to attain a very fine physical development and seem to maintain
good health who subsist upon a mixed diet, including meat. It is
unquestionably true that meat will sustain life, and it is equally true
that life can be sustained without it.
The objections to meat are: First, it is laden with the poisons that
come from the torn-down tissue and urea of the animal, all of which
must be taken into the blood and disposed of by the excretory organs
of the body which are always worked to their normal capacity to carry
off the waste products that come from our own body; and when laden with
that of another animal, they are often taxed beyond their power.
Second, recent experiments in the State of Ohio and Illinois developed
the fact that about 76 per cent. of the best cattle in these two States
are diseased. The majority of them have tuberculosis. All readers of
this book may not be willing to wholly eschew the juicy sirloin, or
even the fat pork chop; but we do believe that when they have thought
the matter seriously over without the consultation of appetite, they
will decide that the flesh of another animal is not only hazardous, but
wholly unnecessary as an article of food.
If one decides that meats are absolutely necessary, it should be his
object to take it in its best and most nutritive form. Cooking cannot
possibly improve it. The only change that heat could possibly make
would be to convert part of its nutritive value into heat and pass
it off into the atmosphere. Inasmuch, therefore, as heat is merely
an expression of energy, the energy or heat lost in cooking might be
applied to the body if the meat were eaten without the application of
fire.
The most popular reason given for cooking meat is that it kills disease
germs. In the first place, nothing should be eaten that contains
disease germs, and in the second place, heat does not kill them. The
germs cannot be destroyed until the meat is destroyed of which they are
a part. In partly cooked or rare meats no germs are destroyed, and it
is admitted by all authorities that rare meats are more easily digested
and far more nutritious than those well done. There is no reason why
the rare meat idea should not be carried to its logical end, and the
food served entirely raw.
In the form of meat there is nothing more nourishing than beefsteak
a la Tartar (see recipe), or Hamburger steak, uncooked, dried beef,
jerked venison, etc. All of these are much to be preferred to the
cooked article.
If cooking were abolished the taste and requirements of the body would
very soon solve the meat question. People would eat shell fish, dried
and smoked meat, and possibly beefsteak a la Tartar so long as the
body called for or demanded them, and _no longer_. This would also
solve several other great questions with which misguided individuals,
societies, churches, political parties and State legislatures are
vainly struggling.
It is impossible to keep alive the appetite for such stimulants as
tobacco, fermented and distilled liquors, tea and coffee, when the body
is correctly fed. A being who subsists upon clean, elementary foods
would have no more desire for stimulants and narcotics than a horse or
a dog would have for a Manhattan cocktail.
It is the changing, the perverting, the cooking and the artificializing
of foods that creates and keeps alive these abnormal desires. If we
feed the body upon elementary foods, in the state in which nature
created them, we can depend upon it to suggest to us daily that which
it needs. The strange faculty of hunger was made a part of the human
organism, to perform this specific work.
NUTS.
Nuts, one of the best articles of food known to science, the thing
which helped to lift primitive man from a gibbering anthropoid to the
Greek Apollo, are by many people the most misunderstood and maligned
articles in all the dietetic catalogue. The nut is commonly used now,
and for many decades has been used, as a confection, or to finish off
the alleged good dinner; and while it was the only decent article of
diet eaten during the feast, yet owing to its geographical position in
the “potpourri” it was charged up with a lot of mischief for which it
was in no wise responsible.
There are many intelligent people who sincerely believe the nut to be
an indigestible and harmful article of food, and we quite agree with
them when it is eaten about number 21 at a swell course dinner. But
when given an opportunity and eaten as a decent nut should be, it is
one of the most delicious, harmless, healthful and hygienic articles
of food that ever graced a civilized table.
It is encouraging, however, when we know that the nut is rapidly
gaining in appreciation and popularity. The great food reform movement
that is now sweeping over this country and civilized Europe has caused
thousands of people to abandon the use of flesh foods, and the natural
substitute therefor is nuts.
