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MAINTAINING HEALTH

(FORMERLY HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY)

By R. L. ALSAKER, M. D.

AUTHOR OF "EATING FOR HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY"

"When you arise in the morning, think what a precious privilege it is to live, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." —MARCUS AURELIUS.

"Nature Cures" —HIPPOCRATES

TO ISAAC T. COOK

WHOSE CRITICISMS, ASSISTANCE AND ENCOURAGEMENT HAVE LIGHTENED THE LABOR AND ADDED TO THE PLEASURE OF PRODUCING THIS VOLUME.

CHAPTER CONTENTS

I PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
Humanity, Health and Healers

II MENTAL ATTITUDE
Correct and Incorrect—Results

III FOOD
General Consideration

IV OVEREATING

V DAILY FOOD INTAKE

VI WHAT TO EAT

VII WHEN TO EAT

VIII HOW TO EAT

IX CLASSIFICATION OF FOODS

X FLESH FOODS
Composition—Utility—Preparation—Combinations

XI NUTS
Composition—Utility—Preparation—Combinations

XII LEGUMES
Composition—Utility—Preparation—Combinations

XIII SUCCULENT VEGETABLES
Composition—Utility—Preparation—Combinations—Salads

XIV CEREAL FOODS
Composition—Utility—Preparation—Combinations

XV TUBERS
Composition—Utility—Preparation—Combinations

XVI FRUITS
Composition—Utility—Preparation—Combinations—Salads

XVII OILS AND FATS

XVIII MILK AND OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS
Composition—Utility—Preparation—Combinations

XIX MENUS
Food Combination in General

XX DRINK
Water—Tea—Coffee—Alcohol—Enslaving Drugs

XXI CARE OF THE SKIN
Baths—Friction—Clothing

XXII EXERCISE

XXIII BREATHING AND VENTILATION

XXIV SLEEP

XXV FASTING
Our Most Important Remedy—Symptoms—When and How to Fast—Cases

XXVI ATTITUDE OF PARENT TOWARD CHILD

XXVII CHILDREN
Prenatal Care—Infancy—Childhood—Mental Training

XXVIII DURATION OF LIFE
Advanced Years—Living to Old Age in Health and Comfort

XXIX EVOLVING INTO HEALTH
How it is Often Done—A Case

XXX RETROSPECT
A Summing-up of the Subject

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.

Writings on hygiene and health have been accessible for centuries, but never before have books and magazines on these subjects been as numerous as they are today. Most of the information is so general, vague and indefinite that only a few have the time and patience to read the thousands of pages necessary to learn what to do to keep well. The truth is to be found in the archives of medicine, in writings covering a period of over thirty centuries, but it is rather difficult to find the grains of truth.

Health is the most valuable of all possessions, for with health one can attain anything else within reason. A few of the great people of the world have been sickly, but it takes men and women sound in body and mind to do the important work. Healthy men and women are a nation's most valuable asset.

It is natural to be healthy, but we have wandered so far astray that disease is the rule and good health the exception. Of course, most people are well enough to attend to their work, but nearly all are suffering from some ill, mental or physical, acute or chronic, which deprives them of a part of their power. The average individual is of less value to himself, to his family and to society than he could be. His bad habits, of which he is often not aware, have brought weakness and disease upon him. These conditions prevent him from doing his best mentally and physically.

This abnormal condition has a bad effect upon his descendants, who may not be born with any special defects, but they have less resistance at birth than is their due, and consequently fall prey to disease very easily. This state of impaired resistance has been passed on from generation to generation, and we of today are passing it on as a heritage to our children.

About 280,000 babies under the age of one year die annually in the United States. The average lifetime is only a little more than forty years. It should be at least one hundred years. This is a very conservative statement, for many live to be considerably older, and it is within the power of each individual to prolong his life beyond what is now considered old age.

Under favorable conditions people should live in comfort and health to the age of one hundred years or more, useful and in full possession of their faculties. Barring accidents, which should be less numerous when people fully realize that unreasonable haste and speed are wasteful and that life is more valuable than accumulated wealth, human life could and should be a certainty. There should be no sudden deaths resulting from the popular diseases of today. In fact, pneumonia, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cancer and various other ills that are fatal to the vast majority of the race, should and could be abolished. This may sound idealistic, but though such results are not probable in the near future, they are possible.

All civilized nations of which we have record, except the Chinese, have decayed after growing and flourishing a few centuries, usually about a thousand years or less. Many reasons are given for the decline and fall of nations. Rome especially furnishes food for much thought. However, look into the history of each known nation that has risen to prominence, glory and power, and you will find that so long as they kept in close contact with the soil they flourished. With the advance of civilization the peoples change their mode of life from simplicity to luxuriousness and complexity. Thus individuals decay and in the end there is enough individual decay to result in national degeneration. When this process has advanced far enough these people are unable to hold their own. In the severe competition of nations the strain is too great and they perish. There is a point of refinement beyond which people can not go and survive.

From luxury nations are plunged into hardship. Then their renewed contact with the soil gradually causes their regeneration, if they have enough vitality left to rise again. Such is the history of the Italians. Many others, like the once great Egyptians, whose civilization was very far advanced and who became so dissolute that a virtuous woman was a curiosity, have been unable to recover, even after a lapse of many centuries. The degenerated nations are like diseased individuals: Some have gone so far on the road to ruin that they are doomed to die. Others can slowly regain their health by mending their ways.

Nations, like individuals, generally do better in moderate circumstances than in opulence. Nearly all can stand poverty, but only the exceptional individual or nation can bear up under riches. Nature demands of us that we exercise both body and mind.

Civilization is not inimical to health and long life. In fact, the contrary is true, for as the people advance they learn to master the forces of nature and with these forces under control they are able to lead better, healthier lives, but if they become too soft and luxurious there is decay of moral and physical fibre, and in the end the nation must fall, for its individual units are unworthy of survival in a world which requires an admixture of brain and brawn.

Civilization is favorable to long life so long as the people are moderate and live simply, but when it degenerates to sensuous softness, individual and racial deterioration ensue. Among savages the infant mortality is very great, but such ills as cancer, tuberculosis, smallpox and Bright's disease are rare. These are luxuries which are generally introduced with civilization. Close housing, too generous supply of food, too little exercise and alcohol are some of the fatal blessings which civilized man introduces among savages.

A part of the price we must pay for being civilized is the exercise of considerable self-control and self-denial, otherwise we must suffer.

The state of the individual health is not satisfactory. There is too much illness, too much suffering and too many premature deaths. It is estimated that in our country about three millions of people are ill each day, on the average. The monetary loss is tremendous and the anguish and suffering are beyond estimate.

The race is losing every year a vast army of individuals who are in their productive prime. When a part of a great city is destroyed men give careful consideration to the material loss and plan to prevent a recurrence. But that is nothing compared to the loss we suffer from the annual death of a host of experienced men and women. Destroyed business blocks can be replaced, but it is impossible to replace men and women.

We look upon this unnecessary waste of life complacently because we are used to it and consequently think that it is natural. It is neither necessary nor natural. If we would read and heed nature's writings it would cease. Then people would live until their time came to fade away peacefully and beautifully, as do the golden leaves of autumn or the blades of grass.

Many dread old age because they think of it in connection with decrepitude, helplessness and the childish querulousness popularly associated with advancing years. This is not a natural old age; it is disease. Natural old age is sweet, tolerant and cheerful. There are few things in life more precious than the memory of parents and grandparents grown old gracefully, after having weathered the storms of appetites and passions, the mind firmly enthroned and filled with the calm toleration and wisdom that come with the passing years of a well spent life.

A busy mind in a healthy body does not degenerate. The brain, though apparently unstable, is one of the most stable parts of the body.

We should desire and acquire health because when healthy we are at our maximum efficiency. We are able to enjoy life. We have greater capacity for getting and giving. We live more fully. Being normal, we are in harmony with ourselves and with our associates. We are of greater value all around. We are better citizens.

Every individual owes something to the race. It is our duty to contribute our part so that the result of our lives is not a tendency toward degeneration, but toward upbuilding, of the race. The part played by each individual is small, but the aggregate is great. If our children are better born and better brought up than we were, and there is generally room for improvement, we have at least helped.

Health is within the grasp of all who are not afflicted with organic disease, and the vast majority have no organic ills. All that is necessary is to lead natural lives and learn how to use the mind properly. Those who are not in sympathy with the views on racial duty can enhance their personal worth through better living without giving the race any thought. Every individual who leads a natural life and thinks to advantage helps to bring about better public health. The national health is the aggregate of individual health and is improved as the individuals evolve into better health. National or racial improvement come through evolution, not through revolution. The improvement is due to small contributions from many sources.

The greatest power for human uplift is knowledge. Reformers often believe that they can improve the world by legislation. Lasting reform comes through education. If the laws are very repressive the reaction is both great and unpleasant.

It takes about six months to learn stenography. It requires a long apprenticeship to become a first-class blacksmith or horseshoer. To obtain the rudiments of a physician's art it is necessary to spend four to six years in college. To learn a language takes an apt pupil at least a year. A lawyer must study from two to four years to become a novice. A businessman must work many years before he is an expert in his line. Not one of these attainments is worth as much as good health, yet an individual of average intelligence can obtain enough knowledge about right living during his spare time in from two to six months to assure him of good health, if he lives as well as he knows how. Is it worth while? It certainly is, for it is one of the essentials of life. Health will increase one's earning capacity and productivity and more than double both the pleasure and the duration of life.

Disease is a very expensive luxury. Health is one of the cheapest, though one of the rarest, things on earth. There is no royal road to health. If there is any law of health it is this: Only those will retain it permanently who are deserving of it.

Many prefer to live in that state of uncertainty, which may be called tolerable health, a state in which they do not suffer, yet are not quite well. In this condition they have their little ups and downs and occasionally a serious illness, which too often proves fatal. Even such people ought to acquire health knowledge, for the time may come when they will desire to enjoy life to the fullest, which they can do only when they have health. Those who have this knowledge are often able to help themselves quickly and effectively when no one else can.

I am acquainted with many who have been educated out of disease into health. Many of them are indiscreet, but they have learned to know the signs of approaching trouble and they ease up before anything serious overtakes them. In this way they save themselves and their families from much suffering, much anxiety and much expense. Every adult should know enough to remain well. Every one should know the signs of approaching illness and how to abort it. The mental comfort and ease that come from the possession of such knowledge are priceless.

Everything that is worth while must be paid for in some way and the price of continued good health is some basic knowledge and self-control. There are no hardships connected with rational living. It means to live moderately and somewhat more simply than is customary. Simplicity reduces the amount of work and friction and adds to the enjoyment of life. The cheerfulness, the buoyancy and the tingling with the joy of life that come to those who have perfect health more than compensate for the pet bad habits which must be given up.

Many of the popular teachings regarding disease and its prevention are false. The germ theory is a delusion. The fact will some day be generally recognized, as it is today by a few, that the so-called pathogenic bacteria or germs have no power to injure a healthy body, that there is bodily degeneration first and then the system becomes a favorable culture medium for germs: In other words, disease comes first and the pathogenic bacteria multiply afterwards. This view may seem very ridiculous to the majority, for it is a strong tenet of popular medical belief today that micro-organisms are the cause of most diseases.

To most people, medical and lay, the various diseases stand out clear and individual. Typhoid fever is one disease. Pneumonia is an entirely different one. Surely this is so, they say, for is not typhoid fever due to the bacillus typhosus and pneumonia to the pneumococcus? But it is not so. Outside of mechanical injuries there is but one disease, and the various conditions that we dignify with individual names are but manifestations of this disease. The parent disease is filthiness, and its manifestations vary according to circumstances and individuals.

This filthiness is not of the skin, but of the interior of the body. The blood stream becomes unclean, principally because of indigestion and constipation, which are chiefly due to improper eating habits. Some of the contributory causes are wrong thinking, too little exercise, lack of fresh air, and ingestion of sedatives and stimulants which upset the assimilative and excretory functions of the body. In all cases the blood is unclean. The patient is suffering from autointoxication or autotoxemia.

If this is true, it would follow that the treatment of all diseases is about the same. For instance, it would be necessary to give about the same treatment for eczema as for pneumonia. Basically, that is exactly what has to be done to obtain the best results, though the variation in location and manifestation requires that special relief measures, of lesser importance, be used in special cases, to get the quickest and best results. In both eczema and pneumonia the essential thing is to get the body clean.

The practice of medicine is not a science. We have drugs that are reputed to be excellent healers, yet these very drugs sometimes produce death within a few hours of being taken. The practice of medicine is an art, and the outcome in various cases depends more on the personality of the artist than on the drugs he gives, for roughly speaking, all medicines are either sedative or stimulant, and if the dosage is kept below the danger line, the patient generally recovers. It seems to make very little difference whether the medicine is given in the tiny homeopathic doses, so small that they have only a suggestive effect, or if they are given in doses several hundred times as large by allopaths and eclectics.

It is true that we have drugs with which we can diminish or increase the number of heart beats per minute, dilate or contract the pupils of the eye, check or stimulate the secretion of mucus, sedate or irritate the nervous system, etc., but all that is accomplished is temporary stimulation or sedation, and such juggling does not cure. The practice of medicine is today what it has been in the past, largely experiment and guess-work.

On the other hand, natural healers who have drunk deep of the cup of knowledge need not guess. They know that withholding of food and cleaning out the alimentary tract will reduce a fever. They know that the same measures will clean up foul wounds and stop the discharge of pus in a short time. They know that the same measures in connection with hot baths will terminate headaches and remove pain. They further know that if the patient will take the proper care of himself after the acute manifestations have disappeared there will be no more disease. After a little experience, an intelligent natural healer can tell his patients, in the majority of cases, what to expect if instructions are followed. He can say positively that there will be no relapses and no complications.

How different is this from the unsatisfactory practice of conventional medicine! However, most physicians refuse to accept the valuable teachings which are offered to them freely, and one of the reasons is that the natural healers do not present their knowledge in scientific form. The knowledge is scientific but it is simple. Such objection does not come with good grace from a profession practicing an art. Life is but a tiny part science, mixed with much art.

The true scientist in the healing art is he who can take an invalid and by the use of the means at his command bring him back to health, not in an accidental manner, but in such a knowing way that he can predict the outcome. In serious cases the natural healer of intelligence and experience can do this twenty times where the man who relies on drugs does it once. The physicians who prescribe drugs are ever on the look-out for complications and relapses, and they have many of them. The natural healers know that under proper treatment neither complications nor relapses can occur, unless the disease has already advanced so far that the vital powers are exhausted before treatment is begun, and this is generally not the case. In this book many of the medical fallacies of today, both professional and lay, will be touched upon in a kindly spirit of helpfulness and ideas that contain more truth will be offered in their place. The truth is the best knowledge we have today, according to our understanding. It is not fixed, for it may be replaced by something better tomorrow. However, one fundamental truth regarding health will never change, namely, that it is necessary to conform to the laws of nature, or in other words, the laws of our being, in order to retain it.

No one can cover the field of health completely, for though it is very simple, it is as big as life. The most helpful parts of this book will be those which point the way for each individual to understand his relation to what we call nature, and hence help to enable him to gain a better understanding of himself.

By natural living is not meant the discarding of the graces of civilization and roaming about in adamic costume, living on the foods as they are found in forest and field, without preparation. What is meant is the adjustment of each person to his environment, or the environment to the person, until harmony or balance is established, which means health.

One of the most difficult things about teaching health is that it is so very simple. People look for something mysterious. When told that good old mother nature is the only healer, they are incredulous, for they have been taught that doctors cure. When informed that they do not need medicine and that outside treatment is unnecessary, they find it difficult to believe, for disease has always called for treatment of some kind in the hands of the medical profession. When further told that they have to help themselves by living so that they will not put any obstacles in the way of normal functioning of their bodies, they think that the physician who thinks and talks that way must be a crank, and many seek help where they are told that they can obtain health from pills, powders and potions or from various inoculations and injections.

To live in health is so simple that any intelligent person can master the art and furthermore regain lost health in the average case, without any help from professional healers. There is plenty knowledge and all that is needed is a discriminating mind to find the truth and then exercise enough will power to live it. If a good healer is at hand, it is cheaper to pay his fee for personal advice than to try to evolve into health without aid, but if it is a burden to pay the price, get the knowledge and practice it and health will return in most cases. The vast majority of people suffering from chronic ills which are considered incurable can get well by living properly.

The more capable and frank the healer is, the less treatment will be administered. Minute examinations and frequent treatment serve to make the patient believe that he is getting a great deal for his money. Advice is what the healer has to sell, and if it is correct, it is precious. The patient should not object to paying a reasonable fee, for what he learns is good for life. People gladly pay for prescriptions or drugs. The latter are injurious if taken in sufficient quantity to have great effect. So why object to paying for health education, which is more valuable than all the drugs in the world? Because of their attitude on this subject, the people force many a doctor to use drugs, who would gladly practice in a more reasonable way if it would bring the necessities of life to him and his family. The public has to enlighten itself before it will get good health advice. The medical men will continue in the future, as they have done in the past, to furnish the kind of service that is popular.

A good natural healer teaches his patients to get along without him and other doctors. A doctor of the conventional school teaches his patrons to depend upon him. The former is consequently deserving of far greater reward than the latter.

The law of compensation may apply elsewhere, thinks the patient, but surely it is nonsense to teach that it applies in matters of health, for does not everybody know that most of our diseases are due to causes over which we have no control? That the chief cause is germs and that we can not control the air well enough to prevent one of these horrible monsters (about 1/25,000 of an inch long) from settling in the body and multiplying, at last producing disease and maybe death? This is untrue, but it is a very comforting theory, for it removes the element of personal responsibility. People do not like to be told that if they are ill it is their own fault, that they are only reaping as they have sowed, yet such is the truth.

Patients often dislike to give up one or more of their bad habits. "Mr. Blank has done this very thing for sixty or seventy years and now at the age of eighty or ninety he is strong and active," they reply to warnings. This is sophistry, for although an individual occasionally lives to old age in spite of broken health laws, the average person who attempts it perishes young. Those who do not conform to the rules are not allowed to sit in the game to the end.

Another false feeling, or rather hope, deeply implanted in the human breast is: "Perhaps others can not do this, but I can. I have done it before and can do it again; it will not hurt me for I am strong and possessed of a good constitution." The wish is father to the thought, which is not founded on facts. The most common and the most destructive form of dishonesty is self-deception. Those who are honest with themselves find it easy to deal fairly and squarely with others.

The doctors of the dominant school are very distrustful of the natural healers, in spite of the fact that the latter obtain the best results. Many of the conditions which the regular physicians treat without satisfactory results, the natural healers are able to remove in a few months. When members of the dominant school of medicine find men leading patients suffering from various skin diseases, Bright's disease, chronic digestive troubles, rheumatism and other ills which they themselves make little or no impression upon back to health, they are unwilling to believe that such results can be accomplished by means of hygiene and proper feeding. They think there is some fakery about it, for their professors, books and experience have taught them otherwise. They consider the views of the natural healer unworthy of serious attention and often call him a quack, which epithet closes the discussion. They are ethical and do not wish to be mired by contact with quacks.

The distrust of medical men for healers of the natural school is not hard to explain. Many of the natural healers are men of education and experience, but others lack both, and no matter how good the latter may be at heart, they make very serious blunders. For instance: They get out circulars, listing all prominent diseases known, stating that they cure them. They either are so enthusiastic that they are carried away or they are so ignorant that they do not know that there is a stage of degeneration which will not allow of regeneration, and that when such a stage is reached in any chronic disease the end is death.

Another handicap is that intelligent natural healers have such excellent success that they lose their heads. They educate patients by the hundred into health who have been given up as incurable by the conventional physicians. In their success they forget that modesty is very becoming to the successful and begin to boast. This hurts the cause. Let the natural healer ever remember that he does not cure, that he is but the interpreter and that nature is the restorer of health.

The natural healers must be more careful about their statements if they would have the respect of intelligent people, and they must labor diligently to be well informed. For their own good regular physicians will have to be more open-minded, and recognize the fact that it is not necessary to have a M. D. degree to accept the truth regarding healing. Medical men are losing their hold on the public largely because they have cultivated the class spirit.

It is a well known fact among natural healers that most cases of
Bright's disease are curable, even after they have become chronic.
However, a physician who voices this truth will probably be classed
among irresponsible dreamers by other doctors.

Antagonism of this kind breeds extremists and is therefore harmful to the public, which pays for all the mistakes made. It is very easy to lose one's mental balance and to begin to play on a harp with but one string. We have a large army of Christian Scientists. If it were not for the way in which physicians of the past mistreated the body and neglected the mind, this sect would not exist. The doctors, with their awful doses of nauseous and destructive drugs, went to one extreme. The reaction was the formation of a sect that has gone to the other extreme. The Christian Scientists are incomprehensible in spots to us mortals who believe in a body as well as a mind, but they have a cheerful and helpful philosophy which brings enjoyment on earth and they have done an immense amount of good by teaching people to cease thinking and talking so much about themselves and their ills. Among other demonstrations, they have shown the uselessness of drugs.

Of late so many varieties of drugless healers have sprung into existence that it is difficult to remember even their names. There are many pathies. These have a tendency to take one part of the human being, or one procedure of treatment, and to play this up to the elimination of all the rest. Some do everything with the mind. Others pay no attention to the mind. Bathing, massage, manipulating the spine, washing out the colon, baths in mud, sunshine or water, suggestion and many other things are separately given credit for being cure-alls. Many of these are excellent as a part of regenerative treatment, but they are not sufficient of themselves to give permanent results.

Most healers have too narrow vision. People come to them because they have faith. The faith alone will produce temporary improvement, but as soon as the interest is gone and the procedure grows old the patient becomes worse again unless the treatment possesses genuine merit. Osteopathy is most excellent, as a part of a healing system, but it is not sufficient. The osteopaths find their patients relapsing over and over again, or taking some other disease. However, they are learning, in increasing numbers, that if they would keep their patrons well, they have to give them education along the line of hygiene and dietetics, with a little mental training thrown in.

Many chiropractors are learning the same thing. In some chiropractic schools there are professors wise enough to teach their students to be broad-minded. The true natural healer makes use of air, water, food, exercise, mental training—in fact, all the means nature has put at his disposal. He realizes that the best treatment is education of the patient. In many cases a cure can be greatly hastened by proper local treatment.

It is unfortunate that the nature healers are so divided and that many operate upon such a narrow basis. If the vast majority of them were well informed, broad enough to make use of all helpful natural means, and were designated by the same name, it would not take them long to gain more public confidence and respect than they now possess. So long as the nature healers segregate themselves and allow themselves to be narrow, so long will they have to struggle at a disadvantage against the more united wielders of scalpels and prescribers of drugs.

The question of choosing a health guide is sometimes perplexing. The patient should select one in whom he has confidence, for confidence is a great aid in restoring health. It often happens that there is no one in the town in whom the patient has confidence, for many communities have no competent natural healers. Then the question is whether or not to seek advice by correspondence. In acute diseases this is generally a bad plan, for the family often lacks the poise and equanimity necessary to carry out directions. In chronic cases it is usually all right. Here all that is required is correct knowledge put into practice and errors are not as dangerous as in acute diseases. Curable cases will get well by following the advice given by correspondence. A medical man who educates people by correspondence is considered unethical and is severely censured by the ethical brethren. To prescribe medicine by mail is without doubt reprehensible, but to educate people into health is a work of merit, whether it is done face to face or by correspondence. It is advantageous to meet the physician, talk things over and be examined, but it is not necessary.

I know of some cases of acute disease treated satisfactorily by letter and telegram, but the patients' families were in sympathy with natural methods, of which they had a fair knowledge, and they had unlimited confidence in the healer.

I am personally acquainted with many people who have been educated out of chronic disease and into health by correspondence, after the local physicians had vainly exhausted all their skill. It is simply a matter of applied knowledge and it works just as well in curable cases if given by telephone, telegraph or letter as if imparted by word of mouth. However, it seems to me that it is most satisfactory for all concerned when the healer and the sufferer can meet.

My words are not inspired by any ill feeling toward the members of the medical profession. I have found medical men to measure well up in every way. They are better educated than the average and they are as kind and considerate as are other men. As men we can expect no more of them under present conditions, but because they are better equipped than the average, we have a right to ask for an improvement in their practice, even if they have inherited a great many handicaps from their predecessors and it is not easy to throw off the past, which acts as a dead weight ever tending to check progress. The tendency of the times is for fuller, freer and more sincere service in every line, for evolving out of the useless into the greatest helpfulness. It is not asking too much when we demand of the doctors that they rid themselves of the injurious drug superstition and become health teachers, that instead of being in the rear they come to the front and make progress easier.

What I say about drugs is founded on intimate observation. I was educated medically in two of the colleges where medication is strongly advocated and well taught, and am a regular M. D. I have watched people who were treated by means of drugs and the biologic products, such as serums, vaccines and bacterines, which are now so popular, and I have watched many who have been treated by natural methods. Anyone with my experience and capable of thinking would come to the conclusions given in this book, that it is a mistake to administer drugs and serums and that the natural methods give results so much superior to the conventional methods that there is no comparison. Others who have discarded drugs know from experience that this is true.

The physicians who are on intimate terms with nature will neither desire nor require drugs. Sound advice, that is, teaching, is the most valuable service a physician can render. Right living and right thinking always result in health if no serious organic degeneration has taken place. If the public could only be made to realize that they need a great deal of knowledge and very little treatment, and that knowledge is very valuable and treatment often worthless the day would soon dawn when health matters will be placed on a sound, natural basis.

Surgery is occasionally necessary, but today from ten to twenty operations are performed where but one is needed.

"There is nothing new beneath the sun," is a popular quotation. It seems to hold true in the healing art, for the best modern practice was the best ancient practice. Naturally, people like to make new discoveries and get credit therefore. Our valuable new discoveries in healing are very ancient. Though much that appears in these pages may seem strange and new to many, I claim no originality. My aim is to present workable, helpful facts in such a way that any person of average intelligence and will power can apply them, and to get the essentials of health within such a compass that no unreasonable amount of time need be employed in finding them.

According to late discoveries, the ancient Egyptians were more advanced in the art of living than any other people on earth, including the moderns. They taught that overeating is the chief causative factor of disease, and so it is. They taught cleanliness, the priests going to the extreme of shaving the entire body daily. It would naturally follow that they prescribed moderation in eating, which leads to internal cleanliness. Cleanliness of body, in conjunction with cleanliness of mind, will put disease to rout.

The ancient Greek writers commented on the good state of health among the Egyptians, and modern medical writers marvel that they made so little use of drugs. Evidently they found drugs of little value, for they were taught hygienic living. The admirable health laws laid down by Moses were derived from Egyptian sources.

The ancient nations were as much influenced by the Egyptians as we are today by the Greeks who lived before the Christian era. The Greeks built combination temples and sanitaria, to which the afflicted resorted. The priests were in charge and these ancient heathens were great rogues. By fooling the people they got big fees out of them. Their oracular sayings and miracles were adroitly presented. They did not teach that overeating is the chief cause of disease, for this did not suit the mystic times. The people liked oracular prescriptions, and they got them. The law of supply and demand worked as well then as it does now. The heathen priests waxed fat and the medical art degenerated.

About five centuries B. C., Pythagoras taught that health can be preserved by means of proper diet, exercise and the right use of the mind. He also taught many other truths and some fallacies. In spite of much superstition mixed with his philosophy, it was too pure for the times and he perished.

Hippocrates, born about 470 years B. C., is one of the bright lights of the medical world. He was so far ahead of his time that he still lives. He was the founder of medical art as we know it. He used many drugs, but he also relied on natural means. He was the first medical man on record to pay serious attention to dietetics. The following quotations will show how well his mind grasped the essentials of the healing art: "Old persons need less fuel (food) than the young." "In winter abundant nourishment is wholesome; in summer a more frugal diet." "Follow nature." "Complete abstinence often acts very well, if the strength of the patient can in any way maintain it." In acute disease he withheld nourishment at first and then he prescribed a liquid diet. He also made use of the "milk cure," which is considered modern, in conjunction with baths and exercise; this is very efficacious in some chronic diseases. He further spoke the oft-forgotten truth that physicians do not heal. "Natural powers are the healers of disease." "Nature suffices for everything under all conditions."

The next great physician was Galen, who lived in the second and third centuries of our era. He added greatly to medical knowledge, made extensive use of dietetics, and then in a self-satisfied manner informed his readers that they need look no further for enlightenment, for he had given them all that was of any value. Perhaps he meant this as a joke, but those who followed him took it seriously, with the result that medical advance stopped for several centuries.

The physicians of the dark ages had some light, as evidenced by this popular quotation taken from a poem that the faculty of the medical college of Salerno gave to Robert, son of William the Conqueror, in the year 1101:

"Salerno's school in conclave high unites
To counsel England's king and thus indites:
If thou to health and vigor wouldst attain,
Shun mighty cares, all anger deem profane;
From heavy suppers and much wine abstain;
Nor trivial count it after pompous fare
To rise from table and to take the air.
Shun idle noonday slumbers, nor delay
The urgent calls of nature to obey.
These rules if thou wilt follow to the end,
Thy life to greater length thou may'st extend."

During recent times but two important discoveries have been made concerning matters of health: First, the advantage of cleanliness; second, the approximate chemical composition of various foods. All the other important new discoveries are old.

Cleanliness, moderation in all things, right thinking and a realization of the fact that nature cures are some of the most important stones upon which to build a healing practice. The most important single therapeutic factor is to abstain from food during pain and active disease processes.

Cleanliness of mind and body has been taught for thousands of years, yet cleanliness of body is a new discovery, for which we are greatly indebted to the great bacteriologist, Pasteur. It has been found that germs thrive best in filth; this has been taught so thoroughly that the public is somewhat afraid of the germs and as a measure of self-protection they are cleaning up. Of old, cleanliness meant a clean skin, but this is the least important part. It is far more necessary to have a clean alimentary tract and clean blood, with a resultant sweet, healthy body, and this is what cleanliness is beginning to mean. Internal cleanliness necessitates moderation, for an overworked alimentary tract becomes foul and some of the poisons are taken into the blood.

Asepsis and antisepsis simply mean cleanliness.

The benefits of moderation have been known for thousands of years. Louis Cornaro, who died in 1566, wrote a delightful book on the subject. People know that it is necessary to be moderate, but they do not seem to realize the meaning of moderation nor is its value well enough implanted in the human mind to produce satisfactory results.

Right thinking seemed as important to the thinkers of old as it does to the New Thought people today. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

For the better knowledge of the composition of food we have to thank the chemists.

Laymen are referred to frequently in this book because their work has been so helpful and important. Herbert Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace had very clear conceptions regarding health. See their opinions regarding vaccination. There is no difference in the mental processes of physicians and laymen. Anyone can know about health, though it takes considerable experience and observation to get acquainted with the less important subject of disease. One indictment against medical men is that they have dwelled almost entirely on disease and paid no attention to health.

A group of modern men deserve great credit for popularizing health knowledge, which generally results in the loss of professional standing of the teacher. R. H. Trall, M. D., insisted that drugs are useless and harmful, that the only rational and safe way of healing ordinary ills is to use nature's means. "Strictly speaking, fever and food are antagonistic ideas," he wrote. In his Hydropathic Encyclopedia, copyrighted in 1851, he puts great stress on natural remedies, such as food and water. He met with much opposition, but he has left a deep impression on the minds of men who are now having some influence in shaping public opinion on health and healing.

Dr. Charles Page of Boston has been writing in advocacy of natural healing for over thirty years. He also has emphasized the harmfulness of drugs, the necessity of withholding food from fever patients, and simple living, remaining in touch with nature. Another important point which the doctor has been trying to impress upon the public is that it is necessary to retain the natural salts of the foods, instead of ruining them or throwing them away, as is generally done, especially in the preparation of vegetables and many cereal products.

Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey began to present his ideas to the public a few years after the Civil War. His little book entitled "The No-Breakfast Plan and the Fasting Cure," has had a great influence among rational healers. The doctor emphasized the importance of going without food in acute diseases so that no one who has read the book can forget it. He pointed out some of the errors of conventional healing as they had never been shown before, and I believe he was the first one to give the correct rules to guide people in the consumption of food.

