THE STARCH FAMILY by David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 10, 1900

THE STARCH FAMILY.

By David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

(Continued.)

WHY MEAT IS USED IN PLACE OF POORLY COOKED GRAINS.

The reason meat does not make trouble for the stomach, as the poorly cooked starches do, is due to the fact that it does not ferment. Meat may decay, or decompose, but ordinarily this does not occur until it has passed out of the stomach into the small intestine, and even then the products of its decomposition are largely tasteless poisons, as well as thoroughly alkaline in their nature—just the opposite of the acids developed by starch fermentation.

Thus a ration of meat may feel like a poultice to the alimentary canal that has been irritated by souring and fermenting mushes; and so the man imagines that he has made a great dietetic discovery in substituting meat for grains, while in reality his last state is worse than his first. For, although he does not now have heartburn, gas on his stomach, or nausea, yet he frequently suffers with an exceedingly unpleasant feeling at the top of the head, and with pain between the shoulders. He feels overworked and debilitated. The doctor gives him a tonic and something to “cure his headache,” while he little suspects that there is any relation between these serious signs of disease, and the rotting of the meat in his alimentary canal. And so, little by little, the deceived man, instead of cooking his grains more thoroughly, so that they can be properly digested, begins to leave them out of his bill of fare altogether, putting meat in their place. This is the devil’s plan for curing a sour stomach, and indeed it seems to be a short and easy way, but in the end it will be found to be a delusion and a snare. It is only healing the “hurt of the daughter of my people slightly,” and “saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.”

In England the annual consumption of meat averages one hundred and fifty pounds to each inhabitant. Of course there are thousands who scarcely taste meat; hence it is evident that others yearly consume two or three hundred pounds of animal food. What is the result?—In 1850 for every one hundred and twenty-seven funerals, one was due to cancer; but fifty years later, for every twenty-two funerals, one was due to cancer. Carefully compiled statistics show that cancer has increased in the exact proportion to the increase of meat-eating. Dr. Roger Williams, of England, and other eminent authorities, have called the attention of the public to these facts. Many persons who aspire to live on the angel plane mentally and morally, are perfectly willing, physically, to camp on the carnal, sensual, and earthly plane.

The proper preparation of starch, while extremely simple, like many other important dietetic truths, has been largely overlooked; and as a result of this neglect and indifference, the digestion of the civilized races is being fast undermined.

SOURCES OF NECESSARY FOOD ELEMENTS.

The three essential food elements are starch, fat, and proteids. From fruit we get a form of sugar (digested starch); in the grains we get a large amount of starch, together with considerable of the proteid element; but if we should attempt to live on fruit and grains, we should still have one essential food element lacking—fat. In nuts we find both fat and proteids. So nuts and fruits alone would furnish us the necessary food elements for a perfect diet; but on account of the present scarcity of fruits and nuts, it would hardly seem possible, the year round, to secure such a variety of fruits and nuts as to give us these food elements in the necessary quantities and proportions; so we are really compelled to make large use of grains, owing to this deficiency in the supply of fruits and nuts.

As we have previously said, grains are best eaten in the milky stage, the starch being then in the form of sugar. But as it is possible to secure our grains in this state during but a very small portion of the year, the next best plan is, by cooking, to subject the starch to such a degree of heat that it will be changed into dextrin. Of course it is possible to feed these pure and nutritious grains to an animal, and then eat the animal, thus eating our grains second-hand. But it is difficult to understand in what way corn or wheat can possibly be improved in food value, by having been a part of a swine or other animal for six months or a year. The natural products of the earth—trees, plants, etc.—have the power of building up and organizing the various essential food elements; while the animal can only tear down, disintegrate, and consume.

STARCH, THE BODY’S FUEL.

