and helpful mode of eating recommended and practiced with such marked
benefits by Horace Fletcher and his converts, will assuredly minimize
the dangers that lurk unsuspected by the uninformed in many of our
commonly used foods, and will derive a greater benefit from all food
than it is possible for those to gain who eat in the hasty and careless
fashion characteristic of most Americans.
VII
HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE EAT?
WE have discussed the question how to eat and what to eat; there
remains the question of when to eat. English people, as a rule, eat
four meals a day. The French are practically a two meal a day nation,
eating a very light breakfast.
Of late years there has been a strong tendency on the part of American
dieticians to advocate a reduction in the number of daily meals, the
ideal aimed at being the establishing of the custom of two meals a day,
with at least six hours intervening between them.
It may be asked whether appetite is not a safe guide to follow, and
whether it is not the part of wisdom to follow personal inclination
in the choice and quantity and number of meals. Does not a study of
dietetic customs and habits definitely decide the essential rules of
dietetics? While it is true that habits and customs are very strong
factors in everybody’s life, yet it is also true that they are
very unreliable guides. We are constantly acquiring new habits, and
sloughing off old ones; and even the most deeply impressed of habits
may be changed for others. And while the common customs of mankind
would seem to indicate that three or four meals a day is the rule,
at least among civilized nations, yet the facts are that the most
primitive people take one meal a day, and the great majority of people
in the world, as a rule, eat certainly less than three.
TWO MEALS A DAY THE BEST
Physiological facts argue for the two meal plan, or else for very light
and easily digested food, if an extra meal be taken.
Healthy digestion requires at least five hours for its completion,
and one hour for rest before another meal is taken. This makes six
hours necessary for the disposal of each meal. If food is taken at
shorter intervals than this, when ordinary food is eaten, the stomach
will be allowed no time for rest. Again, if a meal is taken before
the preceding meal has been digested and has left the stomach, a
portion remaining, one is likely to undergo fermentation, in spite of
the preserving influence of the gastric juice; thus the whole mass
of food will be rendered less fit for the nutrition of the body, and
the stomach itself will be likely to suffer injury from the acids
developed.
[Illustration: MR. UPTON SINCLAIR’S CHILDREN,
Well nourished on two meals a day.]
These facts make it plain why eating between meals is a gross breach
of the requirements of good digestion. The habit of nibbling at
confectionery, fruit, nuts, and other things between meals, is a
positive cause of dyspepsia. No stomach can long endure such usage.
There is a continual irritation of the mucous membrane of the stomach,
and a continual excitation of the glands, which, in the long run, work
great harm.
The same reasons which are advanced against the habit of eating between
meals fit the case of irregularity of meals. Those who have regular
duties, regular hours of work, should have regular meal hours. The
human system is continually forming habits, and seems in a great degree
dependent upon the performance of its functions in accordance with the
habits that are formed. This fact is especially observed in respect to
digestion. When meals are taken at regular times the stomach becomes
accustomed to receiving food at those times, and is prepared for it. If
meals are taken irregularly, the stomach is taken by surprise, so to
speak, and is never in that state of rest in which it should be for the
prompt and perfect performance of its functions. The habit which many
business and professional men form, in the stress of their occupations,
of allowing their meal hours to be intruded upon, at times depriving
themselves of a meal, will undermine the best digestion in the long
run. There is no physiologist who would not endorse the following words
of Kellogg: “Every individual ought to consider the hour for meals a
sacred one, not to be intruded upon under any ordinary circumstances.
Eating is a matter of too momentous importance to be interrupted or
delayed by ordinary matters of business or convenience. The habit of
regularity in eating should be cultivated.”
