The New Glutton or Epicure

by Horace Fletcher

Both my host and my hostess declared that they had never enjoyed a summer evening meal more, and yet all that was ordered was not consumed, while the cost, for the three, was less than a dollar for the food alone.

The method employed to interpret appetite was a revelation to my friends. They were accustomed to ordering several courses for each person, although they thought they were "small eaters" and economic feeders. Had they ordered for us three without my assistance, the dinner would not have cost less than four or five dollars, and with a plethora of food on the table all would have felt it necessary to eat as much as possible, in order to get value received.

The above, as related, was an actual happening, but it in no way indicates what another trio would have ordered in response to their appetites. That is immaterial. The principle of consulting the leanings of appetite is the thing of first importance, and giving appetite a chance to naturally discriminate is the second natural requirement. Had the weather been cooler, and had the appetite earned been like that of a labouring man, more food and more variety might have been required to satisfy appetite, and hence the needs of the body. In that case, after plying the appetite to repletion on the first dish ordered, a second or a third could easily have been added. With this principle of learning the real demands of appetite, any number of combinations can be had for variety. In summer, with light physical exercise, very little proteid-bearing food is needed; but in winter, with vigorous exercise or hard physical labour, the appetite will crave foods that have proteid and fat whether one knows what proteid is or the difference between carbohydrate elements and fat. Any empirical idea of the possible elemental requirements is likely to lead to false suggestion and do harm. It is difficult to stand by and let Nature do the ordering if there is too much elemental intelligence, and that is where the animals, when allowed free choice of food, get on better with their nutrition than man himself, and man's only protection is to carefully heed the delicate discrimination of appetite. This is not a difficult thing to do, for appetite can be easily satisfied within a small range of simple foods.

With any desired variety of sumptuous food to choose from, and no restraint from any cause whatever, the author fed himself nine-tenths of the time during the examination at Yale University, in cold winter weather, on griddle cakes well buttered and accompanied with an abundance of maple syrup. Occasionally more proteid would be demanded,—say once a week, or once in five days,—and then baked beans was the preferential choice.

I am now relating the experiences of a student of hygienic epicureanism and am not considering money economy alone. Were mental or even physical improvement in efficiency to be purchased at high prices, and lack of efficiency could be had for nothing, the high-priced article would be well worth its cost, no matter what it might be, for the reason that total lack of efficiency is equivalent to death and any proportionate lack is the next thing to death. Hence it is not a money economic reform that is being advocated, and this must be borne in mind.

When I am in New York I very often take a room at the Waldorf-Astoria because it has become, by common consent, the suburban and country business and social clearing house of the whole United States; and hence, coming from Europe periodically as I do, and always anxious to meet old friends from San Francisco, New Orleans, Boston, Washington, the great cities of the Middle West, or elsewhere, it is more easily accomplished by camping at the Waldorf than in any other way. I cannot be a profitable guest of this or any hotel kept on the European plan, but I try to make up for this deficiency in other ways. Just across Sixth Avenue from the Waldorf, on Thirty-Fourth Street, is one of the most pretentious of the so-called "dairy lunches." In these places good, appetising, wholesome food is served quickly and in decently small portions. For this very reason alone, I prefer the crowd and the noise of the dairy lunch to the quiet and the luxury of the Waldorf café or dining-room. One would not object to paying a larger price at the more quiet place of service, but prodigality seems to be the present great American sin. Were it a mere waste of money or even of the food, it would not be worthy of great discussion; for when the fool and his money are parted the laugh is on him with no grain of sympathy, and there already being a great surplus of food in the land, there is no fear of famine. But with this prodigality prevalent, so that to have a decent variety one must have put before him enough for a family, the temptation to grossly overeat is great and the abuse is criminal.

It is the hope of the author that some enterprising Boldt will inaugurate an epicurean service and charge well enough for it to pay for the trouble, or better yet, in proportion to the quantity wanted. In this regard the poor do not suffer directly, but the example of the rich is the perverter of the poor in many ways, and surely in this item of dietetic abuse.

When it comes to quantities of food to be prescribed, the author avoids giving even suggestions. This has been the trouble with the past attempts at reform. Had Luigi Cornaro told us in his autobiography the manner of taking his food with other particulars, instead of giving alone a maximum weight to which he limited himself, he might have saved the world three hundred years of uncertainty and confusion. His twelve ounces of solid food and fourteen ounces of new wine (fresh grape juice) means little. The solid food might have been almost water free or might have contained 50 per cent of moisture. The new wine contained a trifle of sugar and probably more than 95 per cent of water and supplied moisture to the body instead of water. During the Yale tests reported elsewhere, and more fully in the "A. B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," the daily ration did not exceed the reported amount of Cornaro, even with the most generous allowance for moisture.