"Of right choice food are his meals, I ween."
Now as to what you should eat, what you should not eat, and how you
should eat. This is perhaps the greatest problem for a man to solve. A
man with a bad digestive apparatus is practically an invalid. We have no
hesitation in saying that there is as much bodily injury done by over
and careless eating among people commonly called temperate as among
those who drink alcoholic liquors to a large extent. If you would
preserve your vital strength and capabilities for a happy, long period,
mind your diet. Don't rest too much on the insane idea that you have a
_stomach_ of _iron_ and that you can digest shingle nails. You are not a
species of the genus ostrich, or goat. Then if you really do possess
organs that can take care of all kinds of food, their splendid power
should not be destroyed or even weakened by improper indulgence. The
mightiest engine is soon as valueless as old iron if it is continually
exerted to its greatest velocity. If inanimate mechanism cannot stand a
permanent strain surely bodily flesh would be quickly disabled.
Some foods are particularly muscle formers, others produce fat, and
still others brain and nerve, while most of the common articles of diet
combine these uses in varying degrees.
But the question to cover our entire physical needs requires to be
broadened into this: What combination of food will best nourish the
body? Even then the answer must be modified to suit individual cases,
for the digestive power differs greatly in different persons. Moreover,
there is an interdependence between the different bodily organs and
tissues, so that the body must be built up as a whole. If one part lacks
the whole suffers, and if one part is overfed the others will be
underfed.
Thus a person who becomes unduly fat loses in muscular fiber, either in
quantity or quality. One who overfeeds the brain loses in muscular
strength. So, too, muscular development may be carried to such excess as
to impoverish the brain, and also to reduce the fat of the body below
what is necessary both as surplus food laid up for emergencies, and as a
protection against sudden changes of temperature.
The best food for producing muscle, therefore, must, while being duly
appetizing, contain a large per cent of nitrates for the muscles, of
phosphates for the brain and nerves, and of carbonates for the fat.
Of nitrates, beans stand at 24 per cent, then peas at 22, cabbage and
salmon at 20, oats at 17, eggs and veal at 16, and beef at 15.
Of phosphates, salmon stands first at 7, then codfish at 6, beef and
eggs at 5, beans and veal at 4, and cabbage, peas, and oats at 3.
Of carbonates, butter stands at the head at 100, rice at 80, corn and
rye at 72, wheat at 69, oats at 66, peas at 60, beans at 57, and cabbage
at 46.
Fresh codfish fried in fat or served with butter gravy about equals beef
in all respects, and so do eggs fried in fat. But we must add:--
The mere eating of food cannot make muscle. The muscles must be called
into vigorous daily exercise, yet without overdoing.
Excessive eating is weakening, and must be avoided. It is the amount
digested and assimilated that tells, not the quantity taken into the
stomach.
All the laws of health must be steadily observed. We are in favor of a
diet that excludes meat entirely; and once a day should be the excess of
those who indulge in the flesh-eating luxury. A suspicion that there is
a difference between merely getting food down into the stomach and its
digestion, is abroad, and that a peach, an orange, an apple, a spoonful
of flour, or something similar, which is digested, is really better for
a man than a beefsteak, which simply passes through the alimentary
canal. See "Food" for further consideration of vegetarianism.
For _breakfast_ have any of the numerous preparations of _mush_, such as
oatmeal, cracked wheat, and germea, every other day some kind of fish;
of the miscellaneous, potatoes baked or boiled, eggs poached, boiled, or
omelette, and natural fruit; of drinks, water, filtered or boiled, and
not below 56 degrees Fahr., milk, pure and sweet but not cream, cocoa,
chocolate, tea, or coffee. These are good and beneficial in the order
they are placed. The following from the N. Y. _Medical Record_ is
invaluable information:--
"Stimulants (drink most healthful).--Milk heated to much above 100
degrees Fahrenheit loses for a time a degree of its sweetness and
density. No one who, fatigued by over-exertion of body or mind, has ever
experienced the reviving influence of a tumbler of this beverage, heated
as warm as it can be sipped, will willingly forego a resort to it
because of its being rendered somewhat less acceptable to the palate.
