What foods feed us / by Eustace Miles.

  • Eustace Miles
Date:
[1905]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: What foods feed us / by Eustace Miles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    63/126 page 35
    it may give us a few useful facts and hints. There is only one satisfactory test—that is by the excreta ; and even that is liable to error. But, at any rate, without this test it is utterly impossible to say how much of any given food or element was absorbed by the system, and how much was passed through the body almost unchanged, yet perhaps at great expense of energy. Some foods have the reputation of being badly digested. It is not always their own fault that they have this unenviable name. Here, once more, individuality is the chief factor. I have two friends who never, under any conditions, have been able to digest lentils. A relation of mine can never digest skins of any sort. An acquaintance of mine can never digest seeds, or a single seed, such as we find in seed-cakes. Others have a vital objection to other elements. I know a good all- round athlete who finds that a banana suits him excellently when eaten for breakfast; his daughter is usually upset by a banana eaten at breakfast, or any other time. So that here my remarks must be of the most general kind. Any individual is liable to find any statement inappropriate for his or her case. First of all, things eaten or drunk very fast are liable to be indigestible. This is not a universal rule. Some people enjoy their food so much, and have such wonderful gifts in the way of digestion, that we cannot be sure that fast eating or drinking, even of very hot or very cold things, will hurt them ; but, to take an extreme case, it is bad for most
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