Raw food

“ The question that now naturally arises is whether modern science can show us that anything more can be done in the preparation of vegetable tissue than the mere softening in boiling water. I have already said that the practice of using the digestive apparatus of sheep, oxen, &c., for the preparation of our food is merely a transitory barbarism, to be ultimately superseded by scientific cookery, by preparing vegetables in such a manner that they shall be as easily digested as the prepared grass we call beef and mutton. ”

“ One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The varieties of nut-butters are many, and the various combinations of nuts and vegetables making potted savouries, add to a long list of highly nutritious and palatable nut-foods. There are the pulses dried and entire, or ground into flour, such as pea-, bean-, and lentil-flour. There are the cereals, barley, corn, oats, rice, rye, wheat, etc., from which the number of preparations made such as breakfast foods, bread, biscuits, cakes, pastries, etc., is legion. (One firm advertises twenty-three varieties of prepared breakfast foods made from cereals.) ”

“ When by these or other means we convert vegetable tissue into dextrin and sugar, as it is naturally converted in the ripening pear, and as it has been artificially converted in our laboratories, we shall extend our food supplies in an incalculable degree. Swedes, turnips, mangold-wurzels, &c., will become delicate diet for invalids; horse beans, far more nutritious than beef; delicate biscuits and fancy pastry, as well as ordinary bread, will be produced from sawdust and wood shavings, plus a little leguminous flour to supplement the nitrogenous requirement. ”

“ Combine them with different vegetables, cooked in the broth, and serve as the principal dish at a meal, or occasionally serve dumplings composed of a mixture of flour and milk, cooked in the broth, to extend the meat flavor. Frequently serve a dish of rice, hominy, cornmeal and oatmeal, dried beans and peas. These are all nutritious, nourishing foods when properly cooked and attractively served. And remember, Mary, to always serve food well seasoned. Many a well-cooked meal owes its failure to please to a lack of proper seasoning. This is a lesson a young cook must learn. ”

“ Tender meats are digested more readily than those which are tough, or than many kinds of vegetable food. The farinaceous articles, such as rice, flour, corn, potatoes, and the like, are the most nutritious, and most easily digested. The popular notion, that meat is more nourishing than bread, is a great mistake. Good bread contains one third more nourishment than butcher's meat. ”

“ Tables have been prepared, showing the amount of nutriment in each kind of food, by which it would appear, that, while beef contains thirty-five per cent. of nutritious matter, wheat-bread and rice contain from eighty to ninety-five per cent. The supposed mistake is attributed to the fact, that, on account of the stimulating nature of animal food, it digests easier and more quickly than vegetables. ”

“ By the substitution of a little cheese and an orange for the oatmeal, a meal containing about the same fuel value and proportion of protein could be arranged, and it would certainly appeal more to the appetite, and furnish better proportions of ash constituents.
In the construction of the menu for the day or meal, we must consider not only food values and time of day and combinations which shall be digestible, but flavor, color, texture, and temperature of our foods. The study of digestible combinations belongs to the science of nutrition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is my desire to present in this book food combinations as perfect as can be produced from food material with our present methods of milling and preliminary treatment. Many people have become so delicate in structure that they cannot use coarse breads and cereals; therefore, a variety of different cereal foods have been included. Vegetable foods, such as are rich in minerals, have been added to the breakfast foods in place of sugar and beverages. ”

“ Indeed, in spite of our acquired meat-eating propensities, it may be fairly said that fruits and seeds (including wheat, rice, peas, beans, and other grains and pulse) still form by far the most important element in the food-stuffs of human populations generally. But, besides the natural sweets, we have also taken to producing artificial ones. Has any housewife ever realized the alarming condition of cookery in the benighted generations before the invention of sugar? It is really almost too appalling to think about. ”

“ To the experienced in this matter, it is well known that the flesh of animals fed on farinaceous produce, such as corn, pulse, &c., is firm, well-flavoured, and also economical in the cooking; that the flesh of those fed on succulent and pulpy substances, such as roots, possesses these qualities in a somewhat less degree; whilst the flesh of those whose food contains fixed oil, as linseed, is greasy, high coloured, and gross in the fat, and if the food has been used in large quantities, possessed of a rank flavour. ”

“ In the country, where vegetables are plentiful and money is not, I have often noticed that sufficient use is not made of vegetables, while where fresh green food is a luxury its place is not taken—as it should be—by such food stuffs as rice, macaroni, haricot beans and corn. ”

“ He can even subsist on every variety of these substances, under every mode of preparation, dried, preserved in salt, hardened in smoke, pickled in vegetable acids, &c.
The Author of Nature has so constructed our organs of digestion, that we can accommodate ourselves to every species of aliment; no kind of food injures us; we are capable of being habituated to every species, and of converting into nutriment almost every production of nature. ”

“ Having reviewed the physiological, chemical, and dietetic qualities of milk, having proved its richness in every constituent of animal flesh, we may fairly compliment our waggish friends, the Vegetarians, in having added to their vegetable bill-of-fare, milk and eggs, two of the best, most concentrated, and nutritious articles of human food. ”

“ The vegetable ration consisted of pea meal, linseed meal, wheat bran, ground oats, Indian corn meal, wheat middlings, gluten meal, and skimmed milk. Before the experiment had been long under way it was noticed that the birds receiving the meat food were developing rapidly and evenly while those that received the purely vegetable diet were becoming thin and uneven in size. ”

