Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New HygieneSinclair, Upton
Science
Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene
Sinclair, Upton
Hygiene
“While the results of the present experiment lean toward
‘vegetarianism,’ they are only incidentally related to that propaganda.
Meat was by no means excluded; on the contrary, the subjects were urged
to eat it if their appetite distinctly preferred it to other foods.
“The sudden and complete exclusion of meat is not always desirable,
unless more skill and knowledge in food matters are employed than most
persons possess. On the contrary, disaster has repeatedly overtaken
many who have made this attempt. Pawlow has shown that meat is one of
the most, and perhaps the most, ‘peptogenic’ of foods. Whether the
stimulus it gives to the stomach is natural, or in the nature of an
improper goad or whip, certain it is that stomachs which are accustomed
to this daily whip have failed, for a time at least, to act when it was
withdrawn.
“Nor is it necessary that meat should be permanently abjured, even when
it ceases to become a daily necessity. The safer course, at least, is
to indulge the craving whenever one is ‘meat hungry,’ even if, as in
many cases, this be not oftener than once in several months. The rule
of selection employed in the experiment was merely to _give the benefit
of the doubt_ to the non-flesh food; but even a _slight_ preference for
flesh foods was to be followed.
“Under flesh foods are included all meat and ‘stock’ soups. It has
been shown that although these extracts of meat contain a large amount
of nitrogen, it is not in the form of proteid which can be utilized,
but only of waste nitrogen which must be excreted. Apparently the sole
virtue of such soups is that they supply the ‘peptogenic’ stimulus
above referred to.
ANYBODY CAN APPLY THE NEW KNOWLEDGE
“The practical value of the experiment consists in the fact that any
layman can apply it, with or without a knowledge of food values, though
with more advantage if he possess than if he lack such knowledge.
If the dietetic rules of the present experiment are followed, no
self-denial as to foods is required. It is, however, absolutely
necessary that there should be _self-control_ enough to break up the
habit of hurried eating to which modern civilization has brought
us—habituating us, as it were, to eat against time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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