The common condiments - salt, pepper, spices, mustard, chili, fruit essences, meat essences, vinegar, sauces and wine and whiskey flavors are among the injurious luxuries and should be avoided as much as possible. A very little arouses the sense of taste, making pleasure acute for a moment, but as already explained, more is demanded the next time to produce the same results. The deception soon leads to the use of so much that the delicate taste bulbs and nerves are deadened until it is impossible to distinguish the real flavor of the food. Because of this the greatest pleasure to be derived from food is lost through high seasoning instead of being increased, as is generally imagined by those who demand an excessive amount of salt, pepper, or spices.

The boiled down mixtures and sauces so much used are not desirable, as they destroy the original taste of food and cultivate abnormal appetites. They are also more or less poisonous from chemical changes and bad combinations. Eugene Christian says, "Sauces seem to have been created for the purpose of covering up something".

Many unscrupulous cooks take advantage of the "seasoning habit," as very often decaying food that could not be imposed upon a normal sense of taste is accepted with relish when covered with a sauce having a high sounding name.

Through habitual use, a liking may be acquired for almost any kind of seasoning of the stimulating order. An infant or a normal person does not like food with the average amount of seasoning. It is repulsive to them until the system is gradually saturated with its poisons. Give a child who has never tasted salt a dish of soup, with the usual amount of salt and pepper, and it cannot eat it. In Persia the taste is so cultivated, or so uncultivated, that asafetida is enjoyed, and thought to add much to the taste of food.

The amount of stimulating things in use at the present time are indulged more from thoughtlessness and habit than from any wilful inclination to violate laws of health. The best families make washtubs full of "catsup" kegs of chow chow and barrels of pickles and sour kraut. To be sure most of these mixtures, except the sour kraut are saved for church dinners and company, but the children, even though they do not care for them at first are impressed with the idea that they are right and important. As soon as they have homes of their own they must pass through the preserve and pickeling season, even if the mother-in-law - the dear soul - must come to help, as the girls of to-day are too busy with books and music to learn such things. Perhaps when the mother-in-laws have all gone to Heaven those of the next generation will not be able to impart the secrets of spiced foods to their children and the art of sauces and pickles will be among the "lost arts".

Vinegar is a germ growth and its acid product, the amount in daily use is a tax upon the system, as the germs attack the living ferments in the stomach and the red corpuscles of the blood. Children who eat pickles in excess are pale and listless, yet, mothers do not realize the cause.

Many kinds of commercial vinegar are only chemical acids that are even more injurious than the real product.

When more fruit is used such acids are not craved. If acids are demanded for flavor the juice of a lemon is the most desirable.

Essences are generally chemical imitations, being neither desirable nor healthy.

Meat extracts from which beef tea and soups are prepared for invalids have no food value. They have a large amount of condensed animal poison and inorganic chemicals, which act as a stimulant, that is mistaken for nourishment.

Pepper and mustard are vegetable poisons. Mustard will blister the skin, and its irritating influence upon the lining of the stomach is the same in proportion to the amount taken.

The daily papers record an account of a boy who accepted a wager to eat a certain amount of pepper. He ate it and won, but the next day he died in great agony. His mother had fed him pepper without telling him it was a poison and enough of it would kill. He had no fear of it, as it was on nearly every table.

Tea, coffee, wine and sodas need no discussion. They contain poison that the system must eliminate. They are supposed to impart strength, but instead, they exhaust strength that might be put to better use. If never touched they are never wanted or missed. After an appetite for them is formed it should be intelligently and carefully regulated until the mind decides that the buoyant feeling of freedom from the poison is more delightful than the excited action of the poison, with its depressing and enslaving after effects.

Chemists are trying to extract the poisonous principle from many things in common use that they may be enjoyed without injury. Their effort will fail to accomplish the desired results, as without this element in coffee, tea, tobacco, etc., they would not be craved, hence no money would be spent on them.

The purpose of such poisons in nature is to discipline the mind. Man has the privilege of deciding between things, thoughts and actions that sustain life and those that induce death. He is strong physically, mentally and morally in proportion to his decision to maintain life.

Salt is probably the most injurious of the common condiments, as it is used most freely and is thought to be, by many, an "elixir of life." This mistaken idea is gradually being counteracted since the chemical nature of salt is better understood. Many sanitariums and boarding schools do not use salt in food. Many prominent doctors are requiring invalids to avoid it. Health magazines and even the daily papers are discussing the poisonous nature of salt and other condiments, hence while it is a shocking idea to some, to be told that so simple a thing as salt is injurious, it will soon be as generally known as that alcohol is a poisonous stimulant.

Nature prepares salt in organized form in various food substances for use in the human system, but the common salt is an inorganic mineral substance that cannot be appropriated by the system. It does not help to form any of the tissues. It remains in the blood until it can be eliminated through the skin, kidneys, or bowels, or settles as sediment around the joints. Everyone knows how it pours out of the skin with perspiration, and if the pores of the skin are suddenly closed by cold air the excess of salt is thrown out through the delicate lining membrane of the throat and lungs in the form of a cold. Other kinds of poison thrown off internally might produce the irritation known as cold, but salt is now considered as the most common cause of cold and many consumptive tendencies. The phlegm expectorated by consumptives is intensely salt. The gradual use of less salt aids in the recovery of a consumptive. It has always been known that diseases of the nature of scurvey are caused by an excessive use of salt foods and too little fresh green vegetables.