Food plants ? Fresh, prepared, processed ? In relation to standards of living and potential diseases of civilization

Abstract

The results are summed up as follows: Provided that medical statistics (sometimes more or less unreliable), medical observations and thorough experimental findings in human pathology before, during, and after World War II in Germany and in Switzerland, would be as trustworthy as recent medical findings in East Africa, both, representatives in nutritional science and in quality research on food plants, ought to react with claims. These are: Improving nutritional quality of food plants. More food from plants used in diets because of decisively favourable effect in fighting diseases of Western civilization. Evidence is furnished by Painter (1968) and Burkitt (1972) as follows: Lack of diseases of Western civilization in the Negro population of East Africa — chiefly coronary heart disease (killing in Western societies one in four men (Burkitt)), and diseases of the digestive tract — is due to plant diets high in contents of undigestible crude fibre. These diets of Africans in rural communities have a distinct influence in shortening the transit time of stool through the alimentary canal. This is in consequence the causation of lack of troubles in the intestinal tract such as diverticulitis, fistula or cancer of the colon, appendicitis, and in further consequence of the non-infective diseases of the colon, lack of both coronary heart disease and cholesterol gall stones (Burkitt). These striking facts, however, alarm research workers in quality of food plants. It is quite possible to control the contents of crude fibre in certain food plants (without lowering the dible value) as well by choice of cultivars, by breeding, and by methods of cultivation as by recommendations in change of distinct habits in consumption of food plants. This in turn may to some extent revolutionize conventional methods of fertilization and particularly the use of pesticides in Agriculture and in Horticulture. The nature of fertilizing significantly alters the contents of water and consequently those of crude fibre, too. It is well known that pesticide residues are stored preferentially in the outer portions of plant tissues rich in fibre, e.g. in cereals, in root crops and in fruit. Besides contents of crude fibres — not occurring in animal products — other plant constituents such as certain vitamins, essential oils regulating metabolic processes in man and showing antimicrobial effects, further high contents in certain minerals decisively help fight diseases of Western civilization. The dietetic problem of sufficient supply of potassium counteracting sodium given as table salt in excess and playing a decisive role in fighting hypertension in man (Meneely) could be settled, when methods of fertilization, procedures in cooking and in industrial processing of plant products may correspond to the justified demands of public health. These methods should be reformed as proposed in the report. Examples are given by the aid of tables and diagrams how to help fight the causation of the diseases of civilization by means of quality research on food plants.