Although scientists have learnt how to provide laboratory animals with perfectly constituted food it is not usually possible for similar arrangements to be made for humans.

The best opportunity to do so is when they are in hospital but this is seldom attempted except in exceptional circumstances. It has been found, when the prolonged use of liquid food is necessary, that providing the main components of diet is insufficient and that many additions are required to sustain good health.

Today most people know about carbohydrates, fats and proteins, but few are informed about the vitamins and minerals, which are needed to enable these foods to be used to full advantage. Our bodies can be imagined as containing a multitude of complex interacting production lines which go slow or breakdown when just one of the many components necessary for their efficient operation are absent.

Most food is used to supply energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is used to contract muscles, to produce heat, which maintains body temperature, and for many other purposes. ATP cannot be stored so its production has to be very carefully regulated. When too much is produced people become hyperactive, but when too little is produced they suffer from depression.

Our brains use more ATP per unit of weight than any other structure so that when it becomes under supplied with the glucose it uses form ATP, the need to eat is sensed and appetite is stimulated.
It is good to feel hungry at meal times but when the production of ATP is too slow the sensation of hunger becomes more frequent and the food that cannot be utilised is added to the fat deposits, or added to the blood as either glucose or cholesterol. Thus obesity, diabetes or arteriosclerosis develops, depending upon the genetics and the diet of the person concerned.

Some become obese because they fail to take sufficient exercise. But it is more likely that most obese people suffer from a mineral or vitamin deficiency, which restricts their ability to produce ATP. When a doctor identifies someone with a high concentration of either glucose or cholesterol in their blood, drugs are usually prescribed and advice is given to eat less. This has the appearance of being good advice but it treats the obvious symptoms while failing to correct the cause.
When the National Health Service was set up 60 years ago it became possible for doctors to prescribe medicinal drugs free of charge, but they were prevented from prescribing nutritional supplements in the same way. Despite the objections of a few farsighted and knowledgeable people this situation has been allowed to continue.

The result is the present health of the nation and the massive, probably unsustainable, cost of the health service. Medical science has been perverted so that too much attention is being given to the given discovery and prescription of drugs, and insufficient attention being to the part played by minerals and vitamins in sustaining good health. It is impossible to substitute a drug for either a mineral or vitamin, yet it is common practice for doctors to prescribe drugs for ailments which have their origin in defective nutrition. The consequences can be observed whenever people gather together.

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