Diet and Health; With Key to the Calories

But remember this point: Any food eaten beyond what your system requires for its energy, growth, and repair, is fattening, or is an irritant, or both.

If a food contains much fat, you will know that it is high in food value, for fat has two and one-quarter times the caloric value that proteins and carbohydrates have. Dry foods are high in value, for they are concentrated and contain little water. Compare the quantity of two heaping teaspoonfuls of sugar, a concentrated food, and one and one-half pounds of lettuce, a watery vegetable, each having the same caloric value. A moderate sized chocolate cream is not only concentrated but has considerable fat in the chocolate.

It is not necessary to know accurately the caloric values. In fact, authorities differ in some of their computations. The list is not mathematically correct, but it will give you a good idea of the relative values, and is accurate enough for our purposes. I have purposely given round numbers, where possible, in order to make them more easily remembered.

In reckoning made dishes, such as puddings and sauces, you must compute the different ingredients approximately. About how much sugar it has, how much fat to the dish, and so on. In reckoning any food, if you are reducing, give it the benefit of the doubt on the high count; and if trying to gain, count it low.

It is well, if you are much overweight or underweight, to have some of these foods that are given weighed, so that you can judge approximately what your servings will total.

A mixture of foods should be used, in order to get the different elements which are necessary for the human machine. It is not wholesome to have many foods at a meal; but the menu should be varied from day to day.

Any regimen which does not allow some carbohydrates and fats for the fuel foods is injurious if persisted in for a length of time.

As to harmful combinations; there are not many, and if your food is thoroughly masticated you need not concern yourself very much about them. However, if you find a food disagrees with you, or that certain combinations disagree, do not try to use them. Underweight individuals sometimes have to train their digestive tracts for some of the foods they need.

Coffee, tea and other mild stimulants are not harmful to the majority; but, like everything else, in excess they will cause ill health. Alcoholic drinks make the fat fatter and the thin thinner, and both more feeble mentally.

I hope I have stimulated you to an interest in dietetics. There are many books which go into the subject much more deeply. I recommend, especially, "The Home Dietitian," written by my beloved colleague and classmate, Dr. Belle Wood-Comstock.

Others I have read that are especially suitable for the home are "Feeding the Family," by Mary Schwartz Rose, and "Dietary Computer," by Pope. There are doubtless many other good ones. The Department of Agriculture publishes free bulletins on the subject. Farmers' Bulletin No. 142, by Atwater, is very comprehensive.

Other authorities I have consulted are Lusk, Friedenwald and Ruhräh, Gautier, Sherman, Buttner, Locke and Von Noorden.

Measuring Table

One Hundred Calorie Portions and Average Helpings

MEATS

FISH

SOUPS

DAIRY PRODUCTS AND EGGS

VEGETABLES

When not otherwise indicated, the method of cooking is by boiling. The caloric value of sauces served with them not included.

FRUITS

BREAD AND CRACKERS

White, gluten, rye, whole wheat, etc., practically same caloric value per same weight. There is so little difference between the caloric value of gluten bread and other breads that it is not necessary for reducing to try to get it. (Toasted bread has the same caloric value that it had before toasting. It is more easily digested, but just as fattening. Advised, however, because it makes you chew.)

BREAKFAST FOODS, ETC.

CANDY, PASTRIES AND SWEETS

Saccharine, a coal tar product 300 to 500 times sweeter than sugar, but of no food value. Not advisable to use habitually. Better learn to like things unsweetened—it can be done.

CONDIMENTS AND SAUCES

NUTS

Key to Key

If you will remember the following portions of food, you will have a standard by which to compute your servings:

If food is fried, or butter, oil, or cream sauces are added, the C. value increases markedly.

Review

1. Why is a mixture of foods necessary?

2. Give the caloric value of the following: 1 glass of milk, skim; buttermilk; 10 chocolate creams; 1 bag peanuts; 1 pat butter; 1 piece pie.

