Mrs. Lincoln's Boston cook book

Those who can digest fine flour, pastry, sugar, and fats become loaded with fat, but are neither strong nor vigorous. Thin people with weak digestion should also avoid such food ; for thin people are often kept thin by the same food which makes others fat. If they cannot digest the starch, The Boston Cook Booh 433 butter, and fine flour, the system is kept in a feverish, dyspeptic state ; they become nervous or go into consumption for no other reason than that hfe is burned out by a diet which only feeds the fire and does not renew the tissues. '"Men dig their graves with their teeth; not only by drinking whiskey and using tobacco, but by eating food loaded down with inflammatory materials." The bilious and gouty should eat sparingly of brown meats, cheese, eggs, beans, peas, or food which is rich in albuminoids. A certain amount of albuminoid or nitrogenized food is requisite for tissue growth and repair ; more being required for growing persons and the convalescent than for healthy adults. Most Americans are inclined to eat more albuminoid food than is required. It gives a sensation of energy, of being equal to work, which is very pleasant. But when we have " too much of a good thing," more than is needed for repair of tissue, this surplus of albuminous material is imperfecth^ oxidized, the blood is laden with waste, and biliousness or gout is the result. Fish gives less albuminoid waste than meat. People who are inclined to constipation should eat whole-wheat, rye, and corn bread and mushes, ripe fruit, berries, green corn, vegetables, beef, mutton, poultry, milk, cream, and butter ; and should avoid fried or greasy food, hot bread, rich cake, veal, pork, or anything which has so much woody fibre or cellulose that it only irritates the digestive canal, such as the outer bran of wheat, coarse oatmeal, etc. Those with consumptive tendencies should eat wholesome, easily digested and assimilated food, with plenty of fat, — not in the indigestible form that it takes when mixed with starch, but as in cream, sweet butter, fat of roast or boiled meat, the fat, but not the lean, of ham and corned beef, oil, salads, cornmeal, oatmeal, etc. The diet of people who are well should be governed largely by their age, occupation, and exercise. Adults should have a variety of wholesome food cooked in different ways. Aged people should have a diet more like that of The Boston Cook Book. children. If the occupation tax the muscular strength, use muscle-making food ; not wholly meat, as many laboring people are inclined to think, but grains, peas, beans, cabbage, milk, cheese, eggs, whole- wheat bread, and chocolate, with a small amount of beef, mutton, and poultry. Students and brain-workers need more of brain-producing and less of muscle-making food. Brain food must contain phosphorus, which is found largely in oysters, eggs, fish, lean meat, wheat, peas, beans, and fruit. Those who are engaged in sedentary occupations, who take little exercise and live in close, confined rooms, should eat only the most easily digested food.