Those people who are confined indoors and whose work is largely with the brain rather than with the muscles require a diet adapted to their needs, rather than one adapted to the needs of the lumberman or the college football player. If the man who engages in almost no physical exercise indulges in a heavy diet, in which meat appears two or three times a day, he is almost certain to suffer one or the other of two rather serious nutritional disturbances. First, he is likely to accumulate a large amount of adipose tissue. Second, his excretion, especially that from the kidneys, is almost certain gradually to be disturbed, with the result that he is visited first with occasional, and later almost continuous, disabilities of rheumatic or neuralgic character. All these difficulties might easily have been avoided if he had used good judgment in his dietary. A typical menu for the sedentary man, whether professional or business man, would be the following:

Breakfast

Fruit.

Coffee.

Buttered toast, muffins, or gems.

Lunch

A cream soup or puree with crackers, or Sandwich and fruit, with a cup custard.

Dinner

Meat, gravy, potatoes.

Vegetables.

Salad.

Fruit.

A light, easily digestible pudding, such as rice pudding, chocolate pudding, bread pudding, cornstarch pudding with fruit sauce, gelatin or tapioca with fruit.

While this dinner will be recognized as a rather heavy one, we will assume that the sedentary man will eat very abstemiously of the different courses; that he will spend a full hour at table; that the dinner hour is the social hour of the family, and that jokes, anecdotes, and repartee keep the whole dinner circle in good spirits. Incidentally, let the sedentary man masticate his food very thoroughly and he will find that his menu is adequate, and that his nutrition is maintained.