Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Eating for Strength and Muscular Development, Part Eight- Norman Zale (1977)







In The Meat Racket, investigative reporter Christopher Leonard delivers the first-ever account of how a handful of companies have seized the nation’s meat supply. He shows how they built a system that puts farmers on the edge of bankruptcy, charges high prices to consumers, and returns the industry to the shape it had in the 1900s before the meat monopolists were broken up. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the greatest capitalist country in the world has an oligarchy controlling much of the food we eat and a high-tech sharecropping system to make that possible.


A historical, yet humorous account of the cereal industry. Find out how Cap'n Crunch came into being, as well as Coo-Coo Bird and Tony the Tiger. Learn about the different impacts that J.H. Kellogg, W.K. Kellogg and C.W. Post had on forming the cereal industry. Find which competitors' cereals came into being and are still around, as well as those that were successful, but are no longer here. This book is a complete story of an industry that has impacted all of our lives as Americans as a part of pop culture. 











For Weak Stomachs Only


Is there a tiger growling in your tank? Perhaps it is a rodent that gnaws away at your insides until you think he will drive you into giving up your training. If this is so, then there is something radically wrong with your eating habits and all the information contained in this book is valueless to you because much of the foot you eat is not doing you any good and may be doing you harm. If you are suffering from growling and gnawing, you may be eating wrong and it will be necessary to cast out as quickly as possible the tigers and rodents so that you can get going on a better diet plan.

Recognizing that most stomach problems result from overeating, eating of wrong food combinations, and the eating of condiments and other substances that produce stomach irritation, you will have to examine your eating habits and make suitable changes. Many men know what is causing their digestive upsets, yet they do nothing to overcome their problems. Despite their knowledge of the physiology of digestion and of the principles of good eating, they continue to follow a poor diet or poor eating habits. Consequently they they suffer from lack of progress with their weight training program simply because they refuse to recognize the effects of wrong eating habits. They eat to fill their stomachs rather than eating in such a manner that the food eaten will be well digested and absorbed so that it can be converted to muscle tissue.

Rule number one for those with weak digestion - DON'T OVEREAT.

When your digestive limitations are overstepped various waste products are formed in the digestive system. These result in putrefaction and the resulting formation of gas, which is accompanied by growling.

Another rule to remember is - DO NOT EAT BETWEEN MEALS.

While this may quiet the tigers in your tank, it increases your problems in the exact proportion to the amount you eat. You may not realize that eating four or five meals or snacking all day instead of eating two or three meals is hard on the digestive process, but it is.

It is not possible to have good digestion when eating too frequently. If the small intestine is not ready to receive food, reflex action will cause a slower emptying time of the stomach, holding the present meal in the stomach longer than ordinary,  thus favoring bacterial decomposition instead of normal digestion. Furthermore, when the stomach is filled before the previous meal has been completely digested in the small intestines, peristalsis increases in the intestines, hurrying along the previous meal to make way for the present meal. Consequently, the previous meal will not remain in the small intestines long enough for perfect digestion or absorption. When you eat all day long, much of the food is just passed through the intestinal tract undigested and unabsorbed.

Eating too often seems to prevent the storage of pepsinogen which is a pre-enzyme necessary for the digestion of protein. Pepsin, the enzyme in the stomach which begins the digestion of protein, is stored as pepsinogen in the cells of the stomach. Thus, eating too often causes a constant secretion of the enzymes necessary for protein digestion and may create a scarcity of the enzyme when needed at mealtime, due to the wasting of them between meals.

We sometimes fail to recognize the fact that digestion is muscular work, just like curling a barbell, and that eating all day long keeps the muscles of the intestines contracting so frequently that fatigue is a possibility, and future contractions may be weaker, causing stasis of the food in the digestive system. Think about it - how long could you keep curling your barbell if you were forced to work at maximum efficiency for half an hour, five or six times a day, every day, seven days a week? You would soon work yourself into a state of exhaustion, like maybe after the first half hour of curling. But most people expect the muscles of the digestive system to react in a favorable manner even though they are abused constantly. Eating after your regular evening meal means that you are taking in more food than actually required, and that means overwork. But, if your late meal is a part of your regular two- or three-a-day, or it is a light snack after a workout, then it is necessary and the nutritive value received compensates for the work of digestion.

