OMNIVOROUS PEOPLE.
In this country, most people are omnivorous. The food is plentiful and people believe in generous living. They put upon their tables at each meal enough variety for a whole day and the custom is to eat some of each. Some breakfasts are heavy enough for dinners. Three heavy meals a day are common. Some can eat this way for years and be in condition to work most of the time, but they are never 100 per cent. efficient. They are never as able as they could be. Besides, they have their times of illness and grow old while they should be young. They generally die while they should be in their prime, leaving their friends and families to mourn them when they ought to be at their best. They are worn out by their food supply, plus other conventional bad habits.
One of the best plans that has been proposed for omnivorous people is that which has been worked out by Dr. J. H. Tilden. Its skeleton is, fruit once a day, starchy food once a day, flesh or other protein with succulent vegetables once a day. I shall make up menus for a few days based on this plan:
Breakfast: Baked apples, a glass of milk.
Lunch: Boiled rice with butter.
Dinner: Roast mutton, spinach and carrots, salad of raw vegetables.
Breakfast: Cantaloupe.
Lunch: Biscuits or toast with butter, buttermilk.
Dinner: Pecans, two stewed succulent vegetables, salad of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, dressing.
Breakfast: Peaches, cottage cheese.
Lunch: Baked potatoes, butter, lettuce.
Dinner: Fresh fish baked, liberal helping of one, two or three of the raw salad vegetables.
Breakfast: Shredded wheat or puffed wheat sprinkled with melted butter, glass of milk.
Lunch: Watermelon.
Dinner: Roast beef, boiled cabbage, stewed onions, butter dressing, sliced tomatoes with salt and oil.
The doctor allows considerable dessert. That generally goes with the dinner.
It is nonsense to write, "So and so shalt thou eat and not otherwise." The menus here given simply serve as suggestions. Where one succulent vegetable is mentioned another may be substituted. One cereal may be substituted for another. One juicy fruit for another. One sweet fruit for another. One legume for another. One food rich in protein for another.
In combining food the principal things to remember are:
Use only a few foods at a meal; use only one hearty, concentrated food in a meal, as a rule, with the exception that various fats and oils in moderation are allowable as dressings for fruits, vegetables and starches; that much fat or oil retards the digestion of the rest of the food; that the habitual combining of acid food with foods heavy in starch is a trouble-maker; that concentrated starchy foods should be taken not to exceed twice a day; that the heating, stimulating foods rich in protein, which include nearly all meats, should be taken only once a day in winter, and less in summer; that either raw fruit or raw vegetables should be a part of the daily food intake, because the salts they contain are essential to health; that fats should be used sparingly in summer, but more freely in winter; that juicy fruits are to be used liberally in summer and sparingly in winter, when the sweet fruits are to take their place a part of the time.
The dried sweet fruits are quite different from the fresh juicy ones. The former serve more the purpose of the starches than that of fruits. They are rich in sugar, which produces heat and energy. The same is true of the banana, which is about one-fifth sugar. It is not as sweet as would be expected from this fact. Some sugars are sweeter than others. This you can easily verify by tasting some milk sugar and then taking the same amount of commercial sugar made of cane or beets.
The food need in summer is surprisingly small, so small that the average person will scarcely believe it. Some writers on dietetics advise eating as much in summer as in winter. How they can do so it is difficult to understand, for reason tells us that in summertime practically no food is needed for heating purposes, and that is how most of the food is used. A little experience and experiment show that reason is right. Nature herself confirms this fact, for at the tropics she has made it easy for man to subsist on fruits, while in the polar regions she furnishes him the most heating of all foods, fats.
Because fats are so concentrated it is very easy to take too much of them. An ounce of butter contains as much nourishment as about twenty-five ounces of watermelon. Those who simplify their cooking and their combining and partake of food in moderation are repaid many times over in improved health. It is necessary to supply good building material in proper form if we would have health.