The Vitamine Manual

by Walter Hollis Eddy

As children grow up, it is fortunate that in their wider choice of dietaries the danger of vitamine deficiency decreases. But even in childhood it is unsafe to rely too much on chance. In this country there are well deserving movements on foot to attract the parents of the community to the necessity of attention to simple standards of growth progress, and clinics for this purpose are appearing in increasing numbers with each year. Such movements are to be most heartily approved. It is also possible in these measures to not only build better children, but to make the children themselves intelligent in their rejection of unsuitable combinations and in that way not only conserve their own health, but provide an educated body of citizens to pass on the knowledge to future generations. In a school in New York City I recently had occasion to discuss the school lunch room and its offerings with the children of the school in the light of vitamine discoveries. The keenness and intelligence shown by the children in the discussion that followed has convinced me that in this matter of vitamines the children themselves can be relied upon to assist materially in the matter of better food combinations and intelligent selection.

Finally it must be noted that one of the most common of infant deficiencies is the failure of the bones to lay down lime. The effect of this failure is commonly described as rickets. The British workers consider that this deficiency is a lack of vitamine "A." Their views have been set forth at greatest length by Mellanby, the principal worker in this subject. While this view is still debatable and in this country it is not yet accepted, one fact has come out in the controversy and that is the remarkable value of cod-liver oil as a preventive of rickets. It may be that the power of the oil is due to its "A" vitamine content in which it is known to be rich, or it may be due to a new vitamine, but the fact that the oil is a preventive in this respect gives the pediatrist another agent to insure normal growth. The various views on the causes of rickets are set forth more in detail in Chapter VIII.

II. ADULT DIETS

A study of the dietary habits of various sections of the United States shows that there is a very general tendency on the part of the majority of the people to confine their foods to a meat, potato, and cereal diet. The use of salads is looked upon by many sections as a foreign affectation and too little attention is paid to the value of eggs, milk and cheese. Enough has been said already to show that these latter articles have much more than an esthetic value and one of the missions of the nutrition expert must be to show the people why dairy products and salads must become features in the every-day meals of the every-day people. And even if the salads are still unappreciated, it is necessary that cooked green vegetables occupy more of a position in the menu than is too often the case.

There has recently appeared a crusade for the eating of yeast cakes. The claim made for their use rests on a perfectly firm basis, they are rich in the "B" vitamine, the proteins of the yeast cake are of good quality and the cake contains no ingredients poisonous to man. Many people are reporting beneficial effects from their use. Is there any lesson to be drawn from this experiment? I feel that the very fact that benefits have resulted from this yeast feeding is excellent evidence of lack of the vitamine in the diets of the people affected and a clear argument that the dietary habits of many people need adjustment to a higher vitamine content. Whether it is necessary to use yeast cakes or any other concentrate of vitamine, depends entirely upon whether the ordinary diet is lacking in these factors and my first advice in the matter would be to make if possible a selection of the vitamine containing foods and see if normal conditions did not result before utilizing foods whose taste is not pleasing or which are taken as medicine. For it is an old experience that medicines will be taken only so long as the patient is sick and perhaps it is just as well so. In other words I believe it is possible with intelligent selection based on such tables as are given in Chapter IV for people to secure from the butcher and the grocer all their requirements of these vitamines as a part of their regular palatable diet. To those who have neglected this selection and find remedy in concentrates, that fact should lead them to reconstruct their diet rather than persist in dependence on the medicine to correct faulty diet. In other words the same arguments apply to the use of medicinal concentrates of vitamines as applies to the use of laxatives. At times these substances are very valuable as cures, but it is better by far to so regulate the dietary habits as to avoid the necessity for their use.

Another phase of this matter that promises to develop in the near future as a result of the vitamine hypothesis is a reform in food manufacture. There has been a strong tendency during the past two decades to "purify" food products. The genesis of this tendency is to be found in a highly laudable ambition to force the manufacturer to eliminate impurities and adulterations and provide clean, wholesome, sanitary food. Unfortunately in attempting to meet this demand on the part of the public, the food manufacturer has sometimes neglected to seek advice from the nutrition expert and the latter has failed to appreciate the need of advice. The net result has been to discover that Nature is often a better chemist than man and has a much better knowledge of what man needs in his diet than the chemist. The chemist employed by the manufacturer has, as a result, gone to such a limit in his development of purification methods as to often eliminate the essential nutrients and the result has been foods that will stand analysis for pure nutrients, but which will not stand Nature's analysis for dietary efficiency. As a secondary result of this tendency we have acquired habits that in many cases must either be broken or must have grafted on to them other habits which shall remedy the defective ones. Take the milling of wheat as an example. Nature put into the wheat grain most of the elements needed by man and in the early days he was content to grind up the whole grain and find it palatable. The craze for purity as expressed by color has gradually replaced this whole meal wheat with a beautiful white product that is largely pure starch with a few of the proteins retained. And the principal protein retained lacks one of the greatest essentials for growth while the vitamines have all been practically eliminated with the grain germ. Intelligence tells us then that if, having formed the habit, we will persist in our appetite for white flour we must see to it that the protein deficiency of the latter and its lack of vitamines is compensated for by supplementing the diet with the food-stuffs in which these are rich. We may in other words retain our bad habits in taste if we will graft on to them the attention to the eliminated factors and their substitution in other form.

In general then, the adult needs to review his feeding habits and analyze them in the light of our new knowledge. For this purpose the tables of Chapter IV supply data useful so far as vitamines are concerned, but it will be perhaps worth while to repeat here some of this data in more generalized form.

a. Sources of the "A" vitamine

Its most abundant sources are milk, butter, egg yolk fat, and the green leaves of plants usually classed as salads. Cabbage, lettuce, spinach and carrots contain this substance in considerable quantity. The germ of cereals is fairly rich in the factor, but the rest of the grain is deficient and white flours are therefore poorer than whole meals in this respect. Cooking temperatures have little effect on this vitamine and hence little attention need be paid to cooking temperatures as far as this vitamine is concerned.

b. Sources of the "B" vitamine