Nutrition Down the Drain

In a school Yahoo groups forum when one posts a message saying that he is sixty four years old and wants to know if bowel movement deteriorates with age, the post is bound to be gang tackled with bawdy suggestions. Non-doctors like me came up with suggestions like positioning one into scary situations so that the bowels move like greased lightening. In our forum, the jokes would have carried on endlessly till a doctor, Dr Richard Haythornwaite, stepped in and got the ball rolling in the right direction.

Dr Richard Haythornwaite posted the following:

Dear Anand,

A few thoughts for you and the group. It was 1948 and just two months into my first term at Jesus College, Cambridge, when out tutor popped a question to the five of us in his tutorial. "Now tell me doctors what was the most important single factor for the health of the nation at the beginning of the last war?" Well we faffed around and in the end the answer came, "Raising the amount of the grain used to make bread flour from 70% of the grain to 85%." It contained extra protein, minerals, vitamins and roughage. The next question, "and who do you think made the most complaint?" Again we faffed about but the answer when it came was something that has stuck with me all these years, "The Laxative manufacturers!" They knew full well that with the extra roughage in the diet their profits would go down the drain! So there you basically have it, that what we eat must have a good proportion of roughage in it. Here is an interesting side line that people whose staple diet is rice have less bowel problems, especially if it is brown rice because the fibre is spread though out the grain. When Japanese British POWs were given the huskings of the rice for their gardens, they eat it for its mineral, vitamins and nutritional content.

It was not until many years later when I joined the McCarrison Society that I appreciated the full import of the tutors’ story. I learnt how in 1880 the English flour mills converted to steel roller mills which enabled them to produce a very fine white flour consisting purely of the endosperm of the grain, sans pericarp, (roughage), vitamins and minerals. The by product, bran, became a new product sold as a health food, "Bemax" and others. The introduction of this very white flour and its very white bread was eagerly taken to by the masses of the country, as it was only the well to do had had white bread heretofore, it being very expensive to sieve out through a fine muslin, the rougher parts of the grain, found in stone ground flour made in water or windmills. I learnt also how in the early 1900s, some twenty years after the introduction of this special white flour there was this interesting new illness, coronary thrombosis, along with constipation, gastric ulcers, diverticulitis, varicose veins, gall-bladder problems and general ill-health, particularly among the poorer portions of society relying on that staple of food, bread, "The Staff of Life" as it was known. They were unaware as were the rest of the population, doctors included, how battered that Staff had become. The one section of the community who knew something has changed were the grannies of English Society who could not understand why they were now constipated. So worried were they that colonic washout clubs were formed to deal with the problem. Note the time lag before the health changes presented themselves.

Despite the recognition how beneficial the National Loaf had been the Government succumbed to pressure from the various food manufacturers to go back to the pre WWII flour, because it has better keeping qualities and gives a better looking product. A government Commission deciding that provided, some chalk, iron and some vitamins were added it would be as good for health as whole grain flour. What an error!

The well known saying an “Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away” confirms the need of our insides for roughage. The fibre of the apple, particularly if the skin and core are eaten as well, kept the doctor away when all he supplied was physic to open the bowels, the apple did just as well and had vitamins and nutrition too in addition to precluding the need to call the doctor.

The McCarrison Society commemorates, Sir Robert McCarrison who early in the 1900s was posted to Gilgit and appreciated the health and stamina of the Hunzakuts. He did a big study on all Indian diets and felt the Northern whole Grain diets were the best, his work being brought together in a publication by Faber and Faber Ltd published first in 1953.

Some other interesting side lines: If one can persuade a patient to change from his current low roughage diet to a high roughage one knows that if he does not get appendicitis within six weeks he will never get it. His bowels will work well, are not sluggish, so the anaerobic dangerous bacteria are replaced by aerobic friendly ones whose products are absorbed and make the blood less sticky, and so protect from arterial plaque and resulting coronary occlusion, as well as the other problems mentioned before.

So those who believe in a diet of vegetables aplenty, whole meal products whether flour, rice or other staple are on the right track. Combine this with an avoidance of white flour and sugar products and one is well on the way to a healthy diet. Naturally some, fish, white meat and other sources of protein are O.K. But perhaps it is the old saying, "It is a little bit of what you fancy does you good!" provided of course that is a good whole food. Certainly many of us eat too much, it being well attested that laboratory animals on a restricted but sufficient diet live much longer and healthier lives than those allowed to tuck in to as much as want.

The Heart Foundation of New Zealand recommends a diet with five helpings of vegetables a day, whole grain products, some fish and dairy products together with a restriction on excessive meat, white flour and sugar products.

