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Counsels on Diet and Foods
their food. Many a mother sets a table that is a snare to her family.
Flesh meats, butter, cheese, rich pastry, spiced foods, and condiments
are freely partaken of by both old and young. These things do their
work in deranging the stomach, exciting the nerves, and enfeebling
the intellect. The blood-making organs cannot convert such things
into good blood. The grease cooked in the food renders it difficult
of digestion. The effect of cheese is deleterious. Fine-flour bread
does not impart to the system the nourishment that is to be found in
unbolted-wheat bread. Its common use will not keep the system in the
best condition. Spices at first irritate the tender coating of the stomach,
but finally destroy the natural sensitiveness of this delicate membrane.
The blood becomes fevered, the animal propensities are aroused, while
the moral and intellectual powers are weakened, and become servants
to the baser passions. The mother should study to set a simple yet
nutritious diet before her family.—[
Christian Temperance and Bible
Hygiene, 46, 47
]
Counsels on Health, 114, 1890
Counteracting Evil Tendencies
357. Will mothers of this generation feel the sacredness of their
mission, and not try to vie with their wealthy neighbors in appearances,
[237]
but seek to excel them in faithfully performing the work of instructing
their children for the better life? If children and youth were trained
and educated to habits of self-denial and self-control, if they were
taught that they eat to live instead of living to eat, there would be less
disease and less moral corruption. There would be little necessity
for temperance crusades, which amount to so little, if in the youth
who form and fashion society, right principles in regard to temperance
could be implanted. They would then have moral worth and moral
integrity to resist, in the strength of Jesus, the pollutions of these last
days.... Parents may have transmitted to their children tendencies
to appetite and passion, which will make more difficult the work of
educating and training these children to be strictly temperate, and to
have pure and virtuous habits. If the appetite for unhealthful food and
for stimulants and narcotics, has been transmitted to them as a legacy
from their parents, what a fearfully solemn responsibility rests upon
the parents to counteract the evil tendencies which they have given to