Interestingly, that is also the time of year when myneighbor gets the most production from her cows and is most willing to part with25 pounds of extra butter. In general, fats are poor foods that should be avoided. Their ratio of nutrition
to calories is absolutely the worst of all food types, except perhaps for pure whitesugar, which is all calories and absolutely no nutrition (this is also true for otherforms of sugar. Honey, too, contains almost no nutrition.). Gram for gram, fatscontain many more calories than do sugars or starches. Yet gram for gram, fatscontain 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 digestive action of the stomach. Another way of saying that isthat they have a very high satiety value. Fats make a person feel full for a longtime 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 tobegin 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 smallquantities of olive oil for salad dressing. Monosaturated fats also have far lesstendency to go rancid than any other type. Vegetable oils with high proportions ofunsaturated fats, the kind that all the authorities push because they contain nocholesterol, go rancid rapidly upon very brief exposure to air. The danger here isthat rancidity in vegetable oil is virtually unnoticeable. Rancid animal fat on theother hand, smells “off.” Eating rancid oil is a sure-fire way to accelerate aging,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 oil, 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 thebottle) or, if you buy olive oil in a large can to save money, immediately uponopening it, transfer the oil to pint jars filled to the very brim to exclude virtually allair, and seal the jars securely. In either case, keep now-opened, in-use smallbottles of oil in the refrigerator because rancidity is simply the combination of oilwith oxygen from the air and this chemical reaction is accelerated at warmertemperatures 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 times faster at normal roomtemperature than it does in the fridge. If you’ll think about the implications of thisdata you’ll see there are two powerful reasons not to fry food. One, the food iscoated with oil and gains in satiety value at the expense of becoming relativelyindigestible and productive of toxemia. Secondly, if frying occurs at 150 degreesCentigrade and normal room temperature is 20 degrees Centigrade, then oil goesrancid 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 about6 weeks of sitting open and exposed to air at room temperature. Think about thatthe next time you’re tempted to eat something from a fast food restaurant wherethe hot fat in the deep fryer has been reacting with oxygen all day, or even forseveral days. Back to butter, where we started. If you must have something traditionally
northern European on your bread, you are far better off to use butter, notmargarine. However, Mediterranean peoples traditionally dip their bread in high-quality extra-virgin olive oil that smells and tastes like olives. Its delicious, why nottry it. But best yet, put low-sugar fruit preserves on your toast or develop a tastefor dry toast. Probably the finest use for butter is melted 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 inthe digestive 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 ofboth the United States and especially that of Canada eating out of its hand(literally), providing the dairy industry with price supports. Because of these pricesupports, in Canada cheese costs half again more than it does in the UnitedStates. The dairy lobby is also very cozy with the medical profession so licensednutritionists constantly bombard us with “drink 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 inprotein; 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 notproduce the enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. Some individuals belongingto these groups can digest goats milk. Some can’t digest any kind except humanbreast milk. And some can digest fermented milk products like yogurt and kiefer.Whenever one eats a protein food that is not fully digestible, it putrefies in thedigestive 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 made to fear cow-transmitteddiseases and/or they are forced to use pasteurized dairy products by healthauthorities. I suspect drinking pasteurized milk or eating cheese made frompasteurized milk is one of the reasons so many people develop allergic reactionsto milk. Yet many states do not allow unpasteurized 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 canbe created: and if you’ve read this book carefully and remember everythingyou’ve read, please forgive me; I am going to repeat a few things said in aprevious chapter about digestion in general..
Proteins are long, complex molecules, intricate chains whose individual links
are amino acids. Proteins are the very stuff of life. All living protoplasm, animal orplant, is largely composed of proteins. There are virtually an infinite number ofdifferent proteins but all are composed of the same few dozen amino acidshooked together in highly variable patterns. Amino acids themselves are highlycomplex organic molecules too. The human body custom-assembles all itsproteins from amino acids derived from digesting protein foods, and can alsomanufacture small quantities of certain of its own amino acids to order, but thereare eight amino acids it cannot make and these are for that reason called essentialamino acids. Essential amino acids must be contained in the food we eat. . Few proteins are water soluble. When we eat proteins the digestive apparatus
must first break them down into their water-soluble components, amino acids, sothese can pass into the blood and then be reassembled into the various proteinsthe body uses. The body has an interesting mechanism to digest proteins; it usesenzymes. An enzyme is like the key for a lock. It is a complex molecule thatlatches to a protein molecule and then breaks it apart into amino acids. Then theenzyme finds yet another protein molecule to free. Enzymes are efficient, reusablemany 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 proteinfoods are present. The stomach then releases hydrochloric acid and churns awaylike a washing machine, mixing the enzymes and the acid with the proteins untileverything 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 thewhite of an egg (which is actually a form of protein). When raw and liquid, thelong chains of albumen (egg white) proteins are in their natural form. However,cook the egg and the egg white both solidifies and becomes smaller. What hashappened is that the protein chains have shriveled and literally tied themselves intoknots. Once this happens, pancreatic enzymes no longer fit and cannot separateall the amino acids. Cooked proteins may churn and churn and churn in thepresence of acid and pancreatic enzymes but they will not digest completely. Partbecomes water soluble; part does not. But, indigestible protein is still subject to an undesirable form of consumption in
the gut. Various bacteria make their home in our airless, warm intestines. Some ofthese live on protein. In the process of consuming undigested proteins, theyrelease 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 combinedwill not produce toxemia in a person that still has a strong pancreas. However,eating raw meat and fish can be a dicey proposition, both for reasons of culturalsensibility (people think it is disgusting) and because there may be living parasitesin uncooked flesh that can attack, sicken and even kill people. It has been arguedthat a healthy stomach containing its proper degree of acidity provides animpenetrable barrier to parasites. Perhaps. But how many of us are that healthythese days? Cooked flesh and fish seems more delicious to our refined, civilizedsensibilities, but are a poor food. In my household we have no moral objection to eating meat. We do have an
ethical objection in that meat eating does not contribute to our health. But still, wedo eat it. A few times a year, for traditional celebrations we may invite thechildren over and cook a turkey. A few times for Thanksgiving 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 itmedium-rare, with relish. It was delicious. It made me feel full for hours and hoursand hours. I stayed flat on the couch and groggily worked on digesting it allevening. 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 alower temperature. But altered none the less. And made less digestible.Pasteurizing also makes milk calcium far less assimilable. That’s ironic because somany people are drinking milk because they fear they need more calcium to avoidosteoporosis and to give their children good teeth. What pasteurized milk actuallydoes to their children is make them calcium deficient and makes the children toxic,provoking many colds, ear infections, sinusitis, inflammations of the tonsils andlung 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 start with. (2) It can be repeatedly exposedto an irritating substance such as pollen when, at the same time, the body’smechanism for dealing with irritations is weakened. Generally weak adrenalscauses this because the adrenal’s job is to produce hormones that reduceinflammation. Once the irritating substance succeeds at producing a significantinflammation, a secondary reaction may be set up, called an allergy. Onceestablished, an allergy is very hard to get rid of. (3) An allergy can develop in a way very similar to the second case, but
instead of being irritated by an external substance, it is irritated by repeatedlyfailing to properly, fully digest something. Pasteurized milk for example, basicallyimpossible to completely digest even in its low-fat form, often sets up an allergythat 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 home-brewed beer; he also became highly intolerant to alcohol. Now he has allergicreactions to both alcohol and barley. And gets far sicker from drinking beer (twoseparate allergies) than from wheat beer, hard liquor or wine (only one allergy). Eating too much of any single food, or repeatedly eating too much of an
otherwise very good food at one time, can eventually overwhelm the body’sability to digest it fully. Then, the finest whole food products may set up an allergicreaction. Worse, this allergic reaction itself subsequently prevents proper digestioneven 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 peopleusually think of when they think “allergic reaction.” Food allergies can cause manykinds of symptoms, from sinusitis to psychosis, from asthma to arthritis, fromhyperactivity to depression, insomnia to narcolepsy—and commonly thesymptoms don’t manifest immediately after eating. Frequently, allergic reactions
