Chapter 8 - Your Optimum Nutrition

Optimum Nutrition | The Basic Seven | Eat a Big Breakfast

You want to reduce your weight safely. At the same time you want to substitute better nutrition than you have ever enjoyed. So this is a two-pronged attack—while you eliminate excess weight you are taking positive steps to add the healthful foods you have neglected in the past.

It's just as important for you to understand your optimum nutrition as it was to understand the hidden calories discussed in the preceding chapter.

You are about to begin reducing and you may not realize that you will require a balanced diet containing essential vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. Although you will cut down on your calories, you will not cut down on your protective foods.

It may seem a contradiction in terms but it is a fact that many obese people are malnourished. Their eating habits have led them to calorie-rich, vitamin-poor foods.

Vegetable oils have no vitamin values. Gravies have very little. Candies, sugar-sweetened drinks, and refined sugars have virtually no vitamin content.

The overweight tend to eat highly concentrated vitamin-deficient foods between meals. This heightens the poverty of their diet, for they require adequate quantities of B vitamins to burn these sugars.
It is a scientific fact that your family will live longer and more healthfully if it consumes foods with vitamins and minerals in proper proportions to calories.

Optimum Nutrition

Optimum nutrition, instead of just adequate nutrition, can give each member more energy, tougher resistance to infection, and increased mental alertness and reproductive vitality.

Experiments conducted by Dr. Henry C. Sherman and his associates at Columbia University demonstrated the importance of the balanced diet. Dr. Sherman used rats for his experiments because their eating habits are somewhat similar to our own and because their lives are short enough to study from birth to death.

Dr. Sherman's animals were divided into two groups. The first was fed Diet I, which was adequate for average growth. These mice seemed to be satisfied fellows. They lived reasonably healthy lives and reached a decent old age.

But the mice on Diet II were the lucky rats. Their diet contained more milk, so they were blessed with added amounts of calcium, vitamin A, riboflavin, and other nutrients. They grew more rapidly than their mousy friends of Diet I, became bigger, and gained weight more efficiently. They reached sexual maturity earlier, reproduced for a longer period, and lived 10 per cent longer lives.

Dr. Sherman concluded that optimum nutrition, in contrast to adequate nutrition, can also increase the life expectancy of human beings.

The studies of Dr. J. B. Orr and Dr. J. L. Gilks for the British Economic Advisory Council should further convince any doubters.

Drs. Orr and Gilks compared the health and development of two African tribes with similar environments but different dietary customs.

The children of Tribe M, whose diet contained relatively high amounts of protein, fat, and calcium, were much healthier than children of Tribe K, whose diet was high in carbohydrate and low in calcium.

Full-grown males of diet-rich Tribe M averaged 5 inches taller and 23 pounds heavier than those of Tribe K. Their muscular strength was fully 50 per cent greater. The women of Tribe M were 3 inches taller than those of Tribe K.
Careful research has demonstrated that optimum nutrition results in greater stamina and working efficiency for the middle-aged. For those in their sixties and seventies it may help to stave off degenerative diseases or slow their development.

A reducing diet need not be a nightmare of portions so small that the diner requires a microscope. The delightful truth is that you can eat large, healthy, tasty portions of the vital protective foods without increasing your body weight.

The Basic Seven

Let's take a look at each of these key groups of foods, known popularly as The Basic Seven.

1. Leafy Green and Yellow Vegetables

You should have two servings each day. These vegetables are rich in vitamin A, which is important for growth and normal vision. Vitamin A also helps to keep the skin and linings of the nose, mouth, and inner organs in good condition.

Vegetables also provide significant amounts of the important B vitamin riboflavin, as well as iron and some calcium.

Broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and greens offer an added bonus of vitamin C which is vital to body tissues. A diet low in this vitamin may result in tender gums, swollen joints, and weakened muscles. Citrus fruits are our principal source of vitamin C, but the greens help, too.

2. Citrus Fruits, Tomatoes, Raw Cabbage

A portion of citrus fruit or tomatoes plus a second fruit each day will cover your vitamin-C requirements for strong blood vessels, good teeth, healthy gums, and normal healing of wounds. Cabbage, if eaten raw, also supplies vitamin C.

3. Potatoes, Other Vegetables, and Fruits

One serving of potatoes or sweet potatoes each day provides you with valuable nutrients. White potatoes contain some vitamin C, while yellow sweet potatoes offer vitamin A as well.

