we do not recommend their liberal use. The ripe olive has something to
recommend it; mainly because it was allowed to get ripe. Pure olive
oil occupies a conspicuous and necessary place on the uncooked bill
of fare. For those who cannot thoroughly masticate nuts--because of
defective teeth--olive oil, or even good peanut oil, affords one of
the most necessary articles of diet. An ordinary body requires each
twenty-four hours from two to two and a half ounces of pure fat (fuel).
The required quantity of nuts may be eaten, but unless mastication is
perfect, they do not contribute to the body all the fats they contain,
while olive oil overcomes completely this difficulty.
MILK AND HONEY.
Milk and honey seem to be the only two things in existence that were
made primarily for no purpose except food. All other articles upon
which people subsist were created for some other purpose. All cereals,
legumes, fruits, nuts and vegetables in the great scheme of nature,
grow wholly to reproduce themselves; but the primary purpose of milk
and honey, when they are created, is for food. They seem to have no
other purpose to fulfill.
In order to be sure of securing pure honey it is best to purchase it in
the comb.
Pure milk as it comes from the cow should contain twelve to fourteen
per cent. solids and from three and a half to four and five eighths per
cent. cream. Pure milk is one of the best proportioned foods known to
science. Great care should be exercised, therefore, in its selection.
The best results are obtainable when it is taken unskimmed, as nature
has proportioned its nutritive elements in accordance with the
requirements of the body.
The custom of salting butter is altogether wrong, and inexcusable from
a hygienic standpoint. It had its origin, no doubt, in the fact that it
became commercially necessary in order to preserve it for the purpose
of shipping, transporting and marketing. During the last few years
fresh or sweet butter has come into general use in all the large cities
and well-appointed hotels and cafés. In Paris, where the culinary art
is studied and kept at a higher standard than at any other city in the
world, it is considered an offense to serve salted butter. It is taken
for granted that the article is aged and would have spoiled had it not
been preserved with salt.
FOOD COMBINATIONS.
Nearly every article of food known, as bad as some of them are, will
agree with the stomach if eaten alone or with a few other articles,
in normal quantities, whose chemical properties harmonize. When we
say that certain things do not agree with us, the fact is that these
things do not agree with themselves. The truth is, we have eaten a
combination of things that do not agree one with the other; and the
stomach, being the receptacle of this chemical disturbance, is made the
sufferer. The question of combinations is extremely important in cooked
foods, because the tendency of modern cookery is to mix, to jumble
together an innumerable number of things and pour over them condiments,
sauces and dressings that are composed of dozens of other ingredients,
until it becomes utterly impossible to ascertain by any method of
calculation how many different articles compose one whole. While it
is always well to observe correct combinations, it is in reality of
secondary importance, for in subsisting on uncooked foods the natural
tendency is towards simplicity. This is one of the greatest virtues
following their adoption. In the beginning many are likely to desire
each meal to be composed of a large number of articles. They like to
see it spread around; they want to see the table covered; they want to
see it groaning beneath a load, simply because they were raised that
way. They have no standard to measure from, except a cooked standard;
but this optical appetite soon wears off, and the taste and delicious
flavors that are developed by combining two or three things, lead the
elementary student to ignore numerical display and make a meal upon
three or four things.
A very delicious taste will be developed by eating fruits and nuts
together, care being taken to masticate the nuts thoroughly before
the fruits are put into the mouth. If this rule is observed in eating
vegetables and nuts, the same delightful taste will be experienced.
The following combinations have been found by experience to be
chemically harmonious, healthful and very nutritious:
Flaked wheat, with nuts, dates and cream.
Flaked wheat, nuts, honey, milk and cream.
Combination cereal with grated nuts and cream.
Egg-nog, protoid nuts, dates, lettuce salad with olive oil and cream.
Cold slaw with olive oil, protoid nuts, unfired bread, sweet apple with
thick cream.
The following articles compose three ideal meals for a perfectly normal
person:
_Breakfast._
One red apple with combination nut butter.
