Much has been said about overeating. Once in a while a person will habitually undereat, but such cases are exceedingly rare. To undereat is foolish. At all times we must use good sense. It is a subject upon which no fixed rules can be promulgated. Be guided by the feelings, for perfect health is impossible to those who lack balance.
Those who think they need scientific direction may take one of the orthodox diet tables. If it contains alcoholics, remove them from the list. Then partake of about one-third of the starch recommended, and about one-third of the protein. Use more fresh fruit and fresh vegetables than listed. Instead of eating bread made from white flour, use whole wheat bread. Do not try to eat everything given on the scientific diet list each day. For instance, rice, potatoes and bread are given in many of these tables. Select one of these starches one day, another the next day, etc. If one-third of the amount recommended is too much, and it sometimes is, reduce still further.
Please bear in mind that the orthodox way, the so-called scientific way, has been tried over a long period of time and it has given very poor results. Moderation has always given good results and always will.
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT TO EAT.
It is very important to eat the right kind of food, but it is even more important to be balanced and use common sense. Those who are moderate in their habits and cheerful can eat almost anything with good results. Of course, people who live almost entirely on such denatured foods as polished rice, finely bolted wheat flour products, sterilized milk and meat spoiled in the cooking, refined sugar and potatoes deprived of most of their salts through being soaked and cooked will suffer.
There are many different diet systems, and some of them are very good.
If their advocates say that their way is the only way, they are wrong.
Many try to force their ideas upon others. They find their happiness in making others miserable. They are afflicted with the proselyting zeal that makes fools of people. This is the wrong way to solve the food problem. Let each individual choose his own way and allow those who differ to continue in the old way.
Many have changed their dietary habits to their own great benefit. After this they become so enthused and anxious for others to do likewise that they wear themselves and others out exhorting them to share in the new discovery. This does no good, but it often does harm, for it leads the zealot to think too much of and about himself, and it annoys others.
Many are like my friend who lunched daily on zwieback and raw carrots.
"I think everybody ought to eat some raw carrots every day; don"t you?"
she said. We can not mold everybody to our liking, and we should not try. If we conquer ourselves, we have about all we can do. If we succeed in this great work, we will evolve enough tolerance to be willing to allow others to shape their own ends. To volunteer undesired information does no good, for it creates opposition in the mind of the hearers. If the information is sought, the chances are that it may in time do good.
It is well enough to indicate how and where better knowledge may be obtained. We should at all times attempt to conserve our energy and use it only when and where it is helpful. Such conduct leads to peace of mind, effectiveness, happiness and health.
The tendency to become too enthusiastic about a dietary regime that has brought personal benefit is to be avoided, for it brings unnecessary odium upon the important subject of food reform. People do not like to change old habits, even if the change would be for the better, and when an enthusiast tries to force the change his actions are resented. He makes no real converts, but as pay for his efforts he gains the reputation of being a crank.
Those who wish to be helpful in an educational way should be patient.
The race has been in the making for ages. Its good habits, as well as its bad ones, have been acquired gradually. If we ever get rid of our bad habits it will be through gradual evolution, not through a hasty revolution. We need a change in dietary habits, but those who become food cranks, insisting that others be as they, r.e.t.a.r.d this movement.
Only a few will change physical and mental habits suddenly. If those who know are content to show the benefits more in results than in words, their influence for good will be great.
What shall we eat? How are we to know the truth among so many conflicting ideas? We can know the truth because it leads to health.
Error leads to suffering, degeneration and premature death. As the homely saying goes, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
Let us look into some of the diet theories before the public and give them thoughtful consideration.
The late Dr. J. H. Salisbury advocated the use of water to drink and meat to eat, and nothing else. The water was to be taken warm and in copious quant.i.ties, but not at or near meal time. The meat, preferably beef, was to be sc.r.a.ped or minced, made into cakes and cooked in a very warm skillet until the cakes turned gray within. These meat cakes were to be eaten three times a day, seasoned with salt and a little pepper.
The doctor had a very successful practice, which is attested by many who were benefited when ordinary medical skill failed. His diet was not well balanced. In meats there is a lack of the cell salts and force food.
Especially are the cell salts lacking when the flesh is drained of its blood. The animals of prey drink the blood and crunch many of the bones of their victims, thus getting nearly all the salts. But in spite of his giving such an unbalanced diet, the doctor had a satisfactory practice and good success. Why? Because his patients had to quit using narcotics and stimulants and they were compelled to consume such simple food that they ceased overeating. It is a well known fact that a mono-diet forces moderation, for there is no desire to overeat, as there is when living on a very varied diet.
