Modern diets ignore the axiom that seeds hold the germ o£ life. Too often overlooked is the fact that nature has placed in seed foods the concentrated essence of all nutrition in order to provide nourishment for the sprouting plant.

Only one part of any plant is outstandingly rich in pro­tein and that is the seed. Proteins are centered in the seeds o£ a plant, so that the new life may receive ample nourishment for normal growth.

Science has isolated and identified most of the nutrients in seed foods. It is my belief that seed foods contain life-sustain­ing powers which are, as yet, unknown to science, and from which we can benefit greatly when these seeds are made a part of our daily diets.

Little by little, modern nutritional science is inclining to the belief that whole seed cereals (I stress "whole" because of the health-blind custom of milling most of the food value out of our cereals) can supply for your diet a now missing something that formerly was there when life and eating habits were much closer to the primitive. In fact, several biochemists have told me it's their private opinion that only when we regain that missing "something" in our diets which the primitive peoples enjoyed will we find the preventive for many of our deficiency and wasting diseases.

Seed foods have always formed a large portion of the in­stinctive diet followed by primitive peoples. And so highly did they value these seed foods that many religious superstitions grew up around them. For instance, the Indians of the two American continents, from Alaska to Patagonia, placed bowls of cereal grains and sunflower seeds on the graves of their dead for food to nourish them on their long, dangerous journey into the next world. What had been good, energy-giving food while they were alive, the surviving Indians reasoned, must also be good food for them when dead.

How many times this past year has your table been graced with millet, steel-cut oats, whole unbolted cornmeal, raw wheat germ, sesame seed or sunflower seed? Have your morn­ing pancakes and your suppertime muffins been made with all-starch white flour or devitalized corn meal—or with whole wheat flour and millet meal? Does your cereal bowl at break­fast contain a no-food-value, devitalized dry cereal—or does it contain steel-cut oats, or millet meal mush? Were the cookies you carried in your lunch topped with white sugar, or with sesame seeds?

Never mind answering!

Unless you are one of the disturbingly small minority in this country who recognizes the stay-young values in seed cereals, I know that your pancakes were made with 100 per cent-starch white flour; that your muffins were made with de­vitalized corn meal; that your cereal bowl contained a patented dry cereal, one of the biggest frauds in modern nutrition; and that your cookies were made with more white flour and decorated with no-nutrition white sugar.

And yet you wonder why your hair turns gray (when it doesn't fall out altogether), why your muscles grow flabby, your figure becomes lumpy, your teeth decay, your eyesight grows poorer all the time, your sexual powers disappear prematurely and your nerves act like Mexican jumping beans.

Much talk is in the air these days about "miracle foods." Two of the so-called "miracle foods" most widely advertised are brewers' yeast and blackstrap molasses. Heaven alone knows how many hundreds of packages of these two unpalatable products are lying around on cupboard shelves, un­touched after the first few attempts to get them down. No food can work "miracles" for your health if you don't like it well enough to eat it regularly.

I don't deny that brewers' yeast and blackstrap molasses contain all the nutrients attributed to them. But why fool yourself that you're obtaining the benefits of the valuable nutrients in these two products, when actually you can't toler­ate the stuff enough to eat it regularly, no matter how you may try to disguise it? How much better it would be for your stay-young efforts if you were to depend instead on the equally valuable nutrition to be found in seed cereals that not only nourish you with an abundance of the same proteins, minerals and vitamins, but which taste good besides.

Let me introduce you to several of the new-old seed cereals about which you probably know very little. Of course, there's no need to go into details on such seed foods as nuts (don't overlook the splendid nutrition and taste enjoyment of fresh coconut as bought in the shell, or in packages at health food stores—not the desiccated, long-keeping, artificially sweetened variety found on grocery shelves) peas and beans. These foods are too well known to need any introduction. They all contain a fair quality of vegetable protein, besides essential minerals and vitamins. And if you find them easy to digest (many persons do not), then by all means include them in your Eat-and-Grow-Younger menus.

