One important thing to remember in connection with cooking is that fried foods, the use of which is so prevalent in America is an unmitigated evil. “Of all dietic abominations for which bad cooking is responsible, fried dishes are the most pernicious,” says Dr. Kellogg. “Meat fried, fricasseed, or otherwise cooked in fat, fried bread, fried vegetables, doughnuts, griddle cakes, and all similar combinations of melted fat or other elements of food are most difficult articles of digestion. None but the most stalwart stomach can master such indigestibles. The gastric juice has little more action upon fats than water. Hence a portion of meat or other food saturated with fat is as completely protected from the action of gastric juice as is a foot within a well-oiled boot from the snow and water outside.” This same reason explains why rich cake, shortened pie crust and pastry generally, as well as warm bread and butter disagree with sick stomachs and are the cause of many diseases. Not only does the interfering with the digestion of the food by its covering of fat set up fermentation, but the chemical changes occasioned in the fat itself develop exceedingly injurious acids which irritate the mucous membrane of the stomach, causing congestion and sometimes even inflammation. The frying-pan is an implement that should be banished from every kitchen in the land. For many years past America has been deluged with various breakfast foods, the virtues of which have been loudly trumpeted. Yet in the ordinary process of cooking these breakfast foods, oatmeal, cracked wheat, etc., it is seldom that more than half the starch completes even the first stage of conversion. Hence it cannot be acted upon at all by the saliva, which does not begin the process of digestion with raw starch. The use of imperfectly cooked cereals is without doubt responsible for a great share of the dyspepsia prevailing among Americans. Oatmeal porridge, and similar preparations, unless most thoroughly cooked, are not wholesome foods, and when cream and sugar are added, there is a combination calculated to create a marked form of dyspepsia. Cereals must be cooked dry in order to be thoroughly cooked, and when prepared by dry cooking or toasting, they are well adapted to the human stomach, are easily digested and in combination with fruits and nuts, constitute a good dietary. Cereals must not only be cooked dry in order to be promptly digested, but they should also be eaten dry. Experiments show that an ounce of dry, well cooked cereal food when well masticated will produce two ounces of saliva; whereas mush, gruel, and other moist cereal foods cause the secretion of only a very small quantity of saliva, less than one quarter of the amount produced by the same food in a dry state.