Granted, that a normal appetite will select food that is perfectly adapted to sustain the animal organism, we, as so called civilized people have long since passed the point where our appetites can be said to be natural or normal - and we must solve this problem of "What shall we eat?" if we want to solve it with a view to perpetuating the life of the physical body for the longest possible time, on the basis of analysis and experiment, and with a view to cultivating a normal appetite, regardless of the cravings and longings of our present abnormal appetites, the results of long years of acquired habits, mostly bad.

To claim, now, that because you like a thing it is good for you to eat it, would be to discard reason and acknowledge yourself the slave of appetite alone. Whether it is good or not good for you, depends not on your liking, but on the actual effect upon your physical organism with reference to sustaining its energy and longevity.

The whiskey toper likes his dram; the drug fiend likes his poison; the opium smoker likes his pipe; and these likes may be no different from your likes except in degree of injury resulting from their gratification.

The answer to this question "What shall we eat?" is really very brief, and some may think that the writer is joking when he gives it, but I assure you that it is no joking matter. The answer is - "FOOD".

The fact is, that a great many things are eaten and drank, swallowed, guzzled and bolted, that are not food - and all that is not food is really poison, and, strange though it may appear on the mere statement, food itself may be poison if not properly eaten, or if eaten in improper quantities.

Food is required by the human organism to supply energy and perpetuate its life. There is no really pure food known in nature. In other words there is always a portion of what is taken in the system as food that has to be discarded as waste, matter that cannot be assimilated.

Food can properly be classed under good food, poor food, bad food, and poison, this classification also includes drinks.

The food that can be most easily assimilated, and will supply the most energy without injury to the organism, thus perpetuating its longevity, is the best food. Food from which the life-giving elements may be easily separated and the refuse easily eliminated from the system is good food.

Food that contains little life-giving force and much refuse and is not easily assimilated or expurged is poor food. Matter that contains no life-giving energy and elements that are harmful, is poison.

To answer this question "What shall we eat?" I say, considering climatic and other conditions normal, a simple fruit and vegetable diet with milk or pure water.

Any pandering to the appetite means suicide - long-drawn out, and often most excruciatingly painful. A healthy, normal appetite will enjoy normal food, the very greatest enjoyment so results, but when one feeds one's appetite without care or regard to the actual requirements of the body, simply lives to eat, instead of eating to live, such a one is not going to live nearly as long as he ought to live; nor is he going to enjoy the time he does live nearly so well as the one who has learned the lesson that the body is like a machine, to be supplied with the things it really needs, and not to be insulted by stuffing into it a lot of things that it does not need, and that are a positive burden and injury to its normal manifestation.

And now I hear many of you who have just read the foregoing ask "Why don't you tell us just what to eat?"

I have! I'll repeat it:

Eat sparingly of raw fruits and nuts, natural sweets, such as honey, etc., drink milk, slowly, and you will have supplied your physical organism with the very best food, from which it can subtract the most vital energy with the least amount of energy expended in eliminating the waste.

And now that I have answered this question, to my own satisfaction, at least, and after I have given several years to experimenting, I will not ask you to accept this answer, only in the good faith that it is given you. There is nothing like a personal demonstration, I am confident that if you make this personal demonstration, and make it with a sincere desire to adjust your physical body to the laws of its being, willing to eliminate all that pertains to acquired appetite, and to live normally, (and if you continue the experiment long enough to allow your organism to adjust itself to your new mode of living, not less than a month, at least,) you will find that my answer is rational, sensible, and conclusive - and you will also find that your new mode of living will give you more life, at a cheaper cost than the old. Your longing for the flesh pots will gradually be replaced by a sense of gratification that you are living in a clean, strong, vigorous body, free from aches and pains and disease. Though it may take you much longer than a month to demonstrate all this, the demonstration is possible. Nature is wonderfully kind and even after years and years of abuse and wrong life she will partly make right old wrongs and repair injuries.

If you are not willing to live right you do not deserve to feel right - nor will you ever free yourself from disease until you learn the lesson that old mother nature has for so many centuries been trying to teach you and your forebears, who have largely made you what you are.

As to the question,"How shall we eat?" the answer is brief. Eat slowly, masticating well before swallowing, also drink slowly, especially milk, mixing same with saliva.

As to "When shall we eat?" here is the rub.

Cultivated habit answers, "Whenever one has a chance." This spells gluttony. No matter how good the food you eat, too much of it is bad. Once the body is supplied with the nourishment it requires, all else that you add is simply waste - and waste that must be eliminated by using the vital energy that should be used for other purposes.