Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
It is a fact that sugar is easy to digest and that one can soon get
energy from it, but feeding is not merely a question of giving
digestible aliments, but a question of using foods that are beneficial
in the long run. The moderate use of this food is all right, but excess
is always bad. Starches need more change than sugars before they can be
absorbed by the blood, but they give better results. Chemically there is
but small difference between starch and sugar. The starch must be
changed into dextrose, a form of sugar, before it can be utilized by the
body.
The human body contains a small amount of a substance called glycogen,
which is an animal starch or sugar. This glycogen is burned. Sugar is a
force food. It combines with oxygen and gives heat and energy. The waste
product is carbonic acid gas, which is carried by the blood to the lungs
and then exhaled.
Honey and maple sugar are good foods, but overconsumption is harmful.
Sugar eating is largely a habit. Because the sugar has so much of the
life and so many of the necessary salts removed in its refinement it is
a good food only when taken in small quantities. Nature demands of us
that we do not get too refined in our habits, for excessive refinement
is followed by decay. It is easy to overcome the tendency to overeat of
sugar.
Some spoil the most delicious watermelon by heaping sugar or salt, or
both, upon it. In this way the flavor is lost. There is not a raw fruit
on the market which is as finely flavored after it has been sugared as
it was before. True, those who have ruined their sense of taste object
to the tartness and natural acidity of various foods, but they are not
judges and can not be until they have regained a normal taste, which can
only be done by living on natural foods for a while.
Fats are obtained most plentifully from nuts, legumes, dairy products
and animal foods. They are the most concentrated of all foods, yielding
over twice the amount of heat or energy that we can obtain from the same
weight of pure sugar, starch or protein. Many who think they are
moderate eaters consume enough butter to put them in the glutton class.
Salts are present in all natural foods of which we partake.
Water is indispensable, for the body has to have fluids in order to
perform its functions.
Foods are burned in the body. They are valuable in proportion to the
completeness with which they are digested and assimilated and the ease
with which this process is accomplished. It takes energy to digest food
and if the food is very indigestible it takes too much energy.
The following remarks on digestibility are according to the best
knowledge we have on the subject:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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