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The lesson we should learn from this is that ordinarily if it is necessary to soak foods, such as beans, they should be cooked in the water in which they have been soaked. Furthermore, where possible, as it is with nearly all succulent vegetables, we should take the fluid in which the vegetables have been cooked as a part of the meal. If the vegetables are properly cooked, there will not be much fluid to take. To pour away the water in which vegetables have been cooked means that perhaps one-third of the food value and one-third to one-half of the valuable salts are lost. Why continue impoverishing foods in this way?

Dr. Charles Page deserves much credit for calling our attention to this fact when most healers neither thought nor talked about it. Now all up-to-date healers with a knowledge of dietetics realize how important it is to give good food. For those who wish more detailed information on the composition of the salts, I insert a table which was compiled by Otto Carque and published in "Brain and Brawn," February, 1913. Those who wish still more detailed knowledge can find it in volumes on food analysis and in some government reports.

Please remember that most of the salts must be worked into organic form for us by vegetation, and that we are able to take but few elements that have not been thus elaborated.

We need a moderate amount of food to maintain the body in health, but we should be careful not to overindulge.

Perhaps the most injurious errors are made by people who eat because they wish to gain in weight. They consider themselves below weight and they try to force a gain by overeating. This is a serious mistake and leads to much suffering.

If the weight is much above this, it is a sure sign that the individual is building disease. It may be Bright's disease, fatty heart, arteriosclerosis, cancer or any other ill. The muscles can not be increased in size very much by eating and there is a limit to the amount of fluid that can be stored away. Stout people generally carry about a great amount of fat.

Excess of fat is a burden. It replaces other tissues and weakens the muscles. It overcrowds the abdominal and thoracic cavities, thus making the breath short and the working of the heart more difficult, also producing a tendency to prolapsus of the various abdominal organs.

People make the mistake of thinking that stoutness indicates health. It indicates disease. Going into weight is going into degeneration. Women like to be plump for various reasons, some of which are not the most creditable to either men or women. Fat people are not good looking. There is not a statue in the world sculptured on corpulent lines that is considered beautiful.

It is natural for some people to be slender and for others to be rather plump, but fatness is abnormal. Rolling double chins and protruding abdomens are signs of self-abuse in eating and drinking. As a rule women are at their right weight at twenty and men at twenty-two or twenty-three. This weight they should retain. If twenty or thirty pounds are added to it life will be materially shortened.

Perfect health is impossible for obese people, but it is within the reach of lean ones. In getting well, it is often necessary to become quite slender, but after the system has cleansed itself, it gains in weight again. It may take from several months to several years to obtain a normal weight after the ravages of disease. A healthy body is self-regulating and will be as heavy as it ought to be.

Those who eat too much in order to gain weight sometimes wreck their digestive and assimilative powers to such an extent that they lose a great deal of weight, and the more they eat the more they lose. Then it is necessary to reduce the food intake until digestion and assimilation catch up with supply. Then if the eating is right the individual goes to the proper weight and retains it.

The slender people are in the safest physical condition. The vast amount of statistics gathered by the life insurance companies bears this out. Remember that fat is a low grade tissue, which sometimes crowds out high grade tissue, that an excess indicates degeneration and that obesity is a disease. All fat people eat too much, even though they consider themselves small eaters. They should regulate their eating and drinking so that they will return to a normal weight. This is the only safe way to reduce.

Pay no attention to underweight. Eat what the body requires and is able to digest and assimilate, without causing any inconvenience. The organism will take care of the rest. To attempt to force weight onto a body at the expense of discomfort, disease, reduced efficiency and premature death shows poor judgment.

Losing weight does not matter at all if there is no discomfort or disease. It is all right to be a little lighter during summer than in winter.

In discussing food and its use, two words are frequently employed, digestion and fermentation. Strictly speaking, digestion is largely a process of fermentation, consisting of the breaking down of complex substances into simple ones, by means of ferments. However, in the popular mind digestion and fermentation are not synonymous, and will not be so considered in this book. To make my meaning clear, in this book the words will have the following meaning:

Digestion - the normal breaking down of food and formation into substances that can be used by the blood for building, repairing and producing heat and energy.

Fermentation - the abnormal breaking down of food in the digestive tract, producing discomfort and health impaired. This process manifests in various ways, such as the production of much gas in the digestive tract or hyperacidity of the body.

We will consider digestion as a process conducive to health, but fermentation, as one that leads to disease, being an early stage of digestive derangement.

Tags: Nutrition