For fourteen years Dr. J. H. Tilden of Denver has been a voluminous writer on health. He teaches that the law of compensation applies to health; that all disease is one and the same fundamentally; that "Autotoxemia is the fundamental basic cause of all diseases." Like all others who have investigated the subject impartially he believes that one of the most important factors of health is correct feeding. He allows all foods, in compatible combinations. Of course, he gives no drugs.

Dr. Harry Brook of Los Angeles is unique among the health educators of today. He is a brainy journalist with a good stock of fundamental health knowledge and is endowed with the ability to place his convictions before the public in a striking manner. He has been carrying on his educational work for many years.

Elbert Hubbard has also had a great deal of influence on the thought of today. At intervals he publishes an article on health which gets wide distribution. He has the faculty of making people think, and those who allow themselves to think independently generally evolve into serviceable knowledge.

Bernarr Macfadden has a large following. He is a strong advocate of physical culture and favors vegetarianism and other changes from conventional life. He educates his readers away from drugs. He has written much that is helpful and his influence is widely felt. Like all others who have struggled against the fetters of convention, he has aroused much opposition.

There are a few good health magazines, and there are many people living who deserve credit for their labor to improve the mental and physical condition of humanity. Some of these will be mentioned and quoted.

Some of the teachers have dwelled upon but one idea and some have advocated fallacies, but there is good to be found in all of them. No knowledge assays one hundred per cent. pure.

No helpful healing knowledge should be kept away from the public; it should be as free as possible. The public, when it understands, willingly pays a fair price for it, which is all that should be asked. To take advantage of the sick and helpless is contemptible. The old-time idea, still prevalent, that medical knowledge is for the doctor only is a mistake. The best patients are the intelligent ones. The office of the physician should be to educate his clients; his best knowledge and his best qualities will be developed in dealing honestly with intelligent people.

The practice of medical secrecy began in ancient times when the healers and the priests believed in fooling the public. Unfortunately, this professional attitude still survives. No one who has not practiced the healing art can know how tempted a doctor is to fake and humbug a little to retain and gain patronage.

Emerson wrote: "He is the rich man who can avail himself of other men's faculties. He is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from the labors of the greatest number of men—of men in distant countries and past times." Those who wish to be healthy and efficient are compelled to advance by taking advantage of other men's faculties. He who attempts to learn all by experience does not live long enough to travel far.

Everyone should try to get a knowledge of the few most fundamental facts of nature governing life. Then it would not be so easy to go astray. Health literature should be read with an open mind. Read in conjunction with your knowledge of the laws of nature, and then it will be seen that health and disease are according to law, and that by eliminating the mistakes disease will disappear.

All disease is one. It is the manifestation of disobeyed natural law, and whether the mistakes are made knowingly or ignorantly matters but little so far as the results are concerned. It is generally considered a disgrace to be imprisoned for transgressing man-made law, which is faulty and complex. How about being in the fetters of disease for disregarding nature's law, which is just and simple?

It is my aim to use as simple language as possible. If physicians read these pages, they will understand them without technicalities, and so will laymen. This book contains much knowledge that physicians should have, knowledge that will help them when that which they have acquired from conventional sources fails, but in many respects it is so opposed to popular customs and beliefs that many physicians will doubtless condemn it on first reading. Doctors are taught otherwise at medical colleges, and most of them have such high regard for authority that it is very difficult for them to see matters in a different light. I appeal to both laymen and healers with open minds.

These rambling thoughts will serve to show the reader whether it is worth while to go any further. The following chapters are devoted to an exposition of a workable knowledge of how to retain health, and how to regain lost health in ordinary cases. They will teach how to get dependable health, how to remain well in spite of climatic conditions, bacteria and other factors that are given as causes of disease, and how to more than double the ordinary span of life.

Good health and long life result in better work, increased earning capacity and efficiency of body and mind, greater understanding, and more enjoyment of life. It gives time to cultivate wisdom.

CHAPTER II.

MENTAL ATTITUDE.

On mental questions there is a wide divergence of opinion. At one extreme some say that all is mind, at the other, that life is entirely physical, that the mind is but a refined part of the body. Most of us recognize both body and mind, and realize that life has a physical basis. If some are pleased to be known as mental phenomena, no harm is done.

All desire to make a success of life. What would be a success for one would be a failure for another. It all depends on the point of view. Broadly speaking, all are successful who are helpful, whether it be in furnishing pleasure or necessities to others. The humble may be as successful as the great, yes even more so.

Wealth and success are not synonymous, as many think. Among the failures must be counted many of the wealthy. Financial success is not real success unless it has been gained in return for valuable service. The men of initiative deserve greater rewards than the plodders and these rewards are cheerfully given.

A little genuine love and affection can bring more beauty and happiness into life than wealth, and neither can be bought with money.

The best and most satisfying form of success comes to him who helps himself by helping others. "It is more blessed to give than to receive," has passed into common currency; but the more we give the more we receive. He who loves attracts love. He who hates is repaid in kind. "He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword."

The enjoyment of the fruits of one's labor is a part of success. Some make a fetish of success and thus lose out. Others are so ambitious that in their striving they forget to live. A little ambition is good; too much sows the seed of struggle, strife and discontent and defeats its own ends. Those who do evil because the end justifies the means have already buried some of the best that is in them.

To enjoy life, health of body and mind is necessary. The mind can not come to full fruitage without a good body. Those who strive so hard to reach a certain goal that they neglect the physical become wrecks and after a few years of discomfort and disease are consigned to premature graves. Through proper living and thinking the body and mind are built up, not only enough to meet ordinary demands upon them, but extraordinary ones. In other words, it is within our power to have a large margin, balance or reserve of physical and mental force.

To make the meaning clearer let us illustrate financially: Prudent people lay aside a few dollars from time to time, in a savings bank, for instance. All goes well and the savings grow. At last there are one thousand dollars. Now an emergency arises, and if the saver can not furnish nine hundred dollars he will lose his home. In this case he must either borrow or use his reserve, so he takes nine hundred dollars from the savings bank and keeps his home. The improvident man loses his home under similar circumstances, for his credit is not good and he has no balance to draw upon.

And it is the same with physical and mental powers, except that we can not borrow these, no matter how much good will or credit we may have. He who lives well is accumulating a reserve. He has a wide margin. If trouble comes he can draw upon his reserve energy or surplus resistance and bridge it over. He may be tired out, but he escapes with body and mind intact.

The imprudent liver generally has such a narrow margin that any extraordinary demand made upon him breaks him down. It is very common for men to die after a financial failure. Disease, insanity and death often follow family trouble or the loss of a dear one. The reason is that such people live up to their limit every day. They have no margin to work on. They either overdo or underdo and fail to become balanced. Then a little physical or mental exertion beyond the ordinary often means a breakage or extinction.

Equanimity and moderation will help to build up the reserve and give the resistance that is necessary to cope successfully with the unforeseen difficulties that we sometimes have to surmount.

The physical state depends largely on the mental state and vice versa. Body and mind react upon each other. Bad blood does not only cause abnormal functioning of such organs as the heart, liver, kidneys and lungs, but it interferes with the normal functioning of the brain. It diminishes the mental output and causes a deterioration of the quality. An engorged liver makes a man cranky. Indigestion causes pessimism. Physical pain is so disturbing that the sufferer thinks mostly of himself and is unable to perform his work well. We never do our best when self-conscious. If there is severe pain the mind can perform no useful labor.

On the other hand, anger stops digestion and poisons the secretions of the body. Worry does the same. It takes the mind from constructive thoughts and deeds and centers it upon ourselves. An effective mind must be tranquil, otherwise it upsets the body and fails to give proper direction to our activities.

For a real life success we need a proper perspective. We need to be balanced, poised, adjusted. Most of us are too circumscribed mentally. We live so much by and for ourselves that we consider ourselves, individually, of greater importance than the facts warrant. Others do not agree with us on this point, and this is a source of disturbance. I am personally acquainted with two surgeons and several physicians who think they are the greatest in the world, and one considers himself the best physician of all time. The rest of the world does not appraise them so highly, and some of these professional men are very much annoyed because of this lack of appreciation.

Selfishness and self-esteem to a certain point are virtues. Beyond that point they become vices. Certainly we should think well of ourselves, and then act so that this good opinion is merited. Self-interest and selfishness are the main-springs of progress. Most of us need some inducement to do good work. It is well that it is so. The ones who deserve the great rewards generally get them, whether they are mental or physical.

To obtain a proper perspective of ourselves we must learn to think independently and honestly. It is too common to be conventionally honest, but dishonest with ourselves. It is too common to pass unnoticed in ourselves the faults we condemn in others. We should be lenient in our judgment because often the mistakes that others make would have been ours had we but had the opportunity to make them.

As physical ills are principally caused by bad physical habits, so are mental ills and inefficiency chiefly due to various bad mental habits, which are allowed to fasten themselves upon us. These will be briefly discussed so as to focus attention upon them, for the first thing necessary for the correction of a bad habit is to recognize its presence. It is as important to think right as it is to give the body proper care. A good body with a mind working in the wrong direction is of no use. If we allow our minds to be disturbed and distressed by every little unfavorable happening, we shall never have enough tranquility to think well.

The proper time to quit our bad habits is now. Why wait until the first of the month or the first of the year? Every day that we harbor a bad habit it grows greater and strikes deeper and stronger roots. A child one year old can often be broken of a bad habit in a week; a child of three, within a month; a child of six, within a few months; but let the habit grow until the age of twenty, and it may take a year or more to break the bonds. Let it continue until the age of thirty, and the victim will say, "I can quit any time," but the chances are that the habit will remain for life. After the individual is fifty or sixty years old, he is rarely capable of changing. If he is the victim of a very bad habit, it has generally so sapped his strength of body and mind that he is unable to break away.

The right time to stop bad habits is now.

Some people have many pet bad habits. It is often the best policy to attack them one at a time. Those who try to conquer all at once often fail. They backslide, lose self-confidence, become discouraged, tell themselves that it is no use, for it can not be done. Begin with the habit that is least formidable. After this is conquered, overcome another one, and in time most of the bad habits will be subdued. The first conquest builds confidence, and with confidence and determination it is possible to gain self-mastery in time.

The greatest evil about bad habits is that they conquer us. They become masters, we slaves. Let us be free. "He who conquers himself is greater than he who taketh a city."

The mind grows strong by overcoming obstacles, as the body gains in strength through work and exercise.

Giving up bad habits is very disagreeable at first. Those who have conquered the prevalent habit of overeating know that they have been in a fight. The smokers who quit suffer. Those who break away from liquor have a much greater struggle. Those who attempt to overcome drug addictions suffer the tortures of the damned. Those who overcome their bad mental habits have a hard time of it at first, but though it is difficult it is possible. It is no easy matter to curb a fiery disposition or to quit worrying. It requires time, persistence and perseverance. Fretting, envy, spite, jealousy and hatred are tenacious tenants of the mind they occupy. These harmful emotions are enemies which sap our strength and we must thrust them from our lives if we would live well. This is not all narrow selfishness, for when we have gained mental calm for ourselves we are in position to impart peace of mind to others and to be more useful than previously. A calm mind is not a stagnant one. It is a mind that is in the best possible condition to work, to think clearly and effectively.

Self-pity is a very common mental ill. Those who suffer much from this affliction usually have very good imagination. They think they are slighted and abused. They know that they do not get their dues. They envy others and are sure that others prosper at their expense. They minimize their blessings and magnify their misfortunes. This state of mind leads to spite and malice. These people become very nervous and irritable and are a nuisance, not only to themselves, but to those who are unfortunate enough to have to associate with them.

Self-consciousness and self-centeredness are twin evils. The sufferers lack perspective. They magnify their own importance. They believe they are the targets of many other minds and eyes. The youth refuses to take a dip in the ocean because he knows that the rest of the people on the beach are watching his spindle shanks or perhaps the bathing suit would reveal his narrow, undeveloped chest. The young man is afraid to go onto the dance floor because everybody is sure to see his ungainly gyrations. He stammers and stutters when he speaks because others are paying particular attention to his words, when in truth he is attracting little or no attention. Whether working or playing, those whose good opinions are worth having are too busy to spend much time in finding fault with others and discovering flaws that do not concern them. More enjoyment is to be had in looking at fine physiques and graceful movements than in watching the less favored.

We always do our best when we are natural. When we become self-conscious we become artificial and awkward. We can not even breathe properly. Those who are ever thinking about themselves fail to do things well enough to hold sustained attention, even if they are able to gain it for a while. Those who do their work well will in time gain the attention and appreciation they require. No one can long occupy a high place in the public heart without adding to the profit or pleasure of the world.

Here is a good line of thought for those who are too self-centered and self-important: "There are millions of solar systems in the universe, some of them much greater than ours. There are uncounted planets in space, beside some of which our little earth is a mere toy. Some of these planets are doubtless inhabited. Even on this small earth there are over a billion people. I am one in a number so great that my mind can not grasp such a multitude. Countless billions have gone before and they got along very well before I was born. Countless billions will live and die after I have passed on, and if they hear of me it will probably be by accident. And so it will be for ages and ages, so extensive that my brain can not grasp the stretch of time, which is without beginning and without end. How much do I, individually, amount to?"

And an honest answer must be, "Personally I am of very small importance."

An individual can not live of himself, for himself and by himself. Only as he adds his efforts to those of others does his work count. When we realize that we are but atoms in this vast universe, we get down to a business basis. Then it is easy to get adjusted. In order to count at all we must be in harmony with some of the rest of the atoms and when we discover this we are in a mental state to be of some real use. Building for individual glory is vanity. Sometimes an individual builds so well that he is picked out for special attention and honor, but this is comparatively seldom. As a rule, we can only help a little in shaping the ends of the race by adding our mite, as privates in the ranks. The time we spend in nursing our conceit is wasted.

This does not mean that we are worms in the dust. A human being is a paradox. He is so little, yet he has great possibilities. Our bodies are kept close to the earth, but our minds can be free and unfettered, soaring through time and space, exploring innumerable worlds of thought.

But it will not do to be too self-centered or consider one's self of too great importance, for this lessens one's chances of meriting the esteem of others.

The well balanced man is not greatly affected by too great praise or excessive censure, for he realizes that though the public may be hasty and unjust at times, in the end it renders a fairly just verdict.

Fear is one of the harmful negative or depressing emotions. Fear, like all other depressing emotions, poisons the body. This is not said in a figurative sense. It is an actual scientific fact; it has been demonstrated chemically. Were it not for the fact that the lungs, skin, kidneys and the bowels are constantly removing poisons from the body, an acute attack of fear would prove fatal.

Fear or fright is largely a habit. The parents are often responsible for this affliction. It is far too common for them to scare their children. They people the darkness with all kinds of danger and with horrible shapes, and the children, with their vivid imaginations, magnify these. Children should be taught to meet all conditions in life courageously and fear should not be instilled into their minds. There is a great deal of difference between fear and the caution which all must learn or perish early.

The caution that is implanted in the human breast is our heritage from the ages and works for our preservation. It was necessary during the infancy of the race when man had to struggle with the animals for supremacy. Beyond this point fear is a health-destroyer.

There are people who cultivate fear until they imagine they are ever in danger. They fear that they may lose their health, their mind, their good name. Some are afraid of many things. Others have one pet fear.

Today the fear of the unseen is strong in the public mind. I refer to the fear of germs, those tiny plants which are so small that the unaided eye can not see them. Children are shown moving pictures of these tiny beings, enormously enlarged and very formidable in appearance. They are told to beware, for these germs are in our food, in our drink, on the earth, in the air, in fact everywhere that man lives.

It is very harmful to scare the young thus, for it inhibits physical action and stunts the mind. How much better it would be to teach the children these truths about the germs: "Yes, there are germs in our foods and beverages. They are on the earth, in the water and in the air. They are necessary for our existence. If we take good care of our bodies and direct our minds in proper channels, these germs will not, in fact, can not harm us. If we do not take care of ourselves, but allow our bodies to fill with debris, the germs try to clean this away; they multiply and grow into great armies while doing it, for they thrive on waste. It is our fault, not the fault of the germs, that we allow our bodies to degenerate. The germs are our good friends and if we treat ourselves properly they will do all they can to help keep the water, the earth and the air in fit condition for our use."

Such teachings have the advantage of being true. They are helpful and healthful. The popular teachings are disease-producing. The mental depression and bodily inhibition caused by fear are injurious. Those who fear a certain kind of disease often bring this ill upon themselves, so powerful is suggestion. The fear is more dangerous than the thing feared.

In fear there is loss of both physical and mental power. Not only the voluntary muscles become impotent, but the involuntary ones lose in effectiveness. Digestion is partly or wholly suspended. "Scared stiff" is a popular and truthful expression. The bodily rhythm is lost, the breathing becomes jerky and the heart beats out of tune.

Keep fear out of the lives of babes. If children are taught the truth, there will be little fear in adult minds. Children should not be taught prayers in which there is an element of fear. It is much better to bring children up to love other people and God than to fear.

Those who have cultivated fear should try suggestion. Positive suggestion is always best. Let them analyze matters thus: "I have feared daily and nightly. Nothing has happened. I have brought much unnecessary discomfort upon myself. There is nothing to fear and I shall be brave hereafter." Those who fear God have a low conception of Him. Let them remember the beautiful saying that "God is love." Through repeating them often enough, such positive suggestions sink so deeply into the mind that they replace doubts and fears.

About 2500 years ago Pythagoras wrote: "Hate and fear breed a poison in the blood, which, if continued, affect eyes, ears, nose and the organs of digestion. Therefore, it is not wise to hear and remember the unkind things that others may say of us." Pythagoras was an ancient philosopher, but his words express modern scientific truths.

Worry: Worrying is perhaps the most common and the worst of our mental sins. Worry is like a cancer: It eats in and in. It is destructive of both body and mind. It is due largely to lack of self-control and is a symptom of cowardice. Much worry is also indicative of great selfishness, which most of those afflicted will deny. Those who worry much are always in poor health, which grows progressively worse. The form of indigestion accompanied by great acidity and gas formation is a prolific source of worry, as well as of other mental and physical troubles. The acidity irritates the nervous system and the irritation in time causes mental depression.

Confirmed worriers will worry about the weather, the past, the present, the future, about work and about play, about food, clothing and drink, about those who are present and those who are absent. Nothing escapes them and they bring sadness and woe in their wake.

Worrying is slow suicide.

Elbert Hubbard says that our most serious troubles are those that never happen.

Worrying is a very futile employment, for it never does any good, and it reacts evilly upon the one who indulges in it, and those with whom he associates. It is a waste of time and energy. The energy thus used could be directed into useful channels.

Let those who are afflicted with this bad and annoying habit get into good physical condition. Then many of the worries will take wing. If they persist, it would be well to face the matter frankly and honestly, setting down the advantages of worrying on one side and the disadvantages on the other. Then take into consideration that not one thing in a thousand worried about happens, and if something disagreeable does occur, worrying can not prevent it. Besides a disagreeable happening now and then will not cause half of the discomfort and trouble that a disturbed mind does.

"And this too shall pass away," is an ancient saying which it would be well to remember in conjunction with, "And this will probably never happen."

Anger is a form of temporary insanity. It is an emotion that is unbecoming in strong men, for it is a sign of weakness, and the women who indulge in it frequently can not long keep the respect of others. Those who become angry lay themselves open to wounds of all kinds, for they partly lose their mental and physical faculties temporarily. An angry man is easily vanquished in any contest where ready wit is necessary. As the saying is, he makes a fool of himself. To be high strung and quick to lose one's temper may sound fine in romantic rubbish, but in real life it is folly, for much more can be accomplished by being calm.

Like hatred, anger produces poisons in the system. An angry mother's milk has been known to kill the nursing child. A fit of anger is so serious that the evil effects can be felt for several days, and those who indulge in daily or even weekly loss of temper can not enjoy the best of health, for the anger produces enough toxins to poison all the fluids of the body.

Fortunately, anger is one of the emotions that can be conquered in a reasonable time, if there is a real desire to do so. It should not take an adult more than one or two years to get himself under control.

During anger there is a tensing of various muscles, those of the face and hands for instance. If this tensing is not allowed the anger will not last long. If there is a tendency to become angry, relax and the mind will ease up. A perfectly relaxed individual can not harbor anger, for this emotion requires tensing of body and mind. A determination to control the temper and a whole-hearted apology after each display of anger will prove very effective in reducing the frequency and force of the attacks. Mental suggestion is not as powerful as some say, but it is such a great force for good or evil, depending on its use, that those who are wise will not neglect it as a means of self-conquest.

People who are easily offended and "stand on their dignity," have a very poor footing. Those who find it necessary to inform others that they are ladies or gentlemen, are very apt to be prejudiced in their own favor. Gentlefolks do not need to advertise, nor do they do so. Others recognize their worth intuitively.

Fretting is anger on a small scale. It is a habit that is easily formed. The fretter and those about him are made uncomfortable. Those who respect themselves and others do not indulge.

Hatred is one of the most harmful and poisonous of emotions. Fortunately, violent hatred can last but a short time, otherwise it would prove fatal. Some are chronic haters. He who hates harms himself. The thoughts weave themselves into one's personality and form the character.

Jealousy is one of the most disagreeable of emotions. The jealous person insists on suffering. A jealous woman can convert a home into an inferno. Jealousy is sure to kill love in time. The jealous individual often excuses himself on the ground that he loves. That is not true. There is more fear than love at the base of jealousy. Jealous people are selfish and too indolent mentally to give their thoughts a positive direction.

Those who are violently jealous are suffering from mental aberration. The jealous person loses, for he drives away the object of his affection.

There are many jealous men, but women suffer most. Bad health and idleness are two prolific causes of jealousy. It has probably broken up more homes than any other one thing. It is blighting to all it touches.

Men and women may feel flattered for a time by producing jealousy, but it is a satisfaction of very short duration. They soon grow weary of the questions, doubts and reproaches.

Those who are sensible enough to give freely to others the liberty they crave for themselves do not suffer much from this emotion. It would help greatly if man and wife would look upon the marriage relation more as a partnership and less as a form of bondage. One of the partners can not force the other one to be "good." People do the best by others when full confidence is given, and even if the confidence should be misplaced, it would be better than to suffer from this corroding emotion at all times.

It is not an easy task to overcome jealousy, but it can be done within a reasonable time if there is a real desire. First get physical health. Then get busy with interesting, useful work. Get something worth while to occupy the mind and the hands. Determine to be master of yourself and not a slave to what is often but figments of the imagination. Unfortunately, jealousy so dwarfs the judgment at times that the sufferers seek only to rule or ruin. Love and hate are so closely akin that it is hard to find the dividing line.

Sorrow: Some dedicate their lives to a sorrow. They make martyrs of themselves. They have suffered a loss and they dwell upon it during all of their waking hours. It may be that it was a very ordinary or worthless husband or child. After death the poor real is converted into a glorious ideal. With the passing years the virtues of the departed grow. All the love and tenderness are lavished upon the dead and the living are neglected. It is generally women who suffer from this peculiar form of mild insanity, but men are not exempt.

It is natural to feel the loss of a dear one, but so long as we are mortal we must accept these things as matters of course.

Related to this form of sorrow is the regretting or brooding over past actions, especially in connection with the dead. Perhaps something that should have been done was neglected, or something was done that should have been left undone. Over this the sufferer broods by the hour, leading to a form of sad resignation that is rather irritating to normal people.

For such people a change of interest and a change of scene will often prove very beneficial.

Envy and spite are closely akin to jealousy and anger. They have the same effect in lesser degree.

Vacillation of mind is a common fault. Many small questions have to be settled and a few important ones. Some are in the habit of deferring their decisions from time to time, or making and revoking their decisions. Then they decide over again, after which there is another revocation. This is repeated until it is absolutely necessary to make a final decision. By this time the mind is so muddled that the chances are that the last decision will be inferior to the first one. No one who leads an active life can be right all the time. He who is right six times out of ten does pretty well, and he who can make a correct decision three times out of four can command a fine salary as an executive or build up a flourishing business of his own, if his mind is active.

The doubt and uncertainty which result from unsettled questions, which should be promptly decided, are more harmful than an occasional error. The untroubled mind works most quickly and truly.

Related to this in minor key is the doubtful condition of mind where the individual has to do things several times before he is sure they are properly done. For instance, there is the man who must try the office door several times to be sure that it is locked and after being satisfied on this point he is obliged to unlock it and investigate the condition of the safe door. Then it is necessary to attend to the office door two or three times again. This kind of doubtfulness takes many forms. It does no special harm except that it leads to much waste of time. Such people should teach themselves concentration, thinking about one thing only at a time, until they learn that when a thing is done it is properly done.

Judging: Many insist on passing judgment on everything and everybody that come to their notice. Every individual has to be placed with the sheep or the goats. This is a great waste of time. Each one of us can know so little about the majority of individuals we meet and of the vast volume of knowledge that is to be had that if we try to judge everyone and everything, our opinions become worthless. Wise people are never afraid to say, "I don't know." If it is necessary to judge, let there be kindness.

Volunteering advice: This is another annoying habit. It is very well to give advice if it is desired and asked for, otherwise it is a waste of time. Take a person with a cold, for example: If he meets twenty people he may be told of fifteen different cures for it, ranging from goose grease on a red rag to suggestive therapeutics. If he were to act upon all the advice received there would probably be a funeral. It is best to be sparing with advice. Those who have any that is worth while will be asked for it and paid for their trouble. Free advice is generally worth what it costs.

Cranks: Many allow themselves to get into a mental rut with their thoughts running almost entirely to one subject. This is a mild form of insanity, for normal people have many interests. These people are the cranks. They can talk volumes about their favorite topic, often of no importance. It may be some peculiar religion or ethics; or that Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare; or some health fad, or almost any subject.

Of all the cranks the diet crank is one of the most annoying, for he has three good opportunities to air his views each day. With the best meaning in the world he does more harm to the cause of food reform than do the advocates of living in the good old way, eating, drinking and being merry and dying young. When people become possessed of too much zeal and enthusiasm regarding a subject, they are sure that their knowledge is the truth and they insist upon trying to enforce their way upon others, resent having their old habits interfered with forcibly. Those who are too persistent and insistent produce antagonism and prejudice in the minds of others, and then it is almost impossible to impart the truth to them, for they will neither see nor hear.

To be able to influence others for better is a grand and glorious thing, but it is well to remember that we can not force knowledge which is contrary to popular thought upon others suddenly. Those who change a well rooted opinion generally do so gradually. When they first hear the truth, they say it is ridiculous. After a while they think there may be something in it. At last they see its superiority over their former opinions and accept it. It requires infinite patience on the part of the educators to impart unpopular knowledge to other adults, no matter how much truth it contains.

The truth about physical well-being is so simple and so self-evident that it is exceptionally hard to get an unprejudiced audience. From the time when the ancient heathen priests were the healers until today the impression has been that health and healing are beyond the understanding of the common mind, and therefore people are willing to be mystified. The mysterious has such a strong appeal in this world of uncertainties that it is more attractive than the simple truth. Mystery simply demands faith. The truth compels thinking and thoughts are often painful.

By all means, avoid being overinsistent in trying to impart health knowledge to others. All who have a little knowledge of the fundamentals of health and growth know that useful men and women are going into degeneration and premature death constantly, because of violated health laws. If these people on the brink, who can yet be saved by natural means, are told how it can be done, they generally either refuse to believe it, or they have led such self-indulgent lives that it is beyond their power to change. The knowledge often comes too late.

Those who are anxious to do good in the spreading of health knowledge among their friends can serve best by getting health themselves. If a physical wreck evolves into good health there will be considerable comment and inquiry. This is the opportunity to tell what nature will do and inform others where to obtain a good interpretation of nature's workings.

A little practicing is worth more than a great deal of preaching. The truth is the truth, no matter what the source, but it is more effective if it comes from one who lives it.

I have gone into the subject of health cranks so deeply because there are so many of them. They get a little knowledge and then they believe they are masters of the subject. The right attitude toward proper living, and especially toward proper eating is: "I shall try to conduct myself so as to be healthy and efficient. If others desire my help, I shall try to indicate the way to them. Right living is no sign of superior goodness or merit, being a matter of higher selfishness, so I deserve no credit for it. Although health is very important, I shall refrain from attempting to force my will on others."

After conquering ourselves it is time to begin making foreign conquests, but by that time the realization comes that in the end it is best to leave others free to work out their own salvation. The desire is strong to mould others according to our pattern, but those who size themselves up honestly soon come to the conclusion that they are so imperfect that perchance some other pattern is fully as good.

Postponing happiness: One peculiar state of mind is to refuse to be happy at present. The romantic girl and boy think they can not be happy until they are married. After marriage they find that they have to gain a certain amount of wealth before happiness comes. Then they have to postpone it for social position. They continue postponing happiness from time to time and the result is that they never attain it. Happiness is not a great entity that bursts upon us, transforming us into radiant beings. It is a comfortable feeling that brings peace and places us in harmony with our surroundings. It can best be gained by doing well each day the work that is to be done, cheerfully giving in return for what is received. Happiness is largely a habit. It is as easy to be bright and cheerful as it is to be sad and doleful, and much more comfortable. If we look for the best we will find beauty even in the most unpromising places. If we are looking for tears and woe, we can easily find them.

We can get along without happiness, but it adds so much color and beauty to life, it makes us so much better, it helps us so much to be useful that it is folly to do without it. It is not gained by narrow selfishness. Those who forget themselves most and are kind and considerate find it. By giving it to others we get it for ourselves. Ecstasy and rapture are emotions of short duration. They are so exhilarating that they soon wear out.

We all have our little troubles and annoyances. These we should accept as inevitable, and neither think nor talk much about them. They help to wear away the rough edges. We are stupid at times and so are others and then mistakes are made. These should also be accepted as inevitable, and we should not be more annoyed by those that others make than by our own. Those who go into a rage when their subordinates err waste much time and energy, erring gravely themselves.

It is not necessary to notice every unimportant detail that is not
pleasing. Fault-finding, carping and nagging destroy harmony.
Disagreements about trifles often lead to broken friendship and enmity.
Most quarrels are about trifles.

If mistakes are made, learn the lesson they teach and then forget about them. All live, active beings make mistakes. Sometimes we make serious ones and afterwards regrets come, but these must soon be thrust aside. Brooding has put many into the insane asylums.

Introspection: It is not well to allow the mind to dwell upon one's self very much. Give yourself enough thought to guide yourself through life, and then for the rest apply the mind to work and play. Many of those who are too self-centered end up in believing they are something or somebody else and then they are shut away from the public.

Introspection is a very useless employment. Individually we are so small, and the mind has such great possibilities, that if we center it upon our tiny physical being, things become unbalanced and the mind ceases to work to good advantage. It is useless to go deeply into self-analysis, for we are very poor judges of ourselves. One of my neighbors delved so deeply into his heart and tried so hard to find out if he was fit to dwell in heaven that he lost his mind and had to be confined for a long time. He allowed his vision to narrow down to one subject. There are many subjects that lead to insanity if they are allowed exclusive possession of the mind.

After we have given ourselves proper care, we should think no more about ourselves. The best way is to get busy in work and play and forget ourselves. It is much better to love others than to center our love upon ourselves. If we conduct ourselves well we shall have all the love from others that we need. If there is a tendency to be introspective, cure it by becoming active mentally and physically.

Those who have acquired the bad habit of thinking and talking ill of others should break themselves of it. First cease talking ill. Then begin to look for the good points and mention them. By and by the thoughts will be good. Those who lack a virtue can often cultivate it by assuming it.

One of the most helpful things is a sense of humor. Laughter brings about relaxation and relaxation gives ease of body and mind. He who can see his own weaknesses and smile at them is surely safe and sane. If the mind is too austere, cultivate a sense of humor. Train yourself to appreciate the ridiculous appearance you make and instead of being chagrined, smile. When others laugh at you, join them.

Whatever the mental ill may be, one-half of its cure will be brought about by getting physical health.

Be charitable, tolerant and kind, and the good things in life will come to you. Be slow to judge and slower still to condemn others.

Those who give love attract it. Hypatia said: "Express beauty in your lives and beauty flows to you and through you. To love means to be loved, and to put hate behind is the sum of all loving that is of any avail."

The best "New Thought" is the best old thought. If we only would put some of the beautiful knowledge into common use, what an agreeable dwelling place this world would be. Marcus Aurelius gave us this pearl of wisdom: "When you arise in the morning, think what a precious privilege it is to live, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love! God's spirit is close to us when we love. Therefore it is better not to resent, not to hate, not to fear. Equanimity and moderation are the secrets of power and peace."

