It is a matter of common experience that we tend to eat much less food when we take but one at a meal. If we are eating but one vegetable we eat just so much and we are satisfied; but if we are eating two vegetables we tend to eat as much of each as we would of a single vegetable if we have only the one or the other at a meal. For example, if we are eating carrots and have consumed all we want of these, we can go back for a serving of asparagus or spinach and apparently start eating all over again. Variety is the spice of gluttony.

This common experience does not prove that we need a variety of foods to supply our demands at the time; but that a variety of foods tends to induce overeating.

This is only one of the reasons why the common habit of eating desserts at the end of a meal is an unwholesome practice. We can always eat a piece of cake or pie or a dish of ice cream or other dessert, even after we have consumed so much of other foods that we experience a sense of uncomfortable fullness. The greater the variety of foods we take at a meal the more we are likely to eat. If we have six foods in our menu we are likely to eat much more than if we have only three. We are a nation of gluttons and much of our overeating is due to the great variety of foods that are placed on our tables at each meal. This practice stimulates the appetite and the gustatory sense to the utmost at each meal.

Indeed, it is the custom to serve the foods in a regularly graduated scale of gustatory relish. Starting with the food that gives least enjoyment and gradually working up to the food that gives the greatest relish, we end by eating two, or three and four times as much food as we actually require and more food than we would take except for this stimulation of our appetites.

Having eaten all he wants of one food, the eater turns to another and still another, until he has eaten several foods. Having eaten all he needs or much more, he takes as a final part of his meal, the article he relishes most. After eating two or three times the quantity of food he requires, he can still "top off" his meal with a piece of pie or cake or some other dessert.

It is the rule that our people continue to eat in this manner until appetite is so depraved and diseased that it becomes an imperious master. This is especially true of those on the conventional diet of stimulating foods. They establish a nervous "craving" for stimulation which is referred to the stomach for satisfaction and is in every way like the craving of the drunkard for his alcohol or of the morphine addict for his morphine.

A morbid appetite, thus established, which is in reality nothing but a morbid longing of enervated nerves for their accustomed stimulus, which they receive by means of food, is not satisfied when the body has received sufficient food to meet its needs, but is satisfied only when the nervous system has received enough stimulation to bring it up to its ordinary tone. When this stage has been reached it is all but impossible to avoid overeating. He is now a food addict and his appetite is a despotic, even painful master. He has a powerful and painful craving or longing of an outraged and diseased nervous system, not for food, but for the accustomed stimulant.

Normal hunger and appetite are never the despotic master that the food addict slaves for. While the addict has a depraved, diseased, despotic, intolerably painful passion; the normal person experiences a healthy, mild, pleasant desire which is never painful and outrageous and which conforms perfectly to the real wants, the physiological needs, of the body. The difference is the same as that between the "craving" of the inebriate for his alcohol and the desire of the normal man for a glass of pure water. Normal demands are never painful.