Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1887 — As to Food. [ARTICLE]

As to Food.

Opinions about eating have taken a more sensible turn under late medical observations, contrasting with the time in memory when conscientious people studied to limit their fare to the. fewest ounces that would sustain life. Pious people and infidel philosophers alike thought it an advance when they could record their daily diet at fifteen ounces, mostly of bread and weak drink. Rigid persons carried scales to the table and weighed their food, allowing’ so many minutes and so many ounces, after which they rose, from the table hungry or satisfied as the case might be. Hygienic reformers are still harping on the mistaken rule, ‘'Always rise from the table hungry,” as if the instincts of the body were given solely to be disregarded, and to be a constant uneasiness. This ascetic rule is one extreme of the food question, opposing which we may place the homely old saying, that the way to eat mush and milk was to “sit two inches from the table and eat until you touch.” Science and common sense alike forbid hunger and repletion. Dr. Hodges, before the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, takes high and well-sustained ground that “the body requires not only to be fed, but filledand says that the underfed absorb a large part of medical practice for the relief of diseases from the lack of nutrition, among which are nervous prostration, anmmia, neuralgia, cough and throat troubles, constipation, backache, and nausea or sick headache.” The symptoms of “chronic starvation,” he declares are found not only in Irish and Lancashire families or among underpaid operatives and shop-girls, but in good families, among growing school children, boys fitting for college, society girls, young mothers of families, and workingwomen. Quality of food, with all the heat and force it may contain. will not make up for quantity, and the better educated classes readily deceive themselves and mislead others as to the amount of food necessary for welfare. Under the conceit heartily is neither wholesome nor refined, a habit of going without enough sustenance is established, till the stomach grows contracted from want of sufficient victualing, and the result is low tone, and weakness of body and brain. Much of the ill-humor, the dullness and flatness of intercourse, the failure in business and literature, is directly traceable to defect ve nutrition. The mind is slow or confused, the nerves give way under strain, and thaEjsnappishness results which is really a form of hysteria in men and women. The shortcomings of the usual

diet are apparent, when it is seen that the ordinary daily ration of mixed fare should (Weigh within an ounce and a half of seventeen pounds of the heartiest food. The utter inadequacy of the genteel restaurant portion was forcibly shown at the Internet onal Health Exhibit on in London, when the Vegetarian Society plumed itself on furnishing s x-penny dinners to four or five hundred persons daily. From the carefully kept ac ount of the fare, compared with the- standard diet agreed upon by phis ologists, it appeared that six of the six-penny dinners would be needed to support a man during a hard day’s labor. And grow ng creatures, hard students, and overtasked women require not less than two-thirds this amount, or the body languishes, and it takes but a few years to establ sh disease. Experience confirms the necessity of a heartier diet. Within twenty years the rations of arm es, and of charitable institutions, hosp tals, and prisons have been liberally increased. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the "hecessity for an amended diet, generous in quantity, quality, and variety.— The Congreg alionalis t.