Otto Ule

“ As we start out with the principle, too late recognized in historical research, that the selection of articles of food is not only important for the personal well-being of the individual, but that it is a weighty, world-stirring question for countries and nations in its bearings on the history of civilization, we will, therefore, endeavor to look closely into it, and study the mode in which this influence is exerted.
If nations are to flourish, they, no less than individuals, need wholesome, strong food. The only question is, How are we to determine what food is strong and wholesome? ”

“ Hence, it might seem to be an easy thing to find wholesome food, as though one had only to seize blindly the store of food offered by Nature, in order to get all that our organism requires to keep it vigorous. But it is not to be forgotten that, while the nutritive elements make up the losses of the organism, and renew the body, as it were, still they must be taken in certain definite proportions. Now, in Nature they are not distributed in any such proportion. There the greatest diversity is found; one food-stuff consists principally of blood-formers, another of heat-producers ”

“ THE progress of science does not consist merely in the discovery of new facts and the enlargement of our knowledge, or even in the ingenious conclusions thence drawn, and which, from their universality, acquire the character of laws; its mightiest work is the change it brings about in our fundamental conceptions, and the consequent revolution in science itself. As science advances, it gains new principles, new arguments ”

“ What food he got by hunting and fishing was precarious, and there were intervals of famine; for fortune does not always smile on the hunter, and the beasts of the forest are not always equally numerous. The food, too, was uniform, and not altogether adapted for man, for the flesh of wild animals lacks fat. The man of those times had not enough of the heat-producers in his food; and that he felt this want, we learn from his taste for the marrow of bones. All the long bones of animals that are found in cave-dwellings are cracked open lengthwise, in order to get out the marrow. ”

“ Man has become a child of Nature; in Nature are all the conditions of his life and development. Climate and soil, the conformation of the land, and the distribution of water, determine the physical and the mental development of nations. It has long been seen that peoples differ, that their history and their civilization are different, accordingly as they live in valleys or on mountains, in islands or in the interior of continents, in deserts and steppes or in forests, in an open, hilly country, or in sequestered valleys. ”

“ The heat-producers or respiratory foods are those rich in carbon; these specially serve to support, with the aid of inspired oxygen, the process of combustion so necessary for the purposes of the organism. Finally, there is a third group of nutritious substances—the nutritive salts—which are of an inorganic nature, and which, after combustion of the food, remain in the shape of ash.
All these food-materials are essential, since with them the organism is built up. Life is an unceasing process of waste and repair, and the food must make good the loss the organism suffers every instant. ”

“ But there have been preserved for us in caverns remains dating from the Ice Age, which tell us of the food used by man in those times. Man then inhabited Central Europe in company with the reindeer, the cave-bear, and the mammoth. He was exclusively a hunter and fisher, as is shown by the bones of animals found in his cave-dwellings. The miocene vegetation, which abounded in arboreal fruits, had disappeared during the long period of the subsequent pliocene formations, the climate of Central Europe, meanwhile, having gradually become colder. Nature supplied no fruits for the food of man. ”

“ Only with a varied and alternating dietary can we be sure that what is lacking in one food-stuff will be supplied in another, and that what we fail to get to-day we shall have to-morrow. What is commonly regarded as simply the result of a spoilt palate, viz., the repugnance excited by the steady recurrence of the same dish, is an uprising of the organism itself against a food which does not meet its requirements ”

“ Foods have been classed in different groups, according to the influence they have on the body, in virtue of their essential constituents; and though this classification, like every artificial classification we make in Nature, is only approximately correct, still it gives us some ground to stand on. Blood-formers, or albuminates, are those albuminous materials which constitute the nutritive elements of the blood, and enter into the composition of the muscles, bones, sinews, and ligaments, on which the exercise of force specially depends. ”

“ The ground under our feet has preserved them in its strata; they rest in barrows and in caves, and in the bottom of lakes and bogs, and these primitive documents are not silent as to the food of extinct nations. ”

“ When we would protect ourselves against the chance which gives up our houses to destruction by fire, or when we would secure our dependents against the accident which deprives us of life and them of a protector, we take out an insurance policy on house or life. ”

“ There is no branch of knowledge that has not experienced this, and even historical investigation is no exception. Time was when the earth used to be regarded as merely the temporary abode of man, or even as the place where he spent a brief term of banishment. ”

“ Here we have an important rule for determining a wholesome diet. The foods we use must contain the indispensable elements of nutrition in due proportion; our food must be mixed, varied, and alternating. ”

“ In the present status of research, the earliest authentic traces of man on earth go no further back than the age of ice, so called, and the accompanying or subsequent formation of the diluvium or drift. ”

“ Fortunately, these nutritive principles are found by no means sparingly distributed throughout Nature; under the most varied forms they occur in almost every food-stuff used by man. We not only find the blood-formers in the shape of fibrine in the blood and muscles of animals, of albumen in eggs, of casein in milk, of lime and areolar tissue in cartilage, sinew, and skin, but also in the vegetable kingdom ”

“ Such substances are common salt, potash, lime, magnesia, phosphoric acid, and, above all, iron, without which the blood-corpuscles would lose their vitality. But none of these groups is, by itself, sufficient for nutrition; they must all be combined. Blood-formers, heat-producers, and nutritive salts, are not separately foods, but only factors of food, each as indispensable for the vital processes as air and water, but each incapable by itself of supporting life. One cannot live on albumen alone or on fat alone. ”

“ Without lime-phosphate no bone would be formed, no matter how much pure albumen and fat we ate; and without albumen no muscular tissue would be formed, though we were to gorge ourselves with sugar and salt ”

“ For, if one, being over-anxious on this point, wished to avoid all danger by having all his food examined by a chemist, so as to apportion by weight the amount of this substance and of that which he should take, there is reason to fear that he would die of hunger long before the chemist had concluded the analysis. ”

“ We defeat chance, when we share it with others. To apply all this to the matter in hand: we must not restrict ourselves to a few articles of food, but must have a great variety of foods to select from ”

“ Historical research, however, has but recently begun to concern itself with the natural causes of the development of civilization, and many an important aspect of this subject is still entirely overlooked. ”

“ Let us now advance a step further, and glance at a time a few thousand years nearer to our own, the period of the ancient pile-dwellings. Man then built up huts, and even villages, on piles, in the midst of lakes. ”

“ Now, this insufficient, uniform food has its counterpart, in the low grade of culture which then prevailed, as evidenced by the mode of life, the weapons, and the tools. Man then lived isolated, without social organization ”