ad renals. Interestingly, 
Canadians do not like their foods nearly as salty as Americans, and prepared foods like soups and the like in cans and packag es 
that look just like the ones in American supermarkets (though with French on the back panel) have to be r eformulated for our 
northern neighbors. I've observed that Canadians are generally healthier than Americans in many respects. We would all be far better off consuming no salt at all. Those with allergies or asthma should completely eliminate it for a 
month or two and discover if that simple step doesn't pretty much cure them. The trouble is that bakery bread is routinely two  
percent salt by weight. Cheese is equally salted or even more so. Canned and frozen prepared food products are all heavily sa lted. Restaurant meals are always highly salted in the kitchen. If you want to avoid salt you almost have to prepare everything you rself, 
bake your own bread, abstain from cheese (though there are unsalted cheeses but even I don't like the flavor of these), and  abstain 
from restaurants. My family has managed to eliminate all salt from our own kitchen except for that in cheese, and we eat chee se 
rather moderately. Sugar is a high -caloric non -food with enormous liabilities. First, from the viewpoint of the uni versal formula for health, no form 
of non -artificial sweetener carries enough nutrients with it to justify the number of calories it contains, not even malt extract. W hite 
refined sugar contains absolutely no nutrients at all; the "good" or "natural" sweet s also carry so little nutrition as to be next to 
useless. Sweets are so far over on the bad end of the Health = Nutrition / Calories scale that for this reason alone they sho uld be 
avoided. However, healthy people can usually afford a small amount of  sin; why not make it sweets? In small quantity, sugars are 
probably the easiest indiscretion to digest and the least damaging to the organ systems. Although, speaking of sin, as Edgar Guest, 
the peoples' poet, once so wisely quipped, (and my husband agree s) "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker." Sugar is a powerful 
drug! People who abuse sweets set up a cycle of addiction that can be very hard to break. It starts when the body tries to re gulate 
blood sugar. Kicked up to high levels by eating sugar, the p ancreas releases insulin. But that is not the end of the chain reaction. Insulin regulates blood sugar levels but also raises brain levels of an amino acid called tryptophan. Tryptophan is the raw m aterial 
the brain uses to manufacture a neurotransmitter c alled serotonin. And serotonin plays a huge role in regulating mood. Higher 
brain levels of serotonin create a feeling of well -being. Eating sugar gives a person a chemical jolt of happiness. Heavy hits of 
high-glycemic index starch foods are also rapidly converted to sugar. So don't give your kids sweets! Or huge servings of starch to 
mellow them out. It is wise not to start out life a happiness addict with a severe weight problem. Now that the chemistry of sugar addiction is understood, there currentl y is a movement afoot to cast the obese as helpless 
victims of serotonin imbalances and to "treat" them with the same kinds of serotonin -increasing happy drugs (like Prozac) that are 
becoming so popular with the psychiatric set. This promises to be a multi ple billion dollar business that will capture all the money 
currently flowing into other dieting systems and bring it right back to the AMA/drug company/FDA nexus. The pitch is that whe n 
serotonin levels are upped, the desire to eat drops and so is weight. This approach is popular with the obese because it requires no 
personal responsibility other than taking a pill that really does make them feel happy. However, the same benefit can be had by 
strict adherence to a low -fat, low -carbohydrate diet. Eventually , the brain chemistry rebalances itself and serotonin levels stabilize. Glycemic Index  
(compared to glucose, which is 100)  
 Grains   Fruits   Vegetables   
all bran  51 apples  39 baked beans  40 
brown rice  66 bananas  62 beets  64 
buckwheat  54 cherries  23 black -eyed peas  33 
cornflakes  80 grapefruit  26 carrots  92 
oatmeal  49 grapes  45 chic peas  36 
shred. wheat  67 orange juice  46 parsnips  97 
muesli  66 peach  29 potato chips  51 
white rice  72 orange  40 baked potato  98 
white spagetti  50 pear 34 sweet potato  48 
whole wheat spagetti  42 plum  25 yams  51 
sweet corn  59 raisins  64 peas 51 
      
Nuts   Baked Goods   Sugars   
peanuts  13 pastry  59 fructose  20 
  sponge cake  46 glucose  100 
Meats   white bread  69 honey  87 
sausage  28 w/w bread  72 maltose  110 
fish sticks  38 whole rye bread  42 sucrose  59 
      
Dairy Products       
yogurt  36 whole milk  34 skim milk  32 
 
Remember, the pancreas has another major service to perform for the body: secreting digestive enzymes to aid in the digestion  of 
proteins. When the diet contains either too much protein or too much sugar and/or high -glycemic index starch foods, the 
overwor ked pancreas begins to be less and less efficient at maintaining both of these functions. Sometimes a stressed -out pancreas gets overactive and does too good a job lowering the blood sugar, producing hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia is generally accompanied  by unpleasant symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, blurred vision, irritability, confusion, 
headache, etc. This condition is typically alleviated by yet another hit of sugar which builds an addiction not only to sugar , but to 
food in general. If the hypog lycemic then keeps on eating sugar to relieve the symptoms of sugar ingestion, eventually the 
pancreas becomes exhausted, producing an insulin deficiency, called diabetes. Medical doctors treat diabetes with insulin 
supplements either oral or intramuscular  plus a careful diet with very low and measured amounts of sugar and starch for the 
remainder of the persons inevitably shortened and far less pleasant life. However, sometimes diabetes can be controlled with diet 
alone, though medical doctors have not had  nearly as much success with this approach as talented naturopaths. Sometimes, long 
fasting can regenerate a pancreas. It is far better to avoid creating this disease! The dietary management of hypoglycemia requires that not only refined but also unref ined sugars and starches with a high 
glycemic index be removed from the diet. (The glycemic index measures the ease with which the starch is converted into glucos e 
in the body, and estimates the amount of insulin needed to balance it out.) This means no su gar, no honey, no white flour, no 
whole grains sweetened with honey, no sweet fruits such as watermelons, bananas, raisins, dates or figs. Potatoes are too rea dily 
converted into sugar. Jerusalem artichokes are a good substitute. People with hypoglyce mia can often control their symptoms with frequent small meals containing vegetable protein every two 
hours. When a non -sweet fruit is eaten such as an apple, it should be eaten with some almonds or other nut or seed that slows the 
absorption of fruit suga r. Hypoglycemics can improve their condition with vitamins and food supplements. See the next chapter. Allergies to foods and environmental irritants are frequently triggered by low blood sugar. Mental conditions are also trigge red 
by low blood sugar levels, frequently contributing to or causing a cycle of acting out behavior accompanied by destruction of 
property and interpersonal violence, as well as psychosis and bouts of depression. It is not possible to easily deal with the  resulting 
behavior problems unless the hypoglycemia is controlled. Unfortunately most institutions such as mental hospitals and  jails serve 
large amounts of sugar and starch and usually caffeinated beverages, with a high availability of soda pop, candy, and cigaret tes at 
concessions. If the diet were drastically improved, the drugs given to control behavior in mental hospitals wou ld be much more 
effective at a lower dose, or unnecessary. The insulin -cycle overworked pancreas may eventually not be able to secrete enough enzymes to allow for the efficient 
digestion of foods high in protein. As stated earlier, poor protein digesti on leads to a highly toxic condition from putrefied protein 
