Introduction

Scientific eating consists in selecting the food the body requires according to age, occupation, and climate. These requirements can be supplied with a very few articles. The necessary changes in diet can always be made by varying the proportions. It is possible to select, for each of the four seasons of the year, three or four articles that will contain all the elements of nourishment the body needs, therefore true food science leads one inevitably toward the mono-diet plan; that is, making a meal of only one kind of food. Owing to our inherent desire to sit at the "groaning table" we may yet be a long distance from the mono-diet plan, but the science of human nutrition points with unerring certainty toward simplicity. It should be remembered, however, that one may eat, under nearly all conditions except extreme superacidity all he desires of one or two things - one preferred.

Scientific eating leads toward simplicity.

In the light of modern medicine, no food has any specific curative property.

Foods become curative only as they remove abnormal conditions, and they will remove abnormal conditions just to the extent that they can be perfectly digested and assimilated, and to the extent that waste matter is thoroughly eliminated from the body. In this way all possible resistance is removed, and Nature will build up the diseased and broken-down tissue in obedience to the law of animal evolution. This constructive process we call "curing."

How foods become curative.

While the menus for each season of the year may seem to vary but little, especially when compared with the conventional omnivorous diet, yet experience has proved that the fewer the articles composing the meal, the better will be the results.

Cooking. Some Important Facts Revealed By Modern Science

The object of cooking is to tear down the cell-structure of foods, and to make them more digestible. After the cell-structure is demolished, every degree of heat to which foods are subjected injures the foods instead of improving them.

Grains

Grains should be cooked whole. They should be cleansed, well covered with water, and boiled until the grains burst open as in making old-fashioned corn hominy. This will often take from three to four hours' constant boiling.

Cereals prepared in this way are more delicious, more nourishing, and far more healthful than any of the prepared or patented "breakfast foods," while the cost is perhaps about one-eighth or one-tenth of that of the popular patented products.

Vegetables

The old or popular method of cooking vegetables is to cover them generously with water and to boil them much longer than is necessary, then to drain off the water, season, and serve. By this process the mineral salts, in many cases the most valuable part of the food, are dissolved, passed into the water, and lost. In this way many excellent articles of food are greatly impoverished and reduced perhaps 50 per cent in nutritive value.

The time vegetables are cooked should be measured by their solidity. As an example, spinach can be thoroughly cooked in about fifteen minutes. In this way some of its elements are volatilized, giving it a delicious flavor and taste, while if cooked in an abundance of water, from half to three-quarters of an hour, which is the customary way, its best nutritive elements are lost by draining away the water, and it is rendered almost tasteless.

Cooking En Casserole

All succulent and watery vegetables such as cabbage and spinach, beans, carrots, onions, parsnips, peas, squash, turnips, etc., should be cooked in a casserole dish.

Prepare vegetables in the usual manner as for boiling. A few tablespoonfuls of water may be added to such articles as green beans and peas, beets, carrots, cauliflower, onions, parsnips, etc. Cover, and place in an ordinary baking oven until the vegetable is thoroughly cooked or softened. In this way vegetables in reality are cooked in their own juices, rendered much softer, more digestible, more delicious, and all their mineral salts and other nutritive elements are preserved, making them also more nutritious.

Rice And Macaroni

Rice, macaroni, and spaghetti are exceptions to the above rules. They should be cooked in an abundance of water and thoroughly drained. In this way the excess of starch which they contain is disposed of, and their nutritive elements are better balanced. They are also rendered much more palatable and digestible.

Fruits

If fruits can be obtained thoroughly ripe, they should never be cooked.

Dried or evaporated fruits can be prepared for the table by soaking them thoroughly in plain water for a few hours, or over night. In this way the green and inferior pieces are exposed and can be discarded. The excess of water can be boiled down to a sirup and poured over the fruit. In this way the fruit-sugar is developed, and sweetening with cane-sugar becomes unnecessary.

Soaking as above described is merely a process of putting back into the fruit the water that was taken out of it by evaporation or dehydration.

It is evident that that part of the fruit which will not soften sufficiently by soaking, to become palatable, was not ripe enough for food.

Canned Foods

The average table, especially hotels and restaurants, are supplied largely from canned foods. A process of perfect preservation of foods has never been invented and probably never will be. No matter how well foods may taste, they undergo constant chemical changes from the time they leave the ground or parent stalk until they are thoroughly decomposed. All vegetables, therefore, should be used fresh, if possible.

Buttermilk

An excellent quality of buttermilk may be made as follows: Allow sweet milk to stand (well covered) in a warm room until it thickens or coagulates; whip with an ordinary rotary egg beater without removing the cream.

Home-Made Butter

Sweet butter may be made in a few minutes from ordinary cream by placing it in a deep bowl and whipping with a rotary egg beater.