SOME PERTINENT QUESTIONS
Will the reader not ask himself the following questions?
1. How much do I know about my own nutrition?
2. Do I know the particular need and purpose of my last meal and what it is likely to accomplish?
3. Considering my body as an engine, would I accept myself as a competent engineer on my own examination and confession?
4. Were I an iron and steel automobile, instead of a flesh and blood automobile, which I really am, could I get a license for myself, as a chauffeur, to run myself with safety, based upon my knowledge of my own mechanism and the theory and development of my power?
5. Were I an owner of valuable live-stock, would I employ a farm-hand or a stable man, even at so low a wage as fifteen dollars a month, who knew as little about the proper feeding of my animals as I know about the proper feeding of myself and my children?
6. Should I employ such an ignorant attendant for my live-stock, and catch him worrying them during their feeding, and hurrying them away from their fodder to hitch them up for work, would I not have the man arrested for cruelty to animals? And yet this is what is habitually done to children!
7. Do I appreciate how important it is to learn sufficient of the requirements of economic and healthy nutrition to enable me to escape the depressing and debilitating effects of a faulty nutrition.
8. How can I religiously “ask a blessing” upon food and then immediately sin by treating it in a manner abhorrent to the natural requirements?
9. If “cleanliness is next to godliness” is it respectable for me to slight my proper feeding in a manner that I know may induce putridity of excreta through indigestion and that may produce fatal disease?
10. With All Eternity ahead of me, cannot I afford at least 1/48[3] of my time for careful feeding of my body in a manner known to favour physical health; mental keenness; firmness of character; enjoyable temperance; sexual vigour without morbidity. In fact, general respectability and efficiency?
Having duly reasoned out logical answers to the questions, may they not seem sufficiently important to be remembered and respected as a Dietary Ten Commandments?
| A | The Psychology of Nutrition APPETITE ATTENTION APPRECIATION |
Appetite is the most important factor in digestion (vide Pawlow).
Normal Appetite is indicated by a desire for some particular simple food accompanied by a “watering of the mouth.”
False Appetite is a general discontent of the body, indefinite of description. It is often expressed by “all gone-ness,” or stomach craving, and calls for something, Anything! to smother the discomfort of present or recent indigestion. It is like the thirst which follows a debauch.
Ignore False Appetite, and Wait for a Return of Normal Appetite. It will come as soon as body repairs have been effected by natural agencies and more material is required. No one was ever injured by intelligently and calmly waiting for an appetite. No one ever starved to death for lack of appetite. Most human ills come from forcing appetite, anticipating appetite, abuse of appetite in some form.
Appetite is the most important factor in nutrition. This estimation is based upon evidence given more fully in the various appendices, but the measure of its importance may be briefly stated, as follows:—
First
In its normal state, Appetite is a perfect indicator of the bodily need of nutriment and moisture, both as to quantity and as to the chemical elements required at the moment.
Second
Appetite is a creature of the mind and does not attach to a tissue. It can be as easily changed, from abnormal to normal, by suggestion, as can the mind itself, and is not like a solid, the form or habit of which has been set in a mould. Whoever has once experienced a bad oyster and has abhorred oysters ever after will substantiate this claim regarding the caprices of appetite.
Third
Appetite can be easily comprehended and read and the degrees of its satisfaction understood by simple attention and study for a brief period (vide Van Someren).
Fourth
Attention is necessary to create Appreciation, and appreciation is absolutely necessary to stimulate the secretion and flow of gastric and other digestive juices (vide Pawlow).
Fifth
Anger, or shock of any kind, and Worry, or any of the pessimistic depressants, stop digestive activity and cause indigestion (vide Cannon).
Sixth
Menticulture should begin with its application to selection (through a normalised appetite) of nutriment for the body, and continue to aid digestion by right thinking.
It is very easy to cultivate calm and fortify against surprise, shock, and anger if the nutrition of the body is carefully attended to. The physical and the mental equipments are beautifully reciprocal and necessary to each other in promoting Menticulture.
| B | The Mechanical and Chemical Physiology of Nutrition |
BUCCAL DIGESTION
THROUGH
MOUTH THOROUGHNESS
Mouth treatment of food, which permits, aids, and includes insalivation (mixing with saliva), and which is both actively digestive in its functions and preparatory to final digestion, is the only actual mechanical responsibility we have in our nutrition; and, in connection with favourable A conditions, insures perfect digestion. It has been so fully and clearly explained in some recent articles, “Observations on Mastication,” by Dr. Harry Campbell, F.R.C.P., physician to the Northwest London Hospital, printed in the “Lancet” of July 11th, 18th, 25th, and August 8th, 1903, that reference to the articles, reprinted herewith, is all that is necessary here.
In giving attention to careful mouth-treatment of soft or liquid foods until they are absorbed by the Swallowing Impulse the best health and economic results are obtained. It should, at least, be tried.