in the intestines. This condition is alleviated by eliminating animal proteins from the diet and taking digestive aids such a s 
pancreatin pills with meals to assist in the digestion of vegetable p roteins. Food Combining And "Healthfood Junkfood." This brings us to a topic I call healthfood junkfood. Many people improve their diet, eliminating meat and chemicalized food in 
favor of whole grains and organically grown foods, but they then procee d to make these otherwise good foods into virtual 
junkfood by preparing them incorrectly. In my travels, I've noticed this same thing happens everywhere on Earth. What should be 
health -producing dietaries are ruined by frying, salting and sugaring. Healthfood junkfoods include organically grown potato chips deep fried in cold pressed organic unsaturated canola oil (made 
rancid by frying) sprinkled with natural sea salt; organically grown oat and nut granola roasted with cold -pressed unsaturated oil 
(made rancid by roasting) hideously sweetened with honey; carrot cake made with rancid whole wheat flour, cold pressed 
unsaturated oil (made rancid by baking), honey, and cream cheese (salted); whole wheat cookies (stale, rancid flour) sweetene d 
with honey, m ade with vegetable oil baked at high heat (rancid); whole wheat pizza vegetarian style with lots of soy cheese; whole 
wheat pizza vegan style with lots of real raw milk cheese; organically grown corn chips deep fried in cold pressed vegetable oil 
with or w ithout natural sea salt, yogurts made from powdered milk without an active culture of beneficial bacteria and covered 
with highly sugared fruits, etc. These foods may well represent an improvement over the average American diet, but they still  are 
not heal thy foods, and should never be used in a diet for a sick person. Nor are they worthy of a person attempting to maximize 
health. The problem with healthfood junkfoods is not their major ingredients, but how they were combined and processed and 
adultera ted. Remember, fats, animal or vegetable, subjected to high heat become indigestible and toxic and make anything they're 
cooked with indigestible; salt is a toxic drug; cheese, hard enough to digest as it is, when raised to high temperatures as i t is when 
making pizza, becomes virtually indigestible and cheese inevitably contains a lot of butterfat which, though saturated animal  fat, 
when raised to high temperatures, still becomes slightly rancid. And all these foods represent indigestible combinations. My clients almost never believe me when I first explain the idea of food combining. They think if it goes in one end, comes o ut 
the other, and they don't feel any unpleasant symptoms in between, then it was digested. But bad food combinations have a 
cumul ative degenerative effect over a long period of time. When the symptoms arrive the victim never associates the food 
combination with the symptom because it seems to them that they've always been eating the food. Mainstream nutritionists have brainwashe d the public into thinking that we should have a representative serving from each of 
the "four basic food groups" at each and every meal, plus a beverage and a desert. Or, as my husband Steve is fond of quippin g, a 
"balanced meal" has four colors on every plate: something red, something green, something white and something yellow. But the 
balanced meal is a gastronomic catastrophe that can only be processed by the very young with high digestive vitality, the 
exceptionally vital of any age, people with cast iron stomachs which usually refers to their good heredity, and those who are very 
physically active. Few seem to realize that each type of food requires specific and different digestive enzymes in the mouth, stomach, and 
intestine. Carbohydrates, fats , proteins –each requires differing acid or alkaline environments in order to be digested. Proteins 
require an acid environment. Starch digestion requires an alkaline environment. When foods in complex combinations are 
presented to the stomach all together,  like a meal with meat, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, bread, butter, a glass of milk, plus a 
starchy sweet desert, followed by coffee or tea, the stomach, pancreas, liver and small intestine are overwhelmed, resulting in the 
fermentation of the sugars and s tarches, and the putrefaction of the proteins, and poor digestion of the whole. It is little wonder that 
most people feel so tired after a large meal and need several cups of strong coffee to be able to even get up from the table. They 
have just presented their digestive tract with an immensely difficult and for some an impossible task. For the most efficient digestion, the body should be presented with one simple food at a time, the one bowl concept, easily 
achieved by adherence to the old saying, "on e food at a meal is the ideal." An example of this approach would be eating fruits for 
breakfast, a plain cereal grain for lunch, and vegetables for supper. If you can't eat quite that simply, then proper food co mbining 
rules should be followed to minimize  digestive difficulty, maximize the adsorption of nutrients from your food, and reduce or 
eliminate the formation of toxemia, and of course foul gas. In general, fruit should be eaten alone unless you happen to be hypoglycemic or diabetic in which cas e fruit should be eaten 
with small quantities of a vegetable protein such as nuts, or yogurt and/or cheese if able to digest dairy. Starches should b e eaten 
with vegetables, which means that a well combined meal would include a grain such as rice, millet, buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa, 
corn, wheat, rye, oats, spelt, potatoes, or starchy winter squash combined with raw or cooked vegetables. Protein foods such as 
meat, eggs, beans, lentils, tofu, split peas, should be combined with vegetables, raw or cooked. Bu t protein should never be 
combined with starches. The most popular North American snacks and meals always have a starch/protein combination, for 
example: meat and potatoes, hamburger in a bun, hot dog with bun, burrito with meat or cheese, meat sandwiches,  etc. It is little 
wonder that intestinal gas is accepted as normal, and that over time these hard to digest combinations eventually cause healt h 
problems that demand attention. Another sure fire way to ruin any food, including the very best available is to eat in the presence of negative emotions generated 
by yourself or others. Negative emotions include fear, anger, frustration, envy, resentment, etc. The digestive tract is imme diately 
responsive to stress and or negative thoughts. It becomes paralyze d in negative emotional states; any foods eaten are poorly 
digested, causing toxemia. It is natural for a person who has lost a loved one or suffered a great loss of any kind to lose their appetite for a period of time. This reaction is pro -survival, because while grieving, the body is griped by powerful negative emotions. There are people who, 
under stress or when experiencing a loss, eat ravenously in an attempt to comfort themselves. If this goes on for long the pe rson 
can expect to create a serious  illness of some kind. Individual sensitivity to this type of overeating is dependent upon genetics and personality and who is generating the negati ve 
emotions. Self generated negative emotions are very difficult to avoid. If you are unable to change your own emotional tone or that 
of others around you, then it is important to eat very lightly, eat only easily digested foods such as raw fruits and vegetab les, raw 
juices, steamed vegetables, and small servings of whole grains, nuts and seeds. Diets To Heal The Critically Ill  
    A critically ill person is someone who could expire at any moment; therapeutic interventions are racing against death. Can th e 
body repair itself enough before some essential function ceases altogether? If there already exists too much damage to vital organs 
the person will die. If there remains sufficient organ function to support life, enough vital force to power those functions,  and a 
will to live, the body may heal itself if helped by the correct therapeutic approach. But th e therapy does not do the healing; the 
body does that by itself –if it can. This reality is also true of allopathic medicine.
