The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1892-07-21

The Coming Mans Diet.

The Coming Mans Diet.
If evolution be true. natural deduction
is that it has not vet finished its work on our
race, and that the coming man will be on
higher plane physically, Intellectually. and
morally than that he has as yet reached.
Among the forces at work to produce this
result will be an improved environment,
and more complete knowledge of the
science of physical life. One of the most
important elements CONCERNED is undoubt-
edly the question of food. Man is an en-
gine, and what can be got out of him is
largely matter of stOking. An article in
the Forum" for this month, by Prof. At
water. entitled "What the Coming Man will
Eat'' indicates at once the Importance of
the subject, the comparative ignorance con-
cerning it. and the road along which inves-
tgatiOn and reform will have to travel.
Everybody is supposed by this time to know
that the body uses food for two purposes,
which are answered by different ingredients.
There are first the nutritive elements or
flesh formers, and secondly. the fatty mat
ters producing heat and energy. America,
whence the article we are noticing dates,
shows, at the same time, its abOunding
prosperity and its neglect of physical laws,
by dietary greatly in excess of the average
European one, and to large extent waste
full and injurious. People in the United
States consume great deal too much fatty
matter in proportion to the nutritve and
the statistics given show also remarkable
prepOnderance of absolute quantities as
compared with those of Europe. There is
no doubt connection between this fact and
the statement of a United States physician,
that America is the hot bed of indigestion
and of nervous diseases. Apart. however,
from these International considerations, the
subject is one which demands far wider at
tentOn than it at present receives, and
should be put In the front rank Of our edu-
catiOnal methods. People. and especially
poor people, make an immense mistake in
imagining that the 'best" food is always
the dearest. From this comes great waste
of their resources A fact of which no
housewife can afford to be ignorant is that
the shilling which goes to the purchase of a
pound of beef steak if expended in wheat
meal will yield to the body over twenty
times the nutritive material and fourteen
times the heat and energy derived from the
shillingwOrth of steak. A large part of
what we pay for in food goes for the fla
vor. And here it is that the question of
cookery comes in. The nation which gives
to its people the sOundest instruction in
food matters, and at the same time trains
them most thoroughly in the art of cooking.
will have taken long stride forward in the
race to the front. We are only at the be.
ginning of investigation on these questions.
The relation. for instance. of different kinds
of food to our moral and spiritual condi-
tions is one which as yet has hardly been
touched. but about which the future will
have much to say. What is certain is that
no one element of life can be disassOciated
from any other element, and that the per-
fecting of our race will 90 on in proportion
as the problems connected with each de.
partment of it are cleared up by patient re.
search, and the light thereby obtained is
conscientously follOwed.-LondOn Chris
tian World.