Body Balance - State of our soils - 1936 Congressional Report

"Our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins, or upon precise proportions of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume." (An excerpt from Senate Document 264)

The simple answer is... We simply do not, and more importantly, can't get what we need for optimal health in the foods that we eat. For a more detailed explanation, let us investigate Senate Document 264 from the 74th Congress, Second Session 1936 You see, even back as far as 1936 our scientists and our government have known that we are simply not getting the nutritional value that we need from the foods that our farmers are growing. The foods that we consume in our homes are missing the essential nutrients that our bodies so desperately need. Our farmlands, back in 1936, were severely lacking in mineral content, is it possible that this problem has been corrected? The answer is no! It has not, but it has gotten progressively worse.

"We know that vitamins are complex chemical substances which are indispensable to nutrition, and that each of them is of importance for normal function of some special structure in the body. Disorder and disease result from any vitamin deficiency. It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the body's appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals they have no function to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system can make some use of minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless." (An excerpt from Senate Document 264)

In 1936 Senate Document 264 announced that our farm soils are severely depleted of minerals. The grains, fruits and vegetables growing in these depleted soils are deficient. If the essential nutrients aren't in the soils, the roots of the plants can't absorb them into the plants and we cannot benefit from them when we eat. What's frightening is that since this was made public, nothing substantial has been done about it. In 1993, The World Health Organization said in a report that our soil is now totally barren, 95% depleted of the basic survival nutrients we need.

The state of our soil should come as no surprise to us. With four to five crop rotations each year on single plot of land, intense farming practices have depleted vital nutrients from the soil and are simply not there to be absorbed by the plants grown to feed our population. What is alarming is that these deficiencies are showing up in our bodies. More and more diseases are becoming a part of our lives and the root of the problem is not being addressed.

U.S. Senate Document 264 and the 1992 Earth Summit Report support these findings and suggest that 99 percent of Americans are mineral deficient. Both reports further explain that a deficiency in nutrients can cause us suffering and may even shorten our lives. Only now are we beginning to fully understand how the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and waste contaminants have fed the world, while creating a national nutrition crisis. It's literally enough to make you sick!

Lack of proper nutrition in our diet is no secret and is certainly nothing new. Below you will find public record of the condition of our soil and its effects on the American public as discussed in the 74th Congress 2nd Session in 1936.
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Farm Land Mineral Depletion Senate Document 264, 1936.
These are Verbatim Unabridged extracts from the 74th Congress 2nd Session:

Senate Document 264 - Farmland Mineral Depletion

"Our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins, or upon precise proportions of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume."

"Do you know that most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until depleted soils from which our food comes are brought into proper mineral balance?" "The alarming fact is that foods (fruits, vegetables and grains) now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain enough of certain minerals are starving us - no matter how much of them we eat. No man of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his system with the minerals he requires for perfect health because his stomach isn't big enough to hold them."

"The truth is that our foods vary enormously in value, and some of them aren't worth eating as food...Our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein or carbohydrates we consume." "This talk about minerals is novel and quite startling. In fact, a realization of the importance of minerals in food is so new that the text books on nutritional dietetics contain very little about it. Nevertheless, it is something that concerns all of us, and the further we delve into it the more startling it becomes."

"You'd think, wouldn't you, that a carrot is a carrot - that one is about as good as another as far as nourishment is concerned? But it isn't; one carrot may look and taste like another and yet be lacking in the particular mineral element which our system requires and which carrots are supposed to contain." "Laboratory test prove that the fruits, the vegetables, the grains, the eggs, and even the milk and the meats of today are not what they were a few generations ago (which doubtless explains why our forefathers thrived on a selection of foods that would starve us!)"

"No man today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his stomach with the mineral salts he requires for perfect health, because his stomach isn't big enough to hold them! And we are turning into big stomachs." "No longer does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist merely of so many calories or certain vitamins or fixed proportion of starches, proteins and carbohydrates. We know that our diets must contain in addition something like a score of minerals salts."

"It is bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99% of the American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals actually results in disease. Any upset of the balance, any considerable lack or one or another element, however microscopic the body requirement may be, and we sicken, suffer, shorten our lives."

"We know that vitamins are complex chemical substances which are indispensable to nutrition, and that each of them is of importance for normal function of some special structure in the body. Disorder and disease result from any vitamin deficiency. It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the body's appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals they have no function to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system can make some use of minerals, but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless."

"Certainly our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our systems than upon calories of vitamins or upon the precise proportions of starch, protein of carbohydrates we consume." "This discovery is one of the latest and most important contributions of science to the problem of human health."

Senate Document No. 264, Year 1936