German Diet

“ In Germany it is the lack of fat that is the cause, perhaps, of the most discomfort and makes the German most dissatisfied with his rations. Even when the diet was sufficient, it was not satisfactory if low in fat.
This dependence on fat in the diet is due to several reasons, both physiological and psychological. Some people, the Japanese for example, habitually eat but little. But it is the habit of both Europeans and Americans to use considerable fat both on the table and in cooking. The taste of food is not so pleasing without it. ”

“ Throughout the German Empire, the cereals, legumes, greens, roots, and fruits supply an important proportion of the food consumed by the common population. Wheaten bread chiefly, and some made from rye, also beans and peas, are used abundantly. Potatoes and green vegetables of all kinds are served in numerous ways, but largely in soups, a favorite dish. Meats, chiefly pork, are greatly esteemed in the form of sausage, and appear also as small portions or joints, but freely garnished with vegetables, on the tables of those who can afford animal diet. ”

“ But the most important influence of eating is exhibited in politics. Here we observe, in the first place, the fact that a substantial diet in a people is, with scarcely one exception inseparable from a certain degree of rational freedom. It is for this reason principally that the nations of the North are with great difficulty reduced to slavery; while the South, more abstemious in eating, has always been more easily conquered and subdued. ”

“ He puts philosophy and science into a readable, comprehensible shape. The Teutonic diet of sauer-kraut, sausages, cheese, ham, etc., is indigestible, giving rise to a vaporous, cloudy cerebral state. German philosophy and mysticism are its natural outcome. ”

“ The body should be, and is, regarded by wholesome-minded people, not as an idol, but as an instrument. The German no doubt sees something ignominious in counting as one chews a chop, in the careful measuring of one’s liquids, in the restricting of oneself to the diet of the squirrel and the cow. ”

“ The diet was a great council of the German empire, consisting of the princes, provincial rulers and the chief dignitaries of the church. The diet from the 10th century had assumed the right of electing the emperor of Germany, subject to confirmation by the pope, by whom alone he could be crowned. The diet was also usually assembled for the consideration of very important matters pertaining to the empire. ”

“ Every one in Germany is getting thin, and the German dieting system proves that much worn-out 50 statement that "we eat too much," for nine out of every ten Germans have never been so well in their lives as they have been since the cards have been introduced. You feel spry, active and energetic, and the annoyance is mental rather than physical, for one is constantly thinking of things to eat.
Woman Selling Ices.
The ones that are really hurt by the blockade are the growing children, and the thing that they lack and long for is sweets. ”

“ As they grew dimmer and grayer in the waning light, the rents and seams of centuries disappeared, and the palace of the old Electors used to stand before me in its ancient pride.
It may not be generally known that the day-laborer of America has better food and more of it than many a wealthy burgher of Central Europe. Only the very few, in Germany, can indulge in beefsteaks for breakfast. I soon learned to conform myself to the cup of coffee and piece of dry bread of the German’s morning repast. ”

“ In response to our request to the landlady for an addition of cold meat or steak to the coffee and rolls of the breakfast, and for more warmth in the room, accompanied by an expression of willingness to make additional payment for the same, the reply, given in a courteous manner, was that Americans lived in rooms much too warm, and ate too much meat, and that it would be for their health in Germany to conform to the German customs. ”

“ Our diet, in fact, is much too dry, and could be improved without resorting to lager-beer, which redeems its deleterious influence to some degree by helping the Germans to digest their pungent comestibles. ”

“ So they eat every few hours. When you first arrive you feel stuffed to bursting all the time, for you naturally eat heartily at every meal, because, as we only eat three times a day in America, we are accustomed to take a good deal at once. Here they have five meals a day, and one has to learn how to take a little at a time. But it is a pretty good idea, for you are continually repairing yourself, and you never have such a strain on your system as to get hungry! The German women are plump roly-polies, as a general rule, and it is probably in consequence of this continual "strengthening." ”

“ In the casual wards of workhouses the dietary is plainer, consisting of 8 oz. of bread, or 6 oz. of bread and one pint of gruel or broth for breakfast; the same for supper; for dinner 8 oz. of bread and 11/2 oz. of cheese or 6 oz. of bread and one pint of soup. The American poor law system is based broadly on that of England, and the methods of relief are much the same. Each state, however, makes its own regulations, and there is considerable diversity in workhouse dietaries in consequence. The German system of poor relief is more methodical than those of England and America. ”

“ That the food question is the dominating topic in Germany among all except the very rich, and that this winter will add to the intensity of the conversations on the subject, is not difficult to understand. Most of the shopping of the world is done by women, and the German woman of the middle class, whose maidservant has gone off to a munition factory, has to spend at least half her day waiting in a long line for potatoes, butter, or meat. ”

“ It is held that flesh food is in itself a stimulant, and that incidentally it is very liable to transmit disease, while vegetarianism, on the contrary, is a simple, natural, less inflammatory diet, which from the earliest times has been known and practised by a few wise persons as containing the secret of health. In Germany, especially, the system of "natural living" has attracted much attention, and the propaganda of food reform is there mainly on those lines ”

“ To bread and potatoes had fallen the task of keeping the mass of the people alive, and the latter were usually, the former always, of low quality.
The resultant gnawings of perpetual hunger had brought to light a myriad of Ersatz foods that were in reality no food at all. It was frequently asserted that this consumption of unwholesome imitations of food was responsible for the erratic conduct of many a present-day German, manifesting itself now in morose, now in talkative moods, often in more serious deviations from his moral character. ”

