THE ONE-MEAL SYSTEM.
In this note I propose to do little more than record a few instances, out
of many, of persons who have lived for longer or shorter periods, and
continue to live, on one meal a day, and let my readers draw their own
inferences, merely remarking that these cases have a very great
significance as bearing upon the question of the _quantity of food_ best
suited to nourish the body and promote health. Dr. Abernethy, a celebrated
English physician, affirmed that “one-fourth of all a man eats sustains
him; the balance he retains at his risk”; but his countrymen eat four
meals, at least.
The case of Mrs. Solberg, an emaciated dyspeptic, whose restoration to
health was accomplished by the one-meal vegetarian diet and “a change of
air” (at home), is mentioned in the chapter on Malaria.
S. N. Silver,[64] of Auburn, Me., a hard-working mechanic, has, for
upwards of three years, lived on the one-meal-a-day plan. He eats at
night, after resting sufficiently from his day’s work. He never eats more
than seven meals per week, not even so much as an apple between meals; and
on Sundays, unless he takes considerable exercise, his “meal” consists of
fruit only——three or four apples, for example. He is a typically healthy
young man, and has not in three years experienced a moment of physical
inconvenience. He is a vegetarian, and lives wholly on simple, pure food,
chiefly bread and fruit.
[Footnote 64: Mr. Silver is 30 years old and is 6 feet, 2 inches in
height. On the three-meal system his greatest weight was 137 pounds. For
two years past, on the new plan, he has weighed from 150 to 160 pounds,
according to his work. When he works hard he eats more, and gains in
weight; when his work is light he eats light and his weight falls off
correspondingly. This illustrates a truly physiological diet. It should
always be thus with man and the domestic animals alike. In practice,
however, the reverse is the rule: the weight increases during leisure and
decreases when hard work is done. Both our athletes and race-horses are
permitted to fatten between times, and are fitted for sharp work by
reducing their weight by exercise. In other words, they are allowed to
become diseased, and then they are “cured.” This process is apt to result,
finally, in premature death, or at least so exhausts the vital forces as
to render former accomplishments impossible, at an age when the individual
should be in his prime.]
Mrs. Wieman, a sister of the above, has, for upwards of a year, taken but
one meal a day, although she prepares three hot meals for her husband and
several boarders. She does the entire household work for her family, which
during the past summer consisted of nine adults. Her one meal (taken at
noon because the regular dinner is at that hour and furnishes a better
variety) is no more in amount than her dinner formerly, when she took
breakfast and supper in addition. She is a perfect specimen of robust
health, and finds that she can now perform with ease an amount of labor
which formerly would have been a severe tax, even if possible to
accomplish. Her diet is mainly vegetarian; she eats but little meat, and
that only because it is constantly before her; and she avoids white flour
and most forms of pastry altogether, as well as hot stimulating drinks,
condiments, spices, etc., although her table is bountifully supplied with
all such things.
Still another of this family, a busy milliner, has lived in this manner
for several months, and finds herself improved in health by the means.
Aside from the immense amount of knowledge gained through
vivisection——through dead animals, I may say——the _lives_ of the lower
animals teach us what to do, in some respects, as well as what to avoid.
Alas, for humanity——claiming such superiority——in both classes there are
important lessons which are not generally learned and practiced. As
bearing upon the one-meal system, I will let Capt. B., an old hunter, tell
his experience with his fox-hound: “The old fellow,” said the Captain,
“knows when I am going on a tramp as well as my wife does——when I turn out
for a hunt, in the morning——and he won’t touch a mouthful of food.[65] I
used to try and ‘fool’ him, by acting as if I wasn’t going out at all, and
sometimes I could get him to eat breakfast. But I never try that game now,
for I noticed, after a while, that when he fixed himself, he did better
work than when I managed to get a breakfast into him.” “How so?” I asked.
