A Comprehensive Guide-Book to Natural, Hygienic and Humane Diet

6. Persons of sedentary habits should let at least one meal a day consist of uncooked fruit only – or of fruit with brown bread and butter – the bread being well baked.

7. Dried fruits, such as figs, dates, prunes, raisins, sultanas, etc., are very easily digested; and if blended with nuts or almonds they make a perfect meal. Such fruits may be taken freely and with advantage by almost everyone.

8. Nuts should be flaked in a nut-mill to aid digestion; cheese can also be made more easily assimilable in this way (or by cooking). Many nut products are now sold which are malted and partially pre-digested.

9. Give a few hours' thought and study to the important subject of your diet; learn what to do, and what newly-invented scientific foods are obtainable.

10. Do not make the mistake of attempting to live on potatoes, white bread, cabbages, etc., or merely upon the ordinary conventional dietary with the meat left out. Obtain and use well made and well cooked wholemeal bread every day. Take sufficient proteid, 1½ to 2-ozs. per day, to avoid anæmia – indigestion often results from lack of vitality caused through chronic semi-starvation.

11. If you feel any symptoms of dyspepsia, and can trace it to excess in eating, or to dietetic errors, reduce your food, fast temporarily, and take more exercise. Consider what mistakes you have made, and avoid them in the future. Eat only when hungry, in such cases.

12. If you are not getting on, obtain advice from a Doctor who is a fruitarian or from an experienced Food-reformer.

Commercial Dietetic Inventions

A large number of special proprietary substitutes for animal food can now be obtained to supplement the ordinary ones provided in the household. The latest particulars concerning these can always be known by reference to the advertisement pages of The Herald of the Golden Age, and full information as to their use is supplied by the various manufacturers. But although they are useful and convenient in many households, they are not absolutely essential. 'Home-made' dishes are often the best, being most economical, therefore it is advisable that all food-reformers should learn how to make nut-meats, &c., at home. Some of these substitutes are as follows: —

For Meat-Extracts: Marmite, Vegeton, Carnos, Nutril, Mapleton's Gravy Essence, Cayler's Extract, Wintox.

For Joints of Meat: Protose, Nuttose, Savrose, Fibrose, F.R. Nut-Meat, Vejola, Nuttoria, Shearn's Nut-Meat, Nutton, Brazose, Nuto-Cream Meat, Mapleton's Frittamix.

For Cold Meats: "Pitman" Nut-Meat Brawn, Ellis's Tomato and Nut Paste, Pasta-sol, Lentose, Nuska Viando, Savoury Paste, Potted Beans and Lentils.

For Meat Fat: Nutter Suet, Vegsu, Nutter, Nucoline, and Nut Margarine.

Pine Kernels, which contain 10 ozs. of oil to the pound, and which when rolled and chopped exactly resemble suet, are also an excellent substitute.

Delicious Nut-Butters are also now obtainable for high-class cookery – such as Almond, Walnut, Cashew, and Table Nutter. Although superior, these are as cheap as ordinary cooking butters.

For Lard and Dripping: Nutter, Darlene, Albene, Nut-oil, "Pitman" Vegetable Lard.

For Meat proteid: Emprote, Hygiama, Horlick's Malted Milk, Casumen Dried Milk, Gluten Meal.

For Gelatine: Agar-Agar, or Cayler's Jellies.

For Animal Soups: Mapleton's Nut and proteid Soups, and "Pitman" Vegsal Soups.

Prepared Breakfast Cereals: Manhu flaked Wheat, Rye, Barley and Oats, Kellogg Wheat and Corn Flakes, Granose Flakes and Biscuits, Shredded Wheat, Archeva Rusks, Puffed Wheat, Power, Kornules, Toasted Wheat Flakes, Melarvi Crisps and Biscuits.

For Picnic Hampers: Savage's Nut Foods or Cream o' Nuts, Wallace Cakes and Scones, Mapleton's Nut Meats, Winter's Nut Cream Rolls, "Pitman" Fruit and Nut Cakes and Nut Meat Brawn, Wallace P. R. or Ixion or Artox or "Pitman" Biscuits.