One daily serving of vegetables and fruits not included in other groups of The Basic Seven enriches your diet with vitamins and minerals. Among these are beets, cauliflower, corn, cucumbers, onions, sauerkraut, turnips, white cabbage, apples, peaches, bananas, berries, and rhubarb.

4. Milk, Cheese, Ice Cream

Milk and cheese provide top proteins which help to build and renew tissues. Milk is our leading source of calcium and you cannot have a strong skeletal structure without this mineral. Calcium is not wasted. About ninety-nine per cent of it is utilized in your framework. Three to four cups of milk as a drink or in food each day will provide you with the necessary amount. Skim milk contains the same values as whole milk but slashes your calorie consumption from 165 per cup to 85 per cup.

The amount of calcium in one cup of milk can be duplicated by 3 ounces of cream cheese, 11 ounces of cottage cheese,1½ ounces of Cheddar cheese, or 2 to 3 scoops of ice cream. With the exception of cottage cheese, however, these are higher-calorie foods.

5. Meat, Poultry, Fish, Eggs, Dried Peas and Beans

Two servings each day should include meat, poultry, fish, or eggs. They provide high-quality protein, to say nothing of iron, which is essential for your red blood cells. In addition, they supply thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin, the B vitamins which aid your nerves, appetite, digestion, and skin. To top off their values, they offer vitamin A.

As for those dried peas and beans, you should include them once or twice a week for their protein, calcium, iron, and B vitamins.

6. Bread, Flour, Cereals

These must be whole-grain, enriched, or restored so that you do not lose their vitamin values. A daily helping will provide the necessary B vitamins. Foods in this group also help out with protein, provide roughage, and supply calories for vital energy in your reproductive years.

Note carefully the allotted quantities of bread and cereal on the diet which applies to you in the next chapter.

7. Butter and Fortified Margarine

These are rich in vitamin A, which protects your eyes and skin and helps guard against infection. They are also rich in calories. You should have some each day, but be sure not to exceed the amount specified in your diet.
Your reducing diet will include foods from each of The Basic Seven groups, so you can see in advance that it won't be too difficult to stomach.

It must be reemphasized that optimum nutrition cannot be achieved when you consume calories without vitamins or minerals. In a diet comprised of The Basic Seven you receive automatically adequate amounts of essential vitamins and minerals. The vitamins enable the body to utilize its food most efficiently and keep its tissues in a healthy state. The minerals serve a variety of vital functions. We have discussed calcium, which is necessary for your skeletal structure. Here are a few others.

Iron and copper serve in the manufacture of blood. Magnesium plays a role in muscular contractions. Zinc is necessary in insulin reactions. Cobalt is an important element in vitamin B12, which is used successfully in the treatment of pernicious anemia.

You don't have to worry about the specific foods which contain these minerals—you can be assured that your needs will be met by the Safe and Sure Diets, each of which is rich in The Basic Seven.

Eat A Big Breakfast

No discussion of your optimum nutrition would be complete without dispelling the widespread myths about breakfast. A healthy, hearty, nutritious breakfast, far from hindering your reducing diet, will actually help it.

You should consume one-fourth to one-third of your total daily calories at breakfast. Otherwise fatigue, irritability, dizziness, nausea, and headache can take over by mid-morning.

Strange as it may seem in this era of plenty, millions of American families eat inadequate breakfasts. Housewives and their teen-age daughters are the principal victims, but sons and husbands may show equally serious effects. Breakfast is the only meal that is regularly misused, abused, neglected, underrated, gulped, and eaten on the run. It is taken for granted, consumed grudgingly, and considered less important than commuter schedules, car pools, school buses, and time clocks.

But it is not less important—it is much more important. What's more, even if you're limited to a reducing diet you can eat a tasty, filling breakfast which will provide energy for the morning and win your battle with temptation during the other meals.

Few homemakers consider the fact that their families have fasted eight to twelve hours from the dinner meal until breakfast the next morning. This fast would not be tolerated during the day, but at night you sleep comfortably without symptoms of hunger. Yet even as you sleep, your stomach is busy preparing for its next intake of food.

As one step in readying itself, the stomach secretes digestive juices. The presence of these gastric juices is demonstrated vividly by people who suffer from stomach ulcers. Their condition makes them painfully aware of the accumulation of acids, and often they awaken between 1 and 3 AM with sharp hunger pangs. A glass of milk brings quick relief and enables them to sleep comfortably.

