'FIBER AND IRON IN THE FOOD OF MAN." 125 



"FIBER AND TROX IN THE FOOD OF MAN." 



FLOYD W. ROBISON. 



It is recognized by physicians that quite a large per cent of the dis- 

 eases of mankind, is primarily due to faulty nutrition. It is, I think, 

 quite well established that the character of the food of man should de- 

 pend somewhat upon the nature of his daily work. In the feeding of 

 animals this principle is adhered to and is considered, in this field, a 

 sort of rudimentary precept. The unscientific boy on the farm will not 

 give the same character of food to the horse, idle in the stable, that he 

 gives to the one working in the field. He recognizes, consciously or un- 

 consciously, two points, — one being that the idle horse does not need 

 such a concentrated food as the one working, because the demands on 

 his system are not so great. — the other, that the inactivity of the animal 

 makes it dangerous to feed a highly concentrated ration. These two 

 considerations are practical ones with the farmer. 



In the human diet, while unconsciously recognizing the one, we almost 

 totally disregard the other. In fact, it is more frequently the case that 

 the person doing the least amount of muscular work is the one who eats 

 the most highly concentrated foods. In the cities it is not the working 

 classes who live on the most nutritious or most highly condensed food, 

 but banker, lawyer, merchant and business man, — the one whose life 

 is made up more of mental than of muscular activity. 



Reasoning from the standpoint of the animals, which is, it seems to 

 me, a logical one, the man who is doing the greatest muscular work is 

 the one who needs the most highly concentrated and most nourishing 

 foods. It is the person who does the least muscular work and on the 

 other hand a great deal of mental work who suffers most from gastro- 

 intestinal troubles, and I have frequently known a sufPerer of this class 

 to be greatly benefited by a vacation which contributed brisk muscular 

 exercise. 



In view of these and other considerations, which in this short article 

 cannot even be touched upon, it has seemed to me that we have gone, 

 perhaps, a little too far in our zeal for a condensed and concentrated 

 human food. 



A, by no means unessential, function of the stomach and intestines 

 is their peristaltic action, by means of which, their food content is 

 moved about continually and forced onward. To say that this con- 

 tributes to the utilization of the food and the elimination of waste is 

 putting it lightly. It is in fact very essential. A vegetable food not 

 highly concentrated or rather not highly purified is a great aid to this 

 more or less mechanical function of the alimentary organs. No better 

 example, of the tendency in modern methods of manufacture, can be 

 given than that which is the basis of the great flour milling interests. 

 The effort is being made constantly to reduce to a minimum the mineral 

 matter and fiber in the wheat, and a high grade patent wheat flour today 

 contains but from one-fourth to one-half of one per cent, mineral matter 



