PURE AND IMPURE FOODS. 



EDITED BY DR. JAS. WEIR, JR. 



Author of "The Dawn of Reason," "Suicide in the United States," "Socialism Among Bees," "The Antiquity of the 

 Human Race," etc. 



" What a Man Eats He Is." 



EAT THINKINGLY. 



I have more than once in these pages 

 called attention to the average man's 

 habit of bolting his food in the shortest 

 time possible, instead of making his meals 

 both enjoyable and profitable by giving up 

 some portion of his time to these necessary 

 functions. If one is, perforce, a la solitaire 

 as to meals, he can spend his time while 

 eating in "chewing the cud of gentle re- 

 flection." If, on the contrary, one has 

 company while at table, he can prolong 

 the meal in pleasant conversation. All 1 

 insist on is that plenty of time should 

 be given each meal and that food should 

 be thoroughly masticated before it is swal- 

 lowed. This latter proposition is by far 

 the more important. A writer in one of 

 the current medical magazines in regard to 

 thorough mastication makes the following 

 exceedingly pertinent remarks: 



"Meats, as ordinarily prepared for the 

 table, are softened and disintegrated by 

 boiling, broiling or stewing. The fibres 

 are separated and no great amount of mas- 

 tication is necessary to reduce them to a 

 pulp and mix them with the saliva. Later, 

 the gastric juice has readier access to them 

 in this softened, pultaceous condition. The 

 action of saliva on the starchy foods pre- 

 pares them for the action of the stomach 

 pepsin and hydrochloric acid. They are 

 first converted into sugar. A piece of 

 bread chewed slowly and well mixed with 

 saliva becomes sweet to the taste. Yet, 

 as a rule, such foods as bread, crackers, 

 hominy, potatoes, toast, oatmeal, rice, 

 parsnips, turnips, peas, beans, etc., are 

 chewed very little, are swallowed with some 

 difficulty, and are usually washed down 

 for convenience and saving of time with 

 copious draughts of liquids. For perfect 

 digestion it is essential that the starch 

 granules in all these foods should be freed 

 from their enclosing envelope and the 

 whole subjected to the action of the 

 saliva." 



NUTS. 

 Fill your pockets with almonds and 

 hazel nuts and munch them between meals 

 when you have that tired feeling. It will 

 leave you as though by magic. Long be- 

 fore we became dignified, earth-walking 

 men we lived in trees and ate nuts. In 

 those old days we were too weak to obtain 

 the proteids in the shape of meat, so we 

 sntisfied ourselves with them as they were 

 t< be found in nuts. 



A perfect substitute for the proteids af- 

 forded by meats may be found in nuts, or 

 perhaps it may be said with greater pro- 

 priety that nuts afford the original source 

 of proteid nutriment intended by nature for 

 human consumption. Nuts are, in fact, 

 vegetable meat. The peanut contains 

 nearly 50 per cent more proteid matter 

 than an equal quantity of the best beef. 

 The same is true of peas, beans and len- 

 tils. Nearly all other nuts are as rich in 

 proteids as the peanut is. It is only nec- 

 essary that these food substances be prop- 

 erly prepared to render them capable of 

 completely replacing flesh foods of every 

 description, not only in affording necessary 

 proteids, but in satisfying all reasonable 

 demands of the palate for gustatory stim- 

 ulation. This sense of taste is without 

 doubt intended by nature to be a correct 

 guide in alimentation. The unperverted 

 taste calls for just the kind of food needed 

 and just the proper quantity, and 'ceases 

 its demands when the needs of the body 

 have been supplied. 



Within the last few years nuts have 

 been widely introduced in the place of 

 meats, and with the most beneficial re- 

 sults. Thousands of people are to-day 

 substituting nut preparations of various 

 sorts for flesh foods of every kind, and 

 with highly beneficial results. 



THE FOOD VALUE OF BEER. 

 The advocacy of the food value of any 

 alcoholic beverage should have its restric- 

 tions. Not long ago a distinguished scien- 

 tific man, who fills a chair in one of our 

 foremost universities, was so indiscreet as 

 to yield himself a willing victim to the 

 plausible and wily reporter. The results 

 of this interview have been, without doubt, 

 extremely disastrous. The reporter made 

 the professor an advocate of and believer 

 in the high food value of alcohol, and 

 many people were thereby led to fatten 

 themselves on alcohol at the expense of 

 their stomachs, livers, kidneys, and brains. 

 Certain malt liquors unquestionably have 

 high food values, notably the heavy bodied 

 American beers. Foreign beers are loaded 

 with "preservatives," consequently are 

 poisonous and of no food value what- 

 ever. Bavaria will not allow preservatives 

 in the beers sold to her own native pop- 

 ulation, while the beers sent to us fairly 

 reek with boracic and salicylic acids and 

 kindred poisons. Our own domestic beers 

 are far more nutritious and healthful thaa 



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