HOW TO GET PLUMP.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 44, 31 October 1891, Page 542

HOW TO GET PLUMP.

hints to lean persons. If the liver acts imperfectly or if the constitution is weak in assimilative power, it may be impossible to accumulate fatty tissue, as the most potent factor in the matter is the assimilation of food. The ordinary person, however, in good health, can gain flesh by a careful selection of carbonaceous and rejection of nitrogenous food, combined with plenty of sleep, mild exercise and freedom from anxiety. The list of articles of food which, if well cooked, are most fattening includes : Fat meats (especially pork and mutton) and gravies ; eels, herring, salmon ; milk, beer, port wine, and champagne; oatmeal; potatoes, beets, carrots, turnips, Indian corn, tapioca, peas and beans ; bread, most pastry ; nuts and confectionery ; grapes, cherries, pears, and red raspberries; molasses, honey, butter and sugar. Among the varieties which should be as far as possible avoided are : lean meats, poultry, game and lobsters; fish not mentioned in the foregoing list; vegetables and fruit not mentioned in the foregoing list; dry toast, hard tack and biscuit; hard-boiled eggs ; cheese ; claret, sherry and Madeira wine. All food should be slowly and thoroughly chewed. Breakfast should open with fruit. Ice-water should not be drunk at meals. Water, if not iced, drunk between meals, is said to place fat on the internal organs. Hot tea should be used as little as possible, as it increases respiration, induces perspiration and acts on the nervous system in a way to produce wakefulness. Cod-liver oil is held by many physicians to be particularly valuable in fatforming, not only on account of its high proportion of pure fat, but furthermore because it usually proves to be easily digestible. As little exercise as is compatible with health and a free action of the skin, aids in tne accumulation of fat. It should be remembered, however, that any sudden change in the selection of a person’s diet is liable to produce a disarrangement of the system, which is sometimes dangerous, and any regimen intended to increase flesh should be followed only under the supervision of a competent physician.