“Why, he is a better dog; he runs better, scents better, barks better,
and comes in at night in better shape. And then, if we walk home, he gets
pretty well rested and has his ‘breakfast’ before a great while; or, if we
ride, he has it as soon as we get home; and (if it is cold weather) I let
him lie in the sitting-room an hour or two after he eats, and then he will
go to his kennel and sleep all night, and _without trembling_; and he
turns out next morning in good shape for another tramp, if called on.” “Do
you ‘fix’ yourself in the same manner?” I could but ask. “Not _much_,” he
replied; “I eat before I start, and take a lunch along; but I don’t know
but the old dog has the best of it, after all.” As a matter of fact, the
aged dog is like a sprightly youth still, while his master, at middle-age,
is a decrepit old man.
[Footnote 65: This is a characteristic of most hunting dogs——not the
exception. It is not that they know more about dietetics than their
masters, for I do not think they do, but, gluttons as they are, they
“rather hunt than eat.”]
The importance of rest after meals has never been fully appreciated by
people in general. Even those who advocate the need of it, have
usually,——perhaps because of the difficulties in the way of demanding
more,——asked for only a half, or a whole hour; while it is the popular
belief that “exercise after eating promotes digestion,” and the fact is
cited that Sunday is, to the laborer, the worst day of all the week,——a
day of leisure, affording ample time for digestion, if that is all that is
required. But that is not all. The “bad feeling” which comes on after the
second meal on Sunday——the “Sunday headache,” of which so many
complain——results from the radical change of habit from the six days of
hard labor: accustomed as he is to digesting a large part of his three
meals together, at night, after he has _earned_ them, physiologically
speaking,——that is, after his labor has provided the digestive fluids in
the blood, by means of which his food is dissolved, and made ready for
absorption into the circulation,——when Sunday, with its leisure, and
possibly even more than usually excessive indulgence, comes, instead of
having the blood diverted to the general muscular system, as the result of
active labor, it is called to the stomach and the circulation becomes
overcharged with nutritive material. Hence lethargy, tendency to sleep,
headache, etc.
The fact is,
EXERCISE AFTER EATING
by _preventing_ digestion, often delays or modifies the ill-feeling which
would otherwise be experienced shortly after over-indulgence at the table.
Hence gentle exercise in the open air will prove the least of two evils;
an emetic, the best of all remedies. The liquids[66] being to a great
extent absorbed, plethora is prevented or delayed because the solids
remain undigested in the stomach! But this solid residue, favored by the
internal temperature, begins to ferment, after a time, and causes more or
less irritation and congestion of the mucous lining of the stomach, which
gives rise to the sensation popularly called “hunger”; and thus every few
hours, and when the patient impatiently awaits the call to dinner and
thinks himself most in need of food, he is, in fact, in the very worst
condition to take it. Ninety-five persons in every hundred have this
disease (for it is nothing less than chronic dyspepsia) throughout life.
The fact that the meal affords immediate relief argues nothing against
this position; it is the seventy-five or eighty per cent. of water
contained in and taken with the meal that relieves the congestion. It
forms a poultice, so to say, for the congested mucous membrane of the
stomach; but unfortunately it can not, as when applied externally upon a
throbbing sore thumb, for example, be removed when it becomes dry. We see
this disease at its worst in infancy, when meals are most frequent and
excessive.
[Footnote 66: In case of an ordinary “mixed meal,” water composes
something near four-fifths of all; solids, pure and simple, one-fifth.
Even roast beef is about three-fourths water, and vegetables the same.]
Jules Virey settled the question, as it seems to me, regarding the effects
of work after eating. He took two dogs of same size, age, and general
_physique_; gave both a fast-day, and then treated them to a square meal,
alike in quantity and variety. One was sent to his kennel, while the other
was permitted to follow the carriage which conveyed the doctor on his
rounds. After the coach-dog had had two hours and a half of (not vigorous,
but gentle) exercise, and immediately on his return, the doctor had both
dogs slain and dissected. The kennel-dog had thoroughly digested his
breakfast,——not a trace of it was found in his stomach,——while with the
other, the work of digestion had not even begun; the mutton cubes and
potato chips remained intact, precisely as when first eaten. It is evident
from this that the rule, “Never eat until you have leisure to
digest,”[67] is a good one, and that for a hard-working person (what man
or woman works as hard as the enthusiastic hunting-dog?) the
one-meal-a-day system would often prove the best,——indeed, in some
instances, this would be the only means of preventing sickness. We may not
know in how many instances the laborer digests his breakfast, dinner, and
supper together (or about all that he does digest) after he is in bed for
the night. Any approach to such a state is provocative of disease.
