Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
When the eliminative organs fail to perform their function, the waste is
deposited in those parts of the body which are weakened. The irritation
from these foreign substances causes inflammation and the result is
pain. The extent to which this depositing of material will go is well
illustrated in some cases of multiple articular rheumatism, or arthritis
deformans, where the deposits are so great that many of the joints
become fixed (anchylosed).
We could review all the diseases, and nearly every time we would come
back to disturbed nutrition as the principal factor, and this is true of
not only physical ills, but the mental ones as well.
Various foods do not combine well, still if they are eaten in moderation
they do but little harm. If we overeat, the evil results are bound to
manifest, no matter how good the food, though it sometimes takes years
before they are perceptible. The effects are cumulative. Each day there
is a little fermentation with absorption of the poisonous products. Each
day the body degenerates a little. The time always comes when the body
can continue its work no longer, and then the individual must choose
between reform on one hand and suffering or death on the other.
It is very difficult to convince people that they eat too much. Indeed,
the average person is a small eater, in his own estimation. We have been
educated into consuming such vast quantities of food that we hardly know
what moderation is. In the past, physiologists and observers have
watched the amount of food that people could coax down and this they
have called the normal amount of food. This is far from the truth. The
average American eats at least two times as much as he can digest,
assimilate and use to advantage. Many eat three and four times too much.
However, nature is very tolerant for a while. Most of us start out with
a fair amount of resistance and are thus enabled to live to the age of
forty or fifty in spite of abuses. If we could only dispense with our
excesses, we could double or treble our life span, live better, get more
enjoyment out of life and give the world more and better work than we
can under present conditions.
There is much talk of food shortage. The amount of food consumed and
wasted annually in the United States is enough to feed 200,000,000
people. Even with our present knowledge we can easily produce twice as
much per acre as we are averaging, and we are tilling only about
one-fourth of the land that could be made productive. If we use our
brains there is little danger of starving. What is needed now is not
more food, but intelligent distribution and consumption of what we
produce.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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