The Physiology of Taste (40 page)

99:
IF I HAD BEEN
a graduate physician, I would first of all have written a detailed monograph on overweight; then I would have set myself up as ruler of this part of the scientific realm, to enjoy the double advantage of having the healthiest of all patients on my list, and of being besieged daily by the prettier half of the human race, for it is the life study of all women to maintain a perfect weight, neither too heavy nor too light.

What I have missed doing, another doctor will do; and if he is at one and the same time well-educated, discreet, and good-looking, I predict miracles for him.

While I wait for this, I can at least open up the rich vein of ore, for an article on obesity is more than proper in a work which has as its subject whatever nourishes mankind.

By
obesity
I mean that state of fatty congestion in which a person’s bodily parts gradually grow larger, without his being ill, and lose their form and their original harmonious proportions. There is one kind of obesity which centers around the belly; I have never noticed it in women: since they are generally made up of softer tissues, no parts of their bodies are spared when obesity attacks them. I call this type of fatness
GASTROPHORIA
, and its victims
GASTROPHORES. I
myself am in their company; but although I carry around with me a fairly prominent stomach, I still have well-formed lower legs, and calves as sinewy as the muscles of an Arabian steed.
²

Nevertheless I have always looked on my paunch as a redoubtable enemy; I have conquered it and limited its outlines to the purely majestic; but in order to win the fight, I have fought hard
indeed: whatever is good about the results and my present observations I owe to a thirty-year battle.

I shall begin this discussion with a condensation of more than five hundred conversations which I have held with my dinner companions who were threatened or afflicted with obesity.

Fat Man
—Heavens, what delicious bread! Where do you buy it?

Myself-
—At Monsieur Limet’s, rue de Richelieu: he is baker for Their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Orleans and the Prince of Condé: I began to go to him because he is my neighbor, and I shall continue to do so because I have already called him the best breadmaker in existence.

Fat Man
—I must make a note of that; I eat a great deal of bread, and if I could get such rolls as these I’d gladly do without any others.

Another Fat Man
—What on earth are you doing there? You’re eating the liquid from your soup, and leaving that wonderful Carolina rice!

Myself
—I am following a special diet I have prescribed for myself.

Fat Man
—What a dreadful one! I love rice as much as I do thickenings, Italian pastes, and all those things: there’s nothing more nourishing, nor cheaper, nor easier to prepare.

Particularly Fat Man
—Will you be good enough, my dear sir, to pass me the dish of potatoes which is in front of you? At the rate they’re disappearing, I’m afraid I’ll miss out.

Myself-
—Certainly they are within reach, are they not?

Fat Man
—But won’t you have some too? There are enough for both of us, and after that who cares?

Myself-
—No, I shan’t take any. I value potatoes solely as preventives of actual famine. Aside from that, I know of nothing more completely tasteless.

Fat Man
—But that’s gastronomical heresy! Nothing is better than potatoes; I eat them in every form, and if there happen to be any in the next part of the dinner, whether
à la Lyonnaise
or in a soufflé, I here and now declare myself for the allotting of my just share of them.

Fat Lady
—It would be so very kind of you if you would bring
me from the other end of the table some of those Soissons beans which I see there.

Myself, after having carried out the command while paraphrasing a well-known song in a low voice.—

Fat Lady
—You shouldn’t joke. The whole district is made richer by them. Paris alone pays a considerable amount of money for its supply. And I must also come to the defense of those ordinary little beans now called
English
: when they are still green, they make a dish fit for the gods.

Myself
—A pox on all beans! A pox even on little common English beans!

Fat Lady
—And that’s enough of your scorn! One might almost think that you were the sole judge of such matters!

Myself, to another Fat Lady
—Permit me to congratulate you on your good health; it seems to me, Madame, that you have grown a wee bit heavier since I last had the honor to see you.

Fat Lady
—I probably owe it to my new diet.

Myself
—But how is that?

Fat Lady
—For some time now I’ve made my luncheon of some good rich soup, a bowl big enough for two, and what a marvelous soup it is! A spoon could stand straight up in it!

Myself, to still another
—Madame, if your glance does not deceive me, you will accept a spoonful of this charlotte?
³
I shall plunge into it in your honor.

Fat Lady
—Ah, my dear sir, your eyes do indeed deceive you! I see two things I especially adore here on the table, and both of them have a French name of the masculine gender: this
gateau de riz
with its golden crust, and then this enormous
biscuit de Savoie
, for I can tell you for your records that I simply dote upon sweet cakes.

Myself, to another
—While all that serious discussion is going on at the other end of the table, Madame, may I put the question to this almond tart for you?

Fat Lady
—But gladly! Nothing delights me more than pastry. We have a pastry cook as one of our tenants, and between my
daughter and myself, I truly believe that we eat up the price of his rent, and a little more besides.

Myself, having looked at the young lady
—This diet is wonderfully becoming to you! Your charming daughter is a very beautiful creature, and more than generously equipped.

Fat Lady
—Well, it is hard to believe, but some of her dearest companions sometimes tell her that she is too fat!

Myself
—Perhaps they are jealous of her?

Fat Lady
—That might be. Anyway, I am about to get her married, and the first baby will take care of all that …

And it is from such dialogues that I made clear to myself a theory which I had formed quite apart from its human connections, that the principal cause of any fatty corpulence is always a diet overloaded with starchy and farinaceous elements; it is from these conversations that I was able to prove to myself that this same diet is always followed by the same effects.

