The Denmark Story
This story was told by Dr.
Kenneth Johnson in his 1993 book, "Mormon Wisdom and Health." We met this
wonderful physician from Arizona some years ago at a health conference. He
is deceased now, and the book is no longer in print; but I feel certain
that Dr. Johnson would be pleased to have us share the story with our
readers.
"The Denmark
Story"
From Mormon Wisdom and Health: A Medical Review of Mormon Doctrine
Dr. Kenneth E. Johnson, M.D.
From Mormon Wisdom and Health: A Medical Review of Mormon Doctrine
Dr. Kenneth E. Johnson, M.D.
World War I became the world's
concern in 1914, and a remarkable story[1] from that period has great
implications for us, even today.
Dr. Martin Hindhede, chairman of the Danish Institute of Nutrition, had become convinced by previous research that a vegetarian-type diet would be beneficial for human health. He also knew that meat production required large quantities of grains and other plant foods. (Today we know that the production of one pound of meat protein requires six to ten pounds of plant protein.)[2]
Under a land and sea blockade by the Germans, Denmark could import no grains to support meat production, and its people were faced with severe food shortages. Dr. Hindhede convinced the Danes to embark on a large nutritional experiment that required a drastic change in the foods they ate. They slaughtered 80 percent of their hogs and 34 percent of their dairy cows. The grain that had previously been used to feed hogs and cattle became the major part of a new diet for the Danish people.
They started producing "war bread" from whole rye flour with 15 percent wheat and wheat bran. Until the war ended, each person by governmental decree was allowed a daily allowance of "very little meat" and small amounts of butter and milk. The main dietary staples were potatoes, cereals, and vegetables. Alcohol was forbidden, and no tea, coffee or tobacco were available. In essence, the large-scale Danish experiment observed all tenets of the Word of Wisdom.
The diet was low-meat, low-protein, low-cholesterol, low-fat and high-fiber.
Within a matter of weeks, the benefit of the Danes' new food plan was apparent. During the year from October 1917 to October1918 when food restrictions were the most severe, the death rate from disease had dropped over 34% from the average of the preceding 18 years. It was the lowest ever known in Europe. Furthermore, Denmark was the only nation in Europe not to have a significant rise in the death rate as a consequence of the 1917 influenza epidemic (emphasis ours). That statistic gives additional credence to recent evidence that a plant-centered diet increases immunity to infectious disease.
The Danish experiment vividly illustrates the waste that occurs when grains are cycled through livestock. As John Robbins points out in Diet For a New America,[3] animal production wastes 90 percent of the grain's protein, 96 percent of its calories, 100 percent of its fiber, and 100 percent of its carbohydrates.
In the years that followed, nutritional scientists began to study the effect of the consumption of animal products on health and disease. Mountains of data are now available to show this relationship.
As the science of nutrition progressed during the first half of the twentieth century, the LDS population continued to grow. Most Church converts emigrated to Zion in Utah.
During the leadership of seventh LDS church President Heber J. Grant, from 1918 to 1945, scientists first began to realize that tobacco was a deadly habit. President Grant was a strong proponent of the Word of Wisdom, preaching frequently about the revelation's ban on alcohol, tobacco, tea, and coffee.
He was also concerned about the food plan in of the Word of Wisdom. In 1925, President Grant exclaimed that:
President Grant died just before the end of World War II in 1945. Ezra Taft Benson, then an apostle, traveled to Europe to assess the postwar damage and determine the needs of the starving Saints.[6]
The first statistics that caught my medical attention as a young doctor were the death rates of Europeans under Nazi occupation during and after the war. The graph on the next page shows that during the Nazi occupation, deaths from heart disease, strokes, and other circulatory diseases dropped dramatically in Norway.[7] Caloric intake was low; no one was fat. Despite hunger and stress, these people were protected from fatal strokes and heart attacks. As soon as the war ended, milk, eggs, and meat became available, and the death rates rose to pre-war levels.
When President George Albert Smith became the eighth president of the LDS Church in 1945, it seems clear that he made choices about his food habits that relate to the Word of Wisdom. His son-in-law recorded, "In the summer he eats no meat, and even in the winter months he eats very little." [8]
In 1950, Apostle John A. Widtsoe and his wife, Leah, published a book, The Word of Wisdom, A Modern Interpretation.[9] Learned and well esteemed, Apostle Widtsoe was a Norwegian immigrant and Harvard graduate. In the light of today's knowledge his book deserves review and comment. Interestingly, it never mentions the word cholesterol and mentions the word fiber only a few times. Of course, most facts about cholesterol and fiber were not known in 1950. Today they are the "buzz words" in the news and health media.
Widtsoe's book came under some unjust criticism because of his indictment of white flour. His indictment was based on the fact that in 1950 the white flour was stripped of most of its vitamins, minerals, and protein. Now we know that the refinement process also strips flour of its fiber. Today's "enriched" white flour is supplemented with added nutrients, but is still missing the fiber.