CHAPTER III.

FOOD.

The human body is so wonderfully made that as yet we have only a poor understanding of it, but we are learning a little each decade, and perhaps in time we shall have a fair knowledge both of the body and of the mind. Body and mind can not be considered as two separate entities, for neither one is of any use without the other.

The body is not a machine. Those who look upon it as such make the mistake of feeding it as they would an engine, thinking that it takes so much fuel to keep going. The human organism is perhaps never quite alike on any two consecutive days, for the body changes with our thoughts, actions and environment, and the conditions never quite repeat themselves and therefore we have to readjust ourselves.

The most important single item for gaining and retaining physical health is proper feeding, yet the medical men of this country pay so little attention to this subject that in some of our best equipped medical colleges dietetics are not taught. A total of from sixteen to thirty hours is considered sufficient to fit the future physicians to guide their patients in the selection, combination and preparation of food. Dietetics should be the principal subject of study. It should be approached both from the scientific and from the empirical side. It is not a rigid subject, but one which can be treated in a very elastic way. The scientific part is important, but the practical part, which is the art, is vastly more important. A part of the art of feeding and fasting is scientific, for we get the same results every time, under given conditions.

When we consider the fact that the body is made up of various tissues, such as connective tissue, blood, nerves and muscles; that these in turn are made up of billions of cells, as are the various glandular organs and membranes; that these cells are constantly bathed in blood and lymph, from which they select the food they need and throw the refuse away, we must marvel that an organism so complex is so resistant, stable and strong.

All articles of good quality are made by first-class workmen from fine materials. However, many people fail to realize that in order to have quality bodies they must take quality food, properly cooked or prepared, in the right proportions and combinations. If we feed the body properly, nature is kind enough to do good constructive work without any thought on our part.

You will find no rigid rules in these talks on diet, but you will find information that will enable you to select foods that will agree with you. People may well disagree on what to eat, for there are so many foods that a person could do without nine-tenths of them and still be well nourished. In fact, we consume too great a variety of food for our physical well-being. Great variety leads to overeating.

A healthy human body is composed of the following compounds, in about the proportions given:

Water, 60 to 65 per cent.
Mineral matter, 5 to 6 per cent.
Protein, 18 to 20 per cent.
Carbohydrates, 1 per cent.
Fat, 10 per cent. This is perhaps excessive.

These substances are very complex and well distributed throughout the body. They are composed of about sixteen or seventeen elements, but a pure element is very rarely found in the body, unless it be a foreign substance, such as mercury or lead. About 70 per cent of the body is oxygen, which is also the most abundant element of the earth. Then in order of their weight come carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, sodium, chlorine, fluorine, potassium, iron, magnesium and silicon.

Because it will be helpful in giving a better idea of the necessity for proper feeding, I shall devote a few words to each of these elements.

Oxygen is a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas, forming a large part of the atmospheric air, of water, of the earth's crust and of our foods. It is absolutely essential to life, for without oxygen there can be no combustion in the animal tissues, and without combustion there can be no life. The union of oxygen with fats, carbohydrates and proteins in the body results in slow combustion, which produces heat and energy. Our chief supply of oxygen comes directly from the air, but this is supplemented by the intake in food and water.

Carbon is the chief producer of energy within the body, being the principal constituent of starches, sugars and fats. It is what we rely on for internal heat, as well as for heating our dwellings, for the essential part of coal is carbon. The carbonaceous substances are needed in greater quantity than any other, but if they are taken pure, they cause starvation more quickly than if no food were eaten. This has been proved through experiments in feeding nothing but refined sugar, which is practically pure carbon. Salts and nitrogenous foods are essential to life.

Hydrogen is a very light gas, without odor, taste or color. It is a necessary constituent of all growing, living things. It is plentifully supplied in water. All acids contain hydrogen and so does the protoplasm of the body.

Nitrogen is also a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas. It is an essential constituent of the body, being present in all compounds of protein. It is abundant in the atmospheric air, from which it is taken by plants. We get our supply either directly from vegetable foods or from animal products, such as milk, eggs and meat.

Calcium is needed principally for the bones and for the teeth, but it is also necessary in the blood, where it assists in coagulation. We get sufficient calcium salts in fruits, grains and vegetables, provided they are properly prepared. The conventional preparation of the food often results in the loss of the various salts, which causes tissue degeneration. If the supply of calcium in the food is too small, the bones and the teeth suffer, for the blood removes the calcium from these structures. Growing children need more calcium proportionately than do adults. This is without doubt the reason pregnant women suffer so much from softening of the teeth. They are fed on foods robbed of their calcium, such as white bread and vegetables that have been drained.

Phosphorus in some forms is a poison whether taken in solid compounds or inhaled in fumes, producing phossy jaw. In other forms it is indispensable for bodily development. The compounds of phosphorus are present in fats, bones and protein. In natural foods they are abundantly present, but when these foods are unduly refined, or are soaked in water which is thrown away, much of the phosphorus is lost. We get phosphorus from milk, eggs, cereals, legumes and other foods. Of course, there is phosphorus in fish, but those who eat sea food to make themselves brainy will probably be disappointed. Phosphates are necessary for brain development, but those who eat natural foods never need to go to the trouble of taking special foods for the brain. If the rest of the body is well nourished, the brain will have sufficient food, and if the body is poorly nourished the brain will suffer.

Sulphur is present in protein and we get a sufficient supply from milk, meat and legumes. The element sulphur is quite inert and harmless, but some of its acids and salts are very poisonous. Sulphur dioxide is freely used in the process of drying fruits, as a bleacher. In this form it is poisonous, and for that reason it would be well to avoid bleached dried fruits. We need some sulphur, but not in the form of sulphur dioxide or concentrated sulphurous acid, both of which are used in the manufacture of food.

Sodium, in its elementary state, which is not found in nature, is a white, silvery metal. It is found in great abundance in the succulent vegetables, and is present in practically all foods. As sodium chloride, or common table salt, it is taken in great quantities by most people. Those who have no salt get along well without it, which shows that it is not needed in large amounts. If but a little is added to the food, it does no perceptible harm, but when sprinkled on everything that is eaten, from watermelons to meat, it is without doubt harmful. By soaking foods, they are deprived of much of their soda: The two sodium salts that are very abundant are sodium chloride, or common salt, and sodium carbonate, generally called soda.

Chlorine is ordinarily combined in our foods with sodium or potash, forming the chlorides. It is essential to life. He who gets enough sodium also gets enough chlorine. In its elementary form it is an irritating gas, used for bleaching purposes.

Fluorine is present in small quantities in the body, appearing as fluorides in the bones and teeth. It is supplied by the various foods. In its elementary form it is a poisonous gas.

Potassium is found in the body in very small quantities, but it is very important. It is mostly in the form of potassium phosphate in the muscles and in the blood. It is necessary for muscular activity. It is found in most foods in greater abundance than is sodium, which indicates that it plays an important part in development. Like sodium, it is easily dissolved out of foods which are soaked in water, and this is one of the reasons that vegetables should not be soaked and the water thrown away. It is very peculiar in its metallic state, being a silvery metal, very light in weight, which burns when thrown upon water. That is, it decomposes both itself and the water with the liberation of so much heat that it fires the escaping hydrogen, which burns with a violet flame. Pure potassium is not found in nature.

Iron is found in very small quantities in the human body, but it is absolutely essential to life. Animals deprived of iron die in a few weeks, and people will do the same under similar circumstances. Iron is obtained principally from fruits and vegetables, but it is also present in other foods. Man can not make use of inorganic iron. He has to get his supply from the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The giving of inorganic iron is folly and helps to ruin the teeth and the stomach of the one who takes it. In the form of hemoglobin this element is the chief agent in carrying oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body. In the manufacture of foods, much of the iron is lost. For instance, whole wheat flour contains about ten times as much iron as does the white flour. Too little iron causes, among other ills, anemia, and if the iron is very low, chlorosis or the green sickness may ensue.

Magnesium is found principally as phosphate in the bones. It is present both in animal and vegetable foods. Its function in the body is not well understood, but it appears to assist the phosphorus.

Silicon is found in traces in the human body. It is supplied in small quantities in nearly all of our foods, and therefore we must take it for granted that it is necessary, although we are in the dark as to its uses. It is very abundant in various rocks. The cereals are especially rich in silicon. In wheat it is found in the bran and is removed from the white flour.

The elements mentioned are the most important in the body, though others are found in traces. We do not find the elements present as elements, but in the form of very complex compounds. Under our present conditions of living, we generally partake of too much carbonaceous and nitrogenous food, and get too little of the salts, except sodium chloride, which is taken in too great quantity. Salt, to most people, means but one thing, sodium chloride or table salt. However, there are thousands of salts, and when salts are mentioned in this book, all those necessary for the processes of life are meant, whether they be compounds of fluorine, sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, iron or magnesium or other metals and minerals.

Salts are not usually classified as foods, but they are essential to life. Supply the body with all the protein, sugar, starch and fat that it requires, but withhold the salts, and it is but a question of a few weeks before life ceases. This is why it is so important to improve our methods of cooking. A potato that is peeled, soaked in cold water and boiled, may lose as much as one-half of its salts, according to one of the bulletins sent out by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Other vegetables not only lose their salts by such treatment, but as high as 30 per cent of their nutritive value.

The lesson we should learn from this is that ordinarily if it is necessary to soak foods, such as beans, they should be cooked in the water in which they have been soaked. Furthermore, where possible, as it is with nearly all succulent vegetables, we should take the fluid in which the vegetables have been cooked as a part of the meal. If the vegetables are properly cooked, there will not be much fluid to take. To pour away the water in which vegetables have been cooked means that perhaps one-third of the food value and one-third to one-half of the valuable salts are lost. Why continue impoverishing foods in this way?

Dr. Charles Page deserves much credit for calling our attention to this fact when most healers neither thought nor talked about it. Now all up-to-date healers with a knowledge of dietetics realize how important it is to give good food. For those who wish more detailed information on the composition of the salts, I insert a table which was compiled by Otto Carque and published in "Brain and Brawn," February, 1913. Those who wish still more detailed knowledge can find it in volumes on food analysis and in some government reports.

MINERAL MATTER IN 1000 PARTS OF WATER-FREE FOOD PRODUCTS.
==========================================================================
P
P M h
o a o C
t C g s S S h
a S a n p u i l
s o l e h l l o
s d c s I o p i r
i i i i r r h c i
u u u u o u u o n
m m m m n s r n e
Total| | | | | | | | |
Salts| K2O |Na2O | CaO | MgO |Fe2O3|P2O5 | SO2 |SiO2 | Cl
—————————————————————————————————————
Human milk 34.70|11.73| 3.16| 5.80| 0.75| 0.07| 7.84| 0.33| 0.07| 6.38
Cow's milk 55.30|13.70| 5.34|12.24| 1.69| 0.30|15.79| 0.17| 0.02| 8.04
Meat (avge) 40.00|16.52| 1.44| 1.12| 1.28| 0.28|17.00| 0.64| 0.44| 1.56
Eggs 41.80| 6.27| 9.56| 4.56| 0.46| 0.17|15.72| 0.13| 0.13| 3.72
Seafish 84.20|18.35|12.55|12.80| 3.28| ….|32.13| ….| ….| 9.60
Cottage Cheese 64.30| 8.50| 0.90|22.50| 1.50| 0.50|24.35| 0.10| ….|11.20
| | | | | | | | |
Apples 33.00|11.78| 8.61| 1.35| 2.89| 0.46| 4.52| 2.01| 1.42| ….
Strawberries 65.00|13.72|18.53| 9.23| ….| 3.73| 7.97| 2.05| 7.82| 1.10
Gooseberries 29.00|11.22| 2.87| 3.54| 1.70| 1.32| 5.71| 1.71| 0.75| 0.22
Prunes 37.75|18.28| 3.41| 4.34| 1.36| 0.94| 6.03| 1.21| 1.19| 0.15
Peaches 17.60| 9.63| 1.50| 1.41| 0.92| 0.18| 2.67| 1.00| 0.26| ….
Cherries 34.60|17.94| 0.76| 2.60| 1.90| 0.69| 5.54| 1.76| 3.11| 0.46
Grapes 25.20|14.16| 0.35| 2.72| 1.06| 0.45| 3.93| 1.41| 0.70| 0.38
Figs 41.00|11.63|10.77| 7.75| 3.78| 0.60| 0.53| 2.77| 2.43| 1.10
Olives 33.40|27.02| 2.52| 2.49| 0.06| 0.31| 0.46| 0.36| 0.22| 0.06
Apricots 33.60|19.68| 3.76| 1.08| 2.89| 0.46| 4.52| 2.01| 1.42| ….
Pears 25.60|14.00| 2.17| 2.05| 1.52| 0.25| 3.90| 1.45| 0.38| ….
Watermelons 40.00|18.00| 3.75| 4.00| 2.10| 1.75| 5.60| 2.10| 7.60| 1.10
Bananas 32.40|16.20| 0.80| 0.25| 0.32| 0.10| 2.03| 0.21| ….| 2.47
Oranges 38.15|18.62| 0.95| 8.65| 2.03| 0.38| 4.70| 2.00| 0.25| 0.29
| | | | | | | | |
Spinach 191.00|21.71|57.42|22.73|12.22| 6.40|19.58|13.18| 8.60|12.03
Onions 48.40|12.10| 1.55|10.65| 2.55| 2.20| 7.25| 2.65| 8.10| 1.35
Carrots 69.00|25.46|14.63| 7.80| 3.04| 0.70| 8.83| 4.45| 1.66| 3.18
Asparagus 86.40|20.74|14.77| 9.33| 3.72| 2.94|16.07| 5.36| 9.50| 5.10
Radishes 110.40|35.33|23.37|15.45| 3.42| 3.09|12.03| 7.18| 1.00|10.10
Cauliflower 91.20|40.46| 5.38| 5.10| 3.37| 0.91|18.42|11.86| 3.37| 3.10
Cucumbers 100.00|41.20|10.00| 7.30| 4.15| 1.40|20.20| 6.90| 8.00| 6.60
Lettuce 180.70|67.94|13.55|26.56|11.20| 9.40|16.62| 6.87|14.64|13.82
Potatoes 44.20|26.56| 1.33| 1.15| 2.18| 0.48| 7.47| 2.89| 0.88| 1.55
Cabbage 123.00|45.33|11.68|21.65| 4.90| 0.86|11.07|17.10| 1.10|10.45
Tomatoes 176.00|82.50|32.90|11.35|13.55| 1.00|10.75| 5.00| 7.75|18.00
Red Beets 41.65| 8.45|21.60| 2.50| 0.10| 1.00| 2.55| 0.50| 2.00| 2.95
Celery 180.00|48.60|65.25|14.70| 6.75| 1.60|14.50| 6.50| 4.30|17.80
| | | | | | | | |
Walnuts 17.40| 2.20| 0.17| 0.97| 2.88| 0.61|10.10| 0.22| 0.12| 0.12
Almonds 21.00| 2.31| 0.38| 3.04| 3.95| 0.23|10.10| 0.96| 0.04| 0.06
Cocoanuts 18.70| 8.21| 1.57| 8.60| 1.76| ….| 2.18| 0.95| 0.09| 2.50
| | | | | | | | |
Lentils 34.70|12.08| 4.62| 2.18| 0.87| 0.69|12.60| ….| ….| 1.61
Peas 30.03|13.06| 0.30| 1.45| 2.42| 0.24|10.87| 1.03| 0.27| 0.53
Beans 38.20|15.85| 0.42| 1.91| 2.73| 0.19|14.86| 1.30| 0.25| 0.69
Peanuts 24.30| 9.27| 0.21| 0.95| 2.29| 0.27|10.60| 0.45| 0.05| 0.23
| | | | | | | | |
Whole Wheat 23.10| 7.20| 0.50| 0.75| 2.80| 0.30|10.90| 0.09| 0.46| 0.07
White flour 5.70| 1.82| 0.08| 0.43| 0.44| 0.03| 2.80| ….| ….| ….
Rye 21.30| 6.84| 0.31| 0.61| 2.39| 0.25|10.16| 0.28| 0.30| 0.01
Barley 31.30| 5.10| 1.28| 0.02| 3.92| 0.53|10.27| 0.93| 8.98| ….
Oats 34.50| 6.18| 0.59| 1.24| 2.45| 0.41| 8.83| 0.62|13.52| 0.03
Corn 18.50| 5.50| 0.02| 0.04| 2.87| 0.15| 8.44| 0.15| 0.39| 0.35
Whole Rice 16.00| 3.60| 0.67| 0.59| 1.78| 0.22| 8.60| 0.08| 0.42| 0.02
Rice, polished 4.00| 0.87| 0.22| 0.13| 0.45| 0.05| 2.15| 0.03| 0.11| 0.01
—————————————————————————————————————

Please remember that most of the salts must be worked into organic form for us by vegetation, and that we are able to take but few elements that have not been thus elaborated.

We need a moderate amount of food to maintain the body in health, but we should be careful not to overindulge.

Perhaps the most injurious errors are made by people who eat because they wish to gain in weight. They consider themselves below weight and they try to force a gain by overeating. This is a serious mistake and leads to much suffering.

There is no weight that can be called ideal for all people. To get a basis, I copy a table from the literature of an insurance company. This is for people twenty years old:

Height Weight
5—0……..114
1……..117
2……..121
3……..124
4……..128
5……..132
6……..136
7……..140
8……..144
9……..149
10……..153
11……..158
6—0……..162
1……..167
2……..172
3……..177

If the weight is much above this, it is a sure sign that the individual is building disease. It may be Bright's disease, fatty heart, arteriosclerosis, cancer or any other ill. The muscles can not be increased in size very much by eating and there is a limit to the amount of fluid that can be stored away. Stout people generally carry about a great amount of fat.

Excess of fat is a burden. It replaces other tissues and weakens the muscles. It overcrowds the abdominal and thoracic cavities, thus making the breath short and the working of the heart more difficult, also producing a tendency to prolapsus of the various abdominal organs.

People make the mistake of thinking that stoutness indicates health. It indicates disease. Going into weight is going into degeneration. Women like to be plump for various reasons, some of which are not the most creditable to either men or women. Fat people are not good looking. There is not a statue in the world sculptured on corpulent lines that is considered beautiful.

It is natural for some people to be slender and for others to be rather plump, but fatness is abnormal. Rolling double chins and protruding abdomens are signs of self-abuse in eating and drinking. As a rule women are at their right weight at twenty and men at twenty-two or twenty-three. This weight they should retain. If twenty or thirty pounds are added to it life will be materially shortened.

Perfect health is impossible for obese people, but it is within the reach of lean ones. In getting well, it is often necessary to become quite slender, but after the system has cleansed itself, it gains in weight again. It may take from several months to several years to obtain a normal weight after the ravages of disease. A healthy body is self-regulating and will be as heavy as it ought to be.

Those who eat too much in order to gain weight sometimes wreck their digestive and assimilative powers to such an extent that they lose a great deal of weight, and the more they eat the more they lose. Then it is necessary to reduce the food intake until digestion and assimilation catch up with supply. Then if the eating is right the individual goes to the proper weight and retains it.

The slender people are in the safest physical condition. The vast amount of statistics gathered by the life insurance companies bears this out. Remember that fat is a low grade tissue, which sometimes crowds out high grade tissue, that an excess indicates degeneration and that obesity is a disease. All fat people eat too much, even though they consider themselves small eaters. They should regulate their eating and drinking so that they will return to a normal weight. This is the only safe way to reduce.

Pay no attention to underweight. Eat what the body requires and is able to digest and assimilate, without causing any inconvenience. The organism will take care of the rest. To attempt to force weight onto a body at the expense of discomfort, disease, reduced efficiency and premature death shows poor judgment.

Losing weight does not matter at all if there is no discomfort or disease. It is all right to be a little lighter during summer than in winter.

In discussing food and its use, two words are frequently employed, digestion and fermentation. Strictly speaking, digestion is largely a process of fermentation, consisting of the breaking down of complex substances into simple ones, by means of ferments. However, in the popular mind digestion and fermentation are not synonymous, and will not be so considered in this book. To make my meaning clear, in this book the words will have the following meaning:

Digestion—the normal breaking down of food and formation into substances that can be used by the blood for building, repairing and producing heat and energy.

Fermentation—the abnormal breaking down of food in the digestive tract, producing discomfort and health impaired. This process manifests in various ways, such as the production of much gas in the digestive tract or hyperacidity of the body.

We will consider digestion as a process conducive to health, but fermentation, as one that leads to disease, being an early stage of digestive derangement.

CHAPTER IV.

OVEREATING.

All agree that excessive indulgence in alcoholics is harmful physically, mentally and morally. We condemn the too free use of tea and coffee and nearly all other excesses. However, intemperate eating is considered respectable. A large part of our social life consists in partaking of too much food.

Medical text-books say that we must eat great quantities of food to maintain strength and health. Humanity views the subject of eating from the wrong angle, and it will perhaps be many years before the majority gets the right point of view. We should eat to live, but most of us eat to die. Benjamin Franklin said that we dig our graves with our teeth.

Men and women band themselves into societies and associations for the purpose of decreasing or doing away with the use of tobacco and alcoholic drinks. They advocate temperance and even abstinence in the use of those things which do not appeal to their own senses; but most of them are far from temperate in their eating. They have very keen vision when searching for weaknesses and faults in others, but are quite near-sighted regarding their own.

Is excessive indulgence in liquor any worse than overeating? Not according to nature's answer. The inebriate deteriorates and so does the glutton. Both cause race deterioration. Gluttony is more common than inebriety and is responsible for more ills. Gluttony is often the cause of the tea, coffee, alcohol and drug habits. Overeating often causes so much irritation that food does not satisfy the cravings, and then drugs are used.

Improper eating, chiefly overeating, causes most of the ills to which man is heir. If people would learn to be moderate in all things disease and early death would be very rare.

It is quite important to combine foods properly, but the worst combinations of food eaten in moderation are harmless, as compared to the damage done by overeating of the best foods. Overeating is with us from the cradle to the grave. It shortens our days and fills them with woe.

There is a hoary belief that a pregnant woman must eat for two. The mothers have generally obeyed this dictum. The result is that women suffer greatly during pregnancy and at childbirth. The morning sickness, the aching back, the headache, the swollen legs and all of the discomforts and diseases from which civilized woman suffers during this period are mostly due to improper eating. Pregnancy and childbirth are physiologic and are devoid of any great amount of discomfort, pain or danger when women lead normal lives.

The overeating affects both mother and child. The mothers are often injured or lose their lives during childbirth. Sometimes labor is so protracted that the child dies and at other times the baby is so large that it can not be born naturally. The mother's suffering is frequently very great. In fact, it is at times so great that it is like a threatening storm cloud to many women, and some of them refuse to become mothers for this reason.

Babies born of normal mothers, who have lived moderately on a non-stimulating diet during gestation, are small. They rarely weigh more than six pounds. Their bones are flexible. The skull can easily be moulded because the bones are very cartilaginous. The result is that childbirth is rapid and practically devoid of pain. However, there are very few normal mothers, and consequently normal babies are also rare.

A heavy baby is never healthy. Its growth has been forced by excessive maternal feeding. It is no hardier than other growing things which result from hot-house methods. Such babies show early signs of catarrhal afflictions, indigestion or skin disease. Their bodies are filled with poisons before they are born.

Mothers who overeat invariably overfeed their babies. And why should they do otherwise? Family, friends and physicians give the same advice: The mother must eat much to be able to feed the child, and the child must be fed frequently in order to grow. It sounds very plausible, but it does not work well in practice.

Why are babies cross? Why do they soon show catarrhal symptoms? Why do they vomit so much? Why are they so subject to stomach and intestinal disorders? Why do they have skin eruptions? Because they are overfed.

The diseases of babies are almost entirely of digestive origin, and in nearly every instance overfeeding is the cause. Statistics show that about one-fifth of the babies born die before they are one year old. In nearly every instance the parents are to blame. One's intentions may be good, but good intentions coupled with wrong actions are deadly to infants. Oscar Wilde wrote, "We kill the thing we love." Parental love too often takes the form of indulging them and so it happens that hundreds of thousands of little ones are placed in their coffins annually through love.

Each year about 280,000 babies under one year of age perish in the United States, according to estimates based on census figures. Outside of accidental deaths, which are but a small per cent., the mortality should be practically nil. It is natural for children to be well, and healthy children do not die. If an army of about 280,000 of our men and women were to perish in a spectacular manner each year it would cause such sorrow and indignation that a remedy would soon be found. But we are so accustomed to the procession of little caskets to the grave that it hardly arouses comment. It costs too much in every way to produce life to waste it so lavishly.

Why do little children suffer so much from eruptive diseases, whooping cough, tonsilitis, adenoids, diphtheria and numerous other diseases? Because they are overfed. The younger the child the greater is the per cent. of disease due to wrong feeding. In adult life overeating and eating improperly otherwise are still the principal causes of disease. But during adult life the causation of disease is more complex than in childhood, for the senses have been more fully developed and instead of confining our physical sins to overeating we fall prey to the abuse of various appetites and passions.

Vigorous adults are often the victims of pneumonia, typhoid fever and tuberculosis. Overeating is chiefly to blame, not the bacteria which are given as the principal cause.

Rheumatism, kidney disease and diseases that manifest in hardening of the various tissues, all being forms of degeneration, are quite common. Again, the principal cause is overeating.

There are a great number of people who live many years without any special disease, but who are always on the brink of being ill. They are full-blooded and too corpulent. Although they are often considered successful, they are never fully efficient either physically or mentally. They do not know what good health is, but they are so accustomed to their state of toleration that they consider themselves healthy. They are rather proud of their stoutness and their friends mistake their precarious condition for health. These people often die suddenly, and friends and acquaintances are very much surprised. No healthy man dies suddenly and unexpectedly except by accident.

Instead of growing old gracefully, in possession of our senses and faculties, we die prematurely or go into physical and mental decay. Bleary eyes, pettiness, childishness and lost mental faculties are no part of nature's plan for advanced years. Those manifestations result from man's improvement on nature!

From birth to death we are victims of this terrible ogre of overeating. It deprives us of friends and relatives. It takes away our strength and health. It makes us mentally inefficient and cowardly. At last it deprives us of life when our work is not half done and our days should not be half run.

How is it possible, you may ask, that this is true? Of course, overeating is not the only cause, but it is the overwhelming one. It is the basic cause. Aided by other bad habits it conquers us. We are what we are because of our parentage, plus what we eat, drink, breathe and think, and the eating largely influences the other factors of life.

Cholera infantum causes the death of many babies. It never occurs in babies who are fed moderately on natural, clean food, not to exceed three or four times a day. The child is cross. The mother thinks that it is cross because it is hungry and accordingly feeds. The real cause of the irritability is the overfeeding that has already taken place. The baby has had so much milk that it is unable to digest all of it. A part of the milk spoils in the digestive tract. This fermented material is partly absorbed and irritates the whole system. A part of it remains in the alimentary tract where it acts as a direct local irritant to the intestines. When these are irritated, the blood-vessels begin to pour out their serum to soothe the bowels and the result is diarrhea. The sick child is fed often. Digestive power is practically absent. The additional food given ferments and more serum has to be thrown out to protect the intestinal walls. Soon there is a well established case of cholera infantum.

If only enough food had been given to satisfy bodily requirements, none of the milk would have spoiled in the alimentary tract. If all feeding had been stopped as soon as the child became irritable and pinched looking about the mouth and nose, and all the water desired had been given and the child kept warm, there would have been no serious disease. In these cases, the less food given the quicker the recoveries and the fewer the fatalities.

Another common disease of childhood is adenoids. To talk of these maladies as diseases is rather misleading, for they are merely symptoms of perverted nutrition, but we are compelled to make the best of our medical language.

Adenoids are due to indigestion. The indigestion is due to overeating. This is how it comes about: A child eats more than can be digested, generally bolting the food, which is often of a mushy character. The excessive amount of food can not be digested, and as the intestines and the stomach are moist and have a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, fermentation soon takes place. Some of the results of fermentation in the alimentary tract are acids, gases and bacterial poisons. These deleterious substances are absorbed into the blood stream and go to all parts of the body, acting as irritants. We do not know why they cause adenoids in one child and catarrh in another. It is easy enough to say that children are predisposed that way, which is no information at all. It seems that all of us have some weak point, and here disease has a tendency to localize. What part the sympathetic nervous system plays, we do not know. Glandular tissue is rather unstable and therefore it becomes diseased easily and adenoids are therefore quite frequent.

A coated tongue, or an irritated tongue, both due to indigestion, is a concomitant of adenoids. Such diseases do not merely happen. There are good reasons for their appearance. They are not reflections on the child, but they are on the parents who should have the right knowledge and should take time and pains enough to educate and train the child into health.

Tuberculosis is one of the results of ruined nutrition. First there is overeating. This causes indigestion. The irritating products of food fermenting in the alimentary tract are taken up by the blood. The blood goes to the lungs where it irritates the delicate mucous membrane. In self-protection it begins to secrete an excess of mucus and if the irritation is great enough, pus. The various bacteria are incidental. The tubercular bacillus is never able to gain a foothold in healthy lungs, but after degeneration of lung-tissue has taken place the lungs furnish a splendid home for this bacillus. The tubercular bacillus is a scavenger and therefore does not thrive in healthy bodies. It is the result of disease, not the cause.

Tubercular subjects never have healthy digestive organs. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are persuaded to eat many times more food than they can digest, and thus they have no opportunity to recover, for the overfeeding ruins the digestive and assimilative powers beyond recuperative ability. A large per cent. of the human race perish miserably from this disease, which results principally from the ingestion of too much food. The liberal use of such devitalized foods as sterilized milk, refined sugar and finely bolted wheat flour is doubtless a great factor in so reducing bodily resistance that the system falls an easy prey to disease. Too little breathing and poor, devitalized air are also important factors.

There are many causes of rheumatism, but overeating is the chief and it is very doubtful if a case of rheumatism can develop without this main cause. Exposure is often given as the cause, but a healthy man with a clean body does not become rheumatic.

Rheumatism is due to internal filth. A filthy alimentary tract makes filthy blood. Some say that the poison in rheumatism is uric acid, and perhaps it is, but there are no uric acid deposits in the body of a prudent eater. The elimination in this disease is imperfect. The skin, the kidneys, the bowels and the lungs do not throw out the debris as they should. Perhaps only one or two of these organs are acting inadequately. The debris is stored up in the system.

Why do the organs of elimination fail to act? Because so much work is thrust upon them that they grow weary and worn; also, a part of the material furnished them is the product of decay in the alimentary tract, and they can not thrive on poor material. Too much food is eaten. An excess of nutritive material, poorly digested, is absorbed. And so we come back to the principal cause, overeating.

When the eliminative organs fail to perform their function, the waste is deposited in those parts of the body which are weakened. The irritation from these foreign substances causes inflammation and the result is pain. The extent to which this depositing of material will go is well illustrated in some cases of multiple articular rheumatism, or arthritis deformans, where the deposits are so great that many of the joints become fixed (anchylosed).

We could review all the diseases, and nearly every time we would come back to disturbed nutrition as the principal factor, and this is true of not only physical ills, but the mental ones as well.

Various foods do not combine well, still if they are eaten in moderation they do but little harm. If we overeat, the evil results are bound to manifest, no matter how good the food, though it sometimes takes years before they are perceptible. The effects are cumulative. Each day there is a little fermentation with absorption of the poisonous products. Each day the body degenerates a little. The time always comes when the body can continue its work no longer, and then the individual must choose between reform on one hand and suffering or death on the other.

It is very difficult to convince people that they eat too much. Indeed, the average person is a small eater, in his own estimation. We have been educated into consuming such vast quantities of food that we hardly know what moderation is. In the past, physiologists and observers have watched the amount of food that people could coax down and this they have called the normal amount of food. This is far from the truth. The average American eats at least two times as much as he can digest, assimilate and use to advantage. Many eat three and four times too much. However, nature is very tolerant for a while. Most of us start out with a fair amount of resistance and are thus enabled to live to the age of forty or fifty in spite of abuses. If we could only dispense with our excesses, we could double or treble our life span, live better, get more enjoyment out of life and give the world more and better work than we can under present conditions.