“ Food is so much a matter of taste and custom, that it seems absurd to make dogmatic remarks about the superiority of one kitchen to another. If you like cold mutton, boiled potatoes and rice pudding, most days in the week, you like them and there is an end of it. The one thing you can say for certain is that to cook for you requires neither skill nor pains, while to cook for a German family, even if it lives plainly and poorly, takes time and trouble. ”

“ An officer of the chemical division of our army who conducted a long investigation within the occupied area found that while the bulk of food should have been sufficient to keep the population in average health, the number of calories was barely one-third what the human engine requires.
The chief reason for this was that food had become more and more Ersatz—substitute articles, ranging all the way from “something almost as good” to the mere shadow of what it pretended to be. “We have become an Ersatz nation,” wailed the German press, “and have lost in consequence many of our good qualities. ”

“ I seldom breakfast, and then only on bread and butter. I take neither chocolate, nor coffee, nor tea, not being able to endure those foreign drugs. I am German in all my habits, and like nothing in eating or drinking which is not conformable to our old customs. I eat no soup but such as I can take with milk, wine, or beer. I cannot bear broth; whenever I eat anything of which it forms a part, I fall sick instantly, my body swells, and I am tormented with colics. When I take broth alone, I am compelled to vomit even to blood, and nothing can restore the tone of my stomach but—ham and sausages! ”

“ The great shortage in animal flesh and fats had made the German of the urban rank and file a vegetarian by force. Theoretically every one got the allotted one hundred and twenty-five grams of meat a week; practically many could not even pay for that, and even if they had been able to it would scarcely have ranked them among the carnivorous species. ”

“ Excellent hams and sausages are to be had here; and the Viennese who dines and sups heartily at his own house never fails, during his evening promenade, to take a tolerable good portion of ham or sausage, with a proportion of Offen wine or Maylander Beer, by way of staying his stomach during the tedious interval between dinner and supper. I need scarce add that smoking is universal, as indeed it is all over Germany, for I scarcely ever see a German without a pipe either in his mouth or fastened to his coat and a bag or pouch of tobacco either in his pocket or attached to his button hole. ”

“ They are, it seems, a favourite dainty at a Bavarian Kirchweih, and must be provided in large quantities. On the fair field itself the food offered by the stall-keepers seemed to be chiefly enormous slabs of shiny gingerbread made in fanciful shapes, such as hearts, lyres, and garlands, cheap sweetmeats, and the small boiled sausages the artless German eats in public without a knife and fork. ”

“ To eat no salad, fruit, or vegetables—to drink no beer or wine—to eat no bread. The exceptional cases are rare; hence the provision consists but of sundry preparations of meat, decanters of water, pudding resembling boiled pound-cake, and baskets of small rolls. The latter, made of wheaten flour, are not recognised as bread, but come under the common term, Semmel—the simmel of which we read in descriptions of lordly banquets in our Plantagenet days. The term bread is confined to the large brown and black loaves made of rye meal, the staple of household diet in Bohemia ”

“ The Professor's wife not only taught Mary the making of superior pastry and the cooking of German dishes, but what was of still greater importance, taught her the value of different foods; that cereals of every description, flour and potatoes, are starchy foods; that cream, butter, oil, etc., are fat foods; that all fruits and vegetables contain mineral matter; and that lean meat, eggs, beans, peas and milk are muscle-forming foods. These are things every young housekeeper should have a knowledge of to be able to plan nourishing, wholesome, well-balanced meals for her family. ”

“ What is lacking in quality of the peasant’s food is made up in quantity or rather the frequency with which it is partaken of. There is early breakfast, lunch at nine A.M., called from its hour s’nüni, dinner at twelve, lunch again at four P.M., called s’vierli, and supper. It is astonishing to see how much solid flesh, good blood, and healthy color can be produced by such inferior and limited diet. ”

“ This menu was typical of the German pension or boarding-house, where the landlady stayed well within the limit of the cards because the things on the cards were cheap. For breakfast we always had the same things—coffee substitute, two pieces of bread, four times a week two pieces of sugar, and three times saccharine, four times a week butter and three times marmalade. Even in peace times Germans eat only coffee and rolls for breakfast. ”

“ She also is cunning in the making of the bitter-sweet salads and purées which are eaten with the more tasteless kinds of meat; but, unfortunately, the good German housewife does not as a rule control the hotel or restaurant that the travelling gourmet is likely to visit, but rules in her own comfortable home. The German Delikatessen, which form the "snacks" a Teuton eats at any time to encourage his thirst, are excellent; and the smoked sprats, and smoked and soused herrings, the various sausages and innumerable pickles, are the best edible products of the Fatherland. ”

“ In Saxony, similarly, the agricultural journeymen received two meals a day, of four courses each, besides frequently cheese and bread at other times should they [Pg 203] require it. Not to have eaten meat for a week was the sign of the direst famine in any district. Warnings are not wanting against the evils accruing to the common man from his excessive indulgence in eating and drinking. ”

“ Upon such a diet, or less than that, the people of Germany are now living to-day. The principle involves eating meat very sparingly, taking half a piece where one would have formerly been taken, and using it only for its flavor. The wing of a chicken has little meat on it and yet if eaten together with vegetables it gives the meal a different quality than it would have had without it, and to this extent its use is warranted. The muscles are active when hard labor is done, but the muscles do not need meat for the performance of their work. A fasting man may have considerable power. ”

“ The English child learns to eat with a fork rather than with a spoon, and never by any chance to put a knife in its mouth, or to touch a bone with its fingers. The German child learns that it must never wear a soiled or an unmended garment or have untidy hair. I have known a German scandalised by the slovenly wardrobe of her well-to-do English pupil, and I have heard English people say that to hear Germans eat soup destroyed their appetite for dinner. English girls are not all slovens, and nowadays decently bred Germans behave like other people at table. ”