FOOTNOTES:

FOODSNutrition and Digestion

BYSusanna Cocroft

The problem of proper nutrition for the body is as vital as any study affecting the morals, health, and consequent power of a nation, since upon the quality and quantity of food assimilated, depend the sustenance, health, and strength of its citizens.

The study of life is the most vital interest in nature. The human race spends more time in providing nourishment for the body than in any other line of activity. Next to nourishment comes self-preservation. It is intuitive, the infant’s first instinct is the preservation of life; almost at once he seeks for nourishment. His bodyis ever an awakening wonder to him. He begins his education by a study of his hands, his legs, and his flesh.

“The physical satisfactions of life, the joys of mental development, the inspiration of soul, the sense of growth, of expansion, and of largest happiness, the self-satisfaction of greatest usefulness, and the glorifying results of this usefulness, come in largest measure only to the person whose nutriment is proper in quantity, quality, and form and is taken properly, as to time, mastication, swallowing, and digestion, with sufficient exercise to give the body activity to convert it into use. This enjoyment of vibrant life is far beyond the joys of the intemperate or the æsthetic.” That ones energies of thought may not be constantly engaged in deciding what is best, it is important that properhabitsbe formed. Habit calls for no conscious energy.

Scientific research along the lines of electricity, psychology, metaphysics, medicine, and art has been tenaciously pursued for centuries; yet scientific study of the natural means of keeping the body in health, that the individual may be in physical, mental, and moral condition to enjoy and to profit by researches made in otherlines, has been neglected. The result is, that man does not enjoy life to the full, nor make his physical nor mental efforts yield the best returns.

It is necessary to know the comparative values of foods as nutrient agents, in order to maintain our bodies in health and strength, and with economy of digestive effort, as well as efficiency. The entire body,—bone, muscle, blood, brain, nerve, heat and energy,—is formed from the food and drink taken into the stomach and from the oxygen breathed into the lungs; the mental and physical activity also depends upon the food. There is no study, therefore, more important than that of bodily nutrition and the preparation of food and drink in right proportions to yield the best returns under varying conditions,—age, employment, health, and sickness.

Nutrition is a broad subject. It means not only that the foods be supplied which contain elements required to rebuild body substance and to create heat and energy, but it embraces, also, the ability of the body to appropriate the foods to its needs. The study of nutrition in its full sense, therefore, must embrace foods, anatomy and physiology (particularly of the digestive system), and chemistry, in order to knowthe changes foods must undergo in being converted into tissue, heat and energy[1]. This study, reduced to a science, is known as Dietetics. There is no more important study for public schools, or for woman’s clubs.

Nutrition must be solved largely through chemistry. The health and efficiency of the individual and of the Nation depend upon careful study of the chemical components of foods and the control of the foods placed upon the market. The “pound of cure” in the study of materia medica has been given much thought,—the “ounce of prevention,” little.

The former custom of employing a physician as a retainer had its distinct advantage, his duty being to instruct in right living so as toavoiddisease rather than tocureit. To-day scientific instruction in food and hygiene is within the reach of all, and every mother and teacher is a retainer, or guard of the health of those in her charge.

Happily, the United States Government, realizing that its power as a nation dependsupon the strength and health of its citizens, has established experimental and analytical food departments. As a result of the findings of the governmental chemists, there was enacted in 1906, the Food and Drug Act, which aims to raise the standard of food purity, by prescribing the conditions under which foods may be manufactured and sold. The law compels the maker of artificially colored or preserved food products to correctly label his goods. The national law was the instigation of state laws, which have further helped to insure a supply of pure food products.

Every particle of body substance is constantly changing. The new material for cells and tissues, the substance to supply the energy needed in the metabolic work of tearing down and rebuilding, the energy used in the digestive process of converting the food into condition to be assimilated, and the energy used in muscular, brain, and nerve movement, must all be supplied by food. Every brain effort in the process of thinking, every motion, and every muscular movement requires energy which the food must supply.

Brain workers, or habitual worriers, use up force and become thin quite as quicklyas those whose work is muscular. The term “brain workers” is commonly applied to professional men or women,—to authors, editors, teachers, or to those engaged in business, but the woman who manages her household judiciously, or the woman who spends her life fretting over existing conditions, or worrying over things which never happen, uses quite as much brain force. The difference is that the former accomplish results outside of themselves, while the latter simply stirs up disagreeable conditions within, resulting in physical ills.

The whole problem of perfect health and efficient activity is in keeping the supply assimilated food equal to the demand, in keeping a forceful circulation that the nourishment may freely reach all tissues and the waste be eliminated, and in full breathing habits that sufficient oxygen be supplied to put the waste in condition for elimination.

The body is certainly a marvelous machine! It is self-building, self-repairing, and, to a degree, self-regulating.

It appropriates to its use foodstuffs for growth and for repair.

It eliminates its waste.

It supplies the energy for rebuilding, and eliminating this waste.

It directs its own emotions.

It supplies the energy for these emotions.

It discriminates in the selection of food and casts out refuse and food not needed.

It forms brain cells and creates mental force with which to control the organism.

It keeps in repair the nerves, which are the telegraph wires connecting the brain with all parts of the body.

It converts the potential energy in the food into heat with which to keep itself warm.

Withal it is not left free to do its work automatically. It has within it a higher intelligence, a spiritual force, which may definitely hamper its workings by getting a wrong control of the telegraph wires, thus interfering with the digestion, the heart action, the lungs and all metabolic changes. The right exercise of this higher intelligence, in turn, depends upon the condition of the body, because when the mechanism of the body is out of repair it hampers mental and spiritual control.Surely man is marvelously made!

The intelligent care of the body,—the temple through which the soul communicates with material conditions,—is a Christian duty. “The priest with liver trouble and the parishioner with indigestion, do not evidence that skilled Christian living so essential to the higher life.”

Certain it is that improper foods affect the disposition, retard the spiritual growth and change the drift of one’s life and of the lives about one.

Man has become so engrossed and hedged about with the complex demands of social, civic, and domestic life, all of which call for undue energy and annoyance and lead him into careless or extravagant habits of eating and living, that he forgets to apply the intelligence which he puts into his business to the care of the machine which does the work. Yet the simple laws of nature in the care of the body, are plainer and easier to follow than the complex habits which he forms. The “simple life” embraces the habits of eating as well as the habits of doing and of thinking.

FOOTNOTES:[1]It is impossible in this book to go into the anatomy and physiology of digestion exhaustively.—The reader is respectfully referred to Miss Cocroft’s book upon “The Vital Organs: their Use and Abuse.” This traces the food through the digestive canal, indicating the juices which act upon it, putting it into a necessary state to be absorbed by the body and appropriated to its various uses.

[1]It is impossible in this book to go into the anatomy and physiology of digestion exhaustively.—The reader is respectfully referred to Miss Cocroft’s book upon “The Vital Organs: their Use and Abuse.” This traces the food through the digestive canal, indicating the juices which act upon it, putting it into a necessary state to be absorbed by the body and appropriated to its various uses.

Back to Index Next