Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
Quantitative tables from vegetarian sources are not so common. The
vegetarians say that meat eating is wrong, being contrary to nature.
Whether they are right or wrong, they make the same mistakes that the
orthodox prescribers do, that is, they advocate overeating. Medical
textbooks prescribe a too abundant supply of starch and meat in
particular. The vegetarians prescribe a superabundance of starch. Read
the magazines advocating vegetarianism and note their menus, giving
numerous cereals, tubers, peas, beans, lentils, as well as other
vegetables, for the same meal. It is as easy to overeat of nuts and
protein in leguminous vegetables as it is to overeat of meat.
Starch poisoning is as bad as meat poisoning and the results are equally
fatal.
The following are suggestions offered by a fruitarian. They give the
food intake for two days:
120 grams shelled peanuts, raw,
1000 " apples,
500 " unfermented whole wheat bread.
120 grams shelled filberts,
450 " raisins,
800 " bananas.
In the first day's menu it will be noted that over two pounds of apples
and over one pound of whole wheat bread are recommended, also over four
ounces of raw peanuts. The writer says that this food should preferably
be taken in two meals. There are very few people with enough digestive
and assimilative power to care for more than one-half of a pound of
whole wheat bread twice a day, especially when taken with raw peanuts,
which are rather hard to digest. The trouble is made worse by the
addition of more than one pound of apples to each meal, for when apples
in large quantities are eaten with liberal amounts of starch, the
tendency for the food to ferment is so strong that only a very few
escape. Gas is produced in great quantities, which is both unnatural and
unpleasant. Neither stomach nor bowels manufacture any perceptible
amount of gas if they are in good condition and a moderate amount of
food is taken.
Whole wheat bread digests easily enough when eaten in moderation, but it
is very difficult to digest when as much as eight ounces are taken at a
meal. One can accustom the body to accept this amount of food, but it is
never required under ordinary conditions and the results in the long run
are bad.
The food prescribed for the second day is more easily digested, but it
is too much. Raisins are a splendid force food, but no ordinary
individual needs a pound of raisins in one day, in addition to about one
and three-fourths pounds of bananas, which are also a force food and are
about as nourishing as the same amount of Irish potatoes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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