Chapter III: Part 3

Professor Chittenden also points out the common blunder which is made in assuming that persons who are doing hard work need an additional amount of proteid substance. One commonly hears the phrase that laborers and athletes can eat meat in large quantities, and “work it off.” As we have seen, one can “work off” sugars and starches and fats completely; but one cannot “work off” proteid completely. Professor Chittenden is now recognized as the leading authority of the world upon this particular question; and he sets forth clearly in his book the fact that the quantity of proteid needed is not increased by muscular activity. One may work as hard as he pleases, but his body will use no more nitrogen, save only in the case where a sufficiency of other food elements is not supplied. Only as a last resort will the system undertake the labor of burning up proteid to make energy.

HOW MUCH SHOULD WE EAT

When foodstuffs are taken into the body, digested, assimilated, and used up, they produce the same amount of heat and other forms of energy as if burned outside of the body; and hence it follows that the number of calories, or units of heat, represented in a given foodstuff, is taken by scientists as a common measure of its food value.

A calory is a heat unit, which has been adopted as a means of estimating the nutritive value of foodstuffs. It represents the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of four pounds of water one degree Fahrenheit. The number of calories contained in food is obtained by burning the food and measuring the heat produced by means of a calorimeter.

It has been calculated that the normal, average person needs from one hundred and sixty to two hundred and forty calories of proteids every day, in order to build blood and tissues. He needs daily from five hundred to nine hundred calories of fats, which supply heat.

He needs of carbohydrates, which are the starches and sugars, and which the body uses to produce energy for work and heat, from one thousand to one thousand four hundred calories daily. It is declared by Chittenden and Kellogg, whose work has overset the old notions, that the total number of calories, or food units, should rarely exceed two thousand.

Two thousand calories are furnished respectively by twenty-eight ounces of bread, or ninety-six ounces of milk, or sixty-two ounces of potatoes, or nine ounces of butter. One quarter of each of these, or any other fractions which together equal unity, will make up a ration containing two thousand calories.

It is quite impossible, however, to make a hard and fast rule in this matter. Every individual differs from others in his requirements. Moreover, the weather, the season of the year, the amount and kind of work done, are all factors in the situation. Hard physical work and exposure to cold demands the largest food supply. A person who naturally perspires freely needs more food than a person who does not, because of the large amount of heat carried off from his body by the evaporation of sweat from the skin. Adults require food chiefly to repair waste and losses. Growing children require in addition to food to repair waste and losses, material for tissue building. According to the best authorities upon the diet of children, a growing infant utilizes fully one-third of its total intake of food in tissue building. When an adult becomes emaciated he requires more tissue building material than the normal adult, his need for it being practically the same as that of a growing child.

We give below a table showing the average number of food units or calories required daily by people of various heights and weights. This table is one drawn up by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. In calculating the number of calories required in a given case, the estimate should be based not upon the actual weight of the individual, but upon the weight of the average person of his height.

“Persons who are in good health,” says Dr. Kellogg, “and find their weight somewhat greater than the figures given in the table, should not necessarily consider themselves obese. While above the average in weight, their condition is probably natural, and no attempt should be made to reduce the weight to any considerable amount, as injury may result. The average for adults applies especially to healthy adults between twenty and thirty years of age. Most people who are above forty years of age have a natural tendency to increase of flesh, which requires no attention unless it becomes excessive. Any reduction in foods made by an obese person should be in carbohydrates rather than in proteids or fats, unless these latter have been taken in excess.”

TABLE NO. 1

Showing for different ages the average height, weight, and the number of food units or calories required daily.

_Boys_

Height in Weight in Calories or
Age Inches Pounds Food Units
5 41.57 41.09 816.2
7 45.74 49.07 912.4
9 49.69 59.23 1,043.7
11 53.33 70.18 1,178.2
13 57.21 84.85 1,352.6

_Girls_

Height in Weight in Calories or
Age Inches Pounds Food Units
5 41.29 39.66 784.5
7 45.52 47.46 881.7
9 49.37 57.07 1,018.5
11 53.42 68.84 1,148.5

_Men_

Calories or Food Units
Height in Weight in
Inches Pounds Proteids Fats Carbohydrates Total
62 110.0 165 495 890 1650
64 121.0 181 543 1086 1810
66 132.0 198 594 1188 1980
68 143.0 215 645 1290 2150
70 154.0 231 693 1386 2310
72 165.0 247 741 1482 2470
74 176.0 264 792 1584 2640

_Women_

Calories or Food Units
Height in Weight in
Inches Pounds Proteids Fats Carbohydrates Total
57 78.4 118 344 688 1180
59 88.8 132 396 792 1320
61 99.2 149 447 894 1490
63 109.3 163 489 978 1630
65 120.2 180 540 1080 1800
67 130.7 195 585 1170 1950
69 143.0 215 645 1290 2150
71 155.0 232 696 1392 2320

PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF DIETARY RULES

While dieticians have ascertained the number of food units daily required by the average person, yet on no point do they reach more thorough agreement than in saying that the average person should not establish any hard and fast rules as to the quantity and kinds of food he consumes. It is really only an invalid, one who is in a physician’s care, who needs to have his food regulated in this precise fashion. The average person should be careful to practice thorough mastication, and should see to it that the proteid part of his meals is not excessive, but he should avoid worrying about his food habits. Any person who fusses and fumes about the kind of foodstuffs and the number of calories they contain, will be apt to cause himself harm; for science has proved by laboratory experiments, which we shall describe later on, that worry, in fact any of the unpleasant emotions, exercises a prohibitive effect upon the flow of digestive juices.

