Nature puts up her vitamins in ideal combinations with the other essential elements of our foods. She gives us lettuce, apples and grapes; the demi-gods of "science" give us the quintessences of these and other natural products and tell us that these are better than Nature's own creations. They give us devitalized foods and synthetic "foods"-- substances with nutrition rejects, preferring to starve.

At first, after the discovery of vitamins, they gave us vitamin extracts. The chemist extracted the vitamin but the vital element was lost, and we were forced to eat uncooked fruits and vegetables to get it. Later, after some of the vitamins were isolated and analyzed (more or less accurately), he gave us synthetic vitamins, which, he assured us, are chemically identical with the natural vitamin. He is unable to manufacture acceptable fats, sugars, amino acids, salts, but he can manufacture "acceptible" vitamins. He can't produce a viable egg, but he insists that his dummy eggs are just as good as the real article.

The chemist is not only an egomaniac, but he is the faithful handmaiden of the commercial firm that employs him. He is engaged in the production of "just as good" substitutes for nature's products, because there "are millions in it." There was never any reason, except commercial reasons, for the attempt to manufacture synthetic vitamins. The plant kingdom, the sole source of supply, manufactures these in super-abundance. Old mother nature puts them in all foods. No prudent eater need ever suffer from a lack of any of them.

Chemists can play with the elements--analyze, synthesize, combine and take apart again--but they cannot produce living substance. Their syntheses lack many important refinings which only the metabolic processes of the plant and animal kingdom can accomplish. They say their synthetic vitamins are chemically identical with those produced by plants, but the results of their use prove unmistakeably that they are not functionally identical. The garden and orchard turn out products far superior to those of the laboratory.

It is folly to think you can mix together a lot of synthetic and extracted vitamins and produce a salad that is equal to a salad of uncooked vegetables or fruits. It is equally as foolish to think you can mix together a dozen or more different salts supplied you by the druggist and produce a salad that will equal a salad of fresh, uncooked vegetables or fruits. Nor can you do so by mixing a dozen synthetic vitamins with a dozen salts from the druggist.

Synthetic vitamins, that is, "vitamins" made in the chemical laboratory, although having practically the same chemical composition as those of nature's products, are not vitamins and do not have the effects of vitamins. Despite the claims made for them by the commercial firms and by the drugging fraternity, who know no difference between nature and their laboratories, except that their laboratories are "superior," made vitamins are no more valuable than the mineral salts sold at the drug stores and prescribed by physicians. Certain synthetic vitamins, such as K, are water soluble, whereas the same vitamins from natural sources are not. This difference in solubility rests upon fundamental differences in their structure. Synthetic "vitamins" are "paste," not true diamonds.

Manufacturers and their subsidized scientists with commercial motives assert that their synthetic vitamins are as good as those the cow gets from grass and alfalfa and passes on to your child in her milk--providing the milk is not pasteurized. This is a gross misrepresentation.

They also emphasize the fact that synthesis brought the price down much below the cost of extraction. The fact that extracting the vitamins is neither necessary nor helpful is ignored.

Ansel Keys and Austin F. Herschel of the University of Minnesota tested vitamin tablets and concentrates to determine their values. The whole alphabet from A to Z was tested. Twenty-six soldiers were used as subjects for these tests. A total of 256 experiments were made. During the whole of the period of observation every effort was made to assure standarized conditions. The men were fed the usual army post rations, wore regulation army clothing and packs at all times and marched on motor-driven treadmills for definite periods.

Both vitamins and placeboes were used in these tests. The placebos were made up in pill form to resemble in every way the "vitamins," so that the men could not know when they were getting vitamins and when they were getting placebos. The two forms of pills looked alike and tasted alike. The synthetic "vitamins" and the placebos were given both before and after each meal. The soldiers were divided into two groups. During the first part of the test one group would have his meals supplemented with "vitamins," the other group would get the placebos. During the second part the first group would receive the placebos and the second group would receive the "vitamins."

Careful tests of circulatory, metabolic and blood-chemistry responses were made after each period on the tread-mill. These two men report as a result of these tests that:

"In neither brief extreme exercise nor in prolonged severe exercise and semi-starvation were there any indications of any effect, favorable, or otherwise, of the vitamin supplementation on muscular ability, endurance, resistance to fatigue, or recovery from exertion.

"It is concluded that no useful purpose would be served by enrichment of the present U.S. Army rations with the vitamins studied."

