Cornfield vs. Pasture

Greg asked me if its possible to grow field crops without animal input and still build soil.

Regardless of input, I know of no one who has developed a way to grow field/row crops and build soil. The best integrated systems just maintain topsoil.

These pictures illustrate why row crops always damage the soil, whereas a stocked and well-managed pasture builds soil.


Image source: Seaburst.com

When we raise crops, we expose long rows of soil. We struggle to keep these free of "weeds" whose natural job is to secure the soil. We can't stop wind and water (rain), which inevitably course through these furrows carrying soil away from the field. The roots of these crops reach shallowly, so they don't trap rainfall efficiently. If managed very intensively with manure, rotation with leguminous cover crops, and mulch with compost, at best we can replace the soil lost each time we plant with row crops.

In contrast, a pasture looks like this:

Image source: Rebelwoodsranch.com

The soil accumulates year after year because the tight root structure and full cover of grasses and "weeds" protects it from wind and water erosion. The roots themselves draw the water (rain) into the soil. The grass constantly takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, converting it into carbohydrates, stored in the root system. Ruminants are an essential part of perennial grass land ecosystems, providing many services to the grass including fertilization with nitrogen. The grass feeds the soil, the soil feeds the grass, the grass feeds the ruminants and the ruminants feed the grass.

In short, a field of row crops requires a constant battle against natural processes, and its very structure involves us in a largely unsuccessful battle to preserve the soil.

It reminds me of a passage in the Tao Te Ching (Chapter 29):

Does anyone want to take the world and do what he wants with it?
I do not see how he can succeed.
The world is a sacred vessel, which must not be tampered with or grabbed after.
To tamper with it is to spoil it, and to grasp it is to lose it.

Vegetarian Myths Review Part 2

Political Vegetarians

Political vegetarians advocate a meat- or animal-free diet for the social good. These people believe that by eating a vegetarian diet they are increasing the amount of food available for humans, and that this is a good thing, i.e., that it will prevent starvation.

These people believe that every time you eat a steak, chicken leg, or any other animal product, you are depriving starving people of food.

These people also believe that raising animals causes global warming and causes the majority of agriculture-related pollution, and that adoption of a vegetarian diet based on grains would thus simultaneously feed the starving millions of people and create an ecological paradise.

Unfortunately, as Lierre Keith points out, these people lack crucial information.

First, they don’t understand the animals. They calculate the amount of grain you must feed to, for instance, a steer, to produce a pound of beefsteak—some say 4.8 pounds—then conclude this wastes resources since we could send that grain to starving people somewhere (more on that later). In a startling non-sequitor, they then conclude that eating beef causes people to starve.

What they miss, Keith points out by quoting Rodney Heithschmidt and Jerry Stuth:

“[H]umankind has historically fostered and relied upon livestock grazing for a substantial portion of its livelihood because it is the only process capable of converting the energy in grassland vegetation into an energy source directly consumable by humans.”

In other words, as Ms. Keith notes:

“Nineteen billion metric tons of vegetation are produced by plants in grasslands and savannas, and we can’t eat them. Humans and ruminants are not naturally in competition for the same meal: This is where the political vegetarians have gone wrong.”

Put otherwise, if we stop raising and eating ruminants, we would in that be refusing to produce food for humans from grass.

Of course, cattle don’t have a natural adaptation to a diet of corn or grains in general. Ruminants display exquisite adaptation to a diet of grass, leaves, and other plant matter indigestible to humans. It doesn’t matter how many pounds of grass it takes to grow a pound of beef, because we can’t eat grass directly. The problem with our food system lies not in omnivory, but in forcing animals to eat diets to which they are not adapted.

Now let’s say we implemented the vegetarian plan. We take all the livestock off grain, and continue to raise the grain. Then we send it to the people starving wherever. Shall we pat ourselves on the back for our benevolence?

No. The moment you dump free grain into an environment of hungry people, you have destroyed the local farm economy and created an unsustainable economy.

No farmer can compete with giveaways. If you give food en masse to a population, the increase in supply and unbeatable price will drive prices down to nothing and put local farmers out of business.

