The following is from a book that made…

dramatic improvements in my physical and emotional health:

While preparing his recurring volume, A History of Nutrition, published in 1957, Professor E. V. McCollum (Johns Hopkins University), sometimes called America’s foremost nutritionist, reviewed approximately 200,000 published scientific papers, recording experiments with food, their properties, and their effects on animals and humans. The material covered the period from the mid-18th century to 1940. From this great repository of scientific inquiry, McCollum selected those experiments which he regarded as significant “to relate the story of progress in discovering human error in this segment of science, that is nutrition”. Professor McCollum failed to record a single controlled scientific experiment with sugar between 1816 and 1940.

Unhappily, we must remind ourselves that scientists today, and always, accomplish little without a sponsor. The protocols of modern science have compounded the costs of scientific inquiry.

We should not be surprised when we read the introduction to McCollum’s A History of Nutrition and find that “The author and publishers are indebted to The Nutrition Foundation, Inc., for a grant provided to meet a portion of the cost of publication of this book”. What, you might ask, is The Nutrition Foundation, Inc.? The author and the publishers don’t tell you. It happens to be a front organization for the leading sugar-pushing conglomerates in the food business, including the American Sugar Refining Company, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Curtis Candy Co., General Foods, General Mills, Nestlé Co., Pet Milk Co. and Sunshine Biscuits-about 45 such companies.

Perhaps the most significant thing about McCollum’s 1957 history was what he left out: a monumental earlier work described by an eminent Harvard professor as “one of those epochal pieces of research which makes every other investigator desirous of kicking himself because he never thought of doing the same thing”. In the 1930s, a research dentist from Cleveland, Ohio, Dr Weston A. Price, traveled all over the world-from the lands of the Eskimos to the South Sea Islands, from Africa to New Zealand. His Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects, which is illustrated with hundreds of photographs, was first published in 1939.

Dr Price took the whole world as his laboratory. His devastating conclusion, recorded in horrifying detail in area after area, was simple. People who live under

so-called backward primitive conditions had excellent teeth and wonderful general health. They ate natural, unrefined food from their own locale. As soon as refined, sugared foods were imported as a result of contact with “civilization”, physical degeneration began in a way that was definitely observable within a single generation.

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The above information had a powerful and life changing effect for me. The book is “Sugar Blues” by William Dufty.  When I read “Sugar Blues” in about 1985, it quickly became my favorite reference book, full of common sense. In 1999 I also had the good fortune to spend time in conversation with William Dufty at a Kushi Macrobiotic Conference that he dubbed the “Kushi Follies”. He was a presenter and I was staff. I rarely have or do ask for autographs, but this book made such an impact on my life I did asked for an autograph.

Read More from from Sugar Blues; Refined Sugar- The Sweetest Poison of All.

By no means is my diet completely refined sugar free. However, I much prefer the taste of maple syrup and rice syrup compared to other sweeteners. There have been times, notably when I began eating and studying the macrobiotic dietary and lifestyle guidelines, where I ate zero processed white sugar. For about 10 to 15 years the only sweets that crossed my lips were fruits, maple syrup, rice syrup and barley malt. It was pretty easy to accomplish, because I was motivated to heal myself and I lived with or near others who were eating similarly.

Those early years of my dramatic diet and lifestyle improvements set in motion my current path and career of helping others achieve greater health and joy.

Speaking of sweet treats! You can try out my popular Sesame Lemon Cookies. Recipe at my blog.

Patricia

“Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food” -Hippocrates