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Nowadays, we must go further than merely say that bread consists of
carbohydrates, cheese of proteins and fat, that pork takes longer to
digest than veal, veal longer than roast beef, and roast beef longer
than boiled and raw meet. Vitamins have made us alter our food
perspective, for vitamins vitalise the tissues. They are largely present
in the outer coverings of rice, corn, and also in eggs and potatoes.
There are none in fine white bread, but are present in brown bread
containing all parts of the grain. What folly it is for people to eat
white bread! Milk contains vitamins ; remember the couplet:
" A pint of milk, egg, orange and greens
Give us our daily vitamins. '
Lack of vitamins lead to deficiency diseases such as rickets, scurvy,
beri-beri, etc. Much work has yet to be done on this subject; I only
mention them to show that vitamins rather than calories are important.
Every man of 40 who would live to 90 must become a food specialist;
the smooth working of his alimentary system is the key to the door
leading to a green old age. He must eat fresh foods and give up the
fancy cooking which wrecks the vitamins. He scorns knowledge and
says his doctor can cure him when necessary. But at 50 nature
presents the bill in the form of symptoms of the destructive process.
There is an excess of food intake over output. Corpulence is the
proof of over-worked digestive and assimilative organs. The wrong
foods are eaten, the heart and liver become encased in fat, so he gets
short-winded and the liver breaks down : toxins spread and he gets
injured endocrines, gout, obesity, high blood pressure, arterio-solerosis,
heart disease, apoplexy and death. He eats four meals a day instead
of two; it would take a 40-mile walk a day to oxidise half of what he
eats. Sick animals starve ; sick human beings ought to do the same,
but they prefer to lap up beef tea. Moderation in eating is imperative.
As that fine writer, Dr. Leonard Williams, says : " People keep talking
about the need for eating to keep up their strength." So when told
that they are poisoning themselves they are astonished. Excessive
intake is fatal. Butcher's meat contains no vitamins; it is less healthy
than fish, fowl or game. Rice pudding is made of decorticated rice,
boiled milk and refined sugar, a combination which contains no
vitamins and no salts. Instead of taking the ordinary table sugar,
that is cane sugar, which is liable to irritate the stomach, we should
take invert sugar in the form of the readily assimilable honey. Eat
more uncooked and unconcentrated foods. Our usual food does not
contain the salts we need, such as salts of calcium, iodine, magnesium,