DON’T EAT BEFORE SLEEPING
The meal which most people would find it advantageous either to drop
altogether, or to reduce in quantity, is supper. The physiological
law which is now come to be recognized is, that the brain must be
active to insure good digestion; and that the stomach must be empty
to insure good sleep. That sense of drowsiness which so often follows
a hearty meal is not a physiological condition; it is not evidence of
a naturally sedative effect in eating; but is really an evidence of
indigestion. Those who practice eating before retiring often sleep
soundly until an hour or two after midnight, then awake, and find
difficulty in getting to sleep again. This is due to irritation of
the solar plexus set up by the labor of digesting under unfavorable
conditions. The lack of appetite for breakfast after a late supper is
evidence of the exhausted state of the stomach. Fruits and cereals are
the ideal supper rather than the ideal breakfast—though good at any
time!
DRINKING AT MEALS
It is nearly always the case that a hasty or over-hearty eater is also
in the habit of drinking copiously of water or other fluids at his
meals. He “washes his food down” instead of legitimately drinking.
The body, of course, needs liquid, but, as a rule, meal times are not
the times for the taking of this liquid supply; except for what is
contained in the food itself. The hasty eater thus associates two great
evils.
Liquid of any kind in large quantity is inimical to digestion, because
it delays the action of the gastric juice, and weakens its digestive
qualities, and also checks the secretion of saliva. In case the fluid
taken is very hot, as tea, coffee, cocoa, or a considerable quantity
of soup—it relaxes and weakens the stomach. On the other hand if it is
very cold, it checks digestion by cooling the contents of the stomach,
and reducing its temperature to a degree at which digestion cannot
proceed. Even a small quantity of cold water, ice cream, or other
very cold substance will create a serious disturbance if taken into a
stomach where food is undergoing digestion. The process of digestion
cannot be carried on at a temperature that is less than the body, which
is about one hundred.
The old notions about the processes of digestion were chiefly drawn
from the experiments of Dr. Beaumont made nearly a hundred years ago up
in Northern Michigan, around Mackinac; with a Canadian hunter, Alexis
St. Martin, as the subject. Most people have probably read of St.
Martin and Beaumont in the physiologies they studied in their school
days. Beaumont was a very capable physician, and a man of the truest
scientific spirit. It happened that through an accident he was given an
opportunity to make the most valuable contribution to the study of the
stomach of man that so far had been furnished by any investigator. The
hunter, St. Martin, had suffered a gunshot wound in his stomach, and
Beaumont kept him alive for years with the wound open so that he might
study the movements of the man’s interior organs. For the first time,
here was a human body with a window in it, so to speak, and through
this window the scientist patiently watched and studied for years.
Of course, however, the window gave only a limited view of what was
going on inside this particular house of life, and a great number of
Beaumont’s ideas and theories have been proven erroneous; nevertheless,
he obtained much important knowledge. When Dr. Beaumont peered through
that curious window which he made in the stomach of Alexis St. Martin,
he noticed that when the latter drank a glassful of water at the usual
temperature of freshly drawn well water, the temperature of the food
undergoing digestion fell immediately to 70. The process of digestion
was checked absolutely and did not resume until the body had regained
its proper temperature, which it did not do for more than half an hour.
Another way in which drinking at meals proves harmful is because of the
fact that particles of food not thoroughly masticated are washed from
the mouth into the stomach. If any drink at meals is taken at all, it
should be a few minutes before eating. Of course, sipping of a little
water will not be harmful, if care is taken not to sip at the time
when food is in the mouth. It will be found, however, that unless the
meal is composed of very dry foods, there will be little inclination
to drink at meals. When, however, the food is rendered either fiery or
irritating with spices, and other stimulating condiments, it is small
wonder that there is an imperious demand for water or liquid of any
kind to allay the irritation.
HOW THE BODY PRODUCES “APPETITE JUICE”
He who is really hungry, however, has no need of condiments, and
usually small relish for them.
The old saying that hunger is the best sauce is one of those proverbs
of the people which modern science is proving to be firmly established
on truth. No sauce can equal appetite. Experiments by Professor Pawlow
of St. Petersburg, Director of Department of Experimental Physiology
in the Imperial Literary School of Medicine, have shown that there is a
real “appetite juice” formed by the body when it is hungry.
