Plant-based food

“ Animals, herbivorous and flesh-eating, man himself, all are dependent upon the starch-making processes of the green plant for the ultimate source of their food. When we remember that in 1913 in the United States the total value of all farm crops was over $6,000,000,000, and when we realize that these products came from the air and soil through the energy of the sun, we may begin to realize why as city boys and girls the study of plant biology is of importance to us. ”

“ The greater part of the human food of plant origin represents in nature the nutrient material supplied by the parent plant for the early life of the seedling. All grains, nuts, fruits and roots, and tubers are merely modified forms of food material adapted to the rapid nourishment of the young plant.
The starch and the oil of seeds, the sugar of fruit, and the lesser quantities of nitrogen contained in all seeds, are in a more available form for cell-nourishment than would be the original mature portions of plant life. ”

“ It is abundant throughout the vegetable kingdom; it forms the first food of plants when they germinate in the seed; when the first little sprout is projected from a grain of corn, a portion of the farina, or starch, is changed into sugar, which may be called the blood of the plant, and from it is drawn the nourishment necessary to its expansion and appearance above the surface of the earth. In the latter growth of many plants an inverse process is carried on, as in the Indian corn, which I have just spoken of. ”

“ In the vegetable group we have first, the different parts of many plants, and second, substances manufactured from plants. While we do not usually eat the whole of any one plant, yet there is not any part of the plant that we have not adopted as food. We use roots and tubers in beets, carrots, and potatoes, and the onion is a bulb. In celery and asparagus we eat the plant stalk. ”

“ We noticed, too, the interesting parallel between young plants and young animals, where both (the plants in the food in the seed, the animals in their mothers’ milk) are supplied with ready-made food at first, and as they get older have to find what food they require for themselves. As regards their feeding, the plants do more work than the animals, for they manufacture the starchy food for themselves out of simpler elements, while the animals require their starch to be ready made. ”

“ To believe they are produced from putrified vegetables is begging the question, and making a circulus vitiosus in the argument. There is therefore no evasion; they were certainly produced by the great Creator of the universe, and endowed with such qualities, as make them capable of producing in various mixtures new bodies; and when they are introduced by moisture, into the first stamina of a plant, or a seed, they expand these stamina, and constitute a new being, capable of affording food to the animal creation. ”

“ He knows that one or two days' growth, after they are well up, followed perhaps by a day or so of rain, may easily double or treble the work of cleaning a patch of onions or carrots, and that where weeds have attained any size they cannot be taken out of sowed crops without doing a great deal of injury. He also realizes, or should, that every day's growth means just so much available plant food stolen from under the very roots of his legitimate crops. ”

“ From this fact we should take our start in every process of orchard, nursery, and garden cultivation of fruit-trees; and if philosophically employed it will, we will not say revolutionize, but materially modify the processes of cultivation peculiar to colder climates and poorer soils. In respect to esculent vegetables—cabbages, radishes, celery, rhubarb, lettuce, etc., this rank and rapid growth is beneficial, since it is not the fruit but the plant which we eat. ”

“ But if the land is planted one or more years with a vegetable which takes a different kind of nourishment from the soil, time is allowed for the chemical changes constantly going on in the ground to produce a supply of the food required by the first kind of crop. In the cultivation of the beet-root for sugar-producing, it must follow the cereals, such as wheat, rye, and barley, but, to be profitable, not oftener than every third year. ”

“ Of course, this gave all such plants a great advantage over their neighbors in the struggle for existence: they could live under conditions where poorer seedlings would starve and die; and so, from generation to generation, those kinds which laid by most material survived the best on the average, till at last in many cases the embryo came to be very richly endowed indeed with starches, oils, gluten, and other valuable collected food-stuffs. This is especially the case with such seeds as wheat, barley, rye, oats, Indian corn, rice, peas, beans, lentils, and buck-wheat. ”

“ In practically every soil that has been cultivated and cropped, in long-settled districts, the amounts of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash which are immediately available will be too meager to produce a good crop of vegetables. It becomes absolutely necessary then, if one would have a really successful garden, no matter how small it is, to add plant foods to the soil abundantly. ”

“ We may for this reason alone look forward to the increasing importance of vegetable growing and fruit raising; but there is a more obvious and perhaps more direct reason. There is in the production of vegetables, at least, a method of satisfying the dietetic needs of an increasing population. The employment of a part of the area now in cereals and forage crops 163 for the production of potatoes, cabbages, legumes, roots and tomatoes is one of the most ready means of increasing the food supply. ”

“ This exists in many vegetables in great abundance as in vines, sycamore, birch, and most abundantly in the palm-tree, (Isert's Voyage to Guinea,) and seems to be a similar fluid in all plants, as chyle is similar in all animals.
Hence as the digested food of vegetables consists principally of sugar, and from that is produced again their mucilage, starch, and oil, and since animals are sustained by these vegetable productions, it would seem that the sugar-making process carried on in vegetable vessels was the great source of life to all organized beings. ”

“ Then late crops, cabbage, cauliflower or spinach, can go where early corn grew, so that the small patch may earn your living and pay big dividends.
Do not let two vegetables of the same botanical family follow each other. For instance, lima beans should not follow green beans or peas, as all the family draw about the same elements from the soil, and are likely to have the same insects and diseases.
Do not plant cucumbers, squash, or pumpkins too near each other, as they will often inter-impregnate and produce uneatable hybrids. ”

