The evening times., 1899-01-12
Two Meals u Day.

The two-meal-a-day craze has struck
this country once more. II appeared some
twenty-five years ago, but in different
form from the present one. The system
of DR.. Dio Lewis included but two meals a
day. breakfast and dinner-dinner taken
some time in the early afternoon. The
present gospel of health forbids not sup
per, but breakfast.
II is alleged by the apostles of this new
creed that one should not use ones nerve
force in digesting breakfast when it is
needed for the mornings work. Going
straight to business or work in the morn
ing. the busy man or woman can afford TO
stop for a quiet and unhurried luncheon at
midday. 1t is also said that one does not
need hearty breakfast after. refreshing
nights sleep, and that TO eat when food is
not needed is a sin. All these things con-
sidered. it is declared that breakfast should
be abolished
There is just as much sense in this new
system as there was in that of the es-
teemed bio Lewis, and no more. About
once in twenty-five or thirty years some
body discovers the great fact that many
Americans-perhaps the majority of our
middle class-eat more than is good for
them or. at any rate, more than they can
digest in their present mode of life. Some
times the discoverer finds that meat is the
article 10 be abolished; sometimes it is pie:
sometimes it is cake; once it was fruit;
sometimes, as in the present instance. it is
urged that we should adopt the French
Of oh Of
on awaking and eating nothing more till
midday when a substantial meal is served
All these crazes. fads and discoveries have
their use. 1t is ridiculous for a man en-
gagged in sedentary pursuits to go on eat
ing the same sort of food that he ate when
he was an active boy on his fathers farm.
If he continues to live on hot biscuits, pie.
doughnuts. cheese and the like, and eat
meat twice or three times q day, he will
be likely to have dyspepsia, and then he
will talk about overwork and advancing
age. and so on. and wish he could ex-
change all his present wealth and honors
for the free life of boyhood. Then. per-
haps, he will discover one of these diet
systems and preach two meals a day or
vegetarianism TO the people in his native
village and be laughed at; all because he
could not see the self-evident truth that
man cannot digest the same food under all
sorts of circumstances. For such a man
it may be the best thing in the world TO
adopt the French fashion of light break
fast or no breakfast at all. He rises late
and is able TO stop for hearty luncheon
al ] or O'Clock, when he needs it. But if
he were to rise at >, as the farmer does
and go out into the field for five or six
hours of manual labor in the hot SUM- with
nothing but cup of coffee and roll for
sustenance, he would very soon feel the
effects of it, and they would not be pleas
ant Neither could he put off his dinner
hour till or s O'CLOCK. The whole diff
Guilty may be settled by that simple old
proverb, evolved at the beginning of such
discussions, What is one mans meat is
another mans poison"
But there is one rule which might profit
ably receive attention from all classes of
people in America. 1t is to refrain from
work, if possible, Immediately after eating.
and TO be as Ieisurely as one can be about
all three meals. The way in which Ameri-
can men and women of the middle class,
and some business men who ought to know
better, bolt their food and rush off 10 work
at once is responsible for more doctors
bills than anything else in our national
life. 1t is a violation of one of the sim
plest laws of existence law which even
the animal understands. The tiger in the
jungle and the housecat in the kitchen