p. 86 | Eat What You Like

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 27, 1864

Eat What You Like.

Tobacco, even, has its apologists and advocates; much more have tea and coffee. So it might be expected, when a reform in the food we eat, begins to be urged upon the people, advocates would spring up to defend the popular style of living. In the Scientific American of Oct. 29, 1864, we find an article from which we take the following declarations:

"We eat just what appetite and inclination prompts us to. Statisticians have prepared tables showing the nutrition contained in certain articles of food, and the time required to digest them in healthy stomachs. These tables are useful as information; but as guides to health they are useless. When a man orders his dinner, he does not consult the state of his system, nor examine the tables to see what would suit his condition, but he asks his palate and that decides the momentous question." "The appetite is satisfied by the food the stomach calls for, so that it is easily appeased, and does its work good humoredly, so to speak, even though it be harder." "Taste is not, as many suppose, a thing to be disregarded and crushed. It is the instinct of the stomach telegraphed to the palate, and from thence communicated to the will, so that through the exercise of an instinct, man orders what he likes for dinner and keeps his body healthy."

Man, no doubt, orders what he likes for his dinner, but facts give the lie to the declaration that he keeps his body healthy. Yet we consider that there is enough truth in the extracts above given to make them all the more dangerous. It is undoubtedly correct that there should be a correspondence between the food and the appetite; that our food should taste good to us, and we eat it with abundant relish; and that the same benefit could not be derived from food which from our dislike to it, had to be forced into the stomach.

But the article goes upon the ground that the appetite as it is, is to be the standard in this matter; and herein lies its fallacy; for the appetite, like the conscience, sometimes becomes perverted; and we have good reasons for saying that people generally are laboring under an artificial, unnatural and perverted appetite—an appetite that has been trained to crave food which is not best adapted to our physical good. Shall such an appetite be allowed to choose for us? If so, the tobacco user and the rum drinker have an excuse for their unnatural indulgences. In the present state of physiological and chemical science, it is too late to deny the claims of these sciences that certain kinds of food contain more nutriment and health-giving properties than others, and are better adapted to the wants of our bodies. Now if our appetites can be brought to choose such kinds of food, would it not be far better? But experience without exception shows that when the appetite is brought back to a natural and healthy state, these are the very kinds of food which it does choose, and relish most. A person never enjoys his meals so well as when under a healthy appetite he is partaking of healthy food.

We say, then, correct your appetite; make that right, and then "eat what you like for dinner," and "keep the body healthy."