MINERALS AND TRACE MINERALS
U.S. GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT NO. 264
“No longer does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist of so many calories or certain vitamins or a fixed proportion of starches, proteins, and carbohydrates. We know that it must contain in addition something like a score of mineral salts.”
“It is bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99% of the American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals actually results in disease. Any upset of the balance, any considerable lack of one or another element, however microscopic the body requirement may be, and we sicken, suffer, shorten our lives!”
Dr. Charles Northern has said that because many of the fruits and vegetables which we buy are grown in soils poor in minerals and that when soils lack the major and trace minerals, the plants do not contain sufficient of them to ward off deficiency diseases when we eat them in normal amounts.
Dr. Northern also stated “In the absence of minerals, vitamins have no function. Lacking vitamins, the system can make use of the minerals, but lacking minerals, the vitamins are useless.
Linda Clark, M.A. said, “We may be looking frantically for health in the wrong direction. Vitamins play their part, of course, but the minerals liberate the vitamins to do their work.”
Dr. Kurt W. Donsbach said, “Remember this about minerals: They work in unison and are inter-related in their nutritional effects. Like vitamins, only a complete pattern of the various mineral complexes is sufficient to do the job.”
Major minerals are those found in larger amounts in the body. Trace minerals are found in very minute amounts. They are just as important as the major minerals. Each has its own job to do. Minerals and trace minerals are the catalysts in the body.
Herbert H. Boyington and Mark McCarty said, “Trace minerals can literally mean the difference between good health and serious disease. They are absolutely vital to our health and well being, though our daily requirements for them are sometimes thousands of times smaller than for the major minerals.