As Ms. Keith puts it, “It may seem counterintuitive, but the last place to put cheap food is near chronically hungry people.” She quotes Lyle Vandyke, the former Canadian Minister of Agriculture:

“Consider a farmer in Ghana who used to be able to make a living growing rice. Several years ago, Ghana was able to feed [itself] and export their surplus. Now, it imports rice. From where? Developed countries. Why? Because it’s cheaper. Even if it costs the rice producer in the developed world much more to produce the rice, he doesn’t have to make a profit from his crop. The government pays him [subsidies] to grow it, so he can sell it more cheaply to Ghana than the farmer in Ghana can. And that farmer in Ghana? He can’t feed his family any more.”

And quoting Oxfam: “Exporters can offer US surpluses for sale at prices around half the cost of production; destroying local agriculture and creating a captive market in the process.”

On top of that, as Daniel Quinn has pointed out, if you give a population an amount of food that could not be produced in the local ecology, this will cause the population to grow to numbers unsupportable by local food production. Increasing grain production, and increasing the availability of grain for human food, will simply increase the human population.

As I wrote in The Garden of Eating:

“Vegetarians assert we should stop eating meat to increase the supply of food for humans. In the mid-1990s, U.S. livestock consumed 130 tons of grain annually, enough to feed about 400 million people. Food supply experts Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D., of Duke University (Durham, North Carolina), and David Pimentel, Ph.D., of Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) explain why the vegetarian idea is misguided: ‘Certainly there would be even more human food available if dependence on livestock was decreased. However, because human population is a function of food availability, the resulting increase in available human food would induce a commensurate rise in population. This population increase would ultimately exacerbate the starvation and malnutrition predicament.’[1]”

Political/environmental vegetarians often make claims about the productivity of vegetarian agriculture as oppose to animal husbandry. For example, the British group Vegfam claims that a 10 acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn, and only two producing cattle. Keith responds:

“ Set aside the fact that a diet of soy, wheat, or corn will result in massive malnutrition—along with fun stuff like kwashiorkor, pellagra, retardation, blindness—and ultimately death. The figure of two [for] cattle might be true if you assume grain feeding, though I can’t make the math come out.”

She then points to Joel Salatin’s Polyface farm as a refutation of the assumptions in the Vegfam calculations. On ten acres of land, Salatin’s grass-based husbandry produces:
3000 eggs
1000 broilers
80 stewing hens
2000 pounds of beef
2500 pounds of pork
100 turkeys
50 rabbits

This would support at least 9 people for a year, and as Keith points out, “in full health,” since people can live on a diet composed solely of the foods above, whereas none of the foods proposed by Vegfam form a complete diet.

In addition, Salatin’s farm produces a few inches of topsoil per year whereas monocultures proposed by Vegfam destroy topsoil.

Keith also addresses claims that livestock consume too much water. She goes through the figures, showing that vegetarian claims don’t hold water, and more importantly, that animals don’t either:

“But most importantly, animals aren’t ever-expanding water balloons. For a steer, almost all of that water will be returned in the form of urine and feces laden with nutrients and bacteria, value-added as it were, to the land that needs it. For a dairy animal, there’s also milk.”

In other words, animals aren’t consuming and destroying water, they are part of nature’s water-flow cycle, essential to fertilization of the land. Vegetarians appear ignorant of this. I liked this passage Ms. Keith penned:

“The political vegetarians, however noble their intentions, are planning a planetary diet in compete ignorance of where food comes from. Advocates like Peter Singer and John Robbins want us to grow annual grains and no animals at all. Set aside the topsoil, water, climate, and typography [sic, I think she meant topography] problems. What is going to fertilize that grain? Peter, John: what is going to feed your food? Vegetarians, like everyone else in an urban industrial culture, have no concept that plants need to eat, that soil is alive and hungry. They seem shocked when I ask them what will feed their food. Do plants eat? Their expressions say. They don’t just … happen? There was a time when I didn’t know either, so I’m patient. But eventually the question has to be answered: fossil fuel, or manure?”

Ms. Keith addresses all of the other claims made by political vegetarians against animal husbandry, like that it uses more fuel than monoculture or causes global warming. In fact raising animals on grass is more fuel efficient than raising row crops, and monoculture of row crops has a net effect of releasing carbon into the atmosphere whereas raising ruminants on pasture has the net effect of sequestering carbon. Get a copy for your favorite political vegetarian.


