Encyclopedia of Diet: A Treatise on the Food Question, Vol. 1

Volume IV

Volume V

Lesson I

THE INTERRELATION

OF

FOOD CHEMISTRY AND PHYSIOLOGICAL

CHEMISTRY

FOOD CHEMISTRY AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY UNITED

The human body is composed of fifteen well-defined chemical elements. A normal body weighing 150 pounds contains these elements in about the following proportions:

There are a number of other body-elements, but they are so remote that they have not been clearly defined by physiological chemists. All these body-elements are nourished separately, or, as it were, individually. They must be replenished in the body as rapidly as they are consumed by the vital processes, and this can be accomplished only through the action of the elements, in the forms of food, air, and water, received into the body and assimilated by it.

From my professional experience I have estimated that about 91 per cent of all human ills have their origin in the stomach and the intestines, and are caused directly by incorrect habits in eating and drinking. If this is true, or even approximately true, it shows that, in its relation to health and the pursuit of happiness, food is the most important matter with which we have to deal; yet the average person devotes far less consideration to it than he does to the gossip of the neighborhood, or to the accumulating of a few surplus dollars.

Profs. Pavloff, Metchnikoff and Chittenden; Hon. R. Russell; Drs. Rabagliati, and Wiley, Ex-Chief of our Federal Bureau of Chemistry, and many other profound thinkers and writers have given in their various books an array of facts which prove beyond doubt that food is the controlling factor in life, strength, and health; yet they have given us but few practical suggestions as to how it should be selected, combined, and proportioned, so as to produce normal health, and especially how to make it remedial and curative, or to make it counteract the appalling increase in disease.

I have endeavored to begin where the great theorists left off—

1 By becoming familiar with the chemistry of food

2 By becoming familiar with the chemistry of the body

Until my work began these two great sciences had been taught as distinct and separate branches of learning, while in reality physiological chemistry is but half of a science, and food chemistry is, in fact, the other half of the same science. The energy in food cannot be developed without the body—the body cannot develop energy without food. Each branch is worthless, therefore, without the other. In this work I have endeavored to unite them and to make of the two one practical, provable, and usable science.

RELATION OF SUPERACIDITY TO OTHER DISEASES

Nearly all stomach and intestinal troubles begin with superacidity. This is caused by the wrong combinations of food, or overeating. Food passing from the stomach, thus supercharged with Superacidity a primary cause acid, causes irritation of the mucous lining of the alimentary tract. This results in nervousness, insomnia, intestinal congestion (constipation), fermentation, and intestinal gas, while the excess of acid in the stomach causes irritation of the mucous surface of that much-abused organ, which develops first into catarrh, then ulceration, and sometimes into cancer. The accumulation of gas from the fermenting mass in the intestines causes irregular heart action, and sometimes heart failure. The great number of sudden deaths from this cause is pronounced by physicians "heart failure." In this the doctors and the writer agree—I know of no other way to die except for the heart to fail. The primary purpose of this work, however, is to ascertain why the heart fails, and, if possible, to remove the causes. From the fermenting food toxic (poisonous) substances, such as carbon dioxid, are generated, which, when taken into the circulation, become a most prolific source of autointoxication (self-poisoning).

From long experience gained by scientific feeding, in treating stomach and intestinal trouble, it became apparent that a great many disorders, very remote from the stomach, completely disappear when perfect digestion and assimilation of food, and thorough elimination of waste are effected. This has led to a very searching investigation of causes, and to the preparation of the following chart, which is designed to show how a great many so-called diseases can be traced back to one original cause—superacidity.

Aside from emotional storms, great nervous shocks, inoculation (vaccination), and violent exposure, nearly all diseases can be traced back to the stomach, or errors in eating. Even in cases of exposure, vaccination, or contagion, if the digestion and the assimilation of food, and the elimination of waste are perfect, the body will have the power to resist nearly all these causes of disease. Curing disease, therefore, by scientific feeding, is merely a method of removing causes and giving Nature a chance to restore normality.

Food that sours, ferments, or that does not digest within Nature's time-limit, cannot make good bone and brain. A defective digestion that converts food into poisonous gases in the intestinal canal will make inferior flesh and blood, just as any other defective machine will turn out inferior work. This is the natural law governing all animal life.

