OVEREATING.
All agree that excessive indulgence in alcoholics is harmful physically,
mentally and morally. We condemn the too free use of tea and coffee and
nearly all other excesses. However, intemperate eating is considered
respectable. A large part of our social life consists in partaking of
too much food.
Medical text-books say that we must eat great quantities of food to
maintain strength and health. Humanity views the subject of eating from
the wrong angle, and it will perhaps be many years before the majority
gets the right point of view. We should eat to live, but most of us eat
to die. Benjamin Franklin said that we dig our graves with our teeth.
Men and women band themselves into societies and associations for the
purpose of decreasing or doing away with the use of tobacco and
alcoholic drinks. They advocate temperance and even abstinence in the
use of those things which do not appeal to their own senses; but most of
them are far from temperate in their eating. They have very keen vision
when searching for weaknesses and faults in others, but are quite
near-sighted regarding their own.
Is excessive indulgence in liquor any worse than overeating? Not
according to nature's answer. The inebriate deteriorates and so does the
glutton. Both cause race deterioration. Gluttony is more common than
inebriety and is responsible for more ills. Gluttony is often the cause
of the tea, coffee, alcohol and drug habits. Overeating often causes so
much irritation that food does not satisfy the cravings, and then drugs
are used.
Improper eating, chiefly overeating, causes most of the ills to which
man is heir. If people would learn to be moderate in all things disease
and early death would be very rare.
It is quite important to combine foods properly, but the worst
combinations of food eaten in moderation are harmless, as compared to
the damage done by overeating of the best foods. Overeating is with us
from the cradle to the grave. It shortens our days and fills them with
woe.
There is a hoary belief that a pregnant woman must eat for two. The
mothers have generally obeyed this dictum. The result is that women
suffer greatly during pregnancy and at childbirth. The morning sickness,
the aching back, the headache, the swollen legs and all of the
discomforts and diseases from which civilized woman suffers during this
period are mostly due to improper eating. Pregnancy and childbirth are
physiologic and are devoid of any great amount of discomfort, pain or
danger when women lead normal lives.
The overeating affects both mother and child. The mothers are often
injured or lose their lives during childbirth. Sometimes labor is so
protracted that the child dies and at other times the baby is so large
that it can not be born naturally. The mother's suffering is frequently
very great. In fact, it is at times so great that it is like a
threatening storm cloud to many women, and some of them refuse to become
mothers for this reason.
Babies born of normal mothers, who have lived moderately on a
non-stimulating diet during gestation, are small. They rarely weigh more
than six pounds. Their bones are flexible. The skull can easily be
moulded because the bones are very cartilaginous. The result is that
childbirth is rapid and practically devoid of pain. However, there are
very few normal mothers, and consequently normal babies are also rare.
A heavy baby is never healthy. Its growth has been forced by excessive
maternal feeding. It is no hardier than other growing things which
result from hot-house methods. Such babies show early signs of catarrhal
afflictions, indigestion or skin disease. Their bodies are filled with
poisons before they are born.
Mothers who overeat invariably overfeed their babies. And why should
they do otherwise? Family, friends and physicians give the same advice:
The mother must eat much to be able to feed the child, and the child
must be fed frequently in order to grow. It sounds very plausible, but
it does not work well in practice.
Why are babies cross? Why do they soon show catarrhal symptoms? Why do
they vomit so much? Why are they so subject to stomach and intestinal
disorders? Why do they have skin eruptions? Because they are overfed.
The diseases of babies are almost entirely of digestive origin, and in
nearly every instance overfeeding is the cause. Statistics show that
about one-fifth of the babies born die before they are one year old. In
nearly every instance the parents are to blame. One's intentions may be
good, but good intentions coupled with wrong actions are deadly to
infants. Oscar Wilde wrote, "We kill the thing we love." Parental love
too often takes the form of indulging them and so it happens that
hundreds of thousands of little ones are placed in their coffins
annually through love.
Each year about 280,000 babies under one year of age perish in the
United States, according to estimates based on census figures. Outside
of accidental deaths, which are but a small per cent., the mortality
should be practically nil. It is natural for children to be well, and
healthy children do not die. If an army of about 280,000 of our men and
women were to perish in a spectacular manner each year it would cause
such sorrow and indignation that a remedy would soon be found. But we
are so accustomed to the procession of little caskets to the grave that
it hardly arouses comment. It costs too much in every way to produce
life to waste it so lavishly.
