Colitis Disease And Bad Food -Temperature

What I prefer to as bad food is not only the ordinary variety of spoiled food due to contamination, insufficient refrigeration or lack of care in sealing, but food which is insufficiently or improperly cooked.

If mankind would like to claim credit for intelligence, I think his most convincing exhibit to substantiate this claim would be the art of cooking. In the process of cooking, various bacteria, molds, yeasts and amebic organisms, in fact all manner of micro­organisms are destroyed by the heat and thus rendered incapable of harming the person who eats them along with their food. Then too, the fibres of the food in the case of vegetables and meat alike are softened and made more permeable to the digestive juices. All of this makes digestion easier and contributes to the healthy functioning of the digestive tract and its possessor.

It is, of course, possible for a person to eat and digest a certain quantity of uncooked fruits and vegetables. It is even possible for certain people endowed with the mentality of a boa constrictor to eat raw meat. While nobody drops dead right away from indulging in these practices, there is nevertheless a demonstrable hazard involved. The danger lies in the presence of living microbes mentioned and also in the form of the ova of tape worms often found in meat fibres or other food. It is not very difficult to understand why and how people get in the habit of eating raw food when every washroom attendant poses as a food expert and finds a ready audience.

Many people will immediately say: “But all the vitamins are killed in the process of cooking.” I assure you they are not. It is true that they are definitely diminished in quantity but that which remains, when figured on the basis of the total ingested, is usually quite adequate. I can assure you that in the course of many years’ practice in the City of New York I have yet to see a case of marked vitamin deficiency. I can also assure you that I have seen countless numbers of cases of colitis disease and tape worm infestation due to the practice of eating raw foods.

So you see when I speak of bad food, I do not mean food that in itself is harmful nor food that has become harmful through chemical changes in the process of spoiling but rather to good food which has been ruined in the process of preparation or lack of preparation.

There are, of course, such things as bad foods in the sense that they are bad for an individual. Of late, the term allergy has been applied to this condition.

As persons we all have our likes and dislikes. As a smart man said long ago, there is no accounting for taste. So too, it seems, in the matter of the food digestion canal. We all know from experience that certain foods just simply do not agree with us, such foods, perhaps, as shellfish, strawberries, etc.

All will claim a certain number of victims. Not long ago, this was spoken of as an idiosyncracy (which term explains nothing), but more lately it has been fashionable to designate the situation as an allergy (which also explains nothing). Apparently there are fashions in ignorance as well as other things. All we have done apparently is to change the name since nobody in the medical profession understood idiosyncracy to food and I am not too sure anybody now understands allergy to food.

When the idea first was brought to the attention of the medical profession, extensive skin tests were made. It was thought that through these tests we could definitely blueprint a person’s diet. However, skin reactions over a period of time have proven unreliable and misleading. If people had to live on the few items that were left after the tests had been made, they would indeed have few food troubles. In fact, they would not have any troubles because they would be beyond the need of food. The sum total, therefore, of what we found out with regard to this is that some foods agree with some people and some do not. I think the old saying, “What is one man’s food is another man’s poison,” conveys more truth than many medical articles written on the subject.

At most it just seems to be a difference in the chemistry of our bodies and that perhaps is the best explanation of both terms used above. It therefore behooves you to make some observations on your own reaction to various foods. If you cannot eat shrimp without breaking out in hives or if you cannot eat strawberries without breaking out in a rash, you will, as a logical and sensible person, decide to cross them off your list of food.

Take heed of the old French philosopher who said that by forty a person was either a physician or a fool. By the time you reach the age of forty, you should know what is good for you and what is not and should have learned to abide by that knowledge. If you do not learn this lesson, you may be sure that you are irritating your food digestion canal and to a far greater extent than is revealed by the hives or rash on your skin. Definite changes are occurring on the internal lining of your food digestion canal and if long continued, the areas of irritation can result in definite damage.

Before leaving the matter of bad food, I would like to call your attention to the fact that even good food, well prepared, can have a harmful effect if it is eaten in such a manner as to be poorly adapted to the proper functioning of the digestive glands. For instance

“A Nice Cold Glass of Milk”

Many have the idea an ice cold glass of milk is a nice cold glass of milk, yet there is nothing so effective in temporarily but nevertheless completely suspending digestive processes than to thrust a “nice cold” anything into the stomach. The digestive glands immediately cease functioning and in that way digestion is impeded until the food content in the canal is heated up to body temperature by the blood circulating in the wall of the stomach.

This takes considerable time and if, in the meantime, other cold things are eaten, the work of digestion is greatly delayed and rendered inefficient. Hence, as the food passes along in response to the rhythmic contraction of the intestine, it passes beyond the area where digestion can take place and arrives at the place where putrefaction does take place.

What has been said with regard to a nice cold drink of milk applies equally to iced tea, iced coffee, ice water, ice cream directly from the freezer, and any other very cold foods which a person is prone to take during warm weather.

“Piping Hot Soup”

Equally disturbing to the digestive function is the habit of taking “piping hot soup,” or anything else at a temperature too hot for comfort in the process of eating. One of the first clues that medical men had as to the cause of cancer came from the observation that cancer of the throat among the Chinese was limited to the men of the family who were served with the rice while it was piping hot, while the women of the family who had to eat the left-over rice, when it was cold, never developed cancer of the throat. Surely this should give you at least food for thought if you are one addicted to the habit of eating excessively hot foods.

While discussing this subject of the temperature of foods, I think it would be well to reason the matter out in a plain commonsense manner. Your body has a certain temperature normally. It does not matter at the moment what number of degrees it is. The fact is that anything more than 10° higher in temperature or lower in temperature than your own body will have a definite effect upon whatever part of your body it comes in contact with. This effect is not normal and can be harmful.

I am sure you will agree with the counsel that food should taste comfortably warm but not hot, cool but not cold. By so doing, you will subject your digestive glands neither to the shock of cold nor to the shock of heat, and you will avoid at least one of the factors which in the end add up to the condition known as colitis.

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