There is much talk of food shortage. The amount of food consumed and wasted annually in the United States is enough to feed 200,000,000 people. Even with our present knowledge we can easily produce twice as much per acre as we are averaging, and we are tilling only about one-fourth of the land that could be made productive. If we use our brains there is little danger of starving. What is needed now is not more food, but intelligent distribution and consumption of what we produce.

We hear of cases of undernourishment. This doubtless occurs at times in the congested parts of great centers of populations. But there are not so many cases suffering from want of the proper quantity of food as from want of quality of food. Bread of finely bolted white flour is starvation food, no matter how great the quantity, unless other food rich in organic salts is also eaten.

The overeating habit is so common and comes on so insidiously that the sufferers do not realize that they are eating to excess. The resultant discomforts are blamed on other things. Babies are fed every two hours or oftener. They should be fed but three or at most four times a day, and never at night. When able to eat solid foods they get three meals a day and generally two or more lunches. Some children seem to be lunching at all times. They have fruit or bread and butter with jelly or jam in the hand almost all the time. They are encouraged to eat much and often to produce growth and strength. This kind of feeding often does produce large children, heavy in weight, but they are not healthy. Sad to relate, the excess causes disease and death.

Such frequent feeding allows the digestive organs no rest. The overwork imposed upon them and the fermentation cause irritation. This irritation manifests in a constant and almost irresistible desire for food, as does the consumption of much alcohol cause a desire for more alcohol, as the use of morphine or cocaine produces a dominating and ruinous appetite for more of these drugs. These appetites grow by what they feed upon. Man ceases to be master and becomes the abject slave of his abnormal cravings.

Slaves of alcohol and the various habit-forming drugs generally lack the strength of body and mind to assert themselves and to regain mastery of themselves. Coffee and tea have their victims, though they are generally not very firmly enslaved. No one realizes how he is bound by his cravings for an excessive amount of food until he tries to break the bonds. Such people may eat moderately for days, perhaps for weeks, and then the old appetite reasserts itself in all its strength and unless the sufferer has a very strong will a food debauch follows. I have seen men go from one restaurant to another, consuming enormous quantities of food to efface the awful craving, just as men go from one saloon to another to satisfy their desire for alcohol. The gluttons often look with the greatest contempt upon the slaves of liquor. But what is the difference? No matter what appetite, what habit, what passion has gained the mastery, we are slaves. The important thing is to keep out of slavery, or break the bonds and regain freedom.

Those who eat to excess often eat more than three times a day. They take a little candy now, a little fruit then, or they go to the drug store for a glass of malted milk or buttermilk, which they call drinks, or they take a dish of ice cream. The housewife nibbles at cake or bread. If a person is in fair health and wishes to evolve into self-mastery and good health, he should make up his mind never to eat more than three times a day. Nothing but plain water should enter his mouth except at meal times.

Next he should limit the number of articles eaten at a meal. The breakfast and lunch should each consist of no more than two or three varieties of food. The dinner should not exceed five or six varieties, and if that many are eaten, they should be compatible. Less would be better. The less variety we have, the better the food digests. Also, eating ten or twelve or more kinds of food, as many people do, always leads to overeating. A little of this added to a little of that soon makes a too great total. It is easy to eat all one should of a certain article of food and feel satisfied, and then change off to something else and before one is through one has eaten three or four times as much as necessary. If the meal is to consist of starch there is no great objection to a small amount of bread, potatoes, rice, macaroni and chestnuts. However, a normal person does not need to coax food down by using great variety. Those who mix their foods this way invariably overeat. Besides, the various starches require different periods for digestion. Rice is more easily disposed of than bread. Each new item stimulates the desire for more food. It is best, when having potatoes, to have no other starchy food in that meal; or when bread is eaten, to have no potatoes or other starchy food. The habit of eating meat, potatoes and bread in the same meal is very common and causes much disease.

Next the searcher for health should teach himself to eat foods that are natural, cooked simply, and with a minimum amount of seasoning and dressing. The various spices and sauces irritate the digestive organs and create a craving for an excessive amount of food. The food should be changed as little as possible because such denatured foods as white flour, polished rice, pasteurized milk, and many of the canned fruits and vegetables are so lacking in the natural salts that they do not satisfy one's desire for organic salts. Overeating results.

Preserves, jellies and jams are open to the same objection. They cause an abnormal desire for food. Therefore, they should be used seldom and very sparingly. So long as apples, oranges, figs, dates, raisins, sweet prunes and various other fruits can be had, there is no excuse for the consumption of great quantities of the heavily sugared concoctions which are now so popular.

Simplicity and naturalness are great aids in breaking away from food slavery. They are discussed more fully elsewhere. In the next chapter will be found hints on the solution of the normal amount of food to be eaten.

CHAPTER V.

DAILY FOOD INTAKE.

It is generally believed that the more we eat the better. Physicians say that it is necessary to eat heartily when well to retain health and strength. When ill it is necessary to consume much food to regain lost health and strength. "Eat all you can of nourishing food," is a common free prescription, and it sounds very reasonable. The physicians of today are not to blame for this belief in overeating, for they were taught thus at college, and very few men in any line do original thinking. It has been a racial belief for centuries and no one now living is responsible. When a physician advocates what he honestly believes he is doing his best, "and angels can do no more."

When a child loses its appetite, the parents worry, for they think that it is very harmful for young people to go without food for a few meals. A lost appetite is nature's signal to quit eating, and it should always be heeded. If it is, it will prevent much disease and suffering and will save many lives.

The present-day mode of preparing food leads to overeating. The sense of taste is ruined by the stimulants put into the food. Dishes are so numerous and so temptingly made that more is eaten than can be digested and assimilated. Refined sugar, salt, the various spices, pickles, sauces and preserves all lead to overeating because of stimulation. The same is true of alcohol taken immediately before meals. If we only give nature a chance, and are perfectly frank and honest with ourselves, she will guard us against the overconsumption of food. Those who eat but few varieties of plain food at a meal are not sorely tempted to overeat. But when one savory dish is served after another it takes much will power to be moderate.

People generally have had more than sufficient before the last course is served. However, the various dishes have different flavors and for this reason the palate is overwhelmed and accepts more food than is good for us.

Men who like to call their work scientific, figure on the amount of food we need to furnish a certain number of heat units—calories. Heat, of course, is a form of energy. Basing the body's food requirements on heat units expended does not solve the problem. The more food that is ingested, the more heat units must be manufactured, and often so much food is taken that the body is compelled to go into the heating business. Then we have fevers.

A large part of the heat is given off by the skin. Those who overeat are compelled to do a great deal of radiating. This excessive amount of fuel taken into the system in the form of food, wears out the body. As figured by the experts, it gives a result of food need that is at least twice as great as necessary. Experience is the only correct guide to food requirements, and each individual has to settle the matter for himself. The human body is not exactly a chemical laboratory, nor is it an engine which can be fed so much fuel with the resultant production of such and such an amount of heat and energy. Some bodies are more efficient than others. It is among human beings as among the lower animals, some require more food than others.

We need enough food to repair the waste, to perform our work and to furnish heat. Every muscle contraction uses up a little energy. Every breath deprives us of heat and carries away carbon dioxide, the latter being formed by oxidation of tissues in the body. Every minute we lose heat by radiation from the skin. Every thought requires a small amount of food. If we worry, the leak of nervous energy is tremendous, but at the same time we put ourselves in position where we are unable to replenish our stock, for worry ruins digestion. All this expenditure of energy and loss of heat must be made up for by the food intake. Only a small amount of surplus food can be stored in the body. Some fat can be stored as fat. Some starch and sugar can be put aside as either glycogen—animal sugar—or be changed into fat. This storing of excess food is very limited, except in cases of obesity, which is a disease.

Overeating invariably causes disease. It may take two or three years, yes even twenty or thirty years, before the overeating results in serious illness, but the results are certain, and in the meanwhile the individual is never up to par. He can use neither body nor mind to the best advantage.

To emphasize and illustrate these remarks, I shall copy a few diet lists, which their authors consider reasonable and correct for the average person for one day, and I shall give my comments. The first is taken from Kirke's Physiology, which has been used extensively as a text-book in medical colleges:

340 grams lean uncooked meat,
600 " bread,
90 " butter,
28 " cheese,
225 " potatoes,
225 " carrots.

An ounce contains 28.3 grams; a pound, 453 grams. It is easy to figure these quantities of food in ounces or pounds, which give a better idea to the average person.

It is self-evident that this is too much food. Over twelve ounces of lean, uncooked meat, over twenty-one ounces of bread, almost one-half of a pound each of potatoes and carrots, about an ounce of cheese and over three ounces of butter make enough food for two days, even for a big eater. He who tries to live up to a diet of this kind is sure to suffer disease and early death.

The average loaf of bread weighs about fourteen ounces. Here we are told to devour one-half of a pound of carrots (for which other vegetables such as turnips, parsnips, beets or cabbage may be substituted), one-half of a pound of potatoes, three-fourths of a pound of lean raw meat, which loses some weight in cooking, a loaf and one-half of bread, besides butter and cheese. The vast majority of people can not eat more than one-third of this amount and retain efficiency and health, but many eat even more.

The next table is taken from Dr. I. Burney Yeo's book on diet, and is given as the food required daily by a "well nourished worker":

151.3 grams meat,
48.1 " white of egg,
450.0 " bread,
500.0 " milk,
1065.9 " beer,
60.2 " suet,
30.0 " butter,
70.0 " starch,
17.0 " sugar,
4.9 " salt.

This worker is too well fed. Often those who are so well fed are poorly nourished, for the excessive amount of food ruins the nutrition, after which the food is poorly digested and assimilated. This worker eats so much that he will be compelled to do manual labor all his days, for such feeding prevents effective thinking.

The following daily average diet is taken from the book, "Diet and Dietetics," by A. Gauthier, a well known authority on the subject of the nutritive needs of the body. Mr. Gauthier averaged the daily food intake of the inhabitants of Paris for the ten years from 1890 to 1899, inclusive. He takes it for granted that this is the average daily food requirement for a person:

420.0 grams bread and cakes,
216.0 " boned meat,
24.1 " eggs (weighed with shell),
8.1 " cheese (dry or cream),
28.0 " butter, oil, etc.,
70.0 " fresh fruit,
250.0 " green vegetables,
40.0 " dried vegetables,
100.0 " potatoes, rice,
40.0 " sugar,
20.0 " salt,
213.0 C. C. milk,
557.0 C. C. of various alcoholics, containing
9.5 C. C. of pure alcohol.

So long as the Parisians consume such quantities of food they will continue to suffer and die before they reach one-half of the age that should be theirs. The French eat no more than do other people, in fact, they seem moderate in their food intake as compared with some of the Germans, English and Americans, but they eat too much for their physical and mental good.

The lists given above are from sources that command the respect of the medical profession. They are the orthodox and popular opinions. It would be an easy matter to give many more tables, but they agree so closely that it would be a waste of time and space.

Quantitative tables from vegetarian sources are not so common. The vegetarians say that meat eating is wrong, being contrary to nature. Whether they are right or wrong, they make the same mistakes that the orthodox prescribers do, that is, they advocate overeating. Medical textbooks prescribe a too abundant supply of starch and meat in particular. The vegetarians prescribe a superabundance of starch. Read the magazines advocating vegetarianism and note their menus, giving numerous cereals, tubers, peas, beans, lentils, as well as other vegetables, for the same meal. It is as easy to overeat of nuts and protein in leguminous vegetables as it is to overeat of meat.

Starch poisoning is as bad as meat poisoning and the results are equally fatal.

The following are suggestions offered by a fruitarian. They give the food intake for two days:

120 grams shelled peanuts, raw,
1000 " apples,
500 " unfermented whole wheat bread.

120 grams shelled filberts,
450 " raisins,
800 " bananas.

In the first day's menu it will be noted that over two pounds of apples and over one pound of whole wheat bread are recommended, also over four ounces of raw peanuts. The writer says that this food should preferably be taken in two meals. There are very few people with enough digestive and assimilative power to care for more than one-half of a pound of whole wheat bread twice a day, especially when taken with raw peanuts, which are rather hard to digest. The trouble is made worse by the addition of more than one pound of apples to each meal, for when apples in large quantities are eaten with liberal amounts of starch, the tendency for the food to ferment is so strong that only a very few escape. Gas is produced in great quantities, which is both unnatural and unpleasant. Neither stomach nor bowels manufacture any perceptible amount of gas if they are in good condition and a moderate amount of food is taken.

Whole wheat bread digests easily enough when eaten in moderation, but it is very difficult to digest when as much as eight ounces are taken at a meal. One can accustom the body to accept this amount of food, but it is never required under ordinary conditions and the results in the long run are bad.

The food prescribed for the second day is more easily digested, but it is too much. Raisins are a splendid force food, but no ordinary individual needs a pound of raisins in one day, in addition to about one and three-fourths pounds of bananas, which are also a force food and are about as nourishing as the same amount of Irish potatoes.

In all my reading it has not been my good fortune to find a diet table for healthy people, giving moderate quantities of food. Diet lists seem scientific, so they appeal to the mind that has not learned to think of the subject from the correct point of view. Quantitative diet tables are worthless, for one person may need more than another. Some are short and some are tall. Some are naturally slender and others of stocky build. There is as much difference in people's food needs as there is in their appearance. To try to fit the same quantity and even kind of food to all is as senseless as it would be to dress all in garments of identical size and cut.

If we eat in moderation it does not make much difference what we eat, provided our diet contains either raw fruits or raw vegetables enough to furnish the various mineral salts and the food is fairly well prepared. There are combinations that are not ideal, but they do very little harm if there is no overeating. People who are moderate in their eating generally relish simple foods. Unfortunately, there is but little moderation in eating. From childhood on the suggestion that it is necessary to eat liberally is ever before us. Medical men, grandparents, parents and neighbors think and talk alike. If the parents believe in moderation, the neighbors kindly give lunches to the children. It is really difficult to raise children right, especially in towns and cities.

After such training we learn to believe in overeating and we pass the belief on to the next generation, as it has in the past been handed down from generation to generation. Finally we die, many of us martyrs to overconsumption of food. Ask any healer of intelligence who has thrown off the blinders put on at college and who has allowed himself to think without fear, and he will tell you that at least nine-tenths of our ills come from improper eating habits. It is not difficult to make up menus of compatible foods. No one knows how much another should eat, and he who prepares quantitative diet tables for the multitude must fail.

However, every individual of ordinary intelligence can quickly learn his own food requirements and the key thereto is given by nature. It is not well to think of one's self much or often. It is not well to be introspective, but everyone should get acquainted with himself, learning to know himself well enough to treat himself with due consideration. We are taught kindness to others. We need to be taught kindness to ourselves. The average person ought to be able to learn his normal food requirements within three or four months, and a shorter time will often suffice.

The following observations will prove helpful to the careful reader:

Food should have a pleasant taste while it is being eaten, but should not taste afterwards. If it does it is a sign of indigestion following overeating, or else it indicates improper combinations or very poor cooking. Perhaps food was taken when there was no desire for it, which is always a mistake. Perhaps too many foods were combined in the meal. Or it may be that there was not enough mouth preparation. It is generally due to overeating. Cabbage, onions, cucumbers and various other foods which often repeat, will not do so when properly prepared and eaten in moderation, if other conditions are right.

Eructation of gas and gas in the bowels are indications of overeating. More food is taken than can be digested. A part of it ferments and gas is a product of fermentation. A very small amount of gas in the alimentary tract is natural, but when there is belching or rumbling of gas in the intestines it is a sign of indigestion, which may be so mild that the individual is not aware of it, or it may be so bad that he can think of little else. When there is formation of much gas it is always necessary to reduce the food intake, and to give special attention to the mastication of all starch-containing aliments. Also, if starches and sour fruits have been combined habitually, this combination should be given up. Starch digests in an alkaline medium, and if it is taken with much acid by those whose digestive powers are weak, the result is fermentation instead of digestion.

People should never eat enough to experience a feeling of languor. They should quit eating before they feel full. If there is a desire to sleep after meals, too much food has been ingested. When drowsiness possesses us after meals we have eaten so much that the digestive organs require so much blood that there is not enough left for the brain. This is a hint that if we have work or study that requires exceptional clearness of mind, we should eat very moderately or not at all immediately before. The digestive organs appropriate the needed amount of blood and the brain refuses to do its best when deprived of its normal supply of oxygen and nourishment.

Serpents, some beasts of prey and savages devour such large quantities of food at times that they go into a stupor. There is no excuse for our patterning after them now that a supply of food is easily obtained at all times.

A bad taste in the mouth is usually a sign of overeating. It comes from the decomposition following a too liberal food intake. If water has a bad taste in the morning or at any other time, it indicates overeating. It may be due to a filthy mouth or the use of alcohol.

Heartburn is also due to overeating, and so is hiccough; both come from fermentation of food in the alimentary tract.

A heavily coated tongue in the morning indicates excessive food intake. If the tongue is what is known as a dirty gray color it shows that the owner has been overeating for years. The normal mucous membrane is clean and pink. The mucous membrane of the mouth, stomach and the first part of the bowels should not be compelled to act as an organ of excretion, for the normal function is secretory and absorptive. However, when so much food is eaten that the skin, lungs, kidneys and lower bowel can not throw off all the waste and excess, the mucous membrane in the upper part of the alimentary tract must assist. The result is a coated tongue, but the tongue is in no worse condition than the mucous membrane of the stomach. A coated tongue indicates overcrowded nutrition and is nature's request to reduce the food intake. How much? Enough to clean the tongue. If the coating is chronic it may take several months before the tongue becomes clean.

A muddy skin, perhaps pimply, is another sign of overeating. It shows that the food intake is so great that the body tries to eliminate too many of the solids through the skin, which becomes irritated from this cause and the too acid state of the system and then there is inflammation. Many forms of eczema and a great many other skin diseases are caused by stomach disorders and an overcrowded nutrition. There is a limit to the skin's excretory ability, and when this is exceeded skin diseases ensue. Some of the so-called incurable skin diseases get well in a short time on a proper diet without any local treatment.

Dull eyes and a greenish tinge of the whites of the eyes point toward digestive disturbances due to an oversupply of food. The green color comes from bile thrown into the blood when the liver is overworked. The liver is never overtaxed unless the consumption of food is excessive.

Another very common sign of too generous feeding is catarrh, and it does not matter where the catarrh is located. It is true that there are other causes of catarrh, in fact, anything that irritates the mucous membrane any length of time will cause it, but an overcrowded nutrition causes the ordinary cases. It is the same old story: The mucous membrane is forced to take on the function of eliminating superfluous matter, which has been taken into the system in the form of food. Many people dedicate their lives to the act of turning a superabundance of food into waste, and as a result they overwork their bodies so that they are never well physically and seldom efficient mentally.

Many people, especially women, say that if they miss a meal or get it later than usual, they suffer from headache. This indicates that the feeding is wrong, generally too generous and often too stimulating. A normal person can miss a dozen meals without a sign of a headache.

To repeat: No one can tell how much another should eat, but everyone can learn for himself what the proper amount of food is. Enough is given above to help solve the problem. The interpretations presented are not the popular ones, but they are true for they give good results when acted upon.

If bad results follow a meal there has been overeating, either at the last meal or previously. Undermasticating usually accompanies overeating and causes further trouble. Those who masticate thoroughly are generally quite moderate in their food intake.

Many say that they eat so much because they enjoy their food so. He who eats too rapidly or in excess does not know what true enjoyment of food is. Excessive eating causes food poisoning, and food poisoning blunts all the special senses. To have normal smell, taste, hearing and vision one must be clean through and through, and those who are surfeited with food are not clean internally.

The average individual does not know the natural taste of most foods. He seasons them so highly that the normal taste is hidden or destroyed. Those who wish to know the exquisite flavor of such common foods as onions, carrots, cabbage, apples and oranges must eat them without seasoning or dressing for a while. To get real enjoyment from food it is necessary to eat slowly and in moderation.

I know both from personal experience and from the experience of others that seasoning is not necessary. Instead of giving the foods better flavor, they taste inferior. A little salt will harm no one, but the constant use of much seasoning leads to irritation of the digestive organs and to overeating. Salt taken in excess also helps to bring on premature aging. It is splendid for pickling and preserving, but health and life in abundance are the only preservatives needed for the body. Refined sugar should be classed among the condiments. People who live normally lose the desire for it. Grapefruit, for instance, tastes better when eaten plain than when sugar is added.

People who sleep seven or eight hours and wake up feeling unrefreshed are suffering from the ingestion of too much food. A food poisoned individual can not be properly rested. To get sweet sleep and feel restored it is necessary to have clean blood and a sweet alimentary tract.

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, retard 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 quantities, but not at or near meal time. The meat, preferably beef, was to be scraped 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 quantities. 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 substituted 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 substituting 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 quantities 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 principally 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 scraps 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 assimilated.

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.

Those who object to flesh, dairy products, cereals, tubers, legumes, refined sugars, fruits or vegetables, should do without the class which they find objectionable, for it is easy to substitute from other classes. Eggs, milk or legumes may be taken in place of flesh foods. The salts contained in fruits may be obtained from vegetables. The starch, which is the chief ingredient of cereals, is easily obtained from tubers and legumes; fats and sugars will take its place. Commercial sugar is not a necessity. The force and heat derived from it can be obtained from starches and fats.

Outside of milk in infancy, there is not a single indispensable food. Some people have peculiarities which prevent them from eating certain foods, such as pork, eggs, milk and strawberries, but with these exceptions a healthy person can eat any food he pleases, provided he is moderate. We eat too much flesh, sugar and starch and we suffer for it. This does not prove that these foods are harmful, but that overeating is.

Sometimes the food question becomes a very trying one in the home. One individual has learned the fact that good results are obtained by using good sense and judgment in combining and consuming food, and he tries to force others to do as he does. This is unfortunate, for most people object to such actions, and though the intention is good, it accomplishes nothing, but prejudices others against sensible living. The best way is to do right yourself and let others sin against themselves and suffer until they are weary. Then, seeing how you got out of your trouble, perhaps they will come to you and accept what you have to offer.

The attempt to force people to be good or to be healthy is merely wasted effort.

The chapter devoted to Menus gives definite information regarding the proper manner in which to combine foods and arrange meals. Such information is also given in treating of the different classes of food.

CHAPTER VII.

WHEN TO EAT.

Three meals a day is the common plan. This is a matter of habit. Three meals a day are sufficient and should not be exceeded by man, woman or child. Lunching or "piecing" should never be indulged in. Children who are fed on plain, nutritious foods that contain the necessary food elements do not need lunches. Lunching is also a matter of habit, and we can safely say that it is a bad habit.

If three meals a day are taken, two should be light. He who wishes to work efficiently can not eat three hearty meals a day. If it is brain work, the digestive organs will take so much of the blood supply that an insufficient amount of blood will be left to nourish the brain. The worker feels the lack of energy. He is not inclined to do thorough work, that is, to go to the root of matters, and he therefore does indifferent work. One rule to which there is no exception is that the brain can not do its best when the digestive organs are working hard. If there is a piece of work to be done or a problem to be solved that requires all of one's powers it is best to tackle it with an empty stomach, or after a very light meal.

If the work is physical, it is not necessary to draw the line so fine. But it is well to remember that hard physical work prevents digestion. All experiments prove this. So if the labor is very trying, the eating should be light. Those who eat much because they work hard will soon wear themselves out, for hard work retards digestion, and with weakened digestion the more that is eaten, the less nourishment is extracted from it. Those who labor hard should take a light breakfast and the same kind of a noon meal. After the day's work is done, take a hearty meal. Those who perform hard physical labor, as well as those who work chiefly with their brains, should relax a while after the noon meal. A nap lasting ten to twenty minutes is very beneficial, but not necessary if relaxation is taken.

During sleep the activities of the body slow down. Most people who take a heavy meal and retire immediately thereafter feel uncomfortable when they wake in the morning. The reason is that the food did not digest well. It is always well to remain up at least two hours after eating a hearty meal.

Most people would be better off if they took but two meals a day. Those who have sedentary occupations need less fuel than manual laborers, and could get along very well on two meals a day. However, if moderation is practiced, no harm will come from eating three times a day.

In olden times many people lived on one meal a day. Some do so today and get along very well. It is easy to get plenty of nourishment from one meal, and it has the advantage of not taking so much time. Most of us spend too much time preparing for meals and eating. Once when it was rather inconvenient to get more meals, I lived for ten months on one meal a day. I enjoyed my food very much and was well nourished. For twelve years I have lived on two meals a day, one of them often consisting of nothing but some juicy fruit. Many others do likewise, not because they are prejudiced against three meals per day, but they find the two meal plan more convenient and very satisfactory.

Meat, potatoes and bread, with other foods, three times a day is a common combination. No ordinary mortal can live in health on such a diet. Such feeding results in discomfort and disease, and unless it is changed, in premature aging and death. The body needs only a certain amount of material. Sufficient can be taken in two meals. If three meals is the custom less food at a meal should be eaten. However, the general rule is that those who eat three meals per day eat fully as large ones as those who take only two.

As a rule, the meal times should be regular. We need a certain amount of nourishment, and it is well to take it regularly. This reduces friction, and is conducive to health, for the body is easily taught to fall into habits of regularity and works best when these are observed.

There should be a period of at least four and one-half to five hours between meals. It takes that long for the body to get a meal out of the way. Stomach digestion is but the beginning of the process, and this alone requires from two to five hours.

On the two-meal plan it makes very little difference whether the breakfast or the lunch is omitted. After going without breakfast for a week or two, one does not miss it. Miss the meal that it is the most troublesome to get. Dr. Dewey revived interest in the no-breakfast plan in this country. He considered it very beneficial. The doctor did not give credit where credit is due, for he insisted on going without breakfast. Omitting lunch or dinner accomplishes the same thing. He got his beneficial results from reducing the number of meals, and consequently the amount of food taken, but it is immaterial which meal is omitted.

Heavy breakfasts are very common in England and in our country. On the European continent they do not eat so much for breakfast, a cup of coffee and one roll being a favorite morning meal there. To eat nothing in the morning is better than to take coffee and rolls. To eat enough to steal one's brain away is a poor way to begin the day. Much better work could be done on some fruit or a glass of milk, or some cereal and butter than on eggs, steak potatoes, hot bread and coffee, which is not an uncommon breakfast.

When we consider the best time to eat, we come back to our old friend, moderation, and find that it is the best solution of the question, for if the meals are moderate we may with benefit take three meals a day, but no more, for there is not time enough during the day to digest more than three meals. However, it is not necessary to eat three times a day.

CHAPTER VIII.

HOW TO EAT.

It seems that all of us ought to know how to eat, for we have much practice; yet the individuals who know the true principles of nourishing the body are comparatively few. Very few healers are able to give full and explicit directions on this important subject. Some can give partial instructions, but we need a full working knowledge.

In one period of our racial history there were times when it was difficult to obtain food, as it is now among some savage people. Then it was without doubt customary to gorge, as it is among some savages now when they get a plenteous supply of food, especially of flesh food. Even among so-called civilized people, the distribution of food is so uneven that some are in want somewhere, nearly all the time. In parts of Russia, we are informed, the peasants go into a state of semi-hibernation during part of the winter, living on very small quantities of inferior food.

With rapid transportation and the extensive use of power-propelled machinery, famine should be unheard of in civilized countries. In our land there is a sufficient quantity of food and people seldom suffer because they have not enough, but considerable suffering is due to excessive intake and to poor quality of food. Weight for weight, white bread is not as valuable as whole wheat bread, though it contains as much starch. Measure for measure, boiled milk is inferior as a food to untreated milk, either fresh or clabbered. Such facts make it necessary for us to know how to eat.

The correct principles of taking nourishment to the best advantage have been fairly well known for a long time, and perhaps they have been fully discussed years ago by some author, but so far as I know Dr. E. H. Dewey is the first one who grouped them and gave them the prominence they deserve. He employed many pages in explaining clearly and forcibly these principles, which can be briefly stated as follows:

First, Be guided by the appetite in eating. Eat only when there is hunger.

Second, During acute illness fast, that is, live on water.

Third, Be moderate in eating.

Fourth, Masticate your food thoroughly.

Dr. J. H. Tilden teaches his patients the same in these words:

"Never eat when you feel badly.

"Never eat when you have no desire.

"Do not overeat.

"Thoroughly masticate and insalivate all your food."

Because these true dietetic principles are so important, probably being the most valuable information given in this book, let us give them enough consideration to fix them in the mind. They should be a part of every child's education. They should be so thoroughly learned that they become second nature, for if they are observed disease is practically impossible. Accidents may happen, but no serious disease can develop and certainly none of a chronic nature if these rules are observed, provided the individual gives himself half a chance in other ways. When the eating is correct, it is difficult to fall into bad habits mentally. Correct eating is a powerful aid to health. Health tends to produce proper thinking, which in turn leads the individual to proper acting.

First, Eat only when there is hunger: Hunger is of two kinds, normal and abnormal. The real or normal hunger was given us by nature to make us active enough to get food. If it were not for hunger, there would be no special incentive for the young to partake of nourishment and consequently many would die comfortably of starvation, perhaps enough to endanger the life of the race. Normal hunger asks for food, but no special kind of food. It is satisfied with anything that is clean and nourishing. It is strong enough to make a decided demand for food, but if there is no food to be had it will be satisfied for the time being with a glass of water and will cause no great inconvenience.

Abnormal hunger is entirely different. It is a very insistent craving and if it is not satisfied it produces bodily discomfort, perhaps headache. The gnawing remains and gives the victim no rest. Very often it must be pampered. It calls for beefsteak, or toast and tea, or sweets, or some other special food. If not satisfied the results may be nervousness, weakness or headache or some other disagreeable symptom.

When missing a meal or two brings discomfort, it is always a sign of a degenerating or degenerated body. A healthy person can go a day without food without any inconvenience. He feels a keen desire for food at meal times, but as soon as he has made up his mind that he is unable to get it or that he is not going to take any the hunger leaves. Normal hunger is a servant. Abnormal hunger is a hard master.

A person in good condition does not get weak from missing a few meals. One in poor physical condition does, although this is more apparent than real. In the abnormal person a part of the food is used as nourishment, but on account of the poor working of the digestive organs, a part decomposes and this acts as an irritant or a stimulant. The greater the irritation the more food is demanded. The temporary stimulation is followed by depression and then the sufferer is wretched. This depression is relieved by more food. Please note that it is relieved, not cured. The relief is only temporary.

All food stimulates, but only slightly. It is when the food decomposes that it becomes stimulating enough to cause trouble. It is well to remember that considerable alcoholic fermentation can take place in an abused alimentary tract. The stimulation obtained from too much food is very much like the stimulation derived from alcohol, tobacco or morphine. At first there is a feeling of well-being, which is followed by a miserable feeling of depression that demands food, alcohol, tobacco or morphine for relief, as the case may be, and no matter which habit is obtaining mastery, to indulge it is courting disaster. When a habit begins to assert itself strongly, break it, for later on it will be very difficult, so difficult that most people lack the will power to overcome it.

If there is abnormal hunger, reduce the food intake. Instead of eating five or six times a day, reduce the meals to two or three. It is quite common for such people to take lunches, which may consist of candies, ice cream, cakes, milk or buttermilk and various other things which most people do not look upon as real food. Take two or three meals a day, and let a large part of them be fresh vegetables and fresh fruits. Eat in moderation and the troublesome abnormal hunger will soon leave. By indulging it you increase it.

Many people get into trouble because they believe that they have to have protein, starch and fat at every meal. This is not necessary, for the blood takes up enough nourishment to last for quite a while. A supply of the various food elements once a day is sufficient, which means that protein needs be taken but once a day, starch once a day and fat once a day. Starch and fat serve the same purpose and one can be replaced by the other.

Cultivate a normal hunger, then fix two or three periods in which to take nourishment, and partake of nothing but water outside of these periods. If there is no desire for food when meal time comes, eat nothing, but drink all the water desired and wait until next meal time.

Second, During acute illness fast: This is so obviously correct that we should expect every normal individual to be guided by it. Even the lower animals know this and act accordingly.