Notes:

1. Hopfenberg R. Pimentel D. Human population numbers as a function of food supply. Environment, Development, and Sustainability 2001;3:1-15.

The Vegetarian Myth Book Review

By Don Matesz

Bottom line: If you believe eating a vegetarian diet improves your moral standing, you need to read this book. If you believe that eating a vegetarian diet will solve world hunger, you need to read this book. If you believe that mass adoption of a vegetarian diet will “save the Earth” from environmental catastrophe, you need to read this book. If you believe that eating a vegetarian diet will give you health and longevity, you need to read this book.

Although Ms. Keith directs her prose to those who eat a vegetarian, particularly a vegan diet, I think everyone needs to read this book. If you believe in agriculture as a way of life, i.e. you believe that agriculture will sustain civilization, and feed people indefinitely, you need to read this book.

Ms. Keith writes from the perspective of a 20-year veteran of vegetarian and vegan dieting who has sustained irreparable damage to her body as a result. As she watched her health deteriorate under the influence of vegan dieting, and made efforts to actually grow her own food, she gradually lost faith in the holy trinity of vegetarianism:

1) Moral vegetarianism, based on the belief that a vegetarian diet reduces bloodshed.
2) Political vegetarianism, based on the belief that widespread practice of a vegetarian diet would produce a sustainable agriculture and social justice.
3) Nutritional vegetarianism, based on the belief that a vegetarian diet produces better health than an omnivorous diet.

In my view, these three legs of vegetarianism are merely logical extensions of the near universal belief in moral, political, social, and nutritional superiority of agri-culture in comparison to hunting-and-gathering culture.

Moral Vegetarians

Moral vegetarianism espouses a principle of non-violence. The advocates wish to eat without killing or stealing from any other organism. As Ms. Keith puts it, the vegetarian nearly prays:

“Let me live without harm to others. Let my life be possible without death.”

This chapter recounts Ms. Keith’s inner and outer struggles with life and death on her path to realizing that, of course, life and death are not really two opposites.

“If killing is the problem, the life of one grass-fed cow will feed me for an entire year. But a single vegan meal of plant babies—rice grains, almonds, soybeans—ground up or boiled alive, will involve hundreds of deaths. Why don’t they matter?”

Throughout this chapter, Ms. Keith shows us how her own moral understanding evolved from the juvenile ethical code of veganism to an adult understanding of how nature really works, as a result of her engaging directly in food production herself. Ms. Keith tells us how, as a vegan attempting to garden, she learned that plants need to eat animal products to thrive. Her garden would not grow without the nitrogen and minerals packed up in blood and bone. Even apple trees eat meat:

“I found one small comfort in The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips. He quotes a book called The Apple Culturist from 1871, recounting the story of an apple tree near the graves of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and his wife Mary Sayles. The roots of the tree were found to have grown in to the graves and assumed the shape of human skeletons while ‘the graves [were] emptied of every particle of human dust. Not a trace of anything was left’”

As she developed her own garden, it attracted other animals. As she puts it, she got “locked in mortal combat with the slugs.” Eventually she had to decide whether to save the slugs or save her garden for her own needs. After much internal struggle, she settled on getting chickens and ducks to eat the slugs. She rationalized that the killing would fall on the ducks and chickens, not herself because “it was their nature, their instinct to hunt insects.” Which led her to ponder:

“Wasn’t death natural? Was it? Or wasn’t it? Which way did I want the answer to fall?

“Because if death was natural—a part of life, not an insult to life—then why was I a vegan?”

Why indeed.

Moral vegetarians believe that agriculture does no damage, that grains and legumes have no blood spilled in their fields. Ms. Keith points out that only someone who has never really understood agriculture could believe this:

“So here is an agriculture without animals, the plant-based diet that is supposed to be so life-affirming and ethically righteous. First, take a piece of land from somebody else, because the history of agriculture is the history of imperialism. Next, bulldoze or burn all the life off it: the trees, the grasses, the wetlands. That includes all creatures great and small: the bison, the grey wolves, the black terns. A tiny handful of species—mice, locusts—will manage, but the other aimals have to go. Now plant your annual monocrops. Your grains and beans will do okay at first, living off the organic matter created by the now-dead forest or prairie. But like any starving beast, the soil witll eat its reserves, until there’s nothing—no organic matter, no biological activity—left. As your yields—your food supply—begin to dwindle, you’ve got two options. Take over another piece of land and start again, or apply some fertilizer. Since the books, pleading and polemical, say that animal products are inherently oppressive and unsustainable, you can’t use manure, bone meal, or blood meal. So you supply nitrogen from fossil fuel. Do I need to add that you can’t produce this yourself, that its production is an ecological nightmare, that one day the oil and gas will run out?