3. Name foods low in caloric value. Why are they valuable?

4. How many calories of bread and butter do you daily consume?

5. Reckon your usual caloric intake. How much of it is in excess of your needs?

6. Memorize caloric value of foods you are fond of.

This Table of Foods, With the C Given Per Oz. Will Help You

The caloric value of pure fat is 255 C per oz., dry starches and sugars (carbohydrates), and protein (the meat element), is 113. This means fats are 2-1/4 times more fattening than other foods. Most foods contain considerable water, so the following is an approximate table of foods 'as is.' I have given round numbers in the table so you can more easily remember them. Memorize it.

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5

Vegetarianism vs. Meat Eating

As protein is the only food which builds and repairs tissue, it is the food which has caused the most controversy.

First: As to the amount needed.

Second: As to whether animal flesh protein is necessary.

AMOUNT NEEDED: It was thought for many years that 150 grams or 5 ounces of dry protein (equivalent to about 1-1/2 pounds lean meat) per day was necessary. But experiments of Chittenden and others have proved that considerably less is sufficient, and that the health is improved if less is taken.

Chittenden's standard is 50 grams, or 1-2/3 ounces, dry protein (equivalent to 1/2 pound meat per day). This is considered by many as insufficient. A variation from 1-2/3 to 3 ounces dry protein per day will give a safe range. (ROSE.)

The amount of protein needed is comparatively independent of the amount of physical exertion, thus differing from the purely fuel foods, carbohydrates and fats, which should vary in direct proportion to the amount of physical exertion. In general, 10 to 15 per cent of the total calories per day should be taken as protein. An excess is undoubtedly irritant to the kidneys, blood vessels, and other organs, and if too little is taken the body tissues will suffer.

Not all of the protein should be taken in the form of animal protein; at least one-half should be taken from the vegetable kingdom.

Animal Flesh Protein

The following are a few of the chief reasons given by those who object to its use:

First: The animal has just as much right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as we have.

Second: They may be diseased, and there is the possibility of their containing animal parasites, such as tapeworms and trichinæ. I would like to tell you more about worms, they are so interesting, but He says not to try to tell all I know in this little book; that maybe he will let me write another sometime, although it is a terrible strain on him, and that I have given enough of the family history, anyway.

Third: The tissues of animals contain excrementitious material, which may cause excess acidity, raise the blood pressure, and so forth.

Fourth: More apt to putrefy and thus give ptomaine poisoning.

Fifth: Makes the disposition more vicious.

(Honest,—animals eating meat exclusively are more vicious.)

Those who believe that animal protein should be eaten answer these points as follows:

First: Survival of the fittest.

Second: If you give decent support to your health departments they can furnish enough inspectors to prevent the marketing of diseased meat; and if some should slip through, if you thoroughly bake, boil, or fry your animal parasites they will lose their pep.

Third: Most of the harmful products are destroyed by the intestines and liver.

Fourth: True, but see that you get good meat, and don't eat it in excess.

Fifth: Unanswerable—to be proved later by personal experiments.

In addition, they say that animal protein is more easily digested, that 97 per cent is assimilated because it is animal, and so it is much more to be desired, especially by children and convalescents; that vegetable protein is enclosed in cellulose, and only 65 to 75 per cent is used by the system; thus the diet is apt to be too bulky if the proper amount is taken.

It has been proved, however, by several endurance tests, that the vegetarian contestants had more strength and greater endurance than their meat-eating competitors, so there is no reason why we should be worried by one or two, or even more, meatless days, especially when animal product protein, such as milk, eggs, cheese, and the vegetable proteins, as in the legumes and the nuts, are available.

I confess that for quite a while after studying vegetarian books I took a dislike to meat, but now I am in the comfortable state described by Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography. It seems that he had been converted to vegetarianism and had decided that he never again would eat the flesh of animals that had been ruthlessly slaughtered, when they so little deserved that fate.

