The suggestions offered in the previous chapter concerning the necessity
for the enjoyment of food, give one a fairly clear idea as to what he
should eat. In other words, he should select those foods that he
thoroughly enjoys, keeping in mind the necessity of using only those
that are at least reasonably wholesome. If you have a large variety
from which to select, this will be to your advantage, provided you do
not include too many foods at one meal. It is a good plan to get your
variety from meal to meal and from day to day, but without including too
many dishes at any one meal.
One of the most remarkable cases of longevity with which I have ever
come in contact proved in a very pointed way the value of this
suggestion. This was a woman who had lived to be over eighty years of
age. During the last forty years of her life she was as agile, as clear-
headed and as capable as a young woman in the heyday of her youth. I am
satisfied that to a large extent the unusual vitality possessed by this
woman was due to her habit of eating but one article of food two meals
each day, although occasionally she would eat only one. Her
meals were taken irregularly, because she would eat only when she was
hungry. When she had a definite appetite it would nearly always
indicate to her the particular food that she wanted. She would then
prepare a meal of this food and thoroughly satisfy her appetite with it.
Nothing else was eaten at that meal. This woman naturally went through
some very severe trials before she adopted this diet-indeed, a terrible
lesson of some sort seems necessary to compel one to follow a strict
dietetic regimen. At the age of forty she was a physical wreck, having
been for years tortured with rheumatism. Having vainly tried every
other remedy, she finally became interested in diet, and through it
finally overcame her difficulty. It might also be of interest in this
connection to know that she never used salt, pepper, or condiments of
any sort with her meals, and it would be well to emphasize that it is
important to avoid the too free use of condiments and stimulating foods.
We have used salt so long that our bodies seem adapted to it, and
it is usually considered essential to the welfare of domestic stock;
therefore it is a moot question as to whether it is advisable for
human beings to avoid it altogether. Yet the excessive use of it to
which we are prone is certainly harmful. How is this to be avoided? If
we eat our food in a hand, I have found that the longer you are without
it the more you long for it, until the craving becomes much more
intense than is the hunger of a man who fasts (the symptoms are those of
a disease rather than of being hungry). Among the uncivilized
Eskimos the dislike of salt is so strong that a saltiness imperceptible
to me would prevent them from eating at all. This fact was often
useful to me, and when our Eskimo visitors threatened to eat us out of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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