Canned foods are extensively used. The canning industry is one of the largest industries in America. It yearly spends millions of dollars to increase its business and to induce people to believe that canned foods are excellent foods. Subsidized research workers, scientists, physicians and others issue statements designed to increase confidence in canned foods.

The process of canning foods has undergone a great change within recent years, so that canned goods are better today than they were some years ago. Canned goods, many of them at least, are not without real food value, but they can never be made to take the place of real foods and should never be used when other foods may be had. There are many hospitals and sanitariums which feed canned foods to patients and to children. This I consider a criminal practice. I have never fed canned foods to patients, nor to children.

We are frequently told that present day methods of canning preserves the salts of the foods and does not destroy their vitamins. That their vitamins are impaired does not admit of doubt and Berg tells us "it seems undesirable to trust to the antiscorbutic efficacy of stored products. The antiscorbutic power of expressed cabbage juice, lemon juice and orange juice, seems to disappear in consequence of prolonged storage." Prolonged heating of acid fruit juices does not completely destroy their vitamin C, these qualities are lost after being bottled or canned and stored.

No method of canning is known that does not impair the salts of food and to a greater or lesser extent the other qualities of the food. Home canned foods are also bad. Professor Morgulis rightly says: "A new and serious source of malnutrition has arisen in our modern industrialized civilization. By the implacable economic forces women have been drawn away from their traditional place in the home and into the turmoil of industrial production. At the same time the factory has intruded itself into the home and has preempted much of the woman's function of preparing the family's food. The manufacture of foods dispensed in cans and all ready to be served has insinuated itself into the homes of the people to such an extent that it has become literally true that many households can now-a-days be conducted with the aid of two implements--the cork screw and the can opener. The evil of these industrial conditions is seen not only in the circumstance that the younger generation is deprived of proper maternal care, but also in the fact that owing to qualitative deficiencies, tinned goods, when these are the staple articles of diet, may produce the effects of partial inanition."

Cooking Vessels

Many types of cooking vessels are offered the public. Of these the waterless cooker is best. The waterless cooker should not be confused with the pressure cooker. Cooking vessels are made of many kinds of materials. Some of these distribute heat more uniformly than others and cook the food quicker. The first waterless cookers were made of aluminum. Due to the crusade that was carried on against the use of aluminum, many people are afraid of aluminum. In my opinion, this fear is unfounded, but for those who are afraid of aluminum, there are stainless steel cookers, earthenware cookers, cookers made of manganese, etc.