Thus we eat starches or sugars; these are converted by the digestive organs into lower and lower forms of sugar till reaching in the small intestine the lowest form, a primary sugar, or glucose, in which form they are absorbed.

But we do not use glucose as fuel; rather in the tissues and the bloom stream this must undergo final conversion into glycogen, the ultimate fuel, and in this form it is stored for immediate use when required, stored in the liver, the other tissues, the blood itself, and when we exert muscular power we use this glycogen as the immediate source of this.

So when we sleep this final conversion takes place, the sugars being converted to glycogen and stored for the next day.

While we sleep we are in a sense still working, though the chemical and oxidation processes do not consume energy, and we can still recharge our batteries while we carry on this chemical or Zymotic action.

We think when we eat a hearty breakfast that we have fortified ourselves with energy for the forenoon's work, but we have not even digested this, and how can it give us energy?

Rather it detracts from our energy for the morning because digestion consumes vitality, energy, and this necessary energy is diverted from the activities of the forenoon's work.

No matter what we eat during the day we still must wait for the night to elaborate this for our use; so we are clearly wrong in thinking that we energize ourselves when we eat; rather we feel better only because we have satisfied a habit in this respect.

This is the law, and we cannot change it in any particular, but we still may eat our three squares a day, if we will make sure that we do not make mistakes in our selection or our combination of the foods that enter into the stores that we are laying up for the night's work of metabolism.

The writer has, for most of the twenty-four years since he changed his habits of eating, taken but one meal a day, and this for convenience was taken after the activities of the day were over; digestion still has time to complete itself before midnight, so that the hours of sleep may still be devoted to preparing this mass of nourishment for use next day.

Hours of eating are so much habit that he does not grow hungry till shortly before the hour for eating, so there is no suffering for food during the day, no after dinner period of inefficiency while Nature struggles with a mass of recently introduced food, and he finds this arrangement a great help toward both mental and physical efficiency.

The army of Caesar was supposed to be the most efficient fighting organization the world has ever seen, at least Julius says it was, and these men fed but once a day, a simple meal of grains and whatever green stuff or fruit they could forage from the countries through which they marched.

The Roman soldiers of that time carried an amount of equipment that would stagger the average modern soldier, yet without shedding this they would run into battle fully equipped, and they were all but irresistible.

The average feeding habits comprise three times the amount of food required for complete daily replenishment. Why may not this third be taken all at one time, and preferably after the activities of the day are over, when nothing remains to interfere with digestion or assimilation?

It has been said that one-third of what we eat keeps us alive, the other two-thirds keeps the doctor alive, and there is more than a grain of common sense in this saying.

It is the law that anything unused in the system is in the way, so must be eliminated in order to restore harmony.

If we wished to build a house that required two hundred thousand brick we would not think of buying and placing on the lot six hundred thousand brick.

The excess would merely be in the way of the builders, and so when we digest and absorb three times as much nourishment as we have need for, this excess must seriously cripple the engineering forces of our system while we sleep.

Nature has designed us with a view to this very overfeeding, no doubt, or else a large capacity for over-plus has developed in response to need created by eating too much, for we still may remain in fairly correct balance when taking entirely too much food, if we are careful in selection and combination.

For instance, the kidneys are capable of taking care of practically ten times the amount of excretion that the body waste alone would represent.

Either we have created this over-development of kidney function or else Nature foreseeing our weakness in the matter of a high protein consumption has designed kidneys capable of an extreme amount of overwork.

Yet, even so, we develop Bright's disease from overworked kidneys, showing that we have very far surpassed our needs in protein consumption.

This does not mean that we should not eat meat, or eggs, or other of the concentrated forms of protein, though it is a fact now well established that we do not need any of these things, our foods practically all containing a modicum of protein sufficient for all needs without the introduction of any of this in concentrated form.

Our needs in the matter of protein do not change with our work as do our fuel needs, for we need the protein only for replenishment of body protein, and this is wasted at an even rate, whether we work or sleep or rest.

Russell H. Chittenden, of Yale, proved this twenty-five years ago, and further proved that our standards of protein feeding were three and one-half times too high, not the average habit, which is ten times too high, but the standard of minimal protein consumption set by Carl Voit many years ago, and usually followed ever since.

The law says we need so much protein for tissue replacement every day, and more than this is in the way of perfect nutrition, yet we use habitually ten times this amount, thus again violating the law.

This will be mentioned again in connection with the directions for correct feeding.