The really important thing to do is to follow a simple dietary, which at the same time is well balanced in its food elements, well cooked, and tastefully served. The housewife will see to it that the foodstuffs she chooses represent more of carbohydrates and fats than of proteids; her guiding rule in this matter being that _the proportion of proteids to the other food elements be ten per cent._ The United States Department of Agriculture has prepared a list of foodstuffs, comprising all those in common use, which shows the proportion of their constituents, and their total energy value, in calories, per pound of material.

This is “Bulletin No. 28, Revised Edition,” the work of two of the leading physiological chemists of America, W. O. Atwater and A. P. Bryant; and may be had on sending five cents to the Department. We have inserted in the Appendix a selected list of foodstuffs taken from this publication; and we give here a rough classification of foods, from which one can see at a glance their leading elements:

FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN PROTEIDS

Eggs
White of Egg
Skimmed Milk
Buttermilk
Yogurt
Cottage Cheese
Nut Products

FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN FATS

Butter
Nut Oils
Olive Oil
Cream
Olives
Nuts (except chestnuts)
Egg Yolks

FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN CARBOHYDRATES

Potato
Rice
Breads
Cereal Preparations

PURE CARBOHYDRATES

Fruits (raw and cooked)
Fruit Juices
Fruit Jellies
Honey
Malt Honey
Marmalades

FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN PROTEIDS AND FATS

Nuts
Nut Butters
Eggs
Cheese
Nut Products

FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN PROTEIDS AND CARBOHYDRATES

Peas
Beans
Lentils
Chestnuts
Skimmed Milk
Gluten Preparations.

FOODSTUFFS WHICH CONTAIN ALL THE FOOD ELEMENTS IN FAIRLY GOOD PROPORTION

Crackers
Batter Breads
Pastry
Malted Nuts
Custards
Puddings
Salads
Sandwiches
Soups (other than meat or fish soups).

V

HOW FOODS POISON THE BODY

In our survey of the processes and organs of digestion, we saw that after food has traversed the stomach and small intestine it passes into the colon, where it must remain for some considerable time, while the absorption of its digested elements is completed. And this brings us to the most important of the discoveries of the new hygiene. It has been found that some of the foods which human beings eat are loaded with injurious bacteria, and with the poisons which these bacteria produce. And others of them are indigestible, and when they reach the colon, become a source of incubation for countless billions of other bacteria. It was demonstrated by Metchnikoff that these poisons are absorbed into the system, and are the cause of manifold evils. This is the process which is called “autointoxication.”

It would not be regarded as an exaggeration by the leading physiologists of the world to-day to speak of autointoxication as the primary source of nine-tenths of the afflictions from which humanity suffers. Any one would be prepared to admit that the banquet he had attended on the previous night was responsible for the headache which he has on the present morning; but the investigations of bacteriologists have revealed that the food habits of which banquets are typical are responsible for a chronic ailment, of which such diseases as gout, rheumatism, Bright’s disease, consumption, and pneumonia are merely symptoms.

THE INVESTIGATIONS OF METCHNIKOFF

Elie Metchnikoff, sub-director of the Pasteur Institute of Paris, is a philosopher, as well as a physiologist; a philosopher who brings to the support of his speculations the exact methods of the laboratory. He, with the other great leaders of the new art of health, is at last removing from science the reproach leveled at it by Metchnikoff’s great fellow-country-man and friend, Tolstoi, who said that science was useless to man, since it did not direct its attention to the problems which mean most to humanity, such as the great questions of life and death, but confined its efforts to investigating useless birds and butterflies.

The books in which Metchnikoff has recorded the results of the investigations which for many years he has been making into the problems of old age and death, have caused a profound sensation in the scientific world. In these books, the great Russian emphatically and definitely ranks himself with the optimists. He states that scientific study of the constitution of man, and of the workings of man’s nature, and of his environment in the world, do not support the view that man is born unto sorrow as the sparks fly upward—to quote the words of the Psalmist—but can really be fitted to live a useful and happy life, ending in a calm and peaceful old age—if man will but turn his attention to the knowledge by which he can really live in harmony with his environment. Metchnikoff has arrived at the conclusions that man and woman would live to be at least one hundred years old, if they could enable their bodies to eliminate those deadly toxins which are the product of the activities of the bacteria which inhabit the human body, as well as of the body’s own organic processes.

Age is not always to be computed in years. As a common saying puts the case, “A man is as old as he feels, a woman as old as she looks.” A famous French physiologist has altered this to read, “A man is as old as his arteries.” The primary change produced by the coming of old age is the hardening and withering of the arteries. As the result of this withering process, a large number of the smaller arteries disappear, so that the blood supply of the muscles, brain, heart, and other important organs, is cut off. This is the change that is technically known as “arterio-sclerosis.” It is quite often found in persons of less than fifty years of age. On the other hand, Harvey, the famous discoverer of the circulation of the blood, declared that in the post-mortem examination made of Old Parr, the celebrated Englishman who died at the age of one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months, he found not a trace of this degenerative change.