The pecan nut, which has been considered in the South for many decades
as a wild, prodigal growth of no great importance, is now being
cultivated, harvested and husbanded as one of the most profitable, as
well as one of the most important, articles of food grown in that balmy
clime.
The Agricultural Department of our national government has just
published a pamphlet on the subject of budding and growing the pecan.
Pecan orchards are being planted in various localities in the South,
and several States have adopted measures to encourage this industry.
During the next few years this movement will undoubtedly receive the
attention it has so long merited. It looks as though within the next
few years we might see the boundless plains of Texas converted into
pecan orchards instead of cattle ranches. It looks as though in the
near future we might see great pecan shelling mills instead of the
slaughter house. The food elements necessary to sustain life are
probably better proportioned in the pecan than in any other nut known.
There are over fifty varieties of this splendid nut now grown in the
Southern States.
In any large market can be found from fifteen to eighteen different
kinds of nuts, all of which possess very superior life-giving
properties.
Nuts are especially to be recommended as an article of food, owing
to the fact that they have not yet been very much contaminated by
the cook stove. The lowly peanut, which has hitherto been considered
worthy of no place on the American table, possesses most excellent food
properties, equal to some and superior to many of the more expensive
varieties.
Nuts should be thoroughly masticated. They should be reduced by the
teeth to a perfect emulsion before entering the stomach, and not more
than two ounces eaten at a meal. Two ounces of pure fat is enough
to supply the demands of a normal body for twenty-four hours. By
consulting our table on nuts, a correct idea can be gained as to the
quantity of each variety that should be consumed each day. Almonds,
peanuts and Brazil nuts should be blanched--that is, the inner covering
should be removed before eating.
It is amazing to think of the kind of food that alleged civilized
people subsist upon, when nature spreads before them its vast fields
and stores of fruits and nuts that have waved to and fro in the
pure air and sunshine, that have drawn their substances from old
Mother Earth and filtered them through a hundred feet of pure white
wood--life-giving substances that have responded to the warm embraces
of summer and spring--substances that have fed the swelling bud,
burst it into bloom, and filled it with fragrance and honey, sweet as
Araby’s fabled rose--foods born from the fecund womb of Mother Earth,
fed on the fragrance and wrapped in the many-hued swaddling clothes of
odorous blossoms, and rocked by every pure and passing breeze in the
life-giving cradle of summer and spring, and nursed to maturity at the
breast of maternal nature and cooked by the fires of the eternal sun.
FRUITS.
In subsisting upon elementary foods, fruits constitute the second most
important article of diet. They occupy a most conspicuous place in the
needs of the human body.
The succulent class, such as apples, oranges, grapes, peaches, plums,
pineapples, and all the juicy berries, possess great germicidal
properties, in addition to their value as food. They seem to be
designed by nature to destroy pathogenic bacteria in other foods while
giving to the body their own nutrition.
It would astonish the average omnivorous Englishman or American to
know what magnificent specimens of manhood are built almost entirely
from fruits in some of the South Sea Islands. According to the most
authentic history of man, fruits were undoubtedly his first and
primitive diet. Primitive man was active, nimble and agile. Fruits left
no deposits in his veins and arteries to age and stiffen them. Fruits
made for him pure blood, and breathing the open air kept it pure. His
surplus energy demanded activity which kept the pure blood surging
through his veins. Long life, superior power and endurance were the
results.
It is a hopeful sign, however, for the future health and longevity of
our race that the demand for and consumption of fruits are rapidly
increasing.
Each distinct genera of fruit has a specific effect or office to
perform in the human body. Oranges, while possessing about the same
food value as milk, acts directly upon and stimulates the activity of
the liver, while apples are the best remedy known for that “dark brown”
taste so often experienced next morning after the course dinner.
