ONCE again cringing under your eye, non-human engine alongside of the human worker, my assertion that the working, cleaning up, cooling-down and fuelling of an engine correspond to exercising, the Bath, the Repose and the Feeding of the human body, recalls my statement that
‘Whilst the engine is at best itself in efficiency after its work, the human is the bigger and stronger for his.’
This difference in the after-work-cleaning-rest-fuelling condition is size and efficiency between Man and Engine lies in that, whilst fueling but just supplies material to the engine to refit it to turn out its limited amount of work, the feeding of the exercised human helps not only to make good broken down tissue, but also builds up more tissue assuring greater turn-out of future work by the now bigger- built muscles. Hence it is obvious that the dieting of the Physical Culturist which spells but the supply of material to replenish tissue lost through Exercise and tissue to be built for development must be based on the selection of such and only such food-stuff as by its ingredients contains all the elements identical with those that made up the human muscle-tissue before Exercise broke it down.
Average man feeds and drinks but to appease a gnawing stomach and allay a burning throat and tongue little caring for the nature of the solid and the liquid he consumes so long as these are as palatable and non-injurious as he can command for the moment.
But in muscle-building an identity of food and drink ingested, with the human muscle to be built, in point of chemical constitution is imperative and it behaves the Culturist to inform himself of the chemical components that make up the human muscle in general to help him select such food-stuff as, on absorption, will make up for the tissue he lost through Exercise and also effect a growth of the muscle, at a rate, I estimate, at a sixteenth of an inch for every twenty-four hours passed in Exercise, Bath and Repose, provided the pupil is not past his prime.
The human muscle, physiologist will have us know, is three-quarters of it just water; the solid quarter, seventy-five per cent of itself containing Protein, seventeen percent Fat and insoluble Sugar and eight percent of Phosphatic Salts.
In selecting food as identical in constitution with the above as practicable, the fifteen percent of Protein in meat, whilst qualifying as food for our Culturist gives us over twice too much of Fat besides burdening the human alimentary system with thirty-two per cent of Refuse-and ashy-matter to be ingested and excreted with no profit to the body and wasteful indent on body and wasteful indent on bodily energy.
Thus “GIVES US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD” when answered only with bread will find the absorbed bread will find the absorbed bread crediting the Culturist’s muscle directly with no more than a modicum of the five per cent that Fat and Carbo-hydrate find place in the human muscle, the soupcon of the Gluten in the bread hardly coping with the fifteen per cent Protein-demand of the muscle.
Pitching vegetables against meat, we find beans, ‘Kidney’, Single’, or ‘Double’, laden with half as much again of protein contents as the muscle wants, meager of water which a draught can amend and Carbohydrates enough to supply the muscle adequately can yet spare enough sugar to generously contribute to the human granary of sugar-supply. Glycogenising Liver, and no refuse-matter to prey upon alimentary energy.
Seriousness apart, any burning curiosity of your regarding my weakness for spinach and spud. I can only allay at the risk of rousing your risible. I have always wondered why meat-eaters slaughter for their food only animals which themselves are vegetarians.
Arguing, flippantly I know, Panther-soup, Filleted-Shark Roast-Lion, Tiger- Cutlets, Coyote-Curry, and Wolf-Pudding should, one would think, rationally make up the menu of the would-be strong man. But carnivore-man, except the cannibal, has ever been marking down herbivorous animals for his food, for the reason I take it of the guarantee of the wholesomeness that a grass-and-greens-fed animal’s meat holds out, as against carnivore-meat, built of flesh, fresh or foul, healthy or putrefying, wholesome or diseased and vermin-sodden.
My personal adherence to vegetable food with the single exception of milk, cow’s milk well boiled, I attribute to my whimsical avidity to satisfy to myself, that of my muscles I have worked up and weaned from their erstwhile stringiness to their present lissome litheness and bulging bulk, not one fibre of them was at an time, part of the rump of an ox, the shoulder of a sheep, the breast of a fowl or the middle piece of a fish!