When_to_Be_Your_Own_Doctor.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        And just like Pottenger's cats, we civilized humans in so -called advanced countr ies are losing the ability to breed, our 
willingness (or the energy) to mother our young; we're losing our good humor in the same way Pottenger's degenerated cats 
became bad tempered. As a group we feel so poorly that we desperately need to feel better fas t, and what better way to do that than 
with drugs. Is it any wonder that the United States, the country furthest down the road of industrial food degeneration, spen ds 14 
percent of its gross domestic product on medical services. Any wonder that so many bab ies are born by Cesarean, any wonder that 
so many of our children have crooked teeth needing an orthodontist. The most depressing aspect of this comes into view when 
considering that Pottenger's cats took four generations on perfect food to repair most of the nutritional damage. In the specific case of my daughter, I know some things about the nutritional history of her maternal ancestors. My daughter' s 
grandmother grew up on a Saskatchewan farm. Though they certainly grew their own rich wheat on virgin  semi-arid prairie soil, 
I'm sure the family bought white flour at the store for daily use. Still, there was a garden and a cow producing raw milk and  free-
range fertile eggs and chicken and other animals. There probably were lots of canned vegetables in w inter, canned but still highly 
nutritious because of the fertility of their prairie garden. My mother consequently had perfect teeth until the Great Depress ion 
forced her to live for too many years on lard and white bread. During this time of severe m alnutrition she had her three babies. The first one got the best of her nutritional reserves. The 
second, born after the worst of the malnutrition, was very small and weak and had a hard time growing up. Fortunately for me,  for 
a few years before I (the la st child) was born, the worst of the economic times had past and the family had been living on a farm. There were vegetables and fresh raw milk and fruit. My mother had two good years to rebuild her nutritional reserves. But 
"Grannybell" did not managed to  replace enough. Shortly after I was born my mother lost every one of her teeth all at once. The 
bone just disappeared around them. Thus, I was born deficient. And my childhood and adolescent nutrition was poor too: soda crackers, pasteurized processe d 
artificial cheese, evaporated milk from cans, hotdogs and canned beans, hotdogs and cabbage. It wasn't until I was pregnant w ith 
my first baby that I started to straighten up my diet. I continued eating very well after my first daughter, so my youngest d aughter 
had another three years of good diet to draw on. Thus both my own daughters got a somewhat better start than I had had. My teeth were not as good as my mother's had been before those years of malnutrition took them all. Instead of perfect strai ght 
undecayed teeth like a healthy farm girl should have, mine were somewhat crowded, with numerous cavities. My jaw bone had not  
received enough minerals to develop to its full size. My pelvic girdle also was smaller than my mother's was. I had had a poo r 
start. My daughters did better. The older one (the first child typically gets the best of the nutritional reserves) has such a wide jaw that 
there are small spaces between her teeth. My second daughter has only one crooked tooth, she has wider, more solid hip s, stronger 
bones and a broader face than I do. If my younger daughter will but from this point in her life, eat perfectly and choose her  food 
wisely to responsibly avoid empty calories and maximize her ratio of nutrition to calories, her daughter (if she gives us 
granddaughters as her older sister already has done) may exhibit the perfect physiology that her genes carry. Along the lines of helping you avoid empty calories I will give you some information about various common foods that most 
people don' t know and that most books about food and health don't tell, or misunderstand. Butter, Margarine and Fats in General. Recently, enormous propaganda has been generated against eating butter. Its been smeared in the health magazines as a 
saturated ani mal fat, one containing that evil substance, cholesterol. Many people are now avoiding it and instead, using 
margarine. Composition of Oils  
  Saturated  Monosaturated  Unsaturated  
Butter  66% 30% 4% 
Coconut Oil  87% 6% 2% 
Cottonseed Oil  26% 18% 52% 
Olive Oil  13% 74% 8% 
Palm Oil  49% 37% 9% 
Soybean Oil  14% 24% 58% 
Sunflower Oil  4% 8% 83% 
Safflower Oil  3% 5% 87% 
Sesame Oil  5% 9% 80% 
Peanut Oil  6% 12% 76% 
Corn Oil  3% 7% 84% 
 
This is a major and serious misunderstanding. First of all, margarine is almost indigestible, chemically very much like shortening –
an artificially saturated or hydrogenated vegetable fat. Hydrogenated fats can't be properly broken down by the body's digest ive 
enzymes, adding to the body's toxic load. Margarine, bei ng a chemically -treated vegetable oil with artificial yellow color and 
artificial flavorings to make it seem like butter, also releases free radicals in the body that accelerate ageing. So, to avo id the 
dangers of eating cholesterol -containing butter, peop le eat something far worse for them. There are severe inconsistencies with the entire "cholesterol -is-evil" theory. Ethnic groups like the Danes, who eat enormous 
quantities of cholesterol -containing foods, have little circulatory disease. Actually, the li ver itself produces cholesterol; it's 
presence in the blood is an important part of the body chemistry. Cholesterol only becomes a problem because of deranged body  
chemistry due to the kind of overall malnutrition Americans usually experience on their junk  food diets. Avoiding cholesterol in 
foods does little good, but eating a low -fat, low -sugar, complex -carbohydrate (whole foods) diet high in minerals does lower blood 
cholesterol enormously. Actually, high quality fresh (not rancid) butter in moderate qu antities is about the finest fat a person could eat. But high quality 
butter is almost unobtainable. First of all, it has to be raw, made from unpasteurized cream. Second, butter can contain very  high 
levels of fat -soluble vitamins, but doesn't have to. Vi tamin -rich butter's color is naturally bright yellow, almost orange. This color 
does not come from a test tube. Pale yellow butter as is found in the commercial trade was probably almost white before it wa s 
artificially tinted. Butter from grass -pastured c ows naturally changes from yellow -orange to white and back again through the year 
as the seasons change. Spring grass, growing in the most intense sunlight of the year contains very high levels of chlorophyl l and 
vitamins. Cows eating this grass put high l evels of vitamins A and D into their cream, evidenced by the orange color of vitamin A. By July, natural butter has degraded to medium -yellow in color. By August, it is pale yellow. Industrial dairy cows fed exclusively 
on hay or artificial, processed feed s (lacking in these vitamins), produce butterfat that is almost white. I prefer to obtain my butter from a neighbor who has several dairy cows grazing on fertile bottom land pasture. We always fre eze a 
year's supply in late spring when butter is at its be st. Interestingly, that is also the time of year when my neighbor gets the most 
production from her cows and is most willing to part with 25 pounds of extra butter. In general, fats are poor foods that should be avoided. Their ratio of nutrition to calori es is absolutely the worst of all food types, 
except perhaps for pure white sugar, which is all calories and absolutely no nutrition (this is also true for other forms of sugar. Honey, too, contains almost no nutrition. ). Gram for gram, fats contain many m ore calories than do sugars or starches. Yet gram 
for gram, fats contain virtually no nutrition except for small quantities of essential fatty acids. The perverse reason people like to eat fats is that they are very hard to digest and greatly slow the dige stive action of the stomach. Another way of saying that is that they have a very high satiety value. Fats make a person feel full for a long time because their 
