Klaus Wiegand wrote:
> Food Processing and Malnutrition
> The Economic Destruction of The Food Chain
> By John Coleman
>
> From 1811 to 1816 groups of English artisans known as Luddites
> rallied against the machinery of the industrial revolution. The
> advent of intensive mechanisation brought not only the end of
> skilled craft labour, but ultimately set in motion the
> widespread malnutrition of the westernised worlds.
>
>
> In 1898 the first edition of Peter Kropotkin's Fields, Factories
> And Workshops Tomorrow was published. In it he says:
>
> "The necessary machinery was created, and the British
> production of manufactured goods went on at a gigantic
> pace. In the course of less than seventy years- from 1810
> to 1878- the output of coal grew from 10 to 133,000,000
> tons; the imports of raw materials rose from 30 to
> 380,000,000 tons; and the exports of manufactured goods
> from 46 to 200,000,000 pounds. The tonnage of the
> commercial fleet was nearly trebled. Fifteen thousand
> miles of railways were build."
>
> With the move of rural peoples into the factories, and the
> cities that grew out of them, the demand came for these
> populations to be fed from the remaining, and now labour scarce,
> farming communities. One particular problem of this new system
> was that fresh wholefoods do not keep for more than a few days
> without serious spoiling. The only economic solution was the
> industrialisation of food production, to replace the loss of
> labour, and rationalising the food supply. The need was to
> decrease the bulk of the food materials and improve their shelf
> life. It was grains that would remain the staple foods of
> industrial society. Grains could be harvested easily, milled
> locally and then shipped into the cities as flour. By the time
> the factory worker got his "daily bread", most of what little
> nutritional value grains possessed had been damaged by oxidation
> or heat. The advent of white bread, brought about due to roller
> mills, may also have brought about the first cases of polio (see
> 'Immunization: The Reality Behind The Myth' by Walene James, for
> links between diet and disease and natural immunity).
>
> The problem of food preservation was solved mainly by either
> denaturing foods so much that they no longer supported bacterial
> or fungal life, (Heating, refining, extruding, irradiating,
> hydrogenating) or by canning or embalming the foods in poisons.
> Later improvements on these techniques means that there are some
> foods in modern society that simply will not decompose, thus
> demonstrating their unsuitability to support life. All of this
> was missed in an era where people were keen to reap the benefits
> of technology and understood very little, if anything, about
> nutrition. So long as enough food was eaten for men and women to
> work the factories, all was well.
>
> The forces of nature are not to be disobeyed without the
> severest of consequences, and so it was that the very means that
> delivered modern humans from toil against feeding themselves
> lead directly to severe physical degeneration. While the old
> diseases of serious malnutrition waned, the lesson of feeding
> properly had not been fully explored. This situation remains
> even today, despite the large amount of money spent on
> scientific research people are still clueless as to what
> constitutes healthy food. Even worse than not knowing which
> foods are healthy, the true destructive danger of refined and
> processed foods has not been publicised despite these dangers
> being known for over half a century. Another effect of
> industrialisation was the creation of a new super rich
> capitalist class amongst the masses of impoverished working
> classes. The capitalist class depends upon industry for its
> survival and is determined to defend it at any costs to
> humanity.
>
> In 1945 a book called Nutrition And Physical Degeneration was
> published. The author, Weston A. Price, D.D.S., had studied in
> very great detail the effects of industrial foods upon primitive
> peoples used to eating their traditional wholefood diets. His
> research uncovers the horrifying effects that refined foods such
> as flour goods, sugar, candies, canned foods, preserves and
> other devitalised foods have on the humans who eat them. As a
> dental surgeon he concentrated on tooth decay and deformities of
> the skull. Even today, modern citizens, lacking knowledge of
> basic human anatomy, are unaware of the degeneration that
> continues to destroy health and undermine continued survival. It
> has even been though that these degeneration's are a genetic
> inheritance, such is the ignorance of the masses that they blame
> nature for errors of their own commission. The effects of
> malnutrition are far from just facial deformities and include
> generally poor development of the skeleton, enfeebled internal
> organs and severe mental retardation. Other concerns are
> expressed by Dr. Price when he suggest links with malnutrition
> and lower IQs, personality disturbances, criminality,
> tuberculosis (and general susceptibility to disease),
> infertility, difficulties with giving birth and birth defects.
> Since nutritional status affects all metabolic processes, it is
> a factor in all diseases and human pursuits.
