Rations

“ Besides these we received other rations: 45 grammes of meat each per week, including bone, and occasionally some stinking fish, so bad that it could not be kept in the cell for more than a minute or two. The other rations were fifteen lumps of sugar each per month ”

“ The daily rations allowed each man were about eight or ten ounces of bread, and five or six ounces of fresh meat, with the accompaniment of a small bowl of tea. The whole would not cost per day over twelve cents per man. ”

“ Variety in the use of grains is as necessary as in the use of other food material, and the numerous grain preparations now to be found in market render it quite possible to make this class of foods a staple article of diet, if so desired, without their becoming at all monotonous. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Even the distribution of rations leaves much to be desired; the fatigue party, well-intentioned and sympathetic though it be, often finds itself short of provisions. ”

“ But if any one shall here object that a large quantity may pass through and yet no necessity be found for a circulation, that all may come from the meat and drink consumed, and quote as an illustration the abundant supply of milk in the mammæ— for a cow will give three, four, and even seven gallons and more in a day, and a woman two or three pints whilst nursing a child or twins, which must manifestly be derived from the food consumed ”

“ Under wheat that land will feed forty-two people; under oats, eighty-eight; under potatoes, maize, or rice, one hundred and seventy-six; under the banana, over six thousand. The crowded nations of the future must abandon flesh-eating for a diet that will feed more than tenfold people by the same soil, expense and labor. How rich men will be when they cease to toll for flesh-meat, alcohol, drugs, sickness, and war! ”

“ 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. ”

“ These necessities granted, cereal foods, such as well-made bread in variety, and vegetable produce, including fruits, should form a great part of the diet consumed, with a fair addition of eggs and milk if no meat is taken, and little of other animal food than fish. On such a dietary, and without alcoholic stimulants, thousands of such workers as I have briefly indicated may enjoy with very little exercise far better health and more strength than at present they experience on meat and heavy puddings, beer, baker's bread, and cheese. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is upon this principle that luxury renders the great quantities of food we take in necessary; and those species of food which satisfy most by their stimulus are by no means such as are the most nutritious. It is also upon this principle, that in cases of accidental hardship from want of food, or in barren and inclement countries where food is scarce, the body is supported, in some measure, by what contains little or no nutritious matter, such as pure water, or the bark of trees powdered and kneaded into a sort of bread, as we are told of the inhabitants of Lapland. ”

“ Those who think it necessary to pay any attention to their health, at table, should take care that the quantity of bread, of meat, and of pudding, and of greens, should not compose, each of them, a meal, as if some only were thrown in to make weight, but carefully to observe that the sum of, altogether, do not exceed due 12bounds or incroach upon the first feeling of satiety.”
All the products of the vegetable kingdom, used as aliment, are not equally nutritious. ”

“ Among the number of substances used in domestic economy which are now very generally found sophisticated, may be distinguished—tea, coffee, bread, beer, wine, spiritous liquors, salad oil, pepper, vinegar, mustard, cream, and other articles of subsistence. ”

“ But it has been demonstrated, that the general use of certain articles, for instance, tea and coffee, betel-nut, tobacco, and wine, depends upon the presence in those substances of elements which are often identical, and which are necessary to the maintenance of the animal economy, more or less, according to the presence or absence of other elements in the food, the different occupation, mode of living, and so on. ”

“ We find an animal like the lion feeding entirely upon the flesh of other animals, and a strong creature like the ox, eating nothing but grass and grain. We also note that one race of men includes meat in its diet, and another subsists almost entirely upon vegetable food, such as rice and beans. Yet in both cases, these diverse kinds of food accomplish the same end,—body building and the supplying of energy. ”

“ It has been already remarked that there are three great purposes to which the food consumed is appropriated; the increase of weight of the animal—the object the feeder has in view and desires to promote—the supplying the waste of the tissues, and the process of respiration, both of which are sources of loss of food, and which it must necessarily be his aim to diminish as much as possible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The preparation of food is of two kinds—public and private. The public consists in the ordinary modes of converting minerals and gases into vegetables, and vegetables into animals with milk, cream, cheese, flesh meat, and marrow-bones. ”

“ The supply of oxygen necessary for life was insufficient in the city, and men breathed in an artificial air. The food trusts, by means of the most daring chemical syntheses, produced artificial wines, meat, milk, fruit, and vegetables, and the diet thus imposed gave rise to stomach and brain troubles. ”

“ So little is to be collected—in the shape of direct testimony, next to nothing—of the domestic life of the Britons—that it is only by conjecture that one arrives at the conclusion that the original diet of our countrymen consisted of vegetables, wild fruit, the honey of wild bees—which is still extensively used in this country,—a coarse sort of bread, and milk. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Take when need is by itself, or with Ale, Beer, or Wine mingled with Sugar."
Who could doubt that it strengthened the spirit, especially when taken with ale or wine? Plainly here do we see the need of a doctor being a good cook. But what pot would hold all that flesh and fowl, that blooming flower-garden of herbs and posies, that assorted lot of fruits and spices, to say nothing of the muscadine? ”