Why do little children suffer so much from eruptive diseases, whooping
cough, tonsilitis, adenoids, diphtheria and numerous other diseases?
Because they are overfed. The younger the child the greater is the per
cent. of disease due to wrong feeding. In adult life overeating and
eating improperly otherwise are still the principal causes of disease.
But during adult life the causation of disease is more complex than in
childhood, for the senses have been more fully developed and instead of
confining our physical sins to overeating we fall prey to the abuse of
various appetites and passions.
Vigorous adults are often the victims of pneumonia, typhoid fever and
tuberculosis. Overeating is chiefly to blame, not the bacteria which are
given as the principal cause.
Rheumatism, kidney disease and diseases that manifest in hardening of
the various tissues, all being forms of degeneration, are quite common.
Again, the principal cause is overeating.
There are a great number of people who live many years without any
special disease, but who are always on the brink of being ill. They are
full-blooded and too corpulent. Although they are often considered
successful, they are never fully efficient either physically or
mentally. They do not know what good health is, but they are so
accustomed to their state of toleration that they consider themselves
healthy. They are rather proud of their stoutness and their friends
mistake their precarious condition for health. These people often die
suddenly, and friends and acquaintances are very much surprised. No
healthy man dies suddenly and unexpectedly except by accident.
Instead of growing old gracefully, in possession of our senses and
faculties, we die prematurely or go into physical and mental decay.
Bleary eyes, pettiness, childishness and lost mental faculties are no
part of nature's plan for advanced years. Those manifestations result
from man's improvement on nature!
From birth to death we are victims of this terrible ogre of overeating.
It deprives us of friends and relatives. It takes away our strength and
health. It makes us mentally inefficient and cowardly. At last it
deprives us of life when our work is not half done and our days should
not be half run.
How is it possible, you may ask, that this is true? Of course,
overeating is not the only cause, but it is the overwhelming one. It is
the basic cause. Aided by other bad habits it conquers us. We are what
we are because of our parentage, plus what we eat, drink, breathe and
think, and the eating largely influences the other factors of life.
Cholera infantum causes the death of many babies. It never occurs in
babies who are fed moderately on natural, clean food, not to exceed
three or four times a day. The child is cross. The mother thinks that it
is cross because it is hungry and accordingly feeds. The real cause of
the irritability is the overfeeding that has already taken place. The
baby has had so much milk that it is unable to digest all of it. A part
of the milk spoils in the digestive tract. This fermented material is
partly absorbed and irritates the whole system. A part of it remains in
the alimentary tract where it acts as a direct local irritant to the
intestines. When these are irritated, the blood-vessels begin to pour
out their serum to soothe the bowels and the result is diarrhea. The
sick child is fed often. Digestive power is practically absent. The
additional food given ferments and more serum has to be thrown out to
protect the intestinal walls. Soon there is a well established case of
cholera infantum.
If only enough food had been given to satisfy bodily requirements, none
of the milk would have spoiled in the alimentary tract. If all feeding
had been stopped as soon as the child became irritable and pinched
looking about the mouth and nose, and all the water desired had been
given and the child kept warm, there would have been no serious disease.
In these cases, the less food given the quicker the recoveries and the
fewer the fatalities.
Another common disease of childhood is adenoids. To talk of these
maladies as diseases is rather misleading, for they are merely symptoms
of perverted nutrition, but we are compelled to make the best of our
medical language.
Adenoids are due to indigestion. The indigestion is due to overeating.
This is how it comes about: A child eats more than can be digested,
generally bolting the food, which is often of a mushy character. The
excessive amount of food can not be digested, and as the intestines and
the stomach are moist and have a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit,
fermentation soon takes place. Some of the results of fermentation in
the alimentary tract are acids, gases and bacterial poisons. These
deleterious substances are absorbed into the blood stream and go to all
parts of the body, acting as irritants. We do not know why they cause
adenoids in one child and catarrh in another. It is easy enough to say
that children are predisposed that way, which is no information at all.
It seems that all of us have some weak point, and here disease has a
tendency to localize. What part the sympathetic nervous system plays, we
do not know. Glandular tissue is rather unstable and therefore it
becomes diseased easily and adenoids are therefore quite frequent.
A coated tongue, or an irritated tongue, both due to indigestion, is a
concomitant of adenoids. Such diseases do not merely happen. There are
good reasons for their appearance. They are not reflections on the
child, but they are on the parents who should have the right knowledge
and should take time and pains enough to educate and train the child
into health.
