INTRODUCTION

with, the wheat has been so denatured through refining that most of its vital substances have been destroyed. Then it is baked in overheated ovens and the removal of what was left of vital substances is completed.

All the added vitamin pills cannot take the place of the natural ones that have been destroyed.

One can go on and on, through the whole gamut of dishes cooked with excessive heat, canned foods, toasted cereals, vitamin plied flour and milk, which have been robbed of all or almost all of the original vitality, cooked out desserts and candies. These products are so ingen­iously advertised that the public is convinced they are musts for their growing children. So strong has become the faith in these foods, that natural, raw food is seldom given a thought. In fact, it is often a matter of con­troversy among our most listened-to nutrition authorities.

The result has been a deplorable deterioration and progressive undermining of the health of American youth. The proof lies bare in a recent government publication which gives startling figures on the number of rejec­tions of our youth for the armed forces. Considering that these "rejects" are our teen-agers, our most select age group, and that the percentage is higher today than it was either in World Wars I or II, there must be something radically wrong. Moreover, this is most typical of Amer­ica—not other countries. It behooves us to look into it!

My husband remembers how, in the past, working people would take a handful of grain, raw and unproc­essed, and use it for their daily bread. Later, they began