You secrete the same juices, though yours do not telegraph such urgent messages. When morning rolls around, your body is ready and waiting for a healthy breakfast. Its needs cannot be met by black coffee, or by fruit juice and coffee, or by coffee and a doughnut. As our Safe and Sure Diets will show, a person who wants to reduce can still consume fruit juice, cereal and milk, and coffee without overstepping the calorie bounds.

The most artful of all breakfast dodgers is the housewife like Helen W., who prepares no breakfast for herself but concentrates on her husband and children. While the family is present she eats nothing, but when the last little W. goes off to school she begins her nibbling. For all her diet pretensions, she can't bear to waste the food her family's left. Instead of salving her conscience by refrigerating the remains for future use, she disposes of them in installments before lunch. Her calorie intake far exceeds the one-fourth to one-third daily allotment of breakfast.

But Helen W. is correct when she tells friends on the telephone, "I haven't had my own breakfast yet." She fails to add that she's had everyone else's.

Then there's the breed like Lilian R. She believes that if she ignores breakfast she will lose weight rapidly. Instead of losing weight, Lilian gains lunch. Having famished herself by omitting the 210 calories contained in fruit juice, an egg, toast, and coffee, she pounces on a double-rich lunch topped off by a 350-calorie slice of chocolate cake.

A nutritious breakfast should contain liberal amounts of protein as in eggs, cheese, milk, and breakfast meats. Your blood stream will receive end products of protein as much as five to six hours after breakfast. This "holding power" enables you to avoid those midmorning symptoms of drowsiness and irritability, makes it possible for you to eat a sensible light lunch, and keeps you in fine trim until dinner.

In the next chapter you will find breakfast guides for every member of your family. You will note a simple rule for reducing diets—have either toast (unbuttered) or cereal with milk, not both!
Our consumption of coffee or tea is an almost unconscious habit, but actually it has purpose. A hot drink is a feature of breakfast from the tropics to the arctic because it warms the innards and imparts a feeling of well-being. It also stimulates the muscular contractions of the intestinal tract, inducing bowel action.

Every item in a healthy breakfast contributes important nutrients. The fruit juice goes a long way toward fulfilling your daily vitamin-C requirement. Whole-grain, enriched, or restored cereals (cooked or prepared dry) are energy foods offering B vitamins, iron, and minerals. The milk in each cereal bowl is vital to every member of the family as his most important source of calcium—this goes for the old folks, too, and will help them preserve strong bones. Eggs contain high-grade proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Bacon, sausage, and ham offer high-quality protein and good-quality fat. Whole-grain or enriched bread or toast provides B vitamins and minerals, and the milk solids of enriched white bread contribute more calcium.

It is not only the housewife who suffers from an inadequate breakfast. A husband's livelihood may be jeopardized if his breakfast does not provide sufficient nutrients. Scientific tests prove that men who do not eat enough breakfast do less work, think and act less quickly, and show more muscular fatigue than their colleagues. They tend to be quick-tempered, gruff, and less personable than those who were well fueled at breakfast.

The grade-school or teen-age child who omits breakfast or eats a scanty one will feel the effects by midmorning classes. Then he may become lackadaisical and sluggish in his work.

The teen-age girl is likely to be especially flighty about breakfast. Often she doesn't take time to eat the first meal of the day. When she becomes hungry at midmorning she slips out to the nearest sweetshop and piles up the calories. Oddly enough, this happens frequently in those families in which Mother restricts daughter's breakfast to prevent obesity. But the more daughter is starved at home the fatter she may get.

You will not expect your teen-age daughter to eat as much as your teen-age boy. A girl always burns less food and usually expends less physical energy, but she still needs a nutritious breakfast to satisfy her and keep her healthy.

A good housewife knows that a rushed breakfast interferes with digestion. The necessary contractions of the intestinal tract are disturbed, the digestive juices are affected, and sometimes the hasty eater suffers spasms of the stomach.
She can avoid the ill effects of a rushed breakfast by getting everyone up early enough so that it can be a peaceful, unhurried family meal.

One of the nicest things about the safe, sure way to reduce is that you are urged to eat a healthy breakfast.

Now we come to the heart of the matter—how to peel off those extra pounds while maintaining the optimum nutrition which has been so much emphasized.

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