Scientific nutrition simplified : a condensed statement & explanation for everybody of the observations of Chittenden, Fletcher, and others

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Preface

It is this task that has been attempted here. In his fifty-fourth year, the originator of this book felt that he was ageing rapidly, going painfully down the wrong side of the hill of life and giving up one by one all the pleasures that had made living attractive to him. He had lost his power to work, his enjoyment of social pleasures, and all his interest in intellectual pursuits. He suffered from intense pain which he took to be muscular rheumatism, and, at times, from a mild form of aphasia. His one object was to get done with his necessary work as rapidly as possible and go to bed. Sometimes he was so overcome with weakness, dizziness and fatigue in the middle of the day that he was forced to go to his club and lie down for an hour or so before he could go on with his work.

To-day he is in better health than he

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PREFACE has enjoyed since he was a boy and feels that — barring accidents — he should live to be a hundred. For this he has to thank the new system of diet described in the following pages.

The best part of the new plan is that it costs nothing to adopt it. It requires no expensive apparatus, no consultation of specialists, no change of climate, no release from daily work ; it is a mere matter of getting and applying certain easily understood information.

However, as a busy professional man, he realizes how difficult it is for a man engaged in the exacting and complicated occupations of modern life to search out this information through the various books in which it is to be found and to devise a method for applying it. Therefore he has secured a digest of the points which he has found most valuable in working out his own problem with the

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PREFACE idea of presenting a sort of lawyer’s brief of the subject.

His hope is that the work will attract the attention, not only of men and women, who in the prime of life are suffering — as he was himself at one time — from all the symptoms of old age, but of the young men and women whose constitutions are subjected to the strain of commercial life ; of the boys and girls in the schools and colleges whose bodily forces are taxed to the utmost by the exactions of modern education ; and of the parents and educators who have the guidance of the lives of the coming generation. It is his sincere conviction that the application of the principles recommended will yield an immense increase of energy for daily work and will add many useful years to their lives.

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Contents

PAOIC

Introduction 1

Chapter I 22

Topics : Mr. Fletcher’s discovery and his quest for scientific endorsement. The test of his claims at Cambridge. Opinions of Sir Michael Foster and Dr. Hubert Higgins. Observation of the system at Yale. Dr. Anderson’s report. Professor Chittenden’s experiments on professional men, soldiers, athletes and dogs. Professor Fisher’s experiments upon students and upon meat-eaters and vegetarians. Summary of the evidence.

Chapter II 68

Topics : Composition of foods. Purposes served by the various food elements. Digestion. Changes occurring in the mouth. New discoveries in regard to saliva. The effect of mastication upon the digestive process. Taste and appetite as stimuli of the digestive secretions. Other psychic influences in digestion. Assimilation. Poisonous properties of the body-waste. Metabolism. Quantities of food necessary to the maintenance of physical efficiency . The old dietary standards. The new standards.

Chapter III

Topics : The principles of Mr. Fletcher’s theories. Appetite, true and false. Taste, the guardian

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CONTENTS

PAGE

of the digestive tract. Nature’s Food Filter.

The Art of Mastication. Inutility of Gladstone’s rule. Inhibitive effect of excess of attention. Influence of the mental and emotional state, Objections to the system considered. Results. Testimony of the rejuvenated.

Chapter IV 170

Topics : True food requirements. Reduction of proteid. The question of meat-eating. Vegetable proteid. Amount of fuel-foods necessary. Specimen dietaries. Tables indicating proteid and fuel value of common foods. The question of stimulants and condiments. Physiological value of sugar. Inutility of foods as specifics. General principles. Conclusion.

CHAPTER V. By J. Sven, m.d. . . .236

Topics : Is a low-proteid diet suitable for everyone ? Need of restraint in applying scientific observation to daily life. Relations of rush, habits, emotions, to daily nutrition. The place of nutrition in the history and life of nations. Regularity of eating ; a feature of nutrition worthy of notice. Adaptability of the body to quantity and quality of foods. Moderation of diet in 1798. The standpoint of Chittenden’s experiments. Prison diets. Scientific nutrition is only in the developmental stages. What is meant by health and disease 1 Is it possible to use a low diet in disease 1 Does a proteid diet affect the reserve powers and the resistance to infectious diseases 1 Intestinal poisons. Mastication.