Another fact that the Salisbury plan brings to mind is that starch and sugar are not necessary for the feeding of adults, although they are convenient and cheap foods and ordinarily consumed in large quant.i.ties.
The fat in the meat takes the place of the starch and sugar. Atomically, starch, sugar and fat are almost identical, and they can be subst.i.tuted one for the other. Nature makes broad provisions.
Dr. Salisbury"s career also serves to remind us that a mixed diet is not necessary for the physical welfare of those who eat to live. Vegetarians dwell upon the toxicity of meat. But Dr. Salisbury fed his patients on nothing but meat and water, and the percentage of recoveries in chronic diseases was considered remarkable. Meat is very easy to digest and when prepared in the simple manner prescribed by the doctor and eaten by itself it will agree with nearly everybody. But when eaten with soup, bread, potatoes, vegetables, cooked and raw, fish, pudding, fruit, coffee, crackers and cheese, there will be overeating followed by indigestion and its consequent train of ills. However, it is not fair to blame the meat entirely, for the whole mixture goes into decomposition and poisons the body.
The cures resulting from Dr. Salisbury"s plan also help to disprove the much heralded theory of Dr. Haig, that uric acid from meat eating is the cause of rheumatism. Overeating of meat is often a contributory cause.
We are told that the rheumatics who followed Dr. Salisbury"s plan got well. They regained physical tone. They lost their gout and rheumatism.
They parted company with their pimples and blotches. All of which would indicate that the blood became clean.
The chief lesson derived from Dr. Salisbury"s plan and experience is the helpfulness of simple living and moderation. An exclusive diet of meat is not well balanced. Energy produced from flesh food is too expensive.
The good results came from subst.i.tuting habits of simplicity and moderation for the habit of overeating of too great variety of food. The same results may be obtained by putting a patient on bread and milk.
Dr. Salisbury"s patients had unsatisfied longings, doubtless for various tissue salts. The addition of fresh raw fruits or vegetables would improve his diet, for apples, peaches, pears, lettuce, celery and cabbage are rich in the salts in which meats are deficient.
Dr. Emmet Densmore recommended omitting the starches entirely, that is, to avoid such foods as cereals, tubers and legumes. He believed that it is best to live on fruits and nuts. He recommended the sweet fruits--figs, dates, raisins, prunes--instead of the starchy foods. The doctor did much good, as everyone does who gets his patients to simplify. He also had good results before discovering that starch is a harmful food, when he fed his patients bread and milk.
Starch must be converted into sugar before it can be used by the body.
The sugar is what is known as dextrose, not the refined sugar of commerce. The sweet fruits contain this sugar in the form of fruit sugar, which needs but little preparation to be absorbed by the blood.
Dr. Densmore reasons thus: Only birds are furnished with mills (gizzards); hence the grains are fit food for them only. Other starches should be avoided because they are difficult to digest, the doctor wrote.
Raw starches are difficult to digest, but when they are properly cooked they are digested in a reasonable time without overburdening the system, provided they are well masticated and the amount eaten is not too great and the combining is correct. Rice, which contains much starch, digests in a short time.
We can do very nicely without starch. We can also thrive on it if we do not abuse it. The two chief starch-bearing staples, rice and wheat, contain considerable protein and salts in their natural state. In fact, the natural wheat will sustain life for a long time. Man has improved on nature by polishing the rice and making finely bolted, bleached wheat flour, deprived of nearly all the salts in the wheat berry. The result is that both of them have become very poor foods. The more we eat of these refined products the worse off we are, unless we partake freely of other foods rich in mineral salts.
Not long ago a lady died in England who was a prominent advocate of a "brainy diet." Her brainy diet consisted largely of excessive quant.i.ties of meat, pork being a favorite. She died comparatively young, her friends say from overwork. Such a diet doubtless had a large part in wearing her out. To overeat of meat is dangerous.
A gentleman is now advocating a diet of nothing but cocoanuts. This is a fad, for they are not a balanced food. He has published a book on the subject. Perhaps his advocacy is influenced by his interest in the sale of cocoanuts.
The vegetarians condemn the use of meat. Some of them are called fruitarians. It is very difficult to decide who are the most representative of them. Some advocate the use of nothing but fruit and nuts. Others add cereals to this. Others use vegetables in addition.
Some even allow the use of dairy products and eggs, that is, all foods except flesh.
