The case of food reform against fish would merely lead to the relating of the arguments against meat. Fish contains nearly seven per cent. of uric acid. It is exposed like meat to the presence of tape worms and other parasites. Even when fresh out of the water its flesh is filled with fatigue poisons, the result of its struggles to escape from the net or the hook; and Mosso of Turin and other authorities have shown that these fatigue toxins have a bad effect upon the body. No food will so quickly decompose and putrefy as fish, and unless perfectly fresh it will always be found full of the putrefactive bacteria which are the active agents in causing autointoxication. It may be stated, however, that the person who follows that careful and helpful mode of eating recommended and practiced with such marked benefits by Horace Fletcher and his converts, will assuredly minimize the dangers that lurk unsuspected by the uninformed in many of our commonly used foods, and will derive a greater benefit from all food than it is possible for those to gain who eat in the hasty and careless fashion characteristic of most Americans. VII HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE EAT? WE have discussed the question how to eat and what to eat; there remains the question of when to eat. English people, as a rule, eat four meals a day. The French are practically a two meal a day nation, eating a very light breakfast. Of late years there has been a strong tendency on the part of American dieticians to advocate a reduction in the number of daily meals, the ideal aimed at being the establishing of the custom of two meals a day, with at least six hours intervening between them. It may be asked whether appetite is not a safe guide to follow, and whether it is not the part of wisdom to follow personal inclination in the choice and quantity and number of meals. Does not a study of dietetic customs and habits definitely decide the essential rules of dietetics? While it is true that habits and customs are very strong factors in everybody’s life, yet it is also true that they are very unreliable guides. We are constantly acquiring new habits, and sloughing off old ones; and even the most deeply impressed of habits may be changed for others. And while the common customs of mankind would seem to indicate that three or four meals a day is the rule, at least among civilized nations, yet the facts are that the most primitive people take one meal a day, and the great majority of people in the world, as a rule, eat certainly less than three. TWO MEALS A DAY THE BEST Physiological facts argue for the two meal plan, or else for very light and easily digested food, if an extra meal be taken.