Food For Thought and Humans

The Blog about the birth of the animal food industry having been mentioned, where does the super animal food come in? One company has advertised that they have a food for every animal on earth. That sounds to me to be an ad before Darwin since we know we, too are animals. When it comes to human nutrition we have learned a great deal about it from studies and observations of lower animals over the years. On trying to appreciate why a single commercial food complete in nutrition has not been provided for humans it may be that no one believes the human animal is as worthy as our pets and domesticated animals for whom we have wonderful single item diets. There are dozens of brands of dog and cat foods that can be fed to those animals with nothing else for long and healthy lives. Why not humans?
Think of the advantage of having such a food for starving children. One human biscuit a day with water could be eaten by anyone with all the necessary ingredients for healthy lives. We don't even do it for our astronauts. Even they are given a variety of nutritious food.
Don't overlook parts of our own population who know and care less about the proper diets for good health. If our poor people who cannot know about nutrition had a box of human biscuits on hand their nutrition would be assured. But the starving children we constantly hear about and see via TV could at least be fed properly rather than our donating one item such as corn, rice or wheat none of which come close to being a complete food.
Could this be a question of those who would not benefit by a human biscuit would scream against such a diet such as vitamin manufacturers? There is such an obvious need as well as solution with our knowledge about human nutrition that it is almost criminal not to have such an item on earth.

The Dawn of Comercial Animal Food

One reason for our family moving from the city of New Haven to The Town of Orange in 1930 was to provide my father, Leon F. Whitney with the space he needed to keep large numbers of dogs to study the inheritance of characteristics. As an example breeds of dogs that were born to hunt for birds run with their heads held high where as a bloodhound runs with his nose to the ground. If crossed would the puppies grow up to run like a setter or a bloodhound? The answer is that all the puppies run with their heads held high. To breed and raise large numbers of dogs takes a lot of food and in those days there was no balanced ration for any animals other than for rats and mice. With 18 or 20 bloodhounds and many coon hounds and various collies, cocker spaniels and beagles and other breeds there was a need for a good balanced food. So what to do? The answer was simple, compound one ourselves. Dad had anticipated an attempt to solving that problem and when our garage was planned an extra closed in bay of the garage was planned. It would be a "rat" laboratory heated with an oil stove. Dad constructed shelves from floor to ceiling. He made rat cages out of hardware cloth which is the name of quarter inch wire mesh with elevated bottoms and no tops. The shelves above would be the tops of the cages.
I don't recall where he got a few pairs of rats but in a year the shelves were full of occupied rat cages. That was the time when the members of the veterinary profession declared that dogs were carnivores and had to have fresh meat to flourish.
It was my paid job to care for the 200 or so rats. Food and water daily and clean the cages weekly. The salary was $1 a week. Each cage of the two top shelves had 4 adult females and one male. It was my job to separate the pregnant females before they gave birth. The weened youngsters would be divided half as controls and half on a different diet and each young rat was weighed weekly to compare weight gains of the two groups. Soon we had a rat food that would grow rats twice as fast and healthier than the commercial rat food. Food for our White Isle Kennel required purchasing all the ingredients necessary and mixing and storing it. My father studied nutrition and found we required 24 different ingredients. The two car garage was sanitized and the bases of the diet, bread meal was piled on one side of the garage with ingredient such as alfalfa leaf meal, bone, fish, beef and on and on with each carefully weighed down to small quantities. Then began a slow process of shoveling the pile to the other side of the garage to mix it. At first we mixed several hundred pounds and eventually a thousand pounds at a time. To be sure some of the trace elements were well mixed required hours of shoveling back and forth.
In studying the per cent protien and trace elements in each component of the food and minerals as well as the same values in each ingreedient resulted in necessary nutritionsl knowledge. It amounted to a self learned home earned degree in canine nutritian.
At this time, questioning the knowledge of that time that dogs could not tolerate much fat in their diets, dad wondered about that idea when he knew dogs often killed animals such as woodchucks and ate the whole animal including the fat. Inquiring about beef fat he was told he could have all he wanted for the taking as the butcher had to pay to dispose of it. Soon dad found his dogs could tolerate up to 20 per cent of their diets as fat and flourished. The new food with fat added resulted in the healthiest looking and active hunting dogs imaginable.
For a short time we donated food to a few kennel owners and the results were so outstanding a company put the formula on the market and that was really the start of the commercial pet food industry in our country. It started as Baloration in Brooklyn, NY, was purchased by Tioga Mills in Waverly, NY and renamed Tioga Dog food. During WWII the formula became too expensive and rather than cheapening the formula my father insisted on stopping the production.
It was royalties from the sales of that dog food that later paid for a veterinary degree for both my father and for me.

All Work and No Play? No Way

Being enthusiastic about my new book, "Come Run With Me," creating a fad for seniors running this is a chapter in that book. You may reach a point, perhaps when you are able to jog for an hour after about 6 months of effort that you will say to yourself,"Imagine, I have always been against work and here I am working at jogging and it's fun." Believe me it will happen and that may be the time for a celebration. If there are others or not plan a special excursion that could even be a regular event. In anticipation of your celebration join the Sierra Club and they will give you a back pack just for joining. For just yourself or more assign one to be the "Pack Rat" for that day and perhaps have a back-up pack-rat. You provide a very light lunch for you and your group and the Back-up will carry the blanket and water or orange juice for a jaunt to an out of door location for the victory picnic. As the designated Pack Rat you can decide how far you and your group will travel as well as the location and all have a celebration while communing with nature. At that gathering you may find all the new joggers mentioning how good they feel for the modest effort in adopting my program and having reached the point of being able to, "Come Run With Me. Be it known, I am delighted, too.