Forty years ago when Widtsoe sought the truth, he relied on faith in the Word of Wisdom revelation. He wrote in his book:
The following, in his own words, gives us a challenge for modern living:
[1] Hindhede M., "Die Neue Ernahrungslehre," (1923); also Hindhede M., Fuldkommen Sundhed (1934); "The Effect of Food Restriction During War on Mortality in Copenhagen," JAMA, 74381, (1920)
[2] Lappe, F., Diet For A New Planet (New York, NY: Ballentine Books, 1982); Altschul, A., Proteins: Their Chemistry and Politics (New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1965).
[3] Robbins, J., Diet For a New America (Walpole, NH: Still Publishing, 1987).
[4] Grant, H., Conference Report (Salt Lake City, UT: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 1925), p.10.
[5] Grant, H., Conference Report (Salt Lake City, UT: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 1937), p. 15.
[6] Benson, E., A Labor of Love (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Co., 1989).
[7] Malmos, H., "The Relation of Nutrition to Health," Acta Med. Scand., (1950)
[8] Quoted in Gerald E. Jones, Concern for Animals as Manifest in Five American Churches: Bible Christian, Shaker, Latter-day Saint, Christian Scientist and Seventh-Day Adventist, Ph.D. diss.,Brigham Young University (1972), p.111.
[9] Widtsoe, J. and L., The Word of Wisdom, A Modern Interpretation (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1950).
[10] Widtsoe, J and L, The Word of Wisdom, A Modern Interpretation (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, (1950)
"I have read this book and it has convinced me to change my diet."
CHARLES R. SMART, M.D.
FORMER CHIEF, NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE, EARLY DETECTION BRANCH,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
"As a physician, I have learned that the human body is a marvelous and rugged, biologic machine, especially when it is cared for and treated properly. I also understand and appreciate that the body will, with neglect and abuse, become prematurely worn out causing misery, suffering and even death. By personal experience and scientific documentation I know that a healthy heart requires both proper diet and appropriate exercise. The evidence is overwhelming. And what is most amazing of all is that this prescription for good health and well-being was given to Joseph Smith more than 160 years ago."
KENNETH E. JOHNSON, M.D.
AUTHOR
"We are an overfed and undernourished nation, digging an early grave with our teeth. . . . We need a generation of young people, who as Daniel, eat in a more healthy manner."
PRESIDENT EZRA TAFT BENSON
BYU TALK (1979)
"Mortality is the time for the spirit to constrain and discipline the body's appetites. The choices made on a day to day basis determine whether one lives a long, healthy life or dies prematurely from degenerative diseases."
JAMES O. MASON, M.D.
AUTHOR OF "ATTITUDES TOWARD HEALTH,"
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MORMONISM, 1992
FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Dr. Martin Hindhede, chairman of the Danish Institute of Nutrition, had become convinced by previous research that a vegetarian-type diet would be beneficial for human health. He also knew that meat production required large quantities of grains and other plant foods. (Today we know that the production of one pound of meat protein requires six to ten pounds of plant protein.)[2]
Under a land and sea blockade by the Germans, Denmark could import no grains to support meat production, and its people were faced with severe food shortages. Dr. Hindhede convinced the Danes to embark on a large nutritional experiment that required a drastic change in the foods they ate. They slaughtered 80 percent of their hogs and 34 percent of their dairy cows. The grain that had previously been used to feed hogs and cattle became the major part of a new diet for the Danish people.
They started producing "war bread" from whole rye flour with 15 percent wheat and wheat bran. Until the war ended, each person by governmental decree was allowed a daily allowance of "very little meat" and small amounts of butter and milk. The main dietary staples were potatoes, cereals, and vegetables. Alcohol was forbidden, and no tea, coffee or tobacco were available. In essence, the large-scale Danish experiment observed all tenets of the Word of Wisdom.
The diet was low-meat, low-protein, low-cholesterol, low-fat and high-fiber.
Within a matter of weeks, the benefit of the Danes' new food plan was apparent. During the year from October 1917 to October1918 when food restrictions were the most severe, the death rate from disease had dropped over 34% from the average of the preceding 18 years. It was the lowest ever known in Europe. Furthermore, Denmark was the only nation in Europe not to have a significant rise in the death rate as a consequence of the 1917 influenza epidemic (emphasis ours). That statistic gives additional credence to recent evidence that a plant-centered diet increases immunity to infectious disease.
The Danish experiment vividly illustrates the waste that occurs when grains are cycled through livestock. As John Robbins points out in Diet For a New America,[3] animal production wastes 90 percent of the grain's protein, 96 percent of its calories, 100 percent of its fiber, and 100 percent of its carbohydrates.
