Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

by Upton Sinclair; Michael Williams

TEA AND COFFEE

In the same laboratory where Dr. Stewart placed his case against alcohol, experiments are being made which show in the same direct way that such drinks as tea and coffee also lower the opsonic power of the blood. Into the United States alone are imported more than one billion pounds, or five hundred thousand tons of tea and coffee each year. It is estimated that tea and coffee contain from three to six per cent. of poison. Therefore, more than fifteen thousand tons of poison, “so deadly that twenty grains might produce fatal results if administered to a full-grown man in a single dose”—in all more than ten billion deadly doses of poison, or, “fully six times as much as would be required to kill every man, woman and child on the face of the earth,” are brought into this country every year, as component parts of substances which are commonly regarded as pleasant foodstuffs.

This is the case stated against coffee and tea in its broadest and most emphatic form. The opponents of the use of tea drinking term both tea and coffee “drugs.” What is commonly thought to be the pleasantest property of both tea and coffee, namely, their ability to banish one’s sense of fatigue, is regarded by the critics of the tea and coffee drinking habits as perhaps the most sufficient evidence of their poisonous character.

“No one would doubt for a moment,” says one such critic, “the poisonous nature of a drug capable of producing irresistible drowsiness in a person who is not weary, as morphine would, for instance. Vice versa, the power of a drug to produce wakefulness in a person strongly inclined to sleep as the result of fatigue is equal evidence of its poisonous character. The sallow complexion common among women of the higher classes who have reached middle life, the almost universal nervousness among American women, and many common digestive disorders, and the increasing prevalence of nervous or sick headaches, afford to the experienced physician ample evidence of the toxic or poisonous character of tea and coffee.”

Tea and coffee contain (in addition to caffeine) tannic acid, and various other volatile poisons, each of which produces characteristic harmful effects. The volatile oils give rise to nervous excitability, and after a time provoke serious nervous disorders. Caffeine is a narcotic, which has been shown to diminish the activity of the peptic glands—and thus seriously to interfere with the normal operation of the organs of digestion. The eminent physiologist, Wolfe, showed by experiments that three grains of caffeine—an amount that might easily be imbibed in an ordinary cup of tea or coffee—very substantially impairs the quality of the gastric juices, lessening their total acidity. Roberts’ experiments showed that tea and coffee interfere with the action of the saliva upon the starch of the food, and at times may even wholly destroy its effect.

XI
DIET REFORM IN THE FAMILY

The reader is now familiar with the new ideas upon the subject of human nutrition. It is obvious, of course, that if these ideas should ever come into general acceptance, there would be enormous changes in the every-day habits of human beings. And we can well imagine that a person might be fully convinced of the soundness of all the arguments which have been advanced in this book, and yet shrink in dismay from the complications incidental to applying them.

We ourselves have faced these difficulties in many forms. We have wished to have two meals, and yet felt obliged to have three, because all our friends had them, and we did not wish to be hermits. We have wished to avoid meat, and yet have eaten it, because it was on the table, and we did not like to startle our hostess—and perhaps find ourselves involved in an argument about vegetarianism, in the course of which we had either to permit a good cause to go down into defeat, or else to tell facts about meat which would take away every one’s appetite for meat, and for vegetables as well. But in the end, the desire for health has conquered all other motives with us, and we have broken with every trace of the old ways. It seemed to us that we would help and interest others if we gave some account of how the new ideas have worked out in practice, and the daily regimen of a family which adopts them.

This book is written in Bermuda, where the writers have been living in co-operation, along the lines worked out at Helicon Hall, only upon a much smaller scale. Their party consists of eight adults and three children—this including two governesses, a secretary, and a servant. They live in an isolated neighborhood, upon the waterfront. Most of the party sleep out of doors on the broad verandas of the house, while the wide doors and windows of the other rooms afford ample ventilation. Daily sea-bathing is the habit of all of the group.

The married women of the party assume in turn the direction of our dietaries; that is to say, they choose the menus, and attend to the ordering of the food supplies. We eat but twice a day, and the menus are made up entirely of fruits, grains, nuts and vegetables, with the occasional use of eggs. We obtain from the Battle Creek Sanitarium a great number of the foods we use, availing ourselves of its splendidly managed food-department. The children eat three times a day, but their breakfasts are very light, consisting of orange juice and a fig or two, or perhaps a banana. The children have this light breakfast immediately after arising. At ten o’clock comes the principal meal of the day for the whole household. An effort is made to make this meal “well balanced”; that is to say, to have the proportion of proteids, carbohydrates and fats. There are usually not more than two, or at the most, three cooked dishes. Sometimes the main dish is a soup; sometimes it is baked or boiled macaroni with tomato dressing; sometimes it is bean or pea croquettes; sometimes it is scrambled eggs, or the yolks of hard boiled eggs.