It is easy to train yourself to eat more and more and by so doing create an imperious, but false, appetite. It is equally possible to cultivate moderation and be satisfied with only enough food to meet your needs.

Exuberance of nutrition, as of many of the other good things of life, is frequently rather a curse than a boon to the body.

Wisdom dictates that we cultivate moderation in the consumption of intelligently chosen natural foods. Choose foods of good quality, cleanse them and prepare them properly and enjoy them fully, but do not make the pleasures of eating an end and aim of life.

Heavy muscular effort and cold weather increase food needs, especially do they increase the need for fat starches and sugars. Hot weather and disease diminish the need for food. It is wise and safest to fast when ill. Drugs and artificial treatments are harmful. Only natural processes are acceptable.

Many people eat large quantities of bulk foods merely to "fill up." They are not "satisfied" unless they feel full. This is not necessary. It is not healthful. It does not improve function. We ought to get away from the idea that our main object in life is to be forever filling up and emptying out again.

The man who has been accustomed to eating stimulating foods and whose nervous system has become accustomed to this form of stimulation until there is a marked longing for stimulation, and who, then undertakes to reform his mode of eating and live upon a natural, unstimulating diet, will find this most difficult at first. His craving and longing for the customary stimulation will be very strong and hard to resist. Herein lies the danger.

Unless he exercises great caution and the most rigid self-control and self-denial, he will establish the habit of eating enormous quantities of his new foods, in his efforts to meet the "demand" of his enervated nervous system for stimulation. Overeating on the new diet will be as difficult to overcome, once the habit has become established, as was the prior habit of overeating the stimulating foods.

We tell these people, when they attempt to reform their eating habits, to eat only what food their bodies require. But we might as well tell them not to get wet while they are standing in the rain. We never supply them with a knowledge of how much food their bodies require.

Set a man down to a table loaded with good things to eat and let him have an appetite trained by years of overeating to be satisfied only after large quantities of food have been consumed, give him no valid guide to the amount of food he should eat, and where will he stop? Certainly not until he has eaten two or three times as much food as he needs. Every mouthful of food he eats convinces him that his body requires a "little more." Or, he may think that this time, at least, he may indulge in a full allowance.

His tendency is always to try 'experiment' in the wrong direction. He is more likely to attempt to see how much he can eat without killing himself immediately than he is to try to see if he can be well-nourished and satisfied on less food.

He certainly cannot depend upon his appetite; neither in the selection of his food nor in determining the amount of food to eat. For this voracious creature of habit and miseducation is both a blind and a false guide. It will lead him back to the abandoned flesh-pots and urge him, always, to eat more and more. His appetite must be re-directed and re-educated and this will call for knowledge, determination, will power and persistence.

If he depends upon his feelings and cravings he will find, like the man who attempts to abandon a long-established tobacco habit and depends upon his feelings to guide him, that his system demands large quantities of food, even the unwholesome foods he is trying to abandon. The feelings of the tobacco addict easily convince him that his system demands tobacco. He finds that he cannot do without this poison.

The immediate feelings following a change of diet determine nothing. They do reveal whether the former diet was healthful or unhealthful. No disagreeable "reactions" follow a change from one healthful diet to another healthful diet.

The true method of determining whether or not the body needs tobacco is to abstain from its use until the body has become accustomed to do without it, until it has had ample time to recover its normal tone and repair the injury done by tobacco and eradicate its effects. Having abstained this long, compare the body in its present state with its state while using tobacco. This will decide the real influence of tobacco upon the body.

In the same way when changing from the conventional eating practices to hygienic eating practices, the immediate feelings determine nothing. Only the final results of a long-continued experiment will reveal the real effects of the two modes of eating.