In the United States the average length of life is about forty-two years; but a large and growing school of modern scientists (comparative anatomists) declare that the natural age of the human family cannot be much less than from one hundred, to one hundred and twenty-five years. Any death that comes at least before one hundred years, is not a natural death but accidental or violent. From the point of view of science, death through disease is just as accidental and violent as the extinguishment of life in a railway wreck or by drowning in the sea; and the fact that the average life of man is to-day only about one-third of that which nature designed for him is due to the operation of autointoxication more than to any other cause.

Natural death in man is therefore more a possibility than an actual occurrence. Nevertheless, instances have been recorded of the actual appearance of the instinct in aged people, where the wished-for death came not because life was burdensome, not because of poverty, disease, or loneliness, but seemed to arrive as naturally as sleep to a younger person, or the wish for more extended life which all of us possess. Metchnikoff states that instances of veritable cases showing an instinct of death are extremely rare, yet this instinct really does seem to lie deep in the constitution of man. And if the cycle of human life followed an ideal course, he concluded men and women after living a healthy and useful life extending over at least a century, with their usefulness and satisfaction in life at maximum during the latter portion of that period, would then give themselves up calmly and gracefully to the arms of death, as to the arms of a friend laying them down to earned and wished-for rest. Old age would have no terrors, and death no victory.

It has been, perhaps, Metchnikoff’s crowning discovery, that the immediate cause of old age is not merely the accumulation of poisonous wastes, but is due to a destruction of the tiny cells which make up the tissues by certain cells of the body, which he describes as macrophages. These are of an especial kind, which wander through the body and devote their energies to the destruction of waste particles and organic débris—particles of material which are not used in the building up of tissue, just as particles of brick and wood might be left on the ground after the erection of a house. These macrophages enact the part of scavengers, very much like the turkey buzzards, which in southern cities eat up the refuse from the back alleys. Just so long as these wandering cells confine themselves to this useful and necessary work, all goes well; but when the vigor of the body cells has been lowered by the accumulation of tissue poisons, these scavenger cells turn traitor to the cause of the body and attack the very cells which they formerly guarded. They have been photographed in the very act of devouring nerve cells in the brains of old people.

HOW TO PREVENT DEGENERATION OF TISSUE

It can readily be seen that if the pernicious activity of these macrophages can be prevented, the coming on of degenerative changes in the body tissue will be much delayed. The practical question, which Metchnikoff therefore asked himself was, How may this revolt of the macrophages, this rebellion of the body’s army, be prevented?

It is not possible to attack the macrophages themselves without at the same time doing damage to the body. For these wandering cells are more hardy and vigorous than the higher cells by which the bodily functions are performed, and which they attack, so whatever might be done to weaken the attack of the wandering cells would to a greater degree damage the higher cells of the body. The conclusion that Metchnikoff reached was that the only direction in which we can hope for success in the attempt to prolong human life, lies in giving attention to the predisposing causes which weaken the vitality of the higher body cells and thus expose them to the successful attacks of the scavenger cells. In other words, if we are to prolong human life, we must make the conditions of life such that the premature accumulation of body wastes or poisons shall be prevented.

One of the first steps to take to affect that end is, obviously, the avoidance of the introduction of poisons, and poison-forming foods, into the body. Out of all proportion to all other causes which lead to the formation of body poisons, is the production of toxins in the colon or large intestine. Metchnikoff’s studies show beyond a doubt that there is a close connection between the size of the colon and the duration of life in various birds and animals. Where the colon is used, and has attained large proportions, as in man, in the horse, and many other animals, life is comparatively short, and death is premature. Where the colon is rudimentary, or where only such foods are eaten as do not decay or ferment in the colon, then life is long.

Thus the most important problem, according to Metchnikoff, is how to prevent the development of poisons in the colon. He believes that the colon, indeed, is quite superfluous, and that man would be better off without it. He quotes several curious cases in which the colon has been removed from the body, and the subjects of the operations have recovered impaired health and lived for long periods afterwards. Since the colon cannot be generally removed from the body, however, the practical problem comes down to this: How may we avoid the evils which result from the fermentative and putrefactive processes which go on in this organ?

If the large intestine is kept clean, if only those foods which are antitoxic are eaten, then there will be very few poisons generated in the colon, and the health of the body will be maintained in a higher degree and for a much longer period than can be possible when toxic foods are freely partaken of. It is here that the great argument for vegetarianism on its scientific side arises. All meats and fish are not only “toxic” foods in themselves, but they are quite likely to contain parasites of various kinds.

Ordinary bread has been shown to contain a sufficient amount of proteid to supply all the body needs, as do also rice and other cereals and potatoes. Nuts and dried peas and beans are exceedingly rich in proteid, like meat, and therefore should be eaten sparingly. The best foods in the order of excellence are given by Dr. Kellogg, as follows—the antitoxic foods being in italics: _fresh ripe fruits_, _cooked fresh fruits_, _cooked dried fruits_, nuts, cooked cereals, _rice_, _zweibach_, _toasted corn flakes_, _potato_, _cauliflower_, _and other fresh vegetables_, _honey_, _malted nuts_, _yogurt_, _or buttermilk_, sterilized _milk_, and cream, peas, beans, lentils, _raised bread_, and sterilized butter.

