FOOD, PURE FOOD, AND FRESH FOOD 23 



foods which we believed unfit for human consump- 

 tion. What should we do in order to secure clean, raw 

 milk, fresh vegetables, and decent chickens? The 

 pasteurized milk which we had been drinking for 

 years was a crime against the human stomach even 

 though the germs which got into the milk in the 

 course of its progress from the cow-stable to our back 

 doors were all embalmed and thus rendered harmless. 

 The fresh vegetables and fruits in the city markets 

 were of necessity of inferior qualities; they had to be 

 picked green, before they ripened naturally, in order 

 to make it possible to transport them without too 

 much spoilage. In addition, they withered and dried 

 out while being shipped, stored and displayed for 

 sale. Meat came to us from a spick and span butcher 

 shop, but we could never forget that it had first 

 passed through the packing-houses which Upton Sin- 

 clair had called "the jungle." After we moved to the 

 country and acquired the habit of eating fresh-killed 

 chicken, we could hardly force ourselves to eat 

 chicken in the city. Nothing which a cook can do 

 to a chicken in the kitchen can disguise for us the 

 flavor which develops in a chicken after it has been 

 kept for weeks and possibly for many months in cold 

 storage with all its intestines intact inside. In the 

 course of our studies of diet we became conscious for 

 the first time of the fact that all these things were part 

 and parcel of city living and of the factory packing 

 of foodstuffs to which industrialism seemed to have 

 irretrievably condemned the consuming public. 



