01. STAY YOUNG! - Mr. U awoke one morning to a disturbing discovery. A panicky feeling welled up from the depths of the little pot­belly that had begun to bulge out below his belt. He glanced across the breakfast table at Mrs. U. Dismayed, he realized for the first time that the woman facing him was in the same unpleasant fix he now found himself: He was getting old— and so was she!

02. HOW OLD? - Exactly how old is "old"? At what precise spot on the calendar does youth end and old age begin? We've all seen automobiles of "vintage" dates whose owners give them such careful, loving treatment (far more careful, in most instances, than they give their own bodies) that these conscientiously shined-up old buses perk along merrily for years.

03. THE SECRET - The secret of feeling and looking younger than your years is really not a secret at all. It's not some witch's brew or alchemist's formula to be guarded jealously from the eyes of the unbeliever or the hands of the uninitiated. Possibly the common-sense simplicity of staying younger than your years is what keeps it from being readily accepted by the great mass of our people, since we are forever inclined to depreciate simple truths.

04. "PROTEIN"? - Your neighbors, your in-laws, your friends—none of them may care whether or not you stay young and vigorous. But protein does!

"Common sense is very uncommon," said Horace Greeley. And I agree. Especially common sense about important things. Protein, for instance. Here is a food element as vital to human life as oxygen. Yet how many persons have more than a nodding acquaintance with the word?

05. HOW MUCH PROTEIN?Several years ago I set out to answer to my own satisfaction the question of "how much protein is 'enough'?"

Using myself as a guinea pig, for eight months I gradually and deliberately cut the amount of protein in my daily meals down to a point which I knew to be inadequate. Every twenty-four hours I would consume only one medium-sized portion of either cheese, eggs, meat, fish or poultry. And about once a week I would skip the protein meal entirely.

06. VEGETARIAN - For your own sake, I wish you were not a confirmed vegetarian. But you maintain that you are, whatever the reason—religious, humane, hygienic, economical, medical or moral. And so my task now is to make vegetarianism safer for you—that is, unless I can persuade you to abandon this biologically unsound diet.

07. STARCH - For several chapters now I've been acquainting you with protein, and explaining why protein is your first food need. Actually, the protein story is so old it's new.

There were no nutrition scientists and health teachers to warn our prehistoric cavemen ancestors that if they wanted to be alert and powerful enough to survive the incredible dangers of life in their era, they had to "eat their protein every day." What these apemen ancestors of ours did was to grab a piece of meat—more than likely raw or only half-cooked—and wolf it down. It was their instinct to seek food that satisfied their hunger cravings and kept them strong enough to meet the physical problems of their rigorous lives.

08. YOUR AGE - Ben Bald treats his thinning hair to a series of expensive scalp treatments, while Susie Sallow spends plenty of hard-earned money for creams and lotions advertised as "rejuve­nating" sallow, wrinkled skins. Both of them are deluded into attempting these costly, last-ditch measures for regaining a youthful appearance because they believe that the hair and the skin can be ''nourished" from the outside. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

09. SIX COMMANDMANTS - Your great desire is to live a long, useful life, all the while looking and feeling far younger than your years. Certainly this is a goal worth aiming at. But are you prepared to abide by the Commandments? Because everything worth attaining has a price. And the price of a long, youthful life is planned diet. No more haphazard eating; no more pandering to a finicky appetite; no more plundering your body's health with indifferent and unwise selections of ''substandard" foods.

10. GERM OF LIFE - Modern diets ignore the axiom that seeds hold the germ o£ life. Too often overlooked is the fact that nature has placed in seed foods the concentrated essence of all nutrition in order to provide nourishment for the sprouting plant.

Only one part of any plant is outstandingly rich in pro­tein and that is the seed. Proteins are centered in the seeds o£ a plant, so that the new life may receive ample nourishment for normal growth.

11. BEST MILKS - Milk, man's first and oldest beverage, has taken on a new form that puts it in the front ranks of concentrated protective foods. I refer to dry skim milk—the new process powdered milk—an inexpensive, readily digested, high-protein food that is handy to use and short on calories.

Unfortunately, the old roller-processed milk, dried and ground between hot rollers, had a slightly brown cast and settled out when made into beverages.

12. HONEY - Please don't get the idea that because I warn so constantly against the evils of white sugar, I am against all sweets in your Eat-and-Grow-Younger diet. I enjoy a sweet as much as you. But I try to confine these sweet sprees to a type of carbohydrate that will make a definite contribution to my daily quota of vitamins and minerals—that is, to confections and desserts made with pure honey. These are natural sweets, and not the sickly product of a white sugar refinery.

13. LOOKS AND CHARM - During the last week of my recent stay in Buenos Aires, I was a guest at a formal dinner party in one of the old Argen­tine mansions. My host was the elder brother of my estanciero friend who raised thoroughbred horses, and on whose estancia I had met those marvelous old Gauchos saluted in an earlier chapter.