Appetite, and hunger, are not synonymous terms with the mere
habit-craving for food which most people consider to be either appetite
or hunger. Real hunger, or appetite, only comes to the body when the
body has earned it. There must be an expenditure of tissue, which
the body requires to be repaired; or there must be a real need for
energy to carry on work before the body will manifest its need for
energy-supplying material. In other words, the body cares nothing
about our likes or dislikes, our whims or our fancies, in the nature
of food, save when it has a real need for food. Professor Chittenden
demonstrated that most people simply eat the entire round of meals from
mere habit. The disturbance when for any reason they miss one or two
meals from the accustomed routine is simply the outcry of a habit and
not the outcry of a real need. While Dr. Kellogg advises that no meal
be missed, yet he also strongly advises us not to eat unless really
hungry, merely drinking a little fruit juice or something of the kind
at the meal hour in order to keep up the normal action of the digestive
organs.
The digestive juice which is manufactured by the body when it is really
hungry and food has been given to it has been shown by Pawlow and
Hanecke to be the most important element in digestion. The chemical
juices produced in the stomach and intestines while food is in them is
of small importance and value compared with the juices that are formed
while food is being chewed when the body has a good appetite or is
really hungry.
This juice begins to flow at the very sight of food, and continues to
from three to five minutes after beginning mastication. The production
of juice in the stomach is stimulated by the contact of food with the
mouth, and only during that contact; so it is obvious that the longer
the food is held in the mouth, if it is held there in enjoyment, and
the more completely it is chewed, so long as chewing is accompanied
by taste, the more thoroughly are the flavors set free by the act of
chewing, and the higher becomes the stimulating effect of these flavors
upon the psychic centers which cause the appetite juice to flow into
the stomach.
These facts prove the dependence of gastric digestion, or stomach
digestion, upon mastication. Pawlow was experimenting with gastric
juice when he hit upon this demonstration; and he has concluded that
we cannot have gastric digestion at all well without thorough mouth
digestion; that the complete mastication of food, in other words, is
the thing necessary to prepare the stomach to receive the food. Thus,
if you chew your food well, the food will be predigested in the mouth,
and when it enters the stomach it will find already there waiting for
it not only enough gastric juice to digest it, but just the particular
kind of gastric juice that is needed.
Pawlow turned this discovery of his to a very practical use. He has
a dozen or more healthy dogs which he calls his Dog Dairy. From these
dogs he collects daily a quart or more of gastric juice, or appetite
juice; and the dogs produce this large quantity without taking a
particle of food into their stomachs. The juice is carefully filtered,
and bottled and shipped all over the world to those physicians who
are in touch with Pawlow and his work, and by them are administered
to human patients. It is given to those patients who are deficient in
gastric juice, and is used in very obstinate cases of indigestion.
Pawlow collects his juice by having openings made in the throat and
in the stomachs of the dogs. When the dogs are hungry they are given
food of kinds which they particularly like, and they are allowed to
smell the odor and to become excited over the prospect of eating it
before they are actually allowed to have it. With the first sight
and odor of this food, the dogs begin to secrete the appetite juice,
which flows from the opening made in their stomachs through tubes into
receptacles. Then when they begin to eat their food, the food does
not reach the stomach at all, but simply passes through the openings
in the throat into a receptacle before the dog, and the dog can go on
eating the same meal over and over again. They thus enjoy themselves
thoroughly for a long time. When the appetite juice ceases to flow, the
process of feeding them in this manner stops, and they are given a real
meal.
VIII
HEALTH AND THE MIND
This account of Professor Pawlow’s experiment leads directly to the
all important subject of the influence of mental states upon digestion
and assimilation. Dr. Saleeby has published a book called “Worry,
the Disease of the Age”—the very title of which shows the attitude
of physicians upon this question; and the bad opinion which mankind
has always entertained of such states of mind as “the blues” has
now been scientifically justified. The effects of pain and pleasure
upon digestion have been demonstrated by actual experiments in the
laboratory of the St. Petersburg professor.