Certainly meat-eating animals never grow fat (think of the wolves, jackals, birds of prey, crows, etc.).

Herbivorous beasts seldom grow fat either, except as old age forces them into a life of greater repose; on the other hand they gain weight quickly and in any season when they are forced to eat potatoes, grains, and any kind of flour.

Obesity is never found either among savages or in those classes of society which must work in order to eat or which do not eat except to exist.

100: It is easy enough to designate the causes of obesity, according to the preceding observations, which anyone can verify for himself.

The first is the natural temperament of the individual. Almost all men are born with certain predispositions which influence their physiognomy. Out of a hundred people who die from an illness of the chest, ninety have dark brown hair, long faces, and noses that come to a point. Out of a hundred fat people, ninety have short faces, round eyes, and snub noses.

It follows therefore that some people in whom the digestive
forces manufacture, all things being equal, a greater supply of fat are, as it were, destined to be obese.

This physical truth, of which I am profoundly convinced, has a miserable influence on my way of looking at things, occasionally.

When a gay, rosy-cheeked girl appears in a drawing room, a little miss with roguish nose, delightful curves, plump tiny hands and feet, everyone is completely charmed by her, while I, taught by experience, see her as she will be in another ten years. I see the ravages which fatness will have wreaked on this appealing freshness, and I groan over misfortunes which have not yet come. My anticipated compassion is a painful sentiment, and furnishes one more proof among a thousand others that mankind would be much unhappier if it could see into the future.

The second principal cause of obesity lies in the starches and flours which man uses as the base of his daily nourishment. As we have already stated, all animals who live on farinaceous foods grow fat whether they will or no; man follows the common rule.

Starch produces this effect more quickly and surely when it is used with sugar: both sugar and fat contain hydrogen and both are combustible. The mixture of sugar with flour is all the more active since it intensifies the flavor, and since we seldom eat sweetened dishes before our natural hunger has been satisfied, and all that is left is that other more refined appetite which we must flatter and tempt by the subtlest tricks of art and variety.

Yeast flour is no less fattening when it is absorbed in such drinks as beer. The people who drink them habitually are the ones who develop the most marvelous bellies, and certain families in Paris who drank beer in 1817 for economy’s sake, because wine was very dear then, found themselves repaid by added weight which they now find quite unwelcome.

101: A double cause of obesity results from too much sleep combined with too little exercise.

The human body repairs many of its natural losses during sleep, and in the same way it loses little then, since its muscular action is suspended. It is necessary therefore to dispose of any
superfluities by exercise; however, the more anyone sleeps, the more he limits the time in which he could be active.

In addition, long sleepers shun anything which will put them in the slightest danger of fatigue; whatever cannot be assimilated is absorbed into the circulation, and there, in an operation which Nature keeps secret from us, it takes on an additional percentage of hydrogen, fat is formed, and it is swept by the circulatory flood into all the cellular tissues.

102: The final cause of obesity is excess, whether in eating or drinking.

It has rightly been said that one of the privileges of the human race is to eat without hunger and drink without thirst: this is naturally not an attribute of the animals, since it springs from reflection on the pleasures of the table and from the desire to prolong them.

This double penchant has been found wherever man himself exists, and it is well known that savages will eat gluttonously and drink themselves insensible whenever they have the chance to.

As for us, citizens of the old and new worlds who believe ourselves to be the finest flower of civilization, it is plain that we eat too much.

I do not say this of the small number of people who, enclosed in their own avarice or impotence, live alone and apart, the former uplifted by the thought of the money they thus save and the latter bewailing the fact that they can do no better. I do say it with firmness of all those who, everywhere about us, are time after time hosts or guests, entertaining with graciousness or accepting with pleasure; all those who, feeling no more physical hunger, eat a dish because it is attractive to them, and drink a wine merely because it is unfamiliar. I say it of them whether they sit down every day to a banquet or only celebrate on Sundays and occasionally Mondays: for in this immense majority, every single person eats and drinks too much, and enormous masses of foodstuffs and potables are absorbed every day without need.

This cause of obesity, almost always present, acts differently
according to the constitution of the individual, and for people with delicate stomachs the result is not so much overweight as indigestion.

103: We once had before our very eyes an example of this which half of Paris knew about.

Monsieur Lang kept up one of the most brilliant houses of the city; above all his table was excellent, but his digestion was as weak as his love of good food was powerful. He was a perfect host, and ate everything with a courage worthy of a more important cause.

Everything would go well for him until he had finished his after-dinner coffee; soon, then, his stomach would rebel at the work he had inflicted on it, his suffering would begin, and the wretched gastronomer would be obliged to throw himself on a couch, where he must lie until the next morning, paying with prolonged anguish for the short pleasures he had enjoyed.

The most remarkable thing is that he never changed his habit; as long as he lived, he accepted this strange alternative, and the sufferings of one day had no influence on the delights of the next.

Among people who have strong active stomachs, any excesses of nutrition are disposed of as outlined in my preceding article: everything is digested, and whatever is not needed to repair bodily losses undergoes a chemical change and turns into fat.

Among the rest of the people there is a kind of perpetual indigestion: foods flow through them unprofitably, and those who do not understand the reason are astonished that so many good things do not produce a happier result.

It is easily apparent that I am not making an exhaustive outline of this subject: there is a mass of secondary causes of obesity which spring from our habits, professions, occupations, and pleasures, and which encourage and activate the ones I have already discussed.