Diet and Health

With

Key to the Calories

By

Lulu Hunt Peters, A.B., M.D.

Dedicated

by permission to

Herbert Hoover

Illustrated by

The Author's Small Nephew

Dawson Hunt Perkins

The little rascal

Read This First

I am sorry I cannot devise a key by which to read this book, as well as a Key to the Calories, for sometimes you are to read the title headings and side explanations before the text. Other times you are supposed to read the text and then the headings. It really does not matter much as long as you read them both. Be sure to do that. They are clever. I wrote them myself.

I have been accused of trying to catch you coming and going, because I have included in my book the right methods of gaining weight, as well as those for losing weight. But this is not the reason—though I don't object to doing that little thing—the reason is that the lack of knowledge of foods is the foundation for both overweight and underweight.

I did want my publishers to get this out in a cheaper edition, thinking that more people could have it, and thus it would be doing more good; but they have convinced me that that idea was a false claim of my mortal mind, and that the more you paid for it, the more you would appreciate it. I have received many times, and without grumbling on my part, ten dollars for the same advice given in my office. Perhaps on this line of reasoning we should have ten dollars for the book. Those of you who think so may send the balance on through my publishers.

CONTENTS

Diet and Health

1

Preliminary Bout

Rule to Find Ideal Adult Net Weight

Multiply number of inches over 5 ft. in height by 5½; add 110. For example: Height 5 ft. 7 in. without shoes.

If under 5 ft. multiply number of inches under 5 ft. by 5½ and subtract from 110.

Are You Thin and Do You Want to Gain?

Skip this chapter. It will not interest you in the least. I will come to you later. I am not particularly interested in you anyway, for I cannot get your point of view. How any one can want to be anything but thin is beyond my intelligence. However, knowing that there are such deluded individuals, I have been constrained to give you advice. You won't find it spontaneous nor from the heart, but if you follow my directions I will guarantee that you will gain; providing, of course, you have no organic trouble; and the chances are that by giving proper attention to your diet you will gain anyway, and maybe in passing lose your trouble. Who knows?

In war time it is a crime to hoard food, and fines and imprisonment have followed the exposé of such practices. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of individuals all over America who are hoarding food, and that one of the most precious of all foods! They have vast amounts of this valuable commodity stored away in their own anatomy.

Now fat individuals have always been considered a joke, but you are a joke no longer. Instead of being looked upon with friendly tolerance and amusement, you are now viewed with distrust, suspicion, and even aversion! How dare you hoard fat when our nation needs it? You don't dare to any longer. You never wanted to be fat anyway, but you did not know how to reduce, and it is proverbial how little you eat. Why, there is Mrs. Natty B. Slymm, who is beautifully thin, and she eats twice as much as you do, and does not gain an ounce. You know positively that eating has nothing to do with it, for one time you dieted, didn't eat a thing but what the doctor ordered, besides your regular meals, and you actually gained.

You are in despair about being anything but fat, and—! how you hate it. But cheer up. I will save you; yea, even as I have saved myself and many, many others, so will I save you.

It is not in vain that all my life I have had to fight the too, too solid. Why, I can remember when I was a child I was always being consoled by being told that I would outgrow it, and that when I matured I would have some shape. Never can I tell pathetically "when I was married I weighed only one hundred eighteen, and look at me now." No, I was a delicate slip of one hundred and sixty-five when I was taken.

I never will tell you how much I have weighed, I am so thoroughly ashamed of it, but my normal weight is one hundred and fifty pounds, and at one time there was seventy pounds more of me than there is now, or has been since I knew how to control it. I was not so shameless as that very long, and as I look back upon that short period I feel like refunding the comfortable salary received as superintendent of an hospital; for I know I was only sixty-five per cent efficient, for efficiency decreases in direct proportion as excess weight increases. Everybody knows it.

The Meeting Is Now Open for Discussion

Jolly Mrs. Sheesasite has the floor and wants some questions answered. You know Mrs. Sheesasite; her husband recently bought her a pair of freight scales.

"Why is it, Doctor, that thin people can eat so much more than fat people and still not gain?"

"First: Thin people are usually more active than fat people and use up their food.

