Note that the proportion of minerals to proteins, proteins to carbohydrates, and carbohydrates to water is uniformly around one to eight and one to nine. This elegant progression is broken by the proportion of fats, in a four-to-one relationship with proteins, and a one to two-and-a-half relationship with carbohydrates. Two surprising facts emerge here. First: in this perfect food for infants, which makes them double their birth weight in six months, the amount of protein present is only slightly over 1 percent. Nature doesn’ t seem to think that we need large amounts of protein. Second, there is four times more fat than protein in mother’ s milk.( I find it interesting that the modern American diet derives 12 percent of its calories from proteins and 45 percent from fats in quite a similar relative proportion.) What is the relationship between the proportion of nutrients in mother’ s milk and the proportion of nutrients which adults need? My research has led me to believe that, with the exception of the high fat content needed for an infant’ s growth, mother’ s milk contains a nutrient balance very similar to that on which adult bodies thrive. This similarity manifests itself throughout our adult lives: when the necessary proportion of nutrients is not met, self-corrective mechanisms kick in, and our bodies crave the missing nutrients. If we don’ t obtain them, illness may result. This tendency of the body to seek nutritional balance will be illustrated throughout this book; it is one of the core concepts of my approach. Let us compare the nutrient balance of some of the more popular foods with that of mother’ s milk. All values are given in milligrams, so you can see the proportions more easily. Fiber isn’ t included in the calculations, since mother’ s milk has none, and we’ re only trying to make a simple comparison of the relative proportions of nutrients by weight. Neither are vitamins; they are present in such small amounts that they could be lumped with the minerals and yet not change the numbers appreciably.