According to this rule we should go without food when ill, but to do so is contrary to the teachings of medical men. They teach that when people are ill there is much waste, which is true, and that for this reason it is necessary to partake of a generous amount of nourishing food, so they give milk, broth, meat, toast and other foods, together with stimulants. Feeding during illness would be all right if the body could take care of the food, which it can not. In all severe diseases digestion is almost or quite at a standstill and the food given under the circumstances decomposes in the alimentary tract and furnishes additional poison for the system to excrete. Food under the circumstances is a detriment and a burden to the body. In fevers, the temperature goes up after feeding. This shows that more poison has entered the blood. In fevers little or none of the digestive fluids is secreted, but the alimentary tract is so warm that the food decomposes quickly. Feeding during acute attacks of disease is one of the most serious and fatal of errors. There is an aversion to food, which is nature's request that none be taken.

When an animal becomes seriously ill, it wants to fast, and does so unless man interferes. Here we could with advantage do as the animals do. Nature made no mistake when she took hunger away in acute diseases, and if we disregard her desires, we invariably suffer for it.

We should make it a rule to take no food, either liquid or solid, during acute disease.

Those who have had no opportunity to watch the rapidity with which people recover from serious illness may take the ground that sick people would starve to death if they were to be treated thus, for some of these acute diseases last a long time. Typhoid fever, for instance, occasionally lasts two or three months. It never lasts that long when treated by natural means, and it is very mild, as a rule. The fever will be gone in from seven to fourteen days in the vast majority of cases, and then feeding can be resumed.

Chronic disease is often due to neglected acute disease, at other times to the building of abnormality through errors of life which have not resulted in acute troubles. While acquiring chronic disease, the individual may be fairly comfortable, but he is never up to par. Most chronic diseases can be cured quickly by taking a fast, but usually it is not necessary to take a complete fast. The desire for food is not generally absent and there is usually fair power to digest. One of the most satisfactory methods, if not the most satisfactory one, of treating chronic disease is to reduce the food intake, and instead of giving so much of the concentrated staples, feed more of the succulent vegetables and the fresh fruits, cooked and raw, using but small quantities of flesh, bread, potatoes and sugar. This gives the body a chance to throw off impurities. There are always many impurities in a deranged body.

Third, Be moderate in your eating: This is often very difficult, for most people do not know what moderation is. In infancy the too frequent feeding and the overfeeding begin. The common belief that infants must be fed every two hours, or oftener, is acted upon. The result is that the child soon loses its normal hunger, which is replaced by abnormal hunger. When food is long withheld it begins to fret. The mother again feeds and there is peace for an hour or so. When mothers learn to feed their children three times a day and no more there will be a great decrease in infant ills and a falling off in the infant mortality. The healthiest children I have seen are fed but three times a day. They become used to it and expect no more.

Another thing that makes it difficult to be moderate is impoverishing the food through refinement and poor cooking. These processes take away a great part of the mineral salts which are present in foods in organic form. These salts can not be replaced by table salt, for sodium chloride is but one of many salts that the body needs and an excess of table salt does not make up for a deficiency in the others.

Children fed on refined, impoverished foods are not satisfied with a reasonable amount. There is something lacking and this makes itself known in cravings, which demand more food than is needed to nourish. I have noticed many times that children are satisfied with less of whole wheat bread than of white bread, and that the brown unpolished rice satisfies them more quickly and completely than the polished rice. In other words, depriving the foods of their salts is one of the factors that leads to overeating.

Simplicity is a great aid to moderation. It is also necessary to exercise the conservative measure, self-control. Some writers suggest to eat all that is desired and then fast at various intervals to overcome the effects of overeating. In other words, they advise to eat enough to become diseased and then fast to cure the trouble. This is better than to continue the eating when the evil results of an excessive food intake make themselves known, but it does not bring the best results. Such people have their spells of sickness, which are unnecessary. If they stop eating as soon as the disease makes itself known, it does not last long. By exercising self-control sickness will be warded off. By using will power daily it grows stronger and those who force themselves to be moderate at first, are in time rewarded by having moderation become second nature.

People should always stop eating before they are full. Those who eat until they are uncomfortable are gluttons. They should be classed with drunkards and drug addicts.

If discomfort follows a meal it is a sign of overeating. It would be well to read this in connection with the chapter that treats of overeating.

Fourth, Thoroughly masticate all food: Horace Fletcher has written a very enthusiastic book on this subject. Enthusiasm is apt to lead one astray, and even if thorough mastication will not do all that Mr. Fletcher believed, it is very important, and we owe Mr. Fletcher thanks for calling our attention to the subject forcibly.

Thorough mastication partially checks overeating.

Our foods have to be finely divided and subdivided or they can not be thoroughly acted upon by the digestive juices. The stomach is well muscled and churns the food about, helping to comminute it, but it can not take the place of the teeth. All foods should be thoroughly masticated. While the mastication is going on the saliva becomes mixed with the food. In the saliva is the ptyalin, which begins to digest the starch. Starch that is well masticated is not so liable to ferment as that which gets scant attention in the mouth. Starches and nuts need the most thorough mastication. If thorough mastication were the rule, meat gluttons would be fewer, for when flesh is well chewed large quantities cause nausea.

Milk digests best when it is rolled around in the mouth long enough to be mixed with saliva. To treat milk as a drink is a mistake, for it is a very nourishing food.

All kinds of nuts must be well masticated. If they are not they can not be well digested, for the digestive organs are unable to break down big pieces of the hard nut meats.

The succulent vegetables contain considerable starch. If mastication is slighted they often ferment enough to produce considerable gas.

Fruits are generally eaten too rapidly, and therefore often produce bad results. Even green fruits can be eaten with impunity if they are very thoroughly masticated.

Those who are fond enough of liquors to take an excess should sip their alcoholic beverages very slowly, tasting every drop before swallowing. This would decrease their consumption of liquor greatly.

Even water should not be gulped down. It should be taken rather slowly, especially on hot days. During hot weather many drink too much water. This tendency can usually be overcome by avoiding iced water and by drinking slowly.

These four rules should be a part of your vital knowledge. If you forget everything else in this book, please remember them and try to put them into practice:

Eat only when hungry.
During acute illness fast.
Be moderate in your eating.
Thoroughly masticate all food.

CHAPTER IX.

CLASSIFICATION OF FOODS.

Food is anything which, when taken into the body under proper conditions, is broken down and taken into the blood and utilized for building, repairing or the production of heat or energy.

There are various forms of foods, which can be divided into two classes: First, nitrogenous foods or proteins. Second, carbonaceous, foods, under which caption come the sugars, starches and fats. Salts and water are not usually classified as foods, though they should be, for life is impossible without either.

The chief proteins are: First, the albuminoids, which are represented by the albumin in eggs, the casein in milk and cheese, the myosin of muscle and the gluten of wheat. Second, the gelatinoids, which are represented by the ossein of bones, which can be made into glue, and the collogen of tendons. Third, nitrogen extractives, which are the chief ingredients in beef tea. They are easily removed from flesh by soaking it while raw in cold water. They are rich in flavor and are stimulating. They have absolutely no food value. Beef tea, and other related extracts, are not foods. They are stimulants. In truth they are of no value, and those who purchase such preparations pay a high price and get nothing in return.

The sugars and starches are grouped under the name of carbohydrates, which means that they are a combination of water and carbon. There are various forms of sugar. About 4 per cent of milk is milk sugar, which agrees better with the young than any other kind of sugar. It is not so soluble in water as the refined cane sugar, and therefore not so sweet, but it is fully as nourishing. Honey is a mixture of various kinds of sugars. Cane sugar is taken principally from sugar beets and sugar cane. There is no chemical difference between the products of canes and beets. Sugars can not be utilized by the blood until it has changed them into other forms of sugar.

The use of sugar is rapidly increasing. Several centuries ago it was used as a drug. It was doubtless as effective as a curing agent as our drugs are today. Until within the last sixty or seventy years it has not been used as a staple food. Now it is one of our chief foods. Not so very long ago but ten pounds of sugar per capita were used annually, but now we are consuming about ninety pounds each annually, that is, about four ounces per day. Many people look upon sugar as a flavoring, which it is in a measure, but it is also one of our most concentrated foods.

That this great consumption of sugar is harmful there is no doubt. Physicians who practiced when the use of sugar was increasing very rapidly called attention to the increasing decay of teeth. Sugar, as it appears upon the table is an unsatisfied compound. It does not appear in concentrated form in nature, but mixed with vegetable and mineral matters, and when the pure sugar is put into solution it seeks these matters. It is especially hungry for calcium and will therefore rob the bones, the teeth and the blood of this important salt, if it can not be had otherwise. The most noticeable effect is the decay of the teeth.

I have read considerable literature of late blaming sugar for producing many diseases, among them tuberculosis and cancer. Improper feeding is the chief cause of these diseases, but to blame sugar for all ills of that kind is far from arriving at the truth. Cancer and tuberculosis killed vast numbers of people before sugar was used as a staple. If we wish to get at the root of any trouble, it is necessary for us to bury our prejudices and be broad minded.

People who eat much sugar should also partake liberally of fresh raw fruits and vegetables, in order to supply the salts in which sugar is deficient. Lump sugar is practically pure, and therefore a poorer article of diet than any other form of sugar, for man can not live on carbon without salts.

Grape sugar and fruit sugar are the same chemically. Another name for them is dextrose, and in the form of dextrose sugar is ready to be taken up by the blood.

Children like sweets, but it is just as easy to give them the sweet fruits, such as good figs, dates and raisins, as it is to give them commercial sugar and candy, and it is much better for their health. Children who get used to the sweet fruits do not care very much for candies. The sugar in these fruits is not concentrated enough to be an irritant and it contains the salts needed by the body. Hence it does not rob the body of any of its necessary constituents. Because the fruit sugar, taken in fruit form, is not so concentrated and irritating as the common sugar, the child is satisfied with less.

Sugar is an irritant of the mucous membrane and therefore stimulates the appetite. This is true only when it is taken in excess in its artificial form, and it does not matter whether it is sugar, jelly or jam. For this reason jellies and jams should be used sparingly, because it is not necessary to stimulate the appetite. Those who resort to stimulation overeat. When much sugar is taken, it not only irritates the stomach, but it even inflames this organ.

Sugar is a preservative, and like all other preservatives it delays digestion, if taken in great quantities, and four ounces per day make a great quantity. The digestive organs rebel if they are given as much of sugar as they will tolerate of starch. When taken in excess sugar ferments easily, producing much gas, which is followed by serious results.

Sugar is changed into forms less sweet by acids and heat. The ferment invertin also acts upon sugars.

Sugar is a valuable food, but we are abusing it, and therefore it is doing us physical harm. The quantity should be reduced, and families who are using four ounces per person per day, as statistics indicate that most are doing, should reduce the intake to about one-third of this amount. It would be well to take as much of the sugar as possible in the form of sweet fruits.

It is a fact that sugar is easy to digest and that one can soon get energy from it, but feeding is not merely a question of giving digestible aliments, but a question of using foods that are beneficial in the long run. The moderate use of this food is all right, but excess is always bad. Starches need more change than sugars before they can be absorbed by the blood, but they give better results. Chemically there is but small difference between starch and sugar. The starch must be changed into dextrose, a form of sugar, before it can be utilized by the body.

The human body contains a small amount of a substance called glycogen, which is an animal starch or sugar. This glycogen is burned. Sugar is a force food. It combines with oxygen and gives heat and energy. The waste product is carbonic acid gas, which is carried by the blood to the lungs and then exhaled.

Honey and maple sugar are good foods, but overconsumption is harmful.

Sugar eating is largely a habit. Because the sugar has so much of the life and so many of the necessary salts removed in its refinement it is a good food only when taken in small quantities. Nature demands of us that we do not get too refined in our habits, for excessive refinement is followed by decay. It is easy to overcome the tendency to overeat of sugar.

Some spoil the most delicious watermelon by heaping sugar or salt, or both, upon it. In this way the flavor is lost. There is not a raw fruit on the market which is as finely flavored after it has been sugared as it was before. True, those who have ruined their sense of taste object to the tartness and natural acidity of various foods, but they are not judges and can not be until they have regained a normal taste, which can only be done by living on natural foods for a while.

Fats are obtained most plentifully from nuts, legumes, dairy products and animal foods. They are the most concentrated of all foods, yielding over twice the amount of heat or energy that we can obtain from the same weight of pure sugar, starch or protein. Many who think they are moderate eaters consume enough butter to put them in the glutton class.

Salts are present in all natural foods of which we partake.

Water is indispensable, for the body has to have fluids in order to perform its functions.

Foods are burned in the body. They are valuable in proportion to the completeness with which they are digested and assimilated and the ease with which this process is accomplished. It takes energy to digest food and if the food is very indigestible it takes too much energy.

The following remarks on digestibility are according to the best knowledge we have on the subject:

As a general rule, the protein of meat and fish is more completely and more quickly digested than the protein in vegetable foods. The reason is that the vegetable protein is found in cells which are protected by the indigestible cellulose which covers each cell. This covering is not always broken and then the digestive juices are practically powerless.

The legumes, which are rich in protein, are comparatively hard to digest. If properly prepared and eaten, they give little or no trouble, but they are generally cooked soft and the mastication is slighted. The result is fermentation. Beans, peas and lentils should be very well chewed, and eaten in moderation, for they are rich both in starch and protein.

Nuts are as a rule not as completely digested as meats and animal fats, and the principal reason is that they are eaten too rapidly and masticated too little. Nuts properly masticated, taken in correct combinations and amounts agree very well. It is not necessary, as many believe, to salt them in order to prevent indigestion.

In the following pages will be found a number of diet tables, giving compositions and fuel values of various foods which have been grouped for the sake of convenience, for the foods in each group are quite similar. These tables are not complete, for to list every food would take too much space. I have simply selected a representative list from the various classes of foods. Under flesh are given fish, meats and eggs. Under succulent vegetables are given both root and top vegetables, because of their similarity. Nuts, cereals, legumes, tubers and fruits are each grouped because it is easy to gain an understanding of them in this way. Milk is given a rather long chapter of its own because of its great importance in the morning of life.

Allow me to repeat that it is impossible to figure out the calories in a given amount of food and then give enough food to furnish so many calories and thus obtain good results. I have already given the key to the amount of food to eat, and it is the only kind of key that works well. However, it is very helpful to have a knowledge of food values.

The calorie is the unit of heat, and heat is convertible into energy. A calorie is the heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree C. To translate into common terms, it is the heat required to raise one pound of water four degrees F.

One pound of protein produces 1,860 calories.
One pound of sugar produces 1,860 calories.
One pound of starch produces 1,860 calories.
One pound of oil or fat produces 4,220 calories.

For the scientific facts regarding foods I have consulted various works, especially the following: Diet and Dietetics, by Gauthier; Foods, by Tibbles; Food Inspection and Analyses, by Leach; Foods and their Adulteration, by Wiley; Commercial Organic Analysis, by Allan. However, I am most indebted to the numerous bulletins issued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. All who make a study of foods and their value owe a great debt to W. O. Atwater and Chas. D. Wood, who have worked so long and faithfully to increase our knowledge regarding foods.

As we consider the various groups of foods, directions are given for the best way of cooking, but no fancy cooking is considered. Those who wish fancy, indigestible dishes should consult the popular cook books.

The women have it in their power to raise the health standard fifty to one hundred per cent by cooking for health instead of catering to spoiled palates, and by learning to combine foods more sensibly than they have in the past. The art of cooking has made its appeal almost entirely to the palate. This art is not on as high level as the science of cooking, which gives foods that build healthy bodies. The right way of cooking is simpler, quicker and easier than the conventional method, and gives food that is superior in flavor. After the normal taste has been ruined, it takes a few months to acquire a natural taste again so that good foods will be enjoyed.

CHAPTER X.

FLESH FOODS.

====================================================================
Pro- Carbohy- Calories
Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb.
——————————————————————————————————
Beef, average 72.03 21.42 5.41 …. 1.14 ….
Veal, lean 78.84 19.86 .82 …. .50 ….
Mutton, average 75.99 17.11 5.77 …. 1.33 ….
Pork, average fat 47.40 14.54 37.34 …. .72 ….
Pork, average lean 72.57 20.25 6.81 …. 1.10 ….
Rabbit 66.80 22.22 9.76 …. 1.17 ….
Chicken, fat 70.06 19.59 9.34 …. .91 ….
Turkey 65.60 24.70 8.50 …. 1.20 ….
Goose 38.02 15.91 45.59 …. .49 ….
Pigeon 75.10 22.90 1.00 …. 1.00 ….
Duck, wild 69.89 25.49 3.69 …. .93 ….
Black bass 76.7 20.4 1.7 …. 1.2 450
Sea bass 79.3 18.8 .5 …. 1.4 370
Cod, steaks 82.5 16.3 .3 …. .9 315
Halibut, steaks 75.4 18.3 5.2 …. 1.1 560
Herring 74.67 14.55 9.03 …. 1.78 ….
Mackerel 73.4 18.2 7.1 …. 1.3 640
Perch, white 75.7 19.1 4.0 …. 1.2 525
Pickerel 79.8 18.6 .5 …. 1.1 365
Salmon 71.4 19.9 7.4 …. 1.3 680
Salmon trout 69.1 18.2 11.4 …. 1.3 820
Shad 70.6 18.6 9.5 …. 1.3 745
Sturgeon 78.7 18.0 1.9 …. 1.4 415
Trout, brook 77.8 18.9 2.1 …. 1.2 440
Clams, long 85.8 8.6 1.0 2.00 2.6 240
Clams, round 86.2 6.5 .4 4.20 2.7 215
Lobster 79.2 16.4 1.8 .40 2.2 390
Oyster in shell 86.9 6.2 1.2 3.70 2.0 230
——————————————————————————————————

The food value of meat depends on the amount of fat and protein it contains. Lean meat may contain less than four hundred calories per pound, while very fat meat may contain more than one thousand five hundred calories.

These foods are eaten because they are rich in protein. Protein is the great builder and repairer of the body. It forms the framework for both bone and muscle. We can get along very well without starch or sugar or fat, but it is absolutely necessary to have proteid foods. They are the only ones that contain nitrogen, which is essential to animal life.

Nitrogenous foods are used not only to build and repair, but in the end they are burned, supplying as much heat as the same weight of sugar or starch.

Proteid foods are generally taken to excess. To most people they are very palatable, and they are generally prepared in a manner that renders rapid eating easy. Besides, meats contain flavoring and stimulating principles, called extractives, which increase the desire for them. The consequence is that those who eat meat often have a tendency to eat too much. Excessive meat eating often leads to consumption of large quantities of liquor. Stimulants crave company.

As will be noted, most fish and meat contain about 20 per cent. of protein, while about 75 per cent. is water. The fatter the meat, the less water it contains, and the more fuel value it has. The leaner the meat, the more watery the animal, and the more easily is the flesh digested. Beef is fatter than veal and harder to digest. Also, the flesh of old animals is more highly flavored than that of the young ones, because it contains more salts. For this reason people who have a tendency to the formation of foreign deposits, as is the case with those who have rheumatism and gout or hardening of the arteries, should take the flesh of young animals when it is obtainable.

In the past we have been taught to partake of excessive amounts of protein. The prescribed amount for the average adult has been about five ounces. If we were to obtain all the protein from meat, this would necessitate eating about twenty-five ounces of meat daily. However, inasmuch as there is considerable protein in the cereals and milk, and a little in most fruits and vegetables, a pound of meat would probably suffice under the old plan. A few physicians have known that such an intake of protein is excessive, and now the physiologists are learning the same. It has lately been determined experimentally that the body needs only about an ounce of protein daily, which will be supplied by about five ounces of flesh. Three or four ounces of flesh daily make a liberal allowance, for it is supplemented by protein in other foods.

Workers eat large quantities of flesh because they think they need a great deal. The fact is that very little more protein is needed by those who do hard physical labor than by brain workers. The extra energy needed calls for more carbohydrates, not for protein.

When the organism is supplied with sugar, starch and fat, or one of these, the protein of the body is saved, only a very small amount being used to replace the waste through wear and tear. Though protein can be burned in the body, it is not an economical fuel, either from a physiological or financial standpoint. The energy obtained from flesh costs much more than the same amount of energy obtained from carbonaceous foods. Ten acres of ground well cultivated can raise enough cereals and vegetables to support a number of people, but if this amount of land is used for raising animals, it will support but a few. The protein obtained from peas, beans and lentils is cheap, but these foods do not appeal to the popular palate as much as flesh.

Meat immediately after being killed is soft. After a while it goes into a state of rigidity known as rigor mortis. Then it begins to soften again. This third stage is really a form of decay, called ripening. It is believed that the lactic acid formed is one of the principal agents producing this softening. Some people enjoy their meats, especially that of fowls and game, ripe enough to deserve the name of rotten. The ripening produces many chemical changes in the meat, which give the flesh more flavor. Consequently those who indulge are very apt to overeat. It is a fact that those who eat much flesh go into degeneration more quickly than those who are moderate flesh eaters and depend largely on the vegetable kingdom for food.

If an excess of good meat causes degeneration, there is no reason to doubt that partaking of overripe foods is even worse.

All meat contains waste. If the flesh comes from healthy animals and is eaten in moderation this waste is so small that it will cause no inconvenience, for a healthy body is able to take care of it. If too much is eaten, the results are serious. Overeating of flesh is followed by excessive production of urea and uric acid products. Some of these may be deposited in various parts of the body, while the urea is mostly excreted by the kidneys. The kidneys do not thrive under overwork any more than other organs. The vast majority of cases of diabetes and Bright's disease are caused by overworking the digestive organs. Too much food is absorbed into the blood and the excretory organs have to work overtime to get rid of the excess.

Meats are easily spoiled. They should be kept in a cold place and not very long. Fresh meat and fish are more easily digested than those which are salted, or preserved in any other way. Pickled meats should be used rarely The same is true of fish.

Ptomaines, or animal poisons, form easily in flesh foods. These are very dangerous, and it is not safe to eat tainted flesh, even after it is cooked. Fish decomposes quickly and fish poisoning is probably even more severe than meat poisoning. Fish should be killed immediately after it is caught, for experiments have shown that the flesh of fish kept captive after the manner of fishers degenerates very rapidly. Fish should be eaten while fresh. Even when the best precautions have been taken, it is somewhat risky to partake of fish that has been shipped from afar.

Flesh foods are more easily and completely digested than the protein derived from the vegetable kingdom.

From the table it will be noted that some fish is fat and some is lean. The ones containing more than 5 per cent of fat should be considered fat fish. These are somewhat harder to digest than the lean ones, but they are more nutritious.

Shell fish is generally low in food value and if taken as nourishment is very expensive. However, most people eat this food for its flavor.

COOKING.

Cooking is an art that should be learned according to correct principles. Every physician should be a good cook. He should be able to go into the kitchen and show the housewife how to prepare foods properly. Medical men who are well versed in food preparation and able to make good food prescriptions have no need of drugs.

The flesh of animals is composed of fibres. These fibres are surrounded by connective tissue which is tough. The cooking softens and breaks down these tissues, thus rendering it easier for the digestive juices to penetrate and dissolve them. That is, proper cooking does this. Poor cooking generally renders the meats indigestible.

The simpler the cooking, the more digestible will be the food. Flavors are developed in the process, but these are hidden if the meats are highly seasoned.

Boiling: When meats are boiled they lose muscle sugar, flavoring extracts, organic acids, gelatin, mineral matters and soluble albumin. That is, they lose both flavor and nourishment. Therefore the liquid in which they are cooked should be used.

The proper way to boil meat is to plunge it into plain boiling water. Allow the water to boil hard for ten or fifteen minutes. This coagulates the outer part of the piece of meat. Then lower the temperature of the water to about 180 degrees F. and cook until it suits the taste. If it is allowed to boil at a high temperature a long time, it becomes tough, for the albumin will coagulate throughout.

Salt extracts the water from meat. Therefore none of it should be used in boiling. The meat should be cooked in plain water with no addition. No vegetables and no cereals are to be added. All meats contain some fat, and this comes into the water and acts upon the vegetables and starches, making them indigestible. Season the meat after it is cooked, or better still, let everyone season it to suit the taste after serving.

Meats that are to be boiled should never be soaked, for the cold water dissolves out some of the salts and some of the flavoring extracts, as well as a part of the nutritive substances. It is better to simply wash the meat if it does not look fresh and clean enough to appeal to the eye, which it always should be.

Stewing: If meat is to be stewed, cut into small pieces and stew or simmer at a temperature of about 180 degrees F. until it is tender. It is to be stewed in plain water. If a meat and vegetable stew is desired, stew the vegetables in one dish, and the meat in another. When both are done, mix. By cooking thus a stew is made that will not "repeat" if it is properly eaten. Foods should taste while being eaten, not afterwards.

Broths: If a broth is desired, select lean meat. Either grind it or chop it up fine. There is no objection to soaking the meat in cold water, provided this water is used in making the broth. Use no seasoning. Let it stew or simmer at about 180 degrees F. until the strength of the meat is largely in the water.

When the broth is done, set it aside to cool. Then skim off all the fat and warm it up and use. One pound of lean meat will produce a quart of quite strong broth.

Broiling: Cut the meat into desired thickness. Place near intense fire, turning occasionally, until done. Be careful not to burn the flesh. An ordinary steak should be broiled in about ten minutes. Of course, the time depends on the thickness of the cut and whether it is desired rare, medium or well done, and in this let the individual suit himself, for he will digest the meat best the way he enjoys it most.

Beefsteak smothered in onions is a favorite dish. It is not a good way to prepare either the onions or the steak. A better way is to broil both the steak and the onions, or broil the steak, cut the onions in slices about one-half to three-fourths of an inch thick, add a little water and bake them. Beefsteak and onions prepared in this way are both palatable and easy to digest.

Roasting is just like broiling, that is, cooking a piece of meat before an open fire. Here we use a larger piece of meat and it therefore takes longer. Of old roasting was quite common, but now we seldom roast meat in this country.

Baking: Here we place the meat in an enclosed oven. Most of our so-called roast meats are baked. The oven for the first ten or fifteen minutes should be very hot, about 400 degrees F. This heat seals the outside of the meat up quite well. Then let the heat be reduced to about 260 degrees F. If it is kept at a high temperature it will produce a tough piece of meat. The time the meat should be in the oven depends upon the size of the piece of meat and how well done it is desired.

While baking, some of the juices and a part of the fat escape. About every fifteen minutes, baste the meat with its own juice. A few minutes before the meat is to be removed from the oven it may be sprinkled with a small amount of salt, and so may broiled and roasted meats a little while before they are done. However, many prefer to season their own foods or eat them without seasoning and they should be allowed to do so.

Steaming: This is an excellent way of cooking. None of the food value is lost. Put the meat in the steamer and allow it to remain until done. The cheapest and toughest cuts of meat, which are fully as good as the more expensive ones and often better flavored, can be rendered very tender by steaming. Tough birds can be treated in the same way. An excellent way to cook an old hen or an old turkey is to steam until tender and then put into a hot oven for a few minutes to brown. Some birds are so tough that they can not be made eatable by either boiling or baking, but steaming makes them tender.

It is best to avoid starchy dressings, in fact dressings of all kinds. A well cooked bird needs none, and dressing does not save a poorly cooked one. Most dressings are very difficult to digest.

Fireless cooking: Every household should have either a good steamer or a fireless cooker. Both are savers of time and fuel and food. They emancipate the women. Those who have fireless cookers and plan their meals properly do not need to spend much time in the kitchen.

Place the meat in the fireless cooker, following the directions which accompany it. However, if they tell you to season the meat, omit this part.

Smothering is a modification of baking. Any kind of meat may be smothered, but it is especially fine for chickens. Take a young bird, separate it into joints, place into a pan, add a pint of boiling water. If chicken is lean put in a little butter, but if fat use no butter. Cover the pan tightly and place in oven and let it bake. A chicken weighing two and one-half pounds when dressed will require baking for one hour and fifteen minutes. Keep the cover on the baking pan until the chicken is done, not raising it even once. Gravy will be found in the pan.

Pressed chicken is very good. Get a hen about a year old. Place it into steamer or fireless cooker until so tender that the flesh readily falls from the bones. Remove the bones, but keep the skin with the meat. Chop it up. Place in dish or jar, salting very lightly. Over the chopped-up meat place a plate and on this a weight, and allow it to press over night. Then it is ready to slice and serve. This is very convenient for outings.

Fish should preferably be baked or broiled. It may also be boiled, but it boils to pieces rather easily and loses a part of its food value. It must be handled with great care. No seasoning is to be used. When served a little salt and drawn butter or oil may be added as dressing.

Frying is an objectionable method of cooking. It is generally held, and with good reason, that when grease at a high temperature is forced into flesh, it becomes very indigestible. In fact the crust formed on the outside of the flesh can not be digested. It is folly to prepare food so that it proves injurious.

However, there is a way of using the frying pan so that practically no harm is done. Grease the pan very lightly, just enough to prevent the flesh from sticking. Make the pan very hot and place the meat in it. Turn the meat frequently. Fries (young chickens) may be cooked in this way with good results. The same is true of steaks and chops.

Avoid greasy cooking. It is an abomination that helps to kill thousands of people annually.

Paper bag cooking is all right if it is convenient. Those who have good steamers or fireless cookers will not find it of special advantage.

Brown flour gravies are not fit to eat. If there is any gravy serve it as it comes from the pan without mixing it with flour or other starches. It may be put over the meat or used as dressing for the vegetables. Milk gravies are also to be avoided. Use only the natural gravies.

Oysters may be eaten raw or stewed. Stew the oysters in a little water. Heat the milk and mix. Eat with cooked succulent vegetables and with raw salad vegetables. It is best to leave the crackers out. The oysters themselves contain very little nourishment, but when made into a milk stew the result is very nutritious.

Eggs should be fresh. Some bakers buy spoiled eggs and use them for their fancy cakes and cookies. This is a very objectionable practice and may be one of the reasons that bakers' cookies never taste like those "mother used to make." Eggs take the place of fish, meat or nuts, for they are rich in protein. They may be taken raw, rare or well done.

Eggs may be boiled, poached, steamed or baked. Soft boiled eggs require about three and one-half minutes. Hard boiled ones require from fifteen to twenty minutes. The albumin of an egg boiled six or seven minutes is tough. When boiled longer it becomes mellow. Eggs may be made into omelettes or scrambled, but the pan should be lightly greased and quite hot so that the cooking will be quickly done. Eggs are variously treated for an omelette. Some cooks add nothing but water and this makes a delicate dish. Others use milk, cream or butter, and beat.

Bacon is a relish and may be taken occasionally with any other food. It should be well done, fried or broiled until quite crisp. This is one place where frying is not objectionable.

Pork should rarely be used. It is too fat and rich and requires too long to digest. When eaten it should be taken in the simplest of combinations, such as pork and succulent vegetables or juicy fruits, either cooked or raw, and nothing else.

Flesh may be eaten more freely in winter than in summer. Meat especially should be eaten very sparingly during hot weather, for it is too stimulating and heating. Nuts, eggs and fish are then better forms in which to take protein.

COMBINATIONS.

Flesh foods combine best with the succulent vegetables and the salad vegetables or with juicy fruits. It is more usual to take vegetables with flesh than to take fruit, but those who prefer fruit may take it with equally as good results. Both fruits and vegetables are rich in tissue salts, in which flesh foods are rather deficient. The succulent vegetables contain some starch and the juicy fruits some sugar, but not enough to do any harm. They both act as fillers.

Flesh is quite concentrated and it is customary to take it with other concentrated foods, such as bread and potatoes. As a result too much food is ingested. It would be a splendid rule to make to avoid bread and potatoes when flesh food is taken, but if this seems too rigid, make it a rule never to eat all three at the same meal. It is best to eat the flesh foods without bread or potatoes, but if starch is desired, take only one kind at a time.

Most people crave a certain amount of food as filler, and they have fallen into the habit of using bread and potatoes for this purpose. This is a mistake. Use the juicy fruits and the succulent vegetables for filling purposes and thus get sufficient salts and avoid the many ills that come from eating great quantities of concentrated foods.

When possible, have a raw salad vegetable or two with the meat or fish meal.

Eat only one concentrated albuminous food at a meal. If you have meat, take no fish, eggs, nuts or cheese.

CHAPTER XI.

NUTS.