The best thing to do with an elegant course dinner late in the evening
is to leave it on the table; but insomuch as the appetite is generally
our complete master and law giver, we know this will not be done.
Therefore, the next best thing to do after such a debauch is to make an
entire breakfast of tart apples, thoroughly masticated.
The juice of the pineapple, which contains much hydrochloric acid, is
among the best remedies known for diphtheria. When this disease first
makes its appearance, if the juice of well-ripened pineapples be given
freely to the patient it will not only destroy diphtheria germs, but
will stimulate activity of the excretory organs, which is an action
always desired in such cases.
The banana will supply the body with all the elements of nourishment
that is obtained from cereals. Many cases of chronic stomach disorder
have been permanently cured under the direction of the authors by
eliminating wholly all cooked cereals and breads of every description
and substituting therefor the simple diet of very ripe bananas.
It is believed by many people who are very fond of fruits that bananas
do not agree with them. Close observation will show in every instance
that this condition is the result of other things with which the fruit
is mixed in the stomach and the trouble can be overcome by making
an entire meal occasionally on fruits and nuts or fruit alone. The
juice of strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and dewberries is
very delicious and healthful. When it is pressed out and the refuse
discarded there is no better food in the fruit family. But the large
amount of seeds these berries contain, which are very hard and entirely
insoluble, produces in many people violent irritation of the mucous
membranes of the intestinal tract which manifests itself in many
harmful ways.
Grape fruit contains many very pronounced and valuable medicinal
properties. It is a natural antidote for biliousness when taken
naturally, but the practice of eating it with sugar counteracts almost
entirely its medicinal value, as the consumption of cane sugar is one
of the causes of torpidity of the liver. Therefore, in taking sugar
with grape fruit you are working one agency against another. Like nuts,
the most desirable feature about fruits is that they are not an article
commonly considered necessary to be cooked. Of course, the cook has
undertaken in many ways to improve them by the application of his art,
but up to date has been unsuccessful, as is evidenced by the fact that
nearly all fruits are used in their natural or elementary state.
In living upon uncooked foods we must necessarily depend very largely
upon fruits and nuts, but we should exercise judgment, patience and
toleration. We must remember that we often suffered for our wrong
eating, and accommodating nature may have partially adjusted our
bodies to these incorrect habits. Therefore, when correct methods of
eating are employed, the wrong must be undone and overcome, and the
stomach sometimes rebels against the change. However, the body will
adjust itself much quicker to the right than the wrong, and when the
adjustment is once made and the natural dietetic law obeyed, perfect
health, strength, endurance and vitality are the inevitable results.
CEREALS.
The literary fabric of the ancient world has been woven from a warp of
fiction and a woof of fact. When we turn to it we find the beautiful,
the poetic, the absurd and the true so mixed together that scholars of
every nation regard their separation as worthy of their most profound
thought.
It was from this confusion that the word “cereal” came. Ceres was
a goddess worshipped by the ancient Romans. She occupies a most
conspicuous place in the beautiful myths that adorn the classic
literature of those ancient peoples. She was considered the head of the
Agricultural Department. Her special duty was to sit on fleecy clouds
and pour from the hollow of her mythical hand floods of sunshine and
showers of rain over the grainfields of the Cæsars. Therefore, all
grains grouped together were called cereals.
These articles were first used only when in a green or soft state--that
is, from the time the grains began to form in a milky condition until
they ripened and become so hard as to hazard the integrity of the
teeth. Later they were soaked in water to soften them, and then in warm
water, which saved time and facilitated the work of preparation. This
custom evolved into the use of hot water, then hotter water, until
boiling or the present method of cooking resulted.
In order to facilitate and lighten the labor in the preparation of
cereals, they were pounded, crushed and broken, which custom very
naturally evolved into the modern grinding and bolting mill. When
cereals are in a milky state before they become hardened, before nature
throws around them an envelope of cellulose for their protection, they
are easy of digestion, and are excellent food. But when they have
become thoroughly ripened and hardened, each molecule of starch, of
which they are so largely composed, is enclosed in another envelope
which is almost impervious to the digestive fluids.