"Second: Thin people have been proved to radiate fifty per cent more heat per pound than fat people; in other words, fat people are regular fireless cookers! They hold the heat in, it cannot get out through the packing, and the food which is also contained therein goes merrily on with fiendish regularity, depositing itself as fat.

"And there are baby fireless cookers and children fireless cookers. The same dietetic rules apply to them as to the adult."

"I recognize Mrs. Tiny Weyaton; then you, Mrs. Knott Little."

"We have heard you say that fat people eat too much, and still we eat so little?"

"Yes, you eat too much, no matter how little it is, even if it be only one bird-seed daily, if you store it away as fat. For, hearken; food, and food only (sometimes plus alcohol) maketh fat. Not water—not air—verily, nothing but food maketh fat. (And between you and me, Mrs. Weyaton, just confidential like—don't tell it—we know that the small appetite story is a myth.)"

"But, Doctor, is it not true that some individuals inherit the tendency to be fat, and can not help it, no matter what they do?"

"Answer to first part—Yes.

"Answer to second part—No! It is not true that they cannot help it; they have to work a little harder, that is all. It is true that being fat is a disease with some, due to imperfect working of the internal secretory glands, such as the thyroid, generative glands, etc.; but that is not true fat such as you have. Yours, and that of the other members who are interested, is due to overeating and underexercising.

"Those diseased individuals should be under the care of a physician. Probably the secretory glands are somewhat inactive or sluggish in the healthy fat individual. I use the word healthy here in contradistinction to the other type. In reality, individuals very much overweight are not really healthy, and they should also visit their physician."

"Yes, Mrs. Ima Gobbler?"

"But, Doctor dear, what's the use of dieting? I only get fatter after I stop."

(Answering delicate like, for I'm fond of her and she is sensitive):

"You fat—! You make me fatigued! You never diet long enough to get out of the fireless cooker class. If you did, you wouldn't."

"Is there anyone else who would like to be recognized? No?"

It is well. I will probably answer more as I go along, for there is nothing that I don't know or haven't studied or tried in the reducing line. I know everything you have to contend with—how you no sooner congratulate yourself on your will power, after you have dragged yourself by the window with an exposure of luscious fat chocolates with curlicues on their tummies, than another comes into view, and you have it all to go through with again, and how you finally succumb.

I hope sometime it will be a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment, to display candy as shamelessly as it is done.

Many fond parents think that candy causes worms. It doesn't, of course, unless it is contaminated with worm eggs, but, personally, I wish every time I ate a chocolate I would get a worm, then I would escape them. The chocolates, I mean. I will tell you more about worms when I discuss meat.

I know how you go down to destruction for peanuts, with their awful fat content. It is terrible, the lure a peanut has for me. Do you suppose Mr. Darwin could explain that?

Perhaps I was a little too delicate like in my answer to Mrs. Gobbler's question,—What's the use of dieting, she only gets fatter after she stops?

So many ask me that question, with the further pathetic addition,—Will they always have to keep it up? And it ever irritates me.

The answer is,—Yes! You will always have to keep up dieting, just as you always have to keep up other things in life that make it worth living—being neat, being kind, being tender; reading, studying, loving.

You will not have to be nearly so strenuous after you get to normal; but you might as well recognize now, and accept it as a fact, that neither you nor anybody else will be able to eat beyond your needs without accumulating fat or disease, or both.

I love Billy Sunday's classical answer to the objection that his conversions were not permanent. He responded: "Neither is a bath!"

WHEN YOU START TO REDUCE

you will have the following to combat:

First: Your husband, who tells you that he does not like thin women. I almost hate my husband when I think how long he kept me under that delusion. Now, of course, I know all about his jealous disposition, and how he did not want me to be attractive.

Second: Your sister, who says, "Goodness, Lou, but you look old today; you looked lots better as you were."

Third: Your friends, who tell you that you are just right now; don't lose another pound! And other friends who tell you cheerful tales of people they have known who reduced, and who went into a decline, and finally died.

But you must not mind them. Smile, and tell them that you know all about it, and don't worry. Go serenely on your way, confident in your heart that you will look fully ten years younger when you get down to normal, no matter how you look in the interim. I don't see why women, and men, too, (secretly) worry so much about wrinkles. If the increased wrinkles on the face are accompanied by increased wrinkles in the gray matter, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. I'm sure I am much more interesting with wrinkles than I was without. I am to myself, anyway.

