The A.B.-Z. of our own nutrition

by Horace Fletcher

The entire principle of economic nutrition is simple and practical. It does not prescribe that we shall follow any special diet nor do away with any of our meals. It simply requires you to throw present habits and conventions to the winds, and for a little time try the experiment of giving the matter of your every-day living honest, intelligent thought.

Eat all you crave, but do not eat more than this simply because you have been in the habit of doing so. See to it that each morsel put into your mouth is thoroughly masticated and mixed with the saliva before going down into the stomach, which is not equipped to perform the work which the teeth and salivary glands were given you for. The stomach will struggle bravely to overcome the abuse which you heap upon it, but in spite of all it can do to manage hastily chewed food, undigested portions remain which clog the intestines and interfere with the healthy conditions which Nature intended.

The appetite is given as an indicator of what the body requires. If you crave potato, the system needs starch, which the saliva makes digestible, but which the acids of the stomach cannot dissolve. Other needs of the system are similarly indicated. Take the trouble of asking your appetite the question, instead of accepting the conventional number of courses simply because they are set before you. The appetite will close the valve when you have eaten enough, if you will give it a chance.

Suppose your time for eating is limited; in twenty minutes you could not eat slowly the luncheon which you usually select. Then eat that much less. The amount of food which you can eat and thoroughly masticate in twenty minutes will give you more nourishment and will sustain you better than twice the amount thrown into the stomach in the same manner in which a man usually packs a trunk.

Why is it that so many men require a “bracer” at eleven o’clock? Because they have loaded their stomachs with a heavy breakfast, and instead of gaining nourishment from it, the smothered organ is doing its best to tear the undigested morsels to pieces, that they may pass into the intestines and prevent sickness, or even death. The time finally arrives when it finds itself unable to do this, and then comes acute indigestion, or something worse, and the system becomes run down, ready to receive typhoid, or any other germs which happen to come along.

Do you know why griddle-cakes hurt you? Because the syrup, which is cane-sugar,—and as such is indigestible,—is allowed to pass through the mouth and down into the stomach, without being properly mixed with the saliva, which makes it digestible. As soon as it enters the stomach it becomes acid and interferes with everything it meets. Had the cakes been properly masticated and mixed with the saliva, the cane-sugar would have become grape-sugar, and in this form it is easily digested.

Why is it that stout people are advised to avoid starchy foods? Economic nutrition does not advise this. Potatoes, eaten too hastily, when not craved by the appetite, supply the system with a superabundance of starch, and this is fat-inducing. Potatoes are supposed to produce fat; but if your appetite craves potato, and you properly masticate it, eating only as much of it as satisfies your appetite, the system absorbs it all, leaving nothing to produce fat. On this same principle economic nutrition assures that the same food, taken in accordance with its requirements, will add to one man’s weight and decrease another’s, simply because proper care of the stomach supplies the vital organs with the necessary materials to form each individual person after the model which Nature intended for him. If Nature intended him to be slight, economic nutrition will not make him heavy; if Nature intended him to be muscularly strong and heavy, economic nutrition will not reduce his weight. In each case he will enjoy that perfect condition which Nature intended him to possess without fat encumbrance.

Did you ever try to reason out why it is necessary for athletes to go into training? Simply because, in order to get the best use of their strength, they are obliged to spend some number of weeks or months in overcoming false conditions which they have brought upon themselves. Any person who lives in accordance with the simple requirements of economic nutrition has nothing of this kind to overcome, but is in perfect condition all the time.

The requirements of economic nutrition are not hardships but pleasures. Proper mastication and insalivation (mixing with saliva), give your sense of taste far greater gastronomic enjoyment than you have ever before had. If you are a wine drinker, try insalivating a little port wine; but it must be good wine, for this is a severe test. A sip will quench your immediate desire and give you more pleasure than a whole glass gulped down. The professional tea-taster does this in tasting tea; he never allows himself to drink any tea at all, for drinking anything that has taste destroys the delicacy of the sense of taste. But he will tell you that he gets more real enjoyment out of the little he takes than he previously gained from drinking a larger amount. The same thing applies to the professional wine-tasters; they never drink any wine, and yet they enjoy the taste of wine as drinkers never can do. These men adopt this method as a business; is their commercial advantage of greater importance than your health and happiness, and even life itself?

Is it not ridiculous that the average man is so ignorant of the engine which supplies him with all his activity and upon which depends every action of his life? Could you tell, were you asked, the particular need and purpose of your last meal and what it is likely to accomplish? Consider your body as an engine: would you accept yourself as a competent engineer on your own examination and confession? Would you employ a chauffeur to run your automobile who knew as little about its mechanism and requirements as you do about your own stomach? Yet which is of greater importance? Were you the owner of valuable live-stock, would you dare entrust their care to a farm-hand or stableman who knew as little about their proper feeding as you know about your own proper feeding or that of your children?