Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency) Part 22

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 gla.s.s of milk.

Lunch: Boiled rice with b.u.t.ter.

Dinner: Roast mutton, spinach and carrots, salad of raw vegetables.

Breakfast: Cantaloupe.

Lunch: Biscuits or toast with b.u.t.ter, b.u.t.termilk.

Dinner: Pecans, two stewed succulent vegetables, salad of lettuce, tomatoes and cuc.u.mbers, dressing.

Breakfast: Peaches, cottage cheese.

Lunch: Baked potatoes, b.u.t.ter, 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 b.u.t.ter, gla.s.s of milk.

Lunch: Watermelon.

Dinner: Roast beef, boiled cabbage, stewed onions, b.u.t.ter 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 subst.i.tuted. One cereal may be subst.i.tuted 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 princ.i.p.al 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 r.e.t.a.r.ds 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 b.u.t.ter 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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.ble. 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.

If the water is very hard, heavily loaded with salts, it should not be used extensively as a drink, for if too much of earthy and mineral matter is taken into the system, the body is unable to get rid of all of them. The result is a tendency for deposits to form in the body. In places where the water is excessively charged with lime it has been noticed that the bones harden too early, which prevents full development of the body. If the bones of the skull are involved, it means that there will not be room enough for the brain. Such diseases are rare in this country, but in parts of Europe they are not uncommon. If the water is very hard, a good plan is to distill it and then add a little of the hard water to the distilled water.

People who partake of an excessive amount of various salts can perhaps drink distilled water to advantage, but those who take but a normal amount of the salts in their foods should have natural water.

Water forms three-fourths of the human body, more or less. It is needed in every process that goes on within the body. "To be dry is to die."

Water keeps the various vital fluids in solution so that they can perform their function. Without water there would be no sense of taste, no digestion, no absorption of food, no excretion of debris, and hence no life. The water is the vehicle through which the nutritive elements are distributed to the billions of cells of the body, and it is also the vehicle which carries the waste to the various excretory organs.

We can live several weeks without food, but only a few days without water.

Hot water and ice-cold water are both irritants. Water may be taken either warm or cool. It is best to avoid the extremes.

The amount of water needed each twenty-four hours varies according to circ.u.mstances. Two quarts is a favorite prescription. Those who eat freely of succulent fruits and vegetables do not need as much as those who live more on dry foods. Salt in excess calls for an abnormal amount of water, for salt is a diuretic, robbing the tissues of their fluids and consequently more water has to be taken to keep up the equilibrium.

Naturally, more water is required when the weather is hot than when it is cool. On hot days warm water is more satisfying and quenches thirst more quickly than ice water. Warm water also stimulates kidney action, which is often sluggish in summer. Ice water is the least satisfactory of all, for the more one drinks the more he wants.

A normal body calls for what water it needs, and no more. An abnormal body is no guide for either the amount of food or drink necessary. Many people do not like the taste of water, especially in the morning. This means that the body is diseased. To a normal person cool water is always agreeable when it is needed, and it is needed in the morning. People with natural taste do not care for ice water, but other water is relished.

The common habit of drinking with meals is a mistake. Man is the only animal that does this, and he has to pay dearly for such errors. Taking a bite of food and was.h.i.+ng it down with fluid lead to undermastication and overeating, and then the body suffers from autointoxication. A mouthful of food followed by a swallow of liquid forces the contents of the mouth into the stomach before the saliva has the opportunity to act.

The best way is to drink one or two gla.s.ses of water in the morning before breakfast. Partake of the breakfast, and all other meals, without taking any liquid. Sometimes there is a desire for a drink immediately after the meal is finished. If so, take some water slowly. If it is taken slowly a little will satisfy. If it is gulped down it may be necessary to take one or two gla.s.ses of water before being satisfied.

Those who have a tendency to drink too much during warm weather will find very slow drinking helpful in correcting it. If there is any digestive weakness, the liquid taken immediately after a meal should be warm and should not exceed a cupful. Those with robust digestion may take cool water.

Cold water chills the stomach. Digestion will not take place until the stomach has reached the temperature of about one hundred degrees Fahrenheit again, and if the stomach contents are chilled repeatedly the tendency is strong for the food to ferment pathologically, instead of being properly digested. For this reason it is not well to drink while there is anything left in the stomach to digest. As stomach digestion generally takes two or three hours at least, it is well to wait this long before taking water after finis.h.i.+ng a meal, and then drink all that is desired until within thirty minutes of taking the next meal. If the thirst should become very insistent before two or three hours have elapsed since eating, take warm water. Those who eat food simply prepared and moderately seasoned are not troubled much with excessive thirst.