"Exactly," ... said the physician; "if you had drunk nothing else than pure water all your life, and had been satisfied with simple nourishment,—such as boiled apples for example,—you would not now be tormented with the gout, and all your limbs would perform their functions with ease."
Dr. Horace Bushnell says: "The child is taken when his training begins in a state of naturalness as respects all the bodily tastes and tempers, and the endeavour should be to keep him in that key, to let no stimulation of excess or delicacy disturb the simplicity of nature, and no sensual pleasure in the name of food become a want or expectation of his appetite. Any artificial appetite begun is the beginning of distemper, disease, and a general disturbance of natural proportion. Nine tenths of the intemperate drinking begins, not in grief and destitution, as we so often hear, but in vicious feeding."
Always let the food be simply for nourishment—never more, never less. Never should food be taken for its own sake, but for the sake of promoting bodily and mental activity. Still less should the peculiarities of food, its taste or delicacy ever become an object in themselves, but only a means to make it good, pure, wholesome nourishment; else in both cases the food destroys health.—Froebel.
Since what need mortals, save twain things alone,
Crushed grain (heaven's gift), and steaming water-draught?
Food nigh at hand, and Nature's aliment—
Of which no glut contents us.
Pampered taste hunts out device of other eatables.—Euripides.