Edible

“ The edible material is by no means a simple substance, but consists of water, and some or all of the compounds variously designated as food stuffs, proximate principles, nutritive ingredients or nutrients, which are classified as protein, fats, carbohydrates and mineral matters. ”

“ The roots are the only edible parts of the plant. These, which are white, soft, and farinaceous, from one to two feet in length, and five or six inches in circumference, are dug out of the earth, at a certain season of the year, washed, stripped of their rind, and ground to a pulp. The juice, or poisonous part, is pressed out, and carefully thrown away; as cattle, and other animals, which have accidentally drunk of it, have almost instantly died. The flour that remains, after pressure, is formed into thin round cakes and baked. ”

“ Many of our most succulent culinary vegetables, our most delicious fruits, our most valuable edible roots, and our most important varieties of grain, are, in the strictest sense of the term, monstrosities. They are, in each case, deformed aberrations from the natural habit of the respective plants in their original states. ”

“ Such are milk, honey, eggs, nuts, cereals, a few roots, legumina, and gums, and the countless variety of fruit, which are man-food par excellence. Our various kinds of bread, though artificially prepared, as well as other farinaceous dishes, are derived from an edible grain which is neither repulsive nor indigestible in its original state.
"To the second or adapted edibles belong different vegetables which are rendered palatable only by the process of cooking, as cabbage, beans, peas and lentils, and various roots and leaves. ”

“ My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep. ”

“ The inhabitants of the interior and mountains are often nauseated by the toothsome dishes of the denizens of the coast. A knowledge of the habits of certain animals (I use the term "animals" in its biological sense as distinguished from plants) often gives rise to an unconquerable abhorrence of the use of their flesh as food. To show how empirical are man's standards of edibles, it will only be necessary to cite a few instances. ”

“ Of butter and of cheese and of nuts I eat perhaps one-third the amount I used to eat, and of meats, roughly, one-half as much as before the dawn of reason came. Of everything except the items I just have enumerated I eat as freely as I please. And when a person begins to reckon up everything else among the edibles—flesh, fowl, fish, berries, fruits, vegetables and the rest he finds quite a sizable list. ”

“ All sacrifices of meat and corn or other edibles belong to the former class; those of flowers to the latter, for these, though of little value in the market yet give great pleasure, and are much esteemed. ”

“ No idea can be given of the noise and pertinacity of the traders calling to you, and even pulling you by the sleeve; and in the midst of all this bustle there is an ample supply of edibles undergoing various culinary operations ”

“ The various secretions of vegetables, as of odour, fruit, gum, resin, wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop-plant into a bitter juice; as by the caterpillar in the nut-shell the sweet kernel is converted into a bitter powder. While the power of absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and lymphatics of animals.
2. The individuals of the vegetable world may be considered as inferior or less perfect animals ”

“ Wines we have of grapes, and drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of roots; and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits dried and decocted; also of the tears and woundings of trees, and of the pulp of canes: and these drinks are of several ages, some to the age at least of forty years. We have drinks also brewed of several herbs or roots, and spices, yea, with several fleshes and wine-meats, whereof some of the drinks are such as they are in effect meat and drink both. So that divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them, with little or no meat or bread ”

“ The flavour and texture of food, its taste, in fact, stimulates the production of those secretions—such as the saliva and the gastric juice—by the action of which the food is digested or dissolved, and becomes finally a part of the body, or is assimilated. As food, then, must be relished it is desirable that it should be varied in character—it should neither be restricted to vegetable products on the one hand, nor to animal substances (including milk and eggs) on the other. ”

“ None of our fruits are more wholesome than these, and, even when eaten in large quantities, they seldom disagree with the stomach. They abound in juice, have a grateful, cooling, somewhat acid taste, and a peculiarly fragrant smell; and are either eaten alone, or with sugar, milk, or wine. A palatable jam, wine, and vinegar, are prepared from strawberries. This fruit is sometimes preserved whole in syrup, and sometimes in wine.
CLASS XIII.—POLYANDRIA. MONOGYNIA.
170. ”