The three seed cereals with which I wish to acquaint you are both satisfying and easily digestible. They merit a place in every diet, for gradually they will take away your desire for white breads and rich pastries. And after you've succeeded in eliminating all artificial, pure-starch, youth-destroying foods from your diet, your body will show its gratitude by losing that bloated, flabby look which puts the years on you along with the pounds. Seed cereals and whole grains help build a body that is firm and lithe—a young body.

MILLET

Millet is the first of the seed cereals that should be on your table regularly.

Little known in this country, except as poultry and animal feed, millet has been one of the principal grains of Eastern Europe, Africa, Siberia and China for centuries. Five hundred years before the beginning of the modern Christian era, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras praised the high nutritive value of millet, and advised his followers (all vegetarians) to adopt millet as the mainstay of their diets.

Contrary to popular belief, millet and not rice is the basic food of most Chinese in their native country. Only the small-statured, less robust Southern Chinese subsist on rice. The tall, sturdy, vigorous Northern Chinese have used millet as their principal food for many centuries.

We Americans will adopt a certain plant from other con` tinents, but for our livestock, not for our own bodies. Our depraved appetites tend to spurn the wholesome, health-giving, youth-protective natural foods in favor of the widely advertised artificial foods that make old men and women of us in our prime.

On a Saturday morning not long ago, while driving to the West Coast, I stopped in a small Iowa town located in the heart of a rich farming section, and parked in front of the local grocery store. The street was lined with farmers' trucks and autos while the families went about their weekly shopping.

Before long the family in the car next to mine returned, loaded down with their purchases—the father carrying a sack labeled ' 'Whole Millet, Chicken Feed, Mineral-and-Protein Rich, For Laying Stock"; the children alternately lapping on ice cream cones or munching on candy bars; and the mother carrying a box of canned goods topped by two loaves of baker's white bread (even sliced for her) and a cellophane package of dried noodles. What a travesty on good nutrition!

The only real nourishment in all their purchases—the whole millet—was going to their chickens, while the de­vitalized white-flour bread and noodles were supposed to ' 'nourish" the hard-working farmer and farm wife and their growing children. Watching them as they drove away, I could have wept for the long-life days when a farmer took his own grain to the mill to be ground whole, then returned it to the barrel in the pantry; and the farm wife made her own bread and noodles from the whole grain flour.

Millet is one of the oldest and most nutritious foods known to man. It is a completely balanced grain, non-acid forming and rich in high-grade protein, minerals, vitamins and lecithin (the same tasty substance found in egg yolk, and containing that valuable B-vitamin, choline, discussed in Chapter 9 for its powers to prevent fatty deposits on artery walls).

Laboratory investigations have revealed that no food is digested with as great ease as millet. It does not ferment in the stomach, causing digestive and intestinal distress, as do the foods and breakfast cereals made from white flour and other devitalized grains.

Millet is non-fattening, since it does not produce the ex­cessive fat that follows a diet containing the all-starch, low-mineral, no-vitamin, devitalized corn, wheat and rice. To our own detriment, we have come to rely too heavily on wheat, corn and rice as our national cereals, forgetting that there are equally as tasty, and far more nutritious, seed foods which we should adopt for the sake of our own, and the national, health.

After the First World War, millions of Russian peasants in White Russia faced starvation. In desperation, they ate the millet which had been put away for the chickens they no longer had. And what happened? Not only did these peasants survive the long period of famine, but they soon discovered they were enjoying better health than they had ever known while consuming their former varied diets. One of the peasants, who had suffered from stomach ulcers for fifteen years, found that his ulcers disappeared in six months on his forced diet of nothing but millet.

News of this millet diet gradually reached the scientists in this country. Professors Osborn and Mendel at Yale, after extensive experiments, announced that millet contains a richer store of vitamins than any other cereal in common use in the United States; that millet is the only grain capable of supplying all the vitamins needed for human nutrition.

Later studies also revealed that millet contains every one of the 10 essential amino acids, and that its protein is equal in value to animal protein.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg declared that millet is the only cereal capable of supporting human life when used as the sole item in the diet. Of course, no one wants to live exclusively on millet—unless forced to do so as were those desperate Russian peasants. But if worse came to worst, scientists are convinced that you could live on a diet of nothing but millet, and not only survive, but become even healthier and more vigorous than you ever were.

