ONE MEAL A DAY by Mary Alice Hare Loper, M. S.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 11, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 31.

ONE MEAL A DAY

By Mary Alice Hare Loper, M. S.

Perpetual Motion of the American Stomach — “Meals at All Hours”

By MARY ALICE HARE LOPER, M. S.

INFANTS are taught to expect food as a remedy not only for feelings of hunger, but for bumps and pin-scratches. Children learn to bury their sorrows and disappointments in ice-cream cones, pop-corn bags, and candy sacks. Young people but follow the example of those of older years when at all hours they patronize public eating places and drinking places, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the stomach sometimes needs rest. We hear of overworked bodies and overworked brains, but overworked stomachs are much more common.

A CHIEF SOURCE OF DYSPEPSIA

Eating between meals is a pernicious practise of which the American people are almost universally guilty; and this is one of the chief reasons why the people of our beloved country are to-day a nation of dyspeptics, and are fast filling untimely graves.

There is some consolation in observing that attention is called more and more to the fact that success in infant feeding depends not alone upon the quality and the quantity of food taken, but also upon the regularity with which it is administered. And this rule holds good with those of older years. There is a vast difference between eating to live and living to eat. One is a law of life, which calls for a reasonable expenditure of means; the other is a law of death, whose expenditures are unlimited. It is appalling to think of the vast sums of money wasted, and the amount of disease incurred, as the result of gross transgression of nature’s laws in regard to eating and drinking.

THE HABIT OF NIBBLING

Children are permitted to acquire the habit of nibbling all day long, like squirrels. When too young to share only the family meals, instead of having simple lunches at proper times, they are encouraged to cultivate the one-meal-a-day tendency, adding a new course whenever anything accessible appeals to the appetite. America’s bill for confectionery alone is in the neighborhood of one hundred eighty million dollars a year.

“MEALS AT ALL HOURS”

This is distinctively an age of eating and drinking. The significant sign, “Meals at All Hours,” has become very familiar; while ice-cream parlors, candy kitchens, lunch counters, pop-corn and peanut venders, fruit stores, tamale parlors, etc., afford ample opportunity for the masses of one-meal-a-day adherents to have their multitudinous wants supplied. When very warm, people carelessly take ice-cold drinks — a practise which has so often resulted in sudden death that some one has tritely said:

Full many a man, both young and old, Has gone to his sarcophagus By pouring water, icy cold, Adown his hot esophagus.

Pure water, rightly employed, is one of the necessities of the human system, and it should be taken between meals. Generally speaking, it is not used as abundantly as it should be. But many of the popular drinks are injurious because of the poisons they contain. This is true of all alcoholic drinks, and of some of the so-called soft drinks. Persons who totally abstain from alcoholic liquor are said to live, on an average, nearly fourteen years longer than the moderate drinker, and thirty years longer than the hard drinker. America’s bill for alcoholic drinks in one year reaches the enormous sum of more than two billion dollars. May the death-dealing liquor traffic be wiped from the fair face of every state where the matter is submitted to the people at the coming election.

Everybody knows that the drink habit is very difficult to cure. We should remember that the “eat” habit, also, may become difficult to cure.

A HABITUAL EATER

I once knew a habitual eater whose appetite had become so perverted, and whose form so emaciated, that he had a constant craving for food, and would resort to strategy, if need be, to secure it. His physicians could not control his appetite; and when he should have been in the very prime of life, he died, a victim of one of the worst forms of dyspepsia.

REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED

It is a publicly recognized fact that the mere announcement, “Refreshments will be served,” will insure a crowd at almost any free entertainment. Dyspeptics learn that for a time they can eat and drink almost anything they wish, within certain limitations, and escape pain temporarily by the use of some patent nostrum or some one’s favorite prescription which has a paralyzing effect locally. Many Adams and Eves to-day partake of forbidden fruit, while they listen credulously to the same old story, “Ye shall not surely die.” It is surprising how long nature will endure such abuse — how long some persons live who continually transgress the laws of their being.

IT WOULD KILL PET DOGS

Christmas, new year’s day, fourth of July, Thanksgiving day, and individual birthdays, are especially observed as days of feasting. If fashionable women were to feed their premium pet dogs as children are fed, they would expect them to die. It is barbarous to punish a child for becoming fretful and cross after being fed upon a murderous diet. The condition of the stomach in childhood determines largely one’s disposition in later years (if one lives), and his success or failure in reaching his possibilities in life.

THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST

People in general have lost sight of the fact that the human body “is the temple of the Holy Ghost,” and that we are not our own. “For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” If any man

defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” 1 Cor. 6: 19, 20; 3: 17.

“DON’T SWALLOW YOUR GUM”

In addition to eating and drinking at all hours of the day and night, Americans use about one billion dollars’ worth of tobacco a year; and besides this, they possess the distinction of being the gum-chewing nation of the world, expending fifteen million or more dollars a year on this worthless commodity. Children begin the habit when so young that “Don’t swallow your gum” has become a familiar household precaution; and some way, there is about the habit a fascination that appeals also to those of older years.

SHOULD CHEW THE FOOD MORE

Strange as it may seem, while there is such a thorough mastication of gum on the part of the American people, there is a serious lack of thorough mastication of food; and this has much to do with the prevalence of digestive disorders. No wonder that children, after swallowing quantities of half-masticated pop-corn and peanuts, should not feel well; or that adults who consider fifteen or twenty minutes ample time for a full meal, should suffer from digestive disorders.

It is all right for the ostrich to swallow oranges whole if he wishes; but the human being should remember that he is not supplied with a gizzard, however much he may feel that up-to-date business demands it.