there is a temptation to over-feed. Appetite
does not need to be goaded by tasty dishes; it does not need to be
goaded at all. We should eat when hungry and until replenished; but to
eat when not hungry in order to gratify a merely sensual appetite, to
have dishes so spiced and concocted as to stimulate a jaded appetite by
novelty of taste, is harmful to an extent but seldom realised. Hence the
advisability, at least in the case of persons who have not attained
self-mastery over sensual desire, of having little variety, for then,
when the system is replenished, over-feeding is less likely to occur.

In this connection it should be remembered that in some parts of the
world the poor, although possessing great strength and excellent health,
live upon, and apparently relish, a dietary limited mostly to black
bread and garlics, while among ourselves an ordinary person eats as many
as fifty different foods in one day.[3]

On the other hand, a too monotonous dietary, especially where people are
accustomed to a large variety of mixed foods, fails to give the
gustatory pleasure necessary for a healthy secretion of the digestive
juices, and so may quite possibly result in indigestion. It is a matter
of common observation that we are better able to digest food which we
enjoy than that which we dislike, and as we live not upon what we eat,
but upon what we digest, the importance of enjoying the food eaten is
obvious.

Also as few people know anything about the nutritive value of foods,
they stand a better chance, if they eat a large variety, of procuring
the required quantity of different nutrients than when restricted to a
very limited dietary, because, if the dietary be very limited they
might by accident choose as their mainstay some food that was badly
balanced in the different nutrients, perhaps wholly lacking in protein.
It is lamentable that there is such ignorance on such an all-important
subject. However, we have to consider things as they are and not as they
ought to be.

Perhaps the best way is to have different food at different meals,
without indulging in many varieties at one meal. Thus taste can be
satisfied, while the temptation to eat merely for the sake of eating is
less likely to arise.

It might be mentioned, in passing, that in the opinion of the best
modern authorities the average person eats far more than he needs, and
that this excess inevitably results in pathological conditions. Voit's
estimate of