A Little Dab'll Do Ya

A Little Dab’ll Do Ya

A Simplified Guide to Vitamins

More and more people are becoming aware of the fact that our food is not nourishing us like it used to. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that today Americans are worse off nutritionally than they were 10 years ago. The prices keep going up, the food processing and agri-business corporations make more and more profit off of us, and the nutritive quality of our food has deteriorated.

There are so many theories about exactly what constitutes a “balanced diet” that it often feels like the more you read about nutrition, the more confusing the whole situation becomes. One thing is certain, however, changing your diet is serious business and should be done with great care. One major problem is that doctors, who ought to lead the way to better nutrition, in the interests of disease prevention, often know next to nothing about this vital subject. It’s sad but true that many doctors scoff at good nutrition as a means to promoting good health, and prefer to push drugs on their patients in between a steady diet of coffee, cigarettes, candy bars, and Burger King “meals.”

For better health, the Free People’s Clinic suggests that people see their diets in an evolutionary way. You can’t change everything at once since eating habits are deeply embedded in life-style and personal history. But you can move step by step toward better eating habits, and better health. It’s easy. For starters:

1) Phase out red meats. Move toward fish, poultry, and eggs;

2) phase out white sugar and phony brown sugar which is usually just white sugar with a little molasses, and evolve toward using raw honey;

3) phase out white bread and move toward the delicious, nutritious breads sold at the People’s Food Co-op; and

4) get hip to vitamins.

Vitamins are naturally occurring chemical substances which are needed in very small amounts by the body. Except for Vitamin D, human bodies cannot manufacture vitamins like plants and some animals can, so we have to eat wisely or supplement our diets with them. The nicest thing about vitamins is that even a moderately vitamin-conscious diet will go a long way toward improving your overall health and disposition. And you don’t have to spend a fortune on pills or freak yourself out by drastically altering your diet, either. Vitamin rich foods are readily available, if-you know what you’re looking for, and they taste at least as good as the skonk you’ve probably been scarfing down lately.

Vitamin A: Vitamin A deficiency is considered by nutritionists to be very common in this country. The first thing you notice is “night blindness,” which is an inability to focus your vision when you enter a brightly lit place from a dark one, or an inability to recover quickly from the glare of oncoming headlights when driving at night. Vitamin A is essential for the development of strong, good teeth. Columbia University researchers report a 10-12% increase in the life-spans of laboratory animals fed a vitamin A rich diet. It is also believe to help reduce the risk of heart disease, the nation’s No. 1 killer. Vitamin A is not destroyed when vegetables are cooked, or when milk is pasteurized. Foods rich in Vitamin A are: fresh carrots (great for late afternoon snacks), milk, asparagus, apricots, cantaloupe, eggs, liver, sweet potatoes (very high in A and cheap), and green peppers.

Vitamin B Complex: The B vitamins are a group of about a dozen related substances. You might recognize some of the names: thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6, B12. You need ALL of them, all the time for good health. They need each other to function properly.

Americans as a whole suffer from serious Vitamin B deficiencies. Alcohol and tobacco strip your body of B vitamins. Whole grains contain ample supplies of B vitamins, but processed white flour products do not. White sugar is also devoid of B vitamins. Right now one-half of the typical American diet is comprised of white flour and white sugar “products,” and this nation is literally starved for B vitamins. Serious B vitamin deficiencies can cause beriberi, anemia which makes you more prone to infection, chronic depression, mental retardation, pellagra and a lot of other bogus shit.

On the other hand, many researchers have linked B vitamin enriched diets to accelerated rates of learning, speedier recovery from illness and trauma to the body (like operations), better reactions to stress and better health generally. If you get nothing else from this article, get into the B vitamins. They are essential to healthy body functioning, and you are probably suffering from at least partial deficiency right now.

