Part 19

HELEN: I’m glad you read it to us, mother. It does seem, when the cattle eat the grass and grain, and then we eat them, as though we were eating second-hand food.

PERCY: I don’t propose to do that way any longer. I think I should have what I eat first-hand, as well as the sheep and ox.

MOTHER: I am sure if you carry out your resolve you will have pure blood and a more healthy body. I saw some pictures of children not long ago who had never tasted meat in their lives, and they were as happy and hearty as you could wish to see. I want you each to act for yourselves in this matter, and do what you think will be the best for your health.

ELMER: Is salt a food, mother?

MOTHER: No; salt is a mineral, yet it is found in all parts of the body. It is also found in nearly all our foods. We add it to some things when cooking to give them flavor, but it is hurtful to eat much of it.

AMY: Are mustard, pepper, spices, ginger, and hot sauces good to eat?

MOTHER: No; some people think they taste good, but they are bad for the body. If you put some mustard on your skin, it makes it red, and may cause a blister. You know a very little pepper in your eye makes it smart. These hot things in the kitchen of our body-house make the walls red, and the cooks get very cross. When people eat such things, they become thirsty, and sometimes, instead of drinking water to cool the heated walls and put out the fire these hot things have made, they pour down beer, whisky, and other drinks, which makes the mischief worse. When once the habit is formed of using such things, they keep wanting them hotter and stronger, till nothing tastes good unless it is highly seasoned. Many become ill, and this is one way drunkards are made.

HELEN: But how do they make drunkards, mother?

MOTHER: These hot things which people sometimes put in the stomach make them thirsty, as I have said, and so they think they must have beer or something stronger. Such drinks do not quench thirst, and so they keep on drinking more and more. If you want the walls of your body-kitchen to be a pretty pale pink color, you will keep the doors shut tight against mustard, spices, pepper, and all hot sauces. You can teach your taste to like the fine flavors which are in our foods already, and which do no harm to the body.

AMY: But sugar is a good food, isn’t it, mother?

MOTHER: I thought my little girl who is so fond of sweet things would ask this question. It is true sugar is a food, but to use much of the kind we buy is hurtful to the body. Nearly all the foods we eat, such as flour, oatmeal, pease, beets, and milk, have sugar in them. Some fruits, such as figs and grapes, have a large amount. It is not well to eat food made very sweet with sugar, such as rich cakes, jams, and preserves. It is also harmful to eat candies and lollies, for many are made from a poor kind of sugar, and the coloring matter used to make them look pretty is hurtful. Besides, as the body-house has a sugar factory of its own, you see it gets too much sugar when we eat many sweet things.

HELEN: But where is the sugar factory, mother?

MOTHER: The liver, the largest worker in the house we live in, makes a kind of sugar, as well as the bitter bile. How it is done I can not tell, but it is true that in the hundreds of little rooms of which the liver is made, all the sweet things we eat are changed to liver sugar before they can be used in the body. The liver, also, makes starch into sugar, I mean the starch found in bread, potatoes, and other foods. Now if the fireman on an engine should shovel so much coal into his furnace that it was filled full, what would happen?

ELMER: The furnace would be choked up so the fire would go out, or else it would burn very slowly.

MOTHER: That is just what takes place in this wonderful sugar factory. Since the liver makes sugar out of starch which is found in our foods, if we swallow a big piece of cake, a lot of jam, some syrup, and some candy, such treatment makes the liver cross. When all those little, living kettles are full of sugar already, how can they hold any more?

PERCY: How does the liver show it is cross, mother?

MOTHER: It goes to work to punish the master of the house. It gives him a nasty taste in his mouth, and he feels so sick that he thinks he wants nothing to eat. Perhaps the liver sends word to the stomach that it has “struck work,” and it will have nothing to do with such messes as are sent it to work over. Then the stomach, not knowing what else to do, sends all there is in it back upstairs out through the passage, and the master of the house tells his friends who come to visit him, that he is “bilious,” or that he has a “bilious attack,” and you may be sure he has a sorry time. There may be a dreadful aching up in the cupola; perhaps there is pain all over the house, all because the right kind of food and the right amount were not sent in to build up the body. The same thing is likely to happen if the master of the house sends a lot of pastry, fat meat, and fried or greasy foods into the kitchen. Bile is the one to care for them all, and he will bear such treatment awhile without complaining; but when once his temper is up, he will not be kind to anything the master may send him. Like other good servants, he makes a bad master. Perhaps he will try to do some work in a lazy sort of way; but he keeps grumbling all the time, till he makes the other servants as cross as himself.

PERCY: I think I will try to keep Bile good-natured, and send the right things and the right amount down to the sugar factory.

MOTHER: You may be sure you will not be happy unless you do; for, though strange, yet ’tis true that when things go wrong in the stomach and liver, it makes the master of the house very cross and unhappy.

Not long ago I visited a lady who has a pleasant home and all she could wish to make her comfortable. I found her face gloomy, and she was crying. She said she was not well; that a skin disease was troubling her; that her children did not do right; and that she was very miserable.

“I think it is my liver,” she added; “for when my blood is right and my liver works well I am not troubled this way.”

Poor woman! She thought she was not a Christian, and she made herself and her friends unhappy by her fault-finding. Her liver was to blame, or rather she was to blame for giving it so much work to do that it made her life hard, when it ought to have been most pleasant.

HELEN: But, mother, you make us feel as though we hardly ought to eat at all, for fear of making somebody sour down-stairs.

MOTHER: Oh, no; I don’t want you to feel that way, but I wish you to use these servants in your body-house so well that it will be a pleasure to them to serve you! We should eat plenty of good, plain food at proper times. We are made so we will get hungry and want to eat; and it is well that we do, or we might forget that fuel is needed in the body. Not only should we eat proper kinds of food, but we should be careful not to eat too much. You remember that Di-ges´tion must have plenty of room in which to do her work, or she gets peevish and does her task poorly.

AMY: How much should we eat in order not to eat too much?

MOTHER: Some persons need more food than others, and no one can tell another just how much he should eat; but it is safe to say that we should not put into the stomach all it will hold, nor eat just for the pleasure of eating. In very cold countries people can eat more without harm to themselves than they can in warmer climates. I once read of a traveler in the frozen north who saw an Esquimau eat thirty-five pounds of meat and several tallow candles in one day; but such a story seems almost too big to be true, and we would certainly hardly feel able to take such an amount of food in the same time. Children should have plenty of good, simple food while they are growing.

ELMER: I think I will take a little food at a time, and take it often. That’s the way the fireman feeds his engine.

MOTHER: That may do for an engine, but not for a stomach. It must have rest as well as food. We should eat what we need, give the stomach time to digest it, let it rest after it has finished its work, and then give it more to do. One great cause of illness among people now is that they eat too often and too much. Three meals a day at regular times are enough, and the last should be a light one and taken early, to allow the cooks time to do their work before the master goes to bed. Then all will be quiet in the body-house, and the servants can rest after their toil. If treated in this way, the morning will find them fresh and ready for their duties.