====================================================================
Pro- Carbohy- Calories
Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb.
——————————————————————————————————
Acorns 4.1 8.1 37.4 48.0 2.4 2718
Almonds 4.8 21.0 54.9 17.3 2.0 3030
Brazil nuts 5.3 17.0 66.8 7.0 3.9 3329
Filberts 3.7 15.6 65.3 13.0 2.4 3432
Hickory nuts 3.7 15.4 67.4 11.4 2.1 3495
Pecans 3.0 11.0 71.2 13.3 1.5 3633
English walnuts 2.8 16.7 64.4 14.8 1.3 3305
Chestnuts, dried 5.9 10.7 7.0 74.2 2.2 1875
Butternuts 4.5 27.9 61.2 3.4 3.0 3371
Cocoanuts 14.1 5.7 50.6 27.9 1.7 2986
Pistachio nuts 4.2 22.6 54.5 15.6 3.1 3010
Peanuts, roasted 1.6 30.5 49.2 16.2 2.5 3177
——————————————————————————————————

Nuts vary a great deal in composition. They are generally the seeds of trees, enclosed in shells, but other substances are also called nuts. The representative nuts are rich in fat and protein, containing some carbohydrate (sugar or starch.)

A few nuts, such as the acorn, cocoanut and chestnut, are very rich in starch, and these should be classified as starchy foods. Very few foods contain as high per cent of starch as the dry chestnut. In southern Europe chestnuts are made into flour, and this is made into bread or cakes. An inferior bread is also made of acorn flour. Chestnuts may be boiled or roasted. They are very nutritious.

The more representative nuts are pecans, filberts, Brazil nuts and walnuts. These may be used in place of flesh foods, for they furnish both protein and fats. If the kernel is surrounded by a tough membrane, as is the case in walnuts and almonds, it should be blanched, which consists in putting the kernel in very hot water for a little while and then removing this membrane. The pecan, though it does not contain very much protein, is one of the best nuts, one which can be eaten often without producing dislike.

Nuts have the reputation of being hard to digest. If they are not well masticated they are very hard to digest indeed, but when they are well masticated they digest almost as completely as do flesh foods and they produce no digestive troubles.

One reason that nuts have obtained a bad reputation is that they are often eaten at the end of a heavy meal, when perhaps two or three times too much food has already been ingested. The result is indigestion and the sufferer swears off on nuts. If he had sense enough to reduce his intake of bread, potatoes, meat, pudding and coffee, the benefit would be very great. The tendency is for the sufferer from indigestion to pick out a certain food and blame all the trouble on that, when in truth the combinations and the quantity of food are to blame.

Some vegetarians make nuts one of their principal foods. We can easily get along without flesh, for we can obtain all the protein needed from milk, eggs, nuts and legumes. However, people who are used to flesh are able to digest it when they can take hardly anything else. The foods which we prefer are taken largely because we have become accustomed to them and have formed a liking for them, not because they are the very best from which to select.

COOKING.

Nut butter: Take the nut meats, clean away all the skins and grind fine in a nut mill. Then form into a pasty substance with or without the addition of oil or water, to suit the individual taste. Most nut butters are very agreeable in flavor. Sometimes the nuts are roasted and sometimes they are not. Almond butter is very good. The nut butters soon spoil if left exposed to the air, for the oils they contain turn rancid.

Peanut butter can be made by taking clean kernels of freshly roasted peanuts and grinding fine. Some are very fond of this butter. Cocoanut and cocoa butters are not made in this way. They are purified fats, the former from cocoanuts, the latter from the cocoa bean.

Nut milk: Take nut butter and mix with water until it is of the desired consistency. Cocoanuts contain a sweet liquid which is called cocoanut milk. However, the artificial cocoanut milk is made by pouring a pint of boiling water over the flesh of a freshly grated cocoanut. Let it stand until cold and strain. If it is allowed to stand some hours the fat will rise to the top and form cream. This milk is used by some who object to the use of animal products.

Various meals are made from nuts and made into food for the sick. This does no harm, nor does it do any special good. These meals contain more or less starch and the action of starches is much the same, no matter what the source. Please remember that there are no health foods.

COMBINATIONS.

Nuts are especially fine in combination with fruits. Fresh pecan meats and mild apples make a meal fit for the gods. Nuts may be used in any combination in which flesh is used, that is, they take the place of flesh foods. The starchy nuts take the place of starchy foods.

A good meal is made of a fruit salad, consisting of two or three kinds of fresh fruits and nuts.

Nuts or nut butter with toast also make a good meal.

Nuts have such fine flavor that cooks should think twice before spoiling them. It is very difficult to use them in cookery and get a product that is as finely flavored as the original nuts. The vegetarians use them in compounding what they call roasts, cutlets, steaks, etc. My experience with these imitation products has not been of the best, for though my digestive organs are strong, they do not take kindly to these mixtures. Some of my friends report the same results, in spite of thorough mastication and moderation. These imitation roasts and cutlets usually contain much starch and there is no reason to believe that it is better to cook nut oils into starchy foods than it is to use any other form of fat for this purpose. Those who like starch and nuts can make a splendid meal of nut meats and whole wheat biscuits or zwieback.

In eating nuts, always remember that the mastication must be thorough. It takes grinding to break up the solid nut meats and the stomach and bowels have no teeth. Those who can not chew well should use the nuts in the form of butter.

Ordinarily two ounces of nut meats, or less, are sufficient for a meal.

At present prices, nuts are not expensive, as compared with meat. Meat is mostly water. Lean meat produces from five to seven hundred calories to the pound. Nut meats produce from twenty-seven to thirty-three hundred calories per pound. In other words, a pound of nut meats has the same fuel value as about five pounds of lean meat, but not as great protein value.

Those who are not used to nuts have a tendency to overeat, but this is largely overcome as soon as people become accustomed to them.

CHAPTER XII.

LEGUMES.

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Pro- Carbohy- Calories
Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb.
——————————————————————————————————
Fresh Legumes:
String beans ……… 89.2 2.3 0.3 7.4 0.8 195
Shelled limas …….. 68.5 7.1 0.7 22.0 1.7 570
Shelled peas ……… 74.6 7.0 0.5 16.9 1.0 465

Dried Legumes:

Lima beans ……….. 10.4 18.1 1.5 65.9 4.1 1625
Navy beans ……….. 12.6 22.5 1.8 59.6 3.5 1605
Lentils ………….. 8.4 25.7 1.0 59.2 5.7 1620
Dried peas ……….. 9.5 24.6 1.0 62.0 2.9 1655
Soy beans ………… 10.8 34.0 16.8 33.7 4.7 1970
Peanuts ………….. 9.2 25.8 38.6 24.4 2.0 2560
——————————————————————————————————-

Analyses of all foods are approximate. The food value varies with the conditions under which the foods are grown and is not always even approximately the same.

The fresh young legumes may be classed with the succulent vegetables. The matured, dried legumes are to be classed both as starchy and proteid foods. They are very easily raised and consequently cheap. They are the cheapest source of protein that we have. Peas and beans are very important foods in Europe. In this country we consume enormous quantities of beans. In Mexico they use a great deal of frijoles, the poor people having this bean at nearly every meal. In China they make the soy beans into various dishes. The lentil is much used in Europe and is gaining favor here, as it should, for it is splendid food, with a flavor of its own. Peanuts, which are really not nuts, but leguminous plants growing their seeds under the ground, are used extensively as food for man and beast.

These foods are much alike in composition, the soy bean being exceptionally rich in protein.

These foods have the undeserved reputation of being indigestible and of producing flatulence. They are a little more difficult to digest than some other foods, but they cause no trouble if they are taken in simple combinations and in moderation, provided they have been properly prepared.

It is necessary to masticate these foods very well, and avoid overeating. They are generally so soft that they are swallowed without proper mouth preparation. The result is that too much is taken of these rich foods, after which there is indigestion accompanied by gas production.

One rather peculiar food belonging to the legumes is the locust bean or St. John's bread, which we can sometimes obtain at the candy stores. It grows near the Mediterranean and is used in places for cattle feed. It is so sweet that it is eaten as a confection. Its name is due to the fact that they say St. John lived on this bean and wild honey. If he did he must have had a sweet tooth. Others say that the saint really devoured grasshoppers. It is not easy to decide, but I prefer to believe that he was a vegetarian.

COOKING.

The fresh young legumes are to be considered in the same class as succulent vegetables, which are dealt with in the next chapter.

Ripe peas, beans and lentils may be cooked alike.

In cooking ripe legumes, try to get as soft water as possible. Hard water contains salts of lime and magnesia and these prevent the softening of the legumes.

Bean soup: Clean the beans and wash them. Let them soak over night. Cook them in the same water in which they have been soaked, until tender. They are to be cooked in plain water without any seasoning and with the addition of neither fats, starches nor other vegetables. When the beans are done, meat stock and other vegetables may be added, if desired. Pea soup is made in the same way.

The reason for not draining away the water in which the beans are soaked is that it takes up some of the valuable salts, the phosphates for instance. The addition of seasoning or fat while they are cooking makes the beans indigestible.

Baked beans: Clean and wash well. Soak them over night. Let them boil about three and one-half to four hours, using the water in which they were soaked. Then put them into the oven to bake. They are to be cooked plain and no fat or seasoning is to be added while they are baking. After they are done you may add some form of fatty dressing, such as bacon, which has been stewed in a separate dish, or you may dress them with butter and salt when they are served. Cooked this way they digest much more easily than when cooked in the ordinary way with tomatoes and grease. Some prefer to add either sugar or molasses to the beans when they are put into the oven. Avoid too much sweetening. Lentils may be baked in the same way.

Boiled beans: The same as bean soup, except that less water is used. Dressing may be the same as for baked beans. Lentils and peas may be treated in the same way.

Beans and corn may be cooked together.

COMBINATIONS.

The legumes are so very rich that they should be eaten in very simple combinations. It is best to take them with some of the raw salad vegetables and nothing else, or with the raw salad vegetables and one of the stewed succulent vegetables. The legumes contain all the protein and all the force food the body needs, so it is useless to add meat, bread and potatoes. Tomatoes and other acid foods should not be used in the same meal, yet beans and tomatoes or beans and catsup are very common combinations.

A plate of bean soup makes a good lunch. Bean soup or baked or boiled beans with succulent vegetables, raw and cooked, give all the nourishment needed in a dinner.

Pea and bean flours can be purchased on the market. These flours can not be made into dough, but they may be used for thickening. They contain more protein than ordinary flour.

Both peas and beans may be roasted, but they are rather difficult to masticate. Roasted peas have a fine flavor. Roasted peanuts are a nutritious food, and may be taken in place of peas or beans.

More legumes and less flesh foods will help to reduce the cost of living. Taken in moderation and well masticated, the legumes are excellent foods.

CHAPTER XIII.

SUCCULENT VEGETABLES.

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Pro- Carbohy- Calories
Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb.
——————————————————————————————————
Asparagus…….. 93.96 1.83 2.55 2.55 .67 …..
Beet…………. 87.5 1.6 .01 8.8 1.10 215
Cabbage………. 90.52 2.39 .37 3.85 1.40 …..
Carrot……….. 88.2 1.1 .4 8.2 1.00 219
Cauliflower…… 90.82 1.62 .79 4.94 .81 …..
Cucumber……… 95.4 .8 .2 3.1 .5 80
Egg plant…….. 92.93 1.15 .31 4.34 .5 …..
Pumpkin………. 93.39 .91 .12 3.93 .67 …..
Lettuce………. 94.17 1.2 .3 2.9 .9 90
Okra…………. 87.41 1.99 .4 6.04 .74 …..
Onion………… 87.6 1.6 .3 9.9 .6 225
Parsnip………. 83.0 1.6 .5 13.5 1.4 300
Radish……….. 91.8 1.3 .3 8.3 1.0 135
Squash……….. 88.3 1.4 .5 9.0 .8 215
Tomato……….. 94.3 .9 .4 3.9 .5 105
Spinach………. 90.6 2.50 .5 3.8 1.7 …..
Kohlrabi……… 87.1 2.6 .2 7.1 1.7 …..
——————————————————————————————————

Lima beans and shelled peas are generally included in this list, though the young lima beans contain about 20 per cent. starch.

Look at the cabbage analysis for kale and Brussels sprouts. They are much alike.

Most of the vegetables contain from one-half of one per cent. to two per cent. of indigestible fibre, which is not listed above.

This is but a partial list of the succulent vegetables. In addition may be mentioned artichokes of the green or cone variety, chard, string beans, celery, corn on the cob, turnips, turnip tops, lotus, endive, dandelion and garlic.

These vegetables produce but little energy, for most of them are not rich in protein, fat and carbohydrates, but they have considerable salts, which are given in the tables as ash. Their juices help to keep the blood alkaline, and it would be well for people to get into the habit of eating these foods, not only cooked, but some of them raw. The salts are very easily disturbed and in cooking they are somewhat changed. The best salts we get when we consume natural foods, such as raw fruits and raw vegetables and milk.

Another function of the succulent vegetables is to take up space in the stomach. Many like to eat until they feel comfortably full, but if they indulge in concentrated foods to this extent they overeat. The succulent vegetables have the merit of taking up much space without furnishing very much nourishment and they should, therefore, be used as space-fillers. However, they contain enough nourishment to be well worth eating, and most of them are excellent in flavor. This flavor is not appreciated by those who eat much meat and drink much alcohol.

The liberal use of these cooked vegetables has a tendency to prevent constipation, and some of them are called laxative foods, such as stewed onions and spinach.

PREPARATION.

These vegetables may be either steamed or prepared in a fireless cooker.

The usual way is to cook them in water. Clean the vegetables. Then put them on to cook in enough water to keep from burning, but use no seasoning. When the vegetables are tender there should be only a little fluid left and those who eat of the vegetables should take their share of this fluid, for it may contain as high as one-half to two-thirds of the salts. When served, let each one season to taste. Avoid the use of vinegar and all other products of fermentation as much as possible. Lemon juice will furnish all the acid needed for dressing.

The vegetables may be dressed with salt, or salt and butter, or salt and olive oil, and at times with cream, or with the natural gravy from meats, but avoid the use of flour and milk dressings, usually called cream gravy. These vegetables may also be eaten without any dressing.

The water is drained off from corn on the cob, asparagus, artichokes and unpeeled beets.

Vegetables should not be soaked in water, for they lose a part of their value if this is done. Cucumbers may be soaked in water to remove a part of the rank flavor, before being peeled.

Spinach is prepared as follows: Wash thoroughly. Put about two tablespoonfuls of water in the bottom of the kettle. Put over the fire and let the spinach wilt. Its juice will then begin to pour out and the spinach will cook in its own juice. Let it cook slowly until tender. Serve the spinach with its proportion of the juice. At first this will taste rather strong, but after a while a person will not want the dry, tasteless mess that is drained, usually served in hotels and restaurants. If some of the roots are left on the spinach, it tastes milder. The roots contain sugar.

Some of these vegetables, such as summer squash, onions and parsnips may be baked. Onions are very good sliced and broiled, but they should never be fried. Beets are good baked, and especially is this true of sugar beets. Radishes are very delicate and delicious when peeled and boiled, but their preparation is tedious. Egg plant is to be stewed, but not fried. As usually served, dipped in egg, rolled in crumbs and fried it is very indigestible.

Beet greens are excellent. They are best if the beets are pulled very young and both the roots and the leaves are used. Turnip tops, dandelion, mustard and Swiss chard are other greens that are good. All of them are prepared like spinach, except that more water is necessary. However, do not use much water.

Those who say that the various vegetables are unfit to eat and act accordingly are missing some good food. The vegetables all contain crude fibre, but they hurt the stomach and intestinal walls no more than they hurt the mucous membrane of the tongue. They furnish some bulk for the intestines to act upon, which is good and proper. All animals need some bulky food, otherwise they become constipated.

Tomatoes are best raw. If they are stewed they are to be cooked plain. Adding crackers and bread crumbs is a mistake. They taste all right without sugar, but a little may be used as dressing.

Vegetable soup: Take equal parts of about four vegetables, any that you like. Slice and cook in plain water until tender. When done add enough water or hot milk to make it of the right consistency. Season to taste. One of the constituents may be starchy, such as potatoes, barley or rice, but the rest should be succulent vegetables.

COMBINATIONS.

The succulent vegetables may be combined with all other foods. They go well with flesh or milk or nuts or starchy foods. With flesh or nuts they make a very satisfying meal. They may be taken with fruit. The tomato grows as a vegetable, but for practical purposes it is a fruit. The tomato combines well with protein, but not so well with the starchy foods.

SALAD VEGETABLES.

If possible, salads should be made entirely of raw vegetables and raw fruits. The chief salad vegetables are celery, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, onions and garlic, the two last mentioned being used for flavoring.

Dr. Tilden, who has done much to popularize raw vegetable salads, has a favorite, which he calls by his own name. It is equal parts of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, with a small piece of onion. Chop up coarse and dress with salt and olive oil and lemon juice. This is all right for those who like it, but many do not care for such a complex salad with such dressing. Some of the combination salads that are served are wonderful mixtures, containing as many as seven or eight vegetables and a complex dressing.

Raw onions are too irritating to use in large quantities, and the same is true of garlic. The best salads contain but two or three ingredients. Take any two of the vegetables mentioned, such as lettuce and tomatoes; lettuce and cucumbers; cabbage and celery; celery and tomatoes, or eat simply one of these green vegetables raw. It is a good thing to eat some of those salad vegetables daily. If your digestion is excellent, you may occasionally take raw carrots or turnips, and a few raw spinach leaves are tasty for a change. Never mind if people tease you about eating grass, for it helps you to keep well.

Dress the raw vegetables as your taste allows. Most people want some salt, or salt and lemon juice, or a little sugar, or cream, or salt and olive oil, or salt, olive oil and lemon juice, or mayonnaise on their salad vegetables. Some eat them without any dressing and the flavor is excellent. Tasty salad can be made of fruit and vegetables, using no dressing, but strewing some nuts over the dish. On warm days, such a salad makes a satisfactory lunch.

It is all right to make a fruit and vegetable salad. Instead of using tomatoes, take strawberries, apples, grapes, or any other acid fruit. These fruits may be combined with cabbage, lettuce, celery or cucumbers. Do not mix too many foods in a meal, for to do so is indicative of poor taste. Those with refined palates like simple meals, and there is no reason for making salads so complex, when simplicity is a requirement for building health. However, a complex salad made of raw vegetables and raw juicy fruits does not play so much havoc as a mixture of concentrated foods.

Lettuce and celery are the most satisfactory salad vegetables to mix with fruits.

People who eat raw fruits do not need to eat the raw salad vegetables, for fruits and vegetables supply the same salts. Those who avoid both raw fruits and raw vegetables are not treating their bodies fairly.

The vegetable salads are most satisfactory when taken in combination with flesh, nuts or eggs, together with cooked succulent vegetables. They may be eaten with starchy foods, but then they should contain little or no acid.

CHAPTER XIV.

CEREAL FOODS.

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Carbohy-
Water Protein Fat drates Ash
——————————————————————————————————
Barley. 10.9 12.4 1.8 72.5 2.4
Buckwheat. 12.6 10.0 2.2 73.2 2.0
Corn. 9.3 9.9 2.8 76.3 1.5
Kafir corn. 16.8 6.6 3.8 70.6 2.2
Oats. 11.0 11.8 5.0 69.2 3.0
Rice. 12.4 7.4 .4 79.4 .4
Rye. 11.6 10.6 1.0 73.7 1.9
Wheat, spring. 10.4 12.5 2.2 73.0 1.9
Wheat, winter. 10.5 11.8 2.1 73.8 1.8
First patent flour. 10.55 11.08 1.15 76.85 0.37
Whole wheat flour. 10.81 12.26 2.24 73.67 1.02
Graham flour. 8.61 12.65 2.44 74.58 1.72
Bread, ordinary white. 37.65 10.13 .64 51.14 .44
Bread, whole wheat. 41.31 10.60 1.04 46.11 .94
Bread, Graham. 42.20 10.65 1.12 44.58 1.45
——————————————————————————————————

The cereal foods are important because of their wide distribution and the ease with which they can be prepared and utilized as food. They are very productive and need but little care and hence are a cheap food. The body can digest and absorb sugar and starch more completely than any other kind of food.

All civilized people have a favorite cereal. The Chinese and Japanese use rice very extensively, and this grain is growing in favor with us. White people generally prefer wheat, which is an excellent grain that has been used by man for thousands of years. It has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and it is so retentive of life that it has started to grow after lying dormant for several thousand years. Truly it is a worthy food for man.

The table of cereals should be carefully studied. It will be seen that the grains contain much starch, a little fat, and considerable protein. They also carry sufficient of salts, but only a small amount of water.

Please note further that patent flour loses nearly all of its salts. Patent flour is the product that is left after all the bran and practically all of the germ have been removed from the wheat. Whole wheat flour, or entire wheat flour, is the name given to the flour that has had a great part of the outer covering of the wheat kernel removed. It is a misnomer. Graham flour, named after Dr. Graham, is the product of the whole wheat kernel, and it will be noted that it is richer in salts and protein than the white flour and the whole wheat flour. The whole wheat flour and Graham flour we find on the market are often the result of blending, which is also true of the patent flour.

As we would expect, the various breads are rich or poor in salts according to the flours from which they are made.

All the cereals are good foods, but inasmuch as wheat and rice are used most extensively, they will receive more attention than the rest.

Wheat is perhaps the best and most balanced of all our cereals. The whole wheat with the addition of a little milk is sufficient to support life indefinitely. It is one of the foods of which people never seem to tire. Tiring of food is often an indication of excess. It is with food as with amusement, if we get too much we become blase. Those who eat in moderation are content with simple foods, but those who eat too much want a great variety, as a rule. There are beef gluttons, who are satisfied with their flesh and liquor, but this is because the meats are so stimulating.

Inasmuch as we use so much wheat, it is important that we use it properly. Today people want refined foods, and in refining they spoil many of our best food products. Sugar is too refined for health, rice suffers through refinement, and so does wheat. The wheat kernel contains all the elements needed to support life. In making fine white flour of it, at least three-fourths of the essential salts are removed. This robs the wheat of a large part of its life-imparting elements, and makes of it starvation food. If much white bread is consumed it is necessary to supplement it by taking large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables, not necessarily in the same meal, in order to get the salts that have been removed in the process of milling.

The salts are found principally in the coats of the wheat, and in removing these coats and the germ, not only the salts, but considerable protein is lost. In other words, we remove most of the essential salts and a considerable part of the building material of the wheat, and then we eat the inferior product. The finer and whiter the flour, the poorer it is.

White flour has a very high starch content. The products made from it are quite tasteless and lacking in flavor, unless flavoring is added. Those who are used to whole wheat products find the white bread flat. It is possible to consume large quantities of white bread, and yet not be satisfied. There is something lacking. Whole wheat bread is more satisfying and therefore the danger of overeating of it is not so great.

The advocates of white flour say that the bran is too irritating for the bowels and for this reason it should be rejected. There is no danger in eating the entire kernel, after it is ground up. The particles of bran are so fine that they do no harm. The intestines were evidently intended for a little roughage, and it might as well come partly from wheat as from other sources. The gentle stimulation produced by the bran helps to keep the intestines active. It is noticeable that consumption of very refined foods leads to constipation.

Bran bread and bran biscuits are prescribed for constipation. This is just as bad as removing the bran entirely. Man has never been able to improve on the composition of the wheat berry. When an excess of bran is eaten, it causes too great irritation and in the end the individual is worse off than before. The after effect of irritation is always depression and sluggishness. Recent experiments seem to show that it is not the coarseness of the bran that causes activity of the bowels, but that some of the contained salts are laxative, for the same results have been obtained by soaking the bran in water and drinking the liquid.

The products of refined flour are more completely and easily digested than the whole wheat products. However, by eating in moderation and masticating well every normal person is able to take good care of whole wheat products, and the benefit of using the entire grain is so great that we should hesitate about continuing the use of the refined flours and white breads.

In the French army it has been found that when the soldiers are fed on refined flour products they are not so well nourished as when they have whole wheat products, and that they must have more of other foods to supplement the impoverished breadstuffs. It is difficult to get people to realize how important it is to give the tissue salts with the foods. Salts are absolutely essential to vital activity, and a lack of salts always results in mental and physical depression and even in disease.

No matter what adults are given, children should not be fed on white flour products. They need all the salts in the wheat. Depriving them of salts retards their development and results in decaying teeth and poor bone formation, among other things. They do not feel satisfied with their white flour foods. Therefore they overeat and get indigestion, catarrh, adenoids and various other ills. It is not difficult for people with observing eyes to note the difference in satisfaction of children after they get impoverished foods and the natural foods.

Anemia is very common among children, especially among the girls. The chief reason is impoverished foods. Salts can be used by the animal organism only after they have been elaborated by the vegetable kingdom. To remove all the iron from wheat and then give inorganic iron, which can not be assimilated, in its stead, is the height of folly. By all means, use less of the white flour and more of the entire wheat flour. If the white flour habit can not be given up, take enough raw fruit and vegetables to make up for the loss of salts in milling.

When rice is properly prepared it digests very easily. It is a little poor in protein, but this can be remedied by taking some milk in the same meal.

The rice we ordinarily get is inferior to the natural product. First they remove the bran. Then the flour is taken off. Then it is coated with a mixture of glucose and talcum and polished. All this trouble is taken to make it appeal to the eye. This impoverished rice is lacking in salts. It will not support people in health. In the countries where polished rice is fed in great quantities, they suffer a great deal from degenerative diseases. One of these is beri-beri, in which there are muscular weakness and degeneration, indigestion, disturbances of the heart and often times anasarca. When people suffering from this disease are given those parts of the rice grain lost in making polished rice, they recover. This is proof enough that the cause of the disease is the impoverished food.

The rice that should be used is brown and unpolished. When it is cooked it looks quite white. It is very satisfying.

Rye is extensively used in some lands. The bread is very good. Oats are largely devoured in Scotland. Corn bread is a favorite food in the southern part of our country. The negroes are fond of corn and pork with molasses, which is far from an ideal combination in warm climates.

PREPARATIONS.

Wheat makes the best bread because it contains gluten. Among proteins gluten is unique, because it is so elastic and after it has stretched it has a tendency to retain its place. This is what makes bread so porous. There are various meals or flours that can not be made into bread, or even dough, because they lack compounds which will act as frame work.

Bread can be made in many ways. The chief question for the housewife to decide is whether to make the bread from entire wheat flour or from patent flour. They are so different in value that a decision should not be difficult. It is also necessary to decide whether to use yeast bread or some other kind.

Yeast bread is made essentially from flour, water and yeast in the presence of heat. There are so many ways of making bread of this kind that a recipe is not necessary. The amount of salt to be added depends upon individual taste. Some like to set their yeast working in part potato, part flour. Others use milk instead of water. Some add shortening. And nearly all women believe that their own bread is the best.

Yeast is made up of myriads of little plants or fungi, which thrive on the sugary part of the flour. They convert this into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. The alcohol is practically all gone before the bread is brought to the table. The gas raises the bread, assisted by the expansion of the water in the dough when it is placed in a hot oven.

The yeast consumes a great deal of the nutritive part of the flour. This may amount to from 5 to 8 per cent. of the food value, and I have read that sometimes it is as high as 20 per cent. Liebig said that the fermentation destroyed enough food material daily in Germany to supply 400,000 people with bread. However, yeast bread is very agreeable to the taste and therefore is probably worth more than the unfermented product.

One objection to yeast bread is that all the yeast is not killed in baking, and the alcoholic fermentation may start again in the stomach. If the bread is turned into zwieback this is remedied. Fresh bread is not fit to eat, for it is very rarely properly masticated and if it is merely moistened and converted into a soggy mass in the mouth it is hard to digest.

Unleavened bread is made by making the flour into a paste, rolling out thin and baking well. Any kind of flour may be used. This is the passover bread of the Jews.

Dr. Graham's bread was made by mixing Graham flour with water, without any leavening, mixing the dough thoroughly, putting this aside several hours and baking.

Macaroni and spaghetti are made by mixing durum wheat flour with water, without any leavening. With the addition of eggs we get commercial noodles. The paste is moulded as desired.

All bread stuffs should be well baked.. The baking turns part of the starch into dextrine, which is easy to digest. Biscuits should be placed into a hot oven, but bread should be put into an oven moderately heated, otherwise the crust forms too quickly.

Whenever a light product is desired, whether it is bread, biscuit or cake, sift the flour over and over again to get it well impregnated with air. The more air it contains the more porous will be the finished product. Five or six siftings will suffice.

Unleavened breads of excellent flavor can be made by using either cream or butter as shortening, rolling the bread very thin, like crackers, and baking thoroughly.

Shredded wheat biscuits, puffed wheat and puffed rice, flaked wheat and flaked corn are some of the good foods we can purchase ready made. Most of them should be placed in a warm oven long enough to crisp. Masticate thoroughly and take them with either butter or milk, or both. It is best to take the milk either before or after eating the cereal. Sugar should not be added to these foods. Those who are not hungry enough to eat them without sugar should fast until normal hunger returns.

Baking powder bread is very good. The essentials are well sifted flour, liquid, good baking powder, quick mixing and a hot oven. The following recipe, recommended by Dr. Tilden, is good: To a quart of very best flour, which has been sifted two or three times, add a little salt and a heaping teaspoonful of baking powder. Sift again three times. Then add one or two tablespoonfuls of soft butter. Mix rapidly into a rather stiff dough with unskimmed milk. The dough should be rolled thin, and cut into small biscuits or strips. Put into a pan and bake in a hot oven until there is a crisp crust on bottom and top, which will take about twenty minutes. The more thoroughly and quickly the dough is mixed, the better the result.

These biscuits or bread sticks are good, always best when made rather thin, not to exceed an inch in thickness after being baked. When an attempt is made to bake in the form of a fairly thick loaf it is generally a failure. Use the proportions of white and whole wheat flours desired.

If more butter or some cream is added and it is rolled out thin, it serves very well for the bread part of shortcake.

Toast: Slice any kind of bread fairly thin, preferably stale bread. Place the slices into a moderately hot oven and let them remain there until they are crisp through and through. The scorched bread that is generally served as toast is no better than untoasted bread.

Whole wheat muffins: One cup whole wheat flour; one cup white flour; one-fourth cup sugar; one teaspoonful salt; one cup milk; one egg; two tablespoonfuls melted butter; four teaspoonfuls baking powder. Mix dry ingredients; add milk gradually, then eggs and melted butter. Put into gem pans and bake in hot oven for twenty-five minutes.

Ginger bread: One cup molasses; one and three-fourths teaspoons soda; one-half cup sour milk; two cups flour; one-half teaspoon salt; one-third cup butter; two eggs; two teaspoonfuls ginger. Put butter and molasses in sauce pan and heat until boiling point is reached. Remove from fire, add soda and beat vigorously. Then add milk, egg well beaten, and remaining ingredients mixed and sifted. Bake twenty-five minutes in buttered, shallow pan in moderate oven.

Custard: Three cups milk; three eggs; one-half cup sugar; one-half teaspoonful vanilla; pinch of salt. Beat eggs, add sugar and salt; then add scalded milk and vanilla; mix well. Pour into cups, place them in a pan of hot water in oven and bake twenty to twenty-five minutes. Serve cold.

Custard may also be cooked in double boiler or baked in a large pan.

This is not a cereal dish, but the next one is.

Rice custard: To well cooked rice add a few raisins and a small amount of sugar. The raisins can be cooked with the rice or separately. Place the rice and raisins in a baking dish, pour over an equal amount of raw custard and bake as directed for custard. Bake in either individual cups or pan. When done the layer of custard is on top and the rice and raisins on the bottom.

Macaroni and cheese: Three-fourths cup macaroni broken in pieces; two quarts boiling water; one-half table-spoonful salt. Cook macaroni in salted water twenty minutes, or longer if necessary to make it tender; drain. Put layer of macaroni in buttered baking dish; sprinkle with cheese, and repeat, making the last or top layer of cheese. Pour in milk to almost cover. Put into oven and bake until the top layer of cheese is brown.

Corn bread: Two cups corn meal; one-half cup wheat flour; one tablespoonful sugar; one-half teaspoonful salt; two teaspoonfuls baking powder; two eggs; one and three-fourths cups milk. Sift corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together four or five times; add eggs and milk; stir well, pour into a hot buttered pan; smooth the top with a little melted butter to crisp the crust. Bake a good brown in hot oven.

Another recipe for corn bread is: To one cup of wheat flour, add two cups of corn flour; two eggs; one heaping teaspoonful butter or cottolene; one heaping teaspoonful baking powder; one pinch soda, a scant fourth teaspoonful; one-half teaspoonful salt. Prepare and make into batter with milk and bake as directed in first recipe.

