Bad Cooking

Next to overeating, it is somewhat difficult to determine whether bad cooking, folly in drinking, or haste in eating, causes most disease. All are well-nigh universally practiced in this country. If our people had to do without foods until they were properly cooked, most of them would starve to death. Some modern cooks try to please the taste, regardless of the stomach, while a large number make no effort to do either. This class simply bring heat, water, food and fat together, and trust to patent medicines and the doctor to keep alive those who eat their products. The modern cook has been energetic in one direction, at least; and that is to get as far away from rational processes as possible. The object of cooking is to disintegrate the food and make it most palatable, but the cook often does everything possible to serve the food in such a way that neither end is attained. Heat coagulates or solidifies albumen - the principal element of meat and eggs - so, in order to make them as nearly insoluble as possible, the cook keeps them subject to a hot fire for a long time, and, as if this were not bad enough, they are often saturated with butter or lard.

Fats are not digested in the stomach, and when meat or eggs are saturated with it, the food is sheathed with material not acted upon by the secretions of the stomach. Could any process be worse than to first render the food insoluble and then smuggle it through the stomach under a cover of fat? This is not all; for the process of cooking starch is equally bad. All starch-yielding foods are composed of layers of starch cells, from one-eight-hundredth, to one-five thousandth of an inch in diameter. These cells are enclosed in indigestible envelopes, which must be ruptured by cooking. Rolled oats is often served within five minutes after it commences to cook, while two hours' cooking would be nearer right. The method of cooking coarse, fibrous vegetables, such as cabbage, is almost as bad. The stomach is the disintegrating vessel of the body, and half-cooked, woody or stringy vegetables, saturated with fat, cannot be dissolved in weak stomachs. The ordinary cook spoils the meat by over-cooking; the starchy foods by almost no cooking; and caps the climax of cuisine folly by serving doughy bread. Verily, the cook slays not only thousands, tens of thousands, but millions. Uselessness of Teeth. The Creator either made a mistake in giving man teeth, or man makes a mistake in not using them.

The teeth were evidently intended to crush all solid substances before they were swallowed. It was also intended that saliva be mixed with the food to an extent of thorough saturation; but most people swallow their food without much crushing or saliva, and to make their folly complete, they wash it down with quantities of both hot and cold drinks."

Drinking Folly

"If he could run like he can drink, I would like to hunt hares with him," can still be applied to many people. Folly in drink seems to have begun with human life, and we fear it will only end there. The use of alcoholic liquors has long been an important factor in producing disease. Strong liquors paralyze the nerves, deaden sensibility and irritate the mucous membranes of the stomach. Malt liquors, in quantities, derange the stomach, because of their icy coldness, their bulk and the amount of acetic acid they contain. Alcoholic inebriety is a great curse both physically and morally, but is not the only harmful drinking.

The reformers are not free from folly of a serious character; for many of them are tea and coffee inebriates, which, if not so bad as alcohol, they make up in the numbers they injure for what they lack in the intensity of effects. The habit of stimulating the nervous system with tea and coffee and tobacco, through its direct and hereditary influences, is one of the principal sources of alcoholic inebriety. Any considerable drinking during meals is pernicious, because it dilutes the digestive secretions too much, and makes too great a bulk in the stomach; but warm drinks are not quite as bad as very cold drinks, which lower the temperature of the stomach and paralyze its nerves. Ice water with meals is one of the most stupid pieces of folly practiced by Americans (mostly men), but a few (mostly female) have a still worse habit. They drink liquids scalding hot. This practice leads to very serious results, as the excessive heat irritates the mucous membranes and relaxes the stomach and causes its dilatation.

Foul Mouths

Some people keep their mouths about as foul as garbage boxes. The food adheres to the teeth and decays; this destroys them, makes an offensive breath, and poisons the food to a greater or less extent, and causes it to decay in the stomach.

Deficient Diet

To maintain health our food must supply the chemical elements found in the body, in proper proportions, and as most people must select their foods from a very limited number set before them, it often happens that the appetite causes them to eat those things that contain an excess of some elements, but deficient in others. Many eat an excess of sugar, syrup, preserves, candy and sweetened foods. Many dyspeptics are cured by leaving off all sweetened or sweet food. A large number eat too much fat in the way of fat meat, butter, cream, gravy and pastry rich from shortening. Free fats in the stomach envelop the food and resist the action of the gastric juice, and delay digestion. If fats remain in the stomach too long, they are partly converted into butyric acid, which irritates the stomach. A common instance of a badly-chosen diet is excessive meat eating. If meat be eaten as the principal part of the diet, it must be used for tissue-repair and heat-production, or it will poison the body if not promptly eliminated. Some go to the otner extreme, and eat very little but starch, white bread and potatoes.

Such a diet is deficient in protein and mineral matter.

Too Little Waste

One of the most common faults or mistakes in our diet, is the use of foods that contain too little waste material. This comes from the practice of removing- all the cellulose (bran) from our breadstuff's, so that they may appear white. Finely powdered bran acts as a stimulant of the bowels, and is the best of all known remedies for constipation. The practice of eating coarse bran, as advised by some physicians, is a great mistake. It is too irritating, and likely to remain in the stomach too long, and may also obstruct the bowels.

Incompatibility Of Foods

Foods may be good and wholesome enough, but incompatible when taken together. As an example, acids arrest the digestion of starch, and acids and milk will often cause vomiting. Strong tea makes eggs insoluble in the stomach, and both strong tea and coffee arrest digestion. Another common fault is that of eating too many kinds of food at the same meal. Some chemical elements unite; others will only mix like oil and water. Foods contain various chemical elements, and the fewer that are mixed at one time the better for digestion. Another thing, foods that are easily digested, and sour quickly, like sweet fruits and sweetened starch puddings, should not be eaten with hearty meals, or with foods that require a long period for digestion. If this be done, they are likely to sour the whole meal.