Part 20

HELEN: Should our food be cooked or eaten raw?

MOTHER: I am glad you asked that question. Most kinds of foods are better cooked, but many things are made unfit for food at all by being badly cooked. To be able to prepare healthful food in a neat, tasteful way is the best and most useful knowledge a girl can obtain. Every one should know how to make good, light bread, how to prepare vegetables, cook grains and fruits, and lay the table in a neat, pleasing way.

AMY: Will you teach us how, mother?

MOTHER: Certainly; we will begin this very day. I think we will form a class of four; for the boys will wish to learn too. I am sure you will soon be able to prepare food very nicely.

ELMER: Then we shall not always need to have a cook when we go out camping, but we can do our own cooking and care for ourselves.

MOTHER: There is still one other thing that I wish you never to forget, and that is that many men become drunkards because they do not have the right kind of food. It may be it is made so hot with pepper, mustard, and spices that it creates thirst, or it may be but half cooked, so they feel poorly fed. Such men are much more apt to go to the bar-room than the man who sits at a neatly-spread table furnished with plain, healthful food.

PERCY: But isn’t alcohol a kind of food, mother? I have seen drinking men who looked so fat and strong it seems as if it must build up the body.

MOTHER: No, my son, it is a great mistake to think there is any food in alcohol or in any drink that contains it. A noted doctor in England says this about it: “There is more nourishment in the flour that can be put on the point of a table knife than in eight quarts of the best beer.”

ELMER: But why do people who drink beer look so fat, then?

MOTHER: It is true many who drink it increase in flesh, and so they think the beer makes them large and strong. Fat men are not always strong men. The alcohol in the beer changes the muscles of the body into fat. It pushes the skin out and makes the face look round and plump.

AMY: And red, too.

MOTHER: Yes; and all the time the man is growing weaker instead of stronger. His liver changes into a mass of fat, and it crowds other rooms of the body-house so they can not properly carry on their work. The fleshy body of the beer-drinker is a diseased body, and you will find that it does not have firm muscles, a strong heart, or a healthy liver.

PERCY: But you have not told us what we should drink, mother.

Mother: Water, pure water, is the best drink for every one. Sometimes people become very ill from drinking bad water, so care should be taken to have it clean and pure. Bad water may be made harmless by boiling it, and this should always be done if it is not known that it is harmless. It may look all right, and yet cause sickness and death.

The well should never be near a pig-sty, barn-yard, or other filthy place. The seeds of sickness, which the doctors call “germs,” may travel through the ground a long distance and so get into the water in the well. This is more likely to be the case if the ground is sandy or slopes toward the well.

ELMER: Wouldn’t it be better to drink tea or coffee than bad water?

MOTHER: Tea and coffee are not foods, and both contain poisons which are hurtful to the body. It does not make bad water better to put poison into it. Besides, these drinks are often taken with food, and we have found that the cook down-stairs can do nothing while a lot of liquid is pouring down over her. It is also true that hot drinks weaken the walls of the stomach. It is better to drink pure water, and to take it before eating or some time after, and then we shall not be tempted to swallow our food without properly chewing it. Alcohol, tea, and coffee are stimulants.

HELEN: And I think you said once, mother, that a stimulant is like a whip to a tired horse.

MOTHER: Yes; to stimulate means to prick, or goad, to excite, or rouse to action. When a horse is very tired from climbing a steep hill his driver strikes him with a whip. That stimulates but it does not strengthen him. At first it takes but one blow to make him go faster, then two or three, and he finally becomes so weak that he does not respond to the whip at all.

That is just what happens when a person uses tea, coffee, tobacco, beer, or whisky. At first only a little will make him feel rested and as though he were stronger. But soon he wants more, and does not feel as strong as before he took the stimulant the first time. These drinks stimulate, but do not give strength. When a horse is tired he does not need a whip, but food and rest. The same is true of a man or woman when tired. Instead of putting poison in the stomach they need good food and rest, and these will make them really stronger.

PERCY: I am glad that I know why all those things are called stimulants.

MOTHER: And I must tell you one more thing about the liver which will help you understand what a wonderful part of the body-house it is, and why we should treat it kindly. As you already know, it is the largest room in the body. We might call it the store-room; for after the fuel is ready to use, it is stored up in the liver, where it is kept till needed, just as the tender carries a supply of coal for the engine.

We can not always be eating, and the body needs fuel when we are asleep as well as when we are awake, so the liver stores it away and sends it out when needed. Now if the master of the house sends a lot of alcohol to his liver, at first the little rooms fill up with fat, so they can not do their work or store up food for the body. If he keeps sending more and more whisky to his liver, it finally becomes small and hard, and when he goes to the doctor to find out what disease he has, the wise man tells him he has “the drunkard’s liver.”

HELEN: What a pity it is that men should abuse the liver so!

MOTHER: Yes, it is a pity, but some women are as bad, though not as many of them as of the men take alcohol. Some of them who would never think of doing that, think that their liver is too big, and that it makes the waist too large, so they gird it up with tight clothing and do not give it room to work. One doctor found a woman who had squeezed her waist so long that the liver was cut in two; and she died for her folly.

When Liver finds his room growing smaller, he gets cross, and says, “We’ll see about this;” and he gives the young lady a pain in her side. Her skin begins to look yellow and dirty, and the silly girl goes to the doctor for some medicine to make her well, when all she needs is to give Liver room to do his work, and give her body the right kind of fuel. Perhaps she is so foolish that she would rather be ill than let her waist grow as large as God made it; and, if so, she and her friends have a sorry time.

AMY: My liver shall never scold because it can’t have room enough in which to work.

MOTHER: That’s like my sensible girl, and I wish every other in the land would say the same.