Soiled Opinions About Soil Facts

It is often commented that food crops are not harmed by soil deficiency; only the quantity is said to be affected. This is a misrepresentation of the facts; more so in that the prestige of some official position is often used to steer attention from its obvious falsity. We are told that only food faddists “cry wolf” about soil deficiency. Have they forgotten the moral of Aesop’s fable? When the cry of wolf was ignored, the victim was devoured! Make no mistake about it: Worn out soils most certainly do cause disease!

Study of the accompanying table on this page shows the tremendous variations in food minerals in the vegetable specimens from the varying soils. Almost, it seems, nothing more need be said… But apparently some of our anti-soil propagandists have difficulty “digesting” the scientific evidence we have shown here. Let us help them with the appraisal.

Notice that the vegetables selected for analysis in this table are common everyday vegetables, served as staple foods in the average diet. These are the kind of vegetables recommended by frequently-quoted food authorities as a part of a well-balanced diet. Another propaganda trick becomes evident. We are told that a “well-balanced diet” supplies all of the nutrients required for nourishment. With this we would agree, but is a well-balanced diet to be judged on the basis of the variety of foods, or variety plus quality? The “quality factor” is negated by advocates of the “well-balanced diet” hypothesis. This table gives them some things to think about.

Suppose we compose their “well-balanced diet” consisting of foods produced on lowest quality soil. (See table for analysis.) If we don’t eat spinach, how many of the other vegetable do we have to eat to get our cobalt, essential mineral component of vitamin B-12, with zero amounts of cobalt present? And what about iron? Manganese? Copper? And other trace minerals? Do we eat five to 10 times as many vegetables to obtain the equivalent amounts of phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium, the minerals needed in larger amounts by the body?

Does a deficiency of the above minerals cause disease? Medical textbooks devote chapter after chapter to the discussion of these mineral deficiencies, too lengthy to discuss here. (The case of vitamin B-12 in the treatment of pernicious anemia, for example. Without cobalt there can be no vitamin B-12.)

Variations in Mineral Content in Vegetables

(Firman E. Bear Report, Rutgers University) 

Do you doubt that the quality of foods is more important than quantity? Read the article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 151-158, 1938) by Dr. C. L. Pathak, declaring, “No arthritis was found in examination of 240 persons in India.” It seems from the report from India that overfeeding with bad foods, as we do in this country, is far worse than underfeeding with better foods, as is the case in India. There, heart disease, dental disease and arthritis are relatively unimportant. Here, these diseases affect almost all of us in some degree.

Nature’s products are unlabeled. If the sale of food was contingent upon the labeling of their analysis–as it is with food supplement products–the sale of food supplements would soon cease, because the purchaser would see how he has become victimized by wanton neglect of nature’s laws. Only one thing is certain: Jumping through the hoop of government “food law” shenanigans may be a good trick and pay off in cash rewards, but nature’s food laws are adamant, compliancy being the only alternative, and the reward is in human values (which cannot be deposited in a bank).

Do you want your well-balanced diet from food grown on organically-rich soil, rich in the natural minerals and vitamins provided by nature, or from poor, depleted soils, robbed of essential minerals? If you realize they are different, then you must know that something is wrong with what our government experts are telling us.