“ The most extended sense of the word, however, according to general usage, comprehends all farinaceous vegetable substances which enter into the diet of man; 10such as the farinaceous seeds or grain, nuts, fruit, roots, &c. And in this extended sense, Bread, in some form or other, has been the principal article in the diet of mankind, from the earliest generations of the human race, to the present time; except among the few, small and scattered tribes, which have, perhaps, ever since the days of Noah, in different parts of the earth, subsisted mainly on animal food. ”

“ Animal food is a root of all evil, so far as temperance is concerned, in its most popular and restricted sense.
The pure vegetable-eaters, especially those who are trained as such, seldom drink at all. Some use a little water with their meals, and a few drink occasionally between them, especially if they labor much in the open air, and perspire freely. Some taste nothing in the form of drink for months, unless we call the abundant juices of apples and other fruits, and milk, etc., by that name—of which, by the way, they are exceedingly fond. The reason is, they are seldom thirsty. ”

“ Its berries had the taste of honey, and those who ate of them felt a cheerful glow, as if they had drunk of wine or old mead, and if a man were even a hundred years old he returned to the age of thirty as soon as he had eaten three of them. ”

“ Surely a person whose olfactory nerves have not been blunted prefers the delicate aroma of ripe fruit to the sickly smell of mortifying flesh,—or fried eggs and bacon!
Notice how young children, whose taste is more or less unperverted, relish ripe fruits and nuts and clean tasting things in general. Man, before he has become thoroughly accustomed to an unnatural diet, before his taste has been perverted and he has acquired by habit a liking for unwholesome and unnatural food, has a healthy appetite for Nature's sun-cooked seeds and berries of all kinds. ”

“ Abstinence from wine—alcoholic stimulants, we would say at present—and from all animal food is the keystone of the Pythagorean system, which also denounced the shedding of blood, and recommended the use of "food which needs no cooking"—fruit, nuts, honey, milk, and the like. ”

“ Spirits, wine, cider, beer, coffee, tea, condiments, tobacco, opium, snuff, flesh meat, and a thousand other things, which excite, for a time, more pleasurable sensations than water and plain vegetables and fruits, will be sought with more or less eagerness according to the education which has been received, and according to our power of self-government.
I have said that most persons are vegetable-eaters from necessity, not from choice. ”

“ Surprizing as it may appear to many of our readers, who are unacquainted with vegetable nature, we may positively atfirm, that a sufficient quantity of wild neglected fruit annually grows in this country, to produce an adequate supply of spirituous liquor, without using any bread-corn, for such wasteful purpose. ”

“ The most special feature is an additional vow to keep a perpetual Lent of the strictest kind, not only flesh meat but fish and all animal products—eggs, milk, butter, cheese, dripping—being forbidden, so that the diet was confined to bread, vegetables, fruit and oil, and water was the only drink. ”

“ But the vegetable-eater escapes both of these extremes. The saliva, the tears, the milk, the gastric juice, the bile, and the other secretions and excretions—particularly the dejections—are as they should be. Nay, the very exhalations of the lungs are purer, as is obvious from the breath. That of a vegetable-eater is perfectly sweet, while that of a flesh-eater is often as offensive as the smell of a charnel-house. This distinction is discernible even among the brute animals. Those which feed on grass, grain, etc., have a breath incomparably sweeter than those which prey on animals. ”

“ In short, it is an undeniable fact, that even a thorough-going vegetable eater might prove every thing he wished, from old established writers on medicine and health, though themselves were feeders on animal food; just as a teetotaler may prove the doctrine of abstinence from all drinks but water, from the writings of medical men, though themselves are still, in many cases, pouring down their cider, their beer, or their wine—or at least, their tea and coffee. ”

