“Concerning the diet of his children Dr. Worden says: ‘No national or international problems concerning the welfare of our people are as important as our food problem. And yet it is a very simple one, solved by an all-wise Creator before the creation of man. Time enough is wasted in the kitchen of our modern homes, spoiling good food by making almost impossible mixtures and then over-cooking these, to do all the necessary work of any nation. This careless and ignorant diet leads to ill-health, from which there is no escape unless we learn to lead a sensible life, eating moderately of natural foods, and these in simple combinations.
“‘With our children, very little cow’s milk is used, largely because of its unreliability in the city; but we do not favor an abundance of milk anyway, after children have teeth to use on their food. Their diet consists of fruits, cereals, nuts, and vegetables, no spices, vinegar, etc., being used. Whole wheat flour, the bran included, is used exclusively.
“‘They are never urged to eat. We expect them to know whether they are hungry or not. Urging children to eat leads to overfilling of the stomach, and this to bowel disorders, and often death. Next to urging children to eat, as a cause of overeating, is variety. We never supply them with a choice of foods at one meal. The diet for each meal is simple, and yet in one season or year they get quite a variety, as exampled by a list of the fruits they get, one kind at a time: Apples, pears, grapes, plums, cherries, oranges, pineapples, peaches, grape fruit, prunes, apricots, figs, dates, raisins, bananas, melons, and the numerous kinds of berries—all choice fruit. They scorn anything with a bad spot as being not fit to eat. Then again we buy them lots of nuts for food, not just for the fun of cracking and eating and usually overeating. They get nut food as a United States soldier his rations. Next we have an immense choice of vegetables, of which they get one kind at a meal—never two vegetables to one child at the same meal. On such a diet it is no occasion for surprise that they have never been sick. The good health to be derived from a simple meal more than repays for any fancied abstinence.’
“The Worden children are already little athletes. The elder girl is the youngest basket-ball player in Milwaukee. Every evening they exercise for a few minutes nude, incidentally getting an air bath to the skin of the whole body while developing and strengthening the muscles.
“Dr. and Mrs. Worden are not faddists. They are earnestly and steadfastly endeavoring to fulfill the trust committed to them, to develop their children into strong healthy women, to strengthen their powers of endurance, and develop their physical faculties by bringing them up in accordance with all the laws of health.”
Another thing that I would have white women learn from their Indian sisters, is a thing they used to know but are rapidly forgetting. That is, the joy of suckling their own children. An Indian mother that does not suckle her own child is almost unknown. With the “superior classes” of the white race it is the opposite of this proposition that is true. Not only is this of great injury to the child, but it is fraught with most serious consequences to the mother. Is it nothing that the mother of a child willfully puts away from herself all the little, fond, sweet intimacies that naturally grow out of this relationship; the joy of exercise of a natural and beautiful function; the feeling that the baby life is still being sustained by the mother’s own life-blood transmuted by mother love and mother-processes into sweet, delicious food that nothing else can equal?
A DILIGENT HOPI BASKET WEAVER, WHO IS ALSO A GOOD MOTHER.
It is a fact that all the higher affections and emotions of the human soul have to be cultivated and developed. The child sees little or no beauty in a sunset; it must be trained to recognize it. The love of Nature grows as we cultivate it. The nobler emotions of self-sacrifice, humility, kindliness, grow as we cultivate them, and while, where maternity is a perfectly natural process, joy accompanies it in all its manifestations, there is no denying the fact that in our so-called civilization women have to cultivate the feelings connected with the function to bring to themselves the joy they should normally possess. But that there is a joy in suckling one’s own child many, many mothers—true mothers—have assured me, and I wish to add my voice to the supplications of the innocent child that every mother give of her own sweet, loving breast to the child she has brought into the world. Some mothers refuse because it destroys the beautiful contour of the bust; others because it demands too close confinement, and would therefore prohibit regular attendance upon club or social functions. Poor women! Bartering their God-given rights and privileges for the messes of pottage that society and club life afford—that is, afford to mothers at the time they should be with their babes. Can any society on earth, any club that ever existed, compensate for the loss of healthful nutrition given from a loving mother’s breast? Let the statistics of “bottle-fed” babies attest the dangers that accrue from the mother’s refusal (or inability—for which she is to be pitied rather than condemned) to suckle her own young.