According to information in the Saturday Evening Post, the eating habits of many of our most influential business men are very simple and the amount of food partaken of small. John D. Rockefeller could hardly live more simply and plainly than he does. William Rockefeller, George F. Baker, James Stillman, Otto H. Kahn, Thomas Fortune Ryan, George W. Perkins, J. Ogden Armour, John H. Patterson, Jacob H. Schiff and Andrew Carnegie, all business giants with money enough to subsist on the most expensive delicacies, are said to live more plainly than does the average American who is complaining of the high cost of living. It is the price they have had to pay for success and it is the price that you and I will have to pay to live successfully, though our success may not take the form of financial power.
The one conspicuous exception among the financially great to the rule of simplicity was J. P. Morgan. His eating habits were somewhat gross, but on account of his rugged constitution he lived to be more than seventy-five years old. If he had given himself just a little more care he would be alive today. They say that his strong black cigars did him no apparent harm, but those who read of his last illness understandingly cannot agree to that statement. Mr. Morgan started with enough vitality to live and work far beyond the century mark. John D. Rockefeller was not physically strong when young. He has been compelled to take good care of himself and to be moderate. Now he is past seventy and enjoying good health.
John W. Gates died a martyr to excess, partly excess of food. He lacked balance. His son followed in his footsteps and died young.
Frank A. Vanderlip, who is looming large on the financial horizon takes but two meals a day, from which he gets enough sustenance to do good work and he says that this plan makes for efficiency. Perhaps now that such men as Mr. Vanderlip live well on two meals a day, it is time to cease calling those who live thus faddists. Eating three meals a day is a habit and many can and do get along very well on two meals, and a few take only one meal daily.
E. H. Harriman also lived simply. He illustrates the evil of a poorly controlled mind. He died when but little past sixty, probably because his frail body was too weak to harbor his great ambition. He took his business wherever he went. When ill and business was forbidden by his physician, Mr. Harriman had a telephone concealed in his bedroom and as soon as the doctor was gone, he was on the wire.
Another cause of premature aging is the drinking of very hard water. The earthy matter is absorbed into the blood stream with the water, and a part of it is deposited in the various tissues. People beyond middle age should drink water containing only a small portion of salts. Those who partake of fresh fruits or fresh vegetables daily get all the salts that the system needs. Even the young should not drink water that is exceedingly hard. We can well illustrate the harm that comes from the excessively hard water by referring to the disease known as cretinism. This disease is quite prevalent in some parts of Europe. They say that the disease is hereditary, which is questionable. What is inherited is the environment and the habits of the parents. The chief cause is without doubt the superabundance of earthy matter in the drinking water. The cretins are ill-favored in face and figure. They do not reach normal mental or physical maturity. They are old long before the normal person has reached his prime. They die young, rarely living to be over thirty years old. The bones are completely ossified early, which is the cause of their small stature and their stupidity. The bones of the skull harden so early that the brain has no room to expand.
There is no need of suffering, even in a mild degree, from the disease of cretinism. If the water is very hard it is easy to distill what is needed for drinking purposes. Such water should at least be boiled. It is much better to have a teakettle lined with earthy matters than to have such a lining in our arteries.
The excessive use of table salt is another cause of early aging. It is a good preservative and pickles meat very well. People have long used salt as a preservative and perhaps they got the salt-eating habit in this way, first using it on the foods to be preserved, and then on nearly all foods. Salts to excess, especially table salt, help to mummify or pickle those who partake of them too liberally. The addition of sodium chloride to foods is unnecessary. We get all we need of this salt in our fruits, vegetables and cereals. Salt should be used in moderation.
Alcohol, tobacco and coffee are harmful. However, it will be found that most of the old people have used one or more of these drugs for many years and this is often largely responsible for their reaching old age. Overeating causes more deaths than any other single factor. The use of tobacco, coffee or alcohol has a tendency to reduce the desire for food and thus these drugs at times prove to be conservers of individual lives, though they are undoubted racial evils. They never can or will take the place of self-control. The senses were given us to use for our protection, but most people abuse them for temporary gratification, and thus they go in the way of self-destruction.
Other things being equal, a healthy child will live longer than a weakly one. But other things are not equal, so it often happens that a weakling has as much chance to survive as a healthy person. Strong people frequently squander their inheritance by the time they are forty or fifty years old. Healthy people are very imprudent. They are well so they think they will always remain well. What a surprise it is when after thirty they discover that they cannot do with impunity what they could do before with apparently no bad results! When warned about their eating habits they boast that they can "eat tacks". Smoking and drinking are harmless, they say! But the day of reckoning always comes and the account is often so great that under the conventional treatment of today they die.