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Dr. Pottenger’s
Cats
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Pottenger’s
Cats |
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IMAGINE
THAT YOU ARE A JUNIOR HIGH school science teacher. Scary thought though it
be, I was one. Now let's say you want to try nutritional experiments with
animals in a seventh grade biology class. Let me clue you in: you can forget
about any hopes you might have for either control or objectivity. Take two
cages of hamsters, mice, Guinea pigs or what have you, and feed one group a
really good diet and the other group a really bad diet. You, the teacher,
know exactly what results to expect. So do the students. The moment you are
not looking, they will smuggle nuts, raw vegetables and probably vitamin
tablets into the "deficient diet" cage. They cannot stand to see
those little mammals suffer the ravages of malnutrition, and they will make
quite certain that it does not happen. Junior
high students, like everyone else including even the youngest of children,
know that junk food leads to junked bodies. Yet these very same kids will eat
the most gosh-awful food they can find in the school cafeteria, if they eat
anything there at all, when so many schools still have competing snack and
drink vending machines. Knowing
clearly does not make it so. Consider food preparation. We know that animals
in the wild never eat cooked food, yet we feed nothing but to our dogs and
cats. If it's in a can, pouch, bag or box, that pet's food has been cooked. And along
with it, perhaps its goose as well. Between
1932 and 1942, Francis M. Pottenger, Jr., M.D.,
conducted his now classic ten-year, multi-generation nutrition study on cats.
This decade of data has been neatly condensed into a concise, inexpensive
119-page book entitled Pottenger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition, also
incorporating summaries of some two dozen of the doctor's nutrition papers. Pottenger's cat experiments were, in a nutshell, a decade-long,
scientifically controlled "Supersize Me"
experiment. Basically, there were two groups of cats: the cats who daily ate the kitty equivalent of Burglar King and McNothing foods, that is, nothing but cooked food. The
other group was fed raw food. What do
you suppose was the result? OK,
class; let's not always see the same hands. Yes,
you're right. The raw food cats thrived. The cooked food cats did not, and
there were no merciful middle-schoolers there to
save them. I have a
cat; her name is Dolly. She is asleep on my lap as I write this. Dolly was
cast off in a rural store parking lot. We brought her home hungry, and to
this day she retains the most amazing kitty appetite I have ever seen. We
have repeatedly discovered that she is inexplicably partial to fresh Italian
bread. [We do not feed her bread, ever. She raids the countertop when we are not looking.] She will energetically eat cooked green beans, zucchini squash, and
beets. As for raw vegetables, she is famous in cyberspace as the Carrot Cat
(photos at http://www.doctoryourself.com/cat1.html). The Carrot Cat will eat raw
carrot pulp left over when I make carrot juice. (Of course, she is also fed a
variety of animal foods.) As I write these very words, she is using her
forehead to lift my hand away from the keyboard and go feed her. Again. Even for
the cat-lovers among us, the larger question must be, To what extent do the Pottenger Cat Experiments apply to people? Chapters 11
and 12 specifically address this, focusing on children's skeletal
development. Chapter 9 provides an excellent validation for breastfeeding. I
am particularly intrigued with Pottenger's
observations that cats fed on cooked meat and milk develop
"all kinds" of allergies, and hypothyroidism. When fed raw foods,
the cats' symptoms go away. (p 33) I personally have seen a case where a
67-year-old woman, who was on a prescribed low dose of Synthroid,
no longer needed it after just a few weeks of raw vegetable juicing. She is
87 now and her doctors have confirmed that still does not require any thyroid
supplement. At the
very least, the Pottenger Cat Experiments show what
an unsupplemented lifetime diet of cooked meat can do to a carnivore. But the
more important message of the experiments is that they also show recovery on
a raw-food diet. I think we can reasonably infer that this applies to people.