The promptness with which its cordial influence is felt is indeed
surprising. Some portion of it seems to be digested and appropriated
almost immediately, and many who now fancy they need alcoholic
stimulants when exhausted by fatigue will find in this simple draught an
equivalent that will be abundantly satisfying and far more enduring in
its effects. There is many an ignorant overworked woman who fancies she
could not keep up without her beer; she mistakes its momentary
exhilaration for strength, and applies the whip instead of nourishment
to her poor, exhausted frame. Any honest, intelligent physician will
tell her that there is more real strength and nourishment in a slice of
bread than in a quart of beer; but if she loves stimulants it would be a
very useless piece of information. It is claimed that some of the lady
clerks in our own city, and those too who are employed in respectable
business houses, are in the habit of ordering ale or beer at the
restaurants. They probably claim that they are 'tired,' and no one who
sees their faithful devotion to customers all day will doubt their
assertions. But they should not mistake beer for a blessing or stimulus
for strength. A careful examination of statistics will prove that men
and women who do not drink can endure more hardships, and do more work,
and live longer, than those less temperate."
If you must eat meat for breakfast, have your _steak rare_, mutton chops
well done; if fish, always well done; and if each are fried, use butter,
not lard--the same applies to everything else that has to be fried. All
meats are sweeter and more healthful broiled than fried. Of bread, for
health, natural _graham_ comes first; and, in order of nutrition, corn,
corn and wheat mixed, rye, and wheat. They should be taken cold and at
least twenty-four hours after baking. If the midday meal is a lunch, all
dishes should be cold. It can be made up largely from dishes left over
from the morning meal, such as cold cracked wheat with milk, natural
fruit; add nuts, sauces, jellies, and prepared fruit.
If _dinner_ is taken at noon instead of lunch at that hour, any one of
the score of vegetable soups are first in value; all other kinds are
secondary; let there be from three to six kinds of vegetables cooked;
any of the drinks mentioned for breakfast may be used, but none of them
iced; cold bread, and no pastry unless an open pie with unshortened
undercrust. An excellent morsel for _dyspeptics_ is _sea biscuit_ dipped
in cold water and then placed in a hot oven from three to five minutes.
If meat is to be a portion of this meal, you can have beef, mutton, or
venison, roasted or broiled, the former rare, and the two latter well
done. Provided dinner is enjoyed at the close of the day, it should
occur before 5:30 P. M.; if at midday, then the lunch meal can be
renamed supper, and can be partaken of as late as 6 or 7 P. M. Let there
be no eating two meals for Sundays and holidays, and three for other
days, or indulging in them at later hours in the morning and earlier in
the evening; for this irregularity will detriment more than many kinds
of improper food.
Do not eat _fresh pork_, for this and every other kind of swine flesh is
an abomination. Eat no _kidney_, _liver_, or _tripe_; deal sparingly
with _fowl_ and all the bird family. Outside impure water and
uncleanliness, there can be but one cause for _skin diseases_, eczema,
boils, and the dread leprosy, which is the eating of pork, kidney,
liver, duck, etc. If the lion indiscriminately kills and eats all kinds
of flesh, and thereby is made ferocious, if the lamb is rendered passive
and inoffensive by grasses and grains, then what the swine or different
domestic fowls eat must have something to do with the make-up of the
flesh of their bodies. The hog is the most filthy animal of that nature,
while chicken and duck are the most so in the line of fowls used by man
for food. It is offensive but true that they will not only _eat_ but
relish both their own and man's _excrement_.
