Fitness

I usually have fruit or fruit juice, meat, tiger’s milk, and coffee or Sanka for breakfast. The youngsters’ favorite breakfast is fruit or juice and buttered muffins containing soy Hour, wheat germ, fresh and powdered milk, eggs, raisins, and soybean oil; they eat quantities of the muffins with milk or tiger’s milk. Unless I am invited out, I have only salad and tiger’s milk or yogurt for lunch; if there is no time to eat, I have nothing except a glass of yogurt or tiger’s milk. Afternoon snacks I particularly enjoy; I usually have fruit or a glass of yogurt or milk, then Sanka. Our suppers are skimpy, perhaps only scrambled eggs or cottage cheese with salad, milk, and fruit; or yogurt with fruit and homemade bread. Even when I entertain, I serve only meat or meat substitute, tossed salad, dark bread if anyone wants it, milk, and fruit. Sometimes I cook a vegetable and occasionally make custard, cheese cake, or some other dessert. The woman who helps me feels so sorry for my guests because they get no potatoes or gravy except on Thanksgivings. My friends are at “that age”; they seem to run to chubbiness.

The objection is sometimes made that such a dietary is expensive. I consider it the reverse. No money is wasted on junk; little or none is needed for medical or dental bills. Thousands of people who could afford adequate diets live on markedly inadequate ones. Persons who have little money also spend tragic amounts on “foods” which can never produce health. Perhaps two-thirds of the items in our food markets are not worth carrying home, let alone paying for, unless the goal be to produce disease.

The trouble with any general instructions is that they cannot meet individual requirements. For example, my first book contained a reducing diet; I recall how proud I was when a woman told me she had followed this diet and had lost 20 pounds. My glow quickly disappeared when I discovered she had also lost 12 teeth partly because the diet had not met her needs. The pounds quickly returned; her teeth did not. Every person’s nutritional requirements vary from those of other individuals and from day to day. No one can possibly know those variations as well as you yourself; for this reason everyone desiring health should have a thorough knowledge of nutrition.

People frequently ask me what vitamin supplements I take. My requirements may vary widely from yours. I use fresh orange juice and yeast and/or liver daily as my sources of vitamins C and the B vitamins and eat yogurt almost daily to supply bacteria which I hope are producing vitamin K and still more B vitamins. For years I have taken after breakfast 25,000 units of vitamin A, 100 units of vitamin E in the form of natural mixed tocopherols, and 100 to 250 milligrams of vitamin C, the amount varying with the number of people who are currently sneezing in my direction. I used to take 25,000 units of vitamin D every Saturday because I was afraid I would forget it on Sunday; now I take it on Saturday because a woman told me she understood that vitamin-D-on-Sunday held a religious significance for me. For one week of every month I take daily three to six tablets of calcium combined with trace minerals; I have hoped that enough trace minerals would be stored for the three following weeks. Occasionally, when working under unusual pressure, I take additional B vitamins in capsule form. If something causes me to blow my top, I run for calcium and vitamin B6 tablets, or if I miss so much sleep that a cold threatens, I take more vitamin C.

While I was visiting a friend recently I was startled to overhear her teen-age daughter remark, “I’m going to bed and leave the menopause gals to themselves.” This jolted me into increasing my vitamin E to 200 units daily, the mixed minerals to an after-breakfast routine, and the vitamin D to 25,000 units every Wednesday and Saturday, still without religious significance.

If you can find an everything-in-one capsule which meets your needs, that is excellent but I have never been able to. Such capsules are usually expensive; many B vitamins are omitted, some are supplied only in microscopic amounts, and the cheap ones are too plentiful. In most cases, to obtain enough vitamin D or E, you need to take several which, besides increasing the expense, may supply far more of other nutrients than you need. The supplements I take meet my needs at about nine cents per day; to obtain my requirements from all-in-one capsules would usually be many times that.

In my opinion, the vitamin business has become a racket.

I am continuously shocked at the amount of money people spend on vitamin supplements. Before buying any supplement, read labels and compare potencies and prices of various brands. Products shipped across a state line are inspected by the Food and Drug Administration. No company wishes its reputation marred by government citations; therefore the potencies stated on the labels of products marketed for some time are usually reliable. The prices vary widely, however, even for products often prepared by the same manufacturers. The cheaper product is often excellent.

There is little value in improving your nutrition if your digestive system is so below par that the food is not efficiently digested or absorbed. If your tongue shows the symptoms discussed on page 63 or if you get gas from taking yeast, milk, or other nutritious food, you can be sure, unless you are eating too fast and swallowing air, that your digestion is on the rocks. In such case lemon juice or dilute hydrochloric acid (10 per cent solution purchased from a drugstore) should be added to yeast, milk and/or tiger’s milk if used. To aid in digesting other foods, hydrochloric acid tablets, usually labeled as “glutamic acid hydrochloride,” are excellent. Tablets of digestive enzymes with bile are often advisable.” One physician I know tells his patients to take five of each kind of these tablets after each meal; if IlO gas occurs, to decrease to four, three, two, and finally one of each, increasing the amounts again if gas recurs. Such a procedure is excellent, but I have never had nerve enough to recommend it; I usually advise one tablet of each after each meal, to be increased later if trouble with gas persists. Both should be stopped as soon as digestion appears normal, or in about a month after a good nutrition program is initiated.

Removing numerous bottle tops daily would make a hypochondriac out of anyone. If you become a tablet taker, buy an attractive box designed for keeping several packages of cigarettes, dump your tablets into it, and keep it on the breakfast table. Avoid, if possible, the display of taking tablets in public.