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AUTHORITIES QUOTED IN THIS WORK

Chittenden, Professor Russell H., Physiological Economy in Nutrition; The Nutrition of Man.

Curtis, Dr. Edward, Nature and Health.

Fisher, Professor Irving, The Effect of Diet on Endurance.

Fletcher, Horace, The A B-Z of our own Nutrition ; The New Glutton or Epicure.

Higgins, Dr. Hubert, Humanicultu/re.

Mendel, Lafayette B., Childhood and Growth.

Metchnikoff, Professor Elie, The Nature of Man; The Prolongation of Life.

Noorden, Yon, Metabolism and Practical Medicine.

Sager, Dr. Daniel S., The Art of Living in Good Health.

Salkeby, Dr. C. W., Worry. The Disease of the Age.

Introduction

"y^THEREVER one may look over the civilized world to-day, he will find in progress a systematic movement for the improvement of the race. In every country the greatest scientists are giving their best efforts to the study of the human organism, while sociologists, economists, reformers and philanthropists are labouring by means of popular health movements to build up a people with strong and vigorous bodies.

These numerous and varied activities have one point in common — a vigorous

B insistence upon the importance of more intelligent ways of feeding. In the face of the perhaps not wholly unwarranted prejudice against any attempt at a scientific regulation of diet, laboratory investigators and social workers are urging the members of the human race to learn to feed themselves with at least as much wisdom as they have used for years in the feeding of their domestic animals — the physicians and physiologists declaring that practically all functional disorders have their rise in faulty nutrition, and the sociologists, political economists and social workers asserting just as emphatically that much of the poverty, vice and crime of the world is directly traceable to errors in diet.

“We eat or drink for health or illhealth,” says Dr. Daniel S. Sager. “ Explain it as you will, this is the only way in which disease can occur in the human body. . . . Aside from surgery and midwifery, the practice of medicine for the most part revolves about the stomach. . . . While medical science has thousands of names for diseases, at bottom all diseases are alike. Poisonous principles are thrown into the blood and the result is disease. There are several hundred organs and tissues in the body, each one of which, when affected, gives a name to a disease ; but while the names of diseases are different, yet the cause which produces them is generally the same — overeating, which produces auto-intoxication, self-poisoning, malassimilation, premature old age or disease, — call it what you will. The conditions which produce Bright’s disease will also produce gout, rheumatism, cancer, or appendicitis.”1

This is the view of a modern physician.

1 Sager, “ The Art of Living in Good Health ” pp. 8, 168, 179.

Professor Irving Fisher of Yale, speaking as a political economist, says :

“ Much attention is now being paid to the physiological condition of the labouring classes, their housing, the sanitation of factories, hours of labour, child labour, etc. Equally important is the problem of the nutrition of these classes. Industrial inefficiency is the price of malnutrition. Increased labour power will be the practical outcome of diet reform.”1 Out of this agitation there has at last emerged a complete new conception of dietetics, the chief recommendation of which is that it gives the best results of a scientifically regulated dietary in combination with the advantages of a reliance upon instinctive promptings of taste and appetite.

The new conception has been fittingly

1 Irving Fisher, Ph.D., The Independent, August, 1907.

named “ economic nutrition ” because its fundamental purpose is to save the body from unnecessary labour through a reduction of food to exact physiological needs.

This, the originators of the new conception point out, is an unqualified advantage to anyone. Every ounce of food over and above the amount necessary to furnish building materials during growth, to repair tissue that has been broken down by muscular exercise, and to supply fuel to keep the body warm and energy to keep it running, compels the organs to perform the thankless task of dealing with this excess of food for the sole and exclusive purpose of getting it out of the way.

