FoodNet

Science of food & cookery

1921

Page 19

Presented as published in 1921. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
Polished rice, white bread, refined sugar, and demineralized foods generally, do not introduce some mysterious germ into the body: their use simply deprives the blood and the tissues of those particular elements which are essential for nutrition and growth in both children and adults, and which are contained in the por- tions that are removed in the refining process. It is thus that the body's defenses are broken down and its immunity destroyed. These so-called refined cereal foods, flours, flakes, sugars, etc., are but a modern invention. Our grandfathers knew little about them, and suffered less from the present-day deficiency diseases that tax the ingenuity of the medical profession and fill un- timely graves. 'Nature's remedies for many of the modern ills may be had by all. Unbolted wheat and corn breads, natural brown rice, with an abundance of fruit and succulent vegetables, furnish a combi- nation of body-building elements which makes for red blood and all-round general health. \ The best way to avoid disease, as well as to prepare for any "epidemic," is to build up the body's resist- ance by the use of wholesome, unprocessed foods, containing the organic ingredients necessary for the maintenance of a disease- resisting vitality, which is the best protective against the diseases that infest our world. IV. NATURAL FOOD OF MAN "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." SINCE the elements that enter into the composition of the body are precisely the same as those which compose plants, it follows that a proper diet for man must be such plants as contain these chemical units in proper proportion. The human body being un- able to assimilate these mineral elements in their inorganic condi- tion, they must be organised, as in plant life, before they can be of use to the body. Only plants have power to absorb these mineral salts from soil, water, and air, and organize them into food for the use of man. For this reason, the patent medicines that purport to contain these mineral ingredients are of little value. Some of these min- erals are actually poisonous when taken in their free state. But not so when nature finishes her work of combining and compound- ing them ; they are then no longer poisonous, but actually beneficial to both plant and animal. The vegetarian diet is the natural diet of the human race ; and one of its great advantages is that it is composed of foods that are more or less complete in the essential constituents, containing in varying proportions protein, carbohydrate, fat, mineral matter, and the indispensable vitamine, which combine to make the food fully adapted to the needs of the body. Dr. Alexander Haig, uric acid specialist of London, England, says concerning the adapta- bility of the vegetarian diet to life and health: "That it is easily possible to sustain life on the products of the vegetable kingdom needs no demonstration for physiologists, even if a majority of the human race were not constantly engaged in demonstrating it; and my researches show, not only that it is 37 SCIENCE of FOOD ancT COOKERY possible, but that it is infinitely preferable in every way, and produces superior powers of both mind and body." — "Uric Acid in the Causation of Disease," page 864. TRUE FOOD SATISFIES HUNGER