PREDIGESTED FOODS by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 1, 1901

PREDIGESTED FOODS.

By L. A. S.

We read much in the newspapers and magazines of to-day about “predigested” foods. These foods are sold by advertisement, and among the recommendations given in the same for a preparation of this kind, one reads the announcement that it requires no work of digestion on the part of the system. It is all ready to be taken up and assimilated into the body without any intermediate process. This is the meaning of “predigested.”

The idea is given that this is a great natural advantage possessed by the preparation in question. It is one great reason why any person, whoever reads the advertisement, should buy and use it. It saves the system a large amount of work which would be required in disposing of food of the ordinary kind. At first glance this strikes the reader favorably, for we are naturally disposed to look with favor upon anything that “saves work.” The world is full of “labor-saving” devices, and the device that will accomplish most in this line usually finds the readiest sale.

But a labor-saving device in the human system is out of place. These predigested foods are very well in their place, as foods for invalids, but they do not belong in the stomach that is healthy. The healthy person who would try to live on such foods would soon get weak. The able-bodied adult wants different work to perform from that suited to the tender child. He must do a man’s work in order to keep strong. And so with the healthy stomach and other organs of digestion; they must have work to do. The stomach is a muscle, and must have exercise

to keep in good condition. Without it, the stomach would become weak and, in time, atrophied. The human system demands work, and the wise person will furnish work to every part of it. Work—exercise—is a part of the law of development. The stomach must have exercise, and this exercise must consist of work performed in the digestion of food.

Comparatively few persons, it is true, have a healthy stomach. Dyspepsia, in one form or another, is the bane of the majority of stomachs in this highly “civilized” land, subjected as they are to the abuse of hastily swallowed meals and the complex dishes of the modern fashionable menu, which should have remained forever uninvented. Simplicity is the demand of the age in the matter of living, and in nothing more than in eating and drinking. For some forms of dyspepsia some predigested foods are probably good; but it is a truth which it should not be necessary to state, that in general, for the promotion of health, there are no prepared foods which can take the place of those given man in the beginning by his Creator. L. A. S.