Losing weight does not matter at all if there is no discomfort or disease. It is all right to be a little lighter during summer than in winter.
In discussing food and its use, two words are frequently employed, digestion and fermentation. Strictly speaking, digestion is largely a process of fermentation, consisting of the breaking down of complex substances into simple ones, by means of ferments. However, in the popular mind digestion and fermentation are not synonymous, and will not be so considered in this book. To make my meaning clear, in this book the words will have the following meaning:
Digestion—the normal breaking down of food and formation into substances that can be used by the blood for building, repairing and producing heat and energy.
Fermentation—the abnormal breaking down of food in the digestive tract, producing discomfort and health impaired. This process manifests in various ways, such as the production of much gas in the digestive tract or hyperacidity of the body.
We will consider digestion as a process conducive to health, but fermentation, as one that leads to disease, being an early stage of digestive derangement.
CHAPTER IV.
OVEREATING.
All agree that excessive indulgence in alcoholics is harmful physically, mentally and morally. We condemn the too free use of tea and coffee and nearly all other excesses. However, intemperate eating is considered respectable. A large part of our social life consists in partaking of too much food.
Medical text-books say that we must eat great quantities of food to maintain strength and health. Humanity views the subject of eating from the wrong angle, and it will perhaps be many years before the majority gets the right point of view. We should eat to live, but most of us eat to die. Benjamin Franklin said that we dig our graves with our teeth.
Men and women band themselves into societies and associations for the purpose of decreasing or doing away with the use of tobacco and alcoholic drinks. They advocate temperance and even abstinence in the use of those things which do not appeal to their own senses; but most of them are far from temperate in their eating. They have very keen vision when searching for weaknesses and faults in others, but are quite near-sighted regarding their own.