And for those bound and determined to go Atkins, well, maybe you'd better
consider eating your meat raw. Repellant
though this thought be, I'd better be careful what I
say. Once I had a reader who took an offhand comment like this seriously. He
wrote to me that he'd started eating wild game, uncooked. While, in truth, he
also claimed he'd never felt better, I cringe at the bacterial and parasite
load one might incur in eating raw animals. Ugh. Though Pottenger does recommend "raw beef hors d' oeuvres
three times weekly" (p 105), it would be inaccurate to imply that Dr. Pottenger expected people to eat meat raw. His
instructions for cooking brains are on page 108; recipes for cooking kidneys,
p 109; preparing heart and tripe, on p 110. He advocated minimal cooking (p
103), but even that is difficult to avoid seeing as a philosophical
inconsistency in his writing. Minimally cooked is still a far cry from raw. More to
my taste is raw bean and grain sprouting, of which Pottenger
said, "To enhance their protein value, sprout before cooking." (p
106) There it is again: cooking. However, he also recommended uncooked
sprouts for salads. (p 111) Dr. Pottenger advocated
clean, raw milk. As a former dairyman and college clinical nutrition
instructor, so do I. Just how
lifeless is cooked food? Well, Dr. Pottenger even
tested the value of cat excreta as fertilizer. Guess what? He found that
plants would not grow in the presence of waste from cooked-food cats and
cooked milk cats. Evidently,
neither did bones, jaws and teeth. Malocclusion was prominent among the
defects and disorders Pottenger saw in cooked-food
fed cats. The problem has not gone away. A MEDLINE search for
"malocclusion cats" brings up a dozen and a half papers on the
subject . . .and 133 papers on the condition in
dogs. You can see more at these web locations: Orthodontics
for housepets http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.plx?P=A&A=164&S=1&SourceID=13
Specifically
for cats http://www.dentalvet.com/vets/cats/feline_dental_pathology_and_care.htm
When it
comes to people, I strongly support Pottenger's
stance in favor of a whole food, whole grain, low
sugar diet. However, I do have a bone to pick with the good doctor, and here
it is: In
recommending his High Protective Diet, Pottenger
calls for an adult human to consume 225 grams of fat per day, and an equal
amount of protein (p 103). I am tempted to try to dismiss this as a misprint,
but it is not, as he has previously presented this opinion on page 94. Pottenger states (p 99) that "Fat is the energy fuel
of the body." There are many complex-carbo
fans who would sharply disagree with this statement, especially to the tune
of 225 grams of fat per day. For an adult, 60 to 80 g/day total dietary fat
is usually recommended. According to the There is,
in fact, no US RDA for fat. Technically, we do not need to eat much fat at
all; we do need some to help absorb fat-soluble vitamins like vitamins A, D
and E. What we absolutely must have are the essential fatty acids: linolenic
and linoleic acid. To his credit, and to my relief,
Pottenger says, "The primary source of man's
fats is vegetable; the secondary source is animal." (p 98) My
interpretation of Pottenger's work is this: It is
not about eating more meat and fat; it is about eating more raw food. Raw for
cats and carnivores means raw meat. Raw for people, who cannot be reasonably
expected to eat raw meat, must emphasize foods other than meat. Differences
aside, I submit that Pottenger's essential and
enduring message might best be expressed in his own words: "We have
shown that allergic manifestations and dental disturbances comparable to
those seen in human beings result from changes in food preparation. . . We
find animals that receive raw meat show consistent facial development and
normal dentition. . . We also find the converse to be true. Those kittens
that receive cooked meat instead of raw develop all types of malformations of
the face, jaws and teeth. . . (When) cats put on the cooked meat diet and are
allowed to become pregnant, their kittens' skulls show marked variations from
the normal . . . (O)nce such deficiencies are
produced and maintained by a faulty diet, they become progressively worse
through the second and third generations. . .
The cats fed cooked food may produce a premature or full term litter
of stillborn kittens. One cat proves unable to deliver her kittens even after
72 hours of labor. If a mother cat is kept on cooked food for more than two
years, she usually dies during delivery. Delivery complications such as these
have not been found in cats placed on raw food. "Deficient
cats exhibit progressive allergic symptoms from generation to generation.
They show most of the common respiratory, gastrointestinal and constitutional
problems as well as various skin disorders. . . Hypothyroidism is prevalent
and contributes to marked disturbances in the osseous development of some
deficient cats and to apparent disturbances in their reproductive efficiency. "The
elements in raw food which activate and support growth and development in the
young appear easily altered and destroyed by heat processing and oxidation. .