presence in the stomach makes it churn and churn and churn. Fats coat proteins and starches and delay their digestion, often 
causing them to begin fermenting (starches) or putrefying (proteins) in the digestive tract. The best fats contain high levels of monosaturated vegetable oils that have never been exposed to heat or chemicals –like virgin 
olive oil. Use small quantities of olive oil for salad dressing. Monosaturated fats also have far less tendency to go rancid than a ny 
other type. Vegetable oils with high proportions of unsaturated fats, the kind that all the authorities push because they con tain no 
cholesterol, go rancid rapidly upon very brief exposure to air. The danger here is that rancidity in vegetable oil is virtual ly 
unnoticeable. Rancid animal fat on the other hand, smells "off. " Eating rancid oil is a sure -fire way to accelerate ageing,  invite 
degenerative conditions in general, and enhance the likelihood of cancer. I recommend that you use only high -quality virgin olive 
oil, the only generally -available fat that is largely monosaturated. (Pearson and Shaw, 1983)  
When you buy vegetable o il, even olive oil, get small bottles so you use them up before the oil has much time being exposed to air 
(as you use the oil air fills the bottle) or, if you buy olive oil in a large can to save money, immediately upon opening it,  transfer 
the oil to pin t jars filled to the very brim to exclude virtually all air, and seal the jars securely. In either case, keep now -opened, in -
use small bottles of oil in the refrigerator because rancidity is simply the combination of oil with oxygen from the air and this 
chemical reaction is accelerated at warmer temperatures and slowed greatly at cold ones. Chemical reactions typically double in speed with every 10 degrees C. increase in temperature. So oil goes rancid about six t imes 
faster at normal room temperature than  it does in the fridge. If you'll think about the implications of this data you'll see there are 
two powerful reasons not to fry food. One, the food is coated with oil and gains in satiety value at the expense of becoming 
relatively indigestible and produc tive of toxemia. Secondly, if frying occurs at 150 degrees Centigrade and normal room 
temperature is 20 degrees Centigrade, then oil goes rancid 2 to the 13th power faster in the frying pan, or about 8,200 times  faster. Heating oil for only ten minutes in a hot skillet induces as much rancidity as about 6 weeks of sitting open and exposed to air at 
room temperature. Think about that the next time you're tempted to eat something from a fast food restaurant where the hot fa t in 
the deep fryer has been reactin g with oxygen all day, or even for several days. Back to butter, where we started. If you must have something traditionally northern European on your bread, you are far bette r off 
to use butter, not margarine. However, Mediterranean peoples traditionally d ip their bread in high -quality extra -virgin olive oil that 
smells and tastes like olives. It’s delicious, why not try it. But best yet, put low -sugar fruit preserves on your toast or develop a 
taste for dry toast. Probably the finest use for butter is melt ed over steamed vegetables. This way only small quantities are needed 
and the fat goes on something that is otherwise very easy to digest so its presence will not produce as many toxins in the di gestive 
tract. Milk, Meat, And Other Protein Foods  
Speaking of butter, how about milk. The dairy lobby is very powerful in North America. Its political clout and campaign 
contributions have the governments of both the United States and especially that of Canada eating out of its hand (literally), 
providing the dair y industry with price supports. Because of these price supports, in Canada cheese costs half again more than it 
does in the United States. The dairy lobby is also very cozy with the medical profession so licensed nutritionists constantly  
bombard us with "d rink milk" and "cheese is good for you" propaganda. And people naturally like dairy foods. They taste good and are fat -rich with a high satiety value. Dairy makes you feel full for a 
long time. Dairy is also high in protein; protein is hard to digest and this too keeps one feeling full for a long time. But many 
people, especially those from cultures who traditionally (genetically) didn't have dairy cows, particularly Africans, Asians and 
Jews, just do not produce the enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. Some individuals belonging to these groups can digest goats 
milk. Some can't digest any kind except human breast milk. And some can digest fermented milk products like yogurt and kiefer. Whenever one eats a protein food that is not fully digestible, it put refies in the digestive tract, with all the bad consequences 
previously described. But no one, absolutely no one can fully digest pasteurized cows milk, which is what most people use because they have been ma de 
to fear cow -transmitted diseases and/or they are forced to use pasteurized dairy products by health authorities. I suspect drinking 
pasteurized milk or eating cheese made from pasteurized milk is one of the reasons so many people develop allergic reactions to 
milk. Yet many states do not allow unpast eurized dairy to be sold, even privately between neighbors. To explain all this, I first 
have to explain a bit more about protein digestion in general and then talk about allergies and how they can be created. Proteins are long, complex molecules, intricat e chains whose individual links are amino acids. Proteins are the very stuff of life. All living protoplasm, animal or plant, is largely composed of proteins. There are virtually an infinite number of different proteins 
but all are composed of the same few  dozen amino acids hooked together in highly variable patterns. Amino acids themselves are 
highly complex organic molecules too. The human body custom -assembles all its proteins from amino acids derived from 
digesting protein foods, and can also manufactur e small quantities of certain of its own amino acids to order, but there are eight 
amino acids it cannot make and these are for that reason called essential amino acids. Essential amino acids must be containe d in 
the food we eat. Few proteins are water s oluble. When we eat proteins the digestive apparatus must first break them down into their water -soluble 
components, amino acids, so these can pass into the blood and then be reassembled into the various proteins the body uses. Th e 
body has an interesting mechanism to digest proteins; it uses enzymes. An enzyme is like the key for a lock. It is a complex 
molecule that latches to a protein molecule and then breaks it apart into amino acids. Then the enzyme finds yet another prot ein 
molecule to free. Enzymes are efficient, reusable many many times. Enzymes that digest proteins are effective only in the very acid environment of the stomach, are manufactured by the pancreas  and 
are released when protein foods are present. The stomach then releases hydrochloric acid and churns away like a washing machine, 
mixing the enzymes and the acid with the proteins until everything has digested. So far so good. That's how its supposed to be. But. Dr. Henry Bieler, who wrote Food Is Your Best Medicine, came up with the 
finest metaphor I know of to explain how protein digestion goes wrong. He compared all proteins to the white of an egg (which is 
actually a form of protein). When raw and liquid, the long chains of albumen (egg white) proteins are in their natural form. Howeve r, cook the egg and the egg white both solidifies and becomes smaller. What has happened is that the protein chains have 
shriveled and literally tied themselves into knots. Once this happens, pancreatic enzymes no longer fit and cannot separate a ll the 
amino acids. Cooked proteins may churn and churn and churn in the presence of acid and pancreatic enzymes but they will not 
digest completely. Part becomes water -soluble; part does not. But, indigestible protein is still subject to an undesirable form of cons umption in the gut. Various bacteria make their home in our 
airless, warm intestines. Some of these live on protein. In the process of consuming undigested proteins, they release highly  toxic 