“ And then, in the mysterious depths of vegetable existence is organized that wonderful quadrille of the aliments of nutrition, the history of which has now been sufficiently explained to you.
The vegetable kingdom, therefore, is simply the great kitchen in which the dinner of the animal kingdom is being constantly made ready; and when we eat beef, it is, in fact, the grass which the ox has eaten, which nourishes us. The animal is only a medium which transmits intact to us the albumen extracted in his own stomach from the juices furnished to him in the fields. ”

“ If, in the whole animal economy, where all is admirable, there be one operation which on reflection appears more wonderful than another, and which evinces in a higher degree the prodigious resources and power of the Creator in fashioning every thing to His own will, it is perhaps that by which the same kind of nutriment is extracted from the most opposite varieties of food consumed by living beings. ”

“ It is now ascertained with positive certainty, that all the substances which constitute the food of man must be divided into two great classes, one of which serves for the nutrition and reproduction of the animal body, whilst the other ministers to quite different purposes. Thus starch, gum, sugar, beer, wine, spirits, &c., furnish no element capable of entering into the composition of blood, muscular fibre, or any part which is the seat of the vital principle. ”

“ It is allowed by all that milk, and the juices of fruits, when taken into the stomach, furnish water that is always pure, and that our bread and vegetable food also supply it in large quantities. There are besides a great variety of agreeable and healthful beverages, made from the juices of fruit, containing no alcohol; and agreeable drinks, such as milk, cocoa, and chocolate, that contain no stimulating principles, and which are nourishing and healthful. ”

“ In England, notwithstanding the produce of the soil has been of late considerably increased by the enclosure of wastes and the adoption, in many places, of a more successful husbandry, yet we do not observe a corresponding addition to the number of inhabitants, the reason of which appears to me to be the more general consumption of animal food amongst us. Many ranks of people whose ordinary diet was, in the last century, prepared almost entirely from milk, roots, and vegetables, now require every day a considerable portion of the flesh of animals. ”

“ Object.—Rational feeding of man has for its object the regulation of the food supply in accord with the demands of the body. It is based upon the same principles as the rational feeding of animals; in each, the best results in the way of health, amount of labor performed, and economy are secured when the body receives nutrients sufficient for the production of heat and energy and for the repair of worn-out tissues. Rational feeding is simply regulation of the food, both as to kind and amount, to meet the needs of the body. ”

“ If the food be cereals or condensed meats, it is sent by pneumatic express, done up in bottles or in pellets. All such food is carried about in one’s pocket. We take our food as we drink water, wherever we may happen to be, when it’s handy and when we need it. ”

“ Shows how food is digested and gives the constituent elements of all food products, their cost, food values, time of digestion, etc., Comparative value of beef, mutton, pork, eggs, fish, fowl, oysters, the grains, breads, peas, beans, milk, butter, cheese, sugar, beer, fruits, nuts, etc., which make flesh, bone, nerve; which gives most for least money. ”

“ In short, in the use of animal food, man having deviated from the simple aliment offered him by the hand of nature, and which is the best suited to his organs of digestion, he has brought upon himself a premature decay, and much intermediate suffering connected with it. To this use of animal food almost all nations that have emerged from a state of barbarism, have united the use of spirituous and fermented liquors. ”

“ No one can explain all the different intricate changes which a particle of food undergoes from the moment it enters the mouth until its final transformation into tissue or some form of energy; but by comparing the income with the outgo, ideas may be gained of what goes on in the economy of the body, and of the proportion of nutrients used, and some of the intricate and complex chemical changes which the different food principles undergo in the various processes of digestion, assimilation, and use. ”

“ I have ten barrels of flour, or a ton as we term it, which I got cheap enough, and if we don't realize a profit on it I shall be much mistaken—then I have sugars, molasses, whiskey, wine, spices, boots and shoes, clothing, meal, preserved meats and vegetables, tobacco and cigars, pipes, pork, a cask of vinegar, a barrel of pickles, firkins of butter, and a dozen cheeses, and fifty other things that I don't recollect, but which I have no doubt will meet with a ready sale after we have once got started. ”

“ You must understand first, that the substances of which our food is composed, and which are afterwards decomposed in the stomach, are not all invited to enter the blood. Our aliments are something like the stones which the gold-seekers of California reduce to powder in order to extract therefrom the hidden particles of gold they contain. The gold of our food is that portion of it which the blood is able to appropriate to his own advantage; the rest he rejects as refuse. And this explains why a small slice of meat nourishes you more than a whole plateful of salad. ”

“ Productions, Grains, Vegetables and Fruits.—As you are only acquainted with the productions of this climate, or the Temperate region of the earth, I cannot well give you a correct idea of the productions of the Tropics, as some of their principal articles of diet are unknown to you. It is enough, perhaps, to say, that they far surpass those to which you are accustomed, in richness and variety There are some, however, with which you are acquainted. Rice, a kind decidedly richer and sweeter than that from the Southern States, may be said to form the main article of food to the native African. ”