I have previously pointed out the harm that may result to the body from an excess of food—showing how food in excess chokes and blocks the system throughout—impeding its proper functions, and rendering the perfect manifestation of life impossible. During the healthy growth of the body, the great process of upbuilding and the functions of nutrition are necessarily somewhat in excess of the processes of destruction; but even here a great excess of food is invariably eaten; and, while the growing child may be adding (say) half-an-ounce a day to its weight, it is urged and even forced to eat a pound of food a day, and even more! And the natural result is that the child becomes sick, and has colds and fever and other troubles, and no one can account for it! The same false notions are carried into adult life. Nearly everyone eats far too much—I mean by this very much too much. I believe that most persons could reduce their three daily meals to one, and curtail the amount eaten at that one meal, and still be ingesting too much food for the bodily needs. This will at all events show us how enormously we do overeat, and the only reason that we do not get ill immediately is, that the body is constantly getting rid of the excess of food material and poisons that are formed, as the result of this constant over-ingestion of food. It is generally believed that, as long as an individual is in health, or apparently so, he is not injured by habitually eating more than is really necessary for the healthy nourishment of his body, but this opinion is utterly and dangerously false. It is, indeed, one of the most mischievous errors entertained by the human mind. For there is nothing in nature more true, more certain, than these propositions: that all vital action is necessarily attended with some expenditure of vital power, and draws something from the ultimate fund of life; and therefore all excessive vital action, all intensity of vital action, increases the expenditure of vital power, and necessarily abbreviates the duration of human life; and consequently, however long the vital economy of any human body may be able to preserve the general balance of action, between the composing and decomposing elements, and maintain a general health of the system under excessive alimentation, yet nothing is more certain than that, just in proportion as the alimentation has exceeded the real healthy wants of the vital economy, and thus caused an unnecessary expenditure of vital power, life has been abbreviated—even though the individual die from what is called old age, without a single violent symptom of disease. The error of opinion on this subject is common and mischievous; and the truth should be presented in its strongest light.
But we have as yet only presented the subject and contemplated it in its most favourable aspect. The case I have presented is a very extraordinary one. As a matter of fact, very few indeed who have constantly over-nourished their bodies do die from old age, but as a rule they die from painful and exhausting diseases long before that period is reached. Millions of human beings perish by disease, in all periods of life, from excessive alimentation or overeating. Generally, they are cut off by disease long before they have lived out their lives, and often prematurely. And the chief cause of all such death is, I must insist, overeating. This can readily be proved; and I have endeavoured to show why it should be the case in my previous work. Overeating is the chief cause of all diseases; and disease shortens and destroys life. Of that there can be no question. But even if no adventitious cause comes in to induce sudden and violent death, either local or general, the continued overworking of the system will almost inevitably exhaust, debilitate and relax some particular organ, and so destroy the balance of action in the vital economy, and thus gradually lead to chronic disease. Adipose tissue is deposited in various parts of the body—causing ruptures of the heart and the blood-vessels, and hence premature death.
It is therefore true, beyond all question, that in all countries where human aliment is abundant and easily procured, gluttony or excessive alimentation is decidedly the greatest source of disease and suffering and premature death known to man. “Excess in drinking,” said Hippocrates, more than two thousand years ago, “is almost as bad as excess in eating!” And the statement has remained true from that day to the present.
How much food should be eaten, then, in order to remain in the best of health, and to preserve that “just balance we term health”? I have no hesitation whatever in laying down one general rule, which it is always safe to follow. Every individual should restrict himself to the smallest quantity that he finds, from careful investigation and experiment, will meet the wants of his system—knowing that whatever is more than this is harmful.
Physiologists have got into a vicious circle when discussing the question of the amount of food that the system really requires. They have measured the income and the outgo of the food values and co-efficients, and have calculated the supposedly necessary quantities of food that the body needs from these figures—a practice open to many objections, and proved erroneous, in certain directions already—as e.g., by the Chittenden experiments on low proteid intake. It never seems to have struck these men that the more food that is ingested into the system, the more must necessarily be eliminated—for otherwise the body would choke up and die. The fact that more N. is excreted because more is ingested does not prove that the body has utilised all this N., because it needs it, but shows merely that it was enabled to convert it, by the expenditure of a great amount of nervous energy, in the processes of digestion. The experiment of mankind should be, not to see how much food they can eat and live, but how little they can eat, and yet live: for the minimum quantity of food is doubtless the best for the system, and that indicated by nature. But many physiologists do not see the matter in this light. For them the amount of waste determines everything![47]
“But,” as Dr Nichols pointed out, “what determines the amount of waste? A man must get rid of all he eats and drinks, or he must retain it in his system. If he keep at the same average weight, the daily waste will depend upon the daily consumption. He who eats and drinks two pounds will lose two pounds; he who eats and drinks six or eight pounds must get rid of that quantity. How, then, are we to get at the normal waste, and therefore at the requisite quantity of food?”
Dr Nichols says further:
“It is my experience—and I believe of many others who work as I do—that the less I eat the better I feel. I do not vary much in weight through months and years from 160 pounds. In solid, dry weight, my food, day by day, would not exceed ten or twelve ounces, and often, for days together, it would not exceed six ounces. I am satisfied by my experience and what I have seen of the effects of diet upon others, that most persons can be perfectly well nourished in full health and activity on from four to eight ounces of food, excluding liquids, and that the amount of water may safely be left to the demands of thirst.”
This is even a more conservative estimate than mine and Dr Rabagliati’s—since we both agree that twelve ounces is the amount that is needed by the average man, for an average day’s work. But then our calculated allowance was not strictly “dry” diet; and the difference may not be so great after all, when this is allowed for.