Article #1: Well! You Wanted To Know By V.V. Vetrano, B.S., D.C.

Is using vinegar or lemon juice, and honey with salads, then eating it with a starch, a bad food combination?

Yes. Starches and acids should not be mixed. The enzyme, salivary amylase (ptyalin) digests starches in an alkaline medium and for a very short time only in a neutral medium. It is quickly destroyed in an acid medium. Therefore, vinegar, which contains acetic acid, interferes with starch digestion because it inactivates salivary amylase.

The reason it is necessary to insure good digestion of food is because if it isn't digested, bacteria decompose it in the stomach and intestines with the formation of toxic products. Since bacteria are living cells, they form waste products and these are very toxic to humans. These, unfortunately, are absorbed in the small intestine and cause enervation. Not being useful nutrients, these toxic wastes must be expelled from the body at a great expenditure of nerve energy, thus producing enervation. The toxemia which ensues from enervation, which checks elimination, causes destruction of normal functioning tissues of the body. Disease is the result. In addition these waste products are irritants and cause gastritis which after many years may result in ulcers and finally cancer.

Lemon juice is an acid and also upsets or impairs starch digestion. Lemon juice is not a poison, however, and if you are not eating a protein or a starch you may indulge once in a while in a little unrefined oil with lemon juice on a salad. But, if you are eating either a starch or a protein with your salad don't indulge in a dressing. For more perfect digestion it is best to always eat salads without dressings of any kind.

Strict Hygienists never use oil. Oil is a fragmented food and never as wholesome as the whole food. The term "cold-pressed" should never be taken literally. It only means the first pressing, not that the food has not been heated. Foods are heated to extract the oil from them. Heated oils become carcinogens if heated long enough, and should never touch the delicate membranes of your gastrointestinal tract.

Oils have gone through many other processes also, such as dewinterizing, deodorizing, and detastizing. These processes are aimed at preventing the oil from solidifying in a cold temperature and to give them a bland tasteless flavor, supposedly "ideal" for cooking. The odor of the original food is also processed out of it for the same reason. After all these processes, oils are no longer fit foods for people.

Honey has a singular history. Hygienists don't use honey because it combines poorly with most foods and contains formic acid (a preservative secreted by the bee), which also impairs digestion and is poisonous. Honey is lacking in the minerals necessary for humans and will cause cavities almost as easily as white sugar, besides creating an acid condition if indulged in excessively.

Modern honeys are mass produced, as are many other of our food products, and because of this, quality suffers. Beekeepers have the tendency to pinch pennies as does everyone else in business, with no thought of the consumer. They purchase old leftover candies from candy manufacturers or other businesses, melt them down and feed them to their bees, including the preservatives, shellac, coloring agents, artificial flavorings and all other poisonous chemicals that go into candy these days. The bees in turn produce a more toxic honey. They also eventually sicken and die and the beekeeper can't understand why. With or without all the poisons, honey is food for the bee, not for people. We must eat those foods which we were designed to eat or suffer disease and die prematurely.

When we learn to eat those things to which we are physiologically and anatomically adapted, instead of searching the heavens, the oceans, forests, rivers and streams for exotic delicacies of the palate, we will begin to glow with health. Instead of wasting time searching high and low for materials out of which to artificially prepare foods for the starving world, we should be planting our gardens and orchards to fulfill this great need.

Fruits, nuts, and vegetables are the foods to which we are anatomically and physiologically adapted, and which have minerals and vitamins in proportion one to the other to meet our special needs, and we don't make a mess of the ecological system by eating them. On the contrary, we are fulfilling our part in the ecological system by eating them. By staying with the foods to which we are constitutionally adapted, we also maintain the proper cycle of the elements. Honey is not among the foods that humans should eat.

Good food combining is not that difficult to learn. Study just a little every day and soon you will know how to make your own Hygienic menus wherever you go no matter what foods are available.

Is the digestion of pasteurized milk difficult?

Pasteurized milk can't be completely digested as can unpasteurized, so in that sense it is harder to digest and handle. The proteins in cooked milk coagulate, come to the surface, and form the skim with which you are familiar. Some protein is lost in the pasteurizing process, because some proteins coagulate. Coagulated protein is harder to digest than that which has not been hardened. Calcium and other minerals in pasteurized milk tend to form insoluble precipitates that are neither digestible nor absorbable, and therefore are lost to us as nutrients. With the idea of improving milk, toxic irradiated ergosterol is added. If you must have milk at least drink it unpasteurized, and take it alone.