Millions of learned people admit that good specimens of men and women can be constructed only out of good building material. They admit that the quality of a man, like that of a house, or a machine, depends upon the kind of material used in his construction; and yet Nature's protest against unsuitable building material they allow this important material to be selected and prepared by the most ignorant and unlearned, and they take it into their bodies with a childish thoughtlessness that is amazing; and when Nature imposes her penalty for violating her laws, they seek a remedy in drugs and medicines, and these are applied only to the symptoms which are merely the protest Nature is uttering. Thus a powerful drug silences or kills the friendly messenger who brought the timely warning, but the cause still remains. Suppose houses, ships, and machinery were constructed and repaired after this plan!

NATURAL LAWS DEMAND OBEDIENCE

Recompense for obedience to natural law, and punishment for its violation, are the invariable order of the universe, and are nowhere so effectively and emphatically demonstrated as in the cause and cure of the condition called disease.

There are certain laws which, if obeyed, will build the human body to its highest efficiency of energy, vitality and strength; but in order to obey these laws, one must know them, and in order to know them one must pass through the long and arduous mill of experience, or else learn from one who has done so.

Pain is a warning that something is wrong with the human mechanism, and he who tries to silence this signal with medicine will be punished for two wrongs instead of one. Nature tolerates no trifling, no deception; her laws are inexorable, her penalties inevitable.

Multitudes of people are convinced that there is something wrong with their eating. Instead of food giving them the highest degree of mental and physical strength, which it should do, it actually produces ills and bodily disorders; moreover, not knowing the cause, people have no conception of a remedy other than drugs. It is amazing when one thinks how man, for two thousand years, has treated disease. Instead of studying causes and endeavoring to remove them, he has treated symptoms and symptoms only. It is generally known that the practise of medicine consists in treating symptoms rather than causes. For example, nearly all headaches—one of our common afflictions—are caused indirectly by impaired digestion, faulty secretion and excretion, yet the drug stores and Materia Medica (the Bible of the profession), are laden with "headache cures," all of which act only upon the symptoms. The whole system of drugging people when they are sick is merely a method of quieting the signals—of killing or paralyzing the messengers. Most drugs, taken into the human body, are merely diminutive explosives, the effect of which is destructive. They are like a lash cruelly applied to a willing servant who lags from sheer exhaustion.

Since symptoms are really the language of Nature, if we learn to interpret them, we need never err in diagnosis, and consequently never err in getting directly at the causes, as we must do in order to "cure." A drug that could cure a disorder caused by wrong feeding would perform a miracle. It would reverse one of the fixed laws of the universe. It would produce an effect without a cause. Nature works along the lines of least resistance, and points out with unerring certainty the best, the cheapest, and the easiest way to live. Health was originally called "ease." People who did not have health were in disgrace or "dis-eased."

HOW TO MAKE HUMAN NUTRITION A SCIENCE

Human nutrition cannot be made a science under the conventional methods of omnivorous eating—eating anything and everything without thought or reason. Nutrition can only be made a science by limiting the articles of food to such things as will reproduce all the chemical elements of the human body, mentioned at the beginning of this lesson.

The further we remove foods from their natural state, the more difficult becomes their analysis, their reliability, and a knowledge of their chemistry, therefore the menus that appear in this work include only the foods that will give to the body the best elements of nutrition.

There is but little difficulty in ascertaining the chemistry of natural foods, but when they have been preserved, pickled, canned, smoked, evaporated, milled, roasted, toasted, oiled, boiled, baked, mixed, flavored, sweetened, salted, soured and put into the popular commercial forms, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to know what we are eating, or to estimate the results.

Man is the net product of what he eats and drinks. Food bears very much the same relation to him that soil does to vegetation. The following questions, therefore, should be solved by every one who believes that success and happiness depend upon health and vitality:

1 How to select and how to combine foods which will give to the body a natural result, which is health

2 How to select and how to combine foods so that they will counteract and remove the causes of dis-ease

3 How to select foods which contain all the chemical elements of the body, and how to combine and proportion them at each meal so that they will chemically harmonize

4 How to determine the quantity of food to be taken each day, or at each meal, that will give to the body all the nourishment it is capable of assimilating

Note: Too much food, even of the right kind, defeats this purpose and produces just the opposite result.

Upon this knowledge hinges the building of a natural body, the cure of a vast majority of dis-eases, our ability to reach the highest state of physical and mental vitality, the prolongation of youth and longevity.

OUR FOOD MUST FIT INTO OUR CIVILIZATION

We must make our diet fit into our civilized requirements. Civilization has imposed many customs, habits, and duties upon us that have not been properly met by nutrition or diet. This is why nearly 91 per cent of our ills are caused by errors in eating.