“Your phosphorous will have to be made from rocks. There’s a reason for the popular image that equates hard labor in prison with chopping rocks. How will you mine it, grind it, or transport it without fossil fuel, using only human musculature and without using slavery? …Meanwhile the soil is turning to dust, clogging the rivers, blowing across the continent. In 1934, the entire eastern seaboard was covered in a thick haze of brown, the topsoil of Oklahoma plowed to cotton and wheat, drifting like an angry ghost to cover the eastern cities and further, to ships hundreds of miles out to sea, a final, fitting tribute to the extractive economies of the civilized. This is where agriculture ends: in death. The trees, the grasses, the birds and the beasts are gone, and the topsoil with them. More of the same is no solution.”

So what does she settle on as the ethical solution?

“It’s so simple, as simple, really, as my vegan morality: we need to be a part of the world to know it. And when we join, when we participate, we see that life and death can’t be separated any more than night and day. I will face what is dying to feed me and I will do my best to ensure that it is individuals—cared for, respected—not entire species; that soil—the work of our grandparents for half a billion years—is built, not destroyed; that the rivers keep their waters and their wetlands and that the oil stays in the ground. Only then can I claim the title ‘adult.’”

Ms. Keith’s struggle with to reconcile life and death is a classic example of the suffering endured in a culture based on a juvenile philosophy of dualism. Western philosophy has long suffered from dualistic thought, in which life/mind/male/action/hardness/white is good and death/body/female/rest/softness/black is bad. This has led to a culture that tries to pull nature apart at the seams, to isolate the good from the bad, to kill death and everything that resembles it because of its dimness. Think of how hard we strive to eliminate the night by powering up the lights. It is a losing battle.

Image source: Wikipedia

Chinese philosophers and scientists represented the non-dual nature of nature in the Yin-Yang symbol. Yin represents death and yang represents life. The symbol shows how they mold and feed one another; each ultimately transforming into the other. The play of yin and yang is simply the course of change. Reality moves and this movement naturally produces polar phenomena like life and death. Long ago the Chinese realized that dualistic thought is really a mental illness, a state of mind that does not accurately reflect reality. If you try to eliminate death, you will undermine life; and if you try to exaggerate life, you will also exaggerate death. It makes you crazy.

Next time I will reflect on Ms. Keith’s chapter on Political Vegetarians.

Ketogenic diets display the "metabolic advantage" and anticancer effects in mice

While browsing Pubmed for recent studies on ketogenic diets I came across Carbohydrate restriction, prostate cancer growth, and the insulin-like growth factor axis. I only read the abstract so far, because the full text costs more than I want to spend, but the abstract certainly contradicts those who say that only calories count.

The researchers put 75 Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) mice on three different diets:

1. No-carbohydrate ketogenic diet (NCKD) providing 84% of energy as fat, 0% as carbohydrate, and 16% as protein.
2. Low-fat diet providing 12% of energy as fat, 72% as carbohydrate, and 16% as protein.
3. "Western" diet providing 40% of energy as fat, 44% as carbohydrate, and 16% as protein.

They let the low-fat dieters eat ad libitum, the others were fed using a modified-paired feeding protocol. After 24 days on the diets, all mice were injected with prostate cancer cells. When tumors approached 1000 mm, they sacrificed the animals.

RESULTS: Despite consuming equal calories, NCKD-fed mice lost weight (up to 15% body weight) relative to low-fat and Western diet-fed mice and required additional kcal to equalize body weight.

Get that? They had to feed the NCKD mice more food calories than the other mice to maintain weight.

