REQUEST BUREAU OF STANDARDS FOR HEALTH DATA

In securing this information the Bureau of Standards entered on a new activity, namely as promoters of the public health. Director Burgess in his letter of March 28, 1926, said:

"In addition we would state for your information that the Bureau of Standards does not deal with the subject of foods in relation either to health or to physiologic action in their primary aspect. Investigations of the character involved in these subjects belong to the realm of medical science."

The above is a most important statement. There is one field of activity in which the Bureau of Standards has not yet entered. Nevertheless they have made a fine beginning and the nose of the camel is now under the edge of the, tent. It is to be expected that within a short time the Bureau of Standards will assume all of these medical investigations in which they have made already a very considerable start.

When the Bureau of Standards was asked to do this public health work by the committtee, it looked around to see where it could best direct its efforts. Dr. Burgess says:

"In deciding upon the sources from which to obtain the information you requested, the staffs of various Government institutions, such as the United States Public Health Service, the Hygienic Laboratory, the Army Medical School, and the Bureau of Home Economics have been consulted, and their able suggestions followed. And it may pertinently be noted at this point that in our search we have failed to find a statement by a single authority that is detrimental to the use of dextrose and levulose as human foods, or that their use as foods would cause diabetes mellitus. On the contrary we have found that all authorities are positive as to the desirability of these sugars as human foods. Their commendation of the Bureau's work on the sugars, whenever they have. had occasion to comment, has been unstinted.

This investigation into the realms of public health made by the Bureau of Standards, at the request of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce was due to a statement I made before the Committee in regard to the undesirability of increasing the amount of prechewed and predigested foods in the American dietary.

On page 113 of the hearings I said:

Now let me give you just a few more words about another feature of injury. You understand that we eat starch and fruit sugars. We digest those. If the sucrose has not been digested we digest it. If the starch has not been digested we digest it, with the functions which we have achieved in this life, and then the sugar enters the blood stream. Now what becomes of the levulose? We never find levulose in the blood stream. We find only dextrose. The sugar that is in the blood and goes to the tissnes and there is burned is always dextrose, it is never levulose. I wish I knew what became of levulose. I do not; but it is possible that there may be an enzyme, a digestive enzyme, that converts levulose into dextrose. Suppose you have too much starch and too much sugar. You cannot burn it all at once. It is converted into an inert substance called glycogen and is stored up in this condition in the liver and in the tissues. The burning of the sugar in the blood is activated by the pancreas. Now if we flood our stomachs with dextrose, then we will need half a dozen artificial pancreases to take care of it, and there is the real danger, the threatening danger, as every wise physiologist will tell you, from that source. So that both by reason of paralysis of our digestive apparatus through lack of functioning that is a threat in itself, and by reason of the increase of the amount of dextrose which we ingest far above what we need we endanger our health in the most serious way. So that I voice now, and with all the emphasis I can put on it, my disagreement with every other person, except Dr. Menges, who has testified here, and it has been unanimous almost, who has said that this predigested and prechewed dextrose is harmless. I deny it and I think I have most scientific grounds to convince you, gentlemen, that it is not a harmless substance. In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to say that I labored for 22 years before I saw the fruits of my labors in the Food and Drugs Act. I did not give myself the name ' but I am universally acclaimed as the father of the Food and Drugs Act, as I am universally acclaimed as the father of the Beet Sugar Industry. I see both of my children threatened, and I have a parental love. Now I have lived long enough to see my two alleged children grow up almost to their majority. Twenty years old they are. I do not want to live long enough to see them crucified."