Corn mush: Cook corn meal in plain water until it is done. It may be cooked over the fire, in a fireless cooker or in a double boiler. Serve with rich milk; add a little salt if desired.

Oatmeal: Put into a double boiler and let it cook until it is very tender. It can also be cooked in a fireless cooker over night. It requires several hours cooking before it is fit to eat. All foods of this nature should be thoroughly cooked, and they may all be made into porridge, which is better.

The objection to all mushy foods is that they are hardly ever properly masticated. The result is that they ferment in the alimentary tract, especially when they are eaten with sugar, as they generally are. It is best to take the mushy foods with milk and a little salt or with butter. Eaten in this way there is not such tendency to overeat as when sugar is used. Children especially eat more of these foods than is good for them if they are allowed to take them with sweets. Porridge is more diluted than the mushes and hence the danger of overeating is not so great.

Boiled rice: The best way to cook it is in a double boiler or a fireless cooker. Every grain should be tender. Cook it in plan water. It is not necessary to stir, but if the rice becomes dry add some more water. If rice and milk are desired, warm the milk and add when the rice is done. Serve like oatmeal. Putting sugar on cereals is nonsense. They are very rich in starch and sugar is about the same as starch. Sugar stimulates the appetite, and consequently people who use it on cereals overeat of this concentrated food.

Rice and raisins: This is prepared the same as boiled rice, except that raisins are added to the rice and water when first put on to cook. With milk this makes a good breakfast or lunch.

COMBINATIONS.

Starches of the cereal order may be eaten in combination with fats, such as cream, butter, olive oil and other vegetable oils.

They combine well with all the dairy products, such as milk and cheese.

Starches combine well with nuts. Take a piece of whole wheat zwieback and some pecans, chew both the bread and the nuts well and you will find this an excellent meal.

There is nothing incompatible about eating cereals with flesh, but it generally leads to trouble, for people eat enough meat for a meal, and then they eat enough starch for a full meal. This overeating is injurious. Besides, starch digestion and meat digestion are different and carried on in different parts of the alimentary tract, so it is best to eat starchy foods and meats at different meals. Those who eat in moderation may eat starch and flesh in the same meal without getting into trouble.

In winter it is all right to take starch with the sweet fruits.

It is best to avoid mixing acid fruits and cereals. Even healthy people find that a breakfast of oranges and bread does not agree as well as one of milk and bread. The saliva, which contains ptyalin, is secreted in the mouth. The ptyalin starts starch digestion, but it does not work in the presence of acid. Eating acid fruits makes the mouth acid temporarily, and consequently the starch does not receive the benefit it should from mouth digestion. The result is an increased liability to fermentation in the alimentary tract.

To get the best results it is absolutely necessary to masticate all starchy foods well. If this is not done it is merely a question of time until there is indigestion, generally accompanied by much acidity and gas production. This condition is a builder of many ills.

Recipes for pies and cakes are not given in this book. The less these compounds are used the better. They are very popular and can be made according to directions in conventional cook books. Pies should be made with thin crusts, which should be baked crisp both on bottom and top. The best cakes are the plain ones.

When desserts are eaten, less should be taken of other foods. Most people make the mistake of eating more than enough of staple foods and then they add insult to injury by partaking of dessert.

CHAPTER XV.

TUBERS.

====================================================================
Pro- Carbohy- Calories
Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb.
——————————————————————————————————
Potato………… 78.3 2.2 0.1 18.0 1.0 375
Sweet potato…… 51.9 3.0 2.1 42.1 .9 925
Jerusalem artichoke. 78.7 2.5 0.2 17.5 1.1

The two tubers that are of chief interest are the Irish potato and the sweet potato. The former is easily and cheaply grown on vast areas of land and therefore forms a large part of the food of many people. Properly prepared it is easily digested and very nourishing.

The sweet potato is a richer food than the Irish potato, but on account of its high sugar contents people soon weary of it. The southern negroes are very fond of this food.

Like all other starches, potatoes must be thoroughly masticated, or they will disagree in time. Potatoes are of such consistency that they are easily bolted without proper mouth preparation. In time the digestive organs object.

A new tuber is receiving considerable attention. It is the dasheen. It is said to be of very agreeable flavor, mealy after cooking, and produces tops that can be used in the same manner as asparagus. The dasheen requires a rather warm climate for its growth.

PREPARATION.

Baking: All the tubers may be baked. Clean and place in the oven; bake until tender. A medium sized potato will bake in about an hour. If the potatoes are soggy after being baked they are not well flavored. To remedy this, run a fork into them after they have been in the oven for a while; this allows some of the steam to escape and the potatoes become mealy. When a fork can easily be run into the potato, it is well enough done.

If the potatoes are well cleaned, there is no objection to eating a part of the jacket after they are baked. The finest flavoring is right under the jacket. This part contains a large portion of the salts.

Boiling: All tubers may be boiled. It is best to keep the jacket on, otherwise a great deal of both the salts and the nourishment is lost. If the potatoes boiled in the jacket seem too highly flavored, cut off one of the ends before placing them in the water. It takes about thirty or forty minutes to boil a medium sized Irish potato. Test with a fork, the same as baked potato, to find if done.

Potatoes should never be peeled and soaked. If they are to be boiled without the jacket, they should be cooked immediately after being peeled.

Steamed potatoes are good.

There is no objection to mashing potatoes and adding milk, cream or butter, provided they are thoroughly masticated when eaten. If the potatoes are mashed, this should be so thoroughly done that not a lump is to be found.

Potatoes cooked in grease are an abomination. The grease ruins a part of the potato and makes the rest more difficult to digest. Potato chips, French fried potatoes and German fried potatoes are too hard to digest for people who live mostly indoors. They should be used very seldom.

COMBINATIONS.

Potatoes are best eaten in combinations such as given for cereals. They are commonly taken with meat and bread. This combination is one of the causes of overeating. Occasionally they may be eaten with flesh, but this should not be a habit. Take them as the main part of the meal. Baked potatoes and butter with a glass of milk make a very satisfying meal. A good dinner can be made of potatoes with cooked succulent vegetables and one or two of the raw salad vegetables, with the usual dressings. It is best not to eat potatoes and acid fruits in the same meal.

In selecting food it is well to remember that as a general rule but one heavy, concentrated food should be eaten at a meal, for when two, three or even four concentrated foods are partaken of, the appetite is so tempted and stimulated by each new dish that before one is aware of it an excessive amount of food has been ingested.

CHAPTER XVI.

FRUITS.

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Pro- Etherial Carbohy- Calories
Water tein Extracts drates Ash per lb.
——————————————————————————————————
Apples……….. 84.6 0.4 0.5 14.2 0.3 290
Bananas………. 75.3 1.3 0.6 22.0 0.8 460
Figs, fresh…… 79.1 1.5 … 18.8 0.6 380
Lemons……….. 89.3 1.0 0.7 8.5 0.5 205
Muskmelons……. 89.5 0.6 … 9.3 0.6 185
Oranges………. 86.9 0.8 0.2 11.6 0.5 240
Peaches………. 89.4 0.7 0.1 9.4 0.4 190
Pears………… 80.9 1.0 0.5 17.2 0.4 …
Persimmons……. 66.1 0.8 0.7 31.5 0.9 630
Rhubarb, stalk… 94.4 0.6 0.7 3.6 0.7 105
Strawberries….. 90.4 1.0 0.6 7.4 0.6 180
Watermelon……. 92.4 0.4 0.2 6.7 0.3 140

Dried Fruits:

Apples……….. 26.1 1.6 2.2 68.1 2.0 1350
Apricots……… 29.4 4.7 1.0 62.5 2.4 1290
Citrons………. 19.0 0.5 1.5 78.1 0.9 1525
Dates………… 15.4 2.1 2.8 78.4 1.3 1615
Figs…………. 18.8 4.3 0.3 74.2 2.4 1475
Prunes……….. 22.3 2.1 … 73.3 2.3 1400
Raisins………. 14.6 2.6 3.3 76.1 3.4 1605
Currants……… 17.2 2.4 1.7 74.2 4.5 1495
——————————————————————————————————

Apricots, avocados, blackberries, cherries, cranberries, currants, gooseberries, grapes, huckleberries, mulberries, nectarines, olives, pineapples, plums, raspberries and whortleberries are some of the other juicy fruits. They are much like the apple in composition, containing much water and generally from 6 to 15 per cent of carbohydrates (sugar). Olives and avocados are rich in oil.

You may classify rhubarb, watermelons and muskmelons as vegetables, if you wish. On the table they seem more like fruit, which is the reason they are given here. Melons are fine hot weather food. They are mostly water, which is pure. During hot weather it is all right to make a meal of melons and nothing else, at any time. The melons are so watery that they dilute the gastric juice very much. The result is that when eaten with concentrated foods they are liable to repeat, which indicates indigestion.

Fruits are not generally eaten for the great amount of nourishment to be obtained from them. They are very pleasant in flavor and contain salts and acids which are needed by the body.

The various fluids of the body are alkaline, and the fruits furnish the salts that help to keep them so. A few secretions and excretions are naturally acid. Sometimes the body gets into a too acid state, but that is very rarely due to overeating of fruit. It is generally caused by pathological fermentation of food in the alimentary tract. The salts and acids of fruits are broken up in the stomach and help to form alkaline substances.

The water of the fruit is very pure, distilled by nature. The acid fruits are refreshing and helpful to those who have a tendency to be bilious. Fruits are cleansers, both of the alimentary tract and of the blood.

Fruits grow most abundantly in warm climates and that is where they should be used most. In temperate climates they should be eaten most freely during warm weather.

Young, vigorous people can eat all the fruit they wish at all seasons, within reason. Thin, nervous people, and those who are well advanced in years should do most of their fruit eating in summer. In winter there is a tendency to be chilly after a meal of acid fruit. In summer such meals do not add to the burden of life by making the partaker unduly warm.

The apple is perhaps the best all-round fruit of all. It is grown in many lands and climates. It is possible to get apples of various kinds, from those that are very tart to those that are so mild that the acid is hardly perceptible to the taste. Stout people can eat sour apples with benefit. Thin, fidgety ones should use the milder varieties. The juice from apples, sweet cider, freshly expressed, is a very pleasant drink, and may be taken with fruit meals.

The avocado is a good salad fruit. It is quite oily. A combination of avocado and lettuce makes a good salad.

Thanks to rapid transportation, the banana has become a staple. It is quite commonly believed that bananas are very starchy and rather indigestible. This may be true when they are green, but not when they are ripe. Green bananas are no more fit for food than are green apples. Ripe bananas are neither starchy nor indigestible. When the banana is ripe it contains a trace of starch, all the rest having been changed to sugar. A ripe banana is mellow and sweet, but firm. The skin is either entirely black, or black in spots, but the flesh is unspotted. The best bananas can often be purchased for one-half of the price of those that are not yet fit to eat.

Bananas are a rich food. Weight for weight they contain more nourishment than Irish potatoes. A few nuts or a glass of milk and bananas make a good meal. Bananas contain so much sugar that it is not necessary to eat bread or other starches with them. Those with normal taste will not spoil good bananas by adding sugar and cream. When well masticated the flavor is excellent and can not be improved by using dressings.

Be sure that the children have learned to masticate well before giving bananas, and then give only ripe ones. The flesh of the banana is so smooth and slippery that children often swallow it in big lumps, and then they frequently suffer.

Lemonade may be taken with fruit or flesh meals. As usually made it is quite nourishing, for it contains considerable sugar. Those who are troubled with sluggish liver may take it with benefit, but the less sugar used the better. Other fruit juices may be used likewise, but they should be fresh. If they are bottled, be sure that no fermentation is taking place in them. These juices may be served with the same kind of meals as lemonade. Most of them require dilution. Grape juice is very rich and a large glassful of the pure juice makes a good summer lunch. It should be sipped slowly. Those who like the combination may make a meal of fruit juice mixed with milk, half and half.

Grapes and strawberries, which are relished by most, disagree with some people. The skin of the Concord grape should be rejected, for it irritates many. If they are relished, the skins of most fruits may be eaten. When peeled apples lose a part of their flavor.

Olives are generally eaten pickled. The fruit in its natural state tastes very disagreeable to most people. The ripe olive is superior in flavor to the green, which is not usually relished at first.

The sweet fruits, by which we mean dried currants, raisins, figs and dates, and bananas should be classed with them, serve the body in the same way as do the breadstuffs, and may be substituted for starches at any time. They may be eaten at all seasons of the year, but are used most during cold weather. A moderate amount of them may be eaten with breadstuffs, or they may be taken alone, or with milk, or with nuts, or with acid fruit. They are very nourishing so it does not take much of them to make a meal. To get the full benefit, masticate thoroughly. They contain sugar in its best form, sugar that not impoverished by being deprived of its salts. Grape sugar needs very little preparation before it enters the blood. Starch and sugar are of equal value as nourishment. It seems that the sugar is available for energy sooner than the starch. Americans generally weary quickly of sweet foods, though they consume enormous quantities of refined sugar, but in tropical countries figs and dates are staple in many places and the inhabitants relish them day in and day out as we relish some of out staples. It is a matter of habit. Those who do not surfeit themselves do not weary quickly of any particular article of diet.

PREPARATION

Most fruits are best raw. Then their acids and salts are in their most available form. Those who become uncomfortable after eating acid fruit may know that they have abused their digestive organs and they should take it as an indication to reduce their food intake, simplify their diet, masticate better and eat more raw food. Those who overeat of starch or partake of much alcohol cultivate irritable stomachs, which object to the bracing fruit juices.

For the sake of a change fruits may be cooked. The more plainly they are cooked the better. Always use sugar in moderation, no matter whether the fruit is to be stewed or baked.

To stew fruit, clean and if necessary peel. Stew in sufficient water until tender. When almost done add what sugar is needed. When stewed thus less sugar is required than if the sweetening is done at the start.

Stewed fruit can be sweetened by adding raisins, figs or dates. This is relished by many. Figs and dates stewed by themselves are too sweet for many tastes. This can be remedied by making a sauce of figs or dates with tart apples or any other acid fruit that appeals in such combinations.

Baked apple: Place whole apples in large, deep pan; add about one-third cup of water and one and one-half teaspoonfuls sugar to each apple. Put into oven and bake until skins burst and the apples are well done. Serve with all the juice.

Boiled apple: Place whole apples in a stewing pan; add two teaspoonfuls sugar and one cup or more of water to each apple; use less sugar if desired. Cover the vessel tightly and boil moderately until the skins burst and the apples are well done.

All stewed fruits should be well done. Avoid making the fruit sauces too sweet.

Stewed prunes: A good prune needs no sweetening. Stew until tender. It is a good plan to let the prunes soak a few hours before stewing them. Raisins may be treated in the same way.

Prunes may be washed and put into a dish; then add hot water enough to about half cover them; cover the dish very tightly and put aside over night. The prunes need no further preparation before being eaten. If the covering is not tight it will be necessary to use more water. Raisins and sundried figs may be treated in the same way.

Unfortunately, most of our dried fruit is sulphured. Sulphurous acid fumes are employed, and you may be sure that this does the fruit no good. If you can get unsulphured fruit, do so. The sulphuring process is popular because it acts as a preservative and it is profitable because it allows the fruit to retain more water without spoiling than would be possible otherwise.

Canning fruit: It is very easy to can fruit, but it requires care. Select fruit that is not overripe. The work room should be clean and so should the cans and covers. It is not sufficient to rinse the cans in clean water. Both the jars and the covers should be taken from boiling water immediately before being used.

Use only sound fruit, cook it sufficiently, adding the sugar when the fruit is almost done. If you cook the fruit in syrup, do not have a heavy syrup. Put into jar while piping hot, filling the jar as full as possible, put on the cover immediately, turning until it fits snugly; turn jar upside down for a few hours to see if it leaks; tighten again and put in cool place.

An even better way, especially for berries, is to fill the jar with fruit, pour syrup over them, put the jars into a receptacle containing water and let this water boil until the berries are done; then fill the jars properly and seal. Some berries that lose their color when cooked in syrup retain it when treated this way.

Canned fruits are not as good as the fresh ones, but better than none. Be sure that they are not fermenting when opened. When proper care is exercised a spoiled jar is a rarity. If there is any doubt about the fruit, scald and cool before using. This destroys the ferments.

Fresh fruit is the best. Next comes fruit recently stewed or baked. If other fruit can not be obtained, get good dried fruit and stew it.

COMBINATIONS.

Fruits may be combined with almost any food, except that which is rich in starch, and even that combination may be used occasionally, although it is not the best. I have seen people who were supposed to be incurable get well when their breakfasts were mostly apple sauce and toast. However, sick people should avoid such combining entirely and healthy ones most of the time. Breakfasting on cereals and fruit is a mistake. Those who eat thus may say that they feel no bad results, but time will tell. Nowhere in our manner of feeding does nature demand of a healthy human being that he walk the chalk line. All she asks is that he be reasonable. So if you feel fine and want a shortcake for dinner take it. But the shortcake should be the meal, not the end of one that has already furnished too much food.

Fruit combines well with both milk and cheese. The impression to the contrary that has been gained from both medical and lay writers is due to false deductions based on premises not founded on facts. Milk and fruit, and nothing else, make very good meals in summer.

Fruit salads: A great variety of these salads can be made. Take two or three of the juicy fruits, slice and mix. Dress with a little sugar, or salt and olive oil, or simply olive oil, or no dressing. Some like a dressing of sour cream or of cottage cheese rather well thinned out. Raisins and other sweet fruits may also be used. Ripe banana may be one of the ingredients.

Such a salad may be eaten with a flesh or nut meal, or it may be used as a meal by itself. Fruit and cottage cheese make a meal that is both delicious and nourishing. A fruit salad strewed with nuts does the same.

Strawberries and sliced tomatoes dressed with cottage cheese make a good meal.

Lettuce, celery and tomatoes may be used in fruit salads.

A few fruit salads to serve as examples are: Apples, grapes and lettuce; peaches, strawberries and celery; bananas, pineapples and nuts; strawberries, tomatoes and lettuce. Combine to suit taste and dress likewise, but avoid large quantities of cream and sugar, not only on your salads, but on all fruits. No acid should be necessary, but if it is desired, use lemon juice or incorporate oranges as a part of the salad.

CHAPTER XVII.

OILS AND FATS.

Oils and fats are the most concentrated foods we have. Weight for weight, they contain more than twice as much fuel or energy value as any other food. Taken in moderation they are easily digested, but if taken in excess they become a burden to the system. About 7 or 8 per cent of the weight of a normal body is fat, and this fat is formed chiefly from the fatty foods taken into the system, supplemented by the sugar and starch.

When the body becomes very fat, it is a disease, called obesity. Fat people are never healthy. The fat usurps the place that should be occupied by normal tissues and organs. It crowds the heart and the lungs, and even replaces the muscle cells in the heart. The result is that the heart and lungs are overcrowded and overworked and the blood gets insufficient oxygen. Not only the lungs pant for breath after a little exercise, but the entire body. Much fat is as destructive of health as it is of beauty. Those who find themselves growing corpulent should decrease their intake of concentrated foods and increase their physical activity.

Our chief sources of fat supply are cream and butter, vegetable oils, nuts and the flesh of animals. Most meats, especially when mature, contain considerable fat. When the fat is mixed in with the meat, it is more difficult to digest than the lean flesh. Fresh fish, most of which contains very little fat, is digested very easily, while the fattest of all flesh, pork, is tedious of digestion.

There is an instinctive craving for fat with foods that contain little or none of it. That is why we use butter with cereals and lean fish, and oil dressings on vegetables. In moderation this is all right. Fats are not very rich in salts, which must be supplied by other foods.

Because of their great fuel value, more fats are naturally consumed in cold than in hot climates. The Esquimeaux thrive when a large part of their rations is fat. Such a diet would soon nauseate people in milder climes.

Fats and oils are used too much in cooking. Fried foods and those cooked in oil are made indigestible. Sometimes we read directions not to use animal fats, but to use olive oil or cotton seed oil for frying. It is poor cooking, no matter whether the grease is of animal or vegetable origin.

So far as food value and digestibility are concerned, there is no difference between animal and vegetable fats. Fresh butter is very good, and so is olive oil. Some vegetable oils contain indigestible substances. Cotton seed oil and peanut oil are much used. Sometimes they are sold in bottles under fancy lables as olive oil. The olive oils from California are fully as good as those imported from Spain, Italy and France and are more likely to be what is claimed for them than the foreign articles. In the past, much of our cotton seed oil has been bought by firms in southern Europe and sent back to us as fine olive oil! Such imposture is probably more difficult under our present laws than it was in the past.

Most oils become rancid easily and then are unfit for consumption. If taken in excess as food they have a splendid opportunity to spoil in the digestive tract, and then they help to poison the system. Taken in moderate quantities they are digested in the intestines and taken into the blood by way of the lymphatics. They may be stored in the body for a while, but finally they are burned, giving up much heat and energy.

Taking oils between meals as medicine or for fattening purposes is folly. People get all they need to eat in their three daily meals. Lunching is to be condemned.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MILK AND OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS.

====================================================================
Pro- Carbohy- Calories
Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb.
——————————————————————————————————
Whole milk 87.00 3.3 4.0 5.0 0.7 325
Cream 74.00 2.5 18.5 4.5 0.5 910
Buttermilk 91.00 3.0 0.5 4.8 0.7 165
Butter ….. … 82.4 … … 3475
Cheese, whole milk 33.70 26.0 34.2 2.3 3.8 1965
" skimmed milk 45.70 31.5 16.4 2.2 4.2 1320
——————————————————————————————————

The dairy products vary greatly. Some cows give richer milk than others. Butter may be almost pure fat, or it may contain much water and salt. The cheeses are rich or poor in protein and fats according to method of making. Cottage cheese may be well drained or quite watery. Therefore, this table gives only approximate contents.

Milk is not a beverage. It is a food. A quart of milk contains as much food and fuel value as eight eggs or twelve ounces of lean beef. That is, a cupful (one-half of a pint) is equal to two eggs or three ounces of lean beef. This shows that milk should not be taken to quench thirst, but to supply nourishment. Milk is one of our most satisfactory and economical albuminous foods, even at the present high prices. In many foods from 5 to 10 per cent of the protein goes to waste. In milk the waste does not ordinarily amount to more than about 1 per cent. This fluid generally leaves the stomach within one or one and one-half hours after being ingested.

In spite of its merits as a food some writers on dietetics advocate that adults stop using it, giving it only to the young.

Milk is an excellent food when properly used. When abused it tends to cause discomfort, disease and death, and so does every other food known to man. Milk is given in fevers and in other diseases, when the digestive and assimilative processes are suspended. This is a serious mistake and has caused untold numbers of deaths. When the digestion has gone on a strike all feeding is destructive. Milk and meat broths, which are generally given, are about the worst foods that could be selected under the circumstances, for they decay very easily, and are excellent food for the numerous bacteria that thrive in the digestive tract during disease. These foods must decay when they are not digested, for the internal temperature of the body during fevers is over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

When bacteria are present in excess they give off considerable poison, which makes the patient worse. If circumstances are such that it is necessary to feed during acute disease, which is always injurious to the patient, let the food be the least harmful obtainable, such as fruit juices. Even they do harm.

In our country cow's milk is used almost exclusively, and that is the variety that will be discussed in this chapter. In other lands the milk of the mare, the ass, the sheep, the goat and of other animals is used. Human milk is discussed in detail in the chapter on Infancy.

The objection voiced against cow's milk is that it is an unnatural food for man, only fit for the calf, which is equipped with several stomachs and is therefore able to digest the curds which are larger and tougher than the curds formed from human milk. It is said that the curds of cow's milk are so indigestible that the human stomach can not prepare them for entry into the blood. This is probably true, but it is also true of other protein-bearing foods. The digestion and assimilation of proteins are begun in the stomach and completed in the intestines, and the protein in milk is one of the most completely utilized of all proteins.

To call a food unnatural means nothing, for we can call nearly all foods unnatural and defend our position. A natural food is presumably a nutritious and digestible aliment that is produced in the locality where it is consumed, one that can be utilized without preparation or preservation. So we may say that a resident of New York should not use figs, dates, bananas and other products of tropical and semi-tropical climates, for they are not natural in the latitude of New York. We can take the position that it is unnatural for people to eat grains, which need much grinding, for the birds are the only living beings supplied with mills (gizzards). We can further say that it is unnatural to eat all cooked and baked foods. But such talk is not helpful. The more a person uses his brain the less power he has left for digestion and therefore it is necessary to prepare some of the foods so that they will be easy to digest. Man is such an adaptable creature that we are not sure what he subsisted on before he became civilized and are therefore unable to say what his natural food is. We know that in the tropics fruits play an important part in nourishing savages, while in the frozen north fat flesh is the chief food. Perhaps there is no natural food for man.

Some of those who advocate the disuse of milk have a substitute or imitation to take its place, nut milk made from finely ground nuts and water. Like all other imitations, it is inferior to the original. It is more difficult to digest than real milk and the flavor is quite different.

The objection that milk is indigestible is not borne out by the experience of those who give it under proper conditions. It is true that milk disagrees with a few, but so do such excellent foods as eggs, strawberries and Concord grapes, and many other aliments which are not difficult to digest. This is a matter of individual peculiarity. Some can take boiled milk, but are unable to take it fresh, and vice versa. Outside of the few exceptions, milk digests in a reasonable time and quite completely. It is easier to digest than the legumes (peas, beans, lentils) which are rich in protein. It is also easier to digest than nuts, which contain much protein. The milk sugar causes no trouble and cream is one of the easiest forms of fat to digest, if taken in moderation. The protein in milk will cause no inconvenience if the milk is eaten slowly, in proper combinations and not to excess. The rennet in the stomach curdles the casein. The hydrochloric acid and the pepsin in the gastric juice then begin to break down and dissolve the clots, and the process of digestion is completed in the small intestines.

Those who overeat of milk in combination with other foods will derive benefit from omitting the milk. They will also be benefitted if they continue using milk and omit either the starch or the meat. When foods disagree, in nearly every instance it is due to the fact that too much has been eaten and too many varieties partaken of at a meal. Some may single out the milk or the meat as the offenders. Others may point to the starches, and still others to the vegetables with their large amount of indigestible residue. They are all right and all wrong, for all the foods help to cause the trouble. However, such reasoning does not solve the problem. If the meals cause discomfort and disease, reduce the amount eaten, take fewer varieties at a meal and simplify the cooking. Those who eat simple meals and are moderate are not troubled with indigestion.

Those who eat such mushy foods as oatmeal and cream of wheat usually take milk or cream and sugar with them. This should not be done, for such dressing stimulates the appetite and leads to undermastication. Neither children nor adults chew these soft starchy foods enough. The result is that the breakfast ferments in the alimentary tract. After a few months or years of such breakfasts, some kind of disease is sure to develop. Mushy starches dressed with rich milk and sugar are responsible for a large per cent. of the so-called diseases of children, which are primarily digestive disturbances. Colds, catarrhs and adenoids are, of course, due to improper eating extending over a long period of time. Nothing should be eaten with mushy starches except a little butter and salt. After enough starch has been taken, a glass of milk may be eaten. If parents would only realize that they are jeopardizing the health and lives of their dear ones when they feed them habitually on these soft messes, which ferment easily, there would be a remarkable decrease in the diseases of childhood and in the disgraceful infant and childhood mortality, for several hundred thousand children perish annually in this country.

Milk is often referred to as a perfect food, and it is the perfect food for infants. The young thrive best on the healthy milk given by a female of their own species. Every baby should be fed at the breast. The milk contains the elements needed by the body.

The table at the head of this chapter shows that milk contains all essential aliments. The ash is composed of the various salts necessary for health, containing potassium, chlorine, calcium, magnesium, iron, silicon and other elements. For the nourishment of the body we need water, protein, fat, carbohydrates and salts, so it will be seen that milk is really a complete food. However, as the body grows the nutritive requirements change and milk is therefore not a balanced food for adults.

It may be interesting to note that there is no starch in milk and that infants fed at the breast exclusively obtain no starchy food. Many babies get no starch for nine, ten or even twelve months, and this is well, for they do not need it. They grow and flourish best without it.

Milk is an emulsion. It is made up of numerous tiny globules floating in serum. The size of the globules varies, but the average is said to be about 1/10,000 of an inch in diameter. These globules are fatty bodies. There are other small bodies, containing protein and fat, which have independent molecular movement. The milk is a living fluid. When it is tampered with it immediately deteriorates. Without doubt, nature intended that the milk should go directly from the mammary gland into the mouth of the consumer, but this is not practicable when we take it away from the calf. However, if we are to use sweet milk it is best to consume it as nearly like it is in its natural state as possible.

It is quite common to drink milk rapidly. This should not be done. Take a sip or a spoonful at a time and move it about in the mouth until it is mixed with saliva. It is not necessary to give it as much mouth preparation as is given to starchy food. If it is drunk rapidly like water large curds from in the stomach. If it is insalivated it coagulates in smaller curds and is more easily digested, for the digestive juices can tear down small soft curds more easily than the large tough ones.

Milk should not form a part of any meal when other food rich in protein is eaten. Our protein needs are small, and it is easy to get too much. Whole wheat bread and milk contain all the nourishment needed. On such a diet we can thrive indefinitely. This is information, not a recommendation. The bread should be eaten either before or after partaking of the milk. Do not break the bread into the milk. If this is done, mastication will be slighted. Bread needs much mastication and insalivation. When liquid is taken with the bread, the saliva does not flow so freely as when it is eaten dry.

Fruit and milk make a good combination, but no starchy foods are to be taken in this meal. Take a glass of milk, either sweet or sour, and what fruit is desired, insalivating both the fruit and the milk thoroughly. If you have read that the combination of fruit and milk has proved fatal, rest assured that those who made such reports only looked at the surface, for other foods and other influences were having their effects on the system. Many people die of food-poisoning and apoplexy. These bad results are due to wrong eating covering a long period and it is folly to blame the last meal. It would be queer if fruit and milk were not occasionally a part of the last meal.

In winter, figs, dates or raisins with milk make an excellent lunch or breakfast. These fruits take the place of bread, for though they are not starchy, they contain an abundance of fruit sugar, which is more easily digested than the starch. Starch must be converted into sugar before the system can use it.

On hot days milk and acid fruit make a satisfying meal. Many believe that milk and acid fruit should not be taken in the same meal, because the acid curdles the milk. As we have already seen, the milk must be curdled before it can be digested. If this step in digestion is performed by the acid in the fruit no more harm is done than when it is performed by the lactic acid bacteria. Fruit juices and milk do not combine to form deadly poisons. If fruit and milk are eaten in moderation and no other food is taken at that meal the results are good. However, if fruit, milk, bread, meat, cake and pickles make up the meal, the results may be bad. Such eating is very common. But do not blame the fruit and the milk when the whole meal is wrong.

Likewise, if a hearty meal has been eaten and before this has had time to digest a lunch is made of fruit and milk, trouble may ensue. All the foods may be good, but a time must come when the body will object to being overfed. In summertime much less food is needed than during the cold months. Nevertheless, barring the Christmas holidays and Thanksgiving, people overeat more in summer than at any other time of the year. Picnics often degenerate into stuffing matches. We should expect many cases of serious illness to follow them, and such is the case.

Sometimes the milk is so carelessly handled that it becomes poisonous and at other times the fruit is tainted, but generally bad combinations and overeating are the factors that cause trouble when the fruit and milk combination is blamed.

Buttermilk and clabbered milk are more easily digested by many than is the fresh milk. In Europe sour milk is a more common food than in this country. Here many do not know how excellent it is. Two glasses of milk, or less, make a good warm-weather lunch.

Those who have a tendency to be bilious should use cream very sparingly. Bilious people always overeat, otherwise their livers would not be in rebellion. The fat, in the form of cream, arouses decided protest on the part of overburdened livers.

A theory has found its way into dietetic literature, sometimes disguised as a truth, to the effect that boiled or hot milk is absorbed directly into the blood stream without being digested. This is contrary to everything we know about digestion and assimilation, and although it is a fine enough theory it does not work out in practice. I have seen bad results when nothing but a small amount of the hot milk was fed to patients with weak digestive power. Perhaps others have had better results. When the system demands a rest from food, nothing but water should be given. Boiled or natural milk is then as bad as any other food, and worse than most, for in the absence of digestive power it soon becomes a foul mass, swarming with billions of bacteria. The system is compelled to absorb some of the poisons given off by the micro-organisms and the results are disastrous.