Now according to all the "experts" who criticize Taubes, only calories count and reducing carbohydrates confers no metabolic advantage. They claim that people always misrepresent their caloric intakes and eat less than they think when eating low-carbohydrate diets. But these mice didn't fill out any questionnaires misrepresenting their caloric intakes. Their food intake was tracked. Where did those extra calories go?

Well, I would venture this: Since the mice eating the low-fat and "western" diets had high carbohydrate diets, they had higher insulin levels, so they had a higher proportion of their caloric intake going into storage (fat), while the NCKD mice had a low insulin level so their calories went into energy for both basal metabolism and activity.

Besides displaying a "metabolic advantage" (i.e. unexpected weight loss at a caloric intake that did not cause weight loss in high-carbohydrate mice), the NCKD had tumor volumes were 33% smaller than Western mice (no different from the low-fat mice). The NCKD mice also had the longest survival, followed by the low-fat mice.

So much for T.Colin Campbell's claims that high-fat dieting will promote cancer while Chinese-style low-fat dieting produces the best health and longest lifespan. He never did think to test a no- or very low- carbohydrate diet on his aflatoxin-poisoned animals.

In addition,serum insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3 measured highest and IGF-1:IGFBP-3 ratio lowest among NCKD mice.

In contrast, serum insulin and IGF-1 levels were highest in Western mice.

Not only that, "NCKD mice had significantly decreased hepatic fatty infiltration relative to the other arms."

"CONCLUSIONS: In this xenograft model, despite consuming more calories, NCKD-fed mice had significantly reduced tumor growth and prolonged survival relative to Western mice and was associated with favorable changes in serum insulin and IGF axis hormones relative to low-fat or Western diet."

It appears this team published a similar paper in the June 1, 2009 issue of Cancer Prevention Research: The Effects of Varying Dietary Carbohydrate and Fat Content on Survival in a Murine LNCaP Prostate Cancer Xenograft Model.

In this second study they fed the mice "to maintain similar average body weights among groups." This showed that you can get a mouse to maintain or even gain weight on a ketogenic diet if you make it eat enough. As I have said, no matter the source, calories do count, but the carbohydrate calories count more than fat or protein calories.

Results: NCKD mice had significantly reduced median serum insulin, insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I), IGF-I/IGF binding protein-1 ratio, and IGF-I/IGF binding protein-3 ratio compared to moderate-carbohydrate (43%) diet mice. In addition,tumore in the NCKD mice had a reduced activity of pathways associated with blocking programmed cell death (antiapoptosis), inflammation, insulin resistance, and obesity.

And this was in mice, a species not adapted to a low-carbohydrate diet. Unlike humans, mice don't have an evolutionary history of dependence on low-carbohydrate diets. The myth that low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diets destroy your health continues to crumble.

How I Came To My Opinion of Vaccines

In my post on New Immunization Guidelines—Who Makes Them, I wrote:

“So far as I can tell, all the "evidence" in favor of vaccinations is epidemiological, that is, correlative, in this vein: "We gave this population the vaccine for X disease and the disease incidence declined, therefore the vaccine eliminated the disease." This is classic mistaking of correlation with causation, along with the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. y happened after x, therefore x caused y. Lindlahr pointed it out more than 75 years ago.”

Some people may wonder how I could come to this opinion. I added this to that post:

“I formed my opinion after examination of evidence such as this graph posted at Child Health Safety :





This shows that vaccines for measles, pertussis, and diphtheria all got introduced during the natural waning of the epidemics, making it impossible for me to conclude that the vaccine had any dramatic benefit. Child Health Safety has similar graphs referring to other vaccines.

Further, if you look deeply into this, you will find that changes and fashions in diagnosis also influenced the "decline" of epidemics "observed" after vaccines. Before the vaccine for measles, physicians were on the lookout for measles, and so diagnosed it frequently (and often erroneously). After the introduction of the vaccine for measles, for example, physicians believed that the vaccine eliminated measles so they simply were less likely to diagnose an infection as measles (or test for measles). But doctors are notoriously bad at diagnosis. They overdiagnose or underdiagnose based on fashions, such as when the incidence of arteriosclerotic heart disease "increased" in 1948 after this diagnosis was added to the ICD.

