Part 4

At Yale University, Professor Russell H. Chittenden, Director of the Sheffield Scientific School, Lafayette B. Mendel, Professor of Physiological Chemistry, and Irving Fisher, Professor of Political Economy, have carried on a long series of experiments, begun six years ago as a test of the claims made by Fletcher. The net results of these experiments up to date (for they are still in progress) may be put into a nutshell. The following statement was drawn up by one of the writers of this book and submitted to Professors Chittenden and Fisher, who have accepted it as a summary of their present views:

“The commonly accepted standards which claim to tell the quantity of food needed each day by the average man are based upon many careful observations of what men actually do eat.

“We challenge these standards, however, as the exact science of to-day cannot accept as authority common customs and habits in any attempt to ascertain the right principles of man’s nutrition, since experiments have demonstrated how readily one set of habits may be substituted for another and how easily wrong habits become hardened into laws. The evidence presented by observers of common customs, while they must be duly considered, cannot, therefore, be taken as proof that these habits and customs are in accord with the true physiological needs of the body.

“We believe that the following propositions have been demonstrated as truths by the experiments we have made at Yale.

“People in general eat and drink too much.

“Especially do they eat too much meat, fish and eggs.

“This is so because meat, fish and eggs are the principal proteid-containing foodstuffs.

“Proteid is an essential food element, absolutely necessary for the upbuilding of tissue, for the maintenance of life. It is one of three main elements into which all foodstuffs may be divided—the others being Carbohydrates (the sugars and starches) and Fat. While it is indispensable, it is also the element which the body machinery finds most difficult to dispose of. Proteid is ‘nitrogenous.’ Nitrogen is never wholly consumed in the body furnace as fats, sugars and starches are. There is always solid matter left unconsumed, like clinkers in a furnace; which clinkers the kidneys and liver have to labor to dispose of. If the clinkers are produced in excess of the ability of these organs to handle them without undue wear and tear, damage of a serious, and sometimes permanent, nature follows. The ideal amount of proteid is the amount which will give the body all of that substance which it needs without entailing excessive work upon the body machinery.

“Excessive consumption of proteid foodstuffs—like meat, fish and eggs—is the greatest evil affecting man’s nutrition. The excess of proteid not only remains unburned in the bodily furnace, but this waste matter very often decays in the body, forming a culture bed for germs which effect the whole system, a condition scientifically known as autointoxication, or self-poisoning of the body through the action of the germs of putrefaction, and of other germs, which are bred in the colon, or large intestine. The researches of Metchnikoff, Bouchard, Tissier, Combe, and other eminent scientists, have shown that autointoxication is the source of a great number of the most serious chronic diseases which afflict mankind.

“We say, then, that the existing dietary standards place in all cases the minimum of proteid necessary for the average man’s daily consumption at far too high a figure. It may be safely said that it is placed twice as high as careful and repeated experiments show to be really necessary.

“There can be little doubt that the habit of excessive eating and drinking, combined with the habit of too hasty eating and drinking, especially of meat, fish and eggs, are probably the most prolific sources of many bodily disabilities affecting men and women, and are consequently the greatest deterrents to the attaining by men and women of a high grade of efficiency in work, of better health, of greater happiness, and of longer life.

“We believe that it has been demonstrated as a fact that health can be bettered, endurance increased, and life lengthened, by cutting down the commonly accepted standards of how much meat, eggs, fish and other proteid food we should eat and drink by about one-half.”

* * * * *

After Horace Fletcher had attracted the notice of the scientific world in 1902, Professor Chittenden invited him to become the subject of a series of experiments at Yale, where the Sheffield Scientific School possessed an equipment suitable for an elaborate inquiry of this kind much superior to any to be found in Europe.

FLETCHER’S CLAIMS SUPPORTED

Professor Chittenden first made certain, by experiments which precluded any chance of error, that Horace Fletcher’s claims were justified so far as Horace Fletcher himself was concerned. But this, of course, by no means solved the problem. Mr. Fletcher might simply be a physiological curiosity—a digestive freak—of whom there are many known cases. He lived and thrived on an amount of proteid food startlingly less than was deemed necessary by all existing standards, but this could not be taken as proof that people in general could do likewise. Only an exhaustive series of tests on a large number of people of varying ages and conditions of life could prove this. Professor Chittenden resolved to make these tests.

