Condiment

“ Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. ”

“ To determine the scope of the act with respect to feeding stuffs we must examine its definitions of the adulteration and misbranding of food, the term 'food' including 'all articles used for food, drink, confectionary, or condiment by man or other animals, whether simple, mixed, or compound' (§ 6) . ”

“ How could we recommend a wholesome, simple diet to a man who had been accustomed to riot in rich sauces and condiments? They had first to wean them from the savage propensities that they had received through the maddening influence of unreflecting men, before a reverence for holy things could be excited. ”

“ Condiments are simply seasoning or flavoring agents, and, though hardly coming under the head of food, yet have an important part to play. As food by their use is rendered more tempting, a larger amount is consumed, and thus a delicate or uncertain appetite is often aided. ”

“ For everyday use, where there is no maid, or only one, set in places convenient to pass, the salt and pepper, vinegar and sugar, bread plate and butter plate, and any small dish of condiment or pickle, with pretty mats for the hot dishes to be set on later, and enough spoons for serving. ”

“ How many of us mean what we say, when the familiar words fall from our lips, “I believe in the Holy Ghost”? Should we think it necessary, if we really did so, to add all these condiments and spices to the pure Bread of Life? ”

“ I have myself carried on a series of experiments, and can testify that on a vegetarian diet, without any condiments, and consisting of a liberal supply of juicy fresh fruits, I have lived comfortably, without tea, coffee, or cocoa, and even water, for days together. ”

“ And thus, of articles of food, those which are unsuitable and hurtful to man when administered, every one is either bitter, or intensely so, or saltish or acid, or something else intense and strong, and therefore we are disordered by them in like manner as we are by the secretions in the body. But all those things which a man eats and drinks are devoid of any such intense and well-marked quality, such as bread, cake, and many other things of a similar nature which man is accustomed to use for food, with the exception of condiments and confectioneries, which are made to gratify the palate and for luxury. ”

“ Cultivate no love of condiments, sauces and stimulants; indulge no ambition to excel in dressing salads, classifying ragouts, or in demonstrating, down to the nicety of a single ingredient, the distinction between a home-made and an imported pâté de foie gras! ”

“ Not satisfied with providing food for his support, man has endeavoured to add to his food something which pleased his taste. He does not wait to be hungry, but he anticipates that feeling, and aggravates it by condiments and seasonings. ”

“ But in man, this sense has been so abused and perverted, by the introduction of stimulants and condiments, and the endless admixture of different articles of food, that the simple action of this part seems to have been superseded almost entirely by acquired taste. ”

“ It appears that when condiments are used in food, especially for the sick, they may serve the double purpose of rendering the food more appetizing and of adding to its nutritive value. The value of food as a purely therapeutic agent is attracting some attention at present, and in its study we must not neglect those substances which combine stimulant and nutritive qualities.--Polyclinic. ”

“ Moreover, if a woman's aim is to prepare dishes which her family will eat and enjoy, she will find [Pg 246] that the purchase of condiments pays, and the variety their occasional use gives will make a change back to simple diet more agreeable. ”

“ Foods may be considered under different classifications. First, as to general appearance and use three classes may be made,—foods, beverages and condiments. As types of the first division of these foods may be mentioned cereals and their preparations, meat and its preparations (except meat extracts) , fish, fowl, and game. Beverages are those liquid food products which are more valued for their taste and flavor than actual nutritive value. As types of beverages may be mentioned wines, beers, distilled spirits and liquors of all characters, tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, etc. ”

“ To a thoroughly normal and unperverted taste, irritating condiments of all sorts are very obnoxious. It is true that Nature accommodates herself to their use with food to such a degree that they may be employed for years without apparently producing very grave results ”

“ Eat but twice daily and of the simplest and purest food, i.e., the cereal grains, vegetables and fruits.49 Ordinarily, a little animal food—unaccompanied by greasy or stimulating condiments—will not affect a robust person seriously ”

“ In fine, the more simple our tastes are the more universal are they, and the most common repugnance is for made-up dishes. Does one ever see a person have a disgust for water or bread? Behold here the impress of nature! Behold here, then, our rule of life. Let us preserve to the child as long as possible his primitive taste; let its nourishment be common and simple; let not its palate be familiarised to any but natural flavours, and let no exclusive taste be formed.... ”

“ I shall admire you then only when you scorn not plain bread, when you have persuaded yourself that herbs exist not for other animals only, but for man also—if you shall recognise that vegetables are sufficient food for the stomach into which we now stuff valuable lives, as though it were to keep them for ever. For what matters it what it receives, since it will soon lose all that it has devoured? The apparatus of dishes, containing the spoils of sea and land, gives you pleasure, you say.... ”

“ And not the least consideration, in the selection of food, is that of suitability or adaptation to the individual’s condition or peculiarity. “What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” says the old proverb. Most persons have found that certain fruits or vegetables or other articles of diet, which are generally considered wholesome, do not agree with them. It is important that each individual should study his peculiarities, in this respect, and abstain from eating or drinking those things which experience has shown will produce discomfort. ”

“ You have now had illnesses enough, to know the value of health, and to make you implicitly follow the prescriptions of your physician in medicines, and the rules of your own common sense in diet; in which, I can assure you, from my own experience, that quantity is often worse than quality; and I would rather eat half a pound of bacon at a meal, than two pounds of any the most wholesome food. ”

