Throughout history, men of God, men of science, and men of politics have been telling us about diet and health. God had this to say immediately after creating Adam in the Garden of Eden:
“Behold, I have given you every herb (vegetable) bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food (meat)” (Genesis 1:29)Mark, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had the following to say concerning the utter failure of physicians to restore health to a woman who had an issue of blood in the days of Jesus:
“And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.” (Mark 5:25-26)Hippocrates, credited with being the “father of medicine,” lived some 400 years before Christ. Here are just a few of his ideas:
“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise . . . . we would have found the safest way to health.” “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” “Walking is man's best medicine.” “Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” “Whenever a doctor cannot do good; he must be kept from doing harm.” “To do nothing is also a good remedy.” “Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods, a man should himself lend a hand.”Over 100 years ago the following words were spoken by Thomas Edison:
“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”
Dietary Goals for the United States
In 1977, the United States Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, chaired by Senator George McGovern, issued "Dietary Goals for the United States.” Its stated purpose was “to point out that the eating patterns of this century represent as critical a public concern as any now before us.” The following is a statement made by Senator George McGovern at a press conference on January 14, 1977, the date of the publication of the report:“Good morning! The purpose of this press conference is to release a nutrition committee study entitled Dietary Goals for the United States, and to explain why we need such a report. I should note from the outset that this is the first comprehensive statement by any branch of the Federal government on risk factors in the American diet. “The simple fact is that our diets have changed radically within the last 50 years, with great and often very harmful effects on our health. These dietary changes represent as great a threat to public health as smoking. Too much fat, too much sugar and salt, can be and are linked directly to heart disease, cancer, obesity, and stroke, among other killer diseases. In all, six of the ten leading causes of death in the United States have been linked to our diet. “Those of us within government have an obligation to acknowledge this. The public wants some guidance, wants to know the truth, and hopefully today we can lay the cornerstone for the building of better health for all Americans, through better nutrition.”At the same press conference, Dr. D.M. Heigstead, Professor of Nutrition for the Harvard School of Public Health, added these thoughts:
“The diet of the American people has become increasingly rich – rich in meat, other sources of saturated fat and cholesterol, and in sugar. It should be emphasized that this diet which affluent people generally consume is everywhere associated with a similar disease pattern – high rates of ischemic heart disease, certain forms of cancer, diabetes, and obesity. These are the major causes of death and disability in the United States. “Ischemic heart disease, cancer, diabetes and hypertension are the diseases that kill us. They are epidemic in our population. We cannot afford to temporize. We have an obligation to inform the public of the current state of knowledge and to assist the public in making the correct food choices. To do less is to avoid our responsibility.”Another attendee, Dr. Beverly Winikoff of the Rockefeller Foundation, in New York City, commented:
“There is a widespread and unfounded confidence in the ability of medical science to cure or mitigate the effects of such diseases once they occur. Appropriate public education must emphasize the unfortunate but clear limitations of current medical practice in curing the common killer diseases. Once hypertension, diabetes, arteriosclerosis or heart disease are manifest, there is, in reality, very little that medical science can do to return a patient to normal physiological function. As awareness of this limitation increases, the importance of prevention will become all the more obvious.”And finally, these words from Dr. Phillip Lee, Professor of Social Medicine and Director of the Health Policy Program at the University of California/San Francisco:
“As a nation we have come to believe that medicine and medical technology can solve our major health problems. The role of such important factors as diet in cancer and heart disease has long been obscured by the emphasis on modern medicine. Treatment, not prevention, has been the order of the day. The problem can never be solved merely by more and more medical care. Finally, our greatest bulwark against the interests that have helped to create the present problems is an informed public.”When the first edition of Dietary Goals for the United States was published, the American Medical Association (AMA) wrote the following in an letter to the Nutritional Committee wrote:
“The evidence for assuming that benefits to be derived from adoption of such universal goals as set forth in the report is not conclusive and a potential for harmful effects would occur through adoption of the proposed national goals.”The letter’s effect was immediate. Before the end of 1977, the first edition of “Dietary Goals for the United States” was no longer available and had been replaced by a second edition. The second edition was published in December 1977 and contained a three-page forward quoting the AMA which was essentially saying that for a person to change their diet could be harmful. The AMA’s forward goes on attempting to discredit the entire document by saying that science has not proven any connection between diet and disease.