are so low grade as to be unnoticeable and may not produce an observablecondition until many years of their grinding down the vital force has passed. Whenthe condition finally appears it is hard to associate it with some food that has beenconsumed 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, widespread, frequently found allergies that anyoneconsidering a dietary cause of their complaints might just cut all these foods out ofthe diet for a few weeks just to see what happens. And individuals may be allergicto anything from broccoli to bacon, strawberries to bean sprouts. Unraveling foodallergies sometimes requires the deductions of a Sherlock Holmes. However, food allergies are very easy to cure if you can get the suffererer to
take the medicine. Inevitably, allergic reactions 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, gradualreintroduction of foods, they can discover which individual items cause trouble.See Coca’s Pulse Test in the Appendix where you’ll find step-by-step instructionsfor 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 caused by the roller mill. This apparently profitable machine permitted the miller to efficiently separatewheat flour into three components: bran, germ and endosperm. Since bread madewithout bran and germ is lighter and appears more “upper class” it becameinstantly popular. Flour without germ and bran also had an industrial application—it could be stored virtually forever without being infested by insects because whiteflour does not contain enough nutrition to support life. Most health consciouspeople are aware that white flour products won’t support healthful human lifeeither. Essentially, white flour’s effect on humans is another demonstration of Health =
Nutrition / Calories. When the bran and germ are discarded, remaining are thecalories and much of the protein, lacking are many vitamins and minerals andother 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 meanyou can just go to the bakery and buy whole grain bread, or go to the healthfoodstore and buy organically grown whole wheat flour, bake your own, and be ashealthy as the ancients? Sorry, the answer is almost certainly no. There are pitfalls,many of them, waiting 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 thewheat germ (where the embryo resides) there is considerable oil, containing
among 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 certainlyrancid. A lot of its other vitamin content has been oxidized too. If the wheat flourhad flowed directly from the grinder into an airtight sack and from there directly tothe freezer, if it had been flash frozen and kept extremely cold, it might have astorage life of some months. Of course that was not the case. Maybe you’relucky and your healthfood store is one of the very few that has its own small-scaleflour 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 kraftpapersacks! How much time had elapsed from milling to wholesaler to baker tobaking? The answer has to be in the order of magnitude of weeks. And it mightbe months. Was the flour 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’vetasted real bread you’ll instantly see by comparison what stale, rancid wholewheat flour tastes like. Freshly ground flour makes bread that can be the staff oflife 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 thatwhen 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 youare going to make rye breads, even more reason to grind your own. Corn mealfrom the grocery store has usually been degerminated too. If it hasn’t been, the oilin the seed’s germ has probably 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 staunchadvocates 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 thevitamins, 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 youare, as we do, going to immediately bake your flour, what difference does it makeif 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 they will grind. If the cereal is a bit moist or if the seed being ground is alittle bit oily, the mill becomes instantly blocked. Steel burr mills grind fast and coarsely and are inexpensivebut coarse flour
makes heavy bread. The metal grinding faces tend to wear out and have to bereplaced occasionally—if they can be replaced. Breads on the heavy side are stilldelicious; for many years I made bread with an inexpensive steel burr millattachment that came with my juicer. Some steel burr mills will also grind oily seed like sesame and sunflower. However, oily seeds can be ground far more easily half-a-cup at a time in a littleinexpensive electric spice/coffee mill, the sort with a single fast-spinning propeller. I currently think the best compromise are hammermills. 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 typeof mill is small, very fast, intermediate in price between steel mills and stone mill,lasts a long time, but when grinding, sounds like a Boeing 747 about to take off. Itis essential to wear hearing protectors when using it. Awareness of bread quality is growing. One excellent new U.S. business,
called Great Harvest Bakery is a fast-growing national franchise chain. They bakeand sell only whole grain breads; all their wheat flour is freshly ground daily on thepremises in the back. Unfortunately, as of the writing of this book, they do notgrind their rye flour 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 organically
grown is no cure all for making good or nutritious bread. Great Harvestunderstands 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 wasspongy after baking like I wanted it to be. Sometimes it kneaded stickily andended up flat and crumbly like a cake. Since I had done everything the same wayexcept that I may have bought my wheat berries from different healthfood 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 collapsing, is gluten. The word glue derivesfrom gluten. The gluten content of various wheats varies. Bread bakers use “hardwheat” because of its high gluten content. Gluten is a protein and gluten comprisesmost of the protein in bread wheat; the protein content and the gluten content arealmost identical. Try this. Ask your healthfood store buyer or owner what the protein content is
of the hard red wheat seeds they’re selling. You’ll almost certainly get a puzzledlook and your answer will almost certainly be, “we have Organic andconventional.” Demand that the store buyer ask this question of their distributor/wholesaler and then report back to you. If the distributor deigns to answer, theanswer 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 breadwheats run from about 12 percent protein to about 19 percent and this differencehas everything to do with the soil fertility (and to an extent the amount of rainfallduring 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 quality and comprises the bulk of cheap bread grain. When youhear in the financial news that a bushel of wheat is selling for a certain price, theymean #2. Bakers compete for higher protein lots and pay far higher prices formore protein. We prefer our bread 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 andfinally discovered a knowledgeable lady that sold flour mills and who also was aserious baker herself. She had located a source of quality wheat with an assayedprotein content and sold it by the 50 pound sack. When I asked her if her wheatwas Organic she said it was either sixteen or seventeen percent protein dependingon 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! Thedifference between seventeen percent and fourteen percent protein is about 25percent. That percentage difference is the key threshold of nutritional deficiencythat makes teeth fall out. We can’t afford to accept 25% degradations in ournutritional quality in something that we eat every day and that forms the very basisof our dietary. Please understand here that I am not saying that high protein wheats can’t be
grown organically. They certainly can be. The founder of Great Harvest Bakeryperforms a valuable service locating and securing high-protein lots of organicallygrown wheats for his outlets. But often as not Organic products are no morenourishing than those grown with chemicals. Until the buyers at Organic wholefood wholesalers get better educated about grain, obtaining one’s personal millingstock from them will be a dicey proposition. Sometimes 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 qualityseed on extremely infertile soil or when half-smothered in weeds becauseherbicides weren’t used for reasons of ideological purity. V egetables will hardlyproduce anything under those conditions; carelessly grown fruits and vegetablesare inevitably small, misshapen, unmarketable. But seed cleaning equipment canremove 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 expend more money for cleaning out highlevels of weed seeds from the field-run harvest, and still make a good profit. Alousy Organic cereal crop like this might even make a higher profit because thefarmer has been spared the expense of fertilization, of rotation, of weed control. Iremember 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 outthat tiny, light (lacking density) seed in favor of using the “conventional” wholeoats 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; they look very much like wheatberries. But rolled oats become rancid and stale on the shelf much like wheat flouron the shelf. Another pitfall about using whole grains is that to be nutritious they must still be