It would be unfortunate, indeed, if you tried to live on wheat alone, even whole wheat, since this grain lacks certain of the 10 essential amino acids. But the completeness and high quality of the proteins in millet make it possible for your body to be well supplied with all the essential amino acids, even though little or no other protein foods are eaten.

This is a fact which I believe should be more widely utilized by dietitians and homemakers during times of meat scarcities and meat rationing. During our past era of meat rationing, in the days of World War II, home economists promoted, as meat substitutes, rice, macaroni, spaghetti and noodle dishes.

Starch is never a safe substitute for protein.

The only foods which should ever appear in the menu as an honest substitute for a meat dish are eggs, cheese, milk and high-protein seed cereals. By adding extra amounts of dry skim milk (a rich source of protein) to these truly protein meat substitutes, a meatless diet may be prevented from falling far below a safe daily minimum of 100 to 150 grams of protein.

Now don't get the idea that I'm recommending that you do away with meat in your diet, and substitute millet. Meat is an unexcelled, hard-to-replace food. But what I do want to impress upon you is this: If the meat situation again becomes "tight," remember that you can stretch your budget through liberal use of millet, a safe vegetable protein. Moreover, millet is almost a necessity in a vegetarian diet, because it can provide a complete protein without the need of eating a lot of bulk, something not true of most other vegetable proteins.

If there were enough meat in this country, at a fair price for everybody, then I'd say "meat twice a day, at least." But we might as well face the fact that meat is deliberately kept high-priced and scarce in this country to benefit the interests of a selfish few, rather than priced reasonably enough so plenty of meat would be available to every pocketbook, thereby appreciably raising the national health standards. The short-sightedness of some high officials in pandering to the interests of the cattle industry prevents our importing enough meat to place at least one red meat dish on every table in the nation twice a day, seven days a week—and at a price well within reach of the lowest income group. This may sound like Utopia to you. But I saw first-grade meat being sold at phenomenally low prices in Uruguay and Argentina, as it al­ways has been—and surely what these two sister countries can do, we in the great United States of America could also do for our own populace.

But it won't be done—you and I know that. In fact, the meat situation will probably be a lot worse before it gets better. And I realize there are thousands of persons living on incomes that won't permit their purchasing meat every day in the week. For that reason, I believe that more recogni­tion should be given to millet (sunflower seeds, too) as a nutritionally safe, low-cost, easily digestible meat substitute.

In addition, millet is an unusually rich source o£ riboflavin —one o£ the B-vitamins. This seed cereal also provides rich amounts of thiamin (B-i), and vitamins A and E, together with good amounts o£ the other B-complex factors. What's more, millet contains a good balance of all the minerals needed by the human body for optimum health.

SUNFLOWER SEEDS

Sunflower seeds are another highly nutritious seed food that we Americans supply generously to our parrots and our chickens, yet neglect to utilize in raising the standards of our under-par human diets.

Our health authorities have been passing up a highly palatable, first-rate source o£ high-grade protein, B-vitamins and urgently needed trace minerals by failing to acquaint the public with sunflower seeds. This is a serious oversight in a country where our health becomes worse as our civilization grows older—and where our past-forty populace is growing old prematurely because of poor diet.

Back in the days of the czars, every Russian soldier out in the campaign field was given what was called his daily "iron ration"—a two-pound bag of sunflower seeds. Because the army away from its supply bases was sometimes forced to live exclusively on these seeds, the officers furnished their men with this tasty, lightweight food knowing that it gave them all the nourishment needed to keep them in good con­dition. (Besides the protein, vitamins and other minerals, two pounds of sunflower seeds contain about 21 milligrams of iron. The average grown man requires at least 12 milligrams of iron each day for optimum health, while the average woman needs a minimum of 15 milligrams. From these figures it's easy to understand that the Russian soldier in those days must have been a red-blooded fellow.)

