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The Abuse of Food

in our temperate climate, it is not required by healthy men who can command a sufficient amount of heat-producing solid food . The various abuses of food may therefore be considered as consisting in- 1st, excess in quality; 2nd, excess in quantity; and, 3rd, abstinence from the food required. 12. EXCESS IN QUALITY is chiefly the result of too highly-stimulating food; that is to say, it consists in partaking of articles which in themselves are highly proper as containing the desired elements , but in too concentrated a form. When taken into the stomach they produce disorder of it from excess of proper stimulus, just as an exceedingly strong light injures the eyes, although a smaller amount of it is absolutely essential to vision. From this cause strong extracts of meat when taken by themselves, rich creams, strong alcoholic drinks, and other concentrations of otherwise wholesome foods, are sure to cause indigestion, and, in the case of alcohol, injury to the whole system. 13. EXCESS IN QUANTITY may either be of the whole elements of the food, or of part. It is well known that the gastric juice is essential to digestion, and that it is poured into the stomach, not in proportion to the food swallowed, but in exact relation to the demands of the system; so that if these are small, and yet a large meal is eaten, there will not be sufficient gastric juice to digest it, and, as a consequence , a considerable amount of crude and easily-fermented food is passed on, or rejected by vomiting. In either case this produces some disorder of the system; and, when habitually indulged in, the effect on the stomach, as well as other organs, is very prejudicial . But besides this bad effect of too great a quantity of otherwise proper food , there is also that resulting from too profuse a supply of either of the two kinds required by the system, and described as blood-making and respiratory. The great and prevalent error in this country is that of eating too much blood-making or azotized matter, whether in the shape of animal or vegetable food; for even in the latter there is too large a proportion to bear mixture with much flesh, as in the case of wheat, peas, or beans. On the other hand, the proportion of respiratory matter may be easily rendered too great, and particularly when strong alcoholic liquors are largely imbibed, as unfortunately so often happens. In this kind of abuse the injury is twofold-first, from the excessive stimulus mentioned in the last paragraph; and, secondly, from the enormous preponderance of respiratory matter. By virtue of the strong attraction for oxygen, alcohol is first oxidized, to the exclusion of the solid food, and even before the absolute and living tissues of the body. If the food is already composed of sufficient starch, sugar, or fat, every drop of alcohol is poisonous to a certain degree; but, on the other hand, when taken with cheese, meat, or eggs, in which there is a large quantity of nitrogen, alcohol in some shape is by no means injurious, unless its stimulating effects are too great from being in a very concentrated form. It is for this reason that our instinct has taught us to take wine or beer with savoury food in preference to sweets. 14. ABSTINENCE FROM THE QUANTITY OR QUALITY OF FOOD required by the system, is just as great an abuse of what is freely offered to us as the opposite extreme. Thus, it is clearly shown that man is an animal designed to live on a mixed diet, consisting of azotized and non azotized materials in a given proportion. It matters not whether these are obtained from the animal or vegetable kingdom, as far as the effect upon him is concerned. A man may feed as fully, and form more blood, on a vegetable diet composed of peas or beans, than he would do on fat meat. There is no difference, as far as is known, in the power of producing blood, between flesh and bread, if the former is mixed with a proper amount of starch or oily matter. But there is one reason why flesh is superior to all other kinds of food for the purpose of supplying the waste of muscular tissue; and that is, that it is the very substance which it is intended to form, and therefore is more readily built up into the animal machine. The proper rule is to obtain the necessary amount of each kind of food in a state as near as possible to that tissue for which it is intended, and avoiding too highly concentrated a form. The instinct of man has always led him to apply this rule whenever he could; though in many cases, for want of sufficient intelligence, he has been led to confine himself, on the one hand, to flesh alone, as in the case of the American Indians; and on the other, to roots, as in the case of the stunted tribes of the interior of Africa.

SECT. 3.-ON THE RELATION EXISTING BETWEEN THE MARKET PRICE