Let Food Be Thy Medicine, Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)

• The Sectrets of Longevity and Vibrant Health
• The Science Behind Living Foods
• Gourmet Live Food Recipes by Top Chefs
• Acid and Alkaline Balancing
• How to Regulate Your Body Temperature With Food!

Vitamins

The vitamins in our foods are sometimes rendered inactive before we get a chance to consume them. The Taber's Cyclopedia Medical Dictionary, Edition 17, has this to say about vitamin loss (page 1562): “Loss of vitamin content in food products because of vitamin instability, especially in oxidation and during heating. Methods of preserving foods add to the loss of vitamins. Pickling, salting, curing or fermenting processes usually cause complete loss of Vitamin C. Commercial canning destroys from fifty to eighty-five percent of Vitamin C contained in peas, lima beans, spinach and asparagus. Pasteurization, unless special precautions are observed, causes a loss of from thirty to sixty percent of Vitamin C. Freshly prepared applesauce retains only from twenty to thirty percent of the Vitamin C value of the apple. Vitamin B1 is lost through milling because the wheat embryo, rich in Vitamin B1, is removed from wheat flour in milling. Some vitamins are unstable, being readily destroyed by oxidation, heat...

Vitamin C is a very interesting vitamin. Practically all animals make it in their bodies so they don't have to eat it. The exceptions are fruit-eating bats, guinea pigs, the red-vented bulbous bird and primates, including man. Linus Pauling, a famous Vitamin C researcher, postulated that humans used to make it but, through eating a fruit rich diet, lost the ability to produce it. It is widely know that if we don't get Vitamin C through our diets, we develop scurvy.