fresh enough to sprout vigorously. A seed is a package of food surrounding anembryo. The living embryo is waiting for the right conditions (temperature andmoisture) to begin sprouting. Sprouting means the embryo begins eating up storedfood 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 virtuallyairtight seed coat that permits only enough oxygen to enter for the embryo’srespiration (yes, seed breaths 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 exposed to air and begin deteriorating rapidly. In thecase of oats, especially rapidly, because oats are the only grass-based cereal thatcontains 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 nutritionalcontent) and perhaps become rancid very rapidly. So we make porridge fromwhole 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 tothe pot badly and may also froth over and mess the stove. Here’s how to cookthem. Coarsely grind (like corn meal) your whole oats until you have one cup ofoat grits. Bring exactly four cups of water (no salt) to a very hard boil at yourhighest 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 toslowly pour the grits into the boiling water or you’ll make clumps. Keep on thehigh heat until the water again boils vigorously. Suddenly, the mixture will beginrising in the pot and will try to pour all over the stove. This means it is all at boilingtemperature again. Quickly move the pot to the low burner; that instantly stopsthe frothing. Then cover. Let the porridge cook for 30 minutes, stirring once ortwice to prevent sticking. Then, keeping it covered, turn off the heat. They can beeaten at this point but I think it is better to let the oats finish soaking on the stovefor at least two to four hours. Then reheat in a double boiler, or warm in amicrowave. We usually start a pot of oats at bedtime for the next morning. See why people
prefer the convenience of using rolled oats? But once you’ve eaten oats maderight, you’ll never prefer the flavor of rolled oats again. And if the human body hasany 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 ofboiling the small round seeds will still be hard and the hulls remain entirelyindigestible. Worse, the half-round hulls (they split eventually) stick in your teeth.But prehulled millet, sitting in the sack for weeks and months, loses a lot ofnutrition and tastes very second-rate compared to freshly-hulled millet. It ispossible to buy unhulled millet, usually by special order from the health fooddistributor—if you’ll take a whole sack. Millet can be hulled at home in smallbatches. Here’s how we figured out how to do it. There probably are betterways. Using a cheap steel-burr flour mill, set the burrs just far enough apart that the
seed is ground to coarse grits, but not flour. This pops the hulls loose. An old millwith worn-out burrs works great for this job. Then you have to get some handseed cleaning screens just large enough to pass the grits but not pass the hulls(most of them). Window screen or other hardware cloths won’t work. Seedcleaning screens come in increments of 1/128 inch; we use a 6/64" round screen.Other batches of millet might work better with a screen one step larger or smaller.It will take you a little ingenuity to find hand-held screens. They’re used by seedcompanies and farmers to clean small batches of seed for inspection and areusually about one square foot in size with a quality wooden frame. Larger framesmade of the same screening material are used in big seed cleaning machines. (Thehulls could also be winnowed out by repeatedly pouring the grit/hulls mixture backand 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 fortwo or three meals and keep the uncooked (unwashed) millet in the freezer in anairtight jar. It is interesting how people will accept poor nutrition and itsconsequent 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 write a thorough book on the home
milling of cereals. And perhaps sell the equipment by mail. Probably would be agood 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 still slowly deteriorates,steadily oxidizing and losing nutritional value. Eventually old seed looses the abilityto sprout. The decline in germination ability matches a decline in nutritional quality.Any seed you are going to use for eating should possess the ability 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 forquite a few years after harvest if they have been stored cool and dry. Eating deador near-dead seeds 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 leaveningprocess, but no bakery could stay in business without salting their bread. Thestandard level of salt is two percent by weight. That is quite a lot! Two percentequals one teaspoonful per pound. I’ll have more to say about the evils of salt. I imagine some of my readers are feeling a little overwhelmed by all these
warnings and “bewares ofs,” and intricacies. They are used to taking noresponsibility for securing their own food supply quality and have come to expectthe “system” to protect them. I believe it is not because of lack of governmentintervention, but because of government intervention itself, our food system is veryperverse. Until our mass consciousness changes, if you wish to make yourself andyour family truly healthy, you are going to have to take charge and become quite adiscriminating shopper. Unconscious consumers are on a rapid road to the totalunconsciousness 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 yourguide 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 gothrough a similar process as their nutritional content gradually oxidizes or isbroken down by the vegetables own enzymes, but vegetables lose nutritionhundreds of times more rapidly than cereals. Produce was recently part of a livingplant. It was connected 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 zucchiniwas entirely alive at the moment of harvest, but from that point, its cells begin todie. Even if it is not yet attacked by bacteria, molds and fungi, its own internalenzymes have begun breaking down its own substances. V egetables, especially leafy vegetables, are far more critical in this respect than
most ripe fruits. All, however, deteriorate much like radioactive material; theyhave a sort of half-life. The mineral content is stable, but in respect to the vitaminsand enzymes and other complex organic components, each time period or “halflife” results in the loss of half the nutrition. Suppose a lettuce has a half life of 48hours, two days after harvest only 50 percent of the original nutrition remains.After two more days, half the remaining half is gone and only 25 percent is left.After two more days half of that 25 percent is lost. Thus six days after harvestand a lettuce contains only bout 12 percent of its original nutrition. A two dayhalf-life is only hypothetical. Those types of produce I classify as very perishableprobably do have a half-life of from 36 to 48 hours. Moderately perishableproduce has a half life of about 72 hours; durable types of produce have half livesof 96 hours or longer. Very Perishible  Moderately Perishible 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 usually use hydrocooling. Thisprocess dumps a just-cut vegetable into icy water within minutes of beingharvested, lowering core temperature to a few degrees above freezing almostimmediately. When cut vegetables are crated up at field temperatures, and stacksof those crates are put in a cooler, it can take the inside of the stack 24 hours, orlonger, to become chilled. Home gardeners should also practice hydrocooling. Fillyour sink with cold water and wash/soak your harvest until it is thoroughly chilledbefore draining and refrigerating it. Or, harvest your garden early in the morningwhen temperatures are lowest. Still, when you 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 certain 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. Saltfrom a mine and salt from the sea both have the same harmful effect; white sugar,natural brown sugar, honey, 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 tomost people and can be used as a very satisfactory replacement for sugars. (Afew people are unable to tolerate nutrisweet, causing the anti-chemicalists tocirculate much anti-nutrisweet propaganda, but you should carefully consider thisthought before dismissing nutrisweet—there is almost no food substance thatsome people are not allergic to or unable to digest. The fact that nutrisweet ismade in a chemical vat and the fact that some cannot handle nutrisweet does notmake it “of the devil.”
And its not all black and white with the other items either. Sea salt does have
certain redeeming qualities not found in mined salt and under certain very specialconditions, eating small quantities of salt may be acceptable. Similarly, some formsof sugar are not quite as harmful as other forms, though 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 thateating salt ruins the kidneys; salt probably does not do that to most kidneys. Thereal problem with salt is that sodium chloride is an adrenal stimulant, triggering therelease of adrenal hormones, especially natural steroids that resist inflammation.When these hormones are at high levels in the blood, the person often feels verygood, has a sense of well-being. Thus salt is a drug! And like many drugs of itstype, salt is a habituating drug. However, we are so used to whipping our adrenalswith salt that we don’t notice it. What we do notice is that we think we like thetaste of salted food and consider that food tastes flat without it. But take away aperson’s salt shaker and they become very uncomfortable. That’s because theaddict isn’t getting their regular dose. What’s wrong with repetitive adrenal whipping is that adrenal fortitude is
variable; many people’s adrenals eventually fail to respond to the prod of salt andthe body begins to suffer from a lack of adrenal hormones. Often those inheritingweak adrenals manifest semi-failure in childhood. The consequence is that
ordinary, 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 removethem from the environment or diet, often this case can be solved far more easilyby complete withdrawal from all salt. This rests the adrenals and they mayrecover their full function; almost certainly their function will improve. The asthma,allergies and etc., gradually 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. There’s enough natural sodium in manytypes of vegetables to supply normal needs without using table salt. Perhapsathletes or other hard working people in the tropics eating deficient food grownon leached-out depleted soils, people that sweat buckets day after day may needa little extra sodium. Perhaps. Not having practiced in the humid tropics myself, Ihave no definitive answer about this. Unfortunately, the average American is entirely addicted to salt and thinks food