Brewer’s yeast is the best, most concentrated source of all the B vitamins. Three teaspoons a day is all you need. You can stir it into yogurt, or mix it up in a refreshing morning smoothie, or granola – lots of great ways to eat it. Brewer’s yeast is available at any health food store. Liver, nuts, wheat germ, soy flour and whole grains are also good sources of B vitamins.

B vitamins are water soluble. This means that if you take some B-rich food and cook it in water, the vitamins will dissolve into the water. So it’s a good idea to save the water you cook with. Add some mint or spices for tea. Or cool it, mix in some lemon juice and/or honey and drink it instead of that bottle of coke. Or make soup. But remember, the best way to get enough B vitamins is to take Brewer’s yeast as a supplement every day.

Vitamin C: Vitamin C is the most talked-about vitamin since Nobel Prize winning scientist Linus Pauling claimed it will prevent and cure the common cold. While this has been disputed, there is no doubt that Vitamin C DOES promote rapid recovery from illness and reduces susceptibility to infection. According to the Department of Agriculture, whose figures are usually low, 25% of us suffer from Vitamin C deficiency. We don’t get scurvy, the disease that results from total lack of any Vitamin C for periods of time over 10 weeks or so, however we might feel sluggish, irritable and catch cold frequently. Sound familiar?

Vitamin C cannot be stored in the body. It must be constantly replenished, and you can’t eat too much of it. 100 milligrams of C per day is recommended – one orange contains 60. But smoking death-drug tobacco, exposure to air pollution, stress, cholesterol and eating fertilized food all deplete Vitamin C.

Citrus fruits are the best sources of Vitamin C. The peels contain twice as much as the fruit. If you have a blender, and you want to make orange juice, throw the whole orange in - just be sure you wash the skin with soap and water to remove all the insecticide. Other foods rich in Vitamin C are: almonds, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, tomatoes, peas, peppers and radishes. Citrus fruits are great snack foods for the late afternoon blahs, or the late-night munchies. And opinion around the Free People’s Clinic is: there’s nothing like a plump juicy orange when you’re stoned . . .

Vitamin D: Vitamin D aids in calcification of bones and teeth. It is called the sunshine vitamin because it is made by the skin when it reacts with sunlight. However, it is possible to overdose on Vitamin D. Excesses of D are thought to cause sunstroke, depression and abnormal calcium deposits around the body. D is plentiful in butter, milk, fish and eggs.

Vitamin E: Vitamin E is the hottest fad vitamin today. It is a skin conditioner (which has led to vitamin E deodorants and shampoos), it is necessary for reproduction, it may add to life-span, and it is important in the prevention of heart disease.

Wheat hulls are an excellent source of Vitamin E, but Americans who eat processed white flour don’t get it, even when their Wonder Bread is “enriched.” Heart disease kills half a million people per year now, and the figure is rising rapidly. Younger and younger people die of heart attacks nowadays. Since 1950, heart attacks for men aged 25-44 have jumped 14%. Autopsies done on Americans who allowed themselves to be manipulated into fighting in defense of the American Empire and Thieu’s police state reveal that these people, average under 25, showed signs of hardening of the arteries which directly leads to heart attacks. This was not the case at the time of our Korean aggression twenty years ago. This means that YOU probably have fatty plaque deposits building up on your precious artery walls right now! Vitamin E reduces the risk of getting these fat deposits on your arteries. Foods high in Vitamin E are: barley, roasted peanuts (another great snack food to replace those potato chips), corn oil, and wheat germ oil.

Lecithin: Lecithin is a natural tract of the fatty part of your soy bean. Like Vitamin E, lecithin helps keep fatty deposits off your artery walls. It’s also good for healthy skin and hair. Nerve fibers are wrapped in lecithin rich sheaths. Lecithin can be taken as a dietary supplement and is able at health food stores, or you can roast up some soy beans and munch your way to better health.

--Free People’s Clinic

(The information in this article I was drawn from “The Complete Handbook of Nutrition” by Gary and Steve Null. It is a Dell paperback, sold all over town for $1.25.)