This leads me to say a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic agents or stimuli for unlocking what would otherwise be unused reservoirs of individual power.... In general, whether a given idea shall be a live idea depends more on the person into whose mind it is injected than on the idea itself. Which is the suggestive idea for this person and which for that one? Mr. Fletcher's disciples regenerate themselves by the idea (and the fact) that they are chewing and re-chewing and super-chewing their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils regenerate themselves by going without their breakfast—a fact, but also an ascetic idea. Not every one can use these ideas with the same success.
Because it is so adaptable and sturdy, the stomach lends itself readily to these devices for gaining self-expression; but the danger lies in bringing the process of digestion into conscious attention which interferes with automatic functioning. Still further, the disregard of physiological chemistry is likely to deprive the body of food-stuffs which it requires.
The average person is too sensible to be carried off his feet by the enthusiasm of the health-crank, but as most of us are likely to pick up a few false notions, it may be well to be armed with the simple principles of food chemistry in order to combat the fads which so easily beset us and to know why we are right when we insist on eating three regular meals of the mixed and
varied diet which has proved best for the race through so many years of trial and experience.
What We Need to Eat
The Essence of Dietetics. To the layman the average discussion of food principles is, to say the least, confusing. Dealing largely, as it does, with unfamiliar terms like carbohydrate and hydrocarbon and calories, it is hard to translate into the terms of the potatoes left over from dinner and the vegetables we can afford to buy. But the practical deductions are not at all difficult to understand. Boiled down to their simplest terms, the essential principles may be stated in a few sentences. The body must secure from the food that we eat, tissue for its cells, energy for immediate use or to be stored for emergency, mineral salts, vitamins, water and a certain bulk from fruits and vegetables,—this latter to aid in the elimination of waste matter.
Food for repairing bodily tissue is called protein and is secured from meat, eggs, milk, and certain vegetables, notably peas. Fuel for heat and energy is in two forms—carbohydrate (starch and sugar) and fat. We get sugar from sugar-cane and beets, and from syrups, fruit, and honey. Starch is furnished from flour products—mainly bread—from rice, potatoes, macaroni, tapioca, and many vegetables. Fats come from milk and butter, from nuts, from meat-fat—bacon, lard and suet—and from vegetable oils. The mineral
salts are obtained mainly from fruit and vegetables, which also provide certain mysterious vitamins necessary for health, but as yet not well understood.
What the Market Affords. The moral from all this is plain. The human body needs all the foods which are ordinarily served on the table. Whenever, through fad or through fear, we leave out of our diet any standard food, we are running a risk of cutting the body down on some element which it needs. They say that variety is the spice of life. In the matter of food it is more than that, it is the essence of life. Eat everything that the market affords and you will be sure to be well nourished. If you leave out meat you will make your body work overtime to secure enough tissue material from other foods. If you leave out white bread, you will lose one of the greatest sources of energy. If you leave out tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries, you deprive your body of the salts and vitamins which are essential.