1/5 “In 1854 the idea came to me, in one of my solitary hours, to try the effects of living exclusively upon one food at a time. This experiment I began upon myself alone at first. Fortunately, in our works on Physiology, beans are placed at the head of the list of foods

2/5 as regards their nutrient qualities. On this account I opened this line of experiments with baked beans. I had not lived upon this food over three days, before light began to break. I became very flatulent and constipated, head dizzy, ears ringing, limbs prickly,

3/5 and was wholly unfitted for mental work. The microscopic examination of passages showed that the bean food did not digest; that it fermented and filled the digestive organs with yeast, carbon-dioxide, alcohol, and acetic acid; that the sacs of the legumes containing starch

4/5 granules were insoluble in the digestive fluids and consequently these fluids could not reach the starch until it had fermented and liberated sufficient gas to explode the sacs.

5/5 By this time the starch was too far changed into gas, alcohol & vinegar, to afford much nourishment to the body”

A brief statement of the principal arguments against the use of Bread, Cereals, Pulses, & all other starch foods.

Densmore, Emmet, 1837
The Natural Food of Man