Foods are prepared by Nature. She turns out a finished product. There is no need for further preparation. But we have become so artificial in our habits and in our thinking, that a few words of caution are needed.

The less "preparation" foods have undergone, the better and more wholesome they are as foods. The more simple the method used in preparing them, the more valuable they are. As well try to improve the rose by paint or perfume as to try to improve nuts or fruits by cooking. How foolish to cook a peach or an orange and then try to hypnotize yourself into believing that you have improved its delicious flavor or increased its dietetic value!

The modern kitchen is a mass of unnatural and anti-natural things and processes. We have forsaken the natural and have developed our present methods of preparing foods in a hap-hazard and thoughtless way.

Every man and woman should possess a clear understanding of the "complexities and possibilities of modern public cooking," together with a full knowledge of the "significance or the insignificance of the digestive appeals, the safety or unsafely of its unprincipled combinations, and the imperative necessity of moral power, backed by the will, to control the demands of a false, because overstimulated, appetite."

The first step in improving the methods of cooking foods was made by Mr. C. Leigh Hunt Wallace, an English vegetarian and editor of the Herald of Health. This journal was the official organ of the Physical Regeneration Society, of which Mr. Wallace was leader. This society opposed drugs and vaccines of all kinds and stood for living reform. In their "General Rules for the Maintenance of Health," I find these words: "all vegetables shall be stewed in their own juices or served with the water in which they are cooked in the form of sauce or gravy. Or they may be steamed or baked, but in whatever way they are prepared, all their natural salts and flavors must be conserved." Mr. Wallace called this "the conservative system of cooking."

Much of our over praised cooking consists in boiling the minerals out of our foods and pouring these down the drain pipe and conservative cooking seeks, among other things to conserve these minerals. Vegetables, even potatoes, should never be boiled. The old method of par-boiling vegetables and throwing the water away carried away practically all of the soluble salts and vitamins.

Open-vessel-cooked foods are largely devitalized, with the oxygen so combined that it is valueless. The vitamins are destroyed and the mineral salts are disarranged or lost. The waterless cooker is less objectionable in these respects.

Rapid cooking at a high temperature produces less damage, while low heat long continued, causes more damage to food. For this reason the "fireless cooker" and other forms of slow cooking are least desirable. Cooking done under steam pressure quickly destroys all vitamins in our food.

Choosing Foods

Wilted lettuce is poor food. The same is true of celery and other vegetables. Fresh foods are best. The tops should be cut from beets, turnips, radishes, etc., as these, when wilting, extract the best elements from the roots.

The mere wilting of vegetables impairs their value as food. Dr. Howe says, "Vitamins of the greatest importance are found in the green leaf vegetables as they come fresh from the gardens, but at least one of the most important of these vitamins is either killed or greatly reduced in efficiency if such vegetables wilt or are kept in cold storage. This does not mean, however, that the cold storage process is not a very valuable means of storing some forms of food.

"A knowledge of what wilting or storage will do to these tender vegetables is not confined to man. In fact, the animal knew it first. If we place fresh lettuce and either wilted or storage lettuce at the same time before the animals in our laboratory, not only will they neglect the wilted lettuce for the fresh, but they seem to feel that the wilted lettuce is suitable only for bedding and they contentedly trample or crunch upon it while eagerly devouring the fresh."

Wilted lettuce, wilted celery and other wilted vegetables are poor foods. Foods that are shipped long distances lose much of their food value. Fresh foods are always best. Canned vegetables and fruits lose much of their value by standing for a long time in the cans. The acid fruits seem to be an exception to this, at least they do not lose their quality as early as do other foods.

Preparation

Never soak vegetables in water for this extracts valuable elements from them and leaves them tasteless and worthless. Lettuce and celery should not be crisped in this way. Vegetables should be washed quickly, care being taken not to bruise them. They may then be wrapped in a damp cloth or wrapped in paper to protect them and placed in the refrigerator or in the fresh air to become crisp. No vegetable should ever be permitted to stand, even for a moment, in water. If they are permitted to stand in water they will be robbed of their precious minerals, which will be absorbed by the water, and you will only eat impoverished vegetables.

Fruits And Nuts

Nuts should never be cooked or roasted.

Fruits should never be cooked. This applies with equal force to dried fruits. Dried prunes, figs, peaches, pears, apples and other dried fruits should be carefully washed and then have enough warm water poured over them to cover them well but not enough to float them. Cover the vessel and let them stand over night. When serving, the water in which they have been soaked, being full of the salts of the fruit, should be served with them. No sugar should be added. Fruits thus prepared are much more pleasant than cooked fruits and are also much more easily digested. It requires a better digestion than most people have to digest cooked fruit. Better not try it.

Leafy Vegetables

Vegetables should be cooked in their own juices with barely enough water to prevent burning and their juices served with them. When spinach, for example, is boiled and the juice is not eaten most of the soluble salts go down the drain pipe. They are lost.

The more food is cooked the deader it is. It should be eaten raw or slightly cooked. Thoroughly cooked--"dead"--foods may build the body but they can never vitalize it.

Leafy vegetables should never be steamed or cooked until they change color. Cook vegetables as short a time as possible, to preserve the living essence as far as possible, and then eat soon after cooking. Do not cook vegetables ahead and let them stand for hours before eating. Twice cooked vegetables have less food value and are less digestible than once cooked vegetables.

The lowly turnip green, so popular throughout the south, as attested by the words of the song: "Cornbread, buttermilk and good old turnip greens," is a rich source of calcium, iron and other minerals. The stems of the green are also fair sources of calcium, though containing less iron. The total ash of this green is important. But when parboiled and boiled for long periods, most of its value is lost.

Cabbage and onions have their sulphur oxidized by the usual methods of cooking them. Small heads of cabbage or small onions may be placed whole in a waterless cooker and cooked whole.

Tubers And Fruiting Plants

Carrots, beets, turnips and other tubers, also squash, tomatoes, etc., should not be pared and cut up before cooking. Scrub them thoroughly with a brush and cook them whole. Serve and eat whole, flavored with a little butter or oil only.

Potatoes should always be cooked in their skins and the skins eaten. Bake them 40 minutes in a very hot oven, or steam them in a waterless cooker.

Animal Proteins

Eggs should be soft-boiled, coddled or poached.

Meats are best baked or broiled under the flame to retain their juices. The juices of the meat should be served with it. Fish may be steamed or baked. No meat should ever be fried. "Frying turns meat into an alkaloid," a poison, says Dr. Gibson.

Cereals

Cereals should be served dry. They should not be boiled. They may be steamed or scalded and served with a little butter or cream--but not with sugar or milk. Stale bread is better than toasted bread.

Soups And Gravies

Soups, which are usually swallowed without mastication, are bad foods. They are especially bad when starch is added to them Starch, flour, tapioca, rice, etc., should never be added. Okra added to soups thickens them nicely and is not objectionable.

Gravies are objectionable and should not be prepared.