Meat Stock is substituted by vegetable stock, produced by stewing haricots, peas, lentils, etc. The latter is far more nutritious, and is free from the uric acid and excrementitious matter that are present in meat decoctions. A tasty and meaty flavour can be at once given to soups or gravies by adding some vegetable meat-extract selected from one of the varieties already mentioned.

In the following pages recipes will be found for preparing dishes which closely resemble, in taste, appearance, and nutritive value, those to which the community have been accustomed, some of them being of such a nature that persons who are fond of flesh-food find it difficult to detect whether they are eating such or not.

RELATIVE VALUES OF FOODS

How to Regulate our Diet

Our food must contain certain elements, and in proper quantity, if the body is to be well sustained, renewed and nourished. These are mainly as follows:

1. Protein to form flesh, build muscle, and produce strength.

2. Fat and Carbohydrates, to provide heat and energy.

3. Salts and minerals (such as phosphates, lime, iron, citrates, etc.) to build bones and teeth, feed the brain and nerves, and purify the body.

No hard-and-fast table or rule can be laid down concerning the proper proportions in which these elements should be combined, because the amount needful for each individual varies according to his size, the sort of work he does, the amount of physical or mental energy he puts forth, and the temperature of the atmosphere surrounding him.

Until Professor Chittenden made his extensive and conclusive series of experiments in America, in 1903-4, to determine the real amount of Protein and other elements required to keep the body in perfect health, the average estimate for a person of average size, who does a moderate amount of physical labour, was about 4-ozs. of Protein per day.

But these official experiments, conducted with scientific precision, extending over a long period, and made with thirty-four typical and carefully graded representatives of physical and mental work, demonstrated that half this amount of Protein is sufficient, and that strength and health are increased when the quantity is thus reduced; also that a smaller amount of Carbohydrate food (bread, etc.), than was previously thought necessary, is enough.

One may therefore now safely reckon that men of average size and weight (say 10 to 12 stone) doing a moderate amount of physical and mental work, can thrive under ordinary circumstances on a daily ration containing about 800 grains of Protein (nearly 2 ozs).

The following food chart will enable the reader to calculate (approximately) how much food of any particular kind is necessary to provide the above amount. Adult persons below the average size and weight, and living sedentary rather than an active physical life, will naturally require less than this normal standard. The relative cost and economy of the different foods can also thus be ascertained.

If care is taken to secure a sufficient quantity of Protein the requisite amount of Carbohydrates is not likely to be omitted, and hunger will prove a reliable guide in most cases. It is advisable, however, to see that enough Fat is taken, especially in winter, and by persons lacking in nerve force.

The table of food-values will easily enable the reader to ascertain the proportion of Fat in each kind of food.

The following indications of dietetic error may prove useful: —

Signs of Dietetic Mistakes. Excess of proteid matter causes a general sense of plethora and unbearableness, nervous prostration or drowsiness after meals, a tendency to congestion (often resulting in piles, etc.), headache, irritability, and bad temper. A continuous deficiency of it would tend to produce general weakness and anæmia.

Excess of carbohydrate matter (starch), especially if not sufficiently cooked and not well masticated, produces dyspepsia, flatulence, pain in the chest and abdomen, acidity (resulting in pimples and boils), and an inflammatory state of the system. Deficiency of it (or its equivalent, grape sugar) would produce lack of force and physical exhaustion.

Excess of fat tends to cause biliousness. Deficiency of it results in nervous weakness, neuralgia, and low temperature of the body.

Food for Brain Workers. It is important to remember that the more physical energy we put forth, the larger is the amount of proteid we require in our diet – and vice versa. Brain workers of sedentary habits require but little proteid, and quickly suffer from indigestion if this is taken too freely. For such, a very simple dietary consisting largely of dried and fresh fruits, nuts (flaked or ground), milk, eggs and cheese, and super-cooked cereals (such as wholemeal biscuits, and toast, Granose and Kellogg flakes, and well baked rice dishes) will be found to be the most suitable.