However I have gone on far too long, but in conclusion treat all food made from white flour, white rice and white sugar, this last being the "pure white and deadly of Professor Yudkin, with care, eat plenty of vegetables and whole grains together with some extra protien, and hopefully the constipation problems of our members will be less intrusive than here-to-fore and their general health improved. A diet like this is for many people a real discipline as the human race is made with an inbuilt longing for sweet food, after all when a food was sweet it was ripe and safe to eat, if it was bitter, salty or acid it was dangerous.

regards to all, Richard.

I really am just an aged G.P. who qualified in 1954 and have been blessed with good health so that I am still sought after as a locum. Joining the McCarrison Society was like a conversion, the sudden realisation how much an ordinary doctor could actually do to prevent illness rather than just treat it.

It is astonishing how the sayings of the ordinary folk are so true. There should have been in the the first reply that fine aphorism, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." But to be truly effective the skin and the core must be eaten too. This came from the time when most of what a doctor did was to supply "physic", i.e. opening medicines, hence the saying, the apple keeping the bowel working happily meant there was no need for the doctor to visit with his "physic". (Medicinal preparations, particularly those of a purgative nature)

It was Denis Burkett working in Africa (circa 1940) who realised that the local population had far less bowel cancer than their European counterparts. He realised this was due to a slow bowel transit time, whereas the Africans on their native time had a transit time of about 36 - 48 hours whereas those on a European diet might have one as long a week. This allows for poisons and toxins to be produced by unhealthy anaerobic bowel bacteria that come to predominate in these conditions. The stagnant bowel contents causing illnesses from acute appendicitis to bowel cancer especially of the large intestine and rectum. Hence the problems caused by the roughage free white bread consumed by most of the western population who have this as a staple food, the toxic gut contents resting against the bowel wall induces cancerous change. Looking up his life on Google is very rewarding.

Again many thanks for your kind words, we are what we eat but it is an uphill battle to get the message across, so many of the general populace sticking to their carbonated sugar filled drinks, white bread, lollies and sweet biscuits. In my medical practice I have encountered patients who have on questioning admitted to consuming 50kgs or more of sugar over a year just in their tea or coffee. Remarkable! No wonder there is an epidemic worldwide of diabetes. To me one of the sad things is the difficulty in persuading patients, friends and family to have healthier eating habits, white bread and sugar laden drinks are to the fore, just as these occupy much shelf space in the super markets.

With kind regards, do keep in touch, Richard.

Googling for Gur, Mollasses, McCarrison, and Denis Burkett threw up the following nuggets:

Ancient Medical scriptures dating back to 2500 years state how Jaggery (Panela)purifies the blood, prevents rheumatic afflictions and disorders of bile and possesses nutritive properties of high order.

Mahatma Gandhi in 1935 exhorted every one to put gur in their milk and not refined sugar. Gur has a mild laxative effect. Gur has Calcium, Phosphorous, Iron, Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, Absorbic Acid and a host of other nutrients.
The manufacture of sugar from sugarcane juice is a process that involves a cocktail of chemicals. Sulphur dioxide, lime, phosphoric acid, formic acid, bleaching agents and viscosity reducers are just some of these. Moreover, the processing of sugar is carried on in mild steel equipment, which leads to a high dosage of Nickel in the mother liquor.

Denis Burket had an alternate theory, published in numerous articles and books, that the use of the natural squatting position for defecation protects the natives of Africa and Asia from gastrointestinal diseases. This theory has never been tested and is now gaining more attention as a promising direction for research.

Research & Development

The above suggests that the industrial revolution was responsible for subtraction of nutrients from the food chain, leading millions to constipation and diseases. Surely technology has developed sufficiently to enable manufacturing methods to simulate hand pounding of rice and wheat to ensure that nutrients are not leached out.

The stink that emanates from sugar refineries suggests that something rotten is going on. A search for traces of harmful compounds in refined sugar is called for.

Biopharmaceutical researchers could suggest elegant sugar refining methods as opposed to the crude chemical methods chemical engineers have come up with so far. The refineries could be designed small enough for the Gram Panchayats to afford and operate.

Legislation & Taxes

Punitive taxes on refined sugar, rice and flour that do not contain a certain percentage of micronutrients should spur R&D efforts towards elegant refining and de-husking methods. Legislation to set deadlines before which mill-owners must return to manufacture wholesome foods of our great-grannies days, will spur R&D. Something on the lines of insisting on Iodized salt as opposed to pure salt is suggested.

The sugar barons wield political clout, however, sugar cane growers would like to see value addition to their products and not adopt a rapacious business-as-usual attitude.

Satyagraha

Mahatma Gandhi exhorted all to wear khadi and shun mill produced textiles. He missed out on gur and hand pounded rice. Thousands of tons of vitamins, nutrients, and fiber have gone down the drain, which the malnourished in India can ill afford.