HOW TO ENLIST THE SERVICES OF FRIENDLY GERMS

Since the poisons which are produced in the colon are due to the growth and cultivation of germs, the remedy which naturally suggested itself to a bacteriological specialist like Metchnikoff was to find some harmless or comparatively harmless germ with which the poison-forming germs might be fought—or, in other words, to introduce into the body an extra battalion of soldiers to assist the warrior cells in the battle of the blood.

After years of study and research, Metchnikoff found this beneficient germ in various lactic acid forming microbes, particularly an especial microbe known by the name of Bulgarian bacillus, or Yogurt. This bacillus grows in milk, and in growing it produces large quantities of pure lactic acid. It does not decompose fats, nor does it produce alcohol, as do other lactic forming germs, such as those found in kumyss, matzoon, and kephir.

Milk is first sterilized by boiling for a few minutes, then allowed to cool and a quantity of the ferment is added. In a few hours a sour taste which is pleasant to all whose palates relish mild buttermilk, is developed. Metchnikoff advises that a pint or a pint and a half of this sour milk be taken daily. By this means large quantities of the acid forming and beneficient germs are taken into the intestine, and by degrees the poison producing germs are killed or driven out. Thus the work required of the kidneys, the liver, the skin, and other excretory organs is lessened, and the vigor of the living cells is maintained so that the macrophages do not attack and destroy them.

In Bulgaria where Yogurt is a staple article of food, there are more centenarians, and more vigorous old people to be found than anywhere else on earth. Not only are the Bulgarians and the Hungarians the longest lived races in Europe, but they show a remarkable freedom from appendicitis, colitis, and other diseases due to intestinal infections, circumstances which called the attention of European physicians to a study of the milk ferment which produced Yogurt, and led to the scientific investigations, first by Masson of Geneva and later and more completely by Metchnikoff and Kellogg, which have placed its use both as a curative and a preventive agent upon a thoroughly scientific basis.

Its use is bound to supersede that of kumyss, kephir, matzoon, and other lactic acid ferments on account of the fact that these ferments are able to live only in the small intestine, while Yogurt bacillus thrives in the colon, where it may be found weeks after the administration of Yogurt has ceased. The importance of this fact will be seen at once when it is recalled that the colon is the chief seat of the anaerobic infection and poison production which are the causes of intestinal autointoxication. Thus the last word of modern science on this subject would seem after all to be but the confirmation of a means for reaching natural old age which has been known for hundreds of years. But to-day we are learning to use means for the prolongation of life by the light of knowledge; no longer blunderingly, handicapped by evil habits which nullify the value of the small fraction of hygienic truth which we possess. To-day, Hygeia, while it holds out to our lips an elixir of life, insists that if it is to have its maximum power, we must also breathe rightly, sleep rightly, and eat and drink rightly.

VI

SOME IMPORTANT FOOD FACTS

The importance of avoiding constipation will be obvious to those who have followed this account of the process of autointoxication; one should see that his daily bill of fare contains a generous supply of laxative foodstuffs, such as sweet fruits, ripe figs and prunes, acid fruits and fruits juices, fresh vegetables, fats and all grain preparations. It is of the utmost importance that the bowels should move regularly once a day. There is another reason for eating food in the shape of fruits or salads, which is that the body may have a sufficient supply of mineral salts.

Nuts and fruits are a splendid combination, since the fat of the nuts and the sugar of the fruits supply the energy and heat producing substances. Fruit sugar indeed is merely a digested form of starch—the digestive process having been accomplished by the heat of the sun in the ripening of the fruit. Fruits contain no fat and practically no starch, and with the exception of the fig, the banana, and a few others, they contain so small an amount of proteid that that element may be considered practically missing. Fruits are used for the sugar, the acids, and the water they contain. Nuts and fruits may be eaten and digested raw by persons who have sound teeth, and who will thoroughly masticate these foods.

Bananas should never be eaten until they are completely ripe, this condition being shown by the appearance of black or dark brown spots on the skin. When in this condition they are usually thrown into the garbage can by the fruit dealer.

Before eating them, one should scrape off the outside fluff, which is next to the skin, as experiments have shown this to be highly indigestible. Eaten when ripe no fruit is more nutritious or delightful than the banana. The only way in which unripe bananas should be used is baked, the same as apples, when they make a succulent and nutritious dish.

Sweet apples will digest more quickly than any other raw fruit substance; but if eaten raw, apples should be thoroughly ripened, and most thoroughly masticated, else hard pieces of apple will enter the stomach and give rise to fermentation. A mealy apple is considered by physiologists as a food substance almost completely predigested, and ready for absorption. If such an apple is reduced to a smooth pulp by chewing, it will pass out of the stomach within an hour. Baked, sweet apples are digested by persons whose stomachs will not tolerate any other fruit.

