226 Diet and Health
ignorance of the subject is still so deep that we can hardly claim scientifically to know
what health is.The theory which I have endeavoured to expound in this book [The Living Soil]
is that the only true conception of health is one of wholeness, dependent upon
both the continuity and the completeness of the cycle of life. I shall make no
attempt to discuss the philosophical aspect of this conception, I am concerned
only with presenting certain evidence suggesting that it is biologically sound.
For the sake of clarity in this presentation, the argument has been divided into
two parts. The first states that the determining factor in health is food, and the
second suggests that the health-giving property of food is dependent on the way
it is grown, prepared and consumed.
There is always an inherent danger in making arbitrary divisions where no true
division exists, but in the present case this could hardly be avoided. The risk of
failing to see the wood for the trees must sometimes be taken in order to discover
how large a number of trees go to make a wood. In the previous chapters [of The
Living Soil] – to pursue the same analogy – I have invited you to examine some of
the trees. In this chapter I want you to take a look at the wood as a whole. This,
research has, so far, largely failed to do. Research workers in chemistry, biology,
mycology, botany, veterinary science and medicine, have for too long been work-
ing in watertight compartments, each busily dissecting his own tree, until in the
process the wood has become so sadly dismembered it is small wonder that we
sometimes cease to be aware of its existence.
It may be objected that I have followed their example of fragmentation in lay-
ing so much stress on the role of the fungus in nutrition. In so far as this accusation
is well founded, my defence is that this is the link in the life cycle which is most
frequently omitted, but which is at the same time the easiest to restore. In empha-
sizing its importance, however, I have never intended to suggest that it forms other
than a part, however important in itself, of the complete cycle of nutrition and
health which is wholeness.
McCarrison in the Cantor Lectures states: ‘The diet of the Sikhs is only health-
promoting so long as it is consumed in its entirety’, and as Dr Wrench points out,
with their whole diet these people ‘have preserved the wholeness of their health, a
thing which we have failed to do’.
In the writings of the scientific experts on nutrition, there are very numerous part-diet
experiments based on synthetic or specially made-up diets, omitting or cutting down
the quantity of one or more of the factors which compose a diet. One scientist will cut
down the quantity of protein given and watch the effect of this upon animals; another
will cut down the fats and note the resulting sicknesses; another will give vegetable or
irradiated vegetable fats in places of customary animal fats; another will give a diet in
which vitamin A is defective, B is defective, C is defective, and so on.
The experiments are skilfully devised and carried out with consumate technique.
They lead to a mass of knowledge about proteins as things in themselves; fats as things