One ounce _protoid_ nuts.
Five or six black dates.
One glass Milk.
_Luncheon._
Sauce dish Combination Cereal.
One ounce Pecan Meats.
Two Turkish pulled Figs.
One ounce protoid nuts
Cold Slaw with Olive Oil.
Two cakes of Unfired Bread
Four prunes with thick cream.
Sweet Butter.
Glass of Egg-nog.
_Dinner._
Two ounces Nut Meats.
Vegetable Salad with Hygeia Dressing.
Two or three cakes Unfired Bread.
Combination nut butter.
Very ripe Banana with thick cream.
Pint of Whole Milk.
There is a popular opinion among the majority of people that appetite,
that is, a desire for food, is an evidence of good health. This is
one of the serious mistakes into which people have gradually evolved.
Irritation of the mucous membranes of the stomach is one of the most
serious and unhealthy conditions with which this much-abused organ
is afflicted; and while in this condition, it calls with ferocity for
food, the satisfying of which has killed suddenly hundreds of thousands
of people whose death is attributed nearly always by the learned
doctors to heart failure. And we agree with them completely. We have
never known any other method of demise, except for the heart to fail.
It is unquestionably the customary way to die, and it matters but
little whether the “heart failed” on account of being shot, beheaded
by a Cuban _machete_, or on account of an over-loaded stomach,--the
doctor’s “heart-failure” theory is safely correct.
There are five different classes of food; there are five different
digestive organs and five different kinds of digestive fluids.
The five classes of foods are, water, proteids, carbohydrates, fat and
mineral salts. The five organs of digestion are, the mouth, stomach,
liver, pancreas and intestinal glands.
The five different digestive fluids are, saliva, gastric juice,
pancreatic juice, bile and intestinal juices.
All the different kinds of food contain more or less water. All of the
different digestive fluids are composed largely of water.
Foods classed under the head of proteids are composed largely of
nitrogen, and embrace albumen in animal foods, the gluten and gelatine
in cereals, cellulose in vegetables, and the casein in milk and cheese.
The foods classed under the head of carbohydrates contain mostly starch
and sugar. All the cereals, vegetables, fruits and nuts are composed,
more or less, of carbohydrates. Many of these also contain nitrogen to
a sufficient degree to class them under the head of protein.
Mineral salts are found in all vegetables and fruits in sufficient
quantities to supply the needs of the body if it is fed upon these
articles. The salts of sodium, potassium, chlorides, calcium,
magnesium, phosphates and iron are the principal mineral or organic
salts and are the most important elements in forming the bony structure
of the human body.
These salts are found in abundance in all fruits, nuts and vegetables,
and when taken into the body in their natural or organic state they
contribute to the body all of their value as building material, but
in cooked foods these elements are rendered inorganic and become so
changed and dissipated as to be in many cases totally worthless. For
instance, iron is one of the principal properties of cabbage. Eaten
naturally it is an excellent food, easy of digestion and assimilation;
but cooked, the iron is set free and is as indigestible as saw filings.
In digesting starch and sugar, and all carbohydrates, an alkaline
solution or digestive fluid is required, a large amount of which is
furnished by the saliva. Hence, all cereals, fruits and vegetables
should be thoroughly masticated, insalivated and pulverized before
entering the stomach. And as the saliva is an alkaline substance, the
digestion of these foods, therefore, begins in the mouth.
All foods composed largely of starch, such as cereals, potatoes, and
nearly all legumes, should not be eaten at the same meal with sweets,
especially cane sugar.
All foods, whether fluids or solids, that contain starch or sugar, such
as rice, potatoes, corn, oats, in fact, all the cereal class, may be
eaten with safety at the same meal. Milk can also be taken with all the
carbohydrate family of foods.
All foods containing gluten, albumen or gelatine, such as meat, eggs,
and a few kinds of nuts, are classed as protein, and require an acid
solvent to be digested; therefore can be eaten with safety with all
kinds of fruits.
The digestive fluid secreted by the stomach is an acid substance;
therefore, the last-named foods are digested mainly in the stomach.
