"I thought you were against drugs," he blurted out, "but you're now talking for protein!"

Here was a man of apparently better than average intelligence, yet he could not visualize anything as vital to human life as protein, unless it were a drug.

Despite my repeated stressing throughout the lecture that protein is a food element, this man couldn't get his mind out of the drugstore. Yet, after my first astonishment at his distortion of my message, I began to look at the subject from his viewpoint.

Every few days when he picks up his newspaper or tunes in his radio, he is likely to hear the latest word on "miracle drugs"—drugs that are going to permit mankind to live indefinitely, to bestow eternal youth on a pitifully eager human race.

My skeptical listener undoubtedly reasoned that in divulg- ing the secret of how to stay young, I should have been talking about one of these "drugs." Naturally the build-up he had been getting via press and radio didn't correspond to my message: that the "miracle substance of youth" could be found right in his own kitchen.

However, it's not the public's fault that "common sense is so uncommon" about a subject as close to the heart of everyone as that of staying young and fit. Even the medical scientists who should be leading the public down the road away from premature aging and debilitating illnesses are themselves often vague about the sensible way to keep premature old age from the door.

Why this inexcusable indifference on the part of so many physicians toward nutrition? Isn't it about time that a too-long-delayed merger should take place between medical practice and nutritional science?

And yet, even certain nutritionists and health teachers aren't without their share of blame for pushing protein far into the background in their lectures and books on "how to defer old age." Perhaps there isn't enough so-called "drama" about commonplace items such as meat, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese, milk and seed cereals. As a public that has cut its eyeteeth on high-pressure advertising, we've been conditioned to value only the "unusual," the "sensational," the "super-colossal."   Hence  something like  everyday  protein   foods, without a big glamour build-up, are all too likely to be "poor copy."

For instance, nutrition-conscious readers have been exposed within recent months to books and newspaper articles sound¬ing the clarion call of the "five wonder foods"—brewer's yeast, wheat germ, yogurt, skim milk and blackstrap molasses. I don't deny that some of these are of value in the diet. But, actually, there is only one wonder food in human nutrition, and that is protein. Here I am speaking of the complete proteins (high proteins) such as meat, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese, milk and seed cereals. On any of these complete proteins, particularly the animal proteins, you can live well and vigorously without ever touching another type of food—and still look forward to the taste joys of mealtime.

But just try subsisting for even so short a period as several days on nothing except the much publicized "five wonder foods," and you'll soon come to regard mealtime as a burden¬some task rather than a pleasure!

One of the tragic results of these periodical waves of food faddism is that, while their followers may get enough vitamins and calories to sustain life in their zealous bodies, inevitably they cut their daily intake of protein (minerals, too) to a dangerously low level.

During the writing of this book, I was asked one evening by an unmarried business woman in her mid-thirties what was "the latest on nutrition." Knowing a little of her personal history, and also judging from her appearance—sallow skin, dull expression, stooped shoulders, weary manner of speech— I was confident that she was both anemic and a food faddist.

Taking a shot in the dark, by way of a reply to her question, I said: "Have you heard about blackstrap molasses?"

"Oh, yes," came the eager response. "I use it every day . . . well . . . at least I try to put it in custards and things. But it tastes so horrible, very often I can't eat them."

"And what do you have for breakfast?" I asked.

"A cup of coffee—if I'm not too rushed."

"And for lunch?" I persisted.
"Usually I only take time for a sandwich and a coke."

"But then you eat a good dinner?" I prompted.

She became flustered. "Yes . . . well, no … that is, I do if I'm invited out. But usually I'm too tired to get myself anything but a bowl of cereal and a cup of tea. Sometimes I boil an egg." Then she brightened up. "But I always have blackstrap molasses and brewer's yeast in the cupboard. And afterwards I try to take a spoonful of each …"
It never occurred to this poor anemic food faddist that she was being "conscientious" about two so-called wonder foods, while at the same time she was woefully negligent of every rule in good nutrition.

First, she ate no breakfast; second, she expected to fuel her body at lunchtime with protein-deficient rations like a sandwich and a soft drink; and last, she ended her day with another meal that denied greatly needed protein to her tired, jittery, rapidly aging body. Yet she felt she was doing her duty by her body merely because she swallowed a spoonful of brewer's yeast and blackstrap molasses!

Perhaps you aren't so sadly misinformed as this woman with her food fads. Maybe you know all about protein, and it isn't news to you that food proteins work far more wonders for the human body than any faddist food or "miracle drug" ever can.
Protein is the safeguard of your youthfulness and good health. It is a preventer of disease, besides being one of the best medicines for numerous human ills. And here is what I consider the real nutrition miracle: All the while that pro¬tein is safeguarding your youth and good health, preventing disease or curing you of an existing ailment, it is also nourish¬ing your body with highly palatable, good-tasting food.