They say that meat is an unnatural food for man and condemn its use on moral grounds. It is difficult to decide what is natural, for we find that man is very adaptable, being able to live on fruits in the tropics and almost exclusively on flesh food, largely fat, in the arctic regions. In nature the strong live on the weak and the intelligent on the dull. There is no sentiment in nature. In her domain might, physical or mental, makes right. Sentiments of right and justice are not highly developed except among human beings, and even there they are so weakly implanted that it takes but little provocation for civilized man to bare his teeth in a wolfish snarl.
With some vegetarianism is largely a matter of esthetics, ethics and morality. Morality is based on expediency, so it really is a question whether meat is an advantageous food or not.
Another vegetarian argument is that man"s anatomy proves that he was not intended by nature to eat meat. Good arguments have been used on both sides, but they are not very convincing nor are they conclusive. It is hard to draw any lines fairly.
Another objection to meat is that it is unclean and full of poisons, that these poisons produce various diseases, such as cancer. We are also informed that refined sugar causes cancer, and the belief in tomatoes as a causative factor is not dead. Cancer is without doubt caused princ.i.p.ally by dietary indiscretions but it is impossible to single out any one food.
No matter what foods we eat, we are compelled to be careful or they will be unclean. Those who wish clean meat can obtain it. The amount of poison or waste in a proper portion of meat is so small that we need give it no thought. Those who eat in moderation can take meat once a day during cold weather and enjoy splendid health. During warm weather it should be eaten more seldom.
On the other hand, meat is not necessary. We need a certain amount of protein, which we can obtain from nuts, eggs, milk, cheese, peanuts, peas, beans, lentils, cereals and from other food in smaller amounts.
The amount of protein needed is small--about one-fifth of what the physiologists used to recommend.
Those who think meat eating is wrong should not partake of it. They can get along very well without it. We are consuming entirely too much meat in America. The organism can stand it if the life is active in the fresh air, but it will not do for people who are housed. Much meat eating causes physical degeneration. The body loses tone. Experiments have shown that vegetarians have more resistance and endurance than the meat eaters, but the meat eaters get so much stimulation from their food that they can speed up in spurts. The excretions of meat eaters are more poisonous than those of vegetarians.
Eggs produced by hens fed largely on meat sc.r.a.ps do not keep as well as those laid by hens feeding more on grains. In short, meat eating leads to instability or degeneration, if carried to excess. Young children should have none of it and it would be a very easy matter for the rising generation to develop without using meat, and I believe this would be better than our present plan of eating. However, let us give flesh food the credit due it. When meat eaters are debilitated no other food seems to act as kindly as meat, given with fruits or vegetables. When properly prepared and taken in moderation meat digests easily and is quite completely a.s.similated.
Many make the mistake of living too exclusively on starch and taking it in excess. The result is fermentation and an acid state of the alimentary tract. Dr. Daniel S. Sager says that, "About all that we have to fear in eating is excessive use of proteids." Experience and observation do not bear out this statement, for it is as easy to find people injured by starch as by protein. One form of poisoning is as bad as the other. The doctor also warns against nearly all the succulent vegetables, saying that on account of the indigestible fibre, most of them are unfit for human consumption.
Dr. E. H. Dewey condemned the apple as a disease-producer, and inferentially, other fruits.
Dr. Charles E. Page objects to the use of milk by adults, on the ground that it is fit food only for the calves for whom nature intended it.
Many writers have repeated this opinion.
Most of the regular physicians have a very vague idea of dietetics and proper feeding. When asked what to eat they commonly say, "Eat plenty nourishing food of the kinds that agree with you." They do not point out the fundamentals to their patients. Sometimes they advise avoiding combinations of milk and fruits. Sometimes they say that all starches should be avoided and in the next breath prescribe toast, one of the starchiest of foods. At times they proscribe pork and pickles but they are seldom able to give a good diet prescription. What people need is a fair knowledge of what to do and the don"ts will take care of themselves.
All foods have been condemned as unfit for human consumption by people who should know. However, those who look at these matters with open eyes and open minds will come to the conclusion that man is a very adaptable animal; that if necessary he can get along without almost all foods, being able to subsist on a very small variety; that he can live for a long period on animal food entirely; that he can live all his life without tasting flesh; that he can live on a mixed diet; that he can adopt a great many plans of eating and live in health and comfort on nearly all of them, provided he does not deprive himself of the natural salts and gets some protein; and finally and most important, that moderation is the chief factor in keeping well, for the best foods produce disease in time if taken in excess.