The majority of disorders that mark the difference between youth and age may be traced directly to the overconsumption of meat and bread, especially cereal starch. The hardening of the arteries, the stiffening of the cartilage, the enlargement of the joints, and the general lack of flexibility throughout the body is due almost wholly to the overconsumption of these two staples.
Uric acid in rheumatic conditions
Uric acid is always present in gouty and rheumatic conditions, but it is there as Nature's defense against our sins, and not as a primary cause. Meat is not the cause of uric acid as has been popularly taught. Uric acid is one of the constituent elements of all animal bodies, and when the normal supply in the human body is supplemented by that which is contained in the body of the animal upon which we prey, we are oversupplied. This is as far as meat-eating contributes toward uric acid poisoning.
Soluble starches desirable
When the body is young and growing, it can consume and appropriate a considerable quantity of starchy or structural material, but when it is fully grown, or has turned forty, it can subsist healthfully upon a diet containing only from three to five per cent of starch, and as one becomes older the more soluble forms of starch should be taken, such as the starch contained in green peas, beans, and corn, which, immature, is readily soluble and assimilable. The starch in the banana is also easily appropriated and easily oxydized, and will be found to agree with many who cannot eat starch in any other form without producing fermentation.
After the fiftieth year the diet becomes more and more a factor needing special attention in the daily regimen, both as to selection and quantity; and with advancing age the quantity of food should be gradually reduced until the minimum which will support life healthfully is reached.
Importance of diet with advancing age
In old age the diet should be governed by the same general rules as those of younger people; that is, elderly people should select, combine, and proportion their food according to temperature of environment, labor, and age. Those performing manual labor can use and eliminate food material which would produce uric acid and other poisons in the body of the sedentary worker.
THREE PERIODS OF OLD AGE
Diet from fifty to sixty