However, you will not be any more wrinkled if you reduce gradually, as I advise, and keep up your exercises at least fifteen minutes daily.

Take care of your face, alternate hot and cold water, glycerine one-quarter, rose water three-quarters, cold cream packs, massage gently, a little ice—you know what to do—you
need not fear. You will not only look ten
years younger and live twenty years longer—I assert it boldly—but your complexion and efficiency will be one hundred per cent better.

If there is anything comparable to the joy of taking in your clothes, I have not experienced it. And when you find your corset coming closer and closer together (I advise a front lace, so this can be watched), and then the day you realize that you will have to stitch in a tuck or get a new one!

But don't be in a hurry to make your clothes smaller now. If they are loose they will show to the world that you are reducing. A fat person in a tight suit, unless it is perfectly new, should be interned.

I have said that food, and food only, causes fat. That gives you the cue to what you must do to get rid of it. No anti-fat medicines unless under the supervision of your scientific, educated physician. They are dangerous; most of them contain thyroid extract, arsenic, or mercury. Even the vendors of these harmful compounds in their advertisements are now saying to "stop harmful drugging," but urge you to adopt their particular delightful product, and, "without dieting or exercises, you will positively reduce," and so forth.

No drastic purges, no violent exercises, especially at first, and not too frequent nor prolonged Turkish baths. Epsom salts baths have little effect. If salts are used habitually internally, they are harmful. All of these are unscientific and unsuccessful, and the things they bring on are worse than the fat.

Now, if food is the only source of body substance, you see that you must study that question, and that is what I will give you—some lessons on foods and their values.

Heretofore you have known only in a dumb, despairing sort of way that all the foods you like are fattening, and all the advice you read and hear is that you must avoid them as a pestilence. And you settle down to your joyless fatness, realizing that it is beyond human strength to do that forever, and that you would rather die young and fat, anyway, than to have nothing to eat all your life but a little meat, fish, and sloshy vegetables. Study on, and you will find the reason your favorite foods are fattening.

But cast off your dejection. You don't have to avoid them!

Eat what you like and grow thin? Yes; follow me. I know it will be an exertion, but you must persist and go through with it. Nothing in life worth while is attained without some effort. So begin now; it is the price of liberty.

Review

1. Give rule for normal weight.

2. How much excess food have you stored away?

3. Why more important than ever to reduce?

4. Why are fat individuals fireless cookers?

5. Give causes of excess fat.

NOTE: The Reviews which follow the chapters are important and the questions should be answered. To get the full benefit, Little Book must be studied, for it is the only authorized textbook of the "Watch Your Weights."

2

Key to the Calories

Some one page the thin? They come back here.

CALORIE; symbol C.; a heat unit and food value unit; is that amount of heat necessary to raise one pound of water 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

There is a good deal of effort expended by many semi-educated individuals to discredit the knowledge of calories, saying that it is a foolish food science, a fallacy, a fetish, and so forth.

They reason, or rather say, that because there are no calories in some of the very vital elements of foods—the vitamines and the mineral salts—therefore it is not necessary to know about them. They further argue that their grandfathers never heard of calories and they got along all right. That grandfather argument always enrages my mortal mind.

Now you know that a calorie is a unit of measuring heat and food. It is not heat, not food; simply a unit of measure. And as food is of supreme importance, certainly a knowledge of how it should be measured is also of supreme importance.

You should know and also use the word calorie as frequently, or more frequently, than you use the words foot, yard, quart, gallon, and so forth, as measures of length and of liquids. Hereafter you are going to eat calories of food. Instead of saying one slice of bread, or a piece of pie, you will say 100 Calories of bread, 350 Calories of pie.

The following is the way the calorie is determined:

An apparatus known as the bomb calorimeter has two chambers, the inner, which contains the dry food to be burned, say a definite amount of sugar, and an outer, which is filled with water. The food is ignited with an electric connection and burned. This heat is transferred to the water. When one pound of water is raised 4 degrees Fahrenheit, the amount of heat used is arbitrarily chosen as the unit of heat, and is called the Calorie.

Food burned (oxydized) in the body has been proved to give off approximately the same amount of heat or energy as when burned in the calorimeter.

