The Value of Good Digestion

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The Value of

Good Digestion

Hygienic Review

Vol. XXXIII February , 1972 No.6

The Value of Good Digestion

Herbert M. Shelton

What shall we eat for health? The old advice to "eat nothing for

breakfast and something you don't like for dinner" is a false approach.

The wholesome foods of nature are as delicious and delightful to the

sense of taste as anything can conceivably be. We can eat things that

we like and be healthy. It is true that we can learn to like things

that are far from wholesome, and once we have acquired a perversion of

the sense of taste, we may no longer relish wholesome foods, but it is

not difficult to re-acquire a relish for that which is wholesome.

The subject of food and feeding has been fully studied and the many

foods we eat have been thoroughly tested and analyzed and there can no

longer be any excuse for any man pleading ignorance of diet. If he is

ignorant, this is because he has chosen to be so. The food which a man

eats, though very important, is no more so than the efficiency of his

digestion; for poor digestion will fail to prepare the best of food for

nutrition.

Many factors or conditions impair or retard the process of digestion

and thus interfere with the work of preparing what may otherwise be

wholesome foods for entrance into the body. Extensive tests have shown

that the residues left in bread by baking powders, retard the digestion

of proteins. Although most of these tests were made with cream of

tartar powders, there does not seem to be any powders that are exempt

from this effect. Strong alkalies in food must go far to neutralize the

acid of the gastric juice and thus annul the digestive power. The food

eaten is then left to ferment instead of digesting. Baking soda, milk

of magnesia or other alkali taken following a meal retard the digestion

of the meal. The resort to alkalies as "medicines" is a patent abuse of

the body. Physicians with their drugs as well as cooks with their

concoctions make dyspeptics. Indigestion is frequently caused by taking

laxative and cathartic drugs. This eternal swallowing of drugs ruins

many constitutions.

The sour stomach, sour eructations, heavy stomachs, gas, distress and

discomfort that are so common after the conventional meals do not teach

our deluded people that their ways of life and particularly their ways

of eating are out of harmony with the laws of being. They think that if

they can take a dose of baking soda, or an aspirin and "relieve" their

distress, all of the evil consequences of their wrong eating are wiped

out and they may go on in continual violation of the laws of life.

These drugs are advertised to give absolution of our daily gastronomic

sins and free indulgences for repetitions of this agreeable weakness.

This use of alkalies is of modern and comparatively recent origin; in

fact the indiscriminate use of them dates back not more than a hundred

years.

Would you eat rotten apples? Of course you couldn't. It borders on

insult to even imply that you would condescend to take such an

unwholesome substance into your mouth. Do you drink hard cider? Do you

use cider vinegar? If you take either of these substances you are

taking rotten apples. You may properly be classed with a person who

eats ripened (rotted) poultry or spoiled cabbage (sauerkraut).

In the production of cider and vinegar we start with a good apple,

which is wholesome food. The apple juice begins to undergo

decomposition as soon as it is extracted from the apple and soon

becomes loaded with decomposition products. The two most abundant of

these products are alcohol, which is a protoplasmic poison, and acetic

acid, which is more toxic than alcohol. Alcohol precipitates pepsin and

thus interrupts and retards protein digestion. Acetic acid chiefly

retards starch digestion. Both alcohol and acetic acid occasion

irritation of the stomach and thus impair digestion in general.

Experiments have shown that even as small a proportion of vinegar as

one part in 5,000 appreciably diminishes the digestion of starch by its

inhibiting or destructive effect upon salivary amylase. One part in

1,000 renders starch digestion very slow and twice this quantity

arrests it altogether. From these facts it becomes evident that

vinegar, pickles, salads on which vinegar has been sprinkled and salad

dressings containing vinegar and other foods to which vinegar is added

are unwholesome, especially when taken with starchy foods such as

cereals, bread, legumes, potatoes and the like.

As I dictated this article, my secretary, who is taking down the

dictation in shorthand, asked me if I had ever eaten sauerkraut. She

stated that she had tried it once in her life and could not remember

how it tasted. She remembers only that it was repulsive. It probably is

repulsive to everybody the first time it is tried, but by repeated

eating one can acquire a relish for the rotten cabbage and the brine in

which it is pickled. Just as one may acquire a liking for sauerkraut or

for tobacco, which is even more repugnant to the unperverted taste, so

one may acquire a relish for the repulsive taste of vinegar. By

frequent repetition we thus succeed in beating down our instinctive

warnings against unwholesome substances.

I recall my boyhood experiences in trying to eat cucumbers and beets

pickled in vinegar and my efforts to use pepper sauce, which was made

by pickling pods in vinegar. I was never quite successful in learning

to relish these unwholesome "foods." In those days many housewives made

their own vinegar so. that it was free of adulteration and chemical

additives, but its taste was nonetheless repugnant. The only way I was

ever able to eat it was as the filler in the vinegar pies my mother

used to make. In these pies the repulsiveness of the vinegar was

camouflaged by an abundance of sugar. The whole concoction was

unwholesome and I do not recommend it as an article of diet.

Other acids, even wholesome ones such as those of the lemon, lime,

orange, grapefruit, tangerine, pineapple and other fruit acids, destroy

the salivary amylase and retard or suspend starch digestion. It is

unwise to eat acid foods and starches at the same meal. As the

hydrochloric acid of the gastric juice, so essential to protein

digestion in the stomach, also destroys ptyalin or salivary amylase and

thus retards starch digestion, it is not wise to eat protein foods and

starch foods at the same meal. Bread, potatoes, cereals, beans, peas,

and other starchy foods are best eaten at meals separate from nuts,

cheese, eggs or flesh foods.

In the largest sense no food is digestible or indigestible per se, but

according to persons, times and circumstances. Overeating is among the

chief causes of indigestion. The competition of our public dining rooms

tempts us to eat three big meals a day, often two of them at a time.

The rate of action of the digestion enzymes depends not alone upon the

pH of the medium in which they act, but also upon the temperature of

the medium. They are most efficient at the normal internal temperature

of the body. Making the contents of the stomach cold by drinking cold

water or other cold drink or by eating ice inevitably reduces the

activity of the digestive enzymes. Very hot liquids raise the

temperature of the mouth and stomach above the normal temperature and

bring about certain equally undesirable changes in the enzymes. Neither

hot nor cold drinks or foods should be taken. Ice cream, ice,

sherberts, etc., taken at the end of the meal, play havoc with

digestion.

The stomach has been termed the "center of sympathies." Certain it is,

irritation of the digestive tract can occasion more vertigo, trembling,

muscular weaknesses, etc., than irritation of almost any other region

of the body. Indigestion is among the most common causes of physical

discomfort and emotional stresses. Palliating these discomforts with

drugs instead of removing the causes of the indigestion leads to

ruinous consequences.

What is the extent of the role played in the evolution of disease by

impaired function of the digestive tract? The fouling of the food

supply and the deterioration of the tissues of the body that results

from poisoning by absorption of septic materials from a digestive tract

that is reeking with decomposition, this largely, if not wholly from

the small intestines, are factors that we must reckon with in any

consideration of etiology, even of the simplest as well as of the most

complex diseases.<

Herbert M. Shelton

-- Peace be with you,

Don "Quai" Eitner

"Spirit sleeps in the mineral, breathes in the vegetable, dreams in the animal and wakes in man."

Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. ~Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb