STARVING AMERICA
By Alfred W. McCann. F. M. Barton. 270 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.61.
This is an adulterating age. The organized exploitation of the primary wants of civilized mankind, the demand for products prepared for immediate consumption, the stimulation of new desires by unprecedented advertising campaigns, the conspicuous consumption of the rich and the unreasoning imitation of the richer by the poorer, the ever lengthening cycle of production from raw material to finished product, the fierce competition among manufacturers and dispensers of goods, the rising cost of living, and more than all, the amazing carelessness of the purchasing public, especially with regard to articles of food and clothing, have caused the adulterators to multiply and flourish and have developed adulteration to a fine art.
The exposure of various forms of food impurities and adulterants, harmless or criminal, is neither new nor unpublished. Few men in our country are better known than Harvey Wiley, and Wiley in the popular mind stands as the champion of pure food and the implacable foe of fraudulent food distributors. No person who reads or listens but knows something of Wiley and something of impure food supplies.
Mr. McCann, whose book under the sensational title of Starving America has recently appeared, is no less valiant than Wiley in his promulgation of pure-food propaganda. Almost unknown, unsupported by the scientific training and the official standing which Wiley possesses, this dark champion girds on his armor and heroically enters the lists, shouting, “I’ll tell the truth if I die for it.” Of course there’s no danger of his dying for it. Speaking logically, the conclusion seems to be that the rest of us will die of starvation if we refuse to heed his speaking.
In general the book supports two theses:
First, that the mineral constituents of foods are much more important in body building than food chemists and dietitians are aware; in fact, that we are either literally starving ourselves and our children by eliminating the ash from our bread, meat, potatoes, rice and other foods, or we are rendering our bodies susceptible to disease—such as tuberculosis—through failure to supply certain mineral defenses to the tissues. The essential ashes, always present in food stuffs—vegetable or animal—in their original raw state, are removed in the manufacture or in the cooking. Wholesome nutritious whole wheat bread and unpolished rice are set over against the insidious, emasculated, mineral-denuded white bread and polished rice—real whited sepulchers, beautiful but deadly.
In the development of this thesis Mr. McCann presents some facts already published and fully accepted, and an array of startling statements. Most of his reasoning is, of course, deductive, because scientists have little authentic data to offer on the effect of the various mineral elements or the lack of them, much less on the most desirable methods of introducing them into the human system. Though neither a university man, nor a graduate chemist, it appears that the author has had exceptional opportunities to study biochemistry as an amateur; and formerly, as advertising agent of a large food industry he spent much time in the food laboratory of the concern. Notwithstanding these qualifications, which he fully sets forth in his preface, some of his conclusions, for example the vital importance of ash in the system and the dire results of our ordinary dietary, though analogically sound, fail to convince the student and perhaps the layman.
On his second proposition, that an astonishing variety and an appalling quantity of our foods are poisonously adulterated both legally and criminally, the author stands on sure ground. Candies, ice-cream, extracts, patent medicines, preservatives, coloring materials are handled without reserve. The argument is supported almost wholly by old material, rather familiar to the magazine reading public; but the cumulative evidence, followed by a dissertation on the appalling and preventable infant death rate gives strength and conviction to the presentation.
The author is not merely destructive. He urges a campaign of education through the public press and pleads for courses and demonstrations of pure food stuffs and their effects in our schools and colleges. He has formulated a practical dietary, a daily menu for a week, of simple, wholesome food, based on the principles he has worked out, for children three years of age and over. His own children have thrived wonderfully on it. He describes in one of the most satisfactory chapters in the book an ideal restaurant that appeals both to one’s common sense and to his appetite.
On the whole the book is timely and deserves a wide reading. In the endeavor to catch the public ear by the presentation of a lurid array of facts under a sensational title I fear the author has overshot the mark. Thoughtful readers are likely to discount much that apparently has a reasonable basis of scientific study merely because of the overstraining after startling statement. The author’s style is not altogether pleasing, nor does it always carry conviction nor inspire confidence in the author. It is not a great book nor an epoch-making one, but it bears the stamp of sincerity, provided one reads to the end, and calls attention to a number of awful truths that should give us pause. The keynote of progress is “light and enlightenment,” rather than repression.
Alexander E. Cance.