And, I notice that if the incidence of infection goes down even in unvaccinated folks, rather than questioning whether the vaccination did the job, vaccine proponents attribute this to herd immunity conferred by vaccination. Its like giving treatment A to one group and a placebo to the other; both groups get better equally, so you conclude that treatment A works so well, it even helps people who didn't receive it by having a “herd” effect. In any other investigation, people would conclude that the treatment works no better than a placebo or no treatment. I understand the rationale given for this explanation in respect to vaccinations, but for vaccine proponents, it conveniently excludes the possibility of concluding that no treatment worked as well as treatment--a possibility necessary for scientific evaluation.”

Paleodiet and Polio Virus

In response to my recent posts on vaccinations, Jeff asked me about polio. Many people think immunizations provide our only defense against this disease.

In 1941, Dr. Benjamin P. Sandler, M.D., published “The production of neuronal injury and necrosis with the virus of poliomyelitis in rabbits during insulin hypoglycemia,” a largely ignored report of his experiments which demonstrated that the poliovirus can only attack neurons suffering from insulin-induced hypoglycemia.

In the introduction of this paper, Sandler wrote:

“While engaged in a clinical study of chronic hypoglycemia inpatients of all ages I was impressed with the fact that several patients gave histories of attacks of poliomyelitis with residual paralysis. It occurred to me that a disturbance in carbohydrate metabolism could be a factor in susceptibility to infection with the virus of poliomyelitis, especially since, during hypoglycemia, cellular oxdation will be reduced.”

Sandler went on to cite investigations that have shown that the nervous tissues of the young of any species consume more oxygen than the adult and that makes them more vulnerable to hypoglycemia and any ill effects it may have.

Sandler noted that rhesus monkeys are extremely vulnerable to poliovirus whereas rabbits display complete resistance. He made investigations into the literature on glucose tolerance in these two species, and found reports that the monkeys blood glucose dips to as low as 50 mg per deciliter, whereas investigators never observed a blood glucose under 100 mg/dL in healthy rabbits. He himself performed glucose tests on rabbits on 25 occasions and never saw the level fall below 100 mg.

As an aside here, I have noticed that some internet diet gurus have claimed that low carbohydrate diets produce “hyperglycemia” in some people because these individuals exhibit a fasting blood glucose of 100 mg/dL to 110 mg/dL. First of all, 100 to 110 mg/dL is not hyperglycemic nor diabetic. In an individual on a low carbohydrate diet, a fasting blood glucose at this level reflects efficient hepatic gluconeogenesis providing constant supplies of glucose to the nervous system. Secondly, as you will see, Sandler’s research indicates that a fasting glucose around 100 ± 10 probably provides protection from viral infection of neural cells.

He therefore came to his experimental design: He used insulin to induce hypoglycemia in rabbits, and simultaneously exposed them to poliovirus. The type and route of virus administration varied as follows:

I. Injection with monkey cord virus suspensions, either (a) intracerebrally, or (b) intranasal instillation.
II. Injection with rabbit cord virus suspensions, either (a) intracerebrally, or (b) intranasal instillation.

All of these rabbits developed typical polio lesions of the neurons after very short incubation periods, and eight of eleven rabbits died from the infections.

For controls, he had the following groups:

A. Insulin alone (no virus) – no neuronal lesions although several rabbits died from insulin shock.
B. Monkey virus suspensions alone (no insulin) – no neuronal lesions despite direct intracerebral injection of the virus.
C. Innocuous monkey cord suspensions and insulin – no deaths and no lesions in any rabbits given this combination.
D. Normal rabbit cord suspensions and insulin – no deaths and no lesions.
E. Innoculation of monkeys with suspensions of rabbit cord virus – all of these monkeys developed lesions.

These results pretty conclusively demonstrated that rabbit neurons remain resistant to poliovirus infection so long as they have blood sugar at about 100 mg/dL, but under conditions of hyperinsulinemia and hypoglycemia the neurons can’t defend themselves against the virus.

Dr. Sandler concluded:

“It is suggested that disturbance in carbohydrate metabolism, especially hypoglycemia, may be an important factor in determining susceptibility to the virus of poliomyelitis, both in man and in the monkey. Hypoglycemia reduces cellular oxidations, causing a cellular asphyxia of mild, moderate, or severe degree depending on the degree of hypoglycemia. That this asphyxia lowers the resistance of the individual cell and of the organism in general to invasion by the virus may be the mechanism of increased susceptibility.”