substances. They poison us. What is true of the white of an egg  is also true of flesh foods and dairy. Raw meat and raw fish are actually easily digestible foods 
and if not wrongly combined will not produce toxemia in a person that still has a strong pancreas. However, eating raw meat a nd 
fish can be a dicey propositi on, both for reasons of cultural sensibility (people think it is disgusting) and because there may be 
living parasites in uncooked flesh that can attack, sicken and even kill people. It has been argued that a healthy stomach co ntaining 
its proper degree of  acidity provides an impenetrable barrier to parasites. Perhaps. But how many of us are that healthy these days. Cooked flesh and fish seems more delicious to our refined, civilized sensibilities, but are a poor food. In my household we have no moral obje ction to eating meat. We do have an ethical objection in that meat eating does not 
contribute to our health. But still, we do eat it. A few times a year, for traditional celebrations we may invite the childre n over and 
cook a turkey. A few times for Thanks giving when the children were going through their holier -than-thou vegetarian stage, I 
purchased the largest, thickest porterhouse steak I could find at the natural meat store and ate it medium -rare, with relish. It was 
delicious. It made me feel full for hours and hours and hours. I stayed flat on the couch and groggily worked on digesting it all 
evening. After that I'd had enough of meat to last for six months. When milk is pasteurized, the proteins in it are also altered in structure. Not so severely as  egg white is altered by cooking because 
pasteurization happens at a lower temperature. But altered none the less. And made less digestible. Pasteurizing also makes m ilk 
calcium far less assimilable. That's ironic because so many people are drinking milk b ecause they fear they need more calcium to 
avoid osteoporosis and to give their children good teeth. What pasteurized milk actually does to their children is make them 
calcium deficient and makes the children toxic, provoking many colds, ear infections, si nusitis, inflammations of the tonsils and 
lung infections, and, induces an allergy to milk in the children. The Development Of Allergies  
There are three ways a body can become allergic. (1) It can have a genetic predisposition for a specific allergy to s tart with. (2) It 
can be repeatedly exposed to an irritating substance such as pollen when, at the same time, the body's mechanism for dealing with 
irritations is weakened. Generally weak adrenals causes this because the adrenal's job is to produce hormone s that reduce 
inflammation. Once the irritating substance succeeds at producing a significant inflammation, a secondary reaction may be set  up, 
called an allergy. Once established, an allergy is very hard to get rid of. (3) in a way very similar to the sec ond, but instead of being irritated by an external substance, it is irritated by repeatedly failing to 
properly, fully digest something. Pasteurized milk for example, basically impossible to completely digest even in its low -fat form, 
often sets up an alle rgy that applies to other forms of cows milk, even raw, unpasteurized cows milk or yogurt. Eating too much 
white flour can eventually set off a wheat allergy. My husband developed a severe allergy to barley after drinking too much h ome-
brewed beer; he also  became highly intolerant to alcohol. Now he has allergic reactions to both alcohol and barley. And gets far 
sicker from drinking beer (two separate allergies) than from wheat beer, hard liquor or wine (only one allergy). Eating too much of any single foo d, or repeatedly eating too much of an otherwise very good food at one time, can eventually 
overwhelm the body's ability to digest it fully. Then, the finest whole food products may set up an allergic reaction. Worse,  this 
allergic reaction itself subseque ntly prevents proper digestion even when only moderate quantities are eaten. An allergy may not be recognized as an allergy because it may not manifest as the instant skin rash or stuffy nose or swollen  
glands or sticky eyes. that people usually think of when they think "allergic reaction. " Food allergies can cause many kinds of 
symptoms, from sinusitis to psychosis, from asthma to arthritis, from hyperactivity to depression, insomnia to narcolepsy –and 
commonly the symptoms don't manifest immediately after  eating. Frequently, allergic reactions are so low grade as to be 
unnoticeable and may not produce an observable condition until many years of their grinding down the vital force has passed. When the condition finally appears it is hard to associate it wit h some food that has been consumed for years, apparently with 
impunity. Thus it is that many North Americans have developed allergies to wheat, dairy, soy products (because many soy foods are very 
hard to digest), corn and eggs. These are such common, wide spread, frequently found allergies that anyone considering a dietary 
cause of their complaints might just cut all these foods out of the diet for a few weeks just to see what happens. And indivi duals 
may be allergic to anything from broccoli to bacon, stra wberries to bean sprouts. Unraveling food allergies sometimes requires the 
deductions of a Sherlock Holmes. However, food allergies are very easy to cure if you can get the suffered to take the medicine. Inevitably, allergic reaction s vanish 
in about five days of abstinence. Anyone with sufficient self -discipline to water fast for five days can cure themselves of all food 
allergies at one step. Then, by a controlled, gradual reintroduction of foods, they can discover which individual items cause  
trouble. Se e Coca's Pulse Test in the Appendix where you'll find step -by-step instructions for allergy testing that are less rigorous, 
not requiring a preliminary fast. Flour, And Other Matters Relating To Seeds  
One of the largest degradations to human health was ca used by the roller mill. This apparently profitable machine permitted the 
miller to efficiently separate wheat flour into three components: bran, germ and endosperm. Since bread made without bran and  
germ is lighter and appears more "upper class" it became  instantly popular. Flour without germ and bran also had an industrial 
application –it could be stored virtually forever without being infested by insects because white flour does not contain enough 
nutrition to support life. Most health conscious people ar e aware that white flour products won't support healthful human life 
either. Essentially, white flour's effect on humans is another demonstration of Health = Nutrition / Calories. When the bran and germ  are 
discarded, remaining are the calories and much o f the protein, lacking are many vitamins and minerals and other vital nutritional 
substances. Whole wheat bread has been called the staff of life. In ages past, healthy cultures have made bread the predominant staple in  their 
diet. Does that mean you can just go to the bakery and buy whole grain bread, or go to the health food store and buy organically 
grown whole wheat flour, bake your own, and be as healthy as the ancients. Sorry, the answer is almost certainly no. There ar e 
pitfalls, many of them, waiti ng for the unwary. White flour has one other advantage over whole wheat flour. It not only remains free of insect infestation, it doesn't become  stale 
(meaning rancid). In the wheat germ (where the embryo resides) there is considerable oil, containing amon g other things, about the 
best natural source of vitamin E. This oil is highly unsaturated and once the seed is ground the oil goes rancid in a matter of days. Whole wheat flour kept on the unrefrigerated shelf of the store is almost certainly rancid. A lo t of its other vitamin content has 
been oxidized too. If the wheat flour had flowed directly from the grinder into an airtight sack and from there directly to t he 
freezer, if it had been flash frozen and kept extremely cold, it might have a storage life of  some months. Of course that was not the 
case. Maybe you're lucky and your health food store is one of the very few that has its own small -scale flour mill and grinds daily. Probably not. How about your baker's whole wheat bread. Where does the baker get flour. From the wholesaler's or distributor's warehouse. In 
