The suggestions and directions given are which follow are for the mothers and housewives. For those on whose shoulders rests the responsibility of feeding the family. It is necessary, however, before undertaking these practical lessons to know exactly to what end you are working and why.
For this purpose let us take “The Science of Eating” and from its unlimited fund of information separate two central facts to serve as the foundation stones of our dietary. Get a thorough knowledge of these two corner stones and you can’t go wrong in preparing menus which will make your children strong and keep them strong.
The first of these “Central Facts” is found in the chapter on “Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return”pages 55 and 6i, where we are told forcibly what we have all known in a hazy sort of way.
There are sixteen minerals designed by the Al-mighty as the food elements of the vegetable and animal kingdoms.
There can be no doubt about this for these sixteen minerals are found repeating themselves all through nature. Analyze chemically a handful of earth or a glass of milk or an egg or a grain of wheat or even your own body. You will find the same sixteen elements. How came they there? Through foodand food alone. Their presence in the right proportion spells health. Their absence spells low resistance, sickness and even death.
We can’t absorb these minerals from the earth as found there.
The plant absorbs them from the earth. We get them from the plant as food.
These sixteen elements are just as necessary for the growth and health of our bodies as they are necessary for the growth and life of the plant.
When a farmer reaps a crop he knows that said crop has taken from the soil certain food elements. Before planting another crop he replaces those elements to the soil by means of a fertilizer. Why? Because he knows that without these minerals his next crop will not thrive.
Yet we intelligent humans have been pre-paring and eating our food to please our palates only with no thought whatever of the mineral elements necessary to sustain our bodies in a state of health. Through our ignorance we have lost these precious minerals in two ways:
1st. By our methods of cookery we have boiled them out of our vegetables and thrown the water containing the minerals down the sink.
2nd. The millers have removed them from our grains.
Wheati.e., the entire wheat berrythe graincontains the whole sixteen minerals. Yet in the milling of white flour three-quarters of these building materials have been removed.
Our White bread contains no food value. This is also true of white rice and of all denatured cereals. It has been positively proven that the removal of these minerals is the cause of malnutrition among children and the primary cause of all our illnesses. Hence :
It is our plan now to obtain and use meal made from the whole grain and to so prepare our food as to conserve all the food value.
This is the basis for our new routine.
SECOND CORNER STONE
The second “Central Fact” which we must thoroughly learn to have it serve as our second corner stone.
In this for the sake of clearness we are given an illustration with which we are all familiar, viz.:
Dissolve some baking soda and stir into it some cream of tartar (or molasses or vinegar). Instantly they bubble and froth.
The cream of tartar (or vinegar) is an acid, the baking soda is an alkali. (In the mixing of the two we call the alkali the “base.”)
When the two come together they fight it out until they neutralize each other.
Some acids are very strong, others are feeble, but all acids are neutralized when brought in contact with “bases” (alkalis).
This point is very important.
Bases and acids neutralize each other and this process of neutralization is constantly going on in our bodies.
Our bodies are constantly manufacturing acids. There must be bases enough in our food to neutralize them.
Certain of our foods are acid-forming. Others are base-forming. If these are properly balanced all is wellbut it is clear that if we eat an acid-forming food and another and another acid-forming food without sufficient alkaline or base-forming food trouble must ensue.
Unless the acids manufactured in our bodies are neutralized by bases a condition of Acidosis is brought about.
Acidosis is the primary cause of nine-tenths of our illnesses.
Acidosis is sometimes called anemia, sometimes neuritis, nervous breakdown, etc. The form it takes makes little difference. The cause is the same.
All foods as found in nature are “balanced” (containing both acid and base forming elements).
But the bases are always mineral and when we have wasted our minerals in the way hereintofore described we have thrown away our bases and have left only the acid-forming elements. Thus:
Whole wheat is “balanced.” White flour is acid-forming.
Baked potatoes are “balanced.” Boiled potatoes are acid-forming.
In both instances we have lost the minerals by methods of milling or cooking.
This is what we are planning to avoid. Nowwe can sum up our knowledge of our two corner stones in this one sentence :
We will conserve our minerals by cooking our vegetables more sanely and by insisting on meal made from the whole grain.
And we must have our food properly balanced as to acids and bases.