Marijuana, grass,drugs

Recently I read of confiscation of four tons of marijuana by our ever vigilant government agents. I don't know how many cigarettes a ton of the weed can make but it has to be way in excess of a million. That drug "bust" was not even enough news to receive a mention in any of the regular press I read. I would think that volume of grass would make the cost of that product soar in price on the street wouldn't you? I am told such a paltry amount would not effect the price because only about ten percent of the hemp smuggled into our country is confiscated. I wonder how much we tax payers pay to keep the ten percent out? Isn't it a farce that we spend anything if our citizens have so much of the drug where they can get it when they want it? It has to be criminals who do the smuggling but it has to be more than the criminals who use it.
For me at 90 plus years of age its the old story of a repeat of history. The rape of us all by the financial geniuses in 1929 has recently been repeated and the prohibition of a much worse drug than marijuana was drinking alcohol. Isn't time we repeal that law and spend the loose change we now pay to stop it to control its use and educate our users why it's not good for you?
Apparently this drug is so commonly used that if a secret vote were taken it seems to me it would be legalized. I don't imbibe in much alcohol and none of the other but on the spot tests could be developed and the guilty should have their cars taken and auctioned off for driving under the influence of any drug.I would think the MADD folks would agree.

Running Observations

The Autumn on the Sound 5k race this year was won by an M40 year old runner and I had a talk with him. He was aware that I had started running late in life and he had wanted me to know that he had been an average runner in his younger days but had given it up until recently when he restarted our sport. Since restarting he has become faster and faster as he trained in spite of his aging. There is an old rule of thumb that after starting runners reach their prime in ten years. For me starting at eighty years it was five years when I was awarded the distinction of being, "outstanding athlete" for the year 2004 in my 80-89 year old class. Dorothy, my late wife commented, "Yes but that's only in the United States." The award was from the USATF, the largest group representing Track and Field in our land. I wonder if some of the runners of old who have given up the sport restarted, would they excel in their new age groups? I believe they would be surprised in their latent ability. How can they be encouraged?
At that race I made a discovery about which I have hesitated to mention without more data. I have asked dozens of runners if they had headaches. It was a first when a young runner said he had occasional headaches. That brings forth another question, do people with migraine headaches ever run for any reason? It would be interesting if those with that debilitating problem were never runners. You and I could something about that. Get them running,

A Tragedy of Best Intentions

It had to be 20 or so years ago that a speaker came to our Rotary Club in Orange, Connecticut with a plea for funds for a program of Rotary International to stamp out poliomyelitis from the Philippines. It seems polio was the number one killer of children with an obscene percent of the children dying from the malady. Having been interested in population explosion over the years I was aware that the Philippines was listed as one of the poor nations with more population than food with a high death rate of starving children. After his talk the speaker asked for questions and I raised my hand to ask about the fate of more children surviving as the result of Rotary inoculations. I recall the answer as if it were today. He said,"That's a philosophical problem. Next question?"
The sad story of children starving all over the world will some day become a dark side of our history. Next to war it should be considered the darkest side. Polio was completely stamped out in the Philippines due in part to my club's contributions. Today there are children migrating to cities all over the world where they beg for food or money to buy it. I am still a Rotarian and at this point our National effort is to stamp out polio from the earth. A laudable activity? Even more laudable would be a world-wide effort to stop over population. The most humanitarian effort mankind should put forth is population control. Birth control in all forms should be our most important effort since we have discovered that there is a limit as to how much food our planet can produce. I often receive 4 and more requests for funds to save starving children the world over in each day's mail and the riots in our great cities from over population should not be necessary to fire up our population to declare it high on the list of subjects of importance to address. What a sad situation. Save the children from polio and watch them die of starvation on the streets a few years later.

Jobs Jobs Jobs

President Obama has hit the economic downturn running with ideas he has said will take time and what does not work will be discarded and others tried. Here is an idea that could provide jobs and help peoples lives worldwide including those who choose to accept a job in our new Army. We can form an army armed with knowledge as its armaments. We know the Peace Corps was and is an impressive success so our new army will be designed in part as was the Peace Corps. The plan is to develop perhaps millions of members trained in all forms of needs of people over the earth. People who would go forth and fill a need. How about an example or two. There is a desire of better education in Otherland but that country does not have the resources to provide more than the most basic education for its people. Our new army has representatives over the world looking for positions to identify as needy and put in an order of those trained to help. School houses will have to be built and there is no wood so people trained in making bricks will be part of a team to go on the spot and show the locals how to make bricks with masons to teach how to lay up bricks and there will have to be teachers to teach the natives the best in teaching. If health has needs in Otherland we will have our trained personell join the platoon involved with the education to train natives to be useful teaching including health for that particular group. At this end we will have our colleges geared to train our privates or officers in teaching all the possible subjects required for helping the people in Otherland.
Think of it, an army composed of privates, noncoms and officers versed in any and all specialties that any people in other lands could benefit from and at no cost to them. Even have countries might request a teacher in zoo husbandry. If our army did not have such a discipline in ranks some could be identified to take a course of study to equip one or more individuals to fill that need. Our Army would soon be known for its widespread cooperation with others. Those working in the field would personally benefit in learning about another culture with its problems as well as the recipients who would demand that no terrorist injure the goose that lays the golden eggs. One need might lead to others. Could the new US Army supply help in agriculture? Each of our State universities have agriculture courses and could create special courses for helping the likes of the needs of Otherland.
Do you suppose such an Army could become so successful that it might eventually replace the need of the U S Army as we know it today?