The acid of sour apples is an excellent corrective for foul conditions of the stomach, such as exist in biliousness. The germs of typhoid, of cholera, and others likely to produce acute disease, are quickly killed by solutions of citric and malic acids, the acids of the lemon or the apple. The juice of a lemon added to an ounce of water will render that water sterile within half an hour, even though it may contain the germs of typhoid fever and cholera. The antiseptic properties of fruit juice render it exceedingly valuable as a means of killing the germs in the stomach and the alimentary canal; a fact which explains the benefits derived from various “fruit cures,” which have been for many years practiced in Europe, and more recently have been employed in various parts of the United States.

The indigestion which many people complain of as arising from the use of fruit comes not from fruit in itself, but from its improper use in combination with other foods with which it does not agree. It is sometimes supposed, for instance, that fruits conduce to bowel disorders; but the truth is that an exclusive diet of fruit is one of the best known remedies for chronic bowel disorders. Care should be taken, however, to avoid fruit juices which contain a large amount of cane sugar; only the juices of sweet fruits should be employed, or else a mixture of sour and sweet fruit juices without sugar. Raisins, figs, prunes, sweet apples and sweet pears may be mixed with sour fruits. Fruit that is sweetened with sugar to a large extent is indigestible, since cane sugar often proves an irritant: while the combination of cream and sugar which is so often used with many fruits is a very bad one. Fruits should be eaten with vegetables only if both are thoroughly masticated, for the reason that the cellulose in vegetables takes a long time to digest, while fruit takes a very short time, and is held in the stomach and ferments. Fruit combines well with cereal foods, breads, and the like, and with nuts.

WHAT COOKING DOES FOR GRAINS

Cooking does for grains what the sun does for fruit; it performs a preliminary digestion. In undergoing digestion the starch in food passes through five stages: first, it is converted into amylodextrin, or soluble starch; second, erythrod extrin; third, achroödextrin; fourth, maltose; and fifth, levulose, or fruit sugar. Cooking can carry the starch through the first three of these processes, rendering it ready for almost instant conversion into maltose, on coming into contact with the saliva in mouth and stomach. In the intestine maltose is converted into levulose or fruit sugar and the process of digestion is completed. Modern science has shown by experiments that the preliminary digestive work done by cooking varies greatly with the method of cooking adopted. There are practically three methods used in the cooking of cereals, kettle cooking (that is, boiling and steaming), over cooking, or roasting, and toasting, or dry cooking. Kettle cooking changes the raw starch into soluble starch; in other words, it carries the starch through the first step of the digestive process. Baking, or very prolonged kettle cooking, will convert the starch into erythrodextrin, the second stage of starch digestion. Toasting, or dry cooking, in which the starch is exposed to a temperature of about 300 Fahrenheit, advances the starch one step farther, yet.

ABOLISH THE FRYING PAN!

One important thing to remember in connection with cooking is that fried foods, the use of which is so prevalent in America is an unmitigated evil. “Of all dietic abominations for which bad cooking is responsible, fried dishes are the most pernicious,” says Dr. Kellogg. “Meat fried, fricasseed, or otherwise cooked in fat, fried bread, fried vegetables, doughnuts, griddle cakes, and all similar combinations of melted fat or other elements of food are most difficult articles of digestion. None but the most stalwart stomach can master such indigestibles. The gastric juice has little more action upon fats than water. Hence a portion of meat or other food saturated with fat is as completely protected from the action of gastric juice as is a foot within a well-oiled boot from the snow and water outside.”

This same reason explains why rich cake, shortened pie crust and pastry generally, as well as warm bread and butter disagree with sick stomachs and are the cause of many diseases. Not only does the interfering with the digestion of the food by its covering of fat set up fermentation, but the chemical changes occasioned in the fat itself develop exceedingly injurious acids which irritate the mucous membrane of the stomach, causing congestion and sometimes even inflammation. The frying-pan is an implement that should be banished from every kitchen in the land.

For many years past America has been deluged with various breakfast foods, the virtues of which have been loudly trumpeted. Yet in the ordinary process of cooking these breakfast foods, oatmeal, cracked wheat, etc., it is seldom that more than half the starch completes even the first stage of conversion. Hence it cannot be acted upon at all by the saliva, which does not begin the process of digestion with raw starch. The use of imperfectly cooked cereals is without doubt responsible for a great share of the dyspepsia prevailing among Americans. Oatmeal porridge, and similar preparations, unless most thoroughly cooked, are not wholesome foods, and when cream and sugar are added, there is a combination calculated to create a marked form of dyspepsia. Cereals must be cooked dry in order to be thoroughly cooked, and when prepared by dry cooking or toasting, they are well adapted to the human stomach, are easily digested and in combination with fruits and nuts, constitute a good dietary. Cereals must not only be cooked dry in order to be promptly digested, but they should also be eaten dry. Experiments show that an ounce of dry, well cooked cereal food when well masticated will produce two ounces of saliva; whereas mush, gruel, and other moist cereal foods cause the secretion of only a very small quantity of saliva, less than one quarter of the amount produced by the same food in a dry state.

In connection with the cooking of cereals, it is well to remember that the chief vegetable proteid, gluten, is also rendered very much more easily digested by thorough cooking. On the other hand, the digestibility of animal proteids, in the form of both meat and eggs, is greatly diminished by cooking.

