apacity for mental and bodily work depends on our
supply of food. Proper food is necessary as a source of power for the
work of the body as well as to furnish material for growth and repair
of the losses of the body. Taking food is the most interesting of the
vital processes. It appeals to all the senses (except hearing).

Professor Dawson calls attention to the fact that the richest food
areas in the world have provided the most powerful stocks of men of
which we have any record, and it has been pointed out by many that
improper food is closely connected with mental and moral defects.
Strong men and women are not the product of improper food. Dr. Stanley
Hall says: "The necessity of judicious, wholesome food is
paramount.... You can educate a long time by externals and not
accomplish as much as good feeding will accomplish by itself. Children
must be supplied with plenty of nutritious food if they are to develop
healthily either in mind or body."

Mr. Robert Hunter says: "All that we are, either as individuals or as
a complexly constituted society of men, is made possible by the food
supply.... Perhaps more than any other condition of life it lies at
the door of most of the social and mental inequalities among men."

In these days of irresponsibility there is probably more harm done to
the health by ignoring physical law in the matter of eating than in
any other one thing.

It is in the study of food substances and their possibilities in
relation to better sanitary conditions that the widest field is open
to housekeepers, and the subject should be especially fascinating to
women of education and ability. All the skill and knowledge of the
best educated women should be enlisted in the cause of better food for
the people. Certainly no subject, except that of pure air, can have a
closer bearing on the health than right diet. Much sound teaching will
be needed before bad habits of eating and drinking will be conquered.

A strong, well man whose work is muscular and carried on in the open
air, as is that of the farmer and of the fisherman, will have the
power to assimilate almost anything, and can maintain abundant health
on the coarsest food poorly prepared, provided, only, that it is
abundant and composed of the chemical constituents that the body
requires.

Only a small proportion of our people, however, engage in work of this
sort. The majority are compelled by occupation, age, or health to
remain indoors. For th