Milk is slightly heavier than water, while oils or fats are lighter. One quart of milk = 980 grams One quart of olive-oil = 876 grams One average egg = 50 grams One average olive = 6 grams One _Vieno_ = 100 calories One decigram nitrogen = 3/5 of a gram of protein LESSON XV CURATIVE AND REMEDIAL MENUS CONCLUDED LESSON XV CURATIVE AND REMEDIAL MENUS INTRODUCTION [Sidenote: Scientific eating leads toward simplicity] Scientific eating consists in selecting the food the body requires according to age, occupation, and climate. These requirements can be supplied with a very few articles. The necessary changes in diet can always be made by varying the proportions. It is possible to select, for each of the four seasons of the year, three or four articles that will contain all the elements of nourishment the body needs, therefore true food science leads one inevitably toward the mono-diet plan; that is, making a meal of only one kind of food. Owing to our inherent desire to sit at the "groaning table" we may yet be a long distance from the mono-diet plan, but the science of human nutrition points with unerring certainty toward simplicity. It should be remembered, however, that one may eat, under nearly all conditions except extreme superacidity all he desires of one or two things--one preferred. [Sidenote: How foods become curative] In the light of modern medicine, no food has any specific curative property. Foods become curative only as they remove abnormal conditions, and they will remove abnormal conditions just to the extent that they can be perfectly digested and assimilated, and to the extent that waste matter is thoroughly eliminated from the body. In this way all possible resistance is removed, and Nature will build up the dis-eased and broken-down tissue in obedience to the law of animal evolution. This constructive process we call "curing." While the menus for each season of the year may seem to vary but little, especially when compared with the conventional omnivorous diet, yet experience has proved that the fewer the articles composing the meal, the better will be the results. COOKING SOME IMPORTANT FACTS REVEALED BY MODERN SCIENCE The object of cooking is to tear down the cell-structure of foods, and to make them more digestible. After the cell-structure is demolished, every degree of heat to which foods are subjected injures the foods instead of improving them. GRAINS Grains should be cooked whole. They should be cleansed, well covered with water, and boiled until the grains burst open as in making old-fashioned corn hominy. This will often take from three to four hours' constant boiling.