Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 169, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1918 — NOT WISE TO GO HUNGRY [ARTICLE]

NOT WISE TO GO HUNGRY

Writer Criticizes the “No-Breakfast” Fad Which Still Retains a Hold on Some People. A few years ago someone started a boom for the breakfastless day as conducive to longevity. I know persons who have clung stubbornly to this absurdity, Meredith Nicholson writes in the Yale Review. The despicable habit contributes to domestic unsociabillty and is, I am convinced by my own experiments, detrimental to health. The chief business of the world is transacted in the morning hours, and I am reluctant to believe that it is most successfully done on empty stomachs. "Fasting as a spiritual discipline is, of course, quite another thing, but fasting by a tired business man under medical compulsion can hardly be lifted to the piano of things spiritual. To delete breakfast from the day’s program is a sheer cowardice, a confession of invalidism ovhich is well, calculated to reduce the powers of resistance. The man who begins the day with a prescription that sets him apart from his neighbors may venture Into the open jauntily, persuading himself that his abstinence proves his superior qualities; but In his heart, to say nothing of his stomach, he knows that -he has been guilty of a sneaking evasion. If he were a normal, healthy being he would not he skulking out of the house breakfastless. Early rising, a prompt response to the breakfast bell, a joyous breaking of the night’s fast, is a rite not to be despised in civilized homes.