Milk, one of the best foods known, can be taken with all kinds of
fruits, provided no cereal starch be eaten at the same meal. All
foods that contain both carbohydrates and proteins compose healthful
combinations.
Starch, sugar and fats may be properly termed the “fuel of the body.”
They supply all the force, energy, heat and brain power of the system,
while proteids produce the structure in which this energy is reposed.
The few fundamental rules given here apply to a normal or healthy
stomach. Where any abnormal condition is present, selections of food
must be made to counteract and overcome them.
The study of food combinations, however, in its last analysis, is the
science of trying to ascertain the best way to do the wrong thing. The
less foods are mixed and combined at the same meal, the healthier and
higher that form of life will be which they build.
The system requires daily so much water, proteids, carbohydrates, fat
and salts. The foods necessary to supply these elements can be eaten at
different meals, instead of combining them all at the same time. It is
this most interesting and important problem that the use of uncooked
foods will solve.
The ultimate and most scientific end that can be attained in the study
of the food question is, to find in foods the exact requirements of a
normal body; in other words, a perfectly balanced bill of fare. This
is rendered extremely difficult when we subsist upon foods which have
been changed by any process from their elemental condition; but in
subsisting upon natural or elementary foods it is but a matter of time
when the taste will dictate the quality, and hunger the quantity, and
the perfectly balanced bill of fare becomes possible.
THE PREPARATION OF FOOD.
Many good women have spent the best part of their lives, and volume
after volume has been written in the endeavor to tell the world how to
prepare foods. The very words, “prepare foods,” suggest to the mind
that they are not right; that nature has not finished her work; that
something must be done to them before they are fit to convert into
human energy.
It suggests that they must be fixed, mixed, mashed, smashed, bruised,
ground, shredded, heated, steamed, baked, boiled, oiled, roasted,
toasted, greased, sweetened, soured, fermented, raised, mushed up, wet
up, dried out, or in some way changed from the way in which they were
handed to us by the provident hand of nature.
The securing of food is the chief business of every living thing on
this globe. The necessity of doing this has shaped to a very large
degree both the body and the mind. It made for man hands suitable for
plucking fruit, nuts, and things that grew above his head high up in
the air and sunshine. It gave to the lion claws and tusks to catch and
tear his food. It gave to the hog a snout with which to root in the
ground. It gave to the stork and the crane long legs and bills. It gave
to the giraffe a long neck with which to reach buds and leaves. It gave
to the honey bee an organ to collect honey, a sack in his own body to
carry it, and intelligence enough to make his cell in which to deposit
it for future use.
In the process of ages, want creates all that is necessary. Food taken
as nature made it will produce a natural being. When it is changed,
mixed, distilled and concentrated, it is unnatural, and it will
necessarily produce an unnatural being. For, as man is the net product
of his food, as is his food, so he must be. There is no problem in
philosophy more obvious than this.
It may be argued that our present methods of feeding are the product
of heredity, and with the long ages we have changed the artificial
into the natural. This is not true, because the ultimate end of
artificialism, that is, the violation of natural law, is extermination.
There is no such thing as getting used to the wrong thing.
A human being can never get used to whiskey and tobacco. They will
stimulate the nervous system above par, only to drop it farther below
each time they are touched. They leave their withering trail through
the body and brain of the real man, and sink lower and lower each day
the hopes, aspirations and emotions. They cover the faculties with
a callous veneering that finally becomes impervious to the sweetest
senses of the human heart.
Foods should be changed as little as possible from their elementary
condition. The idea of preparing foods should be allowed to fade
entirely from the human mind. It is well to remember that they have
been prepared once by a supreme intelligence, and it is seriously to be
doubted if the puny biped called man can very much improve them.
When the average mind thinks of uncooked foods, it is wont, it seems,
to fly to a meat store, more politely called a butcher shop, for proof
infallible that the scheme is wrong; and draw a picture of one dining
from the swinging carcass of a cow or hog, or going to the corn bin and
gnawing through a crack at an ear of yellow corn.