Starch furnishes fuel for the body. It is one of the body’s largest sources of heat and energy, while the proteids principally serve the purpose of building up the bodily structure. If you liken the human system to a stove, then the starch will represent the fuel that is put into the stove, while the proteids might fittingly be compared to the material in the stove itself; for the proteids are one of the most important of the substances used to build up the structure of the human body. As the products of starch digestion are brought to the different tissue cells in the body, by some mysterious process they there meet with the oxygen that is carried to the same cells from the lungs, through the circulation of the blood, and some such combination probably takes place as when oxygen meets the carbon of the coal in the stove: in both cases, heat and energy are liberated—set free. This energy, guided by the divine endowment of intelligence in the human mind, should be so utilized as to make the world better and happier.

The waste material, or ashes, which is left behind as the result of this process of burning up starch in the body, is largely carbon dioxide (there is also a small amount of other waste matter). This gas is eliminated by the lungs, to be breathed in again by the plant-world, where it will be used to build up starch; and

thus it will be prepared to be eaten again by man. In this we see how nature “gathers up the fragments that nothing be lost.”

ORIGIN OF DIABETES.

When the blood in its circulation is compelled to carry to the tissue cells other substances besides food, such as the poison of tobacco, alcohol, or poisonous products due to fermentation in the stomach or alimentary canal, etc., each cell of the body may become so paralyzed—chloroformed, as it were—that it will neither recognize nor utilize the sugar—digested starch—when the blood carries it to its very doors. And so instead of being burned up,—liberated as heat and energy,—the digested starch will, under these circumstances, gradually accumulate in the blood, and will have to be carried off by the kidneys as a foreign substance. Such a person is then said to have diabetes.

The popular treatment of such cases is to withdraw all starchy foods, at the same time allowing the patient to continue his various wrong dietetic habits, such as the use of flesh foods, tea, coffee, etc. But, as the human system needs starch, it rapidly emaciates if it does not get it. Patients in the early stages of this disease can, in nearly all cases, be readily cured if treated in a rational manner: (a) Shut off all sources of poison from without the body; and (b) properly prepare the starchy foods taken within the body, which means that all starch eaten should be thoroughly toasted. Combine with this vigorous physical exercise, which will encourage the tissue cells to resume the work they ceased to do because overwhelmed with poison. In addition to the foregoing suggestions, it is essential to employ such other rational remedies as are adapted to the case.

Another way in which nature sometimes offers a protest against wrong eating and lack of exercise, is the storing away of a superabundance of fat in the different parts of the body. When an animal is deprived of exercise and tied up in a stall, it fattens quickly; but this accumulation of fat is no evidence of increased health. The rational treatment of obesity is to cease gluttony, and take vigorous physical exercise. In general, it is the man whose habits are sedentary that grows fleshy, and not the day-laborer who earns his bread by the sweat of his face, and by daily toil secures the necessities of life for himself and his family.

MORAL POISONING AS A RESULT OF SPIRITUAL INACTIVITY, OR SPIRITUAL DIABETES.

Insufficient physical exercise conduces to the accumulation of poisons in the body, thus assisting in the production of many diseased conditions. So failure to engage in spiritual exercise is sure to result in the accumulation of spiritual poison and character blemishes within the moral being.

Failure to engage in physical activity checks the elimination of poisons from the system: failure to engage in spiritual work—Christian work—also has a tendency toward allowing things of a harmful nature to both form and accumulate in our spiritual experience.

As the brain is beclouded and the sensibilities stupefied by the retention of these poisons in the system, because of the failure to take necessary physical exercise, just so the moral nature and the finer sensibilities of the soul are benumbed and paralyzed by the influence of these moral poisons that accumulate in our character and experience as the result of spiritual inactivity.

Failure to take physical exercise is usually accompanied with a disinclination to engage in any form of wholesome work. Failure to engage in active spiritual exercise—failure to put forth constant effort to help our fellow men—is one of the principal ways in which we discourage the elimination of the weak points of our character, or the moral poisons of the soul. As physical exercise is the true means of eliminating the dross of the system, so spiritual exercise—working for others—invariably encourages the bringing to view our undesirable traits—the dross—of character, and at the same time greatly facilitates the process of their elimination.