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= Lesson 34 - The Harmfulness Of Beverages In The Diet =
34.1. Introduction
34.2. Harmfulness Of Common Beverages 34.3. Harmful Drinking Practices
34.4. Drinking Of The Diet
34.5. Questions & Answers
Article #1: Warning! Don’t Use Commercial Juices! Article #2: No Teas For The Hygienist
Article #3: Herbal Myths
Article #4: The Stimulant Delusion
== Introduction ==
34.1.1 The Harmfulness of Common Beverages
We live on a planet whose surface is mostly water. About 70% of the earth’s area consists of oceans, lakes, rivers and other bodies of water. Your body is also mostly wa- ter. In fact, the human body is about 70% water. If you’re an average person, you have about 45 quarts of water or fluid in you at all times.
The water in your body is responsible for and is involved with nearly every life process. Digestion, absorption, circulation, and excretion—water is the primary trans- porter of nutrients throughout the body and is necessary for all the building functions. Water also helps maintain your body temperature and is essential for carrying wastes from the body.
You’ll lose about three quarts of water, on the average, each day in the form of per- spiration, excretion, etc. If you live in a very hot or dry climate, you might lose as much as 10 quarts per day. This water must, of course, be replaced. Generally, three or four days is the longest person can go without replacing these fluids before serious lamage and eventually death occurs.
Unfortunately, modern man replaces these lost fluids in ways that may be harmful to him. Alcohol, caffeine beverages, soft drinks, hot and cold drinks, drinking with meals—all of these beverages and drinking practices contribute to poor health.
The purpose of this lesson is to inform the reader about the harmful beverages that are used, the harmful drinking practices that occur, and the correct way of obtaining flu- ids for the body.
34.1.1 The Harmfulness of Common Beverages
Water is the only fluid that can be used by the body. It doesn’t require coffee, tea, milk, beer or soda pop for its functions. Everything that is drunk by man that is not pure water must either be classified as a food or as a poison.
If a drink is classified as a food (such as milk, fruit or vegetable juices, etc.) then it should be taken as a food, by self, and not drunk in addition to other foods. If a drink is a poison (such as alcohol, coffee, cocoa, soft drinks, etc), then you should ask yourself if you should drink it at all!
According to Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, water is the only true drink, and in his words: “The time to drink is when one is thirsty and when this time arrives, there is nothing to equal a glass of pure, clear, sparkling, cool water.”
Beverages and drinks are now used as forms of entertainment. They are consumed out of habit or for the ‘kick’ they provide in the form of alcohol, caffeine, or sugar.
Almost everyone drinks excessively, and there are several reasons for this. Many of the common beverages do not satisfy thirst; indeed, many of them with the sugar and
chemical content induce more thirst. Alcohol actually dehydrates the body. People drink with meals; they drink when bored, and they also drink because they eat a diet that is deficient in natural fluids.
The most harmful beverages such as coffee, tea, cola drinks, and alcohol are dis- cussed first. Then the beverages that are used as food substitutes (juices, herb teas, milk, etc.) are also evaluated for their suitability in the diet.
34.2. Harmfulness Of Common Beverages
34.2.1 Coffee, Tea, and Caffeine
34.2.2 How Caffeine Affects You 34.2.3 Soft Drinks Are Hard Drugs 34.2.4 One For The Road
34.2.5 Herbal Potions and Drinks 34.2.6 Fruit and Vegetable Juices 34.2.7 What Can You Drink?
34.2.1 Coffee, Tea, and Caffeine
Perhaps the two most popular beverages in America are coffee and tea. Less than 9% of the population drink neither coffee or tea. About half the people in the United States have two to three cups a day of these beverages, and another one-quarter of the popula- tion drinks 6 to 7 or more cups of coffee and tea every day.
These figures mean that over 200 billion doses of the drug caffeine are consumed by people in this country every year. Most people do not think that their morning cup of coffee or glass of tea at lunch is a drug. Yet caffeine is addictive, causes withdrawal symptoms when discontinued, and induces both psychological and physical dependence. It sure sounds like a drug, doesn’t it?
34.2.2 How Caffeine Affects You
Caffeine is a stimulant of the central nervous system, similar to cocaine and amphet- amines in this manner. It increases the heart rate and rhythm, changes the blood vessel diameter, and affects coronary circulation, blood pressure, urination, and other physio- logical functions.
As little as three cups of coffee have enough caffeine to increase the basal metabolic rate of the body as much as 25%. In other words, you are “speeded up” about one-fourth above your normal activity.
In 1973, a study on heart patients revealed that people who drank five or more cups of coffee daily had twice as many heart attacks as nondrinkers. Caffeine is now also a suspected factor in birth defects, diabetes, kidney failure, gastric ulcers, and cancer of the pancreas.
In large enough amounts, caffeine can kill you. The fatal dose of this drug is what is contained in about 70 cups of coffee. That may sound like a large amount of coffee, but it is not unusual for some coffee drinkers to consume about one-third that amount every day. About seven cups of coffee can produce acute toxic effects in individuals. Symp- toms of caffeine poisoning include mild delirium, ringing in the ears, flashes of light in the field of vision, and trembling of the muscles.
“I’m mad at the world until I get my first cup of coffee,” is a statement heard more than once. Why? Because the habitual user of coffee becomes so addicted to his morn- ing drug that unpleasant withdrawal symptoms occur even overnight.
Dr. J. Murdoch Ritchie, a drug researcher, states that caffeine is physically addictive and withdrawal symptoms are quite common. “Indulgence in caffeine-containing bev- erages leads to a condition of chronic poisoning, resulting in restlessness, disturbed
sleep, cardiac irregularities, and tachycardia (rapid heart rate). The essential oils of cof- fee cause gastrointestinal irritation and diarrhea is a common symptom. The high tannin content of tea (another caffeine beverage), on the other hand, is apt to cause constipa- tion.” The caffeine-beverages are both harmful and addictive.
Caffeine withdrawal can occur from just missing the “morning cup of coffee.” Symptoms of caffeine withdrawal are headaches, irritability, inability to work effective- ly, nervousness, restlessness and lethargy. When a regular user of caffeine drinks ends their use totally, he may experience tight headaches in the back of the neck area and be quick to anger or irritation. These symptoms usually pass in around three days or less as the body detoxifies from its habitual caffeine load.
Although coffee is mentioned as the most widely known caffeine beverage, tea also has a large amount of this drug. Usually tea has about half as much caffeine as a similar amount of coffee (unless strongly brewed), but since many people usually drank a larger amount of tea than coffee at one sitting, they still receive a large dose of the drug.
Interestingly enough, many parents instinctively realize that coffee and tea contain a strong drug, and so they deny it to their children for a few years. I remember at how “adult” I felt when I was allowed to have my first cup of coffee at fourteen years old. Young children instead are often given hot chocolate or cocoa in place of coffee. Yet co- coa and chocolate drinks have significant amounts of the caffeine drug as well.
Not only that, but the cola soft drinks contain large amounts of the drug—sometimes as much or more than that in a cup of coffee. Soft drinks, however, have more dangers than caffeine associated with them, and that is the next topic.
34.2.3 Soft Drinks Are Hard Drugs
In the news was an account of a young boy who drank 64 bottles of a soda drink, one right after the other, to win a two dollar bet. A young girl was given a case of soft drinks as a prize for her scholarship. She drank the entire case that same day.
Over 250 soft drinks are consumed each year for every man, woman, and child in this country. Many people drink one or two such drinks a day as a regular habit. It is not uncommon to find people who drink over 100 ounces of cola, pop, or sodas every day of their lives.
Some drink it the first thing in the morning. Others have it as the last thing at night. Still others have it with every meal or all through the day.
Soft drinks are addictive. They are a drug. They do damage to the body. They furnish no nutrition. They are a menace to your health, and the only thing “soft” about them is how soft they can make your teeth by dissolving them.
Cola drinks were discovered in 1949 to contain a solution strong enough to dissolve iron. As for human teeth, Dr. Clive McCay of Cornell University showed that soft drinks can completely erode tooth enamel and make the teeth soft as mush within two days.
The bad ingredient in this case is phosphoric acid—an acid so strong that it can erode granite rock, and yet it is a common substance in all soft drinks.
Besides phosphoric acid, soft drinks also contain white sugar (usually an ounce or more per drink), artificial flavoring and coloring, carbon dioxide, and caffeine.
The carbonation, or carbonic acid, in the drink (which makes it “fizz”) was discov- ered by Dr. Hunter H. Turner to be a strong factor in the increasing number of nearsight- ed children and adults. Not only is the stuff bad for your teeth, but it destroys the vision as well.
There is so much sugar in a soft drink that heavy drinkers often get an extra pound of white sugar in their diet each day. Blood sugar levels shoot up and sink when soft drinks are consumed. The appetite is dulled, and valuable nutrients are depleted in an attempt to metabolize the sugar in these drinks. When soft drinks are taken with food, the sugar leads to fermentation instead of good digestion.
The coloring used in the drinks are usually coal tar derivatives. Almost every coal tar derivative that has undergone extensive testing has been labeled a carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, agent.
The caffeine in soft drinks is so high that a child who drinks 4 bottles within an hour has received .13 grams of this drug—an amount even termed excessive and dangerous by the medical establishment. Dr. D.G. Steyn of South Africa has demonstrated that cold drinks which contain caffeine (such as soft drinks) are actually more harmful than hot or warm caffeine beverages.
In the last twenty years, soft drink manufacturers have developed, “sugarless” drinks. Of course these are artificially sweetened. The sweeteners used are chemical products which also have been implicated as cancer-causing. Such drinks are often used by people desiring to lose weight. Unfortunately, while cutting down on calories, they may be building a tumor at the same time.
Soft drinks are not “soft”—they are hard on you and your health. 34.2.4 One For The Road
Of all the beverages with harmful effects, alcohol is probably the most widely known and frequently abused. Seven million people in this country have a serious drinking problem. Probably three to four times that amount use alcohol so much as to interfere with their normal lives.
Over 30,000 people a year are killed because of drunken drivers. Tens of millions of work hours are lost each year because of alcohol. We lose millions of dollars every year to alcohol and its related problems.
