ONE MEAL A DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 279, 19 November 1908, Page 3

ONE MEAL A DAY.

In his very interesting book, "The Art of Living in Good Health" (HoddT and Stoughtou), Dr. Daniel Sager, M.D., devotes a special chapter to the qu;stion of meals. During the zenith of Roman and Grecian civilisation, he says it was an established rule that no im;i should eat until he had leisure to digest—that is, at the end of the day's work.

For several hundred years the one- , meal plan was v established rute among the civilised nations living along the snores of the Mcdit.: raueau. Din- , ner in tho form of a mi 1-day lunch was unknown, and lor breakfast a bunch of grapes, a fig, or a crust of bread was sufficient to stay the appetite. The evening least was a kind of domestic festival, the reward of the day's toil. Music and amusements of various kinds usually followed. '■ An abstemiousness of this character would now be regarded as starvation, 'but for brain workers and those iollo.ving sedentary occupations one meal a day is not such a hardship as it may 'appear. H is the one certain way to arouse an appetite among those who "complain of its absence. The oue-meal-a-day plan would not do ' for those engaging in ' heavy manual work.

But no matter what a mail's occupation may be, two meals a day will furnish him with all the needed nouris lment.

We can eat but twite a day and eat naturally—which means giving the stomach a rest after digesting the food. The widespread belief that we must eat three meals each day to maintain health is questionably one of the principal causes that lead to serious illness.

Four meals a day is a common regiment both in England and in Germany. This u sure to result ia gorging Even the three meal plan does noi give the stomach or tho system sufficient time to eliminate the products of food disintegration excepting in hard manual work with long hours. The two-meal plan may be cavrie.l out satisfactorily in two different ways. There should be at least seven hows ' from the beginning of one meal to the beginning of the next, and in many instances this time may be extended tc; eight or even nine hours. At least four hours should lapse between eating the last meal of the day and going U . bed.

Supposing, says Dr. fager, the twomeal plan commends itsell to an individual, special methods would have to be adopted to carry it out :