14. EYES LOOK YOUNG? - Dull, strained, bloodshot, heavily pouched eyes can give you that "lost youth" look quicker than any other feature. Beauty advisers continually admonish their readers to avoid the frowning, strained expressions caused by tired, dull, under­nourished eyes. No optician has yet invented a pair of eye­glasses that will restore beauty and sparkle to dull, under­nourished eyes

15. HAIR AND SKIN - It's a toss up which does more to help you retain the appear­ance of youth—a head of thick, lustrous hair or a smooth skin, glowing with health. Being a man, and realizing how con­scious my sex is of their hairline, my vote goes to hair as second only to the eyes in maintaining youthful good looks. The ladies, however, will no doubt protest that dry, crepy skin is the more aging.

16. BONES AND MUSCLES - A few years ago while in New York on a lecture tour, I attended a stage performance of a celebrated matinee idol— an actor whose masculine charms have had the ladies sighing and yearning for more years than said idol would publicly admit.

In this particular play, he was portraying the role of an intrepid young explorer. As the curtain went up, he was seated on a log in front of a campfire.

17. NERVES - Jittery nerves in a woman do not please a man, regardless o£ whatever youthful charms she may possess. Although a young girl, or a woman in her twenties or early thirties, may get by without much poise and with nervous gestures that irritate the onlooker, the older she grows the more these undesirable nervous habits detract from the charm of a woman who wishes to retain an illusion of youth past her fortieth birthday.

18. BLOOD - Without blood that is kept young—that is, rich with red coloring matter—along with the rest of your physical and mental organism, your efforts to remain a radiantly healthy, young-looking person are doomed to failure almost at the outset. For the blood is your body's "carrier system." In order to dispatch renewed youthfulness to all other parts of your body, you first must make certain that your carrier system is in A-i working order.

19. BREAKFAST - For years you've been assured that "life begins at forty." And so it does—if your middle years are protected from the serious ailments that often sneak in with the fortieth birth­day. But I doubt if you've given much thought to the fact that youth begins at breakfast.

I consider breakfast the most important meal of the day. For me it is always a high-protein meal, with little or no pure starch of any kind.

20. COMBINATIONS? - Whenever I'm asked about "food combinations"—which is frequently—I feel like the old country doctor who was asked by an anxious young mother whether castor oil was good for her child. To which the old doctor replied: "If you can get it down him, it is. If you can't, it isn't!"

If a food combination is good nutrition, it's all right. If it's not, it isn't!

21. EATING HABITS - "To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us." You'll notice that the author of this apt quotation did not say "drag," he said carry. The years are a "drag" on you only if you are ill, whether ailing with some particular malady or maladies, or only half-sick—not well enough to feel good, yet not quite sick enough to go to bed.

22. START NOW - Purposely I have kept your diet program simple and easy to follow in order to make it flexible enough to fit anyone, under whatever personal condition or circumstance, in any place.

I could give you a detailed diet program, hour by hour and meal by meal, throughout the day. For example, I could specify that at 10:45 A·M· you were to drink a glass of this-and-that.

23. HIGH-PROTEIN - Let me emphasize that you don't need to buy the most expensive cuts of meat in order to obtain the most protein nutrition from flesh foods. The cheaper cuts of beef and lamb, as well as their gland and organ meats, contain just as much, often more, nutrition as the most costly steaks, chops and roasts.

24. MEAT SUBSTITUTES - Whenever it's necessary for you to seek a substitute dish for meat (which I hope is not too often), for the sake of your long-lasting youth don't turn to the "noodle and spaghetti" section of your cookbook.

As I pointed out to you earlier, starch can never be a safe substitute for protein.

25. EGG AND CHEESE - Together with the meatless dishes listed above, these egg and cheese dishes are splendid menu-extenders and budget-easers. In addition, they are high-protein, tasty and offer variety to the menu. Especially will you find many new and different ideas for high-protein breakfast main dishes among them.

These egg and cheese dishes may be served also at luncheon or dinner.

26. SEED CEREALS - Seed and whole-grain cereals, and the porridges and various tasty dishes that may be made with them, have a definite place in everyone's diet regardless of age, but especially in the diets of those past forty, since the B-vitamins and high-grade proteins supplied by these seed and whole-grain cereals are needed more and more as the years slip by.

27. SALADS - Why salads on American tables and in American restaurants should have degenerated, for the most part, into a dispirited leaf of lettuce underlying a slice or two of anemic tomato and topped by a splash of unappetizing-looking dressing I cannot say, unless it be owing to the inertia and "don't-care" of our cooks.

Salads should be the acme of taste thrills in a meal.

The success of your salad lies in two things: (1) the fresh­ness and crispness of the greens, and (2) the kind of dressing you select.

28. BAKING WITH PROTEIN - No bread merits a place in your Eat-and-Grow-Younger menus unless it is truly protein. And only the 100 per cent whole-grain breads can be protein. The breads, rolls, pan­cakes and waffles made with the recipes given in this chapter may be eaten with the assurance that they do not violate any rules of good nutrition, as do the white-flour and white-sugar products of the oven and griddle; and with the knowledge that these whole-grain breads are contributing valuable pro­teins, minerals and vitamins to your youth-protecting diet.

29. SWEETS AND TREATS - Desserts certainly provide a pleasant way of topping off a meal. And a sweet or delicious beverage once in a while is a mouth-watering treat to anticipate. Most assuredly I have no intention of denying you these taste pleasures in your Eat-and-Grow-Younger diet.

What I am suggesting is that you limit your desserts, sweets and between-meal beverages to those that ''carry their own weight" in your youth-protecting diet.

THE END