OULD WE EAT?[6]

[6] See July number.

For some years I lived according to the advice given by "M.D." with
regard to the quantity of proteid that should be taken. But experience
led me to believe that it was wrong. In recent years my diet has
consisted of the following quantities per annum:--

Three to four bushels of wheat.
Seventy pounds of oats.
One bushel of nuts (measured in the shells).

And with these foods rich in proteid, I have taken plenty of raw
vegetables and fruit, and three to four gallons of olive oil.

I do not mention this as an ideal, in order to suggest another and
better standard than that of "M.D." I do not think any such thing as a
standard really exists or can exist. But I mention it to show how far
I have travelled away from where I was.

I take it that all food reformers will agree that the main reason for
food reform is to make the body a more harmonious instrument for the
true life of man, and that carries with it the belief that there is
some correspondence, if we cannot yet see absolute unity, between the
physical and the spiritual. Now the law of life, according to Christ,
is one of continual progress towards perfection and I do not see how
this will harmonise with the teaching of a fixed law for the body. All
my experience and observation point to a progressive law for the body,
and I do not know of a single fact contrary to it.

My first point, then, is that there is no such thing as a standard of
proteid needed by the body. All that can be said is this, that if you
take a man who has been fed on a certain quantity for such and such a
time and then feed him on a certain other quantity, alterations in
the physical condition will appear. But who can say whether these
changes are attributable merely to a deficiency or to a previous
excess? If "M.D." and his patients take excessive food they naturally
get trouble from stored poisons when they reduce the quantity. But why
put all the trouble down to present deficiency instead of to previous
excess? To this I can find no satisfactory answer.

If we have got our bodies into so hopeless a condition that we cannot
use our God-given instincts, tastes and feelings in the first place,
the wisdom of troubling much about the continuance of bodily life
would be doubtful; and, in the second place, one would need most
overwhelming signs of knowledge to substitute for them. But where are
they? There is no agreement between those wh