'Learn from the birds the food the thickets yield,
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field."
"Eat to live rather than live to eat."
A MOST interesting parallel is observed in the study of the
composition of the human body, the cells of plants, and fertile,
fruit-bearing soil. Professor Sherman,1 of the Columbia Uni-
versity, gives the following list of elements as composing the
human body: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phos-
phorus, potassium, sulphur, sodium, chlorine, magnesium, iron;
iodine, fluorine, and silicon in very minute quantities ; also traces
of manganese and aluminum. The same text shows that natural,
unrefined foods contain these same elements in varying quantities
and proportions.
Analysis of normal soil2 reveals the same elements to be con-
tained in earth, and experience teaches us that these various mineral
elements in the soil are absolutely necessary to insure a paying crop
of grain or vegetables. The average farmer seems to recognize
instinctively that a lack of soil minerals would result in a feeble
or stunted yield, hence he looks well to the matter of the richness
of the soil before casting in his seed. Intelligent stock raisers,
who make a business of feeding cattle for definite ends, calculate
the results according to fixed laws. Proper food is the means
whereby they supply the essential building material for the physical
needs of the animals in which their money is invested.
With respect to his own food, however, man persistently vio-
lates one of the most beneficent of nature's laws, in that he submits
his most staple foods to a process of hulling and scouring that
leaves them almost void of the mineral and vitamine on which life
is so dependent. These very important parts of our food are
carefully separated from our food and fed to farm animals, thereby
developing magnificent specimens of stock, while our own health
suffers proportionately from a lack of these elements.
1 "Chemistry of Food and Nutrition," page 234.
2 "Soil Analysis," volume 1.
SCIENCE of FOOD ancC COOKERY
To a certain extent, these elements are constantly given off by
the body; and consequently our food must furnish a continual
resupply of them. The carnivorous as well as the herbivorous
pnimals must have these needs satisfied; but in flesh foods, these
elements are not evenly distributed. Hence the carnivora eat the
whole carcass, — viscera, hide, bone, and all, — in order to obtain
these mineral elements, which are found largely in the bones and
other hard parts. When we use flesh as food, we select for ali-
mentation only the muscular parts, which are poorest in mineral.
With this, there is the growing tendency to rely upon artificially
prepared foods, — sugars, white bread, white rice, package foods,
etc., — from which the greater portion of essential mineral and
vitamine has been removed. This in itself would be sufficient to
constitute a potent factor in degeneracy and disease, even with
an abundant supply of otherwise energetic food.
Page 14
Presented as published in 1921. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
'Learn from the birds the food the thickets yield, Learn from the beasts the physic of the field." "Eat to live rather than live to eat."
A MOST interesting parallel is observed in the study of the composition of the human body, the cells of plants, and fertile, fruit-bearing soil. Professor Sherman,1 of the Columbia University, gives the following list of elements as composing the human body: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, sodium, chlorine, magnesium, iron; iodine, fluorine, and silicon in very minute quantities ; also traces of manganese and aluminum. The same text shows that natural, unrefined foods contain these same elements in varying quantities and proportions.
Analysis of normal soil2 reveals the same elements to be contained in earth, and experience teaches us that these various mineral elements in the soil are absolutely necessary to insure a paying crop of grain or vegetables. The average farmer seems to recognize instinctively that a lack of soil minerals would result in a feeble or stunted yield, hence he looks well to the matter of the richness of the soil before casting in his seed. Intelligent stock raisers, who make a business of feeding cattle for definite ends, calculate the results according to fixed laws. Proper food is the means whereby they supply the essential building material for the physical needs of the animals in which their money is invested.
With respect to his own food, however, man persistently violates one of the most beneficent of nature's laws, in that he submits his most staple foods to a process of hulling and scouring that leaves them almost void of the mineral and vitamine on which life is so dependent. These very important parts of our food are carefully separated from our food and fed to farm animals, thereby developing magnificent specimens of stock, while our own health suffers proportionately from a lack of these elements.
1 "Chemistry of Food and Nutrition," page 234.
2 "Soil Analysis," volume 1.
To a certain extent, these elements are constantly given off by the body; and consequently our food must furnish a continual resupply of them. The carnivorous as well as the herbivorous animals must have these needs satisfied; but in flesh foods, these elements are not evenly distributed. Hence the carnivora eat the whole carcass, — viscera, hide, bone, and all, — in order to obtain these mineral elements, which are found largely in the bones and other hard parts. When we use flesh as food, we select for alimentation only the muscular parts, which are poorest in mineral.
With this, there is the growing tendency to rely upon artificially prepared foods, — sugars, white bread, white rice, package foods, etc., — from which the greater portion of essential mineral and vitamine has been removed. This in itself would be sufficient to constitute a potent factor in degeneracy and disease, even with an abundant supply of otherwise energetic food.