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Counsels on Diet and Foods
and eat more sparingly, and of that food alone which was healthful,
and by their own course of action save themselves a great amount of
suffering.—
Spiritual Gifts 4a:129-131, 1864
Educate the Appetite
Persons who have indulged their appetite to eat freely of meat,
highly seasoned gravies, and various kinds of rich cakes and preserves,
cannot immediately relish a plain, wholesome, and nutritious diet.
Their taste is so perverted they have no appetite for a wholesome diet
of fruits, plain bread, and vegetables. They need not expect to relish
at first food so different from that which they have been indulging
themselves to eat. If they cannot at first enjoy plain food, they should
fast until they can. That fast will prove to them of greater benefit than
medicine, for the abused stomach will find that rest which it has long
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needed, and real hunger can be satisfied with a plain diet. It will take
time for the taste to recover from the abuses which it has received, and
to gain its natural tone. But perseverance in a self-denying course of
eating and drinking will soon make plain, wholesome food palatable,
and it will soon be eaten with greater satisfaction than the epicure
enjoys over his rich dainties.
The stomach is not fevered with meat, and overtaxed, but is in a
healthy condition, and can readily perform its task. There should be
no delay in reform. Efforts should be made to preserve carefully the
remaining strength of the vital forces, by lifting off every overtaxing
burden. The stomach may never fully recover health, but a proper
course of diet will save further debility, and many will recover more
or less, unless they have gone very far in gluttonous self-murder.
Those who permit themselves to become slaves to a gluttonous
appetite, often go still further, and debase themselves by indulging
their corrupt passions, which have become excited by intemperance in
eating and in drinking. They give loose rein to their debasing passions,
until health and intellect greatly suffer. The reasoning faculties are, in
a great measure, destroyed by evil habits.
Effect of Indulgence, Physical, Mental, Moral
246. Many students are deplorably ignorant of the fact that diet
exerts a powerful influence upon the health. Some have never made