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Eating for Strength

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 21, 1902

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 79, No. 42.

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Eating for Strength

By John Harvey Kellogg

J. H. KELLOGG, M. D.
It requires a great deal of iron to construct a locomotive, but after it is finished, but little iron is required to keep it in repair; likewise, albumen is the food element necessary for the building up of the muscles; it is to the muscles just what the iron is to the locomotive. Therefore, food containing albumen is very necessary for the growing boy, but after the boy gets to be a man, and his muscles are developed, but little albumen is required to keep them intact. Iron is necessary to repair the locomotive, but the locomotive must also have fuel; and so starch, sugar, and fat are to the muscles what coal is to the locomotive, and are, therefore, necessary for muscular strength. The oxygen contained in the air which we breathe goes into the muscles and burns up our carbon in the form of sugar and fat, and makes muscular power. Thus it is necessary that the air which we breathe should be pure. Otherwise we become stupefied by the poisons which accumulate in the body, just as the fire in the locomotive is put out by the smoke from too much coal.
If too much starch, sugar, and fat are taken into the system, it may not hurt us to-day, but it will not be burned up, and by and by the body will be filled with poisons and unoxidized substances, and the vital processes of the body will be interfered with. But if too much albumen is eaten, exactly the same thing happens as if we should put some bolts, nuts, screws, iron bars, etc., into a locomotive for fuel,—the guards would be clogged, the draft lessened, the fire would go down, and the power of the locomotive would be lessened. So it is with the body. Meat cannot be oxidized perfectly, and so it is converted into uric acid. When too much albumen, in the form of peas and beans, nuts, meat, and other substances, is taken into the body, the result is that it cannot be perfectly burned; that means uric acid; and that means that the whole body is poisoned, the brain is irritated, and the foundation is laid for meningitis and locomotor ataxia and other similar maladies. These poisons permeate the whole body, and often produce neurasthenia. If they accumulate in the kidneys, we may get kidney stone; if in the bladder, then bladder stone is the result, thus making a surgical operation necessary.
Thus is shown the necessity of having the right kind of food and the proper amount,—in other words, the diet should be regulated by a daily ration. We have verified the daily ration by experiment. During a period of one month we had a hundred men and a hundred women making this experiment. They were weighed, and careful note was made of all they ate, and of all that was left over; a careful estimate for the entire month was taken, and we found the amount eaten to be almost exactly twenty-one ounces by a man and twenty ounces by a woman, in a day, the average being about twenty and one-half ounces a day. This was a daily ration of the different elements,—sixteen ounces of starch, three ounces of albumen, and an ounce and a half of fat. This is the normal daily ration. These persons were all in health and strength, and they increased in weight and strength on that dietary, thus showing that this is a sufficient dietary. The probability is that they ate more than was necessary; I have never eaten so much as that in a day.
It is not necessary to eat flesh in order to gain strength. Dr. Bayles, of Tokyo, Japan, traveled for two or three days by the aid of coolies, who had nothing but rice and beans to eat. He tried to persuade them to eat beefsteak, but they were satisfied with their simple fare, and wanted nothing more. The feeling of strength that comes from eating beefsteak is not real; the same sensation is experienced when one has been drinking beef tea or whisky. I once gave two young men two ounces of whisky, and I found that their total lifting capacity was fifty per cent less than it was before drinking the whisky. The reason we do not give meat to our patients is because it produces uric acid, and uric acid gives the sensation of weakness and fatigue.