III. On Nutrition

You see, therefore, that it is important for us to get hold of the right kind of foodstuffs. The salts work mainly upon the front part of the brain, the carbohydrates farther back. A man who cannot thoroughly digest the carbohydrates, whose organism is incapable of carrying them into the proper area of the brain, will very soon become permanently hoarse and be unable to speak with a really clear voice. Therefore if you have in front of you someone who used to speak quite normally but has suddenly developed hoarseness, you may surmise that he has digestive trouble of some kind. He cannot thoroughly digest the carbohydrates; they do not reach the right area of the brain and the consequence is that something goes wrong with his breathing and his speech. And so we may say: the salts work mainly upon thinking. The carbohydrates work, for example, upon speaking and the organic processes allied with it, and are an essential constituent of food. The carbohydrates help to give our human form its proper shape, but if left to themselves their tendency would be to make us into a mere form and leave it at that. They do not fill out the form—that is done by the fats. The carbohydrates have, so to speak, merely outlined the form and the fats provide the filling material. That is their function—to provide us with material substance. In fat itself, of course, this material has a definite character.