tastes lousy without it. To please the average consumer, almost all prepared foodscontain far too much salt for someone suffering from exhausted adrenals.Interestingly, Canadians do not like their foods nearly as salty as Americans, andprepared foods like soups and the like in cans and packages that look just like theones in American supermarkets (though with French on the back panel) have tobe reformulated for our northern neighbors. I’ve observed that Canadians aregenerally 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 thatsimple step doesn’t pretty much cure them. The trouble is that bakery bread isroutinely two percent salt by weight. Cheese is equally salted or even more so.Canned and frozen prepared food products are all heavily salted. Restaurantmeals are always highly salted in the kitchen. If you want to avoid salt you almosthave to prepare everything yourself, 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 ourown kitchen except for that in cheese, and we eat cheese rather moderately. Sugar is a high-caloric non-food with enormous liabilities. First, from the
viewpoint of the universal formula for health, no form of non-artificial sweetenercarries enough nutrients with it to justify the number of calories it contains, noteven malt extract. White refined sugar contains absolutely no nutrients at all; the“good” or “natural” sweets 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 scalethat for this reason alone they should 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 todigest and the least damaging to the organ systems. Although, speaking of sin, asEdgar Guest, the peoples’ poet, once so wisely quipped, (and my husbandagrees) “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.” Sugar is a powerful drug! Peoplewho abuse sweets set up a cycle of addiction that can be very hard to break. Itstarts when the body tries to regulate blood sugar. Kicked up to high levels byeating sugar, the pancreas releases insulin. But that is not the end of the chainreaction. Insulin regulates blood sugar levels but also raises brain levels of anamino acid called tryptophan. Tryptophan is the raw material the brain uses tomanufacture a neurotransmitter called serotonin. And serotonin plays a huge rolein 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 giveyour kids sweets! Or huge servings of starch to mellow them out. It is wise not tostart out life a happiness addict with a severe weight problem. Now that the chemistry of sugar addiction is understood, there currently is a
movement afoot to cast the obese as helpless victims of serotonin imbalances andto “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 multiple billion dollar business that will capture all the money currentlyflowing into other dieting systems and bring it right back to the AMA/drugcompany/FDA nexus. The pitch is that when serotonin levels are upped, thedesire to eat drops and so is weight. This approach is popular with the obesebecause it requires no personal responsibility other than taking a pill that reallydoes make them feel happy. However, the same benefit can be had by strictadherence to a low-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. Eventually, the brain chemistryrebalances itself and serotonin levels stabilize. Remember, the pancreas has another major service to perform for the body:
secreting digestive enzymes to aid in the digestion of proteins. When the dietcontains either too much protein or too much sugar and/or high-glycemic indexstarch foods, the overworked pancreas begins to be less and less efficient atmaintaining 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 generallyaccompanied by unpleasant symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, blurred vision,irritability, confusion, headache, etc. This condition is typically alleviated by yetanother hit of sugar which builds an addiction not only to sugar, but to food ingeneral. If the hypoglycemic then keeps on eating sugar to relieve the symptomsof sugar ingestion, eventually the pancreas becomes exhausted, producing aninsulin deficiency, called diabetes. Medical doctors treat diabetes with insulinsupplements either oral or intramuscular plus a careful diet with very low andmeasured amounts of sugar and starch for the remainder of the persons inevitablyshortened and far less pleasant life. However, sometimes diabetes can becontrolled with diet alone, though medical doctors have not had nearly as muchsuccess with this approach as talented naturopaths. Sometimes, long fasting canregenerate a pancreas. It is far better to avoid creating this disease! Glycemic Index
(compared to glucose, which is 100)
Grains Fruits V egetables
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
The dietary management of hypoglycemia requires that not only refined but
also unrefined sugars and starches with a high glycemic index be removed fromthe diet. (The glycemic index measures the ease with which the starch isconverted into glucose in the body, and estimates the amount of insulin needed tobalance it out.) This means no sugar, no honey, no white flour, no whole grainssweetened with honey, no sweet fruits such as watermelons, bananas, raisins,dates or figs. Potatoes are too readily converted into sugar. Jerusalem artichokesare a good substitute. People with hypoglycemia can often control their symptoms with frequent
small meals containing vegetable protein every two hours. When a non-sweet fruitis eaten such as an apple, it should be eaten with some almonds or other nut orseed that slows the absorption of fruit sugar. Hypoglycemics can improve theircondition 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 triggered by low blood sugar levels,frequently contributing to or causing a cycle of acting out behavior accompaniedby destruction of property and interpersonal violence, as well as psychosis andbouts of depression. It is not possible to easily deal with the resulting behaviorproblems unless the hypoglycemia is controlled. Unfortunately most institutionssuch as mental hospitals and jails serve large amounts of sugar and starch andusually caffeinated beverages, with a high availability of soda pop, candy, andcigarettes at concessions. If the diet were drastically improved, the drugs given tocontrol behavior in mental hospitals would be much more effective at a lowerdose, 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. Asstated earlier, poor protein digestion leads to a highly toxic condition fromputrefied protein in the intestines. This condition is alleviated by eliminating animalproteins from the diet and taking digestive aids such as pancreatin pills with mealsto assist in the digestion of vegetable proteins. 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 andorganically grown foods, but they then proceed to make these otherwise goodfoods into virtual junkfood by preparing them incorrectly. In my travels, I’venoticed 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 withnatural sea salt; organically grown oat and nut granola roasted with cold-pressedunsaturated oil (made rancid by roasting) hideously sweetened with honey; carrotcake made with rancid whole wheat flour, cold pressed unsaturated oil (maderancid by baking), honey, and cream cheese (salted); whole wheat cookies (stale,rancid flour) sweetened with honey, made with vegetable oil baked at high heat(rancid); whole wheat pizza vegetarian style with lots of soy cheese; whole wheatpizza vegan style with lots of real raw milk cheese; organically grown corn chipsdeep fried in cold pressed vegetable oil with or without natural sea salt, yogurtsmade from powdered milk without an active culture of beneficial bacteria andcovered with highly sugared fruits, etc. These foods may well represent animprovement over the average American diet, but they still are not healthy foods,and should never be used in a diet for a sick person. Nor are they worthy of aperson attempting to maximize health. The problem with healthfood junkfoods is not their major ingredients, but how
they were combined and processed and adulterated. Remember, fats, animal orvegetable, subjected to high heat become indigestible and toxic and makeanything they’re cooked with indigestible; salt is a toxic drug; cheese, hard enoughto digest as it is, when raised to high temperatures as it is when making pizza,becomes virtually indigestible and cheese inevitably contains a lot of butterfatwhich, though saturated animal fat, when raised to high temperatures, stillbecomes 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 out the other, and they don’tfeel any unpleasant symptoms in between, then it was digested. But bad foodcombinations have a cumulative degenerative effect over a long period of time.When the symptoms arrive the victim never associates the food combination withthe symptom because it seems to them that they’ve always been eating the food. Mainstream nutritionists have brainwashed the public into thinking that we
should have a representative serving from each of the “four basic food groups” ateach and every meal, plus a beverage and a desert. Or, as my husband Steve isfond of quipping, a “balanced meal” has four colors on every plate: somethingred, something green, something white and something yellow. But the balancedmeal is a gastronomic catastrophe that can only be processed by the very youngwith high digestive vitality, the exceptionally vital of any age, people with cast ironstomachs which usually refers to their good heredity, and those who are veryphysically 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 bedigested. Proteins require an acid environment. Starch digestion requires analkaline environment. When foods in complex combinations are presented to thestomach 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, thestomach, pancreas, liver and small intestine are overwhelmed, resulting in thefermentation of the sugars and starches, and the putrefaction of the proteins, andpoor digestion of the whole. It is little wonder that most people feel so tired aftera large meal and need several cups of strong coffee to be able to even get upfrom the table. They have just presented their digestive tract with an immenselydifficult 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 oldsaying, “one food at a meal is the ideal.” An example of this approach would beeating fruits for breakfast, a plain cereal grain for lunch, and vegetables for supper.If you can’t eat quite that simply, then proper food combining rules should befollowed to minimize digestive difficulty, maximize the adsorption of nutrients fromyour food, and reduce or eliminate the formation of toxemia, and of course foulgas. In general, fruit should be eaten alone unless you happen to be hypoglycemic
