Sugar and Salt — Foods or Poisons?

Sugar And Salt — Foods Or Poisons? by Dr. Axel Emil Gibson was published in Los Angeles in 1913. Dr Gibson is also the author of; "Prolonging Life Through Diet," "Facts and Fancies in Health Foods (1921)" "Life and Death of Diet" "Psychology of Child-life," "Individuality in Diet," "New Light on Living (1922)" "Destructive and Constructive Food Mixtures (1914)" etc. All of these books contain a lot of good information about eating the proper foods, and good health. (150 pages)

The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text. Some books, due to age and other factors may contain imperfections. Since there are many books such as this one that are important and beneficial to literary interests, we have made it digitally available.

To
Luther Burbank — whose untiring labors in the service of humanity have made him a prophet and a seer of the divine life in man and nature — is this little volume lovingly and gratefully dedicated.

Index:

SUGAR — PART I

Preface. — I. Has the Popularity of Sugar a Scientific Basis? — II. Sugar as an Extract, and Sugar as a Natural Product. — III. The Constructive Phase of Sugar. — IV. The Magic of a Chemical Formula. — V. The Destructive Phase of Sugar. — VI. Excess in Food — Failure in Nutrition. — VII. The Philosophy of Excess and Balance. — VIII. The Difference between Organized and Unorganized Acids, and their Relation to Rheumatism. — IX. The Peril of "Free Sweets." — X. The Place of Sugar in the Hygienic Bill-of-Fare. — XI. Sugar the Explosive Force in the Human Dynamo. — XII. Can Sugar Alone Maintain the Expenditure of Muscular Labor? — XIII. Sugar as a Fat Former. — XIV. Sugar as a Force. — XV. Sugar as a Poison? — XVI. Sugar as a Medicine. — XVII. The Moral Application of "Free Sweets."

SALT — PART II

XVIII. Evidence For and Against the Use of Salt. — XIX. The Fundamental Basis of Salt. — XX. Salt at Once a Preservative and a Destroyer. — XXI. How the Principle of Salt Explains the Phenomenon of the X-Ray. — XXII. What the "The Salt of the Earth" means to Physiological Chemistry. — XXIII. How Salt at Once Can Become the Savior and Destroyer of Life. — XXIV. Why the Esquimo Abhors Salt in His Dietary. — XXV. Why Life in the Temperate Zone Needs Salt for its Maintenance. — XXVI. Correspondence Between "Free Sweets" and Loose Morals. — XXVII. The "Salt" and the "Sweets" of the Earth. — XXVIII. The Value of Salt in Medicine. — XXIX. The Value of Salt in Food.

Preface:

.....When sitting at your breakfast-table and quietly enjoying the drink that cheers, but not inebriates, it may not occur to you that the lump of sugar you just slipped into your cup, relates you to principles and force-aspects that have the profoundest bearing, not only on your physical, but also on your mental and moral nature.
.....This means that the principle of "sweetness," which has in sugar its material expression, has on the moral plane the subtler, but not less forceful expression of temptation. In other words, the same principle which in the seductive form of sugar appeals to the gustatory instincts of the physical man, appeals with still greater force in the form of moral "sweetness" to the inner man.
.....In the book before you a bold attempt has been made to explain the weird power which sugar holds over the taste of the highest advanced culture-folk of the world today. At the same time it will convey a knowledge of the principle which translates into terms of moral temptations, on the plane of the mind, the "sweetness" or attractiveness which, as sugar, it exerts on our body through the sensation of taste.
.....As with sugar so with salt. The relation of the latter to the moral life and destiny of man, is no less significant than the former. Both stand for principles adherent in the deepest springs of human nature. In salt, we have the mystic "Rock of Ages," the "Elixir of Life," and the "Philosopher's Stone," all in one. But its nature, like the Sphinx, is double-faced; it relates us both to life and death; to health and disease. It may set free by evaporation, or imprison by crystallization. From the standpoint of principle, it may give to our character the stability of the "Salt of the Earth," or crystallize our intellectual life into the rock-salt pillar of the symbolic wife of Lot.
.....Sugar and salt are the symbols of man's dual nature, the balancing forces of his vast, complex evolution. As servants they raise him in the scale of life and power; as masters they destroy him.