Nutrition teaches us that all foods are divided into four main classes: proteins, carbohydrates (sugars and starches), fats and water. Thus we establish that protein is a food, not a drug.

Protein is the basic raw material of all life, either plant or animal. The word protein is derived from the Greek verb meaning "I come first."

1. Living tissue—meat, fowl, fish.
2. Eggs and milk—intended to nourish newborn life.
3. Seeds of plants in their natural state—cereal and seed grains, nuts, legumes.

Protein is the chief building material of your body. Eigh¬teen per cent of your total body weight is pure protein. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, then approximately 27 pounds of you are pure protein that needs constant repairing, replacing and rebuilding—with more protein, of course.

If you were to analyze a single cell taken from any part of your body—a hair in your head, the tissue in your heart, the lining of your intestines, the muscles in your legs— you would find this tiny cell composed chiefly of protein. And, like the parts of any constantly operated, non-resting machine, your body cells are continually wearing out, need¬ing repairs or replacements. So what are you going to do? Patch up your protein body cells with carbohydrates? Just try patching a rubber tire on your car with flour-and-water paste, and see how far you'll get!

Protein should be the featured food in your diet at all times.

The perpetual-motion human machine must have abundant protein every day in order to repair, replace and renew worn-out cells in every part of your body.

When you don't supply enough high-protein foods in your daily diet to make certain that these vitally needed cell re¬pairs and replacements can go on without interruption, you're inviting old age to take over.

In the laboratories, nutritional scientists and biochemists have proved that a diet poor in proteins hastens aging in the human body.

I could cite you case after case of elderly persons, weakened by tea-and-toast diets to the point of imminent death, who have been restored to life and usefulness by gradually con¬verting their meals to high-protein foods. Their weakened bodies gained new vigor, and their minds become keen and alert once more.

Nobody who has witnessed these recoveries, as I have, could ever deny that protein foods are truly nutritional wonders.
A grievous error has been committed for many years by some medical men who ban high-protein foods such as red meats and cheese as "too heavy" for older digestions. Through this ignorance of the vital part protein plays in preserving youthfulness and maintaining life, such men have "pre¬scribed" invalidism and premature death for many an older person who otherwise could have enjoyed many more years of an active, useful life. Protein foods are the main factor in prolonging youth for the past-forty group, and in maintaining physical vigor and mental alertness in the aged.

Several things start happening to your body cells as the calendar years begin slipping past the forty mark. Biologists tell us that "aging is a matter of changes in your tissue cells." First, the tissue cells in older bodies are less elastic, less resilient, less able to recover quickly from fatigue and injury than the cells in younger bodies. Second, the active cells in the older body (especially those in your glands and muscles) gradually grow fewer.

Bearing in mind what I've already told you about the great restorative powers o£ protein on body cells (as evidenced by the case histories of those protein-starved elderly patients miraculously restored to life and usefulness), isn't it sheer logic that the more years you carry, the more repair material you need each day? And what is that "repair material" except food protein}
The more enlightened o£ our physicians today recognize how wrong it is to eliminate high-protein foods from the diet of the average patient. Yet there still remain the diehard doctors who cling to the out-of-date theory that certain ail¬ments such as arthritis, high blood pressure, certain kidney diseases, hardening of the arteries and diabetes mean "cutting down on," if not eliminating entirely, meat in the patient's diet.

There is the case of a thirty-nine-year-old woman, well known to me, who developed rheumatoid arthritis several years ago. Weighing all of a scant 105 pounds, she had dieted strenuously for years to keep from getting fat; she had existed mostly on tea and dry toast. Since becoming arthritic, her physician had kept her on a no-meat diet, his reasoning being that meat was "bad" for her condition.

About the time I started writing this book, word reached me that she had collapsed from weakness and severe nutri¬tional anemia and had been rushed to the hospital. This came as no surprise to me, for I had anticipated some such climax to her case in view o£ her "no-meat" diet. For days, while she remained in the hospital, she was given injections of various concentrated nutriments in an effort to overcome the anemia, and to give her strength enough to sit in a chair.

I don't need to tell you that this woman, although only thirty-nine years old, looked a good twenty years older on the day she was taken to the hospital. A flagrant case of in¬duced premature aging—induced by both her own senseless dieting and her doctor's ignorance.

Like most stories, this one has a sequel. Thanks to the com¬mon sense of the young doctor now in charge of her case, this woman is taking mineral capsules containing iron in order to build up her blood hemoglobin. Also, he has ordered her to eat three high-protein meals a day. When last I had word of her, she had recovered sufficient use o£ her swollen arthritic hands to do some sewing—and to wash the Venetian blinds in her home—all this in only three short months from the time she was carried to the hospital, a victim of extreme nutritional exhaustion.