Instead, picture a dainty table in a quiet corner, covered with
spotless linen and laden with milk, cream, egg-nog, pecan meats,
walnuts, almonds, grapes, grape fruit, bananas, pears, apples, dates,
figs and raisins, luscious red melons and golden cantaloupes, lettuce,
cucumbers, ripe olives, celery, olive oil and a dozen other delicious
things, all of which being natural, satisfy hunger, furnish the highest
form of nutrition, and quickly appeal to and excite the highest sense
of taste and enjoyment. It is too bad that so many good people go
through the world from the cradle to the coffin, and, after leaving
the maternal fount, never enjoy, never taste, one good, clean, pure,
delicious meal.
PREPARATION OF UNCOOKED FOODS.
The idea of _preparing_ foods is so firmly fixed in the minds of women
that the very suggestion of lessening their labors in this direction
suggests the idea of limiting the family rations,--depriving the table
of its pleasure and luxury; therefore, it sometimes meets with more
or less opposition. Experience has shown that men are more willing
to accept the elementary food idea than women, particularly when it
promises to lighten the labors of their wives, mothers and daughters.
There has been for many thousand years a sort of competition between
housewives, hotels, and all public and private eating-places, as to
which could prepare the greatest variety of foods, the result of which
is that the table is held responsible for over ninety per cent. of all
human ills.
This result is not sufficiently creditable to cause thinking people
to clamor for its continuation. It reminds me of the consolation
that I received once from a gentleman with whom I was playing a game
of billiards. It was my off-day. The balls would neither “hit” nor
“hurdle,” while his plays were all graceful and effective; and I was
enjoying the supreme pleasure of seeing him make all the points beside
paying for the games. In answer to my complaint upon missing a simple
shot, he said, “Oh, this is nothing. I have seen luck run this way for
three or four hours, and all of a sudden get worse.”
The best foods need the least preparation. Geographic and climatic
conditions, under which most of us live, of course, make harvesting and
garnering necessary; and in order to store certain foods for winter
use, certain preparations become necessary; but when we come to prepare
them for the table, the effort should be to bring them back as nearly
as possible to their original condition.
All fruits from which the moisture has been evaporated, so that they
will keep from season to season, only need to have the moisture again
restored to them by being soaked in pure water at about the temperature
of the blood. This is the most healthful and delicious way evaporated
or dried fruits can be prepared.
That food is most healthful and will give to animal life its highest
form that can be taken most nearly in its natural condition. There is
nothing more obvious and certain than this. This course of reasoning
leads us to the inevitable conclusion that fruits, nuts, green
plants,--that is, plants containing much chlorophyll, comprise an
absolutely perfect diet.
Nearly every step in civilization has been taken in the direction of
lightening human labor, except in the art of preparing foods. This has
been doubled and trebled a thousand times, and laid upon the delicate
shoulders of woman. The rail-road train would never have been invented
had it not been that man objected to toting burdens on his back. The
telephone and telegraph were the outgrowth of man’s protest against the
courier system. The inventions of all the marvelous machines to which
we point as evidences and marks of our great civilization, originated
in the one thought, the saving of human labor. But the stomach is a
veritable gehenna, and the appetite its grizzly gorgon that holds
millions of women in a worse bondage than the negro suffered in the
South before the war.
EFFECTS OF COOKING FOOD.
In all nature there are two great forces working, as it were, against
each other; namely, construction and destruction. That is to say,
nature is, on the one hand, assembling together certain elements and
building them into forms we call life, and on the other it is breaking
down, changing and dissipating these elements, which process we call
death or destruction.
In the process of construction, the vegetable or plant takes up from
the mineral kingdom inorganic matter, and converts it into organic or
living matter, such as is found in fruits, nuts, cereals,--the natural
foods of man. It is only through this process that mineral elements can
build or become a part of animal life.