We cannot use space foolishly, if we show plainly why pork should be
abandoned. Did you ever stop to think on what most _swine_ live? _Swill_
is the most common term for it. Anything and everything that is the
refuse of a boarding-house will they eagerly devour. Give them _rotten_
apples and potatoes, full of innumerable microbes, and they will relish
the repast. Place them in a dung heap--they will root, and eat much of
what they find. Now all meat, all flesh and tissue, is made from what an
animal or person eats--if he doesn't eat he grows thin and starves. Then
the hog's flesh is made from elements derived from swill, decayed
substances, and everything either cooked, uncooked, or even digested,
that man is through with or has cast off. You who eat pork relish that
which once you have refused to eat--only in another form. Can you enjoy
this meat when you consider all this? Surely its use means bad health
and contamination. Skin diseases and _poor complexions_ are found almost
entirely among those who live on these improper foods. Again, even if
you feed swine on clean corn, milk, and water, we ascertain by careful
experiment and examination that pork is most susceptible to bacteria of
almost any meat. Better boycott it altogether. _Leprosy_ and skin
troubles are found largely among pork-eating people--such as the
inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands, where there are 749 lepers. On the
other hand, Jews, who everywhere are marked with clear skins, avoid
pork. In Constantinople there are 250 lepers, in Crete upwards of 3,000,
and quantities in the islands of eastern Mediterranean Sea, and 1,000 in
Norway. These places are all characterized by the great amount of pork,
and duck too, that they consume.
Other things not good for _invalids_, and will make strong persons
invalids, are: Fried potatoes, hot cakes, warm bread, pound cake, green
cucumbers, and rich pie-crust. Eat only those things that will excite
the salivary glands to assist digestion. The walls, not the center of
the alimentary canal, need attention.
Have your _soup cool_ enough so that it will not cause tears in your
eyes when you swallow--same with your coffee, tea, and other warm
drinks; take no _ice drinks_; if you are used to having water only with
your meals, drink it warm with sugar and milk, and _not hot_. If you are
obliged to live in a second-class boarding-house or restaurant, and are
obliged to take one of three meals each day at such a place, insist on
having a _napkin_. Use it first to wipe your glass for water, then
follow by polishing every utensil set before you for use at your meal.
If note is taken of the napkin before and after each meal, you will be
able by a mathematical calculation to tell just how much _real estate_
did not belong to you.
How you should eat: Begin with one swallow of cool water. Eat slowly;
take full 20 minutes for a hurried meal, and 45 minutes when you have
the time. If you eat beefsteak, have it rare; if mutton chops, have them
well done; if _fish_, well done and brown; if potatoes, first choice,
baked; second, boiled; third, stewed or mashed. Never eat decayed
vegetables or fruit; have them fresh or do without them. At table, see
that the conversation is pleasant and mirthful. Should any of the
younger members of the family insist, at each meal, in changing this
order of things, cause them for a short season to sit at a separate
table in the kitchen, until this sort of disease--for disease it is--may
be cured. Nothing retards digestion, brings dyspepsia, or creates
neuralgia, to such extent as a sullen disposition. We will end this
chapter with a remarkably bright paraphrase on the ten commandments,
which we recently ran across:--
THE TEN HEALTH COMMANDMENTS.
"1. Thou shalt have no other food than at meal-time.
"2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any pies, or put into pastry the
likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or in the waters under
the earth. Thou shalt not fall to eating it or trying to digest it. For
the dyspepsia will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth
generation of them that eat pie; and long life and vigor upon those that
live prudently and keep the laws of health.
"3. Remember thy bread to bake it well; for he will not be kept sound
that eateth his bread as dough.
"4. Thou shalt not indulge sorrow or borrow anxiety in vain.
"5. Six days shalt thou wash and keep thyself clean, and the seventh
thou shalt take a great bath; thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and
thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the stranger that is within
thy gates. For in six days man sweats and gathers filth and bacteria
enough for disease; wherefore the Lord has blessed the bath-tub and
hallowed it.
"6. Remember thy sitting-room and bed-chamber to keep them ventilated,
that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee.
"7. Thou shalt not eat hot biscuit.
"8. Thou shalt not eat thy meat fried.
"9. Thou shalt not swallow thy food unchewed, or highly spiced, or just
before hard work, or just after it.
"10. Thou shalt not keep late hours in thy neighbor's house, nor with
thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his
cards, nor his glass, nor with anything that is thy neighbor's."--_New
England Farmer._
With the use of the foregoing as a guide, and ordinary judgment in the
affairs with your fellow-men, life will run smoothly, happiness will
follow, and a long life be the result.