A vivid account of these experiments has been given to the writers by
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, who witnessed them about a year ago. Dr. Kellogg
writes:
“Professor Pawlow took Professor Benedict and myself into a quiet
corner of his laboratory, and there we found a dog that had his
salivary glands or ducts arranged so that by means of little tubes
passing through the skin all the saliva, instead of passing down his
throat, passed out through the tubes and could be collected in small
glass bottles suspended beside his neck.
“The dog had been prepared beforehand by the attendant. Little empty
bottles were attached to the collecting tubes, and as soon as the dog
saw Pawlow, he seemed to be very happy, and wagged his tail, and his
eyes gave evidence of satisfaction; but there was no flow of saliva
until Professor Pawlow brought near to his nose a bottle containing
some powdered meat. He took out the cork in the presence of the dog,
turned out a little of it in his hand, shook it in the bottle and
brought it near to the dog’s nose. The dog began to sniff it, licked
his chops, snapped his jaws, reached out after it, and in less than two
minutes the saliva began to flow very profusely, and it was not more
than fifteen or twenty seconds before the saliva was pouring down into
the bottles.
“Professor Pawlow, then, after holding the bottle out before the dog
for about thirty seconds, put the stopper into it, and put it behind
him out of sight, and in a very few seconds the saliva ceased to flow.
Then he brought it back again, showed it to the dog, brought it near
his nose, allowed him to smell it but kept it just out of his reach all
the time, and the saliva poured out again freely. He continued this
until the dog finally made up his mind he was not going to get any
meat, and when the powder was brought near to him he paid no attention
to it, but turned his head around and looked very disappointed and very
ugly, and at that point, the saliva ceased to flow.
“That was a very remarkable thing to me. The meat was right there,
he could smell it, but he knew he was not going to get it, so he was
angry, and as his state of mind changed, the secretion of saliva was
wholly arrested. I was very much surprised. Of course, I believe
thoroughly in the importance of being in a happy state of mind when
eating, but I really did not appreciate thoroughly the importance of
those things; I did not fully appreciate how positive an inhibitor of
the activity of the salivary glands an unhappy state might be.
“But a common experiment made in India shows the same idea. When an
Anglo-Indian has lost anything of value, he has his whole family of
servants brought to him to find out which one has stolen it. A common
test is to stand them all up in a row, and then to give each one a
morsel of dry rice to chew. They must chew this rice for five minutes,
and then the master goes around and examines each man’s mouth. The
mouth which is dry is the mouth of the culprit, and the state of that
man’s mind has the effect of arresting the flow of saliva. Pawlow has
shown that this is a positive physiologic law and operates upon the
dogs as well as upon human beings.
“Another experiment astonished me even more than this. We followed
Pawlow down through a long narrow hall and upstairs into a room which
was small and secluded, in a very quiet part of the laboratory, remote
from any noisy occupation, and there we found a brown dog standing on a
high table. It was a delicate and very intelligent looking animal. The
attendant sat near by, and the dog was prepared as the other had been.
As we came in, the Professor beckoned to us to sit down on a little
bench beside the wall and indicated that we should be quiet. He stepped
up to the dog, looked at him, and the dog recognized him with a smile
in the dog’s way of smiling!—and presently the saliva began to flow.
“Professor Pawlow was very much surprised. We had come into the room
and he had offered the dog nothing, but the saliva was flowing.
That was contrary to his expectation. He looked with considerable
astonishment at the attendant. The attendant quietly said, ‘You have
been feeding meat to the other dog, and he smells the meat on your
hands.’