Can you see now why fats are valuable? Why they make fat more than any other food? They give off more than two and one-fourth times as much heat, or energy, as the other foods.

Notice that protein and carbohydrates have the same food value as to heat or energy, each 113 Calories to the dry ounce. However, they are not interchangeable; that is, carbohydrates will not take the place of protein for protein is absolutely necessary to build and repair tissue, and carbohydrates cannot do that. But fats and carbohydrates are interchangeable as fuel or energy foods.

Calories Needed per Day for Normal Individuals

This depends upon age, weight, and physical activities; the baby and the growing child needing many more calories per pound per day than the adult, who has to supply only his energy and repair needs. The aged require still less than the young adult. As to weight; I have told you why overweight individuals need so little. As to physical activities; the more active, obviously the more calories needed, for every movement consumes calories.

The Maine lumbermen, for instance, while working during the winter months, consume from 5000 to 8000 Calories per day. But they do a tremendous amount of physical work.

Mental work does not require added nourishment. This has been proved, and if an excess be taken over what is needed at rest (if considerable exercise is not taken while doing the mental work) the work is not so well done.

In Round Numbers for the Day

(Remember that in general the boy needs as much as his father, and the girl as much as her mother.)

Example of Finding Number of Calories Needed

1. Determine normal weight by rule.

2. Multiply normal weight by number of calories needed per pound per day.

For example, say you weigh 220 or 125 lbs., but by the rule for your height your weight should be 150 lbs.; then 150 would be the number you would use.

By the rule I have given, adults require 15-20 Calories per pound per day, depending upon activity. For example, if you have no physical activities, then take the lowest figure, 15. 150x15—2250. Therefore your requirement, if your weight should be 150, is 2250 Calories per day.

Now, if you want to lose, cut down 500-1000 Calories per day from that.

Five hundred Calories equal approximately 2 ounces of fat. Two ounces per day would be about 4 pounds per month, or 48 pounds per year. Cutting out 1000 Calories per day would equal a reduction of approximately 8 pounds per month, or 96 pounds per year. These pounds you can absolutely lose by having a knowledge of food values (calories) and regulating your intake accordingly. You can now see the importance of a knowledge of calories.

If you want to gain, add gradually 500-1000 Calories per day.

Review

1. Define Calorie, and tell how determined.

2. How many C. in 1 oz. fat? of carbohydrates? of protein?

3. Why are fats so fattening?

4. How many C. per day do you require? do mental workers?

5. Upon what do C. needed per day for normal individuals depend? Discuss.

3

Review and More Definitions

FOOD: That which taken into the body builds and repairs tissue and yields energy in heat and muscular power.

CLASSES OF FOOD:

1. Protein, 18% of body weight.
2. Fats, 16% of body weight.
3. Carbohydrates, 1% of body weight.
4. Mineral matter, 5% of body weight.
5. Vitamines.
6. Water, 60% of body weight.

PROTEIN: Builds tissue, repairs waste, yields energy, and may help store fat. One-half, at least, of your protein should be from the vegetable kingdom.

A large percentage of protein is contained in

Eggs      Meat      Fowl  Fish  Nuts
Milk      Cheese    Gluten of Wheat
Legumes (beans, peas, lentils, peanuts, etc.)

There is about one-fourth ounce protein in

1 egg
1 glass milk (skim, butter, or whole)
1-1/2 oz. lean meat, or fish or fowl
1 oz. (1-1/5 cu. in.) whole milk cheese
2 slices of bread, 3-1/2 x 3-1/2 x 1/2
(white, whole wheat, corn, etc.)
3 heaping tablespoonfuls canned baked beans or lima beans
17 peanuts

FATS: Yield energy and are stored as fat.

Animal Fat: Cream, Butter, Lard

Oils: Cottonseed, Olive Almonds, Peanuts, Walnuts Chocolate, etc.

CARBOHYDRATES: Yield energy and are stored as fat.

Sugars (candy, honey, syrup, sweet fruits)

Starches (breads, cereals, potatoes, corn, legumes, nuts)

Vegetable fibre, or cellulose

MINERAL MATTER: Shares in forming bones and teeth, and is necessary for proper functioning.

Carbon  Lime  Sodium      Potassium,
Sulphur  Iron  Phosphorus  Etc.

