One stick of candy can be made to yield more "linked sweetness long-drawn-out" than a dozen sticks as usually devoured. Moreover, one stick will not cause hours of discomfort as the dozen sticks surely will; and, in addition, it will cost much less, thus leaving plenty of money to spend on other things. Surely this argument must appeal to all children who have brains enough to be worth schooling.
Every child should also be told over and over again, till the habit is formed, that the pleasure derived from candy and cake and all food can be vastly increased and intensified by consciously breathing out through the nose while eating (as explained on pages 62-3) and that this will be a further protection from indigestion.
If these truths were firmly impressed on all child minds, two-thirds of the minor ills of mankind would disappear in two generations, and most of the major maladies also; for let me say it once more, the stomach is the source of most preventable diseases.
REAL EPICURISM IS ECONOMICAL.
The future of cooking and eating lies in the hands of millions of boys and girls now in our schools.
It should be made clear to them how important it is to their welfare to be real epicures,—that is, persons who never eat too much, who select their food with a fastidious taste, and refuse to eat any that has no Flavor, or a wrong Flavor.
Were all of us, or most of us, epicures, what a change our markets would undergo! How the chemically denatured foods, the tainted cold-storage fowls, the drugged, soggy bread, the tasteless, frozen butchers' meats, would be swept away, together with frozen, unpalatable fish, wilted vegetables, unclean milk, unripe and decayed fruits, all of them the daily source of discomforts and disease (often including ptomaine poisoning) to thousands.
We must become a nation of epicures. To be sure, were we all as fastidious as gourmets are, only the best foods would be tolerated in the markets, and these cost more than the inferior grades. But that will not worry any one who bears in mind the three cardinal principles of gastronomy which I am trying to emphasize in this book:
I. The food from which we chiefly derive our nourishment is for the most part cheap.
II. We need more or less expensive flavor in food to make it appetizing and digestible; but, fortunately,