Centre Democrat. [volume] (Bellefonte, Pa.) 1848-1989, 1880-11-18
DO WE EAT TOO MUCH!
A SUGGESTION THAT MOST PEOPLE CONSUME
MORE FOOD THAN THEY NEED.

DO w wv
A SUGGESTION THAT MOST PEOPLE CONSUME
MORE FOOD THAN THEY NEED.
From the London Spectator
Nothing consumes the general wealth
of the world like the feeding of its
populations, and it is by no means yet
completely settled that the majority of
men, once above the imperative re-
strictions of poverty, do not eat good
deal too much. An idea has been
very generally spread that it is healthy
to eat often, till certain classes, more
especially servants, eat five times q
day and the end of the medical
aphorism, that those who eat often
should eat little, is very often forgot
ten. The Lancet Of September 4, in a
curiously cautious article, hints that
the modern world eats too much in
positive bulk of food-a statement GER
tainly true of great bread.eaters, a
distinct and well-marked type-and
! thinks the modern regularity of meals
has induced us to regard appetite as
the guide rather than hunger, which
is the true one. Regularity of meals
developes appetite, not hunger. We
rather question the previous PROPOSE
tion, as a very hungry man is apt to
eat too much, but we believe that the
extension Of wealth and the extreme
public ignorance upon the subject tend
to foster a habit Of taking too many
meals. Men and women eat three in
ten hours and a-half-breakf at 10
A. NJ, lunch at 1.30 T.. NJ. and dinner
at 7.3O p. Ma division of the twenty
four hours of the day which can
hardly be healthy. 1t leaves thirteen
hours and a-half without food, while
in the remaining ten and a-half there
are three meals 1t would be better,
we imagine, for sedentary men to re-
duce theirs to two, taken at considera-
bic intervals; or if that is too worry
ing, to confne the intercaIarv meal
to the merest mouthful, taken with
out sitting down and with no pro-
vision to tempt the appetite.
iNhb'ii Ibl lllbSt NIlO hDih WIN the
brain is the destruction of laborious-
ness and for those who work with the
hands is the least useful of the meals.
Ii is very doubtful whether the pow
erfully built races of Upper India,
who eat only twice day-at 10 A. NJ.
and 10 Z. Mare not in the right,
exactly equalizlng, as they do, the
periods of abstinence, though is is diff.
ficuIt to decide from the example of
hereditary teetotal vegetarians, the
bulk Of whose food is out of all pro-
portion to its nourishment. The great
evil TO he removed is, however. not so
much the midday meal as the profound
ignorance, even of educated men, as
to the quantity of food Indispensable to
health and the quantity most benefi-
cial to 1t. On the first subject most
men know nothing or at best only the
amount of convict's ration, which is
fixed at the standard found most con-
ducive to severe labor in confinement
and is no rule for ordinary mankind.
Cannot the doctors tell us some handy
rule of thumb about this? They have
told us that the beneficial quantity of
alcohol is the equivalent of pint of
ordinary claret day, but what is the
beneficial quantity of food? 1t must
differ according to diet, physique and
occupation, but still there must be
some formula which will convey in
Ineligible fashion the average maxi.
mum required by men of different
weights. We believe most men would
be surprised to find bow very low it is
and how very much they exceed it,
especially in the consumption of meat.
Vegetarianism, which some among us
exalt as n panacea, has been tried for
thousands of years, by millions of
people, and has, on the whole, failed,
the fesh-eating peoples out-fghting,
out-working and out-thinking the eat
ers of vegetables only but between
vegetarianism and the fesh-eating
habits of well-to-do Englisbmen, there
is a wide distance. Mr.. Banting, too,
wrote wild exaggerations, but the way
in which Englishmen of reasonable
intellectual capacities will swallow
crumbs of bread, otter not halfbaked,
by the pound at time, would account
even for severer melancholy than that
under which they labor. We want an
Ineligible rule, to be obeyed or DISC
beyed, but to he remembered.