The potato is another important foodstuff; when it is well cooked it is one of the most nutritious and wholesome of all foods. The starch of the potato is more easily digested than that of cereals, as has been shown by numerous experiments conducted of late in Germany and in America. A good way of preparing potatoes so as to increase their digestibility is to cut them into slices after cooking and then place in an oven until slightly browned; but the admixture of fat of any sort should be avoided.

On the other hand, cabbage is one of those vegetables which is less likely to create stomach trouble when eaten raw than if cooked. The food value of cabbage, however, is so small that it is hardly worth eating, save as a relish. The same remark may be made as to such other foods as celery, spinach, and greens of all sorts. They are only valuable for the sake of the small quantity of mineral salts they contain, and for the sake of adding another taste to the bill of fare. Onions have a higher nutritive value, but this is offset by their containing an irritating volatile oil, which when onions are used too freely may harm the mucous membrane. The onion plays its best part in cookery when used as a flavoring substance.

The mushroom is another article of food, popular among those who can afford it, which modern science shows to be practically unfit for human use. Paradoxically enough, although chemical analysis of mushrooms show them to be so rich in proteids as to earn for them the name of vegetable beefsteak, yet researches have shown that these proteids are not available by the body, and hence that mushrooms have no nutritive value whatsoever.

DAIRY PRODUCTS NEED ATTENTION

Milk is commonly considered a wholesome and easily digested food, but this is true only in a modified sense. Thousands of infants die annually because of indigestion set up by the use of cows’ milk, and hundreds of adults are more or less injured by the too free use of unsterilized cows’ milk, which produces biliousness, sick headache, inactive bowels and a variety of other disturbances. These are not alone due to the toughness of the curds which are formed by milk, and which set up fermentative and putrefactive processes in the stomach unless the milk is thoroughly cooked beforehand.

Federal departments at Washington were, not long ago, almost crippled by the prevalence of typhoid fever among the employees; and the public health service under Surgeon-General Walter Wyman traced more than ten per cent. of the cases to the milk supply. Professor Lafayette B. Mendel of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, told one of the writers of this book that he went to a certain city that had suffered an epidemic of typhoid, and made a map showing each house that had contained a case of typhoid fever. He made a similar map showing the houses where certain milkmen stopped—and the two maps were almost completely identical. It has also been established beyond a doubt that tuberculosis is communicated from the cow to the human being, and in certain sections of the world it is believed that milk from tubercular cows is the chief channel of infection. It has been shown that even if the udder of a cow be healthy, a tubercular cow may give infected milk, and that the presence of a single tubercular cow in a herd may be responsible for the infection of the milk of healthy animals. Several international medical congresses have lately declared that all milk should be boiled in order to kill the germs.

The United States Department of Agriculture issued in Circular No. 111 of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and in Circular No. 114, the recommendations made by a conference of some twenty of the foremost scientists of the United States, and few more important documents concerning the public health have ever been issued by a government. In brief, these recommendations may be thus stated: Raw milk is highly dangerous. Boiling or pasteurizing kills the disease germs and makes the milk safe without seriously impairing the taste or digestibility. Milk produced under the most ideal conditions, such as “certified” milk, is only relatively safe. Pasteurization, when properly done, makes the milk absolutely safe.

Butter, of course, is subject to all the arguments that can be advanced against milk, with the additional one that it is even more subject to infection with germs than milk itself, since the time that elapses between its manufacture and its consumption is usually far longer than the time that elapses between the drawing of milk from the cow and its use. Only butter that is made from sterilized cream should be used.

Cheese, of course, is open to all the objections urged against unsterilized milk and butter, and in addition has a disagreeable quality all its own. The cheese eater may at any time swallow a serious or even a fatal dose of “cheese poisons,” which are substances produced in cheese by the action of germs. These are not ordinarily present in sufficient quantity to render their presence apparent; nevertheless, a great number of cases of cheese poisoning are annually reported by various boards of health all over the country. Cheese made from sterilized milk is less open to these objections. A delicious cottage cheese may be made from Yogurt milk.

The too free use of sugar at the table and in cooking, not only in its pure form, but in the shape of preserves, syrups and sweet beverages, has been shown to be a most prolific source of injury to the stomach. Sorghum, maple sugar, and maple syrup are essentially the same as cane sugar and molasses. It has been shown that if we eat freely of fruits we will obtain all the sugar our system requires in a form that is easily digestible.

The constitution needs quite a good deal of fat; wholesome fats are contained in nuts, and in cereals, and are also provided liberally by ripe olives and olive oil. Emulsified fats are those in which the minute particles are broken up; and these are far more readily absorbed by the tissues of the body. The fat in ripe olives is emulsified fat—as likewise is olive oil when used in mayonnaise dressing. It should not be mixed with vinegar, however, as vinegar is an irritating substance that works harm, when used freely, to the mucous membrane of the stomach. Lemon juice is not only much safer, but makes a much more delicious dressing.

The objection which applies to vinegar, applies also to pepper, mustard, and other condiments and spices.