The new view attacks the deep-rooted idea in the mind of man that everything he is able to eat will do him good, and that he will surely receive a return for it, either increased energy for work, or in a reserve which he can call upon some day when he needs it. On the contrary, it points out that food in excess of physiological requirements does not yield increased energy for work, but actually takes the energy that might be given to work ; furthermore, that food cannot be stored by the body in any considerable quantity, and the residue which is left floating about in the blood is a source of disease to the human organism.

This principle applies with particular force to the class of foods which forms the great staple of the diet of most of the civilized people of the world: the tissuebuilding or “ proteid ” foods, consumed chiefly in the form of meat, fish, eggs, and in a lesser degree in peas, beans, lentils, nuts and cheese. The reason for this is that these foods — unlike the fuel-

producing foods found in grains, fruits, vegetables, butter and oil — cannot be completely burned up by the body, but leave behind them a solid “ash,” which, as Dr. Edward Curtis has expressed it, “must be raked down by the liver and thrown out by the kidneys.”1

If you think of the body in the light of an engine, the idea at once becomes clear. After you have built your engine you do not feed it on brass, iron and copper : you feed it on coal. It is true you have to put iron and steel and copper into it now and then, when repairs become necessary, but not in such quantities like the coal you have to use to keep it running. It is obvious that if you put iron and steel and copper into the furnace in amounts equal to or exceeding the coal, it would soon wear out or break down.

1 Edward Curtis, m.d., “ Nature and Health,” p. 70.

This is exactly what the originators of the new theories of dietetics say happens to the human body when it is fed upon building material in excess of fuel. To the common practice of eating more meat than vegetables they attribute most of our ills. Furthermore, they declare that it is our excessive eating of “high-proteid” foods, like meats, that cuts us off in our prime at seventy or eighty or so, when, according to the biological law that the lifetime of an animal should be from five to seven times the growing period, he should live to be a hundred at the very least.

It must therefore be evident that the new discovery is of immense importance to practical men and women with work to do in the world. Most of us experience only brief spurts of our maximum efficiency, although we should like

to be always efficient. If it be true that one of the leading causes, if not the leading cause, of the sense of inefficiency that hangs over us like a pall is an excess consumption of food — then the new diet plan supplies us with at least one effective means of tapping those “new levels” of energy that Professor James speaks of in his famous essay, “ The Powers of Men.”1 For the benefit of those who may be inclined to reject the new plan on the grounds that it will interfere with the pleasures of the table, it may be stated that the universal testimony of those who have adopted it is, that they never realized what true enjoyment of food was before they tried it. On this point Professor Chittenden says : —

“ Simplicity of diet does not diminish but rather increases the pleasure of eat-

1 Professor William James, “The Powers of Men,” American Magazine , November, 1907.

ing, especially when the daily restriction — indulged in until a new habit is formed — has created a greater keenness of appetite, since under such conditions the palate takes a new sensitiveness, and manifests a fuller appreciation of the variations of even a simple dietary. There is therefore no hardship, nor curtailment of the pleasure of eating in the restriction of the diet to the real needs of the body. Neither is there implied any cessation of that kindly hospitality that delights in the ‘ breaking of bread ’ with one’s friends. With enlightened methods of living, on the other hand, will come a truer appreciation of the dignity of the body, and a lessened desire to manifest one’s feelings of hospitality by a lavish intemperance that is as unphysiological as it is wasteful.”1

To those who are timid about adopting

1 “Physiological Economy in Nutrition," p. 472.

it because their ‘ ‘ doctors told them it was dangerous to cut down the food that makes muscle,” it may be pointed out that no one — doctor or not — who has not made an exhaustive study of the subject with the same thoroughness or the same facilities as its originators is qualified to give an authoritative opinion regarding it. The theory is an advance over old ways of thinking and cannot, therefore, be tested by any but the most advanced ideas.