Some men may be bothered by gastric acidity and they resort to antacids, not realizing that these types of drugs all cause increased acidity of the stomach due to a rebound effect. Your stomach contains a certain amount of acid, or it should, for the purpose of digestion of proteins and certain minerals. When this acid is neutralized by the use of antacids the body immediately attempts to compensate for the loss of acid by producing more than was originally in the stomach to make up for that lost as a result of neutralizing drugs. More prudent eating and less overeating will usually remedy the situation.

Those who have gastrointestinal problems may find that they have difficulty with certain fruits, usually causing gas. Many times these individuals will do well with eating lettuce with their fruit. The silicon in the salad leaves is thought to help prevent fermentation. Eating lettuce, celery or cucumber with fruit helps the peristalsis action of the intestines, moving the fruit along at a fairly fast rate so that the sugar in the fruit does not have an opportunity to ferment and produce gas.

There are a number of factors which determine how fast the stomach is emptied. For instance, a meal composed of carbohydrates has a tendency to be emptied from the stomach more quickly than those foods rich in protein. This is because there is no digestion of carbohydrates in the stomach, only protein is digested in the stomach. Carbohydrates are digested in the mouth and the small intestine which is the section of the gastrointestinal tract adjacent to the stomach. If you have digestive upsets it might be wise not to eat carbohydrate and protein foods at the same meal. The protein may cause the sugars and starches to be held in the stomach too long, and these foods have a tendency to ferment if not emptied at the regular or normal rate.

The consistency of the food eaten also has a bearing on the time required for it to be evacuated from the stomach. Juicy foods leave the stomach the quickest; semi-solids moderately quick, and solid foods the slowest. This is the basic reason for masticating your food thoroughly and not swallowing it until it has been ground up into a soft, mushy consistency. Digestive enzymes cannot reach the interior of chunks of food material, so gastrointestinal bacteria are served a hearty meal. Bernarr MacFadden once said, "Chew your food well, your stomach has no teeth," and he was so right. As was Winston Churchill when he stated that, ""The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

"How about milk?" is a common question. To prevent you from getting the wrong idea that because milk is a fluid it empties from the stomach rapidly, we must remind you that upon contact with gastric juices in the stomach milk curdles, forming a semisolid material. If you notice an uncomfortable feeling when drinking milk with meals, it may be because the curds have a tendency to surround other food masses, preventing the digestive enzymes from reaching them, favoring indigestion. Try drinking your milk between meals or at least two or three hours before or after meals if you feel that it is an essential part of your training table, though it might be well to point out here that very few top physique men drink any milk at all. They find that it is too difficult to maintain muscularity and clean-cut lines if they drink milk.

The Ciba Collection of Medical Illustrations has a point to add. "A meal exclusively of, or mainly of starch, tends to empty more rapidly, though stimulating less secretion, than does a protein meal. Thus, other factors being equal, a person may expect to be hungry sooner after a breakfast of fruit juice, cereal and toast, than after one of bacon and eggs. The amount of total secretion of acid content is highest with the ingestion of proteins. However, there are great individual variations as well as variations in a single individual under different conditions.

Unfortunately, there are so many opportunities to eat that very few men give themselves a chance to get hungry. Many hard trainers are afraid of not getting sufficient nutrients so they constantly stuff themselves though they could eat a lot less if they were more selective in their choice of foods. Consequently, poor digestion is quite common among weight trainers.

If you eat when you are not genuinely hungry, your system is not ready to accept food and it just lays in your stomach and ferments. It is a cardinal sin to put food in a stomach that is not ready for it. It is the same as stoking a furnace when there is already enough fuel. You crowd both systems, and in the furnace complete combustion does not take place and in the body, complete digestion is not possible.

When meals are eaten when you are truly hungry, stomach and intestinal contractions and secretions are much stronger and food is more fully digested, and only digested food can be absorbed and make a contribution toward greater strength and muscular development.

Bad eating habits have a tendency to sneak in without you realizing it. Sometimes it may be bolting your food because you are in a hurry to go some place after your meal, or it may be eating between meals that creeps into your daily schedule. Whatever bad habits are causing your digestive upsets, it is time to rid yourself of them before they unleash a whole zoo full of rodents and tigers to gnaw and growl away at your insides and destroy one of life's most pleasant activities, eating . . . next to flexing a pumped muscle, that is.      



 

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