Alcohol is not a “safe” drug. It is an addictive drug. Out of every eight people who drink, one will become a life-long alcoholic. You cannot find such a high rate of addic- tion among any other drug users.
Yet alcohol is treated as a non-drug by the government. They issue licenses, collect taxes, and allow manufacturers to spend 300 million dollars a year to push the drug.
Alcohol destroys the liver, contributes to ulcers, enlarges the heart, and kills brain cells. It destroys both the body and the mind. Alcohol must be recognized as the killer it is and no longer treated as a social lubricant or “harmless” relaxant. It is a drug and has no place in a healthful lifestyle.
34.2.5 Herbal Potions and Drinks
Witches used to have their special “brew.” They would toss toads and roots and hair and blood and herbs into a big pot and make their special tea. Today, people leave out the toads and blood but they still use the herbs, and they call their potion “herb tea.”
Most of the drugs and medicines used have originally come from herbs. Herbs are drugs. They are not foods. A tea made from these roots, bark and leaves somehow has achieved an unearned reputation of being healthy. Drugs are never health promoting. A tea made from drugs (herbs) cannot be health promoting.
People have been fooled. Health-seekers who would never touch a drop of coffee or an alcoholic drink put away cup after cup of this witch’s brew because they think herb tea must be good for them since the ingredients are plants.
Since herbs and their dangers are covered in a future lesson, you only need know that herb teas are not such safe and healthy drinks. They may be a stimulant or a depres- sant or a carminative or whatever, but regardless every herb is a drug and a poison and a drink made from them can in no way be considered suitable for human consumption.
34.2.6 Fruit and Vegetable Juices
Fruit and vegetable juices are the finest liquids we can rink—provided that they are obtained directly from the food itself and not artificially extracted.
Extracted juices, like those in bottles, concentrates, or cans, have undergone oxida- tion, deterioration, and fragmentation. An extracted juice is an unnatural food.
We are meant to eat fruits and vegetables, not drink them. We have a thirst center and a hunger center in our brain. When we drink something that was meant to be eaten, we confuse this mechanism. Our hunger center may tell us that we want to eat one or- ange. If we pour down a glass of juice containing three or four oranges instead, we are not listening to the true needs of the body.
This is one of the dangers of drinking extracted juices. They are so concentrated that it is easy to overload the body with one nutrient or the other. At the same time, these juices have no fiber.
Frozen concentrates, bottled and canned juices, or any juice made more than twenty minutes ago cannot be good for the body.
If juices are actively desired, then they should be made fresh, consumed immediate- ly, and used only in the same quantities that you would eat them. For instance, it is quite possible to “drink” twenty or more carrots in a couple glasses of carrot juice. We’re not equipped to handle twenty carrots given to the body in such a short time. It would be better if two or three carrots were juiced and then sipped slowly.
Even the consumption of freshly made juices cannot be strongly recommended. If you’re hungry, eat. It you’re thirsty, drink, and when you drink, make it pure distilled water.
34.2.7 What Can You Drink?
It seems like that everything you drink is not good for you. You might wonder what you can drink. First, realize that most drinking is due to a water-deficient diet. If you do not eat the wrong foods, you’ll probably want to drink very little. Often drinking is a social activity—much like eating. People like to offer drinks as a sign of hospitality.
If you experience true thirst, then your best choice for a drink is distilled water. Should you wish to offer someone something to drink or if you feel a desire for “liquid” nourishment, then freshly made juices may be sipped slowly in small quantities. These juices are actually foods and should be consumed as foods. No other foods should be taken with these fresh juices.
Other than these two liquids, it is difficult to recommend any other beverages. If you can break the habit of drinking with your meals and if you can eliminate the salt habit, then your drinking needs will be very slight and easily satisfied..
All of the drinking done by most people is pathological and results from a poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle.
Drinking merely replaces lost fluids in the body. Treat it as such and you will find that clear, cool water will satisfy you on all levels.
34.3. Harmful Drinking Practices
34.3.1 Drinking With Meals
34.3.2 Hot and Cold Drinks: Injuring the Body 34.3.3 Drinking Instead of Nutrition
34.3.4 Is Drinking A Natural Process?
Besides the harmfulness of certain beverages themselves, the way in which they are consumed is also detrimental to health and well-being. Drinking with meals, drinking hot and cold beverages, and using drinks as substitutes for good nutrition are harmful drinking practices that should be avoided.
34.3.1 Drinking With Meals
Drinking while eating is such a common practice that restaurants don’t ask if you’ll have anything to drink but what you want to drink. If no beverage is ordered with the meal, then water is routinely supplied.
Drinking while eating is a harmful practice because the beverage dilutes the diges- tive juices of the stomach. Since fluids leave the stomach faster than solid food, bever- ages tend to carry out the digestive juices of the stomach and the stomach is left without sufficient juices to carry on its work.
Drinking with a meal also encourages poor chewing of the food since it is frequently washed down in a swallow of water or whatever. Normally food must be thoroughly mixed with saliva in the chewing process for it to be easily swallowed. Beverages re- place the role of saliva in this respect, and permit the gulping of half-chewed food.
Beverages are usually incompatible with the food eaten as well. Fruit juices, for ex- ample, are often drunk with starchy foods (such as orange juice and toast). The acid in the fruit juices suspend the digestion of the starches and indigestion is guaranteed. Milk, another popular meal beverage, requires its own complex digestive environment since it is more properly a food than a drink. When drunk with sandwiches, breakfast or what- ever, fermentation of the milk occurs in the stomach.
Beverages with the meal would never be used if people took the time to thoroughly chew their food. Washing food down and diluting the digestive juices with fluids always result in only partial digestion of the food.
If thirsty, beverages may be consumed twenty to thirty minutes before a meal. After a meal consisting of fruit, water can be taken within thirty minutes; after a starch meal, two hours should pass before drinking, following a protein or fat meal, a full four hours should elapse before fluids are taken. In general, if thirst occurs before these times, it indicates that salted, spiced or unsuitable foods were eaten at the meal and should be avoided in the future.
34.3.2 Hot and Cold Drinks: Injuring the Body
If you or someone you know likes to drink a hot cup of coffee or tea, try this simple experiment: take a tablespoon of the hot liquid, just as you would drink it, and pour it onto the bare stomach. Most likely, you’ll experience intense pain and perhaps some blistering.
Ask yourself this question: if the hot liquid does this to the outside of my stomach, what must it be doing to the delicate and sensitive tissues on the inside!
Hot drinks destroy the sensitive nerve endings in the tongue. They benumb the sens- es so that discrimination of taste is lost. They scar the esophagus and stomach lining. They disrupt body temperature and digestion. Any liquid above 104 degrees (Fahren- heit) should not be drunk.
Similarly, cold liquids also disturb digestion. In fact, an ice cold drink can complete- ly halt the digestive process. The inside of your body is a delicate, well-controlled en- vironment. Digestion proceeds at a proper pace when this environment is kept constant. Pouring a glass of ice water into the stomach is like taking cooking food from an oven and sticking it into a freezer. You can bet that the cooking process is going to be serious- ly suspended, and so is the digestive process suspended when cold beverages are drunk. Nerve endings are also numbed by intense cold just as they are numbed by high heat.
Drinking iced water or beverages over ice is a habit that has only been recently ac- quired by modern man. Why he must have ice cold drinking water from fountains is a mystery. No other animal will drink extra cold or extra hot liquids; they wait until they have reached room temperature.
Remember that the inside of the body is a hundred times more sensitive than the out- side. Why should you pour burning or freezing liquids into your stomach? Like many
habits, drinking hot or cold beverages seems very silly and abnormal when you look at it in an unbiased way.
34.3.3 Drinking Instead of Nutrition
Another harmful drinking practice is using beverages as a substitute for proper nu- trition. Drinks such as alcoholic beverages and soda drinks are full of empty calories. They supply little nutrition in the diet, but many calories. All too often, children use soft drinks for an energy lift instead of wholesome foods. Adults drink beer or mixed drinks in place of good nutrition.
Concentrated fruit juices are consumed instead of the whole fruit. Milk drinks like shakes and malts are downed in place of a wholesome lunch. It’s all too easy to fill the stomach up with needless beverages instead of eating a proper meal.
The problem with many of these beverages is that they so easily become habitual. People drink morning coffee instead of eating fruit for their liquid requirements. They have their soda drink every afternoon or their few bottles of beer. In little time, they have established a beverage habit that has replaced the good habits of nutrition and whole- some foods.
34.3.4 Is Drinking A Natural Process?
To suggest that drinking may be an unnatural or at least an unusual practice may seem foolish. After all, everybody drinks—or do they?
Not actually. There are some people who go for days or weeks without drinking a single glass of water or taking a swallow of any beverage. These people also eat an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables which have a naturally high water content and they eat no salt or other thirst-creating spices in their food. Consequently, they get all the fluids they need from fresh foods and never feel thirsty or have the need for a drink of water. This is not speculation or heresay; it is an observation of my own personal ex- perience as well. During the last six months, for example, I doubt if I drank more than six glasses of fluids. I did eat large amounts of melons and many other fresh juicy fruits. These foods supplied me with an abundance of fluids or water from their tissues. Many other people who eat a similar diet of chiefly fresh fruits and vegetables also report little or no need for drinking fluids.
The animals that have the greatest need for drinking are carnivores or meat-eaters. Their high-acid meat diet requires frequent flushing of the kidneys to remove the waste products of the meat, and the concentrated nature of their meat diet usually means they do not get enough water in the foods they eat. These animals have lapping tongues so that they can get the water into the mouth quite easily. Man has no lapping tongue mech- anism. He has no snout to put into the water to drink.
In fact, man is so poorly equipped to drink water that he invented the drinking cup so he could move the water in his mouth. The truth is that man has very little natural equipment for drinking. Man is not a drinking animal. To be sure, we can swallow water and we can catch some in our hands for this purpose. When compared to all the oth- er drinking animals, however, man is short on the physiological necessities to facilitate drinking. He is like the ape in this respect—another animal that rarely drinks water in its natural habitat.