In the years that followed, nutritional scientists began to study the effect of the consumption of animal products on health and disease. Mountains of data are now available to show this relationship.
As the science of nutrition progressed during the first half of the twentieth century, the LDS population continued to grow. Most Church converts emigrated to Zion in Utah.
During the leadership of seventh LDS church President Heber J. Grant, from 1918 to 1945, scientists first began to realize that tobacco was a deadly habit. President Grant was a strong proponent of the Word of Wisdom, preaching frequently about the revelation's ban on alcohol, tobacco, tea, and coffee.
He was also concerned about the food plan in of the Word of Wisdom. In 1925, President Grant exclaimed that:
No man who breaks the Word of Wisdom can gain the same amount of knowledge and intelligence in this world as the man who obeys that law. I don't care who he is or where he comes from, his mind will not be as clear, and he cannot advance as far and as rapidly and retain his power as much as he would if he obeyed the Word of Wisdom.[4]Twelve years later he said,
I think that another reason I have very splendid strength for an old man is that during the years we have had a cafeteria in the Utah Hotel I have not, with the exception of not more than a dozen times, ordered meat of any kind. On these special occasions I have mentioned I have perhaps had a small tender lamb chop. I have endeavored to live the Word of Wisdom and that, in my opinion, is one reason for my good health.[5]President Grant's statement about breaking the Word of Wisdom is similar to one made by his contemporary, film producer Cecil B. DeMille, who said, "The history of mankind has shown us, we cannot break God's laws, rather we break ourselves against them."
President Grant died just before the end of World War II in 1945. Ezra Taft Benson, then an apostle, traveled to Europe to assess the postwar damage and determine the needs of the starving Saints.[6]
The first statistics that caught my medical attention as a young doctor were the death rates of Europeans under Nazi occupation during and after the war. The graph on the next page shows that during the Nazi occupation, deaths from heart disease, strokes, and other circulatory diseases dropped dramatically in Norway.[7] Caloric intake was low; no one was fat. Despite hunger and stress, these people were protected from fatal strokes and heart attacks. As soon as the war ended, milk, eggs, and meat became available, and the death rates rose to pre-war levels.
When President George Albert Smith became the eighth president of the LDS Church in 1945, it seems clear that he made choices about his food habits that relate to the Word of Wisdom. His son-in-law recorded, "In the summer he eats no meat, and even in the winter months he eats very little." [8]
In 1950, Apostle John A. Widtsoe and his wife, Leah, published a book, The Word of Wisdom, A Modern Interpretation.[9] Learned and well esteemed, Apostle Widtsoe was a Norwegian immigrant and Harvard graduate. In the light of today's knowledge his book deserves review and comment. Interestingly, it never mentions the word cholesterol and mentions the word fiber only a few times. Of course, most facts about cholesterol and fiber were not known in 1950. Today they are the "buzz words" in the news and health media.
Widtsoe's book came under some unjust criticism because of his indictment of white flour. His indictment was based on the fact that in 1950 the white flour was stripped of most of its vitamins, minerals, and protein. Now we know that the refinement process also strips flour of its fiber. Today's "enriched" white flour is supplemented with added nutrients, but is still missing the fiber.
Forty years ago when Widtsoe sought the truth, he relied on faith in the Word of Wisdom revelation. He wrote in his book:
Conflicts may appear between the teaching of science and the Word of Wisdom…. The Food and Nutrition Committee of the National Research Council recommends meat daily; but the Word of Wisdom says definitely [eat] meat sparingly and then only in winter or famine. In time the scientist will prove that the teaching of the inspired Word is correct and until then it may be relied on as a safe guide…. To date, nothing has been discovered to set at naught any truth taught in the Word of Wisdom, and if we may judge by the past, all statements made therein will in time be proved true. (emphasis added)Many of the things that Widtsoe wrote have been confirmed by subsequent medical and scientific studies.
The following, in his own words, gives us a challenge for modern living:
It was shown early in the history of plant science that plants contain all of the necessary food substances: proteins, fats, starches and other carbohydrates, minerals and water. Later it was discovered that the plant kingdom is the best source of the sixth necessary group of food substances, vitamins.It has been more than forty years since the above words were written by Apostle Widtsoe, who brought into clear focus the spiritual reality of the Word of Wisdom and its relation to the medical and scientific truth of that time.
The great Builder of the earth provided well for the physical needs of His children. Countless varieties of edible plants, vegetables, cereals, fruits and nuts are yielded by Mother Nature for man's daily food. Some furnish one predominating food element, some another, each filling some need of the human structure, as bricks in a wall, or as promoters of proper metabolism, to secure his health.
Man should partake in plenty of all edible fruits and vegetables. It is a mistake for a normal person to say: "I don't like this vegetable or that," and refuse to eat it. Children should be taught…to eat and enjoy all the different kinds of vegetables so that their bodies may grow in bone strength and nerve tone a well as in size. This practice should be encouraged in adults as well, for all have need of the nutritive value of fruits and vegetables.