These elements are contained largely in the outer coatings of grains, fruits, and vegetables, and in animal foods and their products. Do not pare potatoes before cooking. Cook vegetables in a small amount of water, saving the water for soups and sauces.

WATER: The universal solvent, absolutely necessary for life.

Contained in purest form in all vegetables and fruits. The average person needs, in addition, from three to five pints taken as a drink. If not sure of the purity, boil. Do not drink while food is in the mouth.

VITAMINES: Health preservers. Vital substances necessary for growth. The chemistry of these products is at present not thoroughly understood, but their importance has been demonstrated by experiments (not torture) on animals. By this work we know that diseases like beri-beri, scurvy, rickets, and probably pellagra, are due to a lack of these vital elements in the food, and from that fact these are called "deficiency" diseases.

Of course I realize that nations can be saved from horrible diseases, and hundreds and thousands of babies saved from death, through this experimentation on a few guinea pigs and other animals; but what is the life of a baby compared with the happiness of a guinea pig? Down with animal experimentation! Let us do everything in our power to hamper scientific work of this kind. We are giving up our husbands, fathers, sons, perhaps to die, for the cause of humanity, but a guinea pig! Horrors!

It has been found that the vitamines, like the minerals, are most abundant in the outer coverings and the germ of grains, and in fruits and vegetables. They are also present in fresh milk, butter, meat and eggs. Babies fed pasteurized or boiled milk should have fruit juices and vegetable purees early. Begin with one-half teaspoonful, well diluted, and gradually increase the feeding to an ounce or more between meals once or twice daily.

Most animal fats have the vitamines, but vegetable fats are deficient in them. That is the reason cod liver oil is better for some therapeutic uses than olive oil.

BALANCED DIET: Should contain

10-15% Protein
(children may need more)
25-30% Fat
60-65% Carbohydrates

For example, suppose you are a fairly active woman and need 2500 calories per day. Then for a balanced diet you would need:

Two and one-fifth ounces dry protein equals the approximate amount of protein in 10 ounces lean meat, fish, or fowl, or 9 ounces cheese, or 9 eggs. (You should not take all of your proteins in any of these single forms.) Two and one-half ounces fat equals approximately 5 pats of butter.

But listen! You don't have to bother with all this fussy stuff. Be careful not to over-or under-eat of the proteins, and your tastes will be a fair standard for the rest. You should remember that a balanced diet contains some of all these foods, in about the proportions given, and that, while watery vegetables and fruits contain very few calories, they contain very important mineral salts, vitamines, and cellulose. The latter is good for the daily scrub of the intestinal tract.

CONSTIPATION is many times caused by a too concentrated diet, or one containing too little roughage. It has also been discovered that some individuals who are troubled with faulty elimination digest this cellulose, and only the more resistant, like bran, is not absorbed. For those, the Japanese seaweed called agaragar in the laboratory, but more familiarly known as agar by the layman, is excellent. The most industrious digestive tract apparently can not digest that. It has the further property of absorbing a large amount of water, thus increasing its bulk.

Mineral oils (refined paraffine) also are not absorbable, and they act with benefit in some cases. About the worst thing to do, in general, is to take physics constantly. These are not physics, however; they act mechanically. Even the C.S. (common-sense?) individual can take these. The agar may be taken two or three heaping teaspoonfuls in a large glass of water before retiring, or in the morning before breakfast, or in lieu of 4 o'clock tea. Drink it down rapidly—for goodness' sake, don't try to chew it.

Mineral oil will make fine mayonnaise dressing. It has little or no food value, so the constipated overweight individual may indulge freely. For faulty elimination, then—

1. Correct diet.

2. Exercise—especially brisk walking.

3. Regularity of habit.

4. Possibly the addition of bran, agar, or mineral oils.

5. Sweet disposition. Mean people are always constipated.

Review

1. Give classes of food, with examples of each.

2. What are vitamines? How importance discovered?

3. Where most abundant?

4. What is a balanced diet?

5. What should be done for faulty elimination?

4

More Keys and More Calories

The following list probably does not contain all of the foods you might like and want to know about, but from those named you can judge of the food value of others. In general, the caloric value, and therefore the fattening value, depends upon the amount of fat and the degree of concentration.