or diabetic in which case fruit should be eaten with small quantities of a vegetableprotein such as nuts, or yogurt and/or cheese if able to digest dairy. Starchesshould be eaten with vegetables, which means that a well combined meal wouldinclude a grain such as rice, millet, buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa, corn, wheat,rye, oats, spelt, potatoes, or starchy winter squash combined with raw or cookedvegetables. Protein foods such as meat, eggs, beans, lentils, tofu, split peas,should be combined with vegetables, raw or cooked. But protein should never becombined with starches. The most popular North American snacks and mealsalways have a starch/protein combination, for example: meat and potatoes,hamburger in a bun, hot dog with bun, burrito with meat or cheese, meatsandwiches, etc. It is little wonder that intestinal gas is accepted as normal, andthat over time these hard to digest combinations eventually cause health problemsthat 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. Thedigestive tract is immediately responsive to stress and or negative thoughts. Itbecomes paralyzed in negative emotional states; any foods eaten are poorlydigested, 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. Thereare people who, under stress or when experiencing a loss, eat ravenously in anattempt to comfort themselves. If this goes on for long the person can expect tocreate a serious illness of some kind. Individual sensitivity to this type of overeating is dependent upon genetics and
personality and who is generating the negative emotions. Self generated negativeemotions are very difficult to avoid. If you are unable to change your ownemotional 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 vegetables, 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 the body repair itself enough beforesome essential function ceases altogether? If there already exists too muchdamage to vital organs the person will die. If there remains sufficient organfunction to support life, enough vital force to power those functions, and a will tolive, the body may heal itself if helped by the correct therapeutic approach. Butthe therapy does not do the healing; the body does that by itself—if it can. Thisreality is also true of allopathic medicine. I believe fasting is the therapy that almost invariably gives a critically ill person
their very best chance of recovery. If a patient dies while fasting they almostcertainly would have died anyway, and if death comes while fasting, it will bemore comfortable, with less pain, and with more mental clarity. Critically ill people may have, among other things, any of the following
diagnoses: advanced cancer, advanced aids, heart failure, very high bloodpressure, kidney failure, advanced liver disease, advanced emphysema,
Food In The Order Of Digestive Difficulty
Individual digestive weaknesses and allergies are not taken into
account in this list:
Hard To Digest: Meat, fish, chicken, eggs (if cooked), all legumes
including soy products, peanuts and peanut butter, beans, split peas, lentils,chick peas, dairy products such as cheese, milk, butter milk, nuts and seedsand their butters. Intermediate: all grains--quinoa, amaranth, millet, spelt, rye, wheat,
oats, barley. Fairly Easy:  Brussels sprouts, green beans, green peas, broccoli,
cauliflower, raw cultured milk products, asparagus, cabbage, sproutsespecially bean sprouts, kale, other leafy greens. Very Easy:  fruits, vegetable juices, fruit juices, broth (clear). No Effort:  herb tea, water. pneumonia or other catastrophic infections, especially those that seem
unresponsive to antibiotics, strokes, emboli, sclerotic vessels as found inarteriosclerosis, severe nerve degeneration interfering with nerve transmission tovital organs. Treating the critically ill does not have to be an all or nothing, ideological
choice between holistic medicine and AMA style medicine. It is important for thecritically ill and their families to know that if they use standard medical treatmentsuch as drugs or surgery, these measures can and should be combined withnatural healing methods. It is always desirable to quit all addicting substances,start a whole foods diet, (as light as possible), and add meganutrition(supplements) to the medical doctor’s treatments. Few medical doctors are soarrogantly partisan as to assert that natural measures will do any harm as long asthe MD is still allowed to prescribe as they please. Holistic support will not only lessen the side effects of the medical treatments
but will speed up healing and often reduce the required dose of prescribed drugs.I have had several clients with cancer who chose to have surgery, radiation andchemotherapy, but stayed on a raw food diet and took high doses of supplementsthroughout the treatment. These people amazed the attending physician by feelinggood with little if any fatigue, no hair loss, or flu symptoms. The same can be trueof other conditions. Ethyl always comes to my mind when I think of how much healing power can
still be left in a dying body. She (accompanied by her husband for support) cameto Great Oaks School with terminal cancer, heart failure, advanced diabetes,extreme weakness, and complete inability to digest. Any food ingested just cameback up immediately. Ethyl had large tumors taking over the breast, sticking outfrom her skull, and protruding from her body in general. The largest was the onein the left breast which was the size of a big man’s fist. She did have one crucial thing going for her, Ethyl was a feisty Irish red head
who still had a will to live, and a reason to do so. She and her husband, who had
just retired, had dreamed their whole life of touring the US and Canada in their
own RV the minute he retired. The time had finally arrived but Ethyl was too ill tosupport her own weight (only 90 pounds) and to top it off was blind from diabeticretinopathy. The doctors had done everything they could to her, and now judgedher too weak to withstand any more surgery (she had already had her right breastremoved). Radiation or chemotherapy were also considered impossible due toheart failure. They sent Ethyl home to die, giving her a few days to a month atmost. Any sensible hygienist trying to stay out of jail would have refused to take on
this type of case because it was a cancer case where death was likely. Treatmentof this highly lucrative disease is considered the AMA’s exclusive franchise, evenwhen the medical doctors have given up after having done everything to a bodythe family can pay for or owe for. Whenever a person dies under the care of anyperson who is not a licensed M.D. there must be an autopsy and a criminalinvestigation in search of negligence. If the person dies under the care of an M.D.the sheriff’s assumption is that the doctor most assuredly did everything he couldand should have done and death was inevitable. By accepting Ethyl I had areasonable likelihood of ending up in trouble; but being foolish, brave and(stupidly) feeling relatively immune to such consequences (I was under 40 at thetime), it seemed important to try to help her. So, undaunted by the task,regardless of the outcome, I proceeded logically, one step at a time. Today, withmore experience and a modest net worth I wouldn’t want to have to defend in alawsuit, and at age 55. possessing no spare five to ten years to give to the State to“pay” for my bravery, I would probably refuse such a case. Fortunately I have notbeen confronted with this problem lately. Since Ethyl was unable to digest anything given by mouth, she was fed rectally
with wheat grass juice implants three times a day. She was carried to the colonictable for a daily colonic. Wheat grass and clay poultices were applied to hertumors three times a day. She received an acupressure massage and reflexology
treatments during the day, plus a lot of tender loving care. This program continued
for a month during which the tumors were being reabsorbed by the body,including the large, extremely hard tumor sticking out the flesh of the right breast. Ethyl complained of severe pain as the large tumor in her breast shrank. While
it had been getting larger and pressing ever harder on all the nerves, she had littleor no sensation, but as it shrank, the nerves were reactivated. Most people thinkthat a growing tumor would cause more pain than a shrinking one. Often theopposite is true. Pain can be a good sign that the body is winning, an indicator toproceed. By the second month, Ethyl, gradually gaining strength, was able to take wheat
grass and carrot juice orally, and gradually eased into raw foods, mostly sproutsand leafy greens such as sunflower and buckwheat greens grown in trays. Shestarted to walk with assistance up and down the halls, no longer experiencing theintense pain formerly caused by a failing heart, and most surprising of all, hereyesight returned, at first seeing only outlines, and then details. The third month Ethyl enlarged her food intake to include raw foods as well as
the carrot and wheat grass juice and sprouts, plus vitamin and mineralsupplements to help support her immune system and the healing process. All thetumors had been reabsorbed by her body and were no longer visible, her heartwas able to support normal activity such as walking, and nonstrenuous householdchores, and her diabetes had corrected itself to the point that she no longerrequired insulin and was able to control her blood sugar with diet. Her husband was then instructed in her maintenance and they went home to
continue the program. The last I heard from them they had made two lengthy tripsaround the US in their RV and were enjoying their retirement together after all. My treatment worked because the most important factor in the healing of the
critically ill person is not give them more nourishment than their body is able toprocess. The moment the digestive capacity of the sick person is exceeded, thecondition will be exacerbated and in a critically illness, the person is likely to die. If the body still has sufficient organ integrity and vital force to heal itself, it will do
so only if given the least possible nourishment that will support life–provided noessential organs are hopelessly damaged. If the liver and kidneys are functional,and the person has done some previous dietary improvement and/or cleansing,success is likely, especially if the person wants to live. A person in critical condition does not have time to ease into fasting by first
spending a month or two on a raw foods diet.