[Footnote 67: It by no means follows that the man of all leisure, or the
“loafer,” can, because of abundant rest after meals, digest the large
quantity of food he may be tempted to swallow. On the contrary, he
probably does not digest one-fourth of it. The balance is assuredly
retained to work him injury at last. No man really _digests_, speaking
strictly, in excess of the physiological needs of his organism; the fact
that one man “carries off,” so to speak, an immense amount of food without
apparent or immediate inconvenience, argues simply that he has greater
excretory capacity——perhaps was endowed originally with a greater degree
of vitality——than another who is constantly troubled though eating less
and working more. Persons of the latter class still exceed their normal
amount; hence their digestive troubles.]
The dyspeptic’s dreams, which disturb his sleep, rob him of needed rest,
and often cause him to wake more tired than when he went to bed, would be
banished, or at least favorably modified, if, at the close of his day’s
work, after sufficient rest from the fatigues and cares of the day, he
were to take his well-earned ration, and, after a period of recreation, if
there still remained time for this, go to his bed.
Another instance I will mention, that of the man who may almost be called
the father of hygiene in this country. He says: “I have tested the
sufficiency of eating once in twenty-four hours [he has himself lived on
this system for eleven years, and continues so to live; and has, besides,
tested its advantages upon patients in certain forms of disease] and have
done work enough to put a much younger man to his trumps if he had to do
it. My food is very simple; I do not eat more at one meal than almost any
person eats who takes three meals a day; I keep my body well built up in
flesh and in vigor of muscle, considering that incurable organic
difficulties render great muscular activity impracticable. I keep up my
own strength, and have held in check my constitutional conditions so that
I have reached old age” [72 years].
I could mention a score or more of similar instances; and, as stated
elsewhere, no person ever tried the plan and found occasion for abandoning
it, except from considerations utterly remote from health. In fact, under
certain circumstances, as in travelling, this system is a most beneficent
one; it makes a person independent of railway restaurants and
lunch-counters; for at some time during the day, usually, as at night in a
good hotel, one can obtain, if not always a really hygienic meal, still a
comparatively good one.
With reference to the amount of food to be taken at the single meal, I
have observed this: those who would be termed hearty eaters, on the
three-meal system, will usually eat no more at their one meal than
formerly at dinner alone; some, indeed, find much less than this suffices
to sustain them in the best manner. This is largely due, however, to the
superior quality of their diet, since people of this class invariably
become, practically, vegetarians and, withal, use a large proportion of
bread, a pure nutrient, instead of flesh, a nutro-stimulant. The amount of
food taken, under any circumstances, will depend largely upon one’s views
as to the true office of eating.
In the case of a certain class of dyspeptics who, while going to the table
three times every day, yet do not eat, all told, a single satisfactory
meal; who in the entire year, perhaps, scarcely know the comfort of eating
a full meal, and who live on in this manner year after year, the one-meal
system would banish their nausea and lack of appetite within a reasonable
time, and, in some instances, such persons would eat, and with a relish
long unknown to them, more food every day than they now force down at
their three or more attempts at eating. There would also result a
corresponding improvement in their general health, more especially if this
reform were accompanied by others, when needed, as to fresh air and
exercise.
Says Dr. Nichols, of London, who speaks with knowledge, from having tested
it: “The one-meal-a-day system will largely increase any person’s working
capacity.”
* * * * *
NOTE.——One item well worth considering, especially by the
laboring classes who find it so difficult to support a little
family on $8 or $10 per week, while imitating the dietetic
habits of their employers: Dr. T. L. Nichols, named above,
experimenting as to cost of living, has lived week in and week
out, in London, at a cost (for food) of sixty or eighty cents
per week (taken two meals then), maintaining full vigor, and
weight, and performing arduous literary labors, combined with a
somewhat active mode of life. Personally, the author was never
more vigorous or better fitted for hard work,——in short, better
nourished,——than when living for several months on the 1-meal
plan and on a diet of unleavened Graham gems and fruit, the
total cost of which was less than ten cents per day.