But he was exceedingly fond of fish, and while on a fishing party, as some fish were being fried, he found they did smell most admirably well, and he was greatly torn between his desire and his principle. Finally he remembered that when the fish were opened he saw some smaller fish in their stomachs, and he decided that if they could eat each other he could eat them.

Protein Calories in 100 C Portions of Food

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6

The Deluded Ones—My Thin Friends

I am going to sandwich you in between the food calories and my fat friends, and maybe you can absorb some of them. In the first chapter, you remember, I said I was not particularly interested in you, but I have changed my mind, and I will treat you tenderly and carefully. I will have to preach a little bit first, but I don't mind that; I love to reform people—Yes, you need reforming!

The first thing many of you have to do is to learn to accept the trivial annoyances and small misfits of life as a matter of course, for to give them attention beyond their deserts is to wear the web of your life to the warp.

Elbert Hubbard never said anything better than that. Have that reproduced in motto form and put it on your bureau, and repeat it fifty times daily.

Adopt my philosophy. If I have a trivial annoyance I analyze it carefully. Was I to blame? Yes? All right, I am glad, because then I can see that it will not happen again, so I stop worrying. If I am not to blame, if I could not help it in the least, well, then I don't worry about it, for that will not help it any, and I wasn't to blame! If it bobs up in my mind again, I say: "Now, look here, you annoyance, I have given you all the attention you deserve; avaunt, depart, get out!"

Now, how is this philosophy going to help you gain?

When you worry needlessly, notice how tense your muscles are. You are exercising them all of the time and using hundreds of calories of energy. You raise your blood pressure, the internal secretory glands may overact (re-read what I have said about these glands in the fat people), and thus many more calories are used. The intestinal secretions do not flow so freely, you have indigestion and do not assimilate your food, and thus hundreds more calories are lost.

It certainly is impossible to gain unless your food is assimilated.

So the first thing you have to learn is this mental control and to relax. Remember that word, relax. After you are better nourished your nervous system will not be on hair-trigger tension, and it will be easier for you.

If you are ill in mind or body, remember that it is natural to be well, and that within your body nature has stored the most wonderful forces which are always tending towards the normal, or health, if not obstructed or hindered.

Nature sometimes needs help to stimulate those forces, or to reinforce them, or to remove obstructions. This is where the physician comes in. But you yourself can aid nature the most by realizing that nature is health and it is normal to be well. By so doing, all of your organs function better and you are restored to normal more rapidly.

Second: It is very important to have enough sleep. Dr. Richard Cabot says that probably resistance is lowered as much by lack of sufficient sleep as by any other factor, and that all you can soak into your system in twenty-four hours is not too much. Don't forget the fresh air.

You generally suffer from sleeplessness, I believe. The overweights are always advised not to sleep too much. They will find while reducing that they won't want to sleep so much, anyway. They will like to stay awake—they feel so much happier.

Now, when you retire and try to sleep but cannot, try this—it works with me. You know when you are passing over your mental images become distorted and grotesque. I artificially induce that state. If I find myself rehearsing about two hundred times, with appropriate gestures, the keen, witty, logical remarks which I could have made in favor of my pet legislation in the club discussion, but didn't, then I begin after this fashion:

Pink elephants with green ribbons on their tails—red rhinoceri (is that right, or should it be rhinoceroses?)—smiling peanuts—Woman's City Club—Social Health Insurance—why didn't I say—I wish I had said—(here get out, you annoyance!)—pink elephants—and so forth and so forth.

Now I realize I have ruined myself. I am my own worst enemy. I have exposed my whole life before those modern vivisectionists, the army of amateur psycho-analysts.

Third: Exercise. Great muscular exertion should be avoided, but the setting-up exercises that I advise, if begun with moderation and increased gradually, will undoubtedly stimulate the appetite and help the body functions to be better performed.

Fourth: Since food is the only source of body substance, you must gradually train your stomach so that it can care for enough food to not only supply your bodily energy, but to leave a little excess to be stored as fat.

