“You acknowledge that the state of knowledge is insufficient to prescribe a diet for any individual that he should take daily; or in other words, that there is very little accurate knowledge of the nutrition problem.”
Reply. “Yes. I do not feel I could prescribe a diet for any one with any degree of confidence.”
“Very well, then. Why should not the body have or acquire the quality that all animals have, in a free, natural state, of knowing what their body wants by appetite and taste?”
This is more or less how you put it to me when I first met you at Cambridge. Its full significance did not dawn on me till much later; till, in short, I commenced the study of my desires at Cambridge.
Now this point of view is the rock on which we stand, and is the cause of H.’s and A.’s interest, and as H. said, is the “most fascinating idea” he ever heard.
It had very much the same effect on A. He was reduced to silence. The more you think of it the more you see there is no answer that could contradict it.
He then admits that
(a) The food should be finely divided.
(b) That it should be thoroughly insalivated.
(c) That in all probability most diseases are caused by dietetic error.