This is not to say that we should not drink water. Obviously, there are times when sufficient high-fluid foods may not be available to eat and we will need to supplement our fluid sources from water directly. During fasting specifically is the need greatest for drinking water since no foods are being eaten. Then, too, if we eat a conventional Amer- ican diet with its high amounts of uric acid, toxins, salt, and other thirst stimulators, we will have to drink perhaps as much as the eight glasses of water a day recommended by certain nutritionists.
But the point is this: if you eat a natural diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables, you will rarely experience the desire to drink. Usually, when thirst arises and the individual is not in a fasting state or in a very hot environment, then it is due to an improper choice of foods.
34.4. Drinking Of The Diet
34.4.1 Foods That Cause Thirst
34.4.2 The Water-Sufficient Diet 34.4.3 The Water-Sufficient Foods
34.4.1 Foods That Cause Thirst
Excessive thirst is caused by eating foods which are either deficient in natural fluids or high in salt, spices or their condiments. A high-protein diet also requires more fluid intake because the waste products of such foods require a large amount of water for their solution and excretion.
Foods become deficient in natural fluids either by cooking or drying them. Cooked foods lose their natural water in the steam that leaves them while cooking. Dried fruits, nuts, dried beans, peas, and other foods which have had their water content decreased by storage or drying are also “deficient” in water content.
The solution appears simple: don’t cook fresh foods and they will remain water-suf- ficient. If dried foods are eaten, they may first be soaked in distilled water or eaten with a compatible, high-fluid food (such as lettuce and nuts).
Most thirst occasioned by foods, however, is due to the salt that is added to them. The body tissues become deprived of water when salt is used. Salt is an irritant to all the cells of the body, and water is used to flush and transport this poison out of the system. This is why extra water is desired when eating salted foods—the body is attempting to remove this biocidal seasoning as quickly as possible.
Other strong spices and seasonings may also bring about a desire to drink. These, too, act as irritants to the delicate tissues of the body, and the water serves as a trans- porter.
To avoid unnatural and excessive thirst, eat your foods fresh, uncooked, and unsea- soned.
34.4.2 The Water-Sufficient Diet
One of the criteria for an optimum diet is that it should also be water-sufficient. That is, a good diet should also supply you with sufficient fluids so that drinking needs are minimal or nonexistent. One reason for this is that the best fluids for your body—the purest and most natural liquids—are the fresh juices of fruits and vegetables as they exist in the food itself.
The fluids of fresh fruits and vegetables contain superior minerals and natural sugars. They are easily assimilated and supply all the cells with all the nutrients they require.
By a wise selection of your food, you can supply all your body’s fluid needs with the best possible liquids.
Certain vegetarian animals that feed on wild grasses and fruits never drink water as long as they can find their natural food. Generally, these animals live on foods that have about an 85% water content. Mother’s milk contains about 87% water, and an in- fant feeding on this food alone never requires additional water. It appears that as long as foods are eaten which are from 80% to 95% water, thirst will not occur and all the body’s water needs will be met in a superior fashion.
34.4.3 The Water-Sufficient Foods
Almost all fresh fruits and vegetables contain 80% to 95% pure water. These foods should form the majority of an optimum and water-sufficient diet.
Other foods may be included, such as seeds and nuts, provided that they are eaten with high-fluid foods in a compatible combination. For example, most nuts are 4% to 5% water. Lettuce is 95% water. If a sufficient amount of lettuce is eaten with a small quantity of nuts (say, 1 ounce of nuts and 8 ounces of lettuce), then a fluid average of 85% is maintained for the meal and thirst will not develop.
It’s really not necessary to be so concerned with figures, percentages, and propor- tions. A simple rule to follow is this: if a natural food is eaten that is low in water con- tent, then it may be advisable to eat a salad, raw vegetables, fruits or whatever is com- patible to balance the low-water food. Of course if your meal consists mostly of cooked, refined, or concentrated foods, then it may be impossible to balance them with water sufficient foods.
The optimum diet does not include salt, seasonings, or spices. All of these substances occasion thirst and cannot be utilized by the body.
If you eat an abundance of fresh, raw, unseasoned fruits and vegetables (supplement- ed by nuts and seeds if desired), then you will be satisfying all your water needs with the highest form of liquids. You will rarely experience thirst, have no desire to drink, and will enjoy the optimum level of health that is the birthright of every human being.
34.5. Questions & Answers
How much water or juice should I drink when I fast?
When fasting, you should always slowly sip pure distilled water whenever you are thirsty and drink until you are no longer thirsty. There is no fixed amount to drink or not to drink. You should not force yourself to drink while fasting, nor should you ever deny yourself a drink while going without food. Don’t try to “fill up” on water to ease your hunger pains—it won’t work.
By the way, if you’re drinking juices while fasting, you are not actually fasting. You’re on a juice diet. There is nothing seriously wrong with a juice diet, provided that the juices are made and used strictly fresh and that excessive amounts are not taken as a substitute for food. However, to get the benefits of a fast, you have to fast and take only distilled water—not juices.
Most doctors and nutritionists say we should drink 8 glasses of water every day for good health. What do you say to that?
If you eat what most doctors and nutritionists eat, that might be good advice! A typical American diet is high in salt and animal protein—both of these require copi- ous amounts of water to keep the kidneys flushed and the tissues clean. Few people eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables to supply them with adequate fluids. I have no doubt that a diet of hot dogs, potato chips and ice cream would also require the addition of eight glasses of water per day. But if your diet is healthy, if you include high-water content foods, if you don’t use salt or animal proteins, then why flood yourself with water? Drink according to thirst, not by some recommendation or the other.
I become thirsty right after I eat, and then when I drink water, I get indigestion. Help!
You become thirsty after you eat only if you eat cooked foods, salted or spiced foods, or concentrated foods (like nuts). First, give up salted foods. You cannot get around this fact: salt-eating will always give you an unnatural thirst.
If you eat cooked or concentrated food, then you must eat a large amount of water-sufficient foods along with them. This usually means a large raw salad. Make sure you drink some water about an hour before you eat. This may help prevent thirst after eating. Of course if you eat a high-water meal of only fresh fruits or raw vegetables, you should never experience that after-meal thirst—or indigestion, for that matter.
I like to make blender drinks. You know, some fruits and nuts and things. Is this an okay beverage?
Blender drinks are not actually drinks—they are meals that you have first run through a blender. If you have chewing problems, poor teeth, or whatever, then this might be an acceptable compromise in your diet. If you must blend your foods, don’t “drink” them—eat them. Use a spoon and eat the blended food slowly, chew- ing each mouthful as well as you can and mix it with your saliva. Gulping down a blender drink is one way to indigestion. Also make sure that the foods you blend together are compatible foods to begin with. Nuts and fruits may not make an ide- al combination in a blender drink. As we said, a drink (if it’s not water) is either a food or a poison. Blended up drinks are foods—separate meals—which should be eaten by themselves and immediately after preparing them to avoid oxidation and nutrient loss.
What can you say to people when they ask you what you want to drink?
Tell them you want a big glass of “sky-juice”—water in other words. If you are thirsty, drink it. If not, keep it beside you and don’t make a big deal out of drinking or not drinking. For many people, drinking is a social activity and an act of hos- pitality. If you graciously accept a glass of water with no further discussion, then everyone should be quite comfortable.
Article #1: Warning! Don’t Use Commercial Juices!
Bad enough that anyone should use freshly-pressed pure fruit and vegetable juices in- stead of the whole fruit or vegetable. But commercial juices are not only fragmented, but contain toxins as well.
What juices do you like? Tomato? Freshly squeezed is pretty bland stuff. The jazzed- up commercial juice always tastes thick and “exciting.” Of course the tomatoes used may be ripe, overripe, underripe and even partially rotten since any tomato may be turned into juice. Mixed well, no one knows the difference, especially after pasteuriza- tion and salt disguise the flavor.
Do you use commercially squeezed orange, lemon and grapefruit juices? It’s the fashion these days to use reconstituted juices. The juices are squeezed from oranges, grapefruit and lemons, peels and all.
The juices from the peels contain citron oil which is quite toxic in the human system.
Citrus trees, like other fruit trees, create a fruit to attract animal consumers. The seed is dispersed in the fruit for propagation by the eater of the fruit. The fruit/seed package is protected until the moment of ripeness by a skin against bacteria and insects. Citrus fruit skins contain citron oil (not to mention fungicides and insecticides) which is an ex- cellent “antibiotic” and is repulsive and toxic to all creatures including humans. Com- mercial juicers squeeze this toxic juice into the mix with other parts of the fruit. Even the juices of the seed, which may contain hydrocyanide, etc. are pressed into the mix.
The juices are then dehydrated and pasteurized. The resulting concentrate is frozen and shipped to points throughout the country for “reconstitution.” If you buy frozen concen- trate and add water, you’re getting the same devitalized stuff.
It doesn’t matter if the juices come from cans or frozen concentrates. It’s all been heated, refined, condimented, preserved and otherwise ruined. It deserves to be left on the shelf.
There’s no reason why we can’t have all the fresh juices directly from the fruit. Most fruits can be shipped just as easily as the juices, although it involves more shipping vol- ume and weight.
Of course this observation is for those that insist on juices—the best of juices are always second-rate to the whole fruit, the natural juice source.
Reprinted from Healthful Living, April 1982
Article #2: No Teas For The Hygienist
The practice of drinking teas made from the leaves, the stems, barks, roots, flowers, seeds and fruits of plants is an old one. The practice was taught to mankind by the med- ical profession, which was, in its origin and for long after its origin, largely herbal in character. Due to the fact that some part of almost every plant contains a poison or two, it is possible to use some part of almost every plant known to man for its alleged “medical action,” both for the “prevention” and “cure” of disease. Faith in the healing virtues of herb teas lingers on in the minds of the people long after the medical profession, which originally fostered and cultivated this faith, has abandoned it.
Mint tea, alfalfa tea, horse mint tea, and other teas are in extensive use among a growing segment of our population and great numbers of these people are convinced that they can derive benefit from the practice of drinking these teas. A brief, instructive reference to some of these currently popular teas is given below, in Herbal Myths.
Reprinted from The Hygienic Review, August 1973
Article #3: Herbal Myths
Juniper berry tea is “healthful, adding fluorine to the diet, increasing functional activity and increasing the secretion and flow of urine”—all of this means that it is a stimulant and that the kidneys are forced to expel it quickly.