Every food we take must be modified by our bodies before entering the circulation, and milk is no exception.

When milk is allowed to stand for a while the sugar ferments, through the action of the lactic acid bacteria. The sugar is turned into lactic acid, which combines with the casein and when this process has continued for a certain length of time the result is clabbered milk or sour milk. The length of time varies with the temperature and the care given the milk. If milk remains sweet for a long time during warm weather, discharge the milkman and patronize one whose product sours more quickly, for milk that remains sweet has been subjected to treatment. All kinds of preservative treatment cause deterioration. If extraordinary care is taken with the milk and it is kept at a temperature of about forty-two degrees Fahrenheit, it may remain sweet five or six weeks, provided it is not exposed to the air, but such care is at present not practicable in commercial dairies. The milk contains unorganized ferments which spoil it in time without exposure to bacterial influences. These ferments cause digestion or decay of the milk.

Fresh butter is a palatable form of fat, which digests easily. Like all other milk products, it must be kept clean and cold, or it will soon spoil. Butter absorbs other flavors quickly and should therefore not be placed near odorous substances. It is best unsalted and in Europe it is very commonly served thus. When people learn to demand unsalted butter they will get good butter, for no one can palm off oleomargarine or other imitations under the guise of fresh unsalted butter. Unsalted butter must be fresh or it will be refused by the nose and the palate. Salt and other preservatives often conceal age and corruption of foods.

Butter combines well with starches and vegetables, in fact, it can be used in moderation with any other food, when the body needs fat. Butter should not be used to cook starches or proteins in. Greasy cooking should be banished from our kitchens.

Milk is a complex food, highly organized, and therefore is easily injured or spoiled. The general rule is that the more complex a food is, the more easily it spoils. It is rather difficult at present to get wholesome milk enough to supply the people of our large cities. When it is boiled, the milk keeps longer, but boiled milk is spoiled milk. The fine flavor is lost, the casein, which is the principal protein of milk, is toughened, the milk, which is normally a living liquid, is killed, the chemical balance is lost, the organic salts being rendered partly inorganic. Milk that is unfit to eat without being boiled is not fit to eat afterwards, for the poisonous end products of bacterial life remain.

The milk is soured by the bacteria it contains. The lactic acid bacteria are harmless. When there is a lack of care and cleanliness, other bacteria get into the milk, and these are also harmless to people in good health, and most of them are not injurious to sick people. The bacteria (germs) do not cause disease, but when disease has been established, they offer their kindly offices as scavengers. Bacteria thrive in sick people, especially when they are fed when digestive power is lacking. Boiling retards the souring of milk, but when fat and protein are boiled together the protein becomes hard to digest. Milk is rich in both fat and protein. Excessive heat turns the milk brown, the milk sugar being carameled.

Babies do not thrive on boiled milk. They may look fat, but instead of having the desirable firmness of normal children, they are puffy. Children fed on denatured milk fall victims to diseases very easily, especially to diseases which are due to lack of organic salts, such as rickets and malnutrition.

Pasteurization of milk is very popular. This is objectionable for the same reasons that boiling is condemned, though not to the same extent. Pasteurization is heating the milk to about 140 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. This kills many of the bacteria, but many escape and when the milk is cooled off they begin to multiply and flourish again. It is estimated that pasteurized milk contains one-fourth as many bacteria as natural milk. So nothing is gained, and the milk is partly devitalized. The advocates of pasteurization give statistics showing that milk so treated has been instrumental in decreasing infant mortality. But please bear in mind that previously a great deal of milk unfit for consumption was fed to the babies. Those who pasteurize milk generally are careful enough to see that they get a good product in the first place.

If we can't get good milk we can do without it, for it is not a necessary food, but we can get good milk if we make the effort. If the milk is filthy, boiling or pasteurizing does not remove the dirt. Gauthier says of pasteurization: "Sometimes it is heated up to 70 degrees (Centigrade) with pressure of carbonic acid. But even in this case pasteurization does not destroy all germs, particularly those of tuberculosis, peptonizing bacteria of cowdung, and the dust of houses and streets, etc."

Even boiling does not kill the spores of bacteria unless it is continued until the milk is rendered entirely unfit for food. To kill these spores it is necessary to boil the milk several times. The spores are small round or oval bodies which form within the bacterial envelope when these micro-organisms are subjected to unfavorable conditions. The spores resist heat and cold that would kill almost any other form of life. When conditions are favorable they develop into bacteria again.

After heating, the cream does not rise so quickly nor does it separate so completely as it does in natural milk. This is due to the toughening of the casein in the milk.

Heating partly disorganizes the delicately balanced salts contained in the milk. The result is that they can not be utilized so easily and completely by the body, for the human organism demands its food in an organic state, that is, in the condition built up by vegetation or by animals. We may consume iron filings and remain anemic, in fact, the effect the iron medication has is to ruin the teeth, digestive organs and other parts of the body as a consequence. But if we partake of such foods as apples, cabbage, lettuce and spinach, the necessary salt is taken into the blood.

Heating milk also makes it constipating. True, normal people can take boiled milk without becoming constipated, but how many normal people are there? We are sorely enough afflicted in this way now. Let us have a supply of natural milk or go without it. It is not my desire to convey the impression that it does any harm to scald or boil milk occasionally, but if done daily it does harm, especially to the young. Scalded milk has its proper place in dietetics. Occasionally we find a person who has persistent chronic diarrhea. If he is in condition to eat anything, this annoying affliction is usually overcome in a reasonable time if the patient will take boiled or scalded milk in moderation three times a day, and nothing else except water.

How are we to obtain good milk? We can do it by using common sense, care and cleanliness.

It is well to remember that there are bacteria in all ordinary milk, and that if the milk is from healthy cows and is kept clean and cold these bacteria are harmless. Most of them are the lactic acid bacteria, which change the milk sugar into acid. When the milk has attained a certain degree of acidity, the lactic acid bacteria are unable to thrive and the souring process is slowed up and finally stopped. Most of the other bacteria in milk perish when lactic acid is formed. This is why stale sweet milk is often harmful, when the same kind of milk allowed to sour can be taken with impunity.

If the milk is kept in a cold place the bacteria multiply slowly. If it is kept in a warm place they increase in numbers at a rate that is marvelous, and consequently the milk sours much sooner. Even if the milk is kept cold, bacterial growth will soon take place, but it will perhaps not be lactic acid bacteria. It may be a form that causes the milk to become ropy and slimy or one that gives it a bad odor.

Bacteria are like other forms of vegetation, such as grass, weeds, flowers and trees, in that some flourish best under one condition and others under dissimilar conditions, and they struggle one against the other for subsistence and existence. Like flowers there are thousands of different forms of bacteria and they vary according to their food and environment.

Peculiar odors in milk generally come from certain kinds of food given to the cows, such as turnips; from bacterial action; or from flavors absorbed from other foods or from odors in the air. Milk should not be exposed to odorous substances, for it becomes tainted very quickly. Sometimes yeast finds its way into milk and causes decomposition of the sugar with the formation of carbon dioxide and alcohol.

A count of the bacteria in milk often serves a good purpose, for it shows whether it is good and has had proper care. The consumers have a right to demand milk low in bacteria, for if no preservatives have been used, that means clean milk. If we could live in our pristine state of beatific bliss, if such it was, we would not have to use milk after childhood is past, but our present condition demands the use of easily digested foods and to many milk is almost a necessity.

The milk in the udder of a healthy cow is almost surely free from bacteria, but the moment it is exposed to the air these little beings start to drop into the fluid.

The bacterial standards given by various city health departments vary. Those who are mathematically inclined may find the following figures interesting: In some great cities they allow 500,000 bacteria to the cubic centimeter of milk. A cubic centimeter contains about twenty-five drops. In other words, they allow 20,000 bacteria per drop. This may seem very lively milk, but these bacteria are so small that about 25,000 of them laid end to end measure only about an inch, and it would take 17,000,000,000,000 of them to weigh an ounce, according to estimates. These are the tiny vegetables we hear and read so much about, that we are warned against and fear so much. Truly the pygmies are having their innings and making cowards of men. The bacteria multiply by the simple process of growing longer and splitting into two, fission, as it is called, and the process is so rapid that within an hour or two after being formed a bacterium may be raising a family of its own.

Some of the milk brought to the cities contains as many as 15,000,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter, that is, about 600,000 per drop. This milk is either very filthy or it has been poorly cared for and should not be given to babies and young children. The filthiest milk may contain several billion bacteria to the cubic centimeter.

By using care milk containing but 100, or even fewer, bacteria per drop can be produced. From the standpoint of cleanliness this is excellent milk. Of course, the dairyman who takes pride enough in his work to produce such milk will sell nothing but what is first-class, and if he has business acumen he can always get more than the market price for his product.

The talk about germs has been overdone, but no one can deny that the study of bacteriology has made people more careful about foods. The filthy dairies that were the rule a few years ago are slowly being replaced by dairies that are comfortable, well lighted and clean. Do not allow the germs to scare you, for if ordinary precautions are taken no more of them will be present than are necessary, and they are necessary. They thrive best in filth, and they are dangerous only to those who live so that they have no resistance.

Wholesome milk can be produced only by healthy animals. Bovine health can be secured by the same means as human health. The cows must be properly fed and housed. They must have both ventilation and light. They must not be unduly worried. If a nursing of an angry mother's milk is at times poisonous enough to kill a baby, you may be sure that the milk from an abused, irritated and angry cow is also injurious. If the animals are kept comfortable and happy they will do the best producing, both in quality and quantity. It may sound far-fetched to some to advocate keeping animals happy in order to get them to produce much and give quality products, but it is good science and good sense. Happy cows give more and better milk than the mistreated ones. The singing hens are the best layers.

Cows should have fresh green food all the year, and this can be obtained in winter time by using silage. It is a mistake to give cows too much of concentrated foods, such as oil meals and grains. Cattle can not long remain well on exclusive rations of too heating and stimulating foods. When fed improperly they soon fall prey to various diseases, such as rheumatism and tuberculosis. It is the same with other domestic animals. The horse when overfed on grain develops stiff joints. The hogs that are compelled to live exclusively on concentrated, heating rations are liable to die of cholera. Young turkeys that have nothing but corn and wheat to eat die in great numbers from the disease known as blackhead. It is the same law running all through nature, applying to the high and to the low, that improper nourishment brings disease and death.

When cattle roam wild, the green grasses (sundried in winter) are their principal source of food. Man should be careful not to deviate too much, for forced feeding is as harmful to animals as it is to man.

The following excellent recommendations for the care of milk are given by Dr. Charles E. North of the New York City Milk Commission:

"No coolers, aerators, straining cloths or strainers should be used.

"The hot milk should be taken to the creamery as soon as possible.

"The night's milk should be placed in spring or iced water higher than the milk on the inside of the can. It should not be stirred, and the top of the can should be open a little way to permit ventilation.

"The milking pails and cans will be sterilized and dried at the creamery, and should be carefully protected until they are used.

"Brush the udder and wipe with a clean cloth; wash with clean water and dry with a clean towel.

"Whitewash the cow stable at least twice yearly.

"Feed no dusty feed until after milking.

"Remove all manure from cow stable twice daily.

"Keep barnyard clean and have manure pile at least 100 feet from the stable.

"Have all stable floors of cement, properly drained.

"Have abundant windows in cowstables to permit sunlight to reach the floor.

"Arrange a proper system of ventilation.

"Do not use milk from any cows suspected of gargot or of any udder inflammation. Such milk contains enormous numbers of bacteria.

"Brush and groom cows from head to foot as horses are groomed.

"Use no dusty bedding; wood shavings or sawdust give least dust.

"Use an abundance of ice in water tank for cooling milk."

Perhaps some will take issue with the doctor on the first paragraph of his recommendation. If straining cloths are used they should be well rinsed in tepid water, washed and then boiled. However, if his recommendations are carried out in letter and spirit no straining is necessary.

Herr Klingelhofer near Dusseldorf, Germany., runs a model dairy. The cows, stables, milkers, containers, in fact, all things connected with the dairy are scrupulously clean. The milkers do not even touch the milk stools, carrying them strapped to their backs. The milk is strained through sterilized cotton and cooled.

The cows are six and seven years old and are milked for ten or twelve months and they are not bred during this time. The first part of the milk drawn from each teat is not used, for that part is not clean, containing dirt and bacteria.

This milk is practically free from bacteria, for without adding preservatives it will remain sweet, for as long as thirteen days. If ordinary milk fails to sour in two or three days it shows that it has been treated.

According to the Country Gentleman, it will cost from one cent and a quarter to one cent and three-quarters extra per quart to produce clean milk. Healthy adults can take milk teeming with bacteria without harm, but for babies it is best to have very few or none in the milk. At Dusseldorf the babies used to die as they do here when fed unclean milk. Herr Klingelhofer says that when fed on his product "sterben keine." (None die.)

This is submitted to those who advocate pasteurizing the milk. Denatured milk makes sickly babies. Clean natural milk makes healthy babies. The extra cost of less than two cents a quart is not prohibitive. Most fathers, no matter how poor, waste more than that daily on tobacco and alcoholics. The extra cost would be more than saved in lessened doctor bills, to say nothing of funeral expenses. The recompense that comes from the satisfaction of having thriving, sturdy, healthy children can not be figured in dollars and cents.

Dr. Robert Mond, of London, after investigating for years, has come to the conclusion that sterilized milk predisposes to tuberculosis, instead of preventing it. He believes that milk so treated is so inferior that he would not personally use it. That sterilized milk predisposes to tuberculosis, as well as to other diseases which can attack the body only when it is run down, is natural. Any food that has been rendered inferior can not build the robust health that comes to those who live on natural food. Adults who use sterilized milk should counteract its bad effects by partaking liberally of fresh fruits and vegetables.

If the milk is clean, put into clean containers by careful milkers and is then kept cold until delivered, it will reach the consumers in good condition. Do not let the fact that when you consume a glass of milk you are also engulfing some millions of bacteria bother you, for bacteria are necessary to our existence. If all the bacteria on earth should perish, it would also mean the end of the human race.

Today the progressive farmer is coming to the fore. He is a man who is justly proud of his work, so it will probably not be long before all city people who desire clean milk can get it.

The milk cure consists in feeding sick people on nothing but milk for varying periods. Generally the patient is told to either take great quantities three or four times a day, or to take smaller quantities perhaps every half hour. The milk cure has no special virtue, except that it is a monotonous diet. The body soon rebels if forced to subsist on an excessive amount of but one kind of food. The individual loses his desire for food and even becomes nauseated. If the advocates of the milk cure would prescribe milk in moderation, instead of in excess, they would have better success. (It is fully as harmful to partake of too much milk as it is to eat excessively of other foods.)

The benefit derived from the milk cure comes from the simplicity, not from the milk. A grape cure, an orange cure or a bread and milk cure would be as beneficial. The milk cure is ancient. It was employed twenty-five centuries ago.

Clabbered milk: Clabbered milk or sour milk needs no special preparation. Put the milk into an earthen or china dish. Do not use metal dishes, for the lactic acid acts upon various metals. Cover the dish so as to keep particles of matter in the air away, but the covering is not to be airtight. Put the dish in a warm place, but not in the sun. Milk that sours in the sun or in an air-tight bottle is generally of poor flavor. Clabbered milk is a good food. It does not form big, tough curds in the stomach, it is easy to digest, and the lactic acid helps to keep the alimentary tract sweet. The various forms of milk may be used in similar combinations.

Buttermilk: The real buttermilk is what remains of the cream after the fat has been removed by churning. It is slightly acid and has a characteristic taste, to most people very agreeable. The flavor is different from that of artificially made buttermilk. In composition it is almost like whole milk, except that it contains very little fat.

Many people make buttermilk by beating the clabbered milk thoroughly, until it becomes light. The buttermilk made from sweet milk and the various brands of bacterial ferments obtainable at the drug stores is all right. These ferments have as their basis the lactic acid bacteria, and if the manufacturers wish to call their germs by other names, such as Bacillus Bulgaricus, no harm is done. It is unnecessary to add any of these ferments, for the milk clabbers about as quickly without them.

Buttermilk is an excellent food. The casein can be seen in fine flakes in the real buttermilk. Adults usually digest buttermilk and clabbered milk more easily than the sweet milk. The lactic acid seems to be quite beneficial. Metchnikoff thought for a while that he had discovered how to ward off decay and old age by means of the lactic acid bacteria in milk.

Milk can be clabbered quickly by adding lemon juice to sweet milk.

Junket: Add rennet to milk and let it stand until it thickens. The milk is not to be disturbed while coagulation takes place, for agitation will cause a separation of the whey. The rennet can be bought at the drug stores.

Whey contains milk sugar, some salts, and a little albumin. It is easily digested, but not very nourishing. It is what is left of the milk after the fat and almost all of the protein are removed.

Cottage cheese: This is sometimes called Dutch cheese or white cheese. It is a delicious and nutritious dairy product that is easy to digest. Put the clabbered milk in a muslin bag, hang the bag up and allow the milk to lose its whey through drainage. In summer this bag must be kept in a cool place. After draining, beat the curds. Then add enough clabbered milk to make the curds soft when well beaten. A small amount of cream may also be added. Cottage cheese made in this way is superior in flavor and digestibility to that which has been scalded. No seasoning is needed. A little salt is allowable, but sugar and pepper should not be used. Fruit and cottage cheese make a satisfying as well as nutritious meal.

Delicious cottage cheese is also made by using the whole clabbered milk. Hang it up to drain in a bag until it has lost a part of its whey. Then beat it until the curds are rather small, but not fine. No milk or cream is to be added to this, for it contains all the fat that is in the whole milk. Do not drain this cheese so long that it becomes dry.

Other cheeses: The various cheeses on the market are made principally from ripened curds, with which more or less fat has been mixed. The ripening is a form of decay, and it is no exaggeration to say that some of the very ripe cheeses on the market are rotten. The flavors are due to ferments, molds and bacteria, which split up the proteins and the fats.

The mild cheeses are generally good and may be eaten with fruits or vegetables or with bread. Two or three ounces are sufficient for the protein part of the meal, taking the place of flesh. Use less if less is desired.

When cheese becomes very odorous and ripe, no one with normal nose and palate will eat it. People who partake of excessive amounts of meats or alcoholic beverages are often fond of these foul cheeses. One perversion leads to another.

Cheese of good quality, eaten in moderation, is a nutritious food, easily digested. Gauthier says of cheese: "Indeed, this casein, which has the composition of muscular tissue, scarcely produces during digestion either residue or toxins."

Because good cheese is concentrated and of agreeable flavor, it is necessary to guard against overeating. An excess of rich cheese soon causes trouble with the liver or constipation or both.

Cheese should not be eaten in the same meal with fish, meat, eggs, nuts or legumes, for such combining makes the protein intake too great. There is nothing incompatible about such combinations, but it is safest not to make them. The course dinners, ending up with a savory cheese, crackers and coffee, are abominations. They are health-destroyers. They lead to overeating. As nearly everybody overeats, and because overeating is the greatest single factor in producing disease and premature death, it is advisable not to eat cheese and other foods rich in protein in the same meal. The greater the variety of food, the more surely the diner will overeat.

The term, "full cream cheese" is misleading, for cheeses are not made of whole cream. The cream does not contain enough protein (casein) for the manufacture of cheese. Some cheeses are made of skimmed milk. Others are made of milk which contains part, or even all, of the cream. Some have cream added. The cheeses containing but a moderate amount of fat are the best.

The popular Roquefort cheese is made of a mixture of goat's milk and sheep's milk. The savor is due to bacterial action and fat saponification, which result in ammonia, glycerine, alcohol, fatty acids and other chemicals in very small quantities.

The peculiar colorings which run in streaks through some cheeses that are well ripened are due to molds, bacteria and yeasts. Gentlemen who would discharge the cook if a moldy piece of bread appeared on the table, eat decaying, moldy cheese with relish.

The best cheese of all is cottage cheese. People of normal taste will soon weary of the frequent consumption of strong cheese, but they can take cottage cheese every other day with relish. Occasionally put a few caraway seeds in it if this flavor is agreeable.

Cottage cheese may be eaten plain or with bread, or with fruit or vegetables. It may be used as dressing both on fruit and vegetable salads.

Cheese should play no part in the alimentation of the sick, with the exception of cottage cheese, which may be given to almost anyone who is in condition to eat anything. The other cheeses are too concentrated for sick people. In acute disease nothing is to be fed.

Skimmed milk is about the same in composition as buttermilk. It is inferior in flavor, but a good food. It is used a great deal in cooking. Milk should not be used very much in cooking. When cooked it does not digest very readily and it has a tendency to make other foods indigestible.

Sour cream or clabbered cream is best when it is taken from clabbered milk. It may be used as dressing on fruits and salads. Sweet cream will clabber, but it is not as delicious as when it clabbers on the milk.

Clotted cream is made by putting the milk aside in pans in a cool place until the cream rises. Then, without disturbing the cream, scald the milk. Put the pan aside until the contents are cold and remove the cream, which has a rich, agreeable flavor. This may be used as a dressing.

Whipped cream and ice cream are so familiar that they hardly need comment. Cream is such a rich food that it must be eaten in moderation. Otherwise it will cause discomfort and disease. Ice cream is made of milk and cream, in varying proportions, flavored to taste and frozen. It is not necessary to add eggs and cornstarch. If eaten slowly it is a good food, but taken in too large quantities and too rapidly it may cause digestive troubles. It is not best to chill the stomach. Those with weak digestion should be very careful not to do so.

Buttermilk is sometimes flavored and frozen. This ice is easy to digest. Some doctors recommend this dish to their convalescents. It is an agreeable change, and can be eaten by many who are unable to take care of the rich ice cream.

CHAPTER XIX.

MENUS.

For a balanced dietary we need some building food, protein; some force food, starch, sugar and fat; some of the mineral salts in organic form, best obtained from raw fruits and vegetables; and a medium in which the foods can be dissolved, water.

We need a replenishment of these food stuffs at intervals, but it is not necessary to take all of them at the same meal, or even during the same day. Those who believe that all alimentary principles must enter into every meal must necessarily injure themselves through too complex eating. In talking of these alimentary principles, reference is made to them only when they are present in appreciable quantities.

To have the subject better in hand, let us again classify the most important foods:

Flesh foods, which are rich in protein.

Nuts, which contain considerable protein and fat.

Milk and cheese, which contain much protein.

Eggs, taken principally for their protein.

Cereals, the most important contents being starches.

Tubers, containing much starch.

Legumes, rich in protein and starch.

Fresh fruits, well flavored and high in salt contents.

Sweet fruits, containing much fruit sugar.

Succulent vegetables, chiefly valuable because of salts and juices.

Fats and oils, no matter what their source, are concentrated foods which furnish heat and energy when burned in the body.

When people are free and active in the fresh air they can eat in a way that would soon ruin the digestive powers of those who lead more artificial lives. It is a well known fact that we can go hunting, fishing, tramping or picnicking and eat mixtures and quantities of foods that would ordinarily give us discomfort. The freedom and activity, the change and the better state of mind give greater digestive power.

Those who wish to live their best must pay some attention to the combination of food. It is true that very moderate people, those who take no more food than the body demands, can combine about as they please. These moderate people do not care to mix their foods much. They are satisfied with very plain fare. Much as we dislike to acknowledge the fact, nearly all of us take too much food, even those who most strongly preach moderation. By combining properly much of the harmful effect of overeating can be overcome.

FRUITARIANS.

I class as fruitarians those who eat only cereals, fruits and nuts. This may not be a correct definition, but after reading much literature on dietetics it is the best I can do. Their combinations should present no difficulties.

They should take cereals once or twice a day; nuts once or twice a day; fruit once a day in winter and once or twice a day in summer. The winter fruit should be sweet part of the time. In summer it can be the juicy fruit and berries at all times.

The fruitarians should be careful to avoid the habitual combination of acid fruits with their cereals.

One meal a day can be made of one or two varieties of fruit and nothing else. Nuts may be added to the fruit at times.

Another meal may be made of some cereal product with nut butter or some kind of vegetable oil.

A third meal may be some form of sweet fruit, with which may be eaten either bread or nuts, or better still, combine one sweet fruit with an acid one.

Most people would consider such a diet very limited, but it is easy to thrive on it, and it is not a tiresome one. There are so many varieties of fruits, nuts and cereals that it is easy to get variety. These foods do not become monotonous when taken in proper amounts. On such a diet it does not make much difference which meal is breakfast, lunch or dinner. The rule should be to take the heartiest meal after the heavy work is done, for hearty meals do not digest well if either mind or body is hard at work.

It is not difficult to get all the food necessary in two meals, but inasmuch as the three meal a day plan is prevalent the menus here given include that number of meals.

Breakfast: Apples, baked or raw.

Lunch: Brown rice and raisins.

Dinner: Whole wheat zwieback with nut butter.

Breakfast: Oranges or grapefruit.

Lunch: Pecans and figs.

Dinner: Bread made of rye or whole wheat flour, with nut butter or olive oil.

Breakfast: Any kind of berries.

Lunch: Dates.

Dinner: Whole wheat bread, with or without oil, Brazil nuts.

These combinations are indeed simple, but these foods are very nourishing and most of them concentrated, so it is best not to mix too much. They are natural foods, which digest easily when taken in moderation, but if eaten to excess they soon produce trouble.

It is no hardship to live on simple combinations. We have so much food that we have fallen into the bad habit of partaking of too great variety at a meal. The fact is that those who combine simply enjoy their foods more than those who coax their appetite with too great variety. There is no physical hardship connected with simple eating, and as soon as the mind is made up to it, neither is there any mental hardship.

VEGETARIANS.

It is difficult to give an acceptable definition for vegetarianism. For a working basis we shall take it for granted that those are vegetarians who reject flesh foods. Those who wish can also reject dairy products and eggs. It is largely a matter of satisfying the mind.

The chief trouble with the vegetarians is that they believe that the fact that they abstain from flesh will bring them health. So they combine all kinds of foods and take several kinds of starches and fruits at the same meal. The consequence is that they soon get an acid condition of the digestive organs and a great deal of fermentation. Among vegetarians, prolapsus of the stomach and bowels is quite common, and this is due to gas pressure displacing the organs.

Their foods are all right, but their combinations, as a rule, are bad. The various vegetarian roasts, composed of nuts, cereals, legumes and succulent vegetables are hard to digest. It would be much better for them not to make such dishes.

A few suggestions for vegetarian combining follow:

Breakfast: Berries and a glass of milk.

Lunch: Baked potatoes and lettuce with oil.

Dinner: Nuts, cooked succulent vegetables, one or two varieties, sliced tomatoes.

Breakfast: Cottage cheese and oranges.

Lunch: Nuts and raisins.

Dinner: Whole wheat bread, stewed onions, butter, salad of lettuce and celery.

Breakfast: Cantaloupe.

Lunch: Buttermilk, bread and butter.

Dinner: Nuts, stewed succulent vegetables, lettuce and sliced tomatoes, with or without oil.

Breakfast: Boiled brown rice with raisins and milk.

Lunch: Grapes.

Dinner: Cooked lentils or baked beans, lettuce and celery.

OMNIVOROUS PEOPLE.

In this country, most people are omnivorous. The food is plentiful and people believe in generous living. They put upon their tables at each meal enough variety for a whole day and the custom is to eat some of each. Some breakfasts are heavy enough for dinners. Three heavy meals a day are common. Some can eat this way for years and be in condition to work most of the time, but they are never 100 per cent. efficient. They are never as able as they could be. Besides, they have their times of illness and grow old while they should be young. They generally die while they should be in their prime, leaving their friends and families to mourn them when they ought to be at their best. They are worn out by their food supply, plus other conventional bad habits.

One of the best plans that has been proposed for omnivorous people is that which has been worked out by Dr. J. H. Tilden. Its skeleton is, fruit once a day, starchy food once a day, flesh or other protein with succulent vegetables once a day. I shall make up menus for a few days based on this plan:

Breakfast: Baked apples, a glass of milk.

Lunch: Boiled rice with butter.

Dinner: Roast mutton, spinach and carrots, salad of raw vegetables.

Breakfast: Cantaloupe.

Lunch: Biscuits or toast with butter, buttermilk.

Dinner: Pecans, two stewed succulent vegetables, salad of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, dressing.

Breakfast: Peaches, cottage cheese.

Lunch: Baked potatoes, butter, lettuce.

Dinner: Fresh fish baked, liberal helping of one, two or three of the raw salad vegetables.

Breakfast: Shredded wheat or puffed wheat sprinkled with melted butter, glass of milk.

Lunch: Watermelon.

Dinner: Roast beef, boiled cabbage, stewed onions, butter dressing, sliced tomatoes with salt and oil.

The doctor allows considerable dessert. That generally goes with the dinner.

It is nonsense to write, "So and so shalt thou eat and not otherwise." The menus here given simply serve as suggestions. Where one succulent vegetable is mentioned another may be substituted. One cereal may be substituted for another. One juicy fruit for another. One sweet fruit for another. One legume for another. One food rich in protein for another.

In combining food the principal things to remember are:

Use only a few foods at a meal; use only one hearty, concentrated food in a meal, as a rule, with the exception that various fats and oils in moderation are allowable as dressings for fruits, vegetables and starches; that much fat or oil retards the digestion of the rest of the food; that the habitual combining of acid food with foods heavy in starch is a trouble-maker; that concentrated starchy foods should be taken not to exceed twice a day; that the heating, stimulating foods rich in protein, which include nearly all meats, should be taken only once a day in winter, and less in summer; that either raw fruit or raw vegetables should be a part of the daily food intake, because the salts they contain are essential to health; that fats should be used sparingly in summer, but more freely in winter; that juicy fruits are to be used liberally in summer and sparingly in winter, when the sweet fruits are to take their place a part of the time.

The dried sweet fruits are quite different from the fresh juicy ones. The former serve more the purpose of the starches than that of fruits. They are rich in sugar, which produces heat and energy. The same is true of the banana, which is about one-fifth sugar. It is not as sweet as would be expected from this fact. Some sugars are sweeter than others. This you can easily verify by tasting some milk sugar and then taking the same amount of commercial sugar made of cane or beets.

The food need in summer is surprisingly small, so small that the average person will scarcely believe it. Some writers on dietetics advise eating as much in summer as in winter. How they can do so it is difficult to understand, for reason tells us that in summertime practically no food is needed for heating purposes, and that is how most of the food is used. A little experience and experiment show that reason is right. Nature herself confirms this fact, for at the tropics she has made it easy for man to subsist on fruits, while in the polar regions she furnishes him the most heating of all foods, fats.

Because fats are so concentrated it is very easy to take too much of them. An ounce of butter contains as much nourishment as about twenty-five ounces of watermelon. Those who simplify their cooking and their combining and partake of food in moderation are repaid many times over in improved health. It is necessary to supply good building material in proper form if we would have health.

CHAPTER XX.

DRINK.

There is but one real beverage and that is water. The other so-called beverages are foods, stimulants or sedatives. Milk is a rich food, one glass having as much food value as two eggs. Coffee, tea, chocolate and cocoa are stimulants, with sedative after-effects. Their food value depends largely on the amount of milk, cream and sugar put into them. Chocolate and cocoa are both drugs and foods. Alcohol is a stimulant at first, afterwards a sedative, and at all times an anesthetic.

When we think of drinking for the sake of supplying the bodily need of fluid, we should think of water and nothing else. If other liquids are taken, they should be taken as foods or drugs.

Water is the best solvent known. The alchemists of old spent much time and energy trying to find the universal solvent, believing that thereafter it would be easy to discover a method of making base metals noble. But they never found anything better than water. Water is the compound that in its various forms does most to change the earth upon which we live, and it is more necessary for the continuation of life than anything else except air.

Pure water does not exist in nature, that is, we have never found a compound of the composition H2O. Water always contains other matter. The various salts are dissolved in it and it absorbs gases. The nearest we come to pure water is distilled. Pure water is an unsatisfied compound, and as soon as it is exposed it begins to absorb gases and take up salts and organic matter.

Pure water differs from clean water. Clean or potable water is a compound which contains a moderate amount of salts, but very little of organic matter. Bacteria should be practically absent. Water that contains much of nitrogenous substances is unfit to use.