Most fruits should be eaten raw, fully ripe, and "in the season thereof." Fruits and vegetables should be eaten in liberal amounts by young and old, and with grain products should form the bulk of the human dietary.
If one uses meat it must be used sparingly and in winter or famine only, as stated in this wise law of health. They who wish to be well and gain the promised reward stated in the Word of Wisdom must obey all of the law, not just part of it as suits their whim or their appetite, or their notion of its meaning.
...The foods used by many careless or uniformed modern civilized people yield a shortage, in greater or lesser degree, of many necessary food factors, especially of vitamins and minerals. This is because so much of the food of so-called civilized man today is preserved, salted, sugared, purified, polished, pickled, canned, extracted, distilled, concentrated, heated, dried, frozen, thawed, stored, packaged, processed and refined! …The Word of Wisdom warns against the "evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days."
If prudence is knowledge applied to daily need, then one with an intelligent interest in food and good life habits is in no sense a faddist or "crank." Indeed, every one should have such a sound fundamental knowledge of nutrition.
The most ardent Word of Wisdom enthusiasts cannot claim that this inspired document gives the last detailed word in nutritional advice. Scientific knowledge concerning man's diet is yet in its infancy. Many new angles to old truths are being discovered constantly. When such are definitely established in the best laboratories of nutrition to be facts, not mere theories, then they may be accepted and used and they will be found to be in harmony with the general principles set forth by the Word of Wisdom. The advice in the Word of Wisdom to use prudence in all these things implies that one should be ready to accept and apply new truth." [10] (emphasis added)
[1] Hindhede M., "Die Neue Ernahrungslehre," (1923); also Hindhede M., Fuldkommen Sundhed (1934); "The Effect of Food Restriction During War on Mortality in Copenhagen," JAMA, 74381, (1920)
[2] Lappe, F., Diet For A New Planet (New York, NY: Ballentine Books, 1982); Altschul, A., Proteins: Their Chemistry and Politics (New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1965).
[3] Robbins, J., Diet For a New America (Walpole, NH: Still Publishing, 1987).
[4] Grant, H., Conference Report (Salt Lake City, UT: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 1925), p.10.
[5] Grant, H., Conference Report (Salt Lake City, UT: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 1937), p. 15.
[6] Benson, E., A Labor of Love (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Co., 1989).
[7] Malmos, H., "The Relation of Nutrition to Health," Acta Med. Scand., (1950)
[8] Quoted in Gerald E. Jones, Concern for Animals as Manifest in Five American Churches: Bible Christian, Shaker, Latter-day Saint, Christian Scientist and Seventh-Day Adventist, Ph.D. diss.,Brigham Young University (1972), p.111.
[9] Widtsoe, J. and L., The Word of Wisdom, A Modern Interpretation (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1950).
[10] Widtsoe, J and L, The Word of Wisdom, A Modern Interpretation (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, (1950)
NOTES FROM THE BOOK JACKET
"I have read this book and it has convinced me to change my diet."
CHARLES R. SMART, M.D.
FORMER CHIEF, NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE, EARLY DETECTION BRANCH,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
DR. JOHNSON'S COMMENTS ON HEART DISEASE, CANCER, AND
OSTEOPOROSIS
"Angina is the agonal cry of an abused heart" -- Chapter 8
"Cancer is a self-inflicted beast" - Chapter 6
"Too much of a good thing and not enough of another causes osteoporosis" - Chapter 9
"Angina is the agonal cry of an abused heart" -- Chapter 8
"Cancer is a self-inflicted beast" - Chapter 6
"Too much of a good thing and not enough of another causes osteoporosis" - Chapter 9
"As a physician, I have learned that the human body is a marvelous and rugged, biologic machine, especially when it is cared for and treated properly. I also understand and appreciate that the body will, with neglect and abuse, become prematurely worn out causing misery, suffering and even death. By personal experience and scientific documentation I know that a healthy heart requires both proper diet and appropriate exercise. The evidence is overwhelming. And what is most amazing of all is that this prescription for good health and well-being was given to Joseph Smith more than 160 years ago."
KENNETH E. JOHNSON, M.D.
AUTHOR
"We are an overfed and undernourished nation, digging an early grave with our teeth. . . . We need a generation of young people, who as Daniel, eat in a more healthy manner."
PRESIDENT EZRA TAFT BENSON
BYU TALK (1979)
"Mortality is the time for the spirit to constrain and discipline the body's appetites. The choices made on a day to day basis determine whether one lives a long, healthy life or dies prematurely from degenerative diseases."
JAMES O. MASON, M.D.
AUTHOR OF "ATTITUDES TOWARD HEALTH,"
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MORMONISM, 1992
FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
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