Parsley tea has a “purifying action” and is a “diuretic” and “mild sedative.”
Papaya tea is a “fine tonic,” has a “rebuilding effect on the stomach and digestive tract,” and contains a “digestant” that is “capable of digesting many times its weight in protein food.” If you could find other “digestants” to take care of the other food factors, you could dispense with the secretion of digestive enzymes.
A delicious combination of lime leaves and papaya that you will always use, once you have tasted it, is sold to the public.
Then there is red clover tea which is “beneficial to the bloodstream” (a “blood puri- fier”) and “cleansing to wounds, boils and ulcers.”
Chamomile tea has a “soothing effect on the nerves and stomach” and is regarded as excellent for children.
Just plain lime tea, without the addition of papaya, “acts on the nervous system, al- laying nervous excitement, invigorating and strengthening, and also soothing and reliev- ing inflammation.”
Horse tail herb tea is “invigorating and strengthening.” It is an “alterative” and an “astringent.”
In spasms, mistletoe tea is said to “relieve nervous excitement.” (MISTLETOE IS ALSO POISON—See Article “Plant Products And Effects” in Lesson 33).
Then there is blueberry tea, an “exciting beverage with delicate fragrance,” made from the leaves of the blueberry, which “purifies.” It is an “antiseptic, a blood purifier and it soothes.”
Strawberry tea, made from the leaves of the strawberry, “provides many benefits to the urinary organs.” It is “astringent, tonic, diuretic, a bitter alterative.”
Sassafras tea, an “old favorite,” is described as a “wonder drug.” It is a “blood puri- fier” and an “aid to the skin”—at least, it is said to be.
Fenugreek tea seems to be one of the present day favorites. If we are to believe the advertising, great and increasing numbers of people are drinking this mild poison regularly. This tea “soothes minor irritations of the stomach and intestines, softens and soothes inflamed parts and relieves inflammaton. It is also good for those with excess mucus due to dietary errors.” I presume that you take this tea instead of correcting your dietary errors.
Mate, a caffeine-containing tea from South America, is highly praised because it “gives a pick-up like coffee.” Why not? It contains the same poison.
Desert herb is an old Indian tonic, often called squaw tea. Although almost all the medicinal virtues are attributed to this tea, it is listed only as “alterative, depurative and diuretic.”
Hop tea is both a “tonic” and a “sedative”—stimulates and inhibits—and is used for “relieving pain, allaying nervous excitement, and to abate fever.”
Flaxseed tea “relieves coughs and sore throats, painful urination and bladder inflam- mation. It is also good in dysentery.”
Sarsaparilla tea, an old-fashioned favorite, “purifies the blood and is used for affec- tions of the chest.” Used for coughs for countless generations, it is “aromatic, depurative and alterative.”
Alfalfa tea is said to be especially valuable in rheumatism and arthritis. It is chiefly recommended for its “richness in minerals.” When mint is added to the alfalfa, this pro- vides a delicious tea that gives all the “advantages” of the alfalfa plus the “sedative ef- fects” of the peppermint leaves and the “aid” they give to digestion.
Nettle tea is a “diuretic” that has varied “properties.” Besides “increasing the secre- tion and flow of urine” (meaning the kidneys hurriedly eliminate it) it is “excellent for the circulation,” is a “tonic” and “relieves infections of the chest.”
For your constipation here is a “pleasant” herbal laxative that should be every bit as good as Inner Clean, Hood Lax, All-Lax, NR Tablets, Black Draught, or anything that grandmother used to brew. It is a curious combination of “freshly cut senna, mandrake root, boneset leaves and tops, elder flowers, sassafras bark, peppermint leaves and Mex- ican saffron.” Use this compound and “keep free from annoying symptoms arising from a constipated condition.”
Finally, here is a “tasty tea” made of a blend of alfalfa, peppermint and desert herb, which you are sure to like, once you have tried.
Dock root “purifies the blood and strengthens in a permanent manner, both allaying and preventing scurvy.” It is also an “astringent.”
Certainly from this list of drugs with their astringent, alterative, tonic, diuretic, diges- tant, soothing, sedative, purifying, emetic, laxative, etc. “actions,” you can find one or more that “will help you back to good health, even assist you in retaining good health.” If you read over the classifications of the alleged actions of these teas and fail to recog- nize the fact that they are drugs and are “recommended” as such, this is because you are unaquainted with so-called pharmacology and the herbal materia medica. They employ the technical jargon of allopathic medicine in describing the “effects” of their teas. What is a depurative, for example? It is “a drug for aiding a cleansing process.” An alterative is a “medicine” that “alters the processes of nutrition and excretion.” Such a drug is sup- posed to be capable of “restoring the normal body-functions.” A diuretic is a “medicine” that “increases the flow of urine.” How does it increase the flow of urine? Does it assist
the kidneys? Does it add to the functioning power of the kidneys? It does neither of these things. It is a poison that is hurriedly eliminated by the kidneys.
Herbs are nature’s own products, we are assured. We could reply that rattlesnakes and cobras are also nature’s own products. They come to you “entirely natural.” I can hear the hiss of the rattlesnake as he strikes: “My venom comes to you entirely natural.”
Teas are made in two general ways. They are prepared as infusions and as decoc- tions. An infusion is the solution obtained when a substance is steeped in water to obtain its soluble principles. It is an old medical device used to extract the “medicinal” quali- ties of herbs. A decoction is a substance derived by the process of boiling. This is also an old medical device used to extract the “medicinal” qualities (the poisons) from herbs. Infusions are made by pouring hot water over the tea and permitting it to steep. Leaves, flowers and thin materials are prepared as infusions. Decoctions are made of the harder materials, such as barks, roots, chips, seeds, etc. These are boiled to extract their “solu- ble principles.” An aromatic is a substance with a spicy fragrance. Such substances are said to be “stimulating,” but they are often added to infusions and decoctions to make them acceptable to the sense of smell.
I shall not, at this time, consider all the alleged actions of these various teas. Enough has been said to reveal that they are recommended to the public as drugs and because they are supposed to have therapeutic actions. All such actions are actions of the body and are employed as means of freeing the body of offensive substances. An herbal laxa- tive is laxative because of the laxative action of the bowels in expelling the herbs or the tea made from these. These are expelled because they are poisonous. It does not matter that there may be minerals and vitamins in the herb or tea; the very hurry to expel them from the body prevents their digestion and absorption. Nonpoisonous herbs are foods; poisonous herbs are supposed to be “medicine.” Do not permit yourself to be misled by the assertion that “current research is proving the value of teas, herbs and berries used in Grandma’s day.” Research seems to be able to prove anything it is paid to prove.
Review the Articles in Lesson 33: Natural Foods—They refer to them as “healthy,” but some are actually hazardous and Plant Products and Effects.
Article #4: The Stimulant Delusion
Some time ago, a magazine published by a religious organization came to my desk. It contained an article which traces chocolate from seed to candy bar. It opens by saying that “chocolate in its many forms has been a taste delight of millions.” It ends by saying: “Many have come to know the nutritional value of chocolate as well as enjoy it for its taste when mixed with sugar. The Creator has thus provided for his Creatures an unend- ing variety of foodstuffs to sustain them and gratify their varied appetites.”
In between these two asinine statements is a brief story of the planting and cultiva- tion of the Cacao tree, the harvesting of its crops and the preparation of the cacao beans for the factories. In the whole article there is not one word said about the poisonous qual- ity of cocoa, nor does the article even hint that the sugar with which it is mixed is white sugar.
The thought comes to me that if the Creator prepared this substance for the use of His creatures, He might well have left the poison out of it. The article does say that the chocolate is bitter, but it fails to mention the fact that, without the addition of great amounts of sugar, the stuff is so bitter that none of the “varied appetites” of man would relish it. It is only by so thoroughly disguising its true character, as manifest in its taste, that foolish men and women can get the poison substance past the sentinel of taste.
Arguments such as that given in the magazine article can be made to sustain any vice or practice to which man may be addicted. We may assume that the Creator made tobac- co to satisfy the varied tastes of man, or that he made opium for the same purpose. There is actually more nutritive value in the leaf of the tobacco plant than in chocolate. Peo- ple do not eat chocolate for is alleged nutritive value but for its stimulating quality. The
theobromine of chocolate is identical with the caffeine of coffee and the theine of tea. It is simply a poison and there are no conditions or circumstances under which it should be taken into the human body. Theological defenses of poison vices are always misleading.
Coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate and the caffeine-containing soft drinks should be classed together and it should be fully recognized that they produce evil and evil only, when introduced into the human system. None of these vices is very old but each of them is very wide-spread. People swallow these poisons under the delusion that stimulation is somehow beneficial.
Of coffee we read in medical literature that, “While a certain portion stimulates the nervous system, a large portion acts as a sedative, so that a difference in the quantity of the potion causes a difference in the kind of its effects.” It is impossible to explain this apparently contradictory behavior of coffee on the basis of the medical theory that “drugs act.” If caffeine is a stimulant, why is it less of a stimulant in large than in small doses? Indeed, why does it not stimulate in proportion to the size of the dose—why aren’t large doses proportionately more stimulating than small doses? Why does it ap- parently act the exact opposite in large doses from the way it acts in small doses?
We can find our answer only if we realize that the increased action that we designate stimulation is simply the extra effort exerted by the body in expelling the poison. This being true, and it is, so-called stimulants must necessarily and inevitably deplete the body’s powers in proportion to the expenditure their use occasions. Because the sick per- son is already greatly depleted, he is less able to bear the losses occasioned by the use of stimulants than is the well and vigorous individual.
Of theine, it is said that when given in small doses to either animals or man, it “quickens the circulation,” and “effects some degree of mental exhiliration and wake- fulness.” But the “final result” is diminished excretion of carbon-dioxide—“the flow of blood through the capillaries is retarded.” Large doses “prove poisonous, causing painful restlessness, rigidity of the muscles, and general exhaustion.”
Thus, theine is pictured to us as a stimulant in small doses, a “poison” in large doses. What is there in the size of dose to change the character and quality of the substance? In what way does the size of the dose alter its relation to the vital structures? As soon as it is realized that stimulation is excited action in resisting and expelling the small dose, it will be recognized that the drug is a poison in doses of any and all sizes.
