Encyclopedia of Diet: a Treatise on the Food Question, Vol. 3

Part 1

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DIET

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

DIET

A Treatise on the Food Question

IN FIVE VOLUMES

EXPLAINING, IN PLAIN LANGUAGE, THE CHEMISTRY OF FOOD AND THE CHEMISTRY OF THE HUMAN BODY, TOGETHER WITH THE ART OF UNITING THESE TWO BRANCHES OF SCIENCE IN THE PROCESS OF EATING, SO AS TO ESTABLISH NORMAL DIGESTION AND ASSIMILATION OF FOOD AND NORMAL ELIMINATION OF WASTE, THEREBY REMOVING THE CAUSES OF STOMACH, INTESTINAL, AND ALL OTHER DIGESTIVE DISORDERS

BY EUGENE CHRISTIAN, F. S. D.

VOLUME III

NEW YORK THE CHRISTIAN DIETETIC SOCIETY 1914

COPYRIGHT, 1914

EUGENE CHRISTIAN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PUBLISHED AUGUST, 1914

CONTENTS

VOLUME III

Lesson XII Page

HARMONIOUS COMBINATIONS OF FOOD AND TABLES OF DIGESTIVE HARMONIES AND DISHARMONIES 591

Chemical Changes Produced by Cooking 593

Starch Digestion--Cooked and Uncooked 597

Excuses for Cooking Our Food 599

Experiment upon Animals 601

Food Combinations 603

How to Interpret the Tables 607

Tables of Digestive Harmonies and Disharmonies 609

Lesson XIII

CLASSIFICATION OF FOODS AND FOOD TABLES 619

Simple Classification of Foods Based on Principal Nutritive Substances 621

Purposes which the Different Classes of Food Serve in the Human Body 625

Part 2

Purpose of Carbohydrates 625

Purpose of Fats 626

Purpose of Proteids 626

Purpose of Mineral Salts 629

Difference between Digestibility and Assimilability 630

Table showing Comparative Assimilability and Carbohydrate and Water Content of Cereals, Legumes, and Vegetables 632

Lesson XIV Page

VIENO SYSTEM OF FOOD MEASUREMENT 637

Energy 639

Nitrogen 641

Systems of Food Measurements Compared 642

The "Old" System 642

The New or "Vieno" System 645

Necessity for a Simple System 646

Explanation of Table 648

Table of Food Measurements 655

Lesson XV

CURATIVE AND REMEDIAL MENUS 665

Introduction 667

Cooking 669

Grains 669

Vegetables 670

Cooking en casserole 671

Rice and Macaroni 672

Fruits 672

Canned Goods 673

Buttermilk 674

Home-made Butter 674

Part 3

The Banana 675

How to Select and Ripen Bananas 676

Baked Bananas 677

Recipes:

For Coddled Egg 677

For Uncooked Eggs 678

For Baked Omelet 678

For Fish and Fowl 678

For Green Peas in the Pod 679

For Pumpkin 680

For Vegetable Juice 680

For Sassafras Tea 681

Wheat Bran 681

Bran Meal 683

Choice of Menus 683

Normal Menus 685

Introduction to Normal Menus 685

For Normal Child, 2 to 5 years 687

For Normal Youth, 5 to 10 years 692

For Normal Youth, 10 to 15 years 696

For Normal Person, 15 to 20 years 700

For Normal Person, 20 to 33 years 704

For Normal Person, 33 to 50 years 708

For Normal Person, 50 to 65 years 712

For Normal Person, 65 to 80 years 716

For Normal Person, 85 to 100 years 720

Introduction to Curative Menus 724

Curative Menus:

Part 4

Superacidity 726

Fermentation 753

Constipation 761

Gastritis 763

Nervous Indigestion 784

Nervousness 789

Subacidity 801

Biliousness 809

Cirrhosis of the Liver 822

Diarrhea 832

Emaciation 845

LESSON XII

HARMONIOUS COMBINATIONS OF FOOD

AND

TABLES OF DIGESTIVE HARMONIES

AND DISHARMONIES

LESSON XII

HARMONIOUS COMBINATIONS OF FOOD AND TABLES OF DIGESTIVE HARMONIES AND DISHARMONIES

CHEMICAL CHANGES PRODUCED BY COOKING

The application of heat to food is comparatively of recent origin in the evolution of mankind. The use of fire involves a certain amount of mental ingenuity, and could not be practised by man's anthropoid ancestors. Anthropoid animals, whether human or ape, have a great amount of curiosity for the unusual and the new.

