To secure a clear, fresh skin, bright eye, active limbs, a quick brain, and a cheerful, pleasant temper, and if you would enjoy a long life, you should live about as follows:—
BREAKFAST.
Oatmeal porridge with milk and sugar. Or, Graham mush with a little good syrup. Or, cracked wheat, with milk and sugar. Or, baked potatoes with bread and butter. Or, beef-steak or mutton-chop with baked potatoes, and bread and butter.
If you are thin, and need fat, use the first three, if you are too fat, use the last named two. Drink cold water or a little weak coffee.
DINNER.
Beef or mutton, roasted, or stewed, with any vegetables you may like, (though tomatoes should be used very sparingly,) good bread and butter, and, close the meal with a glass of weak lemonade. Eat no dessert, unless it be a little fruit, and eat nothing more till the next morning.
There is no rule in regard to diet about which I am so fixed in my convictions as, that nothing should be eaten after dinner, and I think that the dinner should be taken early in the day; not later, if it can be so managed, than two o'clock. In regard to the precise hour for the dinner, I am not so clear, though for myself one o'clock is the best hour; but in reference to the omission of the third meal, I have, after long observation, no doubt whatever.
Hundreds of persons have come to me with indigestion in some of its many forms, and have experienced such relief in a single week from omitting the supper, that I have, for a number of years, depended upon this point in the diet as the best item in my prescriptions for indigestion. I have never met one person suffering from indigestion, who was not greatly relieved at once, by omitting the third meal.
Eat nothing between meals, not even an apple or peach. If you eat fruit, let it be with the breakfast and dinner. Cooked fruit is best for persons of weak digestion. I have met hundreds of people who could digest a large beefsteak without a pang, but who could not manage a single uncooked apple. I think certain dietetic reformers have somewhat overrated the value of fruit.
Avoid cake, pie, all sweetmeats, nuts, raisins and candies.