At the very outset, however, he faced this difficulty. If Mr. Fletcher’s was merely a freak case, there would be a grave danger in putting other men upon his dietary. Mr. Fletcher was flourishing on a daily consumption of proteid foodstuffs amounting to an average of only 45 grams, and the fat, sugar and starch consumed by him were in quantities only sufficient to bring the total food value of the daily food up to a little more than 1600 “calories,” or units of fuel energy. The Voit standard—which is the typical one, the one most commonly accepted, and which is based upon thousands of studies of what men and women actually eat—demands that the average man shall eat at least 118 grams of proteid, with a total fuel value of 3000 large “calories” for the daily ration.

To make clear to the non-scientific reader just what quantity of foodstuffs is represented by 50 grams of proteid, which is 5 grams more than that consumed daily by Mr. Fletcher in his tests, and is approximately the amount consumed daily by other men in the Yale experiments, it may be said that 50 grams is about equal to 772 grains, which are equal to about 1¾ ounces. This quantity would be represented by the proteid contents of 9½ ounces of lean meat, or 7 eggs, or 27 ounces of white bread. Nine and one-half ounces of meat (using comparisons furnished by Dr. Edward Curtis) is about the weight of a slice measuring 7 by 3 inches and cut ¼ of an inch thick. Twenty-seven ounces of bread represent somewhat less than two loaves, the standard loaf weighing one pound (16 ounces). Of course, few people ever eat 7 eggs, or 2 loaves of bread in a day; but the vast majority of people in America do eat a great deal more proteid than would be represented by 7 eggs, or 2 loaves of bread or a slice of meat of the size named, since proteid is found in a great number of other foodstuffs besides those mentioned.

CHITTENDEN’S EXPERIMENTS ON HIMSELF

Professor Chittenden realized that to ask a number of men to subsist on a ration similar to that which nourished Mr. Fletcher might possibly result in seriously weakening their constitutions. This is the problem which has often confronted other scientists, and Professor Chittenden solved it in a way characteristic of the true scientist—the devoted warrior in humanity’s cause who wages warfare against the forces of evil. He began his experiments upon himself.

The result rewarded his self-sacrificing spirit; for within a few months a severe case of muscular rheumatism (which had plagued him for years, refusing to yield to treatment) disappeared; and with it went a recurrent bilious headache. And it may be stated that these have never returned. Professor Chittenden has adopted as a habit of life the dietary which he began as an experiment five years ago. At that time he was a hearty eater of three meals a day, meals rich in meat and other proteid foodstuffs.

THE OTHER CHITTENDEN TESTS

Professor Chittenden then began experiments with a group of university professors and instructors, with a group of thirteen enlisted men of the army, and a group of eight college athletes in training. All three of these groups of men were subjected to careful laboratory observations for continuous periods of many months, during which the proteid ration was reduced from one-half to one-third what had been customary. The professors and athletes followed their customary vocations during the period of observations, while to the ordinary drills of the soldiers were added severe gymnasium work under the supervision of Dr. Anderson.

Results were as follows: The subjects usually lost some weight, especially such as were fat. But it was found that having got down to a new standard, they held this steadily. They all maintained muscular and nervous vigor. Careful tests determined that the soldiers and athletes positively gained in muscular strength. All kept in good health; and many got rid of illnesses with which they had been suffering in the beginning. Appetite was thoroughly satisfied; and quite a number of the subjects permanently adopted the new method of living. Nine of the soldiers went in a body to a new station, and from thence they afterwards wrote, through one of their number, to Professor Chittenden, saying: “The men are in first-class condition as regards their physical condition, and all of them feeling well. We eat little meat now as a rule and would willingly go on another test.”

At the beginning of the experiments these soldiers were subsisting on a daily ration which allows one and one-quarter pounds of meat per day apiece; and toward the end of the experiments they were subsisting and increasing their strength on a daily ration of meat equivalent to about one small chop or less!

These experiments constituted the first series made by Professor Chittenden. He later carried through a series with dogs: prior experiments having supported the view that the dog, a typical high proteid-consuming animal, declined or died when forced to subsist on quantities of proteid less than the amount ordinarily consumed. Professor Chittenden, however, challenged here the methods, as well as the results, of previous investigators. In previous experiments with dogs the animals had been invariably handicapped by being confined in dark and dismal quarters, too cramped to permit of exercise, and at times unsanitary in condition. He reversed these conditions—and reversed the results. His dogs lived and thrived on a diet far less rich in proteid than former investigators deemed necessary.

PROFESSOR CHITTENDEN’S CONCLUSIONS

Summing up the conclusions reached by him after arduous years of experiment and study, Professor Chittenden declares that 60 grams of proteid (about the quantity which a single small chop would supply) are all that are required by the average man of 150 pounds body weight. This is one-half the Voit standard, and far below the common practices of the majority of mankind in Europe and America.

