Post’s Bran Flakestongue, bad breath, and eventually many other more definite and chronic states of ill health. Constipation is to be reckoned among civilization’s greatest menaces.
Dangers of ConstipationBoth our foods and our habits promote this evil. We have inherited an alimentary canal ten times the length of the body. It calls for the exercise that men and animals got perforce when they had to hunt their food. But now the food is delivered by motor and served minced, softened, and denatured with all offending roughage removed. The combination of refined foods and a sedentary life has almost paralyzed the colon, and deprived it of all ambition to do its work. It is too often prodded to activity with cathartics, which only tend to produce a reactionary sluggishness after each use.
ExerciseA laxative diet is not all. Large amounts of laxative, coarse foods, succulent green foods, and enough water, are necessary to counteract modern habits, but exercise must supplement even the most laxative diet. See Appendix for suggestions.
DietThe diet for healthful elimination is simple: much water drinking (morning and night and between meals); Post’s Bran Flakes eaten as a cereal or baked into bread or muffins; decrease of meat consumption, saving appetite and capacity for succulent bulky fruits and vegetables that carry cellulose (fibre that remains undigested and gives bulk to the food residues), as well as the activating minerals and vitamins.
It seems impossible that the solid turnip is 90 per cent water, but such is the case, and carrots, beets,[ 41 ]
