This is an age of seeking after health, and many and various are the means
proffered to that end. Drugs, serums, medical and surgical appliances,
baths, waters, fearfully and wonderfully conceived methods of exercise,
rigid and drastic schemes of dieting, &c., &c., crowd upon each other's
heels until the prevailing idea in the mind of any one seeking to solve the
health problem is one of hopeless mystification. Life would be too short to
give them all a fair trial, even if any one could be found either foolish or
courageous enough to attempt the task (I believe some _do_ try
everything by turns but nothing long), so one is driven perforce to make a
selection; and while dismissing nine-tenths of the nostrums urged upon us as
unworthy of any sane and rational consideration, we know the truth lies
somewhere, and will be found by those who seek it on simple, common-sense
lines. Doctors differ like the rest of us, but there is a broad general
ground of agreement upon which we can all go, namely, that cleanliness, in
its widest sense, including pure air, food, and water; plain,
easily-digested, nourishing food; with rest and exercise in proper
proportion, are the main essentials for right living, and so furnish the key
to the problem. No one of these is of itself sufficient. All are necessary
and inter-dependent, and it is the want of recognising this principle which
so often leads to failure and consequent abandonment, or even wholesale
denunciation, of the regimen followed. Thus a person may be advised to
adopt certain foods, the rules and regulations regarding which he follows to
the letter, but acts unhygienically in other ways, as by shutting out the
fresh air, inattention to cleanliness, over-exertion or want of sufficient
exercise, eating when exhausted, and so on. The food, at least if it has
gone in any way against the inclination or prejudice, will of course be
blamed, while really it may be quite innocent.
One might multiply instances to show how so many not only fail to find
health by their unreasonable methods, but bring ridicule and disrepute on
certain of the measures followed. There is no need to waste further time,
however, in demonstrating the obvious. One would hope that all readers are
genuinely interested in health principles, and sufficiently in earnest to
promote these intelligently.
Our business in these pages lies with the food question, and
in this chapter I purpose to deal specially with
Health Foods,
of which there are a large and ever-increasing number now upon the market.
How people can complain of want of variety with such a seemingly endless
category to choose from passes my comprehension, for the difficulty I find
is to do justice to even a small proportion of them. If one were to sample
a different dish every day it would take months to get over them, and great
as is the outcry in these days for variety, I do not think this constant
chopping and changing by any means desirable. As I have been at some pains
to find out a number of really reliable Health Foods, and can speak of these
from personal experience, the information given in this chapter may serve as
a guide to their selection, and save considerable time and trouble. I may
say that I am indebted to a number of friends and others with whom I am in
correspondence for the benefit of their experience, as well as my own. It
is always good to have as wide a consensus of opinion as possible, for one
finds that tastes and ideas regarding the merit of the several articles vary
with the individual, and with the conditions under which used.
It is difficult to know where to begin when so much claims attention.
Perhaps the class of foods which have come most largely into the public eye
of late years are the so-called
Breakfast Foods,
consisting generally of cereals, pro-digested or so treated as to be easy of
digestion. Several of these, such as Shredded Wheat Biscuits, have
been frequently referred to in different parts of the book, so that no
further words are needed to commend them. If any are sceptical, or even
curious, regarding "what they are," a demonstration recently described by a
Manchester friend might serve to reassure them. It was quite on the
American "pig and sausage" lines, for one saw the whole wheat grain going in
at one part of a machine and coming out at another in the form of a
"Triscuit" ready for use.