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greater endurance. A diet of milk, cereals, vegetables, nuts, and
fruits, raw or simply cooked, with a small amount of animal foods, will
perhaps give the best results in this climate. Food fried in fats, rich
pastries and gravies are the hardest to digest, and better health will
usually follow discontinuing them.
The purity of the food eaten should receive careful consideration.
Artificially preserved foods are usually more or less dangerous, for
although dealers urge that the poison contained in them is too small to
do harm we must remember that it is not the single dose that does harm,
but the many foods each containing a very small amount of poison, taken
day after day.
Pure food laws, national and state, have done great good in driving
adulterated and impure foods out of the markets by requiring all foods
to be properly labeled.
Thorough mastication or chewing of the food is only a little less
important than the character of the food itself. Rapid swallowing
without chewing in childhood lays the foundation for many of the
digestive diseases of later life. If food be thoroughly masticated much
that would otherwise be hard to digest can be eaten without bad results.
One of the best known examples of this is meat, which, while full of
nourishment, sets up in the large intestine a condition known as
"auto-intoxication," a species of digestive poison. If meat be eaten
slowly and chewed thoroughly, this condition is almost entirely absent.
Pure drinking water is almost as necessary as pure food. We take water
into the body for three principal purposes: first, it is needed to
dissolve and dilute various substances and carry them from one part of
the body to another; second, it forms a large part of the blood and
other important fluids of the body, and is a part of many substances
formed in the body; third, it serves to carry from the body the worn-out
and useless tissues, the waste products of the body.
These are extremely poisonous and must be promptly disposed of to
prevent sickness. This can not be done except by an ample supply of
water. Few persons, especially grown persons, drink enough water. Ten
glasses of pure water are needed properly to supply the body.
"Insufficient water drinking is perhaps the commonest cause of the
interruption of the normal life processes," says Doctor Theron C.
Stearns.
But the common drinking cup in public places probably causes far more
disease than the drinking itself p
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