“People in general eat and drink too much.
“Especially do they eat too much meat, fish and eggs.
“This is so because meat, fish and eggs are the principal proteid-containing foodstuffs.
Prof. Russell H. Chittenden, Ph.D., LL.D., Sc.D.,
Director Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University. He has conducted many dietary experiments from the physiologist’s point of view.
“Proteid is an essential food element, absolutely necessary for the upbuilding of tissue, for the maintenance of life. It is one of three main elements into which all foodstuffs may be divided—the others being Carbohydrates (the sugars and starches) and Fat. While it is indispensable, it is also the element which the body machinery finds most difficult to dispose of. Proteid is ‘nitrogenous.’ Nitrogen is never wholly consumed in the body furnace as fats, sugars and starches are. There is always solid matter left unconsumed, like clinkers in a furnace; which clinkers the kidneys and liver have to labor to dispose of. If the clinkers are produced in excess of the ability of these organs to handle them without undue wear and tear, damage of a serious, and sometimes permanent, nature follows. The ideal amount of proteid is the amount which will give the body all of that substance which it needs without entailing excessive work upon the body machinery.
“Excessive consumption of proteid foodstuffs—like meat, fish and eggs—is the greatest evil affecting man’s nutrition. The excess of proteid not only remains unburned in the bodily furnace, but this waste matter very often decays in the body, forming a culture bed for germs which effect the whole system, a condition scientifically known as autointoxication, or self-poisoning of the body through the action of the germs of putrefaction, and of other germs, which are bred in the colon, or large intestine. The researches of Metchnikoff, Bouchard, Tissier, Combe, and other eminent scientists, have shown that autointoxication is the source of a great number of the most serious chronic diseases which afflict mankind.
“We say, then, that the existing dietary standards place in all cases the minimum of proteid necessary for the average man’s daily consumption at far too high a figure. It may be safely said that it is placed twice as high as careful and repeated experiments show to be really necessary.
“There can be little doubt that the habit of excessive eating and drinking, combined with the habit of too hasty eating and drinking, especially of meat, fish and eggs, are probably the most prolific sources of many bodily disabilities affecting men and women, and are consequently the greatest deterrents to the attaining by men and women of a high grade of efficiency in work, of better health, of greater happiness, and of longer life.