34.1. Introduction
34.2. Harmfulness Of Common Beverages 34.3. Harmful Drinking Practices
34.4. Drinking Of The Diet
34.5. Questions & Answers
Article #1: Warning! Don’t Use Commercial Juices! Article #2: No Teas For The Hygienist
Article #3: Herbal Myths
Article #4: The Stimulant Delusion
== Introduction ==
34.1.1 The Harmfulness of Common Beverages
We live on a planet whose surface is mostly water. About 70% of the earth’s area consists of oceans, lakes, rivers and other bodies of water. Your body is also mostly wa- ter. In fact, the human body is about 70% water. If you’re an average person, you have about 45 quarts of water or fluid in you at all times.
The water in your body is responsible for and is involved with nearly every life process. Digestion, absorption, circulation, and excretion—water is the primary trans- porter of nutrients throughout the body and is necessary for all the building functions. Water also helps maintain your body temperature and is essential for carrying wastes from the body.
You’ll lose about three quarts of water, on the average, each day in the form of per- spiration, excretion, etc. If you live in a very hot or dry climate, you might lose as much as 10 quarts per day. This water must, of course, be replaced. Generally, three or four days is the longest person can go without replacing these fluids before serious lamage and eventually death occurs.
Unfortunately, modern man replaces these lost fluids in ways that may be harmful to him. Alcohol, caffeine beverages, soft drinks, hot and cold drinks, drinking with meals—all of these beverages and drinking practices contribute to poor health.
The purpose of this lesson is to inform the reader about the harmful beverages that are used, the harmful drinking practices that occur, and the correct way of obtaining flu- ids for the body.
34.1.1 The Harmfulness of Common Beverages
Water is the only fluid that can be used by the body. It doesn’t require coffee, tea, milk, beer or soda pop for its functions. Everything that is drunk by man that is not pure water must either be classified as a food or as a poison.
If a drink is classified as a food (such as milk, fruit or vegetable juices, etc.) then it should be taken as a food, by self, and not drunk in addition to other foods. If a drink is a poison (such as alcohol, coffee, cocoa, soft drinks, etc), then you should ask yourself if you should drink it at all!
According to Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, water is the only true drink, and in his words: “The time to drink is when one is thirsty and when this time arrives, there is nothing to equal a glass of pure, clear, sparkling, cool water.”
Beverages and drinks are now used as forms of entertainment. They are consumed out of habit or for the ‘kick’ they provide in the form of alcohol, caffeine, or sugar.
Almost everyone drinks excessively, and there are several reasons for this. Many of the common beverages do not satisfy thirst; indeed, many of them with the sugar and
chemical content induce more thirst. Alcohol actually dehydrates the body. People drink with meals; they drink when bored, and they also drink because they eat a diet that is deficient in natural fluids.
The most harmful beverages such as coffee, tea, cola drinks, and alcohol are dis- cussed first. Then the beverages that are used as food substitutes (juices, herb teas, milk, etc.) are also evaluated for their suitability in the diet.
34.2. Harmfulness Of Common Beverages
34.2.1 Coffee, Tea, and Caffeine
34.2.2 How Caffeine Affects You 34.2.3 Soft Drinks Are Hard Drugs 34.2.4 One For The Road
34.2.5 Herbal Potions and Drinks 34.2.6 Fruit and Vegetable Juices 34.2.7 What Can You Drink?
34.2.1 Coffee, Tea, and Caffeine
Perhaps the two most popular beverages in America are coffee and tea. Less than 9% of the population drink neither coffee or tea. About half the people in the United States have two to three cups a day of these beverages, and another one-quarter of the popula- tion drinks 6 to 7 or more cups of coffee and tea every day.
These figures mean that over 200 billion doses of the drug caffeine are consumed by people in this country every year. Most people do not think that their morning cup of coffee or glass of tea at lunch is a drug. Yet caffeine is addictive, causes withdrawal symptoms when discontinued, and induces both psychological and physical dependence. It sure sounds like a drug, doesn’t it?
34.2.2 How Caffeine Affects You
Caffeine is a stimulant of the central nervous system, similar to cocaine and amphet- amines in this manner. It increases the heart rate and rhythm, changes the blood vessel diameter, and affects coronary circulation, blood pressure, urination, and other physio- logical functions.
As little as three cups of coffee have enough caffeine to increase the basal metabolic rate of the body as much as 25%. In other words, you are “speeded up” about one-fourth above your normal activity.
In 1973, a study on heart patients revealed that people who drank five or more cups of coffee daily had twice as many heart attacks as nondrinkers. Caffeine is now also a suspected factor in birth defects, diabetes, kidney failure, gastric ulcers, and cancer of the pancreas.
In large enough amounts, caffeine can kill you. The fatal dose of this drug is what is contained in about 70 cups of coffee. That may sound like a large amount of coffee, but it is not unusual for some coffee drinkers to consume about one-third that amount every day. About seven cups of coffee can produce acute toxic effects in individuals. Symp- toms of caffeine poisoning include mild delirium, ringing in the ears, flashes of light in the field of vision, and trembling of the muscles.
“I’m mad at the world until I get my first cup of coffee,” is a statement heard more than once. Why? Because the habitual user of coffee becomes so addicted to his morn- ing drug that unpleasant withdrawal symptoms occur even overnight.
Dr. J. Murdoch Ritchie, a drug researcher, states that caffeine is physically addictive and withdrawal symptoms are quite common. “Indulgence in caffeine-containing bev- erages leads to a condition of chronic poisoning, resulting in restlessness, disturbed
sleep, cardiac irregularities, and tachycardia (rapid heart rate). The essential oils of cof- fee cause gastrointestinal irritation and diarrhea is a common symptom. The high tannin content of tea (another caffeine beverage), on the other hand, is apt to cause constipa- tion.” The caffeine-beverages are both harmful and addictive.
Caffeine withdrawal can occur from just missing the “morning cup of coffee.” Symptoms of caffeine withdrawal are headaches, irritability, inability to work effective- ly, nervousness, restlessness and lethargy. When a regular user of caffeine drinks ends their use totally, he may experience tight headaches in the back of the neck area and be quick to anger or irritation. These symptoms usually pass in around three days or less as the body detoxifies from its habitual caffeine load.
Although coffee is mentioned as the most widely known caffeine beverage, tea also has a large amount of this drug. Usually tea has about half as much caffeine as a similar amount of coffee (unless strongly brewed), but since many people usually drank a larger amount of tea than coffee at one sitting, they still receive a large dose of the drug.
Interestingly enough, many parents instinctively realize that coffee and tea contain a strong drug, and so they deny it to their children for a few years. I remember at how “adult” I felt when I was allowed to have my first cup of coffee at fourteen years old. Young children instead are often given hot chocolate or cocoa in place of coffee. Yet co- coa and chocolate drinks have significant amounts of the caffeine drug as well.
Not only that, but the cola soft drinks contain large amounts of the drug—sometimes as much or more than that in a cup of coffee. Soft drinks, however, have more dangers than caffeine associated with them, and that is the next topic.
34.2.3 Soft Drinks Are Hard Drugs
In the news was an account of a young boy who drank 64 bottles of a soda drink, one right after the other, to win a two dollar bet. A young girl was given a case of soft drinks as a prize for her scholarship. She drank the entire case that same day.
Over 250 soft drinks are consumed each year for every man, woman, and child in this country. Many people drink one or two such drinks a day as a regular habit. It is not uncommon to find people who drink over 100 ounces of cola, pop, or sodas every day of their lives.
Some drink it the first thing in the morning. Others have it as the last thing at night. Still others have it with every meal or all through the day.
Soft drinks are addictive. They are a drug. They do damage to the body. They furnish no nutrition. They are a menace to your health, and the only thing “soft” about them is how soft they can make your teeth by dissolving them.
Cola drinks were discovered in 1949 to contain a solution strong enough to dissolve iron. As for human teeth, Dr. Clive McCay of Cornell University showed that soft drinks can completely erode tooth enamel and make the teeth soft as mush within two days.
The bad ingredient in this case is phosphoric acid—an acid so strong that it can erode granite rock, and yet it is a common substance in all soft drinks.
Besides phosphoric acid, soft drinks also contain white sugar (usually an ounce or more per drink), artificial flavoring and coloring, carbon dioxide, and caffeine.
The carbonation, or carbonic acid, in the drink (which makes it “fizz”) was discov- ered by Dr. Hunter H. Turner to be a strong factor in the increasing number of nearsight- ed children and adults. Not only is the stuff bad for your teeth, but it destroys the vision as well.
There is so much sugar in a soft drink that heavy drinkers often get an extra pound of white sugar in their diet each day. Blood sugar levels shoot up and sink when soft drinks are consumed. The appetite is dulled, and valuable nutrients are depleted in an attempt to metabolize the sugar in these drinks. When soft drinks are taken with food, the sugar leads to fermentation instead of good digestion.
The coloring used in the drinks are usually coal tar derivatives. Almost every coal tar derivative that has undergone extensive testing has been labeled a carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, agent.
The caffeine in soft drinks is so high that a child who drinks 4 bottles within an hour has received .13 grams of this drug—an amount even termed excessive and dangerous by the medical establishment. Dr. D.G. Steyn of South Africa has demonstrated that cold drinks which contain caffeine (such as soft drinks) are actually more harmful than hot or warm caffeine beverages.
In the last twenty years, soft drink manufacturers have developed, “sugarless” drinks. Of course these are artificially sweetened. The sweeteners used are chemical products which also have been implicated as cancer-causing. Such drinks are often used by people desiring to lose weight. Unfortunately, while cutting down on calories, they may be building a tumor at the same time.
Soft drinks are not “soft”—they are hard on you and your health. 34.2.4 One For The Road
Of all the beverages with harmful effects, alcohol is probably the most widely known and frequently abused. Seven million people in this country have a serious drinking problem. Probably three to four times that amount use alcohol so much as to interfere with their normal lives.
Over 30,000 people a year are killed because of drunken drivers. Tens of millions of work hours are lost each year because of alcohol. We lose millions of dollars every year to alcohol and its related problems.
Alcohol is not a “safe” drug. It is an addictive drug. Out of every eight people who drink, one will become a life-long alcoholic. You cannot find such a high rate of addic- tion among any other drug users.