“But there should be no practical use of the terms ‘standard diets’ and ‘normal diets’ by people in general,” says Professor Chittenden. “What is needed to-day is not so much an acceptance of the view that man needs so many grams of proteid per kilogram of body weight, as a full appreciation of the general principle that the requirements of the body for proteid food are far less than the common customs of mankind, and that there are both economy and gain in following this principle in practice.”

HOW TO INCREASE ENDURANCE

The most broadly interesting of these Yale food experiments are those having to do with the question of endurance. The vast majority of people are not ambitious to excel as athletes; they find better and more enjoyable forms of work in life than putting up big dumb-bells, or breaking records on the athletic field. Of course, everybody wants to be strong, and to have well-trained and active muscles; but on the whole, what the majority of people need is physical and mental stick-to-itiveness—the ability to work without deterioration, without running down like worn-out machinery. Professional men, day laborers, students and athletes, all need this invaluable quality of endurance—this quality that is the true capital in the bank of life to be at their command day in and day out, with a reserve ready to be drawn upon whenever an emergency arises. And it is precisely here that the new art of health bestows its benefits upon those who follow it.

It was to ascertain the relation between diet and endurance in the light of the new knowledge shed upon the subject by Professor Chittenden’s experiments, that Professor Irving Fisher inaugurated his own experiments at Yale University. He conducted two series of tests, as follows:

First, to ascertain the effect of thorough mastication on endurance, following the rules laid down by Horace Fletcher, with the help of nine healthy students.

Second, to ascertain the influence of flesh eating on endurance as compared with the effect of abstinence from flesh, with a group of forty-nine persons, splitting the group as follows,—first, athletes accustomed to a flesh, or high proteid dietary; second, athletes accustomed to a low proteid, or non-flesh dietary; third, sedentary persons accustomed to a low proteid, or non-flesh dietary.

The flesh-eaters were Yale men, including some of the best known athletes of the university. The abstainers were nurses and physicians attached to the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

Professor Fisher’s interest in the subject was that of a political economist. Meats, as a general rule, are the most expensive part of the national diet, and it is apparent that if a fleshless, or low proteid, diet will increase endurance, it will also increase the national earning capacity, and thus add to the national wealth. When Professor Fisher began his experiments he encountered a singular fact, which was that the science of physiology had given very little attention to the study of endurance. “That strength and endurance are not identical, is only partly recognized,” he writes. “The strength of the muscle is measured by the utmost force that it can exert once; its endurance, by the number of times it can repeat any exertion within its strength. The repetition of such exertion, if not stopped by the refusal of the will, is finally stopped by the reduction of the strength of the muscle till it is unable to perform further. Thus endurance may be expressed in terms of loss of strength. It is related to fatigue, and it is only through the study of fatigue and fatigue poisons, made by Mosso and others, that light has been thrown on the nature of endurance.”

When these tests were held Professor Fisher had not then invented the machine for registering endurance which is now in use in the Yale gymnasium; therefore, three simple tests were employed: first, holding the arms horizontal as long as possible; second, deep knee bending; third, leg raising with the subject lying on his back.

VICTORY FOR THE LOW PROTEID DIET

The results of the competitive tests were all in favor of the flesh-abstaining athletes. In the first test, which was holding the arms horizontal, only two of the fifteen flesh-eaters succeeded in holding their arms out over a quarter of an hour; whereas twenty-two of the thirty-two abstainers surpassed that limit. None of the flesh-eaters reached half an hour, but fifteen of the thirty-two abstainers exceeded that limit. Of these, nine exceeded one hour, four exceeded two hours, and one exceeded three hours, the last going exactly two hundred minutes, or three hours and twenty minutes.

In the leg raising test the record showed little difference. None of the abstainers reached their absolute limits. The highest record for the abstainers was one thousand times. A flesh-eater reached one thousand, three hundred and two, but did so after the one-thousand mark had already been set for him by an abstainer, and he went into the test with the expressed intention of defeating his rival. Professor Fisher states that it was evident from his fatigue at the end of the test that he could not have repeated the performance on the next day, as did his flesh-abstaining rival.

