The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1909-01-22

copyright, by Joseph B. Bowles)

SIXTY DAYS ON PEA
NUTS AND LEMONADE.
On October 10, 1907, l began an ex-
elusive diet of peanuts and lemon
ade and subsisted on that alone for
60 days.
What did you do it for? Do you
still live on peanuts? How should
peanuts be taken? Have you changed
your mind about their food value?
These are some of the questions that
l am frequently asked.
Such was the novelty of my expert
ment, which was undertaken as
scientific demonstration, that the av.
erage person refused to consider it
seriously. The newspapers treated it
largely as joke-except that many of
them reported toward the end of the
time that l had died-a result which
many were expecting.
For several years l had been test
ing the relative values of foods by
living for a time on one alone and
recording the results. Incidentally
had reached the conclusion, for rea-
sons which I shall give in a later ar
ticle, that cereal starch is the only
element of vegetable food improved
by cooking and that cereal starch is
unnecessary in our diet, and fire.
quently injurious, particularly in the
case of infants and children. I had
found that cooking Injuries the most
important element of food, albumen,
from which the cells of brain and
Drawn are built, and precipitates, to a
large extent, the mineral elements,
sulphur, phosphorus, magnesia, potash,
ETC., so essential to vigorous, healthy
life, SO that they cannot be absorbed
into the blood. I had come to believe
also after much investigation that
fruit should form large part of our
diet, and | had been prescribing in
certain cases a diet of uncooked pea
nuts and gluten, uncooked, in small
quantities with fruits, eaten separate
~, and had seen remarkable improve
mcnt IN some cases.
One day it was reported in an
Aurora (Ill.) paper Il lived in Aurora)
that a girl had died from eating pea
nuts and at the same time the chair
man of the local board of health at
tributed a case of poisoning to eating
peanut candy.
To prevent an undesirable counter
suggestion on the minds Of those who
were eating peanuts by my advice,
more than to defend my own theories,
I stated my view of these cases, call
ing attention to the great difference
between cooked and uncooked pea
nuts, and to show the f1rmness of my
belief in the correctness of my con-
illusions, said that would be will.
ing to live for 60 days on uncooked
peanuts and have the results care.
fully recorded daily by the board of
health, and give my body for dissec
ton and analysis, if failed to survive
The experiment.
had lived for several days on pea.
nuts, on apples, on prunes, on starch
on nothing, and knew that by fasting
for few days, when the indications
required it, l should have no diff
Guilty in performing the feat. But my
friends begged me to desist, urging
that l was losing my professional dig
nifty and many of them accused me
of insanity, which 1 was, they said
deliberately fostering by this strange
freak! l had studied on my theories
OF feeding till l was half gone and
now l was going to finish the job!
The outcome, however, fully justi
fed the confidence with which the ex
pertinent was undertaken. lost II
pounds In weight but continued my
usual work throughout the entire
period, and In fact did greatly In
creased amount Of mental labor, neces
stated by the increase in my CORE
spondence, interviews, ETC., and or
the evening of the sixtieth day gave
an address in the G.. A. R. hall o.
Aurora on diet and morality, speak
ing for three-quarters of an hour
and followed that with Commute
u
on the relation of diet to strenuou!
endurance.
OF course the peanut Is not com
plete diet and to keep in good condi
ton l tasted at intervals Throughout
the 60 days total of about eigh
days. Probably the extension of thu
experiment to 120 days would no
have reduced my weight to the poin
of physical collapse. My height i:
5 feet liz inches and my weigh
when 1 began was 1e5 pounds.
We live by what We eat; and the
character of our living depends upo1
the kind of food we eat and the wa,
we eat it. You can make a man goot
or bad," says Bishop Fallows, accord
ing to the way you feed him." "Th'
building of brain-cell and mind
stuff" says DR.. Alexander Haig, tn,
distinguished English authority o,
diet, Lies at the root of all tn,
problems of life"
The mind is the measure of tn,
man; what man thinks he becomes
But the mind manifests through tn,
physical, and the character of tn,
physical determines the character o
the mental as certainly as the menta
influences the physical. The body
is the expression of the mind, mucl
as building is the expression of tn,
Thought of the architect who designed
it. And you can no more build :
sound. beautiful. enduring body with