If we now consider typical American meals with a critical eye, we see innocent stupidity elevated to an art. Breakfast may supply too little sugar to maintain the blood sugar level or so much sugar that insulin is oversupplied. Lunches are usually sketchy; mid-meals, if taken, are usually coffee, soft drinks, or sweets; thus is inefficiency produced until dinner time. Protein is eaten at dinner but, alas, efficiencv does not always follow. The accumulation of the day’s fatig~e may be too great unless masked by alcohol and/or coffee; so much food may be eaten that drowsiness is induced. The husband may snore in his chair while his wife reflects bitterly that their marriage has gone to pot. If it is a social evening, the time is often passed in desultory, boring conversation. By bedtime, the acetone bodies have been excreted, and the food is largely digested; efficiency is then produced and slept off much as a drunkard sleeps off a binge.
There is nothing new about high-protein breakfasts. For morning meals on our Indiana farm when I was a youngster, we had hot cereal, steaks, ham and/or eggs, huge patties of sausage or fried chicken with country gravy; a large pitcher of milk was regularly on the table. Remember the English novels where buffet breakfasts of fish, meats, eggs, hot cereals, and creamed dishes were described? A friend returning from the Scandinavian countries recently told of having a smorgasbord with thirty kinds of fish, cheese, and meats served at breakfast. Actually, breakfasts need not be large.
You may say you are not hungry in the morning; this rl;}mark means, “I overate last night:’ Hunger sets in only when the blood sugar drops to about 70 milligrams; 12 hours after a typical American dinner the blood sugar is usually 95 milligrams or even higher. To launch a campaign of efficiency, the best technique is to have a mid-meal in the late afternoon. Dinner should be simple and graciously served: a soup or salad so delicious that everyone wants a second helping, meat or meat substitute, perhaps a low-starch vegetable, milk, buttermilk or yogurt, and fruit. Appetites can be satisfied and the meal enjoyed without potatoes, gravy, and dessert, provided tb,e afternoon snack is sufficient. Such a meal is easy to preparacreates less havoc in the kitchen, and allows you eagerness for breakfast the next morning. The objection to small dinners is that husbands have no time to eat a large meal in the morning or at noon. Why eat a large meal at any time? All meals should be simple, filling, and enjoyable. When hungry, one always finds time to eat. I have yet to meet a red-blooded man who did not enjoy a high-protein breakfast.
Many of our national problems can be traced directly to our faulty eating habits. For example, a third of our population is obese; high-protein breakfast alone would largely correct this problem. Ninety-eight per cent of Americans have tooth decay caused by eating too much sugar; the craving for sweets disappears when the blood sugar is kept high. Lassitude, fatigue, nervousness, irritability, even exhaustion and foggy thinking are widespread indeed. Prevention or remedy are easy; for the essentially healthy person, fatigue can be changed to amazing vitality in a single day. School children are difficult to handle and often learn slowly, thus much school-tax money is wasted. Confused thinking in political, public, and private life is all too common. The greater number of automobile accidents occur when the blood sugar is lowest, when thinking is confused and reactions are slow. Our excessive use of coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol is related to our level of blood sugar; they stimulate the production of adrenal hormones which cause the blood sugar to be increased, thereby producing the needed “lift.” Irritability resulting from low blood sugar can be a factor in divorces. It now appears that polio is contracted only when the blood sugar is particularly low; the summer heat decreases the appetite for proteins and increases the craving for sugar-filled iced drinks and ice cream; exercise, such as swimming, uses up the sugar available.
Blackouts or near-blackouts resulting from low blood sugar are not unusual. For example, I was consulted by a woman who blacked out almost every time she went shopping; on each “dollar day” she came to in the nurse’s office of some department store. Her meals customarily were largely carbohydrate. She hated breakfast; when she became hungry, she bought a pound or more of candy and ate it on the spot; approximately an hour later she blacked out. Another example was a student too psychologically upset to eat; for a short period she blacked out many times daily and had to drop college. She had had so many accidents and near-accidents that only her friends were driving her new Buick convertible. Still another was a motorman on a streamliner who had blacked out on the job and had become so frightened that he had taken sick leave; he had been eating huge meals almost entirely of carbohydrate. Persons who have blacked out usually know when to expect a recurrence by the pounding of their hearts; several tell me that at such times they have parked their cars only in the nick of time. My advice is that if you value your car and/or your life, you should not drive when your blood sugar is low, Low-blood-sugar driving is almost as dangerous as drunken driving.
Weakness or faintness, legs giving away and/or a blackout, together with a pounding heart, cause many people to believe they are having heart attacks, Within the last few months, four men have consulted me because of “heart conditions”; three had “heart attacks” in the evening. One had been hunting all day, a packed lunch forgetfully left behind. A second owned a garage, had gone to work without breakfast, and had been too busy to stop for lunch. A third was vacationing in the mountains; he had taken a walk before breakfast, decided to climb a mountain, and had exercised all day without eating. The fourth was following a strict reducing diet; his “heart attacks” usually occurred between 3 and 7 A.M. Physicians could find nothing wrong with these men’s hearts, but each man was still severely frightened when I first saw him; each was taking as good care of himself as if he were a premature baby; and the life of each family revolved around “Father’s heart condition.” Certainly a person experiencing such symptoms should see his physician immediately; if the physician can find nothing wrong with the heart, however, a blood sugar analysis should be requested.
When the blood sugar is extremely low, the resulting irritability, nervous tension, and mental depression are such that a person can easily go berserk. If hatred, bitterness, and resentments are harbored, and perhaps a temporary psychological upset causes a person to go on a candy binge or makes it impossible for him to eat or digest food, the stage is set; violence or quarreling can occur for which there may be no forgiving. Add a few guns, gas jets, or razor blades, and you have the stuff murders and suicides are made of. The American diet has become dangerous in many more ways than one.
Our nursery-rhyme thinking of baby-bear-papa-bear meals needs revising. Maximum well-being and efficiency can and should be produced for every hour we are awake. The general rule is to eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. Your meals, however, should be planned to give efficiency when you need it most. For example, if you are on a swing shift, your meal highest in protein should be eaten before you go to work.
Two of the finest looking and most energetic men I know of, both physicians about sixty, tell me they eat 50 to 75 grams of protein every morning for breakfast. If you eat such a breakfast daily for a week, I guarantee that you will not go back to low-protein breakfasts.