Everyone will concede that there is a limit to the quantity of food that can be consumed with advantage. For example, everyone will agree that ten pounds a day is too much — or nine pounds, or eight pounds, and so on — but in the descending scale there comes a point where a doubt as to the sufficiency of the amount will be justified. That

this point, below which it is dangerous to reduce the consumption of food, can be determined by science, will hardly be disputed. Every investigation of the subject has endeavoured to fix it. In the generally accepted “ diet standards,” the minimum quantities of food commonly consumed by man have been accepted as the minimum quantities required.

“Within certain rather wide limits,” says Professor Chittenden, “there is an apparent tendency for people of different nations, having a free choice of food and not restricted by expense, to consume daily approximately the same amounts of nutriments ; to use what may be called liberal rather than small amounts of food ; and lastly, to consume food somewhat in proportion to the amount of work done. It is perhaps, therefore, not strange that students of nutrition should have taken these results, obtained by the statistical method, as indicating the actual needs of the body for food, and that so-called ‘standard diets’ and ‘ normal diets ’ should have been constructed, based upon these and corresponding data. . . . These standards covering the quantities of food per day * are intended to show the actual food requirements of persons under different conditions of life and work.’ Here, however, lies an assumption which seems to meet with wide acceptance, but for which it is difficult to conceive any logical reason. The thousands of dietary studies made on peoples all over the world, affording more or less accurate information regarding the average amounts of proteid, fat, and carbohydrate consumed under varying conditions, are indeed most interesting and important, as affording information regarding dietetic customs and habits ; but the writer fails to see any reason why such data need be assumed to throw any light on the actual food requirements of the body. In the words of another, * Food should be ingested in just the proper amount to repair the waste of the body ; to furnish it with the energy it needs for work and warmth ; to maintain it in vigour ; and, in the case of immature animals, to provide the proper excess for normal growth, in order to be of the most advantage to the body’ (Benedict).

Any habitual excess of food, over and above what is really needed to meet the actual wants of the body, is not only uneconomical, but may be distinctly disadvantageous. . . . With these thoughts in mind, may we not reasonably ask why it should be assumed that there is any tangible connection between the dietetic habits of a people and their true physiological needs? Arguments predicated on custom, habit, and usage have no physiological basis that appeals strongly to the impartial observer. Man is a creature of habits ; he is quick to acquire new ones when his environment affords the opportunity, and he is prone to cling to old ones when they minister to his sense of taste. The argument that because the people of a country, constituting a given class, eat a certain amount of proteid food daily, the quantity so consumed must be an indication of the amount needed to meet the requirements of the body, is as faulty as the argument that because people of a given community are in the habit of consuming a certain amount of wine each day at dinner their bodies must necessarily be in need of the stimulant, and that consequently alcohol is a true physiological requirement.”1

Accordingly, Professor Chittenden, actuated by his belief that what a man eats is no guide to what he should eat, has shown by a series of elaborate experiments, extending over long periods of time, that persons of widely varying habits of life, temperament, and constitution, can maintain and even heighten their mental and physical vigour, on far smaller quantities of food than these “ minimum requirements ” of the diet standards. Since the point to be determined is the quantities of food men can live on, not what they do live on, it appears safe to assume that Professor Chittenden has come nearer than anyone else to determining the minimum food requirements of man.

Secondly, everyone must concede that it is possible for science to ascertain the minimum requirement of man for proteid food, and also to ascertain whether the

quantities of proteid in excess of this amount are of advantage or of disadvantage to the body. So far no one has been able to refute Professor Chittenden’s conclusion, drawn from his elaborate experiments, that the quantities of proteid consumed by the average man are far in excess of the quantities assimilated, and that the excess of proteid not assimilated is of unqualified disadvantage to the body.