fifty pound kraftpaper sacks. How much time had elapsed from milling to wholesaler to baker to baking. The answer has to be i n 
the order of magnitude of weeks. And it might be months. Was the flou r stored frozen. Or airtight. Of course not. If you want bread made from freshly ground flour you are almost certainly have to grind and bake it yourself. Is it worth the  
trouble. You bet. Once you've tasted real bread you'll instantly see by comparison wh at stale, rancid whole wheat flour tastes like. Freshly ground flour makes bread that can be the staff of life and can enormously upgrade your health –if the wheat you use is any 
good. But before we talk about wheat quality, a more few words of warning. If you think wheat goes rancid rapidly, rye is even worse. Rye flour goes bad so fast that when you buy it in the store it usually is the rye equivalent of white wheat flour. The germ has been 
removed. The bag may not say so. But it probably has. If you are g oing to make rye breads, even more reason to grind your own. Corn meal from the grocery store has usually been degerminated too. If it hasn't been, the oil in the seed's germ has probabl y gone 
rancid. Grinding flour at home is easy these days. There is an  abundance of at -home milling products and no shortage of hype about them. You'll find staunch advocates of stone mills. These produce the finest -textured flour, but are costly. The sales pitch is that stones 
grind at low temperature and do not damage the oils (remember the development of rancidity is a function of temperature) or the 
vitamins, which are also destroyed at high temperature. This assertion is half true. If you are going to store your flour it is far better 
to grind it cool. However, if you ar e, as we do, going to immediately bake your flour, what difference does it make if it gets a little 
warm before baking. That only accelerates the action of the yeast. On the negative side, stone mills grind slowly and are very fussy about which grains the y will grind. If the cereal is a bit moist or if 
the seed being ground is a little bit oily, the mill becomes instantly blocked. Steel burr mills grind fast and coarsely and are inexpensive. Coarse flour makes heavy bread. The metal grinding faces tend t o 
wear out and have to be replaced occasionally –if they can be replaced. Breads on the heavy side are still delicious; for many years 
I made bread with an inexpensive steel burr mill attachment that came with my juicer. Some steel burr mills will also grin d oily seed like sesame and sunflower. However, oily seeds can be ground far more easily half -
a-cup at a time in a little inexpensive electric spice/coffee mill, the sort with a single fast -spinning propeller. I currently think the best compromise are hamm ermills. The grain dribbles into a chamber full of fast -spinning teeth that literally 
pound the grain into powder. Since air flows through with the grain the flour is not heated very much. This type of mill is s mall, 
very fast, intermediate in price betwee n steel mills and stone mill, lasts a long time, but when grinding, sounds like a Boeing 747 
about to take off. It is essential to wear hearing protectors when using it. Awareness of bread quality is growing. One excellent new U. S. business, called Great H arvest Bakery is a fast -growing national 
franchise chain. They bake and sell only whole grain breads; all their wheat flour is freshly ground daily on the premises in  the 
back. Unfortunately, as of the writing of this book, they do not grind their rye flou r but bring it in sacks. I can't recommend their 
rye breads. The founder of Great Harvest is a knowledgeable buyer who fully understands my next topic, which is that wheat is  not 
wheat. There are great differences between hard bread wheats; being organica lly grown is no cure -all for making good or nutritious bread. Great Harvest understands this and uses top quality grain that is also Organic. When I first stated making my own bread from my own at -home -ground flour I was puzzled by variations in the dough. Sometimes the bread rose well and was spongy after baking like I wanted it to be. Sometimes it kneaded stickily and ended up flat 
and crumbly like a cake. Since I had done everything the same way except that I may have bought my wheat berries from differ ent 
health food stores, I began to investigate the subject of wheat quality. The element in the cereal that forms the rubbery sponge in risen bread so it doesn't crumble and rises high without collapsin g, is 
gluten. The word glue derives from gluten. The g luten content of various wheats varies. Bread bakers use "hard wheat" because of 
its high gluten content. Gluten is a protein and gluten comprises most of the protein in bread wheat; the protein content and  the 
gluten content are almost identical. Try thi s. Ask your health food store buyer or owner what the protein content is of the hard red wheat seeds they're selling. You'll 
almost certainly get a puzzled look and your answer will almost certainly be, "We have Organic and conventional. " Demand that  
the store buyer ask this question of their distributor/wholesaler and then report back to you. If the distributor deigns to answer, the 
answer will be the same –I sell Organic or conventional hard red wheat. Period. When I got these non -answers I looked further and 
discovered that hard bread wheats run from about 12 percent protein to about 19 percent and this difference has everything to  do 
with the soil fertility (and to an extent the amount of rainfall during the season), and almost nothing to do with Organic or 
conventional. This difference also has everything to do with how your dough behaves and how your bread comes out. And how well your bread 
nourishes you. Thirteen percent wheat will not make a decent loaf - fourteen percent is generally considered #2 qu ality and 
comprises the bulk of cheap bread grain. When you hear in the financial news that a bushel of wheat is selling for a certain price, 
they mean #2. Bakers compete for higher protein lots and pay far higher prices for more protein. We prefer our br ead about 25% rye, but rye contains no gluten at all. Mix any rye flour into fourteen percent wheat flour and the 
dough becomes very heavy, won't rise, and after baking, crumbles. So I kept looking for better grain and finally discovered a  
knowledgeable la dy that sold flour mills and who also was a serious baker herself. She had located a source of quality wheat with 
an assayed protein content and sold it by the 50 pound sack. When I asked her if her wheat was Organic she said it was either  
sixteen or seven teen percent protein depending on whether you wanted hard red spring wheat or hard white spring wheat. Organic 
or conventional. I persisted. No, she said. High protein. So, I said to myself, since protein content is a function of soil fertility and since my body needs protein, I figured I am better off 
eating the best quality wheat, pesticide/herbicide residues (if there are any) be damned. Think about it. The difference betw een 
seventeen percent and fourteen percent protein is about 25 percent. That perce ntage difference is the key threshold of nutritional 
deficiency that makes teeth fall out. We can't afford to accept 25% degradations in our nutritional quality in something that  we eat 
every day and that forms the very basis of our dietary. Please unders tand here that I am not saying that high protein wheats can't be grown organically. They certainly can. The founder of 
Great Harvest Bakery performs a valuable service locating and securing high -protein lots of organically grown wheats for his 
outlets. But  often as not Organic products are no more nourishing than those grown with chemicals. Until the buyers at Organic 
whole food wholesalers get better educated about grain, obtaining one's personal milling stock from them will be a dicey 
proposition. Sometim es Organic cereal can be far worse than conventional. To make a cereal Organic is a negative definition; if it hasn't had 
chemicals, then its Organic. Grain is one of the few foods that will still produce economic yields of low quality seed on ext remely 