Tuberculosis is one of the results of ruined nutrition. First there is
overeating. This causes indigestion. The irritating products of food
fermenting in the alimentary tract are taken up by the blood. The blood
goes to the lungs where it irritates the delicate mucous membrane. In
self-protection it begins to secrete an excess of mucus and if the
irritation is great enough, pus. The various bacteria are incidental.
The tubercular bacillus is never able to gain a foothold in healthy
lungs, but after degeneration of lung-tissue has taken place the lungs
furnish a splendid home for this bacillus. The tubercular bacillus is a
scavenger and therefore does not thrive in healthy bodies. It is the
result of disease, not the cause.
Tubercular subjects never have healthy digestive organs. Unfortunately,
nearly all of them are persuaded to eat many times more food than they
can digest, and thus they have no opportunity to recover, for the
overfeeding ruins the digestive and assimilative powers beyond
recuperative ability. A large per cent. of the human race perish
miserably from this disease, which results principally from the
ingestion of too much food. The liberal use of such devitalized foods as
sterilized milk, refined sugar and finely bolted wheat flour is
doubtless a great factor in so reducing bodily resistance that the
system falls an easy prey to disease. Too little breathing and poor,
devitalized air are also important factors.
There are many causes of rheumatism, but overeating is the chief and it
is very doubtful if a case of rheumatism can develop without this main
cause. Exposure is often given as the cause, but a healthy man with a
clean body does not become rheumatic.
Rheumatism is due to internal filth. A filthy alimentary tract makes
filthy blood. Some say that the poison in rheumatism is uric acid, and
perhaps it is, but there are no uric acid deposits in the body of a
prudent eater. The elimination in this disease is imperfect. The skin,
the kidneys, the bowels and the lungs do not throw out the debris as
they should. Perhaps only one or two of these organs are acting
inadequately. The debris is stored up in the system.
Why do the organs of elimination fail to act? Because so much work is
thrust upon them that they grow weary and worn; also, a part of the
material furnished them is the product of decay in the alimentary tract,
and they can not thrive on poor material. Too much food is eaten. An
excess of nutritive material, poorly digested, is absorbed. And so we
come back to the principal cause, overeating.
When the eliminative organs fail to perform their function, the waste is
deposited in those parts of the body which are weakened. The irritation
from these foreign substances causes inflammation and the result is
pain. The extent to which this depositing of material will go is well
illustrated in some cases of multiple articular rheumatism, or arthritis
deformans, where the deposits are so great that many of the joints
become fixed (anchylosed).
We could review all the diseases, and nearly every time we would come
back to disturbed nutrition as the principal factor, and this is true of
not only physical ills, but the mental ones as well.
Various foods do not combine well, still if they are eaten in moderation
they do but little harm. If we overeat, the evil results are bound to
manifest, no matter how good the food, though it sometimes takes years
before they are perceptible. The effects are cumulative. Each day there
is a little fermentation with absorption of the poisonous products. Each
day the body degenerates a little. The time always comes when the body
can continue its work no longer, and then the individual must choose
between reform on one hand and suffering or death on the other.
It is very difficult to convince people that they eat too much. Indeed,
the average person is a small eater, in his own estimation. We have been
educated into consuming such vast quantities of food that we hardly know
what moderation is. In the past, physiologists and observers have
watched the amount of food that people could coax down and this they
have called the normal amount of food. This is far from the truth. The
average American eats at least two times as much as he can digest,
assimilate and use to advantage. Many eat three and four times too much.
However, nature is very tolerant for a while. Most of us start out with
a fair amount of resistance and are thus enabled to live to the age of
forty or fifty in spite of abuses. If we could only dispense with our
excesses, we could double or treble our life span, live better, get more
enjoyment out of life and give the world more and better work than we
can under present conditions.
There is much talk of food shortage. The amount of food consumed and
wasted annually in the United States is enough to feed 200,000,000
people. Even with our present knowledge we can easily produce twice as
much per acre as we are averaging, and we are tilling only about
one-fourth of the land that could be made productive. If we use our
brains there is little danger of starving. What is needed now is not
more food, but intelligent distribution and consumption of what we
produce.
We hear of cases of undernourishment. This doubtless occurs at times in
the congested parts of great centers of populations. But there are not
so many cases suffering from want of the proper quantity of food as from
want of quality of food. Bread of finely bolted white flour is
starvation food, no matter how great the quantity, unless other food
rich in organic salts is also eaten.