This will not be found to be a tedious operation after a little practice, when the habit of attention and care has been formed. On the contrary, a new appreciation and enjoyment of taste will be acquired, the delight of which has to be experienced to be understood.
Some hints on learning how to read the appetite, command the attention, and masticate and swallow food material properly follow.
METHOD
First; Last; and All the Time
Be sure that you are really hungry and are not pampering False Appetite. If true appetite that will relish plain bread alone is not present, wait for it. Especially beware of the early-morning habit-craving. Wait for an earned appetite, if you have to wait till noon. Then: “Chew,” “Masticate,” “Munch,” “Bite,” “Taste” everything you take in your mouth (except water, which has no taste), until it is not only thoroughly liquefied and made neutral or alkaline by saliva, but until the reduced substance all settles back in the (glosso-epiglottidean) folds at the back of the mouth and excites the Swallowing Impulse into a strong inclination to swallow. Then swallow what has collected and has excited the impulse, and continue to chew at the remainder, liquid though it be, until the last morsel disappears in response to the Swallowing Impulse. Never forcibly swallow anything that the instincts connected with the mouth show any disposition to reject. It is safer to get rid of it beforehand than to risk putting it into the stomach.
Sip and taste milk and all liquids that have taste as the wine-tasters do. They never drink wine and yet they get all the enjoyment there is in it and waste none. In a very short time sipping and tasting liquids and masticating and tasting solid food for “all they are worth” will become an agreeable and profitable fixed habit.
Whether We “Eat To Live or Live to Eat,” why not do as Above?
| Z | The True Chemical End-Point of Digestion |
THE DIGESTION-ASH WHAT IT
SHOULD BE LIKE WHEN
IT IS NORMAL
First
In adults; or, in children after the eruption of teeth and the ingestion of solid food: The non-liquid and non-gaseous waste of the human body, which, in its normal state, is not offensive, should be very small, in quantity, should be pillular in form, either separate or massed together; should have no odour when released, should take on no odour on standing, should be entirely aseptic (non-poisonous); should drop freely from the exit, leaving nothing behind to wash or wipe away. It may not be collected in the intestines of full-grown and elderly persons, when normal, as above, in sufficient quantity to require or necessitate emptying oftener than from twice a week to once in two weeks; according to age, activity, etc.; and should neither invite nor justify the description “it is not that which goeth into a man that defileth him but that which cometh out.”
Second
Economic Digestion-Ash (solid excreta), as a daily average for an adult of 140 lbs. (10 stone; 63.5 kilos), including moisture, when released, should not weigh more than two ounces (56.70 grams). An average of less than one half this amount of waste has been secured in test experiments.
Third
The true test of healthy Z is absence of odour and completeness, ease and cleanliness of delivery. Frequency or otherwise, does not so much matter. Quantity too, is not so important; but with foul odour there is disturbance, strain and danger.
The normal man is a cleanly being with all excreta inoffensive; and by these tokens he may be his own private judge.
Why is it that barn-yards are tolerable to the human senses while open dépôts of human excreta are fever-breeding nuisances and intolerable to beasts and humans alike?
This curse of putrid excreta caused more deaths from enteric fever during the Boer War in South Africa than all other causes. It is equally a menace to health and even to life while being formed and carried in the body.
Fourth
Offensive excreta are quite certain evidence of neglect of the self-controllable parts of our own nutrition. They are the tell-tale condemnation of ignorance or carelessness. Each person should learn to read the true bulletins of his health conditions in his waste-products of digestion.
Z
is the form the body must assume to render emptying of the digestion-ash natural and easy. Man was built to squat on his heels in defecating, and sitting erect on a modern seat is like trying to force a semi-solid through a kinked hose. Healthy Human Excreta are no more Offensive than Moist Clay and have no more Odour than a Hot Biscuit.
A. B.-Z. FIGURE
TO ILLUSTRATE THE “DIVISION OF LABOUR”
| First. A | Psychic Environment |  | This |
| Mental State | involves: | ||
| Appetite (to select for) | | DIGESTION | |
| Attention (to prepare for) | |||
| Appreciation (to assist in) | |||
(Absolutely necessary to secure secretion and flow of the digestive juices: Vide Pawlow and Cannon.)
| Second. B | BUCCAL-DIGESTION | | This |
| MOUTH-TREATMENT | involves: | ||
| Mechanical (teeth) | | THOROUGHNESS | |
| Chemical (salival) | |||
(Absolutely necessary to secure complete digestion and avoid the putridity incident to bacterial decomposition: Vide Campbell and Van Someren.)
INTERMEDIATE
The twenty-three letters between “B” and “Z” represent but an inadequate proportion for the spelling of the enormous share Nature assumes in our welfare, marvellously performing her forty-seven forty-eighths share in the secret laboratory of the alimentary canal.
Third. Z
The true chemical end-point of digestion, by which each self-respecter may know how well he has respected his “A” and his “B,” and how faithfully he has performed his one forty-eighth share in the promotion of his own most fundamental interest.