Yet alcohol is treated as a non-drug by the government. They issue licenses, collect taxes, and allow manufacturers to spend 300 million dollars a year to push the drug.
Alcohol destroys the liver, contributes to ulcers, enlarges the heart, and kills brain cells. It destroys both the body and the mind. Alcohol must be recognized as the killer it is and no longer treated as a social lubricant or “harmless” relaxant. It is a drug and has no place in a healthful lifestyle.
34.2.5 Herbal Potions and Drinks
Witches used to have their special “brew.” They would toss toads and roots and hair and blood and herbs into a big pot and make their special tea. Today, people leave out the toads and blood but they still use the herbs, and they call their potion “herb tea.”
Most of the drugs and medicines used have originally come from herbs. Herbs are drugs. They are not foods. A tea made from these roots, bark and leaves somehow has achieved an unearned reputation of being healthy. Drugs are never health promoting. A tea made from drugs (herbs) cannot be health promoting.
People have been fooled. Health-seekers who would never touch a drop of coffee or an alcoholic drink put away cup after cup of this witch’s brew because they think herb tea must be good for them since the ingredients are plants.
Since herbs and their dangers are covered in a future lesson, you only need know that herb teas are not such safe and healthy drinks. They may be a stimulant or a depres- sant or a carminative or whatever, but regardless every herb is a drug and a poison and a drink made from them can in no way be considered suitable for human consumption.
34.2.6 Fruit and Vegetable Juices
Fruit and vegetable juices are the finest liquids we can rink—provided that they are obtained directly from the food itself and not artificially extracted.
Extracted juices, like those in bottles, concentrates, or cans, have undergone oxida- tion, deterioration, and fragmentation. An extracted juice is an unnatural food.
We are meant to eat fruits and vegetables, not drink them. We have a thirst center and a hunger center in our brain. When we drink something that was meant to be eaten, we confuse this mechanism. Our hunger center may tell us that we want to eat one or- ange. If we pour down a glass of juice containing three or four oranges instead, we are not listening to the true needs of the body.
This is one of the dangers of drinking extracted juices. They are so concentrated that it is easy to overload the body with one nutrient or the other. At the same time, these juices have no fiber.
Frozen concentrates, bottled and canned juices, or any juice made more than twenty minutes ago cannot be good for the body.
If juices are actively desired, then they should be made fresh, consumed immediate- ly, and used only in the same quantities that you would eat them. For instance, it is quite possible to “drink” twenty or more carrots in a couple glasses of carrot juice. We’re not equipped to handle twenty carrots given to the body in such a short time. It would be better if two or three carrots were juiced and then sipped slowly.
Even the consumption of freshly made juices cannot be strongly recommended. If you’re hungry, eat. It you’re thirsty, drink, and when you drink, make it pure distilled water.
34.2.7 What Can You Drink?
It seems like that everything you drink is not good for you. You might wonder what you can drink. First, realize that most drinking is due to a water-deficient diet. If you do not eat the wrong foods, you’ll probably want to drink very little. Often drinking is a social activity—much like eating. People like to offer drinks as a sign of hospitality.
If you experience true thirst, then your best choice for a drink is distilled water. Should you wish to offer someone something to drink or if you feel a desire for “liquid” nourishment, then freshly made juices may be sipped slowly in small quantities. These juices are actually foods and should be consumed as foods. No other foods should be taken with these fresh juices.
Other than these two liquids, it is difficult to recommend any other beverages. If you can break the habit of drinking with your meals and if you can eliminate the salt habit, then your drinking needs will be very slight and easily satisfied..
All of the drinking done by most people is pathological and results from a poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle.
Drinking merely replaces lost fluids in the body. Treat it as such and you will find that clear, cool water will satisfy you on all levels.
34.3. Harmful Drinking Practices
34.3.1 Drinking With Meals
34.3.2 Hot and Cold Drinks: Injuring the Body 34.3.3 Drinking Instead of Nutrition
34.3.4 Is Drinking A Natural Process?
Besides the harmfulness of certain beverages themselves, the way in which they are consumed is also detrimental to health and well-being. Drinking with meals, drinking hot and cold beverages, and using drinks as substitutes for good nutrition are harmful drinking practices that should be avoided.
34.3.1 Drinking With Meals
Drinking while eating is such a common practice that restaurants don’t ask if you’ll have anything to drink but what you want to drink. If no beverage is ordered with the meal, then water is routinely supplied.
Drinking while eating is a harmful practice because the beverage dilutes the diges- tive juices of the stomach. Since fluids leave the stomach faster than solid food, bever- ages tend to carry out the digestive juices of the stomach and the stomach is left without sufficient juices to carry on its work.
Drinking with a meal also encourages poor chewing of the food since it is frequently washed down in a swallow of water or whatever. Normally food must be thoroughly mixed with saliva in the chewing process for it to be easily swallowed. Beverages re- place the role of saliva in this respect, and permit the gulping of half-chewed food.
Beverages are usually incompatible with the food eaten as well. Fruit juices, for ex- ample, are often drunk with starchy foods (such as orange juice and toast). The acid in the fruit juices suspend the digestion of the starches and indigestion is guaranteed. Milk, another popular meal beverage, requires its own complex digestive environment since it is more properly a food than a drink. When drunk with sandwiches, breakfast or what- ever, fermentation of the milk occurs in the stomach.
Beverages with the meal would never be used if people took the time to thoroughly chew their food. Washing food down and diluting the digestive juices with fluids always result in only partial digestion of the food.
If thirsty, beverages may be consumed twenty to thirty minutes before a meal. After a meal consisting of fruit, water can be taken within thirty minutes; after a starch meal, two hours should pass before drinking, following a protein or fat meal, a full four hours should elapse before fluids are taken. In general, if thirst occurs before these times, it indicates that salted, spiced or unsuitable foods were eaten at the meal and should be avoided in the future.
34.3.2 Hot and Cold Drinks: Injuring the Body
If you or someone you know likes to drink a hot cup of coffee or tea, try this simple experiment: take a tablespoon of the hot liquid, just as you would drink it, and pour it onto the bare stomach. Most likely, you’ll experience intense pain and perhaps some blistering.
Ask yourself this question: if the hot liquid does this to the outside of my stomach, what must it be doing to the delicate and sensitive tissues on the inside!
Hot drinks destroy the sensitive nerve endings in the tongue. They benumb the sens- es so that discrimination of taste is lost. They scar the esophagus and stomach lining. They disrupt body temperature and digestion. Any liquid above 104 degrees (Fahren- heit) should not be drunk.
Similarly, cold liquids also disturb digestion. In fact, an ice cold drink can complete- ly halt the digestive process. The inside of your body is a delicate, well-controlled en- vironment. Digestion proceeds at a proper pace when this environment is kept constant. Pouring a glass of ice water into the stomach is like taking cooking food from an oven and sticking it into a freezer. You can bet that the cooking process is going to be serious- ly suspended, and so is the digestive process suspended when cold beverages are drunk. Nerve endings are also numbed by intense cold just as they are numbed by high heat.
Drinking iced water or beverages over ice is a habit that has only been recently ac- quired by modern man. Why he must have ice cold drinking water from fountains is a mystery. No other animal will drink extra cold or extra hot liquids; they wait until they have reached room temperature.
Remember that the inside of the body is a hundred times more sensitive than the out- side. Why should you pour burning or freezing liquids into your stomach? Like many
habits, drinking hot or cold beverages seems very silly and abnormal when you look at it in an unbiased way.
34.3.3 Drinking Instead of Nutrition
Another harmful drinking practice is using beverages as a substitute for proper nu- trition. Drinks such as alcoholic beverages and soda drinks are full of empty calories. They supply little nutrition in the diet, but many calories. All too often, children use soft drinks for an energy lift instead of wholesome foods. Adults drink beer or mixed drinks in place of good nutrition.
Concentrated fruit juices are consumed instead of the whole fruit. Milk drinks like shakes and malts are downed in place of a wholesome lunch. It’s all too easy to fill the stomach up with needless beverages instead of eating a proper meal.
The problem with many of these beverages is that they so easily become habitual. People drink morning coffee instead of eating fruit for their liquid requirements. They have their soda drink every afternoon or their few bottles of beer. In little time, they have established a beverage habit that has replaced the good habits of nutrition and whole- some foods.
34.3.4 Is Drinking A Natural Process?
To suggest that drinking may be an unnatural or at least an unusual practice may seem foolish. After all, everybody drinks—or do they?
Not actually. There are some people who go for days or weeks without drinking a single glass of water or taking a swallow of any beverage. These people also eat an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables which have a naturally high water content and they eat no salt or other thirst-creating spices in their food. Consequently, they get all the fluids they need from fresh foods and never feel thirsty or have the need for a drink of water. This is not speculation or heresay; it is an observation of my own personal ex- perience as well. During the last six months, for example, I doubt if I drank more than six glasses of fluids. I did eat large amounts of melons and many other fresh juicy fruits. These foods supplied me with an abundance of fluids or water from their tissues. Many other people who eat a similar diet of chiefly fresh fruits and vegetables also report little or no need for drinking fluids.
The animals that have the greatest need for drinking are carnivores or meat-eaters. Their high-acid meat diet requires frequent flushing of the kidneys to remove the waste products of the meat, and the concentrated nature of their meat diet usually means they do not get enough water in the foods they eat. These animals have lapping tongues so that they can get the water into the mouth quite easily. Man has no lapping tongue mech- anism. He has no snout to put into the water to drink.
In fact, man is so poorly equipped to drink water that he invented the drinking cup so he could move the water in his mouth. The truth is that man has very little natural equipment for drinking. Man is not a drinking animal. To be sure, we can swallow water and we can catch some in our hands for this purpose. When compared to all the oth- er drinking animals, however, man is short on the physiological necessities to facilitate drinking. He is like the ape in this respect—another animal that rarely drinks water in its natural habitat.
This is not to say that we should not drink water. Obviously, there are times when sufficient high-fluid foods may not be available to eat and we will need to supplement our fluid sources from water directly. During fasting specifically is the need greatest for drinking water since no foods are being eaten. Then, too, if we eat a conventional Amer- ican diet with its high amounts of uric acid, toxins, salt, and other thirst stimulators, we will have to drink perhaps as much as the eight glasses of water a day recommended by certain nutritionists.
