When a man has passed his fiftieth year, he certainly has less call for food than during the early and more active part of his life. His structure is complete; he needs only a sufficient quantity of easily-digested foods to repair his tissues and keep up his bodily heat and energy. If the young overeat, they can rectify it now and then by a "bilious" attack, but such dissipation reduces the aged to a condition of invalidism.

The character as well as the quantity of food must be changed to suit the age. Violation of nature's laws, false ideas of the amount of nourishment required, have much to do with early feebleness. More than one-half of the diseases that embitter the middle and latter portion of our lives, are due to errors in diet. A perfect old age, however, has its foundations laid in youth. One cannot dissipate for a quarter of a century, and expect nature to forgive and forget.

If persons have been accustomed to a mixed diet, it is better perhaps to keep on in moderation. More foods are required by the active aged than by those who are simply waiting.

Meats should not be eaten more than four times a week and then at the noonday meal; substitute eggs, milk and milk preparations, puree of lentils, old peas, beans and peanuts. Boiled meats are more easily-digested than baked or fried. Breakfasts should be light, composed of fruits, cereals and whole wheat bread, or eggs, toast and cafe au lait. Soups should not precede the noonday meal, too much liquid reduces the strength of the gastric secretions. A puree of lentils is really the meat dish and need only be accompanied with a baked potato or boiled rice. A liquid or semi-solid food, as cornmeal mush, cocoa, milk toast, eggs and milk, gruels with toast, form admirable suppers. Buttermilk, cottage cheese, koumys, leban, are easily digested, and with a piece of toast contain sufficient nourishment for the night meal.

Do not neglect the output, nor the relations between it and the intake; the motto must be, light easily-digested meals, with not one ounce more than is necessary. The machinery of the aged is easily upset.

As sleep bears a close relation to food, take the lightest meal of the day at night.