It has been shown by modern research that cooking does not break up
this covering. The modern methods of grinding and cooking cereals
render mastication unnecessary as far as pulverizing them is concerned.
Therefore, they pass the taste-buds under false pretenses; they deprive
them of their rights; they do not have time to perform their duties,
hence they do not pour into the mouth the amount of saliva necessary to
perform the first step in digestion.
Soft, mushy foods are also responsible for the woeful decay of teeth,
which is such a conspicuous mark of civilized man. Nature will not keep
alive or produce, generation after generation, any part of the anatomy
that is not used. Her system of economy is perfect.
When cereals are taken in their natural state, or not too completely
pulverized, so that the teeth may be employed in their final and
complete grinding, they constitute a valuable food for a normal,
healthy person. This would also be better for the teeth, and make
cereal substances much easier to digest and more thoroughly convertible
into energy. Under the present dietetic régime, in which cereals are
regarded as the staff of life, it is safe to say that more than fifty
per cent. of all stomach disorders are caused by undigested cereal
starch.
VEGETABLES.
The word “vegetable,” in its broadest sense, is used to describe
everything of an herbaceous character,--everything in plant life, not
merely food products.
When we consider only that portion which is used to support animal
life, its meaning becomes much narrowed. When we consider that portion
used as food by _man_, it is more narrowed still. But when we come to
consider that which is or can be used in an uncooked state, it becomes
more limited still.
Some very high authorities claim that vegetables are wholly unnecessary
in the sustenance of the human body, but experience has led us to the
conclusion that those containing much chlorophyl, such as lettuce,
cabbage, celery, spinach, parsley, onions, watercress, dandelion, etc.,
are very necessary and valuable articles of food, and many vegetables
that can be taken in an uncooked form are found to be very rich in the
organic salts so essential to the maintenance of health.
In the selection of foods, one of the safest rules to be governed by is
that all articles that can be used in their natural condition, as they
are handed to us by Mother Nature, if they do not offend the sense of
taste and smell, are good food, and, on the contrary, all articles that
have to be ground, mixed, fixed, cooked, greased, mushed and mussed up,
are not only unnecessary, but are not good foods.
Aside from the fact that the adoption of uncooked foods will produce
the highest form of physical, mental and moral health, its next
most important office is to do away with the enormous labor and
complications in the preparation of foods.
BREAD--FERMENTATION.
In considering the adoption of uncooked foods in the household, bread
becomes the most serious problem with which the housewife has to
deal. It has become one of the most important articles of food, and
is deserving of the most serious consideration here, because of the
fact that in the process of making, fermentation, one of the most
deleterious processes known in the culinary art, is introduced.
The evils which follow the cooking or super-heating of all other
articles of food cease with their cooking, which consist principally
in lessening their food value. But bread, the so-called staff of life,
is not only subjected to the devitalizing process of baking, but is
infected with a germ that converts a large amount of the nutritive
value of the grain into carbon dioxide poison.
The first step in nature’s process of disintegration--that is, the
changing of matter back into its original elements, is fermentation.
When foods ferment in the stomach, it is because too much has been
eaten, or that combinations have been put together, the chemical
properties of which act with violence, one upon the other. The stomach
being unable to dispose of the burden, nature, in her kindness, aids
in its disposition by an attempt at disintegration by fermentation or
decay.
From the standpoint of him who knows the Laws that govern Health, it
is indeed amazing to contemplate the means men and women have employed
to harm themselves--to shorten their lives--to change their mental
condition from happiness to unhappiness.
One of the quickest known methods for the accomplishment of these ends
is the use of fermented foods. As an instrument for making disease,
indigestion, irritation of the mucous membranes, nervousness, and
troubles of all sorts in all the intestinal machinery, it is the most
effective and successful thing ever employed.