But the point is this: if you eat a natural diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables, you will rarely experience the desire to drink. Usually, when thirst arises and the individual is not in a fasting state or in a very hot environment, then it is due to an improper choice of foods.
34.4. Drinking Of The Diet
34.4.1 Foods That Cause Thirst
34.4.2 The Water-Sufficient Diet 34.4.3 The Water-Sufficient Foods
34.4.1 Foods That Cause Thirst
Excessive thirst is caused by eating foods which are either deficient in natural fluids or high in salt, spices or their condiments. A high-protein diet also requires more fluid intake because the waste products of such foods require a large amount of water for their solution and excretion.
Foods become deficient in natural fluids either by cooking or drying them. Cooked foods lose their natural water in the steam that leaves them while cooking. Dried fruits, nuts, dried beans, peas, and other foods which have had their water content decreased by storage or drying are also “deficient” in water content.
The solution appears simple: don’t cook fresh foods and they will remain water-suf- ficient. If dried foods are eaten, they may first be soaked in distilled water or eaten with a compatible, high-fluid food (such as lettuce and nuts).
Most thirst occasioned by foods, however, is due to the salt that is added to them. The body tissues become deprived of water when salt is used. Salt is an irritant to all the cells of the body, and water is used to flush and transport this poison out of the system. This is why extra water is desired when eating salted foods—the body is attempting to remove this biocidal seasoning as quickly as possible.
Other strong spices and seasonings may also bring about a desire to drink. These, too, act as irritants to the delicate tissues of the body, and the water serves as a trans- porter.
To avoid unnatural and excessive thirst, eat your foods fresh, uncooked, and unsea- soned.
34.4.2 The Water-Sufficient Diet
One of the criteria for an optimum diet is that it should also be water-sufficient. That is, a good diet should also supply you with sufficient fluids so that drinking needs are minimal or nonexistent. One reason for this is that the best fluids for your body—the purest and most natural liquids—are the fresh juices of fruits and vegetables as they exist in the food itself.
The fluids of fresh fruits and vegetables contain superior minerals and natural sugars. They are easily assimilated and supply all the cells with all the nutrients they require.
By a wise selection of your food, you can supply all your body’s fluid needs with the best possible liquids.
Certain vegetarian animals that feed on wild grasses and fruits never drink water as long as they can find their natural food. Generally, these animals live on foods that have about an 85% water content. Mother’s milk contains about 87% water, and an in- fant feeding on this food alone never requires additional water. It appears that as long as foods are eaten which are from 80% to 95% water, thirst will not occur and all the body’s water needs will be met in a superior fashion.
34.4.3 The Water-Sufficient Foods
Almost all fresh fruits and vegetables contain 80% to 95% pure water. These foods should form the majority of an optimum and water-sufficient diet.
Other foods may be included, such as seeds and nuts, provided that they are eaten with high-fluid foods in a compatible combination. For example, most nuts are 4% to 5% water. Lettuce is 95% water. If a sufficient amount of lettuce is eaten with a small quantity of nuts (say, 1 ounce of nuts and 8 ounces of lettuce), then a fluid average of 85% is maintained for the meal and thirst will not develop.
It’s really not necessary to be so concerned with figures, percentages, and propor- tions. A simple rule to follow is this: if a natural food is eaten that is low in water con- tent, then it may be advisable to eat a salad, raw vegetables, fruits or whatever is com- patible to balance the low-water food. Of course if your meal consists mostly of cooked, refined, or concentrated foods, then it may be impossible to balance them with water sufficient foods.
The optimum diet does not include salt, seasonings, or spices. All of these substances occasion thirst and cannot be utilized by the body.
If you eat an abundance of fresh, raw, unseasoned fruits and vegetables (supplement- ed by nuts and seeds if desired), then you will be satisfying all your water needs with the highest form of liquids. You will rarely experience thirst, have no desire to drink, and will enjoy the optimum level of health that is the birthright of every human being.
34.5. Questions & Answers
How much water or juice should I drink when I fast?
When fasting, you should always slowly sip pure distilled water whenever you are thirsty and drink until you are no longer thirsty. There is no fixed amount to drink or not to drink. You should not force yourself to drink while fasting, nor should you ever deny yourself a drink while going without food. Don’t try to “fill up” on water to ease your hunger pains—it won’t work.
By the way, if you’re drinking juices while fasting, you are not actually fasting. You’re on a juice diet. There is nothing seriously wrong with a juice diet, provided that the juices are made and used strictly fresh and that excessive amounts are not taken as a substitute for food. However, to get the benefits of a fast, you have to fast and take only distilled water—not juices.
Most doctors and nutritionists say we should drink 8 glasses of water every day for good health. What do you say to that?
If you eat what most doctors and nutritionists eat, that might be good advice! A typical American diet is high in salt and animal protein—both of these require copi- ous amounts of water to keep the kidneys flushed and the tissues clean. Few people eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables to supply them with adequate fluids. I have no doubt that a diet of hot dogs, potato chips and ice cream would also require the addition of eight glasses of water per day. But if your diet is healthy, if you include high-water content foods, if you don’t use salt or animal proteins, then why flood yourself with water? Drink according to thirst, not by some recommendation or the other.
I become thirsty right after I eat, and then when I drink water, I get indigestion. Help!
You become thirsty after you eat only if you eat cooked foods, salted or spiced foods, or concentrated foods (like nuts). First, give up salted foods. You cannot get around this fact: salt-eating will always give you an unnatural thirst.
If you eat cooked or concentrated food, then you must eat a large amount of water-sufficient foods along with them. This usually means a large raw salad. Make sure you drink some water about an hour before you eat. This may help prevent thirst after eating. Of course if you eat a high-water meal of only fresh fruits or raw vegetables, you should never experience that after-meal thirst—or indigestion, for that matter.
I like to make blender drinks. You know, some fruits and nuts and things. Is this an okay beverage?
Blender drinks are not actually drinks—they are meals that you have first run through a blender. If you have chewing problems, poor teeth, or whatever, then this might be an acceptable compromise in your diet. If you must blend your foods, don’t “drink” them—eat them. Use a spoon and eat the blended food slowly, chew- ing each mouthful as well as you can and mix it with your saliva. Gulping down a blender drink is one way to indigestion. Also make sure that the foods you blend together are compatible foods to begin with. Nuts and fruits may not make an ide- al combination in a blender drink. As we said, a drink (if it’s not water) is either a food or a poison. Blended up drinks are foods—separate meals—which should be eaten by themselves and immediately after preparing them to avoid oxidation and nutrient loss.
What can you say to people when they ask you what you want to drink?
Tell them you want a big glass of “sky-juice”—water in other words. If you are thirsty, drink it. If not, keep it beside you and don’t make a big deal out of drinking or not drinking. For many people, drinking is a social activity and an act of hos- pitality. If you graciously accept a glass of water with no further discussion, then everyone should be quite comfortable.
Article #1: Warning! Don’t Use Commercial Juices!
Bad enough that anyone should use freshly-pressed pure fruit and vegetable juices in- stead of the whole fruit or vegetable. But commercial juices are not only fragmented, but contain toxins as well.
What juices do you like? Tomato? Freshly squeezed is pretty bland stuff. The jazzed- up commercial juice always tastes thick and “exciting.” Of course the tomatoes used may be ripe, overripe, underripe and even partially rotten since any tomato may be turned into juice. Mixed well, no one knows the difference, especially after pasteuriza- tion and salt disguise the flavor.
Do you use commercially squeezed orange, lemon and grapefruit juices? It’s the fashion these days to use reconstituted juices. The juices are squeezed from oranges, grapefruit and lemons, peels and all.
The juices from the peels contain citron oil which is quite toxic in the human system.
Citrus trees, like other fruit trees, create a fruit to attract animal consumers. The seed is dispersed in the fruit for propagation by the eater of the fruit. The fruit/seed package is protected until the moment of ripeness by a skin against bacteria and insects. Citrus fruit skins contain citron oil (not to mention fungicides and insecticides) which is an ex- cellent “antibiotic” and is repulsive and toxic to all creatures including humans. Com- mercial juicers squeeze this toxic juice into the mix with other parts of the fruit. Even the juices of the seed, which may contain hydrocyanide, etc. are pressed into the mix.
The juices are then dehydrated and pasteurized. The resulting concentrate is frozen and shipped to points throughout the country for “reconstitution.” If you buy frozen concen- trate and add water, you’re getting the same devitalized stuff.
It doesn’t matter if the juices come from cans or frozen concentrates. It’s all been heated, refined, condimented, preserved and otherwise ruined. It deserves to be left on the shelf.
There’s no reason why we can’t have all the fresh juices directly from the fruit. Most fruits can be shipped just as easily as the juices, although it involves more shipping vol- ume and weight.
Of course this observation is for those that insist on juices—the best of juices are always second-rate to the whole fruit, the natural juice source.
Reprinted from Healthful Living, April 1982
Article #2: No Teas For The Hygienist
The practice of drinking teas made from the leaves, the stems, barks, roots, flowers, seeds and fruits of plants is an old one. The practice was taught to mankind by the med- ical profession, which was, in its origin and for long after its origin, largely herbal in character. Due to the fact that some part of almost every plant contains a poison or two, it is possible to use some part of almost every plant known to man for its alleged “medical action,” both for the “prevention” and “cure” of disease. Faith in the healing virtues of herb teas lingers on in the minds of the people long after the medical profession, which originally fostered and cultivated this faith, has abandoned it.
Mint tea, alfalfa tea, horse mint tea, and other teas are in extensive use among a growing segment of our population and great numbers of these people are convinced that they can derive benefit from the practice of drinking these teas. A brief, instructive reference to some of these currently popular teas is given below, in Herbal Myths.
Reprinted from The Hygienic Review, August 1973
Article #3: Herbal Myths
Juniper berry tea is “healthful, adding fluorine to the diet, increasing functional activity and increasing the secretion and flow of urine”—all of this means that it is a stimulant and that the kidneys are forced to expel it quickly.