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Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Interestingly, that is also the time of year when myneighbor gets the most production from her cows and is most willing to part with25 pounds of extra butter. In general, fats are poor foods that should be avoided. Their ratio of nutrition
to calories is absolutely the worst of all food types, except perhaps for pure whitesugar, which is all calories and absolutely no nutrition (this is also true for otherforms of sugar. Honey, too, contains almost no nutrition. ). Gram for gram, fatscontain many more calories than do sugars or starches. Yet gram for gram, fatscontain 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 digestive action of the stomach. Another way of saying that isthat they have a very high satiety value. Fats make a person feel full for a longtime 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 tobegin 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 smallquantities of olive oil for salad dressing. Monosaturated fats also have far lesstendency to go rancid than any other type. Vegetable oils with high proportions ofunsaturated fats, the kind that all the authorities push because they contain nocholesterol, go rancid rapidly upon very brief exposure to air. The danger here isthat rancidity in vegetable oil is virtually unnoticeable. Rancid animal fat on theother hand, smells “off. ” Eating rancid oil is a sure-fire way to accelerate aging,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 oil, 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 thebottle) or, if you buy olive oil in a large can to save money, immediately uponopening it, transfer the oil to pint jars filled to the very brim to exclude virtually allair, and seal the jars securely. In either case, keep now-opened, in-use smallbottles of oil in the refrigerator because rancidity is simply the combination of oilwith oxygen from the air and this chemical reaction is accelerated at warmertemperatures 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 times faster at normal roomtemperature than it does in the fridge. If you’ll think about the implications of thisdata you’ll see there are two powerful reasons not to fry food. One, the food iscoated with oil and gains in satiety value at the expense of becoming relativelyindigestible and productive of toxemia. Secondly, if frying occurs at 150 degreesCentigrade and normal room temperature is 20 degrees Centigrade, then oil goesrancid 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 about6 weeks of sitting open and exposed to air at room temperature. Think about thatthe next time you’re tempted to eat something from a fast food restaurant wherethe hot fat in the deep fryer has been reacting with oxygen all day, or even forseveral days. Back to butter, where we started. If you must have something traditionally
northern European on your bread, you are far better off to use butter, notmargarine. However, Mediterranean peoples traditionally dip their bread in high-quality extra-virgin olive oil that smells and tastes like olives. Its delicious, why nottry it. But best yet, put low-sugar fruit preserves on your toast or develop a tastefor dry toast. Probably the finest use for butter is melted 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 inthe digestive 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 ofboth the United States and especially that of Canada eating out of its hand(literally), providing the dairy industry with price supports. Because of these pricesupports, in Canada cheese costs half again more than it does in the UnitedStates. The dairy lobby is also very cozy with the medical profession so licensednutritionists constantly bombard us with “drink 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 inprotein; 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 notproduce the enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. Some individuals belongingto these groups can digest goats milk. Some can’t digest any kind except humanbreast milk. And some can digest fermented milk products like yogurt and kiefer. Whenever one eats a protein food that is not fully digestible, it putrefies in thedigestive 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 made to fear cow-transmitteddiseases and/or they are forced to use pasteurized dairy products by healthauthorities. I suspect drinking pasteurized milk or eating cheese made frompasteurized milk is one of the reasons so many people develop allergic reactionsto milk. Yet many states do not allow unpasteurized 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 canbe created: and if you’ve read this book carefully and remember everythingyou’ve read, please forgive me; I am going to repeat a few things said in aprevious chapter about digestion in general. Proteins are long, complex molecules, intricate chains whose individual links
are amino acids. Proteins are the very stuff of life. All living protoplasm, animal orplant, is largely composed of proteins. There are virtually an infinite number ofdifferent proteins but all are composed of the same few dozen amino acidshooked together in highly variable patterns. Amino acids themselves are highlycomplex organic molecules too. The human body custom-assembles all itsproteins from amino acids derived from digesting protein foods, and can alsomanufacture small quantities of certain of its own amino acids to order, but thereare eight amino acids it cannot make and these are for that reason called essentialamino acids. Essential amino acids must be contained in the food we eat. Few proteins are water soluble. When we eat proteins the digestive apparatus
must first break them down into their water-soluble components, amino acids, sothese can pass into the blood and then be reassembled into the various proteinsthe body uses. The body has an interesting mechanism to digest proteins; it usesenzymes. An enzyme is like the key for a lock. It is a complex molecule thatlatches to a protein molecule and then breaks it apart into amino acids. Then theenzyme finds yet another protein molecule to free. Enzymes are efficient, reusablemany 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 proteinfoods are present. The stomach then releases hydrochloric acid and churns awaylike a washing machine, mixing the enzymes and the acid with the proteins untileverything 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 thewhite of an egg (which is actually a form of protein). When raw and liquid, thelong chains of albumen (egg white) proteins are in their natural form. However,cook the egg and the egg white both solidifies and becomes smaller. What hashappened is that the protein chains have shriveled and literally tied themselves intoknots. Once this happens, pancreatic enzymes no longer fit and cannot separateall the amino acids. Cooked proteins may churn and churn and churn in thepresence of acid and pancreatic enzymes but they will not digest completely. Partbecomes water soluble; part does not. But, indigestible protein is still subject to an undesirable form of consumption in
the gut. Various bacteria make their home in our airless, warm intestines. Some ofthese live on protein. In the process of consuming undigested proteins, theyrelease 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 combinedwill not produce toxemia in a person that still has a strong pancreas. However,eating raw meat and fish can be a dicey proposition, both for reasons of culturalsensibility (people think it is disgusting) and because there may be living parasitesin uncooked flesh that can attack, sicken and even kill people. It has been arguedthat a healthy stomach containing its proper degree of acidity provides animpenetrable barrier to parasites. Perhaps. But how many of us are that healthythese days. Cooked flesh and fish seems more delicious to our refined, civilizedsensibilities, but are a poor food. In my household we have no moral objection to eating meat. We do have an
ethical objection in that meat eating does not contribute to our health. But still, wedo eat it. A few times a year, for traditional celebrations we may invite thechildren over and cook a turkey. A few times for Thanksgiving 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 itmedium-rare, with relish. It was delicious. It made me feel full for hours and hoursand hours. I stayed flat on the couch and groggily worked on digesting it allevening. 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 alower temperature. But altered none the less. And made less digestible. Pasteurizing also makes milk calcium far less assimilable. That’s ironic because somany people are drinking milk because they fear they need more calcium to avoidosteoporosis and to give their children good teeth. What pasteurized milk actuallydoes to their children is make them calcium deficient and makes the children toxic,provoking many colds, ear infections, sinusitis, inflammations of the tonsils andlung 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 start with. (2) It can be repeatedly exposedto an irritating substance such as pollen when, at the same time, the body’smechanism for dealing with irritations is weakened. Generally weak adrenalscauses this because the adrenal’s job is to produce hormones that reduceinflammation. Once the irritating substance succeeds at producing a significantinflammation, a secondary reaction may be set up, called an allergy. Onceestablished, an allergy is very hard to get rid of. (3) An allergy can develop in a way very similar to the second case, but
instead of being irritated by an external substance, it is irritated by repeatedlyfailing to properly, fully digest something. Pasteurized milk for example, basicallyimpossible to completely digest even in its low-fat form, often sets up an allergythat 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 home-brewed beer; he also became highly intolerant to alcohol. Now he has allergicreactions to both alcohol and barley. And gets far sicker from drinking beer (twoseparate allergies) than from wheat beer, hard liquor or wine (only one allergy). Eating too much of any single food, or repeatedly eating too much of an
otherwise very good food at one time, can eventually overwhelm the body’sability to digest it fully. Then, the finest whole food products may set up an allergicreaction. Worse, this allergic reaction itself subsequently prevents proper digestioneven 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 peopleusually think of when they think “allergic reaction. ” Food allergies can cause manykinds of symptoms, from sinusitis to psychosis, from asthma to arthritis, fromhyperactivity to depression, insomnia to narcolepsy—and commonly thesymptoms don’t manifest immediately after eating. Frequently, allergic reactions