People seem not to be content with subjecting their foods to a powerful
heat and robbing them of their original elements--devitalizing them,
changing their life-giving carbon into carbonic acid gas--changing the
starch into dextrine, etc. But to make sure they are thoroughly unfit
for use introduce yeast germs into dough and allow it to stand over
night in a nice, warm, comfortable place, so as to be certain that the
few germs will multiply themselves into millions and billions more.
We do not wish to spoil the reader’s appetite for fermented bread;
but since we are discussing the subject, let us tell the truth about
it. Bread rises when infected with the yeast germ, because millions
of these little worms have been born and have died, and from their
dead and decaying bodies there arises a gas just as it does from the
dead body of a hog, or any other animal. This gas being confined in
the dough, expands, and the whole mass rises. It is at this particular
point that it becomes fit for baking--fit for _human food_. Think of
it! It is at this point that it is supposed to be the proper material
out of which to make the best quality of flesh and blood. It looks
incredible, indeed, that such a process has found favor all these years
among a sane, sensible and civilized people.
In reference to fermentation, Dr. E. P. Miller, an eminent authority
on the subject, writes: “Fermentation passes through three different
stages or processes. In the first one, yeast fermentation converts
starch and sugar into yeast germs, and during the process carbon
dioxide poison and alcohol are developed.
“In the second, acetic fermentation changes the alcohol and other
substances containing it into acetic acid or vinegar.
“The third stage is putrefaction, by which the decomposition of food
substances containing nitrogen, such as albumen, gluten, casein, etc.,
takes place by being converted into dead and putrid matter. Digestion
is not fermentation and the digestive fluids are not ferments, as has
long been supposed. Digestion is a physiological process, and hence
should not be considered as any part of the normal digestive acts.
“Fermentation does not exist in any portion of the alimentary canal
under healthy conditions. The difference between digestion and
fermentation is the difference between taking nutritive material,
foods, and converting them into living tissue, as takes place under
the true digestive process, or taking these nutritive materials, as is
done by the yeast germ, and starting them on the way to destruction,
putrefaction and death.
“One is a process by which nutritive material is used for the support
and maintenance of life. The other takes nutritious material and
converts it into death--starts it on the way to corruption. The one is
health-giving and life-maintaining, the other is disease-producing and
death-dealing.”
The process of fermenting bread is exactly the same as that which is
carried on in the vat for making beer, or through which the grain
passes in making whiskey and through which fruit passes in making
brandies and wines. It creates in the human organism the same set of
conditions that is created in the production of nearly all intoxicating
beverages; therefore, what seems to be the natural appetite for
intoxicants is a false cry of perverted nature first created and set
in motion by what we are pleased to call the staff of life--_fermented
bread_.
The temperance people would do well to go into their laboratories and
study causes instead of spending so much nervo-mental force in dealing
with effects. They would be entitled to the profoundest respect of the
thinking world if they would solve the question of why people desire
intoxicants, instead of trying to close a few rum-shops by calling on
the police.
No man or woman who will live for six months on pure, clean, uncooked
foods can possibly keep alive an appetite for stimulants or narcotics.
From this rule there is absolutely no variance. There can be no room
in the human body, a body made of nature’s unchanged foods, for such
foreign elements as tobacco and rum.
Note:--Fermented bread has come into such general use and occupies
such an important position in modern cookery that we feel justified
in digressing in this one instance and giving a recipe for a pure,
unfermented wheat bread. See recipes.
CONDIMENTS.
The use of condiments must have originated in the desire to supply
something that was missing in the taste of cooked foods, and it is
undoubtedly true that in the process of cooking the nature of many
food products becomes so changed that they taste flat and insipid. For
instance, a sweet turnip is tasty and liked by many in its raw state,
but when it is cooked it seems to need salt or something to give it
flavor and life.