SEDENTARY OCCUPATIONS

Cessation of activity means disintegration

Nature demands from every form of life a certain amount of activity or motion. Any transgression of this law means disintegration. Rest is merely the process adopted by Nature to reconvert matter into its original elements. To whatever extent one ceases activity, Nature, under normal conditions, inflicts this penalty.

The penalty of civilization

Man's civilized habits and customs have produced a class of workers who, while at work, are deprived of their requisite amount of motion, and who, therefore, pay the penalty by shortened periods of life, and by numerous disorders which we have come to characterize as dis-ease. There is but one method known to science by which these penalties may be avoided, and by which the worker whose occupation must be sedentary may become as healthful as his brother who can order his life in conformity with Nature's laws. That method lies in the ordering of his diet.

Dis-ease is merely congestion

All dis-ease may be called congestion, or the failure of the body to eliminate poisons and waste matter. The process of elimination is assisted by activity (work or play). The accumulation of waste and poisons in the body is measured or determined almost wholly by the diet.

Diet governed by work

The man who is swinging a pick or a sledge hammer in the open air may eat or drink almost anything, because his powers of eliminating waste are aided by his work. It follows, therefore, that those whose work is of a sedentary nature must procure their nutrition from substances containing the minimum of waste, and producing the maximum of energy, and the quantity must be measured accurately by the demands of the body, or autointoxication (self-poisoning) will result.

Intestinal congestion (constipation), which is almost universal among sedentary workers, is caused in nearly all cases by consuming a quantity of food in excess of the physical demands, and which cannot be thrown off owing to the lack of exercise. It is at this point that science must lay out the dietetic regimen so as to make it conform to the occupation, or to the lack of physical activity.

The following are suggestions for a spring or summer diet for the average sedentary worker:

BREAKFAST

LUNCHEON

DINNER