Parsley tea has a “purifying action” and is a “diuretic” and “mild sedative.”
Papaya tea is a “fine tonic,” has a “rebuilding effect on the stomach and digestive tract,” and contains a “digestant” that is “capable of digesting many times its weight in protein food.” If you could find other “digestants” to take care of the other food factors, you could dispense with the secretion of digestive enzymes.
A delicious combination of lime leaves and papaya that you will always use, once you have tasted it, is sold to the public.
Then there is red clover tea which is “beneficial to the bloodstream” (a “blood puri- fier”) and “cleansing to wounds, boils and ulcers.”
Chamomile tea has a “soothing effect on the nerves and stomach” and is regarded as excellent for children.
Just plain lime tea, without the addition of papaya, “acts on the nervous system, al- laying nervous excitement, invigorating and strengthening, and also soothing and reliev- ing inflammation.”
Horse tail herb tea is “invigorating and strengthening.” It is an “alterative” and an “astringent.”
In spasms, mistletoe tea is said to “relieve nervous excitement.” (MISTLETOE IS ALSO POISON—See Article “Plant Products And Effects” in Lesson 33).
Then there is blueberry tea, an “exciting beverage with delicate fragrance,” made from the leaves of the blueberry, which “purifies.” It is an “antiseptic, a blood purifier and it soothes.”
Strawberry tea, made from the leaves of the strawberry, “provides many benefits to the urinary organs.” It is “astringent, tonic, diuretic, a bitter alterative.”
Sassafras tea, an “old favorite,” is described as a “wonder drug.” It is a “blood puri- fier” and an “aid to the skin”—at least, it is said to be.
Fenugreek tea seems to be one of the present day favorites. If we are to believe the advertising, great and increasing numbers of people are drinking this mild poison regularly. This tea “soothes minor irritations of the stomach and intestines, softens and soothes inflamed parts and relieves inflammaton. It is also good for those with excess mucus due to dietary errors.” I presume that you take this tea instead of correcting your dietary errors.
Mate, a caffeine-containing tea from South America, is highly praised because it “gives a pick-up like coffee.” Why not? It contains the same poison.
Desert herb is an old Indian tonic, often called squaw tea. Although almost all the medicinal virtues are attributed to this tea, it is listed only as “alterative, depurative and diuretic.”
Hop tea is both a “tonic” and a “sedative”—stimulates and inhibits—and is used for “relieving pain, allaying nervous excitement, and to abate fever.”
Flaxseed tea “relieves coughs and sore throats, painful urination and bladder inflam- mation. It is also good in dysentery.”
Sarsaparilla tea, an old-fashioned favorite, “purifies the blood and is used for affec- tions of the chest.” Used for coughs for countless generations, it is “aromatic, depurative and alterative.”
Alfalfa tea is said to be especially valuable in rheumatism and arthritis. It is chiefly recommended for its “richness in minerals.” When mint is added to the alfalfa, this pro- vides a delicious tea that gives all the “advantages” of the alfalfa plus the “sedative ef- fects” of the peppermint leaves and the “aid” they give to digestion.
Nettle tea is a “diuretic” that has varied “properties.” Besides “increasing the secre- tion and flow of urine” (meaning the kidneys hurriedly eliminate it) it is “excellent for the circulation,” is a “tonic” and “relieves infections of the chest.”
For your constipation here is a “pleasant” herbal laxative that should be every bit as good as Inner Clean, Hood Lax, All-Lax, NR Tablets, Black Draught, or anything that grandmother used to brew. It is a curious combination of “freshly cut senna, mandrake root, boneset leaves and tops, elder flowers, sassafras bark, peppermint leaves and Mex- ican saffron.” Use this compound and “keep free from annoying symptoms arising from a constipated condition.”
Finally, here is a “tasty tea” made of a blend of alfalfa, peppermint and desert herb, which you are sure to like, once you have tried.
Dock root “purifies the blood and strengthens in a permanent manner, both allaying and preventing scurvy.” It is also an “astringent.”
Certainly from this list of drugs with their astringent, alterative, tonic, diuretic, diges- tant, soothing, sedative, purifying, emetic, laxative, etc. “actions,” you can find one or more that “will help you back to good health, even assist you in retaining good health.” If you read over the classifications of the alleged actions of these teas and fail to recog- nize the fact that they are drugs and are “recommended” as such, this is because you are unaquainted with so-called pharmacology and the herbal materia medica. They employ the technical jargon of allopathic medicine in describing the “effects” of their teas. What is a depurative, for example? It is “a drug for aiding a cleansing process.” An alterative is a “medicine” that “alters the processes of nutrition and excretion.” Such a drug is sup- posed to be capable of “restoring the normal body-functions.” A diuretic is a “medicine” that “increases the flow of urine.” How does it increase the flow of urine? Does it assist
the kidneys? Does it add to the functioning power of the kidneys? It does neither of these things. It is a poison that is hurriedly eliminated by the kidneys.
Herbs are nature’s own products, we are assured. We could reply that rattlesnakes and cobras are also nature’s own products. They come to you “entirely natural.” I can hear the hiss of the rattlesnake as he strikes: “My venom comes to you entirely natural.”
Teas are made in two general ways. They are prepared as infusions and as decoc- tions. An infusion is the solution obtained when a substance is steeped in water to obtain its soluble principles. It is an old medical device used to extract the “medicinal” quali- ties of herbs. A decoction is a substance derived by the process of boiling. This is also an old medical device used to extract the “medicinal” qualities (the poisons) from herbs. Infusions are made by pouring hot water over the tea and permitting it to steep. Leaves, flowers and thin materials are prepared as infusions. Decoctions are made of the harder materials, such as barks, roots, chips, seeds, etc. These are boiled to extract their “solu- ble principles.” An aromatic is a substance with a spicy fragrance. Such substances are said to be “stimulating,” but they are often added to infusions and decoctions to make them acceptable to the sense of smell.
I shall not, at this time, consider all the alleged actions of these various teas. Enough has been said to reveal that they are recommended to the public as drugs and because they are supposed to have therapeutic actions. All such actions are actions of the body and are employed as means of freeing the body of offensive substances. An herbal laxa- tive is laxative because of the laxative action of the bowels in expelling the herbs or the tea made from these. These are expelled because they are poisonous. It does not matter that there may be minerals and vitamins in the herb or tea; the very hurry to expel them from the body prevents their digestion and absorption. Nonpoisonous herbs are foods; poisonous herbs are supposed to be “medicine.” Do not permit yourself to be misled by the assertion that “current research is proving the value of teas, herbs and berries used in Grandma’s day.” Research seems to be able to prove anything it is paid to prove.
Review the Articles in Lesson 33: Natural Foods—They refer to them as “healthy,” but some are actually hazardous and Plant Products and Effects.
Article #4: The Stimulant Delusion
Some time ago, a magazine published by a religious organization came to my desk. It contained an article which traces chocolate from seed to candy bar. It opens by saying that “chocolate in its many forms has been a taste delight of millions.” It ends by saying: “Many have come to know the nutritional value of chocolate as well as enjoy it for its taste when mixed with sugar. The Creator has thus provided for his Creatures an unend- ing variety of foodstuffs to sustain them and gratify their varied appetites.”
In between these two asinine statements is a brief story of the planting and cultiva- tion of the Cacao tree, the harvesting of its crops and the preparation of the cacao beans for the factories. In the whole article there is not one word said about the poisonous qual- ity of cocoa, nor does the article even hint that the sugar with which it is mixed is white sugar.
The thought comes to me that if the Creator prepared this substance for the use of His creatures, He might well have left the poison out of it. The article does say that the chocolate is bitter, but it fails to mention the fact that, without the addition of great amounts of sugar, the stuff is so bitter that none of the “varied appetites” of man would relish it. It is only by so thoroughly disguising its true character, as manifest in its taste, that foolish men and women can get the poison substance past the sentinel of taste.
Arguments such as that given in the magazine article can be made to sustain any vice or practice to which man may be addicted. We may assume that the Creator made tobac- co to satisfy the varied tastes of man, or that he made opium for the same purpose. There is actually more nutritive value in the leaf of the tobacco plant than in chocolate. Peo- ple do not eat chocolate for is alleged nutritive value but for its stimulating quality. The
theobromine of chocolate is identical with the caffeine of coffee and the theine of tea. It is simply a poison and there are no conditions or circumstances under which it should be taken into the human body. Theological defenses of poison vices are always misleading.
Coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate and the caffeine-containing soft drinks should be classed together and it should be fully recognized that they produce evil and evil only, when introduced into the human system. None of these vices is very old but each of them is very wide-spread. People swallow these poisons under the delusion that stimulation is somehow beneficial.
Of coffee we read in medical literature that, “While a certain portion stimulates the nervous system, a large portion acts as a sedative, so that a difference in the quantity of the potion causes a difference in the kind of its effects.” It is impossible to explain this apparently contradictory behavior of coffee on the basis of the medical theory that “drugs act.” If caffeine is a stimulant, why is it less of a stimulant in large than in small doses? Indeed, why does it not stimulate in proportion to the size of the dose—why aren’t large doses proportionately more stimulating than small doses? Why does it ap- parently act the exact opposite in large doses from the way it acts in small doses?
We can find our answer only if we realize that the increased action that we designate stimulation is simply the extra effort exerted by the body in expelling the poison. This being true, and it is, so-called stimulants must necessarily and inevitably deplete the body’s powers in proportion to the expenditure their use occasions. Because the sick per- son is already greatly depleted, he is less able to bear the losses occasioned by the use of stimulants than is the well and vigorous individual.
Of theine, it is said that when given in small doses to either animals or man, it “quickens the circulation,” and “effects some degree of mental exhiliration and wake- fulness.” But the “final result” is diminished excretion of carbon-dioxide—“the flow of blood through the capillaries is retarded.” Large doses “prove poisonous, causing painful restlessness, rigidity of the muscles, and general exhaustion.”
Thus, theine is pictured to us as a stimulant in small doses, a “poison” in large doses. What is there in the size of dose to change the character and quality of the substance? In what way does the size of the dose alter its relation to the vital structures? As soon as it is realized that stimulation is excited action in resisting and expelling the small dose, it will be recognized that the drug is a poison in doses of any and all sizes.