Encyclopedia of Diet: A Treatise on the Food Question, Vol. 5Christian, Eugene
Science
Encyclopedia of Diet: A Treatise on the Food Question, Vol. 5
Christian, Eugene
Diet; Diet in disease; Food
It should be borne in mind that I do not advocate the use of flesh
foods, but during pregnancy the appetite is varying and sometimes
tyrannical, and it has been found better to compromise with this
condition than to combat it. The use of a limited quantity of tender
meat, or any other article of good food for which there should arise a
craving, is therefore advisable.
[Sidenote: Flesh of young animals preferred]
In the selection of meats, the flesh of young animals is best, for the
reason that young animals are more healthy and less liable to
contamination by dis-ease. The meat of either fowl or fish is rather
appetizing, and often satisfies the craving that many pregnant women
have for the heavier meats such as pork or veal, which are, of course,
very much more difficult to digest.
There is, notwithstanding the opinion foolishly held by many doctors, no
difference in the nutritive qualities of white or dark meat, as either
variety is nourished by identically the same blood supply, and contains
the same sort of protoplasm.
So it is a mistaken idea to think that there is any appreciable
difference in the digestibility of white meat as compared with dark,
except as the effect of mental suggestion may be operative. Of course,
we know that if you tell a person often enough that a certain thing is
true, eventually he will act upon it automatically. And so it is with
the white and dark meat fetich.
THE NURSING MOTHER
[Sidenote: Breast milk vs. artificial foods]
If the mother supplies enough milk, this is infinitely superior to any
artificial combination of so-called infant foods. Unfortunately a large
majority of children are not breast-fed, and must depend upon the
various commercial infant-foods, or upon the judgment of the untrained
nurse, or the mother.
[Sidenote: The lives of babies often depend upon the mother's diet]
The majority of mothers, if so disposed, could, by studying their own
diet, supply the most robust child with ample breast-nourishment until
it is ten or twelve months old, after which period the infantile crisis
would be passed, and millions of little lives would thereby be saved.
However, the confinement and the trouble to which the mother is
subjected by the nursing baby causes the majority of infants to be
weaned within a few weeks after birth, and turned over to the hazard of
prepared food, soporific drugs, and nurses.
[Sidenote: Child-love stimulated by nursing]
If mothers could realize the love that is daily kindled and
strengthened; if they could be made to know how much more their children
would love them, and they would love their children; if they could look
into the years and see how the link of love between them and their
children had been shaped, molded, and fashioned by the simple act of
nurturing them from the breast (to say nothing of the lives that would
be saved), the artificially-fed baby would be a rarity, and the mother
would be queen in the hearts of the nation's children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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