148 FOODS 



the dinner, as an incentive to social chat with "genial companions, the 

 organism is, thereby, still further stimulated into a condition of quiet 

 digestive activity, with mental musing and muscular rest, the condition 

 best adapted for the quick and pleasant digestion of a meal. 



The feeling of satiety which follows the eating of a full dinner or other 

 repast has some little physiological interest. It is especially noticeable 

 when a large quantity of food has been taken slowly, accompanied by hot 

 tea, coffee,, or cocoa, and ending with a sweet dessert. It arises doubtless 

 from the functional congestion of the stomach and small intestine with 

 its accompanying internal warmth; the muscular and glandular activity 

 add that tone of pleasantness which exercise of whatever sort always 

 produces in a normal organ. This feeling, however, cannot be regarded 

 as the necessary criterion of a sufficient meal, for long before the stomach 

 is so full as to occasion this sensation the needs of the body, if supplied 

 three times a day, have been satisfied. It may be taken, however, to some 

 degree, apparently as the index or criterion of a properly balanced meal, 

 all parts of the digestive mechanism proper being then put in activity. 



As in other human affairs, the common-sense usefulness of ordinary 

 diet is at times disturbed for even a considerable number of persons by the 

 influence of new and radical theories and fads, not to mention the host 

 of proprietary foods which are continually appearing. Certain that 

 actually new nutrients are little apt to appear, scientific dietetics pays 

 little heed to the extreme theories, save to combat them. It welcomes, 

 however, every new form of adequate nutriment as one further addition 

 to the variety of foods, all useful at some time or other. For example, 

 the recent large number of brands of prepared cereals, etc., is a distinct 

 advantage to the public who can buy them, for they make it certain that 

 almost anyone can eat month after month, as part of their breakfast, 

 some delectable and substantial grain-product, whereas not so many 

 years ago to be tired of three or four was to be tired of them all. 



The most usual dietetic objection to eating-fads generally is that, 

 even if the methods or the foods suggested supply the needful nutrients, 

 their use tends to decrease the variety and, by consequence, the value 

 of one's diet. They foster the harmful and disturbing habit of attending 

 to the digestive process, and, like other fads, direct the individual more 

 or less toward the unbalance of fixed or of imperative ideas. The most 

 widespread of the diet-fads is vegetarianism. It arose in the Eastern 

 countries apparently because of the influence brought from Buddhistic 

 India, which makes it seem murder to kill the brute-animals because 

 supposedly animated by transmigrated human souls. Hereabouts, by 

 Christian people, it is construed merely as a belief in the sacredness of 

 brute-life or as a feeling of natural pity. One sees the same point of 

 view as an innate emotion in young children sometimes, an exaggeration 

 of the validity of the purely sentimental over that of the valuable and the 

 practical. Vegetarians are of two sorts, real and self-fancied, consistent 

 vegetarians and mock-vegetarians, as they are termed. The latter we 

 need not here notice, for they are mere zoophilic pretenders in that they 