If you have a small appetite—and many of you have—your stomach is undoubtedly contracted, and you must gradually add to the amount you have been eating, even though it may cause some distress, until you have disciplined it so that it can handle what you need without distress. The stomach is a muscular organ and can be trained and exercised somewhat as other organs can. You will not have much appetite at first, but it will develop. Sometimes a short fast for a day or two, drinking nothing but pure water, seems to be beneficial in the beginning.

Do not drink much with your meals, unless the drink has food value by the addition of lots of cream or sugar, or both.

Decide how many calories you need for your activities, gradually add to your dietary until you have reached that number, and then some more, and you will gain as surely as the overweight individual will lose by doing the opposite. It may take a long time, or you may get results very rapidly, depending somewhat upon the individual characteristics. Gradually increase your butter, cream, sugar, chocolate, and so forth, as they are very high in food value.

Study the Key to the Calories and reckon your calories every day for a while. You have already noticed that the foods that you like are low in food value.

Here are some of the things you can take to add to your fuel:

A glass of milk, hot or cold, taken between meals and before retiring, will add about 500 calories.

Cream sauce on your vegetables will add to their value.

Cod liver oil, or olive oil, or cream, begun in small doses and gradually increased.

One malted milk, made with milk, syrup, egg, ice cream, whipped cream, and the malted milk, will add about 500 calories.

You remember the painful time that I spoke of when there was so much more of me than there ought to be? Well, the aforesaid concoction, made with milk, syrup, egg, ice cream, whipped cream, and the malted milk, was accessory before the fact, and also particeps criminis before the law.

I absorbed this phraseology by being president of the Professional Woman's Club, with its high-class women attorneys, ministers, dentists, Ph.D.'s, and "Medical Trust" doctors.

"Medical Trust."—The American Medical Association (A.M.A.), a powerful trust you can't get into unless you have a high preliminary education and are a graduate of a high-class medical college. Eleven years' training after the grammar school is their minimum standard now.

"League for Medical Ignorance."—The so-called "League for Medical Freedom"; the opponent of the above mentioned trust. Their standard—any old kind of a medical or religious training, two weeks or longer, engrafted on anyone who has the money to pay for the course. No education, no barrier; in fact, those of limited education make the loudest boosters for the league. In justice, I must say that many splendid, estimable persons belong to this league, not knowing these facts.

Fifth: See page 92 in my advice to the fat. It is as important for you as for them. (It always makes me mildly furious when I look up a word and am directed to seek some other locality. If it affects you that way—seek page 60 in my advice to you.)

Also have your teeth X-rayed. Blind abscesses at the roots will cause all sorts of aches and pains, as well as underweight.

Sixth: Don't talk so much. See if you can't leave out two-thirds of the totally unimportant, uninteresting details. A tremendous amount of energy is used in talking. This habit I would not say was confined to you, by any means; it is another one of those pretty nearly universal errors.

I will not give you a sample fattening menu, for it might be all out of proportion to what you could handle, and it would upset you. Make out your own menus, realizing that you must work gradually to the desired amount.

I am taking it for granted that you are organically sound, that your scientific, educated physician has said there is nothing the matter with you, except perhaps your "nervous" disposition.

Have I not been nice to you? All right, relax and watch yourself get into the class of the plumptically adequate.

And if you don't succeed after a faithful trial, take the milk-cure, with its three to six weeks' absolute rest.

Recapitulation

1. Calm yourself.
2. Sleep.
3. Exercise.
4. Food.
5. Masticate
6. Delete the details.
7. Milk-cure.

Review

1. Repeat Elbert Hubbard's advice.
2. Give three reasons why worry can make
you thin.
3. Define "Medical Trust" and "League
for Medical Freedom."
4. Memorize paragraph about nature
5. Enumerate the things you can eat to
increase your calories.

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7

Exercise

It is practically impossible to reduce weight through exercise alone, unless one can do a tremendous amount of it. For the food that one eats is usually enough to cover the energy lost by the exercise.