Man probably began his cooking experiments by soaking hard foods in warm water, then in hot water, or by warming cold foods at his camp-fire. As heat volatilizes the pleasant odorous substance present in many foods, the custom of heating them probably became popular. The habit of cooking spread, as many other novel and interesting customs have spread, from this primitive process to the French chef, regardless of whether the results were beneficial or harmful.

The question whether foods should be eaten cooked or uncooked can best be answered by examining the chemical and mechanical changes produced in the process of cooking, and their consequent physiological effects.

Cooking may be divided into two classes, namely, MOIST HEAT and DRY HEAT. To illustrate:

Sugars are not chemically affected by boiling with water, while starch, cooked with boiling water, or steam, absorbs from three to five times its bulk of moisture, and changes into a soft, pasty, or semi-dissolved mass. Under dry heat, sugars are converted into a brown substance, known as caramel, while starch cooked under a temperature of 300° to 400° of dry heat, is changed into a dextrin, of which toast and zwieback are examples.

Fats are not changed chemically by moist heat; that is, by being boiled in water, but the globules are melted and the hot fat spreads in a film over other material which may be present. In dry heat, fats are chemically decomposed, forming irritating vapors. The odors of frying fat are due to the presence of small quantities of these decomposition products. In larger quantities, and with greater heat, these substances are exceedingly irritating to the mucous membrane of the stomach and the intestines.

The chemical changes produced by heating proteids are of much more importance than are those which take place in other foods. Simple proteids, such as albumin and globulin, are coagulated at a temperature of about 160°. This change is familiar in the coagulation of egg whites under low temperature. Other proteids undergo similar changes, governed by the degree and kind of heat (dry or moist), to which they are subjected. This change in proteid material continues with the application of prolonged heat, until the proteid, under dry heat, is converted into a dark brittle mass, wholly insoluble and indigestible.

If the student will take the white of an egg, and bake it for some time in an oven, he will observe the coagulation or hardening of the proteid. The chemical nature of this change is one of great complexity. The molecules combine with each other, forming almost indestructible substances. The combined or coagulated forms of proteid are represented in nature by horns, hoofs, finger nails, and hair.

STARCH DIGESTION--COOKED AND UNCOOKED

Part 5

The student will remember the reference made in Lesson V to experiments concerning the digestibility of starch when taken in various forms. In these experiments, though conducted for the purpose of demonstrating the supposed advantage of excessive cooking, the results showed that at the time the contents of the stomach were removed, all the proteids of the uncooked grain had been digested, while the percentage of proteid digested from the various forms of cooked grain grew less as the cooking was increased. As the chief function of the gastric juice is the digestion of proteids, the real significance of the above experiments was exactly the opposite from that which was intended to be proved.

The statement is frequently made that the starch of grain cannot be digested without cooking, because the cells enclosing the starch grains have indigestible or insoluble cellulose walls. The old theory is that cooking expands the starch and ruptures or tears down these walls, freeing the contents so that the digestive juices may act upon the enclosed starch granules. This is a theory unsupported by facts. The cell walls on the interior of the grain kernel are very filmy, and in the mature grain scarcely exist at all. The analysis of wheat flour shows only a trace of cellulose fiber. Were these cellulose walls within the wheat grain, as this theory commonly teaches, flour would show a liberal quantity of cellulose. The cellulose wall theory, as a necessity for cooking starch, is an excellent illustration of the ease with which a groundless statement or theory may be used to prove or to explain some popular prejudice.

In the process of cooking, the tendency is to render the organic salts contained in food entirely inorganic. This change from organic to inorganic salts is measured by the temperature to which the foods are subjected. Many of these salts are combined with the nitrogenous constituents of food, therefore when subjected to certain degrees of heat they are of little value in the construction of the proteid molecules within the body. This is especially true of fresh or green vegetables.

EXCUSES FOR COOKING OUR FOOD

Inasmuch as the majority of people favor cooking, probably forgetting that about half of the food consumed in the world at the present time is taken in its natural or uncooked state, it may be well to mention some of the views advanced by those who believe that the present diet of cooked grain is better for modern man than an elementary diet, and who attempt to give a natural explanation. One theory is that man has subsisted so long upon cooked foods that his organs have become fitted for a cooked diet, and a cooked diet only. Another view sometimes advanced is, that while cooked foods were originally detrimental, yet by continued use man has become fitted for such a diet and unfitted for a natural diet. These are but other forms of the old belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This belief, however, is steadily losing ground among evolutionists. There is no more reason to believe that a modified function of the stomach would be inherited, than there is to believe that small feet would be inherited among the Chinese women just because these organs are mutilated by local custom.

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