Thirdly, everyone will agree that it is possible for science to determine whether or not the complete mastication advocated by Horace Fletcher is of any specific value to the nutritive processes. So far all the scientists who have investigated the matter have been convinced that it is. The remarks of Elie Metchnikoff in his book, “ The Prolongation of Life,” which have been taken by some persons as a scientific refutation of the claims of Mr. Fletcher’s theory, are of an extremely casual nature, and are based, not upon extensive investigations such as will be described in this book, but upon the statements of a single physician, who, in a small pamphlet, has published an account of his observations upon two persons suffering from an intestinal disease which he attributed to the fact that they gave an unusual amount of care to the mastication of their food. The remarks in question are as follows : —

“ The habit of eating quickly favours the multiplication of microbes around about the lumps of food which have been swallowed without sufficient mastication. It is quite harmful, however, to chew the food too long, and to swallow it only after it has been kept in the mouth for a considerable time. Too complete a use of the food material causes want of tone in the intestinal wall, from which as much harm may come as from imperfect mastication. In America, where Fletcher’s theory took its origin, there has already been described, under the name of ‘ Brady fagy,’ a disease arising from the habit of eating too slowly. Einhorn, a well-known specialist in the diseases of the digestive system, has found that several cases of this disease were rapidly cured when the patients made up their minds to eat more quickly again. Comparative physiology supplies us with arguments against too prolonged mastication. Ruminants, which carry out to the fullest extent Mr. Fletcher’s plan, are notable for extreme intestinal putrefaction and for the short duration of their lives. On the other hand, birds and reptiles, which have a very poor mechanism for breaking up food, enjoy much longer lives.” 1

1 Metchnikoff, “The Prolongation of Life.” London, William Heinemann.

Mr. Fletcher himself has pointed out that there is danger in carrying the practice of mastication to extremes. Once the swallowing impulse has asserted itself, he says, there is no advantage in and there may be direct injury from attempting to hold the food in the mouth, even if it has not been reduced quite to the point of complete liquefaction and tastelessness.

Metchnikoff’s statement that the ruminants are notable for intestinal putrefaction and shortness of life is at least open to question. The experiments of Dr. C. A. Herter with animals of all classes indicate that, while the bacteria in the intestines of the fast-eating animals (such as cats, dogs, lions, tigers and wolves) are of a deadly character, the bacteria in the intestines of the slow eaters (such as buffaloes, goats,

horses and elephants) are practically harmless.1 And while it may be true that the lives of birds and reptiles are longer than those of ruminating animals, it has yet to be proved that the lives of fast-eating animals are longer than those of the ruminants.

The practical experience of everyone who has adopted the new plan supplies ample evidence that it is productive of only the best possible results. We have now to see that the reason it produces these good results is because it rests on a firm basis of scientific truth.

1 C. A. Hei'ter, m.d., “Character of the Bacterial Flora of Carnivorous and Herbivorous Animals,” Science, p. 859, December 28, 1 906.

Chapter I

Topics : Mr. Fletcher’s discovery and his quest for scientific endorsement. The test of his claims at Cambridge. Opinions of Sir Michael Foster and Dr. Hubert Higgins. Observation of the system at Yale. Dr. Anderson’s report. Professor Chittenden’s experiments on professional men, soldiers, athletes and dogs. Professor Fisher’s experiments upon students and upon meat-eaters and vegetarians. Summary of the evidence.

J^IKE many another discovery of the highest value to science, the principles of the new conception of dietetics set forth in this book were hit upon by accident and applied in everyday life before they were worked out in theory ; and, like many another great discovery, they had to bear the brunt of popular ridicule before they were stamped with the seal of scientific recognition.

Only a few years ago the mention of 22 the word “ Fletcherism ” was enough to provoke a laugh. A mere American business man, without any scientific authority whatever, was declaring from the housetops that he had stumbled upon a great truth in regard to human nutrition that the authorities on dietetics had overlooked. His contention was based on the fact that by chewing both his solid and liquid food until, literally, there was nothing left of it, he had cured himself of a complication of diseases and made himself eligible for life insurance, although only a short time before he had been rejected as an unsafe risk.

He asserted that the practice of thorough mastication had revealed to him that one-half the quantities of food consumed by the average man was more than enough to meet all true bodily needs ; and that when the faculty of taste was given a chance to pass on everything taken into the mouth, the appetite was not only satisfied with much smaller quantities, but that it indicated a preference for vegetable rather than animal food and tended to reject alcoholic liquors, tea, coffee, and most condiments.