“ But even from the first, there can be little doubt that a body so specially fitted to arouse sensation in the gustatory nerve must have afforded pleasure to the unspecialized palates of birds and rodents: for we know that even in the case of naturally carnivorous animals, like dogs, a taste for sugar is extremely noticeable. So, then, the sweet juices of the fruit were early added to its soft and nutritive pulp as an extra attraction for the animal senses. ”

“ Eating wild honey, like drinking goldenrod tea, or devouring handfuls of wild berries, or partaking of any natural harvest, gives a fine edge to the business of eating, at least to the imaginative side of it. ”

“ Fruits are extensively employed as articles of diet by man, both as luxuries and nutriment. The fruit of the cereals furnishes our daily bread; that of the vine gives us the well-known beverage, wine, whilst other varieties enrich our desserts, and provide us with some of our most valuable condiments and aromatics. The acidulous and subacid fruits are antiseptic, aperient, attenuant, diuretic, and refrigerant. They afford little nourishment, and are apt to promote diarrhœa and flatulency. ”

“ Hence our appetites and the bountiful provision made for us extend our choice to both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and it is possible to find vegetable foods on which man could live as long as upon animal food alone. Bread is in vegetable foods that which flesh is in animal foods, and each within itself contains nearly all the elements required for nutrition. ”

“ Vegetables are irritable; mimosa, dionæa muscipula. Vegetable secretions. 2. Vegetable buds are inferior animals, are liable to greater or less irritability. II. Stamens and pistils of plants shew marks of sensibility. III. Vegetables possess some degree of volition. IV. Motions of plants are associated like those of animals. V. 1. Vegetable structure like that of animals, their anthers and stigmas are living creatures. Male-flowers of Vallisneria. 2. Whether vegetables, possess ideas? They have organs of sense as of touch and smell, and ideas of external things? ”

“ But there is as much difference between the odor of the breath of a flesh-eating human being and a vegetable-eater, as between those of the dog and the lamb. This, however, is a secret to all but vegetable-eaters themselves, since none but they are so situated as to be able to make the comparison. ”

“ Now, it is more than sufficiently manifest, that the greatest part of Men live of Vegetables, as of Bread, Beer and Wine; also for Nutriments they use Flesh, Fish, Butter and Cheese: which kinds of Meat and Drink, so soon as put down into the Stomach by a certain natural Coction and Fermentation are so inverted, as some natural Mercury is thence progenited. ”

“ Fruit and fruit juices keep the blood in a healthy condition when the supply of fresh meat, fish, and vegetables is limited and salt or smoked meats constitute the chief elements of diet. Fresh fruit is generally more appetizing and refreshing than cooked. ”

“ It is sufficient for my present purpose, to bring testimony in favor of the safety of vegetable eating, and of the doctrine that man is naturally a vegetable and fruit-eating animal; and especially if I produce, to this end, the testimony of flesh-eaters themselves. ”

“ The shade is beautiful for walks, and the fruit not unpleasant, especially the second kind, of which with new wine and honey, they make a conditum of admirable effect to corroborate the stomach; and the fruit alone is good in dysentery’s and lasks. ”

“ Other vegetables possess various degrees and various kinds of stimulus; and to these we are beholden for the greater part of our Materia Medica, which produce nausea, sickness, vomiting, catharsis, intoxication, inflammation, and even death, if unskilfully administered.
The acrid or intoxicating, and other kinds of vegetable juices, such as produce sickness, or evacuate the bowels, or such even as are only disagreeable to the palate, appear to be a part of the defence of those vegetables, which possess them, from the assaults of larger animals or of insects. ”

“ It is no reproach to them to continue day and night drinking. Their drink is fermented from barley or wheat into a certain resemblance of wine. Their food is simple,—wild fruits, fresh game, or coagulated milk. They satisfy hunger without formality and without delicacies. In regard to thirst they do not exercise this moderation. Indulge their appetites by giving them all they desire, and you may conquer them by their vices not less easily than by arms. ”