The too free use of salt, of which nearly everyone is guilty, is another habit upon which modern physiologists frown. While salt is essential, it is contained as an element in many foods, and there is no more reason why it should be sprinkled upon each and every article of food that is taken than we should have castors containing all the other kinds of inorganic salts, that the system needs, and which are supplied to it in fresh foods. Salt using is merely a habit, and a disastrous one, since it has been shown to be one of the factors in the causation of kidney troubles, such as Bright’s disease.

The large use of glucose in the form of candy, syrups, adulterated honey, and various sweets which are in common use, is said by physiologists to be responsible for a large number of cases of diabetes, a disease which is rapidly increasing in America. There is now produced a malt sugar, called malt honey or “meltose,” which can be used freely for all the purposes that cane sugar is used.

The case of food reform against fish would merely lead to the relating of the arguments against meat. Fish contains nearly seven per cent. of uric acid. It is exposed like meat to the presence of tape worms and other parasites. Even when fresh out of the water its flesh is filled with fatigue poisons, the result of its struggles to escape from the net or the hook; and Mosso of Turin and other authorities have shown that these fatigue toxins have a bad effect upon the body. No food will so quickly decompose and putrefy as fish, and unless perfectly fresh it will always be found full of the putrefactive bacteria which are the active agents in causing autointoxication.

It may be stated, however, that the person who follows that careful and helpful mode of eating recommended and practiced with such marked benefits by Horace Fletcher and his converts, will assuredly minimize the dangers that lurk unsuspected by the uninformed in many of our commonly used foods, and will derive a greater benefit from all food than it is possible for those to gain who eat in the hasty and careless fashion characteristic of most Americans.

VII

HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE EAT?

WE have discussed the question how to eat and what to eat; there remains the question of when to eat. English people, as a rule, eat four meals a day. The French are practically a two meal a day nation, eating a very light breakfast.

Of late years there has been a strong tendency on the part of American dieticians to advocate a reduction in the number of daily meals, the ideal aimed at being the establishing of the custom of two meals a day, with at least six hours intervening between them.

It may be asked whether appetite is not a safe guide to follow, and whether it is not the part of wisdom to follow personal inclination in the choice and quantity and number of meals. Does not a study of dietetic customs and habits definitely decide the essential rules of dietetics? While it is true that habits and customs are very strong factors in everybody’s life, yet it is also true that they are very unreliable guides. We are constantly acquiring new habits, and sloughing off old ones; and even the most deeply impressed of habits may be changed for others. And while the common customs of mankind would seem to indicate that three or four meals a day is the rule, at least among civilized nations, yet the facts are that the most primitive people take one meal a day, and the great majority of people in the world, as a rule, eat certainly less than three.

TWO MEALS A DAY THE BEST

Physiological facts argue for the two meal plan, or else for very light and easily digested food, if an extra meal be taken.

Healthy digestion requires at least five hours for its completion, and one hour for rest before another meal is taken. This makes six hours necessary for the disposal of each meal. If food is taken at shorter intervals than this, when ordinary food is eaten, the stomach will be allowed no time for rest. Again, if a meal is taken before the preceding meal has been digested and has left the stomach, a portion remaining, one is likely to undergo fermentation, in spite of the preserving influence of the gastric juice; thus the whole mass of food will be rendered less fit for the nutrition of the body, and the stomach itself will be likely to suffer injury from the acids developed.

These facts make it plain why eating between meals is a gross breach of the requirements of good digestion. The habit of nibbling at confectionery, fruit, nuts, and other things between meals, is a positive cause of dyspepsia. No stomach can long endure such usage. There is a continual irritation of the mucous membrane of the stomach, and a continual excitation of the glands, which, in the long run, work great harm.

The same reasons which are advanced against the habit of eating between meals fit the case of irregularity of meals. Those who have regular duties, regular hours of work, should have regular meal hours. The human system is continually forming habits, and seems in a great degree dependent upon the performance of its functions in accordance with the habits that are formed. This fact is especially observed in respect to digestion. When meals are taken at regular times the stomach becomes accustomed to receiving food at those times, and is prepared for it. If meals are taken irregularly, the stomach is taken by surprise, so to speak, and is never in that state of rest in which it should be for the prompt and perfect performance of its functions. The habit which many business and professional men form, in the stress of their occupations, of allowing their meal hours to be intruded upon, at times depriving themselves of a meal, will undermine the best digestion in the long run. There is no physiologist who would not endorse the following words of Kellogg: “Every individual ought to consider the hour for meals a sacred one, not to be intruded upon under any ordinary circumstances. Eating is a matter of too momentous importance to be interrupted or delayed by ordinary matters of business or convenience. The habit of regularity in eating should be cultivated.”

DON’T EAT BEFORE SLEEPING

The meal which most people would find it advantageous either to drop altogether, or to reduce in quantity, is supper. The physiological law which is now come to be recognized is, that the brain must be active to insure good digestion; and that the stomach must be empty to insure good sleep. That sense of drowsiness which so often follows a hearty meal is not a physiological condition; it is not evidence of a naturally sedative effect in eating; but is really an evidence of indigestion. Those who practice eating before retiring often sleep soundly until an hour or two after midnight, then awake, and find difficulty in getting to sleep again. This is due to irritation of the solar plexus set up by the labor of digesting under unfavorable conditions. The lack of appetite for breakfast after a late supper is evidence of the exhausted state of the stomach. Fruits and cereals are the ideal supper rather than the ideal breakfast—though good at any time!