Under continued physical exertion, the body will thrive for a time on an unbalanced diet. It will cast off surplus nutrition, and convert one element into another, a problem unknown to modern science, but under sedative or modern business habits and occupations, it will not continue to cast off a surplus, or to reconvert nutritive elements. As a result of an unbalanced bill of fare, the nutrients taken in excess of the daily needs undergo a form of decomposition, producing what is called autointoxication, and become a most prolific source of dis-ease.

WHY THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN NUTRITION IS IN ITS INFANCY

The reader may inquire why it is that all other branches of science have advanced so rapidly, and the science of human nutrition has just begun. The reasons are:

1 Our ancestors, for many thousand years, were taught that dis-ease was a visitation of Divine Providence, therefore to combat it was to tempt the Almighty.

2 Doctors of medicine who have been custodians of the people's health for many centuries have seldom been food scientists. Most of them attempt to combat disease with drugs.

Now we are beginning to learn the truth about the origin of disease and in considering the body as a human engine, to take into consideration the all-important question of fuel.

That the most learned physicians are drifting more and more toward scientific feeding and natural remedies is a matter of common knowledge. This splendid army of laborers in the great field of human suffering is made up largely of what is termed the Modern Doctor—the man who is brave enough to think and to act according to his better judgment.

Just to the extent that we understand the origin of drugs, and the drugging system of treating dis-ease, we turn instinctively from them, and instinctively toward food, for in drugs we find an ancient system of guesswork, while in food we find fundamental principles and primary causes. The majority of causes are removed when the diet is made to fit our physical condition and environment, and we then become normal by the process of animal evolution, Nature merely bestowing upon us our birthright because we have obeyed her laws.

3 The true science of human nutrition can be evolved only from an accurate knowledge of both food chemistry and of physiological chemistry.

The science of physiological chemistry has been known and taught for more than one hundred years, while the science of food chemistry is of recent origin. These two branches have been kept separate because they grew up at different periods of time. United they constitute the greatest science known to mankind, because they affect his health, his happiness, his life, and above all they measure the period of time he will live.

Physiological chemistry tells what the body is and its needs—food chemistry tells how to supply these needs. Recognizing these facts, I have merely united these hitherto unapplied branches of science, and have made of the union the science of Applied Food Chemistry, which makes practical that which has heretofore been confined mainly to theory.

LESSON II

SIMPLE PRINCIPLES OF GENERAL CHEMISTRY

If the student is versed in chemistry, this lesson will serve merely as a review; if not, somewhat close attention must be given to facts which at first may seem uninteresting. Patience should be exercised, for, while all the information herein given does not, taken as a whole, bear directly upon the subjects of health and dis-ease, yet with this knowledge it will be much less difficult to understand the principles which are applied later when we take up the chemistry of the body and the chemistry of food.

Chemistry is not, as popularly supposed, a science far removed from everyday life. Everyone has some knowledge of chemistry, but the chemist has observed things more minutely and therefore more accurately understands the composition of substances and the changes that are everywhere taking place. For illustration:

A cook starts a fire in a stove. She knows that the fire must have "air" or it will not burn; that when the fire is first lighted, it "smokes" heavily, but as it burns more, it smokes less; further, that if the damper in the pipe is closed the "gas" will escape in to the room.

The chemist also knows this, but because he has compared his observations with similar events elsewhere, he is enabled to express his knowledge in the language of science. To the chemist, fire is the process of combustion—the union of the oxygen of the air with the carbon and hydrogen compounds of the wood or of the coal. The heat of the fire is generated by this chemical union. To the chemist, the smoke is a natural phenomenon occasioned by particles of carbon which fail to unite with the oxygen gas. The gas, which to the woman suggests suffocation if enough of it escapes into the room, to the chemist suggests a compound resulting from combination of the oxygen with the carbon.

CHEMICAL ELEMENTS

To the chemist, all forms of matter are mere combinations of elements. Chemical analysis is a process of separating, dividing, and subdividing matter. When the chemist separates or analyzes compounds, until he can no longer simplify or subdivide them, he calls these simple products "chemical elements."

Many of the chemical elements are well known, such as copper, iron, and gold. Other elements that are still more common are unknown in their elementary form, because they combine with other elements so readily that they exist in nature only as compounds. For example: Hydrogen, united with oxygen, forms water; the elements chlorin and sodium, combined or united, form common salt.