“The dog had such a keen sense of smell that the odor of meat on
Pawlow’s hands even at a distance of several feet was sufficient to
cause the saliva to flow. So he went out, washed his hands and came
back. At this time, not a drop of saliva was flowing. The arrangement
was such that every particle secreted must come outside of the mouth
into these bottles. While we were waiting in silence, watching the dog
quietly, suddenly the attendant pressed his foot without making any
motion of the body at all, upon a little lever beneath his toe and the
result was the causing of a high musical note to be sounded, a very
high pitched tone.
“Instantly, in less than three seconds, the saliva was flowing into the
tube. We waited a little while until the saliva ceased to flow, then
the note was sounded again. Instantly the saliva began to flow.
“Professor Pawlow has been experimenting upon this line for a long
time. Other experiments were made. One interesting experiment was with
a large number of dogs. He had upon one counter a long row of dogs,
about a dozen, which had their stomachs fixed in such a way, and their
throats fixed also in such a way, that upon the secretion of the
gastric juice in the stomach the juice would flow out into a flask.
“The dogs were suspended in a sort of harness. They had had their
throats fixed so that food instead of going into the stomach came out
at the throat. So as the dog ate the food, the food fell back into the
plate and the dog continued eating the same breakfast over and over.
These dogs had been eating the same breakfast for four hours, from six
to ten o’clock in the morning, and they were still eating, and just
as hungry as ever because there was no food entering their stomachs
at all and their appetites were growing keener every moment, and they
were having a wonderfully good time. I thought that some people I have
met might enjoy such an arrangement. This really has the same effect
without having your throat cut.
“I noticed that if these dogs got disgruntled, or tired, or
dissatisfied, then the gastric juice would cease to flow. Sometimes the
food, having been chewed a very long time, lost its flavor, and the
dogs secreted no more juice; then the attendant would come along and
put a little fresh food into the plate and the dogs would seize this
with great avidity, and the gastric juice would begin to flow again in
a perfect stream.
“These experiments have demonstrated in the most positive manner the
definite connection there is between psychic conditions and the process
of digestion, and have shown us that the food must be palatable, that
it must address the olfactory sense agreeably, and that the mind must
be in a happy state in order that the digestive process may proceed.”
And then Dr. Kellogg goes on to tell of the work of Professor Cannon,
of Harvard University, who actually has made visible the digestive
processes in the stomach by means of the X-ray. By feeding cats food
colored with certain substances which are impervious to the X-rays,
he was enabled to photograph all the actual movements of the organs
concerned in the acts of digestion. It was demonstrated that certain
emotions, such as anger and fear, positively stopped the whole process
of digestion.
Depressing thought will affect injuriously the circulation of the
blood; it will also affect the breathing. The mere attitude of the body
assumed by the despondent person has its bad influence. The head droops
in a melancholy fashion—and this very attitude prevents normal action
of the lungs and the blood veins. Depressing thoughts destroy the
appetite; and when the body does not receive its proper nourishment,
the blood becomes impoverished.
“Any severe anger or grief is almost certain to be succeeded by fever
in certain parts of Africa,” says Sir Samuel Baker, in the British and
Foreign Medico Chirurgical Review. “In many cases, I have seen reasons
for believing that cancer had its origin in prolonged anxiety,” says
Sir George Paget, in his “Lectures.” “The vast majority of the cases
of cancer, especially of breast or uterine cancer, are probably due
to mental anxiety,” says Dr. Snow, in the London _Lancet_. “Diabetes
from a sudden mental shock is a true, pure type of physical malady of
mental origin,” says Sir B. W. Richardson in “Discourses.” “I have been
surprised how often patients with primary cancer of the liver lay the
cause of this ill health to protracted grief or anxiety. The cases have
been far too numerous to be accounted for as mere coincidences,” says
Murchison.
“Eruptions on the skin will follow excessive mental strain. In all
these and in cancer, epilepsy and mania from mental causes there is a
predisposition. It is remarkable how little the question of physical
disease from mental influence has been studied,” says Sir B. W.
Richardson.