The overeating habit is so common and comes on so insidiously that the
sufferers do not realize that they are eating to excess. The resultant
discomforts are blamed on other things. Babies are fed every two hours
or oftener. They should be fed but three or at most four times a day,
and never at night. When able to eat solid foods they get three meals a
day and generally two or more lunches. Some children seem to be lunching
at all times. They have fruit or bread and butter with jelly or jam in
the hand almost all the time. They are encouraged to eat much and often
to produce growth and strength. This kind of feeding often does produce
large children, heavy in weight, but they are not healthy. Sad to
relate, the excess causes disease and death.
Such frequent feeding allows the digestive organs no rest. The overwork
imposed upon them and the fermentation cause irritation. This irritation
manifests in a constant and almost irresistible desire for food, as does
the consumption of much alcohol cause a desire for more alcohol, as the
use of morphine or cocaine produces a dominating and ruinous appetite
for more of these drugs. These appetites grow by what they feed upon.
Man ceases to be master and becomes the abject slave of his abnormal
cravings.
Slaves of alcohol and the various habit-forming drugs generally lack the
strength of body and mind to assert themselves and to regain mastery of
themselves. Coffee and tea have their victims, though they are generally
not very firmly enslaved. No one realizes how he is bound by his
cravings for an excessive amount of food until he tries to break the
bonds. Such people may eat moderately for days, perhaps for weeks, and
then the old appetite reasserts itself in all its strength and unless
the sufferer has a very strong will a food debauch follows. I have seen
men go from one restaurant to another, consuming enormous quantities of
food to efface the awful craving, just as men go from one saloon to
another to satisfy their desire for alcohol. The gluttons often look
with the greatest contempt upon the slaves of liquor. But what is the
difference? No matter what appetite, what habit, what passion has gained
the mastery, we are slaves. The important thing is to keep out of
slavery, or break the bonds and regain freedom.
Those who eat to excess often eat more than three times a day. They take
a little candy now, a little fruit then, or they go to the drug store
for a glass of malted milk or buttermilk, which they call drinks, or
they take a dish of ice cream. The housewife nibbles at cake or bread.
If a person is in fair health and wishes to evolve into self-mastery and
good health, he should make up his mind never to eat more than three
times a day. Nothing but plain water should enter his mouth except at
meal times.
Next he should limit the number of articles eaten at a meal. The
breakfast and lunch should each consist of no more than two or three
varieties of food. The dinner should not exceed five or six varieties,
and if that many are eaten, they should be compatible. Less would be
better. The less variety we have, the better the food digests. Also,
eating ten or twelve or more kinds of food, as many people do, always
leads to overeating. A little of this added to a little of that soon
makes a too great total. It is easy to eat all one should of a certain
article of food and feel satisfied, and then change off to something
else and before one is through one has eaten three or four times as much
as necessary. If the meal is to consist of starch there is no great
objection to a small amount of bread, potatoes, rice, macaroni and
chestnuts. However, a normal person does not need to coax food down by
using great variety. Those who mix their foods this way invariably
overeat. Besides, the various starches require different periods for
digestion. Rice is more easily disposed of than bread. Each new item
stimulates the desire for more food. It is best, when having potatoes,
to have no other starchy food in that meal; or when bread is eaten, to
have no potatoes or other starchy food. The habit of eating meat,
potatoes and bread in the same meal is very common and causes much
disease.
Next the searcher for health should teach himself to eat foods that are
natural, cooked simply, and with a minimum amount of seasoning and
dressing. The various spices and sauces irritate the digestive organs
and create a craving for an excessive amount of food. The food should be
changed as little as possible because such denatured foods as white
flour, polished rice, pasteurized milk, and many of the canned fruits
and vegetables are so lacking in the natural salts that they do not
satisfy one's desire for organic salts. Overeating results.
Preserves, jellies and jams are open to the same objection. They cause
an abnormal desire for food. Therefore, they should be used seldom and
very sparingly. So long as apples, oranges, figs, dates, raisins, sweet
prunes and various other fruits can be had, there is no excuse for the
consumption of great quantities of the heavily sugared concoctions which
are now so popular.
Simplicity and naturalness are great aids in breaking away from food
slavery. They are discussed more fully elsewhere. In the next chapter
will be found hints on the solution of the normal amount of food to be
eaten.