Winter Meeting. 281 



Science teaches us that the energy of the sun, which lights and 

 heats this restless planet we inhabit, is stored in wood and coal, 

 petroleum and gas, and is constantly being transformed into the 

 heat of the furnace, the light of the lamp, the power of the steam 

 engine, or into electricity, and then into light, or heat, or mechani- 

 cal power again. The same energy from the sun is stored in the 

 protein, the fats, the carbo-hydrates of the various foods we use, 

 and the physiologists and chemists are today telling us how they 

 are transmitted into the heat that warms our bodies, and into 

 the power exerted by muscle, nerve and brain. 



If the propositions just stated are correct, food may be defined 

 as anything which, taken into the body, aids in the building of 

 tissues, or in the production of energy. 



From this it logically follows that the most healthful foods 

 are those that are best fitted to the wants of the user, and that the 

 best foods are those that are most healthful and most economical. 



There is much talk about the relation of diet to health that is 

 equally foolish and hurtful. Foolish, because it subserves no good 

 purpose, and hurtful because it tends to fortify the pernicious idea 

 that our bodies are in such wretched condition as to need con- 

 stant tinkering, and that some sort of self-medication is a positive 

 duty. In the place of this widespread delusion, there should be 

 an inbuilt conviction that there are various products known as 

 foods, in the choice of which, and in the quantity used, each one 

 has daily opportunity to exercise the virtues of common sense and 

 moderation. 



One of the most pitiable errors with respect to certain food 

 products is that which somehow compounds them with medicine. 

 For example, when one eats freely of fruits he does not feel jus- 

 tified in simply saying he does so because he finds them agreeable ; 

 he likes and enjoys them, but is constrained to look wise, and 

 solemnly observe that "Fruits are very healthy." Some even go 

 so far as to have for each bodily ailment a different variety of 

 fruit. Let us banish the idea of making a drug store of our fruit 

 gardens and orchards, and cease looking upon the family fruit 

 dish as a sort of homeopathic pill box. 



Foods are not medicines. A medicine is something which is 

 taken into the body to produce a certain specific and unusual ef- 

 fect, the object being to counteract some injurious tendency or cor- 

 rect some abnormal condition. If taken when not needed, its ef- 

 fect is likely to be directly injurious. 



The normally healthy body demands what is wholesome, not 



