The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

20 DISORGANIZED ELEMENTS ARE REJECTED.

according to their capacity for harming the system;
and thus can be clearly read the lessons of nature,
teaching us to keep out of the stomach and lungs
everything but these fourteen elements, and to admit
them only as they are organized and prepared as in
articles of natural food in Nature's laboratory —the
Vegetable World. But these elements are required
in very different amounts, according to the amount of
exercise of the different faculties and the temperature
of the atmosphere in which we live.
And here we have the foundation for a scientific
adaptation of food to our different employments in life.
The man who is chopping wood in an atmosphere at
zero, and he who sits still, or uses only his brain, in
a room at the temperature of seventy degrees, consume very different elements in very different proportions, and therefore require different elements of food.
The one needs the muscle-producing nitrogenate elements and the heat-producing carbonates; while the
other needs very few nitrogenates, and only carbonates enough to supply the breathing operations with
fuel; but he needs more of the phosphates to keep the
brain in working order, and we shall find on inquiry
that nature has furnished food just adapted to these
and other conditions of life, and shall find also that,
following these suggestions of nature, we shall obtain
a rich reward, both in the enjoyment of health and in
the enjoyment of eating.