Although a member of some of the most famous clubs in the country and a social favourite in San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and generally throughout America, Mr. Fletcher suddenly found himself an object of ridicule. He and his chewing-cult were made the subjects for endless humorous newspaper paragraphs. He was cartooned and lampooned from one end of the country to the other. Some of his friends, shocked and offended at seeing a man they knew rapidly becoming a national joke, actually cut his acquaintance.

Nothing daunted, however, Mr. Fletcher went serenely on his way, talking of his discovery whenever and wherever he could get anyone to listen, and finally hurling defiance in the faces of his critics by writing a pamphlet on the subject, which is now incorporated in his book, “ The New Glutton or Epicure.” 1 His method of eating as set forth in this volume may be briefly summarized as follows :

Eat only when there is a vigorous appetite, expressed, not in a gnawing of the stomach — never pay any attention to that — but in a watering of the mouth. If there is no appetite, wait — even if you have to omit a few meals.

Never eat when you are hurried. If you haven t time to give full attention to the taste of a meal, don’t eat until you can get time.

Never eat when you are worried, angry,

Fletcher, “ The New Glutton or Epicure.’’

exhausted or unhappy. It is better to go without food for a week than to eat when the negative emotions have you in their grip.

Masticate all food, liquid as well as solid, until it is sucked down into the throat by an involuntary swallowing impulse, giving attention, not to the mechanical movements of chewing, but to the sensations of taste provoked thereby.

Remove from the mouth the tasteless residue. It can be done without observation, and it is better to risk criticism than to make a waste-basket of the stomach.

The result of this practice of eating, Mr. Fletcher declared, was a utilization of food so complete as practically to do away with the decomposing waste products of the body and to leave nothing to the organs of excretion but an inoffensive deposit of cellulose and other dry, unabsorbable material.

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The first recognition of his theory which Mr. Fletcher received from the scientific world came from a brief review of this book in the London Lancet, in which the author, Dr. Joseph Blumfield, intimated that Mr. Fletcher had apparently stumbled upon some physiological truths that had been overlooked by the experts and that might be well worth their while to look into.

This gave Mr. Fletcher a new idea. It was to get the endorsement of science for his discovery — and he started out seeking for authorities forthwith.

Dr. Ernest Van Someren, an English physician, was the first member of the medical profession whom he succeeded in persuading to test his claims for the practice of what he called “physiologic mastication.” Dr. Van Someren, who had long been a sufferer from a case of gout which had refused to yield to the treatment of a London specialist, adopted Mr. Fletcher’s plan of prolonging the mouth treatment of food, both liquid and solid, until its taste had been extracted and it was sucked down into the throat by the “ involuntary swallowing impulse,” and, in the course of a few weeks, his symptoms began to disappear.

His conversion was complete. He initiated a series of experiments upon his own account and set forth the results in a paper which he presented first to the British Medical Society, and later, more elaborately, before the International Congress of Physiologists at Turin, Italy, in 1901. 1

The paper created a sensation among the physiologists, and brought Mr. Fletcher and Dr. Van Someren an invitation from Sir Michael Foster to visit Cambridge

1 For this paper see “The A. B. — Z. of Our Own Nutrition,” pp. 27-46.

University in England and submit their theory to scientific tests at the hands of Dr. F. Gowland Hopkins and the other physiological experts in the Cambridge laboratories.

These experiments brought the subject definitely and permanently before the scientific world. Dr. Hubert Higgins, demonstrator of anatomy at the University, after trying the system recommended by Mr. Fletcher and Dr. Van Someren upon himself, and thereby reducing his weight from two hundred and eighty-two to one hundred and ninety-six pounds, became so enthusiastic that he wrote a book on the subject to prove, on grounds of pure science, that the practice of “ physiologic mastication ” would contribute largely to the complete regeneration of the human race.1 Sir Michael Foster, permanent honorary president of the

1 Dr. Hubert Higgins, “ Humaniculture.”