>
> Making use of a few of Weston Price's images and observations,
> it shall be demonstrated that modern man remains grossly
> deformed despite and because of inadequate nutritional
> education. The 50th edition of Nutrition And Physical
> Degeneration has 526 pages, of which only a tiny sample of
> Weston Price's work will be presented. Various doctors have
> written glowingly of this book:
>
> "Most of us cannot remember what life was like without
> sugar and refined foods without chemicals added. Weston
> Price's book drives home that the beginning of many
> degenerative diseases started with the introduction of
> processed foods. A must for anyone seriously interested in
> the effects of foods on health." Robert F. Cathcart, M.D.
>
> "A powerful teastament to the adverse effects of our modern
> diet upon health. As shocking and relevant in its
> implications today as when it was first written." Melvyn
> R. Werbach, M.D.
>
> "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is an incredibly
> important classical work. It was a major force in turning
> my head around, and it deserves to be in every classic
> library on nutrition." Warren M. Levin, M.D.
>
> Weston Price studied over 14 different peoples of which we shall
> look at just three. In most cases the traditional peoples had
> fed on any edible things found locally. These range from a
> diversity of animal parts to fruits and ancient agricultural
> products. Animal organs, yucca roots, water grasses, insects and
> many diverse but unrefined foods are eaten. In most cases these
> traditional feeding patterns produce sturdy and well formed
> populations free of the ravages of degenerative diseases that
> plague modern society even today. The eating of uncooked foods
> whether of animal or plant origins is significant in all cases,
> with cooking predominant in agriculturalised peoples. Of all the
> peoples studied, the so called "Eskimos" with their massive
> reliance on animal foods had the poorest physical build and
> longevity, but still managed to produce stronger bodies than the
> average westerner.
>
> In the book Stone Age Diet by Leon Chaitow, we learn about the
> early origins of physical degeneration as a result of
> agriculture. He says that tooth decay was rarely found in
> Neolithic times before man started farming, but that decay was
> commonly found in the teeth of fossils after the start of
> agricultural settlements (Robert Coates, 'What is Natural
> Diet?', Nutrition and Health, Vol 1, 1982). Chaitow also points
> out that until agriculture began some 10 to 12 thousand years
> ago, and people for the first time crowded into towns, many
> infectious diseases were extremely rare (C. Wells, 'Bones,
> Bodies and Diseases', Thames and Hudson, 1964). Tuberculosis is
> only known from the late Stone Age and not at all in Paleolithic
> times (P. A. Janssems, 'Paleopathology, Diseases and Injuries of
> Prehistoric Man', John Baker, 1970) and Malaria is only thought
> to have started with the clearing of forests and creation of
> pools for mosquitoes to breed in (Robert Coates op. cit.). John
> Robson, M.D., of the University of South Carolina suggests that
> the abandonment of wild fruits as a dietary component may be
> responsible for many of the present day problems of modern man
> (John Robson, 'Journal of Human Nutrition', February 1978). The
> idea that primitive mankind lived under the constant threat of
> disease and starvation is a myth created by modern age
> technophiles to cloud the issue that malnutrition and disease
> are in fact the modern normal.
>
> Today American middle-class white women with their diets high in
> protein and fats give birth to babies that are more unhealthy
> than poor immigrant women. (JAMA, December 21, 1994)
>
> The food industries and the chemical companies that control much
> of modern industry seem to have such control over medical
> opinion and influence in society, that healthy nutrition, the
> most basic requirement of humans, is still spared little thought
> today. They exert this power via official bodies such as
> agricultural and medical regulatory agencies. This has ensured
> that the scientific evidence pointing to the dangers of food
> processing and intoxication with dangerous chemicals has been
> dampened down to the extent required to maintain public
> confidence. Industrial food processors employ huge teams of
> scientists, often engaged in research on animals, in order to
> demonstrate the safety of their products to regulatory bodies
> which ignore the abundant evidence of human degeneration. With
> the grain barons able to threaten a national food crisis at
> will, their ability to control social policy is potentially very
> great.
>
> In the USA it is illegal to use radical dietary therapy to treat
> serious illnesses like cancer. Similar attempts to open such
> centres in the UK have also been thwarted by the industrial
> medical interests. Apparently eating properly is dangerous
> "quackery". In the book Dirty Medicine Martin J. Walker says of
> wholefoods in modern diet:
>
> "By the mid-sixties in America, old ideas about wholefoods
> and the high quality nutritional status of vegetables and
> fruits were being revitalised by the 'health food'
> revolution. Representatives of the chemical and
> pharmaceutical industries tried to ensure, however, that
> those who believed in the 'health food' concept did not
> link concepts of nutrition with those of disease. ...
> Today there are two schools of nutrition, the 'old' and
> the 'new'. Almost all the 'old school' nutritionists are
> linked to the processed food industry and represent vested
> interests. Although such people claim to be guided by
> science, their theoretical position consists of highly
> generalised assumptions. At the centre of these
> assumptions is the 'balanced diet'."
>
>
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