The Russians, Turks and Arabs living near the Black Sea and in Asia Minor chew sunflower seeds as Americans chew gum. Every Russian home in that region has a bowlful of sunflower seeds to be dipped into at all times, as our homes provide dishes of bonbons. This custom arrived in some parts of the United States where immigrants from Russia settled. In the Dakotas, for instance, several decades ago the school children were encouraged to eat sunflower seeds, called "Russian peanuts."

Within the last several years, various scientists over the country have made studies to ascertain the nutritional values of the sunflower seed. An experiment conducted at Indiana University to compare sunflower seeds with wheat germ, corn germ and soybeans obtained these results: Sunflower seed meal (the form of the seed used in the experiment) con­tains about 750 per cent more niacin than the best grade of wheat germ, and is 500 per cent richer in this important mem­ber of the B-complex group than either corn germ or soybean meal. Also, sunflower seed meal has the same total niacin value, if not more, than peanut meal, heretofore, considered an outstanding source of this vitamin. What this experi­ment means to you is that sunflower seeds are an unsurpassed source of niacin.

Further investigations revealed that sunflower seed meal contains about 60 per cent more pantothenic acid (likewise a member of the B-vitamin family, and sometimes known as the "anti-gray hair vitamin") than soybean meal; and con­siderably more pantothenic acid than either corn germ or wheat germ. It was also learned that sunflower seeds top the list of all vegetable concentrates, containing 55.4 per cent high-grade protein.

The report concluded: "Sunflower seed meal is unusually rich in bone-forming calcium. It is an excellent source of thiamin, or vitamin B-i."

We have since discovered that sunflower seeds are regular storehouses for the minerals silicon, magnesium, fluorine and phosphorus, in addition to their particularly generous amounts of calcium and iron.

Because of the flower's close affinity to the sun, sunflower seeds are an extremely rich source o£ vitamin D, being one of the very few plants containing this "sunshine vitamin." This is only natural, when we stop to recall that the sunflower is the only plant that visibly turns its head throughout the day to follow the path of the sun across the heavens.

Sunflower seeds may enter your diet in several ways. The hulled seeds make a delicious confection, with a flavor far superior, in my opinion, to peanuts. Sunflower seeds, hulled and sometimes toasted, have been a delicacy in the Orient and in Slavic countries for many centuries.

The vegetarians who have tried "meat loaf" made of ground sunflower seeds declare it to be far superior in both flavor and nourishment to any other substitute they have found. Sunflower seeds contain a protein that approaches meat protein in taste and smell. The meal made from sun­flower seeds mixes well with other flours, and bakes quickly. It is delicious, too, when used for thickening soups, gravies and sauces.

Sunflower seeds, together with millet, should be an essen­tial in every vegetarian diet, as well as in the diets of those persons who are seeking economical, easily digested, youth-protecting proteins. The protein content of sunflower seeds and millet is better balanced and more digestible than that of soybeans which, up until the present, have formed the "staff of life" for most meatless diets. If I can't persuade you vegetarians to include at least some meats, fish and poultry in your diets, then by all means let me recommend that you get acquainted at once with millet and sunflower seeds, using^ them in the ways outlined for you—and for other users, too— in Part II.

It is no surprise to me when enthusiastic reports keep com­ing in from persons who have adopted sunflower seeds as a regular item in their diets. Especially interesting is the almost unanimous praise for sunflower seeds as a food that remedies bleeding gums, and slows down tooth decay. Of course, the explanation for this is the unusually high content of the vitamins A and D, and the minerals calcium, phosphorus, silicon and fluorine, all of them nutrients directly concerned with the health o£ teeth and gums.

The calcium of raw sunflower seeds is easily assimilated by the human body. This may be one reason why eating sun­flower seeds was believed by our grandparents to cure rheuma­tism. Although no extensive research has been done on this belief as yet, still some of you who suffer from this painful ailment may wish to do some experimenting on your own. About a small handful of hulled seeds is the average daily amount that could be effective. Of course, if sunflower seed meal is available in your community, then by all means also introduce this highly nourishing staple into your meals.

