FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

Shannon News, 21 March 1924, Page 4

FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

IS THOUGHT FOB FOOD. great lives blighted by bad COOKING. A great expert on food* Mr. Charles E. Hecht, has 'told an audience of learned men and women that people ■with the best brains are frequently the greatest sinners in the matter of diet. Every doctor will agree with him in. that statement. Indeed, the late Sir William Osier used to say sometimes that the cleverest men he knew treated their stomachs like dogs. “For some reason,” he added, “the brain and the stomach have never been friends. ’ And yet, as Mr. Hecht declared, if only we could make them fiiends oui w orld would be a happier place to live in. Wo should all ifeel better, think better, and work ~ better. Indeedy I would go as far as to say that: half the gloom of life, half of its miseries, and more than half of its quarrels are due to this want of harmony between thinking and eating. DINNER, AND THEN BED. Take the case mentioned by Mr. Hecht himself — that of the great philospher, Herbert Spencer., He had his dinner at 8 p.m., and then went to bed at 9 p.m. And. them he lay awake half the night a victim to miserable insomnia. .

How much; of the cold, pessimism in his writings was due to just this bad arrangement of his evening meal. Herbert Spencer made a profound impression on the minds of the last generation. His influence is still big in the world today, and, generally speak, ing, it is an influence of,a gloomy kind. Because he wrote and taught we are, all of us perhaps, without knowing it, a little more cynical than we might otherwise have been. So far does, the effect of bad habits in eating spread when the pens to be a mam of outstanding intellect. But Herbert Spencer is only one of thousands in this respectr The great Napoleon is the supreme example. Throughout the whole course of his life he treated his stomach as an enemy. Hi? meals were eaten at any hour amd with terrible speed. Moreover he used to nibble at sweet things 1 constantly, to the great distress and confusion of his doctors. In the end* as everybody knows, the despised stomach had its revenge, and brought the Emperor’s life to a premature end.

DRIVEN TO OPIUM. „ Another historical example of the same kind was the famous English writer De Quincey. Im his case dyspepsia came • early and. drove him to opium eating. In his book,‘The Confessions of an. English Opium Eater, he tells the story of his struggles against that terrible drug, and shows how fearful may bo the sufferings which digestion can inflict on a brain that has insulted and misused it.

Huxley, too, the friend. and apostle of Darwin, was-a victim to stomach trouble which darkened many of his days. In some of the bitterest passages of his essays that influence can be traced, by those who are aware of the facts. .

Shakespeare, on the other hand* is reputed to have possessed a good digestion, and. to have been a careful eatler. And the joy of the contented stomach is certainly expressed in most, if not all, or his writings. The truth! is that right eating is absolutely essential to human happiness. Cooks, not! doctors, are the real guardians of the public health. For I have no hesitation in saying that a really clever cook can make friends of both the brain and the stomach in nine cases out of ten. Even Napoleon himself used to say that he lost his interest in food because of the: vile cooking at the Military Academy at Brieune, where he spent his youth learning to be a soldier. - Once thati interest has been lost the case is usually, hopeless. Digestion too often has been spoiled. . Eating means a sense of discomfort afterwards, and that interfers with bTain work. And so the brain comes to look on the stomach as an enemy.

Some little time ago a great insurance office in America tried to find out what was the most common cause of sickness among its millions of policy holders. The strange and startiling discovery was made that digestion ac. counted for nearly half of the whole mass of illness.

In other words, we spent millions upon millions of pounds every year in trying to undo the evil effects of bad cooking and unsuitable eating. It would pay the world handsomely to spend a quarter of .that amount on giving every girl a free: training in the arts of the kitchen.

There is a great surgeon in London who says unat he believes every lover’s quarrel, every quarrel between husband and wife, “begins in the stewpot or the oven.’’

EATING FOR THE PART. Ho is a man who has made a very careful study of this subject beca-use most of his patients are the victims of indigestion and stomach trouble.’ “I spend my life,” he told me once, “trying to give back to men and women the happiness of which their cooks have robbed them.”

The same surgeon believes that even character itself can be changed by a really clever specialist in diet. In that he agrees with the great Charles Kean, the actor, who is reported*to have said that when he was going to play a murderer he ate beef, and when he was going to be. a lover he ate mutton. •

Every food has its own special “essence.” Every food can give a slightly different kind of nourishment to tire brain. And so every food is, in a very real sense, a “food for thought,” And these qualities can be increased or diminished at will by really intelligent cooking. The cook, in fact, holds the key ta the deepest secrets of, human-nature.. Food, that is to pay, ought always

to be food for thought. When. it is less than this there is waste.

I would go further than that and sav that if a man) is a sinner in respect to his diet, some woman is responsible for his sin.

Happily the standard of cooking in this country is very much higher today than it has ever been. The habit of taking many meals in restaurants had a good effect in making men, and women, too, demand appetising food in tiheir home circles. FOOD AND BRAINS. But we are only at the beginning. It is still painfully true that our young wives are far behind those of Euro, pean countries in the matter of cooking. Our food in the most litoral sense costs us more. Much of it is wasted because we obtain less than full value for the money spent. And in addition that higher value, the/ fast friendship, between stomach and brain, is too often lost altogether. Where there should be happiness and love there is discontent. The brain., after all, is the seat of life. If it is nourished with good food the world is a place of hope and enthusiasm. If it is under-nourished or poisoned darkness clouds the. mental outlook in evei’y direction. Most of the nervous, fretful, quarrelsome people in our land are people .with starved or wrongly.fed brains. And the more active and intelligent these brains, the more disastrous are the offects of incorrect diet. —Alex Whiteleos, in the ‘Sunday Chronicle.