The outstanding feature of all dissent is partition. The type of mind which is favourable towards lack of conformity with the established order of things is just as apt to find points of dissimilarity and room for disagreement in its new sect. The fleshless feeder declares that the already used muscular system of a dead animal has lost all power of repairing the vital tissues of a living one - that in the highest sense of the term flesh foods are devitalised. On the other hand, he affirms with vigour that cereals, fruits, and nuts, being pure foods, are full of vitality which they are capable of transferring to those who consume them.

It does not require much reflection to see that the logical deduction from the claim that fleshless foods are pure, natural, and abounding in vitality, must be that they are therefore ready for use by man without the necessity for further preparation. The idea of eating flesh food raw is certainly repugnant, and so a militant section of the fleshless feeders triumphantly point to their viands, which are so natural that they demand no preparation, or perhaps it would be better to say, no cooking, to fit them for human consumption. Hence has arisen the sect whose disciples - with a lack of courtesy which, I will demonstrate, is not quite consistent with their practice - are known as "raw-fooders."

This latest addition to the ranks of the so-called food reformers claims that its followers are hale, hearty, and happy on a diet which requires no cooking, and its study requires some attention, because it is vaunted as a remedy for many ills, and is confidently regarded as a specific for stomach troubles. This assertion is so delightfully vague that it may signify anything, because the layman - and so far no medical support has been given to the raw-food idea in its baldest form - has an obstinate conception that the abdomen with all its contents is more correctly designated the stomach. But in addition to this potentiality it makes fat people grow thin and thin people grow fat, and ladies are specially directed to inquire into its miraculous powers of beautifying the complexion. The skin, in common with all the other tissues, is renovated, and the soi-disant raw-food scientist declares that under this system no waste matter can deposit in the cells, and so decomposed matter cannot roughen nor discolour the skin.

We are not surprised to find that the amount eaten by a raw-fooder at a meal is small, the reason advanced being that the stomach can "sense" just when it has had enough to satisfy the demands of the body. With cooked food, on the other hand, so much more is required because of the large proportion of waste matter it contains, that a "vast bulk of stuff" must be consumed before the stomach can be certain that it has done its duty by the body. This is solely (say the propagandists) because the life has been cooked out of the food by fire - not a bad thing for the consumer, one would say - and the physical energies are dissipated in their efforts to dispose of this huge quantity of waste matter foisted upon the unoffending organs of digestion. Being unable to cope with these demands, the body falls a prey to disease, which disappears the moment you join the ranks of the raw-fooders. Many other unwarrantable assertions are made in connection with this paradoxical dietetic system, but as they are unsupported by any evidence whatever, it is needless to repeat them.

A Residuum Of Truth

It cannot be gainsaid that there is something of real value in the notion, but something totally unlike the views advanced by its advocates. We may agree that, with other members of the animal kingdom, man originally partook of his food in the uncooked state, and it is highly probable that had he continued to do so, his evolution would have ceased at the troglodytic stage. Fruits, nuts, and soft grains - or grains in the milky state, where the nutrient portion is in the easily assimilated form of dextrin and starch, instead of the more resistent starchy form of the ripe hard grain - comprised his staple diet, and we are quite cognisant of the fact that many people can subsist on just such a dietary to-day.

Just at this point it might be wise to interpolate the remark that, although the raw-fooder claims that his foods are "sun cooked" as well as uncooked, this does not signify that he employs no kind of preparation to fit them for the palates of his supporters. Were we inclined to press the point to its logical conclusion, it would be easy to prove that very few of the foods whose use they counsel have any claim to be included in the category of the uncooked. The term "cooking" is generally applied to all the processes by which food, as purchased retail, is prepared for the table, but it is more particularly employed in its restricted sense to describe the changes produced in food by the application of heat. If we consider the matter from the former point of view, we may well inquire what function is subserved by the manufactories engaged in placing the various raw foods on the market; but even if we waive the right to include that part of the definition and confine our attention to the latter portion, it is perfectly certain that heat in some form or other is resorted to in the preparation of many so-called unfired foods.

The system would hardly be a financial, still less a social success if people were left to select their food like the beasts of the field, and so electricity, transformed for the time being into thermal rays, is pressed into the service. Under this influence much of the crude starch is converted into dextrin, and although one hardly associates this with cooking in the usual sense of the term, because a coal fire has not been the medium of the thermal application, there is little doubt that up to a certain point the processes are identical.