infertile soil or when half -smothered in weeds because herbicides weren't used for reasons of ideological purity. Vegetables will 
hardly produce anything under those conditions; carelessly grown fruits and vegetables are inevitably small, misshapen, 
unmarket able. But seed cleaning equipment can remove the contamination of weed seeds in cereal grains (at a cost. ) The price the farmer receives for Organic cereal grain is much higher, so it is possible to accept rather low yields or expen d more 
money for cleanin g out high levels of weed seeds from the field -run harvest, and still make a good profit. A lousy Organic cereal 
crop like this might even make a higher profit because the farmer has been spared the expense of fertilization, of rotation, of weed 
control. I  remember once I bought a sack of Organic whole oats that were the smallest, most shriveled, bitterest oats I've ever tried 
to eat. We ended up throwing out that tiny, light (lacking density) seed in favor of using the "conventional" whole oats that  were 
plump, heavy and sweet. Wheat is not the only cereal that is damaged by industrial milling. So are oats. Most consumers have never seen whole oats; t hey 
look very much like wheat berries. But rolled oats become rancid and stale on the shelf much like wheat  flour on the shelf. Another pitfall about using whole grains is that to be nutritious they must still be fresh enough to sprout vigorously. A see d is a 
package of food surrounding an embryo. The living embryo is waiting for the right conditions (temperatu re and moisture) to begin 
sprouting. Sprouting means the embryo begins eating up stored food and making a plant out of it. All foods are damaged by 
exposure to oxygen, so to protect the embryo's food supply, the seed is surrounded by a virtually airtight s eed coat that permits 
only enough oxygen to enter for the embryo's respiration (yes, seeds breathe slowly). Often the embryo is located at the edge  of the 
seed and has its own air intake port. When the seed coat is removed or damaged, the innards are expos ed to air and begin 
deteriorating rapidly. In the case of oats, especially rapidly, because oats are the only grass -based cereal that contains large 
quantities of oil –five percent oil, more or less. That's why oats "stick to your ribs. " Rolled oats become stale and lose their flavor 
(and nutritional content) and perhaps become rancid very rapidly. So we make porridge from whole oat groats that we coarsely 
grind to grits (steel -cut oats) in an electric seed/spice mill just before cooking. It is not easy to cook oat grits. They take a lot longer than rolled oats and if not done exactly to the recipe I'm about to give you, 
will almost inevitably stick to the pot badly and may also froth over and mess the stove. Here's how to cook them. Coarsely g rind 
(like cor n meal) your whole oats until you have one cup of oat grits. Bring exactly four cups of water (no salt) to a very hard boil a t 
your highest heat. You may add a handful of raisins. Light or turn on a second, small -sized burner on the stove and set it as low  as 
possible. Into the fast boiling water, slowly pour the ground oats, stirring continuously. Take about 30 seconds to pour it a ll or 
you'll make clumps. Keep on the high heat until the water again boils vigorously. Suddenly, the mixture will begin rising  in the pot 
and will try to pour all over the stove. This means it is all at boiling temperature again. Quickly move the pot to the low b urner; 
that instantly stops the frothing. Then cover. Let the porridge cook for 30 minutes, stirring once or twice to p revent sticking. Then, 
keeping it covered, turn off the heat. They can be eaten at this point but I think it is better to let the oats finish soakin g on the stove 
for at least two to four hours. Then reheat in a double boiler. We usually start a pot of oa ts at bedtime for the next morning. See why people prefer the convenience of using rolled oats. But 
once you've eaten oats made right, you'll never prefer the flavor of rolled oats again. And if the human body has any natural  
method of assaying nutritional  content, it is flavor. Nutritionally, millet is almost the same story as oats. Millet seed is protected by a very hard hull. Cooking unhulled millet  is 
almost impossible. After hours of boiling the small round seeds will still be hard and the hulls remai n entirely indigestible. Worse, 
the half -round hulls (they split eventually) stick in your teeth. But prehulled millet, sitting in the sack for weeks and months, lose s 
a lot of nutrition and tastes very second -rate compared to freshly -hulled millet. It is possible to buy unhulled millet, usually by 
special order from the health food distributor –if you'll take a whole sack. Millet can be hulled at home in small batches. Here's 
how we figured out how to do it. There probably are better ways. Using a cheap ste el-burr flour mill, set the burrs just far enough apart that the seed is ground to grits, but not flour. This pops the 
hulls loose. An old mill with worn -out burrs works great for this job. Then you have to get some hand seed cleaning screens just 
large en ough to pass the grits but not pass the hulls (most of them). Window screen or other hardware cloths won't work. Seed 
cleaning screens come in increments of 1/128 inch; we use a 6/64" round screen. Other batches of millet might work better wit h a 
screen on e step larger or smaller. It will take you a little ingenuity to find hand -held screens. They're used by seed companies and 
farmers to clean small batches of seed for inspection and are usually about one square foot in size with a quality wooden fra me. Larger frames made of the same screening material are used in big seed cleaning machines. (The hulls could also be winnowed out 
by repeatedly pouring the grit/hulls mixture back and forth between two buckets in a gentle breeze. ) After you've screened out most  of the hulls, the rest will rinse out, floating off as you wash the grain prior to cooking. We never 
hull more than enough millet for two or three meals and keep the uncooked (unwashed) millet in the freezer in an airtight jar. It is 
interesting how peopl e will accept poor nutrition and its consequent sickness as the price of convenience. If you eat much buckwheat you should also figure out how to hull (sometimes called groating) it yourself. Someone should writ e a 
thorough book on the home milling of cer eals. And perhaps sell the equipment by mail. Probably would be a good little homestead 
business. Something else you need to keep in mind about seed. Even though the embryo's food supply is protected by the seed coat, it st ill 
slowly deteriorates, steadily  oxidizing and losing nutritional value. Eventually old seed looses the ability to sprout. The decline in 
germination ability matches a decline in nutritional quality. Any seed you are going to use for eating should possess the abi lity to 
sprout, strongly and rapidly. (After you've comparatively sprouted a few grain samples, you'll know what I mean by this. ) Fortunately, cereal grains usually sprout well for quite a few years after harvest if they have been stored cool and dry. Eat ing dead 
or near -dead seed s will help move you closer to the same condition yourself. Finally, one more warning about buying store bread. Salt -free bread tastes "funny" to most people. It bakes fine, salt is not 
necessary to the leavening process, but no bakery could stay in busine ss without salting their bread. The standard level of salt is 
two percent by weight. That is quite a lot. Two percent equals one teaspoonful per pound. I'll have more to say about the evi ls of 
salt later on. I imagine some of my readers are feeling a littl e overwhelmed by all these warnings and "beware ofs," and intricacies. They are 
used to taking no responsibility for securing their own food supply quality and have come to expect the "system" to protect t hem. I 
believe it is not because of lack of governm ent intervention, but because of government intervention itself, our food system is very 
perverse. Until our mass consciousness changes, if you wish to make yourself and your family truly healthy, you are going to have 
