NECESSITY FOR VARIETY IN FOOD.
Let no one believe that it is from mere daintiness that man is
fastidious in regard to food, and that he lives on a great variety of
victuals.
The human body is the transformed food which he has eaten. It is quite
correct that man can live on bread and water a long time; but man's
nature is so varied, his qualities are of such numerous kinds; his
character, his impulses and passions, his wishes and desires, his
thoughts and labors, are so infinitely varified and so much exposed to
change, that man's body, the bearer of all these elements, must also be
formed from material of the most diversified kind.
It is a common observation that animals which take uniform food are very
much poorer in mind than those animals that feed upon richer and more
various kinds of food. Nay, it has even been proved that the character,
the whole nature of an animal may be completely changed by its food.
Very properly, therefore, does the genial naturalist, Moleschott, begin
his excellent treatise, "Our Articles of Food," with the following
words: "Food has made the wild-cat our house-cat;" thus showing that
food may completely change the character of an animal, and more, it may
even change the animal's body. And if civilized man is a being of a
higher order, more spiritual and more intellectual than the savage, we
can ascribe it to no other cause than the impulse his food gives him,
not to sink down to the savage, but, by varying his food as much as
possible, to bestow upon his body many superior qualities.
Nature herself has undeniably impressed upon man, that she wishes him to
take nourishment of different kinds.
Those animals that live upon plants, and such as feed solely on meat,
are entirely different from each other in regard to their bodies. The
teeth of the former, the herbivorous, are broad and flat on the top,
like our molar teeth. They serve to crush vegetable fibres and to chew
the cells which contain the nutritive element; while the other class,
the carnivorous, have but pointed teeth, like our eye-teeth, to tear
their food asunder. The stomach of the herbivorous is also different; it
comprises several divisions which have various functions. For blood is
not so readily obtained from vegetable as from animal food, which itself
contains ready-made blood. Herbivorous animals are for the greater part
ruminators, that is, their food passes from the first division of the
stomach back into the mouth, where it is masticated a second time; this
is called "ruminating." With the carnivorous this is not the case.
Finally, the intestines of the herbivorous are long, because there the
final change of the food into blood takes place; a process requiring
more time with vegetable food than with animal. For the same reason the
intestines of the carnivorous are short, the blood to be formed being
already present there.
Considering the fact that man has sharp teeth in front, at both sides
pointed teeth, and in the rear of them molars; that his stomach is
adapted to the digestion of both vegetable and animal food, and that his
intestine is so constituted as to be able to digest and change into
blood both kinds, we can no longer entertain any doubt that nature
herself bids him to change his food constantly, and to take in such as
is of the most varied kind. If, in addition to that, we recollect that
exclusive animal food renders an animal wild, quick, and sly, while
vegetable food makes it tame, enduring, and slow in mind, it will not
be denied that food exercises great influence upon the nature of a
being, and it will now be readily understood that it would be a sin, if
man were to be forced to take uniform nourishment.
The example of the cat is very instructive; it teaches us that change of
food has transformed her into another being, mentally as well as bodily.
The wild-cat has short intestines and is an animal of prey; the tame cat
has long intestines, and betrays her old character only now and then by
cunning and slyness. We also learn from this, that variety of food
produces variety of bodily and mental qualities; and lastly, it may be
inferred that nature, having fitted man for this variety and given him
such diversity of mental capacities, wishes also that his food be well
selected and of the greatest variety.
These short remarks enable us to pass to the principal dishes
themselves; first to those constituting the principal meal of the day,
the dinner, for which very justly the greatest variety of food is
chosen.