Among the vitamins studied were the much advertised thiamin chloride (B1, ribaflavin (B2), nicotinic acid (a B factor), pyridoxine (B6), pantothentic acid (a B factor), and ascorbic acid (C).

Similar negative results were obtained in experiments conducted in England during the late war. Both school children and working men were given synthetic "vitamins" for several months and the results carefully checked. School children who took multiple vitamin pills for a period lasting from seven to nine months failed to register a superior record in relation to weight, height or sickness in comparison with the children who went without the synthetic "vitamins." The tests showed that, despite the war, the home and school diets of the children contained sufficient real vitamins so that the synthetic "vitamins" contributed nothing. Similar experiments conducted in war workers failed to result in any health gains among those workers who received the synthetic "vitamins" as compared to those who did not.

Baffin and Caper of Duke University give some details in an issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association of the results of an investigation made at the request of the Office of the Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army to determine the value of adding vitamins to the Usual American diet. I think it significant that the "usual American diet" which is by no means an ideal diet, was used in this series of tests. It carries me back to Chittenden's experiments made years before vitamins were heard of. For some time now, I have been convinced that: either Chittenden did not obtain the results he claimed, or else, the vitamin researchers are kidding themselves and the public about their findings.

Two hundred volunteer medical students and technicians were used in these tests. The volunteers were divided into five groups. They were all "in apparent good health" and were consuming the "usual American diet," whatever this may be in any given instance.

The tests were run for thirty days, "because that period is found sufficient for recovery under vitamin treatment," of patients actually ill from vitamin deficiency.

One group was given vitamins tablets and liver extract tablets.

A second group was given yeast extract tablets and vitamin pills.

A third group was given vitamin pills and sugar pills made to resemble the others.

A fourth group was given vitamin pills only.

The fifth group was given sugar pills only.

None of the volunteers were permitted to know what was in the pills they were taking. Each man kept a daily record of his weight and of such symptoms as "gas" or indigestion, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea. Also he kept a daily record of his impressions of any effect on his appetite and on his "pep" or energy.

Baffin and Caper report that "a significant increase in diarrhea and a highly significant increase in abdominal pain and nausea and vomiting occurred in those receiving liver extract and yeast." They found no evidence to substantiate the view that the use of vitamins will increase one's efficiency and sense of well-being in cases where no real deficiency exists.

But are we to believe that the "usual American diet" of white bread, denatured cereals, white sugar, refined syrups, canned goods, pasteurized milk, embalmed and cooked muscle meats, cakes, pies, preserves, candies, coffee, etc., is not deficient in vitamins? No one claims that present methods of determining vitamin deficiencies are sufficiently delicate to reveal the earliest stages of deficiency.

It is not to be supposed that the diet fed to soldiers in the army or the war-time diets of the British people were so good that they could not be improved upon. At best, the British war-time diet was a subsistence diet. Good nutrition is necessarily based on a good diet of natural foodstuffs and health cannot be assured anybody by taking a certain number of vitamin capsules or vitamin pills regularly. A good diet will supply all the vitamins needed, while taking "vitamin" pills to supplement a poor diet is ridiculous. Synthetic "vitamins" are doing incalculable narm in inducing people to depend upon these to the neglect of real vitamins.

What, then is the trouble? First, the vitamins are only imitations. Second, they are not properly used. They are useful only in the presense of elements of food stuffs that are almost invariably deficient in the "usual American diet." Better nutrition may be had by better diet, not by eating vitamin pills.

The fact that vitamins are employed best in combination should show the reader that taking large amounts of vitamin C and not securing sufficient amounts of vitamin B will result in failure of nutrition. This has led to the preparation of pluri-vitamin pills and extracts. But these fail, not alone because the vitamins are not real, but also, because the vitamins are not useful in the absence of the minerals that "act" synergistically with them. Even mixtures of vitamins and minerals fail, for the reason that the minerals are not available and the vitamins are only imitation.

I would emphasize two other important facts: namely, with all the work that has been done, we do not yet know all the chemistry involved in a single one of our common foods, nor in the human body. There may be other vitamins or other food factors of which we know nothing at present. Certainly we do not know all that we need to know about the mineral composition of foods or of the body. There is every reason to think that there are amino acids that are as yet unknown. Mineral concentrates contain only the known minerals of the body. Vitamin concentrates contain only the known vitamins. Amino acids now sold on the market contain only the known amino acids. The unknown factors of foods are lacking in all of these substances. Foods contain all food factors now known as well as those now unknown. Manufacturing chemists, druggists, food manufacturers, etc., cannot compete with nature in preparing food for man.