“ My recovery was rapid, and again I went on duty. Our food was substantial, consisting of bread, potatoes, pork, beans, beef, rice, tea, coffee, and sugar, while by the kindness of neighbors we were often treated to milk, eggs, and chickens. ”

“ Feeds and Feeding.—There are two groups of materials that are essential in food rations for all ages of poultry. The organic feeds include grains and grain by-products, hays, grasses and vegetables. The inorganic feeds include salt to increase palatability and digestibility of the ration; lime, to aid in building bone and body tissue as well as to furnish the shell material; bone ash, especially for growing chicks, and water in liberal amounts supplied by a fountain as well as from succulent green foods. ”

“ It is proper to remember that the white flour from which our bread is chiefly made, and which is deemed the staff of life, is a purely artificial product—a selection from that perfect food combination which exists in wheat. A competent food chemist has compared the regular milling processes to one by which the fat part of an ox should be saved for food, and the lean part—the albuminous or nitrogenous portion—discarded and given to the dogs. ”

“ For dinner, choice may be made of chicken, game, lean meat, fish not cooked in fat, in moderate portions, and of such vegetables as celery, spinach, sea-kale, lettuce, string beans, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, turnips, bulky vegetables of low food value. ”

“ Pure air and sufficient food properly combined and proportioned are essential. Choose more of the lighter forms of protein and starchy foods, as fish, eggs, almonds, green peas, bacon, a moderate amount of lamb and beef, rice, sago, wheat, and vegetable gelatines. Foods rich in minerals are celery, apples, tomatoes, greens, oranges, and practically all the fresh fruits and vegetables, especially the small berries. Melons and starchy vegetables in large quantities are suitable for muscular workers. ”

“ To substitute other cereals for wheat, which can be shipped abroad.
A wheatless meal every day will drive many to appreciate the value of other grains, whose use heretofore has been largely perverted. Corn, rye, barley, and oats are not appreciated as they should be. They have been used largely in the manufacture of intoxicating drinks and for feeding animals to procure meat. It has been said that the Revolutionary War was won by men fed on hastyPg 14 pudding—in other words, corn meal mush. Learn to eat bread made from corn, rye, or oats, or a mixture of these grains. ”

“ Do not milk, butter, cheese, and eggs contain the same kind of matter as animal food does?" Strictly speaking, inasmuch as any article of food contains elements of nutrition, these elements are identical; but the form of the matter in which they are contained may be very different in producing or not the heating and stimulating effects which are opposed to the healthy condition of the body. Chemistry shews, moreover, that the elements of nutrition originate in vegetables. ”

“ Foods that abound in protein—meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and cheese—make satisfying main dishes. Thrifty main dishes often combine these protein-rich foods with vegetables and cereals—beef stew with vegetables or dumplings, chicken with rice, fish with stuffing, cheese with macaroni. ”

“ Oatmeal for the table is made from kiln dried, large, white oats, freed from the husks. Alone it does not make good bread. If long used as a sole or chief food it is reputed to overtax the digestive organs, heat the blood, and produce eruptions of the skin. ”

“ Round their heads they wind cloth turbanwise, or else wear nothing. They live on the simplest diet, nothing but flour cooked before grinding, which they mix with water into a kind of porridge and eat twice a day: this, with some vegetables or herbs, is their staple food. ”

“ The addition of a small quantity of a food rich in oil and albuminous substances to the ordinary kinds of feed, which contain a large quantity of vegetable fibre or woody matter, more or less indigestible, but nevertheless indispensable to the herbivorous animals, their digestive organs being adapted to a bulky food, has been found highly advantageous in practice. ”

“ Meal-providers have sought out many inventions, and call these the “natural way.” They give us, at one sitting, fish, pork, flour, butter, salt, milk, eggs, raisins, spices, corn, potatoes, squash, coffee, sugar, saleratus, pickles, onions, lard, pepper, cooked fruits, tomatoes, essences, all variously combined, and say, “Here, eat, eat in the natural way.” Why natural? The men and women it helps to produce are, to some extent, its natural consequences; but are they natural men and women? ”

“ As age advances, the consumption of meat and all flesh foods should be decreased and that of fruit and vegetables, especially those of bulky character and low food value, such as lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, turnips, salsify, oyster-plant, watercress, celery, parsnips, should be increased. ”

“ Such invalids should eat only a very small proportion of animal food, namely, white meat, which is least stimulating, together with a due quantity of the most nutritious vegetables. They may also partake of small portions of flesh-broth, thickened with sufficient bread, rice, &c. ”

“ Whatever may be the material, therefore, from which bread is made, when the artificial preparation is of that simple character which leaves the proportions of 25nutritious and innutritious properties, as nature combined them, and effects little change in the nutritious principles, and retains the natural requisition for the function of the teeth, and thus secures the proper chewing of the food and the mixing of it with the fluids of the mouth, and swallowing of it slowly, the artificial process militates very little, if at all, against any of the physiological or vital interests of the body. ”

“ There's the Adelle Davis school, people eating whole grains, handfuls of vitamins, lots of dairy and brewers yeast and wheat germ, and even raw liver. Then there's the Organic school. These folks will eat anything in any combination, just so long as it is organically produced, including organically raised beef, chicken, lamb, eggs, rabbit, wild meats, milk and diary products, natural sea salt in large quantities and of course, organically grown fruits, vegetables grains and nuts. ”