to take charge and become quite a dis criminating shopper. Unconscious consumers are on a rapid road to the total unconsciousness 
of death. And again, let me remind you here that this one small book cannot contain everything you should know. The bibliography at the  
end of should become your gu ide to earning your post -graduate education in nutritional health. Freshness Of Fruits And Vegetables   
Most people do not realize the crucial importance of freshness when it comes to produce. In the same way that seeds gradually  die, 
fruits and vegetables  go through a similar process as their nutritional content gradually oxidizes or is broken down by the 
vegetables own enzymes, but vegetables lose nutrition hundreds of times more rapidly than cereals. Produce was recently part of a 
living plant. It was co nnected to the vascular system of a plant and with few exceptions, is not intended by nature to remain intact 
after being cut. A lettuce or a zucchini was entirely alive at the moment of harvest, but from that point, its cells begin to  die. Even 
if it is n ot yet attacked by bacteria, molds and fungi, its own internal enzymes have begun breaking down its own substances. Vegetables, especially leafy vegetables, are far more critical in this respect than most ripe fruits. All, however, deteriora te much 
like ra dioactive material; they have a sort of half -life. The mineral content is stable, but in respect to the vitamins and enzymes and 
other complex organic components, each time period or "half life" results in the loss of half the nutrition. Suppose a lettuc e has a 
half life of 48 hours, two days after harvest only 50 percent of the original nutrition remains. After two more days, half th e 
remaining half is gone and only 25 percent is left. After two more days half of that 25 percent is lost. Thus six days afte r harvest 
and a lettuce contains only bout 12 percent of its original nutrition. A two day half -life is only hypothetical. Those types of 
produce I classify as very perishable probably do have a half -life of from 36 to 48 hours. Moderately perishable produ ce has a half 
life of about 72 hours; durable types of produce have half lives of 96 hours or longer. Vegetable Storage Potential  
 Very Perishable  Moderately Perishable  Durable  
lettuce  zucchini  apple  
spinach  eggplant  squash  
Chinese cabbage  sweet peppers  oranges  
kale broccoli  cabbage  
endive  cauliflower  carrot  
peaches  apricots  lemons  
parsley   beets  
 
 
    The half life of produce can be lengthened by lowering its temperature. For that reason, sophisticated produce growers usuall y 
use hydrocooling. This process dumps a just -cut vegetable into icy water within minutes of being harvested, lowering core 
temperature to a few degrees above freezing almost immediately. When cut vegetables are crated up at field temperatures, and 
stacks of those crates are put in a cooler, it can take the inside of the stack 24 hours, or longer, to become chilled. Home gardeners  
should also practice hydrocooling. Fill your sink with cold water and wash/soak your harvest until it is thoroughly chilled b efore 
draining and refrigerating it. Or, harvest your garden early in the morning when temperatures are lowest. Still, when yo u buy produce in the store it may have been sitting at room temperature for hours or possibly days. The bottom line here: fresh is equally as important as unsprayed or organically grown. The Real Truth About Salt And Sugar  
    First, let me remind c ertain food religionists: salt is salt is salt is salt and sugar is sugar is sugar. There are no good forms of salt 
and no good forms of sugar. Salt from a mine and salt from the sea both have the same harmful effect; white sugar, natural br own 
sugar, hone y, molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, whatever sweet have you. All are sugars and all have the similar harmful effects. I know of no harmless salt substitute that really tastes salty. Nutrisweet is basically harmless to most people and can be us ed as a 
very satisfactory replacement for sugars. (A few people are unable to tolerate nutrisweet, causing the anti -chemicalists to circulate 
much anti -nutrisweet propaganda, but you should carefully consider this thought before dismissing nutrisweet –there is almost no 
food substance that some people are not allergic to or unable to digest. The fact that nutrisweet is made in a chemical vat a nd the 
fact that some cannot handle nutrisweet does not make it "of the devil. " And its not all black and white with the oth er items either. Sea salt does have certain redeeming qualities not found in mined salt 
and under certain very special conditions, eating small quantities of salt may be acceptable. Similarly, some forms of sugar are not 
quite as harmful as other forms, th ough all are harmful. The primary health problem caused by table salt is not that it contributes to high blood pressure in people with poor kidneys, 
though it does that. It is not that eating salt ruins the kidneys; salt probably does not do that. The  real problem with salt is that 
sodium chloride is an adrenal stimulant, triggering the release of adrenal hormones, especially natural steroids that resist 
inflammation. When these hormones are at high levels in the blood, the person often feels very good, has a sense of well -being. Thus salt is a drug. And like many drugs of its type, salt is a habituating drug. However, we are so used to whipping our adr enals 
with salt that we don't notice it. What we do notice is that we think we like the taste of salte d food and consider that food tastes flat 
without it. But take away a person's salt shaker and they become very uncomfortable. That's because the addict isn't getting their 
regular dose. What's wrong with repetitive adrenal whipping is that adrenal fo rtitude is variable; many people's adrenals eventually fail to 
respond to the prod of salt and the body begins to suffer from a lack of adrenal hormones. Often those inheriting weak adrena ls 
manifest semi -failure in childhood. The consequence is that ordin ary, irritating substances begin causing severe irritation. The 
person becomes allergic to pollen, dust, foods, animal danders, etc. We see asthma, hay fever, sinusitis, etc. Though one can  then 
discover specific allergens and try to remove them from the e nvironment or diet, often this case can be solved far more easily by 
complete withdrawal from all salt. This rests the adrenals and they may recover their full function; almost certainly their f unction 
will improve. The asthma, allergies and etc. , graduall y vanish. Most of us don't need to eat salt as a nutrient. There's enough sodium in one dill pickle to run a human body for a year. The re's 
enough natural sodium in many types of vegetables to supply normal needs without using table salt. Perhaps athle tes or other hard 
working people in the tropics eating deficient food grown on leached -out depleted soils, people that sweat buckets day after day 
may need a little extra sodium.
The author advises against using margarine and recommends using high-quality, raw, and unpasteurized butter, as it is a more nutritious option.
What is the author's opinion on the use of butter and margarine?
The author is critical of dairy products, stating that they are hard to digest and can cause health problems, especially in people who are not genetically adapted to digest them.
What is the author's stance on dairy products?
The author considers salt to be a toxic drug that can lead to adrenal fatigue and a range of health problems, including allergies and digestive issues. They recommend avoiding salt and sugary foods.
What is the author's view on the role of salt in the diet?
The author suggests that people should grind their own grains at home, as commercial stores often sell stale or rancid products. They also advise against eating a variety of foods at one meal, as this can lead to poor digestion and toxicity.
How can one avoid the pitfalls of whole grains?
The author believes that the body has the ability to heal itself, and that the role of the therapist is to provide the correct therapeutic approach, rather than the therapy itself doing the healing.
What is the author's approach to treating critically ill patients?