Total Nutrition, by Victor Herbert

Hello friends,

Just wanted to vent about a book a fellow associate had me look at called "Total Nutrition: The only guide you'll ever need."

At first look it looks like a tome of information, then you get to the third chapter: How to serperate food facts and myths. In which he systematically bombards the alternative and nutritional approaches to health.

Some examples: "The nutrition quack uses ancedotes and testimonials to support claims"

"Nutrition fraud is based on the false contention that most diseases and symptoms are due to a faulty diet and can be treated with "proper" nutrition.

"Frauds delcare that foods should be natural or organic and that health food stores are preferable to supermakets"

"Food processing or storage is claimed to destroy food's natural qualities"

"Quacks oppose flouridation of water as cancer-causing or dangerous to health"

"Quacks assert that stress and certain conditions increase the need for vitamins"

"Hair analysis is a worthless diagnostic test"

" Sugar is condemned as a poison"

And many many more.

You know at first I was just going to dismiss this book and give it no other thought, but it kept irratating me in my thoughts. So as per usual I set out to find out who this Victor Herbert is..... Dr. Herbert passed away in 2002.

He certaily had many credentials. Of which, no doubt, the man must have done some good. He also founded the National Association Against Health Fraud (NAAHF). Of which they denounce all the following as frauds and writes position papers about:

Acupuncture (1990)
Amalgam Fillings (2002) (posted 10/7/02)
Chiropractic (1985)
Diet and Criminal Behavior (1983)
Herbal Remedies (1995)
Homeopathy (1994)
Nutriton
Orthomecular Science

And goes as far as to make a list of doctors on a black list that he includes as frauds, including Linus Pauling. Yes that's right Linus Pauling.

Here is an interesting letter to Loma Linda, the University responsible for enabling this organisation that asks key questions about the validity of this organisation including, many court vidicated victories of people he accused, yet no ackwoledgement by the oganization.

[www.internetwks.com]

Of particular note and no doubt the "real" basis of his bias against the nutrtional industry, is Linus Pauling's dealings with this man.
Linus Pauling says this on an interview in 1992 asking who should recieve an IGNOBLE prize: (a spoof of the noble prize)

"Well, let me see. In personal science, Dr. Victor Herbert I think deserves such a prize. He was at Hahnemann [Hospital] and got fired because he got in a fistfight with the dean. He - Victor Herbert - is considered to be a great authority on vitamins, always testifying on vitamin cases, and he was on the food and drug board that National Academy president Frank Press fired when they brought in their report that the RDA's [Recommended Daily Amounts] be decreased. Then when the National Academy of Sciences had a new committee and got out a new report, he sued them for using some material that he had written — for plagiarism."

Dr. Linus Carl Pauling (28 Feb 1901 - 19 Aug 1994) - the only scientist who has won two unshared Nobel Prizes, ever, reveals on page 251 of the fascinating book Linus Pauling(*) in his Own Words, the story of his study on Vitamin C - for colds :

Pauling relates:

" Here's this man, this professor - I didn't identify him when I wrote the book - Victor Herbert, who to this day keeps writing papers and giving speeches saying that no one benefits from taking extra vitamins. And he won't even look at the evidence. The upshot of this whole thing is that I finally became sufficiently irritated by this fellow that I decided I ought to do something about it. So I sat down one summer - here, downstairs in my study -- and in two months wrote a book Vitamin C and the Common Cold."

So we can thank Dr. Victor Herbert! for Pauling's good that his work has unintentionally perpetrated on mankind can not be measured.

Pauling's further studies relating to Vitamin C and other Nutritional Science has further left us his inestimably valuable Protocol for Avoiding and Curing cardiovascular diseases - heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and numerous other circulatory diseases :

The story commences following a Nobel prize in Medicine was awarded for the finding that lesions in the walls of blood vessels are the primary cause of atherosclerotic plaques. Clusters of "fat" molecules acting as repair agents form nature's "plaster casts" against the weakness of blood vessel walls. These sticky molecules are lipoprotein(a). If these deposits continue to develop in the arteries of the heart they lead to heart attack. If they continue to develop in the arteries of the brain they lead to stroke.

Thereafter, hundreds of investigators found that only a specific type of cholesterol molecule, lipoprotein-(a), or Lp(a) for short, is the primary material that binds to a lesion in the walls of an artery forming plaques. Lp(a) is an ordinary LDL cholesterol molecule with a sticky apo-protein(a) (or apo(a)) attached to the surface. Animals that make their own vitamin C generally do not have the variant Lp(a) cholesterol molecules.

One thing that keeps coming up is the bashing of the CNC credential which Phyllis Balch carries after her name. Apparantly this is a true story: a dog named Sassaphras was given a member status by simply sending in 50 dollars and not filling in some information on an application.

What it does not say is, yes, anyone can have this status but it doesn't mean anything. It's like giving 50 dollars for the sheriff's fund raiser and putting a sheriff sticker on your car, it doesn't make you a sheriff. It means you are supporting the organisation ,which is what that 50 dollar membership bought. To actually achieve the credential of CNC you need to pass a 2000 question series of exams, sign notarized documents of your authenticity and already have a healhcare professional status in nutrition.
And Phyllis and James Balch are worldwide recognized authorities on the subject of nutrition.

Ok, so I have had enough. Anyone else?

Joe

I can volunteer a few anecdotes.

I was at the U of I in the physics department and found that those who strongly wanted a Nobel prize were intense and focused, and tended to be secretive and vicious. This doesn't necessarily take anything away from their scientific work. But, it does suggest that those working for a Nobel prize aren't necessarily very "nice" people.

Even terrorist Arafat received a Nobel prize.

I was able to spend an evening with Linus Pauling in the late 70s. I came away not very impressed with his scientific competence, and very impressed with his intensity (ambition) and his stories of how vicious he had been. I've since read books on Pauling which generally supported those impressions.

My experiences suggest some caution is warranted when evaluating Nobel prize winners, the degree of their scientific competence, and the importance of their work. We naturally want to idolize our doctors and Nobel prize winners. But, we have learned that it is sometimes wise to be skeptical about our doctors. Similarly, there are reasons to sometimes be skeptical of Nobel prize winners.

Absolutely Joe

The awful thing is that some people take these so called experts seriously. Only today my mother in law read in the newspaper that bottled water is causing tooth decay in children....!!!!!!???? She knows I give my son bottled water. The reason they say is that the children are not getting the fluoride that comes in tap water. Now I don't mean to be mean, but the way she read this if they were out she would have picked soda over water as a drink from a bottle!!

Any one who says only frauds and quacks say organic is best is definately quackers!!

Fran