Anticipation of Christmas hung heavily in the air.  The crops had been profuse that year with an abundant harvest of grains, tobacco, and beef, but winter had come early to the piedmont of North Carolina.  It had been cold enough in late October to kill hogs which was unusual.  The cold allowed the hams and shoulders to chill properly before being placed in the smoke house. There had even been snow and freezing rain the week of Thanksgiving.  Now in mid-December, everyone in the house was sick with some type of cold or maybe even the flu.

“I am not putting up with everyone being sick as a dog for Christmas,” my dad muttered on Saturday morning.  “I am going to do something about this,” and he left in a rush out the door in our two-tone ’58 Chevy Impala.  Our chore that morning was to load up the truck with corn and oats from the storage and take them to the mill to be ground into feed for the cows, mules, and horses.  When my brother and I arrived at the mill, a real treat to go with big brother, dad was there ‘chewing the fat’ with some other farmers.  He had a three gallon bucket of feed additive from the mill which turned out to be sulfured black strap molasses.

We returned home and dad had made it back as well.  He had added a gallon of cod liver oil to his collection of items necessary to save Christmas.  Every day from then until Christmas, we would line up for our dose of cod liver oil and a fresh home-made biscuit slathered with sulfured black strap molasses. What a waste of a hot biscuit-sulfured molasses-yuk!  By Christmas, everyone had become well and as best as I remember, no one was sick the rest of the winter.  This was my first introduction to healing through nutrition.

Black strap molasses or the syrup remaining after crystallization of the sugar from sugar cane is loaded with minerals that include: iron, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and trace minerals manganese, copper, and selenium.  The sulfur in the molasses comes from the addition of sulfur dioxide to young cane molasses as a preservative.  Because of the large amounts of concentrated minerals, it is commonly added to ground feed for cattle.  Cod liver oil is a very good source of vitamin D3 and vitamin A complexes that some researchers now say may not be the proper balance of vitamin D to vitamin A.  However, when you are deficient in both, it works like magic to boast a slumbering immune system.

How did we get to the point where claims cannot be made that nutrition will heal you from disease?  If we went to the doctor with a cold, he would not dare suggest that the reason for the cold was poor nutrition.  Only drugs can be defined as healing a disease.  Under American law, when we say that something will heal a disease, it automatically becomes a drug.  Are sulfured molasses and cod liver oil drugs?  I guess it depends on what ‘the meaning of is is.”

We have previously explored most of the nutrients listed, but not sulfur.  I was surprised to find that there is not a DRI for sulfur even though it is one of the most abundant elements in our bodies and represents about one half percent of our total weight.  It is sulfur in combination with magnesium and vitamin C that is responsible for collagen production and it is sulfur that holds our synovial fluid together for lubrication of our joints.

I did not mention that dad also brought home a large bag of Indian River oranges from Florida and I am sure that was for the vitamin C.  Somehow, even with the abundance of foods that were farm-to-table, we did not have the right combination of nutrients needed for our health.  Ah the wisdom in the treatment of disease that has been lost so that medical institutions can profit under the guise of protecting our health.  – Pandemic Survivor