In respect to deep-knee bending, Professor Fisher pointed out that of the nine flesh-eaters who went into this contest, only three went above three hundred and twenty-five times, while of the abstainers, seventeen surpassed this figure. Only nine of the flesh-eaters reached one thousand, as against six of the twenty-two abstainers. None of the flesh-eaters surpassed two thousand, while two of the abstainers did. One abstainer, an athlete, S. A. Oberg, did two thousand and four hundred dips or deep knee bends, almost doubling the highest figure set by the flesh-eating athlete, which was one thousand, two hundred and ninety-two. Most of the Yale flesh-eating athletes were so severely crippled by their efforts in this particular set of movements that Professor Fisher resolved not to employ them again, and went to work on his device for mechanically registering endurance. One of the Yale athletes, who in the deep-knee bending test had reached five hundred times, fainted. Several had to be carried down the gymnasium stairs, and others were made so stiff and sore that for days they could not walk up and down stairs with comfort, while in the case of the abstainers from flesh foods there were comparatively little painful after-effects. Two of the abstainers, one a Yale athlete, were almost free from physical after-effects. The Yale man ran on the track of the gymnasium after his performance, and took a long walk afterward; while the other athlete, Oberg, a Sanitarium nurse, who made the highest record of all, two thousand four hundred times, continued his duties and found little annoyance from stiffness or soreness. (Another flesh-abstaining athlete, John E. Granger, of Battle Creek Sanitarium, has since made a new record of five thousand and two dips in two hours and nineteen minutes.)

Professor Fisher tried many means to stimulate the flesh-eating athletes to do their very best. He called upon their “Yale spirit” to rally to their aid, and he states that the advantage of rivalry as between the flesh-eaters and the abstainers was decidedly upon the side of the flesh-eaters, for their tests, with two exceptions, came after all the records of the abstainers had been completed. The Yale men felt that their tests would go on record as tests of Yale athletes, and Professor Fisher states that the “Yale spirit” which aided them appeared to be as great a stimulus as any “vegetarian” spirit could possibly be.

THE RESULT OF THE MASTICATION TEST

As to the experiment with the nine healthy students, Professor Fisher says:

“The results of the experiment demonstrated so great an increase of endurance as to seem at first incredible. It certainly was a surprise, both to the men and to me. But statistics which I have been collecting during the last two years have prepared me to find great differences and changes in endurance. The special result of the present experiment is to show that diet is an important factor in producing such alterations. The fact that endurance, even among persons free from disease, is one of the most variable of human faculties—far more variable than strength, for instance—is evident to any one who has made even a superficial examination. Some persons are tired by climbing a flight of stairs, whereas the Swiss guides, throughout the summer season, day after day spend their entire time in climbing the Matterhorn and other peaks; some persons are “winded” by running a block for a street car, whereas a Chinese coolie will run for hours on end; in mental work, some persons are unable to apply themselves more than an hour at a time, whereas others, like Humboldt, can work almost continuously through eighteen hours of the day.

“It is, to say the least, remarkable that hitherto so little effort has been directed toward discovering the factors which explain such differences in endurance. That exercise is one of the most and perhaps the most important factor has long been recognized. A correspondent assures me that by means of moderate _regular_ exercise he succeeded in increasing his endurance between 100 and 200% in three weeks as measured by leg-raising and “dipping.” The influence of diet has always been regarded as small or negligible, and the opinion has almost been universal, until recently, that a diet rich in proteid promotes endurance. Even among those whose researches have led them to the opposite conclusion, there is very little conception of the extent to which diet is correlated with endurance. Such a person, a medical friend of the writer, stated, when the present experiment was planned, that he did not think the dietetic factor strong enough compared with others to produce any marked effect. We have all heard, of course, of the enthusiastic reports of vegetarians as to their increased endurance, but these we have discounted as exaggerations. The result of the present experiment, however, would seem to indicate that one’s improvement in endurance is usually not less, but greater, than he himself is aware of. Probably it is also true that we may lose a large fraction of our working power before we are distinctly conscious of the fact.

“While the results of the present experiment lean toward ‘vegetarianism,’ they are only incidentally related to that propaganda. Meat was by no means excluded; on the contrary, the subjects were urged to eat it if their appetite distinctly preferred it to other foods.

“The sudden and complete exclusion of meat is not always desirable, unless more skill and knowledge in food matters are employed than most persons possess. On the contrary, disaster has repeatedly overtaken many who have made this attempt. Pawlow has shown that meat is one of the most, and perhaps the most, ‘peptogenic’ of foods. Whether the stimulus it gives to the stomach is natural, or in the nature of an improper goad or whip, certain it is that stomachs which are accustomed to this daily whip have failed, for a time at least, to act when it was withdrawn.

“Nor is it necessary that meat should be permanently abjured, even when it ceases to become a daily necessity. The safer course, at least, is to indulge the craving whenever one is ‘meat hungry,’ even if, as in many cases, this be not oftener than once in several months. The rule of selection employed in the experiment was merely to _give the benefit of the doubt_ to the non-flesh food; but even a _slight_ preference for flesh foods was to be followed.