153. Variety
Today’s reading: “The Ministry of Healing” pp. 299d–300a.
The practical suggestions continue, today we read a short but important section that builds on the fact that we should have a wide variety of berries, and larger fruit, preserved and dried.
Implied is the fact that seasonal fruit and vegetables should be used but this is supplemented by the dried and preserved to make fruits “staple articles of diet” to be eaten “freely”.
Any who has attended a Club CHIP meeting, where everyone brings along their favourite healthy dish, will know the temptation to try a bit of each one… then go back for seconds to the ones we really enjoyed. Overeating and indigestion indeed! So yes, don’t be too lavish with regular meals, just a few dishes.
The opposite problem, monotonously serving the same dish, day after day is not just unappetising but also poor nutritionally. We get all the nutrients that Ellen had no idea were in those fruit and vegetables, when we eat a large variety.
Some take things too far and say we should never have fruit and vegetables together at the same meal. And there is a good point here but that doesn’t mean that an apple after a vegetable meal, or salad with fruit included, are banned. What Ellen is saying is that one meal should be largely fruit-based, the next mostly vegetables.
Notice that not mixing fruit and vegetables, applies especially to those of “feeble” digestion, where a mixture of fruit and vegetables will cause stomach upsets and mental dullness. And you know who you are.