J. I. Rodale, one of the country's most tireless crusaders for better nutrition—and for banning the use of chemical fertilizers—noticed that after eating sunflower seeds for about a month he could walk down a snow-covered road in the bright sunlight without suffering the eyestrain which the dazzling glare had formerly caused.

He noticed, also, that he no longer was troubled with bleeding gums after introducing sunflower seeds into his daily diet. He was further pleased to note that his skin seemed to be getting smoother. Nutritional science has proved that calcium and vitamin A—both of them generously present in sunflower seeds—are an essential in the diet of a person who desires a healthy skin.

Silicon, another mineral provided by sunflower seeds in un­usually large quantities, enters into the composition of your hair, nails, nerves, blood, albumin and teeth (aided in this last by fluorine). Laboratory research has discovered that a deficiency of silicon—a trace mineral—in the diet leads to loss of hair and early decay of teeth, as well as to a greatly lowered resistance to infection.

From what I've told you about sunflower seeds, you should need no urging to add to your diet this cereal which con­tains more riboflavin than wheat germ, and is an all-around better source o£ the B-vitamins and o£ high-grade protein than any other grain, except perhaps millet.

SESAME SEEDS

You probably know sesame seeds as the flat, light-colored seeds which are sometimes used by bakers to sprinkle over loaves o£ Vienna bread. Until recently this seed was not be­lieved to have any special nutritional value. But early in 1924 an American scientist began an exhaustive study on the nutritional values o£ sesame seeds, at the same time using these seeds as the exclusive source o£ protein and £at in his diet. As a result o£ these studies, and his own personal ex­perimentation, he found that the protein and fat in sesame seeds are unusually easy to digest. This fact makes sesame seeds o£ special value in the diets o£ invalids and persons with weak digestive organs.

Sesame seeds, together with millet and sunflower seeds, contain more lecithin than the soybean. Lecithin is a phos-phorized fat (a compound of phosphorus, fat and nitrogen) which is an important ingredient of the tissues in your nerves, brain and endocrine glands. Your nervous system, for in­stance, uses lecithin to aid in generating nerve electricity. When your nerves are plentifully supplied with lecithin, your body abounds in nervous energy; and when the supply of lecithin get low, as it does at the end of the day, your nerve energy decreases, and you say you are "tired and sleepy." A serious deficiency of lecithin in the diet can bring on a nerve exhaustion that is characterized by a chronic fatigue which rest does not alleviate.

Lecithin is also important for your brain, since your "organ of thinking" contains approximately 28 per cent of this substance, that is, provided you are sane. The brains of persons suffering from serious mental illnesses contain less than half this amount of lecithin.

Your sexual organs likewise demand liberal supplies of lecithin to manufacture normal quantities of youth-preserving hormones.

Sesame seeds are known also to contain an important amount of calcium, phosphorus, iron and trace minerals, in addition to their high content of thiamin and the other members of the vitamin B-complex family.

Introduced into your diet, in conjunction with millet and sunflower seeds, sesame seeds can provide an additional seed cereal of high nutritional value. In addition to sprinkling these seeds generously on home-baked breads and cookies (made from whole grain flour, of course), sesame seeds may also be made into a meal by crushing slightly toasted seeds under a rolling pin. This meal may then be sprinkled over salads and hot cereals, mixed with fresh or cooked vegetables for added seasoning, added to soups or combined with other seed meals in making gravies and sauces for something differ­ent in the way of a taste delight.

And when it comes to confections, if you've never eaten sesame candy or sesame cookies, you don't know what you've been missing. The Greeks, traditionally famous cooks, make liberal use of sesame seeds in their pastries and confections. I have never tasted anything more delightful than a Greek confection, called as I remember it "baklava," made prin­cipally of sesame seeds and honey. I have included in Part II a number of recipes using sesame seeds. White-sugar and white-flour confections and cookies will add unwelcome years and pounds to your face and figure. But dainties made from whole grains, natural sweeteners and sesame seeds will de­light your taste buds at the same time they provide added food values for your planned diet

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