Practical Application

Dr. Sandler took this information into his practice in Asheville, N.C. In his book Diet Prevents Polio (available online at Selene River Press Historical Archives under Lee Foundation Nutritional Research) he recounts his attempts to get “authorities” to apply his findings:

“My experimental work with rabbits had been published in January, 1941, in the American Journal of Pathology. Polio has been prevalent every year since then and it reached epidemic proportions in 1944 and 1946. In the summer of 1944 I wrote to a public health agency and suggested that the people in epidemic areas be advised to adhere to a sugarless and starchless diet for the duration of the epidemic. However, no action was taken.”

Sounds like just like the response Dr. Cannell has gotten from the CDC et al regarding vitamin D and the flu. Dr. Sandler continues:

“The summer of 1948 presented an opportunity to test the diet. I was living in the city of Asheville, N. C., which had a population of 55,000. In May and June it was evident that the state of North Carolina was headed for a major polio epidemic. Asheville was having many cases for a city its size. The number of cases increased during July. State and local health officers, after meeting with the Buncombe County Medical Society, finally recommended strong restrictive measures. Churches, theaters, swimming pools, parks, and recreation areas were closed. Public gatherings were discouraged. Children were not permitted to ride in buses. They were kept at home all day long, their activities confined to the home and front yard. Families that could do so, quit the state.”

As the epidemic continued to spread, and on August 1, 1948 Dr. Sandler decided to take the matter directly to the Asheville press. On August 4, 1948, the Asheville Times, an afternoon paper, carried a detailed article recounting Sandler’s nutrition research and experiments with rabbits and monkeys. The article contained the following statements made by Sandler:

"The crisis is here and hours have become precious," he said. "I have been impelled to bring this directly to the newspapers because of my profound conviction that, through community cooperation and general acceptance of a diet low in sugars and starches, this epidemic can be got under control in about two weeks time.

"I am willing to state without reserve that such a diet, strictly observed, can build up in 24 hours time a resistance in the human body sufficiently strong to combat the disease successfully. The answer lies simply in maintaining a normal blood sugar."

The newspaper article published Dr. Sandler’s dietary recommendations for prevention of polio, which will look a little familiar to the paleodieter:

"(1) Eliminate from the diet sugar and foods containing sugar, such as: soft drinks; fruit juices (except tomato juice); ice cream; cakes, pastries, pies; candies; canned and preserved fruits. (Saccharin may be substituted for sugar.)

(2) Cut down the consumption of starchy foods, such as: bread, rolls, pancakes; potatoes; rice; corn; cereals and grits.

(3) Substitute for such starch foods and starchy vegetables, the following: tomatoes, string beans, cucumbers, greens, lettuce, turnips, carrots, red beets, cabbage, onions and soybeans.

(4) Do not eat fresh fruits or melons more than once a day, and then only in small quantities.

(5) Eat more protective protein foods, such as: eggs, pork and beef products; fish (fresh or canned); poultry; milk, cream and cheese.

(6) Eat three substantial meals a day. Avoid exertion and fatigue because they are known to be associated with low blood sugar. Avoid swimming in cold water. Rest as much as possible.

(7) The diet should be followed until the polio danger is officially declared over by local health authorities."

The article also contained the following statements by Sandler:

“I am willing to state without reserve that such a diet, strictly observed, can build up in 24 hours
time a resistance in the human body sufficiently strong to combat the disease. Of course, the diet
must be followed throughout the period of the epidemic.”

“One of the puzzling characteristics of polio has been its prevalence in warm weather. Many peoplecut down on protective foods such as meats, fish, and poultry because of a mistaken idea that a“light” diet is better for them in warm weather. And they increase the consumption of coolingfoods and beverages, most of them heavily sweetened. It is this increase in consumption of sugar that produces a lowering of blood sugar and thereby a lowering of the body’s resistance to the poliovirus.”