One of the most potent and effective agencies known to change and
demolish materials is fire. When we apply it to our food in the process
of cooking, it results in such a change as destroys the elementary
plant form, and the mineral elements return to their inorganic
condition. It cannot be otherwise, insomuch as it possesses absolutely
no element of construction.
At about 145° F. certain properties in plant life are destroyed. For
instance, a leaf of cabbage, if emersed in water that can easily be
endured by the bare hand, will wilt, showing that part of its cellular
life is destroyed at that temperature.
The heat can be increased until all plant life is destroyed. This
becomes important when we remember that animal life is supported and
entirely constructed from plant life. The living plant possesses all
the elements from which animal life is made. Therefore, the question
would naturally arise in the mind of any thinking person, “Why destroy
in part the plant life before feeding it to the animal? In what
possible way can the application of heat improve it?” Our education,
our science and learning, are of small value, if they do not teach us
how to build the highest form of animal life from the material used.
Many articles of our food are subjected to an intense dry heat, ranging
from 300° to 400° F., in the vain hope that in some way they may be
improved. Bread browned in an oven is partly changed to ashes. It is
half destroyed. Were it kept there twice as long it would be wholly
destroyed.
Yet millions of people insist on eating those supercooked foods. They
insist on wheat being made into Zwieback, which might be described as
a bit of ashes held together by a little gluten, without ever spending
one moment in thinking of the real difference in food value, between
this stuff and the grain in its original state.
Of all the curious customs into which people have evolved, cooking
seems to be the strangest and to possess the least excuse for
existence. It has made of woman a slave. It has made of the stomach a
_potpourri_ for everything living or dead. It so changes the properties
of foods that no chemist living can analyze them. It is the chief cause
of mixing food products, which is the principal cause of overeating,
which, in its turn, is the genesis of nearly all stomach and intestinal
disorders. It has changed man into an omnivorous, and in some cases
into a carnivorous animal.
COOKING MILK.
The custom of cooking or sterilizing milk, due to ignorance, is little
less than criminal.
Cooking milk is recommended by certain alleged dietetic authorities on
the ground that it kills bacteria. They probably forget, maybe do not
know, that all the five digestive fluids are strongly germicidal. The
bacteria that may exist in milk, of which so much fear is entertained,
could not live an instant after coming in contact with the gastric
juice which is strongly aciduous, to say nothing of contact with the
saliva, bile, and pancreatic and intestinal juices.
Milk, however, should be taken with some intelligence. A valuable
lesson in its proper use can be learned from the calf, or nursing
infant, which draw and swallow it in small quantities and which keep up
a continuous motion of the jaws as if in chewing, thus pumping into the
mouth enough saliva to aid nature in the first process of digestion.
Milk can be thoroughly insalivated by taking it into the mouth and
mixing it with other foods which have been thoroughly masticated and
are ready for swallowing.
The too free use of boiled or sterilized milk will produce scurvy in
children, and when scurvy exists both sterilized and raw milk must
be discontinued. It is certainly, therefore, much better to commence
at once the use of milk in its natural condition than to risk the
development of scurvy and then be compelled to entirely do without such
a valuable food.
Sterilized milk lacks freshness. It tastes dead, and to a very great
extent it is dead. Milk is rich in albuminoids, derived, as it is,
from tissues that contain them, and are present in a vitalized form as
proteids. The change that takes place in boiling is the coagulation of
the proteid molecules, which sets free the inorganic molecules, thus
rendering them as to the iron and fluorine unabsorbable, and as to the
phosphates unassimilable. It is this most vital change that takes place
when milk is cooked.
The use of sterilized milk becomes especially serious when it is
remembered that children require both phosphatic and ferric proteids in
a living form which are contained only in the natural or uncooked milk.
When adults have long violated the dietetic laws by
overfeeding,--consuming large quantities of food and drink that have
been devitalized by fire and fermentation,--milk is, in many cases, the
one food that will restore a normal condition; especially is this true
in advancing old age when the organs of digestion become weak, and the
requirements of the body are more like those of the infant. Milk is
then of more and more importance as an article of food.
FLESH FOODS.