“ When rich food is brought down by ingredients of a plainer taste, the composition{99} is susceptible of a specific habit. Thus the sweet taste of sugar, rendered less poignant in a mixture, may, in course of time, produce a specific habit for such mixture. As moderate pleasures, by becoming more intense, tend to generic habits; so intense pleasures, by becoming more moderate, tend to specific habits.
The beauty of the human figure, by a special recommendation of nature, appears to us supreme, amid the great variety of beauteous forms bestowed upon animals. ”

“ Had it been intended that we should confine ourselves, in amount and character of food, to only so much as would barely support life, and this of the simplest character, we should hardly have been supplied with such exquisitely sensitive gustatory nerves. ”

“ His continual appetite, arising from his rapid growth, is an unfailing sauce, which supplies the place of many others. With a little fruit, or some of the dainties made from milk, or a bit of pastry rather more of a rarity than the every-day bread, and, more than all, with some tact in bestowing, you may lead an army of children to the world's end without giving them any taste for highly spiced food, or running any risk of cloying their palate. ”

“ Preserve, then, as you value the means of usefulness, the perfect play of your mental powers—so easily trammelled by the clogging of the machinery of the body—the unadulterated taste that is content with a sufficiency of wholesome, well-cooked food to satisfy the demands of healthful appetite. ”

“ In the indulgence of their appetites they display but few or no traits of epicurism, choosing those kinds of food that are most nutritive, without regarding their taste or flavour. In the preservation of their food, no pains are taken to render it savoury or palatable ”

“ If the food selected by the appetite happens to be soup, or milk, or some mushy substance, get all the good taste out of it, doing all you can to accomplish this; for to get the taste out [Pg 55] of food is an assurance of digesting it, and the pleasure it gives in the process of Nature's way of getting you to do the right thing in helping her to nourish yourself properly. ”

“ To make this the chief element of at least three meals daily, and to despise bread and vegetables, is for them no less a sign of taste than a declaration of belief in the perfection of such food for the purposes of nutrition. ”

“ Nature has furnished man with a guide both to the quantity and quality of food that should be taken into the system,—that is, his desire for food, or his appetite,—and, in general, this guide may be safely trusted both as [Pg 268] to the quantity and quality, although, in the latter, the appetite is not so trustworthy as that of the lower animals. ”

“ Suppose that a kind of food which is wholesome and nutritious has been prepared and seasoned in such a way as to be fit, not for the simple tastes of peasants and poor labourers, but for those only who are rich and dainty in their tastes. ”

“ Save the eating of bread, have we any practice in our lives so consistent as that of eating meat, or any from which we, perhaps wrongly, consider that we derive more benefit, or any about whose conditions, sanitary or humane, we are so careless? ”

“ Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating; when he shall confess a perturbation o f mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. ”

“ Sweet, bitter or sour,—we taste one thing in everything tasted, and that is ourselves. Could each once be clean delivered of himself how salutary were all things and sufficing. "'Tis in morals as in dietetics, one cannot see his fault till he has got rid of it." ”

“ Thus, if the appetite and digestion are good, the third—something to eat—becomes an essential condition and primary. If the appetite and digestion, or either, is impaired, the third essential condition becomes secondary or useless, so to speak. These, the essential conditions, concurring in one man, he is capable of happiness, mental and physical, otherwise not. Observe, I do not affirm he will be or is happy, but that he is capable, merely, of happiness. The conditions essential must concur, however, and in one man. ”

“ Those who from moral conviction reject the usual mixed diet, and return toward the natural or fruit diet, enjoy presently a certain intuitive consciousness of the rightness of the principle, which becomes more and more clear and powerful, in proportion to the thoroughness with which the principle is adhered to ”

“ Yet none can deny but that the food itself is a partial cause; for not only new fruit, bread, or corn, but flesh of the same year, is better tasted than that of the former, more forcibly provokes the guests, and enticeth them to eat on. ”

“ Where personal taste and inclination are favorably disposed, the first six fruits named can be partaken of freely, and the diet of the young, especially, can be advantageously modified by the liberal use of such articles of food. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For instance, the bare eating a fruit, considered in its self, is neither fit nor unfit. If a fruit be appointed by God for our food and nourishment, then it is as fit to eat it, as to preserve our lives. ”

“ The Creator intended that the process of eating should be enjoyed. He has gathered the tasteless, insipid food elements together, and mixing in mineral and organic accessories, has produced for the tickling of our palates all the numberless flavors that the combined action of those highly specialized organs of taste and smell have enabled us to enjoy. ”

“ Health and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat. ”

“ One other factor needs to be considered in this matter of selecting one's daily food, and that is the respect which must be paid to the appetite. The most carefully balanced ration will fail to satisfy the ordinary human being unless it is served attractively and unless sufficient variety is provided. ”

“ The agreement of one food or another with any person is more or less a personal idiosyncrasy, but it seems fair to say that those with whom nuts and fruits agree, can, if they desire, readily secure a considerable part of their nutritive material from such sources. ”

“ If the truth or importance of any Principle or Feeling is to be measured, not by its popularity, indeed—not by the quod ab omnibus—but by the extent of its recognition by the most refined and the most earnest thinkers in all the most enlightened times—by the quod a sapientibus—the value of no principle has better been established than that which insists upon the vital importance of a radical reform in Diet. ”