The Asheville Times released the story to the AP and UP wire services. Coast-to-coast newscasts reported on the story on August 4. Asheville print and radio media picked up on it and the story and recommendations got repeated numerous times in daily and weekly print media over the ensuing weeks. Sandler reports the reception:

“The people of Asheville co-operated to an unexpected degree. They welcomed the opportunity to help themselves. The restrictive measures had been depressing. The confinement of children to home all summer was trying to all concerned. The statements about the diet were made in such strong, positive, and optimistic tone that they were readily taken up and adhered to. Since adults as well as children were being attacked by the virus, many grown-ups followed the diet.

One of the striking effects was the immediate improvement in morale. Parents felt that they were doing something constructive instead of just standing by and hoping the disease would not strike their homes. Store sales of sugar, candy, ice cream, cakes, soft drinks, and the like, dropped sharply and remained at low level for the rest of the summer. One southern producer of ice cream shipped one million fewer gallons of ice cream than usual, during the first week following the release of the diet story. Saccharin sales mounted sharply.”

The campaign appeared to produce results in Asheville:

“Up until August 4, 1948, the city of Asheville had 55 cases of polio. If one assumes arbitrarily that the peak had been reached on that date, one could have expected about 55 cases during the decline until the end of the year, since in general during polio epidemics the number of cases following the peak is about equal to the number of cases preceding the peak. However, instead of 55 cases there were only 21 new cases in Asheville from August 4 to December 31.

Actually, however, in the southeastern United States, polio epidemic peaks are usually reached during early September. If the epidemic had been allowed to run its course without the diet story, there might have been around 75 cases in Asheville by the first week in September (a conservative estimate), with a similar number following the peak. Thus there could have been a total of 150 cases in Asheville for the entire season. Actually, there were 76 cases for the entire season, or about half the expected number.”

The diet campaign also appeared to produce effects cross the country:

“From the week ending May 8 through the week ending July 31, the number of cases by which 1948 was leading 1946 was climbing, so that by the week ending July 17, there were 420 more cases in 1948 than for the corresponding week in 1946. For the week ending July 31, there were 304 more cases in 1948 than in the corresponding week in 1946. Then a sudden change occurred. For the next six weeks 1948 fell behind 1946 by 1581 cases…

If we consider that 1948 is running ahead of 1946 or the average by 250 cases each week for the six weeks from June 26 to July 31, then the total for the six weeks August 7 to September 11, 1948, would have exceeded the total for the corresponding six weeks by 1,500 cases. Actually, the total for the six weeks August 7 to September 11, 1948, is 1,581 cases fewer than for the corresponding six weeks in 1946. Thus, one can estimate that the diet campaign prevented around 3,000 cases during the six week period August 7 to September 11, 1948. This is a conservative estimate.”

The following graph taken from Sandler's book displays the national results:



You can readily see that this campaign had some economic casualties. The processed carbohydrate industry lost sales. The polio vaccine did not receive license until 1962, but once it did, the idea that avoiding high carbohydrate foods could prevent polio (and other viral infections of the nervous system) had two powerful opponents.

Reuters reports: Companies reap the swine flu windfall

If you think there’s no profit in swine flu or other vaccines, I’ve got news from you just in from Reuters:

Companies reap the swine flu windfall



Some excerpts:

“Pretty much everyone who does something in influenza in has gained from it,” said Hedwig Kresse, an infectious diseases analyst at Datamonitor in London.

“From a sales perspective, the big players certainly will see a very significant windfall of this pandemic this year,” Kresse said in a telephone interview.”

“Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG said this week it expects the H1N1 flu vaccine to contribute about $400 million to $700 million of sales in the fourth quarter.”

“David Kagi, a healthcare analyst at Swiss-based Bank Sarasin & Co estimates pandemic vaccine sales will be worth a total of $7.6 billion, even with a mild pandemic. A severe pandemic would result in total vaccine sales of $18 billion.”

If the spread of H1N1 goes from mild to severe, the sales of vaccines will more than double the gross income of suppliers. In billions.

Talk about perverse incentives.

Drug companies only make money if they sell drugs, and they only sell drugs if people are sick.

With this as a fact, you can see why we have rising medical care costs as well as institutional resistance to principles like paleodiet.

If everyone ate a paleodiet, the pharmaceutical industry would collapse.

So would the processed food industry.

And that would cause the GDP to decline. So "the economy" would suffer.

Can't have that happen.

Got to keep those profits growing and keep the economy humming.

At all costs.