are so low grade as to be unnoticeable and may not produce an observablecondition until many years of their grinding down the vital force has passed. Whenthe condition finally appears it is hard to associate it with some food that has beenconsumed 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, widespread, frequently found allergies that anyoneconsidering a dietary cause of their complaints might just cut all these foods out ofthe diet for a few weeks just to see what happens. And individuals may be allergicto anything from broccoli to bacon, strawberries to bean sprouts. Unraveling foodallergies sometimes requires the deductions of a Sherlock Holmes. However, food allergies are very easy to cure if you can get the suffererer to
take the medicine. Inevitably, allergic reactions 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, gradualreintroduction of foods, they can discover which individual items cause trouble. See Coca’s Pulse Test in the Appendix where you’ll find step-by-step instructionsfor 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 caused by the roller mill. This apparently profitable machine permitted the miller to efficiently separatewheat flour into three components: bran, germ and endosperm. Since bread madewithout bran and germ is lighter and appears more “upper class” it becameinstantly popular. Flour without germ and bran also had an industrial application—it could be stored virtually forever without being infested by insects because whiteflour does not contain enough nutrition to support life. Most health consciouspeople are aware that white flour products won’t support healthful human lifeeither. Essentially, white flour’s effect on humans is another demonstration of Health =
Nutrition / Calories. When the bran and germ are discarded, remaining are thecalories and much of the protein, lacking are many vitamins and minerals andother 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 meanyou can just go to the bakery and buy whole grain bread, or go to the healthfoodstore and buy organically grown whole wheat flour, bake your own, and be ashealthy as the ancients. Sorry, the answer is almost certainly no. There are pitfalls,many of them, waiting 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 thewheat germ (where the embryo resides) there is considerable oil, containing
among 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 certainlyrancid. A lot of its other vitamin content has been oxidized too. If the wheat flourhad flowed directly from the grinder into an airtight sack and from there directly tothe freezer, if it had been flash frozen and kept extremely cold, it might have astorage life of some months. Of course that was not the case. Maybe you’relucky and your healthfood store is one of the very few that has its own small-scaleflour 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 kraftpapersacks. How much time had elapsed from milling to wholesaler to baker tobaking. The answer has to be in the order of magnitude of weeks. And it mightbe months. Was the flour 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’vetasted real bread you’ll instantly see by comparison what stale, rancid wholewheat flour tastes like. Freshly ground flour makes bread that can be the staff oflife 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 thatwhen 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 youare going to make rye breads, even more reason to grind your own. Corn mealfrom the grocery store has usually been degerminated too. If it hasn’t been, the oilin the seed’s germ has probably 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 staunchadvocates 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 thevitamins, 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 youare, as we do, going to immediately bake your flour, what difference does it makeif 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 they will grind. If the cereal is a bit moist or if the seed being ground is alittle bit oily, the mill becomes instantly blocked. Steel burr mills grind fast and coarsely and are inexpensivebut coarse flour
makes heavy bread. The metal grinding faces tend to wear out and have to bereplaced occasionally—if they can be replaced. Breads on the heavy side are stilldelicious; for many years I made bread with an inexpensive steel burr millattachment that came with my juicer. Some steel burr mills will also grind oily seed like sesame and sunflower. However, oily seeds can be ground far more easily half-a-cup at a time in a littleinexpensive electric spice/coffee mill, the sort with a single fast-spinning propeller. I currently think the best compromise are hammermills. 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 typeof mill is small, very fast, intermediate in price between steel mills and stone mill,lasts a long time, but when grinding, sounds like a Boeing 747 about to take off. Itis essential to wear hearing protectors when using it. Awareness of bread quality is growing. One excellent new U. S. business,
called Great Harvest Bakery is a fast-growing national franchise chain. They bakeand sell only whole grain breads; all their wheat flour is freshly ground daily on thepremises in the back. Unfortunately, as of the writing of this book, they do notgrind their rye flour 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 organically
grown is no cure all for making good or nutritious bread. Great Harvestunderstands 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 wasspongy after baking like I wanted it to be. Sometimes it kneaded stickily andended up flat and crumbly like a cake. Since I had done everything the same wayexcept that I may have bought my wheat berries from different healthfood 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 collapsing, is gluten. The word glue derivesfrom gluten. The gluten content of various wheats varies. Bread bakers use “hardwheat” because of its high gluten content. Gluten is a protein and gluten comprisesmost of the protein in bread wheat; the protein content and the gluten content arealmost identical. Try this. Ask your healthfood store buyer or owner what the protein content is
of the hard red wheat seeds they’re selling. You’ll almost certainly get a puzzledlook and your answer will almost certainly be, “we have Organic andconventional. ” Demand that the store buyer ask this question of their distributor/wholesaler and then report back to you. If the distributor deigns to answer, theanswer 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 breadwheats run from about 12 percent protein to about 19 percent and this differencehas everything to do with the soil fertility (and to an extent the amount of rainfallduring 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 quality and comprises the bulk of cheap bread grain. When youhear in the financial news that a bushel of wheat is selling for a certain price, theymean #2. Bakers compete for higher protein lots and pay far higher prices formore protein. We prefer our bread 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 andfinally discovered a knowledgeable lady that sold flour mills and who also was aserious baker herself. She had located a source of quality wheat with an assayedprotein content and sold it by the 50 pound sack. When I asked her if her wheatwas Organic she said it was either sixteen or seventeen percent protein dependingon 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. Thedifference between seventeen percent and fourteen percent protein is about 25percent. That percentage difference is the key threshold of nutritional deficiencythat makes teeth fall out. We can’t afford to accept 25% degradations in ournutritional quality in something that we eat every day and that forms the very basisof our dietary. Please understand here that I am not saying that high protein wheats can’t be
grown organically. They certainly can be. The founder of Great Harvest Bakeryperforms a valuable service locating and securing high-protein lots of organicallygrown wheats for his outlets. But often as not Organic products are no morenourishing than those grown with chemicals. Until the buyers at Organic wholefood wholesalers get better educated about grain, obtaining one’s personal millingstock from them will be a dicey proposition. Sometimes 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 qualityseed on extremely infertile soil or when half-smothered in weeds becauseherbicides weren’t used for reasons of ideological purity. V egetables will hardlyproduce anything under those conditions; carelessly grown fruits and vegetablesare inevitably small, misshapen, unmarketable. But seed cleaning equipment canremove 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 expend more money for cleaning out highlevels of weed seeds from the field-run harvest, and still make a good profit. Alousy Organic cereal crop like this might even make a higher profit because thefarmer has been spared the expense of fertilization, of rotation, of weed control. Iremember 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 outthat tiny, light (lacking density) seed in favor of using the “conventional” wholeoats 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; they look very much like wheatberries. But rolled oats become rancid and stale on the shelf much like wheat flouron the shelf. Another pitfall about using whole grains is that to be nutritious they must still be
fresh enough to sprout vigorously. A seed is a package of food surrounding anembryo. The living embryo is waiting for the right conditions (temperature andmoisture) to begin sprouting. Sprouting means the embryo begins eating up storedfood 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 virtuallyairtight seed coat that permits only enough oxygen to enter for the embryo’srespiration (yes, seed breaths 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 exposed to air and begin deteriorating rapidly. In thecase of oats, especially rapidly, because oats are the only grass-based cereal thatcontains 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 nutritionalcontent) and perhaps become rancid very rapidly. So we make porridge fromwhole 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 tothe pot badly and may also froth over and mess the stove. Here’s how to cookthem. Coarsely grind (like corn meal) your whole oats until you have one cup ofoat grits. Bring exactly four cups of water (no salt) to a very hard boil at yourhighest 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 toslowly pour the grits into the boiling water or you’ll make clumps. Keep on thehigh heat until the water again boils vigorously. Suddenly, the mixture will beginrising in the pot and will try to pour all over the stove. This means it is all at boilingtemperature again. Quickly move the pot to the low burner; that instantly stopsthe frothing. Then cover. Let the porridge cook for 30 minutes, stirring once ortwice to prevent sticking. Then, keeping it covered, turn off the heat. They can beeaten at this point but I think it is better to let the oats finish soaking on the stovefor at least two to four hours. Then reheat in a double boiler, or warm in amicrowave. We usually start a pot of oats at bedtime for the next morning. See why people