. All tissue enzymes are heat labile and so destroyed. Vitamin C and some
members of the B complex are injured by the process of cooking and minerals
are made less soluble by altering their physiochemical state." (pages
39-42) Surely
these observations demand our most serious consideration. They are a powerful
argument in favor of minimal food processing, maximal raw food intake, and in
my opinion, the use of vitamin supplements. I would like to see a new 10-year
cat study in which one multi-generational group of cats gets cooked food with
supplements, another group raw food with supplements, another cooked and no
supplements, and another raw and no supplements. In a way,
this experiment is already underway, and you and everyone you know are part
of it. But in our unintended, uncontrolled, world-wide version of the study,
we find that even Pottenger's all-cooked-food test
animals had advantages over us: 1) they did not eat junk food; 2) they did
not eat sugar; and 3) cats (like practically all other animals) make their
own vitamin C. We have none of these advantages. What this
means is that the unsupplemented human race's health can be expected to be
even poorer than Pottenger's sickest cats. And it
is. The lesson of Dr. Pottenger's work, nearly 80
years ago, is yet to be learned. Pottenger FM Jr. Pottenger's Cats: A
Study in Nutrition. Elaine Pottenger, editor, with
Robert T. Pottenger, Jr. PRICE, POTTENGER: VEGETARIAN OR CARNIVORE? In one of my newsletters http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n15.txt
I wrote: " For this, I caught a little flack. Here's a typical
reader's comment: "Dear Dr. Saul: I am sure you will get lots of
e-mails about your comment linking Weston Price with vegetarianism. You must
be kidding! All of Dr. Price's writings, from years of traveling the world and
finding out why people were healthy or sick clearly point out the fact that animal foods are
essential and the prerequisite to good health. Vegetarians are not healthier, they don't live longer, and the fact that you are a vegetarian doesn't change
these facts. I enjoy your newsletter as you provide tons of good information; however this one is a boo-boo." Readers' feedback shows a genuine interest in attempting
to keep me honest, and I appreciate receiving it. Though my use of the word "vegetarian"
is presumably the source of contention, I think my use of the qualifying word
"nearly" must be the focal point for discussion. The Cornell China studies clearly support near-vegetarianism ("0-20% animal-based foods"), which is my
preferred long-term dietary maintenance plan. And I would be pleased if
everyone followed Pottenger's dictum and ate pretty
much raw everything, especially raw milk, which I have long advocated. My
reading of Price's work says to me, "eat unprocessed foods." If
people want to eat the seafood and organ meats that Dr. Price advocated in
his book Nutrition and Physical
Degeneration, they will do well nutritionally to do so. RAW FOODS AND FRANCIS POTTENGER, M.D. Dr. Pottenger's emphasis was on
the nutritional value of raw foods, and he got it right. Pottenger
knew that carnivorous animals, normally, would never be in a position to hunt
a cooked meal. His studies were primarily on cats, and most felines are
carnivores. But even "carnivores" are not strictly carnivorous.
Lions and similar predators gobble up the predigested vegetable material from
an herbivorous prey animal's digestive organs in preference to any other part
of the kill. I caught my cat up on the kitchen counter the other day. She was
eating carrot pulp left over from the morning's juicing. Plain carrot pulp.
Years ago, I had a cat that would stand up on her hind legs and beg for
cooked green beans. But this is in addition to an appropriately-meaty kitty
diet. For humans, if a vegetable, fruit or dairy food can be eaten
uncooked, then it should be. As for raw meat, well, no thank you. The Natural
Hygienists have what is at heart the same message: eat fresh and raw. I
admire and seek to emulate such knowledge to the maximum practical extent.
However, I do not apologize for having a stove. A whole-food, good food diet
including legumes (peas, beans, lentils), grains and
potatoes clearly needs some cooking. But there is definitely no need to make
one's home on the range. MEAT: LOTS, SOME, OR NONE Americans consume at least twice as much protein as they
need. Worldwide, 30 grams of protein daily is usually adequate. The US RDA of
protein is about 60 grams daily for a man and about 50 g daily for a woman.
