The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1881-07-16
Eating Too Much.

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tible of proof; and the fact is one which
ought in the interest of the public happi-
ness and prosperity, to be more generally
recognized than it now is.
Much of the food we eat is eaten to
waste. The absolute quantity Of food ap-
propriated by the organism is surprisingly
small as compared with the quantity of
food rejected. Making the largest allow
ance for the difference between the actual
bulk of what we eat and the measure of
its nourshing properties, it will be found
that the average feeder consumes an ag-
gregate quantity greatly in excess of what
he requires. The first cause of this waste
is doubtless the needlessly bulky form Of
the food on which we chiefly rely. In
the endeavor to procure what is termed
light aliment we squander the elements Of
nutriment 1t is deemed a triumph of
the purveyor's skill to provide the public
with forms of nutriment of which much
can be consumed with impunity. No
provinder has yet achieved or seriously at
tempted the feat of supplying US with food
so concentrated that the wants of the body
can be met with the smallest demand on
the digestive and the assimulative powers
of the organism. Because man can take
great deal into his stomach, it is assum-
ed that he ought to do so, and the tenden-
cy of modern enterprise in the matter of
food is to extend rather than to diminish
the total bulk of the material by which
the losses Of the organism in heat produc-
ton and exercise are to be compensated.
If it were otherwise, the net result would
not be very different, or, the habit of life
being to live to eat rather that to eat to
live, if nutriment were furnished in very
compact form and bulk, the glutton would
call the boon chiefly as affording increased
facilities for the indulgence of his appe-
tite.
There is, however, another cause Of the
practice OF excess, which is perhaps even
more potent We do not eat by any rule
of Judgment, but in obedience to craving
which is commonly misinterpreted. When
a man is hungry, he eats until his hunger
is appeased. Now, in the nature of things,
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stomach. The food is not digested and
assimulated the instant it is eaten; an in
terval must elapse between the taking of
material containing the elements of nutri-
ton, and the application of these elements
to their destined purpose. As matter OF
fact, probably little of the food taken at a
meal is appropriated by the organism un-
til an hour or more after it is consumed.
The sense of repletion therefore is not, in
any physiological sense, the result OF
nourishment, but the crude physical effect
of filling the gastric organ, and setting the
processes of digestion in operation. Hence
it must be obvious that the sense of safety
which warns an eater to deslst from the
pleasures Of the table affords no measure
of the extent to which he has provided for
the actual wants of his system. If he con-
sumed only a twentieth part of his ordi-
nary meal, and waited an hour, probably
he would discover that he was quite as
we'll fed as he is after eating as much as
his stomach will hold, and desisting only
when the mechanical effects of loading
the apparatus of digestion with materia
became inconvenient. 1t must not be as
sumed, because we habituate ourselves to
eat to repletion, and do not commonly sui,
fer severely in consequence OF this clumsy
mode of procedure, that we are not guilty
of waste. Nature has provided the organ,
ism with the power of rejecting what it
does not require, and the large proportion
ate waste of ordinary life is the witness al
once to the need and efficiency of the
safety-valve with which the system has
been furnished; but it is at the same time
a perpetual testimony to the crude and
unscientifc way in which we misunder
stand our actual needs and abuse our ap'
petites.
The great majority of the ills which
affects us and the diseases from which We
suffer, causing us pains and shortening oul
lives, are the fruits of the excess we prac
tice in feeding. Gout, rheumatism, The
various forms of indigestion, and the many
known and recognized results of excessive
or disorderly feeding are only the coarse1
and more evident consequences of over
feeding. Underlying these and unnoticee
bv the victim of this common error arr
Tie multitudinous forms of organic disease
and disturbance. In short, the human
body encounters more risks in its daily
struggle to live and grow and discharge it
functions under the burden Of food forced
upon it than it runs by exposure to th'
contingent danger of infection; while, as
matter of fact, nearly all the morbid pois
ons that assai it from without are eithe
generated from or by the decomposition
of food or conveyed into the system under
one of its guises. We give the machinery
of life an almost supernatural task to re
iect the harmful substances imposed on it
and then complain because it breaks dowr
or does its work imperfectly. 1t is diff
cult to make plain without burdening oul
page with details that would be unintelli
gible; but our failure to convince th'
readers judgment will not alter the fact
There are great practical difficulties OF