Why are the nutritious foods such as watercress, comfrey and parsley not included in the Hygienic diet?

Any vegetable that is strong and has a pungent, unpalatable flavor is not eaten by Hygienists. Any substance that can't be enjoyed by the normal sense of taste is considered toxic. The normal taste buds don't appreciate these substances and warn us against such foods that have toxic substances in them. These bitter and pungent substances are not relished normally and it is Nature's way to cause us to avoid them.

Watercress is too strong and pungent to the taste and any vegetable which is that strong should not be used because of an excess of certain substances. It is thought that the sharp taste of watercress is due to the large amount of sulphur contained therein. An excess of sulphur in foods is not healthful.

Parsley is eaten by Hygienists but it is not eaten in excess because of the high quantity of oxalic acid it contains.

Sorrel is generally used in salads, but Hygienists avoid it because it contains much free acid; especially oxalic acid. It contains between three and four parts per thousand of oxalic acid.

Comfrey does not form a part of the Hygienic diet because it has astringent qualities which occasion wasteful vital actions designed to rid the body of the toxic substance. Comfrey is used as a healing agent by herbalists because of these properties. Any plant that occasions vital abnormal actions is toxic and should not be used.

Do you approve of yogurt?

Hygienists as a rule eat no yogurt. In order to make yogurt, milk has to be heated and this causes a precipitation of the minerals in the milk, rendering them insoluble and not absorbable. Consequently there is an objectionable loss of food value. Pasteurized and powdered milk is generally used for the commercial product, making it doubly poor food.

What is poke-weed?

Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is a tall herbaceous plant that grows wild in North America, mainly in the Southern States. The weed has juicy purple berries and a purple root, which is used in making some drugs. The young purple shoots, which resemble asparagus, are used by some people in the spring or early summer in salads; but they are high in oxalic acid. It is best to shun any plant used as a medicine, as it always contains toxic substances.

The Hygienic system does not favor foods high in oxalic acid such as rhubarb, cranberries, chard, beet greens, and spinach. What actually is oxalic acid and how does it disrupt the digestion?

Oxalic acid (C2h3O4) is an organic acid that is widely distributed throughout the vegetable kingdom. It is sometimes found combined with calcium in the form of an oxalate, instead of as a free acid. Sorrel, spinach, rhubarb, cacao, black tea and pepper contain from two to four parts per thousand in the fresh material. It was formerly thought that tomatoes were high in oxalic acid but they have been found to have less than .0005 parts per thousand. Their sour taste is due to citric acid. Cashew nuts also contain an appreciable amount of oxalic acid.

Calcium oxalate is found in the leaves of many plants that we eat, such as spinach, beet tops and swiss chard. It is also found in lichens. The oxalic acid from food will be circulated in the body in the form of a free acid or as a salt of the acid, usually a calcium salt. People in good health can oxidize the oxalic acid, that is, their bodies can break it down into carbon dioxide and water as it does other organic compounds. If metabolism is perverted by excess toxins in the body, then oxalic acid cannot be properly handled. In excess it interferes with digestion by inhibiting enzymic actions. If the oxalic acid is not broken down chemically before it reaches the kidneys, it may predispose to the development of calcium oxalate stones. Ragnar Berg, the Swedish biochemist states, "The amount of oxalic acid in cocoa and black tea is especially high and an over-indulgence in these drinks combined with an acid-forming diet, will greatly favor the formation, or the deposit, of urates and oxalates in the kidneys and bladder...All conditions that favor the increase of uric acid in the body, such as a high flesh diet, combined with demineralized foods, will also contribute to the formation of oxalates."

What is uric acid and how do oxalic acid and uric acid differ?

Oxalic acid is a natural acid found in foods. Uric acid is a decomposition product. It is an end-product of protein metabolism.

Since the body forms its own nucleic acids and the breakdown products of nucleic acids are purines which in turn are changed into uric acid, there will always be a certain amount of uric acid in the blood, but more than what the body will form itself can be hazardous, as uric acid tends to precipitate into stones.