DRINKING AT MEALS

It is nearly always the case that a hasty or over-hearty eater is also in the habit of drinking copiously of water or other fluids at his meals. He “washes his food down” instead of legitimately drinking. The body, of course, needs liquid, but, as a rule, meal times are not the times for the taking of this liquid supply; except for what is contained in the food itself. The hasty eater thus associates two great evils.

Liquid of any kind in large quantity is inimical to digestion, because it delays the action of the gastric juice, and weakens its digestive qualities, and also checks the secretion of saliva. In case the fluid taken is very hot, as tea, coffee, cocoa, or a considerable quantity of soup—it relaxes and weakens the stomach. On the other hand if it is very cold, it checks digestion by cooling the contents of the stomach, and reducing its temperature to a degree at which digestion cannot proceed. Even a small quantity of cold water, ice cream, or other very cold substance will create a serious disturbance if taken into a stomach where food is undergoing digestion. The process of digestion cannot be carried on at a temperature that is less than the body, which is about one hundred.

The old notions about the processes of digestion were chiefly drawn from the experiments of Dr. Beaumont made nearly a hundred years ago up in Northern Michigan, around Mackinac; with a Canadian hunter, Alexis St. Martin, as the subject. Most people have probably read of St. Martin and Beaumont in the physiologies they studied in their school days. Beaumont was a very capable physician, and a man of the truest scientific spirit. It happened that through an accident he was given an opportunity to make the most valuable contribution to the study of the stomach of man that so far had been furnished by any investigator. The hunter, St. Martin, had suffered a gunshot wound in his stomach, and Beaumont kept him alive for years with the wound open so that he might study the movements of the man’s interior organs. For the first time, here was a human body with a window in it, so to speak, and through this window the scientist patiently watched and studied for years. Of course, however, the window gave only a limited view of what was going on inside this particular house of life, and a great number of Beaumont’s ideas and theories have been proven erroneous; nevertheless, he obtained much important knowledge. When Dr. Beaumont peered through that curious window which he made in the stomach of Alexis St. Martin, he noticed that when the latter drank a glassful of water at the usual temperature of freshly drawn well water, the temperature of the food undergoing digestion fell immediately to 70. The process of digestion was checked absolutely and did not resume until the body had regained its proper temperature, which it did not do for more than half an hour.

Another way in which drinking at meals proves harmful is because of the fact that particles of food not thoroughly masticated are washed from the mouth into the stomach. If any drink at meals is taken at all, it should be a few minutes before eating. Of course, sipping of a little water will not be harmful, if care is taken not to sip at the time when food is in the mouth. It will be found, however, that unless the meal is composed of very dry foods, there will be little inclination to drink at meals. When, however, the food is rendered either fiery or irritating with spices, and other stimulating condiments, it is small wonder that there is an imperious demand for water or liquid of any kind to allay the irritation.

HOW THE BODY PRODUCES “APPETITE JUICE”

He who is really hungry, however, has no need of condiments, and usually small relish for them.

The old saying that hunger is the best sauce is one of those proverbs of the people which modern science is proving to be firmly established on truth. No sauce can equal appetite. Experiments by Professor Pawlow of St. Petersburg, Director of Department of Experimental Physiology in the Imperial Literary School of Medicine, have shown that there is a real “appetite juice” formed by the body when it is hungry.

Appetite, and hunger, are not synonymous terms with the mere habit-craving for food which most people consider to be either appetite or hunger. Real hunger, or appetite, only comes to the body when the body has earned it. There must be an expenditure of tissue, which the body requires to be repaired; or there must be a real need for energy to carry on work before the body will manifest its need for energy-supplying material. In other words, the body cares nothing about our likes or dislikes, our whims or our fancies, in the nature of food, save when it has a real need for food. Professor Chittenden demonstrated that most people simply eat the entire round of meals from mere habit. The disturbance when for any reason they miss one or two meals from the accustomed routine is simply the outcry of a habit and not the outcry of a real need. While Dr. Kellogg advises that no meal be missed, yet he also strongly advises us not to eat unless really hungry, merely drinking a little fruit juice or something of the kind at the meal hour in order to keep up the normal action of the digestive organs.

The digestive juice which is manufactured by the body when it is really hungry and food has been given to it has been shown by Pawlow and Hanecke to be the most important element in digestion. The chemical juices produced in the stomach and intestines while food is in them is of small importance and value compared with the juices that are formed while food is being chewed when the body has a good appetite or is really hungry.

This juice begins to flow at the very sight of food, and continues to from three to five minutes after beginning mastication. The production of juice in the stomach is stimulated by the contact of food with the mouth, and only during that contact; so it is obvious that the longer the food is held in the mouth, if it is held there in enjoyment, and the more completely it is chewed, so long as chewing is accompanied by taste, the more thoroughly are the flavors set free by the act of chewing, and the higher becomes the stimulating effect of these flavors upon the psychic centers which cause the appetite juice to flow into the stomach.