“ Most of the vegetables consumed in the large cities are transported a considerable distance, and if those people who eat these much-traveled vegetables raise their own, the transportation system will be relieved to that amount.
The raising and caring for plants is certain to broaden one’s interest. Very few people who cultivate a vegetable-garden, or any other kind of garden, for that matter, are likely to be satisfied until they know something of the physiology of plants, how and why they grow, and the principles underlying successful plant culture. ”

“ Young beets, either in the form of a vegetable or a salad, are considered to be very wholesome.
CARROTS, TURNIPS, PARSNIPS, OYSTER PLANT.
Carrots, turnips, parsnips and oyster plant, although containing a large percentage of water, are considered valuable as nutrients, the turnip being the least nutritious.
GREEN VEGETABLES.
Green vegetables do not contain much nutriment, and are chiefly valuable as affording a pleasing variety in diet; also for supplying mineral matter and some acids. In this class we may include cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, lettuce and celery. ”

“ It is remarkable that the most abundant [9] constituents of atmospheric air—oxygen and nitrogen—are not assimilable by plants, although these elements enter largely into the composition of vegetable substances. In the soil, also, the part which ministers to the wants of vegetables is relatively quite insignificant in amount.
Plants are unendowed with organs of locomotion, their food must therefore be within easy reach. Every breeze wafts gaseous nutriment to their expanded leaves, and their rootlets ramify throughout the soil in search of appropriate mineral aliment. ”

“ Both begin in a seminal point but the seed is not analogous; both develop—but not by an analogous growth; both require food, but the selection, the digestion and the assimilation are different. The mineral kingdom is the lowest. Out of it, by help of the sun and air, the vegetable procures its materials of growth; in turn the vegetable kingdom is the magazine from which the animal kingdom is sustained; to each, thus the soil contains the original elements; the vegetable is the chemical manipulator, and the animal, the final recipient of its products. ”

“ We do not always realize that if it were not for the green plants, there would be no animals on the earth. Green plants furnish food to animals. Even the meat-eating animals feed upon those that feed upon plants. How the plants manufacture this food and the relation they bear to animals will be discussed in later chapters. Plants furnish man with the greater part of his food in the form of grains and cereals, fruits and nuts, edible roots and leaves; they provide his domesticated animals with food ”

“ The Flesh and Force-producers are most abundant in those plants which yield the substantive food of man. These plants belong principally to the group of cereal grasses, as wheat, oats, barley, &c., and leguminous plants, as peas, beans, lentils, &c. Of these the most important is wheat. At the western end of the gallery are shown samples of many cultivated varieties of wheat, oats, barley, rye, and maize, in the straw, and in grain.
The Flesh and Force-producers exist also in large quantities in milk, and in the flesh of vertebrate animals, divided into mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles. ”

“ For table-use, medium sized fruits and vegetables are every way preferable; a beet should never be larger than a goose-egg.
It is equally foolish to suppose that large, coarse-grained vegetables, whether potatoes, beets, parsnips, ruta bagas, or anything else, are as good for stock, though not so palatable to men. To be sure they fill up. But that which is nutriment to man is nutriment to beast; a vegetable which is rank and watery is no better for my cow than for us. It is not the bulk but the quality that measures the fitness of articles for food. ”

“ Bushes which yield acid, suitable for coagulating the milk of the rubber plant, grow alongside. Cotton does not do well here owing to the scarcity of rain, but coffee and tea flourish. All the palms, many ferns and orchids and nearly every fruit and vegetable, European as well as tropical, grow in great profusion while the melons, vegetable marrows, beans, peas, potatoes, lettuces, cucumbers and tomatoes look healthy. ”

“ Vegetables may be regarded as the intermediate link in the great chain of creation, between animals and minerals. The latter grow by mere chymical affinity, and by additions, sometimes analogous and sometimes foreign from their own nature; while plants, like animals, have an organization that enables them to receive their food, digest and assimilate it to their own substance, reproduce their species, and maintain an existence of longer or shorter duration. ”

“ Hence it is wise to use them in combination with other articles of diet—grains, whole-wheat bread, etc.—that supplement the qualities lacking in the vegetables.
To Select Vegetables.—All roots and tubers should be plump, free from decay, bruises, and disease, and with fresh, unshriveled skins. They are good from the time of maturing until they begin to germinate. Sprouted vegetables are unfit for food. Potato sprouts contain a poison allied to belladonna. All vegetables beginning to decay are unfit for food. ”

“ The heavier weight of fact relates to the idea that famine does not belong to tree food regions. It relates to the fact that tree foods can supply all of the essentials of provender for men, livestock and fowls; proteins, starches, fats and vitamines in delicious form. It relates to the fact that tree foods come largely out of the sub-soil without apparent diminution of fertility of the ground. ”

“ One-third of the vegetable food consists of cultivated fruits, or those which may be cultivated, such as strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries; but while we debit the bird with the whole of this, it is probable—and in the eastern and well-wooded part of the country almost certain—that a large part was obtained from wild vines. The rest of the vegetable matter is mostly wild fruit, such as cherries, dogwood, sour gum, elder berries, greenbriar, spice berries, black alder, sumac, and poison ivy. ”

“ Man has made many plants his servants. His first attention was naturally given to such species as he could use for food. Two thousand years ago, the ancients were growing practically all the food plants that are known today. Maize, Potatoes, Rice, Beans, Dates and Bananas have been cultivated for an even longer period. [Pg 217] Fodder plants, calculated to furnish food for man’s domestic animals, were the next to receive attention, and following those, medical plants, edible fruits, garden vegetables and aromatic leaves and seeds, such as Tea and Coffee, came to the fore. ”