Dr. Philip Norman says: "Possibly the most confusing chapter in medicine today is the one related to the problem of diet. Textbooks on treatment are woefully barren of tangible information. The authors assume that the medical man is sufficiently schooled in dietaries. Instruction concerning diet are usually dismissed with the admonition, 'Of course, the diet must be carefully planned, etc.' The greatest reflection on medical intelligence is to be found in the diet kitchens of the hospitals. The interns, the nurses, and the patients testify voluntarily to the short-comings of hospital fare. It is traditionally accepted by patient and physician as part of the disagreeableness to be expected in the process of hospitalization. Dieticians are too often nothing more than cooks, who feebly attempt to enhance the physical attractiveness of food without thought or knowledge of the patients' nutritional requirements.

"The average meal consumed today is the outgrowth of the efforts of cooks who have catered to taste rather than to reason. The basic plan is to combine proteins, carbohydrates and fats. The conception of the calorie has retarded logical and rational reasoning in regard to diet, more so than any single other factor. The calorie is definitely associated with proteins, carbohydrates and fats. The calorific conception is a fuelistic rather than a nutritional conception. Nourishing such a complex aggregation of cells designated as the body differs widely from the problem of burning fuel to make steam."

Conditions are not much better in the ranks of the various drugless schools. Many of these practitioners give no attention whatever to diet and others almost none. Many of those who give great attention to diet know very little about it and to the everlasting shame of many of these, they are guided by what they have learned from lecturers and written works of a swarm of lecture racketeers, who, while they have many patent foods to sell, have had neither training nor experience in trophology. The lecturers are sadly deficient in knowledge of everything except salesmanship.

"Type feeding," "polarity feeding," feeding according to temperament, and similar attempts to feed "individualized" diets, are based on fallacies and errors of the most misleading kinds. In spite of this, their authors have frequently worked out dietaries that are far superior to the conventional diet.

Another group feeds "specific foods" for "specific diseases." Dr. Harry Finkel says: "It is to be hoped that the future doctors will learn the medicinal value of each particular food and prescribe it in the same manner he does drugs." A formidable dietetic-pharmacopea has been worked out--apricots for nausea, obesity and constipation; beets for the kidneys and bladder; cucumbers to purify the blood; pineapple for "sore throat"; leeks for coughs, colds and insomnia; spinach and beet tops for anemia; olive oil for gall stones; lemons and grapes for cancer; celery and fish for nervous troubles, etc. This is a system of medicine--allopathic medicine.

I agree with Dr. Weger that no food has curative properties per se, and that "it is wrong to ascribe to food the power to cure." He correctly says, "the person who recommends or takes a certain kind of food to cure a certain kind of disease is still in the elementary or kindergarten stage of food and health knowledge."

No confidence can be placed in the claims for therapeutic virtues in special foods. The theories and claims of those who maintain foods have certain specific effects upon certain organs and tissues of the body have been thoroughly studied and tested by the author and by others. Time and time again we have prescribed these foods and watched for their alleged effects. These effects have not shown up.

Similar to the effort to feed special foods in "specific diseases" is the effort to feed special organs of the body. We are told that there are certain foods to feed the eyes, certain foods to feed the nerves, certain foods to feed the hair, certain foods to feed the nails, certain foods to feed the brain, certain foods to make one magnetic, certain foods to make one sleep, certain foods to fill one with energy, etc. No such foods exist. The ensemble of diet must meet the ensemble of the nutritive needs of the body before any organ can be adequately nourished.

Nothing that is good for the muscles is bad for the nerves, or any vital organ. What is good .for the teeth is good for every organ of the body. Foods that promote and preserve beauty of the skin are also best for the brain. Foods that build strong, efficient stomachs are precisely those foods that build vigorous hearts, efficient livers, good kidneys, etc. The good of one is the good of all. That which perfects one organ perfects all the organs. The body is a unit and goes forward or backward as a unit--it must be nourished as a whole, not by piece-meal.

Foods enter the digestive tract and are broken up into their constituent nutritive elements and enter the blood stream as mineral salts, amino-acids, monosaccharides, glycerol and water. These are the things that circulate in the blood and which reach the organs and tissues. The blood succeeds in maintaining a surprising uniformity of structure and composition regardless of the food eaten. It is blood that feeds the organs.

One of the greatest mistakes in those dietaries worked out on the calorie basis is that the chemical reactions which occur in the incongruous combinations usually fed, so change the character and value of the whole mass that the one who eats such menus never receives the calories represented in his meal. The same thing is true of similar menus now worked out with special reference to vitamins.

Due to the prevailing confusion about nutrition and stimulation, many old errors continue to rule the minds and influence the practices of the layman, the dietician and the physician. Dr. Trall protested that physicians were "in the habit of saying to cold, pale, thin, and debilitated patients, for whom some other doctor had recommended a vegetarian diet, that they require a 'more stimulating diet,' meaning, of course, fresh-meat. And I have heard more than one doctor of the 'old school' call 'flesh, fish and fowl' tonic or high diet, in contradistinction to vegetable, which they termed reducing or low diet."

So-called "strengthening" foods stimulate the nerves and muscles, put on fat, color the face and lend a fictitious appearance of health; but they waste strength, "rust" the tissues, distend the blood vessels with plethora, overwork the heart, bring about arterio-sclorosis, and result in premature old age and death.

In dietary matters, as in other matters, it reveals a lack of vision and understanding to consider only immediate and temporary results and not look into the future at ultimate and permanent results. It can hardly be too often repeated that the more you eat, the more you poison yourself and the faster you wear yourself out.