We generally eat over 100 grams of protein daily, mostly from meat. Chronic
protein excess can overload and irreversibly damage the kidneys by middle
age. (Williams, S. Nutrition and Diet Therapy, 7th ed, Mosby,
1993). When in doubt, eat like other primates do. Chimps,
gorillas, orangutans and that crowd are very strong, very smart, and mostly but
not entirely vegetarian. By moving TOWARDS a vegetarian diet, you
automatically reduce your too-high intake of protein, fat and sugar. It is
just that simple. There is no diet plan to buy. I think dairy products and
eggs and fish must remain occasional options for most of us. My kids did so
well as lacto-ovo-vegetarians that they never had a
single dose of an antibiotic, not once. Had they NOT been healthy, the State
and the school board would have been on our backs instantly. To avoid all animal products makes one a vegan. I am most
certainly not a vegan, and I do not universally advocate it. I have many good
friends who utterly and totally reject animal products. For this I admire
them. I also observe that their conviction is, at times, more admirable than
their health is. Ethical issues aside, veganism
truly is an excellent transition diet. As limited-term treatment for
overweight, constipated, drug-soaked people, veganism
cannot be beat. I think a few months without animal products is worth a therapeutic trial for most illnesses. But long
term, for most people, I think some animal foods are necessary as the decades
pass. The majority of vegetarians are actually near-vegetarians, eating some animal products, such as milk products. My readers know I am something of a cheese and yogurt fan. As a former dairyman, what do you expect? I also use eggs now and then for cooking, and I make a mean broccoli quiche. But I am not really much of a milk-drinker, and typically do not go through even half a dozen eggs in a month. Albert Einstein wrote, "Nothing will benefit human
health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution
to a vegetarian diet." Evolution,
a key word, means gradual change with time. "Vegetarianism" is a
process, not an absolute. For my children, the process began in infancy. http://www.doctoryourself.com/toddler_health.html
Okay, so they were not fed meat. What exactly DID they
eat? Here's an example of some basic meal plans, on which you can (and we did)
build a tasty meatless meal. http://www.doctoryourself.com/12_Veggie_Dinners.html
Meatless most certainly does NOT mean "zero animal
products." The two are far, far apart. And when considering the moral
arguments on the dialectics of dietetics, we are humbled when we recall that Mahatma
Gandhi ate dairy products, and Jesus ate fish. I regularly took my three-year-old son with me when shopping at the local supermarket. We inevitably passed through the meat department. My son pointed to the blood-red packages and loudly asked me, "What's that Daddy?" I replied, much more quietly, "That is meat." He then said, just as loudly as before, "We don't eat meat, do we, Daddy!" He was correct, of course, and I told him so. He smiled, and in a voice that could easily be heard in the Produce department on the other side of the store, declared for all to hear: "We don't eat meat! We're not Italian!" I think he meant to say, "We're vegetarian," but
I kinda like it better his way. And very few
three-year-olds can say, "We're lacto-ovo-vegetarian,
aren't we, Daddy!" In truth, I cannot even be described as an
lacto-ovo-vegetarian (eggs and dairy), for I also
eat seafood. Not often, and usually not directly in front of my
aquarium. But I maintain, in the face
of animal-rights adversity, that fish and their oceanic roommates are
valuable nutrition sources. After millennia of changes to human civilization,
the world's number one animal protein source in 2003 is still seafood. By the
time we come up with a definition of "fishatarian,"
we are very close to the natural animal-products percentages that Price found
again and again in his travels amongst "primitive" (aka "healthy") cultures back in the 1930's. I
have no shame whatsoever in eating like a south sea island native. WESTON PRICE AND NATIVE DIETS I am quite willing to eat along the dietary lines of other
traditional cultures that Dr. Price visited and wrote of. Price found that
isolated, healthy Swiss communities ate cheese and raw milk daily, plus a lot
of whole-grain bread. But they only
ate meat once a week. The basic foods of the islanders of the In short, most vegetarians are not, and most carnivores
are not. Optimum human diet is not to be found at either extreme. The issue is
natural food more than where it comes from. Unprocessed foods, whether animal
or plant origin, are the healthiest. This is the enduring message of Price
and Pottenger. A POEM: Dunderbeck, oh Dunderbeck Oh how could ye be so mean To ever have invented The sausage-meat machine. Now all the rats And puddy-cats Will never more be seen; For they'll all be ground To sausage meat In Dunderbeck's machine. (Author unknown, fortunately) Andrew Saul, who is certainly not a poet, is however the author of
the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader
reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
)
Copyright 2003 Andrew W. Saul. Revised 2018.
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AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This page is not in any way offered as prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision. Neither the author nor the webmaster has authorized the use of their names or the use of any material contained within in connection with the sale, promotion or advertising of any product or apparatus. Single-copy reproduction for individual, non-commercial use is permitted providing no alterations of content are made, and credit is given. |
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