Appendix 3 – Lectures on the Science of Human Life

Sylvester Graham

digestion of it; and if the diet be suddenly changed to one of flesh-meat exclusively, the stomach will not be prepared to receive it, and will not at first digest it, but it will cause vomiting and purging, and other symptoms of physiological disturbance. Yet if the flesh diet be commenced by degrees, and regularly continued, the stomach will soon become adapted to it, and secrete a solvent fluid most perfectly qualified to digest it,” (and the reverse.)

Score - Verified

What 75 - Drinking with Meals W 61 A 110 C 62 K 85

Do not drink water or any other fluid with meals.

Page 599-1526 – “take a quantity of water or any other liquid into the gastric cavity (with food is dangerous)”

Page 599-1527 – “the use of even pure cold water with our food....is incompatible with the physiological interests of our bodies,”

Score – Unverified

Why 78 – Drinking with Meals (What 75)

Drinking with meals dilutes the digestive juices and can allow undigested food into the intestine causing irritation, colic and flatulence.

Page 498-1526 – “because the gastric juices were to mix with the water, it would be so much diluted that its solvent power would be wholly destroyed.”

Page 599-1526 – “take a quantity of water or any other liquid into the gastric cavity,....the flood will come down and sweep over the entire mass, and reduce it to a more unmanageable wash than it was at first, and then will follow a distressing sense of distension, attended frequently with eructations and belching, and often a part of the crude condense of the stomach are spasmodically thrown up, and a part perhaps ejected into the intestines, to produce irritations, flatulence, colic, etc.”

Score - Unverified

What 76 – Hot Food or Drink W 54 R 36 A 148 C 61 J 80 K 74

Our food and drink should be no higher temperature than blood temperature.

Page 599-1527 – “As with our food so with our drink, every thing taken into the mouth and stomach in a higher temperature than our blood is (dangerous)”

Score - Unverified

Why 79 – Hot Food 1 (What 76)

Hot food and drink debilitates the stomach and makes it prone to disease.

Page 599-1527 – “a higher temperature than our blood is relaxing and debilitating to the parts on which it acts, and through them to the whole system....and rendered more liable to disease’

Score - Unverified

Why 80 - Hot Food 2 (What 76)

Hot food and drink cause tooth decay.

Page 287-711 - “Where the people use much hot drinks and hot food, …. their teeth are black and much decayed;”

Comment - Rapid changes in temperature can cause small cracks in enamel and increase the chances of tooth decay.

Score – Unverified

Why 81 – Tooth Decay – 1 (What 76)

Sugar does not cause tooth decay.

Appendix 3 – Lectures on the Science of Human Life

Sylvester Graham

Page 289 –714 – “Among the external causes acting directly on the teeth, heat is certainly the most powerful. It is common to hear people speak of sugar,... as very injurious to the teeth, .... but if these substances were .... never swallowed.... the teeth suffer very little from them.”

Score - Unverified

Why 82 – Tooth Decay – 2 (What 76)

It may take four generations for a change in lifestyle to prevent or cause tooth decay.

Page 285-706 – “some people, with excellent teeth, may habitually violate the constitutional laws of their nature in such a manner as is calculated to destroy their teeth, and yet die ....at an advanced age, with sound teeth in their jaws; but their iniquities will surely be visited upon their children and grandchildren; so that, if the same habits continued, the third or fourth generation .... will be afflicted with miserable teeth. And on the other hand, people with teeth strongly predisposed to decay, may most rigidly observe the constitutional laws of their nature, without being able to preserve their own teeth.... and if these habits are preserved in by their posterity, the third and fourth generation will have excellent teeth.”

Comment – The preservation of teeth is dependent on your own lifestyle and not your parents or grand parents back for four generations.

Score - Unverified

Page 564-1433 – “I speak with all the authority of indubitable truth, therefore, when I say that man cannot habitually take his meals more frequently than once in six hours, without serious detriment to his constitution”

Page 564-1434 – “the existence of nature is not more certain than that the habitual taking of food more frequently than in six hours is injurious to health and destructive of life. …. man can not habitually take more than three meals a day,”

Page 565-1436 – “It is incomparably better to eat but two meals a day....and this is particularly true of those members of civic life whose employment are attended with much exercise and excitement of the mind.”

Score – Unverified

Why 83 – Six hours between Meals (What 77)

The stomach requires six hours to rest between meals.

Page 563-1432 – “the stomach should not be actively employed at the same time with a fresh supply of food or, in other words, ...the entire alimentary cavity should complete its chymifying process on one portion of food before another meal is received ....the stomach requires a time to rest and to recruit its energies after it has completed its function,”

Comment – Digestion takes three to four hours, but there is no health risk if more food is ingested in that time.

Score – Unverified

Why 84 – Graze Feeding (What 77) Frequent small meals cause ill health.

Page 569-1450 – “Many people are in the habit of eating but little at the regular meal-time, and of taking a few mouthfuls every hour or two between meals; and I believe that such people almost invariably complain of ill health, and most of them are dyspeptic;”

Comment – Graze feeding is only bad if excessive food or poor quality food is eaten between meals.