prefer the convenience of using rolled oats. But once you’ve eaten oats maderight, you’ll never prefer the flavor of rolled oats again. And if the human body hasany 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 ofboiling the small round seeds will still be hard and the hulls remain entirelyindigestible. Worse, the half-round hulls (they split eventually) stick in your teeth. But prehulled millet, sitting in the sack for weeks and months, loses a lot ofnutrition and tastes very second-rate compared to freshly-hulled millet. It ispossible to buy unhulled millet, usually by special order from the health fooddistributor—if you’ll take a whole sack. Millet can be hulled at home in smallbatches. Here’s how we figured out how to do it. There probably are betterways. Using a cheap steel-burr flour mill, set the burrs just far enough apart that the
seed is ground to coarse grits, but not flour. This pops the hulls loose. An old millwith worn-out burrs works great for this job. Then you have to get some handseed cleaning screens just large enough to pass the grits but not pass the hulls(most of them). Window screen or other hardware cloths won’t work. Seedcleaning screens come in increments of 1/128 inch; we use a 6/64" round screen. Other batches of millet might work better with a screen one step larger or smaller. It will take you a little ingenuity to find hand-held screens. They’re used by seedcompanies and farmers to clean small batches of seed for inspection and areusually about one square foot in size with a quality wooden frame. Larger framesmade of the same screening material are used in big seed cleaning machines. (Thehulls could also be winnowed out by repeatedly pouring the grit/hulls mixture backand 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 fortwo or three meals and keep the uncooked (unwashed) millet in the freezer in anairtight jar. It is interesting how people will accept poor nutrition and itsconsequent 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 write a thorough book on the home
milling of cereals. And perhaps sell the equipment by mail. Probably would be agood 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 still slowly deteriorates,steadily oxidizing and losing nutritional value. Eventually old seed looses the abilityto sprout. The decline in germination ability matches a decline in nutritional quality. Any seed you are going to use for eating should possess the ability 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 forquite a few years after harvest if they have been stored cool and dry. Eating deador near-dead seeds 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 leaveningprocess, but no bakery could stay in business without salting their bread. Thestandard level of salt is two percent by weight. That is quite a lot. Two percentequals one teaspoonful per pound. I’ll have more to say about the evils of salt. I imagine some of my readers are feeling a little overwhelmed by all these
warnings and “bewares ofs,” and intricacies. They are used to taking noresponsibility for securing their own food supply quality and have come to expectthe “system” to protect them. I believe it is not because of lack of governmentintervention, but because of government intervention itself, our food system is veryperverse. Until our mass consciousness changes, if you wish to make yourself andyour family truly healthy, you are going to have to take charge and become quite adiscriminating shopper. Unconscious consumers are on a rapid road to the totalunconsciousness 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 yourguide 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 gothrough a similar process as their nutritional content gradually oxidizes or isbroken down by the vegetables own enzymes, but vegetables lose nutritionhundreds of times more rapidly than cereals. Produce was recently part of a livingplant. It was connected 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 zucchiniwas entirely alive at the moment of harvest, but from that point, its cells begin todie. Even if it is not yet attacked by bacteria, molds and fungi, its own internalenzymes have begun breaking down its own substances. V egetables, especially leafy vegetables, are far more critical in this respect than
most ripe fruits. All, however, deteriorate much like radioactive material; theyhave a sort of half-life. The mineral content is stable, but in respect to the vitaminsand enzymes and other complex organic components, each time period or “halflife” results in the loss of half the nutrition. Suppose a lettuce has a half life of 48hours, two days after harvest only 50 percent of the original nutrition remains. After two more days, half the remaining half is gone and only 25 percent is left. After two more days half of that 25 percent is lost. Thus six days after harvestand a lettuce contains only bout 12 percent of its original nutrition. A two dayhalf-life is only hypothetical. Those types of produce I classify as very perishableprobably do have a half-life of from 36 to 48 hours. Moderately perishableproduce has a half life of about 72 hours; durable types of produce have half livesof 96 hours or longer. Very Perishible  Moderately Perishible 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 usually use hydrocooling. Thisprocess dumps a just-cut vegetable into icy water within minutes of beingharvested, lowering core temperature to a few degrees above freezing almostimmediately. When cut vegetables are crated up at field temperatures, and stacksof those crates are put in a cooler, it can take the inside of the stack 24 hours, orlonger, to become chilled. Home gardeners should also practice hydrocooling. Fillyour sink with cold water and wash/soak your harvest until it is thoroughly chilledbefore draining and refrigerating it. Or, harvest your garden early in the morningwhen temperatures are lowest. Still, when you 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 certain 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. Saltfrom a mine and salt from the sea both have the same harmful effect; white sugar,natural brown sugar, honey, 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 tomost people and can be used as a very satisfactory replacement for sugars. (Afew people are unable to tolerate nutrisweet, causing the anti-chemicalists tocirculate much anti-nutrisweet propaganda, but you should carefully consider thisthought before dismissing nutrisweet—there is almost no food substance thatsome people are not allergic to or unable to digest. The fact that nutrisweet ismade in a chemical vat and the fact that some cannot handle nutrisweet does notmake it “of the devil. ”
And its not all black and white with the other items either. Sea salt does have
certain redeeming qualities not found in mined salt and under certain very specialconditions, eating small quantities of salt may be acceptable. Similarly, some formsof sugar are not quite as harmful as other forms, though 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 thateating salt ruins the kidneys; salt probably does not do that to most kidneys. Thereal problem with salt is that sodium chloride is an adrenal stimulant, triggering therelease of adrenal hormones, especially natural steroids that resist inflammation. When these hormones are at high levels in the blood, the person often feels verygood, has a sense of well-being. Thus salt is a drug. And like many drugs of itstype, salt is a habituating drug. However, we are so used to whipping our adrenalswith salt that we don’t notice it. What we do notice is that we think we like thetaste of salted food and consider that food tastes flat without it. But take away aperson’s salt shaker and they become very uncomfortable. That’s because theaddict isn’t getting their regular dose. What’s wrong with repetitive adrenal whipping is that adrenal fortitude is
variable; many people’s adrenals eventually fail to respond to the prod of salt andthe body begins to suffer from a lack of adrenal hormones. Often those inheritingweak adrenals manifest semi-failure in childhood. The consequence is that
ordinary, 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 removethem from the environment or diet, often this case can be solved far more easilyby complete withdrawal from all salt. This rests the adrenals and they mayrecover their full function; almost certainly their function will improve. The asthma,allergies and etc. , gradually 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. There’s enough natural sodium in manytypes of vegetables to supply normal needs without using table salt. Perhapsathletes or other hard working people in the tropics eating deficient food grownon leached-out depleted soils, people that sweat buckets day after day may needa little extra sodium.
To prevent rancidity, as oil reacts with oxygen in the air to become rancid, and this process is accelerated at warmer temperatures.
Why is it recommended to use small bottles of oil and transfer it to jars with minimal exposure to air?
Fats are hard to digest and slow down the digestive action of the stomach, making a person feel full for a long time.
What is the main reason people enjoy eating fats, according to the text?
To ensure the quality of the grains and prevent rancidity, as commercial products may have been exposed to air and heat during processing, leading to a loss of nutritional value.
Why is it recommended to grind one's own grains at home?
The author believes that sugar is a harmful substance and should be avoided, as it can lead to addiction and other health problems.
What is the author's stance on the use of sugar?
The author emphasizes the importance of eating one type of food at a time, as combining foods can lead to poor digestion and the formation of toxins in the digestive tract.
What is the author's opinion on the importance of food combining in digestive health?